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A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

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There are certain half-dreaming moods of
mind, in which we naturally steal away from
noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt,
where we may indulge our reveries and build
our air castles undisturbed. In such a mood I
was loitering about the old gray cloisters of
Westminster Abbey, enjoying that luxury of

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wandering thought which one is apt to dignify
with the name of reflection, when suddenly
an irruption of madcap boys from Westminster
school, playing at foot-ball, broke in
upon the monastic stillness of the place, making
the vaulted passages and mouldering
tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to
take refuge from their noise by penetrating still
deeper into the solitudes of the pile, and applied
to one of the vergers for admission to the
library. He conducted me through a portal
rich with the crumbling sculpture of former
ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage
leading to the chapter house and the chamber
where doomsday book is deposited. Just
within the passage is a small door on the left.
To this the verger applied a key; it was double
locked, and opened with some difficulty, as if
seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow
staircase, and passing through a second
door, entered the library.

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the
roof supported by massive joists of old English

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oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic
windows at a considerable height from the
floor, and which apparently opened upon the
roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of
some reverend dignitary of the church in his
robes hung over the fire place. Around the
hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged
in carved oaken cases. They consisted
principally of old polemical writers, and were
much more worn by time than use. In the
centre of the library was a solitary table with
two or three books on it; an inkstand without
ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse.
The place seemed fitted for quiet study and
profound meditation. It was buried deep
among the massive walls of the abbey, and
shut up from the tumult of the world. I
could only hear now and then the shouts of the
schoolboys faintly swelling from the cloister,
and the sound of a bell tolling for prayers, that
soberly echoed along the roofs of the abbey.
By degrees the shouts of merriment grew fainter
and fainter, and at length died away. The

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bell ceased to toll, and the most profound silence
reigned through the dusky hall.

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously
bound in parchment, with brass clasps,
and seated myself at the table in a venerable
elbow chair. Instead of reading, however, I
was beguiled by the solemn monastic air, and
noiseless quiet of the place, into a train of musing.
As I looked around upon the old volumes
in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the
shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their
repose, I could not but consider the library a
kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like
mummies, are piously entombed, and left to
blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.

How much, thought I, has each of these
volumes, now thrust aside with such indifference,
cost some aching head; how many weary
days—how many sleepless nights. How have
their authors buried themselves in the solitude
of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from
the face of man, and the still more blessed face
of nature, and devoted themselves to painful

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research and intense reflection. And all for
what! to occupy an inch of dusty shelf—to
have the title of their works read now and then
in a future age, by some drowsy churchman,
or casual straggler like myself; and in another
age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is
the amount of this boasted immortality.—A
mere temporary rumour, a local sound, like the
tone of that bell which has just tolled among
these towers, filling the ear for a moment—
lingering transiently in echo—and then passing
away, like a thing that was not!

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating
these unprofitable speculations, with my head
resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally
loosened the clasps, when, to my utter astonishment,
the little book gave two or three yawns,
like one awaking from a deep sleep; then a
husky hem, and at length began to talk. At
first its voice was very hoarse and broken,
being much troubled by a cobweb that some
studious spider had woven across it; and

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having probably contracted a cold from long exposure
to the chills and damps of the abbey.
In a short time, however, it became more distinct,
and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent
conversable little tome. Its language, to be
sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its
pronunciation, what, in the present day, would
be deemed barbarous; but I shall endeavour, as
far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.

It began with railings about the neglect of
the world—merit being suffered to languish in
obscurity, and other such common place topics
of literary repining, and complained bitterly
that it had not been opened for more than two
centuries. That the Dean only looked now
and then into the library, sometimes took down
a volume or two, trifled with them for a few
moments, and then returned them to their
shelves. “What a plague do they mean,” said
the little quarto, which I began to perceive was
somewhat choleric, “what a plague do they
mean by keeping several thousand volumes of

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us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers
like so many beauties in a harem, merely
to be looked at now and then by the Dean.
Books were written to give pleasure and to be
enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that
the Dean should pay each of us a visit at least
once a year; or if he is not equal to the task,
let them once in a while turn loose the whole
school of Westminster among us, that at any
rate we may now and then have an airing.”

“Softly, my worthy friend,” replied I, “you
are not aware how much better you are off
than most books of your generation. By being
stored away in this ancient library, you are
like the treasured remains of those saints and
monarchs which lie enshrined in the adjoining
chapels, while the remains of their contemporary
mortals, left to the ordinary course of nature,
have long since returned to dust.”

“Sir,” said the little tome, ruffling his
leaves and looking big, “I was written for all
the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey.
I was intended to circulate from hand to hand,

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like other great contemporary works; but here
have I been clasped up for more than two centuries,
and might have silently fallen a prey to
these worms that are playing the very vengeance
with my intestines, if you had not by
chance given me an opportunity of uttering a
few last words before I go to pieces.”

“My good friend,” rejoined I, “had you
been left to the circulation of which you speak,
you would long ere this have been no more.
To judge from your physiognomy, you are now
well stricken in years: very few of your contemporaries
can be at present in existence; and
those few owe it to being immured like yourself
in old libraries; which, suffer me to add, instead
of likening to harams, you might more
properly and gratefully have compared to those
infirmaries attached to religious establishments,
for the benefit of the old and decrepid, and
where, by quiet fostering and no employment,
they often endure to an amazingly good for nothing
old age. You talk of your contemporaries
as if in circulation—where do we meet with

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their works? what do we hear of Robert Grosteste
of Lincoln? No one could have toiled
harder than he for immortality. He is said to
have written nearly two hundred volumes. He
built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate
his name: but, alas! the pyramid has long
since fallen, and only a few fragments are scattered
in various libraries, where they are
scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian.
What do we hear of Gyraldus Cambrensis, the
historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian,
and poet? He declined two bishopries that he
might shut himself up and write for posterity;
but posterity never inquires after his labours.
What of Henry of Huntingdon, who, beside a
learned history of England, wrote a treatise on
the contempt of the world, which the world
has revenged by forgetting him. What is quoted
of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of
his age in classical composition? Of his three
great heroic poems one is lost forever, excepting
a mere fragment; the others are known only
to a few of the curious in literature, and as to

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his love verses and epigrams, they have entirely
disappeared. What is in current use of John
Wallis, the franciscan, who acquired the name
of the tree of life? Of William of Malmsbury;—
of Simeon of Durham; of Benedict of
Petersborough; of John Hanvill of St. Albans;
of —”

“Prithee, friend,” cried the quarto in a testy
tone, “how old do you think me? You are talking
of authors that lived long before my time,
and wrote either in Latin or French, so that
they in a manner expatriated themselves, and
deserved to be forgotten;[1] but I, sir, was ushered
into the world from the press of the renowned
Wynkyn de Worde. I was written in
my own native tongue at a time when the language
had become fixed, and indeed I was considered
a model of pure and elegant English.

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(I should observe that these remarks were
couched in such intolerably antiquated terms,
that I had infinite difficulty to render them into
modern phraseology.)

“I cry you mercy,” said I, “for mistaking
your age; but it matters little; almost all the
writers of your time have likewise passed into
forgetfulness; and De Worde's publications
are mere literary rarities among book-collectors.
The purity and stability of language, too,
on which you found your claims to perpetuity,
have been the fallacious dependence of authors
of every age, even back to the times of the
worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his
history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.[2] Even,
now, many talk of Spenser's “well of pure

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English undefiled,” as if the language ever
sprang from a well or fountain head, and was
not rather a mere confluence of various tongues,
perpetually subject to changes and intermixtures.
It is this which has made English
literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation
built upon it so fleeting. Unless
thought can be committed to something more
permanent and unchangeable than such a medium,
even thought must share the fate of
every thing else, and fall into decay. This
should serve as a check upon the vanity and
exultation of the most popular writer. He
finds the language in which he has embarked
his fame gradually altering, and subject to the
dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion.
He looks back and beholds the early authors
of his country, once the favourites of their
day, supplanted by modern writers. A few
short ages have covered them with obscurity,
and their merits can only be relished by the
quaint taste of the bookworm. And such he
anticipates, will be the fate of his work.

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which, however it may be admired in its day,
and held up as a model of purity, will in the
course of years grow antiquated and obsolete,
until it becomes almost as unintelligible in its
native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of
those Runic inscriptions said to exist in the
deserts of Tartary. I declare,” added I with
some emotion, “when I contemplate a modern
library, filled with new works in all the bravery
of rich gilding and binding, I feel disposed to
sit down and weep, like the good Xerxes when
he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the
splendour of military array, and reflected that
in one hundred years not one of them would
be in existence!”

“Ah,” said the little quarto, with a heavy
sigh, “I see how it is; these modern scribblers
have superseded all the good old authors. I
suppose nothing is read now-a-days but Sir
Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Sackville's stately
plays, and Mirror for Magistrates, or the finespun
euphuisms of the “unparraleld John
Lyly.”

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“There you are again mistaken,” said I,
“the writers whom you suppose in vogue, because
they happened to be so when you were
last in circulation, have long since had their
day. Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia, the immortality
of which was so fondly predicted by his
admirers,[3] and which, in truth, is full of noble
thoughts, delicate images, and graceful turns of
language, is now scarcely ever mentioned.
Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even
Lyly, though his writings were once the delight
of a court, and apparently perpetuated by
a proverb, is now scarcely known even by name.
A whole crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled
at the time, have likewise gone down with
all their writings and their controversies. Wave
after wave of succeeding literature has rolled

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over them, until they are buried so deep, that
it is only now and then some industrious diver
after the fragments of antiquity brings up a specimen
for the gratification of the curious.”

“For my part,” I continued, “I consider this
mutability of language a wise precaution of Providence
for the benefit of the world at large,
and authors in particular. To reason from analogy,
we daily behold the varied and beautiful
tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing,
adorning the fields for a short time, and then
fading into dust, to make way for their successors.
Were not this the case, the fecundity of
nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing.
The earth would groan with rank and
excessive vegetation, and its surface become a
tangled wilderness. In like manner, the works
of genius and learning decline and make way
for subsequent productions. Language gradually
varies, and with it fade away the writings
of authors who have flourished their allotted
time; otherwise the creative powers of genius
would overwhelm the world with productions

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and the mind would be completely bewildered
in the endless mazes of literature. Formerly
there were some restraints on this excessive
multiplication. Works had to be transcribed
by hand, which was a slow and laborious
operation; they were written either on
parchment, which was expensive, so that one
work was often erased to make way for another;
or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely
perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofitable
craft, and pursued chiefly by monks
in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters.
The accumulation of manuscripts was slow and
costly, and confined almost entirely to monasteries.
To these circumstances it may in some
measure be owing that we have not been inundated
by the intellect of antiquity; that the
fountains of thought have not been broken up,
and modern genius drowned in the deluge. But
the inventions of paper and the press have put
an end to all these restraints. They have made
every one a writer, and enabled every mind to
pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the

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whole intellectual world. The consequences
are alarming. The stream of literature has
swoln into a torrent—grown into a river—expanded
into a sea. A few centuries since, five
or six hundred manuscripts constituted a great
library; but what would you say to libraries,
such as actually exist, containing three and four
hundred thousand volumes; legions of authors
at the same time busy, and a press going on with
fearfully increasing activity, to double and
quadruple the number. Unless some unforseen
mortality should break out among the progeny
of the muse, now that she has become so prolific,
I tremble for posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation
of language will not be sufficient. Criticism
may do much; it increases with the increase
of literature, and resembles one of those
salutary checks on population spoken of by economists.
All possible encouragement, therefore,
should be given to the growth of critics, good
or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let criticism
do what it may, writers will write, printers
will print, and the world will inevitably be

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overstocked with good books. It will soon be
the employment of a life time merely to learn
their names. Many a man of passable information
at the present day reads scarce any thing
but reviews, and before long a man of erudition
will be little better than a mere walking catalogue.”

“My very good sir,” said the little quarto,
yawning most drearily in my face, “excuse my
interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather
given to prose. I would ask the fate of an author
who was making some noise just as I left
the world. His reputation, however, was considered
quite temporary. The learned shook
their heads at him, for he was a poor half educated
varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing
of Greek, and had been obliged to run the
country for deer stealing. I think his name was
Shakspeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion.”

“On the contrary,” said I, “it is owing to
that very man that the literature of his period
has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary

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term of English literature. There arise authors
now and then, who seem proof against
the mutability of language, because they have
rooted themselves in the unchanging principles
of human nature. They are like gigantic trees
that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream;
which, by their vast and deep roots, penetrating
through the mere surface, and laying hold on
the very foundations of the earth, preserve the
soil around them from being swept away by the
everflowing current, and hold up many a neighbouring
plant, and, perhaps, worthless weed, to
perpetuity. Such is the case with Shakspeare,
whom we behold, defying the encroachments of
time, retaining in modern use the language and
literature of his day, and giving duration to many
an indifferent author, merely from having flourished
in his vicinity. But even he, I grieve to
say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and
his whole form is overrun by a profusion of
commentators, who, like clambering vines and
creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds
them.”

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Here the little quarto began to heave his sides
and chuckle, until at length he broke out into
a short plethoric fit of laughter that had well
nigh choked him, by reason of his excessive
corpulency. “Mighty well!” cried he, as
soon as he could recover breath, “mighty well!
and so you would persuade me that the literature
of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond
deer stealer! by a man without learning!
by a poet, forsooth—a poet!” And here he
wheezed forth another fit of laughter.

I confess I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness,
which I ascribed to his having flourished
in a less polished age. I determined, nevertheless,
not to give up my point.

“Yes,” resumed I positively, “a poet; for
of all writers he has the best chance for immortality.
Others may write from the head, but
he writes from the heart, and the heart will always
understand him. He is the faithful portrayer
of nature, whose features are always the
same, and always interesting. Prose writers
are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages

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crowded with common places, and their thoughts
expanded into tediousness. But with the true
poet every thing is terse, touching, or brilliant.
He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest
language. He illustrates them by every thing
that he sees most striking in nature and art.
He enriches them by pictures of human life,
such as it is passing before him. His writings,
therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I may
use the phrase, of the age in which he lives.
They are caskets which inclose within a small
compass the wealth of the language—its family
jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable
form to posterity. The setting may occasionally
be antiquated, and require now and then to
be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the
brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems continue
unaltered. Cast a look back over the long
reach of literary history. What vast valleys of
dulness, filled with monkish legends and academical
controversies. What bogs of theological
speculations; what dreary wastes of metaphysics.
Here and there only we behold the

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heaven-illumined bards, elevated like beacons
on their widely-separated heights, to transmit
the pure light of poetical intelligence from age
to age.”[4]

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums
upon the poets of the day, when the sudden
opening of the door caused me to turn my
head. It was the verger, who came to inform
me that it was time to close the library. I
sought to have a parting word with the quarto,
but the worthy little tome was silent; the
clasps were closed, and it looked perfectly unconscious
of all that had passed. I have been
to the library two or three times since, and

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endeavoured to draw it into farther conversation,
but in vain. And whether all this rambling
colloquy actually took place, or whether it was
another of those odd day dreams to which I am
subject, I have never, to this moment, been able
to discover.

eaf214v4.n1

[1] In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte
to endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes there
ben some that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the
French men have as good a fantasye as we have in heryng of Frenchemen's
Englishe.

Chaucer's Testament of Love.

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