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diff --git a/37342-8.txt b/37342-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..82864f2 --- /dev/null +++ b/37342-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5476 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Medieval English Literature, by William Paton Ker + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Medieval English Literature + Home University of Modern Knowledge #43 + +Author: William Paton Ker + +Release Date: September 7, 2011 [EBook #37342] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MEDIEVAL ENGLISH LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Watson, Stephen Hutcheson, Mark Akrigg +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at +http://www.pgdpcanada.net + + + + + + + + + + + _THE HOME UNIVERSITY LIBRARY + OF MODERN KNOWLEDGE_ + + 43 + + MEDIEVAL + ENGLISH LITERATURE + + _EDITORS OF + The Home University Library + of Modern Knowledge_ + + GILBERT MURRAY, O.M., D.C.L., F.B.A. + G. N. CLARK, LL.D., F.B.A. + G. R. DE BEER, D.SC., F.R.S. + + _United States_ + + JOHN FULTON, M.D., PH.D. + HOWARD MUMFORD JONES, LITT.D. + WILLIAM L. LANGER, PH.D. + + + + + _Medieval + English Literature_ + + + W. P. KER + + + _Geoffrey Cumberlege_ + OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS + LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO + + +_First published in_ 1912, _and reprinted in_ 1925, 1926, 1928 (_twice_), + 1932, _and_ 1942 + _Reset in_ 1945 _and reprinted in_ 1948 + + + PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN + + + + + CONTENTS + + + CHAP. PAGE + I INTRODUCTION 7 + II THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 16 + III THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD (1150-1500) 43 + IV THE ROMANCES 76 + V SONGS AND BALLADS 107 + VI COMIC POETRY 124 + VII ALLEGORY 137 + VIII SERMONS AND HISTORIES, IN VERSE AND PROSE 150 + IX CHAUCER 163 + NOTE ON BOOKS 187 + SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE _by_ R. W. CHAMBERS 188 + INDEX 190 + + + + + CHAPTER I + INTRODUCTION + + +Readers are drawn to medieval literature in many different ways, and it +is hardly possible to describe all the attractions and all the approaches +by which they enter on this ground. Students of history have to learn the +languages of the nations with whose history they are concerned, and to +read the chief books in those languages, if they wish to understand +rightly the ideas, purposes and temper of the past ages. Sometimes the +study of early literature has been instigated by religious or +controversial motives, as when the Anglo-Saxon homilies were taken up and +edited and interpreted in support of the Reformation. Sometimes it is +mere curiosity that leads to investigation of old literature--a wish to +find out the meaning of what looks at first difficult and mysterious. +Curiosity of this sort, however, is seldom found unmixed; there are +generally all sorts of vague associations and interests combining to lead +the explorer on. It has often been observed that a love of Gothic +architecture, or of medieval art in general, goes along with, and helps, +the study of medieval poetry. Chatterton's old English reading and his +imitations of old English verse were inspired by the Church of St. Mary +Redcliffe at Bristol. The lives of Horace Walpole, of Thomas Warton, of +Sir Walter Scott, and many others show how medieval literary studies may +be nourished along with other kindred antiquarian tastes. + +Sometimes, instead of beginning in historical or antiquarian interests, +or in a liking for the fashions of the Middle Ages in general, it happens +that a love of medieval literature has its rise in one particular author, +e.g. Dante or Sir Thomas Malory. The book, the _Divina Commedia_ or _Le +Morte d'Arthur_, is taken up, it may be, casually, with no very distinct +idea or purpose, and then it is found to be engrossing and +captivating--what is often rightly called 'a revelation of a new world'. +For a long time this is enough in itself; the reader is content with +Dante or with the _Morte d'Arthur_. But it may occur to him to ask about +'the French book' from which Malory got his adventures of the Knights of +King Arthur; he may want to know how the legend of the Grail came to be +mixed up with the romances of the Round Table; and so he will be drawn +on, trying to find out as much as possible and plunging deeper and deeper +into the Middle Ages. The same kind of thing happens to the reader of +Dante; Dante is found all through his poem acknowledging obligations to +earlier writers; he is not alone or independent in his thought and his +poetry; and so it becomes an interesting thing to go further back and to +know something about the older poets and moralists, and the earlier +medieval world in general, before it was all summed up and recorded in +the imagination of the Divine Comedy. Examples of this way of reading may +be found in the works of Ruskin and in Matthew Arnold. Matthew Arnold, +rather late in his life (in the introductory essay to T. H. Ward's +_English Poets_), shows that he has been reading some old French authors. +He does not begin with old French when he is young; evidently he was +brought to it in working back from the better known poets, Dante and +Chaucer. Ruskin's old French quotations are also rather late in the +series of his writings; it was in his Oxford lectures, partly published +in _Fors Clavigera_, that he dealt with _The Romance of the Rose_, and +used it to illustrate whatever else was in his mind at the time. + +Thus it is obvious that any one who sets out to write about English +literature in the Middle Ages will find himself addressing an audience +which is not at all in agreement with regard to the subject. Some will +probably be historical in their tastes, and will seek, in literature, for +information about manners and customs, fashions of opinion, 'typical +developments' in the history of culture or education. Others may be on +the look-out for stories, for the charm of romance which is sometimes +thought to belong peculiarly to the Middle Ages, and some, with ambitions +of their own, may ask for themes that can be used and adapted in modern +forms, as the Nibelung story has been used by Wagner and William Morris +and many others; perhaps for mere suggestions of plots and scenery, to be +employed more freely, as in Morris's prose romances, for example. Others, +starting from one favourite author--Dante or Chaucer or Malory--will try +to place what they already know in its right relation to all its +surroundings--by working, for instance, at the history of religious +poetry, or the different kinds of story-telling. It is not easy to write +for all these and for other different tastes as well. But it is not a +hopeless business, so long as there is some sort of interest to begin +with, even if it be only a general vague curiosity about an unknown +subject. + +There are many prejudices against the Middle Ages; the name itself was +originally an expression of contempt; it means the interval of darkness +between the ruin of ancient classical culture and the modern revival of +learning--a time supposed to be full of ignorance, superstition and bad +taste, an object of loathing to well-educated persons. As an example of +this sort of opinion about the Middle Ages, one may take what Bentham +says of our 'barbarian ancestors'--'few of whom could so much as read, +and those few had nothing before them that was worth the reading'. 'When +from their ordinary occupation, their order of the day, the cutting of +one another's throats, or those of Welshmen, Scotchmen or Irishmen, they +could steal now and then a holiday, how did they employ it? In cutting +Frenchmen's throats in order to get their money: this was active +virtue:--leaving Frenchmen's throats uncut was indolence, slumber, +inglorious ease.' + +On the other hand, the Middle Ages have been glorified by many writers; +'the Age of Chivalry', the 'Ages of Faith' have often been contrasted +with the hardness of the age of enlightenment, rationalism, and material +progress; they are thought of as full of colour, variety, romance of all +sorts, while modern civilization is represented as comparatively dull, +monotonous and unpicturesque. This kind of view has so far prevailed, +even among people who do not go to any extremes, and who are not +excessively enthusiastic or romantic, that the term 'Gothic', which used +to be a term of contempt for the Middle Ages, has entirely lost its +scornful associations. 'Gothic' was originally an abusive name, like +'Vandalism'; it meant the same thing as 'barbarian'. But while +'Vandalism' has kept its bad meaning, 'Gothic' has lost it. It does not +now mean 'barbarous', and if it still means 'unclassical' it does not +imply that what is 'unclassical' must be wrong. It is possible now to +think of the Middle Ages and their literature without prejudice on the +one side or the other. As no one now thinks of despising Gothic +architecture simply because it is not Greek, so the books of the Middle +Ages may be read in a spirit of fairness by those who will take the +trouble to understand their language; they may be appreciated for what +they really are; their goodness or badness is not now determined merely +by comparison with the work of other times in which the standards and +ideals of excellence were not the same. + +The language is a difficulty. The older English books are written in the +language which is commonly called Anglo-Saxon; this is certainly not one +of the most difficult, but no language is really easy to learn. +Anglo-Saxon poetry, besides, has a peculiar vocabulary and strange forms +of expression. The poetical books are not to be read without a great deal +of application; they cannot be rushed. + +Later, when the language has changed into what is technically called +Middle English--say, in the thirteenth century--things are in many ways +no better. It is true that the language is nearer to modern English; it +is true also that the language of the poetical books is generally much +simpler and nearer that of ordinary prose than was the language of the +Anglo-Saxon poets. But on the other hand, while Anglo-Saxon literature is +practically all in one language, Middle English is really not a language +at all, but a great number of different tongues, belonging to different +parts of the country. And not only does the language of Yorkshire differ +from that of Kent, or Dorset, or London, or Lancashire, but within the +same district each author spells as he pleases, and the man who makes a +copy of his book also spells as he pleases, and mixes up his own local +and personal varieties with those of the original author. There is +besides an enormously greater amount of written matter extant in Middle +English than in Anglo-Saxon, and this, coming from all parts of the +country, is full of all varieties of odd words. The vocabulary of Middle +English, with its many French and Danish words, its many words belonging +to one region and not to another, is, in some ways, more difficult than +that of Anglo-Saxon. + +But luckily it is not hard, in spite of all these hindrances, to make a +fair beginning with the old languages--in Anglo-Saxon, for example, with +Sweet's _Primer_ and _Reader_, in Middle English with Chaucer or _Piers +Plowman_. + +The difference in language between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English +corresponds to a division in the history of literature. Anglo-Saxon +literature is different from that which follows it, not merely in its +grammar and dictionary, but in many of its ideas and fashions, +particularly in its fashion of poetry. The difference may be expressed in +this way, that while the older English literature is mainly English, the +literature after the eleventh century is largely dependent on France; +France from 1100 to 1400 is the chief source of ideas, culture, +imagination, stories, and forms of verse. It is sometimes thought that +this was the result of the Norman Conquest, but that is not the proper +explanation of what happened, either in language or in literature. For +the same kind of thing happened in other countries which were not +conquered by the Normans or by any other people speaking French. The +history of the German language and of German literature in the Middle +Ages corresponds in many things to the history of English. The name +Middle English was invented by a German philologist (Grimm), who found in +English the same stages of development as in German; Anglo-Saxon +corresponds to Old German in its inflexions; Middle English is like +Middle German. The change, in both languages, is a change from one kind +of inflexion to another. In the 'Old' stage (say, about the year 900) the +inflexions have various clearly pronounced vowels in them; in the +'Middle' stage (about 1200) the terminations of words have come to be +pronounced less distinctly, and where there is inflexion it shows most +commonly one vowel, written _e_, where the 'Old' form might have _a_ or +_o_ or _u_. Changes of this kind had begun in England before the Norman +Conquest, and would have gone on as they did in Germany if there had been +no Norman Conquest at all. The French and the French language had nothing +to do with it. + +Where the French were really important was in their ideas and in the +forms of their poetry; they made their influence felt through these in +all Western Christendom, in Italy, in Denmark, and even more strongly in +Germany than in England. Indeed it might be said that the Norman Conquest +made it less easy for the English than it was for the Germans to employ +the French ideas when they were writing books of their own in their own +language. The French influence was too strong in England; the native +language was discouraged; many Englishmen wrote their books in French, +instead of making English adaptations from the French. The Germans, who +were independent politically, were not tempted in the same way as the +English, and in many respects they were more successful than the English +as translators from the French, as adapters of French 'motives' and +ideas. But whatever the differences might be between one nation and +another, it is certain that after 1100 French ideas were appreciated in +all the countries of Europe, in such a way as to make France the +principal source of enlightenment and entertainment everywhere; and the +intellectual predominance of France is what most of all distinguishes the +later medieval from the earlier, that is, from the Anglo-Saxon period, in +the history of English literature. + +The leadership of France in the literature of Europe may be dated as +beginning about 1100, which is the time of the First Crusade and of many +great changes in the life of Christendom. About 1100 there is an end of +one great historical period, which began with what is called the +Wandering of the German nations, and their settlement in various parts of +the world. The Norman Conquest of England, it has been said, is the last +of the movements in the wandering of the nations. Goths and Vandals, +Franks, Burgundians, Lombards, Angles, Jutes and Saxons, Danes and +Northmen, had all had their times of adventure, exploration, conquest and +settlement. One great event in this wandering was the establishment of +the Norwegian settlers in France, the foundation of Normandy; and the +expeditions of the Normans--to Italy as well as to England--were nearly +the last which were conducted in the old style. After the Norman Conquest +there are new sorts of adventure, which are represented in Chaucer's +Knight and Squire--the one a Crusader, or Knight errant, the other (his +son) engaged in a more modern sort of warfare, England against France, +nation against nation. + +The two forms of the English language, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, +and the two periods of medieval English literature, correspond to the two +historical periods of which one ends and the other begins about 1100, at +the date of the First Crusade. Anglo-Saxon literature belongs to the +older world; Anglo-Saxon poetry goes back to very early times and keeps a +tradition which had come down from ancient days when the English were +still a Continental German tribe. Middle English literature is cut off +from Anglo-Saxon, the Anglo-Saxon stories are forgotten, and though the +old alliterative verse is kept, as late as the sixteenth century, it is +in a new form with a new tune in it; while instead of being the one great +instrument of poetry it has to compete with rhyming couplets and stanzas +of different measure; it is hard put to it by the rhymes of France. + + + + + CHAPTER II + THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD + + +In dealing with Anglo-Saxon literature it is well to remember first of +all that comparatively little of it has been preserved; we cannot be +sure, either, that the best things have been preserved, in the poetry +especially. Anglo-Saxon poetry was being made, we know, for at least five +hundred years. What now exists is found, chiefly, in four manuscript +volumes,[1] which have been saved, more or less accidentally, from all +sorts of dangers. No one can say what has been lost. Many manuscripts, as +good as any of these, may have been sold as old parchment, or given to +the children to cut up into tails for kites. One Anglo-Saxon poem, +_Waldere_, is known from two fragments of it which were discovered in the +binding of a book in Copenhagen. Two other poems were fortunately copied +and published about two hundred years ago by two famous antiquaries; the +original manuscripts have disappeared since then. Who can tell how many +manuscripts have disappeared without being copied? The obvious conclusion +is that we can speak about what we know, but not as if we knew everything +about Anglo-Saxon poetry. + +With the prose it is rather different. The prose translations due to King +Alfred are preserved; so is the English Chronicle; so are a fair number +of religious works, the homilies of Ælfric and others; it does not seem +likely from what we know of the conditions of authorship in those times +that any prose work of any notable or original value has disappeared. +With the poetry, on the other hand, every fresh discovery--like that of +the bookbinding fragments already mentioned--makes one feel that the +extent of Anglo-Saxon poetry is unknown. Anything may turn up. We cannot +say what subjects were not treated by Anglo-Saxon poets. It is certain +that many good stories were known to them which are not found in any of +the extant manuscripts. + +The contents of Anglo-Saxon literature may be divided into two sections, +one belonging to the English as a Teutonic people who inherited along +with their language a form of poetry and a number of stories which have +nothing to do with Roman civilization; the other derived from Latin and +turning into English the knowledge which was common to the whole of +Europe. + +The English in the beginning--Angles and Saxons--were heathen Germans who +took part in the great movement called the Wandering of the Nations--who +left their homes and emigrated to lands belonging to the Roman empire, +and made slaves of the people they found there. They were barbarians; the +civilized inhabitants of Britain, when the English appeared there, +thought of them as horrible savages. They were as bad and detestable as +the Red Indians were to the Colonists in America long afterwards. + +But we know that the early English are not to be judged entirely by the +popular opinion of the Britons whom they harried and enslaved, any more +than the English of Queen Elizabeth's time are to be thought of simply +according to the Spanish ideas about Sir Francis Drake. There were +centuries of an old civilization behind them when they settled in +Britain; what it was like is shown partially in the work of the Bronze +and the early Iron Age in the countries from which the English came. The +_Germania_ of Tacitus tells more, and more still is to be learned from +the remains of the old poetry. + +Tacitus was not quite impartial in his account of the Germans; he used +them as examples to point a moral against the vices of Rome; the German, +in his account, is something like the 'noble savage' who was idealized by +later philosophers in order to chastise the faults of sophisticated +modern life. But Tacitus, though he might have been rather inclined to +favour the Germans, was mainly a scientific observer who wished to find +out the truth about them, and to write a clear description of their +manners and customs. One of the proofs of his success is the agreement +between his _Germania_ and the pictures of life composed by the people of +that race themselves in their epic poetry. + +The case of the early English is very like that of the Danes and Northmen +four or five hundred years later. The Anglo-Saxons thought and wrote of +the Danes almost exactly as the Britons had thought of their Saxon +enemies. The English had to suffer from the Danish pirates what the +Britons had suffered from the English; they cursed the Danes as their own +ancestors had been cursed by the Britons; the invaders were utterly +detestable and fiendish men of blood. But luckily we have some other +information about those pirates. From the Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic +historians, and from some parts of the old Northern poetry, there may be +formed a different idea about the character and domestic manners of the +men who made themselves so unpleasant in their visits to the English and +the neighbouring coasts. The pirates at home were peaceful country +gentlemen, leading respectable and beneficent lives among their poorer +neighbours. The Icelandic histories--including the history of Norway for +three or four centuries--may be consulted for the domestic life of the +people who made so bad a name for themselves as plunderers abroad. They +appear there, several varieties of them, as members of a reasonable, +honourable community, which could have given many lessons of civilization +to England or France many centuries later. But the strangest and most +convincing evidence about the domestic manners of the Northmen is found +in English, and is written by King Alfred himself. King Alfred had many +foreigners in his service, and one of them was a Norwegian gentleman from +the far North, named Ohthere (or Ottárr, as it would be in the Norse +tongue rather later than King Alfred's time). How he came into the King's +service is not known, but there are other accounts of similar cases which +show how easy it was for Northmen of ability to make their way in the +world through the patronage of kings. Ohthere belonged exactly to the +class from which the most daring and successful rovers came. He was a +gentleman of good position at home in Halogaland (now called Helgeland in +the north of Norway), a landowner with various interests, attending to +his crops, making a good deal out of trade with the Finns and Lapps; and +besides that a navigator, the first who rounded the North Cape and sailed +into the White Sea. His narrative, which is given by Alfred as an +addition to his translation of Orosius, makes a pleasant and amusing +contrast to the history of the Danish wars, which also may have been +partly written by King Alfred himself for their proper place in the +English Chronicle. + +As the Icelandic sagas and Ohthere's narrative and other documents make +it easy to correct the prejudiced and partial opinions of the English +about the Danes, so the opinions of the Britons about the Saxons are +corrected, though the evidence is not by any means so clear. The Angles +and Saxons, like the Danes and Northmen later--like Sir Francis Drake, or +like Ulysses, we might say--were occasionally pirates, but not restricted +to that profession. They had many other things to do and think about. +Before everything, they belonged to the great national system which +Tacitus calls _Germania_--which was never politically united, even in the +loosest way, but which nevertheless was a unity, conscious of its +separation from all the foreigners whom it called, in a comprehensive +manner, Welsh. In England the Welsh are the Cambro-Britons; in Germany +Welsh means sometimes French, sometimes Italian--a meaning preserved in +the name 'walnut' (or 'walsh-note', as it is in Chaucer)--the 'Italian +nut'. Those who are not Welsh are 'Teutonic'--which is not a mere modern +pedantic name, but is used by old writers in the same way as by modern +philologists, and applied to High or Low Dutch indifferently, and also to +English. But the unity of _Germania_--the community of sentiment among +the early German nations--does not need to be proved by such philological +notes as the opposition of 'Dutch' and 'Welsh'. It is proved by its own +most valuable results, by its own 'poetical works'--the heroic legends +which were held in common by all the nations of _Germania_. If any one +were to ask, 'What does the old English literature _prove_?' the answer +would be ready enough. It proves that the Germanic nations had a +reciprocal free trade in subjects for epic poems. They were generally +free from local jealousy about heroes. Instead of a natural rivalry among +Goths, Burgundians and the rest, the early poets seem to have had a +liking for heroes not of their own nation, so long as they were members +of one of the German tribes. (The Huns, it may be here remarked, are +counted as Germans; Attila is not thought of as a barbarian.) The great +example of this common right in heroes is Sigfred, Sigurd the Volsung, +Siegfried of the _Nibelungenlied_. His original stock and race is of no +particular interest to any one; he is a hero everywhere, and everywhere +he is thought of as belonging, in some way or other, to the people who +sing about him. This glory of Sigurd or Siegfried is different from the +later popularity of King Arthur or of Charlemagne in countries outside of +Britain or France. Arthur and Charlemagne are adopted in many places as +favourite heroes without any particular thought of their nationality, in +much the same way as Alexander the Great was celebrated everywhere from +pure love of adventurous stories. But Siegfried or Sigurd, whether in +High or Low Germany, or Norway or Iceland, is always at home. He is not +indeed a national champion, like the Cid in Spain or the Wallace in +Scotland, but everywhere he is thought of, apart from any local +attachment, as the hero of the race. + +One of the old English poems called _Widsith_ (the Far Traveller) is an +epitome of the heroic poetry of _Germania_, and a clear proof of the +common interest taken in all the heroes. The theme of the poem is the +wandering of a poet, who makes his way to the courts of the most famous +kings: Ermanaric the Goth, Gundahari the Burgundian, Alboin the Lombard, +and many more. The poem is a kind of _fantasia_, intended to call up, by +allusion, the personages of the most famous stories; it is not an epic +poem, but it plays with some of the plots of heroic poetry familiar +throughout the whole Teutonic region. Ermanaric and Gundahari, here +called Eormanric and Guthhere, are renowned in the old Scandinavian +poetry, and the old High German. Guthhere is one of the personages in the +poem of _Waldere_; what is Guthhere in English is Gunnar in Norse, +Gunther in German--the Gunther of the _Nibelungenlied_. Offa comes into +Widsith's record, an English king; but he has no particular mark or +eminence or attraction to distinguish him in the poet's favour from the +Goth or the Lombard; he is king of 'Ongle', the original Anglia to the +south of Jutland, and there is no room for doubt that the English when +they lived there and when they invaded Britain had the stories of all the +Teutonic heroes at their command to occupy their minds, if they chose to +listen to the lay of the minstrel. What they got from their minstrels was +a number of stories about all the famous men of the Teutonic +race--stories chanted in rhythmical verse and noble diction, presenting +tragic themes and pointing the moral of heroism. + +Of this old poetry there remains one work nearly complete. _Beowulf_, +because it is extant, has sometimes been over-valued, as if it were the +work of an English Homer. But it was not preserved as the _Iliad_ was, by +the unanimous judgement of all the people through successive generations. +It must have been of some importance at one time, or it would not have +been copied out fair as a handsome book for the library of some +gentleman. But many trashy things have been equally honoured in +gentlemen's libraries, and it cannot be shown that _Beowulf_ was nearly +the best of its class. It was preserved by an accident; it has no right +to the place of the most illustrious Anglo-Saxon epic poem. The story is +commonplace and the plan is feeble. But there are some qualities in it +which make it (accidentally or not, it hardly matters) the best worth +studying of all the Anglo-Saxon poems. It is the largest extant piece in +any old Teutonic language dealing poetically with native Teutonic +subjects. It is the largest and fullest picture of life in the order to +which it belongs; the only thing that shows incontestably the power of +the old heroic poetry to deal on a fairly large scale with subjects taken +from the national tradition. The impression left by _Beowulf_, when the +carping critic has done his worst, is that of a noble manner of life, of +courtesy and freedom, with the dignity of tragedy attending it, even +though the poet fails, or does not attempt, to work out fully any proper +tragic theme of his own. + +There is a very curious likeness in many details between _Beowulf_ and +the _Odyssey_; but quite apart from the details there is a real likeness +between them in their 'criticism of life'--i.e. in their exhibition of +human motives and their implied or expressed opinions about human +conduct. There is the same likeness between the _Odyssey_ and the best of +the Icelandic Sagas--particularly the _Story of Burnt Njal_; and the +lasting virtue of _Beowulf_ is that it is bred in the same sort of world +as theirs. It is not so much the valour and devotion of the hero; it is +the conversation of the hosts and guests in the King's hall, the play of +serious and gentle moods in the minds of the freeborn, that gives its +character to the poem. _Beowulf_, through its rendering of noble manners, +its picture of good society, adds something distinct and unforgettable to +the records of the past. There is life in it, and a sort of life which +would be impossible without centuries of training, of what Spenser called +'vertuous and gentle discipline'. + +_Beowulf_ is worth studying, among other reasons, because it brings out +one great difference between the earlier and later medieval poetry, +between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English taste in fiction. _Beowulf_ is a +tale of adventure; the incidents in it are such as may be found in +hundreds of other stories. Beowulf himself, the hero, is a champion and a +slayer of monsters. He hears that the King of the Danes is plagued in his +house by the visits of an ogre, who night after night comes and carries +off one of the King's men. He goes on a visit to Denmark, sits up for the +ogre, fights with him and mortally wounds him. That does not end the +business, for the ogre's mother comes to revenge her son, and Beowulf has +a second fight and kills her too, and is thanked and goes home again. +Many years afterwards when he is king in his own country, Gautland (which +is part of modern Sweden), a fiery dragon is accidentally stirred up from +a long sleep and makes itself a pest to the country. Beowulf goes to +attack the dragon, fights and wins, but is himself killed by the poison +of the dragon. The poem ends with his funeral. So told, in abstract, it +is not a particularly interesting story. Told in the same bald way, the +story of Theseus or of Hercules would still have much more in it; there +are many more adventures than this in later romances like _Sir Bevis of +Southampton_ or _Sir Huon of Bordeaux_. What makes the poem of _Beowulf_ +really interesting, and different from the later romances, is that it is +full of all sorts of references and allusions to great events, to the +fortunes of kings and nations, which seem to come in naturally, as if the +author had in his mind the whole history of all the people who were in +any way connected with Beowulf, and could not keep his knowledge from +showing itself. There is an historical background. In romances, and also +in popular tales, you may get the same sort of adventures as in +_Beowulf_, but they are told in quite a different way. They have nothing +to do with reality. In _Beowulf_, the historical allusions are so many, +and given with such a conviction of their importance and their truth, +that they draw away the attention from the main events of the story--the +fights with the ogre Grendel and his mother, and the killing of the +dragon. This is one of the faults of the poem. The story is rather thin +and poor. But in another way those distracting allusions to things apart +from the chief story make up for their want of proportion. They give the +impression of reality and weight; the story is not in the air, or in a +fabulous country like that of Spenser's _Faerie Queene_; it is part of +the solid world. It would be difficult to find anything like this in +later medieval romance. It is this, chiefly, that makes _Beowulf_ a true +_epic_ poem--that is, a narrative poem of the most stately and serious +kind. + +The history in it is not English history; the personages in it are Danes, +Gauts, and Swedes. One of them, Hygelac, the king whom Beowulf succeeded, +is identified with a king named by the Frankish historian Gregory of +Tours; the date is about A.D. 515. The epic poem of _Beowulf_ has its +source pretty far back, in the history of countries not very closely +related to England. Yet the English hearers of the poem were expected to +follow the allusions, and to be interested in the names and histories of +Swedish, Gautish, and Danish kings. As if that was not enough, there is a +story within the story--a poem of adventure is chanted by a minstrel at +the Danish Court, and the scene of this poem is in Friesland. There is no +doubt that it was a favourite subject, for the Frisian story is mentioned +in the poem of Widsith, the Traveller; and more than that, there is an +independent version of it among the few remains of Anglo-Saxon heroic +poetry--_The Fight at Finnesburh_. Those who listened to heroic songs in +England seem to have had no peculiar liking for English subjects. Their +heroes belong to _Germania_. The same thing is found in Norway and +Iceland, where the favourite hero is Sigurd. His story, the story of the +Volsungs and Niblungs, comes from Germany. In _Beowulf_ there is a +reference to it--not to Sigfred himself, but to his father Sigemund. +Everywhere and in every possible way the old heroic poets seem to escape +from the particular nation to which they belong, and to look for their +subjects in some other part of the Teutonic system. In some cases, +doubtless, this might be due to the same kind of romantic taste as led +later authors to place their stories in Greece, or Babylon, or anywhere +far from home. But it can scarcely have been so with _Beowulf_; for the +author of _Beowulf_ does not try to get away from reality; on the +contrary, he buttresses his story all round with historical tradition and +references to historical fact; he will not let it go forth as pure +romance. + +The solid foundation and epic weight of _Beowulf_ are not exceptional +among the Anglo-Saxon poems. There are not many other poems extant of the +same class, but there is enough to show that _Beowulf_ is not alone. It +is a representative work; there were others of the same type; and it is +this order of epic poetry which makes the great literary distinction of +the Anglo-Saxon period. + +It is always necessary to remember how little we know of Anglo-Saxon +poetry and generally of the ideas and imaginations of the early English. +The gravity and dignity of most of their poetical works are +unquestionable; but one ought not to suppose that we know all the +varieties of their poetical taste. + +It is probable that in the earlier Middle Ages, and in the Teutonic +countries, there was a good deal of the fanciful and also of the comic +literature which is so frequent in the later Middle Ages (after 1100) and +especially in France. One proof of this, for the fanciful and romantic +sort of story-telling, will be found in the earlier part of the Danish +history written by Saxo Grammaticus. He collected an immense number of +stories from Danes and Icelanders--one of them being the story of +Hamlet--and although he was comparatively late (writing at the end of the +twelfth century), still we know that his stories belong to the North and +are unaffected by anything French; they form a body of Northern romance, +independent of the French fashions, of King Arthur and Charlemagne. The +English historians--William of Malmesbury, e.g.--have collected many +things of the same sort. As for comic stories, there are one or two in +careful Latin verse, composed in Germany in the tenth century, which show +that the same kind of jests were current then as in the later comic +poetry of France, in the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, and in the _Canterbury +Tales_. The earlier Middle Ages were more like the later Middle Ages than +one would think, judging merely from the extant literature of the +Anglo-Saxon period on the one hand and of the Plantagenet times on the +other. But the differences are there, and one of the greatest is between +the Anglo-Saxon fashion of epic poetry and the popular romances of the +time of Edward I or Edward III. + +The difference is brought out in many ways. There is a different choice +of subject; the earlier poetry, by preference, is concentrated on one +great battle or combat--generally in a place where there is little or no +chance of escape--inside a hall, as in _The Fight at Finnesburh_, and in +the slaughter 'grim and great' at the end of the _Nibelungenlied_; or, it +may be, in a narrow place among rocks, as in the story of Walter of +Aquitaine, which is the old English _Waldere_. This is the favourite sort +of subject, and it is so because the poets were able thus to hit their +audience again and again with increasing force; the effect they aimed at +was a crushing impression of strife and danger, and courage growing as +the danger grew and the strength lessened. In _Beowulf_ the subjects are +different, but in _Beowulf_ a subject of this sort is introduced, by way +of interlude, in the minstrel's song of _Finnesburh_; and also _Beowulf_, +with a rather inferior plot, still manages to give the effect and to +bring out the spirit of deliberate heroic valour. + +Quite late in the Anglo-Saxon period--about the year 1000--there is a +poem on an English subject in which this heroic spirit is most thoroughly +displayed: the poem on the Battle of Maldon which was fought on the Essex +shore in 993 between Byrhtnoth, alderman of East Anglia, and a host of +vikings whose leader (though he is not mentioned in the poem) is known as +Olaf Tryggvason. By the end of the tenth century Anglo-Saxon poetry had +begun to decay. Yet the Maldon poem shows that it was not only still +alive, but that in some respects it had made very remarkable progress. +There are few examples anywhere of poetry which can deal in a +satisfactory way with contemporary heroes. In the Maldon poem, very +shortly after the battle, the facts are turned into poetry--into poetry +which keeps the form of the older epic, and which in the old manner works +up a stronger and stronger swell of courage against the overwhelming +ruin. The last word of the heroic age is spoken, five hundred years after +the death of Hygelac (above, p. 26), by the old warrior who, like the +trusty companion of Beowulf, refused to turn and run when his lord was +cut down in the battle: + + Thought shall be the harder, heart the keener, + Mood the more, as our might lessens. + +It is one of the strange things in the history of poetry that in another +five hundred years an old fashion of poetry, near akin to the +Anglo-Saxon, comes to an end in a poem on a contemporary battle The last +poem in the Middle English alliterative verse, which was used for so many +subjects in the fourteenth century--for the stories of Arthur and +Alexander and Troy, and for the Vision of Piers Plowman--is the poem of +_Scottish Field_ A.D. 1513, on the battle of Flodden. + +This alliterative verse, which has a history of more than a thousand +years, is one of the things that are carried over in some mysterious way +from the Anglo-Saxon to the later medieval period. But though it survives +the great change in the language, it has a different sound in the +fourteenth century from what it has in _Beowulf_; the older verse has a +manner of its own. + +The Anglo-Saxon poetical forms are difficult at first to understand. The +principal rule of the verse is indeed easy enough; it is the same as in +the verse of _Piers Plowman_; there is a long line divided in the middle; +in each line there are _four_ strong syllables; the first _three_ of +these are generally made alliterative; i.e. they begin with the same +consonant-- + + Wæs se grimma gæst Grendel haten + mære mearcstapa, se the móras heold + fen and fæsten. + + Was the grievous guest Grendel namèd + mighty mark-stalker, and the moors his home + fen and fastness. + +or they all begin with _different_ vowels-- + + Eotenas and ylfe and orcneas. + + Etins and elves and ogres too. + +But there is a variety and subtilty in the Anglo-Saxon measure which is +not found in the Middle English, and which is much more definitely under +metrical rules. And apart from the metre of the single line, there is in +the older alliterative poetry a skill in composing long passages, best +described in the terms which Milton used about his own blank verse: 'the +sense variously drawn out from one line to another'. The Anglo-Saxon +poets, at their best, are eloquent, and able to carry on for long periods +without monotony. Their verse does not fall into detached and separate +lines. This habit is another evidence of long culture; Anglo-Saxon +poetry, such as we know it, is at the end of its progress; already +mature, and with little prospect in front of it except decay. + +The diction of Anglo-Saxon poetry is a subject of study by itself. Here +again there is a great difference between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English +poetry. Middle English poetry borrows greatly from French. Now in all the +best French poetry, with very few exceptions, the language is the same as +that of prose; and even if there happen to be a few poetical words (as in +Racine, for example, _flammes_ and _transports_ and _hymenée_) they do +not interfere with the sense. Middle English generally copies French, and +is generally unpretentious in its vocabulary. But Anglo-Saxon poetry was +impossible without a poetical dictionary. It is very heavily ornamented +with words not used in prose, and while there are hardly any similes, the +whole tissue of it is figurative, and most things are named two or three +times over in different terms. This makes it often very tiresome, when +the meaning is so encrusted with splendid words that it can scarcely +move; still more, when a poet does not take the trouble to invent his +ornaments, and only repeats conventional phrases out of a vocabulary +which he has learned by rote. But those extravagances of the Anglo-Saxon +poetry make it all the more interesting historically; they show that +there must have been a general love and appreciation of fine language, +such as is not commonly found in England now, and also a technical skill +in verse, something like that which is encouraged in Wales at the modern +poetical competitions, though certainly far less elaborate. Further, +these curiosities of old English verse make it all the more wonderful and +admirable that the epic poets should have succeeded as they did with +their stories of heroic resistance and the repeated waves of battle and +death-agony. Tremendous subjects are easily spoilt when the literary +vogue is all for ornament and fine language. Yet the Anglo-Saxon poets +seldom seem to feel the encumbrances of their poetic language when they +are really possessed with their subject. The eloquence of their verse +then gets the better of their ornamental diction. + +The subjects of Anglo-Saxon poetry were taken from many different sources +besides the heroic legend which is summarized by Widsith, or contemporary +actions like the battle of Maldon. + +The conversion of the English to Christianity brought with it of course a +great deal of Latin literature. The new ideas were adopted very readily +by the English, and a hundred years after the coming of the first +missionary the Northumbrian schools and teachers were more than equal to +the best in any part of Europe. + +The new learning did not always discourage the old native kind of poetry. +Had that been the case, we should hardly have had anything like +_Beowulf_; we should not have had the poem of Maldon. Christianity and +Christian literature did not always banish the old-fashioned heroes. +Tastes varied in this respect. The Frankish Emperor Lewis the Pious is +said to have taken a disgust at the heathen poetry which he had learned +when he was young. But there were greater kings who were less delicate in +their religion. Charles the Great made a collection of 'the barbarous +ancient poems which sung the wars and exploits of the olden time'. Alfred +the Great, his Welsh biographer tells us, was always ready to listen to +Saxon poems when he was a boy, and when he was older was fond of learning +poetry by heart. That the poems were not all of them religious, we may +see from some things in Alfred's own writings. He was bold enough to +bring in a Northern hero in his translation of the Latin philosophical +book of Boethius. Boethius asks, 'Where are the bones of Fabricius the +true-hearted?' In place of the name Fabricius, Alfred writes, 'Where are +now the bones of Wayland, and who knows where they be?' Wayland Smith, +who thus appears, oddly, in the translation of Boethius, is one of the +best-known heroes of the Teutonic mythology. He is the original craftsman +(like Daedalus in Greece), the brother of the mythical archer Egil and +the harper Slagfinn--the hero of one of the finest of the old +Scandinavian poems, and of many another song and story. + +The royal genealogies in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are an example of the +conservative process that went on with regard to many of the old beliefs +and fancies--a process that may be clearly traced in the poem of +_Beowulf_--by means of which pre-Christian ideas were annexed to +Christianity. The royal house of England, the house of Cerdic, still +traces its descent from Woden; and Woden is thirteenth in descent from +Noah. Woden is kept as a king and a hero, when he has ceased to be a god. +This was kindlier and more charitable than the alternative view, that the +gods of the heathen were living devils. + +There was no destruction of the heroic poetry through the conversion of +the English, but new themes were at once brought in, to compete with the +old ones. Bede was born (672) within fifty years of the baptism of King +Edwin of Northumbria (625), and Bede is able to tell of the poet Cædmon +of Whitby who belonged to the time of the abbess Hild, between 658 and +670, and who put large portions of the Bible history into verse. + +Cædmon the herdsman, turning poet late in life by a special gift from +Heaven and devoting himself exclusively to sacred subjects, is a +different sort of minstrel from that one who is introduced in _Beowulf_ +singing the lay of Finnesburh. His motive is different. It is partly the +same motive as that of King Alfred in his prose translations. Cædmon made +versions of Bible history for the edification of Christian people. + +Anglo-Saxon poetry, which had been heathen, Teutonic, concerned with +traditional heroic subjects was drawn into the service of the other world +without losing its old interests. Hence comes, apart from the poetical +value of the several works, the historical importance of Anglo-Saxon +poetry, as a blending of _Germania_, the original Teutonic civilization, +with the ideas and sentiments of Christendom in the seventh century and +after. + +Probably nothing of Cædmon's work remains except the first poem, which is +paraphrased in Latin by Bede and which is also preserved in the original +Northumbrian. But there are many Bible poems, _Genesis_, _Exodus_, and +others, besides a poem on the Gospel history in the Saxon language of the +Continent--the language of the 'Old Saxons', as the English called +them--which followed the example and impulse given by Cædmon, and which +had in common the didactic, the educational purpose, for the promotion of +Christian knowledge. + +But while there was this common purpose in these poems, there were as +great diversities of genius as in any other literary group or school. +Sometimes the author is a dull mechanical translator using the +conventional forms and phrases without imagination or spirit. Sometimes +on the other hand he is caught up and carried away by his subject, and +the result is poetry like the _Fall of the Angels_ (part of _Genesis_), +or the _Dream of the Rood_. These are utterly different from the regular +conventional poetry or prose of the Middle Ages. There is no harm in +comparing the _Fall of the Angels_ with Milton. The method is nearly the +same: narrative, with a concentration on the character of Satan, and +dramatic expression of the character in monologue at length. The _Dream +of the Rood_ again is finer than the noblest of all the Passion Plays. It +is a vision, in which the Gospel history of the Crucifixion is so +translated that nothing is left except the devotion of the young hero (so +he is called) and the glory; it is not acted on any historical scene, but +in some spiritual place where there is no distinction between the Passion +and the Triumph. In this way the spirit of poetry does wonderful things; +transforming the historical substance. It is quite impossible to dismiss +the old English religious poetry under any summary description. Much of +it is conventional and ordinary; some of it is otherwise, and the +separate poems live in their own way. + + +It is worth remembering that the manuscripts of the _Dream of the Rood_ +have a history which is typical of the history in general, the progress +of Anglo-Saxon poetry, and the change of centre from Northumberland to +Wessex. Some verses of the poem are carved in runic letters on the +Ruthwell Cross (now in the Parish Church of Ruthwell in Dumfriesshire) in +the language of Northumberland, which was the language of Cædmon and +Bede. The Ruthwell Cross with the runic inscription on it is thus one of +the oldest poetical manuscripts in English, not to speak of its +importance in other ways. + +The Ruthwell verses are Northumbrian. They were at first misinterpreted +in various ways by antiquaries, till John Kemble the historian read them +truly. Some time after, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript was found at Vercelli +in the North of Italy--a regular station on the old main road which +crosses the Great St. Bernard and which was commonly used by Englishmen, +Danes, and other people of the North when travelling to Rome. In this +Vercelli book the _Dream of the Rood_ is contained, nearly in full, but +written in the language of Wessex--i.e. the language commonly called +Anglo-Saxon--the language not of Bede but of Alfred. The West Saxon +verses of the _Rood_ corresponding to the old Anglian of the Ruthwell +Cross are an example of what happened generally with Anglo-Saxon +poetry--the best of it in early days was Anglian, Northumbrian; when the +centre shifted to Wessex, the Northern poetry was preserved in the +language which by that time had become the proper literary English both +for verse and prose. + +Cynewulf is an old English poet who has signed his name to several poems, +extant in West Saxon. He may have been the author of the _Dream of the +Rood_; he was probably a Northumbrian. As he is the most careful artist +among the older poets, notable for the skill of his verse and phrasing, +his poetry has to be studied attentively by any one who wishes to +understand the poetical ideals of the age between Bede and King Alfred, +the culmination of the Northumbrian school. His subjects are all +religious, from the Gospel (_Crist_) or the lives of saints (_Guthlac_, +_Juliana_, _Elene_, probably _Andreas_ also). The legendary subjects may +be looked on as a sort of romance; Cynewulf in many ways is a romantic +poet. The adventure of St. Andrew in his voyage to rescue St. Matthew +from the cannibals is told with great spirit--a story of the sea. +Cynewulf has so fine a sense of the minor beauties of verse and diction +that he might be in danger of losing his story for the sake of poetical +ornament; but though he is not a strong poet he generally manages to +avoid the temptation, and to keep the refinements of his art subordinate +to the main effect. + +There is hardly anything in Anglo-Saxon to be called lyrical. The epic +poetry may have grown out of an older lyric type--a song in chorus, with +narrative stuff in it, like the later choral ballads. There is one old +poem, and a very remarkable one, with a refrain, _Deor's Lament_, which +may be called a dramatic lyric, the utterance of an imaginary personage, +a poet like Widsith, who comforts himself in his sorrow by recalling +examples of old distresses. The burden comes after each of these records: + + That ancient woe was endured, and so may mine. + +_Widsith_ in form of verse is nearer to this lyric of _Deor_ than to the +regular sustained narrative verse of _Beowulf_. There are some fragments +of popular verse, spells against disease, which might be called songs. +But what is most wanting in Anglo-Saxon literature is the sort of poetry +found at the close of the Middle Ages in the popular ballads, songs and +carols of the fifteenth century. + +To make up for the want of true lyric, there are a few very beautiful +poems, sometimes called by the name of elegies--akin to lyric, but not +quite at the lyrical pitch. The _Wanderer_, the _Seafarer_, the _Ruin_, +the _Wife's Complaint_--they are antique in verse and language but modern +in effect, more than most things that come later, for many centuries. +They are poems of reflective sentiment, near to the mood of a time when +the bolder poetical kinds have been exhausted, and nothing is left but to +refine upon the older themes. These poems are the best expression of a +mood found elsewhere, even in rather early Anglo-Saxon days--the sense of +the vanity of life, the melancholy regret for departed glories--a kind of +thought which popular opinion calls 'the Celtic spirit', and which indeed +may be found in the Ossianic poems, but not more truly than in the _Ruin_ +or the _Wanderer_. + +When the language of Wessex became the literary English, it was naturally +used for poetry--not merely for translations of Northumbrian verse into +West Saxon. The strange thing about this later poetry is that it should +be capable of such strength as is shown in the Maldon poem--a perpetual +warning against rash conclusions. For poetry had seemed to be exhausted +long before this, or at any rate to have reached in Cynewulf the +dangerous stage of maturity. But the Maldon poem, apart from some small +technical faults, is sane and strong. In contrast, the earlier poem in +the battle of Brunanburh is a fair conventional piece--academic laureate +work, using cleverly enough the forms which any accomplished gentleman +could learn. + +Those forms are applied often most ingeniously, in the Anglo-Saxon +riddles; pieces, again, which contradict ordinary opinion. Few would +expect to find in Anglo-Saxon the curious grace of verbal workmanship, +the artificial wit, of those short poems. + +The dialogue of _Salomon and Saturnus_ is one of the Anglo-Saxon things +belonging to a common European fashion; the dialogue literature, partly +didactic, partly comic, which was so useful in the Middle Ages in +providing instruction along with varying degrees of amusement. There is +more than one Anglo-Saxon piece of this sort, valuable as expressing the +ordinary mind; for, generally speaking, there is a want of merely popular +literature in Anglo-Saxon, as compared with the large amount later on. + + +The history of prose is continuous from the Anglo-Saxon onwards; there is +no such division as between Anglo-Saxon and Middle English poetry. In +fact, Middle English prose at first is the continuation of the English +Chronicle, and the transcription of the homilies of Ælfric into the later +grammar and spelling. + +The English had not the peculiar taste for prose which seems to be dealt +by chance to Hebrews and Arabs, to Ireland and Iceland. As in Greece and +France, the writing of prose comes after verse. It begins by being +useful; it is not used for heroic stories. But the English had more +talent for prose than some people; they understood it better than the +French; and until the French influence came over them did not habitually +degrade their verse for merely useful purposes. + +Through the Chronicle, which probably began in King Alfred's time, and +through Alfred's translations from the Latin, a common available prose +was established, which had all sorts of possibilities in it, partly +realized after a time. There seems no reason, as far as language and +technical ability are concerned, why there should not have been in +English, prose stories as good as those of Iceland. The episode of King +Cynewulf of Wessex, in the Chronicle, has been compared to the Icelandic +sagas, and to the common epic theme of valorous fighting and loyal +perseverance. In Alfred's narrative passages there are all the elements +of plain history, a style that might have been used without limit for all +the range of experience. + +Alfred's prose when he is repeating the narratives of his sea-captains +has nothing in it that can possibly weary, so long as the subject is +right. It is a perfectly clean style for matter of fact. + +The great success of Anglo-Saxon prose is in religious instruction. This +is various in kind; it includes the translation of Boethius which is +philosophy, and fancy as well; it includes the Dialogues of Gregory which +are popular stories, the homilies on Saints' Lives which are often prose +romances, and which often are heightened above prose, into a swelling, +chanting, alliterative tune, not far from the language of poetry. The +great master of prose in all its forms is Ælfric of Eynsham, about the +year 1000. Part of his work was translation of the Bible, and in this, +and in his theory of translation, he is more enlightened than any +translator before Tyndale. The fault of Bible versions generally was that +they kept too close to the original. Instead of translating like free men +they construed word for word, like the illiterate in all ages. Ulphilas, +who is supposed by some to have written Gothic prose, is really a slave +to the Greek text, and his Gothic is hardly a human language. Wycliffe +treats his Latin original in the same way, and does not think what +language he is supposed to be writing. But Ælfric works on principles +that would have been approved by Dryden; and there is no better evidence +of the humanities in those early times than this. Much was lost before +the work of Ælfric was taken up again with equal intelligence. + + + + + CHAPTER III + THE MIDDLE ENGLISH PERIOD, 1150-1500 + + + INTRODUCTORY + +Anglo-Saxon and Middle English literature had many things in common. The +educational work of King Alfred was continued all through the Middle +Ages. Chaucer translates Boethius, five hundred years after King Alfred's +translation. The same authors are read and adapted. The sermons of +Ælfric, A.D. 1000, have the same sort of matter as those of the +thirteenth or the fourteenth century, and there is no very great +difference of tone. Many of the literary interests of the Plantagenet +times are found already among the Anglo-Saxons. The Legends of the Saints +are inexhaustible subjects of poetical treatment in the earlier as well +as the later days. The poetical expression is, of course, very greatly +changed, but earlier or later the Saints' Lives are used as material for +literature which is essentially romantic, whatever its other qualities +may be. There are other sources of romance open, long before the French +influence begins to be felt in England; particularly, the wonders of the +East appear in the Anglo-Saxon version of Alexander's letter to +Aristotle; and later Greek romance (through the Latin) in the Anglo-Saxon +translation of _Apollonius of Tyre_. + +The great difference between the two ages is made by the disappearance of +the old English poetry. There is nothing in the Plantagenet reigns like +_Beowulf_ or the Maldon poem; there is nothing like the _Fall of the +Angels_ and the dramatic eloquence of Satan. The pathos of the later +Middle Ages is expressed in a different way from the _Wanderer_ and the +_Ruin_. The later religious poetry has little in it to recall the +finished art of Cynewulf. Anglo-Saxon poetry, whether derived from +heathendom or from the Church, has ideas and manners of its own; it comes +to perfection, and then it dies away. The gravity and thought of the +heroic poetry, as well as the finer work of the religious poets, are +unlike the strength, unlike the graces, of the later time. Anglo-Saxon +poetry grows to a rich maturity, and past it; then, with the new forms of +language and under new influences, the poetical education has to start +again. + +Unfortunately for the historian, there are scarcely any literary things +remaining to show the progress of the transition. For a long time before +and after 1100 there is a great scarcity of English productions. It is +not till about 1200 that Middle English literature begins to be at all +fully represented. + +This scantiness is partly due, no doubt, to an actual disuse of English +composition. But many written things must have perished, and in poetry +there was certainly a large amount of verse current orally, whether it +was ever written down or not. This is the inference drawn from the +passages in the historian William of Malmesbury to which Macaulay refers +in his preface to the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, and which Freeman has +studied in his essay on _The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early +English History_. The story of Hereward the Wake is extant in Latin; the +story of Havelock the Dane and others were probably composed in English +verse much earlier than the thirteenth century, and in much older forms +than those which have come down to us. + +There is a gap in the record of alliterative poetry which shows plainly +that much has been lost. It is a curious history. Before the Norman +conquest the old English verse had begun to go to pieces, in spite of +such excellent late examples as the Maldon poem. About 1200 the +alliterative verse, though it has still something of its original +character, is terribly broken down. The verse of Layamon's _Brut_ is +unsteady, never to be trusted, changing its pace without warning in a +most uncomfortable way. Then suddenly, as late as the middle of the +fourteenth century, there begins a procession of magnificent alliterative +poems, in regular verse--_Sir Gawayne_, the _Morte Arthure_, _Piers +Plowman_; in regular verse, not exactly with the same rule as _Beowulf_, +but with so much of the old rule as seemed to have been hopelessly lost +for a century or two. What is the explanation of this revival, and this +sudden great vogue of alliterative poetry? It cannot have been a new +invention, or a reconstruction; it would not in that case have copied, as +it sometimes does, the rhythm of the old English verse in a way which is +unlike the ordinary rhythms of the fourteenth century. The only +reasonable explanation is that somewhere in England there was a tradition +of alliterative verse, keeping in the main to the old rules of rhythm as +it kept something of the old vocabulary, and escaping the disease which +affected the old verse elsewhere. The purer sort of verse must have been +preserved for a few hundred years with hardly a trace of it among the +existing documents to show what it was like till it breaks out +'three-score thousand strong' in the reign of Edward III. + +In the Middle Ages, early and late, there was very free communication all +over Christendom between people of different languages. Languages seem to +have given much less trouble than they do nowadays. The general use of +Latin, of course, made things easy for those who could speak it; but +without Latin, people of different nations appear to have travelled over +the world picking up foreign languages as they went along, and showing +more interest in the poetry and stories of foreign countries than is +generally found among modern tourists. Luther said of the people of +Flanders that if you took a Fleming in a sack and carried him over France +or Italy, he would manage to learn the tongues. This gift was useful to +commercial travellers, and perhaps the Flemings had more of it than other +people. But in all the nations there seems to have been something like +this readiness, and in all it was used to translate the stories and adapt +the poetry of other tongues. This intercourse was greatly quickened in +the twelfth century through a number of causes, the principal cause being +the extraordinary production of new poetry in France, or rather in the +two regions, North and South, and the two languages, French and +Provençal. Between these two languages, in the North and the South of +what is now France, there was in the Middle Ages a kind of division of +labour. The North took narrative poetry, the South took lyric; and French +narrative and Provençal lyric poetry in the twelfth century between them +made the beginning of modern literature for the whole of Europe. + +In the earlier Middle Ages, before 1100, as in the later, the common +language is Latin. Between the Latin authors of the earlier time--Gregory +the Great, or Bede--and those of the later--Anselm, or Thomas +Aquinas--there may be great differences, but there is no line of +separation. + +In the literature of the native tongues there is a line of division about +1100 more definite than any later epoch; it is made by the appearance of +French poetry, bringing along with it an intellectual unity of +Christendom which has never been shaken since. + +The importance of this is that it meant a mutual understanding among the +laity of Europe, equal to that which had so long obtained among the +clergy, the learned men. + +The year 1100, in which all Christendom is united, if not thoroughly and +actively in all places, for the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre, at any +rate ideally by the thought of this common enterprise, is also a year +from which may be dated the beginning of the common lay intelligence of +Europe, that sympathy of understanding by which ideas of different sorts +are taken up and diffused, outside of the professionally learned bodies. +The year 1100 is a good date, because of the first Provençal poet, +William, Count of Poitiers, who was living then; he went on the Crusade +three years later. He is the first poet of modern Europe who definitely +helps to set a fashion of poetry not only for his own people but for the +imitation of foreigners. He is the first modern poet; he uses the kind of +verse which every one uses now. + +The triumph of French poetry in the twelfth century was the end of the +old Teutonic world--an end which had been long preparing, though it came +suddenly at last. Before that time there had been the sympathy and +informal union among the Germanic nations out of which the old heroic +poems had come; such community of ideas as allowed the Nibelung story to +be treated in all the Germanic tongues from Austria to Iceland, and even +in Greenland, the furthest outpost of the Northmen. But after the +eleventh century there was nothing new to be got out of this. Here and +there may be found a gleaner, like Saxo Grammaticus, getting together all +that he can save out of the ancient heathendom, or like the Norwegian +traveller about fifty years later, who collected North German ballads of +Theodoric and other champions, and paraphrased them in Norwegian prose. +The really great achievement of the older world in its last days was in +the prose histories of Iceland, which had virtue enough in them to change +the whole world, if they had only been known and understood; but they +were written for domestic circulation, and even their own people scarcely +knew how good they were. Germania was falling to pieces, the separate +nations growing more and more stupid and drowsy. + +The languages derived from Latin--commonly called the Romance +languages--French and Provençal, Italian and so on--were long of +declaring themselves. The Italian and Spanish dialects had to wait for +the great French outburst before they could produce anything. French and +Provençal, which are well in front of Spanish and Italian, have little of +importance to show before 1100. But after that date there is such +profusion that it is clear there had been a long time of experiment and +preparation. The earlier French epics have been lost; the earliest known +Provençal poet is already a master of verse, and must be indebted to many +poetical ancestors whose names and poems have disappeared. Long before +1100 there must have been a common literary taste in France, fashions of +poetry well understood and appreciated, a career open for youthful poets. +In the twelfth century the social success of poetry in France was +extended in different degrees over all Europe. In Italy and Spain the +fashions were taken up; in Germany they conquered even more quickly and +thoroughly; the Danes and Swedes and Norwegians learned their ballad +measures from the French; even the Icelanders, the only Northern nation +with a classical literature and with minds of their own, were caught in +the same way. + +Thus French poetry wakened up the sleepy countries, and gave new ideas to +the wakeful; it brought the Teutonic and Romance nations to agree and, +what was much more important, to produce new works of their own which +might be original in all sorts of ways while still keeping within the +limits of the French tradition. Compared with this, all later literary +revolutions are secondary and partial changes. The most widely +influential writers of later ages--e.g. Petrarch and Voltaire--had the +ground prepared for them in this medieval epoch, and do nothing to alter +the general conditions which were then established--the +intercommunication among the whole laity of Europe with regard to +questions of taste. + +It seems probable that the Normans had a good deal to do as agents in +this revolution. They were in relation with many different people. They +had Bretons on their borders in Normandy; they conquered England, and +then they touched upon the Welsh; they were fond of pilgrimages; they +settled in Apulia and Sicily, where they had dealings with Greeks and +Saracens as well as Italians. + +It is a curious thing that early in the twelfth century names are found +in Italy which certainly come from the romances of King Arthur--the name +Galvano, e.g. which is the same as Gawain. However it was brought there, +this name may be taken for a sign of the process that was going on +everywhere--the conversion of Europe to fashions which were prescribed in +France. + +The narrative poetry in which the French excelled was of different kinds. +An old French poet, in an epic on Charlemagne's wars against the Saxons, +has given a classification which is well known, dividing the stories +according to the historical matter which they employ. There are three +'matters', he says, and no more than three, which a story-teller may take +up--the matter of France, the matter of Britain, the matter of Rome the +Great. The old poet is right in naming these as at any rate the chief +groups; since 'Rome the Great' might be made to take in whatever would +not go into the other two divisions, there is nothing much wrong in his +refusal to make a fourth class. The 'matter of France' includes all the +subjects of the old French national epics--such as Roncevaux, or the song +of Roland; Reynold of Montalban, or the Four Sons of Aymon; Ferabras; +Ogier the Dane. The matter of Britain includes all the body of the +Arthurian legend, as well as the separate stories commonly called Breton +lays (like Chaucer's Franklin's Tale). The matter of Rome is not only +Roman history, but the whole of classical antiquity. The story of Troy, +of course, is rightly part of Roman history, and so is the Romance of +Eneas. But under Rome the Great there fall other stories which have much +slighter connexion with Rome--such as the story of Thebes, or of +Alexander. + +Many of those subjects were of course well known and popular before the +French poets took them up. The romantic story of Alexander might, in part +at any rate, have been familiar to Alfred the Great; he brings the +Egyptian king 'Nectanebus the wizard' into his translation of +Orosius--Nectanebus, who is the father of Alexander in the apocryphal +book from which the romances were derived. But it was not till the French +poets turned the story of Alexander into verse that it really made much +impression outside of France. The tale of Troy was widely read, in +various authors--Ovid and Virgil, and an abstract of the _Iliad_, and in +the apocryphal prose books of Dares the Phrygian and Dictys the Cretan, +who were supposed to have been at the seat of war, and therefore to be +better witnesses than Homer. These were used and translated some times +apart from any French suggestion. But it was the French _Roman de Troie_, +written in the twelfth century, which spread the story everywhere--the +source of innumerable Troy Books in all languages, and of Chaucer's and +Shakespeare's _Troilus_. + +The 'matter of Britain' also was generally made known through the works +of French authors. There are exceptions; the British history of Geoffrey +of Monmouth was written in Latin. But even this found its way into +English by means of a French translation; the _Brut_ of Layamon, a long +poem in irregular alliterative verse, is adapted from a French rhyming +translation of Geoffrey's History. The English romances of Sir Perceval, +Sir Gawain and other knights are founded on French poems. + +There is an important distinction between the 'matter of France' and the +'matters' of Britain and Rome; this distinction belongs more properly to +the history of French literature, but it ought not to be neglected here. +The 'matter of France', which is exemplified in the song of Roland, +belongs to an earlier time, and was made into French poetry earlier than +the other subjects. The poems about Charlemagne and his peers, and others +of the same sort, are sometimes called the old French epics; the French +name for them is _chansons de geste_. Those epics have not only a +different matter but a different form from the French Arthurian romances +and the French _Roman de Troie_. What is of more importance for English +poetry, there is generally a different tone and sentiment. They are +older, stronger, more heroic, more like _Beowulf_ or the Maldon poem; the +romances of the 'matter of Britain', on the other hand, are the +fashionable novels of the twelfth century; their subjects are really +taken from contemporary polite society. They are long love-stories, and +their motive chiefly is to represent the fortunes, and, above all, the +sentiments of true lovers. Roughly speaking, the 'matter of France' is +action, the 'matter of Britain' is sentiment. The 'matter of Rome' is +mixed; for while the _Roman de Troie_ (with the love-story of Troilus, +and with courteous modern manners throughout) is like the romances of +Lancelot and Tristram, Alexander, in the French versions, is a hero like +those of the national epics, and is celebrated in the same manner as +Charlemagne. + +The 'matter of France' could not be popular in England as it was in its +native country. But Charlemagne and Roland and his peers were well known +everywhere, like Arthur and Alexander, and the 'matter of France' went to +increase the stories told by English minstrels. It was from an English +version, in the thirteenth century, that part of the long Norwegian prose +history of Charlemagne was taken; a fact worth remembering, to illustrate +the way in which the exportation of stories was carried on. Of course, +the story of Charlemagne was not the same sort of thing in England or +Norway that it was in France. The devotion to France which is so intense +in the song of Roland was never meant to be shared by any foreigner. But +Roland as a champion against the infidels was a hero everywhere. There +are statues of him in Bremen and in Verona; and it is in Italy that the +story is told of the simple man who was found weeping in the +market-place; a professional story-teller had just come to the death of +Roland and the poor man heard the news for the first time. A traveller in +the Faroe Islands not long ago, asking in the bookshop at Thorshavn for +some things in the Faroese language, was offered a ballad of +Roncesvalles. + +The favourite story everywhere was _Sir Ferabras_, because the centre of +the plot is the encounter between Oliver the Paladin and Ferabras the +Paynim champion. Every one could understand this, and in all countries +the story became popular as a sound religious romance. + +Naturally, the stories of action and adventure went further and were more +widely appreciated than the cultivated sentimental romance. The English +in the reign of Edward I or Edward III had often much difficulty in +understanding what the French romantic school was driving +at--particularly when it seemed to be driving round and round, spinning +long monologues of afflicted damsels, or elegant conversations full of +phrases between the knight and his lady. The difficulty was not +unreasonable. If the French authors had been content to write about +nothing but sentimental conversations and languishing lovers, then one +would have known what to do. The man who is looking at the railway +bookstall for a good detective story knows at once what to say when he is +offered the Diary of a Soul. But the successful French novelists of the +twelfth century appealed to both tastes, and dealt equally in sensation +and sentiment; they did not often limit themselves to what was always +their chief interest, the moods of lovers. They worked these into plots +of adventure, mystery, fairy magic; the adventures were too good to be +lost; so the less refined English readers, who were puzzled or wearied by +sentimental conversations, were not able to do without the elegant +romances. They read them; and they skipped. The skipping was done for +them, generally, when the romances were translated into English; the +English versions are shorter than the French in most cases where +comparison is possible. As a general rule, the English took the +adventurous sensational part of the French romances, and let the language +of the heart alone. To this there are exceptions. In the first place it +is not always true that the French romances are adventurous. Some of them +are almost purely love-stories--sentiment from beginning to end. Further, +it is proved that one of these, _Amadas et Ydoine_--a French romance +written in England--was much liked in England by many whose proper +language was English; there is no English version of it extant, and +perhaps there never was one, but it was certainly well known outside the +limited refined society for which it was composed. And again there may be +found examples where the English adapter, instead of skipping, sets +himself to wrestle with the original--saying to himself, 'I will _not_ be +beaten by this culture; I will get to the end of it and lose nothing; it +shall be made to go into the English language'. An example of this effort +is the alliterative romance of _William and the Werwolf_, a work which +does not fulfil the promise of its title in any satisfactory way. It +spends enormous trouble over the sentimental passages of the original, +turning them into the form worst suited to them, viz. the emphatic style +of the alliterative poetry which is so good for battle pieces, satire, +storms at sea, and generally everything except what it is here applied +to. Part of the success of Chaucer and almost all the beauty of Gower may +be said to be their mastery of French polite literature, and their power +of expressing in English everything that could be said in French, with no +loss of effect and no inferiority in manner. Gower ought to receive his +due alongside of Chaucer as having accomplished what many English writers +had attempted for two hundred years before him--the perfect adoption in +English verse of everything remarkable in the style of French poetry. + +The history of narrative poetry is generally easier than the history of +lyric, partly because the subjects are more distinct and more easily +traceable. But it is not difficult to recognize the enormous difference +between the English songs of the fourteenth century and anything known to +us in Anglo-Saxon verse, while the likeness of English to French lyrical +measures in the later period is unquestionable. The difficulty is that +the history of early French lyric poetry is itself obscure and much more +complicated than the history of narrative. Lyric poetry flourished at +popular assemblies and festivals, and was kept alive in oral tradition +much more easily than narrative poetry was. Less of it, in proportion, +was written down, until it was taken up by ambitious poets and composed +in a more elaborate way. + +The distinction between popular and cultivated lyric is not always easy +to make out, as any one may recognize who thinks of the songs of Burns +and attempts to distinguish what is popular in them from what is +consciously artistic. But the distinction is a sound one, and especially +necessary in the history of medieval literature--all the more because the +two kinds often pass into one another. + +A good example is the earliest English song, as it is sometimes called, +which is very far from the earliest-- + + Sumer is icumen in + lhude sing cuccu. + +It sounds like a popular song; an anonymous poem from the heart of the +people, in simple, natural, spontaneous verse. But look at the original +copy. The song is written, of course, for music. And the Cuckoo song is +said by the historians of music to be remarkable and novel; it is the +first example of a canon; it is not an improvisation, but the newest kind +of art, one of the most ingenious things of its time. Further, the words +that belong to it are Latin words, a Latin hymn; the Cuckoo song, which +appears so natural and free, is the result of deliberate study; syllable +for syllable, it corresponds to the Latin, and to the notes of the music. + +Is it then _not_ to be called a popular song? Perhaps the answer is that +all popular poetry, in Europe at any rate for the last thousand years, is +derived from poetry more or less learned in character, or, like the +Cuckoo song, from more or less learned music. The first popular songs of +the modern world were the hymns of St. Ambrose, and the oldest fashion of +popular tunes is derived from the music of the Church. + +The learned origin of popular lyric may be illustrated from any of the +old-fashioned broadsheets of the street ballad-singers: for example _The +Kerry Recruit_-- + + As I was going up and down, one day in the month of August, + All in the town of sweet Tralee, I met the recruiting serjeant-- + +The metre of this is the same as in the _Ormulum_-- + + This book is nemned Ormulum, for thy that Orm hit wroughtè. + +It is derived through the Latin from the Greek; it was made popular first +through Latin rhyming verses which were imitated in the vernacular +languages, Provençal, German, English. As it is a variety of 'common +metre', it is easily fitted to popular tunes, and so it becomes a regular +type of verse, both for ambitious poets and for ballad-minstrels like the +author quoted above. It may be remembered that a country poet wrote the +beautiful song on Yarrow from which Wordsworth took the verse of his own +Yarrow poems-- + + But minstrel Burne cannot assuage + His grief, while life endureth, + To see the changes of this age + Which fleeting time procureth-- + +verse identical in measure with the _Ormulum_, and with the popular Irish +street ballad, and with many more. So in the history of this type of +verse we get the following relations of popular and literary poetry: +first there is the ancient Greek verse of the same measure; then there +are the Latin learned imitations; then there is the use of it by scholars +in the Middle Ages, who condescend to use it in Latin rhymes for +students' choruses. Then comes the imitation of it in different languages +as in English by Orm and others of his day (about 1200). It was very much +in favour then, and was used often irregularly, with a varying number of +syllables. But Orm writes it with perfect accuracy, and the accurate type +survived, and was just as 'popular' as the less regular kind. Minstrel +Burne is as regular as the _Ormulum_, and so, or very nearly as much, is +the anonymous Irish poet of The _Kerry Recruit_. + +What happened in the case of the _Ormulum_ verse is an example of the +whole history of modern lyric poetry in its earlier period. Learned men +like St. Ambrose and St. Augustine wrote hymns for the common people in +Latin which the common people of that time could understand. Then, in +different countries, the native languages were used to copy the Latin +measures and fit in to the same tunes--just as the English Cuckoo song +corresponds to the Latin words for the same melody. Thus there were +provided for the new languages, as we may call them, a number of poetical +forms or patterns which could be applied in all sorts of ways. These +became common and well understood, in the same manner as common forms of +music are understood, e.g. the favourite rhythms of dance tunes; and like +those rhythms they could be adapted to any sort of poetical subject, and +used with all varieties of skill. + +Many strange things happened while the new rhyming sort of lyric poetry +was being acclimatized in England, and a study of early English lyrics is +a good introduction to all the rest of English poetry, because in those +days--in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--may be found the origin of +the most enduring poetical influences in later times. + +One of the strange things was that the French lyrical examples affected +the English in two opposite ways. As foreign verse, and as belonging +especially to those who were acquainted with courts and good society, it +had the attraction which fashionable and stylish things generally have +for those who are a little behind the fashion. It was the newest and most +brilliant thing; the English did all they could to make it their own +whether by composing in French themselves or by copying the French style +in English words. But besides this fashionable and courtly value of +French poetry, there was another mode in which it appealed to the +English. Much of it was closely related not to the courts but to popular +country festivals which were frequent also in towns, like the games and +dances to celebrate the coming of May. French poetry was associated with +games of that sort, and along with games of that sort it came to England. +The English were hit on both sides. French poetry was more genteel in +some things, more popular and jovial in others, than anything then +current in England. Thus the same foreign mode of composition which gave +a new courtly ideal to the English helped also very greatly to quicken +their popular life. While the distinction between courtly and popular is +nowhere more important than in medieval literature, it is often very hard +to make it definite in particular cases, just for this reason. It is not +as if there were a popular native layer, English in character and origin, +with a courtly foreign French layer above it. What is popular in Middle +English literature is just as much French as English; while, on the other +hand, what is native, like the alliterative verse, is as often as not +used for ambitious works. _Sir Gawayne and the Greene Knight_ and the +poem of the _Morte Arthure_ are certainly not 'popular' in the sense of +'uneducated' or 'simple' or anything of that kind, and though they are +written in the old native verse they are not intended for the people who +had no education and could not speak French. + +The great manifestation of French influence in the common life of the +Middle Ages was through the fashion of the dance which generally went by +the name of _Carole_. The _carole_--music, verse and dance +altogether--spread as a fashion all over Europe in the twelfth century; +and there is nothing which so effectively marks the change from the +earlier to the later Middle Ages. It _is_ in fact a great part of the +change, with all that is implied in it; which may be explained in the +following way. + +The _carole_ was a dance accompanied by a song, the song being divided +between a leader and the rest of the chorus; the leader sang the +successive new lines, while the rest of the dancers holding hands in a +ring all joined in the refrain. Now this was the fashion most in favour +in all gentle houses through the Middle Ages, and it was largely through +this that the French type of lyric was transported to so many countries +and languages. French lyric poetry was part of a graceful diversion for +winter evenings in a castle or for summer afternoons in the castle +garden. But it was also thoroughly and immediately available for all the +parish. In its origin it was popular in the widest sense--not restricted +to any one rank or class; and though it was adopted and elaborated in the +stately homes of England and other countries it could not lose its +original character. Every one could understand it and enjoy it; so it +became the favourite thing at popular festivals, as well as at the +Christmas entertainments in the great hall. Particularly, it was a +favourite custom to dance and sing in this way on the vigils or eves of +Saints' days, when people assembled from some distance at the church +where the day was to be observed. Dancing-parties were frequent at these +'wakes'; they were often held in the churchyard. There are many stories +to show how they were discouraged by the clergy, and how deplorable was +their vanity: but those moral examples also prove how well established +the custom was; some of them also from their date show how quickly it had +spread. The best is in Giraldus Cambrensis, 'Gerald the Welshman', a most +amusing writer, who is unfortunately little read, as he wrote in Latin. +In his _Gemma Ecclesiastica_ he has a chapter against the custom of using +churches and churchyards for songs and dances. As an illustration, he +tells the story of a wake in a churchyard, somewhere in the diocese of +Worcester, which was kept up all night long, the dancers repeating one +refrain over and over; so that the priest who had this refrain in his +ears all night could not get rid of it in the morning, but repeated it at +the Mass--saying (instead of _Dominus vobiscum_) 'Sweet Heart, have +pity!' Giraldus, writing in Latin, quotes the English verse: _Swete +lemman, thin arè_. _Are_, later _ore_, means 'mercy' or 'grace', and the +refrain is of the same sort as is found, much later, in the lyric poetry +of the time of Edward I. Giraldus wrote in the twelfth century, in the +reign of Henry II, and it is plain from what he tells that the French +fashion was already in full swing and as thoroughly naturalized among the +English as the Waltz or the Lancers in the nineteenth century. The same +sort of evidence comes from Denmark about the same time as Giraldus; +ring-dances were equally a trouble and vexation to religious teachers +there--for, strangely, the dances seem everywhere to have been drawn to +churches and monasteries, through the custom of keeping religious wakes +in a cheerful manner. Europe was held together in this common vanity, and +it was through the _caroles_ and similar amusements that the poetical art +of France came to be dominant all over the North, affecting the popular +and unpretending poets no less than those of greater ambition and +conceit. + +The word 'Court' and its derivations are frequently used by medieval and +early modern writers with a special reference to poetry. The courts of +kings and great nobles were naturally associated with the ideas of polite +education; those men 'that has used court and dwelled therein can Frankis +and Latin', says Richard Rolle of Hampole in the fourteenth century; the +'courtly maker' is an Elizabethan name for the accomplished poet, and +similar terms are used in other languages to express the same meaning. +This 'courtly' ideal was not properly realized in England till the time +of Chaucer and Gower; and a general view of the subject easily leads one +to think of the English language as struggling in the course of three +centuries to get rid of its homeliness, its rustic and parochial +qualities. This period, from about 1100 to 1400, closes in the full +attainment of the desired end. Chaucer and Gower are unimpeachable as +'courtly makers', and their success in this way also implies the +establishment of their language as pure English; the competition of +dialects is ended by the victory of the East Midland language which +Chaucer and Gower used. The 'courtly poets' make it impossible in England +to use any language for poetry except their own. + +But the distinction between 'courtly' and 'vulgar', 'popular', or +whatever the other term may be, is not very easy to fix. The history of +the _carole_ is an example of this difficulty. The _carole_ flourishes +among the gentry and it is a favourite amusement as well among the common +people. 'Courtly' ideas, suggestions, phrases, might have a circulation +in country places, and be turned to literary effect by authors who had no +special attachment to good society. A hundred years before Chaucer there +may be found in the poem of _The Owl and the Nightingale_, written in the +language of Dorset, a kind of good-humoured ironical satire which is very +like Chaucer's own. This is the most _modern_ in tone of all the +thirteenth-century poems, but there are many others in which the rustic, +or popular, and the 'courtly' elements are curiously and often very +pleasantly mixed. + +In fact, for many purposes even of literary history and criticism the +medieval distinction between 'courtly' and popular may be neglected. +There is always a difficulty in finding out what is meant by 'the +People'. One has only to remember Chaucer's Pilgrims to understand this, +and to realize how absurd is any fixed line of division between ranks, +with regard to their literary taste. The most attentive listener and the +most critical among the Canterbury Pilgrims is the Host of the Tabard. +There was 'culture' in the Borough as well as in Westminster. The +Franklin who apologizes for his want of rhetorical skill--he had never +read Tullius or Cicero--tells one of the 'Breton lays', a story elegantly +planned and finished, of the best French type; and the Wife of Bath, +after the story of her own life, repeats another romance of the same +school as the Franklin's Tale. The average 'reading public' of Chaucer's +time could understand a great many different varieties of verse and +prose. + +But while the difference between 'courtly' and 'popular' is often hard to +determine in particular cases, it is none the less important and +significant in medieval history. It implies the chivalrous ideal--the +self-conscious withdrawal and separation of the gentle folk from all the +rest, not merely through birth and rank and the fashion of their armour, +but through their ways of thinking, and especially through their theory +of love. The devotion of the true knight to his lady--the motive of all +the books of chivalry--began to be the favourite subject in the twelfth +century; it was studied and meditated in all manner of ways, and it is +this that gives its character to all the most original, as well as to the +most artificial, poetry of the later Middle Ages. The spirit and the +poetical art of the different nations may be estimated according to the +mode in which they appropriated those ideas. For the ideas of this +religion of chivalrous love were _literary_ and _artistic_ ideas; they +went along with poetical ambitions and fresh poetical invention--they led +to the poetry of Dante, Petrarch and Spenser, not as ideas and +inspirations simply, but through their employment of definite poetical +forms of expression, which were developed by successive generations of +poets. + +Stories of true love do not belong peculiarly to the age of chivalrous +romance. The greatest of them all, the story of Sigurd and Brynhild, has +come down from an older world. The early books of the Danish History of +Saxo Grammaticus are full of romantic themes. 'A mutual love arose +between Hedin and Hilda, the daughter of Hogne, a maiden of most eminent +renown. For though they had not yet seen one another, each had been +kindled by the other's glory. But when they had a chance of beholding one +another, neither could look away; so steadfast was the love that made +their eyes linger'. This passage (quoted from Oliver Elton's translation) +is one of the things which were collected by Saxo from Danish tradition; +it is quite independent of anything chivalrous, in the special sense of +that word. Again, Chaucer's _Legend of Good Women_, the story of Dido, or +of Pyramus and Thisbe, may serve as a reminder how impossible it is to +separate 'romantic' from 'classical' literature. A great part of medieval +romance is nothing but a translation into medieval forms, into French +couplets, of the passion of Medea or of Dido. Even in the fresh discovery +which made the ideal of the 'courtly' schools, namely, the lover's +worship of his lady as divine, there is something traceable to the Latin +poets. But it was a fresh discovery, for all that, a new mode of thought, +whatever its source might be. The devotion of Dante to Beatrice, of +Petrarch to Laura, is different from anything in classical poetry, or in +the earlier Middle Ages. It is first in Provençal lyric verse that +something like their ideas may be found; both Dante and Petrarch +acknowledge their debt to the Provençal poets. + +Those ideas can be expressed in lyric poetry; not so well in narrative. +They are too vague for narrative, and too general; they are the utterance +of any true lover, his pride and his humility, his belief that all the +joy and grace of the world, and of Heaven also, are included in the +worshipful lady. There is also along with this religion a firm belief +that it is not intended for the vulgar; and as the ideas and motives are +noble so must the poetry be, in every respect. The refinement of the idea +requires a corresponding beauty of form; and the lyric poets of Provence +and their imitators in Germany, the Minnesingers, were great inventors of +new stanzas and, it should be remembered, of the tunes that accompanied +them. It was not allowable for one poet to take another poet's stanza. +The new spirit of devotion in love-poetry produced an enormous variety of +lyrical measures, which are still musical, and some of them still +current, to this day. + +It was an artificial kind of poetry, in different senses of the term. It +was consciously artistic, and ambitious; based upon science--the science +of music--and deliberately planned so as to make the best effect. The +poets were competitors--sometimes in actual competition for a prize, as +in the famous scene at the Wartburg, which comes in _Tannhäuser_, or as +at a modern Welsh _eisteddfod_; the fame of a poet could not be gained +without the finest technical skill, and the prize was often given for +technical skill, rather than for anything else. Besides this, the ideas +themselves were conventional; the poet's amatory religion was often +assumed; he chose a lady to whom he offered his poetical homage. The +fiction was well understood, and was highly appreciated as an honour, +when the poetry was successful. For example, the following may be taken +from the Lives of the Troubadours-- + +'Richard of Barbezieux the poet fell in love with a lady, the wife of a +noble lord. She was gentle and fair, and gay and gracious, and very +desirous of praise and honour; daughter of Jeffrey Rudel, prince of +Blaye. And when she knew that he loved her, she made him fair semblance +of love, so that he got hardihood to plead his suit to her. And she with +gracious countenance of love treasured his praise of her, and accepted +and listened, as a lady who had good will of a poet to make verses about +her. And he composed his songs of her, and called her _Mielhs de Domna_ +('Sovran Lady') in his verse. And he took great delight in finding +similitudes of beasts and birds and men in his poetry, and of the sun and +the stars, so as to give new arguments such as no poet had found before +him. Long time he sang to her; but it was never believed that she yielded +to his suit.' + +Provençal poetry cannot be shown to have had any direct influence upon +English, which is rather strange considering the close relations between +England and the districts where the Provençal language--the _langue +d'oc_--was spoken. It had great indirect influence, through the French. +The French imitated the Provençal lyric poetry, as the Germans and the +Italians did, and by means of the French poets the Provençal ideas found +their way to England. But this took a long time. The Provençal poets were +'courtly makers'; so were the French who copied them. The 'courtly maker' +needs not only great houses and polite society for his audience; not only +the fine philosophy 'the love of honour and the honour of love', which is +the foundation of chivalrous romance. Besides all this, he needs the +reward and approbation of success in poetical art; he cannot thrive as an +anonymous poet. And it is not till the time of Chaucer and Gower that +there is found in England any poet making a great name for himself as a +master of the art of poetry, like the Provençal masters Bernart de +Ventadour or Arnaut Daniel in the twelfth century, or like the German +Walther von der Vogelweide at the beginning of the thirteenth. + +Lyric poetry of the Provençal kind was a most exacting and difficult art; +it required very peculiar conditions before it could flourish and be +appreciated, and those conditions did not exist in England or in the +English language. At the same time the elaborate lyrics of Provence, like +those of the Minnesingers in Germany, are pretty closely related to many +'popular' forms and motives. Besides the idealist love-poetry there were +other kinds available--simple songs of lament, or of satire--comic +songs--lyrics with a scene in them, such as the very beautiful one about +the girl whose lover has gone on the Crusade. In such as these, though +they have little directly to do with English poetry, may be found many +illustrations of English modes of verse, and rich examples of that most +delightful sort of poetry which refuses to be labelled either 'courtly' +or 'popular'. + +In French literature, as distinct from Provençal, there was a 'courtly' +strain which flourished in the same general conditions as the Provençal, +but was not so hard to understand and had a much greater immediate effect +on England. + +The French excelled in narrative poetry. There seems to have been a +regular exchange in poetry between the South and the North of France. +French stories were translated into Provençal, Provençal lyrics were +imitated in the North of France. Thus French lyric is partly Provençal in +character, and it is in this way that the Provençal influence is felt in +English poetry. The French narrative poetry, though it also is affected +by ideas from the South, is properly French in origin and style. It is by +means of narrative that the French ideal of courtesy and chivalry is made +known, to the French themselves as well as to other nations. + +In the twelfth century a considerable change was made in French poetry by +the rise and progress of a new romantic school in succession to the old +_chansons de geste_--the epic poems on the 'matter of France'. The old +epics went down in the world, and gradually passed into the condition of +merely 'popular' literature. Some of them survive to this day in roughly +printed editions, like the _Reali di Francia_, which is an Italian prose +paraphrase of old French epics, and which seems to have a good sale in +the markets of Italy still, as _The Seven Champions of Christendom_ used +to have in England, and _The Four Sons of Aymon_ in France. The decline +of the old epics began in the twelfth century through the competition of +more brilliant new romances. + +The subjects of these were generally taken either from the 'matter of +Britain', or from antiquity, the 'matter of Rome the Great', which +included Thebes and Troy. The new romantic school wanted new subjects, +and by preference foreign subjects. This, however, was of comparatively +small importance; it had long been usual for story-tellers to go looking +for subjects to foreign countries; this is proved by the Saints' Lives, +and also by the story of Alexander the Great, which appeared in French +before the new school was properly begun. + +In form of verse the new romances generally differed from the _chansons +de geste_, but this again is not an exact distinction. Apart from other +considerations, the distinction fails because the octosyllabic rhyming +measure, the short couplet, which was the ordinary form for fashionable +romances, was also at the same time the ordinary form for everything +else--for history, for moral and didactic poetry, and for comic stories +like Reynard the Fox. The establishment of this 'short verse' (as the +author of _Hudibras_ calls it) in England is one of the most obvious and +one of the largest results of the literary influence of France, but it is +not specially due to the romantic school. + +The character of that school must be sought much more in its treatment of +motives, and particularly in its use of sentiment. It is romantic in its +fondness for strange adventures; but this taste is nothing new. The real +novelty and the secret of its greatest success was its command of pathos, +more especially in the pathetic monologues and dialogues of lovers. It is +greatly indebted for this, as has been already remarked, to the Latin +poets. The _Aeneid_ is turned into a French romance (_Roman d'Eneas_); +and the French author of the _Roman de Troie_, who gives the story of the +Argonauts in the introductory part of his work, has borrowed much from +Ovid's Medea in the _Metamorphoses_. Virgil's Dido and Ovid's Medea had +an immense effect on the imagination of the French poets and their +followers. From Virgil and Ovid the medieval authors got the suggestion +of passionate eloquence, and learned how to manage a love-story in a +dramatic way--allowing the characters free scope to express themselves +fully. Chivalrous sentiment in the romances is partly due to the example +of the Latin authors, who wrote long passionate speeches for their +heroines, or letters like that of Phyllis to Demophoon or Ariadne to +Theseus and the rest of Ovid's _Heroides_--the source of Chaucer's +_Legend of Good Women_. The idea of the lover as the servant of his +mistress was also taken first of all from the Latin amatory poets. And +the success of the new romantic school was gained by the working together +of those ideas and examples, the new creation of chivalrous and courteous +love out of those elements. + +The ideas are the same in the lyric as in the narrative poetry; and it is +allowable to describe a large part of the French romantic poems as being +the expression in narrative of the ideas which had been lyrically uttered +in the poetry of Provence-- + + The love of honour and the honour of love. + +The well-known phrase of Sidney is the true rendering of the Provençal +spirit; it is found nearly in the same form in the old language-- + + Quar non es joys, si non l'adutz honors, + Ni es honors, si non l'adutz amors. + +(There is no joy, if honour brings it not; nor is there honour, if love +brings it not.) + +The importance of all this for the history of Europe can scarcely be +over-estimated. It was the beginning of a classical renaissance through +the successful appropriation of classical ideas in modern languages and +modern forms. It is true that the medieval version of the _Aeneid_ or of +the story of the Argonauts may appear exceedingly quaint and 'Gothic' and +childish, if it be thought of in comparison with the original; but if it +be contrasted with the style of narrative which was in fashion before it, +the _Roman d'Eneas_ comes out as something new and promising. There is +ambition in it, and the ambition is of the same sort as has produced all +the finer sentimental fiction since. If it is possible anywhere to trace +the pedigree of fashions in literature, it is here. All modern novelists +are descended from this French romantic poetry of the twelfth century, +and therefore from the classical poets to whom so much of the life of the +French romances can be traced. The great poets of the Renaissance carry +on in their own way the processes of adaptation which were begun in the +twelfth century, and, besides that, many of them are directly +indebted--Ariosto and Spenser, for example--to medieval romance. + +Further, all the chivalrous ideals of the modern world are derived from +the twelfth century. Honour and loyalty would have thriven without the +chivalrous poets, as they had thriven before them in every nation on +earth. But it is none the less true that the tradition of honour was +founded for the sixteenth century and the eighteenth and the present day +in Europe by the poets of the twelfth century. + +The poetical doctrine of love, which is so great a part of chivalry, has +had one effect both on civilization in general and on particular schools +of poetry which it is hard to sum up and to understand. It is sometimes a +courtly game like that described in the life of the troubadour quoted +above; the lady pleased at the honour paid her and ready to accept the +poet's worship; the lady's husband either amused by it all, or otherwise, +if not amused, at any rate prevented by the rules of polite society from +objecting; the poet enamoured according to the same code of law, with as +much sincerity as that law and his own disposition might allow; +thoroughly occupied with his own craft of verse and with the new +illustrations from natural or civil history by means of which he hoped to +make a name and go beyond all other poets. The difficulty is to know how +much there is of pretence and artifice in the game. It is certain that +the Provençal lyric poetry, and the other poetry derived from it in other +languages, has many excellences besides the ingenious repetition of stock +ideas in cleverly varied patterns of rhyme. The poets are not all alike, +and the poems of one poet are not all alike. The same poem of Bernart de +Ventadour contains a beautiful, true, fresh description of the skylark +singing and falling in the middle of the song through pure delight in the +rays of the sun; and also later an image of quite a different sort: the +lover looking in the eyes of his mistress and seeing himself reflected +there is in danger of the same fate as Narcissus, who pined away over his +own reflection in the well. Imagination and Fancy are blended and +interchanged in the troubadours as much as in any modern poet. But apart +from all questions of their value, there is no possible doubt that the +Provençal idealism is the source, though not the only source, to which +all the noblest lyric poetry of later times and other nations may be +referred for its ancestry. The succession of schools (or whatever the +right name may be) can be traced with absolute certainty through Dante +and Petrarch in the fourteenth century to Ronsard and Spenser in the +sixteenth, and further still. + +The society which invented good manners and the theory of honour, which +is at the beginning of all modern poetry and of all novels as well, is +often slighted by modern historians. The vanity, the artifice, the +pedantry can easily be noted and dismissed. The genius of the several +writers is buried in the difficulty and unfamiliarity of the old +languages, even where it has not been destroyed and lost in other ways. +But still the spirit of Provençal lyric and of old French romance can be +proved to be, at the very lowest estimate, the beginning of modern +civilization, as distinct from the earlier Middle Ages. + + + + + CHAPTER IV + THE ROMANCES + + +All through the time between the Norman Conquest and Chaucer one feels +that _the Court_ is what determines the character of poetry and prose. +The English writers almost always have to bear in mind their inferiority +to French, and it is possible to describe their efforts during three +centuries (1100-1400) as generally directed towards the ideal of French +poetry, a struggle to realize in English what had been already achieved +in French, to make English literature polite. + +In the history of the English romances this may be tested in various +ways. To begin with, there is the fact that many writers living in +England wrote French, and that some French romances, not among the worst, +were composed in England. It can hardly be doubted that such was the case +with the famous love-story of _Amadas and Ydoine_; it is certain that the +romance of _Ipomedon_ was composed by an Englishman, Hue de Rotelande. +Those two works of fiction are, if not the noblest, at any rate among the +most refined of their species; _Amadas and Ydoine_ is as perfect a +romance of true love as _Amadis of Gaul_ in later days--a history which +possibly derived the name of its hero from the earlier Amadas. _Ipomedon_ +is equally perfect in another way, being one of the most clever and +successful specimens of the conventionally elegant work which was +practised by imitative poets after the fashion had been established. +There is no better romance to look at in order to see what things were +thought important in the 'school', i.e. among the well-bred unoriginal +writers who had learned the necessary style of verse, and who could turn +out a showy piece of new work by copying the patterns they had before +them. Both _Ipomedon_ and _Amadas and Ydoine_ are in the best possible +style--the genteelest of tunes. The fact is clear, that in the twelfth +century literary refinement was as possible in England as in France, so +long as one used the French language. + +It must not be supposed that everything written in French, whether in +France or England, was courtly or refined. There is plenty of rough +French written in England--some of it very good, too, like the prose +story of Fulk Fitzwaryn, which many people would find much more lively +than the genteel sentimental novels. But while French could be used for +all purposes, polite or rude, English was long compelled to be rude and +prevented from competing on equal terms with the language of those 'who +have used court'. + +It is very interesting to see how the English translated and adapted the +polite French poems, because the different examples show so many +different degrees of ambition and capacity among the native English. In +the style of the English romances--of which there are a great many +varieties--one may read the history of the people; the romances bring one +into relation with different types of mind and different stages of +culture. What happened to _Ipomedon_ is a good illustration. First there +is the original French poem--a romantic tale in verse written in the +regular French short couplets of octosyllabic lines--well and correctly +written by a man of English birth. In this production Hue de Rotelande, +the author, meant to do his best and to beat all other competitors. He +had the right sort of talent for this--not for really original +imagination, but for the kind of work that was most in fashion in his +time. He did not, like some other poets, look for a subject or a +groundwork in a Breton lay, or an Arabian story brought from the East by +a traveller; instead of that he had read the most successful romances and +he picked out of them, here and there, what suited him best for a new +combination. He took, for example, the idea of the lover who falls in +love with a lady he has never seen (an idea much older than the French +romantic school, but that does not matter, for the present); he took the +story of the proud lady won by faithful service; he took from one of the +Arthurian romances another device which is older than any particular +literature, the champion appearing, disguised in different colours, on +three successive days. In _Ipomedon_, of course, the days are days of +tournament, and the different disguises three several suits of armour. +The scene of the story is Apulia and Calabria, chosen for no particular +reason except perhaps to get away from the scene of the British romances. +The hero's name, Hippomedon, is Greek, like the names in the _Romance of +Thebes_, like Palamon and Arcita, which are taken from the Greek names +Palæmon and Archytas. Everything is borrowed, and nothing is used +clumsily. _Ipomedon_ is made according to a certain prescription, and it +is made exactly in the terms of the prescription--a perfect example of +the regular fashionable novel, well entitled to its place in any literary +museum. This successful piece was turned into English in at least two +versions. One of these imitates the original verse of _Ipomedon_, it is +written in the ordinary short couplets. In every other respect it fails +to represent the original. It leaves things out, and spoils the +construction, and misses the point. It is one of our failures. The other +version is much more intelligent and careful; the author really was doing +as much as he could to render his original truly. But he fails in his +choice of verse; he translates the French couplets of _Ipomedon_ into a +form of stanza, like that which Chaucer burlesques in _Sir Thopas_. It is +a very good kind of stanza, and this anonymous English poet manages it +well. But it is the wrong sort of measure for that kind of story. It is a +dancing, capering measure, and ill suited to translate the French verse, +which is quiet, sedate, and not emphatic. These two translations show how +the English were apt to fail. Some of them were stupid, and some of them +had the wrong sort of skill. + +It may be an accident that the English who were so fond of translating +from the French should (apparently) have taken so little from the chief +French poet of the twelfth century. This was Chrestien de Troyes, who was +in his day everything that Racine was five hundred years later; that is +to say, he was the successful and accomplished master of all the +subtleties of emotion, particularly of love, expressed in the newest, +most engaging and captivating style--the perfect manner of good society. +His fine narrative poems were thoroughly appreciated in Germany, where +German was at that time the language of all the courts, and where the +poets of the land were favoured and protected in the same way as poets in +France and Provence. In English there is only one romance extant which is +translated from Chrestien de Troyes; and the character of the translation +is significant: it proves how greatly the circumstances and conditions of +literature in England differed from those of France and Germany. The +romance is _Ywain and Gawain_, a translation of Chrestien's _Yvain_, +otherwise called _Le Chevalier au Lion_. It is a good romance, and in +style it is much closer to the original than either of the two versions +of _Ipomedon_, lately mentioned; no other of the anonymous romances comes +so near to the standard of Chaucer and Gower. It is good in manner; its +short couplets (in the language of the North of England) reproduce very +well the tone of French narrative verse. But the English writer is +plainly unable to follow the French in all the effusive passages; he +thinks the French is too long, and he cuts down the speeches. On the +other hand (to show the difference between different countries), the +German translator Hartmann von Aue, dealing with the same French poem, +admires the same things as the French author, and spins out his +translation to a greater length than the original. Another historical +fact of the same sort is that the English seem to have neglected the +_Roman d'Eneas_; while German historians note that it was a translation +of this French poem, the _Eneide_ of Heinrich van Valdeke, which first +introduced the courteous literary form of romance into Germany. German +poetry about the year 1200 was fully the equal of French, in the very +qualities on which the French authors prided themselves. England was +labouring far behind. + +It is necessary to judge England in comparison with France, if the +history of medieval poetry is to be written and studied at all. But the +comparison ought not to be pressed so far as to obliterate all the +genuine virtues of the English writers because they are not the same as +the French. There is another consideration also which ought not to be +left out. It is true that the most remarkable thing in the French +romances was their 'language of the heart', their skill in rendering +passion and emotion--their 'sensibility', to use an eighteenth-century +name for the same sort of disposition. But this emotional skill, this +ingenious use of passionate language in soliloquies and dialogues, was +not the only attraction in the French romances. It was the most important +thing at the time, and historically it is what gives those romances, of +Chrestien de Troyes and others, their rank among the poetical ideas of +the world. It was through their sensibility that they enchanted their own +time, and this was the spirit which passed on from them to later +generations through the prose romances of the fourteenth century, such as +_Amadis of Gaul_, to those of the seventeenth century, such as the _Grand +Cyrus_ or _Cassandra_. To understand what the works of Chrestien de +Troyes meant for his contemporaries one cannot do better than read the +letters in which Dorothy Osborne speaks of her favourite characters in +the later French prose romances, those 'monstrous fictions', as Scott +called them, 'which constituted the amusement of the young and the gay in +the age of Charles II'. Writing to Sir William Temple she says: 'Almanzor +is as fresh in my memory as if I had visited his tomb but yesterday. . . . +You will believe I had not been used to great afflictions when I made +his story such an one to me as I cried an hour together for him, and was +so angry with Alcidiana that for my life I could never love her after +it'. Almanzor and Alcidiana, and the sorrows that so touched their gentle +readers in the age of Louis XIV and Charles II, were the descendants of +Chrestien de Troyes in a direct line; they represent what is enduring and +inexhaustible in the spirit of the older polite literature in France. +Sentiment in modern fiction can be traced back to Chrestien de Troyes. It +is a fashion which was established then and has never been extinguished +since; if there is to be any history of ideas at all, this is what has to +be recorded as the principal influence in French literature in the +twelfth century. But it was not everything, and it was not a simple +thing. There are many varieties of sentiment, and besides sentiment there +are many other interests in the old French romantic literature. The works +of Chrestien de Troyes may be taken as examples again. In one, _Cliges_, +there are few adventures; in _Perceval_ (the story of the Grail), his +last poem, the adventures are many and wonderful. In his _Lancelot_, the +sentimental interest is managed in accordance with the rules of the +Provençal poetry at its most refined and artificial height; but his story +of _Enid_ is in substance the same as Tennyson's, a romance which does +not need (like Chrestien's _Lancelot_) any study of a special code of +behaviour to explain the essence of it. The lovers here are husband and +wife (quite against the Provençal rules), and the plot is pure comedy, a +misunderstanding cleared away by the truth and faithfulness of the +heroine. + +Further, although it is true that adventure is not the chief interest +with Chrestien de Troyes and his followers, it is not true that it is +neglected by them; and besides, although they were the most fashionable +and most famous and successful authors of romance, they were not the only +story-tellers nor was their method the only one available. There was a +form of short story, commonly called _lai_ and associated with Brittany, +in which there was room for the same kind of matter as in many of the +larger romances, but not for the same expression and effusion of +sentiment. The best known are those of Marie de France, who dedicated her +book of stories to King Henry of England (Henry II). One of the best of +the English short romances, _Sir Launfal_, is taken from Marie de France; +her stories have a beauty which was not at the time so enthralling as the +charm of the longer stories, and which had nothing like the same +influence on the literature of the future, but which now, for those who +care to look at it, has much more freshness, partly because it is nearer +to the fairy mythology of popular tradition. The longer romances are +really modern novels--studies of contemporary life, characters and +emotions, mixed up with adventures more or less surprising. The shorter +_lais_ (like that of _Sir Launfal_) might be compared to the stories of +Hans Christian Andersen; they are made in the same way. Like many of +Andersen's tales, they are borrowed from folk-lore; like them, again, +they are not mere transcripts from an uneducated story-teller. They are +'old wives' tales', but they are put into fresh literary form. This new +form may occasionally interfere with something in the original +traditional version, but it does not, either with Marie de France or with +Andersen, add too much to the original. Curiously, there is an example in +English, among the shorter rhyming romances, of a story which Andersen +has told in his own way under the title of the _Travelling Companion_. +The English _Sir Amadace_ is unfortunately not one of the best of the +short stories--not nearly as good as _Sir Launfal_--but still it shows +how a common folk-lore plot, the story of the Grateful Dead, might be +turned into literary form without losing all its original force and +without being transformed into a mere vehicle for modern literary +ambitions. + +The relations between folk-lore and literature are forced on the +attention when one is studying the Middle Ages, and perhaps most of all +in dealing with this present subject, the romances of the age of +chivalry. In Anglo-Saxon literature it is much less to the fore, probably +not because there was little of it really, but because so little has been +preserved. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there was a great +stirring-up of popular mythology in a number of countries, so that it +came to be noticed, and passed into scores of books, both in the form of +plots for stories, and also in scientific remarks made by investigators +and historians. Giraldus Cambrensis is full of folk-lore, and about the +same time Walter Map (in his _De Nugis Curialium_) and Gervase of Tilbury +(in his _Otia Imperialia_) were taking notes of the same sort. Both +Giraldus and Walter Map were at home in Wales, and it was particularly in +the relation between the Welsh and their neighbours that the study of +folk-lore was encouraged; both the historical study, as in the works of +these Latin authors just named, and the traffic in stories to be used for +literary purposes in the vernacular languages whether French or English. + +The 'matter of Britain' in the stories of Tristram, Gawain, Perceval and +Lancelot came to be associated peculiarly with the courteous sentimental +type of romance which had such vogue and such influence in the Middle +Ages. But the value of this 'matter'--the Celtic stories--was by no means +exclusively connected with the ambitious literary art of Chrestien and +others like him. Apart from form altogether, it counts for something that +such a profusion of stories was sent abroad over all the nations. They +were interesting and amusing, in whatever language they were told. They +quickened up people's imaginations and gave them something to think +about, in the same way as the Italian novels which were so much read in +the time of Shakespeare, or the trashy German novels in the time of +Shelley. + +It is much debated among historians whether it was from Wales or Brittany +that these stories passed into general circulation. It seems most +probable that the two Welsh countries on both sides of the Channel gave +stories to their neighbours--to the Normans both in France and England, +and to the English besides on the Welsh borders. It seems most probable +at any rate that the French had not to wait for the Norman Conquest +before they picked up any Celtic stories. The Arthurian names in Italy +(mentioned already above, p. 50) are found too early, and the dates do +not allow time for the stories to make their way, and find favour, and +tempt people in Lombardy to call their children after Gawain instead of a +patron saint. It is certain that both in Brittany--Little Britain--and in +Wales King Arthur was a hero, whose return was to put all things right. +It was to fulfil this prophecy that Geoffrey Plantagenet's son was called +Arthur, and a Provençal poet hails the child with these auspices: 'Now +the Bretons have got their Arthur'. Other writers speak commonly of the +'Breton folly'--this hope of a deliverer was the Breton vanity, well +known and laughed at by the more practical people across the border. + +Arthur, however, was not the proper hero of the romantic tales, either in +their shorter, more popular form or in the elaborate work of the courtly +school. In many of the _lais_ he is never mentioned; in most of the +romances, long or short, early or late, he has nothing to do except to +preside over the feast, at Christmas or Whitsuntide, and wait for +adventures. So he is represented in the English poem of _Sir Gawayn and +the Grene Knyght_. The stories are told not about King Arthur, but about +Gawain or Perceval, Lancelot or Pelleas or Pellenore. + +The great exception to this general rule is the history of Arthur which +was written by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the first half of the twelfth +century as part of his Latin history of Britain. This history of Arthur +was of course translated wherever Geoffrey was translated, and sometimes +it was picked out for separate treatment, as by the remarkable author of +the _Morte Arthure_, one of the best of the alliterative poems. Arthur +had long been known in Britain as a great leader against the Saxon +invaders; Geoffrey of Monmouth took up and developed this idea in his own +way, making Arthur a successful opponent not of the Saxons merely but of +Rome; a conqueror of kingdoms, himself an emperor before whom the power +of Rome was humbled. In consequence of which the 'Saxons' came to think +of their country as Britain, and to make Arthur their national hero, in +the same way as Charlemagne was the national hero in France. Arthur also, +like Charlemagne, came to be generally respected all over Christendom, in +Norway and Iceland, as well as Italy and Greece. Speaking generally, +whenever Arthur is a great conquering hero like Alexander or Charlemagne +this idea of him is due to Geoffrey of Monmouth; the stories where he +only appears as holding a court and sending out champions are stories +that have come from popular tradition, or are imitations of such stories. +But there are some exceptions. For one thing, Geoffrey's representation +of Arthur is not merely a composition after the model of Alexander the +Great or Charlemagne; the story of Arthur's fall at the hands of his +nephew is traditional. And when Layamon a 'Saxon' turned the French +rhyming version of Geoffrey into English--Layamon's _Brut_--he added a +number of things which are neither in the Latin nor the French, but +obtained by Layamon himself independently, somehow or other, from the +Welsh. Layamon lived on the banks of the Severn, and very probably he may +have done the same kind of note-taking in Wales or among Welsh +acquaintances as was done by Walter Map a little earlier. Layamon's +additions are of great worth; he tells the story of the passing of +Arthur, and it is from Layamon, ultimately, that all the later +versions--Malory's and Tennyson's--are derived. + +None of the English authors can compete with the French poets as elegant +writers dealing with contemporary manners. But apart from that kind of +work almost every variety of interest may be found in the English +stories. There are two, _King Horn_ and _Havelok the Dane_, which appear +to be founded on national English traditions coming down from the time of +the Danish wars. _King Horn_ is remarkable for its metre--short rhyming +couplets, but not in the regular eight-syllable lines which were imitated +from the French. The verse appears to be an adaptation of the old native +English measure, fitted with regular rhymes. Rhyme was used in +continental German poetry, and in Icelandic, and occasionally in +Anglo-Saxon, before there were any French examples to follow; and _King +Horn_ is one thing surviving to show how the English story-tellers might +have got on if they had not paid so much attention to the French +authorities in rhyme. The story of Havelok belongs to the town of Grimsby +particularly and to the Danelaw, the district of England occupied by +Danish settlers. The name Havelok is the Danish, or rather the Norwegian, +Anlaf or Olaf, and the story seems to be a tradition in which two +historical Olafs have been confused--one the Olaf who was defeated at the +battle of Brunanburh, the other the Olaf who won the battle of +Maldon--Olaf Tryggvason, King of Norway. _Havelok_, the English story, is +worth reading as a good specimen of popular English poetry in the +thirteenth century, a story where the subject and the scene are English, +where the manners are not too fine, and where the hero, a king's son +disinherited and unrecognized, lives as a servant for a long time and so +gives the author a chance of describing common life and uncourtly +manners. And he does this very well, particularly in the athletic sports +where Havelok distinguishes himself--an excellent piece to compare with +the funeral games which used to be a necessary part of every regular epic +poem. _Horn_ and _Havelok_, though they belong to England, are scarcely +to be reckoned as part of the 'matter of Britain', at least as that was +understood by the French author who used the term. There are other +stories which will not go easily into that or into either of the two +other divisions. One of these is the story of _Floris and Blanchefleur_, +which was turned into English in the thirteenth century--one of the +oldest among the rhyming romances. This is one of the many stories that +came from the East. It is the history of two young lovers who are +separated for a time--a very well known and favourite type of story. This +is the regular plot in the Greek prose romances, such as that of +Heliodorus which was so much admired after the Renaissance. This story of +_Floris and Blanchefleur_, however, does not come from Greece, but from +the same source as the _Arabian Nights_. Those famous stories, the +Thousand and One Nights, were not known in Europe till the beginning of +the eighteenth century, but many things of the same sort had made their +way in the Middle Ages into France, and this was the best of them all. It +is found in German and Dutch, as well as in English; also in Swedish and +Danish, in the same kind of short couplets--showing how widely the +fashions of literature were prescribed by France among all the Teutonic +races. + +How various the styles of romance might be is shown by two poems which +are both found in the famous _Auchinleck_ manuscript in Edinburgh, _Sir +Orfeo_ and _Sir Tristrem_. The stories are two of the best known in the +world. _Sir Orfeo_ is Orpheus. But this version of Orpheus and Eurydice +is not a translation from anything classical; it is far further from any +classical original than even the very free and distinctly 'Gothic' +rendering of Jason and Medea at the beginning of the old French tale of +Troy. The story of Orpheus has passed through popular tradition before it +turns into _Sir Orfeo_. It shows how readily folk-lore will take a +suggestion from book-learning, and how easily it will make a classical +fable into the likeness of a Breton lay. Orfeo was a king, and also a +good harper: + + He hath a queen full fair of price + That is clepèd Dame Erodys. + +One day in May Queen Erodys slept in her orchard, and when she awoke was +overcome with affliction because of a dream--a king had appeared to her, +with a thousand knights and fifty ladies, riding on snow-white steeds. + + The king had a crown on his head + It was no silver, ne gold red, + All it was of precious stone, + As bright as sun forsooth it shone. + +He made her ride on a white palfrey to his own land, and showed her +castles and towers, meadows, fields and forests; then he brought her +home, and told her that the next day she would be taken away for ever. + +The king kept watch on the morrow with two hundred knights; but there was +no help; among them all she was fetched away 'with the faerie'. Then King +Orfeo left his kingdom, and went out to the wilderness to the 'holtes +hoar' barefoot, taking nothing of all his wealth but his harp only. + + In summer he liveth by hawès + That on hawthorne groweth by shawès, + And in winter by root and rind + For other thing may he none find. + No man could tell of his sore + That he suffered ten year and more, + He that had castle and tower, + Forest, frith, both field and flower, + Now hath he nothing that him liketh + But wild beasts that by him striketh. + +Beasts and birds came to listen to his harping-- + + When the weather is clear and bright, + He taketh his harp anon right; + Into the wood it ringeth shrill + As he could harpè at his will: + The wildè bestès that there beth + For joy about him they geth + All the fowlès that there were + They comen about him there + To hear harping that was fine + So mickle joy was therein. + . . . + Oft he saw him beside + In the hotè summer tide + The king of Fayré with his rout + Came to hunt all about. + . . . + +Sometimes he saw the armed host of the Faerie; sometimes knights and +ladies together, in bright attire, riding an easy pace, and along with +them all manner of minstrelsy. One day he followed a company of the Fairy +ladies as they were hawking by the river (or rather the _rivere_--i.e. +the bank of the stream) at + + Pheasant heron and cormorant; + The fowls out of the river flew + Every falcon his game slew. + +King Orfeo saw that and laughed and rose up from his resting-place and +followed, and found his wife among them; but neither might speak with the +other-- + + But there might none with other speak + Though she him knew and he her, eke. + +But he took up his harp and followed them fast, over stock and stone, and +when they rode into a hillside--'in at the roche'--he went in after them. + + When he was into the roche y-go + Well three mile, and some deal mo + He came to a fair countray + Was as bright as any day. + +There in the middle of a lawn he saw a fair high castle of gold and +silver and precious stones. + + No man might tell ne think in thought + The riches that therein was wrought. + +The porter let him in, as a minstrel, and he was brought before the king +and queen. 'How do you come here?' said the king; 'I never sent for you, +and never before have I known a man so hardy as to come unbidden.' Then +Sir Orfeo put in a word for the minstrels; 'It is our manner', he said, +'to come to every man's house unbidden', + + 'And though we nought welcome be + Yet we must proffer our game or glee.' + +Then he took his harp and played, and the king offered him whatever he +should ask. + + 'Minstrel, me liketh well thy glee.' + +Orfeo asked for the lady bright. 'Nay', said the king, 'that were a foul +match, for in her there is no blemish and thou art rough and black'. +'Fouler still', said Orfeo, 'to hear a leasing from a king's mouth'; and +the king then let him go with good wishes, and Orfeo and Erodys went +home. The steward had kept the kingdom truly; 'thus came they out of +care'. + +It is all as simple as can be; a rescue out of fairyland, through the +power of music; the ideas are found everywhere, in ballads and stories. +The ending is happy, and nothing is said of the injunction not to look +back. It was probably left out when Orpheus was turned into a fairy tale, +on account of the power of music; the heart of the people felt that +Orpheus the good harper ought not to be subjected to the common plot. For +there is nothing commoner in romance or in popular tales than +forgetfulness like that of Orpheus when he lost Eurydice; the plot of +_Sir Launfal_ e.g. turns on that; he was warned not to speak of his fairy +wife, but he was led, by circumstances over which he had no control, to +boast of her-- + + To speke ne mightè he forgo + And said the queen before: + 'I have loved a fairer woman + Than thou ever laidest thine eye upon, + This seven year and more!' + +The drama of _Lohengrin_ keeps this idea before the public (not to speak +of the opera of _Orfeo_), and _Lohengrin_ is a medieval German romance. +The Breton lay of Orpheus would not have been in any way exceptional if +it had kept to the original fable; the beauty of it loses nothing by the +course which it has preferred to take, the happy ending. One may refer to +it as a standard, to show what can be done in the medieval art of +narrative, with the simplest elements and smallest amount of decoration. +It is minstrel poetry, popular poetry--the point is clear when King Orfeo +excuses himself to the King of Faerie by the rules of his profession as a +minstrel; that was intended to produce a smile, and applause perhaps, +among the audience. But though a minstrel's poem it is far from rude, and +it is quite free from the ordinary faults of rambling and prosing, such +as Chaucer ridiculed in his _Geste of Sir Thopas_. It is all in good +compass, and coherent; nothing in it is meaningless or ill-placed. + +_Sir Tristrem_ is a great contrast to _Sir Orfeo_; not an absolute +contrast, for neither is this story rambling or out of compass. The +difference between the two is that _Sir Orfeo_ is nearly perfect as an +English representative of the 'Breton lay'--i.e. the short French +romantic story like the _Lais_ of Marie de France; while _Sir Tristrem_ +represents no French style of narrative poetry, and is not very +successful (though technically very interesting) as an original English +experiment in poetical form. It is distinctly clever, as it is likewise +ambitious. The poet intends to do finer things than the common. He adopts +a peculiar stanza, not one of the easiest--a stanza more fitted for lyric +than narrative poetry, and which is actually used for lyrical verse by +the poet Laurence Minot. It is in short lines, well managed and effective +in their way, but it is a thin tinkling music to accompany the tragic +story. + + Ysonde bright of hewe + Is far out in the sea; + A wind again them blew + That sail no might there be; + So rew the knightes trewe, + Tristrem, so rew he, + Ever as they came newe + He one again them three + Great swink-- + Sweet Ysonde the free + Asked Brengwain a drink. + + The cup was richly wrought, + Of gold it was, the pin; + In all the world was nought + Such drink as there was in; + Brengwain was wrong bethought + To that drink she gan win + And sweet Ysonde it betaught; + She bad Tristrem begin + To say: + Their love might no man twin + Till their ending day. + +The stage is that of a little neat puppet-show; with figures like those +of a miniature, dressed in bright armour, or in scarlet and vair and +grey--the rich cloth, the precious furs, grey and ermine, which so often +represent the glory of this world in the old romances-- + + Ysonde of highe pris, + The maiden bright of hewe, + That wered fow and gris + And scarlet that was newe; + In warld was none so wis + Of crafte that men knewe. + +There is a large group of rhyming romances which might be named after +Chaucer's _Sir Thopas_--the companions of _Sir Thopas_. Chaucer's +burlesque is easily misunderstood. It is criticism, and it is ridicule; +it shows up the true character of the common minstrelsy; the rambling +narrative, the conventional stopgaps, the complacent childish vanity of +the popular artist who has his audience in front of him and knows all the +easy tricks by which he can hold their attention. Chaucer's _Rime of Sir +Thopas_ is interrupted by the voice of common sense--rudely-- + + This may well be rime doggerel, quoth he. + +But Chaucer has made a good thing out of the rhyme doggerel, and +expresses the pleasant old-fashioned quality of the minstrels' romances, +as well as their absurdities. + +His parody touches on the want of plan and method and meaning in the +popular rhymes of chivalry; it is also intended as criticism of their +verse. That verse, of which there are several varieties--there is more +than one type of stanza in _Sir Thopas_--is technically called _rime +couée_ or 'tail-rhyme', and like all patterns of verse it imposes a +certain condition of mind, for the time, on the poets who use it. It is +not absolutely simple, and so it is apt to make the writer well pleased +with himself when he finds it going well; it very readily becomes +monotonous and flat-- + + Now cometh the emperour of price, + Again him rode the king of Galice + With full mickle pride; + The child was worthy under weed + And sat upon a noble steed + By his father side; + And when he met the emperour + He valed his hood with great honour + And kissed him in that tide; + And other lords of great valour + They also kissèd Segramour + In heart is not to hide. (_Emaré._) + +For that reason, because of the monotonous beat of the tail-rhymes in the +middle and at the end of the stanza, it is chosen by the parodists of +Wordsworth in the _Rejected Addresses_ when they are aiming at what they +think is flat and insipid in his poetry. But it is a form of stanza which +may be so used as to escape the besetting faults; the fact that it has +survived through all the changes of literary fashion, and has been used +by poets in all the different centuries, is something to the credit of +the minstrels, as against the rude common-sense criticism of the Host of +the Tabard when he stopped the Rime of _Sir Thopas_. + +Chaucer's catalogue of romances is well known-- + + Men speken of romances of prys + Of Horn Child and of Ypotys + Of Bevis and Sir Gy, + Of Sir Libeux and Pleyndamour, + But Sir Thopas he bereth the flour + Of royal chivalry. + +In this summary, the name of _Pleyndamour_ is still a difficulty for +historians; it is not known to what book Chaucer was referring. _Ypotis_ +is curiously placed, for the poem of _Ypotis_ is not what is usually +reckoned a romance. 'Ypotis' is Epictetus the Stoic philosopher, and the +poem is derived from the old moralizing dialogue literature; it is +related to the Anglo-Saxon dialogue of Solomon and Saturn. The other four +are well known. _Horn Childe_ is a later version, in stanzas, of the +story of _King Horn_. Bevis of Southampton and Guy of Warwick are among +the most renowned, and most popular, of all the chivalrous heroes. In +later prose adaptations they were current down to modern times; they were +part of the favourite reading of Bunyan, and gave him ideas for the +_Pilgrim's Progress_. _Guy of Warwick_ was rewritten many +times--Chaucer's pupil, Lydgate, took it up and made a new version of it. +There was a moral and religious strain in it, which appealed to the +tastes of many; the remarkable didactic prose romance of _Tirant the +White_, written in Spain in the fifteenth century, is connected with _Guy +of Warwick_. Sir Bevis is more ordinary and has no particular moral; it +is worth reading, if any one wishes to know what was regularly expected +in romances by the people who read, or rather who listened to them. The +disinherited hero, the beautiful Paynim princess, the good horse Arundel, +the giant Ascapart--these and many other incidents may be paralleled in +other stories; the history of Sir Bevis has brought them all together, +and all the popular novelist's machinery might be fairly catalogued out +of this work alone. + +_Sir Libeaus_--Le Beau Desconnu, the Fair Knight unknown--is a different +thing. This also belongs to the School of Sir Thopas--it is minstrels' +work, and does not pretend to be anything else. But it is well done. The +verse, which is in short measure like that of _Sir Tristrem_, but not in +so ambitious a stanza, is well managed-- + + That maide knelde in halle + Before the knightes alle + And seide: My lord Arthour! + A cas ther is befalle + Worse withinne walle + Was never non of dolour. + My lady of Sinadoune + Is brought in strong prisoun + That was of great valour; + Sche praith the sende her a knight + With herte good and light + To winne her with honour. + +This quotation came from the beginning of the story, and it gives the one +problem which has to be solved by the hero. Instead of the mixed +adventures of Sir Bevis, there is only one principal one, which gives +occasion to all the adventures by the way. The lady of Sinodoun has +fallen into the power of two enchanters, and her damsel (with her dwarf +attendant) comes to the court of King Arthur to ask for a champion to +rescue her. It is a story like that of the Red Cross Knight and Una. If +Sir Bevis corresponds to what one may call the ordinary matter of +Spenser's _Faerie Queen_, the wanderings, the separations, the dangerous +encounters, _Sir Libeaus_ resembles those parts of Spenser's story where +the plot is most coherent. One of the most beautiful passages in all his +work, Britomart in the house of the enchanter Busirane, may have been +suggested by _Sir Libeaus. Sir Libeaus_ is one example of a kind of +medieval story, not the greatest, but still good and sound; the Arthurian +romance in which Arthur has nothing to do except to preside at the +beginning, and afterwards to receive the conquered opponents whom the +hero sends home from successive stages in his progress, to make +submission to the king. Sir Libeaus (his real name is Guinglain, the son +of Gawain) sets out on his journey with the damsel and the dwarf; at +first he is scorned by her, like Sir Gareth of Orkney in another story of +the same sort, but very soon he shows what he can do at the passage of +the Pont Perilous, and in the challenging of the gerfalcon, and many +other trials. Like other heroes of romance, he falls under the spell of a +sorceress who dazzles him with 'fantasm and faerie', but he escapes after +a long delay, and defeats the magicians of Sinodoun and rescues the lady +with a kiss from her serpent shape which the enchanters have put upon +her. Compared with Spenser's house of Busirane, the scene of Sir Libeaus +at Sinodoun is a small thing. But one does not feel as in _Sir Tristrem_ +the discrepancy between the miniature stage, the small bright figures, +and the tragic meaning of their story. Here the story is not tragic; it +is a story that the actors understand and can play rightly. There are no +characters and no motives beyond the scope of a fairy tale-- + + Sir Libeaus, knight corteis + Rode into the paleis + And at the halle alighte; + Trompes, homes, schalmeis, + Before the highe dais, + He herd and saw with sight; + Amid the halle floor + A fire stark and store + Was light and brende bright; + Then farther in he yede + And took with him his steed + That halp him in the fight. + + Libeaus inner gan pace + To behold each place, + The hales in the halle; _niches_ + Of main more ne lasse + Ne saw he body ne face + But menstrales clothed in palle; + With harpe, fithele and rote, + And with organes note, + Great glee they maden alle, + With citole and sautrie, + So moche menstralsie + Was never withinne walle. + +As if to show the range and the difference of style in English romance, +there is another story written like _Sir Libeaus_ in the reign of Edward +III, taken from the same Arthurian legend and beginning in the same way, +which has scarcely anything in common with it except the general +resemblance in the plot. This is _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_, one +of the most original works in medieval romance. It is written in +alliterative blank verse, divided into irregular periods which have +rhyming tailpieces at the end of them-- + + As hit is stad and stoken + In story stif and stronge + With leal letters loken + In land so has been longe. + +While the story of _Sir Libeaus_ is found in different languages--French, +Italian, German--there is no other extant older version of _Gawain and +the Green Knight_. But the separate incidents are found elsewhere, and +the scene to begin with is the usual one: Arthur at his court, Arthur +keeping high festival and waiting for 'some main marvel'. The adventure +comes when it is wanted; the Green Knight on his green horse rides into +the king's hall--half-ogre, by the look of him, to challenge the Round +Table. What he offers is a 'jeopardy', a hazard, a wager. 'Will any +gentleman cut off my head', says he, 'on condition that I may have a fair +blow at him, and no favour, in a twelvemonth's time? Or if you would +rather have it so, let me have the first stroke, and I promise to offer +my neck in turn, when a year has gone'. This is the beheading game which +is spoken of in other stories (one of them an old Irish comic romance) +but which seems to have been new at that time to the knights of King +Arthur. It is rightly considered dangerous; and so it proved when Sir +Gawain had accepted the jeopardy. For after Gawain had cut off the +stranger's head, the Green Knight picked it up by the hair, and held it +up, and it spoke and summoned Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a +year's space, and bide the return blow. + +This is more surprising than anything in _Sir Bevis_ or _Sir Guy_. Not +much is done by the writer to explain it; at the same time nothing is +left vague. The author might almost have been a modern novelist with a +contempt for romance, trying, by way of experiment, to work out a +'supernatural' plot with the full strength of his reason; merely +accepting the fabulous story, and trying how it will go with accessories +from real life, and with modern manners and conversation. There is none +of the minstrel's cant in this work, none of the cheap sensations, the +hackneyed wonders such as are ridiculed in _Sir Thopas_. Only, the +incident on which the whole story turns, the device of the beheading +game, is a piece of traditional romance. It is not found in every +language, but it is fairly well known. It is not as common as the lady +turned into a serpent, or the man into a werewolf, but still it is not +invented, it is borrowed by the English poet, and borrowed for a work +which always, even in the beheading scenes, is founded on reality. + +It is probable that the author of _Sir Gawain_ is also the author of +three other poems (not romances) which are found along with it in the +same manuscript--the _Pearl_, _Cleanness_, and _Patience_. He is a writer +with a gift for teaching, of a peculiar sort. He is not an original +philosopher, and his reading appears to have been the usual sort of thing +among fairly educated men. He does not try to get away from the regular +authorities, and he is not afraid of commonplaces. But he has great force +of will, and a strong sense of the difficulties of life; also high +spirits and great keenness. His memory is well supplied from all that he +has gone through. The three sporting episodes in _Sir Gawain_, the +deer-hunt (in Christmas week, killing the hinds), the boar-hunt and the +fox-hunt, are not only beyond question as to their scientific truth; the +details are remembered without study because the author has lived in +them, and thus, minute as they are, they are not wearisome. They do not +come from a careful notebook; they are not like the descriptions of rooms +and furniture in painstaking novels. The landscapes and the weather of +_Sir Gawain_ are put in with the same freedom. The author has a talent +especially for winter scenes. 'Grim Nature's visage hoar' had plainly +impressed his mind, and not in a repulsive way. The winter 'mist hackles' +(copes of mist) on the hills, the icicles on the stones, the swollen +streams, all come into his work--a relief from the too ready +illustrations of spring and summer which are scattered about in medieval +stories. + +The meaning of the story is in the character of Gawain. Like some other +romances, this is a chivalrous _Pilgrim's Progress_. Gawain, so much +vilified by authors who should have known better, is for this poet, as he +is for Chaucer, the perfection of courtesy. He is also the servant of Our +Lady, and bears her picture on his shield, along with the pentangle which +is the emblem of her Five Joys, as well as the Five Wounds of Christ. The +poem is the ordeal of Gawain; Gawain is tried in courage and loyalty by +his compact with the Green Knight; he is tried in loyalty and temperance +when he is wooed by the wanton conversation of the lady in the castle. +The author's choice of a plot is justified, because what he wants is an +ordeal of courage, and that is afforded by the Green Knight's 'jeopardy'. + +The alliterative poetry is almost always stronger than the tales in +rhyme, written with more zest, not so much in danger of droning and +sleepiness as the school of Sir Thopas undoubtedly is. But there is a +great difference among the alliterative romances. _William of Palerne_, +for example, is vigorous, but to little purpose, because the author has +not understood the character of the French poem which he has translated, +and has misapplied his vigorous style to the handling of a rather +sophisticated story which wanted the smooth, even, unemphatic, French +style to express it properly. _The Wars of Alexander_ is the least +distinguished of the group; there was another alliterative story of +Alexander, of which only fragments remain. The _Chevelere Assigne_, the +'Knight of the Swan,' is historically interesting, as giving the romantic +origin of Godfrey the Crusader, who is the last of the Nine Worthies. +Though purely romantic in its contents, the _Chevalier au Cygne_ belongs +to one of the French narrative groups usually called epic--the epic of +_Antioch_, which is concerned with the first Crusade. The _Gest historial +of the Destruction of Troy_ is of great interest; it is the liveliest of +all the extant 'Troy Books', and it has all the good qualities of the +fourteenth-century alliterative school, without the exaggeration and +violence which was the common fault of this style, as the contrary fault +of tameness was the danger of the rhyming romances. But the alliterative +poem which ranks along with _Sir Gawayne_ as an original work with a +distinct and fresh comprehension of its subject is the _Morte Arthure_. +This has some claim to be called an epic poem, an epic of the modern +kind, composed with a definite theory. The author takes the heroic view +of Arthur given by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and turns his warfare into a +reflection of the glory of King Edward III; not casually, but following +definite lines, with almost as much tenacity as the author of _Sir +Gawayne_, and, of course, with a greater theme. The tragedy of Arthur in +Malory to some extent repeats the work of this poet--whose name was +Huchoun of the Awle Ryale; it may have been Sir Hugh of Eglinton. + + + + + CHAPTER V + SONGS AND BALLADS + + +King Canute's boat-song has some claim to be the earliest English song in +rhyme-- + + Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely + Tha Knut king rew therby: + Roweth, knihtes, ner the land + And here we thes muneches sang. + +If this claim be disallowed, then the first is St. Godric, the hermit of +Finchale in the reign of Henry II--his hymn to Our Lady and the hymn to +St. Nicholas. These are preserved along with the music (like the Cuckoo +song which comes later); the manuscript of the poems of Godric is copied +in the frontispiece to Saintsbury's _History of English Prosody_; it +proves many interesting things. It is obvious that musical notation is +well established; and it seems to follow that with a good musical +tradition there may be encouragement for lyric poetry apart from any such +'courtly' circumstances as have been described in another chapter. There +is no doubt about this. While it is certain on the one hand that the +lyrical art of the Middle Ages was carried furthest in courtly society by +the French, Provençal, German and Italian poets, it is equally certain +that the art of music flourished also in out-of-the-way places. And as in +those days musical and poetical measures, tunes and words, generally went +together, the development of music would mean the development of poetical +forms, of lyric stanzas. Music flourished in England most of all in +Godric's country, the old Northumbria. Giraldus Cambrensis, who has been +quoted already for his story of the wake and the English love-song, gives +in another place a remarkable description of the part-singing which in +his time was cultivated where it is most in favour at the present day--in +Wales, and in England north of the Humber. Where people met to sing in +parts, where music, therefore, was accurate and well studied, there must +have been careful patterns of stanza. Not much remains from a date so +early as this, nor even for a century after the time of Godric and +Giraldus. But towards the end of the reign of Edward I lyric poems are +found more frequently, often careful in form. And in judging of their art +it is well to remember that it is not necessary to refer them to the +courtly schools for their origin. Country people might be good judges of +lyric; they might be as exacting in their musical and poetical criticisms +as any persons of quality could be. Hence while it is certain that +England before the time of Chaucer was generally rustic and provincial in +its literary taste, it does not follow that the rustic taste was +uninstructed or that the art was poor. The beauty of the English songs +between 1300 and 1500 is not that of the nobler lyric as it was (for +example) practised and described by Dante. But the beauty is undeniable, +and it is the beauty of an art which has laws of its own; it is poetry, +not the primitive elements of poetry. In art, it is not very far from +that of the earlier Provençal poets. For everywhere, it should be +remembered, the noble lyric poetry was ready to draw from the popular +sources, to adapt and imitate the rustic themes; as on the other hand the +common people were often willing to take up the courtly forms. + +The earliest rhyming songs are more interesting from their associations +than their own merits; though Canute and St. Godric are certainly able to +put a good deal of meaning into few words. Godric's address to St. +Nicholas is particularly memorable for its bearing on his own history. +Godric had been a sea captain in his youth (like another famous author of +hymns, the Rev. John Newton) and St. Nicholas is the patron saint of +sailors. Godric, whose operations were in the Levant, had often prayed to +St. Nicholas of Bari, and he brings the name of the saint's own city into +his hymn, by means of a sacred pun. 'Saint Nicholas', he says, 'build us +a far sheen house-- + + At thi burch at thi bare + Sainte Nicholaes bring us wel thare. + +'Bare' here means shrine, literally, but Godric is thinking also of the +name of the 'burgh', the city of Bari to which the relics of the saint +had been lately brought. + +Religious lyric poetry is not separate from other kinds, and it +frequently imitates the forms and language of worldly songs. The _Luve +Ron_ of the Friar Minor Thomas de Hales is one of the earliest poems of a +type something between the song and the moral poem--a lyric rather far +away from the music of a song, more like the lyrics of modern poets, +meant to be read rather than sung, yet keeping the lyrical stave. One +passage in it is on the favourite theme of the 'snows of yester year'-- + + Where is Paris and Heleyne + That were so bright and fair of blee! + +This is earlier in date than the famous collection in the Harleian MS., +which is everything best worth remembering in the old lyrical poetry-- + + Betwene Mersche and Averil + When spray beginneth to springe. + +The lyrical contents of this book (there are other things besides the +songs--a copy of _King Horn_, e.g.)--the songs of this Harleian MS.--are +classified as religious, amatory and satirical; but a better division is +simply into songs of love and songs of scorn. The division is as old and +as constant as anything in the world, and the distinction between +'courtly' and 'popular' does not affect it. In the older court poetry of +Iceland, as in the later of Provence and Germany, the lyric of scorn and +the lyric of praise were equally recognized. The name 'Wormtongue' given +to an Icelandic poet for his attacking poems would do very well for many +of the Provençals--for Sordello, particularly, whose best-known poem is +his lyrical satire on the Kings of Christendom. It depends, of course, on +fashion how the lyrical attack shall be developed. In England it could +not be as subtle as in the countries of Bertran de Born or Walter von der +Vogelweide, where the poet was a friend and enemy of some among the +greatest of the earth. The political songs in the Harleian manuscript are +anonymous, and express the heart of the people. The earliest in date and +the best known is the song of Lewes--a blast of laughter from the +partisans of Simon de Montfort following up the pursuit of their defeated +adversaries--thoroughly happy and contemptuous, and not cruel. It is +addressed to 'Richard of Almain', Richard the king's brother, who was +looked on as the bad counsellor of his nephew Edward-- + + Sir Simon de Montfort hath swore by his chin, + Hadde he now here the Erl of Warin + Sholde he never more come to his inn + With shelde, ne with spere, ne with other gin + To helpe of Windesore! + _Richard! thah thou be ever trichard,_ + _Trichen shalt thou never more!_ + +This very spirited song is preserved together with some others dealing +with later events in the life of Edward. One of them is a long poem of +exultation over the death of the King's Scottish rebels, Sir William +Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser; the author takes great pleasure in the +treatment of Wallace by the King and the hangman-- + + Sir Edward oure King, that full is of pité + The Waleis' quarters sende to his owne countré + On four half to honge, here mirour to be + Ther upon to thenche, that monie mihten see + And drede: + Why nolden hie be war, + Of the bataile of Donbar + How evele hem con spede? + +The same poet gibes at a Scottish rebel who was then still living and +calls him a 'king of summer' and 'King Hob'-- + + Nou kyng Hobbe in the mures gongeth. + +This King Hob of the moors was Robert the Bruce, wandering, as Barbour +describes him, over the land. There is another very vigorous and rather +long piece on a recent defeat of the French by the Flemings at Courtrai-- + + The Frenshe came to Flaundres so light so the hare + Er hit were midnight, hit fell hem to care + Hie were caught by the net, so bird is in snare + With rouncin and with stede: + The Flemishe hem dabbeth on the hed bare, + Hie nolden take for hem raunsoun ne ware + Hie doddeth off here hevedes, fare so hit fare, + And thare to haveth hie nede. + +This style of political journalism in rhyme was carried on later with +much spirit, and one author is well known by name and has had his poems +often edited--Lawrence Minot, a good workman who is sometimes +undervalued. Lawrence Minot has command of various lyrical measures; he +has the clear sharp phrasing which belongs generally to his northern +dialect, and he can put contempt into his voice with no recourse to bad +language. After describing the threats and boasting of the French, when +Minot remarks + + And yet is England as it was, + +the effect is just where it ought to be, between wind and water; the +enemy is done for. It is like Prior's observation to Boileau, in the +_Ode_ on the taking of Namur, and the surrender of the French garrison-- + + Each was a Hercules, you tell us, + Yet out they marched like common men. + +Besides the songs of attack, there are also comic poems, simply amusing +without malice--such is the excellent Harleian piece on the _Man in the +Moon_, which is the meditation of a solitary reveller, apparently +thinking out the problem of the Man and his thorn-bush and offering +sympathy: 'Did you cut a bundle of thorns, and did the heyward come and +make you pay? Ask him to drink, and we will get your pledge redeemed'. + + If thy wed is y-take, bring home the truss; + Set forth thine other foot, stride over sty! + We shall pray the heyward home to our house, + And maken him at ease, for the maistry! + Drink to him dearly of full good bouse, + And our dame Douce shall sitten him by; + When that he is drunk as a dreynt mouse + Then we shall borrow the wed at the bailie! + +A Franciscan brother in Ireland, Friar Michael of Kildare, composed some +good nonsensical poems--one of them a rigmarole in which part of the joke +is the way he pretends to rhyme and then sticks in a word that does not +rhyme, asking all through for admiration of his skill in verse. As a +poetical joke it is curious, and shows that Brother Michael was a critic +and knew the terms of his art. There are many literary games in the +Middle Ages, nonsense rhymes of different sorts; they are connected with +the serious art of poetry which had its own 'toys and trifles'--such +feats of skill in verse and rhyming as Chaucer shows in his _Complaint of +Anelida_. Tricks of verse were apt to multiply as the poetic imagination +failed--a substitute for poetry; but many of the strongest poets have +used them occasionally. Among all the artistic games one of the most +curious is where a Welsh poet (in Oxford in the fifteenth century) gives +a display of Welsh poetical form with English words--to confute the +ignorant Saxon who had said there was no art of poetry in Wales. + +The stanza forms in the Harleian book are various, and interesting to +compare with modern stanzas. There is an example of the verse which has +travelled from William of Poitiers, about the year 1100, to Burns and his +imitators. Modern poetry begins with William of Poitiers using the verse +of Burns in a poem on _Nothing_-- + + The song I make is of no thing, + Of no one, nor myself, I sing, + Of joyous youth, nor love-longing, + Nor place, nor time; + I rode on horseback, slumbering: + There sprang this rhyme! + +Two hundred years after, it is found in England-- + + Her eye hath wounded me, y-wisse, + Her bende browen that bringeth blisse; + Her comely mouth that mightè kisse + In mirth he were; + I woldè chaungè mine for his + That is her fere! + +The romance stanza is used also in its original lyrical way, with a +refrain added-- + + For her love I cark and care + For her love I droop and dare + For her love my bliss is bare + And all I waxè wan; + For her love in sleep I slake, + For her love all night I wake + For her love mourning I make + More than any man. + _Blow, northern wind!_ + _Send thou me my sweeting!_ + _Blow, northern wind!_ + _Blow! blow! blow!_ + +Technically, it is to be noted that some of those poems have the +combination of a six-line with a four-line passage which is frequent in +French lyrics of all ages, which is also found in the verse of _The +Cherrie and the Slae_ (another of Burns's favourite measures), and also +in some of Gray's simpler odes. It is found in one of the religious +poems, with the six lines first, and the four lines after, as in Burns. +The common French pattern arranges them the other way round, and so does +Gray, but the constituent parts are the same. + + Now shrinketh rose and lily flower + That whilom bare that sweete savour, + In summer, that sweete tide; + Ne is no queene so stark ne stour, + Ne no lady so bright in bower + That death ne shall by glide; + Whoso will flesh-lust forgon, + And heaven bliss abide, + On Jesu be his thought anon, + That thirled was his side. + +This poem is a good text to prove the long ancestry of modern verse, and +the community of the nations, often very remote from definite intercourse +between them. And there is one phrase in this stanza which goes back to +the older world: 'bright in bower' is from the ancient heroic verse; it +may be found in Icelandic, in the Elder Edda. + +The fifteenth century, which is so dismal in the works of the more +ambitious poets (Lydgate, and Occleve, e.g.), is rich in popular carols +which by this time have drawn close to the modern meaning of the name. +They are Christmas carols, and the name loses its old general application +to any song that went with dancing in a round. In the carols, the art is +generally much more simple than in the lyrics which have just been +quoted; they belong more truly to the common people, and their authors +are less careful. Yet the difference is one of degree. The only +difference which is really certain is between one poem and another. + +Speaking generally about the carols one may say truly they are unlike the +work of the Chaucerian school; the lyrics of the Harleian book in the +reign of Edward I are nearer the Chaucerian manner. It is hardly worth +while to say more, for the present. + +And it is not easy to choose among the carols. Some of them are well +known to-day-- + + When Christ was born of Mary free + In Bethlehem that fair city + Angels sang loud with mirth and glee + _In excelsis gloria_. + +Ballads in the ordinary sense of the term--ballads with a story in them, +like _Sir Patrick Spens_ or _The Milldams of Binnorie_--are not found in +any quantity till late in the Middle Ages, and hardly at all before the +fifteenth century. But there are some early things of the kind. A rhyme +of _Judas_ (thirteenth century) is reckoned among the ballads by the +scholar (the late Professor Child) who gave most time to the subject, and +whose great collection of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads has +brought together everything ascertainable about them. + +By some the ballads are held to be degenerate romances; and they appear +at a time when the best of romance was over, and when even the worst was +dying out. Also, it is quite certain that some ballads are derived from +romances. There is a ballad of the young _Hynd Horn_ which comes from the +old narrative poem of _King Horn_ or of _Horn Childe_. There is a ballad +version of _Sir Orfeo_, the 'Breton lay' which has been described in +another chapter. But there are great difficulties in the way of this +theory. In the first place, there are many ballads which have no romance +extant to correspond to them. That may not prove much, for many old +romances have been lost. But if one is to make allowance for chances of +this sort, then many old ballads may have been lost also, and many extant +ballads may go back to the thirteenth century or even earlier for their +original forms. Again, there are ballads which it is scarcely possible to +think of as existing in the shape of a narrative romance. The form of the +ballad is lyrical; all ballads are lyrical ballads, and some of them at +any rate would lose their meaning utterly if they were paraphrased into a +story. What would the story of _Sir Patrick Spens_ be worth if it were +told in any other way--with a description of the scenery about +Dunfermline, the domestic establishment of the King of Norway, and the +manners at his Court? Further, the theory that the ballads are degenerate +romances is unfair to those ballads which are known to be descended from +romances. The ballad of _Hynd Horn_ may be derived from an older +narrative poem, but it is not a _corruption_ of any old narrative; it is +a different thing, in a lyrical form which has a value of its own. +'Corruption', 'degeneracy', does not explain the form of the ballads, any +more than the Miracle Plays are explained by calling them corruptions of +the Gospel. + +The proper form of the ballads is the same as the _carole_, with +narrative substance added. Anything will do for a ring dance, either at a +wake in a churchyard, or in a garden like that of the _Roman de la Rose_, +or at Christmas games like those described in _Sir Gawayne and the Green +Knight_. At first, a love-song was the favourite sort, with a refrain of +_douce amie_, and so on. But the method was always the same; there was a +leader who sang the successive verses, the fresh lines of the song, while +the other dancers came in with the refrain, most often in two parts, one +after the first verse, the second after the second-- + + When that I was and a little tiny boy + _With a heigh-ho, the wind and the rain_, + A foolish thing was but a toy + _And the rain it raineth every day_. + +The narrative ballad was most in favour where people were fondest of +dancing. The love-song or the nonsense verses could not be kept up so +long; something more was wanted, and this was given by the story; also as +the story was always dramatic, more or less, with different people +speaking, the entertainment was all the better. If this is not the whole +explanation, it still accounts for something in the history, and it is +certainly true of some places where the ballad has flourished longest. +The _carole_ has lasted to the present day in the Faroe Islands, together +with some very ancient types of tune; and there the ballads are much +longer than in other countries, because the dancers are unwearied and +wish to keep it up as long as may be. So the ballads are spun out, +enormously. + +The history of ballad poetry in Western Europe, if one dates it from the +beginning of the French _carole_ fashion--about 1100--is parallel to the +history of pure lyric, and to the history of romance. It is distinct from +both, and related to both. There are many mysterious things in it. The +strangest thing of all is that it often seems to repeat in comparatively +modern times--in the second half of the Middle Ages--what has been +generally held to be the process by which epic poetry begins. There is +reason for thinking that epic poetry began in concerted lyric, something +like the ballad chorus. The oldest Anglo-Saxon heroic poem, _Widsith_, is +near to lyric; _Deor's Lament_ is lyric, with a refrain. The old Teutonic +narrative poetry (as in _Beowulf_) may have grown out of a very old sort +of ballad custom, where the narrative elements increased and gradually +killed the lyric, so that recitation of a story by the minstrel took the +place of the dancing chorus. However that may be, it is certain that the +ballads of Christendom in the Middle Ages are related in a strange way to +the older epic poetry, not by derivation, but by sympathy. The ballad +poets think in the same manner as the epic poets and choose by preference +the same kind of plot. The plots of epics are generally the plots of +tragedies. This is one of the great differences between the Anglo-Saxon +heroic poetry and the later romances. It is a difference also between the +romances and the ballads. Few of the romances are tragical. The story of +Tristram and the story of King Arthur are tragical; but the romantic +poets are beaten by the story of Tristram, and they generally keep away +from the tragedy of Arthur. The ballads often have happy endings, but not +nearly so often as the romances; in the best of the ballads there is a +sorrowful ending; in many there is a tragical mistake; in many (and in +how few of the romances!) there is a repetition of the old heroic scene, +the last resistance against the enemy as in Roncevaux or in the +_Nibelunge Nôt_. _Chevy Chase_ is the ballad counterpart of _Maldon_; +_Parcy Reed_ or _Johnny of Braidislee_ answers in the ballad form to the +fight at _Finnesburgh_, a story of a treacherous onset and a good +defence. Parcy Reed, beset and betrayed, is more like a northern hero +than a knight of romance. + +The mystery is that the same kind of choice should be found in all the +countries where ballads were sung. The English and Scottish ballads, like +the English romances, are related to similar things in other lands. To +understand the history of the ballads it is necessary, as with the +romances, to compare different versions of the same matter--French or +German, Italian, Danish. + +Many curious things have been brought out by study of this +sort--resemblances of ballad plots all over Christendom. But there is a +sort of resemblance which no amount of 'analogues' in different languages +can explain, and that is the likeness in temper among the ballad poets of +different languages, which not only makes them take up the same stories, +but makes them deal with fresh realities in the same way. How is it that +an English ballad poet sees the death of Parcy Reed in a certain manner, +while a Danish poet far off will see the same poetical meaning in a +Danish adventure, and will turn it into the common ballad form? In both +cases it is the death of a hero that the poet renders in verse; deaths of +heroes are a subject for poetry, it may be said, all over the world. But +how is it that this particular form should be used in different countries +for the same kind of subject, not conventionally, but with imaginative +life, each poet independently seizing this as the proper subject and +treating it with all the force of his mind? + +The medieval ballad is a form used by poets with their eyes open upon +life, and with a form of thought in their minds by which they comprehend +a tragic situation. The medieval romance is a form used originally by +poets with a certain vein of sentiment who found that narrative plots +helped them to develop their emotional rhetoric; then it passed through +various stages in different countries, sinking into chapbooks or rising +to the _Orlando_ or the _Faerie Queene_--but never coming back to the old +tragic form of imagination, out of which the older epics had been +derived, and which is constantly found in the ballads. + +Probably the old ballad chorus in its proper dancing form was going out +of use in England about 1400. Barbour, a contemporary of Chaucer, speaks +of girls singing ballads 'at their play'; Thomas Deloney in the time of +Elizabeth describes the singing of a ballad refrain; and the game lives +happily still, in songs of _London Bridge_ and others. But it became more +and more common for ballads to be sung or recited to an audience sitting +still; ballads were given out by minstrels, like the minstrel of _Chevy +Chase_. Sometimes ballads are found swelling into something like a +narrative poem; such is the famous ballad of _Adam Bell, Clim o' the +Clough, and William of Cloudeslee_, which has a plot of the right sort, +the defence of a house against enemies. _The Little Geste of Robin Hood_ +seems to be an attempt to make an epic poem by joining together a number +of ballads. The ballad of _Robin Hood's Death_ is worth reading as a +contrast to this rather mechanical work. _Robin Hood's Death_ is a ballad +tragedy; again, the death of a hero beset by traitors. Red Roger stabbed +Robin with a grounden glave ('grounden' comes from the oldest poetic +vocabulary). Robin made 'a wound full wide' between Roger's head and his +shoulders. Then he asks Little John for the sacrament, the housel of +earth (he calls it 'moud', i.e. 'mould') which could be given and taken +by any Christian man, in extremity, without a priest-- + + 'Now give me moud,' Robin said to Little John, + 'Now give me moud with thy hand; + I trust to God in heaven so high + My housel will me bestand.' + +And he refuses to let Little John burn the house of the treacherous +Prioress where he had come by his death. This is heroic poetry in its +simplest form, and quite true to its proper nature. + +The beauty of the ballads is uncertain and often corrupted by +forgetfulness and the ordinary accidents of popular tradition. It is not +always true that the right subject has the best form. But the grace of +the ballads is unmistakable; it is unlike anything in the contemporary +romances, because it is lyrical poetry. It is often vague and intangible. +It is never the same as narrative romance. + + He's tane three locks o' her yellow hair, + _Binnorie, O Binnorie!_ + And wi' them strung his harp so fair + _By the bonny mill-dams o' Binnorie_. + +It is the singing voice that makes the difference; and it is a difference +of thought as well as of style. + + + + + CHAPTER VI + COMIC POETRY + + +France sets the model for comic as well as romantic poetry, in the Middle +Ages. In romance the English were not able for a long time--hardly before +Chaucer and Gower--to imitate the French style properly; the French +sentiment was beyond them, not appreciated; they took the stories, the +action and adventures, and let the sentiment alone, or abridged it. The +reasons for this are obvious. But there seems to be no reason, except +accident, for the way in which the English writers in those times +neglected the French comic literature of the twelfth century. Very little +of it is represented in the English of the following centuries; yet what +there is in English corresponding to the French _fabliaux_ and to Reynard +the Fox is thoroughly well done. The English wit was quite equal to the +French in matters such as these; there were no difficulties of style or +caste in the way, such as prevented the English minstrels from using much +of the French romantic, sentimental rhetoric. There might have been a +thirteenth-century English _Reynard_, as good as the High or Low German +_Reynards_; that is proved by the one short example (295 lines) in which +an episode of the great medieval comic epic is told by an English +versifier--the story of _The Vox and the Wolf_. This is one of the best +of all the practical jokes of Reynard--the well-known story of the Fox +and the Wolf in the well. It is told again, in a different way, among the +Fables of the Scottish poet Robert Henryson; it is also one of the +stories of Uncle Remus. + + A vox gan out of the wodè go, + +and made his way to a hen-roost, where he got three hens out of five, and +argued with Chauntecler the cock, explaining, though unsuccessfully, that +a little blood-letting might be good for him; thence, being troubled with +thirst, he went to the well. The well had two buckets on a rope over a +pulley; the Fox 'ne understood nought of the gin' and got into one of the +buckets and went down to the bottom of the well; where he repented of his +gluttony. The comic epic is as moral as Piers Plowman; that is part of +the game. + +Then ('out of the depe wode') appeared the Wolf, Sigrim (Isengrim), also +thirsty, and looking for a drink; he heard the lamentations of his gossip +Reneuard, and sat down by the well and called to him. Then at last the +Fox's wit returned and he saw how he might escape. There was nothing (he +said) he would have prayed for more than that his friend should join him +in the happy place: 'here is the bliss of Paradise'. 'What! art thou +dead?' says the Wolf: 'this is news; it was only three days ago that thou +and thy wife and children all came to dine with me.' 'Yes! I am dead', +says the Fox. 'I would not return to the world again, for all the world's +wealth. Why should I walk in the world, in care and woe, in filth and +sin? But this place is full of all happiness; here is mutton, both sheep +and goat.' When the Wolf heard of this good meat his hunger overcame him +and he asked to be let in. 'Not till thou art shriven', says the Fox; and +the Wolf bends his head, sighing hard and strong, and makes his +confession, and gets forgiveness, and is happy. + + Nou ich am in clene live + Ne recche ich of childe ne of wive. + +'But tell me what to do.' 'Do!' quoth the Fox, 'leap into the bucket, and +come down.' And the Wolf going down met the Fox half-way; Reynard, 'glad +and blithe' that the Wolf was a true penitent and in clean living, +promised to have his soul-knell rung and masses said for him. + +The well, it should be said, belonged to a house of friars; Aylmer the +'master curtler' who looked after the kitchen-garden came to the well in +the morning; and the Wolf was pulled out and beaten and hunted; he found +no bliss and no indulgence of blows. + +The French story has some points that are not in the English; in the +original, the two buckets on the pulley are explained to Isengrim as +being God's balance of good and evil, in which souls are weighed. Also +there is a more satisfactory account of the way Reynard came to be +entrapped. In the English story the failure of his wit is rather +disgraceful; in the French he takes to the bucket because he thinks he +sees his wife Hermeline in the bottom of the well; it is a clear +starlight night, and as he peers over the rim of the well he sees the +figure looking up at him, and when he calls there is a hollow echo which +he takes for a voice answering. But there is no such difference of taste +and imagination here between the French and the English Reynard as there +is between the French and the English chivalrous romances. + +The _Roman de Renart_ is generally, and justly, taken as the ironical +counterpart of medieval epic and romance; an irreverent criticism of +dignitaries, spiritual and temporal, the great narrative comedy of the +Ages of Faith and of Chivalry. The comic short stories usually called +_fabliaux_ are most of them much less intelligent; rhyming versions of +ribald jokes, very elementary. But there are great differences among +them, and some of them are worth remembering. It is a pity there is no +English version of the _jongleur_, the professional minstrel, who, in the +absence of the devils, is put in charge of the souls in Hell, but is +drawn by St. Peter to play them away at a game of dice--the result being +that he is turned out; since then the Master Devil has given +instructions: No Minstrels allowed within. + +There are few English _fabliaux_; there is perhaps only one preserved as +a separate piece by itself, the story of _Dame Sirith_. This is far above +the ordinary level of such things; it is a shameful practical joke, but +there is more in it than this; the character of Dame Sirith, in her +machinations to help the distressed lover of his neighbour's wife, is +such as belongs to comedy and to satire, not to the ordinary vulgar +'merry tale'. + +It is hard to find any other separate tale of this class in English; but +the stories of the Seven Wise Masters, the Seven Sages of Rome, are many +of them impossible to distinguish from the common type of the French +_fabliaux_, though they are often classed among the romances. There are +many historical problems connected with the medieval short stories. +Although they do not appear in writing to any large extent before the +French rhyming versions, they are known to have been current long before +the twelfth century and before the French language was used in +literature. There are Latin versions of some of them composed in Germany +before the _fabliaux_ had come into existence; one of them in substance +is the same as Hans Andersen's story of Big Claus and Little Claus, which +also is found as one of the _fabliaux_. Evidently, there are a number of +comic stories which have been going about for hundreds (or thousands) of +years without any need of a written version. At any time, in any country, +it may occur to some one to put one of those stories into literary +language. Two of the German-Latin comic poems are in elaborate medieval +verse, set to religious tunes, in the form of the _Sequentia_--a fact +which is mentioned here only to show that there was nothing popular in +these German experiments. They were not likely to found a school of comic +story-telling; they were too difficult and exceptional; literary +curiosities. The French _fabliaux_, in the ordinary short couplets and +without any literary ornament, were absolutely popular; it needed no +learning and not much wit to understand them. So that, as they spread and +were circulated, they came often to be hardly distinguishable from the +traditional stories which had been going about all the time in spoken, +not written, forms. It was one of the great popular successes of medieval +French literature; and it was due partly to the French stories +themselves, and partly to the example which they set, that comic +literature was cultivated in the later Middle Ages. The French stories +were translated and adapted by Boccaccio and many others; and when the +example had once been given, writers in different languages could find +stories of their own without going to the _fabliaux_. + +Does it matter much to any one where these stories came from, and how +they passed from oral tradition into medieval (or modern) literary forms? +The question is more reasonable than such questions usually are, because +most of these stories are trivial, they are not all witty, and many of +them are villainous. But the historical facts about them serve to bring +out, at any rate, the extraordinary talent of the French for making +literary profit out of every kind of material. Any one might have thought +of writing out these stories which every one knew; but, with the +exception of the few Latin experiments, this was done by nobody till the +French took it up. + +Further, those 'merry tales' come into the whole subject of the relations +between folk-lore and literature, which is particularly important (for +those who like that sort of inquiry) in the study of the Middle Ages. All +the fiction of the Middle Ages, comic or romantic, is full of things +which appear in popular tales like those collected by Grimm in Germany or +by Campbell of Islay in the West Highlands. So much of medieval poetry is +traditional or popular--the ballads especially--that folk-lore has to be +studied more carefully than is needful when one is dealing with later +times. With regard to short comic tales of the type of the _fabliaux_, +part of the problem is easy enough, if one accepts the opinion that +stories like _Big Claus and Little Claus_, which are found all over the +world, and which can be proved to have been current orally for centuries, +are things existing, and travelling, independently of written books, +which may at any time be recorded in a written form. The written form may +be literary, as when the story is written in Latin verse by an early +German scholar, or in French medieval verse by a minstrel or a minstrel's +hack, or in fine Danish prose by Hans Andersen. Or it may be written down +by a scientific collector of folk-lore keeping closely to the actual +phrasing of the unsophisticated story-teller; as when the plot is found +among the Ananzi stories of the negroes in the West Indies. The life of +popular stories is mysterious; but it is well known in fact, and there is +no difficulty in understanding how the popular story which is perennial +in every climate may any day be used for the literary fashion of that +day. + +It is rather strange that while there is so much folk-lore in medieval +literature there should be so few medieval stories which take up exactly +the plots of any of the popular traditional tales. And it is a curious +coincidence that two of the plots from folk-lore which are used in +medieval literature, distinctly, by themselves, keeping to the folk-lore +outlines, should also appear in literary forms equally distinct and no +less true to their traditional shape among the Tales of Andersen. One is +that which has just been mentioned, _Big Claus and Little Claus_, which +comes into English rather late in the Middle Ages as the _Friars of +Berwick_. The other is the _Travelling Companion_, which in English +rhyming romance is called _Sir Amadace_. There is something fortunate +about those two stories which has gained for them more attention than the +rest. They both come into the Elizabethan theatre, where again it is +curiously rare to find a folk-lore plot. One is Davenport's _New Trick to +Cheat the Devil_; the other, the _Travelling Companion_, is Peele's _Old +Wives' Tale_. + +With most of the short stories it is useless to seek for any definite +source. To ask for the first author of _Big Claus and Little Claus_ is no +more reasonable than to ask who was the inventor of High Dutch and Low +Dutch. But there is a large section of medieval story-telling which is in +a different condition, and about which it is not wholly futile to ask +questions of pedigree. _The Seven Sages of Rome_ is the best example of +this class; it has been remarked already that many things in the book are +like the _fabliaux_; but unlike most of the _fabliaux_ they have a +literary origin which can be traced. The Book of the Seven Wise Masters +of Rome (which exists in many different forms, with a variety of +contents) is an Oriental collection of stories in a framework; that is to +say, there is a plot which leads to the telling of stories, as in the +_Arabian Nights_, the _Decameron_, the _Canterbury Tales_. The _Arabian +Nights_ were not known in the West till the beginning of the eighteenth +century, but the Oriental plan of a group of stories was brought to +Europe at least as early as the twelfth century. The plot of the _Seven +Sages_ is that the son of the Emperor of Rome is falsely accused by his +stepmother, and defended by the Seven Masters, the Empress and the +Masters telling stories against one another. As the object of the Masters +is to prove that women are not to be trusted, it may be understood that +their stories generally agree in their moral with the common +disrespectful 'merry tales'. Among the lady's stories are some of a +different complexion; one of these is best known in England through W. R. +Spencer's ballad of the death of Gelert, the faithful hound who saved the +child of his lord, and was hastily and unjustly killed in error. Another +is the story of the Master Thief, which is found in the second book of +Herodotus--the treasure of Rhampsinitus, king of Egypt. + +One of those Oriental fables found among the old French short stories +comes into English long afterwards in the form of Parnell's _Hermit_. + +Although the _fabliaux_ are not very largely represented in medieval +English rhyme, there is a considerable amount of miscellaneous comic +verse. One of the great differences between Middle English and +Anglo-Saxon writings (judging from what is extant) is that in Middle +English there is far more jesting and nonsense. The best of the comic +pieces is one that might be reckoned along with the _fabliaux_ except +that there is no story in it; the description of the _Land of Cockayne_, +sometimes called the land of Readymade, where the geese fly about +roasted-- + + Yet I do you mo to wit + The geese y-roasted on the spit + Fleeth to that abbey, Got it wot + And gredeth: Geese all hot, all hot! + +The land of Cockayne is a burlesque Paradise 'far in the sea by West of +Spain'. + + There beth rivers great and fine + Of oil, milk, honey and wine; + Water serveth there to no thing, + But to sight and to washing. + +This piece, and _Reynard and Isengrim (The Fox and the Wolf)_, and +others, show that fairly early, and before the French language had given +way to English as the proper speech for good society, there was some +talent in English authors for light verse, narrative or descriptive, for +humorous stories, and for satire. The English short couplets of those +days--of the time of Henry III and Edward I--are at no disadvantage as +compared with the French. Anything can be expressed in that familiar +verse which is possible in French--anything, except the finer shades of +sentiment, for which as yet the English have no mind, and which must wait +for the authors of the _Confessio Amantis_ and the _Book of the Duchess +Blanche_. + +But there is one early poem--a hundred, it may be a hundred and fifty, +years before Chaucer--in which not the sentiment but something much more +characteristic of Chaucer is anticipated in a really wonderful way. _The +Owl and the Nightingale_ is an original poem, written in the language of +Dorset at a time when nothing English was considered 'courteous'. Yet it +is hard to see what is wanting to the poem to distinguish it from the +literature of polite society in the Augustan ages. What is there +provincial in it, except the language? And why should the language be +called, except in a technical and literal sense, rustic, when it is used +with a perfect command of idiom, with tact and discretion, with the good +humour that comprehends many different things and motives at once, and +the irony which may be a check on effusive romance, but never a hindrance +to grace and beauty? Urbanity is the right word, the name one cannot help +using, for the temper of this rustic and provincial poem. It is urbane, +like Horace or Addison, without any town society to support the author in +his criticism of life. The author is like one of the personages in his +satire, the Wren, who was bred in the greenwood, but brought up among +mankind--in the humanities: + + For theih heo were ybred a wolde + Heo was ytowen among mankenne, + And hire wisdom broughte thenne. + +_The Owl and the Nightingale_ is the most miraculous piece of writing, +or, if that is too strong a term, the most contrary to all preconceived +opinion, among the medieval English books. In the condition of the +English language in the reign of Henry III, with so much against it, +there was still no reason why there should not be plenty of English +romances and a variety of English songs, though they might not be the +same sort of romances and songs as were composed in countries like France +or Germany, and though they might be wanting in the 'finer shades'. But +all the chances, as far as we can judge, were against the production of +humorous impartial essays in verse. Such things are not too common at any +time. They were not common even in French polite literature in the +thirteenth century. In the century after, Froissart in French, Gower and +of course Chaucer in English have the same talent for light familiar +rhyming essays that is shown by Prior and Swift. The early English poet +had discovered for himself a form which generally requires ages of +training and study before it can succeed. + +His poem is entitled in one of the two MSS. _altercatio inter Philomenam +et Bubonem_: 'A debate between the Nightingale and the Owl.' Debates, +contentions, had been a favourite literary device for a long time in many +languages. It was known in Anglo-Saxon poetry. It was common in France. +There were contentions of Summer and Winter, of the Soul and the Body, +the Church and the Synagogue, of Fast and Feasting; there were also +(especially in the Provençal school) debates between actual men, one poet +challenging another. The originality of _The Owl and the Nightingale_ +argument is that it is not, like so many of those poetical disputations, +simply an arrangement of all the obvious commonplaces for and against one +side and the other. It is a true comedy; not only is the writer +impartial, but he keeps the debate alive; he shows how the contending +speakers feel the strokes, and hide their pain, and do their best to face +it out with the adversary. Also, the debate is not a mere got-up thing. +It is Art against Philosophy; the Poet meeting the strong though not +silent Thinker, who tells him of the Immensities and Infinities. The +author agrees with Plato and Wordsworth that the nightingale is 'a +creature of a fiery heart', and that the song is one of mirth and not +lamentation. Yet it is not contrasted absolutely with the voice of the +contemplative person. If it were, the debate would come to an end, or +would turn into mere railing accusations--of which there is no want, it +may be said, along with the more serious arguments. What makes the +dispute worth following, what lifts it far above the ordinary medieval +conventions, is that each party shares something of the other's mind. The +Owl wishes to be thought musical; the Nightingale is anxious not to be +taken for a mere worldling. + + + + + CHAPTER VII + ALLEGORY + + +Allegory is often taken to be the proper and characteristic mode of +thought in the Middle Ages, and certainly there is no kind of invention +which is commoner. The allegorical interpretation of Scripture was the +regular, the universal method employed by preachers and commentators. +Anglo-Saxon religious writings are full of it. At the Revival of +Learning, five hundred years after Ælfric, the end of the Middle Ages is +marked by a definite attack upon the allegorical method, an attack +carried on by religious reformers and classical scholars, who held that +allegory perverted and destroyed the genuine teaching of Scripture, and +the proper understanding of Virgil and Ovid. + +The book in which this medieval taste is most plainly exhibited is the +_Gesta Romanorum_, a collection of stories, in Latin prose, drawn from +many different sources, each story having the moral interpretation +attached to it, for the use of preachers. + +One of the most popular subjects for moral interpretation was natural +history. There is a book called _Physiologus_--'the Natural +Philosopher'--which went through all the languages in the same way as the +story of Alexander or the book of the Seven Wise Masters. There are +fragments of an Anglo-Saxon rendering, in verse--the _Whale_, and the +_Panther_, favourite examples. The Whale is the Devil; the Whale lying in +the sea with his back above water is often mistaken by sailors for an +island; they land on his back to rest, and the Whale goes down with them +to the depths. The common name for these natural histories (versions or +adaptations of _Physiologus_) is 'Bestiary'; there is an English +_Bestiary_ of the beginning of the thirteenth century, most of it in the +irregular alliterative verse which seems to have been common at that +date; some of it is in fairly regular rhyme. + +Allegorical interpretation of Scripture, or of stories, or of natural +history is not the same thing as allegorical invention. This is sometimes +forgotten, but it is clear enough that an allegory such as the _Pilgrim's +Progress_ has a quite different effect on the mind, and requires a +different sort of imagination, from the allegorical work which starts +from a given text and spins out some sort of moral from it. Any one with +a little ingenuity can make an allegorical interpretation of any matter. +It is a different thing to invent and carry on an allegorical story. One +obvious difference is that in the first case--for example in the +_Bestiary_--the two meanings, literal and allegorical, are separate from +one another. Each chapter of the _Bestiary_ is in two parts; first comes +the _nature_ of the beast--_natura leonis, etc._--the natural history of +the lion, the ant, the whale, the panther and so forth; then comes the +_signification_. In the other kind of allegory, though there is a double +meaning, there are not two separate meanings presented one after the +other to the mind. The signification is given along with, or through, the +scene and the figures. Christian in the _Pilgrim's Progress_ is not +something different from the Christian man whom he represents +allegorically; Mr. Greatheart, without any interpretation at all, is +recognized at once as a courageous guide and champion. So when the Middle +Ages are blamed for their allegorical tastes it may be well to +distinguish between the frequently mechanical allegory which forces a +moral out of any object, and the imaginative allegory which puts fresh +pictures before the mind. The one process starts from a definite story or +fact, and then destroys the story to get at something inside; the other +makes a story and asks you to accept it and keep it along with its +allegorical meaning. + +Thus allegorical invention, in poetry like Spenser's, or in imaginative +prose like Bunyan's, may be something not very different from imaginative +work with no conscious allegory in it at all. All poetry has something of +a representative character in it, and often it matters little for the +result whether the composer has any definite symbolical intention or not. +_Beowulf_ or _Samson Agonistes_ might be said to 'stand for' heroism, +just as truly as the Red Cross Knight in Spenser, or Mr. Valiant for +Truth in the _Pilgrim's Progress_. So in studying medieval allegories +either in poetry, painting or sculpture, it seems advisable to consider +in each case how far the artist has strained his imagination to serve an +allegorical meaning, or whether he has not succeeded in being imaginative +with no proper allegorical meaning at all. + +By far the best known and most influential of medieval allegories is the +_Romance of the Rose_. Both in France and in England it kept its place as +a poetical example and authority from the thirteenth century till well on +in the sixteenth. It is the work of two authors; the later, Jean Clopinel +or Jean de Meung, taking up the work of Guillaume de Lorris about 1270, +forty years after the death of the first inventor. The part written by +Jean Clopinel is a rambling allegorical satire, notorious for its slander +against women. The earlier part, by Guillaume de Lorris, is what really +made the fame and spread the influence of the _Roman de la Rose_, though +the second part was not far below it in importance. + +Guillaume de Lorris is one of those authors, not very remarkable for +original genius, who put together all the favourite ideas and sentiments +of their time in one book from which they come to be distributed widely +among readers and imitators. His book is an allegory of all the spirit +and doctrine of French romantic poetry for the past hundred years; and as +the French poets had taken all they could from the lyric poets of +Provence, the _Roman de la Rose_ may be fairly regarded as an abstract of +the Provençal lyrical ideas almost as much as of French sentiment. It was +begun just at the time when the Provençal poetry was ended in the ruin of +the South and of the Southern chivalry, after the Albigensian crusade. + +No apology is needed for speaking of this poem in a discourse on English +literature. Even if Chaucer had not translated it, the _Roman de la Rose_ +would still be a necessary book for any one who wishes to understand not +only Chaucer but the poets of his time and all his successors down to +Spenser. The influence of the _Roman de la Rose_ is incalculable. It is +acknowledged by the poet whose style is least like Chaucer's, except for +its liveliness, among all the writers in the reign of Edward III--by the +author of the alliterative poem on _Purity_, who is also generally held +to be the author of the _Pearl_ and of _Sir Gawayne_, and who speaks with +respect of 'Clopyngel's clene rose'. + +It is thoroughly French in all its qualities--French of the thirteenth +century, using ingeniously the ideas and the form best suited to the +readers whom it sought to win. + +One of the titles of the _Roman de la Rose_ is the _Art of Love_. The +name is taken from a poem of Ovid's which was a favourite with more than +one French poet before Guillaume de Lorris. It appealed to them partly on +account of its subject, and partly because it was a didactic poem. It +suited the common medieval taste for exposition of doctrine, and the +_Roman de la Rose_ which follows it and copies its title is a didactic +allegory. In every possible way, in its plan, its doctrine, its +sentiment, its decoration and machinery, the _Roman de la Rose_ collects +all the things that had been approved by literary tradition and conveys +them, with their freshness renewed, to its successors. It concludes one +period; it is a summary of the old French romantic and sentimental +poetry, a narrative allegory setting forth the ideas that might be +extracted from Provençal lyric. Then it became a storehouse from which +those ideas were carried down to later poets, among others to Chaucer and +the Chaucerian school. Better than anything else, the descriptive work in +the _Roman de la Rose_ brings out its peculiar success as an intermediary +between earlier and later poets. The old French romantic authors had been +fond of descriptions, particularly descriptions of pictorial subjects +used as decoration, in painting or tapestry, for a magnificent room. The +_Roman de la Rose_, near the beginning, describes the allegorical figures +on the outside wall of the garden, and this long and elaborate passage, +of the same kind as many earlier descriptions, became in turn, like +everything else in the book, an example for imitation. How closely it is +related to such arts as it describes was proved in Ruskin's _Fors +Clavigera_, where along with his notes on the _Roman de la Rose_ are +illustrations from Giotto's allegorical figures in the chapel of the +Arena at Padua. + +The 'formal garden' of the Rose is equally true, inside the wall-- + + The gardin was by mesuring + Right even and squar in compassing. + +The trees were set even, five fathom or six from one another. + + In places saw I wèlles there + In whiche ther no froggès were + And fair in shadwe was every welle; + But I ne can the nombre telle + Of stremès smale that by device + Mirth had done comè through coundys, + Of which the water in renning + Can make a noyse ful lyking. + +The dreamer finds Sir Mirth and a company of fair folk and fresh, dancing +a _carole_. + + This folk of which I telle you so + Upon a carole wenten tho; + A lady caroled hem, that highte + Gladnesse the blisful the lighte; + Wel coude she singe and lustily, + Non half so wel and semely, + And make in song swich refreininge + It sat her wonder wel to singe. + +The dream, the May morning, the garden, the fair company, the carole all +were repeated for three hundred years by poets of every degree, who drew +from the _Romaunt of the Rose_ unsparingly, as from a perennial fountain. +The writers whom one would expect to be impatient with all things +conventional, Chaucer and Sir David Lyndsay, give no sign that the May of +the old French poet has lost its charm for them; though each on one +occasion, Chaucer in the _Hous of Fame_ and Lyndsay in the _Dreme_, with +a definite purpose changes the time to winter. With both, the May comes +back again, in the _Legend of Good Women_ and in the _Monarchy_. + +Even Petrarch, the first of the moderns to think contemptuously of the +Middle Ages, uses the form of the Dream in his _Trionfi_--he lies down +and sleeps on the grass at Vaucluse, and the vision follows, of the +Triumph of Love. + +The _Pearl_, one of the most beautiful of the English medieval poems, is +an allegory which begins in this same way; the _Vision of Piers Plowman_ +is another. Neither of these has otherwise much likeness to the _Rose_; +it was by Chaucer and his school that the authority of the _Rose_ was +established. The _Pearl_ and _Piers Plowman_ are original works, each +differing very considerably from the French style which was adopted by +Chaucer and Gower. + +The _Pearl_ is written in a lyrical stanza, or rather in groups of +stanzas linked to one another by their refrains; the measure is unlike +French verse. The poem itself, which in many details resembles many other +things, is altogether quite distinct from anything else, and +indescribable except to those who have read it. Its resemblance to the +_Paradiso_ of Dante is that which is less misleading than any other +comparison. In the English poem, the dreamer is instructed as to the +things of heaven by his daughter Marjory, the Pearl that he had lost, who +appears to him walking by the river of Paradise and shows him the New +Jerusalem; like Dante's Beatrice at the end she is caught away from his +side to her place in glory. + +But it is not so much in these circumstances that the likeness is to be +found--it is in the fervour, the belief, which carries everything with it +in the argument, and turns theology into imagination. As with Dante, +allegory is a right name, but also an insufficient name for the mode of +thought in this poem. + +In the _Pearl_ there is one quite distinct and abstract theory which the +poem is intended to prove; a point of theology (possibly heretical): that +all the souls of the blessed are equal in happiness; each one is queen or +king. In _Sir Gawayne_, which is probably by the same author, there is +the same kind of definite thought, never lost or confused in the details. +_Piers Plowman_, on the other hand, though there are a number of definite +things which the author wishes to enforce, is wholly different in method. +The method often seems as if it were nothing at all but random +association of ideas. The whole world is in the author's mind, +experience, history, doctrine, the estates and fortunes of mankind, 'the +mirror of middle-earth'; all the various elements are turned and tossed +about, scenes from Bartholomew Fair mixed up with preaching or +philosophy. There is the same variety, it may be said, in _The Pilgrim's +Progress_. But there is not the same confusion. With Bunyan, whatever the +conversation may be, there is always the map of the road quite clear. You +know where you are; and if ever the talk is abstract it is the talk of +people who eat and drink and wear clothes--real men, as one is accustomed +to call them. In _Piers Plowman_ there is as much knowledge of life as in +Bunyan; but the visible world is seen only from time to time. It is not +merely that some part of the book is comic description and some of it +serious discourse, but the form of thought shifts in a baffling way from +the pictorial to the abstract. It is tedious to be told of a brook named +'Be buxom of speech', and a croft called 'Covet not men's cattle nor +their wives', when nothing is made of the brook or the croft by way of +scenery; the pictorial words add nothing to the moral meaning; if the Ten +Commandments are to be turned into allegory, something more is wanted +than the mere tacking on to them of a figurative name. The author of +_Piers Plowman_ is too careless, and uses too often a mechanical form of +allegory which is little better than verbiage. + +But there is more than enough to make up for that, both in the comic +scenes like the Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins, and in the sustained +passages of reasoning, like the argument about the righteous heathen and +the hopes allowable to Saracens and Jews. The Seven Sins are not +abstractions nor grotesque allegories; they are vulgar comic personages +such as might have appeared in a comedy or a novel of low life, in London +taverns or country inns, figures of tradesmen and commercial travellers, +speaking the vulgar tongue, natural, stupid, ordinary people. + +Also there is beauty; the poem is not to be dismissed as a long religious +argument with comic interludes, though such a description would be true +enough, as far as it goes. The author is no great artist, for he lets his +meaning overpower him and hurry him, and interrupt his pictures and his +story. But he is a poet, for all that, and he proves his gift from the +outset of his work 'in a May morning, on Malvern hilles'; and with all +his digressions and seemingly random thought the argument is held +together and moves harmoniously in its large spaces. The secret of its +construction is revealed in the long triumphant passage which renders +afresh the story of the Harrowing of Hell, and in the transition to what +follows, down to the end of the poem. The author has worked up to a +climax in what may be called his drama of the Harrowing of Hell. This is +given fully, and with a sense of its greatness, from the beginning when +the voice and the light together break in upon the darkness of Hell and +on the 'Dukes of that dim place'--_Attollite portas_: 'be ye lift up, ye +everlasting doors'. After the triumph, the dreamer awakes and hears the +bells on Easter morning-- + + That men rongen to the resurrexioun, and right with that I waked + And called Kitte my wyf and Kalote my doughter: + Ariseth and reverenceth Goddes resurrexioun, + And crepeth to the crosse on knees, and kisseth it for a juwel, + For Goddes blessid body it bar for owre bote, + And it afereth the fende, for suche is the myghte + May no grysly gost glyde there it shadoweth! + +This is the end of one vision, but it is not the end of the poem. There +is another dream. + + I fel eftsones aslepe and sodeynly me mette + That Pieres the plowman was paynted al blody + And come on with a crosse before the comune people + And righte lyke in alle lymes to oure lorde Jhesu + And thanne called I Conscience to kenne me the sothe: + 'Is this Jhesus the juster' quoth I 'that Jewes did to death? + Or is it Pieres the plowman? Who paynted him so rede?' + Quoth Conscience and kneled tho: 'This aren Pieres armes, + His coloures and his cote-armure, ac he that cometh so blody + Is Cryst with his crosse, conqueroure of crystene'. + +The end is far off; Antichrist is to come; Old Age and Death have their +triumph likewise. The poem does not close with a solution of all +problems, but with a new beginning; Conscience setting out on a +pilgrimage. The poet has not gone wrong in his argument; the world is as +bad as ever it was, and it is thus that he ends, after scenes of ruin +that make one think of the Twilight of the Gods, and of the courage which +the Northern heroes opposed to it. + +It is not by accident that the story is shaped in this way. The +construction is what the writer wished it to be, and his meaning is +expressed with no failure in coherence. His mind is never satisfied; +least of all with such conclusions as would make him forget the +distresses of human life. He is like Blake saying-- + + I will not cease from mental fight + Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand. + +The book of _Piers Plowman_ is found in many manuscripts which were +classified by Mr. Skeat in his edition of the poem as representing three +versions, made at different times by the author who twice revised his +book, so that there is an earlier and a later revised and expanded +version besides the first. This theory of the authorship is not accepted +by every one, and attempts have been made to distinguish different hands, +and more particularly to separate the authorship of the first from the +second version. Those who wish to multiply the authors have to consider, +among other things, the tone of thought in the poem; it is hard to +believe that there were two authors in the same reign who had the same +strong and weak points, the same inconsistencies, wavering between lively +imagination and formal allegory, the same indignation and the same +tolerance. _Piers Plowman_ is one of the most impartial of all reformers. +He makes heavy charges against many ranks and orders of men, but he +always remembers the good that is to be said for them. His remedy for the +evils of the world would be to bring the different estates--knights, +clergy, labourers and all--to understand their proper duty. His political +ideal is the commonwealth as it exists, only with each part working as it +was meant to do: the king making the peace, with the knights to help him, +the clergy studying and praying, the commons working honestly, and the +higher estates also giving work and getting wages. In this respect there +is no inconsistency between the earlier and the later text. In the second +version he brings in Envy as the philosophical socialist who proves out +of Plato and Seneca that all things should be in common. This helps to +confirm what is taught in the first version about the functions of the +different ranks. If the later versions are due to later hands, they, at +any rate, continue and amplify what is taught in the first version, with +no inconsistency. + + + + + CHAPTER VIII + SERMONS AND HISTORIES, IN VERSE AND PROSE + + +It is one of the common difficulties in studying ancient literature that +the things preserved are not always what we would have chosen. In modern +literature, criticism and the opinion of the reading public have +generally sorted out the books that are best worth considering; few +authors are wrongfully neglected, and the well-known authors generally +deserve their reputation. But in literature such as that of the +thirteenth century, or the fourteenth before the time of Chaucer, not +much has been done by the opinion of the time to sift out the good from +the bad, and many things appear in the history of literature which are +valuable only as curiosities, and some which have no title to be called +books at all. The _Ayenbite of Inwit_ is well known by name, and passes +for a book; it is really a collection of words in the Kentish dialect, +useful for philologists, especially for those who, like the author of the +book, only care for one word at a time. The _Ayenbite of Inwit_ was +translated from the French by Dan Michel of Northgate, one of the monks +of St. Augustine's at Canterbury, in 1340; it is extant in his own +handwriting; there is no evidence that it was ever read by any one else. +The method of the author is to take each French word and give the English +for it; if he cannot read the French word, or mistakes it, he puts down +the English for what he thinks it means, keeping his eye firmly fixed on +the object, and refusing to be distracted by the other words in the +sentence. This remarkable thing has been recorded in histories as a +specimen of English prose. + +The _Ormulum_ is another famous work which is preserved only in the +author's original handwriting. It is a different thing from the +_Ayenbite_; it is scholarly in its own way, and as far as it goes it +accomplishes all that the author set out to do. As it is one of the +earliest books of the thirteenth century, it is immensely valuable as a +document; not only does it exhibit the East Midland language of its time, +in precise phonetic spelling (the three G's of the _Ormulum_ are now +famous in philology), but it contains a large amount of the best ordinary +medieval religious teaching; and as for literature, its author was the +first in English to use an exact metre with unvaried number of syllables; +it has been described already. But all those merits do not make the +_Ormulum_ much more than a curiosity in the history of poetry--a very +distinct and valuable sign of certain common tastes, certain +possibilities of education, but in itself tasteless. + +One of the generalities proved by the _Ormulum_ is the use of new metres +for didactic work. The Anglo-Saxon verse had been taken not infrequently +for didactic purposes--at one time for the paraphrase of _Genesis_, at +another for the moral emblems of the _Whale_ and the _Panther_. But the +Anglo-Saxon verse was not very well fitted for school books; it was too +heavy in diction. And there was no need for it, with Anglo-Saxon prose +established as it was. After the Norman Conquest, however, there was a +change. Owing to the example of the French, verse was much more commonly +used for ordinary educational purposes. There is a great deal of this +extant, and the difficulty arises how to value it properly, and +distinguish what is a document in the history of general culture, or +morality, or religion, from what is a poem as well. + +One of the earliest Middle English pieces is a Moral Poem which is found +in several manuscripts and evidently was well known and popular. It is in +the same metre as the _Ormulum_, but written with more freedom, and in +rhyme. This certainly is valuable as a document. The contents are the +ordinary religion and morality, the vanity of human wishes, the +wretchedness of the present world, the fearfulness of Hell, the duty of +every man to give up all his relations in order to save his soul. This +commonplace matter is, however, expressed with great energy in good +language and spirited verse; the irregularity of the verse is not +helplessness, it is the English freedom which keeps the rhythm, without +always regularly observing the exact number of syllables. + + Ich am eldrè than ich was, a winter and eke on lorè, + Ich weldè morè than ich dyde, my wit oughtè be morè. + +i.e.-- + + I am older than I was, in winters and also in learning; + I wield more than I did [I am stronger than I once was], my wit ought + to be more. + +The first line, it will be noticed, begins on the strong syllable; the +weak syllable is dropped, as it is by Chaucer and Milton when they think +fit. With this freedom, the common metre is established as a good kind of +verse for a variety of subjects; and the _Moral Ode_, as it is generally +called, is therefore to be respected in the history of poetry. One vivid +thing in it seems to tell where the author came from. In the description +of the fire of Hell he says-- + + Ne mai hit quenchè salt water, ne Avene stream ne Sture. + +He is thinking of the rivers of Christchurch, and the sea beyond, as +Dante in Hell remembers the clear mountain waters running down to the +Arno. + +Layamon's _Brut_ shows how difficult it might be for an Englishman in the +reign of King John to find the right sort of verse. The matter of the +_Brut_ is Geoffrey of Monmouth's history, originally in Latin prose. This +had been translated into French, and of course into rhyme, because +nothing but rhyme in French was thought a respectable form. Layamon has +the French rhyming version before him, and naturally does not think of +turning it into prose. That would be mean, in comparison; once the +historical matter has been put into poetical form, it must not be allowed +to fall back into any form less honourable than the French. Layamon, +however, has no proper verse at command. He knows the old English +alliterative verse, but only in the corrupt variety which is found in +some of the later Anglo-Saxon pieces, with an increasing taste for rhyme; +Layamon, of course, had also in his head the rhymes of the French +couplets which he was translating; and the result is a most disagreeable +and discordant measure. The matter of Layamon in many places compensates +for this; much of it, indeed, is heavy and prosaic, but some of it is +otherwise, and the credit of the memorable passages is at least as often +due to Layamon as to the original British history. He found the right +story of the passing of Arthur, and that makes up for much of his +uncomfortable verse and ranks him higher than the mere educational +paraphrasers. + +The _Bestiary_ and the _Proverbs of Alfred_ are two other works which +resemble the _Brut_ more or less in versification, and are interesting +historically. It ought to be said, on behalf of the poorer things in this +early time, that without exception they prove a very rich colloquial +idiom and vocabulary, which might have been used to good effect, if any +one had thought of writing novels, and which is in fact well used in many +prose sermons, and, very notably, in the long prose book of the _Ancren +Riwle_. + +Looking at the _Ancren Riwle_ and some other early prose, one is led to +think that the French influence, so strong in every way, so distinctly +making for advance in civilization, was hurtful to the English, and a bad +example, in the literature of teaching, because the French had nothing +equal to the English prose. French prose hardly begins till the +thirteenth century; the history of Villehardouin is contemporary with the +_Ancren Riwle_. But the English prose authors of that time were not +beginners; they had the Anglo-Saxon prose to guide them, and they +regularly follow the tradition of Ælfric. There is no break in the +succession of prose as there is between Anglo-Saxon and Plantagenet +verse; Anglo-Saxon prose did not lose its form as the verse did, and +Ælfric, who was copied by English preachers in the twelfth century, might +have taught something of prose style to the French, which they were only +beginning to discover in the century after. And there might have been a +thirteenth-century school of English prose, worthy of comparison with the +Icelandic school of the same time, if the English had not been so +distracted and overborne by the French example of didactic rhyme. French +rhyme was far beyond any other model for romance; when it is used for +historical or scientific exposition it is a poor and childish mode, +incomparably weaker than the prose of Ælfric. But the example and the +authority of the French didactic rhyme proved too strong, and English +prose was neglected; so much so that the _Ancren Riwle_, a prose book +written at the beginning of the thirteenth century, is hardly matched +even in the time of Chaucer and Wycliffe; hardly before the date of +Malory or Lord Berners. + +The _Ancren Riwle_ (the _Rule of Anchoresses_) is a book of doctrine and +advice, like many others in its substance. What distinguishes it is the +freshness and variety of its style. It is not, like so many excellent +prose works, a translation. The writer doubtless took his arguments where +he found them, in older books, but he thinks them over in his own way, +and arranges them; and he always has in mind the one small household of +religious ladies for whom he is writing, their actual circumstances and +the humours of the parish. His literary and professional formulas do not +get in his way; he sees the small restricted life as it might have +appeared to a modern essayist, and writes of it in true-bred language, +the style in which all honest historians agree. The passages which are +best worth quoting are those which are oftenest quoted, about the +troubles of the nun who keeps a cow; the cow strays, and is pounded; the +religious lady loses her temper, her language is furious; then she has to +beseech and implore the heyward (parish beadle) and pay the damages after +all. Wherefore it is best for nuns to keep a cat only. But no one +quotation can do justice to the book, because the subjects are varied, +and the style also. Much of it is conventional morality, some of it is +elementary religious instruction. There are also many passages where the +author uses his imagination, and in his figurative description of the +Seven Deadly Sins he makes one think of the 'characters' which were so +much in fashion in the seventeenth century; there is the same love of +conceits, though not carried quite so far as in the later days. The +picture of the Miser as the Devil's own lubberly boy, raking in the ashes +till he is half blind, drawing 'figures of augrim' in the ashes, would +need very little change to turn it into the manner of Samuel Butler, +author of _Hudibras_, in his prose _Characters_; so likewise the +comparison of the envious and the wrathful man to the Devil's jugglers, +one making grotesque faces, the other playing with knives. Elsewhere the +writer uses another sort of imagination and a different style; his +description of Christ, in a figure drawn from chivalry, is a fine example +of eloquent preaching; how fine it is, may be proved by the imitation of +it called the _Wooing of Our Lord_, where the eloquence is pushed to an +extreme. The author of the _Ancren Riwle_ felt both the attraction and +the danger of pathos; and he escaped the error of style into which his +imitator fell; he kept to the limits of good prose. At the same time, +there is something to be said in defence of the too poetic prose which is +exemplified in the _Wooing of Our Lord_, and in other writings of that +date. Some of it is derived from the older alliterative forms, used in +the _Saints' Lives_ of found something Ælfric; and this, with all its +faults and excesses, at any rate kept an idea of rhythm which was +generally wanting in the alliterative verse of the thirteenth century. It +may be a wrong sort of eloquence, but it could not be managed without a +sense of rhythm or beauty of words; it is not meagre or stinted, and it +is in some ways a relief from the prosaic verse in which English authors +copied the regular French couplets, and the plain French diction. + +One of the best pieces of prose about this time is a translation from the +Latin. _Soul's Ward_ is a homily, a religious allegory of the defence of +Man's Soul. The original Latin prose belongs to the mystical school of +St. Victor in Paris. The narrative part of the English version is as good +as can be; the mystical part, in the description of Heaven and the +Beatific Vision, is memorable even when compared with the greatest +masters, and keeps its own light and virtue even when set alongside of +Plotinus or Dante. Here, as in the _Ancren Riwle_, the figures of +eloquence, rhythm and alliteration are used temperately, and the phrasing +is wise and imaginative; not mere ornament. By one sentence it may be +recognized and remembered; where it is told how the souls of the faithful +see 'all the redes and the runes of God, and his dooms that dern be, and +deeper than any sea-dingle'. + +The greatest loss in the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Norman and +Angevin times was the discontinuance of prose history, and the failure of +the Chronicle after the accession of Henry II. It made a good end. The +Peterborough monk who did the reign of Stephen was much worse off for +language than his predecessors either in the time of Edward the Elder or +Edward the Confessor. His language is what he chooses to make it, without +standard or control. But his narrative is not inferior in style to the +best of the old work, though it is weaker in spelling. It is less +restrained and more emotional than the Anglo-Saxon history; in telling of +the lawlessness under King Stephen the writer cannot help falling into +the tone of the preachers. In the earlier Chronicle one is never led to +think about the sentiments of the writer; the story holds the attention. +But here the personal note comes in; the author asks for sympathy. One +thinks of the cold, gloomy church, the small depressed congregation, the +lamentable tones of the sermon in the days when 'men said openly that +Christ slept and his saints'. With the coming of Henry of Anjou a new +order began, but the Chronicle did not go on; the monks of Peterborough +had done their best, but there was no real chance for English prose +history when it had come to depend on one single religious house for its +continuance. The business was carried on in Latin prose and in French +rhyme; through the example of the French, it became the fashion to use +English verse for historical narrative, and it was long before history +came back to prose. + +Of all the rhyming historians Robert of Gloucester in the reign of Edward +I is the most considerable by reason of his style. Robert Manning of +Brunne was more of a literary critic; the passage in which he deals +severely with the contemporary rhyming dunces is singularly interesting +in a time when literary criticism is rare. But Robert of Brunne is not so +successful as Robert of Gloucester, who says less about the principles of +rhyme, but discovers and uses the right kind. This was not the short +couplet. The short couplet, the French measure, was indeed capable of +almost anything in English, and it was brilliantly used for history by +Barbour, and not meanly in the following century by Andrew Wyntoun. But +it was in danger of monotony and flatness; for a popular audience a +longer verse was better, with more swing in it. Robert of Gloucester took +the 'common measure', with the ordinary accepted licences, as it is used +by the ballad poets, and by some of the romances--for example, in the +most admirable _Tale of Gamelyn_. He turns the history of Britain to the +tune of popular minstrelsy, and if it is not very high poetry, at any +rate it moves. + +The same kind of thing was done about the same time with the _Lives of +the Saints_--possibly some of them by Robert of Gloucester himself. These +are found in many manuscripts, with many variations; but they are one +book, the Legend, keeping the order of Saints' Days in the Christian +Year. This has been edited, under the title of the _South English +Legendary_, and there are few books in which it is easier to make +acquaintance with the heart and mind of the people; it contains all sorts +of matter: church history as in the lives of St. Dunstan, St. Thomas of +Canterbury and St. Francis 'the Friar Minor'; and legend, in the common +sense of the word, as in the life of St. Eustace, or of St. Julian 'the +good harbinger'. There is the adventure of Owen the knight in St. +Patrick's Purgatory; there is also the voyage of St. Brandan. In one +place there is a short rhyming treatise on natural science, thoroughly +good and sound, and in some ways very modern. The right tone of the +popular science lecture has been discovered; and the most effective +illustrations. The earth is a globe; night is the shadow of the earth; +let us take an apple and a candle, and everything is plain. Astronomical +distances are given in the usual good-natured manner of the lecturer who +wishes to stir but not to shock the recipient minds. The cosmography, of +course, is roughly that of Dante and Chaucer; seven spheres beneath the +eighth, which is the sphere of the fixed stars and the highest visible +heaven. The distance to that sphere from the earth is so great that a man +walking forty miles a day could not reach it in eight thousand years. If +Adam had started at once at that rate, and kept it up, he would not be +there yet-- + + Much is between heaven and earth; for the man that mightè go + Every day forty mile, and yet some deal mo, + He ne shoulde nought to the highest heaven, that ye alday y-seeth + Comen in eighte thousand year, there as the sterren beeth: + And though Adam our firstè father had begun anon + Tho that he was first y-made, and toward the heaven y-gon, + And had each day forty mile even upright y-go + He ne had nought yet to heaven y-come, by a thousand mile and mo! + +Encyclopedias and universal histories are frequent in rhyme. The Northern +dialect comes into literary use early in the fourteenth century in a long +book, the _Cursor Mundi_ or _Cursor o Werld_, which is one of the best of +its kind, getting fairly over the hazards of the short couplet. In the +Northern dialect this type of book comes to an end two hundred years +later; the _Monarchy_ of Sir David Lyndsay is the last of its race, a +dialogue between Experience and a Courtier, containing a universal +history in the same octosyllabic verse as the _Cursor Mundi_. The Middle +Ages may be dated as far down as this; it is a curiously old-fashioned +and hackneyed form to be used by an author so original as Lyndsay, but he +found it convenient for his anti-clerical satire. And it may be observed +that generally the didactic literature of the Middle Ages varies +enormously not only as between one author and another, but in different +parts of the same work; nothing (except, perhaps, the _Tale of Melibeus_) +is absolutely conventional repetition; passages of real life may occur at +any moment. + +The _Cursor Mundi_ is closely related to the Northern groups of _Miracle +Plays_. The dramatic scheme of the _Miracle Plays_ was like that of the +comprehensive narrative poem, intended to give the history of the world +'from Genesis to the day of Judgement'. It is impossible in this book to +describe the early drama, its rise and progress; but it may be observed +that its form is generally near to the narrative, and sometimes to the +lyrical verse of the time. + +The _Cursor Mundi_ is one of a large number of works in the Northern +dialect, which in that century was freely used for prose and +verse--particularly by Richard Rolle of Hampole and his followers, a +school whose mysticism is in contrast to the more scholastic method of +Wycliffe. The most interesting work in the Northern language is Barbour's +_Bruce_. Barbour, the Scottish contemporary of Chaucer, is not content +with mere rhyming chronicles; he has a theory of poetry, he has both +learning and ambition, which fortunately do not interfere much with the +spirit of his story. + + + + + CHAPTER IX + CHAUCER + + +Chaucer has sometimes been represented as a French poet writing in +English--not only a 'great translator' as his friend Eustache Deschamps +called him, but so thoroughly in sympathy with the ideas and the style of +French poetry that he is French in spirit even when he is original. This +opinion about Chaucer is not the whole truth, but there is a great deal +in it. Chaucer got his early literary training from French authors; +particularly from the _Romance of the Rose_, which he translated, and +from the poets of his own time or a little earlier: Machaut, Deschamps, +Froissart, Granson. From these authors he learned the refinements of +courtly poetry, the sentiment and the elegant phrasing of the French +school, along with a number of conventional devices which were easier to +imitate, such as the allegorical dream in the fashion of the _Roman de la +Rose_. With Chaucer's poetry, we might say, English was brought up to the +level of French. For two or three centuries English writers had been +trying to be as correct as the French, but had seldom or never quite +attained the French standard. Now the French were equalled in their own +style by an English poet. English poetry at last comes out in the same +kind of perfection as was shown in French and Provençal as early as the +twelfth century, in German a little later with narrative poets such as +Wolfram von Eschenbach, the author of _Parzival_, and lyric poets such as +Walther von der Vogelweide. Italian was later still, but by the end of +the thirteenth century, in the poets who preceded Dante, the Italian +language proved itself at least the equal of the French and Provençal, +which had ripened earlier. English was the last of the languages in which +the poetical ideal of the Middle Ages was realized--the ideal of courtesy +and grace. + +One can see that this progress in English was determined by some general +conditions--the 'spirit of the age'. The native language had all along +been growing in importance, and by the time of Chaucer French was no +longer what it had been in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, the only +language fit for a gentleman. At the same time French literature retained +its influence and its authority in England; and the result was the +complete adaptation of the English language to the French manner of +thought and expression. The English poetry of Gower is enough to prove +that what Chaucer did was not all due to Chaucer's original genius, but +was partly the product of the age and the general circumstances and +tendencies of literature and education. Gower, a man of literary talent, +and Chaucer, a man of genius, are found at the same time, working in the +same way, with objects in common. Chaucer shoots far ahead and enters on +fields where Gower is unable to follow him; but in a considerable part of +Chaucer's work he is along with Gower, equally dependent on French +authority and equally satisfied with the French perfection. If there had +been no Chaucer, Gower would have had a respectable place in history as +the one 'correct' English poet of the Middle Ages, as the English +culmination of that courtly medieval poetry which had its rise in France +and Provence two or three hundred years before. The prize for style would +have been awarded to Gower; as it is, he deserves rather more +consideration than he has generally received in modern times. It is easy +to pass him over and to say that his correctness is flat, his poetical +art monotonous. But at the very lowest valuation he did what no one else +except Chaucer was able to do; he wrote a large amount of verse in +perfect accordance with his own critical principles, in such a way as to +stand minute examination; and in this he thoroughly expressed the good +manners of his time. He proved that English might compete with the +languages which had most distinguished themselves in poetry. Chaucer did +as much; and in his earlier work he did no more than Gower. + +The two poets together, different as they are in genius, work in common +under the same conditions of education to gain for England the rank that +had been gained earlier by the other countries--France and Provence, +Germany and Italy. Without them, English poetry would have possessed a +number of interesting, a number of beautiful medieval works, but nothing +quite in the pure strain of the finest medieval art. English poetry would +still have reflected in its mirror an immense variety of life, a host of +dreams; but it would have wanted the vision of that peculiar courteous +grace in which the French excelled. Chaucer and Gower made up what was +lacking in English medieval poetry; the Middle Ages did not go by without +a proper rendering of their finer spirit in English verse. + +But a great many ages had passed before Chaucer and Gower appeared, and +considered as spokesmen for medieval ideas they are rather belated. +England never quite made up what was lost in the time of depression, in +the century or two after the Norman Conquest. Chaucer and Gower do +something like what was done by the authors of French romance in the +twelfth century, such as Chrestien de Troyes, the author of _Enid_, or +Benoît de Sainte More, the author of the _Romance of Troy_. But their +writings do not alter the fact that England had missed the first +freshness of chivalrous romance. There were two hundred years between the +old French romantic school and Chaucer. Even the _Roman de la Rose_ is a +hundred years old when Chaucer translates it. The more recent French +poets whom Chaucer translates or imitates are not of the best medieval +period. Gower, who is more medieval than Chaucer, is a little behind his +time. He is mainly a narrative poet, and narrative poetry had been +exhausted in France; romances of adventure had been replaced by +allegories (in which the narrative was little worth in comparison with +the decoration), or, more happily, by familiar personal poems like those +in which Froissart describes various passages in his own life. Froissart, +it is true, the contemporary of Chaucer, wrote a long romance in verse in +the old fashion; but this is the exception that proves the rule: +Froissart's _Meliador_ shows plainly enough that the old type of romance +was done. It is to the credit of Gower that although he wrote in French a +very long dull moralizing poem, he still in English kept in the main to +narrative. It may have been old-fashioned, but it was a success. + +Gower should always be remembered along with Chaucer; he is what Chaucer +might have been without genius and without his Italian reading, but with +his critical tact, and much of his skill in verse and diction. The +_Confessio Amantis_ is monotonous, but it is not dull. Much of it at a +time is wearisome, but as it is composed of a number of separate stories, +it can be read in bits, and ought to be so read. Taken one at a time the +clear bright little passages come out with a meaning and a charm that may +be lost when the book is read too perseveringly. + +The _Confessio Amantis_ is one of the medieval works in which a number of +different conventions are used together. In its design it resembles the +_Romance of the Rose_; and like the _Romance of the Rose_ it belongs to +the pattern of Boethius; it is in the form of a conversation between the +poet and a divine interpreter. As a collection of stories, all held +together in one frame, it follows the example set by _The Book of the +Seven Wise Masters_. Like the _Romance of the Rose_ again it is an +encyclopaedia of the art of love. Very fortunately, in some of the +incidental passages it gets away from conventions and authorities, and +enlarges in a modern good-tempered fashion on the vanities of the current +time. There is more wickedness in Gower than is commonly suspected. +Chaucer is not the only ironical critic of his age; and in his satire +Gower appears to be, no less than Chaucer, independent of French +examples, using his wit about the things and the humours which he could +observe in the real life of his own experience. + +Chaucer's life as a poet has by some been divided into three periods +called French, Italian and English. This is not a true description, any +more than that which would make of him a French poet merely, but it may +be useful to bring out the importance of Chaucer's Italian studies. +Chaucer was French in his literary education, to begin with, and in some +respects he is French to the end. His verse is always French in pattern; +he did not care for the English alliterative verse; he probably like the +English romance stanza better than he pretended, but he uses it only in +the burlesque of _Sir Thopas_. In spite of his admiration for the Italian +poets, he never imitates their verse, except in one short passage where +he copies the _terza rima_ of Dante. He is a great reader of Italian +poems in the octave stanza, but he never uses that stanza; it was left +for the Elizabethans. He translates a sonnet by Petrarch, but he does not +follow the sonnet form. The strength and constancy of his devotion to +French poetry is shown in the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_. The +_Legend_ was written just before the _Canterbury Tales_; that is to say, +after what has been called the Italian period. But the ideas in the +Prologue to the _Legend_ are largely the ideas of the _Roman de la Rose_. +As for the so-called English period, in which Chaucer is supposed to come +to himself, to escape from his tutors, to deal immediately in his own way +with the reality of English life, it is true that the _Canterbury Tales_, +especially in the Prologue and the interludes and the comic stories, are +full of observation and original and fresh descriptive work. But they are +not better in this respect than _Troilus and Criseyde_, which is the +chief thing in Chaucer's Italian period. + +The importance of Chaucer's Italian reading is beyond doubt. But it does +not displace the French masters in his affection. It adds something new +to Chaucer's mind; it does not change his mind with regard to the things +which he had learned to value in French poetry. + +When it is said that an English period came to succeed the Italian in +Chaucer's life, the real meaning of this is that Chaucer was all the time +working for independence, and that, as he goes on, his original genius +strengthens and he takes more and more of real life into his view. But +there is no one period in which he casts off his foreign masters and +strikes out absolutely for himself. Some of his greatest imaginative +work, and the most original, is done in his adaptation of the story of +Troilus from an Italian poem of Boccaccio. + +Chaucer represents a number of common medieval tastes, and many of these +had to be kept under control in his poetry. One can see him again and +again tempted to indulge himself, and sometimes yielding, but generally +securing his freedom and lifting his verse above the ordinary traditional +ways. He has the educational bent very strongly. That is shown in his +prose works. He is interested in popular philosophy and popular science; +he translates 'Boece', the Consolation of Philosophy, and compiles the +Treatise on the Astrolabe for 'little Lewis my son'. The tale of +_Melibeus_ which Chaucer tells in his own person among the Canterbury +pilgrims is a translation of a moral work which had an extraordinary +reputation not very easy to understand or appreciate now Chaucer took it +up no doubt because it had been recommended by authors of good standing: +he translates it from the French version by Jean de Meung. The _Parson's +Tale_ is an adaptation from the French, and represents the common form of +good sermon literature. Chaucer thus shared the tastes and the aptitudes +of the good ordinary man of letters. He was under no compulsion to do +hack work; he wrote those things because he was fond of study and +teaching, like the Clerk of Oxford in the _Canterbury Tales_. The +learning shown in his poems is not pretence; it came into his poems +because he had it in his mind. How his wit could play with his science is +shown in the _Hous of Fame_, where the eagle is allowed to give a popular +lecture on acoustics, but is prevented from going on to astronomy. +Chaucer dissembles his interest in that subject because he knows that +popular science ought not to interfere too much with the proper business +of poetry; he also, being a humorist, sees the comic aspect of his own +didactic tastes; he sees the comic opposition between the teacher anxious +to go on explaining and the listener not so ready to take in more. There +is another passage, in _Troilus_, where good literary advice is given +(rather in the style of Polonius) against irrelevant scientific +illustrations. In a love-letter you must not allow your work for the +schools to appear too obviously-- + + Ne jompre eek no discordant thing y-fere, + As thus, to usen termes of physik. + +This may be fairly interpreted as Chaucer talking to himself. He knew +that he was inclined to this sort of irrelevance and very apt to drag in +'termes of physik', fragments of natural philosophy, where they were out +of place. + +This was one of the things, one of the common medieval temptations, from +which he had to escape if he was to be a master in the art of poetry. How +real the danger was can be seen in the works of some of the Chaucerians, +e.g. in Henryson's _Orpheus_, and in Gawain Douglas's _Palace of Honour_. + +Boethius is a teacher of a different sort from Melibeus, and the poet +need not be afraid of him. Boethius, the master of Dante, the disciple of +Plato, is one of the medieval authors who are not disqualified in any +century; with him Chaucer does not require to be on his guard. The +_Consolation of Philosophy_ may help the poet even in the highest reach +of his imagination; so Boethius is remembered by Chaucer, as he is by +Dante, when he has to deal solemnly with the condition of men on earth. +This is not one of the common medieval vanities from which Chaucer has to +escape. + +Far more dangerous and more attractive than any pedantry of the schools +was the traditional convention of the allegorical poets, the _Rose_ and +all the attendants of the _Rose_. This was a danger that Chaucer could +not avoid; indeed it was his chief poetical task, at first, to enter this +dreamland and to come out of it with the spoils of the garden, which +could not be won except by a dreamer and by full subjection to all the +enchantments of the place. It was part of Chaucer's poetic vocation to +comprehend and to make his own the whole spirit and language of the +_Roman de la Rose_ and also of the French poets who had followed, in the +century between. The _Complaint to Pity_ shows how he succeeded in this; +also the _Complaint of Mars_ and the poem called the _Complaint of +Venus_, which is a translation from Oton de Granson, 'the floure of hem +that maken in France'. Chaucer had to do this, and then he had to escape. +This sort of fancy work, a kind of musical sentiment with a mythology of +personified abstract qualities, is the least substantial of all +things--thought and argument, imagery and utterance, all are of the +finest and most impalpable. + + Thus am I slayn sith that Pité is deed: + Allas the day! that ever hit shulde falle! + What maner man dar now holde up his heed? + To whom shall any sorwful herte calle, + Now Crueltee hath cast to sleen us alle + In ydel hope, folk redelees of peyne? + Sith she is deed, to whom shul we compleyne + +If this sort of verse had not been written, English poetry would have +missed one of the graces of medieval art--a grace which at this day it is +easy to despise. It is not despicable, but neither is it the kind of +beauty with which a strong imagination can be content, or indeed any mind +whatsoever, apart from such a tradition as that of the old 'courtly +makers'. And it is worth remembering that not every one of the courtly +makers restricted himself to this thin, fine abstract melody. Eustache +Deschamps, for example, amused himself with humorous verse as well; and +for Froissart his ballades and virelais were only a game, an occasional +relief from the memoirs in which he was telling the story of his time. +Chaucer in fact did very little in the French style of abstract +sentiment. The longest of his early poems, _The Book of the Duchess_, has +much of this quality in it, but this does not make the poem. _The Book of +the Duchess_ is not abstract. It uses the traditional manner--dream, +mythology, and all--but it has other substance in it, and that is the +character of the Duchess Blanche herself, and the grief for her death. +Chaucer is here dealing with real life, and the conventional aids to +poetry are left behind. + +How necessary it was to get beyond this French school is shown by the +later history of the French school itself. There was no one like Chaucer +in France; except perhaps Froissart, who certainly had plenty of real +life in his memoirs. But Froissart's Chronicles were in prose, and did +nothing to cure the inanition of French poetry, which went on getting +worse and worse, so that even a poetic genius like Villon suffered from +it, having no examples to guide him except the thin ballades and rondeaux +on the hackneyed themes. R. L. Stevenson's account of Charles d'Orleans +and his poetry will show well enough what sort of work it was which was +abandoned by Chaucer, and which in the century after Chaucer was still +the most favoured kind in France. + +It should not be forgotten that Chaucer, though he went far beyond such +poetry as that of his French masters and of his own _Complaint to Pity_, +never turned against it. He escaped out of the allegorical garden of the +Rose, but with no resentment or ingratitude. He never depreciates the old +school. He must have criticized it--to find it unsatisfying is to +criticize it, implicitly at any rate; but he never uses a word of blame +or a sentence of parody. In his later writings he takes up the devices of +the Rose again; not only in the Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_, +but also, though less obviously, in the _Squire's Tale_, where the +sentiment is quite in harmony with the old French mode. + +Chaucer wrote no such essay on poetry as Dante _de Vulgari Eloquentia_; +not even such a practical handbook of versification as was written by his +friend Eustache Deschamps. But his writings, like Shakespeare's, have +many passages referring to the literary art--the processes of the +workshop--and a comparison of his poems with the originals which +suggested them will often bring out what was consciously in his mind as +he reflected on his work--as he calculated and altered, to suit the +purpose which he had before him. + +Chaucer is one of the greatest of literary artists, and one of the +finest; so it is peculiarly interesting to make out what he thought of +different poetical kinds and forms which came in his way through his +reading or his own practice. For this object--i.e. to bring out Chaucer's +aims and the way in which he criticized his own poetry--the most valuable +evidence is given by the poem of _Anelida and the False Arcite_. This is +not only an unfinished poem--Chaucer left many things unfinished--it is a +poem which changes its purpose as it goes on, which is written under two +different and discordant influences, and which could not possibly be made +harmonious without total reconstruction from the beginning. It was +written after Chaucer had gone some way in his reading of the Italian +poets, and the opening part is copied from the _Teseide_ of Boccaccio, +which is also the original of the _Knight's Tale_. Now it was principally +through Boccaccio's example that Chaucer learned how to break away from +the French school. Yet here in this poem of _Anelida_, starting with +imitation of Boccaccio, Chaucer goes back to the French manner, and works +out a theme of the French school--and then drops it, in the middle of a +sentence. He was distracted at that time, it is clear, between two +opposite kinds of poetry. His _Anelida_ is experimental work; in it we +can see how he was changing his mind, and what difficulty he had with the +new problems that were offered to him in his Italian books. He found in +Italian a stronger kind of narrative than he had been accustomed to, +outside of the Latin poets; a new kind of ambition, an attempt to rival +the classical authors in a modern language. The _Teseide_ (the _Theseid_) +of Boccaccio is a modern epic poem in twelve books, meant by its author +to be strong and solid and full; Chaucer in _Anelida_ begins to translate +and adapt this heroic poem--and then he turns away from the wars of +Theseus to a story of disappointed love; further, he leaves the narrative +style and composes for Anelida the most elaborate of all his lyric poems, +the most extreme contrast to the heavy epic manner in which his poem is +begun. The lyrical complaint of Anelida is the perfection of everything +that had been tried in the French school--a fine unsubstantial beauty so +thin and clear that it is hardly comprehensible at first, and never in +agreement with the forcible narrative verse at the beginning of the poem. + +Chaucer here has been caught escaping from the Garden of the Rose; he has +heard outside the stronger music of the new Italian epic poetry, but the +old devotion is for the time too strong, and he falls back. His return is +not exactly failure, because the complaint of Anelida, which is in many +respects old-fashioned, a kind of poetry very near exhaustion, is also +one of the most elaborate things ever composed by Chaucer, such a proof +of his skill in verse as he never gives elsewhere. + +The _Teseide_ kept him from sleeping, and his later progress cannot be +understood apart from this epic of Boccaccio. When Chaucer read the +Italian poets, he found them working with a new conception of the art of +poetry, and particularly a fresh comprehension of the Ancients. The +classical Renaissance has begun. + +The influence of the Latin poets had been strong all through the Middle +Ages. In its lowest degree it helped the medieval poets to find matter +for their stories; the French _Roman d'Eneas_ is the work that shows this +best, because it is a version of the greatest Latin poem, and can be +easily compared with its original, so as to find out what is understood +and what is missed or travestied; how far the scope of the _Aeneid_ is +different from the old French order of romance. + +But neither here nor generally elsewhere is the debt limited to the +matter of the stories. The sentiment, the pathos, the eloquence of +medieval French poetry is derived from Virgil and Ovid. The Latin poets +are the originals of medieval romance, far beyond what can be reckoned by +any comparison of plots and incidents. And the medieval poets in their +turn are the ancestors of the Renaissance and show the way to modern +poetry. + +But the old French poets, though they did much for the classical +education of Europe, were inattentive to many things in classical poetry +which the Italians were the first to understand, even before the revival +of Greek, and which they appropriated for modern verse in time for +Chaucer to be interested in what they were doing. Shortly, they +understood what was meant by composition, proportion, the narrative +unities; they appreciated the style of Latin poetry as the French did +not; in poetical ornament they learned from Virgil something more +spiritual and more imaginative than the French had known, and for which +the term 'ornament' is hardly good enough; it is found in the similes of +Dante, and after him in Chaucer. + +This is one of the most difficult and one of the most interesting parts +of literary history--the culmination and the end of the Middle Ages, in +which the principles of medieval poetry are partly justified and partly +refuted. As seen in the work of Chaucer, the effect of this new age and +the Italian poetry was partly the stronger and richer poetical language +and (an obvious sign of this strengthening) the similes such as were used +by the classical authors. But far more than this, a change was made in +the whole manner of devising and shaping a story. This change was +suggested by the Italian poets; it fell in with the change in Chaucer's +own mind and with the independent growth of his strength. What he learned +as a critic from study he used as an artist at the time when his +imaginative power was quickest and most fertile. Yet before his journey +to Italy, and apparently before he had learnt any Italian, he had already +gone some way to meet the new poetry, without knowing it. + +His earlier narrative poems, afterwards used for the tales of the Second +Nun, the Clerk of Oxford and the Man of Law, have at least one quality in +which they agree both with the Italians and with Chaucer's maturest work. +The verse is stately, strong, _heroic_ in more senses than one. Chaucer's +employment of the ten-syllable line in the seven-line stanza for +narrative was his own discovery. The decasyllabic line was an old +measure; so was the seven-line stanza, both in Provençal and French. But +the stanza had been generally restricted to lyric poetry, as in Chaucer's +_Complaint to Pity_. It was a favourite stanza for ballades. French +poetry discouraged the stanza in narrative verse; the common form for +narrative of all sorts, and for preaching and satire as well, was the +short couplet--the verse of the _Roman de Troie_, the _Roman de Renart_, +the _Roman de la Rose_, the verse of the _Book of the Duchess_ and the +_Hous of Fame_. When Chaucer used the longer verse in his _Life of St. +Cecilia_ and the other earlier tales, it is probable that he was +following a common English opinion and taste, which tended against the +universal dominion of the short couplet. 'Short verse' was never put out +of use or favour, never insulted or condemned. But the English seem to +have felt that it was not enough; they wanted more varieties. They had +the alliterative verse, and, again, the use of the _rime couée_--_Sir +Thopas_ verse--was certainly due to a wish for variety. The long verse of +Robert of Gloucester was another possibility, frequently taken. After +Chaucer's time, and seemingly independent of him, there were, in the +fifteenth century, still more varieties in use among the minstrels. There +was a general feeling among poets of all degrees that the short couplet +(with no disrespect to it) was not the only and was not the most powerful +of instruments. The technical originality of Chaucer was, first, that he +learned the secret of the ten-syllable line, and later that he used it +for regular narrative and made it the proper heroic verse in English. The +most remarkable thing in this discovery is that Chaucer began to conform +to the Italian rule before he knew anything about it. Not only are his +single lines much nearer to the Italian rhythm than the French. This is +curious, but it is not exceptional; it is what happens generally when the +French decasyllable is imitated in one of the Teutonic languages, and +Gower, who knew no Italian, or at any rate shows no sign of attending to +Italian poetry, writes his occasional decasyllabic lines in the same way +as Chaucer. But besides this mode of the single verse Chaucer agrees with +the Italian practice in using stanzas for long narrative poetry; here he +seems to have been led instinctively, or at least without any conscious +imitation, to agree with the poet whom he was to follow still further, +when once Boccaccio came in sight. This coincidence of taste in metre was +one thing that must have struck Chaucer as soon as he opened an Italian +book. Dante and Boccaccio used the same type of line as Chaucer had taken +for many poems before ever he learned Italian; while the octave stanzas +of Boccaccio's epic--the common verse, before that, of the Italian +minstrels in their romances--must have seemed to Chaucer remarkably like +his own stanza in the _Life of St. Cecilia_ or the story of _Constance_. + +This explains how it was that Chaucer, with all his admiration for +Italian poetry, never, except in one small instance, tries to copy any +Italian verse. He did not copy the Italian line because he had the same +line already from another source; and he did not copy Boccaccio's octave +stanza because he had already another stanza quite as good, if not +better, in the same kind. One need not consider long, what is also very +very probable, that Chaucer felt the danger of too great attraction to +those wonderful new models; he would learn what he could (so he seems to +have thought to himself), but he would not give up what he had already +gained without them. Possibly the odd change of key, the relapse from +Italian to French style in _Anelida_, might be explained as Chaucer's +reaction against the too overpowering influence of the new Italian +school. 'Here is this brand-new epic starting out to conquer all the +world; no question but that it is triumphant, glorious, successful; and +we cannot escape; but before we join in the procession, and it is too +late to draw back, suppose we draw back _now_--into the old garden--to +try once more what may be made of the old French kind of music'. So +possibly we might translate into ruder terms what seems to be the +artistic movement in this remarkable failure by Chaucer. + +Chaucer spent a long time thinking over the Italian poetry which he had +learned, and he made different attempts to turn it to profit in English +before he succeeded. One of his first complete poems after his Italian +studies had begun is as significant as _Anelida_ both with respect to the +difficulties that he found and also to the enduring influence of the +French school. In the _Parliament of Birds_, his style as far as it can +be tested in single passages seems to have learned everything there was +to be learned-- + + Through me men goon into the blisful place + Of hertès hele and dedly woundès cure; + Through me men goon unto the welle of Grace, + There grene and lusty May shal ever endure; + This is the way to all good aventure; + Be glad, thou reader, and thy sorrow offcaste! + All open am I; passe in and hy thee faste! + +And, as for composition, the poem carries out to the full what the author +intends; the digressions and the slackness that are felt to detract from +the _Book of the Duchess_ have been avoided; the poem expresses the mind +of Chaucer, both through the music of its solemn verse, and through the +comic dialogue of the birds in their assembly. But this accomplished +piece of work, with all its reminiscences of Dante and Boccaccio, is old +French in its scheme; it is another of the allegorical dreams, and the +device of the Parliament of Birds is in French older than the _Romaunt of +the Rose_. + +Chaucer is still, apparently, holding back; practising on the ground +familiar to him, and gradually working into his poetry all that he can +readily manage out of his Italian books. In _Anelida_ Italian and French +are separate and discordant; in the _Parliament of Birds_ there is a +harmony, but as yet Chaucer has not matched himself thoroughly against +Boccaccio. When he does so, in _Troilus_ and in the _Knight's Tale_, it +will be found that he is something more than a translator, and more than +an adapter of minor and separable passages. + +The _Teseide_ of Boccaccio is at last after many attempts--how many, it +is impossible to say--rendered into English by Chaucer, not in a +translation, but with a thorough recasting of the whole story. _Troilus +and Criseyde_ is taken from another poem by Boccaccio. _Troilus_ and the +_Knight's Tale_ are without rivals in English for the critical keenness +which has gone into them. Shakespeare has the same skill in dealing with +his materials, in choosing and rejecting, but Shakespeare was never +matched, as Chaucer was in these works, against an author of his own +class, an author, too, who had all the advantages of long training. The +interest--the historical interest at any rate--of Chaucer's dealings with +Boccaccio is that it was an encounter between an Englishman whose +education had been chiefly French, and an Italian who had begun upon the +ways of the new learning. To put it bluntly, it was the Middle Ages +against the Renaissance; and the Englishman won on the Italian ground and +under the Italian rules. Chaucer judged more truly than Boccaccio what +the story of Palamon and Arcite was worth; the story of Troilus took +shape in his imagination with incomparably more strength and substance. +In both cases he takes what he thinks fit; he learned from Boccaccio, or +perhaps it would be truer to say he found out for himself in reading +Boccaccio what was the value of right proportion in narrative. He refused +altogether to be led away as Boccaccio was by the formal classical ideal +of epic poetry--the 'receipt to make an epic poem' which prescribed as +necessary all the things employed in the construction of the _Aeneid_. +Boccaccio is the first modern author who writes an epic in twelve books; +and one of his books is taken up with funeral games, because Virgil in +the _Aeneid_ had imitated the funeral games in Homer. In the time of Pope +this was still a respectable tradition. Chaucer is not tempted; he keeps +to what is essential, and in the proportions of his story and his +conception of the narrative unities he is saner than all the Renaissance. + +One of the finest passages in English criticism of poetry is Dryden's +estimate of Chaucer in the Preface to the _Fables_. Chaucer is taken by +Dryden, in the year 1700, as an example of that sincerity and truth to +Nature which makes the essence of classical poetry. In this classical +quality, Dryden thinks that Ovid is far inferior to Chaucer. Dryden makes +allowance for Chaucer's old-fashioned language, and he did not fully +understand the beauty of Chaucer's verse, but still he judges him as a +modern writer with respect to his imagination; to no modern writer does +he give higher praise than to Chaucer. + +This truth to Nature, in virtue of which Chaucer is a classic, will be +found to be limited in some of his works by conventions which are not +always easy to understand. Among these should not be reckoned the dream +allegory. For though it may appear strange at first that Chaucer should +have gone back to this in so late a work as the Prologue to the _Legend +of Good Women_, yet it does not prevent him from speaking his mind either +in earlier or later poems. In the _Book of the Duchess_, the _Parliament +of Birds_, the Prologue to the _Legend_, one feels that Chaucer is +dealing with life, and saying what he really thinks, in spite of the +conventions. The _Hous of Fame_, which is a dream poem, might almost have +been written for a wager, to show that he could bring in everything +traditional, everything most common in the old artificial poetry, and yet +be original and fresh through it all. But there are some stories--the +_Clerk's Tale_, and the _Franklin's Tale_--in which he uses conventions +of another sort and is partially disabled by them. These are stories of a +kind much favoured in the Middle Ages, turning each upon one single +obligation which, for the time, is regarded as if it were the only rule +of conduct. The patience of Griselda is absolute; nothing must be allowed +to interfere with it, and there is no other moral in the story. It is one +of the frequent medieval examples in which the author can only think of +one thing at a time. On working out this theme, Chaucer is really tried +as severely as his heroine, and his patience is more extraordinary, +because if there is anything certain about him it is that his mind is +never satisfied with any one single aspect of any matter. Yet here he +carries the story through to the end, though when it is finished he +writes an epilogue which is a criticism on the strained morality of the +piece. The plot of the _Franklin's Tale_ is another of the favourite +medieval type, where the 'point of honour', the obligation of a vow, is +treated in the same uncompromising way; Chaucer is here confined to a +problem under strict rules, a drama of difficulties without character. + +In the _Legend of Good Women_ he is limited in a different way, and not +so severely. He has to tell 'the Saints' Lives of Cupid'--the Legends of +the Heroines who have been martyrs for love; and as in the Legend of the +Saints of the Church, the same motives are repeated, the trials of +loyalty, the grief and pity. The Legend was left unfinished, apparently +because Chaucer was tired. Yet it is not certain that he repented of his +plan, or that the plan was wrong. There may possibly have been in this +work something of the formalism which is common in Renaissance art, the +ambition to build up a structure in many compartments, each compartment +resembling all the others in the character of the subject and its general +lines. But the stories are distinct, and all are beautiful--the legends +of Cleopatra Queen and Martyr, of Thisbe and Ariadne, and the rest. +Another poem which may be compared with the _Legend of Good Women_ is the +_Monk's Tale_--an early work to which Chaucer made later additions--his +book of the _Falls of Princes_. The Canterbury pilgrims find it too +depressing, and in their criticism of the Monk's tragedies Chaucer may +possibly have been thinking also of his unfinished _Legend of Good +Women_. But what has been said of the Legend may be repeated about the +_Monk's Tale_; there is the same kind of pathos in all the chapters, but +they are all varied. One of the tragedies is the most considerable thing +which Chaucer took from Dante; the story of Ugolino in the _Inferno_, +'Hugelyn Erle of Pise'. + +It is uncertain whether Chaucer knew the _Decameron_ of Boccaccio, but +the art of his comic stories is very like that of the Italian, to whom he +owed so much in other ways. It is the art of comic imagination, using a +perfect style which does not need to be compared with the unsophisticated +old French ribaldry of the _fabliaux_ to be appreciated, though a +comparison of that sort will show how far the Middle Ages had been left +behind by Boccaccio and Chaucer. Among the interludes in the _Canterbury +Tales_ there are two especially, the monologues of the Wife of Bath and +the Pardoner, where Chaucer has discovered one of the most successful +forms of comic poetry, and the Canon's Yeoman's prologue may be reckoned +as a third along with them, though there, and also in the _Canon's +Yeoman's Tale_, the humour is of a peculiar sort, with less character in +it, and more satire--like the curious learned satire of which Ben Jonson +was fond. It is remarkable that the tales told by the Wife of Bath and +the Pardoner are both in a different tone from their discourses about +themselves. + +Without _Troilus and Criseyde_ the works of Chaucer would be an immense +variety--romance and sentiment, humour and observation, expressed in +poetical language that has never been equalled for truth and liveliness. +But it is only in _Troilus_ that Chaucer uses his full powers together in +harmony. All the world, it might be said, is reflected in the various +poems of Chaucer; _Troilus_ is the one poem which brings it all into a +single picture. In the history of English poetry it is the close of the +Middle Ages. + + + + + NOTE ON BOOKS + + +For the language: Anglo-Saxon can be learned in Sweet's _Primer_ and +_Reader_ (Clarendon Press). Sweet's _First Middle English Primer_ gives +extracts from the _Ancren Riwle_ and the _Ormulum_, with separate +grammars for the two dialects. But it is generally most convenient to +learn the language of Chaucer before attempting the earlier books. Morris +and Skeat's _Specimens of Early English_ (two volumes, Clarendon Press) +range from the end of the English Chronicle (1153) to Chaucer; valuable +for literary history as well as philology. The nature of the language is +explained in Henry Bradley's _Making of English_ (Clarendon Press), and +in Wyld's _Study of the Mother Tongue_ (Murray). + +The following books should be noted: Stopford Brooke, _Early English +Literature_ (Macmillan); Schofield, _English Literature from the Norman +Conquest to Chaucer_ (Macmillan); Jusserand, _Literary History of the +English People_ (Fisher Unwin); Chambers' _Cyclopædia of English +Literature_, I; Ten Brink, _Early English Literature_ (Bell); Saintsbury, +_History of English Prosody_, I (Macmillan); Courthope, _History of +English Poetry_, I and II (Macmillan). + +Full bibliographies are provided in the _Cambridge History of English +Literature_. + +The bearings of early French upon English poetry are illustrated in +Saintsbury's _Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory_ (Blackwood). +Much of the common medieval tendencies may be learned from the earlier +part of Robertson's _German Literature_ (Blackwood), and Gaspary's +_Italian Literature_, translated by Oelsner (Bell). Some topics have been +already discussed by the present author in other works: _Epic and +Romance_ (Macmillan); _The Dark Ages_ (Blackwood); _Essays on Medieval +Literature_ (Macmillan). + +The history of medieval drama in England, for which there was no room in +this book, is clearly given in Pollard's _Miracle Plays, Moralities and +Interludes_ (Clarendon Press). + + + + + SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE + + + By R. W. Chambers + +_Many years have passed since the publication of Ker's volume in the_ +Home University Library, _yet there is hardly a paragraph in it which +demands any serious addition or alteration. It is a classic of English +criticism, and any attempt to alter it, or 'bring it up to date', either +now or in future years, would be futile_. + +_Ker deliberately refused to add an elaborate bibliography. But his_ Note +on Books _reminds us how, though his own work remains unimpaired, the +whole field of study has been altered, largely as a result of that work_. + + +Sweet's books mark an epoch in Anglo-Saxon study, and have not lost their +practical value: to his _Primer_ and _Reader_ (Clarendon Press) must be +added the _Anglo-Saxon Reader_ of A. J. Wyatt (Cambridge University +Press, 1919, etc.). The earlier portion of Morris's _Specimens of Early +English_, Part I (1150-1300), has been replaced by Joseph Hall's +_Selections from Early Middle English_, 1130-1250, 2 vols. (Clarendon +Press, 1920); Part II, _Specimens_ (1298-1393), edited by Morris and +Skeat, has been replaced by _Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose_, edited +by Kenneth Sisam (Clarendon Press, 1921). To Wyld's _Study of the Mother +Tongue_ must now be added his _History of Modern Colloquial English_ and +Otto Jespersen's _Growth and Structure of the English Language_ +(Blackwell, 1938). + +_The Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records_, edited by G. P. Krapp and others +(Columbia Univ. Press and Routledge, 6 vols, 1931, etc.), provide a +corpus of Anglo-Saxon poetry. + +It is impossible to review editions of, or monographs on, individual +poems or authors, but some work done on _Beowulf_ and Chaucer may be +noted: editions of _Beowulf_, by Sedgefield (Manchester Univ. Press, +1910, etc.), by Wyatt and Chambers (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1914, etc.) +and by Klaeber (Heath & Co., 1922, etc.); R. W. Chambers, _Beowulf, an +Introduction_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1921, etc.), and W. W. Lawrence, +_Beowulf and Epic Tradition_ (Harvard Univ. Press, 1928, etc.); G. L. +Kittredge, _Chaucer and his Poetry_ (Harvard Univ. Press, 1915); J. L. +Lowes, _Geoffrey Chaucer_ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1934); F. N. Robinson, +_The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer_ (Oxford Univ. Press, 1933). + +Fresh aspects of medieval literature are dealt with in G. R. Owst's +_Preaching in Medieval England_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1926) and +_Literature and the Pulpit in Medieval England_ (Cambridge Univ. Press, +1933); R. W. Chambers, _The Continuity of English Prose_ (Oxford Univ. +Press, 1932); C. S. Lewis, _Allegory of Love_ (Clarendon Press, 1936); +Mr. Owst's books serve to remind us that Ker's work can still be +supplemented by minute study of fields which he, with his vast range over +the literatures of all Western Europe, had of necessity to leave +unexplored, when he closed his little book with Chaucer. The two most +startling new discoveries in Medieval English Literature fall outside the +limits which Ker set himself; they are _The Book of Margery Kempe_, +edited in 1940 for the Early English Text Society by Prof. S. B. Meech +and Miss Hope Emily Allen, and the Winchester manuscript of Malory's +_Morte Darthur_, upon which Prof. Eugene Vinaver is now engaged. + +The student will find particulars of the books he wants by consulting the +new bibliography of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_ or _A +Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1400_, by Prof. J. E. +Wells (Yale and Oxford Univ. Presses, 1916, with supplements). + + + + + FOOTNOTES + + +[1] + + The Cædmon MS. in Oxford. + The Exeter Book. + The Vercelli Book. + The book containing the poems _Beowulf_ and _Judith_ in the Cotton + Library at the British Museum. + + + + + INDEX + + + Ælfric, 17, 40, 42, 43, 154, 155, 157 + Alexander the Great, 51, 53, 105, 137 + Alfred, King, 17, 19, 33, 34, 35, 41, 43 + _Amadace, Sir_, 84, 130 + _Amadas et Ydoine_, 55, 77 + _Ancren Riwle_, 154-7 + Andersen, Hans, 83, 128 + _Anelida and Arcite_, 113, 174, 175, 180, 181 + _Apollonius of Tyre_, 57 + Arnold, Matthew, 8 + Arthur, King, 50, 86, 87, 120 + _Auchinleck MS._, 90 + _Ayenbite of Inwit_, 150 + + Ballads, 116-23 + Barbour, 162 + Bede, 34, 37 + Bentham on the Middle Ages, 10 + _Beowulf_, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 34, 43, 45, 52 + _Bestiary_, 138, 154 + _Bevis of Southampton, Sir_, 25, 98 + Boccaccio, 28, 174, 175, 179, 181, 182, 185 + Boethius, 34, 41, 43, 171 + _Book of the Duchess_, 173, 178, 181, 183 + _Book of the Duchess Blanche_, 133 + Britain,' 'Matter of, 50-1, 52, 53, 85 + _Bruce_, 162 + Bunyan, John, 98, 132, 138, 139, 145 + Burne, Minstrel, 58 + Burns, Robert, 56, 114, 115 + Byrhtnoth, 29 + + Cædmon, 34, 35, 37 + _Canon's Yeoman's Tale, The_, 186 + Canute, his boat song, 107, 109 + _Canterbury Tales, The_, 28, 64, 168, 170, 184, 185, 186 + _Carole, The_, 61, 63, 64 + _Chansons de Geste_, 52, 70 + Charlemagne, 52, 53, 87 + Chaucer, 20, 43, 55, 63, 64, 69, 94, 96, 97, 113, 133, 134, 140, + 141, 143, 160, 163-86 + _Chevelere Assigne_, 105 + Chrestien de Troyes, 79, 80, 81, 82, 85, 166 + Chronicle, The English, 41 + _Clerk's Tale, The_, 184 + Clopinel, Jean, 140 + _Cockayne, Land of_, 132 + _Complaint to Pity_, 173, 178 + _Confessio Amantis_, 133, 167 + Courtly Poets, 63, 64, 66, 68 + _Cuckoo Song_, 57, 59 + _Cursor Mundi, The_, 161 + Cynewulf, 37, 38, 39, 44 + + Dante, 8, 9, 65, 66, 75, 144, 160, 168, 171, 177, 179, 181, 185 + _Deor's Lament_, 38, 119 + Deschamps, Eustace, 174 + _Dream of the Rood, The_, 36, 37 + Dryden on Chaucer, 183 + + _Emaré_, quoted, 97 + + _Fabliaux_, 127-32 + _Faerie Queene, The_, 26, 99 + _Fall of the Angels, The_, 36, 44 + Faroese Ballads, 53, 119 + _Ferabras, Sir_, 54 + _Finnesburgh, The Fight at_, 26, 29 + _Floris and Blanchefleur_, 89 + France,' 'The Matter of, 50-1, 52, 53 + _Franklin's Tale, The_, 184 + French Poetry, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 60, 69, 70, 72, + 163, 176 + _Friars of Berwick_, 130 + Froissart, 166, 173 + + Gawain, Sir, 50, 52 + _Gawain and the Green Knight_, 45, 60, 86, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, + 144 + _Genesis_, Anglo-Saxon poem, 35 + Geoffrey of Monmouth, 52, 86, 87 + _Germania, The_, 18, 20, 21, 27 + Giraldus Cambrensis, 62, 84, 108 + Godric, St., 107, 108, 109 + Gower, John, 55, 56, 63, 69, 134, 164, 165, 166, 167 + Grimm, 13, 129 + Guillaume de Lorris, 140 + _Guy of Warwick_, 98 + + Hampole, Richard Rolle of, 63, 162 + Harleian MS., the, 110-3, 114,116 + _Havelock the Dane_, 45, 88, 89 + Henryson, Robert, 125 + _Hous of Fame, The_, 143, 170, 178, 184 + Huchoun, 106 + Huon of Bordeaux, Sir, 25 + + Ipomedon, Romance of, 76, 77, 78, 79 + + _Kerry Recruit, The_, 57, 58 + _King Horn_, 88, 89, 98 + _Knight's Tale, The_, 175, 181, 182 + + _Lais_, Breton, 83, 86, 94 + _Launfal, Sir_, 83, 84, 93 + Layamon's _Brut_, 45, 52, 87, 88, 153, 154 + _Legend of Good Women, The_, 66, 72, 143, 168, 174, 183, 184 + Lewes, Song on the Battle of, 111 + _Libeaus, Sir_, 98, 99, 100, 102 + _Luve Ron_, 109 + Lydgate, John, 98 + Lyndsay, Sir David, 161 + Lyric poetry, 56-63, 107-23 + + Maldon, Battle of, 29, 30, 33, 39, 40, 43, 52 + Malmesbury, William of, 44 + Malory, 86, 88 + _Man in the Moon_, 113 + Map, Walter, 84, 87 + Marie de France, 83, 84, 86, 94 + _Melibeus_, 169 + Michael of Kildare, Friar, 113 + Minnesingers, 67, 69 + Minot, Laurence, 95, 112 + _Monk's Tale, The_, 185 + _Moral Ode_, 152, 153 + _Morte Arthure_, in alliterative verse, 45, 60, 86, 105, 106 + + _Nibelungenlied_, 21, 22, 29, 48 + + _Odyssey, The_, 24 + Ohthere, 19, 20 + _Orfeo, Sir_, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 117 + _Ormulum_, 57, 58, 59, 151 + Osborne, Dorothy, 81 + Ovid, read by French poets, 72, 176 + _Owl and the Nightingale, The_, 64, 133-6 + + _Parliament of Birds_, 181, 183 + _Pearl_, 103, 143 + Petrarch, 49, 65, 66, 75, 143 + _Piers Plowman_, 30, 31, 45, 143, 144-9 + Provençal poetry, 67, 68, 69 + + Reynard the Fox, 124-7 + _Riddles_, Anglo-Saxon, 40 + _Rime of Sir Thopas_, 79, 94, 96, 97, 103, 104, 168, 178 + Robert of Brunne, 159 + Robert of Gloucester, 158, 178 + Robin Hood, 122 + Roland, 51, 52, 53 + _Roman d'Eneas_, 71, 73, 176 + _Roman de Troie_, 51, 52, 53, 71, 105 + Rome,' 'The Matter of, 50, 51 + _Rood, Dream of the_, 36, 37 + _Rose, Roman de la_, 139-43, 163, 166, 167, 171, 173 + _Ruin, The_, 39, 44 + Ruskin, 8, 9 + Ruthwell verses, the, 37 + + _St. Cecilia, Life of_, 178, 179 + _Saints, Lives of the_, 43, 159 + _Salomon and Saturnus_, 40 + Saxo Grammaticus, 28, 48, 66 + Science, popular, 160 + _Scottish Field, The_, 30 + _Seafarer, The_, 39 + _Seven Wise Masters of Rome_, 137, 167 + Sidney, Sir Philip, 72 + Sigfred (Sigurd, or Siegfried the Volsung), 21, 22, 27 + _Sirith, Dame_, 127 + _Soul's Ward_, 157 + Spenser, 65, 73, 75, 99, 139 + + Tacitus, 18 + Thomas de Hales, Friar, 109 + _Thopas, Rime of Sir_, 79, 94, 96, 97, 103, 104, 168, 178 + _Tristrem, Sir_, 90, 94, 99, 100, 120 + _Troilus and Criseyde_, 51, 168, 170, 181, 182, 186 + + Verse, Anglo-Saxon, 30-40 + --later alliterative, 45, 46 + --rhyming, 57, 58, 59, 79, 114, 115, 178, 179 + + Voltaire, 49 + _Vox and the Wolf, The_, 124 + + _Waldere_, Anglo-Saxon poem, 16, 22, 29 + _Wanderer, The_, 39, 44 + Wayland Smith, 34 + Welsh poet writing English, 114 + _Widsith_, 22, 26, 33, 38, 119 + _Wife's Complaint, The_, 39 + William of Malmesbury, 28, 44 + _William of Palerne_ (or _William and the Werwolf_), 55, 105 + William of Poitiers, 47, 48, 114 + Wycliffe, 42 + + _Ypotis_, 98 + _Ywain and Gawain_, 80 + + + PRINTED IN GREAT 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