Book Description

From the INTRODUCTION. IN my Memorial-Introduction to the Works of NICHOLAS BRETON I thus wrote: - "An anonymous book that internally seems out-and-out Bretonese is the following: - Choice, Chance and Change: or Conceits in their Colours. 1606. As I read and re-read this singularly brilliant and unforgettable manners-painting book, I felt here was the 'fine Roman hand' of Breton. But seeing that there is no external authority for giving it to him, In reluctantly decided not to include it among his Works, but rather perhaps find a place for it among my Occasional Issues." (Vol. i., pp. lxxiii-iv.) I still think that there are phrases and turns of expression and allusions and recurring words, that point to Breton as the author of Choice, Chance, and Change. But I am bound to add, that the general style is less formed and the specific wording less finished than Breton's; while the playing on - Will of Wit and other well-known phrases (pp. 29, 32, 50) may be accounted for by his popularity and influence on the Writer. It is assigned to Breton in the BODLEIAN CATALOGUE; but without an authority being given. Whoever was the author of Choice, Chance and Change, we have in it a noticeably bright and pleasant book, that - as I have put it in the general title-page-gives us "Glimpses of merry England in the Olden Time," that all to whom it comes must be glad to get. As a composition, Choice, Chance and Change is facile and fluent rather than well-wrought; but occasionally,- as in the 'Table Talk' dropped and renewed, renewed and dropped, throughout,-we have capital examples of how our Elizabethan and early Jacobean ancestors used to speak while they were under the spell of Euphuism. Still more welcome, it informs us in the liveliest and most rattling and realistic way, of the manner in which they behaved and amused themselves in their wooing and fooling, games and sports and pastimes, and 'bridal' and other feastings and country-house meetings. Though all set forth is most 'proper,' when one reads between the lines, it is not hard to discern abundant love of fun, a great deal of (universal) human nature, and, as compared with to-day, an outspoken mode of referring to such subjects as harlotry and cuckoldry by young men and maidens, extremely note-worthy. In the outset, 'Tidero' attempts to pass off his 'journeyings' as having taken him abroad; but as almost invariably results when a feigned method is adopted, the Author betrays ever and anon that he is really describing different parts of England, and towards the end it becomes quite clear that in the story of 'Sir Swadd' and his love-story, he is simply speaking of English scenes, people and customs. This fact makes Choice, Chance and Change the more valuable and interesting. Indeed, for myself, I cannot think of a contemporary book that so vividly actualizes to us the 'rural' England of the period. Evidently the Writer turned to account all odds and ends that lay to his hand, his main motif probably having been the working in of his epigrammatic Sonnets....