The Ship of Fools, Volume 1-2, Sebastian Brant [good books to read TXT] 📗

feeling are Barclay’s Ship of Fools and Eclogues

thoroughly expressive of the unhappy, discontented, poverty-stricken,

priest-ridden, and court-ridden condition and life, the bitter sorrows and

the humble wishes of the people, their very texture, as Barclay himself

tells us, consists of the commonest language of the day, and in it are

interwoven many of the current popular proverbs and expressions. Almost all

of these are still “household words” though few ever imagine the garb of

their “daily wisdom” to be of such venerable antiquity. Every page of the

“Eclogues” abounds with them; in the “Ship” they are less common, but still

by no means infrequent. We have for instance:—

 

“Better is a frende in courte than a peny in purse”—(I. 70.)

“Whan the stede is stolyn to shyt the stable dore”—(I. 76.)

“It goeth through as water through a syue.”—(I. 245.)

“And he that alway thretenyth for to fyght

Oft at the prose is skantly worth a hen

For greattest crakers ar nat ay boldest men.”—(I. 198.)

“I fynde foure thynges whiche by no meanes can

Be kept close, in secrete, or longe in preuetee

The firste is the counsell of a wytles man

The seconde is a cyte whiche byldyd is a hye

Upon a montayne the thyrde we often se

That to hyde his dedes a louer hath no skyll

The fourth is strawe or fethers on a wyndy hyll.”—(I. 199.)

“A crowe to pull.”—(II. 8.)

“For it is a prouerbe, and an olde sayd sawe

That in euery place lyke to lyke wyll drawe.”—(II. 35.)

“Better haue one birde sure within thy wall

Or fast in a cage than twenty score without”—(II. 74)

“Gapynge as it were dogges for a bone.”—(II. 93.)

“Pryde sholde haue a fall.”—(II. 161).

“For wyse men sayth …

One myshap fortuneth neuer alone.”

“Clawe where it itchyth.”—(II. 256.) [The use of this, it occurs again in

the Eclogues, might be regarded by some of our Southern friends, as

itself a sufficient proof of the author’s Northern origin.]

 

The following are selected from the Eclogues as the most remarkable:

 

“Each man for himself, and the fende for us all.”

“They robbe Saint Peter therwith to clothe Saint Powle.”

“For might of water will not our leasure bide.”

“Once out of sight and shortly out of minde.”

“For children brent still after drede the fire.”

“Together they cleave more fast than do burres.”

“Tho’ thy teeth water.”

“I aske of the foxe no farther than the skin.”

“To touche soft pitche and not his fingers file.”

“From post unto piller tost shall thou be.”

“Over head and eares.”

“Go to the ant.”

“A man may contende, God geueth victory.”

“Of two evils chose the least.”

 

These are but the more striking specimens. An examination of the “Ship,”

and especially of the “Eclogues,” for the purpose of extracting their whole

proverbial lore, would be well worth the while, if it be not the duty, of

the next collector in this branch of popular literature. These writings

introduce many of our common sayings for the first time to English

literature, no writer prior to Barclay having thought it dignified or worth

while to profit by the popular wisdom to any perceptible extent. The first

collection of proverbs, Heywood’s, did not appear until 1546, so that in

Barclay we possess the earliest known English form of such proverbs as he

introduces. It need scarcely be said that that form is, in the majority of

instances, more full of meaning and point than its modern representatives.

 

Barclay’s adoption of the language of the people naturally elevated him in

popular estimation to a position far above that of his contemporaries in

the matter of style, so much so that he has been traditionally recorded as

one of the greatest improvers of the language, that is, one of those who

helped greatly to bring the written language to be more nearly in

accordance with the spoken. Both a scholar and a man of the world, his

phraseology bears token of the greater cultivation and wider knowledge he

possessed over his contemporaries. He certainly aimed at clearness of

expression, and simplicity of vocabulary, and in these respects was so far

in advance of his time that his works can even now be read with ease,

without the help of dictionary or glossary. In spite of his church training

and his residence abroad, his works are surprisingly free from Latin or

French forms of speech; on the contrary, they are, in the main,

characterised by a strong Saxon directness of expression which must have

tended greatly to the continuance of their popularity, and have exercised a

strong and advantageous influence both in regulating the use of the common

spoken language, and in leading the way which it was necessary for the

literary language to follow. Philologists and dictionary makers appear,

however, to have hitherto overlooked Barclay’s works, doubtless owing to

their rarity, but their intrinsic value as well as their position in

relation to the history of the language demand specific recognition at

their hands.

 

Barclay evidently delighted in his pen. From the time of his return from

the Continent, it was seldom out of his hand. Idleness was distasteful to

him. He petitions his critics if they be “wyse men and cunnynge,” that:—

 

“They shall my youth pardone, and vnchraftynes

Whiche onely translate, to eschewe ydelnes.”

 

Assuredly a much more laudable way of employing leisure then than now,

unless the translator prudently stop short of print. The modesty and

singleness of aim of the man are strikingly illustrated by his thus

devoting his time and talents, not to original work as he was well able to

have done had he been desirous only of glorifying his own name, but to the

translation and adaptation or, better, “Englishing” of such foreign authors

as he deemed would exercise a wholesome and profitable influence upon his

countrymen. Such work, however, moulded in his skilful hands, became all

but original, little being left of his author but the idea. Neither the

Ship of Fools, nor the Eclogues retain perceptible traces of a foreign

source, and were it not that they honestly bear their authorship on their

fore-front, they might be regarded as thoroughly, even characteristically,

English productions.

 

The first known work from Barclay’s pen[3] appeared from the press of De

Worde, so early as 1506, probably immediately on his return from abroad,

and was no doubt the fruit of continental leisure. It is a translation, in

seven line stanzas, of the popular French poet Pierre Gringore’s Le Chateau

de labour (1499)—the most ancient work of Gringore with date, and perhaps

his best—under the title of “The Castell of laboure wherein is richesse,

vertu, and honour;” in which in a fanciful allegory of some length, a

somewhat wearisome Lady Reason overcomes despair, poverty and other such

evils attendant upon the fortunes of a poor man lately married, the moral

being to show:—

 

“That idleness, mother of all adversity,

Her subjects bringeth to extreme poverty.”

 

The general appreciation of this first essay is evidenced by the issue of a

second edition from the press of Pynson a few years after the appearance of

the first.

 

Encouraged by the favourable reception accorded to the first effort of his

muse, Barclay, on his retirement to the ease and leisure of the College of

St Mary Otery, set to work on the “Ship of Fools,” acquaintance with which

Europe-famous satire he must have made when abroad. This, his _magnum

opus_, has been described at some length in the Introduction, but two

interesting personal notices relative to the composition of the work may

here be added. In the execution of the great task, he expresses himself,

(II. 278), as under the greatest obligations to his colleague, friend, and

literary adviser, Bishop:—

 

“Whiche was the first ouersear of this warke

And vnto his frende gaue his aduysement

It nat to suffer to slepe styll in the darke

But to be publysshyd abrode: and put to prent

To thy monycion my bysshop I assent

Besechynge god that I that day may se

That thy honour may prospere and augment

So that thy name and offyce may agre

… …

In this short balade I can nat comprehende

All my full purpose that I wolde to the wryte

But fayne I wolde that thou sholde sone assende

To heuenly worshyp and celestyall delyte

Than shoulde I after my pore wyt and respyt,

Display thy name, and great kyndnes to me

But at this tyme no farther I indyte

But pray that thy name and worshyp may agre.”

 

Pynson, in his capacity of judicious publisher, fearing lest the book

should exceed suitable dimensions, also receives due notice at p. 108 of

Vol. I., where he speaks of

 

“the charge Pynson hathe on me layde

With many folys our Nauy not to charge.”

 

The concluding stanza, or colophon, is also devoted to immortalising the

great bibliopole in terms, it must be admitted, not dissimilar to those of

a modern draper’s poet laureate:—

 

Our Shyp here leuyth the sees brode

By helpe of God almyght and quyetly

At Anker we lye within the rode

But who that lysteth of them to bye

In Flete strete shall them fynde truly

At the George: in Richarde Pynsonnes place

Prynter vnto the Kynges noble grace.

Deo gratias.

 

Contemporary allusions to the Ship of Fools there could not fail to be, but

the only one we have met with occurs in Bulleyn’s Dialogue quoted above, p.

xxvii. It runs as follows:—_Uxor_.—What ship is that with so many owers,

and straunge tacle; it is a greate vessell. Ciuis.—This is the ship of

fooles, wherin saileth bothe spirituall and temporall, of euery callyng

some: there are kynges, queenes, popes, archbishoppes, prelates, lordes,

ladies, knightes, gentlemen, phisicions, lawiers, marchauntes,

housbandemen, beggers, theeues, hores, knaues, &c. This ship wanteth a good

pilot: the storme, the rocke, and the wrecke at hande, all will come to

naught in this hulke for want of good gouernement.

 

The Eclogues, as appears from their Prologue, had originally been the work

of our author’s youth, “the essays of a prentice in the art of poesie,” but

they were wisely laid past to be adorned by the wisdom of a wider

experience, and were, strangely enough, lost for years until, at the age of

thirty-eight, the author again lighted, unexpectedly, upon his lost

treasures, and straightway finished them off for the public eye.

 

The following autobiographical passage reminds one forcibly of Scott’s

throwing aside Waverley, stumbling across it after the lapse of years, and

thereupon deciding at once to finish and publish it. After enumerating the

most famous eclogue writers, he proceeds:—

 

“Nowe to my purpose, their workes worthy fame,

Did in my yonge age my heart greatly inflame,

Dull slouth eschewing my selfe to exercise,

In such small matters, or I durst enterprise,

To hyer matter, like as these children do,

Which first vse to creepe, and afterwarde to go.

… … . .

So where I in youth a certayne worke began,

And not concluded, as oft doth many a man:

Yet thought I after to make the same perfite,

But long I missed that which I first did write.

But here a wonder, I fortie yere saue twayne,

Proceeded in age, founde my first youth agayne.

To finde youth in age is a probleme diffuse,

But nowe heare the truth, and then no longer muse.

As I late turned olde bookes to and fro,

One litle treatise I founde among the mo

Because that in youth I did compile the same,

Egloges of youth I did call it by name.

And seing some men haue in the same delite,

At their great instance I made the same perfite,

Adding and bating where I perceyued neede,

All them desiring which shall this treatise rede,

Not to be