3 1822 01195 7768
 
 f!)l 
 
 '25
 
 Ptriotis of lEuropean ILttcraturc 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 PEOFESSOR SAINTSBURY 
 
 IL 
 
 THE TWELFTH AND THIKTEENTH 
 CENTUPiIES
 
 PERIODS OF EUROPEAN LITERATURE. 
 
 Edited by Professor SAINTSBURY. 
 
 " The criticism which alone can micch help us for the future 
 is a criticism which regards Europe as being, for intellectual 
 and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, hound to a joint 
 action and xoorking to a common residt." 
 
 —Matthew Arnold. 
 
 In 12 Crown 8vo Volumes. Price 5s. net each. 
 
 The DARK AGES 
 
 The FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE 
 AND THE RISE OF ALLEGORY. 
 Tlie FOURTEENTH CENTURY 
 The TRANSITION PERIOD . 
 The EARLIER RENAISSANCE 
 The LATER RENAISSANCE . 
 Tlie FIRST HALF of 17th CENTURY . 
 The AUGUSTAN AGES .... 
 The MID-EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
 The ROMANTIC REVOLT 
 The ROMANTIC TRIUMPH . 
 Tlie LATER NINETEENTH CENTURY. 
 
 Piofessor W. P. Kf.r. 
 
 The Editor. 
 F. J. Snell. 
 
 D.wiD Hannay. 
 
 Oliver Elton. 
 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 Walter H. Pollock. 
 The Editor. 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.
 
 THE 
 
 FLOURISHING OF ROMANCE 
 
 RISE OF ALLEGOKY 
 
 GEOKGE SAINTSBUEY, M.A. 
 
 PROFESSOR or RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN TH»: 
 CNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH 
 
 iN' L W Y O R K 
 
 CHAKLES S CRIB NEK'S SONS 
 
 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE 
 1897 
 
 All Kiyliii reserved
 
 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 neces- 
 sarily objected that it would be difficult, if not impos- 
 sible, 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
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 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 Eoumansch or of Platt- 
 Deutsch, not to mention those of the greater languages
 
 PEEFACE. Vll 
 
 — 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 jv^st 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. T know somewhat 
 less of Icelandic and Provencal ; 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 matidres, 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.
 
 vm PKEFACE. 
 
 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 Erench, less momentous and unique in promise 
 than the English, but more normal than either, and 
 furnishing in the epics, of which the Nihelunyenlied 
 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. 
 
 ProvenQal 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
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 more original. But it so happens that the promin- 
 ent 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 Proven(^al 
 lyric with a strictly philological competence, in order 
 to appreciate the literary value of the contributions 
 which these two charming isolations made to Euro- 
 pean 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 
 Provencal, but can be better handled in connection 
 with Dante, who falls to the province of the writer 
 of tlie 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
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 early thirteenth centuries. It seemed to me, there- 
 fore, that I might, without presumption, undertake the 
 volume. Of the execution as apart from the under- 
 taking others must judge. I will only mention (to 
 show that the book is not a mere compilation) that 
 the chapter on the Arthurian Eomances 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 in- 
 dependent essays by specialists, has been adopted. Tor
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 a survey of each time is what is aijiied 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 invidice 
 causa — to one of the very best literary histories of 
 this or any century, Mr Tickuor'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. '21), 
 show almost entire ignorance of the whole prosody 
 of the chansons dc gcste, which give such an indis- 
 pensable light in reference to the subject, and which, 
 even at the time of his first edition (1849), if not
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 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.^ 
 
 ^ 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 fur- 
 ther, 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 uot noticing the bulk of medieval Latin literature — 
 Excepted divisions — Comic Latin literature — Examples of its 
 verbal influence — The value of bixrlesque — Hymns — The Dies 
 Irce — The rhythm of Bernard — Literary perfection of the 
 Hymns — Scholastic Philosojihy — Its influence on jjhrase and 
 method — The great Scholastics ..... 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 
 
 European literature in 1100 — Late discovery of the chansons — 
 Their age and history — Their distinguishiug character — Mis- 
 takes 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 c/(«??so?is — Twelfth century — Thir- 
 teenth century — Fourteenth, and later — Chansons in print — 
 Language : oc and oil — Italian — Dift'usion of the chansons — 
 Their authorship and publication — Their performance — Hear- 
 ing, not reading, the object — Eff'ect on 2>rosody — The junglems
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 — JongUresses, &c. — Singularity of the chansons — Their charm 
 — Peculiarity of the geste system— Instances — Summary of the 
 geste of William of Orauge — And first of the Couronnemcnt 
 Loys — Comments on the Couronnevient — William of Orange — 
 The earlier poems of the cycle — The Charroi de Nlmes — 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 testi- 
 mony — The version of Geoffrey — Its lacunae — How the Legend 
 grew — Wace — Layamou — The Eomances 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 — Arthuj- — 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 — 
 Attemi^ted hypothesis ...... 
 
 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 Besan9on — The decasyllabic 
 poem — The great Roman d'Alixandre — Form, &c. — Continua-
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 tions — King Alexander — Characteristics — The Tale of Troy — 
 Dictys and Dares— The Dares story — Its absurdity — Its capa- 
 bilities — Troilus and Briseida — The Human de Troie— The 
 phases of Cressid — The Ilistoria 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 — Scantine.ss of its constituents 
 — Layamon — The form of the Brut — Its substance — -Tlie 
 Ormulum : Its metre, its spelling — The Ancren Riwle — The 
 Owl and Vie Xightingale — Proverbs — Robert of Gloucester — 
 Romances— i?««eZo^ the Dane — King Horn — Tlie prosody of 
 the modern languages — Historical retro.si3ect — Anglo-Saxon 
 prosody — Romance prosody — English jirosody — 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 Nibel- 
 ungenlied — The Volsunga saga — The German version — Metres 
 — Rhyme and language — Kudruii — 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 Wandercere and 
 /we in — Lyrics — The "booklets " — Der A rme Heinrich — 
 "Wolfram von Eschenbach — Titurel — Willehalm — Parzival — 
 Walther von der Vogelweide — Personality of the poets — The 
 Minnesingers generally ...... 225
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' AND THE MINOR CONTRIBUTIONS 
 OF FRANCE. 
 
 The predomiuaiice of France— The rise of Allegory — Lyric— The 
 Romance aud the Pastourelle — The Fabliaux — Their origin — 
 Their licence — Their wit — Definition and siibjects — Effect of 
 the fabliaux on language — Aud on narrative — Conditions of 
 /aiZ2ct«(-\vritiug — 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-Seem- 
 ing" — Contrast of the parts — Value of both, and charm of the 
 first — Marie de France and Rutebceuf — Drama — Adam de la 
 Halle — Robin et Ma^-ion—TheJeude la Feuillie — Comj)arison 
 of them — Early French prose — Laws and sermons— Villehar- 
 douiu — William of Tyre — Joinville — Fiction — Aucassin et 
 Nicolette ........ 265 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. 
 
 Resemblances — Contrasts — Icelandic literature of this time mainly 
 prose — Ditticulties 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 — Laxdaila — Eyrbyggja — Egla — Qrettla — Its critics — 
 Merits of it — The parting of Asdis and her sons — Great pas- 
 sages of the sagas — Style— Proven9al mainly lyric — Origin of 
 this lyric — Forms — Many men, one mind — Example of rhyme- 
 schemes — Provencal poetry not great — But extraordinarily 
 pedagogic — Though not directly on English — Some trouba- 
 doiirs — Criticism of Provencal ..... 333
 
 CONTENTS. XVll 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 
 
 Limitations of this chapter — Late Greek romance — Its difficulties 
 as a subject^ Anna Conmena, &c. — Hysminias and Hysmine 
 — Its style — Its story — Its handling — Its "decadence" — Late- 
 ness of Italian — The "Saracen" theory — The "folk-song" 
 theory — Ciullo d'Alcanio — Heavy debt to France— Yet form 
 and spirit both original — Love-lyric in different European 
 countries — Position of Spanish — Catalan-Provencal— Galician- 
 Portuguese — Castiliau — Ballads? — The Poema del Cid — -A 
 Spanish chanson de geste — In scheme and spirit — Difficiilties 
 of its prosody — Ballad-metre theory — Irregidarity of line — 
 Other poems — Apollonius and Mary of E.gypt — Berceo — 
 Alfonso el Sabio ...... 375 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUSION ........ 412 
 
 INDEX ......... 427
 
 THE FLOUEISHING OF ROMANCE 
 
 RISE OF ALLEGORY 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN, 
 
 REASONS FOR NOT NOTICING THE BULK OP MEDIEVAL LATIN LITERATURE 
 
 EXCEPTED DIVISIONS — COMIC LATIN LITERATURE EXAMPLES OV 
 
 ITS VERBAL INFLUENCE — THE VALUE OP BURLESQUE HYMNS — THE 
 
 "dies IR^" THE RHYTHM OF BERNARD — LITERARY PERFECTION 
 
 OF THE HYMNS SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY — -ITS INFLUENCE ON 
 
 PHRASE AND METHOD — THE GREAT SCHOLASTICS. 
 
 This series is intended to survey and illustrate the 
 development of the vernacular literatures of mediaeval 
 Rmsonsfor ^^^ modem Europe ; and for that purpose 
 ,wt noticing it is unuecessary to busy ourselves with 
 medieval Latin more than a part of the Latin writing 
 literature. which, in a Steadily decreasing but — until 
 the end of the last century — an always considerable 
 proportion, served as the vehicle of literary expression, 
 
 A
 
 2 EUKOPEAN IJTEltATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 litera- 
 ture 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 consci- 
 ously, a schoolmaster to bring the vernacular lan- 
 guages 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 impos- 
 sible 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 helles 
 lettres proper were such serious performances as con- 
 tinued to be written well into our period of capital
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 6 
 
 importance. Such a book, for instance, as the well- 
 known Trojan War of Joseph of Exeter,^ though it 
 really deserves much of the praise which it used to 
 receive,- 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 Ctcrialium,^ 
 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. 
 
 We may, however, with advantage select three divi- 
 sions of the Latin literature of our section of the 
 
 Excepted Middle Ages, which have in all cases no 
 
 divisions, gjjj^ii 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 philo- 
 sophical writing which goes by the general title of 
 Scholastic Pliilosophy, and which was at its palmiest 
 time in the later portion of our own special period. 
 
 It may not be absolutely obvious, but it does not 
 
 Comic Latin Tcquire mucli thought to discover, why the 
 
 literattm. comic and burlesque Latin writing, especially 
 
 in verse, of the earlier Middle Ages holds such a posi- 
 
 ^ Included with Dictys and Dares in a volume of Yalpy's Delphin 
 Classics. 
 
 2 Cf. Warton, History of Enrjlish Poetry. Ed. Hazlitt, i. 226-292. 
 
 * Gualteri Mapes, De Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinquc. Ed. 
 T. Wright : Camden Society, 1850.
 
 4 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tiou. But if we compare such things as the Carmina 
 Burana, or as the Goliardic poems attributed to or 
 connected with Walter IMap,^ 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 sub- 
 jects, 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 degrada- 
 tion 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 Eeformers and " Papists," intentional ribaldry 
 no doubt began. But such a thing as, for example, the 
 " Missa de Potatoribus " ^ is much more significant of 
 an unquestioning familiarity than of deliberate insult. 
 
 1 Carmina Buranu, Stuttgart, 1847 ; Political Sonrjs of England 
 (1839), and Latin Poems attribiUcd to Walter Mapes (1841), both 
 edited for the Camden Society hj T. Wright. 
 
 2 Wright and Halliwell's Rcliquite Antiques (London, 1845), ii. 208.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 5 
 
 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 parpdy the classics, not at all be- 
 cause they hate them, but because they are their most 
 familiar literature. 
 
 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," ^ 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 re- 
 ceived 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 audaciou.s compound 
 of experience and experiment. 
 
 ^ On this Arch-Poet see Scherer, History of German Literature 
 (Engl, ed., Oxford, 1886), i. 68.
 
 6 EUKOPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 The first impression of any one who reads that ex- 
 ceedingly delightfnl volume the Camden Society's 
 Poems attributed to Walter Mapes may be 
 
 Examples of its ^ £ i • i . i 
 
 verbal influ- onc 01 mcrc amuscment, or 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 sito In- 
 fortunio; 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 him- 
 self, or his countrymen, or at farthest his successors, in 
 the use of the vernacular tongues with the same light- 
 ness and brightness. When he insinuated that 
 
 " Dulcis erit mihi status 
 Si prebenda muneratus, 
 
 Reditu vel alio, 
 Vivam, licet non habunde, 
 Saltern naihi 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
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 7 
 
 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 ? 
 
 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 
 The value of oftcn directly burlcsqued. But in the very 
 luriesque. 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 vernac- 
 ular tongues ; as, for instance, in the constant presence 
 of what the French call chcvilles, expletive phrases 
 such as the " sikerly," and the " I will not lie," the 
 "veraraent," 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
 
 8 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tedious. A good deal of this comic writing may be 
 graceless : some of it may, to delicate tastes, he shock- 
 ing or disgusting. But it was at any rate an obvious 
 and excellent school of word-fence, a g^ nnasium and 
 exercising-ground for style. 
 
 And if the beneficial effect in the liteiary sense of 
 
 these light songs is not to be overlooked, how much 
 
 greater in every way is that of the mag- 
 
 Jlymns. ^ ■ n i ■ t ^ 
 
 nificent compositions of which they were 
 in some cases the parody! It will be more conven- 
 ient to postpone to a later chapter of this volume 
 consideration of tlie 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 mediaeval hymn, 
 with perhaps the sole exception of Veni, Sancte 
 SpiriiuH, date from the twelfth and thirteenth cen- 
 turies.^ 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 in- 
 tervals of his eccentric vernacular exercises, was in- 
 spired to write the Stahat Mater, From this time 
 comes that glorious descant of Bernard of Morlaix, in 
 which, the more its famous and very elegant Englisli 
 
 ' A few more precise dates may be useful. St Bernard, 1091-1153 ; 
 Bernard of Morlaix, exact years uncertain, but twelf tli century ; Adam 
 of St Victor, oh. civ. 1190 ; Jacopone da Todi, oh. 1306 ; St Bonaven- 
 tura, 1221-1274 ; Thomas of Celano,/. c. 1226. The two great store- 
 houses of Latin hymn-texts are the well-known books of Daniel, The- 
 saurus Hymnologiciis, and Mone, Hymni Latim Mcdii JEvi. And on 
 this, as on all matters connected with hymns, the exhaustive Dic- 
 tionary of Ilymnology (London, 1892) of the Rev. .John Julian will he 
 found UKjst valuable.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 9 
 
 paraphrase is read beside it, the more does the t^reat- 
 ness and the beauty of the original appear. And from 
 this time comes the greatest of all hymns, and one of 
 the greatest .yf all poems, the Dies Irce, There have 
 been attempts — more than one of thein^ — to make out 
 that the Dies Irce 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 
 ot heterodox independence. The judgment of the 
 ^eatest (and not always of the most pious) men of 
 letters of modern times may confirm those who are 
 uncomfortable without authority in a different opin- 
 ion. 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. 
 
 It would be possible, indeed, to illustrate a com- 
 plete dissertation on the methods of expression in 
 serious poetry from the fifty-one lines of the 
 
 The Dies Ira;.. . . . 
 
 Dies Irm. Ehyme, 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 minnu spargens sonum,''
 
 10 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 with the thud of the trochee ^ falling in each instance 
 in a different vowel ; and still more on the continu- 
 ous sequence of five stanzas, from Judex e7-go to non sit 
 cassus, in which not a word could be displaced or re- 
 placed by another without loss. The climax of verbal 
 harmony, corresponding to and expressing religious 
 passion and religious awe, is reached in the last — 
 
 " Quserens me sedisti lassus, 
 Eedemisti 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 
 «'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 Irce, 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 Shake- 
 speare has fully done so. 
 
 Beside the grace and the grandeur, the passion and 
 the art, of this wonderful composition, even the best re- 
 maining examples of mediasval 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 Jcsu dulcis memoria, that it is a little faint 
 and frittered ; while, of course, those who do not like 
 
 ^ Of course no one of the four is a pure classical trochee ; but all 
 obey the trochaic rhythm.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 11 
 
 conceits and far-fetched interpretations can always 
 quarrel with the substance of Adam of St Victor. 
 But those wlio care for merits rather than for de- 
 fects will never be weary of admiring the best of 
 these liymns, or of noticing and, as far as possible, 
 understanding their perfection. Althougli the lan- 
 guage they use is old, and their subjects are those 
 which very competent and not at all irreligious cri- 
 tics 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. 
 
 Let us, for instance, take the rhythm of Bernard 
 the Englishman (as he was really, though called of 
 The rhythm Morlaix). "Jerusalem the Golden" has 
 of Bernard, made somc of its merits common pro- 
 perty, while its practical discoverer. Archbishop 
 Trench, has set those of the original forth with a 
 judicious enthusiasm which cannot be bettered.^ 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 
 
 ^ Sacred Latin Poetry (2d ed., London, 1864), p. 304. This admir- 
 able book has not been, and from its mixture of taste and learning is 
 never likely to be, superseded as an introduction to, and chrestomatliy 
 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.
 
 12 EUROPEAN LTTERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Augustan, its peculiarities are superadded to, not 
 substituted for, the requirements of classical pros- 
 ody. The writer does not avail himself of the new 
 accentual quantitication, and his other licences are but 
 few. If we examine the poem, however, we shall 
 find that, besides the abundant use of rhyme — in- 
 terior as well as final — he avails himself of all those 
 artifices of what may be called word-music, suggest- 
 ing 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 — 
 
 " flora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus ! 
 Ecce ! minaciter imminet arbiter ille supremus." 
 
 liut immediately afterwards, and more or less througli- 
 out, he redoubles and redoubles again every possible 
 artifice — sound-repetition in the imminet, imviinet, of 
 the third line, alliteration in the recta rcTnuneret 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 vary- 
 ing as much as possible the cadence and composition 
 of the last third of his verse, and carefully avoids any- 
 thing 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
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 13 
 
 once rliyme 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Literary %icr- _ _ _ •*- 
 
 fectiono/the it to this day. But it must be obvious at 
 ymns. 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 liymns con- 
 stantly sung, and what means of producing like effects 
 were suggested to them. The most varied and charm- 
 ing 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 Proven(j.al 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 
 mediaeval 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
 
 14 EUROPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 stiff,- — liere, owing to the milleuniuni and more during 
 which it had heen throughout Western Europe the 
 living language and the sole living language of the 
 Church Universal, shakes off at once all artiticial and 
 all doggerel character. It is thoroughly alive : it 
 conies 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. 
 
 The far-famed and almost more abused than famed 
 Scholastic Philosophy ^ cannot be said to have added 
 schoiastK to positive literature any such masterpieces 
 Philosophy, jj-^ pi-ose 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 per- 
 haps Anselm, the heroes of medieval dialectic, the 
 Doctors Subtle and Invincible, Irrefragal:)le and An- 
 gelic, 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 
 
 ^ 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 Philosophj", by Ueberweg, Erdmanu, Wiudel- 
 band, &c., may be consulted with advantage, and though some mono- 
 graphs may be added, there are still no better guides than Haurdau, 
 Dc la Philosophic Scolastique (revised edition) and Prantl, Gcschichte 
 dcr Locjik im Ahendlandc, 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."
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 15 
 
 select of literary histories. Yet they cannot but 
 receive some notice here in a history, however con- 
 densed, of the literature of the period of tlieir 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 dis- 
 pute 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 INIill (not often a 
 scholastically minded philosopher) set in the fore- 
 front of his Logic, that, in the Scottish philosopher's 
 words, "it is to the schoolmen that the vulgar lan- 
 guages 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 Scholas- 
 ticism a precision unknown to the ancients them- 
 selves." 
 
 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 
 
 Its influence , . 
 
 o>n)hraseaiLd of whicli lias bccu uotcd in theological verse, 
 had the same effect in philosophico- theo- 
 logical prose. Latin is before all things a precise Ian-
 
 16 EUROPEAN LITKllATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 "iiaoe, and the one qualification which it lacked in 
 classical times for philosophic use, the prc^sence 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 ascitas 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 linger- 
 ing 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 Epistolm 
 Ohscurorum 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 sliould have better teachers in it than the 
 few famous, and even than most of the numerous
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 17 
 
 imknown or almost unknown, philosophers of the 
 Scholastic period. 
 
 It has been said that of those most famous almost 
 all belong specially to this our period. Before it there 
 The great IS, till its vcry latcst eve, hardly one ex- 
 schoiastics. QQ^^ John Scotus Eiigcua ; 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 Eealist and Nominalist controversy, 
 Eoscellinus 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.^ But it was not till the ex- 
 treme 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 con- 
 demned the JSTominalism of Eoscellinus 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, 
 
 ^ Some exacter dates may be useful. Anselm, 1033-1109 ; Ros- 
 celliu, 1050?-112o ; William of Champeaux, ?-1121 ; Abelard, 1079- 
 1142 ; Peter Lombard, oh. 1164 ; John of Salisbury, ?-1180 ; Alex- 
 ander of Hales, M245 ; 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, M277; Raymond Lully, 1235- 
 1315. 
 
 B
 
 18 EUEOPEAN LITEKATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 twelftli century : and the 
 curious outburst of Pantheism which connects itself on 
 the one hand with the little-known teaching of Amaury 
 de Bene 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 ex- 
 ample of the Summa Theologise ; Bonaventura, the 
 mystic ; Boger Bacon, the natural philosopher ; Vin- 
 cent of Beauvais, the encyclopedist. If, of the four 
 greatest of all, Albert of Bolstadt, Albertus ]\Iagnus, 
 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 quar- 
 ters ; 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. Eaymond Lully (one of the 
 most characteristic figures of Scholasticism and of the 
 mediaeval 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 
 Summulm Logicales, the grammar of formal logic for 
 ages, died in 1277.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 19 
 
 Of the matter which these and others l)y hundreds 
 put in forgotten wealth of exposition, no account will 
 be expected here. Even yet it is comparatively unex- 
 plored, or else the results of the exploration exist only 
 in books brilliant, but necessarily summary, like that of 
 Haureau, in books thorough, but almost as formidable 
 as the original, like that of Prantl. Even the latest 
 historians of philosophy complain tnat there is up to 
 the present day no "ingoing" (as the Germans say) 
 monograph about Scotus and none about Occam.^ 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 tlie 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 mys- 
 
 ' Kcmusat 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 otlier recent 
 monograph of any importance by an Englishman on Scholasticism 
 except ]\Ir 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.
 
 20 EUROPEAN LITEIIATUKE, llUO-1300. 
 
 tery.^ Yet tliere has always, in generous souls wlio have 
 some tincture of pliilosophy, subsisted a curious kind of 
 sympatliy and yearning over the work of these gener- 
 ations of mainly disinterested scholars who, whatever 
 they were, were tliorough, 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. 
 
 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 mod- 
 ern thought, had indulged in the haphazard slovenli- 
 ness 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 mediaevally 
 kept. The justice or the injustice, the taste or the 
 
 ^ The Amalricans, as the followers of Amaury de Bene 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.
 
 THE FUNCTION OF LATIN. 21 
 
 vulgarity, of these moralisings, of these felicitations, may 
 not concern us here. But in expression, as distin- 
 guished from thought, the value of the discipline to 
 which these youthful languages were suhjected 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 woidd certainly have been a pity if the tongues had 
 all been subjected to the fullest influence of Latin con- 
 straint. 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 Scholas- 
 ticism exercised in prose, are beyond dispute : and even 
 those who will not pardon literature, whatever its 
 historical and educating importance be, for being some- 
 thing 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 Dirs Ircc.
 
 22 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE.^ 
 
 EUROPEAN LITERATURE IN 1100 — LATE DISCOVERT 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 " OIL " 
 
 ITALIAN — DIFFUSION OF THE " CHANSONS " THEIR AUTHORSHIP 
 
 AND PUBLICATION — THEIR PERFORMANCE — HEARING, NOT READING, 
 TITE OBJECT — EFFECT ON PROSODY — THE " JONGLEURS " — " JONG- 
 
 LERESSES," ETC. SINGULARITY OP 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 " COURONNE- 
 MENT " — WILLIAM OF ORANGE — THE EARLIER POEMS OF THE CYCLE 
 
 THE "CHARROI DE nImES " THE " PRISE d'ORANGE " THE 
 
 STORY OF VIVIEN — "aLISCANs" — THE END OP THE STORY RENOU- 
 
 ART — some other " CHANSONS " — FINAL REMARKS ON THEM. 
 
 When we turn from Latin and consider the condition 
 of the vernacular tongues in the year 1100, there is 
 
 ^ I prefer, as more logical, the plural form chansons de gestes, aud 
 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
 
 CHANSONS I)E GESTE. 23 
 
 hardly more than one country in Europe where we 
 find them producing anything that can be called 
 European lit- Htcrature. In England Anglo - Saxon, if 
 erauireiiiuoo. ^^q^ 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 pro- 
 duct of Icelandic prose, the Saga, still volitat per ora 
 vmtm, 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 tlie lingua rustica showing 
 traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be ; though 
 the originals of the great Pocma del Cicl cannot be far 
 off. German is in something the same trance between 
 
 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 Littirature Frangaise, Paris, 1895. For 
 the mediicval period generally M. Gaston Paris, La LitUrature Fran- 
 (;aise au Moyen Age (Paris, 1888), speaks with unapproached com- 
 petence ; and, still narrowing the range, the subject of the present 
 chapter has been dealt with by M. Leon Gautier, Lcs Epopees Fran- 
 daises (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 sjjlendidl}' illustrated collection of mono- 
 graphs (Paris : Colin) which M. Petit de JuUeville is editing under 
 the title Histoire de la Langue et de la LitUrature Fraru^aise. Mr 
 Paget Toynbee's Specimens of Old French (Oxford, 1892) will illus- 
 trate this and the following chapters.
 
 24 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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'o'il, shows us — in actually known 
 existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed 
 — the national epic or chanson de gestc ; the southern, 
 or langue d'oc, gives us the Provencal 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 indi- 
 vidual, 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 litera- 
 ture to become in any degree properly known.. In so 
 far as they were known at all, until within the pre- 
 sent 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 tlie French even after their dis- 
 covery, and cannot yet be said to have been taken to 
 the heart of the nation, even to the limited extent to 
 which tlie 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 dis-
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 25 
 
 CUSS the reason of this at length would lead us out of 
 our present subject ; but it is a fact, and a very curi- 
 ous fact. 
 
 The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their 
 more technical designation, the chansons dc gestc, form 
 Late discovery ^ large, a remarkably homogeneous, and a 
 of the chansons, well-scparatcd body of compositions. These, 
 as far as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh 
 to the thirteenth century, with a few belated repre- 
 sentatives 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 scliolar, 
 Their age Conybcare, known for his services to our 
 and history. Q^yj^ 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 re- 
 markable of all. This was the Chanson de Boland, 
 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 exam- 
 ination of the older European literature any European 
 country lias produced, and after more than half a 
 century of enthusiastic resuscitation by M. Paris, l)y 
 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. 
 Leon Gautier's EpopScs Fi^angaiscs, while perhaps a
 
 2G EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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'^ 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. 
 
 The old habit of reading this division of romance 
 
 in late and travestied versions naturally and neces- 
 
 Theirdistin- sarily obscurcd the curious traits of com- 
 
 guishing char- ... , , , 
 
 acter. munity m torm 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 Charle- 
 magne 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 matUre de France - is happier. For they are 
 all still more directly connected with Frencli history, 
 
 ^ This monotony almost follows from the title. For geste in the 
 French is not merely the equivalent of gcsta, "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 gcstcs 
 are in chief three — those of the king, of Doon de Mayence, and of 
 Garin de Montglane — besides smaller ones. 
 
 ^ Jean Bodel, a trouverc of the thirteenth century, furnished liter- 
 ary history with a valuable stock-quotation in the opening of -his 
 Chanson dcs Saisncs for the three great divisions of Romance: — 
 
 " Xe sont que trois matieres a nul home attendant, 
 Ue France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant." 
 
 —Chanson des Saxons, ed. Michel, Paris, 1S39, vol. i. p. 1. 
 
 The lines following, less often quoted, are an interesting early locus 
 for French literary patriotism.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 27 
 
 seen through a romantic lens ; and even the late and 
 half - burlesque Hugucs Cai)et, even the extremely 
 interesting and partly contemporary set on the Crus- 
 ades, as well as such " little gcstcs " as that of the Lor- 
 rainers, Gnrin le Lohcrain and the rest, and the three 
 " great gcstes " of the king, of the southern hero William 
 of Orange (sometimes called the gcstc of Montglane), 
 and of the family of Doon de Mayence, arrange them- 
 selves with no difficulty under this more general head- 
 ing. And the chanson de gestc proper, as Frenchmen 
 are entitled to boast, never quite deserts this matidre 
 de France. It is always the Gesta Francoriun 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 ; ^ 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 Eomance " which has 
 been referred to. But the chanson de gestc itself was 
 never, so to speak, " half-known " — except to a very 
 few antiquaries. After its three centuries of flourish- 
 ing, first alone, then with the other two " matters," it 
 retired altogether, and made its reappearance only 
 after four centuries had passed away. 
 
 This fact or set of facts has made the actual nature 
 of the original Charlemagne liomances the subject of 
 
 ^ Or only in rare cases to later French history itself — Du Gues- 
 clin, and the Combat dcs Trente.
 
 •28 EUROPEAN LITERATUIIE, 1100-1300. 
 
 imicli mistake and misstatement on the part of gen- 
 Mutakes about eral historians of literature. The widely 
 them. j.gr^(^ r^^iid 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 Bihliothegue 
 (les Romans of the Comte de Tressan. He therefore 
 assigned to them^ 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 ori- 
 ginal 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, tlie 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 ; 1 )ut 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 Ilomance, with a much 
 greater proficiency in general literary history, prac- 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 29 
 
 tically passes the chansons dc geste over altogether in 
 the introduction to his Litcrahcre of Europe, which 
 purports to siimmarise all that is important in the 
 History of the Middle Ages, and to supplement and 
 correct that book itself. 
 
 The only excuse (besides mere unavoidable igno- 
 rance, which,- no doubt, is a sufficient one) for this 
 Their isolation ueglect is the curious fact, in itself adding 
 and origin. ^q tlicir 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 subse- 
 quent. As to their own origin, the usual abundant, 
 warm, and if it may be said without impertinence, 
 rather futile controversies have prevailed. Prac- 
 tically speaking, we know nothing whatever about 
 the matter. There used to be a theory that the Char- 
 lemagne Romances owed their origin more or less 
 directly to the fabulous Chronicle of Tilpin or Turpin, 
 the warrior - Archbishop of Eheims. It has now 
 been made tolerably certain that the Latin chronicle 
 on the subject is not anterior even to our existing 
 Chanson dc 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 lioland (" Hruotlandus comes Britannia? ") 
 at the skirmish of lloncesvalles. There are, however, 
 early mentions of certain cantilenm or ballads ; and it 
 has been assumed by some scholars that the earliest 
 chansons were compounded out of precedent ballads of
 
 30 EUKOPEAN LlTEltATUlIE, 1100-1300. 
 
 the kind. It is unnecessary to inform those wlio 
 know something of general literary history, that this 
 theory (that the corruption of the ballad is the gener- 
 ation of the epic) is not confined to the present sub- 
 ject, but is one of the favourite fighting-grounds of 
 a certain school of critics. It has been applied to 
 Homer, to Bcotoulf, to the Old and Middle German 
 Romances, and it would be very odd indeed if it had 
 not been applied to the Chansons dc gcste. But it may 
 be said witli 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 Eoland 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 w^e have nothing anterior to the 
 earliest chansons dc geste ; and that we have not even 
 any satisfactory reason for presuming that there ever 
 was anything.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 31 
 
 One of the reasons, liowever, which no doubt has 
 been most apt to suggest anterior compositions is the 
 Their metrical singular Completeness of form exhibited by 
 •^'"■'"- these poems. It is now practically agreed 
 
 tliat — scraps and fragments themselves excepted — we 
 have no monument of French in accomplished pro- 
 fane literature more ancient than the Chanson clc 
 IiolandJ 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 caesura at 
 the second foot, these lines being written with a pre- 
 cision 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. Fur- 
 ther, 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 
 llola7id) regularly rhymed. But they are arranged in 
 batches (called in French laisses or tirades) of no cer- 
 tain 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 liomance tongues 
 
 ^ Editio princeps by Fr. Michel, 1837. Since that time it has been 
 frequently I'eprinted, translated, and commented. Those who wish 
 for an exact reproduction of the oldest MS. will find it given by 
 Stengel (Heilbronn, 1878).
 
 32 EUROPEAN LITEKATUKE, IIOU-ISOO. 
 
 ill 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 chatisons 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, tlie 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 exten- 
 sions 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 Ca2'>et and 
 Baudouin dc Sehourc — full as enthusiasts like ]M. 
 Gautier complain that they are of a spirit very differ- 
 ent 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 laisscs, some- 
 times 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. 
 
 That scheme is, in the majority of the chansons, curi- 
 
 Their scheme ously uiiiform. It has, since the earliest 
 
 of matter. gtudics of them, been remarked as odd that 
 
 Charlemagne, though almost omnipresent (except of
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 33 
 
 course in the Crusading cycle and a few others), and 
 though sucli 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 witli great pomp and circumstance as li 
 The character 0/ empercrcs ct, la harhc fioric, with a gorgeous 
 charieriMgne. court, a widc realm, a numerous and brilliant 
 baronage. But his character is far from tenderly treated. 
 In Moland 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, in- 
 deed, 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. 
 
 Nevertheless, Charlemagne is always the defender
 
 34 EUROPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 of the Cross, and the antagonist of the Saracens, and 
 the part which these latter play is as 
 
 Other characters , . . , . ^ j_i i i 
 
 and character- ubiquitous as his own, and on the whole 
 isiics. 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 a Constantinohle is, as is supposed, of tlie 
 early twelfth century, if not the eleventh) a most im- 
 portant 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 Iloland's betrothed, who dies wlien she hears of his 
 death, is toucliing, 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. Charle- 
 magne'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 con- 
 stant sires, which is something of a blot on Paynim 
 princesses like Floripas in Fierahras. Tliis 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
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 35 
 
 that Fierabras himself rebukes her with a " Moult 
 "rant tort aves." 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 mediaeval Churcli as 
 to the identity, for practical purposes, of betrothal and 
 marriage. On the other hand, the courtesy of the 
 cJiansons is distinctly in a more rudimentary state than 
 that of the succeeding romances. Not only is the 
 harshest language used by knights to ladies,^ 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 chan- 
 sons, is of a curious and rather elementary type. The 
 knights are ready enough to fight to tlie last gasp, and 
 the last drop of blood, for the Cross ; and their faith is 
 as free from flaw as their zeal. Li Ajjostoiles de Itoiiic — 
 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 Ajiiis and 
 
 ^ V. infra on the scene in Aliscuns between William uf Orange and 
 his sister Queen ISlancliefleur.
 
 30 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Sara- 
 cens' heads whensoever they present themselves.^ 
 
 In mannei's, as in theology and ethics, there is 
 the same simplicity, which some have called almost 
 Realist barbarous. Architecture and dress receive 
 quality. 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 Beowidf. The hall is still 
 the common resort of both sexes by day and of the 
 men at niglit. Although gold and furs, silk and jewels, 
 are lavished with the usual cheap magnificence of 
 fiction, very few details are given of the minor sitpellex 
 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 
 
 ^ Even the famous and very admirable death-scene of Vivien (again 
 t>. infra) will not disprove these remarks.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 37 
 
 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 dc gestc 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 gcstc possess a realistic quality which 
 is entirely absent from the gracious idealism of the 
 Eomances. The emperors and the admirals, perhaps 
 even their fair and obliging daughters, were not person- 
 ages 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 pre- 
 sentation and dressing apart, not so very different 
 from the general temper of man after the break up of 
 the Eoman 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 hv^man 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
 
 38 EUROrEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 its time ; and thus it far exceeds the lowest kinds, 
 and retains an abiding vakie even apart from the 
 distinct, the high, and the very cnrious perfection, 
 within narrow limits, of its peculiar form. 
 
 It is probable that very few persons who are not 
 specially acquainted with the subject are at all aware 
 voiumeandage of the enomious bulk and number of these 
 o/{7ie chansons, poems, evou if their later remanievients (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 considera- 
 tion. The most complete list published, that of M. 
 Leon Gautier, enumerates 110. Of these he himself 
 places only the Chanson dc llolancl in the eleventh 
 century, perhaps as early as the iSTorman 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 philo- 
 logical) Acquin, Aliscans, Amis et Amiles, Antioche 
 Aspremont, Auheri le Bourgoing, Aye d' Avignon, the Ba- 
 taille Loquifer, the oldest (now only known in Italian) 
 form of Berte aus grans Bids, Beuves d' Hansto7ie (with 
 another Italian form more or less independent), the 
 Twelfth Cliarroi de Nimes, Les C%6tifs, the Ghevalcrie 
 century. Qgicr dc Danemarchc, the Chcvalerie Vivien 
 (otherwise known as Covenant Vivien), the major part 
 (also known by separate titles) of the Chevalier au 
 Cygne, La Conqiiete de la Betite Bretagne (another form of 
 Acquin), the Couronnement Loys, Boon de la Boche, Boon
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 39 
 
 dc Nmitenil, the Enfaiiccs Cliarlemagnc, the Enfances 
 Godefroi, the Enfances Roland, the Enfances Ogier, 
 Floovant, Garin le Loherain, Gamier cle Nanteuil, 
 Giratz de Eossilho, Girhcri de Metz, G^ii de Bourgogne, 
 Gui de Nanteuil, Helias, JTervis de Metz, the oldest 
 form of Huon de Bordeaux, J6rusaleni, Jourdains de 
 Blaivies, the Lorraine cycle, including Garin, &c., 
 Macaire, Mainet, the Moniage Guillaume, the Moniage 
 Rainoart, Orson d.e Beauvais, Rainoart, Raoid de 
 Camhrai, Les Saisnes, the Sitge de Barhastre, Syracon, and 
 the Voyage de Charlemagne. In other words, nearly half 
 the total number date from the twelfth century, if not 
 even earlier. 
 
 By far the larger number of the rest are not later 
 than the thirteenth. They include — Ainieri de Nar- 
 Thirtcenth honne, Aiol, Ans6is de Carthage, Ans4is Fils 
 century. ^g Gcrlcrt, Aubcron, Berte aus grans Pi^s 
 in its present ^French form, Beton et Daurel, Beuves de 
 Commarchis, the Bepartement des Enfans Aimeri, the 
 Destruction de Rome, Boon de Mayence, Elie de Saint 
 Grilles, the Enfances Boon de Mayence, the Enfances 
 G^dllaume, the Enfaiices Vivien, the Entrde en Es- 
 pagne, Fierabras, Foulques de Candie, Gaydon, Garin 
 de Montglane, Gaufrey, Gerard de Viane, G^cihert 
 d'Andrcnas, Jchan de Bauson, Maugis d' Aigremont, 
 the Mort Aimeri de Narhonne, Otinel, Parise la Duch- 
 esse, the Prise de Cordres, the Prise de Pam^Jclune, the 
 Quatre Fils d'Aymon, Renaud de Montanhan (a variant 
 of the same), Renier, the later forms of the Chanson 
 de Roland, to which the name of Roncevanx is some- 
 times given for the sake of distinction, the Sikfe de
 
 40 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Narhonne, Simon de Pouille, Vivien VAmackour de 
 Montbranc, and Yon. 
 
 By this the list is almost exhausted. The four- 
 teenth century, though fruitful in mnaniemcnts, some- 
 Fourteenth, times in mono-rliymed tirades, but often in 
 mid later. 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 Sebourc, and 
 the Bastari de Bouillon ; Hugues Capet, a very lively 
 and readable but slightly vulgar thing, exhibiting an 
 almost undisguised tone of parody ; and some frag- 
 ments known by the names of Hcrnaut de Bcaulande, 
 Bcnier de Gcnnes, &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 c/ia7iso7i-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. 
 
 It must further be remembered that, with the excep- 
 tion of a very few in fragmentary condition, all these 
 Chansons™ pocms are of great length. Only the later 
 print. Qj. jggg ggnxiine, indeed, run to the prepos- 
 
 terous 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 pro- 
 bably not excessive to put the average length of the 
 older chansons at six thousand lines; while if the)
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 41 
 
 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 imprinted, 
 and (as was unavoidable) suoh 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 satisfac- 
 tion of private crotchets before the " unlocking of the 
 word-hoard " to the utmost possible extent. The ear- 
 liest chansons printed ^ were, I believe, M. Paulin Paris's 
 Berte aus grans Pids, M. Francisque Michel's Roland ; 
 and thereafter these two scholars and others edited for M. 
 Techener a very handsome set of " Eomances des Douze 
 Pairs," as they were called, including Les Saisnes, Ogier, 
 Raoul tU Cambrai, Garin, and the two great crusading 
 chansons, Antioche and Jerusalem, Other scattered 
 efforts were made, such as the publication of a beau- 
 tiful edition of Baudo7tm de Sehourc at Valenciennes 
 as early as 1841 ; while a Belgian scholar, M. de 
 Reiffenberg, published Ze Chevalier ait Cygnc, and a 
 Dutch one, Dr Jonckbloet, gave a large part of the 
 later numbers of the Garin de Montglane cycle in his 
 Guillaumc d'Orange (2 vols.. The Hague, 1854). But 
 
 ^ Immanuel Bekker had priuted the Provencal Ficrahms as early 
 as 1829.
 
 42 EUROrEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 apjiaratus, 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 agree- 
 able little volumes, in the type, shape, and paper of 
 the " Bibliotheque Elzevirienne with abundant edi- 
 torial matter, paraphrases in modern French, and the 
 like. Lcs Ancie7is Podtes 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 in- 
 terestingly 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 Societe des Ancieus Textes Fran9ais has 
 edited some chansons, and independent German and 
 French scholars have given some more ; but no system- 
 atic attempt has been made to fill the gaps, and the 
 pernicious system of re-editing, on pretext of wrong
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 43 
 
 selection of MSS. or the like, has continued. Neverthe- 
 less, 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 ct Amilcs, Antioche, Baudouin 
 de Scbourc (though iu a mixed kind), Bcrte aus grans 
 Pi6s, Ficrahras, Garin le Loherain, GSrard de Roussillon, 
 Huon de Bordeavx, 0(jier de Daneiaarche, Raoid dc 
 Camhrai, Roland, and the Voyage de Charlemagne ct 
 Constantinohle. 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 sim- 
 plest, sharpest, and first state. ISTor is there anywhere 
 a finer passage than the death of Eoland, though there 
 are many not less fine. 
 
 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. 
 
 In the first place, it will be noticed by careful readers 
 Language. Oo ^^ ^hc list above glvcu, that thcsc composi- 
 andoii tlous are not limited to French proper or 
 
 to the langne d'o'il, though infinitely the grc^ater part of
 
 44 EUROrEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tliein are in tliat tongue. Indeed, for some time after 
 attention had been drawn to them, and before their ac- 
 tual natures and contents had been thoroughly examined, 
 there was a theory that they were Provencal in origin. 
 This, though it was chiefly due to the fact that Eayn- 
 ouard, Fauriel, and other early students of old French 
 had a strong southern leaning, had some other excuses. 
 It is a fact that ProveuQal was earlier in its develop- 
 ment 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 lanc/uc 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 ProvenQal epic had " le defaut d'etre 
 perdu." That is not quite true. There is, as noted 
 above, a I'roven^al Fierabras, though it is beyond doubt 
 an adaptation of the French ; Betonnet d' Hanstone or 
 Beton ct Daurel only exists in Provencal, though there 
 is again no doubt of its being borrowed ; and, lastly, 
 the oldest existing, and probably the original, form of 
 Gdrard de Eoussillon, Giratz de Rossilho, is, as its title 
 implies, Provengal, though it is in a dialect more ap- 
 proaching to the langue d'o'il than any form of oc, and 
 even presents the curious peculiarity of existing in 
 two forms, one leaning to Provencal, the other to 
 French. But these very facts, though they show the 
 statement that " the Provencal epic is lost " to be ex- 
 cessive, yet go almost farther than a total deficiency in 
 proving that the chanson de geste was not originally
 
 CHANSOXS DE GESTE. 45 
 
 ProveiK^'al. Had it been otherwise, there can be no 
 possible reason wliy a bare three per cent of the exist- 
 ing 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. 
 
 The next fact — one almost more interesting, inas- 
 much as it bears on that community of Romance 
 tongues of which we have evidence in 
 
 Italian. t^iii 
 
 Dante,^ and perhaps also makes tor 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 Provenq-al, nor Italian, but 
 French Italicised in part.- The substance, moreover, 
 of the Charlemagne stories was very early naturalised 
 in Italy in the form of a sort of abstract or compila- 
 tion called the Bcali di Francia^ which in various 
 forms maintained popularity through mediaeval and 
 early modern times, and undoubtedly exercised much 
 influence on the great Italian poets of the Renais- 
 sance. 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, patrioti- 
 cally resenting the frequent forays into Spain to which 
 
 ^ V. the famous aud all-imiaortant ninth chapter of the first book 
 of the De Vulyari Eloquio. 
 
 - See especially Macaire, ed. Guessard, Paris, 1860. 
 '^ So also the acstc of Montglane became the Ncrhonesi.
 
 46 EUROPEAN LITEEATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 the chaoisons bear witness, and availing themselves of 
 Diffusion of the ^h© confcssion of cHsaster at Roncesvalles, 
 chansons. gg^ ^^p r^ countcr-story in whicli Eoland is 
 personally worsted by Bernardo del Carpio, and the 
 quarrels of the payninis 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 {Fiera- 
 hras), The Siege of M.ilan, Sir Otnel (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 
 Coilzcar (Collier), in which the well-known romance- 
 donnSe of the king visiting some obscure person is 
 applied to Charlemagne. Of these, one, the version 
 of Huon of Bordeaux} is literature of no mean kind ; 
 but this is because it was executed by Lord Ber- 
 ners, long after our jDrcsent period. Also, being 
 of that date, it represents the latest French form of 
 the story, which was a very popular one, and incor- 
 porated very large borrowings from other sources 
 (the loadstone rock, the punishment of Cain, and 
 so forth) which are foreign to the subject and sub- 
 stance of the chansons proper. 
 
 „,, . ,, Very great pains have been spent on the 
 
 ship and pubii- question of the authorship, publication, or 
 
 cation. p „ , , . ^ . . . 
 
 periormance or these compositions. As is 
 the case with so much mediaeval work, the great mass 
 
 1 Ed. S. Lee, Luudon, 1SS3-86.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 47 
 
 of them is entirely anonymous. A line which con- 
 cludes, or rather supplements, Roland — 
 
 " Ci fait 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, Thor- 
 olds, or Therouldes, in the eleventh century, and dis- 
 covering 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 mean- 
 ing of declinet, which, thougli it must signify " go 
 over," " tell like a bead - roll," in some way or other, 
 might be susceptible of application to authorship, 
 recitation, oi even copying. In some other cases, how- 
 ever, we have more positive testimony, though they 
 are in a great minority. Graindor of Douai refashioned 
 the work of Eichard the Pilgrim, an actual partaker 
 of the first Crusade, into the present Antioclie, Jeru- 
 salem, and perhaps Lcs CMtifs. Either Eichard or 
 Graindor must have been one of the very best poets of 
 the whole cycle. Jehan de Flagy wrote the spirited 
 Gavin Ic Lohcrain; and Jehan Bodel of Arras Lcs Saisnes. 
 Adenes le Eoi, a trovverc, 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 Piis, and one of the forms of part of 
 Ogier. Other names — Bertrand of Bar sur Aube, 
 Pierre de Eieu, Gerard d'xVmiens, Eaimbert de Paris,
 
 48 EUROPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Brianclion (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 
 I'apaume, 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. 
 
 No subject, however, in connection with these 
 chansons de gcste has occupied more attention than the 
 Their per- precisc modc of wliat has been called above 
 fortruince. their " authorsliip, publication, or perform- 
 ance." 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 mediaeval 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 Itomantic 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
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 49 
 
 — as the very word recitative should be enough to 
 remind any one — pass into each other by degrees im- 
 perceptible to any but a technical ear ; and the instru- 
 ments, 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 
 Idstory of music, not that of literature. 
 
 But it is a matter of quite other importance 
 
 that, as has been said, lighter mediaeval literature 
 
 „ . generally, and the chansons in particular, 
 
 Hearing, not o </ ' j- ' 
 
 reading, the wcrc meant for tlic car, not the eye 
 oject. — ^^ ^^ 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 re- 
 petitions, 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 
 Effect on 0^ ^hc mono-rhymcd, or even the single- 
 prosody. assouauccd, tirade depends almost entirely 
 upon its being delivered vivd voce. Only then does
 
 50 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 un- 
 learned, were constantly and regularly addicted — it 
 was almost impossible that they should not demand 
 a similar prosody in the profaner compositions ad- 
 dressed 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. 
 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
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 51 
 
 different from that afterwards occasioned Ijv the drama, 
 took place between the trouvtre, 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 trouvtrcs, 
 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 difierent kinds. Immense pains have 
 been spent upon the jongleur. It has been asserted, and 
 it is not improbable, tliat during the palmiest days — say 
 the eleventh and twelfth centuries — of the chansons a 
 special order of the jongleur or minstrel hierarchy con- 
 cerned itself with them, — it is at least certain that
 
 52 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 the phrase chanter cle gcstc 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 cliance of a dishonourable mention ; a fact which, 
 though we must not base any calculations upon it as 
 to the actual sentiments of Eoland or Ogier, Eaoul 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 chan- 
 sons they can sing. 
 
 But the enumeration of the kinds of jongleurs — 
 those itinerant, those attached to courts and great 
 jongieresses, families, &c. — would lead vis too far. They 
 '^''^- were not all of one sex, and we hear of 
 
 jongieresses and chantcrcsscs, such as Adeline who 
 figures in the history of the Norman Conquest, Aig- 
 lantine 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 jongieresses 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
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 53 
 
 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 — 2^oitevincs, 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 para- 
 graph 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 ex-
 
 54 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 ample — 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 confis- 
 cations, 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. AVhen with the assistance (always to 
 be gratefully received) of philologists and historians 
 in the strict sense the date of a literary work is ascer- 
 tained 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 con- 
 templation and ornaments of discourse ; but, once more, 
 neither has much, if anything, to do with literature. 
 
 We may therefore with advantage, having made this 
 Singularity of digrcssion to comply a little with prevalent 
 tfte ciiausoiis. fashious, return to the chansons themselves, 
 to the half- million or million verses of majestic
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 55 
 
 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 sepa- 
 rate and unique peculiarity in matter and form, which 
 has such extraordinary charm, and endowed besides, 
 more perhaps than any other division, with the attrac- 
 tion 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 associa- 
 tions, 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 misjudg- 
 ment 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. Fer- 
 dinand Brunetifere, 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
 
 56 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Their charm. , , , . c j i t , j 
 
 also been reading masses or 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 
 Eoland, that where the hero discovers the dead arch- 
 bishop, with his hands — " the white, the beautiful " — 
 crossed on liis breast : — 
 
 " Li quenz RoUanz revient de pasmeisuns, 
 Sur piez se drecet, mais il ad grant dulur ; 
 Guard et aval e si guardet amunt ; 
 Sur I'erbe verte, ultre ses cumpaiguuns, 
 La veit gesir le nobile barun : 
 C'est I'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 
 Centre paiens fut tuz tens campiuns. 
 Deus li otreit seinte beneigun. 
 Aoi ! " 1 
 
 1 Roland, 11. 2233-2246.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 57 
 
 Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can 
 be called a chanson de gcstc proper in style, Le Bastart 
 de Bouillon, and open on these lines : — • 
 
 " Pardevant la chite qui Miekes ^ fut clamee 
 Fu grande la bataille, et fiere la mellee, 
 Enchois car on eust nulle tente levee, 
 Commencha li debas a chelle matinee. 
 Li cine frere paien i mainent grant hnee, 
 II keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit I'espee, 
 Et una forte targe a son col acolee. 
 Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demoree, 
 Un gentil crestien de France I'onneree — 
 Armeire n'i vault une pomme pek'e ; 
 Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamee, 
 Le branc li embati par dedans la coree,^ 
 Mort I'abat du cheval ; son ame soit sauvee ! " ^ 
 
 This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the 
 very " padding " of the average chanson, but what pad- 
 ding it is ! Compare the mere sound, the clash and 
 clang of the verse, with the ordinary English romance 
 in Si?' 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 ; * 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. 
 
 But in order to the proper comprehension of this 
 
 ^ I.e., Mecca. 
 
 2 Coree is not merely = caijr, but heart, hver, and all the upper 
 "inwards." 
 
 "* Li Bastars de Bouillon (ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1877). 
 
 ■* 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.
 
 58 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 section of literature, it is necessary that something 
 Peculiarity of more shoulcl be saicl as well of the matter 
 the geste system, ^t large as of the constrviction 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 Charle- 
 magne 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. 
 
 In our present subject, on the other hand, even 
 Charlemagne's life is less the object of the story than
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 59 
 
 the history of France ; and enormous as the falsification 
 of that history may seem to modern criti- 
 
 Instanccs. . , . , . 
 
 cism, the writers always m a certani sense 
 remembered that they were historians. When an in- 
 teresting 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.^ 
 Thus it happens that the geste or saga of Ouillaume 
 d'Oranrjc — which is itself not the whole of the great 
 gcste 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 extra- 
 ordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which 
 for some eight hundred pages M. Leon Gautier has de- 
 voted to the king's gcste, twenty-seven different chan- 
 sons 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 romcms 
 cVavcntttrcs subsequently tied on, like the above-men- 
 tioned outlying romances of the Arthurian group, to 
 the main subject. 
 
 It seems necessary, therefore, or at least desirable, 
 
 especially as these poems are still far too 
 
 Summary of the _ "' •"■ _ 
 
 gesteo/jruziam little kuowu to EugUsh readers, to give 
 
 ranrje. .^^ ^j^^ ^^^^ placc a uiorc or less detailed 
 
 account of one of the groups ; in the second, a still 
 
 1 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.
 
 60 EUROPEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 more detailed accoimt 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 Cruillaume 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 com- 
 petent scholars of the century on the subject — Dr 
 Jonckbloet, 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. 
 
 The poem as we have it ^ begins with a double 
 
 exordium, from which the jongleur might perhaps choose 
 
 as from alternative collects in a liturgy. 
 
 And first of the ^ . . °'' 
 
 Couronnement Eacli is tcu lincs 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 example ! " 
 
 A much less commonplace note is struck immediately 
 
 ^ Ed. Jonckbloet, op. cit., i. 1-71.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 61 
 
 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 Eome himself said mass ; 
 and Louis, son of Charlemagne, was brought up to the 
 liigh altar where the crown was laid. At this mo- 
 ment 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 cnfcs) 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 pre- 
 tending 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.
 
 62 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 pechi(5s," 
 
 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 Eome. 
 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 tliousands, 
 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 njany wives as he chooses, — a method of
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 63 
 
 guerdon which shocks M. Gautier, the most orthodox 
 as well as not the least scholarly of scholars. How- 
 ever, the Holy Father also wishes to buy off the 
 heathen, thereby showing a truly apostolic ignorance 
 of the world. Galafre, 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," ^ that he is a descendant of Eomulus and Julius 
 Ccesar, 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. Unfor- 
 tunately 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 liis 
 epic surname of Guillaume au Court Xez), 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 honour- 
 ably incurred) pursues them, captures Galafre, con- 
 verts him at point of sword, and receives from him 
 the offer of his beautiful daughter. The marriage is 
 
 ^ "Parlez h, moi, sire au chaperon large." — C.L., 1. 468.
 
 64 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 dessevre, 
 Puis ne se virent en trestot leur ae." 
 
 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 Eouen, son of 
 Eichard, 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 Galafre 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 Piome, defeats the Germans, takes his 
 faineant emperor's part in a single combat with 
 Guy, and is again victorious. Xor, though he has
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 65 
 
 to treat his pusillanimous sovereign in an exceedingly 
 cavalier fashion, does he fail to have Louis crowned 
 again as Emperor of Eome. A fresh rebellion 
 breaking out in France, he again subdues it ; and 
 strengthens the tottering house of Charles Martel by 
 giving his own sister Blanchelieur to the chicken- 
 hearted king. 
 
 " En grant barnage f u Looys entrez ; 
 Quant il fu riche, Guillaume n'en sot gre," 
 
 ends the poem with its usual laconism. 
 
 There is, of course, in this story an element of 
 rough comedy, approaching horse - play, which may 
 Comments 071 the ^(^^ plcase all tastes. This element, how- 
 couronnement. ever, is vcry largely present in the chan- 
 sons (though it so happens, yet once more, that Roland 
 is accidentally free from it), and it is especially ob- 
 vious in the particular branch or gcste 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 esjjrit 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 Eome) give a dramatic turn : and though there is 
 no fine writing, there is a refreshing directness. The
 
 66 EUROPEAN LITEEATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 faindantisc 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 mo- 
 ment to cross the water of Gironde with a hundred 
 thousand men in order to cravcnter ct confondrc 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.^ 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. 
 
 It may be perhaps expected that before, in the 
 
 1 C.L.. 11. 72-79. 172-196.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 67 
 
 second place, summing the other branches of the 
 William of saga of this William of Orange, it should 
 oraiuje, \^q g^j(]^ ^y|^Q \^q ^yas, 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 cer- 
 tain trouvdres 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 Mont- 
 glane runs to twenty-four. 
 
 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 
 poevisofthe pccrs, a Special bulwark of France and 
 ''^'^^" Clnistendom 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 ISTarbonne, heroes both, and possessors of 
 the same good qualities which extend to all the
 
 68 EUROPEAN LITEKATUKE, 1 100-1300. 
 
 family. For it is a cardinal point of the chansons 
 that not only hon 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 re- 
 mainino- eighteen that of his life. The first in M. 
 Gautier's order ^ is Lcs Enfanccs Gar in de Montglane. 
 Garin de Montglane, the son of Duke Savary of 
 Aquitaine and a mother persecuted by false accusa- 
 tions, 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 pre- 
 liminaries 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 Eoland and Oliver have 
 
 ^ M. Jonckblolit, who takes a less wide range, begins his selection 
 or collection of the William saga with the Couroniicmcnt Loys.
 
 CHANSONS DE OESTE. 69 
 
 their famous fight, and Eoland is betrothed to Oliver's 
 sister Aude. Hernaut de Beaulande tells how the 
 hero conquers Aquitaine, marries Fregonde, and be- 
 comes the father of Aimeri de ]S"arbonne ; 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 (Charle- 
 magne reigning all the time) with the above-named 
 Aimeri de Narhonne. The events of this come after 
 Eoncesvalles, 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 ]S!"arbonne, 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 acces- 
 sible in any such convenient corpus as De Jonckbloijt's 
 though some have been edited recently. 
 
 Three poems intervene between Aimeri de Narhonne 
 and the Couronnement Loys, but they do not seem to 
 have been always kept apart. The first, the Enfances 
 Guillcmme, 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.
 
 70 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 pre- 
 serves 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 Departcment dcs Unfans 
 Aimeri, in which William's brothers, following his 
 example, leave Narbonne and their father for different 
 parts of France, and achieve adventures and posses- 
 sions. 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 througli 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 hLs victory again returns 
 to Aix. 
 
 Now begins the Couronnement Loys, of which the 
 more detailed abstract given above may serve, not
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 71 
 
 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 Nimes, 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 Nimes. This 
 The charroi ^6 carrics, as told in the Charroi de Nimes} 
 de Nimes. j^^ ^j^g Douglas-Hkc 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 blow^s his 
 horn, and the knights springing from their casks, the 
 town is taken. This Charroi de Nimes is one of the 
 most spirited, but one of the roughest, of the group. 
 The catalogue of his services with which William 
 
 1 Jonckbloet. i. 73-111.
 
 72 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 overwhelms the king, each item ushered by the phrase 
 "Eois, 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 curi- 
 ously 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 one 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. 
 
 William has thus entered on part, though the least 
 part, of the king's gift to him — a gift which it is fair 
 TAe Prise to Louis to Say that the hero had himself 
 a Orange, clemauded, after refusing the rather vague 
 offer of a fourth of the lands and revenues of all 
 France. The Prise cV Orange'^ follows in time and as 
 a subject of chanson, the Charroi de Nhnes. The 
 earlier poem had been all sheer fighting with no 
 softer side. In this William is reminded of the beau- 
 tiful Orable (wife, if only in name, of King Thibaut), 
 ^ Jonckbloet, i. 112-162.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE, 73 
 
 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 pas- 
 sage (this probably shows the chanson to be a late one 
 in this form) lets the heathen in : and all three cham- 
 pions 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 Nimes 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 Nimes, the 
 Saracens are cut to pieces and Orange won. Orable 
 is quickly baptised, her name being changed to Gui- 
 bourc, and married without further delay. William
 
 74 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 ]\I. Jonck- 
 bloet (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 con- 
 duct, and her words do not come to much more than — 
 
 " I am your wife if you will marry me.'' 
 La Prise d' Orange ends with the couplet — 
 
 " Puis estut il tiex xxx aus en Orenge 
 Mes ainc un jor ii'i estut sanz chalenge." 
 
 Orange, in short, was a kind of Garde Douloureuse 
 against the infidel : and William well earned his title 
 The story of of " Marchis." The story of his exploits 
 Vivien diverges a little — a loop rather than an 
 episode — in two specially heroic chansons, the Enfances 
 Vivien and the Covenant Vivien} 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'Ansene, 
 one of those " children of Aimeri " who have sought 
 fortune away from Xarbonne, and one of the captives 
 of Eoncesvalles. 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 
 
 ^ Enfances Vivien, ed. AVahlen and v. P^eilitzer, Paris, 1886: 
 Covenant Vivien, Jonckbloet, i. 163-213.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 75 
 
 Vivien is rescued, but sold as a slave. An amiable 
 paynim woman buys him and adopts him ; but he 
 is a born knight, and wlien grown up, with a few 
 allies surprises Luiserne itself, and holds it till a 
 French army arrives, and Gariu 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 Desrame. 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'^ it- 
 self 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 sovifri grans ahans." 
 
 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 : 
 
 Aliscans, ^ ^^ n A 1 • 
 
 the literary excellence or Ahscans is one. 
 The scale of the battle is represented as being enor- 
 mous : and the poet is not unworthy of his subject. 
 Neither is William impar sihi : but his day of un- 
 
 ^ Jonckbloet, i. 215 to end ; seijarately, as noted above, by Gues- 
 sard and de Montaignon, Paris, 1870.
 
 7G EUllOPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 broken victory is over. No one can resist him per- 
 sonally ; but the vast numbers of the Saracens make 
 personal valour useless. A'ivien, 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 admin- 
 ister 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 A^ivien 
 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 prow- 
 ess 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,
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 77 
 
 besides, Aliscans is one of the best known of the 
 chansons, and has been twice printed. 
 
 From this point the general interest of the saga, 
 which has cuhiiinated in the battle of Aliscans, 
 
 The end of thougli it Can hardly be said to disappear, 
 
 the story. dcclincs somcwliat, 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. 
 
 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
 
 78 EUROPEAN LITERATURE; 1100-1:300. 
 
 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. Eeconciliation 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 Eenouart, 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 Eenouart or Eainouart 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 characterj and ends by 
 being discovered to be of noble or royal birth. 
 Eainouart is thus the ancestor, and perhaps the 
 direct ancestor, of Havelok, whom he especially 
 resembles ; of Beaumains, in a hitherto untraced 
 episode of the Artliuriau 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 Unci — 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 Eainouart finds in re- 
 mounting his comrades, the seven nephews of 
 William, because his tinel blows are so swashing 
 that they simply smash horse and man- — a difficulty
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 79 
 
 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 gcstc 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 Desrame, 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 Bataillc Loquifcr, is ranked by 
 good judges as ancient, and describes fresh prowess of 
 Eainouart. Then comes the Moniagc [" 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 — Fotdqucs dc Candie, the Siege de Bar- 
 hastre, the Prise de Cordres, and Gilbert d'Andrenas. 
 And at last the whole geste is wound up by the Mort 
 Aimeri de Narhonne, Renicr, and the Moniagc Chiil- 
 laume, the poem which unites the profane history 
 of the Marquis au Court Ncz to the legend of St 
 William of the Desert, though in a fashion sometimes
 
 80 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 odd. AI. Gavitier will not allow any of these poems 
 (except the Bataillc Loquifer and the two Montages) 
 great age ; and even if it were otherwise, and more 
 of them were directly accessible,^ there could be no 
 space to say much of them here. The sketch given 
 should bo 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. 
 
 If these delights can move any one, they may be 
 found almost universally distributed about the 
 Some other cJiansons. Of the minor groups the most 
 chansons, interesting and considerable are the cru- 
 sading 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 Jerusalem 
 are almost historical, and are pretty certainly based 
 on the account of an actual partaker. Antioche in 
 particular has few superiors in the wliole hundred 
 and more poems of the kind.. Udias ties this historic 
 matter on to legend proper by introducing the story 
 of the Knight of the Swan ; while Zcs CMtifs {The 
 Captives) combines history and legend very interest- 
 ingly, 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 ScIoutg 
 and the Bastart de Bouillon, have been already more 
 
 ^ Foulqucs de Candle (ed. Tarbe, Reims, 1860) is the only one of 
 this batch which I pussess, or have read in extcntiu.
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 81 
 
 than once mentioned They show, as has been said, 
 the latest form of the chanson, and are ahnost pure 
 fiction^ though they have a sort of framework or out- 
 line in tlie wars in Northern Arabia, at and round 
 the city of Jof, whose crusading towers still, according 
 to travellers, look down on tlie hadj route through 
 the desert. Garin le Zoherain, on the other hand, and 
 its successors, are pure early feudal fighting, as is also 
 the early, excellent, and very characteristic Raoul de 
 CamhraL 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 gener- 
 ally 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 Daneniarche. 
 The former, since the fortunate reprinting of Lord 
 Berners's version by the Early English Text Society, is 
 open to every one, though, of coursej 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 HuoU; brought to the loadstone rock, is then 
 subjected to the enchantments — loving, and now not 
 baneful — of Arthur's sister Morgane, and tears him- 
 self from fairyland to come to the rescue of France, 
 is b}' far the most delightful of the attempts to
 
 82 EUllOPEAN LITEKATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 " cross " the Artlmriuii aud Carlo vingian cycles. And 
 of this we fortunately have in English a poetical 
 version from the great trouvire among the poets of 
 our day, the late Mr William Morris. Of yet others, 
 the often-mentioned Voyage a ConstmitinoUc, 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, bvit vigorous and interesting. The 
 pleasant pair of Aiol and Elie dc St Gilles ; the touch- 
 ing history of Charlemagne's motlier, Berte cms grans 
 PUs ; Acquin, one of the rare chansons dealing with 
 Brittany (though Roland was historically count 
 thereof) ; Gdrard de Bmissillon. which has more than 
 merely philological interest ; Macaire, already men- 
 tioned; the famous Qtiatre Fils d'Agmon, longest and 
 most widely popular, must be added to the list, and 
 are not all that should be added to it. 
 
 On the whole, I must repeat that the chansons de 
 gestc, which as we have them are the work of the 
 Final remarics twclftli and thirteenth centuries in the 
 0)1 ikcvi. main, form the second division in point of 
 
 literary value of early mediaeval literature, while they 
 possess, in a certain " sincerity and strength," qualities 
 not to be found even in the Arthurian story itself. De- 
 spite the ardour with which they have been philo- 
 logically studied for nearly three-quarters of a
 
 CHANSONS DE GESTE. 83 
 
 century, despite (or perhaps because of) the enthu- 
 siasm 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 Brunetiere, 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 grcx. " 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 " beaute 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 meme 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-
 
 84 EUKOPEAN LlTEKATUllE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 hcauU 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 pre- 
 conceived 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 ^ncid, certain from the Divina Commedia, 
 certain from Paradise Lost, — if he runs over the list 
 and says to the chanso7i, " Are you like Homer in 
 this point ? Can you match me Virgil in that ? '' the 
 result will be that the cltanson 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 con- 
 clusion. 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
 
 CHAXSONS DE flESTE. 85 
 
 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 Couronne- 
 ment Loys, have a stern beauty of thought and senti- 
 ment 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 every- 
 where here, and can be found nowhere else.
 
 86 
 
 CHAP TEE III. 
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 
 
 ATTRACTIONS OF THE ARTHURIAN LEGEND — DISCUSSIONS ON THEIR 
 
 SOURCES — THE PERSONALITY OP ARTHUR THE FOUR WITNESSES 
 
 THEIR TESTIMONY THE VERSION OP GEOFFREY ITS LACUNA 
 
 HOW THE LEGEND GREW WAGE — 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 OP ARIMATHEA 
 
 MERLIN — LANCELOT — THE LEGEND BECOMES DRAMATIC — STORIES OP 
 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 ENG- 
 LISH OR ANGLO-NORMAN PRETENSIONS — ATTEMPTED HYPOTHESIS. 
 
 To English readers, and perhaps not to English readers 
 only, the middle division of tlie three great romance- 
 subjects ^ ought to be of far higher interest than the 
 
 ^ 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
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 87 
 
 others ; and that not merely, even in the English case, 
 ^„ ,. , fur reasons of local patriotism. The medi- 
 
 Attrachons of '■ 
 
 the ArtMirmn geval vcrsions of classical story, though at- 
 ''^'"'' ' tractive 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 transfor- 
 mation, 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 exer- 
 cises, the king cc la harhe Jlorie has inspired no modern 
 singer — hiageste is extinct. But the Legend of Arthur, 
 the latest to take definite form of the three, has shown 
 
 Lerjend 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 can- 
 not be neglected ; and M. Loth's surveys of the subject there and in 
 the Revue Cdtique (October 1892) are valuable. Naturally, there has 
 been a great deal in German, the best being, perhaps, Dr Kolbing's 
 long introduction to his reprint of Arthour and Merlin (Leipzig, 1890)- 
 Other books will be mentioned in subsequent notes ; but a comj)lete 
 and impartial histoiy of the whole subject, giving the contents, with 
 strictly literary criticism only, of all the texts, and merely sum- 
 marising theories as to origin, &c. , is still wanting, and sorely wanted. 
 Probably there is still no better, as there is certainly no more delight- 
 ful, book on the matter than M. Paulin Paris's Romans de la. Table 
 Ronde (5 vols., Paris, 1868-77). The monograph by M. Cledat on the 
 subject in M. Petit de Julleville'a new History {v, swpra, p. 23, note) 
 is unfortunately not by any means one of the best of these studies.
 
 88 EUKOPEAX LTTEP.ATUUE, 1100-1300. 
 
 by far the greatest vitality. From generation to gene- 
 ration it has taken new forms, inspired new poetries. 
 The very latest of the centuries has been tlie 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 gcste, majestic and in- 
 teresting 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 torms, 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. 
 
 That the vitality of the Legend is in part, if not 
 wholly, due to the strange crossing and blending of its 
 i)tom«,nson sources, I at least have no doubt. To 
 tuir sources, (jigcuss thcsc sourccs at all, much more to 
 express any definite opinion on the proportions and 
 order of their blending, is a dilficult matter for any 
 literary student, and dangerous withal ; but the adven- 
 ture 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 de-
 
 THE MATTER OF BrJTAIN. 89 
 
 bating 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 compli- 
 cated by the facts that extremely few scholars possess 
 equal and adequate knowledge of Celtic, English, 
 French, German, and Latin, and that the best palaeo- 
 graphers 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, Eng- 
 lish, French, and German, and I believe that I have 
 not neglected any important modern discussions of the
 
 90 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 subject. To have no Celtic is the less disqualification 
 in that all the most qualified Celtic scholars them- 
 selves 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 enter- 
 ing 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 Eitson to 
 Professor Ehys, from Paulin Paris to M. Loth, and 
 from San Marte to Drs Porster 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. 
 
 That there was no such a person as Arthur in reality 
 was at one time a not very uncommon opinion among 
 Thepersonaiity nien wlio could Call themselvcs scholars, 
 of Arthur. though of latc 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 re- 
 gard to him. The silence of Bede might be accidental, 
 and he wrote ex hypothcsi nearly two centuries after 
 Arthur's day. Yet his collections were extremely 
 careful, and the neighbourhood of his own North- 
 umbria was certainly not that in which traditions
 
 THE ^rATTER OF BTtlTAIX. 91 
 
 of Arthur should have been least rife. That Gildas 
 should say nothing is more surprising and more diffi- 
 cult of explanation. For putting aside altogether the 
 positive testimony of the Vita Gildce, to which we shall 
 come presently, Gildas was, again ex hypothesi, a con- 
 temporary of Arthur's, and must have known all about 
 him. If the compound of scolding and lamentation 
 known as De Excidio Britannia^ 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. 
 
 At the same time, mere silence can never establish 
 anything but a presumption ; and the presumption is 
 The/our vit- i^^ this casc reljutted by far stronger 
 iiesses. probabilities on the other side. The 
 
 evidence is here drawn from four main sources, 
 which we may range in the order of their chrono- 
 logical bearing. First, there are the Arthurian 
 place - names, and the traditions respecting them ; 
 secondly, the fragments of genuine early Welsh re- 
 ference to Arthur ; thirdly, the famous passage of 
 Nennius, which introduces him for the first time to 
 probably dated literature ; fourthly, the curious refer- 
 ences in the above-referred-to Vita Crildo' of, or attrib- 
 uted to, Caradoc of Lancarvan. After this last, or at 
 a time contemporary with it, we come to the compara- 
 tively detailed account of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and 
 the beginning of the Legend proper. 
 
 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 con-
 
 92 EUKOPEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 quests, but especially in West Wales, Strathclyde, 
 and Lothian, certain place-names connec- 
 
 Their testimony. . • i i i -i • 
 
 tnig themselves either with Arthur him- 
 self or with the early catalogue of his battles.^ 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 Nen- 
 nius, whom general opinion attributes to the ninth 
 century, but who uiay 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 
 hellorum commanding kings, many of whom were 
 more noble than himself. 
 
 The first authority from whom we get any personal 
 
 1 The late Mr Skene, with great learning and ingenuity, endeavoured 
 in his Four Ancient Boohs 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 Gildce) will be found con- 
 veniently 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 vejy long excursus by ]\[r Stuart-Glennie on the 
 lace-name question.
 
 THE MATTER OF BKITAIN, 93 
 
 account of Arthur is Caradoc, if Caradoc it be. Tlie 
 biographer makes his hero St Gildas (I put luinor 
 and irrelevant discrepancies aside) contemporary with 
 Arthur; Avhom 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 iniajor natu, and became unquestioned rex U7iiver- 
 salis Britannice, but incurred the censure of the 
 Church for killing Hoel. From this sin Gildas him- 
 self 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, A¥illiam of Malmesbury and Giraldus Cam- 
 brensis 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 con- 
 tinually reduced in importance by the men of real
 
 94 EUKOPEAN LITEUATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 genius, especially Mapes, Chrestien, and, long after- 
 wards, Malory, who handled them. The escapade of 
 ]\Ielvas 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. 
 
 And it is again very important to observe that, 
 though under the hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth 
 ™ . , the story at once acquires more romantic 
 
 The version of J ^ 
 
 Geoffrey proportious, 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 he\]) 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 liomans, is about to pass the Alps when he 
 hears that his nephew IMordred, 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 lioman family, and surpassing in beauty 
 all the women of the island ") has wickedly married 
 him. Arthur returns, defeats JMordred at Eutupias 
 (after this battle Guinevere takes the veil), and, at 
 Winchester, drives him to the extremity of Corn- 
 wall, and there overthrows and kills him. But the 
 renowned King Arthur himself was mortally wounded,
 
 THE MATTER OF BEITAIN. 95 
 
 anil "being carried thence to the Isle of Avallon to 
 Le 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," 
 
 A few people, perhaps, who read this little book 
 
 will need to be told that Geoffrey attributed the new 
 
 and striking facts which he sprun'r upon 
 
 Its lacuiiiB. i o i 
 
 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, in- 
 asmuch 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 liistorian 
 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 ex- 
 tension of the fighting with Saxons at home, and the 
 addition of that with Eomans abroad, the Igraine 
 episode, or rather overture, the doubtless valuable 
 introduction of Merlin, the treason of IMordred and 
 Guinevere, and the retirement to Avalon — that is 
 practically all. Xo Hound Table ; no knights (thougli
 
 96 EUROPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300, 
 
 " Walgaii, the king s nephew," is, of course, an early 
 appearance of G a wain) ; 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 in- 
 fidelity 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 amplifica- 
 tions which the Middle Age was always giving, 
 complete.. 
 
 In the account of its probable origins and growth 
 which follows nothing can be further from the writer's 
 How the wish than to emulate the confident dognia- 
 Legendgrew. tism of tliose who claini to liavc 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
 
 THE :MATTER of BRITAIN. 97 
 
 shrewdest modern critic of romance itself.^ 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 guessw^ork 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. 
 
 The known or reasonably inferred historical proces- 
 sion 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 
 
 ^ " Both these subjects of discussion [authorshijj and perform- 
 ance of Komances] 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. 
 
 G
 
 98 EUROPEAN LITEKATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tlie dedication of the Historia Britonum died in 1146) 
 Geoffrey supi^lies 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 Frencli, another 
 Geoffrey, Gaimar, and AVace 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 Eound Table. 
 
 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 Eomans chiefly. But 
 if it were only that we find first ^ in Layamon the 
 
 ^ A caution may be necessary as to this word " first. " Nearly all 
 the dates are extremely uncertain, and it is highly probable that
 
 Hollywood Sc\. . _._ Gi.rk 
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 99 
 
 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 Eound Table receives added 
 attention ; the voluntary yielding of Guinevere, here 
 called Wenhaver, is insisted upon, and Gawain (Wal- 
 wain) and Bedivere (Beduer) make their appearance. 
 But there is still no Lancelot, and still no Grail. 
 
 These additions, which on the one side gave the 
 greatest part of the secular interest, on the other 
 The Romances a,lmost the whole of the mystical attrac- 
 proper. ^j^j^^ ^^ ^Yie Complete story, had, however, 
 
 it seems probable, been actually added before Lay- 
 amon 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 Ti'istram 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. 
 
 A consensus of MS. authority ascribes the best and 
 
 intermediate texts of great imijortance are lost, or not yet found. 
 But Layamon gives us Wace as an autliority, and this is not in Wace. 
 See Madden's edition (London, 1847).
 
 100 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 largest part of the 2'^'^ose romances,^ especially those 
 dealing with Lancelot and the later 
 fortunes of the Graal and the Eound 
 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 (1137-06) is the 
 right one ; his abilities were equal to any literary 
 performance ; his evident familiarity with things 
 AVelsh (he seems to have been a Herefordshire man) 
 would have informed him of Welsh tradition, if there 
 was any, and the De Nugis Curialmm 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 
 
 ^ These, both Map's and Borron's {v. infra), with some of the verse 
 forms connected with them, are in a very puzzUng 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 jjrac- 
 tically inaccessible in any modern edition.
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 101 
 
 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 mediaeval MSS. attributed authorship, to assert 
 positively that Map wrote Lancelot, or the Qmst of the 
 Saint Graal, it may be asserted with the utmost 
 confidence that it has not been proved that he did 
 not. 
 
 The other claimant for the authorship of a main 
 part of the story — in this case the Merlin part, and 
 
 Robert de the loug history of the Graal from the 
 
 Borron. ^^^^ q£ Joscpli of Arimathca downwards — 
 is a much more shadowy person, a certain Eobert 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. 
 
 The third personage who is certainly or uncertainly 
 connected by name with the original framework of 
 chrestiende the legend is again more substantial than 
 Troyes. Eobcrt dc Borrou, 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
 
 102 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 attached not merely to the court of his native prince, 
 the Count of Champagne, but to those of the neigh- 
 bouring 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 Pcrccvale le Gallois} much of 
 which, however, is the work of continuators ; the 
 interesting episode of the Lancelot saga, called Lc 
 Chevalier a la Charette ; Erec et Enidc, the story 
 known to every one from Lord Tennyson's idyll; 
 the Chevalier aM Lyon, a Gawain legend ; and Cligh, 
 which is quite on the outside of the Arthurian group. 
 All these works are written in octosyllal^ic couplets, 
 particularly light and skipping, somewhat destitute 
 of force and grip, but full of grace and charm. Of 
 their contents more presently. 
 
 Next to the questions of authorship and of origin 
 
 in point of difficulty come two otliers — "Which are 
 
 the older : the prose or the verse romances ? " and, 
 
 " Was there a Latin original of the Graal story ? " 
 
 With regard to the first, it has long been laid down 
 
 Prose or verse ^s a general axiom, and it is no doubt as a 
 
 first? rule true, that prose is always later than 
 
 verse, and that in mediaeval times especially the order 
 
 1 Ed. Potviii, 6 vols., Mons, 1866-70. Dr Forster has undertaken 
 a complete Chrestien, of which the 2d and 3d vols, are Yvcdn ("Le 
 Chevalier au Lyon") and Erec (Halle, 1887-90). Lc Clievalicr cl 
 la Charctte should be read in Dr Jonckbloct'a 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.
 
 THE MATTEK OF BRITAIX. 103 
 
 is almost invariable. Verse ; unrhymed and half-dis- 
 rhytlimed 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.^ 
 
 With regard to the Latin Graal-book, the testimony 
 
 1 The parallel edition, above referred to, of the Chevalier a 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-i:)ositiveness to 
 which I have referred above is M. Cledat's statement that " nous 
 savons " that the prose romances are later than the vei-se. We cer- 
 tainly do not " know " this any more than we know the contrarj^. 
 There is important authority both ways ; there is fair argument both 
 ways ; but the positive evidence which alone can turn opinion into 
 knowledge ha? not been produced, and probably does not exist.
 
 104 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 of the romances themselves is formal enough as to its 
 A Latin existence. But no trace of it has been 
 Graai-iook. 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 impos- 
 sible, 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 con- 
 tented 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 in- 
 dependent 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
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 105 
 
 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 ad- 
 mitted to he in their present form later than the 
 Eomances, are still regarded as possible originals by 
 some. 
 
 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 Eomances on the 
 TheMaUn- Mcchinogion '^ alone. The posteriority of 
 oginn. tlicsc as wc havc 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, 
 
 1 Translated by Lady Charlotte Guest, 2d ed., London, 1877.
 
 106 EUROrEAN LlTEItATURE. 1100-1300. 
 
 the three Welsh -French or French- Welsh romances of 
 Yvain-Oivain, Ercc-Gcraint, and Pcrcivalc-Percdur, and 
 then turn to those that are certainly and purely Celtic, 
 Killnvcli and Olwen, the Dream of Bliiahivy (both of 
 these Arthurian after a fashion, though quite apart 
 from our Arthurian Legend), and the fourfold Mah- 
 inogi, 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 sugges- 
 tion, the work of the same people, or have been pro- 
 duced under the same literary covenant. 
 
 Let us now turn to the Legend itself. The story 
 which ends in Avalon begins in Jerusalem. For 
 The Legend thougli tlic Graal-lcgcnds are undoubtedly 
 itself. later additions to whatever may have been 
 
 the original Arthurian saga — seeing that we find 
 nothing of them in the early Welsh traditions, noth- 
 ing 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 Komans, which in the 
 earlier Legend had occupied almost the whole room.
 
 THE MATTEll OF P.IIITAIN. 107 
 
 And accordingly these wars, which still hold a very 
 large part of the field in the Merlhi, 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-Gracd, and the Death of Arthur. Each of 
 the first two pairs intertwines with the other: the 
 last, 3Iort Artus, completes them all, and thus its 
 title was not improperly used in later times to desig- 
 nate tlie whole Legend. 
 
 The starting-point of the whole, in time and in- 
 cident, is the supposed revenge of the Jews on Joseph 
 „, , , of Arimathea for the part he has taken in 
 
 The story of ^ 
 
 Joseiihof the burial of our Lord. He is thrown into 
 
 Arimathea. . , . , / • ^ ^ 
 
 prison and remains tliere (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 Josepli'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 com- 
 pany, or the holier survivors of them, are finally settled 
 in Britain. Here the imprudence of Evelake (or Mor-
 
 108 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 drains) 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 
 mediaeval writers very particularly, and is fully de- 
 veloped, apart from its Arthurian use, in the vast and 
 interesting miscellany of the Cursor Mundi. 
 
 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 seduc- 
 tive devil is despatched to play incubus to the last 
 and chastest daughter of a prud'homme, who has been
 
 THE :\IATTER OF BRITAIN. 109 
 
 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 know- 
 ledge 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 
 Geofi'rey 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 pur- 
 poses of poetic contrast blackened yet further) he plays 
 the part of adviser, assistant, and good enchanter
 
 110 EUROPEAN LITEltATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 generally to Arthur and Arthur's knights. He in 
 some stories directly procures, and in all contirms, 
 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 ])resides over the foundation of the liound 
 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 graniarye, in the discomfiture not 
 merely of the rival and rebel kinglets, but of the 
 Saxons and Eomans. 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 Saisncs or Saxon rock). And he also dis- 
 carded a curious episode which makes a great figure in 
 the original Ihrlin, the tale of the " false Guinevere," a 
 foster-sister, namesake, and counterpart of the true 
 princess, who is nearly substituted for Guinevere her- 
 self 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 blame- 
 less, 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 rdgime, as we imagine it with the liound Table, is
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. Ill 
 
 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 Canielot, with the realm (until Mordred's 
 treachery) well under control, and with a constant 
 succession of adventures, culminating^ in the fjreatest 
 of all, the Quest of the Graal or Sangreal itself. 
 Although there are passages of great beauty, the ex- 
 cessive 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 Mei'lin 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 fero- 
 cious 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 pas- 
 sion, 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 tilings 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 con- 
 sciously incestuous, and on the queen's quite innocent) 
 adventure of Arthur with his sister Margause, of the 
 exceedingly unromautic wooing of IMorgane le Fee,
 
 112 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, llUO-1300. 
 
 and of the warlock-planned intercourse of King Ban 
 and the mother of Lancelot. 
 
 Whether it was Walter Map, or Chrestien de Troyes, 
 or both, or neither, to whom the glory of at once com- 
 pleting and exalting the story is due, I at 
 least have no pretension to decide. Who- 
 soever 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 justifica- 
 tion, 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 compar- 
 ing his prose narratives of the Passing of Arthur and
 
 THE I\rATTER OF BRITAIN. 113 
 
 the parting of Lancelot and the queen with the verse ^ 
 from which he ahiiost 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. 
 
 We have seen that in the original story of Geoffrey 
 the treason of Mordred and the final scenes take place 
 The Legend he- while Arthur is warring against the Eomans, 
 cov^ dranrntic. ygj.-^. shortly after he has established his 
 sovereignty in the Isle of Britain. Walter, or Chres- 
 tien, 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 minutim 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 accom- 
 modate the birth of Lancelot (which happened, ac- 
 cording 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. 
 
 ' Le Morte Arthur (ed. Furuivall, London, 1864), 1. 3400 s<iq. 
 H
 
 114 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 But the allowance of a golden age of comparatively 
 quiet sovereignty, of feasts and joustings at Canielot, 
 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. 
 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 
 
 stories of Ga- 
 
 wain and other Said that the promiueut figure in the earlier 
 knigMs. storics is Gawaiu, 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 noth- 
 ing 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
 
 THE MATTEli OF BRITAIN. 115 
 
 make between him and Lancelot.^ Generally speak- 
 ing, 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 Tgraine) 
 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.- 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 "Eown- 
 tabull." 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
 ^ Since I wrote this passage I have leai-nt with pleasure tliat 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. 
 
 ^ The Welsh passages relating to Kay seem to be older than most 
 others.
 
 116 EUKOPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 widest diversity of opinion prevails, an impartial ex- 
 amination of the texts perhaps enables us 
 
 Sir Tristram. . . i i i i 
 
 to obtain some tolerably clear views on 
 the subject — views which are helpful not merely with 
 reference to the " Tristan-saga " itself, but with refer- 
 ence to the origins and character of the whole Legend.^ 
 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 hloie Bretagnc 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 Eomans. Again, the religious part of the 
 story, which is so important in the developed Ar- 
 thurian Legend proper, is almost entirely absent from 
 the Tristram-tale, and the subject which played the 
 
 ^ 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 Kolbing, who has also given tlie late Icelandic 
 version, as well as for the Scottish Text Society (Edinburgh, 1886) 
 by Mr George P. M"^Neill ; Gottfried of Strasburg's German {v. chap. 
 vi. ), ed. Bechstein (Leipzig, 1890). Romania, v. xv. (1886), contains 
 several essays on the Tristram storj^.
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 117 
 
 fourth part in medieval affections and interests with 
 love, religion, and fighting — the chase — takes in the 
 Tristram romances the place of religion itself. 
 
 But the most interesting, though the most delicate, 
 part of the inquiry concerns the attitude of this episode 
 His story almost 01" brauch to lovc, and the conclusion to be 
 certainly Celtic, (jj-awu as wcll from that attitude as from 
 the local peculiarities above noticed, as to the national 
 origin of Tristram on the one hand, and of the Artliur 
 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 jj/^^.s 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 adven- 
 tures in these compositions as being different from 
 those of classical story, different from tliose 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.
 
 118 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 A discussion of this kind is perhaps more than any 
 other pcriculosce 2Jlcnum opus alece ; but it is too im- 
 portant to be neglected. Taking the character of the 
 early Celtic, and especially the Irisli, 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 jNIorgane, 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 ^ 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 at- 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 THE MATTEIi OF BRITAIN. 119 
 
 tribiited to lier in Sir Launfal, and only in Sir Laiin- 
 fal, 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. 
 
 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 mediaeval 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 temj)ting to be 
 resisted. So Tristram makes his appearance in Ar- 
 thur's court, and as a knight of the Round Table, but 
 as not exactly at home there,^ — as a visitor, an " hon- 
 orary member" rather than otherwise, and only an 
 occasional partaker of the home tournaments and the 
 adventures abroad which occupy Arthur's knights 
 proper. 
 
 The origin of the greatest of these, of Lancelot him- 
 self, is less distinct. Since the audacious imaginative- 
 ness of the late M. de la Villemarque, which once, I
 
 120 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 am told, brought upon him the epithet " Faitssaire ! " 
 uttered in full conclave of Breton anti- 
 
 Sir Lancelot. . . i j_ i j_ i • i i 
 
 quaries, 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 tra- 
 dition with the abduction of the queen. It is, how- 
 ever, 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 natvirally spontaneous literary growth. The ne- 
 cessity 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 - sur- 
 render to Mordred as the king de facto, to the " lips 
 that were near," of Greoffrey's Guanhumara and Laya- 
 mon'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 "
 
 THE ]\rATTER OF BEITATN. 121 
 
 but more heroic than Paris and more interesting than 
 Hector,— not only a "greatest kniglit," 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 inven- 
 tion 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 G-ala- 
 had), then the same compliment must be paid to that 
 person unknown. Meanwhile the conception and exe- 
 cution of Lancelot, to whomsoever they may be due, 
 are things most happy. Entirely free from the fault- 
 lessness which is the curse of the classical hero ; his 
 unequalled valour not seldom rewarded only by re- 
 verses ; 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. 
 
 But the virtues which are found in Lancelot emi- 
 nently are found in all but the " felon " knights, 
 differing only in degree. It is true that the later
 
 122 EUROPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 romances and compilations, feeling perhaps the neces- 
 The minor ^ity of shaclc, extend to all the sons of Lot 
 haigiiis. ^^^^ Maigausc, cxcept Gareth, and to some 
 extent Gavvain, the unamiable character which jNIordred 
 enjoys throughout, and which even in the Merlin is 
 found showing itself in Agravaine. Ikit Sir Lamo- 
 racke, 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, tliey 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 - Pitio to the misconduct of Melea- 
 graunce — there is no hatred of your neighbour any- 
 where. 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 mediaaval writer,^ 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. 
 
 It may be desirable, as it was in reference to 
 Charlemagne, to say a few words as to Arthur him- 
 self. In both cases there is noticeable 
 
 Arthur. / ^ -i ^ • ^ 
 
 (though less m 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 
 
 1 Cursor Mundi, 1. 2898.
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 123 
 
 even more noticeable in the later versions than in the 
 earlier. This may have been partly due to the aristo- 
 cratic 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 dis- 
 covered 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 Guine- 
 vere, 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 ac- 
 cepted 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 com- 
 plaisant wittol, which late and rather ignoble works 
 like the CohwoUVs Dauncc'^ represent him as being: 
 and he never exhibits the slightest approach to the 
 
 ^Printed by Hartshorne, Ancient Metrical Talcs (London, 1829), 
 p. 209 ; and Hazlitt, Eat-hj Poimlar Poetry (London, 18G4), i. 38.
 
 124 EUEOPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 outbursts of almost imbecile wrath which characterise 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 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 all'ected 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 Guine- 
 vere'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 unfaith- 
 fulness 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 MATTER OF BRITAIN. 125 
 
 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 
 Espees. But though a French critic has detected some- 
 thing shocking in Le Chevalier d la Charctte, it re- 
 quires curious consideration to follow him. 
 
 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 
 
 The Graal. 
 
 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 com- 
 pilers at least do not seem to think mutually exclusive. 
 With the usual reserves as to the impossibility of pro- 
 nouncing 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 ,^ the Graal Quest lies 
 
 ^ And contrariwise the Welsh Peredur [Mabinocjion, cd. 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.
 
 126 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 very much outside the more intimate concerns of the 
 Arthurian court and the reahn of Britain. Indeed, in 
 the latest and perhaps greatest of this school, Wolfram 
 von Eschenbacli {v. chap, vi.), the story wanders off 
 into uttermost isles of fancy, quite remote from the 
 proper Arthurian centres. It may perhaps be con- 
 ceded that this development is in more strict accord- 
 ance 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 
 Piobert de Borron, or anotlier — 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 particu- 
 larly the flesh ; diversifying his wars and preachings 
 only or mainly by long mystical visions of sacred 
 history as it presented itself to mediieval 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. 
 
 Another genius, that of Walter ]\Iap (by hypothesis, 
 as before), described and worked out different capabil- 
 How it perfects i^ics ill tlic story. By the idea, simple, like 
 the story. most idcas of gcuius, of making Lancelot, 
 
 the father, at once the greatest knight of the Arima- 
 thean lineage, and unable perfectly to achieve the 
 Quest by reason of his sin, and Galahad the son, in- 
 heritor of his prowess but not of his weakness, lie lias
 
 THE MATTEIl OF BKITAIN. 127 
 
 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 disquali- 
 fies Lancelot with tlie catastrophe of Artlmr, and the 
 achieving of the Quest itself witli the weakening and 
 breaking up of the Eound Table (an idea insisted upon 
 no doubt, hj Tennyson, but existent in the originals), 
 a dramatic and romantic completeness has been given 
 to the whole cycle which no other collection of medi- 
 aeval 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 ma- 
 terials, 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 tliinks) 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 im- 
 probable that we should find the adjustment, though 
 not the expression, to some extent anticipated. 
 
 At any rate, the idea is already to hand in the orig- 
 inal romances of our present period ; and a wonderfully 
 Nature of thu g^eat and perfect idea it is. Not the much 
 perfection. ^■^^^[ justly praised arrangement and poeti- 
 cal justice of the Oresteia or of tlie story of CEdipus 
 excel the Arthuriad in what used to be called "pro- 
 priety" (which has nothing to do with prudishness)' 
 wliile both are, as at least it seems to me. far inferior
 
 128 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 com- 
 pletes the triumph of Sarras. From yet another point 
 of view, tlie bringing into judgment of all the char- 
 acters and their deeds is equally complete, equally 
 natural and unforced. It is astonishing that men like 
 Aschani,^ unless blinded by a survival of mediaeval or 
 a foreshadowing of Puritan prudery, should have failed 
 to see that the morality of the Mortc d' Arthur is as 
 rigorous as it is unsqueamish. Guinevere in her 
 cloister and Lancelot in his hermitage, Arthur fall- 
 ing by (or at any rate in battle against) the fruit of 
 his incestuous intercourse — these are not exactly en- 
 couragements to vice : v/hile at the same time the 
 earlier history may be admitted to have nothing of 
 a crabbed and jejune virtue. 
 
 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 
 
 ' This curious outburst, referred to before, may be found in the 
 Schoolmaster, ed. Arber, p. 80, or ed. Giles, Worls of AscJiam, iii. 159.
 
 THE MATTER OF BEITAIN. 129 
 
 world for a niediteval romancer to let his subject go. 
 He must needs take it up from generation to gen- 
 eration ; and the interminable series of Amadis and 
 Esplandian stories, which, as the last example, looks 
 almost like a designed caricature, is only an exagger- 
 ation of the habit which we can trace back through 
 Huon of Bordeaux and Guij of Warwick almost to the 
 earliest chansons de geste. 
 
 But the intelligent genius who shaped the Arthuriad 
 has escaped this danger, and that not merely by the 
 
 No sequel simplc proccss whicli Dryden, with his 
 
 possible. placid irony, somewhere describes as " leav- 
 ing 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. Lance- 
 lot'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, af cer 
 the Round Table is dissolved. 
 
 It is creditable to the intelligence and taste of the 
 average mediaeval 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 
 
 I
 
 130 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Cleriodns, avowedly take up the story long subse- 
 quently, 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 Pcrceforcst, though based on 
 the Brut, selects periods anterior to Arthur.^ 
 
 There was, however, no such artistic constraint 
 as regards episodes of the main story, or romans 
 latin d'avcnturcs celebrating the exploits of single 
 episodes, knights, and connected with that story by 
 a sort of stock overture and d^noHnnent, 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 
 
 ^ I have a much less direct acquaintance with the romances men- 
 tioned in this paragraph than with most of the works referred to in 
 this book. I am obliged to speak of tliem at second-hand (chiefly 
 from Dunlojj 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 Perccforest, 
 for instance, is left to black-letter, which, not to mention its costli- 
 ness, is impossible to weak eyes ; even where it is not left to manu- 
 script, which is more impossible still.
 
 THE MATTEK OF BRITAIN. 131 
 
 in the same place. As has been said above,^ 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 Gmvccine and. the 
 Green Knight, Lancelot of the Laih, the quaint allitera- 
 tive Thornton Morte Arthur, and not a few others. 
 The most interesting of all is that hitherto untraced 
 romance of Beaumaius 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 j)oints in common with 
 Yvain- and others in common with Ifotnydonf 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 * (which 
 both from the title and from certain mystical Graal 
 passages rather connects itself with the Percevale 
 sub-section) ; and the Chevalier as Detox UsjpSes,^ which 
 belongs to the Gawain class. But all these, as well 
 as the German romances to be noticed in chap, vi., 
 
 ^ See pp. 114, 115 note. - See above, p. 102. 
 
 3 Ed. Weber, Metrical Romances, Edinlnirgh, 1810, ii. 279. 
 * Ed. Sleugel. Tubingen, 1873. '" Ed. Forster. Halle, 1877.
 
 132 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 distinguish themselves from tlie 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 cTAventures is 
 that neither the unsophisticated freshness of the 
 chanson cle geste, nor the variety and commanding 
 breadth of the Arthurian legend, appears in them 
 to the full. The kind of " balaaiu," the stock repeti- 
 tions and expletives at which Chaucer laughs in 
 " Sir Thopas " — a laugh which lias been rather un- 
 justly received as condemning the whole class of Eng- 
 lish 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. 
 
 It may perhaps seem to some readers that too much 
 praise has been given to that romance itself. Far as 
 The Legend ^^ ^^6, not merely from Ascham's days, 
 asaiuhoic. jj^^ from thosc in which the excellent 
 Dunlop was bound to confess that " they [the romances 
 of the Eound Table] will be found extremly defective 
 in those points which have been laid down as con- 
 stituting excellence in fictitious narrative," that they 
 are "improbable," full of "glaring anachronisms and 
 geographical blunders," " not well shaded and dis- 
 tinguished in character," possessing heroines such as 
 "the mistresses of Tristan and Lancelot" [may God 
 assoil Dunlop !] who are " women of abandoned char- 
 acter," " 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
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 133 
 
 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 Stra- 
 chey, not to mention the recent and stately issues 
 given by Dr Sommer and Professor Ehys — 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 oppor- 
 tunity 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. 
 
 Yet however exaggerated the attention to the 
 Quellen may have been, however inadequate the atten- 
 Tiie theories tiou to the actual literary result, it would be 
 of its origin, r^^ 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
 
 134 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 : — 
 
 I. That the Legend is, not merely in its first in- 
 ceitic. ception, but in main bulk, Celtic, either 
 (a) Welsh or {h) Armorican. 
 
 French. II. That it is, cxccpt in the mere names 
 and the vaguest outline, French. 
 
 EngiisTi. Ill, That it is English, or at least Anglo- 
 Norman. 
 
 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 de- 
 
 Literary. 
 
 velopment unconnected, or almost uncon- 
 nected, with traditional sources of any kind. 
 
 The first explanation is the oldest. After being for 
 nearly half a century discredited, it has again found 
 The Celtic ardcut defcndeis, and it may seem at first 
 theory. sight to bc the most natural and reason- 
 able. 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
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 135 
 
 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 
 approacliing 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. ( )n the other hand, as far as Brit- 
 tany was concerned, after a period of confident asser- 
 tion, and of attempts, in at least doubtful honesty, to 
 supply what could not be found, it had to be acknow- 
 ledged 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, how- 
 ever, 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 passion- 
 ately defended in England by Mr Nutt, and with 9,
 
 136 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 more cautious, but perhaps at least equally firm, 
 support by Professor Ehys. 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 liolder of them, taking 
 advantage of the admitted superiority in age of Irish 
 to AVelsh literature as far as texts go, have had re- 
 course 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 especi- 
 ally 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
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 137 
 
 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 Ehys's careful though most 
 friendly abstract of the testimony of early Welsh lit- 
 erature, 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.^ 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 Arthur- 
 ian 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 con- 
 jugal difficulties between Arthur and his queen. But 
 unfortunately these last are not confined to Artliurian 
 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 Eomance. 
 Like the Celtic theory, the French has an engaging 
 Tiie French appcarancc of justice and probability, and 
 ciaiins. j^ ]^g^g pygj. i}iq Qeltic tlic Overwhelming ad- 
 vantage as regards texts. That all, without exception, 
 
 ^ 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 j'ears an article of faith 
 there that one of the original Mahdi's rivals had a magic tent which 
 would supply rations for an army.
 
 138 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 con- 
 clusive. 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 roman- 
 tic 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 origina- 
 tion of these early texts, Chrestien de Troyes, was un- 
 doubtedly a Frenchman in the wide sense ; so (if he 
 existed) was Eobert 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 suf- 
 ficient, 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 ver- 
 nacular, except Provenc^al, had attained to anything
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 139 
 
 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 liobert 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. 
 
 The last theory, that the Legend may be almost if 
 not quite sufficiently accounted for as a legitimate 
 
 , , , descendant of previous literature, classical 
 
 The theory of ... 
 
 general liter- and otlicr (including (Oriental sources), has 
 my grow i. ^^^^^ ^|-^g Icast general favourite. As orig- 
 inally started, or at least introduced into English lit- 
 erary 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 contemptvi- 
 ous remarks of some later critics as little as he did the 
 savai^e attacks of the half-lunatic Eitson. 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 Eng- 
 lish and European literature during the Middle Ages,
 
 140 EUKOPEAN LITE1;ATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 and was apt to assign to direct borrowing or imita- 
 tion those fresh workings up of the eternal donndes of 
 all literary art which presented themselves. As the 
 theory has been more recently presented with far ex- 
 acter learning and greater judgment by his successor, 
 Mr Courthope,^ 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 remem- 
 bered, were composed in this very twelfth century, and 
 must have come under the notice of the crusadeio), viay 
 have exercised a direct effect upon mediaeval Eomance 
 proper. I formed this opinion more than twenty years 
 ago, when I first read Hysminias and Hysminc ; and I 
 have never seen reason to change it since. But these 
 influences, thougli not to be left out of the ques- 
 tion, are perhaps in one respect too general, and in 
 another too partial, to explain the precise matter. 
 That the Arthurian Eomances, in common with all 
 the romances, and with mediaeval literature gener- 
 ally, were much more influenced by the traditional 
 classical culture tlian used at one time to be thought, 
 I have believed ever since I began to study the sub- 
 ject, 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 litera- 
 ture ; but it was only a part. 
 
 ^ lu his History of English Poetry, vol. i., London, 1895, and in a 
 subsequent controversy with Mr Nutt, which was carried on in the 
 A thenaum.
 
 THE MATTER OF BllITAIN. 141 
 
 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 
 
 The English or o . , 
 
 Anr/io-Norman be donc in no Spirit of national 'plfonexia, 
 
 pretensions. , , -, • i j • /• n j.i 
 
 but on a sober consideration or all the 
 facts of the case, and allowing all other claimants 
 their fair share in the matter as subsidiaries. From 
 the merely a iiriori point of view the claims of Eng- 
 land — 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 per- 
 sonal 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 CiiriaHuvi, 
 exhibits many — perhaps all — of the qualifications re- 
 quired: 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
 
 142 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 
 Ahhey and FJiododaphne — nay, two Shakespeares to 
 father the Sonnets and the Merry Wives. If any one 
 will turn to the stories of Gerbert and Meridian a, of 
 Galo, Sadius, and the evil queen in the Nugm, 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 Con- 
 tinental 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 Percevalc of Chrestien and his con- 
 tinuators, 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 Ehys, to the effect that 
 •' the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere is unknown 
 to Welsh literature." Now, as I have tried to point
 
 THE MATTER OF BRITAIN. 143 
 
 out, the passion of Lancelot for Guinevere, blended as 
 it is with the quasi-historic interest of Arthur's con- 
 quests 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, 
 
 1 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. 
 
 In so far as the probable personality and exploits, 
 and the almost certain tradition of such exploits and 
 
 Attempted such a personality, goes, there is no reason 
 
 hypothesis, fgj.^ q^^^ much reasou 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 sucli a careful critic as Professor Ehys, 
 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 jNIap were
 
 144 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 litera- 
 ture more or less Eastern in origin, is one of those 
 critical freaks which betray an utterly uncritical tem- 
 perament. 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 Eng- 
 land 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 gcdcs of Arthur 
 as given by Geoffrey, — then I must confess that I can 
 see no evidence of Celtic forces or sources havino:
 
 THE MATTEi; OF BRITAIN. 145 
 
 played any great part in the matter. If Caradoc of 
 Lancarvan wrote the Vita Gildcc — 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, Britisli and 
 Armorican, of St Gildas — if he or any one else gave 
 us what he has given about Arthur and Gildas him- 
 self, 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 conclu- 
 sion 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 trans- 
 late them from the French or at least adapt and adjust 
 them thereto ? 
 
 On the other hand, the supposition that the fashion- 
 ing, partly out of vague tradition, partly it may be 
 
 K
 
 146 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 out of more dej&nite Celtic tales like that of Tristram, 
 partly from classical, Eastern, and other sources, be- 
 longs to the English in the wide sense — that is to 
 say, the nation or nations jsartly 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 argu- 
 ments 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 Eng- 
 lish, — 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 com- 
 parative 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 poli- 
 tics, of everything that is English. Classical rhetoric, 
 French gallantry, Saxon religiosity and intense real- 
 isation 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,
 
 THE MATTEli OF BRITAIN. 147 
 
 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 Sliakespeare, the 
 one writer of the world to whom the world allows an 
 absolute universality.
 
 148 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 
 
 ODDITY OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE — ITS IMPORTANCE — THE TROT 
 
 STORY THE ALEXANDREID CALLISTHENES LATIN VERSIONS — 
 
 THEIR STORY ITS DEVELOPMENTS — ALBERIC OF BESANgON 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 TBOIE ' — THE PHASES OF CRESSID — THE ' HISTORIA 
 TROJANA ' — MEANING OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE. 
 
 As the interest of Jeau Bodel's first two divisions ^ 
 differs strikingly, and yet represents, in each case 
 fi/ie intimately and indispensably, certain sides 
 Classical of the medicTval 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 litera- 
 ture like the Arthurian story, nor embodies and pre- 
 serves a single long-past pliase in national spirit and 
 character, like the chanso'tis de geste. From certain 
 standpoints of the drier and more rigid criticism it is 
 
 ^ See note 2, p. 26.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROjMANCE. 149 
 
 exposed to the charge of being trifling, ahnost puerile. 
 We cannot understand — or, to speak with extrenier 
 correctness, it wouki seem that some of us cainiot 
 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 lux- 
 uriance that makes the treatment of the Tale of 
 Troy seem positively modest and sober ; which makes 
 Thebes, Julius Cffisar, anything and anybody in fabulous 
 and historical antiquity alike, the centre, or at least the 
 nucleus, of successive accretions of romantic fiction. 
 
 Nevertheless, the attractions, intrinsic and extrinsic, 
 of the division are neither few nor small. This very 
 Its importance— coufusiou, as it sccms uowadays, tliis extra- 
 the Troy story, ordinary 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 
 mediaeval 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 mediaeval imagination with a remark- 
 able grip, aiid some of the most interesting literary suc- 
 cessions of all history date from it. Among them it is 
 almost enough to mention the chain of names — Benoit
 
 150 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 de Sainte-More, Guide Colonna, ]5occaccio, Chancer, 
 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 humor- 
 ous portrayal in fiction ; the wonderful passage, culniin- 
 ating in a more wonderful single line,^ of that Dunferm- 
 line 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 
 
 1 " Than upon him scho kest up baith her ene. 
 
 And with ane blunk it came in to his thoeht, 
 That he sumtyme hir face before had sene. 
 
 Ane sparke of lufe than till his hart culd spring, 
 
 And kendht all his bodie in ane fyre 
 With heit fevir, ane sweit and trimbilhng 
 
 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 ncvcrtheles not ane ane uther knnv." 
 
 Laiug's Poems of Henryson (Edinburgh, 1865), p. 93. This volume 
 is unfortunately not too common ; but ' The Testament and Com- 
 plaint of Cressid ' may also be found under Chaucer in Chalmers's 
 Poets (i. 298 for this passage).
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 151 
 
 was wont. Xor 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 liter- 
 ary treatment till the fourteenth century. But the 
 great Alexander cycle gives us work which merely as 
 poetry equals all but the very best mediaeval work, and 
 its importance in connection with the famous metre 
 named from it is of itself capital. 
 
 In interest, bulk, and importance these two stories 
 
 — the Story of the Destruction of Troy and the Alex- 
 
 andreid — far outstrip all the other romances 
 
 The Alexnndreid. . . , -i i i 
 
 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 
 Benoit's Bo^nan cle Troie six-and-twenty years ago,^ 
 and it is at least improbable that much will be added 
 to M. Paul Meyer's handling of the old French treat- 
 ments of the Alexandreid in his Alexandre le Grand 
 dans la LitUrature Frangaise aic Moyen Age? 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 
 
 1 Lc Roman de Troie. Par Benoit de Sainte - More. Ed. Joly. 
 Paris, 1870. 
 
 - Paris, 1886. The number of monographs on this subject is, how- 
 ever, 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,
 
 152 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 sur- 
 passed their masters is quite true, and is nothing 
 unusual; that they were scholars is simple fact. 
 
 The Alexander story, which Mr AVallis Budge, our 
 
 chief authority (and perhaps the chief authority) on 
 
 the Oriental versions of it, speaks of as " a 
 
 Callisthcncs. ,•,■,.■,■,■,■, ■, ■, 
 
 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. 
 ISTor 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 ^Ethiopic or 
 Old-Egyptian origin of nearly the whole), represent
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 153 
 
 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 ^-Ethiopic 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,^ was the 
 main source of the mediasval legend of Alexander. 
 And it is not at all impossible (though the old vague 
 assertions that this or that media3val 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 mediaeval literature itself an Eastern colouring, per- 
 haps to some extent even an Eastern substance. 
 
 Still the direct sources of knowledge in the West 
 were undoubtedly Latin versions of the Pseudo- 
 Callisthenes, one of which, that ascribed to 
 
 Latin versions. . 
 
 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 
 Prodiis, is later by a good deal. Later still, and repre- 
 
 ^ Most conveniently accessible in the Teubner collection, ed. Kiibler, 
 Leipzig, 1888.
 
 154 EUEOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 senting 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 
 Pararlisum, 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. 
 
 Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different 
 in nature from at least the opening part of the Callis- 
 thenes version itself. This starts with what 
 
 Their story. , • i i i i p 
 
 seems to be the capital and oldest part ot 
 tlie whole fabulous story, a very circumstantial 
 account of the fictitious circumstances of the birth of 
 Alexander. According to this, which is pretty con- 
 stantly 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-sjnel on a basin of water with wax ships) 
 that his throne is doomed, quits the country and goes 
 to Macedonia. There he tails 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 per- 
 suading King Philip to believe this, and to accept the 
 consequences, the part of Ammon having been played 
 of course by Nectanabus himself. Bucephalus makes
 
 ANTIQUITY IX EOMANCE. 155 
 
 a considerable figure in tlie story, and ISTectanabus 
 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 relation- 
 ship. 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 appen- 
 dices, of it are epistolary communications between 
 Aristotle and Alexander on the one hand, Alexander 
 and Dindymus (Dandamis, &c.). King of the P)rahmins, 
 on the other. After his Indian adventures the king is 
 poisoned by Cassander or at his instigation. 
 
 Into a framework of this kind fables of the sort 
 above mentioned had, it will be seen, not the remotest 
 Its develop- difficulty in fitting themselves; and it was 
 ■mcnts. j^Q^ 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 P)eauvais, 
 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 tradi- 
 tion. It seems clear that the Latin Alexandreis of 
 AV alter of Chatillon is derived from him, or from a 
 common source, rather than from Valerius -Callis- 
 thenes : while M. Meyer has dwelt upon a Latin
 
 156 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 else- 
 where. 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 cle 
 Prodiis, 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'Alixandrc^ in 
 French, the long and interesting English Kinrj/ Alis- 
 aunder^ and perhaps the German of Lamprecht. The 
 Icelandic Alexander-Saga, though of the thirteenth 
 century, is derived from Walter of Chatillon, and so 
 reflects the comparatively sober side of the story. Of 
 all the others the Boman d'Alixandrc is the most 
 immediate parent. 
 
 1 Ed. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846. 
 - Ed. Weber, op. cit. sup., i. 1-327.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 157 
 
 There was, indeed, an older French poem than this 
 — perhaps two such — and till the discovery of a frag- 
 Aihericof Mcnt of it six jears after the publication 
 Bcsanion. jj^ 1846 of the great lloman 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 ^ (respecting which the philologists, as usual, 
 fight whether it was written by a Besan^on man or 
 a BrianQon one, or somebody else) is extremely inter- 
 esting 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 Provengal ; and in the third, the author 
 not only does not follow, but distinctly and rather 
 indignantly rejects, the story of Nectanabus : — 
 
 " Dicunt alqiiaut estrobatour 
 Quel reys fuel filz d'encantatour : 
 Mentent fellon losengetour ; 
 Mai en credreyz nee i;n de lour." - 
 
 But the fragment is unluckily so short (105 lines 
 only) that it is impossible to say much of its matter. 
 Between this and the Alexandrine poem there is 
 another version,^ curiously intermediate in form, date, 
 ThBdecasyiiaUc and substaucc. This is in the ordinary 
 poem. 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 
 
 1 Ed. Meyer, op. cit., i. 1-9. - LI. 27-30. » Meyer, i. 25-59.
 
 158 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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, 
 auy more than Alberic, to have admitted the scandal 
 about ISTectanabus, the death of that person is intro- 
 duced, 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. 
 
 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 acces- 
 sible to the student. AVhen M. Paul Meyer says that 
 this edition " ne saurait fournir une base suffisante a 
 une ^tude 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 com- 
 plete for his criticism in the Stuttgart version of 
 the Alixand7'€, 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 deca- 
 syllabic poem, and for the extracts from that of Thomas 
 of Kent, who, unlike the authors of the great Eomance, 
 admitted the ISTectanabus marvels and intrio[ues.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN KOMANCE. 159 
 
 The story is of such importance in mediaeval litera- 
 ture that some account of the chief Englisli and 
 The reat French embodiments of it may be desir- 
 Roman able. The French version, attributed in 
 
 d'Alixandrc. , i • i i i • i j_i 
 
 shares, which have as usual exercised the 
 adventurous ingenuity of critics, to two authors, Lam- 
 bert li Tors, the Crooked (the older designation " Li 
 Cors," the Short, seems to be erroneous), and Alex- 
 ander 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 por- 
 tion, 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 con- 
 quered 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 gen- 
 erally figures, the Eomance goes straight to the 
 war with Darius. This is introduced (in a manner 
 which made a great impression on the ]\Iiddle Ages,
 
 160 EUROPEAN LITER ATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 as appears in a famous passage of our wars with 
 France') by an insulting message and present of child- 
 ish 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 Fiierres cle 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. 
 
 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 begin- 
 ning (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 figliting 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 
 
 ^ See Hanry V. for the tenuis-ball incident.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 161 
 
 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 Eeturn" 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 
 Eesurrection. 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 experi- 
 ence that they come to the Fountain of Youth — the 
 Fontaine de Jouvence — which has left such an in- 
 delible impression on tradition. Treachery had de- 
 prived Alexander of access to that of Immortality ; 
 and that of Eesurrection 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 be- 
 come 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. 
 
 L
 
 163 EUROPEAN LITEEATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 re- 
 commences with the siege of " Def ur." An enchanted 
 river, which w^hosoever drinks he becomes guilty of 
 cowardice or treachery, follows ; and then we return 
 to Tarsus and Candace, that courteous queen. Mean- 
 while the traitors Autipater and " Divinuspater " con- 
 tinue 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Form. «6c. . . 
 
 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 in- 
 equality, 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 relat-
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 163 
 
 ing 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. 
 
 It is also characteristic in having been freely con- 
 tinued. Two authors, G-uy of Cambray and Jean le 
 Nevelois, composed a Vengeance Alexandre. 
 
 Continuations. i • i i i 
 
 The Vmux 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 Perce- 
 forest. Less interesting in itself, but curious as illus- 
 trating 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 cen- 
 tury, dealing with Alexander's grandfather.^ 
 
 The principal and earliest version of the English 
 
 Alexander is accessible witliout much diihculty in 
 
 Weber's Metrical Romances of the Thir- 
 
 King Alexander. 7 tt i /~i 
 
 teenth, 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 
 
 1 111 this paragraph I agaiu .speak at second-hand, for neither the 
 Vaux 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 re- 
 printed, ill another version, by the Scottish Text Society.
 
 164 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-13(X). 
 
 of its contents may therefore not be witliont interest. 
 It should be observed that besides this and the Scots 
 Alexander (see note above) an alliterative liomance of 
 Alexander and Dindymus ^ exists, and perhaps others. 
 But until some one supplements Mr Ward's admirable 
 Catalogue of Bomances 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. 
 
 Our present poem may be of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, 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 liundred lines carry us to the death of 
 Nectanabus and the breaking of " Bursifal " (Buce- 
 phalus) 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 
 
 ^ E.KT.y., 1878, edited by Professor Skeat.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 165 
 
 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 
 Amnion — indeed in all the later versions of the story 
 the crossing of the purely fantastic Callisthenic 
 romance with more or less historical matter is notice- 
 able. 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 mediievalised, is brought 
 somewhat more into accordance with the historic ac- 
 count, 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 " Def ur," however, like that 
 at Gaza, is omitted ; and the wilder and more mys- 
 tical and luxuriant parts of the story — the three
 
 166 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Fountains, the Sirens, the flower -maidens, and the 
 like — are either omitted likewise or handled more 
 prosaically.^ 
 
 One of tlie most curious things about this poem 
 is that every division — divisions of whicli 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 l)ytyde. 
 Loth is grater man to chyde." 
 
 The treatment of the Alexander story thus well illus- 
 trates one way of the mediseval 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 ances- 
 tors 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 
 
 ^ Dr Kolbing, 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 Alittaundre, but 
 Arthour and Merlin, Richard Caur de Lion, and other pieces. I 
 should much like to believe this.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 167 
 
 traits of Middle-Age literature. As will have been 
 noted, there was little invention in the later versions, 
 the Callisthenic fictions and the Itc7' ad Paradisuin 
 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 
 Floriviont 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 Eomance writers. 
 Olympias has very little character in more senses than 
 one : Candace is not worked out : and Alexander him- 
 self 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. 
 
 In this respect the Tale of Troy presents a remark- 
 able contrast to its great companion — a contrast 
 The Tale of pcrvadiug, and almost too remarkable to 
 ^^°y- be accidental. Inasmuch as this part of 
 
 mediaeval 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 inves-
 
 168 EUEOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1:300. 
 
 tigated.^ But it is so important, and so characteristic 
 of the time with which we are dealing, that it cannot 
 be passed over here, thongh 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 medioeval 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 in- 
 stinct 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. 
 As in the case of the Alexander-Saga, their oricrins 
 were the Pseudo-Callisthenes and the Iter ad Para- 
 disum, 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 
 Dictys and ^^^ Darcs Phrygius, to whom may perhaps 
 Dares. j^g 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 autho- 
 rities. If they did not know Homer very well at first- 
 hand, they did know him : they knew Ovid (who of 
 
 ■* 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'Hdricault, Nouvellcs Pram^aises 
 du QuatorzUme Siicle (Bibliotheque Elzevirienne. Paris, 1856).
 
 ANTIQUITY IN EOMANCE. 1G9 
 
 course represents Homer, though not Homer only) ex- 
 tremely 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 re- 
 gard 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 repre- 
 sent the Greek side, but more fairly than Homer ; 
 and Dares, priest of Hephaestus, 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,^ — exist at present only in 
 Latin prose, though, as the Greeks were more expert 
 and inventive forgers than the Eomans, 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 intro- 
 duced by a letter to a certain Quintus Aradius from 
 Lucius Septimius, who informs " his Eufinus " 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 turn- 
 ing the Punic letters into Greek (which had always 
 
 1 Ed. Meister. Leipzig, 1872-73.
 
 170 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 sjods fioht with men ! 
 
 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 com- 
 monplace of mediaeval bookroaking. 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
 
 ANTIQUITY IN EOMANCE. 171 
 
 cannot well be earlier than tlie fourth century and may 
 be much later), while Dares may possibly 
 
 The Dares story. J s. J 
 
 be as late as the twelfth. Neither book 
 is of the very slightest interest intrinsically. Dictys 
 (the full title of whose book is Ephemcris 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 be- 
 ginning at the abduction of Helen ; Dares starts his 
 De Excidio Trojce 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 
 mediaeval peculiarities, but thought to be possibly 
 derived from some similar things attributed to the 
 rhetorician Philostratus at the end of the third cen- 
 tury. And among these a great place is given to 
 Troilus and " Briseida." 
 
 Nearly half the book is filled with these pre- 
 liminaries, 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
 
 172 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 maj 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 simul- 
 taneously 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 svich 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 pugnce
 
 ANTIQUITY IN KOMANCE. 173 
 
 supervcnit (a stock phrase of the book) Troilus is again 
 the hero, wounds everybody, including Agamemnon, 
 Menelaus, and Dioiued, and very reasonably opposes a 
 six months' armistice which his father grants. At its 
 end he again bears all before him ; Imt, 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 unen- 
 chanted heel), and of Ajax and Paris in single fight, 
 leads to the appearance of the Amazons, who beat the 
 GTreeks, till Penthesilea is killed by ISTeoptolemus. 
 Antenor, ^neas, 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 uhi 
 extrinsecus portam equi sculptum caput erat. Antenor 
 and J^^neas receive their reward; but the latter is 
 banished because he has concealed Polyxena, who is 
 massacred when discovered by IN^eoptolemus. 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 mouths, and 
 twelve days ; that 886,000 men fell on the Greek side, 
 and 676,000 on the Trojan ; that ^Eneas 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.
 
 174 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 
 
 Its absurdity. , , , , . . p i • i 
 
 book, has no literary merit oi any kind. 
 It reads more like an excessively uninspired precis of 
 a larger work than like anything else — a prScis in 
 which all the literary merit has, with unvarying in- 
 felicity, 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 endea- 
 vour 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. 
 
 Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the 
 
 Eomantic period that it fastened so eagerly on this 
 
 sorriest of illegitimate epitomes.^ Very few persons 
 
 at that time were in case to compare the 
 
 Its ca2)abilities. . t e r\ • i 
 
 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 ele- 
 ments 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 
 
 ^ The British Museum alone (see Mr Ward's Catalogue of Ronuitices, 
 vol. i.) contains some seventeen separate MS8. of Dares.
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 175 
 
 a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la deesse d'amors," 
 there was nothing of which the mediteval 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 them- 
 selves worshipped in the pagan times. It was impos- 
 sible 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 media3val 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 ^neas, 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 Ivanlwc), and it 
 would have been a somewhat violent escapade for 
 even a medieval fancy. 
 
 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 opera- 
 tors into a complete roman d'aventures : his facts, if 
 meagre and jejune, are numerous. The raids and
 
 176 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1 100-1300. 
 
 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 com- 
 munications, no scientific nonsense of any kind, — were 
 exactly to mediseval taste. 
 
 Above all, the prominence of new heroes and heroines, 
 about whom not very much was said, and whose gestes 
 the mediffival 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 " Ex- 
 cidium Trqjffi " (the title of the Dares book, and after 
 it of otliers), must be blackened ; and though Dares 
 himself does not contain the worst accusations of the 
 mediaeval 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 him- 
 self, is not far. On the other hand, Troilus, a mere 
 name in the older stories, offers himself as a hero. 
 Troilus and And for a heroiue, the casual mention of 
 BHseida. q-^q 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 con- 
 fusion with Chryseis (to be altered in name after-
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 177 
 
 wards) 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 per- 
 ceived as that which appears in the Alexander legend. 
 The sobriety of Gautier of Chatillon'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 mediaeval 
 writer of classical Latin verse. But this neighbour- 
 hood of the streams of history and fiction ceases much 
 earlier in the Trojan case, and for very obvious reasons. 
 The temperament of mediteval poets urged them to 
 fill in and fill out : the structure of the Daretic epi- 
 tome invited them to do so : and they very shortly 
 did it. 
 
 After some controversy, the credit of first " romanc- 
 ing" the Tale of Troy has been, it would seem justly 
 
 Tfec Roman ^^d finally, assigned to Benoit de Sainte- 
 
 deTroie. Morc, Bcuoit, 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 ex- 
 pansion of the fifty pages of Dares, which stands 
 perhaps almost alone even among the numerous sim- 
 ilar feats of mediasval bards. He has helped himself 
 freely with matter from Dictys towards the end of 
 his work ; but, as we have seen, even this reinforce- 
 ment could not be great in bulk. Expansion, however, 
 
 M
 
 178 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 SO difficult to some writers, was never in the least a 
 stumbling - block to the trouvere. It was rather a 
 bottomless pit into which he fell, traversing in his 
 fall lines and pages with endless alacrity of sinning. 
 Not that Benoit 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 especi- 
 ally of the octosyllabic variety — the sin of smooth but 
 insignificant fluency — is always pleasant, and some- 
 times picturesque. Still there is no doubt that at 
 present the second claim is the strongest with us ; 
 and that if Benoit 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. 
 
 Dares, as we have seen, mentions Briseida, and 
 extols her beauty and charm : she was, he says, 
 The phases of " bcautiful, not of lofty stature, fair, her 
 Cressid. j^^^jj, 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 elabor- 
 ated in terms not altogether consistent with some of 
 the above laudatory epithets. Tzetzes, who with some 
 others gives her the alternative name of Hippodamia,
 
 ANTIQUITY IN EOMANCE. "179 
 
 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 Benoit 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 omcI Cressida itself, the allu- 
 sion to the " lazar kite of Cressid's kind " in Henry V. 
 shows that he knew it) it had reached that complete- 
 ness through the hands of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and 
 Henryson, the least of whom was capable of turning 
 a comparatively barren donnde into a rich possession, 
 and who as a matter of fact each added much. We do 
 not find in the Norman trouvhre, and it would be rather 
 wonderful if we did find, the gay variety of the Filos- 
 trato and its vivid picture of Cressid as merely passion- 
 ate, Chaucer's admirable Pandarus and his skilfully 
 blended heroine, or the infinite pathos of Henryson's 
 final interview. Still, all this great and moving ro- 
 mance would have been impossible without the idea 
 of Cressid's successive sojourn in Troy and the Greek
 
 180 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 camp, and of her successive courtship by Troihis and 
 by Diomed. And this Benoit 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, gor- 
 geously 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
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 181 
 
 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 Troiliis 
 himself, and we hear no more of the lady. 
 
 The volubility of Benoit 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 essen- 
 tial 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'Hericault (the first who did Benoit jus- 
 tice) 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. 
 
 But between Benoit and Boccaccio there is another 
 personage who concerns us very distinctly. Never 
 was there such a case, even in the Middle 
 r/icHistona ^ojgg ^hcn 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, other- 
 wise Guido delle Colonne, or Guido Colonna, of Mes-
 
 182 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 sina. 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 libra- 
 ries 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 fifteeenth centuries, Be- 
 noit being completely forgotten. Yet recent inves- 
 tigation has shown that Gruido not merely adapted 
 Benoit in the usual mediieval 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 Benoit 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 ver- 
 sion, it follows necessarily that all the vernacular Troy- 
 books — our own Destriiction of Troy} the French prose 
 romance of Troilus^ &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 TJiebes, the Roman d'Endas, the 
 Roman de Jules C6sar, Athis and. Profilias, and the 
 
 ^ Efl. Panton and Donaldson, E.E.T.S. I;ondoii, 1S69-74. 
 - Ed. Molaud .and d'H(5ricault, op. cit.
 
 ANTIQUITY IX ROMANCE. 183 
 
 rest;^ while something will be said of the German 
 JEneid 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 p^Tpose. 
 
 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 
 
 Meaning of 
 
 the classical stories aftectcd the Middle Ages, This 
 romance. latter poiut 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 meditcval times as 
 being almost totally ignorant of the classics them- 
 selves, 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 mediaeval 
 student, perhaps to any mediaeval student, it seems 
 seldom or never to have occurred that the men of 
 whom he was reading had lived under a dispensation 
 
 ^ The section on " L'Epopee Antique " in M. Petit de Julleville's 
 book, more than once referred to, is by M. Leopold Constaus, editor 
 of the Jiorium dc Thebes, and will be found useful.
 
 184 EUROPEAIs^ LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 neces- 
 sary in order to get at anything like a real compre- 
 hension of them. ISTor 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 in- 
 tensely though less widely, and Shakespeare (but Shake- 
 speare had already felt the Eenaissance spirit) fully 
 and perfectly, on the broad ground of liumanity, 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 chevauclUcs 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 his- 
 torical siege of Gaza into a Fitcrres de Gadrcs, of which 
 Aimeri of Narbonne or Eaoul de Cambrai would have 
 been the appropriate hero. Sometimes, indeed, he 
 simply confounded Persians and Saracens, just as else-
 
 ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE. 185 
 
 where 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 mediaeval thought with 
 any real classicism, even if it had been devoted to 
 much more genuine specimens of antiquity tlian the 
 semi-Oriental medley of the Pseudo-Callisthenes and 
 the bit of bald euhemerism which had better have 
 been devoted to Hephaestus than ascribed to his priest. 
 But, by another very curious fact, the two great and 
 commanding examples of the Eomance of Antiquity 
 were executed each under the influence of the flourish- 
 ing of one of the two mightiest branches of mediaeval 
 poetry proper. When Alberic and the decasyllabist 
 (whoever he was) wrote, the chanson de gestc was in the 
 very prime of its most vigorous manhood, and the 
 Roman d'AHxa.ndrc accordingly took not merely the 
 outward form, but the whole spirit of the chanson de 
 gestc itself. And when Benoit 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
 
 186 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 good deal of Iseult — au Iseult more faithless to love, 
 but equally indifferent to anything except love. As 
 Candace in Alexander lias the crude though not un- 
 amiable naturalism of a chanson heroine, so Cressid — 
 so even Briseida to some extent — has the characteris- 
 tic of the frail angels of Arthurian legend. The cup 
 would have spilled wofuUy 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 Eound Table, — she is of the first 
 creation of the order of romantic womanhood.
 
 18^ 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH AND THE SETTLEMENT OF 
 EUKOPEAN PliOSODY. 
 
 SPECIAL INTEREST OF EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH DECAY OF ANGLO-SAXON 
 
 EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH LITERATURE — SCANTINESS OF ITS CON- 
 STITUENTS — LAYAMON THE FORM OF THE ' BRUT ' ITS SUBST.VNCE 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Special interest o o ' 
 
 nf Early Middle literary productiou of tlie 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 equip- 
 ping it with grammar and prosody, in preparing, so to 
 speak, for Chaucer, is not only of the first importance
 
 188 EUEOrEAN LITEEATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 
 Eomanic vulgar tongues into Spanish, Italian, Portu- 
 guese, Provencal, 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 step- 
 ping-stones by which to cross from Ausonius to the 
 Chanson de Boland. 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, cceteris 
 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 Beoimdf 
 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 Eomance tongues, it is nowhere trace- 
 able 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,
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 189 
 
 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 he 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 Csedmon 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 litera- 
 ture," between calling it " impossible to pronounce 
 with certainty whether anything in it is artistically 
 good or bad," ^ and thinking it proper, as it has some- 
 times been thought, in an examination in English 
 literature, to give four papers to Credmon, ^Ihic, 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. 
 
 The evidence is rendered more easy in the present 
 connection by the fact, recognised by the most com- 
 petent authorities in Eirst English or Anglo-Saxon 
 
 ^ See Craik, History of Eivjlish Literature, 3d ed. (Loudon, 186G), 
 i. 55.
 
 190 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 itself, that for some time before the arbitrary line 
 Decay of Anglo. ^'^ the Coiiquest the procluctivc powers 
 Saxon. of the literature had been failing, and the 
 
 language itself was showing signs of change. ISTo 
 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 appear- 
 ance, 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. 
 
 It is not surprising that, although the Latin literary 
 
 Earl Middi P^'oductiou of the time, especially in his- 
 
 Engiish tory, was at least equal to that of any other 
 
 European country, and though it is at least 
 
 probable that some of the greatest achievements
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 191 
 
 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 
 coniiBcted with, though not confined to, the concen- 
 tration of learning and teaching in the clergy brought 
 about a disj)roportionate 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. 
 
 It could not be expected that the slowly changing 
 Scantiness of its language should at once change its habits 
 constituents. jj^ ^jjjf. rcspect. And so, as the century 
 immediately before the Conquest had seen little
 
 192 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 hcllcs 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 Ornmdum and the 
 Ancren Biide, 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, 
 Eobert of Glloucester'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 Oui 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 otlier things, do we find pure 
 literature — not the literature of education or edifica- 
 tion, but the literature of art and form. 
 
 Yet the whole is, for the true student of literature, 
 full enough of interest, while the best things 
 
 J.ayamon. !",„.. 
 
 are not m need of praising by allowance. 
 Of Layamon mention has already been made in the
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 193 
 
 chapter on the Arthurian Legend. But his work covers 
 very mucli more than the Arthurian matter, and has 
 interests entirely separate from it. Layamon, as he 
 tells us/ derived his information from Bede, Wace, 
 and a certain Albinus who has not been clearly iden- 
 tified. 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 mediaeval literature 
 would be solved. Thus in the Arthurian part, just as 
 we find additions in Wace to Geoffrey, so we find addi- 
 tions 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. 
 
 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 
 mediaeval work is in similar case. But then the 
 great body of mediaeval 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 
 
 1 Ed. Madden, i. 2. 
 
 N
 
 194 EUKOPEAN LITERATUllE, 1100-1300. 
 
 inevitable, omits many passages, besides those in wliich 
 it is injured or mutilated, and alters proper names en- 
 tirely at discretion. 
 
 The only explanation of this, though it is an ex- 
 planation 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 un- 
 certain, 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 inser- 
 tion 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 ex- 
 amine whether there was any ground for considering 
 it actual. 
 
 Secondly, Layamon has no small interest of form. 
 The language in which the Brut is written has an ex- 
 
 Theform of cccdingly Small admixture of French words ; 
 
 thcBtut. ]j^^^ ^^ j-^jjg made a step, and a long one, 
 from Anglo-Saxon towards English. The verse is still 
 alliterative, still destitute of any fixed number of syl- 
 lables or syllabic equivalents. But the alliteration is 
 weak and sometimes not present at all, the lines are of
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 195 
 
 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 "brotlier" 
 and " other," " miglit " and " riglit," " fare " and " care." 
 But it is a beginning : and we know that it will 
 spread. 
 
 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 
 
 Its substance. 
 
 Chrestien de Troyes, his earlier, though 
 not much earlier, contemporary. Here the French- 
 man 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 dis- 
 tinctly poetical genius. And yet Layamon can survive 
 the test. He is less, not more, subject to the cliche, the 
 stereotyped and stock poetical form, than Chrestien. 
 If he is far less smooth, he has not tlie monotony 
 which accompanies and, so to speak, dogs the " skip- 
 ping 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 Eouw^nne (Kowena), the Tintagel passage, the 
 speech of Walwain to tlie Emperor of Home — 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 de-
 
 196 EUKOrEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1:300. 
 
 velopnient. When one reads Chrestien or another 
 earlier contemporary, Benoit de Sainte-lMore, the ques- 
 tion is, " What can come after this ? " When one reads 
 Layamon the happier question is, " What will come 
 after this ? " 
 
 The Ormulum and the Ancrcn Riwle appear to be 
 — the former exactly and the latter nearly of the same 
 T/ic Ormulum. tlatc as Layauion, all being near to 1200. 
 Its metre. -^■^J^^ though they were "good books," their 
 interest is by no means merely one of edification. That 
 of the Ormtihwi ^ 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 v^p 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 ad- 
 dresses 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 
 
 ' Ed. White aud Holt, 2 vols. Oxford, 1878.
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 197 
 
 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 lan- 
 guages 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 extrava- 
 gances 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 Ijy the rigid syllable which
 
 198 EUEOPEAN LITEUATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Orm liimself adopted, but which in those early days 
 only served to guide and not to fetter. 
 
 His second important peculiarity shows that he 
 
 must have been an odd and crotchety creature, but 
 
 one with sense in his crotchets. He seems 
 
 Its spelling. . . . 
 
 to have been annoyed by mispronunciation 
 of his own and other work : and accordingly he adopts 
 (with full warning and explanation) the plan of in- 
 variably 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 
 travcder. It is a pity that knowledge which existed 
 in the twelfth century should apparently have be- 
 come partial ignorance close to the beginning of the 
 twentieth. 
 
 The Ancren Miiole ^ has no oddities of this kind, and 
 nothing particularly noticeable in its form, though its 
 easy pleasant prose would have been wonderful at the 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 199 
 
 time in any other European nation. Even French 
 The Ancren prose was Only just beginning to take such 
 Riwie. form, and had not yet severed itself from 
 
 poetic peculiarities to anything like the same extent. 
 But then the unknown author of the Ancren Mivde 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 un- 
 known, and he neither names himself nor is author- 
 itatively 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 founda- 
 tion. 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. 
 
 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 advis- 
 ing 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 unde- 
 filed. The treatise, which describes itself, or is de- 
 scribed 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 mediteval reli-
 
 200 EUKOPEAN .LITEEATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 gion, 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 num- 
 ber ; 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 hedge- 
 hog-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 sec- 
 tions are termed ; the remaining seven deal with 
 religious service, private devotion, the Wcsen or na- 
 ture 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 pil-
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 201 
 
 grimage 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. Eenan oddly 
 enough pronounced Ecclesiastcs, 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 aimahle, but it may safely be said that there is 
 none more amiable in a cheerful human way than the 
 Ancrcn 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.^ They are 
 almost without exception either religious — the con- 
 stant rehandling of the time cannot be better exem- 
 
 ^ Substantial portions of all the work mentioned in this chapter 
 will be found in Messrs Morris and Skeat's invaluable Spcrimcvs of 
 Early Enfjlhh (Oxford, Part i. ed. 2, 18S7 ; Part ii. ed. 3, 1801). 
 These rnclude the whole of the Moral Ode and of King Horn. 
 Separate complete editions of some are noted below.
 
 202 KUROPEAN LITETtATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 plified than by tlie fact that at least two paraphrases, 
 one in prose, one in verse, of one of the " doles " of the 
 Ancren Riivle itself exist — or else moral-scientific, such 
 as the Bestiary^ so often printed. One of the con- 
 stantly recurring version-paraphrases of the Scriptures, 
 however — the so-called Story of Genesis and Exodus,'^ 
 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 
 witli 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 Kcdendar, and then by Coleridge himself — and was 
 to become one of the most powerful, varied, and charm- 
 ing 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 quan- 
 titative 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 tliis same poem it is possible to discover not a 
 few very complete and handsome decasyllabics which 
 would do no discredit to Chaucer himself. 
 
 But the Oui and the Niyhtingale^ is another kind 
 
 ^ Wright, Reliquicc Antiquce, i. 208-227. 
 2 Ed. Morris, E.E.T.S., London, 1865. 
 
 ^ About 600 lines of this are given by Morris and Skeat. Com- 
 pletely edited by (among others) F. H. Sti'atmann. Ivrefeld 18G8.
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 203 
 
 of thing. Ill tlie first place, it appears to be (though 
 r;ieOwiand it woulcl be rash to affirm this positively of 
 the Nightingale, anything in a form so popular with the 
 French trouveres as the dShat) original and not trans- 
 lated. 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. Al- 
 though 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 " ^ (supposed to date from this very 
 time), the " Proverbs of Hendyng " ^ 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 aah c cl>, the 
 proverb and the coda "quod Hendyng" ])eing added 
 
 ^ Fa\. Morris, An Old English Miscellany. LoikIdii, 1872. 
 ^ See Rcli<iuuc Antiqiut; i. 109-116.
 
 204 EUEOPEAN LITER ATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 to each. The Oivl and the Niglitiwjale 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. 
 
 As the dividing-point of the thirteenth and four- 
 teenth centuries approaches, the interest of literary 
 Robert of work incrcascs, and requires less and less 
 Gloucester. allowauce of historical and accidental 
 value. This allowance, indeed, is still necessary with 
 the verse chronicle of liobert of Gloucester,^ 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 mediasval 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 exces- 
 sive price upon their own discoveries or fosterlings. 
 Eobert of Gloucester's work, with the later but com- 
 panion Englishing of Peter of Langtoft by Eobert 
 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 2^'^otdg4s of their own. Yet there is 
 not a little attraction in Eobert. To begin with, he 
 is the first in English, if not the first in any modern 
 
 ^ lulited with Langtoft, in 4 vols., by Hearne, Oxford, 1724 ; and 
 reprinted, London, 1810. Also more lately in the Rolls Series.
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 205 
 
 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 — 
 
 " Engelaud 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." 
 
 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 prejvidiced in the matter of Harold) he 
 represents, if not what we should call solid historical 
 knowledge, at any rate direct, and for the time toler- 
 ably 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 anapaestic 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
 
 206 EUROPEA^^ LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 as lie is not translating from chanson clc gcste form, 
 he does not, as Robert of Brunne sometimes does, fall 
 into complete Inisscs. 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 Eobert. 
 
 Verse history, however, must always be an awkward 
 
 and unnatural form at the best. The end of the 
 
 thirteenth century had something better to 
 
 liiimanccs. i • i /. 
 
 show m the appearance or romance prof)er 
 and of ej)ic. 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 Eng- 
 lish verse romances began to be read, this tendency 
 prevailed at least as much as usual. Later investiga- 
 tion, 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, how- 
 ever, three of exceptional interest (perhaps the best 
 three except Gaivaine and the Green Knight and /S'ir 
 Launfal) may probably be classed — to wit, Horn, 
 Haveloh, 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 lihymer. 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
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 207 
 
 pronounce both Havdoh the Dane and Kinrj Horn to 
 be older than loOO.^ 
 
 It is, moreover, not a mere accident tlmt these 
 three, though the authors j)retty 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 Hm^n and Haveloh, while the 
 Tristram story, as is pointed out in the chapter on the 
 Haveioktiie Arthurian Legend, is the most British in 
 Dane. (^qj^q of qW ^]^q 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. Havdoh is an English equivalent, with 
 extremely strong local connections and identifications, 
 of the homelier passages of the French chansons de r/este. 
 The hero, born in Denmark, and orphan heir to a king- 
 dom, is to be put away by his treacherous guard- 
 ian, 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 re- 
 solves 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 employ- 
 
 ^ Tristram, for editions v. p. 116 : Ilavdolc, edited bj' Madden, 
 1828, and again by Prof. Skeat, E.E.T.S., 1868. Kiwj Horn has been 
 repeatedly jtrinted — first by Ritson, A ncient Enf/lish Metrical Jioj/ianccs 
 (London, 1802), ii. 91, and Appendix ; last by Prof. Skeat in the 
 Specimens above mentioned.
 
 208 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 ment 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, Gold- 
 borough, 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 fight- 
 ing, 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 ex- 
 cept an occasional double rhyme — in very sterling 
 English, and with some, though slight, traces of 
 alliteration. 
 
 Horn {Kin<j Horn, Horn-Child and Maiden Him- 
 
 nilde, &c.) is somewhat more courtly in its general 
 
 outlines, and has less of the folk- tale about 
 
 King Horn. • -i , • ^ ^ ■ • ^ i-^ 
 
 it ; but it also has connections with Den- 
 mark, 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), tlie faithfulness of his friend Athulf 
 (who has to undergo the very trying experience of 
 being made violent love to by Eimenhild under the
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 209 
 
 impression that he is Horn), and the treachery of his 
 friend Pikenild (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 them- 
 selves the syllabic licence of alliterative verse proper, 
 though there is even less alliteration than in Haveloh, 
 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 cliarming literature in English has, 
 however, still to be mentioned : and this is to be found 
 in the volume — 1:" "■ more than a pamphlet — edited 
 fifty years ago i r 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 lar from novel trouv^re 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 trouvhre measures — an eleven- 
 line stanza of eight sevens or sixes, rhymed ah, ah, 
 

 
 210 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 al), ah, c, h, c; but moral-religions in tone and much 
 alliterated. The fifth, also English, is anapiestic tetra- 
 meter heavily alliterated, and mono-rliymed for eight 
 verses, with the stanza made np to ten by a couplet 
 on another rhyme. It is not very interesting. But 
 with VI. the chorus of sweet sounds begins, and there- 
 fore, small as is the room for extract here, it must be 
 given in full : — 
 
 " Bytuene Mershe and Avoril 
 
 When spray beginnetli to springe, 
 The little foul hath hire wyl 
 
 On hyre Ind 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 ynuh 
 
 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 niyn wonges waxeth won ; 
 
 Levedi, al for thine sake 
 Lon"inge is Anient me on.
 
 THE MAKING OF ENGLISH. 211 
 
 In world is non so wytor mon 
 That al hire bountL' telle con ; 
 Heir swyre is whittere than the swon 
 Ant fayrest may in toune. 
 An liendy hap, &c. 
 
 Icham for wouyng al I'or-wake, 
 
 Wery so water in wore 
 Lest any reve me my make 
 
 Ychabbe y-3yrned 3ore. 
 Betere is tholien whyle sore 
 Then mournen evermore. 
 Geynest under gore, 
 Herkene to my roune. 
 An bendy 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 h, 
 a ah, ha ah. Those of VIII. are twelve-lined in eights, 
 rhymed ah, ah, ah, ah, c, d, c, d ; but it is observ- 
 able that there is some assonance here instead of pure 
 rhyme. IX. is in the famous romance stanza of six or 
 rather twelve lines, a la Sir ThojMs; X. in octaves of 
 eights alternately rhymed with an envoy quatrain ; 
 XL (a very pretty one) in a new metre, rhymed « a a h 
 a, h. 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 ; "
 
 212 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 by a sturdy Praise of Women which charges gallantly 
 against the usual mediii?val 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, uortlierne wynd, blou, blou, blou " — 
 
 Here is Tennysonian verse five hundred years before 
 Tennyson. The " cry " of Englisli lyric is on this 
 northern wind at last ; and it shall never fail after- 
 wards. 
 
 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 
 the modern Jingiish as 01 the othcr modern literary 
 languages. languagcs. A vcry great ^ deal has been 
 written, with more and with less learning, with in- 
 genuity 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 
 
 1 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 dcr Enylhchcn Metrik {\\ien, 1 895), and for foreign matters 
 M. Gaston Paris's chapter in his LitUrature Franraisc au Moycn Aye. 
 I do not agree with any of theui, but I have a profound respect for all.
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PROSODY. 213 
 
 accept plain and obvious facts. These facts, or the 
 most important of them, may be summarised as fol- 
 lows : The prosody of a language will necessarily 
 vary according to the pronunciation and composition 
 of that language ; but there are certain general prin- 
 ciples of prosody which govern all languages possess- 
 ing a certain kinship. These general principles were. 
 Historical for the Westcm branches of the Aryan 
 retrospect, tongues, vcry early discovered and formu- 
 lated 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 increas- 
 ing 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 indi- 
 vidual syllables appears to have undergone a complete 
 change. xVlthough metres quantitative in scheme con- 
 tinued 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 fre- 
 quently used with a looser syllabic arrangement, re- 
 taining the divisional characteristics of the older 
 prosody, but neglecting quantity, the strict rules of 
 elision, and so forth. 
 
 On the other hand, some of the new Teutonic
 
 214 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tongues which were thus hrought into contact with 
 Anglo-Saxon Latin, and with which Latin was brought 
 prosody. jj^^q 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. 
 
 While these were the states of things with regard 
 to Latin on the one hand, and to the tongues most 
 Eomance Separated from Latin on the other, the Ro- 
 prosody. mancc 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 ProvenQal, 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.^ Efforts have been made to father 
 this directly on some classical original, and some au- 
 thorities have even been uncritical enough to speak 
 of the connection — this or that — having been " proved " 
 
 ^ Vide Dante, Dc Vnlgari Eloquio.
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PROSODY. 215 
 
 for these verses or others. jSTo 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. Ehyme became by degrees an in- 
 variable 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 mea- 
 sures like the Alcaic, became the rule. Even elision 
 was very greatly restricted, though ctesura was pretty 
 strictly retained, and an additional servitude was im- 
 posed 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. 
 
 But the prosody of the Eomance tongues is perfectly 
 simple and intelligible, except in the one crux of the 
 Engiiiii qucstiou how it came into being, and what 
 •proiotiy. pg^j-j^ "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 differ- 
 ent.^ As has been said, the older prosody itself, with 
 
 ^ What is said here of English appHes 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
 
 216 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 
 The later of later volumos of this series will have 
 alliteration, ^q show, alliterative verse was taken up 
 with something like a set purpose during the four- 
 teenth and fifteenth centuries, its character was wholly 
 changed, and though some very good work was writ- 
 ten 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 tetra- 
 meter. Above all, the old strict and accurate com- 
 bination 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 con- 
 stantly leading to mere senseless and tasteless jingle, 
 if not to the positive coining of fantastic or improper 
 locutions to get the " artful aid." 
 
 Meanwhile the real prosody of English had been 
 elaborated, in the usual blending fashion of the race, 
 Thenew ^J ^^^ intricate, yet, as it happens, an easily 
 verse. traccablc series of compromises and natur- 
 alisations. By the end of the twelfth century, as 
 
 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.
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PROSODY, 217 
 
 we have seen, rhyme was creeping in to supersede 
 alliteration, and a regular arrangement of elastic syl- 
 labic 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. 
 
 Ehyme 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 
 
 Rhyme ana ■*- '' 
 
 syllabic bc cxpclled by deliberate and unnatural 
 
 equivalence. i_ij_j? tj_ j.- it 
 
 crotchet from any but narrative and dra- 
 matic poetry. On the other hand, it is almost inevit- 
 able 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 uncon- 
 sciously 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 anaptestic, 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
 
 218 EUEOPEAN LITEEATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 — quantity in modern languages is always loose : but 
 it does not follow that they ignored it altogether. 
 
 Those who insist that they did ignore it, and who 
 painfully search for verses of so many " accents," for 
 Accent and " scctions," for " pauscs," and what not, 
 quantity. ^j,g Confronted with difticulties 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 tliere 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.^ 
 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 
 
 ^ Of course there is plenty of alliteration in " Alison." That orna- 
 ment 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 Jias absolutely nothing to do with the structure 
 of the line.
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PROSODY. 219 
 
 to do to scan the piece according to classical laws, 
 allowing only much more licence of " common " syl- 
 lables — common in themselves and by position — than 
 in Latin, and rather more than in Greek. 
 
 Yet another conclusion may perhaps be risked, and 
 that is that this change of prosody was either directly 
 The gain of caused by, or in singular coincidence was 
 form. 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 un- 
 suited 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 foas 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
 
 220 EUEOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 tly. 
 
 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 be- 
 ginning 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. For- 
 tunately 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, quanti- 
 fication, metrical arrangement, that English needed; 
 and it received them. 
 
 These remarks are of course not presented as a 
 complete account, even in summary, of English, much 
 Tiie" accent" ^^ss of European prosody. They are barely 
 theory. morc 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
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PEOSODY. 221 
 
 to English poetry, and which, though not capable of 
 being applied in quite the same fashion to the 
 Eomance 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 innova- 
 tion, 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 
 ]\Ir 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. 
 
 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 develop- 
 
 I nit ial fallacies. . • i c 
 
 ments, typical and special, of English 
 prosody in the nineteenth century cannot be quite 
 the same as those of Greek two thousand years ago,
 
 222 EUROPEAN LITEUATURE, 1100-i;iOO, 
 
 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 exces- 
 sively improbable that the prosodic results of nations 
 so nearly allied to each other, and so constantly 
 studying each other's work, as Greeks, Eomans, 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. 
 
 But to go on from this, as Dr Guest and some of his 
 followers have done, to the subjection of the whole 
 A,uiflnaipervcJ^'^^^^^^^(^ vocabulary of classical prosody 
 sities thereof . to a sort of prccmunive, to hold up the 
 hands in horror at the very name of a tribrach, and 
 exhibit symptoms of catalejDsy at the word catalectic 
 — to ransack the dictionary for unnatural words or
 
 SETTLEMENT OF PllOSODY. 223 
 
 uses of words like " catch," and " stop," and " pause," 
 where a perfectly clear and perfectly flexible ter- 
 minology 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 un- 
 natural contortions of scansion, the imj)utations 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 anapa3St followed by two iambs,^ 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 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 224 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 theory beforehand, and dismisses the best things as 
 bad because they do not agree therewith, it becomes a 
 futile nuisance. And I belie \e 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.
 
 225 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 
 
 POSITION OF GEEJIANY 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 OP ITS ADAPTATION — THE PIONEERS : HEINRICH VON 
 
 VELDEKE — GOTTFRIED OF STRASBURG HARTMANN VON AUE 
 
 'EREC DER WANDER^RE' 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. 
 
 It must have been already noticed that one main rea- 
 son for the unsurpassed literary interest of this present 
 Position of period is that almost all the principal 
 Germany. European nations contribute, in their dif- 
 ferent ways, elements to that interest. The contri- 
 bution is not in all cases one of positive literary pro- 
 duction, 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 ex- 
 
 P
 
 226 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 cept France and perhaps Iceland. Nor is Germany,^ 
 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 ex- 
 tent, 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Merit of its J ' •' 
 
 ■jjoetry. cxcessivc 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 
 
 ^ 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 
 Nihclungenlied Essay {E&s<tys, vol. iii.) can never be obsolete save in 
 unimportant matters : that which follows on Early German Literatiirc 
 is good, but less good. Mr Gosse's Northern Studies (1879) contains 
 a very agreeable paper on Walther von der Vogelweide. The Wag- 
 nerites have naturally of late years dealt much with Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach, but seldom from a literary point of view.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEKMAN POETRY, 227 
 
 same breath that the first period of German litera- 
 ture was "richer in inventive genius than any that 
 followed it," and that " nothing but fragments of a 
 single song ^ 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 NiheluTigenlicd to 
 the niad 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 it- 
 self 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. 
 
 The three divisions above sketched may very well 
 be taken in tlie order given. The great folk-epics 
 just mentioned, with some smaller poems, such as 
 Konig Bother, 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 witli the Lyric poets, especially the best 
 of them, the exquisite singer known as Walter of the 
 Bird-Meadow. 
 
 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 Kibching- 
 
 ^ HUdebrand and Maduhrand.
 
 228 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 enlied ; ^ the amount of work expended on the subject 
 Foik-qncs-The ^7 Genuaus during the century in which 
 Nibeiungeniied. ^\^q poeui has been knowu 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, w^e undoubtedly have handlings of it 
 TTicVoisunga ^^ Icclaudic (the so-called Volsunga Saga), 
 '^aga. and still earlier verse- dealings in the Elder 
 
 Edda, which are older, and probably much older, than 
 the German poem.^ They are not only older, but they 
 
 1 Ed. Bartsch. 6th ed. Leipzig, 1886. 
 
 " For the verse originals see Vigfusson and Powell's Corpus Pocticum 
 Boreal.e (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).
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN TOETEY. 229 
 
 are different. As a Volsung story, the interest is 
 centred on the ancestor of Sigurd (Sigfried in the 
 later poem), on his acqviisitiou of tlie 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. 
 
 The author of the Nibclungenlied (or rather the 
 " Nibelungen-AoiJ/t,'' 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 in- 
 terest as regards Sifrit, and very largely increases the
 
 230 EUEOrEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 importance of the revenge of Cludrun, now called 
 Kriemhild. Only sixteen of the thirty-nine " aven- 
 tiuren " or " fyttes " (into which the poem in the 
 edition here used is divided) are allotted to the part 
 np to and including the murder of Sifrit ; the remain- 
 ing twenty-three deal with the vengeance of Kriem- 
 hild, 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 com- 
 parison 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 liner touches of pure clear poetry in single pas- 
 sages 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 
 Eegin is excellent ; and the wild and ferocious story 
 of Sinfiotli, with which the saga opens, has unmatched 
 intensity, well brought out in Mr Morris's splendid 
 verse-rendering. The Story of Sigurd the Volsung} 
 
 But every poet has a perfect right to deal with any 
 
 story as he chooses, if he makes good poetry of it ; and 
 
 The German the poct of the NibeluTigenlied is more than 
 
 version. justified iu tliis respect. By curtailing the 
 
 beginning, cutting off the coda above mentioned alto- 
 
 ^ 4tli edition. London, 1887.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 231 
 
 gether, 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 hus- 
 band 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 draw- 
 back ; 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 per- 
 sonages — Dietrich of Bern, for instance, has ex- 
 tremely 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 Nihdaiigenlicd is 
 a very great poem ; and with Bcoiviilf (the oldest, 
 but the least interesting on the whole), Boland (the 
 most artistically finished in form), and the Poem of the 
 Cicl (the cheerfullest and perhaps the fullest of char- 
 acter), composes a quartette of epic with which tlu;
 
 232 EUEOPEAN LITEEATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 literary story of the great European literary nations 
 most appropriately begins. In bulk, dramatic com- 
 pleteness, and a certain furia, the Nihelungenlied, 
 though the youngest and probably the least original, 
 is the greatest of the four. 
 
 The form, though not finished with the perfection of 
 the French decasyllabic, is by no means of a very un- 
 couth description. The poem is written in 
 quatrains, rhymed couplet and couplet, not 
 alternately, but evidently intended for quatrains, inas- 
 much 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 thir- 
 teen-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 isenstangeii : 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 con- 
 fusion ; the general swing of the metre is well main- 
 tained, and maintains itself in turn on the ear.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 233 
 
 In the rhymes, as in those of all early rhymed 
 poems, there is a certain monotony. Just as in the 
 Rhyme and probably Contemporary Layamon the poet 
 language. ^g 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 per- 
 haps 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 Riivle, 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 mediaeval work, as if the 
 writer were trying to find words that he cannot find 
 for a thought which he cannot fully shape even to him- 
 self. In short, there is in the particular kind, stage, 
 and degree that accomplishment which distinguishes 
 the greater from the lesser achievements of literature. 
 Kudrun ^ or Ckulrun — it is a little curious that 
 this should be the name of the original joint-heroine 
 of the NibeluTigenlied, of the heroine of one 
 
 Kudnui. 
 
 of the finest and most varied of the Icelandic 
 sagas, the Laxdcela, and of the present poem — is far 
 
 1 Ed. Bartsch. 4tli ed. Leipzig, 18S0.
 
 234 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 less known to general students of literature than its 
 companion. Nor can it be said taat 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 Nihchingen, of which in formal points it has 
 been thought to be a direct imitation. The stanza is 
 much the same, except tliat 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 pro- 
 longed to either ten or eleven syllables. The first 
 refinement may be an improvement : the second cer- 
 tainly 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 dittidence), has a slightly more 
 archaic cast, as of intended archaism, than is the 
 case with the Nibdungcn. 
 
 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 Nibelnng- 
 nilied, it seems to have had older forms, of which 
 some remains exist in the Xorse. But there is less 
 coincidence of story : and the most striking incident 
 in the Norse — an unending battle, where the combat- 
 ants, killed every night, come alive again every day — 
 is in the German a merely ordinary " battle of Wul- 
 pensand," 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
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEK:\rAN POETRY. 235 
 
 and Christianised in others, has the extravagance, not 
 so much primitive as carelessly artificial, of the later 
 romances. Eomance has a special charter to neglect 
 chronology ; but the chronology here is exceptionally 
 wanton. After the above-mentioned Battle of Wul- 
 pensand, the beaten side resigns itself quite comfort- 
 ably to wait till the sons of the slain grow up : aud 
 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 unpleas- 
 ant 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 hj 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 Kitdrun. 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 liorant, 
 play a great part throughout the poem ; the sub- 
 sequent 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 slaugliter of her tyrants, especially 
 Gerlind, which " Wate der alte " makes. There is 
 also a generally happy ending, which, rather contrary
 
 236 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 to the somewhat ferocious use and wont of these 
 poems, is made to include Hartmuth, Gudrun's unsuc- 
 cessful wooer, and his sister Ortrun. The most note- 
 worthy character, perhaps, is the above - mentioned 
 Wate (or Wade), who is something like Hagen in the 
 Nilelungenlied 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 appear- 
 ance 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 Nihelungcnlied. 
 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 Nihelwngenlied is one. 
 
 Besides these two long poems (the greater of which, 
 the NihchLiigenlied, connects itself indirectly with 
 others through the personage of Dietrich ^) there is a 
 
 ^ The very name of this remarkable personage seems to have exer- 
 cised a fascination over the early German mind, and appears as given 
 to others (Wolfdietrich, Hugdietrich) who have nothing to do with 
 him of Verona.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEEMAN POETEY. 237 
 
 group of shorter and rather older pieces, attributed in 
 Shorter national their present forms to the twelfth century, 
 ''^''^'^^' and not much later than the German trans- 
 
 lation 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 
 mediaeval subjects of Solomon and Marcolf, St Bran- 
 dan, &c., are often classed, but somewhat wrongly, 
 as they belong to a different school. Properly of the 
 group are Konig Bother, Herzog Ernst, and Orendel. 
 All these suo-o-est distinct imitation of the chansons, 
 Orendel inclining rather to the legendary and travel- 
 ling kind of Jourdains de BlaAvies or Huon, Herzog 
 Ernst to the more feudal variety. Konig Rother^ 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 lean- 
 ing towards assonance. The strong connection of these 
 poems witli the chansons is also shown by the fact that 
 Eother is made grandfather of Charlemagne and King 
 of Eome. Whether he had anything to do with the 
 actual Lombard King Eother 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. 
 
 It will depend on individual taste whether the 
 
 1 Ed. Von Bahcler. Halle, 1884.
 
 238 EUROPEAN LITEKATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 reader prefers the so - called " art - poetry " which 
 broke out in Germany, almost wholly on 
 
 Literary poetry. , . . , . , . , . 
 
 a Irench 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.^ 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 tliat the one group is to be on any true 
 reckoning preferred to the other. 
 
 In any case the German literary poetry (a much 
 better phrase than hunst - poesie , for there is plenty 
 Its four chief of art Oil botli sidcs) forms a part, and, 
 tnasters. i\Q;yit to its Frcuch origiuals, 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 — Hartmami von Aue, 
 Gottfried of Strasburg, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and 
 Walther von der Vogelweide — illustrate it as far as 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 239 
 
 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 ^neid, com- 
 municated to Germany something of a directly clas- 
 sical, though more of a French, touch. AVe 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 Kaiscrchronih, 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 else- 
 where, 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Excellence, both ., n.i i i i i -^ c 
 
 natural and aptitudc 01 the pcoplc who produced it tor 
 acqvircd,of poetrv. It is a familiar observation from 
 
 German verse, '- •' 
 
 beginners in German wlio have any literary 
 taste, that German poetry reads naturally, German
 
 24:0 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 litera- 
 ture 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. 
 
 But the German adapters of French at the meeting 
 of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are persons of 
 Originality of Very different calibre from the translators 
 its adaptation, ^f 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 Tri&tan is by far the best of all the nu- 
 merous rehandlings of the story which have come 
 down to us. If we must rest Hartmann von Aue's 
 chief claims on the two Bilchlein, on the songs, and 
 on the delightful Armer Heinrich, yet his Iivcin and 
 his Erec can hold their own even with two of the
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 241 
 
 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 trouvhre is unmistakable, it is equally unmistak- 
 able 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 trouvdrc, the half artificial 
 but not wholly insincere intensity of his brethren of 
 the langue (Toe, will never miss their meed. But for 
 real " cry," for the diviner elements of lyric, we some- 
 how wait till we hear it in 
 
 " Under cler linden 
 
 An der heide, 
 da nnser zweier bette was, 
 da muget ir vinden 
 
 schone beide 
 gebrochen bluomen nnde gras. 
 
 Vor dem walde in einem tal, 
 tandaradei ! 
 
 schone sane diu nahtegal." ^ 
 
 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. 
 
 ^ Walther's ninth Lied, opening stanza. 
 
 Q
 
 242 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Historians arrange the process of Lorrowing from 
 
 the French and adjusting prosody to the loans in, 
 
 rou<^hly speaking;, three stages. The first 
 
 The pioneers. o J r O' O 
 
 Heinrichvon of thesc 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 Blancliejieur^ 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 - hrieg 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 
 
 ^ Found in every language, but originally French.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEKMAN POETRY. 243 
 
 that of an editor of the said Gottfried (who himself 
 rather fails to reck his own salutary rede by proceed- 
 ing to redistribute the ordinary attribution of poems), 
 " Ich bekenne dass ich in diesen Dingen skeptischcr 
 Natur bin." 
 
 If, however, even Gottfried's own authorship of the 
 Tristan ^ is rather a matter of extremely probable infer- 
 Gottfricd of Gucc than of certain knowledge, and if the 
 stnisburg. Hves 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 Farzival, 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 exer- 
 cised 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 ex- 
 cuse for the lovers, degrades the purely romantic 
 character of their affection in more than compen- 
 sating 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 
 
 ^ Ed. Bechstein. 3d ed., 2 vols. Leipzig, 1891.
 
 244 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 general ; and Gottfried seems to have been quite ad- 
 mirably 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 inextri- 
 cable 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 Ehymer, 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 dis- 
 carded 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 mucli too sen- 
 sible 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 free-
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAX POETRY. 245 
 
 dom. The rhymes are sometimes single, sometimes 
 double, occasionally even triple. The syllables con- 
 stantly 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 
 anapeests as Spenser allows himself in " The Oak and 
 the Brere," but to all intents and purposes fully con- 
 stituted, if not fully developed. 
 
 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 Tristrcm, 
 or the cliarming 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 narra- 
 tive charmingly. 
 
 " Diu wise Isot, dm schoene Isot, 
 Dili liuhtet alse der morgenrot," 
 
 is the very thing the want of which mars the pleas- 
 antly flowing but somewhat featureless octosyllables
 
 24G EUEOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1:300. 
 
 of his French models. In the famous passage ^ where 
 he has been thought to reflect on Wolfram, he cer- 
 tainly 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 Camoenae, the nine " Sirens 
 of the ears " — a slightly mixed reminiscence, but char- 
 acteristic 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. 
 
 Hartmann von Aue,^ the subject of Gottfried's 
 highest eulogy, has left a bulkier — at least a more 
 Hartmann Varied — poctical baggage than his eulogist, 
 von Aue. whose owu Icgacy 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 Chev- 
 
 ^ Tristan, 8th soug, 1. 4619 and onwards. The crucial passage is 
 a sharp rebuke of " finders [vindcere, trouvercs] of wild tales," or one 
 particular such who plays tricks on his readers and utters unin- 
 telligible things. It may be Wolfram : it also may not be. 
 
 2 Ed. Bech. 3d. ed., 3 vols. Leipzig, 1893.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEEMAN POETRY. 247 
 
 alier au Lyon and the Errc ct Enidc of Chrestien cle 
 Troves ; a certain number of songs, partly amatory, 
 partly religious, two curious pieces entitled Die Klngc 
 and Biichlein, a verse -rendering of a subject which 
 was much a favourite, the involuntary incest and 
 atonement of St Gregory of the Eock; and lastly, 
 his masterpiece, Der Arme Heinrich. 
 
 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 
 
 Brec der Wan- ^^ 
 
 deraere and have, and that the originals here are two of 
 the very best examples in their kind and 
 language. That Hartmann did not escape the beset- 
 ting sin of all adapters, and especially of all mediaeval 
 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 whicli 
 belongs to Gottfried : and this is not to be altogether
 
 248 EUKOPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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. 
 
 The next or lyrical division shows Hartmann more 
 favourably, though still not exactly as a great poet. 
 Lyrics. 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 decasyllabics. I do not know, and it 
 would probably be difficult to say, what was the first 
 appearance of the decasyllabic, 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. In- 
 deed the very first words, expressing his determina- 
 tion after his lord's death to leave the world to itself,
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY, 249 
 
 have a better ring tlian 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 icli mir Kiystes bluomen kos 
 Die icli hie trage." 
 
 Tlie two curious booklets or complaints (for each 
 
 bore the title of Bilchlcin in its own day, and each is a 
 
 27ie Klage) and the Gregorius touch the lyric on 
 
 "hookicts." Qj^Q g^(jg g^j^^j ^YiQ adventure poems on the 
 
 other. Gregorius, indeed, is simply a roman cl'avcn- 
 tures 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 
 Urec and Iwein, though they are applied to different 
 matter. In size the two " booklets " stand in a curi- 
 ously diminishing ratio to Erec with its ten thousand 
 verses, Iivein with its eight, and Gregorius with its 
 four ; for Die Klctge has a little under two thousand, 
 and the Bilchlein 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 continu-
 
 250 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 ous pair of single and double rhymes, ci;! unde: ant 
 ende, &c. The BUclilein proper is all couplets, and 
 ends less deplorably than its beginning — 
 
 ''Owe, Owe, unde owe ! " — 
 
 might suggest. It is, however, more serious than the 
 Klage, which is really a d6lat (as the technical term in 
 French poetry then went) between Body and Soul, 
 and of no unusual kind. 
 
 Fortunately for Hartmann, he has left another 
 work, Dcr Arme Hcinrich, which is thought to be his 
 Der Arme l^st, and is Certainly his most perfect. It 
 Heinrich. |g ^Imost 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 
 mediaeval 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 allow- 
 ing her to die, and stops the crime. He is rewarded
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 251 
 
 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 mediaeval sentiment, the crowning instance of which 
 is found in Guy of Warioiclc. Ilartmann 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 
 
 Although German writers may sometimes have mis- 
 praised or overpraised their greatest mediaeval poet, it 
 Wolfram von ^^ Certain that we find in Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach. Eschcnbach ^ qualities which, in the thou- 
 sand years between the Fall and the Eenaissance 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 con- 
 trast to the poets already mentioned, and to most of 
 the far greater number not mentioned. It is in Wolf- 
 ram first that we come across, in anything like notice- 
 able 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 
 
 ^ Complete works. Ed. Lachmann. Berlin, 1838. Parzival und 
 Titurcl. 2 vols. Ed. Bartsch. Leipzig, 1870,
 
 252 . EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 fancy ; of the liigher qualities of imagination there is 
 little or nothing in them ; and not much in the vast 
 crowd of the Minnesingers, from the chief " nightin- 
 gale " 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, thovigh the 
 former has left no lyric), has left us few but very 
 remarkable auhadcs, 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 Willehahn 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 Kttdrun stanza does to that of the Nibel- 
 ungen. 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
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEEMAN POETRY. 253 
 
 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Willehalm. i • i i 
 
 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. 
 
 Farzival, 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 EngHsh version (which 
 figures among the Thornton Eomances) does the Graal
 
 254 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 make any figure. In the huge poem, made huger by 
 continuators, of Ghrestien de Troyes, Percival becomes 
 a Graal-seeker ; and on the whole it would appear 
 that, as observed before, he in point of time antici- 
 pates Galahad and the story which works the Graal 
 thoroughly into the main Arthurian tale. According 
 to Wolfram (but this is a romantic commonplace), 
 Ghrestien was culpably remiss in telling the story, 
 and his deficiencies had to be made up by a certain 
 Provencal named Kyot. Unfortunately there are no 
 traces elsewhere of any such person, or of any version,, 
 in Provencal or otherwise, between Chrestien's and 
 Wolfram's. The two, however, stand far enough apait. 
 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 Perccvale 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 Ghrestien is a better trotivtre 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 
 Eound 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
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEKMAN I'OETKY. 255 
 
 of Carbouek " ; the nuigiciau Kliugsclior is a more 
 shadowy person far than Merlin. 
 
 "Cuudrie la Sorziere 
 Dili iinsueze unci docli din fiere " 
 
 is a much more weird personage than Morgana or 
 Nimue, though she may also be more " unsweet." 
 Part of this unfamiliar effect is no doubt due to Wolf- 
 ram'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, con- 
 taining 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 liandling, out of ordinary ways into 
 ways that are not ordinary. There may perhaps be 
 allowed to be a certain want of " arcliitectonic " in 
 him. He has not made of Parzival and Condwiramurs,
 
 256 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 J^nide to Dnrmart 
 Ic Gallois, and from the Chevalier aio Lyon to the 
 Chevalier as Devx EsjJ^es, must recognise in him some- 
 thing 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. 
 
 Yet it may be applied in a different sense, though 
 without hesitation, to our fourth selected name, 
 ur 7rt 7 Walther von der Vogelweide,^ a name in 
 
 Waltner von dcr O ' 
 
 Vogeiweide. 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 
 
 1 Ed. Bartsch. 4th ed. Leipzig, 1873.
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEKMAN POETRY. 257 
 
 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 Wal- 
 ther 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 
 
 " Dili werlt was gelf, rot unde bin," ^ 
 
 one only prays for more such childishness. Is there 
 a better song of May and maidens than 
 
 " So dill bliiomen 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 micli der stunde, daz ich sie erkande " ! 
 
 how endearing the drooping cadence of 
 
 " Bin ich. dir iinraasre 
 Des enweiz ich. niht; ich minne dich" ! 
 
 1 " Dill werlt was gelf, rot unde bid, 
 griien, in dem walde und anderswS 
 kleine vogele siingen da. 
 nd schriet aber den nebelkra. 
 pfligt s'iht ander varwe ? ja, 
 s'ist worden bleich und UbergrS, : 
 des rimpfet sich vil manic bra.' 
 
 Similar stanzas in r, t, o, u follow in order. 
 
 R
 
 258 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 how small the change which makes a jewel out of a 
 commonplace in 
 
 " Si liat ein hdssen daz ist rot '' ! 
 
 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 Sprilche, a name 
 given to short lyrical pieces in which the Minne- 
 singers particularly delighted, and which correspond 
 pretty nearly, though not exactly, to the older sense 
 of " epigram," seldom, though sometimes, possess the 
 charm of the Lieclcr themselves. But these Licdcr are, 
 for probable freedom from indebtedness and intrinsic 
 exquisiteness of phrase and rhythm, unsurpassed, per- 
 haps 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 Eomance. 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. 
 
 Perhaps something may be expected as to the per- 
 sonality of these poets, a matter which has had too
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 259 
 
 great a place assigned to it in literary liistorv. 
 PersomtHfyof Luckilj, nnlcss he delights in unbridled 
 thepoHg. guessing, the historian of medieval litera- 
 ture 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, tlie trouvere-jongleur 
 class existed ; the greater part of the poetry of the 
 twelfth century, including the so-called small epics, 
 Konig Rothcr 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 tlie 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 min- 
 strel, but a burgher of the town which gives him his 
 name — indeed a caution is necessary to the effect that
 
 260 EUROPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 the von of these early designations, like the dc of their 
 French originals, is by no means, as a rule, a sign of 
 nobility. Hartniann 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 Dcr 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 diversi- 
 ties on this heraldic point) two axe-blades argent on 
 a field gules, or a bunch of five flowers argent spring- 
 ing 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 
 trouvhre, 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 his- 
 torians are proud to record that a bishop gave him a
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GERMAN POETRY. 261 
 
 fur coat precisely on the 12th of November 1203. He 
 was probably born in Austria, lived at Vienna with 
 Duke Frederic of Labenberg 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 dis- 
 tinction 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 relation- 
 ship 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. 
 
 The introduction of what may bo called a represen- 
 tative system into literary history has been here ren- 
 Tiie Minnesing- dcrcd uccessary by tlie fact that the school- 
 trs (jmcndiy. resemblance so common in mediaeval writers 
 is nowhere more common than aniono- the Minne-
 
 262 EUEOPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 singers,^ and that the latter are extraordinarily numer- 
 ous, 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 Minne- 
 song 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 Eeinmar von 
 Hagenau, whom Gottfried selects as Walther's imme- 
 diate predecessor in " nightingaleship ''' : the chief later 
 ones, N'eidhart von Eegenthal, famous for dance-songs ; 
 TannhJiuser, 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 ver- 
 sion to combine the two elements) ; Ulrich von Lich- 
 tenstein, half an apostle, half a caricaturist of Fraucn- 
 clienst on the Provenc^al 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 Minne- 
 song and Meistersong. 
 
 So also in the other departments of poetry, liarbin- 
 gers, contemporaries, and continuators, some of whom 
 have been mentioned, most of whom it would be im- 
 
 ^ The standard edition oi- corpus of their work is that of Xdu der 
 Hagen, in three large vols. Leipzig, 1838,
 
 MIDDLE HIGH GEEMAX POETHY. 263 
 
 })Ossible to mention, group round the greater masters, 
 and as in France, so here, the departments themselves 
 branch out in an almost bewildering manner. Ger- 
 many, as may be supposed, had its full share of that 
 " poetry of information " which constitutes so large a 
 part of medifeval verse, though here even more than 
 elsewhere such verse is rarely, except by courtesy, 
 poetry. !b'amilies of later liandlings, both of the folk 
 epic and the literary romances, exist, such _as the 
 Roscngarten, the Horny Sicfjfried, and the story of 
 Wolfdietrich in the one class ; Wigalois and WigaviiLr, 
 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 Wigcdois) 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 cidminate in the somewhat 
 well-known Renner ^ of Hugo von Trimberg, dating 
 from the very last year of our period : perhaps the 
 most noteworthy is the Reschridenhcit of Freidank, a 
 
 ^ On this see the last passage, ^cept the conclusion (ni Rcijnavd the 
 Fox, of Carlyle's Essay on " Early German Literature " noted above. 
 Of the great romances, as distinguished from the Nibclurif/en, Carlj'le 
 did not know much, and he was not quite in sympathy either with 
 their writers or with the Minnesingers jiroper. But the life-philos- 
 opher of Reynard and the Renner attracted him.
 
 264 EUKOPEAN LITEUATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 crusader trouverc 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 Nihclungenlicd at their head, the 
 Arthurian stories transformed, of which in different 
 ways Tristan and Fm-zival, 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.
 
 265 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE ' fox/ the * KOSE,' AND THE MINOR 
 CONTRIBUTIONS OF FRANCE. 
 
 THE I'KEDOMINANCE OF FRA:SCE — 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 NARRATH'E 
 
 — CONDITIONS OF " FABLIAU "- WRITING — THE APPEARANCE OF 
 IRONY — FABLES PROPER — ' REYNARD THE FOX ' — ORDER OP TEXTS 
 
 — PLACE OF ORIGIN — THE FRENCH FORM — ITS COMPLICATIONS — 
 UNITY OP SPIRIT — THE RISE OP ALLEGORY — THE SATIRE OF ' RENART ' 
 — THE FOX HIMSELF — HIS CIRCLE — THE BURIAL OF RENART — THE 
 
 ' ROMANCE OP 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 ruteb(euf — drama — adam de la halle — " robin et 
 Marion" — the "jeu de la feuillie " — comparison of them 
 
 — early french prose — laws and sermons — villehardouln 
 
 — william of tyre — joinville — fiction • — ' aucassin et 
 nicolette.' 
 
 The contriljutioiis of France to European literature 
 Thepredomiu- mentioned in the tliree chapters (II.-IV.) 
 ance of France, -^j^ich deal witli tlis thrcB main sections 
 of Romance, great as we have seen them to be, by no
 
 266 EUllOPEAxN LITEEATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 al- 
 most 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 Boc- 
 caccio 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 l^^urope, 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 
 wrouuht consummateh'. She revived and transformed
 
 THE * fox/ the ' EOSE,' ETC, 267 
 
 the fable ; perfected, if she did not invent, the beast- 
 epic ; brought the short prose tale to an exquisite 
 completeness ; enlarged, suppled, chequered, the some- 
 what stiff and monotonous forms of Provencal 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 per- 
 formance, sometimes inspired from elsewhere but 
 never as literature copied, which we have already 
 seen, in her fostering if not mothering of Eomance. 
 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 dc 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 
 faliliaux and the Fox-eiAc, prose not merely of laws 
 and homilies and rudimentary educational subjects, 
 but of every variety, drama, history, pliilosophy, alle- 
 gtjry, dream. 
 
 To give an account of these various things in great 
 detail would nut merely be impossible here, Init would
 
 268 EUROPEAN LITEKATUKE, llUO-1300. 
 
 injure the scheme and thwart the purpose of this his- 
 Theriseof tory. We must survey them in the gross, 
 Allegory, qj. yvith a few examples — showing the les- 
 sons 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 Erench 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 Hose, 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. 
 
 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 Lyricoruvi 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. Eor, 
 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
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' HOSE,' ETC. 269 
 
 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 — resem- 
 bling the more accomplished methods of more educated 
 and long - descended literatures. But the poets are 
 always in a Robinson Crusoe condition, and worse: 
 for Eobinson had at least seen the tools and utensils 
 he needed, if he did not know how to make them. 
 The scops and scalds were groping for the very 
 pattern of the tools themselves. 
 
 The languG d'oc, first of all vernacular tongues, bor- 
 rowed 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 trouveres of the north 
 of France — if indeed these did not work out the trans- 
 fer for themselves almost independently. And as there 
 was much more northern admixture, and in particular 
 a less tyrannous softness of vowel - ending in the 
 languc d'o'il, 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
 
 270 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 beginning of the fifteentli than has ever been the case 
 since.^ 
 
 M. Alfred Jeauroy has written a learned and ex- 
 tensive monograph on Les Origines dc la Poesie Lyriqite 
 en France, which with M. Gaston Raynaud's Biblio- 
 (jraphie ties Chansonniers Francais, and his collection 
 of Motets of our present period, is indispensable to the 
 thorough student of the subject.^ But for general 
 literary purposes the two classics of the matter are, and 
 are long likely to be, the charming Romancero Frangais ^ 
 which M. Paulin Paris published in the very dawn of 
 the study of mediaeval literature in France, and the 
 admirable Fi,omanzcn und Pastourellcn'^ which Herr 
 Karl Bartsch collected and issued a quarter of a cen- 
 tury 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 
 jiidge 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 Cham- 
 
 ^ This is not inconsistent with allowing that no single French lyric 
 poet is the equal of Walther von der Vogelweide, and that the exer- 
 cises of all are hampered by the lack — after the earliest examples — 
 of trisyllabic metres. 
 
 ^ 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. 
 
 •' Paris, 1833. * Leipzig, 1870.
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE ' r.OSE,' ETC. 271 
 
 pagne or Xavarre/ which is easily accessible, will fonn 
 an excellent third. 
 
 In this northern lyric — that is to say, northern as 
 
 compared with Provengal ^ — we find all or almost all 
 
 ^, „ the artificial forms which are characteristic 
 
 The Romance 
 
 and the Pas- of Provcn^al itsclf , somc of them no doubt 
 rather sisters than daughters of their ana- 
 logues in the lanrjuc d'oc. Indeed, at the end of our 
 present period, and still more later, the ingenuity of 
 the troiLveres 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, hcdladc and chant royal. IJut the 
 Romances and the PastoiLrelles 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 inedia'val 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-Broivne Maid, the 
 
 ' Rheims, 1851. 
 
 ^ This for convenience' sake is postponed to cliaji. viii.
 
 272 EUEOPEAN LITEPvATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 " pastourelle " by Henrysou's Robene and Makyne. Per- 
 liaps 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 in- 
 deed : and when the best of the other lyrics — auhades, 
 dShats, 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. 
 
 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 
 anhadc (chief among its kind, as " En un vergier sotz 
 folha d'albespi " is among the Proven(;al albas), which 
 begins — 
 
 " Gaite de la tor, 
 
 Gardez entor 
 
 Les murs, si Deus vos voie ; " ^ 
 
 1 Romancero Francais, p. 66.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' P.OSE,' ETC. 273 
 
 and where the gaite (watcher) answers (like a Cornish 
 watcher of tlie pilchards) — 
 
 " Hn ! et hu ! et Im ! ct hu ! " 
 
 Then there is the group, among the oldest and the 
 best of all, assigned to Audefroy le Batard — 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 Beatrix and Guy; 
 of Argentine, whose husband better loved another ; of 
 Guy the second, who aima Emmelot defoi — all charm- 
 ing 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 1 
 laysette ! '* 
 
 immediately answering her own question by con- 
 fessing 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 
 Koland 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 men cors n'arai pelice vaire." 
 
 This conduct differs sufficiently from that of tlie un- 
 
 S
 
 274 EUEOPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 named 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 sliort, 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. pere, 
 
 Qui chante sur la ramee 
 el plus haut boscage ; 
 
 La seraine ele est nia mere, 
 qui chante en la mer salee 
 
 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 puUica 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. Lut I 
 doubt whether there is any sweeter or, in a certain
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' UOSE,' ETC. 275 
 
 .sense, more poignant. The nightingale and the mer- 
 maid were justified of their cliildren. 
 
 It is little wonder that all Europe soon tried to 
 imitate notes so charming, and in some cases, thouiih 
 other languages were far behind French in develop- 
 ment, tried successfully. Our own " Alison," ^ the first 
 note of true English lyric, is a " romance " of the most 
 genuine kind ; the songs of Walther von der Vogel- 
 weide, 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 recep- 
 tion than even in itself. France could point to the 
 chansons and to the ro7navccs, to Audefroy le Bastard 
 and Chrestien of Troyes, to Villehardouiu and Thibaut, 
 to William of Lorris and John of Meung, to the 
 fabliaux writers and the cyclists of Renart, in justifica- 
 tion of her claims. She shut them up ; she forgot 
 them ; she sneered at them whenever they were re- 
 membered ; and she appointed as her attorneys in the 
 court of Parnassus Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux and 
 Francois Arouet de Voltaire ! 
 
 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. 
 
 The. Fal)li;nix. . . ,, ^ . ,.,. 
 
 can be imagined than that wlncli is pre- 
 sented l)y the next division to which we come — tlio 
 division occupied by the celebrated poems, or at least 
 
 ' See p. 210.
 
 276 EUEOPEAN LITER ATUUE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Meon, 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 
 ]\'I. Anatole de Montaiglon and ]\I. Gaston Eaynaud.^ 
 Since this collection M. Bedier has executed a mono- 
 graph 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 conforma- 
 tion of the human intellect, than by supposing de- 
 liberate 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 
 
 1 6 vols. Paris, 1872-90.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ItOSE,' ETC. 277 
 
 back ; and in fact, leave us at the last with no alter- 
 native except that which we might have adopted at 
 the first. 
 
 That, however, some assistance may have been given 
 
 to the general tendency to produce the same forms by 
 
 the literary knowledge of earlier, especially 
 
 Their origin. n • c i • 
 
 iLastern, collections oi tales is no extrava- 
 gant supposition, and is helped by the undoubted fact 
 that actual translations of such collections — Dolopathos, 
 the Sevcji Sages of Rome} and so forth — are found early 
 in French, and chiefly at second-hand from the French 
 in other languages. But the general tendency of man- 
 kind, 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. 
 
 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 accomplish- 
 ment 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 thirteentli century in French. In the 
 
 1 For these see tlie texts and editorial matter of Ihlopathos, cd. 
 Brunet and De Moiitaiglon (Bibliothcque Elzevirienne), Paris, 1S.')6 ; 
 and of Le Roiimn dcs Sept Saycs, ed. G. Paris (Soc. dcs A nc. Textcs), 
 Paris, 1875. The English Seven Saycs (in Weber, vol. iii. ) has been 
 thought to be of the thirteenth century. The Gcsta Romanorwiii in 
 any of its numerous forms is jirobably later.
 
 278 EUROPEAN LITEKATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 invari- 
 able, is the rule. Not merely are the subjects, in the 
 majority of cases, distinctly " broad," but the treat- 
 ment 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, 
 hravent llionneteU, in Latin, the use of which a Eoman 
 poet has vaunted as Romana simjjlicitas, and which 
 for some centuries have been left alone by regular 
 literature in all European languages till very recent- 
 ly, — appear to be introduced on purpose as part of 
 the game. In fact, it is in the faldiatt that the char- 
 acteristic which Mr Matthew Arnold selected as the 
 opprobrium of the French in life and literature prac- 
 tically 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. 
 
 It would, however, be extremely unfair to let it be 
 
 supposed that the fahliaux contain nothing but ob- 
 
 scenitv, or that they can offer attractions to 
 
 Their wit. " 
 
 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 ' fox/ the ' ROSE.' ETC. 279 
 
 — the Eeeve'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, includ- 
 ing 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. 
 
 There is, indeed, no special reason why the fahliau 
 should be " improper " (except for the greater ease of 
 Definition and getting a laugh) according to its definition, 
 siibjecu. 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 condi- 
 tion of " ordinary life " that the faUiau can be differ- 
 entiated 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 jciix d'es^prit 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-Eabelaisian fabliaux, " Le 
 Vair Palefroi," which has been Englished by Leigh 
 Hunt and shortly paraphrased by Peacock, while ex- 
 amples of the former may be found without turning 
 very long over even one of MM. de Montaiglon and 
 Eaynaud'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
 
 280 EUROPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 both together; and this very general character of the 
 fabliaVjX (which, it must be remembered, were per- 
 formed or recited by the very same joiKjleurs who 
 conducted the pubHcation of the chansons de geste and 
 the romances) was no doubt partly the result and 
 partly the cause of the persistent dislike and dis- 
 favour with which the Church regarded the profes- 
 sion 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 amus- 
 ing i deals with the half-clumsy, half-satiric boasts 
 of two members of the order, who misquote the titles 
 of their Hipcrtoire, 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. 
 
 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 — 
 
 " For ce teng-je celui a. fol 
 Qui trop met en fame sa cure ; 
 Fame est de trop foible nature, 
 De noient rit, de noient pleure, 
 Fame aime et liet en trop j)oi d'eure : 
 Tost est ses talenz remuez, 
 Qui fame croit, si est desvfes." 
 
 So too, again, in " La Housse Partie," a piece which 
 perhaps ranks next to the " Vair Palefroi " in general 
 
 ' " Les Deux Bordeors [bourders, jesters] Ribaux."
 
 THE 'fox/ the 'KOSE/ ETC. 281 
 
 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 medieeval 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 Eumming " ; and in 
 many places other patterns, the later reproductions of 
 which are well known to readers of Boccaccio and the 
 Gent Nouvelles Nouvellcs of La Fontaine ■ and his fol- 
 lowers. Title after title — " Du Prestre Crucifie," " 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
 
 282 EUROPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Eenais- 
 ance — such, for instance, as most of that in the prose 
 " Pleasant Historic of Thomas of Reading," ^ which 
 the late Mr Thoms was pleased to call a romance. 
 Yet the actual stuff of " Thomas of Eeading " 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 note- 
 worthy. So it is also in English verse-work of the 
 kind — the " Hunting of the Hare " - and the like — to 
 take examples necessarily a little later than our time. 
 Eor in these curious compositions the esprit Gaulois 
 found itself completely at home ; indeed some have 
 , , held that here it hit upon its most charac- 
 
 Efcct of the ^ _ ■■• 
 
 fabliaux oil tcristic and peculiar development. The 
 
 language. i p i r> i ^ c • p 
 
 wonderiui lacuity tor expression — tor 
 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 com- 
 petitors. But in other departments, with one or 
 two exceptions, the union of temper and craft, of 
 
 ^ Early EmjUsh Prose Jiomanccs (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. 
 
 - Weber, iii. 177-
 
 THE ' fox/ the ' rose; etc. 283 
 
 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 
 nettetS, 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. 
 
 Above all, these fabliaux served as an exercise- 
 ground for the practice in which French was to 
 And on narra- becomc almost if uot quitc supreme, the 
 *^'"^- practice of narrative. In the longer 
 
 romances, which for a century or a century and a 
 half preceded the fahliaux, the art of narration, as 
 has been more than once noticed, was little attended 
 to, and indeed had liltle scope. The chansons had 
 a common form, or something very like it, which 
 almost dispensed the trouvere from devoting much 
 pains to the individual conduct of the story. The 
 most abrupt transitions were accustomed, indeed ex- 
 pected; 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,
 
 284 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 for instance — were not " engineered " or led up to 
 in any way, but left to act in mass and by assault. 
 
 The smaller range and more delicate — however 
 indelicate — argument of the fcMiaux not only invited 
 Conditions of ^^ut almost necessitated a different kind 
 uhxmxx-writing. ^f 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 
 fahliavx of tliirty 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 unsur- 
 passed 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. 
 
 The great means for doing this in literature is 
 irony ; and irony appears in the fabliaux as it had 
 The appearance hardly douc siucc Luciau. Take, for in- 
 of irony. staucc, this Opening of a piece, the rest 
 
 of which is at least as irreverent, considerably less 
 quotable, but not much less pointed : — 
 
 " Qnant Dieus ot estore lo monde, 
 Si con il est a la reonde, 
 Et quanque il convit dedans, 
 Trois ordres establir de genz, 
 Et fist el siecle demoranz 
 Chevalers, clers et lalooranz.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' ETC. 285 
 
 Les clievalers 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 
 fahliau 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. 
 
 It will doubtless have been observed that the 
 
 fahliau — though the word is simply fabula in one 
 
 of its regular Eomance metamorphoses, 
 
 Fables proper. 
 
 and though the method is sufficiently 
 ^sopic — is not a " fable " in the sense more especi- 
 ally assigned to the term. Yet the mediaeval languages, 
 especially French and Latin, were by no means desti- 
 tute of fables properly so called. On the contrary, 
 it would appear that it was precisely during our present 
 period that the rather meagre yEsopisings of l^htedrns 
 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 Eomance) of Marie de Fraiice,
 
 286 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 the somewhat later Lyoner Ysopet (as its editor, Dr 
 Forster, calls it), and the origiual of this latter, the 
 Latin elegiacs of the so-called Anonymus Neveldi} 
 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 tliirteenth cen- 
 turies, and forming a sort of offshoot less of the sub- 
 stance of the Arthurian story than of its spirit, are 
 among the most delightful relics of mediaeval 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 Beynard the 
 Fox, one of the capital works of the Middle Ages, 
 and with the sister but contrasted Romance of the 
 Ro.se, as much the distinguishing literary product of 
 the thirteenth century as the romances proper — Car- 
 lovingian, Arthurian, and Classical — are of the twelfth. 
 Not, of course, that the antiquity of the Reynard 
 story itself - does not mount far higher than the thir- 
 teenth century. No two things are more remarkable 
 
 ^ Works of Marie; ed. Eoquefort, Paris, 1820; or ed. Warnke, 
 Halle, 1885. The Lyona- Ysopct, with the Anonymus; ed. Forster, 
 Heilbronn, 1882. 
 
 - Ronutn du (should be dc) Renart : ed. Moon and Chabaille, 5 vols., 
 Paris, 1826-35 ; ed. Martin, 3 vols, text and 1 critical observations, 
 Strasburg, 1882-87. RcincJce de Vos, ed. Prien, Halle, 1887, with a 
 valuable bibliography. Reinacrt, ed. Martin, Paderborn, 1874. Rein- 
 ardus Vulpcs, ed. Mone, Stuttgart, 1834. Reinhart Fuchs, ed. Grimm, 
 Berlin, 1832. On the story there is perhaps nothing better than 
 Carlylo, as quoted supra.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' I^OSE,' ETC. 287 
 
 as results of that comparative and simultaneous study 
 Reyiiai.itik; of literature, to which this series hopes to 
 Fox. gi^y 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 tlie 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 
 Keynard story, though to some extent contemporane- 
 ous, 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 Ifeynard 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. 
 
 It was not to be expected but that so strange, so 
 
 interesting, and so universally popular a story as that 
 
 of King Noble and liis not always loving 
 
 Order of tcxU. ,.,,11 i f 
 
 subjects, should have been made, as usual, 
 the battle-ground of literary fancy and of tluit general 
 tendency of mankind to ferocity, wliich, unluckily, the 
 study of helles lettres does not seem very appreciably 
 to soften. Assisted by the usual fallacy of antedating 
 MSS. in the early days of palffiographic study, and by 
 their prepossessions as Germans, some early students
 
 288 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 of the lieynard story made out much too exclusive and 
 too early claims, as to possession hy right of invention, 
 for the country in which Eeynard 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 acknowledg- 
 ment of the fact that the very early Middle High Ger- 
 man 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 Eeynard romances as we actually have them. 
 That is to say, if the Latin Isengrimus — the oldest 
 Meinarchis Vulpes — of 1150 or thereabouts is actu- 
 ally the oldest text, the older branches of the French 
 Benart pretty certainly come next, with the High 
 German following a little later, and the Low Ger- 
 man Reinclce cle 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 Eeynard with as much enthusiasm 
 as they showed towards the Eomances ; and our Eng- 
 lish forms were undoubtedly late adaptations from 
 foreign originals. 
 
 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 tlie 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
 
 THE ' FOX. THE ' ROSE,' ETC. 289 
 
 maintain the story to be purely French in inception. 
 I have not myself seen any reason to change tlie opin- 
 ion 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 Picarcl dialect, and 
 that it was written somewhere between the Seine and 
 the Ehine. 
 
 The character and accomplishment of the story, 
 however, are matters of much more purely literary 
 interest than the rather barren question of the prob- 
 able — 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. 
 
 As usual with mediaeval work, when it once took 
 hold on the imagination of writers and hearers, the 
 
 The French hulk is vcry great, especially in the French 
 
 form. forms, which, taking them altogether, can- 
 
 not fall much short of a hundred thousand lines. This 
 total, however, includes developments — Ze Couronnc- 
 mcnt Benart, Benart le Nouvd, and, later than our 
 present period, a huge and still not very well-known 
 thins called Benart le Contrcfait, which are distinct ad- 
 ditions to the first conception of the story. Yet even 
 that first conception is not a story in the single sense. 
 
 T
 
 290 EUROPEAN LITER ATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Its thirty thousand lines or thereabouts are divided 
 into a considerable number of what are called braiiches, 
 attributed to authors sometimes anonymous, some- 
 times named, but never, except in the one case of 
 Renart Ic Bcstoumi, known.^ And it is always difficult 
 and sometimes impossible to determine in what rela- 
 tion these branches stand to the main trunk, or which 
 of them is the main trunk The two editors of the 
 Roman, Meon and Herr Martin, arrange them in dif- 
 ferent 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.'-^ 
 
 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 
 Eeynard 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 Eeynard story. The multiplication of complaints 
 by other beasts, the sufferings inflicted by Eeynard 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. 
 
 ^ Tliis, which is not so much a branch as an independent fahliau, 
 is attributed to Ruteboeuf, v. infra. 
 
 * 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.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' ETC. 291 
 
 But from this, at least in the French versions, the 
 branches diverge, cross, and repeat or contradict each 
 itscoinpiim- other with an altogether bewildering free- 
 tions. dom. Sometimes, for long passages to- 
 
 gether, as in the interesting fytte, "How Eeynard 
 hid himself among the Skins," ^ the author seems to 
 forget tlie general purpose altogether, and to devote 
 himself to something quite different — in this case the 
 description of the daily life and pursuits of a thir- 
 teenth-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. 
 
 Nevertheless the whole is knit together, to a degree 
 
 altogether unusual in a work of such magnitude, due 
 
 to many different hands, by an extraordi- 
 
 Unity of spirit. , . 
 
 nary unity oi tone and temper. This tone 
 and this temper are to some extent conditioned by 
 the Else of Allegory, the great feature, in succession 
 to the outburst of Eomance, of our present period. 
 We do not find in the original licnart branches the 
 The Rise of abstracting of qualities and the personifica- 
 Aiiegory. ^^^^^ ^f abstractious which appear in later 
 developments, and which are due to the popularity of 
 the Romance of the Bose, 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 
 Gi^lee, the anther of Renart le Nouvel, might personify 
 Rcnardie and work his beast-personages into knights of 
 
 1 Mc^on, iii. 82 ; Martin, ii. 43.
 
 292 EUKOPEAN" LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tourney ; the clerk of Troyes, who later wrote Bcnart 
 le Contrefait, might weave a sort of encyclopaedia into 
 his piece. But the authors of the " Ancien Eenart " 
 knew better. With rare lapses, they exhibit wonder- 
 ful 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 Eenart 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 Moon'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. 
 Eenart may beat Ic 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. 
 
 The general fable is so familiar that not much need 
 be said about it. But it is, I think, not unfair to say 
 Tiie satire of that tlic German and Flemish versions, from 
 Renart. |^}-^q latter of wliicli Caxton's and all later 
 English forms seem to be copied, are, if better ad- 
 justed to a continuous story, less saturated with the 
 quintessence of satiric criticism of life than the French 
 Ficnart. 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
 
 THE 'fox/ the ' eose/ etc. 293 
 
 would not be well to be too sure. The passage quoted 
 on a former page will show with what completely 
 fearless satire the trouvh-es 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 mediaeval 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 Rcnart — and it is all the more delightful — is 
 scarcely in the smallest degree political, is only in an 
 interesting archseological way of the time ecclesiastical 
 or religious ; but it is human, perennial, contemptuous 
 of mere time and circumstance, throughout. 
 
 It cannot, no doubt, be called kindly satire — French 
 
 satire very rarely is, Eenart, 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 
 
 The Fox himself. ^ 
 
 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 tnaufes 
 was a better fellow than Eenart, because he was much 
 less purely malignant. I do not think that Jonathan 
 often said his prayers ; but he probably never went to
 
 294 EUllOJ'EAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 bed, as lleynard did upon the hay-mow, after perform- 
 ing 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 re- 
 frain from disliking him, and are not tempted to like 
 him illegitimately. 
 
 The trouvercs did not trouljle 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 fiere or Orgueilleuse, the lioness, Hersent, the 
 she-wolf, Hermeline, the vixen, and the rest — are too 
 much tinged with that stock slander of feminine char- 
 acter 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 Eoonel — 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 (/dines 
 whom Eenart consumes, so steadily and with such 
 immunity, it cannot be said that their various mis- 
 fortunes 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 Con- 
 stable, he is just as much of a rascal and a malefactor
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' ETC. 295 
 
 as Eenart himself, with the additional crime of stupid- 
 ity. 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. Ilenart 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 oppression. 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, coai'se, 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 Kenart. 
 
 When Meon, the excellent first editor of the collec- 
 tion, put, as was reason, the branch entitled " La Mort 
 Thehuriaiof Bcnart " last, he was a little troubled by 
 rx.enart. |^j-^q consideration that several of the beasts 
 whom in former branches Eenart 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 per-
 
 296 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, ] 100-1300. 
 
 fectly 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 pervad- 
 ing satire which is the key of the whole, gives us to 
 understand at the last that Eenart (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 
 Eenart inscribed upon it, the fact was indeed true 
 but the meaning false, inasmuch as it was another 
 Eenart altogether. Indeed the true Eenart 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
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE/ ETC. 297 
 
 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. Eenart is comforted to some ex- 
 tent by his old love, Queen Fiere the lioness ; but pain, 
 and wounds, and defeat have brought him near death, 
 and he craves a priest. Bernard the Ass, Court- Arch- 
 priest, 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 open- 
 ness ; but the excellent Noble is a philosophic husband 
 as well as a good king, and sets about the funeral of 
 
 Eenart 
 
 (" 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 
 Eenart, 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 de-
 
 29B EUEOPEAN LITEKATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 signed 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 sophisti- 
 cated times ; but every one can appreciate liis tender 
 reference to the deceased's prowess in daring all 
 dangers — 
 
 " Pur avou' vostre ventre plaine, 
 Et pour porter a Hermeline 
 Vostre fame, coc ou geline 
 Chapou, ou oie, ou gras oison " — 
 
 for, as he observes in a sorrowful parenthesis, " any- 
 thing was in season if you could only get hold of it." 
 Brichemer the Stag notes how Eeynard 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 ! Eeynard 
 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 levee en masse of the Lion's people 
 soon surrounds him, catches him up, and forces him 
 to release Chanticleer, wlio, 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 Eaven and his wife (who 
 think to strip his body) in kind, he reaches IMalpertuis 
 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 ' FOX,' THE ' KOSE,' ETC. 299 
 
 The defects which distinguish almost all mediaeval 
 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 tlie 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 Eabelais or Voltaire. 
 It happened that some ten or twelve years had passed 
 between the time when the present writer had last 
 ojDcned Rcnart (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 judg- 
 ment 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 llcnart with even a higher idea of 
 its literary merit than that with which I had taken 
 it up. 
 
 The second great romance which distinguishes the 
 Tiie Romance thirteenth century in France stands, as we 
 of the Rose, may say, to one side of the Roman de Rcnart 
 as the fahliaux do to the other side. lUit, though
 
 300 EUROPEAN LITEKATQKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 coiuplex in fewer pieces, the Roman de la liose^ is, 
 like the liovian de Bcnart, 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 Hose 
 which brings it close to Bcnart : the smaller and 
 earlier is conceived in a spirit entirely different, 
 though not entirely alien, and one which, reinforc- 
 ing the satiric drift of the fabliaux and Rcnart itself, 
 influenced almost the entire literary production in 
 helles httres at least, and sometimes out of them, for 
 more than two centuries throughout Europe. 
 
 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 be- 
 ginning 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 Rcnart, 
 of Northern France, and exhibits, especially in the 
 
 * 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 mediaeval literature, M, Langlois, has bestowed 
 much attention on the Rose, and has produced a monograph on ii^ 
 Qrigines et Sources du Roman dc la Rose. Paris, 1890.
 
 THE ' fox/ the ' EOSE,' ETC. 301 
 
 Lorris portion, an approximation to Provenc^al 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 theo- 
 logical treatises of treating the Seven Deadly Sins and 
 other abstractions as entities. Every devout or un- 
 devout frequenter of the Church in those times knew 
 " Accidia " ^ 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. 
 
 When "William of Lorris, probably at some time in 
 the fourth decade of the thirteenth century, set to 
 ,,.„. .-r work to write the Romance of the Rose, he 
 
 William of Lor- '' ' 
 
 ris and Jean de adjustcd tliis allcgorical handling to the 
 purposes or 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. 
 l')Ut this is hard to justify either on directly aesthetic 
 or on historical principles of criticism. In the first 
 
 ^ "Sloth" is a rather unhappy substitute for Accidia {a. K-fiSeia), 
 the gloomy and impious despair and indifference to good living and 
 even life, of wliich sloth itself is but a partial result.
 
 302 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 place, there can be no question that, vitally as he 
 changed the spirit, Jean cle j\Ieung was wholly in- 
 debted 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 enor- 
 mous attraction and authority that it so long pos- 
 sessed. In the second place, clever as Jean de Meung 
 is, and more thoroughly in harmony as he may be 
 with the esjjrit gcmlois, 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 fahliau-writeTS and the 
 authors of Renart a firm grasp on the perennial rascal- 
 ities 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 com- 
 monplace 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 poet- 
 ical (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 suffi- 
 cient to clothe his universally true reflections in a 
 universally acceptable form. 
 
 The first four thousand and odd lines of the Eo- 
 mance, on the other hand — for beyond them it is
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' ETC, 303 
 
 known that the work of William of Lorris does not 
 q;o — contain matter which may seem but 
 
 The. first, part. 5^. . '' 
 
 little connected with criticism of life, ar- 
 ranged 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, 
 whicli 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 dc la Hose 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. 
 
 To comprehend a Gothic cathedral the Hose should 
 be as familiar as the Dies lire. For the spirit of it is 
 
 indeed, though faintly " decadent," even 
 
 Its capital value 
 
 more the mediaeval 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 exclud- 
 ing by any means in this half-reflective, half-contrast- 
 ing office, the philosophical side also. Yet when men 
 pray and fight, when they sneer and speculate, they
 
 304' EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 are constrained to be very like themselves and each 
 other. They are much freer in their dreams : and the 
 Bomance of the Hose, 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 I'ars d'amorz est tote enclose." 
 
 The poem itself opens with a description of a dewy 
 morn in May, a description then not so hackneyed 
 The rose- ^^> chicfly froui this very instance, it after- 
 garden. wards becamc, and in itself at once "set- 
 ting," so to speak, the frame of gracious decorative 
 imagery in which the poet works. He "threaded a 
 silver needle " (an odd but not unusual mediaeval pas- 
 time was sewing stitches in the sleeve) and strolled, 
 cousant ses inanches, 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 mediaeval verger much better than 
 " orchard "), on the wall of wliich were portrayed
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' EOSE/ ETC. 305 
 
 certain images ^ — Hatred, Felony, Villainy, Covetous- 
 ness, 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, en- 
 joyment. 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 entertain- 
 ment of jongleurs and jongleresses to help pass the 
 time. 
 
 Courtesy asks him to join in the karolc (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, Frank- 
 ness, Companionship, Fair-Seeming ; in the left Pride, 
 Villainy ,2 Shame, Despair, and " New - Thought " — 
 
 ^ " 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 tc7i. The author of the licadings was 
 no doubt thinking of the Seven Deadly Sins. 
 
 - Vilcnie is never an easy word to translate : it means general mis- 
 conduct and disagreeable behaviour. 
 
 U
 
 306 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 else- 
 where, vanishes, leaving him in no little pain, and still 
 unable to get at the Rose. Suddenly in his distress 
 there aj^pears to him 
 
 " Un valet buen et avenant 
 Bel-Acueil se faisoit clamer," 
 
 and it seems that he was the son of Courtesy. 
 
 Bialacoil (to give him his Chaucerian ^ 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 appear- 
 ance. 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. 
 
 ^ I am well aware of eveiything 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.
 
 THE ' FOX,' TTTE ' TIOSE,' ETC. 307 
 
 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 masciiline 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 liericies, 
 S'ot les iex rouges comiiie feus, 
 Le nes froncie, le vis hideus, 
 Et s'escrie comme forcenes." 
 
 He abuses Bialacoil for bringing the Lover to the 
 Eose, and turns the Lover out of the park, while 
 Bialacoil flies. 
 
 To the disconsolate suitor appears Eeason, and does 
 
 not speak comfortable words. She is described as a 
 
 middle-aged lady of a comely and dignified 
 
 " Jleason." - - - . ,, . 
 
 appearance, crowned, and made specially m 
 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.
 
 308 EUKOPEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 He ought never to have surrendered to Love, In the 
 service of that power 
 
 " il a phis poine 
 Que n'ont herniite ne blanc moiiie ; 
 La poine en est demesuree, 
 Et la joie a courte duree." 
 
 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 
 Kose, more beautiful than ever. He even, assisted 
 by Venus, is allowed to kiss his love. 
 
 This is very agreeable : but it arouses the two other 
 guardians of whom Eeason has vainly warned him, 
 
 "s^ame- ««(? Shame and Evil - Speaking, or Scandal. 
 
 "Scandal." ^^iQ latter wakcs 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 'FOX,' THE 'HOSE,' ETC. 309 
 
 the Lover, his case only made worse by tlie remembered 
 savour of the Eose on his lips,^ is left helpless outside. 
 But as the rubric of the poem has it — 
 
 " Cyendroit trespassa Guillaume 
 De Lorris, et n'en fist plus pseaulme." 
 
 The work which forty years later Jean de Meung 
 (some say at royal suggestion) added to the piece, so 
 The later &§ to make it five times its former length, 
 poem. j^g^g ]3Qgjj spoken of generally already, and 
 needs less notice in detail. Jean de Meung takes 
 up the theme by once more introducing Eeason, 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 Eeason, 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 
 ''False- figure of the second part, Faux-Semhlant, 
 Seeming." g^ variety of Eeynard. Bialacoil is freed: 
 but Danger still guards the Eose. Love, beaten, 
 invokes the help of his mother, who sends Nature 
 and Genius to his aid. They talk more than any- 
 body else. But Venus has to come herself before 
 Danger is vanquished and the Lover plucks the Eose. 
 
 1 " Car ge suis a greignor meschief 
 Por la joie que j'ai perdue. 
 Que s'onques ue Teussi eue." 
 
 Dante undoubtedly had this in his mind when he wrote the immortal 
 Nessun magyior dolore. All this famous passage, 1. 4 557 sq., is admirable.
 
 310 EUKOl'EAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 The appeal of this famous poem is thus twofold, 
 though the allegorical form in which the appeal is 
 
 Contrast of coiiveyecl is the same. In the first part 
 
 theparts. ^]^ ^|-^q love - poctrj of troubadour and 
 trouvere 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 FaUiaux and Benart 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 
 Ijy Jean de Meung, when after twenty thousand lines 
 the catastrophe is at length approaching, are felt to 
 be far greater intruders. 
 
 The completeness of the representation of the time 
 
 given by the poem is of course enormously increased 
 
 .^ . by this second part, and the individual 
 
 Value of both, •' ^ 
 
 andcharvi touchcs, tliougli rather lost in the wilder- 
 
 of the first. i< ,, t • • , n i i jj 
 
 ness of skipping octosyllables, are won- 
 derfully sharp and true at times. Yet to some judg- 
 ments at any rate the cliarm 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
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE ' KOSE/ ETC. 311 
 
 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.^ Also besides pic- 
 tures he has music — music not very brilliant or varied, 
 but admirably matchilig 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 fur- 
 nished in turn to Latin and to English. He is indeed 
 " softer than sleep," and, as soft sleep is, laden with 
 gracious and various visions. 
 
 The great riches of French literature at this time, 
 and the necessity of arranging this history rather with 
 ,^ . , „ a view to " epoch-makincj " kinds and books 
 
 Marie cle France J^ o 
 
 and Riuehceuf. than to interesting individual authors, make 
 attention to many of these latter impossible here. 
 Thus Marie de France '^ 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 trouvhx Euteboeuf, who has been the subject of 
 critical attention, a little disproportionate perhaps, 
 
 1 The following of the Rose would take a volume, even treated as 
 the poem itself is here. The EngUsh version has been referred to : 
 Italian naturalised it early in a sonnet cycle, II Fiore. Every country 
 welcomed it, but the actual versions are as nothing to the imitations 
 and the influence. 
 
 - See note above, p. 286.
 
 312 EUROPEAN LITERATURE,. 1100-1300. 
 
 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. 
 
 E,uteboeuf ^ (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 con- 
 jectured 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 m 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 Bit des Cordeliers, Frdre Denise, and 
 others — are of the class of the Fabliaux: indeed 
 Euteboeuf may be taken as the type and chief figure 
 to us of the whole body of fabliau-writing frouvdres. 
 Besides the marriage poem, we have others on his 
 personal affairs, the chief of which is speakingly 
 entitled " La Pauvrete Ruteboeuf." But he has been 
 even more, and even more justly, prized as having left 
 
 1 Ed. Jubiual, 2d ed.j Paris, 1874 ; or ed. Kressner; Wolfenbiittel. 
 1885.
 
 THE 'fox; the 'kose/ etc. 313 
 
 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 " Debat du 
 Croise et du Decroise " tell their own tale, and contain 
 generous, if perhaps not very long-sighted or practical, 
 laments and indignation over the decadence of adven- 
 turous piety. Others are less religious ; but. on the 
 whole. Euteboeuf, 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 repent- 
 ance, 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 Thdopliile. It will serve as a text or 
 starting-point on which to take up the subject of the 
 drama itself, with no more about Euteboeuf except the 
 observation that the varied character of his work is no 
 doubt typical of that of at least the later tronvhxs- 
 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. 
 
 The obscure but not uninteresting subject of the 
 links between the latest stages of classical 
 
 Drama ^ n i • i 
 
 drama and the earliest stages oi mediaeval 
 belong to the first volume of this series ; indeed by
 
 314 EUKOPEAN LITEIIATUIIE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 otlier coun- 
 try. 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 four- 
 teenth. The three oldest mystery plays wherein any 
 modern language makes its appearance are those of The 
 Ten Virgins^ mainly in Latin, but partly in a dialect 
 which is neither quite French nor quite Provencal ; the 
 ]\Iystery of Daniel, partly Latin and partly French ; 
 and the Mystery of Aclam^ 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 Euteboeuf's Tlidoiohile, a Saint Nicolas by 
 another very well-known trouvere, Jean Bodel of Arras, 
 author of many late and probably rehandled ehaiisons, 
 and of the famous classification of romance which has 
 been adopted above. 
 
 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 vio- 
 
 ^ Ed. Monmerque et Michel, Thtdtrc Frunrais au Moyen A'jc. Paris, 
 1874. This also contains Theophilc, Saint Nicolas, and the plays of 
 Adam de la Halle. 
 
 " Ed. Luzarches, Tours, 1854 ; ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877.
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE ' ItOSE,' ETC. 315 
 
 lently 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 ex- 
 crescence from the services of the Church herself, 
 which in their antiphonal character, and in the alter- 
 nation of monologue and chorus, were distinctly dra- 
 matic 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 there- 
 fore, 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 dra- 
 matic performances to sacred subjects, tliat hope was 
 doomed to disappointment, and in France at least to 
 very speedy disappointment. The examples of ]\Iystery 
 or Miracle plays which we have of a date older than 
 the beginning of the fourteenth century are not numer- 
 ous, but it is quite clear that at an early time the neces- 
 sity 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 tliese interludes soon
 
 316 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 ^ and the 
 Saints, show this characteristic throughout, and the 
 Fool's remark which pleased Lamb, "Hazy weather, 
 Master ISToah ! '' 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. 
 
 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 par- 
 ticularly 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 
 trouveres of the thirteenth century. 
 
 The honour of producing the first examples known 
 
 Adam dc la to US is assigucd to Adam de la Halle, a 
 
 Halle. trouvere of Arras, who must have been a 
 
 pretty exact contemporary of Euteboeuf, and who be- 
 
 ^ Several of these miracles of the Virgin will be found in the volume 
 by Monmerque and Michel referred to above : the whole collection 
 has been printed by the Society des Anciens Testes. The MS. is of 
 the fourteenth century, but some of its contents may date from the 
 thirteenth.
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' ETC. 317 
 
 sides some lyrical work has left us two plays, Li 
 Jus de la Feuillie and RoMn et Marion} 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 per- 
 sonal poems, of which, as has just been mentioned in 
 the case of Ruteba^uf himself, the trotcvhxs 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 man- 
 ners in its most developed form. 
 
 It may be more interesting to give some account 
 here of these two productions, the parents of so 
 Robin et numerous and famous a family, than to 
 Marion. (jwcll 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 {Jm is the general term, and 
 the exact, though now in French obsolete, equivalent 
 of the English word) of Bohi^i et Marion combines 
 the general theme of the earlier lyric 2^^'^^^ourGllc, 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 demandee, 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 
 
 1 Besides the issue above noted these hiive been separately edited 
 by A. Rambeau. Marburg, 1886.
 
 318 ETTIJOPEAIT LTTERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 no eucouragenieiit. Eobiii comes up after the Knight's 
 departure. He is, to use Steerlbrth's words in David 
 Co]jperfidd, "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 liobin 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 pitch- 
 fork and another his good blackthorn. Meanwhile the 
 Knight returns, and though Marion replies to his 
 
 accost — 
 
 " Pour Dieu, sire, alez vo chemin, 
 Si feres moult grant coi;rtoisie," 
 
 he renews his suit, but is again rejected. Eeturning 
 in a bad temper he meets Eobin and cuffs him soundly, 
 a correction which Eobin does not take in the heroic 
 manner. Marion runs to rescue him, and the Knight 
 threatens to carry her off — which Eobin, even though 
 his friends have come up, is too cowardly to prevent. 
 She, however, is constant and escapes ; the piece finish- 
 ing 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 pleas- 
 ing, and the whole has promise. It is essentially a 
 comic opera ; but that a trouvh^c of the thirteenth 
 century should by himself, so far as we can see, have 
 founded comic opera is not a small thing. 
 
 The Jus dc la Feuillic (" 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
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' ETC. 319 
 
 said, an early sketch of a comedy of manners ; but 
 r;iejeudeia upon tliis is grafted in the most curious 
 Feuiiiie. -^r^y r^ 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 en- 
 larging 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 apaies." 
 
 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 JMonseigneur Saint Acaire, promising 
 miracles ; a madman succeeds him ; and in the midst 
 enters the Mainic Hdlccjuin, "troop of Hellequin" 
 (a sort of Oberon or fairy king), with Morgue la fee 
 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. 
 
 In this odd piece, which, except the description of
 
 320 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Marie the deserted wife, has little poetical merit, we 
 Comparison of s^e drama of the particular kind in a much 
 them. ruder and vaguer condition than in the 
 
 parallel instance of Robin et Marion. There the very 
 form of the 'pastourcllc 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. IsTevertheless the piece is almost more in- 
 teresting 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 Wallcnstcin^s Lager — naturally 
 appears here in an exaggerated form. But the root
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE '"ROSE,' ETC. 321 
 
 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 exten- 
 sion 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 alle- 
 gory, 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. 
 
 All the matter hitherto discussed in this chapter, 
 as well as all that of previous chapters as far as 
 Earhj French Freucli is coucemcd, with the probable if 
 prose. j^Qf^ 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 Eomance 
 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, 
 
 X
 
 322 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 vernacular prose was not required, while verse was 
 more agreeable to the vulgar. 
 
 Yet it was inevitable that prose should, sooner or 
 later, make its appearance ; and it was equally in- 
 iMws and evitable that spoken prose sermons should 
 sermons. -[33 ^f ^\^q utmost antiquity. Indeed such 
 sermons form, by reasonable inference, the subject of 
 the very earliest reference ^ to that practically lost 
 lingua romana rustica which formed the bridge be- 
 tween Latin and the Eomance 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 Lettrcs du Sipulcrc 
 or Assises do Jerusalem, 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. ]\Iuch 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 
 
 ^ The often-quoted statement that in 659 Mummolinus or Momo- 
 lenus was made Bishop of Noyon because of his double skill in 
 "Teutonic" and "Roman" (not "Latin") speech.
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' ROSE,' ETC. 323 
 
 in the twelfth century. There is, at any rate, no 
 doubt that Maurice de Sully, who was Archl)ishop 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 compli- 
 cated 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. 
 
 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 chron- 
 icles 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 Conquetc de Constantinoblc^ or 
 history of the Fourth Crusade, by Geoffroy 
 
 Villelmrdouin. , . . __ n^, 
 
 de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne 
 and Eomanie, who was born about 1160 in the first- 
 named province, and died at Messinople in Greece 
 about 1213. 
 
 This deservedly famous and thoroughly delightful 
 
 1 Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1S72.
 
 324 EUROPEAN LITEEATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 con- 
 duct, 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, ap- 
 parently by instinct, has attained. The list of the 
 crusaders ; their embassy to " li dux de Venise qui 
 ot h 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 Cham- 
 pagne (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 trans- 
 port-money is unfortunately lacking, and the Venetians, 
 still with the main chance steadily before them, pro- 
 pose 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 1 ") ; how Zara is besieged and
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE ' KOSE,' ETC. 325 
 
 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 thronC; bids them stay, and they do 
 so. Soon dissensions arise, war breaks out, a con- 
 spiracy is formed against Isaac and his son by ]\Iour- 
 zufle, " et Murchufies chauga les houses vennoilles," 
 quickly putting the former owners of the scarlet boots 
 to deathc A second siege and capture of the city 
 follows, and Baldwin of Flanders is crowned emperor, 
 while Boniface marries the widow of Isaac, and re- 
 ceives 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 " Itomanie " before, at the
 
 326 EUROPEAN LITEUATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 death of Boniface, Villehardouiii gives up the pen to 
 Henri of Valenciennes), because even such a bare argu- 
 ment 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 medioeval and even 
 Eenaissance historians indulged from corrupt follow- 
 ing of the ancients. But no abstract could show- — 
 though the few scraps of actual phrase purposely in- 
 serted 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. JSTor, 
 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 rhyth- 
 mical 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 Chris- 
 tian princes who have given it not the slightest pro-
 
 THE ' FOX,' THE ' KOSE/ ETC. 327 
 
 vocation, never attacks the intidel at all, and ends 
 by a filibustering seizure of already Christian terri- 
 tory. Nor does Villehardouin make any elaborate 
 disguise of this ; but he tells the tale with such a 
 gust, such a fiiria, that we are really as much in- 
 terested in the success of this private piracy as if 
 it had been the true crusade of Godfrey of Bouillon 
 himself. 
 
 The earlier and more legitimate crusades did not 
 lack fitting chroniclers in the same style, though 
 William of Hone of them had the genius of Villehar- 
 Tyre. douin. The Roman cVEradcs (as tlie early 
 
 vernacular version ^ 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 
 gouverua I'empire de Kome ") is a chronicle the 
 earlier part of which is assigned to a certain Bernard, 
 treasurer of the Abbey of Corbie. It is a very ex- 
 tensive 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 hot with 
 Villehardouin's epic spirit, in a very agreeable and 
 readable fashion. Not much later, vernacular chron- 
 icles of profane history in France became common, 
 and the celebrated Grandcs Chroniques of St Denis 
 began to be composed in French. But the only pro- 
 duction of this thirteenth century which has taken 
 rank in general literary knowledge with the work of 
 
 1 Ed. Taulin Paris. Paris, 1879.
 
 328 EUROPEAN LITERATURE. 1100-1300. 
 
 the Marshal of Champagne is that ^ of Jean de Join- 
 ville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of 
 
 JoinviUc. 
 
 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 Crusadin" misfortunes of Saint Louis, beloncfs 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. 
 
 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 liis people. And he reports only in the 
 briefest abstract the luckless " voie de Tunes," or ex- 
 pedition 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 in- 
 teresting, 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 
 
 1 Ed. Xatalis de M'aiUy. Paris, 1874.
 
 THE 'fox/ the 'rose/ ETC. 329 
 
 nothing of the antique vigour of Villehardouin. Join- 
 ville 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 per- 
 sonal 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 Pepys- 
 ian 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. Prance, 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 Mesticrs, or book of the guilds of Paris, is of 
 the thirteenth century), and miscellaneous. But few 
 of these things concern literature proper. It is other- 
 wise with the application of prose to 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 
 
 Fiction. ^ PIT 
 
 thirteenth century prose romances of length 
 were not unknown, though it was later that uU the
 
 330 EUKOPEAN LITEKATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 three classes — Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Antique — 
 were thrown indiscriminately into prose, and lengthened 
 even beyond the huge length of their later representa- 
 tives 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 any- 
 thing like a proper scheme. 
 
 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 at- 
 tempted — the fact that the verse fahliau was still in 
 the very height of its flourishing-time, made this un- 
 likely ; 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 /aS/'icM^-flower. But it is 
 from the thirteenth century that (with some others) 
 Aucassin et wc liavc Aucossln ct Nicolcttc} If it was 
 Nicoiette. £qj. ^ short time rather too much of a 
 fashion to praise (it cannot be over-praised) this ex- 
 quisite story, no wise man will allow himself to be 
 disgusted any more than he will allow himself to be 
 
 •'• Frequently edited : not least satisfactorily in the NouveUes 
 Fran/^ai&es du XIII"^^ Sieclc, referred to above. In 1887 two Eng- 
 lish 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)
 
 THE 'FOX,' THE 'ROSE,' ETC. 331 
 
 attracted by fashion, lliis work of " the old caitiff," as 
 the author calls himself with a rather Hibernian coax- 
 ingness, is what has been called a cantcfaUc — that is to 
 say, it is not only obviously written, like verse romances 
 and fahliaux, 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. 
 
 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 cer- 
 tainly the most beautiful thing of the kind in mediieval
 
 332 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 prose-work, and the equal of anything of the kind any- 
 where. And for original audacity few things surpass 
 Aucassin's equally famous inquiry. ' En Paradis qu'ai- 
 je a 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 Hose — to which it is closely akin — is the full 
 dreamy beauty, a little faint, a little shadowy, but all 
 the more attractive, of medieval art ; and here it has 
 managed to convey itself in prose no less happily and 
 with more concentrated happiness than there in verse.
 
 333 
 
 CHAPTER VITT. 
 
 ICELANDIC AND PEOVENCAL. 
 
 RESEMBLANCES — CONTRASTS — ICELANDIC LITERATURE OP THIS TIME 
 MAINLY PROSE — DIFFICULTIES WITH IT— THE SAGA ITS INSULAR- 
 ITY OF MANNER OF SCENERY AND CHARACTER — FACT AND FICTION 
 
 IN THE SAGAS CLASSES AND AUTHORSHIP OP THEM THE FIVE 
 
 GREATER SAGAS — * NJALA ' ' LAXD^LA ' ' EYRBYGGJA ' ' EGLA ' 
 
 'GRETTLa' ITS CRITICS MERITS OF IT — THE PARTING OP ASDIS 
 
 AND HER SONS — GREAT PASSAGES OP THE SAGAS — STYLE — PRO- 
 
 VENQAL MAINLY LYRIC ORIGIN OP THIS LYRIC FORMS MANY 
 
 JfEN, ONE MIND — EXAMPLE OF RHYME-SCHEMES — PROVENCAL POETRY 
 
 NOT GREAT BUT EXTRAORDINARILY PEDAGOGIC THOUGH NOT 
 
 DIRECTLY ON ENGLISH SOME TROUBADOURS CRITICISM OP PHO- 
 
 VENgAL. 
 
 There 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 con- 
 
 Resemblances. . ,, n ft i T^ 
 
 nection, both or likeness and unhkeness, 
 between them is too tempting to the student of com- 
 parative literature, and too useful in such a compara- 
 tive survey of literature as that which we are here un- 
 dertaking, to be mistaken or refused. Both attaining, 
 thanks to very different causes, an extraordinarily early 
 maturity, completely worked themselves out in an
 
 334 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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, Proven(^al in form. 
 And their differences are no less fascinating, since 
 they start from this very diversity of similar perfection. 
 Icelandic, after a brief period of copying 
 
 Contnista. , iii • -ii t i 
 
 iTench 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 no- 
 thing 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 be- 
 ginnings of the later Eomantic revival in Western 
 Europe, a hundred and fifty years ago) nothing and 
 nobody. It was as isolated as its own island. To 
 Provencal, on the other hand, though its own actual 
 producing-time was about as brief, belongs the school- 
 ing, to no small extent, of the whole literature of 
 Europe. Directly, it taught the trouvdres 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,
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. 335 
 
 points of likeness in unlikeness have been left to the 
 last. The contrasts between the hawthorn and ni"[ht- 
 ingale of Provence, her " winds heavy with the rose," 
 and the grey firths, the ice- and foam-fretted skerries of 
 Iceland ; between the remains of Eoman luxury pushed 
 to more than Eoman 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 re- 
 produced with an incredible — a " copy-book " — fidelity 
 in the literatures. The insistence of experts and en- 
 thusiasts 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 whi-ch 
 nobody dreams of measuring swords, or avoiding van- 
 tage of any kind. Yet the enthusiastic experts are 
 not wrong. Whatever outrages the Icelander may 
 commit, he always has the law — an eccentric, un- 
 modern, conventional law, but a real and recognised 
 one — before his eyes, and respects it in principle, how- 
 ever much he may sometimes violate it in practice. 
 To the Provencal, 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 an-
 
 330 EUKOPEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 other man's wife, but it is to make her his own. The 
 Provencal 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 raanners, 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 con- 
 trast, the hackneyed contrast, of South and Xorth 
 never could have been exhibited with a more artistic 
 completeness, never has been exhibited with a com- 
 pleteness 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 Provencal love-song was sounding under the 
 vines and olives of Languedoc. The very Iceland- 
 ers 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. 
 
 It is not, of course, true that Provencal only sings 
 of love and Icelandic only of war. There is a fair
 
 ICEL.VNDIC AND PROVENCAL. 337 
 
 amount of love in the Northern literature and a fair 
 
 icaanaicutcra. ';^"^°""t ^^ ^^'^^l^ing "^ ^^^^ Southcm, And 
 ture of this time it is not true that Icelandic literature is 
 viamy prose. ^\^q\\j pj-Qse, ProveuQal wholly poetry. 
 But it is true that rroven(^al prose plays an extremely 
 small part in Provencal 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 Provengal that is not in verse. It is 
 distinctly curious how much later, cceteris 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 nuich 
 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 con- 
 nection 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 Ice- 
 land; and this leaves them far behind us.'^ On the 
 other hand, the work which we have in Provencal be- 
 fore the extreme end of the eleventh century is not 
 finished literature. It has linguistic interest, the in- 
 terest of origins, but no more. 
 
 ' Iceland began to be r!hristia)i in 1000 
 Y
 
 338 EUr.OPEAN LITEEATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Although there is practically as little doubt about 
 the antiquity of Icelandic literature ^ as about its 
 Difficulties interest, there is unusual room for guess- 
 withit. work as to the exact dates of the docu- 
 ments which compose it. Writing seems to have 
 been introduced into Iceland late ; and it is not the 
 opinion of scholars who combine learning with patri- 
 otism 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 coun- 
 tries and at foreign courts — though as Vikings or 
 Varangians, as merchants or merely travelling adven- 
 turers, 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 is almost superfluous to insert, but would be disagreeable to 
 omit, a reference to the Sturlunfja Saga (2 vols., Oxford, 1879) and 
 the Corpus Foeticum Boreale (2 vols., Oxford, 1883) of the late Dr 
 Vigfusson and Professor York Powell. The first contains an invalu- 
 able 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 ac- 
 cording to Dr Vigfusson's plan, practically the whole of Icelandic lit- 
 erature 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 mediaeval literatures, and re- 
 gret that she has not done as much for others.
 
 ICELANDIC AND Pr.OVENf'AL. 339 
 
 it naturally liad most correspondence. We are there- 
 fore almost entirely devoid of tliose 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 mat- 
 ter. 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 Niheluiigenlied, for instance, is the work of men 
 who wrote with the Volsunga-Saga or the Grudrun lays 
 before them, any more than the Grettis Saga is made 
 up out of Beovmlf. 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 commun- 
 ity of origin they help us little or not at all. 
 
 Tlie 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-educa- 
 tion 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 tln^ough Europe in the 
 years immediately before and innnediately after 1200, 
 though tlicy might be in some cases concerned directly 
 with national heroes, appealed without exception to
 
 340 EUP.OPEAX LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 international and generally human interests. The 
 slightest education, or the slightest hearing of per- 
 sons educated, sufficed to teach every one that Alex- 
 ander and Cffisar 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. 
 
 But saga-literature had nothing of this appeal. It 
 was as indifferently and almost superciliously insular 
 itsinsitJarUy ^s the English country-house novel itself, 
 ofmanner, g^j^^ ^-^r^y \-iQ_yQ produccd in somc 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 mediaeval 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 Eng- 
 lish romances has it) whom the general Middle Age 
 liked or thought it liked. An intricate, intensely local,
 
 ICELANDIC AND PKOVENf;AL. 341 
 
 and (away from the locality) not seldom shocking sys- 
 tem 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 
 ]\Iiddle Ages the very air they breathed, was either 
 absent altogether or present in an artificial^ uneasy, 
 and scanty fashion. 
 
 Yet all these things were of less importance than 
 another, which is, after all, the great differentia, the 
 ofscemryand abiding quality, of the sagas. In the 
 character. 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 sub- 
 dued to a kind of common literary handling, a " dis- 
 realising " process which made them universally ac- 
 ceptable. The personal element, too, was conspicu- 
 ously absent — the generic character is always upper- 
 most. 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 Eng- 
 lishmen, Erenchmen, Germans, Italians alike, because 
 they were not obtrusively English, German, Italian,
 
 342 EUltOrEAN LITERATUIIE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 jokul 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 ad- 
 duced 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 
 cliarm reinforced by the fact of its extraordinary dif- 
 ference 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 ambusli or holmgang, recur to and 
 beyond the utmost limits of permitted re]3etition, the
 
 ICELANDIC AND PKOVENgAL. 343 
 
 imfamiliarity 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 mediteval, at least as often as 
 in other, writing, plays Scylla to the Charybdis of 
 tameness. Moreover, they have, as no other division 
 of medieval romance has in anything like the same 
 measure, the advantage of the presence of intcrcstiiig 
 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. 
 
 There is, of course, Icelandic literature in prose 
 outside of the sagas — the great law code {Gray as or 
 Fact and jmonGr^^y goose), rcligious books in the usual 
 in the sagas, plenty, scicntific books of a kind, and 
 others. But the saga, the story, was so emphatically 
 the natural mould into which Icelandic literary im- 
 pulse threw itself, that it is even more difficult here 
 than elsewhere at the time to separate story and his-
 
 344 EUKOPEAN LITER ATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 tory, fiction and fact. Indeed the stricter critics 
 would, I believe, maintain that every saga which 
 deserves the name is actually founded on fact: the 
 Laxdcda no less than the Heimskringla^ the story 
 of Kormak no less than that of Jarl llognwald. 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, con- 
 taining not a little of the most poetical matter of the 
 whole world, the Landnama Boh of Ari Frodi, a 
 Domesday-book turned into literature, which is in- 
 deed older than our time, but which forms a sort of 
 commentary and companion to the whole of the sagas 
 by anticipation or otherwise. 
 
 Difficult as it may be to draw the line between in- 
 tended history, which was always strongly " romanced " 
 , in form, if not intentionally in fact, and 
 
 Classes and '' 
 
 authorshi2> that vcry pcculiar product of Icelandic 
 genius the saga proper, in which the 
 original domestic record has been, so to sj^eak, " super- 
 romanced " into a work of art, it is still possible to see 
 it, if not to draw it, between the Heimshringla, the 
 
 ^ Dr Vigfusson is exceedingly severe on the Hciniskrinyla, which 
 he will have to be only a late, weak, and rationalised compilation 
 from originals like the oddly termed " Great 0. 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 iimsse 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.
 
 ICELANDIC AND PliOVENgAL. 345 
 
 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 Fcercyingct- Sagas (the tales of these 
 outlying islands before the former came under Nor- 
 wegian 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 en- 
 ables him to concentrate attention on the literature 
 itself. 
 
 This literature is undoubtedly best exemplified, as 
 we should expect, in the wholly anon}nious and
 
 346 EUllOPEAN LITEKATUIIE, 1100-1300. 
 
 only indirectly historical sagas of the second division, 
 though it is fair to say that tliere is nothing here much 
 finer than such things as the famous last fight of King 
 Olaf in the Hcimskringla, 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. 
 
 There seems no reason to quarrel with the classi- 
 fication which divides the sagas proper into two 
 The five 'jrcaicr classcs, greater and lesser, and assigns po- 
 MQus. sition in the first to five only — the Saga 
 
 of Burnt Njal, that of the dwellers in Laxdale, the 
 Eyrhyggja, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of Grettir the 
 Strong. It is very unlucky that the reception ex- 
 tended 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 ; ^ the Eyi'hyggja and 
 Egla in abstracts by Sir Walter Scott- and Mr 
 Gosse;^ Laxdctla has been treated as it deserves 
 
 1 The atory of Burnt Njal. Edinburgh, 1861. 
 
 ■- Included in the Bohn edition of Mallet's Northern Antiquitieti. 
 
 " Oornhill Marjailnc, July 1879.
 
 ICELANDIC AND PKO VENIAL. 347 
 
 in the longest and nearly the finest section of J\lr 
 Morris's Earthly Paradise ; ^ and the same writer 
 with Dr Magnusson has given a literal translation 
 of Grdtla? 
 
 The lesser sagas of the same group are some thirty 
 in numljer, the best known or the most accessible 
 being those of Gunnlaug Serpent's - Tongue, often 
 printed in the original,^ very short, very character- 
 istic, and translated by the same hands as Grettla;^ 
 Vif/a Glum, translated l:)y Sir Edmund Head ; ^ Gisli 
 the Outlaw (Dasent) ; " Hotuard or Havard the Halt, 
 The Banded Men, and Hen Thoinr (Morris and Mag- 
 nusson) ^ ; Kormak, said to be the oldest, and cer- 
 tainly one of the most interesting.^ 
 
 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 
 
 ^ " The Lovers of Gudruu ; " Noveiiiber, part iii. p. 337, origiual 
 edition. London, 1870. 
 
 2 London, 1869. 
 
 3 Gunnlauffs tiarja OrmsUmyu. Ed. Mogk. Halle, 1886, 
 * In Three Northern Lo%x- Stories. London, 1875. 
 
 5 London, 1866. « Edinburgh, 1866. 
 
 ^ In one volume. London, 1891. 
 
 ^ Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the original, but 
 Very fully abstracted in Northern ArUiqvitics, as above, pp. 321-339. 
 The verse is in the Corpus Poeticwtn Borcak.
 
 348 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 of one who does not pretend to Icelandic scholar- 
 ship, 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 Daseut's JSjala, or Morris and Magnusson's 
 Grettla, the next best idea attainable is perhaps from 
 Sir Walter Scott's abstract of the Eyrhyggja or Mr 
 Blackwell's of the Kormak's Saga, or Mr Gosse's of 
 lUgla. Njal's Saga deals with the friendship between 
 the warrior Gunuar and the lawyer Njal, which, prin- 
 cipally owing to the black-heartedness of Guunar'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 com- 
 plication — thoroughly Xorthern and not in the least 
 Southern — of a most elaborate, though not entirely 
 impartial, system of judicial inquiries and compen- 
 sations, 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 gentle- 
 man'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. 
 As Njala is the most complete and dramatic of the
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. 349 
 
 sagas where love has no very prominent part except 
 in the Helen -like danMrousness, if not 
 
 Niala, 
 
 exactly Helen -like charm, of Hallgerd, of 
 whom it might certainly be said that 
 
 "Where'er she came, 
 She brought Calamity " ; 
 
 so Lnxdaia is the chief of those in which love figures, 
 
 though on the male side at least there is no lover that 
 
 interests ns as much as the hapless, reck- 
 
 Laxdala. ^^ , ^ r ' 
 
 less poet ivormak, 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 Belli, 
 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 whichj 
 as above suggested, are apt to be found in the Ice- 
 landic 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 utter- 
 ance of the aged heroine — 
 
 " I did the worst to him I loved the most," 
 
 which is almost literally from tlie Icelandic, redeem 
 anything unsympathetic in the narrative : and the 
 figure of Bodli, a strange mixture of lionour and 
 faithlessness to the friend he loves and murders, is
 
 350 EUROPEAN LTTEr.ATTTRE, 1100-1300. 
 
 one of the most striking among the thralls of Venns 
 in literature. 
 
 The defect of the Eyrhyggja Saga is its want of 
 
 any central interest ; for it is the history not of a 
 
 person, nor even of one single family, but 
 
 Eyrhyggja. .... 
 
 of a whole Icelandic district with its in- 
 habitants from the settlement onwards. Its attrac- 
 tion, 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 (jestc, family legends, with a greater vividness and 
 individuality than the French genius could then im- 
 part, though presented more roughly. 
 
 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 sou Egil, in opposition to Harald Har- 
 fagr 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
 
 ICELANDIC AND PEOVEX(;*AL. 351 
 
 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. 
 
 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 tack- 
 ing on an obvious plagiarism from Tristan 
 
 Grettla. ^ ^ ^ 
 
 as an appendix, ostensibly dealing with the 
 avenging of the hero), the fifth, Grettis Saga or Grettla, 
 would perhaps be the best of all. 
 
 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 
 
 Its critics. 
 
 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 arc 
 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 Laxdcda : 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 Eyrhyygja. 
 
 After an overture about the hero's forebears, wliieh 
 in any other country would be as certainly spurious 
 as the epilogue, but to which the peculiar cliaracter 
 of saga-writing gives a rather different claim here, the 
 story proper begins with a description of the youtli
 
 352 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, llGO-i:'00. 
 
 of Grettir the Strong, second son to Asmund the Grey- 
 haired of Biarg. who had made mnch 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 some- 
 what unamiable and even distinctly ferocious. That, 
 being made gooseherd,- and finding the birds trouble- 
 some, 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, through- 
 out 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 prone- 
 ness 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
 
 ICELANDIC AND PEOVENgAL. 353 
 
 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 Haram- 
 sey, 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 in- 
 cidents in the story. The most precious part of the 
 booty is a peculiar " short-sword." Also when Thor- 
 finn'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 suc- 
 ceeds 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 witliout 
 it, owing to his sulky temper and sour tongue, suc- 
 cessively 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 
 
 z
 
 354 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-lP.OO. 
 
 Iceland, he has made Norway too hot to hold him ; 
 and he lands in liis native island with a great repute 
 for strength, valour, and, it must be added, quarrel- 
 someness. 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 Beoundf most strikingly,^ and slays him (for Ice- 
 landic 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. 
 
 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 brag- 
 gart 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 quarrel- 
 some temper, and some " metaphysical aid," he misses 
 
 ^ It seems almost incredible that the resemblances between 
 Beoivulf and the Grcttis 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.
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. 355 
 
 tlie 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 Thor- 
 biorn 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
 
 356 EUEOPEAN LITERATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 single - handed. His plight at first is not much 
 worsened by this ; for though the simple plan of set- 
 ting 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 LawmaUj and the latter points out that 
 as Grettir had been outlawed hefore 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 be- 
 come 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 dwell- 
 ing with supernatural creatures, — Hallmund, a kindly 
 spirit or cave-dweller with a hospitable daughter, or 
 the half-troll giant Thorir, a person of daughters like- 
 wise. 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
 
 ICELAJ!JDIC AND PROVEN^'AL. 357 
 
 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 ad- 
 vice 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 helj) 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.
 
 358 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 him- 
 self, 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Merits of it. '■ . . ° 
 
 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 criti- 
 cism, 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 pro- 
 vided 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 Stein- 
 vor and the daughters of the friendly spirits, and has 
 made a mere faUiau 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 illustra- 
 ting the quaintly blended life of Iceland ; and of the 
 highest kind as regards the conception of the hero —
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENgAL. 359 
 
 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 poeti- 
 cal 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 fear- 
 fully 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 : — 
 
 " ' 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 
 
 The parting '^ 
 
 of Asdis and no day uow 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
 
 360 EUROPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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." 
 
 These moments, whether of incident or expression, 
 are indeed frequent enough in the sagas, though the 
 Great passages main attraction may consist, as has been 
 of the sagas. s^[^^ in tlic 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 him- 
 self 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 Steiugerd, 
 and the poet's unconscious translation of ^Eschylus^ 
 
 1 Compare, mutitis mutandis, Again.. 410 s^.; and Kormak's "Stray 
 verses." 11. 41-44, in the Corpua. ii. 65.
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. 361 
 
 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 Tam- 
 berskelvir'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^ to weight him through the deep green 
 water. 
 
 The saga prose is straightforward and business-like, 
 
 the dialogue short and pithy, with considerable in- 
 
 terspersion of proverbial phrase, but witli, 
 
 style. . r > > 
 
 except m 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 ex- 
 traordinary 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 
 
 ^ Hclriixl-riH(jla, does not sni/ " eilgeways," but tlii.s is the clear mean- 
 ing. Kolbioru held his shield flat and below him, so that it acted as 
 a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.
 
 362 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 in the Havavial and the other earliest and most 
 certainly genuine examples. 
 
 It is perhaps well to add that very small sagas 
 are called thcettir (" 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 char- 
 acter. In fact short sagas might be called thcettir and 
 vice versd. 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 ad- 
 mittedly rare. 
 
 In regard to the second, and contrasted, division of 
 the subject of the present chapter, it has been already 
 vrovcn^ai notcd that, just as Icelandic at this period 
 mainly lyric, prescuts to the purvicw of the comparative 
 literary historian one main subject, if not one only — 
 the saga — so Provenc^al presents one main subject, and 
 almost one only — the formal lyric. The other pro- 
 ducts of the Muse in langue d'oc, whether verse or 
 prose, are so scanty, and in comparison ^ so uuim- 
 
 ^ Of course this is only in comiiarisoii. For iustauce, in Dr 
 Suchier's Denkmiilcr (Halle, 1883), which contains nearly 500 large 
 pages of Provencal 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 mediaival languages, is hardly litera- 
 ture at all, being usually translated, with scarcely any expense of 
 literary originality, from the Latin, or each other.
 
 ICELANDIC AND PRO VENIAL, 363 
 
 portant, that even special historians of the subject 
 have found but little to say about them. The earliest 
 monument of all, perhaps the earliest finished monu- 
 ment of literature in any Romance language, the 
 short poem on Boethius, in assonanced decasyllabic 
 laisscs, — 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 cle Rossilho, Daurel 
 et Beton, Aigar ct Maurin, which exist ; nor the later 
 romans d'avcnture of Jaufrc, Flamcnca, 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.^ And if these things, and others like them 
 in much larger number, had existed alone, it is certain 
 that Provencal literature would not hold the place 
 which it now holds in the comparative literary history 
 of Europe. 
 
 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 Provencal actually had 
 
 1 Alberic's Alexander {v. chap, iv.) is of course Provencal in a way, 
 and there was probably a Provencal intermediary between the Chan- 
 son d'Antioche and the Spanish Gran Conqucsta dc Ultramar. But we 
 have only a few lines of the first and nothing of the second.
 
 364 EUKOPEAN LITEllATUllE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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. 
 
 It would appear, though such things can never be 
 quite certain, that, as we should indeed expect, the 
 
 oHgin of ^^st dcvclopments of Provencal lyric were 
 
 this lyric, q^ ^j^q hymu kind, and perhaps originally 
 mixtures of Eomance 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 
 JVocl 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 Provencal 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 ProvenQal ones. 
 This same arrangement occurs with a Provencal 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. 
 
 The earliest purely secular lyrics, however, are at- 
 tributed to William IX., Count of Poitiers, who was
 
 ICELANDIC AND PROVEN9AL. 365 
 
 a crusader in the very first year of the twelfth century, 
 and is said to have written an account of his 
 
 Forms. . 1 • 1 • i -rr- i • 
 
 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 ^ the first is in seven-lined stanzas, 
 rhymed aaaahah, the a - rhyme lines being iambic 
 dimeters, and the 5's monometers. Number two has 
 five six-lined stanzas, all dimeters, rhymed anahab : 
 and a four-lined finale, rhymed a&, ah. The third is 
 mono-rhymed throughout, the lines being dissyllabic 
 with licence to extend. And the fourth is in the 
 quatrain aaab^ but with the h rhyme identical through- 
 out, capped with a couplet aK If these systems be 
 compared with the exact accounts of early Trench, 
 English, and German lyric in chapters v.-vii , it will 
 be seen that Provenc^al 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 
 
 ^ The Grundriss zxir Gcuchichtc dcr Provcnzalischcn Llteratur (Elber- 
 feld, 1872) and the Ohrcstomathie Provcnrale (3d ed.j Elberfeld, 187^) 
 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. Malm's Trouhadour.t 
 and the older works of Raynouard and Fauriel are the chief store- 
 houses of wider information, and separate editions of the works of 
 the chief jwets are being accumulated by modern, chiefly German, 
 scholars. An interesting and valuable addition to the Ewjlish litera- 
 ture of the subject has been made, since the text was written, by 
 Miss Ida Farnell's Lives of the Trouladovr.<i. a translation with added 
 specimens of the poets and other editorial matter.
 
 366 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 sirventc, 
 of vers and cohla, of planh, tenso, torncjamcns, balada, 
 rdrocnsa, 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 shep- 
 herdess 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 Provencal 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 Provengal, was only used in 
 Provenc^al by Italian experimenters. The poets proper 
 of the languc d'oc were probably too proud to admit 
 any form that they had not invented themselves. 
 
 Next in noteworthiness to the variety of form of 
 the Provencal poets is their number. Even the mul- 
 Many men, titudc of twuvdrcs and Miuncsingers dwin- 
 onemimi. (jjgg besidc 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
 
 ICELANDIC AND PEO VENIAL. 367 
 
 with ten, twenty, fifty, or even close to a hundred, not 
 to mention an anonymous appendix of over two hun- 
 dred and fifty poems more. Great, however, as is the 
 bulk of tliis division of literature, hardly any has more 
 distinct and uniform — its enemies may say more 
 monotonous — characteristics. It is not entirely com- 
 posed 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 Provencal poetry to be almost, and with the due 
 limitation in the first case, convertible terms. 
 
 The spirit of this poetry is nowhere better shown 
 than in the refrain of an anonymous alba, which 
 begins — 
 
 " En iin verger sotz folha d'albespi," 
 
 and which has for burden — 
 
 " Oi deus ! oi deus, de Talba, tant tost ve ! " 
 
 of which an adaptation liy Mr Swinburne is well 
 known. " In the Orchard,'' however, is not only a 
 much longer poem than the alha from which it bor- 
 rows its burden, but is couched in a form much more 
 elaborate, and lias a spirit rather early Italian than 
 Provenc^al. It is, indeed, not very easy to define the 
 Provencal spirit itself, which has sometimes been mis- 
 taken, and oftener exaggerated. Although the aver- 
 age 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
 
 368 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 trouv^rcs, 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 speci- 
 men. It consists of six double stanzas, of fourteen 
 lines or two septets each, finished by a sestet, aahaab. 
 The septets are rhymed aaabaab ; and though the a 
 rhymes vary in each set of fourteen, the h rhymes 
 are the same throughout ; and the first of them in 
 Example of each scptct is the same word, vilana 
 rhyme-schemcs. (peasant girl), tliroughout. Thus we have 
 as the rhymes of the first twenty-eight lines sebissa, 
 mestissa, massissa, vilana, pelissa, treslissa, lana ; pla- 
 nissa, faitissa, Jissa, vilana, noirissa„ m'erissa, sana; 
 pia, via, conipanliia, vilana, paria, hcstia, soldana ; sia, 
 folia, parelharia, vilana, s'cstia, hailia, Vufana. 
 
 Such a carillon of rhymes as this is sometimes held 
 to be likely to concentrate the attention of both writer 
 Provencal poetry and reader too much on the accompani- 
 not great. ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ j^^^^ ^^le formcr little time 
 
 to convey, and the latter little chance of receiving,
 
 ICELANDIC AXD PKOVENQAL. 369 
 
 any very particularly choice sense. This most cer- 
 tainly 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 ad- 
 mitted that when the styles of literature are both 
 fashionable and limited, and when a very large num- 
 ber 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 elabo- 
 rate in form and sovereign in spirit ; and the peoples 
 of the langue d'oe, 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. 
 
 Yet their educating influence was undoubtedly 
 strong, and their actual production not to be scorned. 
 But extraordin- In the Capacity of teachers they were not 
 ariiy pedagogic, ^ithout stroug influence ou 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 trouvires 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 trouba- 
 dour, Bertran de Born, is known to have been con- 
 cerned in the disputes between Henry IF. nnd his 
 
 2 A
 
 370 EUROPEAN" LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 sons — l*rovenral should not liave exercised more 
 direct influence over English literature. It was a 
 partly excusable mistake which made some English 
 critics, who knew that Eichard Crour de Lion, for 
 instance, was himself not unversed in the " manner 
 of trohar," 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 suffi- 
 ciently simple, or at least (for it is double rather than 
 simple) sufficiently clear. 
 
 In the first place, English was not, until quite the 
 
 end of the flourishing period of Provencal poetry, and 
 
 specially at the period above referred to, 
 
 Though not ^ '' , ^ 
 
 directly on in a couditiou to profit by Provencal 
 '"'' " ■ models ; while in the fourteenth century, 
 when English connection with the south of France 
 was closer still, Provenc^al 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 be- 
 tween Provencal and the Peninsular tongues. To 
 which things, if any one pleases, he may add the differ- 
 ence 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 litera- 
 ture proper. Such a rhyme - arrangement as that 
 above set forth is probably impossiljle in English ; 
 even now it will lie observed that Mr Swinburne,
 
 ICELANDIC AND FROVENCAL. 371 
 
 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 Provencal. 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 Provencal manner, and greater than 
 anything in Provencal), 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 man- 
 ner 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 pro- 
 longed 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 impor- 
 tance, but which, perhaps, will not seem so to those 
 who are content not merely to count pages but to 
 weigh moments. The moment which Provenqal 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 mo- 
 tives of literature that it was sure to lead to imitation 
 and development. It gave means and held up models
 
 372 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, llOO-WOO. 
 
 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. 
 
 The " first warbler," Count William IX. of Poitiers, 
 has already been mentioned, and his date fixed at 
 Some exactly the first year of our period. His 
 
 troubadmirs. chief immediate successors or contempo- 
 raries 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) Eudel 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 ban- 
 quet, the two most famous pieces of Troubadour 
 anecdotic history, we have half-a-dozen pieces. In 
 succession to these, Count Eambaut 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 abahah, with prose " tags " 
 to each, something in the manner of the modern comic 
 song), is at least a curiosity. The primacy of the
 
 ICELANDIC AND PEG VENIAL. 373 
 
 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, inas- 
 much as he is said to have run about on all fours 
 in a wolfskin in honour of his mistress Loba (Lupa) ; 
 Gaucelm Paidit and Arnaut de Maroilh, Folquet of 
 Marseilles, and Eambaut of Vaqueras ; the Monk of 
 Montaudon and Bertrand de Born himself, who witli 
 Peire Cardinal is the chief satirist (though the satire 
 of the two takes different forms) ; Guillem Pigueira, 
 the author of a long invective against Rome, and Sor- 
 dello 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 lliquier. 
 
 It would scarcely be fair to say that the exploit 
 
 attributed to Ptambaut of Vaqueras, a poet of the very 
 
 Criticism of palmiest time, at the juncture of the twelftli 
 
 Provencal, and thirteenth ccnturics — that of composing 
 
 a poem in lines written successively in three dilferent
 
 374 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, llUO-1300. 
 
 forms of Provencal {lang^te d'oc proper, Gascon, and 
 Catalan), in languc d'o'il, 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, Provencal 
 served — in a fashion probably impossible to the stiffer 
 if more virile tongues — as an example in point of form 
 to these tongvies themselves : and it achieved, at the 
 same time with a good deal of mere gymnastic, exer- 
 cises 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 lan- 
 guages — 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 neces- 
 sary 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 Provenc^al had scarcely any other 
 places of abode to ofier.
 
 375 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 THE LITEliATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 
 
 LIMITATIONS UF THIS CHAITER LATE GKEEK KOMAXCE — ITS DIFFICULTIES 
 
 AS A SUBJECT ANNA COMNENA, ETC. ' HYSMINIAS AND HYSMINE ' 
 
 — ITS STYLE — ITS STORY — ITS HANDLING — ITS " DEC.VDENCE " — 
 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 OP SPANISH — CATALAN-PR0\TEN9AL 
 — GALICIAN-PORTUGUESE — CASTILIAN — BALLADS ? — THE * POEMA DEL 
 CID' — A SPANISH "chanson DE GESTE " — IN SCHEME AND SPIRIT — 
 DIFFICULTIES OF ITS PROSODY BALLAD-METRE THEORY IRREGU- 
 LARITY OF LINE — OTHER POEMS — APOLLONIUS AND MARY OF EGYIT 
 — BERCEO — ALFONSO EL SABIO. 
 
 There is something more than a freak, or a mere 
 geographical adaptation, in taking together, and at 
 Limitations of the last, the contributions of the three 
 this chapter, peninsulas which form the ext?eme south 
 of Europe. For in the present scheme they form, as 
 it were, but an appendix to the present book. The 
 dying literatvire 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 Frcujc, a thesis,
 
 376 EUKOPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 than a solid literary contribution. The literature of 
 Italy prior to the fourteenth century is such a daughter 
 of Provenc^al 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 admis- 
 sion 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 Pocma del Cicl, 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 litera- 
 ture, is at any rate written matter. And at the very 
 last there is the attempt, rather respectable than suc- 
 cessful, 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 sub- 
 jects 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 J^^urope, almost ceases with tlie latest poets 
 of the Anthology. 
 
 In what has been called the "ghost" time, however. 
 
 in that portion of it which belongs to our present 
 
 Late Greek period, there is one shadow that flutters 
 
 romance. ^jt^j-^ r^ nearer approach to substance than 
 
 most. Some glance has been made above at the
 
 THE LITEEATURE OF THE PENINSXJLAS. 377 
 
 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 
 Hysminc ^ 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 achieve- 
 ments 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 ? 
 
 All these questions are questions exceedingly proper 
 to be stated in a book of this kind ; not quite so 
 ■Its difficulties proper to be worked out in it, even if the 
 asambjcct. working out wcrc 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 
 
 ' Ed. Hercher, Erotki Scriptorcs Grccci (2 vols., Leipzig, 1858), 
 ii. 161-286,
 
 378 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Eomance, 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, iirowy^re-knights in the garrisons of Edessa or 
 of Jof who could have told us all about it. But nobody 
 did tell : or if anybody did, the tale has not survived. 
 
 But this interest of problem is not the only one 
 that attaches to the " drama/' as he calls it, of Eusta- 
 Anna Com- thius or Eumathius " the philosopher," who 
 ncna,<s:c. flourished at some time between the 
 twelfth and the fourteenth century, and is therefore 
 pretty certainly ours. Eor 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 ^ in history, 
 or the verse romances of Eustathius's probable contem- 
 poraries Theodorus Prodromus^ and JSTicetas Eugeni- 
 anus." The princess's book, though historically impor- 
 tant, and by no means disagreeable to read, is, as liter- 
 ature, chiefly remarkable as exhibiting the ease and 
 the comparative success with which Greek lent itself 
 to the formation of an artificial sti/le noble, more like 
 the writing of the average (not the better) Frenchman 
 
 1 Ed. Reifferscheid. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1884. 
 - Following Eustathius in Hercher, o^j. cit.
 
 THE LlTEKATUr.E OF THE PENINSULAS. 379 
 
 of the eighteenth century than it is like anything else. 
 It is this peculiarity which has facilitated the con- 
 struction of the literary jJcistichc called Modern Greek, 
 and perhaps it is this which will long prevent the pro- 
 duction 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 doubt- 
 ful whether even the great Tragic poets could have 
 made the trimeter tolerable as the vehicle of a lont' 
 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 
 c[uantity, 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 " ^ 
 of the Wise Manasses," 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 indi- 
 vidual 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. 
 
 ^ These political verses are fiftcen-syllaliled, witii a Cicsura at the 
 eighth, and in a rhythm ostensibly accentual. 
 " Erotici Scriptorcs, ii. 555.
 
 380 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 But Hysminias and Hysmine ^ has interests of 
 character which distinguish its author and itself, not 
 Hysminias aud merely from the herd of chroniclers and 
 Hysmine. commcntators 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 judg- 
 ment (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. 
 
 Its style. _ -*■ 
 
 It is needless to say that while the sim- 
 plicity of the best Greek style usually prefers the 
 most direct and natural order, its suppleness lends 
 itself to almost any gymnastic, and its lucidity pre- 
 vents 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,- with its coquetry 
 
 ^ Sometimes spelt Ismenias and Israenc. 1 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. 
 
 ^ noAis ^vptiKw/xts Kal raWa fxev ayadrj, on Kal daKaTTij ffTecpafovTai 
 KOI TrolK/j.o7s KUTappiTrai ku'l Aet/xuxri Kofj.d Kal rpvcpa'ts tvdrjvuTai iravro- 
 SaTrais, to. S' els 6iovs (iifff^ris, Kal vwhp jas xpvcrus ^AQrivas '6Kri ^w/xSi, 
 '6\i] 6v/j.a, Ofols audOrjixa.
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE RENINSULAS. 381 
 
 of arrangement, its tormented structure of phrase, its 
 jingle of sound -repetition, its desperate rejection of 
 simplicity in every shape and form. To describe pre- 
 cisely the means resorted to would take a chapter at 
 least. They are astonishingly modern — the present 
 tense, the use of catchwords like o\o<i, 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 
 Hysmmias and Hysminc more mediaeval 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 per- 
 sonification — for instance, in the battle of Love and 
 Shame, which serves as climax to the elaborate de- 
 scription 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. 
 
 Whether the book, either as an individual composi- 
 tion, 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
 
 382 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 is no doubt, injiy perhaps colour the matter too much. 
 All that can be safely said is that it reads with dis- 
 tinctly modern effect after Heliodorus and Achilles, 
 Lono'us and Xenophon The story is not 
 
 Its story. '^ . . -^ -^ 
 
 much. Hysminias, a beautiful youth of 
 the city of Eurycomis, is chosen for a religious embassy 
 or Jcerultcia 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. 
 
 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 
 
 Its handling. . . i i -i i 
 
 spirit, the conduct, the details, do not show 
 a temper much more akin to mediaeval 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 re-
 
 THE LITEEATURE OF THE rENIXRULAS. 383 
 
 minded of Nicolette, as I am never reminded in other 
 parts of the Scriptores JUrutici. 
 
 Yet, experiment or remainder, imitation or original, 
 one cannot but feel tliat the book, like all tlie litera- 
 ture to which it belongs, has more of the 
 
 Its " deradriice.' ^ 
 
 marks of death than of life in it. Its very 
 elegances are " rose-coloured curtains for the doctors " 
 — tlie 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 {6\o<; 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 aliout 
 being "71^ trop tarcl dans un monde trojj vuiix" has 
 been true of many persons, while more still have 
 affected to believe it true of themselves, since Eusta- 
 thius t it is not much truer of any one tlian 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, litera- 
 tures which have a future instead of merely a past, 
 and which, independently of that somewhat illegiti- 
 mate advantage, have characteristics not unable to 
 bear comparison with those of the past, even had it 
 existed.
 
 384 ETTI^OPEAN LTTEF.ATUEE, 1100-1:500. 
 
 Between the earliest Italian and the earliest Spanish 
 literature, however, there are striking differences to be 
 Lateness of noted. Persons ignorant of the usual course 
 itciiiari. Qf 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^: 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 litera- 
 tures of France, both Southern and Northern — is quite 
 certain and incontestable. The intercourse between 
 the various Eomanee-speaking nations surrounding the 
 western Mediterranean was always close ; and the 
 development of Proven(^al literature far anticipated, 
 both in date and form, that of any other. Moreover, 
 some northern influence was undoubtedly communi- 
 cated by the Norman conquests of the eleventh century. 
 
 ^ I have not thought it proper, considering the system of excluding 
 mere hypothesis which I have adopted, to give much place here to 
 tliat interesting theory of modern "Romanists" which will have it 
 tliat 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 guess- 
 work. But a great deal of it is.
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 385 
 
 But two other strains — one of whicli has long been 
 asserted witli 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. 
 This matter can probably never be pronounced 
 upon, with complete satisfaction to readers, except by a 
 The "Saracen'- literary critic who is equally competent in 
 thrnry. Eastcm 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 indeter- 
 minate 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 
 
 2 B
 
 386 EUEOPEAN LITEEATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Provencal, 
 much more with French, most of all with Teutonic 
 poetry, to contact with Arabian literature, is not 
 merely possible l)ut probable. Anything more must 
 be regarded as not proven, and not even likely. 
 
 Of late, however, attempts have been made to assign 
 the greater part of the matter to no foreign influence 
 Tiie "folk-song" whatcvcr, but to uativc folk - songs, in 
 theory. 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
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 387 
 
 referred to the very learned dissertation ^ 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 dAlcamo 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. 
 
 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 Dc 
 V'ulgari Eloquio^ — may be left Ciullo, or Cielo, and 
 his successors the Frederician set, from the Emperor 
 himself and Piero delle Vigne downwards. More 
 
 ^ See Studj suUa Lctleratura Jtaliana del Primi Secoli. 2<1 ed. 
 Milan : Fratelli Treves, 1891. Pp. 241-458. 
 
 2 Obtainable in many forms, separately and with Dante's works. 
 The Latin is easy enough, but there is a good English ti-anslation bj- 
 A. G. Ferrers Howell (London, 1890). Those who like facsimiles 
 may find one of the Grenoble MS., with a learned introduction, 
 edited by MM. Maignion and I'rcjmpt (Venice, 1892).
 
 388 EUKOPEAN LITEKATUEE, 1100-1300, 
 
 especially to him belong the poets of the late 
 thirteenth century, Dante's own immediate prede- 
 cessors, 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) ; Bru- 
 nette Latini, of fiery memory ; Fra Jacopone,^ 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. 
 
 There is no valid reason for doubting that these 
 influences and materials were mainly French. As 
 Heavy deit ^as been partly noted in a former chapter, 
 to France, ^^q 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 vm- 
 mistakable 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 Proven(^al than the Sicilian ; and that the 
 
 ^ 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 liim.
 
 THE LITERATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 389 
 
 special characteristic of the latter did not appear iu 
 it. The Carlovingian poems (arid to some, though a 
 much less, extent the Arthurian) made a deep im- 
 pression 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 appear- 
 ance 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. 
 
 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'^ of Ciullo itself is 
 a poem in lyric stanzas of five lines — three of six- 
 teen syllables, rhymed a, and two hendecasyllabics, 
 ,^ , , , rhymed h. The rhymes are fairly exact. 
 
 Yet form and " •' j ' 
 
 spirit both though somctimcs 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 imstourelles, displays how- 
 ever, with some of the exaggeration and stock phrase 
 of Provengal (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 
 
 1 The text with coinmeut, stanza by stauza, is to be fuund iu the 
 book cited above.
 
 390 EUKOPEAJSr LITEKATUKE, llOU-1300. 
 
 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 genera- 
 tion 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 Prance 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 Provencal poets 
 deify passion, and concentrate themselves wholly 
 upon it; but it is seldom, indeed, that we find the 
 " metaphysical '' touch in the Provencals proper. And 
 it is this — this blending of love and religion, of 
 scholasticism and tninncdicnst (to borrow a word 
 wanted in other languages than that in which it ex- 
 ists) — 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. 
 
 On these points it is not possible to decide : the 
 point on which to lay the finger for our present
 
 THE LITEKATUIIE OF THE PENINSULAS. 391 
 
 purpose is that the contribution of Italy at this time 
 
 was, on the one hand, the further refine- 
 
 fiffcmit" ^"' ment of the Provenc^'al attention to form, 
 
 Eiiropeun ^^^ ^jjg production of one capital instru- 
 
 coimtries. •*■ 
 
 ment of European poetry — the sonnet ; 
 on the other, the conveyance, by means of this in- 
 strument 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 one- 
 ness, of passion by variations of metrical form. In 
 each language these variations reflect national peculi- 
 arities — in Northern French and German irregular 
 bursts with a multiplicity of inarticulate refrain, in 
 Provencal and Italian a statelier and more graceful 
 but somewhat more monotonous arrangement and pro- 
 portion. 
 
 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 trouvdrcs, pathetic sometimes, and 
 sometimes impassioned, are yet, as a rule, cheerful, 
 not very deep, verging not seldom on i)ure comedy.
 
 392 EUROPEAN LITERATUHE, 1100-1300. 
 
 The so-called mouotouous enthusiasm of the trouba- 
 dour, his stock-images, his musical form, sul)lime 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.! Among those collections for which the 
 student of letters pines, not the least desirable would 
 be a corims 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 over- 
 shadowed by the achievements of its own pupils ; 
 though it has a double portion of the medijeval 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 
 
 ^ " Sacro erotismo," " baccauale cristiano," are phrases of Professor 
 
 d'Aiidrea's.
 
 THE LITEKATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 393 
 
 century would be not tlie least interesting part of 
 such a corpus. 
 
 The Spanish literature ^ with which we have to do 
 is probably inferior in bulk even to that of Italy ; it 
 Podtionof is certainly far less rich in named and 
 Spanish. 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 Pocma 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 chieftain- 
 ship ; 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 ; 
 
 ^ Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an extent commen- 
 sui'ate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study of the older 
 forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in EngUsh, and 
 I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor's History of 
 Spaniah Literature (3 vols., London, 1849, and leprinted since), in the 
 early part of which he had the invaluable assistance of the late Don 
 Pascual de Gayangos. Some scattered jjapers may be found in Jio- 
 mania. Fortunately, almost all the known litei-ary materials for our 
 I^eriod are to be found in Sanchez' Pocsias Castcllanas Antcriorcs aZ 
 Sifjlo XV., the Paris (1842) reprint of which by Oclioa, with a few 
 valuable additions, 1 have used. Tiie Poniw del Cid is, except in this 
 old edition, rather discreditably inaccessible — Volliniiller's German 
 edition (Halle, 1879), the only modern or critical one, being, I under- 
 stand, out of print. It would be a good deed if the Clarendon Press 
 would furnish students with this, the only rival of Bco^vulf hiid the 
 Chanson de Roland in the combination of anti(iuity and interest.
 
 394 EUROPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 much less with Icelandic and Provenc^-al, as containing 
 a " smooth and round " expression of certain definite 
 characteristics of literature and life once for all em- 
 bodied. It has to give way not merely to Provencal, 
 but to Italian itself as an example of early scholar- 
 ship in literary form. But it makes a most interest- 
 ing 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 Pocma, 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 Bnvle, even 
 in the Arthurian romances and the early lyrics. 
 
 The earliest literature which, in the wide sense, can 
 be called Spanish divides itself into three heads — 
 
 Catalan- ProvcnQal - Catalan ; Galician - Portuguese ; 
 Proven<;ai. ^^^ Castiliau 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 
 Provencal school at home, for a time even encouraged 
 the continuance of ProvenQal literature in Spain : and 
 to a certain extent Spanish and Provencal 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 "
 
 THE LITERATUIIE OF THE PENINSULAS. 395 
 
 tongue in Catalonia and (strongly dialected) in Val- 
 encia having been once noted, not nmcli further 
 notice need be taken of this division. 
 
 So also we may, with a brief distinctive notice, pass 
 by the Galician dialects which found their perfected 
 
 Gaiician- literary form later in Portuguese. No im- 
 
 Portugucsc. portaut early literature remains in Galician, 
 and of Portuguese itself there does not seem to be 
 anything certainly dating before the fourteenth cen- 
 tury, 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 irremov- 
 able 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. 
 
 With Castilian — that is to say, Spanisli proper — 
 
 the case is very different. It cannot claim any great 
 
 antiquity : and as is the case with Italian, 
 
 Castilian. 
 
 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 j)olitical and social welter in which 
 Europe lay between the fifth and the eleventh cen- 
 turies. It is, of course, a most natural and constant 
 consideration that the formation of literary languages 
 was delayed in the Koniance - speaking countries by 
 the fact that everybody of any education at all had 
 Latin ready to his hands. And the exceptional cir-
 
 396 EUEOPEAN LITEEATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 cumstances of Spain, which, after hardly settling 
 down under the Visigothic conquest, was whelmed 
 afresh by the Moorish invasion, have not been ex- 
 cessively insisted upon by the authorities who have 
 dealt witli the subject. But still it cannot but strike 
 us as peculiar that the document — the famous Charter 
 of Aviles,^ 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 inconsider- 
 able literature. It is true that the Aviles document 
 is not quite so jargonish as the Strasburg, but the 
 same mark — the presence of undigested Latin — ap- 
 pears in both. 
 
 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 Aviles 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. 
 
 As to the ballads, what has been said about those 
 in Portuguese must be repeated at somewhat greater 
 
 ^ Extracts of this appear in Tickuor, Appendix A., iii. 352, note,
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 397 
 
 length. There is no doubt at all that these ballads 
 (which are well known even to English 
 
 Ballads? ^ ° 
 
 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 CanrAoneroa of the sixteenth century. It is, of 
 course, said that the Cronica General (see ^yost), 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 any- 
 thing 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 
 Cicl 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
 
 398 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 re- 
 sembling what we now call Spanish ? It seems some- 
 times 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 re- 
 presents 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 law- 
 less metres of early Teutonic poetry are in them- 
 selves 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 
 
 At any rate there is no sort of proof that they 
 are early ; and in this history it has been made a 
 The Poema ^'^^^^ ^^ demand proof, or at least the very 
 del ci(i. strongest probability. If there be any 
 force in the argument at the end of the last para- 
 graph, it tells (unless, indeed, the latest critical hy- 
 pothesis be adopted, of which more presently) as much 
 in favour of the antiquity of the Poema del Cid as it
 
 THE LITERATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 399 
 
 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 (3V44 
 lines) has been very greatly affected by the mutila- 
 tions, 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 
 Euy Diaz de Bivar, el Cid Campeador (? 1040-1099), 
 does not concern us, though it is perfectly well estab- 
 lished 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 Eoderic who 
 regained what a Eoderic 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. 
 
 But in the criticism of his poetical liistcjry this is
 
 400 EUKOPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 in strictness irrelevant. It is unlucky for that 
 criticism that Southey and Ticknor — the 
 
 A Sjyanish , _ '' 
 
 chanson de two bcst critics, not merely in English 
 ^''•''*''" but in any language, who have dealt 
 
 with Spanish literature — were quite unacquainted 
 with the French cJiansons de gcste ; while of late, 
 discussion of the Foema, 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 dc Roland, was to all 
 but a certainty in existence when Paiy 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 gcste. 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. ISTor 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
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 401 
 
 Eoncesvaux or of Aliscans. Even in the Nihehingen- 
 liecl, 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 Eodrigo himself, 
 but to Bermuez and Mufio Gustioz, to Asur Gonzalez 
 and Minaya. 
 
 Still the chanson stamp is unmistakably on it 
 from the very beginning, where the Cid, like three- 
 in scheme and fourths of the chaiisou hcrocs themselves, 
 ^"'- has experienced royal ingratitude, through 
 
 the vaunts and the fighting, and the stock phrases 
 (abcvxan las Lanzas following ahrazan 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. 
 
 "When we pass from comparisons of general scheme 
 and spirit to those of metrical form, the matter pre- 
 Difficuities nf scuts greater puzzles. As observed above, 
 Us prosody, q^q earlicst French chansons known to us 
 are written in a strict syllabic metre, with a regular 
 cffisura, and arranged in distinct though not uniformly 
 long laisses, each tipped with an identical assonance. 
 
 2 G
 
 402 EUROPEAN LITERATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 Further, it so happens that this very assonance is one 
 of the best known characteristics of Spanisli 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 be- 
 came so popular that the great dramatists adopted it, 
 and s it thus figures in the two most excellent pro- 
 ductions 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. 
 
 But when we turn to the Pocma del Cid we find 
 nothing like this. It is true that its latest and most 
 Banad-metre learned student. Professor Cornu of Prague,^ 
 theory. j-^^^g^ J bgHeve, persuaded himself that he has 
 
 discovered the basis of its metre to be the ballad octo- 
 syllables, 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 
 
 ^ 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.
 
 THE LITET^ATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 403 
 
 a measure so simple., so universally natural, and, as his- 
 tory shows, so peculiarly grateful to the Spanish ear, 
 and to change it into something quite difl'erent. 
 
 For there is no question but that at first sight, and 
 not at first sight only; the Pocmci del Cid seems to be 
 irrcaniarity thc most irrcgular production of its kind 
 nf line. {^]^g^^ qq^^ claim high rank in the poetry of 
 Europe. It is not merely that it is "rough," as its 
 great northern congener the Nihelungenlicd 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 wliich 
 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 
 csesura, 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,^ 
 nobody has been able to get further in a generalisa- 
 tion 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. 
 And the ends of the verses are as troublesome as 
 
 ^ It is perhaps fair to Professor Cornu to admit some weight in 
 his argument that wlicre proper names predominate — i.e., wliei-e tlie 
 copyist was least likely to alter — his basis suggests itself most 
 easily.
 
 404 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 ^ 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 in- 
 clined 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 demon- 
 strable 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, ac- 
 cording 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 mediaeval 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 
 
 ■* Some writers very inconveniently, and. by a false transference 
 from "consonant," use "consonance" as if equivalent to "alliter- 
 ation. It is much better kept for full rhyme, in which vowels and 
 consonants both "sound with " each other,
 
 THE LITEKATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 405 
 
 cutting of the knot as the supposition that the 
 copyist has made " pie " of about seventy per cent 
 at least of the whole. 
 
 Still the form, puzzling as it is, is extremely interest- 
 ing, 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 edi- 
 tion 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 
 {Tfifanzon, 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 Tizou tjue non lidiaseii con ellas lu--^ del Campeador " 
 should be printed as one line, and 
 
 " Hybalos ver el Key Alfonso. 
 Dixieron los del Campeador," 
 
 as two.
 
 406 EUKOPEAN LITEKATUllE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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, courier, acordar, 
 grandcs, and pan ; but it will be a system so exceed- 
 ingly 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 ^ 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 coin- 
 cidence 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. anos,'' 
 
 tliere 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 
 
 ^ I have not thought it necessary to give an abstract of the con- 
 tents 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.
 
 THE LITEKATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 407 
 
 be added that if mccxlv. is the correct date, this would 
 correspond to 1207 of our chronology, the Spanish medi- 
 seval era starting thirty-eight years too early. 
 
 The remaining literature before the end of the thir- 
 teenth century (immediately after that date there is a 
 good deal, but most of it is imitated from 
 
 other poems, i i • 
 
 France) may be dismissed more brielly. 
 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 Alexccndreicls and Romans d'Alixanclre. 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. 
 
 The Spanish Apollonius,^ however, is noteworthy, 
 because it is written in a form which is also used by 
 Apollonius mid Berceo, and which has sometimes been 
 Mary of Egypt, thought to be spokeu of in the poem itself 
 as nueva maestria. This measure is the old four- 
 teener, which struggles to appear in the Cid, regularly 
 divided into hephthemimers, and now regularly ar- 
 ranged also in mono -rhymed quatrains. The "Life 
 of St Mary of Egypt," '^ on the other hand, is in octo- 
 syllabic couplets, treated with the same freedom 
 that we find in contemporary German handlings of 
 
 1 Sanchez- Ocliua, ojt. ciL, pp. 525-561. - Ibid., pp. 561-57(5.
 
 408 EUROPEAN LITEP.ATUKE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 ad- 
 herence to a probably Pi^ven^al 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 com- 
 posed 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 ^ 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 Ugipciaca, 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 
 faUiaux" are not to the point. The fabliaux, it is 
 true, are in octosyllabic verse ; but octosyllabic verse 
 is certainly older than the fahliaiix, which have nothing 
 to do with the Lives of the Saints. But he could hardly 
 have known this when he wrote. 
 
 Berceo, who appears to have written more than thir- 
 
 ^ Sanchez-Oclioa. 0J3. cit.. pp. 577-579.
 
 THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. 409 
 
 teen thousand lines, wrote nothing secular ; and though 
 the religious poetry of the ]\Iiddle Ages is 
 
 Bcrceo. . , . . 
 
 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. 
 
 Of King Alfonso the Learned (for he does not 
 seem to have been by any means very wise) much 
 Alfonso el niorc is of coursc known, though the saying 
 sabio. 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 there- 
 in had the Creator taken advice. Even the far more 
 deservedly famous Siete Partidas, with that Fxtxro 
 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 Span- 
 ish prose in its earliest form. He could not have 
 executed these or any great part of them himself:
 
 410 EUKOPEAN LITEKATUHE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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, Pro- 
 vencal in style and (to the puzzlement of historians) 
 Galician rather than Castilian in dialect, and an 
 alchemical medley of verse and prose called the Tcsoro. 
 These, if they be his, he may have written for himself 
 and by himself. But for his Astronontical Tables, a not 
 unimportant point de rcphre 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 Trisor, which is or is not a 
 translation of the famous work of Brunetto Latini (dates 
 would here seem awkward). But the Cronica General 
 de Espaiia, the Spanish Bible, the Universal History, 
 and the Gran Conquesta de Ultramar (this last a His- 
 tory 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 attri- 
 butions, 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 LITEEATUKE OF THE PENINSULAS. 411 
 
 the noticeable points in this division of our subject. 
 It will be observed that Spain is at this time content, 
 like Goethe's scholar, sick iihen. Her one great liter- 
 ary achievement — admirable in some respects, incom- 
 parable 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 Cicl that we have 
 Beowulf and Roland and the Nibdunycn — 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.
 
 412 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUSIONc 
 
 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 argu- 
 ment in urging its claim to be at least tried on the 
 merits. All varieties of literary history have draw- 
 backs almost inseparable from their schemes. The 
 elaborate monograph, which is somewhat in favour 
 just now, is exposed to the criticism, not quite carp- 
 ing, 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
 
 CONCLUSION. 413 
 
 "blinking," as regards matters without. And so such 
 a survey as this is liable to the charge of being super- 
 ficial, or of attempting more than it can possibly cover, 
 or of not keeping the due balance betvs^een its various 
 provinces and compartments. 
 
 It must be for others to say how such a charge, in 
 the present case, is helped by lachea 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 Thir- 
 teenth 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
 
 414 EUROPEAN TJTETtATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 these ? " the answer is not difticult. In the tirst place, 
 the work of tliese two centuries — which is mainly 
 though not wholly the work of the liundred 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 thir- 
 teenth 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 develop- 
 ment 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 Eose 
 lialf told, with the Fox not yet broken up. 
 
 And, in the second place, the singular combination 
 of anonymity and school-character in the most char- 
 acteristic medio3val 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 minute- 
 ness of attention to Lautlehrc 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 cha'\sons de gesU do not 
 demand discussion in anythiUj^ like direct proportion 
 to their bulk. One fahliau, much more one minne- 
 song or troubadour lyric, has a far greater resemblance
 
 CONCLUSION. 415 
 
 of kind to its fellows than even one modern novel, 
 even one nineteenth-centniy 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 IJirtli — tlie 
 exact times and seasons of literary births no man 
 knoweth — at any rate of the first appearance, full- 
 blown or full - fledged, of Eomance. Many praise- 
 worthy folk have made many efforts to show that 
 Eomance was after all no such new thing — that there 
 is Eomance in the Odyssey, Eomance in the choruses 
 of ^schylus, Eomance East and West, North and 
 South, before the Middle Ages. They are only less 
 unwise than the other good folk who endeavour to 
 tie Eomance down to a Teutonic origin, or a Celtic, 
 or in the other sense a Eomance 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 luichanging 
 human mind, there were notes, doubtless, of Homer 
 and of yEschylus, of Solomon the son of David and
 
 416 EUKOPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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, permuta- 
 tions 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 Eomantic 
 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. Eoman 
 Literature, always more or less in statu pupillari, had 
 wanted the fellow-pupils, if not the tutor. But the 
 national divisions of mediaeval 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
 
 CONCLUSTOX. 417 
 
 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 e(pTally 
 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 sacritice 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 compensa- 
 tions ! 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 curabrousness of synthetic accidence 'to all 
 but the smallest extent, and in case to elaborate a syn- 
 tax equally suitable for verse and prose, for exposition 
 and narrative, for oratory and for argument. More- 
 over it was, as I have at least endeavoured to show, 
 probably England which provided the groundwork 
 
 3p
 
 418 EUEOPEAX LITER ATUEE, 1100-1300. 
 
 and first literary treatment, it was certainly England 
 that provided the sulyect, of the largest, the most en- 
 during, the most varied single division of mediaeval 
 work ; while the Isle of Ikitain furnished at least its 
 quota to the general literature of Europe other than 
 vernaciilar. 
 
 Other countries, though their languages were not 
 conquering their conqueror as English was doing with 
 French, also displayed sufficient individuality in deal- 
 ing 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 be- 
 gan, 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. Tlie children of the vatcs 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 exer- 
 cised upon Italy the same effect that was exercised in 
 Germany by the romances of Arthur and of Antiquity,
 
 CONCLUSION. 419 
 
 and by the trouvhre 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 how- 
 ever, 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 Michard 
 Cmur 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 tlie 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
 
 420 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 Eomance and the purely Teutonic 
 tongues, which made it a sort of natural interpreter 
 between them ; perhaps must of all that inexplicable 
 but undeniable fornuil talent of the French for 
 literature, which is as undeniable and as inexjDlicable 
 as the less formal senius of the Eniiiish, — 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 tu 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
 
 CONCLUSION. 421 
 
 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 Provencal 
 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 Provencals, 
 she could or would have inspired them with more 
 varied kinds of literature tlian 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, tlie 
 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 tlie 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 llomance is 
 most evident — the spirit which, to those who have
 
 422 EUROPEAN LITERATURE, 1100-1300. 
 
 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 gcstc 
 show the way, anticipating in time, if not quite 
 equalling in intensity, the Sagas and the Nihchingen- 
 lied. There is sometimes faintly mingled with this 
 (as in the gabz of the Voyage a Constantinohlc, and the 
 exploits of Eainoart with the Unci) the spirit, half 
 rough, half sly, of jesting, which by -and -by takes 
 shape in the fablianoi. 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 Ira:, and the 
 sermons of St Francis were equally natural expres- 
 sions, 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 liiwle. There is no 
 lack of knowledge and none of inquiry ; though in 
 embarking on the enormous ocean of ignorance, it is
 
 CONCLUSION. 423 
 
 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 adopt- 
 ing 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 Pomance 
 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 Poman, 
 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 medi;eval mind. In its l)roadest 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, iu its most
 
 424 EUllOPEAN LITEKATURE, 1100-1300, 
 
 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 llomance, and to 
 mediaeval 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 medieeval 
 poetry, very commonly in mediaeval 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 Si7' 
 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
 
 CONCLUSION. 425 
 
 of letters — no Chaucer nor Dante, no Froissart even, 
 at best for certainties a Villehardouin and a AYilliam 
 of Lorris, a "Wolfram and a "Walther, witli shadowy 
 creatures of speculation like the authors of the p;reat 
 romances. But it produced some of the greatest mat- 
 ter, and some of not the least delightful handlings of 
 matter, in book-history. And it is everywhere dis- 
 tinguished, first, by the adventurous fecundity, of its 
 experiments in form and kind, secondl}', by the pres- 
 ence 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, 
 j)atterns, form : they found passion and spirit, with not 
 seldom positive story-subject as well. AMien we come 
 upon some nueva niaestria, as the old Spanish poet 
 called it, some cunning trick of fornix some craftsman- 
 like adjustment of style and kind to literary ])urposes, 
 we shall generally find that it w^as invented in France. 
 But we know that no Frenchman could have written 
 the Dies Tree ; and though we recognise French as at 
 home in the Kose-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. 
 
 AWmt, Peter, 406. 
 
 Abelaifl. 14, 17. 
 
 Adam de la Halle, 316-321. 
 
 Adam of St Victor, 8, 10. 
 
 Alberic of BesaiKjon. 157. 
 
 Albertus jMacnmSj 18. 
 
 Alcamo, Ciullo d', 387. 
 
 Alexander Hales, 18. 
 
 Alexander, romances of, chap. iv. 
 
 passim. 
 Alfonso X., 409, 410. 
 AUscans, 75 sq. 
 "Alison," 210, 211. 
 Amalricans, the, 20 note. 
 Amanry de Bene, 18. 
 Ancona, Professor d', 387. 
 A-}icren Riwle, the, 198-201. 
 Anna Comnena, 378. 
 Anselni, 14, 17. 
 Apollonius, the Spanish, 407. 
 Aquinas, Tlionias, 18. 
 "Arch-poet," tlie, 5. 
 Arnold, Matthew, 55, 278. 
 Ascham, 128. 
 
 Axicassin et Nicolette, 330-332. 
 Audefroy le Bastard, 275. 
 Aue, Hartniann von, 246-251. 
 
 Bacon, Koger, IS. 
 Bartsch, HerrK.,270. 
 Bastart de Jiouillon, le, 57. 
 Baudouin de Sehourc, 32 sq. 
 Beanvais, Vincent of, 18. 
 Bede, 90. 
 
 Bedicr, M., 276. 
 
 Benoit de Sainte-More, 177 sq. 
 
 Beoicidf, 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, i38. 
 
 Brunetiere, M. F., 55, 83. 
 
 Brut. See Geottrey of Moumoutli, 
 
 Lavanion, and Wace. 
 Budge, Mr Wallis, 152. 
 
 Callisthenes, the Pseudo-, 152 sq. 
 Caradoc of Lancarvan, 91. 
 Canniiia Jiurana, 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. 
 Condorcft, 15. 
 
 (UmqxiHc de ( 'onstarUinoble, 323. 
 dontrasto, 387, 389. 
 Conybeare, 25. 
 Coniu, l*rofcssor, 402. 
 Couronnemeiit L<»js, le, 60 «'/. 
 Courthope, Mr, 140. 
 Cronica, General, 410. 
 Curialitim, Dc Nwjis, 141.
 
 428 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Dares Plirygius, 171 sq. and chap. 
 
 iv. jiasaim. 
 David of Dinaut, 18. 
 Dictys Creteiisis, 169 sq. and cli.ip. 
 
 iv. passim. 
 Dies Irce, the, 9, 10. 
 Dimlop, 28, 13-2. 
 
 Eyil's Saga, 3o0, 360. 
 JEpistolce Obscuroriim Virorum, 16. 
 Epopees Frctn^aises, les, 25 sq, 
 Erigena, John Scotus, 17. 
 Eschenbach, Wolfram von. 126, 
 
 251-256. 
 "Eternal Gospel," the, 18. 
 Exeter, Joseph of, 3. 
 Eyrhyggja Saga, 350. 
 
 Flora, Joachim of. 18. 
 Fronde, Mr J. A.^ 55. 
 
 Gautier, M. Leon, 25. 
 
 Genesis and Exodus, 202. 
 
 Geoffrey, Gaimar, 98. 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 94 sq. and 
 
 chaji. iii. jiassim. 
 Geotfroy de Villehardouin, 323 sq. 
 Gerard de Roussillon, 44. 
 Gielee, Jacquemart, 291, 
 Gildas, 91. 
 
 Gloucester, Kohert of, 204 sq. 
 Golias and Goliardic Poems, 4 sq. 
 Gottfried von Htrasburg, 242-246. 
 Gran Co7iquesta 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. 
 Ilavelok the Dane, 207, 208. 
 Haureau, De la I'hilosophie Scol- 
 
 astique, 14 note, 19. 
 Ileimskringla, 344, 361. 
 Heinrich von Veldeke, 242. 
 Henryson, 150, 272. 
 Ilistoria de Prailiis, 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., 15L 
 Joseph of Exeter, 3. 
 Jus de la Fcuillie, 318-321. 
 
 Iviilbing, Dr, 166 note. 
 Kunig Rother, 237= 
 Kormak's Saqa, 347, 360. 
 Kudrun, 233-236. 
 
 Lambert li Tors, 157 sq. 
 Lamiarecht. 156. 
 Lang, Mr, 331. 
 Lanson, M., 83. 
 Laxdtda Saqa, 349. 
 Layamon, 98, 99, 192-196. 
 Lombard, Peter, 17. 
 Lorris, William of. 300 sq. 
 Loth, M., 143. 
 
 Mahinogio7i, the, 105. 
 
 Madden, Sir Frederic, 97. 
 
 Malory, Sir T.. 104 and chap. iii. 
 
 passim. 
 Manasses, 379. 
 Map or Mapes, Walter. 4 sq., 58, 
 
 100 sg. ■ 
 Marcabrun, 368 
 
 Marie de France, 285. 286, 311. 
 Martin, Herr, 290. 
 Meon, 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. 
 Nihelungenlied. 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.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 429 
 
 Orm and tlie Onnulum. 196-198. 
 Oiol and the Sty lit Ing ale, the, 203. 
 
 Paris, M. Gaston, '£), 102 note, 'Jl-J 
 
 note. 
 Paris, M. Paulin, 25, 97, 270. 
 Pater, Mr. 331. 
 Peacock, 142, 279. 
 Peter Lombard, 17. 
 Peter the Spaniard, 18. 
 Prantl, Geschichte dtr Logik, 14 
 
 note, 19. 
 Proverbs, early English, 203. 
 
 Qiiintus Curtius, 155. 
 
 Raymond LuUy; 18. 
 liaynaud, M. G., 270. 
 Eenan, M., 201. 
 Reynard the Fox, 286 S'/. 
 Rhys, Professor, 136 sq. 
 Roliert of Gloucester, 204 sq. 
 Robin et Marion, 317, 318. 
 Roland, Chanson de, 29 sq. 
 Romanco of the Rose, the, 
 
 299 
 
 sq. 
 
 Romancero Frangais, 27. 
 Romanzen und Paslourellcn, 270. 
 Roscelliu, 17. 
 Ruteboeuf, 312, 313. 
 
 Sagas, 339 sq. 
 
 Santa Maria Egipciaca, 407, 408. 
 
 Scotus Erigena, 17. 
 
 Scotus, John Duns, 18. 
 
 Siete Partidas, 409. 
 
 Specimens of Lijric Poetry, 209 sq. 
 
 Strashurg, Gottfried von,' 243-246. 
 
 St Victor, Adam of, 8. 
 
 Sully, Maurice de, 323. 
 
 Swinburne, Mr, 3.J1, 367. 370. 
 
 'Ilieodorus Prodromus, 37!*. 
 Thomas of Celano, P. 
 'J'homas of Kent, 158. 
 Thorns, Mr, 282. " 
 Ticknor, Mr, 393 sq. 
 Todi, Jacoiiiiiie da, 8. 
 Tressan, Comte <le, 28. 
 Tristram, Sir, 116. 
 Troubadours, the, 362 sq. 
 Troy, the Tale of, 167 sq. 
 Troves, Chrestien de, 101 sq. 
 Turi)in, Arelibislioj), 29. 
 Tyre, William of, 327. 
 Tyrwhitt, 25. 
 
 Valerius, Julius, 152 sq. 
 Vcldeke, H. von, 242. 
 Vigfusson, Dr, 267. 
 Villehardouin, G. de, 323 sq. 
 Vincent of Beauvais, 18. 
 Vogelweide, Walther von der, 256- 
 
 261. 
 Vol.'iunfja Saga, 228, 229. 
 
 Wace, 98. 
 
 Walter, Archdeacon of Oxfonl. 
 
 See Geofl'rey of Monmouth. 
 Walter of Cliatillon, 15.5. 
 ^\^'llther von der Vogelweide, 256- 
 
 2'il. 
 Ward, Mr, 164. 
 
 Warton's History of Pottry, 139. 
 Weber, 163. 
 
 William IX., of Poitiers, 364. 
 William of Tyre, 327. 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 126, 251- 
 
 256. 
 Wright, Thomas, 209. 
 
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