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So in England, Robert of

of la Rose, is the most tedious of doctors. Brunne transposes into verse the Manuel des Péchés of Bishop Grostête; Adam Davie, certain Scripture histories; Hampole composes the Pricke of Conscience. The titles alone make one yawn; what of the text?

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There is a poem! You did not think so; call it a sermon, if you will give it its proper name. It goes on, well divided, well prolonged, flowing and hollow; the literature which contains and resembles it bears witness of its origin by its loquacity and its clearness.

It bears witness to it by other and more agreeable features. Here and there we find divergences more or less awkward into the domain of genius; for instance, a ballad full of quips against Richard, King of the Romans, who was taken at the battle of Lewes. Moreover, charm is not lacking, nor sweetness either. No one has ever spoken so lively and so well to the ladies as the French of the Continent, and they have not quite forgotten this talent while settling in England. You perceive it readily in the manner in which they celebrate the Virgin. Nothing could be more different from the Saxon sentiment, which is altogether biblical, than the chivalric adoration of the sovereign Lady, the fascinating Virgin and Saint, who was the real deity of the middle ages. It breathes in this pleasing hymn:

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'Blessed beo thu, lavedi,

Ful of hovene blisse ;
Swete flur of parais,
Moder of milternisse.
I-blessed beo thu, Lavedi,
So fair and so briht;

Al min hope is uppon the,

Bi day and bi nicht.

Bricht and scene quen of storre,

So me liht and lere.

In this false fikele world,

So me led and steore.'1

There is but a short and easy step between this tender worship of the Virgin and the sentiments of the court of love. The English rhymesters take it; and when they wish to praise their earthly mistresses, they borrow, here as elsewhere, our ideas and very form of verse. One compares his lady to all kinds of precious stones and flowers; others sing truly amorous songs, at times sensual:

Another sings:

'Bytuene Mershe and Aueril,

When spray biginneth to springe,
The lutel foul hath hire wyl

On hyre lud to synge,

Ich libbe in loue longinge

For semlokest of alle thynge.

He may me blysse bringe,
Icham in hire baundoun.

An hendy hap ich abbe yhent,

Ichot from heuene it is me sent.

From all wymmen my love is lent,
And lyht on Alysoun.'

'Suete lemmon, y preye the, of loue one speche,

Whil y lyue in world so wyde other nulle y seche.

With thy loue, my suete leof, mi bliss thou mihtes eche
A suete cos of thy mouth mihte be my leche.'3

Is not this the lively and warm imagination of the south? They speak of springtime and of love, 'the fine and lovely weather,' like trouvères, even like troubadours. The dirty, smoke-grimed cottage, the black feudal castle, where all but the master lie higgledy-piggledy on the straw in the great stone hall, the cold rain, the muddy earth, make the return of the sun and the warm air delicious.

'Sumer is i-cumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu:

1 Time of Henry III., Reliquiæ Antiquæ, edited by Messrs. Wright and Halli. well, i. 102.

About 1278. Warton, i. 28.

3 Ibid. i. 31.

Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
And springeth the wde nu.

Sing cuccu, cuccu.
Awe bleteth after lomb,
Llouth after calue cu,

Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth:

Murie sing cuccu,
Cuccu, cuccu.

Wel singes thu cuccu;

Ne swik thu nauer nu.
Sing, cuccu nu,
Sing, cuccu.1

Here are glowing pictures, such as Guillaume de Lorris was writing at the same time, even richer and more lively, perhaps because the poet found here for inspiration that love of country life which in England is deep and national. Others, more imitative, attempt pleasantries like those of Rutebeuf and the fabliaux, frank quips, and even satirical, loose waggeries. Their true aim and end is to hit out at the monks. In every French country, or country which imitates France, the most manifest use of convents is to furnish material for sprightly and scandalous stories. One writes, for instance, of the kind of life they live at the abbey of Cocagne:

1 Warton, i. 30.

voice.

"There is a wel fair abbei,

Of white monkes and of grei.
Ther beth bowris and halles :
Al of pasteiis beth the wallis,
Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met,
The likfullist that man may et.
Fluren cakes beth the schingles alle,
Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle.
The pinnes beth fat podinges
Rich met to princes and kinges.
Though paradis be miri and bright
Cokaign is of fairir sight. . . .
Another abbei is ther bi,
Forsoth a gret fair nunnerie.
When the someris dai is hote

The young nunnes takith a bote...

And doth ham forth in that river

Both with ores and with stere. ...

And each monk him takes on,

And snelliche berrith forth har prei
To the mochil grei abbei,

And techith the nunnes an oreisun,
With iamblene up and down.'

Poem of the Owl and Nightingale, who dispute as to which has the finest

This is the triumph of gluttony and feeding. Moreover many things could be mentioned in the middle ages, which are now unmentionable.

But it was the poems of chivalry, which represented to him in fair language his own mode of life, that the baron preferred to have translated. He desired that his trouvère should set before his eyes the magnificence which he has spread around him, and the luxury and enjoyments which he has introduced from France. Life at that time, without and even during war, was a great pageant, a brilliant and tumultuous kind of fête. When Henry II. travelled, he took with him a great number of knights, foot-soldiers, baggage-waggons, tents, warhorses, comedians, courtesans, and their overseers, cooks, confectioners, posture-makers, dancers, barbers, go-betweens, hangers-on.1 In the morning when they start, the assemblage begins to shout, sing, hustle each other, make racket and rout, as if hell were let loose.' William Longchamps, even in time of peace, would not travel without a thousand horses by way of escort. When Archbishop à Becket came to France, he entered the town with two hundred knights, a number of barons and nobles, and an army of servants, all richly armed and equipped, he himself being provided with four-and-twenty suits; two hundred and fifty children walked in front, singing national songs; then dogs, then carriages, then a dozen war-horses, each ridden by an ape and a man; then equerries, with shields and horses; then more equerries, falconers, a suite of domestics, knights, priests; lastly, the archbishop himself, with his particular friends. Imagine these processions, and also these entertainments; for the Normans, after the Conquest, borrowed from the Saxons the habit of excess in eating and drinking. At the marriage of Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, they provided thirty thousand dishes. Add to this, that they still continued to be gallant, and punctiliously performed the great precept of the love courts; be assured that in the middle age the sense of love was no more idle than the others. Mark also that tourneys were plentiful; a sort of opera prepared for their own entertainment. So ran their life, full of adventure and adornment, in the open air and in the sunlight, with show of cavalcades and arms; they act a pageant, and act it with enjoyment. Thus the King of Scots, having come to London with a hundred knights, at the coronation of Edward I., they all dismounted, and made over their horses and superb caparisons to the people; as did also five English lords, emulating their example. In

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1 Letter of Peter of Blois.

2 William of Malmesbury.

At the installation-feast of George Nevill, Archbishop of York, the brother of Guy of Warwick, there were consumed, 104 oxen and 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 304 calves, as many hogs, 2000 swine, 500 stags, bucks, and does, 204 kids, 22,802 wild or tame fowl, 300 quarters of corn, 300 tuns of ale, 100 of wine, a pipe of hypocras, 12 porpoises and seals.

the midst of war they took their pleasure. Edward I., in one of his expeditions against the King of France, took with him thirty falconers, and made his campaign alternately hunting and fighting.1 Another time, says Froissart, the knights who joined the army carried a plaster over one eye, having vowed not to remove it until they had performed an exploit worthy of their mistresses. Out of the very exube rancy of genius they practised the art of poetry; out of the buoyancy of their imagination they made a sport of life. Edward III. built at Windsor a round hall and a round table; and in one of his tourneys in London, sixty ladies, seated on palfreys, led, as in a fairy tale, each her knight by a golden chain. Was not this the triumph of the gallant and frivolous French fashions? His wife Philippa sat as a model to the artists for their Madonnas. She appeared on the field of battle listened to Froissart, who provided her with moral-plays, love-stories, and things fair to listen to.' At once goddess, heroine, and scholar, and all this so agreeably, was she not a true queen of polite chivalry? Now, as in France under Louis of Orleans and the Dukes of Burgundy, the most elegant flower of this romanesque civilisation appeared, void of common sense, given up to passion, bent on pleasure, immoral and brilliant, but, like its neighbours of Italy and Provence, for lack of serious intention, it could not last.

;

Of all these marvels the narrators make display in their accounts. Follow this picture of the vessel which takes the mother of King Richard into England:

'Swlk on ne seygh they never non;

All it was whyt of huel-bon,

And every nayl with gold begrave:

Off pure gold was the stave.
Her mast was of yvory;
Off samyte the sayl wytterly.

Her ropes wer off tuely sylk,

Al so whyt as ony mylk.

That noble schyp was al withoute,

With clothys of golde sprede aboute;

And her loof and her wyndas,

Off assure forsothe it was. 2

On such subjects they never run dry. When the King of Hungary wishes to console his afflicted daughter, he proposes to take her to the chase in the following style:

'To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare;
And yede, my daughter, in a chair;

1 These prodigalities and refinements grew to excess under his grandson

Richard II.

2 Warton, i. 156.

B

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