onicle. We should find ourselves in the
company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as
those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from
the highest to the lowest,--from the royal cloth of state to the den of
the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where
the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders,--the
stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory and the
high-mass in its chapel,--the manor-house, with its hunting and
hawking,--the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and
the cloth of gold,--would give truth and life to the representation.
We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of
the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled
under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters would
not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern,
in innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite
for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth
century. In the Reformation we should see, not merely a schism which
changed the ecclesiastical constitution of England and the mutual
relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in every
family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the
father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the
mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have
the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his
savage and imperious old age. We should perceive the gradual progress
of selfish and tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or
ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open
and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed,
struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of
disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her
strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted,
and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself
the most contradictory qualities of both her parents,--the coquetry, the
caprice, the petty malice of Anne,--the haughty and resolute spirit of
Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might produce
a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the
novel of Kenilworth, without employing