SHAKSPERE'S ENGLAND. • IT is difficult to make a large and
what is called a popular book out of the manners and customs and "social history' of a par- ticular age. If it is done elaborately, by a learned and conscien- tious man who gives chapter and verse for every statement, and presses into his service all the facts he gets hold of, the thing will probably be overdone. The subject will be smothered and. the reader fatigued by too minute details, possibly by too ponderous a manner. The book will remain a monument of industry, but will be chiefly resorted to by litterateurs and compilers' to save themselves the trouble of research. If, on the other hand, a writer adopts the striking or brilliant style of which Macaulay the great master, and. many popular novelists, its, essayists, or article-
writers, clever practitioners he is apt to fall into the exaggeration
of the showman style. practitioners, himself does not altogether escape this defect in some parts of his picture of England under James the Second ; his worst imitators fairly run down the style into "now you shall see what you shall see " ; and forthwith follows All exhibition in which forced vivacity, flat literalness, and spangle finery, mingle together in pretty equal proportions. These are great literary faults; literary vices are generally coupled with them. Either natural deficiency, or laziness, or mistaken love of effect, in- duces more or less of falsehood; such writers neither convey a true idea of their subject nor leave true impressions of their authorities. It is notorious even in Macaulay, that if you trace him to his ori- ginal' you will rarely find his statement supported. A greater error than mere misconception arises from the habit of generaliza- tion in which these writers indulge themselves. The original author records a particular and probably an exceptional fact; not content with dressing up the original statement till it is hardly to be recognized, the literary showman proceeds to paint the sin- gular exception as the representation of large classes. For instance, " Shakspere s England," if the author of the book which bears that title were implicitly believed in, would appear to consist of two great classes, knaves and fools. No iloubt, the abnormals of every age come conspicuously before the observer's eye, whether their prominence be for good or evil; and it may be difficult to mark distinctly the mass of steady industry, regular progress, and homely virtues of society at large: but this difficulty it is the writer's business to overcome. The scum will float to the top, but it is worse than a blunder to represent the liquor as all scum.
Shakspere's England; or Sketches of our Social History in the Reign of Elisa- beth. By W. G. Thornbury. Author of the "History of the Buccaneers," itc, In two volumes. Published by Longmans.
Besides- the faults more or less common to his school, Mr. Thornbury has several of his own. From haste, or insufficient preparation, or innate peculiarity of mind, he often states things inaccurately from mere looseness of expression, or want of thought; since it is difficult to imagine him ignorant of the facts. Thus, to impress the narrow limits of Elizabethan London, he tells his reader that "Islington [is] a village "—which it was in George the Third's time ; and that " Marylebone [is] a suburb" —which it was not till even beyond his early time. With like looseness of language he terms Fleet Street, then a suburb." Contradicting the notorious fact, he says—" No distinctive grades of social position are yet known" ; by which he seems to mean, if he troubles himself about meaning, that the various classes of society lived in the same neighbourhood; for he adds, that "the tradesman lives at the very doors of the richest nobles in Eng- land." The fact is the distinctive grades" were so marked that the noble in his " feudal castle or Tudor mansion did not care who lived as near his door as they could get. The practice is not yet quite extinct. Northumberland House is the ease most in point; but Devonshire House and Burlington House are lesser examples. A mind that blunders in such obvious matter is hardly fitted to paint the externals of London and its vicinity in the days of Queen Elizabeth, whether as regards material objects, or manners amusements, and the like.
Mr. 'lornbury is equally uncritical in dealing with his author- ities ; some of whom, by the by, are such recondite works as Cim- ninghara's Handbook. Of the Thames he says—" The bright river we must imagine as when it supported 40,000 Lwatermen and floated 2000 small boats." For the forty thousand watermen there is the authority of some edition of Taylor the Water Poet. The "Swan of Thames" doubtless wrote or meant four thousand, which would tally with the two thousand boats : the idea of twenty watermen to a wherry is ridiculous—in fact, the number is impossible. On the usual calculation of five persons to one adult male, this would give two hundred thousand' souls dependent on the earnings of the Elizabethan watermen! The population data for Elizabeth's reign is nil. In 1696, Gregory King estimated the population of London Westminster, and the "fifteen out-parishes of Middle- sex and Surrey," at 479,600; the hearth-tax returns serving as the basis of his calculation. So that we are called upon to believe that the watermen and their families formed at least one half the population of London in Elizabeth's reign.
Mr. Thornbury does not always avoid contradicting himself. In a description of the day of a man of fashion, on one page he is represented rising at noon, the dinner-hour ! in the next, and in- deed on the same, as beginning his morning's work at eleven and getting it done by half-past.
"The rose of fashion, in the days of cloak and dagger, seldom rose before he had heard it at least ring noon from Paul's or Bow. The fumes of ca- nary perfumed the room like the odours of mandragora, and his brain was wearied with the wit-combats at the Mermaid or the Devil. * * "He puts on all his silken bravery, his ash-coloured velvet and gold- laced cloak, or his cherry satin and blue taffety, and tying his points goes down to a solid breakfast of meat and ale. Then, mounting his Irish hobby, his Irish horseboy running at his side, and his French page behind, he has- tens to the. promenade at Paul's • it being now, we will suppose, not noon but only just gone eleven. Arriving at the door, he leaps off hia horse, throws his bridle to the boy, and, giving him his cloak and sword, enters at the North door, and takes half a dozen turns down the Mediterranean aisle,' avoiding the serving-man's pillar and the Si Quis (advertisement) wall, taking care to display his jingling spurs, his gold-fringed garters, and the rich taffety lining of his cloak, which he snatches from the page.. The gallant, after a few turns to prevent being taken for a hungry tenant of Duke Humphrey,' s house, repairs to the sempstressas' shops at the "Ex- change, and talks pretty euphuisms to the citizen's daughters ; to the book- sellers, to see the last book that had been written against the divine weed,' to con the last new lay or to the new tobacco-office, to practise smoking tricks and purchase Tnnidado. "If it be now half-past eleven, and the gallant be still found chatting in Paul's Walk, he will at once repair to his ordinary, first pulling out his gilded watch, setting it by the minster clock, and arranging at what hour the friend with whom he parts should meet him at the door of the Rose el Fortune ; mounting his Galloway nag or Spanish jennet, whichever it might be, and, followed by his French or Irish lad, he would then repair to a fashionable ordinary, say Tarleton's, the low comedian's, in Paternoster Row."
Besides town and. town-life, Mr. Th-ornbury's volume contains descriptions of country houses, country sports, and country life, as well as several classes of society. In such drag-net work as the author has permitted himself, a good many curious particu- lars are brought together, and. a good deal of information is con- tained in his eight hundred pages. Except, however, in the form of direct quotation, and where the extent of the original author's predication is evident, the information cannot be implicitly de- pended upon, from the rhetorical style of the author, or his un- warranted. generalization of particulars, as well as from the pecu- liarity of mind already exhibited in examples.
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