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Updated: May 1, 2025
Towards the close of the mediæval period we find an immense number of national ballads, of chap-books, not to mention the Passion Plays or the polemical theological writings of the time leading up to the Reformation. Luther's works, more especially his translation of the Bible, powerfully helped to fix German as a literary language.
It is an entertainment to compare the chap-books of the time with the reasoned, finished work of art: not in any spirit of pedantry since accuracy in these matters is of small account, but with intent to show how doubly fortunate Fielding was in his genius and in his material.
One has to read the literature current in the earlier part of this century in order to get a correct idea of the terror with which Bonaparte filled his enemies, and this literature is so extensive that it seems an impossibility that anything like a complete collection should be got together; to say nothing of the histories, the biographies, the volumes of reminiscence and the books of criticism which the career of the Corsican inspired, there are Napoleon dream-books, Napoleon song-books, Napoleon chap-books, etc., etc., beyond the capability of enumeration.
Besides, my story draws quickly to an end now, for I had never intended to tell you more than the events connected with the Western rising. If the closing part hath been of the dreariest, and if all doth not wind up with the ringing of bells and the joining of hands, like the tales in the chap-books, you must blame history and not me.
So marvellously did his reputation grow, that it became a distinction to be outwitted by him, and the brains of innocent men were racked to invent tricks which might have been put upon them by the illustrious Captain. Thus livelier jests and madder exploits were fathered upon him than upon any of his kind, and he has remained for two centuries the prime favourite of the chap-books.
For four years he practised his art, chilled by no shadow of suspicion, and his immunity was due as well to his excellent bearing as to his sleight of hand. In one of the countless chap-books which dishonour his fame, he is unjustly accused of relying for his effects upon an elaborate apparatus, half knife, half scissors, wherewith to rip the pockets of his victims. The mere backbiting of envy!
The untidy, little chap-books, tied together with the tag of rusty ribbon, had lain undisturbed in the drawer of his library table ever since the to him very memorable evening, when, kneeling before the image of the stricken Mother and the dead Christ, he had found the man's heart under the priest's cassock and awakened to newness of life.
His blunders and disasters are chronicled in penny chap-books and in nursery rhymes, of infinite variety. Who has not heard how Simple Simon went a-fishing For to catch a whale, But all the water he had got Was in his mother's pail?
All the editions printed in Spain from 1637 to 1771, when the famous printer Ibarra took it up, were mere trade editions, badly and carelessly printed on vile paper and got up in the style of chap-books intended only for popular use, with, in most instances, uncouth illustrations and clap-trap additions by the publisher.
He is a hero of the popular chap-books of old times, where he and his associate, Friar Bungay, are represented as playing tricks on his servant Miles, and as summoning the spirits of Julius Caesar and Hercules for the edification of the kings of France and England, from whom, however, he would accept no reward.
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