Hakewill and the Arthurian LegendAuthor(s): George WilliamsonSource: Modern Language Notes, Vol. 50, No. 7 (Nov., 1935), pp. 462-463Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2911934 .

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462 MODERN LANGUAGE NOTES, NOVEMBER, 1935

HAKEWILL AND THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND

An oversight of some importance in Professor R. F. Brinkley's Arthurian Legend in the Seventeenth Century (Baltimore, 1932) is the omission of Dr. George Hakewill, than whom not even the esteemed Selden was more overwhelming in his doubt of the Trojan origin. In the Apologie or Declaration of the Power and Provi- dence of God in the Gouernment of the World (1627), which is " an examination and censure of the common errour touching Natures perpetually and universall decay," Hakewill considers " diverse other opinions justly suspected if not rejected, though commonly received," among which he displays this one:

That Brute a Trojan by Nation, and great grandchild to Aeneas, arrived in this Iland, gave it the name of Brittaine from himselfe, heere raigned, and left the government thereof divided among his three sonnes, England to Loegrius, Scotland to Albanak, and Wales to Camber: Yet our great Antiquary* beating (as he professeth) his braines, & bending the force of his wits to maintain that opinion, hee found no warrantable ground for it. Nay by forcible arguments (produced as in the person of others dis- puting against himself) he strongly proves it (in my judgement) altogether unsound & unwarrantable. Boccace, Adrianus lunius, Polydorus, Buchanan, Vignier, Genebrard, Molinaeus, Bodin, and other Writers of great account, are all of opinion, there was no such man as this supposed Brute: And among our own ancient Chroniclers, Iohn of Wethamsted, Abbot of S. Albon,t holdeth the whole narration of Brute to have been rather Poeticall, then Historicall, which me thinkes is agreeable to reason, since Caesar, Tacitus, Gildas, Ninius, Bede, William of Malmesbery, and as many others as have written any thing touching our Countrey, before the yeare 1160, made no mention at all of him, nor seeme ever so much as to have heard of him. The first that ever broached it, was Geffrey of Monmouth, about foure hundred yeares agoe, during the raigne of Henry the second, who publishing the Brittish story in Latine, pretended to have taken out of ancient monuments written in the Brittish tongue: but this Booke as soone as it peeped forth into the light, was sharply censured both by Giraldus Cambrensis, and William of Newbery, who lived at the same time; the former terming it no better, then Fabulosam historian, a fabulous history; and the latter, ridicule figmenta, ridiculous fictions, and it now stands branded with a black coale among the bookes prohibited by the Church of Rome.1

* Camden: Britan: de primis Incolis. t In granario, Anno 1440.

3 The Sd Edition much Enlarged (London, 1635), p. 9. Previously printed in 1627 and 1630; I have not been able to consult these editions.

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AN ATTRIBUTION TO SUCKLING 463

Although explicitly concerned with the Trojan origin, this also condemns the Arthurian matter at its source, and makes altogether a rather devastating resume. Professor Brinkley's book provides many similar arguments, but perhaps none more strongly adverse, and none which leaves the British story exposed in a catalogue of vulgar errors.

Hakewill's Apologie supplied the thesis for disputation at the Cambridge Commencement of 1628, when Milton urged Hakewill's contention (borrowing his arguments) in a Latin poem, " Naturam non pati senium." But this is not the place to consider whether Milton eventually turned his energies from a poetic fiction so that he might combat the idea of " universal decay " by his own justi- fication of the Providence of God. It is sufficient to remark that a mind which was so Jacobean as to draw up its own " Christian Doctrine " could not express itself in romance.

GEORGE WILLIAMSON University of Oregon

AN ATTRIBUTION TO SUCKLING

In A Bo-ok of Seventeenth-Century Prose (New York, 1929), the editors, R. P. T. Coffin and A. M. Witherspoon, ascribe to Suckling "A Sermon on Malt," to which they append this foot- note: "This letter is on the back of fol. 102 of Ashm. MIS. 826, Bodleian Library. It is here printed for the first time." If they mean that this version is here printed for the first time, they are probably right; but if they mean that this sermon on malt has not been printed before, they are mistaken. For John Ashton in- cluded it in his Humour, Wit, & Satire of the Seventeenth Cen- tury (New York, 1884, p. 411), where it is reprinted from Coffee House Jests Refined and Enlarged (London, 1686). This version, which is called A Preachment on Malt, offers a better text and makes good some of the points which are fumbled in the Coffin and Witherspoon book. In satiric effect the later reprint is also weak- ened by its abbreviation of the 'division' in the Jacobean sermon, which is being parodied.

As a sample of the superiority of the Ashton text, let me instance the opening lines. Where the Coffin and Witherspoon text reads

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