information from Phillips, the last Prior of the Benedictines at Rochester, who had sat in the Convocation of 1529, and from Thomas Harding, who had been chaplain to Stokesley. Hall is, like the rest, among the Cardinal's accusers. William Forrest, who was a contemporary, and became chaplain to Queen Mary, agrees with Harpsfield and Shelley, Sanders and Hall. Indeed, without resorting to contemporary foreigners, or to English writers of a later generation, the evidence that Wolsey first moved the idea of divorce appears to us conclusive. The Cardinal himself admitted it to Du Bellay, not speaking under pressing need of deception and excuse, but privately, to one who was his friend, who powerfully supported his policy, who needed no convincing, and had evidently not heard the contrary on any authority worthy of belief. A statement made in these circumstances is not necessarily credible, but it far outweighs a public declaration demanded by the stress of popular suspicion. Wolsey's communication to Du Bellay, confirm ing what he wrote to Casale,* connects the Divorce with the great change in the system of alliances which was made in the spring of 1525, and perfectly explains the tenacious grasp with which he then retained This power in spite of all the sacrifices which the failures of his policy imposed on the King. We cannot reject it without stronger reason than has been yet produced. After his disgrace, Wolsey constantly declared himself innocent of crime, yet worthy of the royal displeasure. The Divorce, he said, was the cause of his fall, yet he denied that, in that, he had offended. This would be consistent and intelligible language if he was the author of counsels that had proved so pernicious. On his deathbed he delivered to Kingston the lesson of his experience of Henry. He warned him to be cautious what matter he put into his head, as he would never put it out again. He was alluding to what had passed in the affair of Queen Catharine; and his words had a pregnant as well as a literal significance if he was thinking of a matter which he had himself incautiously put into the King's head. We are at a loss to find a valid reason for doubting, except the authority of Mr. Brewer. We acknowledge the force of that objection. It is impossible to differ without uneasiness and regret, from a historian who has supplied so large and so rich a part of the knowledge attainable on this subject, *December 6, 1527. and who is unsurpassed for accuracy and penetration. But Mr. Brewer's words, in speaking of Wolsey, must be taken with a slight allowance. It is not only because of the dignified liberality, the ceremonious self-restraint, which is due from a divine of the English Church towards a Roman Card-. inal, and from an illustrious scholar who is willing to think nobly and generously of the Church of Rome, towards a prelate by whose fault that Church was dishonoured and cast down. For as many years as Wolsey's administration lasted, Mr. Brewer has been employed in investigating his actions. He has hewn him out of the block. He has found much that is new and different from the character which Protestant and Catholic have had so much reason to blacken; and he has felt the influence not only of disgust for ignorant detractors, but of admiration for the strong man who, when the population of all England did not exceed that of a modern city, when the annual revenue was no more than that which is now received in a single day, when Scotland and Ireland were drains upon her power, when she was without dependencies and without a fleet, raised the kingdom by the force of his solitary genius, to a position among European nations not inferior to that which it now enjoys. For Wolsey as a Minister of tyranny, as a pensioner of foreign potentates, as a priest of immoral life, he has an extreme indulgence. The Cardinal attempted to obtain from Parliament a declaration that all things in the land belonged to the Crown-a doctrine which, from the day on which Frederic Barbarossa consulted the jurists of Bologna, until Lewis XIV. caused it to be sanctioned by the divines of the Sorbonne, has been the symbol of despotic power. At the moment when he broke off the alliance with the House of Burgundy and sought the friendship of France, he had for four years been denied his pensions by the Power that he abandoned, whilst he required from the Power that he joined a sum equal in our money to 285,000l. When he exchanged Durham for Winchester, he asked that the see which he vacated should be transferred to his son, a youth then studying at Paris. Mr. Brewer will not admit a doubt as to Wolsey's integrity. If we remember rightly, he nowhere mentions the proposed transfer of the great see of Durham. He is almost unwilling to believe that Wolsey had a son. That he had a daughter Mr. Brewer does not dispute. But he thinks that such transgressions did not necessarily involve any greater impropriety than the marriage of an English cler gyman at the present day.* This view of the age of the Reformation leaves a great feature in its history unexplained. No influence then at work contributed more than the private lives of ecclesiastics such as Wolsey to undermine Catholicism, and to incline men towards a Church which renounced the hazards of an enforced celibacy. We would undertake, if necessary, to justify our words by proof which Mr. Brewer will accept, by the writings of the most eminent and the nost impartial men of the sixteenth century, by the decrees of twenty synods, by the constitutions of York itself. Mr. Brewer's abounding charity defends the Cardinal as a persecutor. Wolsey had caused Protestants to be burnt in the day of his power, and in the last hour of his life, when his speech faltered and his eyes grew dim, he uttered an exhortation that Henry would not spare the Lutherans, because they would prove a danger to the State. Yet even that appalling vision of the dying Prelate, who, having clothed himself in sackcloth, and made his peace with God, gathered his last breath to fan the flames of Smithfield, has no terrors for Mr. Brewer. No man, he says, was less disposed to persecute; and he excuses him by the examples of his age, and by the greater cruelty of More. The argument which excuses Wolsey by the times he lived in, is a serious fallacy. Christians must be judged by a moral code which is not an invention of the eighteenth century, but is as old as the Apostles. We are no wiser than the contemporaries of Wolsey regarding the rights of conscience. Persecution has indeed become more difficult to carry out; and the conditions of modern society make toleration easy. But there are, in our day, many educated men who think it right to persecute; and there were, in the days of Wolsey, many who were as enlightened on that point as Burke or Jefferson. There was a humane and liberal current, both in government and in literature, which the religious conflict that followed checked for generations. Whilst Lollards and Lutherans were burning, in the Chancellorship of Wolsey, the Greeks lived unmolested in Venice, and the Waldenses enjoyed a respite in Savoy; the Inquisition 'Here, as in other Catholic countries at was forbidden to interfere with the Moriscoes of Granada; and in Portugal the later laws of Emanuel the Great protected the Judaizing heretics from popular fanaticism. No country had suffered so much from religious strife as Bohemia; but in 1512 Catholics and Utraquists made an agreement in perpetuity that rich and poor of both churches should enjoy freedom unrestrained. In Denmark equal rights were assigned to Catholics and Protestants at the Diet of 1527. Before the close of the fifteenth century the French Inquisition had been shorn of its might; the bishops refused to prosecute those who were accused of heresy; the Parliament rescued them; and Lutheranism was allowed to spread with the connivance of the court, until the long absence and captivity of the King. Many years even then elapsed before the Protestants ceased to regard Francis as their defender. Beneath the sceptre of the Hapsburgs persecution reigned; yet in 1526 Ferdinand conceded territorial toleration, and Charles himself, in 1532, proclaimed the rights of conscience in language worthy of a better time. There was a strong body of opinion on the other side, but authorities equally strong may be quoted in favour of murder, not merely among men entangled in the habits of a darker age, but among those who had struggled to emancipate their minds from tradition, and who made it the pride and the business of their lives to resist the vices of the vulgar. It was no reason for an assassin to escape the gallows that Melancthon had prayed for a brave man to despatch Henry VIII.; that the brave man who despatched the Duke of Guise was praised by Beza to the skies; that Knox wished the doom of Rizzio to be inflicted on every Catholic; that the Swedish bishops recommended that a dose of poison should be mixed with the King's food. Nor can we admit that the intolerance of Wolsey is excused by comparison with the greater intolerance of More. The Cardinal, in his last hours, asked for measures of repression, the nature of which ris own example and the statute of Henry IV. left in no kind of doubt. Sir Thomas More protested before his death, in terms which have satisfied the impartial judgment of one of his latest successors on the woolsack, that no Protestant the present day, or at least until recently, the had perished by his act. marriage of the parochial clergy had to be tole- ART. II.—1. Kongs - Skugg-sió. 1768. Soro, | the continuer of the Sagas after Snorri, who died 1284. 2. Speculum Regale. Christiania, 1848. And I was born in Island, as brute as a beest; When I ete candels ends I am at a feest,' &c. Indeed, as history teaches us, Scandinavia generally fared not a whit better in the estimation of our countrymen; but by degrees, with the diffusion of knowledge, a truer light has been thrown upon the subject. The tables have in fact been turned, and it now appears that to despised Scandinavia England owes a great deal. In Iceland, and its language, have been found the key to many a riddle in our national character and national language. It is only within the last few years, as we have seen, that reading Englishmen have begun to realise the fact, that at a period when our Anglo-Saxon forefathers were innocent of all skill in writing books in their own tongue, in which they were born (the most cultivated among them using Latin as a vehicle for expressing their thoughts), there was a race of men in a far distant island, more than half-way over to South Greenland, who had attained to a power of composition in their own vernacular, which, for vividness and fire, for firmness and breadth of outline, for picturesgue grouping of accessories and details, has never been surpassed. Although the rich and racy language in which these imperishable monuments were cast-the Old Norse, Danish, or Icelandic, as it is indifferently called was current in those days all over Scandinavia, yet they were almost invariably the work of Icelanders living. in Iceland. Such were Ari Frodi, born 1067, died 1148, the father of Icelandic history; his friend and fellow-student, Saemund, the reputed compiler of the Old Edda;' the immortal Snorri Sturleson; and Sturla Thordarson, What caused this barren island to be so fertile in literary production? Was it the exuberant energy of a race, once lords of the main land, but now cooped up in the narrow confines of that desolate wilderness, that found a partial vent in literary fecundity? Did hard simple fare sharpen the intellectual faculty? Was it the spectacle of fire and frost, fighting for the mastery, that fired or excited their brain? Or the desire to make themselves a name which should penetrate from this remote corner, in which they were earth? Or was it frequent mixture on their voluntary exiles, to the very ends of the travels, in the best society of foreign parts, which taught them that to excel in history and poetry was to be a favourite with the great, and to have a purse well filled with gold pieces-a piece of practical knowledge which their ready mother-wit would lose no time in turning to the best account? Or was blood-race-at the bottom of the phenomenon after all-a dormant proclivity, an embryo aspiration inbred in this particular tribe of Eastern emigrants, which required peculiar conditions of locality, of natural surroundings, of worldly circumstances, to start forth into vigorous life; and those conditions they met with, and the thing was done? While the other Teutonic tribes, halting in the tamer plains and forests of Central Germany, or paddling among the mud-flats of the lower Elbe and Rhine, or comfortably settled in the enjoyment of the temperate climate and more genial soil of England, garnished for them and nicely swept by the hand of effete and waning Rome, either fell upon soil unfavourable to literary germination, or naturally lacked, in their mental and physical composition, the spark of celestial fire that goes to the making of a poet or historian! The poem of Beowulf -a chief monument of Anglo-Saxon literature-is no proof to the contrary: for it is now held by the best judges to be of continental and heathen origin. In its scenery and personages, in its form and essence, it is Scandinavian—features, which at once point to the conclusion that it came over with the early Scandinavian invaders, and got altered into its present shape. Is it, then, to some of the above suggested causes, or to a combination of all of them, that we must look for the Mimer's fount the source of inspiration of these people -and attribute the difference between the literary compositions of the Anglo-Saxon and the Scandinavian? To take a crucial instance, just compare our Anglo-Saxon Chronicle with the Heimskringla.' The first reminds us, if we may be permitted to | synonymes, and alliteration run mad, the say so, of the Valley of dry bones,'-not a Erse productions are not to be compared living trait there of the Great Alfred's char- with the work of the Icelanders. Hypeacter, moral or intellectual, or of his personal rion to a Satyr! qualities. In the Heimskringla, on the contrary, by the wave of the enchanter's wand, in the hand of a Snorri, these dry bones start up into animated life. A new and startling theory has lately, however, been broached by the Irish antiquaries, claiming for natives of Ireland the laurels hitherto worn by Scandinavia. Dr. Todd, in his edition of the Wars of the Gaedhill and the Gaill' (Introd. p. xxviii.), surmises that the Icelandic sagas were only 'imitations, on the part of the Northmen, of the historical tales and bardic poems which they had found in Ireland.' Some of these, he goes on to say, are still extant in the Irish tongue, and were popular with the Irish in the tenth and eleventh centuries, at latest; whereas Ari Frodi, who, according to Snorri, was the first man that wrote down in Norse things new and old, was not born till 1067. The Irish Tales, like the Norse, were in prose interspersed with poems and fragments of poems, and therefore he (Dr. Todd) concludes, 'Ireland had evidently the priority of the North in this species of popular literature.' But, though Ari may have been the first to write these things down, yet it is clear that, centuries before, these people had a live tradition, wonderfully elaborated and faithfully kept; so that, at the end of the tenth century, the national literature was full-blown and ready to be committed to writing. Saxo, who flourished in the tenth century, in the Preface to his History of Denmark,' dwells on this extraordinary aptitude of the Icelanders for committing facts to memory and writing them down. * But Dr. Todd is not without backers. Mr. Matthew Arnold, in his papers on Celtic Literature, has discovered that the style of the Icelandic writers is due to early Celtic influence.' And he bases this dictum on the statement of Ari, that in 870, when the Northmen arrived in Iceland, there were Christians there (Papae), who went away because they did not like to live with heathen, leaving behind them Irish books, bells, and crosiers; whence these people must have been Irish. But surely this is a slender foundation for the statement that the inimitable style of Icelandic literature is borrowed from the Irish. And, besides, to judge from the specimens of inflation and bombast exhibited in the Irish Saga,' edited by Dr. Todd, with its synonymes piled on * 'Islendingabok.' We have indicated above how far England was behind with the pen in Alfred's time. But this want of genius and incapacity for original composition endured long after the Conquest. The linguistic strata of the country were thoroughly dislocated by the social earthquake at Hastings, and most literary efforts were confined to Latin, or mere translations from the French. many weary years Norman and Anglo-Saxon were striving for the mastery, so that, according to some philologists, the earliest specimen of a public document in our native tongue is the well-known proclamation of Henry III., A.D. 1258. For The King's Mirror,' to which we now desire to call the attention of our readers, is one of the few works, composed in the old tongue, that did not see the light in Iceland. From internal evidence it is clear that this remarkable book was written in Norway, although all the MSS. of it, save one, were made in Iceland. Who the author was is matter of doubt. At an early period it was attributed to King Swerrer, the friend of our King John. Olaus Wormius, writing to Stephanius in 1641, mentions this tradition, and does not impugn it. This reputed author was such a notable fellow, that we must introduce him to our readers. Brought up in boyhood, and educated for the priestly office, under his uncle the Bishop of Faro, he doubtless often ministered in the quaint old church at Kirkubö, near Thorshaven, which, when we visited the Islands a few years ago, was still used for public worship. With no very well-founded pretensions to the crown, his royal blood being little better than a myth, this man at length surmounted all obstacles and ascended the throne of Norway. Like many of our English monarchs in those days, like the Emperor Frederick II. of Germany, like all the monarchs who would not brook the arrogant pretensions of Rome, and appointed their own bishops, he soon got the Pope upon his back, and found. him as difficult to dislodge as ever did Sinbad, the old man o the sea. To such a pass did matters come at last between Swerrer and the Pope, that the King, like our craven John, was placed under an interdict, and all the bishops fled out of the land. But we cannot follow the details of his eventful life, and must pass on to its end. Falling sick after a successful deed of arms at Tansberg, he sailed for Bergen, keeping his berth during the voyage. As soon as he reached that city, he caused himself to be carried up to the castle. Perceiving death approaching, he ordered the letters about the succession to be read aloud, and then sealed up and despatched to his son Hacon at Trondjem. The city clergy were next summoned to administer extreme unction to the dying king, and—all honour to these spirited ecclesiastics!-they did not appear to have raised any objection, although he was under the ban of the Church. At this moment he exclaimed, Here will I wait for recovery or death. If I die in my high seat, surrounded by my friends, it will chance otherwise than Bishop Arnesen prophesied that I should be cut down as food for dogs and ravens.' Thereupon he was anointed; his last request being that they should leave his face bare, so that friends and enemies might see whether it exhibited any traces of the Church's ban and interdict. More moil and unrest have been my portion,' exclaimed he, than rest and enjoyment. Many foes have I had, who have let me feel the full weight of their enmity, which God forgive them all. Let Him judge between us.' So died March 9, 1202, at the early age of 51, worn out by hardships, one of Norway's greatest kings; the insinuations of one of his bitterest detractors, William of Newbury, notwithstanding. A book by such a man would indeed have been worth reading; and there is a clerkly flavour about the work in parts, which might well befit one brought up, like Swerrer, for the Church but by common consent the authorship must be sought elsewhere. With much polish, it has none of the fire and vehemence so characteristic of the impetuous king. On the other hand, the style has none of the spirit of that prince of raconteurs historiques, Snorri. But, though at times somewhat artificial, there is a curious felicity of expression, which cannot fail to interest. A passage in it fixes the habitat of the writer, Halgoland, in the north of Norway, the birthplace, by the way, of King Alfred's gossip, Ohthere. He is conjectured to have Been a distinguished nobleman, who had been much at Court and in foreign parts. Though the age was one of licentiousness, yet his tone throughout is highly moral and religious, while he gives his son the benefit of his varied experiences. The work is in the form of a dialogue, which affords many interesting glimpses of contemporary manners, ceremonics, ideas, and characters in every grade and profession. The date of its composition has been much disputed. The late Professor Munch placed it between 1190 and 1196, while Otto Blom, solely from the military costumes, fixes its date at ten years later, i.e. the period at which AngloSaxon was beginning gradually to give place to modern English.* But it is time we should review the contents of the book. A young man looks around him into the world, and scrutinises the doings of it, and he beholds the motley crowd straying from the right road and wearying themselves in bye-paths, and so he goes to his father and asks him to lay down for him some rules of life. It so chanced that certain persons of worship and wisdom overheard the colloquy, and, though they do not appear to have been the youth's enemies, they urged him to write a book," and so give the world the benefit of so much wisdom combined with amusement (gaman). He takes their advice; but then comes the knotty question, what was to be the name of the book? Now with the literary world in those days, whether moralists, philosophers, satirists, or what not, there was one title which was quite the rage-Speculum, to wit; Anglicé, Mirror. ror. A good seventy such looking-glasses were held up to mankind—some of them to the august person of royalty during the twelfth and two following centuries. There was the renowned Speculum Stultorum,' by Nigel Wireker, wherein, under the character of the ass Brunellus, he had (A.D. 1186) been convulsing London and Paris by his telling sarcasms on the illiterate monks therein portrayed. Wireker had died of the plague at Rome, 1188; and what so likely as that one of the many ecclesiastics, who were passing and re-passing between Rome and Norway, might have brought along with him in his valise a copy of Nigel's 'Speculum' to while away the tedium of those long nights within the Arctic circle? Then there was the 'Speculum Ecclesiæ,' by that fiery Archdeacon of the blood royal of Wales, Gerald de Barri, in which, with the biting pen of a Junius though with a less veracious one, he writes down, or holds up to ridicule, the clerical profession. So 6 The Royal Mirror'-Islandicè, KongsSkugg-sió,' is the title fixed on by our author, 'Not from any motives of pride, but simply to attract the reader.' And as for the epithet "Royal," the book treats of the manners of kings among those of other people, and a king, standing as he does at the top of the tree, ought to be a pattern of the Since writing the above, a treatise by Pro*Torfaeus,' iv. 1. Keyser Norske Kirkens fessor Steenstrup, of Copenhagen, has reached Historie,' i. 316. us, fixing the date as unquestionably after 1200. |