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Title: A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1
       From the Beginning to 1800

Author: George Saintsbury

Release Date: October 8, 2008 [EBook #26838]

Language: English

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A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

LONDON  BOMBAY  CALCUTTA  MADRAS  MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK  BOSTON  CHICAGO
DALLAS  SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.
TORONTO




A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH NOVEL

(TO THE CLOSE OF THE 19TH CENTURY)

BY GEORGE SAINTSBURY

M.A. AND HON. D.LITT. OXON.; HON. LL.D. ABERD.; HON. D.LITT. DURH.;
FELLOW OF THE BRITISH ACADEMY; HON. FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD;
LATE PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH

VOL. I

FROM THE BEGINNING TO 1800

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1917

COPYRIGHT




PREFACE


In beginning what, if it ever gets finished, must in all probability be
the last of some already perhaps too numerous studies of literary
history, I should like to point out that the plan of it is somewhat
different from that of most, if not all, of its predecessors. I have
usually gone on the principle (which I still think a sound one) that, in
studying the literature of a country, or in dealing with such general
characteristics of parts of literature as prosody, or such coefficients
of all literature as criticism, minorities are, sometimes at least, of
as much importance as majorities, and that to omit them altogether is to
risk, or rather to assure, an imperfect--and dangerously
imperfect--product.

In the present instance, however, I am attempting something that I have
never, at such length, attempted before--the history of a Kind, and a
Kind which has distinguished itself, as few others have done, by
communicating to readers the _pleasure_ of literature. I might almost
say that it is the history of that pleasure, quite as much as the
history of the kind itself, that I wish to trace. In doing so it is
obviously superfluous to include inferiorities and failures, unless they
have some very special lesson or interest, or have been (as in the case
of the minorities on the bridge of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries) for the most part, and unduly, neglected, though they are
important as experiments and links.[1] We really do want here--what the
reprehensible hedonism of Mr. Matthew Arnold, and his submission to what
some one has called "the eternal enemy, Caprice," wanted in all
cases--"only the chief and principal things." I wish to give a full
history of how what is commonly called the French Novel came into being
and kept itself in being; but I do not wish to give an exhaustive,
though I hope to give a pretty full, account of its practitioners.

In another point, however, I have kept to my old ways, and that is the
way of beginning at the beginning. I disagree utterly with any Balbus
who would build an absolute wall between romance and novel, or a wall
hardly less absolute between verse- and prose-fiction. I think the
French have (what is not common in their language) an advantage over us
in possessing the general term _Roman_, and I have perhaps taken a
certain liberty with my own title in order to keep the noun-part of it
to a single word. I shall extend the meaning of "novel"--that of _roman_
would need no extension--to include, not only the prose books, old and
new, which are more generally called "romance," but the verse romances
of the earlier period.

The subject is one with which I can at least plead almost lifelong
familiarity. I became a subscriber to "Rolandi's," I think, during my
holidays as a senior schoolboy, and continued the subscriptions during
my vacations when I was at Oxford. In the very considerable leisure
which I enjoyed during the six years when I was Classical Master at
Elizabeth College, Guernsey, I read more French than any other
literature, and more novels than anything else in French. In the late
'seventies and early 'eighties, as well as more recently, I had to round
off and fill in my knowledge of the older matter, for an elaborate
account of French literature in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, for a
long series of articles on French novelists in the _Fortnightly Review_,
and for the _Primer_ and _Short History_ of the subject which I wrote
for the Clarendon Press; while from 1880 to 1894, as a _Saturday
Review_er, I received, every month, almost everything notable (and a
great deal hardly worth noting) that had appeared in France.

Since then, the cutting off of this supply, and the extreme and constant
urgency of quite different demands on my time, have made my cultivation
of the once familiar field "_parc_ and infrequent." But I doubt whether
any really good judge would say that this was a serious drawback in
itself; and it ceases to be one, even relatively, by the restriction of
the subject to the close of the last century. It will be time to write
of the twentieth-century novel when the twentieth century itself has
gone more than a little farther.

For the abundance of translation, in the earlier part especially, I
need, I think, make no apology. I shall hardly, by any one worth
hearing, be accused of laziness or scamping in consequence of it, for
translation is much more troublesome, and takes a great deal more time,
than comment or history. The advantage, from all other points of view,
should need no exposition: nor, I think, should that of pretty full
story-abstract now and then.

There is one point on which, at the risk of being thought to "talk too
much of my matters," I should like to say a further word. All my books,
before the present volume, have been composed with the aid of a
library, not very large, but constantly growing, and always reinforced
with special reference to the work in hand; while I was able also, on
all necessary occasions, to visit Oxford or London (after I left the
latter as a residence), and for twenty years the numerous public or
semi-public libraries of Edinburgh were also open to me. This present
_History_ has been outlined in expectation for a very long time; and has
been actually laid down for two or three years. But I had not been able
to put much of it on paper when circumstances, while they gave me
greater, indeed almost entire, leisure for writing, obliged me to part
with my own library (save a few books with a reserve _pretium
affectionis_ on them), and, though they brought me nearer both to Oxford
and to London, made it less easy for me to visit either. The London
Library, that Providence of unbooked authors, came indeed to my aid, for
without it I should have had to leave the book alone altogether; and I
have been "munitioned" sometimes, by kindness or good luck, in other
ways. But I have had to rely much more on memory, and of course in some
cases on previous writing of my own, than ever before, though, except in
one special case,[2] there will be found, I think, not a single page of
mere "rehashing." I mention this without the slightest desire to beg
off, in one sense, from any omissions or mistakes which may be found
here, but merely to assure my readers that such mistakes and omissions
are not due to idle and careless bookmaking. That "books have fates" is
an accepted proposition. In respect to one of these--possession of
materials and authorities--mine have been exceptionally fortunate
hitherto, and if they had any merit it was no doubt largely due to this.
I have, in the present, endeavoured to make the best of what was not
quite such good fortune. And if anybody still says, "Why did you not
wait till you could supply deficiencies?" I can only reply that, after
seventy, [Greek: nyx gar erchetai] is a more insistent warrant, and
warning, than ever.[3]

                          GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

    [_Edinburgh, 1914-15; Southampton, 1915-16_]
    1 ROYAL CRESCENT, BATH, _May 31, 1917_.




ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA


P. 3, _note_.--This note was originally left vague, because, in the
first place, to perform public and personal fantasias with one's spear
on the shield of a champion, with whom one does not intend to fight out
the quarrel, seems to me bad chivalry, and secondly, because those
readers who were likely to be interested could hardly mistake the
reference. The regretted death, a short time after the page was sent to
press, of Mr. W. J. Courthope may give occasion to an acknowledgment,
coupled with a sincere _ave atque vale_. Mr. Courthope was never an
intimate friend of mine, and our agreement was greater in political than
in literary matters: but for more than thirty years we were on the best
terms of acquaintance, and I had a thorough respect for his
accomplishments.

P. 20, l. 5.--_Fuerres de Gadres._ I wonder how many people thought of
this when Englishmen "forayed Gaza" just before Easter, 1917?

P. 46, mid-page.--It so happened that, some time after having passed
this sheet for press, I was re-reading Dante (as is my custom every year
or two), and came upon that other passage (in the _Paradiso_, and
therefore not known to more than a few of the thousands who know the
Francesca one) in which the poet refers to the explanation between
Lancelot and the Queen. It had escaped my memory (though I think I may
say honestly that I knew it well enough) when I passed the sheet: but it
seemed to me that perhaps some readers, who do not care much for
"parallel passages" in the pedantic sense, might, like myself, feel
pleasure in having the great things of literature, in different places,
brought together. Moreover, the _Paradiso_ allusion seems to have
puzzled or misled most of the commentators, including the late Mr. A. J.
Butler, who, by his translation and edition of the _Purgatorio_ in 1880,
was my Virgil to lead me through the _Commedia_, after I had sinfully
neglected it for exactly half a life-time. He did not know, and might
easily not have known, the Vulgate _Lancelot_: but some of those whom he
cites, and who evidently _did_ know it, do not seem to have recognised
the full significance of the passage in Dante. The text will give the
original: the _Paradiso_ (xvi. 13-15) reference tells how Beatrice
(after Cacciaguida's biographical and historical recital, and when
Dante, in a confessed outburst of family pride, addresses his ancestor
with the stately _Voi_), "smiling, appeared like her who coughed at the
first fault which is written of Guinevere." This, of course (see text
once more), is the Lady of Malahault, though Dante does not name her as
he does Prince Galahault in the other _locus_. The older commentators
(who, as has been said, _did_ know the original) do not seem to have
seen in the reference much more than that both ladies noticed, and
perhaps approved, what was happening. But I think there is more in it.
The Lady of Malahault (see note in text) had previously been aware that
Lancelot was deeply in love, though he would not tell her with whom. Her
cough therefore meant: "Ah! I have found you out." Now Beatrice, well as
she knew Dante's propensity to love, knew as well that _pride_ was even
more of a besetting weakness of his. This was quite a harmless instance
of it: but still it _was_ an instance--and the "smile" which is _not_
recorded of the Arthurian lady meant: "Ah! I have _caught_ you out."
Even if this be excessive "reading into" the texts, the juxtaposition of
them may not be unsatisfactory to some who are not least worth
satisfying. (Since writing this, I have been reminded that Mr. Paget
Toynbee did make the "juxtaposition" in his Clarendon Press _Specimens
of Old French_ (October, 1892), printing there the "Lady of Malahault"
passage from MSS. copied by Professor Ker. But there can be no harm in
duplicating it.)

P. 121, ll. 8-10. Perhaps instead of, or at least beside, Archdeacon
Grantly I should have mentioned a more real dignitary (as some count
reality) of the Church, Charles Kingsley. The Archdeacon and the Canon
would have fought on many ecclesiastical and some political grounds, but
they might have got on as being, in Dr. Grantly's own words at a
memorable moment "both gentlemen." At any rate, Kingsley was soaked in
Rabelais, and one of the real curiosities of literature is the way in
which the strength of _Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ helped to beget the
sweetness of _The Water Babies_.

Chap. viii. pp. 163-175.--After I had "made my" own "siege" of the
_Astrée_ on the basis of notes recording a study of it at the B.M., Dr.
Hagbert Wright of the London Library was good enough to let me know that
his many years' quest of the book had been at last successful, and to
give me the first reading of it. (It was Southey's copy, with his own
unmistakable autograph and an inserted note, while it also contained a
cover of a letter addressed to him, which had evidently been used as a
book-mark.) Although not more than four months had passed since the
previous reading, I found it quite as appetising as (in the text itself)
I had expressed my conviction that it would be: and things not noticed
before cropped up most agreeably. There is no space to notice all or
many of them here. But one of the earliest, due to Hylas, cannot be
omitted, for it is the completest and most sententious vindication of
polyerotism ever phrased: "Ce n'était pas que je n'aimasse les autres:
mais j'avais encore, outre leur place, celle-ci vide dans mon âme." And
the soul of Hylas, like Nature herself, abhorred a vacuum! (This
approximation is not intended as "new and original": but it was some
time after making it that I recovered, in _Notre Dame de Paris_, a
forgotten anticipation of it by Victor Hugo.)

Another early point of interest was that the frontispiece portrait of
Astrée (the edition, see _Bibliography_, appears to be the latest of the
original and ungarbled ones, _imprimée à Rouen, et se vend à Paris_
(1647, 10 vols.)) is evidently a portrait, though not an identical one,
of the same face given in the Abbé Reure's engraving of Diane de
Châteaumorand herself. The nose, especially, is hardly mistakable, but
the eyes have rather less expression, and the mouth less character,
though the whole face (naturally) looks younger.

On the other hand, the portrait here--not of Céladon, but admittedly of
Honoré d'Urfé himself--is much less flattering than that in the Abbé's
book.

Things specially noted in the second reading would (it has been said)
overflow all bounds here possible: but we may perhaps find room for
three lines from about the best of the very numerous but not very
poetical verses, at the beginning of the sixth (_i.e._ the middle of the
original _third_) volume:

    _Le prix d'Amour c'est l'Amour même._
    Change d'humeur qui s'y plaira,
    Jamais Hylas ne changera,

the two last being the continuous refrain of a "villanelle" in which
this bad man boasts his constancy in inconstancy.

P. 265, _note_ 1.--It ought perhaps to be mentioned that Mlle. de
Lussan's paternity is also, and somewhat more probably, attributed to
Eugene's elder brother, Thomas of Savoy, Comte de Soissons. The lady is
said to have been born in 1682, when Eugene (b. 1663) was barely
nineteen; but of course this is not decisive. His brother Thomas
_Amédée_ (b. 1656) was twenty-six at the time. The attribution above
mentioned gave no second name, and did not specify the relationship to
Eugene: so I had some difficulty in identifying the person, as there
were, in the century, three Princes Thomas of Savoy, and I had few books
of reference. But my old friend and constant helper in matters
historical, the Rev. William Hunt, D.Litt., cleared the point up for me.
Of the other two--Thomas _François_, who was by marriage Comte de
Soissons and was grandfather of Eugene and Thomas Amédée, died in the
same year in which Thomas Amédée was born, therefore twenty-six before
Mlle. de Lussan's birth: while the third, Thomas _Joseph_, Eugene's
cousin, was not born till 1796, fourteen years after the lady. The
matter is, of course, of no literary importance: but as I had passed the
sheet for press before noticing the diversity of statements, I thought
it better to settle it.

P. 267. Pajon. I ought not to have forgotten to mention that he bears
the medal of Sir Walter Scott (Introduction to _The Abbot_) as "a
pleasing writer of French Fairy Tales."

Page 453.--Choderlos de Laclos. Some surprise has been expressed by a
friend of great competence at my leaving out _Les Liaisons Dangereuses_.
I am, of course, aware that "persons of distinction" have taken an
interest in it; and I understand that, not many years ago, the
unfortunate author of the beautiful lines _To Cynara_ wasted his time
and talent on translating the thing. To make sure that my former
rejection was not unjustified, I have accordingly read it with care
since the greater part of this book was passed for press; and it shall
have a judgment here, if not in the text. I am unable to find any
redeeming point in it, except that some ingenuity is shown in bringing
about the _dénouement_ by a rupture between the villain-hero and the
villainess-heroine, M. le Vicomte de Valmont and Mme. la Marquise de
Merteuil. Even this, though fairly craftsmanlike in treatment, is banal
enough in idea--that idea being merely that jealousy, in both sexes,
survives love, shame, and everything else, even community in
scoundrelism--in other words, that the green-eyed monster (like "Vernon"
and unlike "Ver") _semper viret_. But it is scarcely worth one's while
to read six hundred pages of very small print in order to learn this. Of
amusement, as apart from this very elementary instruction, I at least
can find nothing. The pair above mentioned, on whom practically hangs
the whole appeal, are merely disgusting. Their very voluptuousness is
accidental: the sum and substance, the property and business of their
lives and natures, are compact of mischief, malice, treachery, and the
desire of "getting the better of somebody." Nor has this diabolism
anything grand or impressive about it--anything that "intends greatly"
and glows, as has been said, with a black splendour, in Marlowesque or
Websterian fashion. Nor, again, is it a "Fleur du Mal" of the
Baudelairian kind, but only an ugly as well as noxious weed. It is
prosaic and suburban. There is neither tragedy nor comedy, neither
passion nor humour, nor even wit, except a little horse-play. Congreve
and Crébillon are as far off as Marlowe and Webster; in fact, the
descent from Crébillon's M. de Clérval to Laclos' M. de Valmont is
almost inexpressible. And, once more, there is nothing to console one
but the dull and obvious moral that to adopt love-making as an
"occupation" (_vide_ text, p. 367) is only too likely to result in the
[Greek: technê] becoming, in vulgar hands, very [Greek: banausos]
indeed.

The victims and _comparses_ of the story do nothing to atone for the
principals. The lacrimose stoop-to-folly-and-wring-his-bosom Mme. de
Tourvel is merely a bore; the _ingénue_ Cécile de Volanges is, as Mme.
de Merteuil says, a _petite imbécile_ throughout, and becomes no better
than she should be with the facility of a predestined strumpet; her
lover, Valmont's rival, and Mme. de Merteuil's plaything, M. le
Chevalier Danceny, is not so very much better than _he_ should be, and
nearly as much an imbecile in the masculine way as Cécile in the
feminine; her respectable mother and Valmont's respectable aunt are not
merely as blind as owls are, but as stupid as owls are not. Finally, the
book, which in many particular points, as well as in the general
letter-scheme, follows Richardson closely (adding clumsy notes to
explain the letters, apologise for their style, etc.), exhibits most of
the faults of its original with hardly any of that original's merits.
Valmont, for instance, is that intolerable creature, a pattern Bad
Man--a Grandison-Lovelace--a prig of vice. Indeed, I cannot see how any
interest can be taken in the book, except that derived from its
background of _tacenda_; and though no one, I think, who has read the
present volume will accuse me of squeamishness, _I_ can find in it no
interest at all. The final situations referred to above, if artistically
led up to and crisply told in a story of twenty to fifty pages, might
have some; but ditchwatered out as they are, I have no use for them. The
letter-form is particularly unfortunate, because, at least as used, it
excludes the ironic presentation which permits one almost to fall in
love with Becky Sharp, and quite to enjoy _Jonathan Wild_. Of course, if
anybody says (and apologists _do_ say that Laclos was, as a man, proper
in morals and mild in manners) that to hold up the wicked to mere
detestation is a worthy work, I am not disposed to argue the point.
Only, for myself, I prefer to take moral diatribes from the clergy and
aesthetic delectation from the artist. The avenging duel between
Lovelace and Colonel Morden is finely done; that between Valmont and
Danceny is an obvious copy of it, and not finely done at all. Some,
again, of the riskiest passages in subject are made simply dull by a
Richardsonian particularity which has no seasoning either of humour or
of excitement. Now, a Richardson _de mauvais lieu_ is more than a
bore--it is a nuisance, not pure and simple, but impure and complex.

I have in old days given to a few novels (though, of course, only when
they richly deserved it) what is called a "slating"--an
_éreintement_--as I once had the honour of translating that word in
conversation, at the request of a distinguished English novelist, for
the benefit of a distinguished French one. Perhaps an example of the
process is not utterly out of place in a _History_ of the novel itself.
But I have long given up reviewing fiction, and I do not remember any
book of which I shall have to speak as I have just spoken. So _hic
caestus_, etc.--though I am not such a coxcomb as to include _victor_ in
the quotation.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For the opposite or corresponding reasons, it has seemed unnecessary
to dwell on such persons, a hundred and more years later, as Voisenon
and La Morlière, who are merely "corrupt followers" of Crébillon _fils_;
or, between the two groups, on the numerous failures of the
quasi-historical kind which derived partly from Mlle. de Scudéry and
partly from Mme. de la Fayette.

[2] That of the minor "Sensibility" novelists in the last chapter.

[3] I have once more to thank Professors Ker, Elton, and Gregory Smith
for their kindness in reading my proofs and making most valuable
suggestions; as well as Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly and the Rev. William
Hunt for information on particular points.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I
                                                             PAGE

INTRODUCTORY                                                    1

The early history of prose fiction--The late classical
stage--A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance?--the facts
about the matter--The power and influence of the "Saint's
Life"--The Legend of St. Eulalia--The _St. Alexis_.


CHAPTER II

THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN                        9

The _Chanson de Geste_--The proportions of history and
fiction in them--The part played by language, prosody, and
manners--Some drawbacks--But a fair balance of actual story
merit--Some instances of this--The classical borrowings:
Troy and Alexander--_Troilus_--_Alexander_--The Arthurian
Legend--Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him--His
unquestioned work--Comparison of the _Chevalier à la
Charette_ and the prose _Lancelot_--The constitution of the
Arthuriad--Its approximation to the novel proper--Especially
in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
Guinevere--Lancelot--Guinevere--Some minor
points--Illustrative extracts translated from the "Vulgate":
the youth of Lancelot--The first meeting of Lancelot and
Guinevere--The scene of the kiss--Some further remarks on
the novel-character of the story--And the personages--Books.


CHAPTER III

ROMANS D'AVENTURES                                             55

Variety of the present group--Different views held of
it--_Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
translation.


CHAPTER IV

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION                                73

Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century: _Aucassin et
Nicolette_ not quite typical--_L'Empereur Constant_ more
so--_Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_--_La Comtesse de
Ponthieu_--Those of the fourteenth:
_Asseneth_--_Troilus_--_Foulques Fitzwarin_--Something on
these--And on the short story generally.


CHAPTER V

ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE              89

The connection with prose fiction of allegory--And of the
_fabliaux_--The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself--_Les Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles_--Analysis of "La Demoiselle
Cavalière"--The interest of _namea_ personages--_Petit Jehan
de Saintré_--_Jehan de Paris._


CHAPTER VI

RABELAIS                                                      105

The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up
to this point--Rabelais unquestionably the first very great
known writer--But the first great novelist?--Some objections
considered--And dismissed as affecting the general
attraction of the book--Which lies, largely if not wholly,
in its story-interest--Contrast of the _Moyen de
Parvenir_--A general theme possible--A reference, to be
taken up later, to the last Book--Running survey of the
whole--_Gargantua_--The birth and education--The war--The
Counsel to Picrochole--The peace and the Abbey of
Thelema--_Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted
youth--Panurge--Short view of the sequels in Book
II.--_Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.) The marriage of Panurge
and the consultations on it--_Pantagruel_ III. (Book IV.)
The first part of the voyage--_Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The
second part of the voyage: the "Isle Sonnante"--"La
Quinte"--The conclusion and The Bottle.


CHAPTER VII

THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE
"AMADIS" ROMANCES                                             134

Subsidiary importance of Brantôme and other
character-mongers--The _Heptameron_--Note on
Montaigne--Character and "problems"--Parlamente on human and
divine love--Despériers--_Contes et Joyeux Devis_--Other
tale-collections--The "provincial" character of these--The
_Amadis_ romances--Their characteristics--Extravagance in
incident, nomenclature, etc.--The "cruel" heroine--Note on
Hélisenne de Crenne.


CHAPTER VIII

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I.                             152

_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story._

Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
subject--The divisions of its contribution--Note on marked
influence of Greek Romance--The Pastoral in general--Its
beginnings in France--Minor romances preceding the
_Astrée_--Their general character--Examples of their
style--Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_--Des
Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_--François de Molière:
_Polyxéne_--Du Périer: _Arnoult et Clarimonde_--Du Croset:
_Philocalie_--Corbin: _Philocaste_--Jean de Lannoi and his
_Roman Satirique_--Béroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen
de Parvenir_--The _Astrée_: its author--The book--Its
likeness to the _Arcadia_--Its philosophy and its general
temper--Its appearance and its author's other work--Its
character and appeals--Hylas and Stella and their
Convention--Narrative skill frequent--The Fountain of the
Truth of Love--Some drawbacks: awkward history--But
attractive on the whole--The general importance and
influence--The _Grand Cyrus_--Its preface to Madame de
Longueville--The "Address to the Reader"--The opening of the
"business"--The ups and downs of the general conduct of the
story--Extracts: the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane--His
soliloquy in the pavilion--The Fight of the Four
Hundred--The abstract resumed--The oracle to
Philidaspes--The advent of Araminta--Her correspondence with
Spithridates--Some interposed comments--Analysis
resumed--The statue in the gallery at Sardis--The judgment
of Cyrus in a court of love--Thomyris on the
warpath--General remarks on the book and its class--The
other Scudéry romances:
_Ibrahim_--_Almahide_--_Clélie_--Perhaps the liveliest of
the set--Rough outline of it--La Calprenède: his
comparative cheerfulness--_Cléopatre_: the Cypassis and
Arminius episode--The book
generally--_Cassandre_--_Faramond_--Gomberville: _La
Caritée_--_Polexandre_--Camus: _Palombe_, etc.--Hédelin
d'Aubignac: _Macarise_--Gombauld: _Endimion_--Mme. de
Villedieu--_Le Grand Alcandre Frustré_--The collected
love-stories--Their historic liberties--_Carmente_,
etc.--Her value on the whole--The fairy tale--Its _general_
characteristics: the happy ending--Perrault and Mme.
d'Aulnoy--Commented examples: _Gracieuse et
Percinet_--_L'Adroite Princesse_--The danger of the
"moral"--Yet often redeemed--The main _Cabinet des Fées_:
more on Mme. d'Aulnoy--Warning against disappointment--Mlle.
de la Force and others--The large proportion of Eastern
Tales--_Les Voyages de Zulma_--Fénelon--Caylus--_Prince
Courtebotte et Princesse Zibeline_--_Rosanie_--_Prince
Muguet et Princesse Zaza_--Note on _Le Diable Amoureux_.


CHAPTER IX

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--II.                            274

_From "Francion" to "La Princesse de Clèves"--Anthony Hamilton._

The material of the chapter--Sorel and _Francion_--The
_Berger Extravagant_ and _Polyandre_--Scarron and the _Roman
Comique_--The opening scene of this--Furetière and the
_Roman Bourgeois_--Nicodème takes Javotte home from
church--Cyrano de Bergerac and his _Voyages_--Mme. de la
Fayette and _La Princesse de Clèves_--Its central
scene--Hamilton and the Nymph--The opening of _Fleur
d'Épine_--_Les Quatre Facardins_.


CHAPTER X

LESAGE, MARIVAUX, PRÉVOST, CRÉBILLON                          325

The subjects of the chapter--Lesage: his Spanish
connections--Peculiarity of his work generally--And its
variety--_Le Diable Boiteux_--Lesage and Boileau--_Gil
Blas_: its peculiar cosmopolitanism--And its adoption of the
_homme sensuel moyen_ fashion--Its inequality, in the Second
and Fourth Books especially--Lesage's quality: not requiring
many words, but indisputable--Marivaux: _Les Effets de la
Sympathie_ (?)--His work in general--_Le Paysan
Parvenu_--_Marianne_: outline of the story--Importance of
Marianne herself--Marivaux and Richardson:
"Marivaudage"--Examples: Marianne on the _physique_ and
_moral_ of Prioresses and Nuns--She returns the
gift-clothes--Prévost--His minor novels: the opinions on
them of Sainte-Beuve--And of Planche--The books themselves:
_Histoire d'une Grecque Moderne_--_Cléveland_--_Le Doyen de
Killérine_--_The Mémoires d'un Homme de Qualité_--Its
miscellaneous curiosities--_Manon Lescaut_--Its
uniqueness--The character of its heroine--And that of the
hero--The inevitableness of both and the inestimableness of
their history--Crébillon _fils_--The case against him--For
the defendant: the veracity of his artificiality and his
consummate cleverness--The Crébillonesque atmosphere and
method--Inequality of his general work; a survey of it.


CHAPTER XI

THE _PHILOSOPHE_ NOVEL                                        377

The use of the novel for "purpose"; Voltaire--General
characteristics of his tales--_Candide_--_Zadig_ and its
satellites--_Micromégas_--_L'Ingénu_--_La Princesse de
Babylone_--Some minors--Voltaire, the Kehl edition, and
Plato--An attempt at different evaluation of
himself--Rousseau: the novel character of the
_Confessions_--The ambiguous position of _Émile_--_La
Nouvelle Héloïse_--Its numerous and grave faults--The minor
characters--The delinquencies of Saint-Preux--And the less
charming points of Julie; her redemption--And the better
side of the book generally--But little probability of more
good work in novel from its author--The different case of
Diderot--His gifts and the waste of them--The various
display of them--_Le Neveu de Rameau_--_Jacques le
Fataliste_--Its "Arcis-Pommeraye" episode--_La
Religieuse_--Its story--A hardly missed, if missed,
masterpiece--The successors--Marmontel--His "Telemachic"
imitations worth little--The best of his _Contes Moraux_
worth a good deal--_Alcibiade ou le Moi_--_Soliman the
Second_--_The Four Flasks_--_Heureusement_--_Le Philosophe
Soi-disant_--A real advance in these--Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre.


CHAPTER XII

"SENSIBILITY." MINOR AND LATER NOVELISTS. THE FRENCH
NOVEL, _c._ 1800                                              428

"Sensibility"--A glance at Miss Austen--The thing
essentially French--Its history--Mme. de Tencin and _Le
Comte de Comminge_--Mme. Riccoboni and _Le Marquis de
Cressy_--Her other work: _Milady Catesby_--Mme. de Beaumont:
_Lettres du Marquis de Roselle_--Mme. de Souza--Xavier de
Maistre--His illustrations of the lighter side of
Sensibility--A sign of decadence--Benjamin Constant:
_Adolphe_--Mme. de Duras's "postscript"--_Sensibilité_ and
_engouement_--Some final words on the matter--Its importance
here--Restif de la Bretonne--Pigault-Lebrun: the difference
of his positive and relative importance--His life and the
reasons for giving it--His general
characteristics--_L'Enfant du Carnaval_ and _Les Barons de
Felsheim_--_Angélique et Jeanneton_--_Mon Oncle
Thomas_--_Jérôme_--The redeeming points of these--Others:
_Adélaïde de Méran and Tableaux de
Société_--_L'Officieux_--Further examples--Last words on
him--The French novel in 1800.

CHRONOLOGICAL CONSPECTUS OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS OF FRENCH
FICTION NOTICED IN THIS VOLUME                                475

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES                                         479

INDEX                                                         483




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY


[Sidenote: The early history of prose fiction.]

Although I have already, in two places,[4] given a somewhat precise
account of the manner in which fiction in the modern sense of the term,
and especially prose fiction, came to occupy a province in modern
literature which had been so scantily and infrequently cultivated in
ancient, it would hardly be proper to enter upon the present subject
with a mere reference to these other treatments. It is matter of
practically no controversy (or at least of none in which it is worth
while to take a part) that the history of prose fiction, before the
Christian era, is very nearly a blank, and that, in the fortunately
still fairly abundant remains of poetic fiction, "the story is the least
part" (as Dryden says in another sense), or at least the _telling_ of
the story, in our modern sense, is so. Homer (in the _Odyssey_ at any
rate), Herodotus (in what was certainly not intentional fiction at all),
and Xenophon[5] are about the only Greek writers who can tell a story,
for the magnificent narrative of Thucydides in such cases as those of
the Plague and the Syracusan cataclysm shows all the "headstrong"
_ethos_ of the author in its positive refusal to assume a "story"
character. In Latin there is nothing before Livy and Ovid;[6] of whom
the one falls into the same category with Herodotus and Xenophon, and
the other, admirable _raconteur_ as he is, thinks first of his poetry.
Scattered tales we have: "mimes" and other things there are some, and
may have been more. But on the whole the schedule is not filled: there
are no entries for the competition.

[Sidenote: The late classical stage.]

In later classical literature, both Greek and Latin, the state of things
alters considerably, though even then it cannot be said that fiction
proper--that is to say, either prose or verse in which the
accomplishment of the form is distinctly subordinate to the interesting
treatment of the subject--constitutes a very large department, or even
any regular department at all. If Lucius of Patrae was a real person,
and much before Lucian, he may dispute with Petronius--that
first-century Maupassant or Meredith, or both combined--the actual
foundation of the novel as we have it; but Lucian himself and Apuleius
(strangely enough handling the same subject in the two languages) give
securer and more solid starting-places. Yet nothing follows Apuleius;
though some time after Lucian the Greek romance, of which we have still
a fair number of examples (spread, however, over a still larger number
of centuries), establishes itself in a fashion. It does one thing,
indeed, which in a way refounds or even founds the whole conception--it
establishes the heroine. There are certainly feminine persons, sometimes
not disagreeable, who play conspicuous and by no means mute or
unpractical parts in both Greek and Latin versions of the Ass-Legend;
but one can hardly call them heroines. There need be no chicane about
the application of that title to Chloe or to Chariclea, to Leucippe or
to her very remarkable rival, to Anthia or to Hysmine. Without the
heroine you can hardly have romance: the novel without her (though her
individuality may be put in commission) is an absolute impossibility.

[Sidenote: A _nexus_ of Greek and French romance? The facts about the
matter.]

The connection between these curious performances (with the much larger
number of things like them which we know to have existed) on the one
side, and the Western mediaeval romance on the other, has been at
various times matter of considerable controversy; but it need not
trouble us much here. The Greek romance was to have very great influence
on the French novel later: on the earlier composition, generally called
by the same name as itself, it would seem[7] to have had next to none.
Until we come to _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and perhaps _Parthenopex_,
things of a comparatively late stage, obviously post-Crusade, and so
necessarily exposed to, and pretty clearly patient of, Greek-Eastern
influence, there is nothing in Old French which shows even the same
kinship to the Greek stories as the Old English _Apollonius of Tyre_,
which was probably or rather certainly in the original Greek itself. The
sources of French "romance"--I must take leave to request a "truce of
God" as to the application of that term and of "epic" for present
purposes--appear to have been two--the Saint's Life and the patriotic or
family _saga_, the latter in the first place indelibly affected by the
Mahometan incursions of the eighth, ninth, and tenth centuries. The
story-telling instinct--kindled by, or at first devoted to, these
subjects--subsequently fastened on numerous others. In fact almost all
was fish that came to the magic net of Romance; and though two great
subjects of ours, the "Matter of Britain" (the Arthurian Legend) and the
"Matter of Rome" (classical story generally, including the Tale of
Troy), came traditionally to rank themselves with the "Matter of France"
and with the great range of hagiology which it might have been dangerous
to proclaim a fourth "matter" (even if anybody had been likely to take
the view that it was so), these classifications are, like most of their
kind, more specious than satisfactory.

[Sidenote: The power and influence of the "Saint's Life."]

Any person--though indeed it is to be feared that the number of such
persons is not very large--who has some knowledge of hagiology _and_
some of literature will admit at once that the popular notion of a
Saint's Life being necessarily a dull and "goody" thing is one of the
foolishest pieces of presumptuous ignorance, and one of the most
ignorant pieces of foolish presumption. Not only have modern novelists
sometimes been better informed and better inspired--as in the case of
more than one version of the Legends of St. Mary of Egypt, of St.
Julian, of Saint Christopher, and others--but there remain scores if not
hundreds of beautiful things that have been wholly or all but wholly
neglected. It is impossible to imagine a better romance, either in verse
or in prose, than might have been made by William Morris if he had kept
his earliest loves and faiths and had taken the _variorum_ Legend of St.
Mary Magdalene, as we have it in divers forms from quite early French
and English to the fifteenth-century English Miracle Play on the
subject. That of St. Eustace ("Sir Isumbras"), though old letters and
modern art have made something of it, has also never been fully
developed in the directions which it opens up; and one could name many
others. But it has to be admitted that the French (whether, as some
would say, naturally enough or not) never gave the Saint's Life pure and
simple the development which it received in English. It started them--I
at least believe this--in the story-telling way; but cross-roads, to
them more attractive, soon presented themselves.

[Sidenote: The Legend of St. Eulalia.]

Still, it started them. I hope it is neither intolerably fanciful nor
the mere device of a compiler anxious to make his arrows of all wood, to
suggest that there is something noteworthy in the nature of the very
first piece of actual French which we possess. The Legend of St. Eulalia
can be tried pretty high; for we have[8] the third hymn of the
_Peristephanon_ of Prudentius to compare it with. The metre of this

    Germine nobilis Eulalia

is not one of the best, and contrasts ill with the stately
decasyllables--perhaps the very earliest examples of that mighty metre
that we have--which the infant daughter-tongue somehow devised for
itself some centuries later. But Prudentius is almost always a poet, if
a poet of the decadence, and he had as instruments a language and a
prosody which were like a match rifle to a bow and arrows--_not_ of yew
and _not_ cloth-yard shafts--when contrasted with the dialect and
speech-craft of the unknown tenth-century Frenchman. Yet from some
points of view, and especially from ours, the Anonymus of the Dark Ages
wins. Prudentius spins out the story into two hundred and fifteen lines,
with endless rhetorical and poetical amplification. He wants to say that
Eulalia was twelve years old; but he actually informs us that

    Curriculis tribus atque novem,
    Tres hyemes quater attigerat,

and the whole history of the martyrdom is attitudinised and bedizened in
the same fashion.

Now listen to the noble simplicity of the first French poet and
tale-teller:

     A good maiden was Eulalia: fair had she the body, but the
     soul fairer. The enemies of God would fain conquer
     her--would fain make her serve the fiend. She listened not
     to the evil counsellors, that she should deny God, who
     abideth in Heaven aloft--neither for gold, nor for silver,
     nor for garments; for the royal threatenings, nor for
     entreaties. Nothing could ever bend the damsel so that she
     should not love the service of God. And for that reason she
     was brought before Maximian, who was the King in those days
     over the pagans. And he exhorted her--whereof she took no
     care--that she should flee from the name of Christian. But
     she assembled all her strength that she might rather sustain
     the torments than lose her virginity: for which reason she
     died in great honour. They cast her in the fire when it
     burnt fiercely: but she had no fault in her, and so it
     pained her [_or_ she burnt[9]] not.

     To this would not trust the pagan king: but with a sword he
     bade them take off her head. The damsel did not gainsay this
     thing: she would fain let go this worldly life if Christ
     gave command. And in shape of a dove she flew to heaven. Let
     us all pray that she may deign to intercede for us; that
     Christ may upon us have mercy after death, and of His
     clemency may allow us to come to Him.

[Sidenote: The _St. Alexis_.]

Of course this is story-telling in its simplest form and on its smallest
scale: but the essentials are there, and the non-essentials can be
easily supplied--as indeed they are to some extent in the _Life of St.
Leger_ and to a greater in the _Life of St. Alexis_, which almost follow
the _Sainte-Eulalie_ in the making of French literature. The _St.
Alexis_ indeed provides something like a complete scheme of romance
interest, and should be, though not translated (for it runs to between
600 and 700 lines), in some degree analysed and discussed. It had, of
course, a Latin original, and was rehandled more than once or twice. But
we have the (apparently) first French form, probably of the eleventh
century. The theme is one of the commonest and one of the least
sympathetic in hagiology. Alexis is forced by his father, a rich Roman
"count," to marry; and after (not before) the marriage, though of course
before its consummation, he deserts his wife, flies to Syria, and
becomes a beggar at Edessa. After a time, long enough to prevent
recognition, he goes back to Rome, and obtains from his own family alms
enough to live on, though these alms are dispensed to him by the
servants with every mark of contempt. At last he dies, and is recognised
forthwith as a saint. This hackneyed and somewhat repulsive _donnée_
(there is nothing repulsive to the present writer, let it be observed,
either in Stylites or in Galahad) the French poet takes and makes a
rather surprising best of it. He is not despicable even as a poet, all
things considered; but he is something very different indeed from
despicable as a tale-teller. To begin, or, strictly speaking, to end
with (R. L. Stevenson never said a wiser thing than that the end must be
the necessary result of, and as it were foretold in, the beginning), he
has lessened if not wholly destroyed the jar of the situation by (most
unusually and considering the mad chastity-worship of the time rather
audaciously) associating the deserted wife directly with the Saint's
"gustation of God" above:

    Without doubt is St. Alexis in Heaven,
    With him has he God in the company of the Angels,
    _With him the maiden to whom he made himself strange,_
    _Now he has her close to him--together are their souls,_
    _I know not how to tell you how great their joy is._[10]

But there are earlier touches of that life which makes all literature,
and tale-telling most of all. An opening on Degeneracy is scarcely one
of these, for this was, of course, a commonplace millenniums earlier,
and it had the recent belief about the approaching end of the world at
the actual A.D. 1000 to prompt it. The maiden is "bought" for Alexis
from her father or mother. Instead of the not unusual and rather
distasteful sermons on virginity which later versions have, the future
saint has at least the grace to accompany the return of the ring[11]
with only a few words of renunciation of his spouse to Christ, and of
declaration that in this world "love is imperfect, life frail, and joy
mutable." A far more vivid touch is given by the mother who, when search
for the fugitive has proved futile, ruins the nuptial chamber, destroys
its decorations, and hangs it with rags and sackcloth,[12] and who, when
the final discovery is made, reproaches the dead saint in a fashion
which is not easy to reply to: "My son, why hadst thou no pity of _us_?
Why hast thou not spoken to me _once_?" The bride has neither forgotten
nor resented: she only weeps her deserter's former beauty, and swears to
have no other spouse but God. The poem ends--or all but ends--in a
hurly-burly of popular enthusiasm, which will hardly resign its new
saint to Pope or Emperor, till at last, after the usual miracles of
healing, the body is allowed to rest, splendidly entombed, in the Church
of St. Boniface.

Now the man who could thus, and by many other touches not mentioned, run
blood into the veins of mummies,[13] could, with larger range of subject
and wider choice of treatment, have done no small things in fiction.

But enough talk of might-have-beens: let us come to the things that were
done.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The article "Romance" in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, 11th ed.;
and the volume on _The English Novel_ in Messrs. Dent's series "Channels
of English Literature," London, 1913.

[5] Plato (or Socrates?) does it only on a small scale and partially,
though there are the makings of a great novelist in the _Dialogues_.
Apollonius Rhodius is the next verse-tale teller to Homer among the
prae-Christian Greeks.

[6] Virgil, in the only parts of the _Aeneid_ that make a good story, is
following either Homer or Apollonius.

[7] To me at least the seeming seems to approach demonstration; and I
can only speak as I find, with all due apologies to those who find
differently.

[8] There is, of course, a Latin "sequence" on the Saint which is nearer
to the French poem; but that does not affect our present point.

[9] The literal "cooked," with no burlesque intention, was used of
punitory burning quite early; but it is not certain that the transferred
sense of _cuire_, "to _pain_," is not nearly or quite as old.

[10] Not the least interesting part of this is that it is almost
sufficient by itself to establish the connection between Saint's Life
and Romance.

[11] By a very curious touch he gives her also "les renges de s'espide,"
_i.e._ either the other ring by which the sword is attached to the
sword-belt, or the belt itself. The meaning is, of course, that with her
he renounces knighthood and all worldly rank.

[12] She addresses the room itself, dramatically enough: "Chamber! never
more shalt thou bear ornament: never shall any joy in thee be enjoyed."

[13] Let me repeat that I mean no despite to the "Communion of Saints"
or to their records--much the reverse. But the hand of any _purpose_,
Religious, Scientific, Political, what not, is apt to mummify story.




CHAPTER II

THE MATTERS OF FRANCE, ROME, AND BRITAIN


It has been said already that the Saint's Life, as it seems most
probable to the present writer, started the romance in France; but of
course we must allow considerable reinforcement of one kind or another
from local, traditional, and literary sources. The time-honoured
distribution, also given already, of the "matter" of this romance does
not concern us so much here as it would in a history of French
literature, but it concerns us. We shall indeed probably find that the
home-grown or home-fed _Chanson de Geste_ did least for the novel in the
wide sense--that the "Matter of Rome" chiefly gave it variety, change of
atmosphere to some extent, and an invaluable connection with older
literatures, but that the central division or "Matter of Britain," with
the immense fringes of miscellaneous _romans d'aventures_--which are
sometimes more or less directly connected with it, and are always
moulded more or less on its patterns--gave most of all.

[Sidenote: The _Chanson de Geste_.]

Of these, however, what has been called the family or patriotic part was
undoubtedly the earliest and for a long time the most influential. There
is, fortunately, not the least need here to fight out the old battle of
the _cantilenae_ or supposed _ballad_-originals. I see no reason to
alter the doubt with which I have always regarded their existence; but
it really does not matter, _to us_, whether they existed or not,
especially since we have not got them now. What we have got is a vast
mass of narrative poetry, which latterly took actual prose form, and
which--as early certainly as the eleventh century and perhaps
earlier--turns the French faculty for narrative (whether it was actually
or entirely fictitious narrative or not does not again matter) into
channels of a very promising kind.

The novel-reader who has his wits and his memory about him may perhaps
say, "Promising perhaps; but paying?" The answer must be that the
promise may have taken some time to be fully liquidated, but that the
immediate or short-dated payment was great. The fault of the _Chansons
de Geste_--a fault which in some degree is to be found in French
literature as a whole, and to a greater extent in all mediaeval
literature--is that the class and the type are rather too prominent. The
central conception of Charlemagne as a generally dignified but too
frequently irascible and rather petulant monarch, surrounded by valiant
and in a way faithful but exceedingly touchy or ticklish paladins, is no
doubt true enough to the early stages of feudalism--in fact, to adapt
the tag, there is too much human nature in it for it to be false. But it
communicates a certain sameness to the chansons which stick closest to
the model.

[Sidenote: The proportions of history and fiction in them.]

The exact relation of the _Chansons de Geste_ to the subsequent history
of French fiction is thus an extremely important one, and one that
requires, not only a good deal of reading on which to base any opinion
that shall not be worthless, but a considerable exercise of critical
discretion in order to form that opinion competently. The present writer
can at least plead no small acquaintance with the subject, and a full if
possibly over-generous acknowledgment of his dealings with it on the
part of some French authorities, living and dead, of the highest
competence. But the attractions of the vast and strangely long ignored
body of _chanson_ literature are curiously various in kind, and they
cannot be indiscriminately drawn upon as evidence of an early mastery of
tale-telling proper on the part of the French as a nation.

There is indeed one solid fact, the importance of which can hardly be
exaggerated in some ways, though it may be wrongly estimated in others.
Here is not merely the largest part proportionately, but a very large
bulk positively, of the very earliest part of a literature, devoted to a
kind of narrative which, though some of it may be historic originally,
is pretty certainly worked up into its concrete and extant state by
fiction. The comparison with the two literatures which on the whole bear
such comparison with French best--English and Greek--is here very
striking. People say that there "must have been" many _Beowulfs_: it can
hardly be said that we have so much as a positive assertion of the
existence of even one other, though we have allusions and glances which
have been amplified in the usual fashion. We have positive and not
reasonably doubtful assertion of the existence of a very large body of
more or less early Greek epic; but we have nothing existing except the
_Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.

[Sidenote: The part played by language, prosody, and manners.]

On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound
criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.
There must have been some more than ordinary _nisus_ towards
story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three
or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes
of great length, on the single general[14] subject of the exploits,
sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary
emperor _à la barbe florie_, of his son, and of the more legendary than
historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"
generally. And though the assertion requires a little more justification
and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or
less fictitious composition when such a vast body of spirited
fictitious, or even half-fictitious, narrative is turned out.

But in this justification as to the last part of the contention a good
deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because
the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind
purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of
it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the
language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which
only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in
modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar
character of the metre--the long _tirades_ or _laisses_, assonanced or
mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those
who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and
unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange
unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the
brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a
stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to
mention here.

[Sidenote: Some drawbacks.]

Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of
the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that
most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of
fiction--that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand,
while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to
credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the
account. The sameness of the _chanson_ story, the almost invariable
recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks--of rebellion, treason,
paynim invasion, petulance of a King's son, somewhat too "coming"
affection of a King's daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like _impotentia_ of
the King himself, etc.--may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the
greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed _Roland_, the
economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less
unsophisticated age--say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or
eleventh century--might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.
The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in
skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh
and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the
great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by
somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that
is not how I read Homer.

In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the
_chansons_, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure
examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as _Amis et
Amiles_ (for passion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is
so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the _Voyage à
Constantinoble_, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic
donnée.[15] This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken
logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing
that is not found in the _Chanson de Roland_ ought to be found in any
_chanson_. But we may admit that the "bones"--the simplest terms of the
_chanson_-formula--hardly include varied interests, though they allow
such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.

[Sidenote: But a fair balance of actual story merit.]

Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is
to the "romances" proper--Arthurian, classical, and adventurous--rather
than to the _chansons_ that one must look for the first satisfactory
examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the
_chansons_ themselves provide a great deal of it--whether because of
adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in
another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful
memory which should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that
the _Chanson de Geste_ as such is merely monotonous and dull. The
intensity of the appeal of _Roland_ is no doubt helped by that approach
to bareness--even by a certain tautology--which has been mentioned.
_Aliscans_, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains,
even without the family of dependent poems which cluster round it, a
vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange,
with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.

[Sidenote: Some instances of this.]

The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"
imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of _Amis et
Amiles_,--where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to
save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the
other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by
the blood of the friend's children, is the crowning instance of another
set of appeals. The catholicity of a man's literary taste, and his more
special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better
estimated by his opinion of _Amis et Amiles_ than by any other
touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one--a much
greater development of the love-motive than either _Roland_ or
_Aliscans_, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation,
_Jourdains de Blaivies_, takes the hero abroad, as do many other
_chansons_, especially two of the most famous, _Huon de Bordeaux_ and
_Ogier de Danemarche_. These two are also good--perhaps the
best--examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and
leaving its mark on future fiction--that of expansion and continuation.
In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that
enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the
almost total disconnection between William Morris's beautiful section of
_The Earthly Paradise_ and the original French, as edited by Barrois in
the first attempt to collect the _chansons_ seventy or eighty years ago.
The great "Orange" subcycle, of which _Aliscans_ is the most famous,
extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more
to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly
matched by Garin of Lorraine. No _chanson_ retained its popularity, in
every sense of that word, better than the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_--the
history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous
enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy's book" there is perhaps none better,
and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern
English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." _Berte
aux grands Piés_, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the
extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more
agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that
of Doon and Nicolette[16] in _Doon de Mayence_. And not to make a mere
catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would
be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers,
it may be said that the general _chanson_ practice of grouping together
or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the
fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on
the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention
to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against
them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either Dickens
or Thackeray is to escape damnation, with Sir Walter to greet them in
their uncomfortable sojourn.

But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of
the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed
novel-interest. Love affairs--some glanced at above--do indeed make, in
some of the _chansons_, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of
lost tragedy which we have in _Roland_. But until the reflex influence
of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always
disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as
indeed are the delineations of manners generally.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: The classical borrowings--Troy and Alexander.]

The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in
fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of
the class), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and
through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have
interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated
upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken
by, and illustrated in, the three great literary languages of the
earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in
French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be
almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with
practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really classical
sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to
the world's literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first
instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can
discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which
contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and
development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It
is only our business here to say something about the general nature of
the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the
capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.

[Sidenote: _Troilus._]

That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its
more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older
tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is
not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently
attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of
the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the
one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even
the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoît de
Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this;
it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has
written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest
of inventions. But it is certain that nobody hitherto has been able to
"get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough
base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be
credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in
reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his
contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards
that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of
the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In
the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great
old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an
immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the
last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in
action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say
stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a noble lady, who by birth
and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can
be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains
her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or
exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already
attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy's leaders, and being not merely
a coquette but a light-o'-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her
punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life
of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the
person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is
novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and
the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the
cultivator.

For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient
suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of
that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of
it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the
heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could
possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in
common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most
remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of
the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have
indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense,
even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism
or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoît de
Sainte-More's story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay
post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course,
abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Benoît or
into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing
uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later
writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as
a support for, the hybrid perpetual--a term which could itself be
developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval _moralitas_.
And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse
of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of
Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then
we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed
novel. It would be easy, as it was not in the case of the _chansons_,
to illustrate directly by a translation, either here from Benoît or
later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which
we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much
space.

[Sidenote: _Alexander._]

The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a
widely different kind. In _Troilus_, as has been said, the Middle Age is
working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it
amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart--a head
which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients,
and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any
ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more
passively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying
and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes,
"Julius Valerius," the _Historia de Praeliis_, etc., are once more not
for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the
state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the
classical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early
at least as the third century after Christ--that is to say, long before
even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of--and perhaps
earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of
Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They
long anticipated the importing afresh of such influences by the
Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to
say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental
influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to
create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place;
the appetite for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the
half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a
considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been
composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the _trouvères_ should
fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the curiosities of
literature in its own class, they picked out a historical but not very
important episode--the siege of Gaza and Alexander's disgraceful cruelty
to its brave defender--and made of this a regular _Chanson de Geste_ (in
all but "Family" connection), the _Fuerres de Gadres_, a poem of several
thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes
squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of
Olympias, not by the God Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus
personating the God and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian
and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very
slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of
the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other
myths of the kind.

Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two
legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical
evaluation which pronounces one more important to the development of the
novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander
poems--the heroine of this part being Queen Candace--but it is slight,
episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing passions
which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the
truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting
or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are
the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say
that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have
been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous
slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the
novel.

[Sidenote: The Arthurian Legend.]

It is scarcely necessary to speak of other classical romances, and it is
of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no
form in which we have it, attempts any _strictly_ novel interest; while
though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are
not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with
which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who
each in his own speech--one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at
that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as
possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some
think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse--displayed the full
possibilities of Benoît's story. But the third "matter," the matter of
Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian
Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some
time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at
least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in
this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction--prose as well as
verse--was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the
_Chansons_, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the
Troilus story.

[Sidenote: Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.]

Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in
the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a
figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it,
there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"
figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It
is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects
strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid
passages[20] of Spenser's unequalled scene-painting in words with
musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in
stripping one part of the shore of its belongings, and hurrying them off
to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky
personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this
fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained
the same--his part of the shore has not been actually extended like part
of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and
decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian
language of another but somewhat similar passage (111. iv. 20), a "rich
strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion
entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him,
was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily
high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman
d'aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his
heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a
singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat
undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as
Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of
character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a
quite capital example of the better class of _trouvère_, far above the
_improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but
below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.

To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long
ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who
has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.

Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the
market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston
Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his
great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great
French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by
the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all
probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and
probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent
put up Chrestien's value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from
it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional
honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in
some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and principal place,
there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from
his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian
romance, and to substitute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also
to some extent, I think, independently of this immense ennoblement,
discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself,
which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite
a scholar, and so passionate a lover of Old French literature as the
elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior
gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will
and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present
historian.

Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing
to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception,
namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the
loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of
Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even
further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They
have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his
actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad,
not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvère_--as much as this,
or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of
romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval
Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and
character-analysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations
of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists
injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the titles
of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to
this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
Ursula, and like her in Memling's presentation at Bruges, sheltering in
its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and
romancers, from the author of _Aucassin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole
France.

Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of
all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty
years reading of Chrestien himself and a passion for Old French, leave
the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let
us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in
the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.

[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]

The works attributed to this very differently, though never
unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern
us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier à[22] la Charette_, _Le
Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cligès_, and a much shorter
_Guillaume d'Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror
(though the title has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical
romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.
Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of _Sir
Isumbras_. It is very doubtfully Chrestien's, and in any case very
unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician
might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal
stories than the rest of his compositions, even _Percevale_ itself. Of
these, all, except the _Charette_, deal with what may be called outliers
of the Arthurian story. _Percevale_ is the longest, but its immense
length required, by common confession, several continuators;[23] the
others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand
lines. _Cligès_ is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero,
though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople,
and the story is that of the recovery of his kingdom. _Erec_, as the
second part of the title will truly suggest, though the first may
disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson's original
_Idylls_. The _Chevalier au Lyon_ is a delightful romance of the Gawain
group, better represented by its English adaptation, _Ywain_, than any
other French example. _Percevale_ and the _Charette_ touch closest on
the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief
battlefield as to Chrestien's connection therewith, some even begging
the question to the extent of adopting for it the title _Lancelot_.

[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Chevalier à la Charette_ and the prose
_Lancelot_.]

The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory,
of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King
Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been
absent from Court in one of the lovers' quarrels) to rescue her; and of
his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the
earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart--a thing regarded, by
one of the odd[24] conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.
Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all
sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time
to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again
forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where
Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with
her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her
window. The ill chances and _quiproquos_ which result from his having
cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not
discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined
avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest,
Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.

Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not
infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by
Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in
Lancelot's way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In
the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has
refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for assistance; and on
coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help,
which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not
only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar
the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a
speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during
which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant,
might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning
scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way
through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his
bleeding hands, the circumlocutions are _plusquam_ Richardsonian--and do
not fall far short of a serious anticipation of Shakespeare's burlesque
in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. The mainly gracious description is
spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white
nightdress and mantle of scarlet and _camus_[26] on one side of the
bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain
of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain,
almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no
parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they
hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come
together vexes them so immeasurably that--what? They blame the iron work
for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding[27] and a very
creditable sense of the facts of the situation on the part of both
lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes
Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way
there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual
pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first
bar splits one of Lancelot's fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top
joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told
(though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole,
from the knight's coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150
lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate _Lancelot_."

     "And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for
     him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the
     other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they
     could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter
     yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet
     friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it
     please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she,
     "I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in
     God's name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron
     will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone
     to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly
     that no noise was made and no bar broke."

In this simple prose, sensuous and passionate for all its simplicity, is
told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in
Dr. Sommer's reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us
multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping
octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in
the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the
contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some
forty lines of the poet's watering-out. "Great was the joy that they
made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.
And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!

Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his
views, I read these two forms of the story in the valuable joint
edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may
Heaven _not_ assoil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said
then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."
Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative
work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.
Forster's edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer's of the prose, and said,
"There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been
prettified and platitudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a
possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a
thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should
have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time,
largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater
genius than Chrestien's.

This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single
particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly passage about the bars
above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous
amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose,
"May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by
thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other
way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work
like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century--nor, even in the case of
Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.

It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a
writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as
Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear
enough. He took from this or that source--his selection of the _Erec_
and _Percivale_ matters, if not also that of _Yvain_, suggests others
besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story--and
from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the _Chevalier à la
Charette_. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant etceteras, and
in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already
introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of
detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that
he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse _Roman
d'aventures_. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above,
that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic
sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given
us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" _Arthur_. In his own way
and place he is a great and an attractive figure--not least in the
history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think
him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the
author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and
almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it
was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All
external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I
have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one
likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our
business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.

[Sidenote: The constitution of the Arthuriad.]

The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is
astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not
all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in
the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a
rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he
no more knows where Godfrey de Lagny took up the _Charette_, or the
various other sequelists the _Percevale_, from Chrestien than he would
have known, without confession, the books of the _Odyssey_ done by Mr.
Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The _grand-oeuvre_
is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant
of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the
general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one
successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways
than one[28]) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion
of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Passing of Arthur, of his own
rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor
details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of
the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot's descent from King
Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur's old allies, and
both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with
the Merlin legend by Lancelot's fostering under the Lady of the
Lake;[29] the exaltation, inspiring, and, as it were, unification of
the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot's constant presence as
partaker, rescuer, and avenger;[30] the human interest given to the
Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by
his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general
characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the
whole.

Not merely the exact author or authors, but even the exact source or
sources of this complicated, fateful, and exquisite imagination are,
once more, not known. Years ago it was laid down finally by the most
competent of possible authorities (the late Sir John Rhys) that "the
love of Lancelot and Guinevere is unknown to Welsh literature."
Originals for the "greatest knight" have been sought by guesswork, by
idle play on words and names, if not also by positive forgery, in that
Breton literature which does not exist. There do exist versions of the
story in which Lancelot plays no very prominent part, and there is even
one singular version--certainly late and probably devised by a proper
moral man afraid of scandal--which makes Lancelot outlive the Queen,
quite comfortably continuing his adventurous career (this is perhaps the
"furthest" of the Unthinkable in literature), and (not, it may be owned,
quite inconsistently) hints that the connection was merely Platonic
throughout. These things are explicable, but better negligible. For my
own part I have always thought that the loves of Tristram and Iseult
(which, as has been said, were originally un-Arthurian) suggested the
main idea to the author of it, being taken together with Guinevere's
falseness with Mordred in the old quasi-chronicle, and perhaps the story
of the abduction by Melvas (Meleagraunce), which seems to be possibly a
genuine Welsh legend. There are in the Tristram-Iseult-Mark trio quite
sufficient suggestions of Lancelot-Guinevere-Arthur; while the far
higher plane on which the novice-novelist sets his lovers, and even the
very interesting subsequent exaltation of Tristram and Iseult themselves
to familiarity and to some extent equality with the other pair, has
nothing critically difficult in it.

But this idea, great and promising as it was, required further
fertilisation, and got it from another. The Graal story is (once more,
according to authority of the greatest competence, and likely if
anything to be biassed the other way) pretty certainly not Welsh in
origin, and there is no reason to think that it originally had anything
to do with Arthur. Even after it obeyed the strange "suck" of legends
towards this centre whirlpool, or Loadstone Rock, of romance, it yielded
nothing intimately connected with the Arthurian Legend itself at first,
and such connection as succeeded seems pretty certainly[31] to be that
of which Percevale is the hero, and an outlier, not an integral part.
But either the same genius (as one would fain hope) as that which
devised the profane romance of Lancelot and Guinevere, or another,
further grafted or inarched the sacred romance of the Graal and its
Quest with the already combined love-and-chivalry story. Lancelot, the
greatest of knights, and of the true blood of the Graal-guardians, ought
to accomplish the mysteries; but he cannot through sin, and that sin is
this very love for Guinevere. The Quest, in which (despite warning and
indeed previous experience) he takes part, not merely gives occasion for
adventures, half-mystical, half-chivalrous, which far exceed in
interest the earlier ones, but directly leads to the dispersion and
weakening of the Round Table. And so the whole draws together to an end
identical in part with that of the Chronicle story, but quite infinitely
improved upon it.

[Sidenote: Its approximation to the novel proper.]

Now not only is there in this the creation of the novel _in posse_, of
the romance _in esse_, but it is brought about in a curiously noteworthy
fashion. A hundred years and more later the greatest known writer of the
Middle Ages, and one of the three or four greatest of the world, defined
the subjects of poetry as Love, War, and Religion, or in words which we
may not unfairly translate by these. The earlier master recognised
(practically for the first time) that the romance--that allotropic form
(as the chemists might say) of poetry--must deal with the same. Now in
these forms of the Arthurian legend, which are certainly anterior to the
latter part of the twelfth century, there is a great deal of war and a
good deal of religion, but these motives are mostly separated from each
other, the earlier forms of the Arthur story having nothing to do with
the Graal, and the earlier forms of the Graal story--so far as we can
see--nothing, or extremely little, to do with Arthur. Nor had Love, in
any proper and passionate sense of the word, anything to do with either.
Women and marriage and breaches of marriage appear indeed; but the
earlier Graal stories are dominated by the most ascetic
virginity-worship, and the earlier Arthur-stories show absolutely
nothing of the passion which is the subject of the magnificent overture
of Mr. Swinburne's _Tristram_. Even this story of Tristram himself,
afterwards fired and coloured by passion, seems at first to have shown
nothing but the mixture of animalism, cruelty, and magic which is
characteristic of the Celts.[32] Our magician of a very different
gramarye, were he Walter or Chrestien or some third--Norman, Champenois,
Breton,[33] or Englishman (Welshman or Irishman he pretty certainly was
_not_)--had therefore before him, if not exactly dry bones, yet the
half-vivified material of a chronicle of events on the one hand and a
mystical dream-sermon on the other. He, or a French or English Pallas
for him, had to "think of another thing."

And so he called in Love to reinforce War and Religion and to do its
proper office of uniting, inspiring, and producing Humanity. He
effected, by the union of the three motives, the transformation of a
mere dull record of confused fighting into a brilliant pageant of
knightly adventure. He made the long-winded homilies and genealogies of
the earlier Graal-legend at once take colour from the amorous and
war-like adventures, raise these to a higher and more spiritual plane,
and provide the due punishment for the sins of his erring characters.
The whole story--at least all of it that he chose to touch and all that
he chose to add--became alive. The bones were clothed with flesh and
blood, the "wastable country verament" (as the dullest of the Graal
chroniclers says in a phrase that applies capitally to his own work)
blossomed with flower and fruit. Wars of Arthur with unwilling subjects
or Saxons and Romans; treachery of his wife and nephew and his own
death; miracle-history of the Holy Vessel and pedigree of its
custodians; Round Table; these and many other things had lain as mere
scraps and orts, united by no real plot, yielding no real characters,
satisfying no real interest that could not have been equally satisfied
by an actual chronicle or an actual religious-mystical discourse. And
then the whole was suddenly knit into a seamless and shimmering web of
romance, from the fancy of Uther for Igerne to the "departing of them
all" in Lyonnesse and at Amesbury and at Joyous Gard. A romance
undoubtedly, but also incidentally providing the first real novel-hero
and the first real novel-heroine in the persons of the lovers who, as in
the passage above translated, sometimes "made great joy of each other
for that they had long caused each other much sorrow," and finally
expiated in sorrow what was unlawful in their joy.

Let us pass to these persons themselves.

[Sidenote: Especially in the characters and relations of Lancelot and
Guinevere.]

The first point to note about Lancelot is the singular fashion in which
he escapes one of the dangers of the hero. Aristotle had never said that
a hero must be faultless; indeed, he had definitely said exactly the
contrary, of at least the tragic hero. But one of the worst of the many
misunderstandings of his dicta brought the wrong notion about, and
Virgil--that exquisite craftsman in verse and phrase, but otherwise,
perhaps, not great poet and very dangerous pattern--had confirmed this
notion by his deplorable figurehead. It is also fair to confess that all
except morbid tastes do like to see the hero win. But if he is to be a
hero of Rymer, not merely

    Like Paris handsome[34] and like Hector brave,

but as pious as Aeneas; "a rich fellow enough," with blood hopelessly
blue and morals spotlessly copy-bookish--in other words, a Sir Charles
Grandison--he will duly meet with the detestation and "conspuing" of the
elect. Almost the only just one of the numerous and generally silly
charges latterly brought against Tennyson's Arthurian handling is that
his conception of the blameless king does a little smack of this false
idea, does something grow to it. It is one of the chief points in which
he departed, not merely from the older stories (which he probably did
not know), but from Malory's astonishing redaction of them (which he
certainly did).

[Sidenote: Lancelot.]

But Lancelot escapes this worst of fates in the _Idylls_ themselves, and
much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though
he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he
constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and
even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And
just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his
triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from
anything approaching mawkishness,[35] his innumerable and yet
inoffensive virtues; his chastity, save in this instance, which chastity
itself, by a further stroke of art, is saved from _niaiserie_ by the
plotted adventures with Elaine; his courtesy, his mercifulness, his
wonderfully early notion of a gentleman (_v. inf._), his invariable
disregard of self, and yet his equally invariable naturalness. Pious
Aeneas had not the least objection to bringing about the death of Dido,
as he might have known he was doing (unless he was as great a fool as he
is a prig); and he is probably never more disgusting or Pecksniffian
than when he looks back on the flames of Dido's pyre and is really
afraid that something unpleasant must have happened, though he can't
think what the matter can be. But _he_, one feels sure, would never have
lifted up his hand against a woman, unless she had richly deserved it on
the strictest patriotic scores, as in the case of Helen, when his mamma
fortunately interfered. On the other hand, Lancelot was "of the Asra who
die when they love" and love till they die--nay, who would die if they
did not love. But it is certain (for there is a very nice miniature of
it reproduced from the MS. in M. Paulin Paris's abstract) that, for a
moment, he drew his sword on Elaine to punish the deceit which made him
unwittingly false to Guinevere. It is very shocking, no doubt, but
exceedingly natural; and of course he did not kill or even (like
Philaster) wound her, though nobody interfered to prevent him. Many of
the incidents which bring out his character are well known to moderns by
poem and picture, though others, as well worth knowing, are not. But the
human contrasts of success and failure, of merit and sin, have never, I
think, been quite brought out, and to bring them out completely here
would take too much room. We may perhaps leave this other--quite
other--"_First_ Gentleman in Europe" with the remark that Chrestien de
Troyes gives only one side of him, and therefore does not give him at
all. The Lancelot of board and bower, of travel and tournament, he does
very fairly. But of the Lancelot of the woods and the hermitage, of the
dream at the foot of the cross, of the mystic voyage and the just
failing (if failing) effort of Carbonek, he gives, because he knows,
nothing.

[Sidenote: Guinevere.]

Completed as he was, no matter for the moment by whom, he is thus the
first hero of romance and nearly the greatest; but his lady is worthy of
him, and she is almost more original as an individual. It is true that
she is not the first heroine, as he is, if not altogether, almost the
first hero. Helen was that, though very imperfectly revealed and
gingerly handled. Calypso (hardly Circe) _might_ have been. Medea is
perhaps nearer still, especially in Apollonius. But the Greek romancers
were the first who had really busied themselves with the heroine: they
took her up seriously and gave her a considerable position. But they did
not succeed in giving her much character. The naughty _not_-heroine of
Achilles Tatius, though she has less than none in Mr. Pope's supposed
innuendo sense, alone has an approach to some in the other. As for the
accomplished Guinevere's probable contemporary, the Ismene or Hysmine of
Eustathius Macrembolites (_v. sup._ p. 18), she is a sort of
Greek-mediaeval Henrietta Temple, with Mr. Meredith and Mr. Disraeli by
turns holding the pen, though with neither of them supplying the brains.
But Guinevere is a very different person; or rather, she _is_ a person,
and the first. To appreciate her she must be compared with herself in
earlier presentations, and then considered fully as she appears in the
Vulgate--for Malory, though he has given much, has not given the whole
of her, and Tennyson has painted only the last panel of the polyptych
wholly, and has rather over-coloured that.[36]

In what we may call the earliest representations of her, she has hardly
any colour at all. She is a noble Roman lady, and very beautiful. For a
time she is apparently very happy with her husband, and he with her; and
if she seems to make not the slightest scruple about "taking up with"
her nephew, co-regent and fellow rebel, why, noble Roman ladies thought
nothing of divorce and not much of adultery. The only old Welsh story
(the famous Melvas one so often referred to) that we have about her in
much detail merely establishes the fact, pleasantly formulated by M.
Paulin Paris, that she was "très sujette à être enlevée," but in itself
(unless we admit the Peacockian triad of the "Three Fatal Slaps of the
Isle of Britain" as evidence) again says nothing about her character.
If, as seems probable if not certain, the _Launfal_ legend, with its
libel on her, is of Breton origin, it makes her an ordinary Celtic
princess, a spiritual sister of Iseult when she tried to kill Brengwain,
and a cross between Potiphar's wife and Catherine of Russia, without any
of the good nature and "gentlemanliness" of the last named. The real
Guinevere, the Guinevere of the Vulgate and partly of Malory, is freed
from the colourlessness and the discreditable end of Geoffrey's queen,
transforms the promiscuous and rather _louche_ Melvas incident into an
important episode of her epic or romantic existence, and gives the lie,
even in her least creditable or least charming moments, to the _Launfal_
libel. As before in Lancelot's case, details of her presentation had in
some cases best be either translated in full or omitted, but I cannot
refuse myself the pleasure of attempting, with however clumsy a hand, a
portrait of our, as I believe, English Helen, who gave in French
language to French, and not only French literature, the pattern of a
heroine.

There is not, I think, any ancient authority for the rather commonplace
suggestion, unwisely adopted by Tennyson, that Guinevere fell in love
with Lancelot when he was sent as an ambassador to fetch her; thus
merely repeating Iseult and Tristram, and anticipating Suffolk and
Margaret. In fact, according to the best evidence, Lancelot could not
have been old enough, if he was even born. On the contrary, nothing
could be better than the presentation of her introduction to Arthur and
the course of the wooing in the Vulgate--the other "blessed original."
She first sees Arthur as a foe from the walls of besieged Carmelide, and
admires his valour; she has further occasion to admire it when, as a
friend, he rescues her father, showing himself, as what he really was in
his youth, his own best knight. The pair are genuinely in love with each
other, and the betrothal and parting for fresh fight are the most
gracious passages of the _Merlin_ book, except the better version (_v.
sup._) of the love of Merlin himself and the afterwards libelled
Viviane. Anyhow, she was married because she fell in love with him, and
there is no evidence to show that she and Arthur lived otherwise than
happily together. But, if all tales were true, she had no reason to
regard him as a very faithful husband or a blameless man. She may not
have known (for nobody but Merlin apparently did know) the early and
unwitting incest of the King and his half-sister Margause; but the
extreme ease with which he adopted her own treacherous foster-sister,
the "false Guinevere," and his proceedings with the Saxon enchantress
Camilla, were very strong "sets off" to her own conduct. Also she had a
most disagreeable[37] sister-in-law in Morgane-la-Fée. These are not in
the least offered as excuses, but merely as "lights." Indeed Guinevere
never seems to have hated or disliked her husband, though he often gave
her cause; and if, until the great repentance, she thought more lightly
of "spouse-breach" than Lancelot did, that is not uncharacteristic of
women.[38] In fact, she is a very perfect (not of course in the moral
sense) gentlewoman. She is at once popular with the knights, and loses
that popularity rather by Lancelot's fault than by her own, while
Gawain, who remains faithful to her to the bitter end, or at least till
the luckless slaughter of his brethren, declares at the beginning that
she is the fairest and most gracious, and will be the wisest and best of
queens. She shows something very like humour in the famous and fateful
remark (uttered, it would seem, without the slightest ill or double
meaning at the time) as to Gawain's estimate of Lancelot.[39] She seems
to have had an agreeable petulance (notice, for instance, the rebuke of
Kay at the opening of the _Ywain_ story and elsewhere), which sometimes,
as it naturally would, rises to passionate injustice, as Lancelot
frequently discovered. She is, in fact, always passionate in one or
other sense of that great and terrible and infinite[40] word, but never
tragedy-queenish or vixenish. She falls in love with Lancelot because he
falls in love with her, and because she cannot help it. False as she is
to husband and to lover, to her court and her country,[41] it can hardly
be said that any act of hers, except the love itself and its
irresistible consequences, is faulty. She is not capricious,
extravagant, or tyrannical; in her very jealousy she is not cruel or
revengeful (the original Iseult would certainly have had Elaine poisoned
or poniarded, for which there was ample opportunity). If she torments
her lover, that is because she loves him. If she is unjust to him, that
is because she is a woman. Her last speech to Lancelot after the
catastrophe--Tennyson should have, as has been said, paraphrased this as
he paraphrased the passing of her husband, and from the same texts, and
we should then have had another of the greatest things of English
poetry--shows a noble nature with the [Greek: hamartia] present, but
repented in a strange and great mixture of classical and Christian
tragedy. There is little told in a trustworthy fashion about her
personal appearance. But if Glastonbury traditions about her bones be
true, she was certainly (again like Helen) "divinely tall." And if the
suggestions of Hawker's "Queen Gwennyvar's Round"[42] in the sea round
Tintagel be worked out a little, it will follow that her eyes were
divinely blue.

[Sidenote: Some minor points.]

When such very high praise is given to the position of the (further)
accomplished Arthur-story, it is of course not intended to bestow that
praise on any particular MS. or printed version that exists. It is in
the highest degree improbable that, whether the original magician was
Map, or Chrestien, or anybody else (to repeat a useful formula), we
possess an exact and exclusive copy of the form into which he himself threw
the story. Independently of the fact that no MS., verse or prose, of anything
like the complete story seems old enough, independently of the enormous and
almost innumerable separable accretions, the so-called Vulgate cycle of
"_Graal-Merlin-Arthur-Lancelot-Graal-Quest-Arthur's-Death_" has
considerable variants--the most important and remarkable of which by far
is the large alteration or sequel of the "Vulgate" _Merlin_ which Malory
preferred. In the "Vulgate" itself, too, there are things which were
certainly written either by the great contriver in nodding moods, or by
somebody else,--in fact no one can hope to understand mediaeval
literature who forgets that no mediaeval writer could ever "let a thing
alone": he simply _must_ add or shorten, paraphrase or alter. I rather
doubt whether the Great Unknown himself meant _both_ the amours of
Arthur with Camilla and the complete episode of the false Guinevere to
stand side by side. The first is (as such justifications go) a
sufficient justification of Guinevere by itself; and the conduct of
Arthur in the second is such a combination of folly, cruelty, and all
sorts of despicable behaviour that it overdoes the thing. So, too,
Lancelot's "abscondences," with or without madness, are too many and too
prolonged.[43] The long and totally uninteresting campaign against
Claudas, during the greater part of which Lancelot (who is most of all
concerned) is absent, and in which he takes no part or interest when
present, is another great blot. Some of these things, but not all,
Malory remedied by omission.

To sum up, and even repeat a little, in speaking so highly of this
development--French beyond all doubt as a part of literature, whatever
the nationality, domicile, and temper of the person or persons who
brought it about--I do not desire more to emphasise what I believe to be
a great and not too well appreciated truth than to guard against that
exaggeration which dogs and discredits literary criticism. Of course no
single redaction of the legend in the late twelfth or earliest
thirteenth century contains the story, the whole story, and nothing but
the story as I have just outlined it. Of course the words used do not
apply fully to Malory's English redaction of three centuries later--work
of genius as this appears to me to be. Yet further, I should be fully
disposed to allow that it is only by reading the _posse_ into the
_esse_, under the guidance of later developments of the novel itself,
that the estimate which I have given can be entirely justified. But this
process seems to me to be perfectly legitimate, and to be, in fact, the
only process capable of giving us literary-historical criticism that is
worth having. The writer or writers, known or unknown, whose work we
have been discussing, have got the plot, have got the characters, have
got the narrative faculty required for a complete novel-romance. If they
do not quite know what to do with these things it is only because the
time is not yet. But how much they did, and of how much more they
foreshadowed the doing, the extracts following should show better than
any "talk about it."

     [_Lancelot, still under the tutelage of the Lady of the Lake
     and ignorant of his own parentage, has met his cousins,
     Lionel and Bors, and has been greatly drawn to them._]

     [Sidenote: Illustrative extracts translated from the
     "Vulgate." The youth of Lancelot.]

     Now turns herself the Lady back to the Lake, and takes the
     children with her. And when she had gone[44] a good way, she
     called Lancelot a little way off the road and said to him
     very kindly, "King's son,[45] how wast thou so bold as to
     call Lionel thy cousin? for he _is_ a king's son, and of not
     a little more worth and gentry than men think." "Lady," said
     he, who was right ashamed, "so came the word into my mouth
     by adventure that I never took any heed of it." "Now tell
     me," said she, "by the faith thou owest me, which thinkest
     thou to be the greater gentleman, thyself or him?" "Lady,"
     said he, "you have adjured me strongly, for I owe no one
     such faith as I owe you, my lady and my mother: nor know I
     how much of a gentleman I am by lineage. But, by the faith I
     owe you, I would not myself deign to be abashed at that for
     which I saw him weep.[46] And they have told me that all men
     have sprung from one man and one woman: nor know I for what
     reason one has more gentry than another, unless he win it by
     prowess, even as lands and other honours. But know you for
     very truth that if greatness of heart made a gentleman I
     would think yet to be one of the greatest." "Verily, fair
     son," said the Lady, "it shall appear. And I say to you that
     you lose nothing of being one of the best gentlemen in the
     world, if your heart fail you not." "How, Lady!" said he,
     "say you this truly, _as_ my lady?" And she said, "Yes,
     without fail." "Lady," said he, "blessed be you of God, that
     you said it to me so soon [_or_ as soon as you have said
     it]. For to that will you make me come which I never thought
     to attain. Nor had I so much desire of anything as of
     possessing gentry."

     [_The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere. The Lady of
     the Lake has prevailed upon the King to dub Lancelot on St.
     John's Day (Midsummer, not Christmas). His protectress
     departing, he is committed to the care of Ywain, and a
     conversation arises about him. The Queen asks to see him._]

     [Sidenote: The first meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere.]

     Then bid he [the King] Monseigneur[47] Ywain that he should
     go and look for Lancelot. "And let him be equipped as
     handsomely as you know is proper: for well know I that he
     has plenty." Then the King himself told the Queen how the
     Lady of the Lake had requested that he would not make
     Lancelot knight save in his own arms and dress. And the
     Queen marvelled much at this, and thought long till she saw
     him. So Messire Ywain went to the Childe [_vallet_] and had
     him clothed and equipped in the best way he could: and when
     he saw that nothing could be bettered, he led him to Court
     on his own horse, which was right fair. But he brought him
     not quietly. For there was so much people about that the
     whole street was full: and the news was spread through all
     the town that the fair Childe who came yester eve should be
     a knight to-morrow, and was now coming to Court in knightly
     garb. Then sprang to the windows they of the town, both men
     and women. And when they saw him pass they said that never
     had they seen so fair a Childe-knight. So he came to the
     Court and alighted from his horse: and the news of him
     spread through hall and chamber; and knights and dames and
     damsels hurried forth. And even the King and the Queen went
     to the windows. So when the Childe had dismounted, Messire
     Ywain took him by the hand, and led him by it up to the
     Hall.

     The King and the Queen came to meet him: and both took him
     by his two hands and went to seat themselves on a couch:
     while the Childe seated himself before them on the fresh
     green grass with which the Hall was spread. And the King
     gazed on him right willingly: for if he had seemed fair at
     his first coming, it was nothing to the beauty that he now
     had. And the King thought he had mightily grown in stature
     and thews.[48] So the Queen prayed that God might make him a
     man of worth, "for right plenty of beauty has He given him,"
     and she looked at the Childe very sweetly: and so did he at
     her as often as he could covertly direct his eyes towards
     her. Also marvelled he much how such great beauty as he saw
     appear in her could come: for neither that of his lady, the
     Lady of the Lake, nor of any woman that he had ever seen,
     did he prize aught as compared with hers. And no wrong had
     he if he valued no other lady against the Queen: for she was
     the Lady of Ladies and the Fountain of Beauty. But if he had
     known the great worthiness that was in her he would have
     been still more fain to gaze on her. For none, neither poor
     nor rich, was her equal.

     So she asked Monseigneur Ywain what was the Childe's name,
     and he answered that he knew not. "And know you," said she,
     "whose son he is and of what birth?" "Lady," said he, "nay,
     except I know so much as that he is of the land of Gaul. For
     his speech bewrayeth him."[49] Then the Queen took him by
     the hand and asked him of whom he came. And when he felt it
     [the touch] he shuddered as though roused from sleep, and
     thought of her so hard that he knew not what she said to
     him. And she perceived that he was much abashed, and so
     asked him a second time, "Tell me whence you come." So he
     looked at her very sheepishly and said, with a sigh, that he
     knew not. And she asked him what was his name; and he
     answered that he knew not that. So now the Queen saw well
     that he was abashed and _overthought_.[50] But she dared not
     think that it was for her: and nevertheless she had some
     suspicion of it, and so dropped the talk. But that she might
     not make the disorder of his mind worse, she rose from her
     seat and, in order that no one might think any evil or
     perceive what she suspected, said that the Childe seemed to
     her not very wise, and whether wise or not had been ill
     brought up. "Lady," said Messire Ywain, "between you and me,
     we know nothing about him: and perchance he is forbidden[51]
     to tell his name or who he is." And she said, "It may well
     be so," but she said it so low that the Childe heard her
     not.

     [_Here follows (with a very little surplusage removed
     perhaps) the scene which Dante has made world-famous, but
     which Malory (I think for reasons) has "cut." I trust it is
     neither Philistinism nor perversity which makes me think of
     it a little, though only a little, less highly than some
     have done. There is (and after all this makes it all the
     more interesting for us historians) the least little bit of
     anticipation of_ Marivaudage _about it, and less of the
     adorable simplicity such as that (a little subsequent to the
     last extract given) where Lancelot, having forgotten to take
     leave of the Queen on going to his first adventure, and
     having returned to do so, kneels to her, receives her hand
     to raise him from the ground, "and much was his joy to feel
     it bare in his." But the beauty of what follows is
     incontestable, and that Guinevere was "exceeding wise in
     love" is certain._]

     [Sidenote: The scene of the kiss.]

     "Ha!" said she then, "I know who you are--Lancelot of the
     Lake is your name." And he was silent. "They know it at
     court," said she, "this sometime. Messire Gawain was the
     first to bring your name there...." Then she asked him why
     he had allowed the worst man in the world to lead him by
     the bridle. "Lady," said he, "as one who had command neither
     of his heart nor of his body." "Now tell me," said she,
     "were you at last year's assembly?" "Yes, Lady," said he.
     "And what arms did you bear?" "Lady, they were all of
     vermilion." "By my head," said she, "you say true. And why
     did you do such deeds at the meeting the day before
     yesterday?" Then he began to sigh very very deeply. And the
     Queen cut him short as well, knowing how it was with him.

     "Tell me," she said, "plainly, how it is. I will never
     betray you. But I know that you did it for some lady. Now,
     tell me, by the faith you owe me, who she is." "Ah, Lady,"
     said he, "I see well that it behoves me to speak. Lady, it
     is you." "I!" said she. "It was not for me you took the
     spears that my maiden brought you. For I took care to put
     myself out of the commission." "Lady," said he, "I did for
     others what I ought, and for you what I could." "Tell me,
     then, for whom have you done all the things that you _have_
     done?" "Lady," said he, "for you." "How," said she, "do you
     love me so much?" "So much, Lady, as I love neither myself
     nor any other." "And since when have you loved me thus?"
     "Since the hour when I was called knight and yet was not
     one."[52] "Then, by the faith you owe me, whence came this
     love that you have set upon me?" Now as the Queen said these
     words it happened that the Lady of the Puy of Malahault[53]
     coughed on purpose, and lifted her head, which she had held
     down. And he understood her now, having oft heard her
     before: and looked at her and knew her, and felt in his
     heart such fear and anguish that he could not answer the
     Queen. Then began he to sigh right deeply, and the tears
     fell from his eyes so thick, that the garment he wore was
     wet to the knees. And the more he looked at the Lady of
     Malahault the more ill at ease was his heart. Now the Queen
     noticed this and saw that he looked sadly towards the place
     where her ladies were, and she reasoned with him. "Tell me,"
     she said, "whence comes this love that I am asking you
     about?" and he tried as hard as he could to speak, and said,
     "Lady, from the time I have said." "How?" "Lady, you did it,
     when you made me your friend, if your mouth lied not." "My
     friend?" she said; "and how?" "I came before you when I had
     taken leave of my Lord the King all armed except my head and
     my hands. And then I commended you to God, and said that,
     wherever I was, I was your knight: and you said that you
     would have me to be your knight and your friend. And then I
     said, 'Adieu, Lady,' and you said, 'Adieu, fair sweet
     friend.' And never has that word left my heart, and it is
     that word that has made me a good knight and valiant--if I
     be so: nor ever have I been so ill-bested as not to remember
     that word. That word comforts me in all my annoys. That word
     has kept me from all harm, and freed me from all peril, and
     fills me whenever I hunger. Never have I been so poor but
     that word has made me rich." "By my faith," said the Queen,
     "that word was spoken in a good hour, and God be praised
     when He made me speak it. Still, I did not set it as high as
     you did: and to many a knight have I said it, when I gave no
     more thought to the saying. But _your_ thought was no base
     one, but gentle and debonair; wherefore joy has come to you
     of it, and it has made you a good knight. Yet, nevertheless,
     this way is not that of knights who make great matter to
     many a lady of many a thing which they have little at heart.
     And your seeming shows me that you love one or other of
     these ladies better than you love me. For you wept for fear
     and dared not look straight at them: so that I well see that
     your thought is not so much of me as you pretend. So, by the
     faith you owe the thing you love best in the world, tell me
     which one of the three you love so much?" "Ah! Lady," said
     he, "for the mercy of God, as God shall keep me, never had
     one of them my heart in her keeping." "This will not do,"
     said the Queen, "you cannot dissemble. For many another such
     thing have I seen, and I know that your heart is there as
     surely as your body is here." And this she said that she
     might well see how she might put him ill at ease. For she
     thought surely enough that he meant no love save to her, or
     ill would it have gone on the day of the Black Arms.[54] And
     she took a keen delight in seeing and considering his
     discomfort. But he was in such anguish that he wanted little
     of swooning, save that fear of the ladies before him kept
     him back. And the Queen herself perceived it at the sight of
     his changes of colour, and caught him by the shoulder that
     he might not fall, and called to Galahault. Then the prince
     sprang forward and ran to his friend, and saw that he was
     disturbed thus, and had great pain in his own heart for it,
     and said, "Ah, Lady! tell me, for God's sake, what has
     happened." And the Queen told him the conversation. "Ah,
     Lady!" said Galahault, "mercy, for God's sake, or you may
     lose me him by such wrath, and it would be too great pity."
     "Certes," said she, "that is true. But know you why he has
     done such feats of arms?" "Nay, surely, Lady," said he.
     "Sir," said she, "if what he tells me is true, it was for
     me." "Lady," said he, "as God shall keep me, I can believe
     it. For just as he is more valiant than other men, so is
     his heart truer than all theirs." "Verily," said she, "you
     would say well that he is valiant if you knew what deeds he
     has done since he was made knight," and then she told him
     all the chivalry of Lancelot ... and how he had done it all
     for a single word of hers [_Galahault tells her more, and
     begs mercy for L._]. "He could ask me nothing," sighed she,
     "that I could fairly refuse him, but he will ask me nothing
     at all."... "Lady," said Galahault, "certainly he has no
     power to do so. For one loves nothing that one does not
     fear." [_And then comes the immortal kiss, asked by the
     Prince, delayed a moment by the Queen's demur as to time and
     place, brought on by the "Galeotto"-speech._ "Let us three
     corner close together as if we were talking secrets,"
     _vouchsafed by Guinevere in the words_, "Why should I make
     me longer prayer for what I wish more than you or he?"
     _Lancelot still hangs back, but the Queen_ "takes him by the
     chin and kisses him before Galahault with a kiss long
     enough" so that the Lady of Malahault knows it.] And then
     said the Queen, who was a right wise and gracious lady,
     "Fair sweet friend, so much have you done that I am yours,
     and right great joy have I thereof. Now see to it that the
     thing be kept secret, as it should be. For I am one of the
     ladies of the world who have the fairest fame, and if my
     praise grew worse through you, then it would be a foul and
     shameful thing."

[Sidenote: Some further remarks on the novel character of the story.]

A little more comment on this cento, and especially on the central
passage of it, can hardly be, and ought certainly not to be, avoided in
such a work as this, even if, like most summaries, it be something of a
repetition. It must surely be obvious to any careful reader that here is
something much more than--unless his reading has been as wide elsewhere
as it is careful here--he expected from Romance in the commoner and
half-contemptuous acceptation of that word. Lancelot he may, though he
should not, still class as a mere _amoureux transi_--a nobler and
pluckier Silvius in an earlier _As Yon Like It_, and with a greater than
Phoebe for idol. Malory ought to be enough to set him right there: he
need even not go much beyond Tennyson, who has comprehended Lancelot
pretty correctly, if not indeed pretty adequately. But Malory has left
out a great deal of the information which would have enabled his
readers to comprehend Guinevere; and Tennyson, only presenting her in
parts, has allowed those parts, especially the final and only full
presentation, great as it is, to be too much influenced by his certainly
unfortunate other presentation of Arthur as a blameless king.

I do not say that the actual creator of the Vulgate Guinevere, whoever
he was, has wrought her into a novel-character of the first class. It
would have been not merely a miracle (for miracles often happen), but
something more, if he had. If you could take Beatrix Esmond at a better
time, Argemone Lavington raised to a higher power, and the spirit of all
that is best and strongest and least purely paradoxical in Meredith's
heroines, and work these three graces into one woman, adding the passion
of Tennyson's own Fatima and the queenliness of Helen herself, it might
be something like the achieved Guinevere who is still left to the
reader's imagination to achieve. But the Unknown has given the hints of
all this; and curiously enough it is only of _English_ novel-heroines
that I can think in comparison and continuation of her. This book, if it
is ever finished, will show, I hope, some knowledge of French ones: I
can remember none possessing any touch of Guineveresque quality. Dante,
if his poetic nature had taken a different bent, and Shakespeare, if he
had only chosen, could have been her portrayers singly; no others that I
can think of, and certainly no Frenchman.

[Sidenote: And the personages.]

But here Guinevere's creator or expounder has done more for her than
merely indicate her charm. Her "fear for name and fame" is not exactly
"crescent"--it is there from the first, and seems to have nothing either
cowardly or merely selfish in it, but only that really "last infirmity
of noble minds," the shame of shame even in doing things shameful or
shameless. I have seldom seen justice done to her magnificent
fearlessness in all her dangers. Her graciousness as a Queen has been
more generally admitted, but, once again, the composition and complexity
of her fits of jealousy have never, I think, been fully rationalised.
Here, once more, we must take into account that difference of age which
is so important. _He_ thinks nothing of it; _she_ never forgets it. And
in almost all the circumstances where this rankling kindles into
wrath--whether with no cause at all, as in most cases, or with cause
more apparent than real, as in the Elaine business--study of particulars
will show how easily they might be wrought out into the great character
scenes of which they already contain the suggestion. _This_ Guinevere
would never have "taken up" (to use purposely a vulgar phrase for what
would have been a vulgar thing) with Mordred,[55] either for himself or
for the kingdom that he was trying to steal. And I am bound to say again
that much as I have read of purely French romance--that is to say,
French not merely in language but in certain origin--I know nothing and
nobody like her in it.

That Guinevere, like Charlotte, was "a married lady," that, unlike
Charlotte, she forgot the fact, and that Lancelot, though somewhat
Wertheresque in some of his features, was not quite so "moral" as that
very dull young man, are facts which I wish neither to suppress nor to
dwell upon. We may cry "Agreed" here to the indictment, and all its
consequences. They are not the question.

The question is the suggesting of novel-romance elements which forms the
aesthetic solace of this ethical sin. It should be seen at once that the
Guinevere of the Vulgate, and her fault or fate, provide a character and
career of no small complexity. It has been already said that to
represent her as after a fashion intercepted by love for Lancelot on her
way to Arthur, like Iseult of Ireland or Margaret of Anjou, is, so to
speak, as unhistorical as it is insufficiently artistic. We cannot,
indeed, borrow Diderot's speech to Rousseau and say, "C'est le pont aux
ânes," but it certainly would not have been the way of the Walter whom I
favour, though I think it might have been the way of the Chrestien that
I know. Guinevere, when she meets her lover, rescuer, and doomsman, is
no longer a girl, and Lancelot is almost a boy. It is not, in the common
and cheap misuse of the term, the most "romantic" arrangement, but some
not imperfect in love-lore have held that a woman's love is never so
strong as when she is past girlhood and well approaching age, and that
man's is never stronger than when he is just not a boy. Lancelot himself
has loved no woman (except his quasi-mother, the Lady of the Lake), and
will love none after he has fulfilled the Dead Shepherd's "saw of
might." She _has_ loved; dispute this and you not only cancel gracious
scenes of the text, but spoil the story; but she has, though probably
she does not yet know it, ceased to love,[56] and not without some
reason. To say no more about Arthur's technical "blamelessness," he has,
by the coming of Lancelot, ceased to be altogether heroic. Though never
a mere petulant and ferocious dotard as the _Chansons_ too often
represent Charlemagne, he is very far from being a wise ruler or even
baron. He makes rash promises and vows, accepts charges on very slight
evidence, and seems to have his knights by no means "in hand." So, too,
though never a coward or weakling, he seems pretty nearly to have lost
the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of
Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his
sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct
to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable
and legitimate to the critic, as a foundation for novel-character.

Her lover may look less promising, at least at the moment of
presentation; and indeed it is true that while "la donna è _im_mobile,"
in essentials and possibilities alike, forms of man, though never losing
reality and possibility, pass at times out of possible or at least easy
recognition. Anybody who sees in the Lancelot of the foregoing scene
only a hobbledehoy and milksop who happens to have a big chest, strong
arms, and plenty of mere fighting spirit, will never grasp him. Hardly
better off will be he who takes him--as the story _does_ give some
handles for taking him--to be merely one of the too common examples of
humanity who sin and repent, repent and sin, with a sort of
Americanesque notion of spending dollars in this world and laying them
up in another. Malory has on the whole done more justice to the
possibilities of the Vulgate Lancelot than he has to Guinevere, and
Tennyson has here improved on Malory. He has, indeed, very nearly "got"
Lancelot, but not quite. To get him wholly would have required Tennyson
for form and Browning for analysis of character; while even this
_mistura mirabilis_ would have been improved for the purpose by touches
not merely of Morris and Swinburne, but of lesser men like Kingsley and
even George Macdonald. To understand Lancelot you must previously
understand, or by some kind of intuition divine, the mystical element
which his descent from the Graal-Wardens confers; the essential or
quintessential chivalric quality which his successive creators agreed in
imparting to him; the all-conquering gift so strangely tempered by an
entire freedom from the boasting and the rudeness of the _chanson_ hero;
the actual checks and disasters which his cross stars bring on him; his
utter loyalty in all things save one to the king; and last and mightiest
of all, his unquenchable and unchangeable passion for the Queen.

Hence what they said to him in one of his early adventures, with no
great ill following, "Fair Knight, thou art unhappy," was always true in
a higher sense. He may have been Lord of Joyous Gard, in title and fact;
but his own heart was always a Garde Douloureuse--a _cor
luctificabile_--pillowed on idle triumphs and fearful hopes and
poisoned satisfactions, and bafflements where he would most fain have
succeeded. He has almost had to have the first kiss forced on him; he is
refused the last on grounds of which he himself cannot deny the
validity. Guinevere is a tragic figure in the truest and deepest sense
of the term, and, as we have tried to show, she is amply complex in
character and temperament. But it is questionable whether Lancelot is
not more tragic and more complex still.

[Sidenote: Books.]

It may perhaps without impropriety be repeated that these are not mere
fancies of the writer, but things reasonably suggested by and solidly
based upon "the French books," when these later are collated and, so to
speak, "checked" by Malory and the romances of adventure branching off
from them. But Arthur and Guinevere and Lancelot by no means exhaust the
material for advanced and complicated novel-work--in character as well
as incident--provided by the older forms of the Legend. There is Gawain,
who has to be put together from the sort of first draft of Lancelot
which he shows in the earlier versions, and the light-o'-love opposite
which he becomes in the later, a contrast continued in the Amadis and
Galaor figures of the Spanish romances and their descendants. There is
the already glanced at group of Arthur's sisters or half-sisters, left
mere sketches and hints, but most interesting. Not to be tedious, we
need not dwell on Palomides, a very promising Lancelot unloved; on
Lamoracke, left provokingly obscure, but shadowing a most important
possibility in the unwritten romance of one of those very sisters; Bors,
of whom Tennyson has made something, but not enough, in the later
_Idylls_; and others. But it is probably unnecessary to carry the
discussion of this matter further. It has been discussed and illustrated
at some length, because it shows how early the elements, not merely of
romance but of the novel in the fullest sense, existed in French
literature.

     [_Here follows the noble passage above referred to between
     Lancelot and King Bagdemagus after the death of
     Meleagraunce, whose cousin Lancelot has just slain in
     single combat for charging him with treason. He has kept his
     helm on, but doffs it at the King's request._]

And when the King saw him he ran to kiss him, and began to make such joy
of him as none could overgo. But Lancelot said, "Ah, Sir! for God's
sake, make no joy or feast for me. Certainly you should make none, for
if you knew the evil I have done you, you would hate me above all men in
the world." "Oh! Lancelot," said he, "tell it me not, for I
understand[57] too well what you would say; but I will know[57] nothing
of it, because it might be such a thing" as would part them for ever.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The subdivision of the _gestes_ does not matter: they were all
connected closely or loosely--except the Crusading section, and even
that falls under the Christian _v._ Saracen grouping if not under the
Carlovingian. The real "outside" members are few, late, and in almost
every case unimportant.

[15] There are comic _episodes_ elsewhere; but almost the whole of this
poem turns on the _gabz_ or burlesque boasts of the paladins.--It may be
wise here to anticipate an objection which may be taken to these remarks
on the _chansons_. I have been asked whether I know M. Bédier's handling
of them; and, by an odd coincidence, within a few hours of the question
I saw an American statement that this excellent scholar's researches
"have revised our conceptions" of the matter. No one can exceed me in
respect for perhaps the foremost of recent scholars in Old French. But
my "conception" of the _chansons_ was formed long before he wrote, not
from that of any of his predecessors, but from the _chansons_
themselves. It is therefore not subject to "revisal" except from my own
re-reading, and such re-reading has only confirmed it.

[16] It is not of course intended to be preferred to the far more widely
known tale in which the heroine bears the same name, and which will be
mentioned below. But if it is less beautiful such beauty as it has is
free from the slightest _morbidezza_.

[17] And to this introduction our dealings with it here may be confined.
The accounts of the siege itself are of much less interest, especially
in connection with our special subject.

[18] A sort of companion handbook to the first part of this volume will
be found in the present writer's sketch of twelfth and thirteenth
century European literature, under the title of _The Flourishing of
Romance and the Rise of Allegory_, in Messrs. Blackwood's _Periods of
European Literature_ (Edinburgh and London, 1897), and another in his
_Short History of French Literature_ (Oxford, 7th ed. at press).

[19] It is scarcely rash to say that Cressid is the first representative
of this dread and delightful entity, and the ancestress of all its
embodiments since in fiction, as Cleopatra seems to have been in
history. No doubt "it" was of the beginning, but it lacked its _vates_.
Helen was different.

[20] _Faerie Queene_, v. iv. 1-20.

[21] I hope I may be allowed to emphasise the disclaimer, which I have
already made more than once elsewhere, of the very slightest disrespect
to this admirable scholar. The presumption and folly of such disrespect
would be only inferior to its ingratitude, for the indulgence with which
M. Paris consistently treated my own somewhat rash adventures in Old
French was extraordinary. But as one's word is one's word so one's
opinion is one's opinion.

[22] Sometimes _de_, but _à_ seems more analogical.

[23] Chrestien was rather like Chaucer in being apt not to finish. Even
the _Charette_ owes its completion (in an extent not exactly
determinable) to a certain Godfrey de Lagny (Laigny, etc.).

[24] Of course it is easy enough to assign explanations of it, from the
vehicle of criminals to the scaffold downwards; but it remains a
convention--very much of the same kind as that which ordains (or used to
ordain) that a gentleman may not carry a parcel done up in newspaper,
though no other form of wrapping really stains his honour.

[25] Neither he nor Malory gives one of the most gracious parts of
it--the interview between Lancelot and King Bagdemagus, _v. inf._ p. 54.

[26] Material (chamois skin)? or garment? Not common in O.F., I think,
for _camisia_; but Spenser (_Faerie Queene_, II. iii. xxvi.) has (as
Prof. Gregory Smith reminds me) "a silken _camus_ lilly whight."

[27] As does Pyramus's--or Bottom's--objection to the wall.

[28] This part of the matter has received too little attention in modern
studies of the subject: partly because it was clumsily handled by some
of the probably innumerable and certainly undiscoverable meddlers with
the Vulgate. The unpopularity of Lancelot and his kin is not due merely
to his invincibility and their not always discreet partisanship. The
older "Queen's knights" must have naturally felt her devotion to him;
his "undependableness"--in consequence not merely of his fits of madness
but of his chivalrously permissible but very inconvenient habit of
disguising himself and taking the other side--must have annoyed the
whole Table. Yet these very things, properly managed, help to create and
complicate the "novel" character. For one of the most commonly and not
the least justly charged faults of the average romance is its deficiency
in combined plot and character-interest--the presence in it, at most, of
a not too well-jointed series of episodes, possibly leading to a death
or a marriage, but of little more than chronicle type. This fault has
been exaggerated, but it exists. Now it will be one main purpose of the
pages which follow to show that there is, in the completed Arthuriad,
something quite different from and far beyond this--something perhaps
imperfectly realised by any one writer, and overlaid and disarranged by
the interpolations or misinterpretations of others, but still a "mind"
at work that keeps the "mass" alive, and may, or rather surely will,
quicken it yet further and into higher forms hereafter. (Those who know
will not, I hope, be insulted if I mention for the benefit of those who
do not, that the term "Vulgate" is applied to those forms of the parts
of the story which, with slighter or more important variations, are
common to many MSS. The term itself is most specially applied to the
_Lancelot_ which, in consequence of this popularity throughout the later
Middle Ages, actually got itself printed early in the French
Renaissance. The whole has been (or is being) at last most fortunately
reprinted by Dr. Sommer. See Bibliography.)

[29] This is another point which, not, I suppose, having been clearly
and completely evolved by the first handler, got messed and muddled by
successive copyists and continuators. In what seems to be the oldest,
and is certainly the most consistent and satisfactory, story there is
practically nothing evil about Viviane--Nimiane--Nimue, who is also
indisputably identical with the foster-mother of Lancelot, the
occasional Egeria (always for good) of Arthur himself, and the
benefactress (this is probably a later addition though in the right key)
of Sir Pelleas. For anybody who possesses the Power of the Sieve she
remains as Milton saw her, and not as Tennyson mis-saw part of her. The
bewitching of Merlin (who, let it be remembered, was an ambiguous person
in several ways, and whose magic, if never exactly black, was sometimes
a rather greyish or magpied white) was not an unmixed loss to the world;
she seems to have really loved him, and to have faithfully kept her word
by being with him often. He "could not get out" certainly, but are there
many more desirable things in the outside world than lying with your
head in the lap of the Lady of the Lake while she caresses and talks to
you? "J'en connais des plus malheureux" as the French poet observed of
some one in less delectable case. The author of the _Suite de Merlin_
seems to have been her first maligner. Tennyson, seduced by contrast,
followed and exaggerated the worst view. But I am not sure that the most
"irreligious" thing (as Coleridge would have said) was not the
transformation of her into a mere married lady (with a château in
Brittany, and an ordinary knight for her husband) which astounds us in
one of the dullest parts of the Vulgate about Lancelot--the wars with
Claudas.

[30] I have always thought that Spenser (whose dealings with Arthuriana
are very curious, and have never, I think, been fully studied) took this
function of Lancelot to suggest the presentation of his Arthur. But
Lancelot has no--at least no continuous--fairy aid; he is not invariably
victorious, and he is thoroughly human. Spenser's Prince began the
"blamelessness" which grew more trying still in Tennyson's King. (In the
few remarks of this kind made here I am not, I need hardly say, "going
back upon" my lifelong estimate of Tennyson as an almost impeccable
poet. But an impeccable poet is not necessarily an impeccable plot- and
character-monger either in tale-telling or in drama.)

[31] Of this we have unusually strong evidence in the shape of MS.
interlineations, where the name "Percevale" is actually struck out and
that of "Gala[h]ad" substituted above it.

[32] I do not say that this is their _only_ character.

[33] Brittany had much earlier and much more tradition of chivalry than
Wales.

[34] The only fault alleged against Lancelot's person by carpers was
that he was something "pigeon"--or "guardsman"--chested. But Guinevere
showed her love and her wit, and her "valiancy" (for so at least on this
occasion we may translate _vaillant_) by retorting that such a chest was
only big enough--and hardly big enough--for such a heart.

[35] Some of the later "redactors" of the Vulgate may perhaps have
unduly multiplied his madnesses, and have exaggerated his early shyness
a little. But I am not sure of the latter point. It is not only "beasts"
that, as in the great Theocritean place, "go timidly because they fear
Cythera"; and a love charged with such dread consequences was not to be
lightly embarked upon.

[36] The early _Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere_, though only external,
is perfect. Many touches in the _Idylls_ other than the title-one are
suitable and even subtle; but the convertite in that one is (as they say
now) "unconvincing." The simpler attitude of the rejection of Lancelot
in the verse _Morte_ and in Malory is infinitely better. As for Morris's
two pieces, they could hardly be better in themselves as poems--but they
are scarcely great on the novel side.

[37] Disagreeable, that is to say, as a sister and sister-in-law. There
must have been something attractive about her in other relations.

[38] Compare one of the not so very many real examples of Ibsen's
vaunted psychology, the placid indifference to her own past of Gina in
the _Wild Duck_.

[39] He had said that if he were a woman he would give Lancelot anything
he asked; and the Queen, following, observes that Gawain had left
nothing for a woman to say.

[40] _Nos passions ont quelque chose d'infini_, says Bossuet.

[41] [Greek: helandros, heleptolis]. She had no opportunity of being
[Greek: helenaus].

[42] Hawker's security as to Cornish men and things is, I admit, a
little Bardolphian. But did he not write about the Quest? (This sort of
argument simply swarms in Arthurian controversy; so I may surely use it
once.) Besides there is no doubt about the blueness of the sea in
question; though Anthony Trollope, in _Malachi's Cove_, has most falsely
and incomprehensibly denied it.

[43] That this is a real sign of decadence and unoriginality, the
further exaggeration of it in the case of the knights of the _Amadis_
cycle proves almost to demonstration.

[44] After the opening sentence I have dropped the historic present,
which, for a continuance, is very irritating in English.

[45] Lancelot himself has told us earlier (_op. cit._ i. 38) that,
though he neither knew nor thought himself to be a king's son, he was
commonly addressed as such.

[46] Lionel (very young at the time) had wept because some one mentioned
the loss of his inheritance, and Lancelot (young as he too was) had
bidden him not cry for fear of landlessness. "There would be plenty for
him, if he had heart to gain it."

[47] This technical title is usually if not invariably given to Ywain
and Gawain as eldest sons of recognised kings. "Prince" is not used in
this sense by the older Romancers, but only for distinguished knights
like Galahault, who is really a king.

[48] There is one admirable word here, _enbarnis_, which has so long
been lost to French that it is not even in Littré. But Dryden's
"_burnish_ into man" probably preserves it in English; for this is
certainly not the other "burnish" from _brunir_.

[49] "Car moult en parole diroit la parole."

[50] Puzzled by the number of new thoughts and emotions.

[51] Ywain suggests one of the commonest things in Romance.

[52] Arthur had, by a set of chances, not actually girded on Lancelot's
sword.

[53] Whose prisoner Lancelot had been, who had been ready to fall in
love with him, and to whom he had expressly refused to tell his own
love. Hence his confusion.

[54] The day when Lancelot, at her request, had turned against the side
of his friend Galahault and brought victory to Arthur's.

[55] By the way, the Vulgate Mordred is a more subtle conception than
the early stories gave, or than Malory transfers. He is no mere traitor
or felon knight, much less a coward, from the first; but at that first
shows a mixture of good and bad qualities in which the "dram of eale"
does its usual office. Here once more is a subject made to the hand of a
novelist of the first class.

[56] Some poet or pundit, whether of East or West, or of what place,
from Santiago to Samarcand, I know not, has laid it down, that men can
love many, but without ceasing to love any; that women love only one at
once, but can (to borrow, at fifty years' memory, a phrase of George
Lawrence's in _Sans Merci_) "drop their lovers down _oubliettes_" with
comparative ease.

[57] It is excusable to use two words for the single verb _savoir_ to
bring out the meaning. King Bagdemagus does not "know" as a fact that
Lancelot has slain his son, though he fears it and feels almost sure of
it.




CHAPTER III

ROMANS D'AVENTURES


[Sidenote: Variety of the present groups.]

On the whole, however, the most important influence in the development
of the novel originally--that of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_ in French,
and Italian taking the second place in order of time--must be assigned
to the very numerous and very delightful body of compositions (not very
long as a rule,[58] but also never exactly short) to which the name
_Romans d'aventures_ has been given with a limited connotation. They
exist in all languages; our own English Romances, though sometimes
derived from the _chansons_ and the Arthurian Legend, are practically
all of this class, and in every case but one it is true that they have
actual French originals. These _Romans d'aventures_ have a habit, not
universal but prevailing, of "keying themselves on" to the Arthurian
story itself; but they rarely, if ever, have much to do with the
principal parts of it. It is as if their public wanted the connection as
a sort of guarantee; but a considerable proportion keep independence.
They are so numerous, so various, and with rare exceptions so
interesting, that it is difficult to know which to select for elaborate
analysis and translated selection; but almost the entire _corpus_ gives
us the important fact of the increased _freedom_ of fiction. Even the
connection with the Arthurian matter is, as has been said, generally of
the loosest kind; that with the Charlemagne cycle hardly exists. The
Graal (or things connected with its legends) may appear: Gawain is a
frequent hero; other, as one might call them, sociable features as
regards the older stories present themselves. But as a rule the man has
got his own story which he wants to tell; his own special hero and
heroine whom he wants to present. Furthermore, the old community of
handling, which is so noticeable in the _chansons_ more particularly,
disappears almost entirely. Nothing has yet been discovered in French,
though it may be any day, to serve as the origin of our _Gawain and the
Green Knight_, and some special features of this are almost certainly
the work of an Englishman. Our English _Ywain and Gawain_ is, as has
been said, rather better than Chrestien's original. But, as a rule, the
form, which is French form in language (by no means always certainly or
probably French in nationality of author), is not only the original, but
better; and besides, it is with it that we are busied here, though in
not a few cases English readers can obtain an idea, fairly sufficient,
of these originals from the English versions. As these, however, with
the exception of one or two remarkable individuals or even groups, were
seldom written by men of genius, it is best to go to the sources to see
the power and the variety of fictitious handling which have been
mentioned.

[Sidenote: Different views held of it.]

The richness, indeed, of these _Romans d'aventures_ is surprising, and
they very seldom display the flatness and triviality which mar by no
means all but too many of their English imitations. Some of the faults
which are part cause of these others they indeed have--the apparently
irrational catalogues of birds and beasts, stuffs and vegetables; the
long moralisings; the religious passages sometimes (as it may seem to
mere moderns) interposed in very odd contexts; the endless descriptions
of battles and single combats; the absence of striking characterisation
and varied incident. Their interest is a peculiar interest, yet one can
hardly call the taste for it "an acquired taste," because the very
large majority of healthy and intelligent children delight in these
stories under whatever form they are presented to them, and at least a
considerable number of grown-up persons never lose the enjoyment. The
disapproval which rested on "romances of chivalry" for a long time was
admittedly ignorant and absurd; and the reasons why this disapproval, at
least in its somewhat milder form of neglect, has never been wholly
removed, are not very difficult to discover. It is to be feared that
_Don Quixote_, great as it is, has done not a little mischief, and by
virtue of its greatness is likely to do not a little more, though the
_Amadis_ group, which it specially satirises, has faults not found in
the older tales. The texts, though in most cases easily enough
accessible now, are not what may be called obviously and yet
unobtrusively so. They are to a very large extent issued by learned
societies: and the public, not too unreasonably, is rather suspicious,
and not at all avid, of the products of learned societies. They are
accompanied by introductions and notes and glossaries--things the
public (again not wholly to be blamed) regards without cordiality.
Latterly they have been used for educational purposes, and anything
used for educational purposes acquires an evil--or at least an
unappetising--reputation. In some cases they have been messed and
meddled in _usum vulgi_. But their worst enemy recently has been, it may
be feared, the irreconcilable opposition of their spirit to what is
called the modern spirit--though this latter sometimes takes them up and
plays with them in a fashion of maudlin mysticism.

[Sidenote: _Partenopeus of Blois_ selected for analysis and
translation.]

To treat them at large here as Ellis treated some of the English
imitations would be impossible in point of scale and dangerous as a
competition; for Ellis, though a little too prone to Voltairianise or at
least Hamiltonise things sometimes too good for that kind of treatment,
was a very clever man indeed. For somewhat full abstract and translation
we may take one of the most famous, but perhaps not one of the most
generally and thoroughly known, _Partenopeus_ (or -_pex_[59]) _of
Blois_, which, though it exists in English, and though the French was
very probably written by an Englishman, is not now one of the most
widely read and is in parts very charming. That it is one of the
romances on which, from the fact of the resemblance of its central
incident to the story of Cupid and Psyche, the good defenders of the bad
theory of the classical origin of romance generally have based one of
their few plausible arguments, need not occupy us. For the question is
not whether Denis Pyramus or any one else (modernity would not be
modernity if his claims were not challenged) told it, but _how_ he told
it. Still less need we treat the other question before indicated. Here
is one of the central stories of the world--one of those which Eve told
to her children in virtue of the knowledge communicated by the apple,
one with which the sons of God courted the daughters of men, or, at
latest, one of those which were yarned in the Ark. It is the story of
the unwise lover--in this case the man, not as in Psyche's the
woman--who will not be content to enjoy an unseen, but by every other
sense enjoyable and adorable love, even though (in this case) the single
deprivation is expressly to be terminated. We have it, of course, in all
sorts of forms, languages, and differing conditions. But we are only
concerned with it here as with a gracious example of that kind of
romance which, though not exactly a "fairy tale" in the Western sense,
is pretty obviously influenced by the Eastern fairy tale itself, and
still more obviously influences the modern kind in which "the
supernatural" is definitely prominent.

It was perhaps excusable in the good M. Robert, who wrote the
Introduction to Crapelet's edition of this poem eighty years ago, to
"protest too much" in favour of the author whom he was now presenting
practically for the first time--to a changed audience; but it was
unnecessary and a little unfortunate. Except in one point or group of
points, it is vain to try to put _Partenopeus_ above _Cupid and
Psyche_: but it can perfectly well stand by itself in its own place, and
that no low one. Except in _Floire et Blanchefleur_ and of course in
_Aucassin et Nicolette_, the peculiar grace and delicacy of romance are
nowhere so well shown; and _Partenopeus_, besides the advantage of
length, has that of personages interesting, besides the absolute hero
and heroine. The Count of Blois himself is, no doubt, despite his
beauty, and his bravery, and his good nature, rather of a feeble folk.
Psyche has the excuse of her sex, besides the evil counsel of her
sisters, for her curiosity. But Partenopeus has not the former; nor has
he even that weaker but still not quite invalid one which lost Agib, the
son of Cassib, his many-Houried Paradise on Earth. He is supposed to be
a Frenchman--the somewhat excessive fashion in which Frenchmen make
obedience to the second clause[60] of the Fifth Commandment atone for
some neglect of other parts of the decalogue is well known, or at least
traditionally believed. But most certainly a man is not justified in
obeying his mother to the extent of disobeying--and that in the
shabbiest of ways--his lady and mistress, who is, in fact, according to
mediaeval ideas, virtually, if not virtuously, his wife. But Melior
herself, the heroine, is an absolutely delightful person from her first
appearance (or rather _non_-appearance) as a sweet dream come true, to
her last in the more orthodox and public spousals. The grace of her
Dian-like surrender of herself to her love; the constancy with which she
holds to the betrothal theory of the time; the unselfishness with which
she not only permits but actually advises the lover, whom she would so
fain, but cannot yet, make her acknowledged husband, to leave her; her
frank forgiveness of his only-just-in-time repented and prevented, but
intended, infidelity; her sorrow at and after the separation enforced by
his breach of pact; her interviews with her sister, naturally chequered
by conflicting feelings of love and pride and the rest--are all
charming. But she is not the only charming figure.

The "second heroine," a sister or cousin who plays a sort of superior
confidante's part, is by no means uncommon in Romance. Alexandrine, for
instance, who plays this in _William of Palerne_, is a very nice girl.
But Urraque or Urraca,[61] the sister of Melior--whether full and
legitimate, or "half" illegitimate, versions differ--is much more
elaborately dealt with, and is, in fact, the chief _character_ of the
piece, and a character rather unusually strong for Romance. She plays
the part of reconciler after Partenopeus' fatal folly has estranged him
from her sister, and plays it at great length, but with much less tedium
than might be expected. But the author is an "incurable feminist," as
some one else was once described with a mixture of pity and admiration:
and he is not contented with two heroines. There is a third, Persewis,
maid of honour to Urraque, and also a fervent admirer of the
incomparable Partenopeus, on whose actual beauty great stress is
laid, and who in romance, other than his own, is quoted as a modern
paragon thereof, worthy to rank with ancient patterns, sacred and
profane. Persewis, however, is very young--a "flapper" or a
"[bread-and-]buttercup," as successive generations have irreverently
called the immature but agreeable creature. The poet lays much emphasis
on this youth. She did not "kiss and embrace," he says, just because she
was too young, and not because of any foolish prudery or propriety,
things which he does not hesitate to pronounce appropriate only to ugly
girls. His own attitude to "the fair" is unflinchingly put in one of the
most notable and best known passages of the poem (l. 7095 _sq._):

     When God made all creation, and devised their forms for his
     creatures, He distributed beauties and good qualities to
     each in proportion as He loved it. He loved ladies above all
     things, and therefore made for them the best qualities and
     beauties. Of mere earth made He everything [else] under
     Heaven: but the hearts of ladies He made of honey, and gave
     to them more courtesy than to any other living creature. And
     as God loves them, therefore I love them: hunger and thirst
     are nothing to me as regards them: and I cry "Quits" to Him
     for His Paradise if the bright faces of ladies enter not
     therein.

It will be observed, of course, how like this is to the most famous
passage of _Aucassin et Nicolette_. It is less dreamily beautiful, but
there is a certain spirit and downrightness about it which is agreeable;
nor do I know anywhere a more forcible statement of the doctrine, often
held by no bad people, that beauty is a personal testimonial of the
Divinity--a scarcely parabolic command to love and admire its
possessors.[62]

If, however, our poet has something of that Romantic morality to which
Ascham--in a conjoined fit[63] of pedantry, prudery, and
Protestantism--gave such an ugly name, he may excuse it to less
strait-laced judges by other traits. Even the "retainer" of an editor
ought not to have induced M. Robert to say that Melior's original
surrender was "against her will," though she certainly did make a
protest of a kind.[64] But the enchanted and enchanting Empress's
constancy is inviolable. Even after she has been obliged to banish her
foolish lover, or rather after he has banished himself, she avows
herself his only. She will die, she says, before she takes another lord;
and for this reason objects for some time to the proposed tourney for
her hand, in which the already proven invincibility of the Count of
Blois makes him almost a certain victor, because it involves a
conditional consent to admit another mate. To her scrupulousness, a kind
of blunt common-sense, tempering the amiability of Urraca, is a pleasant
set-off, and the freshness of Persewis completes the effect.

Moreover, there are little bits of almost Chaucerian vividness and
terseness here and there, contrasting oddly with the _chevilles_--the
stock phrases and epithets--elsewhere. When the tourney actually comes
off and Partenopeus is supposed to be prisoner of a felon knight afar
off, the two sisters and Persewis take their places at the entrance of
the tower crossing the bridge at Melior's capital, "Chef d'Oire."[65]
Melior is labelled only "whom all the world loves and prizes," but
Urraca and her damsel "have their faces pale and discoloured--for they
have lost much of their beauty--so sorely have they wept Partenopeus."
On the contrary, when, at the close of the first day's tourney, the
usual "unknown knights" (in this case the Count of Blois himself and his
friend Gaudins) ride off triumphant, they "go joyfully to their hostel
with lifted lances, helmets on head, hauberks on back, and shields held
proudly as if to begin jousting."

    Bel i vinrent et bel s'en vont,

says King Corsols, one of the judges of the tourney, but not in the
least aware of their identity. This may occur elsewhere, but it is by no
means one of the commonplaces of Romance, and a well hit-off picture is
motived by a sharply cut phrase.[66]

It is this sudden enlivening of the commonplaces of Romance with vivid
picture and phrase which puts _Partenopeus_ high among its fellows. The
story is very simple, and the variation and multiplication of episodic
adventure unusually scanty; while the too common genealogical preface is
rather exceptionally superfluous. That the Count of Blois is the nephew
of Clovis can interest--outside of a peculiar class of antiquarian
commentator--no mortal; and the identification of "Chef-d'Oire,"
Melior's enchanted capital, with Constantinople, though likely enough,
is not much more important. Clovis and Byzantium (of which the
enchantress is Empress) were well-known names and suited the _abonné_ of
those times. The actual "argument" is of the slightest. One of Spenser's
curious doggerel common measures--say:

    A fairy queen grants bliss and troth
      On terms, unto the knight:
    His mother makes him break his oath,
      Her sister puts it right--

would almost do; the following prose abstract is practically exhaustive.

Partenopeus, Count of Blois, nephew of King Clovis of France, and
descendant of famous heroes of antiquity, including Hector, the most
beautiful and one of the most valiant of men, after displaying his
prowess in a war with the Saracen Sornagur, loses his way while hunting
in the Ardennes. He at last comes to the seashore, and finds a ship
which in fifteen days takes him to a strange country, where all is
beautiful but entirely solitary. He finds a magnificent palace, where he
is splendidly guested by unseen hands, and at last conducted to a
gorgeous bedchamber. In the dark he, not unnaturally, lies awake
speculating on the marvel; and after a time light footsteps approach the
bed, and a form, invisible but tangible, lies down beside him. He
touches it, and finds it warm and soft and smooth, and though it
protests a little, the natural consequences follow. Then the lady
confesses that she had heard of him, had (incognita) seen him at the
Court of France, and had, being a white witch as well as an Empress,
brought him to "Chef d'Oire," her capital, though she denies having
intentionally or knowingly arranged the shepherd's hour itself.[67] She
is, however, as frank as Juliet and Miranda combined. She will be his
wife (she makes a most interesting and accurate profession of Christian
orthodoxy) if he will marry her; but it is impossible for the remainder
of a period of which two and a half years have still to run, and at the
end of which, and not till then, she has promised her vassals to choose
a husband. Meanwhile, Partenopeus must submit to an ordeal not quite so
painful as hot ploughshares. He must never see her or attempt to see
her, and he must not, during his stay at Chef d'Oire, see or speak to
any other human being. At the same time, hunting, exploring the palace
and the city and the country, and all other pastimes independent of
visible human companionship, are freely at his disposal by day.

    Et moi aurès cascune nuit

says Melior, with the exquisite simplicity which is the charm of the
whole piece.

One must be very inquisitive, exceedingly virtuous (the mediaeval value
of consummated betrothal being reckoned), superfluously fond of the
company of one's miscellaneous fellow-creatures, and a person of very
bad taste[68] to boot, in order to decline the bargain. Partenopeus does
not dream of doing so, and for a whole year thinks of nothing but his
fairy love and her bounties to him. Then he remembers his uncle-king and
his country, and asks leave to visit them, but not with the faintest
intention of running away. Melior gives it with the same frankness and
kindness with which she has given herself--informing him, in fact, that
he _ought_ to go, for his uncle is dead and his country in danger. Only,
she reminds him of his pledges, and warns him of the misfortunes which
await his breach of them. He is then magically wafted back on ship-board
as he came.

He has, once more, no intention of playing the truant or traitor, and
does his duty bravely and successfully. But the new King has a niece and
the Count himself has a mother, who, motherlike, is convinced that her
son's mysterious love is a very bad person, if not an actual _maufès_ or
devil, and is very anxious that he shall marry the niece. She has
clerical and chemical resources to help her, and Partenopeus has
actually consented, in a fit of aberration, when, with one of the odd
Wemmick-like flashes of reflection,[69] not uncommon with knights, he
remembers Melior, and unceremoniously makes off to her. He confesses
(for he is a good creature though foolish) and is forgiven, Melior
being, though not in the least insipid or of a put-up-with-anything
disposition, full of "loving _mercy_" in every sense. But the situation
is bound to recur, and now, though the time of probation (probation very
much tempered!) is nearly over, the mother wins her way. Partenopeus is
deluded into accepting an enchanted lantern, which he tries on his
unsuspecting mistress at the first possible moment. What he sees, of
course, is only a very lovely woman--a woman in the condition best
fitted to show her loveliness--whom he has offended irreparably, and
lost.

Melior is no scold, but she is also no milksop. She will have nothing
more to do with him, for he has shamed her with her people (who now
appear), broken her magic power, and, above all, been false to her wish
and his word. The entreaties of her sister Urraca (whose gracious figure
is now elaborately introduced) are for the time useless, and Partenopeus
is only saved from the vengeance of the courtiers and the household by
Urraca's protection.[70]

To halt for a moment, the scene of the treason and discovery is another
of those singular vividnesses which distinguish this poem and story. The
long darkness suddenly flashing into light, and the startled Melior's
beauty framed in the splendour of the couch and the bedchamber--the
offender at once realising his folly and his crime, and dashing the
instrument of his treachery (useless, for all is daylight now, the charm
being counter-charmed) against the wall--the half-frightened,
half-curious Court ladies and Court servants thronging in--the
apparition of Urraca,--all this gives a picture of extraordinarily
dramatic power. It reminds one a little of Spenser's famous portrayal of
Britomart disturbed at night, and the comparison of the two brings out
all sorts of "excellent differences."

But to return to the story itself. Although the invariable
cut-and-driedness of romance incidents has been grossly exaggerated,
there is one situation which is almost always treated in the same way.
The knight who has, with or without his own fault, incurred the
displeasure of his mistress, "doth [_always_] to the green wood go," and
there, whether in complete sanity or not, lives for a time a half or
wholly savage life, discarding knightly and sometimes any other dress,
eating very little, and in considerable danger of being eaten himself.
Everybody, from Lancelot to Amadis, does it; and Partenopeus does it
too, but in his own way. Reaching Blois and utterly rejecting his
mother's attempts to excuse herself and console him, he drags out a
miserable time in continual penance and self-neglect, till at last,
availing himself of (and rather shabbily if piously tricking) a Saracen
page,[71] he succeeds in getting off incognito to the vague "Ardennes,"
where his sadly ended adventure had begun. These particular Ardennes
appear to be reachable by sea (on which they have a coast), and to
contain not only ordinary beasts of chase, not only wolves and bears,
but lions, tigers, wyverns, dragons, etc. A single unarmed man has
practically no chance there, and the Count determines to condemn himself
to the fate of the Roman arena. As a preliminary, he dismounts and turns
loose his horse, who is presently attacked by a lion and wounded, but
luckily gets a fair blow with his hoof between his enemy's eyes, and
kills him. Then comes another of the flashes (and something more) of the
piece. Stung by the pain of his wound and dripping with blood, the
animal dashes at full speed, and whinnying at the top of his powers, to
the seashore and along it. The passage is worth translating:

     He [_the horse after he has killed the lion_] lifts his
     tail, and takes to flight down a valley towards nightfall.
     Much he looks about him and much he whinnies. By night-time
     he has got out of the wood and has fled to the sea: but he
     will not stop there. He makes the pebbles fly as he gallops
     and never stops whinnying. Now the moon has mounted high in
     the heavens, all clear and bright and shining: there is not
     a dark cloud in all the sky, nor any movement on the sea:
     sweet and serene is the weather, and fair and clear and
     lightened up. And the palfrey whinnies so loudly that he can
     be heard far off at sea.

He _is_ heard at sea, for a ship is waiting there in the calm, and on
board that ship is Urraca, with a wise captain named Maruc and a stout
crew. The singularity of the event induces them to land (Maruc knows the
dangers of the region, but Urraca has no fears; the captain also knows
how to enchant the beasts), and the horse's bloodmarks guide them up the
valley. At last they come upon a miserable creature, in rags,
dishevelled, half-starved, and altogether unrecognisable. After a little
time, however, Urraca does recognise him, and, despite his forlorn and
repulsive condition, takes him in her arms.

    Si le descouvre un poi le vis.

Yet another of the uncommon "flashlight" sketches, where in two short
lines one sees the damsel as she has been described not so long before,
"tall and graceful, her fair hair (which, untressed, reached her feet
[now, no doubt, more suitably arranged]), with forehead broad and high,
and smooth; grey eyes, large and _seignorous_" (an admirable word for
eyes), "all her face one kiss"; one sees her with one arm round the
tottering wretch, and with the "long fingers" of her other white hand
clearing the matted hair from his visage till she can recognise him.

They take him on board, of course, though to induce him to go this
delightful creature has to give an account of her sister's feelings
(which, to put it mildly, anticipates the truth very considerably), and
also to cry over him a little.[72] She takes him to Saleuces,[73] an
island principality of her own, and there she and her maid-of-honour,
Persewis (see above), proceed to cocker and cosset him up exactly as one
imagines two such girls would do to "a dear, silly, nice, handsome
thing," as a favourite modern actress used to bring down the house by
saying, with a sort of shake, half of tears and half of laughter, in her
voice. Indeed the phrase fits Partenopeus precisely. We are told that
Urraca would have been formally in love with him if it had not been
unsportsgirl-like towards her sister; and as for Persewis, there is once
more a windfall in the description of the "butter-cup's" delight when
Urraca, going to see Melior, has to leave her alone with the Count. The
Princess is of course very sorry to go. "But Persewis would not have
minded if she had stayed forty days, or till August," and she "glories
greatly" when her rival departs. No mischief, however, comes of it; for
the child is "too young," as we are earnestly assured, and Partenopeus,
to do him justice, is both too much of a gentleman, and too dolefully in
earnest about recovering Melior, to dream of any.

Meanwhile, Urraca is most unselfishly doing her very best to reconcile
the lovers, not neglecting the employment of white fibs as before, and
occasionally indulging, not merely in satiric observation on poor
Melior's irresolution and conflict of feeling, but in decidedly sisterly
plainness of speech, reminding the Empress that after all she had
entrapped Partenopeus into loving her, and that he had, for two whole
years, devoted himself entirely to her love and its conditions. At last
a rather complicated and not always quite consistently told provisional
settlement is arrived at, carrying out, in a manner, the undertakings
referred to by Melior in her first interview with her lover. An immense
tourney for the hand of Melior is to be held, with a jury of kings to
judge it: and everybody, Christian or pagan, from emperor to vavasour is
invited to compete. But in case of no single victor, a kind of
"election" by what may be called the States of Byzantium--kings, dukes,
counts, and simple fief-holders--is to decide, and it seems sometimes
as if Melior retained something of a personal veto at last. Of the
incidents and episodes before this actually comes off, the most
noteworthy are a curious instance of the punctilio of chivalry (the
Count having once promised Melior that no one but herself shall gird on
his sword, makes a difficulty when Urraca and Persewis arm him), and a
misfortune by which he, rowing carelessly by himself, falls into the
power of a felon knight, Armans of Thenodon. This last incident,
however, though it alarms his two benefactresses, is not really unlucky.
For, in the first place, Armans is not at home, and his wife, falling a
victim, like every woman, to Partenopeus' extraordinary beauty, allows
him his parole; while the accident enables him to appear at the
tournament incognito--a practice always affected, if possible, by the
knights of romance, and in this case possessing some obvious and special
advantages.

On his way he meets another knight, Gaudin le Blond, with whom he gladly
strikes up brotherhood-in-arms. The three days of the mellay are not
_very_ different from the innumerable similar scenes elsewhere, nor can
the author be said to be specially happy at this kind of business. But
any possible tedium is fairly relieved by the shrewd and sometimes
jovial remarks made by one of the judging kings, the before-quoted
Corsols--met by grumbles from another, Clarin, and by the fears and
interest of the three ladies, of whom the ever-faithful and shrewd
Urraca is the first to discover Partenopeus. He and Gaudin perform the
usual exploits and suffer the usual inconveniences, but at the end it is
still undecided whether the Count of Blois or the Soldan of Persia--a
good knight, though a pagan, and something of a braggart--deserves the
priceless prize of Melior's hand with the empire of Byzantium to boot.
The "election" follows, and after some doubt goes right, while Melior
now offers no objection. But the Soldan, in his _outrecuidance_, demands
single combat. He has, of course, no right to do this, and the Council
and the Empress object strongly. But Partenopeus will have no stain on
his honour; consents to the fight; deliberately refuses to take
advantage of the Soldan when he is unhorsed and pinned down by the
animal; assists him to get free; and only after an outrageous menace
from the Persian justifies his own claim to belong to the class of
champions

    Who _always_ cleave their foe
        To the waist

--indeed excels them, by entirely bisecting the Soldan.

An episodic restoration of parole to the widow of Armans (who has
actually taken part in the tourney and been killed) should be noticed,
and the piece ends, or rather comes close to an end, with the marriages
which appropriately follow these well-deserved murders. Marriages--not a
marriage only--for King "Lohier" of France most sensibly insists on
espousing the delightful Urraca: and Persewis is consoled for the loss
of Partenopeus by the suit--refused at first and then granted, with the
obviously intense enjoyment of both processes likely in a novice--of his
brother-in-arms, to whom the "Emperor of Byzantium" abandons his own two
counties in France, adding a third in his new empire, and winning by
this generosity almost more popularity than by his prowess.

But, as was hinted, the story does not actually end. There is a great
deal about the festivities, and though the author says encouragingly
that he "will not devise much of breeches," he _does_--and of many other
garments. Indeed the last of his liveliest patches is a mischievous
picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror;
make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat
over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing
of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed
fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps
the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but
stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and
seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace--now merely an ordinary place
of splendour and festivity--and when something came to the bed, "step by
step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.

Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features
of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of
which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer,
seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable
instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of
course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for
itself and himself. I think the author of the _Odyssey_ (the _Iliad_
comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances)
was a better poet than the author of _Partenopeus_, and I also think
that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter
was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I
can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches
the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not
weary me with their exploits, and I confess that I am hyperbolical
enough to like reading and thinking as well as talking of the ladies
very much. They are of various sorts; but they are generally lovable.
There is no better for affection and faithfulness and pluck than the
Josiane of _Bevis_, whose husband and her at one time faithful guardian,
but at another would-be ravisher, Ascapart, guard a certain gate not
more than a furlong or two from where I am writing. It is good to think
of the (to some extent justified) indignation of l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours
when Sir Blancandin rides up and audaciously kisses her in the midst of
her train; and the companion picture of the tomb where Idoine apparently
sleeps in death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe
above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed,
the Lidoine of _Méraugis de Portlesguez_, interests me less, it is
because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love
and moral allegory--a "wanity" which is not my favourite "wanity." To
the Alexandrine of _Guillaume de Palerne_ reference has already been
made. Blanchefleur--known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris,
etc.)--the Saracen slave who charms a Christian prince, and is rescued
by him from the Emir of Babylon, to whom she has been sold in hopes of
weaning Floris from his attachment, more than deserved her vogue. But,
as in the case of the _chansons_, mere cataloguing would be dull and
unprofitable, and analysis on the scale accorded to _Partenopeus_
impossible. One must only take up once more the note of this whole early
part of our history, and impress again on the reader the evident
_desire_ for the accomplished novel which these numerous romances show;
the inevitable _practice_, in tale-telling of a kind, which the
production of them might have given; and, above all, the openings,
germs, suggestions of new devices in fiction which are observable in
them, and which remained for others to develop if the first finders left
them unimproved.

FOOTNOTES:

[58] That is, of nothing like the length of the latest forms of the
_Chansons de Geste_ or the Arthurian Romances proper. Some of the late
fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Adventure stories, before they dropped
into prose, are indeed long enough, and a great deal too long; but they
show degeneracy.

[59] The _h_ (Part_h_-) does occur in both forms, and there are other
variation, as "Part_o_nopeus," etc. But these are trifles.

[60] Taking honour to the mother as separate from that to the father.

[61] The Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am sorry to say
that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it "Urra_cle_," which is
_not_ pretty. Southey's "Queen _O_rraca" seems to me to have changed her
vowel to disadvantage.

[62] The original author of the _Court of Love_, whether Chaucer or
another, pretty certainly knew it; and Spenser spiritualised the
doctrine itself in the _Four Hymns_.

[63] I think the medical people (borrowing, as Science so often does,
the language which she would fain banish from human knowledge) call this
sort of thing _a syndrome_.

[64] See below on Urraca's plain speaking.

[65] Not too commentatorially identified with Constantinople.

[66] It may be worth noting that in this context appears the original
form of an English word quite common recently, but almost unknown a very
short time ago--"grouse" in the sense of "complain," "grumble": "Ce dist
Corsols et nul n'en _grouce_."

[67] No one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen,
her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate,
that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture.
Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch,
unknown to her?

[68] For Melior, though of invisible beauty, is represented as
delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech
as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her
for her _sermon_, there is no satire; he only means _sermo_.

[69] Like Guy of Warwick; still more like Mr. Jaggers's clerk, though
the circumstances are reversed. _He_ almost says in so many words,
"Hullo! here's an engagement ring on my finger. We _can't_ have a
marriage."

[70] The author, _more suo_, intimates that the Court _ladies_ by no
means shared these hostile feelings, and would have willingly been in
Melior's place.

[71] He induces him to turn Christian on the supposition of being his
companion; and then gives him the slip. The neophyte's expressions on
the occasion are not wholly edifying.

[72] The good palfrey is found and in a state to carry his master, who
is quite unable to walk. One hopes they did not leave the beast to the
lions, tigers, wyverns, etc., for he could hardly hope for such a
literal "stroke of luck" again.

[73] The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore, no less a
vintage than Château Yquem. Nothing could be better for a person in the
Count's condition as a restorative.

[74] These two directions obviously refer to the common mediaeval
"wimple" arrangement.




CHAPTER IV

THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE FICTION


[Sidenote: Prose novelettes of the thirteenth century. _Aucassin et
Nicolette_ not quite typical.]

The title of this chapter may seem an oversight or an impertinence,
considering that large parts of an earlier one have been occupied with
discussions and translations of the prose Arthurian Romances. It was,
however, expressly pointed out that the priority of these is a matter of
opinion, not of judgment; and it may be here quite frankly admitted that
one of the most serious arguments against that priority is the extreme
lateness of Old French Prose in any finished literary form. The excuse,
however, if excuse be needed, does not turn on any such hinge as this.
It was desired to treat, in the last two chapters, romance matter proper
of the larger kind, whether that matter took the form of prose or of
verse. Here, on the other hand, the object is to deal with the smaller
but more miscellaneous body of fictitious matter (part, no doubt, of a
larger) which presents it tolerably early, and in character foretells
the immense development of the kind which French was to see later.[75] A
portion of this body, sufficient for us, is contained in two little
volumes of the _Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_, published rather less than
sixty years ago (1856 and 1858) by MM. L. Moland and Ch. d'Héricault,
the first devoted to thirteenth-, the second to fourteenth-century work.
One of these, the now world-famous _Aucassin et Nicolette_, has been so
much written about and so often translated already that it cannot be
necessary to say a great deal about it here. It is, moreover, of a mixed
kind, a _cante-fable_ or blend of prose and verse, with a considerable
touch of the dramatic in it. Its extraordinary charm is a thing long ago
settled; but it is, on the whole, more of a dramatic and lyrical
romance--to recouple or releash kinds which Mr. Browning had perhaps
best never have put asunder--than of a pure prose tale.

[Sidenote: _L'Empereur Constant_ more so.]

Its companions in the thirteenth-century volume are four in number, and
if none of them has the peculiar charm, so none has the technical
disqualification (if that be not too strong a word) of _Aucassin et
Nicolette_. The first, shortest, and, save for one or two points, least
remarkable, _L'Empereur Constant_, is a very much abbreviated and in
more than one sense prosaic version of the story out of which Mr.
William Morris made his delightful _The Man Born to be King_. Probably
of Greek or Greek-Eastern origin, it begins with an astrological passage
in which the Emperor, childless except for a girl, becomes informed of
the imminent birth of a man-child, who shall marry his daughter and
succeed him. He discovers the, as it seems, luckless baby; has it
brought to him, and with his own hand attempts to disembowel it, but
allows himself, most improbably,[76] to be dissuaded from finishing the
operation. The benevolent knight who has prevented the completion of the
crime takes the infant to a monastery, where (after a quaint scene of
haggling about fees with the surgeon) the victim is patched up, grows to
be a fine youth, and comes across the Emperor, to whom the abbot
guilelessly, but in this case naturally enough,[77] betrays the secret.
The Emperor's murderous thoughts as naturally revive, and the
frustration of them by means of the Princess's falling in love with the
youth, the changing of "the letters of Bellerophon," and the Emperor's
resignation to the inevitable, follow the same course as in the English
poem. The latter part is better than the earlier; and the writer is
evidently (as how should he not be?) a novice; but his work is the kind
of experiment from which better things will come.

[Sidenote: _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane._]

These marks of the novice are even more noticeable in a much longer
story, _Le Roi Flore et la Belle Jehane_, which is found not only in the
same printed volume, but in the same original MS. The fault of this is
curious, and--if not to a mere reader for pastime, to a student of
fiction--extremely interesting. It is one not at all unknown at the
present day, and capable of being used as an argument in favour of the
doctrine of the Unities: that is to say, the mixture, by arbitrary and
violent process, of two stories which have nothing whatever to do with
each other, except that they are, wilfully and with no reason, buckled
together at the end. The first, thin and uninteresting enough, is of a
certain King Florus, who has a wife, dearly beloved, but barren. After
some years and some very unmanly shilly-shallyings, he puts her away,
and marries another, with whom (one is feebly glad to find) he is no
more lucky, but who has herself the luck to die after some years.
Meanwhile, King Florus being left "in a cool barge for future use," the
second item, a really interesting story, is, with some intervals,
carried on. A Count of high rank and great possessions has an only
daughter, whom, after experience of the valour and general worthiness of
one of his vassals of no great "having," he bestows on this knight,
Robert, the pair being really in love with each other. But another
vassal knight of greater wealth, Raoul, plots with one of the wicked old
women who abound in these stories, and engages Robert in a rash wager of
all his possessions, that during one of those pilgrimages to "St.
James," which come in so handy, and are generally so unreasonable, he
will dishonour the lady. He fails, but, in a manner not distantly
related to the Imogen-Iachimo scene, acquires what seems to be damning
acquaintance with the young Countess's person-marks. Robert and Jehane
are actually married; but the felon knight immediately afterwards brings
his charge, and Robert pays his debt, and flies, a ruined man, from, as
he thinks, his faithless wife, though he takes no vengeance on her.
Jehane disguises herself as a man, joins him on his journey, supports
him with her own means for a time, and enters into partnership with him
in merchandise at Marseilles, he remaining ignorant of her sex and
relation to him. At last things come right: the felon knight is forced
in single combat (a long and good one) to acknowledge his lie and give
up his plunder, and the excellent but somewhat obtuse Robert recovers
his wife as well. A good end if ever there was one, and not a badly told
tale in parts. But, from some utterly mistaken idea of craftsmanship,
the teller must needs kill Robert for no earthly reason, except in order
that Jehane may become the third wife of Florus and bear him children. A
more disastrous "sixth act" has seldom been imagined; for most readers
will have forgotten all about Florus, who has had neither art nor part
in the main story; few can care whether the King has children or not;
and still fewer can be other than disgusted at the notion of Jehane,
brave, loving, and clever, being, as a widow, made a mere child-bearing
machine to an oldish and rather contemptible second husband. But, once
more, the mistake is interesting, and is probably the first example of
that fatal error of not knowing when to leave off, which is even worse
than the commoner one (to be found in some great artists) of "huddling
up the story." The only thing to be said in excuse is that you could cut
his majesty Florus out of the title and tale at once without even the
slightest difficulty, and with no need to mend or meddle in any other
way.

The remaining stories of the thirteenth-century volume are curiously
contrasted. One is a short prose version of that exquisite _chanson de
geste_, _Amis et Amiles_, of which it has been said above that any one
who cannot "taste" it need never hope to understand mediaeval
literature. The full beauty of the verse story does not appear in the
prose; but some does.

[Sidenote: _Le Comtesse de Ponthieu._]

Of the other, the so-called "Comtesse de Ponthieu" (though she is not
really this, being only the Count's daughter and the wife of a vassal),
I thought rather badly when I first read it thirty or forty years ago,
and till the present occasion I have never read it since. Now I think
better of it, especially as a story suggestive in story-telling art. The
original stumbling-block, which I still see, though I can get over or
round it better now, was, I think, the character of the heroine, who
inherits not merely the tendency to play fast and loose with successive
husbands, which is observable in both _chanson_ and _roman_ heroines,
but something of the very unlovely savagery which is also sometimes
characteristic of them; while the hero also is put in "unpleasant"
circumstances. He is a gentleman and a good knight, and though only a
vassal of the Count of Ponthieu, he, as has been said, marries the
Count's daughter, entirely to her and her father's satisfaction. But
they are childless, and the inevitable "monseigneur Saint _Jakeme_" (St.
James of Compostella) suggests himself for pilgrimage. Thiebault, the
knight, obtains leave from his lady to go, and she, by a device not
unprettily told, gets from him leave to go too. Unfortunately and
unwisely they send their suite on one morning, and ride alone through a
forest, where they are set upon by eight banditti. Thiebault fights
these odds without flinching, and actually kills three, but is
overpowered by sheer numbers. They do not kill him, but bind and toss
him into a thicket, after which they take vengeance of outrage on the
lady and depart, fearing the return of the meyney. Thiebault feels that
his unhappy wife is guiltless, but unluckily does not assure her of
this, merely asking her to deliver him. So she, seeing a sword of one
of the slain robbers, picks it up, and, "full of great ire and evil
will," cries, "I will deliver you, sir," and, instead of cutting his
bonds, tries to run him through. But she only grazes him, and actually
cuts the thongs, so that he shakes himself free, starts up, and wrests
the sword from her with the simple words, "Lady, it is not to-day that
you will kill me." To which she replies, "And right sorry I am
therefor."[78] Their followers come up; the pair are clothed and set out
again on their journey. But Thiebault, though treating his wife with the
greatest attention, leaves her at a monastery, accomplishes his
pilgrimage alone, and on his return escorts her to Ponthieu as if
nothing had happened. Still--though no one knows this or indeed anything
about her actual misfortune and intended crime--he does not live with
her as his wife. After a time the Count, who is, as another story has
it, a "_h_arbitrary" Count, insists that Thiebault shall tell him some
incident of his voyage, and the husband (here is the weak point of the
whole) recounts the actual adventure, though not as of himself and his
lady. The Count will not stand ambiguity, and at last extorts the truth,
which the lady confirms, repeating her sorrow that she had _not_ slain
her husband. Now the Count is, as has been said, an arbitrary Count, and
one day, his county having, as our Harold knew to his cost, a sea-coast
to it, somewhat less disputable than those of Bohemia and the Ardennes,
embarks, with only his daughter, son-in-law, son, and a few retainers,
taking with him a nice new cask. Into this, despite the prayers of her
husband and brother, he puts the lady, and flings it overboard. She is
picked up half-suffocated by mariners, who carry her to "Aymarie" and
sell her to the Sultan. She is very beautiful, and the Sultan promptly
proposes conversion and marriage. She makes no difficulty, bears him two
children, and is apparently quite happy. But meanwhile the Count of
Ponthieu begins--his son and son-in-law have never ceased--to feel that
he has exercised the paternal rights rather harshly; the Archbishop of
Rheims very properly confirms his ideas on this point, and all three go
_outremer_ on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. They are captured by the
Saracens of Aymarie, imprisoned, starved, and finally in immediate
danger of being shot to death as an amusement for the Sultan's
bodyguard. But the Sultaness has found out who they are, visits them in
prison, and "reconciliations and forgivenesses of injuries" follow.

After this, things go in an easily guessable manner. The
Countess-Sultana beguiles her easy-going lord into granting her the
lives of the prisoners one after another, for which she rewards him by
carrying them off, with her son by the second marriage, to Italy, where
the boy is baptized. "The Apostle" (as the Pope is usually called in
Romance), by a rather extensive exercise of his Apostleship, gives
everybody absolution, confirms the original marriage of Thiebault and
the lady who had been so obstinately sorry that she had not killed him,
and who had suffered the paynim spousals so easily; and all goes
merrily. There is a postscript which tells how the daughter of the
Sultan and the Countess, who is termed _La Bele Caitive_, captivates and
marries a Turk of great rank, and becomes the mother of no less a person
than the great Saladin himself--a consummation no doubt very
satisfactory to the Miss Martha Buskbodies of the mediaeval world.

Now this story might seem to one who read it hastily, carelessly, or as
"not in the vein," to be partly extravagant, partly disagreeable, and,
despite its generous allowance of incident, rather dull, especially if
contrasted with its next neighbour in the printed volume, _Aucassin et
Nicolette_ itself. I am afraid there may have been some of these
uncritical conditions about my own first reading. But a little study
shows some remarkable points in it, though the original writer has not
known how to manage them. The central and most startling one--the
attempt of the Countess to murder her husband--is, when you think of it,
not at all unnatural. The lady is half mad with her shame; the witness,
victim, and, as she thinks, probable avenger of that shame is helpless
before her, and in his first words at any rate seems to think merely of
himself and not of her. Whether this violent outburst of feeling was not
likely to result in as violent a revulsion of tenderness is rather a
psychological probability than artistically certain. And Thiebault,
though an excellent fellow, is a clumsy one. His actual behaviour is
somewhat of that "killing-with-kindness" order which exasperates when it
does not itself kill or actually reconcile; and, whether out of delicacy
or not, he does not give his wife the only proof that he acknowledges
the involuntariness of her actual misfortune, and forgives the
voluntariness of her intended crime. His telling the story is
inexcusable: and neither his preference of his allegiance as a vassal to
his duty as knight, lover, and husband in the case of the Count's
cruelty, nor his final acceptance of so many and such peculiar bygones
can be called very pretty. But there are possibilities in the story, if
they are not exactly made into good gifts.

[Sidenote: Those of the fourteenth. _Asseneth._]

The contents of the fourteenth-century volume are, with one exception,
much less interesting in themselves; but from the point of view of the
present enquiry they hardly yield to their predecessors. They are three
in number: _Asseneth_, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, and _Troilus_. The first,
which is very short, is an account of Joseph's courtship of his future
wife, in which entirely guiltless proceeding he behaves at first very
much as if the daughter of Potipherah were fruit as much forbidden as
the wife of Potiphar. For on her being proposed to him (he has come to
her father, splendidly dressed and brilliantly handsome, on a mission
from Pharaoh) he at first replies that he will love her as his sister.
This, considering the Jewish habit of exchanging the names, might not be
ominous. But when the damsel, at her father's bidding, offers to kiss
him, Joseph puts his hand on her chest and pushes her back, accompanying
the action with words (even more insulting in detail than in substance)
to the effect that it is not for God-fearing man to kiss an idolatress.
(At this point one would rather like to kick Joseph.) However, when,
naturally enough, she cries with vexation, the irreproachable but most
unlikable patriarch condescends to pat her on the head and bless her.
This she takes humbly and thankfully; deplores his absence, for he is
compelled to return to his master; renounces her gods; is consoled by an
angel, who feeds her with a miraculous honeycomb possessing a sort of
sacramental force, and announces her marriage to Joseph, which takes
place almost immediately.

It will be at once seen, by those who know something of the matter, that
this is entirely in the style of large portions of the Graal romances;
and so it gives us a fresh and interesting division of the new short
prose tale, allying itself to some extent with the allegory which was to
be so fruitful both in verse and in prose. It is not particularly
attractive in substance; but is not badly told, and would have made
(what it was very likely used as) a good sermon-story.

[Sidenote: _Troilus._]

As _Asseneth_, the first of the three, is by far the shortest, so
_Troilus_, the last, is by far the longest. It is, in fact, nearly
twenty times the length of the history of Joseph's pious impoliteness,
and makes up something like two-thirds of the whole collection. But,
except as a variant of one of the famous stories of the world (_v. sup._
Chap. IV.), it has little interest, and is not even directly taken from
Benoît de Sainte-Maure, but from Guido delle Colonne and Boccaccio, of
whose _Filostrato_ it is, in fact, a mere translation, made apparently
by a known person of high station, Pierre de Beauvau, one of the chief
nobles of Anjou, at the close of the fourteenth and the beginning of the
fifteenth century. It thus brings itself into direct connection with
Chaucer's poem, and has some small importance for literary history
generally. But it has not much for us. It was not Boccaccio's verse but
his prose that was really to influence the French Novel.

[Sidenote: _Foulques Fitzwarin._]

With the middle piece of the volume, _Foulques Fitzwarin_, it is very
different. It is true that the present writer was once "smitten
friendly" by a disciple of the modern severe historical school, who
declared that the adventures of Fitzwarin, though of course adulterated,
were an important historical document, and nothing so frivolous as a
novel. One has, however, a reed-like faculty of getting up again from
such smitings: and for my part I do not hesitate once more to call
_Foulques Fitzwarin_ the first historical prose novel in modern
literature. French in language, as we have it, it is thoroughly English
in subject, and, beyond all doubt, in the original place of composition,
while there is no reason to doubt the assertion that there were older
verse-renderings of the story both in English and French. In fact, they
may turn up yet. But the thing as it stands is a very desirable and even
delectable thing, and well deserved its actual publication, not merely
in the French collection, of which we are speaking, but in the papers of
the too short-lived English Warton Club.

For it is not only our first historical novel, but also the first, as
far as England is concerned, of those outlaw stories which have always
delighted worthy English youth from _Robin Hood_ to _The Black Arrow_.
The Fitzwarins, as concerns their personalities and genealogies, may be
surrendered without a pang to the historian, though he shall not have
the marrow of the story. They never seem to have been quite happy except
when they were in a state of "utlagation," and it was not only John
against whom they rebelled, for one of them died on the Barons' side at
Lewes.

The compiler, whoever he was--it has been said already and cannot be
said too often, that every recompiler in the Middle Ages felt it (like
the man in that "foolish" writer, as some call him, Plato) a sacred duty
to add something to the common stock,--was not exactly a master of his
craft, but certainly showed admirable zeal. There never was a more
curious _macédoine_ than this story. Part of it is, beyond all doubt,
traditional history, with place-names all right, though distorted by
that curious inability to transpronounce or trans-spell which made the
French of the thirteenth century call Lincoln "Nicole," and their
descendants of the seventeenth call Kensington "Stintinton." Part is
mere stock or common-form Romance, as when Foulques goes to sea and has
adventures with the usual dragons and their usual captive princesses.
Part, though not quite dependent on the general stock, is indebted to
that of a particular kind, as in the repeated catching of the King by
the outlaws. But it is all more or less good reading; and there are two
episodes in the earlier part which (one of them especially) merit more
detailed account.

The first still has something of a general character about it. It is the
story of a certain Payn Peveril (for we meet many familiar names), who
seems to have been a real person though wrongly dated here, and has one
of those nocturnal combats with demon knights, the best known examples
of which are those recounted in _Marmion_ and its notes. Peveril's
antagonist, however--or rather the mask which the antagonist
takes,--connects with the oldest legendary history of the island, for he
reanimates the body of Gogmagog, the famous Cornish giant, whom Corineus
slew. The diabolic Gogmagog, however, seems neither to have stayed in
Cornwall nor gone to Cambridgeshire, though (oddly enough the French
editors do not seem to have noticed this) Payn Peveril actually held
fiefs in the neighbourhood of those exalted mountains called now by the
name of his foe. He had a hard fight; but luckily his arms were _or_
with a cross _édentée azure_, and this cross constantly turned the
giant-devil's mace-strokes, while it also weakened him, and he had
besides to bear the strokes of Peveril's sword. So he gave in, remarking
with as much truth as King Padella in similar circumstances, that it was
no good fighting under these conditions. Then he tells a story of some
length about the original Gogmagog and his treasure. The secret of this
he will not reveal, but tells Peveril that he will be lord of
Blanche-lande in Shropshire, and vanishes with the usual unpleasant
accompaniment--_tiel pueur dont Payn quida devier_. He left his mace,
which the knight kept as a testimony to anybody who did not believe the
story.

This is not bad; but the other, which is either true or extraordinarily
well invented, is far finer, and, with some omissions, must be analysed
and partly translated. Those who know the singular beauty of Ludlow Town
and Castle will be able to "stage" it to advantage, but this is not
absolutely necessary to its appreciation as a story.

The Peverils have died out by this time, and the honour and lands have
gone by marriage to Guarin of Metz, whose son, Foulques Fitzguarin or
Warin, starts the subjects of the general story. When the first Foulkes
is eighteen, there is war between Sir Joce of Dinan (the name then given
to Ludlow) and the Lacies. In one of their skirmishes Sir Walter de Lacy
is wounded and captured, with a young knight of his party, Sir Ernault
de Lyls. They have courteous treatment in Ludlow Castle, and Ernault
makes love to Marion de la Brière, a most gentle damsel, who is the
chief maid of the lady of the castle, and as such, of course, herself a
lady. He promises her marriage, and she provides him and his chief with
means of escape. Whether Lisle (as his name probably was) had at this
time any treacherous intentions is not said or hinted. But Lacy,
naturally enough, resents his defeat, and watches for an opportunity of
_revanche_; while Sir Joce[lyn], on the other hand, takes his prisoners'
escape philosophically, and does not seem to make any enquiry into its
cause. At first Lacy thinks of bringing over his Irish vassals to aid
him; but his English neighbours not unnaturally regard this step with
dislike, and a sort of peace is made between the enemies. A match is
arranged between Sir Joce's daughter Hawyse and Foulques Fitzwarin. Joce
then quits Ludlow for a time, leaving, however, a strong garrison there.
Marion, who feigns illness, is also left. And now begins the tragic and
striking part of the story.

     The next day after Joce had gone, Marion sent a message to
     Sir Ernault de Lyls, begging him, for the great love that
     there was between them, not to forget the pledges they had
     exchanged, but to come quickly to speak with her at the
     castle of Dinan, because the lord and the lady and the bulk
     of the servants had gone to Hertilande--also to come to the
     same place by which he had left the castle. [_He replies
     asking her to send him the exact height of the wall (which
     she unsuspiciously does by the usual means of a silk thread)
     and also the number of the household left. Then he seeks his
     chief, and tells him, with a mixture of some truth, that the
     object of the Hertilande journey is to gather strength
     against Lacy, capture his castle of Ewyas, and kill
     himself--intelligence which he falsely attributes to Marion.
     He has, of course, little difficulty in persuading Lacy to
     take the initiative. Sir Ernault is entrusted with a
     considerable mixed force, and comes by night to the
     castle._] The night was very dark, so that no sentinel saw
     them. Sir Ernault took a squire to carry the ladder of hide,
     and they went to the window where Marion was waiting for
     them. And when she saw them, never was any so joyful: so she
     dropped a cord right down and drew up the hide ladder and
     fastened it to a battlement. Then Ernault lightly scaled the
     tower, and took his love in his arms and kissed her: and
     they made great joy of each other and went into another room
     and supped, and then went to their couch, and left the
     ladder hanging.

     But the squire who had carried it went to the forces hidden
     in the garden and elsewhere, and took them to the ladder.
     And one hundred men, well armed, mounted by it and descended
     by the Pendover tower and went by the wall behind the
     chapel, and found the sentinel too heavy with sleep to
     defend himself: and the knights and the sergeants were cut
     to pieces crying for mercy in their beds. But Sir Ernault's
     companions were pitiless, and many a white sheet was dyed
     red with blood. And at last they tossed the watchman into
     the deep fosse and broke his neck.

     Now Marion de la Brière lay by her lover Sir Ernault and
     knew nothing of the treason he had done. But she heard a
     great noise in the castle and rose from her bed, and looked
     out and heard more clearly the cry of the massacred, and saw
     knights in white armour. Wherefore she understood that Sir
     Ernault had deceived and betrayed her, and began to weep
     bitterly and said, "Ah! that I was ever of mother born: for
     that by my crime I have lost my lord Sir Joce, who bred me
     so gently, his castle, and his good folk. Had I not been,
     nothing had been lost. Alas! that I ever believed this
     knight! for by his lies he has ruined me, and what is worse,
     my lord too." Then, all weeping, she drew Sir Ernault's
     sword and said, "Sir knight! awake, for you have brought
     strange company into my lord's castle without his leave. I
     brought in only you and your squire. And since you have
     deceived me you cannot rightly blame me if I give you your
     deserts--at least you shall never boast to any other
     mistress that by deceiving me you conquered the castle and
     the land of Dinan!" The knight started up, but Marion, with
     the sword she held drawn, ran him straight through the body,
     and he died at once. She herself, knowing that if she were
     taken, ill were the death she should die, and knowing not
     what to do, let herself fall from a window and broke her
     neck.

Now this, I venture to think, is not an ordinary story. Tales of
treachery, onslaught, massacre, are not rare in the Middle Ages, nor
need we go as far as the Middle Ages for them. But the almost heroic
insouciance with which the traitor knight forgets everything except his
immediate enjoyment, and, provided he has his mistress at his will,
concerns himself not in the slightest degree as to what becomes of his
companions, is not an every-day touch. Nor is the strong contrast of the
chambers of feast and dalliance--undisturbed, voluptuous,
terrestrial-paradisaic--with "the horror and the hell" in the courts
below. Nor, last of all, the picture of the more than half innocent
Marion, night-garbed or ungarbed, but with sword drawn, first hanging
over her slumbering betrayer, then dealing the stroke of vengeance, and
then falling--white against the dark towers and the darker ravines at
their base--to her self-doomed judgment.

[Sidenote: Something on these,]

Even more, however, than in individual points of interest or excitement,
the general survey of these two volumes gives matter for thought on our
subject. Here are some half-dozen stories or a little more. It is not
much, some one may say, for the produce of two hundred years. But what
it lacks in volume (and that will be soon made up in French, while it is
to be remembered that we have practically nothing to match it in
English) it makes up in variety. The peculiarity, some would say the
defect, of mediaeval literature--its sheep-like tendency to go in
flocks--is quite absent. Not more than two of the eight, _Le Roi Flore_
and _La Comtesse de Ponthieu_, can be said to be of the same class,
even giving the word class a fairly elastic sense. They are short prose
_Romans d'aventures_. But _Asseneth_ is a mystical allegory; _Aucassin
et Nicolette_ is a sort of idyll, almost a lyric, in which the adventure
is entirely subordinated to the emotional and poetical interest;
_L'Empereur Constant_, though with something of the _Roman d'aventures_
in it, has a tendency towards a _moralitas_ ("there is no armour against
fate") which never appears in the pure adventurous kind; _Troilus_ is an
abridgment of a classical romance; and _Foulques Fitzwarin_ is, as has
been said, an embryonic historical novel. Most, if not all, moreover,
give openings for, and one or two even proceed into, character- and even
"problem"-writing of the most advanced novel kind. In one or two also,
no doubt, that aggression and encroachment of allegory (which is one of
the chief notes of these two centuries) makes itself felt, though not to
the extent which we shall notice in the next chapter. But almost
everywhere a strong _nisus_ towards actual tale-telling and the rapid
acquisition of proper "plant" for such telling, become evident. In
particular, conversation--a thing difficult to bring anyhow into
verse-narrative, and impossible there to keep up satisfactorily in
various moods--begins to find its way. We may turn, in the next chapter,
to matter mostly or wholly in verse forms. But prose fiction is started
all the same.

[Sidenote: And on the short story generally.]

Before we do so, however, it may not be improper to point out that the
short story undoubtedly holds--of itself--a peculiar and almost
prerogative place in the history and morphology or the novel. After a
long and rather unintelligible unpopularity in English--it never
suffered in this way in French--it has been, according to the way of the
world, a little over-exalted of late perhaps. It is undoubtedly a very
difficult thing to do well, and it would be absurd to pretend that any
of the foregoing examples is done thoroughly well. The Italian _novella_
had to come and show the way.[79] But the short story, even of the
rudimentary sort which we have been considering, cannot help being a
powerful schoolmaster to bring folk to good practice in the larger kind.
The faults and the merits of that kind, as such, appear in it after a
fashion which can hardly fail to be instructive and suggestive. The
faults so frequently charged against that "dear defunct" in our own
tongue, the three-volume novel--the faults of long-windedness, of otiose
padding, of unnecessary episodes, etc., are almost mechanically or
mathematically impossible in the _nouvelle_. The long book provides
pastime in its literal sense, and if it is not obvious in the other the
accustomed reader, unless outraged by some extraordinary dulness or
silences, goes on, partly like the Pickwickian horse because he can't
well help it, and partly because he hopes that something _may_ turn up.
In the case of the short he sees almost at once whether it is going to
have any interest, and if there is none such apparent he throws it
aside.

Moreover, as in almost every other case, the shortness is appropriate to
_exercise_; while the prose form does not encourage those terrible
_chevilles_--repetitions of stock adjective and substantive and verb and
phrase generally--which are so common in verse, and especially in
octosyllabic verse. It is therefore in many ways healthy, and the space
allotted to these early examples of it will not, it is hoped, seem to
any impartial reader excessive.

FOOTNOTES:

[75] The position of "origin" assigned already to the sacred matter of
the Saint's Life may perhaps be continued here as regards the Sermon. It
was, as ought to be pretty generally known, the not ungenial habit of
the mediaeval preacher to tell stories freely. We have them in Ælfric's
and other English homilies long before there was any regular French
prose; and we have, later, large and numerous collections of
them--compiled more or less expressly for the use of the clergy--in
Latin, English, and French. The Latin story is, in fact, very
wide-ranging and sometimes quite of the novel (at least _nouvelle_)
kind, as any one may see in Wright's _Latin Stories_, Percy Society,
1842.

[76] This is one, and one of the most glaring, of the _bêtises_ which at
some times have been urged against Romance at large. They are not, as a
matter of fact, very frequent; but their occurrence certainly does show
the essentially uncritical character of the time.

[77] For of course the knight did not tell the _whole_ story.

[78] _I.e._ not sorry for having tried to kill him, but sorry that she
had not done so.

[79] In _prose_. For the very important part played by the home verse
_fabliaux_ see next chapter.




CHAPTER V

ALLEGORY, FABLIAU, AND PROSE STORY OF COMMON LIFE


[Sidenote: The connection with prose fiction of allegory.]

It was shown in the last chapter that fiction, and even prose fiction,
of very varied character began to develop itself in French during the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. By the fifteenth the development
was very much greater, and the "disrhyming" of romances, the beginnings
of which were very early, came to be a regular, not an occasional,
process; while, by its latter part, verse had become not the usual, but
the exceptional vehicle of romance, and prose romances of enormous
length were popular. But earlier there had still been some obstacles in
the way of the prose novel proper. It was the period of the rise and
reign of Allegory, and France, preceptress of almost all Europe in most
literary kinds, proved herself such in this with the unparalleled
example of the _Roman de la Rose_. But the _Roman de la Rose_ was itself
in verse--the earlier part of it at least in real poetry--and most of
its innumerable imitations were in verse likewise. Moreover, though
France again had been the first to receive and to turn to use the riches
of Eastern apologue, the most famous example of which is _The Seven Wise
Masters_, these rather serious matters do not seem to have especially
commended themselves to the French people. The place of composition of
the most famous of all, the _Gesta Romanorum_, has been fairly settled
to be England, though the original language of composition is not likely
to have been other than Latin. At any rate, the style of serious
allegory, in prose which should also be literature, never really caught
hold of the French taste.

Comic tale-telling, on the other hand, was germane to the very soul of
the race, and had shown itself in _chanson_ and _roman_ episodes at a
very early date. But it had been so abundantly, and in so popular a
manner, associated with verse as a vehicle in those pieces, in the great
beast-epic of _Renart_, and above all in the _fabliaux_ and in the
earliest farces, that the connection was hard to separate. None of the
stories discussed in the last chapter has, it may be noticed, the least
comic touch or turn.

[Sidenote: And of the _fabliaux_.]

As we go on we must disengage ourselves more and more (though with
occasional returns to it) from attention to verse; and the two great
compositions in that form, the _Romance of the Rose_ and the _Story of
the Fox_, especially the former, hardly require much writing about to
any educated person. They are indeed most strongly contrasted examples
of two modes of tale-telling, both in a manner allegoric, but in other
respects utterly different. The mere story of the _Rose_, apart from the
dreamy or satiric digressions and developments of its two parts and the
elaborate descriptions of the first, can be told in a page or two. An
abstract of the various _Renart_ books, to give any idea of their real
character, would, on the other hand, have to be nearly as long as the
less spun-out versions themselves. But the verse _fabliaux_ can hardly
be passed over so lightly. Many of them formed the actual bases of the
prose _nouvelles_ that succeeded them; not a few have found repeated
presentation in literature; and, above all, they deserve the immense
praise of having deliberately introduced ordinary life, and not
conventionalised manners, into literary treatment. We have taken some
pains to point out touches of that life which are observable in Saint's
Life and Romance, in _chanson_ and early prose tale. But here the case
is altered. Almost everything is real; a good deal is what is called, in
one of the senses of a rather misused word, downright "realism."

Few people who have ever heard of the _fabliaux_ can need to be told
that this realism in their case implies extreme freedom of treatment,
extending very commonly to the undoubtedly coarse and not seldom to the
merely dirty. There are some--most of them well known by modern
imitations such as Leigh Hunt's "Palfrey"--which are quite guiltless in
this respect; but the great majority deal with the usual comic farrago
of satire on women, husbands, monks, and other stock subjects of
raillery, all of which at the time invited "sculduddery." To translate
some of the more amusing, one would require not merely Chaucerian
licence of treatment but Chaucerian peculiarities of dialect in order to
avoid mere vulgarity. Even Prior, who is our only modern English
_fabliau_-writer of real literary merit--the work of people like Hanbury
Williams and Hall Stevenson being mostly mere pornography--could hardly
have managed such a piece as "Le Sot Chevalier"--a riotously "improper"
but excessively funny example--without running the risk of losing that
recommendation of being "a lady's book" with which Johnson rather
capriciously tempered his more general undervaluation. Sometimes, on the
other hand, the joke is trivial enough, as in the English-French
word-play of _anel_ for _agnel_ (or _-neau_), which substitutes "donkey"
for "lamb"; or, in the other, on the comparison of a proper name,
"Estula," with its component syllables "es tu là?" But the important
point on the whole is that, proper or improper, romantic or trivial,
they all exhibit a constant improvement in the mere art of telling; in
discarding of the stock phrases, the long-winded speeches, and the
general _paraphernalia_ of verse; in sticking and leading up smartly to
the point; in coining sharp, lively phrase; in the co-ordination of
incident and the excision of superfluities. Often they passed without
difficulty into direct dramatic presentation in short farces. But on the
whole their obvious destiny was to be "unrhymed" and to make their
appearance in the famous form of the _nouvelle_ or _novella_, in regard
to which it is hard to say whether Italy was most indebted to France
for substance, or France to Italy for form.

[Sidenote: The rise of the _nouvelle_ itself.]

It was not, however, merely the intense conservatism of the Middle Ages
as to literary form which kept back the prose _nouvelle_ to such an
extent that, as we have seen, only a few examples survive from the two
whole centuries between 1200 and 1400, while not one of these is of the
kind most characteristic ever since, or at least until quite recent
days, of French tale-telling. The French octosyllabic couplet, in which
the _fabliaux_ were without exception or with hardly an exception
composed, can, in a long story, become very tiresome because of its want
of weight and grasp, and the temptations it offers to a weak rhymester
to stuff it with endless tags. But for a short tale in deft hands it can
apply its lightness in the best fashion, and put its points with no lack
of sting. The _fabliau_-writer or reciter was not required--one imagines
that he would have found scant audiences if he had tried it--to spin a
long yarn; he had got to come to his jokes and his business pretty
rapidly; and, as La Fontaine has shown to thousands who have never
known--perhaps have never heard of--his early masters, he had an
instrument which would answer to his desires perfectly if only he knew
how to finger it.

At the same time, both the lover of poetry and the lover of tale must
acknowledge that, though alliance between them is not in the least an
unholy one, and has produced great and charming children, the best of
the poetry is always a sort of extra bonus or solace to the tale, and
the tale not unfrequently seems as if it could get on better without the
poetry. The one can only aspire somewhat irrelevantly; the other can
never attain quite its full development. So it was no ill day when the
prose _nouvelle_ came to its own in France.

[Sidenote: _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles._]

The first remarkable collection was the famous _Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles_, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and an
exile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and courtiers, but
more recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggage
they have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question of
authorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though the
point last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have to
notice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainly
some of the hundred that he might have written.

In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the
_Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ were held to be mere imitation of the
_Decameron_ and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more than
probable that the Italian _novella_ had not a little to do with the
precipitation of the French _nouvelle_ from its state of solution in the
_fabliau_. But the person or persons who, in imitating the _Decameron_,
produced the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ had a great deal more to do--and
did a great deal less--than this mere imitation of their original. As
for a group of included tales, the already-mentioned _Seven Wise
Masters_[80] was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The title
was indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require no
positive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-framework
like that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerful
personalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals but
the stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, there
is nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety--a pure
gift of genius--which succeeds in making the _Decameron_ a real book as
well as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literary
brilliancy of the actual style and handling.

Nevertheless, _Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ is a book of great interest
and value, despite serious defects due to its time generally and to its
place in the history of fiction in particular. Its obscenity, on which
even Sir Walter Scott, the least censorious or prudish-prurient of men,
and with Southey, the great witness against false squeamishness, has
been severe,[81] is unfortunately undeniable. But it is to be doubted
whether Sir Walter knew much of the _fabliaux_; if he had he would have
seen first, that this sort of thing had become an almost indispensable
fashion in the short story, and secondly, that there is here
considerable improvement on the _fabliaux_ themselves, there being much
less mere schoolboy crudity of dirty detail and phrase, though the
situations may remain the same. It suffers occasionally from the heavy
and rhetorical style which beset all European literature (except
Italian, which itself did not wholly escape) in the fifteenth century.
But still one can see in it that improvement of narrative method and
diction which has been referred to: and occasionally, amid the crowd of
tricky wives, tricked husbands, too obliging and too hardly treated
chambermaids, ribald priests and monks, and the like, one comes across
quite different things and persons, which are, as the phrase goes,
almost startlingly modern, with a mixture of the _un_modern heightening
the appeal. One of the most striking of these--not very likely to be
detected or suspected by a careless reader under its sub-title of "La
Demoiselle Cavalière," and by no means fully summarised in the quaint
short argument which is in all cases subjoined--may be briefly analysed.

[Sidenote: Analysis of "La Demoiselle Cavalière".]

In one of the great baronial households of Brabant there lived, after
the usual condition of gentle servitude, a youth named Gerard, who fell
in love, after quite honourable and seemly fashion, with Katherine, the
daughter of the house--a fact which, naturally, they thought known only
to themselves, when, as naturally, everybody in the Court had become
aware of it. "For the better prevention of scandal," an immediate
marriage being apparently out of the question because of Gerard's
inferiority in rank to his mistress, it is decided by the intervention
of friends that Gerard shall take his leave of the Brabantine "family."
There is a parting of the most laudable kind, in which Katherine
bestows on her lover a ring, and a pledge that she will never marry any
one else, and he responds suitably. Then he sets out, and on arriving at
Bar has no difficulty in establishing himself in another great
household. Katherine meanwhile is beset with suitors of the best rank
and fortune; but will have nothing to say to any of them, till one day
comes the formidable moment when a mediaeval father determines that his
daughter shall marry a certain person, will she nill she. But if
mediaeval fatherhood was arbitrary, mediaeval religion was supreme, and
a demand to go on pilgrimage before an important change of life could
hardly be refused. In fact, the parents, taking the proposal as a mere
preliminary of obedience, consent joyfully, and offer a splendid suite
of knights and damsels, "Nous lui baillerons ung tel gentilhomme et une
telle demoiselle, Ysabeau et Marguerite et Jehanneton." But "no," says
Mistress Katherine sagely. The road to St. Nicolas of Warengeville is
not too safe for people travelling with a costly outfit and a train of
women. Let her, dressed as a man, and a bastard uncle of hers (who is
evidently the "Will Wimble" of the house) go quietly on little horses,
and it will save time, trouble, money, and danger. This the innocent
parents consider to show "great sense and good will," and the pair start
in German dress--Katherine as master, the uncle as man,--comfortably,
too, as one may imagine (for uncles and nieces generally get on well
together, and the bend sinister need do no harm). They accomplish their
pilgrimage (a touch worth noticing in Katherine's character), and then
only does she reveal her plan to her companion. She tells him, not
without a little bribery, that she wants to go and see Gerard _en
Barrois_, and to stay there for a short time; but he is to have no doubt
of her keeping her honour safe. He consents, partly with an eye to the
future main chance (for she is her father's sole heir), and partly
because _elle est si bonne qu'il n'y fault guère guet sur elle_.
Katherine, taking the name of Conrad, finds the place, presents herself
to the _maître_ _d'ostel_, an ancient squire, as desirous of
entertainment or _re_tainment, and is very handsomely received. After
dinner and due service done to the master, the old squire having heard
that Katherine--Conrad--is of Brabant, naturally introduces her
countryman Gerard to her. He does not in the least recognise her, and
what strikes her as stranger, neither during their own dinner nor after
says a word about Brabant itself. Conrad is regularly admitted to
Monseigneur's service, and, as a countryman, is to share Gerard's room.
They are perfectly good friends, go to see their horses together, etc.,
but still the formerly passionate lover says not a word of Brabant or
his Brabançonian love, and poor Katherine concludes that she has been
"put with forgotten sins"--not a bad phrase, though it might be
misconstrued. Being, however, as has been already seen, both a plucky
girl and a clever one, she determines to carry her part through. At
last, when they go to their respective couches in the same chamber, she
herself faces the subject, and asks him if he knows any persons in
Brabant. "Oh yes." "Does he know" her own father, his former master?
"Yes." "They say," said she, "that there are pretty girls there: did you
not know any?" "Precious few," quoth he, "and I cared nothing about
them. Do let me go to sleep! I am dead tired." "What!" said she, "can
you sleep when there is talk of pretty girls? _You_ are not much of a
lover." But he slept "like a pig."

Nevertheless, Katherine does not give up hope, though the next day
things are much the same, Gerard talking of nothing but hounds and
hawks, Conrad of pretty girls. At last the visitor declares that he
[she] does not care for the Barrois, and will go back to Brabant. "Why?"
says Gerard, "what better hunting, etc., can you get there than here?"
"It has nothing," says Conrad, "like the women of Brabant," adding, in
reply to a jest of his, an ambiguous declaration that she is actually in
love. "Then why did you leave her?" says Gerard--about the first
sensible word he has uttered. She makes a fiery answer as to Love
sometimes banishing from his servants all sense and reason. But for the
time the subject again drops. It is, however, reopened at night, and
some small pity comes on one for the recreant Gerard, inasmuch as she
keeps him awake by wailing about her love. At last she "draws" the
sluggard to some extent. "Has not _he_ been in love, and does not he
know all about it? But he was never such a fool as Conrad, and he is
sure that Conrad's lady is not such either." Another try, and she gets
the acknowledgment of treason out of him. He tells her (what she knows
too well) how he loved a noble damsel in Brabant and had to leave her,
and it really annoyed him for a few days (it is good to imagine
Katherine's face, even in the dark, at this), though of course he never
lost his appetite or committed any folly of that sort. But he knew his
Ovid (he tells her), and as soon as he came to Bar he made love to a
pretty girl there who was quite amiable to him, and now he never thinks
of the other. There is more talk, and Katherine insists that he shall
introduce her to his new lady, that she may try this remedy of
counter-love. He consents with perfect nonchalance, and is at last
allowed to go to sleep. No details are given of the conversation with
the rival,[82] except the bitterness of Katherine's heart at the fact,
and at seeing the ring she had given to Gerard on his hand. This she
actually has the pluck to play with, and, securing it, to slip on her
own. But the man being obviously past praying or caring for, she
arranges with her uncle to depart early in the morning, writes a letter
telling Gerard of the whole thing and renouncing him, passes the night
silently, leaves the letter, rises quietly and early, and departs, yet
"weeping tenderly," not for the man, but for her own lost love. The pair
reach home safely, and says the tale-teller, with an agreeable dryness
often found here,[83] "There were some who asked them the adventures of
their journey, but whatever they answered they did not boast of the
chief one." The conclusion is so spirited and at the very end so scenic
and even modern (or, much better, universal), that it must be given in
direct translation, with a few _chevilles_ (or pieces of padding) left
out.

     As for Gerard, when he woke and found his companion gone, he
     thought it must be late, jumped up in haste, and seized his
     jerkin: but, as he thrust his hand in one of the sleeves,
     there dropped out a letter which surprised him, for he
     certainly did not remember having put any there. He picked
     it up and saw it subscribed "To the disloyal Gerard." If he
     was startled before he was more so now: but he opened it at
     last, and saw the signature "Katherine, surnamed Conrad."
     Even yet he knew not what to think of it: but as he read the
     blood rose to his face and his heart fluttered, and his
     whole manner was changed. Still, he read it through, and
     learnt how his disloyalty had come to the knowledge of her
     who had wished him so well; and that not at second hand, but
     from himself to herself; what trouble she had taken to find
     him; and how (which stung him most) he had slept three
     nights in her company after all. [_After thinking some time
     he decides to follow her, and arrives in Brabant on the very
     day of her marriage: for she has, in the circumstances, kept
     her word to her parents._] Then he tried to go up to her and
     salute her, and make some wretched excuse for his fault. But
     he was not allowed, for she turned her shoulder on him, and
     he could never manage to speak to her all through the day.
     He even stepped forward once to lead her out to dance, but
     she refused him flatly before all the company, many of whom
     heard her. And immediately afterwards another gentleman
     came, who bade the minstrels strike up, and she stepped down
     from her dais in full view of Gerard and went to dance with
     him. And so did the disloyal lover lose his lady.

Now whether this, as the book asserts and as is not at all improbable,
is a true story or not, cannot matter to any sensible person one
farthing. What does matter is that it is a by no means badly told story,
that it resorts to no illegitimate sources or seasonings of interest,
and that it offers opportunities for amplification and "diversity of
administration" to almost any extent. One can fancy it told, at much
greater length and with more or less adjustment to different times, by
great novelists of the most widely varying classes--by Scott and by
Dumas, by Charles Reade and by George Meredith, to mention no living
writer, as might easily be done. Both hero and heroine have more
character between them than you could extract out of fifty of the usual
_nouvelles_, and each lends him or herself to endless further
development. Not a few of the separate scenes--the good parents fussing
over their daughter's intended cavalcade and her thrifty and ingenious
objections; the journey of the uncle and niece (any of the first three
of the great novelists mentioned above would have made chapters of
this); the dramatic and risky passages at the castle _en Barrois_; the
contrast of Katherine's passion and Gerard's sluggishness; and the
fashion in which this latter at once brings on the lout's defeat and
saves the lady from danger at his hands--all this is novel-matter of
almost the first class as regards incident, with no lack of
character-openings to boot. Nor could anybody want a better "curtain"
than the falling back of the scorned and baffled false lover, the
concert of the minstrels, and Katherine's stately stepping down the dais
to complete the insult by dancing with another.

[Sidenote: The interest of _named_ personages.]

One more general point may be noticed in connection with the superiority
of this story, and that is the accession of interest, at first sight
trivial but really important, which comes from the _naming_ of the
personages. Both in the earlier _fabliaux_ and in these _Nouvelles_
themselves, by far the larger number of the actors are simply called by
class-names--a "knight," a "damsel," a "merchant and his wife," a
"priest," a "varlet." It may seem childish to allow the mere addition of
a couple of names like Gerard and Katherine to make this difference of
interest, but the fact is that there is a good deal of childishness in
human nature, and especially in the enjoyment of story.[84] Only by
very slow degrees were writers of fiction to learn the great difference
that small matters of this kind make, and how the mere "anecdote," the
dry argument or abstract of incident, can be amplified, varied,
transformed from a remainder biscuit to an abundant and almost
inexhaustible feast, by touches of individual character, setting of
interiors, details of conversation, description, nomenclature, and what
not. Quite early, as we saw in the case of the _St. Alexis_, persons of
narrative gift stumbled upon things of the kind; but it was only after
long delays, and hints of many half-conscious kinds, that they became
part of recognised craft. Even with such a master of that craft as
Boccaccio before them, not all the Italian novelists could catch the
pattern; and the French, perhaps naturally enough, were slower still.

It must be remembered, in judging the fifteenth-century French tale,
that just as it was to some extent hampered by the long continuing
popularity of the verse _fabliau_ on the one hand, so it was, as we may
say, "bled" on the other by the growing popularity of the farce, which
consists of exactly the same material as the _fabliaux_ and the
_nouvelles_ themselves, with the additional liveliness of voice and
action. These later additions imposed not the smallest restraint on the
license which had characterised and was to characterise the plain verse
and prose forms,[85] and no doubt the result was all the more welcome to
the taste of the time. But for that very reason the appetites and
tastes, which could glut themselves with the full dramatic
representation, might care less for the mere narrative, on the famous
principle of _segnius irritant_. Nor was the political state of France
during the time very favourable to letters. There are, however, two
separate fifteenth-century stories which deserve notice. One of them is
the rather famous, though probably not widely read, _Petit Jehan de
Saintré_ of the already mentioned Antoine de la Salle, a certain work
of his this time. The other is the pleasant, though to Englishmen
intentionally uncomplimentary, _Jehan de Paris_ of an unknown writer. La
Salle's book must belong to the later middle of the century, though, if
he died in or about 1461, not to a very late middle. _Jehan de Paris_
has been put by M. de Montaiglon nearer the close.

[Sidenote: _Petit Jehan de Saintré._]

The history of "little John of Saintré and the Lady of the Beautiful
Cousins"[86] has not struck all judges, even all English judges,[87] in
the same way. Some have thought it mawkish, rhetorical, clumsily
imitative of the manners of dead chivalry, and the like. Others,
admitting it to be a late and "literary" presentation of the stately
society it describes, rank it much higher as such. Its author was a
bitter enough satirist if he wrote, as he most probably did, the famous
_Quinze Joyes de Mariage_, one of the most unmitigated pieces of
unsweetened irony--next to _A Tale of a Tub_ and _Jonathan Wild_--to be
found in literature; but not couched in narrative form. The same quality
appears of course in the still more famous farce of _Pathelin_, which
few good judges deny very stoutly to him, though there is little
positive evidence. In the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ again, as has been
said, he certainly had a hand, and possibly a great hand, as well as
perhaps elsewhere. The satiric touch appears even in _Petit Jehan_
itself; for, after all the gracious courtship of the earlier part, the
_dame des belles Cousines_, during an absence of her lover on service,
falls a by no means, as it would seem, very reluctant victim to the
vulgar viciousness of a rich churchman, just like the innominatas of the
_nouvelles_ themselves. But the earlier part _is_ gracious--a word
specifically and intensively applicable to it. It may be a little
unreal; does not the secondary form and sense which has been fastened
upon reality--"realism"--show that, in the opinion of many people at
least, reality is _not_ gracious? The Foozles of this world who "despise
all your kickshaws," the Dry-as-dusts who point out--not in the least
seeing the real drift of their argument--that the fifteenth century was,
in the greater part of Europe if not the whole, at a new point of morals
and manners, may urge these things. But the best part of _Petit Jehan_
remains a gracious sort of dream for gracious dreamers--a picture of a
kind of Utopia of Feminism, when Feminism did not mean votes or anything
foolish, but only adoration of the adorable.

[Sidenote: _Jehan de Paris._]

It would be impossible to find or even to imagine anything more
different than the not much later _Jehan de Paris_, an evident
folk-tale[88] of uncertain origin, which very quickly became a popular
chapbook and lasted long in that condition. Although we Englishmen
provide the fun, he is certainly no Englishman who resents the fact or
fails to enjoy the result, not to mention that we "could tell them tales
with other endings." It is, for instance, not quite historically
demonstrable that in crossing a river many English horsemen would be
likely to be drowned, while all the French cavaliers got safe through;
nor that, in scouring a country, the Frenchmen would score all the game
and all the best beasts and poultry, while the English bag would consist
of starvelings and offal. But no matter for that. The actual tale tells
(with the agreeable introductory "How," which has not yet lost its zest
for the right palates in chapter-headings) the story of a King and Queen
of Spain who have, in recompense for help given them against turbulent
barons, contracted their daughter to the King of France for his son; how
they forgot this later, and betrothed her to the King of England, and
how that King set out with his train, through France itself, to fetch
his bride. As soon as the Dauphin (now king, for his father is dead)
hears of their coming, he disguises himself under the name of John of
Paris, with a splendid train of followers, much more gorgeous than the
English (the "foggy islander" of course cannot make this out), and sets
of _quiproquos_ follow, in each of which the Englishman is outdone and
baffled generally, till at last "John of Paris" enters Burgos in state,
reveals himself, and carries off the Englishman's bride, with the
natural effect of making him _bien marry et courroucé_, though no fight
comes off.

The tale is smartly and succinctly told (there are not many more than a
hundred of the small-sized and large-printed pages of the _Collection
Jannet-Picard_), and there is a zest and _verve_ about it which ought to
please any mood that is for the time in harmony with the much talked of
Comic Spirit. But it certainly does not lose attraction, and it as
certainly does not fail to lend some, when it is considered side by side
with the other "John," especially if both are again compared with the
certainly not earlier and probably later "Prose Romances" in English, to
which that rather ambitious title was given by Mr. Thoms. There is
nothing in these in the very remotest degree resembling _Jehan de
Saintré_: you must get on to the _Arcadia_ or at least to _Euphues_
before you come anywhere near that. There is, on the other hand, in our
stuff, a sort of distant community of spirit with _Jehan de Paris_; but
it works in an altogether lower and less imaginative sphere and fashion;
no sense of art being present, and very little of craft. It is
astonishing that a language which had had, if only in verse, such an
unsurpassable tale-teller as Chaucer, should have been so backward. But
then the whole conditions of the fifteenth century, especially in
England, become only the more puzzling the longer one studies them. Even
in France, it will be observed, the output of Tale is by no means
large.[89] Nor shall we find it very greatly increased even in the next
age, though there is one masterpiece in quantity as well as quality.
But, for our purpose, the _Cent Nouvelles_ and the two separate pieces
just discussed continue, and in more and more striking manner, to show
the vast possibilities when the way shall have been clearly found and
the feet of the wayfarers firmly set in it.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] Prose as well as verse.

[81] In the very delightful imaginative introduction to _Quentin
Durward_.

[82] This is one of the points which a modern novelist would certainly
have seized; but whether to advantage or not is another question.

[83] And of course recognised by the "Antonians" as peculiar to La
Salle.

[84] Only contrast "_Tom, Tom_, the piper's son," with "_There was once_
a piper's son," or think how comparatively uninteresting the enormities
of another hero or not-hero would have been if he had been anonymous
instead of being called "Georgy-Porgy Pudding-and-Pie!" ["Puddenum" is,
or used to be, the preferred if corrupt nursery form.] In more elaborate
and adorned narrative the influence, not merely of the name but of the
beautiful name, comes in, and that of the name itself remains. In that
tragic story of Ludlow Castle which was given above (Chap. iv. pp.
84-6), something, for the present writer at least, would have been lost
if the traitor had been merely "a knight" instead of Sir Ernault Lisle
and the victim merely "a damsel" instead of Marion de la Brière. And
would the _bocca bacciata_ of Alaciel itself be as gracious if it was
merely anybody's?

[85] The amazing farce-insets of Lyndsay's _Satire of the Three Estates_
could be paralleled, and were no doubt suggested, by French farces of
older date.

[86] Nobody seems to be entirely certain what this odd title means:
though there have been some obvious and some far-fetched guesses. But it
has, like other _rhétoriqueur_ names of 1450-1550, such as "Traverser of
Perilous Ways" and the like, a kind of fantastic attraction for some
people.

[87] If I remember rightly, my friend the late R. L. Stevenson was wont
to abuse it.

[88] As such, the substance is found in other languages. But the French
itself has been traced by some to an earlier _roman d'aventure_, _Blonde
d'Oxford_, in which an English heiress is carried off by a French
squire.

[89] Perhaps one should guard against a possible repetition of a not
uncommon critical mistake--that of inferring ignorance from absence of
mention. I am quite aware that no exhaustive catalogue of known French
stories in prose has been given; and the failure to supplement a former
glance at the late prose versions of romance is intentional. They have
nothing new in romance-, still less in novel-_character_ for us. The
_Bibliothèque Elzévirienne_ volumes have been dwelt upon, not as a
_corpus_, but because they appear to represent, without any unfair
manipulation or "window-dressing," the kind at the time with a
remarkable combination of interest both individual and contrasted.




CHAPTER VI

RABELAIS


[Sidenote: The anonymity, or at least impersonality, of authorship up to
this point.]

Although--as it is hoped the foregoing chapters may have shown--the
amount of energy and of talent, thrown into the department of French
fiction, had from almost the earliest times been remarkably great;
although French, if not France, had been the mother of almost all
literatures in things fictitious, it can hardly be said that any writer
of undeniable genius, entitling him to the first class in the Art of
Letters, had shown himself therein. A hundred _chansons de geste_ and as
many romances _d'aventures_ had displayed dispersed talent of a very
high kind, and in the best of them, as the present writer has tried to
point out, a very "extensive assortment" of the various attractions of
the novel had from time to time made its appearance. But this again had
been done "dispersedly," as the Shakespearean stage-direction has it.
The story is sometimes well told, but the telling is constantly
interrupted; the great art of novel-conversation is, as yet, almost
unborn; the descriptions, though sometimes very striking, as in the case
of those given from _Partenopeus_--the fatal revelation of Melior's
charms and the galloping of the maddened palfrey along the seashore,
with the dark monster-haunted wood behind and the bright moonlit sea and
galley in front--are more often stock and lifeless; while, above all,
the characters are rarely more than sketched, if even that. The one
exception--the great Arthurian history, as liberated from its
Graal-legend swaddling clothes, and its kite-and-crow battles with
Saxons and rival knights, but retaining the mystical motive of the
Graal-search itself and the adventures of Lancelot and other knights;
combining all this into a single story, and storing it with incident for
a time, and bringing it to a full and final tragic close by the loves of
Lancelot himself and Guinevere--this great achievement, it has been
frankly confessed, is so much muddled and distracted with episode which
becomes positive digression, that some have even dismissed its
pretensions to be a whole. Even those who reject this dismissal are not
at one as to any single author of the conception, still less of the
execution. The present writer has stated his humble, but ever more and
more firm conviction that Chrestien did not do it and could not have
done it; others of more note, perhaps of closer acquaintance with MS.
sources, but also perhaps not uniting knowledge of the subject with more
experience in general literary criticism and in special study of the
Novel, will not allow Mapes to have done it.

The _Roman de la Rose_, beautiful as is its earlier part and ingenious
as is (sometimes) its later, is, as a _story_, of the thinnest kind. The
_Roman de Renart_ is a vast collection of small stories of a special
class, and the _Fabliaux_ are almost a vaster collection (if you do not
exclude the "waterings out" of _Renart_) of kinds more general. There is
abundance of amusement and some charm; but nowhere are we much beyond
very simple forms of fiction itself. None of the writers of _nouvelles_,
except Antoine de la Salle, can be said to be a known personality.

[Sidenote: Rabelais unquestionably the first very great known writer.]

There has always been a good deal of controversy about Rabelais, not all
of which perhaps can we escape, though it certainly will not be invited,
and we have no very extensive knowledge of his life. But we have some:
and that, as a man of genius, he is superior to any single person named
and known in earlier French literature, can hardly be contested by any
one who is neither a silly paradoxer nor a mere dullard, nor affected by
some extra-literary prejudice--religious, moral, or whatever it may be.
But perhaps not every one who would admit the greatness of Master
Francis as a man of letters, his possession not merely of consummate
wit, but of that precious thing, so much rarer in French, actual humour;
his wonderful influence on the future word-book and phrase-book of his
own language, nay, not every one who would go almost the whole length of
the most uncompromising Pantagruelist, and would allow him profound
wisdom, high aspirations for humanity, something of a complete
world-philosophy--would at once admit him as a very great novelist. For
my own part I have no hesitation in doing so, and to make the admission
good must be the object of this chapter.

[Sidenote: But the first great novelist?]

It may almost be said that his very excellence in this way has "stood in
its own light." The readableness of Rabelais is extraordinary. The
present writer, after for years making of him almost an Addison
according to Johnson's prescription, fell, by mere accident and
occupation with other matters, into a way of _not_ reading him, except
for purposes of mere literary reference, during a long time. On three
different occasions more recently, one ten or a dozen years ago, one six
or seven, and the third for the purposes of this very book, he put
himself again under the Master, and read him right through. It is
difficult to imagine a severer test, and I am bound to confess (though I
am not bound to specify) that in some, though not many, instances I have
found famous and once favourite classics fail to stand it. Not so Master
Francis. I do not think that I ever read him with greater interest than
at this last time. Indeed I doubt whether I have ever felt the
_catholicon_--the pervading virtue of his book--quite so strongly as I
have in the days preceding that on which I write these words.

[Sidenote: Some objections considered.]

Of course Momus may find handles--he generally can. "You are suffering
from morbid senile relapse into puerile enjoyment of indecency," he or
Mrs. Momus (whom later ages have called Grundy) may be kind enough to
say. "You were a member of the Rabelais Club of pleasant memory, and
think it necessary to live up to your earlier profession." "You have
said this in print before [I have not exactly done so] and are bound to
stick to it," etc. etc. etc., down to that final, "You are a bad critic,
and it doesn't matter what you say," which certainly, in a sense, does
leave nothing to be replied. But whether this is because the accused is
guilty, or because the Court does not call upon him, is a question which
one may leave to others.

Laying it down, then, as a point of fact that Rabelais _has_ this
curious "holding" quality, whence does he get it? As everybody ought to
know, many good people, admitting the fact, have, as he would himself
have said, gone about with lanterns to seek for out-of-the-way reasons
and qualities; while some people, not so good, but also accepting the
fact in a way, have grasped at the above-mentioned indecency itself for
an explanation. This trick requires little effort to kick it into its
native gutter. The greater proportion of the "_Indexable_" part of
Rabelais is mere nastiness, which is only attractive to a very small
minority of persons at any age, while to expert readers it is but a
time-deodorised dunghill by the roadside, not beautiful, but negligible.
Of the other part of this kind--the "naughty" part which is not nasty
and may be somewhat nice--there is, when you come to consider it
dispassionately, not really so very much, and it is seldom used in a
seductive fashion. It may tickle, but it does not excite; may create
laughter, but never passion or even desire. Therefore it cannot be this
which "holds" any reader but a mere novice or a glutton for garbage.

Less easily dismissible, but, it will seem, not less inadequate is the
alleged "key"-interest of the book. Of course there are some people, and
more than a person who wishes to think nobly of humanity might desire to
find, who seem never to be tired of identifying Grandgousier, Gargantua,
and Pantagruel himself with French kings to whom they bear not the
slightest resemblance; of obliging us English by supposing us to be the
Macréons (who seem to have been very respectable people, but who inhabit
an island singularly unlike England in or anywhere near the time of
Rabelais), and so on. But to a much larger number of persons--and one
dares say to all true Pantagruelists--these interpretations are either
things that the Master himself would have delighted to satirise, and
would have satirised unsurpassably, or, at best, mere superfluities and
supererogations. At any rate there is no possibility of finding in them
the magic spell--the "Fastrada's ring," which binds youth and age alike
to the unique "Alcofribas Nasier."

One must, it is supposed, increase the dose of respect (though
some people, in some cases, find it hard) when considering a further
quality or property--the Riddle-attraction of Rabelais. This
riddle-attraction--or attractions, for it might be better spoken of in a
very large plural--is of course quite undeniable in itself. There are as
many second intentions in the ordinary sense, apparently obvious in
_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_, as there can have been in the scholastic
among the dietary of La Quinte, or of any possible Chimaera buzzing at
greatest intensity in the extremest vacuum. On the other hand, some of
us are haunted by the consideration, "Was there ever any human being
more likely than François Rabelais to echo (with the slightest change)
the words ascribed to Divinity in that famous piece which is taken, on
good external and ultra-internal evidence, to be Swift's?

    _I_ to such block-heads set my wit!
    _I_ [_pose_] such fools! Go, go--you're bit."

And there is not wanting, amongst us sceptics, a further section who are
quite certain that a not inconsiderable proportion of the book is not
allegory at all, but sheer "bamming," while others again would transfer
the hackneyed death-bed saying from author to book, and say that the
whole Chronicle is "a great perhaps."

[Sidenote: And dismissed as affecting the general attraction of the
book.]

These things--or at least elaborate discussions of them--lie somewhat,
though not so far as may at first seem, outside our proper business. It
must, however, once more be evident, from the facts and very nature of
the case, that the puzzles, the riddles, the allegories cannot
constitute the main and, so to speak, "universal" part of the attraction
of the book. They may be a seasoning to some, a solid cut-and-come-again
to others, but certainly not to the majority. Even in _Gulliver_--the
Great Book's almost, perhaps quite, as great descendant--these
attractions, though more universal in appeal and less evasively
presented, certainly do not hold any such position. The fact is that
both Rabelais and Swift were consummate tellers of a story, and
(especially if you take the _Polite Conversation_ into Swift's claim)
consummate originators of the Novel or larger story, with more than
"incidental" attraction itself. But we are not now busied with Swift.

[Sidenote: Which lies, largely if not wholly, in its story-interest.]

Not much serious objection will probably be taken to the place allotted
to Master Francis as a tale-teller pure and simple, although it cannot
be said that all his innumerable critics and commentators have laid
sufficient stress on this. From the uncomfortable birth of Gargantua to
the triumphant recessional scene from the Oracle of the Bottle, proofs
are to be found in every book, every chapter almost, and indeed almost
every page; and a little more detail may be given on this head later.
But the presentation of Rabelais as a novelist-before-novels may cause
more demur, and even suggest the presence of the now hopelessly
discredited thing--paradox itself. Of course, if anybody requires
regular plot as a necessary constituent, only paradox could contend for
that. It _has_ been contended--and rightly enough--that in the general
scheme and the two (or if you take in Grandgousier, three) generations
of histories of the good giants, Rabelais is doing nothing more than
parody--is, indeed, doing little more than simply follow the traditions
of Romance--Amiles and Jourdains, Guy and Rembrun, and many others. But
some of us regard plot as at best a full-dress garment, at the absence
of which the good-natured God or Muse of fiction is quite willing to
wink. Character, if seldom elaborately presented, except in the case of
Panurge, is showered, in scraps and sketches, all over the book, and
description and dialogue abound.

[Sidenote: Contrast of the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]

But it is not on such beggarly special pleading as this that the claim
shall be founded. It must rest on the unceasing, or practically
unceasing, impetus of story-interest which carries the reader through. A
remarkably useful contrast-parallel in this respect, may be found in
that strange book, the _Moyen de Parvenir_. I am of those who think that
it had something to do with Rabelais, that there is some of his stuff in
it, even that he may have actually planned something like it. But the
"make-up" is not more inferior in merit to that of _Gargantua_ and
_Pantagruel_ than it is different in kind. The _Moyen de Parvenir_ is
full of separate stories of the _fabliau_ kind, often amusing and well
told, though exceedingly gross as a rule. These stories are "set" in a
framework of promiscuous conversation, in which a large number of great
real persons, ancient and modern, and a smaller one of invented
characters, or rather names, take part. Most of this, though not quite
all, is mere _fatrasie_, if not even mere jargon: and though there are
glimmerings of something more than sense, they are, with evident
deliberation, enveloped in clouds of nonsense. The thing is not a whole
at all, and the stories have as little to do with each other or with any
general drift as if they were professedly--what they are practically--a
bundle of _fabliaux_ or _nouvelles_. As always happens in such
cases--and as the author, whether he was Béroalde or another, whether or
not he worked on a canvas greater than he could fill, or tried to patch
together things too good for him, no doubt intended--attempts have been
made to interpret the puzzle here also; but they are quite obviously
vain.

[Sidenote: A general theme possible.]

[Sidenote: A reference--to be taken up later--to the last Book.]

Such a sentence, however, cannot be pronounced in any such degree or
measure on the similar attempts in the case of _Gargantua_ and
_Pantagruel_; for a reason which some readers may find unexpected. The
unbroken vigour--unbroken even by the obstacles which it throws in its
own way, like the Catalogue of the Library of Saint-Victor and the
burlesque lists of adjectives, etc., which fill up whole chapters--with
which the story or string of stories is carried on, may naturally
suggest that there _is_ a story or at least a theme. It is a sort of
quaint alteration or catachresis of _Possunt quia posse videntur_. There
must be a general theme, because the writer is so obviously able to
handle any theme he chooses. It may be wiser--it certainly seems so to
the present writer--to disbelieve in anything but occasional
sallies--episodes, as it were, or even digressions--of political,
religious, moral, social and other satire. It is, on the other hand, a
most important thing to admit the undoubted presence--now and then, and
not unfrequently--of a deliberate dropping of the satiric and burlesque
mask. This supplies the presentation of the serious, kindly, and human
personality of the three princes (Grandgousier, Gargantua, and
Pantagruel); this the schemes of education (giving so large a proportion
of the small bulk of _not_-nonsense written on that matter). Above all,
this permits, to one taste at least, the exquisite last Book,
presentation of La Quinte and the fresh roses in her hand, the
originality of which, not only in the whole book in one sense, but in
the particular Book in the other, is, to that taste, and such
argumentative powers as accompany it, an almost absolute proof of that
Book's genuineness. For if it had been by another who, _un_like
Rabelais, had a special tendency towards such graceful imagination, he
could hardly have refrained from showing this elsewhere in this long
book.[90]

[Sidenote: Running survey of the whole.]

But however this may be, it is certain that a critical reader,
especially when he has reason to be startled by the external, if not
actually extrinsic, oddities of and excesses of the book, will be
justified in allowing--it may almost be said that he is likely to
allow--the extraordinary volume of concatenated fictitious interest in
the whole book or books. The usual and obvious "catenations" are indeed
almost ostentatiously wanting. The absence of any real plot has been
sufficiently commented on, with the temptations conferred by it to
substitute a fancied unity of purpose. The birth, and what we may call
the two educations, of Gargantua; the repetition, with sufficient
differences, of the same plan in the opening of _Pantagruel_; the
appearance of Panurge and the campaign against the Dipsodes; the great
marriage debate; and the voyage to the Oracle of the Bottle, are
connected merely in "chronicle" fashion. The character-links are hardly
stronger, for though Friar John does play a more or less important part
from almost the beginning to quite the end, Panurge, the most important
and remarkable single figure, does not appear for a considerable time,
and the rest are shadows. The scene is only in one or two chapters
nominally placed in Nowhere; but as a whole it is Nowhere Else, or
rather a bewildering mixture of topical assignments in a very small part
of France, and allegorical or fantastic descriptions of a multitude of
Utopias. And yet, once more, it _is_ a whole story. As you read it you
almost forget what lies behind, you quite forget the breaches of
continuity, and press on to what is before, almost as eagerly, if not
quite in the same fashion, as if the incidents and the figures were not
less exciting than those of _Vingt Ans Après_. Let us hope it may not be
excessive to expend a few pages on a sketch of this strange story that
is no story, with, it may be, some fragments of translation or
paraphrase (for, as even his greatest translator, Urquhart, found, a
certain amount of his own _Fay ce que voudras_ is necessary with
Rabelais) here and there.

[Sidenote: _Gargantua._]

Master Francis does not exactly plunge into the middle of things; but he
spends comparatively little time on the preliminaries of the ironical
Prologue to the "very illustrious drinkers," on the traditionally
necessary but equally ironical genealogy of the hero, on the elaborate
verse _amphigouri_ of the _Fanfreluches Antidotées_, and on the mock
scientific discussion of extraordinarily prolonged periods of pregnancy.
Without these, however, he will not come to the stupendous banquet of
tripe (properly washed down, and followed by pleasant revel on the
"echoing green") which determined the advent of Gargantua into the
world, which enabled Grandgousier, more fortunate than his son on a
future occasion, to display his amiability as a husband and a father
unchecked by any great sorrow, and which was, as it were, crowned and
sealed by that son's first utterance--no miserable and ordinary infant's
wail, but the stentorian barytone "_A boire!_" which rings through the
book till it passes in the sharper, but not less delectable treble of
"_Trinq!_" And then comes a brief piece, not narrative, but as
characteristic perhaps of what we may call the ironical _moral_ of the
narrative as any--a grave remonstrance with those who will not believe
in _ceste estrange nativité_.

[Sidenote: The birth and education.]

     I doubt me ye believe not this strange birth assuredly. If
     ye disbelieve, I care not; but a respectable man--a man of
     good sense--_always_ believes what people tell him and what
     he finds written. Does not Solomon say (Prov. xiv.), "The
     innocent [simple] believeth every word" etc.? And St. Paul
     (1 Cor. xiii.), "Charity believeth all things"? Why should
     you _not_ believe it? "Because," says you, "there is no
     probability[91] in it." I tell you that for this very and
     only reason you ought to believe with a perfect faith. For
     the Sorbonists say that faith is the evidence of things of
     no probability.[92] Is it against our law or our faith?
     against reason? against the Sacred Scriptures?[93] For my
     part I can find nothing written in the Holy Bible which is
     contrary thereto. But if the Will of God had been so, would
     you say that He could not have done it? Oh for grace' sake
     do not make a mess of your wits in such vain thoughts. For I
     tell you that nothing is impossible with God.

And Divinity being done with, the Classics and pure fantasy are drawn
upon; the incredulous being finally knocked down by a citation from
Pliny, and a polite request not to bother any more.

This is, of course, the kind of passage which has been brought against
Rabelais, as similar ones have been brought against Swift, to justify
charges of impiety. But, again, it is not necessary to bother
(_tabuster_) about that. Any one who cannot see that it is the foolish
use of reverend things and not the things themselves that the satire
hits, is hardly worth argument. But there is no doubt that this sort of
mortar, framework, menstruum, canvas, or whatever way it may be best
metaphored, helps the apparent continuity of the work marvellously,
leaving, as it were, no rough edges or ill-mended joints. It is, to use
an admirable phrase of Mr. Balfour's about a greater matter, "the
logical glue which holds together and makes intelligible the
multiplicity" of the narrative units, or perhaps instead of
"intelligible" one should here say "appreciable."

Sometimes the "glue" of ironic comment rather saturates these units of
narrative than surrounds or interjoins them, and this is the case with
what follows. The infantine peculiarities of Gargantua; his dress and
the mystery of its blue and white colours (the blue of heaven and the
white of the joy of earth); how his governesses and he played together;
what smart answers he made; how he became early both a poet and an
experimental philosopher--all this is recounted with a marvellous
mixture of wisdom and burlesque, though sometimes, no doubt, with rather
too much of _haut goût_ seasoning. Then comes the, in Renaissance books,
inevitable "Education" section, and it has been already noted briefly
how different this is from most of its group (the corresponding part of
_Euphues_ may be suggested for comparison). Even Rabelais does not
escape the main danger--he neglects a little to listen to the wisest
voice, "Can't you let him alone?" But the contrasts in the case of
Gargantua, the general tenor (that good prince profiting by his own
experience for his son's benefit) in that of Pantagruel, are not too
"improving," and are made by their historian's "own sauce" exceedingly
piquant. Much as has been written on the subject, it is not easy to be
quite certain how far the "Old" Learning was fairly treated by the
"New." Rabelais and Erasmus and the authors of the _Epistolae Obscurorum
Virorum_ are such a tremendous overmatch for any one on the other side,
that the most judicial as well as judicious of critics must be rather
puzzled as to the real merits of the case. But luckily there is no need
to decide. Enjoyment, not decision, is the point, and there is no
difficulty in _that_. How Gargantua was transferred from the learned but
somewhat, as the vulgar would say, "stick-in-the-mud" tutorship of
Master Thubal Holofernes, who spent eighteen years in reading _De Modis
Significandi_ with his pupil, and Master Jobelin Bridé, who has "become
a name"--not exactly of honour; how he was transferred to the less
antiquated guidance of Ponocrates, and set out for Paris on the famous
dappled mare, whose exploits in field and town were so alarming, and
who had the bells of Notre Dame hung round her neck, till they were
replaced rather after than because of the remonstrance of Master Janotus
de Bragmardo; how for a time, and under Sorbonic direction, he wasted
that time in short and useless study, with long intervals of
card-playing, sleeping, etc. etc., and of course a great deal of eating
and drinking, "not as he ought and as he ought not"--all this leads up
to the moment when the sage Ponocrates takes him again in hand, and
institutes a strenuous drill in manners, studies, manly exercises, and
the like, ending with one of those extraordinary flashes of perfect
style and noble meaning which it pleases Rabelais to emit from what some
call his "dunghill" and others his "marine-store."

     Also they prayed to God the Creator, adoring Him, and
     solemnly repledging to Him their faith, and glorifying Him
     for His boundless goodness; while, giving Him thanks for all
     time past, they commended themselves to His divine mercy for
     all the future. This done, they turned to their rest.

[Sidenote: The war.]

It is only after this serious training that the first important division
of what may be called the action begins--the "War of the Cakes," in
which certain outrageous bakers, subjects of King Picrochole of Lerné,
first refuse the custom of the good Grandgousier's shepherds, and then
violently assault them, the incident being turned by the choleric
monarch into a _casus belli_ against the peaceful one. Invasion, the
early triumph of the aggressor, the triumphant appearance of the
invincible Friar John, and the complete turning of the tables by the
advent of Gargantua and his terrible mare, follow each other in rapid
and brilliant telling, and perhaps no parts of the book are better
known. The extraordinary felicity with which Rabelaisian irony--here
kept in quieter but intenser activity than almost anywhere else--seizes
and renders the common causes, excuses, manners, etc., of war can never
have escaped competent readers; but it must have struck more persons of
late than perhaps at any former time. It would be impertinent to
particularise largely; but if the famous adaptation and amplification of
the old Pyrrhus story in the counsel of Spadassin and Merdaille to
Picrochole were printed in small type as the centre of a fathom-square
sheet, the whole margin could be more than filled with extracts, from
German books and newspapers, of advice to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Nor is
there anything, in literature touching history, where irony has bitten
more deeply and lastingly into Life and Time than the brief record of
Picrochole's latter days after his downfall.

     He was informed by an old hag that his kingdom would be
     restored to him at the coming of the Cocqsigrues: since then
     it is not certainly known what has become of him. However, I
     have been told that he now works for his poor living at
     Lyons, and is as choleric as ever. And always he bemoans
     himself to strangers about the Cocqsigrues--yet with a
     certain hope, according to the old woman's prophecy, that at
     their coming he will be reinstated in his kingdom.

Edward FitzGerald would have called this "terrible"; and perhaps it is.

But there is much more humour than terror in the rest, and sometimes
there are qualities different from either. The rescue of the sacred
precincts of the Abbey of Seuillé from the invaders by that glorious
monk (a personage at no great remove from our own Friar Tuck, to the
later portraits of whom he has lent some of his own traits) pleases the
soul well, as do the feats of Gymnast against Tripet, and the fate of
the unlucky Touquedillon, and the escalade of La Roche Clermande, and (a
little less perhaps) the pure burlesque of the eating of the pilgrims,
and the combing out of the cannon balls, and the contrasted sweet
reasonableness of the amiable though not at all cowardly Grandgousier.
But the advice of the Evil Counsellors to Picrochole is still perhaps
the pearl:

[Sidenote: The Counsel to Picrochole.]

     Then there appeared before Picrochole the Duke of Mennail,
     Count Spadassin, and Captain Merdaille, and said to him,
     "Sire, this day we make you the most happy and chivalrous
     prince that ever has been since the death of Alexander of
     Macedon." "Be covered, be covered," said Picrochole.
     "Gramercy, sire", said they, "but we know our duty. The
     means are as follows. You will leave here in garrison some
     captain with a small band of men to hold the place, which
     seems to us pretty strong, both by nature and by the
     fortifications you have contrived. You will, as you know
     well, divide your army in half. One half will fall upon this
     fellow Grandgousier and his people, and easily discomfit him
     at the first assault. There we shall gain money in heaps,
     for the rascal has plenty. (Rascal we call him, because a
     really noble prince never has a penny. To hoard is the mark
     of a rascal.)

     "The other part will meanwhile draw towards Aunis,
     Saintonge, Angoumois, and Gascony, as well as Perigord,
     Medoc, and Elanes. Without any resistance they will take
     towns, castles, and fortresses. At Bayonne, at St. Jean de
     Luz, and at Fontarabia you will seize all the ships, and
     coasting towards Galicia and Portugal, will plunder all the
     seaside places as far as Lisbon, where you will be
     reinforced with all the supplies necessary to a conqueror:
     _Corbleu!_ Spain will surrender, for they are all poltroons.
     You will pass the Straits of Seville,[94] and will there
     erect two columns more magnificent than those of Hercules
     for the perpetual memory of your name. And that Strait shall
     thenceforward be named the Sea of Picrochole.

     "When that sea has been passed, lo! comes Barbarossa[95] to
     surrender as your slave." "I," said Picrochole, "will extend
     mercy to him." "Very well," said they, "on condition that he
     is baptized. And then you will assault the kingdoms of
     Tunis, of Hippo,[96] of Argier, of Bona, of Corona--to cut
     it short, all Barbary. Going further,[97] you will keep in
     your hands Majorca, Minorca, Sardinia, Corsica, and the
     other islands of the Ligurian and Balearic sea. Coasting to
     the left[98] you will dominate all Narbonese Gaul, Provence,
     the Allobroges, Genoa, Florence, Lucca, and, begad! Rome.
     Poor master Pope is already dying for fear of you." "I will
     never kiss his slipper," said Picrochole.






     "Italy being taken, behold Naples, Calabria, Apulia, and
     Sicily all at your mercy, and Malta into the bargain. I
     should like to see those funny knights, formerly of Rhodes,
     resist you! if it were only to examine their water." "I
     should like," said Picrochole, "to go to Loretto." "No, no,"
     said they, "that will be on the way back. Thence we shall
     take Candia, Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, and make a
     set at Morea. We shall get it at once. By St. Treignan, God
     keep Jerusalem! for the soldan is nothing in power to you."
     "Shall I," said he, "then rebuild the Temple of Solomon?"
     "Not yet," said they, "wait a little. Be not so hasty in
     your enterprises."

And so with the most meticulous exactness (Rabelais' geography is
irreproachable, and he carefully avoids the cheap expedient of making
Spadassin and Merdaille blunder) and the sagest citations of _Festina
lente_, they take him through Asia Minor to the Euphrates and Arabia,
while the other army (that which has annihilated Grandgousier) comes
round by the northern route, sweeping all Europe from Brittany and the
British Isles to Constantinople, where the great rendezvous is made and
the universal empire established, Picrochole graciously giving his
advisers Syria and Palestine as their fiefs.

"Pretty much like our own days," said Mr. Rigmarole. Have we not heard
something very like this lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais
to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire
of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for
Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually
undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed
at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99]
which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital.
There is, indeed, an unpleasant Echephron[100] who points the old moral
of Cineas to Pyrrhus himself. But Picrochole rebuffs him with the
invaluable _Passons oultre_, and closes the discussion by anticipating
Henri Quatre (who, no doubt, learnt the phrase from him), crying, "_Qui
m'aime, si me suive!_" and ordering all haste in the war.

It is possible that, here or earlier, the
not-quite-so-gentle-as-he-is-traditionally-called reader may ejaculate,
"This is all true enough; but it is all very well known, and does not
need recapitulation." Is this quite so certain? No doubt at one time
Englishmen did know their Rabelais well. Southey did, for instance, and
so, according to the historian of Barsetshire, did, in the next
generation, Archdeacon Grantly. More recently my late friend Sir Walter
Besant spent a great deal of pains on Master Francis, and mainly owing
to his efforts there existed for some years a Rabelais Club (already
referred to), which left some pleasant memories. But _is_ it quite so
certain that the average educated Englishman can at once distinguish
Eudemon from Epistemon, give a correct list of the various answers to
Panurge's enquiries as to the probable results of his marriage, relate
what happened when (as glanced at above and returned to later) _nous
passasmes oultre_, and say what the adorable Quintessence admitted to
her dainty lips besides second intentions? I doubt it very much. Even
special students of the Great Book, as in other cases, have too often
allowed themselves to be distracted from the pure enjoyment of it by
idle questions of the kinds above mentioned and others--questions of
dates and names and places, of origins and borrowings and
imitations--questions the sole justification of which, from the genuine
Pantagruelian point of view, is that their utter dryness inevitably
suggests the cries--the Morning Hymn and the Evening Voluntary of the
book itself--_À boire!_ and _Trinq_.

But, even were this not so, a person who has undertaken, wisely or
unwisely, to write the history of the French Novel is surely entitled to
lay some stress on what seems to him the importance of this its first
eminent example. At any rate he proposes _not_ to _passer oultre_, but
to stick to the line struck out, and exhibit, in reasonable detail, the
varieties of novel-matter and manner contained in the book.

[Sidenote: The peace and the Abbey of Thelema.]

The conclusion of _Gargantua_--after the victor has addressed a _concio_
to the vanquished, has mildly punished the originators of the trouble or
those he could catch (Spadassin and Merdaille having run away "six hours
before the battle") by setting them to work at his newly established
printing-press, and has distributed gifts and estates to his
followers--may be one of the best known parts of the whole book, but is
not of the most strictly novel character, though it has suggested at
least one whole novel and parts or passages of others. The "Abbey of
Thelema"--the home of the order of _Fay ce que vouldras_--is, if not a
devout, a grandiose imagination, and it gives occasion for some
admirable writing. But it is one of the purest exercises of "purpose,"
and one of the least furnished with incident or character, to be found
in Rabelais. In order to introduce it, he may even be thought guilty of
what is extremely rare with him, a fault of "keeping." He avoids this
fault surprisingly in the contrasted burlesque and serious chronicles of
Grandgousier and Gargantua himself, as well as in the expanded contrast
of Pantagruel and Panurge. Yet the heartiest admirer of "Friar John of
the Funnels" (or "Collops," for there is a schism on this point) may
fail to see in him a suitable or even a possible Head for an assemblage
of gallant gentlemen and stately ladies (both groups being also
accomplished scholars) like the Thelemites. But Rabelais, like
Shakespeare, had small care for small objections. He wanted to sketch a
Paradise of Anti-Monkery, and for this he wanted an Anti-Abbot. Friar
John was the handiest person, and he took him. But it is worth noting
that the Abbot of Thelema never afterwards appears as such, or in the
slightest relation to this miniature but most curious and interesting
example of the Renaissance fancy for imaginary countries, cities,
institutions, with its splendours of architecture and decoration, its
luxurious but not loose living, its gallantry and its learning, its
gorgeous dress, its polished manners (the Abbot must have had some
trouble to learn them), and its "inscriptions and enigmas" in verse
which is not quite so happy as the prose. One would not cut it out of
the book for anything, and parallels to it (not merely of the kind above
referred to) have found and may find place in other books of fiction.
But it is only a sort of chantry, in the Court of the Gentiles too, of
the mighty Temple of the Novel.

[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ I. The contrasted youth.]

What it was exactly that made Rabelais "double," as it were, on
_Gargantua_ in the early books of _Pantagruel_[101] it would probably be
idle to enquire. His deliberate mention in the Prologue of some of the
most famous romances (with certain others vainly to be sought now or at
any time) might of course most easily be a mere red herring. It may be,
that as _Gargantua_ was not entirely of his own creation, he determined
to "begin at the beginning" in his original composition. But it matters
little or nothing. We have, once more, a burlesque genealogy with known
persons--Nimrod, Goliath, Polyphemus, etc. etc.--entangled in a chain of
imaginaries, one of the latter, Hurtaly, forming the subject of a solemn
discussion of the question why he is not received among the crew of the
Ark. The unfortunate concomitants of the birth of Pantagruel--which is
fatal to his mother Badebec--contrast with the less chequered history of
Gargantua and Gargamelle, while the mixed sorrow and joy of Gargantua at
his wife's death and his son's birth completes this contrast.
Pantagruel, though quite as amiable as his father, if not more so, has
in infancy the natural awkwardnesses of a giant, and a hairy giant
too--devouring cows whole instead of merely milking them, and tearing to
pieces an unfortunate bear who only licked his infant chops. As was said
above, he has no wild-oats period of education like his father's, but
his company is less carefully chosen than that of Gargantua in the days
of his reformation, and gives his biographer opportunities for his
sharpest satire.

First we have (taken, as everybody is supposed now to know, from
Geoffrey Tory, but improved) the episode of the Limousin scholar with
his "pedantesque"[102] deformation of French and Latin at once, till the
giant takes him by the throat and he cries for mercy in the strongest
meridional brogue.[103] Then comes the famous catalogue of the Library
of Saint Victor, a fresh attack on scholastic and monastic degeneracy,
and a kind of joining hands (Ortuinus figures) with the German guerrilla
against the _Obscuri_, and then a long and admirable letter from
Gargantua, whence we learn that Grandgousier is dead, and that his son
is now the sagest of monarchs, who has taken to read Greek, and shows no
memory of his governesses or his earlier student days. And then again
comes Panurge.

[Sidenote: Panurge.]

Many doubtful things have been said about this most remarkable
personage. He has been fathered upon the Cingar of Folengo, which is too
much of a compliment to that creation of the great Macaronic, and
Falstaff has been fathered upon him, which is distinctly unfair to
Falstaff. Sir John has absolutely nothing of the ill-nature which
characterises both Cingar and Panurge; and Panurge is an actual and
contemptible coward, while many good wits have doubted whether Falstaff
is, in the true sense, a coward at all. But Panurge is certainly one
thing--the first distinct and striking _character_ in prose fiction.
Morally, of course, there is little to be said for him, except that,
when he has no temptations to the contrary, he is a "good fellow"
enough. As a human example of _mimesis_ in the true Greek sense, not of
"imitation" but of "fictitious creation," he is, once more, the first
real character in prose fiction--the ancestor, in the literary sense, of
the mighty company in which he has been followed by the similar
creations of the masters from Cervantes to Thackeray. The fantastic
colouring, and more than colouring, of the whole book affects him, of
course, more than superficially. One could probably give some not quite
absurd guesses why Rabelais shaped him as he did--presented him as a
very naughty but intensely clever child, with the monkey element in
humanity thrown into utmost prominence. But it is better not to do so.
Panurge has some Yahooish characteristics, but he is not a Yahoo--in
fact, there is no misanthropy in Rabelais.[104] He is not merely impish
(as in his vengeance on the lady of Paris), but something worse than
impish (as in that on Dindenault); and yet one cannot call him diabolic,
because he is so intensely human. It is customary, and fairly correct,
to describe his ethos as that of understanding and wit wholly divorced
from morality, chivalry, or religion; yet he is never Mephistophelian.
If one of the hundred touches which make him a masterpiece is to be
singled out, it might perhaps be the series of rapturous invitations to
his wedding which he gives to his advisers while he thinks their advice
favourable, and the limitations of enforced politeness which he appends
when the unpleasant side of their opinions turns up. And it may perhaps
be added that one of the chief reasons for believing heartily in the
last Book is the delectable and unimprovable contrast which La Quinte
and her court of intellectual fantastry present to this picture of
intellectual materialism.

[Sidenote: Short view of the sequels in Book II.]

It was impossible that such a figure should not to a certain extent
dwarf others; but Rabelais, unlike some modern character-mongers, never
lets his psychology interfere with his story. After a few episodes, the
chief of which is the great sign-duel of Thaumast and Panurge himself,
the campaign against the Dipsodes at once enables Pantagruel to display
himself as a war-like hero of romance, permits him fantastic exploits
parallel to his father's, and, by installing Panurge in a lordship of
the conquered country and determining him, after "eating his corn in
the blade," to "marry and settle," introduces the larger and most
original part of the whole work--the debates and counsellings on the
marriage in the Third Book, and, after the failure of this, the voyage
to settle the matter at the Oracle of the Bottle in the Fourth and
Fifth. This "plot," if it may be called so, is fairly central and
continuous throughout, but it gives occasion for the most surprising
"alarums and excursions," variations and divagations, of the author's
inexhaustible humour, learning, inventive fertility, and never-failing
faculty of telling a tale. If the book does sometimes in a fashion "hop
forty paces in the public street," and at others gambade in a less
decorous fashion even than hopping, it is also Cleopatresque in its
absolute freedom from staleness and from tedium.

[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ II. (Book III.)

The marriage of Panurge and the consultations on it.]

The Third Book has less of apparent variety in it, and less of what
might be called striking incident, than any of the others, being all but
wholly occupied by the enquiries respecting the marriage of Panurge. But
this gives it a "unity" which is of itself attractive to some tastes,
while the delightful sonnet to the spirit Of Marguerite,

    Esprit abstraict, ravy et ecstatique,

(perhaps the best example of _rhétoriqueur_ poetry), at the beginning,
and the last sight (except in letters) of Gargantua at the end, with the
curious _coda_ on the "herb Pantagruelion" (the ancestor of Joseph de
Maistre's famous eulogy of the Executioner), give, as it were, handle
and top to it in unique fashion. But the body of it is the thing. The
preliminary outrunning of the constable--had there been constables in
Salmigondin, but they probably knew the story of the Seigneur of Basché
too well--and the remarkable difference between the feudatory and his
superior on the subject of debt, serve but as a whet to the project of
matrimony which the debtor conceives. Of course, Panurge is the very
last man whom a superficial observer of humanity--the very first whom a
somewhat profounder student thereof--would take as a marrying one. He is
"a little failed"; he thinks to rest himself while not foregoing his
former delights, and he shuts eyes and ears to the proverb, as old as
Greek in words and as old as the world in fact, that "the doer shall
suffer." That he should consult Pantagruel is in the circumstances
almost a necessity, and Pantagruel's conduct is exactly what one would
expect from that good-natured, learned, admirable, but rather enigmatic
personage. Merely "aleatory" decision--by actual use of dice--he rejects
as illicit, though towards the close of the book one of its most
delectable episodes ends in his excusing Mr. Justice Bridoye for
settling law cases in that way. But he recommends the _sortes
Virgilianae_, and he, others, and Panurge himself add the experiment of
dreams, and the successive consultation of the Sibyl of Panzoust, the
dumb Nazdecabre, the poet Raminagrobis, Epistemon, "Her Trippa," Friar
John himself, the theologian Hippothadée, the doctor Rondibilis, the
philosopher Trouillogan, and the professional fool Triboulet. No reader
of the most moderate intelligence can need to be told that the
counsellors opine all in the same sense (unfavourable), though with more
or less ambiguity, and that Panurge, with equal obstinacy and ingenuity,
invariably twists the oracles according to his own wishes. But what no
reader, who came fresh to Rabelais and fasting from criticism on him,
could anticipate, is the astonishing spontaneity of the various dealings
with the same problem, the zest and vividness of the whole thing, and
the unceasing shower of satire on everything human--general,
professional, and individual--which is kept up throughout. There is less
pure extravagance, less mere farce, and (despite the subject) even less
"sculduddery" than in any other Book; but also in no other does Rabelais
"keep up with humanity" (somewhat, indeed, in the fashion in which a
carter keeps up with his animal, running and lashing at the same time)
so triumphantly.

In no book, moreover, are the curious intervals--or, as it were, prose
choric odes--of interruption more remarkable. Pantagruel's own serious
wisdom supplies not a few of them, and the long and very characteristic
episode of Judge Bridoye and his decision by throw of dice is very
loosely connected with the main subject. But the most noteworthy of
these excursions comes, as has been said, at the end--the last personal
appearance of the good Gargantua, and the famous discourse, several
chapters long, on the Herb Pantagruelion, otherwise Hemp.

[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ III. (IV.) The first part of the voyage.]

The Fourth Book (Third of _Pantagruel_) starts the voyage, and begins to
lead the commentator who insists on fixing and interpreting the
innumerable real or apparent double, treble, and almost centuple
meanings, into a series of dances almost illimitable. As has been
suggested more than once, the most reasonable way is probably to regard
the whole as an intentional mixture of covert satire, pure fooling, not
a little deliberate leading astray, and (serving as vehicle and
impelling force at once) the irresistible narrative impulse animating
the writer and carrying the reader on to the end--any end, if it be only
the Other End of Nowhere. The "curios," living and other, of Medamothi
(Nowhere to begin with!), and the mysterious appearance of a shipful of
travellers coming back from the Land of Lanterns, whither the
Pantagruelian party is itself bound; the rather too severely punished
ill-manners of the sheep-dealer Dindenault; the strange isles of various
nature--such, especially, as the abode of the bailiffs and
process-servers, which gives occasion to the admirably told story of
François Villon and the Seigneur of Basché; the great storm--another of
the most famous passages of the book--with the cowardice of Panurge and
the safe landing in the curious country of the Macréons (long-livers);
the evil island where reigns Quaresmeprenant, and the elaborate analysis
of that personage by the learned Xenomanes; the alarming Physeter
(blowing whale) and his defeat by Pantagruel; the land of the
Chitterlings, the battle with them, and the interview and peace-making
with their Queen Niphleseth (a passage at which the sculduddery-hunters
have worked their hardest), and then the islands of the Papefigues and
the Papimanes, where Rabelais begins his most obvious and boldest
meddling with the great ecclesiastical-political questions of the
day--all these things and others flit past the reader as if in an actual
voyage. Even here, however, he rather skirts than actually invades the
most dangerous ground. It is the Decretals, not the doctrines, that are
satirised, and Homenas, bishop of Papimania, despite his adoration of
these forgeries, and the slightly suspicious number and prettiness of
the damsels who wait upon him, is a very good fellow and an excellent
host. There is something very soothing in his metaphorical way of
demanding wine from his Hebes, "_Clerice_, esclaire icy," the necessary
illumination being provided by a charming girl with a hanap of
"extravagant" wine. These agreeable if satiric experiences--for the
Decretals do no harm beyond exciting the bile of Master Epistemon (who,
it is to be feared, was a little of a pedant)--are followed by the once
more almost universally known passage of the "Frozen Words" and the
visit to "Messer Gaster, the world's first Master of Arts"; by the
islands (once more mysterious) of Chaneph (hypocrisy) and Ganabin
(thieves); the book concluding abruptly with an ultra-farcical
_cochonnerie_ of the lower kind, relieved partially by a libellous but
impossible story about our Edward the _Fifth_ and the poet Villon again,
as well as by the appearance of an interesting but not previously
mentioned member of the crew of the _Thalamége_ (Pantagruel's flagship),
the great cat Rodilardus.

[Sidenote: _Pantagruel_ IV. (Book V.) The second part of the voyage. The
"Isle Sonnante."]

[Sidenote: The "Chats Fourrés."]

One of the peculiarities of the Fifth Book, and perhaps one of those
which have aroused that suspicion about it which, after what has been
said above, it is not necessary further to discuss, is that it is more
"in blocks" than the others.[105] The eight chapters of the _Isle
Sonnante_ take up the satire of the Fourth Book on Papimania and on the
"Papegaut," who is here introduced in a much fiercer tone--a tone which,
if one cared for hypothetical criticism, might be attributed with about
equal probability to a genuine deepening of hostile feeling, to absence
of revision, and to possible sophistication by some one into whose hands
it fell between the author's death and its publication. But a perfectly
impartial critic, who, on the one hand, does not, in Carlyle's admirable
phrase, "regard the Universe as a hunting-field from which it were good
and pleasant to drive the Pope," and, on the other, is content to regard
the extremer Protestants as singularly unpleasant persons without
pronouncing Ernulphus-curses on them, may perhaps fail to find in it
either the cleverest or the most amusing part of the voyage. The episode
of the next Isle--that _des Ferrements_--is obscure, whether it is or is
not (as the commentators were sure to suggest) something else beginning
with "obsc-," and the succeeding one, with its rocks fashioned like
gigantic dice, is not very amusing. But the terrible country of the
_Chats Fourrés_ and their chief Grippeminaud--an attack on the Law as
unsparing as, and much more vivid than that on the Church in the
overture--may rank with the best things in Rabelais. The tyrant's
ferocious and double-meaning catchword of _Or çà!_ and the power at his
back, which even Pantagruel thinks it better rather to run away from
than to fight openly, which Panurge frankly bribes, and over which even
the reckless and invincible Friar John obtains not much triumph, except
that of cutting up, after buying it, an old woman's bed--these and the
rest have a grim humour not quite like anything else.

[Sidenote: "La Quinte."]

The next section--that of the Apedeftes or Uneducated Ones[106]--has
been a special object of suspicion; it is certainly a little difficult,
and perhaps a little dull. One is not sorry when the explorers, in the
ambiguous way already noted, "_passent_ _Oultre_," and, after
difficulties with the wind, come to "the kingdom of Quintessence, named
Entelechy." Something has been said more than once of this already, and
it is perhaps unnecessary to say more, or indeed anything, except to
those who themselves "hold of La Quinte," and who for that very reason
require no talking about her. "We" (if one may enrol oneself in their
company) would almost rather give up Rabelais altogether than sacrifice
this delightful episode, and abandon the idea of having the ladies of
the Queen for our partners in Emmelie, and Calabrisme, and the thousand
other dances, of watching the wonderful cures by music, and the
interesting process of throwing, not the house out of the window, but
the window out of the house, and the miraculous and satisfactory
transformation of old ladies into young girls, with very slight
alteration of their former youthful selves, and all the charming
topsyturvifications of Entelechy. Not to mention the gracious if
slightly unintelligible speeches of the exquisite princess, when clear
Hesperus shone once more, and her supper of pure nectar and ambrosia
(not grudging more solid viands to her visitors), and the great
after-supper chess-tournament with living pieces, and the "invisible
disparition" of the lady, and the departure of the fortunate visitors
themselves, duly inscribed and registered as Abstractors of
Quintessence. The whole is like a good dream, and is told so as almost
to be one.

Between this and the final goal of the Country of Lanterns the interest
falls a little. The island of "Odes" (not "poems" but "ways"), where the
"walks walk" (_les chemins cheminent_); that of "Esclots" ("clogs"),
where dwell the Frères Fredonnants, and where the attack on monkery is
renewed in a rather unsavoury and rather puerile fashion; and that of
Satin, which is a sort of Medamothi rehandled, are not first-rate--they
would have been done better, or cut out, had the book ever been issued
by Master Francis. But the arrival at and the sojourn in Lanternia
itself recovers the full powers of Rabelais at his best, though one may
once more think that some of the treatment might have been altered in
the case just mentioned.

[Sidenote: The conclusion and The Bottle.]

Apart from the usual mixture of serious and purely jocular satire, of
learning and licence, of jargonic catalogues, of local references to
Western France and the general topography of Utopia, this conclusion
consists of two main parts--first, a most elaborate description of the
Temple, containing underground the Oracle of the Bottle, to which the
pilgrims are conducted by a select "Lantern," and of its priestess
Bacbuc, its _adytum_ with a fountain, and, in the depth and centre of
all, the sacred Bottle itself; and secondly, the ceremonies of the
delivery of the Oracle; the divine utterance, _Trinq!_ its
interpretation by Bacbuc; the very much _ad libitum_ reinterpretations
of the interpretation by Panurge and Friar John, and the dismissal of
the pilgrims by the priestess, _Or allez de par Dieu, qui vous
conduise!_[107]

       *       *       *       *       *

What, it may be asked, is the object of this cumbrous analysis of
certainly one of the most famous and (as it at least should be) one of
the best known books of the world? That object has been partly indicated
already; but it may be permissible to set it forth more particularly
before ending this chapter. Of the importance, on the one hand, of the
acquisition by the novel of the greatest known and individual writer of
French up to his date, and of the enormous popularity of this example of
it, enough may have been said. But the abstract has been given, and the
further comment is now added, with the purpose of showing, in a little
detail, how immensely the resources and inspirations of future
practitioners were enriched and strengthened, varied and multiplied, by
_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_. The book as a whole is to be classed, no
doubt, as "Eccentric" fiction. But if you compare with Rabelais that one
of his followers[108] who possessed most genius and who worked at his
following with most deliberation, you will find an immense falling off
in richness and variety as well as in strength. The inferiority of
Sterne to Master Francis in his serious pieces, whether he is whimpering
over dead donkeys and dying lieutenants, or simulating honest
indignation against critics, is too obvious to need insistence. Nor can
one imagine any one--unless, like Mackenzie and other misguided
contemporaries or juniors, he himself wanted to whimper, or unless he
also aimed at the _fatrasie_--going to Sterne for pattern or
inspiration. Now Rabelais is a perpetual fount of inspiration, an
inexhaustible magazine of patterns to the most "serious" novelist whose
seriousness is not of the kind designated by that term in dissenting
slang. That abounding narrative faculty which has been so much dwelt on
touches so many subjects, and manages to carry along with it so many
moods, thoughts, and even feelings, that it could not but suggest to any
subsequent writer who had in him the germ of the novelist's art, how to
develop and work out such schemes as might occur to him. While, for his
own countrymen at least, the vast improvement which he made in French
prose, and which, with the accomplishment of his younger contemporaries
Amyot and Montaigne, established the greatness of that prose itself, was
a gain, the extent of which cannot be exaggerated. Therefore it has
seemed not improper to give him a chapter to himself, and to treat his
book with a minuteness not often to be paralleled in this
_History_.[109]

FOOTNOTES:

[90] A complete argument on this much vexed subject can hardly be wished
for here: but it may be permitted to say that nearly fifty years'
consideration of the matter has left less and less doubt in my mind as
to the genuineness of the "_Quart_" or "_Quint_" _Livre_ as it is
variously called--according as _Gargantua_ is numbered separately or
not. One of the apparently strongest arguments against its
genuineness--the constant presence of "_Je_" in the narrative--really
falls, with the others--the fiercer and more outspoken character of the
satire, the somewhat lessened prominence of Pantagruel, etc.
etc.--before one simple consideration. We know from the dates of
publication of the other books that Rabelais was by no means a rapid
writer, or at any rate that, if he wrote rapidly, he "held up" what he
did write long, and pretty certainly rewrote a good deal. Now the
previous Book had appeared only a short time before what must have been
the date of his death; and this could not, according to analogy and
precedent, have been ready, or anything like ready, when he died. On the
other hand, time enough passed between his death and the publication
(even of the _Ile Sonnante_ fragment) for the MS. to have passed through
other hands and to have been adulterated, even if it was not, when the
Master's hands left it, in various, as well as not finally finished
form. I can see nothing in it really inconsistent with the earlier
Books; nothing unworthy of them (especially if on the one hand possible
meddling, and on the other imperfect revision be allowed for); and much,
especially the _Chats Fourrés_, the Quintessence part, and the
Conclusion, without which the whole book would be not only incomplete
but terribly impoverished. I may add that, having a tolerably full
knowledge of sixteenth-century French literature, and a great admiration
of it, I know no single other writer or group of other writers who
could, in my critical judgment, by any reasonable possibility have
written this Book. François Rabelais could have done it, and I have no
doubt that he did it; though whether we have it as he left it no man can
say.

[91] It is perhaps hardly necessary, but may not be quite idle, to
observe that our Abstractor of Quintessence takes good care not to quote
the other half of the parallelism, "but the prudent looketh well to his
going."

[92] It is possible, but not certain, that he is playing on the two
senses of the word _apparence_, the ambiguity of which is not so great
in English. The A. V., "evidence of things _not seen_," would not have
suited his turn.

[93] In which, it will be remembered, the "liquor called punch," which
one notes with sorrow that Rabelais knew not, but which he certainly
would have approved, is also "nowhere spoken against."

[94] Original "Sibyle." I owe to Prof. Ker an important reminder (which
I ought not to have needed) of Dante's "Sibilia" in the famous "Ulysses"
passage, _Inf._ xxvi. 110.

[95] The Turkish corsair, not the German Emperor.

[96] Probably erected into a kingdom in honour of St. Augustine.

[97] _Passant oultre_--one of Rabelais' favourite and most _polymorphic_
expressions. It has nearly always an ironical touch in it; and it enjoys
a chapter all to itself in that mood--V. xvii.

[98] Perhaps this _à gauche_ might make as good a short test as any of a
reader's sense of humour. But here also a possible Dantean reminiscence
(not suggested to me this time) comes in; for in the lines already
quoted "dalla man _destra_" occurs.

[99] The King is, however, more difficult to satisfy on this point than
on others; and objects with a delightful _preterite_, "Yes: but we _did
not get_ our wine fresh and cool"; whereat they rebuke him with a
respectful reminder that great conquerors cannot be always entirely
comfortable.

[100] "Suspender of judgment."

[101] Of course the first book of the son _preceded_ the reconstructed
history of the father; but this is immaterial.

[102] The correct opposition of this term (Latin or Greek words
vernacularised) to "Macaronic" (vernacular words turned into Latin or
Greek form) is not always observed.

[103] It is very seldom, after his infantine and innocent excesses, that
Pantagruel behaves thus. He is for the most part a quiet and somewhat
reserved prince, very generous, very wise, very devout, and, though
tolerating the eccentricities of Panurge and Friar John, never taking
part in them.

[104] If Swift had drunk more wine and had not put water in what he did
drink, possibly this quality might have been lessened in _him_.

[105] The first of these, the _Isle Sonnante_, as is well enough known
to all students, appeared separately and before the rest.

[106] A sort of dependency or province of the _Chats Fourrés_.

[107] A MS. "addition" unknown to the old printed forms, appears in some
modern ones. It is a mere disfigurement: and is hardly likely even to
have been a rejected draft.

[108] Not Swift here, but Sterne. There is far higher genius in
_Gulliver_ than in _Shandy_; but the former is not _fatrasie_, the
latter is.

[109] That the not quite unknown device of setting up a man of straw in
order to knock him down has not been followed in this chapter, a single
piece of evidence out of many may be cited. H. Körting in his justly
well reputed _Geschichte des Franz. Romans im XVII. Jahrh._ (Oppeln u.
Leipzig, 1891, i. 133 _note_) would rule Rabelais out of the history of
the novel altogether. This book, which will be quoted again with
gratitude later, displays a painstaking erudition not necessitating any
make-weight of sympathy for its author's early death after great
suffering. It is extremely useful; but it does not escape, in this and
other places, the censure which, ten years before the war of 1914, the
present writer felt it his duty to express on modern German critics and
literary historians generally (_History of Criticism_, London, 1904,
vol. iii. Bks. viii. and ix.), that on points of literary appreciation,
as distinguished from mere philology, "enumeration," bibliographical
research, and the like, they are "sadly to seek." It may not be
impertinent to add that Herr Körting's history happened never to have
been read by me till after the above chapter of the present book was
written.




CHAPTER VII

THE SUCCESSORS OF RABELAIS AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE "AMADIS" ROMANCES


In the present chapter we shall endeavour to treat two divisions of
actual novel- or at least fiction-writing--strikingly opposed to each
other in character; and a third subject, to include which in the title
would have made that title too long, and which is not strictly a branch
of novel-_writing_, but which had perhaps as important an influence on
the progress of the novel itself as anything mentioned or to be
mentioned in all this _History_. The first division is composed of the
followers--sometimes in the full, always in the chronological sense--of
Rabelais, a not very strong folk as a rule, but including one brilliant
example of co-operative work, and two interesting, if in some degree
problematical, persons. The second, strikingly contrasting with the
general if not the universal tendency of the first, is the great
translated group of _Amadis_ romances, which at once revived romance of
the older kind itself, and exercised a most powerful, if not an actually
generative, influence on newer forms which were themselves to pass into
the novel proper. The third is the increasing body of memoir- and
anecdote-writers who, with Brantôme at their head, make actual
personages and actual events the subjects of a kind of story-telling,
not perhaps invariably of unexceptionable historic accuracy, but
furnishing remarkable situations of plot and suggestions of character,
together with abundant new examples of the "telling" faculty itself.

[Sidenote: Subsidiary importance of Brantôme and other
character-mongers.]

The last point, as an apparent digression but really a most important
contribution to the History, may perhaps be discussed and dismissed
first. All persons who have even a slight knowledge of French literature
must be aware how early and how remarkable are its possessions in what
is vaguely called the "Memoir" department. There is nothing at the time,
in any modern literature known to the present writer, similar to
Villehardouin, or a little later to Joinville,--one might almost say
that there is nothing in any literature at any time superior, if there
be anything equal, in its kind to Froissart. In the first two cases
there is pure personal experience; in the third there is, of course, a
certain amount of precedent writing on the subject for guidance, and a
large gathering of information by word of mouth. But in all these, and
to a less extent in others up to the close of the fifteenth century,
there is the indefinable gift of treatment--of "telling a story." In
Villehardouin this gift may be almost wholly, and in principle very
mainly, limited to the two great subjects which made the mediaeval end
as far as profane matters were concerned--fighting and counselling; but
this is by no means the case in Froissart, whom one is sometimes tempted
to regard as a Sir Walter Scott thrown away upon base reality.

With the sixteenth century this gift once more burgeoned and spread
itself out--dealing, indeed, very mainly with the somewhat ungrateful
subject of the religious disputes and wars, but flowering or fruiting
into the unsurpassable gossip--though gossip is too undignified a
word--of Pierre de Bourdeilles, Abbé de Brantôme, that Froissart and
Pepys in one, with the noble delight in noble things of the first,
inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second,
and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, and
ranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier
(his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable--not
professional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, and
obviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies,
"Bayard and the two Marguerites," as some one has put it. And his vivid
irregular fashion of writing adapts itself with equal ease to a gallant
feat of arms and a ferocious, half-cut-throat duel, to an exquisite
piece of sentimental passion like that which tells us the story how the
elder Queen of Navarre rebuked the lover carelessly stepping over the
grave of his dead mistress, and to an unquotable anecdote to parallel
the details of which, in literature of high rank, one must go to
Rabelais himself, to Martial, or to Aristophanes. But, whatever the
subject, the faculty of lively communication remains unaltered, and the
suggestion of its transference from fact (possibly a little coloured) to
pure fiction becomes more and more possible and powerful.[110]

[Sidenote: The _Heptameron_.]

No book has been more subject to the "insupportable advances" of the
"key"-monger than the _Heptameron_, and the rage for identifying has
gone so far that the pretty old name of "Emarsuite" for one of the
characters has been discarded for an alleged and much uglier
"Ennasuite," which is indeed said to have MS. authority, but which is
avowedly preferred because it can be twisted into "_Anne_ à Suite"
("Anne in Waiting"), and so can be fastened to an actual Maid of Honour
of Marguerite's. It is only fair, however, to admit that something of
the kind is at least suggested by the book itself. Even by those who do
not trouble themselves in the least about the personages who may or may
not have been disguised under the names of Nomerfide (the Neifile of
this group) and Longarine, Saffredent and Dagoucin and Gebron (Geb_u_ron
they call him now), admit the extreme probability of the Queen having
invited identification of herself with Parlamente, the younger matron of
the party, and of Hircan her husband with the King of Navarre.[111] But
some (among whom is the present writer) think that this delightful and
not too well-fated type of Renaissance amorousness, letteredness, and
piety combined made a sort of dichotomy of herself here, and intended
the personage of Oisille, the elder duenna (though by no means a very
stern one) of the party, to stand for her as well as Parlamente--to whom
one really must give the Italian pronunciation to get her out of the
abominable suggestion of our "talking-machine."

[Sidenote: Character and "problems."]

A much more genuinely literary question has been raised and discussed as
to the exact authorship of the book. That it is entirely Marguerite's,
not the most jealous admirers of the Queen need for a moment contend.
She is known to have had a sort of literary court from Marot and
Rabelais downwards, some of the members of which were actually resident
with her, and not a few of whom--such as Boaistuau and Le Maçon, the
translators of Bandello and Boccaccio, and Bonaventure Despériers (_v.
inf._)--were positive experts in the short story. Moreover, the custom
of distributing these collections among different speakers positively
invited collaboration in writing. The present critic and his friend, Mr.
Arthur Tilley of King's College, Cambridge, who has long been our chief
specialist in the literature of the French Renaissance, are in an
amicable difference as to the part which Despériers in particular may
have played in the _Heptameron_; but this is of no great importance
here, and though Marguerite's other literary work is distinctly inferior
in style, it is not impossible that the peculiar tone of the best parts
of it, especially as regards the religious-amorous flavour, was infused
by her or under her direct influence. The enthusiasm of Rabelais and
Marot; the striking anecdote already mentioned which Brantôme, whose
mother had been one of Marguerite's maids of honour, tells us, and one
or two other things, suggest this; for Despériers was more of a satirist
than of an amorist, and though the charges of atheism brought against
him are (_v. inf._ again) scarcely supported by his work, he was
certainly no pietist. I should imagine that he revised a good deal and
sometimes imparted his nervous and manly, but, in his own _Contes_,
sometimes too much summarised style. But some striking phrases, such as
"_l'impossibilité_ de nostre chair,"[112] may be hers, and the following
remarkable speech of Parlamente probably expresses her own sentiments
pretty exactly. It is very noteworthy that Hircan, who is generally
represented as "taking up" his wife's utterances with a certain sarcasm,
is quite silent here.

     [Sidenote: Parlamente on human and divine love.]

     "Also," said Parlamente, "I have an opinion that never will
     a man love God perfectly if he has not perfectly loved some
     of God's creatures in this world." "But what do you call
     'perfect loving'?" said Saffredent. "Do you reckon as
     perfect lovers those who are _transis_,[113] and who adore
     ladies at a distance, without daring to make their wishes
     known?" "I call perfect lovers," answered Parlamente, "those
     who seek in what they love some perfection--be it beauty,
     kindness, or good grace,--always striving towards virtue;
     and such as have so high and honourable a heart, that they
     would not, were they to die for it, take for their object
     the base things which honour and conscience disapprove: for
     the soul, which is only created that it may return to its
     Sovereign Good, does naught while it is in the body but long
     for the attainment of this. But because the senses by which
     alone it can acquire information are darkened and made
     carnal by the sin of our first father, they can only show
     her the visible things which approach closest to
     perfection--and after these the soul runs, thinking to find
     in outward beauty, in visible grace, and in moral virtue,
     grace, beauty, and virtue in sovereign degree. But when she
     has sought them and tried them, and finds not in them Him
     whom she loves, she leaves them alone,[114] just as a child,
     according to his age, likes dolls and other trivialities,
     the prettiest he sees, and thinks a collection of pebbles
     actual riches, but as he grows up prefers his dolls alive,
     and gets together the goods necessary for human life. Yet
     when he knows, by still wider experience, that in earthly
     things there is neither perfection nor felicity, he desires
     to seek the Creator and the Source of these. Nevertheless,
     if God open not the eye of faith in him he would be in
     danger of becoming, instead of a merely ignorant man, an
     infidel philosopher.[115] For Faith alone can demonstrate
     and make receivable the good that the carnal and animal man
     cannot understand."

This gives the better Renaissance temper perhaps as well as anything to
be found, and may, or should in fairness, be set against the worser tone
of mere libertinage in which some even of the ladies indulge here, and
still more against that savagery which has been noticed above. This
undoubtedly was in Milton's mind when he talked of "Lust hard by Hate,"
and it makes Hircan coolly observe, after a story has been told in which
an old woman successfully interferes to save a girl's chastity, that in
the place of the hero he should certainly have killed the hag and
enjoyed the girl. This is obviously said in no bravado, and not in the
least humorously: and the spirit of it is exemplified in divers not in
the least incredible anecdotes of Brantôme's in the generation
immediately following, and of Tallemant des Réaux in the next. The
religiosity displayed is of a high temper of Christian Platonism, and we
cannot, as we can elsewhere, say what the song says of something else,
that "it certainly looks very queer." The knights and ladies do go to
mass and vespers; but to say that they go punctually would be altogether
erroneous, for Hircan makes wicked jokes on his and Parlamente's being
late for the morning office, and, on one occasion at least, they keep
the unhappy monks of the convent where they are staying (who do not seem
to dare to begin vespers without them) waiting a whole hour while they
are finishing not particularly edifying stories. The less complaisant
casuists, even of the Roman Church, would certainly look askance at the
piety of the distinguished person (said by tradition to have been King
Francis himself) who always paid his respects to Our Lady on his way to
illegitimate assignations, and found himself the better therefor on one
occasion of danger. But the tone of our extract is invariably that of
Oisille and Parlamente. The purer love part of the matter is a little,
as the French themselves say, "alembicated." But still the whole is
graceful and fascinating, except for a few pieces of mere passionless
coarseness, which Oisille generally reproves. And it is scarcely
necessary to say what large opportunities these tones and colours of
fashion and "quality," of passion and manners, give to the future
novelist, whose treatment shall stand to them very much as they stand to
the shorter and sometimes almost shorthand written tales of Despériers
himself.

[Sidenote: Despériers.]

With the _Cymbalum Mundi_ of this rather mysterious person we need have
little to do. It is, down to the dialogue-form, an obvious imitation of
Lucian--a story about the ancient divinities (especially Mercury) and a
certain "Book of Destiny" and talking animals, and a good deal of often
rather too transparent allegory. It has had, both in its own day and
since, a very bad reputation as being atheistical or at least
anti-Christian, and seems really to have had something to do with the
author's death, by suicide or otherwise. There need, however, be very
little harm in it; and there is not very much good as a story, nor,
therefore, much for us. It does not carry the art of its particular kind
of fiction any further than Lucian himself, who is, being much more of a
genius, on the whole a much better model, even taking him at that rather
inferior rate. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on the other hand, though
the extreme brevity of some has perhaps sometimes prejudiced readers
against them, have always seemed to the present writer to form the most
remarkable book, as literature, of all the department at the time except
_Gargantua_ and _Pantagruel_ and the _Heptameron_, and to supply a
strong presumption that their author had more than a minor hand in the
_Heptameron_ itself. It must, of course, be admitted that the fashion in
which they are delivered may not only offend in one direction, but may
possibly mislead in another. One may read too much into the brevity, and
so fall into the error of that other Englishman who was beguiled by the
mysterious signs of Despériers' greatest contemporary's most original
creation. But a very large and long experience of literary weighing and
measuring ought to be some safeguard against the mistake of Thaumast.

[Sidenote: _Contes et Joyeux Devis._]

One remarkable difference which may seem, at first sight, to be against
the theory of Despériers having had a large share in the _Heptameron_ is
the contrasted and, as it may seem again at first sight, antagonistic
tone of the two. There are purely comic and even farcical passages in
Marguerite's book, but the general colour, as has been said, is
religious-sentimental or courtly-amatory, with by no means infrequent
excursions into the purely tragical. The _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, on
the other hand, in the main continue the wholly jocular tone of the old
_fabliaux_. But Despériers must have been, not only _not_ the great man
of letters which the somewhat exaggerated zeal of his editor, M. Louis
Lacour, ranked him as being, but a very weak and feeble writer, if he
could not in this way write comedy in one book and tragedy in another.
In fact Rabelais gives us (as the greatest writers so often do) what is
in more senses than one a master-key to the contrast. Despériers has in
the _Contes_ constant ironic qualifications and asides which may even
have been directly imitated from his elder and greater contemporary;
Marguerite has others which pair off in the same way with the most
serious Rabelaisian "intervals," to which attention has been drawn in
the last chapter. One point, however, does seem, at least to me, to
emerge from the critical consideration of these two books with the other
works of the Queen on the one hand and the other works of
Despériers[116] on the other. It is that the latter had a much crisper
and stronger style than Marguerite's own, and that he had a faculty of
grave ironic satire, going deeper and ranging wider than her
"sensibility" would allow. There is one on the fatal and irremediable
effects of disappointing ladies in their expectations, wherein there is
something more than the mere _grivoiserie_, which in other hands it
might easily have remained. The very curious Novel XIII.--on King
Solomon and the philosopher's stone and the reason of the failure of
alchemy--is of quite a different type from most things in these
story-collections, and makes one regret that there is not more of it,
and others of the same kind. For sheer amusement, which need not be
shocking to any but the straitest-laced of persons, the story (XXXIV.)
of a curate completely "scoring off" his bishop (who did not observe the
caution given by Ophelia to Laertes) has not many superiors in its
particular kind.

[Sidenote: Other tale-collections.]

The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth
century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories
of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they
are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of
which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne,
_Apologie pour Hérodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the
_Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noël Du Fail, a Breton squire
(as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _Escraignes
Dijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinées_ and
_Après Dinées_ of Cholières, and, the largest collection of all, the
_Sérees_ [Soirées] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while after
the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work,
appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributed
and denied to Béroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the
imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be
found; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Despériers;
while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one
collection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffing
together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque
style--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to
most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old
_fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the
Renaissance--learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost
everything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] and
none of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit of
tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special
point of importance "for us."

[Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]

It will be observed that some of them actually display in their titles
(such as that of Tabouret's book as quoted) the fact that they have a
definite provinciality in no bad sense: while Bouchet is as clearly
Angevin and Du Fail as distinctly Breton as Des Accords is Burgundian
and as the greatest of all had been Tourangeau. It can scarcely be
necessary to point out at great length what a reinforcement of vigour
and variety must have been brought by this plantation in the different
soils of those provinces which have counted for so much--and nearly
always for so much good[119]--in French literature and French things
generally. The great danger and defect of mediaeval writing had been its
tendency to fall into schools and ruts, and the "printed book"
(especially such a printed book as Rabelais) was, at least in one way,
by no means unlikely to exercise this bad influence afresh. To this the
provincial differences opposed a salutary variety of manners, speech,
local colour, almost everything. Moreover, manners themselves
generally--one of the fairest and most fertile fields of the
novel-kingdom--became thus more fully and freely the object and subject
of the tale-teller. Character, in the best and most extensive and
intensive sense of the word, still lagged behind; and as the drama
necessarily took that up, it was for more reasons than one encouraged,
as we may say, in its lagging. But meanwhile Amyot and Calvin[120] and
Montaigne were getting the language more fully ready for the
prose-writer's use, and the constant "sophistication" of literature with
religion, politics, knowledge of the physical world in all ways,
commerce, familiarity with foreign nations--everything almost that
touched on life--helped to bring on the slow but inevitable appearance
of the novel itself. But it had more influences to assimilate and more
steps to go through before it could take full form.

[Sidenote: The _Amadis_ romances.]

No more curious contrast (except, perhaps, the not very dissimilar one
which will meet us in the next chapter) is to be found in the present
_History_, or perhaps in any other, than that of the matter just
discussed with the great body of _Amadis_ romance which, at this same
time, was introduced into French literature by the translation or
adaptation of Nicolas Herberay des Essarts and his continuators. That
Herberay[121] deserves, according to the best and most catholic students
of French, a place with the just-mentioned writers among the formers or
reformers of the French tongue, is a point of some importance, but, for
us, minor. Of the controversial part of the _Amadis_ subject it must, as
in other cases, be once more unnecessary for us to say much. It may be
laid down as certain, on every principle of critical logic and research,
that the old idea of the Peninsular cycle being borrowed direct from any
French original is hopelessly absurd. There is, notoriously, no external
evidence of any such original ever having existed, and there is an
immense improbability against any such original ever having existed.
Further, the internal characteristics of the Spanish romances, though,
undoubtedly, they might never have come into existence at all but for
the French, and though there is a very slight "catch-on" of _Amadis_
itself to the universally popular Arthurian legend, are not in the least
like those of French or English. How the actual texts came into that
existence; whether, as used to be thought at first, after some expert
criticism was turned on them, the actual original was Portuguese, and
the refashioned and prolific form Spanish, is again a question utterly
beyond bounds for us. The quality of the romances themselves--their huge
vogue being a matter of fact--and the influence which they exercised on
the future development of the novel,--these are the things that concern
us, and they are quite interesting and important enough to deserve a
little attention.

[Sidenote: Their characteristics.]

What is certain is that these Spanish romances themselves--which, as
some readers at any rate may be presumed to know, branch out into
endless genealogies in the _Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ lines, besides the
more or less outside developments which fared so hardly with the censors
of Don Quixote's library--as well as the later French examples of a not
dissimilar type, the capital instance of which, for literature, is Lord
Berners's translation of _Arthur of Little Britain_--do show the most
striking differences, not merely from the original twelfth- and
thirteenth-century Charlemagne and Arthur productions, but also from
intermediate variants and expansions of these. The most obvious of these
discrepancies is the singular amplification of the supernatural
elements. Of course these were not absent in the older romance
literature, especially in the Arthurian cycle. But there they had
certain characteristics which might almost deserve the adjective
"critical"--little criticism proper as there was in the Middle Ages.
They were very generally religious, and they almost always had what may
be called a poetic restraint about them. The whole Graal-story is
deliberately modelled on Scriptural suggestions; the miracle of
reconciliation and restoration which concludes _Amis and Amiles_ is the
work of a duly commissioned angel. There are giants, but they are
introduced moderately and equipped in consonance. The Saint's Life,
which, as it has been contended, exercised so large an influence on the
earlier romance, carried the nature, the poetry, the charm of its
supernatural elements into the romance itself.

[Sidenote: Extravagance in incident, nomenclature, etc.]

In the _Amadis_ cycle and in romances like _Arthur of Little Britain_
all this undergoes a change--not by any means for the better. What has
been unkindly, but not perhaps unjustly, called the "conjuror's
supernatural" takes the place of the poet's variety. One of the
personages of the _Knight of the Sun_ is a "Bedevilled Faun," and it is
really too much not to say that most of such personages are bedevilled.
In _Arthur of_ (so much the Lesser) _Britain_ there is, if I remember
rightly, a giant whose formidability partly consists in his spinning
round on a sort of bedevilled music-stool: and his class can seldom be
met with without three or seven heads, a similarly large number of legs
and hands, and the like. This sort of thing has been put down, not
without probability, to the Oriental suggestion which would come so
readily into Spain. It may be so or it may not. But it certainly imports
an element of puerility into romance, which is regrettable, and it
diminishes the dignity and the poetry of the things rather lamentably.
Whether it diminishes, and still more whether it originally diminished
the _readability_ of these same things, is quite another question.

Closely connected with it is the fancy for barbaric names of great
length and formidable sound, such as Famongomadan, Pintiquinestra, and
the like--a trait which, if anybody pleases, may be put down to the
distorted echo of more musical[122] appellations in Arabic and other
Eastern tongues, or to a certain childishness, for there is no doubt
that the youthful mind delights, and always has delighted, in such
things. The immense length of these romances even in themselves, and
still more with continuations from father to son and grandson, and
trains of descendants sometimes alternately named, can be less charged
as an innovation, though there is no doubt that it established a rule
which had only been an exception before. But, as will have been seen
earlier, the continuation of romance genealogically had been not
uncommon, and there had been a constant tendency to lengthen from the
positively terse _Roland_ to the prolix fifteenth-century forms. In fact
this went on till the extravagant length of the Scudéry group made
itself impossible, and even afterwards, as all readers of Richardson
know, there was reluctance to shorten.

[Sidenote: The "cruel" heroine.]

We have, however, still to notice another peculiarity, and the most
important by far as concerns the history of the novel: this is the
ever-increasing tendency to exaggerate the "cruelty" of the heroine and
the sufferings of the lovers. This peculiarity is not specially
noticeable in the earliest and best of the group itself. Amadis suffers
plentifully; yet Oriana can hardly be called "cruel." But of the two
heroines of _Palmerin_, Polisarda does play the part to some extent, and
Miraguarda (whose name it is not perhaps fantastic to interpret as
"Admire her but beware of her") is positively ill-natured. Of course the
thing was no more a novelty in literature than it was in life. The
lines--

    And cruel in the New
    As in the Old one,

may certainly be transferred from the geographical world to the
historical. But in classical literature "cruelty" is attributed rather
indiscriminately to both sexes. The cliff of Leucas knew no distinction
of sex, and Sappho can be set against Anaxarete. Indeed, it was safer
for men to be cruel than for women, inasmuch as Aphrodite, among her
innumerable good qualities, was very severe upon unkind girls, while one
regrets to have to admit that no particular male deity was regularly
"affected" to the business of punishing light o' love men, though
Eros-Cupid may sometimes have done so. The Eastern mistress, for obvious
reasons, had not much chance of playing the Miraguarda part as a rule,
though there seems to me more chance of the convention coming from Arab
and Hebrew poetry than from any other source. But in the _Arabian
Nights_ at least, though there are lustful murderesses--eastern
Margarets of Burgundy, like Queen Labé of the Magicians,--there is
seldom any "cruelty," or even any tantalising, on the part of the
heroines.

A hasty rememberer of the sufferings of Lancelot and one or two other
heroes of the early and genuine romance might say, "Why go further than
this?" But on a little examination the cases will be found very
different. Neither Iseult nor Guinevere is cruel to her lover;
Orgueilleuse has a fair excuse in difference of rank and slight
acquaintance; persons like Tennyson's Ettarre, still more his Vivien,
are "sophisticated"--as we have pointed out already. Besides, Vivien and
Ettarre are frankly bad women, which is by no means the case with the
Polisardas and Miraguardas. They, if they did not introduce the
thing--which is, after all, as the old waterman in _Jacob Faithful_
says, "Human natur',"--established and conventionalised the Silvius and
Phoebe relation of lover and mistress. If Lancelot is banished more than
once or twice, it is because of Guinevere's real though unfounded
jealousy, not of any coquettish "cruelty" on her part; if Partenopeus
nearly perishes in his one similar banishment, it is because of his own
fault--his fault great and inexcusable. But the Amadisian heroes, as a
rule--unless they belong to the light o' love Galaor type, which would
not mind cruelty if it were exercised, but would simply laugh and ride
away--are almost painfully faithful and deserving; and their sojourns in
Tenebrous Isles, their encounters with Bedevilled Fauns, and the like,
are either pure misfortunes or the deliberate results of capricious
tyranny on the part of their mistresses.

Now of course this is the sort of thing which may be (and as a matter of
fact it no doubt was) tediously abused; but it is equally evident that
in the hands of a novelist of genius, or even of fair talent and
craftsmanship, it gives opportunity for extensive and ingenious
character-drawing, and for not a little "polite conversation." If _la
donna è mobile_ generally, she has very special opportunities of
exhibiting her mobility in the exercise of her caprice: and if it is the
business of the lover (as it is of minorities, according to a Right
Honourable politician) to suffer, the _amoureux transi_ who has some
wits and some power of expression can suffer to the genteelest of tunes
with the most ingenious fugues and variations. A great deal of the
actual charm of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century poetry in all
languages comes from the rendering in verse of this very relation of
woman and man. We owe to the "dear Lady Disdain" idea not merely
Beatrice, but Beatrix long after her, and many another good thing both
in verse and in prose between Shakespeare and Thackeray.

In the _Amadis_ group (as in its slightly modernised successor, that of
the _Grand Cyrus_), the handling is so preposterously long and the
reliefs of dialogue and other things frequently managed with so little
skill, that, except for sheer passing of time, the books have been found
difficult to read. The present writer's knowledge of Spanish is too
sketchy to enable him to read them in the original with full comfort.
_Amadis_ and _Palmerin_ are legible enough in Southey's translations,
made, as one would expect from him, with all due effort to preserve the
language of the old English versions where possible. But Herberay's
sixteenth-century French is a very attractive and perfectly easy
language, thoroughly well suited to the matter. And if anything that has
been said is read as despite to these romances, the reading is wrong.
They have grave faults, but also real delights, and they have no small
"place i' the story."[123]

FOOTNOTES:

[110]

[Sidenote: Note on Montaigne.]

This suggestive influence may be found almost as strongly, though shown
with less literary craftsmanship, in Brantôme's successor and to some
extent overlapper, Tallemant des Réaux. And it is almost needless to say
that in both _subjects_ for novel treatment "foison," as both French and
English would have said in their time. Nor may it be improper to add
that Montaigne himself, though more indirectly, assisted in speeding the
novel. The actual telling of a story is indeed not his strongest point:
the dulness of the _Travels_, if they were really his (on which point
the present writer cannot help entertaining a possibly unorthodox
doubt), would sufficiently show this. But the great effect which he
produced on French prose could not, as in the somewhat similar case of
Dryden in English a century later, but prove of immense aid to the
novelist. Except in the deliberately eccentric style, as in Rabelais'
own case, or in periods such as the Elizabethan and our own, where there
is a coterie ready to admire jargon, you cannot write novels, to
interest and satisfy readers, without a style, or a group of styles,
providing easy and clear narrative media. We shall see how, in the next
century, writers in forms apparently still more alien from the novel
helped it in the same way.

[111] The character of this Bourbon prince seems to have been very
faithfully though not maliciously drawn by Margaret (for the name,
_Gallicé pulchrum_, is _Anglicé pulchrius_, and our form may be
permitted in a note) as not ungenial, not exactly ungentlemanly, and by
no means hating his wife or being at all unkind to her, but constantly
"hard" on her in speech, openly regarding infidelity to her as a matter
of course, and not a little tinged by the savagery which (one is afraid)
the English wars had helped to introduce among the French nobility;
which the religious wars were deepening, and which, in the times of the
Fronde, came almost to its very worst, and, though somewhat tamed later,
lasted, and was no mean cause, if not so great a one as some think, of
the French Revolution. Margaret's love for her brother was ill rewarded
in many ways--among others by brutal scandal--and her later days were
embittered by failure to protect the new learning and the new faith she
had patronised earlier. But one never forgets Rabelais' address to her,
or the different but still delightful piece in which Marot is supposed
to have commemorated her Platonic graciousness; while her portrait,
though drawn in the hard, dry manner of the time, and with the tendency
of that time to "make a girl's nose a proboscis," is by no means
unsuggestive of actual physical charm.

[112] This phrase, though Biblical, of course, in spirit, is not, so far
as I remember, anywhere found textually in Holy Writ. It may be
patristic; in which case I shall be glad of learned information. It
sounds rather like St. Augustine. But I do not think it occurs earlier
in French, and the word _impossibilité_ is not banal in the connection.

[113] The famous phrase "amoureux _transi_" is simply untranslatable by
any single word in English for the adjective, or rather participle. Its
unmetaphorical use is, of course, commonest in the combination _transi
de froid_, "frozen," and so suggests in the other a lover shivering
actually under his mistress's shut window, or, metaphorically, under her
disdain.

[114] The expression (_passe oultre_) commented on in speaking of
Rabelais, and again one which has no English equivalent.

[115] A very early example of the special sense given to this word in
French increasingly during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth
centuries, of "freethinker" deepening to "atheist." Johnson's friend, it
will be remembered, regarded Philosophy as something to which the
irruption of Cheerfulness was fatal; Butler, as something acquirable by
reading Alexander Ross; a famous ancient saying, as the remembrancer of
death; and a modern usage, as something which has brass and glass
"instruments." But it was Hegel, was it not? or Carlyle? who summarised
the French view and its time of prevalence in the phrase, "When every
one was a philosopher who did not believe in the Devil."

[116] His translations of the _Andria_ and of Plato's _Lysis_; and his
verses, the chief charm of which is to be found in his adoption of the
"cut and broken" stanzas which the French Renaissance loved.

[117] Not to be confused with _Jehan_ Bouchet the poet, a much older
man, indeed some twenty years older than Rabelais, and as dull as
Raminagrobis Crétin himself, but the inventor or discoverer of that
agreeable _agnomen_ "Traverseur des Voies Périlleuses" which has been
noted above.

[118] Cholières, I think, deserves the prize for sinking lowest.

[119] From all the endless welter of abuse of God's great gift of speech
[and writing] about the French Revolution, perhaps nothing has emerged
more clearly than that its evils were mainly due to the sterilisation of
the regular Provincial assemblies under the later monarchy.

[120] A person not bad of blood will always be glad to mention one of
the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person of
humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin's
services to French prose were utilised.

[121] He did not confine his good offices to romances of _caballería_.
In 1539 he turned into French the _Arnalte and Lucenda_ of Diego de San
Pedro (author of the more widely known _Carcel de Amor_), a very curious
if also rather tedious-brief love-story which had great influence in
France (see Reynier, _op. cit. inf._ pp. 66-73). This (though M. Reynier
did not know it) was afterwards versified in English by one of our minor
Carolines, and will appear in the third volume of the collected edition
of them now in course of publication by the Clarendon Press.

[122] Not always. Nouzhatoul-aouadat is certainly not as musical as
Pintiquinestra, though Nouronnihar as certainly is.

[123]

[Sidenote: Note on Hélisenne de Crenne.]

There should be added here a very curious, and now, if not in its own
time, very rare book, my first knowledge of which I owed to a work
already mentioned, M. Gustave Reynier's _Le Roman Sentimental avant
l'Astrée_ (Paris, 1908), though I was able, after this chapter was
composed, to find and read the original in the British Museum. It was
first printed in 1538, and bears, like other books of its time, a
disproportionately long title, which may, however, be easily shortened,
"_Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procèdent d'Amour_ ... composées par
dame Hélisenne de Crenne." This Hélisenne or Hélisaine seems to have
been a real person: and not the least of the remarkable group of women
authors who illustrate her time in France, though M. Reynier himself
admits that "it is difficult to know exactly _who_ she was." She appears
to have been of Picardy, and other extant and non-extant works are
attributed to her. Like almost everybody of her time she wrote in the
extreme _rhétoriqueur_ style--so much so indeed as to lead even Pasquier
into the blunder of supposing that Rabelais hit at her in the dialect of
the "Limousin scholar." The _Angoisses_, which M. Reynier's acute
examination shows to have been written by some one who must have known
Boccaccio's _Fiammetta_ (more than once Frenched about this time), is,
or gives itself out to be, the autobiography of a girl of noble birth
who, married at eleven years old and at first very fond of her husband,
becomes at thirteen the object of much courtship from many gallants. Of
these she selects, entirely on the love-at-first-sight principle, a very
handsome young man who passes in the street. She is well read and tries
to keep herself in order by stock examples, classical and romantic, of
ill-placed and ill-fated affection. Her husband (who seems to have been
a very good fellow for his time) gives her unconsciously what should
have been the best help of all, by praising her self-selected lover's
good looks and laughing at the young man's habit of staring at her. But
she has already spoken frankly of her own _appétit sensuel_, and she
proceeds to show this in the fashion which makes the fifteenth century
and the early sixteenth a sort of trough of animalism between the
altitudes of Mediaeval and Renaissance passion. Her lover turns out to
be an utter cad, boastful, blabbing, and almost cowardly (he tells her
in the usual stolen church interview, _Je crains merveilleusement
monsieur votre mari_). But it makes not the slightest difference; nor
does the at last awakened wrath of an at last not merely threatened but
wideawake husband. Apparently she never has the chance of being actually
guilty, for her husband finally, and very properly, shuts her up in a
country house under strong duennaship. This finishes the first part, but
there are two more, which return to more ancient ways. The lover
Guenélic goes off to seek adventures, which he himself recounts, and
acquires considerable improvement in them. He comes back, endeavours to
free his mistress from her captivity, and does actually fly with her;
but they are pursued; and though the lover and a friend of his with the
rather Amadisian name of "Quezinstra" do their best, the heroine dies of
weariness and shock, to be followed by her lover.

This latter part is comparatively commonplace. M. Reynier thinks very
highly of the first. It is possible to go with him a certain part of the
way, but not, I think, the whole, except from a purely "naturalist" and
not at all "sentimental" point of view. Some bold bad men have, of
course, maintained that when the other sex is possessed by an _appétit
sensuel_ this overcomes everything else, and seems, if not actually to
exclude, at any rate by no means always or often to excite, that
accompanying transcendentalism which is not uncommon with men, and
which, comprised with the appetite, makes the love of the great lovers,
whether they are represented by Dante or by Donne, by Shakespeare or by
Shelley. Whether this be truth or libel _non nostrum est_. But it is
certain that Hélisenne, as she represents herself, does not make the
smallest attempt to spiritualise (even in the lowest sense) or inspirit
the animality of her affection. She wants her lover as she might want a
pork chop instead of a mutton one; and if she is sometimes satisfied
with seeing him, it is as if she were looking at that pork chop through
a restaurateur's window and finding it better than not seeing it at all
and contenting herself with the mutton. Still this result is probably
the result at least as much of want of art as of original _mis_feeling;
and the book certainly does deserve notice here.

The original _Oeuvres_ of Hélisenne form a rather appetising little
volume, fat, and close and small printed, as indeed is the case with
most, but not quite all, of the books now under notice. The
complementary pieces are mainly moralities, as indeed are, in intention,
the _Angoisses_ themselves. These latter seem to me better worth
reprinting than most other things as yet not reprinted, from the
_Heptameron_ (Hélisenne, be it remembered, preceded Marguerite) for
nearly a hundred years. The later parts, though (or perhaps even
because) they contrast curiously with the first, are by no means
destitute of interest; and M. Reynier, I think, is a little hard on them
if he has perhaps been a little kind to their predecessor. The lingo is
indeed almost always stupendous and occasionally terrible. The printer
aids sometimes; for it was not at once that I could emend the
description of the B. V. M. as "Mère et Fille de _l'aliltonât_ [ant]
plasmateur" into "_altitonant_" ("loud-thundering"), while _plasmateur_
itself, though perfectly intelligible and legitimate, a favourite with
the _rhétoriqueurs_, and borrowed from them even in Middle Scots, is not
exactly everybody's word. But from her very exordium she may be fairly
judged. "Au temps que la Déesse Cibélé despouilla son glacial et gélide
habit, et vestit sa verdoyante robe, tapissée de diverses couleurs, je
fus procréé, de noblesse." And, after all, there _is_ a certain nobility
in this fashion of speech and of literary presentation.




CHAPTER VIII

THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL--I

_The Pastoral and Heroic Romance, and the Fairy Story_


[Sidenote: Immense importance of the seventeenth century in our
subject.]

The seventeenth century, almost if not quite from its beginning, ranks
in French literature as the eighteenth does with us, that is to say, as
the time of origin of novels or romances which can be called, in any
sense, modern. In its first decade appeared the epoch-making
pastoral-heroic _Astrée_ of Honoré d'Urfé;[124] its middle period, from
1620 to 1670, was the principal birth-time of the famous "Heroic"
variety, pure and simple; while, from that division into the last third,
the curiously contrasted kind of the fairy tale came to add its quota of
influence. At various periods, too, individuals of more or less note
(and sometimes of much more than almost any of the "school-writers" just
mentioned) helped mightily in strengthening and diversifying the
subjects and manners of tales. To this period also belongs the
continuance and prominence of that element of actual "lived" anecdote
and personal history which has been mentioned more than once before. The
_Historiettes_ of Tallemant contain short suggestions for a hundred
novels and romances; the memoirs, genuine or forged, of public and
private persons have not seldom, in more modern times, formed the actual
basis of some of the greatest fiction. Everybody ought long to have
known Thackeray's perhaps rather whimsical declaration that he
positively preferred the forged D'Artagnan memoirs of Courtils de
Sandras (as far at least as the Gascon himself was concerned) to the
work of that Alexander, the truly Great, of which he was nevertheless
such a generous admirer: and recently mere English readers have had the
opportunity of seeing whether they agree with him. In fact, as the
century went on, almost all kinds of literature began to be more or less
pervaded with the novel appeal and quality.

[Sidenote: The divisions of its contribution.]

The letters of "Notre Dame des Rochers" constantly read like parts or
scenes of a novel, and so do various compositions of her ill-conditioned
but not unintelligent cousin Bussy-Rabutin. Camus de Pontcarré in the
earlier and Fénelon in the later century determined that the Devil
should not have this good prose to himself, and our own Anthony Hamilton
showed the way to Voltaire in a kind, of which, though the Devil had
nothing immediately to do with it, he might perhaps make use later. In
fact, the whole century teems with the spirit of tale-telling, _plus_
character-analysis; and in the eighteenth itself, with a few notable
exceptions, there was rather a falling-off from, than a further advance
towards, the full blossoming of the aloe in the nineteenth.

It will probably, therefore, not be excessive to give two chapters (and
two not short ones) to this period. In the first of them we may take the
two apparently opposite, but by no means irreconcilable schools of
Pastoral and Heroic Romance[125] and of Fairy Tale, including perhaps
only four persons, if so many, of first-rate literary rank--Urfé,[126]
Madeleine de Scudéry, Madame d'Aulnoy, and Perrault; in the second, the
more isolated but in some cases not unimportant names and works of
Sorel, Scarron, Furetière, and the capital ones of Madame de la Fayette
and Hamilton. According to the plan previously pursued, less attempt
will be made to give exhaustive or even full lists of practitioners than
to illustrate their practice thoroughly by example, translated or
abstracted, and by criticism; and it is necessary that this latter
course should be used without mercy to readers or to the historian
himself in this first chapter. For there is hardly any department of
literature which has been more left to the rather treacherous care of
traditional and second- or seventh-hand judgment than the Heroic
romance.[127]

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: The Pastoral in general.]

The Pastoral, as being of the most ancient and in a literary sense of
the highest formal rank, may occupy us first, but by no means longest. A
great deal of attention (perhaps a great deal more than was at all
necessary) has been paid to the pastoral element in various kinds of
literature. The thing is certainly curious, and inevitably invited
comment; but unfortunately it has peculiar temptations to a kind of
comment which, though very fashionable for some time past, is rarely
profitable. Pastorals of the most interesting kind actually exist in
literature: "pastoralism" in the abstract, unless treated in the pure
historical manner, is apt, like all similar criticism and discussion of
"kinds" in general, to tend to [Greek: phlyaria].[128] For a history in
a nutshell there is perhaps room even here, because the relations of the
thing to fiction cannot be well understood without it. That the
association of shepherds,[129] with songs, and with the telling of
"tales" in both senses, is immensely old, is a fact which the Hebrew
Scriptures establish, and almost the earliest Greek mythology and poetry
confirm; but the wiser mind, here as elsewhere, will probably be content
with the fact, and not enquire too busybodily into the reason. The
connection between Sicily--apparently a land of actual pastoral
life--and Alexandria--the home of the first professional man-of-letters
school, as it may be called--perhaps supplies something more; the actual
beauty of the Sicilian-Alexandrian poems, more still; the adoption of
the form by Virgil, who was revered at Rome, renowned somewhat
heterodoxically in the Middle Ages, and simply adored by the
Renaissance, most of all. So, in English, Spenser and Milton, in French,
Marot and others niched it solidly in the nation's poetry; and the
certainly charming _Daphnis and Chloe_, when vernacularised, transferred
its influence from verse to prose in almost all the countries of Europe.

To what may be called "common-sense" criticism, there is, of course, no
form of literature, in either prose or verse, which is more utterly
abhorrent and more helplessly exposed. Unsympathetic, and in some points
unfair and even unintelligent, as Johnson's criticism of _Lycidas_ may
seem, to the censure of its actual "pastorality" there is no answer,
except that "these things are an allegory" as well as a convention. To
go further out of mere common-sense objections, and yet stick to the
Devil's-Advocate line, there is no form which lends itself to--which,
indeed, insists upon--conventions of the most glaring unreality more
than the pastoral, and none in which the decorations, unless managed
with extraordinary genius, have such a tendency to be tawdry at best,
draggled and withered at worst. Nevertheless, the fact remains that at
almost all times, both in ancient literature and since the revival of
letters, as well as in some probably more spontaneous forms during the
Middle Ages themselves,[130] pastorals have been popular with the
vulgar, and practised by the elect; while within the very last hundred
years such a towering genius as Shelley's, and such a manifold and
effectual talent as Mr. Arnold's, have selected it for some of their
very best work.

Such adoption, moreover, had, for the writer of prose fiction, some
peculiar and pretty obvious inducements. It has been noticed by all
careful students of fiction that one of the initial difficulties in its
way, and one of those which do not seem to get out of that way very
quickly, is diffidence on the writer's part "how to begin." It may be
said that this is not peculiar to fiction; but extends from the poet who
never can get beyond the first lines of his epic to the journalist who
sits for an hour gazing at the blank paper for his article, and returns
home at midnight, if not like Miss Bolo "in a flood of tears and a sedan
chair," at any rate in a tornado of swearing at himself and (while there
were such things) a hansom cab. Pastoral gives both easy beginning and
supporting framework.

[Sidenote: Its beginnings in France.]

[Sidenote: Minor romances preceding the _Astrée_.]

The transformation of the older pastoral form into the newer began,
doubtless, with the rendering into French of _Daphnis and Chloe_,[131]
which appeared in the same year with the complete _Heptameron_ (1559).
Twelve years later, in 1571, Belleforest's _La Pyrénee et Pastorale
Amoureuse_ rather took the title than exemplified the kind; but in 1578
the translation of Montemayor's _Diana_ definitely turned the current
into the new-old channel. It was not, however, till seven years later
still that "_Les Bergeries de Juliette_, de l'invention d'Ollenix du
Mont Sacré" (a rather exceptionally foolish anagram of Nicolas de
Montreux) essayed something original in the style. Montreux issued his
work, of which more presently, again and again in five instalments, the
last of which appeared thirteen years later than the first. And it has
been proved with immense bibliographical labour by M. Reynier,[132] that
though the last decade of the sixteenth century in France was almost as
fertile in short love-romances[133] as ours was in sonnet-cycles, the
pastoral form was, whether deliberately or not, for the most part
eschewed, though there were one or two exceptions of little if any
consequence. It is indeed noteworthy that (only four years before the
first part of the _Astrée_) a second translation or the _Diana_ came
out. But it was not till 1607 that this first part actually appeared,
and in the opinion of its own time generally, and our own time for the
most part, though not in that of the interval, made a new epoch in the
history of French fiction.

[Sidenote: Their general character.]

The general characteristics of this curious and numerous, but almost
forgotten, body of work--which must, be it remembered, have exercised
influence, more or less, on the progress of the novel by the ways of
supply, demand, and reaction alike--have been carefully analysed by M.
Reynier, with whom, in regard to one or two points of opinion, one may
differ, but whose statements of fact are certainly trustworthy. Short as
they usually are, and small as is the literary power displayed in most
of them, it is clear that they, long before Rambouillet and the
_précieuses_, indicate a distinct reaction against merely brutal and
ferocious manners, with a standard of "courtiership" in both senses. Our
dear Reine Margot herself in one case prescribes, what one hopes she
found not merely in La Mole, but in others of those transitorily happy
ones whose desiccated hearts did or did not distend the pockets of her
farthingale as live Persian kittens do those of their merchants. To be a
lover you must have "a stocking void of holes, a ruff, a sword, a plume,
_and a knowledge how to talk_." This last point is illustrated in these
miniature romances after a fashion on which one of the differences of
opinion above hinted at may arise. It is not, as in the later "Heroics,"
shown merely in lengthy harangues, but in short and almost dramatised
dialogue. No doubt this is often clumsy, but it may seem to have been
not a whole mistake in itself--only an abortive attempt at something
which, much later again, had to come before real novel-writing could be
achieved, and which the harangues of the Scudéry type could never have
provided. There is a little actual history in them--not the
key-cryptograms of the "Heroics" or their adoption of ancient and
distant historic frames. In a very large proportion, forced marriages,
proposed and escaped from, supply the plot; in not a few, forced
"vocations" to the conventual life. Elopements are as common as
abductions in the next stage, and are generally conducted with as much
propriety. Courtships of married women, and lapses by them, are very
rare.

[Sidenote: Examples of their style.]

No one will be surprised to hear that the "Phébus" or systematised
conceit, for which the period is famous, and which the beloved
Marguerite herself did not a little favour, is abundant in them. From a
large selection of M. Reynier's, I cull, as perhaps the most delightful
of all these, if not also of all known to me in any language, the
following:

     During this task, Love, who had ambushed himself, plunged
     his wings in the tears of the lover, and dried them in the
     burning breast of the maiden.

"A squadron of sighs" is unambitious, but neat, terse, and very tempting
to the imagination. More complicated is a lady "floating on the sea of
the persecution of her Prince, who would fain give her up to the
shipwreck of his own concupiscence."

And I like this:

     The grafts of our desires being inarched long since in the
     tree of our loves, the branches thereof bore the lovely
     bouquets of our hopes.

And this is fine:

     Paper! that the rest of your white surface may not blush at
     my shame, suffer me to blacken it with my sorrow!

It has always been a sad mystery to me why rude and dull intelligences
should sneer at, or denounce, these delightful fantastries, the very
stuff of which dreams and love and poetry--the three best things of
life--are made.[134]

[Sidenote: Montreux and the _Bergeries de Juliette_.]

The British Museum possesses not very many of the, I believe, numerous
works of Nicolas de Montreux, _alias_, as has been said, Ollenix du Mont
Sacré, a "gentleman of Maine," as he scrupulously designates himself.
But it does possess two parts (the first two) of the _Bergeries de
Juliette_, and I am not in the least surprised that no reader of them
should have worried any librarian into completing the set. Each of these
parts is a stout volume of some five hundred pages,[135] not very small,
of close small print, filled with stuff of the most deadly dulness. For
instance, Ollenix is desirous to illustrate the magnificence and the
danger of those professional persons of the other sex at Venice who have
filled no small place in literature from Coryat to Rousseau. So he tells
us, without a gleam or suspicion of humour, that one customer was so
astonied at the decorations of the bedroom, the bed, etc., that he
remained for two whole hours considering them, and forgetting to pay any
attention to the lady. It is satisfactory to know that she revenged
herself by raising the fee to an inordinate amount, and insisting on her
absurd client's lackey being sent to fetch it before the actual
conference took place. But the silliness of the story itself is a fair
sample of Montreux' wits, and these wits manage to make anything they
deal with duller by their way of telling it.

[Sidenote: Des Escuteaux and his _Amours Diverses_.]

It is still more unfortunate that our national collection has none of
the numerous fictions[136] of A(ntoine?) de Nervèze. His _Amours
Diverses_ (1606), in which he collected no less than seven love-stories,
published separately earlier, would be useful. But it luckily does
provide the similarly titled book of Des Escuteaux, who is perhaps the
most representative and prolific writer, next to Montreux and Nervèze,
of the whole, and who seems to me, from what I have read of the first
and what others say of the second, to be their superior. The collections
consist of (_Amours de_ in every case) _Filiris et Isolia_, dedicated to
Isabel (not "-bel_le_") de Rochechouart; _Clarimond et Antoinette_ (to
Lucresse [_sic_] de Bouillé); _Clidamant et Marilinde_ (to _Jane_ de la
Brunetière), and _Ipsilis et Alixée_ (to Renée de Cossé, Amirale de
France!).[137]

Some readers may be a little "put off" by a habit which Des Escuteaux
has, especially in the first story of the volume, of prefixing, as in
drama, the names of the speakers--_Le Prince_, _La Princesse_, etc.--to
the first paragraphs of the harangues and _histoires_ of which these
books so largely consist.[138] But it is not universal. The most
interesting of the four is, I think, _Clidamant et Marilinde_, for it
introduces the religious wars, a sojourn of the lovers on a desert
island, which M. Reynier[139] not unjustly calls Crusoe-like, and other
"varieties."

[Sidenote: François de Molière--_Polyxène._]

I have not seen the other--quite other, and François--Molière's _Semaine
Amoureuse_, which belongs to this class, though later than most; but his
still later _Polyxène_, a sort of half-way house between these shorter
novels and the ever-enlarged "Heroics," is a very fat duodecimo of 1100
pages. The heroine has two lovers--one with the singular name of
Cloryman,--but love does not run smooth with either, and she ends by
taking the (pagan) veil. The bathos of the thought and style may be
judged from the heroine's affecting mention of an entertainment as "the
last _ballet_ my unhappy father ever saw."

[Sidenote: Du Périer--_Arnoult et Clarimonde._]

Not one of the worst of these four or five score minors, though scarcely
in itself a positively good thing, is the Sieur du Périer's _La Haine et
l'Amour d'Arnoult et de Clarimonde_. It begins with a singularly banal
exordium, gravely announcing that Hate and Love _are_ among the most
important passions, with other statements of a similar kind couched in
commonplace language. But it does something to bring the novel from an
uninteresting cloudland to earth by dealing with the recent and still
vividly felt League wars: and there is some ingenuity shown in plotting
the conversion of the pair from more than "a little aversion" at the
beginning to nuptial union--_not_ at the end. For it is one of the
points about the book which are not commonplace, though it may be a
survival or atavism from mediaeval practice--that the latter part of it
is occupied mainly, not with Arnoult and Clarimonde, but with the loves,
fortunes, and misfortunes of their daughter Claride.

[Sidenote: Du Croset--_Philocalie._ Corbin--_Philocaste._]

The _Philocalie_ of Du Croset (1593) derives its principal interest from
its being not merely a _Bergerie_ before the _Astrée_, but, like it, the
work of a Forézian gentleman who proudly asserts his territoriality, and
dedicates his book to the "Chevalier D'Urfé." And its part name-fellow,
the _Philocaste_ of Jean Corbin--a very tiny book, the heroine of which
is (one would hardly have thought it from her name) a Princess of
England--is almost entirely composed of letters, discourse on them, and
a few interspersed verses. It belongs to the division of
backward-looking novels, semi-chivalrous in type, and its hero is as
often called "The Black Knight" as by his name.

[Sidenote: Jean de Lannoi and his _Roman Satirique_.]

The _Roman Satirique_ (1624) of Jean de Lannoi is another example of the
curious inability to "hit it off" which has been mentioned so often as
characterising the period. Its 1100 pages are far too many, though it is
fair to say that the print is exceptionally large and loose. Much of it
is not in any sense "satiric," and it seems to have derived what
popularity it had almost wholly from the "key" interest.

[Sidenote: Béroalde de Verville outside the _Moyen de Parvenir_.]

The minor works--if the term may be used when the attribution of the
major is by no means certain--of Béroalde de Verville have, as is usual,
been used both ways as arguments for and against his authorship of the
_Moyen de Parvenir_. _Les Aventures de Floride_ is simply an attempt,
and a big one in size, to _amadigauliser_, as the literary slang of the
time went. The _Histoire Véritable_, owing nothing but its title and
part of its idea to Lucian, and sub-titled _Les Princes Fortunés_, is
less conventional. It has a large fancy map for a frontispiece; there
are fairies in it, and a sort of _pot-pourri_ of queernesses which might
not impossibly have come from the author or editor of the _Moyen_ in his
less inconveniently ultra-Pantagruelist moments. _Le Cabinet de Minerve_
is actually a glorification of "honest" love. In fact, Béroalde is one
of the oddest of "polygraphers," and there is nobody quite like him in
English, though some of his fellows may be matched, after a fashion,
with our Elizabethan pamphleteers. I have long wished to read the whole
of him, but I suppose I never shall.

And it is time to leave these very minor stars and come to the full and
gracious moon of the _Astrée_ itself.

[Sidenote: The _Astrée_--its author.]

Honoré D'Urfé, who was three years younger than Shakespeare, and died in
the year in which Charles I. came to the throne, was a cadet of a very
ancient family in the district or minor province of Forez, where his own
famous Lignon runs into the Loire. He was a pupil of the Jesuits and
early _fort en thème_, was a strenuous _ligueur_, and, though (or
perhaps also because) he was very good friends with Henri's estranged
wife, Margot, for some time decidedly suspect to Henri IV. For this
reason, and others of property, etc., he became almost a naturalised
Savoyard, but died in the service of his own country at the beginning of
Richelieu's Valtelline war. The most noteworthy thing in his rather
eventful life was, however, his marriage. This also has a direct
literary interest, at least in tradition, which will have his wife,
Diane de Châteaumorand, to be Astrée herself, and so the heroine of "the
first [great] sentimental romance." The circumstances of the union,
however, were scarcely sentimental, much less romantic. They were even,
as people used to say yesterday, "not quite nice," and the Abbé Reure, a
devotee of both parties to it, admits that they "_heurte[nt] violemment
nos idées_." In fact Diane was not only eight years older than Honoré
and thirty-eight years of age, but she had been for a quarter of a
century the wife of his elder brother, Anne, while he himself was a
knight of Malta, and vowed to celibacy. Of course (as the Canon points
out with irrefragably literal accuracy in logic and law) the marriage
being declared null _ab initio_ (for the cause most likely to suggest
itself, though alleged after extraordinary delay), Diane and Honoré were
not sister- and brother-in-law at all, and no "divorce" or even
"dispensation" was needed. In the same way, Honoré, having been
introduced into the Order of St. John irregularly in various ways, never
was a knight of it at all, and could not be bound by its rules. Q.E.D.
Wicked people, of course, on the other hand, said that it was a device
to retain Diane's great wealth (for Honoré was quite poor in comparison)
in the family; sentimental ones that it was a fortunate and blameless
crowning of a long and pure attachment. As a matter of fact, no
"permanent children" (to adopt an excellent phrase of the late Mr.
Traill's) resulted; Diane outlived her husband, though but for a short
time, and left all her property to her relations of the Lévis family.
The pair are also said not to have been the most united of couples. In
connection with the _Astrée_ their portraits are interesting. Honoré
d'Urfé, though he had the benefit of Van Dyck's marvellous art of
cavalier creation, must have been a very handsome man. Diane's portrait,
by a much harder and dryer hand, purports to have been taken at the age
of sixty-four. At first sight there is no beauty in it; but on
reinspection one admits possibilities--a high forehead, rather
"enigmatic" eyes, not at all "extinguished," a nose prominent and rather
large, but straight and with well, but not too much, developed "wings,"
and, above all, a full and rather voluptuous mouth. Such may have been
the first identified novel-heroine. It is a popular error to think that
sixty-four and beauty are incompatibles, but one certainly would have
liked to see her at sixteen, or better still and perhaps best of all, at
six and twenty.

[Sidenote: The book.]

The _Astrée_ itself is not the easiest of subjects to deal with. It is
indeed not so huge as the _Grand Cyrus_, but it is much more difficult
to get at--a very rare flower except in the "grey old gardens" of
secular libraries. It and its author have indeed for a few years past
had the benefit (as a result partly of another doubtful thing, an
_x_-centenary) of one[140] of the rather-to-seek good specimens among
the endless number of modern literary monographs. But it has never been
reprinted--even extracts of it, with the exception of a few stock
passages, are not common or extensive; and though a not small library
has been written about it in successive waves of eulogy, reaction,
mostly ignorant contempt, rehabilitation, and mere bookmaking; though
there have been (as noted) recent anniversaries and celebrations, and so
forth; though it is one of the not numerous books which have given a
name-type--Celadon,--and a place--"les bords du Lignon,"--to their own,
if not to universal literature, it seems to be "as a book" very little
known. The faithful monographer above cited admits merit in Dunlop; but
Dunlop does not say very much about it. Herr Körting (_v. sup._)
analyses it. Possibly there may be, also in German, a comparison,
tempting to those who like such things, between it and its twenty years'
predecessor, Sidney's _Arcadia_, the first French translation of which,
in 1625, just after Urfé's death, was actually dedicated to his widow.
But I suspect that few English writers about Sidney have known much of
the _Astrée_, and I feel sure that still fewer French writers[141] on
this have known anything of Sidney save perhaps his name. Of course the
indebtedness of both books to Montemayor's _Diana_ is a commonplace.

[Sidenote: Its likeness to the _Arcadia_.]

[Sidenote: Its philosophy and its general temper.]

One of the numerous resemblances between the two, and one which,
considering their respective positions in the history of the French and
English novel, is most interesting, is the strong philosophical and
specially Platonic influence which the Renaissance exercised on
both.[142] Sidney, however full of it elsewhere, put less of it in his
actual novel; while, on the other hand, nothing did so much to create
and spread the rather rococo notion of pseudo-platonic love in France,
and from France throughout Europe, as the _Astrée_ itself. The further
union of the philosophic mind with an eminently cavalier
temperament--the united _ethos_ of scholar, soldier, lover, and
courtier--fills out the comparison: and dwarfs such merely mechanical
things as the mixed use of prose and verse (which both may have taken,
nay pretty certainly did take, from Montemayor) and the pastoralities,
for which they in the same way owed royalty to the Spaniard, to Tasso,
to Sannazar, and to the Greek romances, let alone Theocritus and Virgil.
And, to confine ourselves henceforward to our own special subject, it is
this double infusion of idealism--of spiritual and intellectual
enthusiasm on the one hand and practical fire of life and act on the
other--which makes the great difference, not merely between the _Astrée_
and its predecessors of the _Amadis_ class, but between it and its
successors the strictly "Heroic" romances, though these owe it so much.
The first--except in some points of passion--hardly touch reality at
all; the last are perpetually endeavouring to simulate and insinuate a
sort of reality under cover of adventures and conventions which, though
fictitious, are hardly at all fantastic. But the _Astrée_ might almost
be called a French prose _Faerie Queene_, allowing for the difference of
the two nations, languages, vehicles, and _milieux_ generally, in its
representation of the above-mentioned cavalier-philosophic _ethos_--a
thing never so well realised in France as in England or in Spain, but of
which Honoré d'Urfé, from many traits in life and book, seems to have
been a real example, and which certainly vindicates its place in history
and literature.

[Sidenote: Its appearance and its author's other work.]

The _Astrée_ appeared in five instalments, 1607-10-12-19 and
posthumously, the several parts being frequently printed: and it is said
to be almost impossible to find a copy, all the parts of which are of
the first issue in each case. The two later parts probably, the last
certainly, were collaborated in, if not wholly written by, the author's
secretary Baro. But it was by no means Honoré's only work; indeed the
Urfés up to his time were an unusually literary family; and, while his
grandfather Claude collected a remarkable library (whence, at its
dispersion in the evil days of the house[143] during the eighteenth
century, came some of not the least precious possessions of French
public and private collections), his unfortunate brother Anne was a
poet. Honoré himself, besides school exercises, wrote _Epistres Morales_
which were rather popular, and display qualities useful in appreciating
the novel itself; a poem in octosyllables, usually and perhaps naturally
called "_La_ Sireine," but really entitled in the masculine, and having
nothing to do with a mermaid; a curious thing, semi-dramatic in form and
in irregular blank verse, entitled _Silvanire ou La Morte Vive_, which
was rehandled soon after his death by Corneille's most dangerous rival
Mairet; and an epic called _La Savoisiade_, which seems to have no
merit, and all but a very small portion of which is still unprinted.

[Sidenote: Its character and appeals.]

He remains, therefore, the author of the _Astrée_, and, taking things on
the whole (a mighty whole, beyond contest, as far as bulk goes), there
are not so many authors of the second rank (for one of the first he can
hardly be called) who would lose very much by an exchange with him.
One's estimates of the book are apt to vary in different places, even
as, though not in the same degree as, the estimates of others have
varied at different times; but I myself have found that the more I read
of it the more I liked and esteemed it; and I believe that, if I had a
copy of my own and could turn it over in the proper diurnal and
nocturnal fashion, not as duty- but as pleasure-reading, I should like
it better still. Certain points that have appealed to me have been
noticed already--its combination of sensuous and ideal passion is
perhaps the most important of them; but there are not a few others,
themselves by no means void of importance. One is the union, not common
in French books between the sixteenth and the nineteenth century, of
sentiment and seriousness with something very like humour. Hylas, the
not exactly "comic man," but light-o'-love and inconstant shepherd, was
rather a bone of contention among critics of the book's own century. But
he certainly seasons it well; and there is one almost Shakespearean
scene in which he is concerned--a scene which Benedick and Beatrice, who
may have read it not so very many years after their own marriage, must
have enjoyed considerably. Hylas and the shepherdess Stella (who is
something of a girl-counterpart of his, as in the case just cited) draw
up a convention of love[144] between them. The tables, though they are
not actually numbered in the original, are twelve, and, shortened a
little, run as follows:

[Sidenote: Hylas and Stella and their Convention.]

     1. Neither is to be sovereign over the other.

     2. Both are to be at once Lover and Beloved. [They knew
     something about the matter, these two, for all their
     jesting.]

     3. There is to be no constraint of any kind.

     4. They are to love for as long or as short a time as they
     please.

     5. No charge of infidelity is ever to be brought on either
     side.

     6. It is quite permitted to either or both to love somebody
     else, and yet to continue loving each other.

     7. There is to be no jealousy, no complaints, no sulks.

     8. They are to do and say exactly what they please.

     9. Words like "faithfulness," etc., are taboo.

     10. They may leave off playing whenever they like.

     11. And begin again ditto.

     12. They are to forget both the favours they receive from
     each other and the offences they may commit against each
     other.

Now, of course, any one may say of the Land where such a code might be
realised, in the very words of one of the most charming of songs, set to
one of the happiest of tunes:

    Cette rive, ma chère,
    On ne la connaît guère
        Au pays des amours!

But that is not the question, and if it _were_ possible it undoubtedly
would be a very agreeable Utopia, combining the transcendental charms of
the country of Quintessence with the material ones of the Pays de
Cocagne. From its own point of view there seems to be no fault to find
with it, except, perhaps, with the first part of the Twelfth
Commandment; for the remembrance of former favours heightens the
enjoyment of later ones, and the danger of _nessun maggior dolore_ is
excluded by the hypothesis of indifference after breach. But a sort of
umpire, or at any rate thirdsman, the shepherd Silvandre,[145] when
asked his opinion, makes an ingenious objection. To carry out Article
Three, he says, there ought to be a Thirteenth:

     13. That they may break any of these rules just as they
     please.

For what comes of this further the reader may go to the book, but enough
of it should have been given to show that there is no want of salt,
though there is no (or very little) _gros sel_[146] in the _Astrée_.

[Sidenote: Narrative skill frequent.]

Yet again there is very considerable narrative power. Abstracts may be
found, not merely in older books mentioned or to be mentioned, but in
the recent publications of Körting and the Abbé Reure, and there is
neither room nor need for a fresh one here. As some one (or more than
one) has said, the book is really a sort of half-allegorical tableau of
honourable Love worked out in a crowd of couples (some I believe, have
counted as many as sixty), from Celadon and Astrée themselves downwards.
The course of these loves is necessarily "accidented," and the accidents
are well enough managed from the first, and naturally enough best known,
where Celadon flings himself into the river and is rescued, insensible
but alive, by nymphs, who all admire him very much, though none of them
can affect his passion for Astrée. But one cares--at least I have found
myself caring--less for the story than for the way in which it is
told--a state of things exactly contrary, as will be seen, to that
produced with or in me by the _Grand Cyrus_. There we have a really
well, if too intricately, engineered plot, in the telling of which it is
difficult to take much interest. Here it is just the reverse. And one of
the consequences is that you can dip in the _Astrée_ much more
refreshingly than in its famous follower, where, if you do so, you
constantly "don't know where you are."

[Sidenote: The Fountain of the Truth of Love.]

One of the most famous things in the book, and one of the most important
to its conduct, is the "Fountain of the Truth of Love," a few words on
which will illustrate the general handling very fairly. This Fountain
(presided over by a Druid, a very important personage otherwise, who is
a sort of high priest thereof) has nothing in common with the more usual
waters which are philtres or anti-philtres, etc. Its function is to be
gazed in rather than to be drunk, and if you look into it, loving
somebody, you see your mistress. If she loves you, you see yourself as
well, beside her, and (which is not so nice) if she loves some one else
you see _him_; while if she is fancy-free you see her only. Clidaman,
one of the numerous lovers above mentioned, tries the water; and his
love, Silvie, presents herself again and again as he looks, "almost
setting on fire with her lovely eyes the wave which seemed to laugh
around her." But she is quite alone.

The presiding Druid interprets, not merely in the sense already given,
but with one of the philosophic commentaries, which, as has been said,
are distinctive of the book. The nature of the fountain is to reflect
not body but spirit. Spirit includes Will, Memory, and Judgment, and
when a man loves, his spirit transforms itself through all these ways
into the thing loved. Therefore when he looks into the fountain he sees
Her. In the same way She is changed into Him or some one else whom she
loves, and He sees that image also; but if she loves no one He sees her
image alone.

"This is very satisfactory" (as Lady Kew would say) to the inquiring
mind, but not so much so to the lover. He wants to have the fountain
shut up, I suppose (for my notes and memory do not cover this point
exactly), that no rival may have the chance denied to himself. He would
even destroy it, but that--the Druid tells and shows him--is quite
impossible. What can be done shall be. And here comes in another of the
agreeable things (to me) in the book--its curious fairy-tale character,
which is shown by numerous supernaturalities, much more _humanised_ than
those of the _Amadis_ group, and probably by no means without effect on
the fairy-tale proper which was to follow. Clidaman himself happens, in
the most natural way in the world, to "keep"--as an ordinary man keeps
cats and dogs--a couple of extraordinary big and savage lions and
another couple of unicorns to fight, not with each other, but with
miscellaneous animals. The lions and the unicorns are forthwith
extra-enchanted, so as to guard the fountain--an excellent arrangement,
but subject to some awkwardnesses in the sequel. For the lions take
turns to seek their meat in the ordinary way, and though they can hurt
nobody who does not meddle with the fountain, and have no wish to be
man-eaters, complications naturally supervene. And sometimes, besides
fighting,[147] and love-making, and love casuistry, and fairy-tales, and
oracles, and the finer comedy above mentioned, "Messire d'Urfé" (for he
did not live too late to have that most gracious of all designations of
a gentleman used in regard to him) did not disdain, and could not ill
manage, sheer farce. The scene with Cryseide and Arimant and Clorine and
the nurse and the ointment in Part III. Book VII., though it contains
little or nothing to _effaroucher la pudeur_, is like one of the broader
but not broadest tales of the Fabliaux and their descendants.

[Sidenote: Some drawbacks--awkward history.]

The book, therefore, has not merely a variety, but a certain liveliness,
neither of which is commonplace; but it would of course be uncritical to
suppress its drawbacks. It is far too long: and while bowing to those to
the manner born who say that Baro carried out his master's plan well in
point of style, and acknowledging that I have paid less attention to
Parts IV. and V. than to the others, it seems to me that we could spare
a good deal of them. One error, common to almost the whole century in
fiction, is sometimes flagrant. Nobody except a pedant need object to
the establishment, in the time of the early fifth century and the place
of Gaul, of a non-historical kinglet- or queenletdom of Forez or
"Séguse" under Amasis (here a feminine name[148]), etc.; nor, though (as
may perhaps be remarked again later) things Merovingian bring little
luck in literature, need we absolutely bar Chilperics and Alarics, or a
reference to "all the beauties of Neustria." But why, in the midst of
the generally gracious _macédoine_ of serious and comic loves, and
jokes, and adventures, should we have thrust in the entirely
unnecessary, however historical, crime whereby Valentinian the Third
lost his worthless life and his decaying Empire? It has, however, been
remarked, perhaps often enough, by those who have busied themselves with
the history of the novel, how curious it is that the historical variety,
though it never succeeded in being born for two thousand years after
the _Cyropaedia_ and more, constantly strove to be so. At no time were
the throes more frequent than during the seventeenth century in France;
at no time, there or anywhere else, were they more abortive.[149]

[Sidenote: But attractive on the whole.]

But it remains on the whole an attractive book, and the secret of at
least part of this attractiveness is no doubt to be found stated in a
sentence of Madame de Sévigné's, which has startled some people, that
"everything in it is natural and true." To the startled persons this may
seem either a deliberate paradox, or a mere extravagance of affection,
or even downright bad taste and folly. But the Lady of all Beautiful
Letter-writers was almost of the family of Neverout in literary
criticism. If she had been a professional critic (which is perhaps
impossible), she might have safeguarded her dictum by the addition,
"according to its own scheme and division." It is the neglect of this
implication which has caused the demurs. "'Natural!'" and "'true!'" they
say, "why, the Pastoral is the most frankly and in fact outrageously
unnatural and false of all literary kinds. Does not Urfé himself warn us
that we are not to expect ordinary shepherds and shepherdesses at all?"
Or perhaps they go more to detail. "The whole book is unabashedly
occupied with love-making; and love is not the whole, it is even a very
small part, of life, that is to say, of truth and nature." Or, to come
still closer to particulars, "Where, for instance, did Celadon, who is
represented as having been reduced to utter destitution when, _more
heroum_, he started a quasi-hermit life in the wood, get the
decorations, etc., of the Temple he erected to Love and Astrée?" One
almost blushes at having to explain, in a popular style, the
mistakenness, to use the mildest word, of these objections. The present
writer, in a book less ambitious than the present on the sister subject
of the English novel, once ventured to point out that if you ask "where
Sir Guyon got that particularly convenient padlock with which he
fastened Occasion's tongue, and still more the hundred iron chains with
which he bound Furor?" that is to say, if you ask such a question
seriously, you have no business to read romance at all. As to the Love
matter, of that it is still less use to talk. There are some who would
go so far as to deny the major; even short of that hardiness it may be
safely urged that in poetry and romance Love _is_ the chief and
principal thing, and that the poet and the romancer are only acting up
to their commission in representing it as such. But the source of all
these errors is best reached, and if it may be, stopped, by dealing with
the first article of the indictment in the same way. What if Pastoral
_is_ artificial? That may be an argument against the kind as a whole,
but it cannot lie against a particular example of it, because that
example is bound to act up to its kind's law. And I think it not
extravagant to contend that the _Astrée_ acts up to its law in the most
inoffensive fashion possible--in such a fashion, in fact, as is hardly
ever elsewhere found in the larger specimens, and by no means very often
in the smaller. Hardly even in _As You Like It_, certainly not in the
_Arcadia_, do the crook and the pipe get less in the way than they do
here. A minor cavil has been urged--that the "shepherds" and the
"knights," the "shepherdesses" and the "nymphs" are very little
distinguishable from each other; but why should they be? Urfé had
sufficient art to throw over all these things an air of glamour which,
to those who can themselves take the benefit of the spell, banishes all
inconsistencies, all improbabilities, all specks and knots and the like.
It has been said that the _Astrée_ has in it something of the genuine
fairy-tale element. And the objections taken to it are really not much
more reasonable than would be the poser whether even the cleverest of
wolves, with or without a whole human grandmother inside it, would find
it easy to wrap itself up in bedclothes, or whether, seeing that even
walnut shells subject cats to such extreme discomfort, top-boots would
not be even more intolerable to the most faithful of feline retainers.

[Sidenote: The general importance and influence.]

The literary influence and importance of the book have never been denied
by any competent criticism which had taken the trouble to inform itself
of the facts. It can be pointed out that while the "Heroics," great as
was their popularity for a time, did not keep it very long, and lost it
by sharp and long continued--indeed never reversed--reaction, the
influence of the _Astrée_ on this later school itself was great, was not
effaced by that of its pupils, and worked in directions different, as
well as conjoint. It begat or helped to beget the _Précieuses_; it did a
great deal, if not exactly to set, to continue that historical character
which, though we have not been able to speak very favourably of its
immediate exercise, was at last to be so important. Above all, it
reformed and reinforced the "sentimental" novel, as it is called. We
have tried to show that there was much more of this in the mediaeval
romance proper than it has been the fashion in recent times to allow.
There was a great deal in the _Amadis_ class, but extravaganzaed out of
reason as well as out of rhyme. To us, or some of us, the _Astrée_ type
may still seem extravagant, but in comparison it brings things back to
that truth and nature which were granted it by Madame de Sévigné. Its
charms actually soothed the savage breast of Boileau, and it is not
surprising that La Fontaine loved it. Few things of the kind are more
creditable to the better side of Jean Jacques a full century later, than
that he was not indifferent to its beauty; and there were few greater
omissions on the part of _mil-huit-cent-trente_ (which, however, had so
much to do!) than its comparative neglect to stray on to the gracious
banks of the Lignon. All honour to Saint-Marc Girardin (not exactly the
man from whom one would have expected it) for having been, as it seems,
though in a kind of _palinodic_ fashion, the first to render serious
attention, and to do fair justice, to this vast and curious wilderness
of delights.[150]

[Sidenote: The _Grand Cyrus_.]

[Sidenote: Its preface to Madame de Longueville.]

To turn from the Pastoral to the Heroic, the actual readers, English or
other, of _Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus_[151] in late years, have probably
been reckonable rather as single spies (a phrase in this connection of
some rather special appropriateness) than in battalions. And it is to be
feared that many or most, if not nearly all of them, have opened it with
little expectation of pleasure. The traditional estimates are dead
against it as a rule; it has constantly served as an example--produced
by wiseacres for wiseacres--of the _un_wisdom of our ancestors; and,
generous as were Sir Walter's estimates of all literature, and
especially of his fellow-craftsmen's and craftswomen's work, the lively
passage in _Old Mortality_ where Edith Bellenden's reference to the book
excites the (in the circumstances justifiable) wrath of the
Major--perhaps the only _locus_ of ordinary reading that touches
_Artamène_ with anything but vagueness--is not entirely calculated to
make readers read eagerly. But on turning honestly to the book itself,
it is possible that considerable relief and even a little astonishment
may result. Whether this satisfaction will arise at the very dedication
by that vainglorious and yet redoubtable cavalier, Georges de Scudéry,
in which he characteristically takes to himself the credit due mainly,
if not wholly, to his plain little sister Madeleine, will depend upon
taste. It is addressed to Anne Geneviève de Bourbon, Duchess of
Longueville, sister of Condé, and adored mistress of many noteworthy
persons--the most noteworthy perhaps being the Prince de Marcillac,
better known, as from his later title, as Duc de la Rochefoucauld, and
a certain Aramis--not so good a man as three friends of his, but a very
accomplished, valiant, and ingenious gentleman. The blue eyes of Madame
de Longueville (M. de Scudéry takes the liberty to mention specially
their charm, if not their colour) were among the most victorious in that
time of the "raining" and reigning influence of such things: and somehow
one succumbs a little even now to her as the Queen of that bevy of fair,
frail, and occasionally rather ferocious ladies of the Fronde feminine.
(The femininity was perhaps most evident in Madame de Chevreuse, and the
ferocity in Madame de Montbazon.) Did not Madame de Longueville--did not
they all--figuratively speaking, draw that great philosopher Victor
Cousin[152] up in a basket two centuries after her death, even as had
been done, literally if mythically, to that greater philosopher,
Aristotle, ages before? But the governor of Our Lady of the Guard[153]
says to her many of these things which that very Aramis delighted to
hear (though not perhaps from the lips of rivals) and described,
rebuking the callousness of Porthos to them, as fine and worthy of being
said by gentlemen. The Great Cyrus himself "comes to lay at her
Highness's feet his palms and his trophies." His historian, achieving at
once advertisement and epigram, is sure that as she listened kindly to
the _Death of Caesar_ (his own play), she will do the same to the Life
of Cyrus. Anne Geneviève herself will become the example of all
Princesses (the Reverend Abraham Adams might have groaned a little
here), just as Cyrus was the pattern of all Princes. She is not the
moon, but the sun[154] of the Court. The mingled blood of Bourbon and
Montmorency gives her such an _éclat_ that it is almost unapproachable.
He then digresses a little to glorify her brother, her husband, and
Chapelain, the famous author of _La Pucelle_, who had the good fortune
to be a friend of the Scudérys, as well as, like them, a strong "Heroic"
theorist. After which he comes to that personal inventory which has been
referred to, decides that her beauty is of a celestial splendour, and,
in fact, a ray of Divinity itself; goes into raptures, not merely over
her eyes, but over her hair (which simply effaces sunbeams); the
brightness and whiteness of her complexion; the just proportion of her
features; and, above all, her singularly blended air of modesty and
gallantry; her intellectual and spiritual match; her bodily graces; and
he is finally sure that though somebody's misplaced acuteness may
discover faults which nobody else will perceive (Georges would like to
see them, no doubt), her extreme kindness will pardon them. A
commonplace example of flattery this? Well, perhaps not. One somehow
sees, across the rhetoric, the blue eyes of Anne Geneviève and the
bristling mustachios and "swashing outside" and mighty rapier of
Georges; and the thing becomes alive with the life of a not ungracious
past, the ills of which were, after all, more or less common to all
times, and its charms (like the charms of all things and persons
charming) its own.

[Sidenote: The "Address to the Reader."]

But the Address to the Reader, though it discards those "temptations of
young ladies" (Madame de Longueville can never have been old) which Dr.
Johnson recognised, and also the companion attractions of Cape and
Sword, is of perhaps directly greater importance for our special and
legitimate purpose. Here the brother and sister (probably the sister
chiefly) develop some of the principles of their bold adventure, and
they are of no small interest. It is allowed that the varying accounts
of Cyrus (in which, as almost every one with the slightest tincture of
education[155] must be aware, doctors differ remarkably), at least those
of Herodotus and Xenophon (they do not, or she does not, seem to have
known Ctesias), are confounded, and selected _ad libitum_ and _secundum
artem_ only. Further "lights" are given by the selection of the
"Immortal Heliodorus" and "the great Urfé" as patterns and patrons of
the work. In fact, to any expert in the reading and criticism of novels
it is clear that a great principle has been--imperfectly but
somehow--laid hold of.

[Sidenote: The opening of the "business."]

Perhaps, however, "laid hold of" is too strong; we should do better by
borrowing from Dante and saying that the author or authors have
"glimpsed the Panther,"--have seen that a novel ought not to be a mere
chronicle, unselected and miscellaneous, but a work which, whether it
has actual unity of plot or not, has unity of interest, and will deal
with its facts so as to secure that interest. At first, indeed, they
plunge us into the middle of matters quite excitingly, though perhaps
not without more definite suggestion, both to them and to us, of the
"immortal" Heliodorus. The hero, who still bears his false name of
Artamène,[156] appears at the head of a small army, the troops of
Cyaxares of Media; and, at the mouth of a twisting valley, suddenly sees
before him the town of Sinope in flames, the shipping in the harbour
blazing likewise, all but one bark, which seems to be flying from more
than the conflagration. A fine comic-opera situation follows; for while
Artamène is trying to subdue the fire he is attacked by the traitor
Aribée, general under the King of Assyria, who is himself shut up in a
tower and seems to be hopelessly cut off from rescue by the fire. The
invincible hero, however, subdues at once the rebel and the destroying
element; captures the Assyrian, who is not only his enemy and that of
his master Cyaxares, but his Rival (the word has immense importance in
these romances, and is always honoured with a capital there), and learns
that the escaping galley carried with it his beloved Mandane, daughter
of Cyaxares, of whom he is in quest, and who has been abducted from her
abductor and lover by another, Prince Mazare of Sacia.

[Sidenote: The ups and downs of the general conduct of the story.]

All this is lively and business-like enough, and one feels rather a
brute in making the observation (necessary, however) that Artamène talks
too much and not in the right way. When things in general are "on the
edge of a razor" and one is a tried and skilful soldier, one does not,
except on the stage, pause to address the unjust Gods, and inquire
whether they have consented to the destruction of the most beautiful
princess in the world; discuss with one's friends the reduction into
cinders[157] of the adorable Mandane, and further enquire, without the
slightest chance of answer, "Alas! unjust Rival! hast thou not thought
rather of thine own preservation than of hers?" However, for a time, the
incidents do carry off the verbiage, and for nearly a hundred small
pages there is no great cause for complaint. It is the style of the
book; and if you do not like it you must "seek another inn." But what
succeeds, for the major part of the first of the twenty volumes,[158] is
open to severer criticisms. We fall into interminable discussions,
_récits_, and the like, on the subject of the identity of Artamène and
Cyrus, and we see at once the imperfect fashion in which the nature of
the novel is conceived. That elaborate explanation--necessary in
history, philosophy, and other "serious" works--cannot be cut down too
much in fiction, is one truth that has not been learnt.[159] That the
stuffing of the story with large patches of solid history or
pseudo-history is wrong and disenchanting has not been learnt either;
and this is the less surprising and the more pardonable in that very
few, if indeed any, of the masters and mistresses of the novel, later
and greater than Georges and Madeleine de Scudéry, have not refused to
learn it or have not carelessly forgotten the learning. Even Scott
committed the fault sometimes, though never in his very best work.
Dumas--when he went out and left the "young men" to fill in, and stayed
too long, and made them fill in too much--did it constantly. Yet again,
that mixture of excess and defect in talking, which has been noted
already, becomes more and more trying in connection with the previously
mentioned faults and others. Of _mere_ talk there is enough and
immensely to spare; but it is practically never real dialogue, still
less real conversation. It is harangue, narrative, soliloquy, what you
will, in the less lively theatrical forms of speech watered out in
prose, with "passing of compliments" in the most gentlefolkly manner,
and a spice of "Phébus" or Euphuism now and then. But it is never real
personal talk,[160] while as for conveying the action _by_ the talk as
the two great masters above mentioned and nearly all others of their
kind do, there is no vestige of even an attempt at the feat, or a
glimpse of its desirableness.

Again, one sees before long that of one priceless quality--a sense of
humour--we shall find, though there is a little mild wit, especially in
the words of the ladies named in the note, no trace in the book, but a
"terrible _minus_ quantity." I do not know that the late Sir William
Gilbert was a great student of literature--of classical literature, to
judge from the nomenclature of _Pygmalion and Galatea_ mentioned above,
he certainly was not. But his eyes would surely have glistened at the
unconscious and serious anticipation of his own methods at their most
Gilbertian, had he ever read pp. 308 _sqq._ of this first volume. Here
not only do Cyrus and a famous pirate, by boarding with irresistible
valour on each side, "exchange ships," and so find themselves at once to
have gained the enemy's and lost their own, but this remarkable
manoeuvre is repeated more than twenty times without advantage on
either side--or without apparently any sensible losses on either side.
From which it would appear that both contented themselves with displays
of agility in climbing from vessel to vessel, and did nothing so
impolite as to use their "javelins, arrows, and cutlasses" (of which,
nevertheless, we hear) against the persons of their competitors in such
agility on the other side. It did come to an end somehow after some
time; but one is quite certain that if Mr. Crummles had had the means of
presenting such an admirable spectacle on any boards, he never would
have contented himself without several encores of the whole twenty
operations.

An experienced reader, therefore, will not need to spend many hours
before he appreciates pretty thoroughly what he has to expect--of good,
of bad, and of indifferent--from this famous book. It is, though in a
different sense from Montaigne's, a _livre de bonne foi_. And we must
remember that the readers whom it directly addressed expected from books
of this kind "pastime" in the most literal and generous, if also
humdrum, sense of the word; noble sentiments, perhaps a little learning,
possibly a few hidden glances at great people not of antiquity only. All
these they got here, most faithfully supplied according to their demand.

[Sidenote: Extracts--the introduction of Cyrus to Mandane.]

Probably nothing will give the reader, who does not thus read for
himself, a better idea of the book than some extract translations,
beginning with Artamène's first interview with Mandane,[161] going on to
his reflections thereon, and adding a perhaps slightly shortened version
of the great fight recounted later, in which again some evidence of the
damaging absence of humour, and some suggestions as to the originals of
divers well-known parodies, will be found. (It must be remembered that
these are all parts of an enormous _récit_ by Chrisante, one of
Artamène's confidants and captains, to the King of Hircania, a monarch
doubtless inured to hardships in the chase of his native tigers, or
requiring some sedative as a change from it.)

     No sooner had the Princess seen my Master than she rose, and
     prepared to receive him with much kindness and much joy,
     having already heard, by Arbaces, the service he had done to
     the King, her father. Artamène then made her two deep bows,
     and coming closer to her, but with all the respect due to a
     person of her condition, he kissed [_no doubt the hem of_]
     her robe, and presented to her the King's letter, which she
     read that very instant. When she had done, he was going to
     begin the conversation with a compliment, after telling her
     what had brought him; but the Princess anticipated him in
     the most obliging manner. "What Divinity, generous
     stranger," said she, "has brought you among us to save all
     Cappadocia by saving its King? and to render him a service
     which the whole of his servants could not have rendered?"
     "Madam," answered Artamène, "you are right in thinking that
     some Divinity has led me hither; and it must have been some
     one of those beneficent Divinities who do only good to men,
     since it has procured me the honour of being known to you,
     and the happiness of being chosen by Fortune to render to
     the King a slight service, which might, no doubt, have been
     better done him by any other man." "Modesty," said the
     Princess (smiling and turning towards the ladies who were
     nearest her), "is a virtue which belongs so essentially to
     our own sex, that I do not know whether I ought to allow
     this generous stranger so unjustly to rob us of it, or--not
     content with possessing eminently that valour to which we
     must make no pretension--to try to be as modest when he is
     spoken to of the fineness of his actions as reasonable women
     ought to be when they are praised for their beauty. For my
     part," she added, looking at Artamène, "I confess I find
     your proceeding a little unfair. And I do not think that I
     ought to allow it, or to deprive myself of the power of
     praising you infinitely, although you cannot endure it."
     "Persons like you," retorted Artamène, but with profound
     respect, "ought to receive praise from all the earth, and
     not to give it lightly. 'Tis a thing, Madam, of which it is
     not pleasant to have to repeat; for which reason I beg you
     not to expose yourself to such a danger. Wait, Madam, till I
     have the honour of being a little better known to you."

There are several pages more of this _carte_ and _tierce_ of compliment;
but perhaps a degenerate and impatient age may desire that we should
pass to the next subject. Whether it is right or not in so desiring may
perhaps be discussed when the three samples have been given.

Artamène has been dismissed with every mark of favour, and lodged in a
pavilion overlooking the garden. When he is alone--

     [Sidenote: His soliloquy in the pavilion.]

     After having passed and re-passed all these things over
     again in his imagination, "Ye gods!" said he, "if, when she
     is so lovable, it should chance that I cannot make her love
     me, what would become of the wretched Artamène? But," and he
     caught himself up suddenly, "since she seems capable of
     appreciating glory and services, let us continue to act as
     we have begun! and let us do such great deeds that, even if
     her inclination resisted, esteem may introduce us, against
     her will, into her heart! For, after all, whatever men may
     say, and whatever I may myself have said, one may give a
     little esteem to what one will never in the least love; but
     I do not think one can give much esteem to what will never
     earn a little love. Let us hope, then; let us hope! let us
     make ourselves worthy to be pitied if we are not worthy to
     be loved."

After which somewhat philosophical meditation it is not surprising that
he should be informed by one of his aides-de-camp that the Princess was
in the garden. For what were Princesses made? and for what gardens?

The third is a longer passage, but it shall be subjected to that kind of
_cento_ing which has been found convenient earlier in this volume.

     [Sidenote: The Fight of the Four Hundred.]

     [_The dispute between the kings of Cappadocia on the one
     hand and of Pontus on the other has been referred to a
     select combat of two hundred men a side. Artamène, of
     course, obtains the command of the Cappadocians, to the
     despair of his explosive but not ungenerous rival, "Philip
     Dastus." After a very beautiful interview with Mandane
     (where, once more, the most elegant compliments pass between
     these gentlefolkliest of all heroes and heroines) and divers
     preliminaries, the fight comes off._][162] They began to
     advance with heads lowered, without cries or noise of any
     kind, but in a silence which struck terror. As soon as they
     were near enough to use their javelins, they launched them
     with such violence that [_a slight bathos_] these flying
     weapons had a pretty great effect on both sides, but much
     greater on that of the Cappadocians than on the other. Then,
     sword in hand and covered by their shields, they came to
     blows, and Artamène, as we were informed, immolated the
     first victim [_but how about the javelin "effect"?_] in this
     bloody sacrifice. For, having got in front of all his
     companions by some paces, he killed, with a mighty
     sword-stroke, the first who offered resistance. [_Despite
     this, the general struggle continues to go against the
     Cappadocians, though Artamène's exploits alarm one of the
     enemy, named Artane, so much that he skulks away to a
     neighbouring knoll. At last_] things came to such a point
     that Artamène found himself with fourteen others against
     forty; so I leave you to judge, Sir [_Chrisante parle
     toujours_], whether the party of the King of Pontus did not
     believe they had conquered, and whether the Cappadocians had
     not reason to think themselves beaten. But as, in this
     fight, it was not allowed either to ask or to give quarter,
     and was necessary either to win or to die, the most
     despairing became the most valiant. [_The next stage is,
     that in consequence of enormous efforts on his part, the
     hero finds himself and his party ten to ten, which
     "equality" naturally cheers them up. But the wounds of the
     Cappadocians are the severer; the ten on their side become
     seven, with no further loss to the enemy, and at last
     Artamène finds himself, after three hours' fighting, alone
     against three, though only slightly wounded. He wisely uses
     his great agility in retiring and dodging; separates one
     enemy from the other two, and kills him; attacks the two
     survivors, and, one luckily stumbling over a buckler, kills
     a second, so that at last the combat is single. During this
     time the coward Artane abstains from intervening, all the
     more because the one surviving champion of Pontus is a
     personal rival of his, and because, by a very ingenious
     piece of casuistry, he persuades himself that the two
     combatants are sure to kill each other, and he, Artane,
     surviving, will obtain the victory for self and country!_]

He is nearly right; but not quite. For after Artamène has wounded the
Pontic Pharnaces in six places, and Pharnaces Artamène in four (for we
wound "by the card" here), the hero runs Pharnaces through the heart,
receiving only a thigh-wound in return. He flourishes both swords, cries
"I have conquered!" and falls in a faint from loss of blood. Artane
thinks him dead, and without caring to come close and "mak sicker," goes
off to claim the victory. But Artamène revives, finds himself alone,
and, with what strength he has left, piles the arms of the dead
together, writes with his own blood on a silver shield--

              TO
            JUPITER
    GUARDIAN OF TROPHIES,

and lies beside it as well as he can. The false news deceives for a
short time, but when the stipulated advance to the field takes place on
both sides, the discovery of the surviving victor introduces a new
complication, from which we may for the moment abstain.

The singlestick rattle of compliment in the interview first given, and
the rather obvious and superfluous meditations of the second, may seem,
if not exactly disgusting, tedious and jejune. But the "Fight of the
Four Hundred" is not frigid; and it is only fair to say that, after the
rather absurd passage of _chassé croisé_ on ship-board quoted or at
least summarised earlier, the capture of Artamène by numbers and his
surrender to the generous corsair Thrasybulus are not ill told, while
there are several other good fights before you come to the end of this
very first volume. There is, moreover, an elaborate portrait of the
Princess, evidently intended to "pick up" that vaguer one of Madame de
Longueville in the Preface, but with the blue of the eyes here
fearlessly specified. Here also does the celebrated Philidaspes (most
improperly, if it had not been for the justification to be given later,
transmogrified in the above-mentioned passage by Major Bellenden into
"Philip Dastus? Philip Devil") make his appearance. The worst of it is
that most, if not the whole, is done by the _récit_ delivered, as noted
above, by Chrisante, one of those representatives of the no less
faithful than strong Gyas and Cloanthus, whom imitation of the ancients
has imposed on Scudéry and his sister, and inflicted on their readers.

[Sidenote: The abstract resumed.]

The story of the Cappadocian-Pontic fight[163] is continued in the
second volume of the First Part by the expected delivery of harangues
from the two claimants, and the obligatory, but to Artane very
unwelcome, single combat. He is, of course, vanquished and pardoned by
his foe,[164] making, if not full, sufficient confession; and it is not
surprising to hear that the King of Pontus requests to see no more of
him. The rest--for it must never be forgotten that all this is "throwing
back"--then turns to the rivalry of Artamène and Philidaspes for the
love of Mandane, while she (again, of course) has not the faintest idea
that either is in love with her. Philidaspes, who (still, of course) is
not Philidaspes at all, is a rough customer--(in fact the Major hardly
did him injustice in calling him "Philip Devil"--betraying also perhaps
some knowledge of the text), and it comes to a tussle. This rather
resembles what the contemptuous French early Romantics called _une
boxade_ than a formal duel, and Artamène stuns his man with a blow of
the flat. Cyaxares[165] is very angry, and imprisons them both, not yet
realising their actual fault. It does not matter much to Artamène, who
in prison can think, aloud and in the most beautiful "Phébus," of
Mandane. It matters perhaps a little more to the reader; for a courteous
jailer, Aglatidas, takes the occasion to relate his own woes in a
"History of Aglatidas and Amestris," which completes the second volume
of the First Part in three hundred and fifty mortal pages to itself.

The first volume of the Second Part returns to the main story, or rather
the main series of _récits_; for, Chrisante being not unnaturally
exhausted after talking for a thousand pages or so, Feraulas, another of
Artamène's men, takes up the running. The prisoners are let out, and
Mandane reconciles them, after which--as another but later contemporary
remarks (again of other things, but probably with some reminiscence of
this)--they become much more mortal enemies than before. The
reflections and soliloquies of Artamène recur; but a not unimportant,
although subordinate, new character appears--not as the first example,
but as the foremost representative, in the novel, of the great figure of
the "confidante"--in Martésie, Mandane's chief maid of honour. Nobody,
it is to be hoped, wants an elaborate account of the part she plays, but
it should be said that she plays it with much more spirit and
individuality than her mistress is allowed to show. Then, according to
the general plan of all these books, in which fierce wars and faithful
loves alternate, there is more fighting, and though Artamène is
victorious (as how should he not be, save now and then to prevent
monotony?) he disappears and is thought dead. Of course Mandane cries,
and confesses to the confidante, being entirely "finished" by a very
exquisite letter which Artamène has written before going into the
doubtful battle. However, he is (yet once more, of course) not dead at
all. What (as that most sagacious of men, the elder Mr. Weller, would
have said)'d have become of the other seventeen volumes if he had been?
There is one of the _quiproquos_ or misunderstandings which are as
necessary to this kind of novel as the flirtations and the fisticuffs,
brought about by the persistence of an enemy princess in taking Artamène
for her son Spithridates;[166] but all comes right for the time, and the
hero returns to his friends. The plot, however, thickens. An accident
informs Artamène that Philidaspes is really Prince of Assyria, sure to
become King when his mother, Nitocris, dies or abdicates, and that,
being as he is, and as Artamène knows already, desperately in love with
Mandane, he has formed a plot for carrying her off. The difficulties in
the way of preventing this are great, because, though the hero is
already aware that he is Cyrus, it is for many reasons undesirable to
inform Cyaxares of the fact; and at last Philidaspes, helped by the
traitor Aribée (_v. sup._), succeeds in the abduction, after an
interlude in which a fresh Rival, with a still larger R, the King of
Pontus himself, turns up; and an immense episode, in which Thomyris,
Queen of Scythia, appears, not yet in her more or less historical part
of victress of Cyrus. She is here only a young sovereign, widowed in her
earliest youth, extremely beautiful (see a portrait of her _inf._), who
has never yet loved, but who falls instantly in love with Cyrus himself
(when he is sent to her court), and is rather a formidable person to
deal with, inasmuch as, besides having great wealth and power, she has
established a diplomatic system of intrigue in other countries, which
the newest German or other empire might envy. By the end of this volume,
however, the Artamène-Cyrus confusion is partly cleared up (though
Cyaxares is not yet made aware of the facts), and the hero is sent after
Mandane, to be disappointed at Sinope, in the fashion recounted some
thousand or two pages before.

[Sidenote: The oracle to Philidaspes.]

With the beginning of vol. iv. (that is to say, part ii. vol. ii.) we
return, though still in retrospect, to the direct fate of Mandane.
Nitocris is dead, Philidaspes has succeeded to the crown of Assyria, and
has carried Mandane off to his own dominions. The situation with so
robustious a person as this prince may seem awkward, and indeed, as is
observed in a later part of the book, the heroine's repeated sojourns
(there are three if not four of them in all[167]) in the complete power
of one of the Rivals, with a large R, are very trying to Cyrus. However,
such a shocking thing as violence is hardly hinted at, and the Princess
always succeeds, as the Creole lady in _Newton Forster_ said she did
with the pirates, in "temporising," while her abductors confine
themselves for the most part to the finest "Phébus." Even the fiery
Philidaspes, though he breaks out sometimes, conveys his wish that
Mandane should accompany him to Babylon by pointing out that "the
Euphrates is jealous of the Tigris for having first had the honour of
her presence," and that "the First City of the World ought clearly to
possess the most illustrious princess of the Earth." Of course, if there
is any base person who cannot derive an Aramisian satisfaction (_v.
sup._) from such things as this, he had better abstain from the _Cyrus_.
But happier souls they please--not exquisitely, perhaps, or
tumultuously, but still well--with a mild tickle which is not
unvoluptuous. One is even a very little sorry for Philip Dastus when he
begs his cruel idol to write to him the single word ESPEREZ, and
meanwhile kindly puts it in capitals and a line to itself. Almost
immediately afterwards an oracle juggles with him in fashion delightful
to himself, and puzzling to everybody except the intelligent reader,
who, it is hoped, will see the double meaning at once.

      Il t'est permis d'espérer
      De la faire soupirer,
        Malgré sa haine:
    Car un jour entre ses bras,
        Tu rencontreras
        La fin de ta peine.

Alas! without going further (upon honour and according to fact), one
sees the _other_ explanation--that Mandane will have to perform the
uncomfortable duty--often assigned to heroines--of having Philidaspes
die in her lap.

For the present, however, only discomfiture, not death, awaits him. The
Medes blockade Babylon to recover their princess; it suffers from
hunger, and Philidaspes, with Mandane and the chivalrous Sacian Prince
Mazare, whom we have heard of before, escapes to Sinope. Then the events
recorded in the very beginning happen, and Mandane, after escaping the
flames of Sinope through Mazare's abduction of her by sea, and suffering
shipwreck, falls into the power of the King of Pontus. This calls a halt
in the main story; and, as before, a "Troisième Livre" consists of
another huge inset--the hugest yet--of seven hundred pages this time,
describing an unusually, if not entirely, independent subject--the
loves and fates of a certain Philosipe and a certain Polisante. This
volume contains a rather forcible boating-scene, which supplies the
theme for the old frontispiece.

Refreshed as usual by this excursion,[168] the author returns (in vol.
v., bk. i., chap. iii.) to Cyrus, who is once more in peril, and in a
worse one than ever. Cyaxares, arriving at Sinope, does not find his
daughter, but does discover that Artamène, whom he does not yet know to
be Cyrus and heir to Persia, is in love with her. Owing chiefly to the
wiles of a villain, Métrobate, he arrests the Prince, and is on the
point of having him executed, despite the protests of the allied kings.
But the whole army, with the Persian contingent at its head, assaults
the castle, and rescues Cyrus, after the traitor Métrobate has tried to
double his treachery and get Cyaxares assassinated. Nobody who remembers
the _Letter of Advice_ already quoted will doubt what the conduct of
Cyrus is. He only accepts the rescue in order that he may post himself
at the castle gate, and threaten to kill anybody who attacks Cyaxares.

After this burst, which is really exciting in a way, we must expect
something more soporific. Martésie takes the place of her absent
mistress to some extent, and a good deal of what might be mistaken for
"Passerelle"[169] flirtation takes place, or would do so, if it were not
that Cyrus would, of course, die rather than pay attention to anybody
but Mandane herself, and that Feraulas, already mentioned as one of the
Faithful Companions, is detailed as Martésie's lover. She is, however,
installed as a sort of Vice-Queen of a wordy tourney between four
unhappy lovers, who fill up the rest of the volume with their stories of
"Amants _In_fortunés" (cf. the original title of the _Heptameron_),
dealing respectively with and told by--

(1) A lover who is loved, but separated from his mistress.

(2) One who is unloved.

(3) A jealous one.

(4) One whose love is dead.[170]

They do it moderately, in rather less than five hundred pages, and
Martésie sums up in a manner worthy of any Mistress of the Rolls,
contrasting their fates, and deciding very cleverly against the jealous
man.

The first twenty pages or so of the sixth volume (nominally iii. 2)
afford a good example of the fashion in which, as may be observed more
fully below, even an analysis of the _Grand Cyrus_, though a great
advance on mere general description of it, must be still (unless it be
itself intolerably voluminous) insufficient. Not very much actually
"happens"; but if you simply skip, you miss a fresh illustration of
magnanimity not only in Cyrus, but in a formerly mentioned character,
Aglatidas, with reference to the heroine Amestris earlier inset in the
tale (_v. sup._). And this is an example of the new and sometimes very
ingenious fashion in which these apparent excursions are turned into
something like real episodes, or at any rate supply connecting threads
of the whole, in a manner not entirely unlike that which some critics
have so hastily and unjustly overlooked in Spenser. Then we have an
imbroglio about forged letters, and a clearing-up of a former charge
against the hero, and (still within the twenty pages) a very curious
scene--the last for the time--of that flirtation-without-flirtation
between Cyrus and Martésie. She wants to have back a picture of Mandane,
which she has lent him to worship; and he replies, looking at her
"attentively" (one wonders whether Mandane, if present, would have been
entirely satisfied with his "attention"), addresses her as "Cruel
Person," and asks her (he is just setting out for the Armenian war) how
she thinks he can conquer when she takes away what should make him
invincible. To which replies Miss Martésie, "You have gained so many
victories [_ahem!_] without this help, that it would seem you have no
need of it." This is very nice, and Martésie, who is herself, as
previously observed, quite nice throughout, lets him have the picture
after all. But Cyrus, for once rather ungraciously, will not allow her
lover, and his henchman, Feraulas to escort her home; first, because he
wants Feraulas's services himself, and secondly, because it is unjust
that Feraulas should be happy with Martésie when Cyrus is miserable
without Mandane--an argument which, whether slightly selfish or not, is
at any rate in complete keeping with the whole atmosphere of the book.

[Sidenote: The advent of Araminta.]

Now, as this is by no means a very exceptional, certainly not a unique,
score of pages, and as it has taken almost a whole one of ours to give a
rather imperfect notion of its contents, it follows that it would take
about six hundred, if not more, to do justice to the ten or twelve
thousand of the original. Which (in one of the most immortal of
formulas) "is impossible." We must fall back, therefore, on the system
already pursued for the rest of this volume, and perhaps even contract
its application in some cases. A rash promise of the now entirely, if
not also rather insanely,[171] generous Prince not to marry Mandane
without fighting Philidaspes, or rather the King of Assyria, beforehand,
is important; and an at last minute description of Cyrus's person and
equipment as he sets out (on one of the proudest and finest horses that
ever was, with a war-dress the superbest that can be imagined, and with
Mandane's magnificent scarf put on for the first time) is not quite
omissible. But then things become intricate. Our old friend Spithridates
comes back, and has first love affairs and afterwards an enormous
_récit_-episode with a certain Princess of Pontus, whom Cyrus,
reminding one slightly of Bentley on Mr. Pope's _Homer_ and Tommy Merton
on Cider, pronounces to be _belle, blonde, blanche et bien faite_, but
not Mandane; and who has the further charm of possessing, for the first
time in literature if one mistakes not, the renowned name of Araminta. A
pair of letters between these two will be useful as specimens, and to
some, it may be hoped, agreeable in themselves.

     SPITHRIDATES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA

     [Sidenote: Her correspondence with Spithridates.]

     I depart, Madam, because you wish it: but, in departing, I
     am the most unhappy of all men. I know not whither I go; nor
     when I shall return; nor even if you wish that I _should_
     return; and yet they tell me I must live and hope. But I
     should not know how to do either the one or the other,
     unless you order me to do both by two lines in your own
     hand. Therefore I beg them of you, divine Princess--in the
     name of an illustrious person, now no more, [_her brother
     Sinnesis, who had been a great friend of his_], but who will
     live for ever in the memory of

                              SPITHRIDATES.

     [_He can hardly have hoped for anything better than the
     following answer, which is much more "downright Dunstable"
     than is usual here._]


     ARAMINTA TO SPITHRIDATES

     Live as long as it shall please the Gods to allow you. Hope
     as long as Araminta lives--she begs you: and even if you
     yourself wish to live, she orders you to do so.

     [_In other words he says, "My own Araminta, say 'Yes'!" and
     she does. This attitude necessarily involves the despair of
     a Rival, who writes thus:_]


     PHARNACES TO THE PRINCESS ARAMINTA

     If Fortune seconds my designs, I go to a place where I shall
     conquer _and_ die--where I shall make known, by my generous
     despair, that if I could not deserve your affection by my
     services, I shall have at least not made myself unworthy of
     your compassion by my death.

     [_And, to do him justice, he "goes and does it."_]

This episode, however, did not induce Mademoiselle Madeleine to break
her queer custom of having something of the same kind in the Third Book
of every Part. For though there is some "business," it slips into
another regular "History," this time of Prince Thrasybulus, a naval
hero, of whom we have often heard, and his Alcionide, not a bad name for
a sailor's mistress.[172] Finally, we come back to more events of a
rather troublesome kind: for the _ci-devant_ Philidaspes most
inconveniently insists in taking part in the rescuing expedition,
which--saving scandal of great ones--is very much as if Mr. William
Sikes should insist in helping to extract booty from Mr. Tobias Crackit.
And we finally leave Cyrus in a decidedly awkward situation morally, and
the middle of a dark wood physically.

[Sidenote: Some interposed comments.]

Here, according to that paulo-post-future precedent which she did so
much to create, the authoress was quite justified in leaving him at the
end of a volume; and perhaps the present historian is, to compare small
things with great, equally justified in heaving-to (to borrow from Mr.
Kipling) and addressing a small critical sermon to such crew as he may
have attracted. We have surveyed not quite a third of the book; but this
ought in any case--_teste_ the loved and lost "three-decker" which the
allusion just made concerns--to give us a notion of the author's quality
and of his or her _faire_. It should not be very difficult for anybody,
unless the foregoing analysis has been very clumsily done, to discern
considerable method in Madeleine's mild madness, and, what is more, not
a little originality. The method has, no doubt, as it was certain to
have in the circumstances, a regular irregularity, which is, or would be
in anybody but a novice, a little clumsy: and the originality may want
some precedent study to discover it. But both are there. The skeleton of
this vast work may perhaps be fairly constructed from what has already
been dissected of the body; and the method of clothing the skeleton
reveals itself without much difficulty. You have the central idea in the
loves of Cyrus and Mandane, which are to be made as true as possible,
but also running as roughly as may be. Moreover, whether they run rough
or smooth, you are to keep them in suspense as long as you possibly can.
The means of doing this are laboriously varied and multiplied. The
clumsiest of them--the perpetual intercalation or interpolation of
"side-shows" in the way of _Histoires_--annoys modern readers
particularly, and has, as a rule, since been itself beautifully and
beneficently lessened, in some cases altogether discarded, or
changed--in emancipation from the influence of the "Unities"--to the
form of second plots, not ostentatiously severed from the main one. But,
as has been pointed out, a great deal of trouble is at any rate taken to
knit them to the main plot itself, if not actually and invariably to
incorporate them therewith; and the means of this are again not
altogether uncraftsmanlike. Sometimes, as in the case of Spithridates,
the person, or one of the persons, is introduced first in the main
history; his own particular concerns are dealt with later, and, for good
or for evil, he returns to the central scheme. Sometimes, as in that of
Amestris, you have the _Histoire_ before the personage enters the main
story. Then there is the other device of varying direct narrative, as to
this main story itself, with _Récit_; and always you have a careful
peppering in of new characters, by _histoire_, by _récit_, or by the
main story, to create fresh interests. Again, there is the contrast of
"business," as we have called it--fighting and politics--with
love-making and miscellaneous fine talk. And, lastly, there are--what,
if they were not whelmed in such an ocean of other things, would attract
more notice--the not unfrequent individual phrases and situations which
have interest in themselves. It must surely be obvious that in these
things are great possibilities for future use, even if the actual
inventor has not made the most of them.

Their originality may perhaps deserve a little more comment.[173] The
mixture of secondary plots might, by a person more given to theorise
than the present historian--who pays his readers the compliment of
supposing that that excessively easy and therefore somewhat negligible
business can be done by themselves if they wish--be traced to an
accidental feature of the later mediaeval romances. In these the
congeries of earlier texts, which the compiler had not the wits, or at
least the desire, to systematise, provided something like it; but
required the genius of a Spenser, or the considerable craft of a
Scudéry, to throw it into shape and add the connecting links. Many of
the other things are to be found in the Scudéry romance practically for
the first time. And the suffusion of the whole with a new tone and
colour of at least courtly manners is something more to be counted, as
well as the constant exclusion of the clumsy "conjuror's supernatural"
of the _Amadis_ group. That the fairy story sprung up, to supply the
always graceful supernatural element in a better form, is a matter which
will be dealt with later in this chapter. The oracles, etc., of the
_Cyrus_ belong, of course, to the historical, not the imaginative side
of the presentation; but may be partly due to the _Astrée_, the
influence of which was, we saw, admitted.

[Sidenote: Analysis resumed.]

It may seem unjust that the more this complication of interests
increases, the less complete should be the survey of them; and yet a
moment's thought will show that this is almost a necessity. Moreover,
the methods do not vary much; it is only that they are applied to a
larger and larger mass of accumulating material. The first volume of the
Fourth Part, the seventh of the twenty, follows--though with that
absence of slavish repetition which has been allowed as one of the
graces of the book--the general scheme. Cyrus gets out of the wood
literally, but not figuratively; for when he and the King of Assyria
have joined forces, to pursue that rather paradoxical alliance which is
to run in couple with rivalry for love and to end in a personal combat,
they see on the other side of a river a chariot, in which Mandane
probably or certainly is. But the river is unbridged and unfordable, and
no boats can be had; so that, after trying to swim it and nearly getting
drowned, they have to relinquish the game that had been actually in
sight. Next, two things happen. First, Martésie appears (as usually to
our satisfaction), and in consequence of a series of accidents, shares
and solaces Mandane's captivity. Then, on the other side, Panthea, Queen
of Susiana, and wife of one of the enemy princes, falls into Cyrus's
hands, and with Araminta (who is, it should have, if it has not been,
said earlier, sister of the King of Pontus) furnishes valuable hostage
for good treatment of Mandane and other Medo-Persian-Phrygian-Hircanian
prisoners.

Things having thus been fairly bustled up for a time, a _Histoire_ is,
of course, imminent, and we have it, of about usual length, concerning
the Lydian Princess Palmis and a certain Cléandre; while, even when this
is done, we fall back, not on the main story, but once more on that of
Aglatidas and Amestris, which is in a sad plight, for Amestris (who has
been married against her will and is _maumariée_ too) thinks she is a
widow, and finds she is not.

It has just been mentioned that Palmis is a Lydian Princess; and before
the end of this Part Croesus comes personally into the story, being the
head of a formidable combination to supplant the King of Pontus, detain
Mandane, and, if possible (as the well-known oracle, in the usual
ambiguity (_v. inf._), encourages him to hope), conquer the Medo-Persian
empire and make it his own. But the _Histoire_ mania--now further
excited by consistence in working the personages so obtained in
generally--is in great evidence, and "Lygdamis and Cléonice" supply a
large proportion of the early and all the middle of the eighth volume,
the second of the Fourth Part. There is, however, much more business
than usual at the end to make up for any slackness at the beginning. In
a side-action with the Lydians both Cyrus and the King of Assyria are
captured by force of numbers, though the former is at once released by
the Princess Palmis, as well as Artames, son of Cyrus's Phrygian ally,
whom Croesus chooses to consider as a rebel, and intends to put to
death. Here, however, the captive Queen and Princess, Panthea and
Araminta, come into good play, and exercise strong and successful
influence through the husband of the one and the brother of the other.
But at the end of book, volume, and part we leave Cyrus once more in the
dismals. For though he has actually seen Mandane he cannot get at her,
and he has heard three apparently most unfavourable oracles; the
Babylonian one, which was quoted above, and which he, like everybody
else, takes as a promise of success to Philidaspes; the ambiguous
Delphic forecast of "the fall of _an_ Empire" to Croesus; and that of
his own death at the hands of a hostile queen, the only one which,
historically, was to be fulfilled in its apparent sense, while the
others were not. He cares, indeed, not much about the two last, but
infinitely about the first.

At the opening of the Fifth Part (ninth volume) there is a short but
curious "Address to the Reader," announcing the fulfilment of the first
half of the promised production, and bidding him not be downhearted, for
the first of the second half (the Sixth Part or eleventh volume of the
whole) is actually at Press. It may be noticed that there is a swagger
about these _avis_ and such like things, which probably _is_
attributable to Georges, and not to Madeleine.[174]

The inevitable _Histoire_ comes earlier than usual in this division, and
is of unusual importance; for it deals with two persons of great
distinction, and already introduced in the story, Queen Panthea and her
husband Abradates. It is also one of the longer batch, running to some
four hundred pages; and a notable part in it and in the future main
story is played by one Doralise--a pretty name, which Dryden, making it
prettier still by substituting a _c_ for the _s_, borrowed for his most
original and (with that earlier Florimel of _The Maiden Queen_, who is
said to have been studied directly off Nell Gwyn) perhaps his most
attractive heroine, the Doralice of _Marriage à la Mode_. Another
important character, the villain of the sub-plot, is one Mexaris.[175]
At the end of the first instalment we leave Cyrus preparing elaborate
machines of war to crush the Lydians.

Early in Book II. we hear of a mysterious warrior on the enemy side whom
nobody knows, who calls himself Telephanes, and whom Cyrus is very
anxious to meet in battle, but for the time cannot. He is also
frustrated in his challenge of the King of Pontus to fight for
Mandane--a challenge of which Croesus will not hear. At last Telephanes
turns out to be no less a person than Mazare, Prince of Sacia, whom we
know already as one of the ever-multiplying lovers and abductors of the
heroine; while, after a good deal of confused fighting, another inset
_Histoire_ of him closes the tenth volume (V. ii.). It is, however, only
two hundred pages long--a mere parenthesis compared to others, and it
leads up to his giving Cyrus a letter from Mandane--an act of generosity
which Philidaspes, otherwise King of Assyria, frankly confesses that he,
as another Rival, could never have done. After yet another _Histoire_
(now a "four-some") of Belesis, Hermogenes, Cléodare, and Léonice,
Abradates changes sides, carrying us on to an "intricate impeach" of
old and new characters, especially Araminta and Spithridates, and to the
death in battle of the generous King of Susiana himself, and the grief
of Panthea. There is, at the close of this volume, a rather interesting
_Privilège du Roi_, signed by Conrart ("_le silencieux Conrart_"),
sealed with "the great seal of yellow wax in a simple tail" (one ribbon
or piece of ferret only?), and bestowing its rights "nonobstant Clameur
de Haro, Charte Normande, et autres lettres contraires."

The first volume of the Sixth Part (the eleventh of the whole and the
first of what, as so many words of the kind are required, we may call
the Second Division) has plenty of business--showing that the author or
her adviser was also a business-like person--to commence the new
venture. Cyrus, after being victorious in the field and just about to
besiege Sardis in form, receives a "bolt from the blue" in the shape of
a letter "From the unhappy Mandane to the faithless"--himself! She has
learnt, she tells him, that his feelings towards her are changed,
requests that she may no longer serve as a pretext for his ambition,
and--rather straining the prerogatives assumed even by her nearest
ancestresses in literature, the Polisardas and Miraguardas of the
_Amadis_ group, but scarcely dreamt of by the heroines of ancient Greek
Romance--desires that he will send back to her father Cyaxares all the
troops that he is, as she implies, commanding on false pretences.

Now one half expects that Cyrus, in a transport of
Amadisian-Euphuist-heroism, will comply with this very modest request.
In fact it is open to any one to contend that, according to the
strictest rules of the game, he ought to have done so and gone mad, or
at least marooned himself in some desert island, in consequence. The
sophistication, however, of the stage appears here. After a very natural
sort of "Well, I never!" translated into proper heroic language, he sets
to work to identify the person whom Mandane suspects to be her
rival--for she has carefully abstained from naming anybody. And he
asks--with an ingenious touch of self-confession which does the author
great credit, if it was consciously laid on--whether it can be Panthea
or Araminta, with both of whom he has, in fact, been, if not exactly
flirting, carrying on (as the time itself would have said) a "commerce
of respectful and obliging admiration." He has a long talk with his
confidant Feraulas (whose beloved and really lovable Martésie is,
unluckily, not at hand to illuminate the mystery), and then he writes as
"The Unfortunate Cyrus to the Unjust Mandane," tells her pretty roundly,
though, of course, still respectfully, that if she knew how things
really were "she would think herself the cruellest and most unjust
person in the world." [I should have added, "just as she is, in fact,
the most beautiful."] She is, he says, his first and last passion, and
he has never been more than polite to any one else. But she will kindly
excuse his not complying with her request to send back his army until he
has vanquished all his Rivals--where, no doubt, in the original, the
capital was bigger and more menacing than ever, and was written with an
appropriate gnashing of teeth.

The traditional balance of luck and love, however, holds; and the armies
of Croesus and the King of Pontus begin to melt away; so that, after a
short but curious pastoral episode, they have to shut themselves up in
the capital. The dead body of Abradates is now found, and his widow
Panthea stabs herself upon it. This removes one of Mandane's possible
causes of jealousy, but Araminta remains; and, as a matter of fact, it
_is_ this Princess on whom her suspicion has been cast, arising partly,
though helped by makebates, from the often utilised personal resemblance
between her actual lover, Prince Spithridates, and Cyrus. The
treacherous King of Pontus has, in fact, shown her a letter from
Araminta (his sister, be it remembered) which seems to encourage the
idea.

All this, however, and more fills but a hundred pages or so, and then we
are as usual whelmed in a _Histoire de Timarète et de Parthénie_, which
takes up four times the space, and finishes the First Book. The Second
opens smartly enough with the actual siege of Sardis; but we cannot get
rid of Araminta (it is sad to have to wish that she was not "our own
Araminta" quite so often) and Spithridates. Conversations between the
still prejudiced Mandane and the Lydian Princess Palmis--a sensible and
agreeable girl--are better; but from them we are hurled into a _Histoire
de Sésostre_ (the Egyptian prince, son of Amasis, who is now an ally of
Cyrus) _et de Timarète_, which not only fills the whole of the rest of
the volume, but swells over into the next, being much occupied with the
villainies of a certain Heracleon, who is at the time a wounded prisoner
in Cyrus's Camp. The siege is kept up briskly, but Cyrus's courteous
release of certain captives adds fuel to Mandane's wrath as having been
procured by Araminta. He will do anything for Araminta! The releases
themselves give rise to fresh "alarums and excursions," among which we
again meet a pretty name (Candiope), borrowed by Dryden. Doralise is
also much to the fore; and we have a regular _Histoire_, though a
shorter one than usual, of _Arpalice and Thrasimède_, which will, as
some say, "bulk largely" later. The length of this part is, indeed,
enormous, the double volume running to over fourteen hundred pages,
instead of the usual ten or twelve. But its close is spirited and
sufficiently interim-catastrophic. Cyrus discovers in the _enceinte_ of
Sardis the usual weak point--an apparently impregnable scarped rock,
which has been weakly fortified and garrisoned--takes it by escalade in
person with his best paladins, and after it the city.

But of course he cannot expect to have it all his own way when not quite
twelve-twentieths of the book are gone, and he finds that Mandane is
gone likewise; the King of Pontus, who has practically usurped the
authority of Croesus, having once more carried her off--perhaps not so
entirely unwilling as before. Cyrus pursues, and while he is absent the
King of Assyria (Philidaspes) shows himself even more of a "Philip
Devil" than usual by putting the captive Lydian prince on a pyre,
threatening to burn him if he will not reveal the place of the
Princess's flight, and actually having the torch applied. Of course
Cyrus turns up at the nick of time, has the fire put out, rates the King
of Assyria soundly for his violence, and apologises handsomely to
Croesus. The notion of an apology for nearly roasting a man may appear
to have its ludicrous side, but the way in which the historic pyre and
the mention of Solon are brought in without discrediting the hero is
certainly ingenious. The Mandane-hunt is renewed, but fruitlessly.

At the beginning of Part VII. there are--according to the habit noticed,
and in rather extra measure as regards "us" if not "them"--some
interesting things. The first is an example--perhaps the best in the
book--of the elaborate description (called in Greek rhetorical technique
_ecphrasis_) which is so common in the Greek Romances. The subject is an
extraordinarily beautiful statue of a woman which Cyrus sees in
Croesus's gallery, and which will have sequels later. It, or part of it,
may be given:

     [Sidenote: The statue in the gallery at Sardis.]

     But, among all these figures of gold, there was to be seen
     one of marble, so wonderful, that it obliged Cyrus to stay
     longer in admiring it than in contemplating any of the
     others, though it was not of such precious material. It is
     true that it was executed with such art, and represented
     such a beautiful person, as to prevent any strangeness in
     its charming a Prince whose eyes were so delicate and so
     capable of judging all beautiful objects. This statue was of
     life-size, placed upon a pedestal of gold, on the four sides
     of which were bas-reliefs of an admirable beauty. On each
     were seen captives, chained in all sorts of fashions, but
     chained only by little Loves, unsurpassably executed. As for
     the figure itself, it represented a girl about eighteen
     years old, but one of surprising and perfect beauty. Every
     feature of the face was marvellously fine;[176] her figure
     was at once so noble and so graceful that nothing more
     elegant[177] could be seen; and her dress was at once so
     handsome and so unusual, that it had something of each of
     the usual garbs of Tyrian ladies, of nymphs, and of
     goddesses; but more particularly that of the Wingless
     Victory, as represented by the Athenians, with a simple
     laurel crown on her head. This statue was so well set on its
     base, and had such lively action, that it seemed actually
     animated; the face, the throat, the arms, and the hands were
     of white marble, as were the legs and feet, which were
     partly visible between the laces of the buskins she wore,
     and which were to be seen because, with her left hand, she
     lifted her gown a little, as if to walk more easily. With
     her right she held back a veil, fastened behind her head
     under the crown of laurel, as though to prevent its being
     carried away by the breeze, which seemed to agitate it. The
     whole of the drapery of the figure was made of
     divers-coloured marbles and jaspers; and, in particular, the
     gown of this fair Phoenician, falling in a thousand graceful
     folds, which still did not hide the exact proportion of her
     body, was of jasper, of a colour so deep that it almost
     rivalled Tyrian purple itself. A scarf, which passed
     negligently round her neck, and was fastened on the
     shoulder, was of a kind of marble, streaked with blue and
     white, which was very agreeable to the eye. The veil was of
     the same substance; but sculptured so artfully that it
     seemed as soft as mere gauze. The laurel crown was of green
     jasper, and the buskins, as well as the sash she wore, were,
     again of different hues. This sash brought together all the
     folds of the gown over the hips; below, they fell again more
     carelessly, and still showed the beauty of her figure. But
     what was most worthy of admiration in the whole piece was
     the spirit which animated it, and almost persuaded the
     spectators that she was just about to walk and talk. There
     was even a touch of art in her face, and a certain
     haughtiness in her attitude which made her seem to scorn the
     captives chained beneath her feet: while the sculptor had so
     perfectly realised the indefinable freshness, tenderness,
     and _embonpoint_ of beautiful girls, that one almost knew
     her age.

Then come two more startling events. A wicked Prince Phraortes bolts
with the unwilling Araminta, and the King of Assyria (_alias_
Philidaspes) slips away in search of Mandane on his own account--two
things inconvenient to Cyrus in some ways, but balancing themselves in
others. For if it is unpleasant to have a very violent and rather
unscrupulous Rival hunting the beloved on the one hand, that beloved's
jealousy, if not cured, is at least not likely to be increased by the
disappearance of its object. This last, however, hits Spithridates, who
is, as it has been and will be seen, the _souffre-douleur_ of the book,
much harder. And the double situation illustrates once more the
extraordinary care taken in systematising--and as one might almost say
_syllabising_--the book. It is almost impossible that there should not
somewhere exist an actual syllabus of the whole, though, my habit being
rather to read books themselves than books about them, I am not aware of
one as a fact.[178]

Another characteristic is also well illustrated in this context, and a
further translated extract will show the curious, if not very recondite,
love-casuistry which plays so large a part. But these French writers of
the seventeenth century[179] did not know one-tenth of the matter that
was known by their or others' mediaeval ancestors, by their English and
perhaps Spanish contemporaries, or by writers in the nineteenth century.
They were not "perfect in love-lore"; their _Liber Amoris_ was, after
all, little more than a fashion-book in divers senses of "fashion." But
let them speak for themselves:

     [Sidenote: The judgment of Cyrus in a court of love.]

     [_Ménécrate and Thrasimède are going to fight, and have,
     according to the unqualified legal theory[180] and very
     occasional actual practice of seventeenth-century France, if
     not of the Medes and Persians, been arrested, though in
     honourable fashion. The "dependence" is a certain Arpalice,
     who loves Thrasimède and is loved by him. But she is ordered
     by her father's will to marry Ménécrate, who is now quite
     willing to marry her, though she hates him, and though he
     has previously been in love with Androclée, to whom he has
     promised that he will not marry the other. A sort of
     informal_ Cour d'Amour _is held on the subject, the
     President being Cyrus himself, and the judges Princesses
     Timarète and Palmis, Princes Sesostris and Myrsilus, with
     "Toute la compagnie" as assessors and assessoresses. After
     much discussion, it is decided to disregard the dead
     father's injunction and the living inconstant's wishes, and
     to unite Thrasimède and Arpalice. But the chief points of
     interest lie in the following remarks:_]

     "As it seems to me," said Cyrus, "what we ought most to
     consider in this matter is the endeavour to make the fewest
     possible persons unhappy, and to prevent a combat between
     two gentlemen of such gallantry, that to whichever side
     victory inclines, we should have cause to regret the
     vanquished. For although Ménécrate is inconstant and a
     little capricious, he has, for all that, both wits and a
     heart. We must, then, if you please," added he, turning to
     the two princesses, "consider that if Arpalice were forced
     to carry out her father's testament and marry Ménécrate,
     everybody would be unhappy, and he would have to fight two
     duels,[181] one against Thrasimède and one against
     Philistion (_Androclée's brother_), the one fighting for his
     mistress, the other for his sister." "No doubt," said
     Lycaste, "several people will be unhappy, but, methinks, not
     all; for at any rate Ménécrate will possess _his_ mistress."
     "'Tis true," said Cyrus, "that he will possess Arpalice's
     beauty; but I am sure that as he would not possess her
     heart, he could not call himself satisfied; and his greatest
     happiness in this situation would be having prevented the
     happiness of his Rival. As for the rest of it, after the
     first days of his marriage, he would be in despair at having
     wedded a person who hated him, and whom he, perhaps, would
     have ceased to love; for, considering Ménécrate's humour, I
     am the most deceived of all men if the possession of what he
     loves is not the very thing to kill all love in his heart.
     As for Arpalice, it is easy to see that, marrying Ménécrate,
     whom she hates, and _not_ marrying Thrasimède, whom she
     loves, she would be very unhappy indeed; nor could
     Androclée, on her side, be particularly satisfied to see a
     man like Ménécrate, whom she loves passionately, the husband
     of another. Philistion could hardly be any more pleased to
     see Ménécrate, after promising to marry his sister, actually
     marrying another. As for Thrasimède, it is again easy to
     perceive that, being as much in love with Arpalice as he is,
     and knowing that she loves him, he would have good reason
     for thinking himself one of the unhappiest lovers in the
     world if his Rival possessed his mistress. Therefore, from
     what I have said, you will see that by giving Arpalice to
     Ménécrate, everybody concerned is made miserable; for even
     Parmenides [_not the philosopher, but a friend of Ménécrate,
     whose sister, however, has rejected him_], though he may
     make a show of being still attached to the interests of
     Ménécrate, will be, unless I mistake, well enough pleased
     that his sister should not marry the brother of a person
     whom he never wishes to see again, and by whom he has been
     ill-treated. Then, if we look at the matter from the other
     side and propose to give Arpalice to Thrasimède, it remains
     an unalterable fact that these two people will be happy;
     that Philistion will be satisfied; that justice will be done
     to Androclée; that nothing disobliging will be done to
     Parmenides, and that Ménécrate will be made by force more
     happy than he wishes to be; for we shall give him a wife by
     whom he is loved, and take from him one by whom he is hated.
     Moreover, things being so, even if he refuses to subject his
     whim to his reason, he can wish to come to blows with
     Thrasimède alone, and would have nothing to ask of
     Philistion; besides which, his sentiments will change as
     soon as Thrasimède is Arpalice's husband. One often fights
     with a Rival, thinking to profit by his defeat, when he has
     not married the beloved object; but one does not so readily
     fight the husband of one's mistress, as being her
     lover.[182]"

Much about the "Good Rival" (as we may call him) Mazare follows, and
there is an illuminative sentence about our favourite Doralise's _humeur
enjouée et critique_, which, as the rest of her part does, gives us a
"light" as to the origin of those sadly vulgarised lively heroines of
Richardson's whom Lady Mary very justly wanted to "slipper." Doralise
and Martésie are ladies, which the others, unfortunately, are not. And
then we pay for our _ecphrasis_ by an immense _Histoire_ of the Tyrian
Élise, its original.

At the beginning of VII. ii. Cyrus is in the doldrums. Many of his
heroes have got their heroines--the personages of bygone
_histoires_--and are honeymooning and (to borrow again from Mr. Kipling)
"dancing on the deck." He is not. Moreover, the army, like all
seventeenth-century armies after victory and in comfortable quarters, is
getting rather out of hand; and he learns that the King of Pontus has
carried Mandane off to Cumae--not the famous Italian Cumae, home of the
Sibyl whom Sir Edward Burne-Jones has fixed for us, and of many
classical memories, but a place somewhere near Miletus, defended by
unpleasant marshes on land, and open to the sea itself, the element on
which Cyrus is weakest, and by which the endlessly carried off Mandane
may readily be carried off again. He sends about for help to Phoenicia
and elsewhere; but when, after a smart action by land against the town,
a squadron does appear off the port, he is for a time quite uncertain
whether it is friend or foe. Fortunately Cléobuline, Queen of Corinth, a
young widow of surpassing beauty and the noblest sentiments, who has
sworn never to marry again, has conceived a Platonic-romantic admiration
for him, and has sent her fleet to his aid. She deserves, of course, and
still more of course has, a _Histoire de Cléobuline_. Also the
inestimable Martésie writes to say that Mandane has been dispossessed of
her suspicions, and that the King of Pontus is, in the race for her
favour, nowhere. The city falls, and the lovers meet. But if anybody
thinks for a moment that they are to be happy ever afterwards,
Arithmetic, Logic, and Literary History will combine to prove to him
that he is very much mistaken. In order to make these two lovers happy
at all, not only time and space, but six extremely solid volumes would
have to be annihilated.

The close of VII. ii. and the whole of VIII. i. are occupied with
imbroglios of the most characteristic kind. There is a certain Anaxaris,
who has been instrumental in preventing Mandane from being, according to
her almost invariable custom, carried off from Cumae also. To whom,
though he is one of the numerous "unknowns" of the book, Cyrus rashly
confides not only the captainship of the Princess's guards, but various
and too many other things, especially when "Philip Devil" turns up once
more, and, seeing the lovers in apparent harmony, claims the fulfilment
of Cyrus's rash promise to fight him before marrying. This gets wind in
a way, and watch is kept on Cyrus by his friends; but he, thinking of
the parlous state of his mistress if both her principal lovers were
killed--for Prince Mazare is, so to speak, out of the running, while the
King of Pontus is still lying _perdu_ somewhere--entrusts the secret to
Anaxaris, and begs him to take care of her. Now Anaxaris--as is so
usual--is not Anaxaris at all, but Aryante, Prince of the Massagetae and
actually brother of the redoubtable Queen Thomyris; and he also has
fallen a victim to Mandane's fascinations, which appear to be
irresistible, though they are, mercifully perhaps, rather taken for
granted than made evident to the reader. One would certainly rather have
one Doralise or Martésie than twenty Mandanes. However, again in the now
expected manner, the fight does not immediately come off. For "Philip
Devil," in his usual headlong violence, has provoked another duel with
the Assyrian Prince Intaphernes,[183] and has been badly worsted and
wounded by his foe, who is unhurt. This puts everything off, and for a
long time the main story drops again (except as far as the struggles of
Anaxaris between honour and love are depicted), first to a great deal of
miscellaneous talk about the quarrel of King and Prince, and then to a
regular _Histoire_ of the King, Intaphernes, Atergatis, Princess
Istrine, and the Princess of Bithynia, Spithridates's sister and
daughter of a very robustious and rather usurping King Arsamones, who is
a deadly enemy of Cyrus. The dead Queen Nitocris, and the passion for
her of a certain Gadates, Intaphernes's father, and also sometimes, if
not always, called a "Prince," come in here. The story again introduces
the luckless Spithridates himself, who is first, owing to his likeness
to Cyrus, persecuted by Thomyris, and then imprisoned by his father
Arsamones because he will not give up Araminta and marry Istrine, whom
Nitocris had wanted to marry her own son Philidaspes--a good instance of
the extraordinary complications and contrarieties in which the book
indulges, and of which, if Dickens had been a more "literary" person, he
might have thought when he made the unfortunate Augustus Moddle observe
that "everybody appears to be somebody else's." Finally, the volume ends
with an account of the leisurely progress of Mandane and Cyrus to
Ecbatana and Cyaxares, while the King of Assyria recovers as best he
can. But at certain "tombs" on the route evidence is found that the King
of Pontus has been recently in the land of the living, and is by no
means disposed to give up Mandane.

The second volume of this part is one of the most eventless of all, and
is mainly occupied by a huge _Histoire_ of Puranius, Prince of Phocaea,
his love Cléonisbe, and others, oddly topped by a passage of the main
story, describing Cyrus's emancipation of the captive Jews. He is for a
time separated from the Princess.

The first pages of IX. i. are lively, though they are partly a _récit_.
Prince Intaphernes tells Cyrus all about Anaxaris (Aryante), and how by
representing Cyrus as dead and the King of Assyria in full pursuit of
her, he has succeeded in carrying off Mandane; how also he has had the
cunning, by availing himself of the passion of another high officer,
Andramite, for Doralise, to induce him to join, in order that the maid
of honour may accompany her mistress. Accordingly Cyrus, the King of
Assyria himself, and others start off in fresh pursuit; but the King has
at first the apparent luck. He overtakes the fugitives, and a sharp
fight follows. But the guards whom Cyrus has placed over the Princess,
and who, in the belief of his death, have followed the ravishers, are
too much for Philidaspes, and he is fatally wounded; fulfilling the
oracle, as we anticipated long ago, by dying in Mandane's arms, and
honoured with a sigh from her as for her intended rescuer.

She herself, therefore, is in no better plight, for Aryante and
Andramite continue the flight, with her and her ladies, to a port on the
Euxine, destroying, that they may not be followed, all the shipping save
one craft they select, and making for the northern shore. Here after a
time Aryante surrenders Mandane to his sister Thomyris, as he cannot
well help doing, though he knows her violent temper and her tigress-like
passion for Cyrus, and though, also, he is on rather less than brotherly
terms with her, and has a party among the Massagetae who would gladly
see him king. Meanwhile the King of Pontus and Phraortes, Araminta's
carrier-off, fight and kill each other, and Araminta is given up--a loss
for Mandane, for they have been companions in quasi-captivity, and there
is no longer any subject of jealousy between them.

Having thus created a sort of "deadlock" situation such as she loves,
and in the interval, while Cyrus is gathering forces to attack Thomyris,
the author, as is her fashion likewise, surrenders herself to the joys
of digression. We have a great deal of retrospective history of Aryante,
and at last the famous Scythian philosopher, Anacharsis, is introduced,
bringing with him the rest of the Seven Ancient Sages--with whom we
could dispense, but are not allowed to do so. There is a Banquet of them
all at the end of the first volume of the Part; and they overflow into
the second, telling stories about Pisistratus and others, and discussing
"love in the _aib_-stract," as frigidly as might be expected, on such
points as, "Can you love the same person _twice_?"[184] But the last
half of this IX. ii. is fortunately business again. There is much hard
fighting with Thomyris, who on one occasion wishes to come to actual
sword-play with Cyrus, and of whom we have the liveliest _ecphrasis_, or
set description, in the whole romance.

     [Sidenote: Thomyris on the warpath.]

     As for Thomyris, she was so beautiful that day that there
     was no one in the world save Mandane, who could have
     disputed a heart with her[185] without the risk of losing.
     This Princess was mounted on a fine black horse, trapped
     with gold; her dress was of cloth of gold, with green panels
     shot with a little carnation, and was of the shape of that
     of Pallas when she is represented as armed. The skirt was
     caught up on the hip with diamond clasps, and showed buskins
     of lions' muzzles made to correspond with the rest. Her
     head-dress was adorned with jewels, and a great number of
     feathers--carnation, white and green--hung over her
     beautiful fair tresses, while these, fluttering at the
     wind's will, mixed themselves with the plumes as she turned
     her head, and with their careless curls gave a marvellous
     lustre to her beauty. Besides, as her sleeves were turned
     up, and caught on the shoulder, while she held the bridle of
     her horse with one hand and her sword with the other, she
     showed the loveliest arms in the world. Anger had flushed
     her complexion, so that she was more beautiful than usual;
     and the joy of once more seeing Cyrus, and seeing him also
     in an action respectful towards her,[186] effaced the marks
     of her immediately preceding fury so completely that he
     could see nothing but what was amiable and charming.

Thomyris, however, is as treacherous and cruel as she is beautiful; and
part of her reason for seeming milder is that more of her troops may
turn up and seize him.

On another occasion, owing to false generalship and disorderly advance
on the part of the King of Hyrcania, Cyrus is in no small danger, but he
"makes good," though at a disastrous expense, and with still greater
dangers to meet. Thomyris's youthful son (for young and beautiful widow
as she is, she has been an early married wife and a mother),
Spargapises, just of military age, is captured in battle, suffers from
his captors' ignorance what has been called "the indelible insult of
bonds," and though almost instantly released as soon as he is known,
stabs himself as disgraced. His body is sent to his mother with all
sorts of honours, apologies, and regrets, but she, partly out of natural
feeling, partly from her excited state, and partly because her mind is
poisoned by false insinuations, sends, after transports of maternal and
other rage, a message to Cyrus to the effect that if he does not put
himself unreservedly in her hands, she will send him back Mandane dead,
in the coffin of Spargapises. And so the last double-volume but one ends
with a suitable "fourth act" curtain, as we may perhaps call it.

The last of all, X. i. and ii., exhibits, in a remarkable degree, the
general defects and the particular merits and promise of this curious
and (it cannot be too often repeated) epoch-making book. In the latter
respect more especially it shows the "laborious orient ivory sphere in
sphere" fashion in which the endless and, it may sometimes seem, aimless
episodes, and digressions, and insets are worked into the general theme.
The defects will hardly startle, though they may still annoy, any one
who has worked through the whole. But if another wickedly contented
himself with a sketch of the story up to this point, and thought to make
up by reading this Part of two volumes carefully, he would probably feel
these defects very strongly indeed. We--we corrupt moderns--do expect a
quickening up for the run-in. The usual beginning may seem to the
non-experts to promise this, or at least to give hopes of it; for though
there is a vast deal of talking--with Anacharsis as a go-between and
Gélonide (a good confidante), endeavouring to soften Thomyris, one can
but expect it--the situation itself is at once difficult and exciting.
The position of Aryante in particular is really novel-dramatic. As he is
in love with Mandane, he of course does not want his sister to murder
her. But inasmuch as he fears Cyrus's rivalry, he does not want him to
be near Mandane for two obvious reasons: first, the actual proximity,
and, secondly, the danger of Thomyris's temper getting the better (or
worse) of her when both the lovers are in her power. So he sends private
messengers to the Persian Prince, begging him _not_ to surrender. Cyrus,
however, still thinks of exchanging himself for Mandane. At this point
the neophyte's rage may be excited by being asked to plunge into the
regular four-hundred page _Histoire_ of a certain Arpasie, who has two
lovers--a Persian nobleman Hidaspe, and a supposed Assyrian champion
Méliante, who has come with reinforcements for Thomyris. And no doubt
the proportion _is_ outrageous. But "wait and see," a phrase, it may be
observed, which was not, as some seem to think, invented by Mr. Asquith.

At last the business does begin again, and a tremendous battle takes
place for the possession of certain forests which lie between the two
armies, and are at first held by the Scythians. Cyrus, however, avails
himself of the services of an engineer who has a secret of combustibles,
sets the forests ablaze, and forces his way through one or two open
defiles, with little loss to himself and very heavy loss to the enemy,
whose main body, however, is still unbroken. This affords a fine subject
for one of the curious frontispieces known to all readers of seventeenth
century books. A further wait for reinforcements takes place, and the
author basely avails herself of it for a no doubt to herself very
congenial (they actually called her in "precious" circles by the name of
the great poetess) and enormous _Histoire_ of no less a person than
Sappho, which fills the last 250 pages of the first (nineteenth) volume
and about as much of the second (twentieth) or last. It has very little
connection with the text, save that Sappho and Phaon (for the
self-precipitation at Leucas is treated as a fable) retire to the
country of the Sauromatae, to live there a happy, united, but unwed and
purely Platonic (in the silly sense) existence. The foolish side of the
_précieuse_ system comes out here, and the treatment confirms one's
suspicion that the author's classical knowledge was not very deep.

It does come to an end at last, however, and at last also we do get our
"run-in," such as it is. The chief excuse for its existence is that it
brings in a certain Méréonte, who, like his quasi-assonant Méliante, is
to be useful later, and that the tame conclusion is excused by a Sapphic
theory--certainly not to be found in her too fragmentary works--that
"possession ruins love," a doctrine remembered and better put by Dryden
in a speech of that very agreeable Doralice, whose name, though not
originally connected with this part of it, he also, as has been noted,
borrowed from the _Grand Cyrus_.

The actual finale begins (so to speak) antithetically with the last
misfortune of the unlucky Spithridates. His ill-starred likeness to
Cyrus, assisted by a suit of armour which Cyrus has given to him, make
the enemy certain that he is Cyrus himself, and he is furiously
assaulted in an off-action, surrounded, and killed. His head is taken
to Thomyris, who, herself deceived, executes upon it the famous
"blood-bath" of history or legend.[187] Unfortunately it is not only in
the Scythian army that the error spreads. Cyrus's troops are terrified
and give way, so that he is overpowered by numbers and captured.
Fortunately he falls into the hands, not of Thomyris's own people or of
her savage allies, the Geloni (it is a Gelonian captain who has acted as
executioner in Spithridates's case), but of the supposed Assyrian leader
Méliante, who is an independent person, admires Cyrus, and, further
persuaded by his friend Méréonte (_v. sup._), resolves to let him
escape. The difficulties, however, are great, and the really safest,
though apparently the most dangerous way, seems to lie through the
"Royal Tents" (the nomad capital of Thomyris) themselves. Meanwhile,
Aryante is making interest against his sister; some of Cyrus's special
friends, disguised as Massagetae, are trying to discover and rescue him,
and the Sauromatae are ready to desert the Scythian Queen. One of her
transports of rage brings on the catastrophe. She orders the Gelonian
bravo to poniard Mandane, and he actually stabs by mistake her
maid-of-honour Hésionide--the least interesting one, luckily. Cyrus
himself, after escaping notice for a time, is identified, attacked, and
nearly slain, when the whole finishes in a general chaos of rebellion,
arrival of friends, flight of Thomyris, and a hairbreadth escape of
Cyrus himself, which unluckily partakes more of the possible-improbable
than of the impossible-probable. The murders being done, the marriages
would appear to have nothing to delay them; but an evil habit, the
origin of which is hard to trace, and which is not quite extinct, still
puts them off. Méliante has got to be rewarded with the hand of Arpasie,
which is accomplished after he has been discovered, in a manner not
entirely romantic, to be the son of the King of Hyrcania, and both his
marriage and that of Cyrus are interfered with by a supposed Law of the
Medes and of certain minor Asiatic peoples, that a Prince or Princess
may not marry a foreigner. Fresh discoveries get rid of this in
Méliante's case, while in that of Cyrus a convenient Oracle declares
that he who has conquered every kingdom in Asia cannot be considered a
foreigner in any. So at last the long chart is finished, Doralise
retaining her character as lightener of this rather solid entertainment
by declaring that she cannot say she loves her suitor, Prince Myrsilus,
because every phrase that occurs to her is either too strong or too
weak. So we bless her, and stop the water channels--or, as the Limousin
student might have more excellently said, "claud the rives."

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: General remarks on the book and its class.]

If the reader, having tolerated this long analysis (it is perhaps most
probable that he will _not_ have done so), asks what game one pretends
to have shown for so much expenditure or candle, it is, no doubt, not
easy to answer him without a fresh, though a lesser, trial of his
patience. You cannot "ticket" the _Grand Cyrus_, or any of its fellows,
or the whole class, with any complimentary short description, such as a
certain school of ancient criticism loved, and corresponding to our
modern advertisement labels--"grateful and comforting," "necessary in
every travelling bag," and the like. They are, indeed, as I have
endeavoured to indicate indirectly as well as directly, by no means so
destitute of interest of the ordinary kind as it has generally been the
fashion to think them. From the charge of inordinate length it is, of
course, impossible to clear the whole class, and _Artamène_ more
particularly.[188] Length "no more than reason" is in some judgments a
positive advantage in a novel; but this _is_ more than reason. I believe
(the _moi_, I trust, is not utterly _haïssable_ when it is necessary)
that I myself am a rather unusually rapid, without being a careless or
unfaithful, reader; and that I have by nature a very little of that
faculty with which some much greater persons have been credited, of
being able to see at a glance whether anything on a page needs more
than that glance or not, a faculty not likely to have been rendered
abortive (though also not, I hope, rendered morbid) by infinite practice
in reviewing. I do not say that, even now, I have read every word of
this _Artamène_ as I should read every word of a sonnet of Shakespeare
or a lyric of Shelley, even as I should read every word of a page of
Thackeray. I have even skimmed many pages. But I have never found, even
in a time of "retired leisure," that I could get through more than
three, or at the very utmost four, of the twenty volumes or half-volumes
without a day or two of rest or other work between. On the other hand,
the book is not significantly piquant in detail to enable me to read
attentively fifty or a hundred pages and then lay it down.[189] You do,
in a lazy sort of way, want to know what happened--a tribute, no doubt,
to Mlle. Madeleine--and so you have to go on ploughing the furrow. But
several weeks' collar-work[190] is a great deal to spend on a single
book of what is supposed to be pastime; and the pastime becomes
occasionally one of doubtful pleasure now and then. In fact, it is, as
has been said, best to read in shifts. Secondly, there may, no doubt, be
charged a certain unreality about the whole: and a good many other
criticisms may be, as some indeed have been already, made without
injustice.

The fact is that not only was the time not yet, but something which was
very specially of the time stood in the way of the other thing coming,
despite the strong _nisus_ in its favour excited by various influences
spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. This was the
devotion--French at almost all times, and specially French at this--to
the type. There are some "desperate willins" (as Sam Weller called the
greengrocer at the swarry) who fail to see much more than types in
Racine, though there is something more in Corneille, and a very great
deal more in Molière. In the romances which charmed at home the
audiences and spectators of these three great men's work abroad, there
is nothing, or next to nothing, else at all. The spirit of the _Epistle
to the Pisos_, which acted on the Tragedians in verse, which acted on
Boileau in criticism and poetry, was heavier on the novelist than on any
of them. Take sufficient generosity, magnanimity, adoration, bravery,
courtesy, and so forth, associate the mixture with handsome flesh and
royal blood, clothe the body thus formed with brilliant scarfs and
shining armour, put it on the best horse that was ever foaled, or kneel
it at the feet of the most beautiful princess that ever existed, and you
have Cyrus. For the princess herself take beauty, dignity, modesty,
graciousness, etc., _quant. suff._, clothe _them_ in garments again
magnificent, and submit the total to extreme inconveniences, some
dangers, and an immense amount of involuntary travelling, but nothing
"irreparable," and you have Mandane. For the rest, with the rare and
slight exceptions mentioned, they flit like shadows ticketed with more
or less beautiful names. Even Philidaspes, the most prominent male
character after the hero by far, is, whether he be "in cog" as that
personage or "out of cog" as Prince and King of Assyria, merely a
petulant hero--a sort of cheap Achilles, with no idiosyncrasy at all. It
is the fault, and in a way the very great fault, of all the kind: and
there is nothing more to do with it but to admit it and look for
something to set against it.

How great a thing the inception (to use a favourite word of the present
day, though it be no favourite of the writer's) of the "psychological"
treatment of Love[191] was may, of course, be variously estimated. The
good conceit of itself in which that day so innocently and amusingly
indulges will have it, indeed, that the twentieth century has invented
this among other varieties of the great and venerable art of extracting
nourishment from eggs. "We have," somebody wrote not long ago--the exact
words may not be given, but the sense is guaranteed--"perceived that
Love is not merely a sentiment, an appetite, or a passion, but a great
means of intellectual development." Of course Solomon did not know this,
nor Sappho, nor Catullus, nor the fashioners of those "sentiments" of
the Middle Ages which brought about the half-fabulous Courts of Love
itself, nor Chaucer, nor Spenser, nor Shakespeare, nor Donne. It was
reserved for--but one never names contemporaries except _honoris causâ_.

It is--an "of course" of another kind--undeniable that the fashion of
love-philosophy which supplies so large a part of the "yarn" of
Madeleine de Scudéry's endless rope or web is not _our_ fashion. But it
is, in a way, a new variety of yarn as compared with anything used
before in prose, even in the Greek romances[192] and the _Amadis_ group
(nay, even in the _Astrée_ itself). Among other things, it connects
itself more with the actual society, manners, fashions of its day than
had ever been the case before, and this is the only interesting side of
the "key" part of it. This was the way that they did to some extent talk
and act then, though, to be sure, they also talked and acted very
differently. It is all very well to say that the Hôtel de Rambouillet is
a sort of literary-historical fiction, and the _Précieuses Ridicules_ a
delightful farce. The fiction was not wholly a fiction, and the farce
was very much more than a farce--would have been, indeed, not a farce at
all if it had not satirised a fact.

It is, however, in relation to the general history and development of
the novel, and therefore in equally important relation to the present
_History_, that the importance of the _Grand Cyrus_, or rather of the
class of which it was by far the most popular and noteworthy member, is
most remarkable. Indeed this importance can hardly be exaggerated, and
is much more likely to be--indeed has nearly always been--undervalued.
Even the jejune and partial analysis which has been given must have
shown how many of the elements of the modern novel are here--sometimes,
as it were, "in solution," sometimes actually crystallised. For any one
who demands plot there is one--of such gigantic dimensions, indeed, that
it is not easy to grasp it, but seen to be singularly well articulated
and put together when it is once grasped. Huge as it is, it is not in
the least formless, and, as has been several times pointed out, hardly
the most (as it may at first appear) wanton and unpardonable episode,
digression, or inset lacks its due connection with and "orientation"
towards the end. The contrast of this with the more or less formless
chronicle-fashion, the "overthwart and endlong" conduct, of almost all
the romances from the Carlovingian and Arthurian[193] to the _Amadis_
type, is of the most unmistakable kind.

Again, though character, as has been admitted, in any real live sense,
is terribly wanting still; though description is a little general and
wants more "streaks in the tulip"; and though conversation is formal and
stilted, there is evident, perhaps even in the first, certainly in the
second and third cases, an effort to treat them at any rate
systematically, in accordance with some principles of art, and perhaps
even not without some eye to the actual habits, manners, demands of the
time--things which again were quite new in prose fiction, and, in fact,
could hardly be said to be anywhere present in literature outside of
drama.

To set against these not so very small merits in the present, and very
considerable seeds of promise for the future, there are, of course,
serious faults or defects--defaults which need, however, less
insistence, because they are much more generally known, much more
obvious, and have been already admitted. The charge of excessive length
need hardly be dealt with at all. It has already been said that the most
interesting point about it is the opportunity of discovering how it was,
in part, a regular, and, in fact, almost the furthest possible,
development of a characteristic which had been more or less observable
throughout the progress of romance. But it may be added that the law of
supply and demand helped; for people evidently were not in the least
bored by bulk, and that the fancy for having a book "on hand" has only
lately, if it has actually, died out.[194] Now such a "book on hand" as
the _Grand Cyrus_ exists, as far as my knowledge goes, in no Western
literature, unless you count collections of letters, which is not fair,
or such memoirs as Saint-Simon's, which do not appeal to quite the same
class of readers.

A far more serious default or defect--not exactly blameworthy, _because_
the time was not yet, but certainly to be taken account of--is the
almost utter want of character just referred to. From Cyrus and Manda