CLERICAL CHURCH REFORMERS.

THERE is no topic which one hears insisted upon more frequently, or with greater earnestness by clerical church reformers, than the extreme folly, obstinacy, and perverseness of those who do not join in what they assert is the general feeling for alterations in the church. Professing very loudly (and feeling, no doubt, what they profess) strong attachment to the church, they foretel its certain ruin, unless concessions be made, and deference paid, to what they call public opinion; and they declare most emphatically, that this ruin will be due entirely to those who differ from themselves, and wish to maintain things nearly as they are. The writer of this paper converses with many of these gentlemen, has devoted much time to considering such arguments as he has had the good fortune to hear from them, and having entirely failed in getting any clear view of their opinions, wishes, and expectations, is induced to ask the following questions, (not in an invidious or angry temper, but) in the hope that some of them may give, in writing, that exposition of the clerical reformers' opinions which the writer has endeavoured in vain to get in conversation, and which it is very expedient should be made.* Let us take at present the question of church property.

The first declaration which is usually made is, that the public is entirely dissatisfied with the present state of church property, and that therefore it must be altered.

This is clear enough. What is not clear, however, on this head, is of some importance. Would the clerical church reformers, then, answer the following questions?

I. Do they believe that the public is well, or even moderately, informed (1) on the amount of church property; (2) as to the advantages of an establishment; (3) as to the advantage of considerable inequalities in the provision for the clergy?

II. Do they believe that any concessions, which they, in their consciences, think ought to be made, could satisfy an ignorant demand for alterations? The writer particularly begs for a definite answer to this question; and, if it be answered in the affirmative, for a specification of the changes proposed.

To exemplify the lax way in which some clerical reformers speak, let us look to a letter, dated, Napton Vicarage, Warwickshire, in the "Record" of Aug. 6th. The writer recommends the exaction of the full first-fruits and tenths from all property without cure of souls; and this, he tells us, would, in a few years, make every benefice adequate to the residence of a minister, and remunerate his services. Now, he tells us himself, that the property in question is worth 200,000l. a year-that is to say, the tenths will amount to 20,000 a year. Let the first-fruits be 5000l., then in forty years this fund would yield a million. If the purchases in land were very fortunate, this might return 30,000l. per annum. Now there are 4861 livings under 1501. per annum. In forty years, then, nearly 77. per annum could be added to each of these. Go down to a lower class, and augment only half the number. Then you will add 147. per annum to livings of 1007. per annum or thereabout. When these general statements are examined, their idleness is seen; but this talking of a few years, and great incomes, and enormous riches, &c., &c., is throwing fire

brands.

III. What are their own notions as to the amount of church property? that is to say, do they believe that, if divided after any fashion they might choose, it would yield even a decent subsistence for the clergy?

IV. If they believe that it would, their data, in the shape of authentic documents, are requested.

V. If they believe that it would not, what end do they propose to themselves in a new division?

As far as the writer has been able to ascertain the notions of the clerical church reformers, they appear to him to have a belief that there are very many very large livings, and that it would be right to reduce these and divide their revenues in some way. Would they then

VI. State how many livings in England exceed 20007., 15007., and 10007., respectively?

VII. On the supposition (maintainable, as is conceived, from documents) that the overwhelming mass of what are called good livings are from 3007. to 5007. per annum, and that without reducing them especially, the smaller ones cannot be augmented, do the clerical church reformers think it desirable, or likely to prove eventually advantageous to the church, that these should be reduced ?* Do they think, that is, that if all livings were made 2007., or even 2507., per annum, the clergy would be men of as good education, feelings, or habits as they now are that they would have as much influence on the higher, and more on the lower classes-that as many men of private property would enter the church, and thus eke out its revenues, and benefit their parishes in a temporal point of view?

know ought not to be conceded-to see it exist with its tasks remaining, and its power to accomplish them gone-to see it, in short,

Propter vitam, vivendi perdere caussas.

He would join with the clerical church reformers in the correction of any real evils; but when that is done, he, for one, would be ready to make his stand, in a perfect confidence that God will bless those who act according to their consciences; and he would resist all farther concessions to public opinion at any risk. But he is far from asserting the infallibility of his own opinions, and he earnestly wishes to know what are the real views and opinions of the clerical church reformers.

NOTICES OF THE OLDEN TIME.

[THE present article, though not connected with the principal objects of this Magazine, is so interesting, from its bearing on the early history of English, that we cannot but insert it, and shall occasionally transgress in the same way. The studious clergy have, of all other persons, the best means of throwing light on the early history of our language, which must depend very much on the study of ancient translations of Scripture and works of divinity; and it is well to give to the studies of young clergy this subsidiary aim. The Editor, however, would be obliged to any person sending extracts from early English MSS. or books, to adhere strictly to the original spelling, without which they are useless, as far as regards the history of the language.]

WILLIAM AND THE WEREWOLF.

Edited from an unique copy in King's College Library, Cambridge; with an Introduction and Glossary, by Frederick Madden, Esq., F.R.S., F.S.A., M.R.S.L., Assistant-Keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. 4to. London: W. Nicholl. 1832.

THIS curious poem, presented in its present form to the Roxburgh Club by the Earl of Cawdor, and with a sight of which we have been favoured, was translated from the French, about A. D. 1350, into such a mixture of Anglo-saxon, Norman, and English, as might have baffled almost any reader, were it not for the complete and laborious glossary which the Editor has subjoined to it.

The story is to this effect:-A king of Spain, by his first wife (a princess of Navarre), had a son, Alfonso. Losing his wife, he marries another, by whom he has a second son. Being both a step-mother and a witch, she turns Alfonso into a wolf, in which shape he is driven to the woods. The wolf being in Sicily, near the Court of Ebroin, king of that island, overhears a plot to murder William, that monarch's infant child, and, with the humane intention of defeating it, carries off the child, swims the Faro, and takes it to a wood near Rome, and rears it in a cave. A cowherd takes the boy from the wolf, and he and his wife nurse him for the space of seven years. Then the emperor of Rome takes him from the cowherd, and intrusts him to his daughter Meliors, who rears him up to man's estate and falls in love with him, and he with her. Alexandrina, her handmaiden, ministers to her passion with all the fidelity of romance, that is to say, gross

lenociny, and (in this instance) some small matter of witchcraft. Meanwhile, her father betroths her to the prince of Greece; to avoid which marriage, William and Meliors steal the skins of two white bears out of the Roman emperor's kitchen, and take flight upon all fours, and in that formidable disguise. The Greek emperor hearing that two white bears had been seen stealing out of the palace garden, suspects the truth, and raises a hue and cry after them. But the wolf is always at hand to guide their steps, divert their pursuers, and furnish them with victuals. Being hard pressed by their enemies, near Benevento, they skinned a hart and a hind, which the wolf had slain for them, and drest themselves up as stags instead of bears. In this new shape they cross over to Sicily, and find the king of Spain besieging William's mother, the widow of Ebroin, in Palermo. The queen, having learnt part of the truth from a dream and a priest, dresses herself also in a stag's skin, and, so transformed, passes through the besieging army and introduces them into the town. William disposes of the Spaniards as briefly as, on a former occasion, he had of the Saxons, and brings the king and his son prisoners into Palermo. The wolf recognises his captive father, who sends for the wicked queen of Spain, his wife, and compels her to restore to the young man his natural shape and lawful inheritance. Alfonso, no longer a wolf, marries the princess of Sicily, William's sister; Brandenys, his halfbrother, takes up with the faithful Alexandrina, and a sort of parish wedding takes place between William and his experienced bride, the Lady Meliors, upon whom the Roman empire soon devolves, by her father's death. Such (with various incidents not worth particularizing) is the queer tale, told with good taste and simplicity by the old poet. The versification is worthy of a remark or two. It is without final rhyme, and in the long measure composed of four anapastic feet, such as,

or,

"That all the clene cumpanie come to the place,"

"Full mekely said Meliors with melling of teres, etc." but not with regularity, as in Beattie's Hermit, but with a very frequent redundancy or defect of syllables. The absence of rhyme is supplied by an alliteration, at least triple, within the compass of each line, and every line that wants it is defective, either by the author's or the transcriber's neglect; but the several verses are not assimilated one to another by any recurrence of sound. In compounds, such as a-bide, a-way, man-kind, with-stand, de-fault, etc., the alliteration is usually to the second of the component parts, though instances of the contrary may be found. The letters k, g, and qu, are used as

equivalents in alliteration,

"But quickly cleped he the young knights alle,"

and so are s and the soft c in city. It is immaterial whether the three words follow each other,* or in what manner they are divided, or

As in this line,

"Thanne was that merksful Meliors muchel ygladed."

where placed. It may be doubted whether the want of three such corresponding words be in any case the fault of the author. Sometimes he travels so far in search of an initial rhyme, that he should seem to have thought it a thing most indispensable; for instance, in his description of Lady Meliors' garden,

"And each bush full of briddes that blitheliche song,

Both the thrush, and the thrustle, thirty-one (!) of both."

And in many instances where the sound does not recur thrice, the line is evidently of curtailed dimensions; while in others, the absent word is obvious to conjecture, as in p. 33,

"That I (wot) not in the world what is me to rede,"

and in p. 65,

"And he them told tightly which (way) two white bears,"

and in p. 55,

"And sothliche Madame (Meliors) so may it betide."

In p. 34, Thanne has been substituted for the regular standing rhyme to Alisaundrine, anon,

"Anon said Alisaundrine auntrose is thine evil."

Probably the instances in which the author of this Romance neglected the due recurrence of sounds were very rare, if there were any. We need hardly say, that, in citing these lines, we have not altogether retained the orthography of a language, compared to which the subsequent writings of the illustrious Chaucer, then in the flower of his adolescence, may be esteemed modern in their fashion.

The execution of this volume is splendid, and nearly a fac-simile of the manuscript from which it is taken. The printing of it, and especially the formation of the glossary, is a service rendered to the lovers of our ancient tongue, its history, and its changes. One verse appears to have found no clear solution even in Mr. F. Madden's inexhaustible Magazine of Archaisms,

"And they nighed so nigh to nymphe the sooth;"

the glossary says, "nymphe, to tell?"+ Some such meaning as that, or to perceive, discover, suspect, ascertain, &c., is required; perhaps the easiest conjecture is, that "to nym (i. e. apprehend or lay hold of) the sooth," was originally written here, and that the phe is only a reduplication of the following the by the copyist.

* Telle has been substituted for shewe in this line, p. 42,

"But shortly for to telle the shape of his tale,"

with as much detriment to the sense as to the rhythm. Another defective verse, p. 69, "Than either lapped other full lovely in arms,"

should probably be read,

"Than either lapped other lovely ligand in arms.”—See P.

Sl.

In allusion, no doubt, to the verb nempne, to declare by name, "Ye moten nempne him to what place also,

Or to what contree that you list to ride."- Chaucer, Squier, 10632.