The Press. — London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

754 She bids him keep in view the straight and only -entrance, that wicket-gate, which none ever entered till they ha•i put off their own clothing—that is, mortality ; and then only by her grace and favour. He is then led to her h mac (i.e., the Church), but before reaching it has to wade through a stream, which signifies, of course, Baptism. After this purification he is admitted, and finds assembled a number of pilgrims, and personages who offer them what may be useful on the journey. One of the latter is Moses, who stands for " Law," as opposed to " Grace," and is reproved accordingly. Moses is succeeded by personifications of Reason or Prudence, and of Nature ; of Sapience or Dis cretion, Repentance, Piety, and Charity, the latter presenting to her auditory the last Will and Testament of Him who, for love of mankind, died rpm the Cross ; which runs thus : " I, who am the way, ;he truth, and the life, make this maylest testament, and voluntarily bequeath my soul to my Father, to be in his safe keeping, whilst I descend int 3 hell to release those who love me. My body I bequeath to be interred in the sepulchre Joseph has made, and to the pilgrims who keep in the right way, in order that they may be nourished by it, and helped on their way. My bent I leave to those who love anti keep my command. meats. To John I leave the care of my mother, and my blood I leave for the salvation of all those who had compas sion on me." There is something in the quaintness of this formal will which one might be inclined to trace to the influence of the " Bazochiens " or lawyers' clerks, who had invented the entertainments called Moralities, not long before Dc Guileville wrote. These pieces he had no doubt seen performed, and it is not difficult to imagine that the language in which they were couched would reflect in many instances the calling of the actors. The same remark applies to a very professional conversa tion (at p. xxxvii. of the appendix) between Avarice " and the Pilgrim on the subject of a purchase of growing timber. After presenting the Pilgrim with the mail armour of Patience, the helmet of Temperance, the gorget of Sobriety, the gauntlets of Conti nence, the sword of Righteousness, the scabbard of Humility. and the shield of Prudence, she pro sides him with an attendant called Memory, who is to produze any of these weapons as often as occasion may require. The Pilgrim proceeds on his road, and soon arrives at the "parting of the ways." This "point" in the allegory is repre sented by our old friend the Pythagorean Y, apropos of which the editors have a learned note, where every parallel passage bearing on the sub ject appears to be industriously cited. At the en trance of one path is seated Industry, engaged as a " natte-maker " (crochet ?); at the other, Idleness, playing with her gloves ; but by a curious slip of the mediaeval artist it is the former who is placed at the broad, and the latter at the narrow way. The Pilgrim of course chooses the proper one, which does not, however, prevent him from meet. ing on his journey with Tribulation and Avarice, the latter of whom favours him with a long and cynical discourse on the wickedness of mankind, which reads somewhat like a bit of Rabelais deodorized. Atter having passed through the temptations of Worldly Gladness and of Flattery, and conversed with several other allegorical per sonages, he falls into the clutches of Infirmity and Old Age, who are succeeded by Death, repre sented as an old woman bearing a wooden coffin and a scythe. (We may observe that almost all the abstract ideas are personified by women, so that the Pilgrim—lucky dog !—enjoys a good deal of female society in the course of his jour ney.) Gracedieu ultimately appears, and re assures her protege at this crisis of his fate ; after which, he says, Death seemed to run him through the body with her ey:he ; and he awoke with a start, scarcely knowing whether he were dead or alive, until he was certified of the fact of his being alive by the sound of the convent bell and the crowing of the cocks. Hereupon he would have arisen, but lay still in bed musing upon his wondrous dream; cuncer ll ill g which, lie informs the reader, that, if there be anything in it which seems to savour of vanity or untruth, it must be taken as the straw and the chaff is with wheat, and the whole so sifted that the good and true may remain and be remembered, whilst the light and worthless is for gotten and dismissed ; and, finally, he concludes by re aammending his (work to all those who, like good win no are skilled in separating reality from error, and truth fro m falsehood. That the poem of which we have given a brief account was very popular in England, appears from the imitations of it occurring in Chaucer, whose " A, 13, C," or "Priere de Nostre Dame," is almost a literal translation from De Guileville's Prayer to the Virgin; and from the fact that HE PRESS, AUGUST 7, 1858. the whole poem was translated by Lydgate in the succeeding century (1426) under the patronage of Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury. This version now only exists in two MSS. on vellum in the British Museum, one of which is imperfect at the end, while the other, of which the beginning is wanting, supplies the missing portion. The editors have printed a great portion of it in an appendix, adding parallel passages from the original, with connecting remarks and an analysis of such parts as are too long for textual quotation. A trans lation appears also to have been made by John Skelton in the time of Henry VIII. ; there is a Dutch version in the Library at the Hague ; and various other editions appear in the list which the editors have supplied. For this popu larity it is not perhaps difficult to account. As long as human nature continues, it will doubtless always be interested in that which comes to it in the guise of a story ; and when to this is added the contemplation of familiar ethical notions under a new aspect, the mild excitement of making out a tolerably easy allegory, and the conscious meritoriousness of reading what was religious and improving, it is obvious that any composition uniting these qualities would, in most ages, find a large class of persons disposed to welcome it favourably. We should not, perhaps, be far wrong in supposing that such works were to their epoch a sort of " Proverbial Philosophy," and that they addressed themselves with success to the same sort of minds as those which enjoy our Tupper at the present day. They do not rise to the height of epic dignity or lyric sweetness, and the only character they display is, perhaps unconsciously, that of the man who wrote them ; but they have their place, and, while we indulge our curiosity by dwelling on their quaintness, and elucidating their obscurity, we may, in the midst of the rich banquet of literature which often lies untasted around us, afford to bestow a little of our sympathy on those who were forced to content themselves with so comparatively meagre an intellectual diet. The resemblances in the poem of De Guileville to Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" are such as to strike every reader, and some of them have already occurred in our analysis. We find in the former the prototypes of the " wicket-gate," of the " burden," of the " Interpreter's house," of the " roll with the seal upon it," of " Mr. Legality," and of the " furniture which the Lord " has provided for pilgrims," stored up in the Interpreter's house. In the older narrative Gracedieu presents the Pilgrim " with the iden tical pebbles that David had in his scrip when "he fought against Goliath." In Bunyan, the damsels at the House Beautiful show Christian " the sling and stone with which David slew " Goliath of Gath." Perhaps the most curious parallel is that of the " bysme " (besom) with which, in De Guileville, Repentance sweeps out the sins from the heart of man, and which Bunyan has adopted, and worked up into the scene in the " dusty parlour " at the Interpreter's house, where the diverse effects of the Law and the Gospel are contrasted with each other. Finally, De Guileville's envoy to the reader, which we have extracted above, is in substance identical with the lines which Bunyan has sub j,ined to the conclusion of his work. There are other instances, to which we want space to refer ; but our general impression from the work before us is that Bunyan was really indebted to it fur a good many hints, which, however, he has used in a manner which makes them alto gether his own. We have left ourselves no room to mention the illustrations, which are extremely curious, but which will speak for themselves to any one who may chance to open the book. The attitudes are out of drawing, and the laws of perspective not rigidly adhered to, but there is an expression about the faces which is highly characteristic and often very entertaining. Another kind of merit is possessed by the engraving of " The Christian Warrior's Spiritual Combat,' at page 34, which belongs to the sixteenth century, and which, independently of its allegorical ingenuity, is remarkably good as a work of arts. In taking * We venture to suggest chat the convenience of the work would be enhanced by a complete net of the illustrations, with some explanation appended to each title. The cross references to them from the text are at present a little embarrassing. This addition might easily be comprehended in one or two pages which might be issued to purchasers and could easily be inserted in their proper place. leave of the editors and thanking them for the industry and ability with which they have pe r . formed their task, we hope that this is not the last time that we shall meet with such zea l" labourers in so interesting a field of research. There are numerous inedited MSS. in the British Museum which would well repay even a less amount of toil and care than that w hi ch they have bestowed on this elegant monument of their studies. PERIODICAL LITERATURE. Toe August number of Blackwood is not, upon the whole, a strong number, although containing a good deal of pleasant writing. The review of Mr. Glad. stone's Homer is, however, an excellent paper, and not, we think, more than fairly severe on the right hon. scholar's ingenious theories. The following general observations, having no particular application to Mr. Gladstone, are worth remembering : All historians and critics agree in portraying this period in much the same colours. Some are more impressed with the lights, some with the shadows, but the picture cannot be very different to any two candid observers. Mr. Gladstone dwells more frequently on the virtues than the vices of this heroic period, but he does not omit the latter. Perhaps the chief source of the difference that may be noticed in the estimate formed of this period by any two students of Homer, lies in this, that one will make a greater allowance than another for the peculiar colouring it has received from the imagination or the sentiments of the poet. It is most true that the poet himself is but the highest creation of his own age ; it is most true that he cannot stir the minds of others, nor obtain their admire. tion, unless he, to a certain extent, is in unison with his own age; but it is equally true that a great poet will occasionally attribute to his warriors sentiments which would unl) arise in the minds of a few reflective men like himself. We think that our Shakespeare has not unfairly represented the English barons of the middle ages; but how many thoughts and sentiments has he given them which were quite unknown to Yorkist or Lancastrian! Homer idealised; he could not otherwise have been the great poet that he was. Something—how much it is hard to say--of what we admire in Achilles and Hector belongs exclusively to the poet, not to the warrior, of that age. In some of the speeches assigned to his heroes we think we see the reflective, meditative man giving out his own especial thoughts; uttering them in the person of thatches of fighting men amongst whom they would probably never have originated. And the reviewer quotes in illustration of his mean ing the famous speeches of Hector and Sarpedon in the twelfth book of the liiad respecting augury, the duties of kings, and tha impossibility of escaping death. The general character of the work is summed up in the following paragraph We could select many passages from this work, and we hope we shall be able to find room in our pages for some of them, which contain separable observations both true and admirably expressed; but we are compelled to report that the nhilosophical and historical criticism which forms the substance of the book is of a very slight, unstable character—much of it fanciful and visionary. We do not say that a painstaking student of Homer will have gained nothing from a perusal of these three volumes; but we do think that, in the course of his scholarly reading, he will rarely have encountered three such bulky volumes from which he has gained so little. He presses his hand, and the more tightly he grasps the less be retains. So much escapes in mere forth, mere fancy, vague and unaccredited assertion. There is, too, a great deal of repetition; time has not been taken to condense, and so to arrange the material as to avoid this repetition. " Excuse the length of my letter, I had not time to make it shorter," writes the venerable John Wesley. The excuse is permissible in a letter: is it equally permissible in a book? The review of Mr. White's " Eighteen Christian Centuries " is very favourable to the author, and seems on the whole a good article. But we must strongly protest against a paragraph at p. 166, where the writer argues as if mere information were every thing, and the cultivation of the taste nothing. We are glad to see another article that does full justice to the beauties of Mr. Kingsley's " Andromeda." And in " What will he do with it " we rejoice to find the story beginning to move a little. Sophy has shot up into a young lady, companion to Lsdy Mootfort, and Lionel Houghton is in love with her. Darrell has given up his notion of a second marriage, which draws flrth the following regrets from Colonel Morley : Mere gossip—not true. No, he will never again marry. Three days ago I thought it certain that he would — certain that I should find for my old age a nook in his home—the easiest chair in his social circle ; that my daily newspaper would have a fresh interest, in the praise of his name, or the report of his speech; that I should walk proudly into White's, sure to hear there of Guy Darrell ; that I should keep from misanthropical rust my dry knowledge of life, planning shrewd panegyrics to bira of a young happy wife, needing all his indulge nce — panegyrics to her of the highminded sensit ive man, claiming tender respect and delicate soothing ; — th at day by day, I should have made more pleasant th e home in which I should have planted myself, and found i n bts children boys to lecture and girls to spoil. Don't be jealous, George. I like your wife, I love yoar little ones, and you will have all I have to leave. But to en old ■ ME M M