Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
which it is proposed to accomplish, and the means by which it can be attained, will show that it falls properly into three distinct operations, namely, Collection, Preservation, and Publication.
The first and most important is, the Collection of Materials. In this, it is obvious, the co-operation of individuals well qualified for the work may be secured in all parts of the country, provided some well-defined plan of operation is furnished for their guidance, by some recognised centre of union. A Committee of the Society of Antiquaries, who should well consider and determine upon some uniform plan of recording the inscriptions, &c., is clearly the body who, from their position, could most effectually, and with the greatest propriety, issue such circulars. That the Antiquaries would in this receive the support of both the Archæological Societies, there cannot, of course, be any doubt.
And as we have in the Society of Antiquaries a machinery already established for the proper collection of the materials, so we have an existing and most appropriate place for their preservation in the British Museum, where they may be consulted at all times, by all parties, with the greatest facility, and free of charge.
These two great points, then, of Collection and Preservation, it is clear may be attained at an expense so inconsiderable, compared with the benefits to be gained from their accomplishment, that we cannot believe in their failure from want of funds.
For the accomplishment of the third great end, that of Publication, there is no existing machinery. But let the work of collection and preservation be once fairly entered upon—let it be seen how valuable a collection of materials has been gathered ready to the hand of a Society which should undertake its publication, and there need be little fear that from the supporters of the various Antiquarian, Archæological, and Publishing Societies, now spread throughout the country, there would be found plenty of good men and true ready to lend their aid to the printings and publishing of the Monumentarium Anglicanum.
But as the first step is Collection—and that step is the one in which the Society of Antiquaries can best move, we trust that the present year, in which this Society celebrates the centenary of its chartered existence, will be signalised by its promotion of such a Record of Existing Monuments as is here proposed; which cannot be otherwise regarded—(and we use the words of the Society's Charter)—than as "good, useful, honest, and necessary for the encouragement, advancement, and furtherance of the study and knowledge of Antiquities and the History of this Country."
Notes
ILLUSTRATIONS OF CHAUCER, NO. IV
The Pilgrimage to Canterbury.
"Whanne that April with his shoures sote
The droughte of March hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veine in swiche licour
Of which vertue engendred is the flour;
When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe
Enspired hath in every holt and hethe
The tendre croppes—and the yonge Sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne;
* * * *
Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages—
* * * *
* * * *
Befelle, that in that seson, on a day."—Prologue.
I quote these lines because I wish to show that Tyrwhitt, in taking them as indicative of the very day on which the journey to Canterbury was performed, committed a great mistake.
The whole of the opening of the prologue, down to the line last quoted, is descriptive, not of any particular day, but of the usual season of pilgrimages; and Chaucer himself plainly declares, by the words "in that seson, on a day"—that the day is as yet indefinite.
But because Tyrwhitt, who, although an excellent literary critic, was by no means an acute reader of his author's meaning, was incapable of appreciating the admirable combination of physical facts by which Chaucer has not only identified the real day of the pilgrimage, but has placed it, as it were, beyond the danger of alteration by any possible corruption in the text, he set aside these physical facts altogether, and took in lieu of them the seventh and eighth lines of the prologue quoted above, which, I contend, Chaucer did not intend to bear any reference to the day of the journey itself, but only to the general season in which it was undertaken.
But Tyrwhitt, having seized upon a favourite idea, seems to have been determined to carry it through, at any cost, even at that of altering the text from "the Ram" into "the Bull:" and I fear that he can scarcely be acquitted of unfair and intentional misquotation of Chaucer's words, by transposing "his halfe cours" into "half his course," which is by no means an equivalent expression. Here are his own words:
"When he (Chaucer) tells us that 'the shoures of April had perced to the rote the drought of March' (ver. 1, 2.), we must suppose, in order to allow due time for such an operation, that April was far advanced; while, on the other hand, the place of the sun, 'having just run half his course in the Ram' (ver. 7, 8.), restrains us to some day in the very latter end of March. This difficulty may, and, I think, should, be removed by reading in ver. 8. the Bull, instead of the Ram. All the parts of the description will then be consistent with themselves, and with another passage (ver. 4425.), where, in the best MSS., the eighte and twenty day of April is named as the day of the journey to Canterbury."—Introductory Discourse.
Accordingly, Mr. Tyrwhitt did not hesitate to adopt in his text the twenty-eighth of April as the true date, without stopping to examine whether that day would, or would not, be consistent with the subsequent phenomena related by Chaucer.
Notwithstanding Tyrwhitt's assertion of a difficulty only removable by changing the Ram into the Bull, there are no less than two ways of understanding the seventh and eighth lines of the prologue so as to be perfectly in accordance with the rest of the description. One of these would be to suppose the sign Aries divided into two portions (not necessarily equal in the phraseology of the time), one of which would appertain to March, anal the other to April—and that Chaucer, by the "halfe cours yronne," meant the last, or the April, half of the sign Aries. But I think a more probable supposition still would be to imagine the month of April, of which Chaucer was speaking, to be divided into two "halfe cours," in one of which the sun would be in Aries, and in the other in Taurus; and that when Chaucer says that "the yonge Sonne had in the Ram his halfe cours yronne," he meant that the Aries half of the month of April had been run through, thereby indicating in general terms some time approaching to the middle of April.
Both methods of explaining the phrase lead eventually to the same result, which is also identical with the interpretation of Chaucer's own contemporaries, as appears in its imitation by Lydgate in the opening of his "Story of Thebes:"
"Whan bright Phebus passed was the Ram,
Midde of Aprill, and into the Bull came."
And it is by no means the least remarkable instance of want of perception in Tyrwhitt, that he actually cites these two lines of Lydgate's as corroborative of his own interpretation, which places the sun in the middle of Taurus.
I enter into this explanation, not that I think it necessary to examine too curiously into the consistency of an expression which evidently was intended only in a general sense, but that the groundlessness of Tyrwhitt's alleged necessity for the alteration of "the Ram" into "the Bull" might more clearly appear.
I have said that Tyrwhitt was not a competent critic of Chaucer's practical science, and I may perhaps be expected to point out some other instance of his failure in that respect than is afforded by the subject itself. This I may do by reference to a passage in "The Marchante's Tale," which evinces a remarkable want of perception not only in Tyrwhitt, but in all the editors of Chaucer that I have had an opportunity of consulting.
The morning of the garden scene is said in the text to be "er that dayes eight were passed of the