The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 2

S >> Sebastian Brandt >> The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 2

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"Softe, fooles, softe, a little slacke your pace,
Till I haue space you to order by degree,
I haue eyght neyghbours, that first shall haue a place
Within this my ship, for they most worthy be,
They may their learning receyue costles and free,
Their walles abutting and ioyning to the scholes;
Nothing they can, yet nought will they learne nor see,
Therfore shall they guide this our ship of fooles."

In the comfort, quiet, and seclusion of the pleasant Devonshire retreat,
the "Ship" was translated in the year 1508, when he would be about
thirty-two, "by Alexander Barclay Preste; and at that tyme chaplen in the
sayde College," whence it may be inferred that he left Devon, either in
that year or the year following, when the "Ship" was published, probably
proceeding to London for the purpose of seeing it through the press.
Whether he returned to Devonshire we do not know; probably not, for his
patron and friend Cornish resigned the wardenship of St Mary Otery in 1511,
and in two years after died, so that Barclay's ties and hopes in the West
were at an end. At any rate we next hear of him in monastic orders, a monk
of the order of S. Benedict, in the famous monastery of Ely, where, as is
evident from internal proof, the Eclogues were written and where likewise,
as appears from the title, was translated "The mirrour of good maners," at
the desire of Syr Giles Alington, Knight.

It is about this period of his life, probably the period of the full bloom
of his popularity, that the quiet life of the poet and priest was
interrupted by the recognition of his eminence in the highest quarters, and
by a request for his aid in maintaining the honour of the country on an
occasion to which the eyes of all Europe were then directed. In a letter of
Sir Nicholas Vaux, busied with the preparations for the meeting of Henry
VIII., and Francis I., called the Field of the Cloth of Gold, to Wolsey, of
date 10th April 1520, he begs the cardinal to "send to them ... Maistre
Barkleye, the Black Monke and Poete, to devise histoires and convenient
raisons to florisshe the buildings and banquet house withal" (Rolls
Calendars of Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., III. pt. 1.). No doubt it was
also thought that this would be an excellent opportunity for the eulogist
of the Defender of the Faith to again take up the lyre to sing the glories
of his royal master, but no effort of his muse on the subject of this great
chivalric pageant has descended to us if any were ever penned.

Probably after this employment he did not return to Ely; with his position
or surroundings there he does not seem to have been altogether satisfied
("there many a thing is wrong," see p. lxix.); and afterwards, though in
the matter of date we are somewhat puzzled by the allusion of Bulleyn, an
Ely man, to his Franciscan habit, he assumed the habit of the Franciscans
at Canterbury, ('Bale MS. Sloan, f. 68,') to which change we may owe, if it
be really Barclay's, "The life of St Thomas of Canterbury."

Autumn had now come to the poet, but fruit had failed him. The advance of
age and his failure to obtain a suitable position in the Church began
gradually to weigh upon his spirits. The bright hopes with which he had
started in the flush of youth, the position he was to obtain, the influence
he was to wield, and the work he was to do personally, and by his writings,
in the field of moral and social reformation were all in sad contrast with
the actualities around. He had never risen from the ranks, the army was in
a state of disorganisation, almost of mutiny, and the enemy was more bold,
unscrupulous, and numerous than ever. It is scarcely to be wondered at
that, though not past fifty, he felt prematurely aged, that his youthful
enthusiasm which had carried him on bravely in many an attempt to instruct
and benefit his fellows at length forsook him and left him a prey to that
weakness of body, and that hopelessness of spirit to which he so
pathetically alludes in the Prologue to the Mirror of good Manners. All his
best work, all the work which has survived to our day, was executed before
this date. But the pen was too familiar to his hand to be allowed to drop.
His biographers tell us "that when years came on he spent his time mostly
in pious matters, and in reading and writing histories of the Saints." A
goodly picture of a well-spent old age. The harness of youth he had no
longer the spirit and strength to don, the garments of age he gathered
resignedly and gracefully about him.

On the violent dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539, when their inmates,
the good and bad, the men of wisdom and the "fools," were alike cast adrift
upon a rock-bound and stormy coast, the value of the patronage which his
literary and personal popularity had brought him, was put to the test, and
in the end successfully, though after considerable, but perhaps not to be
wondered at, delay. His great patrons, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of
Kent, Bishop Cornish, and probably also Sir Giles Alington, were all dead,
and he had to rely on newer and necessarily weaker ties. But after waiting,
till probably somewhat dispirited, fortune smiled at last. Two handsome
livings were presented to him in the same year, both of which he apparently
held at the same time, the vicarage of Much Badew in Essex, by the
presentation of Mr John Pascal, to which he was instituted on February 7th,
1546, holding it (according to the Lansdowne MS. (980 f. 101), in the
British Museum) till his death; and the vicarage of S. Mathew at Wokey, in
Somerset, on March 30th of the same year. Wood dignifies him with the
degree of doctor of divinity at the time of his presentation to these
preferments.

That he seems to have accepted quietly the gradual progress of the reformed
religion during the reign of Edward VI., has been a cause of wonder to
some. It would certainly have been astonishing had one who was so unsparing
in his exposure of the flagrant abuses of the Romish Church done otherwise.
Though personally disinclined to radical changes his writings amply show
his deep dissatisfaction with things as they were. This renders the more
improbable the honours assigned him by Wadding (Scriptores Ordinis Minorum,
1806, p. 5), who promotes him to be Suffragan Bishop of Bath and Wells, and
Bale, who, in a slanderous anecdote, the locale of which is also Wells,
speaks of him as a chaplain of Queen Mary's, though Mary did not ascend the
throne till the year after his death. As these statements are nowhere
confirmed, it is not improbable that their authors have fallen into error
by confounding the poet Barclay, with a Gilbert Berkeley, who became Bishop
of Bath and Wells in 1559. One more undoubted, but tardy, piece of
preferment was awarded him which may be regarded as an honour of some
significance. On the 30th April 1552, the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury,
London, presented him to the Rectory of All Hallows, Lombard Street, but
the well-deserved promotion came too late to be enjoyed. A few weeks after,
and before the 10th June, at which date his will was proved, he died, as
his biographers say, "at a very advanced age;" at the good old age of
seventy-six, as shall be shown presently, at Croydon where he had passed
his youth, and there in the Church he was buried. "June 10th 1552,
Alexander Barkley sepult," (Extract from the Parish Register, in Lyson's
Environs of London).

A copy of his will, an extremely interesting and instructive document, has
been obtained from Doctors' Commons, and will be found appended. It bears
in all its details those traits of character which, from all that we
otherwise know, we are led to associate with him. In it we see the earnest,
conscientious minister whose first thought is of the poor, the loyal
churchman liberal in his support of the house of God, the kind relative in
his numerous and considerate bequests to his kith and kin, the amiable,
much loved man in the gifts of remembrance to his many friends, and the
pious Christian in his wishes for the prayers of his survivors "to
Almightie God for remission of my synnes, and mercy upon my soule."

Barclay's career and character, both as a churchman and a man of letters,
deserve attention and respect from every student of our early history and
literature. In the former capacity he showed himself diligent, honest, and
anxious, at a time when these qualities seemed to have been so entirely
lost to the church as to form only a subject for clerical ridicule. In the
latter, the same qualities are also prominent, diligence, honesty, bold
outspokenness, an ardent desire for the pure, the true, and the natural,
and an undisguised enmity to everything false, self-seeking, and vile.
Everything he did was done in a pure way, and to a worthy end.

Bale stands alone in casting aspersions upon his moral character,
asserting, as Ritson puts it, "in his bigoted and foul-mouthed way," that
"he continued a hater of truth, and under the disguise of celibacy a filthy
adulterer to the last;" and in his Declaration of Bonner's articles (1561,
fol. 81), he condescends to an instance to the effect that "Doctoure
Barkleye hadde greate harme ones of suche a visitacion, at Wellys, before
he was Quene Maryes Chaplayne. For the woman whome he so religiouslye
visited did light him of all that he had, sauinge his workinge tolas. For
the whiche acte he had her in prison, and yet coulde nothing recouer
againe." Whether this story be true of any one is perhaps doubtful, and, if
true of a Barclay, we are convinced that he is not our author. It may have
arisen as we have seen from a mistake as to identity. But apart from the
question of identity, we have nothing in support of the slander but Bale's
"foul-mouthed" assertion, while against it we have the whole tenor and aim
of Barclay's published writings. Everywhere he inculcates the highest and
purest morality, and where even for that purpose he might be led into
descriptions of vice, his disgust carries him past what most others would
have felt themselves justified in dealing with. For example, in the chapter
of "Disgysyd folys" he expressly passes over as lightly as possible what
might to others have proved a tempting subject:

"They disceyue myndes chaste and innocent
With dyuers wayes whiche I wyll nat expres
Lyst that whyle I labour this cursyd gyse to stynt
I myght to them mynyster example of lewdnes
And therfore in this part I shall say les
Than doth my actour."

Elsewhere he declares:

"for my boke certaynly
I haue compyled: for vertue and goodnes
And to reuyle foule synne and vyciousnes"

But citation is needless; there is not a page of his writings which will
not supply similar evidence, and our great early moralist may, we think, be
dismissed from Court without a stain on his character.

Indeed to his high pitched morality, he doubtless owed in some degree the
great and extended popularity of his poetical writings in former times and
their neglect in later. Sermons and "good" books were not yet in the
sixteenth century an extensive branch of literature, and "good" people
could without remorse of conscience vary their limited theological reading
by frowning over the improprieties and sins of their neighbours as depicted
in the "Ship," and joining, with a serious headshaking heartiness, in the
admonitions of the translator to amendment, or they might feel
"strengthened" by a glance into the "Mirrour of good Maners," or edified by
hearing of the "Miseryes of Courtiers and Courtes of all princes in
generall," as told in the "Eclogues."

Certain it is that these writings owed little of their acceptance to
touches of humour or satire, to the gifts of a poetical imagination, or the
grace of a polished diction. The indignation of the honest man and the
earnestness of the moralist waited not for gifts and graces. Everything
went down, hard, rough, even uncouth as it stood, of course gaining in
truth and in graphic power what it wants in elegance. Still, with no
refinement, polish or elaboration, there are many picturesque passages
scattered throughout these works which no amount of polishing could have
improved. How could a man in a rage be better touched off than thus ("Ship"
I. 182, 15).

"This man malycious whiche troubled is with wrath
Nought els soundeth but the hoorse letter R."

The passion of love is so graphically described that it is difficult to
imagine our priestly moralist a total stranger to its power, (I. 81).

"For he that loueth is voyde of all reason
Wandrynge in the worlde without lawe or mesure
In thought and fere sore vexed eche season
And greuous dolours in loue he must endure
No creature hym selfe, may well assure
From loues soft dartis: I say none on the grounde
But mad and folysshe bydes he whiche hath the wounde

Aye rennynge as franatyke no reason in his mynde
He hath no constaunce nor ease within his herte
His iyen ar blynde, his wyll alwaye inclyned
To louys preceptes yet can nat he departe
The Net is stronge, the sole caught can nat starte
The darte is sharpe, who euer is in the chayne
Can nat his sorowe in vysage hyde nor fayne"

For expressive, happy simile, the two following examples are capital:--

"Yet sometimes riches is geuen by some chance
To such as of good haue greatest aboundaunce.
Likewise as streames unto the sea do glide.
But on bare hills no water will abide.
. . . . . .
So smallest persons haue small rewarde alway
But men of worship set in authoritie
Must haue rewardes great after their degree."--ECLOGUE I.

"And so such thinges which princes to thee geue
To thee be as sure as water in a siue
. . . . . . .
So princes are wont with riches some to fede
As we do our swine when we of larde haue nede
We fede our hogges them after to deuour
When they be fatted by costes and labour."--ECLOGUE I.

The everlasting conceit of musical humanity is very truthfully hit off.

"This is of singers the very propertie
Alway they coueyt desired for to be
And when their frendes would heare of their cunning
Then are they neuer disposed for to sing,
But if they begin desired of no man
Then shewe they all and more then they can
And neuer leaue they till men of them be wery,
So in their conceyt their cunning they set by."--ECLOGUE II.

Pithy sayings are numerous. Comparing citizens with countrymen, the
countryman says:--

"Fortune to them is like a mother dere
As a stepmother she doth to us appeare."

Of money:

"Coyne more than cunning exalteth every man."

Of clothing:

"It is not clothing can make a man be good
Better is in ragges pure liuing innocent
Than a soule defiled in sumptuous garment."

It is as the graphic delineator of the life and condition of the country in
his period that the chief interest of Barclay's writings, and especially of
the "Ship of Fools," now lies. Nowhere so accessibly, so fully, and so
truthfully will be found the state of Henry the Eighth's England set forth.
Every line bears the character of truthfulness, written as it evidently is,
in all the soberness of sadness, by one who had no occasion to exaggerate,
whose only object and desire was, by massing together and describing
faithfully the follies and abuses which were evident to all, to shame every
class into some degree of moral reformation, and, in particular, to effect
some amelioration of circumstances to the suffering poor.

And a sad picture it is which we thus obtain of merrie England in the good
old times of bluff King Hal, wanting altogether in the _couleur de rose_
with which it is tinted by its latest historian Mr Froude, who is ably
taken to task on this subject by a recent writer in the Westminster Review,
whose conclusions, formed upon other evidence than Barclay's, express so
fairly the impression left by a perusal of the "Ship of Fools," and the
Eclogues, that we quote them here. "Mr Froude remarks: 'Looking therefore,
at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt that under Henry the
body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal, and contented. In all
points of material comfort, they were as well off as ever they had been
before; better off than they have ever been in later times.' In this
estimate we cannot agree. Rather we should say that during, and for long
after, this reign, the people were in the most deplorable condition of
poverty and misery of every kind. That they were ill-fed, that loyalty was
at its lowest ebb, that discontent was rife throughout the land. 'In all
points of material comfort,' we think they were worse off than they had
ever been before, and infinitely worse off than they have ever been since
the close of the sixteenth century,--a century in which the cup of
England's woes was surely fuller than it has ever been since, or will, we
trust, ever be again. It was the century in which this country and its
people passed through a baptism of blood as well as 'a baptism of fire,'
and out of which they came holier and better. The epitaph which should be
inscribed over the century is contained in a sentence written by the famous
Acham in 1547:--'Nam vita, quae nunc vivitur a plurimis, non vita sed
miseria est.'" So, Bradford (Sermon on Repentance, 1533) sums up
contemporary opinion in a single weighty sentence: "All men may see if they
will that the whoredom pride, unmercifulness, and tyranny of England far
surpasses any age that ever was before." Every page of Barclay corroborates
these accounts of tyranny, injustice, immorality, wretchedness, poverty,
and general discontent.

Not only in fact and 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:--

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