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[Transcriber's Notes: To improve readability, dashes between entries
in the Table of Contents and in chapter subheadings have been
converted to periods. The Anglo-Saxon yogh symbol is here represented
by [y].]




Periods of European Literature


EDITED BY

PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY


II.

THE TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES




PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE.

EDITED BY PROFESSOR SAINTSBURY.


     "_The criticism which alone can much help us for the future
     is a criticism which regards Europe as being, for
     intellectual and spiritual purposes, one great
     confederation, bound to a joint action and working to a
     common result._"

     --MATTHEW ARNOLD.


In 12 Crown 8vo Volumes. Price 5s. net each.

The DARK AGES                         Professor W.P. KER.
The FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE
  AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY            THE EDITOR.
The FOURTEENTH CENTURY                F.J. SNELL.
The TRANSITION PERIOD
The EARLIER RENAISSANCE
The LATER RENAISSANCE                 DAVID HANNAY.
The FIRST HALF OF 17TH CENTURY
The AUGUSTAN AGES                     OLIVER ELTON.
The MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The ROMANTIC REVOLT                   EDMUND GOSSE.
The ROMANTIC TRIUMPH                  WALTER H. POLLOCK.
The LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY          THE EDITOR.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON.




THE

FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE

AND THE

RISE OF ALLEGORY


BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
EDINBURGH


WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCXCVII




PREFACE.


As this volume, although not the first in chronological order, is
likely to be the first to appear in the Series of which it forms part,
and of which the author has the honour to be editor, it may be well to
say a few words here as to the scheme of this Series generally. When
that scheme was first sketched, it was necessarily objected that it
would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain contributors who
could boast intimate and equal knowledge of all the branches of
European literature at any given time. To meet this by a simple denial
was, of course, not to be thought of. Even universal linguists, though
not unknown, are not very common; and universal linguists have not
usually been good critics of any, much less of all, literature. But it
could be answered that if the main principle of the scheme was
sound--that is to say, if it was really desirable not to supplant but
to supplement the histories of separate literatures, such as now exist
in great numbers, by something like a new "Hallam," which should take
account of all the simultaneous and contemporary developments and
their interaction--some sacrifice in point of specialist knowledge of
individual literatures not only must be made, but might be made with
little damage. And it could be further urged that this sacrifice might
be reduced to a minimum by selecting in each case writers thoroughly
acquainted with the literature which happened to be of greatest
prominence in the special period, provided always that their general
literary knowledge and critical habits were such as to render them
capable of giving a fit account of the rest.

In the carrying out of such a scheme occasional deficiencies of
specialist dealing, or even of specialist knowledge, must be held to
be compensated by range of handling and width of view. And though it
is in all such cases hopeless to appease what has been called "the
rage of the specialist" himself--though a Mezzofanti doubled with a
Sainte-Beuve could never, in any general history of European
literature, hope to satisfy the special devotees of Roumansch or of
Platt-Deutsch, not to mention those of the greater languages--yet
there may, I hope, be a sufficient public who, recognising the
advantage of the end, will make a fair allowance for necessary
shortcomings in the means.

As, however, it is quite certain that there will be some critics, if
not some readers, who will not make this allowance, it seemed only
just that the Editor should bear the brunt in this new Passage
Perilous. I shall state very frankly the qualifications which I think
I may advance in regard to this volume. I believe I have read most of
the French and English literature proper of the period that is in
print, and much, if not most, of the German. I know somewhat less of
Icelandic and Provençal; less still of Spanish and Italian as regards
this period, but something also of them: Welsh and Irish I know only
in translations. Now it so happens that--for the period--French is,
more than at any other time, the capital literature of Europe. Very
much of the rest is directly translated from it; still more is
imitated in form. All the great subjects, the great _matières_, are
French in their early treatment, with the exception of the national
work of Spain, Iceland, and in part Germany. All the forms, except
those of the prose saga and its kinsman the German verse folk-epic,
are found first in French. Whosoever knows the French literature of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, knows not merely the best
literature in form, and all but the best in matter, of the time, but
that which all the time was imitating, or shortly about to imitate,
both in form and matter.

Again, England presents during this time, though no great English work
written "in the English tongue for English men," yet the spectacle,
unique in history, of a language and a literature undergoing a
sea-change from which it was to emerge with incomparably greater
beauty and strength than it had before, and in condition to vie
with--some would say to outstrip--all actual or possible rivals.
German, if not quite supreme in any way, gives an interesting and
fairly representative example of a chapter of national literary
history, less brilliant and original in performance than the French,
less momentous and unique in promise than the English, but more normal
than either, and furnishing in the epics, of which the _Nibelungenlied_
and _Kudrun_ are the chief examples, and in the best work of the
Minnesingers, things not only of historical but of intrinsic value in
all but the highest degree.

Provençal and Icelandic literature at this time are both of them of
far greater intrinsic interest than English, if not than German, and
they are infinitely more original. But it so happens that the
prominent qualities of form in the first, of matter and spirit in the
second, though intense and delightful, are not very complicated,
various, or wide-ranging. If monotony were not by association a
question-begging word, it might be applied with much justice to both:
and it is consequently not necessary to have read every Icelandic saga
in the original, every Provençal lyric with a strictly philological
competence, in order to appreciate the literary value of the
contributions which these two charming isolations made to European
history.

Yet again, the production of Spain during this time is of the
smallest, containing, perhaps, nothing save the _Poem of the Cid_,
which is at once certain in point of time and distinguished in point
of merit; while that of Italy is not merely dependent to a great
extent on Provençal, but can be better handled in connection with
Dante, who falls to the province of the writer of the next volume. The
Celtic tongues were either past or not come to their chief
performance; and it so happens that, by the confession of the most
ardent Celticists who speak as scholars, no Welsh or Irish _texts_
affecting the capital question of the Arthurian legends can be
certainly attributed to the twelfth or early thirteenth centuries. It
seemed to me, therefore, that I might, without presumption, undertake
the volume. Of the execution as apart from the undertaking others must
judge. I will only mention (to show that the book is not a mere
compilation) that the chapter on the Arthurian Romances summarises,
for the first time in print, the result of twenty years' independent
study of the subject, and that the views on prosody given in chapter
v. are not borrowed from any one.

I have dwelt on this less as a matter of personal explanation, which
is generally superfluous to friends and never disarms foes, than in
order to explain and illustrate the principle of the Series. All its
volumes have been or will be allotted on the same principle--that of
occasionally postponing or antedating detailed attention to the
literary production of countries which were not at the moment of the
first consequence, while giving greater prominence to those that were:
but at the same time never losing sight of the _general_ literary
drift of the whole of Europe during the whole period in each case. It
is to guard against such loss of sight that the plan of committing
each period to a single writer, instead of strapping together bundles
of independent essays by specialists, has been adopted. For a survey
of each time is what is aimed at, and a survey is not to be
satisfactorily made but by one pair of eyes. As the individual study
of different literatures deepens and widens, these surveys may be more
and more difficult: they may have to be made more and more "by
allowance." But they are also more and more useful, not to say more
and more necessary, lest a deeper and wider ignorance should accompany
the deeper and wider knowledge.

The dangers of this ignorance will hardly be denied, and it would be
invidious to produce examples of them from writings of the present
day. But there can be nothing ungenerous in referring--_honoris_, not
_invidiæ causa_--to one of the very best literary histories of this or
any century, Mr Ticknor's _Spanish Literature_. There was perhaps no
man of his time who was more widely read, or who used his reading with
a steadier industry and a better judgment, than Mr Ticknor. Yet the
remarks on assonance, and on long mono-rhymed or single-assonanced
tirades, in his note on Berceo (_History of Spanish Literature_, vol.
i. p. 27), show almost entire ignorance of the whole prosody of the
_chansons de geste_, which give such an indispensable light in
reference to the subject, and which, even at the time of his first
edition (1849), if not quite so well known as they are to-day,
existed in print in fair numbers, and had been repeatedly handled by
scholars. It is against such mishaps as this that we are here doing
our best to supply a guard.[1]

[Footnote 1: One of the most difficult points to decide concerned the
allowance of notes, bibliographical or other. It seemed, on the whole,
better not to overload such a Series as this with them; but an attempt
has been made to supply the reader, who desires to carry his studies
further, with references to the best editions of the principal texts
and the best monographs on the subjects of the different chapters. I
have scarcely in these notes mentioned a single book that I have not
myself used; but I have not mentioned a tithe of those that I have
used.]




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER I.

THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.

Reasons for not noticing the bulk of mediæval Latin literature.
Excepted divisions. Comic Latin literature. Examples of its verbal
influence. The value of burlesque. Hymns. The _Dies Iræ_. The rhythm
of Bernard. Literary perfection of the Hymns. Scholastic Philosophy.
Its influence on phrase and method. The great Scholastics            1


CHAPTER II.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.

European literature in 1100. Late discovery of the _chansons_. Their
age and history. Their distinguishing character. Mistakes about them.
Their isolation and origin. Their metrical form. Their scheme of
matter. The character of Charlemagne. Other characters and
characteristics. Realist quality. Volume and age of the _chansons_.
Twelfth century. Thirteenth century. Fourteenth, and later. _Chansons_
in print. Language: _oc_ and _oïl_. Italian. Diffusion of the
_chansons_. Their authorship and publication. Their performance.
Hearing, not reading, the object. Effect on prosody. The _jongleurs_.
_Jongleresses_, &c. Singularity of the _chansons_. Their charm.
Peculiarity of the _geste_ system. Instances. Summary of the _geste_
of William of Orange. And first of the _Couronnement Loys_. Comments
on the _Couronnement_. William of Orange. The earlier poems of the
cycle. The _Charroi de Nîmes_. The _Prise d'Orange_. The story of
Vivien. _Aliscans._ The end of the story. Renouart. Some other
_chansons_. Final remarks on them                                   22


CHAPTER III.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

Attractions of the Arthurian Legend. Discussions on their sources. The
personality of Arthur. The four witnesses. Their testimony. The
version of Geoffrey. Its _lacunæ_. How the Legend grew. Wace. Layamon.
The Romances proper. Walter Map. Robert de Borron. Chrestien de
Troyes. Prose or verse first? A Latin Graal-book. The Mabinogion. The
Legend itself. The story of Joseph of Arimathea. Merlin. Lancelot. The
Legend becomes dramatic. Stories of Gawain and other knights. Sir
Tristram. His story almost certainly Celtic. Sir Lancelot. The minor
knights. Arthur. Guinevere. The Graal. How it perfects the story.
Nature of this perfection. No sequel possible. Latin episodes. The
Legend as a whole. The theories of its origin. Celtic. French.
English. Literary. The Celtic theory. The French claims. The theory of
general literary growth. The English or Anglo-Norman pretensions.
Attempted hypothesis                                                86


CHAPTER IV.

ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.

Oddity of the Classical Romance. Its importance. The Troy story. The
Alexandreid. Callisthenes. Latin versions. Their story. Its
developments. Alberic of Besançon. The decasyllabic poem. The great
_Roman d'Alixandre_. Form, &c. Continuations. _King Alexander._
Characteristics. The Tale of Troy. Dictys and Dares. The Dares story.
Its absurdity. Its capabilities. Troilus and Briseida. The _Roman de
Troie_. The phases of Cressid. The _Historia Trojana_. Meaning of the
classical romance                                                  148


CHAPTER V.

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN PROSODY.

Special interest of Early Middle English. Decay of Anglo-Saxon. Early
Middle English Literature. Scantiness of its constituents. Layamon.
The form of the _Brut_. Its substance. The _Ormulum_: Its metre, its
spelling. The _Ancren Riwle_. The _Owl and the Nightingale_. Proverbs.
Robert of Gloucester. Romances. _Havelok the Dane._ _King Horn._ The
prosody of the modern languages. Historical retrospect. Anglo-Saxon
prosody. Romance prosody. English prosody. The later alliteration. The
new verse. Rhyme and syllabic equivalence. Accent and quantity. The
gain of form. The "accent" theory. Initial fallacies, and final
perversities thereof                                               187


CHAPTER VI.

MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY.

Position of Germany. Merit of its poetry. Folk-epics: The
_Nibelungenlied_. The _Volsunga saga_. The German version. Metres.
Rhyme and language. _Kudrun._ Shorter national epics. Literary poetry.
Its four chief masters. Excellence, both natural and acquired, of
German verse. Originality of its adaptation. The Pioneers: Heinrich
von Veldeke. Gottfried of Strasburg. Hartmann von Aue. _Erec der
Wanderære_ and _Iwein_. Lyrics. The "booklets." _Der Arme Heinrich._
Wolfram von Eschenbach. _Titurel._ _Willehalm._ _Parzival._ Walther
von der Vogelweide. Personality of the poets. The Minnesingers
generally                                                          225


CHAPTER VII.

THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' AND THE MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRANCE.

The predominance of France. The rise of Allegory. Lyric. The _Romance_
and the _Pastourelle_. The _Fabliaux_. Their origin. Their licence.
Their wit. Definition and subjects. Effect of the _fabliaux_ on
language. And on narrative. Conditions of _fabliau_-writing. The
appearance of irony. Fables proper. _Reynard the Fox._ Order of texts.
Place of origin. The French form. Its complications. Unity of spirit.
The Rise of Allegory. The satire of _Renart_. The Fox himself. His
circle. The burial of Renart. The _Romance of the Rose_. William of
Lorris and Jean de Meung. The first part. Its capital value. The
rose-garden. "Danger." "Reason." "Shame" and "Scandal." The later
poem. "False-Seeming." Contrast of the parts. Value of both, and charm
of the first. Marie de France and Ruteboeuf. Drama. Adam de la
Halle. _Robin et Marion._ The _Jeu de la Feuillie_. Comparison of
them. Early French prose. Laws and sermons. Villehardouin. William of
Tyre. Joinville. Fiction. _Aucassin et Nicolette_                  265


CHAPTER VIII.

ICELANDIC AND PROVENÇAL.

Resemblances. Contrasts. Icelandic literature of this time mainly
prose. Difficulties with it. The Saga. Its insularity of manner. Of
scenery and character. Fact and fiction in the sagas. Classes and
authorship of them. The five greater sagas. _Njala._ _Laxdæla._
_Eyrbyggja._ _Egla._ _Grettla._ Its critics. Merits of it. The parting
of Asdis and her sons. Great passages of the sagas. Style. Provençal
mainly lyric. Origin of this lyric. Forms. Many men, one mind. Example
of rhyme-schemes. Provençal poetry not great. But extraordinarily
pedagogic. Though not directly on English. Some troubadours. Criticism
of Provençal                                                       333


CHAPTER IX.

THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS.

Limitations of this chapter. Late Greek romance. Its difficulties as a
subject. Anna Comnena, &c. _Hysminias and Hysmine._ Its style. Its
story. Its handling. Its "decadence." Lateness of Italian. The
"Saracen" theory. The "folk-song" theory. Ciullo d'Alcamo. Heavy debt
to France. Yet form and spirit both original. Love-lyric in different
European countries. Position of Spanish. Catalan-Provençal.
Galician-Portuguese. Castilian. Ballads? The _Poema del Cid_. A
Spanish _chanson de geste_. In scheme and spirit. Difficulties of its
prosody. Ballad-metre theory. Irregularity of line. Other poems.
Apollonius and Mary of Egypt. Berceo. Alfonso el Sabio             375


CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION                                                         412


INDEX                                                              427




THE FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE

AND THE

RISE OF ALLEGORY.




CHAPTER I.

THE FUNCTION OF LATIN.

     REASONS FOR NOT NOTICING THE BULK OF MEDIÆVAL LATIN
     LITERATURE. EXCEPTED DIVISIONS. COMIC LATIN LITERATURE.
     EXAMPLES OF ITS VERBAL INFLUENCE. THE VALUE OF BURLESQUE.
     HYMNS. THE "DIES IRÆ." THE RHYTHM OF BERNARD. LITERARY
     PERFECTION OF THE HYMNS. SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. ITS
     INFLUENCE ON PHRASE AND METHOD. THE GREAT SCHOLASTICS.


[Sidenote: _Reasons for not noticing the bulk of mediæval Latin
literature._]

This series is intended to survey and illustrate the development of
the vernacular literatures of mediæval and Europe; and for that
purpose it is unnecessary to busy ourselves with more than a part of
the Latin writing which, in a steadily decreasing but--until the end
of the last century--an always considerable proportion, served as the
vehicle of literary expression. But with a part of it we are as
necessarily concerned as we are necessarily compelled to decline the
whole. For not only was Latin for centuries the universal means of
communication between educated men of different languages, the medium
through which such men received their education, the court-language,
so to speak, of religion, and the vehicle of all the literature of
knowledge which did not directly stoop to the comprehension of the
unlearned; but it was indirectly as well as directly, unconsciously as
well as consciously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular languages
to literary accomplishment. They could not have helped imitating it,
if they would; and they did not think of avoiding imitation of it, if
they could. It modified, to a very large extent, their grammar; it
influenced, to an extent almost impossible to overestimate, the
prosody of their finished literature; it supplied their vocabulary; it
furnished models for all their first conscious literary efforts of the
more deliberate kind, and it conditioned those which were more or less
spontaneous.

But, even if we had room, it would profit us little to busy ourselves
with diplomatic Latin or with the Latin of chronicles, with the Latin
of such scientific treatises as were written or with the Latin of
theology. All these except, for obvious reasons, the first, tended
away from Latin into the vernaculars as time went on, and were but of
lesser literary moment, even while they continued to be written in
Latin. Nor in _belles lettres_ proper were such serious performances
as continued to be written well into our period of capital
importance. Such a book, for instance, as the well-known _Trojan War_
of Joseph of Exeter,[2] though it really deserves much of the praise
which it used to receive,[3] can never be anything much better than a
large prize poem, such as those which still receive and sometimes
deserve the medals and the gift-books of schools and universities.
Every now and then a man of irrepressible literary talent, having no
vernacular or no public in the vernacular ready to his hand, will
write in Latin a book like the _De Nugis Curialium_,[4] which is good
literature though bad Latin. But on the whole it is a fatal law of
such things that the better the Latin the worse must the literature
be.

[Footnote 2: Included with Dictys and Dares in a volume of Valpy's
Delphin Classics.]

[Footnote 3: Cf. Warton, _History of English Poetry_. Ed. Hazlitt, i.
226-292.]

[Footnote 4: Gualteri Mapes, _De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones
Quinque_. Ed. T. Wright: Camden Society, 1850.]

[Sidenote: _Excepted divisions._]

We may, however, with advantage select three divisions of the Latin
literature of our section of the Middle Ages, which have in all cases
no small literary importance and interest, and in some not a little
literary achievement. And these are the comic and burlesque Latin
writings, especially in verse; the Hymns; and the great body of
philosophical writing which goes by the general title of Scholastic
Philosophy, and which was at its palmiest time in the later portion of
our own special period.

[Sidenote: _Comic Latin literature._]

It may not be absolutely obvious, but it does not require much thought
to discover, why the comic and burlesque Latin writing, especially in
verse, of the earlier Middle Ages holds such a position. But if we
compare such things as the _Carmina Burana_, or as the Goliardic poems
attributed to or connected with Walter Map,[5] with the early
_fabliaux_, we shall perceive that while the latter, excellently
written as they sometimes are, depend for their comedy chiefly on
matter and incident, not indulging much in play on words or subtle
adjustment of phrase and cadence, the reverse is the case with the
former. A language must have reached some considerable pitch of
development, must have been used for a great length of time seriously,
and on a large variety of serious subjects, before it is possible for
anything short of supreme genius to use it well for comic purposes.
Much indeed of this comic use turns on the existence and degradation
of recognised serious writing. There was little or no opportunity for
any such use or misuse in the infant vernaculars; there was abundant
opportunity in literary Latin. Accordingly we find, and should expect
to find, very early parodies of the offices and documents of the
Church,--things not unnaturally shocking to piety, but not perhaps to
be justly set down to any profane, much less to any specifically
blasphemous, intention. When the quarrel arose between Reformers and
"Papists," intentional ribaldry no doubt began. But such a thing as,
for example, the "Missa de Potatoribus"[6] is much more significant of
an unquestioning familiarity than of deliberate insult. It is an
instance of the same bent of the human mind which has made very
learned and conscientious lawyers burlesque law, and which induces
schoolboys and undergraduates to parody the classics, not at all
because they hate them, but because they are their most familiar
literature.

[Footnote 5: _Carmina Burana_, Stuttgart, 1847; _Political Songs of
England_ (1839), and _Latin Poems attributed to Walter Mapes_ (1841),
both edited for the Camden Society by T. Wright.]

[Footnote 6: Wright and Halliwell's _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_ (London, 1845),
ii. 208.]

At the same time this comic degradation, as may be seen in its
earliest and perhaps its greatest practitioner Aristophanes--no bad
citizen or innovating misbeliever--leads naturally to elaborate and
ingenious exercises in style, to a thorough familiarity with the
capacities of language, metre, rhyme. And expertness in all these
things, acquired in the Latin, was certain sooner or later to be
transferred to the vernacular. No one can read the Latin poems which
cluster in Germany round the name of the "Arch-Poet,"[7] in England
round that of Map, without seeing how much freer of hand is the Latin
rhymer in comparison with him who finds it "hard only not to stumble"
in the vernacular. We feel what a gusto there is in this graceless
catachresis of solemn phrase and traditionally serious literature; we
perceive how the language, colloquially familiar, taught from infancy
in the schools, provided with plentiful literary examples, and having
already received perfect licence of accommodation to vernacular
rhythms and the poetical ornaments of the hour, puts its stammering
rivals, fated though they were to oust it, out of court for the time
by its audacious compound of experience and experiment.

[Footnote 7: On this Arch-Poet see Scherer, _History of German
Literature_ (Engl. ed., Oxford, 1886), i. 68.]

[Sidenote: _Examples of its verbal influence._]

The first impression of any one who reads that exceedingly delightful
volume the Camden Society's _Poems attributed to Walter Mapes_ may be
one of mere amusement, of which there are few books fuller. The
agreeable effrontery with which the question "whether to kiss Rose or
Agnes" is put side by side with that "whether it is better to eat
flesh cooked in the cauldron or little fishes driven into the net;"
the intense solemnity and sorrow for self with which Golias discourses
in trochaic mono-rhymed _laisses_ of irregular length, _De suo
Infortunio_; the galloping dactylics of the "Apocalypse"; the
concentrated scandal against a venerated sex of the _De Conjuge non
Ducenda_, are jocund enough in themselves, if not invariably edifying.
But the good-for-nothing who wrote

    "Fumus et mulier et stillicidia
    Expellunt hominem a domo propria,"

was not merely cracking jokes, he was exercising himself, or his
countrymen, or at farthest his successors, in the use of the
vernacular tongues with the same lightness and brightness. When he
insinuated that

    "Dulcis erit mihi status
    Si prebenda muneratus,
      Reditu vel alio,
    Vivam, licet non habunde,
    Saltem mihi detur unde
      Studeam de proprio,"--

he was showing how things could be put slyly, how the stiffness and
awkwardness of native speech could be suppled and decorated, how the
innuendo, the turn of words, the _nuance_, could be imparted to
dog-Latin. And if to dog-Latin, why not to genuine French, or English,
or German?

[Sidenote: _The value of burlesque._]

And he was showing at the same time how to make verse flexible, how to
suit rhythm to meaning, how to give freedom, elasticity, swing. No
doubt this had in part been done by the great serious poetry to which
we shall come presently, and which he and his kind often directly
burlesqued. But in the very nature of things comic verse must supple
language to a degree impossible, or very seldom possible, to serious
poetry: and in any case the mere tricks with language which the
parodist has to play, familiarise him with the use of it. Even in
these days of multifarious writing, it is not absolutely uncommon to
find men of education and not devoid of talent who confess that they
have no notion how to put things, that they cannot express themselves.
We can see this tying of the tongue, this inability to use words, far
more reasonably prevalent in the infancy of the vernacular tongues;
as, for instance, in the constant presence of what the French call
_chevilles_, expletive phrases such as the "sikerly," and the "I will
not lie," the "verament," and the "everidel," which brought a whole
class of not undeserving work, the English verse romances of a later
time, into discredit. Latin, with its wide range of already
consecrated expressions, and with the practice in it which every
scholar had, made recourse to constantly repeated stock phrases at
least less necessary, if necessary at all; and the writer's set
purpose to amuse made it incumbent on him not to be tedious. A good
deal of this comic writing may be graceless: some of it may, to
delicate tastes, be shocking or disgusting. But it was at any rate an
obvious and excellent school of word-fence, a gymnasium and
exercising-ground for style.

[Sidenote: _Hymns._]

And if the beneficial effect in the literary sense of these light
songs is not to be overlooked, how much greater in every way is that
of the magnificent compositions of which they were in some cases the
parody! It will be more convenient to postpone to a later chapter of
this volume a consideration of the exact way in which Latin sacred
poetry affected the prosody of the vernacular; but it is well here to
point out that almost all the finest and most famous examples of the
mediæval hymn, with perhaps the sole exception of _Veni, Sancte
Spiritus_, date from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[8] Ours are
the stately rhythms of Adam of St Victor, and the softer ones of St
Bernard the Greater. It was at this time that Jacopone da Todi, in the
intervals of his eccentric vernacular exercises, was inspired to write
the _Stabat Mater_. From this time comes that glorious descant of
Bernard of Morlaix, in which, the more its famous and very elegant
English paraphrase is read beside it, the more does the greatness and
the beauty of the original appear. And from this time comes the
greatest of all hymns, and one of the greatest of all poems, the _Dies
Iræ_. There have been attempts--more than one of them--to make out
that the _Dies Iræ_ is no such wonderful thing after all: attempts
which are, perhaps, the extreme examples of that cheap and despicable
paradox which thinks to escape the charge of blind docility by the
affectation of heterodox independence. The judgment of the greatest
(and not always of the most pious) men of letters of modern times may
confirm those who are uncomfortable without authority in a different
opinion. Fortunately there is not likely ever to be lack of those who,
authority or no authority, in youth and in age, after much reading or
without much, in all time of their tribulation and in all time of
their wealth, will hold these wonderful triplets, be they Thomas of
Celano's or another's, as nearly or quite the most perfect wedding of
sound to sense that they know.

[Footnote 8: A few more precise dates may be useful. St Bernard,
1091-1153; Bernard of Morlaix, exact years uncertain, but twelfth
century; Adam of St Victor, _ob. cir._ 1190; Jacopone da Todi, _ob._
1306; St Bonaventura, 1221-1274; Thomas of Celano, _fl. c._ 1226. The
two great storehouses of Latin hymn-texts are the well-known books of
Daniel, _Thesaurus Hymnologicus_, and Mone, _Hymni Latini Medii Ævi_.
And on this, as on all matters connected with hymns, the exhaustive
_Dictionary of Hymnology_ (London, 1892) of the Rev. John Julian will
be found most valuable.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Dies Iræ.]

It would be possible, indeed, to illustrate a complete dissertation on
the methods of expression in serious poetry from the fifty-one lines
of the _Dies Iræ_. Rhyme, alliteration, cadence, and adjustment of
vowel and consonant values,--all these things receive perfect
expression in it, or, at least, in the first thirteen stanzas, for the
last four are a little inferior. It is quite astonishing to reflect
upon the careful art or the felicitous accident of such a line as

    "Tuba mirum spargens sonum,"

with the thud of the trochee[9] falling in each instance in a
different vowel; and still more on the continuous sequence of five
stanzas, from _Judex ergo_ to _non sit cassus_, in which not a word
could be displaced or replaced by another without loss. The climax of
verbal harmony, corresponding to and expressing religious passion and
religious awe, is reached in the last--

    "Quærens me sedisti lassus,
    Redemisti crucem passus:
    Tantus labor non sit cassus!"--

where the sudden change from the dominant _e_ sounds (except in the
rhyme foot) of the first two lines to the _a_'s of the last is simply
miraculous, and miraculously assisted by what may be called the
internal sub-rhyme of _sedisti_ and _redemisti_. This latter effect
can rarely be attempted without a jingle: there is no jingle here,
only an ineffable melody. After the _Dies Iræ_, no poet could say that
any effect of poetry was, as far as sound goes, unattainable, though
few could have hoped to equal it, and perhaps no one except Dante and
Shakespeare has fully done so.

[Footnote 9: Of course no one of the four is a pure classical trochee;
but all obey the trochaic _rhythm_.]

Beside the grace and the grandeur, the passion and the art, of this
wonderful composition, even the best remaining examples of mediæval
hymn-writing may look a little pale. It is possible for criticism,
which is not hypercriticism, to object to the pathos of the _Stabat_,
that it is a trifle luscious, to find fault with the rhyme-scheme of
_Jesu dulcis memoria_, that it is a little faint and frittered; while,
of course, those who do not like conceits and far-fetched
interpretations can always quarrel with the substance of Adam of St
Victor. But those who care for merits rather than for defects will
never be weary of admiring the best of these hymns, or of noticing
and, as far as possible, understanding their perfection. Although the
language they use is old, and their subjects are those which very
competent and not at all irreligious critics have denounced as
unfavourable to poetry, the special poetical charm, as we conceive it
in modern days, is not merely present in them, but is present in a
manner of which few traces can be found in classical times. And some
such students, at least, will probably go on to examine the details of
the hymn-writers' method, with the result of finding more such things
as have been pointed out above.

[Sidenote: _The rhythm of Bernard._]

Let us, for instance, take the rhythm of Bernard the Englishman (as he
was really, though called of Morlaix). "Jerusalem the Golden" has made
some of its merits common property, while its practical discoverer,
Archbishop Trench, has set those of the original forth with a
judicious enthusiasm which cannot be bettered.[10] The point is, how
these merits, these effects, are produced. The piece is a crucial one,
because, grotesque as its arrangement would probably have seemed to
an Augustan, its peculiarities are superadded to, not substituted
for, the requirements of classical prosody. The writer does not avail
himself of the new accentual quantification, and his other licences
are but few. If we examine the poem, however, we shall find that,
besides the abundant use of rhyme--interior as well as final--he
avails himself of all those artifices of what may be called
word-music, suggesting beauty by a running accompaniment of sound,
which are the main secret of modern verse. He is not satisfied, ample
as it may seem, with his double-rhyme harmony. He confines himself to
it, indeed, in the famous overture-couplet--

    "Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus!
    Ecce! minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus."

[Footnote 10: _Sacred Latin Poetry_ (2d ed., London, 1864), p. 304.
This admirable book has not been, and from its mixture of taste and
learning is never likely to be, superseded as an introduction to, and
chrestomathy of, the subject. Indeed, if a little touch of orthodox
prudery had not made the Archbishop exclude the _Stabat_, hardly a
hymn of the very first class could be said to be missing in it.]

But immediately afterwards, and more or loss throughout, he redoubles
and redoubles again every possible artifice--sound-repetition in the
_imminet, imminet_, of the third line, alliteration in the _recta
remuneret_ of the fourth, and everywhere trills and _roulades_, not
limited to the actually rhyming syllables of the same vowel--

    "Tunc nova gloria pectora sobria clarificabit...
    Candida lilia, viva monilia, sunt tibi Sponsa...
    Te peto, te colo, te flagro, te volo, canto, saluto."

He has instinctively discovered the necessity of varying as much as
possible the cadence and composition of the last third of his verse,
and carefully avoids anything like a monotonous use of his only
spondee; in a batch of eighteen lines taken at random, there are only
six end-words of two syllables, and these only once rhyme together.
The consequence of these and other devices is that the whole poem is
accompanied by a sort of swirl and eddy of sound and cadence,
constantly varying, constantly shifting its centres and systems, but
always assisting the sense with grateful clash or murmur, according as
it is loud or soft, of word-music.

[Sidenote: _Literary perfection of the Hymns._]

The vernacular languages were not as yet in case to produce anything
so complicated as this, and some of them have never been quite able to
produce it to this day. But it must be obvious at once what a standard
was held up before poets, almost every one of whom, even if he had but
small Latin in a general way, heard these hymns constantly sung, and
what means of producing like effects were suggested to them. The most
varied and charming lyric of the Middle Ages, that of the German
Minnesingers, shows the effect of this Latin practice side by side, or
rather inextricably mingled, with the effects of the preciser French
and Provençal verse-scheme, and the still looser but equally musical,
though half-inarticulate, suggestions of indigenous song. That English
prosody--the prosody of Shakespeare and Coleridge, of Shelley and
Keats--owes its origin to a similar admixture the present writer at
least has no doubt at all, while even those who deny this can hardly
deny the positive literary achievement of the best mediæval hymns.
They stand by themselves. Latin--which, despite its constant
colloquial life, still even in the Middle Ages had in profane use many
of the drawbacks of a dead language, being either slipshod or
stiff,--here, owing to the millennium and more during which it had
been throughout Western Europe the living language and the sole living
language of the Church Universal, shakes off at once all artificial
and all doggerel character. It is thoroughly alive: it comes from the
writers' hearts as easily as from their pens. They have in the fullest
sense proved it; they know exactly what they can do, and in this
particular sphere there is hardly anything that they cannot do.

[Sidenote: _Scholastic Philosophy._]

The far-famed and almost more abused than famed Scholastic
Philosophy[11] cannot be said to have added to positive literature any
such masterpieces in prose as the hymn-writers (who were very commonly
themselves Scholastics) produced in verse. With the exception of
Abelard, whose interest is rather biographical than strictly literary,
and perhaps Anselm, the heroes of mediæval dialectic, the Doctors
Subtle and Invincible, Irrefragable and Angelic, have left nothing
which even on the widest interpretation of pure literature can be
included within it, or even any names that figure in any but the
least select of literary histories. Yet they cannot but receive some
notice here in a history, however condensed, of the literature of the
period of their chief flourishing. This is not because of their
philosophical importance, although at last, after much bandying of not
always well-informed argument, that importance is pretty generally
allowed by the competent. It has, fortunately, ceased to be
fashionable to regard the dispute about Universals as proper only to
amuse childhood or beguile dotage, and the quarrels of Scotists and
Thomists as mere reductions of barren logomachy to the flatly absurd.
Still, this importance, though real, though great, is not directly
literary. The claim which makes it impossible to pass them over here
is that excellently put in the two passages from Condorcet and
Hamilton which John Stuart Mill (not often a scholastically minded
philosopher) set in the forefront of his _Logic_, that, in the
Scottish philosopher's words, "it is to the schoolmen that the vulgar
languages are indebted for what precision and analytical subtlety they
possess;" and that, as the Frenchman, going still further, but hardly
exaggerating, lays it down, "logic, ethics, and metaphysics itself owe
to Scholasticism a precision unknown to the ancients themselves."

[Footnote 11: I should feel even more diffidence than I do feel in
approaching this proverbially thorny subject if it were not that many
years ago, before I was called off to other matters, I paid
considerable attention to it. And I am informed by experts that though
the later (chiefly German) Histories of Philosophy, by Ueberweg,
Erdmann, Windelband, &c., may be consulted with advantage, and though
some monographs may be added, there are still no better guides than
Hauréau, _De la Philosophie Scolastique_ (revised edition) and Prantl,
_Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande_, who were our masters
five-and-twenty years ago. The last-named book in especial may be
recommended with absolute confidence to any one who experiences the
famous desire for "something craggy to break his mind upon."]

[Sidenote: _Its influence on phrase and method._]

There can be no reasonable or well-informed denial of the fact of
this: and the reason of it is not hard to understand. That constant
usage, the effect of which has been noted in theological verse, had
the same effect in philosophico-theological prose. Latin is before all
things a precise language, and the one qualification which it lacked
in classical times for philosophic use, the presence of a full and
exact terminology, was supplied in the Middle Ages by the fearless
barbarism (as pedants call it) which made it possible and easy first
to fashion such words as _aseitas_ and _quodlibetalis_, and then,
after, as it were, lodging a specification of their meaning, to use
them ever afterwards as current coin. All the peculiarities which
ignorance or sciolism used to ridicule or reproach in the
Scholastics--their wiredrawnness, their lingering over special points
of verbal wrangling, their neglect of plain fact in comparison with
endless and unbridled dialectic--all these things did no harm but much
positive good from the point of view which we are now taking. When a
man defended theses against lynx-eyed opponents or expounded them
before perhaps more lynx-eyed pupils, according to rules familiar to
all, it was necessary for him, if he were to avoid certain and
immediate discomfiture, to be precise in his terms and exact in his
use of them. That it was possible to be childishly as well as
barbarously scholastic nobody would deny, and the famous sarcasms of
the _Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_, two centuries after our time, had
been anticipated long before by satirists. But even the logical
fribble, even the logical jargonist, was bound to be exact. Now
exactness was the very thing which languages, mostly young in actual
age, and in all cases what we may call uneducated, unpractised in
literary exercises, wanted most of all. And it was impossible that
they should have better teachers in it than the few famous, and even
than most of the numerous unknown or almost unknown, philosophers of
the Scholastic period.

[Sidenote: _The great Scholastics._]

It has been said that of those most famous almost all belong specially
to this our period. Before it there is, till its very latest eve,
hardly one except John Scotus Erigena; after it none, except Occam, of
the very greatest. But during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
there is scarcely a decade without its illustration. The first
champions of the great Realist and Nominalist controversy, Roscellinus
and William of Champeaux, belong to the eleventh century in part, as
does their still more famous follower, Abelard, by the first twenty
years of his life, while almost the whole of that of Anselm may be
claimed by it.[12] But it was not till the extreme end of that century
that the great controversy in which these men were the front-fighters
became active (the date of the Council of Soissons, which condemned
the Nominalism of Roscellinus as tritheistic is 1092), and the
controversy itself was at its hottest in the earlier part of the
succeeding age. The Master of the Sentences, Peter Lombard, belongs
wholly to the twelfth, and the book which gives him his scholastic
title dates from its very middle. John of Salisbury, one of the
clearest-headed as well as most scholarly of the whole body, died in
1180. The fuller knowledge of Aristotle, through the Arabian writers,
coincided with the latter part of the twelfth century: and the curious
outburst of Pantheism which connects itself on the one hand with the
little-known teaching of Amaury de Bène and David of Dinant, on the
other with the almost legendary "Eternal Gospel" of Joachim of Flora,
occurred almost exactly at the junction of the twelfth and thirteenth.
As for the writers of the thirteenth century itself, that great period
holds in this as in other departments the position of palmiest time of
the Middle Ages. To it belong Alexander Hales, who disputes with
Aquinas the prize for the best example of the Summa Theologiæ;
Bonaventura, the mystic; Roger Bacon, the natural philosopher; Vincent
of Beauvais, the encyclopædist. If, of the four greatest of all,
Albert of Bolstadt, Albertus Magnus, the "Dumb Ox of Cologne," was
born seven years before its opening, his life lasted over four-fifths
of it; that of Aquinas covered its second and third quarters; Occam
himself, though his main exertions lie beyond us, was probably born
before Aquinas died; while John Duns Scotus hardly outlived the
century's close by a decade. Raymond Lully (one of the most
characteristic figures of Scholasticism and of the mediæval period,
with his "Great Art" of automatic philosophy), who died in 1315, was
born as early as 1235. Peter the Spaniard, Pope and author of the
_Summulæ Logicales_, the grammar of formal logic for ages, died in
1277.

[Footnote 12: Some exacter dates may be useful. Anselm, 1033-1109;
Roscellin, 1050?-1125; William of Champeaux, ?-1121; Abelard,
1079-1142; Peter Lombard, _ob._ 1164; John of Salisbury, ?-1180;
Alexander of Hales, ?-1245; Vincent of Beauvais, ?-1265?; Bonaventura,
1221-1274; Albertus Magnus, 1195-1280; Thomas Aquinas, 1225?-1274;
Duns Scotus, 1270?-1308?; William of Occam, ?-1347; Roger Bacon,
1214-1292; Petrus Hispanus, ?-1277; Raymond Lully, 1235-1315.]

Of the matter which these and others by hundreds put in forgotten
wealth of exposition, no account will be expected here. Even yet it is
comparatively unexplored, or else the results of the exploration exist
only in books brilliant, but necessarily summary, like that of
Hauréau, in books thorough, but almost as formidable as the original,
like that of Prantl. Even the latest historians of philosophy complain
that there is up to the present day no "ingoing" (as the Germans say)
monograph about Scotus and none about Occam.[13] The whole works of
the latter have never been collected at all: the twelve mighty volumes
which represent the compositions of the former contain probably not
the whole work of a man who died before he was forty. The greater part
of the enormous mass of writing which was produced, from Scotus
Erigena in the ninth century to Gabriel Biel in the fifteenth, is only
accessible to persons with ample leisure and living close to large and
ancient libraries. Except Erigena himself, Anselm in a few of his
works, Abelard, and a part of Aquinas, hardly anything can be found in
modern editions, and even the zealous efforts of the present Pope have
been less effectual in divulging Aquinas than those of his
predecessors were in making Amaury of Bena a mystery.[14] Yet there
has always, in generous souls who have some tincture of philosophy,
subsisted a curious kind of sympathy and yearning over the work of
these generations of mainly disinterested scholars who, whatever they
were, were thorough, and whatever they could not do, could think. And
there have even, in these latter days, been some graceless ones who
have asked whether the Science of the nineteenth century, after an
equal interval, will be of any more positive value--whether it will
not have even less comparative interest than that which appertains to
the Scholasticism of the thirteenth.

[Footnote 13: Rémusat on Anselm and Cousin on Abelard long ago
smoothed the way as far as these two masters are concerned, and Dean
Church on Anselm is also something of a classic. But I know no other
recent monograph of any importance by an Englishman on Scholasticism
except Mr R.L. Poole's _Erigena_. Indeed the "Erin-born" has not had
the ill-luck of his country, for with the Migne edition accessible to
everybody, he is in much better case than most of his followers two,
three, and four centuries later.]

[Footnote 14: The Amalricans, as the followers of Amaury de Bène were
termed, were not only condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215, but
sharply persecuted; and we know nothing of the doctrines of Amaury,
David, and the other northern Averroists or Pantheists, except from
later and hostile notices.]

However this may be, the claim, modest and even meagre as it may seem
to some, which has been here once more put forward for this
Scholasticism--the claim of a far-reaching educative influence in mere
language, in mere system of arrangement and expression, will remain
valid. If, at the outset of the career of modern languages, men had
thought with the looseness of modern thought, had indulged in the
haphazard slovenliness of modern logic, had popularised theology and
vulgarised rhetoric, as we have seen both popularised and vulgarised
since, we should indeed have been in evil case. It used to be thought
clever to moralise and to felicitate mankind over the rejection of the
stays, the fetters, the prison in which its thought was mediævally
kept. The justice or the injustice, the taste or the vulgarity, of
these moralisings, of these felicitations, may not concern us here.
But in expression, as distinguished from thought, the value of the
discipline to which these youthful languages were subjected is not
likely now to be denied by any scholar who has paid attention to the
subject. It would have been perhaps a pity if thought had not gone
through other phases; it would certainly have been a pity if the
tongues had all been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin
constraint. But that the more lawless of them benefited by that
constraint there can be no doubt whatever. The influence of form which
the best Latin hymns of the Middle Ages exercised in poetry, the
influence in vocabulary and in logical arrangement which Scholasticism
exercised in prose, are beyond dispute: and even those who will not
pardon literature, whatever its historical and educating importance
be, for being something less than masterly in itself, will find it
difficult to maintain the exclusion of the _Cur Deus Homo_, and
impossible to refuse admission to the _Dies Iræ_.




CHAPTER II.

CHANSONS DE GESTE.[15]

[Footnote 15: I prefer, as more logical, the plural form _chansons de
gestes_, and have so written it in my _Short History of French
Literature_ (Oxford, 4th ed., 1892), to which I may not improperly
refer the reader on the general subject. But of late years the fashion
of dropping the _s_ has prevailed, and, therefore, in a book meant for
general reading, I follow it here. Those who prefer native authorities
will find a recent and excellent one on the whole subject of French
literature in M. Lanson, _Histoire de la Littérature Française_,
Paris, 1895. For the mediæval period generally M. Gaston Paris, _La
Littérature Française au Moyen Age_ (Paris, 1888), speaks with
unapproached competence; and, still narrowing the range, the subject
of the present chapter has been dealt with by M. Léon Gautier, _Les
Epopées Françaises_ (Paris, 4 vols., 1878-92), in a manner equally
learned and loving. M. Gautier has also been intrusted with the
section on the _Chansons_ in the new and splendidly illustrated
collection of monographs (Paris: Colin) which M. Petit de Julleville
is editing under the title _Histoire de la Langue et de la Littérature
Française_. Mr Paget Toynbee's _Specimens of Old French_ (Oxford,
1892) will illustrate this and the following chapters.]

     EUROPEAN LITERATURE IN 1100. LATE DISCOVERY OF THE
     "CHANSONS." THEIR AGE AND HISTORY. THEIR DISTINGUISHING
     CHARACTER. MISTAKES ABOUT THEM. THEIR ISOLATION AND ORIGIN.
     THEIR METRICAL FORM. THEIR SCHEME OF MATTER. THE CHARACTER
     OF CHARLEMAGNE. OTHER CHARACTERS AND CHARACTERISTICS.
     REALIST QUALITY. VOLUME AND AGE OF THE "CHANSONS." TWELFTH
     CENTURY. THIRTEENTH CENTURY. FOURTEENTH, AND LATER.
     "CHANSONS" IN PRINT. LANGUAGE: "OC" AND "OÏL." ITALIAN.
     DIFFUSION OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR AUTHORSHIP AND
     PUBLICATION. THEIR PERFORMANCE. HEARING, NOT READING, THE
     OBJECT. EFFECT ON PROSODY. THE "JONGLEURS." "JONGLERESSES,"
     ETC. SINGULARITY OF THE "CHANSONS." THEIR CHARM. PECULIARITY
     OF THE "GESTE" SYSTEM. INSTANCES. SUMMARY OF THE "GESTE" OF
     WILLIAM OF ORANGE. AND FIRST OF THE "COURONNEMENT LOYS."
     COMMENTS ON THE "COURONNEMENT." WILLIAM OF ORANGE. THE
     EARLIER POEMS OF THE CYCLE. THE "CHARROI DE NÎMES." THE
     "PRISE D'ORANGE." THE STORY OF VIVIEN. "ALISCANS." THE END
     OF THE STORY. RENOUART. SOME OTHER "CHANSONS." FINAL REMARKS
     ON THEM.


[Sidenote: _European literature in 1100._]

When we turn from Latin and consider the condition of the vernacular
tongues in the year 1100, there is hardly more than one country in
Europe where we find them producing anything that can be called
literature. In England Anglo-Saxon, if not exactly dead, is dying, and
has for more than a century ceased to produce anything of distinctly
literary attraction; and English, even the earliest "middle" English,
is scarcely yet born, is certainly far from being in a condition for
literary use. The last echoes of the older and more original Icelandic
poetry are dying away, and the great product of Icelandic prose, the
Saga, still _volitat per ora virum_, without taking a concrete
literary form. It is in the highest degree uncertain whether anything
properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all--anything but
dialects of the _lingua rustica_ showing traces of what Spanish and
Italian are to be; though the originals of the great _Poema del Cid_
cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its
"Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in
both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature
active. The northern tongue, the _langue d'oïl_, shows us--in actually
known existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed--the
national epic or _chanson de geste_; the southern, or _langue d'oc_,
gives us the Provençal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later,
the former must be dealt with at once.

It is rather curious that while the _chansons de geste_ are, after
Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of
verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not
indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but
individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are
entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud
of its literary achievements,--they were almost the last division of
European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far
as they were known at all, until within the present century, the
knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and
still later in prose; while--the most curious point of all--they were
not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and
cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even
to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken
to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much
less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for
periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries.
To discuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our
present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact.

[Sidenote: _Late discovery of the_ chansons.]

[Sidenote: _Their age and history._]

The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their more technical
designation, the _chansons de geste_, form a large, a remarkably
homogeneous, and a well-separated body of compositions. These, as far
as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh to the thirteenth
century, with a few belated representatives in the fourteenth; but
scarcely, as far as probability shows, with any older members in the
tenth. Very little attention of any kind was paid to them, till some
seventy years ago, an English scholar, Conybeare, known for his
services to our own early literature, following the example of another
scholar, Tyrwhitt, still earlier and more distinguished, had drawn
attention to the merit and interest of, as it happens, the oldest and
most remarkable of all. This was the _Chanson de Roland_, which, in
this oldest form, exists only in one of the MSS. of the Bodleian
Library at Oxford. But they very soon received the care of M. Paulin
Paris, the most indefatigable student that in a century of examination
of the older European literature any European country has produced,
and after more than half a century of enthusiastic resuscitation by M.
Paris, by his son M. Gaston, and by others, the whole body of them has
been thoroughly overhauled and put at the disposal of those who do not
care to read the original, in the four volumes of the remodelled
edition of M. Léon Gautier's _Epopées Françaises_, while perhaps a
majority of the actual texts are in print. This is as well, for though
a certain monotony is always charged against the _chansons de
geste_[16] by those who do not love them, and may be admitted to some
extent even by those who do, there are few which have not a more or
less distinct character of their own; and even the generic character
is not properly to be perceived until a considerable number have been
studied.

[Footnote 16: This monotony almost follows from the title. For _geste_
in the French is not merely the equivalent of _gesta_, "deeds." It is
used for the record of those deeds, and then for the whole class or
family of performances and records of them. In this last sense the
_gestes_ are in chief three--those of the king, of Doon de Mayence,
and of Garin de Montglane--besides smaller ones.]

[Sidenote: _Their distinguishing character._]

The old habit of reading this division of romance in late and
travestied versions naturally and necessarily obscured the curious
traits of community in form and matter that belong to it, and indeed
distinguish it from almost all other departments of literature of the
imaginative kind. Its members are frequently spoken of as "the
Charlemagne Romances"; and, as a matter of fact, most of them do come
into connection with the great prince of the second race in one way or
another. Yet Bodel's phrase of _matière de France_[17] is happier. For
they are all still more directly connected with French history, seen
through a romantic lens; and even the late and half-burlesque _Hugues
Capet_, even the extremely interesting and partly contemporary set on
the Crusades, as well as such "little _gestes_" as that of the
Lorrainers, _Garin le Loherain_ and the rest, and the three "great
_gestes_" of the king, of the southern hero William of Orange
(sometimes called the _geste_ of Montglane), and of the family of Doon
de Mayence, arrange themselves with no difficulty under this more
general heading. And the _chanson de geste_ proper, as Frenchmen are
entitled to boast, never quite deserts this _matière de France_. It is
always the _Gesta Francorum_ at home, or the _Gesta Dei per Francos_
in the East, that supply the themes. When this subject or group of
subjects palled, the very form of the _chanson de geste_ was lost. It
was not applied to other things;[18] it grew obsolete with that which
it had helped to make popular. Some of the material--_Huon of
Bordeaux_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, and others--retained a certain
vogue in forms quite different, and gave later ages the inexact and
bastard notion of "Charlemagne Romance" which has been referred to.
But the _chanson de geste_ itself was never, so to speak,
"half-known"--except to a very few antiquaries. After its three
centuries of flourishing, first alone, then with the other two
"matters," it retired altogether, and made its reappearance only after
four centuries had passed away.

[Footnote 17: Jean Bodel, a _trouvère_ of the thirteenth century,
furnished literary history with a valuable stock-quotation in the
opening of his _Chanson des Saisnes_ for the three great divisions of
Romance:--

    "Ne sont que trois matières à nul home attendant,
    De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant."
      --_Chanson des Saxons_, ed. Michel, Paris, 1839, vol. i. p. 1.

The lines following, less often quoted, are an interesting early
_locus_ for French literary patriotism.]

[Footnote 18: Or only in rare cases to later French history itself--Du
Guesclin, and the _Combat des Trente_.]

[Sidenote: _Mistakes about them._]

This fact or set of facts has made the actual nature of the original
Charlemagne Romances the subject of much mistake and misstatement on
the part of general historians of literature. The widely read and
generally accurate Dunlop knew nothing whatever about them, except in
early printed versions representing their very latest form, and in the
hopelessly travestied eighteenth-century _Bibliothèque des Romans_ of
the Comte de Tressan. He therefore assigned to them[19] a position
altogether inferior to their real importance, and actually apologised
for the writers, in that, coming _after_ the Arthurian historians,
they were compelled to imitation. As a matter of fact, it is probable
that all the most striking and original _chansons de geste_, certainly
all those of the best period, were in existence before a single one of
the great Arthurian romances was written; and as both the French and
English, and even the German, writers of these latter were certainly
acquainted with the _chansons_, the imitation, if there were any, must
lie on their side. As a matter of fact, however, there is little or
none. The later and less genuine _chansons_ borrow to some extent the
methods and incidents in the romances; but the romances at no time
exhibit much resemblance to the _chansons_ proper, which have an
extremely distinct, racy, and original character of their own. Hallam,
writing later than Dunlop, and if with a less wide knowledge of
Romance, with a much greater proficiency in general literary history,
practically passes the _chansons de geste_ over altogether in the
introduction to his _Literature of Europe_, which purports to
summarise all that is important in the _History of the Middle Ages_,
and to supplement and correct that book itself.

[Footnote 19: Dunlop, _History of Prose Fiction_ (ed. Wilson, London,
1888), i. 274-351. Had Dunlop rigidly confined himself to _prose_
fiction, the censure in the text might not be quite fair. As a matter
of fact, however, he does not, and it would have been impossible for
him to do so.]

[Sidenote: _Their isolation and origin._]

The only excuse (besides mere unavoidable ignorance, which, no doubt,
is a sufficient one) for this neglect is the curious fact, in itself
adding to their interest, that these _chansons_, though a very
important chapter in the histories both of poetry and of fiction, form
one which is strangely marked off at both ends from all connection,
save in point of subject, with literature precedent or subsequent. As
to their own origin, the usual abundant, warm, and if it may be said
without impertinence, rather futile controversies have prevailed.
Practically speaking, we know nothing whatever about the matter. There
used to be a theory that the Charlemagne Romances owed their origin
more or less directly to the fabulous _Chronicle_ of Tilpin or Turpin,
the warrior-Archbishop of Rheims. It has now been made tolerably
certain that the Latin chronicle on the subject is not anterior even
to our existing _Chanson de Roland_, and very probable that it is a
good deal later. On the other hand, of actual historical basis we have
next to nothing except the mere fact of the death of Roland
("Hruotlandus comes Britanniæ") at the skirmish of Roncesvalles. There
are, however, early mentions of certain _cantilenæ_ or ballads; and it
has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest _chansons_ were
compounded out of precedent ballads of the kind. It is unnecessary to
inform those who know something of general literary history, that this
theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the generation of the
epic) is not confined to the present subject, but is one of the
favourite fighting-grounds of a certain school of critics. It has been
applied to Homer, to _Beowulf_, to the Old and Middle German Romances,
and it would be very odd indeed if it had not been applied to the
_Chansons de geste_. But it may be said with some confidence that not
one tittle of evidence has ever been produced for the existence of any
such ballads containing the matter of any of the _chansons_ which do
exist. The song of Roland which Taillefer sang at Hastings may have
been such a ballad: it may have been part of the actual _chanson_; it
may have been something quite different. But these "mays" are not
evidence; and it cannot but be thought a real misfortune that, instead
of confining themselves to an abundant and indeed inexhaustible
subject, the proper literary study of what does exist, critics should
persist in dealing with what certainly does not, and perhaps never
did. On the general point it might be observed that there is rather
more positive evidence for the breaking up of the epic into ballads
than for the conglomeration of ballads into the epic. But on that
point it is not necessary to take sides. The matter of real importance
is, to lay it down distinctly that we _have_ nothing anterior to the
earliest _chansons de geste_; and that we have not even any
satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever was anything.

[Sidenote: _Their metrical form._]

One of the reasons, however, which no doubt has been most apt to
suggest anterior compositions is the singular completeness of form
exhibited by these poems. It is now practically agreed that--scraps
and fragments themselves excepted--we have no monument of French in
accomplished profane literature more ancient than the _Chanson de
Roland_.[20] And the form of this, though from one point of view it
may be called rude and simple, is of remarkable perfection in its own
way. The poem is written in decasyllabic iambic lines with a cæsura at
the second foot, these lines being written with a precision which
French indeed never afterwards lost, but which English did not attain
till Chaucer's day, and then lost again for more than another century.
Further, the grouping and finishing of these lines is not less
remarkable, and is even more distinctive than their internal
construction. They are not blank; they are not in couplets; they are
not in equal stanzas; and they are not (in the earliest examples, such
as _Roland_) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in batches
(called in French _laisses_ or _tirades_) of no certain number, but
varying from one to several score, each of which derives unity from an
_assonance_--that is to say, a vowel-rhyme, the consonants of the
final syllable varying at discretion. This assonance, which appears to
have been common to all Romance tongues in their early stages,
disappeared before very long from French, though it continued in
Spanish, and is indeed the most distinguishing point of the prosody of
that language. Very early in the _chansons_ themselves we find it
replaced by rhyme, which, however, remains the same for the whole of
the _laisse_, no matter how long it is. By degrees, also, the
ten-syllabled line (which in some examples has an octosyllabic
tail-line not assonanced at the end of every _laisse_) gave way in its
turn to the victorious Alexandrine. But the mechanism of the _chanson_
admitted no further extensions than the substitution of rhyme for
assonance, and of twelve-syllabled lines for ten-syllabled. In all
other respects it remained rigidly the same from the eleventh century
to the fourteenth, and in the very latest examples of such poems, as
_Hugues Capet_ and _Baudouin de Seboure_--full as enthusiasts like M.
Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very different from that of
the older _chansons_--there is not the slightest change in form; while
certain peculiarities of stock phrase and "epic repetition" are
jealously preserved. The immense single-rhymed _laisses_, sometimes
extending to several pages of verse, still roll rhyme after rhyme with
the same sound upon the ear. The common form generally remains; and
though the adventures are considerably varied, they still retain a
certain general impress of the earlier scheme.

[Footnote 20: _Editio princeps_ by Fr. Michel, 1837. Since that time
it has been frequently reprinted, translated, and commented. Those who
wish for an exact reproduction of the oldest MS. will find it given by
Stengel (Heilbronn, 1878).]

[Sidenote: _Their scheme of matter._]

[Sidenote: _The character of Charlemagne._]

That scheme is, in the majority of the _chansons_, curiously uniform.
It has, since the earliest studies of them, been remarked as odd that
Charlemagne, though almost omnipresent (except of course in the
Crusading cycle and a few others), and though such a necessary figure
that he is in some cases evidently confounded both with his ancestor
Charles Martel and his successor Charles the Bald, plays a part that
is very dubiously heroic. He is, indeed, presented with great pomp and
circumstance as _li empereres à la barbe florie_, with a gorgeous
court, a wide realm, a numerous and brilliant baronage. But his
character is far from tenderly treated. In _Roland_ itself he appears
so little that critics who are not acquainted with many other poems
sometimes deny the characteristic we are now discussing. But elsewhere
he is much less leniently handled. Indeed the plot of very many
_chansons_ turns entirely on the ease with which he lends an ear to
traitors (treason of various kinds plays an almost ubiquitous part,
and the famous "trahis!" is heard in the very dawn of French
literature), on his readiness to be biassed by bribes, and on the
singular ferocity with which, on the slightest and most unsupported
accusation, he is ready to doom any one, from his own family
downwards, to block, stake, gallows, or living grave. This
combination, indeed, of the irascible and the gullible tempers in the
king defrays the plot of a very large number of the _chansons_, in
which we see his best knights, and (except that they are as intolerant
of injustice as he is prone to it) his most faithful servants, forced
into rebellion against him, and almost overwhelmed by his own violence
following on the machinations of their and his worst enemies.

[Sidenote: _Other characters and characteristics._]

Nevertheless, Charlemagne is always the defender of the Cross, and
the antagonist of the Saracens, and the part which these latter play
is as ubiquitous as his own, and on the whole more considerable. A
very large part of the earlier _chansons_ is occupied with direct
fighting against the heathen; and from an early period (at least if
the _Voyage à Constantinoble_ is, as is supposed, of the early twelfth
century, if not the eleventh) a most important element, bringing the
class more into contact with romance generally than some others which
have been noticed, is introduced in the love of a Saracen princess,
daughter of emperor or "admiral" (emir), for one of the Christian
heroes. Here again _Roland_ stands alone, and though the mention of
Aude, Oliver's sister and Roland's betrothed, who dies when she hears
of his death, is touching, it is extremely meagre. There is
practically nothing but the clash of arms in this remarkable poem. But
elsewhere there is, in rather narrow and usual limits, a good deal
else. Charlemagne's daughter, and the daughters of peers and paladins,
figure: and their characteristics are not very different from those of
the pagan damsels. It is, indeed, unnecessary to convert them,--a
process to which their miscreant sisters usually submit with great
goodwill,--and they are also relieved from the necessity of showing
the extreme undutifulness to their more religiously constant sires,
which is something of a blot on Paynim princesses like Floripas in
_Fierabras_. This heroine exclaims in reference to her father, "He is
an old devil, why do you not kill him? little I care for him provided
you give me Guy," though it is fair to say that Fierabras himself
rebukes her with a "Moult grant tort avès." All these ladies, however,
Christian as well as heathen, are as tender to their lovers as they
are hard-hearted to their relations; and the relaxation of morality,
sometimes complained of in the later _chansons_, is perhaps more
technical than real, even remembering the doctrine of the mediæval
Church as to the identity, for practical purposes, of betrothal and
marriage. On the other hand, the courtesy of the _chansons_ is
distinctly in a more rudimentary state than that of the succeeding
romances. Not only is the harshest language used by knights to
ladies,[21] but blows are by no means uncommon; and of what is
commonly understood by romantic love there is on the knights' side
hardly a trace, unless it be in stories such as that of _Ogier le
Danois_, which are obviously late enough to have come under Arthurian
influence. The piety, again, which has been so much praised in these
_chansons_, is of a curious and rather elementary type. The knights
are ready enough to fight to the last gasp, and the last drop of
blood, for the Cross; and their faith is as free from flaw as their
zeal. _Li Apostoiles de Rome_--the Pope--is recognised without the
slightest hesitation as supreme in all religious and most temporal
matters. But there is much less reference than in the Arthurian
romances, not merely to the mysteries of the Creed, but even to the
simple facts of the birth and death of Christ. Except in a few
places--such as, for instance, the exquisite and widely popular story
of _Amis and Amiles_ (the earliest vernacular form of which is a true
_chanson de geste_ of the twelfth century)--there are not many
indications of any higher or finer notion of Christianity than that
which is confined to the obedient reception of the sacraments, and the
cutting off Saracens' heads whensoever they present themselves.[22]

[Footnote 21: _V. infra_ on the scene in _Aliscans_ between William of
Orange and his sister Queen Blanchefleur.]

[Footnote 22: Even the famous and very admirable death-scene of Vivien
(again _v. infra_) will not disprove these remarks.]

[Sidenote: _Realist quality._]

In manners, as in theology and ethics, there is the same simplicity,
which some have called almost barbarous. Architecture and dress
receive considerable attention; but in other ways the arts do not seem
to be far advanced, and living is still conducted nearly, if not
quite, as much in public as in the _Odyssey_ or in _Beowulf_. The hall
is still the common resort of both sexes by day and of the men at
night. Although gold and furs, silk and jewels, are lavished with the
usual cheap magnificence of fiction, very few details are given of the
minor _supellex_ or of ways of living generally. From the _Chanson de
Roland_ in particular (which, though it is a pity to confine the
attention to it as has sometimes been done, is undoubtedly the type of
the class in its simplest and purest form) we should learn next to
nothing about the state of society depicted, except that its heroes
were religious in their fashion, and terrible fighters. But it ought
to be added that the perusal of a large number of these _chansons_
leaves on the mind a much more genuine belief in their world (if it
may so be called) as having for a time actually existed, than that
which is created by the reading of Arthurian romance. That fair
vision we know (hardly knowing why or how we know it) to have been a
creation of its own Fata Morgana, a structure built of the wishes, the
dreams, the ideals of men, but far removed from their actual
experience. This is not due to miracles--there are miracles enough in
the _chansons de geste_ most undoubtingly related: nor to the strange
history, geography, and chronology, for the two divisions are very
much on a par there also. But strong as the fantastic element is in
them, the _chansons de geste_ possess a realistic quality which is
entirely absent from the gracious idealism of the Romances. The
emperors and the admirals, perhaps even their fair and obliging
daughters, were not personages unknown to the contemporaries of the
Norman conquerors of Italy and Sicily, or to the first Crusaders. The
faithful and ferocious, covetous and indomitable, pious and lawless
spirit, which hardly dropped the sword except to take up the torch,
was, poetic presentation and dressing apart, not so very different
from the general temper of man after the break up of the Roman peace
till the more or less definite mapping out of Europe into modern
divisions. More than one Vivien and one William of Orange listened to
Peter the Hermit. In the very isolation of the atmosphere of these
romances, in its distance from modern thought and feeling, in its lack
(as some have held) of universal quality and transcendent human
interest, there is a certain element of strength. It was not above its
time, and it therefore does not reach the highest forms of literature.
But it was intensely _of_ its time; and thus it far exceeds the
lowest kinds, and retains an abiding value even apart from the
distinct, the high, and the very curious perfection, within narrow
limits, of its peculiar form.

[Sidenote: _Volume and age of the_ chansons.]

[Sidenote: _Twelfth century._]

It is probable that very few persons who are not specially acquainted
with the subject are at all aware of the enormous bulk and number of
these poems, even if their later _remaniements_ (as they are called)
both in verse and prose--fourteenth and fifteenth century
refashionings, which in every case meant a large extension--be left
out of consideration. The most complete list published, that of M.
Léon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself places only the
_Chanson de Roland_ in the eleventh century, perhaps as early as the
Norman Conquest of England, certainly not later than 1095. To the
twelfth he assigns (and it may be observed that, enthusiastic as M.
Gautier is on the literary side, he shows on all questions of age,
&c., a wariness not always exhibited by scholars more exclusively
philological) _Acquin_, _Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche
Aspremont_, _Auberi le Bourgoing_, _Aye d'Avignon_, the _Bataille
Loquifer_, the oldest (now only known in Italian) form of _Berte aus
grans Piés_, _Beuves d'Hanstone_ (with another Italian form more or
less independent), the _Charroi de Nîmes_, _Les Chétifs_, the
_Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche_, the _Chevalerie Vivien_ (otherwise
known as _Covenant Vivien_), the major part (also known by separate
titles) of the _Chevalier au Cygne_, _La Conquête de la Petite
Bretagne_ (another form of _Acquin_), the _Couronnement Loys_, _Doon
de la Roche_, _Doon de Nanteuil_, the _Enfances Charlemagne_, the
_Enfances Godefroi_, the _Enfances Roland_, the _Enfances Ogier_,
_Floovant_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Garnier de Nanteuil_, _Giratz de
Rossilho_, _Girbert de Metz_, _Gui de Bourgogne_, _Gui de Nanteuil_,
_Hélias_, _Hervis de Metz_, the oldest form of _Huon de Bordeaux_,
_Jérusalem_, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, the Lorraine cycle, including
_Garin_, &c., _Macaire_, _Mainet_, the _Moniage Guillaume_, the
_Moniage Rainoart_, _Orson de Beauvais_, _Rainoart_, _Raoul de
Cambrai_, _Les Saisnes_, the _Siège de Barbastre_, _Syracon_, and the
_Voyage de Charlemagne_. In other words, nearly half the total number
date from the twelfth century, if not even earlier.

[Sidenote: _Thirteenth century._]

By far the larger number of the rest are not later than the
thirteenth. They include--_Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Aiol_, _Anséis de
Carthage_, _Anséis Fils de Gerbert_, _Auberon_, _Berte aus grans Piés_
in its present French form, _Beton et Daurel_, _Beuves de Commarchis_,
the _Département des Enfans Aimeri_, the _Destruction de Rome_, _Doon
de Mayence_, _Elie de Saint Gilles_, the _Enfances Doon de Mayence_,
the _Enfances Guillaume_, the _Enfances Vivien_, the _Entrée en
Espagne_, _Fierabras_, _Foulques de Candie_, _Gaydon_, _Garin de
Montglane_, _Gaufrey_, _Gérard de Viane_, _Guibert d'Andrenas_, _Jehan
de Lanson_, _Maugis d'Aigremont_, the _Mort Aimeri de Narbonne_,
_Otinel_, _Parise la Duchesse_, the _Prise de Cordres_, the _Prise de
Pampelune_, the _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_, _Renaud de Montauban_ (a
variant of the same), _Renier_, the later forms of the _Chanson de
Roland_, to which the name of _Roncevaux_ is sometimes given for the
sake of distinction, the _Siège de Narbonne_, _Simon de Pouille_,
_Vivien l'Amachour de Montbranc_, and _Yon_.

[Sidenote: _Fourteenth, and later._]

By this the list is almost exhausted. The fourteenth century, though
fruitful in _remaniements_, sometimes in mono-rhymed tirades, but
often in Alexandrine couplets and other changed shapes, contributes
hardly anything original except the very interesting and rather
brilliant last branches of the _Chevalier au Cygne_--_Baudouin de
Seboure_, and the _Bastart de Bouillon_; _Hugues Capet_, a very lively
and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an almost
undisguised tone of parody; and some fragments known by the names of
_Hernaut de Beaulande_, _Renier de Gennes_, &c. As for fifteenth and
sixteenth century work, though some pieces of it, especially the very
long and unprinted poem of _Lion de Bourges_, are included in the
canon, all the _chanson_-production of this time is properly
apocryphal, and has little or nothing left of the _chanson_ spirit,
and only the shell of the _chanson_ form.

[Sidenote: Chansons _in print._]

It must further be remembered that, with the exception of a very few
in fragmentary condition, all these poems are of great length. Only
the later or less genuine, indeed, run to the preposterous extent of
twenty, thirty, or (it is said in the case of _Lion de Bourges_) sixty
thousand lines. But _Roland_ itself, one of the shortest, has four
thousand; _Aliscans_, which is certainly old, eight thousand; the
oldest known form of _Huon_, ten thousand. It is probably not
excessive to put the average length of the older _chansons_ at six
thousand lines; while if the more recent be thrown in, the average of
the whole hundred would probably be doubled.

This immense body of verse, which for many reasons it is very
desirable to study as a whole, is still, after the best part of a
century, to a great extent unprinted, and (as was unavoidable) such of
its constituents as have been sent to press have been dealt with on no
very uniform principles. It was less inevitable, and is more to be
regretted, that the dissensions of scholars on minute philological
points have caused the repeated printing of certain texts, while
others have remained inaccessible; and it cannot but be regarded as a
kind of petty treason to literature thus to put the satisfaction of
private crotchets before the "unlocking of the word-hoard" to the
utmost possible extent. The earliest _chansons_ printed[23] were, I
believe, M. Paulin Paris's _Berte aus grans Piés_, M. Francisque
Michel's _Roland_; and thereafter these two scholars and others edited
for M. Techener a very handsome set of "Romances des Douze Pairs," as
they were called, including _Les Saisnes_, _Ogier_, _Raoul de
Cambrai_, _Garin_, and the two great crusading _chansons_, _Antioche_
and _Jérusalem_. Other scattered efforts were made, such as the
publication of a beautiful edition of _Baudouin de Seboure_ at
Valenciennes as early as 1841; while a Belgian scholar, M. de
Reiffenberg, published _Le Chevalier au Cygne_, and a Dutch one, Dr
Jonckbloët, gave a large part of the later numbers of the Garin de
Montglane cycle in his _Guillaume d'Orange_ (2 vols., The Hague,
1854). But the great opportunity came soon after the accession of
Napoleon III., when a Minister favourable to literature, M. de
Fourtou, gave, in a moment of enthusiasm, permission to publish the
entire body of the _chansons_. Perfect wisdom would probably have
decreed the acceptance of the godsend by issuing the whole, with a
minimum of editorial apparatus, in some such form as that of our
Chalmers's Poets, the bulk of which need probably not have been
exceeded in order to give the oldest forms of every real _chanson_
from _Roland_ to the _Bastart de Bouillon_. But perfect wisdom is not
invariably present in the councils of men, and the actual result took
the form of ten agreeable little volumes, in the type, shape, and
paper of the "Bibliothèque Elzévirienne" with abundant editorial
matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the like. _Les Anciens
Poètes de la France_, as this series was called, appeared between
1858, which saw the first volume, and 1870, which fatal year saw the
last, for the Republic had no money to spare for such monarchical
glories as the _chansons_. They are no contemptible possession; for
the ten volumes give fourteen _chansons_ of very different ages, and
rather interestingly representative of different kinds. But they are a
very small portion of the whole, and in at least one instance,
_Aliscans_, they double on a former edition. Since then the Société
des Anciens Textes Français has edited some _chansons_, and
independent German and French scholars have given some more; but no
systematic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the pernicious
system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong selection of MSS. or the
like, has continued. Nevertheless, the number of _chansons_ actually
available is so large that no general characteristic is likely to have
escaped notice; while from the accounts of the remaining MSS., it
would not appear that any of those unprinted can rank with the very
best of those already known. Among these very best I should rank in
alphabetical order--_Aliscans_, _Amis et Amiles_, _Antioche_,
_Baudouin de Seboure_ (though in a mixed kind), _Berte aus grans
Piés_, _Fierabras_, _Garin le Loherain_, _Gérard de Roussillon_, _Huon
de Bordeaux_, _Ogier de Danemarche_, _Raoul de Cambrai_, _Roland_, and
the _Voyage de Charlemagne à Constantinoble_. The almost solitary
eminence assigned by some critics to _Roland_ is not, I think,
justified, and comes chiefly from their not being acquainted with many
others; though the poem has undoubtedly the merit of being the oldest,
and perhaps that of presenting the _chanson_ spirit in its best and
most unadulterated, as well as the _chanson_ form at its simplest,
sharpest, and first state. Nor is there anywhere a finer passage than
the death of Roland, though there are many not less fine.

[Footnote 23: Immanuel Bekker had printed the Provençal _Fierabras_ as
early as 1829.]

It may, however, seem proper, if not even positively indispensable, to
give some more general particulars about these _chansons_ before
analysing specimens or giving arguments of one or more; for they are
full of curiosities.

[Sidenote: _Language._ Oc _and_ oïl.]

In the first place, it will be noticed by careful readers of the list
above given, that these compositions are not limited to French proper
or to the _langue d'oïl_, though infinitely the greater part of them
are in that tongue. Indeed, for some time after attention had been
drawn to them, and before their actual natures and contents had been
thoroughly examined, there was a theory that they were Provençal in
origin. This, though it was chiefly due to the fact that Raynouard,
Fauriel, and other early students of old French had a strong southern
leaning, had some other excuses. It is a fact that Provençal was
earlier in its development than French; and whether by irregular
tradition of this fact, or owing to ignorance, or from anti-French
prejudice (which, however, would not apply in France itself), the part
of the _langue d'oc_ in the early literature of Europe was for
centuries largely overvalued. Then came the usual reaction, and some
fifty years ago or so one of the most capable of literary students
declared roundly that the Provençal epic had "le défaut d'être perdu."
That is not quite true. There is, as noted above, a Provençal
_Fierabras_, though it is beyond doubt an adaptation of the French;
_Betonnet d'Hanstone_ or _Beton et Daurel_ only exists in Provençal,
though there is again no doubt of its being borrowed; and, lastly, the
oldest existing, and probably the original, form of _Gérard de
Roussillon_, _Giratz de Rossilho_, is, as its title implies,
Provençal, though it is in a dialect more approaching to the _langue
d'oïl_ than any form of _oc_, and even presents the curious
peculiarity of existing in two forms, one leaning to Provençal, the
other to French. But these very facts, though they show the statement
that "the Provençal epic is lost" to be excessive, yet go almost
farther than a total deficiency in proving that the _chanson de geste_
was not originally Provençal. Had it been otherwise, there can be no
possible reason why a bare three per cent of the existing examples
should be in the southern tongue, while two of these are evidently
translations, and the third was as evidently written on the very
northern borders of the "Limousin" district.

[Sidenote: _Italian._]

[Sidenote: _Diffusion of the_ chansons.]

The next fact--one almost more interesting, inasmuch as it bears on
that community of Romance tongues of which we have evidence in
Dante,[24] and perhaps also makes for the antiquity of the Charlemagne
story in its primitive form--is the existence of _chansons_ in
Italian, and, it may be added, in a most curious bastard speech which
is neither French, nor Provençal, nor Italian, but French Italicised
in part.[25] The substance, moreover, of the Charlemagne stories was
very early naturalised in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or
compilation called the _Reali di Francia_,[26] which in various forms
maintained popularity through mediæval and early modern times, and
undoubtedly exercised much influence on the great Italian poets of the
Renaissance. They were also diffused throughout Europe, the
_Carlamagnus Saga_ in Iceland marking their farthest actual as well as
possible limit, though they never in Germany attained anything like
the popularity of the Arthurian legend, and though the Spaniards,
patriotically resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which the
_chansons_ bear witness, and availing themselves of the confession of
disaster at Roncesvalles, set up a counter-story in which Roland is
personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the quarrels of the
paynims are taken up by Spain herself. In England the imitations,
though fairly numerous, are rather late. They have been completely
edited for the Early English Text Society, and consist (for Bevis of
Hampton has little relation with its _chanson_ namesake save the name)
of _Sir Ferumbras_ (_Fierabras_), _The Siege of Milan_, _Sir Otuel_
(two forms), the _Life of Charles the Great_, _The Soudone of
Babylone_, _Huon of Bordeaux_, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_, besides a
very curious semi-original entitled _Rauf Coilzear_ (Collier), in
which the well-known romance-_donnée_ of the king visiting some
obscure person is applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version
of _Huon of Bordeaux_,[27] is literature of no mean kind; but this is
because it was executed by Lord Berners, long after our present
period. Also, being of that date, it represents the latest French form
of the story, which was a very popular one, and incorporated very
large borrowings from other sources (the loadstone rock, the
punishment of Cain, and so forth) which are foreign to the subject and
substance of the _chansons_ proper.

[Footnote 24: _V._ the famous and all-important ninth chapter of the
first book of the _De Vulgari Eloquio_.]

[Footnote 25: See especially _Macaire_, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860.]

[Footnote 26: So also the _geste_ of Montglane became the
_Nerbonesi_.]

[Footnote 27: Ed. S. Lee, London, 1883-86.]

[Sidenote: _Their authorship and publication._]

Very great pains have been spent on the question of the authorship,
publication, or performance of these compositions. As is the case with
so much mediæval work, the great mass of them is entirely anonymous.
A line which concludes, or rather supplements, _Roland_--

    "Ci falt la geste que Turoldus declinet"--

has been the occasion of the shedding of a very great deal of ink. The
enthusiastic inquisitiveness of some has ferreted about in all
directions for Turolds, Thorolds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh
century, and discovering them even among the companions of the
Conqueror himself, has started the question whether Taillefer was or
was not violating the copyright of his comrade at Hastings. The fact
is, however, that the best authorities are very much at sea as to the
meaning of _declinet_, which, though it must signify "go over," "tell
like a bead-roll," in some way or other, might be susceptible of
application to authorship, recitation, or even copying. In some other
cases, however, we have more positive testimony, though they are in a
great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned the work of Richard the
Pilgrim, an actual partaker of the first Crusade, into the present
_Antioche_, _Jérusalem_, and perhaps _Les Chétifs_. Either Richard or
Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of the whole cycle.
Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited _Garin le Loherain_; and Jehan Bodel
of Arras _Les Saisnes_. Adenès le Roi, a _trouvère_, of whose actual
position in the world we know a little, wrote or refashioned three or
four _chansons_ of the thirteenth century, including _Berte aus grans
Piés_, and one of the forms of part of _Ogier_. Other names--Bertrand
of Bar sur Aube, Pierre de Rieu, Gérard d'Amiens, Raimbert de Paris,
Brianchon (almost a character of Balzac!), Gautier of Douai, Nicolas
of Padua (an interesting person who was warned in a dream to save his
soul by compiling a _chanson_), Herbert of Dammartin, Guillaume de
Bapaume, Huon de Villeneuve--are mere shadows of names to which in
nearly all cases no personality attaches, and which may be as often
those of mere _jongleurs_ as of actual poets.

[Sidenote: _Their performance._]

No subject, however, in connection with these _chansons de geste_ has
occupied more attention than the precise mode of what has been called
above their "authorship, publication, or performance." They are called
_chansons_, and there is no doubt at all that in their inception, and
during the earlier and better part of their history, they strictly
deserved the name, having been written not to be read but to be sung
or recited. To a certain extent, of course, this was the case with all
the lighter literature of mediæval times. Far later than our present
period the English metrical romances almost invariably begin with the
minstrel's invocation, "Listen, lordings," varied according to his
taste, fancy, and metre; and what was then partly a tradition, was two
or three hundred years earlier the simple record of a universal
practice. Since the early days of the Romantic revival, even to the
present time, the minutest details of this singing and recitation have
been the subject of endless wrangling; and even the point whether it
was "singing" or "recitation" has been argued. In a wider and calmer
view these things become of very small interest. Singing and
recitation--as the very word recitative should be enough to remind
any one--pass into each other by degrees imperceptible to any but a
technical ear; and the instruments, if any, which accompanied the
performance of the _chansons_, the extent of that accompaniment, and
the rest, concern, if they concern history at all, the history of
music, not that of literature.

[Sidenote: _Hearing, not reading, the object._]

[Sidenote: _Effect on prosody._]

But it is a matter of quite other importance that, as has been said,
lighter mediæval literature generally, and the _chansons_ in
particular, were meant for the ear, not the eye--to be heard, not to
be read. For this intention very closely concerns some of their most
important literary characteristics. It is certain as a matter of fact,
though it might not be very easy to account for it as a matter of
argument, that repetitions, stock phrases, identity of scheme and
form, which are apt to be felt as disagreeable in reading, are far
less irksome, and even have a certain attraction, in matter orally
delivered. Whether that slower irritation of the mind through the ear
of which Horace speaks supplies the explanation may be left
undiscussed. But it is certain that, especially for uneducated hearers
(who in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, if not in the thirteenth,
must have been the enormous majority), not merely the phraseological
but the rhythmical peculiarities of the _chansons_ would be specially
suitable. In particular, the long maintenance of the mono-rhymed, or
even the single-assonanced, _tirade_ depends almost entirely upon its
being delivered _vivâ voce_. Only then does that wave-clash which has
been spoken of produce its effect, while the unbroken uniformity of
rhyme on the printed page, and the apparent absence of uniformity in
the printed assonances, are almost equally annoying to the eye. Nor is
it important or superfluous to note that this oral literature had, in
the Teutonic countries and in England more especially, an immense
influence (hitherto not nearly enough allowed for by literary
historians) in the great change from a stressed and alliterative to a
quantitative and rhymed prosody, which took place, with us, from about
1200 A.D. Accustomed as were the ears of all to quantitative (though
very licentiously quantitative) and rhymed measures in the hymns and
services of the Church--the one literary exercise to which gentle and
simple, learned and unlearned, were constantly and regularly
addicted--it was almost impossible that they should not demand a
similar prosody in the profaner compositions addressed to them. That
this would not affect the _chansons_ themselves is true enough; for
there are no relics of any alliterative prosody in French, and its
accentual scanning is only the naturally "crumbled" quantity of Latin.
But it is extremely important to note that the metre of these
_chansons_ themselves, single-rhyme and all, directly influenced
English writers. Of this, however, more will be found in the chapter
on the rise of English literature proper.

[Sidenote: _The_ jongleurs.]

Another, and for literature a hardly less important, consequence of
this intention of being heard, was that probably from the very first,
and certainly from an early period, a distinction, not very different
from that afterwards occasioned by the drama, took place between the
_trouvère_ who invented the _chanson_ and the _jongleur_ or minstrel
who introduced it. At first these parts may, for better or worse, have
been doubled. But it would seldom happen that the poet who had the
wits to indite would have the skill to perform; and it would happen
still seldomer that those whose gifts lay in the direction of
interpretation would have the poetical spirit. Nor is it wonderful
that, in the poems themselves, we find considerably more about the
performer than about the author. In the cases where they were
identical, the author would evidently be merged in the actor; in cases
where they were not, the actor would take care of himself.
Accordingly, though we know if possible even less of the names of the
_jongleurs_ than of those of the _trouvères_, we know a good deal
about their methods. Very rarely does an author like Nicolas of Padua
(_v. supra_) tell us so much as his motive for composing the poems.
But the patient study of critics, eked out it may be by a little
imagination here and there, has succeeded in elaborating a fairly
complete account of the ways and fortunes of the _jongleur_, who also
not improbably, even where he was not the author, adjusted to the
_chansons_ which were his copyright, extempore _codas_, episodes,
tags, and gags of different kinds. Immense pains have been spent upon
the _jongleur_. It has been asserted, and it is not improbable, that
during the palmiest days--say the eleventh and twelfth centuries--of
the _chansons_ a special order of the _jongleur_ or minstrel hierarchy
concerned itself with them,--it is at least certain that the phrase
_chanter de geste_ occurs several times in a manner, and with a
context, which seem to justify its being regarded as a special term of
art. And the authors at least present their heroes as deliberately
expecting that they will be sung about, and fearing the chance of a
dishonourable mention; a fact which, though we must not base any
calculations upon it as to the actual sentiments of Roland or Ogier,
Raoul or Huon, is a fact in itself. And it is also a fact that in the
_fabliaux_ and other light verse of the time we find _jongleurs_
presented as boasting of the particular _chansons_ they can sing.

[Sidenote: Jongleresses, _&c._]

But the enumeration of the kinds of _jongleurs_--those itinerant,
those attached to courts and great families, &c.--would lead us too
far. They were not all of one sex, and we hear of _jongleresses_ and
_chanteresses_, such as Adeline who figures in the history of the
Norman Conquest, Aiglantine who sang before the Duke of Burgundy,
Gracieuse d'Espagne, and so forth--pretty names, as even M. Gautier,
who is inclined to be suspicious of them, admits. These suspicions, it
is fair to say, were felt at the time. Don Jayme of Aragon forbade
noble ladies to kiss _jongleresses_ or share bed and board with them;
while the Church, which never loved the _jongleur_ much, decided that
the duty of a wife to follow her husband ceased if he took to
jongling, which was a _vita turpis et inhonesta_. Further, the pains
above referred to, bestowed by scholars of all sorts, from Percy
downwards, have discovered or guessed at the clothes which the
_jongleur_ and his mate wore, and the instruments with which they
accompanied their songs. It is more germane to our purpose to know, as
we do in one instance on positive testimony, the principles (easily to
be guessed, by the way) on which the introduction of names into these
poems were arranged. It appears, on the authority of the historian of
Guisnes and Ardres, that Arnold the Old, Count of Ardres, would
actually have had his name in the _Chanson d'Antioche_ had he not
refused a pair of scarlet boots or breeches to the poet or performer
thereof. Nor is it more surprising to find, on the still more
indisputable authority of passages in the _chansons_ themselves, that
the _jongleur_ would stop singing at an interesting point to make a
collection, and would even sometimes explicitly protest against the
contribution of too small coins--_poitevines_, _mailles_, and the
like.

It is impossible not to regard with a mixture of respect and pity the
labour which has been spent on collecting details of the kind whereof,
in the last paragraph or two, a few examples have been given. But they
really have very little, if anything, to do with literature; and what
they have to do with it is common to all times and subjects. The
excessive prodigality to minstrels of which we have record parallels
itself in other times in regard to actors, jockeys, musicians, and
other classes of mechanical pleasure-makers whose craft happens to be
popular for the moment. And it was never more likely to be shown than
in the Middle Ages, when generosity was a profane virtue; when the
Church had set the example--an example the too free extension of
which she resented highly--of putting reckless giving above almost all
other good deeds; and when the system of private war, of ransoms and
other things of the same kind, made "light come, light go," a maxim
almost more applicable than in the days of confiscations, in those of
pensions on this or that list, or in those of stock-jobbing. Moreover,
inquirers into this matter have certainly not escaped the besetting
sin of all but strictly political historians--a sin which even the
political historian has not always avoided--the sin of mixing up times
and epochs.

It is the great advantage of that purely literary criticism, which is
so little practised and to some extent so unpopular, that it is able
to preserve accuracy in this matter. When with the assistance (always
to be gratefully received) of philologists and historians in the
strict sense the date of a literary work is ascertained with
sufficient--it is only in a few cases that it can be ascertained with
absolute--exactness, the historian of literature places it in that
position for literary purposes only, and neither mixes it with other
things nor endeavours to use it for purposes other than literary. To
recur to an example mentioned above, Adeline in the eleventh century
and Gracieuse d'Espagne in the fifteenth are agreeable objects of
contemplation and ornaments of discourse; but, once more, neither has
much, if anything, to do with literature.

[Sidenote: _Singularity of the_ chansons.]

We may therefore with advantage, having made this digression to comply
a little with prevalent fashions, return to the _chansons_ themselves,
to the half-million or million verses of majestic cadence written in
one of the noblest languages, for at least first effect, to be found
in the history of the world, possessing that character of distinction,
of separate and unique peculiarity in matter and form, which has such
extraordinary charm, and endowed besides, more perhaps than any other
division, with the attraction of presenting an utterly vanished Past.
The late Mr Froude found in church-bells--the echo of the Middle
Ages--suggestion of such a vanishing. To some of us there is nothing
dead in church-bells; there is only in them, as in the Arthurian
legends, for instance, a perennial thing still presented in
associations, all the more charming for being slightly antique. But
the _chansons de geste_, living by the poetry of their best examples,
by the fire of their sentiment, by the clash and clang of their music,
are still in thought, in connection with manners, hopes, aims, almost
more dead than any of the classics. The literary misjudgment of them
which was possible in quite recent times, to two such critics--very
different, but each of the first class--as Mr Matthew Arnold and M.
Ferdinand Brunetière, is half excused by this curious feature in their
own literary character. More than mummies or catacombs, more than
Herculaneum and Pompeii, they bring us face to face with something so
remote and afar that we can hardly realise it at all. It may be that
that peculiarity of the French genius, which, despite its unsurpassed
and almost unmatched literary faculty, has prevented it from
contributing any of the very greatest masterpieces to the literature
of the world, has communicated to them this aloofness, this, as it may
almost be called, provincialism. But some such note there is in them,
and it may be that the immense stretch of time during which they were
worse than unknown--misknown--has brought it about.

[Sidenote: _Their charm._]

Yet their interest is not the less; it is perhaps even the more. It is
nearly twenty years since I began to read them, and during that period
I have also been reading masses of other literature from other times,
nations, and languages; yet I cannot at this moment take up one
without being carried away by the stately language, as precise and
well proportioned as modern French, yet with much of the grandeur
which modern French lacks, the statelier metre, the noble phrase, the
noble incident and passion. Take, for instance, one of the crowning
moments, for there are several, of the death-scene of Roland, that
where the hero discovers the dead archbishop, with his hands--"the
white, the beautiful"--crossed on his breast:--

    "Li quenz Rollanz revient de pasmeisuns,
    Sur piez se drecet, mais il ad grant dulur;
    Guardet aval e si guardet amunt;
    Sur l'erbe verte, ultre ses cumpaignuns,
    La veit gesir le nobile barun:
    C'est l'arcevesque que deus mist en sun num,
    Claimet sa culpe, si regardet amunt,
    Cuntre le ciel ainsdoux ses mains ad juinz,
    Si priet deu que pareis li duinst.
    Morz est Turpin le guerrier Charlun.
    Par granz batailles e par mult bels sermuns
    Contre paiens fut tuz tens campiuns.
    Deus li otreit seinte beneïçun.
                Aoi!"[28]

[Footnote 28: _Roland_, ll. 2233-2246.]

Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can be called a
_chanson de geste_ proper in style, _Le Bastart de Bouillon_, and open
on these lines:--

    "Pardevant la chité qui Miekes[29] fut clamée
    Fu grande la bataille, et fière la mellée,
    Enchois car on eust nulle tente levée,
    Commencha li debas à chelle matinée.
    Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huée,
    Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espée,
    Et une forte targe à son col acolée.
    Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demorée,
    Un gentil crestien de France l'onnerée--
    Armeïre n'i vault une pomme pelée;
    Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamée,
    Le branc li embati par dedans la corée,[30]
    Mort l'abat du cheval; son ame soit sauvée!"[31]

[Footnote 29: _I.e._, Mecca.]

[Footnote 30: _Corée_ is not merely = _coeur_, but heart, liver, and
all the upper "inwards."]

[Footnote 31: _Li Bastars de Bouillon_ (ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1877).]

This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the very "padding"
of the average _chanson_, but what padding it is! Compare the mere
sound, the clash and clang of the verse, with the ordinary English
romance in _Sir Thopas_ metre, or even with the Italian poets. How
alert, how succinct, how finished it is beside the slip-shodness of
the first, in too many instances;[32] how manly, how intense, beside
the mere sweetness of the second! The very ring of the lines brings
mail-shirt and flat-topped helmet before us.

[Footnote 32: Not always; for the English romance of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries has on the whole been too harshly dealt with.
But its _average_ is far below that of the _chansons_.]

[Sidenote: _Peculiarity of the_ geste _system._]

But in order to the proper comprehension of this section of
literature, it is necessary that something more should be said as well
of the matter at large as of the construction and contents of separate
poems; and, most of all, of the singular process of adjustment of
these separate poems by which the _geste_ proper (that is to say, the
subdivision of the whole which deals more or less distinctly with a
single subject) is constituted. Here again we find a "difference" of
the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian
story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the
Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior
literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very
nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the
_chansons de geste_. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in
himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one
else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story--the
connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the
Grail--complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate
closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be
keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might
be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin
or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the
resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically
complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space.

[Sidenote: _Instances._]

In our present subject, on the other hand, even Charlemagne's life is
less the object of the story than the history of France; and enormous
as the falsification of that history may seem to modern criticism, the
writers always in a certain sense remembered that they were
historians. When an interesting and important personality presented
itself, it was their duty to follow it out to the end, to fill up the
gaps of forerunners, to round it off and shade it in.[33] Thus it
happens that the _geste_ or saga of _Guillaume d'Orange_--which is
itself not the whole of the great _geste_ of Garin de Montglane--occupies
eighteen separate poems, some of them of great length; that the
crusading series, beginning no doubt in a simple historical poem,
which was extended and "cycled," has seven, the Lorraine group five;
while in the extraordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which
for some eight hundred pages M. Léon Gautier has devoted to the king's
_geste_, twenty-seven different _chansons_ are more or less
abstracted. Several others might have been added here if M. Gautier
had laid down less strict rules of exclusion against mere _romans
d'aventures_ subsequently tied on, like the above-mentioned outlying
romances of the Arthurian group, to the main subject.

[Footnote 33: This will explain the frequent recurrence of the title
"_Enfances ----_" in the list given above. A hero had become
interesting in some exploit of his manhood: so they harked back to his
childhood.]

[Sidenote: _Summary of the_ geste _of William of Orange._]

It seems necessary, therefore, or at least desirable, especially as
these poems are still far too little known to English readers, to give
in the first place a more or less detailed account of one of the
groups; in the second, a still more detailed account of a particular
_chanson_, which to be fully illustrative should probably be a member
of this group; and lastly, some remarks on the more noteworthy and
accessible (for it is ill speaking at second-hand from accounts of
manuscripts) of the remaining poems. For the first purpose nothing can
be better than _Guillaume d'Orange_, many, though not all, of the
constituents of which are in print, and which has had the great
advantage of being systematically treated by more than one or two of
the most competent scholars of the century on the subject--Dr
Jonckbloët, MM. Guessard and A. de Montaiglon, and M. Gautier himself.
Of this group the short, very old, and very characteristic
_Couronnement Loys_ will supply a good subject for more particular
treatment, a subject all the more desirable that _Roland_ may be said
to be comparatively familiar, and is accessible in English
translations.

[Sidenote: _And first of the_ Couronnement Loys.]

The poem as we have it[34] begins with a double exordium, from which
the _jongleur_ might perhaps choose as from alternative collects in a
liturgy. Each is ten lines long, and while the first rhymes
throughout, the second has only a very imperfect assonance. Each
bespeaks attention and promises satisfaction in the usual manner,
though in different terms--

    "Oez seignor que Dex vos soit aidant;"

    "Seignor baron, pleroit vos d'un exemple!"

[Footnote 34: Ed. Jonckbloët, _op. cit._, i. 1-71.]

A much less commonplace note is struck immediately afterwards in what
may be excusably taken to be the real beginning of the poem:--

    "A king who wears our France's crown of gold
    Worthy must be, and of his body bold;
    What man soe'er to him do evil wold,
    He may not quit in any manner hold
    Till he be dead or to his mercy yold.
    Else France shall lose her praise she hath of old.
    Falsely he's crowned: so hath our story told."

Then the story itself is plunged into in right style. When the chapel
was blessed at Aix and the minster dedicated and made, there was a
mighty court held. Poor and rich received justice; eighteen bishops,
as many archbishops, twenty-six abbots, and four crowned kings
attended; the Pope of Rome himself said mass; and Louis, son of
Charlemagne, was brought up to the high altar where the crown was
laid. At this moment the people are informed that Charles feels his
death approaching, and must hand over his kingdom to his son. They
thank God that no strange king is to come on them. But when the
emperor, after good advice as to life and policy, bids him not dare to
take the crown unless he is prepared for a clean and valiant life, the
infant (_li enfes_) does not dare. The people weep, and the king
storms, declaring that the prince is no son of his and shall be made a
monk. But Hernaut of Orleans, a great noble, strikes in, and
pretending to plead for Louis on the score of his extreme youth,
offers to take the regency for three years, when, if the prince has
become a good knight, he shall have the kingdom back, and in increased
good condition. Charlemagne, with the singular proneness to be victim
of any kind of "confidence trick" which he shows throughout the
_chansons_, is turning a willing ear to this proposition when William
of Orange enters, and, wroth at the notion, thinks of striking off
Hernaut's head. But remembering

    "Que d'ome occire est trop mortex péchiés,"

he changes his plan and only pummels him to death with his fists, a
distinction which seems indifferential. Then he takes the crown
himself, places it on the boy's head, and Charles accommodates himself
to this proceeding as easily as to the other proposal.

Five years pass: and it is a question, not of the mere choice of a
successor or assessor, but of actual death. He repeats his counsels to
his son, with the additional and very natural warning to rely on
William. Unluckily this chief, who is in the earlier part of the
_chanson_ surnamed Firebrace (not to be confounded with the converted
Saracen of that name), is not at the actual time of the king's death
at Aix, but has gone on pilgrimage, in fulfilment of a vow, to Rome.
He comes at a good time, for the Saracens have just invaded Italy,
have overthrown the King of Apulia with great slaughter, and are close
to Rome. The Pope (the "Apostle") hears of William, and implores his
succour, which, though he has but forty knights and the Saracens are
in their usual thousands, he consents to give. The Pope promises him
as a reward that he may eat meat all the days of his life, and take as
many wives as he chooses,--a method of guerdon which shocks M.
Gautier, the most orthodox as well as not the least scholarly of
scholars. However, the Holy Father also wishes to buy off the heathen,
thereby showing a truly apostolic ignorance of the world. Galafré, the
"admiral," however has a point of honour. He will not be bought off.
He informs the Pope, calling him "Sir with the big hat,"[35] that he
is a descendant of Romulus and Julius Cæsar, and for that reason feels
it necessary to destroy Rome and its clerks who serve God. He relents,
however, so far as to propose to decide the matter by single combat,
to which the Pope, according to all but nineteenth century sentiment,
very properly consents. William is, of course, the Christian champion;
the Saracen is a giant named Corsolt, very hideous, very violent, and
a sort of Mahometan Capaneus in his language. The Pope does not
entirely trust in William's valour, but rubs him all over with St
Peter's arm, which confers invulnerability. Unfortunately the
"promontory of the face" is omitted. The battle is fierce, but not
long. Corsolt cuts off the uncharmed tip of William's nose (whence his
epic surname of Guillaume au Court Nez), but William cuts off
Corsolt's head. The Saracens fly: William (he has joked rather
ruefully with the Pope on his misadventure, which, as being a
recognised form of punishment, was almost a disgrace even when
honourably incurred) pursues them, captures Galafré, converts him at
point of sword, and receives from him the offer of his beautiful
daughter. The marriage is about to be celebrated, William and the
Saracen princess are actually at the altar, when a messenger from
Louis arrives claiming the champion's help against the traitors who
already wish to wrest the sceptre from his hand. William asks the Pope
what he is to do, and the Pope says "Go":

    "Guillaumes bese la dame o le vis cler,
    Et ele lui; ne cesse deplorer.
    Par tel covent ensi sont dessevré,
    Puis ne se virent en trestot leur aé."

[Footnote 35: "Parlez à moi, sire au chaperon large."--_C.L._, l.
468.]

Promptly as he acts, however, he is only in time to repair, not to
prevent, the mischief. The rebels have already dethroned Louis and
imprisoned him at St Martins in Tours, making Acelin of Rouen, son of
Richard, Emperor. William makes straight for Tours, prevails on the
castellan of the gate-fortress to let him in, kicks--literally
kicks--the monks out of their abbey, and rescues Louis. He then kills
Acelin, violently maltreats his father, and rapidly traverses the
whole of France, reducing the malcontents.

Peace having been for the time restored at home, William returns to
Rome, where many things have happened. The Pope and Galafré are dead,
the princess, though she is faithful to William, has other suitors,
and there is a fresh invasion, not this time of heathen Asiatics, but
led by Guy of Germany. The Count of Orange forces Louis (who behaves
in a manner justifying the rebels) to accompany him with a great army
to Rome, defeats the Germans, takes his _fainéant_ emperor's part in a
single combat with Guy, and is again victorious. Nor, though he has
to treat his pusillanimous sovereign in an exceedingly cavalier
fashion, does he fail to have Louis crowned again as Emperor of Rome.
A fresh rebellion breaking out in France, he again subdues it; and
strengthens the tottering house of Charles Martel by giving his own
sister Blanchefleur to the chicken-hearted king.

    "En grant barnage fu Looys entrez;
    Quant il fu riche, Guillaume n'en sot gré,"

ends the poem with its usual laconism.

[Sidenote: _Comments on the_ Couronnement.]

There is, of course, in this story an element of rough comedy,
approaching horse-play, which may not please all tastes. This element,
however, is very largely present in the _chansons_ (though it so
happens, yet once more, that _Roland_ is accidentally free from it),
and it is especially obvious in the particular branch or _geste_ of
William with the Short Nose, appearing even in the finest and longest
of the subdivisions, _Aliscans_, which some have put at the head of
the whole. In fact, as we might expect, the _esprit gaulois_ can
seldom refrain altogether from pleasantry, and its pleasantry at this
time is distinctly "the humour of the stick." But still the poem is a
very fine one. Its ethical opening is really noble: the picture of the
Court at Aix has grandeur, for all its touches of simplicity; the
fighting is good; the marriage scene and its fatal interruption (for
we hear nothing of the princess on William's second visit to Rome)
give a dramatic turn: and though there is no fine writing, there is a
refreshing directness. The shortness, too (it has less than three
thousand lines), is undoubtedly in its favour, for these pieces are
apt to be rather too long than too short. And if the pusillanimity and
_fainéantise_ of Louis seem at first sight exaggerated, it must be
remembered that, very awkward as was the position of a Henry III. of
England in the thirteenth century, and a James III. of Scotland in the
fifteenth, kings of similar character must have cut even worse figures
in the tenth or eleventh, when the story was probably first
elaborated, and worse still in the days of the supposed occurrence of
its facts. Indeed, one of the best passages as poetry, and one of the
most valuable as matter, is that in which the old king warns his
trembling son how he must not only do judgment and justice, must not
only avoid luxury and avarice, protect the orphan and do the widow no
wrong, but must be ready at any moment to cross the water of Gironde
with a hundred thousand men in order to _craventer et confondre_ the
pagan host,--how he must be towards his own proud vassals "like a
man-eating leopard," and if any dare levy war against him, must summon
his knights, besiege the traitor's castle, waste and spoil all his
land, and when he is taken show him no mercy, but lop him limb from
limb, burn him in fire, or drown him in the sea.[36] It is not
precisely an amiable spirit, this spirit of the _chansons_: but there
is this to be said in its favour, there is no mistake about it.

[Footnote 36: _C.L._, ll. 72-79, 172-196.]

[Sidenote: _William of Orange._]

It may be perhaps expected that before, in the second place, summing
the other branches of the saga of this William of Orange, it should be
said who he was. But it is better to refer to the authorities already
given on this, after all, not strictly literary point. Enormous pains
have been spent on the identification or distinction of William
Short-nose, Saint William of Gellona, William Tow-head of Poitiers,
William Longsword of Normandy, as well as several other Williams. It
may not be superfluous, and is certainly not improper, for those who
undertake the elaborate editing of a particular poem to enter into
such details. But for us, who are considering the literary development
of Europe, it would be scarcely germane. It is enough that certain
_trouvères_ found in tradition, in history freely treated, or in their
own imaginations, the material which they worked into this great
series of poems, of which those concerning William directly amount to
eighteen, while the entire _geste_ of Garin de Montglane runs to
twenty-four.

[Sidenote: _The earlier poems of the cycle._]

For the purposes of the _chansons_, William of the Strong Arm or the
Short Nose is Count, or rather Marquis, of Orange, one of
Charlemagne's peers, a special bulwark of France and Christendom
towards the south-east, and a man of approved valour, loyalty, and
piety, but of somewhat rough manners. Also (which is for the _chanson
de geste_ of even greater importance) he is grandson of Garin de
Montglane and the son of Aimeri de Narbonne, heroes both, and
possessors of the same good qualities which extend to all the family.
For it is a cardinal point of the _chansons_ that not only _bon sang
chasse de race_, but evil blood likewise. And the House of Narbonne,
or Montglane, or Orange, is as uniformly distinguished for loyalty as
the Normans and part of the house of Mayence for "treachery." To
illustrate its qualities, twenty-four _chansons_, as has been said,
are devoted, six of which tell the story before William, and the
remaining eighteen that of his life. The first in M. Gautier's
order[37] is _Les Enfances Garin de Montglane_. Garin de Montglane,
the son of Duke Savary of Aquitaine and a mother persecuted by false
accusations, like so many heroines of the middle ages, fights first in
Sicily, procures atonement for his mother's wrongs, and then goes to
the Court of Charlemagne, who, according to the general story, is his
exact equal in age, as is also Doon de Mayence, the special hero of
the third great _geste_. He conquers Montglane, and marries the Lady
Mabille, his marriage and its preliminaries filling the second
romance, or _Garin de Montglane_ proper. He has by Mabille four
sons--Hernaut de Beaulande, Girart de Viane, Renier de Gennes, and
Milles de Pouille. Each of the three first is the subject of an
existing _chanson_, and doubtless the fourth was similarly honoured.
_Girart de Viane_ is one of the most striking of the _chansons_ in
matter. The hero quarrels with Charlemagne owing to the bad offices of
the empress, and a great barons' war follows, in which Roland and
Oliver have their famous fight, and Roland is betrothed to Oliver's
sister Aude. _Hernaut de Beaulande_ tells how the hero conquers
Aquitaine, marries Fregonde, and becomes the father of Aimeri de
Narbonne; and _Renier de Gennes_ in like fashion the success of its
eponym at Genoa, and his becoming the father of Oliver and Aude. Then
we pass to the third generation (Charlemagne reigning all the time)
with the above-named _Aimeri de Narbonne_. The events of this come
after Roncesvalles, and it is on the return thence that, Narbonne
being in Paynim hands, Aimeri, after others have refused, takes the
adventure, the town, and his surname. He marries Hermengart, sister of
the king of the Lombards, repulses the Saracens, who endeavour to
recover Narbonne, and begets twelve children, of whom the future
William of Orange is one. These _chansons_, with the exception of
_Girart de Viane_, which was printed early, remained much longer in
MS. than their successors, and the texts are not accessible in any
such convenient _corpus_ as De Jonckbloët's though some have been
edited recently.

[Footnote 37: M. Jonckbloët, who takes a less wide range, begins his
selection or collection of the William saga with the _Couronnement
Loys_.]

Three poems intervene between _Aimeri de Narbonne_ and the
_Couronnement Loys_, but they do not seem to have been always kept
apart. The first, the _Enfances Guillaume_, tells how when William
himself had left Narbonne for Charlemagne's Court, and his father was
also absent, the Saracens under Thibaut, King of Arabia, laid siege to
the town, laying at the same time siege to the heart of the beautiful
Saracen Princess Orable, who lives in the enchanted palace of
Gloriette at Orange, itself then, as Narbonne had been, a pagan
possession. William, going with his brothers to succour their mother,
captures Baucent, a horse sent by the princess to Thibaut, and falls
in love with her, his love being returned. She is forced to marry
Thibaut, but preserves herself by witchcraft as a wife only in name.
Orange does not fall into the hand of the Christians, though they
succeed in relieving Narbonne. William meanwhile has returned to
Court, and has been solemnly dubbed knight, his _enfances_ then
technically ceasing.

This is followed by the _Département des Enfans Aimeri_, in which
William's brothers, following his example, leave Narbonne and their
father for different parts of France, and achieve adventures and
possessions. One of them, Bernart of Brabant, is often specially
mentioned in the latter branches of the cycle as the most valiant of
the clan next to Guillaume, and it is not improbable that he had a
_chanson_ to himself. The youngest, Guibelin, remains, and in the
third _Siege of Narbonne_, which has a poem to itself, he shows
prowess against the Saracens, but is taken prisoner. He is rescued
from crucifixion by his aged father, who cuts his way through the
Saracens and carries off his son. But the number of the heathen is too
great, and the city must have surrendered if an embassy sent to
Charlemagne had not brought help, headed by William himself, in time.
He is as victorious as usual, but after his victory again returns to
Aix.

[Sidenote: _The_ Charroi de Nîmes.]

Now begins the _Couronnement Loys_, of which the more detailed
abstract given above may serve, not merely to make the individual
piece known, but to indicate the general course, incidents, language,
and so forth of all these poems. It will be remembered that it ends by
a declaration that the king was not grateful to the King-maker. He
forgets William in the distribution of fiefs, says M. Gautier; we may
say, perhaps, that he remembers rather too vividly the rough
instruction he has received from his brother-in-law. On protest
William receives Spain, Orange, and Nîmes, a sufficiently magnificent
dotation, were it not that all three are in the power of the infidels.
William, however, loses no time in putting himself in possession, and
begins with Nîmes. This he carries, as told in the _Charroi de
Nîmes_,[38] by the Douglas-like stratagem (indeed it is not at all
impossible that the Good Lord James was acquainted with the poem) of
hiding his knights in casks, supposed to contain salt and other
merchandise, which are piled on cars and drawn by oxen. William
himself and Bertrand his nephew conduct the caravan, dressed in rough
boots (which hurt Bertrand's feet), blue hose, and coarse cloth
frocks. The innocent paynims give them friendly welcome, though
William is nearly discovered by his tell-tale disfigurement. A
squabble, however, arises; but William, having effected his entrance,
does not lose time. He blows his horn, and the knights springing from
their casks, the town is taken. This _Charroi de Nîmes_ is one of the
most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. The catalogue of
his services with which William overwhelms the king, each item
ushered by the phrase "Rois, quar te membre" ("King, bethink thee
then"), and to which the unfortunate Louis can only answer in various
forms, "You are very ill-tempered" ("Pleins es de mautalent";
"Mautalent avez moult"), is curiously full of uncultivated eloquence;
while his refusal to accept the heritage of Auberi le Bourgoing, and
thereby wrong Auberi's little son, even though "sa marrastre
Hermengant de Tori" is also offered by the generous monarch with the
odd commendation--

    "La meiller feme qui onc beust de vin,"

is justly praised. But when the venerable Aymon not unnaturally
protests against almost the whole army accompanying William, and the
wrathful peer breaks his jaw with his fist, when the peasants who
grumble at their casks and their oxen being seized are hanged or have
their eyes put out--then the less amiable side of the matter certainly
makes its appearance.

[Footnote 38: Jonckbloët, i. 73-111.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Prise d'Orange.]

William has thus entered on part, though the least part, of the king's
gift to him--a gift which it is fair to Louis to say that the hero had
himself demanded, after refusing the rather vague offer of a fourth of
the lands and revenues of all France. The _Prise d'Orange_[39] follows
in time and as a subject of _chanson_, the _Charroi de Nîmes_. The
earlier poem had been all sheer fighting with no softer side. In this
William is reminded of the beautiful Orable (wife, if only in name, of
King Thibaut), who lives there, though her husband, finding a wife
who bewitches the nuptial chamber unsatisfactory, has left her and
Orange to the care of his son Arragon. The reminder is a certain
Gilbert of Vermandois who has been prisoner at Orange, and who, after
some hesitation, joins William himself and his brother Guibelin in a
hazardous expedition to the pagan city. They blacken themselves with
ink, and are not ill received by Arragon: but a Saracen who knows the
"Marquis au Court Nez" informs against him (getting his brains beaten
out for his pains), and the three, forcing a way with bludgeons
through the heathen, take refuge in Gloriette, receive arms from
Orable, who has never ceased to love the Marquis, and drive their
enemies off. But a subterranean passage (this probably shows the
_chanson_ to be a late one in this form) lets the heathen in: and all
three champions are seized, bound, and condemned to the flames. Orable
demands them, not to release but to put in her own dungeons,
conveniently furnished with vipers; and for a time they think
themselves betrayed. But Orable soon appears, offers them liberty if
William will marry her, and discloses a second underground passage.
They do not, however, fly by this, but only send Gilbert to Nîmes to
fetch succour: and as Orable's conduct is revealed to Arragon, a third
crisis occurs. It is happily averted, and Bertrand soon arriving with
thirteen thousand men from Nîmes, the Saracens are cut to pieces and
Orange won. Orable is quickly baptised, her name being changed to
Guibourc, and married without further delay. William is William of
Orange at length in good earnest, and the double sacrament reconciles
M. Gautier (who is constantly distressed by the forward conduct of his
heroines) to Guibourc ever afterwards. It is only fair to say that in
the text published by M. Jonckbloët (and M. Gautier gives references
to no other) "la curtoise Orable" does not seem to deserve his hard
words. There is nothing improper in her conduct, and her words do not
come to much more than--

    "I am your wife if you will marry me."

[Footnote 39: Jonckbloët, i. 112-162.]

_La Prise d'Orange_ ends with the couplet--

    "Puis estut il tiex xxx ans en Orenge
    Mes ainc un jor n'i estut sanz chalenge."

[Sidenote: _The story of Vivien._]

Orange, in short, was a kind of Garde Douloureuse against the infidel:
and William well earned his title of "Marchis." The story of his
exploits diverges a little--a loop rather than an episode--in two
specially heroic _chansons_, the _Enfances Vivien_ and the _Covenant
Vivien_,[40] which tell the story of one of his nephews, a story
finished by Vivien's glorious death at the opening of the great
_chanson_ of _Aliscans_. Vivien is the son of Garin d'Ansène, one of
those "children of Aimeri" who have sought fortune away from Narbonne,
and one of the captives of Roncesvalles. Garin is only to be delivered
at the cost of his son's life, which Vivien cheerfully offers. He is
actually on the pyre, which is kindled, when the pagan hold Luiserne
is stormed by a pirate king, and Vivien is rescued, but sold as a
slave. An amiable paynim woman buys him and adopts him; but he is a
born knight, and when grown up, with a few allies surprises Luiserne
itself, and holds it till a French army arrives, and Garin recovers
his son, whom he had thought dead. After these _Enfances_, promising
enough, comes the _Covenant_ or vow, never to retreat before the
Saracens. Vivien is as savage as he is heroic; and on one occasion
sends five hundred prisoners, miserably mutilated, to the great
Admiral Desramé. The admiral assembles all the forces of the East as
well as of Spain, and invades France. Vivien, overpowered by numbers,
applies to his uncle William for help, and the battle of Aliscans is
already half fought and more than half lost before the actual
_chanson_ of the name begins. _Aliscans_[41] itself opens with a
triplet in which the "steel clash" of the _chanson_ measure is more
than ever in place:--

    "A icel jor ke la dolor fu grans,
    Et la bataille orible en Aliscans:
    Li quens Guillaumes i soufri grans ahans."

[Footnote 40: _Enfances Vivien_, ed. Wahlen and v. Feilitzer, Paris,
1886; _Covenant Vivien_, Jonckbloët, i. 163-213.]

[Footnote 41: Jonckbloët, i. 215 to end; separately, as noted above,
by Guessard and de Montaignon, Paris, 1870.]

[Sidenote: _Aliscans._]

And it continues in the same key. The commentators declare that the
story refers to an actual historical battle of Villedaigne. This may
be a fact: the literary excellence of _Aliscans_ is one. The scale of
the battle is represented as being enormous: and the poet is not
unworthy of his subject. Neither is William _impar sibi_: but his day
of unbroken victory is over. No one can resist him personally; but
the vast numbers of the Saracens make personal valour useless. Vivien,
already hopelessly wounded, fights on, and receives a final blow from
a giant. He is able, however, to drag himself to a tree where a
fountain flows, and there makes his confession, and prays for his
uncle's safety. As for William himself, his army is entirely cut to
pieces, and it is only a question whether he can possibly escape. He
comes to Vivien's side just as his nephew is dying, bewails him in a
very noble passage, receives his last breath, and is able before it
passes to administer the holy wafer which he carries with him. It is
Vivien's first communion as well as his last.

After this really great scene, one of the finest in all the
_chansons_, William puts the corpse of Vivien on the wounded but still
generous Baucent, and endeavours to make his way through the ring of
enemies who have held aloof but are determined not to let him go.
Night saves him: and though he has to abandon the body, he cuts his
way through a weak part of the line, gains another horse (for Baucent
can carry him no longer), and just reaches Orange. But he has taken
the arms as well as the horse of a pagan to get through his foes: and
in this guise he is refused entrance to his own city. Guibourc herself
rejects him, and only recognises her husband from the prowess which he
shows against the pursuers, who soon catch him up. The gates are
opened and he is saved, but Orange is surrounded by the heathen. There
is no room to tell the full heroism of Guibourc, and, besides,
_Aliscans_ is one of the best known of the _chansons_, and has been
twice printed.

[Sidenote: _The end of the story._]

From this point the general interest of the saga, which has culminated
in the battle of Aliscans, though it can hardly be said to disappear,
declines somewhat, and is diverted to other persons than William
himself. It is decided that Guibourc shall hold Orange, while he goes
to the Court of Louis to seek aid. This personal suit is necessary
lest the fulness of the overthrow be not believed; and the pair part
after a scene less rugged than the usual course of the _chansons_, in
which Guibourc expresses her fear of the "damsels bright of blee," the
ladies of high lineage that her husband will meet at Laon; and William
swears in return to drink no wine, eat no flesh, kiss no mouth, sleep
on his saddle-cloth, and never change his garments till he meets her
again.

[Sidenote: _Renouart._]

His reception is not cordial. Louis thinks him merely a nuisance, and
the courtiers mock his poverty, distress, and loneliness. He meets
with no hospitality save from a citizen. But the chance arrival of his
father and mother from Narbonne prevents him from doing anything rash.
They have a great train with them, and it is no longer possible simply
to ignore William; but from the king downwards, there is great
disinclination to grant him succour, and Queen Blanchefleur is
especially hostile. William is going to cut her head off--his usual
course of action when annoyed--after actually addressing her in a
speech of extreme directness, somewhat resembling Hamlet's to
Gertrude, but much ruder. Their mother saves Blanchefleur, and after
she has fled in terror to her chamber, the fair Aelis, her daughter, a
gracious apparition, begs and obtains forgiveness from William, short
of temper as of nose, but also not rancorous. Reconciliation takes
place all round, and an expedition is arranged for the relief of
Orange. It is successful, but chiefly owing to the prowess, not of
William, but of a certain Renouart, who is the special hero, not
merely of the last half of _Aliscans_, but of nearly all the later
_chansons_ of the _geste_ of Garin de Montglane. This Renouart or
Rainouart is an example, and one of the earliest, perhaps the very
earliest, of the type of hero, so dear to the middle ages, who begins
by service in the kitchen or elsewhere, of no very dignified
character, and ends by being discovered to be of noble or royal birth.
Rainouart is thus the ancestor, and perhaps the direct ancestor, of
Havelok, whom he especially resembles; of Beaumains, in a hitherto
untraced episode of the Arthurian story, and of others. His early
feats against the Saracens, in defence of Orange first, and then when
William arrives, are made with no knightly weapon, but with a
_tinel_--huge bludgeon, beam, "caber"--but he afterwards turns out to
be Guibourc's, or rather Orable's, own brother. There are very strong
comic touches in all this part of the poem, such as the difficulty
Rainouart finds in remounting his comrades, the seven nephews of
William, because his _tinel_ blows are so swashing that they simply
smash horse and man--a difficulty overcome by the ingenious
suggestion of Bertrand that he shall hit with the small end. And these
comic touches have a little disturbed those who wish to find in the
pure _chanson de geste_ nothing but war and religion, honour and
generosity. But, as has been already hinted, this is to be over-nice.
No doubt the oldest existing, or at least the oldest yet discovered,
MS. of _Aliscans_ is not the original, for it is rhymed, not
assonanced, a practically infallible test. But there is no reason to
suppose that the comic touches are all new, though they may have been
a little amplified in the later version. Once more, it is false
argument to evolve the idea of a _chanson_ from _Roland_ only, and
then to insist that all _chansons_ shall conform to it.

After the defeat of Desramé, and the relief of half-ruined Orange, the
troubles of that city and its Count are not over. The admiral returns
to the charge, and the next _chanson_, the _Bataille Loquifer_, is
ranked by good judges as ancient, and describes fresh prowess of
Rainouart. Then comes the _Moniage_ ["Monking" of] _Rainouart_, in
which the hero, like so many other heroes, takes the cowl. This,
again, is followed by a series describing chiefly the reprisals in
Spain and elsewhere of the Christians--_Foulques de Candie_, the
_Siège de Barbastre_, the _Prise de Cordres_, and _Gilbert
d'Andrenas_. And at last the whole _geste_ is wound up by the _Mort
Aimeri de Narbonne_, _Renier_, and the _Moniage Guillaume_, the poem
which unites the profane history of the _Marquis au Court Nez_ to the
legend of St William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes
odd. M. Gautier will not allow any of these poems (except the
_Bataille Loquifer_ and the two _Moniages_) great age; and even if it
were otherwise, and more of them were directly accessible,[42] there
could be no space to say much of them here. The sketch given should be
sufficient to show the general characteristics of the _chansons_ as
each is in itself, and also the curious and ingenious way in which
their successive authors have dovetailed and pieced them together into
continuous family chronicles.

[Footnote 42: _Foulques de Candie_ (ed. Tarbé, Reims, 1860) is the
only one of this batch which I possess, or have read _in extenso_.]

[Sidenote: _Some other_ chansons.]

If these delights can move any one, they may be found almost
universally distributed about the _chansons_. Of the minor groups the
most interesting and considerable are the crusading cycle, late as it
is in part, and that of the Lorrainers, which is, in the main, very
early. Of the former the _Chansons d'Antioche_ and _de Jérusalem_ are
almost historical, and are pretty certainly based on the account of an
actual partaker. _Antioche_ in particular has few superiors in the
whole hundred and more poems of the kind. _Hélias_ ties this historic
matter on to legend proper by introducing the story of the Knight of
the Swan; while _Les Chétifs_ (_The Captives_) combines history and
legend very interestingly, starting as it does with a probably
historical capture of certain Christians, who are then plunged in
dreamland of romance for the rest of it. The concluding poems of this
cycle, _Baudouin de Sebourc_ and the _Bastart de Bouillon_, have been
already more than once mentioned. They show, as has been said, the
latest form of the _chanson_, and are almost pure fiction, though they
have a sort of framework or outline in the wars in Northern Arabia, at
and round the city of Jôf, whose crusading towers still, according to
travellers, look down on the _hadj_ route through the desert. _Garin
le Loherain_, on the other hand, and its successors, are pure early
feudal fighting, as is also the early, excellent, and very
characteristic _Raoul de Cambrai_. These are instances, and no doubt
not the only ones, of what may be called district or provincial
_gestes_, applying the principles of the _chansons_ generally to local
quarrels and fortunes.

Of what purists call the sophisticated _chansons_, those in which
general romance-motives of different kinds are embroidered on the
strictly _chanson_ canvas, there are probably none more interesting
than the later forms of _Huon de Bordeaux_ and _Ogier de Danemarche_.
The former, since the fortunate reprinting of Lord Berners's version
by the Early English Text Society, is open to every one, though, of
course, the last vestiges of _chanson_ form have departed, and those
who can should read it as edited in M. Guessard's series. The still
more gracious legend, in which the ferocious champion Ogier, after his
early triumphs over the giant Caraheu and against the paladins of
Charles, is, like Huon, brought to the loadstone rock, is then
subjected to the enchantments--loving, and now not baneful--of
Arthur's sister Morgane, and tears himself from fairyland to come to
the rescue of France, is by far the most delightful of the attempts
to "cross" the Arthurian and Carlovingian cycles. And of this we
fortunately have in English a poetical version from the great
_trouvère_ among the poets of our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of
yet others, the often-mentioned _Voyage à Constantinoble_, with its
rather unseemly _gabz_ (boasting jests of the peers, which are
overheard by the heathen emperor with results which seem like at one
time to be awkward), is among the oldest, and is a warning against the
tendency to take the presence of comic elements as a necessary
evidence of late date. _Les Saisnes_, dealing with the war against the
Saxons, is a little loose in its morals, but vigorous and interesting.
The pleasant pair of _Aiol_ and _Elie de St Gilles_; the touching
history of Charlemagne's mother, _Berte aus grans Piés_; _Acquin_, one
of the rare _chansons_ dealing with Brittany (though Roland was
historically count thereof); _Gérard de Roussillon_, which has more
than merely philological interest; _Macaire_, already mentioned; the
famous _Quatre Fils d'Aymon_, longest and most widely popular, must be
added to the list, and are not all that should be added to it.

[Sidenote: _Final remarks on them._]

On the whole, I must repeat that the _chansons de geste_, which as we
have them are the work of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the
main, form the second division in point of literary value of early
mediæval literature, while they possess, in a certain "sincerity and
strength," qualities not to be found even in the Arthurian story
itself. Despite the ardour with which they have been philologically
studied for nearly three-quarters of a century, despite (or perhaps
because of) the enthusiasm which one or two devotees have shown for
their literary qualities, it does not seem to me that fair justice, or
anything like it, has yet been generally done. German critics care
little for literary merit, and are perhaps not often trained to
appreciate it; in England the _chansons_ have been strangely little
read. But the most singular thing is the cold reception, slightly if
at all thawed recently, which they have met in France itself. It may
give serious pause to the very high estimate generally entertained of
French criticism by foreigners to consider this coldness, which once
reached something like positive hostility in M. Ferdinand Brunetière,
the chief French literary critic of our generation. I regret to see
that M. Lanson, the latest historian of French literature, has not
dared to separate himself from the academic _grex_. "On ne saurait
nier," he says, "que quelques uns aient eu du talent;" but he
evidently feels that this generous concession is in need of guards and
caveats. There is no "beauté formelle" in them, he says--no formal
beauty in those magnificently sweeping _laisses_, of which the ear
that has once learnt their music can no more tire thereafter than of
the sound of the sea itself. The style (and if it be objected that his
previous words have been directly addressed to the later _chansons_
and _chanson_ writers, here he expressly says that this style "est le
même style que dans le _Roland_," though "moins sobre, moins plein,
moins sur") has "no beauty by itself," and finally he thinks that the
best thing to do is "to let nine-tenths of the _chansons_ follow
nine-tenths of our tragedies." I have read many _chansons_ and many
tragedies; but I have never read a _chanson_ that has not more poetry
in it than ninety-nine French tragedies out of a hundred.

The fact is that it is precisely the _beauté formelle_, assisted as it
is by the peculiar spirit of which so much has been said already,
which constitutes the beauty of these poems: and that these
characteristics are present, not of course in uniform measure, but
certainly in the great majority of the _chansons_ from _Roland_ to the
_Bastard_. Of course if a man sits down with a preconceived idea of an
epic poem, it is more likely than not that his preconceived idea will
be of something very different from a _chanson de geste_. And if,
refusing to depart from his preconceived idea, and making that idea up
of certain things taken from the _Iliad_, certain from the _Æneid_,
certain from the _Divina Commedia_, certain from _Paradise Lost_,--if
he runs over the list and says to the _chanson_, "Are you like Homer
in this point? Can you match me Virgil in that?" the result will be
that the _chanson_ will fail to pass its examination.

But if, with some knowledge of literature in the wide sense, and some
love for it, he sits down to take the _chansons_ as they are, and
judge them on their merits and by the law of their own poetical state,
then I think he will come to a very different conclusion. He will say
that their kind is a real kind, a thing by itself, something of which
if it were not, nothing else in literature could precisely supply the
want. And he will decide further that while the best of them are
remarkably good of their kind, few of them can be called positively
bad in it. And yet again, if he has been fortunately gifted by nature
with that appreciation of form which saves the critic from mere
prejudice and crotchet, from mere partiality, he will, I believe, go
further still, and say that while owing something to spirit, they owe
most to form itself, to the form of the single-assonanced or
mono-rhymed _tirade_, assisted as it is by the singular beauty of Old
French in sound, and more particularly by the sonorous recurring
phrases of the _chanson_ dialect. No doubt much instruction and some
amusement can be got out of these poems as to matters of fact: no
doubt some passages in _Roland_, in _Aliscans_, in the _Couronnement
Loys_, have a stern beauty of thought and sentiment which deserves
every recognition. But these things are not all-pervading, and they
can be found elsewhere: the clash and clang of the _tirade_ are
everywhere here, and can be found nowhere else.




CHAPTER III.

THE MATTER OF BRITAIN.

     ATTRACTIONS OF THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND. DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR
     SOURCES. THE PERSONALITY OF ARTHUR. THE FOUR WITNESSES.
     THEIR TESTIMONY. THE VERSION OF GEOFFREY. ITS LACUNÆ. HOW
     THE LEGEND GREW. WACE. LAYAMON. THE ROMANCES PROPER. WALTER
     MAP. ROBERT DE BORRON. CHRESTIEN DE TROYES. PROSE OR VERSE
     FIRST? A LATIN GRAAL-BOOK. THE MABINOGION. THE LEGEND
     ITSELF. THE STORY OF JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA. MERLIN. LANCELOT.
     THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC. STORIES OF GAWAIN AND OTHER
     KNIGHTS. SIR TRISTRAM. HIS STORY ALMOST CERTAINLY CELTIC.
     SIR LANCELOT. THE MINOR KNIGHTS. ARTHUR. GUINEVERE. THE
     GRAAL. HOW IT PERFECTS THE STORY. NATURE OF THIS PERFECTION.
     NO SEQUEL POSSIBLE. LATIN EPISODES. THE LEGEND AS A WHOLE.
     THE THEORIES OF ITS ORIGIN. CELTIC. FRENCH. ENGLISH.
     LITERARY. THE CELTIC THEORY. THE FRENCH CLAIMS. THE THEORY
     OF GENERAL LITERARY GROWTH. THE ENGLISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN
     PRETENSIONS. ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS.


[Sidenote: _Attractions of the Arthurian Legend._]

To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers only, the
middle division of the three great romance-subjects[43] ought to be of
far higher interest than the others; and that not merely, even in the
English case, for reasons of local patriotism. The mediæval versions
of classical story, though attractive to the highest degree as
evidence of the extraordinary plastic power of the period, which could
transform all art to its own image and guise, and though not destitute
of individual charm here and there, must always be mainly curiosities.
The cycle of Charlemagne, a genuine growth and not merely an
incrustation or transformation, illustrated, moreover, by particular
examples of the highest merit, is exposed on the one hand to the
charge of a certain monotony, and on the other to the objection that,
beautiful as it is, it is dead. For centuries, except in a few
deliberate literary exercises, the king _à la barbe florie_ has
inspired no modern singer--his _geste_ is extinct. But the Legend of
Arthur, the latest to take definite form of the three, has shown by
far the greatest vitality. From generation to generation it has taken
new forms, inspired new poetries. The very latest of the centuries has
been the most prolific in contributions of any since the end of the
Middle Ages; and there is no sufficient reason why the lineage should
ever stop. For while the romance of antiquity is a mere "sport," an
accident of time and circumstance, the _chanson de geste_, majestic
and interesting as it is, representative as it is to a certain extent
of a nation and a language, has the capital defect of not being
adaptable. Having little or no allegorical capacity, little "soul," so
to speak, it was left by the tide of time on the shores thereof
without much hope of floating and living again. The Arthurian Legend,
if not from the very first, yet from the first moment when it assumed
vernacular forms, lent itself to that double meaning which, though it
is open to abuse, and was terribly abused in these very ages, is after
all the salvation of things literary, since every age adopting the
first and outer meaning can suit the second and inner to its own taste
and need.

[Footnote 43: See the quotation from Jean Bodel, p. 26, note. The
literature of the Arthurian question is very large; and besides the
drawbacks referred to in the text, much of it is scattered in
periodicals. The most useful recent things in English are Mr Nutt's
_Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail_ (London, 1888); Professor
Rhys's _Arthurian Legend_ (Oxford, 1891); and the extensive
introduction to Dr Sommer's _Malory_ (London, 1890). In French the
elaborate papers on different parts which M. Gaston Paris brings out
at intervals in _Romania_ cannot be neglected; and M. Loth's surveys
of the subject there and in the _Revue Celtique_ (October 1892) are
valuable. Naturally, there has been a great deal in German, the best
being, perhaps, Dr Kölbing's long introduction to his reprint of
_Arthour and Merlin_ (Leipzig, 1890). Other books will be mentioned in
subsequent notes; but a complete and impartial history of the whole
subject, giving the contents, with strictly literary criticism only,
of all the texts, and merely summarising theories as to origin, &c.,
is still wanting, and sorely wanted. Probably there is still no
better, as there is certainly no more delightful, book on the matter
than M. Paulin Paris's _Romans de la Table Ronde_ (5 vols., Paris,
1868-77). The monograph by M. Clédat on the subject in M. Petit de
Julleville's new _History_ (_v. supra_, p. 23, note) is unfortunately
not by any means one of the best of these studies.]

[Sidenote: _Discussions on their sources._]

That the vitality of the Legend is in part, if not wholly, due to the
strange crossing and blending of its sources, I at least have no
doubt. To discuss these sources at all, much more to express any
definite opinion on the proportions and order of their blending, is a
difficult matter for any literary student, and dangerous withal; but
the adventure is of course not to be wholly shirked here. The matter
has, both in England and abroad, been quite recently the subject of
that rather acrimonious debating by which scholars in modern tongues
seem to think it a point of honour to rival the scholars of a former
day in the classics, though the vocabulary used is less picturesque. A
great deal of this debate, too, turns on matters of sheer opinion, in
regard to which language only appropriate to matters of sheer
knowledge is too often used. The candid inquirer, informed that Mr, or
M., or Herr So-and-so, has "proved" such and such a thing in such and
such a book or dissertation, turns to the text, to find to his
grievous disappointment that nothing is "proved"--but that more or
less probable arguments are advanced with less or more temper against
or in favour of this or that hypothesis. Even the dates of MSS., which
in all such cases must be regarded as the primary data, are very
rarely _data_ at all, but only (to coin, or rather adapt, a
much-needed term) _speculata_. And the matter is further complicated
by the facts that extremely few scholars possess equal and adequate
knowledge of Celtic, English, French, German, and Latin, and that the
best palæographers are by no means always the best literary critics.

Where every one who has handled the subject has had to confess, or
should have confessed, imperfect equipment in one or more respects,
there is no shame in confessing one's own shortcomings. I cannot speak
as a Celtic scholar; and I do not pretend to have examined MSS. But
for a good many years I have been familiar with the printed texts and
documents in Latin, English, French, and German, and I believe that I
have not neglected any important modern discussions of the subject.
To have no Celtic is the less disqualification in that all the most
qualified Celtic scholars themselves admit, however highly they may
rate the presence of the Celtic element in spirit, that no texts of
the legend in its romantic form at present existing in the Celtic
tongues are really ancient. And it is understood that there is now
very little left unprinted that can throw much light on the general
question. I shall therefore endeavour, without entering into
discussions on minor points which would be unsuitable to the book, to
give what seems to me the most probable view of the case, corrected by
(though not by any means adjusted in a hopeless zigzag of deference
to) the various authorities, from Ritson to Professor Rhys, from
Paulin Paris to M. Loth, and from San Marte to Drs Förster and Zimmer.

The first and the most important thing--a thing which has been by no
means always or often done--is to keep the question of Arthur apart
from the question of the Arthurian Legend.

[Sidenote: _The personality of Arthur._]

That there was no such a person as Arthur in reality was at one time a
not very uncommon opinion among men who could call themselves
scholars, though of late it has yielded to probable if not certain
arguments. The two most damaging facts are the entire silence of Bede
and that of Gildas in regard to him. The silence of Bede might be
accidental, and he wrote _ex hypothesi_ nearly two centuries after
Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely careful, and the
neighbourhood of his own Northumbria was certainly not that in which
traditions of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas should
say nothing is more surprising and more difficult of explanation. For
putting aside altogether the positive testimony of the _Vita Gildæ_,
to which we shall come presently, Gildas was, again _ex hypothesi_, a
contemporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about him. If the
compound of scolding and lamentation known as _De Excidio Britanniæ_
is late and a forgery, we should expect it to contain some reference
to the king; if it is early and genuine, it is difficult to see how
such reference could possibly be omitted.

[Sidenote: _The four witnesses._]

At the same time, mere silence can never establish anything but a
presumption; and the presumption is in this case rebutted by far
stronger probabilities on the other side. The evidence is here drawn
from four main sources, which we may range in the order of their
chronological bearing. First, there are the Arthurian place-names, and
the traditions respecting them; secondly, the fragments of genuine
early Welsh reference to Arthur; thirdly, the famous passage of
Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to probably dated
literature; fourthly, the curious references in the above-referred-to
_Vita Gildæ_ of, or attributed to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this
last, or at a time contemporary with it, we come to the comparatively
detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the beginning of the
Legend proper.

[Sidenote: _Their testimony._]

To summarise this evidence as carefully but as briefly as possible, we
find, in almost all parts of Britain beyond the range of the first
Saxon conquests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, and
Lothian, certain place-names connecting themselves either with Arthur
himself or with the early catalogue of his battles.[44] We find
allusions to him in Welsh poetry which may be as old as the sixth
century--allusions, it is true, of the vaguest and most meagre kind,
and touching no point of his received story except his mysterious
death or no-death, but fairly corroborative of his actual existence.
Nennius--the much-debated Nennius, whom general opinion attributes to
the ninth century, but who _may_ be as early as the eighth, and cannot
well be later than the tenth--gives us the catalogue of the twelve
battles, and the exploits of Arthur against the Saxons, in a single
paragraph containing no reference to any but military matters, and
speaking of Arthur not as king but as a _dux bellorum_ commanding
kings, many of whom were more noble than himself.

[Footnote 44: The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity,
endeavoured in his _Four Ancient Books of Wales_ to claim all or
almost all these place-names for Scotland in the wide sense. This can
hardly be admitted: but impartial students of the historical
references and the romances together will observe the constant
introduction of northern localities in the latter, and the express
testimony in the former to the effect that Arthur was general of _all_
the British forces. We need not rob Cornwall to pay Lothian. For the
really old references in Welsh poetry see, besides Skene, Professor
Rhys, _op. cit._ Gildas and Nennius (but not the _Vita Gildæ_) will be
found conveniently translated, with Geoffrey himself, in a volume of
Bohn's Historical Library, _Six Old English Chronicles_. The E.E.T.S.
edition of _Merlin_ contains a very long _excursus_ by Mr
Stuart-Glennie on the place-name question.]

The first authority from whom we get any _personal_ account of Arthur
is Caradoc, if Caradoc it be. The biographer makes his hero St Gildas
(I put minor and irrelevant discrepancies aside) contemporary with
Arthur, whom he loved, and who was king of all Greater Britain. But
his brother kings did not admit this sovereignty quietly, and often
put him to flight. At last Arthur overthrew and slew Hoel, who was his
_major natu_, and became unquestioned _rex universalis Britanniæ_, but
incurred the censure of the Church for killing Hoel. From this sin
Gildas himself at length absolved him. But King Melvas carried off
King Arthur's queen, and it was only after a year that Arthur found
her at Glastonbury and laid siege to that place. Gildas and the abbot,
however, arranged matters, and the queen was given up. It is most
proper to add in this place that probably at much the same time as the
writings of Caradoc and of Geoffrey (_v. infra_), or at a time not
very distant, William of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cambrensis give us
Glastonbury traditions as to the tomb of Arthur, &c., which show that
by the middle of the twelfth century such traditions were clustering
thickly about the Isle of Avalon. All this time, however, it is very
important to notice that there is hardly the germ, and, except in
Caradoc, not even the germ, of what makes the Arthurian Legend
interesting to us, even of what we call the Arthurian Legend. Although
the fighting with the Saxons plays an important part in the _Merlin_
branches of the story, it has extremely little to do with the local
traditions, and was continually reduced in importance by the men of
real genius, especially Mapes, Chrestien, and, long afterwards,
Malory, who handled them. The escapade of Melvas communicates a touch
rather nearer to the perfect form, but only a little nearer to it. In
fact, there is hardly more in the story at this point than in hundreds
of other references in early history or fiction to obscure kinglets
who fought against invaders.

[Sidenote: _The version of Geoffrey._]

And it is again very important to observe that, though under the hands
of Geoffrey of Monmouth the story at once acquires more romantic
proportions, it is still not in the least, or only in the least, the
story that we know. The advance is indeed great. The wonder-working of
Merlin is brought in to help the patriotism of Arthur. The story of
Uther's love for Igraine at once alters the mere chronicle into a
romance. Arthur, the fruit of this passion, succeeds his father,
carries on victorious war at home and abroad, is crowned with
magnificence at Caerleon, is challenged by and defeats the Romans, is
about to pass the Alps when he hears that his nephew Mordred, left in
charge of the kingdom, has assumed the crown, and that Guinevere
(Guanhumara, of whom we have only heard before as "of a noble Roman
family, and surpassing in beauty all the women of the island") has
wickedly married him. Arthur returns, defeats Mordred at Rutupiæ
(after this battle Guinevere takes the veil), and, at Winchester,
drives him to the extremity of Cornwall, and there overthrows and
kills him. But the renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded,
and "being carried thence to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his
wounds, he gave up the crown to his kinsman Constantine." And so
Arthur passes out of Geoffrey's story, in obedience to one of the
oldest, and certainly the most interesting, of what seem to be the
genuine Welsh notices of the king--"Not wise is it to seek the grave
of Arthur."

[Sidenote: _Its_ lacunæ.]

A few people, perhaps, who read this little book will need to be told
that Geoffrey attributed the new and striking facts which he sprung
upon his contemporaries to a British book which Walter, Archdeacon of
Oxford, had brought out of Armorica: and that not the slightest trace
of this most interesting and important work has ever been found. It is
a thousand pities that it has not survived, inasmuch as it was not
only "a very ancient book in the British tongue," but contained "a
continuous story in an elegant style." However, the inquiry whether
Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, did or did not belong to the ancient
British family of Harris may be left to historians proper. To the
specially literary historian the chief point of interest is first to
notice how little, if Geoffrey really did take his book from "British"
sources, those sources apparently contained of the Arthurian Legend
proper as we now know it. An extension of the fighting with Saxons at
home, and the addition of that with Romans abroad, the Igraine
episode, or rather overture, the doubtless valuable introduction of
Merlin, the treason of Mordred and Guinevere, and the retirement to
Avalon--that is practically all. No Round Table; no knights (though
"Walgan, the king's nephew," is, of course, an early appearance of
Gawain); none of the interesting difficulties about Arthur's
succession: an entire absence of personal characteristics about
Guinevere (even that peculiarity of hers which a French critic has
politely described as her being "very subject to be carried off," and
which already appears in Caradoc, being changed to a commonplace act
of ambitious infidelity with Mordred): and, most remarkable of all, no
Lancelot, and no Holy Grail.

Nevertheless Geoffrey had, as it has been the fashion to say of late
years, "set the heather on fire," and perhaps in no literary instance
on record did the blaze spread and heighten itself with such
extraordinary speed and intensity. His book must have been written a
little before the middle of the twelfth century: by the end thereof
the legend was, except for the embellishments and amplifications which
the Middle Age was always giving, complete.

[Sidenote: _How the Legend grew._]

In the account of its probable origins and growth which follows
nothing can be further from the writer's wish than to emulate the
confident dogmatism of those who claim to have proved or disproved
this or that fact or hypothesis. In the nature of the case proof is
impossible; we cannot go further than probability. It is unfortunate
that some of the disputants on this, as on other kindred subjects,
have not more frequently remembered the admirable words of the
greatest modern practitioner and though he lacked some more recent
information, the shrewdest modern critic of romance itself.[45] I
need only say that though I have not in the least borrowed from
either, and though I make neither responsible for my views, these
latter, as they are about to be stated, will be found most to resemble
those of Sir Frederic Madden in England and M. Paulin Paris in
France--the two critics who, coming after the age of wild guesswork
and imperfect reading, and before that of a scholarship which,
sometimes at least, endeavours to vindicate itself by innovation for
the sake of innovation, certainly equalled, and perhaps exceeded, any
others in their familiarity with the actual texts. With that
familiarity, so far as MSS. go, I repeat that I do not pretend to vie.
But long and diligent reading of the printed material, assisted by
such critical lights as critical practice in more literatures than one
or two for many years may give, has led me to the belief that when
they agreed they were pretty sure to be right, and that when they
differed, the authority of either was at least equal, as authority, to
anything subsequent.

[Footnote 45: "Both these subjects of discussion [authorship and
performance of Romances] have been the source of great controversy
among antiquaries--a class of men who, be it said with their
forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very
points which are least susceptible of proof, and least valuable, if
the truth could be ascertained."--Sir Walter Scott, "Essay on
Romance," _Prose Works_, vi. 154.]

[Sidenote: _Wace._]

The known or reasonably inferred historical procession of the Legend
is as follows. Before the middle of the twelfth century we have
nothing that can be called a story. At almost that exact point (the
subject of the dedication of the _Historia Britonum_ died in 1146)
Geoffrey supplies the outlines of such a story. They were at once
seized upon for filling in. Before many years two well-known writers
had translated Geoffrey's Latin into French, another Geoffrey, Gaimar,
and Wace of Jersey. Gaimar's _Brut_ (a title which in a short time
became generic) has not come down to us: Wace's (written in 1155) has,
and though there is, as yet, no special attention bestowed upon
Arthur, the Arthurian part of the story shares the process of
dilatation and amplification usual in the Middle Ages. The most
important of these additions is the appearance of the Round Table.

[Sidenote: _Layamon._]

As Geoffrey fell into the hands of Wace, so did Wace fall into those
of Layamon; but here the result is far more interesting, both for the
history of the legend itself and for its connection with England. Not
only did the priest of Ernley or Arley-on-Severn do the English tongue
the inestimable service of introducing Arthur to it, not only did he
write the most important book by far, both in size, in form, and in
matter, that was written in English between the Conquest and the
fourteenth century, but he added immensely to the actual legend. It is
true that these additions still do not exactly give us the Arthur whom
we know, for they still concern the wars with the Saxons and Romans
chiefly. But if it were only that we find first[46] in Layamon the
introduction of "elves" at Arthur's birth, and his conveyance by them
at death in a magic boat to Queen "Argante" at Avalon, it would be
almost enough. But there is much more. The Uther story is enlarged,
and with it the appearances of Merlin; the foundation of the Round
Table receives added attention; the voluntary yielding of Guinevere,
here called Wenhaver, is insisted upon, and Gawain (Walwain) and
Bedivere (Beduer) make their appearance. But there is still no
Lancelot, and still no Grail.

[Footnote 46: A caution may be necessary as to this word "first."
Nearly all the dates are extremely uncertain, and it is highly
probable that intermediate texts of great importance are lost, or not
yet found. But Layamon gives us Wace as an authority, and this is not
in Wace. See Madden's edition (London, 1847).]

[Sidenote: _The Romances proper._]

These additions, which on the one side gave the greatest part of the
secular interest, on the other almost the whole of the mystical
attraction, to the complete story, had, however, it seems probable,
been actually added before Layamon wrote. For the date of the earlier
version of his _Brut_ is put by the best authorities at not earlier
than 1200, and it is also, according to such authorities, almost
certain that the great French romances (which contain the whole legend
with the exception of part of the Tristram story, and of hitherto
untraced excursions like Malory's Beaumains) had been thrown into
shape. But the origin, the authorship, and the order of _Merlin_ in
its various forms, of the _Saint Graal_ and the _Quest_ for it, of
_Lancelot_ and the _Mort Artus_,--these things are the centre of
nearly all the disputes upon the subject.

[Sidenote: _Walter Map._]

A consensus of MS. authority ascribes the best and largest part of
the _prose_ romances,[47] especially those dealing with Lancelot and
the later fortunes of the Graal and the Round Table company, to no
less a person than the famous Englishman Walter Mapes, or Map, the
author of _De Nugis Curialium_, the reputed author (_v._ chap. i.) of
divers ingenious Latin poems, friend of Becket, Archdeacon of Oxford,
churchman, statesman, and wit. No valid reason whatever has yet been
shown for questioning this attribution, especially considering the
number, antiquity, and strength of the documents by which it is
attested. Map's date (1137-96) is the right one; his abilities were
equal to any literary performance; his evident familiarity with things
Welsh (he seems to have been a Herefordshire man) would have informed
him of Welsh tradition, if there was any, and the _De Nugis Curialium_
shows us in him, side by side with a satirical and humorous bent, the
leaning to romance and to the marvellous which only extremely shallow
people believe to be alien from humour. But it is necessary for
scholarship of the kind just referred to to be always devising some
new thing. Frenchmen, Germans, and Celticising partisans have grudged
an Englishman the glory of the exploit; and there has been of late a
tendency to deny or slight Map's claims. His deposition, however,
rests upon no solid argument, and though it would be exceedingly rash,
considering the levity with which the copyists in mediæval MSS.
attributed authorship, to assert positively that Map wrote _Lancelot_,
or the _Quest of the Saint Graal_, it may be asserted with the utmost
confidence that it has not been proved that he did not.

[Footnote 47: These, both Map's and Borron's (_v. infra_), with some
of the verse forms connected with them, are in a very puzzling
condition for study. M. Paulin Paris's book, above referred to,
abstracts most of them; the actual texts, as far as published, are
chiefly to be found in Hucher, _Le Saint Graal_ (3 vols., Le Mans,
1875-78); in Michel's _Petit Saint Graal_ (Paris, 1841); in the
_Merlin_ of MM. G. Paris and Ulrich (Paris, 1886). But _Lancelot_ and
the later parts are practically inaccessible in any modern edition.]

[Sidenote: _Robert de Borron._]

The other claimant for the authorship of a main part of the story--in
this case the Merlin part, and the long history of the Graal from the
days of Joseph of Arimathea downwards--is a much more shadowy person,
a certain Robert de Borron, a knight of the north of France. Nobody
has much interest in disturbing Borron's claims, though they also have
been attacked; and it is only necessary to say that there is not the
slightest ground for supposing that he was an ancestor of Lord Byron,
as was once very gratuitously done, the time when he was first heard
of happening to coincide with the popularity of that poet.

[Sidenote: _Chrestien de Troyes._]

The third personage who is certainly or uncertainly connected by name
with the original framework of the legend is again more substantial
than Robert de Borron, though less so than Walter Map. As his surname,
derived from his birthplace, indicates, Chrestien de Troyes was of
Champenois extraction, thus belonging to the province which, with
Normandy, contributed most to early French literature. And he seems to
have been attached not merely to the court of his native prince, the
Count of Champagne, but to those of the neighbouring Walloon lordships
or principalities of Flanders and Hainault. Of his considerable work
(all of it done, it would seem, before the end of the twelfth century)
by far the larger part is Arthurian--the immense romance of _Percevale
le Gallois_,[48] much of which, however, is the work of continuators;
the interesting episode of the Lancelot saga, called _Le Chevalier à
la Charette_; _Erec et Énide_, the story known to every one from Lord
Tennyson's idyll; the _Chevalier au Lyon_, a Gawain legend; and
_Cligès_, which is quite on the outside of the Arthurian group. All
these works are written in octosyllabic couplets, particularly light
and skipping, somewhat destitute of force and grip, but full of grace
and charm. Of their contents more presently.

[Footnote 48: Ed. Potvin, 6 vols., Mons, 1866-70. Dr Förster has
undertaken a complete Chrestien, of which the 2d and 3d vols. are
_Yvain_ ("Le Chevalier au Lyon") and _Erec_ (Halle, 1887-90). _Le
Chevalier à la Charette_ should be read in Dr Jonckbloët's invaluable
parallel edition with the prose of _Lancelot_ (The Hague, 1850). On
this last see M. G. Paris, _Romania_, xii. 459--an admirable paper,
though I do not agree with it.]

Next to the questions of authorship and of origin in point of
difficulty come two others--"Which are the older: the prose or the
verse romances?" and, "Was there a Latin original of the Graal story?"

[Sidenote: _Prose or verse first?_]

With regard to the first, it has long been laid down as a general
axiom, and it is no doubt as a rule true, that prose is always later
than verse, and that in mediæval times especially the order is almost
invariable. Verse; unrhymed and half-disrhythmed prose; prose pure and
simple: that is what we find. For many reasons, however, drawn partly
from the presumed age of the MSS. and partly from internal evidence,
the earlier scholars who considered the Arthurian matter, especially
M. Paulin Paris, came to the conclusion that here the prose romances
were, if not universally, yet for the most part, the earlier. And
this, though it is denied by M. Paris's equally learned son, still
seems the more probable opinion. For, in the first place, by this time
prose, though not in a very advanced condition, was advanced enough
not to make it absolutely necessary for it to lag behind verse, as had
been the case with the _chansons de geste_. And in the second place,
while the prose romances are far more comprehensive than the verse,
the age of the former seems to be beyond question such that there
could be no need, time, or likelihood for the reduction to a general
prose summary of separate verse originals, while the separate verse
episodes are very easily intelligible as developed from parts of the
prose original.[49]

[Footnote 49: The parallel edition, above referred to, of the
_Chevalier à la Charette_ and the corresponding prose settled this in
my mind long ago; and though I have been open to unsettlement since, I
have not been unsettled. The most unlucky instance of that
over-positiveness to which I have referred above is M. Clédat's
statement that "nous savons" that the prose romances are later than
the verse. We certainly do not "know" this any more than we know the
contrary. There is important authority both ways; there is fair
argument both ways; but the positive evidence which alone can turn
opinion into knowledge has not been produced, and probably does not
exist.]

[Sidenote: _A Latin Graal-book._]

With regard to the Latin Graal-book, the testimony of the romances
themselves is formal enough as to its existence. But no trace of it
has been found, and its loss, if it existed, is contrary to all
probability. For _ex hypothesi_ (and if we take one part of the
statement we must take the rest) it was not a recent composition, but
a document, whether of miraculous origin or not, of considerable age.
Why it should only at this time have come to light, why it should have
immediately perished, and why none of the persons who took interest
enough in it to turn it into the vernacular should have transmitted
his copy to posterity, are questions difficult, or rather impossible,
to answer. But here, again, the wise critic will not peremptorily
deny. He will say that there _may_ be a Latin Graal-book, and that
when that book is produced, and stands the test of examination, he
will believe in it; but that until it appears he will be contented
with the French originals of the end of the twelfth century. Of the
characteristic and probable origins of the Graal story itself, as of
those of the larger Legend of which it forms a part, it will be time
enough to speak when we have first given an account of the general
history as it took shape, probably before the twelfth century had
closed, certainly very soon after the thirteenth had opened. For the
whole Legend--even excluding the numerous ramifications into
independent or semi-independent _romans d'aventures_--is not found in
any single book or compilation. The most extensive, and by far the
best, that of our own Malory, is very late, extremely though far from
unwisely eclectic, and adjusted to the presumed demands of readers,
and to the certain existence in the writer of a fine literary sense of
fitness. It would be trespassing on the rights of a future contributor
to say much directly of Malory; but it must be said here that in what
he omits, as well as in his treatment of what he inserts, he shows
nothing short of genius. Those who call him a mere, or even a bad,
compiler, either have not duly considered the matter or speak
unhappily.

But before we go further it may be well also to say a word on the
Welsh stories, which, though now admitted to be in their present form
later than the Romances, are still regarded as possible originals by
some.

[Sidenote: _The Mabinogion._]

It would hardly be rash to rest the question of the Celtic origin, in
any but the most remote and partial sense, of the Arthurian Romances
on the _Mabinogion_[50] alone. The posteriority of these as we have
them need not be too much dwelt upon. We need not even lay great
stress on what I believe to be a fact not likely to be disputed by
good critics, that the reading of the French and the Welsh-English
versions one after the other, no matter in what order they be taken,
will leave something more than an impression that the French is the
direct original of the Welsh, and that the Welsh, in anything at all
like its present form, could not by any possibility be the original of
the French. The test to which I refer is this. Let any one read, with
as open a mind as he can procure, the three Welsh-French or
French-Welsh romances of _Yvain-Owain_, _Erec-Geraint_, and
_Percivale-Peredur_, and then turn to those that are certainly and
purely Celtic, _Kilhwch and Olwen_, the _Dream of Rhiabwy_ (both of
these Arthurian after a fashion, though quite apart from our Arthurian
Legend), and the fourfold _Mabinogi_, which tells the adventures of
Rhiannon and those of Math ap Matholwy. I cannot conceive this being
done by any one without his feeling that he has passed from one world
into another entirely different,--that the two classes of story simply
_cannot_ by any possibility be, in any more than the remotest
suggestion, the work of the same people, or have been produced under
the same literary covenant.

[Footnote 50: Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, 2d ed., London,
1877.]

[Sidenote: _The Legend itself._]

Let us now turn to the Legend itself. The story which ends in Avalon
begins in Jerusalem. For though the Graal-legends are undoubtedly
later additions to whatever may have been the original Arthurian
saga--seeing that we find nothing of them in the early Welsh
traditions, nothing in Nennius, nothing in Geoffrey, nothing even in
Wace or Layamon--yet such is the skill with which the unknown or
uncertain authors have worked them into the legend that the whole
makes one indivisible romance. Yet (as the untaught genius of Malory
instinctively perceived) when the Graal-story on the one hand, and the
loves of Lancelot and Guinevere with which it is connected on the
other, came in, they made comparatively otiose and uninteresting the
wars with Saxons and Romans, which in the earlier Legend had occupied
almost the whole room. And accordingly these wars, which still hold a
very large part of the field in the _Merlin_, drop out to some extent
later. The whole cycle consists practically of five parts, each of
which in almost all cases exists in divers forms, and more than one of
which overlaps and is overlapped by one or more of the others. These
five are _Merlin_, the _Saint-Graal_, _Lancelot_, the _Quest of the
Saint-Graal_, and the _Death of Arthur_. Each of the first two pairs
intertwines with the other: the last, _Mort Artus_, completes them
all, and thus its title was not improperly used in later times to
designate the whole Legend.

[Sidenote: _The story of Joseph of Arimathea._]

The starting-point of the whole, in time and incident, is the supposed
revenge of the Jews on Joseph of Arimathea for the part he has taken
in the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into prison and remains there
(miraculously comforted, so that the time seems to him but as a day or
two) till delivered by Titus. Then he and certain more or less
faithful Christians set out in charge of the Holy Graal, which has
served for the Last Supper, which holds Christ's blood, and which is
specially under the guardianship of Joseph's son, the Bishop
"Josephes," to seek foreign lands, and a home for the Holy Vessel.
After a long series of the wildest adventures, in which the
personages, whose names are known rather mistily to readers of Malory
only--King Evelake, Naciens, and others--appear fully, and in which
many marvels take place, the company, or the holier survivors of them,
are finally settled in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or
Mordrains) causes him to receive the "dolorous stroke," from which
none but his last descendant, Galahad, is to recover him fully. The
most striking of all these adventures, related in various forms in
other parts of the Legend, is the sojourn of Naciens on a desert
island, where he is tempted of the devil; while a very great part is
played throughout by the Legend of the Three Trees, which in
successive ages play their part in the Fall, in the first origin of
mankind according to natural birth, not creation, in the building of
the Temple, and in the Passion. This later legend, a wild but very
beautiful one, dominated the imagination of English mediæval writers
very particularly, and is fully developed, apart from its Arthurian
use, in the vast and interesting miscellany of the _Cursor Mundi_.

[Sidenote: _Merlin._]

But when the Graal and its guardians have been safely established upon
English soil, the connection of the legend with the older and, so to
speak, historical Arthurian traditions, is effected by means of
Merlin, in a manner at least ingenious if not very direct. The results
of the Passion, and especially the establishment on earth of a
Christian monarchy with a sort of palladium in the Saint-Graal,
greatly disturb the equanimity of the infernal regions; and a council
is held to devise counter-policy. It occurs apparently that as this
discomfiture has come by means of the union of divine and human
natures, it can be best opposed by a union of human and diabolic: and
after some minor proceedings a seductive devil is despatched to play
incubus to the last and chastest daughter of a _prud'homme_, who has
been driven to despair and death by previous satanic attacks. The
attempt is successful in a way; but as the victim keeps her chastity
of intention and mind, not only is she herself saved from the legal
consequences of the matter, but her child when born is the celebrated
Merlin, a being endowed with supernatural power and knowledge, and not
always scrupulous in the use of them, but always on the side of the
angels rather than of his paternal kinsfolk. A further and more
strictly literary connection is effected by attributing the knowledge
of the Graal history to his information, conveyed to his master and
pupil Blaise, who writes it (as well as the earlier adventures at
least of the Arthurian era proper) from Merlin's dictation or report.

For some time the various Merlin stories follow Geoffrey in recounting
the adventures of the prophetic child in his youth, with King
Vortigern and others. But he is soon brought (again in accordance with
Geoffrey) into direct responsibility for Arthur, by his share in the
wooing of Igraine. For it is to be observed that--and not in this
instance only--though there is usually some excuse for him, Merlin is
in these affairs more commonly occupied in making two lovers happy
than in attending to the strict dictates of morality. And
thenceforward till his inclusion in his enchanted prison (an affair in
which it is proper to say that the earliest versions give a much more
favourable account of the conduct and motives of the heroine than that
which Malory adopted, and which Tennyson for purposes of poetic
contrast blackened yet further) he plays the part of adviser,
assistant, and good enchanter generally to Arthur and Arthur's
knights. He in some stories directly procures, and in all confirms,
the seating of Arthur on his father's throne; he brings the king's
nephews, Gawain and the rest, to assist their uncle, in some cases
against their own fathers; he presides over the foundation of the
Round Table, and brings about the marriage of Guinevere and Arthur; he
assists, sometimes by actual force of arms, sometimes as head of the
intelligence department, sometimes by simple gramarye, in the
discomfiture not merely of the rival and rebel kinglets, but of the
Saxons and Romans. As has been said, Malory later thought proper to
drop the greater part of this latter business (including the
interminable fights round the _Roche aux Saisnes_ or Saxon rock). And
he also discarded a curious episode which makes a great figure in the
original _Merlin_, the tale of the "false Guinevere," a foster-sister,
namesake, and counterpart of the true princess, who is nearly
substituted for Guinevere herself on her bridal night, and who later
usurps for a considerable time the place and rights of the queen. For
it cannot be too often repeated that Arthur, not even in Malory a
"blameless king" by any means, is in the earlier and original versions
still less blameless, especially in the article of faithfulness to his
wife.

We do not, however, in the _Merlin_ group proper get any tidings of
Lancelot, though Lucan, Kay, Bedivere, and others, as well as Gawain
and the other sons of Lot, make their appearance, and the Arthurian
court and _régime_, as we imagine it with the Round Table, is already
constituted. It is to be observed that in the earlier versions there
is even a sharp rivalry between the "Round Table" proper and the
"Queen's" or younger knights. But this subsides, and the whole is
centred at Camelot, with the realm (until Mordred's treachery) well
under control, and with a constant succession of adventures,
culminating in the greatest of all, the Quest of the Graal or Sangreal
itself. Although there are passages of great beauty, the excessive
mysticism, the straggling conduct of the story, and the extravagant
praise of virginity in and for itself, in the early Graal history,
have offended some readers. In the _Merlin_ proper the incompleteness,
the disproportionate space given to mere kite-and-crow fighting, and
the defect of love-interest, undoubtedly show themselves. Although
Merlin was neither by extraction nor taste likely to emulate the
almost ferocious horror of human affection entertained by Robert de
Borron (if Robert de Borron it was), the authors of his history,
except in the version of his own fatal passion, above referred to,
have touched the subject with little grace or charm. And while the
great and capital tragedies of Lancelot and Guinevere, of Tristram and
Iseult, are wholly lacking, there is an equal lack of such minor
things as the episodes of Lancelot and the two Elaines, of Pelleas and
the Lady of the Lake, and many others. Nor is this lack compensated by
the stories of the incestuous (though on neither side consciously
incestuous, and on the queen's quite innocent) adventure of Arthur
with his sister Margause, of the exceedingly unromantic wooing of
Morgane le Fée, and of the warlock-planned intercourse of King Ban
and the mother of Lancelot.

[Sidenote: _Lancelot._]

Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, or both, or
neither, to whom the glory of at once completing and exalting the
story is due, I at least have no pretension to decide. Whosoever did
it, if he did it by himself, was a very great man indeed--a man second
only to Dante among the men of the Middle Age. Even if it was done by
an irregular company of men, each patching and piecing the others'
efforts, the result shows a marvellous "wind of the spirit" abroad and
blowing on that company. As before, the reader of Malory only, though
he has nearly all the best things, has not quite all even of those,
and is without a considerable number of things not quite the best, but
good. The most difficult to justify of the omissions of Sir Thomas is
the early history of the loves of Guinevere and Lancelot, when the
knight was introduced to the queen by Galahault the haughty
prince--"Galeotto," as he appears in the most universally known
passage of Dante himself. Not merely that unforgettable association,
but the charm and grace of the original passage, as well as the
dramatic and ethical justification, so to speak, of the fatal passion
which wrecked at once Lancelot's quest and Arthur's kingdom, combine
to make us regret this exclusion. But Malory's genius was evidently
rather an unconscious than a definitely critical one. And though the
exquisite felicity of his touch in detail is established once for all
by comparing his prose narratives of the Passing of Arthur and the
parting of Lancelot and the queen with the verse[51] from which he
almost beyond question directly took both, he must sometimes have been
bewildered by the mass of material from which he had to select, and
may not always have included or excluded with equally unerring
judgment.

[Footnote 51: _Le Morte Arthur_ (ed. Furnivall, London, 1864), l. 3400
_sqq._]

[Sidenote: _The Legend becomes dramatic._]

We have seen that in the original story of Geoffrey the treason of
Mordred and the final scenes take place while Arthur is warring
against the Romans, very shortly after he has established his
sovereignty in the Isle of Britain. Walter, or Chrestien, or whoever
it was, saw that such a waste of good romantic material could never be
tolerated. The romance is never--it has not been even in the hands of
its most punctilious modern practitioners--very observant of miserable
_minutiæ_ of chronology; and after all, it was reasonable that
Arthur's successes should give him some considerable enjoyment of his
kingdom. It will not do to scrutinise too narrowly, or we should have
to make Arthur a very old man at his death, and Guinevere a lady too
elderly to leave any excuse for her proceedings, in order to
accommodate the birth of Lancelot (which happened, according to the
_Merlin_, after the king came to the throne), the birth of Lancelot's
son Galahad, Galahad's life till even the early age of fifteen, when
knighthood was then given, the Quest of the Sangreal itself, and the
subsequent breaking out of Mordred's rebellion, consequent upon the
war between Lancelot and Arthur after the deaths of Agravain and
Gareth. But the allowance of a golden age of comparatively quiet
sovereignty, of feasts and joustings at Camelot, and Caerleon, and
Carlisle, of adventures major and minor, and of the great Graal-quest,
is but a moderate demand for any romancer to make. At any rate, he or
they made it, and justified the demand amply by the result. The
contents of the central Arthurian story thus elaborated may be divided
into four parts: 1. The miscellaneous adventures of the several
knights, the king himself sometimes taking share in them. 2. Those of
Sir Tristram, of which more presently. 3. The Quest of the Sangreal.
4. The Death of Arthur.

[Sidenote: _Stories of Gawain and other knights._]

Taking these in order, the first, which is the largest in bulk, is
also, and necessarily, the most difficult to summarise in short space.
It is sometimes said that the prominent figure in the earlier stories
is Gawain, who is afterwards by some spite or caprice dethroned in
favour of Lancelot. This is not quite exact, for the bulk of the
Lancelot legends being, as has been said, anterior to the end of the
twelfth century, is much older than the bulk of the Gawain romances,
which, owing their origin to English, and especially to northern,
patriotism, do not seem to date earlier than the thirteenth or even
the fourteenth. But it is true that Gawain, as we have seen, makes an
appearance, though no very elaborate one, in the most ancient forms of
the legend itself, where we hear nothing of Lancelot; and also that
his appearances in _Merlin_ do not bear anything like the contrast
(similar to that afterwards developed in the Iberian romance-cycle as
between Galaor and Amadis) which other authorities make between him
and Lancelot.[52] Generally speaking, the knights are divisible into
three classes. First there are the older knights, from Ulfius (who had
even taken part in the expedition which cheated Igraine) and Antor,
down to Bedivere, Lucan, and the most famous of this group, Sir Kay,
who, alike in older and in later versions, bears the uniform character
of a disagreeable person, not indeed a coward, though of prowess not
equal to his attempts and needs; but a boaster, envious, spiteful, and
constantly provoking by his tongue incidents in which his hands do not
help him out quite sufficiently.[53] Then there is the younger and
main body, of whom Lancelot and Gawain (still keeping Tristram apart)
are the chiefs; and lastly the outsiders, whether the "felon" knights
who are at internecine, or the mere foreigners who are in friendly,
antagonism with the knights of the "Rowntabull."

[Footnote 52: Since I wrote this passage I have learnt with pleasure
that there is a good chance of the whole of the Gawain romances,
English and foreign, being examined together by a very competent hand,
that of Mr I. Gollancz of Christ's College, Cambridge.]

[Footnote 53: The Welsh passages relating to Kay seem to be older than
most others.]

Of these the chief are Sir Palomides or Palamedes (a gallant Saracen,
who is Tristram's unlucky rival for the affections of Iseult, while
his special task is the pursuit of the Questing Beast, a symbol of
Slander), and Tristram himself.

[Sidenote: _Sir Tristram._]

The appearance of this last personage in the Legend is one of the most
curious and interesting points in it. Although on this, as on every
one of such points, the widest diversity of opinion prevails, an
impartial examination of the texts perhaps enables us to obtain some
tolerably clear views on the subject--views which are helpful not
merely with reference to the "Tristan-saga" itself, but with reference
to the origins and character of the whole Legend.[54] There cannot, I
think, be a doubt that the Tristram story originally was quite
separate from that of Arthur. In the first place, Tristram has nothing
whatever to do with that patriotic and national resistance to the
Saxon invader which, though it died out in the later legend, was the
centre, and indeed almost reached the circumference, of the earlier.
In the second, except when he is directly brought to Arthur's court,
all Tristram's connections are with Cornwall, Brittany, Ireland, not
with that more integral and vaster part of _la bloie Bretagne_ which
extends from Somerset and Dorset to the Lothians. When he appears
abroad, it is as a Varangian at Constantinople, not in the train of
Arthur fighting against Romans. Again, the religious part of the
story, which is so important in the developed Arthurian Legend proper,
is almost entirely absent from the Tristram-tale, and the subject
which played the fourth part in mediæval affections and interests
with love, religion, and fighting--the chase--takes in the Tristram
romances the place of religion itself.

[Footnote 54: Editions: the French _Tristan_, edited long ago by F.
Michel, but in need of completion; the English _Sir Tristrem_ in
Scott's well-known issue, and re-edited (Heilbronn, 1882), with
excellent taste as well as learning, by Dr Kölbing, who has also given
the late Icelandic version, as well as for the Scottish Text Society
(Edinburgh, 1886) by Mr George P. McNeill; Gottfried of Strasburg's
German (_v._ chap. vi.), ed. Bechstein (Leipzig, 1890). _Romania_, v.
xv. (1886), contains several essays on the Tristram story.]

[Sidenote: _His story almost certainly Celtic._]

But the most interesting, though the most delicate, part of the
inquiry concerns the attitude of this episode or branch to love, and
the conclusion to be drawn as well from that attitude as from the
local peculiarities above noticed, as to the national origin of
Tristram on the one hand, and of the Arthur story on the other. It has
been said that Tristram's connections with what may be roughly called
Britain at large--_i.e._, the British Islands _plus_ Brittany--are,
except in his visits to Arthur's court, entirely with the Celtic
parts--Cornwall, Ireland, Armorica--less with Wales, which plays a
strangely small part in the Arthurian romances generally. This would
of itself give a fair presumption that the Tristram story is more
purely, or at any rate more directly, Celtic than the rest. But it so
happens that in the love of Tristram and Iseult, and the revenge and
general character of Mark, there is also a suffusion of colour and
tone which is distinctly Celtic. The more recent advocates for the
Celtic origin of romance in general, and the Arthurian legend in
particular, have relied very strongly upon the character of the love
adventures in these compositions as being different from those of
classical story, different from those of Frankish, Teutonic, and
Scandinavian romance; but, as it seems to them, like what has been
observed of the early native poetry of Wales, and still more (seeing
that the indisputable texts are older) of Ireland.

A discussion of this kind is perhaps more than any other _periculosæ
plenum opus aleæ_; but it is too important to be neglected. Taking the
character of the early Celtic, and especially the Irish, heroine as it
is given by her champions--a process which obviates all accusations of
misunderstanding that might be based on the present writer's
confession that of the Celtic texts alone he has to speak at
second-hand--it seems to me beyond question that both the Iseults,
Iseult of Ireland and Iseult of Brittany, approach much nearer to this
type than does Guinevere, or the Lady of the Lake, or the damsel
Lunete, or any of Arthur's sisters, even Morgane, or, to take earlier
examples, Igraine and Merlin's love. So too the peculiar spitefulness
of Mark, and his singular mixture of tolerance and murderous purpose
towards Tristram[55] are much more Celtic than Anglo-French: as indeed
is the curious absence of religiosity before noted, which extends to
Iseult as well as to Tristram. We have no trace in Mark's queen of the
fact or likelihood of any such final repentance as is shown by
Arthur's: and though the complete and headlong self-abandonment of
Iseult is excused to some extent by the magic potion, it is of an
"all-for-love-and-the-world-well-lost" kind which finds no exact
parallel elsewhere in the legend. So too, whether it seem more or less
amiable, the half-coquettish jealousy of Guinevere in regard to
Lancelot is not Celtic: while the profligate vindictiveness
attributed to her in _Sir Launfal_, and only in _Sir Launfal_, an
almost undoubtedly Celtic offshoot of the Arthurian Legend, is equally
alien from her character. We see Iseult planning the murder of
Brengwain with equal savagery and ingratitude, and we feel that it is
no libel. On the other hand, though Tristram's faithfulness is
proverbial, it is an entirely different kind of faithfulness from that
of Lancelot--flightier, more passionate perhaps in a way, but of a
less steady passion. Lancelot would never have married Iseult the
White-handed.

[Footnote 55: It is fair to say that Mark, like Gawain, appears to
have gone through a certain process of blackening at the hands of the
late romancers; but the earliest story invited this.]

It is, however, quite easy to understand how, this Tristram legend
existing by hypothesis already or being created at the same time, the
curious centripetal and agglutinative tendency of mediæval romance
should have brought it into connection with that of Arthur. The mere
fact of Mark's being a vassal-king of Greater Britain would have been
reason enough; but the parallel between the prowess of Lancelot and
Tristram, and between their loves for the two queens, was altogether
too tempting to be resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in
Arthur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but as not exactly
at home there,--as a visitor, an "honorary member" rather than
otherwise, and only an occasional partaker of the home tournaments and
the adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights proper.

[Sidenote: _Sir Lancelot._]

The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot himself, is less
distinct. Since the audacious imaginativeness of the late M. de la
Villemarqué, which once, I am told, brought upon him the epithet
"_Faussaire!_" uttered in full conclave of Breton antiquaries, has
ceased to be taken seriously by Arthurian students, the old fancies
about some Breton "Ancel" or "Ancelot" have been quietly dropped. But
the Celticisers still cling fondly to the supposed possibility of
derivation from King Melvas, or King Maelgon, one or other of whom
does seem to have been connected, as above mentioned, by early Welsh
tradition with the abduction of the queen. It is, however, evident to
any reader of the _Charette_ episode, whether in the original French
prose and verse or in Malory, that Meleagraunce the ravisher and
Lancelot the avenger cannot have the same original. I should myself
suppose Lancelot to have been a directly and naturally spontaneous
literary growth. The necessity of a love-interest for the Arthurian
story being felt, and, according to the manner of the time, it being
felt with equal strength that the lover must not be the husband, it
was needful to look about for some one else. The merely business-like
self-surrender to Mordred as the king _de facto_, to the "lips that
were near," of Geoffrey's Guanhumara and Layamon's Wenhaver, was out
of the question; and the part of Gawain as a faithful nephew was too
well settled already by tradition for it to be possible to make him
the lover. Perhaps the great artistic stroke in the whole Legend, and
one of the greatest in all literature, is the concoction of a hero who
should be not only

    "Like Paris handsome, and like Hector brave,"

but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than Hector,--not only
a "greatest knight," but at once the sinful lover of his queen and the
champion who should himself all but achieve, and in the person of his
son actually achieve, the sacred adventure of the Holy Graal. If, as
there seems no valid reason to disbelieve, the hitting upon this idea,
and the invention or adoption of Lancelot to carry it out, be the work
of Walter Mapes, then Walter Mapes is one of the great novelists of
the word, and one of the greatest of them. If it was some unknown
person (it could hardly be Chrestien, for in Chrestien's form the
Graal interest belongs to Percevale, not to Lancelot or Galahad), then
the same compliment must be paid to that person unknown. Meanwhile the
conception and execution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due,
are things most happy. Entirely free from the faultlessness which is
the curse of the classical hero; his unequalled valour not seldom
rewarded only by reverses; his merits redeemed from mawkishness by his
one great fault, yet including all virtues that are themselves most
amiable, and deformed by no vice that is actually loathsome; the soul
of goodness in him always warring with his human frailty;--Sir
Lancelot fully deserves the noble funeral eulogy pronounced over his
grave, and felt by all the elect to be, in both senses, one of the
first of all extant pieces of perfect English prose.

[Sidenote: _The minor knights._]

But the virtues which are found in Lancelot eminently are found in all
but the "felon" knights, differing only in degree. It is true that the
later romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the necessity of
shade, extend to all the sons of Lot and Margause, except Gareth, and
to some extent Gawain, the unamiable character which Mordred enjoys
throughout, and which even in the _Merlin_ is found showing itself in
Agravaine. But Sir Lamoracke, their victim, is almost Lancelot's
equal: and the best of Lancelot's kin, especially Sir Bors, come not
far behind. It is entirely untrue that, as the easy epigram has it,
they all "hate their neighbour and love their neighbour's wife." On
the contrary, except in the bad subjects--ranging from the mere
ruffianism of Breuse-sans-Pitié to the misconduct of Meleagraunce--there
is no hatred of your neighbour anywhere. It is not hatred of your
neighbour to be prepared to take and give hard blows from and to him,
and to forgather in faith and friendship before and after. And as to
the other and more delicate point, a large majority of the knights can
at worst claim the benefit of the law laid down by a very pious but
indulgent mediæval writer,[56] who says that if men will only not
meddle with "spouse or sib" (married women or connections within the
prohibited degrees), it need be no such deadly matter.

[Footnote 56: _Cursor Mundi_, l. 2898.]

[Sidenote: _Arthur._]

It may be desirable, as it was in reference to Charlemagne, to say a
few words as to Arthur himself. In both cases there is noticeable
(though less in the case of Arthur than in that of Charlemagne) the
tendency _not_ to make the king blameless, or a paragon of prowess:
and in both cases, as we should expect, this tendency is even more
noticeable in the later versions than in the earlier. This may have
been partly due to the aristocratic spirit of at least idealised
feudalism, which gave the king no semi-divine character, but merely a
human primacy _inter pares_; partly also to the literary instinct of
the Middle Ages, which had discovered that the "biggest" personage of
a story is by no means that one who is most interesting. In Arthur's
very first literary appearance, the Nennius passage, his personal
prowess is specially dwelt upon: and in those parts of the _Merlin_
group which probably represent the first step from Geoffrey to the
complete legend, he slays Saxons and Romans, wrests the sword
single-handed from King Ryaunce, and so forth, as valiantly as Gawain
himself. It is, however, curious that at this time the writers are
much less careful than at a later to represent him as faithful to
Guinevere, and blameless before marriage, with the exception of the
early affair with Margause. He accepts the false Guinevere and the
Saxon enchantress very readily; and there is other scandal in which
the complaisant Merlin as usual figures. But in the accepted Arthuriad
(I do not of course speak of modern writers) this is rather kept in
the background, while his prowess is also less prominent, except in a
few cases, such as his great fight with his sister's lover, Sir
Accolon. Even here he never becomes the complaisant wittol, which late
and rather ignoble works like the _Cokwold's Daunce_[57] represent him
as being: and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the
outbursts of almost imbecile wrath which characterise Charlemagne.

[Footnote 57: Printed by Hartshorne, _Ancient Metrical Tales_ (London,
1829), p. 209; and Hazlitt, _Early Popular Poetry_ (London, 1864), i.
38.]

[Sidenote: _Guinevere._]

Something has been said of Guinevere already. It is perhaps hard to
look, as any English reader of our time must, backward through the
coloured window of the greatest of the _Idylls of the King_ without
our thoughts of the queen being somewhat affected by it. But those who
knew their Malory before the _Idylls_ appeared escape that danger. Mr
Morris's Guinevere in her _Defence_ is perhaps a little truer than
Lord Tennyson's to the original conception--indeed, much of the
delightful volume in which she first appeared is pure _Extrait
Arthurien_. But the Tennysonian glosses on Guinevere's character are
not ill justified: though perhaps, if less magnificent, it would have
been truer, both to the story and to human nature, to attribute her
fall rather to the knowledge that Arthur himself was by no means
immaculate than to a despairing sense of his immaculateness. The
Guinevere of the original romances is the first perfectly human woman
in English literature. They have ennobled her unfaithfulness to Arthur
by her constancy to Lancelot, they have saved her constancy to
Lancelot from being insipid by interspersing the gusts of jealousy in
the matter of the two Elaines which play so great a part in the story.
And it is curious that, coarse as both the manners and the speech of
the Middle Ages are supposed to have been, the majority of these
romances are curiously free from coarseness. The ideas might shock
Ascham's prudery, but the expression is, with the rarest exceptions,
scrupulously adapted to polite society. There are one or two coarse
passages in the _Merlin_ and the older _Saint Graal_, and I remember
others in outside branches like the _Chevalier as Deux Espées_. But
though a French critic has detected something shocking in _Le
Chevalier à la Charette_, it requires curious consideration to follow
him.

[Sidenote: _The Graal._]

The part which the Holy Graal plays in the legend generally is not the
least curious or interesting feature of the whole. As has been already
said more than once, it makes no figure at all in the earliest
versions: and it is consistent with this, as well as with the general
theory and procedure of romance, that when it does appear the
development of the part played by it is conducted on two more or less
independent lines, which, however, the later compilers at least do not
seem to think mutually exclusive. With the usual reserves as to the
impossibility of pronouncing with certainty on the exact order of the
additions to this wonderful structure of legend, it may be said to be
probable, on all available considerations of literary probability,
that of the two versions of the Graal story--that in which Percival is
the hero of the Quest, and that in which Galahad occupies that
place--the former is the earlier. According to this, which commended
itself especially to the French and German handlers of the story,[58]
the Graal Quest lies very much outside the more intimate concerns of
the Arthurian court and the realm of Britain. Indeed, in the latest
and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram von Eschenbach (_v._
chap. vi.), the story wanders off into uttermost isles of fancy, quite
remote from the proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be conceded
that this development is in more strict accordance with what we may
suppose and can partly perceive to have been the original and almost
purely mystical conception of the Graal as entertained by Robert de
Borron, or another--the conception in which all earthly, even wedded,
love is of the nature of sin, and according to which the perfect
knight is only an armed monk, converting the heathen and resisting the
temptations of the devil, the world, and more particularly the flesh;
diversifying his wars and preachings only or mainly by long mystical
visions of sacred history as it presented itself to mediæval
imagination. It is true that the genius of Wolfram has not a little
coloured and warmed this chilly ideal: but the story is still
conducted rather afar from general human interest, and very far off
indeed from the special interests of Arthur.

[Footnote 58: And contrariwise the Welsh _Peredur_ (_Mabinogion_, _ed.
cit._, 81) has only a possible allusion to the Graal story, while the
English _Sir Percivale_ (_Thornton Romances_, ed. Halliwell, Camden
Society, 1844) omits even this.]

[Sidenote: _How it perfects the story._]

Another genius, that of Walter Map (by hypothesis, as before),
described and worked out different capabilities in the story. By the
idea, simple, like most ideas of genius, of making Lancelot, the
father, at once the greatest knight of the Arimathean lineage, and
unable perfectly to achieve the Quest by reason of his sin, and
Galahad the son, inheritor of his prowess but not of his weakness, he
has at once secured the success of the Quest in sufficient accordance
with the original idea and the presence of abundant purely romantic
interest as well. And at the same time by connecting the sin which
disqualifies Lancelot with the catastrophe of Arthur, and the
achieving of the Quest itself with the weakening and breaking up of
the Round Table (an idea insisted upon no doubt, by Tennyson, but
existent in the originals), a dramatic and romantic completeness has
been given to the whole cycle which no other collection of mediæval
romances possesses, and which equals, if it does not exceed, that of
any of the far more apparently regular epics of literary history. It
appears, indeed, to have been left for Malory to adjust and bring out
the full epic completeness of the legend: but the materials, as it was
almost superfluous for Dr Sommer to show by chapter and verse, were
all ready to his hand. And if (as that learned if not invariably
judicious scholar thinks) there is or once was somewhere a _Suite_ of
Lancelot corresponding to the _Suite de Merlin_ of which Sir Thomas
made such good use, it is not improbable that we should find the
adjustment, though not the expression, to some extent anticipated.

[Sidenote: _Nature of this perfection._]

At any rate, the idea is already to hand in the original romances of
our present period; and a wonderfully great and perfect idea it is.
Not the much and justly praised arrangement and poetical justice of
the Oresteia or of the story of Oedipus excel the Arthuriad in what
used to be called "propriety" (which has nothing to do with
prudishness), while both are, as at least it seems to me, far
inferior in varied and poignant interest. That the attainment of the
Graal, the healing of the maimed king, and the fulfilling of the other
"weirds" which have lain upon the race of Joseph, should practically
coincide with the termination of that glorious reign, with which fate
and metaphysical aid had connected them, is one felicity. The
"dolorous death and departing out of this world" in Lyonnesse and
elsewhere corresponds to and completes the triumph of Sarras. From yet
another point of view, the bringing into judgment of all the
characters and their deeds is equally complete, equally natural and
unforced. It is astonishing that men like Ascham,[59] unless blinded
by a survival of mediæval or a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery,
should have failed to see that the morality of the _Morte d'Arthur_ is
as rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her cloister and
Lancelot in his hermitage, Arthur falling by (or at any rate in battle
against) the fruit of his incestuous intercourse--these are not
exactly encouragements to vice: while at the same time the earlier
history may be admitted to have nothing of a crabbed and jejune
virtue.

[Footnote 59: This curious outburst, referred to before, may be found
in the _Schoolmaster_, ed. Arber, p. 80, or ed. Giles, _Works of
Ascham_, iii. 159.]

But this conclusion, with the minor events which lead up to it, is
scarcely less remarkable as exhibiting in the original author, whoever
he was, a sense of art, a sense of finality, the absence of which is
the great blot on Romance at large, owing to the natural, the human,
but the very inartistic, craving for sequels. As is well known, it was
the most difficult thing in the world for a mediæval romancer to let
his subject go. He must needs take it up from generation to
generation; and the interminable series of Amadis and Esplandian
stories, which, as the last example, looks almost like a designed
caricature, is only an exaggeration of the habit which we can trace
back through _Huon of Bordeaux_ and _Guy of Warwick_ almost to the
earliest _chansons de geste_.

[Sidenote: _No sequel possible._]

But the intelligent genius who shaped the Arthuriad has escaped this
danger, and that not merely by the simple process which Dryden, with
his placid irony, somewhere describes as "leaving scarce three of the
characters alive." We have reached, and feel that we have reached, the
conclusion of the whole matter when the Graal has been taken to
Heaven, and Arthur has gone to Avalon. Nobody wants to hear anything
of the doubtless excellent Duke and King Constantine. Sir Ector
himself could not leave the stage with more grace than with his great
discourse on his dead comrade and kinsman. Lancelot's only son has
gone with the Graal. The end is not violent or factitious, it is
necessary and inevitable. It were even less unwise to seek the grave
of Arthur than to attempt to take up the story of the Arthurians after
king and queen and Lancelot are gone each to his and her own place,
after the Graal is attained, after the Round Table is dissolved.

It is creditable to the intelligence and taste of the average mediæval
romance-writer that even he did not yield to his besetting sin in this
particular instance. With the exception of _Ysaie le Triste_, which
deals with the fortunes of a supposed son of Tristan and Yseult, and
thus connects itself with the most outlying part of the legend--a part
which, as has been shown, is only hinged on to it--I cannot remember a
single romance which purports to deal with affairs subsequent to the
battle in Lyonesse. The two latest that can be in any way regarded as
Arthurian, _Arthur of Little Britain_ and _Cleriodus_, avowedly take
up the story long subsequently, and only claim for their heroes the
glory of distant descent from Arthur and his heroes. _Meliadus de
Lyonnois_ ascends from Tristram, and endeavours to connect the matter
of Britain with that of France. _Giron le Courtois_ deals with
Palamedes and the earlier Arthurian story; while _Perceforest_, though
based on the _Brut_, selects periods anterior to Arthur.[60]

[Footnote 60: I have a much less direct acquaintance with the romances
mentioned in this paragraph than with most of the works referred to in
this book. I am obliged to speak of them at second-hand (chiefly from
Dunlop and Mr Ward's invaluable _Catalogue of Romances_, vol. i. 1883;
vol. ii. 1893). It is one of the results of the unlucky fancy of
scholars for re-editing already accessible texts instead of devoting
themselves to _anecdota_, that work of the first interest, like
_Perceforest_, for instance, is left to black-letter, which, not to
mention its costliness, is impossible to weak eyes; even where it is
not left to manuscript, which is more impossible still.]

[Sidenote: _Latin episodes._]

There was, however, no such artistic constraint as regards episodes of
the main story, or _romans d'aventures_ celebrating the exploits of
single knights, and connected with that story by a sort of stock
overture and _dénoûment_, in the first of which an adventure is
usually started at Arthur's court, while the successful knight is also
accustomed to send his captives to give testimony to his prowess in
the same place. As has been said above,[61] there is a whole cluster
of such episodes--most, it would seem, owing their origin to England
or Scotland--which have Sir Gawain for their chief hero, and which, at
least in such forms as survive, would appear to be later than the
great central romances which have been just noticed. Some of these are
of much local interest--there being a Scottish group, a group which
seems to centre about Cumbria, and so forth--but they fall rather to
the portion of my successor in this series, who will take as his
province _Gawaine and the Green Knight_, _Lancelot of the Laik_, the
quaint alliterative Thornton _Morte Arthur_, and not a few others. The
most interesting of all is that hitherto untraced romance of Beaumains
or Gareth (he, as Gawain's brother, brings the thing into the class
referred to), of which Malory has made an entire book, and which is
one of the most completely and perfectly turned-out episodes existing.
It has points in common with _Yvain_,[62] and others in common with
_Ipomydon_,[63] but at the same time quite enough of its own. But we
have no French text for it. On the other hand, we have long verse
romances like _Durmart le Gallois_[64] (which both from the title and
from certain mystical Graal passages rather connects itself with the
Percevale sub-section); and the _Chevalier as Deux Espées_,[65] which
belongs to the Gawain class. But all these, as well as the German
romances to be noticed in chap. vi., distinguish themselves from the
main stories analysed above not merely by their obvious and almost
avowed dependence, but by a family likeness in incident, turn, and
phrase from which those main stories are free. In fact the general
fault of the _Romans d'Aventures_ is that neither the unsophisticated
freshness of the _chanson de geste_, nor the variety and commanding
breadth of the Arthurian legend, appears in them to the full. The kind
of "balaam," the stock repetitions and expletives at which Chaucer
laughs in "Sir Thopas"--a laugh which has been rather unjustly
received as condemning the whole class of English romances--is very
evident even in the French texts. We have left the great and gracious
ways, the inspiring central ideas, of the larger romance.

[Footnote 61: See pp. 114, 115 note.]

[Footnote 62: See above, p. 102.]

[Footnote 63: Ed. Weber, _Metrical Romances_, Edinburgh, 1810, ii.
279.]

[Footnote 64: Ed. Stengel. Tübingen, 1873.]

[Footnote 65: Ed. Förster. Halle, 1877.]

[Sidenote: _The legend as a whole._]

It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much praise has been
given to that romance itself. Far as we are, not merely from Ascham's
days, but from those in which the excellent Dunlop was bound to
confess that "they [the romances of the Round Table] will be found
extremely defective in those points which have been laid down as
constituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they are
"improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and geographical
blunders," "not well shaded and distinguished in character,"
possessing heroines such as "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot"
[may God assoil Dunlop!] who are "women of abandoned character,"
"highly reprehensible in their moral tendency," "equalled by the most
insipid romance of the present day as a fund of amusement." In those
days even Scott thought it prudent to limit his praise of Malory's
book to the statement that "it is written in pure old English, and
many of the wild adventures which it contains are told with a
simplicity bordering on the sublime." Of Malory--thanks to the charms
of his own book in the editions of Southey, of the two editors in
12mo, of Wright and of Sir Edward Strachey, not to mention the recent
and stately issues given by Dr Sommer and Professor Rhys--a better
idea has long prevailed, though there are some gainsayers. But of the
originals, and of the Legend as a whole, the knowledge is too much
limited to those who see in that legend only an opportunity for
discussing texts and dates, origins and national claims. Its
extraordinary beauty, and the genius which at some time or other, in
one brain or in many, developed it from the extremely meagre materials
which are all that can be certainly traced, too often escape attention
altogether, and have hardly, I think, in a single instance obtained
full recognition.

[Sidenote: _The theories of its origin._]

Yet however exaggerated the attention to the _Quellen_ may have been,
however inadequate the attention to the actual literary result, it
would be a failure in duty towards the reader, and disrespectful to
those scholars who, if not always in the most excellent way, have
contributed vastly to our knowledge of the subject, to finish this
chapter without giving something on the question of origins itself. I
shall therefore conclude it with a brief sketch of the chief opinions
on the subject, and with an indication of those to which many years'
reading have inclined myself.

The theories, not to give them one by one as set forth by individual
writers, are in the main as follows:--

[Sidenote: _Celtic._]

I. That the Legend is, not merely in its first inception, but in main
bulk, Celtic, either (_a_) Welsh or (_b_) Armorican.

[Sidenote: _French._]

II. That it is, except in the mere names and the vaguest outline,
French.

[Sidenote: _English._]

III. That it is English, or at least Anglo-Norman.

[Sidenote: _Literary._]

IV. That it is very mainly a "literary" growth, owing something to the
Greek romances, and not to be regarded without error as a new
development unconnected, or almost unconnected, with traditional
sources of any kind.

[Sidenote: _The Celtic theory._]

The first explanation is the oldest. After being for nearly half a
century discredited, it has again found ardent defenders, and it may
seem at first sight to be the most natural and reasonable. Arthur, if
he existed at all, was undoubtedly a British hero; the British Celts,
especially the Welsh, possess beyond all question strong literary
affinities and a great literary performance, and Geoffrey of Monmouth,
the father of the whole story, expressly declares that he took it from
a book written in the British tongue. It was natural that in
comparatively uncritical ages no quarrel should be made with this
account. There were, even up to the last century, I believe,
enthusiastic antiquaries who affirmed, and perhaps believed, that
they had come across the very documents to which Geoffrey refers, or
at worst later Welsh transcripts of them. But when the study of the
matter grew, and especially when Welsh literature itself began to be
critically examined, uncomfortable doubts began to arise. It was found
impossible to assign to the existing Welsh romances on the subject,
such as those published in the _Mabinogion_, a date even approaching
in antiquity that which can certainly be claimed by the oldest French
texts: and in more than one case the Welsh bore unmistakable
indications of having been directly imitated from the French itself.
Further, in undoubtedly old Welsh literature, though there were (_v.
supra_) references to Arthur, they were few, they were very meagre,
and except as regards the mystery of his final disappearance rather
than death, they had little if anything to do with the received
Arthurian story. On the other hand, as far as Brittany was concerned,
after a period of confident assertion, and of attempts, in at least
doubtful honesty, to supply what could not be found, it had to be
acknowledged that Brittany could supply no ancient texts whatever, and
hardly any ancient tradition. These facts, when once established (and
they have never since been denied by competent criticism), staggered
the Celtic claim very seriously. Of late years, however, it has found
advocates (who, as usual, adopt arguments rather mutually destructive
than mutually confirmatory) both in France (M. Gaston Paris) and in
Germany (Herr Zimmer), while it has been passionately defended in
England by Mr Nutt, and with a more cautious, but perhaps at least
equally firm, support by Professor Rhys. As has been said, these
Neo-Celticists do not, when they are wise, attempt to revive the older
form of the claims. They rest theirs on the scattered references in
undoubtedly old Welsh literature above referred to, on the place-names
which play such an undoubtedly remarkable part in the local
nomenclature of the West-Welsh border in the south-west of England and
in Cornwall, of Wales less frequently, of Strathclyde and Lothian
eminently, and not at all, or hardly at all, of that portion of
England which was early and thoroughly subjected to Saxon and Angle
sway. And the bolder of them, taking advantage of the admitted
superiority in age of Irish to Welsh literature as far as texts go,
have had recourse to this, not for direct originals (it is admitted
that there are none, even of parts of the Legend such as those
relating to Tristram and Iseult, which are not only avowedly Irish in
place but Irish in tone), but for evidences of differential origin in
comparison with classical and Teutonic literature. Unfortunately this
last point is one not of technical "scholarship," but of general
literary criticism, and it is certain that the Celticists have not
converted all or most students in that subject to their view. I should
myself give my opinion, for whatever it may be worth, to the effect
that the tone and tendency of the Celtic, and especially the Irish,
literature of very early days, as declared by its own modern
champions, are quite different from those of the romances in general
and the Arthurian Legend in particular. Again, though the other two
classes of evidence cannot be so ruled out of court as a whole, it
must be evident that they go but a very little way, and are asked to
go much further. If any one will consult Professor Rhys's careful
though most friendly abstract of the testimony of early Welsh
literature, he will see how very great the interval is. When we are
asked to accept a magic caldron which fed people at discretion as the
special original of the Holy Grail, the experienced critic knows the
state of the case pretty well.[66] While as to the place-names, though
they give undoubted and valuable support of a kind to the historical
existence of Arthur, and support still more valuable to the theory of
the early and wide distribution of legends respecting him, it is
noticeable that they have hardly anything to do with _our_ Arthurian
Legend at all. They concern--as indeed we should expect--the fights
with the Saxons, and some of them reflect (very vaguely and thinly) a
tradition of conjugal difficulties between Arthur and his queen. But
unfortunately these last are not confined to Arthurian experience;
and, as we have seen, Arthur's fights with the Saxons, except the last
when they joined Mordred, are of ever-dwindling importance for the
Romance.

[Footnote 66: For these magical provisions of food are commonplaces of
general popular belief, and, as readers of Major Wingate's book on the
Soudan will remember, it was within the last few years an article of
faith there that one of the original Mahdi's rivals had a magic tent
which would supply rations for an army.]

[Sidenote: _The French claims._]

Like the Celtic theory, the French has an engaging appearance of
justice and probability, and it has over the Celtic the overwhelming
advantage as regards texts. That all, without exception, of the
oldest texts in which the complete romantic story of Arthur appears
are in the French language is a fact entirely indisputable, and at
first blench conclusive. We may even put it more strongly still and
say that, taking positive evidence as apart from mere assertion (as in
the case of the Latin Graal-book), there is nothing to show that any
part of the full romantic story of Arthur, as distinguished from the
meagre quasi-historical outline of Geoffrey, ever appeared in any
language before it appeared in French. The most certain of the three
personal claimants for the origination of these early texts, Chrestien
de Troyes, was undoubtedly a Frenchman in the wide sense; so (if he
existed) was Robert de Borron, another of them. The very phrase so
familiar to readers of Malory, "the French book," comes to the
assistance of the claim.

And yet, as is the case with some other claims which look irresistible
at first sight, the strength of this shrinks and dwindles remarkably
when it comes to be examined. One consideration is by itself
sufficient, not indeed totally to destroy it, but to make a terrible
abatement in its cogency; and this is, that if the great Arthurian
romances, written between the middle and end of the twelfth century,
were written in French, it was chiefly because they could not have
been written in any other tongue. Not only was no other language
generally intelligible to that public of knights and ladies to which
they were addressed; not only was no other vernacular language
generally known to European men of letters, but no such vernacular,
except Provençal, had attained to anything like the perfection
necessary to make it a convenient vehicle. Whatever the nationality of
the writer or writers, it was more likely that he or they would write
in French than in any other language. And as a matter of fact we see
that the third of the great national claimants was an Englishman,
while it is not certain that Robert de Borron was not an English
subject. Nor is it yet formally determined whether Chrestien himself,
in those parts of his work which are specially Arthurian, had not Map
or some one else before him as an authority.

[Sidenote: _The theory of general literary growth._]

The last theory, that the Legend may be almost if not quite
sufficiently accounted for as a legitimate descendant of previous
literature, classical and other (including Oriental sources), has been
the least general favourite. As originally started, or at least
introduced into English literary history, by Warton, it suffered
rather unfairly from some defects of its author. Warton's _History of
English Poetry_ marks, and to some extent helped to produce, an
immense change for the better in the study of English literature: and
he deserved the contemptuous remarks of some later critics as little
as he did the savage attacks of the half-lunatic Ritson. But he was
rather indolent; his knowledge, though wide, was very desultory and
full of scraps and gaps; and, like others in his century, he was much
too fond of hypothesis without hypostasis, of supposition without
substance. He was very excusably but very unluckily ignorant of what
may be called the comparative panorama of English and European
literature during the Middle Ages, and was apt to assign to direct
borrowing or imitation those fresh workings up of the eternal
_données_ of all literary art which presented themselves. As the
theory has been more recently presented with far exacter learning and
greater judgment by his successor, Mr Courthope,[67] it is much
relieved from most of its disabilities. I have myself no doubt that
the Greek romances (see chap. ix.) _do_ represent at the least a stage
directly connecting classical with romantic literature; and that the
later of them (which, it must be remembered, were composed in this
very twelfth century, and must have come under the notice of the
crusaders), _may_ have exercised a direct effect upon mediæval Romance
proper. I formed this opinion more than twenty years ago, when I first
read _Hysminias and Hysmine_; and I have never seen reason to change
it since. But these influences, though not to be left out of the
question, are perhaps in one respect too general, and in another too
partial, to explain the precise matter. That the Arthurian Romances,
in common with all the romances, and with mediæval literature
generally, were much more influenced by the traditional classical
culture than used at one time to be thought, I have believed ever
since I began to study the subject, and am more and more convinced of
it. The classics both of Europe and the East played a part, and no
small part, in bringing about the new literature; but it was only a
part.

[Footnote 67: In his _History of English Poetry_, vol. i., London,
1895, and in a subsequent controversy with Mr Nutt, which was carried
on in the _Athenæum_.]

[Sidenote: _The English or Anglo-Norman pretensions._]

If, as I think may fairly be done, the glory of the Legend be chiefly
claimed for none of these, but for English or Anglo-Norman, it can be
done in no spirit of national _pleonexia_, but on a sober
consideration of all the facts of the case, and allowing all other
claimants their fair share in the matter as subsidiaries. From the
merely _a priori_ point of view the claims of England--that is to say,
the Anglo-Norman realm--are strong. The matter is "the matter of
Britain," and it was as natural that Arthur should be sung in Britain
as that Charlemagne should be celebrated in France. But this could
weigh nothing against positive balance of argument from the facts on
the other side. The balance, however, does not lie against us. The
personal claim of Walter Map, even if disproved, would not carry the
English claim with it in its fall. But it has never been disproved.
The positive, the repeated, attribution of the MSS. may not be final,
but requires a very serious body of counter-argument to upset it. And
there is none such. The time suits; the man's general ability is not
denied; his familiarity with Welshmen and Welsh tradition as a
Herefordshire Marcher is pretty certain; and his one indisputable book
of general literature, the _De Nugis Curialium_, exhibits
many--perhaps all--of the qualifications required: a sharp judgment
united with a distinct predilection for the marvellous, an
unquestionable piety combined with man-of-the-worldliness, and a
toleration of human infirmities. It is hardly necessary to point out
the critical incompetence of those who say that a satirist like Map
could not have written the _Quest_ and the _Mort_. Such critics would
make two Peacocks as the simultaneous authors of _Nightmare Abbey_ and
_Rhododaphne_--nay, two Shakespeares to father the _Sonnets_ and the
_Merry Wives_. If any one will turn to the stories of Gerbert and
Meridiana, of Galo, Sadius, and the evil queen in the _Nugæ_, he will,
making allowance for Walter's awkward Latin in comparison with the
exquisite French of the twelfth century, find reasons for thinking the
author of that odd book quite equal to the authorship of part--not
necessarily the whole--of the Arthurian story in its co-ordinated
form.

Again, it is distinctly noticeable that the farther the story goes
from England and the English Continental possessions, the more does it
lose of that peculiar blended character, that mixture of the purely
mystical and purely romantic, of sacred and profane, which has been
noted as characteristic of its perfect bloom. In the _Percevale_ of
Chrestien and his continuators, and still more in Wolfram von
Eschenbach, as it proceeds eastwards, and into more and more purely
Teutonic regions, it absorbs itself in the _Graal_ and the moonshiny
mysticism thereto appertaining. When it has fared southwards to Italy,
the lawlessness of the loves of Guinevere and Iseult preoccupies
Southern attention. As for Welsh, it is sufficient to quote the
statement of the most competent of Welsh authorities, Professor Rhys,
to the effect that "the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere is unknown
to Welsh literature." Now, as I have tried to point out, the passion
of Lancelot for Guinevere, blended as it is with the quasi-historic
interest of Arthur's conquests and the religious-mystical interest of
the Graal story, is the heart, the life, the source of all charm and
beauty in the perfect Arthur-story.

I should think, therefore, that the most reasonable account of the
whole matter may be somewhat as follows, using imagination as little
as possible, and limiting hypothesis rigidly to what is necessary to
connect, explain, and render generally intelligible the historical
facts which have been already summarised. And I may add that while
this account is not very different from the views of the earliest of
really learned modern authorities, Sir Frederic Madden and M. Paulin
Paris, I was surprised to find how much it agrees with that of one of
the very latest, M. Loth.

[Sidenote: _Attempted hypothesis._]

In so far as the probable personality and exploits, and the almost
certain tradition of such exploits and such a personality, goes, there
is no reason for, and much reason against, denying a Celtic origin to
this Legend of Arthur. The best authorities have differed as to the
amount of really ancient testimony in Welsh as to him, and it seems to
be agreed by the best authorities that there is no ancient tradition
in any other branch of Celtic literature. But if we take the mentions
allowed as ancient by such a careful critic as Professor Rhys, if we
combine them with the place-name evidence, and if we add the really
important fact, that of the earliest literary dealers, certain or
probable, with the legend, Geoffrey, Layamon, and Walter Map were
neighbours of Wales, and Wace a neighbour of Brittany, to suppose that
Arthur as a subject for romantic treatment was a figment of some
non-Celtic brain, Saxon or Norman, French or English, is not only
gratuitous but excessively unreasonable. Again, there can be no
reasonable doubt that the Merlin legends, in at least their inception,
were Celtic likewise. The attempt once made to identify Merlin with
the well-known "Marcolf," who serves as Solomon's interlocutor in a
mass of early literature more or less Eastern in origin, is one of
those critical freaks which betray an utterly uncritical temperament.
Yet further, I should be inclined to allow no small portion of Celtic
ingredient in the spirit, the tendency, the essence of the Arthurian
Legend. We want something to account for this, which is not Saxon, not
Norman, not French, not Teutonic generally, not Latin, not Eastern;
and I at least am unable to discover where this something comes from
if it is not from the Celtic fringe of England and of Normandy.

But when we come to the Legend proper, and to its most important and
most interesting characteristics, to its working up, to that
extraordinary development which in a bare half-century (and half a
century, though a long time now, was a very short one seven hundred
years ago) evolved almost a whole library of romance from the scanty
_faits et gestes_ of Arthur as given by Geoffrey,--then I must confess
that I can see no evidence of Celtic forces or sources having played
any great part in the matter. If Caradoc of Lancarvan wrote the _Vita
Gildæ_--and it is pretty certainly not later than his day, while if it
was not written by him it must have been written by some one equally
well acquainted with traditions, British and Armorican, of St
Gildas--if he or any one else gave us what he has given about Arthur
and Gildas himself, about Arthur's wife and Melvas, and if traditions
existed of Galahad or even Percivale and the Graal, of the Round
Table, most of all of Lancelot,--why in the name of all that is
critical and probable did he not give us more? His hero could not have
been ignorant of the matter, the legends of his hero could hardly have
been silent about them. It is hard to believe that anybody can read
the famous conclusion of Geoffrey's history without seeing a
deliberate impishness in it, without being certain that the tale of
the Book and the Archdeacon is a tale of a Cock and a Bull. But if it
be taken seriously, how could the "British book" have failed to
contain something more like our Legend of Arthur than Geoffrey has
given us, and how, if it existed and gave more, could Geoffrey have
failed to impart it? Why should the Welsh, the proudest in their way
of all peoples, and not the least gifted in literature, when they came
to give Arthurian legends of the kind which we recognise, either
translate them from the French or at least adapt and adjust them
thereto?

On the other hand, the supposition that the fashioning, partly out of
vague tradition, partly it may be out of more definite Celtic tales
like that of Tristram, partly from classical, Eastern, and other
sources, belongs to the English in the wide sense--that is to say, the
nation or nations partly under English rule proper, partly under
Scottish, partly under that of the feudatories or allies of the
English kings as Dukes of Normandy--has to support it not merely the
arguments stated above as to the concentration of the legend proper
between Troyes and Herefordshire, between Broceliande and Northumbria,
as to MS. authority, as to the inveteracy of the legend in
English,--not only those negative ones as to the certainty that if it
were written by Englishmen it would be written in French,--but
another, which to the comparative student of literary history may seem
strongest of all.

Here first, here eminently, and here just at the time when we should
expect it, do we see that strange faculty for exhibiting a blend, a
union, a cross of characteristics diverse in themselves, and giving
when blended a result different from any of the parts, which is more
than anything else the characteristic of the English language, of
English literature, of English politics, of everything that is
English. Classical rhetoric, French gallantry, Saxon religiosity and
intense realisation of the other world, Oriental extravagance to some
extent, the "Celtic vague"--all these things are there. But they are
all co-ordinated, dominated, fashioned anew by some thing which is
none of them, but which is the English genius, that curious,
anomalous, many-sided genius, which to those who look at only one side
of it seems insular, provincial, limited, and which yet has given us
Shakespeare, the one writer of the world to whom the world allows an
absolute universality.




CHAPTER IV.

ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.

     ODDITY OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE. ITS IMPORTANCE. THE TROY
     STORY. THE ALEXANDREID. CALLISTHENES. LATIN VERSIONS. THEIR
     STORY. ITS DEVELOPMENTS. ALBERIC OF BESANÇON. THE
     DECASYLLABIC POEM. THE GREAT "ROMAN D'ALIXANDRE." FORM, ETC.
     CONTINUATIONS. "KING ALEXANDER." CHARACTERISTICS. THE TALE
     OF TROY. DICTYS AND DARES. THE DARES STORY. ITS ABSURDITY.
     ITS CAPABILITIES. TROILUS AND BRISEIDA. THE 'ROMAN DE
     TROIE.' THE PHASES OF CRESSID. THE 'HISTORIA TROJANA.'
     MEANING OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE.


[Sidenote: _Oddity of the Classical Romance._]

As the interest of Jean Bodel's first two divisions[68] differs
strikingly, and yet represents, in each case intimately and
indispensably, certain sides of the mediæval character, so also does
that of his third. This has perhaps more purely an interest of
curiosity than either of the others. It neither constitutes a capital
division of general literature like the Arthurian story, nor embodies
and preserves a single long-past phase in national spirit and
character, like the _chansons de geste_. From certain standpoints of
the drier and more rigid criticism it is exposed to the charge of
being trifling, almost puerile. We cannot understand--or, to speak
with extremer correctness, it would seem that some of us cannot
understand--the frame of mind which puts Dictys and Dares on the one
hand, Homer on the other, as authorities to be weighed on equal terms,
and gravely sets Homer aside as a very inferior and prejudiced person;
which, even after taking its Dictys and Dares, proceeds to supplement
them with entire inventions of its own; which, after in the same way
taking the Pseudo-Callisthenes as the authoritative biographer of
Alexander, elaborates the legend with a wild luxuriance that makes the
treatment of the Tale of Troy seem positively modest and sober; which
makes Thebes, Julius Cæsar, anything and anybody in fabulous and
historical antiquity alike, the centre, or at least the nucleus, of
successive accretions of romantic fiction.

[Footnote 68: See note 2, p. 26.]

[Sidenote: _Its importance--the Troy story._]

Nevertheless, the attractions, intrinsic and extrinsic, of the
division are neither few nor small. This very confusion, as it seems
nowadays, this extraordinary and almost monstrous blending of
uncritical history and unbridled romance, shows one of the most
characteristic sides of the whole matter, and exhibits, as do few
other things, that condition of mediæval thought in regard to all
critical questions which has so constantly to be insisted on. As in
the case of the Arthurian story, the matter thus presented caught hold
of the mediæval imagination with a remarkable grip, and some of the
most interesting literary successions of all history date from it.
Among them it is almost enough to mention the chain of names--Benoît
de Sainte-More, Guido Colonna, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson--which
reaches Shakespeare, and does not cease with him, all successively
elaborating the history of Troilus and Cressida. The lively story,
first formed, like so many others, by the French genius, and well, if
rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian
Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of
the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful
passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that
Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared
to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of
Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost
repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play,
which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of
Shakespeare's,--all these spring from the Tale of Troy, not in the
least as handed down by the ancients, but tricked and frounced as the
Middle Age was wont. Nor is this half-borrowed interest by any means
the only one. The Cressid story, indeed, does not reach its full
attraction as a direct subject of literary treatment till the
fourteenth century. But the great Alexander cycle gives us work which
merely as poetry equals all but the very best mediæval work, and its
importance in connection with the famous metre named from it is of
itself capital.

[Footnote 69:

    "Than upon him scho kest up baith her ene,
      And with ane blunk it came in to his thocht,
    That he sumtyme hir face before had sene.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Ane sparke of lufe than till his hart culd spring,
      And kendlit all his bodie in ane fyre
    With heit fevir, ane sweit and trimbilling
      Him tuik quhile he was readie to expire;
      To beir his scheild his breast began to tyre:
    Within ane quhyle he changit mony hew,
    _And nevertheles not ane ane uther knew_."

Laing's _Poems of Henryson_ (Edinburgh, 1865), p. 93. This volume is
unfortunately not too common; but 'The Testament and Complaint of
Cressid' may also be found under Chaucer in Chalmers's Poets (i. 298
for this passage).]

[Sidenote: _The Alexandreid._]

In interest, bulk, and importance these two stories--the Story of the
Destruction of Troy and the Alexandreid--far outstrip all the other
romances of antiquity; they are more accessible than the rest, and
have been the subject of far more careful investigation by modern
students. Little has been added, or is likely to be added, in regard
to the Troy-books generally, since M. Joly's introduction to Benoît's
_Roman de Troie_ six-and-twenty years ago,[70] and it is at least
improbable that much will be added to M. Paul Meyer's handling of the
old French treatments of the Alexandreid in his _Alexandre le Grand
dans la Littérature Française au Moyen Age_.[71] For it must once more
be said that the pre-eminence of French over other literatures in this
volume is not due to any crotchet of the writer, or to any desire to
speak of what he has known pretty thoroughly, long, and at first-hand,
in preference to that which he knows less thoroughly, less of old,
and in parts at second-hand. It is the simplest truth to say that in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries France kept the literary school
of Europe, and that, with the single exception of Iceland, during a
part, and only a part, of the time, all the nations of Europe were
content to do, each in its own tongue, and sometimes even in hers, the
lessons which she taught, the exercises which she set them. That the
scholars sometimes far surpassed their masters is quite true, and is
nothing unusual; that they were scholars is simple fact.

[Footnote 70: _Le Roman de Troie._ Par Benoît de Sainte-More. Ed.
Joly. Paris, 1870.]

[Footnote 71: Paris, 1886. The number of monographs on this subject
is, however, very large, and I should like at least to add Mr Wallis
Budge's _Alexander the Great_ (the Syriac version of Callisthenes),
Cambridge, 1889, and his subsequent _Life and Exploits of Alexander_.]

[Sidenote: _Callisthenes._]

The Alexander story, which Mr Wallis Budge, our chief authority (and
perhaps _the_ chief authority) on the Oriental versions of it, speaks
of as "a book which has had more readers than any other, the Bible
alone excepted," is of an antiquity impossible to determine in any
manner at all certain. Nor is the exact place of its origin, or the
language in which it was originally written, to be pronounced upon
with anything like confidence. What does seem reasonably sure is that
what is called "the Pseudo-Callisthenes"--that is to say, the fabulous
biography of the great king, which is certainly the basis of all
Western, and perhaps that of most Eastern, versions of the legend--was
put into Greek at least as early as the third century after Christ,
and thence into Latin (by "Julius Valerius" or another) before the
middle of the fourth. And it appears probable that some of the Eastern
versions, if not themselves the original (and a strong fight has been
made for the Æthiopic or Old-Egyptian origin of nearly the whole),
represent Greek texts older than those we have, as well as in some
cases other Eastern texts which may be older still. Before any modern
Western vernacular handled the subject, there were Alexander legends,
not merely in Greek and Latin, not merely in Æthiopic or Coptic, but
in Armenian and Syriac, in Hebrew and Arabic, in Persian and perhaps
in Turkish: and it is possible that, either indirectly before the
Crusades, or directly through and after them, the legend as told in
the West received additions from the East.

As a whole, however, the Pseudo-Callisthenes, or rather his Latin
interpreter Julius Valerius,[72] was the main source of the mediæval
legend of Alexander. And it is not at all impossible (though the old
vague assertions that this or that mediæval characteristic or
development was derived from the East were rarely based on any solid
foundation so far as their authors knew) that this Alexander legend
did, at second-hand, and by suggesting imitation of its contents and
methods, give to some of the most noteworthy parts of mediæval
literature itself an Eastern colouring, perhaps to some extent even an
Eastern substance.

[Footnote 72: Most conveniently accessible in the Teubner collection,
ed. Kübler, Leipzig, 1888.]

[Sidenote: _Latin versions._]

Still the direct sources of knowledge in the West were undoubtedly
Latin versions of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, one of which, that ascribed
to Julius Valerius, appears, as has been said, to have existed before
the middle of the fourth century, while the other, sometimes called
the _Historia de Proeliis_, is later by a good deal. Later still,
and representing traditions necessarily different from and later than
those of the Callisthenes book, was the source of the most marvellous
elements in the Alexandreids of the twelfth and subsequent centuries,
the _Iter ad Paradisum_, in which the conquerer was represented as
having journeyed to the Earthly Paradise itself. After this, connected
as it was with dim Oriental fables as to his approach to the unknown
regions north-east of the Caucasus, and his making gates to shut out
Gog, there could be no further difficulty, and all accretions as to
his descent into the sea in a glass cage and so forth came easily.

[Sidenote: _Their story._]

Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different in nature from
at least the opening part of the Callisthenes version itself. This
starts with what seems to be the capital and oldest part of the whole
fabulous story, a very circumstantial account of the fictitious
circumstances of the birth of Alexander. According to this, which is
pretty constantly preserved in all the fabulous versions of the legend
(a proof of its age), Nectanabus, an Egyptian king and magician,
having ascertained by sortilege (a sort of _kriegs-spiel_ on a basin
of water with wax ships) that his throne is doomed, quits the country
and goes to Macedonia. There he falls in love with Olympias, and
during the absence of her husband succeeds by magic arts not only in
persuading her that the god Ammon is her lover, but to some extent in
persuading King Philip to believe this, and to accept the
consequences, the part of Ammon having been played of course by
Nectanabus himself. Bucephalus makes a considerable figure in the
story, and Nectanabus devotes much attention to Alexander's
education--care which the Prince repays (for no very discernible
reason) by pushing his father and tutor into a pit, where the sorcerer
dies after revealing the relationship. The rest of the story is mainly
occupied by the wars with Darius and Porus (the former a good deal
travestied), and two important parts, or rather appendices, of it are
epistolary communications between Aristotle and Alexander on the one
hand, Alexander and Dindymus (Dandamis, &c.), King of the Brahmins, on
the other. After his Indian adventures the king is poisoned by
Cassander or at his instigation.

[Sidenote: _Its developments._]

Into a framework of this kind fables of the sort above mentioned had,
it will be seen, not the remotest difficulty in fitting themselves;
and it was not even a very long step onward to make Alexander a
Christian, equip him with twelve peers, and the like. But it has been
well demonstrated by M. Paul Meyer that though the fictitious
narrative obtained wide acceptance, and even admission into their
historical compilations by Vincent of Beauvais, Ekkehard, and others,
a more sober tradition as to the hero obtained likewise. If we were
more certain than we are as to the exact age of Quintus Curtius, it
would be easier to be certain likewise how far he represents and how
far he is the source of this more sober tradition. It seems clear that
the Latin _Alexandreis_ of Walter of Châtillon is derived from him, or
from a common source, rather than from Valerius-Callisthenes: while M.
Meyer has dwelt upon a Latin compilation perhaps as old as the great
outburst of vernacular romance on Alexander, preserved only in English
MSS. at Oxford and Cambridge, and probably of English composition,
which is a perfectly common-sense account based upon historians, of
various dates and values, indeed, ranging from Trogus to Isidore of
Seville, but all historians and not romancers.

In this path, however, comparatively few cared to tread. The
attraction for the twelfth century lay elsewhere. Sometimes a little
of the more authentic matter was combined with the fabulous, and at
least one instance occurs where the author, probably in the thirteenth
century, simply combined, with a frank audacity which is altogether
charming, the popular epitome of Valerius and the sober compilation
just referred to. The better, more famous, and earlier romantic work
is taken straight from, though it by no means confines itself to,
Valerius, the _Historia de Proeliis_, and the _Iter ad Paradisum_.
The results of this handling are enormous in bulk, and in minor
varieties; but they are for general purposes sufficiently represented
by the great _Roman d'Alixandre_[73] in French, the long and
interesting English _King Alisaunder_,[74] and perhaps the German of
Lamprecht. The Icelandic Alexander-Saga, though of the thirteenth
century, is derived from Walter of Châtillon, and so reflects the
comparatively sober side of the story. Of all the others the _Roman
d'Alixandre_ is the most immediate parent.

[Footnote 73: Ed. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846.]

[Footnote 74: Ed. Weber, _op. cit. sup._, i. 1-327.]

[Sidenote: _Alberic of Besançon._]

There was, indeed, an older French poem than this--perhaps two
such--and till the discovery of a fragment of it six years after the
publication in 1846 of the great _Roman d'Alixandre_ itself by
Michelant, it was supposed that this poem was the original of
Lamprecht's German (or of the German by whomsoever it be, for some
will have it that Lamprecht is simply Lambert li Tors, _v. infra_).
This, however, seems not to be the case. The Alberic fragment[75]
(respecting which the philologists, as usual, fight whether it was
written by a Besançon man or a Briançon one, or somebody else) is
extremely interesting in some ways. For, in the first place, it is
written in octosyllabic _tirades_ of single assonance or rhyme, a very
rare form; in the second, it is in a dialect of Provençal; and in the
third, the author not only does not follow, but distinctly and rather
indignantly rejects, the story of Nectanabus:--

    "Dicunt alquant estrobatour
    Quel reys fud filz d'encantatour:
    Mentent fellon losengetour;
    Mai en credreyz nec un de lour."[76]

[Footnote 75: Ed. Meyer, _op. cit._, i. 1-9.]

[Footnote 76: Ll. 27-30.]

But the fragment is unluckily so short (105 lines only) that it is
impossible to say much of its matter.

[Sidenote: _The decasyllabic poem._]

Between this and the Alexandrine poem there is another version,[77]
curiously intermediate in form, date, and substance. This is in the
ordinary form of the older, but not oldest, _chansons de geste_,
decasyllabic rhymed _tirades_. There are only about eight hundred
lines of it, which have been eked out, by about ten thousand
Alexandrines from the later and better known poem, in the MSS. which
remain. The decasyllabic part deals with the youth of Alexander, and
though the author does not seem, any more than Alberic, to have
admitted the scandal about Nectanabus, the death of that person is
introduced, and altogether we see a Callisthenic influence. The piece
has been very highly praised for literary merit; it seems to me
certainly not below, but not surprisingly above, the average of the
older _chansons_ in this respect. But in so much of the poem as
remains to us no very interesting part of the subject is attacked.

[Footnote 77: Meyer, i. 25-59.]

The great romance is in more fortunate conditions. We have it not
indeed complete (for it does not go to the death of the hero) but in
ample measure: and fortunately it has for full half a century been
accessible to the student. When M. Paul Meyer says that this edition
"ne saurait fournir une base suffisante à une étude critique sur le
roman d'Alixandre," he is of course using the word _critique_ with the
somewhat arbitrary limitations of the philological specialist. The
reader who cares for literature first of all--for the book as a book
to read--will find it now complete for his criticism in the Stuttgart
version of the _Alixandre_, though he cannot be too grateful to M.
Meyer for his second volume as a whole, and for the printing in the
first of Alberic, and the decasyllabic poem, and for the extracts from
that of Thomas of Kent, who, unlike the authors of the great Romance,
admitted the Nectanabus marvels and intrigues.

[Sidenote: _The great_ Roman d'Alixandre.]

The story is of such importance in mediæval literature that some
account of the chief English and French embodiments of it may be
desirable. The French version, attributed in shares, which have as
usual exercised the adventurous ingenuity of critics, to two authors,
Lambert li Tors, the Crooked (the older designation "Li Cors," the
Short, seems to be erroneous), and Alexander of Bernay or Paris,
occupies in the standard edition of Michelant 550 pages, holding, when
full and with no blanks or notes, 38 lines each. It must, therefore,
though the lines are not continuously numbered, extend to over 20,000.
It begins with Alexander's childhood, and though the paternity of
Nectanabus is rejected here as in the decasyllabic version, which was
evidently under the eyes of the authors, yet the enchanter is admitted
as having a great influence on the Prince's education. This portion,
filling about fifteen pages, is followed by another of double the
length, describing a war with Nicolas, King of Cesarea, an
unhistorical monarch, who in the Callisthenic fiction insults
Alexander. He is conquered and his kingdom given to Ptolemy. Next
Alexander threatens Athens, but is turned from his wrath by Aristotle;
and coming home, prevents his father's marriage with Cleopatra, who is
sent away in disgrace. And then, omitting the poisoning of Philip by
Olympias and her paramour, which generally figures, the Romance goes
straight to the war with Darius. This is introduced (in a manner which
made a great impression on the Middle Ages, as appears in a famous
passage of our wars with France[78]) by an insulting message and
present of childish gifts from the Persian king. Alexander marches to
battle, bathes in the Cydnus, crosses "Lube" and "Lutis," and passing
by a miraculous knoll which made cowards brave and brave men fearful,
arrives at Tarsus, which he takes. The siege of Tyre comes next, and
holds a large place; but a very much larger is occupied by the
_Fuerres de Gadres_ ("Foray of Gaza"), where the story of the
obstinate resistance of the Philistine city is expanded into a kind of
separate _chanson de geste_, occupying 120 pages and some five
thousand lines.

[Footnote 78: See _Henry V._ for the tennis-ball incident.]

In contradistinction to this prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and
the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly
passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for
it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning (thought by some
to coincide with a change of authors) then occurs, and the more
marvellous part of the narrative opens. After passing the desert and
(for no very clear object) visiting the bottom of the sea in a glass
case, Alexander begins his campaign with Porus, whom Darius had
summoned to his aid. The actual fighting does not take very long; but
there is an elaborate description of the strange tribes and other
wonders of India. Porus fights again in Bactria and is again beaten,
after which Alexander pursues his allies Gog and Magog and shuts them
off by his famous wall. An arrangement with Porus and a visit to the
Pillars of Hercules follow. The return is begun, and marvels come
thicker and thicker. Strange beasts and amphibious men attack the
Greeks. The "Valley from which None Return" presents itself, and
Alexander can only obtain passage for his army by devoting himself,
though he manages to escape by the aid of a grateful devil whom he
sets free from bondage. At the sea-shore sirens beset the host, and
numbers perish; after which hairy horned old men tell them of the
three magic fountains--the Fountain of Youth, the Fountain (visible
only once a-year) of Immortality, and the Fountain of Resurrection.
Many monstrous tribes of enemies supervene; also a Forest of Maidens,
kind but of hamadryad nature--"flower-women," as they have been
poetically called. It is only after this experience that they come to
the Fountain of Youth--the Fontaine de Jouvence--which has left such
an indelible impression on tradition. Treachery had deprived Alexander
of access to that of Immortality; and that of Resurrection has done
nothing but restore two cooked fish to life. But after suffering
intense cold, and passing through a rain of blood, the army arrives at
the Jouvence, bathes therein, and all become as men thirty years old.
The fountain is a branch of the Euphrates, the river of Paradise.
After this they come to the Trees of the Sun and Moon--speaking trees
which foretell Alexander's death. Porus hears of this, and when the
army returns to India he picks a quarrel, and the two kings fight.
Bucephalus is mortally wounded; but Porus is killed. The beginnings
of treason, plots against Alexander, and the episode of Queen Candace
(who has, however, been mentioned before) follow. The king marches on
Babylon and soars into the air in a car drawn by griffins. At Babylon
there is much fighting; indeed, except the Foray of Gaza, this is the
chief part of the book devoted to that subject, the Persian and Indian
wars having been, as we saw, but lightly treated. The Amazons are
brought in next; but fighting recommences with the siege of "Defur."
An enchanted river, which whosoever drinks he becomes guilty of
cowardice or treachery, follows; and then we return to Tarsus and
Candace, that courteous queen. Meanwhile the traitors Antipater and
"Divinuspater" continue plotting, and though Alexander is warned
against them by his mother Olympias, they succeed in poisoning him.
The death of the king and the regret of his Twelve Peers, to whom he
has distributed his dominions, finish the poem.

[Sidenote: _Form, &c._]

In form this poem resembles in all respects the _chansons de geste_.
It is written in mono-rhymed _laisses_ of the famous metre which owes
its name and perhaps its popularity to the use of it in this romance.
Part of it at least cannot be later than the twelfth century; and
though in so long a poem, certainly written by more than one, and in
all likelihood by more than two, there must be inequality, this
inequality is by no means very great. The best parts of the poem are
the marvels. The fighting is not quite so good as in the _chansons de
geste_ proper; but the marvels are excellent, the poet relating them
with an admirable mixture of gravity and complaisance, in spirited
style and language, and though with extremely little attention to
coherence and verisimilitude, yet with no small power of what may be
called fabulous attraction.

[Sidenote: _Continuations._]

It is also characteristic in having been freely continued. Two
authors, Guy of Cambray and Jean le Nevelois, composed a _Vengeance
Alexandre_. The _Voeux du Paon_, which develop some of the episodes
of the main poem, were almost as famous at the time as _Alixandre_
itself. Here appears the popular personage of Gadiffer, and hence was
in part derived the great prose romance of Perceforest. Less
interesting in itself, but curious as illustrating the tendency to
branch up and down to all parts of a hero's pedigree, is _Florimont_,
a very long octosyllabic poem, perhaps as old as the twelfth century,
dealing with Alexander's grandfather.[79]

[Footnote 79: In this paragraph I again speak at second-hand, for
neither the _Voeux_ nor _Florimont_ is to my knowledge yet in print.
The former seems to have supplied most of the material of the poem in
fifteenth-century Scots, printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1831, and to
be reprinted, in another version, by the Scottish Text Society.]

[Sidenote: King Alexander.]

The principal and earliest version of the English _Alexander_ is
accessible without much difficulty in Weber's _Metrical Romances of
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries_. Its differences
from the French original are, however, very well worth noting. That it
only extends to about eight thousand octosyllabic lines instead of
some twenty thousand Alexandrines is enough to show that a good deal
is omitted; and an indication in some little detail of its contents
may therefore not be without interest. It should be observed that
besides this and the Scots _Alexander_ (see note above) an
alliterative _Romance of Alexander and Dindymus_[80] exists, and
perhaps others. But until some one supplements Mr Ward's admirable
_Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum_ with a similar catalogue
for the minor libraries of the United Kingdom, it will be very
difficult to give complete accounts of matters of this kind.

[Footnote 80: E.E.T.S., 1878, edited by Professor Skeat.]

Our present poem may be of the thirteenth century, and is pretty
certainly not long posterior to it. It begins, after the system of
English romances, with a kind of moral prologue on the various lives
and states of men of "Middelerd." Those who care for good literature
and good learning are invited to hear a noble _geste_ of Alisaundre,
Darye, and Pore, with wonders of worm and beast. After a geographical
prologue the story of Nectanabus, "Neptanabus," is opened, and his
determination to revenge himself on Philip of Macedon explained by the
fact of that king having headed the combination against Egypt. The
design on Olympias, and its success, are very fully expounded.
Nectanabus tells the queen, in his first interview with her, "a high
master in Egypt I was"; and about eight hundred lines carry us to the
death of Nectanabus and the breaking of "Bursifal" (Bucephalus) by the
Prince. The episodes of Nicolas (who is here King of Carthage) and of
Cleopatra follow; but when the expedition against Darius is reached,
the mention of "Lube" in the French text seems to have induced the
English poet to carry his man by Tripoli, instead of Cilicia, and
bring him to the oracle of Ammon--indeed in all the later versions of
the story the crossing of the purely fantastic Callisthenic romance
with more or less historical matter is noticeable. The "Bishop" of
Ammon, by the way, assures him that Philip is really his father. The
insulting presents follow the siege of Tyre; the fighting with Darius,
though of course much mediævalised, is brought somewhat more into
accordance with the historic account, though still the Granicus does
not appear; the return to Greece and the capture of Thebes have their
place; and the Athens-Aristotle business is also to some extent
critically treated. Then the last battle with Darius comes in: and his
death concludes the first part of the piece in about five thousand
lines. It is noticeable that the "Foray of Gaza" is entirely omitted;
and indeed, as above remarked, it bears every sign of being a separate
poem.

The second part deals with "Pore"--in other words, with the Indian
expedition and its wonders. These are copied from the French, but by
no means slavishly. The army is, on the whole, even worse treated by
savage beasts and men on its way to India than in the original; but
the handling, including the Candace episodes, follows the French more
closely than in the first part. The fighting at "Defur," however, like
that at Gaza, is omitted; and the wilder and more mystical and
luxuriant parts of the story--the three Fountains, the Sirens, the
flower-maidens, and the like--are either omitted likewise or handled
more prosaically.[81]

[Footnote 81: Dr Kölbing, who in combination of philological and
literary capacity is second among Continental students of romance only
to M. Gaston Paris, appears to have convinced himself of the existence
of a great unknown English poet who wrote not only _Alisaundre_, but
_Arthour and Merlin_, _Richard Coeur de Lion_, and other pieces. I
should much like to believe this.]

One of the most curious things about this poem is that every
division--divisions of which Weber made chapters--begins by a short
gnomic piece in the following style:--

    "Day spryng is jolyf tide.
    He that can his tyme abyde,
    Oft he schal his wille bytyde.
    Loth is grater man to chyde."

[Sidenote: _Characteristics._]

The treatment of the Alexander story thus well illustrates one way of
the mediæval mind with such things--the way of combining at will
incongruous stories, of accepting with no, or with little, criticism
any tale of wonder that it happened to find in books, of using its own
language, applying its own manners, supposing its own clothing,
weapons, and so forth to have prevailed at any period of history. And
further, it shows how the _geste_ theory--the theory of working out
family connections and stories of ancestors and successors--could not
fail to be applied to any subject that at all lent itself to such
treatment. But, on the other hand, this division of the romances of
antiquity does not exhibit the more fertile, the more inventive, the
more poetical, and generally the nobler traits of Middle-Age
literature. As will have been noted, there was little invention in the
later versions, the Callisthenic fictions and the _Iter ad Paradisum_
being, with a few Oriental accretions, almost slavishly relied upon
for furnishing out the main story, though the "Foray of Gaza," the
"Vows of the Peacock," and _Florimont_ exhibit greater independence.
Yet again no character, no taking and lively story, is elaborated.
Nectanabus has a certain personal interest: but he was given to, not
invented by, the Romance writers. Olympias has very little character
in more senses than one: Candace is not worked out: and Alexander
himself is entirely colourless. The fantastic story, and the wonders
with which it was bespread, seem to have absorbed the attention of
writers and hearers; and nobody seems to have thought of any more.
Perhaps this was merely due to the fact that none of the more original
genius of the time was directed on it: perhaps to the fact that the
historical element in the story, small as it was, cramped the
inventive powers, and prevented the romancers from doing their best.

[Sidenote: _The Tale of Troy._]

In this respect the Tale of Troy presents a remarkable contrast to its
great companion--a contrast pervading, and almost too remarkable to be
accidental. Inasmuch as this part of mediæval dealings with antiquity
connects itself with the literary history of two of the very greatest
writers of our own country, Chaucer and Shakespeare; with that of one
of the greatest writers of Italy, Boccaccio; and with some of the most
noteworthy work in Old French, it has been thoroughly and repeatedly
investigated.[82] But it is so important, and so characteristic of
the time with which we are dealing, that it cannot be passed over
here, though the later developments must only be referred to in so far
as they help us to understand the real originality, which was so long,
and still is sometimes, denied to mediæval writers. In this case, as
in the other, the first striking point is the fact that the Middle
Ages, having before them what may be called, _mutatis mutandis_,
canonical and apocryphal, authentic and unauthentic, ancient and not
ancient, accounts of a great literary matter, chose, by an instinct
which was not probably so wrong as it has sometimes seemed, the
apocryphal in preference to the canonical, the unauthentic in
preference to the authentic, the modern in preference to the ancient.

[Footnote 82: It would be unfair not to mention, as having preceded
that of M. Joly by some years, and having practically founded study on
the right lines, the handling of MM. Moland and d'Héricault,
_Nouvelles Françaises du Quatorzième Siècle_ (Bibliothèque
Elzévirienne. Paris, 1856).]

[Sidenote: _Dictys and Dares._]

As in the case of the Alexander-Saga, their origins were the
Pseudo-Callisthenes and the _Iter ad Paradisum_, so in the Tale of
Troy they were the works of two persons whose literary offspring has
obtained for them an amount of attention transcending to a quite
ludicrous extent their literary merit--Dictys Cretensis and Dares
Phrygius, to whom may perhaps be added the less shadowy personage of
the grammarian John Tzetzes. But, as in the other case also, they were
by no means confined to such authorities. If they did not know Homer
very well at first-hand, they did know him: they knew Ovid (who of
course represents Homer, though not Homer only) extremely well: and
they knew Virgil. But partly from the instinct above referred to, of
which more presently, partly from the craze for tracing Western Europe
back to the "thrice-beaten Trojans," it pleased them to regard Homer
as a late and unhistorical calumniator, whose Greek prejudices made
him bear false witness; and to accept the pretensions of Dictys and
Dares to be contemporaries and eyewitnesses of fact. Dictys, a
companion of Idomeneus, was supposed to represent the Greek side, but
more fairly than Homer; and Dares, priest of Hephæstus, the Trojan.

The works of these two worthies, which are both of small
compass,--Dictys occupies rather more than a hundred, Dares rather
more than fifty, pages of the ordinary Teubner classics,[83]--exist at
present only in Latin prose, though, as the Greeks were more expert
and inventive forgers than the Romans, it is possible, if not even
highly probable, that both were, and nearly certain that Dictys was,
originally Greek at least in language. Dictys, the older pretty
certainly, is introduced by a letter to a certain Quintus Aradius from
Lucius Septimius, who informs "his Rufinus" and the world, with a
great deal of authority and learning, that the book had been written
by Dictys in Punic letters, which Cadmus and Agenor had then made of
common use in Greece; that some shepherds found the manuscript written
on linden-bark paper in a tin case at his tomb at Gnossus; that their
landlord turning the Punic letters into Greek (which had always been
the language), gave it to Nero the Emperor, who rewarded him richly;
and that he, Septimius, having by chance got the book into his hands,
thought it worth while to translate it into Latin, both for the sake
of making the true history known and "ut otiosi animi desidiam
discuteremus." The Dares volume is more ambitious, and purports to be
introduced by no less a person than Cornelius Nepos to no less a
person than Sallustius Crispus, and to have been "faithfully
translated" by the former from MS. in the very hand of Dares, which he
found at Athens, in order to correct the late and fabulous authority
of Homer, who actually makes gods fight with men!

[Footnote 83: Ed. Meister. Leipzig, 1872-73.]

[Sidenote: _The Dares story._]

It will be, of course, obvious to the merest tyro in criticism that
these prefaces bear "forgery" on the very face of them. The first is
only one of those innumerable variants of the genesis of a fiction
which Sir Walter Scott has so pleasantly summarised in one of his
introductions; and the phrase quoted about _animi otiosi desidiam_ is
a commonplace of mediæval bookmaking. The second, more cleverly
arranged, exposes itself to the question how far, putting the
difficulty about writing aside, an ancient Greek MS. of the kind could
possibly have escaped the literary activity of many centuries of
Athenian wits and scholars, to fall into the hands of Cornelius Nepos.
The actual age and origin of the two have, of course, occupied many
modern scholars; and the favourite opinion seems to be that Dictys may
have been originally written by some Greek about the time of Nero (the
Latin translation cannot well be earlier than the fourth century and
may be much later), while Dares may possibly be as late as the
twelfth. Neither book is of the very slightest interest intrinsically.
Dictys (the full title of whose book is _Ephemeris Belli Trojani_) is
not only the longer but the better written of the two. It contains no
direct "set" at Homer; and may possibly preserve traits of some value
from the lost cyclic writers. But it was not anything like such a
favourite with the Middle Ages as Dares. Dictys had contented himself
with beginning at the abduction of Helen; Dares starts his _De Excidio
Trojæ_ with the Golden Fleece, and excuses the act of Paris as mere
reprisals for the carrying off of Hesione by Telamon. Antenor having
been sent to Greece to demand reparation and rudely treated, Paris
makes a regular raid in vengeance, and so the war begins with a sort
of balance of cause for it on the Trojan side. Before the actual
fighting, some personal descriptions of the chief heroes and heroines
are given, curiously feeble and strongly tinged with mediæval
peculiarities, but thought to be possibly derived from some similar
things attributed to the rhetorician Philostratus at the end of the
third century. And among these a great place is given to Troilus and
"Briseida."

Nearly half the book is filled with these preliminaries, with an
account of the fruitless embassy of Ulysses and Diomed to Troy, and
with enumerating the forces and allies of the two parties. But when
Dares gets to work he proceeds with a rapidity which may be partly
due to the desire to contradict Homer. The landing and death of
Protesilaus, avenged to some extent by Achilles, the battle in which
Hector slays Patroclus (to whom Dares adds Meriones), and that at the
ships, are all lumped together; and the funerals of Protesilaus and
Patroclus are simultaneously celebrated. Palamedes begins to plot
against Agamemnon. The fighting generally goes much against the
Greeks; and Agamemnon sues for a three years' truce, which is granted
despite Hector's very natural suspicion of such an uncommonly long
time. It is skipped in a line; and then, the fighting having gone
against the Trojans, they beg for a six months' truce in their turn.
This is followed by a twelve days' fight and a thirty days' truce
asked by the Greeks. Then comes Andromache's dream, the fruitless
attempt to prevent Hector fighting, and his death at the hands of
Achilles. After more truces, Palamedes supplants Agamemnon, and
conducts the war with pretty good success. Achilles sees Polyxena at
the tomb of Hector, falls in love with her, demands her hand, and is
promised it if he can bring about peace. In the next batch of
fighting, Palamedes kills Deiphobus and Sarpedon, but is killed by
Paris; and in consequence a fresh battle at the ships and the firing
of them takes place, Achilles abstaining, but Ajax keeping up the
battle till (natural) night. Troilus then becomes the hero of a seven
days' battle followed by the usual truce, during which Agamemnon tries
to coax Achilles out of the sulks, and on his refusal holds a great
council of war. When next _tempus pugnæ supervenit_ (a stock phrase
of the book) Troilus is again the hero, wounds everybody, including
Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Diomed, and very reasonably opposes a six
months' armistice which his father grants. At its end he again bears
all before him; but, killing too many Myrmidons, he at last excites
Achilles, who, though at first wounded, kills him at last by wounding
his horse, which throws him. Memnon recovers the body of Troilus, but
is himself killed. The death of Achilles in the temple of Apollo (by
ambush, but, of course, with no mention of the unenchanted heel), and
of Ajax and Paris in single fight, leads to the appearance of the
Amazons, who beat the Greeks, till Penthesilea is killed by
Neoptolemus. Antenor, Æneas, and others urge peace, and on failing to
prevail with Priam, begin to parley with the Greeks. There is no
Trojan horse, but the besiegers are treacherously introduced at a gate
_ubi extrinsecus portam equi sculptum caput erat_. Antenor and Æneas
receive their reward; but the latter is banished because he has
concealed Polyxena, who is massacred when discovered by Neoptolemus.
Helenus, Cassandra, and Andromache go free: and the book ends with the
beautifully precise statements that the war, truces and all, lasted
ten years, six months, and twelve days; that 886,000 men fell on the
Greek side, and 676,000 on the Trojan; that Æneas set out in
twenty-two ships ("the same with which Paris had gone to Greece," says
the careful Dares), and 3400 men, while 2500 followed Antenor, and
1200 Helenus and Andromache.

[Sidenote: _Its absurdity._]

This bald summary is scarcely balder than the book itself, which also,
as can be seen from the summary, and would be more fully seen from the
book, has no literary merit of any kind. It reads more like an
excessively uninspired _précis_ of a larger work than like anything
else--a _précis_ in which all the literary merit has, with unvarying
infelicity, been omitted. Nothing can be more childish than the
punctilious euhemerism by which all the miraculous elements of the
Homeric story are blinked or explained away, unless it be the
painstaking endeavour simply to say something different from Homer, or
the absurd alternation of fighting and truces, in which each party
invariably gives up its chance of finishing the war at the precise
time at which that chance is most flourishing, and which reads like a
humorous travesty of the warfare of some historic periods with all the
humour left out.

[Sidenote: _Its capabilities._]

Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the Romantic period that
it fastened so eagerly on this sorriest of illegitimate epitomes.[84]
Very few persons at that time were in case to compare the literary
merit of Homer--even that of Ovid and Virgil--with the literary merit
of these bald pieces of bad Latin prose. Moreover, the supernatural
elements in the Homeric story, though very congenial to the temper of
the Middle Age itself, were presented and ascribed in such a fashion
that it was almost impossible for that age to adopt them. Putting
aside a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la déesse d'amors," there
was nothing of which the mediæval mind was more tranquilly convinced
than that "Jubiter," "Appollin," and the rest were not mere fond
things vainly invented, but actual devils who had got themselves
worshipped in the pagan times. It was impossible for a devout
Christian man, whatever pranks he might play with his own religion, to
represent devils as playing the part of saints and of the Virgin,
helping the best heroes, and obtaining their triumph. Nor, audacious
as was the faculty of "transfer" possessed by the mediæval genius, was
it easy to Christianise the story in any other way. It is perhaps
almost surprising that, so far as I know or remember, no version
exists representing Cassandra as a holy and injured nun, making Our
Lady play the part of Venus to Æneas, and even punishing the
sacrilegious Diomed for wounding her. But I do not think I have heard
of such a version (though Sir Walter has gone near to representing
something parallel in _Ivanhoe_), and it would have been a somewhat
violent escapade for even a mediæval fancy.

[Footnote 84: The British Museum alone (see Mr Ward's _Catalogue of
Romances_, vol. i.) contains some seventeen separate MSS. of Dares.]

So, with that customary and restless ability to which we owe so much,
and which has been as a rule so much slighted, it seized on the
negative capacities of the story. Dares gives a wretched painting, but
a tolerable canvas and frame. Each section of his meagre narrative is
capable of being worked out by sufficiently busy and imaginative
operators into a complete _roman d'aventures_: his facts, if meagre
and jejune, are numerous. The raids and reprisals in the cases of
Hesione and Helen suited the demands of the time; and, as has been
hinted, the singular interlardings of truce and war, and the shutting
up of the latter into so many days' hand-to-hand fighting,--with no
strategy, no care for communications, no scientific nonsense of any
kind,--were exactly to mediæval taste.

[Sidenote: _Troilus and Briseida._]

Above all, the prominence of new heroes and heroines, about whom not
very much was said, and whose _gestes_ the mediæval writer could
accordingly fill up at his own will, with the presentation of others
in a light different from that of the classical accounts, was a
godsend. Achilles, as the principal author of the "Excidium Trojæ"
(the title of the Dares book, and after it of others), must be
blackened; and though Dares himself does not contain the worst
accusations of the mediæval writers against the unshorn son of the
sea-goddess, it clears the way for them by taking away the excuse of
the unjust deprivation of Briseis. From this to making him not merely
a factious partisan, but an unfair fighter, who mobs his enemies half
to death with Myrmidons before he engages them himself, is not far. On
the other hand, Troilus, a mere name in the older stories, offers
himself as a hero. And for a heroine, the casual mention of the charms
of Briseida in Dares started the required game. Helen was too
puzzling, as well as too Greek; Andromache only a faithful wife;
Cassandra a scolding sorceress; Polyxena a victim. Briseida had almost
a clear record, as after the confusion with Chryseis (to be altered in
name afterwards) there was very little personality left in her, and
she could for that very reason be dealt with as the romancers pleased.

In the subsequent and vernacular handling of the story the same
difference of alternation is at first perceived as that which appears
in the Alexander legend. The sobriety of Gautier of Châtillon's
_Alexandreis_ is matched and its Latinity surpassed by the _Bellum
Trojanum_ of our countryman Joseph of Exeter, who was long and justly
praised as about the best mediæval writer of classical Latin verse.
But this neighbourhood of the streams of history and fiction ceases
much earlier in the Trojan case, and for very obvious reasons. The
temperament of mediæval poets urged them to fill in and fill out: the
structure of the Daretic epitome invited them to do so: and they very
shortly did it.

[Sidenote: _The_ Roman de Troie.]

After some controversy, the credit of first "romancing" the Tale of
Troy has been, it would seem justly and finally, assigned to Benoît de
Sainte-More. Benoît, whose flourishing time was about 1160, who was a
contemporary and rival of Wace, and who wrote a chronicle of Normandy
even longer than his Troy-book, composed the latter in more than
thirty thousand octosyllabic lines, an expansion of the fifty pages of
Dares, which stands perhaps almost alone even among the numerous
similar feats of mediæval bards. He has helped himself freely with
matter from Dictys towards the end of his work; but, as we have seen,
even this reinforcement could not be great in bulk. Expansion,
however, so difficult to some writers, was never in the least a
stumbling-block to the _trouvère_. It was rather a bottomless pit into
which he fell, traversing in his fall lines and pages with endless
alacrity of sinning.

Not that Benoît is by any means a person to be contemptuously spoken
of. In the first place, as we shall see presently, he was for many
hundred years completely and rather impudently robbed of his fame; in
the second, he is the literary ancestor of far greater men than
himself; and in the third, his verse, though not free from the
besetting sin of its kind, and especially of the octosyllabic
variety--the sin of smooth but insignificant fluency--is always
pleasant, and sometimes picturesque. Still there is no doubt that at
present the second claim is the strongest with us; and that if Benoît
de Sainte-More had not, through his plagiarist Colonna, been the
original of Boccaccio and Chaucer and Shakespeare, he would require
little more than a bare mention here.

[Sidenote: _The phases of Cressid._]

Dares, as we have seen, mentions Briseida, and extols her beauty and
charm: she was, he says, "beautiful, not of lofty stature, fair, her
hair yellow and silky, her eyebrows joined, her eyes lively, her body
well proportioned, kind, affable, modest, of a simple mind, and
pious." He also mightily extols Troilus; but he does not intimate any
special connection between the two, or tell the story of "Cressid,"
which indeed his followers elaborated in terms not altogether
consistent with some of the above laudatory epithets. Tzetzes, who
with some others gives her the alternative name of Hippodamia, alters
her considerably, and assigns to her tall stature, a white complexion,
black hair, as well as specially comely breasts, cheeks, and nose,
skill in dress, a pleasant smile, but a distinct tendency to
"arrogance." Both these writers, however, with Joseph of Exeter and
others, seem to be thinking merely of the Briseis whom we know from
Homer as the mistress of Achilles, and do not connect her with
Calchas, much less with Troilus. What may be said with some confidence
is that the confusion of Briseida with the daughter of Calchas and the
assignment of her to Troilus as his love originated with Benoît de
Sainte-More. But we must perhaps hesitate a little before assigning to
him quite so much credit as has sometimes been allowed him. Long
before Shakespeare received the story in its full development (for
though he does not carry it to the bitter end in _Troilus and
Cressida_ itself, the allusion to the "lazar kite of Cressid's kind"
in _Henry V._ shows that he knew it) it had reached that completeness
through the hands of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Henryson, the least of
whom was capable of turning a comparatively barren _donnée_ into a
rich possession, and who as a matter of fact each added much. We do
not find in the Norman _trouvère_, and it would be rather wonderful if
we did find, the gay variety of the _Filostrato_ and its vivid picture
of Cressid as merely passionate, Chaucer's admirable Pandarus and his
skilfully blended heroine, or the infinite pathos of Henryson's final
interview. Still, all this great and moving romance would have been
impossible without the idea of Cressid's successive sojourn in Troy
and the Greek camp, and of her successive courtship by Troilus and by
Diomed. And this Benoît really seems to have thought of first. His
motives for devising it have been rather idly inquired into. For us it
shall be sufficient that he did devise it.

By an easy confusion with Chryses and Chryseis--half set right
afterwards in the change from Briseida to Griseida in Boccaccio and
Creseide in Chaucer--he made his heroine the daughter of Calchas. The
priest, a traitor to Troy but powerful with the Greeks, has left his
daughter in the city and demands her--a demand which, with the usual
complacency noticed above as characterising the Trojans in Dares
himself, is granted, though they are very angry with Calchas. But
Troilus is already the damsel's lover; and a bitter parting takes
place between them. She is sent, gorgeously equipped, to the Greeks;
and it happens to be Diomed who receives her. He at once makes the
fullest declarations--for in nothing did the Middle Age believe more
fervently than in the sentiment,

    "Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"

But Briseida, with a rather excessive politeness, and leaving him a
good deal of hope, informs him that she has already a fair friend
yonder. Whereat, as is reasonable, he is not too much discouraged. It
must be supposed that this is related to Troilus, for in the next
fight he, after Diomed has been wounded, reproaches Briseida pretty
openly. He is not wrong, for Briseida weeps at Diomed's wound, and (to
the regret and reproof of her historian, and indeed against her own
conscience) gives herself to the Greek, or determines to do so, on the
philosophical principle that Troilus is lost to her. Achilles then
kills Troilus himself, and we hear no more of the lady.

The volubility of Benoît assigns divers long speeches to Briseida, in
which favourable interpreters have seen the germ of the future
Cressid; and in which any fair critic may see the suggestion of her.
But it is little more than a suggestion. Of the full and masterly
conception of Cressid as a type of woman which was afterwards reached,
Troilus, and Diomed, and Pandarus, and the wrath of the gods were
essential features. Here Troilus is a shadow, Diomed not much more,
Pandarus non-existent, the vengeance of Love on a false lover
unthought of. Briseida, though she has changed her name, and
parentage, and status, is still, as even the patriotic enthusiasm of
MM. Moland and d'Héricault (the first who did Benoît justice)
perceives, the Briseis of Homer, a slave-girl who changes masters, and
for her own pleasure as well as her own safety is chiefly anxious to
please the master that is near. The vivifying touch was brought by
Boccaccio, and Boccaccio falls out of our story.

[Sidenote: _The_ Historia Trojana.]

But between Benoît and Boccaccio there is another personage who
concerns us very distinctly. Never was there such a case, even in the
Middle Ages, when the absence of printing, of public libraries, and of
general knowledge of literature made such things easy, of _sic vos non
vobis_ as the _Historia Trojana_ of Guido de Columnis, otherwise Guido
delle Colonne, or Guido Colonna, of Messina. This person appears to
have spent some time in England rather late in the thirteenth century;
and there, no doubt, he fell in with the _Roman de Troie_. He
wrote--in Latin, and thereby appealing to a larger audience than even
French could appeal to--a Troy-book which almost at once became widely
popular. The MSS. of it occur by scores in the principal libraries of
Europe; it was the direct source of Boccaccio, and with that writer's
_Filostrato_ of Chaucer, and it formed the foundation of almost all
the known Troy-books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Benoît
being completely forgotten. Yet recent investigation has shown that
Guido not merely adapted Benoît in the usual mediæval fashion, but
followed him so closely that his work might rather be called
translation than adaptation. At any rate, beyond a few details he has
added nothing to the story of Troilus and Cressida as Benoît left it,
and as, in default of all evidence to the contrary, it is only fair to
conclude that he made it.

From the date, 1287, of Guido delle Colonne's version, it follows
necessarily that all the vernacular Troy-books--our own _Destruction
of Troy_,[85] the French prose romance of _Troilus_,[86] &c., not to
mention Lydgate and others--fall like Boccaccio and Chaucer out of the
limits of this volume. Nor can it be necessary to enter into detail as
to the other classical French romances, the _Roman de Thèbes_, the
_Roman d'Enéas_, the _Roman de Jules César_, _Athis and Profilias_,
and the rest;[87] while something will be said of the German Æneid of
H. von Veldeke in a future chapter. The capital examples of the
Alexandreid and the Iliad, as understood by the Middle Ages, not only
must but actually do suffice for our purpose.

[Footnote 85: Ed. Panton and Donaldson, E.E.T.S. London, 1869-74.]

[Footnote 86: Ed. Moland and d'Héricault, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 87: The section on "L'Epopée Antique" in M. Petit de
Julleville's book, more than once referred to, is by M. Léopold
Constans, editor of the _Roman de Thèbes_, and will be found useful.]

[Sidenote: _Meaning of the classical romance._]

And we see from them very well not merely in what light the Middle
Ages regarded the classical stories, but also to what extent the
classical stories affected the Middle Ages. This latter point is of
the more importance in that even yet the exact bearing and meaning of
the Renaissance in this respect is by no means universally
comprehended. It may be hoped, if not very certainly trusted, that
most educated persons have now got rid of the eighteenth-century
notion of mediæval times as being almost totally ignorant of the
classics themselves, a notion which careful reading of Chaucer alone
should be quite sufficient to dispel. The fact of course is, that all
through the Middle Ages the Latin classics were known, unequally but
very fairly in most cases, while the earlier Middle Ages at least were
by no means ignorant of Greek.

But although there was by no means total ignorance, there was what is
to us a scarcely comprehensible want of understanding. To the average
mediæval student, perhaps to any mediæval student, it seems seldom or
never to have occurred that the men of whom he was reading had lived
under a dispensation so different from his own in law and in
religion, in politics and in philosophy, in literature and in science,
that an elaborate process of readjustment was necessary in order to
get at anything like a real comprehension of them. Nor was he, as a
rule, able--men of transcendent genius being rather rare, amid a more
than respectable abundance of men of talent--to take them, as Chaucer
did to a great extent, Dante more intensely though less widely, and
Shakespeare (but Shakespeare had already felt the Renaissance spirit)
fully and perfectly, on the broad ground of humanity, so that
anachronisms, and faults of costume, matter not one jot to any one but
a pedant or a fool. When he came to something in the story--something
in sentiment, manners, religion, what not--which was out of the range
of his own experience, he changed it into something within the range
of his own experience. When the whole story did not lend itself to the
treatment which he wished to apply, he changed it, added to it, left
out from it, without the slightest scruple. He had no more difficulty
in transforming the disciplined tactic of the Macedonian phalanx into
a series of random _chevauchées_ than in adjusting the much more
congenial front-fighting of Greeks and Trojans to his own ideas; and
it cost him little more to engraft a whole brand-new romantic
love-story on the Tale of Troy than to change the historical siege of
Gaza into a _Fuerres de Gadres_, of which Aimeri of Narbonne or Raoul
de Cambrai would have been the appropriate hero. Sometimes, indeed, he
simply confounded Persians and Saracens, just as elsewhere he
confounded Saracens and Vikings; and he introduced high priests of
heathen divinities as bishops, with the same _sang froid_ with which
long afterwards the translators of the Bible founded an order of
"dukes" in Edom.

A study of antiquity conducted in such a fashion could hardly have
coloured mediæval thought with any real classicism, even if it had
been devoted to much more genuine specimens of antiquity than the
semi-Oriental medley of the Pseudo-Callisthenes and the bit of bald
euhemerism which had better have been devoted to Hephæstus than
ascribed to his priest. But, by another very curious fact, the two
great and commanding examples of the Romance of Antiquity were
executed each under the influence of the flourishing of one of the two
mightiest branches of mediæval poetry proper. When Alberic and the
decasyllabist (whoever he was) wrote, the _chanson de geste_ was in
the very prime of its most vigorous manhood, and the _Roman
d'Alixandre_ accordingly took not merely the outward form, but the
whole spirit of the _chanson de geste_ itself. And when Benoît de
Sainte-More gave the first shapings of the great story of Troilus and
Cressida out of the lifeless rubbish-heap of Dares, it was at the
precise minute when also, in hands known or unknown, the greater story
of Arthur and Gawain, of Lancelot and Guinevere, was shaping itself
from materials probably even scantier. Even Guido of the Columns, much
more Boccaccio, had this story fully before them; and Cressida, when
at last she becomes herself, has, if nothing of the majesty of
Guinevere, a good deal of Iseult--an Iseult more faithless to love,
but equally indifferent to anything except love. As Candace in
_Alexander_ has the crude though not unamiable naturalism of a
_chanson_ heroine, so Cressid--so even Briseida to some extent--has
the characteristic of the frail angels of Arthurian legend. The cup
would have spilled wofully in her husband's hand, the mantle would
scarcely have covered an inch of her; but though of coarser make, she
is of the same mould with the ladies of the Round Table,--she is of
the first creation of the order of romantic womanhood.




CHAPTER V.

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF EUROPEAN PROSODY.

     SPECIAL INTEREST OF EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH. DECAY OF
     ANGLO-SAXON. EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE. SCANTINESS OF
     ITS CONSTITUENTS. LAYAMON. THE FORM OF THE 'BRUT.' ITS
     SUBSTANCE. THE 'ORMULUM': ITS METRE, ITS SPELLING. THE
     'ANCREN RIWLE.' THE 'OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE.' PROVERBS.
     ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. ROMANCES. 'HAVELOK THE DANE.' 'KING
     HORN.' THE PROSODY OF THE MODERN LANGUAGES. HISTORICAL
     RETROSPECT. ANGLO-SAXON PROSODY. ROMANCE PROSODY. ENGLISH
     PROSODY. THE LATER ALLITERATION. THE NEW VERSE. RHYME AND
     SYLLABIC EQUIVALENCE. ACCENT AND QUANTITY. THE GAIN OF FORM.
     THE "ACCENT" THEORY. INITIAL FALLACIES, AND FINAL
     PERVERSITIES THEREOF.


[Sidenote: _Special interest of Early Middle English._]

The positive achievements of English literature, during the period
with which this volume deals, are not at first sight great; and all
the more finished literary production of the time, till the extreme
end of it, was in French and Latin. But the work done during this time
in getting the English language ready for its future duties, in
equipping it with grammar and prosody, in preparing, so to speak, for
Chaucer, is not only of the first importance intrinsically, but has a
value which is almost unique in general literary history as an
example. Nowhere else have we the opportunity of seeing a language and
a literature in the process of gestation, or at least of a reformation
so great as to be almost equal to new birth. Of the stages which
turned Latin through the Romanic vulgar tongues into Spanish, Italian,
Portuguese, Provençal, French, we have the very scantiest remains; and
though the Strasburg oaths and the Eulalia hymn are no doubt
inestimable in their way, they supply exceedingly minute and
precarious stepping-stones by which to cross from Ausonius to the
_Chanson de Roland_. From the earliest literary stages of the Teutonic
tongues we have, except in the case of Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic, very
little wreckage of time; and Anglo-Saxon at least presents the
puzzling characteristic that its earliest remains are, _coeteris
paribus_, nearly as complete and developed as the earliest remains of
Greek. In German itself, whether High or Low, the change from oldest
to youngest is nothing like the change from the English of _Beowulf_
to the English of Browning. And though the same process of primordial
change as that which we have seen in English took place certainly in
German, and possibly in the Romance tongues, it is nowhere traceable
with anything like the same clearness or with such gradual
development. By the eleventh century at latest in France, by the end
of the twelfth in Germany, verse had taken, in the first case fully,
in the second almost fully, a modern form. In England it was, during
the two hundred years from 1150 to 1350, working itself steadily, and
with ample examples, from pure accent to accentual quantity, and from
alliteration to rhyme. Of this process, and those similar to it in
other countries, we shall give an account which will serve for the
whole in the latter part of this chapter; the actual production and
gradual transformation of English language and literature generally
may occupy us in the earlier part.

It is to be hoped that by this time a middle way, tolerably free from
molestation, may be taken between those historians of English who
would have a great gulf fixed before Chaucer, and those who insist
upon absolute continuity from Cædmon to Tennyson. There must surely be
something between dismissing (as did the best historian of the subject
in the last generation) Anglo-Saxon as "that nocturnal portion of our
literature," between calling it "impossible to pronounce with
certainty whether anything in it is artistically good or bad,"[88] and
thinking it proper, as it has sometimes been thought, in an
examination in English literature, to give four papers to Cædmon,
Ælfric, and Wulfstan, and one to the combined works of Addison, Pope,
Johnson, and Burke. Extravagances of the latter kind have still, their
heyday of reaction not being quite past, a better chance than
extravagances of the former. But both may surely be avoided.

[Footnote 88: See Craik, _History of English Literature_, 3d ed.
(London, 1866), i. 55.]

[Sidenote: _Decay of Anglo-Saxon._]

The evidence is rendered more easy in the present connection by the
fact, recognised by the most competent authorities in First English or
Anglo-Saxon itself, that for some time before the arbitrary line of
the Conquest the productive powers of the literature had been failing,
and the language itself was showing signs of change. No poetry of the
first class seems to have been written in it much after the end of the
ninth century, little prose of a very good class after the beginning
of the eleventh; and its inflexions must in time have given way--were,
it is said by some, actually giving way--before the results of the
invasion and assimilation of French and Latin. The Conquest helped;
but it did not wholly cause.

This, however, is no doubt open to argument, and the argument would
have to be conducted mainly if not wholly on philological
considerations, with which we do not here meddle. The indisputable
literary facts are that the canon of pure Anglo-Saxon or Old-English
literature closes with the end of the Saxon Chronicle in 1154, and
that the "Semi-Saxon," the "First Middle English," which then makes
its appearance, approximates, almost decade by decade, almost year by
year, nearer and nearer to the modern type. And for our purpose,
though not for the purpose of a history of English Literature proper,
the contemporary French and Latin writing has to be taken side by side
with it.

[Sidenote: _Early Middle English Literature._]

It is not surprising that, although the Latin literary production of
the time, especially in history, was at least equal to that of any
other European country, and though it is at least probable that some
of the greatest achievements of literature, French in language, are
English in nationality, the vernacular should for long have been a
little scanty and a little undistinguished in its yield. Periods of
moulting, of putting on new skins, and the like, are never periods of
extreme physical vigour. And besides, this Anglo-Saxon itself had (as
has been said) been distinctly on the wane as a literary language for
more than a century, while (as has not yet been said) it had never
been very fertile in varieties of profane literature. This infertility
is not surprising. Except at rare periods literature without literary
competition and comparison is impossible; and the Anglo-Saxons had
absolutely no modern literature to compare and compete with. If any
existed, their own was far ahead of it. On the other hand, though the
supposed ignorance of Latin and even Greek in the "dark" ages has long
been known to be a figment of ignorance itself, circumstances
connected with, though not confined to, the concentration of learning
and teaching in the clergy brought about a disproportionate attention
to theology. The result was that the completest Anglo-Saxon library of
which we can form any well-based conception would have contained about
ten cases of religious to one of non-religious books, and would have
held in that eleventh but little poetry, and hardly any prose with an
object other than information or practical use.

[Sidenote: _Scantiness of its constituents._]

It could not be expected that the slowly changing language should at
once change its habits in this respect. And so, as the century
immediately before the Conquest had seen little but chronicles and
homilies, leechdoms and laws, that which came immediately afterwards
gave at first no very different products, except that the laws were
wanting, for obvious reasons. Nay, the first, the largest, and almost
the sole work of _belles lettres_ during the first three-fourths of
our period, the _Brut_ of Layamon, is a work of _belles lettres_
without knowing it, and imagines itself to be a sober history, while
its most considerable contemporaries, the _Ormulum_ and the _Ancren
Riwle_, the former in verse, the latter in prose, are both purely
religious. At the extreme end of the period the most important and
most certain work, Robert of Gloucester's, is, again, a history in
verse. About the same time we have, indeed, the romances of _Havelok_
and _Horn_; but they are, like most of the other work of the time,
translations from the French. The interesting _Poema Morale_, or
"Moral Ode," which we have in two forms--one of the meeting-point of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one fifty years later--is almost
certainly older than its earliest extant version, and was very likely
pure Saxon. Only in Nicholas of Guilford's _Owl and Nightingale_,
about 1250, and perhaps some of the charming _Specimens of Lyric
Poetry_, printed more than fifty years ago by Mr Wright, with a very
few other things, do we find pure literature--not the literature of
education or edification, but the literature of art and form.

[Sidenote: _Layamon._]

Yet the whole is, for the true student of literature, full enough of
interest, while the best things are not in need of praising by
allowance. Of Layamon mention has already been made in the chapter on
the Arthurian Legend. But his work covers very much more than the
Arthurian matter, and has interests entirely separate from it.
Layamon, as he tells us,[89] derived his information from Bede, Wace,
and a certain Albinus who has not been clearly identified. But he must
have added a great deal of his own, and if it could be decided exactly
_how_ he added it, the most difficult problem of mediæval literature
would be solved. Thus in the Arthurian part, just as we find additions
in Wace to Geoffrey, so we find additions to Wace in Layamon. Where
did he get these additions? Was it from the uncertain "Albinus"? Was
it, as Celtic enthusiasts hold, that, living as he did on Severn bank,
he was a neighbour of Wales, and gathered Welsh tradition? Or was it
from deliberate invention? We cannot tell.

[Footnote 89: Ed. Madden, i. 2.]

Again, we have two distinct versions of his _Brut_, the later of which
is fifty years or thereabouts younger than the earlier. It may be said
that almost all mediæval work is in similar case. But then the great
body of mediæval work is anonymous; and even the most scrupulous ages
have not been squeamish in taking liberties with the text of Mr Anon.
But the author is named in both these versions, and named differently.
In the elder he is Layamon the son of Leovenath, in the younger
Laweman the son of Leuca; and though Laweman is a mere variant or
translation of Layamon, as much can hardly be said of Leovenath and
Leuca. Further, the later version, besides the changes of language
which were in the circumstances inevitable, omits many passages,
besides those in which it is injured or mutilated, and alters proper
names entirely at discretion.

The only explanation of this, though it is an explanation which leaves
a good deal unexplained, is, of course, that the sense both of
historical criticism and of the duty of one writer to another was
hardly born. The curiosity of the Middle Ages was great; their
literary faculty, though somewhat incult and infantine, was great
likewise: and there were such enormous gaps in their positive
knowledge that the sharp sense of division between the certain, the
uncertain, and the demonstrably false, which has grown up later, could
hardly exist. It seems to have been every man's desire to leave each
tale a little richer, fuller, handsomer, than he found it: and in
doing this he hesitated neither at the accumulation of separate and
sometimes incongruous stories, nor at the insertion of bits and scraps
from various sources, nor, it would appear, at the addition of what
seemed to him possible or desirable, without troubling himself to
examine whether there was any ground for considering it actual.

[Sidenote: _The form of the_ Brut.]

Secondly, Layamon has no small interest of form. The language in which
the _Brut_ is written has an exceedingly small admixture of French
words; but it has made a step, and a long one, from Anglo-Saxon
towards English. The verse is still alliterative, still destitute of
any fixed number of syllables or syllabic equivalents. But the
alliteration is weak and sometimes not present at all, the lines are
of less extreme lawlessness in point of length than their older Saxon
representatives, and, above all, there is a creeping in of rhyme. It
is feeble, tentative, and obvious, confined to ostentatious pairs like
"brother" and "other," "might" and "right," "fare" and "care." But it
is a beginning: and we know that it will spread.

[Sidenote: _Its substance._]

In the last comparison, that of matter, Layamon will not come out ill
even if he be tried high. The most obvious trial is with the work of
Chrestien de Troyes, his earlier, though not much earlier,
contemporary. Here the Frenchman has enormous advantages--the
advantage of an infinitely more accomplished scheme of language and
metre, that of some two centuries of finished poetical work before
him, that of an evidently wider knowledge of literature generally, and
perhaps that of a more distinctly poetical genius. And yet Layamon can
survive the test. He is less, not more, subject to the _cliché_, the
stereotyped and stock poetical form, than Chrestien. If he is far less
smooth, he has not the monotony which accompanies and, so to speak,
dogs the "skipping octosyllable"; and if he cannot, as Chrestien can,
frame a set passage or show-piece, he manages to keep up a diffused
interest, and in certain instances--the story of Rouwènne (Rowena),
the Tintagel passage, the speech of Walwain to the Emperor of
Rome--has a directness and simple appeal which cannot be slighted. We
feel that he is at the beginning, while the other in respect of his
own division is nearly at the end: that he has future, capabilities,
opportunities of development. When one reads Chrestien or another
earlier contemporary, Benoît de Sainte-More, the question is, "What
can come after this?" When one reads Layamon the happier question is,
"What will come after this?"

[Sidenote: _The_ Ormulum. _Its metre._]

The _Ormulum_ and the _Ancren Riwle_ appear to be--the former exactly
and the latter nearly of the same date as Layamon, all being near to
1200. But though they were "good books," their interest is by no means
merely one of edification. That of the _Ormulum_[90] is, indeed,
almost entirely confined to its form and language; but it so happens
that this interest is of the kind that touches literature most nearly.
Orm or Ormin, who gives us his name, but of whom nothing else is
known, has left in ten thousand long lines or twenty thousand short
couplets a part only of a vast scheme of paraphrase and homiletic
commentary on the Four Gospels (the "four-in-hand of Aminadab," as he
calls them, taking up an earlier conceit), on the plan of taking a
text for each day from its gospel in the calendar. As we have only
thirty-two of these divisions, it is clear that the work, if
completed, was much larger than this. Orm addresses it to Walter, his
brother in the flesh as well as spiritually: the book seems to be
written in an Anglian or East Anglian dialect, and it is at least an
odd coincidence that the names Orm and Walter occur together in a
Durham MS. But whoever Orm or Ormin was, he did two very remarkable
things. In the first place, he broke entirely with alliteration and
with any-length lines, composing his poem in a metre which is either a
fifteen-syllabled iambic tetrameter catalectic, or else, as the reader
pleases, a series of distichs in iambic dimeters, alternately
acatalectic and catalectic. He does not rhyme, but his work, in the
couplet form which shows it best, exhibits occasionally the
alternation of masculine and feminine endings. This latter peculiarity
was not to take hold in the language; but the quantified or mainly
syllabic arrangement was. It was natural that Ormin, greatly daring,
and being almost the first to dare, should neither allow himself the
principle of equivalence shortly to distinguish English prosody from
the French, which, with Latin, he imitated, nor should further hamper
his already difficult task with rhyme. But his innovation was great
enough, and his name deserves--little positive poetry as there is in
his own book--high rank in the hierarchy of British poets. But for him
and others like him that magnificent mixed harmony, which English
almost alone of languages possesses, which distinguishes it as much
from the rigid syllabic bondage of French as from the loose jangle of
merely alliterative and accentual verse, would not have come in, or
would have come in later. We might have had Langland, but we should
not have had Chaucer: we should have had to console ourselves for the
loss of Surrey and Wyatt with ingenious extravagances like Gawain
Douglas's Eighth Prologue; and it is even possible that when the
reaction did come, as it must have come sooner or later, we might have
been bound like the French by the rigid syllable which Orm himself
adopted, but which in those early days only served to guide and not to
fetter.

[Footnote 90: Ed. White and Holt, 2 vols. Oxford, 1878.]

[Sidenote: _Its spelling._]

His second important peculiarity shows that he must have been an odd
and crotchety creature, but one with sense in his crotchets. He seems
to have been annoyed by mispronunciation of his own and other work:
and accordingly he adopts (with full warning and explanation) the plan
of invariably doubling the consonant after every _short_ vowel without
exception. This gives a most grotesque air to his pages, which are
studded with words like "nemmnedd" (named), "forrwerrpenn" (to
despise), "tunderrstanndenn" (to understand), and so forth. But, in
the first place, it fixes for all time, in a most invaluable manner,
the pronunciation of English at that time; and in the second, it shows
that Orm had a sound understanding of that principle of English which
has been set at nought by those who would spell "traveller"
"traveler." He knew that the tendency, and the, if not warned,
excusable tendency, of an English tongue would be to pronounce this
trav_ee_ler. It is a pity that knowledge which existed in the twelfth
century should apparently have become partial ignorance close to the
beginning of the twentieth.

[Sidenote: _The_ Ancren Riwle.]

The _Ancren Riwle_[91] has no oddities of this kind, and nothing
particularly noticeable in its form, though its easy pleasant prose
would have been wonderful at the time in any other European nation.
Even French prose was only just beginning to take such form, and had
not yet severed itself from poetic peculiarities to anything like the
same extent. But then the unknown author of the _Ancren Riwle_ had
certainly four or five, and perhaps more, centuries of good sound
Saxon prose before him: while St Bernard (if he wrote French prose),
and even Villehardouin, had little or nothing but Latin. I have called
him unknown, and he neither names himself nor is authoritatively named
by any one; while of the guesses respecting him, that which identifies
him with Simon of Ghent is refuted by the language of the book, while
that which assigns it to Bishop Poore has no foundation. But if we do
not know who wrote the book, we know for whom it was written--to wit,
for the three "anchoresses" or irregular nuns of a private convent or
sisterhood at Tarrant Keynes in Dorsetshire.

[Footnote 91: Ed. Morton, for the Camden Society. London, 1853. This
edition is, I believe, not regarded as quite satisfactory by
philology: it is amply adequate for literature.]

Later this nunnery, which lasted till the dissolution, was taken under
the Cistercian rule; but at first, and at the time of the book, it was
free, the author advising the inmates, if anybody asked, to say that
they were under "the rule of St James"--_i.e._, the famous definition,
by that apostle, of pure religion and undefiled. The treatise, which
describes itself, or is described in one of its MSS., as "one book
to-dealed into eight books," is of some length, but singularly
pleasing to read, and gives evidence of a very amiable and sensible
spirit in its author, as well as of a pretty talent for writing easy
prose. If he never rises to the more mystical and poetical beauties of
mediæval religion, so he never descends to its ferocities and its
puerilities. The rule, the "lady-rule," he says, is the inward; the
outward is only adopted in order to assist and help the inward:
therefore it may and should vary according to the individual, while
the inward cannot. The outward rule of the anchoresses of Tarrant
Keynes was by no means rigorous. They were three in number; they had
lay sisters (practically lady's-maids) as well as inferior servants.
They are not to reduce themselves to bread-and-water fasting without
special direction; they are not to be ostentatious in alms-giving;
they may have a pet cat; haircloth and hedgehog-skins are not for
them; and they are not to flog themselves with briars or leaded
thongs. Ornaments are not to be worn; but a note says that this is not
a positive command, all such things belonging merely to the external
rule. Also they may wash just as often as it is necessary, or as they
like!--an item which, absurd as is the popular notion of the dirt of
the Middle Ages, speaks volumes for the sense and taste of this
excellent anonym.

This part is the last or eighth "dole," as the sections are termed;
the remaining seven deal with religious service, private devotion, the
_Wesen_ or nature of anchorites, temptation, confession, penance,
penitence, and the love of God. Although some may think it out of
fashion, it is astonishing how much sense, kindliness, true religion,
and useful learning there is in this monitor of the anchoresses of
Tarrant Keynes, which place a man might well visit in pilgrimage to
do him honour. Every now and then, rough as is his vehicle of
speech--a transition medium, endowed neither with the oak-and-rock
strength of Anglo-Saxon nor with the varied gifts of modern
English--he can rise to real and true eloquence, as where he speaks of
the soul and "the heavy flesh that draweth her downwards, yet through
the highship [nobleness] of her, it [the flesh] shall become full
light--yea, lighter than the wind is, and brighter than the sun is, if
only it follow her and draw her not too hard to its own low kind." But
though such passages, good in phrase and rhythm, as well as noble in
sense, are not rare, the pleasant humanity of the whole book is the
best thing in it. M. Renan oddly enough pronounced _Ecclesiastes_,
that voice of the doom of life, to be "le seul livre aimable" which
Judaism had produced. The ages of St Francis and of the _Imitation_ do
not compel us to look about for a _seul livre aimable_, but it may
safely be said that there is none more amiable in a cheerful human way
than the _Ancren Riwle_.

It would serve no purpose here to discuss in detail most of the other
vernacular productions of the first half of the thirteenth century in
English.[92] They are almost without exception either religious--the
constant rehandling of the time cannot be better exemplified than by
the fact that at least two paraphrases, one in prose, one in verse, of
one of the "doles" of the _Ancren Riwle_ itself exist--or else
moral-scientific, such as the _Bestiary_,[93] so often printed. One of
the constantly recurring version-paraphrases of the Scriptures,
however--the so-called _Story of Genesis and Exodus_,[94] supposed to
date from about the middle--has great interest, because here we find
(whether for the first time or not he would be a rash man who should
say, but certainly for almost, if not quite, the first) the famous
"Christabel" metre--iambic dimeter, rhymed with a wide licence of
trisyllabic equivalence. This was to be twice revived by great poets,
with immense consequences to English poetry--first by Spenser in the
_Kalendar_, and then by Coleridge himself--and was to become one of
the most powerful, varied, and charming of English rhythms. That this
metre, the chief battle-ground of fighting between the accent-men and
the quantity-men, never arose till after rhymed quantitative metre had
met accentual alliteration, and had to a great extent overcome it, is
a tell-tale fact, of which more hereafter. And it is to be observed
also that in this same poem it is possible to discover not a few very
complete and handsome decasyllables which would do no discredit to
Chaucer himself.

[Footnote 92: Substantial portions of all the work mentioned in this
chapter will be found in Messrs Morris and Skeat's invaluable
_Specimens of Early English_ (Oxford, Part i. ed. 2, 1887; Part ii.
ed. 3, 1894). These include the whole of the _Moral Ode_ and of _King
Horn_. Separate complete editions of some are noted below.]

[Footnote 93: Wright, _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, i. 208-227.]

[Footnote 94: Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., London, 1865.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Owl and the Nightingale.]

[Sidenote: _Proverbs._]

But the _Owl and the Nightingale_[95] is another kind of thing. In
the first place, it appears to be (though it would be rash to affirm
this positively of anything in a form so popular with the French
_trouvères_ as the _débat_) original and not translated. It bears a
name, that of Nicholas of Guildford, who seems to be the author, and
assigns himself a local habitation at Portesham in Dorsetshire.
Although of considerable length (nearly two thousand lines), and
written in very pure English with few French words, it manages the
rhymed octosyllabic couplet (which by this time had become the
standing metre of France for everything but historical poems, and for
some of these) with remarkable precision, lightness, and harmony.
Moreover, the Owl and the Nightingale conduct their debate with plenty
of mother-wit, expressed not unfrequently in proverbial form. Indeed
proverbs, a favourite form of expression with Englishmen at all times,
appear to have been specially in favour just then; and the "Proverbs
of Alfred"[96] (supposed to date from this very time), the "Proverbs
of Hendyng"[97] a little later, are not likely to have been the only
collections of the kind. The Alfred Proverbs are in a rude popular
metre like the old alliteration much broken down; those of Hendyng in
a six-line stanza (soon to become the famous ballad stanza) syllabled,
though sometimes catalectically, 8 8 6 8 8 6, and rhymed _a a b c c
b_, the proverb and the _coda_ "quod Hendyng" being added to each.
The _Owl and the Nightingale_ is, however, as we might expect,
superior to both of these in poetical merit, as well as to the
so-called _Moral Ode_ which, printed by Hickes in 1705, was one of the
first Middle English poems to gain modern recognition.

[Footnote 95: About 600 lines of this are given by Morris and Skeat.
Completely edited by (among others) F.H. Stratmann. Krefeld, 1868.]

[Footnote 96: Ed. Morris, _An Old English Miscellany_. London, 1872.]

[Footnote 97: See _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, i. 109-116.]

[Sidenote: _Robert of Gloucester._]

As the dividing-point of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
approaches, the interest of literary work increases, and requires less
and less allowance of historical and accidental value. This allowance,
indeed, is still necessary with the verse chronicle of Robert of
Gloucester,[98] the date of which is fixed with sufficient certainty
at 1298. This book has been somewhat undervalued, in point of strict
literary merit, from a cause rather ludicrous but still real. It will
almost invariably be found that those mediæval books which happen to
have been made known before the formal beginning of scholarship in the
modern languages, are underrated by modern scholars, who not
unnaturally put a perhaps excessive price upon their own discoveries
or fosterlings. Robert of Gloucester's work, with the later but
companion Englishing of Peter of Langtoft by Robert Manning of Brunne,
was published by Hearne in the early part of the last century. The
contemporaries of that publication thought him rude, unkempt,
"Gothick": the moderns have usually passed him by for more direct
_protégés_ of their own. Yet there is not a little attraction in
Robert. To begin with, he is the first in English, if not the first in
any modern language, to attempt in the vernacular a general history,
old as well as new, new as well as old. And the opening of him is not
to be despised--

    "Engeland is a well good land, I ween of each land the best,
    Yset in the end of the world, as all in the West:
    The sea goeth him all about, he stands as an isle,
    His foes he dares the less doubt but it be through guile
    Of folk of the self land, as men hath y-seen while."

[Footnote 98: Edited with Langtoft, in 4 vols., by Hearne, Oxford,
1724; and reprinted, London, 1810. Also more lately in the Rolls
Series.]

And in the same good swinging metre he goes on describing the land,
praising its gifts, and telling its story in a downright fashion which
is very agreeable to right tastes. Like almost everybody else, he drew
upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for his early history: but from at least the
time of the Conqueror (he is strongly prejudiced in the matter of
Harold) he represents, if not what we should call solid historical
knowledge, at any rate direct, and for the time tolerably fresh,
historical tradition, while as he approaches his own time he becomes
positively historical, and, as in the case of the Oxford town-and-gown
row of 1263, the first Barons' Wars, the death of the Earl-Marshal,
and such things, is a vigorous as well as a tolerably authoritative
chronicler. In the history of English prosody he, too, is of great
importance, being another landmark in the process of consolidating
accent and quantity, alliteration and rhyme. His swinging verses still
have the older tendency to a trochaic rather than the later to an
anapæstic rhythm; but they are, so to speak, on the move, and
approaching the later form. He is still rather prone to group his
rhymes instead of keeping the couplets separate: but as he is not
translating from _chanson de geste_ form, he does not, as Robert of
Brunne sometimes does, fall into complete _laisses_. I have counted as
many as twenty continuous rhymes in Manning, and there may be more:
but there is nothing of that extent in the earlier Robert.

[Sidenote: _Romances._]

Verse history, however, must always be an awkward and unnatural form
at the best. The end of the thirteenth century had something better to
show in the appearance of romance proper and of epic. When the study
of any department of old literature begins, there is a natural and
almost invariable tendency to regard it as older than it really is;
and when, at the end of the last century, the English verse romances
began to be read, this tendency prevailed at least as much as usual.
Later investigation, besides showing that, almost without exception,
they are adaptations of French originals, has, partly as a consequence
of this, shown that scarcely any that we have are earlier than the
extreme end of the thirteenth century. Among these few that are,
however, three of exceptional interest (perhaps the best three except
_Gawaine and the Green Knight_ and _Sir Launfal_) may probably be
classed--to wit, _Horn_, _Havelok_, and the famous _Sir Tristram_. As
to the last and best known of these, which from its inclusion among
Sir Walter Scott's works has received attention denied to the rest, it
may or may not be the work of Thomas the Rhymer. But whether it is or
not, it can by no possibility be later than the first quarter of the
fourteenth century, while the most cautious critics pronounce both
_Havelok the Dane_ and _King Horn_ to be older than 1300.[99]

[Footnote 99: _Tristram_, for editions _v._ p. 116: _Havelok_, edited
by Madden, 1828, and again by Prof. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1868. _King Horn_
has been repeatedly printed--first by Ritson, _Ancient English
Metrical Romances_ (London, 1802), ii. 91, and Appendix; last by Prof.
Skeat in the _Specimens_ above mentioned.]

[Sidenote: Havelok the Dane.]

It is, moreover, not a mere accident that these three, though the
authors pretty certainly had French originals before them, seem most
likely to have had yet older English or Anglo-Saxon originals of the
French in the case of _Horn_ and _Havelok_, while the Tristram story,
as is pointed out in the chapter on the Arthurian Legend, is the most
British in tone of all the divisions of that Legend. _Havelok_ and
_Horn_ have yet further interest because of the curious contrast
between their oldest forms in more ways than one. _Havelok_ is an
English equivalent, with extremely strong local connections and
identifications, of the homelier passages of the French _chansons de
geste_. The hero, born in Denmark, and orphan heir to a kingdom, is to
be put away by his treacherous guardian, who commits him to Grim the
fisherman to be drowned. Havelok's treatment is hard enough even on
his way to the drowning; but as supernatural signs show his kingship
to Grim's wife, and as the fisherman, feigning to have performed his
task, meets with very scant gratitude from his employer, he resolves
to escape from the latter's power, puts to sea, and lands in England
at the place afterwards to be called from him Grimsby. Havelok is
brought up simply as a rough fisher-boy; but he obtains employment in
Lincoln Castle as porter to the kitchen, and much rough horse-play of
the _chanson_ kind occurs. Now it so happens that the heiress of
England, Goldborough, has been treated by her guardian with as much
injustice though with less ferocity; and the traitor seeks to crown
his exclusion of her from her rights by marrying her to the sturdy
scullion. When the two rights are thus joined, they of course prevail,
and the two traitors, after a due amount of hard fighting, receive
their doom, Godard the Dane being hanged, and Godric the Englishman
burnt at the stake. This rough and vigorous story is told in rough and
vigorous verse--octosyllabic couplets, with full licence in
shortening, but with no additional syllables except an occasional
double rhyme--in very sterling English, and with some, though slight,
traces of alliteration.

[Sidenote: King Horn.]

_Horn_ (_King Horn_, _Horn-Child and Maiden Rimnilde_, &c.) is
somewhat more courtly in its general outlines, and has less of the
folk-tale about it; but it also has connections with Denmark, and it
turns upon treachery, as indeed do nearly all the romances. Horn, son
of a certain King Murray, is, in consequence of a raid of heathen in
ships, orphaned and exiled in his childhood across the sea, where he
finds an asylum in the house of King Aylmer of Westerness. His love
for Aylmer's daughter Rimenhild and hers for him (he is the most
beautiful of men), the faithfulness of his friend Athulf (who has to
undergo the very trying experience of being made violent love to by
Rimenhild under the impression that he is Horn), and the treachery of
his friend Fikenild (who nearly succeeds in making the princess his
own), defray the chief interest of the story, which is not very long.
The good steward Athelbrus also plays a great part, which is
noticeable, because the stewards of Romances are generally bad. The
rhymed couplets of this poem are composed of shorter lines than those
of _Havelok_. They allow themselves the syllabic licence of
alliterative verse proper, though there is even less alliteration than
in _Havelok_, and they vary from five to eight syllables, though five
and six are the commonest. The poem, indeed, in this respect occupies
a rather peculiar position. Yet it is all the more valuable as showing
yet another phase of the change.

The first really charming literature in English has, however, still to
be mentioned: and this is to be found in the volume--little more than
a pamphlet--edited fifty years ago for the Percy Society (March 1,
1842) by Thomas Wright, under the title of _Specimens of Lyric Poetry
composed in England in the Reign of Edward the First_, from MS. 2253
Harl. in the British Museum. The first three poems are in French, of
the well-known and by this time far from novel _trouvère_ character,
of which those of Thibaut of Champagne are the best specimens. The
fourth--

    "Middel-erd for mon wes mad,"

is English, and is interesting as copying not the least intricate of
the _trouvère_ measures--an eleven-line stanza of eight sevens or
sixes, rhymed _ab, ab, ab, ab, c, b, c_; but moral-religious in tone
and much alliterated. The fifth, also English, is anapæstic tetrameter
heavily alliterated, and mono-rhymed for eight verses, with the stanza
made up to ten by a couplet on another rhyme. It is not very
interesting. But with VI. the chorus of sweet sounds begins, and
therefore, small as is the room for extract here, it must be given in
full:--

    "Bytuene Mershe and Avoril
      When spray beginneth to springe,
    The little foul hath hire wyl
      On hyre lud to synge:
    Ich libbe in love-longinge
    For semlokest of alle thynge,
    He may me blisse bringe
      Icham in hire banndoun.
    An hendy hap ichabbe y-hent,
    Ichot from hevine it is me sent,
    From alle wymmen my love is lent
      Ant lyht on Alisoun.

    On hew hire her is fayr ynoh
      Hire browe bronne, hire eye blake;
    With lovsom chere he on me loh;
      With middel small ant wel y-make;
    Bott he me wille to hire take,
    For to buen hire owen make,
    Long to lyven ichulle forsake,
      Ant feye fallen a-doun.
        An hendy hap, &c.

    Nihtes when I wenke ant wake,
      For-thi myn wonges waxeth won;
    Levedi, al for thine sake
      Longinge is ylent me on.
    In world is non so wytor mon
    That al hire bounté telle con;
    Heir swyre is whittere than the swon
      Ant fayrest may in toune.
        An hendy hap, &c.

    Icham for wouyng al for-wake,
      Wery so water in wore
    Lest any reve me my make
      Ychabbe y-[y]yrned [y]ore.
    Betere is tholien whyle sore
    Then mournen evermore.
      Geynest under gore,
        Herkene to my roune.
          An hendy hap, &c."

The next, "With longyng y am lad," is pretty, though less so: and is
in ten-line stanzas of sixes, rhymed _a a b, a a b, b a a b_. Those of
VIII. are twelve-lined in eights, rhymed _ab, ab, ab, ab, c, d, c, d_;
but it is observable that there is some assonance here instead of pure
rhyme. IX. is in the famous romance stanza of six or rather twelve
lines, _à la_ _Sir Thopas_; X. in octaves of eights alternately rhymed
with an envoy quatrain; XI. (a very pretty one) in a new metre, rhymed
_a a a b a, b_. And this variety continues after a fashion which it
would be tedious to particularise further. But it must be said that
the charm of "Alison" is fully caught up by--

    "Lenten ys come with love to toune,
    With blosmen ant with bryddes roune,
      That al this blisse bringeth;
    Dayes-eyes in this dales,
    Notes suete of nytengales,
      Ilk foul song singeth;"

by a sturdy Praise of Women which charges gallantly against the usual
mediæval slanders; and by a piece which, with "Alison," is the flower
of the whole, and has the exquisite refrain--

    "Blow, northerne wynd,
    Send thou me my suetyng,
    Blow, northerne wynd, blou, blou, blou"--

Here is Tennysonian verse five hundred years before Tennyson. The
"cry" of English lyric is on this northern wind at last; and it shall
never fail afterwards.

[Sidenote: _The prosody of the modern languages._]

[Sidenote: _Historical retrospect._]

This seems to be the best place to deal, not merely with the form of
English lyric in itself, but with the general subject of the prosody
as well of English as of the other modern literary languages. A very
great[100] deal has been written, with more and with less learning,
with ingenuity greater or smaller, on the origins of rhyme, on the
source of the decasyllabic and other staple lines and stanzas; and,
lastly, on the general system of modern as opposed to ancient
scansion. Much of this has been the result of really careful study,
and not a little of it the result of distinct acuteness; but it has
suffered on the whole from the supposed need of some new theory, and
from an unwillingness to accept plain and obvious facts. These facts,
or the most important of them, may be summarised as follows: The
prosody of a language will necessarily vary according to the
pronunciation and composition of that language; but there are certain
general principles of prosody which govern all languages possessing a
certain kinship. These general principles were, for the Western
branches of the Aryan tongues, very early discovered and formulated by
the Greeks, being later adjusted to somewhat stiffer rules--to
compensate for less force of poetic genius, or perhaps merely because
licence was not required--by the Latins. Towards the end of the
classical literary period, however, partly the increasing importance
of the Germanic and other non-Greek and non-Latin elements in the
Empire, partly those inexplicable organic changes which come from time
to time, broke up this system. Rhyme appeared, no one knows quite how,
or why, or whence, and at the same time, though the general structure
of metres was not very much altered, the quantity of individual
syllables appears to have undergone a complete change. Although metres
quantitative in scheme continued to be written, they were written, as
a rule, with more or less laxity; and though rhyme was sometimes
adapted to them in Latin, it was more frequently used with a looser
syllabic arrangement, retaining the divisional characteristics of the
older prosody, but neglecting quantity, the strict rules of elision,
and so forth.

[Footnote 100: It is sufficient to mention here Guest's famous
_English Rhythms_ (ed. Skeat, 1882), a book which at its first
appearance in 1838 was no doubt a revelation, but which carries things
too far; Dr Schipper's _Grundriss der Englischen Metrik_ (Wien, 1895),
and for foreign matters M. Gaston Paris's chapter in his _Littérature
Française au Moyen Age_. I do not agree with any of them, but I have a
profound respect for all.]

[Sidenote: _Anglo-Saxon prosody._]

On the other hand, some of the new Teutonic tongues which were thus
brought into contact with Latin, and with which Latin was brought into
contact, had systems of prosody of their own, based on entirely
different principles. The most elaborate of these probably, and the
only one from which we have distinct remains of undoubtedly old matter
in considerable quantities, is Anglo-Saxon, though Icelandic runs it
close. A detailed account of the peculiarities of this belongs to the
previous volume: it is sufficient to say here that its great
characteristic was alliteration, and that accent played a large part,
to the exclusion both of definite quantity and of syllabic identity or
equivalence.

[Sidenote: _Romance prosody._]

While these were the states of things with regard to Latin on the one
hand, and to the tongues most separated from Latin on the other, the
Romance languages, or daughters of Latin, had elaborated or were
elaborating, by stages which are almost entirely hidden from us,
middle systems, of which the earliest, and in a way the most perfect,
is that of Provençal, followed by Northern French and Italian, the
dialects of the Spanish Peninsula being a little behindhand in
elaborate verse. The three first-named tongues seem to have hit upon
the verse of ten or eleven syllables, which later crystallised itself
into ten for French and eleven for Italian, as their staple
measure.[101] Efforts have been made to father this directly on some
classical original, and some authorities have even been uncritical
enough to speak of the connection--this or that--having been "proved"
for these verses or others. No such proof has been given, and none is
possible. What is certain, and alone certain, is that whereas the
chief literary metre of the last five centuries of Latin had been
dactylic and trisyllabic, this, the chief metre of the daughter
tongues, and by-and-by almost their only one, was disyllabic--iambic,
or trochaic, as the case may be, but generally iambic. Rhyme became by
degrees an invariable or almost invariable accompaniment, and while
quantity, strictly speaking, almost disappeared (some will have it
that it quite disappeared from French), a syllabic uniformity more
rigid than any which had prevailed, except in the case of lyric
measures like the Alcaic, became the rule. Even elision was very
greatly restricted, though cæsura was pretty strictly retained, and an
additional servitude was imposed by the early adoption in French of
the fixed alternation of "masculine" and "feminine" rhymes--that is to
say, of rhymes with, and rhymes without, the mute _e_.

[Footnote 101: _Vide_ Dante, _De Vulgari Eloquio_.]

[Sidenote: _English prosody._]

[Sidenote: _The later alliteration._]

But the prosody of the Romance tongues is perfectly simple and
intelligible, except in the one crux of the question how it came into
being, and what part "popular" poetry played in it. We find it, almost
from the first, full-blown: and only minor refinements or improvements
are introduced afterwards. With English prosody it is very
different.[102] As has been said, the older prosody itself, with the
older verse, seems to have to a great extent died out even before the
Conquest, and what verse was written in the alliterative measures
afterwards was of a feeble and halting kind. Even when, as the authors
of later volumes of this series will have to show, alliterative verse
was taken up with something like a set purpose during the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, its character was wholly changed, and though
some very good work was written in it, it was practically all literary
exercise. It frequently assumed regular stanza-forms, the lines also
frequently fell into regular quantitative shapes, such as the heroic,
the Alexandrine, and the tetrameter. Above all, the old strict and
accurate combination of a limited amount of alliteration, jealously
adjusted to words important in sense and rhythm, was exchanged for a
profusion of alliterated syllables, often with no direct rhythmical
duty to pay, and constantly leading to mere senseless and tasteless
jingle, if not to the positive coining of fantastic or improper
locutions to get the "artful aid."

[Footnote 102: What is said here of English applies with certain
modifications to German, though the almost entire loss of Old German
poetry and the comparatively late date of Middle make the process less
striking and more obscure, and the greater talent of the individual
imitators of French interferes more with the process of insensible
shaping and growth. German prosody, despite the charm of its lyric
measures, has never acquired the perfect combination of freedom and
order which we find in English, as may be seen by comparing the best
blank verse of the two.]

[Sidenote: _The new verse._]

Meanwhile the real prosody of English had been elaborated, in the
usual blending fashion of the race, by an intricate, yet, as it
happens, an easily traceable series of compromises and naturalisations.
By the end of the twelfth century, as we have seen, rhyme was
creeping in to supersede alliteration, and a regular arrangement of
elastic syllabic equivalents or strict syllabic values was taking the
place of the irregular accented lengths. It does not appear that the
study of the classics had anything directly to do with this: it is
practically certain that the influence on the one hand of Latin hymns
and the Church services, and on the other of French poetry, had very
much.

[Sidenote: _Rhyme and syllabic equivalence._]

Rhyme is to the modern European ear so agreeable, if not so
indispensable, an ornament of verse, that, once heard, it is sure to
creep in, and can only be expelled by deliberate and unnatural
crotchet from any but narrative and dramatic poetry. On the other
hand, it is almost inevitable that when rhyme is expected, the lines
which it tips should be reduced to an equal or at any rate an
equivalent length. Otherwise the expectation of the ear--that the
final ring should be led up to by regular and equable rhythm--is
baulked. If this is not done, as in what we call doggerel rhyme, an
effect of grotesque is universally produced, to the ruin of serious
poetic effect. With these desiderata present, though unconsciously
present, before them, with the Latin hymn-writers and the French poets
for models, and with Church music perpetually starting in their
memories cadences, iambic or trochaic, dactylic or anapæstic, to which
to set their own verse, it is not surprising that English poets should
have accompanied the rapid changes of their language itself with
parallel rapidity of metrical innovation. Quantity they observed
loosely--quantity in modern languages is always loose: but it does
not follow that they ignored it altogether.

[Sidenote: _Accent and quantity._]

Those who insist that they did ignore it, and who painfully search for
verses of so many "accents," for "sections," for "pauses," and what
not, are confronted with difficulties throughout the whole course of
English poetry: there is hardly a page of that brilliant, learned,
instructive, invaluable piece of wrong-headedness, Dr Guest's _English
Rhythms_, which does not bristle with them. But at no time are these
difficulties so great as during our present period, and especially at
the close of it. Let any man who has no "prize to fight," no thesis to
defend, take any characteristic piece of Anglo-Saxon poetry and
"Alison," place them side by side, read them aloud together, scan them
carefully with the eye, compare each separately and both together with
as many other examples of poetic arrangement as he likes. He must, I
think, be hopelessly blinded by prejudice if he does not come to the
conclusion that there is a gulf between the systems of which these two
poems are examples--that if the first is "accentual," "sectional," and
what not, then these same words are exactly _not_ the words which
ought to be applied to the second.[103] And he will further see that
with "Alison" there is not the slightest difficulty whatever, but
that, on the contrary, it is the natural and all but inevitable thing
to do to scan the piece according to classical laws, allowing only
much more licence of "common" syllables--common in themselves and by
position--than in Latin, and rather more than in Greek.

[Footnote 103: Of course there is plenty of alliteration in "Alison."
That ornament is too grateful to the English ear ever to have ceased
or to be likely to cease out of English poetry. But it has ceased to
possess any _metrical_ value; it has absolutely nothing to do with the
_structure_ of the line.]

[Sidenote: _The gain of form._]

Yet another conclusion may perhaps be risked, and that is that this
change of prosody was either directly caused by, or in singular
coincidence was associated with, a great enlargement of the range and
no slight improvement of the quality of poetry. Anglo-Saxon verse at
its best has grandeur, mystery, force, a certain kind of pathos. But
it is almost entirely devoid of sweetness, of all the lighter artistic
attractions, of power to represent other than religious passion, of
adaptability to the varied uses of lyric. All these additional gifts,
and in no slight measure, have now been given; and there is surely an
almost fanatical hatred of form in the refusal to connect the gain
with those changes, in vocabulary first, in prosody secondly, which
have been noted. For there is not only the fact, but there is a more
than plausible reason for the fact. The alliterative accentual verse
of indefinite length is obviously unsuited for all the lighter, and
for some of the more serious, purposes of verse. Unless it is at
really heroic height (and at this height not even Shakespeare can keep
poetry invariably) it must necessarily be flat, awkward, prosaic,
heavy, all which qualities are the worst foes of the Muses. The new
equipments may not have been indispensable to the poet's soaring--they
may not be the greater wings of his song, the mighty pinions that take
him beyond Space and Time into Eternity and the Infinite. But they
are most admirable _talaria_, ankle-winglets enabling him to skim and
scud, to direct his flight this way and that, to hover as well as to
tower, even to run at need as well as to fly.

That a danger was at hand, the danger of too great restriction in the
syllabic direction, has been admitted. The greatest poet of the
fourteenth century in England--the greatest, for the matter of that,
from the beginning till the sixteenth--went some way in this path, and
if Chaucer's English followers had been men of genius we might have
been sorely trammelled. Fortunately Lydgate and Occleve and Hawes
showed the dangers rather than the attractions of strictness, and the
contemporary practice of alliterative irregulars kept alive the
appetite for liberty. But at this time--at our time--it was
restriction, regulation, quantification, metrical arrangement, that
English needed; and it received them.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _The "accent" theory._]

These remarks are of course not presented as a complete account, even
in summary, of English, much less of European prosody. They are barely
more than the heads of such a summary, or than indications of the line
which the inquiry might, and in the author's view should, take.
Perhaps they may be worked out--or rather the working out of them may
be published--more fully hereafter. But for the present they may
possibly be useful as a protest against the "accent" and "stress"
theories which have been so common of late years in regard to English
poetry, and which, though not capable of being applied in quite the
same fashion to the Romance languages, have had their counterparts in
attempts to decry the application of classical prosody (which has
never been very well understood on the Continent) to modern tongues.
No one can speak otherwise than respectfully of Dr Guest, whose book
is certainly one of the most patient and ingenious studies of the kind
to be found in any literature, and whose erudition, at a time when
such erudition needed far greater efforts than now, cannot be too
highly praised. But it is a besetting sin or disease of Englishmen in
all matters, after pooh-poohing innovation, to go blindly in for it;
and I cannot but think that Dr Guest's accentual theory, after being
for years mainly neglected, has, for years again, been altogether too
greedily swallowed. It is not of course a case necessarily of want of
scholarship, or want of ear, for there are few better scholars or
poets than Mr Robert Bridges, who, though not a mere Guestite, holds
theories of prosody which seem to me even less defensible than
Guest's. But it is, I think, a case of rather misguided patriotism,
which thinks it necessary to invent an English prosody for English
poems.

[Sidenote: _Initial fallacies._]

This is surely a mistake. Allowances in degree, in shade, in local
colour, there must of course be in prosody as in other things. The
developments, typical and special, of English prosody in the
nineteenth century cannot be quite the same as those of Greek two
thousand years ago, or of French to-day. But if, as I see not the
slightest reason for doubting, prosody is not an artificially acquired
art but a natural result of the natural desires, the universal organs
of humanity, it is excessively improbable that the prosodic results of
nations so nearly allied to each other, and so constantly studying
each other's work, as Greeks, Romans, and modern Europeans, should be
in any great degree different. If quantity, if syllabic equivalence
and so forth, do not display themselves in Anglo-Saxon or in
Icelandic, it must be remembered that the poetry of these nations was
after all comparatively small, rather isolated, and in the conditions
of extremely early development--a childish thing to which there is not
the slightest rhyme or reason for straining ourselves to assimilate
the things of manhood. That accent modified English prosody nobody
need deny; there is no doubt that the very great freedom of
equivalence--which makes it, for instance, at least theoretically
possible to compose an English heroic line of five tribrachs--and the
immense predominance of common syllables in the language, are due in
some degree to a continuance of accentual influence.

[Sidenote: _And final perversities thereof._]

But to go on from this, as Dr Guest and some of his followers have
done, to the subjection of the whole invaluable vocabulary of
classical prosody to a sort of _præmunire_, to hold up the hands in
horror at the very name of a tribrach, and exhibit symptoms of
catalepsy at the word catalectic--to ransack the dictionary for
unnatural words or uses of words like "catch," and "stop," and
"pause," where a perfectly clear and perfectly flexible terminology is
ready to your hand--this does seem to me in another sense a very
childish thing indeed, and one that cannot be too soon put away. It is
no exaggeration to say that the extravagances, the unnatural
contortions of scansion, the imputations of irregularity and
impropriety on the very greatest poets with which Dr Guest's book
swarms, must force themselves on any one who studies that book
thoroughly and impartially. When theory leads to the magisterial
indorsement of "gross fault" on some of the finest passages of
Shakespeare and Milton, because they "violate" Dr Guest's privy law of
"the final pause"; when we are told that "section 9," as Dr Guest is
pleased to call that admirable form of "sixes," the anapæst followed
by two iambs,[104] one of the great sources of music in the ballad
metre, is "a verse which has very little to recommend it"; when one of
Shakespeare's secrets, the majestic full stop before the last word of
the line, is black-marked as "opposed to every principle of accentual
rhythm," then the thing becomes not so much outrageous as absurd.
Prosody respectfully and intelligently attempting to explain how the
poets produce their best things is useful and agreeable: when it makes
an arbitrary theory beforehand, and dismisses the best things as bad
because they do not agree therewith, it becomes a futile nuisance. And
I believe that there is no period of our literature which, when
studied, will do more to prevent or correct such fatuity than this
very period of Early Middle English.

[Footnote 104: His instance is Burns's--

    "Like a rogue | for for | gerie."

It is a pity he did not reinforce it with many of the finest lines in
_The Ancient Mariner_.]




CHAPTER VI.

MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY.

     POSITION OF GERMANY. MERIT OF ITS POETRY. FOLK-EPICS: THE
     'NIBELUNGENLIED.' THE 'VOLSUNGA SAGA.' THE GERMAN VERSION.
     METRES. RHYME AND LANGUAGE. 'KUDRUN.' SHORTER NATIONAL
     EPICS. LITERARY POETRY. ITS FOUR CHIEF MASTERS. EXCELLENCE,
     BOTH NATURAL AND ACQUIRED, OF GERMAN VERSE. ORIGINALITY OF
     ITS ADAPTATION. THE PIONEERS: HEINRICH VON VELDEKE.
     GOTTFRIED OF STRASBURG. HARTMANN VON AUE. 'EREC DER
     WANDERÆRE' AND 'IWEIN.' LYRICS. THE "BOOKLETS." 'DER ARME
     HEINRICH.' WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH. 'TITUREL.' 'WILLEHALM.'
     'PARZIVAL.' WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. PERSONALITY OF THE
     POETS. THE MINNESINGERS GENERALLY.


[Sidenote: _Position of Germany._]

It must have been already noticed that one main reason for the
unsurpassed literary interest of this present period is that almost
all the principal European nations contribute, in their different
ways, elements to that interest. The contribution is not in all cases
one of positive literary production, of so much matter of the first
value actually added to the world's library. But in some cases it is;
and in the instance to which we come at present it is so in a measure
approached by no other country except France and perhaps Iceland. Nor
is Germany,[105] as every other country except Iceland may be said to
be, wholly a debtor or vassal to France herself. Partly she is so; of
the three chief divisions of Middle High German poetry (for prose here
practically does not count), the folk-epic, the "art-epic," as the
Germans themselves not very happily call it, and the lyric--the second
is always, and the third to no small extent, what might punningly be
called in copyhold of France. But even the borrowed material is
treated with such intense individuality of spirit that it almost
acquires independence; and part of the matter, as has been said, is
not borrowed at all.

[Footnote 105: The most accessible _History of German Literature_ is
that of Scherer (English translation, 2 vols., Oxford, 1886), a book
of fair information and with an excellent bibliography, but not very
well arranged, and too full of extra-literary matter. Carlyle's great
_Nibelungenlied_ Essay (_Essays_, vol. iii.) can never be obsolete
save in unimportant matters; that which follows on _Early German
Literature_ is good, but less good. Mr Gosse's _Northern Studies_
(1879) contains a very agreeable paper on Walther von der Vogelweide.
The Wagnerites have naturally of late years dealt much with Wolfram
von Eschenbach, but seldom from a literary point of view.]

[Sidenote: _Merit of its poetry._]

It has been pointed out that for some curious reason French literary
critics, not usually remarkable for lack of national vanity, have been
by no means excessive in their laudations of the earlier literature of
their country. The opposite is the case with those of Germany, and the
rather extravagant patriotism of some of their expressions may perhaps
have had a bad effect on some foreign readers. It cannot, for
instance, be otherwise than disgusting to even rudimentary critical
feeling to be told in the same breath that the first period of German
literature was "richer in inventive genius than any that followed it,"
and that "nothing but fragments of a single song[106] remain to us"
from this first period--fragments, it may be added, which, though
interesting enough, can, in no possible judgment that can be called
judgment, rank as in any way first-rate poetry. So, too, the habit of
comparing the _Nibelungenlied_ to the _Iliad_ and _Kudrun_ to the
_Odyssey_ (parallels not far removed from the Thucydides-and-Tennyson
order) may excite resentment. But the Middle High German verse of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries is in itself of such interest, such
variety, such charm, that if only it be approached in itself, and not
through the medium of its too officious ushers, its effect on any real
taste for poetry is undoubted.

[Footnote 106: _Hildebrand and Hadubrand._]

The three divisions above sketched may very well be taken in the order
given. The great folk-epics just mentioned, with some smaller poems,
such as _König Rother_, are almost invariably anonymous; the
translators or adaptors from the French--Gottfried von Strasburg,
Hartmann von Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and others--are at least
known by name, if we do not know much else about them; and this is
also the case with the Lyric poets, especially the best of them, the
exquisite singer known as Walter of the Bird-Meadow.

[Sidenote: _Folk-epics_--_The_ Nibelungenlied.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Volsunga Saga.]

It was inevitable that the whole literary energy of a nation which is
commentatorial or nothing, should be flung on such a subject as the
_Nibelungenlied_;[107] the amount of work expended on the subject by
Germans during the century in which the poem has been known is
enormous, and might cause despair, if happily it were not for the most
part negligible. The poem served as a principal ground in the
battle--not yet at an end, but now in a more or less languid
condition--between the believers in conglomerate epic, the upholders
of the theory that long early poems are always a congeries of still
earlier ballads or shorter chants, and the advocates of their integral
condition. The authorship of the poem, its date, and its relation to
previous work or tradition, with all possible excursions and alarums
as to sun-myths and so forth, have been discussed _ad nauseam_.
Literary history, as here understood, need not concern itself much
about such things. It is sufficient to say that the authorship of the
_Lied_ in its present condition is quite unknown; that its date would
appear to be about the centre of our period, or, in other words, not
earlier than the middle of the twelfth century or later than the
middle of the thirteenth, and that, as far as the subject goes, we
undoubtedly have handlings of it in Icelandic (the so-called _Volsunga
Saga_), and still earlier verse-dealings in the Elder Edda, which are
older, and probably much older, than the German poem.[108] They are
not only older, but they are different. As a Volsung story, the
interest is centred on the ancestor of Sigurd (Sigfried in the later
poem), on his acquisition of the hoard of the dwarf Andvari by slaying
the dragon Fafnir, its guardian, and on the tale of his love for the
Amazon Brynhild; how by witchcraft he is beguiled to wed instead
Gudrun the daughter of Giuki, while Gunnar, Gudrun's brother, marries
Brynhild by the assistance of Sigurd himself; how the sisters-in-law
quarrel, with the result that Gudrun's brothers slay Sigurd, on whose
funeral-pyre Brynhild (having never ceased to love him and wounded
herself mortally), is by her own will burnt; and how Gudrun, having
married King Atli, Brynhild's brother, achieves vengeance on her own
brethren by his means. A sort of _coda_ of the story tells of the
third marriage of Gudrun to King Jonakr, of the cruel fate of
Swanhild, her daughter by Sigurd (who was so fair that when she gazed
on the wild horses that were to tread her to death they would not harm
her, and her head had to be covered ere they would do their work), of
the further fate of Swanhild's half-brothers in their effort to avenge
her, and of the final _threnos_ and death of Gudrun herself.

[Footnote 107: Ed. Bartsch. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1886.]

[Footnote 108: For the verse originals see Vigfusson and Powell's
_Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (Oxford, 1883), vol. i. The verse and prose
alike will be found conveniently translated in a cheap little volume
of the "Camelot Library," _The Volsunga Saga_, by W. Morris and E.
Magnusson (London, 1888).]

The author of the _Nibelungenlied_ (or rather the "Nibelungen-_Noth_,"
for this is the older title of the poem, which has a very inferior
sequel called _Die Klage_) has dealt with the story very differently.
He pays no attention to the ancestry of Sifrit (Sigurd), and little to
his acquisition of the hoard, diminishes the part of Brynhild,
stripping it of all romantic interest as regards Sifrit, and very
largely increases the importance of the revenge of Gudrun, now called
Kriemhild. Only sixteen of the thirty-nine "aventiuren" or "fyttes"
(into which the poem in the edition here used is divided) are allotted
to the part up to and including the murder of Sifrit; the remaining
twenty-three deal with the vengeance of Kriemhild, who is herself
slain just when this vengeance is complete, the after-piece of her
third marriage and the fate of Swanhild being thus rendered
impossible.

Among the idler parts of Nibelungen discussions perhaps the idlest are
the attempts made by partisans of Icelandic and German literature
respectively to exalt or depress these two handlings, each in
comparison with the other. There is no real question of superiority or
inferiority, but only one of difference. The older handling, in the
_Volsunga Saga_ to some extent, but still more in the Eddaic songs,
has perhaps the finer touches of pure clear poetry in single passages
and phrases; the story of Sigurd and Brynhild has a passion which is
not found in the German version; the defeat of Fafnir and the
treacherous Regin is excellent; and the wild and ferocious story of
Sinfiötli, with which the saga opens, has unmatched intensity, well
brought out in Mr Morris's splendid verse-rendering, _The Story of
Sigurd the Volsung_.[109]

[Footnote 109: 4th edition. London, 1887.]

[Sidenote: _The German version._]

But every poet has a perfect right to deal with any story as he
chooses, if he makes good poetry of it; and the poet of the
_Nibelungenlied_ is more than justified in this respect. By curtailing
the beginning, cutting off the _coda_ above mentioned altogether, and
lessening the part and interest of Brynhild, he has lifted Kriemhild
to a higher, a more thoroughly expounded, and a more poetical
position, and has made her one of the greatest heroines of epic, if
not the greatest in all literature. The Gudrun of the Norse story is
found supplying the loss of one husband with the gain of another to an
extent perfectly consonant with Icelandic ideas, but according to less
insular standards distinctly damaging to her interest as a heroine;
and in revenging her brothers on Atli, after revenging Sigurd on her
brothers by means of Atli, she completely alienates all sympathy
except on a ferocious and pedantic theory of blood-revenge. The
Kriemhild of the German is quite free from this drawback; and her own
death comes just when and as it should--not so much a punishment for
the undue bloodthirstiness of her revenge as an artistic close to the
situation. There may be too many episodic personages--Dietrich of
Bern, for instance, has extremely little to do in this galley. But the
strength, thoroughness, and in its own savage way charm of Kriemhild's
character, and the incomparable series of battles between the
Burgundian princes and Etzel's men in the later cantos--cantos which
contain the very best poetical fighting in the history of the
world--far more than redeem this. The _Nibelungenlied_ is a very great
poem; and with _Beowulf_ (the oldest, but the least interesting on the
whole), _Roland_ (the most artistically finished in form), and the
_Poem of the Cid_ (the cheerfullest and perhaps the fullest of
character), composes a quartette of epic with which the literary
story of the great European literary nations most appropriately
begins. In bulk, dramatic completeness, and a certain _furia_, the
_Nibelungenlied_, though the youngest and probably the least original,
is the greatest of the four.

[Sidenote: _Metres._]

The form, though not finished with the perfection of the French
decasyllabic, is by no means of a very uncouth description. The poem
is written in quatrains, rhymed couplet and couplet, not alternately,
but evidently intended for quatrains, inasmuch as the sense frequently
runs on at the second line, but regularly stops at the fourth. The
normal line of which these quatrains are composed is a thirteen-syllabled
one divided by a central pause, so that the first half is an iambic
dimeter catalectic, and the second an iambic dimeter hypercatalectic.

    "Von einer isenstangen: des gie dem helde not."

The first half sometimes varies from this norm, though not very often,
the alteration usually taking the form of the loss of the first
syllable, so that the half-line consists of three trochees. The second
half is much more variable. Sometimes, in the same way as with the
first, a syllable is dropped at the opening, and the half-line becomes
similarly trochaic. Sometimes there is a double rhyme instead of a
single, making seven syllables, though not altering the rhythm; and
sometimes this is extended to a full octosyllable. But this variety by
no means results in cacophony or confusion; the general swing of the
metre is well maintained, and maintains itself in turn on the ear.

[Sidenote: _Rhyme and language._]

In the rhymes, as in those of all early rhymed poems, there is a
certain monotony. Just as in the probably contemporary Layamon the
poet is tempted into rhyme chiefly by such easy opportunities as
"other" and "brother," "king" and "thing," so here, though rhyme is
the rule, and not, as there, the exception, certain pairs, especially
"wip" and "lip" ("wife" and "body"), "sach" and "sprach," "geben" and
"geleben," "tot" and "not," recur perhaps a little too often for the
ear's perfect comfort. But this is natural and extremely pardonable.
The language is exceedingly clear and easy--far nearer to German of
the present day than Layamon's own verse, or the prose of the _Ancren
Riwle_, is to English prose and verse of the nineteenth century; the
differences being, as a rule, rather matters of spelling or phrase
than of actual vocabulary. It is very well suited both to the poet's
needs and to the subject; there being little or nothing of that
stammer--as it may be called--which is not uncommon in mediæval work,
as if the writer were trying to find words that he cannot find for a
thought which he cannot fully shape even to himself. In short, there
is in the particular kind, stage, and degree that accomplishment which
distinguishes the greater from the lesser achievements of literature.

[Sidenote: Kudrun.]

_Kudrun_[110] or _Gudrun_--it is a little curious that this should be
the name of the original joint-heroine of the _Nibelungenlied_, of the
heroine of one of the finest and most varied of the Icelandic sagas,
the _Laxdæla_, and of the present poem--is far less known to general
students of literature than its companion. Nor can it be said that
this comparative neglect is wholly undeserved. It is an interesting
poem enough; but neither in story nor in character-interest, in
arrangement nor in execution, can it vie with the _Nibelungen_, of
which in formal points it has been thought to be a direct imitation.
The stanza is much the same, except that there is a much more general
tendency to arrange the first couplet in single masculine rhyme and
the second in feminine, while the second half of the fourth line is
curiously prolonged to either ten or eleven syllables. The first
refinement may be an improvement: the second certainly is not, and
makes it very difficult to a modern ear to get a satisfactory swing on
the verse. The language, moreover (though this is a point on which I
speak with some diffidence), has a slightly more archaic cast, as of
intended archaism, than is the case with the _Nibelungen_.

[Footnote 110: Ed. Bartsch. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1880.]

As for matter, the poem has the interest, always considerable to
English readers, of dealing with the sea, and the shores of the sea;
and, like the _Nibelungenlied_, it seems to have had older forms, of
which some remains exist in the Norse. But there is less coincidence
of story: and the most striking incident in the Norse--an unending
battle, where the combatants, killed every night, come alive again
every day--is in the German a merely ordinary "battle of Wulpensand,"
where one side has the worst, and cloisters are founded for the repose
of the dead. On the other hand, _Kudrun_, while rationalised in some
respects and Christianised in others, has the extravagance, not so
much primitive as carelessly artificial, of the later romances.
Romance has a special charter to neglect chronology; but the
chronology here is exceptionally wanton. After the above-mentioned
Battle of Wulpensand, the beaten side resigns itself quite comfortably
to wait till the sons of the slain grow up: and to suit this
arrangement the heroine remains in ill-treated captivity--washing
clothes by the sea-shore--for fifteen years or so. And even thus the
climax is not reached; for Gudrun's companion in this unpleasant task,
and apparently (since they are married at the same time) her equal, or
nearly so, in age, has in the exordium of the poem also been the
companion of Gudrun's grandmother in durance to some griffins, from
whom they were rescued by Gudrun's grandfather.

One does not make peddling criticisms of this kind on any legend that
has the true poetic character of power--of sweeping the reader along
with it; but this I, at least, can hardly find in _Kudrun_. It
consists of three or perhaps four parts: the initial adventures of
Child Hagen of Ireland with the griffins who carry him off; the wooing
of his daughter Hilde by King Hetel, whose ambassadors, Wate, Morunc,
and Horant, play a great part throughout the poem; the subsequent
wooing of _her_ daughter Gudrun, and her imprisonment and ill-usage by
Gerlind, her wooer's mother; her rescue by her lover Herwig after many
years, and the slaughter of her tyrants, especially Gerlind, which
"Wate der alte" makes. There is also a generally happy ending, which,
rather contrary to the somewhat ferocious use and wont of these
poems, is made to include Hartmuth, Gudrun's unsuccessful wooer, and
his sister Ortrun. The most noteworthy character, perhaps, is the
above-mentioned Wate (or _Wade_), who is something like Hagen in the
_Nibelungenlied_ as far as valour and ferocity go, but is more of a
subordinate. Gudrun herself has good touches--especially where in her
joy at the appearance of her rescuers she flings the hated "wash" into
the sea, and in one or two other passages. But she is nothing like
such a _person_ as Brynhild in the Volsung story or Kriemhild in the
_Nibelungenlied_. Even the "wash" incident and the state which, in the
teeth of her enemies, she takes upon her afterwards--the finest thing
in the poem, though it frightens some German critics who see beauties
elsewhere that are not very clear to eyes not native--fail to give her
this personality. A better touch of nature still, though a slight one,
is her lover Herwig's fear, when he meets with a slight mishap before
the castle of her prison, that she may see it and reproach him with it
after they are married. But on the whole, _Kudrun_, though an
excellent story of adventure, is not a great poem in the sense in
which the _Nibelungenlied_ is one.

[Sidenote: _Shorter national epics._]

Besides these two long poems (the greater of which, the
_Nibelungenlied_, connects itself indirectly with others through the
personage of Dietrich[111]) there is a group of shorter and rather
older pieces, attributed in their present forms to the twelfth
century, and not much later than the German translation of the
_Chanson de Roland_ by a priest named Conrad, which is sometimes put
as early as 1130, and the German translation (see chapter iv.) of the
_Alixandre_ by Lamprecht, which may be even older. Among these smaller
epics, poems on the favourite mediæval subjects of Solomon and
Marcolf, St Brandan, &c., are often classed, but somewhat wrongly, as
they belong to a different school. Properly of the group are _König
Rother_, _Herzog Ernst_, and _Orendel_. All these suggest distinct
imitation of the _chansons_, _Orendel_ inclining rather to the
legendary and travelling kind of _Jourdains de Blaivies_ or _Huon_,
_Herzog Ernst_ to the more feudal variety. _König Rother_,[112] the
most important of the batch, is a poem of a little more than five
thousand lines, of rather irregular length and rhythm, but mostly very
short, rhymed, but with a leaning towards assonance. The strong
connection of these poems with the _chansons_ is also shown by the
fact that Rother is made grandfather of Charlemagne and King of Rome.
Whether he had anything to do with the actual Lombard King Rother of
the seventh century is only a speculative question; the poem itself
seems to be Bavarian, and to date from about 1150. The story is one of
wooing under considerable difficulties, and thus in some respects at
least nearer to a _roman d'aventures_ than a _chanson_.

[Footnote 111: The very name of this remarkable personage seems to
have exercised a fascination over the early German mind, and appears
as given to others (Wolfdietrich, Hugdietrich) who have nothing to do
with him of Verona.]

[Footnote 112: Ed. Von Bahder. Halle, 1884.]

[Sidenote: _Literary poetry._]

It will depend on individual taste whether the reader prefers the
so-called "art-poetry" which broke out in Germany, almost wholly on a
French impulse, but with astonishing individuality and colour of
national and personal character, towards the end of the twelfth
century, to the folk-poetry, of which the greater examples have been
mentioned hitherto, whether he reverses the preference, or whether, in
the mood of the literary student proper, he declines to regard either
with preference, but admires and delights in both.[113] On either side
there are compensations for whatever loss may be urged by the
partisans of the other. It may or may not be an accident that the sons
of adoption are more numerous than the sons of the house: it is not so
certain that the one group is to be on any true reckoning preferred to
the other.

[Footnote 113: The subjects of the last paragraph form, it will be
seen, a link between the two, being at least probably based on German
traditions, but influenced in form by French.]

[Sidenote: _Its four chief masters._]

In any case the German literary poetry (a much better phrase than
_kunst-poesie_, for there is plenty of art on both sides) forms a
part, and, next to its French originals, perhaps the greatest part, of
that extraordinary and almost unparalleled blossoming of literature
which, starting from France, overspread the whole of Europe at one
time, the last half or quarter of the twelfth century, and the first
quarter of the thirteenth. Four names, great and all but of the
greatest--Hartmann von Aue, Gottfried of Strasburg, Wolfram von
Eschenbach, and Walther von der Vogelweide--illustrate it as far as
Germany is concerned. Another, somewhat earlier than these, and in a
way their master, Eilhart von Oberge, is supposed or rather known to
have dealt with the Tristram story before Gottfried; and Heinrich von
Veldeke, in handling the Æneid, communicated to Germany something of a
directly classical, though more of a French, touch. We have spoken of
the still earlier work of Conrad and Lamprecht, while in passing must
be mentioned other things fashioned after French patterns, such as the
_Kaiserchronik_, which is attributed to Bavarian hands. The period of
flourishing of the literary poetry proper was not long--1150 to 1350
would cover very nearly the whole of it, and, here, as elsewhere, it
is impossible to deal with every individual, or even with the majority
of individuals. But some remarks in detail, though not in great
detail, on the four principals above referred to, will put the German
literary "state" of the time almost as well as if all the battalions
and squadrons were enumerated. Hartmann, Gottfried, and Wolfram, even
in what we have of them, lyric writers in part, were chiefly writers
of epic or romance; Walther is a song-writer pure and simple.

[Sidenote: _Excellence, both natural and acquired, of German verse._]

One thing may be said with great certainty of the division of
literature to which we have come, that none shows more clearly the
natural aptitude of the people who produced it for poetry. It is a
familiar observation from beginners in German who have any literary
taste, that German poetry reads naturally, German prose does not. In
verse the German disencumbers himself of that gruesome clumsiness
which almost always besets him in the art he learnt so late, and never
learnt to any perfection. To "say" is a trouble to him, a trouble too
often unconquerable; to sing is easy enough. And this truth, true of
all centuries of German literature, is never truer than here.
Translated or adapted verse is not usually the most cheerful
department of poetry. The English romances, translated or adapted from
the French, at times on the whole later than these, have been unduly
abused; but they are certainly not the portion of the literature of
his country on which an Englishman would most pride himself. Even the
home-grown and, as I would fain believe, home-made legend of Arthur,
had to wait till the fifteenth century before it met, and then in
prose, a worthy master in English.

[Sidenote: _Originality of its adaptation._]

But the German adapters of French at the meeting of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries are persons of very different calibre from the
translators of _Alexander_ and the other English-French romances, even
from those who with far more native talent Englished _Havelok_ and
_Horn_. If I have spoken harshly of German admiration of _Kudrun_, I
am glad to make this amends and to admit that Gottfried's _Tristan_ is
by far the best of all the numerous rehandlings of the story which
have come down to us. If we must rest Hartmann von Aue's chief claims
on the two _Büchlein_, on the songs, and on the delightful _Armer
Heinrich_, yet his _Iwein_ and his _Erec_ can hold their own even with
two of the freshest and most varied of Chrestien's original poems. No
one except the merest pedant of originality would hesitate to put
_Parzival_ above _Percevale le Gallois_, though Wolfram von Eschenbach
may be thought to have been less fortunate with _Willehalm_. And
though in the lyric, the debt due to both troubadour and _trouvère_ is
unmistakable, it is equally unmistakable what mighty usury the
minnesingers have paid for the capital they borrowed. The skill both
of Northern and Southern Frenchmen is seldom to seek in lyric: we
cannot give them too high praise as fashioners of instruments for
other men to use. The cheerful bird-voice of the _trouvère_, the half
artificial but not wholly insincere intensity of his brethren of the
_langue d'oc_, will never miss their meed. But for real "cry," for the
diviner elements of lyric, we somehow wait till we hear it in

    "Under der linden
      An der heide,
    da unser zweier bette was,
    da muget ir vinden
      schone beide
    gebrochen bluomen unde gras.
      Vor dem walde in einem tal,
    tandaradei!
      schone sanc diu nahtegal."[114]

[Footnote 114: Walther's ninth _Lied_, opening stanza.]

At last we are free from the tyranny of the iambic, and have variety
beyond the comparative freedom of the trochee. The blessed liberty of
trisyllabic feet not merely comes like music, but is for the first
time complete music, to the ear.

[Sidenote: _The pioneers. Heinrich von Veldeke._]

Historians arrange the process of borrowing from the French and
adjusting prosody to the loans in, roughly speaking, three stages. The
first of these is represented by Lamprecht's _Alexander_ and Conrad's
_Roland_; while the second and far more important has for chief
exponents an anonymous rendering of the universally popular _Flore et
Blanchefleur_,[115] the capital example of a pure love-story in which
love triumphs over luck and fate, and differences of nation and
religion. Of this only fragments survive, and the before-mentioned
first German version of the Tristan story by Eilhart von Oberge exists
only in a much altered form of the fifteenth century. But both, as
well as the work in lyric and narrative of Heinrich von Veldeke, date
well within the twelfth century, and the earliest of them may not be
much younger than its middle. It was Heinrich who seems to have been
the chief master in form of the greater poets mentioned above, and now
to be noticed as far as it is possible to us. We do not know,
personally speaking, very much about them, though the endless industry
of their commentators, availing itself of not a little sheer
guesswork, has succeeded in spinning various stories concerning them;
and the curious incident of the _Wartburg-krieg_ or minstrels'
tournament, though reported much later, very likely has sound
traditional foundations. But it is not very necessary to believe, for
instance, that Gottfried von Strasburg makes an attack on Wolfram von
Eschenbach. And generally the best attitude is that of an editor of
the said Gottfried (who himself rather fails to reck his own salutary
rede by proceeding to redistribute the ordinary attribution of poems),
"Ich bekenne dass ich in diesen Dingen skeptischer Natur bin."

[Footnote 115: Found in every language, but _originally_ French.]

[Sidenote: _Gottfried of Strasburg._]

If, however, even Gottfried's own authorship of the _Tristan_[116] is
rather a matter of extremely probable inference than of certain
knowledge, and if the lives of most of the poets are very little
known, the poems themselves are fortunately there, for every one who
chooses to read and to form his own opinion about them. The palm for
work of magnitude in every sense belongs to Gottfried's _Tristan_ and
to Wolfram's _Parzival_, and as it happens--as it so often
happens--the contrasts of these two works are of the most striking and
interesting character. The Tristram story, as has been said above,
despite its extreme popularity and the abiding hold which it has
exercised on poets as well as readers, is on the whole of a lower and
coarser kind than the great central Arthurian legend. The philtre,
though it supplies a certain excuse for the lovers, degrades the
purely romantic character of their affection in more than compensating
measure; the conduct of Iseult to the faithful Brengwain, if by no
means unfeminine, is exceedingly detestable; and if Tristram was
nearly as good a knight as Lancelot, he certainly was not nearly so
good a lover or nearly so thorough a gentleman. But the attractions of
the story were and are all the greater, we need not say to the vulgar,
but to the general; and Gottfried seems to have been quite admirably
and almost ideally qualified to treat them. His French original is not
known, for the earlier French versions of this story have perished or
only survive in fragments; and there is an almost inextricable coil
about the "Thomas" to whom Gottfried refers, and who used to be
(though this has now been given up) identified with no less a person
than Thomas the Rhymer, Thomas of Erceldoune himself. But we can see,
as clearly as if we had parallel texts, that Gottfried treated his
original as all real and sensible poets do treat their originals--that
is to say, that he took what he wanted, added what he chose, and
discarded what he pleased. In his handling of the French octosyllable
he at once displays that impatience of the rigidly syllabic system of
prosody which Teutonic poetry of the best kind always shows sooner or
later. At first the octosyllables are arranged in a curious and not
particularly charming scheme of quatrains, not only mono-rhymed, but
so arranged that the very same words occur in alternate places, or in
1, 4, and 2, 3--"Man," "kan," "man," "kan"; "list," "ist," "ist,"
"list,"--the latter order being in this interesting, that it suggests
the very first appearance of the _In Memoriam_ stanza. But Gottfried
was much too sensible a poet to think of writing a long poem--his,
which is not complete, and was continued by Ulrich von Turheim, by an
Anon, and by Heinrich von Freiberg, extends to some twenty thousand
lines--in such a measure as this. He soon takes up the simple
octosyllabic couplet, treated, however, with great freedom. The
rhymes are sometimes single, sometimes double, occasionally even
triple. The syllables constantly sink to seven, and sometimes even to
six, or extend themselves, by the admission of trisyllabic feet, to
ten, eleven, if not even twelve. Thus, once more, the famous
"Christabel" metre is here, not indeed in the extremely mobile
completeness which Coleridge gave it, nor even with quite such an
indulgence in anapæsts as Spenser allows himself in "The Oak and the
Brere," but to all intents and purposes fully constituted, if not
fully developed.

[Footnote 116: Ed. Bechstein. 3d ed., 2 vols. Leipzig, 1891.]

And Gottfried is quite equal to his form. One may feel, indeed, and it
is not unpleasant to feel, that evidence of the "young hand," which
consists in digressions from the text, of excursus and ambages,
essays, as it were, to show, "Here I am speaking quite for myself, and
not merely reading off book." But he tells the story very
well--compare, for instance, the crucial point of the substitution of
Brengwain for Iseult in him and in the English _Sir Tristrem_, or the
charming account of the "Minnegrotte" in the twenty-seventh song, with
the many other things of the kind in French, English, and German of
the time. Also he has constant little bursts, little spurts, of
half-lyrical cry, which lighten the narrative charmingly.

    "Diu wise Isôt, diu schoene Isôt,
    Diu liuhtet alse der morgenrot,"

is the very thing the want of which mars the pleasantly flowing but
somewhat featureless octosyllables of his French models. In the
famous passage[117] where he has been thought to reflect on Wolfram,
he certainly praises other poets without stint, and shows himself a
generous as well as a judicious critic. How Hartmann von Aue hits the
meaning of a story! how loud and clear rings the crystal of his words!
Did not Heinrich von Veldeke "imp the first shoot on Teutish tongues"
(graft French on German poetry)? With what a lofty voice does the
nightingale of the Bird-Meadow (Walther) warble across the heath! Nor
is it unpleasant to come shortly afterwards to our old friends Apollo
and the Camoenæ, the nine "Sirens of the ears"--a slightly mixed
reminiscence, but characteristic of the union of classical and
romantic material which communicates to the Middle Ages so much of
their charm. Indeed nowhere in this Pisgah sight of literature would
it be pleasanter to come down and expatiate on the particular subject
than in the case of these Middle High German poets.

[Footnote 117: _Tristan_, 8th song, l. 4619 and onwards. The crucial
passage is a sharp rebuke of "finders [_vindære_, _trouvères_] of wild
tales," or one particular such who plays tricks on his readers and
utters unintelligible things. It _may_ be Wolfram: it also may not
be.]

[Sidenote: _Hartmann von Aue._]

Hartmann von Aue,[118] the subject of Gottfried's highest eulogy, has
left a bulkier--at least a more varied--poetical baggage than his
eulogist, whose own legacy is not small. It will depend a good deal on
individual taste whether his actual poetical powers be put lower or
higher. We have of his, or attributed to him, two long romances of
adventure, translations or adaptations of the _Chevalier au Lyon_ and
the _Erec et Énide_ of Chrestien de Troyes; a certain number of songs,
partly amatory, partly religious, two curious pieces entitled _Die
Klage_ and _Büchlein_, a verse-rendering of a subject which was much a
favourite, the involuntary incest and atonement of St Gregory of the
Rock; and lastly, his masterpiece, _Der Arme Heinrich_.

[Footnote 118: Ed. Bech. 3d ed., 3 vols. Leipzig, 1893.]

[Sidenote: Erec der Wanderære _and_ Iwein.]

In considering the two Arthurian adventure-stories, it is fair to
remember that in Gottfried's case we have not the original, while in
Hartmann's we have, and that the originals here are two of the very
best examples in their kind and language. That Hartmann did not escape
the besetting sin of all adapters, and especially of all mediæval
adapters, the sin of amplification and watering down, is quite true.
It is shown by the fact that while Chrestien contents himself in each
case with less than seven thousand lines (and he has never been
thought a laconic poet), Hartmann extends both in practically the same
measure (though the licences above referred to make the lines often
much shorter than the French, while Hartmann himself does not often
make them much longer)--in the one case to over eight thousand lines,
in the other to over ten. But it would not be fair to deny very
considerable merits to his versions. They are readable with interest
after the French itself: and in the case of _Erec_ after the
_Mabinogion_ and the _Idylls of the King_ also. It cannot be said,
however, that in either piece the poet handles his subject with the
same appearance of mastery which belongs to Gottfried: and this is not
to be altogether accounted for by the fact that the stories
themselves are less interesting. Or rather it may be said that his
selection of these stories, good as they are in their way, when
greater were at his option, somewhat "speaks him" as a poet.

[Sidenote: _Lyrics._]

The next or lyrical division shows Hartmann more favourably, though
still not exactly as a great poet. The "Frauenminne," or profane
division, of these has something of the artificial character which
used very unjustly to be charged against the whole love-poetry of the
Middle Ages, and which certainly does affect some of it. There is
nowhere the "cry" that we find in the best of Gottfried's
"nightingales"--the lyric poets as opposed to the epic. He does not
seem to have much command of trisyllabic measures, and is perhaps
happiest in the above-mentioned mono-rhymed quatrain, apparently a
favourite measure then, which he uses sometimes in octosyllables, but
often also in decasyllables. I do not know, and it would probably be
difficult to say, what was the first appearance of the decasyllable,
which in German, as in English, was to become on the whole the staple
measure of non-lyrical poetry and the not infrequent medium of
lyrical. But this must be fairly early, and certainly is a good
example. The "Gottesminne," or, as our own old word has it, the
"Divine" Poems, are very much better. Hartmann himself was a crusader,
and there is nothing merely conventional in his few lays from the
crusading and pilgrim standpoint. Indeed the very first words,
expressing his determination after his lord's death to leave the world
to itself, have a better ring than anything in his love-poetry; and
the echo is kept up in such simple but true sayings as this about
"Christ's flowers" (the badge of the cross):--

    "Min froude wart nie sorgelos
      Unz an die tage
    Daz ich mir Krystes bluomon kos
      Die ich hie trage."

[Sidenote: _The "booklets."_]

The two curious booklets or complaints (for each bore the title of
_Büchlein_ in its own day, and each is a _Klage_) and the _Gregorius_
touch the lyric on one side and the adventure poems on the other.
_Gregorius_, indeed, is simply a _roman d'aventures_ of pious
tendency; and there cannot be very much doubt that it had a French
original. It extends to some four thousand lines, and does not show
any poetical characteristics very different from those of _Erec_ and
_Iwein_, though they are applied to different matter. In size the two
"booklets" stand in a curiously diminishing ratio to _Erec_ with its
ten thousand verses, _Iwein_ with its eight, and _Gregorius_ with its
four; for _Die Klage_ has a little under two thousand, and the
_Büchlein_ proper a little under one. _Die Klage_ is of varied
structure, beginning with octosyllables, of which the first--

    "Minne waltet grozer kraft"--

has a pleasant trochaic cadence: continuing after some sixteen hundred
lines (if indeed it be a continuation and not a new poem) in curious
long _laisses_, rather than stanzas, of eights and sevens rhymed on
one continuous pair of single and double rhymes, _cit unde: ant
ende_, &c. The _Büchlein_ proper is all couplets, and ends less
deplorably than its beginning--

    "Owê, Owê, unde owê!"--

might suggest. It is, however, more serious than the _Klage_, which is
really a _débat_ (as the technical term in French poetry then went)
between Body and Soul, and of no unusual kind.

[Sidenote: Der Arme Heinrich.]

Fortunately for Hartmann, he has left another work, _Der Arme
Heinrich_, which is thought to be his last, and is certainly his most
perfect. It is almost a pity that Longfellow, in his adaptation of it,
did not stick closer to the original; for pleasant as _The Golden
Legend_ is, it is more of a pastiche and mosaic than _Der Arme
Heinrich_, one of the simplest, most direct, and most touching of
mediæval poems. Heinrich (also Von Aue) is a noble who, like Sir
Isumbras and other examples of the no less pious than wise belief of
the Middle Ages in Nemesis, forgets God and is stricken for his sin
with leprosy. He can only recover by the blood of a pure maiden; and
half despairing of, half revolting at, such a cure, he gives away all
his property but one farm, and lives there in misery. The farmer's
daughter learns his doom and devotes herself. Heinrich refuses for a
time, but yields: and they travel to Salerno, where, as the sacrifice
is on the point of completion, Heinrich sees the maiden's face through
a crack in the doctor's room-wall, feels the impossibility of allowing
her to die, and stops the crime. He is rewarded by a cure as
miraculous as was his harm; recovers his fortune, and marries the
maiden. A later termination separates them again; but this is simply
the folly and bad taste of a certain, and only a certain, perversion
of mediæval sentiment, the crowning instance of which is found in _Guy
of Warwick_. Hartmann himself was no such simpleton; and (with only an
infinitesimal change of a famous sentence) we may be sure that as he
was a good lover so he made a good end to his story.

[Sidenote: _Wolfram von Eschenbach._]

[Sidenote: Titurel.]

Although German writers may sometimes have mispraised or over-praised
their greatest mediæval poet, it certain that we find in Wolfram von
Eschenbach[119] qualities which, in the thousand years between the
Fall and the Renaissance of classical literature, can be found to
anything like the same extent in only two known writers, the Italian
Dante and the Englishman Langland; while if he is immensely Dante's
inferior in poetical quality, he has at least one gift, humour, which
Dante had not, and is far Langland's superior in variety and in
romantic charm. He displays, moreover, a really curious contrast to
the poets already mentioned, and to most of the far greater number not
mentioned. It is in Wolfram first that we come across, in anything
like noticeable measure, that mastery of poetical mysticism which is
the pride, and justly the pride, of the German Muse. Gottfried and
Hartmann are rather practical folk. Hartmann has at best a pious and
Gottfried a profane fancy; of the higher qualities of imagination
there is little or nothing in them; and not much in the vast crowd of
the Minnesingers, from the chief "nightingale" Walther downwards.
Wolfram, himself a Minnesinger (indeed the term is loosely applied to
all the poets of this time, and may be very properly claimed by
Gottfried and Hartmann, though the former has left no lyric), has left
us few but very remarkable _aubades_, in which the commonplace of the
morning-song, with its disturbance of lovers, is treated in no
commonplace way. But his fame rests on the three epics, _Parzival_,
_Titurel_, and _Willehalm_. It is practically agreed that _Parzival_
represents the flourishing time, and _Willehalm_ the evening, of his
work; there is more critical disagreement about the time of
composition of _Titurel_, which, though it was afterwards continued
and worked up by another hand, exists only in fragments, and presents
a very curious difference of structure as compared both with
_Parzival_ (with which in subject it is connected) and with
_Willehalm_. Both these are in octosyllables: _Titurel_ is in a
singular and far from felicitous stanza, which stands to that of
_Kudrun_ much as the _Kudrun_ stanza does to that of the _Nibelungen_.
Here there are none but double rhymes; and not merely the second half
of the fourth, but the second half of the second line "tails out" in
the manner formerly described. The consequence is, that while in
_Kudrun_ it is, as was remarked, difficult to get any swing on the
metre, in _Titurel_ it is simply impossible; and it has been thought
without any improbability that the fragmentary condition of the piece
is due to the poet's reasonable discontent with the shackles he had
imposed on himself. The substance is good enough, and would have made
an interesting chapter in the vast working up of the Percevale story
which Wolfram probably had in his mind.

[Footnote 119: Complete works. Ed. Lachmann. Berlin, 1838. _Parzival
und Titurel._ 2 vols. Ed. Bartsch. Leipzig, 1870.]

[Sidenote: Willehalm.]

_Willehalm_, on the other hand, is not only in form but in substance a
following of the French, and of no less a French poem than the _Battle
of Aliscans_, which has been so fully dealt with above. It is
interesting to compare advocates of the two, and see how German
critics usually extol the improvements made by the German poet, while
the French sneer at his preachments and waterings-down. But we need
say nothing more than that if Wolfram's fame rested on _Willehalm_,
the notice of him here would probably not go beyond a couple of lines.

[Sidenote: Parzival.]

_Parzival_, however, is a very different matter. It has of late years
received adventitious note from the fact of its selection by Wagner as
a libretto; but it did not need this, and it was the admiration of
every fit reader long before the opera appeared. The Percevale story,
it may be remembered, lies somewhat outside of the main Arthurian
legend, which, however, had hardly taken full form when Wolfram wrote.
It has been strongly fought for by the Celticists as traceable
originally to the Welsh legend of Peredur; but it is to be observed
that neither in this form nor in the English version (which figures
among the Thornton Romances) does the Graal make any figure. In the
huge poem, made huger by continuators, of Chrestien de Troyes,
Percival becomes a Graal-seeker; and on the whole it would appear
that, as observed before, he in point of time anticipates Galahad and
the story which works the Graal thoroughly into the main Arthurian
tale. According to Wolfram (but this is a romantic commonplace),
Chrestien was culpably remiss in telling the story, and his
deficiencies had to be made up by a certain Provençal named Kyot.
Unfortunately there are no traces elsewhere of any such person, or of
any version, in Provençal or otherwise, between Chrestien's and
Wolfram's. The two, however, stand far enough apart to have admitted
of more than one intermediary; or rather no number of intermediaries
could really have bridged the chasm, which is one of spirit rather
than of matter. In _Percevale le Gallois_, though the Graal exists,
and though the adventures are rather more on the outside of the
strictly Arthurian cycle than usual, we are still in close relations
with that cycle, and the general tone and handling are similar (except
in so far as Chrestien is a better _trouvère_ than most) to those of
fifty other poems. In _Parzival_ we are translated into another
country altogether. Arthur appears but seldom, and though the link
with the Round Table is maintained by the appearances of Gawain, who
as often, though not always, plays to Percevale the part of light to
serious hero, here almost only, and here not always, are we in among
"kenned folk." The Graal mountain, Montsalvatsch, is even more in
fairyland than the "enchanted towers of Carbonek"; the magician
Klingschor is a more shadowy person far than Merlin.

    "Cundrie la Sorziere
    Diu unsueze und doch diu fiere"

is a much more weird personage than Morgane or Nimue, though she may
also be more "unsweet." Part of this unfamiliar effect is no doubt due
to Wolfram's singular fancy for mutilating and torturing his French
names, to his admixture of new characters and adventures, and
especially to the almost entirely new genealogy which he introduces.
In the pedigree, containing nearly seventy names, which will be found
at the end of Bartsch's edition, not a tithe will be familiar to the
reader of the English and French romances; and that reader will
generally find those whom he does know provided with new fathers and
mothers, daughters and wives.

But these would be very small matters if it were not for other
differences, not of administration but of spirit. There may have been
something too much of the attempt to credit Wolfram with anti-dogmatic
views, and with a certain Protestant preference of simple repentance
and amendment to the performance of stated rites and penances. What is
unmistakable is the way in which he lifts the story, now by phrase,
now by verse effect, now by the indefinable magic of sheer poetic
handling, out of ordinary ways into ways that are not ordinary. There
may perhaps be allowed to be a certain want of "architectonic" in him.
He has not made of Parzival and Condwiramurs, of Gawain and Orgeluse,
anything like the complete drama which we find (brought out by the
genius of Malory, but existing before) in the French-English Arthurian
legend. But any one who knows the origins of that legend from _Erec et
Énide_ to _Durmart le Gallois_, and from the _Chevalier au Lyon_ to
the _Chevalier as Deux Espées_, must recognise in him something higher
and larger than can be found in any of them, as well as something more
human, if even in the best sense more fairy-tale like, than the
earlier and more Western legends of the Graal as we have them in
_Merlin_ and the other French books. Here again, not so much for the
form as for the spirit, we find ourselves driven to the word
"great"--a great word, and one not to be misused as it so often is.

[Sidenote: _Walther von der Vogelweide._]

Yet it may be applied in a different sense, though without hesitation,
to our fourth selected name, Walther von der Vogelweide,[120] a name
in itself so agreeable that one really has to take care lest it raise
an undue prejudice in his favour. Perhaps a part of his greatness
belongs to him as the chief representative of a class, not, as in
Wolfram's case, because of individual merit,--a part also to his
excellence of form, which is a claim always regarded with doubt and
dislike by some, though not all. It is nearly a quarter of a century
since the present writer first possessed himself of and first read the
delectable volume in which Franz Pfeiffer opened his series of German
Classics of the Middle Ages with this singer; and every subsequent
reading, in whole or in part, has only increased his attraction.
There are some writers--not many--who seem to defy criticism by a sort
of native charm, and of these Walther is one. If we listen to some
grave persons, it is a childish thing to write a poem, as he does his
second _Lied_, in stanzas every one of which is mono-rhymed on a
different vowel. But as one reads

    "Diu werlt was gelf, röt unde blâ,"[121]

one only prays for more such childishness. Is there a better song of
May and maidens than

    "So diu bluomen uz dem grase dringent"?

where the very phrase is romance and nature itself, and could never be
indulged in by a "classical" poet, who would say (very justly),
"flowers grow in beds, not grass; and if in the latter, they ought to
be promptly mown and rolled down." How intoxicating, after deserts of
iambs, is the dactylic swell of

    "Wol mich der stunde, daz ich sie erkande"!

how endearing the drooping cadence of

            "Bin ich dir unmære
    Des enweiz ich niht; ich minne dich"!

how small the change which makes a jewel out of a commonplace in

    "Si hat ein _kûssen_ daz ist rot"!

[Footnote 120: Ed. Bartsch. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1873.]

[Footnote 121:

    "Diu werlt was gelf, röt unde blâ,
    grüen, in dem walde und anderswâ
    kleine vogele sungen dâ.
    nû schriet aber den nebelkrâ.
    pfligt s'iht ander varwe? jâ,
    s'ist worden bleich und übergrâ:
    des rimpfet sich vil manic brâ."

Similar stanzas in _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_ follow in order.]

But to go through the nearly two hundred pieces of Walther's lyric
would be here impossible. His _Leich_, his only example of that
elaborate kind, the most complicated of the early German lyrical
forms, is not perhaps his happiest effort; and his _Sprüche_, a name
given to short lyrical pieces in which the Minnesingers particularly
delighted, and which correspond pretty nearly, though not exactly, to
the older sense of "epigram," seldom, though sometimes, possess the
charm of the _Lieder_ themselves. But these _Lieder_ are, for probable
freedom from indebtedness and intrinsic exquisiteness of phrase and
rhythm, unsurpassed, perhaps unequalled. To compare Walther to
Petrarch, and to talk of the one being superior or inferior to the
other, is to betray hopeless insensibility to the very rudiments of
criticism. They are absolutely different,--the one the embodiment of
stately form and laboured intellectual effort--of the Classical
spirit; the other the mouthpiece of the half-inarticulate,
all-suggesting music that is at once the very soul and the very
inseparable garment of Romance. Some may like one better, others the
other; the more fortunate may enjoy both. But the greatest of all
gulfs is the gulf fixed between the Classical and the Romantic; and
few there are, it seems, who can cross it.

[Sidenote: _Personality of the poets._]

Perhaps something may be expected as to the personality of these
poets, a matter which has had too great a place assigned to it in
literary history. Luckily, unless he delights in unbridled guessing,
the historian of mediæval literature is better entitled to abstain
from it than any other. But something may perhaps be said of the men
whose work has just been discussed, for there are not uninteresting
shades of difference between them. In Germany, as in France, the
_trouvère-jongleur_ class existed; the greater part of the poetry of
the twelfth century, including the so-called small epics, _König
Rother_ and the rest, is attributed to them, and they were the objects
of a good deal of patronage from the innumerable nobles, small and
great, of the Empire. On the other hand, though some men of
consequence were poets, the proportion of these is, on the whole,
considerably less than in France proper or in Provence. The German
noble was not so much literary as a patron of literature, like that
Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, whose court saw the fabulous or
semi-fabulous "War of the Wartburg," with Wolfram von Eschenbach and
Heinrich von Ofterdingen as chief champions. Indeed this court was the
main resort of German poets and minstrels till Saint Elizabeth of
Hungary in the next generation proved herself a rather "sair sanct"
for literature, which has since returned her good for evil.

To return to our four selected poets. Gottfried is supposed to have
been neither noble, nor even directly attached to a noble household,
nor a professional minstrel, but a burgher of the town which gives him
his name--indeed a caution is necessary to the effect that the _von_
of these early designations, like the _de_ of their French originals,
is by no means, as a rule, a sign of nobility. Hartmann von Aue,
though rather attached to than a member of the noble family of the
same name from which he has taken the hero of _Der Arme Heinrich_,
seems to have been admitted to knightly society, was a crusader, and
appears to have been of somewhat higher rank than Gottfried, whom,
however, he resembled in this point, that both were evidently men of
considerable education. We rise again in status, though probably not
in wealth, and certainly not in education, when we come to Wolfram von
Eschenbach. He was of a family of Northern Bavaria or Middle
Franconia; he bore (for there are diversities on this heraldic point)
two axe-blades argent on a field gules, or a bunch of five flowers
argent springing from a water-bouget gules; and he is said by
witnesses in 1608 to have been described on his tombstone as a knight.
But he was certainly poor, had not received much education, and he was
attached in the usual guest-dependant fashion of the time to the
Margrave of Vohburg (whose wife, Elizabeth of Bavaria, received his
poetical declarations) and to Hermann of Thuringia. He was a married
man, and had a daughter.

Lastly, Walther von der Vogelweide appears to have been actually a
"working poet," as we may say--a _trouvère_, who sang his own poems as
he wandered about, and whose surname was purely a decorative one. He
lived, no doubt, by gifts; indeed, the historians are proud to record
that a bishop gave him a fur coat precisely on the 12th of November
1203. He was probably born in Austria, lived at Vienna with Duke
Frederic of Babenberg for some time, and held poetical offices in the
households of several other princes, including the Emperor Frederick
II., who gave him an estate at last. It should be said that there are
those who insist that he also was of knightly position, and was
Vogelweide of that ilk, inasmuch as we find him called "herr," the
supposed mark of distinction of a gentleman at the time. Such
questions are of importance in their general bearing on the question
of literature at given dates, not in respect of individual persons. It
must be evident that no word which, like "herr," is susceptible of
general as well as technical meanings, can be absolutely decisive in
such a case, unless we find it in formal documents. Also, after
Frederick's gift Walther would have been entitled to it, though he was
not before. At any rate, the entirely wandering life, and the constant
relationship to different protectors, which are in fact the only
things we know about him, are more in accordance with the notion of a
professional minstrel than with that of a man who, like Wolfram, even
if he had no estate and was not independent of patronage, yet had a
settled home of his own, and was buried where he was born.

[Sidenote: _The Minnesingers generally._]

The introduction of what may be called a representative system into
literary history has been here rendered necessary by the fact that the
school-resemblance so common in mediæval writers is nowhere more
common than among the Minnesingers,[122] and that the latter are
extraordinarily numerous, if not also extraordinarily monotonous. One
famous collection contains specimens of 160 poets, and even this is
not likely to include the whole of those who composed poetry of the
kind before Minnesong changed (somewhere in the thirteenth century or
at the beginning of the fourteenth, but at times and in manners which
cannot be very precisely fixed) into Meistersong. The chief lyric
poets before Walther were Heinrich von Veldeke, his contemporary and
namesake Heinrich von Morungen, and Reinmar von Hagenau, whom
Gottfried selects as Walther's immediate predecessor in
"nightingaleship": the chief later ones, Neidhart von Regenthal,
famous for dance-songs; Tannhäuser, whose actual work, however, is of
a mostly burlesque character, as different as possible from, and
perhaps giving rise by very contrast to, the beautiful and terrible
legend which connects his name with the Venus-berg (though Heine has
managed in his version to combine the two elements); Ulrich von
Lichtenstein, half an apostle, half a caricaturist of _Frauendienst_
on the Provençal model; and, finally, Frauenlob or Heinrich von
Meissen, who wrote at the end of our period and the beginning of the
next for nearly fifty years, and may be said to be the link between
Minnesong and Meistersong.

[Footnote 122: The standard edition or _corpus_ of their work is that
of Von der Hagen, in three large vols. Leipzig, 1838.]

So also in the other departments of poetry, harbingers,
contemporaries, and continuators, some of whom have been mentioned,
most of whom it would be impossible to mention, group round the
greater masters, and as in France, so here, the departments themselves
branch out in an almost bewildering manner. Germany, as may be
supposed, had its full share of that "poetry of information" which
constitutes so large a part of mediæval verse, though here even more
than elsewhere such verse is rarely, except by courtesy, poetry.
Families of later handlings, both of the folk epic and the literary
romances, exist, such as the _Rosengarten_, the _Horny Siegfried_, and
the story of Wolfdietrich in the one class; _Wigalois_ and _Wigamur_,
and a whole menagerie of poems deriving from the _Chevalier au Lyon_,
on the other. With the general growth, half epidemic, half directly
borrowed from France, of abstraction and allegory (_vide_ next
chapter), Satire made its way, and historians generally dwell on the
"Frau Welt" of Konrad von Wurzburg in the middle of the thirteenth
century, in which Wirent von Grafenburg (a well-known poet among the
literary school, the author of _Wigalois_) is brought face to face
with an incarnation of the World and its vanity. Volumes on volumes of
moral poetry date from the thirteenth century, and culminate in the
somewhat well-known _Renner_[123] of Hugo von Trimberg, dating from
the very last year of our period: perhaps the most noteworthy is the
_Bescheidenheit_ of Freidank, a crusader _trouvère_ who accompanied
Frederick II. to the East. But in all this Germany is only following
the general habit of the age, and to a great extent copying directly.
Even in those greater writers who have been here noticed there is, as
we have seen, not a little imitation; but the national and individual
peculiarities more than excuse this. The national epics, with the
_Nibelungenlied_ at their head, the Arthurian stories transformed, of
which in different ways _Tristan_ and _Parzival_, but especially the
latter, are the chief, and the Minnesong,--these are the great
contributions of Germany during the period, and they are great indeed.

[Footnote 123: On this see the last passage, except the conclusion on
_Reynard the Fox_, of Carlyle's Essay on "Early German Literature"
noted above. Of the great romances, as distinguished from the
_Nibelungen_, Carlyle did not know much, and he was not quite in
sympathy either with their writers or with the Minnesingers proper.
But the life-philosopher of _Reynard_ and the _Renner_ attracted
him.]




CHAPTER VII.

THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' AND THE MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRANCE.

     THE PREDOMINANCE OF FRANCE. THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. LYRIC. THE
     "ROMANCE" AND THE "PASTOURELLE." THE "FABLIAUX." THEIR
     ORIGIN. THEIR LICENCE. THEIR WIT. DEFINITION AND SUBJECTS.
     EFFECT OF THE "FABLIAUX" ON LANGUAGE. AND ON NARRATIVE.
     CONDITIONS OF "FABLIAU"-WRITING. THE APPEARANCE OF IRONY.
     FABLES PROPER. 'REYNARD THE FOX.' ORDER OF TEXTS. PLACE OF
     ORIGIN. THE FRENCH FORM. ITS COMPLICATIONS. UNITY OF SPIRIT.
     THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. THE SATIRE OF 'RENART.' THE FOX
     HIMSELF. HIS CIRCLE. THE BURIAL OF RENART. THE 'ROMANCE OF
     THE ROSE.' WILLIAM OF LORRIS AND JEAN DE MEUNG. THE FIRST
     PART. ITS CAPITAL VALUE. THE ROSE-GARDEN. "DANGER."
     "REASON." "SHAME" AND "SCANDAL." THE LATER POEM.
     "FALSE-SEEMING." CONTRAST OF THE PARTS. VALUE OF BOTH, AND
     CHARM OF THE FIRST. MARIE DE FRANCE AND RUTEBOEUF. DRAMA.
     ADAM DE LA HALLE. "ROBIN ET MARION." THE "JEU DE LA
     FEUILLIE." COMPARISON OF THEM. EARLY FRENCH PROSE. LAWS AND
     SERMONS. VILLEHARDOUIN. WILLIAM OF TYRE. JOINVILLE. FICTION.
     'AUCASSIN ET NICOLETTE.'


[Sidenote: _The predominance of France._]

The contributions of France to European literature mentioned in the
three chapters (II.-IV.) which deal with the three main sections of
Romance, great as we have seen them to be, by no means exhausted the
debt which literature owes to her during this period. It is indeed not
a little curious that the productions of this time, long almost
totally ignored in France itself, and even now rather grudgingly
acknowledged there, are the only periodic set of productions that
justify the claim, so often advanced by Frenchmen, that their country
is at the head of the literary development of Europe. It was not so in
the fourteenth century, when not only Chaucer in England, but Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio in Italy, attained literary heights to which
none of their French contemporaries even approached. It was not so in
the fifteenth, when France, despite Villon and others, was the very
School of Dulness, and even England, with the help of the Scottish
poets and Malory, had a slight advantage over her, while she was far
outstripped by Italy. It was not so in the sixteenth, when Italy
hardly yet fell behind, and Spain and England far outwent her: nor,
according to any just estimate, in the seventeenth. In the eighteenth
her pale correctness looks faint enough, not merely beside the massive
strength of England, but beside the gathering force of Germany: and if
she is the equal of the best in the nineteenth, it is at the very most
a bare equality. But in the twelfth and thirteenth France, if not
Paris, was in reality the eye and brain of Europe, the place of origin
of almost every literary form, the place of finishing and polishing,
even for those forms which she did not originate. She not merely
taught, she wrought--and wrought consummately. She revived and
transformed the fable; perfected, if she did not invent, the
beast-epic; brought the short prose tale to an exquisite completeness;
enlarged, suppled, chequered, the somewhat stiff and monotonous forms
of Provençal lyric into myriad-noted variety; devised the
prose-memoir, and left capital examples of it; made attempts at the
prose history; ventured upon much and performed no little in the
vernacular drama; besides the vast performance, sometimes inspired
from elsewhere but never as literature copied, which we have already
seen, in her fostering if not mothering of Romance. When a learned and
enthusiastic Icelander speaks of his patrimony in letters as "a native
literature which, in originality, richness, historical and artistic
worth, stands unrivalled in modern Europe," we can admire the patriot
but must shake our heads at the critic. For by Dr Vigfusson's own
confession the strength of Icelandic literature consists in the sagas,
and the sagas are the product of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
At that very time France, besides the _chansons de geste_--as native,
as original, as the sagas, and if less rich, far more artistic in
form--France has to show the great romances proper, which Iceland
herself, like all the world, copied, a lyric of wonderful charm and
abundance, the vast comic wealth of the _fabliaux_, and the
_Fox_-epic, prose not merely of laws and homilies and rudimentary
educational subjects, but of every variety, drama, history,
philosophy, allegory, dream.

[Sidenote: _The rise of Allegory._]

To give an account of these various things in great detail would not
merely be impossible here, but would injure the scheme and thwart the
purpose of this history. We must survey them in the gross, or with a
few examples--showing the lessons taught and the results achieved,
from the lyric, which was probably the earliest, to the drama and the
prose story, which were pretty certainly the latest of the French
experiments. But we must give largest space to the singular growth of
Allegory. This, to some extent in the beast-epic, to a far greater in
one of the most epoch-making of European books, the _Romance of the
Rose_, set a fashion in Europe which had hardly passed away in three
hundred years, and which, latterly rather for the worse, but in the
earlier date not a little for the better, coloured not merely the work
directly composed in imitation of the great originals, but all
literary stuff of every kind, from lyric to drama, and from sermons to
prose tales.

[Sidenote: _Lyric._]

It has been said elsewhere that the shaping of a prosody suitable for
lyric was the great debt which Europe owes to the language of
Provence. And this is not at all inconsistent with the undoubted
critical fact that in a _Corpus Lyricorum_ the best songs of the
northern tongues would undoubtedly rank higher, according to all sound
canons of poetical criticism, than the best lyrics of the southern.
For, as it happens, we have lyrics in at least two most vigorous
northern tongues before they had gone to school to southern prosody,
and we can see at once the defects in them. The scanty remains of
Anglo-Saxon lyric and the more copious remains of Icelandic display,
with no little power and pathos, and plenty of ill-organised "cry," an
almost total lack of ability to sing. Every now and then their natural
genius enables them to hit, clumsily and laboriously, on
something--the refrain of the _Complaint of Deor_, the stepped stanzas
of the _Lesson of Loddfafni_--resembling the more accomplished methods
of more educated and long-descended literatures. But the poets are
always in a Robinson Crusoe condition, and worse: for Robinson had at
least seen the tools and utensils he needed, if he did not know how to
make them. The scôps and scalds were groping for the very pattern of
the tools themselves.

The _langue d'oc_, first of all vernacular tongues, borrowed from
Latin, as Latin had borrowed from Greek, such of the practical
outcomes of the laws of lyric harmony in Aryan speech as were suitable
to itself; and passed the lesson on to the _trouvères_ of the north of
France--if indeed these did not work out the transfer for themselves
almost independently. And as there was much more northern admixture,
and in particular a less tyrannous softness of vowel-ending in the
_langue d'oïl_, this second stage saw a great increase of suppleness,
a great emancipation from monotony, a wonderful freshness and wealth
of colour and form. It has been said, and I see no reason to alter the
saying, that the French tongue in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries
was actually better suited for lyrical poetry, and did actually
produce lyrical poetry, as far as prosody is concerned, of a fresher,
freer, more spontaneous kind, from the twelfth century to the
beginning of the fifteenth than has ever been the case since.[124]

[Footnote 124: This is not inconsistent with allowing that no single
French lyric poet is the equal of Walther von der Vogelweide, and that
the exercises of all are hampered by the lack--after the earliest
examples--of trisyllabic metres.]

M. Alfred Jeanroy has written a learned and extensive monograph on
_Les Origines de la Poesie Lyrique en France_, which with M. Gaston
Raynaud's _Bibliographie des Chansonniers Français_, and his
collection of _Motets_ of our present period, is indispensable to the
thorough student of the subject.[125] But for general literary
purposes the two classics of the matter are, and are long likely to
be, the charming _Romancero Français_[126] which M. Paulin Paris
published in the very dawn of the study of mediæval literature in
France, and the admirable _Romanzen und Pastourellen_[127] which Herr
Karl Bartsch collected and issued a quarter of a century ago. Here as
elsewhere the piecemeal system of publication which has been the bane
of the whole subject is to be regretted, for with a little effort and
a little division of labour the entire _corpus_ of French lyric from
the tenth to the fourteenth century might have been easily set before
the public. But the two volumes above mentioned will enable the reader
to judge its general characteristics with pretty absolute sureness;
and if he desires to supplement them with the work of a single author,
that of Thibaut of Champagne or Navarre,[128] which is easily
accessible, will form an excellent third.

[Footnote 125: M. Jeanroy, as is also the case with other writers of
monographs mentioned in this chapter, has contributed to M. Petit de
Julleville's _Histoire_ (_v._ p. 23) on his subject.]

[Footnote 126: Paris, 1833.]

[Footnote 127: Leipzig, 1870.]

[Footnote 128: Rheims, 1851.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Romance _and the_ Pastourelle.]

In this northern lyric--that is to say, northern as compared with
Provençal[129]--we find all or almost all the artificial forms which
are characteristic of Provençal itself, some of them no doubt rather
sisters than daughters of their analogues in the _langue d'oc_.
Indeed, at the end of our present period, and still more later, the
ingenuity of the _trouvères_ seems to have pushed the strictly formal,
strictly artificial part of the poetry of the troubadours to almost
its furthest possible limits in varieties of _triolet_ and _rondeau_,
_ballade_ and _chant royal_. But the _Romances_ and the _Pastourelles_
stand apart from these, and both are recognised by authorities among
the troubadours themselves as specially northern forms. The
differentia of each is in subject rather than in form, the "romance"
in this sense being a short love-story, with little more than a single
incident in it sometimes, but still always possessing an incident; the
_Pastourelle_, a special variety of love-story of the kind so
curiously popular in all mediæval languages, and so curiously alien
from modern experience, where a passing knight sees a damsel of low
degree, and woos her at once, with or without success, or where two
personages of the shepherd kind sue and are sued with evil hap or
good. In other words, the "romance" is supremely presented in English,
and in the much-abused fifteenth century, by the _Nut-Browne Maid_,
the "pastourelle" by Henryson's _Robene and Makyne_. Perhaps there is
nothing quite so good as either in the French originals of both;
certainly there is nothing like the union of metrical felicity,
romantic conduct, sweet but not mawkish sentiment, and never-flagging
interest in the anonymous masterpiece which the ever-blessed Arnold
preserved for us in his _Chronicle_. But the diffused merits--the
so-to-speak "class-merits"--of the poems in general are very high
indeed: and when the best of the other lyrics--_aubades_, _débats_,
and what not--are joined to them, they supply the materials of an
anthology of hardly surpassed interest, as well for the bubbling music
of their refrains and the trill of their metre, as for the fresh mirth
and joy of living in their matter. The "German paste in our
composition," as another Arnold had it, and not only that, may make us
prefer the German examples; but it must never be forgotten that but
for these it is at least not improbable that those would never have
existed.

[Footnote 129: This for convenience' sake is postponed to chap. viii.]

To select capital examples from so large a body is no easy task. One
or two, indeed, have "made fortune," the most famous of them being the
great _aubade_ (chief among its kind, as "En un vergier sotz folha
d'albespi" is among the Provençal albas), which begins--

    "Gaite de la tor,
         Gardez entor
         Les murs, si Deus vos voie;"[130]

and where the _gaite_ (watcher) answers (like a Cornish watcher of the
pilchards)--

    "Hu! et hu! et hu! et hu!"

[Footnote 130: _Romancero Français_, p. 66.]

Then there is the group, among the oldest and the best of all,
assigned to Audefroy le Bâtard--a most delectable garland, which tells
how the loves of Gerard and Fair Isabel are delayed (with the refrain
"et joie atent Gerars"), and how the joy comes at last; of "belle
Ydoine" and her at first ill-starred passion for "li cuens [the Count]
Garsiles"; of Béatrix and Guy; of Argentine, whose husband better
loved another; of Guy the second, who _aima Emmelot de foi_--all
charming pieces of early verse. And then there are hundreds of others,
assigned or anonymous, in every tone, from the rather unreasonable
request of the lady who demands--

    "Por coi me bast mes maris?
                laysette!"

immediately answering her own question by confessing that he has found
her embracing her lover, and threatening further justification;
through the less impudent but still not exactly correct morality of
"Henri and Aiglentine," to the blameless loves of Roland and "Bele
Erembors" and the _moniage_ of "Bele Doette" after her lover's death,
with the words--

    "Tant mar i fustes, cuens Do, frans de nature,
    por vostre aor vestrai je la haire
    ne sur mon cors n'arai pelice vaire."

This conduct differs sufficiently from that of the unnamed heroine of
another song, who in the sweetest and smoothest of verse bids her
husband never to mind if she stays with her lover that night, for the
night is very short, and he, the husband, shall have her back
to-morrow!

And besides the morality, perverse or touching, the quaint manners,
the charming unusual names or forms of names, Oriour, Oriolanz,
Ysabiaus, Aigline,--there are delightful fancies, borrowed often
since:--

    "Li rossignox est mon père,
      Qui chante sur la ramée
    el plus haut boscage;
      La seraine ele est ma mère,
    qui chante en la mer salée
      el plus haut rivage."

Something in the very sound of the language keeps for us the freshness
of the imagery--the sweet-briar and the hawthorn, the mavis and the
oriole--which has so long become _publica materies_. It is not
withered and hackneyed by time and tongues as, save when genius
touches it, it is now. The dew is still on all of it; and, thanks to
the dead language, the dead manners, it will always be on. All is just
near enough to us for it to be enjoyed, as we cannot enjoy antiquity
or the East; and yet the "wall of glass" which seven centuries
interpose, while hiding nothing, keeps all intact, unhackneyed,
strange, _fresh_. There may be better poetry in the world than these
twelfth and thirteenth century French lyrics: there is certainly
higher, grander, more respectable. But I doubt whether there is any
sweeter or, in a certain sense, more poignant. The nightingale and
the mermaid were justified of their children.

It is little wonder that all Europe soon tried to imitate notes so
charming, and in some cases, though other languages were far behind
French in development, tried successfully. Our own "Alison,"[131] the
first note of true English lyric, is a "romance" of the most genuine
kind; the songs of Walther von der Vogelweide, of which we have also
spoken, though they may rise higher, yet owe their French originals
service, hold of them, would either never or much later have come into
existence but for them. An astonishing privilege for a single nation
to have enjoyed, if only for a short time; a privilege almost more
astonishing in its reception than even in itself. France could point
to the _chansons_ and to the _romances_, to Audefroy le Bastard and
Chrestien of Troyes, to Villehardouin and Thibaut, to William of
Lorris and John of Meung, to the _fabliaux_ writers and the cyclists
of _Renart_, in justification of her claims. She shut them up; she
forgot them; she sneered at them whenever they were remembered; and
she appointed as her attorneys in the court of Parnassus Nicolas
Boileau-Despréaux and François Arouet de Voltaire!

[Footnote 131: See p. 210.]

[Sidenote: _The_ Fabliaux.]

No more curious contrast, but also none which could more clearly show
the enormous vigour and the unique variety of the French genius at
this time, can be imagined than that which is presented by the next
division to which we come--the division occupied by the celebrated
poems, or at least verse-compositions, known as _fabliaux_. These,
for reasons into which it is perhaps better not to inquire too
closely, have been longer and better known than any other division of
old French poetry. They were first collected and published a hundred
and forty years ago by Barbazan; they were much commented on by Le
Grand d'Aussy in the last years of the last century, were again
published in the earlier years of the present by Méon, and recently
have been re-collected, divested of some companions not strictly of
their kind, and published in an edition desirable in every respect by
M. Anatole de Montaiglon and M. Gaston Raynaud.[132] Since this
collection M. Bédier has executed a monograph upon them which stands
to the subject much as that of M. Jeanroy does to the Lyrics. But a
great deal of it is occupied by speculations, more interesting to the
folk-lorist than to the student of literature, as to the origin of the
stories themselves. This, though a question of apparently
inexhaustible attraction to some people, must not occupy us very long
here. It shall be enough to say that many of these subjects are hardy
perennials which meet us in all literatures, and the existence of
which is more rationally to be accounted for by the supposition of a
certain common form of story, resulting partly from the conditions of
human life and character, partly from the conformation of the human
intellect, than by supposing deliberate transmission and copying from
one nation to another. For this latter explanation is one of those
which, as has been said, only push ignorance further back; and in
fact, leave us at the last with no alternative except that which we
might have adopted at the first.

[Footnote 132: 6 vols. Paris, 1872-90.]

[Sidenote: _Their origin._]

That, however, some assistance may have been given to the general
tendency to produce the same forms by the literary knowledge of
earlier, especially Eastern, collections of tales is no extravagant
supposition, and is helped by the undoubted fact that actual
translations of such collections--_Dolopathos_, the _Seven Sages of
Rome_,[133] and so forth--are found early in French, and chiefly at
second-hand from the French in other languages. But the general
tendency of mankind, reinforced and organised by a certain specially
literary faculty and adaptability in the French genius, is on the
whole sufficient to account for the _fabliau_.

[Footnote 133: For these see the texts and editorial matter of
_Dolopathos_, ed. Brunet and De Montaiglon (Bibliothèque
Elzévirienne), Paris, 1856; and of _Le Roman des Sept Sages_, ed. G.
Paris (_Soc. des Anc. Textes_), Paris, 1875. The English _Seven Sages_
(in Weber, vol. iii.) has been thought to be of the thirteenth
century. The _Gesta Romanorum_ in any of its numerous forms is
probably later.]

[Sidenote: _Their licence._]

It presents, as we have said, the most striking and singular contrast
to the Lyric poems which we have just noticed. The technical morality
of these is extremely accommodating, indeed (in its conventional and
normal form) very low. But it is redeemed by an exquisite grace and
charm, by true passion, and also by a great decency and accomplishment
of actual diction. Coarse language--very rare in the romances, though
there are a few examples of it--is rarer still in the elaborate formal
lyric of the twelfth and thirteenth century in French. In the
_fabliaux_, which are only a very little later, and which seem not to
have been a favourite form of composition very long after the
fourteenth century had reached its prime, coarseness of diction,
though not quite invariable, is the rule. Not merely are the subjects,
in the majority of cases, distinctly "broad," but the treatment of
them is broader still. In a few instances it is very hard to discern
any wit at all, except a kind similar to that known much later in
England as "selling bargains"; and almost everywhere the words which,
according to a famous classical French tag, _bravent l'honnêteté_, in
Latin, the use of which a Roman poet has vaunted as _Romana
simplicitas_, and which for some centuries have been left alone by
regular literature in all European languages till very recently,--appear
to be introduced on purpose as part of the game. In fact, it is in the
_fabliau_ that the characteristic which Mr Matthew Arnold selected as
the opprobrium of the French in life and literature practically makes
its first appearance. And though the "lubricity" of these poems is
free from some ugly features which appear after the Italian wars of
the late fifteenth century, it has never been more frankly destitute
of shamefacedness.

[Sidenote: _Their wit._]

It would, however, be extremely unfair to let it be supposed that the
_fabliaux_ contain nothing but obscenity, or that they can offer
attractions to no one save those whom obscenity attracts. As in those
famous English followings of them, where Chaucer considerably reduced
the licence of language, and still more considerably increased the
dose of wit--the Reeve's and Miller's sections of the _Canterbury
Tales_--the lack of decency is very often accompanied by no lack of
sense. And a certain proportion, including some of the very best in a
literary point of view, are not exposed to the charge of any
impropriety either of language or of subject.

[Sidenote: _Definition and subjects._]

There is, indeed, no special reason why the _fabliau_ should be
"improper" (except for the greater ease of getting a laugh) according
to its definition, which is capable of being drawn rather more sharply
than is always the case with literary kinds. It is a short tale in
verse--almost invariably octosyllabic couplets--dealing, for the most
part from the comic point of view, with incidents of ordinary life.
This naturally admits of the widest possible diversity of subject:
indeed it is only by sticking to the condition of "ordinary life" that
the _fabliau_ can be differentiated from the short romance on one side
and the allegoric beast-fable on the other. Even as it is, its most
recent editors have admitted among their 157 examples not a few which
are simple _jeux d'esprit_ on the things of humanity, and others which
are in effect short romances and nothing else. Of these last is the
best known of all the non-Rabelaisian _fabliaux_, "Le Vair Palefroi,"
which has been Englished by Leigh Hunt and shortly paraphrased by
Peacock, while examples of the former may be found without turning
very long over even one of M. M. de Montaiglon and Raynaud's pretty
and learned volumes. A very large proportion, as might be expected,
draw their comic interest from satire on priests, on women, or on
both together; and this very general character of the _fabliaux_
(which, it must be remembered, were performed or recited by the very
same _jongleurs_ who conducted the publication of the _chansons de
geste_ and the romances) was no doubt partly the result and partly the
cause of the persistent dislike and disfavour with which the Church
regarded the profession of jonglerie. It is, indeed, from the
_fabliaux_ themselves that we learn much of what we know about the
_jongleurs_; and one of not the least amusing[134] deals with the
half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts of two members of the order, who
misquote the titles of their _répertoire_, make by accident or
intention ironic comments on its contents, and in short do _not_
magnify their office in a very modern spirit of humorous writing.

[Footnote 134: "Les Deux Bordeors [bourders, jesters] Ribaux."]

Every now and then, too, we find, in the half-random and wholly
scurrile slander of womankind, a touch of real humour, of the humour
that has feeling behind it, as here, where a sufficiently ribald
variation on the theme of the "Ephesian matron" ends--

    "Por ce teng-je celui à fol
    Qui trop met en fame sa cure;
    Fame est de trop foible nature,
    De noient rit, de noient pleure,
    Fame aime et het en trop poi d'eure:
    Tost est ses talenz remuez,
    Qui fame croit, si est desvès."

So too, again, in "La Housse Partie," a piece which perhaps ranks next
to the "Vair Palefroi" in general estimation, there is neither purely
romantic interest, as in the Palfrey, nor the interest of "the pity of
it," as in the piece just quoted; but an ethical purpose, showing out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings the danger of filial ingratitude.

But, as a general rule, there is little that is serious in these
frequently graceless but generally amusing compositions. There is a
curious variety about them, and incidentally a crowd of lively touches
of common life. The fisherman of the Seine starts for his day's work
or sport with oar and tackle; the smith plies the forge; the bath
plays a considerable part in the stories, and we learn that it was not
an unknown habit to eat when bathing, which seems to be an unwise
attempt to double luxuries. A short sketch of mediæval catering might
be got out of the _fabliaux_, where figure not merely the usual
dainties--capons, partridges, pies well peppered--but eels salted,
dried, and then roasted, or more probably grilled, as we grill
kippered salmon. Here we have a somewhat less grimy original--perhaps
it was actually the original--of Skelton's "Tunning of Elinor
Rumming"; and in many places other patterns, the later reproductions
of which are well known to readers of Boccaccio and the _Cent
Nouvelles Nouvelles_ of La Fontaine and his followers. Title after
title--"Du Prestre Crucifié," "Du Prestre et d'Alison," &c.--tells us
that the clergy are going to be lampooned. Sometimes, where the fun is
no worse than childish, it is childish enough--plays on words, jokes
on English mispronunciation of French, and so forth. But it very
seldom, though it is sometimes intolerably nasty, approaches the
sheer drivel which appears in some English would-be comic writing of
the Middle Ages, or the very early Renaissance--such, for instance, as
most of that in the prose "Pleasant Historie of Thomas of
Reading,"[135] which the late Mr Thoms was pleased to call a romance.
Yet the actual stuff of "Thomas of Reading" is very much of the nature
of the _fabliaux_ (except of course the tragical part, which happens
to be the only good part), and so the difference of the handling is
noteworthy. So it is also in English verse-work of the kind--the
"Hunting of the Hare"[136] and the like--to take examples necessarily
a little later than our time.

[Footnote 135: _Early English Prose Romances_ (2d ed., London, 1858),
i. 71. The text of this is only Deloney's and sixteenth century, but
much of the matter must be far earlier.]

[Footnote 136: Weber, iii. 177.]

[Sidenote: _Effect of the_ fabliaux _on language._]

For in these curious compositions the _esprit Gaulois_ found itself
completely at home; indeed some have held that here it hit upon its
most characteristic and peculiar development. The wonderful faculty
for expression--for giving, if not the supreme, yet the adequate and
technically masterly dress to any kind of literary production--which
has been the note of French literature throughout, and which was never
more its note than at this time, enabled the language, as we have seen
and shall see, to keep as by an easy sculling movement far ahead of
all its competitors. But in other departments, with one or two
exceptions, the union of temper and craft, of inspiration and
execution, was not quite perfect. Here there was no misalliance. As
the language lost the rougher, fresher music which gives such peculiar
attraction to the _chansons_, as it disused itself to the varied
trills, the half-inarticulate warblings which constitute the charm of
the lyrics, so it acquired the precision, the flexibility, the
_netteté_, which satiric treatment of the follies and evil chances of
life, the oddities of manners and morals, require. It became bright,
if a little hard, easy, if a little undistinguished, capable of
slyness, of innuendo, of "malice," but not quite so capable as it had
been of the finer and vaguer suggestions and aspirations.

[Sidenote: _And on narrative._]

Above all, these _fabliaux_ served as an exercise-ground for the
practice in which French was to become almost if not quite supreme,
the practice of narrative. In the longer romances, which for a century
or a century and a half preceded the _fabliaux_, the art of narration,
as has been more than once noticed, was little attended to, and indeed
had little scope. The _chansons_ had a common form, or something very
like it, which almost dispensed the _trouvère_ from devoting much
pains to the individual conduct of the story. The most abrupt
transitions were accustomed, indeed expected; minor incidents received
very little attention; the incessant fighting secured the attention of
the probable hearers by itself; the more grandiose and striking
incidents--the crowning of Prince Louis and the indignation of William
at his sister's ingratitude, for instance--were not "engineered" or
led up to in any way, but left to act in mass and by assault.

[Sidenote: _Conditions of_ fabliau-_writing._]

The smaller range and more delicate--however indelicate--argument of
the _fabliaux_ not only invited but almost necessitated a different
kind of handling. The story had to draw to point in (on an average)
two or three hundred lines at most--there are _fabliaux_ of a thousand
lines, and _fabliaux_ of thirty or forty, but the average is as just
stated. The incidents had to be adjusted for best effect, neither too
many nor too few. The treatment had to be mainly provocative--an
appeal in some cases by very coarse means indeed to very coarse
nerves, in others by finer devices addressed to senses more tickle o'
the sere. And so grew up that unsurpassed and hardly matched product
the French short story, where, if it is in perfection, hardly a word
is thrown away, and not a word missed that is really wanted.

[Sidenote: _The appearance of irony._]

The great means for doing this in literature is irony; and irony
appears in the _fabliaux_ as it had hardly done since Lucian. Take,
for instance, this opening of a piece, the rest of which is at least
as irreverent, considerably less quotable, but not much less
pointed:--

    "Quant Dieus ot estoré lo monde,
    Si con il est à la reonde,
    Et quanque il convit dedans,
    Trois ordres establir de genz,
    Et fist el siecle demoranz
    Chevalers, clers et laboranz.
    Les chevalers toz asena
    As terres, et as clers dona
    Les aumosnes et les dimages;
    Puis asena les laborages
    As laborenz, por laborer.
    Qant ce ot fet, sanz demeler
    D'iluec parti, et s'en ala."

What two orders were left, and how the difficulty of there being
nothing left for them was got over, may be found by the curious in the
seventy-sixth _fabliau_ of the third volume of the collection so often
quoted. But the citation given will show that there is nothing
surprising in the eighteenth-century history, literary or poetical, of
a country which could produce such a piece, certainly not later than
the thirteenth. Even Voltaire could not put the thing more neatly or
with a more complete freedom from superfluous words.

[Sidenote: _Fables proper._]

It will doubtless have been observed that the _fabliau_--though the
word is simply _fabula_ in one of its regular Romance metamorphoses,
and though the method is sufficiently Æsopic--is not a "fable" in the
sense more especially assigned to the term. Yet the mediæval
languages, especially French and Latin, were by no means destitute of
fables properly so called. On the contrary, it would appear that it
was precisely during our present period that the rather meagre
Æsopisings of Phædrus and Babrius were expanded into the fuller
collection of beast-stories which exists in various forms, the chief
of them being the _Ysopet_ (the name generally given to the class in
Romance) of _Marie de France_, the somewhat later _Lyoner Ysopet_ (as
its editor, Dr Förster, calls it), and the original of this latter,
the Latin elegiacs of the so-called _Anonymus Neveleti_.[137] The
collection of Marie is interesting, at least, because of the author,
whose more famous Lais, composed, it would seem, at the Court of Henry
III. of England about the meeting of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, and forming a sort of offshoot less of the substance of the
Arthurian story than of its spirit, are among the most delightful
relics of mediæval poetry. But the Lyons book perhaps exhibits more of
the characteristic which, evident enough in the _fabliau_ proper,
discovers, after passing as by a channel through the beast-fable, its
fullest and most famous form in the world-renowned _Romance of Reynard
the Fox_, one of the capital works of the Middle Ages, and with the
sister but contrasted _Romance of the Rose_, as much the
distinguishing literary product of the thirteenth century as the
romances proper--Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Classical--are of the
twelfth.

[Footnote 137: Works of Marie; ed. Roquefort, Paris, 1820; or ed.
Warnke, Halle, 1885. The _Lyoner Ysopet_, with the _Anonymus_; ed.
Förster, Heilbronn, 1882.]

[Sidenote: Reynard the Fox.]

Not, of course, that the antiquity of the Reynard story itself[138]
does not mount far higher than the thirteenth century. No two things
are more remarkable as results of that comparative and simultaneous
study of literature, to which this series hopes to give some little
assistance, than the way in which, on the one hand, a hundred years
seem to be in the Middle Ages but a day, in the growth of certain
kinds, and on the other a day sometimes appears to do the work of a
hundred years. We have seen how in the last two or three decades of
the twelfth century the great Arthurian legend seems suddenly to fill
the whole literary scene, after being previously but a meagre
chronicler's record or invention. The growth of the Reynard story,
though to some extent contemporaneous, was slower; but it was really
the older of the two. Before the middle of this century, as we have
seen, there was really no Arthurian story worthy the name; it would
seem that by that time the Reynard legend had already taken not full
but definite form in Latin, and there is no reasonable reason for
scepticism as to its existence in vernacular tradition, though perhaps
not in vernacular writing, for many years, perhaps for more than one
century, earlier.

[Footnote 138: _Roman du_ (should be _de_) _Renart_: ed. Méon and
Chabaille, 5 vols., Paris, 1826-35; ed. Martin, 3 vols. text and 1
critical observations, Strasburg, 1882-87. _Reincke de Vos_, ed.
Prien, Halle, 1887, with a valuable bibliography. _Reinaert_, ed.
Martin, Paderborn, 1874. _Reinardus Vulpes_, ed. Mone, Stuttgart,
1834. _Reinhart Fuchs_, ed. Grimm, Berlin, 1832. On the _story_ there
is perhaps nothing better than Carlyle, as quoted _supra_.]

[Sidenote: _Order of texts._]

It was not to be expected but that so strange, so interesting, and so
universally popular a story as that of King Noble and his not always
loving subjects, should have been made, as usual, the battle-ground of
literary fancy and of that general tendency of mankind to ferocity,
which, unluckily, the study of _belles lettres_ does not seem very
appreciably to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating
MSS. in the early days of palæographic study, and by their
prepossessions as Germans, some early students of the Reynard story
made out much too exclusive and too early claims, as to possession by
right of invention, for the country in which Reynard has no doubt, for
the last four centuries or so, been much more of a really popular hero
than anywhere else. Investigation and comparison, however, have had
more healing effects here than in other cases; and since the
acknowledgment of the fact that the very early Middle High German
version of Henry the Glichezare, itself of the end of the twelfth
century, is a translation from the French, there has not been much
serious dispute about the order of the Reynard romances as we actually
have them. That is to say, if the Latin _Isengrimus_--the oldest
_Reinardus Vulpes_--of 1150 or thereabouts is actually the oldest
_text_, the older branches of the French _Renart_ pretty certainly
come next, with the High German following a little later, and the Low
German _Reincke de Vos_ and the Flemish _Reinaert_ a little later
still. The Southern Romance nations do not seem--indeed the humour is
essentially Northern--to have adopted Reynard with as much enthusiasm
as they showed towards the Romances; and our English forms were
undoubtedly late adaptations from foreign originals.

[Sidenote: _Place of origin._]

If, however, this account of the texts may be said to be fairly
settled, the same cannot of course be said as to the origin of the
story. Here there are still champions of the German claim, whose
number is increased by those who stickle for a definite "Low" German
origin. Some French patriots, with a stronger case than they generally
have, still maintain the story to be purely French in inception. I
have not myself seen any reason to change the opinion I formed some
fifteen years ago, to the effect that it seems likely that the
original language of the epic is French, but French of a Walloon or
Picard dialect, and that it was written somewhere between the Seine
and the Rhine.

The character and accomplishment of the story, however, are matters of
much more purely literary interest than the rather barren question of
the probable--it is not likely that it will ever be the proved--date
or place of origin of this famous thing. The fable in general, and the
beast-fable in particular, are among the very oldest and most
universal of the known forms of literature. A fresh and special
development of it might have taken place in any country at any time.
It did, as a matter of fact, take place somewhere about the twelfth
century or earlier, and somewhere in the central part of the northern
coast district of the old Frankish empire.

[Sidenote: _The French form._]

As usual with mediæval work, when it once took hold on the imagination
of writers and hearers, the bulk is very great, especially in the
French forms, which, taking them altogether, cannot fall much short of
a hundred thousand lines. This total, however, includes
developments--_Le Couronnement Renart_, _Renart le Nouvel_, and, later
than our present period, a huge and still not very well-known thing
called _Renart le Contrefait_, which are distinct additions to the
first conception of the story. Yet even that first conception is not a
story in the single sense. Its thirty thousand lines or thereabouts
are divided into a considerable number of what are called _branches_,
attributed to authors sometimes anonymous, sometimes named, but never,
except in the one case of _Renart le Bestourné_, known.[139] And it is
always difficult and sometimes impossible to determine in what
relation these branches stand to the main trunk, or which of them _is_
the main trunk. The two editors of the _Roman_, Méon and Herr Martin,
arrange them in different orders; and I do not think it would be in
the least difficult to make out a good case for an order, or even a
large number of orders, different still.[140]

[Footnote 139: This, which is not so much a branch as an independent
_fabliau_, is attributed to Ruteboeuf, _v. infra_.]

[Footnote 140: The Teutonic versions are consolidated into a more
continuous story. But of the oldest High German version, that of the
Glichezare, we have but part, and _Reincke de Vos_ does not reach
seven thousand verses. The French forms are therefore certainly to be
preferred.]

By comparison, however, with the versions in other languages, it seems
not very doubtful that the complaint of Isengrim the Wolf as to the
outrages committed by Reynard on the complainant's personal comfort,
and the honour of Hersent his wife--a complaint laid formally before
King Noble the Lion--forms, so far as any single thing can be said to
form it, the basis and beginning of the Reynard story. The
multiplication of complaints by other beasts, the sufferings inflicted
by Reynard on the messengers sent to summon him to Court, and his
escapes, by mixture of fraud and force, when he is no longer able to
avoid putting in an appearance, supply the natural continuation.

[Sidenote: _Its complications._]

But from this, at least in the French versions, the branches diverge,
cross, and repeat or contradict each other with an altogether
bewildering freedom. Sometimes, for long passages together, as in the
interesting fytte, "How Reynard hid himself among the Skins,"[141] the
author seems to forget the general purpose altogether, and to devote
himself to something quite different--in this case the description of
the daily life and pursuits of a thirteenth-century sportsman of easy
means. Often the connection with the general story is kept only by the
introduction of the most obvious and perfunctory devices--an intrigue
with Dame Hersent, a passing trick played on Isengrim, and so forth.

[Footnote 141: Méon, iii. 82; Martin, ii. 43.]

[Sidenote: _Unity of spirit._]

[Sidenote: _The Rise of Allegory._]

Nevertheless the whole is knit together, to a degree altogether
unusual in a work of such magnitude, due to many different hands, by
an extraordinary unity of tone and temper. This tone and this temper
are to some extent conditioned by the Rise of Allegory, the great
feature, in succession to the outburst of Romance, of our present
period. We do not find in the original _Renart_ branches the
abstracting of qualities and the personification of abstractions which
appear in later developments, and which are due to the popularity of
the _Romance of the Rose_, if it be not more strictly correct to say
that the popularity of the _Romance of the Rose_ was due to the taste
for allegory. Jacquemart Giélée, the author of _Renart le Nouvel_,
might personify _Renardie_ and work his beast-personages into knights
of tourney; the clerk of Troyes, who later wrote _Renart le
Contrefait_, might weave a sort of encyclopædia into his piece. But
the authors of the "Ancien Renart" knew better. With rare lapses, they
exhibit wonderful art in keeping their characters beasts, while
assigning to them human arts; or rather, to put the matter with more
correctness, they pass over the not strictly beast-like performances
of Renart and the others with such entire unconcern, with such a
perfect freedom from tedious after-thought of explanation, that no
sense of incongruity occurs. The illustrations of Méon's _Renart_,
which show us the fox painfully clasping in his forelegs a stick four
times his own length, show the inferiority of the nineteenth century.
Renart may beat _le vilain_ (everybody beats the poor _vilain_) as
hard as he likes in the old French text; it comes all naturally. A
neat copper-plate engraving, in the best style of sixty or seventy
years ago, awakes distrust.

[Sidenote: _The satire of_ Renart.]

The general fable is so familiar that not much need be said about it.
But it is, I think, not unfair to say that the German and Flemish
versions, from the latter of which Caxton's and all later English
forms seem to be copied, are, if better adjusted to a continuous
story, less saturated with the quintessence of satiric criticism of
life than the French _Renart_. The fault of excessive coarseness of
thought and expression, which has been commented on in the _fabliaux_,
recurs here to the fullest extent; but it is atoned for and sweetened
by an even greater measure of irony. As to the definite purposes of
this irony it would not be well to be too sure. The passage quoted on
a former page will show with what completely fearless satire the
_trouvères_ treated Church and State, God and Man. It is certain that
they had no love of any kind for the clergy, who were not merely their
rivals but their enemies; and it is not probable they had much for the
knightly order, who were their patrons. But it is never in the very
least degree safe to conclude, in a mediæval writer, from that satire
of abuses, which is so frequent, to the distinct desire of reform or
revolution, which is so rare. The satire of the _Renart_--and it is
all the more delightful--is scarcely in the smallest degree political,
is only in an interesting archæological way of the time ecclesiastical
or religious; but it is human, perennial, contemptuous of mere time
and circumstance, throughout.

[Sidenote: _The Fox himself._]

It cannot, no doubt, be called kindly satire--French satire very
rarely is. Renart, the only hero, though a hero sometimes uncommonly
hard bested, is a furred and four-footed Jonathan Wild. He appears to
have a creditable paternal affection for Masters Rovel, Percehaie, and
the other cubs; and despite his own extreme licence of conjugal
conduct, only one or two branches make Dame Hermeline, his wife,
either false to him or ill-treated by him. In these respects, as in
the other that he is scarcely ever outwitted, he has the advantage of
Jonathan. But otherwise I think our great eighteenth-century _maufès_
was a better fellow than Renart, because he was much less purely
malignant. I do not think that Jonathan often said his prayers; but he
probably never went to bed, as Reynard did upon the hay-mow, after
performing his devotions in a series of elaborate curses upon all his
enemies. The fox is so clever that one never dislikes him, and
generally admires him; but he is entirely compact of all that is
worst, not merely in beast-nature but in humanity. And it is a triumph
of the writers that, this being so, we at once can refrain from
disliking him, and are not tempted to like him illegitimately.

[Sidenote: _His circle._]

The _trouvères_ did not trouble themselves to work out any complete
character among the many whom they grouped round this great personage;
but they left none without touches of vivification and verisimilitude.
The female beasts--Dame Fière or Orgueilleuse, the lioness, Hersent,
the she-wolf, Hermeline, the vixen, and the rest--are too much tinged
with that stock slander of feminine character which was so common in
the Middle Ages. And each is rather too much of a type, a fault which
may be also found with their lords. Yet all of these--Bruin and
Brichemer, Coart and Chanticleer, Tybert and Primaut, Hubert and
Roonel--have the liveliest touches, not merely of the coarsely
labelling kind, but of the kind that makes a character alive. And,
save as concerns the unfortunate capons and _gelines_ whom Renart
consumes, so steadily and with such immunity, it cannot be said that
their various misfortunes are ever incurred without a valid excuse in
poetical justice. Isengrim, the chief of them all, is an especial case
in point. Although he is Chief Constable, he is just as much of a
rascal and a malefactor as Renart himself, with the additional crime
of stupidity. One is disposed to believe that, if domiciliary visits
were made to their various abodes, Malpertuis would by no means stand
alone as a bad example of a baronial abode. Renart is indeed
constantly spoken of as Noble's "baron." Yet it would be a great
mistake to take this epic, as it has been sometimes taken, for a
protest against baronial suppression. A sense of this, no doubt,
counts--as do senses of many other oppressions that are done under the
sun. But it is the satire on life as a whole that is uppermost; and
that is what makes the poem, or collection of poems, so remarkable. It
is hard, coarse, prosaic except for the range and power of its fancy,
libellous enough on humanity from behind its stalking-brutes. But it
is true, if an exaggeration of the truth; and its constant hugging of
the facts of life supplies the strangest possible contrast to the
graceful but shadowy land of romance which we have left in former
chapters. We all know the burial-scene of Launcelot--later, no doubt,
in its finest form, but in suggestion and spirit of the time with
which we are dealing. Let us now consider briefly the burial-scene of
Renart.

[Sidenote: _The burial of Renart._]

When Méon, the excellent first editor of the collection, put, as was
reason, the branch entitled "La Mort Renart" last, he was a little
troubled by the consideration that several of the beasts whom in
former branches Renart himself has brought to evil ends reappear and
take part in his funeral. But this scarcely argued a sufficient
appreciation of the true spirit of the cycle. The beasts, though
perfectly lively abstractions, are, after all, abstractions in a way,
and you cannot kill an abstraction. Nay, the author, with a really
grand final touch of the pervading satire which is the key of the
whole, gives us to understand at the last that Renart (though he has
died not once, but twice, in the course of the _fytte_) is not really
dead at all, and that when Dame Hermeline persuades the complaisant
ambassadors to report to the Lion-King that they have seen the tomb
with Renart inscribed upon it, the fact was indeed true but the
meaning false, inasmuch as it was another Renart altogether. Indeed
the true Renart is clearly immortal.

Nevertheless, as it is his mission, and that of his poets, to satirise
all the things of Life, so must Death also be satirised in his person
and with his aid. The branch, though it is probably not a very early
one, is of an admirable humour, and an uncompromising truth after a
fashion, which makes the elaborate realism and pessimism of some other
periods look singularly poor, thin, and conventional. The author, for
the keeping of his story, begins by showing the doomed fox more than a
little "failed"--the shadow of fate dwelling coldly beforehand on him.
He is badly mauled at the opening (though, it is true, he takes
vengeance for it) by monks whose hen-roost he is robbing, and when he
meets Coart the hare, _sur son destrier_, with a _vilain_ whom he has
captured (this is a mark of lateness, some of the verisimilitude of
the early time having been dropped), he plays him no tricks. Nay, when
Isengrim and he begin to play chess he is completely worsted by his
ancient butt, who at last takes, in consequence of an imprudent stake
of the penniless Fox, a cruel but appropriate vengeance for his former
wrongs. Renart is comforted to some extent by his old love, Queen
Fière the lioness; but pain, and wounds, and defeat have brought him
near death, and he craves a priest. Bernard the Ass, Court-Archpriest,
is ready, and admonishes the penitent with the most becoming gravity
and unction. The confession, as might be expected, is something
impudent; and the penitent very frankly stipulates that if he gets
well his oath of repentance is not to stand good. But it looks as if
he were to be taken at the worse side of his word, and he falls into a
swoon which is mistaken for death. The Queen laments him with perfect
openness; but the excellent Noble is a philosophic husband as well as
a good king, and sets about the funeral of Renart

    ("Jamais si bon baron n'avai,"

says he) with great earnestness. Hermeline and her orphans are fetched
from Malpertuis, and the widow makes heartrending moan, as does Cousin
Grimbart when the news is brought to him. The vigils of the dead are
sung, and all the beasts who have hated Renart, and whom he has
affronted in his lifetime, assemble in decent mourning and perform the
service, with the ceremony of the most well-trained choir. Afterwards
they "wake" the corpse through the night a little noisily; but on the
morrow the obsequies are resumed "in the best and most orgilous
manner," with a series of grave-side speeches which read like a
designed satire on those common in France at the present day. A
considerable part of the good Archpriest's own sermon is unfortunately
not reproducible in sophisticated times; but every one can appreciate
his tender reference to the deceased's prowess in daring all dangers--

    "Pur avoir vostre ventre plaine,
    Et pour porter à Hermeline
    Vostre fame, coc ou geline
    Chapon, ou oie, ou gras oison"--

for, as he observes in a sorrowful parenthesis, "anything was in
season if _you_ could only get hold of it." Brichemer the Stag notes
how Reynard had induced the monks to observe their vows by making them
go to bed late and get up early to watch their fowls. But when Bruin
the Bear has dug his grave, and holy water has been thrown on him, and
Bruin is just going to shovel the earth--behold! Reynard wakes up,
catches Chanticleer (who is holding the censer) by the neck, and bolts
into a thick pleached plantation. Still, despite this resurrection,
his good day is over, and a levée _en masse_ of the Lion's people soon
surrounds him, catches him up, and forces him to release Chanticleer,
who, nothing afraid, challenges him to mortal combat on fair terms,
beats him, and leaves him for dead in the lists. And though he manages
to pay Rohart the Raven and his wife (who think to strip his body) in
kind, he reaches Malpertuis dead-beat; and we feel that even his last
shift and the faithful complaisance of Grimbart will never leave him
quite the same Fox again.

The defects which distinguish almost all mediæval poetry are no doubt
discoverable here. There is some sophistication of the keeping in the
episodes of Coart and Chanticleer, and the termination is almost too
audacious in the sort of choice of happy or unhappy ending, triumph or
defeat for the hero, which it leaves us. Yet this very audacity suits
the whole scheme; and the part dealing with the death (or swoon) and
burial is assuredly one of the best things of its kind in French,
almost one of the best things in or out of it. The contrast between
the evident delight of the beasts at getting rid of Renart and their
punctilious discharge of ceremonial duties, the grave parody of rites
and conventions, remind us more of Swift or Lucian than of any French
writer, even Rabelais or Voltaire. It happened that some ten or twelve
years had passed between the time when the present writer had last
opened _Renart_ (except for mere reference now and then) and the time
when he refreshed his memory of it for the purposes of the present
volume. It is not always in such cases that the second judgment
exactly confirms the first; but here, not merely in the instance of
this particular branch but almost throughout, I can honestly say that
I put down the _Roman de Renart_ with even a higher idea of its
literary merit than that with which I had taken it up.

[Sidenote: _The_ Romance of the Rose.]

The second great romance which distinguishes the thirteenth century in
France stands, as we may say, to one side of the _Roman de Renart_ as
the _fabliaux_ do to the other side. But, though complex in fewer
pieces, the _Roman de la Rose_[142] is, like the _Roman de Renart_, a
complex, not a single work; and its two component parts are
distinguished from one another by a singular change of tone and
temper. It is the later and larger part of the _Rose_ which brings it
close to _Renart_: the smaller and earlier is conceived in a spirit
entirely different, though not entirely alien, and one which,
reinforcing the satiric drift of the _fabliaux_ and _Renart_ itself,
influenced almost the entire literary production in _belles lettres_
at least, and sometimes out of them, for more than two centuries
throughout Europe.

[Footnote 142: Ed. Michel. Paris, 1864. One of the younger French
scholars, who, under the teaching of M. Gaston Paris, have taken in
hand various sections of mediæval literature, M. Langlois, has
bestowed much attention on the _Rose_, and has produced a monograph on
it, _Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose_. Paris, 1890.]

At no time probably except in the Middle Ages would Jean de Meung, who
towards the end of the thirteenth century took up the scheme which
William of Lorris had left unfinished forty years earlier, have
thought of continuing the older poem instead of beginning a fresh one
for himself. And at no other time probably would any one, choosing to
make a continuation, have carried it out by putting such entirely
different wine into the same bottle. Of William himself little is
known, or rather nothing, except that he must have been, as his
continuator certainly was, a native of the Loire district; so that the
_Rose_ is a product of Central, not, like _Renart_, of Northern
France, and exhibits, especially in the Lorris portion, an
approximation to Provençal spirit and form.

The use of personification and abstraction, especially in relation to
love-matters, had not been unknown in the troubadour poetry itself and
in the northern verse, lyrical and other, which grew up beside or in
succession to it. It rose no doubt partly, if not wholly, from the
constant habit in sermons and theological treatises of treating the
Seven Deadly Sins and other abstractions as entities. Every devout or
undevout frequenter of the Church in those times knew "Accidia"[143]
and Avarice, Anger and Pride, as bodily rather than ghostly enemies,
furnished with a regular uniform, appearing in recognised
circumstances and companies, acting like human beings. And these were
by no means the only sacred uses of allegory.

[Footnote 143: "Sloth" is a rather unhappy substitute for _Accidia_
([Greek: akêdeia]), the gloomy and impious despair and indifference to
good living and even life, of which sloth itself is but a partial
result.]

[Sidenote: _William of Lorris and Jean de Meung._]

When William of Lorris, probably at some time in the fourth decade of
the thirteenth century, set to work to write the _Romance of the
Rose_, he adjusted this allegorical handling to the purposes of
love-poetry with an ingenious intricacy never before attained. It has
been the fashion almost ever since the famous Romance was rescued from
the ignorant and contemptuous oblivion into which it had fallen, to
praise Jean de Meung's part at the expense of that due to William of
Lorris. But this is hard to justify either on directly æsthetic or on
historical principles of criticism. In the first place, there can be
no question that, vitally as he changed the spirit, Jean de Meung was
wholly indebted to his predecessor for the form--the form of
half-pictorial, half-poetic allegory, which is the great
characteristic of the poem, and which gave it the enormous attraction
and authority that it so long possessed. In the second place, clever
as Jean de Meung is, and more thoroughly in harmony as he may be with
the _esprit gaulois_, his work is on a much lower literary level than
that of his predecessor. Jean de Meung in the latter and larger part
of the poem simply stuffs into it stock satire on women, stock
learning, stock semi-pagan morality. He is, it is true, tolerably
actual; he shares with the _fabliau_-writers and the authors of
_Renart_ a firm grasp on the perennial rascalities and meannesses of
human nature. The negative commendation that he is "no fool" may be
very heartily bestowed upon him. But he is a little commonplace and
more than a little prosaic. There is amusement in him, but no charm:
and where (that is to say, in large spaces) there is no amusement,
there is very little left. Nor, except for the inappropriate
exhibition of learning and the strange misuse of poetical (at least of
verse) allegory, can he be said to be eminently characteristic of his
own time. His very truth to general nature prevents that; while his
literary ability, considerable as it is, is hardly sufficient to
clothe his universally true reflections in a universally acceptable
form.

[Sidenote: _The first part._]

The first four thousand and odd lines of the Romance, on the other
hand--for beyond them it is known that the work of William of Lorris
does not go--contain matter which may seem but little connected with
criticism of life, arranged in a form completely out of fashion. But
they, beyond all question, contain also the first complete
presentation of a scheme, a mode, an atmosphere, which for centuries
enchained, because they expressed, the poetical thought of the time,
and which, for those who can reach the right point of view, can
develop the right organs of appreciation, possess an extraordinary,
indeed a unique charm. I should rank this first part of the _Roman de
la Rose_ high among the books which if a man does not appreciate he
cannot even distantly understand the Middle Ages; indeed there is
perhaps no single one which on the serious side contains such a
master-key to their inmost recesses.

[Sidenote: _Its capital value._]

To comprehend a Gothic cathedral the _Rose_ should be as familiar as
the _Dies Iræ_. For the spirit of it is indeed, though faintly
"decadent," even more the mediæval spirit than that of the Arthurian
legend, precisely for the reason that it is less universal, less of
humanity generally, more of this particular phase of humanity. And as
it is opposed to, rather than complementary of, the religious side of
the matter in one direction, so it opposes and completes the satirical
side, of which we have heard so much in this chapter, and the purely
fighting and adventurous part, which we have dealt with in others, not
excluding by any means in this half-reflective, half-contrasting
office, the philosophical side also. Yet when men pray and fight, when
they sneer and speculate, they are constrained to be very like
themselves and each other. They are much freer in their dreams: and
the _Romance of the Rose_, if it has not much else of life, is like it
in this way--that it too is a dream.

As such it quite honestly holds itself out. The author lays it down,
supporting himself with the opinion of another "qui ot nom macrobes,"
that dreams are quite serious things. At any rate he will tell a dream
of his own, a dream which befell him in his twentieth year, a dream
wherein was nothing

    "Qui avenu trestout ne soit
    Si com le songes racantoit."

And if any one wishes to know how the romance telling this dream shall
be called--

    "Ce est li Rommanz de la Rose,
    Ou l'ars d'amorz est tote enclose."

[Sidenote: _The rose-garden._]

The poem itself opens with a description of a dewy morn in May, a
description then not so hackneyed as, chiefly from this very instance,
it afterwards became, and in itself at once "setting," so to speak,
the frame of gracious decorative imagery in which the poet works. He
"threaded a silver needle" (an odd but not unusual mediæval pastime
was sewing stitches in the sleeve) and strolled, _cousant ses
manches_, towards a river-bank. Then, after bathing his face and
seeing the bright gravel flashing through the water, he continued his
stroll down-stream, till he saw in front of him a great park (for this
translates the mediæval _verger_ much better than "orchard"), on the
wall of which were portrayed certain images[144]--Hatred, Felony,
Villainy, Covetousness, Avarice, Envy, Sadness, Old Age, Hypocrisy,
and Poverty. These personages, who strike the allegoric and
personifying note of the poem, are described at varying length, the
last three being perhaps the best. Despite these uninviting figures,
the Lover (as he is soon called) desires violently to enter the park;
but for a long time he can find no way in, till at length Dame Oyseuse
(Idleness) admits him at a postern. She is a very attractive damsel
herself; and she tells the Lover that Delight and all his Court haunt
the park, and that he has had the ugly images made, apparently as
skeletons at the feast, to heighten, not to dash, enjoyment. Entering,
the Lover thinks he is in the Earthly Paradise, and after a time he
finds the fair company listening to the singing of Dame Lyesse
(Pleasure), with much dancing, music, and entertainment of _jongleurs_
and _jongleresses_ to help pass the time.

[Footnote 144: "Seven" says the verse chapter-heading, which is a
feature of the poem; but the actual text does not mention the number,
and it will be seen that there were in fact _ten_. The author of the
headings was no doubt thinking of the Seven Deadly Sins.]

Courtesy asks him to join in the _karole_ (dance), and he does so,
giving full description of her, of Lyesse, of Delight, and of the God
of Love himself, with his bow-bearer Sweet-Glances, who carries in
each hand five arrows--in the right Beauty, Simpleness, Frankness,
Companionship, Fair-Seeming; in the left Pride, Villainy,[145] Shame,
Despair, and "New-Thought"--_i.e._, Fickleness. Other personages--sometimes
with the same names, sometimes with different--follow in the train;
Cupid watches the Lover that he may take shot at him, and the tale is
interrupted by an episode giving the story of Narcissus. Meanwhile the
Lover has seen among the flowers of the garden one rose-bud on which
he fixes special desires. The thorns keep him off; and Love, having
him at vantage, empties the right-hand quiver on him. He yields
himself prisoner, and a dialogue between captive and captor follows.
Love locks his heart with a gold key; and after giving him a long
sermon on his duties, illustrated from the Round Table romances and
elsewhere, vanishes, leaving him in no little pain, and still unable
to get at the Rose. Suddenly in his distress there appears to him

    "Un valet buen et avenant
    Bel-Acueil se faisoit clamer,"

and it seems that he was the son of Courtesy.

[Footnote 145: _Vilenie_ is never an easy word to translate: it means
general misconduct and disagreeable behaviour.]

[Sidenote: _"Danger."_]

Bialacoil (to give him his Chaucerian[146] Englishing) is most
obliging, and through his help the Lover has nearly reached the Rose,
when an ugly personage named Danger in turn makes his appearance. Up
to this time there is no very important difficulty in the
interpretation of the allegory; but the learned are not at one as to
what "Danger" means. The older explanation, and the one to which I
myself still incline as most natural and best suiting what follows, is
that Danger is the representative of the beloved one's masculine and
other guardians--her husband, father, brother, mother, and so forth.
Others, however, see in him only subjective obstacles--the coyness, or
caprice, or coquettishness of the Beloved herself. But these never
troubled a true lover to any great extent; and besides they seem to
have been provided for by the arrows in the left hand of Love's
bow-bearer, and by Shame (_v. infra_). At any rate Danger's
proceedings are of a most kill-joy nature. He starts from his
hiding-place--

    "Grans fu, et noirs et hericiés,
    S'ot les iex rouges comme feus,
    Le nés froncié, le vis hideus,
    Et s'escrie comme forcenés."

[Footnote 146: I am well aware of everything that has been said about
and against the Chaucerian authorship of the English _Rose_. But until
the learned philologists who deny that authorship in whole or in part
agree a little better among themselves, they must allow literary
critics at least to suspend their judgment.]

He abuses Bialacoil for bringing the Lover to the Rose, and turns the
Lover out of the park, while Bialacoil flies.

[Sidenote: _"Reason."_]

To the disconsolate suitor appears Reason, and does not speak
comfortable words. She is described as a middle-aged lady of a comely
and dignified appearance, crowned, and made specially in God's image
and likeness. She tells him that if he had not put himself under the
guidance of Idleness, Love would not have wounded him; that besides
Danger, he has made her own daughter Shame his foe, and also
Male-Bouche (Scandal, Gossip, Evil-Speaking), the third and most
formidable guardian of the Rose. He ought never to have surrendered
to Love. In the service of that power

               "il a plus poine
    Que n'ont hermite ne blanc moine;
    La poine en est démesurée,
    Et la joie a courte durée."

The Lover does not take this sermon well. He is Love's: she may go
about her business, which she does. He bethinks him that he has a
companion, Amis (the Friend), who has always been faithful; and he
will go to him in his trouble. Indeed Love had bidden him do so. The
Friend is obliging and consoling, and says that he knows Danger. His
bark is worse than his bite, and if he is spoken softly to he will
relent. The Lover takes the advice with only partial success. Danger,
at first robustious, softens so far as to say that he has no objection
to the Lover loving, only he had better keep clear of his roses. The
Friend represents this as an important point gained; and as the next
step Pity and Frankness go as his ambassadresses to Danger, who allows
Bialacoil to return to him and take him once more to see the Rose,
more beautiful than ever. He even, assisted by Venus, is allowed to
kiss his love.

[Sidenote: _"Shame" and "Scandal."_]

This is very agreeable: but it arouses the two other guardians of whom
Reason has vainly warned him, Shame and Evil-Speaking, or Scandal. The
latter wakes Jealousy, Fear follows, and Fear and Shame stir up
Danger. He keeps closer watch, Jealousy digs a trench round the
rose-bush and builds a tower where Bialacoil is immured: and the
Lover, his case only made worse by the remembered savour of the Rose
on his lips,[147] is left helpless outside. But as the rubric of the
poem has it--

    "Cyendroit trespassa Guillaume
    De Lorris, et n'en fist plus pseaulme."

[Footnote 147:

    "Car ge suis a greignor meschief
    Por la joie que j'ai perdue.
    Que s'onques ne l'éussi éue."

Dante undoubtedly had this in his mind when he wrote the immortal
_Nessun maggior dolore_. All this famous passage, l. 4557 _sq._, is
admirable.]

[Sidenote: _The later poem._]

[Sidenote: _"False-Seeming."_]

The work which forty years later Jean de Meung (some say at royal
suggestion) added to the piece, so as to make it five times its former
length, has been spoken of generally already, and needs less notice in
detail. Jean de Meung takes up the theme by once more introducing
Reason, whose remonstrances, with the Lover's answers, take nearly
half as much room as the whole story hitherto. Then reappears the
Friend, who is twice as long-winded as Reason, and brings the tale up
to more than ten thousand lines already. At last Love himself takes
some pity of his despairing vassal, and besieges the tower where
Bialacoil is confined. This leads to the introduction of the most
striking and characteristic figure of the second part, _Faux-Semblant_,
a variety of Reynard. Bialacoil is freed: but Danger still guards the
Rose. Love, beaten, invokes the help of his mother, who sends Nature
and Genius to his aid. They talk more than anybody else. But Venus has
to come herself before Danger is vanquished and the Lover plucks the
Rose.

[Sidenote: _Contrast of the parts._]

The appeal of this famous poem is thus twofold, though the allegorical
form in which the appeal is conveyed is the same. In the first part
all the love-poetry of troubadour and _trouvère_ is gathered up and
presented under the guise of a graceful dreamy symbolism, a little
though not much sicklied o'er with learning. In the second the satiric
tendency of the _Fabliaux_ and _Renart_ is carried still further, with
an admixture of not often apposite learning to a much greater extent.
Narcissus was superfluous where William of Lorris introduced him, but
Pygmalion and his image, inserted at great length by Jean de Meung,
when after twenty thousand lines the catastrophe is at length
approaching, are felt to be far greater intruders.

[Sidenote: _Value of both, and charm of the first._]

The completeness of the representation of the time given by the poem
is of course enormously increased by this second part, and the
individual touches, though rather lost in the wilderness of "skipping
octosyllables," are wonderfully sharp and true at times. Yet to some
judgments at any rate the charm of the piece will seem mostly to have
vanished when Bialacoil is once shut up in his tower. In mere poetry
Jean de Meung is almost infinitely the inferior of William of Lorris:
and though the latter may receive but contemptuous treatment from
persons who demand "messages," "meanings," and so forth, others will
find message and meaning enough in his allegorical presentation of the
perennial quest, of "the way of a man with a maid," and more than
enough beauty in the pictures with which he has adorned it. He is
indeed the first great word-painter of the Middle Ages, and for
long--almost to the close of them--most poets simply copied him, while
even the greatest used him as a starting-point and source of
hints.[148] Also besides pictures he has music--music not very
brilliant or varied, but admirably matching his painting, soft,
dreamy, not so much monotonous as uniform with a soothing uniformity.
Few poets deserve better than William of Lorris the famous hyperbole
which Greek furnished in turn to Latin and to English. He is indeed
"softer than sleep," and, as soft sleep is, laden with gracious and
various visions.

[Footnote 148: The following of the Rose would take a volume, even
treated as the poem itself is here. The English version has been
referred to: Italian naturalised it early in a sonnet cycle, _Il
Fiore_. Every country welcomed it, but the actual versions are as
nothing to the imitations and the influence.]

[Sidenote: _Marie de France and Ruteboeuf._]

The great riches of French literature at this time, and the necessity
of arranging this history rather with a view to "epoch-making" kinds
and books than to interesting individual authors, make attention to
many of these latter impossible here. Thus Marie de France[149] yields
to few authors of our two centuries in charm and interest for the
reader; yet for us she must be regarded chiefly as one of the
practitioners of the fable, and as the chief practitioner of the
_Lai_, which in her hands is merely a subdivision of the general
romance on a smaller scale. So, again, the _trouvère_ Ruteboeuf, who
has been the subject of critical attention, a little disproportionate
perhaps, considering the vast amount of work as good as his which has
hardly any critical notice, but still not undeserved, must serve us
rather as an introducer of the subject of dramatic poetry than as an
individual, though his work is in the bulk of it non-dramatic, and
though almost all of it is full of interest in itself.

[Footnote 149: See note above, p. 286.]

Ruteboeuf[150] (a name which seems to be a professional _nom de
guerre_ rather than a patronymic) was married in 1260, and has devoted
one of his characteristic poems, half "complaints," half satires, to
this not very auspicious event. For the rest, it is rather conjectured
than known that his life must have filled the greater part, if not the
whole, of the last two-thirds of the thirteenth century, thus
including the dates of both parts of the _Rose_ within it. The
tendencies of the second part of the great poem appear in Ruteboeuf
more distinctly than those of the earlier, though, like both, his work
shows the firm grip which allegory was exercising on all poetry, and
indeed on all literature. He has been already referred to as having
written an outlying "branch" of _Renart_; and not a few of his other
poems--_Le Dit des Cordeliers_, _Frère Denise_, and others--are of the
class of the _Fabliaux_: indeed Ruteboeuf may be taken as the type
and chief figure to us of the whole body of _fabliau_-writing
_trouvères_. Besides the marriage poem, we have others on his personal
affairs, the chief of which is speakingly entitled "La Pauvreté
Ruteboeuf." But he has been even more, and even more justly, prized
as having left us no small number of historical or political poems,
not a few of which are occupied with the decay of the crusading
spirit. The "Complainte d'Outremer," the "Complainte de
Constantinoble," the "Débat du Croisé et du Décroisé" tell their own
tale, and contain generous, if perhaps not very long-sighted or
practical, laments and indignation over the decadence of adventurous
piety. Others are less religious; but, on the whole, Ruteboeuf, even
in his wilder days, seems to have been (except for that dislike of the
friars, in which he was not alone) a religiously minded person, and we
have a large body of poems, assigned to his later years, which are
distinctly devotional. These deal with his repentance, with his
approaching death, with divers Lives of Saints, &c. But the most
noteworthy of them, as a fresh strand in the rope we are here weaving,
is the Miracle-play of _Théophile_. It will serve as a text or
starting-point on which to take up the subject of the drama itself,
with no more about Ruteboeuf except the observation that the varied
character of his work is no doubt typical of that of at least the
later _trouvères_ generally. They were practically men of letters, not
to say journalists, of all work that was likely to pay; and must have
shifted from romance to drama, from satire to lyric, just as their
audience or their patrons might happen to demand, as their
circumstances or their needs might happen to dictate.

[Footnote 150: Ed. Jubinal, 2d ed., Paris, 1874; or ed. Kressner,
Wolfenbüttel, 1885.]

[Sidenote: _Drama._]

The obscure but not uninteresting subject of the links between the
latest stages of classical drama and the earliest stages of mediæval
belong to the first volume of this series; indeed by the eleventh
century (or before the period, properly speaking, of this book opens)
the vernacular drama, as far as the sacred side of it is concerned,
was certainly established in France, although not in any other
country. But it is not quite certain whether we actually possess
anything earlier than the twelfth century, even in French, and it is
exceedingly doubtful whether what we have in any other vernacular is
older than the fourteenth. The three oldest mystery plays wherein any
modern language makes its appearance are those of _The Ten
Virgins_,[151] mainly in Latin, but partly in a dialect which is
neither quite French nor quite Provençal; the Mystery of _Daniel_,
partly Latin and partly French; and the Mystery of _Adam_,[152] which
is all French. The two latter, when first discovered, were as usual
put too early by their discoverers; but it is certain that they are
not younger than the twelfth century, while it is all but certain that
the _Ten Virgins_ dates from the eleventh, if not even the tenth. In
the thirteenth we find, besides Ruteboeuf's _Théophile_, a _Saint
Nicolas_ by another very well-known _trouvère_, Jean Bodel of Arras,
author of many late and probably rehandled _chansons_, and of the
famous classification of romance which has been adopted above.

[Footnote 151: Ed. Monmerqué et Michel, _Théâtre Français au Moyen
Age_. Paris, 1874. This also contains _Théophile_, _Saint Nicolas_,
and the plays of Adam de la Halle.]

[Footnote 152: Ed. Luzarches, Tours, 1854; ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877.]

It was probably on the well-known principle of "not letting the devil
have all the best tunes" that the Church, which had in the patristic
ages so violently denounced the stage, and which has never wholly
relaxed her condemnation of its secular use, attempted at once to
gratify and sanctify the taste for dramatic performances by adopting
the form, and if possible confining it to pious uses. But there is a
school of literary historians who hold that there was no direct
adoption of a form intentionally dramatic, and that the modern sacred
drama--the only drama for centuries--was simply an expansion of or
excrescence from the services of the Church herself, which in their
antiphonal character, and in the alternation of monologue and chorus,
were distinctly dramatic in form. This, however, is one of those
numerous questions which are only good to be argued, and can never
reach a conclusion; nor need it greatly trouble those who believe that
all literary forms are more or less natural to man, and that man's
nature will therefore, example or no example, find them out and
practise them, in measure and degree according to circumstances,
sooner or later.

At any rate, if there was any hope in the mind of any ecclesiastical
person at any time of confining dramatic performances to sacred
subjects, that hope was doomed to disappointment, and in France at
least to very speedy disappointment. The examples of Mystery or
Miracle plays which we have of a date older than the beginning of the
fourteenth century are not numerous, but it is quite clear that at an
early time the necessity for interspersing comic interludes was
recognised; and it is needless to say to any one who has ever looked
even slightly at the subject that these interludes soon became a
regular part of the performance, and exhibited what to modern ideas
seems a very indecorous disregard of the respect due to the company in
which they found themselves. The great Bible mysteries, no less and no
more than the miracle plays of the Virgin[153] and the Saints, show
this characteristic throughout, and the Fool's remark which pleased
Lamb, "Hazy weather, Master Noah!" was a strictly legitimate and very
much softened descendant of the kind of pleasantries which diversify
the sacred drama of the Middle Ages in all but its very earliest
examples.

[Footnote 153: Several of these miracles of the Virgin will be found
in the volume by Monmerqué and Michel referred to above: the whole
collection has been printed by the Société des Anciens Textes. The MS.
is of the fourteenth century, but some of its contents may date from
the thirteenth.]

It was certain, at any rate in France, that from comic interludes in
sacred plays to sheer profane comedy in ordinary life the step would
not be far nor the interval of time long. The _fabliaux_ more
particularly were farces already in the state of _scenario_, and some
of them actually contained dialogue. To break them up and shape them
into actual plays required much less than the innate love for drama
which characterises the French people, and the keen literary sense and
craft which characterised the French _trouvères_ of the thirteenth
century.

[Sidenote: _Adam de la Halle._]

The honour of producing the first examples known to us is assigned to
Adam de la Halle, a _trouvère_ of Arras, who must have been a pretty
exact contemporary of Ruteboeuf, and who besides some lyrical work
has left us two plays, _Li Jus de la Feuillie_ and _Robin et
Marion_.[154] The latter, as its title almost sufficiently indicates,
is a dramatised _pastourelle_; the former is less easy to classify,
but it stands in something like the same relation to the personal
poems, of which, as has just been mentioned in the case of Ruteboeuf
himself, the _trouvères_ were so fond. For it introduces himself, his
wife (at least she is referred to), his father, and divers of his
Arras friends. And though rough in construction, it is by no means a
very far-off ancestor of the comedy of manners in its most developed
form.

[Footnote 154: Besides the issue above noted these have been
separately edited by A. Rambeau. Marburg, 1886.]

[Sidenote: Robin et Marion.]

It may be more interesting to give some account here of these two
productions, the parents of so numerous and famous a family, than to
dwell on the early miracle plays, which reached their fullest
development in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and then for
the most part died away. The play (_Jeu_ is the general term, and the
exact, though now in French obsolete, equivalent of the English word)
of _Robin et Marion_ combines the general theme of the earlier lyric
_pastourelle_, as explained above, with the more general pastoral
theme of the love of shepherd and shepherdess. The scene opens on
Marion singing to the burden "Robins m'a demandée, si m'ara." To her
the Knight, who inquires the meaning of her song, whereupon she avows
her love for Robin. Nevertheless he woos her, in a fashion rather
clumsy than cavalier, but receives no encouragement. Robin comes up
after the Knight's departure. He is, to use Steerforth's words in
_David Copperfield_, "rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl,"
but is apparently welcome. They eat rustic fare together and then
dance; but more company is desired, and Robin goes to fetch it. He
tells the friends he asks that some one has been courting Marion, and
they prudently resolve to bring, one his great pitchfork and another
his good blackthorn. Meanwhile the Knight returns, and though Marion
replies to his accost--

    "Pour Dieu, sire, alez vo chemin,
    Si ferès moult grant courtoisie,"

he renews his suit, but is again rejected. Returning in a bad temper
he meets Robin and cuffs him soundly, a correction which Robin does
not take in the heroic manner. Marion runs to rescue him, and the
Knight threatens to carry her off--which Robin, even though his
friends have come up, is too cowardly to prevent. She, however, is
constant and escapes; the piece finishing by a long and rather tedious
festival of the clowns. Its drawbacks are obvious, and are those
natural to an experiment which has no patterns before it; but the
figure of Marion is exceedingly graceful and pleasing, and the whole
has promise. It is essentially a comic opera; but that a _trouvère_ of
the thirteenth century should by himself, so far as we can see, have
founded comic opera is not a small thing.

[Sidenote: _The_ Jeu de la Feuillie.]

The _Jus de la Feuillie_ ("the booths"), otherwise _Li Jus Adam_, or
Adam's play, is more ambitious and more complicated, but also more
chaotic. It is, as has been said, an early sketch of a comedy of
manners; but upon this is grafted in the most curious way a fairy
interlude, or rather after-piece. Adam himself opens the piece and
informs his friends with much coolness that he has tried married life,
but intends to go back to "clergy" and then set out for Paris, leaving
his father to take care of his wife. He even replies to the
neighbours' remonstrances by enlarging in the most glowing terms on
the passion he has felt for his wife and on her beauty, adding, with a
crude brutality which has hardly a ghost of atoning fun in it, that
this is all over--

    "Car mes fains en est apaiés."

His father then appears, and Adam shows himself not more dutiful as a
son than he is grateful as a husband. But old Henri de la Halle, an
easy-going father, has not much reproach for him. The piece, however,
has hardly begun before it goes off into a medley of unconnected
scenes, though each has a sort of _fabliau_ interest of its own. A
doctor is consulted by his clients; a monk demands alms and offerings
in the name of Monseigneur Saint Acaire, promising miracles; a madman
succeeds him; and in the midst enters the _Mainie Hellequin_, "troop
of Hellequin" (a sort of Oberon or fairy king), with Morgue la fée
among them. The fairies end with a song, and the miscellaneous
conversation of the men of Arras resumes and continues for some time,
reaching, in fact, no formal termination.

[Sidenote: _Comparison of them._]

In this odd piece, which, except the description of Marie the
deserted wife, has little poetical merit, we see drama of the
particular kind in a much ruder and vaguer condition than in the
parallel instance of _Robin et Marion_. There the very form of the
_pastourelle_ was in a manner dramatic--it wanted little adjustment to
be quite so; and though the _coda_ of the rustic merry-making is
rather artless, it is conceivably admissible. Here we are not far out
of Chaos as far as dramatic arrangement goes. Adam's announced
desertion of his wife and intended journey to Paris lead to nothing:
the episodes or scenes of the doctor and the monk are connected with
nothing; the fool or madman and his father are equally independent;
and the "meyney of Hellequin" simply play within the play, not without
rhyme, but certainly with very little reason. Nevertheless the piece
is almost more interesting than the comparatively regular farces (into
which rather later the _fabliaux_ necessarily developed themselves)
and than the miracle plays (which were in the same way dramatic
versions of the Lives of the Saints), precisely because of this
irregular and pillar-to-post character. We see that the author is
trying a new kind, that he is endeavouring to create for himself. He
is not copying anything in form; he is borrowing very little from any
one in material. He has endeavoured to represent, and has not entirely
failed in representing, the comings and goings, the ways and says, of
his townsmen at fair and market. The curiously desultory character of
this early drama--the character hit off most happily in modern times
by _Wallenstein's Lager_--naturally appears here in an exaggerated
form. But the root of the matter--the construction of drama, not on
the model of Terence or of anybody, but on the model of life--is here.

It will be for my successor to show the wide extension of this
dramatic form in the succeeding period. Here it takes rank rather as
having the interest of origins, and as helping to fill out the picture
of the marvellously various ability of Frenchmen of letters in the
thirteenth century, than for the positive bulk or importance of its
constituents. And it is important to repeat that it connects itself in
the general literary survey both with _fabliau_ and with allegory. The
personifying taste, which bred or was bred from allegory, is very
close akin to the dramatic taste, and the _fabliau_, as has been said
more than once, is a farce in the making, and sometimes far advanced
towards being completely made.

[Sidenote: _Early French prose._]

All the matter hitherto discussed in this chapter, as well as all that
of previous chapters as far as French is concerned, with the probable
if not certain exception of the Arthurian romances, has been in verse.
Indeed--still with this exception, and with the further and more
certain exceptions of a few laws, a few sermons, &c.--there was no
French prose, or none that has come down to us, until the thirteenth
century. The Romance tongues, as contradistinguished from Anglo-Saxon
and Icelandic, were slow to develop vernacular prose; the reason,
perhaps, being that Latin, of one kind or another, was still so
familiar to all persons of any education that, for purposes of
instruction and use, vernacular prose was not required, while verse
was more agreeable to the vulgar.

[Sidenote: _Laws and sermons._]

Yet it was inevitable that prose should, sooner or later, make its
appearance; and it was equally inevitable that spoken prose sermons
should be of the utmost antiquity. Indeed such sermons form, by
reasonable inference, the subject of the very earliest reference[155]
to that practically lost _lingua romana rustica_ which formed the
bridge between Latin and the Romance tongues. But they do not seem to
have been written down, and were no doubt extempore addresses rather
than regular discourses. Law appears to have had the start of divinity
in the way of providing formal written prose; and the law-fever of the
Northmen, which had already shaped, or was soon to shape, the
"Gray-goose" code of their northernmost home in Iceland, expressed
itself early in Normandy and England--hardly less early in the famous
_Lettres du Sépulcre_ or _Assises de Jérusalem_, the code of the
Crusading kingdom, which was drawn up almost immediately after its
establishment, and which exists, though not in the very oldest form.
Much uncertainty prevails on the question when the first sermons in
French vernacular were formally composed, and by whom. It has been
maintained, and denied, that the French sermons of St Bernard which
exist are original, in which case the practice must have come in
pretty early in the twelfth century. There is, at any rate, no doubt
that Maurice de Sully, who was Archbishop of Paris for more than
thirty years, from 1160 onwards, composed sermons in French; or at
least that sermons of his, which may have been written in Latin, were
translated into French. For this whole point of early prose,
especially on theological subjects, is complicated by the uncertainty
whether the French forms are original or not. There is no doubt that
the feeling expressed by Ascham in England nearly four centuries
later, that it would have been for himself much easier and pleasanter
to write in Latin, must at the earlier date have prevailed far more
extensively.

[Footnote 155: The often-quoted statement that in 659 Mummolinus or
Momolenus was made Bishop of Noyon because of his double skill in
"Teutonic" and "Roman" (_not_ "Latin") speech.]

[Sidenote: _Villehardouin._]

Still prose made its way: it must have received an immense accession
of vogue if the prose Arthurian romances really date from the end of
the twelfth century; and by the beginning of the thirteenth it found a
fresh channel in which to flow, the channel of historical narrative.
The earliest French chronicles of the ordinary compiling kind date
from this time; and (which is of infinitely greater importance) it is
from this time (_cir._ 1210) that the first great French prose book,
from the literary point, appears--that is to say, the _Conquête de
Constantinoble_,[156] or history of the Fourth Crusade, by Geoffroy de
Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne and Romanie, who was born about
1160 in the first-named province, and died at Messinople in Greece
about 1213.

[Footnote 156: Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1872.]

This deservedly famous and thoroughly delightful book, which has more
than one contemporary or slightly younger parallel, though none of
these approaches it in literary interest, presents the most striking
resemblance to a _chanson de geste_--in conduct, arrangement (the
paragraphs representing _laisses_), and phraseology. But it is not, as
some other early prose is, merely verse without rhyme, and with broken
rhythm; and it is impossible to read it without astonished admiration
at the excellence of the medium which the writer, apparently by
instinct, has attained. The list of the crusaders; their embassy to
"li dux de Venise qui ot à nom Henris Dandolo et etait mult sages et
mult prouz"; their bargain, in which the business-like Venetian, after
stipulating for 85,000 marks of transport-money, agrees to add fifty
armed galleys without hire, for the love of God _and_ on the terms of
half-conquests; the death of the Count of Champagne (much wept by
Geoffroy his marshal); and the substitution after difficulties of
Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat;--these things form the prologue. When
the army is actually got together the transport-money is unfortunately
lacking, and the Venetians, still with the main chance steadily before
them, propose that the crusaders shall recover for them, from the King
of Hungary, Zara, "Jadres en Esclavonie, qui est une des plus forz
citez du monde." Then we are told how Dandolo and his host take the
cross; how Alexius Comnenus, the younger son of Isaac, arrives and
begs aid; how the fleet set out ("Ha! Dex, tant bon destrier i ot
mis!"); how Zara is besieged and taken; of the pact made with Alexius
to divert the host to Constantinople; of the voyage thither after the
Pope's absolution for the slightly piratical and not in the least
crusading _prise de Jadres_ has been obtained; of the dissensions and
desertions at Corfu, and the arrival at the "Bras St Georges," the Sea
of Marmora. This is what may be called the second part.

The third part opens with debates at San Stefano as to the conduct of
the attack. The emperor sends soft words to "la meillor gens qui soent
sanz corone" (this is the description of the chiefs), but they reject
them, arrange themselves in seven battles, storm the port, take the
castle of Galata, and then assault the city itself. The fighting
having gone wholly against him, the emperor retires by the open side
of the city, and the Latins triumph. Some show is made of resuming, or
rather beginning, a real crusade; but the young Emperor Alexius, to
whom his blind father Isaac has handed over the throne, bids them
stay, and they do so. Soon dissensions arise, war breaks out, a
conspiracy is formed against Isaac and his son by Mourzufle, "et
Murchufles chauça les houses vermoilles," quickly putting the former
owners of the scarlet boots to death. A second siege and capture of
the city follows, and Baldwin of Flanders is crowned emperor, while
Boniface marries the widow of Isaac, and receives the kingdom of
Salonica.

It has seemed worth while to give this abstract of the book up to a
certain point (there is a good deal more of confused fighting in
"Romanie" before, at the death of Boniface, Villehardouin gives up
the pen to Henri of Valenciennes), because even such a bare argument
may show the masterly fashion in which this first of modern vernacular
historians of the great literary line handles his subject. The parts
are planned with judgment and adjusted with skill; the length allotted
to each incident is just enough; the speeches, though not omitted, are
not inserted at the tyrannous length in which later mediæval and even
Renaissance historians indulged from corrupt following of the
ancients. But no abstract could show--though the few scraps of actual
phrase purposely inserted may convey glimpses of it--the vigour and
picturesqueness of the recital. That Villehardouin was an eyewitness
explains a little, but very little: we have, unfortunately, libraries
full of eyewitness-histories which are duller than any ditch-water.
Nor, though he is by no means shy of mentioning his own performances,
does he communicate to the story that slightly egotistic interest of
gossip and personal detail of which his next great successor is
perhaps the first example. It is because, while writing a rather
rugged but completely genuine and unmetrical though rhythmical prose,
Villehardouin has the poet's eye and grasp that he sees, and therefore
makes us see, the events that he relates. These events do not form
exactly the most creditable chapter of modern history; for they simply
come to this, that an army assembling for a crusade against the
infidel, allows itself to be bribed or wheedled into two successive
attacks on two Christian princes who have given it not the slightest
provocation, never attacks the infidel at all, and ends by a
filibustering seizure of already Christian territory. Nor does
Villehardouin make any elaborate disguise of this; but he tells the
tale with such a gust, such a _furia_, that we are really as much
interested in the success of this private piracy as if it had been the
true crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon himself.

[Sidenote: _William of Tyre._]

[Sidenote: _Joinville._]

The earlier and more legitimate crusades did not lack fitting
chroniclers in the same style, though none of them had the genius of
Villehardouin. The _Roman d'Eracles_ (as the early vernacular
version[157] of the Latin chronicle of William of Tyre used to be
called, for no better reason than that the first line runs, "Les
anciennes histoires dient qu'Eracles [Heraclius] qui fu mout bons
crestiens gouverna l'empire de Rome") is a chronicle the earlier part
of which is assigned to a certain Bernard, treasurer of the Abbey of
Corbie. It is a very extensive relation, carrying the history of Latin
Palestine from Peter the Hermit's pilgrimage to about the year 1190,
composed probably within ten or fifteen years after this later date,
and written, though not with Villehardouin's epic spirit, in a very
agreeable and readable fashion. Not much later, vernacular chronicles
of profane history in France became common, and the celebrated
_Grandes Chroniques_ of St Denis began to be composed in French. But
the only production of this thirteenth century which has taken rank in
general literary knowledge with the work of the Marshal of Champagne
is that[158] of Jean de Joinville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of
the province, who was born about ten years after Villehardouin's
death, and who died, after a life prolonged to not many short of a
hundred years, in 1319. Joinville's historical work seems to have been
the occupation of his old age; but its subject, the Life and Crusading
misfortunes of Saint Louis, belongs to the experiences of his youth
and early middle life. Besides the _Histoire de Saint Louis_, we have
from him a long _Credo_ or profession of religious faith.

[Footnote 157: Ed. Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879.]

[Footnote 158: Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1874.]

There is no reason at all to question the sincerity of this faith. But
Joinville was a shrewd and practical man, and when the kings of France
and Navarre pressed him to take the cross a second time, he answered
that their majesties' servants had during his first absence done him
and his people so much harm that he thought he had better not go away
again. Indeed it would be displeasing to God, "qui mit son corps pour
son peuple sauver," if he, Joinville, abandoned _his_ people. And he
reports only in the briefest abstract the luckless "voie de Tunes," or
expedition to Tunis. But of the earlier and not much less unlucky
Damietta crusade, in which he took part, as well as of his hero's life
till all but the last, he has written very fully, and in a fashion
which is very interesting, though unluckily we have no manuscript
representing the original text, or even near to it in point of time.
The book, which has been thought to have been written in pieces at
long intervals, has nothing of the antique vigour of Villehardouin.
Joinville is something of a gossip, and though he evidently writes
with a definite literary purpose, is not master of very great
argumentative powers. But for this same reason he abounds in anecdote,
and in the personal detail which, though it may easily be overdone, is
undoubtedly now and then precious for the purpose of enabling us to
conjure up the things and men of old time more fully and correctly.
And there is a Pepysian garrulity as well as a Pepysian shrewdness
about Joinville; so that, on the whole, he fills the position of
ancestor in the second group of historians, the group of lively
_raconteurs_, as well as Villehardouin leads that of inspired
describers. For an instance of the third kind, the philosophical
historian, France, if not Europe, had to wait two centuries, when such
a one came in Comines.

It is almost unnecessary to say that when the secret of producing
prose and its advantages over verse for certain purposes had been
discovered, it was freely employed for all such purposes, scientific
as science was understood, devotional, instructive, business (the
_Livre des Mestiers_, or book of the guilds of Paris, is of the
thirteenth century), and miscellaneous. But few of these things
concern literature proper. It is otherwise with the application of
prose to fiction.

[Sidenote: _Fiction._]

This, as we have seen, had probably taken place in the case of the
Arthurian romances as early as the middle of our period, and
throughout the thirteenth century prose romances of length were not
unknown, though it was later that all the three classes--Carlovingian,
Arthurian, and Antique--were thrown indiscriminately into prose, and
lengthened even beyond the huge length of their later representatives
in verse. But for this reason or that, romance in prose was with rare
exceptions unfavourable to the production of the best literature. It
encouraged the prolixity which was the great curse of the Middle Ages,
and the deficient sense of form and scanty presence of models
prevented the observance of anything like a proper scheme.

[Sidenote: Aucassin et Nicolette.]

But among the numerous origins of this wonderful time the origin of
the short prose tale, in which France was to hold almost if not quite
the highest rank among European countries, was also included. It would
not seem that the kind was as yet very frequently attempted--the fact
that the verse _fabliau_ was still in the very height of its
flourishing-time, made this unlikely; nor was it till that
flourishing-time was over that farces on the one hand, and prose tales
on the other, succeeded as fruit the _fabliau_-flower. But it is from
the thirteenth century that (with some others) we have _Aucassin et
Nicolette_.[159] If it was for a short time rather too much of a
fashion to praise (it cannot be over-praised) this exquisite story, no
wise man will allow himself to be disgusted any more than he will
allow himself to be attracted by fashion. This work of "the old
caitiff," as the author calls himself with a rather Hibernian
coaxingness, is what has been called a _cantefable_--that is to say,
it is not only obviously written, like verse romances and _fabliaux_,
for recitation, but it consists partly of prose, partly of verse, the
music for the latter being also given. Mr Swinburne, Mr Pater, and,
most of all, Mr Lang, have made it unnecessary to tell in any detailed
form the story how Aucassin, the son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, fell
in love with Nicolette, a Saracen captive, who has been bought by the
Viscount of the place and brought up as his daughter; how Nicolette
was shut up in a tower to keep her from Aucassin; how Count Bongars of
Valence assailed Beaucaire and was captured by Aucassin on the faith
of a promise from his father that Nicolette shall be restored to him;
how the Count broke his word, and Aucassin, setting his prisoner free,
was put in prison himself; how Nicolette escaped, and by her device
Aucassin also; how the lovers were united; and how, after a comic
interlude in the country of "Torelore," which could be spared by all
but folk-lorists, the damsel is discovered to be daughter of the King
of Carthage, and all ends in bowers of bliss.

[Footnote 159: Frequently edited: not least satisfactorily in the
_Nouvelles Françaises du XIIIme. Siècle_, referred to above. In 1887
two English translations, by Mr Lang and Mr Bourdillon, the latter
with the text and much apparatus, appeared: and Mr Bourdillon has
recently edited a facsimile of the unique MS. (Oxford, 1896).]

But even the enthusiasm and the art of three of the best writers of
English and lovers of literature in this half-century have not
exhausted the wonderful charm of this little piece. The famous
description of Nicolette, as she escapes from her prison and walks
through the daisies that look black against her white feet, is
certainly the most beautiful thing of the kind in mediæval
prose-work, and the equal of anything of the kind anywhere. And for
original audacity few things surpass Aucassin's equally famous
inquiry, "En Paradis qu'ai-je à faire?" with the words with which he
follows it up to the Viscount. But these show passages only
concentrate the charm which is spread all over the novelette, at least
until its real conclusion, the union and escape of the lovers. Here,
as in the earlier part of the _Rose_--to which it is closely akin--is
the full dreamy beauty, a little faint, a little shadowy, but all the
more attractive, of mediæval art; and here it has managed to convey
itself in prose no less happily and with more concentrated happiness
than there in verse.




CHAPTER VIII.

ICELANDIC AND PROVENÇAL.

     RESEMBLANCES. CONTRASTS. ICELANDIC LITERATURE OF THIS TIME
     MAINLY PROSE. DIFFICULTIES WITH IT. THE SAGA. ITS INSULARITY
     OF MANNER. OF SCENERY AND CHARACTER. FACT AND FICTION IN THE
     SAGAS. CLASSES AND AUTHORSHIP OF THEM. THE FIVE GREATER
     SAGAS. 'NJALA.' 'LAXDÆLA.' 'EYRBYGGJA.' 'EGLA.' 'GRETTLA.'
     ITS CRITICS. MERITS OF IT. THE PARTING OF ASDIS AND HER
     SONS. GREAT PASSAGES OF THE SAGAS. STYLE. PROVENÇAL MAINLY
     LYRIC. ORIGIN OF THIS LYRIC. FORMS. MANY MEN, ONE MIND.
     EXAMPLE OF RHYME-SCHEMES. PROVENÇAL POETRY NOT GREAT. BUT
     EXTRAORDINARILY PEDAGOGIC. THOUGH NOT DIRECTLY ON ENGLISH.
     SOME TROUBADOURS. CRITICISM OF PROVENÇAL.


[Sidenote: _Resemblances._]

These may seem at first to be no sufficient reason for treating
together two such literatures as those named in the title of this
chapter. But the connection, both of likeness and unlikeness, between
them is too tempting to the student of comparative literature, and too
useful in such a comparative survey of literature as that which we are
here undertaking, to be mistaken or refused. Both attaining, thanks to
very different causes, an extraordinarily early maturity, completely
worked themselves out in an extraordinarily short time. Neither had,
so far as we know, the least assistance from antecedent vernacular
models. Each achieved an extraordinary perfection and intensity,
Icelandic in spirit, Provençal in form.

[Sidenote: _Contrasts._]

And their differences are no less fascinating, since they start from
this very diversity of similar perfection. Icelandic, after a brief
period of copying French and other languages, practically died out as
a language producing literature; and, perhaps for that very reason,
maintained itself in all the more continuity as a spoken language.
Even its daughter--or at least successor--Norse tongues produced
nothing worthy to take up the tradition of the Sagas and the Poems. It
influenced (till the late and purely literary revival of it biassed to
some extent the beginnings of the later Romantic revival in Western
Europe, a hundred and fifty years ago) nothing and nobody. It was as
isolated as its own island. To Provençal, on the other hand, though
its own actual producing-time was about as brief, belongs the
schooling, to no small extent, of the whole literature of Europe.
Directly, it taught the _trouvères_ of Northern France and the poets
of Spain and Italy prosody, and a certain amount of poetical style and
tone; indirectly, or directly through France, it influenced England
and Germany. It started, indeed, none of the greater poetical kinds
except lyric, and lyric is the true _grass_ of Parnassus--it springs
up naturally everywhere; but it started the form of all, or at least
was the first to adapt from Latin a prosody suitable to all.

The most obvious, though not the least interesting, points of
likeness in unlikeness have been left to the last. The contrasts
between the hawthorn and nightingale of Provence, her "winds heavy
with the rose," and the grey firths, the ice- and foam-fretted
skerries of Iceland; between the remains of Roman luxury pushed to
more than Roman effeminacy in the one, and the rough Germanic virtue
exasperated to sheer ferocity in the other,--are almost too glaring
for anything but a schoolboy's or a rhetorician's essay. Yet they are
reproduced with an incredible--a "copy-book"--fidelity in the
literatures. The insistence of experts and enthusiasts on the
law-abiding character of the sagas has naturally met with some
surprise from readers of these endless private wars, and burnings, and
"heath-slayings," these feuds where blood flows like water, to be
compensated by fines as regular as a water-rate, these methodical
assassinations, in which it is not in the least discreditable to
heroes to mob heroes as brave as themselves to death by numbers, in
which nobody dreams of measuring swords, or avoiding vantage of any
kind. Yet the enthusiastic experts are not wrong. Whatever outrages
the Icelander may commit, he always has the law--an eccentric,
unmodern, conventional law, but a real and recognised one--before his
eyes, and respects it in principle, however much he may sometimes
violate it in practice. To the Provençal, on the other hand, law, as
such, is a nuisance. He will violate it, so to speak, on
principle--less because the particular violation has a particular
temptation for him than because the thing is forbidden. The Icelander
may covet and take another man's wife, but it is to make her his own.
The Provençal will hardly fall, and will never stay, in love with any
one who is not another's. In savagery there is not so very much to
choose: it requires a calculus, not of morals but of manners, to
distinguish accurately between carving the blood-eagle on your enemy
and serving up your rival's heart as a dish to his mistress. In
passion also there may be less difference than the extreme advocates
of both sides would maintain. But in all things external the contrast,
the hackneyed contrast, of South and North never could have been
exhibited with a more artistic completeness, never has been exhibited
with a completeness so artistic. And these two contrasting parts were
played at the very same time at the two ends of Europe. In the very
same years when the domestic histories and tragedies (there were few
comedies) of Iceland were being spun into the five great sagas and the
fifty smaller ones, the fainter, the more formal, but the not less
peculiar music of the gracious long-drawn Provençal love-song was
sounding under the vines and olives of Languedoc. The very Icelanders
who sailed to Constantinople in the intervals of making the subjects
of these sagas, and sometimes of composing them, must not seldom have
passed or landed on the coasts where _cansos_ and _tensos_, _lai_ and
_sirvente_, were being woven, and have listened to them as the
Ulyssean mariners listened to the songs of the sirens.

[Sidenote: _Icelandic literature of this time mainly prose._]

It is not, of course, true that Provençal only sings of love and
Icelandic only of war. There is a fair amount of love in the Northern
literature and a fair amount of fighting in the Southern. And it is
not true that Icelandic literature is wholly prose, Provençal wholly
poetry. But it is true that Provençal prose plays an extremely small
part in Provençal literature, and that Icelandic poetry plays, in
larger minority, yet still a minor part in Icelandic. It so happens,
too, that in this volume we are almost wholly concerned with Icelandic
prose, and that we shall not find it necessary to say much, if
anything, about Provençal that is not in verse. It is distinctly
curious how much later, _coeteris paribus_, the Romance tongues are
than the Teutonic in attaining facilities of prose expression. But
there is no reason for believing that even the Teutonic tongues
falsified the general law that poetry comes before prose. And
certainly this was the case with Icelandic--so much so that, uncertain
as are the actual dates, it seems better to relinquish the Iceland of
poetry to the first volume of this series, where it can be handled in
connection with that Anglo-Saxon verse which it so much resembles. The
more characteristic Eddaic poems--that is to say, the most
characteristic parts of Icelandic poetry--must date from Heathen
times, or from the first conflicts of Christianity with Heathenism in
Iceland; and this leaves them far behind us.[160] On the other hand,
the work which we have in Provençal before the extreme end of the
eleventh century is not finished literature. It has linguistic
interest, the interest of origins, but no more.

[Footnote 160: Iceland began to be Christian in 1000.]

[Sidenote: _Difficulties with it._]

Although there is practically as little doubt about the antiquity of
Icelandic literature[161] as about its interest, there is unusual room
for guesswork as to the exact dates of the documents which compose it.
Writing seems to have been introduced into Iceland late; and it is not
the opinion of scholars who combine learning with patriotism that
many, if any, of the actual MSS. date further back than the thirteenth
century; while the actual composition of the oldest that we have is
not put earlier than the twelfth, and rather its later than its
earlier part. Moreover, though Icelanders were during this period, and
indeed from the very first settlement of the island, constantly in
foreign countries and at foreign courts--though as Vikings or
Varangians, as merchants or merely travelling adventurers, they were
to be found all over Europe, from Dublin to Constantinople--yet, on
the other hand, few or no foreigners visited Iceland, and it figures
hardly at all in the literary and historical records of the Continent
or even of the British Isles, with which it naturally had most
correspondence. We are therefore almost entirely devoid of those
side-lights which are so invaluable in general literary history, while
yet again we have no borrowings from Icelandic literature by any other
to tell us the date of the borrowed matter. At the end of our present
time, and still more a little later, Charlemagne and Arthur and the
romances of antiquity make their appearance in Icelandic; but nothing
Icelandic makes its appearance elsewhere. For it is not to be supposed
for one moment that the _Nibelungenlied_, for instance, is the work of
men who wrote with the _Volsunga-Saga_ or the Gudrun lays before them,
any more than the _Grettis Saga_ is made up out of _Beowulf_. These
things are mere examples of the successive refashionings of traditions
and stories common to the race in different centuries, manners, and
tongues. Except as to the bare fact of community of origin they help
us little or not at all.

[Footnote 161: It is almost superfluous to insert, but would be
disagreeable to omit, a reference to the _Sturlunga Saga_ (2 vols.,
Oxford, 1879) and the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_ (2 vols., Oxford,
1883) of the late Dr Vigfusson and Professor York Powell. The first
contains an invaluable sketch, or rather history, of Icelandic
literature: the second (though one may think its arrangement a little
arbitrary) is a book of unique value and interest. Had these two been
followed up according to Dr Vigfusson's plan, practically the whole of
Icelandic literature that has real interest would have been accessible
once for all. As it is, one is divided between satisfaction that
England should have done such a service to one of the great mediæval
literatures, and regret that she has not done as much for others.]

[Sidenote: _The Saga._]

The reasons why Icelandic literature, in its most peculiar and
interesting form of the saga, did not penetrate abroad are clear
enough; and the remoteness and want of school-education in the island
itself are by no means the most powerful of them. The very thing which
is most characteristic of them, and which in these later times
constitutes their greatest charm, must have been against them in their
own time. For the stories which ran like an epidemic through Europe in
the years immediately before and immediately after 1200, though they
might be in some cases concerned directly with national heroes,
appealed without exception to international and generally human
interests. The slightest education, or the slightest hearing of
persons educated, sufficed to teach every one that Alexander and Cæsar
were great conquerors, that the Story of Troy (the exact truth of
which was never doubted) had been famous for hundreds and almost
thousands of years. Charlemagne had had directly to do with the
greater part of Europe in peace or war, and the struggle with the
Saracens was of old and universal interest, freshened by the Crusades.
The Arthurian story received from fiction, if not from history, an
almost equally wide bearing; and was, besides, knitted to
religion--the one universal interest of the time--by its connection
with the Graal. All Europe, yet again, had joined in the Crusades, and
the stories brought by the crusaders directly or indirectly from the
East were in the same way common property.

[Sidenote: _Its insularity of manner._]

But saga-literature had nothing of this appeal. It was as
indifferently and almost superciliously insular as the English
country-house novel itself, and may have produced in some of the very
few foreigners who can ever have known it originally, something of the
same feelings of wrath which we have seen excited by the English
country-house novel in our own day. The heroes were not, according to
the general ideas of mediæval Europe, either great chiefs or
accomplished knights; the heroines were the very reverse of those
damsels "with mild mood" (as the catch-word in the English romances
has it) whom the general Middle Age liked or thought it liked. An
intricate, intensely local, and (away from the locality) not seldom
shocking system of law and public morality pervaded the whole. The
supernatural element, though in itself it might have been an
attraction, was of a cast quite different from the superstitions of
the South, or even of the Centre; and the Christian element, which was
to the Middle Ages the very air they breathed, was either absent
altogether or present in an artificial, uneasy, and scanty fashion.

[Sidenote: _Of scenery and character._]

Yet all these things were of less importance than another, which is,
after all, the great _differentia_, the abiding quality, of the sagas.
In the literature of the rest of Europe, and especially in the central
and everywhere radiating literature of France, there were sometimes
local and almost parochial touches--sometimes unimportant heroes, not
seldom savage heroines, frequently quaint bits of exotic
supernaturalism. But all this was subdued to a kind of common literary
handling, a "dis-realising" process which made them universally
acceptable. The personal element, too, was conspicuously absent--the
generic character is always uppermost. Charlemagne was a real person,
and not a few of the incidents with which he was connected in the
_chansons_ were real events; but he and they have become mere stuff of
romance as we see them in these poems. Whether Arthur was a real
person or not, the same to an even greater extent is true of him. The
kings and their knights appealed to Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans,
Italians alike, because they were not obtrusively English, German,
Italian, or French. But the sagas are from the first and to the (at
least genuine) last nothing if not national, domestic, and personal.
The grim country of ice and fire, of jökul and skerry, the massive
timber homesteads, the horse-fights and the Viking voyages, the
spinning-wheel and the salting-tub, are with us everywhere; and yet
there is an almost startling individuality, for all the sameness of
massacre and chicanery, of wedding and divorce, which characterises
the circumstances. Gunnar is not distinguished from Grettir merely by
their adventures; there is no need of labels on the lovers of Gudrun;
Steingerd in Kormak's Saga and Hallgerd in Njal's, are each something
much more than types of the woman with bad blood and the woman with
blood that is only light and hot. And to the unsophisticated reader
and hearer, as many examples might be adduced to show, this
personality, the highest excellence of literature to the sophisticated
scholar, is rather a hindrance than a help. He has not proved the ways
and the persons; and he likes what he has proved.

To us, on the contrary, the characteristics of saga-work, at which a
glance has been made in the foregoing paragraphs, form its principal
charm, a charm reinforced by the fact of its extraordinary difference
from almost all other literature except (in some points) that of the
Homeric poems. Although there is a good deal of common form in the
sagas, though outlawry and divorce, the quibbles of the Thing and the
violence of ambush or holmgang, recur to and beyond the utmost limits
of permitted repetition, the unfamiliarity of the setting atones for
its monotony, and the individuality of the personages themselves very
generally prevents that monotony from being even felt. The stories are
never tame; and, what is more remarkable, they seldom or never have
the mere extravagance which in mediæval, at least as often as in
other, writing, plays Scylla to the Charybdis of tameness. Moreover,
they have, as no other division of mediæval romance has in anything
like the same measure, the advantage of the presence of _interesting_
characters of both sexes. Only the Arthurian story can approach them
here, and that leaves still an element of gracious shadowiness about
the heroines, if not the heroes. The Icelandic heroine has nothing
shadowy about her. Her weakest point is the want of delicacy--not in a
finicking sense by any means--which a rough promiscuous life to begin
with, and the extreme facility and frequency of divorce on the other,
necessarily brought about. But she is always, as the French have it, a
"person"--when she is good, a person altogether of the best; even when
she is bad, a person seldom other than striking and often charming.

[Sidenote: _Fact and fiction in the sagas._]

There is, of course, Icelandic literature in prose outside of the
sagas--the great law code (_Gragas_ or _Greygoose_), religious books
in the usual plenty, scientific books of a kind, and others. But the
saga, the story, was so emphatically the natural mould into which
Icelandic literary impulse threw itself, that it is even more
difficult here than elsewhere at the time to separate story and
history, fiction and fact. Indeed the stricter critics would, I
believe, maintain that every saga which deserves the name is actually
founded on fact: the _Laxdæla_ no less than the _Heimskringla_,[162]
the story of Kormak no less than that of Jarl Rognwald. A merely and
wholly invented story (they hold, and perhaps rightly) would have been
repugnant to that extraordinarily business-like spirit which has left
us, by the side of the earlier songs and later sagas, containing not a
little of the most poetical matter of the whole world, the _Landnama
Bok_ of Ari Frodi, a Domesday-book turned into literature, which is
indeed older than our time, but which forms a sort of commentary and
companion to the whole of the sagas by anticipation or otherwise.

[Footnote 162: Dr Vigfusson is exceedingly severe on the
_Heimskringla_, which he will have to be only a late, weak, and
rationalised compilation from originals like the oddly termed "Great
O.T. Saga." But it is hard for a man to think hardly of the book in
which, though only a translation, he first read how Queen Sigrid the
Haughty got rid of her troublesome lovers by the effectual process of
burning them _en masse_ in a barn, and how King Olaf died the greatest
sea-death--greater even than Grenville's--of any defeated hero, in
history or literature.]

[Sidenote: _Classes and authorship of them._]

Difficult as it may be to draw the line between intended history,
which was always strongly "romanced" in form, if not intentionally in
fact, and that very peculiar product of Icelandic genius the saga
proper, in which the original domestic record has been, so to speak,
"super-romanced" into a work of art, it is still possible to see it,
if not to draw it, between the _Heimskringla_, the story of the Kings
of Norway (made English after some earlier versions by Messrs
Magnusson and Morris, and abstracted, as genius can abstract, by
Carlyle), the _Orkneyinga_ and _Færeyinga_ Sagas (the tales of these
outlying islands before the former came under Norwegian rule), the
curious conglomerate known as the _Sturlunga Saga_ on the one hand,
and the greater and lesser sagas proper on the other. The former are
set down to the two great writers Snorri and Sturla, the one the chief
literary light of Iceland in the first half of the thirteenth century,
the other the chief light in the second, both of the same family, and
with Ari Frodi the three greatest of the certainly known men of
letters of the island. Conjecture has naturally run riot as to the
part which either Snorri or Sturla may have taken in the sagas not
directly attributed to either, but most probably dating from their
time, as well as with the personalities of the unknown or little known
poets and prosemen who shaped the older stories at about the same
period. But to the historian who takes delight in literature, and does
not care very much who made it provided it is made well, what has been
called "the singular silence" as to authorship which runs through the
whole of the early Icelandic literature is rather a blessing than
otherwise. It frees him from those biographical inquiries which always
run the risk of drawing nigh to gossip, and it enables him to
concentrate attention on the literature itself.

This literature is undoubtedly best exemplified, as we should expect,
in the wholly anonymous and only indirectly historical sagas of the
second division, though it is fair to say that there is nothing here
much finer than such things as the famous last fight of King Olaf in
the _Heimskringla_, or as many other incidents and episodes in the
history-books. Only the hands of the writers were freer in the others:
and complete freedom--at least from all but the laws of art--is never
a more "nobil thing" than it is to the literary artist.

[Sidenote: _The five greater sagas._]

There seems no reason to quarrel with the classification which divides
the sagas proper into two classes, greater and lesser, and assigns
position in the first to five only--the Saga of Burnt Njal, that of
the dwellers in Laxdale, the _Eyrbyggja_, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of
Grettir the Strong. It is very unlucky that the reception extended by
the English public to the publications of Mr Vigfusson and Professor
York Powell, mentioned in a note above, did not encourage the editors
to proceed to an edition at least of these five sagas together, which
might, according to estimate, have been done in three volumes, two
more containing all the small ones. Meanwhile _Njala_--the great sagas
are all known by familiar diminutives of this kind--is accessible in
English in the late Sir G.W. Dasent's well-known translation;[163] the
_Eyrbyggja_ and _Egla_ in abstracts by Sir Walter Scott[164] and Mr
Gosse;[165] _Laxdæla_ has been treated as it deserves in the longest
and nearly the finest section of Mr Morris's _Earthly Paradise_;[166]
and the same writer with Dr Magnusson has given a literal translation
of _Grettla_.[167]

[Footnote 163: _The Story of Burnt Njal._ Edinburgh, 1861.]

[Footnote 164: Included in the Bohn edition of Mallet's _Northern
Antiquities_.]

[Footnote 165: _Cornhill Magazine_, July 1879.]

[Footnote 166: "The Lovers of Gudrun;" _November_, part iii. p. 337,
original edition. London, 1870.]

[Footnote 167: London, 1869.]

The lesser sagas of the same group are some thirty in number, the best
known or the most accessible being those of Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue,
often printed in the original,[168] very short, very characteristic,
and translated by the same hands as _Grettla_;[169] _Viga Glum_,
translated by Sir Edmund Head;[170] _Gisli the Outlaw_ (Dasent);[171]
_Howard_ or _Havard the Halt_, _The Banded Men_, and _Hen Thorir_
(Morris and Magnusson)[172]; _Kormak_, said to be the oldest, and
certainly one of the most interesting.[173]

[Footnote 168: _Gunnlaug's Saga Ormstungu_. Ed. Mogk. Halle, 1886.]

[Footnote 169: In _Three Northern Love-Stories_. London, 1875.]

[Footnote 170: London, 1866.]

[Footnote 171: Edinburgh, 1866.]

[Footnote 172: In one volume. London, 1891.]

[Footnote 173: Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the
original, but very fully abstracted in _Northern Antiquities_, as
above, pp. 321-339. The verse is in the _Corpus Poeticum Boreale_.]

So much of the interest of a saga depends on small points constantly
varied and renewed, that only pretty full abstracts of the contents of
one can give much idea of them. On the other hand, the attentive
reader of a single saga can usually give a very good guess at the
general nature of any other from a brief description of it, though he
must of course miss the individual touches of poetry and of character.
And though I speak with the humility of one who does not pretend to
Icelandic scholarship, I think that translations are here less
inadequate than in almost any other language, the attraction of the
matter being so much greater than that of the form. For those who will
not take the slight trouble to read Dasent's _Njala_, or Morris and
Magnusson's _Grettla_, the next best idea attainable is perhaps from
Sir Walter Scott's abstract of the _Eyrbyggja_ or Mr Blackwell's of
the Kormak's Saga, or Mr Gosse's of _Egla_. Njal's Saga deals with the
friendship between the warrior Gunnar and the lawyer Njal, which,
principally owing to the black-heartedness of Gunnar's wife Hallgerd,
brings destruction on both, Njal and almost his whole family being
burnt as the crowning point, but by no means the end, of an intricate
series of reciprocal murders. For the blood-feuds of Iceland were as
merciless as those of Corsica, with the complication--thoroughly
Northern and not in the least Southern--of a most elaborate, though
not entirely impartial, system of judicial inquiries and
compensations, either by fine or exile. To be outlawed for murder,
either in casual affray or in deliberate attack, was almost as regular
a part of an Icelandic gentleman's avocations from his home and daily
life as a journey on viking or trading intent, and was often combined
with one or both. But outlawry and fine by no means closed the
incident invariably, though they sometimes did so far as the feud was
concerned: and there is hardly one saga which does not mainly or
partly turn on a tangle of outrages and inquests.

[Sidenote: Njala.]

[Sidenote: Laxdæla.]

As _Njala_ is the most complete and dramatic of the sagas where love
has no very prominent part except in the Helen-like dangerousness, if
not exactly Helen-like charm, of Hallgerd, of whom it might certainly
be said that

    "Where'er she came,
    She brought Calamity";

so _Laxdæla_ is the chief of those in which love figures, though on
the male side at least there is no lover that interests us as much as
the hapless, reckless poet Kormak, or as Gunnlaug Serpent's-Tongue.
The _Earthly Paradise_ should have made familiar to all the quarrel
or, if hardly quarrel, feud between the cousins Kiartan and Bodli, or
Bolli, owing to the fatal fascinations of Gudrun. Gudrun is less
repulsive than Hallgerd, but she cannot be said to be entirely free
from the drawbacks which, as above suggested, are apt to be found in
the Icelandic heroine. It is more difficult to sentiment, if not to
morality, to pardon four husbands than many times four lovers, and the
only persons with whom Gudrun's relations are wholly agreeable is
Kiartan, who was not her husband. But the pathos of the story, its
artful unwinding, and the famous utterance of the aged heroine--

    "I did the worst to him I loved the most,"

which is almost literally from the Icelandic, redeem anything
unsympathetic in the narrative: and the figure of Bodli, a strange
mixture of honour and faithlessness to the friend he loves and
murders, is one of the most striking among the thralls of Venus in
literature.

[Sidenote: Eyrbyggja.]

The defect of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ is its want of any central
interest; for it is the history not of a person, nor even of one
single family, but of a whole Icelandic district with its inhabitants
from the settlement onwards. Its attraction, therefore, lies rather in
episodes--the rivalry of the sorceresses Katla and Geirrid; the
circumventing of the (in this case rather sinned against than sinning)
bersarks Hall and Leikner; the very curious ghost-stories; and the
artful ambition of Snorri the Godi. Still, to make an attractive
legend of a sort of "county history" may be regarded as a rare
triumph, and the saga is all the more important because it shows,
almost better than any other, the real motive of nearly all these
stories--that they are real _chansons de geste_, family legends, with
a greater vividness and individuality than the French genius could
then impart, though presented more roughly.

[Sidenote: Egla.]

The Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson, again, shifts its special points of
attraction. It is the history partly of the family of Skallagrim, but
chiefly of his son Egil, in opposition to Harald Harfagr and his son
Eric Blood-axe, of Egil's wars and exploits in England and elsewhere,
of his service to King Athelstan at Brunanburh, of the faithfulness of
his friend Arinbiorn, and the hero's consequent rescue from the danger
in which he had thrust himself by seeking his enemy King Eric at York,
of his son's shipwreck and Egil's sad old age, and of many other
moving events. This has the most historic interest of any of the great
sagas, and not least of the personal appeal. Perhaps, indeed, it is
more like a really good historical novel than any other.

[Sidenote: Grettla.]

If, however, it were not for the deficiency of feminine character (a
deficiency which rehandlers evidently felt and endeavoured to remedy
by the expedient of tacking on an obvious plagiarism from _Tristan_ as
an appendix, ostensibly dealing with the avenging of the hero), the
fifth, Grettis Saga or _Grettla_, would perhaps be the best of all.

[Sidenote: _Its critics._]

It is true that some experts have found fault with this as late in
parts, and bolstered out with extraneous matter in other respects
beside the finale just referred to. The same critics denounce its
poetical interludes (see _infra_) as spurious, object to some traits
in it as coarse, and otherwise pick it to pieces. Nevertheless there
are few sagas, if there are any, which produce so distinct and
individual an effect, which remind us so constantly that we are in
Iceland and not elsewhere. In pathos and variety of interest it cannot
touch _Njala_ or _Laxdæla_: in what is called "weirdness," in wild
vigour, it surpasses, I think, all others; and the supernatural
element, which is very strong, contrasts, I think, advantageously with
the more business-like ghostliness of _Eyrbyggja_.

After an overture about the hero's forebears, which in any other
country would be as certainly spurious as the epilogue, but to which
the peculiar character of saga-writing gives a rather different claim
here, the story proper begins with a description of the youth of
Grettir the Strong, second son to Asmund the Grey-haired of Biarg, who
had made much money by sea-faring, and Asdis, a great heiress and of
great kin. The sagaman consults poetical justice very well at first,
and prepares us for an unfortunate end by depicting Grettir as, though
valiant and in a way not ungenerous, yet not merely an incorrigible
scapegrace, but somewhat unamiable and even distinctly ferocious.
That, being made gooseherd, and finding the birds troublesome, he
knocks them about, killing some goslings, may not be an unpardonable
atrocity. And even when, being set to scratch his father's back, he
employs a wool-comb for that purpose, much to the detriment of the
paternal skin and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the
impishness of a naughty boy. But when, being promoted to mind the
horses, and having a grudge against a certain "wise" mare named
Keingala, because she stays out at graze longer than suits his
laziness, he flays the unhappy beast alive in a broad strip from
shoulder to tail, the thing goes beyond a joke. Also he is
represented, throughout the saga, as invariably capping his pranks or
crimes with one of the jeering enigmatic epigrams in which one finds
considerable excuse for the Icelandic proneness to murder. However, in
his boyhood, he does not go beyond cruelty to animals and fighting
with his equals; and his first homicide, on his way with a friend of
his father's to the Thing-Parliament, is in self-defence. Still,
having no witnesses, he is, though powerfully backed (an all-important
matter), fined and outlawed for three years. There is little love
lost between him and his father, and he is badly fitted out for the
grand tour, which usually occupies a young Icelandic gentleman's first
outlawry; but his mother gives him a famous sword. On the voyage he
does nothing but flirt with the mate's wife: and only after strong
provocation and in the worst weather consents to bale, which he does
against eight men.

They are, however, wrecked off the island of Haramsey, and Grettir,
lodging with the chief Thorfinn, at first disgusts folk here as
elsewhere with his sulky, lazy ways. He acquires consideration,
however, by breaking open the barrow of Thorfinn's father, and not
only bringing out treasures (which go to Thorfinn), but fighting with
and overcoming the "barrow-wight" (ghost) itself, the first of the
many supernatural incidents in the story. The most precious part of
the booty is a peculiar "short-sword." Also when Thorfinn's wife and
house are left, weakly guarded, to the mercy of a crew of unusually
ruffianly bersarks, Grettir by a mixture of craft and sheer valour
succeeds in overcoming and slaying the twelve bersarks single-handed.
Thorfinn on his return presents him with the short-sword and becomes
his fast friend. He has plenty of opportunity: for Grettir, as usual,
neither entirely by his own fault nor entirely without it, owing to
his sulky temper and sour tongue, successively slays three brothers,
being in the last instance saved only with the greatest difficulty by
Thorfinn, his own half-brother Thorstein Dromond, and others, from the
wrath of Swein, Jarl of the district. So that by the time when he can
return to Iceland, he has made Norway too hot to hold him; and he
lands in his native island with a great repute for strength, valour,
and, it must be added, quarrelsomeness. For some time he searches
about "to see if there might be anywhere somewhat with which he might
contend." He finds it at a distant farm, which is haunted by the ghost
of a certain godless shepherd named Glam, who was himself killed by
Evil Ones, and now molests both stock and farm-servants. Grettir dares
the ghost, overcomes him after a tremendous conflict, which certainly
resembles that in _Beowulf_ most strikingly,[174] and slays him (for
Icelandic ghosts are mortal); but not before Glam has spoken and
pronounced a curse upon Grettir, that his strength, though remaining
great, shall never grow, that all his luck shall cease, and, finally,
that the eyes of Glam himself shall haunt him to the death.

[Footnote 174: It seems almost incredible that the resemblances
between _Beowulf_ and the _Grettis Saga_ should never have struck any
one till Dr Vigfusson noticed them less than twenty years ago. But the
fact seems to be so; and nothing could better prove the rarity of that
comparative study of literature to which this series aims at being a
modest contribution and incentive.]

Grettir at first cares little for this; but the last part of the curse
comes on almost at once and makes him afraid to be alone after dark,
while the second is not long delayed. On the eve of setting out once
more for Norway, he quarrels with and slays a braggart named
Thorbiorn; during the voyage itself he is the unintentional cause of a
whole household of men being burnt to death; and lastly, by his own
quarrelsome temper, and some "metaphysical aid," he misses the chance
of clearing himself by "bearing iron" (ordeal) before King Olaf at
Drontheim. Olaf, his own kinsman, tells him with all frankness that
he, Grettir, is much too "unlucky" for himself to countenance; and
that though he shall have no harm in Norway, he must pack to Iceland
as soon as the sea is open. He accordingly stays during the winter, in
a peace only broken by the slaying of another bersark bully, and
partly passed with his brother Thorstein Dromond.

Meanwhile Asmund has died, his eldest son Atli has succeeded him, and
has been waylaid by men suborned by Thorbiorn Oxmain, kinsman of the
Thorbiorn whom Grettir slew before leaving Iceland the second time.
Atli escapes and slays his foes. Then Thorbiorn Oxmain himself visits
Biarg and slays the unarmed Atli, who is not avenged because it was
Grettir's business to look after the matter when he came home. But
Glam's curse so works that, though plaintiff in this case, he is
outlawed in his absence for the burning of the house above referred
to, in which he was quite guiltless; and when he lands in Iceland it
is to find himself deprived of all legal rights, and in such case that
no friend can harbour him except under penalty.

Grettir, as we might expect, is not much daunted by this complication
of evils, but he lies hid for a time at his mother's house and
elsewhere, not so much to escape his own dangers as to avenge Atli on
Thorbiorn Oxmain at the right moment. At last he finds it; and
Thorbiorn, as well as his sixteen-year-old son Arnor, who rather
disloyally helps him, is slain by Grettir single-handed. His plight
at first is not much worsened by this; for though the simple plan of
setting off Thorbiorn against Atli is not adopted, Grettir's case is
backed directly by his kinsmen and indirectly by the two craftiest men
in Iceland, Snorri the Godi and Skapti the Lawman, and the latter
points out that as Grettir had been outlawed _before_ it was decreed
that the onus of avenging Atli lay on him, a fatal flaw had been made
in the latter proceeding, and no notice could be taken of the death of
Thorbiorn at all, though his kin must pay for Atli. This fine would
have been set off against Grettir's outlawry, and he would have become
a freeman, had not Thorir of Garth, the father of the men he had
accidentally killed in the burning house, refused; and so the
well-meant efforts of Grettir's kin and friends fall through.

From this time till the end of his life he is a houseless outlaw,
abiding in all the most remote parts of the island--"Grettir's lairs,"
as they are called, it would seem, to this day--sometimes countenanced
for a short time by well-willing men of position, sometimes dwelling
with supernatural creatures,--Hallmund, a kindly spirit or
cave-dweller with a hospitable daughter, or the half-troll giant
Thorir, a person of daughters likewise. But his case grows steadily
worse. Partly owing to sheer ill-luck and Glam's curse, partly, as the
saga-writer very candidly tells us, because he "was not an easy man to
live withal," his tale of slayings and the feuds thereto appertaining
grows steadily. For the most part he lives by simple cattle-lifting
and the like, which naturally does not make him popular; twice other
outlaws come to abide with him, and, after longer or shorter time, try
for his richly priced head, and though they lose their own lives,
naturally make him more and more desperate. Once he is beset by his
enemy Thorir with eighty men; and only comes off through the backing
of his ghostly friend Hallmund, who not long after meets his fate by
no ignoble hand, and Grettir cannot avenge him. Again, Grettir is
warmly welcomed by a widow, Steinvor of Sand-heaps, at whose dwelling,
in the oddest way, he takes up the full _Beowulf_ adventure and slays
a troll-wife in a cave just as his forerunner slew Grendel's mother.
But in the end the hue and cry is too strong, and by advice of friends
he flies to the steep holm of Drangey in Holmfirth--a place where the
top can only be won by ladders--with his younger brother Illugi and a
single thrall or slave. Illugi is young, but true as steel: the slave
is a fool, if not actually a traitor. After the bonders of Drangey
have done what they could to rid themselves of this very damaging and
redoubtable intruder, they give up their shares to a certain Thorbiorn
Angle. Thorbiorn at first fares ill against Grettir, whose outlawry is
on the point of coming to an end, as none might last longer than
twenty years. With the help of a wound, witch-caused to Grettir, and
the slave's treacherous laziness, Thorbiorn and his crew climb the
ladders and beset the brethren--Grettir already half dead with his
gangrened wound. The hero is slain with his own short-sword; the brave
Illugi is overwhelmed with the shields of the eighteen assailants, and
then slaughtered in cold blood. But Thorbiorn reaps little good, for
his traffickings with witchcraft deprive him of his blood-money; the
deaths of his men, of whom Illugi and Grettir had slain not a few, are
set against Illugi's own; and Thorbiorn himself, after escaping to
Micklegarth (Constantinople) and joining the Varangians, is slain by
Thorstein Dromond, who has followed him thither and joined the same
Guard on purpose, and who is made the hero of the appendix above
spoken of.

[Sidenote: _Merits of it._]

The defects of this are obvious, and may be probably enough accounted
for in part by the supposition of the experts above referred to--that
the saga as we have it is rather later than the other great sagas, and
is a patchwork of divers hands. It may perhaps be added, as a more
purely literary criticism, that no one of these hands can have been
quite a master, or that his work, if it existed, must have been
mutilated or disfigured by others. For the most is nowhere made,
except in the Glam fight and the last scenes on Drangey, of the
admirable situations provided by the story; and the presentation of
Grettir as a man almost everywhere lacks the last touches, while the
sagaman has simply thrown away the opportunities afforded him by the
insinuated amourettes with Steinvor and the daughters of the friendly
spirits, and has made a mere _fabliau_ episode of another thing of the
kind. Nevertheless the attractions of _Grettla_ are unique as regards
the mixture of the natural and supernatural; not inferior to any other
as illustrating the quaintly blended life of Iceland; and of the
highest kind as regards the conception of the hero--a not ungenerous
Strength, guided by no intellectual greatness and by hardly any
overmastering passion, marred by an unsocial and overbearing temper,
and so hardly needing the ill luck, which yet gives poetical finish
and dramatic force to the story, to cast itself utterly away. For in
stories, as in other games, play without luck is fatiguing and jejune,
luck without play childish. It is curious how touching is the figure
of the ill-fated hero, not wholly amiable, yet over-matched by
Fortune, wandering in waste places of a country the fairest spots of
which are little better than a desert, forced by his terror of
"Glam-sight" to harbour criminals far worse than himself, and well
knowing that they seek his life, grudgingly and fearfully helped by
his few friends, a public nuisance where he should have been a public
champion, only befriended heartily by mysterious shadowy personages of
whom little is positively told, and when, after twenty years of
wild-beast life, his deliverance is at hand, perishing by a
combination of foul play on the part of his foes and neglect on that
of his slave. At least once, too, in that parting of Asdis with
Grettir and Illugi, which ranks not far below the matchless epitaph of
Sir Ector on Lancelot, there is not only suggestion, but expression of
the highest quality:--

[Sidenote: _The parting of Asdis and her sons._]

"'Ah! my sons twain, there ye depart from me, and one death ye shall
have together, for no man may flee from that which is wrought for him.
On no day now shall I see either of you once again. Let one fate,
then, be over you both; for I know not what weal ye go to get for
yourselves in Drangey, but there ye shall both lay your bones, and
many shall grudge you that abiding-place. Keep ye heedfully from
wiles, for marvellously have my dreams gone. Be well ware of sorcery;
yet none the less shall ye be bitten with the edge of the sword, for
nothing can cope with the cunning of eld.' And when she had thus
spoken she wept right sore. Then said Grettir, 'Weep not, mother; for
if we be set upon by weapons it shall be said of thee that thou hast
had sons and not daughters.' And therewith they parted."

[Sidenote: _Great passages of the sagas._]

These moments, whether of incident or expression, are indeed frequent
enough in the sagas, though the main attraction may consist, as has
been said, in the wild interest of the story and the vivid
individuality of the characters. The slaying of Gunnar of Lithend in
_Njala_, when his false wife refuses him a tress of hair to twist for
his stringless bow, has rightly attracted the admiration of the best
critics; as has the dauntless resignation of Njal himself and
Bergthora, when both might have escaped their fiery fate. Of the
touches of which the Egil's Saga is full, few are better perhaps than
the picture in a dozen words of King Eric Blood-axe "sitting bolt
upright and glaring" at the son of Skallagrim as he delivers the
panegyric which is to save his life, and the composition of which had
been so nearly baulked by the twittering of the witch-swallow under
his eaves. The "long" kisses of Kormak and Steingerd, and the poet's
unconscious translation of Æschylus[175] as he says, "Eager to find
my lady, I have scoured the whole house with the glances of my
eyes--in vain," dwell in the memory as softer touches. And for the
sterner, nothing can beat the last fight of Olaf Trygveson, where with
the crack of Einar Tamberskelvir's bow Norway breaks from Olaf's
hands, and the king himself, the last man with Kolbiorn his marshal to
fight on the deck of the Long Serpent, springs, gold-helmed,
mail-coated, and scarlet-kirtled, into the waves, and sinks with
shield held up edgeways[176] to weight him through the deep green
water.

[Footnote 175: Compare, _mutatis mutandis_, _Agam._, 410 _sq._, and
Kormak's "Stray verses," ll. 41-44, in the _Corpus_, ii. 65.]

[Footnote 176: _Heimskringla_ does not _say_ "edgeways," but this is
the clear meaning. Kolbiorn held his shield flat and below him, so
that it acted as a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.]

[Sidenote: _Style._]

The saga prose is straightforward and business-like, the dialogue
short and pithy, with considerable interspersion of proverbial phrase,
but with, except in case of bad texts, very little obscurity. It is,
however, much interspersed also with verses which, like Icelandic
verse in general, are alliterative in prosody, and often of the
extremest euphuism and extravagance in phrase. All who have even a
slight acquaintance with sagas know the extraordinary periphrases for
common objects, for men and maidens, for ships and swords, that
bestrew them. There is, I believe, a theory, not in itself improbable,
that the more elaborate and far-fetched the style of this imagery, the
later and less genuine is likely to be the poem, if not the saga; but
it is certain that the germs of the style are to be found in the
_Havamal_ and the other earliest and most certainly genuine examples.

It is perhaps well to add that very small sagas are called _thættir_
("scraps"), the same word as "tait" in the Scots phrase "tait of
wool." But it is admitted that it is not particularly easy to draw the
line between the two, and that there is no difference in real
character. In fact short sagas might be called _thættir_ and _vice
versâ_. Also, as hinted before, there is exceedingly little comedy in
the sagas. The roughest horse-play in practical joking, the most
insolent lampoons in verbal satire, form, as a rule, the lighter
element; and pieces like the _Bandamanna Saga_, which with tragic
touches is really comic in the main, are admittedly rare.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Sidenote: _Provençal mainly lyric._]

In regard to the second, and contrasted, division of the subject of
the present chapter, it has been already noted that, just as Icelandic
at this period presents to the purview of the comparative literary
historian one main subject, if not one only--the saga--so Provençal
presents one main subject, and almost one only--the formal lyric. The
other products of the Muse in _langue d'oc_, whether verse or prose,
are so scanty, and in comparison[177] so unimportant, that even
special historians of the subject have found but little to say about
them. The earliest monument of all, perhaps the earliest finished
monument of literature in any Romance language, the short poem on
Boethius, in assonanced decasyllabic _laisses_,--even in its present
form probably older than our starting-point, and, it may be, two
centuries older in its first form,--is indeed not lyrical; nor is the
famous and vigorous verse-history of the Albigensian War in _chanson_
style; nor the scanty remnants of other _chansons_, _Girart de
Rossilho_, _Daurel et Beton_, _Aigar et Maurin_, which exist; nor the
later _romans d'aventure_ of _Jaufre_, _Flamenca_, _Blandin of
Cornwall_. But in this short list almost everything of interest in our
period--the flourishing period of the literature--has been mentioned
which is not lyrical.[178] And if these things, and others like them
in much larger number, had existed alone, it is certain that Provençal
literature would not hold the place which it now holds in the
comparative literary history of Europe.

[Footnote 177: Of course this is only in comparison. For instance, in
Dr Suchier's _Denkmäler_ (Halle, 1883), which contains nearly 500
large pages of Provençal _anecdota_, about four-fifths is devotional
matter of various kinds and in various forms, prose and verse. But
such matter, which is common to all mediæval languages, is hardly
literature at all, being usually translated, with scarcely any expense
of literary originality, from the Latin, or each other.]

[Footnote 178: Alberic's _Alexander_ (_v._ chap. iv.) is of course
Provençal in a way, and there was probably a Provençal intermediary
between the _Chanson d'Antioche_ and the Spanish _Gran Conquesta de
Ultramar_. But we have only a few lines of the first and nothing of
the second.]

That place is due to its lyric, construing that term in a wide sense
such as that (but indeed a little wider) in which it has been already
used with reference to the kindred and nearly contemporary lyric of
France proper. It is best to say "nearly contemporary," because it
would appear that Provençal actually had the start of French in this
respect, though no great start: and it is best to say "kindred" and
not "daughter," because though some forms and more names are common to
the two, their developments are much more parallel than on the same
lines, and they are much more sisters than mother and daughter.

[Sidenote: _Origin of this lyric._]

It would appear, though such things can never be quite certain, that,
as we should indeed expect, the first developments of Provençal lyric
were of the hymn kind, and perhaps originally mixtures of Romance and
Latin. This mixture of the vernacular and the learned tongues, both
spoken in all probability with almost equal facility by the writer, is
naturally not uncommon in the Middle Ages: and it helps to explain the
rapid transference of the Latin hymn-rhythms to vernacular verse. Thus
we have a _Noel_ or Christmas poem not only written to the tune and in
the measure of a Latin hymn, _In hoc anni circulo_, not only crowning
the Provençal six-syllable triplets with a Latin refrain, "De virgine
Maria," and other variations on the Virgin's title and name, but with
Latin verses alternate to the Provençal ones. This same arrangement
occurs with a Provençal fourth rhyme, which seems to have been a
favourite one. It is arranged with a variety which shows its
earliness, for the fourth line is sometimes "in the air" rhyming to
nothing, sometimes rhymes with the other three, and sometimes forces
its sound on the last of them, so that the quatrain becomes a pair of
couplets.

[Sidenote: _Forms._]

The earliest purely secular lyrics, however, are attributed to William
IX., Count of Poitiers, who was a crusader in the very first year of
the twelfth century, and is said to have written an account of his
journey which is lost. His lyrics survive to the number of some dozen,
and show that the art had by his time received very considerable
development. For their form, it may suffice to say that of those given
by Bartsch[179] the first is in seven-lined stanzas, rhymed _aaaabab_,
the _a_-rhyme lines being iambic dimeters, and the _b_'s monometers.
Number two has five six-lined stanzas, all dimeters, rhymed _aaabab_:
and a four-lined finale, rhymed _ab, ab_. The third is mono-rhymed
throughout, the lines being disyllabic with licence to extend. And the
fourth is in the quatrain _aaab_, but with the _b_ rhyme identical
throughout, capped with a couplet _ab_. If these systems be compared
with the exact accounts of early French, English, and German lyric in
chapters v.-vii., it will be seen that Provençal probably, if not
certainly, led the way in thus combining rhythmic arrangement and
syllabic proportion with a cunning variation of rhyme-sound. It was
also the first language to classify poetry, as it may be called, by
assigning special forms to certain kinds of subject or--if not quite
this--to constitute classes of poems themselves according to their
arrangement in line, stanza, and rhyme. A complete prosody of the
language of _canso_ and _sirvente_, of _vers_ and _cobla_, of _planh_,
_tenso_, _tornejamens_, _balada_, _retroensa_, and the rest, would
take more room than can be spared here, and would hardly be in place
if it were otherwise. All such prosodies tend rather to the childish,
as when, for instance, the _pastorela_, or shepherdess poem in
general, was divided into _porquiera_, _cabreira_, _auqueira_, and
other things, according as the damsel's special wards were pigs or
goats or geese. Perhaps the most famous, peculiar, and representative
of Provençal forms are the _alba_, or poem of morning parting, and the
_sirvente_, or poem _not_ of love. The _sestina_, a very elaborate
canzonet, was invented in Provence and borrowed by the Italians. But
it is curious to find that the sonnet, the crown and flower of all
artificial poetry, though certainly invented long before the decadence
of Provençal, was only used in Provençal by Italian experimenters. The
poets proper of the _langue d'oc_ were probably too proud to admit any
form that they had not invented themselves.

[Footnote 179: The _Grundriss zur Geschichte der Provenzalischen
Literatur_ (Elberfeld, 1872) and the _Chrestomathie Provençale_ (3d
ed., Elberfeld, 1875) of this excellent scholar will not soon be
obsolete, and may, in the peculiar conditions of the case, suffice all
but special students in a degree hardly possible in any other
literature. Mahn's _Troubadours_ and the older works of Raynouard and
Fauriel are the chief storehouses of wider information, and separate
editions of the works of the chief poets are being accumulated by
modern, chiefly German, scholars. An interesting and valuable addition
to the _English_ literature of the subject has been made, since the
text was written, by Miss Ida Farnell's _Lives of the Troubadours_, a
translation with added specimens of the poets and other editorial
matter.]

[Sidenote: _Many men, one mind._]

Next in noteworthiness to the variety of form of the Provençal poets
is their number. Even the multitude of _trouvères_ and Minnesingers
dwindles beside the list of four hundred and sixty named poets, for
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries only, which Bartsch's list
contains; some, it is true, credited with only a single piece, but
others with ten, twenty, fifty, or even close to a hundred, not to
mention an anonymous appendix of over two hundred and fifty poems
more. Great, however, as is the bulk of this division of literature,
hardly any has more distinct and uniform--its enemies may say more
monotonous--characteristics. It is not entirely composed of
love-poetry; but the part devoted to this is so very much the largest,
and so very much the most characteristic, that popular and almost
traditional opinion is scarcely wrong in considering love-poetry and
Provençal poetry to be almost, and with the due limitation in the
first case, convertible terms.

[Sidenote: _Example of rhyme-schemes._]

The spirit of this poetry is nowhere better shown than in the refrain
of an anonymous _alba_, which begins--

    "En un verger sotz folha d'albespi,"

and which has for burden--

    "Oi deus! oi deus, de l'alba, tant tost ve!"

of which an adaptation by Mr Swinburne is well known. "In the
Orchard," however, is not only a much longer poem than the _alba_ from
which it borrows its burden, but is couched in a form much more
elaborate, and has a spirit rather early Italian than Provençal. It
is, indeed, not very easy to define the Provençal spirit itself, which
has sometimes been mistaken, and oftener exaggerated. Although the
average troubadour poem--whether of love, or of satire, or, more
rarely, of war--is much less simple in tone than the Northern lyric
already commented on, it cannot be said to be very complex; and, on
the whole, the ease, accomplishment, and, within certain strict
limits, variety of the form are more remarkable than any intensity or
volume of passion or of thought. The musical character (less
inarticulate and more regular), which has also been noted in the poems
of the _trouvères_, is here eminent: though the woodnote wild of the
Minnesinger is quite absent or very rarely present. The facility of
double rhymes, with a full vowel sound in each syllable, has a
singular and very pleasing effect, as in the piece by Marcabrun
beginning--

    "L'autrier jost una sebissa,"

"the other day by a hedge," the curiously complicated construction of
which is worth dwelling on as a specimen. It consists of six double
stanzas, of fourteen lines or two septets each, finished by a sestet,
_aabaab_. The septets are rhymed _aaabaab_; and though the _a_ rhymes
vary in each set of fourteen, the _b_ rhymes are the same throughout;
and the first of them in each septet is the same word, _vilana_
(peasant girl), throughout. Thus we have as the rhymes of the first
twenty-eight lines _sebissa_, _mestissa_, _massissa_, _vilana_,
_pelissa_, _treslissa_, _lana_; _planissa_, _faitissa_, _fissa_,
_vilana_, _noirissa_, _m'erissa_, _sana_; _pia_, _via_, _companhia_,
_vilana_, _paria_, _bestia_, _soldana_; _sia_, _folia_, _parelharia_,
_vilana_, _s'estia_, _bailia_, _l'ufana_.

[Sidenote: _Provençal poetry not great._]

Such a _carillon_ of rhymes as this is sometimes held to be likely to
concentrate the attention of both writer and reader too much on the
accompaniment, and to leave the former little time to convey, and the
latter little chance of receiving, any very particularly choice
sense. This most certainly cannot be laid down as a universal law;
there are too many examples to the contrary, even in our own language,
not to go further. But it may be admitted that when the styles of
literature are both fashionable and limited, and when a very large
number of persons endeavour to achieve distinction in them, there is
some danger of something of the sort coming about. No nation has ever
been able, in the course of less than two centuries, to provide four
hundred and sixty named poets and an indefinitely strong reinforcement
of anonyms, all of whom have native power enough to produce verse at
once elaborate in form and sovereign in spirit; and the peoples of the
_langue d'oc_, who hardly together formed a nation, were no exception
to the rule. That rule is a rule of "minor poetry," accomplished,
scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority.

[Sidenote: _But extraordinarily pedagogic._]

Yet their educating influence was undoubtedly strong, and their actual
production not to be scorned. In the capacity of teachers they were
not without strong influence on their Northern countrymen; they
certainly and positively acted as direct masters to the literary lyric
both of Italy and Spain; they at least shared with the _trouvères_ the
position of models to the Minnesingers. It is at first sight rather
surprising that, considering the intimate relations between England
and Aquitaine during the period--considering that at least one famous
troubadour, Bertran de Born, is known to have been concerned in the
disputes between Henry II. and his sons--Provençal should not have
exercised more direct influence over English literature. It was a
partly excusable mistake which made some English critics, who knew
that Richard Coeur de Lion, for instance, was himself not unversed
in the "manner of _trobar_," assert or assume, until within the
present century, that it did exercise such influence. But, as a matter
of fact, it did not; and the reason is sufficiently simple, or at
least (for it is double rather than simple) sufficiently clear.

[Sidenote: _Though not directly on English._]

In the first place, English was not, until quite the end of the
flourishing period of Provençal poetry, and specially at the period
above referred to, in a condition to profit by Provençal models; while
in the fourteenth century, when English connection with the south of
France was closer still, Provençal was in its decadence. And, in the
second place, the structure and spirit of the two tongues almost
forbade imitation of the one in the other. It was Northern, not
Southern, French that helped to make English proper out of
Anglo-Saxon; and the gap between Northern French and Southern French
themselves was far wider than between Provençal and the Peninsular
tongues. To which things, if any one pleases, he may add the
difference of the spirit of the two races; but this is always vague
and uncertain ground, and is best avoided when we can tread on the
firm land of history and literature proper. Such a rhyme-arrangement
as that above set forth is probably impossible in English; even now it
will be observed that Mr Swinburne, the greatest master of double and
treble rhymes that we have ever had, rarely succeeds in giving even
the former with a full spondaic effect of vowel such as is easy in
Provençal. In "The Garden of Proserpine" itself, as in the double
rhymes, where they occur, of "The Triumph of Time" (the greatest thing
ever written in the Provençal manner, and greater than anything in
Provençal), the second vowels of the rhymes are never full. And there
too, as I think invariably in English, the poet shows his feeling of
the intolerableness of continued double rhyme by making the odd verses
rhyme plump and with single sound.

Of poetry so little remarkable in individual manner or matter it is
impossible to give abstracts, such as those which have been easy, and
it may be hoped profitable, in some of the foregoing chapters; and
prolonged analyses of form are tedious, except to the expert and the
enthusiast. With some brief account, therefore, of the persons who
chiefly composed this remarkable mass of lyric we may close a notice
of the subject which is superficially inadequate to its importance,
but which, perhaps, will not seem so to those who are content not
merely to count pages but to weigh moments. The moment which Provençal
added to the general body of force in European literature was that of
a limited, somewhat artificial, but at the same time exquisitely
artful and finished lyrical form, so adapted to the most inviting of
the perennial motives of literature that it was sure to lead to
imitation and development. It gave means and held up models to those
who were able to produce greater effects than are to be found in its
own accomplishment: yet was not its accomplishment, despite what is
called its monotony, despite its limits and its defects, other than
admirable and precious.

[Sidenote: _Some troubadours._]

The "first warbler," Count William IX. of Poitiers, has already been
mentioned, and his date fixed at exactly the first year of our period.
His chief immediate successors or contemporaries were Cercamon
("Cherchemonde," _Cursor Mundi_); the above quoted Marcabrun, who is
said to have accompanied Cercamon in his wanderings, and who has left
much more work; and Bertrand de Ventadorn or Ventadour, perhaps the
best of the group, a farmer's son of the place from which he takes his
noble-sounding name, and a professional lover of the lady thereof. Of
Jaufre (Geoffrey) Rudel of Blaye, whose love for the lady of Tripoli,
never yet seen by him, and his death at first sight of her, supply,
with the tragedy of Cabestanh and the cannibal banquet, the two most
famous pieces of Troubadour anecdotic history, we have half-a-dozen
pieces. In succession to these, Count Rambaut of Orange and Countess
Beatrice of Die keep up the reputation of the _gai saber_ as an
aristocratic employment, and the former's poem--

    "Escoutatz mas no sai que s'es"

(in six-lined stanzas, rhymed _ababab_, with prose "tags" to each,
something in the manner of the modern comic song), is at least a
curiosity. The primacy of the whole school in its most flourishing
time, between 1150 and 1250, is disputed by Arnaut Daniel (a great
master of form, and as such venerated by his greater Italian pupils)
and Giraut de Bornelh, who is more fully represented in extant work
than most of his fellows, as we have more than fourscore pieces of
his. Peire or Peter Vidal, another typical troubadour, who was a
crusader, an exceedingly ingenious verse-smith, a great lover, and a
proficient in the fantastic pranks which rather brought the school
into discredit, inasmuch as he is said to have run about on all fours
in a wolfskin in honour of his mistress Loba (Lupa); Gaucelm Faidit
and Arnaut de Maroilh, Folquet of Marseilles, and Rambaut of Vaqueras;
the Monk of Montaudon and Bertrand de Born himself, who with Peire
Cardinal is the chief satirist (though the satire of the two takes
different forms); Guillem Figueira, the author of a long invective
against Rome, and Sordello of mysterious and contingent fame,--are
other chief members, and of some of them we have early, perhaps
contemporary, _Lives_, or at least anecdotes. For instance, the
Cabestanh or Cabestaing story comes from these. The last name of
importance in our period, if not the last of the right troubadours, is
usually taken to be that of Guiraut Riquier.

[Sidenote: _Criticism of Provençal._]

It would scarcely be fair to say that the exploit attributed to
Rambaut of Vaqueras, a poet of the very palmiest time, at the juncture
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--that of composing a poem in
lines written successively in three different forms of Provençal
(_langue d'oc_ proper, Gascon, and Catalan), in _langue d'oïl_, and in
Italian, with a _coda_ line jumbled up of all five--is a final
criticism at once of the merits and the defects of this literature.
But it at least indicates the lines of such a criticism. By its
marvellous suppleness, sweetness, and adaptation to the verbal and
metrical needs of poetry, Provençal served--in a fashion probably
impossible to the stiffer if more virile tongues--as an example in
point of form to these tongues themselves: and it achieved, at the
same time with a good deal of mere gymnastic, exercises in form of the
most real and abiding beauty. But it had as a language too little
character of its own, and was too fatally apt to shade into the other
languages--French on the one hand, Spanish and Italian on the
other--with which it was surrounded, and to which it was akin. And
coming to perfection at a time when no modern thought was distinctly
formed, when positive knowledge was at a low ebb, and when it had
neither the stimulus of vigorous national life nor the healthy
occupation of what may be called varied literary business, it tended
to become, on the whole, too much of a plaything merely. Now, schools
and playgrounds are both admirable things, and necessary to man; but
what is done in both is only an exercise or a relaxation from
exercise. Neither man nor literature can stay either in class-room or
playing-field for ever, and Provençal had scarcely any other places of
abode to offer.




CHAPTER IX.

THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS.

     LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER. LATE GREEK ROMANCE. ITS
     DIFFICULTIES AS A SUBJECT. ANNA COMNENA, ETC. 'HYSMINIAS AND
     HYSMINE.' ITS STYLE. ITS STORY. ITS HANDLING. ITS
     "DECADENCE." LATENESS OF ITALIAN. THE "SARACEN" THEORY. THE
     "FOLK-SONG" THEORY. CIULLO D'ALCAMO. HEAVY DEBT TO FRANCE.
     YET FORM AND SPIRIT BOTH ORIGINAL. LOVE-LYRIC IN DIFFERENT
     EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. POSITION OF SPANISH. CATALAN-PROVENÇAL.
     GALICIAN-PORTUGUESE. CASTILIAN. BALLADS? THE 'POEMA DEL
     CID.' A SPANISH "CHANSON DE GESTE." IN SCHEME AND SPIRIT.
     DIFFICULTIES OF ITS PROSODY. BALLAD-METRE THEORY.
     IRREGULARITY OF LINE. OTHER POEMS. APOLLONIUS AND MARY OF
     EGYPT. BERCEO. ALFONSO EL SABIO.


[Sidenote: _Limitations of this chapter._]

There is something more than a freak, or a mere geographical
adaptation, in taking together, and at the last, the contributions of
the three peninsulas which form the extreme south of Europe. For in
the present scheme they form, as it were, but an appendix to the
present book. The dying literature of Greece--if indeed it be not more
proper to describe this phase of Byzantine writing as ghostly rather
than moribund--presents at most but one point of interest, and that
rather a _Frage_, a thesis, than a solid literary contribution. The
literature of Italy prior to the fourteenth century is such a daughter
of Provençal on the one hand, and is so much more appropriately to be
taken in connection with Dante than by itself on the other, that it
can claim admission only to be, as it were, "laid on the table." And
that of Spain, though full of attraction, had also but just begun, and
yields but one certain work of really high importance, the _Poema del
Cid_, for serious comment in our pages. In the case of Spain, and
still more in that of Italy, the scanty honour apparently paid here
will be amply made up in other volumes of the series. As much can
hardly be said of Greece. Conscientious chroniclers of books may,
indeed, up to the sixteenth century find something which, though
scarcely literature, is at any rate written matter. And at the very
last there is the attempt, rather respectable than successful, to
re-create at once the language and the literature, for the use of
Greeks who are at least questionably Hellenic, in relation to forms
and subjects separated by more than a millennium--by nearly two
millennia--from the forms and the subjects in regard to which Greek
was once a living speech. But Greek literature, the living literary
contribution of Greek to Europe, almost ceases with the latest poets
of the Anthology.

[Sidenote: _Late Greek romance._]

In what has been called the "ghost" time, however, in that portion of
it which belongs to our present period, there is one shadow that
flutters with a nearer approach to substance than most. Some glance
has been made above at the question, "What was the exact relation
between western romance and that later form of Greek novel-writing of
which the chief relic is the _Hysminias and Hysmine_[180] of
Eustathius Macrembolita?" Were these stories, many of which must be
lost, or have not yet been recovered, direct, and in their measure
original and independent, continuations of the earlier school of Greek
romance proper? Did they in that case, through the Crusades or
otherwise, come under the notice of the West, and serve as stimulants,
if not even directly as patterns, to the far greater achievements of
Western romance itself? Do they, on the other hand, owe something to
models still farther East? Or are they, as has sometimes been hinted,
copies of Western romance itself? Had the still ingenious, though
hopelessly effeminate, Byzantine mind caught up the literary style of
the visitors it feared but could not keep out?

[Footnote 180: Ed. Hercher, _Erotici Scriptores Græci_ (2 vols.,
Leipzig, 1858), ii. 161-286.]

[Sidenote: _Its difficulties as a subject._]

All these questions are questions exceedingly proper to be stated in a
book of this kind; not quite so proper to be worked out in it, even if
the working out were possible. But it is impossible for two
causes--want of room, which might not be fatal; and want of
ascertained fact, which cannot but be so. Despite the vigorous work of
recent generations on all literary and historical subjects, no one has
yet succeeded, and until some one more patient of investigation than
fertile in theory arises, no one is likely to succeed, in laying down
the exact connection between Eastern, Western, and, as go-between,
Byzantine literature. Even in matters which are the proper domain of
history itself, such as those of the Trojan and Alexandrine
Apocryphas, much is still in the vague. In the case of Western
Romance, of the later Greek stories, and of such Eastern matter as,
for instance, the story of Sharkan and that of Zumurrud and her master
in the _Arabian Nights_, the vague rules supreme. There were, perhaps,
_trouvère_-knights in the garrisons of Edessa or of Jôf who could have
told us all about it. But nobody did tell: or if anybody did, the tale
has not survived.

[Sidenote: _Anna Comnena, &c._]

But this interest of problem is not the only one that attaches to the
"drama," as he calls it, of Eustathius or Eumathius "the philosopher,"
who flourished at some time between the twelfth and the fourteenth
century, and is therefore pretty certainly ours. For the purposes of
literary history the book deserves to be taken as the typical
contribution of Greek during the period, much better than the famous
_Alexiad_ of Anna Comnena[181] in history, or the verse romances of
Eustathius's probable contemporaries Theodorus Prodromus and Nicetas
Eugenianus.[182] The princess's book, though historically important,
and by no means disagreeable to read, is, as literature, chiefly
remarkable as exhibiting the ease and the comparative success with
which Greek lent itself to the formation of an artificial _style
noble_, more like the writing of the average (not the better)
Frenchman of the eighteenth century than it is like anything else. It
is this peculiarity which has facilitated the construction of the
literary _pastiche_ called Modern Greek, and perhaps it is this which
will long prevent the production of real literature in that language
or pseudo-language. On the other hand, the books of Theodorus and
Nicetas, devoted, according to rule, to the loves respectively of
Rhodanthe and Dosicles, of Charicles and Drosilla, are written in
iambic trimeters of the very worst and most wooden description. It is
doubtful whether even the great Tragic poets could have made the
trimeter tolerable as the vehicle of a long story. In the hands of
Theodorus and Nicetas its monotony becomes utterly sickening, while
the level of the composition of neither is much above that of a by no
means gifted schoolboy, even if we make full allowance for the changes
in prosody, and especially in quantity, which had set in for Greek as
they had for other languages. The question whether these iambics are
more or less terrible than the "political verses"[183] of the Wise
Manasses,[184] which usually accompany them in editions, and which
were apparently inserted in what must have been the inconceivably
dreary romance of "Aristander and Callithea," must be left to
individual taste to decide. Manasses also wrote a History of the World
in the same rhythm, and it is possible that he may have occasionally
forgotten which of the two books he was writing at any given time.

[Footnote 181: Ed. Reifferscheid. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1884.]

[Footnote 182: Following Eustathius in Hercher, _op. cit._]

[Footnote 183: These political verses are fifteen-syllabled, with a
cæsura at the eighth, and in a rhythm ostensibly accentual.]

[Footnote 184: _Erotici Scriptores_, ii. 555.]

[Sidenote: Hysminias and Hysmine.]

[Sidenote: _Its style._]

But _Hysminias and Hysmine_[185] has interests of character which
distinguish its author and itself, not merely from the herd of
chroniclers and commentators who make up the bulk of Byzantine
literature so-called, but even from such more respectable but somewhat
featureless work as Anna Comnena's. It is not a good book; but it is
by no means so extremely bad as the traditional judgment (not always,
perhaps, based on or buttressed by direct acquaintance with the
original) is wont to give out. On one at least of the sides of this
interest it is quite useless to read it except in the original, for
the attraction is one of style. Neither Lyly nor any of our late
nineteenth-century "stylists" has outgone, perhaps none has touched,
Eustathius in euphuism. It is needless to say that while the
simplicity of the best Greek style usually prefers the most direct and
natural order, its suppleness lends itself to almost any gymnastic,
and its lucidity prevents total confusion from arising. Eustathius has
availed himself of these opportunities for "raising his mother tongue
to a higher power" to the very utmost. No translation can do justice
to the elaborate foppery of even the first sentence,[186] with its
coquetry of arrangement, its tormented structure of phrase, its
jingle of sound-repetition, its desperate rejection of simplicity in
every shape and form. To describe precisely the means resorted to
would take a chapter at least. They are astonishingly modern--the
present tense, the use of catchwords like [Greek: holos], the
repetitions and jingles above referred to. Excessively elaborate
description of word-painting, though modern too, can hardly be said to
be a novelty: it had distinguished most of the earlier Greek
novelists, especially Achilles Tatius. But there is something in the
descriptions of _Hysminias and Hysmine_ more mediæval than those of
Achilles, more like the _Romance of the Rose_, to which, indeed, there
is a curious resemblance of atmosphere in the book. Triplets of
epithet--"a man athirst, and parched, and boiling"--meet us. There is
a frequent economy of conjunctions. There is the resort to
personification--for instance, in the battle of Love and Shame, which
serves as climax to the elaborate description of the lovers' kissing.
In short, all our old friends--the devices which every generation of
seekers after style parades with such a touching conviction that they
are quite new, and which every literary student knows to be as old as
literature--are to be found here. The language is in its decadence:
the writer has not much to say. But it is surprising how much, with
all his drawbacks, he accomplishes.

[Footnote 185: Sometimes spelt _Ismenias and Ismene_. I believe it was
first published in an Italian translation of the late Renaissance, and
it has appeared in other languages since. But it is only worth reading
in its own.]

[Footnote 186: [Greek: Polis Eurykômis kai talla men agathê, hoti kai
thalattê stephanoutai kai poilmois katarreitai kai leimôsi koma kai
tryphais euthêneitai pantodapais, ta d' eis theous eusebês, kai hyper
tas chrysas Athênas holê bômos, holê thyma, theois anathêma.]]

[Sidenote: _Its story._]

Whether the book, either as an individual composition, or more
probably as a member of an extinct class, is as important in matter
and in tone as it is in style is more doubtful. The style itself, as
to which there is no doubt, may perhaps colour the matter too much.
All that can be safely said is that it reads with distinctly modern
effect after Heliodorus and Achilles, Longus and Xenophon. The story
is not much. Hysminias, a beautiful youth of the city of Eurycomis, is
chosen for a religious embassy or _kerukeia_ to the neighbouring town
of Aulicomis. The task of acting as host to him falls on one
Sosthenes, whose daughter Hysmine strikes Hysminias with love at first
sight. The progress of their passion is facilitated by the pretty old
habit of girls acting as cupbearers, and favoured by accident to no
small degree, the details of the courtship being sometimes luscious,
but adjusted to less fearless old fashions than the wooings of Chloe
or of Melitta. Adventures by land and sea follow; and, of course, a
happy ending.

[Sidenote: _Its handling._]

But what is really important is the way in which these things are
handled. It has as mere story-telling little merit: the question is
whether the spirit, the conduct, the details, do not show a temper
much more akin to mediæval than to classical treatment. I think they
do. Hysminias is rather a silly, and more than rather a
chicken-hearted, fellow; his conduct on board ship when his beloved
incurs the fate of Jonah is eminently despicable: but then he was
countryman _ex hypothesi_ of Mourzoufle, not of Villehardouin. The
"battailous" spirit of the West is not to be expected in a Byzantine
sophist. Whether something of its artistic and literary spirit is not
to be detected in him is a more doubtful question. For my part, I
cannot read of Hysmine without being reminded of Nicolette, as I am
never reminded in other parts of the _Scriptores Erotici_.

[Sidenote: _Its "decadence."_]

Yet, experiment or remainder, imitation or original, one cannot but
feel that the book, like all the literature to which it belongs, has
more of the marks of death than of life in it. Its very elegances are
"rose-coloured curtains for the doctors"--the masque of a moribund
art. Some of them may have been borrowed by, rather than from, younger
and hopefuller craftsmanship, but the general effect is the same. We
are here face to face with those phenomena of "decadence," which,
though they have often been exaggerated and wrongly interpreted, yet
surely exist and reappear at intervals--the contortions of style that
cannot afford to be natural, the tricks of word borrowed from literary
reminiscence ([Greek: holos] itself in this way is at least as old as
Lucian), the tormented effort at detail of description, at "analysis"
of thought and feeling, of incident and moral. The cant phrase about
being "_né trop tard dans un monde trop vieux_" has been true of many
persons, while more still have affected to believe it true of
themselves, since Eustathius: it is not much truer of any one than of
him.

Curious as such specimens of a dying literature may be, it cannot but
be refreshing to go westward from it to the nascent literatures of
Italy and of Spain, literatures which have a future instead of merely
a past, and which, independently of that somewhat illegitimate
advantage, have characteristics not unable to bear comparison with
those of the past, even had it existed.

[Sidenote: _Lateness of Italian._]

Between the earliest Italian and the earliest Spanish literature,
however, there are striking differences to be noted. Persons ignorant
of the usual course of literary history might expect in Italian a
regular and unbroken development, literary as well as linguistic, of
Latin. But, as a matter of fact, the earliest vernacular literature in
Italy shows very little trace of classical influence[187]: and though
that influence appears strongly in the age immediately succeeding
ours, and helps to produce the greatest achievements of the language,
it may be questioned whether its results were wholly beneficial. In
the earliest Italian, or rather Sicilian, poetry quite different
influences are perceptible. One of them--the influence of the
literatures of France, both Southern and Northern--is quite certain
and incontestable. The intercourse between the various Romance-speaking
nations surrounding the western Mediterranean was always close; and
the development of Provençal literature far anticipated, both in date
and form, that of any other. Moreover, some northern influence was
undoubtedly communicated by the Norman conquests of the eleventh
century. But two other strains--one of which has long been asserted
with the utmost positiveness, while the latter has been a favourite
subject of Italian patriotism since the political unification of the
country--are much more dubious. Because it is tolerably certain that
Italian poetry in the modern literary sense arose in Sicily, and
because Sicily was beyond all doubt almost more Saracen than Frank up
to the twelfth century, it was long, and has not quite ceased to be,
the fashion to assign a great, if not the greatest, part to Arabian
literature. Not merely the sonnet (which seems to have arisen in the
two Sicilies), but even the entire system of rhymed lyrical verse,
common in the modern languages, has been thus referred to the East by
some.

[Footnote 187: I have not thought it proper, considering the system of
excluding mere hypothesis which I have adopted, to give much place
here to that interesting theory of modern "Romanists" which will have
it that Latin classical literature was never much more than a literary
artifice, and that the modern Romance tongues and literatures connect
directly, through that famous _lingua romana rustica_ and earlier
forms of it, vigorous though inarticulate, in classical times
themselves, with primitive poetry--"Saturnian," "Fescennine," and what
not. All this is interesting, and it cannot be said, in the face of
inscriptions, of the scraps of popular speech in the classics, &c., to
be entirely guesswork. But a great deal of it is.]

[Sidenote: _The "Saracen" theory._]

This matter can probably never be pronounced upon, with complete
satisfaction to readers, except by a literary critic who is equally
competent in Eastern and Western history and literature, a person who
certainly has not shown himself as yet. What can be said with some
confidence is, that the Saracen theory of Literature, like the Saracen
theory of Architecture, so soon as it is carried beyond the advancing
of a possible but slight and very indeterminate influence and
colouring, has scarcely the slightest foundation in known facts, and
is very difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with facts that are
known, while it is intrinsically improbable to the very highest
degree. As has been pointed out above, the modern prosody of Europe is
quite easily and logically explicable as the result of the
juxtaposition of the Latin rhythms of the Church service, and the
verse systems indigenous in the different barbaric nations. That the
peculiar cast and colour of early Italian poetry may owe something of
that difference which it exhibits, even in comparison with Provençal,
much more with French, most of all with Teutonic poetry, to contact
with Arabian literature, is not merely possible but probable. Anything
more must be regarded as not proven, and not even likely.

[Sidenote: _The "folk-song" theory._]

[Sidenote: _Ciullo d'Alcamo._]

Of late, however, attempts have been made to assign the greater part
of the matter to no foreign influence whatever, but to native
folk-songs, in which at the present time, and no doubt for a long time
back, Italy is beyond all question rich above the wont of European
countries. But this attempt, however interesting and patriotic,
labours under the same fatal difficulties which beset similar attempts
in other languages. It may be regarded as perfectly certain that we do
not possess any Italian popular poem in any form which can have
existed prior to the thirteenth century; and only such poems would be
of any use. To argue, as is always argued in such cases, that existing
examples show, by this or that characteristic, that in other forms
they must have existed in the twelfth century or even earlier, is only
an instance of that learned childishness which unfortunately rules so
widely in literary, though it has been partly expelled from general,
history. "May have been" and "must have been" are phrases of no
account to a sound literary criticism, which insists upon "was." And
in reference to this particular subject of Early Italian Poetry the
reader may be referred to the very learned dissertation[188] of
Signor Alessandro d'Ancona on the _Contrasto_ of Ciullo d'Alcamo,
which has been commonly regarded as the first specimen of Italian
poetry, and has been claimed for the beginning of the thirteenth
century, if not the end of the twelfth. He will, if the gods have made
him in the least critical, rise from the perusal with the pretty clear
notion that whether Ciullo d'Alcamo was "such a person," or whether he
was Cielo dal Camo; whether the _Contrasto_ was written on the bridge
of the twelfth and thirteenth century, or fifty years later; whether
the poet was a warrior of high degree or an obscure folk-singer;
whether his dialect has been Tuscanised or is still Sicilian with
French admixture,--these are things not to be found out, things of
mere opinion and hypothesis, things good to write programmes and
theses on, but only to be touched in the most gingerly manner by sober
history.

[Footnote 188: See _Studj sulla Letteratura Italiana dei Primi
Secoli_. 2d ed. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1891. Pp. 241-458.]

To the critic, then, who deals with Dante--and especially to him,
inasmuch as he has the privilege of dealing with that priceless
document, the _De Vulgari Eloquio_,[189]--may be left Ciullo, or
Cielo, and his successors the Frederician set, from the Emperor
himself and Piero delle Vigne downwards. More especially to him
belong the poets of the late thirteenth century, Dante's own immediate
predecessors, contemporaries, and in a way masters--Guinicelli,
Cavalcanti, Sinibaldi, and Guittone d'Arezzo (to whom the canonical
form of the sonnet used at one time to be attributed, and may be
again); Brunetto Latini, of fiery memory; Fra Jacopone,[190] great in
Latin, eccentric in Italian, and others. It will be not merely
sufficient, but in every way desirable, here to content ourselves with
an account of the general characteristics of this poetry (contemporary
prose, though existent, is of little importance), and to preface this
by some remarks on the general influences and contributions of
material with which Italian literature started.

[Footnote 189: Obtainable in many forms, separately and with Dante's
works. The Latin is easy enough, but there is a good English
translation by A.G. Ferrers Howell (London, 1890). Those who like
facsimiles may find one of the Grenoble MS., with a learned
introduction, edited by MM. Maignien and Prompt (Venice, 1892).]

[Footnote 190: Authorities differ oddly on Jacopone da Todi (_v._ p.
8) in his Italian work. Professor d'Andrea's book, cited above, opens
with an excellent essay on him.]

[Sidenote: _Heavy debt to France._]

There is no valid reason for doubting that these influences and
materials were mainly French. As has been partly noted in a former
chapter, the French _chansons de geste_ made an early and secure
conquest of the Italian ear in the north, partly in translation,
partly in the still more unmistakable form of macaronic Italianised
French. It has indeed been pointed out that the Sicilian school was to
some extent preceded by that of the Trevisan March, the most famous
member of which was Sordello. It would appear, however, that this
school was even more distinctly and exclusively a branch of Provençal
than the Sicilian; and that the special characteristic of the latter
did not appear in it. The Carlovingian poems (and to some, though a
much less, extent the Arthurian) made a deep impression both on
popular and on cultivated Italian taste as a matter of subject; but
their form, after its first results in variation and translation, was
not perpetuated; and when Italian epic made its appearance some
centuries later, it inclined for the most part to burlesque, or at
least to the tragi-comic, until the serious genius of Tasso gave it a
new, but perhaps a not wholly natural, direction.

[Sidenote: _Yet form and spirit both original._]

In that earliest, really national, and vernacular school, however,
which has been the chief subject of discourse, the direction was
mainly and almost wholly towards lyric; and the supremacy of the
sonnet and the _canzone_ is the less surprising because their rivals
were for the most part less accomplished examples of the same kind.
The _Contrasto_[191] of Ciullo itself is a poem in lyric stanzas of
five lines--three of sixteen syllables, rhymed _a_, and two
hendecasyllabics, rhymed _b_. The rhymes are fairly exact, though
sometimes loose, _o_ and _u_, _e_ and _i_, being permitted to pair.
The poem, a simple discourse or dispute between two lovers, something
in the style of some French _pastourelles_, displays however, with
some of the exaggeration and stock phrase of Provençal (perhaps we
might say of all) love-poetry, little or nothing of that peculiar
mystical tone which we have been accustomed to associate with early
Italian verse, chiefly represented, as it is to most readers, by the
_Vita Nuova_, where the spirit is slightly altered in itself, and
speaks in the mouth of a poet greater in his weakest moments than the
whole generation from Ciullo to Guittone in their strongest. This
spirit, showing itself in the finer and more masculine form in Dante
himself, in the more feminine and weaker in Petrarch, not merely gives
us sublime or exquisite poetry in the fourteenth century, but in the
sixteenth contributes very largely to launch, on fresh careers of
achievement, the whole poetry of France and of England. But it is fair
to acknowledge its presence in Dante's predecessors, and at the same
time to confess that they themselves do not seem to have learned it
from any one, or at least from any single master or group of masters.
The Provençal poets deify passion, and concentrate themselves wholly
upon it; but it is seldom, indeed, that we find the "metaphysical"
touch in the Provençals proper. And it is this--this blending of love
and religion, of scholasticism and _minnedienst_ (to borrow a word
wanted in other languages than that in which it exists)--that is
attributed by the partisans of the East to Arabian influence, or at
least to Arabian contact. Some stress has been laid on the testimony
of Ibn Zobeir about the end of the twelfth century, and consequently
not long before even the latest date assigned to Ciullo, that Alcamo
itself was entirely Mussulman in belief.

[Footnote 191: The text with comment, stanza by stanza, is to be found
in the book cited above.]

[Sidenote: _Love-lyric in different European countries._]

On these points it is not possible to decide: the point on which to
lay the finger for our present purpose is that the contribution of
Italy at this time was, on the one hand, the further refinement of the
Provençal attention to form, and the production of one capital
instrument of European poetry--the sonnet; on the other, the
conveyance, by means of this instrument and others, of a further, and
in one way almost final, variation of the poetic expression of love.
It is of the first importance to note the characteristics, in
different nations at nearly the same time, of this rise of lyrical
love-poetry. We find it in Northern and Southern France, probably at
about the same time; in Germany and Italy somewhat later, and almost
certainly in a state of pupilship to the French. All, in different
ways, display a curious and delightful metrical variety, as if the
poet were trying to express the eternal novelty, combined with the
eternal oneness, of passion by variations of metrical form. In each
language these variations reflect national peculiarities--in Northern
French and German irregular bursts with a multiplicity of inarticulate
refrain, in Provençal and Italian a statelier and more graceful but
somewhat more monotonous arrangement and proportion.

And the differences of spirit are equally noticeable, though one must,
as always, be careful against generalising too rashly as to their
identity with supposed national characteristics. The innumerable
love-poems of the _trouvères_, pathetic sometimes, and sometimes
impassioned, are yet, as a rule, cheerful, not very deep, verging not
seldom on pure comedy. The so-called monotonous enthusiasm of the
troubadour, his stock-images, his musical form, sublime to a certain
extent the sensual side of love, but confine themselves to that side
merely, as a rule, or leave it only to indulge in the purely
fantastic.

Of those who borrowed from them, the Germans, as we should expect,
lean rather to the Northern type, but vary it with touches of purity,
and other touches of religion; the Italians to the Southern, exalting
it into a mysticism which can hardly be called devotional, though it
at times wears the garb of devotion.[192] Among those collections for
which the student of letters pines, not the least desirable would be a
_corpus_ of the lyric poets of Europe during the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. We should then see--after a fashion difficult if
not impossible in the sporadic study of texts edited piecemeal, and
often overlaid with comment not of the purely literary kind--at once
the general similarity and the local or individual exceptions, the
filiation of form, the diffusion of spirit. No division of literature,
perhaps, would serve better as a kind of chrestomathy for illustrating
the positions on which the scheme of this series is based. And though
it is overshadowed by the achievements of its own pupils; though it
has a double portion of the mediæval defect of "school"-work--of the
almost tedious similarity of different men's manner--the Italian
poetry, which is practically the Italian literature, of the
thirteenth century would be not the least interesting part of such a
_corpus_.

[Footnote 192: "Sacro erotismo," "baccanale cristiano," are phrases of
Professor d'Andrea's.]

[Sidenote: _Position of Spanish._]

The Spanish literature[193] with which we have to do is probably
inferior in bulk even to that of Italy; it is certainly far less rich
in named and more or less known authors, while it is a mere drop as
compared with the Dead Sea of Byzantine writing. But by virtue of at
least one really great composition, the famous _Poema del Cid_, it
ranks higher than either of these groups in sheer literary estimation,
while from the point of view of literary history it is perhaps more
interesting than the Italian, and certainly far more interesting than
the Greek. It does not rank with French as an instance of real
literary preponderance and chieftainship; or with German as an example
of the sudden if short blossoming of a particular period and dialect
into great if not wholly original literary prominence; much less with
Icelandic and Provençal, as containing a "smooth and round" expression
of certain definite characteristics of literature and life once for
all embodied. It has to give way not merely to Provençal, but to
Italian itself as an example of early scholarship in literary form.
But it makes a most interesting pair to English as an instance of
vigorous and genuine national literary development; while, if it is
inferior to English, as showing that fatal departmental or provincial
separation, that "particularism" which has in many ways been so
disastrous to the Peninsula, it once more, by virtue of the _Poema_,
far excels our own production of the period in positive achievement,
and foretells the masterpieces of the national poetry in a way very
different from any that can be said to be shown in Layamon or the
_Ancren Riwle_, even in the Arthurian romances and the early lyrics.

[Footnote 193: Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an
extent commensurate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study
of the older forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in
English, and I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor's
_History of Spanish Literature_ (3 vols., London, 1849, and reprinted
since), in the early part of which he had the invaluable assistance of
the late Don Pascual de Gayangos. Some scattered papers may be found
in _Romania_. Fortunately, almost all the known literary materials for
our period are to be found in Sanchez' _Poesias Castellanas Anteriores
al Siglo XV._, the Paris (1842) reprint of which by Ochoa, with a few
valuable additions, I have used. The _Poema del Cid_ is, except in
this old edition, rather discreditably inaccessible--Vollmöller's
German edition (Halle, 1879), the only modern or critical one, being,
I understand, out of print. It would be a good deed if the Clarendon
Press would furnish students with this, the only rival of _Beowulf_
and the _Chanson de Roland_ in the combination of antiquity and
interest.]

[Sidenote: _Catalan-Provençal._]

The earliest literature which, in the wide sense, can be called
Spanish divides itself into three heads--Provençal-Catalan;
Galician-Portuguese; and Castilian or Spanish proper. Not merely
Catalonia itself, but Aragon, Navarre, and even Valencia, were
linguistically for centuries mere outlying provinces of the _langue
d'oc_. The political circumstances which attended the dying-out of the
Provençal school at home, for a time even encouraged the continuance
of Provençal literature in Spain: and to a certain extent Spanish and
Provençal appear to have been written, if not spoken, bilingually by
the same authors. But for the general purpose of this book the fact of
the persistence of the "Limousin" tongue in Catalonia and (strongly
dialected) in Valencia having been once noted, not much further notice
need be taken of this division.

[Sidenote: _Galician-Portuguese._]

So also we may, with a brief distinctive notice, pass by the Galician
dialects which found their perfected literary form later in
Portuguese. No important early literature remains in Galician, and of
Portuguese itself there does not seem to be anything certainly dating
before the fourteenth century, or anything even probably attributed to
an earlier time except a certain number of ballads, as to the real
antiquity of which a sane literary criticism has always to reiterate
the deepest and most irremovable doubts. The fact of the existence of
this dialect, and of its development later into the language of
Camoens, is of high interest: the positive documents which at this
time it offers for comment are very scanty indeed.

[Sidenote: _Castilian._]

With Castilian--that is to say, Spanish proper--the case is very
different. It cannot claim any great antiquity: and as is the case
with Italian, and to a less degree with French also, the processes by
which it came into existence out of Latin are hid from us to a degree
surprising, even when we remember the political and social welter in
which Europe lay between the fifth and the eleventh centuries. It is,
of course, a most natural and constant consideration that the
formation of literary languages was delayed in the Romance-speaking
countries by the fact that everybody of any education at all had Latin
ready to his hands. And the exceptional circumstances of Spain,
which, after hardly settling down under the Visigothic conquest, was
whelmed afresh by the Moorish invasion, have not been excessively
insisted upon by the authorities who have dealt with the subject. But
still it cannot but strike us as peculiar that the document--the
famous Charter of Avilés,[194] which plays in the history of Spanish
something like the same part which the Eulalia hymn and the Strasburg
Oaths play in French--dates only from the middle of the twelfth
century, more than three hundred years after the Strasburg
interchange, and at a time when French was not merely a regularly
constituted language, but already had no inconsiderable literature. It
is true that the Avilés document is not quite so jargonish as the
Strasburg, but the same mark--the presence of undigested
Latin--appears in both.

[Footnote 194: Extracts of this appear in Ticknor, Appendix A., iii.
352, note.]

It is, however, fair to remember that prose is almost invariably later
than poetry, and that official prose of all periods has a tendency to
the barbarous. If the Avilés charter be genuine, and of its assigned
date, it does not follow that at the very same time poetry of a much
less uncouth character was not being composed in Spanish. And as a
matter of fact we have, independently of the ballads, the great _Poema
del Cid_, which has sometimes been supposed to be of antiquity equal
to this, and which can hardly be more than some fifty years later.

[Sidenote: _Ballads?_]

As to the ballads, what has been said about those in Portuguese must
be repeated at somewhat greater length. There is no doubt at all that
these ballads (which are well known even to English readers by the
masterly paraphrases of Lockhart) are among the finest of their kind.
They rank with, and perhaps above, the best of the Scottish poems of
the same class. But we have practically, it would seem, no earlier
authority for them than the great _Cancioneros_ of the sixteenth
century. It is, of course, said that the _Cronica General_ (see
_post_), which is three centuries earlier, was in part compiled from
these ballads. But, in the first place, we do not know that this was
the fact, or that the ballads were not compiled from the Chronicles,
or from traditions which the Chronicles embodied. And in the second
place, if the Chronicles were compiled from ballads, we do not know
that these ballads, as pieces of finished literature and apart from
their subjects, were anything at all like the ballads that we possess.
This last consideration--an uncomfortable one, but one which the
critic is bound to urge--at once disposes of, or reduces to a minimum,
the value of the much-vaunted testimony of a Latin poem, said to date
before the middle of the eleventh century, that "Roderic, called _Mio
Cid_," was sung about. No doubt he was; and no doubt, as the
expression _Mio Cid_ is not a translation from the Arabic, but a quite
evidently genuine vernacularity, he was sung of in those terms. But
the testimony leaves us as much in doubt as ever about the age of the
_existing_ Cid ballads. And if this be the case about the Cid ballads,
the subject of which did not die till hard upon the opening of the
twelfth century itself, or about those concerning the Infantes of
Lara, how much more must it be so with those that deal with such
subjects as Bernardo del Carpio and the Charlemagne invasion, three
hundred years earlier, when it is tolerably certain that there was
nothing at all resembling what we now call Spanish? It seems sometimes
to be thought that the antiquity of the subject of a ballad comports
in some strange fashion the antiquity of the ballad itself; than which
nothing can be much more disputable. Indeed the very metre of the
ballads themselves--which, though simple, is by no means of a very
primitive character, and represents the "rubbing down" of popular
dialect and unscholarly prosody for a long time against the regular
structure of Latin--disproves the extreme earliness of the poems in
anything like their present form. The comparatively uncouth, though
not lawless metres of early Teutonic poetry are in themselves warrants
of their antiquity: the regularity, not strait-laced but unmistakable,
of the Spanish ballads is at least a strong suggestion that they are
not very early.

[Sidenote: _The_ Poema del Cid.]

At any rate there is no sort of proof that they _are_ early; and in
this history it has been made a rule to demand proof, or at least the
very strongest probability. If there be any force in the argument at
the end of the last paragraph, it tells (unless, indeed, the latest
critical hypothesis be adopted, of which more presently) as much in
favour of the antiquity of the _Poema del Cid_ as it tells against
that of the ballads. This piece, which has come down to us in a
mutilated condition, though it does not seem likely that its present
length (3744 lines) has been very greatly affected by the mutilations,
has been regarded as dating not earlier than the middle of the twelfth
or later than the middle of the thirteenth century--that is to say, in
the first case, within a lifetime of the events it professes to deal
with; in the second, at scarcely more than two lifetimes from them.
The historical personality of Ruy Diaz de Bivar, el Cid Campeador
(?1040-1099), does not concern us, though it is perfectly well
established in general by the testimony of his enemies, as well as by
that of his countrymen, and is indeed almost unique in history as that
of a national hero at once of history and of romance. The Roderic who
regained what a Roderic had lost may have been--must have been,
indeed--presented with many facts and achievements which he never
performed, and there may be no small admixture of these in the _Poema_
itself; but that does not matter at all to literature. It would not,
strictly speaking, matter to literature if he had never existed. But
not every one can live up to this severe standard in things literary;
and it is undoubtedly a comfort to the natural man to know that the
Cid certainly did exist, and that, to all but certainty, his blood
runs in the veins of the Queen of England and of the Emperor of
Austria, not to mention the King of Spain, to-day.

[Sidenote: _A Spanish_ chanson de geste.]

But in the criticism of his poetical history this is in strictness
irrelevant. It is unlucky for that criticism that Southey and
Ticknor--the two best critics, not merely in English but in any
language, who have dealt with Spanish literature--were quite
unacquainted with the French _chansons de geste_; while of late,
discussion of the _Poema_, as of other early Spanish literature, has
been chiefly abandoned to philologists. No one familiar with these
_chansons_ (the greatest and oldest of which, the _Chanson de Roland_,
was to all but a certainty in existence when Ruy Diaz was in his
cradle, and a hundred years before the _Poema_ was written) can fail
to see in a moment that this latter is itself a _chanson de geste_. It
was written much nearer to the facts than any one of its French
analogues, except those of the Crusading cycle, and it therefore had
at least the chance of sticking much closer to those facts. Nor is
there much doubt that it does. We may give up as many as we please of
its details; we may even, if, not pleasing, we choose to obey the
historians, give up that famous and delightful episode of the Counts
of Carrion, which indeed is not so much an episode as the main subject
of the greater part of the poem. But--partly because of its nearness
to the subject, partly because of the more intense national belief in
the hero, most of all, perhaps, because the countrymen of Cervantes
already possessed that faculty of individual, not merely of typical,
characterisation which has been, as a rule, denied to the countrymen
of Corneille--the poem is far more _alive_ than the not less heroic
histories of Roncesvaux or of Aliscans. Even in the _Nibelungenlied_,
to which it has been so often compared, the men (not the women--there
the Teutonic genius bears its usual bell) are, with the exception,
perhaps, of Hagen, shadowy, compared not merely to Rodrigo himself,
but to Bermuez and Muño Gustioz, to Asur Gonzalez and Minaya.

[Sidenote: _In scheme and spirit._]

Still the _chanson_ stamp is unmistakably on it from the very
beginning, where the Cid, like three-fourths of the _chanson_ heroes
themselves, has experienced royal ingratitude, through the vaunts and
the fighting, and the stock phrases (_abaxan las lanzas_ following
_abrazan los escudos_, and the like), to that second marriage
connecting the Cid afresh with royalty, which is almost as common in
the _chansons_ as the initial ingratitude. It would be altogether
astonishing if the _chansons_ had not made their way, when French
literature was making it everywhere, into the country nearest to
France. In face of the _Poema del Cid_, it is quite certain that they
had done so, and that here as elsewhere French literature performed
its vigorous, and in a way self-sacrificing, function of teaching
other nations to do better than their teacher.

[Sidenote: _Difficulties of its prosody._]

When we pass from comparisons of general scheme and spirit to those of
metrical form, the matter presents greater puzzles. As observed above,
the earliest French _chansons_ known to us are written in a strict
syllabic metre, with a regular cæsura, and arranged in distinct though
not uniformly long _laisses_, each tipped with an identical
assonance. Further, it so happens that this very assonance is one of
the best known characteristics of Spanish poetry, which is the only
body of verse except old French to show it in any great volume or
variety. The Spanish ballads are uniformly written in trochaic
octosyllables (capable of reduction or extension to six, seven, or
nine), regularly assonanced in the second and fourth line, but not
necessarily showing either rhyme or assonance in the first and third.
This measure became so popular that the great dramatists adopted it,
and as it thus figures in the two most excellent productions of the
literature, ballad and drama, it has become practically identified in
the general mind with Spanish poetry, and not so very long ago might
have been described by persons, not exactly ignorant, as peculiar to
it.

[Sidenote: _Ballad-metre theory._]

But when we turn to the _Poema del Cid_ we find nothing like this. It
is true that its latest and most learned student, Professor Cornu of
Prague,[195] has, I believe, persuaded himself that he has discovered
the basis of its metre to be the ballad octosyllables, full or
catalectic, arranged as hemistichs of a longer line, and that he has
been able to point out some hundreds of tolerably perfect verses of
the kind. But this hypothesis necessitates our granting that it was
possible for the copyists, or the line of copyists, of the unique MS.
in the vast majority of cases to mistake a measure so simple, so
universally natural, and, as history shows, so peculiarly grateful to
the Spanish ear, and to change it into something quite different.

[Footnote 195: I have not seen Professor Cornu's paper itself, but
only a notice of it by M. G. Paris in _Romania_, xxii. 153, and some
additional annotations by the Professor himself at p. 531 of the same
volume.]

[Sidenote: _Irregularity of line._]

For there is no question but that at first sight, and not at first
sight only, the _Poema del Cid_ seems to be the most irregular
production of its kind that can claim high rank in the poetry of
Europe. It is not merely that it is "rough," as its great northern
congener the _Nibelungenlied_ is usually said to be, or that its lines
vary in length from ten syllables to over twenty, as some lines of
Anglo-Saxon verse do. It is that there is nothing like the regular
cadence of the one, or (at least as yet discovered) the combined
system of accent and alliteration which accounts for the other. Almost
the only single feature which is invariable is the break in the middle
of the line, which is much more than a mere cæsura, and coincides not
merely with the end of a word, but with a distinct stop or at least
pause in sense. Beyond this, except by the rather violent hypothesis
of copyist misdeeds above referred to,[196] nobody has been able to
get further in a generalisation of the metre than that the normal form
is an eight and six (better a seven and seven) "fourteener,"
trochaically cadenced, but admitting contraction and extension with a
liberality elsewhere unparalleled.

[Footnote 196: It is perhaps fair to Professor Cornu to admit some
weight in his argument that where proper names predominate--_i.e._,
where the copyist was least likely to alter--his basis suggests itself
most easily.]

And the ends of the verses are as troublesome as their bodies. Not
only is there no absolute system either of assonance or of rhyme; not
only does the consideration that at a certain stage assonance and
consonance[197] meet and blend help us little; but it is almost or
quite impossible to discern any one system on which the one or the
other, or both, can be thought to have been used. Sometimes, indeed
frequently, something like the French _laisses_ or continuous blocks
of end-sound appear: sometimes the eye feels inclined to see
quatrains--a form, as we shall see, agreeable to early Spain, and very
common in all European nations at this stage of their development. But
it is very seldom that either is clearly demonstrable except in parts,
while neither maintains itself for long. Generally the pages present
the spectacle of an intensely irregular mosaic, or rather
conglomerate, of small blocks of assonance or consonance put together
on no discoverable system whatever. It is, of course, fair to remember
that Anglo-Saxon verse--now, according to the orthodox, to be ranked
among the strictest prosodic kinds--was long thought to be as formless
as this. But after the thorough ransacking and overhauling which
almost all mediæval literature has had during the last century, it is
certainly strange that the underlying system in the Spanish case, if
it exists, should not have been discovered, or should have been
discovered only by such an Alexandrine cutting of the knot as the
supposition that the copyist has made "pie" of about seventy per cent
at least of the whole.

[Footnote 197: Some writers very inconveniently, and by a false
transference from "consonant," use "consonance" as if equivalent to
"alliteration." It is much better kept for full rhyme, in which vowels
and consonants both "sound with" each other.]

Still the form, puzzling as it is, is extremely interesting, and very
satisfactory to those who can be content with unsystematic enjoyment.
The recurrent wave-sound which has been noted in the _chansons_ is at
least as noticeable, though less regular, here. Let us, for instance,
open the poem in the double-columned edition of 1842 at random, and
take the passage on the opening, pp. 66, 67, giving the best part of
two hundred lines, from 3491 to 3641. The eye is first struck with the
constant repetition of catch-endings--"Infantes de Carrion," "los del
Campeador"--each of which occurs at a line-end some dozen times in the
two pages. The second and still more striking thing is that almost all
this long stretch of verse, though not in one single _laisse_, is
carried upon an assonance in _o_, either plump (_Infanzon_, _cort_,
_Carrion_, &c.), which continues with a break or two for at least
fifty lines, or with another vowel in double assonance (_taiadores_,
_tendones_, _varones_). But this sequence is broken incomprehensibly
by such end-words as _tomar_; and the length of the lines defies all
classification, though one suspects some confusion of arrangement. For
instance, it is not clear why

    "Colada e Tizon que non lidiasen con ellas los del Campeador"

should be printed as one line, and

    "Hybalos ver el Rey Alfonso.
    Dixieron los del Campeador,"

as two.

If we then turn to the earlier part, that which comes before the
Carrion story, we shall find the irregularity greater still. It is
possible, no doubt, by making rules sufficiently elastic, to devise
some sort of a system for five consecutive lines which end _folgar_,
_comer_, _acordar_, _grandes_, and _pan_; but it will be a system so
exceedingly elastic that it seems a superfluity of trouble to make it.
On a general survey it may, I think, be said that either in double or
single assonance _a_ and _o_ play a much larger part than the other
vowels, whereas in the French analogues there is no predominance of
this kind, or at least nothing like so much. And lastly, to
conclude[198] these rather desultory remarks on a subject which
deserves much more attention than it has yet had, it may be worth
observing that by an odd coincidence the _Poema del Cid_ concludes
with a delusive personal mention very similar to, though even more
precise than, that about "Turoldus" in the _Chanson de Roland_. For it
ends--

    "Per Abbat le escribio en el mes de maio
    En era de mill e CC ... XLV. años,"

there being, perhaps, something dropped between the second C and the
X. Peter Abbat, however, has been less fortunate than Turoldus, in
that no one, it seems, has asserted his authorship, though he may have
been the copyist-malefactor of theory. And it may perhaps be added
that if MCCXLV. is the correct date, this would correspond to 1207 of
our chronology, the Spanish mediæval era starting thirty-eight years
too early.

[Footnote 198: I have not thought it necessary to give an abstract of
the contents of the poem, because Southey's _Chronicle of the Cid_ is
accessible to everybody, and because no wise man will ever attempt to
do over again what Southey has once done.]

[Sidenote: _Other poems._]

The remaining literature before the end of the thirteenth century
(immediately after that date there is a good deal, but most of it is
imitated from France) may be dismissed more briefly. It is not very
bulky, but it is noteworthy that it is collected in a manner by no
means usual at the time, under two known names, those of Gonzalo
Berceo, priest of St Elianus at Callahorra, and of King Alfonso X. For
the Spanish _Alexander_ of Juan Lorenzo Segura, though written before
1300, is clearly but one of the numerous family of the French and
French-Latin _Alexandreids_ and _Romans d'Alixandre_. And certain
poems on Apollonius of Tyre, St Mary of Egypt, and the Three Kings,
while their date is rather uncertain, are also evidently "school
poems" of the same kind.

[Sidenote: _Apollonius and Mary of Egypt._]

The Spanish Apollonius,[199] however, is noteworthy, because it is
written in a form which is also used by Berceo, and which has
sometimes been thought to be spoken of in the poem itself as _nueva
maestria_. This measure is the old fourteener, which struggles to
appear in the _Cid_, regularly divided into hephthemimers, and now
regularly arranged also in mono-rhymed quatrains. The "Life of St Mary
of Egypt,"[200] on the other hand, is in octosyllabic couplets,
treated with the same freedom that we find in contemporary German
handlings of that metre, and varying from five syllables to at least
eleven. The rhymes are good, with very rare lapses into assonance; one
might suspect a pretty close adherence to a probably Provençal
original, and perhaps not a very early date. Ticknor, whose
Protestantism or whose prudery seems to have been shocked by this
"coarse and indecent history"--he might surely have found politer
language for a variant of the Magdalene story, which is beautiful in
itself and has received especial ornament from art--thought it
composed of "meagre monkish verse," and "hardly of importance" except
as a monument of language. I should myself venture--with infinitely
less competence in the particular language, but some knowledge of
other things of the same kind and time--to call it a rather lively and
accomplished performance of its class. The third piece[201] of those
published, not by Sanchez himself, but as an appendix to the Paris
edition, is the _Adoracion de Los Santos Reyes_, a poem shorter than
the _Santa Maria Egipciaca_, but very similar in manner as well as in
subject. I observe that Ticknor, in a note, seems himself to be of the
opinion that these two pieces are not so old as the Apollonius; though
his remarks about "the French _fabliaux_" are not to the point. The
_fabliaux_, it is true, are in octosyllabic verse; but octosyllabic
verse is certainly older than the _fabliaux_, which have nothing to do
with the Lives of the Saints. But he could hardly have known this when
he wrote.

[Footnote 199: Sanchez-Ochoa, _op. cit._, pp. 525-561.]

[Footnote 200: Ibid., pp. 561-576.]

[Footnote 201: Sanchez-Ochoa, _op. cit._, pp. 577-579.]

[Sidenote: _Berceo._]

Berceo, who appears to have written more than thirteen thousand
lines, wrote nothing secular; and though the religious poetry of the
Middle Ages is occasionally of the highest order, yet when it is of
that rank it is almost invariably Latin, not vernacular, while its
vernacular expression, even where not despicable, is apt to be very
much of a piece, and to present very few features of literary as
distinguished from philological interest. Historians have, however,
very properly noted in him the occurrence of a short lyrical fragment
in irregular octosyllabics, each rhymed in couplets and interspersed
after every line with a refrain. The only certain fact of his life
seems to be his ordination as deacon in 1221.

[Sidenote: _Alfonso el Sabio._]

Of King Alfonso the Learned (for he does not seem to have been by any
means very wise) much more is of course known, though the saying about
the blessedness of having no history is not falsified in his case. But
his titular enjoyment of the empire, his difficulties with his sons,
his death, practically dethroned, and the rest, do not concern us: nor
does even his famous and rather wickedly wrested saying (a favourite
with Carlyle) about the creation of the world and the possibility of
improvement therein had the Creator taken advice. Even the far more
deservedly famous _Siete Partidas_, with that _Fuero Juzgo_ in which,
though it was issued in his father's time, he is supposed to have had
a hand, are merely noteworthy here as early, curious, and, especially
in the case of the _Partidas_, excellent specimens of Spanish prose in
its earliest form. He could not have executed these or any great part
of them himself: and the great bulk of the other work attributed to
him must also have been really that of collaborators or secretaries.
The verse part of this is not extensive, consisting of a collection of
_Cantigas_ or hymns, Provençal in style and (to the puzzlement of
historians) Galician rather than Castilian in dialect, and an
alchemical medley of verse and prose called the _Tesoro_. These, if
they be his, he may have written for himself and by himself. But for
his _Astronomical Tables_, a not unimportant _point de repère_ in
astronomical history, he must, as for the legal works already
mentioned and others, have been largely indebted. There seems to be
much doubt about a prose _Trésor_, which is or is not a translation of
the famous work of Brunetto Latini (dates would here seem awkward).
But the _Cronica General de España_, the Spanish Bible, the Universal
History, and the _Gran Conquesta de Ultramar_ (this last a History of
the Crusades, based partly on William of Tyre, partly on the _chanson_
cycle of the Crusades, fables and all) must necessarily be his only in
the sense that he very likely commissioned, and not improbably
assisted in them. The width and variety of the attributions, whether
contestable in parts or not, prove quite sufficiently for our purpose
this fact, that by his time (he died in 1284) literature of nearly all
kinds was being pretty busily cultivated in the Spanish vernaculars,
though in this case as in others it might chiefly occupy itself with
translations or adaptations of Latin or of French.

This fact in general, and the capital and interesting phenomenon of
the _Poema del Cid_ in particular, are the noticeable points in this
division of our subject. It will be observed that Spain is at this
time content, like Goethe's scholar, _sich üben_. Her one great
literary achievement--admirable in some respects, incomparable in
itself--is not a novelty in kind; she has no lessons in form to give,
which, like some of Italy's, have not been improved upon to this day;
she cannot, like Germany, boast a great quantity of work of equal
accomplishment and inspiration; least of all has she the astonishing
fertility and the unceasing _maestria_ of France. But she has practice
and promise, she is doing something more than "going to begin," and
her one great achievement has (it cannot well be too often repeated)
the inestimable and unmistakable quality of being itself and not
something else, in spirit if not in scheme, in character if not quite
in form. It would be no consolation for the loss of the _Cid_ that we
have _Beowulf_ and _Roland_ and the _Nibelungen_--they would not fill
its place, they do not speak with its voice. The much-abused and
nearly meaningless adjective "Homeric" is here, in so far as it has
any meaning, once more appropriate. Of the form of Homer there is
little: of the vigour, the freshness, the poetry, there is much.




CHAPTER X.

CONCLUSION.


It is now time to sum up, as may best be done, the results of this
attempt to survey the Literature of Europe during one, if not of its
most accomplished, most enlightened, or most generally admired
periods, yet assuredly one of the most momentous, the most
interesting, the fullest of problem and of promise. Audacious as the
attempt itself may seem to some, inadequate as the performance may be
pronounced by others, it is needless to spend much more argument in
urging its claim to be at least tried on the merits. All varieties of
literary history have drawbacks almost inseparable from their schemes.
The elaborate monograph, which is somewhat in favour just now, is
exposed to the criticism, not quite carping, that it is practically
useless without independent study of its subject, and practically
superfluous with it. The history of separate literatures, whether in
portion or in whole, is always liable to be charged with omissions or
with disproportionate treatment within its subject, with want of
perspective, with "blinking," as regards matters without. And so such
a survey as this is liable to the charge of being superficial, or of
attempting more than it can possibly cover, or of not keeping the due
balance between its various provinces and compartments.

It must be for others to say how such a charge, in the present case,
is helped by _laches_ or incompetence on the part of the surveyor. But
enough has, I hope, been said to clear the scheme itself from the
objection of uselessness or of impracticability. In one sense, no
doubt, far more room than this volume, or a much larger, could
provide, may seem to be required for the discussion and arrangement of
so great and interesting a matter as the Literature of the Twelfth and
Thirteenth Centuries. But to say this, is only saying that no such
account in such a space could be exhaustive: and it so happens that an
exhaustive account is for the purpose not required--would indeed go
pretty far towards the defeat of that purpose. What is wanted is to
secure that the reader, whether he pursues his studies in more detail
with regard to any of these literatures or not, shall at any rate have
in his head a fair general notion of what they were simultaneously or
in succession, of the relation in which they stood to each other, of
the division of literary labour between them.

If, on the other hand, it be said, "You propose to give, according to
your scheme, a volume apiece to the fourteenth and even the fifteenth
centuries, the work of which was far less original and interesting
than the work of these two! Why do you couple these?" the answer is
not difficult. In the first place, the work of these two
centuries--which is mainly though not wholly the work of the hundred
years that form their centre period--is curiously inseparable. In only
a few cases do we know precise dates, and in many the _circa_ is of
such a circuitous character that we can hardly tell whether the
twelfth or the thirteenth century deserves the credit. In almost all
the adoption of any intermediate date of severance would leave an
awkward, raw, unreal division. We should leave off while the best of
the _chansons de geste_ were still being produced, in the very middle
of the development of the Arthurian legend, with half the _fabliaux_
yet to come and half the sagas unwritten, with the Minnesingers in
full voice, with the tale of the Rose half told, with the Fox not yet
broken up.

And, in the second place, the singular combination of anonymity and
school-character in the most characteristic mediæval literature makes
it easier, vast as is its mass and in some cases conspicuous as is its
merit, to handle in small space than later work. Only by a wild
indulgence in guessing or a tedious minuteness of attention to
_Lautlehre_ and rhyme-lists is it possible to make a treatment of even
a named person like Chrestien de Troyes on the scale of a notice of
Dante or even Froissart, and this without reference to the comparative
literary importance of the three. The million lines of the _chansons
de geste_ do not demand discussion in anything like direct proportion
to their bulk. One _fabliau_, much more one minnesong or troubadour
lyric, has a far greater resemblance of kind to its fellows than even
one modern novel, even one nineteenth-century minor poem, to another.
As the men write in schools, so they can be handled in them.

Yet I should hope that it must have been already made apparent how
very far the present writer is from undervaluing the period with which
he has essayed to deal. He might perhaps be regarded as overvaluing it
with more apparent reason--not, I think, with any reason that is more
than apparent.

For this was the time, if not of the Birth--the exact times and
seasons of literary births no man knoweth--at any rate of the first
appearance, full-blown or full-fledged, of Romance. Many praiseworthy
folk have made many efforts to show that Romance was after all no such
new thing--that there is Romance in the _Odyssey_, Romance in the
choruses of Æschylus, Romance East and West, North and South, before
the Middle Ages. They are only less unwise than the other good folk
who endeavour to tie Romance down to a Teutonic origin, or a Celtic,
or in the other sense a Romance one, to Chivalry (which was in truth
rather its offspring than its parent), to this, and that, and the
other. "All the best things in literature," it has been said, "are
returns"; and this is perfectly true, just as it is perfectly true in
another sense that all the best things in literature are novelties. In
this particular growth, being as it was a product of the unchanging
human mind, there were notes, doubtless, of Homer and of Æschylus, of
Solomon the son of David and of Jesus the son of Sirach. But the
constituents of the mixture were newly grouped; elements which had in
the past been inconspicuous or dormant assumed prominence and
activity; and the whole was new.

It was even one of the few, the very few, permutations and
combinations of the elements of literature, which are of such
excellence, volume, durability, and charm, that they rank above all
minor changes and groupings. An _amabilis insania_ of the same general
kind with those above noted has endeavoured again and again to mark
off and define the chief constituents of the fact. The happiest
result, if only a partial one, of such attempts has been the
opposition between Classical precision and proportion and the Romantic
vague; but no one would hold this out as a final or sufficient account
of the matter. It may, indeed, be noted that that peculiar blended
character which has been observed in the genesis of perhaps the
greatest and most characteristic bloom of the whole garden--the
Arthurian Legend--is to be found elsewhere also. The Greeks, if they
owed part of the intensity, had undoubtedly owed nearly all the gaps
and flaws of their production, as well as its extraordinarily
short-lived character, to their lack alike of instructors and of
fellow-pupils--to the defect in Comparison. Roman Literature, always
more or less _in statu pupillari_, had wanted the fellow-pupils, if
not the tutor. But the national divisions of mediæval Europe--saved
from individual isolation by the great bond of the Church, saved from
mutual lack of understanding by the other great bond of the Latin
_quasi_-vernacular, shaken together by wars holy and profane, and
while each exhibiting the fresh characteristics of national infancy,
none of them case-hardened into national insularity--enjoyed a unique
opportunity, an opportunity never likely to be again presented, of
producing a literature common in essential characteristic, but richly
coloured and fancifully shaded in each division by the genius of race
and soil. And this literature was developed in the two centuries which
have been the subject of our survey. It is true that not all the
nations were equally contributors to the positive literary production
of the time. England was apparently paying a heavy penalty for her
unique early accomplishments, was making a large sacrifice for the
better things to come. Between 1100 and 1300 no single book that can
be called great was produced in the English tongue, and hardly any
single writer distinctly deserving the same adjective was an
Englishman. But how mighty were the compensations! The language itself
was undergoing a process of "inarching," of blending, crossing, which
left it the richest, both in positive vocabulary and in capacity for
increasing that vocabulary at need, of any European speech; the
possessor of a double prosody, quantitative and alliterative, which
secured it from the slightest chance of poetic poverty or
hide-boundness; relieved from the cumbrousness of synthetic accidence
to all but the smallest extent, and in case to elaborate a syntax
equally suitable for verse and prose, for exposition and narrative,
for oratory and for argument. Moreover it was, as I have at least
endeavoured to show, probably England which provided the groundwork
and first literary treatment, it was certainly England that provided
the subject, of the largest, the most enduring, the most varied single
division of mediæval work; while the Isle of Britain furnished at
least its quota to the general literature of Europe other than
vernacular.

Other countries, though their languages were not conquering their
conqueror as English was doing with French, also displayed sufficient
individuality in dealing with the models and the materials with which
French activity supplied them. The best poetical work of Icelandic,
like the best work of its cousin Anglo-Saxon, was indeed over before
the period began, and the best prose work was done before it ended,
the rapid and never fully explained exhaustion of Norse energy and
enterprise preventing the literature which had been produced from
having effect on other nations. The children of the _vates_ of Grettir
and Njal contented themselves, like others, with adapting French
romances, and, unlike others, they did not make this adaptation the
groundwork of new and original effort. But meanwhile they had made in
the Sagas, greater and lesser, such a contribution as no literature
has excelled in intensity and character, comparatively small as it is
in bulk and comparatively undistinguished in form.

"Unlike others," it has been said; for there can be no doubt that the
Charlemagne Cycle from Northern, the troubadour lyric from Southern,
France exercised upon Italy the same effect that was exercised in
Germany by the romances of Arthur and of Antiquity, and by the
_trouvère_ poetry generally. But in these two countries, as also more
doubtfully, but still with fair certainty, in Spain, the French models
found, as they did also in England, literary capacities and tastes not
jaded and outworn, but full of idiosyncrasy, and ready to develop each
in its own way. Here however, by that extraordinary law of
compensation which seems to be the most general law of the universe,
the effects differed as much in quantity and time as in character--a
remarkable efflorescence of literature in Germany being at once
produced, to relapse shortly into a long sterility, a tardier but more
constant growth following in England and Italy, while the effect in
Spain was the most partial and obscure of all. The great names of
Wolfram von Eschenbach and Walther von der Vogelweide hardly meet with
any others in these literatures representing writers who are known
abroad as well as at home. Only philologists out of England (and I
fear not too many besides philologists in it) read _Alisaunder_ and
_Richard Coeur de Lion_, _Arthour and Merlin_, or the _Brut_; the
early Italian poets shine but in the reflected light of Dante; and if
any one knows the Cid, it is usually from Corneille, or Herder, or
Southey, rather than from his own noble _Poem_. But no one who does
study these forgotten if not disdained ones, no one who with a love
for literature bestows even the most casual attention on them, can
fail to see their meaning and their promise, their merit and their
charm.

That languages of such power should have remained without literatures
is of course inconceivable; that any of them even needed the
instruction they received from France cannot be said positively; but
what is certain is that they all received it. In most cases the
acknowledgment is direct, express, not capable of being evaded or
misconstrued: in all it is incapable of being mistaken by those who
have eyes, and who have trained them. To inquire into the cause were
rather idle. The central position of France; the early notoriety and
vogue of the schools of Paris; the curious position of the language,
midway between the extremer Romance and the purely Teutonic tongues,
which made it a sort of natural interpreter between them; perhaps most
of all that inexplicable but undeniable formal talent of the French
for literature, which is as undeniable and as inexplicable as the less
formal genius of the English,--all these things, except the central
position, only push the problem farther back, and are in need of being
explained themselves. But the fact, the solid and certain fact,
remains. And so it is that the greater part of this book has
necessarily been occupied in expounding, first the different forms
which the lessons of France took, and then the different ways in which
other countries learnt those lessons and turned them to account.

It is thus difficult to overestimate the importance of that wonderful
literature which rises dominant among all these, imparting to all,
borrowing from none, or borrowing only subjects, exhibiting finish of
structure when all the rest were merely barbarian novices, exploring
every literary form from history to drama, and from epic to song,
while others were stammering their exercises, mostly learnt from her.
The exact and just proportions of the share due to Southern and
Northern France respectively none can now determine, and scholarship
oscillates between extremes as usual. What is certain (perhaps it is
the only thing that is certain) is that to Provençal belongs the
credit of establishing for the first time a modern prosody of such a
kind as to turn out verse of perfect form. Whether, if Pallas in her
warlike capacity had been kinder to the Provençals, she could or would
have inspired them with more varied kinds of literature than the
exquisite lyric which as a fact is almost their sole title to fame, we
cannot say. As a matter of fact, the kinds other than lyric, and some
of the lyrical kinds themselves--the short tale, the epic, the
romance, the play, the history, the sermon--all find their early home,
if not their actual birthplace, north, not south, of the Limousin
line. It was from Normandy and Poitou, from Anjou and the Orleannais,
from the Isle of France and Champagne, that in language at least the
patterns which were used by all Europe, the specifications, so to
speak, which all Europe adapted and filled up, went forth, sometimes
not to return.

Yet it is not in the actual literature of France itself, except in
those contributions to the Arthurian story which, as it has been
pointed out, were importations, not indigenous growths, and in some
touches of the _Rose_, that the spirit of Romance is most evident--the
spirit which, to those who have come thoroughly to appreciate it,
makes classical grace and finish seem thin and tame, Oriental
exuberance tasteless and vulgar, modern scientific precision
inexpressibly charmless and jejune.

Different sides of this spirit display themselves, of course, in
different productions of the time. There is the spirit of combat, in
which the _Chansons de geste_ show the way, anticipating in time, if
not quite equalling in intensity, the Sagas and the _Nibelungenlied_.
There is sometimes faintly mingled with this (as in the _gabz_ of the
_Voyage à Constantinoble_, and the exploits of Rainoart with the
_tinel_) the spirit, half rough, half sly, of jesting, which by-and-by
takes shape in the _fabliaux_. There is the immense and restless
spirit of curiosity, which explores and refashions, to its own guise
and fancy, the relics of the old world, the treasures of the East, the
lessons of Scripture itself. Side by side with these there is that
singular form of the religious spirit which has been so constantly
misunderstood, and which, except in a very few persons, seems so rare
nowadays--the faith which is implicit without being imbecile,
childlike without being childish, devout with a fearless familiarity,
the spirit to which the _Dies Iræ_ and the sermons of St Francis were
equally natural expressions, and which, if it could sometimes
exasperate itself into the practices of the Inquisition, found a far
commoner and more genuine expression in the kindly humanities of the
_Ancren Riwle_. There is no lack of knowledge and none of inquiry;
though in embarking on the enormous ocean of ignorance, it is inquiry
not cabined and cribbed by our limits. In particular, there is an
almost unparalleled, a certainly unsurpassed, activity in metaphysical
speculation, a fence-play of thought astonishing in its accuracy and
style. As Poetry slowly disintegrates and exfoliates itself into
Prose, literary gifts for which verse was unsuited develop themselves
in the vernaculars; and the chronicle--itself so lately an
epic--becomes a history, or at least a memoir; the orator, sacred or
profane, quits the school rhetoric and its familiar Latin vehicle for
more direct means of persuasion; the jurist gives these vernaculars
precision by adopting them.

But with and through and above all these various spirits there is most
of all that abstract spirit of poetry, which, though not possessed by
the Middle Ages or by Romance alone, seems somehow to be a more
inseparable and pervading familiar of Romance and of the Middle Ages
than of any other time and any other kind of literature. The sense of
mystery, which had rarely troubled the keen intellect of the Greek and
the sturdy common-sense of the Roman, which was even a little degraded
and impoverished (except in the Jewish prophets and in a few other
places) by the busy activity of Oriental imagination, which we
ourselves have banished, or think we have banished, to a few "poets'
scrolls," was always present to the mediæval mind. In its broadest and
coarsest jests, in its most laborious and (as we are pleased to call
them) dullest expansions of stories, in its most wire-drawn and most
lifeless allegory, in its most irritating admixture of science and
fable, there is always hard by, always ready to break in, the sense of
the great and wonderful things of Life, and Love, and Death, of the
half-known God and the unknown Hereafter. It is this which gives to
Romance, and to mediæval work generally, that "high seriousness," the
want of which was so strangely cast at it in reproach by a critic who,
I cannot but think, was less intimately acquainted with its literature
than with that either of classical or of modern times. Constantly in
mediæval poetry, very commonly in mediæval prose, the great things
appear greatly. There is in English verse romance perhaps no less
felicitous sample of the kind as it stands, none which has received
greater vituperation for dulness and commonplace, than _Sir Amadas_.
Yet who could much better the two simple lines, when the hero is
holding revel after his ghastly meeting with the unburied corse in the
roadside chapel?--

    "But the dead corse that lay on bier
      Full mickle his thought was on."

In Homer's Greek or Dante's Italian such a couplet (which, be it
observed, is as good in rhythm and vowel contrast as in simple
presentation of thought) could hardly lack general admiration. In the
English poetry of the Middle Ages it is dismissed as a commonplace.

Yet such things, and far better things, are to be met everywhere in
the literature which, during the period we have had under review, took
definite form and shape. It produced, indeed, none of the greatest
men of letters--no Chaucer nor Dante, no Froissart even, at best for
certainties a Villehardouin and a William of Lorris, a Wolfram and a
Walther, with shadowy creatures of speculation like the authors of the
great romances. But it produced some of the greatest matter, and some
of not the least delightful handlings of matter, in book-history. And
it is everywhere distinguished, first, by the adventurous fecundity of
its experiments in form and kind, secondly, by the presence of that
spirit which has been adumbrated in the last paragraph. In this last,
we must own, the pupil countries far outdid their master or mistress.
France was stronger relatively in the spirit of poetry during the
Middle Ages than she has been since; but she was still weaker than
others. She gave them expression, patterns, form: they found passion
and spirit, with not seldom positive story-subject as well. When we
come upon some _nueva maestria_, as the old Spanish poet called it,
some cunning trick of form, some craftsman-like adjustment of style
and kind to literary purposes, we shall generally find that it was
invented in France. But we know that no Frenchman could have written
the _Dies Iræ_; and though we recognise French as at home in the
Rose-Garden, and not out of place in the fatal meeting of Lancelot and
Guinevere, it sounds but as a foreign language in the towers of
Carbonek or of Montsalvatsch.




INDEX.


Abbat, Peter, 406.

Abelard, 14, 17.

Adam de la Halle, 316-321.

Adam of St Victor, 8, 10.

Alberic of Besançon, 157.

Albertus Magnus, 18.

Alcamo, Ciullo d', 387.

Alexander Hales, 18.

_Alexander_, romances of, chap. iv. _passim_.

Alfonso X., 409, 410.

_Aliscans_, 75 _sq._

"Alison," 210, 211.

Amalricans, the, 20 note.

Amaury de Bène, 18.

Ancona, Professor d', 387.

_Ancren Riwle_, the, 198-201.

Anna Comnena, 378.

Anselm, 14, 17.

_Apollonius_, the Spanish, 407.

Aquinas, Thomas, 18.

"Arch-poet," the, 5.

Arnold, Matthew, 55, 278.

Ascham, 128.

_Aucassin et Nicolette_, 330-332.

Audefroy le Bastard, 275.

Aue, Hartmann von, 246-251.


Bacon, Roger, 18.

Bartsch, Herr K., 270.

_Bastart de Bouillon, le_, 57.

_Baudouin de Sebourc_, 32 _sq._

Beauvais, Vincent of, 18.

Bede, 90.

Bédier, M., 276.

Benoît de Sainte-More, 177 _sq._

_Beowulf_, 30, 36, 188.

Berceo, G., 407.

Bernard of Morlaix, 8, 11-13.

Bernard, St, 8, 322.

Bodel, Jean, 26 note, 148.

Bonaventura, 18.

Borron, Robert de, 138.

Brunetière, M. F., 55, 83.

_Brut._ See Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, and Wace.

Budge, Mr Wallis, 152.


Callisthenes, the Pseudo-, 152 _sq._

Caradoc of Lancarvan, 91.

_Carmina Burana_, 4.

Celano, Thomas of, 9.

Champeaux, William of, 17.

Chrestien de Troyes, 101 _sq._, 195.

_Cid, Poema del_, 23, 376, 393, 398 _sq._

Ciullo d'Alcamo, 387.

Colonna, or delle Colonne, or de Columnis, Guido, 181 _sq._

Condorcet, 15.

_Conquête de Constantinoble_, 323.

_Contrasto_, 387, 389.

Conybeare, 25.

Cornu, Professor, 402.

_Couronnement Loys, le_, 60 _sq._

Courthope, Mr, 140.

_Cronica, General_, 410.

_Curialium, De Nugis_, 141.


Dares Phrygius, 171 _sq._ and chap. iv. _passim_.

David of Dinant, 18.

Dictys Cretensis, 169 _sq._ and chap. iv. _passim_.

_Dies Iræ_, the, 9, 10.

Dunlop, 28, 132.


_Egil's Saga_, 350, 360.

_Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum_, 16.

_Epopées Françaises, les_, 25 _sq._

Erigena, John Scotus, 17.

Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 126, 251-256.

"Eternal Gospel," the, 18.

Exeter, Joseph of, 3.

_Eyrbyggja Saga_, 350.


Flora, Joachim of, 18.

Froude, Mr J.A., 55.


Gautier, M. Léon, 25.

_Genesis and Exodus_, 202.

Geoffrey, Gaimar, 98.

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 94 _sq._ and chap. iii. _passim_.

Geoffroy de Villehardouin, 323 _sq._

_Gérard de Roussillon_, 44.

Giélée, Jacquemart, 291.

Gildas, 91.

Gloucester, Robert of, 204 _sq._

_Golias_ and Goliardic Poems, 4 _sq._

Gottfried von Strasburg, 242-246.

_Gran Conquesta de Ultramar_, 410.

_Grandes Chroniques_ of St Denis, 327.

_Grettis Saga_, 351-360.

Guest, Dr, 218 _sq._

_Guillaume d'Orange_, 59 _sq._


Hallam, 28.

Hamilton, Sir W., 15.

Hartmann von Aue, 246-251.

_Havelok the Dane_, 207, 208.

Hauréau, _De la Philosophie Scolastique_, 14 note, 19.

_Heimskringla_, 344, 361.

Heinrich von Veldeke, 242.

Henryson, 150, 272.

_Historia de Proeliis_, 153.

_Horn (King)_, 208, 209.

Hunt, Leigh, 279.

_Hysminias and Hysmine_, 140, 377 _sq._


_Iter ad Paradisum_, 154.


Jacopone da Todi, 8.

Jeanroy, M. A., 270.

Joachim of Flora, 18.

John of Salisbury, 17.

John Scotus Erigena, 17.

Joinville, Jean de, 328, 329.

Joly, M., 151.

Joseph of Exeter, 3.

_Jus de la Feuillie_, 318-321.


Kölbing, Dr, 166 note.

König Rother, 237.

_Kormak's Saga_, 347, 360.

Kudrun, 233-236.


Lambert li Tors, 157 _sq._

Lamprecht, 156.

Lang, Mr, 331.

Lanson, M., 83.

_Laxdæla Saga_, 349.

Layamon, 98, 99, 192-196.

Lombard, Peter, 17.

Lorris, William of, 300 _sq._

Loth, M., 143.


_Mabinogion, the_, 105.

Madden, Sir Frederic, 97.

Malory, Sir T., 104 and chap. iii. _passim_.

Manasses, 379.

Map or Mapes, Walter, 4 _sq._, 58, 100 _sq._

Marcabrun, 368

Marie de France, 285, 286, 311.

Martin, Herr, 290.

Méon, 276.

Meung, Jean de, 300 _sq._

Meyer, M. Paul, 151 _sq._

Michelant, M., 159.

Mill, J.S., 15.

Minnesingers, the minor, 261-264.

_Missa de Potatoribus_, 4.


Nennius, 91, 92.

_Nibelungenlied_, 227 _sq._

Nicetas, 379.

_Njal's Saga_, 348.

_Nut-Browne Maid, the_, 271.

Nutt, Mr, 135.


Occam, William of, 17, 18.

Orange, William of, 59 _sq._

Orm and the _Ormulum_, 196-198.

_Owl and the Nightingale, the_, 203.


Paris, M. Gaston, 25, 102 note, 212 note.

Paris, M. Paulin, 25, 97, 270.

Pater, Mr, 331.

Peacock, 142, 279.

Peter Lombard, 17.

Peter the Spaniard, 18.

Prantl, _Geschichte der Logik_, 14 note, 19.

_Proverbs_, early English, 203.


Quintus Curtius, 155.


Raymond Lully, 18.

Raynaud, M. G., 270.

Renan, M., 201.

_Reynard the Fox_, 286 _sq._

Rhys, Professor, 136 _sq._

Robert of Gloucester, 204 _sq._

_Robin et Marion_, 317, 318.

_Roland, Chanson de_, 29 _sq._

Romance of the Rose, the, 299 _sq._

_Romancero Français_, 27.

_Romanzen und Pastourellen_, 270.

Roscellin, 17.

Ruteboeuf, 312, 313.


Sagas, 339 _sq._

_Santa Maria Egipciaca_, 407, 408.

Scotus Erigena, 17.

Scotus, John Duns, 18.

_Siete Partidas_, 409.

_Specimens of Lyric Poetry_, 209 _sq._

Strasburg, Gottfried von, 243-246.

St Victor, Adam of, 8.

Sully, Maurice de, 323.

Swinburne, Mr, 331, 367, 370.


Theodorus Prodromus, 379.

Thomas of Celano, 9.

Thomas of Kent, 158.

Thoms, Mr, 282.

Ticknor, Mr, 393 _sq._

Todi, Jacopone da, 8.

Tressan, Comte de, 28.

_Tristram, Sir_, 116.

Troubadours, the, 362 _sq._

Troy, the Tale of, 167 _sq._

Troyes, Chrestien de, 101 _sq._

Turpin, Archbishop, 29.

Tyre, William of, 327.

Tyrwhitt, 25.


Valerius, Julius, 152 _sq._

Veldeke, H. von, 242.

Vigfusson, Dr, 267.

Villehardouin, G. de, 323 _sq._

Vincent of Beauvais, 18.

Vogelweide, Walther von der, 256-261.

_Volsunga Saga_, 228, 229.


Wace, 98.

Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. See Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Walter of Châtillon, 155.

Walther von der Vogelweide, 256-261.

Ward, Mr, 164.

Warton's _History of Poetry_, 139.

Weber, 163.

William IX., of Poitiers, 364.

William of Tyre, 327.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, 126, 251-256.

Wright, Thomas, 209.

       *       *       *       *       *

PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.