Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Disraeli Isaac
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fly from PETTY TYRANTS—to the Throne!”

      In the short space of seventy years the owners of those castles bearded even majesty itself; these lords, by their undue share of power, were in perpetual revolt; till two royal persons, though opposed to each other, Stephen and Maude, decreed for their mutual interest the demolition of fifteen hundred and fifteen castles. They were razed by commission, or by writs to the sheriffs; and a law was further enacted that “none hereafter, without license, should embattle his house.” And thus was broken this aristocracy of castles. See two dissertations on “Castles,” by Sir Robert Sutton, and by Agard; “Curious Discourses by Eminent Antiquaries,” i. 104 and 188.

      This number of castles seems incredible; possibly many were “embattled houses.” My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, an antiquary most versant in manuscripts, inclines to think there may be some scriptural error of the ancient scribe, who was likely to add or to leave out a cipher, without much comprehension of the numerals he was transcribing without a thought, like what happened to the eleven thousand virgins of St. Ursula.

      The Rev. Dr. Ingram, principal of Trinity College, Oxon, has since published his translation, accompanied by the original, a collation of the manuscripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A volume not less valuable than curious.

      THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL.

      Destitute of a national education, the higher orders thus found a substitute in a conventional system of manners. Circumstances, perhaps originally accidental, became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In this moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement adorned barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in disguise, and it broke out in the forms of imagination, passion, and magnificence, seeking their objects or their semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying the foundations of social order and national glory in Europe.

      A regular course of practical pursuits was assigned to the future noble “childe” from the day that he left the parental roof for the baronial hall of his patron. In these “nurseries of nobility,” as Jonson has well described such an institution, in his first charge as varlet or page, the boy of seven years was an attendant at the baron’s table, and it was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the carver and the cupbearer. He played on the viol or danced in the brawls till he was more gravely trained in “the mysteries of woods and rivers,” the arts of the chase, and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery, or the falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk, which had not obeyed him had he neglected that daily flattery.

      At fourteen the varlet became an esquire, vaulting on his fiery steed, and perfecting himself in all noble exercises, nicely adroit in the science of “courtesie,” or the etiquette of the court; and already this “servant of love” was taught to elect La dame de ses pensées, and wore her favour and her livery for “the love of honour, or the honour of love,” as Sir Philip Sydney in the style of chivalry expressed it.

      At the maturity of twenty and one years the late varlet, and now the esquire, stood forth a candidate to blazon his shield by knighthood—the accomplished gentleman of these Gothic days, and right learned too, if he can con his Bible and read his romance. Enchanting mirror of all chivalry! if he invent songs and set them to his own melodies. Yet will the gentle “batchelor” he dreaming on some gallant feat of arms, or some martial achievement, whereby “to win his spurs.” On his solemn entrance into the church, laying his sword upon the altar, he resumed it by the oath which for ever bound him to defend the church and the churchmen. Thus all human affairs then were rounded by the ecclesiastical orbit, out of which no foot dared to stray. All began and all ended as the romances which formed his whole course of instruction—with the devotion which seemed to have been addressed to man as much as to Heaven.

      After the termination of the Crusades, the grand incident in the life of the Baron was a pilgrimage to the holy city of Jerusalem; what the penitent of the Cross had failed to conquer, it seemed a consolation to kneel at and to weep over: a custom not obsolete so late as the reigns of our last Henries; and still, though less publicly avowed, the melancholy Jerusalem witnesses the Hebrew and the Christian performing some secret vow, to grieve with a contrition which it seems they do not feel at home.

      In these peregrinations a lordly Briton might chance to find some French or Italian knight as rash and as haughty; it was a law in chivalry that a knight should not give way to any man who demanded it as a right, nor decline the single combat with any knight under the sun; a challenge could not therefore be avoided. But a pas d’armes was not always a friendly invitation, for often under the guise of chivalry was concealed the national hostility of the parties.