Traces of the Reformation in the Drama.

91

རཿ

vices of the ecclesiastic. At the same time there are comparatively few traces of this in that portion of the dramatic literature which has been preserved, and none of any large or conscientious antagonism to the principle of Catholicism. Had there been any wide-spread repugnance to the doctrine of the Church of Rome, the evidence would certainly have been more abundant. But what valid facts remain, go to prove that, at the era of the Reformation, the people, though disgusted with the special nuisances aud iniquities of the monastic system, remained loyal Catholics at heart. Heywood, for instance, often directed his vigorous ridicule against the mendicant monks and pardoners of his day. Into the "newe and very merry Enterlude of the Four P's," one of the latter is introduced who displays a most filthy and preposterous store of relics, among which are the French-hood and bon-grace of the Virgin, the great toe of the Trinity, the jaw-bone of All-Saints, and the bees that stung Eve when she eat the apple ;

Pardoner.

Here is a boxful of humble bees,

That stange Eve as she sat on her knees,
Tasting the fruit to her forbidden.

Who kisseth the bees within this hidden,
Shall have as much pardon of right,
As for any relic he kiss this night.

To which the Apothecary modestly replies,—

I am not worthy; nay, let be,

Those bees that stange Eve, shall not sting me.

1

Again, in the same play, we have this sarcastic appreciation of a famous clerical luxury

With small cost, and without any paine,

These pardons bring them to Heaven plaine;

Give me but a penny or two pence,

And as soon as the soul departeth hence,
In half an hour, or three-quarters at most,

The soul is in Heaven with the Holy Ghost.

But Heywood was himself a conscientious Roman Catholic, and suffered for his attachment to the faith. It was against those external accessories alone, which were not, in his opinion, a necessary element of his creed, and which were calcu

'Dodsley's Old Plays, vol. i.

lated to impair the authority of an old and august communion, that his satire was directed. The evidence is of a similar tenor throughout. The Reformation was not the result of any general conviction among the English people of the unfitness of Catholicism to satisfy the demands of their religious life. Compliance with the scrupulous morality of an unscrupulous monarch; resentment at the secular pretensions of the Roman Pontiff; vehement hatred against a clergy who shackled their intellectual life, and defiled their household purity; these, if we are to credit the testimony of our national drama, the verdict of our social literature, were the causes which led to the downfall of the Catholic system in England.1

It is often asserted, on behalf of Catholicism, that it has proved itself better fitted than Protestantism to nourish the more graceful arts of life. Such a statement is curiously fallacious. For the patronage which it has bestowed has always

'The reports of the commissioners appointed by Cromwell to inquire into the state of the monasteries, prove that Heywood's satire was not overcharged. The "Pardoner's" collection of relics is not more preposterous than those which Langton and Loudon scattered. "By my servant," says Langton, writing to Cromwell, "I send you reliques; first, two flowers wrapt in black and white sarcenet, that on Christynmus evyn, hora ipsa qua Christus natus fuerat, will spring or burgen, and bear blossoms, quod expertum esse, saith the Prior of Maden Bradeley. Ye shall also receive a bag of reliques, wherein ye shall see strange things, as shall appear by the scripture, Our Ladies smock, Parte of God's supper in cena domini, Pars petre super qua natus erat Jesus in Bethelem, belyke there is in Bethlehem plcntie of stones, and they make their mangers of stone. The scripture of everything shall declare to you all and all this of Maden Bradeley, where is an holy father prior who hath but vj children, and but one daughter married yet of the goodes of the monastery,-hoping shortly to marry the rest. I send you also our Ladies gyrdell of Bruton, rede silk, which is a solemne relique sent to women travelyng, which shall not miscarry in partu" (page 58). "I have sent up," writes Dr. Loudon from the abbey of Reading, "the principal relique of idolytrie within this realm, an angel with one wing that brought to Caversham the spearhede that percyd our Saviour his syde upon the Crosse. I have required of my Lord Abbot the reliques of his house, and I have taken an inventory of them." In the accompanying inventory we find "two peces of the Holye Crosse," Saynt James his hand," "a bone of Mary Magdelene," "a chow-bone of Saint Ethelmolde" (page 227). The mendicant pilgrims were considered a nuisance by the clergy as well as the laity. Bishop Barlow in petitioning for the translation of his See, complains that in the desolate and unfrequented place where it is situated,." vacabounde pilgrimes" are his only visitors (page 207).—The Suppression of the Monasteries, Camden Society, 1843.

Effect of Reformation on English Literature.

93

been arrogant, ostentatious, insulting, and, from its very nature, calculated to cramp the freedom of the judgment, to petrify the versatile life of the imagination. Catholicism preserves admirably, it is the most conservative of institutions, and it was consequently pre-eminently fitted for the work which it undertook before the revival of letters. But to develope the taste or the intellect is not its appropriate function, and when it has affected to do so, the attempt has proved either ineffective or insincere. Its best literature is the literature of those of its members, who, like Pascal and Bossuet, asserted their intellectual and political freedom in opposition to the exacting claims of the Church. Even in its relation to the great masters of the Italian school, the case on which its advocates chiefly rely, even there the instincts of the artist were sacrificed to the interest of the priest. The loving insight which might have charmed us with exquisite studies of the familiar life of Italy-a life more pictorial than the poetic life of other people-was spent upon decrepit martyrs and emaciated saints, was forced to move within the narrow limits marked out by the meagre asceticism of the monk, and created an art which, great in the genius and capacity of its masters, was great in spite of the coarse tyranny which it served slavishly. To the Reformation, letters, learning, language in England, are incalculably indebted. While it saved our liberties, it emancipated our art, and created our literature. The impressive unity of Catholicism had required throughout Christendom the preservation of one common language; the Reformation introduced into the national literature the habitual use of the national speech, a speech not now. surpassed by any in Europe for its varied harmonies, its rich and versatile combinations. Men think more freely, more eloquently, more earnestly, in their own than through the fetters of a foreign tongue; so much so, that had the Latin not been abolished by the Reformation, it is quite certain that Lear, Hamlet, Othello, would have been postponed-sine die.

The emancipation of English literature, was however, somewhat sudden. The weight was abruptly removed, and the recoil was violent and excessive. But the most severe and hostile historian cannot criticise very harshly the extravagances which followed. These extravagances, as we know,

broke out in every direction; in thought, in speech, in the habits of dress, in the usages of society, in Euphuisms by Lily, in Arcadias by Sidney; "whereby," as old Harrison drily concludes of his contemporaries, "they imagine the workmanship of God to be not a little amended." "Except," he goes on, "it were a dog in a doublet, you shall not see anie so disguised as are our countrymen of England; women are become men, and men transformed into monsters." His invective need not have been limited to dress, for the spirit was the same throughout, and Euphuism,-into an examination of which I regret that I cannot now enter,—was its literary representative. These extravagances,-the inevitable issue of an exuberant and suddenly enlarged intellectual activity,―might have done lasting harm to our society; but they were luckily nipped in the bud, and the popular sympathies diverted from the artificial to the real by one who, utterly disregarding the mechanic unity of form, contrived to reach by a peculiarly subtle and penetrating insight, the organic unity of life. An age of daring license and reckless originality was prevented from permanently injuring the national taste, by the perfect tact and temperance of SHAKE

SPEARE.

J. S.

HOMEOPATHY.

OBSERVATION, meditation, and experience," writes

Hahnemann in the introduction to his chief work, the Organon of the Healing Art, "have discovered to me that, according to the precepts of homoeopathy, the course to be followed in order to obtain gentle, swift, sure, and durable cures consists in choosing, in each case of disease, a remedy capable in itself of producing an affection similar to that which it is desired to cure. This homœopathic method had not been taught by any one before me; no one had put it in practice. But if it alone be consistent with truth, (as every one may be convinced as well as I), we may expect that, notwithstanding its long concealment, every age will, nevertheless, offer palpable traces of it. This has, in fact, been the case. In all times, all diseases which have been cured really, promptly, durably, evidently, by medicines, and which have not owed their cure to the accidental concurrence of some favourable circumstance, such as the natural termination of an acute disease, or the gradually reinforced bodily powers obtaining a mastery over the disease during an allopathic or antipathic treatment (for a direct and an indirect cure are very different),—all such diseases, I say, have yielded, although the physician did not know it, to a homoeopathic remedy, that is to say, to a remedy having the power of exciting of itself a disease resembling that of which it caused the removal."

In another passage, Hahnemann thus briefly expounds the results which he ascribes to the homoeopathic method. "When the application of a medicine, chosen so as to be perfectly homœopathic, has been well made, the natural acute disease