Extracts from ye gild book of the Barber-Surgeons of York.

  • Bent, J. Theodore (James Theodore), 1852-1897.
Date:
[between 1880 and 1889?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Extracts from ye gild book of the Barber-Surgeons of York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    1/4 (page 153)
    FLETCHER OF SALTO UN'S WRITINGS. Vnd a neat touch of the old picturesque, ipproaching idyllic prose, worthy of Sir Thomas Overbury, appears in these words )f Sir Christopher Musgrave ;— The county of Kent furnishes us with the choicest ruit; Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire with com ; Lincolnshire, Essex, and Surrey with beef, veal, and ntttton ; Buckinghamshire with wood for fuel, and the iver with all that the seas and the rest of the world iffords. In a word, all the useful and superfluous things hat Nature produces, or the wit of man has invented, ire to be found here, either made by our artificers, 3t imported by our merchants. [t also contains one or two bits of rough jest- ing and some sallies of touchy tempers, which seem to be recorded with all their strength of heated passion in the words. Take, for example, this strikingly described scene :— What account, said he (Sir Edward Seymour), should we make of Scotland, so often trampled under foot by our armies ? Of late years, did not the very scum of our nation conquer you ? Yes, said I, after they had, with our assistance, conquered the king and the nobility and gentiy of England ; and yet that, which you call a conquest, was a dispute between parlies, and not a national quarrel. It was, said he, nseparable from the fortune of our Edwards to triumph over your nation. Do you mean Edward of Carnarvon, said I, and his vicloiy at Bannockburn ? No, replied he, I mean Edward the First and Third, whose heroic actions no princes have ever equalled. Sure, said I, you do not mean the honour of the firstj or the humanity of the third, so signally manifested at Berwick ; nor the murder of Wallace by the first Edward, or the poisoning of Randolph, Earl of Munray, by the third, after they had both refused to give battle to those heroes ? His ever-memorable remark about national ballads occurs in this “ Account of a Con- versation,” and in this way :— Even the poorer sort of both sexes (said Sir Christopher) are daily tempted to all manner of lewd- ness by infamous songs sung in every corner of the streets. One would think, said the Earl, this last were of no great consequence. I said I knew a very '^c man so much of Sir Christopher’s sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the I laws of a nation. And we find that most of the ancient legislators thought they could not well reform e manners of any city without the help of a lyric, nu sometimes of a dramatic poet. is noteworthy that this proverbial saying js said to have been quoted by Fletcher from wise man,” though it has long been ributed to Fletcher’s own self. In the ^ authors such a remark is five found, and universal belief has ‘ VQ ^^^’^'^°’^ship upon him. It was pro- bably with a little stern egotism that he referred to himself as being “ a very wise man.” This remarkable saying has been said to have been uttered by men as widely sepa- rated as Burns and Cobbett. In our litera- ture this was the earliest acknowledgment of the power of ballads. But the fact that in Scotland the kings kept bards and jongleurs who strolled about the country singing their ballads at burgh street corners, among vil- lagers, and at farmhouses, goes to show that the author of that happy saying was a Scot. In Scotland at that time ballads alone formed the literature of the people. They were their songs, and to their music they danced. Their directness and simplicity show us that, if not written by, they were at least written for, the people. Over the country they grew like wild flowers. Satiric-smiling pasquils spread over tlie land like briar roses. Bal- lads breathed the hopes and fears of the people, and went straight to their hearts ; their lugli^ '&'^l/^~;:kpH matter? were said in thi times of national their strains Sti^^/the /pedple’s like trumpet seftfii^; and! the. burdeiis^f their loves and s|^ws foun& mfiiet expre^9n in the sweet- n^qf tlieir own’'spiJgs. \ j^wn in the Bor- d«4&^s the-ballads! WCTeT'^e best, and it is noK,igiji?obafeie4hat^e^er had them in his Boern^y wjien his Jips spoke of their power?'*“.4-Ui3,(Bt^^)g^--^ say, the lives and manners or’TntStTDorder marauders, bold and brave and hearty in their lawlessness, agree to a nicety with the burdens and de- scriptions of their popular ballads. The spirit of lawless daring, a light laughing scorn of personal danger, gladdens their lives, and the music is full of the clanking noise of gallant moss-troopers returning from the Borders with flocks of sheep and heads of cattle, with Englishmen in pursuit waving their spears and lances, and the ringing yel^) of a bloodhound on the rievers’ track. With the true reformer’s spirit, Fletcher saw that real progress has first to be made in the national heart. It was another way of expressing that he would rather have been Homer than Alexander^ the Great. And in his own country it receives a home- thnist in pointed facts. Burns did more for Scotland than all the laivmakers of M