The Chronicle of FABYAN was not long given to the world when it encountered the doom of a system at its termination, just before the beginnings of a coming one; that fatal period of a change in human affairs and human opinions, usually described as a state of transition. But in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded by no transitional approach; for within the small circuit of thirty years it seemed as if the events of whole centuries had been more miraculously compressed, than any in those "lives of the saints" whose legendary lore, provided the saints were English, Master FABYAN had loved to perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned all the sense of our chronicler into nonsense, all his honest faith into lying absurdities, all his exhortations to maintain "religious houses" into treasonable matters. Successive editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and 55, surpassed each other in watchfulness, to rid themselves of the old song. Never was author so mutilated in parts, nor so wholly changed from himself; and when, as it sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration availed the reforming critics, the author's sides bore their marginal flagellations. The corrections or alterations were, however, dexterously performed, for the texture of the work betrayed no trace of the rents. The omission of a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true they swept away all his delightful legends, without sparing his woful metres of "the seven joys of the Blessed Virgin," and his appreciation of some favourite relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as they did "the holy virgin Edith," of whom Fabyan has recorded that "many _virtues_ be rehearsed," which they delicately reduced to _verses_. His Holiness the Pope is simply "the Bishop of Rome;" and on one memorable occasion--the Papal interdiction of John--this "Bishop" is designated in the margin by the reformer as "that monstrous and wicked Beast." The narrative of Becket cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy and ambitious Archbishop murdered by knightly assassins, Fabyan said, "They _martyred_ the blessed Archbishop;" our corrector of the press simply reads, "They slew the traitorous Bishop." The _omissions_ and the commissions in the Chronicle of FABYAN are often amusing and always instructive; but these could not have been detected but by a severe collation, which has been happily performed. When the antiquary Brand discovered that FABYAN had been "_modernized_" in later editions, his observation would seem to have extended no further than to the style: but the style of FABYAN is simple and clear even to modern readers: modernized truly it was, not however for phrases, but for notions--not for statements, but for omissions--not for words, but for things. FOOTNOTE: