John Wesley Hales

“ It would be a not uninteresting task—though a somewhat laborious one, as the notices of this disease are, for the most part, of a scattered and fragmentary description—to trace the gradual decline of leprosy in Europe. The great cause of its disappearance is undoubtedly the vast progress that has been made in sanitary matters. Our Europe is not the Europe of three centuries ago. The uncultivated and marshy era is past, with its humid and miasmatous atmosphere, its squalid and unwholesome dwellings. Those cachectic days are gone by for ever, and the leprosy is gone by with them. ”

“ Our path conducts us outside of the city, to hamlets and to hospitals all alone by the roadside, or on the bank of the river. This is the quiet life, par excellence. As quiet as the monastery before the hour of Prime. This is the life of the shunned—of men whom society casts from her, lest she be tainted by contact with them—of men that are excluded from the enjoyments, and the ambitions, and the excitements that make up the sum of life, as we value it. This is death in life—civil death and legal death, with mere animal life surviving. ”

“ They were disabled from suing in any action, real or personal. “It is meet,” says an old jurist, “that the right of legal action should be denied in the case of leprosy: for instance, if the plaintiff is a leper, and so unsightly as to deserve exclusion from all communion with the world: for such a disease excludes the suitor from suing.”
There can be no doubt, that, in spite of the many hospitals established for him, the leper was regarded with eyes of aversion. He was an abject and odious spectacle, and for the most part the charity of that day could not abide him in its sight. ”

“ In the ‘House of Fame’ Chaucer represents himself as borne off into the air to Fame’s house by an eagle, just as Dante represents himself borne up by an eagle to the gates of purgatory (Purg. ix.) Of course, the classical story of Ganymede was familiar to Chaucer as well as to Dante, but a comparison of the two passages will certainly show Chaucer’s familiarity with the lines in which Dante describes his translation. (For further illustrations of Chaucer’s knowledge of the ‘Divine Comedy’ see Ten Brink’s ‘ Studies.’) With Petrarch’s poetry Chaucer does not show a like sympathetic intimacy. ”

“ The leper was St. Lazarus himself. During the night he made himself known, and promised the Cid a happy recompense for his charity.
We might quote many more cases in which men, in entertaining lepers, entertained angels unawares; and many more still, in which the generous deed was followed by no such dénouement, and the humble thanks of the recipient were the only acknowledgment of it. Thus, even the curse of leprosy oft-times produced a good and happy result. Some men, at least, it inspired with a generous pity, a holy charity, a divine sympathy ”

“ At the beginning of the third book he seems specially conscious of its inadequacy, as when he speaks of the ‘ryme’ as ‘lyght and lewed.’ He is longing for a better ‘art poetical’—a finer ‘craft.' The result is seen in two new metrical developments-in the stanza of seven ‘heroic’ lines, commonl called ‘rime royal,’ because a king, a humble imitator of Chaucer, used it; and secondly in the heroic couplet which has ever since been one of our most polpular measures. ”

“ He sees vividly the objects and the sights he describes, and makes his readers see them vividly. He is as exact and realistic as Dante, however inferior in the greatness of his conceptions or in nobleness of poetic form. In this last respect Langland is connected with the past rather than with what was the metrical fashion of his own day ”

“ THE LEPER.
In every age life has two leading phases. It has its busy phase, and it is with this phase that we are most intimately acquainted. Indeed this is the only form of life which we, for the most part, care to read about, or to think of. It comprehends all the great men of history, all those active natures that in some way or other acquire a wide and sensible influence in their day and generation. ”

“ Chaucer was not only singularly original but singularly impressible and receptive. The literary influences of the age were reflected in its rising genius. The influence of the French poetry is visible in Chaucer's first period, and that of Dante and other great Italians—also Florentines—in his second. In the last period the qualities that make him one of the great masters of our literature exhibit. themselves no longer in promise but in fulfilment. ”

“ It is strange indeed that the widower should be carefully described as of twenty-four years of age, whereas John of Gaunt was twenty-nine at the time. Artistically considered, the work, though not without beauty, is juvenile and crude. It is conventional in form, awkward in arrangement, inadequate in expression. There is scarcely anything specially Chaucerian in it. And indeed the great interest of the poem is that it brings Chaucer before us just at this early stage. ”

“ But, before we proceed to a more particular consideration of the life and the status of the leper in the Middle Ages, it may be as well to say something of the history of his disease. Leprosy is supposed,—whether on sufficient grounds or not, we do not take upon ourselves to pronounce,—to have had its origin in Egypt. ”

“ PERCY, THOMAS (1729–1811) , editor of the ‘Reliques of Ancient English Poetry’ and bishop of Dromore, was born in Cartway Street, Bridgnorth, Shropshire, on 13 April 1729. His father was a grocer and the son of a grocer, as appears from the ‘Bridgnorth Common Council Books;’ but, in later life at least, the bishop was anxious to deduce his descent from the Percys of Northumberland, with the living representative of whom he was brought into official and social connection. ”

“ But we must pass on to later times. The Levitical law will furnish those who wish for them with particulars about the Jewish leper. Let us look at the history of leprosy subsequently to the Christian era.
It is very commonly believed that this malady was unknown in Europe before the time of the Crusades; but this opinion and the facts of the case are far from agreeing. Some centuries ere Peter the Hermit roused the chivalrous piety of the West against the encroaching infidel of the East, there are records of the existence of leprosy in the southern parts of our continent. ”

“ The poet's healthy spirit soon rebelled against a long succession of tragedies. He was endowed in a rare degree with the gift of humour. It became clear that this siibject would not serve his purpose. Part of the 'Legende of Good Women' is of great excellence and value. The prologue is to be classed with Chaucer's best writings. And in the legends there are passages of admirable vigour and beauty, such as could come only from the hand of a master. The poem is a noble fragment, but it would not fully have expressed the mature genius of its author. ”

“ We cannot but admire the unflinching patience with which they bore their crosses, the unconquerable will with which they worked out the life imposed, as they believed, upon them, the unrepining resignation with which they accepted their life with all its thorns and misery. ”

“ Percy had serious misgivings as to whether he was employing his energies profitably, but expressed the hope that ‘the names of so many men of learning and character’ among his patrons and subscribers would ‘serve as an amulet to guard him from every unfavourable censure for having bestowed any attention on a parcel of Old Ballads.’ He occasionally tampered with his texts and inserted at the end of each volume, in conformity with current sentiment, a ‘few modern attempts in the same kind of writing to atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems.’ Dr. ”

“ Arms were not granted to merchants till the reign of Henry VI. But long before that time wealthy merchants of the middle ages bore their trade-marks upon their shields’ (Fuller is wrong, however, for, strangely enough, it appears that the coat of Chaucer's father was quite different: it was ermine on a chief three birds’ heads issuant—see Mr. Walford D. Selby's communication to the Academy for 13 Oct. 1877.) ”

“ Well to do in a pecuniary way — holding two pensions, one from the crown and one from John of Gaunt, besides his emoluments from the customs' comptrollerships, with probably other additions to his income—he was in 1386 elected a knight of the shire for Kent. But at the end of that year he was deprived of both his offices, Adam Yardley superceding him as comptroller of the customs and subsidies, and a few days after Henry Gisors superseding him as comptroller of the petty customs in the port of London. ”

“ By the Council of Lateran, in 1179, it is ordained, that “whereas numbers of people were gathered together in community, they shall be permitted to enjoy to themselves a church, a churchyard, and a priest of their own; but they must take care that this be no way injurious or prejudicial to the rights of parish churches; yet shall not the leprous or lazarhouses be compelled to pay tithes for the increase of their own proper cattle.” ”

“ By helping such, great souls have put on Christ.
Mapes—the same Mapes who, in his memorable drinking-song, declares that his heart is set on “dying in a tavern”—gives us a long account of how Count Theobald devoted his life and zeal to the service of the miserable and the destitute, and of the leprous especially, “because,” says the author of the De Nugis Curialium, “as these were held most eminently despicable and most abjectly depraved, he hoped, by succouring them, to render himself especially well-pleasing in the sight of God.” ”

“ An interest in China and in the East generally was ‘in the air.’ But more noticeable was the growing interest in the older poetry of Europe. Deeply impressed by Macpherson's studies in Gaelic and Erse poetry, Percy in 1763 published ‘Five Pieces of Runic Poetry, translated from the Islandic Language.’ In this book he gratefully acknowledges the assistance of his neighbour Lye. ”

“ And also, it seems to me men should not force clerks to common men's work; for by the Levitical law, which Our Lord confirmed, clerks that are crowned [i.e. tonsured] , by a natural understanding [i.e. as nature would dictate] , should neither swink nor sweat, nor swear at inquests, nor fight in the vanward, nor harass their foe; for they are heirs of heaven, are all that are tonsured, and in quire and churches are Christ's own ministers' (C text, vi. init.) ”

“ Hutchinson, the historian of the county of Durham, informs us that at one period half the existing hospitals of the county were for the benefit of the lepers.
The lepers had, therefore, no ground for complaining of eleemosynary neglect. On this point Michaud aptly observes that “the spirit of devotion richly endowed lepers without doing anything for their cure. Isolation appears to have been the only curative or preservative means known for their malady.” ”

“ His work marks the revival of the English mind and spirit. Stories told up to Layamon's time only in Latin and French now appear in the vernacular speech and the vernacular form. And among them are some of the most famous stories of English literature-stories of Locrine, of King Lear, of King Arthur. Noticeably also it marks the perfect fusion of the Celtic and the Teutonic elements of our race. Welshmen like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Walter Map might well be expected to make much of the of heroes of Britain and the British, of the island and in inhabitants before the Angles came over the seas ”

“ There are a hundred in the ‘Decamerone' but they are comparatively slight and brief; many of Chaucer's are long and elaborate. Several of his earlier writings were adapted (not always thoroughly) to form a part of it, viz. ‘Palamon and Arcite,' the ‘Tale of Griselda,’ the ‘Tale of Constance,' the ‘Tale of Saint Cecilia.' Perhaps the earliest allusion to the ‘Canterbury Tales’ is made by Gower in the prologue to the second (the 1393) edition of the ‘Confessio Amantis’—
But for my wittes ben so smale
To tellen every man his tale, &c. ”

“ Let us hope that the great service they conferred upon starving Samaria by discovering the enemy’s flight was not unrewarded—that there was granted them some slight mitigation of the rigour with which men in their unhappy condition were treated. ”

“ The special mark of this period is the influence of the Italian literature. Chaucer’s introduction to the Italian masterpieces gave him a new conception of literary art, an the effect is quickly perceptible. Ie presently abandons the octosyllabic couplet—the metre of the ‘Roman de la Rose’—for a metre of more weight and dignitv. He uses it in only one more work, in ‘The House of Fame,’ and in that poem he shows dissatisfaction with it. ”

“ In October another grant of wine was made him, this time not a ‘pitcher,’ but a time, to be received in the port of London by the king's chief butler or his deputy. The king's butler at that time was Thomas Chaucer.
He was not more satisfactorily placed till the accession of Henry IV the son of his old patron the Duke of Lancaster (3 Oct. 1399) . Four days after Henry came to the throne he granted Chaucer forty marks (23l. 13s. 4d) . yearly, in addition to the annuity Richard II had given him, so nearly doubling his previous income. ”

“ A third group of manuscripts carries us on another fifteen years to 1392 and thereabouts. In 1392, as Professor Skeat points out, the city of London refused the King a loan of 1,000l., and a Lombard who lent it him was beaten by the Londoners nearly to death. Now, in a line, not occurring in the 'A' and the 'B' groups, Conscience, addressing the king, declares that unseemly tolerance [vusittynge suffrance] (of bad men) has almost brought it about, 'hote Maria the help' [unless the Virgin succours him] that no land loves him, and least of all his own (C text, iv. 210) ”

“ When asked by Reason what work he can do, whether he could lend a hand in farming operations, or knew any other kind of craft that the community needs, he replies that the only life that attracted him was the priestly. ”