The Mutability Of Literature - A Colloquy In Westminster Abbey - Prose Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABBABBAC D E C B F G B H I J D F K L C M N B O NP| I know that all beneath the moon decays | A |
| And what by mortals in this world is brought | B |
| In time's great periods shall return to nought | B |
| I know that all the muses' heavenly rays | A |
| With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought | B |
| As idle sounds of few or none are sought | B |
| That there is nothing lighter than mere praise | A |
| DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN | C |
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| There are certain half dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed In such a mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify with the name of reflection when suddenly an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster school playing at football broke in upon the monastic stillness of the place making the vaulted passages and mouldering tombs echo with their merriment I sought to take refuge from their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library He conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the chapter house and the chamber in which Doomsday Book is deposited Just within the passage is a small door on the left To this the verger applied a key it was double locked and opened with some difficulty as if seldom used We now ascended a dark narrow staircase and passing through a second door entered the library | D |
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| I found myself in a lofty antique hall the roof supported by massive joists of old English oak It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic windows at a considerable height from the floor and which apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the Church in his robes hung over the fireplace Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books arranged in carved oaken cases They consisted principally of old polemical writers and were much more worn by time than use In the centre of the library was a solitary table with two or three books on it an inkstand without ink and a few pens parched by long disuse The place seemed fitted for quiet study and profound meditation It was buried deep among the massive 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 faintly swelling from the cloisters and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter and at length died away the bell ceased to toll and a profound silence reigned through the dusky hall | E |
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| I had taken down a little thick quarto curiously bound in parchment with brass clasps and seated myself at the table in a venerable elbow chair Instead of reading however I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air and lifeless quiet of the place into a train of musing As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers thus ranged on the shelves and apparently never disturbed in their repose I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb where authors like mummies are piously entombed and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion | C |
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| How much thought I has each of these volumes now thrust aside with such indifference cost some aching head how many weary days how many sleepless nights How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters shut themselves up from the face of man and the still more blessed face of Nature and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection And all for what To occupy an inch of dusty shelf to have the titles of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like myself and in another age to be lost even to remembrance Such is the amount of this boasted immortality A mere temporary rumor a local sound like the tone of that bell which has tolled among these towers filling the ear for a moment lingering transiently in echo and then passing away like a thing that was not | B |
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| While I sat half murmuring half meditating these unprofitable speculations with my head resting on my hand I was thrumming with the other 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 length began to talk At first its voice was very hoarse and broken being much troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it and having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and damps 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 its pronunciation what in the present day would be deemed barbarous but I shall endeavor as far as I am able to render it in modern parlance | F |
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| It began with railings about the neglect of the world about merit being suffered to languish in obscurity and other such commonplace topics of literary repining and complained bitterly that it had not been opened for more than two centuries that the dean only looked now and then into the library sometimes took down a volume or two trifled with them for a few moments and then returned them to their shelves What a plague do they mean said the little quarto which I began to perceive was somewhat choleric what a plague do they mean by keeping several thousand volumes of us shut up here and watched by a set of old vergers like so many beauties in a harem merely to be looked at now and then by the dean Books were written to give pleasure and to be enjoyed and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of us a visit at least once a year or if he is not equal to the task let them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among us that at any rate we may now and then have an airing | G |
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| Softly my worthy friend replied I you are not aware how much better you are off than most books of your generation By being stored away in this ancient library you are like the treasured remains of those saints and monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels while the remains of their contemporary mortals left to the ordinary course of Nature have long since returned to dust | B |
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| Sir said the little tome ruffling his leaves and looking big I was written for all the world not for the bookworms of an abbey I was intended to circulate from hand to hand like other great contemporary works but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries and might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the very vengeance with my intestines if you had not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces | H |
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| My good friend rejoined I had you been left to the circulation of which you speak you would long ere this have been no more To judge from your physiognomy you are now well stricken in years very few of your contemporaries can be at present in existence and those few owe their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries which suffer me to add instead of likening to harems you might more properly and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious establishments for the benefit of the old and decrepit and where by quiet fostering and no employment they often endure to an amazingly good for nothing old age You talk of your contemporaries as if in circulation Where do we meet with their works What do we hear of Robert Grosteste of Lincoln No one could have toiled harder than he for immortality He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes He built as it were a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name but alas the pyramid has long since fallen and only a few fragments are scattered in various libraries where they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis the historian antiquary philosopher theologian and poet He declined two bishoprics that he might shut himself up and write for posterity but posterity never inquires after his labors What of Henry of Huntingdon who besides a learned history of England wrote a treatise on the contempt of the world which the world has revenged by forgetting him What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter styled the miracle of his age in classical composition Of his three great heroic poems one is lost forever excepting a mere fragment the others are known only to a few of the curious in literature and as to his love verses and epigrams they have entirely disappeared What is in current use of John Wallis the Franciscan who acquired the name of the tree of life Of William of Malmsbury of Simeon of Durham of Benedict of Peterborough of John Hanvill of St Albans of | I |
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| Prithee friend cried the quarto in a testy tone how old do you think me You are talking of authors that lived long before my time and wrote either in Latin or French so that they in a manner expatriated themselves and deserved to be forgotten but I sir was ushered into the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde I was written in 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 | J |
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| I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably antiquated terms that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them into modern phraseology | D |
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| I cry you mercy said I for mistaking your age but it matters little almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into forgetfulness and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities among book collectors The purity and stability of language too on which you found your claims to perpetuity have been the fallacious dependence of authors of every age even back to the times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon Even now many talk of Spenser's 'well of pure English undefiled ' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain head and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures It is this which has made English literature so extremely mutable and the reputation built upon it so fleeting Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent and unchangeable than such a medium even thought must share the fate of everything else and fall into decay This should serve as a check upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer He finds the language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering and subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion He looks back and beholds the early authors of his country once the favorites of their day supplanted by modern writers A few short ages have covered them with obscurity and their merits can only be relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm And such he anticipates will be the fate of his own work which however it may be admired in its day and held up as a model of purity will in the course of years grow antiquated and obsolete until it shall become almost as unintelligible in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk or one of those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary I declare added I with some emotion when I contemplate a modern library filled with new works in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding I feel disposed to sit down and weep like the good Xerxes when he surveyed his army pranked out in all the splendor of military array and reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in existence | F |
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| Ah said the little quarto with a heavy sigh I see how it is these in modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors I suppose nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia Sackville's stately plays and Mirror for Magistrates or the fine spun euphuisms of the 'unparalleled John Lyly ' | - |
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| There you are again mistaken said I the writers whom you suppose in vogue because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation have long since had their day Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia the immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers and which in truth was full of noble thoughts delicate images and graceful turns of language is now scarcely ever mentioned Sackville has strutted into obscurity and even Lyly though his writings were once the delight of a court and apparently perpetuated by a proverb is now scarcely known even by name A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled at the time have likewise gone down with all their writings and their controversies Wave after wave of succeeding literature has rolled over them until they are buried so deep that it is only now and then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen for the gratification of the curious | K |
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| For my part I continued I consider this mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large and of authors in particular To reason from analogy we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up flourishing adorning the fields for a short time and then fading into dust to make way for their successors Were not this the case the fecundity of nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing The earth would groan with rank and excessive vegetation and its surface become a tangled wilderness In like manner the works of genius and learning decline and make way for subsequent productions Language gradually varies and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time otherwise the creative powers of genius would overstock the world and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive multiplication Works had to be transcribed by hand which was a slow and laborious operation they were written either on parchment which was expensive so that one work was often erased to make way for another or on papyrus which was fragile and extremely perishable Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and costly and confined almost entirely to monasteries To these circumstances it may in some measure be owing that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity that the fountains of thought have not been broken up and modern genius drowned in the deluge But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end to all these restraints They have made every one a writer and enabled every mind to pour itself into print and diffuse itself over the whole intellectual world The consequences are alarming The stream of literature has swollen into a torrent augmented into a river expanded into a sea A few centuries since five or six hundred manuscripts constituted a great library but what would you say to libraries such as actually exist containing three or four hundred thousand volumes legions of authors at the same time busy and the press going on with fearfully increasing activity to double and quadruple the number Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of the 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 by economists All possible encouragement therefore should be given to the growth of critics good or bad But I fear all will be in vain let criticism do what it may writers will write printers will print and the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books It will soon be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names Many a man of passable information at the present day reads scarcely anything but reviews and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a mere walking catalogue | L |
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| My very good sir said the little quarto yawning most drearily in my face excuse my interrupting you but I perceive you are rather given to prose I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise just as I left the world His reputation however was considered quite temporary 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 his name was Shakespeare I presume he soon sunk into oblivion | C |
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| On the contrary said I it is owing to that very man that the literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of English literature There rise authors now and then who seem proof against the mutability of language because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature They are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream which by their vast and deep roots penetrating through the mere surface and laying hold on the very foundations of the earth preserve the soil around them from being swept away by the ever flowing current and hold up many a neighboring plant and perhaps worthless weed to perpetuity Such is the case with Shakespeare whom we behold defying the encroachments of time retaining in modern use the language and literature of his day and giving duration to many an indifferent author merely from having flourished in his vicinity But even he I grieve to say is gradually assuming the tint of age and his whole form is overrun by a profusion of commentators who like clambering vines and creepers almost bury the noble plant that upholds them | M |
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| Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle until at length he broke out into a plethoric fit of laughter that had wellnigh choked him by reason of his excessive corpulency Mighty well cried he as soon as he could recover breath mighty well and so you would persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond deer stealer by a man without learning by a poet forsooth a poet And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter | N |
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| 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 I determined nevertheless not to give up my point | B |
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| Yes resumed I positively a poet for of all writers he has the best chance for immortality Others may write from the head but he writes from the heart and the heart will always understand him He is the faithful portrayer of Nature whose features are always the same and always interesting Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy their pages crowded with commonplaces and their thoughts expanded into tediousness But with the true poet every thing is terse touching or brilliant He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language He illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and art He enriches them by pictures of human life such as it is passing before him His writings therefore contain the spirit the aroma if I may use the phrase of the age in which he lives They are caskets which inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language its family jewels which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity The setting may occasionally be antiquated and require now and then to be renewed as in the case of Chaucer but the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue unaltered Cast a look back over the long reach of literary history What vast valleys of dulness filled with monkish legends and academical controversies What bogs of theological speculations What dreary wastes of metaphysics Here and there only do we behold the heaven illumined bards elevated like beacons on their widely separated heights to transmit the pure light of poetical intelligence from age to age | O |
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| I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the day when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head It was the verger who came to inform me that it was time to close the library I sought to have a parting word with the quarto but the worthy little tome was silent the clasps were closed and it looked perfectly unconscious of all that had passed I have been to the library two or three times since and have endeavored to draw it into further conversation but in vain and whether all this rambling colloquy actually took place or whether it was another of those old day dreams to which I am subject I have never to this moment been able to discover | N |
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