The Ship of Fools | Page 6

throughout with the greatest emphasis, exhibiting an independence of
spirit which few ecclesiastics of the time would have dared to own.
Barclay seems to have been first an Englishman, then an ecclesiastic.
Everywhere throughout his great work the voice of the people is heard
to rise and ring through the long exposure of abuse and injustice, and
had the authorship been unknown it would most certainly have been
ascribed to a Langlande of the period. Everywhere he takes what we
would call the popular side, the side of the people as against those in
office. Everywhere he stands up boldly in behalf of the oppressed, and
spares not the oppressor, even if he be of his own class. He applies the

cudgel as vigorously to the priest's pate as to the Lolardes back. But he
disliked modern innovation as much as ancient abuse, in this also
faithfully reflecting the mind of the people, and he is as emphatic in his
censure of the one as in his condemnation of the other.
Barclay's "Ship of Fools," however, is not only important as a picture
of the English life and popular feeling of his time, it is, both in style
and vocabulary, a most valuable and remarkable monument of the
English language. Written midway between Chaucer and Spenser, it is
infinitely more easy to read than either. Page after page, even in the
antique spelling of Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader
of to-day without reference to a dictionary, and when reference is
required it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is
Saxon, not Latin. This is all the more remarkable, that it occurs in the
case of a priest translating mainly from the Latin and French, and can
only be explained with reference to his standpoint as a social reformer
of the broadest type, and to his evident intention that his book should
be an appeal to all classes, but especially to the mass of the people, for
amendment of their follies. In evidence of this it may be noticed that in
the didactic passages, and especially in the L'envois, which are
additions of his own, wherever, in fact, he appears in his own character
of "preacher," his language is most simple, and his vocabulary of the
most Saxon description.
In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes
to have purposely used the most "comon speche":--
"My speche is rude my termes comon and rural
And I for rude peple
moche more conuenient
Than for estates, lerned men, or eloquent."
He afterwards humorously supplements this in "the prologe," by:--
"But if I halt in meter or erre in eloquence
Or be to large in langage I
pray you blame not me
For my mater is so bad it wyll none other be."
So much the better for all who are interested in studying the
development of our language and literature. For thus we have a volume,

confessedly written in the commonest language of the common people,
from which the philologist may at once see the stage at which they had
arrived in the development of a simple English speech, and how far, in
this respect, the spoken language had advanced a-head of the written;
and from which also he can judge to what extent the popularity of a
book depends, when the language is in a state of transition, upon the
unusual simplicity of its style both in structure and vocabulary, and
how far it may, by reason of its popularity, be influential in modifying
and improving the language in both these respects. In the long barren
tract between Chaucer and Spenser, the Ship of Fools stands all but
alone as a popular poem, and the continuance of this popularity for a
century and more is no doubt to be attributed as much to the use of the
language of the "coming time" as to the popularity of the subject.
In more recent times however, Barclay has, probably in part, from
accidental circumstances, come to be relegated to a position among the
English classics, those authors whom every one speaks of but few read.
That modern editions of at least his principal performance have not
appeared, can only be accounted for by the great expense attendant
upon the reproduction of so uniquely illustrated a work, an interesting
proof of which, given in the evidence before the Select Committee of
the House of Commons on the Copyright act in 1818, is worth quoting.
Amongst new editions of standard but costly works, of which the tax
then imposed by the act upon publishers of giving eleven copies of all
their publications free to certain libraries prevented the publication, is
mentioned, Barclay's "Ship of Fools;" regarding which Harding, the
well known bookseller, is reported to have said, "We