The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon

by Washington Irving

  THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE.

  A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

  I know that all beneath the moon decays, And what by mortals in this world is brought, In time's great periods shall return to nought. I know that all the muses' heavenly rays, With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, As idle sounds, of few or none are sought-- That there is nothing lighter than mere praise. DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

  THERE are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturallysteal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we mayindulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such amood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey,enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignifywith the name of reflection, when suddenly an irruption of madcap boysfrom Westminster school, playing at football, broke in upon the monasticstillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombsecho with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from their noise bypenetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied toone of the vergers for admission to the library. He conducted me througha portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, which openedupon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter-house and the chamber inwhich Doomsday Book is deposited. Just within the passage is a smalldoor on the left. To this the verger applied a key; it was doublelocked, and opened with some difficulty, as if seldom used. We nowascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing through a second door,entered the library.

  I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massivejoists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothicwindows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparentlyopened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of somereverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace.Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged incarved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers,and were much more worn by time than use. In the centre of the librarywas a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand withoutink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fittedfor quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among themassive 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 faintlyswelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for prayersechoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts ofmerriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away; the bellceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall.

  I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment,with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerableelbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemnmonastic air and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing.As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thusranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose,I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, whereauthors, like mummies, are piously entombed and left to blacken andmoulder in dusty oblivion.

  How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside withsuch indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! howmany sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in thesolitude of cells and cloisters, shut themselves up from the face ofman, and the still more blessed face of Nature; and devoted themselvesto painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? To occupyan inch of dusty shelf--to have the titles of their works read now andthen in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler likemyself, and in another age to be lost even to remembrance. Such is theamount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a localsound; like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers,filling the ear for a moment, lingering transiently in echo, and thenpassing away, like a thing that was not!

  While I sat half-murmuring, half-meditating, these unprofitablespeculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with theother 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 lengthbegan to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being muchtroubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it, andhaving probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills anddamps 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 itspronunciation what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but Ishall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.

  It began with railings about the neglect of the world, about merit beingsuffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics ofliterary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been openedfor more than two centuries--that the dean only looked now and then intothe library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them fora few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. "What a plaguedo they mean?" said the little quarto, which I began to perceive wassomewhat choleric--"what a plague do they mean by keeping severalthousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of oldvergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at nowand then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to beenjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each ofus a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal to the task, letthem once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster amongus, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing."

  "Softly, my worthy friend," replied I; "you are not aware how muchbetter you are off than most books of your generation. By being storedaway in this ancient library you are like the treasured remains of thosesaints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels, whilethe remains of their contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary courseof Nature, have long since returned to dust."

  "Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, "Iwas written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I wasintended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporaryworks; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, andmight have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing thevery vengeance with my intestines if you had not by chance given me anopportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."

  "My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the circulation ofwhich you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judgefrom your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few ofyour contemporaries can be at present in existence, and those few owetheir longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which,suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properlyand gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religiousestablishments for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, byquiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazinglygood-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if incirculation. Where do we meet with their works? What do we hear ofRobert Grosteste of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he forimmortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. Hebuilt, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but,alas! the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments arescattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbedeven by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, thehistorian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined twobishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; butposterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon,who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on thecontempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him?What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age inclassical composition? Of his three great heroic poems, one is lostforever, excepting a
mere fragment; the others are known only to a fewof the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams,they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallisthe Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of Williamof Malmsbury--of Simeon of Durham--of Benedict of Peterborough--of JohnHanvill of St. Albans--of----"

  "Prithee, friend," cried the quarto in a testy tone, "how old do youthink me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, andwrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriatedthemselves, and deserved to be forgotten;* but I, sir, was ushered intothe world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was writtenin 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."

  (I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerablyantiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering theminto modern phraseology.)

  "I cry you mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it matterslittle. Almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed intoforgetfulness, and De Worde's publications are mere literary raritiesamong book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, onwhich you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallaciousdependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthyRobert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.+Even now many talk of Spenser's 'well of pure English undefiled,' asif the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head, and was notrather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject tochanges and intermixtures. It is this which has made English literatureso extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so fleeting.Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent andunchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate ofeverything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a checkupon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He findsthe language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering andsubject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. Helooks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once thefavorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ageshave covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relishedby the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will bethe fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its dayand held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years growantiquated and obsolete, until it shall become almost as unintelligiblein its native land as an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runicinscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary." "I declare," addedI, with some emotion, "when I contemplate a modern library, filledwith new works in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feeldisposed to sit down and weep, like the good Xerxes, when he surveyedhis army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, andreflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be inexistence."

  * "In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as w ave in hearying of Frenchmen's Englishe."--CHAUCER'S Testament of Love.

  + Holinshed in his Chronicle, observes, "Afterwards, also, by diligent vell f Geffry Chaucer and John Gowre, in the time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the ornature of the same to their great praise and mortal commendation."

  "Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is: thesein modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I supposenothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Sackville'sstately plays and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun euphuisms ofthe 'unparalleled John Lyly.'"

  "There you are again mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose invogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation,have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, theimmortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,* andwhich, in truth, was full of noble thoughts, delicate images, andgraceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackvillehas strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings wereonce the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, isnow scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote andwrangled at the time, have likewise gone down with all their writingsand their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature hasrolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now andthen that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings upa specimen for the gratification of the curious.

  * "Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle witt, and the golden pillar of his noble courage; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey bee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the tongue of Suada in the chamber, the spirits of Practise in esse, and the paragon of excellence in print."--Harvey Pierce's Supererogation.

  "For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of language awise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, andof authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold thevaried and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing,adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, tomake way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity ofnature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groanwith rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangledwilderness. In like manner, the works of genius and learning decline andmake way for subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and withit fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allottedtime; otherwise the creative powers of genius would overstock the world,and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes ofliterature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessivemultiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slowand laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, whichwas expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way foranother; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable.Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly bymonks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulationof manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely tomonasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owingthat we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity--that thefountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drownedin the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an endto all these restraints. They have made every one a writer, and enabledevery mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over thewhole intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream ofliterature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river-expandedinto a sea. A few centuries since five or six hundred manuscriptsconstituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries, suchas actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand volumes;legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on withfearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number?Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny ofthe 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 byeconomists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given tothe growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; letcriticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, andthe world will inevitab
ly be overstocked with good books. It will soonbe the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a manof passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything butreviews, and before long a man of erudition will be little better than amere walking catalogue."

  "My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in myface, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather givento prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noisejust as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quitetemporary. 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 hisname was Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."

  "On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that theliterature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinaryterm of English literature. There rise authors now and then who seemproof against the mutability of language because they have rootedthemselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are likegigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream, whichby their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface andlaying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soilaround them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and holdup many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.Such is the case with Shakespeare, whom we behold defying theencroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language andliterature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferentauthor, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, Igrieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole formis overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vinesand creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them."

  Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until atlength he broke out into a plethoric fit of laughter that had wellnighchoked him by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" criedhe, as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you wouldpersuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by avagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning! by a poet! forsooth--apoet!" And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.

  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. Idetermined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.

  "Yes," resumed I positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the bestchance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he writesfrom the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is thefaithful portrayer of Nature, whose features are always the same andalways interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; theirpages crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded intotediousness. But with the true poet every thing is terse, touching, orbrilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. Heillustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature andart. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passingbefore him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if Imay use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets whichinclose within a small compass the wealth of the language--its familyjewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. Thesetting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to berenewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsicvalue of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the longreach of literary history. What vast valleys of dulness, filled withmonkish legends and academical controversies! What bogs of theologicalspeculations! What dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there onlydo we behold the heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons ontheir widely-separated heights, to transmit the pure light of poeticalintelligence from age to age."*

  I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of theday when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. Itwas the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close thelibrary. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthylittle tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectlyunconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library twoor three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into furtherconversation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquyactually took place, or whether it was another of those old day-dreamsto which I am subject, I have never, to this moment, been able todiscover.

  * Thorow earth and waters deepe, The pen by skill doth passe: And featly nyps the worldes abuse, And shoes us in a glasse, The vertu and the vice Of every wight alyve; The honey comb that bee doth make Is not so sweet in hyve, As are the golden leves That drops from poet's head! Which doth surmount our common talke As farre as dross doth lead. Churchyard.