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ril.MM-:i,.\l\ 



105 



4 'Imp-hooks are little stitched tracts written 



for tin- people, jiinl M>ld liy chapmen, or travelling 

 i..'.i!.u-, whose representative Autolycus is BO 

 \i\idly liron^lit In- fore our eyes by Shakespeare in 

 \\'intrr'x '!' If. The literary wares of the chapman 

 \\ere mo-tly liallads or other broadsides, luit In- also 

 dealt in these stitehe<l lMM>klets. Popular litera- 

 tim- has naturally become scarce on account of the 



limit's to which it is subject, and few of the 

 olilt-r chap-lxmks exist at the present day. Samuel 

 l'ep\s collected some of considerable interest which 

 In- hound in small quarto volumes and lettered 

 Viihiuriit. Besides these he left four volumes of 

 chap l>ooks of a smaller si/e which he lettered 

 l'> any Merriments, Penny Witticisms, Penny Com- 

 ji/iiiif/if.f and Penny Godlinesses. The small quarto 



:>< in Us are the descendants of the black-letter 

 ts of NVynkyn <le \Vonle, Copland, and other 

 famous printers, and were probably bought from 

 booksellers as well as from chapmen. With the 

 iMli century came in a much inferior class of 

 literature, which was printed in a smaller size, and 

 forms the bulk of what is known to us now in 

 collections of chap-books. These tracts were 

 print eil largely in Alderniary Churchyard, and after- 

 words in liow Churchyard, as well as at Northamp- 

 ton, York, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Stokesley, Warring- 

 ton, Liverpool, Ban bury, Aylesbury, Durham, 

 Birmingham. Wolverhampton, Coventry, White- 

 haven, Carlisle, Worcester, Penrith, Cirencester, 

 \c. , in England; at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Fal kirk, 

 1'ai-ley, Dumfries, Kilmarnock, Stirling, &c., in 

 Scot land ; and at Dublin. As ballads are frequently 

 reduced versions of romances, so chap-books usually 

 contain vulgarised versions of popular stories. The 

 subjects of the chap-books are very various ; first 

 and foremost are the popular tales, such as 

 Valentine and Orson, Fortunatus, Reynard the Fox, 

 Jiti-k and the Giants, Patient Grissel, Tom Thumb, 

 and Tom Hickathrift ; then come the lives of 

 heroes, historical abridgments, travels, religious 

 treatises, and abstracts of popular books like 

 Robinson Crusoe and Don Quixote. Besides these 

 there are the more modern inventions of hack 

 writers. Don gal Graham (1724-1779), bellman to 

 the city of Glasgow, was a popular writer who is 

 supposed to have done much to give a special 

 character to Scottish chap-book literature. Mother- 

 well has styled him 'the vulgar Juvenal of his 

 age.' His works were reprinted at Glasgow in 

 2 vols. in 1883. 



The chap-books of the 17th century are valuable 

 as illustrations of manners ; but little is to be 

 learned from those of the 18th century, which are 

 altogether of an inferior character. An instance 

 <>i this may be taken from the story of Dick 

 Whittington. The earliest version of this tale 

 which has come down to us is a small quarto tract 

 entitled 'The Famous and Remarkable History of 

 Sir Richard Whittington, three times Lord Mayor 

 of London, who lived in the time of King Henry 

 the Fifth in the year 1419, with all the remarkable 

 passages, and things of note, which happened in his 

 time-, with his Life and Death.' It is without a 

 date, but was probably published about 1670. In 

 tlii- the historical character of the subject is fairly 

 kept up, although the dates are somewhat mixed, 

 and to this the widespread folk-tale of the cat is 

 added. In the later chap-lnwk versions the histori- 

 es 1 incidents are ruthlessly cut down, and the ficti- 

 tious ones amplified. The three chief points of the 

 story are ( 1 ) the poor parentage of the hero, ( 2 ) his 

 change of mind at Highgate Hill by reason of hear- 

 ing Bow Bells, and (3) his good fortune arising 

 from the sale of his cat. Now these are all equally 

 untrue as referring to the historical Whittington, 

 and the second is apparently an invention of the 

 18th century. In the 17th-century story we learn 



that Whittington net out before daybreak on All- 

 Hallows' Day, and before he got a* far an Bunhill 

 he heard Bow Bells ring out. Hollowar replaced 

 Bunhill in the later versions, and hence an.-- the 

 myth connected with Whittington Store on High- 

 gate Hill. 



Hannah More's Repository Tract*, and after- 

 wards the publications of the Useful Knowledge 

 Society, Chambers's Miscellany of Tracts, and the 

 growth of cheap magazines, greatly reduced the 

 popularity of chap-books ; but Catnach, a London 

 printer, kept up tne supply in the early twrtion of 

 the 19th century, and even now chap-books are 

 still produced in England and elsewhere. 



The influence of chap-books can never have been 

 very great in Britain from the inferiority of their 

 literary character. This has not been the case in 

 other countries, and Mr Wentworth Webster has 

 discovered the curious fact that the Pastorales or 

 Basque dramas owe their origin to the chap-books 

 hawked about the country (see article BASQUES). 

 A valuable and standard work on the chap-books of 

 France was published in 1854, entitled Histoirc des 

 Livres Popuiaires, ou de la Litterature du Colport- 

 age, by M. Ch. Nisard ; but little has been done in 

 England for this class of literature. Mr J. O. 

 HaYliwell-Phillipps printed in 1849 Notices of 

 Fugitive Tracts and Chap Books and Descriptive 

 Notices of Popular English Histories; Mr John 

 Ash ton published in 1882 a useful work on Clmii- 

 books of the Eighteenth Century; and five of the 

 most interesting of the old chap-books have been 

 reprinted (1885) by the Villon Society, with intro- 

 ductions by Mr Gomme and Mr H. B. Wheatley. 

 For German chap-books, the reader should consult 

 Karl Simrock, Die deutschen Volksbucher (55 parts, 

 Berlin and Frankfort, 1839-67), and Gotthard 

 Oswald Marbach, Altdeutsche Volksbucher (44 vols. 

 Leip. 1838-47). 



Chapel ( through Fr. from a late Latin capella, 

 which, according to Brachet, already in the 7th 

 century had the sense of a chapel, but earlier meant 

 the sanctuary in which was preserved the cappa or 

 cope of St Martin, and was next expanded to mean 

 any sanctuary containing relics). The term now 

 signifies a building erected for the purposes of 

 public worship, but not possessing the full privileges 

 and characteristics of a church. In this sense all 

 places of worship erected by dissenters are now 

 called chapels in England, and the term is also 

 applied to supplementary places of worship, even 

 though in connection with the established church 

 such as parochial chapels, chapels of ease, free 

 chapels, and the like. In former times it was 

 applied either to a domestic oratory, or to a place 

 or worship erected bv a private individual or a 

 body corporate. In tne latter sense we speak of 

 chapels in colleges. But its earliest significa- 

 tion was that of a separate erection, either within 

 or attached to a large church or cathedral, separ- 

 ately dedicated, and devoted to special service- 

 (see CHANTRY). Chapels had no burying-ground 

 attached to them, ana the sacrament of baptism 

 was not usually administered in them. The name 

 is also given to a printer's workshop, hence to u 

 union of the workmen in a printing-office said to 

 be so applied because Caxton set up his press in a 

 chapel at Westminster. 



Chapelaill, JEAN, a somewhat curious figure 

 in the gallery of French authors, was born in LV.I.'I, 

 and died in 1674. He was a learned, industrious 

 writer, who passed for a time as a poet, and was 

 accepted as the dominant authority in the world of 

 French letters between the literary dictatorships of 

 Malherbe and of Bpileau. He produced one of the 

 abortive epics which it was the fashion to write 

 during the regency of Mazarin. This work, the 



