The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I — Key Ideas to Explore

hur was aware of an arm clothed in white samite, that held a fair sword in the hand. "Lo," said Merlin unto the King, "yonder is the sword that I spake of."

With that they saw a damsel going upon the lake. "What damsel is that?" said the King. "That is the Lady of the Lake," said Merlin; "and within that lake is a reach, and therein is as fair a place as any is on earth, and richly beseen; and this damsel will come to you anon, and then speak fair to her that she will give you that sword." Therewith came the damsel to King Arthur, and saluted him, and he her again. "Damsel," said the King, "what sword is that which the arm holdeth yonder above the water? I would it were mine, for I have no sword." "Sir King," said the damsel of the lake, "that sword is mine, and if ye will give me a gift when I ask it you, ye shall have it." "By my faith," said King Arthur, "I will give you any gift that you will ask or desire." "Well," said the damsel, "go ye into yonder barge, and row yourself unto the sword, and take it and the scabbard with you; and I will ask my gift when I see my time."

So King Arthur and Merlin alighted, tied their horses to two trees, and so they went into the barge. And when they came to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up by the handles, and took it with him; and the arm and the hand went under the water, and so came to the land and rode forth.

Then King Arthur saw a rich pavilion. "What signifieth yonder pavilion?" "That is the knight's pavilion that ye fought with last--Sir Pellinore; but he is out; for he is not there: he hath had to do with a knight of yours, that hight Eglame, and they have foughten together a great while, but at the last Eglame fled, and else he had been dead; and Sir Pellinore hath chased him to Carlion, and we shall anon meet with him in the highway." "It is well said," quoth King Arthur; "now have I a sword, and now will I wage battle with him and be avenged on him." "Sir, ye shall not do so," said Merlin: "for the knight is weary of fighting and chasing; so that ye shall have no worship to have a do with him. Also he will not lightly be matched of one knight living: and therefore my counsel is, that yet let him pass; for he shall do you good service in short time, and his sons after his days. Also ye shall see that day in short space, that ye shall be right glad to give him your sister to wife." "When I see him," said King Arthur, "I will do as ye advise me."

Then King Arthur looked upon the sword and liked it passing well. "Whether liketh you better," said Merlin, "the sword or the scabbard?" "Me liketh better the sword," said King Arthur. "Ye are more unwise," said Merlin; "for the scabbard is worth ten of the sword: for while ye have the scabbard upon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded--therefore keep well the scabbard alway with you." So they rode on to Carlion.

[Footnote 20: From the "Morte d'Arthur."]

Born in 1478, died in 1535; met Erasmus in London in 1497; after 1503 devoted himself mainly to politics; entered Parliament in 1504; ambassador to Flanders in 1515; published "Utopia" in 1516; privy counsellor to Henry VIII in 1518; present with the King at the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520; speaker of the House of Commons in 1523; defended the papacy against Luther; succeeded Wolsey as chancellor in 1529; refused in 1534 to take the oath of adherence to the act vesting the succession in the issue of Anne Boleyn and committed to the Tower, indicted for high treason and executed July 6th, 1535.

There are fifty-four cities in the island, all large and well built, the manners, customs, and laws of which are the same, and they are all contrived as near in the same manner as the ground on which they stand will allow. The nearest lie at least twenty-four miles' distance from one another, and the most remote are not so far distant but that a man can go on foot in one day from it to that which lies next it. Every city sends three of their wisest senators once a year to Amaurot, to consult about their common concerns; for that is the chief town of the island, being situated near the center of it, so that it is the most convenient place for their assemblies. The jurisdiction of every city extends at least twenty miles; and where the towns lie wider, they have much more ground. No town desires to enlarge its bounds, for the people consider themselves rather as tenants than landlords.

They have built, over all the country, farmhouses for husbandmen; which are well contrived, and furnished with all things necessary for country labor. Inhabitants are sent, by turns, from the cities to dwell in them; no country family has fewer than forty men and women in it, besides two slaves. There is a master and a mistress set over every family, and over thirty families there is a magistrate. Every year twenty of this family come back to the town after they have stayed two years in the country, and in their room there are other twenty sent from the town, that they may learn country work from those that have been already one year in the country, as they must teach those that come to them the next from the town. By this means such as dwell in those country farms are never ignorant of agriculture, and so commit no errors which might otherwise be fatal and bring them under a scarcity of corn. But tho there is every year such a shifting of the husbandmen, to prevent any man being forced against his will to follow that hard course of life too long, yet many among them take such pleasure in it that they desire leave to continue in it many years.

These husbandmen till the ground, breed cattle, hew wood and convey it to the towns either by land or water, as is most convenient. They breed an infinite multitude of chickens in a very curious manner: for the hens do not sit and hatch them, but a vast number of eggs are laid in a gentle and equal heat in order to be hatched; and they are no sooner out of the shell, and able to stir about, but they seem to consider those that feed them as their mothers, and follow them as other chickens do the hen that hatched them. They breed very few horses, but those they have are full of mettle, and are kept only for exercising their youth in the art of sitting and riding them; for they do not put them to any work, either of plowing or carriage, in which they employ oxen. For tho their horses are stronger, yet they find oxen can hold out longer; and as they are not subject to so many diseases, so they are kept upon a less charge and with less trouble. And even when they are so worn out that they are no more fit for labor, they are good meat at last. They sow no corn but that which is to be their bread: for they drink either wine, cider, or perry, and often water, sometimes boiled with honey or licorice, with which they abound; and tho they know exactly how much corn will serve every town and all that tract of country which belongs to it, yet they sow much more, and breed more cattle, than are necessary for their consumption, and they give that overplus of which they make no use to their neighbors.

When they want anything in the country which it does not produce, they fetch that from the town, without carrying anything in exchange for it. And the magistrates of the town take care to see it given them; for they meet generally in the town once a month, upon a festival day. When the time of harvest comes, the magistrates in the country send to those in the towns, and let them know how many hands they will need for reaping the harvest; and the number they call for being sent to them, they commonly dispatch it all in one day.

He that knows one of their towns knows them all--they are so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference. I shall therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot; for as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to this, because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was none of them better known to me, I having lived five years all together in it.

It lies upon the side of a hill, or rather a rising ground. Its figure is almost square: for from the one side of it, which shoots up almost to the top of the hill, it runs down, in a descent for two miles, to the river Anider; but it is a little broader the other way that runs along by the bank of that river. The Anider rises about eighty miles above Amaurot, in a small spring at first. But other brooks falling into it, of which two are more considerable than the rest, as it runs by Amaurot it is grown half a mile broad; but it still grows larger and larger, till after sixty miles' course below it, it is lost in the ocean. Between the town and the sea, and for some miles above the town, it ebbs and flows every six hours with a strong current. The tide comes up about thirty miles so full that there is nothing but salt water in the river, the fresh water being driven back with its force; and above that, for some miles, the water is brackish; but a little higher, as it runs by the town, it is quite fresh; and when the tide ebbs, it continues fresh all along to the sea. There is a bridge cast over the river, not of timber, but of fair stone, consisting of many stately arches; it lies at that part of the town which is farthest from the sea, so that the ships, without any hindrance, lie all along the side of the town.

There is likewise another river that runs by it, which, tho it is not great, yet it runs pleasantly, for it rises out of the same hill on which the town stands, and so runs down through it and falls into the Anider. The inhabitants have fortified the fountain-head of this river, which springs a little without the towns; that so, if they should happen to be besieged, the enemy might not be able to stop or divert the course of the water, nor poison it; from thence it is carried in earthen pipes to the lower streets. And for those places of the town to which the water of that small river can not be conveyed, they have great cisterns for receiving the rain-water, which supplies the want of the other.

The town is compassed with a high and thick wall, in which there are many towers and forts; there is also a broad and deep dry ditch, set thick with thorns, cast round three sides of the town, and the river is instead of a ditch on the fourth side. The streets are very convenient for all carriage, and are well sheltered from the winds. Their buildings are good, and are so uniform that a whole side of a street looks like one house. The streets are twenty feet broad. There lie gardens behind all their houses; these are large, but inclosed with buildings, that on all hands face the streets, so that every house has both a door to the street and a back door to the garden. Their doors have all two leaves, which, as they are easily opened, so they shut of their own accord; and there being no property among them, every man may freely enter into any house whatsoever. At every ten years' end they shift their houses by lots. They cultivate their gardens with great care, so that they have both vines, fruits, herbs, and flowers in them; and all is so well ordered and so finely kept that I never saw gardens anywhere that were both so fruitful and so beautiful as theirs. And this humor of ordering their gardens so well is not only kept up by the pleasure they find in it, but also by an emulation between the inhabitants of the several streets, who vie with each other. And there is, indeed, nothing belonging to the whole town that is both more useful and more pleasant. So that he who founded the town seems to have taken care of nothing more than of their gardens; for they say the whole scheme of the town was designed at first by Utopus, but he left all that belonged to the ornament and improvement of it to be added by those that should come after him, that being too much for one man to bring to perfection.

Their records, that contain the history of their town and state, are preserved with an exact care, and run backward seventeen hundred and sixty years. From these it appears that their houses were at first low and mean, like cottages, made of any sort of timber, and were built with mud walls and thatched with straw. But now their houses are three stories high; the fronts of them are faced either with stone, plastering, or brick, and between the facings of their walls they throw in their rubbish. Their roofs are flat; and on them they lay a sort of plaster, which costs very little, and yet is so tempered that it is not apt to take fire, and yet resists the weather more than lead. They have great quantities of glass among them, with which they glaze their windows; they use also in their windows a thin linen cloth, that is so oiled or gummed that it both keeps out the wind and gives free admission to the light.

[Footnote 21: The "Utopia" was written originally in Latin. It derived its name from an imaginary island, the seat of an ideal state. Ralph Robinson made a translation into English in 1551. Another translation was made by Bishop Burnet in 1633.]

Born in 1505, died in 1572; early influenced by George Wishart, a Lutheran refugee who had found an asylum in Scotland; a royal chaplain in 1550; assisted in the revision of the Prayer-book; fled to the Continent after the accession of Mary Tudor and visited Calvin; preached for a time at Frankfort and afterward traveled and preached in Scotland; occupied himself with the organization of the Presbyterian Church, having frequent dramatic encounters with Mary, Queen of Scots, whose sympathies were Catholic.

AN INTERVIEW WITH MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS[22]

The queen, in a vehement fume, began to cry out that never prince was handled as she was. "I have," said she, "borne with you in all your rigorous manner of speaking, both against myself and against my uncles; yea, I have sought your favors by all possible means. I offered unto you presence and audience, whensoever it pleased you to admonish me, and yet I cannot be quit of you. I avow to God I shall be anes [once] revenged." And with these words scarcely could Marnock, her secret chamber-boy, get napkins to hold her eyes dry for the tears; and the owling, besides womanly weeping, stayed her speech.

The said John did patiently abide all the first fume, and at opportunity answered: "True it is, Madam, your Grace and I have been at diverse controversies, into the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended at me. But when it shall please God to deliver you from that bondage of darkness and error, in the which ye have been nourished, for the lack of true doctrine, your majesty will find the liberty of my tongue nothing offensive. Without the preaching-place, Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me, and there, Madam, I am not master of myself, but man [must] obey Him who commands me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth."

"But what have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage?"

"If it please your majesty," said he, "patiently to hear me, I shall shew the truth in plain words. I grant your Grace offered me more than ever I required; but my answer was then, as it is now, that God hath not sent me to await upon the courts of princesses, nor upon the chambers of ladies; but I am sent to preach the evangel of Jesus Christ to such as please to hear it; and it hath two parts--repentance and faith. And now, Madam, in preaching repentance, of necessity it is, that the sins of men be so noted, that they may know wherein they offend; but so it is, that the most part of your nobility are so addicted to your affections, that neither God, His word, nor yet their commonwealth, are rightly regarded. And therefore, it becomes me so to speak that they may know their duty."

"What have ye to do," said she, "with my marriage? Or what are ye within this commonwealth?"

"A subject born within the same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me--how abject that ever I be in your eyes--a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the nobility; for both my vocation and conscience craves plainness of me. And therefore, Madam, to yourself I say that which I speak in public place: whensoever that the nobility of this realm shall consent that ye be subject to an unfaithful husband, they do as much as in them lieth to renounce Christ, to banish His truth from them, to betray the freedom of this realm, and perchance shall in the end do small comfort to yourself."

At these words, owling was heard, and tears might have been seen in greater abundance than the matter required. John Erskine of Dun--a man of meek and gentle spirit--stood beside, and entreated what he could to mitigate her anger, and gave unto her many pleasing words of her beauty, of her excellence, and how that all the princes of Europe would be glad to seek her favors. But all that was to cast oil in the flaming fire. The said John stood still, without any alteration of countenance, for a long season, while that the queen gave place to her inordinate passion, and in the end he said: "Madam, in God's presence I speak: I never delighted in the weeping of any of God's creatures; yea, I can scarcely well abide the tears of my own boys, whom my own hand corrects, much less can I rejoice in your majesty's weeping. But, seeing that I have offered unto you no just occasion to be offended, but have spoken the truth, as my vocation craves, I may sustain, albeit unwillingly, your majesty's tears, rather than hurt my conscience, or betray my commonwealth."