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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/37865-8.txt b/37865-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ed1df09 --- /dev/null +++ b/37865-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6245 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature, by +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +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: Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature + +Author: Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37865] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE AND *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE + AND LITERATURE + + BY + + EDWARD TOMPKINS MCLAUGHLIN + + PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES + IN YALE UNIVERSITY + + + [Decoration] + + + G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + NEW YORK LONDON + 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND + + The Knickerbocker Press + + 1894 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1894 + BY + SARAH B. MCLAUGHLIN + + _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_ + BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + + Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by + The Knickerbocker Press, New York + G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + + + +[Decoration] + + CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + INTRODUCTION v + + THE MEDIÆVAL FEELING FOR NATURE 1 + + ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN: THE MEMOIRS OF AN + OLD GERMAN GALLANT 34 + + NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL AND HIS BAVARIAN + PEASANTS 71 + + MEIER HELMBRECHT: A GERMAN FARMER OF THE + THIRTEENTH CENTURY 100 + + CHILDHOOD IN MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE 123 + + A MEDIÆVAL WOMAN 152 + + APPENDIX 183 + +[Decoration] + + + + +[Decoration] + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin, the writer of the essays contained in this +volume, was born at Sharon, Connecticut, on May 28, 1860. He was the son +of the Reverend D. D. T. McLaughlin, a graduate of Yale College of the +class of 1834. His mother's maiden name was Mary Whittlesey Brownell. +She was the daughter of the Reverend Grove L. Brownell, who was settled +for many years over the Congregational church of Cromwell, Connecticut. +Thus it will be seen that the author of this work belonged on both sides +to what Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly called the Brahman caste of New +England. + +At the time of his birth his father was pastor of the Congregational +church of Sharon, Connecticut, but in 1866 left that place for Morris in +the same county. There he remained until 1872 when he gave up parish +duties entirely, and retired to Litchfield, which he thenceforward made +his permanent home. + +With the exception of a short time spent in the Litchfield Academy, the +son was fitted for college almost wholly by his father, who was himself +a finished scholar in Latin and Greek. He entered Yale in the autumn of +1879, and received the degree of A.B. in 1883. From the very beginning +of his university life he was distinguished for his interest in English +literature, and during the entire course of it displayed remarkable +proficiency in the pursuit of that study. To him, before his graduation, +fell the highest honors which the college has to bestow in that +department. + +After receiving his bachelor's degree he remained another year in New +Haven as a graduate student. During that time he devoted himself with +increased ardor to the special branches of study in which from the +outset he had been interested. In the following year he was made tutor +in English. This position he held until 1890, when he was appointed +assistant professor of the same subject. At the meeting of the +Corporation of the University in May, 1893, he was elected by it to the +chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. Happily married to a wife of +congenial tastes, who speedily learned to sympathize with him in the +studies which he had made peculiarly his own, he had every reason to +expect a long career of usefulness, which would be attended with +distinction to himself and would confer distinction upon the institution +with which he was connected. But his health had never been vigorous, and +in the very summer vacation following his appointment a fever, which +came upon him almost without warning, and which seemed at first of +slight importance, carried him off after an illness that lasted little +more than a week. He died on the 25th of July, 1893, at the age of +thirty-three. He lies buried at Litchfield. + +Such is a brief sketch of the life of the author of this volume. He had +at the time of his death many projects on hand, some partly carried out, +some only in contemplation. In 1893 he had edited a volume of +selections from English writers under the title of _Literary Criticism +for Students_; and since his death a school-edition of Marlowe's _Edward +II._, prepared by him, but left mainly in manuscript, has come from the +press. But these were in a measure tasks imposed upon him by the needs +of students, and not those undertaken in consequence of his own +inclinations. During the last year of his life, however, he had been +devoting himself to the preparation for publication of the following +essays. He had long been a student of mediæval literature, not merely of +that found in the English tongue, but of the much fuller and more varied +work that had been produced at an early period on the continent. The +writers of France, of Germany, and of Italy, belonging to that period, +were in truth so familiar to him that he was sometimes disposed to +assume that general acquaintance with them on the part of others which +it is the fortune of but few to possess. Some results of this study he +now set about putting into permanent form. The first rough draft of the +essays here printed had been finished when the fatal illness fell upon +him that carried him away. + +There is no intention of apologizing either for the matter or the manner +of the pieces contained in this volume. They are in no need of it, and +in any event what is published must stand or fall upon its own merits. +Yet it is the barest justice to the author of these essays to state that +not in a single instance do they represent the final form they would +have assumed, had he lived to review and revise the first sketches he +made. In the case of two of them, which were nearest to the condition in +which they were ultimately to appear, evidences of their incompleteness +in his own eyes are plainly seen in the manuscripts. Against particular +passages and sometimes whole paragraphs there were marginal notes, +indicating that the expression was to undergo alteration of various +kinds. In several instances a place was marked for the insertion of a +transition paragraph which had apparently never been written out, though +its character was suggested. These, of course, had all to be +disregarded. The condition of things, furthermore, was much worse with +the four which had not been so fully completed as the two just +mentioned. In the case of these the matter had to be collected and +pieced together, at no slight expenditure of time and trouble, from +scattered leaves of manuscript, in which it was not always easy to trace +out the exact order. + +Unfortunately, one essay, intended to be the longest and most important +of all, could not be included in this volume. Professor McLaughlin had +been for many years an ardent admirer of Dante. To a study of the early +life of the great Italian poet he had devoted years of patient research. +It was the one subject in which he had the deepest interest, and upon +which he had expended the most labor, and he purposed to make the essay +dealing with it the principal piece in the work he was preparing. But, +as was not unnatural, it was the one essay which needed most the +revising hand of its composer. The gaps in it were too numerous and +important to justify its insertion in the unfinished condition in which +it existed, and this particular piece, upon which the author himself set +most store, has been reluctantly laid aside. + +But while it is simple justice to state the facts just given, it must +not be inferred that these essays, unfinished and even fragmentary as +they might have seemed to the writer, will so appear to the reader. Few +there will be who will detect that any part of them has failed to +receive the full attention to which it is entitled. Nor is it likely, +indeed, that the sentiments expressed in these essays would have +undergone any material modification, whatever changes might have been +made in the manner in which they were set forth. Doubtless some of the +points now found in them would have been amplified, others would have +been retrenched. Other views again, to which no allusion is made here, +would have been introduced. Still, so complete in themselves are the +essays in most particulars, that no thought of their incompleteness +would have arrested the attention of any save the smallest possible +number of readers, had not the condition in which they were left been +mentioned in this introduction. + +But even had these essays needed much more than they do the revising +hand of the author, none the less cordially would they have been +received by those who were familiar with his personal presence. +Especially is this true of students possessed of literary taste, who +have been under his instruction, and it is largely in compliance with +their wishes that the publication of this volume was determined upon. +For as a teacher Professor McLaughlin, though still young, had attained +eminence. He had in particular the rare quality of inspiring those under +him with the same zeal for learning and the same love of literature that +animated himself. + +The teacher of English, it must be confessed, has set before him a task +of special difficulty. In the case of other tongues the business of +translation, with the verbal and grammatical investigation implied by +it, must always constitute the principal part of the work of preparation +for the class-room; and the skill and knowledge with which it is +performed will of necessity be the main element in testing the +proficiency and success of the student. But in the case of English this +main part of the usual preparation has been reduced to a minimum. The +business has already been done at the pupil's hands. He knows, at least +after a fashion, the meaning of the words, even if he does not always +comprehend the meaning of the phrase or sentence as a whole in which +they are found. The hard task is, therefore, given the teacher of +English of starting in his instruction at the point where the teacher of +other languages ends. He is, furthermore, to make his subject one of +pleasure and profit to that select body of students, who are eager to +gain from the pursuit of it all the benefit possible. He is at the same +time expected to exact some degree of labor from those who, whether by +their own fault or the fault of others, have no interest in this +particular subject, if indeed they have interest in any subject +whatever. The temptation naturally presents itself to sacrifice the +former class to the latter. Especially does this appeal to instructors +who are deficient in the literary sense, or who possessing it, lack the +ability to arouse it in those under them. The easy process is resorted +to of turning the study into one of a purely linguistic character, in +which the discussion of words will take the place of the discussion of +literature. This is a cheap though convenient method for the teacher to +evade the real work he is called upon to perform, and while it may be +followed by some incidental advantages, it is almost in the nature of a +crime against letters to associate in the minds of young men, at the +most impressionable period of their lives, the writings of a great +author with a drill that is mainly verbal or philological. + +It was the rare fortune of Professor McLaughlin that he solved this +problem, presented to every instructor in English, with a felicity that +does not fall often to the lot of those engaged in the same occupation. +It was not so much in imparting knowledge that his peculiar distinction +lay; it was in his success in inspiring interest in the subject and zeal +for its prosecution. It is, therefore, more especially to those who have +been under his teaching that this little volume is addressed as a +memorial of one to whom many will acknowledge is due the first bent +their minds received to the study and appreciation of what is best and +highest in literature. What its author would have accomplished with his +remarkable powers of acquisition and assimilation, had he lived to carry +out and perfect plans which he had in contemplation, it is idle to +conjecture; and the world, which cares but little for what is actually +done in the field in which he was largely working, cannot be expected to +concern itself with that which was never more than projected. But there +are some to whom the result of his labors, shown in this volume, will +prove of interest for what it is; while to those who have known him +personally, it will, even in its comparatively imperfect state, furnish +a suggestive intimation of what might have been. + + T. R. LOUNSBURY + + YALE UNIVERSITY, + March 22, 1894. + +[Decoration] + + + + +MEDIÆVAL +LIFE AND LITERATURE + + + + +THE MEDIÆVAL FEELING FOR NATURE. + + +On the 26th April, 1335, Mt. Ventoux, near Avignon, was the scene of a +remarkable occurrence. Petrarch was the hero, and on the evening of that +day, while the impression was yet strong upon him, he wrote an account +of it to a friend. The incident was nothing less than climbing a +mountain for æsthetic gratification. That he cared to do it showed that +Petrarch was on the outskirts of mediævalism. + +The narrative is so interesting that I may translate a part of it; for +the great humanist's letters are inaccessible to general readers. He +says that he had thought of climbing the mountain for many years, since +he had known the country from early boyhood, and the great mass of rocky +cliff, entirely rugged and almost inaccessible, was constantly and +everywhere visible. He took with him his brother and two servants. As +they were starting on the ascent, they fell in with an aged shepherd, +who tried to dissuade them. Fifty years before he had climbed to the +summit, moved by a boyish impulse--and he supposed himself the only one +who had ever done it; his recollections were full of awe and terror. +But the poet pressed on, beguiling the weariness, which at times +amounted almost to exhaustion, by moralizing on the labor as a type of +spiritual attainments. At the summit of the highest peak, "moved deeply +at first by that vast spectacle, and affected by the unusual lightness +of the air, I stood as if overwhelmed. I looked, and under my feet I saw +the clouds." His thoughts turned to the classical myths, and the history +of his beloved Italy. He recalled that ten years before, on that same +day, he had left Bologna and his studies. How many changes in his ways. +His wrong loves--he loved them no longer, or rather he no longer liked +to love them. He thought of his future. + + "Thus rejoicing in what I had gained, regretful of my + weakness, and pitying the common instability of human + affections, I seemed to forget where I was and why I had + come. At last I turned to the occasion of my expedition. The + sinking sun and lengthening shadows admonished me that the + hour of departure was at hand, and, as if started from sleep, + I turned around and looked to the west. The Pyrenees--the eye + could not reach so far, but I saw the mountains of Lyonnais + distinctly, and the sea by Marseilles; the Rhone, too, was + there before me. Observing these closely, now thinking on the + things of earth, and again, as if I had done with the body, + lifting my mind on high, it occurred to me to take out the + copy of St. Augustine's _Confessions_ that I always kept with + me; a little volume, but of unlimited value and charm. And I + call God to witness that the first words on which I cast mine + eyes were these: 'Men go to wonder at the heights of + mountains, the ocean floods, rivers' long courses, ocean's + immensity, the revolutions of the stars,--and of themselves + they have no care!' My brother asked me what was the matter. + I bade him not disturb me. I closed the book, angry with + myself for not ceasing to admire things of earth, instead of + remembering that the human soul is beyond comparison the + subject for admiration. Once and again, as I descended, I + gazed back, and the lofty summit of the mountain seemed to me + scarcely a cubit high, compared with the sublime dignity of + man."[1] + +In these sentences we find the new life and the old in the same mind. +Such an action would have been impossible for a genuine son of the +middle ages, but could Petrarch stand on a mountain top to-day, such an +outcome of it would be equally impossible. His feeling for nature was +intense even to a sense of the charm of ruggedness in hills, as +Burckhardt, who refers to this letter in his work on _The Italian +Renaissance_, shows by ample quotations; but the intense lover of nature +in the nineteenth century, though his ethical sense be as deep as +Wordsworth's, finds a different influence in such a scene. Indeed, read +in Wordsworth himself, the modern contrast: + + "Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth + And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay + Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched, + And in their silent faces could he read + Unutterable love. Sound needed none, + Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank + The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form, + All melted into him; they swallowed up + His animal being, in them did he live, + And by them did he live: they were his life. + In such access of mind, in such high hour + Of visitation from the living God, + Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. + No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request, + Rapt into still communion, that transcends + The imperfect offices of prayer and praise." + +How far apart is the piety of the two poets, how different their +absorption. This identification of the human mood with Nature, and the +spiritual elation that arises from the union, is thoroughly +characteristic of the present century. Wordsworth's peculiar beauty, as +Hartley Coleridge told Caroline Fox, "consisted in viewing things as +amongst them, mixing himself up in everything that he mentions, so that +you admire the man in the thing, the involved man." And Hartley's +inspired father uttered a great criticism on the modern feeling for +nature, when in the _Ode on Dejection_ he cried, + + "Oh, lady, we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone doth nature live." + +No literary contemporaries were ever more apart than Wordsworth and +Byron, yet _Childe Harold_ has the same note: + + "I live not in myself, but I become + Portion of that around me; and to me + _High mountains are a feeling_. + . . . . the soul can flee + And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain + Of ocean, or the stars, mingle and not in vain." + +We discover the same sentiment, more delicately held, in Keats, as in +some of his sayings about flowers, and Shelley, speaking of the longing +for a response to one's own nature, says: + + "The discovery of its antitype, this is the invisible and + unattainable point to which love tends.... Hence in solitude, + or in that state when we are surrounded by human beings, and + yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, and the + grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motions of the + very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is found a + secret correspondence with our heart, that awakens the + spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and brings tears of + mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of + patriotic rapture, or the voice of one beloved singing to you + alone." + +Yet this spirit, with which our later poetry is almost everywhere +touched, "this mysterious analogy between human emotions and the +phenomena of the world without us," as von Humboldt expresses it, in its +present comprehensiveness is new to literature. To feel for mountains, +forests, or the ocean, with mingled awe, love, and ecstasy, seems so +natural to us, that we can hardly realize that Gray was striking a novel +and significant chord when he wrote at the Grande Chartreuse, "One of +the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... +Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with +religion and poetry." + +In Petrarch's letter we observe the deficiency in absorbing enthusiasm +for the grander forms of nature, as well as his sense of the isolation +of such sentiment from true spiritual life. Yet this letter is the most +significant indication which we possess from the middle ages of a +capacity for enjoying the sublimity of heights. In _Præterita_, Ruskin, +while describing his eagerness at the first sight of the Alps, as a boy, +has written two or three sentences that we may employ to illustrate the +contrast between Petrarch and his predecessors: + + "Till Rousseau's time there had been no 'sentimental' love of + nature ... St. Bernard of La Fontaine, looking out to Mont + Blanc with his child's eyes, sees above Mont Blanc the + Madonna; St. Bernard of Talloires, not the Lake of Annecy, + but the dead between Martigny and Aosta. But for me, the Alps + and their people were alike beautiful in their snow, and + their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, + sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any + spirits in heaven but the clouds." + +Others, beside the Bernards, men from whose culture and intelligence we +should expect fine appreciation, felt nothing august or inspiring in the +material world. So far as we have any record, the fourteenth-century +laureate was the first of the moderns to climb a mountain for the +æsthetic pleasure of the view. Burckhardt's suggestion that this honor +belongs to Dante, on the strength of a passage in the fourth canto of +the _Purgatory_, is surely not tenable; for the top of Bismantova +possessed a citadel in Dante's time to which business may easily have +called him. All through the middle ages, the lofty elevations between +central Europe and Italy were constantly being crossed. The most +cultivated men were going back and forth as couriers on business of the +Church, and the political relations, especially between Italy and +Germany, kept up a continual stream of travel. Yet one recalls no lines +in any mediæval poem that describe or express sensations of the least +interest concerning the sights that have bowed the strongest souls of +our era, that have been felt by thousands, and put into words by so many +poets. + +There is, indeed, in the beginning of a passage from a famous scholar, +John of Salisbury, an apparent exception to this strange indifference; +but a few clauses correct the hasty judgment. Writing from Lombardy, he +explained why he could not send a letter from the Great St. Bernard: "I +have been on the mount of Jove: on the one hand looking up to the heaven +of the mountains; on the other, shuddering at the hell of the valleys; +feeling myself so much nearer to heaven that I was more sure that my +prayer would be heard." Yet this was due to no rapture of soul, +for--"Lord, I said, restore me to my brethren, that they come not into +this place of torment." He goes on to specify the perils of ice, +precipice, and cold, and nothing disturbs him so much as that his ink +was frozen. But there is not a suggestion of anything worth looking at. +Even Cæsar, as von Humboldt reminds us, composed a rhetorical treatise +while crossing the Alps. But the poet of Vaucluse did climb a mountain +for the love of the view, and the very fact that his æsthetic attention +was distracted by ethical introspection is an indication of that serious +sensibility which was destined to become such an essential element in +our feeling for nature; what for every Wordsworthian is summed up in the +second mood of _Tintern Abbey_. + +This incapacity for appreciating mountainous sublimity involved a +blindness to the rugged and picturesque on smaller scales. In minor +chords, and in combinations of tone superficially discordant, we have +learned to recognize some of nature's richest harmonies; this is one of +our marks of development. Closely linked, too, with this first of modern +passions for nature, indeed unified with it by the qualities of strength +and massiveness, is our feeling for the ocean and great woods. + + "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, + There is a rapture on the lonely shore: + There is society where none intrudes, + By the deep sea, and music in its roar." + +Even deeper than the idea of companionship here is the mystical sense of +absorption into that physical world which seems the very dwelling-place +of the infinite soul, which finds one of its most remarkable +manifestations in an intense and almost defiant sensation of human +transitoriness and unimportance, and which is frequently blended with +very exultation in the reflection that presently we ourselves shall be +unified forever with the unconscious life that stretches out before us: + + "Rolled round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees." + +There is a strange fascination to the modern mind, in presence of the +majesties of nature, in this thought of humanity's return to the +earth-mother. Innumerable generations have come home to her, as many or +more are to be born that they may follow them, and she remains. Perhaps +we are never so serenely conscious of self, as in these rare moments +when we bear without a pang the thought of losing personal identity. +There is something more here than the certainty of at least +materialistic immortality, and the impression of infinite repose and +beauty. + +The projection of our immediate sensation into the long future silence +suffuses nature with pantheistic life, until the eager and buoyant +thrills of spiritual realization render one grateful to have been +permitted to gain such a sensation at what seems the trivial cost of +feeling oneself the mere creature of a day. Such a mood as this +certainly comes but seldom, but probably every one who has ever +experienced any imaginative sensibility to a grand landscape will recall +a heightened sensation that is beyond description.[2] + +But still stranger than the failure to catch the finer suggestions in +the more strenuous forms of nature, is the way in which such sights are +ignored. In southern Europe, mountains, storms, rocks, the ocean, are +scarcely ever described, even as objects of awe or terror. When in the +course of a story they have to be mentioned, the treatment is brief and +matter of fact. Heinrich von Veldeke in his famous epic, makes nothing +of his necessary introduction of a storm at sea, nor does Gottfried, or +indeed any one of this whole period. + +_Gudrun_, that epic of the people which deserves to stand near the more +famous _Niebelungen Lied_, treats constantly of the ocean, yet never +with any feeling except dread of shipwreck. This poem, however, shows a +more northern tone in one or two descriptions of winter, that are at +least elaborated. In the scene, for instance, when Herwig and Ortwin +arrive at the shore where Hildeburg and Gudrun, almost naked, are +washing the clothes for their cruel mistress, we find some realistic +touches, such as their trembling before the March wind, in which their +hair was streaming as they toiled on the beach, while before them the +sea was full of cakes of ice that had broken up under the early spring. +In another connection, too, the poet compares something to a thick +snowstorm, driven by mountain winds. The sense of fitness in a +sympathetic natural environment for the human action, that has been so +generally regarded in literature, as by Shakespeare, is indeed +occasionally found in mediæval poetry; so in an interesting French +romance that relates the trials of a heroine who barely escapes with her +life, after the loss of everything dear: "The lady is in the wood and +bitterly she wails. She hears the wolves howl, and the screech-owls cry; +it lightens terribly, and the thunder is heavy, rain, hail, and +wind--'tis wild for a lady all alone." + +Exceptions occur now and then. Dante, for example, was impressed by the +mountains; no readers of the _Purgatory_ need to be reminded of his +experience in climbing them. The setting for a mood of unrealized love +in one of his lyrics is in winter, among the whitened hills: "He wooed +the lady in a lovely grassy meadow, surrounded by lofty hills." But the +arbitrary verbal repetitions of the _sestina_ modify the original face +of the image of the mountains towering about the lover's plain, and the +pensive beauty of the whole poem may be connected with an allegory. But +I believe that even in Dante we never catch the sense of exultation in +the earth's power and majesty. + +Our modern feeling for forests is not only at times sombre and +oppressive; we also derive a sense of sublime composure from them. This +latter sentiment was hardly shared by the mediævals. Dante was only +following earlier poets when he located the opening of Hell by a gloomy +wood, and his repeated metaphor of life as a forest, "confusing," +"gloomy," and "dark," accords with the feeling of his age. He would not +have appreciated Chateaubriand. He has left us, however, a rare and +interesting reference to the soughing in the pines on the Adriatic, +which shows how well his ear could interpret its solemn beauty. The +mystical apple-tree, moreover, near the close of the _Purgatory_, whose +blossoms are so exquisitely defined, indirectly reminds us how +exceptional is a mention of fruit trees in flower. Yet the Provençal, +French, and German lyrics constantly begin with the joyousness of +spring, and the happy contrast from the season that destroys flowers and +foliage. Nothing is more conventional than these nature preludes. Over +and over, till we close our books impatiently, we hear reiterations of +the charm of spring and summer. There is a slender kind of grace and +sincerity that would lend interest to many of these, if they had come +down by themselves; but they lie together in books in wearisome +uniformity. A dandelion in April is much prettier than the dandelions in +June. These preludes are usually in keeping with the love-phrases that +follow, cold and imitative. For poets thought and felt in exterior +generalities, rather than in detachment and inner consciousness. Their +typical landscape may be seen in a passage from Gottfried von +Strassburg,--one of Germany's most brilliant poets--where Tristan and +Isolde have fled to the forest grotto, in fear of King Mark. The grotto +is fitted up luxuriously, in keeping with the temper of the entire poem, +but since it is in the wilderness, far away from roads or paths, in a +description of its surroundings we might certainly look for a sense of +the picturesque. But so far from caring for the wild and rugged, +Gottfried does not even like a quiet woodland simplicity. + + "Above the entrance stood three broad lindens, no more; but + below, stretching down the slope, were innumerable trees that + hid the retreat. On one side was a level stretch where a + fountain flowed, a fresh, cool stream, clearer than the sun. + Above it, too, stood three beautiful shady lindens that + shielded the spring from rain and the sun. Bright blossoms + and green grass struggled with each other sweetly on the + field. One caught also the delightful songs of birds which + sang more delightfully there than anywhere else. Eye and ear + each had its pleasure, there was shade and sun, air and + breezes soft and pleasing." + +He goes on to describe the lovers, in a passage from which I translate +the opening: + + When they waked and when they slept, + Side by side they ever kept. + In the morning o'er the dew + Softly to the field they drew, + Where, beside the little pool, + Flowers and grass were dewy cool. + And the cool fields pleased them well, + Pleased them, too, their love to tell, + Straying idly thro' the glade, + Hearing music, as they strayed. + Sweetly sang the birds, and then + In their walk they turned again + Where the cool brook rippled by, + Listening to the melody, + As it flowed and as it went: + Where across the field it bent, + There they sat them down to hear, + Resting there, its murmur clear. + And until the sunshine blazed, + In the rivulet they gazed. + +These lines are characteristic of Gottfried, even to the lingering +verbal repetition, and the picture certainly is pretty, as is the whole +account of the lovers' life that follows. Nothing in early German +literature comes closer to refined modern sensuousness than Gottfried's +best passages; there is a dreamy passion in them, and sometimes they +flash. His rich voluptuous strain has more of the poet than the +free-liver, and his general tone is curiously modern. It would be a +showy phrase to call his _Tristan_ the _Don Juan_ of the middle ages, +for the poems are very dissimilar, yet it is safe to say that we think +of Byron as we read him. Contrast these representative poets of the +thirteenth and nineteenth centuries in this matter of their feeling for +nature. For once among German settings we have a wild scene. But we +observe how studiously it is modified into the conventional meadow, with +trees in uniform little groups, a grassy field is sprinkled with +flowers, there is a spring, and the little stream that escapes from it +instead of tumbling down over a rocky bed into a glen, flows across the +field. Gottfried mentions mountains and rocks that lie round about, only +to point out that they are types of the difficulties and perils to be +undergone before reaching love's shrine. The almost inaccessible retreat +was necessary as a shelter for the fugitives from Mark's court; the poet +has done his best to obliterate the reality. If we turn to Byron, and +look for instance at that incomparable passage in which he relates the +early love of Juan and Haidee, we observe where he voluntarily places +his lovers: + + "It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, + With cliffs above and a broad sandy shore; + Guarded by shoals and rocks as by a host, + With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore + A better welcome to the tempest-tost; + And rarely ceased the haughty billows' roar." + + "And thus they wandered forth, and hand in hand, + Over the shining pebbles and the shells, + Glided along the smooth and hardened sand, + And in the worn and wild receptacles + Worked by the storms, yet worked as it were planned, + In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells, + They turned to rest; and each clasped by an arm, + Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm." + +And, to pass over the description of sky, sea, moon, and starlight, that +follows, as elements in the nature-setting, notice the scene where Juan +is sleeping: + + "The lady watched her lover, and that hour + Of Love's, and Night's, and Ocean's solitude, + O'erflowed her soul with their united power, + Amid the barren sand and rocks so rude, + She and her wave-worn love had made their bower." + +It would be easy to parallel these two situations; the older by no means +ends with the middle ages, for Eden's "blissful bower" is no exception +in modern poetry before the romantic age: while in our own century +counterparts to this conception of untrained and strenuous natural +surroundings for even the happiest of emotions will occur to every +one.[3] The idle triteness in those inevitable scenes of spring, was +manifest to some of the poets themselves. So the Comte de Champagne +declares foliage and flowers of no service to poets, except for rhyming +and to amuse commonplace people. The great Wolfram himself derides the +conventionality of all romance narratives falling in spring and early +summer: + + Arthur is the man of May; + Each event in every lay, + Happened or at Whitsuntide + Or when the May was blooming wide. + +And Uhland cites from the lives of the troubadours the contemporaneous +criticism upon a minor poet of the twelfth century, who wrote in the +old style about leaves, and flowers, and the song of birds,--nothing of +any account. We may recollect that such criticisms go far back of the +middle ages: Horace glances at his contemporaries' conventional +descriptions of a stream hastening through pleasant fields. + +In the widely popular romances of Enid we find illustrations of Welsh, +French, and German treatment in the hands of leading authors, and there +is one point in the narrative where we may compare their feeling for the +natural environment. Readers of Tennyson will recall the passage in the +wandering, where, after one of Geraint's struggles with bandits, he +comes upon a lad carrying provisions. Chrestien's treatment of the +episode is clear and straightforward; the youth and two comrades are +taking cheese, cakes, and wine to the count's meadows for the haymakers. +The young man notices the travellers' worn appearance, and invites them +to sit down "in this fair meadow, under these ironwood trees," to rest +and eat. + +Hartmann von Aue (whose paraphrase of the French poem is, by the way, +far from the merit of his _Iwein_) narrates the incident in the same +manner, omitting the poetically specific touches of the haymaking, and +the shady spot in the field; but characteristically inserting some +courteous concern on the part of the young man, for the comfort of Enid. +But if we turn to the _Mabinogion_ we come upon something very +different: + + "And early in the day they left the wood, and they came to an + open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers mowing the + meadows; and there was a river before them, and the horses + bent down and drank the water. And they went up out of the + river by a lofty steep, and there they met a slender + stripling with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that + there was something in the satchel, but they knew not what + it was. And he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a + bowl on the mouth of the pitcher." + +How charming it is, even to the lovely touch of color. We know here that +the unremembered writer saw nature and cared for it as we do. Indeed, +this mediæval Welshman satisfies us quite as well as does even +Tennyson's transcript: + + "So through the green gloom of the wood they passed, + And issuing under open heavens beheld + A little town with towers, upon a rock: + And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased + In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it: + And down a rocky pathway from the place + There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his hand + Bare victual for the mowers." + +There we have a simplicity treated with Tennysonian artifice, which +"victual" does not succeed in correcting; beautiful in its way, though +its way is perhaps not so fine as the prose. Yet we notice the modern +spirit in the appreciation of the "brown wild" as well as the meadow, +and out of the more general and evasive "steep" is developed the +picturesque "rocky pathway." + +Except for the interest in establishing these forms of +nature-appreciation from such older and more original sources, we might +have satisfied ourselves with illustrations of them from Chaucer's early +poems, where his descriptions are almost wholly derivative. His feeling +for "the smale, softe, swote gras," that was sweetly embroidered with +flowers; the earth's joyous oblivion of the cold, in her enthusiasm of +May; his constant delight in the "smale foules," and the like, are +purely conventional, though the unction with which he writes shows his +real enjoyment. There are touches in Chaucer, however, that we miss in +his romance predecessors, such as his eye for delicate effects--most +interesting as marking the growth of accurate observation and sensitive +rendering, like the description of twilight in _Troylus and Creyseyde_, +when + + "White thynges wexen dymme and donne + For lakke of lyght," + +or the graceful illustration in the same poem of a sudden troubling of +one's mood: + + "But right as when the sonne shyneth brighte + In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face, + And that a cloude is put with wynde to flyght, + Which overspret the sonne, as for a space, + A cloudy thought gan through his soule pace." + +Such a touch makes us feel how modern he is. Yet he does not love the +picturesque. Under the influence of a Breton lay, he writes in the +loveliest of all his tales, of the rugged sea-coast on whose high bank +Dorigen and her friends used to walk (since "stood hire castel faste by +the see") and look down upon "the grisly rokkes blake," which, in her +apprehension for her lord's safe return, she would call "these grisly, +feendly rokkes blake." But we feel that even had Arviragus been at her +side she would never have regarded the coast as we should regard it. +Still we observe the advance in observation and literary expression. In +the _Knight's Tale_, the wild picturesque is employed again to connote +the terrible, but no poet, from Statius to Boccaccio, his guides in the +passage, had written such lines as his setting for the temple of the +God of War: + + "First on the wal was peynted a forest + In which there dwelleth neither man nor best, + With knotty, knarry, bareyne trees olde + Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to biholde, + In which ther ran a rumbel and a swough, + As though a storm sholde bresten every bough." + +Nothing even in _Childe Roland_ sketches desolating natural effects with +more power. Yet Chaucer had a superior, in the sympathetic eye and +adequate expression for the stern and stormy phases of nature, in a +countryman of whom perhaps he never heard. We do not know the name of +the author of _Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knyght_. But the poem marks on +the whole the noblest conception in our literature before Spenser. It +possesses moral dignity, romantic interest, simplicity, and directness, +united with deep seriousness of style, creative imagination in dealing +both with character and with nature. Chaucer wrote nothing so spiritual, +though much of course more artistic and poetically valuable. In regard +to this one matter of the interpretation of nature, it would be +difficult to point out passages in the whole range of mediæval +literature so fine and so remarkable as such descriptions as follow, of +the northern winter scenes through which Gawayn passed on his weird +mission. + + A forest full deep, and wild to a wonder, + High hills on each side, and crowded woods under, + Of oaks hoar and huge, a hundred together. + The hazel and hawthorne were grown altogether + Everywhere coated by moss ragged, rough; + Many birds on bare branches, unhappy enough; + That piteously piped there, for pain of the cold. + + Wondrous fair was the earth, for the frost lay thereby; + On the mist ruddy gleams the sun cast, as on high + He coasted full clearly the clouds of the sky. + + They beat along banks where the branches are bare, + They climbed along cliffs where clingeth the cold, + The clouds yet held up, but 'twas ugly beneath. + Mist lowered on the moor, dissolved on the mountains. + Each hill had a hat, a huge misty cloak. + Brooks boiling and breaking dashed on the banks, + Shattered brightly on shore. + +That is what we find in the North, and such English feeling for the +sublime is nothing new; it goes far back beyond these lines into the +generations that seem misty as the air which their poets are wont to +describe. Mr. Stopford Brooke's recent volume on Anglo-Saxon poetry +makes it unnecessary to enter into the subject of old England's eye and +ear for nature. Its accounts of the sympathy for the bold and fierce +bear out what one might guess without knowledge--that the stern northern +climate and familiarity with ocean life found large poetical expression. +Luxury, southern artifice of sentiment and literary manner, had not +invaded the rugged men of the North; they delight in describing +elemental conflicts, and sometimes with studied elaboration. But if the +pictures of the German and French poets are uniform in their mildness, +those of these Anglo-Saxons are marked by their stormy aspect. We +exchange spring for winter. + +The same contrast holds true when we take up the Scandinavian poets; +they show much feeling and power, but little susceptibility to the +beauty of gentleness and grace. Mr. Brooke has remarked upon a +similarity between the _Tempest_ of Cynewulf and Shelley's _Ode to the +West Wind_. A closer parallel may be observed in the _Lines Among the +Euganean Hills_ and the so-called Helgi poet; where we find a curiously +identical image of rooks and hawks flying into the early morning with +wings sparkling from the mists through which they have passed. The Norse +poems are fond of screaming eagles, and ravens on the high branches. + +That weird northern imagination too has vivid pictures, as the shields +of the night-warriors shining in the waning moon. Nature also +occasionally speaks to their personal moods, both by harmony and +contrast. A poet's boat is swept fiercely by the tempest, as he dies +with thoughts of his "linen-clad lady" in his heart. Another watches the +sea dashing against the steep cliff, and thinks of his far-away love, in +the control of his rival. Like the early English, they feel exultation +in sea and storm. They know them intimately and their descriptions are +spirited and faithful. They love them, but they love fiercely, terribly, +as they do their women. Yet even as in their human passions, there are +tranquillities. "They rode their steeds through dewy dales and dusky +glens: the air, a sea of mist, shook as they passed by." We linger +behind the storming horsemen for a moment, to look back as the silence +steals in again through those dusky glens. + +But to return to what is our real subject, the sentiment for nature in +what we may term the polite literatures of mediævalism. + +The reason for their feeling about winter is summed up in one of the +Latin student songs, "the cold icy harshness of winter, its fierceness, +and dull, miserable inactivity." It kept them within, when their +interests and concerns were so mainly out-of-door. The poets are for +ever singing in praise of spring, not so much because they loved it for +itself, as because it brought them a life that was gay and easy. They +seldom introduce touches of appreciation in their descriptions of the +wintry season. Snow may have appeared lovely to them, but we observe +Dante as doing something singular when he compares the talking of +ladies, which was mingled with sighs and tears, to raindrops +interspersed with beautiful snowflakes (_cp._ _Inf._, 14, 30; 24, 5), +and one of the most memorable lines in his friend Guido Cavalcanti's +poems is the one which mentions the dreamy sinking down of snow, falling +when the air is windless. The old-time gentlemen apparently hugged the +fire and drank of "their bugle-horn the wyn," and ate "brawn of the +tusked swyn," when winter came, instead of watching the snow, through +their little windows. + +There are many phases of nature which it seems to us impossible not to +notice and enjoy, of which we seldom find a trace. We should expect them +in the large body of lyrical verse, and still more in the copious +romance literature, which corresponds to the modern novel, both in +incident and in the invitation to bits of passing local color. Clouds, +for instance, aside from their glory of line and mass, and the grace and +loveliness of their lighter forms, are curious and oddly suggestive, as +Antony reminds Eros, and they are constantly before the eye; yet let any +reader of mediæval poetry recall how imperceptible a part they play in +it, even as plain facts of description. A line in one of the Latin songs +expresses the feeling: their thought of clouds is, how delightful not to +see them. Moonlight, too, is seldom dwelt on as poetical; the most +romantic touch that comes to my mind in connection with it, is in +Chrestien de Troyes, where it shines over the reconciliation of +estranged lovers. Just as we find little notice of sunrise, sunset, +clouds, and moon, we find little feeling for the stars. They are +mentioned occasionally in a facile way, though scarcely ever with +manifest sentiment. There are two or three passages, however, in +_Aucassin et Nicolette_, that show the daintiest sort of sentiment for +moonlight and stars. Here, for instance, where the lovers are confined +for the sake of thwarting their love: + + "'Twas in summer time, in the month of May, when the days are + warm, long, and clear and the nights calm and cloudless. + Nicolette was lying one night in her bed, and she saw the + moon clearly shining through a window, and she heard the + nightingale singing in the garden and she thought of Aucassin + her lover, whom she loved so much." + +So making a rope of the bedclothes she lets herself down into the +garden. + + "Then she caught her gown by one hand in front and by the + other behind, and tucked it up on account of the dew which + she saw was heavy on the grass, and she went down through the + garden.... And the daisy-blossoms that she broke with the + toes of her feet, that lay over on the small of her foot, + were even black, by her feet and legs, so very white was the + dear little girl. Along the streets she passed in the shadow, + for the moon shone very clear, and she went on till she came + to the tower where her lover was." + +And again when the lover is in pursuit of her, after she had built +herself a lodge in what she thought a safe retreat; he does not know +where she is, and his thoughts are so absorbed that he falls and puts +out his shoulder, and then creeps into her vacant shelter: + + "And he looked through a break in the lodge and saw the stars + in the sky, and he saw one brighter than the rest, and he + began to say: + + 'Pretty little star, I see + Where the moon is leading thee. + Nicolette is with thee there, + My darling with the golden hair; + God would have her, I believe, + To make beautiful the eve.'" + +Yet even here there is nothing of the deeper sensibility to midnight +sky, common alike to ancient and modern seriousness. Yet we find notes +also of this. It is hard, for example, to think of giving up the +genuineness of Dante's letter refusing to return to Florence, if only +for the rare touch of everywhere seeing the sun and the stars (_nonne +solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam?_), that bears out such +evidences as the last word of each of the divine canticles and other +fine proofs that he felt the high wonder and peace of the stars at +night. Who can doubt that he did--that every deep nature always has? Yet +the poetical evidence for it is curiously scanty throughout these +centuries. It is a surprise to come upon such an exclamation as this of +Freidank's: "The constellations sweep through heaven as if they were +alive,--sun, moon, the bright stars,--there is nothing so wonderful!" + +Indeed, I can recall no writer to whom the material world seems to +suggest such inner sensations as he who called himself Freidank, the +German free-thinker. He was not much of a poet, so far as his verses go, +but his soul knew life as mystery. He also made one of the band of +reformers three centuries before Luther. He saw the corruption of the +Church, yet he revered the sacred institution; in spite of his faith, he +was a Christian rationalist. Some of his sentences almost startle us, as +words before their season: "If the Pope can forgive sins by indulgence, +without repentance, people ought to stone him if he allows any one to go +to hell." "God is constantly shaping new souls, which he gives to +men--to be lost. How does the soul deserve God's wrath before it is +born?" He is haunted by the secret of life: "How is the soul made? No +one tells me that. If all souls could be in a hand, none could see or +grasp their glory." "Earth and heaven are full of the Godhead. Hell +would be empty, were God not there." "Whatever the sun touches, the +sunlight keeps pure. However the priest may be, the mass is still pure. +The mass and the sunshine will always be pure." "I never cease wondering +how the soul is made. Whence it came, and whither it fares--the path is +hidden. Nay, I know not who I am myself.[4] Lord God, grant me that I +may know thee, and also myself." So when Freidank hears the roar of the +wind, its invisible might reminds his skepticism that the soul may well +be great, though none can see it: while he watches the wide mist which +no hand can seize upon, a symbolism of the soul comes to him again. He +is oppressed by the restless energy of being: "Our hearts beat +unceasingly, our breaths are seldom still:--and then, our thoughts and +dreams!" As he rides through spring, he observes the infinite diversity +of nature: + + Many hundred flowers, + Alike none ever grew; + Mark it well, no leaf of green + Is just another's hue. + +"Many a man looks out at the stars, and tells what wonders take place +there. Let him tell me now (something closer at hand), what is the weed +in the garden. If he tells me that truly, I shall be more ready to +believe the other." It is the germ of Tennyson's _Flower in the Crannied +Wall_. Nature's commonplaces hold the heavenly mystery in a common bond +with their own. Such subtle blendings of the outward and inward vision +could come only from a refined and pensive spirit--such as his who sums +up thus the discipline of life: "Many a time the lips must smile when +the heart weeps." + +One of the marked deficiencies of all these descriptions of nature is in +the indefiniteness of the terms employed. In minute accuracy, Dante, to +be sure, is one of the world's greatest masters; but elsewhere it is +rarely that we come upon anything concrete or specific. It is not until +centuries later, indeed, that, so far as nature goes, we find habitual +composition "with the eye upon the object," but, as it seems, most +mediæval poets never carried their observation beyond the barest general +impressions. We do not expect Tennyson's "More black than ashbuds in the +front of March," or Browning's eye for the fact that when "the leaf-buds +on the vine are woolly," the red is about to turn gray. The outer +world's "open secret" is not open enough to make us demand minute +attention. But it is surprising that they did not more frequently record +easy impressions, and in their inventions introduce definite details. +The poetical effect of even apparently prosaic precision is at times +imaginative, but the art of this was kept for the later romanticists. + +There is a lyric, however (belonging, I believe, to the twelfth +century), by a poet of northern France, and written as a satire on the +love-romance literature of the age, which contains one or two happy +instances of just this missing trait. So charming it is in itself that I +have translated it as a whole, though it belongs to an essay on the +lyrical romances, instead of on nature. What a light touch the unknown +writer shows, what dainty fancy! Sir Thopas is hardly a parallel to this +blending of poetry with humor, a humor too gracious to be derisive, +whose genial satire sparkles and dances to meet its sister wave of +sentiment and beauty, till they ripple together, and each seems to have +absorbed the other. The opening stanza is the poet's introduction of +himself, and from the olive we may draw an inference respecting his +local associations: + + Will ye attend me, while I sing + A song of love,--a pretty thing, + Not made on farms:-- + Nay, by a gentle knight 'twas made + Who lay beneath an olive's shade + In his love's arms. + + 1. + + A linen undergown she wore, + And a white ermine mantle, o'er + A silken coat; + With flowers of May to keep her feet, + And round her ankles leggings neat, + From lands remote. + + 2. + + Her girdle was of leafage green; + Spring foliage, with a fringing sheen + Of gold above; + And underneath a love-purse hung, + By bloomy pendants featly strung, + A gift of love. + + 3. + + Upon a mule the lady rode, + The which with silver shoes was shode; + Saddle gold-red; + And behind rose-bushes three + She had set up a canopy + To shield her head. + + 4. + + As so she passed adown the meads, + A gentle childe in knightly weeds + Cried: "Fair one, wait! + What region is thy heritance?" + And she replied: "I am of France, + Of high estate. + + 5. + + "My father is the nightingale, + Who high within the bosky pale, + On branches sings; + My mother's the canary; she + Sings on the high banks where the sea + Its salt spray flings." + + 6. + + "Fair lady, excellent thy birth; + Thou comest from the chief of earth, + Of high estate: + Ah, God our Father, that to me + Thou hadst been given, fair ladye, + My wedded mate!" + +Everything here is definite and concrete, and how delightful the picture +all is. Such plastic art as the "rose-bushes three" is not unworthy of +the great modern poets of whom its magic and romantic definiteness +reminds us,--as the "five miles meandering of Alph, the sacred river," +or the "kisses four" with which the pale loiterer shut the eyes of La +Belle Dame sans Merci. The description of the nightingale on its high +branches, too, is a noticeably accurate touch, as we compare it, for +example, with Coleridge's nightingale descriptions. + +The explanation for the usual vague and indefinite description is not +found in saying that they could not describe minutely. We meet with +abundant details of such material interests as embroideries or armor. +There is artistic emotion in Villehardouin's account of the glorious +sight of Constantinople, as it rose before the crusaders, just as +distinctly as in Lord Byron's letter. But, to their simple eyes, nature +not only failed to suggest associated fancies, like Shakespeare's + + "Wrinkled pebbles in the brook," + +or Wordsworth's ash, + + "A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs," + +but they see natural objects as units, without lingering upon their +parts. When we find, for example, a line that marks the jerky flight of +a swallow, we are surprised at the specific touch; we look almost in +vain for such landscape details as the colors of autumn. Neidhart von +Reuenthal is marking his originality, when he speaks of the red +tree-tops, falling down yellow. + +The want of observation and the shallow sympathy with nature shown by +most poets before Dante are much more surprising than their preference +for placid effects. It is unusual, for instance, to meet such a +suggestive note of association as in the stanza by the Frenchman Gaces +Brulles: + + The birds of my own land + In Brittany I hear, + And seem to understand + The distant in the near; + In sweet Champagne I stand, + No longer here. + +This paraphrase, indeed, is unworthy of the charming simplicity of the +original. Surely, when Matthew Arnold made his sweeping characterization +of mediæval poetry as grotesque, he forgot what a straightforward +evolution of narrative or of quiet sentiment, and what a transparent +expression, we find in some of these minor poets. They are as direct and +unadorned, as they are graceful. It is almost impossible to translate +them without substituting for the fresh and delicate touch, some +metaphysical warping of the idea, or some rhetorical consciousness in +words. What for instance could be more elegantly remote from the +grotesque than this literal translation of Brulles' expression of his +sensibility to the song-birds of his home: "The birds of my country I +have heard in Brittany; by their song I know well that in sweet +Champagne I heard them of old." + + * * * * * + +We may sum up these outline statements to this effect. + +The northern poets described storm, winter, the ocean, and kindred +subjects, with considerable force and fulness. In the cultivated +literatures to the south, natural description was mainly confined to the +agreeable forms of beauty; the grand, awesome, and inspiring were +scarcely felt, and the literal fact of their physical expression was +hardly ever noticed. The exterior world was not made a subject of close +observation, nor was its poetic availability realized as a setting for +action, or as an interpreter of emotion. + +The people of the north, through being habituated to severer weather, +not merely as a fact of climate, but from their rougher, less politely +organized habits of living, [we should especially observe their activity +on the sea,] regarded the violent seasons and aspects of nature with the +sympathetic acquiescence of custom. Moreover, this influence tended to +develop sturdier and more rugged character, race-temperament obviously +being in part a geographical result, which acts with the forces of +social organization, especially those that affect the moral qualities, +such as rude or luxurious living. This vigorous character was more +susceptible to impressions of native power, as well as from association +more interested in recalling them. Accordingly, we find the early +northern poetry an anticipation of the seriousness of modern English +literature, and, as well, of its unequalled recognition of physical +symbolisms of the sublime. Where the northern force blended with more +southern lightness and elegance, as it did in the _Mabinogion_, we find +a deeper poetic sentiment; where it coincides with moral earnestness, we +find such nature sensation as in the poetry of _Sir Gawayn_. But the +literature of the Germans and their romance originals, aim at courtly +levities; they artificialize sentiment and thought, as well as manner. +The deeper and more spiritually sympathetic minds did not as a rule +devote themselves to _belles-lettres_. The Church drew them into her +sober service, and even though they wrote, the close theological faith +was not favorable to their poetic expansion. Most of all, there was but +little individualism, and any artistic sensation of our modern complex +inner consciousness was still crude, even when it existed at all. + +One point, however, should be observed in any inquiry into the reasons +for the inadequateness of these ages' feeling for nature; that many +latent sympathies may never have found a voice. Many through the +centuries before our later ease of publication, may have felt the modern +sensations, without ever thinking of putting them into words. In any new +movement, of art as of practice, a great leader of expression is needed. +Men are sheep to their leaders in various admirations, and many genuine +æsthetic tastes are acquired, through stages of more or less unconscious +imitation. Browning puts this in an acute sentence where Fra Lippo Lippi +explains his usefulness as a painter: + + ". . . We're made so that we love, + First when we see them painted, things we have passed + Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see." + +There were few new departures, there was little originality, in the +methods of mediæval literature. Descriptions of the physical world as a +field of power and sublimity would have fallen dead on the ears of a +public who had never dreamed that storm and cliffs were beautiful. What +if Wordsworth had tried to support himself and win fame by singing at +castles? Nor is it easy, though the taste has been established, to +describe a sunset, or the sublimity of the Alps. We say to each other +"How beautiful!" "How grand!" seldom more. Rare imagination and the tact +of genius are necessary to tell what we really need to show. The sense +of physical sublimity is complex. Its distinctive element is moral or +spiritual emotion. For a full delineation it requires a more subtle, +verbal repertory than those popular poets usually possessed. Yet these +modifications no longer apply when we come to Dante, and superior as his +interpretations are to his predecessors' we miss even in him, as we miss +in the great poets for four hundred years afterwards, appreciation of +the material world's sublimity. + +Macaulay and others have said that it was not until man had become the +master of nature that he learned to love its stern and violent aspects. +But thunder storms, for example, are as dangerous now as they ever were, +at least to a traveller. Still, Byron wrote of them with raptures amid +the Pindus mountains as his predecessors did not. + +Winter was scarcely colder or bleaker for mediæval poets than for +Scottish peasants a century ago, yet Burns would sing as they could not: + + "E'en winter bleak has charms for me, + When winds rave through the naked tree." + +Others have accounted for this change by the era of science, with its +close scrutiny of the world, and its enthusiasm for physical knowledge. +But the scientist masters the world as a reality where the poet sees it +as a symbol. The two modern tendencies may be the result of a common +cause--that recognition of complexity, and disposition to observe, which +is a main fact in man's expansion. + +A better explanation may be found, I believe, in modern refinement and +ethical sensitiveness. + +Side by side with the new appreciation of nature may be observed a +steady growth in sensibility. Our modern moods of inward +contemplation--we are famous for them--our modern zeal for humanity down +to its lowest grades; nay, even our tenderness for the brutes, have been +distinguishing marks of the poet guides under whom we have learned to +appreciate our new physical symbolisms of human emotion. Modern +melancholy, as well, a melancholy more subtle and thoughtful, more +poetical too, than that of mediævalism, has touched men with its pensive +fascination. Philosophical pantheism such as Wordsworth's or Tennyson's, +feels deity in nature; the new Christianity incarnates divinity in +universal man. Man is more than he used to be, his moods are deeper, his +thought freer. He seeks more ardently than of old, because with less +constraint, the mystery in whom he lives and moves and has his being. He +no longer quails before the majesty and awe of its forever elusive +presence. For he knows that though he cannot find it, it enfolds him +with love and beauty, it cries back to his passion and pain in winter +and storm; from the solemn mountains it reminds him of himself, an +unconquerable partner of its own eternity. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Lit. Fam._, iv., 1. + +[2] Since this passage was written, I have met with the following +extract from a letter of Tennyson's, dated in 1874, though with no +direct reference to the experience being associated with nature: "All at +once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of +individuality, the individuality itself has seemed to dissolve and to +fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the +clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond +words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of +personality (if so it were), seeming no extinction, but the only true +life." + +[3] Any student of Dante, who recalls his lovely early sonnet, _Guido, +vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io_, and compares it with Shelley's almost +parallel conception of lovers sailing away in indivisible companionship, +in the latter part of _Epipsychidion_, will obtain an excellent +illustration of this same difference of feeling about the natural +setting for a happy love. In Dante the sentiment is vague, and only what +is peaceful, while Shelley's ideal haunt of lovers admits owls and bats +with the ring-dove, an "old cavern hoar" left unadorned, mossy +mountains, and quivering waves. + +[4] We recall his great countryman's modern cry: "Wohin es geht, wer +weiss es? Erinnert er sich doch kaum, woher er kam." + + + + +[Decoration] + +ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN. + +THE MEMOIRS OF AN OLD GERMAN GALLANT. + + +Any one who has read Freytag's excellent studies of German social life +will recall a curious illustration in his first volume of the lawless +violence of thirteenth-century knighthood, in the imprisonment of Ulrich +von Liechtenstein by his liegeman Pilgerin. The account not only proves +the author's point, but it goes on to suggest a good deal besides. For +the victim's unsophisticated and plaintive manner under his misfortune, +the fashion in which he relates what he suffered, his allusions to his +own life and character, and most of all to the consolations of his love, +are all stimulating to one's curiosity about the writer. When we go to +the mediæval shelves of a German library we find this curiosity +satisfied in a long poem by the unfortunate Ulrich, and immediately we +are in that chivalric age which wins most of its romantic lustre from +its devotion to womanhood. + +If our guesses at a truth beneath the stories of widowed ladies rescued +from bandits of the forest and recreant knights, or of lovely ladies +rescued from worse than death by the capture of castles through the +prowess of generous champions--stories which every one knows and +incredulously likes--send us to a study of the times when they were +composed, we find that the age, when stripped of romantic +embellishments, in its actual life felt a sentiment for women unequalled +by earlier times. We wonder what caused it. Can it have been the +increase in the culture of the Virgin, that beautiful and beneficent +phase of mediæval religion? In its larger development, this appears +rather the parallel expression of some common influence, these +adorations of the divine and human conceptions of woman seeming to be +mutually impulsive, and drawn alike from some undetermined tendency of +social and spiritual refinement. Or was it the Crusades? For a German +essayist has suggested that we may count this increase of sentimentalism +among their many influences upon western Europe; the beauty of the women +and the more luxurious habits of the East, its more effeminate +emotionalism, finding impressionable subjects in the hearts of those +stranger knights lying, wakeful for home, beneath southern stars. +Perhaps the conjecture is equally reasonable that the influence came +from French poets who, as they travelled with the early Christian +armies, caught such suggestions from snatches of oriental poetry. Yet it +seems more natural to regard the growth of knightly sentiment toward +ladies as the more delicate manifestation of a spontaneous increase of +social personality, which was stimulated by that general motion in mind +and heart which we observe in the progress of chivalric and crusadal +life, and based, as we must not forget, upon that Teutonic character, +whose ancient deference to woman is recorded by Tacitus side by side +with his account of knighting youthful soldiers with spear and shield. + +But, to waive the question of its origin, we find its main expression in +the old society, in that protracted and conventional wooing which, we +should remember, was not usually directed toward marriage. As gentlemen +grew hyperbolical and fantastic in their professions of regard and +devotion, feminine coquettishness and love of admiration naturally +became fastidious and exacting. Ladies grew arbitrary and capricious, +and began to demand substantial proofs of their lovers' concern for +them. It became a trait of elegant culture for a lady to pose as +inexorable, while still retaining her control over the wooer; while he, +complaisant to the sentimental fashion, sighed in a cheerful melancholy, +obeyed, adored, and waited. The mistress set tasks, often no trifles, +which the loyal subject must perform--hard feats of arms, long and +perilous journeys, abnegations of pride or comfort. When these were +accomplished, he sometimes returned to receive a new test, involving a +continued delay of his reward. These mediæval ladies were as pitiless as +the mystic spiritual dictatress of Browning's _Numpholeptos_, to their +devotees: + + "Seeking love + At end of toil, and finding calm above + Their passion, the old statuesque regard." + +In the fourteenth century something of this romantic tyranny survived. +We find Chaucer, for instance, in one of his early poems, mentioning in +praise of his heroine that she did not impose dangerous expeditions to +distant countries, or extravagant exploits upon her lover: + + "And saye, 'Sir, be now ryght ware + That I may of you here seyn + Worshippe, or that ye come agayn.'" + +Extended probations, courtships long enough to satisfy Ruskin, were an +established convention. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the seventh book of +_Parzival_, represents Obie as indignantly telling her royal lover, who +has asked her to marry him after what seems to him a reasonable +love-making, that if he had spent his days for five years, in hard +service, under full armor, with distinction, and she had then said "Yes" +to his desire, she would be yielding too soon. + +Jane Austen, in the novel to which Trollope gave the palm of English +fiction before _Henry Esmond_, has expressed in Mr. Collins's address to +Elizabeth exactly the notion of the significance in a rejection, held by +well-bred gentlemen six centuries earlier: + + "'I am not now to learn,' replied Mr. Collins, with a formal + wave of the hand, 'that it is usual with young ladies to + reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to + accept, when he first applies for their favor; and that + sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third + time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have + just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere + long.'" + +But these exercises, as was suggested, were not usually directed toward +the altar. A characteristic of the age is the relation, less or more +sentimental, between a married knight and a lady not his wife; a +relation rather expected of the former, and countenanced in the latter. +This peculiar dual system of domestic and knightly love may be ascribed +to various influences, such as the prosaic influence of early and +dowered marriages, subject to parental arrangement, or the feudal life +which for considerable periods kept gentlemen away from their own homes +in residence in the larger castles, or the idleness of such a society, +or again the popularity of love-lyrics and romance-recitals, which +would tend to sentimentalize their audience. At any rate, it came to be +a fashionable idea that the highest love was independent of marriage, +and the most poetically inclined,--the troubadours and the +minnesingers--were famous for their impassioned and submissive service +of married ladies. It is from these poets' accounts of their own +love-trials that we learn most about this phase of mediævalism, and in +their contented sufferings we see once more that the joy of all romantic +love is in the lover. + +Although there is danger of generalizing too widely from literary +indications, we may believe that chivalric society was appreciably +marked by formal amatory disciplines. Was it all for nothing these +ceremonial disciplines? Can it be that these Don Quixote prototypes, who +trifled away their frivolous days in lady-worship so trivial, did +anything to help the Prince to take Cinderella from the ashes? The +ashes, then the fairy coach; first the drudge, then the sentimental +plaything, then at last the friend. In those days, as perhaps always, +the lover objectified himself in his love, to the extent of finding in +her his own _ideal feminine_. The very fact that this self, which he +probably called into conscious life only as he created it in another, +represented the most refined side of his thought, as is shown in the old +poets' recurrent epithets of "constant, chaste, good," etc., made the +devotion a refining and dignifying experience, especially for the days +when men and women had less in common than they have now. These +lady-services, where the lover often was denied intimacy for a +considerable time, kept up the illusion which the devotee himself may +have half felt was sentimental and artificial. We may reply to little +Peterkin that some good did come of it at last, even for the more +commonplace of these servants of abstract womanhood. Even if the +"visionary gleam" left no permanent illumination, the men were better +for seeing it brightening through their darkness now and then. At its +best, lady-loving gave the mediæval knights consideration for women and +a measure of gentleness. If it only stimulated some to fight hard, they +would have fought anyway, and the motive was a shade less brutal than a +directly selfish one. + +But such an eccentric social idea, especially when the poetic +exhilaration of its earlier hours has passed by, was sure to bring out +extravagant sentimentalists, whose romantic sensibility with no check +from practical judgment, ran wild steeplechases of nonsense. Such, for +example, was the Provençal poet, Peter Vidal, one of the most famous +troubadours, who carried his romantic infatuations so far that he became +crack-brained. The name of one of his ladies was Lupa, Mistress Wolf; +and if he had contented himself with assuming a wolfish device for his +coat-of-arms, as he did, and having himself called Mr. Wolf, he would +have done nothing very peculiar, for that age. But it occurred to him +that it would be a graceful symbol to wear a wolf's skin, and after he +had procured one which quite covered him, he got down on all-fours, and +trotted through the street; and all went charmingly until one day, while +he was exhibiting himself in this fashion about his lady's estate, a +pack of dogs was deceived by the metaphor, and the allegorical lover was +badly bitten before rescue arrived. + +But the most detailed example of mediæval gallantry is that presented in +the work already mentioned, the autobiography of the thirteenth-century +minnesinger, Ulrich von Liechtenstein. The poem is a prolix narrative +of his amatory religion, extending through some sixteen thousand lines, +and containing a large number of lyrics composed in the wooing of two +ladies to whom he consecrated his literary and romantic life. We utterly +tire of the commonplaces in which he praises them. We reflect that not a +single specific incident is ever introduced to illustrate the inner +character of either; the descriptions have no color, except in the +heartlessness of the first beloved, whose virtue and humor alike Ulrich +apparently misses. Yet this presumably undesigned caricature of the more +poetic twelfth-century chivalric love gives important suggestions of the +times, and Ulrich himself is a knight and a poet worth knowing. + +The impression that his romance makes upon a modern reader is something +like that of a beetle hovering above a lily. He played zany to the +gentlemen of an early generation who had amused their leisurely lives by +courtly lady-service; as he emulated their feats of sentimental +gallantry, he stumbled and fell. The odd thing is that after each fall +he called for his tables: "Meet it is I set it down." Undoubtedly many +marvelled and admired, as they looked on: others marvelled and laughed. +Perhaps he mistook the laughter for applause. It may be that the sound +was lost in the applause of his own simple-minded complacency. But yet, +though this gallant was born to a foolish horoscope, his life gained a +good fortune denied multitudes who lived sensibly,--he saw the stars of +his destiny, and he loved them. Their combination caused a silly career, +yet individually they were admirable,--simplicity of nature, theoretical +reverence for womanhood, patient love, regard for stately old usages. +If defective eyesight makes a man fancy a burdock a rosebush, and if he +tends and cherishes the absurd idealization,--at least, the man has a +sentiment for roses. + +The earliest fact which Ulrich has confided to us, is that in his +childhood he used to ride about on sticks, in imitation of the knights, +and while in that simple age he noticed that the poetry which people +read, and the conversation of wise men which he overheard, kept +declaring that no one could become a worthy man without serving +unwaveringly good ladies, and that "no one was right happy unless he +loved as dearly as his own life some one whose virtue made her fitly +called a woman." Whereupon, he thought in his simplicity that since pure +sweet women so ennoble men's lives, he, whatever happened, would always +serve ladies. In such thoughts he grew up until his twelfth year, when +he began a four or five years' term as page to a lady who was good, +chaste, and gentle, complete in virtues, beautiful, and of high rank. +She was destined to give Ulrich much trouble, and the lover's sweet +solicitude began at once, as he started in his teens. For his constant +attention found nothing in her but what was good and charming, and he +feared--this boy of thirteen--that she might not care for him. His ups +and downs of fortune are reported for us in the popular mediæval form +(used for example by Map, and one as late as by Villon), of a dialogue +between his heart and his body. Heart is hopeful, but Body has the +better wit. Yet even if she is too high-born to notice him, he will +always serve her late and early, and in the interim between his childish +page-waiting, and the bold knighthood to be his when he grows up, he +gathers pretty summer flowers, and carries them to her. When she took +them in her white hand, he was happy. + +As the time came near for him to leave her household, the youth grew +emotional: when at table water was poured over those lovely white hands, +he transformed her finger-glass into a tumbler. A German dry-as-dust has +laughed at Ulrich for this. + +But the tender little Teutonic blossom could unfold its youth no longer +in the sunshine of its lady-desire. The stern father appeared, and +transferred the lover, his "grief showing well the power of love," to +the service of an Austrian Margrave. "My body departed, but my heart +remained"; and Ulrich pauses for a moment to point out the strangeness +of the paradox. "Whenever I rode or walked, my heart never left her; it +saw her at all times, night and day." + +His new master was a knightly gentleman, professedly a lady-servant, and +the lessons that Ulrich had caught as a child from the conversation in +his father's hall were reinforced by this Margrave Henry. He was taught +the best style of riding, the refinements of address to ladies, and +poetical composition, and assured that whoever would live worthily must +be a lady's true subject. "It adorns a youth--sweet speech to women.... +To succeed well with them, have sweet words with true deeds." + +After four years of such instruction, his father's death called him home +to inherit his property, and he spent the three years that followed by +tourneying in the noviciate of knighthood. At Vienna, in 1222, during +the great festival in celebration of the marriage of Leopold's daughter, +where five thousand knights were present, and tourneying and other +entertainments of chivalry were mingled with much dancing, Ulrich made +one of the two hundred and fifty squires who received their spurs. But +the occasion was otherwise memorable to him, for here he saw his lady +again. She recognized him, and told one of his friends of her pleasure +at seeing become a knight one who had been her page when a little +fellow. The mere simple foolish thought that she would perhaps have him +for her own knight, as he tells us, was sweet and good, and put him in +high spirits. Indeed this was all the contentment which the blushing +young knight desired: + + "Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in + dreams?" + +Ulrich did not wake from his to do anything so practical as to speak +face to face with her, but gaily rode off to a summer of adventure in +twelve tournaments, wherein he invariably fared well, thanks to his +devotion. + +German sentiment has always shown a butterfly's sensibility to winter +and rough weather, and with the last of autumn, Ulrich's spirit grows +heavy. He longs to see his lady, he knows that now he would speak to +her. There are no tourneys to distract him, and in care of heart he +rose, lay down, sat, and walked. As it chanced, a cousin of his knew +this only lovely one, and the taxing office of a lover's confidante fell +heavily upon her, and remained for some years. After beating about the +bush with her for a while, he confessed the truth, only to receive +point-blank advice to give up so hopeless an aspiration. Never! on the +contrary she must help him in his perseverance by visiting the lady and +presenting her with a copy of the verses which Ulrich has been composing +for her as a confession of his love. His cousin consented, but her +mission resulted in a scornful rejection of the suit, softened by +compliments upon the poem. He was advised to abandon his quest, for the +lady seriously objected to his mouth. "Nothing but grim death can drive +me from her; I will serve her all my life," he exclaimed. But he felt +that the criticism upon his mouth was a fair one, and he determined to +pay attention to it. + +Poor Ulrich, with so much sentiment, yet with such physical +deficiencies; with such correct perception of the use of lips, yet +having such uninviting ones of his own. In one of his songs he tells us: + + When a lady on her lover + Looks and smiles, and for a kiss + Shapes her lips, he can discover + Never joy so great; his bliss + Transcends measure: + O'er all pleasures is his pleasure. + +But until he was quite in his twenties, his experience of this +blessedness must have been of those + + "By hopeless fancy feigned + On lips that are for others"; + +for Ulrich confesses to the deformity of what he calls three lips; that +is, a bad hare-lip. + +But this protagonist of mediæval Quixotism has energy and nerve, as well +as sentiment. In spite of his cousin's dissuasions (this plain-minded +lady tells him to take the body God has given him, instead of arrogantly +improving upon his creation), Ulrich rides off to find the best surgeon +in the country, and submit to an operation. But the doctor decides that +the time of year is unsuitable; he must wait until winter is past, keep +his three lips until May. + +At last spring comes and Ulrich returns to the doctor. Upon the way he +meets a page of his lady's, to whom he confides the purpose of his +journey, and whose presence he secures as a witness. Early one Monday +morning the surgeon received his patient, laid out his instruments +before him, and produced several straps. At sight of the latter, martial +dignity recoiled, and Ulrich refused to allow himself to be bound. It +was to no purpose that he was told of the danger involved in even a +twitch; he said with spirit that he came of his own will, and if +anything happened amiss he alone would be to blame. Whereupon he sat +calmly upon a bench, and without a tremor allowed the surgeon to "cut +his mouth above his teeth and farther up. He cut like a master, I +endured like a man." + +Ulrich describes the discomfort which he experienced during the healing +of the wound, in details which give an unpleasant notion of the methods +of mediæval surgery. As he was able to eat and drink scarcely anything, +he wasted in flesh, and his only comfort was the thought of her for whom +he had suffered. During the confinement, he composed another dancing +song in her honor, which, after his recovery he entrusted to his cousin, +who forwarded it with a letter of her own. Presently an answer came. The +lady is to spend the next Monday night near by, in the course of a +journey, and she will be very happy to see her friend's relative, and +learn from himself how things are. Time changes the significance of +letters, among other things. This lady-like note, which gave such a +heart-leap to Ulrich's sentimental hope, interests scholars to-day as +being the earliest prose letter in German. + +On Tuesday morning, when Ulrich appeared at the chapel where the lady's +chaplain was singing mass before her, she bowed without speaking. After +the service she rode off, and Ulrich had found no chance to meet her. +His cousin, however, told him that everything was favorable, and that +the lady would allow him to ride with her that day. So he galloped off +in gay spirits, and soon overtook the cavalcade. But alas for his +self-possession; when he reaches her his head drops and he cannot find a +single word. Another knight was riding with her. Ulrich's heart makes a +speech to his body, reproaching it for cowardice; "If you go on without +speaking to her now, she will never be good to you again." So he rides +up to her and gets a sweet glance, but still he cannot speak. Heart +nudges Body and whispers: "Speak now, speak now, speak now!" All through +the day Body tries, he tries over and over, but he cannot. Alas, as a +poet of his own day said: + + "Mit gedanken wirt erworben niemer wîbes kint: + . . . . . . . + Des enkan sî wizzen niht."[5] + +When they reach their lodging-place for the night, he wishes to assist +the only one in dismounting, but she is not sufficiently flattered by +his attentions to accept them; she says that he is sick and useless, and +not strong enough to help her down. The attending gentlemen laugh +merrily at that, and the ever sweet, constant, good, and so forth, as +she slides from her horse, catches hold of Ulrich's hair, without any +one's noticing it (however that can have been done), and pulls a lock +out by the roots. "Take this for being afraid," she whispers; "I have +been deceived by other accounts of you." Reproaching himself, and +wishing God to take his life, he stood gawkily where she left him, +absorbed in remorse for his awkwardness, until a knight admonished him +to step aside and allow the ladies to go by to their rooms. Whereupon he +rode off to his inn, and swore that he was ill. + +As he tossed restlessly through the night, he talked with himself as +usual, lamenting his birth, and assuring himself that should he live a +thousand years he could never again be happy. "Not to speak one word to +her! My worthlessness has lost my lady." But in the morning he rode up +to her on the street. No silence this time: "Thy grace, gracious lady! +Graciously be gracious to me. Thou art my joy's abiding place, the +festival of my joys." Like many shy people, Ulrich talked fluently +enough when he was once started, and he was only in the midst of his +protestations when the lady interrupted him. "Hush, you are too young; +ride on before me. Talking may hurt you, it never can help you. It would +be amiss for others to hear what you are saying. Leave me in peace; you +grow troublesome." Then she beckoned to another knight, and directed +that she should never again be attended by less than two gentlemen. + +It was in the book of lady-service that no repulse was a discouragement. +"This morning," says the heroine in Bret Harte's parody of _Jane Eyre_, +"this morning he flung his boot at me! Now I know he loves me." Ulrich +rode off, thinking that he had met with good success in telling her a +part of his love, before the interruption. + +Another summer passed in tourneying, and during another winter he tried +to amuse himself by making poetry for his lady. This time he sent her a +more pretentious tribute, his first "Büchlein," a poem of some four +hundred lines. Like most of its kind, it is formal, sentimentally +prolix, and supplicatory, yet not without a certain pleasant interest. +He begs her from the wealth of her loveliness to grant him some trifling +favor which she never can miss: + + What is worse the bloomy heath, + If a few flowers for the sake + Of a garland some one break? + +He wishes it were himself that the messenger is about to deliver to her: + + Little book, I fain would be, + When thou comest, changed to thee. + When her fair white hand receives + Thine assemblement of leaves, + And her glances, shyly playing, + Thee so happy are surveying. + And her red mouth comes close by, + I would steal a kiss, or die. + +But the unsatisfactory manuscripts were returned at once. The lady told +the bearer that she recognized the merit of the poetry, but she would +have nothing to do with it. Like many poets of those days when monks and +ladies constituted the educated classes, like his predecessor, the great +master of high mediæval romance, Ulrich could neither read nor write, +and for such delicate personal affairs as correspondence with his lady +he depended upon his confidential clerk. This confidant of his passion +was absent when the "Büchlein" came back, but the eager eyes of the poet +looked through the pages over which they had evidently wandered before +he dismissed his labors to their fate, repeating the lines from memory +as he looked over the characters which should interpret his loving +patience to the lady who would not let him speak it to her; and as he +looked, he detected an addition to what he had sent, an appendix of ten +lines. The slighted letter found a home in his bosom, and for ten days +he awaited his secretary's return. His happy hopes--those ten days were +so cheerful. But when the little response was at last interpreted, away +with hopes and cheerfulness. To make plainness trebly plain, his cruel +correspondent had copied out three times the sentiment: "Whoever desires +what he should not, has refused himself." + +Summer again, and the lover has diversion in the sports of chivalry. Any +one interested in the details of mediæval tournaments will find in +Ulrich's narrative a valuable and lively record of the tourney held at +Friesach in 1224. His sense for material splendor is well shown by his +full accounts of the costuming and tent equipments. The trustworthiness +of the minor points may be questioned when we recall that the +_Frauendienst_ was composed more than thirty years later, but as a +sketch of thirteenth-century chivalry, no doubt it is accurate. The +heralds running hither and thither, and shouting as they arranged for +the contests, with their cries to "good gallant knights to risk honor, +goods, and life for true women"; the squires crowding the ways, loud +noise of drums, flute-playing, blowing of horns, great trumpeting,--we +have the old picture, made vivid in English by Chaucer in the _Knight's +Tale_, and by Tennyson. + +Ulrich rode in disguise, prompted by the sentimentalist's +self-consciousness, always delighted in attracting attention and making +himself talked of. According to his own account, he did good hearty +tourneying, breaking ten spears with one antagonist, seven with +another, five with a third, six with a fourth, in a single day. The +meeting continued for ten days, and Ulrich grows prolix in his +particulars, though he is modest enough about his own exploits, +pronouncing himself neither the best nor the worst of the participants. +The accidents of jousting, through which many were left at Friesach with +broken limbs and other injuries, and the misfortunes which compelled +others to have recourse to the Jews for loans, did not disturb the +musical contestant. At the end he rode cheerfully off to his cousin with +another song for the same inattentive ear. She promised to report, as +she sent it, that no one in the great tourney had excelled him. + +This lyric is the poem by which modern German students of their old +literature have been best pleased, and we shall hardly dissent from +Scherer's commendation. For it is both a typical minnesong, in its +treatment of nature and love, and also fortunate in its union of +sentiment, force, finish, and a ring of personal meaning. Omitting two +of its stanzas, it goes as follows: + + Now the little birds are singing + In the wood their darling lay; + In the meadow flowers are springing, + Confident in sunny May. + So my heart's bright spirits seem + Flowers her goodness doth embolden; + For in her my life grows golden, + As the poor man's in his dream. + + Ah, her sweetness! Free from turning + Is her true and constant heart; + Till possession banish yearning, + Let my dear hope not depart. + Only this her grace I'll pray: + Wake me from my tears, and after + Sighs let comfort come and laughter; + Let my joy not slip away. + + Blissful May, the whole world's anguish + Finds in thee its single weal; + Yet the pain whereof I languish, + Thou, nor all the world, canst heal. + What least joy may ye impart, + She so dear and good denied me? + In her comforts ever hide me, + All my life her loving heart. + +But elegant and tender as in the original these verses are, their object +returned a slighting answer, and added that the messenger must not be +sent again. People would come to have suspicions. Ulrich made another +set of verses, and went off to another joust. There one of his fingers +was seriously wounded, and in his anxiety to save it he offered a +surgeon a thousand pounds for a cure. The treatment was unsuccessful, +and, after showing a good deal of temper, he went to a new surgeon, on +the way beguiling himself of his pain by composing another poem upon the +old theme. But a shock was at hand; a friend divulged to him his closely +kept secret. "This lady [still unnamed to us] is the May-time of your +heart." What though this friend believed that the lady cared for him? +"My head sank down, my heart sighed, my mouth was dumb," in terror lest +it might be through his fault that the object of his devotion had been +discovered. For secrecy was the first of a chivalric lover's virtues, +even about the object of his passion. Yet the pain was not without +compensation, inasmuch as this gentleman, who declared that he had +already kept the secret for two years and a half, volunteered to make +another appeal. So off to the home of the inexorable went anew the +story of unflinching devotion, the loss of a finger in a tournament for +her glory not unmentioned. Ulrich's cause was pleaded with fervor, and +in winning style. The lover was praised and prayed for. The song he had +sent was even sung, instead of being formally delivered. A faithful and +versatile legate was this proxy wooer, but it was all to no purpose. The +lady declared that she would grow old in entire ignorance of any love +but her husband's. She warned the messenger that Ulrich would find +himself in trouble if he should persist in annoying her with such +sentimental folly; she would not receive such attentions from the +highest-born--not even from a king. + +The news saddened, but did not cast down. "What if she refuses me?" +cried Ulrich; "that shall not disturb me. If she hates me to-day, I will +serve her so that later she shall like me. Were I to give up for a cold +greeting, could a little word drive me away from my high hope, I should +have no sound mind or manly mood. Whatever the true, sweet one does to +me, for that I must be grateful." But now another summer was over, and +he diverted himself by a pilgrimage to Rome. After Easter he returned, +on his way composing this sweetly conceived and rather pretty lyric: + + Ah, see, the touch of spring + Hath graced the wood with green; + And see, o'er the wide plain + Sweet flowers on every spray. + The birds in rapture sing; + Such joy was never seen: + Departed all their pain, + Comfort has come with May. + + May comforts all that lives, + Except me, love-sick man; + Love-stricken is my heart, + This drives all joys away. + When life some pleasure gives, + In tears my heart will scan + My face, and tell its smart; + How then can pleasure stay? + + Vowed constantly to woo + High love am I; that good + While I pursue, I see + No promise of success. + Pure lady, constant, true, + The crown of womanhood, + Think graciously of me, + Through thy high worthiness. + +The knight passed his summer in Steierland under arms, and after +pleasant experiences he sent his messenger again, only to have his suit +repelled with the same coldness and decision as before. The report was +even more discouraging, for the lady, who had been told of his losing a +finger in her service, had now learned that he still had it; nor was she +moved by the assurance that it was almost useless. The desire to keep +the wounded member had led him to large expense of money and time, but +he cared for it no longer. He set about the composition of another long +elegy, which explains how his heart loves her, and weeps for her favor, +as a poor and orphaned child weeps after comfort; so ardently he loves +her, that he gladly sacrifices anything, and as a pledge of his constant +fidelity, he sends her one of his fingers, lost in that service for +which it was born. + +After the poem was ready, he directed a goldsmith to make a fine case, +in which he enclosed it. But he put in something more; he had the +convalescent finger amputated, and sent it to the chiding critic as a +proof that he had not lied in saying that he had lost it for her. Yet +even this failed to please so unsympathetic a mistress. She said she +wondered how any one could be so foolish as to cut off his finger: he +would have been able to serve ladies better by keeping it. However, she +would retain the token of his consideration, but a thousand years of his +service would be lost on her. Ulrich was jubilant, for he was confident +that with this memento, she would always think of him.[6] + +Now a large idea visits this sanguine gentleman. Gone to Rome on a +pilgrimage, that is what he will pretend; he rigs himself out with a +wallet and staff which he obtains from a priest, and trudges off. But +something more novel and magnificent is haunting his ingenious mind. It +is to Venice that he goes--cautiously, so as not to be observed. Upon +his arrival, he takes lodgings in an out-of-the-way inn, so that no one +may hear of him. There he spends the winter, making a liberal +expenditure for costumes for himself and a retinue. He dresses himself +as Queen Venus, in complete feminine attire, even to the long braids of +hair which figure so prominently in the descriptions of the ladies of +that age. + +When spring came, he sent a courier over the route that he intended to +take on his journey homeward, with a circular-letter that contained a +list of thirty places at which Lady Venus would appear, and joust with +all contestants. A ring which makes beautiful and keeps true love, was +offered to whoever might break a spear against her. If she should cast a +knight down, he should become a loyal knight to women everywhere; if he +were to overthrow her, she would give him her horse. But to no one would +she show her face or hand. + +Thirty days later he started on his disguised errantry. His retinue +consisted of a marshal, a cook, a banner-bearer, two trumpeters, three +boys to take charge of three sumpters, three squires for the three +war-steeds, four finely dressed squires, each holding three spears, two +maids--good-looking, he tells us,--and two fiddlers. + + Who raised my spirits, fiddling loud + A marching tune, which made me proud. + +Behind these he rode himself, dressed, like the entire cavalcade, +entirely in white,--cape, hood, shirt, coat reaching to his feet, +embroidered silk gloves, and those hair-braids hanging to his waist. "In +my love-longing heart, I rejoiced thus to serve my lady." + +The narrative of this "Venus-journey" is prolonged, detailed, and +tedious, and only two or three episodes need be mentioned. At Treviso, a +crowd of women are gathered about his lodging, when he comes out on his +way to early mass, and he takes comfort in thinking how well-dressed he +is. In the church, a countess suggests kissing him, conformably to the +kiss of peace custom; the attraction is stronger than the desire for +disguise, and he lifts his veil. She sees that Lady Venus is a man, but +she kisses him nevertheless. "That raised my spirits," Ulrich confides +to us, "for a lady's kiss is delightful"; and he goes on to say that +"every one who ever kissed a lady's mouth knows that nothing is so sweet +as the kiss of a noble lady. A high-born true woman who has a red mouth +and a fair body, whenever she kisses a man he can judge of a lady's +kiss, and of it he is ever glad. A lady's kiss is still better than +good, and it fills a heart with joy." No wonder that many ladies +collected at his inn, to bid so sentimental a knight God-speed. From +their prayers he assures us that he gained good fortune, "for God cannot +slight ladies' petitions," an imputation of gallantry to God, for which +we find curious mediæval parallels. + +Wherever the knight goes, numerous contestants are awaiting him, in this +idle age when no one had anything to do. Some of these, also, assume +disguises, one as a monk, another in female costume, his shield and +spear æsthetic with flowers. But the travelling combatant is always the +winner. At one point during the journey he steals off for a couple of +days to a place which he has never mentioned previously: namely, to his +home. The love-stricken lady-servant speaks with the most unaffected +simplicity of the joy with which he rode away to see his wife: + + "Who was just as dear to me as she could be.... The good + woman received me just as a lady should receive her very dear + husband. I had made her happy by my visit. My arrival had + taken away her sadness. She was glad to see me, and I was + glad to see her; with kisses the good woman received me. The + true woman was glad to see me, and joyously I took my ease + and pleasure there two days." + +This appears tautological, but it also seems sincere. + +But a wound was in store for his sensibility. One day he had gone to a +retired place for a bath, and his attendant had gone to bring a suit. +While thus left quite alone and unprotected, a lady sent by her servant +a suit of female garments, a piece of tapestry, a coat, a girdle, a +fine buckle, a garland, a ring with a ruby red as a lady's sweet mouth, +and a letter. To receive such a gift from a lady not one's love was +treason. He bade the page take the things away, but he would not; nay, +he presently returned with two others, carrying fresh beautiful roses, +which they strewed all about Ulrich in the bath, while he raged and +fumed to think of the insult offered to his unprotected condition. To +think of receiving a gift from any but his own lady! And, of all gifts, +a ring! + +The next present that came was received very differently. After all +these years of neglect, the mistress of his life sent Ulrich an +affectionate message, and a ring which her white hand had worn for ten +years, as a token that she took part in the honors which he was gaining, +and rejoiced in his worthiness. Possibly the knight's name was gaining +currency as genuinely valorous. But fancy his ecstasy! "This little ring +shall ever lift up my heart. Well for me that I was born, and that I +found a lady so true, sweet, blissful, lady of all my joys, brightness +of my heart's joys," and so forth. He was informed that many knights +were waiting to contest with him at Vienna. "What harm can happen to me, +since my lady is gracious? If for every knight there were three, I could +master them all." + +Outside of amorous and knightly themes, Ulrich's mind is not active, but +he occasionally shows a philosophical observation on social topics, as +in the present context, where he comments on female vanity in dress: + + "Woman's nature, young and old, likes many clothes. Even if + she does not wear them all, she is pleased to have them, so + that she can say, 'an if I liked, I could be better dressed + than other people.' Good clothes are becoming to beautiful + women, and my foolish masculine opinion is that a man should + take pleasure in dressing them well, since he should hold his + wife as his own body." + +Certainly Ulrich took pleasure in dressing himself well. + +The Venus-journey ended, and Ulrich counted up the results. Two hundred +and seventy-one of his spears had been broken, and he had broken three +hundred and seven; he had brought honor upon his lady by his loyalty and +valor; and had shown her constant devotion, even though he had +momentarily fallen in love with a bewitching woman at one of his +stopping-places, and taken advantage of his disguise to kiss various +fair ones at mass. Is it possible that the anonymous heroine heard of +such trivial infidelities? At any rate, the next visit of the messenger +brought a bitter dismissal, with cruel charges of inconstancy. She would +always hate him, and never hold him dear; she was angry with herself for +giving him a ring; she bade him return it at once. Alas, poor Ulrich! +Never had he entertained a false thought; if he had ever been guilty of +one, he would in no wise have survived it. "I sat weeping like a child; +from weeping I was almost blind. I wrung my hands pitilessly; in my +distress my limbs cracked as one snaps dry wood." Well may the poet +declare that exhibition of grief no child's play. As the lover and his +bosom friend sat weeping together, Ulrich's brother-in-law admonished +him that such behavior disgraced the name of knight; moreover, there was +no reason for melancholy now, when the champion ought to be happy in the +fine reputation just made. "If women hear how you are behaving, they +will always hate you for this weak mood." Ulrich tried to tell about his +grief for the lady whom he had served so long, but the strain was too +great: "The blood in truth burst out from my mouth and my nose, so that +I was all blood." It was perhaps natural for his friend to thank God +that "before his death he had been permitted to see one man who truly +loves." Yet he bade him be courageous. "Nothing helps so much with +ladies as good courage. Melancholy doesn't succeed with them at all. +Joyousness always has served well with women." + +Water is stable compared with Ulrich's temperament. Close upon the +anguish of this renewed rejection he goes home for a ten-days' visit +with his wife,--"my dear wife, who could not be dearer to me even though +I had another woman for the lady of my life." Within eight lines this +mercurial poet speaks of his comfort with his wife, and of the suffering +of his love-languishing heart. + +Another message from his dream brought a renewed expression of coldness. +She felt kindly to him, but she never would grant favor to any one. But +another song and messenger secure at last the promise of an interview. +Yet notice the conditions. Evidently this lady was a humorist, to whom +her former page was amusing when her less complaisant mood did not find +him tiresome. And perhaps she thought that he could not accept her +terms. She says she will see him if he will come the next Sunday morning +before breakfast, dressed in poor clothes, and in company with a squad +of lepers who have a camp near her castle. But even then he is to +indulge in no hope of her love. The distance is so great that he thinks +he will be unable to cover it in time; but he is told that he must, for +"women are very strange; they wish men constantly to carry out their +desires, and to any one who fails to do so they are not well disposed." +On Saturday he rode thirty-six miles, lost two horses by the forced +journey, very likely over rough country, and was wearied by the exertion +of so hard an effort. But he succeeded, and as soon as they reach the +neighborhood of the castle, he and his two companions put on poor +clothes--the shabbiest they could procure,--and with leper cups and long +knives for their safety among such outcasts of society, they go to the +spot where thirty lepers are huddled together. Mediæval charity and +religion are illustrated by this incident; the miserable beggars explain +that a lady of the castle is ill, and therefore they often receive food +and money in recompense for their prayers for her recovery. Beating his +clapper like one of them, he goes toward the castle gate, and meets an +envoy maid who bids him beware of failing to obey every command +literally, and adds that her mistress will not see him yet awhile. That +personal vanity which always marked him had submitted to stains of herbs +to disguise his face, as well as to miserable and ragged dress, and off +he went, in the servitude of love, and sat among the lepers, ate and +drank among them--nay, even went about begging for scraps, which, +however, he threw under a bush. The foul odors and the filthiness of the +wretches about him made the day almost insufferable, but at last night +came, and he hid himself in a field of grain, getting well stung by +insects and drenched in a cold storm. But he told himself that "whoever +has in his troubles sweet anticipation, he can endure them." In the +morning he went to the castle again, and was encouraged to believe that +he would be received that evening. So he returned and ate with the +beggars; then he escaped to a wood, and with true old German +nature-sentiment, he sat down where the sun fell through the trees and +listened to the birds--many were singing--and forgot the cold. + +Toward evening he secured another interview with the maid, and received +directions for the night. He and his companion hid in the ditch before +the castle, skulking from the observation of the patrol, until well +after dark; then when the signal light appeared at a certain window he +went beneath it, and found a rope made of clothes hanging down. In this +he fastened himself, and hands above began to raise him, but when he was +half way up they could raise him no farther, and he was let down to the +ground. This happened three times; and yet, guileless Ulrich, you had no +glimmering that perhaps it was a joke? The companion was lighter than +his lord, and it occurred to the two that they had better change places. +So they did, and the substitute was lifted into the window by the +waiting ladies above, and then Ulrich himself arrived there. He was +given a coat (an accident below had compelled him to leave his on the +ground), and, blissful moment, he was ushered into the presence of the +woman whom he had so long served without even a glimpse. It was a +brilliant social scene which broke upon those enamoured eyes, indeed too +brilliant and too social to correspond with a lover's sentiment for +"dual solitude." His soul's desire, richly dressed, sat upon a couch, +surrounded by a bevy of ladies. Her husband, it is true, was not +present, but with an absence of tact (as it must have seemed to Ulrich) +she fell to talking about him and her complete happiness in his love. +Their mutual confidence is so strong that he is quite willing to have +her receive any visitors whom she pleases, and she added that her true +mind served him better than any safeguard which he could put upon her. +Awkward as such a line of conversation made it, Ulrich began to tell the +story of his heart, and entreats her to respond to his devotion. She +assured him that she had no thought of ever loving him; she had +consented to this interview only to assure him of her kindly feeling, +and satisfy him from her own lips that he must cherish no romantic hope. +If he continued to ask her to love him, he should lose her favor. "I was +horrified," he declares, "and started up at the threat." + +At this point in the interview he withdraws to talk to his cousin, who +was with other ladies in an adjoining apartment, and who advised him to +return and plead again. But an abrupt dismissal sends him into a moody +reflection, which culminates in a desperate resolve. Now or never; he +sends her word of his determination, and then rushes in and tells her +that if she will not say she loves him, he will kill himself then and +there. The lady sees that such a suicide would be compromising, and +tries to persuade him that perhaps she may some time. Ah, no such +coyness; she must confess her love to-night. Finally, as a last +resource, she thinks of employing the usual right of a courted +woman--putting her lover to a test of his devotion. He has already given +her so many that a trifling, a merely formal one will serve now. Let him +just get into the clothes-rope again and be lowered part way down, and +pulled back; then she will say she loves him. A glimmer of suspicion +flits over his mind, but she gives him her hand as a pledge, and he gets +into the rope. Now he is hanging outside the window, still holding the +dear hand, and such sweet things as she whispers, as she leans out--no +knight was ever so dear to her; now comes his contentment, all his +troubles are past now! She even coddles his chin with her disengaged +hand, and bids him kiss her. Kiss her! In his joy he lets go the hand he +was holding, to throw both arms about her neck, when suddenly he is +dropped to the ground so swiftly "that he ran great peril of his +life."[7] + +In the rooms above a score of voices ringing with laughter, on the +ground a too credulous child of Mars and Venus, cursing his day. Ulrich +spies a deep pool and is about to drown himself, when his companion +arrives with a little present sent by the lady. She promises--(the +gentleman afterward confesses that this is a falsehood of his own to +preserve Ulrich from despair)--that if he will return in three weeks, +she will assure him of her real affection. But now it is near day, and +they must hasten off; providentially there is a tournament awaiting +them, which will distract his attention. But he sends his friend back to +have a talk with the lady, who is in a rather humorous mood, and says +that Ulrich made so much noise when he fell that one of the guard +thought it was the Devil. But though she laughs, she evidently has had +enough of such fun, for she tells the messenger that if his lord wishes +her favor he must make the journey over-sea. Ulrich agrees to go, but he +is warned against the almost hopeless dangers of that most formidable of +pilgrimages; he is reminded that no one ever took such a perilous +journey except for God, and that he would surely sacrifice his soul, if +he lost his life thus for a woman. + +But one grows tired of the story, which runs on with ups and downs, over +the long thirteen years through which Ulrich served this lady. Toward +the end of the period he was plainly growing impatient. He wrote more +lyrics, which suggest here and there that devotion without love in +return is foolish, and that he is contemplating a change. Finally he +conceived himself treated shamefully (we are not told what the +discourtesy was which he could not idealize), and he made a final break +with his old worship. But now the time passed wearily, and he felt that +he must still have a lady to serve. "How joyfully once the days went by; +alas, no longer have I any service to render. How happy ladies' service +makes one." But the knight has learned the lesson of his trials, and +this time he arranges for a judicious passion. He runs over all his +female acquaintance, to see which of them he had best select. Finally he +fixes upon one who, of course, is beautiful and good, and wholly free +from change; who has finished manners and gentle ways, chastity and +force of character, and to her he offers his service, which she accepts. + +From this point in Ulrich's memoirs we have an increasing number of +lyrics; he likes them all, but complains that one or two were not +appreciated by the public, though whoever was clever enough to +understand his poetry, he tells us, did appreciate it. Perhaps we are +not clever enough to understand it all; but some of the songs, as he +himself says, "are good for dancing and very cheerful; the martial ones +were gladly sung when in the jousts fire sprung from helmets," and more +than one of his poems is a contribution to the graceful though minor +work of the later minnesingers. For example: + + Summer-hued, + Is the wood, + Heath and field; debonair + Now is seen + White, brown, green, + Blue, red, yellow, everywhere. + Everything + You see spring + Joyously, in full delight; + He whose pains + Dear love deigns + With her favor to requite-- + Ah, happy wight. + + Whosoe'er + Knows love's care, + Free from care well may be; + Year by year + Brightness clear + Of the May shall he see. + Blithe and gay + All the play + Of glad love shall he fulfil; + Joyous living + Is in the giving + Of high love to whom she will, + Rich in joys still. + + He's a churl + Whom a girl + Lovingly shall embrace, + Who'll not cry + "Blest am I"-- + Let none such show his face. + This will cure you + (I assure you) + Of all sorrows, all alarms; + What alloy + In his joy + On whom white and pretty arms + Bestow their charms? + +And again: + + Sweet, in whom all things behooving, + Virtue, brightness, beauty, meet, + Little troubles thee this loving, + Thou art safe above it, sweet. + My love-trials couldst thou feel + From thy dainty lips should steal + Sighs like mine, as deep and real. + + Sir, what is love? Prithee, answer; + Is it maid or is it man? + And explain, too, if you can, sir, + How it looks; though I began + Long ago, I ask in vain; + Everything you know explain, + That I may avoid its pain. + + Sweet, love is so strong and mighty + That all countries own her sway; + Who can speak her power rightly? + Yet I'll tell thee what I may. + She is good and she is bad; + Makes us happy, makes us sad; + Such moods love always had. + + Sir, can love from care beguile us + And our sorrowing distress? + With fair living reconcile us, + Gaiety and worthiness? + If her power hath controlled + Everything as I've just told, + Sure her grace is manifold. + + Sweet, of love there's more to tell thee; + Service she with rapture pays; + With her joys and honors dwell; we + Learn from her dear virtue's ways. + Mirth of heart and bliss of eye + Whom she loves shall satisfy; + Nor will she higher good deny. + + Sir, I fain would win her wages, + Her approval I would seek; + Yet distress my mind presages; + Ah, for that I am too weak. + Pain I never can sustain. + How may I her favors gain? + Sir, the way you must explain. + + Sweet, I love thee; be not cruel; + Thou to love again must try. + Make a unit of our dual, + That we both become an "I." + Be thou mine and I'll be thine. + "Sir, not so; the hope resign. + Be your own, and I'll be mine." + +The latter part of this prolix autobiography is occupied by a detailed +account of a long tourneying trip, which he contrived as a parallel to +his Venus-journey, this time under the disguise of King Arthur. But the +narration of that ends at last, and Ulrich becomes reflective upon the +seasons and his lady. "Whoever sorrows at winter, and is made glad by +summer, lives like the bird which rejoices in sunny May. How distressing +is bad weather! Yet whatever the weather, her goodness gives me joy +which storms cannot disturb." Presently he tells us his feelings about +the life around him, for the social critics of mediævalism felt the +inequalities of fortune and happiness quite as strongly as do the +social critics of to-day. Some time earlier Ulrich, in criticising a +number of knights whom he met, showed a noteworthily refined feeling for +generous qualities, and resistance against hardness and selfish aims. In +spite of this love-singer's belief in cheerfulness ("no one does well to +be sad except about sins," he wrote), the roughness of the age troubled +him, as it had troubled earlier and greater authors of his nation. +"Instead of being good, the rich work one another harm; the only +profession is that of plundering, the service of ladies is forsaken. The +young men are spendthrifts, and with pillaging consume their youth." +Indeed, the golden hour of chivalry had struck when Ulrich wrote, in his +later life, just past the middle of the thirteenth century. But this +sentimental absurdity, whose fanciful devotion and melodramatic moonings +we find so preposterous, kept a strain of the higher manhood. He was +good-hearted; he believed in the refined side of life, so far as he knew +it; in a rough time and place he loved gentleness; though born with a +large streak of the fool, he had also a pleasant element of the +simple-minded gentleman; and as he grew old amid fading ideals, over +which he had hung with effeminately romantic faith, the brutal and +joyless hardness of men perplexed and saddened him. Yet his simplicity +was his trouble's best physician; nature, the beauty and goodness of +true womanhood, his sense of inner virtue as opposed to worldly +estimates, and his poetry--in these he found comfort. + +"Whatever people have done, I have been happy and sung of my love." + +After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career, +he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been +consecrated. Has he made a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness +unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a +noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little +beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be +sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness--it is better +than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will +become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay, +shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no +womanly woman." ... + +"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not +notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who +gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them +into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry +that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow +which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers." + +For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so +certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true +woman and a loving man. + +Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are +four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the +poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some +strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all, +win none, and hate themselves. + +And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these +revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or +meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he +has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his left hand, a +bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his +rôle. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the +green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the +bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his +head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb +falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue: + + "Of this last class am I; I have lived my life trying not to + give up the three for any one. I desired and even hoped that + I might obtain all the four. This hope has still deceived me, + and I am made a fool by it. One day I will serve Him who has + given me soul, life, thought, whatever I have; the next as a + man I will strive for honor; then for wealth; on the fourth + day I am for ease. Thus inconstant, I have passed my entire + life." + +Nothing accomplished--nothing even steadily aimed at. Nothing? With +characteristic buoyancy the gray-haired poet puts aside this sombre mood +of dissatisfaction with his fifty odd years. For in one point, at least, +he has been true. In this book, written only because his lady commanded, +he has spoken very many sweet words for worthy women, and throughout his +life he has been faithful to his love. "And I do believe that the very +true sweet God, through his very high goodness, will think on my +fidelity to her, and my constant service." + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] + "A woman is never won by what is in one's thoughts: + . . . . . . . . + Of that she can know nothing." + +[6] With this extravagant but probably veracious incident, one naturally +compares the sacrifice of Guillem de Balaun's finger nail. + +[7] These poet lovers seem to have been frequently laughed at. For +instance, Pierre Vidal was promised in their amusement anything by the +ladies whom he loved. Na Alazais was so indignant when he took +encouragement to steal his one kiss, that he was compelled to flee, and +go with Richard to the East. + + + + +[Decoration] + +NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, AND HIS BAVARIAN PEASANTS. + + +Our liveliest pictures of old German peasantry come, as we should +expect, from a singer of the knightly class. The masses had fewer and of +course less accomplished poets, and these would be most likely to please +their audiences by touching with the glamour of fashionable life such +work as they cared to make contemporary and imitative. Realistic social +transcripts usually come from culture. It may be that Neidhart von +Reuenthal had been brought up at the ducal court or in a castle, but +there is as good reason for conjecturing that his origin was among the +scenes of country life that he describes. Most of the courtly poets +belonged to the lower class of knights, and between this and the better +order of peasants there was no wide dividing line; indeed, a farmer with +a little land of his own and four free ancestors ("von allen vieren anen +ein gebûre," as Neidhart says bitterly of his enemy the swaggering Ber), +by the old Saxon law stood higher than a knight not of free blood. The +agricultural class in the thirteenth century was becoming more impatient +of the costly conflicts of their military superiors and was also +suffering severely from the pillaging domestic raids of lawless knights, +who, as they grew bolder, established centres of reckless free-booting +to which they attracted wayward youth of the middle classes. Cities were +also getting larger, and the tradesmen joined with the established +gentry in thinking slightingly of the farming population. Accordingly +there was jealousy on one side and arrogance on the other, yet there was +still a meeting-place between the two classes. Depleted nobles would +marry daughters of wealthy peasants, and a gentleman whose fief lay +among well-to-do farmers might easily meet them in social relations. + +A grant from the Bavarian Duke evidently isolated Neidhart from his own +companions, and he appears to have mingled freely with the peasantry, +though we cannot determine how early the contact began. He was born in +the latter part of the twelfth century, we may say about 1185, perhaps, +and with the exception of absence on Leopold VII's crusade of 1217-1219, +he apparently kept his home in his native Bavaria until about 1230, when +he lost the Duke's favor and turned as a homeless wanderer to Austria, +where he received welcome and another fief. The last date inferred from +his songs is 1236, in connection with the Emperor's coming, and he was +dead before the composition of Meier Helmbrecht, which is earlier than +1250. + +So far as imitations prove popularity, he was one of the most popular of +mediæval poets. It is easy to understand the pleasure that his verses +must have given, striking as they did into a new field, and executed +with literary skill, full of verve and humor, and appealing to strong +class prejudice. We must think of him as a gentleman fond of society, of +refined courtly habits, with an aristocratic contempt for pinchbeck +upstarts, yet not unwilling now and then to play the good-natured +acquaintance with middle-class people. + +Though he ranks as a knight, his tastes were not military. He was +lively, quick-witted, and satirical; clever at musical invention; +genuinely interested in poetry. Moreover, he gave early evidence of an +independent literary taste, that dared to yawn at the methods practised +by the great minnesingers of his youth. By his singing he had obtained +sufficient favor with the Duke to receive a fief though away among the +peasantry; yet rather than relinquish a home of his own, that constant +dream of his profession, he made the merriest and the best of the time +he needed to spend on his estate. + +The feeling for spring is largely an animal sensation, as the lambs in +the pasture, or dogs on the green, or little children remind us. The +comparison of loving something "as goats love the spring," goes back to +Greek literature. It has also been habitually associated with physical +sentiment, as the splendid proëmium of Lucretius suggests. With this +buoyancy of spirits and emotional susceptibility, serious minds touched +with poetry have associated various deep and beautiful moods. But the +moral element that enters into such spring poems as Wordsworth's, is not +present in mediæval literature. There we find poets feeling spring as +animals, as children, as lovers. Those were out-of-door generations; +hunting, riding, fighting, and enjoying themselves beneath the open sky, +were their chief employments. They found winter travel hard, for they +had no beaten roads; it caused a dreary interruption to their principal +engagements, and to a large extent confined them in narrow quarters, not +too comfortably warmed. In spite of all the amusements that could be +provided, the time must have dragged. If Romans could cry out as Ovid +did at the significance of spring, what must the season have meant to +the castled sons of central Europe. It is not strange then that their +nature-worship instituted in early times a festival to the genial +conqueror of frost and snow, and that this ceremony, as the old +superstitions died away, was continued in graceful traditions of village +customs. The first flowers or the earliest boughs in leaf served as the +signal for the ceremonial welcome of April or May. With widely varying +details, the youth of the parish would stream out to the fields or +woods, and come back singing spring catches, and dancing that long, +skipping forward step which they practised out-of-doors, carrying with +them trophies of the season. Sometimes they fastened the first violet to +a pole, and setting it up danced around it; sometimes they danced about +the first linden that appeared in leaf. It is the linden that the poets +are continually mentioning, whether in the centre of the courtyard or in +the field, and the tree suggests the social life of the old times as +happily as the pine under which Charlemagne sat, in the great chanson, +suggests the imperial master. + +Customs related in Herrick's _Going a-Maying_, such as the decoration of +the houses of favorites with early greenery and the processions of girls +and young men to the woods and fields, were familiar in Germany long +before. Exercises to welcome spring became not only a social but +even--so far as the rude country songs went--a literary habit. The +earlier ritual dance around some altar or symbol of the summer deity +grew into an entertainment from which all sense of its original +significance had passed away. These celebrations became the main social +feature of the warm months. At one time partners appear to have been +taken for the year (a passage in _Wilhelm Meister_ reminds us of this +usage), but not in the period before us. A summons to a holiday dance +(and the large number of church festivals made holidays frequent) was +usually given by a musician playing or singing through the street. The +young men and women, and not infrequently their elders, came to the +customary field, dressed for the gaiety; as they went along, tossing and +catching bright-colored balls. This favorite ball-playing, mentioned by +more than one poet of the age as a sign of spring, and especially +entered into by girls, often formed a prelude to the dance. For one +thing it gave the girls a way of choosing their partners, for the man +who caught the ball tossed by a girl, according to some usages, could +claim the right to dance with her. An anonymous poet of the thirteenth +century gives a lively picture of one of these scenes. + + "All the time the young people are passing ball on the + street. This is the earliest sport of summer, and as they + play they scream. What if the rustic lad gives me a shove? + How rude he is as he darts here and there, flying and chasing + and playing tricks with the ball. Then two by two they have a + hoppaldy dance about the fiddle, as if they wanted to fly." + +As one of the fellows holds the ball, + + "What pretty speeches the girls make him, how they shriek, + how wild they get. While he's hesitating to whom he'll throw, + they stretch out their hands; now you're my friend + (geveterlin),--throw it down here to me ... Jiutelin and + Elsemuot hurry after it. Whoever gets it is the best one. + Krumpolt ran, and cried, 'Throw it to me, and I'll throw it + back.' In the scrimmage some of the girls get pushed down, + and an accident happens to Eppe, the prettiest one in the + field. But she picks herself up, and tosses the ball into the + air. All scream, 'Catch it! catch it!' No girl can play + better than she does; she judges the ball so well, and is + such a sure catch." + +Another way of choosing partners was by presenting garlands, and one of +the prettiest of the spring customs was the walk to the fields and woods +after flowers for wreaths, either to give away or to wear. So one of the +Latin songs describes young people going out,-- + + "Juvenes ut flores accipiant + Et se per odores reficiant + Virgines assumant alacriter, + Et eant in prata floribus ornata, communiter." + +It certainly is a genial phase of those old times, this out-of-door +companionship of lads and lassies, gathering flowers and "dancing in the +chequered shade." The custom has in a manner survived to our own day; in +England, for example, Mr. Thomas Hardy has introduced such scenes very +pleasantly in some of his novels, but the zest and universality of it +have not descended. Even in Elizabeth's England the hobby-horse was +forgot; and back in the thirteenth century the May-time amusements were +being frowned away. For preachers and moralists saw much evil in these +summer gaieties. It is the old story: Nature is such a puritanical +stage-manager that she likes to bring on a tragedy for the after-piece +to her pleasant comedy, and she is best satisfied when we take warning +from the practice and stay away from the play. + +The insane frenzies into which meadow dancing was carried on some +occasions, especially at the riotous midsummer festival, do not belong +to our subject. Neidhart assumes a flippant tone about matters of +conduct, but his treatment of the summer merrymakings is usually +innocent and agreeable. He comes as an artist, to the rude material +provided in the traditional village songs for these occasions, and +transfers to the polished verse of Germany's already highly trained +lyrical school, that fresh and gay subject-matter that is so remote from +the formal phrases of most of his courtly predecessors. His songs are +lyric in their introduction, but almost invariably epic or dramatic in +the later stanzas, scarcely ever overstepping closely drawn lines. +Whereas, Walther von der Vogelweide's work in the popular poetry retains +the lyrical mood throughout, and is far less realistic, never, I +believe, treating a peasant element as such. Those lyrical preludes +attest Neidhart's deep sentiment for nature; we feel that, in spite of +the conventionality in them. He has the rare merit of an occasional +specific note, and he touches even the hackneyed expressions about birds +and flowers with a contagious buoyancy. Look at a few of these +introductions: + + "Hedges green as gold; the heath dressed in bright roses. + Come on, you fine girls: May is in the land. The linden is + well hung with rich attire; now hearken, how the nightingale + draws near." + + "The time is here: for many a year I have not seen a fairer. + The cold winter is over, and many hearts rejoice that felt + its chill. The woods are in leaf. Come then with me to the + linden, dear." + + "Summer, a thousand welcomes! Whatever heart was wounded by + the long winter is healed, its pain all gone. Thou comest + welcome to the world in all lands. Through thee, rich and + poor lose their sorrows, when winter has to go." + +And another, which loses its effect if we neglect the long, swinging +metre: + + The forest for new foliage its grey dress has forsaken; + And therefore now full many hearts to pleasure must awaken. + The birds to whom the winter brought dismay, + Have never sung so well as now the praises of the May. + + The winter from the lovely heath at last has turned aside, + And there the blossoms stand, arrayed in colors gaily pied. + Above them May's sweet dews are lightly shed; + Ah, how I wish I had a wreath, dear friend, a lady said. + +This stanza moves more quickly: + + Forth from your houses, children fair! + Out to the street! No wind is there, + Sharp wind, cold snow. + The birds were dreary, + They're singing cheerily; + Forth to the woodland go. + +After such opening stanzas comes the action of the song, almost always +an expression of a girl's longing to go to the dance, and her mother's +unwillingness. The burden of the remonstrances is that of the song in +_Much Ado_, "Men were deceivers ever"; and though some of the +conversations are amiable, often the two come to high words, and even to +blows. The girl cannot think of going without her best costume, and +this, in the prudent old domestic management, was always carefully +folded up, and kept under lock and key. "Who gave you the right to lock +up my gown?" a daughter demands. "You did not spin a thread of it. +Where's the key? now open the room for me." Finally, she obtained it by +stealth. "She took from the chest the gown that was laid in many small +folds. To the knight of Reuenthal she threw her colored ball." But +Neidhart grimly brings in her mother at the close. + +Another cries: "Bring me my fine gown. The gentleman from Reuenthal has +sung us a new song. I hear him singing there to the children. I must +dance with him at the linden." Her mother warns her of what happened to +her playmate Jiute last year, "just as her mother said." But the +gentleman had sent her a lovely garland of roses, and had brought her a +pair of red stockings from over the Rhine, which she was wearing then; +and she had promised to let him teach her the dance. Another song +represents two girls talking of the same knight from Reuenthal: "All +know him, and his songs are heard everywhere. He loves me, and to please +him I will lace myself trimly, and go." + +Some of the mothers do more than remonstrate: "The wood is well in leaf, +but my mother will not let me go. She has tied my feet with a rope. But +all the same, I must go with the children to the linden in the field." +Her mother overheard and threatened to punish her. "You little +grasshopper, whither wilt thou hop away from the nest? Sit and sew in +the sleeve for me." The girl is impudent, and the poem ends with a +lively contest. + +Love is too strong. "He kissed me," one of them says, "and he had some +root in his mouth, so that I lost all my senses." Perhaps the high-born +poet bewitched these peasant-girls; he often assures us of it. One of +them is plighted to a farmer, and whenever he expects to find her at +home to entertain him, she joins the dancers, as toward evening "they +bend their way down the street," and throws her ball to the knightly +singer. Even the mothers themselves are sometimes caught by the desire +to dance with him, or at least with some of the men at the linden, and +in two or three of Neidhart's sprightliest songs the tables are turned, +and the daughter tries to keep her mother from the gaieties that her +years have outgrown. I have translated two of these summer dance songs +in their exact rhythms, and so literally as to make them appear almost +bald. In the first the nature opening may be omitted. + + "Mother, do not deny me,-- + Forth to the field I'll hie me, + And dance the merry spring; + 'Tis ages since I heard the crowd + Any new carols sing." + + "Nay, daughter, nay, mine own, + Thee I have all alone + Upon my bosom carried; + Now yield thee to thy mother's will, + And seek not to be married." + + "If I could only show him! + Why, mother dear, you know him, + And to him I will haste; + Ah, 'tis the knight of Reuenthal, + And he shall be embraced. + + "Such green the branches bending! + The leafy weight seems rending + The trees so thickly clad: + Now be assured, dear mother mine, + I'll take the worthy lad. + + "Dear mother, with such burning + After my love he's yearning, + Ungrateful can I be? + He says that I'm the prettiest + From France to Germany." + + Bare we saw the fields, but that is over; + Now the flowers are crowding thro' the clover; + At length the season that we love is here: + As last year, + All the heath is caught and held by roses; + To roses summer brings good cheer. + + Thrushes, nightingales, we hear them singing; + With their loud music mount and dale are ringing: + For the dear summer is their jubilee: + To you and me, + It brings bright sights and pleasures without number; + The heath is a fair thing to see. + + "Dewy grow the meadows," cried a maiden, + "Branches lately bare are greenly laden: + Listen! how the birds are crowning May: + Come and play, + For, Wierat, the leaves are on the linden; + Winter, I ween, has gone away. + + "This year, too, we'll dance till twilight closes; + Near the wood is a great mass of roses, + I'll have a garland of them, trimly made; + Come, you jade, + Hand in hand with a fine knight you'll see me + Dance in the linden shade." + + "Little daughter, heed not his advances; + If thou press among the knights at dances, + Something not befitting such as we + There will be + Trouble coming to thee, little daughter-- + And the young farmer thinks of thee." + + "Nay, I trust to rule a knight in armor; + How then should I listen to a farmer? + What! you think I'd be a peasant's bride!" + She replied: + "He could never woo me to my liking, + He'll never marry me," she cried. + +At first Neidhart seems to have maintained friendly relations with the +young men of the district, for we find him addressing in amicable terms +even Engelmar, who later became his worst enemy, complimenting him upon +his room, in a song apparently designed for a dance at his house. But it +is difficult to believe that his critical genius would have gone long +without expression, and he presently began amusing himself, and courting +the admirations of others, by original snatches of songs that were +imitated from the _trutzstrophen_ of humorous, rustic, and often roughly +personal verses, that were evidently in vogue among the country people +before Neidhart's day. Such jeering, gibing bits of peasant fun-making +would grow out of the custom of songs at these rural gatherings, like +the parallel practice sometimes found with us of country +valentine-parties, where personalities are touched off with the freedom +of anonymous and privileged license. We can readily imagine him +beginning with hits at one and another, that contained no deeper offence +than an inevitable tone of his amused sense of the ridiculous. But the +country gallants, already jealous of their elegant rival, whose +gentlemanly prestige and courtly accomplishments would naturally make +him attractive to their sweethearts, would be quick to take umbrage, and +boorishly ready to manifest their displeasure. Neidhart certainly +enjoyed at least as much of the poetic dower as "the hate of hate, the +scorn of scorn," and must have answered their sullenness and rudeness +with the contempt that falls with such a sting from gentility. Then +stung himself by their bad manners, he naturally composed sharper and +more direct stanzas, holding those who had offended him up to the +laughter of other men, and of the tittering damsels. It does not seem +probable that the most cutting and individualized of these attacks were +written to be sung at dances where the victims of the satire were +present. When we consider the violence and recklessness that +historically marked this whole class in the thirteenth century, we are +sure that the poet would hardly have survived some of the recitations. +Many of them he probably composed to gratify his possibly irritated +mood; for, as we shall presently see, his displeasure was deeper than +the vexation of wounded social pride. But they strayed easily to the +objects of their ridicule. As he strolled along the street, carrying his +fiddle, and stopping to amuse himself at one house or another with any +of the pretty girls whom he found idle like himself, he may have played +and sung the piece over which he had just been working, or the minor +singers who must have haunted him as he grew better known, would catch +up and repeat far and wide the witty verses. The piece at which he was +working, I said, for in an important sense the poems were professional +labor. The natural comparison of the minnesinger on his farm to Ovid +among the Goths, loses most of its force when we reflect that Neidhart's +absences from his various little Romes were in some sense at his own +pleasure, and that he must have kept riding about from castle to castle, +and have made frequent sojourns at his patron's court, in the exercise +of his now established musical vocation. The better his songs, the surer +his hold on the Duke's favor, and as his prestige might rise throughout +the country, the more cordial his greeting would be, and the more +generous his dismission whenever he chose to go. These mediæval poets +were more than careless rhymsters: painstaking labor was assumed as +necessary for success. Their poetry was as subtle and difficult as the +schoolmen's philosophy; though we may not care much for either, we at +least respect the skill with which they mastered self-enforced technical +difficulties. Arnaut Daniel's contest for a wager with another +troubadour (King Richard was to decide which produced the cleverer +poem), illustrates the statement that time was thought necessary for +composition. The Provençal biography tells us that the contestants were +shut up in separate rooms, and only ten days were allowed each for +preparing his song. In Neidhart's seclusion on his fief, then, he would +naturally make studies for his more important literary appearances, +studies in subject-matter, as well as in verse and music. And a large +number of his poems, at least considered in their entirety, must be +thought of as compositions intended for courtly audiences. + +It is to be presumed that Neidhart began by writing in the conventional +style of the love-singers. But his sense of humor and his originality +were too vigorous to allow him to continue in the polished and +monotonous manners of the school that reached its acme in Reinmar. He +possessed the creative faculty, and the rude village lyrics were a +sufficient suggestion of the new departure that he at once instituted +and consummated. He put in the place of lyrical elegies, lyrical +snatches of epic; and instead of gathering his epic materials from the +already familiar, even if not hackneyed, cycles of chivalry, he took +them from the real life, and that a growing life, of the German +villagers of his time. Their boorish manners and arrogant social +pretensions, their vulgar assumptions of elegance, and their jealous, +recklessly brutal tempers, he sketches vividly. His touch is not to be +called magical, there are no imaginative hauntings about the poems, +there is little fascination of subtle poetry in his expression or his +melodies. But his rude subjects are by no means treated rudely; he shows +excellent technique in those elaborately built stanzas; his tone rather +deepens than shrills in excited movements: in his dash and energy of +feeling, he retains artistic self-possession; while he is such an +iconoclast of sentimental poetry, that some have thought that Walther +had him in mind in his complaint of the new school. He invariably shows +sentiment for nature in his preludes, as well as sympathetic tones for +character, especially in what we may call his personal confessions. It +is indeed by virtue of this combination of qualities, as well as by his +novelty of subject, that he caught the approval of his age. Romantic +idealism was dying out, and a long period of coarse sensibility was +drawing on; while there was yet still some feeling for sentiment, and an +intellectual appreciation of artistic performance was, as usual, lapping +over the first stages of literary decadence. If we accept the view which +I have suggested, that at least as wholes many of Neidhart's songs were +intended only for the gentry, we may find it easier to meet the question +of their autobiographic and actual significance. + +It is possible to be unduly literal and too credulous of the historic +reality of whatever is found in an old literature. Especially in the +works of the minnesingers, some modern Germans appear unconscious that a +poet may relate fictitious experiences and sensations. As I have +remarked in an earlier essay, Cowley's love-poems had many mediæval +prototypes, and there seems no necessity for assuming a fact behind each +of Neidhart's statements. Why is it not reasonable to suppose that +having once made what we call a "strike" with some of his village +characters, he occasionally invented continuations or parallels? We may +go so far as to assert the possibility that the continual reappearances +of Engelmar, Neidhart's most recurrent character, who is always +associated with the beginning of his disasters, is due quite as much to +the fact that his early treatment of the famous snatching of a girl's +mirror proved, by virtue of the topic, or the melody, or both, a great +favorite, as to the incident in itself having been of the fateful +influence upon his life that is implied. In other cases, as in what we +may term the episode of the ginger-root, Neidhart certainly seems to be +referring to some of his most popular earlier songs, for no other reason +than that the reference would be agreeable to his audience and give a +sort of continuity to his work. One of these instances is almost +pathetic. The poet is old and song comes hard to him. After several +stanzas of unusually serious tone, he says that people ask him why he +does not sing as they are told he once did: they keep wondering what has +become of the peasants who used to be on Tulnaere-field. So he attempts +to conclude with a strain of his old satirical gaiety. "I'll tell of the +bold free ways of Limizun, who is yet worse than our friend who took +Friderun's mirror, or those who bought mail awhile ago at Vienna," as if +by the mention of these popular achievements of his younger wit he could +hide his dull present mood. + +So, too, as it appears to me, we may explain the recurrent complaints of +his unhappy loves and of his desires frustrated by one and another of +the boors. These lover's sorrows are just what we should expect from a +poet in Neidhart's relation to the fashionable love lyrics; he retains +something of the tone of despondent yearning that was deemed requisite +by all his predecessors, yet he gives it a piquant novelty by +substituting irony and class animosities for vague and impersonal +wailings, and the sense of humor in these courtly woes in behalf of mere +peasant maidens would be a livelier attraction to the knights and ladies +of his polite circles than we might suppose. Surely Neidhart was the +victim of no deep passion for his rustic heroines. He may have been +amused by them, or even have liked them, and he certainly was enraged at +being interfered with or baffled by middle-class rivals; but his rôle is +more a Lothario's than a true lass-lorn wooer's. Imagine a peasant +farm-house with a large main apartment, such as Neidhart had in mind in +one of his earliest winter songs: "Engelmar, thy room is good; chill is +it in the dales: winter is hateful." The young farmers and the girls +come trooping in by pairs and little groups, dressed in their best, +smiling and gay: no better aid to imagining the scene could be desired +than Defregger's genial picture of a modern Tyrolese peasant party. It +is a change from the summer dances: "Winter, thy might will drive us +indoors from the broad linden. Thy winds are cold. Lark, quit thy +singing: both frost and snow have said thee nay; alas, for the green +clover. May, to thee I am loyal; winter is my bane." "Winter gives joy +to none but such as love the chimney-corner." They all think of the +change from their summer gatherings, and the singer strums his fiddle +and strikes into the nature prelude of his lyric, as they prepare to +begin the dance. Here is another opening, translated in the stanza +system of the original: + + The green grass and the flowers + Both are gone; + Before the sun the linden gives no shade; + Those happy hours + On shady lawn + Of various joys are over; where we played, + None may play; + No paths stray + Where we went together; + Joy fled away at the winter weather, + And hearts are sad which once were gay. + +We are reminded again of Herrick in his lines to the meadows: + + "Ye have been fresh and green, + Ye have been fill'd with flowers; + And ye the walks have been, + Where maids have spent their hours." + +The dance is under way now; if, as sometimes happened, they paid a +surprise visit, the guests have taken hold and made the room ready: + + Clear out the benches and stools; + Set in the middle + The trestles, then fiddle; + We'll dance till we're tired, merry fools. + Throw open the windows for air, + That the breeze + Softly please + The throat of each child debonair. + When the leaders grow weary to sing, + We'll all say, + "Fiddler, play + Us the tune for a stylish court-fling." + +(They apparently piled the table-frames in the middle of the room in +place of the linden, about which they danced on the lawn.) + +The singer goes on to remind them of the preparation for the party: + +"I advise my friends to consult where the children shall have their +fun. Megenwart has a large room: if it like you all, we will have the +holiday party there. His daughter wishes us to come. All of you tell the +rest. Engelmar shall lead a dance around the table." + +Again: "Let Kunegunde know; we shall be blamed if no one tells her about +it, and don't forget Hedwig." Once more: "Come along, children, to the +farm-house at Hademuot's; Engelbrecht, Adelmar, Friderich, Tuoze, Guote, +Wentel, and her sisters all three; Hildeburg, pretty child; Jiutel and +her cousin Ermelint." + +Still again, in one of the cheerful early songs, before Neidhart's +bitter tone came in: + + "Now for the children who've been asked to the party. Jiutel + shall tell them all, that they are to step after the fiddle + with Hilde. 'Twill be a great dance. Diemuot, Gisel, are + going together; Wendel, too, Engelmuot, for Heaven's sake! go + out and call Künze to come. + + "Tell her the man is here; if she cares to see him, as she + has all the time been wishing to, let her put on a little + jacket and her cloak; I should prefer to have her come here, + than to have him find her there at home in her every day + clothes. + + "Künze tarried then no longer, but came, as Engelmuot bade + her. She was in a hurry; quickly she dressed. Both sides of + her gown were red silk. The finest of girls! No one could + discover through the country, one I should be so glad to give + my dear mother for a daughter. + + "Haha! How she pleased me, when I saw what she was; such + hair, and red lips. Then I asked her to sit by me, but she + said: 'I don't dare; I've been told not to talk with you, or + even sit by you. Go and ask Heilke over there by Vriderune!'" + +"I hear dancing in the room," he sings at another time; "a crowd of +village women are there; two fiddles; when they pause, gay outbreak of +talking and laughing. Through the window goes the hubbub. Adelber never +dances but between two girls." Sometimes the knightly guest entered into +the gay interlude of conversation, entertaining a merry screaming group. +But when his moody vein, or vexation at some common man's successful +rivalry, dulled his social spirits, he would stand apart, or go to one +side with one of the peasant maids, and satirically note the men +scattered over the room. The young farmer's assumption of the dress and +manners of gentility, carrying arms, discarding rustic fashions, +affecting polite speech ("_Mit sîner rede er vlaemet_," Neidhart says of +one of them,--he talks like a fine gentleman from abroad),--all this was +ridiculous to the courtly poet, and his sense of the humor of it was +associated with the bitterness of social contempt. "Look at Engelmar, +how high he holds his head. What elegant style he has, at the dance, +with his showy sword; something different from his father Batze. His son +is a poor gawk, with his rough head. He puffs himself out like a stuffed +pigeon, that sits crop-full on a corn-chest." And again: "Did you ever +see so gay a peasant as he is? Good Lord! he is first of all in the +dance. His sword-band is two hands broad. Proud enough he, of his new +jacket; it has four and twenty small pieces of cloth in it, and the +sleeves come down over his hand."[8] "There are two peasants wearing +coats in the court style, of Austrian cloth. Uoze never cut them." + +Then he goes on to say: + + "Perhaps you would like to hear how the rustics are dressed. + Their clothes are above their place. Small coats they wear, + and small cloaks; red hoods, shoes with buckles, and black + hose. They have on silk pouch-bags, and in them they carry + pieces of ginger, to make themselves agreeable to the girls. + They wear their hair long, a privilege of good birth. They + put on gloves that come up to their elbows. One appears in a + fustian jacket green as grass. Another flaunts it in red. + Another carries a sword long as a hemp flail, wherever he + goes; the knob of its hilt has a mirror, that he makes the + girls look at themselves in. Poor clumsy louts, how can the + girls endure them? One of them tears his partner's veil, + another sticks his sword hilt through her gown, as they are + dancing, and more than once, enthusiastically dancing and + excited by the music, their awkward feet tread on the girls' + skirts and even drag them off. But they are more than clumsy, + they have an offensive horse-play kind of pleasantry that is + nothing less than insult. They put their hands in wrong + places, and one of them tries to get a maiden's ring, and + actually wrenches it from her finger as she is treading the + bending _reie_. + + "Why should I not be angry at his insolence? Yet I would not + mind the ring so much, if he had not hurt her hand." + +And just so, Engelmar snatched her mirror from Neidhart's darling +Vriderune. + +This last, as has been said, is the most famous incident in the Neidhart +story. From it he dates all his misfortunes, and he reverts to it, over +and over, with bitterness that can hardly be regarded as merely ironical +humor. Yet numerous as the references are, there is a mystery about the +affair that has not been cleared up. It has been suggested that +Vriderune's way of taking the rudeness made it clear to Neidhart that it +was her peasant lover, and not himself, whom she really liked, but it +would seem more natural to associate the occurrence with something +violent. Possibly the poet's indignation at the boorish familiarity led +him to a personal attack, just as in another connection he threatens to +strike an obnoxious fellow, and the resulting quarrel may have been +taken up by friends of both, with such serious consequences that various +annoyances followed on their part, which he could only return by +insulting hits in his songs. The chances are all in favor of the poet's +having been a slighter man physically than these farm-workers, at one of +whom he sneers for the sacks that ride on his neck, and there are +suggestions in the pseudo-Neidhart poetry of his having had helpers to a +revenge. In one of these imitations it is said that through Neidhart's +injury thirty-two had their left legs cut off, an evident exaggeration +of an earlier imitation, where the writer reminds his hearers of what +happened to Engelmar for taking Vriderune's mirror, that he lost his +left leg and had to go on crutches. Such violent fights are +authentically reported at merrymakings of the time, and as the +aristocratic leader of such a brawl, Neidhart no doubt would find his +subsequent residence among the peasants uncongenial. Yet why should he +manifest such reserve, at the same time that he mentions the subject so +constantly, referring to it long after he has left Bavaria? Is it +possible that his jealousy and hot blood drove him to some underhanded +attack in some such way as that in which a brilliant restoration poet +tried to punish a supposed injury? This ill reputation as an aristocrat +equally insolent and treacherous, might follow him to Austria; he would +hardly be pleased to acknowledge in his poem what he had done, while the +constant references to his injury in the insult of Vriderune, and the +misfortunes to himself which it caused may be regarded as half defensive +attempts to excite sympathy instead of disapproval. So much for +possible explanations of this curious literary enigma, out of which we +may make too much; for, as I have already suggested, Neidhart may only +be doing what novelists sometimes do when they repeat a popular hit in +characterization. At any rate, Vriderune seems to have been lost to her +upper-class lover, "and ever from that time I have had some new +heart-sorrow." + +Neidhart constantly reverts to the peasants' brutality and eagerness to +fight. "Look out for a brutish fellow named Ber. He is tall and +broad-shouldered; he scarcely can get in at the door. Fie, who brought +him here? He is the nephew of Hildebolt of Bern, who was pounded by +Williher." Lanze, again, "had got himself up for a champion, and thought +nothing could resist him. He put underneath a coat of mail. Snarling +like a bear he goes; so ugly is he, one were a child who withstood him." +And of another: "He wears a sword that cuts like shears, and a good +safety hat. Whoever you are, you may well keep out of his way. +Villagers, look out for him; his sword is poisoned. It's a well-tempered +Waidover, that sword of his." + +With such village-warriors, no wonder that the parties did not always +end cheerfully. With a resemblance to modern slang Neidhart tells how +they threaten to put sunshine through each other. The lively episode of +a quarrel over a rural gallant's presenting a young lady with a piece of +ginger, Neidhart says he cannot describe in full, for he came away. But +"each began screaming to his friends; one called loudly: 'Help, gossip +Wezerant.' He must have been in great difficulty to scream so for help. +I heard Hildebolt's sister shriek: 'Oh, my brother, my brother!'" +Another dance ends with a milder disagreement. "Ruoprecht found an +egg--'I ween the devil gave it to him'--and threatened to throw it. Eppe +got mad, and dared him. Ruoprecht threw it at the top of his head, and +it trickled down over him." Sometimes, evidently, peacemakers +interfered, as they did in Frideliep's and Engelmar's disagreement about +Gotelint, so that the rivals did not fight, though "just like two silly +geese they went toward each other, all the rest of the day." + +Like all of those poets, Neidhart, though he says "I" very often, lets +us become but indifferent acquaintances. We read some of the mediæval +lyrists without feeling sure that we detect a single genuine personal +note; they had little of our modern sense of individuality. With +Neidhart we fare better than with most; yet, after all, we are hardly +sure that some of his personal confessions are not formally or +humorously assumed. Yet of one trait we are left in no doubt, his strong +German sense for the fatherland. With many other Bavarians, he went to +Syria and Damietta on the crusade of 1217-1219, led by Leopold VII. of +Austria, and he has left us two songs which, though certainly different +enough from the deep religious feeling of such crusade lyrics as +Hartmann's or Walther's, are unmistakably sincere. The first opens with +the minnesinger's usual spring and love-lorn stanzas, but Neidhart soon +drops conventionality with the exclamation, "For my song the foreign +folk here do not care: ah, blessings on thee, Germany!" It reminds us of +Walther: nothing is like the German home. He thinks of sending a +messenger, not we notice, to some town or castle, but to that village +where he left the loving heart from which his constancy never wavers, +and to the dear friends over-sea. + + "Tell them from us all that they should quickly see us there, + joyous enough, except for these wide waves. Bear my glad + service to my mistress, dear to me before all ladies, and say + to friends and kinsmen that I am well. If they inquire how + things are going with us pilgrims, tell them, dear boy, what + ill these foreign folk have wrought us. Haste thee, be swift; + after thee assuredly shall I follow, quick as ever I may. God + grant we may live to see the happy day of going home." + +"We are all scarcely alive," he goes on; "the army is more than half +dead. Ah, were I there! By my beloved gladly would I rest, in mine own +place." "If I may only grow old with her!" he cries, and he breaks out +impatiently against those who keep delaying through August, instead of +moving westward. "Nowhere could a man be better off than at home, in his +own parish." + +At last the expedition, dissatisfied and worn, as the returning +crusaders always were, are on the confines of the longed-for country. We +can imagine the straggling company making their way along, their +minstrel riding among them, fingering the old violin that he has carried +over his shoulders all the two years, and thinking out a new song. He is +still a young man, or at least only approaching middle age, and thoughts +of home, friendship, love, and the spring gaiety of the village life, +crowd upon him with buoyant thrills; he strikes the strings more firmly, +and his voice rings out a home-coming lyric, full of life and feeling. +"The long bright days are come again, and with them the birds; it is a +long time since they sang so well. The winter-weary are gayer than they +have been for thirty years. Maidens, ye children, fine people all, let +your hearts be free to the summer joy, spring quickly in the carols." + + Dear herald, homeward go; + 'Tis over, all my woe; + We're near the Rhine! + +Neidhart's poems are readily classified in two divisions, his songs for +summer and for winter. Both were probably sung as an accompaniment to +the dances, either of the peasants or of the upper class, though there +may be some doubt whether this is true of all the winter songs. Almost +invariably he opens with a nature-prelude, often an elaborate one, and +the temper of the songs is always congenial to the season, gay for +summer, and gloomy or critical for winter. + +There is no evidence that the difficulty with Engelmar was the occasion +of the poet's leaving Bavaria, but his unpopularity with the peasants +seems to have had something to do with the loss of his fief. He was cast +down at the thought of parting with Reuenthal, and said that he would +sing no longer, since the name under which his merry lines had been +known was taken from him; and with a play on the word, "I am put out +undeservedly, my friends; now leave me free of the name!" But after he +was settled by Frederich on an Austrian fief, he adapted himself +cheerfully to his new home. "Here I am at Medelicke, in spite of them +all. I am not sorry that I sang so much of Eppe and of Gumpe at +Reuenthal." + +The Duke gave him money and a house, in response to musical +solicitations, and Neidhart appealed for exemption from his heavy taxes, +that threatened to consume what his children needed. With our modern +ideas this system of literary patronage upon which mediæval poets +depended, and which usually required direct and even pressing +solicitation, seems painful to self-respect; we forget how lately it +flourished. In those days when princely giving was an established +custom, and differed from a system of salaries mainly in being a less +regularly appointed income, a poet's request for a gift was scarcely +more than a modern author's reminder of an unpaid claim; there is +nothing of the unmanly dependence of Coleridge in these earlier +suppliants for aid. None of them asked more gracefully--even Chaucer is +not more delicately suggestive--than Neidhart in such lines as these: + + "Whoever had a bird who satisfied him with song through the + year, he would occasionally look to his bird-cage, and give + him good food. Then the bird could go on singing sweet + melodies. If he always sang well to meet the May, he should + be well cared for, summer and winter. Even the birds + appreciate kind treatment." + +But the times were bad, and even a box of silver, and a house to put it +in, and remission of taxes, could not keep the poet gay as he passed +into later life. He composed penitential lyrics, after orthodox +precedents, of the love-singers, for they almost always grew old +seriously. On these we need not linger, though there seems a cry fuller +than the echo-note in his farewell to Lady Earth, and appeal for pardon +for some of his foolish songs: "Lord God of Heaven, give me thy +guidance; Might of all Might, now strengthen my heart, that I may win +soul's health, and partake ever-enduring joy, through thy sweet will." +But the wail of all of the thirteenth-century's serious minds, that +things were going "ever the lenger the wers" in Christendom, comes out +nowhere more deeply than in Neidhart's allegorical love-song to Joy of +the World, chiding her for her change of character during his long, +unrequited service: + + "False, shameless folk nowadays people her court, and her old + household, truth, chastity, good manners, none find these any + longer. My lady's honor is lame all over. She is fallen so + that none can rescue her. She lies in such a pool that only + God can make her clean. Men of wise mind be on your guard + before her, in church or on street: women of worth keep far + away." + +Eighty new melodies he has sung in her service; this is the last, and +not the most joyous. + +To this closing period we may refer a few summer songs that are an +exception to the usually light-hearted verses of that form. Their +seriousness is all the more noticeable from their fair-weather setting; +for once, the spring is not a panacea. "A delightful May has come, but +alas, neither priest nor layman rejoices in its arrival. Were it the +Emperor who had come, we might rejoice. Trouble and sorrow dwell in +Austria." There is something here besides a sense that the joyousness of +simple free-living and the loyalty of love-service are passing away; he +attributes much of the social decline to national confusion and the +political unrestraint. Yet controversial as he is in social relations, +he has little of Walther von der Vogelweide's thoughtfulness and energy +in patriotic polemics. He drifts down the stream with a sigh. + +In the poem which Meyer's elaborate study of the order of his work +places last, though only conjecturally, he again considers his friends' +entreaty for more songs. The world goes too sadly, he says; as he had +said before that they must ask Troestelin to sing; he himself had no +longer a heart for poetry. Yet there is one pleasant story that he can +tell them: "to break down troubles comes one worthy to be praised; 'tis +May, with all his might." There is something pathetic in such songs, +that try to assume the cheerful strain in which the poet, now grown +gloomy, wrote while he was young. They remind us of the stray leaves +that we sometimes see caught up to their old home among the branches by +a sudden March gust; the brown leaves that will never again uncrumple +their green infancies, hover for a moment, then sink hesitatingly back +to the ground. In this one song, the nature stanzas are transferred from +the place of prelude to the conclusion. "May has conquered; wood and +heath have adorned themselves with their lovely attire; blue flowers are +here and the roses," and he ends with the old thought, that joyousness +and virtuous honor go together. As an idle fancy it is "pleasant if one +consider it," to regard these as the final words of this knightly singer +of mediæval country scenes, the last of the great figures of that old +German group, a parting reminder of the philosophy of a happy life which +mediæval lyrists often maintained so earnestly,--that the secret of good +living is blitheness of heart, and out-of-door life in spring and +summer. For many of these old poets the two terms were convertible; +their creed was surely a simple one. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTE: + +[8] We must remember that the unwillingness of the upper grade of +society to have peasants assume its styles of dress, went so far that +ducal edicts were issued forbidding them to use coats of mail and +helmets, or to carry any weapons. Bitter complaints were made of their +wearing any stuffs so fine as silk, and clothes stylishly cut. + + + + +[Decoration] + +MEIER HELMBRECHT, + +A GERMAN FARMER OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. + + +The usual conception of the middle ages seems to consist of a few facts +and theories about the feudal system and the crusades, the names with +possibly some traits of a few eminent public figures and a general +impression of confusion and obscurity. Supplementing this central idea, +one usually sees a panel picture on either side. One, sunshine flashing +from the spears and armor of knights tilting in tournaments, and watched +by dimly beautiful women; in the distance a solitary knight pricking +over a plain, or, guided by the wail of an unseen and lovely captive, +making his way through forest haunts of giants and gnomes. The other, a +lowering twilight overhanging gloomy monastery walls, the shelter of +melancholy, hypocrisy, manuscript illuminations, and a barren, difficult +philosophy. Sunshine and twilight on either hand, and in the background +an impenetrable mist concealing the great masses of humanity, as well as +all concrete actual lives even of the great. A little information and a +little romance are unsatisfactory artists for a sketch of mediævalism. +We soon discover that there is a great deal behind such a picture of +soldiers living in wars, and in the tourneying pretence of war; or +schoolmen contending in brilliant logical panoply within and without +spectral philosophic fastnesses; or hermits, nuns, and monks fighting +against God's present that they might win His future; or marauders +beating down helplessness and innocence. + +Yet we may study the middle ages laboriously, and find ourselves still +confronted by the mist that hangs over the rank and file. Our curiosity +about these forgotten multitudes teases us. "How is it that you lived, +and what is it that you did?" we ask these distant prototypes of +Wordsworth's peasant. We come to discover that there is much behind our +slight old notion of chivalry and monasticism; though seven hundred +years have changed its conditions, life then and now is yet less +different than we had thought. But we find it difficult to acquire much +information about those social substrata on which the learned and the +polite classes rested. Clio is the most aristocratic of the ladies nine, +and that instinct of vitality whereby we count fame for ourselves +something desirable, makes us think with a certain compassion of great +armies of those generations filing sullenly on, not only as individuals, +but as whole masses, to the grave of oblivion. The little that we know +makes us sure only that they were wretched, their lives the most gloomy +of all the lives of gloomy ages. + +We may read thousands of pages of the literature of those days with +scarcely any addition to our knowledge of the work-a-day world, for most +of the poetry is romantic, and in its imitative phases mainly a +reflection of courtly customs and character. The middle ages in Germany +and France were anything but uncivilized, and the poetry of secondary +cultivation is, as was said in the last essay, likely to prefer +idealistic interpretation of its finest development to democratic +realism. Yet the student finds from time to time interesting material +for an account of the average life, and in the poet whom this essay is +designed to introduce to a modern audience, we obtain an extended study +in this side field of literary interpretation. He wrote not of high life +but of the middle classes, not in romance but in a literal yet at the +same time artistic manner that we may call a heightened realism. He +appears to have been himself one of the people, a poet who possibly made +his living by reciting poems of incident, and by singing at their +merrymakings, though of this there is no evidence. It has been thought +by some German scholars that he may have been a monk, but the +indications make rather against than for this view. We know in fact +nothing whatever about him except for one single line, in which he tells +us that his name is Wernher the Gardener. + +As was said, his poem is remarkable as being the heightened treatment +of a plain story of the peasant classes a little before 1250; it is +remarkable, too, for the liveliness and simple force of his +treatment. He is an artist--though he works in chalks instead of +water-colors;--unornamented, unassuming, he produces an impression of +personal power, moral seriousness, a clear eye for what he saw, and +the power to state it directly, one of the marks of a later and more +developed age. He has no little dramatic liveliness, a sense of +humor, and the pleasantest love for the plain beauties of character +and home-life. + +He tells the story of a farmer, Helmbrecht, and his wayward son. The boy +has been the admiration of his peasant family as the oldest child, +notable for his splendid yellow hair, and full of life and spirit. At +the time the poem opens he has grown to early manhood, dissatisfied with +the hidden and laborious life of tiller of the soil, vain of his +appearance, fond of fine dress, and ambitious to live easily and be +admired. He is petted and indulged by his mother and his sister +Gotelint, and when he desires a hood--a part of masculine costume much +affected by gallant youths--they provide him with one so fine that it +becomes famous far and near. Embroidery, as every one knows who is +acquainted with the mediæval arts, was the most artistic accomplishment +of the period. Ladies learned to embroider and weave the most +complicated and elaborate devices; handicraftsmen of all sorts put on +their work representations so copious that one sometimes wonders whether +the literary descriptions of them are not exaggerations. Can the +frequency and detail of these passages, we wonder, be a faintly +remembered tradition of the devices put by Homer on the shield of +Achilles, or by Vergil on the gates of the rising Carthage? At any rate, +tapestries, cloths, and garments, to say nothing of saddles and the +like, were covered by picture after picture, in almost every important +poem of the age. This young peasant Helmbrecht's hood was embroidered, +not, of course, by the rude country fingers of his mother and sister, +but by a clever nun, who had run away from her nunnery to enjoy the +pleasures of a lively youth. Many were the wages of farm-produce by +which she was persuaded to fit out the young man. The hood was covered +with birds, parrots, and doves; on one side were representations of the +siege of Troy and the escape of Æneas; on the other, the stout deeds of +Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, in their wars against the heathen +Moors. Behind, adventures of old German legendary heroes, in the cycle +of Dietrich of Bern. In front, dances of knights, ladies, and of maidens +and young esquires--the favorite and mediæval dance, where the gentleman +stood between two ladies, holding the hand of each. + +After this acquisition the boy became ambitious for still more finery, +and was indulged in an elaborate costume that need not be described. +Such white linen, such a splendid blue coat, all covered with buttons, +gilded ones in double rows down the back, around the collar, and in +front of silver. About the shoulders little bells were hung, that rang +merrily when he sprang in the _reie_. Ah, very love-lorn were the +glances cast on him by women and girls at the dance. + +At last he is fully equipped by the love and sacrifice of his family, +and they are happy in his elegance, and contented with themselves +because the self-willed and capricious boy is pleased; when suddenly the +simple household is thrown into grief and anxiety by his announcement +that he is going to leave home. He must have a horse--there was none on +the farm--to complete his outfit as a gentleman, and then he will ride +away to some court and seek his fortune. In vain they remonstrate. + + "'My dear father, help me on. My mother and sister have + helped me so that I shall love them all my life.' + + "His father was troubled to hear that he was resolved to go, + but he said to him: 'I'll give you a fast horse for your + outfit, good at hedges and ditches, for you to have there at + court. I'll buy him for you willingly, if I can find one for + sale. But, my dear son, now give up going to court. The ways + there are hard for those who have not been used to them from + the time they were children. My dear son, now drive team for + me, or if you'd rather, hold the plough, and I'll drive for + you, and let us till the farm, so you'll come to your grave + full of honors like me; at least I hope to, for I surely am + honest and loyal, and every year I pay my tithes. I have + lived my life without hate and without envy.' + + "But the son replied: 'My dear father, keep quiet and stop + talking; there's only one way about it, I'm going to find out + how things smack there at court. Your sacks sha'n't load my + back any longer. I won't load any more manure on your wagon, + and God hate me if I ever yoke oxen for you again, and sow + your oats. That's not the thing for my long yellow hair and + my curly locks, and my close-fitting coat, and my fine hood, + and the silk doves the women worked on it. I won't help you + farm any longer.' + + "'Dear son, stay with me. I am certain that farmer Ruoprecht + will give you his daughter, with lots of sheep and swine, and + ten cattle, old and young. At court you'll be hungry, you'll + have to lie hard, and give up all comforts. Now take my + advice, and it will be to your interests and credit. It very + seldom happens that a man gets along well who rebels against + his own station. Your station is the plough. My son, I swear + to you that the genuine court-people will make fun of you, my + dear child. Do as I say, and give it up.' + + "'Father, if I only have a horse I shall get on as well in + the court ways as those who were born there. Any one who saw + that hood on my head would swear a thousand oaths that I + never worked for you, or drove a plough through a furrow. + Whenever I put on the clothes my mother and my sister gave me + yesterday, I sha'n't look much as if I ever took a flail to + thresh wheat on the barn floor, or as if I ever drove stakes. + When I get my legs and my feet in the hose and cordovan + boots, nobody'll know that I ever made fence for you or any + one else. Let me have a horse, and farmer Ruoprecht may go + without me for a son-in-law. I'll not give up my future for a + wife.'" + +The father goes on pleading with the boy to take advice and keep out of +the disorderly life he is likely to get into about a court. By the +silent assumption that his new master and his people will pillage from +the peasantry, we get a suggestion of the lawlessness of the +country--which had grown worse during the long absenteeism of Frederic +II. But if the peasants catch you, he tells his son with energy, you +will fare much worse than one of the gentlemen would. They will take the +quickest revenge, and think that they are doing God service when they +find one of their own kind stealing. + +But the son only goes on to repeat that he will leave the farm. He talks +just as an ambitious country fellow will talk to-day about the slow life +and small profits. He becomes bolder and more insolent. If it were not +for that wretched horse he would be riding with the rest across fields +and dragging peasants through the hedges; the cattle would be lowing as +he drove them off. He says he can endure poverty no longer;--raising a +colt or an ox for three years, and then selling them for just nothing. +So his father traded a large piece of homespun, four good cows, two +oxen, three steers, and four bushels of wheat,--all worth about ten +pounds,--for a horse that could not have been sold for three ("alas for +the wasted seven!"), and the young man put on his finery, tossed his +head, and, looking around, jauntily declared that he could "bite through +a stone, or eat iron, he felt so fierce." If he could catch the Emperor +or the Duke, there would be some money coming in. "'Father, you could +manage a Saxon easier than me.'" + +When he calls upon his father to release him from the family control, +the latter assents, though with all his old reluctance. Indeed he cannot +let him go without one more appeal: + + "'I give you your liberty, my son. But take care that no one + yonder hurts your hood and its silk doves, or viciously tears + your long yellow hair. And I am afraid that at the end you + will be following a staff, or some little boy will be + leading you.'" + +Then once more, after a pause, comes the abrupt: + + "'My son, my own dear boy, give up going. You shall live on + what I live, and on what your mother gives you. Drink water, + my dear son, before you steal to buy wine. Austrian pie, any + one, fool or wise man, will tell you, is food fit for + gentlemen. Eat that, dear child, instead of giving an ox you + have stolen to some inn-keeper for a chicken. Your mother can + cook good broth; eat that, instead of giving a stolen horse + for a goose. My son, mix rye with oats sooner than eat fish + in a dishonored life. If you will not obey me, go. But though + you win wealth and great honors, never will I share them with + you. And misfortune--have that alone too.' + + "'You drink water, father, but I'll drink wine. Eat your + mush, but I'll eat what they call fricasseed chicken there + and white wheat bread; oats will do for you. They say at Rome + that a child takes after his godfather, and mine was a + knight. Thank God for giving me such high and noble ideas.'" + +But the old farmer replied that he liked much better a man who did right +and remained constant to it. + + "Even though his birth might be rather humble, he would + please the world better than a king's son without virtue and + honor. An honest man of lowly rank, and a nobleman who was + not courteous and honorable,--let the two come to a land + where neither is known, and the child of lowly birth will + outrank the high-born. My son, if you will be noble, on my + word I counsel you, do noble deeds. Good life is a crown + above all nobility." + +There is the old thought, so common in literature from ancient authors +down to the poet of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and especially a favorite +with writers of the middle age. Possibly some of them caught it from +Boëthius, who expressed it more than once in the testament of wise and +generous character that he left to the world from his confinement at +Pavia, and that proved so singularly congenial to the mediæval mind; but +we need certainly not require the aid of origins to account for its +frequency. Aristocratic as many phases of the times were, there were a +number of important evening influences, conspicuously two: the church, +in whose monastery cloisters the rich and poor met together as brothers +of one impartial discipline, and from whose ranks members of low birth +might rise to be the peers of dukes; and the orders of chivalry, which +received approved squires from the middle class. Thus, in addition to +aristocracy of birth, there was a conditional gentility to which those +who had the claim of merit might aspire. But though the thought that +desert, and not descent, is the test for nobility, is so obvious in the +days when position carried with it so strong a connotation of power, and +when the upper strata of society bore down so hard and haughtily upon +the lower, we always feel satisfaction in coming upon a trim statement +of the fine old commonplace whose best mediæval expression we can quote +from a poet of our own language: + + "Look, who that is moost vertuous alway, + Pryvee and apert, and moost entendeth ay + To do the gentil dedes that he kan, + Taak hym for the grettest gentil man." + +"'Alas, that your mother bore you!'" the farmer exclaimed, when the +boy's only answer to his appeal was to declare his hair and hood better +fitted for a dance than for the plough or the harrow. "'Thou wilt leave +the best and do the worst'"; and he goes on to contrast the man who +lives against God and the good of others, followed by every one's +curses, with the man who helps the world along, trying night and day to +do good by his life, and thereby honors God. This one, wherever he may +turn, has the love of God and all the world. + + "'Dear son,' he says, 'that man you might be, if you would + yield to me. Till with the plough, and plenty of people will + be the better for your life, poor and rich; nay, even wolf + and eagle, and everything that lives on earth. Many a woman + must be made more beautiful through the farmer, many a king + must be crowned through the produce of the farm. Indeed, + there is no one so noble that his pride would not be a very + small thing, except for the farmer.'" + +How natural all this sounds,--agriculture the basis of society, tillage +of the soil alike useful and honorable. With what quiet manliness this +old German talks of the dignity of labor, with no touch of the modern +arrogance and discontent with the existing social condition. He will +keep to his rank in life, and be loyal to his station, yet, though he +looks up with a simple-hearted interest and wonder to the great world +above him, he reflects as he follows his plough that without him that +great world's pride "would be a very small thing." But there is a +quality here that is still finer: the undercurrent perception of "the +gospel of service." It is not only that honesty is the best policy, +though the peasant is shrewd, and appreciates the practical side too; +his conversation with the boy breathes the best nineteenth-century +spirit of the duty of making one's life valuable to others. That +sentence about working night and day to be useful, and thereby honoring +God, is no commonplace for our century, to say nothing of the +thirteenth. There is something pretty, too, in the touch of sympathy +with the animal world; in some way, he feels that even the birds and +beasts must be better off for a good farmer. + +These times seem often savage in their cruelties and recklessness of +giving pain, but they have a gentle side as well, as may be seen in the +tales cited by Montalembert of friendly relations between monks and wild +beasts, and in examples collected by Uhland in his essay on the old +German animal literature. It is pleasant in connection with such +barbarities as we shall presently be reminded of in this very poem to +recall the myth versified by Longfellow, of the great minnesinger's +legacy to the monastery, conditioned on the brethren's every day placing +grain and water for the birds upon his grave; and more than one +authentic story is told like that of the Abbot of Hirsan, who, when snow +was deep in winter, would take oats from his barn to feed the birds. + +After the young Helmbrecht has begged God to release him soon from his +father's preaching,--"if you only had been a real preacher you might +have got up a whole army with your sermons for a crusade,"--and has +explained that instead of keeping on ploughing, he is resolved to have +white hands, and no longer need to feel mortified whenever he holds +ladies' hands at a dance, his father resorts to his last resource--an +appeal to superstition, that he has been keeping in reserve. He tells +him what he has been dreaming--three dreams that he interprets as +ominous of the loss of sight, feet, and arms, and worst of all, a final +dream of one of those sights so common for many centuries before and +after, but made no less dreadful by familiarity. + + "'You were hanging on a tree. Your feet were a fathom from + the ground. Above your head on a bough sat a raven, by its + side a crow. Your hair was all tangled. On the right hand the + raven combed your head for you, on the left the crow.'" + +But the hopeful rode gaily off through the bars, and came to a castle +where a warlike lord was glad to receive any addition to his force. +There he stayed for a year, leading the extreme bandit life of whose +outrages and oppressions we read so much during this troubled period. He +quickly obtained reputation as daring and merciless: + + "Into his sack he stuffed everything; it was all one to him. + Nothing was too small, nothing too great. Helmbrecht took it + all, rough and smooth, crooked and straight. He took horses, + cattle, jacket, sword, cloak, coat, goats, sheep. From women + he stripped everything, and well enough his ship went that + first year, 'its sails full.' But after a while, as people + are wont to think of going home, he took leave of the court, + and commended them to the good God." + +They heard at the farm that he was coming on for a visit, and in +accordance with the ancient custom of giving a present to the bearer of +good news, the messenger received a shirt and pair of hose. But when the +young man himself arrived, "how he was received! Did they step forward +to meet him? Nay, they ran, all together; one crowded past another; +father and mother sprang as if they had never had a care." It is +touching to notice the suggestiveness of a single line in the poet's +description of the scene. The plain people understood that their son was +no longer one of them, and they knew how his earlier false pride must +have grown in this year's absence in the outer world. So in their +anxiety that everything should gratify this brilliant, wayward eldest +son of their admiration and hope, and that nothing should interfere +with his being pleased and gracious to their yearning, timid love, and +knowing how in the homely heartiness of their joy at seeing their young +master again the two servants would treat him at once in the old +familiar way of peasant-farm equality, they instructed their man and +their woman in what they thought to be polite salutation. So when the +guest appeared, "Did the woman and the man cry 'Welcome back, +Helmbrecht'? Nay, they did not; they had been told not to. They said: +'Master, in God's name be you welcome.'" There is a touch of humor in +their rushing forward and being the first to greet him, in their rude +good-feeling; but we also get a sense of tenderness from seeing the +father and mother keeping in the background, behind their daughter +Gotelint. + +Little education as there was in the middle ages, people fully +appreciated the elegance as well as the utility of a knowledge of +foreign languages, and no accomplishment was held more desirable. +Especially the Germans, representing an outlying civilization, would +send their sons, while still boys, to some French court to serve as +pages and acquire especially the language as well as other branches of +knightly culture. The praises of various heroes of French as well as +German romances, give to linguistic attainments a high place; Gottfried, +for example, in his account of the training of Tristan, who was the +typical gentleman of the romances, says that from the age of seven until +he was fourteen he was studying languages under the care of a tutor, by +travelling through different lands. Since this was the fashion, +imitations were sure to become popular, and a thin veneering of foreign +speech became the mark of a pinchbeck culture, just as it has been so +frequently since. Accordingly, after the servants have cried out their +"Master, in God's name be you welcome," and Gotelint has thrown her arms +about her brother, the young gallant calls her his dear little sister in +a phrase of salutation touched with Low Dutch, which he follows by the +elegant "gratia vester." Then the younger children ran up, and last of +all the farmer and his wife, who greeted him over and over. He addressed +his father in French: "Deu sal"; his mother in Bohemian: "Dobraytra." +They looked at each other; four strange languages all together--there +must be some mistake. + + "The housewife said: 'My dear, this is not our son. This is a + Bohemian or a Slav.' Her husband replied: 'It is a Frenchman. + My son whom I commended to God, certainly this is not he, and + yet he looks like him.' And Gotelint suggested: 'He answered + me in Latin; may be he is a priest.' 'Faith,' put in the + hired man, who had caught the phrase in dialect, 'he has + lived in Saxony or Brabant, for he said, "liebe + susterkindekin"; he must be a Saxon.'" + +The old peasant was devoted and loving, but he had resolution and +self-respect under it all. He told the accomplished youth that before he +would take him for his son he must talk German. If he would do that and +declare himself Helmbrecht, well and good. He should have a chicken +boiled, and another roasted, and his horse should be well cared for. But +a Bohemian, or a Slav, or a Saxon, or a Brabanter, or a Frenchman, or a +priest, should be given nothing. The youth began to reflect. It was +getting late, there was no place near by where he could go; so he +concluded to waive his elegant manners, and speak in the old style. But +the shrewd peasant feigns incredulity, and decides to test his son a +little further. In vain the young man protests himself Helmbrecht. His +gentility must stoop to vulgar peasant identification, and tell what he +knows about the oxen on the farm. He rattles over all four of them, +Grazer, Black-spot, Rascal, and White-star, with a little praise for +two, and the reconciliation is accomplished. Thereupon the repressed +fondness and devotion obtain free expression. The father hurried out to +attend to the horse, the mother sent her daughter for a pillow and +cushion--"Run, now, and don't walk for it"--and makes a couch for him on +the bench close to the stove, so that he may have a nap while she is +preparing his dinner. When the boy woke the meal was ready, and Wernher +assures us that any gentleman might have enjoyed it. After washing his +hands, the usual first step in a meal, a dish of fine-cut sauer-kraut +was put before him, by it bacon, both fat and lean, and a rich mellow +cheese. Then there was as fat a goose as ever roasted on a spit--and +with what good-will they provided that extraordinary peasant luxury--a +roasted and a boiled chicken. A knight out hunting, and happening on +such a meal, would like it well. For besides this they had managed to +get delicacies in which peasants never think of indulging. "'If I had +any wine you should be drunk to-night,'" the farmer said; and he +added--with such a noble union of dignity, simplicity, and sentiment for +the plain homely blessings which he had appreciated and loved all his +life: "'My dear son, now take a drink of water from the best spring that +ever came out of earth. I know no spring fit to be compared with it, +except the one at Wankhûsen.'" + +"'Tell me, son,'" he continued, as they went on with their dinner, for +he could not wait to ask him, "'tell me how about the court fashions, +and then I will tell you how they used to be when I was young.'" But +the son was too busy eating to stop to talk then, and he allowed his +father to relate his early reminiscences. + + "'When I was a boy,' he began 'and your grandfather + Helmbrecht had sent me to court with cheese and eggs, just as + a farmer does to-day, I took note of the knights, and marked + their ways. They were courteous and cheerful and had no + rascality about them in those days, such as many men and + women too have now. The knights had a custom, to make + themselves pleasing to the ladies, that was called jousting. + A man of the court explained it to me when I asked him what + they called it. Two companies would come together from + opposite directions, riding as if they were mad, and they + would drive against each other, as if their spears must + pierce through. There's nothing in these days like what I saw + then. After that they had a dance, and while dancing they + sang lively songs, that made the time go quickly. Presently a + playman came forward and struck in with his fiddle; at that + the ladies jumped up, and the knights went to meet them, and + they took hold of hands. That was a pleasant sight--the + overflowing delight of ladies and gentlemen, dancing so + gaily, poor and rich. When that was over a man came out and + read about some one called Ernest. Each could do whatever he + liked. Some took their bows and shot at a target; others went + hunting: there was no end to the kinds of pleasure. The worst + off there would be the best off with us now. Those were the + times before false and vicious people could turn the right + about with their tricks. Nowadays the wise man is the one who + can cheat and lie; he has position and money and honor at + court, much more than the man who lives justly and strives + after God's grace.'" + +We find here as in so many other places in thirteenth century poetry, +that the serious-minded were already looking back. Just as we have seen +Walther and Ulrich bewailing the lost sunshine of chivalry, Wernher +laments that the old-time honesty has gone, and with it the knightly +light-hearted honorable joys. Already, before 1250, there was a halo +about the chivalric court; ladies were honored, knights tourneyed for +their pleasure; dancing with them attracted gentlemen quite beyond +drinking bouts; the poet's narratives of old German heroes were yet in +fashion. + +All this seems amusing to the young man; what sappy and goody-goody +fashions those were. He thinks it manly to swagger about the new ways, +and tell how the fashionable cry is "Trinkà, herre, trinkà trinc!" It +used to be good breeding to dangle about pretty ladies, but the correct +thing now is just to drink. "'This is the kind of love-letters we have: +"You dear little bar-maid, fill up our cups. What a fool a man is who +wastes his life for women, instead of good wine." It's a genteel thing +to be sharp with your tongue, and get the best of people, and tell +clever lies.'" + +The old man hears, and with a sigh wishes back the day when gentlemen +shouted "Hey[=a], ritter, wis et fro!" in the tourneys, instead of these +new cries of riotry and pillage. The son would tell him more, but he has +ridden far and wishes to go to sleep. There were no linen sheets in that +farm-house, but Gotelint spread a newly washed shirt on his bed, and he +slept until high day. The next morning he displayed the gifts he had +brought: for his father, a whetstone, scythe, and axe; for his mother, a +fox-skin; for Gotelint, a head-dress with a band of silk and gold, +better fitted for a nobleman's child than for her; shoes with straps for +the farm-hand; and for his wife, a cloth to cover her hair, and a red +ribband. He remained at home for a week, and then he became restless to +return. His father again took up his entreaties, begging him in the +tenderest tones to stay from the bitter and sour life he has been +leading. As long as he lives he will share what he has with him, even +if the young man will do nothing but sit still and wash his hands. Only +he must not go back. + +What, not go back with so much to do? Has not a rich man ridden over the +field of his god-father? Has not another rich man eaten bread with +crullers? And still a third, while eating at a bishop's table, loosened +his girdle? Each one must be taught better manners through wholesale +plunder of cattle, sheep, and swine, to say nothing of a boor who blew +the foam off his beer. He and some friends will give them a good +training, and he runs over the list of his bandit companions with the +cant names borne by each, such as Lambswallow, Hellbag, Bolt-the-sheep, +Coweater, Wolfthroat, and at last his own name, Swallow-the-land. + +We may pass by the exploits of which he boasts--the children of the +peasants near him eat water-gruel, their father's eyes he puts out, +their beards he draws with pincers, he binds them in ant-hills, or +smokes them in the chimney, and so forth, through a revolting list of +barbarities. + +The youth uncloaks himself as a full-fledged desperado, and his father's +short, stern warning in God's name of vengeance only throws him into a +passion, and he declares that, though hitherto on their raids he has +kept off his companions from the farm, instead of doing so longer, he +will give up his father and mother to their will. He reveals what had +been a main motive in his visit, an arrangement he had made with his +comrade Lambswallow to let him marry Gotelint. But of that brilliant +match her father's conduct has deprived the girl; also she will never +find another man who can give her such luxuries of dress and fare. +Moreover, his sister was worthy of such a husband, and he stops to +repeat the tribute he had paid to her while discussing the alliance with +his friend. The lines bring before us a weird mediæval scene, to which +these reckless free-livers looked forward as their assured end, and +which they dreaded most from the lurid light thrown by superstition upon +the picture. The ghastly swinging of their corpses on the gibbet ("The +rain has drenched and washed us," Villon says two hundred years later, +"and the sun dried and blackened us. Magpies and crows have hollowed out +our eyes, and plucked away our beards and eyebrows."[9]) troubled them +less than the thought that their falling bones must lie unburied, and +their lives be followed by no religious rites to mitigate the eternal +justice. French poetry has interpreted this phase of crime and misery in +Villon's _Epitaphe_; in English it has been interpreted by Tennyson in +_Rizpah_, at once the most intense and the most piteous of all his +poems, as free from self-consciousness as an early ballad, the most +pathetic expression in all literature of a mother's love, and kept out +of the category of the very greatest poems only by the intolerable +anguish of its emotion. In this old German story we find an +interpretation of it too; the briefest and much the simplest, yet not +without an unobtrusive power. Young Helmbrecht declares that he told his +comrade that he might trust Gotelint never to make him repent his +choice. + + "I know her," he represents himself as saying, "to be so + loyal--on this you may count--that she never will leave you + hanging long; she will cut you down with her own hands, and + carry you to your grave at the cross-roads, with incense and + myrrh--of this you can be sure. Nightly for a whole year she + will go about you. Or if, less fortunate, you are blinded or + crippled by the loss of hands or feet, the good, pure girl + will guide you with her own hand over all the paths of every + land; every morning she will bring your crutches to your bed, + or cut for you, even till you die, your bread and meat." + +From the first, Gotelint has been under the fascination of her brother, +and as she hears his long account of the life the wife of Lambswallow +must live, she calls young Helmbrecht aside, and arranges to run away +from home and marry his friend. So at the appointed time she does, and a +great wedding feast, provided at the cost of many widows and orphans, +follows the curious mediæval marriage ceremony. In the midst of it a +strange foreshadowing of evil comes over her; she wishes herself back at +her father's simple fare; his cabbage was better than the luxury of +Lambswallow's fish. She tells her bridegroom that she is afraid +strangers are at hand to harm them, and even as the players are +receiving their gifts, the sheriff and his force break in upon the +revellers. All meet quick justice; nine are hung; Helmbrecht, the tenth, +is sent off blind, and with only one foot and one hand. "What the +forsaken bride suffered" let him tell who saw. + +The story works to its conclusion in a temper better fitted to the +thirteenth century than to ours. The poet feels no complaisance for an +obstinate wrong-doer. He says: "God is a worker of wonders, and this is +the proper lot of a youth who called his father an old peasant and his +mother a worthless woman." Nor does he stop with his own exclamation; he +tells in detail how the blind and maimed fellow is brought by a boy to +the farm, only to receive his father's taunts and mocking. Brutal and +distressing as the passage seems, it is true to the age and to the +character of the sturdy old farmer. While there was hope he had borne +every insult; he had pleaded persistently, tenderly, and to every limit +of generosity and devotion. But when the youth had proved himself +susceptible to no claims of virtue or humanity, and, as a last stroke of +evil, had seduced his sister from an honorable life, further pity seems +sentimentalism. Before the boy's first departure his father had warned +him that he would take no part in any ill-won prosperity, and if +misfortunes came, they, too, must be borne alone. The foreign phrases +are on the father's lips this time, as the sightless cripple creeps up +to the farm-house door. He runs over the proud speeches that have thus +ended in shame and misery; nor will he listen to the entreaties for +shelter, even as a beggar, for a single night. "'Every one, the country +round, is cruel to me; alas! so you are now. In God's name give me the +charity you would give a poor sick man!'" But the farmer "laughed +scoffingly, even though it broke his heart, for this was his own flesh, +his child, who stood there before him blind." He struck the boy who was +leading the wretch, and drove them off. "Yet as they went away his +mother put a loaf of bread in his hand, as if he were a child." For a +year he crawled about, skulking in the woods and living on what he +might. Then one day, having wandered to the scene of some of his worst +crimes, a set of peasants catch sight of him, and recount to one another +what their farms, their babes, their daughters, had suffered from this +outlaw and his band. As they talk they tremble with hate and rage, and, +catching up a rope, they fulfil the last of the dreams that tormented +the anxious night of the father just before his son rode out, with his +rich clothes and fine horse and wonderful hood covering that long, +beautiful hair, to seek his fortune in a court. + +Why is it worth while to introduce to English readers this peasant tale +of the middle ages? Not on account of its antiquarian value, though it +is full of interesting suggestions of old manners. Nor primarily on +account of its literary significance, notwithstanding the tact and +nervous directness of Wernher's style, and the heightened realism of +treatment that gives him distinction beside the romanticists of the +time. Its main importance for us lies in that sense of the human unity +which we derive from such a story of a time so remote from our own, and +in most of its aspects so different. Many of the influences that render +man's life desirable--organized society, with respect for property and +personal safety, ease of living, humanitarian sensibility even to the +guiltiest suffering--we miss, and missing them we rejoice in the +progress of our age toward the light. But the traits whereby life in all +ages becomes estimable--simplicity of character, contentment with the +station of one's birth, if only one can live there with dignity and +usefulness; frugality, integrity, natural love which grows most tender +and yearning when the kinship of moral worthiness seems in danger of +dissolution--are our own best possession, and this identity of manhood +then and now makes us feel less strange among those distant and dimly +remembered generations. Thus serious writers offer to our study many +notable and interesting thoughts, and in their courtly poets we find +scores of delightful pictures of gracious and noble dames and knights +moving through the pleasures and pains of an ideal world. It is also +pleasant to listen to a poet from among the people, and to touch the +rough hand of an old German farmer, whose most brilliant recollection +was of the time when, as a boy, he carried eggs and cheese to one of the +courts of old-fashioned chivalry; whose virtue cast in a decadent era +had looked at life sternly, yet whose austerity was softened by a homely +simplicity through whose grace he grew old, with his heart true to his +plain home life and his family, even to the assurance that no drink +could be more refreshing than water from the spring on his own farm. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTE: + +[9] + "La pluye nous a debuez et lavez, + Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz; + Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, + Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz." + + + + +[Decoration] + +CHILDHOOD IN MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE. + + +When Homer described the pretty fright of Astyanax in his nurse's arms, +amid the parting of Hector and Andromache; when Vergil made Damon recall +the day when, as a little boy just able to reach up to the branches, he +saw his mother and the child who was to be his fate gathering +apples--the hyacinths of Theocritus were daintier--they struck two +chords of feeling, one charming, the other deeper and richer, which have +started vibrations whenever they have met a sympathetic reader ever +since. Because we are susceptible to the poetry of childhood we are +pleased to find that these ancient poets also cared for it. It adds a +personal touch to our feeling for them. It gives us a thrill of the +immortality of heart and its simplest, purest sentiment. There may be an +element of the fictitious in our feeling about childhood. Heaven may not +be about our infancy, those "sweet early days" may not have been "as +long as twenty days are now"; and they may not have been the types of +innocence, simplicity, the loveliness of the race taken at first hand +from nature, which we fancy them. But there is something beyond a +fallacy in this sentiment; it is in our purer and more refined moods +that we are sensitive to it. Like a whiff of spring smoke, or woodsy +odors, a reminder of our early life will sometimes throw us into a +revery which is more than recollection. No one can write well about +children without sensibility to youthful emotion and some love for +family life. Whoever looks back with genial wistfulness upon his own +early days, and enjoys renewing them in the playthings of his fancy, can +hardly be without a vein of quiet refinement. When an age listens with +pleasure to such sketches, it is not barren of the homely affections, +nor uniformly given over to restless and unlawful passions. As one +wanders through the poetry of the middle ages, one observes the +frequency with which it mentions children. + +These passages, judged absolutely, may not be remarkable for insight or +tenderness, but in those days all emotional subjects were treated +crudely. Yet they are often interesting for themselves, and they show a +fact which many seem to question that the sentiments of simple family +life were felt by poets and people. So much has been written by critics +upon the worse side of the society of chivalry, that it is well to +recognize this other aspect of its affections. The public has frequently +been assured that those days knew nothing of true family sentiment. How +much truth there is in the statement that fashionable love disregarded +marriage, has been shown in a preceding essay. But on _a priori_ grounds +we should disbelieve that general society was permeated by artificial +gallantry. Even were the testimony of lyrical lovers uniform, we must +recollect how conventional all their love-poetry was; most poets +composed on formal lines impersonally, in spite of their pronouns. One +of the troubadours, indeed, denied that this was possible when the +husband of his theme challenged him, in the lonely place where he was +hunting, by his liege truth to tell him whether he had a lady love. +"Sire," he replied, "how could I sing unless I loved?" But in most poems +there was more business, or ambitious art, than nature. A large number +of these poets impress us as having just as little emotional veracity in +writing as had Cowley in _The Mistress_. Moreover, even if a school of +poetry, not conventionalized, should treat romantic and sensational +sentiment to the exclusion of domestic, it would prove nothing. What if +cynical critics some centuries hence should give Mr. Coventry Patmore a +place in their encyclopedias, simply on the ground that he was an +exception to the nineteenth-century belief that love ended at the bridal +altar? Possibly by that time love, poetry, and fiction may deal mainly +with domestic emotions after marriage, and then our own romances will +very likely appear strange. + +From one point of view those centuries were too akin to undeveloped life +to be prepared to represent it. Europe seven hundred years ago seems +like a vast nursery abandoned by its governess. The people are like +children of various ages and sizes, degrees of education, and innate +sense of right and wrong. Children are impulsive, passionate, selfish, +brutally inconsiderate; they are sometimes religious too. We find +apparently sporadic susceptibility to isolation and prayer. They cry at +trifles, and while their cheeks are still wet, they are smiling. Bright +and simple things please them; they are fickle and impatient; they love +lively music; when they are tired playing, nothing pleases them like a +story--they listen intently, credulously. When spring comes they can no +more help running and dancing over the grass, than sunbeams on a brook. +The gentler sit in the meadow making posies, while the rougher are +setting traps, and racing, and fighting: but sometimes the rough boys +will come and play in the meadow, and be pleasant to the girls. All +these traits of children apply to the mediæval character, their +barbarisms, their ethical inconsistencies, their delight in stories (no +age has ever cared more for story telling), their love of play, their +passion for spring, and the rest. + +Undoubtedly the popular impression gives the period too little +joyousness. Mercurial childhood has capacity for sudden pleasures even +when life goes ill, and life frequently went very well even then. But +the mystery and grace of motherhood and dawning life are likely to +appeal to a calmer and more retrospective age. The seriousness that +takes pleasure in contemplating childhood is more serene and pensive +than the usual moods of an era undeveloped emotionally. So it would not +be a matter for surprise if the literary remains of those days had left +us mainly incidental references to children. + +Of such plain facts we have many, such as, for instance, that the little +ones were entertained with pet dogs, birds, and squirrels (apparently +never with cats), mice harnessed to a toy wagon, clay or wooden images +of animals, and tiny vessels after kitchen models, toy men, women, and +children, tops, and marbles; that they played blind man's buff, and many +games attended with songs. As early as the interesting Latin poem called +_Waltharius et Hiltgunde_, which at least in a popular version Walther +von der Vogelweide liked, we find the hero appealing to Hagen, by the +memory of the boyish games with which they had whiled away their +childhood, and over which they never had quarrelled. + +We obtain considerable information about customs of education also; +such as the attention paid to languages (a girl in a French romance is +said to have understood fourteen tongues), and Isolde knew French and +Latin as well as Irish. Boys were sent off on their travels early, going +especially to Paris. Weinhold's quotation from Hugo von Trimberg +illustrates the dangers that beset the pursuit of culture even then: +"Many boys go to Paris; they learn little and spend much. But yet no +doubt they see Paris." + +When Sir Philip Sidney derided the contemporary drama's habit of +carrying a play through a large part of the hero's lifetime, instead of +restricting the action to a developed episode, he made a poor criticism, +out of tune, as are other parts of his criticism, with the genius of +Elizabethan poetry. But the passage is interesting as a reminder of the +relation to that great literature of the romances which runs back +through the middle ages to the later Greek writings. Such narrations as +the _Daphnis and Chloe_, and the _Aethiopica_, introduce their central +characters while they are still children, and whether through +transmitted influence or independently, the same course is pursued by +the most important romance poems of mediæval France and Germany. To this +practice we owe pleasant domestic scenes of many a hero's early life, +and sometimes, indeed, a narration of early joys and sorrows of his +parents' love. The _Tristan_ of Gottfried von Strassburg, for example, +begins well before the birth of its subject, with noteworthy romantic +episodes. This brilliant poem's account of the early years of chivalry's +typical fine gentleman illustrates the admiration paid to intellectual +training at a time when polite society in general was not well educated. +Tristan spent his first seven years under the care of his foster-mother, +learning various lessons of good behavior; after that Rual li Foitenant +provided a master, and sent him off to acquire foreign languages in +their own lands, and "book-learning" as well. The luxurious temper of +his chronicler stops for a long sigh at the hardship of such training, +through the years when joyousness is at its best. So it is, he exclaims +in his studied style, with many youth; when life is in its first bloom +and freedom, away they are constrained to go from its free blossom. For +seven years this young prince was constantly kept busy with the +exercises of arms and horsemanship, in addition to his formal studies; +he also learned hunting, and all courtly arts, especially music. Then he +was called home to be prepared for his political career. The education +of children was assisted by not a few treatises on manners and morals, +such as _Babees Books_, as the old English called them. They are usually +manuals of etiquette, mediæval prototypes of such modern works as +_Don't_. Chaucer's Prioress had evidently studied the sections on table +proprieties, and her gentility, which was so tender-hearted, might well +have been developed under the admonishments of the ethical passages +which often accompanied them. For a tender age many of these precepts +were depressing. One of the gravest and most mature of these works is +called _Der Winsbeke_, with a sequel, _Die Winsbekin_, for girls, the +advice of a twelfth-century Solomon, which moralizes certainly as well +as most of its analogues. This stanza, for instance, shows a homely +dignity: + + That bright candle mark, my son, + While it burns, it wastes away; + So from thee thy life doth run, + (I say true) from day to day. + In thy memory let this dwell, + And life here so rule, that then + With thy soul it may be well. + What though wealth exalt thy name? + Only this shall follow thee-- + A linen cloth to hide thy shame. + +These gnomic writings, running into a developed didacticism, are +illustrated by the song of Walther von der Vogelweide on the restraint +of eye, ear, and tongue. Whether this poet was the teacher of the young +King Henry, as some have thought, or gained his experience in humbler +ways, he evidently knew the trials of the pedagogue. "Oh, you +self-willed boy," he cries, "too small to be put to work in the field +and too big to whip, have your own way and go to sleep." As for +flogging, this prince of the minnesingers took the side of the Matthew +Feildes against the Boyers: "No one can switch a child into education; +to those whom you can bring up well, a word is as good as a blow." +Apropos of the teacher's view, we also find the pupil's feeling for his +teacher recorded in that little poem of the English school-boy, who was +late in the morning, and explained to the master that his mother told +him to stop and milk the ducks. The boy recounts the details of what +follows, and afterwards, instead of taking up his interrupted studies, +he words out a day-dream in which the master is turned into a hare, his +books into hounds, and the boy goes hunting. + +There is a grain of humor, too, at least for the modern reader, in a +much more sentimental child-play of the minnesinger Hadlaub. Though he +mainly echoes the love singers who wrote a hundred years before him, one +of the first songs in the collection of his poems raises a hope of +something more than the ordinary, though this only leads us on to +disappointment through the rest of his fifty-odd pieces. There is +something very natural about this picture of the lover catching sight of +his disdainful fair one playing with a little child. "She reached out +her arms and caught it close to her, she took its face between her white +hands, and pressed it to her lips and mouth and lovely cheek; ah, how +deliciously she kissed it!" What did the child do? "Just what I should +have done; threw its arms around her, and was so happy." When she let +the little one go, the lover went after it and kissed it just where her +lips had been, "and how that went to my heart!" Poor fellow! "I serve +her since we both were children," and this is the nearest apparently +that he ever came to the seals of love. + +But instead of delaying over estrays, pleasant scraps like those left us +by Heinrich von Morungen, for instance, one of the few minnesingers for +whom one really cares, we may pass on to three or four more detailed +examples from the thirteenth century, of household love and sympathy +with the poetry of childhood. But first I will translate a simple sesame +for opening again the early gates. The poet is known as the Wild +Alexander, but his mood was gentle and gracious when this revery of his +boyhood came upon him: + + There we children used to play, + Thro' the meadows and away, + Looking 'mid the grassy maze + For the violets; those days + Long ago + Saw them grow; + Now one sees the cattle graze. + + I remember as we fared + Thro' the blossoms, we compared + Which the prettiest might be: + We were little things, you see. + On the ground + Wreaths we bound;-- + So it goes, our youth and we. + + Over stick and stone we went + Till the sunny day was spent; + Hunting strawberries each skirrs + From the beeches to the firs, + Till--Hello, + Children! Go + Home, they cry--the foresters. + +So he goes on to tell how their childhood took as a pleasure the hurts +and stings that they received as they hunted for strawberries, and to +recall the warnings against snakes that the herdsman sometimes shouted +through the branches. Apart from its graceful manner, and the breezy +freshness of its universal childhood, the poem's specific touches are +unusual. "From the beeches to the firs," for instance, does not sound +mediæval aside from one's surprise that a German should have omitted the +linden. We need not be as old as was Lamb in 1820, to look back with a +touch of desire on the child, that other me, there in the background. +Perhaps there is the glamour of sentiment about that familiar +association of childhood with purity and moral grace. Yet the feeling +appeals to us as true beyond mere beauty, and many may read with +responsiveness these lines, hitherto unprinted, by one on whose lips, +just parted for their song, silence laid her finger: + + "Could I answer love like thine, + All earth to me were heaven anew; + But were thy heart, dear child, as mine, + What place for love between us two? + Bright things for tired eyes vainly shine: + A grief the pure heaven's simple blue. + Alas, for lips past joy of wine, + That find no blessing in God's dew! + From dawning summits crystalline + Thou lookest down; thou makest sign + Toward this bleak vale I wander through. + I cannot answer; that pure shrine + Of childhood, though my love be true, + Is hidden from my dim confine: + I must not hope for clearer view. + The sky, the earth, the wrinkled brine + Would wear to me a fresher hue, + And all once more be half-divine, + Could I answer love like thine." + +The spiritual subtlety of such a mood certainly is beyond the mediæval +poets, yet we find pleasant proofs of sensibility to the tender, +unselfish nature of a loving child. Nowhere in such detail, perhaps, as +in the most familiar of Middle High German poems, the _Poor Henry_, of +Hartmann von Aue. The story is known in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_. +This is not the place to discuss that poem, which contains some charming +passages. The poet's treatment may be far from satisfactory, yet when he +calls his original the most beautiful of mediæval legends, he certainly +shows a more satisfactory side of extreme estimate than does Goethe, in +his curious fling at the poem (which we may notice he read in a +modernized form). He says it gave him a "physico-æsthetic pain," and +adds that the notion of a fine girl sacrificing herself for a leper, +affected him so that he felt himself poisoned by the book. This judgment +was pronounced in Goethe's later life, and is consistent with his +habitual want of sympathy with mediæval romantic literature. It shows, +moreover, a lack of historical adjustment, for the dreadful disease was +so common in the twelfth century that its repulsiveness was blurred for +Hartmann; yet he mentions it with the greatest reserve, though a +description of its appearance could hardly be more painful than the +famous conclusion of the _De Rerum Natura_. We are reminded of Goethe's +visit to Assisi, interesting to him only as the situation of some +remains of classical architecture.[10] + +Hartmann von Aue ranks below his two great companions in German +narrative poetry, for he is more of a translator than either Gottfried +or Wolfram. His distinction is in his style; he has a very agreeable way +of telling a story, and there is a quiet charm about his diction. "How +clear and pure his crystal words are and always must be," is Gottfried's +tribute. We come to feel a personal liking for him, through his +unaffected interest in his characters, his unassuming ways and the tact +by which he lightens or deepens his accentuation. We feel that he was a +gentleman, and we do not wonder at the kind regard in which all his +fellow poets held him. We like his refined moral seriousness and that +calm temperament of which he speaks in _Gregorius_. The original for the +_Arme Heinrich_ is lost, but though his introduction claims for himself +no merit beyond a careful selection out of the many books that he takes +pains to tell us he was learned enough to read for himself, we are +probably justified in feeling that he took his heart into partnership +when he made the version, receiving from it touches that he did not find +in the earlier treatment. To appreciate the poem we have to put +ourselves into harmony with the wonder-loving, credulous, and mystically +religious world of seven hundred years ago. Hartmann's simple +earnestness and unobtrusive tenderness and piety constitute an ideal +manner for the legend, and that ease of his soul which he hoped would +come through the prayers of those who read the poem after his death, is +perhaps equally well secured if he knows how some of his verses touch +the sophisticated sense of to-day. He said that he was actuated in +writing by the desire to soften hard hours in a way that would be to the +honor of God, and by which he might make himself dear to others. He has +succeeded. It is to the honor of God, and it wins the affection of +others, when a poet leads his readers to a little well of pure unselfish +love, hedged about by a child's religious faith. + +The hero of the legend is a gentleman of position and feudal +possessions, whose free and generous career is cut short by an incurable +leprosy. It is in vain that he consults masters at Montpelier and +Salerno, the famous seats of medicine; and the honor and affection in +which a genial life had established him among his friends cannot save +him from becoming a social outcast. He disposes of his wealth between +the poor and the church, and retires to a fief whose tenant is willing +to receive his suzerain as a guest. Here, on a little estate, away from +all contact with the world, the gay lord resigns himself to the +companionship of the farmer and his wife, whose gratitude for his +kindness in the past distinguishes them among the multitude to whom his +amiable disposition had made him a benefactor and friend. There were +children in the family, the eldest a girl eight years old, when Henry +came. It was because their hearts were loyal that her parents were kind, +but she kept close by him because she loved to be there. She was always +to be found at his feet, and his affectionate nature liked her +companionship. He bought her a hand mirror, a riband for her hair, a +belt and finger ring, and whatever children care for. These gifts +attached her to him, yet the main secret of her love was the sweet +spirit that God had given her. After three years, as the family were +sitting together one day with their high-born guest, the farmer asked +him why it was that he had given himself up so hopelessly to his +disease, and Henry laid aside his reserve, and told for the first time +about his visit to the great physician at Salerno. The only remedy was +an impossible one. He might indeed be healed, but not unless a virgin +made a voluntary offering of her life. Alas, God was his only physician. + +The little girl, who was so inseparable a companion that he jestingly +called her his bride, listened as she was holding her sick lord's feet +in her lap. She could not get it out of her head (the old German idiom +is better, "out of her heart") the rest of the day, and when at night +she lay in her usual place at her father's and mother's feet, she felt +so sorry for her dear lord that she cried, and the warm tears fell on +her parents' feet, and woke them. When they asked her what was the +matter, she said that she thought they ought to be sorry, too; for what +would happen to them all if their lord should die? Some one else would +own the farm, and no one could ever be as kind to them as he had been. +They told her that was all true, but it could do no good to lament. +"Dear child, do not grieve. We feel as badly as you do, but alas, we +cannot help him." So they hushed her, but all the night and the next day +she continued to be unhappy, and whatever else she was doing, she kept +thinking of this. When she went to bed, she cried again, till finally +she resolved to herself that if she lived till morning she would surely +give her life for her lord. Straightway from that thought, she became +light-hearted and happy, and felt free of all her cares, until it +occurred to her that perhaps Henry and her parents would not permit her +to make the sacrifice; whereupon the poor little girl burst out crying +again, and wakened her parents, as she had done the night before. It was +only with difficulty that they drew from her this simple speech: "My +lord might get well in the way that he told us, and if you will only let +me, I am what he needs for being cured. I am a maid, and rather than see +him pass away, I will die for him." A long dialogue follows, in which +the parents remonstrate with the daughter, who replies in a strain of +spiritual elation. She appeals not only to her parents' worldly +dependence on their master's goodness, but also to their desire for her +own highest welfare. How much better for her to pass to eternal life in +unstained childhood, only anticipating the death that must come some +time, no less unwelcome late than soon. Her parents ceased to +remonstrate, for they felt that the Holy Ghost was speaking through her, +as they listened to the visionary cry. Instead of taking, two or three +years hence, some neighbor for her husband, she will choose + + "the Franklin, who is wooing me to a home where the plough + runs easily, where there is all abundance, where horses and + cattle never are lost, where no wailing children suffer, + where it is neither too warm nor too cold, where the old will + grow young, where is nor frost nor hunger, no kind of pain, + but all joy without toil; thither will I haste me, and + forsake a farm whose tillage, fire, hail, and flood destroy, + so that one half-day ruins the labor of a year. Then let me + go to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose grace is sure, and who + loves me, poor as I am, like a queen." + +Unlike our modern analysts of character, Hartmann does not stop to +comment on the art of his delineation, and it is possible to miss the +tact with which he keeps his heroine's renunciation consistent with a +child's nature. Hartmann is not treating this character inartistically, +as a mere instrument for religious culture. Earnest speech of a +thoughtful parish priest; or phrases caught from the conversation of her +lord touched by his sorrows, with the age's feeling _de contemptu +mundi_, might have supplied her with some sentiments that seem beyond a +child's invention, and children's emotions are sometimes precocious, +especially in what seems a morbid religious development. + +Those are the years of faith, credulous belief that burns with the white +light of knowledge; a child's faith is a man's superstition. The peasant +maid's imagination sees heaven and salvation a fact so infinitely +desirable, that all dread of death was eliminated from the path of her +love. The joyousness of her sacrifice, too, instead of being a romantic +exaggeration, is far truer to life than a willingness touched with pain +and hesitation could have been. In a noble dread, austerely controlled, +lies Calvary's dignity and pathos. But her gratitude and impetuous love +for what seems to her simple mind a superior and infinitely deserving +object, reached that finest pitch of selfishness, where self-sacrifice +becomes the demand of impulsive egotism. To an enthusiastic temperament +love's passionate altruism may be consummate self-will. As the little +maid came away from her deliverance, though she was happy in her lord's +restoration, she was less happy than as she went. + +For she did not have to die. In the tyranny of undeniable love, she +broke down the opposition of her parents, and although Henry indeed +hesitated, she pleaded so anxiously and drew such an eloquent sketch of +the advantage and gladness death would be to her, and the value of his +life compared with hers, that at last, genial and affectionate as he +was, the temptation to live by the sacrifice of a mere child's life (and +the feudal sense of possession ought not to be overlooked) was too +strong to be resisted. Compare the scene with the one in _Philaster_, +where Bellario wishes to offer herself for the man whom she loves with a +hopeless earthly sentiment: + + "'Tis not a life, + 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." + +For her, continuance of life is only "a game that must be lost." But for +the nameless German girl there is no pathos in living, beyond the +thought of her master's death, and her sentiment was as childlike as +when it began, while she was only eight years old. Her love is a flame +that burns impatiently away from the taper that feeds it; for her +generous passion is after all a beautiful devoted wilfulness. When her +parents wept to lose her, and her lord wept at his own weak hesitation, +she wept above them all and her tears won the day. She rode with Henry +to Salerno, and was unhappy only because the journey was so long. The +great physician took her hand, and led her alone into a barred and +bolted room. Then he tried to frighten her and induce her to retract +her consent, but she only laughed until she became afraid that he would +not do his part, whereupon she broke out into an indignant scorn for his +unmanly weakness. When he bade her undress, she did so without a blush; +he bound her to his table, and took up his knife. He wished to render +death easy (so he told himself), and taking a whetstone to make the +knife sharper, he slowly whetted it--only as a pretext for delaying. The +gentleman outside found himself restless. He listened, then he tried to +look in and at last through a crevice in the wall he saw that "little +bride" who had been his main companion and comfort during those three +wretched years. By a fine touch of nature, the poet makes the sight of +her perfect loveliness as she lay waiting for her celestial bridal, the +force that broke the selfish charm which had enchained his manliness. He +beat on the door, he called, and when no response came, he burst his way +in. "The child is too lovely to die. For myself, God's will be done." + +It was now that her trial came, as she wailed and beat wildly at her +body, to force on him the life he was unwilling to take. She talked +bitterly and peevishly, as if she had been cheated of heaven through his +cruelty. But it was in vain, he dressed her again in the rich garments +which he had procured for the sacrificial journey, and they set out on +their return to their distant home, the sobbing girl and the leper. But +as they rode along, the divine might that seemed so near to mediæval +faith was their companion, and touching the incurable disease, fulfilled +love's miracle. Henry took their daughter back to the peasants, and gave +her rich gifts, while he presented them with the land which they had +farmed, and all its serfs and chattels. Then he went back to his +estates, and to the welcome that the world was waiting to give him. By +and by, when his people insisted that he should marry, he called an +old-time conference about whom he should choose. There were numerous +suggestions, but the advisers did not agree. He listened, and then +telling them that unless they would approve his own choice, he should +never marry, he stepped to the side of "the dear little wife" who had +loved him as a leper. + +The romance of _Fleur et Blanchefleur_, which goes back, though not in +its present form, to the twelfth century, enjoyed such popularity that +it was translated into almost every European tongue. Indeed, in some +languages it is found in more than one version. The story tells of a +Saracen prince, whose royal father interrupts the smooth course of his +true love for a Christian girl. She was the daughter of a captive lady +in the palace of the Queen, and the royal boy and the bond girl had been +born on the same day. From his birth, the mother of Blanchefleur became +Fleur's nurse; the pagan law required that he must be suckled by a +heathen, but in all other ways the infants were treated like twins. They +slept in one cradle, and when they could eat and drink they were given +the same food. Thus they grew up together, until they were five years +old, when the King, seeing his child as fine and promising a boy as +could be found in any land, decided that it was time for him to begin +his education. He selected a master, but Fleur, when he was bidden to +study, burst into tears and cried, "Sire, what will Blanchefleur do? Who +will teach her? I never can learn without her." The King answered that +since he loved her so, Blanchefleur should go with him to school. + + "So they went and came together, and the joy of their love + was still uninterrupted. It was a wonder to see how each of + the two studied for each; neither learned anything without + straightway telling the other. At nature's earliest, all + their concern was love; they were quick in learning and well + they remembered. Pagan books that spake of love they read + together with delight; these hastened them along in the + understanding and joy of love. On their way home from school, + they would put their arms about each other, and kiss. In the + King's garden, bright with all plants and flowers of various + hues, they went to play every morning, and to eat their + dinner; and after they had eaten, they listened to the birds + singing in the trees above them, and then they went their way + back to school, and a happy walk they found it. When they + were again at school they took their ivory tablets, and you + might have seen them writing letters and verses of love, in + the wax. Deftly with their gold and silver styles they made + letters and greeting of love, of the songs of birds and of + flowers. This was all they cared for. In five years and + fifteen days, they both had learned to write neatly on + parchment, and to talk in Latin so well that no one could + understand." + +When we follow the poem along, we find in the different versions many +familiar romance expedients, conventional incidents of the pathetic, +exciting, and marvellous, but the charm is in the unwavering love of +these twins, who from the hour of birth breathed together, even in their +sleep, yet no kin to each other, and blending brotherhood and sisterhood +with the other love of man and woman in perfection, since for neither +they knew the beginning. In this way the mediæval romance is even more +ideal than Beaumont's _Triumph of Love_, where Gerard and Violante +passed from the sentiment of childhood "as innocently as the first +lovers ere they fell." + +"Gerard's and my affection began," the heroine tells Ferdinand, + + "In infancy: my uncle brought him oft + In long clothes hither; you were such another. + The little boy would kiss me, being a child, + And say he loved me: give me all his toys, + Bracelets, rings, sweetmeats, all his rosy smiles; + I then would stand and stare upon his eyes, + Play with his locks, and swear I loved him too. + For sure, methought he was a little Love, + He wooed so prettily in innocence + That then he warmed my fancy; for I felt + A glimmering beam of love kindle my blood + Both which time since hath made a flame and flood." + +In the early stages of Fleur's love-trials his parents attempted to +persuade him that Blanchefleur was dead, and to give confirmation to +their assertions they caused a superb tomb to be constructed, in a style +that is of considerable interest in the study of literary origins from +its obviously Oriental tone. Without delaying for its rich and curious +Eastern details, we may yet notice the sentiment in the figures of the +boy and girl that were placed upon it. "Never were seen images of fairer +children, or more like to the lovers. The image of Blanchefleur holds a +flower before Fleur, before her lover holds the fair one a rose of fine +bright gold; and before her, Fleur holds a blanched golden fleur-de-lis. +Close by each other they sit, a sweet look on their faces." A mechanical +device is so contrived that when the wind blew and touched the children +they embraced and kissed, and by necromancy they spoke to each other as +in their childhood, and thus said Fleur to Blanchefleur: "Kiss me, +sweet," and kissing him, she replied: "I love you more than all the +world." + +The story of Fleur and Blanchefleur was so popular that they became +identified with the characters of another romance, and were sung of as +the parents of Berte-as-graus-pies, the heroine of an attractive +legend, and the mythical mother of Charlemagne. In the poem that relates +her misfortunes after she has been sent from Hungary to France as the +wife of Pepin, we find a suggestion of the depth of sentiment that was +always associated with her legendary parents. She has been in France +almost nine years without their having heard from her, and Blanchefleur +determines to undertake a journey to see her child again before she +dies. The King, without opposing her desire, expresses a half +remonstrance that we may add to the other proofs in mediæval poetry, +that true love in our modern sense was familiar throughout those eras: +"Oh, my lady, how shall we be able to live so long without each other?" +Let us believe that in the Utopia where these lovers who loved from +their birth resided, they found, after their own sharp trials and the +trials of their daughter were safely over, a serene old age, out of +which they passed unconsciously some night, sleeping themselves away in +each other's arms. + +This love between boy and girl was attractive to the old narrative +poets. The greatest of them all touched the soul of young romance when +he said of Sigune and Schionatulander, "Alas, they are still too young +for such pain, yet 'tis the love of youth which lasts." Wolfram gives us +pretty touches of childhood as far back as the nursery; like that of a +mother and her ladies playing over the new-born baby, or of children +learning to stand by taking hold of chairs, and creeping over the floor +to reach them, or of Sigune's care to take her box of dolls with her +when she went away. "Whoever saw this little girl thought her a glimpse +of May among the dewy flowers." As she grew older, too, he describes +her, assuming the airs of a young lady. "When her breasts were rounding +and her light wavy hair began to turn dark, she grew more proud and +dignified, though always keeping her womanlike sweetness." The story of +her love with Schionatulander has delightful stanzas; their long +love-pleading dialogue is much truer than most of the minnesingers' work +in its restraint and in the girl's coy sweetness. She is an earlier +Dorigen as she watches for the beloved who does not come, wasting many +an evening at the window gazing over the fields, or climbing to the +housetop to look. But what distinguishes the author of the _Titurel_ +above his fellow-poets is his sentiment for something more than romance. +Children are dear to him, and the wife is dearer. His idea of love +consists no more in Dante's platonic mysticism than in passion and +inconstancy. Without transcendentalism its dominant tone is spiritual. +Compare an earlier lover's cry in the loveliest of French romances: +"What is there in heaven for me? I will never go there without +Nicolette, my sweet darling, whom I love so much. It is to hell that +fine gentlemen go and pretty, well-bred ladies who love." Compare that +Parisian type of feeling with this of Wolfram: "Love between man and +woman has its house on earth, and its pure guidance leads us to God and +heaven. This love is everywhere save in hell!" To such a poet we +naturally turn for the deepest mediæval note in the treatment of +childhood, and we do not listen in vain. + +"What a difference there is between women," Wolfram exclaims. It seems +to him the way of modern womanhood to be disloyal, worldly, selfish, +like men: but in the days of which he writes in his chief poem there was +a lady Herzeloide, to whom after her husband's death in the wars, the +sun was a cloud, the world's joy lost, night and day alike, who for +heavenly riches chose earthly poverty, and leaving her estates went with +her retainers far into the unreclaimed forest to bring up her infant +safe from the strife and wiles of men. This only heritage of her lost +lord was the boy Parzival. She trusted that by hiding him away from all +knowledge of the world, she might always keep him her own. She exacted +an oath from her servants that they would never let him hear of knights +and knighthood, and while they cleared farming land in the heart of the +woods, she cared for the child. It was a desolate place, but she was not +looking for meadows and flowers; she gave no thought to wreaths, whether +red or yellow.[11] + +The child grew into boyhood, and was indulged in making bows and arrows. +As he played in the woods, he shot some of the birds. But after he saw +them dead, he remembered how they had sung, and he cried. Every morning +he went to a stream to bathe. There was nothing to trouble him, except +the singing of the birds over his head: but that was so sweet that his +breast grew strained with feeling; and he ran to his mother in tears. +She asked what ailed him, but "like children even now it may be," he +could not tell her. But she kept the riddle in her heart, and one day +she found him gazing up at the trees listening to the birds, and she saw +how his breast heaved as they sang. It seemed to her that she hated +them, she did not know why. She wanted to stop their singing, and bade +her farm hands snare and kill them. But the birds were too quick; most +of them remained and kept on singing. The boy asked his mother what harm +the birds did, and if the war upon them might not cease. She kissed his +lips: + + "Why am I opposing highest God? Shall the birds lose their + happiness because of me?" + + "Nay, mother, what is God?" + + "My son, He is brighter than the day; He took upon himself + the likeness of man. When trouble comes upon thee, pray to + him: his faithfulness upholds the world. The Devil is + darkness; turn thy thoughts from him, and from unbelief." + +This passage is Wolfram's invention; the brilliant Gallic poet whose +romance he followed could not have contrived it. This sympathy with +nature belongs to our later era; it seems less strange to meet it in +Keats, when the boy Apollo wanders out alone in the morning twilight: + + "The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars + Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush + Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle + There was no covert, no retired cave + Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves. + Though scarcely heard in many a green recess, + He listened and he wept, and his bright tears + Went trickling down the golden bow he held." + +One recalls nothing in the two centuries which Wolfram touches that +equals this picture of the mother watching her child's baptism with the +sad and precious gift of soul, as he stands gazing upward in his forest +trance, or listening to his dawning perplexities, or teaching him his +first religious lesson, or jealous of the birds, because his dreamy love +for them dimly warned her of a mysterious growing soul that would not +remain within her simple call. Those lines in the _Princess_ of the +faith in womankind and the trust in all things high, that come easy to +the son of a good mother, certainly are appropriate to Parzival, whose +faith held true and simple through his whole career as the foremost +knight of chivalric legend, living for a spiritual ideal, unseduced by +beauty and the ways of courts from loyalty to his first wedlock: + + "True to the kindred points of heaven and home." + +The description of Parzival's meeting with the knights, his mistaking +them in their bright armor for angels, and his eagerness to make his way +to Arthur's court are narrated by Chrestien with his own excellent +vivacity, and here Wolfram only follows. + +The Welsh version of the story in the _Mabinogi_ of Peredur, though +disappointing, contains a naïve sketch of the boy's rustic attempt to +imitate the knight's trappings. But for the full tenderness of his +mother's parting as he goes out from home to the fierce world we must +turn again to the German.[12] + +She kisses him, and as he rides away "runs a few steps after him" till +he has galloped out of sight and then she closes forever the eyes whose +light of motherhood shone like a star above the sea, over those +tumultuous years. + +All through these centuries there are poems to the Virgin, especially +in Latin, which manifest similar sensibility to infancy and motherhood. +One of the most pleasing belongs to England, and is written in the +commixture of Latin and the modern tongue, which occasionally produces +quaintly pretty effects. The glorified Christ summons his mother, by the +memory of their kisses when she calmed him in sweet song, to come and be +crowned. "Pulcra ut luna"--lovely as moonlight--"veni coronaberis." + +But perhaps the most delicate of all such sketches comes from an +unexpected source. A young lawyer in the town of Todi, whose early life +had combined pleasure with sufficient study to gain the doctorate, was +turned aside from a prosperous public career by the tragical loss of his +bride. Matthew Arnold has given a symbolism to the story of her death in +the sonnet beginning: + + "That son of Italy who tried to blow + 'Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song." + +The sorrow struck deep, even to the point of partial mania; the gay +young man forsook the world and devoted years to seclusion and religious +culture. Later in 1278, he entered the order of the Minorites, and ranks +as one of their delirious enthusiasts, a mystic poet, a reckless +satirist of evils in high places. His fanatic asceticism made him glory +in bodily torments and the world's scorn. The nickname, Jacapone, he +carried proudly, and even the harshness of Boniface VIII. could not +quell his zest for martyrdom. We should scarcely look to him for +sympathy with the sweet gaieties of the nursery, yet this little sketch +of the Virgin's life with Christ, the child, came from the same hand +that wrote the sorrows of the _Stabat Mater_. + + Ah sweet, how sweet, the love within thy heart, + When on thy breast the nursing infant lay: + What gentle actions, sweetly loving play, + Thine, with thy holy child apart. + When for a little while he sometimes slept, + Thou eager to awake thy paradise, + Soft, soft, so that he could not hear thee, crept, + And laidest thy lips close to his eyes, + Then, with the smile maternal calling, "Nay, + 'Twere naughty to sleep longer, wake, I say!" + +The almost incoherent repetition of the word "Love," in one of his +poems, is suggestive of the man; despair for human love led to his +half-crazed absorption in the divine. Very sweetly sounds this sacred +meditation's echo of his recollection of the nights of his own +childhood, of which he has told, when his mother, as she waked, would +make a light and come and lean over his bed, till sometimes his eyes +would open to see her watching him there. His father did not spare the +rod for the careless boy, nor in later years did the father of his soul; +but the divine motherhood of memory and of present faith bent with +yearning eyes, we may be sure, over his anxious sleep in prison or in +the ascetic cell. + +But it was only the greatest of all these poets who could leave us the +lovely image of the new-born soul that comes forth in its simplicity +from the hand that loves it before its birth, playing like a young girl +who weeps and smiles. Yet Dante's principal sensation about childhood is +its helplessness, and the mother's eyes, which throw its aureole about +infancy, do not seem to have held their tenderest meaning for him. He +would never have gone beyond the original ten lines of + + "She was a phantom of delight." + +But he gives beauty to the child's frightened eyes when they meet its +mother's, and certainly the vision, whether real or imagined, toward the +close of the _Vita Nuova_ will please forever. This straying love is +recalled to its old faithfulness by "the strong imagination" of a little +figure that is habited in red, just as it had appeared to him when, +perhaps in Folco's Florentine garden, the boy not quite nine fell in +love with the girl of eight. + +Perhaps Boccaccio's story of the falcon is too familiar to quote, though +it illustrates domestic love too well to be unmentioned. One hardly can +choose the best of its touches--the bright account of the boy running +over the fields with his mother's old-time lover, as he hawked, always +eying with a boy's eagerness for ownership the famous falcon, the only +remnant of Frederick's gay and wealthy life, which he had lost for the +unsuccessful love; or the picture of the mother again and again begging +the child, as he lay ill, to tell her something which he desired, so +that she might obtain it for him; until his feverish imagination +persuaded him that to have the wonderful falcon would make him well +again; or our thought of the impoverished gentleman, whose devotion had +lasted under the years of exile on his little farm, his hope departed, +who when suddenly visited by his widowed love, and finding nothing in +the larder, nor money, nor even anything valuable enough for a pledge to +secure some entertainment for her, desperately wrung the neck of his +precious bird; or the delicate hesitation and awkwardness of the lady +when she came to explain her errand, and the struggle, before love for +her child bent both pride and pity; or the lover's broken heart when he +found that his excess of devotion had cost him his only opportunity of +pleasing her. The whole may be read in a little play of Tennyson's later +years, or among the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_; but it is much better to +read it in the narrative of the Certaldesian. Tuscany has sent us down +no tenderer story. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[10] I will not quote Goethe's famous disparagement of the _Divina +Commedia_, for the context indicates that it was uttered petulantly. +Still, he certainly did not care for Dante, or appreciate him, though he +recognized his eminence. + +[11] It may be worth noting that Wolfram substitutes for the French +original's usual conventionality of a pretty watered meadow, this harder +and more appropriate setting. + +[12] Tennyson might suitably enough have had the marriage of Parzival +and Condiuiramur in mind when writing the Prince's aspiration. "Then +reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm." Such passages in +Wolfram's poem as Book iv. from line 666 and Book v. 676-682 may be +commended to the critics who see nothing in mediæval love that is pure +or faithful in the modern sense of marriage. + + + + +[Decoration] + +A MEDIÆVAL WOMAN.[13] + + +When Heloise was born, just after the twelfth century opened, Abelard, +through whom she was to experience the deepest ecstacies and the most +poignant distress, and by whose union with her life she was to become +the most famous mediæval woman, was a young man of twenty-two. He came +of a rather high-bred family in Brittany; his father, though an active +soldier, was interested in letters and took pains to have his children +instructed in the ornaments as well as the defence of life. This eldest +son, so attracted by his early lessons that he determined to sacrifice +his rights of primogeniture, and to renounce the distinction of a +knightly career for the life of study, while yet a youth started out as +a student-tramp, one of a multitude who wandered from town to town to +hear lectures on the seven topics that made up the educational +curriculum of the age. Through this entire epoch, for generation after +generation, this practice of student vagrancy continued: now the +intellectual centre was England, now France, now Germany; sometimes two +or three teachers would draw crowds to the exclusion of all other +schools, sometimes the numbers would divide up among scores of masters. +Poor, rich, coarse, refined, hard-working, indolent, quick-witted, +stupid, scholars, impostors,--these student crowds were an extraordinary +medley. To realize the irregularity and the strangeness of their lives +we have to read such a story as Freytag quotes[14] from Thomas Platter, +a wandering scholar of the fifteenth century. Such German students were +perhaps of a lower grade than the young men who travelled through France +three hundred years before, and the standard of scholarship may have +been inferior, but their general experiences must have been similar, and +most of Abelard's companions no doubt were mentally crude, arrogant, +superstitious; many dissipated and even brutal. Yet some were touched by +the love of truth, and had vigorous minds, well trained by application. +The majority of these better men were of course hedged in by the +palisades of Catholic tradition, and sought knowledge from the past, +rather than from independent present thought: but there were some whose +ideas were bolder, and who kept proposing questions which their teachers +did not answer. + +The deferential attention with which Roscellinus and William of +Champeaux were listened to, was broken in upon when the handsome youth +Abelard appeared at the schools of these leaders of European thought. +The strength of each was in dialectics, the topic which then held +intellectual interest to the practical disregard of almost every other +subject except the theology into which it played, and they took opposite +sides on the absorbing problem of general terms. In the school of each, +Abelard rose as a disputant; he challenged his teacher to argue with him +as an equal until he triumphed in turn over the extreme Nominalist and +the extreme Realist. Then he set up schools of his own, which he moved +from place to place, as the intolerant hostility of his vanquished +chiefs and their upholders required. His reputation steadily rose, and +he drew the largest and most enthusiastic following, for the keenest +young thought of the generation recognized in him its natural leader. + +All independence and liberality of mind must be estimated relatively to +the age concerned. From our outlook Abelard seems a narrow and +constrained thinker, but to the churchman of the opening of the twelfth +century he was a rationalist, a daring explorer into the sacred +mysteries that must be accepted by the sealed eye of Faith. How absurd, +he exclaims, to teach what you cannot give reasons for believing. So he +tried to make belief a matter for intellectual comprehension; he argued +where others asserted, and made bold to modify current opinions which +his ingenuity, often childishly simple, could not explain. He had a +noble grasp upon some conceptions far beyond the reach of his +antagonists. He independently developed the ethical doctrine that the +value of conduct is in motive, not in act; he taught that the main worth +of the incarnation was to present the model of a perfect life; that the +man Christ Jesus was not a member of the Trinity; that the love of God +is as freely bestowed on sinner as on saint; that God could not prevent +evil, or he would have done so. For the sufferings that he endured in +teaching his pupils to use not credulity but unflinching independent +thought in their reflections even on theology, he deserves our grateful +admiration. + +When Abelard was thirty-eight years old he was at the height of his +reputation. Technical and abstruse as his intellectual interests were, +he appears to have been anything but a dry-as-dust. Though as a logician +he had trained himself severely in precision of speech, the hesitating +and half-frozen way of talking that most exact thinkers fall into, he +seems to have escaped. We have a letter written about this time by a +canon named Fulcus, who, dwelling on Abelard's intellectual cleverness, +his power and subtlety of expression, makes special mention of the +sweetness of his eloquence; _limpidissimus philosophiæ fons_, he calls +him, too--philosophy's very clearest fountain. He was not only an easy +and agreeable speaker, he had also the advantages of an attractive +presence; he was a fine-looking man, in the prime of life. + +Now for about twenty years he had been a hero of the schools. The +philosophic and theological leaders of the age he had overthrown and +trampled on; the audiences that he had been at the first successful in +drawing had steadily increased. Established in Paris without +controversy, a canon of the church, in the chair of Notre-Dame, the +philosophical throne of France, he lectured to the best pupils of +Europe. Fulcus, in his letter to Abelard, described the geographical +extent of his influence thus: + + "Rome sent her sons to be taught by you, the former teacher + of all arts confessing herself not so wise as you. No + distance, no height of mountains, no depth of valleys, no + road hard to travel or perilous with robbers, hindered + scholars from hastening to you. The English students were not + frightened by the tempestuous waves of the sea between; every + peril was despised as soon as your name was known. The remote + Britons, the Angevins, the Picts, the Gascons, the Spaniards, + the people of Normandy and Flanders, the Teutons, and the + Suevi, all about Paris and through France, near and remote, + thirsted to be taught by you, as if they could learn nowhere + else." + +Such eminence had not come to him without effort. He had been a close +worker, secluding himself from society. "The assiduity of my application +to study," he says, "prevented my associating with refined ladies, and I +had hardly any acquaintance with women outside of the church." The +purity of his morals was only less famous than his intellect; he says +that the notion of associating, as many churchmen of the time did, with +coarse women was odious to him. + +But suddenly over this man already middle-aged, and, as one might +suppose, established in self-control mentally and physically, there came +a reaction. Reputation had become an old story, his enthusiasm for +philosophy seemed to dwindle when he believed himself the first +philosopher of the world; no doubt, too, the intellectual pressure of +his work had so worn upon him as to make a change of interests +impulsive. So Abelard turned to divert himself with immoral indulgences, +and at thirty-eight began the life of passion. + +Several years before this, a story had begun to circulate that another +canon of Notre-Dame, Fulbert by name, had a remarkable niece. She was +then only a little girl in a nunnery at Argenteuil, but year by year the +accounts of her precocity grew more astonishing, and by the time she was +sixteen we are told that she was talked about through the whole kingdom. +This was Heloise, and her uncle--people did not know whether he was +prouder or fonder of her. He brought her back to his own house near the +cathedral, and Abelard met her to find the reports of her learning had +not been exaggerated, and--something more interesting--to find that she +was not merely a scholar, that she was a genius. The modern accounts of +this famous story that I have seen (most of them mere imitations of one +or two authors who really have taken the trouble to study the originals) +declare that Heloise was uncommonly beautiful, but there seems to be no +authority for this. Abelard says only, "_per faciem non infirma_"--"not +lowest in beauty, but in literary culture highest." Making allowance for +his rhetorical contrast, we may say, without intensives, that she was +attractive as well as brilliant. + +We should have to read a good many indecent chronicles, and get +thoroughly familiar with Don Juan prototypes, to find as cold-blooded a +story of seduction as this that follows. We have it from Abelard's own +pen, told in perfectly calm language, a clear-cut narrative without the +slightest tremor of confession about it. He was delighted with her +loveliness, her youth and innocence, her fame, and most of all with her +brilliancy. He says that he believed no woman whom he might honor with +his regard could resist the combination of his personal qualities and +his reputation. But he wished cultivated, congenial companionship in his +amours, and deliberately resolved to betray this girl of sixteen under +the disguise of her teacher. At his own application, Fulbert received +him as a lodger, the board to be paid by private instruction of his +niece. "He gave the lamb to me, a wolf"--such is Abelard's well-chosen +metaphor. She was to be taught at any hours, day or night, that her +tutor found convenient. She was to obey him in everything, and if he +thought fit it was enjoined upon him to discipline her with the rod. "To +such an extent," Abelard remarks, "was he blinded by his trust in his +niece, and by my reputation for strict morality." + +Nothing could be more repulsive than the coldly deliberate wickedness of +Abelard's plan, and it would be time thrown away to attempt any +extenuation of it. But the crime once committed, it is a relief to find +something in addition to brute passion present in the unscrupulous +seducer. The girl who had fascinated him, won from him as complete love +as his nature was capable of giving. Week by week he resigned himself +more and more to his happiness, he neglected the school, his lectures +were only the repetition of formerly acquired views, and he wooed +philosophy for no new truths. Even the perfunctory teaching that he did +grew irksome to him, and his knowledge of the great sadness, groans, and +lamentations that he tells arose among his followers, was powerless to +break the spell. For it was only a spell: he was pre-eminently an +intellectual man with superficial affections; his heart was given to +philosophy, and the only permanent passion of his life was ambition. But +little as the praise is, to that little extent it is to his credit that +where he had planned for himself a holiday from mental and moral +severity, in which he was to enjoy relaxation selfishly and viciously at +Heloise's undivided cost, he found his better nature captured by this +loveliest representative of womanhood in its fullest and most +exceptional combination of elements that mediæval history has made known +to us. After all, Abelard was not wholly destitute of the moral +sensibilities: I believe no narrator of this story has called attention +to his love for his old home in Brittany, or to his family's devotion to +him and reliance on his guidance, or to the tenderness with which he +mentions his mother. In spite of all the viciousness in his early and +the hardness in his later treatment of Heloise, we may credit him with +real affection for her, from the early days of his crime. + +For a man of Abelard's force and finish of mind, such a refined +companionship must have been the first of pleasures. There are +traditions, not to be accepted too credulously, that Heloise was a +larger scholar than her lover, and could read Hebrew and Greek--those +rarest accomplishments of mediæval learning. That at least she knew +Latin literature well, we have abundant evidence, and the most positive +proof that her scholarship was refined and appreciative, that she felt +poetry as well as understood it. Her mind responded also to the +theological interests of the thinkers of the age, she was at home in the +church fathers, and learned from Abelard the main principles of his +philosophical doctrine. In trying to conceive a character when +information is so fragmentary as ours here, we are no doubt in some +danger of making fanciful biography. Three letters of her own, several +of Abelard's to her, and his autobiography, a few slight contemporary +hints--these materials leave some important points of her character +undeveloped. But given certain suggestions, our imaginative instincts +cannot go far wrong, provided the inferences of sympathetic +interpretation are held in check by judgment. These guides teach us to +see in the girl Heloise an extraordinary combination of thoughtfulness +and bright temper, active thinking and religious deference, accurate +scholarship (after the fashion of mediæval schools) and æsthetic +sensibility, passion and maidenly delicacy. To this last quality Abelard +has borne complete testimony, and her own letters supply any evidence +needed. Absorbed though her whole nature was in her love, her lover +himself has let us know that her modesty had to be conquered more than +once by blows. + +Her mind was mastered by the greatness of his reputation, her eye was +taken with his beauty, her imagination was fascinated by his universal +charm: it is no wonder that she was flattered and bewitched into loving +him. But the completeness and devotion and ecstatic self-oblivion of the +love she gave him is a wonder. Her generous faith, though to an +undeserving object, communicates to the ineffective results of her life +an ideal value; by a supreme self-forgetting, she rendered herself +worthy to be always remembered. + +Abelard's was a stormy life in a stormy age, when the scholars fought +quite as bitterly as the soldiers, and the last forty-four years of +Heloise's life were the tragedy of being buried alive, unable to die. +But for a few months in this year 1118, both found perfect happiness. We +have a pretty picture outlined for us of the way their time went. +Abelard says: "We used to have our books open, but we talked more of +love than about the reading, there were more kisses than ideas. Love +made pictures of each of us in the other's eyes more often than we +turned our eyes upon the books." + +Every now and then this great philosopher appeared in a new rôle. As to +most of the highest men, Nature had given him a great deal more than +brains. He had a wonderfully fine voice, was fond of music, and as poets +in those days went, he was a poet. He had stopped constructing +dialectics, but his mind could not be inactive; so he took up the art of +song-writing and song-making, and wrote love-lyrics and many of them, +almost all directly in the praise of Heloise. Nor was he content to +praise her to her own ears alone; the man was past all prudence in the +violence of his new absorption. He let others hear them, and no doubt +his hateful egotism was flattered by the thought that the most +fascinating girl in all France would thus become known as his mistress. +The lyrics at once caught the popular fancy; we hear of them as +spreading over the country, sung everywhere by the light-minded. Many +years later, Heloise wrote that if any woman's heart could have resisted +Abelard's other magic, to read his songs and to hear him sing them would +surely have conquered her. + +The neglect of his work, and the notoriety of these love-ditties after a +while made public Abelard's real relation to his pupil. Yet for some +time after the world at large understood it, the devoted uncle and +guardian of the girl heard nothing, and after the rumors did begin to +reach him, he obstinately refused to believe them. Nothing in the whole +history shows the essential goodness of Heloise more significantly than +the canon Fulbert's complete incredulity; for as the event proved, his +nature was not so gentle as to repudiate harsh thoughts without the +strongest prepossessions. When the truth was forced upon him, his +distress was so intense that even the cold-hearted Abelard was compelled +to pity him. But if Abelard pitied the uncle, how much greater his +distress for the niece, and greater still, unfortunately, his +apprehension for himself. Egotist he proved himself, but he proved +himself also Heloise's real lover. "First we lived together in one +house," he says, "but at last in one soul." In the crash of public +disgrace, "neither of us complained of personal suffering, but each for +the suffering that came to the other," and the bodily separation that +ensued, he says with a touch of real feeling, was "the greatest linking +of our souls." + +Soon after the separation, Abelard discovered that Heloise required more +care and comforts than the heart-broken and embittered Fulbert would be +likely to provide, and he devised and carried through a plan to take +her back to his own country, to his sister's house. There, amid the +scenes of her lover's boyhood, in that Brittany whose legend and poetry +have blessed us with so many of our loveliest romances, this heroine of +a deeper romance than any of fiction found a home for several months. We +may guess that the home was pleasant to her, for the lady with whom she +lived afterwards entered the abbey of which Heloise was prioress. +Abelard meanwhile was continuing his lectures in Paris, fearing--he +seems to have been at all times a great deal of a coward--the personal +violence from Heloise's family which the fierce habits of the age gave +him reason to anticipate. At last the distress of Fulbert touched his +better feeling into the wish to give him comfort, this long separation +from Heloise he found hard to support, and his fear of revenge +constantly increased. These motives induced a promise to rectify his +offence by marriage. He made only one condition--that the marriage +should be secret. + +On the whole, this is perhaps the most favorable exhibition of himself +that Abelard ever made. With all deductions for selfish considerations, +it is reasonable to allow some weight to moral feeling, and a good deal +more to devotion for the girl. This renders it all the sadder to find +him some sixteen years later referring to this best act of his life with +a feeble apology. "Let no one," he entreats, "wonder at my offer of +marriage, who has felt the power of love, and known how the greatest men +have been overthrown by woman." + +Even here when his feeling for Heloise seems strongest, we see that his +selfish ambition was stronger still. Secular as his tastes were, bound +to the church by his intellectual side only, he still hoped to rise to +ecclesiastical dignities and power. From very early times the +disposition for a celibate clergy had been strong, and five years before +Abelard's birth Hildebrand had declared that no married priest should +have any part in the celebration of the mass. Quite apart from all +questions of marriage, Abelard seems to have had scarcely any chance of +distinguished clerical dignity; the student crowds might follow him, but +the leaders of the church were dead set against his rationalism; they +feared and hated the arrogant and progressive thinker. If Abelard had +acted like a man, and had openly chosen married love with the girl whose +mind and heart were, either of them, better than the best of life's +other gifts, the misfortunes of his distressed later career might have +been avoided, and Heloise, after a happy and lovely life, would be no +more remembered to-day than the flowers she had gathered, or the birds +she heard sing. But because the man, not quite unprincipled, was yet not +true, he brought death upon his own good name, and upon Heloise a +melancholy life with which she paid too dear for all the remembrance and +love that the ages have given her. To his selfishness we owe the +sweetest and saddest story which the middle ages have bequeathed us; but +we think of the words of Demodocus, as he recites in the Odyssey the +story of heroes dead: "This the gods contrived, and for these they +ordained destruction, so that the people of times to come might have a +song." + +His mind once made up, Abelard started for Brittany, to see the son of +whose birth he had just heard, and to take back the mother as his bride. +But when this resolution was known to Heloise, he met an unexpected +opposition. She said she did not wish him to marry her, and persisted in +her refusal. + +Unwomanly does it appear, this unwillingness of Heloise to become her +lover's wife? She knew Abelard's vehement ambition, the impossibility of +its being satisfied if he was known to be a married man, the practical +certainty that her family would prefer the redemption of her reputation +to her husband's success. So she told Abelard that to marry her would be +dangerous to him,--but still more, that it would be disgraceful. She +talked to him in the rôle of a learned and ascetic mediæval preacher; +she seems to draw a monk's rough robe about her girlish figure, to +disguise her tones, and to muffle her bright face in a cowl. We have +long, formally rendered objections, a crowd of citations from the Bible, +Cicero, Theophrastus, Jerome, Josephus, Augustine,--to prove marriage +less honorable than celibacy, devotion to knowledge a duty not to be +interfered with by the responsibilities and annoyances of a family, +conformity to the rules of the church the highest obligation. Her desire +for his own greatness completely overshadows her passion for his love. +He is already the first of philosophers, but if he has outrivalled +others, he must go on to surpass himself. For this, he must have quiet +and solitude, freedom for thought. She quotes a Roman maxim that all +things are to be neglected for philosophy. What monks endure through +love of God, the thinker ought to endure from devotion to truth. If +laymen and gentiles have lived thus continently, bound by no religious +profession, what does it become a clerk and a canon to do? "If you +regard not God, at least care for philosophy." + +"For what harmony is there," she asks, "between a scholar and a nurse, a +writing-desk and a cradle, books and spinning-wheels? Who when absorbed +in religious or philosophic meditation can endure hearing children cry, +or having to listen to the lullabies of the woman who soothes them? Rich +people can get along, for they have abundant room and plenty of +servants; but scholars are not rich." She has difficulty in keeping +herself disguised: in the excess of her feeling she throws out her arms, +and discloses the gracious outline of the unselfish woman. Then, after +reasoning, come personal pleadings. Is he sacrificing himself for her? +She is content as she is. Now she holds him by the free gift of that +love and favor to which he would have a claim in marriage. Does he +believe she feels herself disgraced by this relation? To be called his +mistress is dear and ennobling to her. Years later when she was past her +middle life, she wrote to Abelard that "the name of mistress, or even of +harlot, was sweeter to me then the holier name of wife, so that by my +greater humiliation I might gain greater favor and less injure thy fame. +I call God to witness that if Augustus would have set me by himself at +the head of the whole world, it would have seemed to me more dear and +noble to be called thy mistress than his empress." + +Thus by argument, authority, protestation that her sacrifice is choice, +she tries to conquer his decision. Nay, she throws aside the cowl +entirely, and by her natural bright humor tries to banter him into +acquiescence. "And then think," she says in substance, "what a plague a +wife is to a man. Only imagine" (and she laughs, and Abelard laughs too, +at the inconceivable grotesqueness of the idea), "imagine what a shrew I +might turn out! I might treat you as Xanthippe treated _her_ +philosopher." She reminds him of the passage where Jerome tells the +story about Socrates' wife having fretted and scolded and raged one day +through the house with desperate temper, until she wound up by throwing +a basin of dirty water over him: + + "He took it patiently, and wiped his head: + 'Rain follows thunder,'--that was all he said." + +To Abelard's credit, this impassioned unselfishness strengthened, +instead of weakening, his resolution. Heloise was forced to yield, but +her instincts saw the dark shadows gathering about them: with sobs and +tears she exclaimed, "In the ruin of both of us not less pain is to +follow than was the love that came before." + +Leaving the child with his aunt the lovers returned to Paris; there they +were married in great secrecy, and at once separated. After this they +met but seldom, and then with careful precautions against their +interviews becoming known. Heloise's family, however, as she had feared, +determined to redeem her good name by announcing that Abelard had made +her honorable reparation. When people came to her and asked if it was +really true that she was the canon's wife, she denied the story angrily. +When her uncle and other relatives contradicted her contradiction, the +girl took religion's holiest name in vain, in her asseverations that +Abelard was not her husband. Fulbert lost all patience, and attempted by +cruelty and indignity to drive her to confess the truth. She told +Abelard of what she suffered, and one night he contrived to steal her +away from her uncle and to carry her back to her old nunnery at +Argenteuil, where she assumed most of the dress of the order, and +received only occasional visits from him. + +The conjecture that Abelard designed to keep her there, and as soon as +his attachment could be weaned to make her take the vows and thus save +himself from all further trouble, suggests itself to us to-day: with +greater force, it occurred to the people immediately concerned. The rage +of the uncle and his friends at Abelard's treachery, first and last, to +themselves, and at his heartlessness toward the girl whose worth they +understood so well, grew uncontrollable; they bribed a servant to admit +them to his house by night, and avenged themselves. + +Abelard's spirit was broken, as he saw all hopes of ecclesiastical +promotion at an end, and his fame turned to notoriety. Heretofore his +public appearances had made the sensation of a king's: "What region did +not burn to see you!" asked Heloise. "Who, when you walked abroad, did +not hurry to look at you, rising on tiptoe and with straining eyes?" But +now every look he fancied scornful. + +In this wild age there was always one refuge for the victims of the +world or of themselves. To the monasteries flocked all classes, from +fashionable knights broken down or unsuccessful or weary of conflict, to +the half-witted clowns sheltered and utilized as lay-brethren. Husbands +forsook their wives, and wives fled from their husbands, to take shelter +in the religious life. In this early part of the twelfth century, +monastic houses were multiplying like hives of bees, constantly sending +out from themselves colonies that quickly became parents of others. For +some time the tendency had been to an easier discipline than the +traditional, but at last asceticism had blazed out anew, and the rich +and luxurious Cluny paled in popularity before Clairveaux or the Grande +Chartreuse. In this single century the Cistercians expanded from one +abbey to eight hundred, a single one of which is said to have +controlled seven hundred benefices. The one meal a day, the hard manual +labor, the restricted sleep, the wearisome routine of prayer, reading, +and penance, won by their very severity and by the mystical impression +of sanctity and immortal safety which brooded about these retired +prisons of self-condemned sin. + + "Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, + Ye solemn seats of holy pain," + +was the cry with which multitudes approached the gates that should +emancipate them from a freedom which did not satisfy. Ben Jonson's fear +lest his inclination to God might be + + "Through weariness of life, not love of thee," + +was realized in the case of numbers of convertites quite equalling and +probably far exceeding those who entered the ascetic orders from the +enthusiasm of visionaries. To this retirement, as a screen from the +world's curiosity and fancied mocks, Abelard now resolved to withdraw, +as his father and mother in their later lives had done before him. His +jealousy could not leave Heloise behind, so he told her of his purpose, +and hoped that she would volunteer to imitate him. But Heloise made no +such offer. In every way hers was a mind beyond her age, and the +unnatural harshness of cloistral discipline, its artificial dreariness, +its "hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell," seemed to her fine +insight untrue. Though she had suffered, she was yet in tune with life; +her heart assured her that innocent pleasure is the soul's hymn of +praise to God; bitterly as she shared her husband's misery, she saw no +reason for separating her life and his; most of all, she revolted from +the notion of professing religion with lip-service only. But Abelard +urged, insisted, even commanded, and, seeing it to be his wish, the +girl-wife yielded. She told herself that only she was responsible for +her husband's afflictions; except for her, his prosperity would have +continued undimmed; so the day was fixed on which, in her old nunnery, +she should take the vows of perpetual seclusion. + +It must have been a strange scene in that chapel at Argenteuil. Abelard +was there, still in his habit of a mere secular priest, there to make +sure that Heloise's impulses should not burst out again, and cast her +back into the world's sunshine. The bishop, attended by his priests, +stands at the altar: upon it lies a newly consecrated veil. The nuns, +kneeling in their accustomed places, are praying. All wait for the +votaress, but she is detained by a crowd of friends. There were many of +them there, as Abelard has told us, and they could not endure that this +girl, personally so charming, perhaps the most accomplished +intellectually of all the women of France, should consummate the +sacrifice that she had already in such large measure made. They knew her +love for the bright things of life, her beautiful zest for the joyous +and sympathetic, her eagerness in study, the grace of her strong, sweet +seriousness. Such a nature might be for a time bewildered at the loss of +the love of one of the most famous men living, yet if for a little while +they could keep her face unhidden by the veil, she might forget. So they +delay her outside the chapel, pleading with a heart that has made the +same pleas for itself before. Presently the door is pushed open and she +enters the oratory, her friends still about her. Even in the sacred +place they continue their entreaties, and Abelard's glance is anxiously +upon her; but her eyes are downcast. "How they pitied her!" he has told +us; "they kept trying to hold back her youth from the yoke of monastic +rule, as from punishment intolerable." The bishop seems half pitiful, +half impatient; the nuns look up from their praying. Has the world +renewed its hold upon her? Will she snatch herself from God? Does he no +longer attract her? At this last moment is she hesitating? + +She was hesitating; the world did have a hold upon her. God? God had +never attracted her. + +In all the ceremonials of the Catholic Church, there can have been none +which has so combined sacrilege with loftiness of feeling as did the +scene which followed. From the silent, even wistful hearing that she has +been giving to her friends, Heloise suddenly starts away, and, as if +waking from a reverie, she moves with dreamy gesture toward her husband. +Her lips part, and what will be her last words as a lady of the world? +Some scriptural exhortation to her friends to follow her as she follows +Christ? A cry of exultant renunciation of the wilds of life's ocean, and +of contentment at the holy calm in the bosom of the church? + +The girl is weeping, and as she tries to control herself to speak, her +misery overcomes her, and she bursts into loud sobs. But it must have +been surprising to the listening ecclesiastics to hear the words which +at last got expression. It is probably the only time in the church's +history that a novice has taken her last vows with the prelude of a +quotation from a love speech in a pagan poem, directing it not to the +bleeding effigy of her present and eternal Master hanging above the +altar, but to a human lover at her side. Heloise "broke out as she could +between her tears and sobs," in a passage from one of the later books of +Lucan's _Pharsalia_: surely as she spoke the lines, her voice grew +steady, and her eyes looked bravely through the tears: + + "Husband and lord, too worthy for my bed, + Can Fortune thus cast down so dear a head? + Fated to make thee wretched, why did I + Become thy wife? Accept the penalty; + I will endure it gladly." + +I fancy that Abelard was quite as much impressed by the brilliant young +mind that could make so apt and scholarly a quotation from the Roman +classics, as by the heart which dared on the very margin of the altar to +fling back to the world and up to God this protestation of its +unfaltering human love, which took the vows of religion from no other +motive than to impose torture upon itself--an offering not to God, but +to Abelard. + +As she spoke the verses, she hurried to the altar. _Accipe poenas, quas +sponte luam_,--her voice died away, the bishop received her, and covered +her forever with the veil. + +Heloise was only eighteen. + + * * * * * + +The convent gates shut in all sight of her for the next ten or eleven +years. But in 1130, the nunnery over which she had become prioress was +broken up by the unfavorable decision of a suit for the land and +buildings which it occupied. This decade had brought abundant misery to +Abelard. His heresies in theology had been exposed, and he had been +compelled to burn a treasured book in which they were expounded, a +council had imprisoned him in an abbey where it was boasted that his +haughtiness was tamed by a course of vigorous whipping administered +under the abbot's supervision. There is something pitiful in the +thought of such physical and mental pride being under the control of +fanatical monks, ignorant and coarse, from whom he was glad to escape to +a desert east of Troyes, as a hermit. He had taught at intervals during +these years, and once for a season with a notable renewal of his early +success. Near Troyes, where he had built his hermit-shelter out of reeds +and stubble, in a desolate region infested by wild animals and a covert +for robbers, some vagrant student found the intellectual champion, and +reported at Paris his discovery. The news spread, and soon the desert +was populous. The students built a house for the master, apparently a +commodious one, and about it they made more temporary structures for +their own shelter. Not only the younger class of scholars besieged him +for instruction; older men, ecclesiastics who, as we are told, were wont +to grasp instead of giving, paid generously toward constructing a home +for the great philosopher. But he was world-weary, and soon retired +again to a bleak monastery on the Atlantic, in the lower part of +Brittany, where he became abbot of a set of half-barbarous monks, who +resented his austere rule and, so he tells us, tried repeatedly to +poison him because he interfered with their profligacy. While there he +had learned of Heloise's loss of her nunnery, and had established her +and her religious sisters in the buildings in Champagne that had been +standing unoccupied since he broke up that last school. "The Paraclete," +he had called the home, as a special invocation to the Holy Spirit and +as a tribute for the temporary comfort that he received there. Possibly +he himself conducted his wife thither, but it is equally likely that he +did not see her after he forced her into the church. + +For ten years he appears to have struggled on in Brittany, with no +intellectual associations, none of the notoriety with which he had been +so long pampered, in terror for his life, yet still working at his +philosophy of religion. At last he was impelled to talk of what he had +endured and was still enduring; to speak in the bitterness of his soul, +and get, perhaps, the consolation of pity. He composed a long and +immensely interesting autobiography, telling the whole story of his +youth, his later triumphs, his logical acumen, his love, his disgrace, +the injustice of his condemnation by the conservative church, the tumult +of his experiences in the lonely monastery of St. Gildas. The creditable +pages are calmly written, the shameful unflinchingly. He tells how +tremendous had been his love for Heloise, but he says nothing of loving +her still. The narrative reveals an egotist, but it reveals as certainly +one of the most striking characters of the Middle Ages. + + * * * * * + +We find ourselves inevitably speculating upon the life of Heloise during +the sixteen or more years whose only recorded event is her removal from +Argenteuil to the Paraclete. It might be that a reaction in her love +would follow, when the grim captivity that she had dreaded so became yet +more hateful in its realization; she might lose her old gentleness; it +might become hopeless for her to try to adjust her spirit to its new +conditions and to devote herself to even a submissive piety. From +contemporary testimony we are sure that some of these possibilities did +not come true. She won respect and even devotion as an abbess, her house +prospered financially to her husband's undisguised surprise and +admiration, her life was pure from the least fleck of reproach, or +criticism in any quarter. May we go farther, and say that her spirit did +adjust itself to its new conditions, and lose its pain in a submissive +piety? For such a result we should find many parallels in mediæval +religion; numerous accounts not to be cavilled at as legendary prove +that in these monasteries souls which had suffered found peace. Nay, +many a nun among these most refined groups of mediæval women, driven in +one way or another to forsake the hope of love and earthly happiness, +secured delight of heart in a sort of spiritual romance. As their +emotion grew more subtilized, as asceticism burned away material +impulse, some of the gentlest and most poetically endowed of these +religious recluses acquired a mystical compensation for their loneliest +sacrifice of life,--a divinely idealized personal love, too magical for +friendship, too impassioned and mutual for worship, where, the sexes +mysteriously spiritualized, translated womanhood should rest at last on +the breast of Christ. The final vow of religious consecration was the +nun's betrothal to the divine man; to make herself beautiful for his +bride she wasted her body by fasting and scarred it with the scourge; +the rough lath cross on the wall of her cell was his love token; love +messages came from him in her dreams; prostrated on the chapel flagging +she indited to him prayers that scarcely needed verse to become lyrics. +And when to such a mystic's contemplation the cloister sanctity seemed +too worldly, when her exhausted body found the walk from cell to chapel +too long a journey and she was compelled to stay in the coffin that for +years of nights had sweetly reminded her of the sure untwining of soul +and sense, when she could hear only faintly her sisters' thin chanting +of the hours, and felt her spirit quivering with new sensations, vague, +awed, and eager, she understood that the waiting time was over, and her +espousal at hand. Her failing eyes see white processionals that come to +lead her to the banqueting house where the banner of His love shall be +over her; the music, which the dying so often hear, for her is a +marriage melody ringing from angelic harps and dulcimers; with new-born +strength and grace, mantled in new raiment, she floats upward to her +desire. And when space has been traversed the immortal vision bursts +upon her, a great poet has put in words her last thought this side +heaven: + + "He lifts me to the golden doors, + The flashes come and go; + All heaven bursts her starry floors, + And strows her light below, + And deepens on and up! the gates + Roll back, and far within + For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, + To make me pure of sin. + The sabbaths of Eternity, + One sabbath deep and wide,-- + A light upon the shining sea, + The Bridegroom with his bride." + +But for Heloise there was no such resource. It is to natures more +ethereal and constitutionally religious that such fancies and dreams +appeal. The main feature of the matured Heloise is sanity and balanced +womanhood; she was too strong and intense to be a sentimentalist. Could +the nature which had once been caught into the clouds by the whirlwind +of love, beguile itself from the memory of that storm of rapture by a +visionary tempest raised with a fan? And yet there would be some +satisfaction if we could conceive her adjusting herself to the spiritual +life with closer accord, and passing even through the gates of +superstitious hallucination from the harsh religion of her day into the +inner sanctuary whose "solemn shadow is better than the sun," finding an +outlet for her quick emotions in this personal love for her new Master. + + * * * * * + +Heloise had been a nun some sixteen years when some one showed her +Abelard's so-called _Historia Calamitatum_. Apparently her husband had +forbidden her to write to him; but though she had kept a long silence, +she was a lover until death. This account of Abelard's sufferings and +perils broke her constraint; she could not help writing to comfort him +and to beg for news of his safety. What other love-letters equal the +intensity, the tenderness, the womanliness of these final appeals for +the broken love? Through their nervous pliancy one may learn as nowhere +else the reality of Browning's + + "Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn." + +In them appears also her strength of nature; they are the love-calls of +a woman who knows that the man she continues to set far above all the +rest of humanity is wronging her. She chides him for this long and +complete neglect, but there is a marvellous sweetness in her caressing +reproaches. She tells him to remember under what peculiar bonds she +holds him,--what sacred obligation of marriage, of love, and of devotion +he owes to her; she gave her honor to please him, not herself; she +sacrificed her tender age to the harshness of a monastic life not from +piety, but only in submission to his desire. "There was a time," she +writes, "when people doubted whether in our amour I yielded to love or +to passion. But the end shows how I began; to please you, I have denied +myself all pleasures." She points out to him how differently the end +interprets his feeling for her. "It is common talk," she says, "that you +felt only gross emotions toward me, and when there was a stop to their +indulgence, your so-called love vanished. My dearest one, would that +this appeared to me only, and not to every one; would that I might be +soothed by hearing others excuse you, or that I could myself devise +excuses." + +She appears to entertain no hope that he will visit her, though she +hints longingly at the possibility; but he can at least do as much for +her as he does for others under obligations so far slighter, as much as +the example of the church fathers regarding the women of their flocks +teaches him to do,--he can write and tell her how he is, he can comfort +her love: or (and she appeals to the monk who may listen, even if the +old-time lover will not) he can send spiritual admonition to uphold her +slipping soul. Her heart put at rest, she can be so much freer for the +divine service. "When you wooed me for the pleasures of earth," she +reminds him, "you sent me letter after letter; with many songs you put +your Heloise in the speech of all, so that every street and house echoed +with me. How much more ought you now to excite toward God the one whom +then you aroused to sin." + +She tells him again of her complete absorption in him: "You are the only +one who can make me either sad or happy; you only can be my comforter. +The whole world knows how much I loved you," and she turns with a +half-shuddering reminiscence to the day she became a nun. "It was for +you, not for God--that sacrifice. From God I can look for no reward; +consider, then, how vain my trial, if by it I win nothing from you"; and +the woman for sixteen years a nun calls God--and remember that hers was +the God of mediæval superstition--to witness that she would have +followed Abelard, or gone before him, if she had seen him hastening to +hell. + +Her letters evidently moved the monk, for his replies were full of good +advice, and under the surface gave some indications of tender regard. +But the affection that we find is colorless and formal. No word of a +husband's gentleness, nor warmth of phrase, not a hint that he cherishes +happy memories of the old days of their union. They are the letters of +an old man, absorbed in himself, worn by the world, who has no capacity +for anything deeper than kind feeling. He calls her his sister, once +dear in the world, now dearer in Christ, begs her prayers for him living +and dead, and entreats that whenever he may die she will have his body +carried to her abbey, that the constant sight of his grave may move her +and her spiritual daughters to pray for his salvation. He gulps down the +_Lachrima Christi_ of her exquisite love as if it were the small beer of +pietistic commonplace, and then looks disappointed to find that it was +not. For he ignores the soul of her letters, and composes complacent +treatises of twelfth-century ecclesiastical discipline designed to +subject her to a mechanical and lifeless asceticism. + +Heloise in answer reproaches him for his talk of death, like a brave +heart bidding him not by anticipation suffer before his time. The +knowledge of her husband's unhappiness is a renewed affliction, and she +owns that there is nothing but sorrow in her life. Like a daring +Titaness, she exclaims against God's administration of his world: + + "While we lived in sin, he indulged us; when we married, he + forced us to separate. Let his other creatures rejoice and + count themselves safe from the inclement clemency of the God + whom I almost dare to call cruel to me in every way. They are + safe, for upon me he has used up all the weapons of his + wrath, so that he has none with which to rage at others; nor, + if any remained, could he find a place in me wherein to + strike them." + +After sixteen years' silence, this woman has broken into speech, and +unmasked confessions of her inner spirit will no longer be restrained. +She goes on as if carried by cyclone winds; she tells her far-off lover +what few nuns under terror of eternal death can ever have brought +themselves to confide to their confessors in scarcely audible whisper. +She calls up the scenes of their union; she confesses that visions of +that life are with her constantly: she bemoans the thoughts which "haunt +me sometimes, even at the holy mass." She was no calm northern woman; +she had nothing of the temperament that Shakespeare compared to an +icicle + + "That's curdied by the frost from purest snow, + And hangs on Dian's temple"; + +she was made to walk with love, under summer moonlight,--no sister of +Percivale, to forget thwarted desire in prayer beneath the frosty stars +of winter. + +"Help me," cries this victim of a gloomy religion, "for I do not find +how by penance to appease God, whom I still accuse of the greatest +cruelty. It is easy to confess and to torture the body; it is hard to +tear the soul from its desires. My mind keeps the same wish for sin; so +sweet was our happiness that I cannot be sorry for it. Most wretched +life, if I have endured so much in vain, destined to have no recompense +hereafter." + +Thus Heloise the woman and Heloise the abbess fight out the old problem +whether the training of life is by the use of its gifts, or by the +rejection of them; shall we play the full organ, or only the harsh reed +stops? The church taught her to condemn what nature taught her to +justify. The religious authority of all the dark ages confronted this +woman's instincts of life, and--to her honor--it could not quell them. +Yet conceive her wretchedness and the anguish of her mental struggle, +living as she did in the middle of Catholic mediævalism. When, after a +scanty rest, she left her cell at midnight, this artificial conscience +attended her to the long chapel service that followed, pointed at the +austere pages over which she bent in the study when the service was +over, kept calling her hypocrite as she chided and instructed the nuns +whom she is said to have ruled so wisely, snatched food and wine from +her hungry lips, with fast, pitiless lashing wielded the whip of +penance, haunted her sleep with its stern face. Yet the pleasures of +time were still honorable to her; the world _was_ good; her love _had_ +been beautiful; if her conscience prayed forgiveness for it, her heart +sang, because she had known it. + +To hear this bewildered voice crying to Abelard for his prayers because +in spite of the world's praise of her virtue she thinks herself a +hypocrite,--Oh, my only one, pray for me, for I cannot be sorry that we +loved--to hear this makes one glad that the time has passed for +identifying the devil with the world's laughter, and God with its +sobbing. + +She lived on as abbess of the Paraclete for twenty-one years after she +buried her husband. We cannot believe that as one set of feelings cooled +with age, her spiritual emotions grew more impulsive. In the +twenty-eight years which followed her last letter to Abelard, she no +doubt more and more mechanically went through the life of monastic duty, +her intellectual accord with the church leading her to an increasingly +calm performance of routine piety, her heart more and more silent--but +never dead. We fancy its main utterance an anticipation of that cry of +Clough's--"Submit, submit." Thus kindling with no spiritual ardor--(she +once confessed that her religious ambition did not rise so high as to +wish a crown of victory, or to have God's strength made perfect in her +weakness), she lived out her faithful and successful life as abbess of +the Paraclete, comforted--we may hope--by a continuance of the +intellectual consolations of her youth, and honored, as we know, by +church and world. If imaginary biography is ever safe we may employ it +here, and fancy that when she came to die she repeated what she had said +years before, that she should be quite content to be given just a corner +in heaven. I think as she lay waiting to be received there, she dreamed +of looking up from it, not at the ineffable glory, but at one human face +stationed highest among the masters in divine philosophy. Highest among +the masters! Less than a hundred and fifty years later, the great poem +of mediævalism forgot to give Abelard a place even among the penitents +of purgatory, and to-day except by special students he is remembered +only as Heloise's unworthy lover. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] _Petri Abælardi Historia Calamitatum. Petri Abælardi et Heloissæ +Epistolæ._ + +[14] _Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit_, iii., 14-34. + + + + +[Decoration] + +APPENDIX. + + +At the suggestion of the publishers the following brief notices of some +of the works and authors mentioned in these essays are added for +convenience of reference. + + +ÆTHIOPICA, the oldest and most famous of the Greek romances. It narrates +the loves of Theagenes and Charicleia, and was written in his youth by +Heliodorus of Emesa, who flourished about the end of the fourth century, +and died as Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. + + +ALEXANDER, or as he is termed in some MSS. the Wild Alexander. A +South-German poet of the thirteenth century. Of his life scarcely +anything is known. + + +CHRESTIEN DE TROYES, a French trouvère, who flourished in the second +half of the twelfth century. He may be regarded as the popularizer in +the French form of the cycle of tales that centre about the Round Table. +The most important of his poems is the one bearing the title, _Perceval +le Gallois_ or _Li Contes del Graal_. + + +COMTE DE CHAMPAGNE.--See Thibaut. + + +ARNAUD DANIEL, a Provençal poet, who died about 1189. He was +distinguished for the complicated character of his versification, and in +particular was the inventor of the verse called the _sestine_. He lived +for some time at the court of Richard I. of England. Dante in the +twenty-sixth canto of the _Purgatory_ puts him at the head of all the +Provençal poets. He was also highly praised by Petrarch. + + +DAPHNIS AND CHLOE, a Greek pastoral romance, the prototype of all the +pastoral romances which have been written in various languages. Its +composition is usually ascribed to a certain Longus, a Greek sophist, +who flourished about the beginning of the fifth century. + + +FREIDANK, the composer of a Middle High German didactic poem, which +belongs to the first half of the thirteenth century. The name has been +considered by some to be merely allegorical. His work, which was +entitled _Bescheidenheit_, consists of over four thousand verses and +discusses religious, political and social questions. It was an +exceedingly popular work during the Middle Ages. + + +GACES BRULLES, a French trouvère of the early part of the thirteenth +century. He was born in Champagne, but spent a portion of his life in +Brittany. About seventy of his _chansons_ are extant. + + +GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, a German poet who flourished at the end of the +twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. His great work was +the epic entitled _Tristan und Isolde_, continued by others after his +death. This took place somewhere between 1210 and 1220. Gottfried wrote +also many lyric poems. + + +GUILLAUME DE BALAUN (or BALAZUN), a Provençal poet of the twelfth +century. He was the lover of the lady of Joviac, in the Gévaudan. +Alienation having sprung up between them upon account of his assumed or +real indifference, his mistress would not restore him to favor unless he +should agree to extract the nail of the longest finger of his right +hand, and should come and present it to her with a poem composed +expressly for the occasion. The condition was fulfilled. + + +JOHANN HADLAUB, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. His life was +spent mainly in Zurich. His compositions were principally love-songs and +popular songs dealing with the pleasures of autumn and harvest. A statue +was erected to him in Zurich in 1885. + + +HARTMANN VON AUE, a Middle High German, belonging by birth to a noble +Swabian family, was born about 1170, and died between 1210 and 1220. He +wrote _Erec and Enide_, basing it upon the French poem with the same +title of Chrestien de Troyes. Another poem of his belonging also to the +Arthurian cycle is _Iwein_. The most popular of his works with modern +students is _Der arme Heinrich_. The details of its story have been made +known to English readers by Longfellow's _Golden Legend_, which is +founded upon it. Another work of his is entitled _Gregorius vom Stein_. + + +HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN, a German minnesinger, a knight of Thuringia, who +flourished at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth +century. His last years were spent at the court of Meissen. He wrote +many love-songs, many of which owe their existence to those of the +troubadours. + + +HEINRICH VON VELDEKE, a German poet of the twelfth century, who was of a +noble family settled near Maastricht, on the lower Rhine. Besides the +love-songs and other pieces he wrote, he was the composer of the epic of +the _Eneide_, the first poem of the Middle High German epic poetry, +which reached its highest development in the writings of Hartmann von +Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg. + + +HUGO VON TRIMBERG, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. From 1260 to +1309 he was rector of the collegiate school in the Theuerstadt, a suburb +of Bamberg. He is known as the composer of the _Renner_, a didactic +poem, in which the manners and customs of the time are largely depicted, +and the prevailing vices severely censured. + + +JACOPO DA TODI, or JACOPONE, an Italian poet, born about the middle of +the thirteenth century at Todi, in the duchy of Spoleto. He belonged to +the noble family of the Benedetti, began life as an advocate, but, on +account of the sudden accidental death of his wife, devoted himself to a +religious life and entered the order of Franciscans. He wrote many +religious poems in Italian, and also in Latin. To him in particular is +ascribed the composition of the famous _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_. + + +NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, a German lyric poet of the thirteenth century. +He was of a noble Bavarian family, but spent part of his life in +Austria. His poems were written between 1210 and 1240, and are of +special interest for the descriptions they give of the customs of the +times. + + +THIBAUT, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE AND KING OF NAVARRE. He was born at Troyes +in 1201, and died in 1253. He is one of the most noted of the early +French poets. + + +ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN, a Middle High German poet, born about 1200, +and died in 1276. He was the author of the poem entitled _Frauendienst_, +described in this volume, and also of a didactic poem called +_Frauenbuch_. + + +WALTHARIUS ET HILTGUNDE, or simply Waltharius, a Latin poem of the tenth +century in hexameter verse, and consisting of between fourteen hundred +and fifteen hundred lines. Its authorship is unknown. + + +WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, the greatest German poet of the Middle Ages. +He was born about 1160, and died about 1230. He was of a knightly +family, though poor, and much of his life was spent at the courts of +several German princes and emperors. He wrote not only love-poems, but +in the contest that went on between the imperialists and the papacy, he +supported the side of the former in patriotic verses which had no slight +influence upon contemporary opinion. Both for matter and manner he stood +at the head of the poets called minnesingers. + + +WERNHER THE GARDENER, a German poet of the thirteenth century, who +composed, between 1234 and 1250, the story of _Meier Helmbrecht_. +Nothing is known with certainty of his life. + + +WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, a German poet, of noble birth, of the latter +half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. He died +about 1220. His greatest work is the _Parzival_, which was completed +about 1210. It was founded, according to his own statement, partly upon +the _Conte del Graal_ of Chrestien de Troyes, but more particularly upon +the work of a poet whom he calls Kyot, who is supposed by some to be +Guyot de Provins, whose romance of _Perceval_, not extant, is assumed to +be the original of Wolfram's poem. Another of his poems was the +unfinished _Titurel_, which contains the tale of the love of +Schionatulander and Sigune. + +[Decoration] + + + * * * * * + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Spelling and punctuation errors have been repaired. + +Ellipses in poetry have been spaced to preserve appearance of the +original; all other ellipses are standardized. + +Colons after "Liechtenstein" and "Helmbrecht" on Contents page, and +variant punctuation after the same terms in Chapter headings, were +retained. + +P. 21, (cp. Inf., 14, 30; 24, 5) in original "24" was at the end of a +line, and "5" at the beginning of the next, with no punctuation between. + +P. 47 original "midst of his prostestations" changed to "midst of +his protestations." + +P. 76 original "reficient" changed to "reficiant." + +P. 92 original "merry-makings" changed to more frequent "merrymakings." + +P. 93 original "Wezerant. He" changed to "Wezerant.' He" (single quote +added). + +P. 116 Hey[=a], [=a] indicates lower case "a" with macron. (Text version +only). + +P. 132 The change in indentation in the poetry, beginning at "Thou +lookest down," is faithful to the original. + +P. 174 "sister's thin chanting" changed to "sisters' thin chanting." + +P. 184 original "Tristran und Isolde" changed to "Tristan und Isolde." + +P. 187 original "von Lichtenstein" changed to more frequent "von +Liechtenstein." + +The following variant spellings were used in the original equally, +and were retained: god-father and godfather, riband and ribband, +rose-bushes (second use is quoting the first=1 use) and rosebush, +Wendel and Wentel, "Arnaud Daniel" and "Arnaut Daniel," Aethiopica +and Æthiopica, Jacapone and Jacopone, sestine and sestina. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature, by +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE AND *** + +***** This file should be named 37865-8.txt or 37865-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/6/37865/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature + +Author: Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37865] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE AND *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<div class="hugeskip"></div> + +<h1> +STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE +AND LITERATURE</h1> + +<div class="bigskip"></div> +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2><span class="smcap">EDWARD TOMPKINS McLAUGHLIN</span></h2> + +<h4>PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES +IN YALE UNIVERSITY</h4> + +<div class="hugeskip"></div> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 40px;"> +<img src="images/titlepgdeco.png" width="40" height="40" alt="Title page decoration" title="" /> +</div> +<div class="hugeskip"></div> + +<h3>G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS</h3> +<div class="smallskip"></div> + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="publishers"> +<tr><td align="center">NEW YORK</td><td align="center"><span class="gap"> </span></td><td align="center">LONDON</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center">27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET</td><td align="center"><span class="gap"> </span></td><td align="center">24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<div class="medskip"></div> +<h5>The Knickerbocker Press<br /> + +1894</h5> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<div class="center"> +<span class="smcap">Copyright, 1894<br /> +by<br /> +SARAH B. McLAUGHLIN</span><br /> +<br /> +<i>Entered at Stationers' Hall, London</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">By G. P. Putnam's Sons</span><br /> +<br /> +<div class="hugeskip"></div> +Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by<br /> +The Knickerbocker Press, New York<br /> +<span class="smcap">G. P. Putnam's Sons</span><br /> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/toct.png" width="500" height="119" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + + + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="right"><span class="smcap">page</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#introduction"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></a></td><td align="right">v</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#nature"><span class="smcap">The Mediæval Feeling for Nature</span></a></td><td align="right">1</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#vonliechtenstein"><span class="smcap">Ulrich von Liechtenstein: The Memoirs of an old German Gallant</span></a></td><td align="right">34</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#neidhart"><span class="smcap">Neidhart von Reuenthal and his Bavarian Peasants</span></a></td><td align="right">71</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#helmbrecht"><span class="smcap">Meier Helmbrecht: a German Farmer of the Thirteenth Century</span></a></td><td align="right">100</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#childhood"><span class="smcap">Childhood in Mediæval Literature</span></a></td><td align="right">123</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#woman"><span class="smcap">A Mediæval Woman</span></a></td><td align="right">152</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><a href="#appendix"><span class="smcap">Appendix</span></a></td><td align="right">183</td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/brdstow.png" width="200" height="67" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="introduction" id="introduction"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/intrt.png" width="500" height="125" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>INTRODUCTION.</h2> + + +<p>Edward Tompkins McLaughlin, the writer of the essays contained in this +volume, was born at Sharon, Connecticut, on May 28, 1860. He was the son +of the Reverend D. D. T. McLaughlin, a graduate of Yale College of the +class of 1834. His mother's maiden name was Mary Whittlesey Brownell. +She was the daughter of the Reverend Grove L. Brownell, who was settled +for many years over the Congregational church of Cromwell, Connecticut. +Thus it will be seen that the author of this work belonged on both sides +to what Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly called the Brahman caste of New +England.</p> + +<p>At the time of his birth his father was pastor of the Congregational +church of Sharon, Connecticut, but in 1866 left that place for Morris in +the same county. There he remained until 1872 when he gave up parish +duties entirely, and retired to Litchfield, which he thenceforward made +his permanent home.</p> + +<p>With the exception of a short time spent in the Litchfield Academy, the +son was fitted for college almost wholly by his father, who was himself +a finished scholar in Latin and Greek. He entered Yale in the autumn of +1879, and received the degree of A.B. in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span> 1883. From the very beginning +of his university life he was distinguished for his interest in English +literature, and during the entire course of it displayed remarkable +proficiency in the pursuit of that study. To him, before his graduation, +fell the highest honors which the college has to bestow in that +department.</p> + +<p>After receiving his bachelor's degree he remained another year in New +Haven as a graduate student. During that time he devoted himself with +increased ardor to the special branches of study in which from the +outset he had been interested. In the following year he was made tutor +in English. This position he held until 1890, when he was appointed +assistant professor of the same subject. At the meeting of the +Corporation of the University in May, 1893, he was elected by it to the +chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. Happily married to a wife of +congenial tastes, who speedily learned to sympathize with him in the +studies which he had made peculiarly his own, he had every reason to +expect a long career of usefulness, which would be attended with +distinction to himself and would confer distinction upon the institution +with which he was connected. But his health had never been vigorous, and +in the very summer vacation following his appointment a fever, which +came upon him almost without warning, and which seemed at first of +slight importance, carried him off after an illness that lasted little +more than a week. He died on the 25th of July, 1893, at the age of +thirty-three. He lies buried at Litchfield.</p> + +<p>Such is a brief sketch of the life of the author of this volume. He had +at the time of his death many projects on hand, some partly carried out, +some only in contemplation. In 1893 he had edited a volume of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span> +selections from English writers under the title of <i>Literary Criticism +for Students</i>; and since his death a school-edition of Marlowe's <i>Edward +II.</i>, prepared by him, but left mainly in manuscript, has come from the +press. But these were in a measure tasks imposed upon him by the needs +of students, and not those undertaken in consequence of his own +inclinations. During the last year of his life, however, he had been +devoting himself to the preparation for publication of the following +essays. He had long been a student of mediæval literature, not merely of +that found in the English tongue, but of the much fuller and more varied +work that had been produced at an early period on the continent. The +writers of France, of Germany, and of Italy, belonging to that period, +were in truth so familiar to him that he was sometimes disposed to +assume that general acquaintance with them on the part of others which +it is the fortune of but few to possess. Some results of this study he +now set about putting into permanent form. The first rough draft of the +essays here printed had been finished when the fatal illness fell upon +him that carried him away.</p> + +<p>There is no intention of apologizing either for the matter or the manner +of the pieces contained in this volume. They are in no need of it, and +in any event what is published must stand or fall upon its own merits. +Yet it is the barest justice to the author of these essays to state that +not in a single instance do they represent the final form they would +have assumed, had he lived to review and revise the first sketches he +made. In the case of two of them, which were nearest to the condition in +which they were ultimately to appear, evidences of their incompleteness +in his own eyes are plainly seen in the manuscripts. Against particular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> +passages and sometimes whole paragraphs there were marginal notes, +indicating that the expression was to undergo alteration of various +kinds. In several instances a place was marked for the insertion of a +transition paragraph which had apparently never been written out, though +its character was suggested. These, of course, had all to be +disregarded. The condition of things, furthermore, was much worse with +the four which had not been so fully completed as the two just +mentioned. In the case of these the matter had to be collected and +pieced together, at no slight expenditure of time and trouble, from +scattered leaves of manuscript, in which it was not always easy to trace +out the exact order.</p> + +<p>Unfortunately, one essay, intended to be the longest and most important +of all, could not be included in this volume. Professor McLaughlin had +been for many years an ardent admirer of Dante. To a study of the early +life of the great Italian poet he had devoted years of patient research. +It was the one subject in which he had the deepest interest, and upon +which he had expended the most labor, and he purposed to make the essay +dealing with it the principal piece in the work he was preparing. But, +as was not unnatural, it was the one essay which needed most the +revising hand of its composer. The gaps in it were too numerous and +important to justify its insertion in the unfinished condition in which +it existed, and this particular piece, upon which the author himself set +most store, has been reluctantly laid aside.</p> + +<p>But while it is simple justice to state the facts just given, it must +not be inferred that these essays, unfinished and even fragmentary as +they might have seemed to the writer, will so appear to the reader. Few +there<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span> will be who will detect that any part of them has failed to +receive the full attention to which it is entitled. Nor is it likely, +indeed, that the sentiments expressed in these essays would have +undergone any material modification, whatever changes might have been +made in the manner in which they were set forth. Doubtless some of the +points now found in them would have been amplified, others would have +been retrenched. Other views again, to which no allusion is made here, +would have been introduced. Still, so complete in themselves are the +essays in most particulars, that no thought of their incompleteness +would have arrested the attention of any save the smallest possible +number of readers, had not the condition in which they were left been +mentioned in this introduction.</p> + +<p>But even had these essays needed much more than they do the revising +hand of the author, none the less cordially would they have been +received by those who were familiar with his personal presence. +Especially is this true of students possessed of literary taste, who +have been under his instruction, and it is largely in compliance with +their wishes that the publication of this volume was determined upon. +For as a teacher Professor McLaughlin, though still young, had attained +eminence. He had in particular the rare quality of inspiring those under +him with the same zeal for learning and the same love of literature that +animated himself.</p> + +<p>The teacher of English, it must be confessed, has set before him a task +of special difficulty. In the case of other tongues the business of +translation, with the verbal and grammatical investigation implied by +it, must always constitute the principal part of the work of preparation +for the class-room; and the skill and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span> knowledge with which it is +performed will of necessity be the main element in testing the +proficiency and success of the student. But in the case of English this +main part of the usual preparation has been reduced to a minimum. The +business has already been done at the pupil's hands. He knows, at least +after a fashion, the meaning of the words, even if he does not always +comprehend the meaning of the phrase or sentence as a whole in which +they are found. The hard task is, therefore, given the teacher of +English of starting in his instruction at the point where the teacher of +other languages ends. He is, furthermore, to make his subject one of +pleasure and profit to that select body of students, who are eager to +gain from the pursuit of it all the benefit possible. He is at the same +time expected to exact some degree of labor from those who, whether by +their own fault or the fault of others, have no interest in this +particular subject, if indeed they have interest in any subject +whatever. The temptation naturally presents itself to sacrifice the +former class to the latter. Especially does this appeal to instructors +who are deficient in the literary sense, or who possessing it, lack the +ability to arouse it in those under them. The easy process is resorted +to of turning the study into one of a purely linguistic character, in +which the discussion of words will take the place of the discussion of +literature. This is a cheap though convenient method for the teacher to +evade the real work he is called upon to perform, and while it may be +followed by some incidental advantages, it is almost in the nature of a +crime against letters to associate in the minds of young men, at the +most impressionable period of their lives, the writings of a great +author with a drill that is mainly verbal or philological.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was the rare fortune of Professor McLaughlin that he solved this +problem, presented to every instructor in English, with a felicity that +does not fall often to the lot of those engaged in the same occupation. +It was not so much in imparting knowledge that his peculiar distinction +lay; it was in his success in inspiring interest in the subject and zeal +for its prosecution. It is, therefore, more especially to those who have +been under his teaching that this little volume is addressed as a +memorial of one to whom many will acknowledge is due the first bent +their minds received to the study and appreciation of what is best and +highest in literature. What its author would have accomplished with his +remarkable powers of acquisition and assimilation, had he lived to carry +out and perfect plans which he had in contemplation, it is idle to +conjecture; and the world, which cares but little for what is actually +done in the field in which he was largely working, cannot be expected to +concern itself with that which was never more than projected. But there +are some to whom the result of his labors, shown in this volume, will +prove of interest for what it is; while to those who have known him +personally, it will, even in its comparatively imperfect state, furnish +a suggestive intimation of what might have been.</p> + +<div class="signature"> +<span class="smcap">T. R. Lounsbury</span><br /></div> + +<p><span class="smcap">Yale University</span>,<br /> +March 22, 1894.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/intrb.png" width="200" height="54" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>MEDIÆVAL LIFE AND LITERATURE</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="nature" id="nature"></a>THE MEDIÆVAL FEELING FOR NATURE.</h2> + + +<p>On the 26th April, 1335, Mt. Ventoux, near Avignon, was the scene of a +remarkable occurrence. Petrarch was the hero, and on the evening of that +day, while the impression was yet strong upon him, he wrote an account +of it to a friend. The incident was nothing less than climbing a +mountain for æsthetic gratification. That he cared to do it showed that +Petrarch was on the outskirts of mediævalism.</p> + +<p>The narrative is so interesting that I may translate a part of it; for +the great humanist's letters are inaccessible to general readers. He +says that he had thought of climbing the mountain for many years, since +he had known the country from early boyhood, and the great mass of rocky +cliff, entirely rugged and almost inaccessible, was constantly and +everywhere visible. He took with him his brother and two servants. As +they were starting on the ascent, they fell in with an aged shepherd, +who tried to dissuade them. Fifty years before he had climbed to the +summit, moved by a boyish impulse—and he supposed himself the only one +who had ever done it; his recollections<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span> were full of awe and terror. +But the poet pressed on, beguiling the weariness, which at times +amounted almost to exhaustion, by moralizing on the labor as a type of +spiritual attainments. At the summit of the highest peak, "moved deeply +at first by that vast spectacle, and affected by the unusual lightness +of the air, I stood as if overwhelmed. I looked, and under my feet I saw +the clouds." His thoughts turned to the classical myths, and the history +of his beloved Italy. He recalled that ten years before, on that same +day, he had left Bologna and his studies. How many changes in his ways. +His wrong loves—he loved them no longer, or rather he no longer liked +to love them. He thought of his future.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Thus rejoicing in what I had gained, regretful of my weakness, +and pitying the common instability of human affections, +I seemed to forget where I was and why I had come. At last I +turned to the occasion of my expedition. The sinking sun and +lengthening shadows admonished me that the hour of departure +was at hand, and, as if started from sleep, I turned around +and looked to the west. The Pyrenees—the eye could not +reach so far, but I saw the mountains of Lyonnais distinctly, and +the sea by Marseilles; the Rhone, too, was there before me. +Observing these closely, now thinking on the things of earth, +and again, as if I had done with the body, lifting my mind on +high, it occurred to me to take out the copy of St. Augustine's +<i>Confessions</i> that I always kept with me; a little volume, but +of unlimited value and charm. And I call God to witness that +the first words on which I cast mine eyes were these: 'Men go +to wonder at the heights of mountains, the ocean floods, rivers' +long courses, ocean's immensity, the revolutions of the stars,—and +of themselves they have no care!' My brother asked me +what was the matter. I bade him not disturb me. I closed the +book, angry with myself for not ceasing to admire things of +earth, instead of remembering that the human soul is beyond +comparison the subject for admiration. Once and again, as I +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>descended, I gazed back, and the lofty summit of the mountain +seemed to me scarcely a cubit high, compared with the sublime +dignity of man."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></p></blockquote> + +<p>In these sentences we find the new life and the old in the same mind. +Such an action would have been impossible for a genuine son of the +middle ages, but could Petrarch stand on a mountain top to-day, such an +outcome of it would be equally impossible. His feeling for nature was +intense even to a sense of the charm of ruggedness in hills, as +Burckhardt, who refers to this letter in his work on <i>The Italian +Renaissance</i>, shows by ample quotations; but the intense lover of nature +in the nineteenth century, though his ethical sense be as deep as +Wordsworth's, finds a different influence in such a scene. Indeed, read +in Wordsworth himself, the modern contrast:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in their silent faces could he read<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unutterable love. Sound needed none,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All melted into him; they swallowed up<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His animal being, in them did he live,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And by them did he live: they were his life.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In such access of mind, in such high hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of visitation from the living God,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rapt into still communion, that transcends<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The imperfect offices of prayer and praise."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>How far apart is the piety of the two poets, how +different their absorption. This identification of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +human mood with Nature, and the spiritual elation +that arises from the union, is thoroughly characteristic +of the present century. Wordsworth's peculiar beauty, +as Hartley Coleridge told Caroline Fox, "consisted in +viewing things as amongst them, mixing himself up in +everything that he mentions, so that you admire the +man in the thing, the involved man." And Hartley's +inspired father uttered a great criticism on the modern +feeling for nature, when in the <i>Ode on Dejection</i> he +cried,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, lady, we receive but what we give,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in our life alone doth nature live."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>No literary contemporaries were ever more apart than Wordsworth and +Byron, yet <i>Childe Harold</i> has the same note:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I live not in myself, but I become<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Portion of that around me; and to me<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>High mountains are a feeling</i>.<br /></span> +<span class="i0"> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span>the soul can flee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of ocean, or the stars, mingle and not in vain."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We discover the same sentiment, more delicately held, in Keats, as in +some of his sayings about flowers, and Shelley, speaking of the longing +for a response to one's own nature, says:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The discovery of its antitype, this is the invisible and unattainable +point to which love tends.... Hence in solitude, +or in that state when we are surrounded by human beings, and +yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, and the +grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motions of the very +leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is found a secret correspondence +with our heart, that awakens the spirits to a dance +of breathless rapture, and brings tears of mysterious tenderness +to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic rapture, or the +voice of one beloved singing to you alone."</p></blockquote> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p><p>Yet this spirit, with which our later poetry is almost everywhere +touched, "this mysterious analogy between human emotions and the +phenomena of the world without us," as von Humboldt expresses it, in its +present comprehensiveness is new to literature. To feel for mountains, +forests, or the ocean, with mingled awe, love, and ecstasy, seems so +natural to us, that we can hardly realize that Gray was striking a novel +and significant chord when he wrote at the Grande Chartreuse, "One of +the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... +Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with +religion and poetry."</p> + +<p>In Petrarch's letter we observe the deficiency in absorbing enthusiasm +for the grander forms of nature, as well as his sense of the isolation +of such sentiment from true spiritual life. Yet this letter is the most +significant indication which we possess from the middle ages of a +capacity for enjoying the sublimity of heights. In <i>Præterita</i>, Ruskin, +while describing his eagerness at the first sight of the Alps, as a boy, +has written two or three sentences that we may employ to illustrate the +contrast between Petrarch and his predecessors:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Till Rousseau's time there had been no 'sentimental' love of nature ... +St. Bernard of La Fontaine, looking out to Mont Blanc with his child's +eyes, sees above Mont Blanc the Madonna; St. Bernard of Talloires, not +the Lake of Annecy, but the dead between Martigny and Aosta. But for me, +the Alps and their people were alike beautiful in their snow, and their +humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, sight of any +thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any spirits in heaven but the +clouds." +</p></blockquote> + +<p>Others, beside the Bernards, men from whose culture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> and intelligence we +should expect fine appreciation, felt nothing august or inspiring in the +material world. So far as we have any record, the fourteenth-century +laureate was the first of the moderns to climb a mountain for the +æsthetic pleasure of the view. Burckhardt's suggestion that this honor +belongs to Dante, on the strength of a passage in the fourth canto of +the <i>Purgatory</i>, is surely not tenable; for the top of Bismantova +possessed a citadel in Dante's time to which business may easily have +called him. All through the middle ages, the lofty elevations between +central Europe and Italy were constantly being crossed. The most +cultivated men were going back and forth as couriers on business of the +Church, and the political relations, especially between Italy and +Germany, kept up a continual stream of travel. Yet one recalls no lines +in any mediæval poem that describe or express sensations of the least +interest concerning the sights that have bowed the strongest souls of +our era, that have been felt by thousands, and put into words by so many +poets.</p> + +<p>There is, indeed, in the beginning of a passage from a famous scholar, +John of Salisbury, an apparent exception to this strange indifference; +but a few clauses correct the hasty judgment. Writing from Lombardy, he +explained why he could not send a letter from the Great St. Bernard: "I +have been on the mount of Jove: on the one hand looking up to the heaven +of the mountains; on the other, shuddering at the hell of the valleys; +feeling myself so much nearer to heaven that I was more sure that my +prayer would be heard." Yet this was due to no rapture of soul, +for—"Lord, I said, restore me to my brethren, that they come not into +this place of torment." He goes on to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> specify the perils of ice, +precipice, and cold, and nothing disturbs him so much as that his ink +was frozen. But there is not a suggestion of anything worth looking at. +Even Cæsar, as von Humboldt reminds us, composed a rhetorical treatise +while crossing the Alps. But the poet of Vaucluse did climb a mountain +for the love of the view, and the very fact that his æsthetic attention +was distracted by ethical introspection is an indication of that serious +sensibility which was destined to become such an essential element in +our feeling for nature; what for every Wordsworthian is summed up in the +second mood of <i>Tintern Abbey</i>.</p> + +<p>This incapacity for appreciating mountainous sublimity involved a +blindness to the rugged and picturesque on smaller scales. In minor +chords, and in combinations of tone superficially discordant, we have +learned to recognize some of nature's richest harmonies; this is one of +our marks of development. Closely linked, too, with this first of modern +passions for nature, indeed unified with it by the qualities of strength +and massiveness, is our feeling for the ocean and great woods.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is a rapture on the lonely shore:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is society where none intrudes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the deep sea, and music in its roar."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Even deeper than the idea of companionship here is the mystical sense of +absorption into that physical world which seems the very dwelling-place +of the infinite soul, which finds one of its most remarkable +manifestations in an intense and almost defiant sensation of human +transitoriness and unimportance, and which is frequently blended with +very exultation in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> reflection that presently we ourselves shall be +unified forever with the unconscious life that stretches out before us:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Rolled round in earth's diurnal course<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With rocks, and stones, and trees."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There is a strange fascination to the modern mind, in presence of the +majesties of nature, in this thought of humanity's return to the +earth-mother. Innumerable generations have come home to her, as many or +more are to be born that they may follow them, and she remains. Perhaps +we are never so serenely conscious of self, as in these rare moments +when we bear without a pang the thought of losing personal identity. +There is something more here than the certainty of at least +materialistic immortality, and the impression of infinite repose and +beauty.</p> + +<p>The projection of our immediate sensation into the long future silence +suffuses nature with pantheistic life, until the eager and buoyant +thrills of spiritual realization render one grateful to have been +permitted to gain such a sensation at what seems the trivial cost of +feeling oneself the mere creature of a day. Such a mood as this +certainly comes but seldom, but probably every one who has ever +experienced any imaginative sensibility to a grand landscape will recall +a heightened sensation that is beyond description.<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a></p> + +<p>But still stranger than the failure to catch the finer +suggestions in the more strenuous forms of nature, is +the way in which such sights are ignored. In <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +southern Europe, mountains, storms, rocks, the ocean, +are scarcely ever described, even as objects of awe or +terror. When in the course of a story they have to +be mentioned, the treatment is brief and matter of +fact. Heinrich von Veldeke in his famous epic, makes +nothing of his necessary introduction of a storm at sea, +nor does Gottfried, or indeed any one of this whole +period.</p> + +<p><i>Gudrun</i>, that epic of the people which deserves to stand near the more +famous <i>Niebelungen Lied</i>, treats constantly of the ocean, yet never +with any feeling except dread of shipwreck. This poem, however, shows a +more northern tone in one or two descriptions of winter, that are at +least elaborated. In the scene, for instance, when Herwig and Ortwin +arrive at the shore where Hildeburg and Gudrun, almost naked, are +washing the clothes for their cruel mistress, we find some realistic +touches, such as their trembling before the March wind, in which their +hair was streaming as they toiled on the beach, while before them the +sea was full of cakes of ice that had broken up under the early spring. +In another connection, too, the poet compares something to a thick +snowstorm, driven by mountain winds. The sense of fitness in a +sympathetic natural environment for the human action, that has been so +generally regarded in literature, as by Shakespeare, is indeed +occasionally found in mediæval poetry; so in an interesting French +romance that relates the trials of a heroine who barely escapes with her +life, after the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> loss of everything dear: "The lady is in the wood and +bitterly she wails. She hears the wolves howl, and the screech-owls cry; +it lightens terribly, and the thunder is heavy, rain, hail, and +wind—'tis wild for a lady all alone."</p> + +<p>Exceptions occur now and then. Dante, for example, was impressed by the +mountains; no readers of the <i>Purgatory</i> need to be reminded of his +experience in climbing them. The setting for a mood of unrealized love +in one of his lyrics is in winter, among the whitened hills: "He wooed +the lady in a lovely grassy meadow, surrounded by lofty hills." But the +arbitrary verbal repetitions of the <i>sestina</i> modify the original face +of the image of the mountains towering about the lover's plain, and the +pensive beauty of the whole poem may be connected with an allegory. But +I believe that even in Dante we never catch the sense of exultation in +the earth's power and majesty.</p> + +<p>Our modern feeling for forests is not only at times sombre and +oppressive; we also derive a sense of sublime composure from them. This +latter sentiment was hardly shared by the mediævals. Dante was only +following earlier poets when he located the opening of Hell by a gloomy +wood, and his repeated metaphor of life as a forest, "confusing," +"gloomy," and "dark," accords with the feeling of his age. He would not +have appreciated Chateaubriand. He has left us, however, a rare and +interesting reference to the soughing in the pines on the Adriatic, +which shows how well his ear could interpret its solemn beauty. The +mystical apple-tree, moreover, near the close of the <i>Purgatory</i>, whose +blossoms are so exquisitely defined, indirectly reminds us how +exceptional is a mention of fruit trees in flower. Yet the Provençal, +French, and German<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> lyrics constantly begin with the joyousness of +spring, and the happy contrast from the season that destroys flowers and +foliage. Nothing is more conventional than these nature preludes. Over +and over, till we close our books impatiently, we hear reiterations of +the charm of spring and summer. There is a slender kind of grace and +sincerity that would lend interest to many of these, if they had come +down by themselves; but they lie together in books in wearisome +uniformity. A dandelion in April is much prettier than the dandelions in +June. These preludes are usually in keeping with the love-phrases that +follow, cold and imitative. For poets thought and felt in exterior +generalities, rather than in detachment and inner consciousness. Their +typical landscape may be seen in a passage from Gottfried von +Strassburg,—one of Germany's most brilliant poets—where Tristan and +Isolde have fled to the forest grotto, in fear of King Mark. The grotto +is fitted up luxuriously, in keeping with the temper of the entire poem, +but since it is in the wilderness, far away from roads or paths, in a +description of its surroundings we might certainly look for a sense of +the picturesque. But so far from caring for the wild and rugged, +Gottfried does not even like a quiet woodland simplicity.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Above the entrance stood three broad lindens, no more; +but below, stretching down the slope, were innumerable trees +that hid the retreat. On one side was a level stretch where a +fountain flowed, a fresh, cool stream, clearer than the sun. +Above it, too, stood three beautiful shady lindens that shielded +the spring from rain and the sun. Bright blossoms and green +grass struggled with each other sweetly on the field. One +caught also the delightful songs of birds which sang more delightfully +there than anywhere else. Eye and ear each had its +pleasure, there was shade and sun, air and breezes soft and +pleasing."</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p> + +<p>He goes on to describe the lovers, in a passage from which I translate +the opening:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When they waked and when they slept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Side by side they ever kept.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the morning o'er the dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Softly to the field they drew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where, beside the little pool,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flowers and grass were dewy cool.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the cool fields pleased them well,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pleased them, too, their love to tell,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Straying idly thro' the glade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hearing music, as they strayed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweetly sang the birds, and then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In their walk they turned again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the cool brook rippled by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Listening to the melody,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As it flowed and as it went:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where across the field it bent,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There they sat them down to hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Resting there, its murmur clear.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And until the sunshine blazed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the rivulet they gazed.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These lines are characteristic of Gottfried, even to the lingering +verbal repetition, and the picture certainly is pretty, as is the whole +account of the lovers' life that follows. Nothing in early German +literature comes closer to refined modern sensuousness than Gottfried's +best passages; there is a dreamy passion in them, and sometimes they +flash. His rich voluptuous strain has more of the poet than the +free-liver, and his general tone is curiously modern. It would be a +showy phrase to call his <i>Tristan</i> the <i>Don Juan</i> of the middle ages, +for the poems are very dissimilar, yet it is safe to say that we think +of Byron as we read him. Contrast these representative poets of the +thirteenth and nineteenth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> centuries in this matter of their feeling for +nature. For once among German settings we have a wild scene. But we +observe how studiously it is modified into the conventional meadow, with +trees in uniform little groups, a grassy field is sprinkled with +flowers, there is a spring, and the little stream that escapes from it +instead of tumbling down over a rocky bed into a glen, flows across the +field. Gottfried mentions mountains and rocks that lie round about, only +to point out that they are types of the difficulties and perils to be +undergone before reaching love's shrine. The almost inaccessible retreat +was necessary as a shelter for the fugitives from Mark's court; the poet +has done his best to obliterate the reality. If we turn to Byron, and +look for instance at that incomparable passage in which he relates the +early love of Juan and Haidee, we observe where he voluntarily places +his lovers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With cliffs above and a broad sandy shore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guarded by shoals and rocks as by a host,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A better welcome to the tempest-tost;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And rarely ceased the haughty billows' roar."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And thus they wandered forth, and hand in hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over the shining pebbles and the shells,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glided along the smooth and hardened sand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in the worn and wild receptacles<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worked by the storms, yet worked as it were planned,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They turned to rest; and each clasped by an arm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And, to pass over the description of sky, sea, moon, and starlight, that +follows, as elements in the nature-setting, notice the scene where Juan +is sleeping:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The lady watched her lover, and that hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Love's, and Night's, and Ocean's solitude,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'erflowed her soul with their united power,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the barren sand and rocks so rude,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She and her wave-worn love had made their bower."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It would be easy to parallel these two situations; the older by no means +ends with the middle ages, for Eden's "blissful bower" is no exception +in modern poetry before the romantic age: while in our own century +counterparts to this conception of untrained and strenuous natural +surroundings for even the happiest of emotions will occur to every +one.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> The idle triteness in those inevitable scenes of spring, was +manifest to some of the poets themselves. So the Comte de Champagne +declares foliage and flowers of no service to poets, except for rhyming +and to amuse commonplace people. The great Wolfram himself derides the +conventionality of all romance narratives falling in spring and early +summer:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Arthur is the man of May;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each event in every lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Happened or at Whitsuntide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or when the May was blooming wide.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And Uhland cites from the lives of the troubadours +the contemporaneous criticism upon a minor poet of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +the twelfth century, who wrote in the old style about +leaves, and flowers, and the song of birds,—nothing +of any account. We may recollect that such criticisms +go far back of the middle ages: Horace glances at his +contemporaries' conventional descriptions of a stream +hastening through pleasant fields.</p> + +<p>In the widely popular romances of Enid we find illustrations of Welsh, +French, and German treatment in the hands of leading authors, and there +is one point in the narrative where we may compare their feeling for the +natural environment. Readers of Tennyson will recall the passage in the +wandering, where, after one of Geraint's struggles with bandits, he +comes upon a lad carrying provisions. Chrestien's treatment of the +episode is clear and straightforward; the youth and two comrades are +taking cheese, cakes, and wine to the count's meadows for the haymakers. +The young man notices the travellers' worn appearance, and invites them +to sit down "in this fair meadow, under these ironwood trees," to rest +and eat.</p> + +<p>Hartmann von Aue (whose paraphrase of the French poem is, by the way, +far from the merit of his <i>Iwein</i>) narrates the incident in the same +manner, omitting the poetically specific touches of the haymaking, and +the shady spot in the field; but characteristically inserting some +courteous concern on the part of the young man, for the comfort of Enid. +But if we turn to the <i>Mabinogion</i> we come upon something very +different:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"And early in the day they left the wood, and they came to +an open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers +mowing the meadows; and there was a river before them, and +the horses bent down and drank the water. And they went up +out of the river by a lofty steep, and there they met a slender +stripling with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that there +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>was something in the satchel, but they knew not what it was. +And he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a bowl on +the mouth of the pitcher."</p></blockquote> + +<p>How charming it is, even to the lovely touch of color. We know here that +the unremembered writer saw nature and cared for it as we do. Indeed, +this mediæval Welshman satisfies us quite as well as does even +Tennyson's transcript:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So through the green gloom of the wood they passed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And issuing under open heavens beheld<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little town with towers, upon a rock:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And down a rocky pathway from the place<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bare victual for the mowers."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There we have a simplicity treated with Tennysonian artifice, which +"victual" does not succeed in correcting; beautiful in its way, though +its way is perhaps not so fine as the prose. Yet we notice the modern +spirit in the appreciation of the "brown wild" as well as the meadow, +and out of the more general and evasive "steep" is developed the +picturesque "rocky pathway."</p> + +<p>Except for the interest in establishing these forms of +nature-appreciation from such older and more original sources, we might +have satisfied ourselves with illustrations of them from Chaucer's early +poems, where his descriptions are almost wholly derivative. His feeling +for "the smale, softe, swote gras," that was sweetly embroidered with +flowers; the earth's joyous oblivion of the cold, in her enthusiasm of +May; his constant delight in the "smale foules," and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> like, are +purely conventional, though the unction with which he writes shows his +real enjoyment. There are touches in Chaucer, however, that we miss in +his romance predecessors, such as his eye for delicate effects—most +interesting as marking the growth of accurate observation and sensitive +rendering, like the description of twilight in <i>Troylus and Creyseyde</i>, +when</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"White thynges wexen dymme and donne<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For lakke of lyght,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or the graceful illustration in the same poem of a sudden troubling of +one's mood:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"But right as when the sonne shyneth brighte<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And that a cloude is put with wynde to flyght,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which overspret the sonne, as for a space,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A cloudy thought gan through his soule pace."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such a touch makes us feel how modern he is. Yet he does not love the +picturesque. Under the influence of a Breton lay, he writes in the +loveliest of all his tales, of the rugged sea-coast on whose high bank +Dorigen and her friends used to walk (since "stood hire castel faste by +the see") and look down upon "the grisly rokkes blake," which, in her +apprehension for her lord's safe return, she would call "these grisly, +feendly rokkes blake." But we feel that even had Arviragus been at her +side she would never have regarded the coast as we should regard it. +Still we observe the advance in observation and literary expression. In +the <i>Knight's Tale</i>, the wild picturesque is employed again to connote +the terrible, but no poet, from Statius to Boccaccio, his guides in the +passage,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> had written such lines as his setting for the temple of the +God of War:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"First on the wal was peynted a forest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In which there dwelleth neither man nor best,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With knotty, knarry, bareyne trees olde<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to biholde,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In which ther ran a rumbel and a swough,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though a storm sholde bresten every bough."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Nothing even in <i>Childe Roland</i> sketches desolating natural effects with +more power. Yet Chaucer had a superior, in the sympathetic eye and +adequate expression for the stern and stormy phases of nature, in a +countryman of whom perhaps he never heard. We do not know the name of +the author of <i>Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knyght</i>. But the poem marks on +the whole the noblest conception in our literature before Spenser. It +possesses moral dignity, romantic interest, simplicity, and directness, +united with deep seriousness of style, creative imagination in dealing +both with character and with nature. Chaucer wrote nothing so spiritual, +though much of course more artistic and poetically valuable. In regard +to this one matter of the interpretation of nature, it would be +difficult to point out passages in the whole range of mediæval +literature so fine and so remarkable as such descriptions as follow, of +the northern winter scenes through which Gawayn passed on his weird +mission.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A forest full deep, and wild to a wonder,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High hills on each side, and crowded woods under,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of oaks hoar and huge, a hundred together.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hazel and hawthorne were grown altogether<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everywhere coated by moss ragged, rough;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Many birds on bare branches, unhappy enough;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That piteously piped there, for pain of the cold.<br /></span></div> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +<div class="stanza"><span class="i0">Wondrous fair was the earth, for the frost lay thereby;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the mist ruddy gleams the sun cast, as on high<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He coasted full clearly the clouds of the sky.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">They beat along banks where the branches are bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They climbed along cliffs where clingeth the cold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The clouds yet held up, but 'twas ugly beneath.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mist lowered on the moor, dissolved on the mountains.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each hill had a hat, a huge misty cloak.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brooks boiling and breaking dashed on the banks,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shattered brightly on shore.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is what we find in the North, and such English feeling for the +sublime is nothing new; it goes far back beyond these lines into the +generations that seem misty as the air which their poets are wont to +describe. Mr. Stopford Brooke's recent volume on Anglo-Saxon poetry +makes it unnecessary to enter into the subject of old England's eye and +ear for nature. Its accounts of the sympathy for the bold and fierce +bear out what one might guess without knowledge—that the stern northern +climate and familiarity with ocean life found large poetical expression. +Luxury, southern artifice of sentiment and literary manner, had not +invaded the rugged men of the North; they delight in describing +elemental conflicts, and sometimes with studied elaboration. But if the +pictures of the German and French poets are uniform in their mildness, +those of these Anglo-Saxons are marked by their stormy aspect. We +exchange spring for winter.</p> + +<p>The same contrast holds true when we take up the Scandinavian poets; +they show much feeling and power, but little susceptibility to the +beauty of gentleness and grace. Mr. Brooke has remarked upon a +similarity between the <i>Tempest</i> of Cynewulf and Shelley's <i>Ode to the +West Wind</i>. A closer parallel may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> observed in the <i>Lines Among the +Euganean Hills</i> and the so-called Helgi poet; where we find a curiously +identical image of rooks and hawks flying into the early morning with +wings sparkling from the mists through which they have passed. The Norse +poems are fond of screaming eagles, and ravens on the high branches.</p> + +<p>That weird northern imagination too has vivid pictures, as the shields +of the night-warriors shining in the waning moon. Nature also +occasionally speaks to their personal moods, both by harmony and +contrast. A poet's boat is swept fiercely by the tempest, as he dies +with thoughts of his "linen-clad lady" in his heart. Another watches the +sea dashing against the steep cliff, and thinks of his far-away love, in +the control of his rival. Like the early English, they feel exultation +in sea and storm. They know them intimately and their descriptions are +spirited and faithful. They love them, but they love fiercely, terribly, +as they do their women. Yet even as in their human passions, there are +tranquillities. "They rode their steeds through dewy dales and dusky +glens: the air, a sea of mist, shook as they passed by." We linger +behind the storming horsemen for a moment, to look back as the silence +steals in again through those dusky glens.</p> + +<p>But to return to what is our real subject, the sentiment for nature in +what we may term the polite literatures of mediævalism.</p> + +<p>The reason for their feeling about winter is summed up in one of the +Latin student songs, "the cold icy harshness of winter, its fierceness, +and dull, miserable inactivity." It kept them within, when their +interests and concerns were so mainly out-of-door. The poets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> are for +ever singing in praise of spring, not so much because they loved it for +itself, as because it brought them a life that was gay and easy. They +seldom introduce touches of appreciation in their descriptions of the +wintry season. Snow may have appeared lovely to them, but we observe +Dante as doing something singular when he compares the talking of +ladies, which was mingled with sighs and tears, to raindrops +interspersed with beautiful snowflakes (<i>cp.</i> <i>Inf.</i>, 14, 30; <ins title="Transcriber's Note: no comma between 24 and 5 in original">24, +5</ins>), and one of the most memorable lines in his friend Guido Cavalcanti's +poems is the one which mentions the dreamy sinking down of snow, falling +when the air is windless. The old-time gentlemen apparently hugged the +fire and drank of "their bugle-horn the wyn," and ate "brawn of the +tusked swyn," when winter came, instead of watching the snow, through +their little windows.</p> + +<p>There are many phases of nature which it seems to us impossible not to +notice and enjoy, of which we seldom find a trace. We should expect them +in the large body of lyrical verse, and still more in the copious +romance literature, which corresponds to the modern novel, both in +incident and in the invitation to bits of passing local color. Clouds, +for instance, aside from their glory of line and mass, and the grace and +loveliness of their lighter forms, are curious and oddly suggestive, as +Antony reminds Eros, and they are constantly before the eye; yet let any +reader of mediæval poetry recall how imperceptible a part they play in +it, even as plain facts of description. A line in one of the Latin songs +expresses the feeling: their thought of clouds is, how delightful not to +see them. Moonlight, too, is seldom dwelt on as poetical; the most +romantic touch that comes to my mind in connection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> with it, is in +Chrestien de Troyes, where it shines over the reconciliation of +estranged lovers. Just as we find little notice of sunrise, sunset, +clouds, and moon, we find little feeling for the stars. They are +mentioned occasionally in a facile way, though scarcely ever with +manifest sentiment. There are two or three passages, however, in +<i>Aucassin et Nicolette</i>, that show the daintiest sort of sentiment for +moonlight and stars. Here, for instance, where the lovers are confined +for the sake of thwarting their love:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Twas in summer time, in the month of May, when the +days are warm, long, and clear and the nights calm and +cloudless. Nicolette was lying one night in her bed, and she +saw the moon clearly shining through a window, and she +heard the nightingale singing in the garden and she thought +of Aucassin her lover, whom she loved so much."</p></blockquote> + +<p>So making a rope of the bedclothes she lets herself down into the +garden.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Then she caught her gown by one hand in front and by the +other behind, and tucked it up on account of the dew which +she saw was heavy on the grass, and she went down through +the garden.... And the daisy-blossoms that she broke with +the toes of her feet, that lay over on the small of her foot, were +even black, by her feet and legs, so very white was the dear +little girl. Along the streets she passed in the shadow, for the +moon shone very clear, and she went on till she came to the +tower where her lover was."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And again when the lover is in pursuit of her, after she had built +herself a lodge in what she thought a safe retreat; he does not know +where she is, and his thoughts are so absorbed that he falls and puts +out his shoulder, and then creeps into her vacant shelter:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"And he looked through a break in the lodge and saw the +stars in the sky, and he saw one brighter than the rest, and he +began to say:</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'Pretty little star, I see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the moon is leading thee.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nicolette is with thee there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My darling with the golden hair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God would have her, I believe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To make beautiful the eve.'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Yet even here there is nothing of the deeper sensibility to midnight +sky, common alike to ancient and modern seriousness. Yet we find notes +also of this. It is hard, for example, to think of giving up the +genuineness of Dante's letter refusing to return to Florence, if only +for the rare touch of everywhere seeing the sun and the stars (<i>nonne +solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam?</i>), that bears out such +evidences as the last word of each of the divine canticles and other +fine proofs that he felt the high wonder and peace of the stars at +night. Who can doubt that he did—that every deep nature always has? Yet +the poetical evidence for it is curiously scanty throughout these +centuries. It is a surprise to come upon such an exclamation as this of +Freidank's: "The constellations sweep through heaven as if they were +alive,—sun, moon, the bright stars,—there is nothing so wonderful!"</p> + +<p>Indeed, I can recall no writer to whom the material world seems to +suggest such inner sensations as he who called himself Freidank, the +German free-thinker. He was not much of a poet, so far as his verses go, +but his soul knew life as mystery. He also made one of the band of +reformers three centuries before Luther. He saw the corruption of the +Church, yet he revered the sacred institution; in spite of his faith, he +was a Christian rationalist. Some of his sentences almost startle us, as +words before their season: "If the Pope<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> can forgive sins by indulgence, +without repentance, people ought to stone him if he allows any one to go +to hell." "God is constantly shaping new souls, which he gives to +men—to be lost. How does the soul deserve God's wrath before it is +born?" He is haunted by the secret of life: "How is the soul made? No +one tells me that. If all souls could be in a hand, none could see or +grasp their glory." "Earth and heaven are full of the Godhead. Hell +would be empty, were God not there." "Whatever the sun touches, the +sunlight keeps pure. However the priest may be, the mass is still pure. +The mass and the sunshine will always be pure." "I never cease wondering +how the soul is made. Whence it came, and whither it fares—the path is +hidden. Nay, I know not who I am myself.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> Lord God, grant me that I +may know thee, and also myself." So when Freidank hears the roar of the +wind, its invisible might reminds his skepticism that the soul may well +be great, though none can see it: while he watches the wide mist which +no hand can seize upon, a symbolism of the soul comes to him again. He +is oppressed by the restless energy of being: "Our hearts beat +unceasingly, our breaths are seldom still:—and then, our thoughts and +dreams!" As he rides through spring, he observes the infinite diversity +of nature:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Many hundred flowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alike none ever grew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mark it well, no leaf of green<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is just another's hue.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> +<p>"Many a man looks out at the stars, and tells what wonders take place +there. Let him tell me now (something closer at hand), what is the weed +in the garden. If he tells me that truly, I shall be more ready to +believe the other." It is the germ of Tennyson's <i>Flower in the Crannied +Wall</i>. Nature's commonplaces hold the heavenly mystery in a common bond +with their own. Such subtle blendings of the outward and inward vision +could come only from a refined and pensive spirit—such as his who sums +up thus the discipline of life: "Many a time the lips must smile when +the heart weeps."</p> + +<p>One of the marked deficiencies of all these descriptions of nature is in +the indefiniteness of the terms employed. In minute accuracy, Dante, to +be sure, is one of the world's greatest masters; but elsewhere it is +rarely that we come upon anything concrete or specific. It is not until +centuries later, indeed, that, so far as nature goes, we find habitual +composition "with the eye upon the object," but, as it seems, most +mediæval poets never carried their observation beyond the barest general +impressions. We do not expect Tennyson's "More black than ashbuds in the +front of March," or Browning's eye for the fact that when "the leaf-buds +on the vine are woolly," the red is about to turn gray. The outer +world's "open secret" is not open enough to make us demand minute +attention. But it is surprising that they did not more frequently record +easy impressions, and in their inventions introduce definite details. +The poetical effect of even apparently prosaic precision is at times +imaginative, but the art of this was kept for the later romanticists.</p> + +<p>There is a lyric, however (belonging, I believe, to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> the twelfth +century), by a poet of northern France, and written as a satire on the +love-romance literature of the age, which contains one or two happy +instances of just this missing trait. So charming it is in itself that I +have translated it as a whole, though it belongs to an essay on the +lyrical romances, instead of on nature. What a light touch the unknown +writer shows, what dainty fancy! Sir Thopas is hardly a parallel to this +blending of poetry with humor, a humor too gracious to be derisive, +whose genial satire sparkles and dances to meet its sister wave of +sentiment and beauty, till they ripple together, and each seems to have +absorbed the other. The opening stanza is the poet's introduction of +himself, and from the olive we may draw an inference respecting his +local associations:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Will ye attend me, while I sing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A song of love,—a pretty thing,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Not made on farms:—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nay, by a gentle knight 'twas made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who lay beneath an olive's shade<br /></span> +<span class="i4">In his love's arms.<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>1.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A linen undergown she wore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a white ermine mantle, o'er<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A silken coat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With flowers of May to keep her feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And round her ankles leggings neat,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">From lands remote.<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>2.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her girdle was of leafage green;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Spring foliage, with a fringing sheen<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of gold above;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span><span class="i0">And underneath a love-purse hung,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By bloomy pendants featly strung,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A gift of love.<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>3.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Upon a mule the lady rode,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The which with silver shoes was shode;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Saddle gold-red;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And behind rose-bushes three<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She had set up a canopy<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To shield her head.<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>4.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As so she passed adown the meads,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A gentle childe in knightly weeds<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Cried: "Fair one, wait!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What region is thy heritance?"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she replied: "I am of France,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of high estate.<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>5.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"My father is the nightingale,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who high within the bosky pale,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">On branches sings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My mother's the canary; she<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sings on the high banks where the sea<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Its salt spray flings."<br /></span> +</div> + + +<h5>6.</h5> + +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fair lady, excellent thy birth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou comest from the chief of earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of high estate:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, God our Father, that to me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou hadst been given, fair ladye,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My wedded mate!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Everything here is definite and concrete, and how delightful the picture +all is. Such plastic art as the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> "rose-bushes three" is not unworthy of +the great modern poets of whom its magic and romantic definiteness +reminds us,—as the "five miles meandering of Alph, the sacred river," +or the "kisses four" with which the pale loiterer shut the eyes of La +Belle Dame sans Merci. The description of the nightingale on its high +branches, too, is a noticeably accurate touch, as we compare it, for +example, with Coleridge's nightingale descriptions.</p> + +<p>The explanation for the usual vague and indefinite description is not +found in saying that they could not describe minutely. We meet with +abundant details of such material interests as embroideries or armor. +There is artistic emotion in Villehardouin's account of the glorious +sight of Constantinople, as it rose before the crusaders, just as +distinctly as in Lord Byron's letter. But, to their simple eyes, nature +not only failed to suggest associated fancies, like Shakespeare's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Wrinkled pebbles in the brook,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or Wordsworth's ash,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>but they see natural objects as units, without lingering upon their +parts. When we find, for example, a line that marks the jerky flight of +a swallow, we are surprised at the specific touch; we look almost in +vain for such landscape details as the colors of autumn. Neidhart von +Reuenthal is marking his originality, when he speaks of the red +tree-tops, falling down yellow.</p> + +<p>The want of observation and the shallow sympathy with nature shown by +most poets before Dante are much more surprising than their preference +for placid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> effects. It is unusual, for instance, to meet such a +suggestive note of association as in the stanza by the Frenchman Gaces +Brulles:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The birds of my own land<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In Brittany I hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And seem to understand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The distant in the near;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In sweet Champagne I stand,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No longer here.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This paraphrase, indeed, is unworthy of the charming simplicity of the +original. Surely, when Matthew Arnold made his sweeping characterization +of mediæval poetry as grotesque, he forgot what a straightforward +evolution of narrative or of quiet sentiment, and what a transparent +expression, we find in some of these minor poets. They are as direct and +unadorned, as they are graceful. It is almost impossible to translate +them without substituting for the fresh and delicate touch, some +metaphysical warping of the idea, or some rhetorical consciousness in +words. What for instance could be more elegantly remote from the +grotesque than this literal translation of Brulles' expression of his +sensibility to the song-birds of his home: "The birds of my country I +have heard in Brittany; by their song I know well that in sweet +Champagne I heard them of old."</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>We may sum up these outline statements to this effect.</p> + +<p>The northern poets described storm, winter, the ocean, and kindred +subjects, with considerable force and fulness. In the cultivated +literatures to the south, natural description was mainly confined to the +agreeable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> forms of beauty; the grand, awesome, and inspiring were +scarcely felt, and the literal fact of their physical expression was +hardly ever noticed. The exterior world was not made a subject of close +observation, nor was its poetic availability realized as a setting for +action, or as an interpreter of emotion.</p> + +<p>The people of the north, through being habituated to severer weather, +not merely as a fact of climate, but from their rougher, less politely +organized habits of living, [we should especially observe their activity +on the sea,] regarded the violent seasons and aspects of nature with the +sympathetic acquiescence of custom. Moreover, this influence tended to +develop sturdier and more rugged character, race-temperament obviously +being in part a geographical result, which acts with the forces of +social organization, especially those that affect the moral qualities, +such as rude or luxurious living. This vigorous character was more +susceptible to impressions of native power, as well as from association +more interested in recalling them. Accordingly, we find the early +northern poetry an anticipation of the seriousness of modern English +literature, and, as well, of its unequalled recognition of physical +symbolisms of the sublime. Where the northern force blended with more +southern lightness and elegance, as it did in the <i>Mabinogion</i>, we find +a deeper poetic sentiment; where it coincides with moral earnestness, we +find such nature sensation as in the poetry of <i>Sir Gawayn</i>. But the +literature of the Germans and their romance originals, aim at courtly +levities; they artificialize sentiment and thought, as well as manner. +The deeper and more spiritually sympathetic minds did not as a rule +devote themselves to <i>belles-lettres</i>. The Church drew them into her +sober service, and even though they wrote,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> the close theological faith +was not favorable to their poetic expansion. Most of all, there was but +little individualism, and any artistic sensation of our modern complex +inner consciousness was still crude, even when it existed at all.</p> + +<p>One point, however, should be observed in any inquiry into the reasons +for the inadequateness of these ages' feeling for nature; that many +latent sympathies may never have found a voice. Many through the +centuries before our later ease of publication, may have felt the modern +sensations, without ever thinking of putting them into words. In any new +movement, of art as of practice, a great leader of expression is needed. +Men are sheep to their leaders in various admirations, and many genuine +æsthetic tastes are acquired, through stages of more or less unconscious +imitation. Browning puts this in an acute sentence where Fra Lippo Lippi +explains his usefulness as a painter:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">" . <span class="gap2"> </span>. <span class="gap2"> </span>. We're made so that we love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">First when we see them painted, things we have passed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>There were few new departures, there was little originality, in the +methods of mediæval literature. Descriptions of the physical world as a +field of power and sublimity would have fallen dead on the ears of a +public who had never dreamed that storm and cliffs were beautiful. What +if Wordsworth had tried to support himself and win fame by singing at +castles? Nor is it easy, though the taste has been established, to +describe a sunset, or the sublimity of the Alps. We say to each other +"How beautiful!" "How grand!" seldom more. Rare imagination and the tact +of genius<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> are necessary to tell what we really need to show. The sense +of physical sublimity is complex. Its distinctive element is moral or +spiritual emotion. For a full delineation it requires a more subtle, +verbal repertory than those popular poets usually possessed. Yet these +modifications no longer apply when we come to Dante, and superior as his +interpretations are to his predecessors' we miss even in him, as we miss +in the great poets for four hundred years afterwards, appreciation of +the material world's sublimity.</p> + +<p>Macaulay and others have said that it was not until man had become the +master of nature that he learned to love its stern and violent aspects. +But thunder storms, for example, are as dangerous now as they ever were, +at least to a traveller. Still, Byron wrote of them with raptures amid +the Pindus mountains as his predecessors did not.</p> + +<p>Winter was scarcely colder or bleaker for mediæval poets than for +Scottish peasants a century ago, yet Burns would sing as they could not:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"E'en winter bleak has charms for me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When winds rave through the naked tree."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Others have accounted for this change by the era of science, with its +close scrutiny of the world, and its enthusiasm for physical knowledge. +But the scientist masters the world as a reality where the poet sees it +as a symbol. The two modern tendencies may be the result of a common +cause—that recognition of complexity, and disposition to observe, which +is a main fact in man's expansion.</p> + +<p>A better explanation may be found, I believe, in modern refinement and +ethical sensitiveness.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> + +<p>Side by side with the new appreciation of nature may be observed a +steady growth in sensibility. Our modern moods of inward +contemplation—we are famous for them—our modern zeal for humanity down +to its lowest grades; nay, even our tenderness for the brutes, have been +distinguishing marks of the poet guides under whom we have learned to +appreciate our new physical symbolisms of human emotion. Modern +melancholy, as well, a melancholy more subtle and thoughtful, more +poetical too, than that of mediævalism, has touched men with its pensive +fascination. Philosophical pantheism such as Wordsworth's or Tennyson's, +feels deity in nature; the new Christianity incarnates divinity in +universal man. Man is more than he used to be, his moods are deeper, his +thought freer. He seeks more ardently than of old, because with less +constraint, the mystery in whom he lives and moves and has his being. He +no longer quails before the majesty and awe of its forever elusive +presence. For he knows that though he cannot find it, it enfolds him +with love and beauty, it cries back to his passion and pain in winter +and storm; from the solemn mountains it reminds him of himself, an +unconquerable partner of its own eternity.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/dmndvase.png" width="200" height="127" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="vonliechtenstein" id="vonliechtenstein"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/34t.png" width="500" height="126" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN.</h2> + +<h3>THE MEMOIRS OF AN OLD GERMAN GALLANT.</h3> + + +<p>Any one who has read Freytag's excellent studies of German social life +will recall a curious illustration in his first volume of the lawless +violence of thirteenth-century knighthood, in the imprisonment of Ulrich +von Liechtenstein by his liegeman Pilgerin. The account not only proves +the author's point, but it goes on to suggest a good deal besides. For +the victim's unsophisticated and plaintive manner under his misfortune, +the fashion in which he relates what he suffered, his allusions to his +own life and character, and most of all to the consolations of his love, +are all stimulating to one's curiosity about the writer. When we go to +the mediæval shelves of a German library we find this curiosity +satisfied in a long poem by the unfortunate Ulrich, and immediately we +are in that chivalric age which wins most of its romantic lustre from +its devotion to womanhood.</p> + +<p>If our guesses at a truth beneath the stories of widowed ladies rescued +from bandits of the forest and recreant knights, or of lovely ladies +rescued from worse than death by the capture of castles through the +prowess of generous champions—stories which every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> one knows and +incredulously likes—send us to a study of the times when they were +composed, we find that the age, when stripped of romantic +embellishments, in its actual life felt a sentiment for women unequalled +by earlier times. We wonder what caused it. Can it have been the +increase in the culture of the Virgin, that beautiful and beneficent +phase of mediæval religion? In its larger development, this appears +rather the parallel expression of some common influence, these +adorations of the divine and human conceptions of woman seeming to be +mutually impulsive, and drawn alike from some undetermined tendency of +social and spiritual refinement. Or was it the Crusades? For a German +essayist has suggested that we may count this increase of sentimentalism +among their many influences upon western Europe; the beauty of the women +and the more luxurious habits of the East, its more effeminate +emotionalism, finding impressionable subjects in the hearts of those +stranger knights lying, wakeful for home, beneath southern stars. +Perhaps the conjecture is equally reasonable that the influence came +from French poets who, as they travelled with the early Christian +armies, caught such suggestions from snatches of oriental poetry. Yet it +seems more natural to regard the growth of knightly sentiment toward +ladies as the more delicate manifestation of a spontaneous increase of +social personality, which was stimulated by that general motion in mind +and heart which we observe in the progress of chivalric and crusadal +life, and based, as we must not forget, upon that Teutonic character, +whose ancient deference to woman is recorded by Tacitus side by side +with his account of knighting youthful soldiers with spear and shield.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span></p> + +<p>But, to waive the question of its origin, we find its main expression in +the old society, in that protracted and conventional wooing which, we +should remember, was not usually directed toward marriage. As gentlemen +grew hyperbolical and fantastic in their professions of regard and +devotion, feminine coquettishness and love of admiration naturally +became fastidious and exacting. Ladies grew arbitrary and capricious, +and began to demand substantial proofs of their lovers' concern for +them. It became a trait of elegant culture for a lady to pose as +inexorable, while still retaining her control over the wooer; while he, +complaisant to the sentimental fashion, sighed in a cheerful melancholy, +obeyed, adored, and waited. The mistress set tasks, often no trifles, +which the loyal subject must perform—hard feats of arms, long and +perilous journeys, abnegations of pride or comfort. When these were +accomplished, he sometimes returned to receive a new test, involving a +continued delay of his reward. These mediæval ladies were as pitiless as +the mystic spiritual dictatress of Browning's <i>Numpholeptos</i>, to their +devotees:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"Seeking love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At end of toil, and finding calm above<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their passion, the old statuesque regard."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the fourteenth century something of this romantic tyranny survived. +We find Chaucer, for instance, in one of his early poems, mentioning in +praise of his heroine that she did not impose dangerous expeditions to +distant countries, or extravagant exploits upon her lover:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"And saye, 'Sir, be now ryght ware<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I may of you here seyn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Worshippe, or that ye come agayn.'"<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Extended probations, courtships long enough to satisfy Ruskin, were an +established convention. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the seventh book of +<i>Parzival</i>, represents Obie as indignantly telling her royal lover, who +has asked her to marry him after what seems to him a reasonable +love-making, that if he had spent his days for five years, in hard +service, under full armor, with distinction, and she had then said "Yes" +to his desire, she would be yielding too soon.</p> + +<p>Jane Austen, in the novel to which Trollope gave the palm of English +fiction before <i>Henry Esmond</i>, has expressed in Mr. Collins's address to +Elizabeth exactly the notion of the significance in a rejection, held by +well-bred gentlemen six centuries earlier:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'I am not now to learn,' replied Mr. Collins, with a formal +wave of the hand, 'that it is usual with young ladies to reject +the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, +when he first applies for their favor; and that sometimes the +refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore +by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and +shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>But these exercises, as was suggested, were not usually directed toward +the altar. A characteristic of the age is the relation, less or more +sentimental, between a married knight and a lady not his wife; a +relation rather expected of the former, and countenanced in the latter. +This peculiar dual system of domestic and knightly love may be ascribed +to various influences, such as the prosaic influence of early and +dowered marriages, subject to parental arrangement, or the feudal life +which for considerable periods kept gentlemen away from their own homes +in residence in the larger castles, or the idleness of such a society, +or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> again the popularity of love-lyrics and romance-recitals, which +would tend to sentimentalize their audience. At any rate, it came to be +a fashionable idea that the highest love was independent of marriage, +and the most poetically inclined,—the troubadours and the +minnesingers—were famous for their impassioned and submissive service +of married ladies. It is from these poets' accounts of their own +love-trials that we learn most about this phase of mediævalism, and in +their contented sufferings we see once more that the joy of all romantic +love is in the lover.</p> + +<p>Although there is danger of generalizing too widely from literary +indications, we may believe that chivalric society was appreciably +marked by formal amatory disciplines. Was it all for nothing these +ceremonial disciplines? Can it be that these Don Quixote prototypes, who +trifled away their frivolous days in lady-worship so trivial, did +anything to help the Prince to take Cinderella from the ashes? The +ashes, then the fairy coach; first the drudge, then the sentimental +plaything, then at last the friend. In those days, as perhaps always, +the lover objectified himself in his love, to the extent of finding in +her his own <i>ideal feminine</i>. The very fact that this self, which he +probably called into conscious life only as he created it in another, +represented the most refined side of his thought, as is shown in the old +poets' recurrent epithets of "constant, chaste, good," etc., made the +devotion a refining and dignifying experience, especially for the days +when men and women had less in common than they have now. These +lady-services, where the lover often was denied intimacy for a +considerable time, kept up the illusion which the devotee himself may +have half felt was sentimental and artificial. We may reply to little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +Peterkin that some good did come of it at last, even for the more +commonplace of these servants of abstract womanhood. Even if the +"visionary gleam" left no permanent illumination, the men were better +for seeing it brightening through their darkness now and then. At its +best, lady-loving gave the mediæval knights consideration for women and +a measure of gentleness. If it only stimulated some to fight hard, they +would have fought anyway, and the motive was a shade less brutal than a +directly selfish one.</p> + +<p>But such an eccentric social idea, especially when the poetic +exhilaration of its earlier hours has passed by, was sure to bring out +extravagant sentimentalists, whose romantic sensibility with no check +from practical judgment, ran wild steeplechases of nonsense. Such, for +example, was the Provençal poet, Peter Vidal, one of the most famous +troubadours, who carried his romantic infatuations so far that he became +crack-brained. The name of one of his ladies was Lupa, Mistress Wolf; +and if he had contented himself with assuming a wolfish device for his +coat-of-arms, as he did, and having himself called Mr. Wolf, he would +have done nothing very peculiar, for that age. But it occurred to him +that it would be a graceful symbol to wear a wolf's skin, and after he +had procured one which quite covered him, he got down on all-fours, and +trotted through the street; and all went charmingly until one day, while +he was exhibiting himself in this fashion about his lady's estate, a +pack of dogs was deceived by the metaphor, and the allegorical lover was +badly bitten before rescue arrived.</p> + +<p>But the most detailed example of mediæval gallantry is that presented in +the work already mentioned, the autobiography of the thirteenth-century +minnesinger,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> Ulrich von Liechtenstein. The poem is a prolix narrative +of his amatory religion, extending through some sixteen thousand lines, +and containing a large number of lyrics composed in the wooing of two +ladies to whom he consecrated his literary and romantic life. We utterly +tire of the commonplaces in which he praises them. We reflect that not a +single specific incident is ever introduced to illustrate the inner +character of either; the descriptions have no color, except in the +heartlessness of the first beloved, whose virtue and humor alike Ulrich +apparently misses. Yet this presumably undesigned caricature of the more +poetic twelfth-century chivalric love gives important suggestions of the +times, and Ulrich himself is a knight and a poet worth knowing.</p> + +<p>The impression that his romance makes upon a modern reader is something +like that of a beetle hovering above a lily. He played zany to the +gentlemen of an early generation who had amused their leisurely lives by +courtly lady-service; as he emulated their feats of sentimental +gallantry, he stumbled and fell. The odd thing is that after each fall +he called for his tables: "Meet it is I set it down." Undoubtedly many +marvelled and admired, as they looked on: others marvelled and laughed. +Perhaps he mistook the laughter for applause. It may be that the sound +was lost in the applause of his own simple-minded complacency. But yet, +though this gallant was born to a foolish horoscope, his life gained a +good fortune denied multitudes who lived sensibly,—he saw the stars of +his destiny, and he loved them. Their combination caused a silly career, +yet individually they were admirable,—simplicity of nature, theoretical +reverence for womanhood, patient love, regard for stately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> old usages. +If defective eyesight makes a man fancy a burdock a rosebush, and if he +tends and cherishes the absurd idealization,—at least, the man has a +sentiment for roses.</p> + +<p>The earliest fact which Ulrich has confided to us, is that in his +childhood he used to ride about on sticks, in imitation of the knights, +and while in that simple age he noticed that the poetry which people +read, and the conversation of wise men which he overheard, kept +declaring that no one could become a worthy man without serving +unwaveringly good ladies, and that "no one was right happy unless he +loved as dearly as his own life some one whose virtue made her fitly +called a woman." Whereupon, he thought in his simplicity that since pure +sweet women so ennoble men's lives, he, whatever happened, would always +serve ladies. In such thoughts he grew up until his twelfth year, when +he began a four or five years' term as page to a lady who was good, +chaste, and gentle, complete in virtues, beautiful, and of high rank. +She was destined to give Ulrich much trouble, and the lover's sweet +solicitude began at once, as he started in his teens. For his constant +attention found nothing in her but what was good and charming, and he +feared—this boy of thirteen—that she might not care for him. His ups +and downs of fortune are reported for us in the popular mediæval form +(used for example by Map, and one as late as by Villon), of a dialogue +between his heart and his body. Heart is hopeful, but Body has the +better wit. Yet even if she is too high-born to notice him, he will +always serve her late and early, and in the interim between his childish +page-waiting, and the bold knighthood to be his when he grows up, he +gathers pretty summer flowers, and carries them to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> her. When she took +them in her white hand, he was happy.</p> + +<p>As the time came near for him to leave her household, the youth grew +emotional: when at table water was poured over those lovely white hands, +he transformed her finger-glass into a tumbler. A German dry-as-dust has +laughed at Ulrich for this.</p> + +<p>But the tender little Teutonic blossom could unfold its youth no longer +in the sunshine of its lady-desire. The stern father appeared, and +transferred the lover, his "grief showing well the power of love," to +the service of an Austrian Margrave. "My body departed, but my heart +remained"; and Ulrich pauses for a moment to point out the strangeness +of the paradox. "Whenever I rode or walked, my heart never left her; it +saw her at all times, night and day."</p> + +<p>His new master was a knightly gentleman, professedly a lady-servant, and +the lessons that Ulrich had caught as a child from the conversation in +his father's hall were reinforced by this Margrave Henry. He was taught +the best style of riding, the refinements of address to ladies, and +poetical composition, and assured that whoever would live worthily must +be a lady's true subject. "It adorns a youth—sweet speech to women.... +To succeed well with them, have sweet words with true deeds."</p> + +<p>After four years of such instruction, his father's death called him home +to inherit his property, and he spent the three years that followed by +tourneying in the noviciate of knighthood. At Vienna, in 1222, during +the great festival in celebration of the marriage of Leopold's daughter, +where five thousand knights were present, and tourneying and other +entertainments of chivalry were mingled with much dancing, Ulrich<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> made +one of the two hundred and fifty squires who received their spurs. But +the occasion was otherwise memorable to him, for here he saw his lady +again. She recognized him, and told one of his friends of her pleasure +at seeing become a knight one who had been her page when a little +fellow. The mere simple foolish thought that she would perhaps have him +for her own knight, as he tells us, was sweet and good, and put him in +high spirits. Indeed this was all the contentment which the blushing +young knight desired:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in +dreams?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Ulrich did not wake from his to do anything so practical as to speak +face to face with her, but gaily rode off to a summer of adventure in +twelve tournaments, wherein he invariably fared well, thanks to his +devotion.</p> + +<p>German sentiment has always shown a butterfly's sensibility to winter +and rough weather, and with the last of autumn, Ulrich's spirit grows +heavy. He longs to see his lady, he knows that now he would speak to +her. There are no tourneys to distract him, and in care of heart he +rose, lay down, sat, and walked. As it chanced, a cousin of his knew +this only lovely one, and the taxing office of a lover's confidante fell +heavily upon her, and remained for some years. After beating about the +bush with her for a while, he confessed the truth, only to receive +point-blank advice to give up so hopeless an aspiration. Never! on the +contrary she must help him in his perseverance by visiting the lady and +presenting her with a copy of the verses which Ulrich has been composing +for her as a confession of his love. His cousin consented, but her +mission<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> resulted in a scornful rejection of the suit, softened by +compliments upon the poem. He was advised to abandon his quest, for the +lady seriously objected to his mouth. "Nothing but grim death can drive +me from her; I will serve her all my life," he exclaimed. But he felt +that the criticism upon his mouth was a fair one, and he determined to +pay attention to it.</p> + +<p>Poor Ulrich, with so much sentiment, yet with such physical +deficiencies; with such correct perception of the use of lips, yet +having such uninviting ones of his own. In one of his songs he tells us:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">When a lady on her lover<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Looks and smiles, and for a kiss<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shapes her lips, he can discover<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Never joy so great; his bliss<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Transcends measure:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O'er all pleasures is his pleasure.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But until he was quite in his twenties, his experience of this +blessedness must have been of those</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"By hopeless fancy feigned<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On lips that are for others";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>for Ulrich confesses to the deformity of what he calls +three lips; that is, a bad hare-lip.</p> + +<p>But this protagonist of mediæval Quixotism has energy and nerve, as well +as sentiment. In spite of his cousin's dissuasions (this plain-minded +lady tells him to take the body God has given him, instead of arrogantly +improving upon his creation), Ulrich rides off to find the best surgeon +in the country, and submit to an operation. But the doctor decides that +the time of year is unsuitable; he must wait until winter is past, keep +his three lips until May.</p> + +<p>At last spring comes and Ulrich returns to the doctor.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> Upon the way he +meets a page of his lady's, to whom he confides the purpose of his +journey, and whose presence he secures as a witness. Early one Monday +morning the surgeon received his patient, laid out his instruments +before him, and produced several straps. At sight of the latter, martial +dignity recoiled, and Ulrich refused to allow himself to be bound. It +was to no purpose that he was told of the danger involved in even a +twitch; he said with spirit that he came of his own will, and if +anything happened amiss he alone would be to blame. Whereupon he sat +calmly upon a bench, and without a tremor allowed the surgeon to "cut +his mouth above his teeth and farther up. He cut like a master, I +endured like a man."</p> + +<p>Ulrich describes the discomfort which he experienced during the healing +of the wound, in details which give an unpleasant notion of the methods +of mediæval surgery. As he was able to eat and drink scarcely anything, +he wasted in flesh, and his only comfort was the thought of her for whom +he had suffered. During the confinement, he composed another dancing +song in her honor, which, after his recovery he entrusted to his cousin, +who forwarded it with a letter of her own. Presently an answer came. The +lady is to spend the next Monday night near by, in the course of a +journey, and she will be very happy to see her friend's relative, and +learn from himself how things are. Time changes the significance of +letters, among other things. This lady-like note, which gave such a +heart-leap to Ulrich's sentimental hope, interests scholars to-day as +being the earliest prose letter in German.</p> + +<p>On Tuesday morning, when Ulrich appeared at the chapel where the lady's +chaplain was singing mass before her, she bowed without speaking. After +the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> service she rode off, and Ulrich had found no chance to meet her. +His cousin, however, told him that everything was favorable, and that +the lady would allow him to ride with her that day. So he galloped off +in gay spirits, and soon overtook the cavalcade. But alas for his +self-possession; when he reaches her his head drops and he cannot find a +single word. Another knight was riding with her. Ulrich's heart makes a +speech to his body, reproaching it for cowardice; "If you go on without +speaking to her now, she will never be good to you again." So he rides +up to her and gets a sweet glance, but still he cannot speak. Heart +nudges Body and whispers: "Speak now, speak now, speak now!" All through +the day Body tries, he tries over and over, but he cannot. Alas, as a +poet of his own day said:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Mit gedanken wirt erworben niemer wîbes kint:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> + . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> + . <span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Des enkan sî wizzen niht."<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When they reach their lodging-place for the night, he +wishes to assist the only one in dismounting, but she +is not sufficiently flattered by his attentions to accept +them; she says that he is sick and useless, and not +strong enough to help her down. The attending +gentlemen laugh merrily at that, and the ever sweet, +constant, good, and so forth, as she slides from her +horse, catches hold of Ulrich's hair, without any one's +noticing it (however that can have been done), and +pulls a lock out by the roots. "Take this for being +afraid," she whispers; "I have been deceived by other +accounts of you." Reproaching himself, and wishing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> +God to take his life, he stood gawkily where she left +him, absorbed in remorse for his awkwardness, until a +knight admonished him to step aside and allow the +ladies to go by to their rooms. Whereupon he rode +off to his inn, and swore that he was ill.</p> + +<p>As he tossed restlessly through the night, he talked with himself as +usual, lamenting his birth, and assuring himself that should he live a +thousand years he could never again be happy. "Not to speak one word to +her! My worthlessness has lost my lady." But in the morning he rode up +to her on the street. No silence this time: "Thy grace, gracious lady! +Graciously be gracious to me. Thou art my joy's abiding place, the +festival of my joys." Like many shy people, Ulrich talked fluently +enough when he was once started, and he was only in the midst of his +<ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'prostestations'">protestations</ins> when the lady interrupted him. "Hush, you are too young; +ride on before me. Talking may hurt you, it never can help you. It would +be amiss for others to hear what you are saying. Leave me in peace; you +grow troublesome." Then she beckoned to another knight, and directed +that she should never again be attended by less than two gentlemen.</p> + +<p>It was in the book of lady-service that no repulse was a discouragement. +"This morning," says the heroine in Bret Harte's parody of <i>Jane Eyre</i>, +"this morning he flung his boot at me! Now I know he loves me." Ulrich +rode off, thinking that he had met with good success in telling her a +part of his love, before the interruption.</p> + +<p>Another summer passed in tourneying, and during another winter he tried +to amuse himself by making poetry for his lady. This time he sent her a +more pretentious tribute, his first "Büchlein," a poem of some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> four +hundred lines. Like most of its kind, it is formal, sentimentally +prolix, and supplicatory, yet not without a certain pleasant interest. +He begs her from the wealth of her loveliness to grant him some trifling +favor which she never can miss:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What is worse the bloomy heath,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If a few flowers for the sake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a garland some one break?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He wishes it were himself that the messenger is about to deliver to her:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Little book, I fain would be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When thou comest, changed to thee.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When her fair white hand receives<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thine assemblement of leaves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her glances, shyly playing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thee so happy are surveying.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her red mouth comes close by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I would steal a kiss, or die.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the unsatisfactory manuscripts were returned at once. The lady told +the bearer that she recognized the merit of the poetry, but she would +have nothing to do with it. Like many poets of those days when monks and +ladies constituted the educated classes, like his predecessor, the great +master of high mediæval romance, Ulrich could neither read nor write, +and for such delicate personal affairs as correspondence with his lady +he depended upon his confidential clerk. This confidant of his passion +was absent when the "Büchlein" came back, but the eager eyes of the poet +looked through the pages over which they had evidently wandered before +he dismissed his labors to their fate, repeating the lines from memory +as he looked over the characters which should interpret his loving<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +patience to the lady who would not let him speak it to her; and as he +looked, he detected an addition to what he had sent, an appendix of ten +lines. The slighted letter found a home in his bosom, and for ten days +he awaited his secretary's return. His happy hopes—those ten days were +so cheerful. But when the little response was at last interpreted, away +with hopes and cheerfulness. To make plainness trebly plain, his cruel +correspondent had copied out three times the sentiment: "Whoever desires +what he should not, has refused himself."</p> + +<p>Summer again, and the lover has diversion in the sports of chivalry. Any +one interested in the details of mediæval tournaments will find in +Ulrich's narrative a valuable and lively record of the tourney held at +Friesach in 1224. His sense for material splendor is well shown by his +full accounts of the costuming and tent equipments. The trustworthiness +of the minor points may be questioned when we recall that the +<i>Frauendienst</i> was composed more than thirty years later, but as a +sketch of thirteenth-century chivalry, no doubt it is accurate. The +heralds running hither and thither, and shouting as they arranged for +the contests, with their cries to "good gallant knights to risk honor, +goods, and life for true women"; the squires crowding the ways, loud +noise of drums, flute-playing, blowing of horns, great trumpeting,—we +have the old picture, made vivid in English by Chaucer in the <i>Knight's +Tale</i>, and by Tennyson.</p> + +<p>Ulrich rode in disguise, prompted by the sentimentalist's +self-consciousness, always delighted in attracting attention and making +himself talked of. According to his own account, he did good hearty +tourneying, breaking ten spears with one antagonist, seven with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +another, five with a third, six with a fourth, in a single day. The +meeting continued for ten days, and Ulrich grows prolix in his +particulars, though he is modest enough about his own exploits, +pronouncing himself neither the best nor the worst of the participants. +The accidents of jousting, through which many were left at Friesach with +broken limbs and other injuries, and the misfortunes which compelled +others to have recourse to the Jews for loans, did not disturb the +musical contestant. At the end he rode cheerfully off to his cousin with +another song for the same inattentive ear. She promised to report, as +she sent it, that no one in the great tourney had excelled him.</p> + +<p>This lyric is the poem by which modern German students of their old +literature have been best pleased, and we shall hardly dissent from +Scherer's commendation. For it is both a typical minnesong, in its +treatment of nature and love, and also fortunate in its union of +sentiment, force, finish, and a ring of personal meaning. Omitting two +of its stanzas, it goes as follows:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now the little birds are singing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In the wood their darling lay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the meadow flowers are springing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Confident in sunny May.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So my heart's bright spirits seem<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Flowers her goodness doth embolden;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For in her my life grows golden,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the poor man's in his dream.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, her sweetness! Free from turning<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is her true and constant heart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till possession banish yearning,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let my dear hope not depart.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only this her grace I'll pray:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wake me from my tears, and after<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span><span class="i2">Sighs let comfort come and laughter;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let my joy not slip away.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Blissful May, the whole world's anguish<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Finds in thee its single weal;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet the pain whereof I languish,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou, nor all the world, canst heal.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What least joy may ye impart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">She so dear and good denied me?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In her comforts ever hide me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All my life her loving heart.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But elegant and tender as in the original these verses are, their object +returned a slighting answer, and added that the messenger must not be +sent again. People would come to have suspicions. Ulrich made another +set of verses, and went off to another joust. There one of his fingers +was seriously wounded, and in his anxiety to save it he offered a +surgeon a thousand pounds for a cure. The treatment was unsuccessful, +and, after showing a good deal of temper, he went to a new surgeon, on +the way beguiling himself of his pain by composing another poem upon the +old theme. But a shock was at hand; a friend divulged to him his closely +kept secret. "This lady [still unnamed to us] is the May-time of your +heart." What though this friend believed that the lady cared for him? +"My head sank down, my heart sighed, my mouth was dumb," in terror lest +it might be through his fault that the object of his devotion had been +discovered. For secrecy was the first of a chivalric lover's virtues, +even about the object of his passion. Yet the pain was not without +compensation, inasmuch as this gentleman, who declared that he had +already kept the secret for two years and a half, volunteered to make +another appeal. So off to the home of the inexorable went anew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> the +story of unflinching devotion, the loss of a finger in a tournament for +her glory not unmentioned. Ulrich's cause was pleaded with fervor, and +in winning style. The lover was praised and prayed for. The song he had +sent was even sung, instead of being formally delivered. A faithful and +versatile legate was this proxy wooer, but it was all to no purpose. The +lady declared that she would grow old in entire ignorance of any love +but her husband's. She warned the messenger that Ulrich would find +himself in trouble if he should persist in annoying her with such +sentimental folly; she would not receive such attentions from the +highest-born—not even from a king.</p> + +<p>The news saddened, but did not cast down. "What if she refuses me?" +cried Ulrich; "that shall not disturb me. If she hates me to-day, I will +serve her so that later she shall like me. Were I to give up for a cold +greeting, could a little word drive me away from my high hope, I should +have no sound mind or manly mood. Whatever the true, sweet one does to +me, for that I must be grateful." But now another summer was over, and +he diverted himself by a pilgrimage to Rome. After Easter he returned, +on his way composing this sweetly conceived and rather pretty lyric:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, see, the touch of spring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hath graced the wood with green;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And see, o'er the wide plain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet flowers on every spray.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The birds in rapture sing;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such joy was never seen:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Departed all their pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Comfort has come with May.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">May comforts all that lives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Except me, love-sick man;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span><span class="i0">Love-stricken is my heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This drives all joys away.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When life some pleasure gives,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In tears my heart will scan<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My face, and tell its smart;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How then can pleasure stay?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Vowed constantly to woo<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High love am I; that good<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While I pursue, I see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No promise of success.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pure lady, constant, true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The crown of womanhood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Think graciously of me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through thy high worthiness.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The knight passed his summer in Steierland under arms, and after +pleasant experiences he sent his messenger again, only to have his suit +repelled with the same coldness and decision as before. The report was +even more discouraging, for the lady, who had been told of his losing a +finger in her service, had now learned that he still had it; nor was she +moved by the assurance that it was almost useless. The desire to keep +the wounded member had led him to large expense of money and time, but +he cared for it no longer. He set about the composition of another long +elegy, which explains how his heart loves her, and weeps for her favor, +as a poor and orphaned child weeps after comfort; so ardently he loves +her, that he gladly sacrifices anything, and as a pledge of his constant +fidelity, he sends her one of his fingers, lost in that service for +which it was born.</p> + +<p>After the poem was ready, he directed a goldsmith to make a fine case, +in which he enclosed it. But he put in something more; he had the +convalescent finger<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> amputated, and sent it to the chiding critic as a +proof that he had not lied in saying that he had lost it for her. Yet +even this failed to please so unsympathetic a mistress. She said she +wondered how any one could be so foolish as to cut off his finger: he +would have been able to serve ladies better by keeping it. However, she +would retain the token of his consideration, but a thousand years of his +service would be lost on her. Ulrich was jubilant, for he was confident +that with this memento, she would always think of him.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p> + +<p>Now a large idea visits this sanguine gentleman. Gone to Rome on a +pilgrimage, that is what he will pretend; he rigs himself out with a +wallet and staff which he obtains from a priest, and trudges off. But +something more novel and magnificent is haunting his ingenious mind. It +is to Venice that he goes—cautiously, so as not to be observed. Upon +his arrival, he takes lodgings in an out-of-the-way inn, so that no one +may hear of him. There he spends the winter, making a liberal +expenditure for costumes for himself and a retinue. He dresses himself +as Queen Venus, in complete feminine attire, even to the long braids of +hair which figure so prominently in the descriptions of the ladies of +that age.</p> + +<p>When spring came, he sent a courier over the route +that he intended to take on his journey homeward, +with a circular-letter that contained a list of thirty +places at which Lady Venus would appear, and joust +with all contestants. A ring which makes beautiful +and keeps true love, was offered to whoever might +break a spear against her. If she should cast a knight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +down, he should become a loyal knight to women +everywhere; if he were to overthrow her, she would +give him her horse. But to no one would she show +her face or hand.</p> + +<p>Thirty days later he started on his disguised errantry. His retinue +consisted of a marshal, a cook, a banner-bearer, two trumpeters, three +boys to take charge of three sumpters, three squires for the three +war-steeds, four finely dressed squires, each holding three spears, two +maids—good-looking, he tells us,—and two fiddlers.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Who raised my spirits, fiddling loud<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A marching tune, which made me proud.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Behind these he rode himself, dressed, like the entire cavalcade, +entirely in white,—cape, hood, shirt, coat reaching to his feet, +embroidered silk gloves, and those hair-braids hanging to his waist. "In +my love-longing heart, I rejoiced thus to serve my lady."</p> + +<p>The narrative of this "Venus-journey" is prolonged, detailed, and +tedious, and only two or three episodes need be mentioned. At Treviso, a +crowd of women are gathered about his lodging, when he comes out on his +way to early mass, and he takes comfort in thinking how well-dressed he +is. In the church, a countess suggests kissing him, conformably to the +kiss of peace custom; the attraction is stronger than the desire for +disguise, and he lifts his veil. She sees that Lady Venus is a man, but +she kisses him nevertheless. "That raised my spirits," Ulrich confides +to us, "for a lady's kiss is delightful"; and he goes on to say that +"every one who ever kissed a lady's mouth knows that nothing is so sweet +as the kiss of a noble lady. A high-born true woman who has a red mouth +and a fair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> body, whenever she kisses a man he can judge of a lady's +kiss, and of it he is ever glad. A lady's kiss is still better than +good, and it fills a heart with joy." No wonder that many ladies +collected at his inn, to bid so sentimental a knight God-speed. From +their prayers he assures us that he gained good fortune, "for God cannot +slight ladies' petitions," an imputation of gallantry to God, for which +we find curious mediæval parallels.</p> + +<p>Wherever the knight goes, numerous contestants are awaiting him, in this +idle age when no one had anything to do. Some of these, also, assume +disguises, one as a monk, another in female costume, his shield and +spear æsthetic with flowers. But the travelling combatant is always the +winner. At one point during the journey he steals off for a couple of +days to a place which he has never mentioned previously: namely, to his +home. The love-stricken lady-servant speaks with the most unaffected +simplicity of the joy with which he rode away to see his wife:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Who was just as dear to me as she could be.... The good +woman received me just as a lady should receive her very dear +husband. I had made her happy by my visit. My arrival had +taken away her sadness. She was glad to see me, and I was +glad to see her; with kisses the good woman received me. The +true woman was glad to see me, and joyously I took my ease +and pleasure there two days."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This appears tautological, but it also seems sincere.</p> + +<p>But a wound was in store for his sensibility. One day he had gone to a +retired place for a bath, and his attendant had gone to bring a suit. +While thus left quite alone and unprotected, a lady sent by her servant +a suit of female garments, a piece of tapestry, a coat, a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> girdle, a +fine buckle, a garland, a ring with a ruby red as a lady's sweet mouth, +and a letter. To receive such a gift from a lady not one's love was +treason. He bade the page take the things away, but he would not; nay, +he presently returned with two others, carrying fresh beautiful roses, +which they strewed all about Ulrich in the bath, while he raged and +fumed to think of the insult offered to his unprotected condition. To +think of receiving a gift from any but his own lady! And, of all gifts, +a ring!</p> + +<p>The next present that came was received very differently. After all +these years of neglect, the mistress of his life sent Ulrich an +affectionate message, and a ring which her white hand had worn for ten +years, as a token that she took part in the honors which he was gaining, +and rejoiced in his worthiness. Possibly the knight's name was gaining +currency as genuinely valorous. But fancy his ecstasy! "This little ring +shall ever lift up my heart. Well for me that I was born, and that I +found a lady so true, sweet, blissful, lady of all my joys, brightness +of my heart's joys," and so forth. He was informed that many knights +were waiting to contest with him at Vienna. "What harm can happen to me, +since my lady is gracious? If for every knight there were three, I could +master them all."</p> + +<p>Outside of amorous and knightly themes, Ulrich's mind is not active, but +he occasionally shows a philosophical observation on social topics, as +in the present context, where he comments on female vanity in dress:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Woman's nature, young and old, likes many clothes. Even +if she does not wear them all, she is pleased to have them, so +that she can say, 'an if I liked, I could be better dressed than +other people.' Good clothes are becoming to beautiful women, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>and my foolish masculine opinion is that a man should take +pleasure in dressing them well, since he should hold his wife +as his own body."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Certainly Ulrich took pleasure in dressing himself well.</p> + +<p>The Venus-journey ended, and Ulrich counted up the results. Two hundred +and seventy-one of his spears had been broken, and he had broken three +hundred and seven; he had brought honor upon his lady by his loyalty and +valor; and had shown her constant devotion, even though he had +momentarily fallen in love with a bewitching woman at one of his +stopping-places, and taken advantage of his disguise to kiss various +fair ones at mass. Is it possible that the anonymous heroine heard of +such trivial infidelities? At any rate, the next visit of the messenger +brought a bitter dismissal, with cruel charges of inconstancy. She would +always hate him, and never hold him dear; she was angry with herself for +giving him a ring; she bade him return it at once. Alas, poor Ulrich! +Never had he entertained a false thought; if he had ever been guilty of +one, he would in no wise have survived it. "I sat weeping like a child; +from weeping I was almost blind. I wrung my hands pitilessly; in my +distress my limbs cracked as one snaps dry wood." Well may the poet +declare that exhibition of grief no child's play. As the lover and his +bosom friend sat weeping together, Ulrich's brother-in-law admonished +him that such behavior disgraced the name of knight; moreover, there was +no reason for melancholy now, when the champion ought to be happy in the +fine reputation just made. "If women hear how you are behaving, they +will always hate you for this weak mood." Ulrich tried to tell about his +grief for the lady<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> whom he had served so long, but the strain was too +great: "The blood in truth burst out from my mouth and my nose, so that +I was all blood." It was perhaps natural for his friend to thank God +that "before his death he had been permitted to see one man who truly +loves." Yet he bade him be courageous. "Nothing helps so much with +ladies as good courage. Melancholy doesn't succeed with them at all. +Joyousness always has served well with women."</p> + +<p>Water is stable compared with Ulrich's temperament. Close upon the +anguish of this renewed rejection he goes home for a ten-days' visit +with his wife,—"my dear wife, who could not be dearer to me even though +I had another woman for the lady of my life." Within eight lines this +mercurial poet speaks of his comfort with his wife, and of the suffering +of his love-languishing heart.</p> + +<p>Another message from his dream brought a renewed expression of coldness. +She felt kindly to him, but she never would grant favor to any one. But +another song and messenger secure at last the promise of an interview. +Yet notice the conditions. Evidently this lady was a humorist, to whom +her former page was amusing when her less complaisant mood did not find +him tiresome. And perhaps she thought that he could not accept her +terms. She says she will see him if he will come the next Sunday morning +before breakfast, dressed in poor clothes, and in company with a squad +of lepers who have a camp near her castle. But even then he is to +indulge in no hope of her love. The distance is so great that he thinks +he will be unable to cover it in time; but he is told that he must, for +"women are very strange; they wish men constantly to carry out their +desires, and to any one who fails to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> do so they are not well disposed." +On Saturday he rode thirty-six miles, lost two horses by the forced +journey, very likely over rough country, and was wearied by the exertion +of so hard an effort. But he succeeded, and as soon as they reach the +neighborhood of the castle, he and his two companions put on poor +clothes—the shabbiest they could procure,—and with leper cups and long +knives for their safety among such outcasts of society, they go to the +spot where thirty lepers are huddled together. Mediæval charity and +religion are illustrated by this incident; the miserable beggars explain +that a lady of the castle is ill, and therefore they often receive food +and money in recompense for their prayers for her recovery. Beating his +clapper like one of them, he goes toward the castle gate, and meets an +envoy maid who bids him beware of failing to obey every command +literally, and adds that her mistress will not see him yet awhile. That +personal vanity which always marked him had submitted to stains of herbs +to disguise his face, as well as to miserable and ragged dress, and off +he went, in the servitude of love, and sat among the lepers, ate and +drank among them—nay, even went about begging for scraps, which, +however, he threw under a bush. The foul odors and the filthiness of the +wretches about him made the day almost insufferable, but at last night +came, and he hid himself in a field of grain, getting well stung by +insects and drenched in a cold storm. But he told himself that "whoever +has in his troubles sweet anticipation, he can endure them." In the +morning he went to the castle again, and was encouraged to believe that +he would be received that evening. So he returned and ate with the +beggars; then he escaped to a wood, and with true old German +nature-sentiment,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> he sat down where the sun fell through the trees and +listened to the birds—many were singing—and forgot the cold.</p> + +<p>Toward evening he secured another interview with the maid, and received +directions for the night. He and his companion hid in the ditch before +the castle, skulking from the observation of the patrol, until well +after dark; then when the signal light appeared at a certain window he +went beneath it, and found a rope made of clothes hanging down. In this +he fastened himself, and hands above began to raise him, but when he was +half way up they could raise him no farther, and he was let down to the +ground. This happened three times; and yet, guileless Ulrich, you had no +glimmering that perhaps it was a joke? The companion was lighter than +his lord, and it occurred to the two that they had better change places. +So they did, and the substitute was lifted into the window by the +waiting ladies above, and then Ulrich himself arrived there. He was +given a coat (an accident below had compelled him to leave his on the +ground), and, blissful moment, he was ushered into the presence of the +woman whom he had so long served without even a glimpse. It was a +brilliant social scene which broke upon those enamoured eyes, indeed too +brilliant and too social to correspond with a lover's sentiment for +"dual solitude." His soul's desire, richly dressed, sat upon a couch, +surrounded by a bevy of ladies. Her husband, it is true, was not +present, but with an absence of tact (as it must have seemed to Ulrich) +she fell to talking about him and her complete happiness in his love. +Their mutual confidence is so strong that he is quite willing to have +her receive any visitors whom she pleases, and she added that her true +mind served him better than any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> safeguard which he could put upon her. +Awkward as such a line of conversation made it, Ulrich began to tell the +story of his heart, and entreats her to respond to his devotion. She +assured him that she had no thought of ever loving him; she had +consented to this interview only to assure him of her kindly feeling, +and satisfy him from her own lips that he must cherish no romantic hope. +If he continued to ask her to love him, he should lose her favor. "I was +horrified," he declares, "and started up at the threat."</p> + +<p>At this point in the interview he withdraws to talk to his cousin, who +was with other ladies in an adjoining apartment, and who advised him to +return and plead again. But an abrupt dismissal sends him into a moody +reflection, which culminates in a desperate resolve. Now or never; he +sends her word of his determination, and then rushes in and tells her +that if she will not say she loves him, he will kill himself then and +there. The lady sees that such a suicide would be compromising, and +tries to persuade him that perhaps she may some time. Ah, no such +coyness; she must confess her love to-night. Finally, as a last +resource, she thinks of employing the usual right of a courted +woman—putting her lover to a test of his devotion. He has already given +her so many that a trifling, a merely formal one will serve now. Let him +just get into the clothes-rope again and be lowered part way down, and +pulled back; then she will say she loves him. A glimmer of suspicion +flits over his mind, but she gives him her hand as a pledge, and he gets +into the rope. Now he is hanging outside the window, still holding the +dear hand, and such sweet things as she whispers, as she leans out—no +knight was ever so dear to her; now comes his contentment, all his +troubles are past<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> now! She even coddles his chin with her disengaged +hand, and bids him kiss her. Kiss her! In his joy he lets go the hand he +was holding, to throw both arms about her neck, when suddenly he is +dropped to the ground so swiftly "that he ran great peril of his +life."<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p> + +<p>In the rooms above a score of voices ringing with laughter, on the +ground a too credulous child of Mars and Venus, cursing his day. Ulrich +spies a deep pool and is about to drown himself, when his companion +arrives with a little present sent by the lady. She promises—(the +gentleman afterward confesses that this is a falsehood of his own to +preserve Ulrich from despair)—that if he will return in three weeks, +she will assure him of her real affection. But now it is near day, and +they must hasten off; providentially there is a tournament awaiting +them, which will distract his attention. But he sends his friend back to +have a talk with the lady, who is in a rather humorous mood, and says +that Ulrich made so much noise when he fell that one of the guard +thought it was the Devil. But though she laughs, she evidently has had +enough of such fun, for she tells the messenger that if his lord wishes +her favor he must make the journey over-sea. Ulrich agrees to go, but he +is warned against the almost hopeless dangers of that most formidable of +pilgrimages; he is reminded that no one ever took such a perilous +journey except for God, and that he would surely sacrifice his soul, if +he lost his life thus for a woman.</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p> +<p>But one grows tired of the story, which runs on with ups and downs, over +the long thirteen years through which Ulrich served this lady. Toward +the end of the period he was plainly growing impatient. He wrote more +lyrics, which suggest here and there that devotion without love in +return is foolish, and that he is contemplating a change. Finally he +conceived himself treated shamefully (we are not told what the +discourtesy was which he could not idealize), and he made a final break +with his old worship. But now the time passed wearily, and he felt that +he must still have a lady to serve. "How joyfully once the days went by; +alas, no longer have I any service to render. How happy ladies' service +makes one." But the knight has learned the lesson of his trials, and +this time he arranges for a judicious passion. He runs over all his +female acquaintance, to see which of them he had best select. Finally he +fixes upon one who, of course, is beautiful and good, and wholly free +from change; who has finished manners and gentle ways, chastity and +force of character, and to her he offers his service, which she accepts.</p> + +<p>From this point in Ulrich's memoirs we have an increasing number of +lyrics; he likes them all, but complains that one or two were not +appreciated by the public, though whoever was clever enough to +understand his poetry, he tells us, did appreciate it. Perhaps we are +not clever enough to understand it all; but some of the songs, as he +himself says, "are good for dancing and very cheerful; the martial ones +were gladly sung when in the jousts fire sprung from helmets," and more +than one of his poems is a contribution to the graceful though minor +work of the later minnesingers. For example:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Summer-hued,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is the wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heath and field; debonair<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now is seen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">White, brown, green,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blue, red, yellow, everywhere.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everything<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You see spring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joyously, in full delight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He whose pains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dear love deigns<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her favor to requite—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, happy wight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whosoe'er<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knows love's care,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Free from care well may be;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Year by year<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brightness clear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the May shall he see.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blithe and gay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All the play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of glad love shall he fulfil;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joyous living<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is in the giving<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of high love to whom she will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rich in joys still.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">He's a churl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom a girl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lovingly shall embrace,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who'll not cry<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Blest am I"—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Let none such show his face.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This will cure you<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(I assure you)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of all sorrows, all alarms;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What alloy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In his joy<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span><span class="i0">On whom white and pretty arms<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bestow their charms?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And again:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet, in whom all things behooving,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Virtue, brightness, beauty, meet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Little troubles thee this loving,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art safe above it, sweet.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My love-trials couldst thou feel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From thy dainty lips should steal<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sighs like mine, as deep and real.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sir, what is love? Prithee, answer;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is it maid or is it man?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And explain, too, if you can, sir,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How it looks; though I began<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Long ago, I ask in vain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everything you know explain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I may avoid its pain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet, love is so strong and mighty<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That all countries own her sway;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who can speak her power rightly?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet I'll tell thee what I may.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She is good and she is bad;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Makes us happy, makes us sad;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Such moods love always had.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sir, can love from care beguile us<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And our sorrowing distress?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With fair living reconcile us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gaiety and worthiness?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If her power hath controlled<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Everything as I've just told,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure her grace is manifold.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet, of love there's more to tell thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Service she with rapture pays;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With her joys and honors dwell; we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Learn from her dear virtue's ways.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mirth of heart and bliss of eye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whom she loves shall satisfy;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor will she higher good deny.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sir, I fain would win her wages,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her approval I would seek;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet distress my mind presages;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, for that I am too weak.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pain I never can sustain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How may I her favors gain?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sir, the way you must explain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet, I love thee; be not cruel;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou to love again must try.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make a unit of our dual,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That we both become an "I."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be thou mine and I'll be thine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Sir, not so; the hope resign.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be your own, and I'll be mine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The latter part of this prolix autobiography is occupied by a detailed +account of a long tourneying trip, which he contrived as a parallel to +his Venus-journey, this time under the disguise of King Arthur. But the +narration of that ends at last, and Ulrich becomes reflective upon the +seasons and his lady. "Whoever sorrows at winter, and is made glad by +summer, lives like the bird which rejoices in sunny May. How distressing +is bad weather! Yet whatever the weather, her goodness gives me joy +which storms cannot disturb." Presently he tells us his feelings about +the life around him, for the social critics of mediævalism felt the +inequalities of fortune and happiness quite as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> strongly as do the +social critics of to-day. Some time earlier Ulrich, in criticising a +number of knights whom he met, showed a noteworthily refined feeling for +generous qualities, and resistance against hardness and selfish aims. In +spite of this love-singer's belief in cheerfulness ("no one does well to +be sad except about sins," he wrote), the roughness of the age troubled +him, as it had troubled earlier and greater authors of his nation. +"Instead of being good, the rich work one another harm; the only +profession is that of plundering, the service of ladies is forsaken. The +young men are spendthrifts, and with pillaging consume their youth." +Indeed, the golden hour of chivalry had struck when Ulrich wrote, in his +later life, just past the middle of the thirteenth century. But this +sentimental absurdity, whose fanciful devotion and melodramatic moonings +we find so preposterous, kept a strain of the higher manhood. He was +good-hearted; he believed in the refined side of life, so far as he knew +it; in a rough time and place he loved gentleness; though born with a +large streak of the fool, he had also a pleasant element of the +simple-minded gentleman; and as he grew old amid fading ideals, over +which he had hung with effeminately romantic faith, the brutal and +joyless hardness of men perplexed and saddened him. Yet his simplicity +was his trouble's best physician; nature, the beauty and goodness of +true womanhood, his sense of inner virtue as opposed to worldly +estimates, and his poetry—in these he found comfort.</p> + +<p>"Whatever people have done, I have been happy +and sung of my love."</p> + +<p>After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career, +he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been +consecrated. Has he made<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness +unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a +noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little +beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be +sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness—it is better +than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will +become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay, +shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no +womanly woman." ...</p> + +<p>"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not +notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who +gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them +into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry +that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow +which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers."</p> + +<p>For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so +certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true +woman and a loving man.</p> + +<p>Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are +four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the +poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some +strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all, +win none, and hate themselves.</p> + +<p>And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these +revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or +meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he +has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> left hand, a +bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his +rôle. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the +green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the +bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his +head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb +falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Of this last class am I; I have lived my life trying not to +give up the three for any one. I desired and even hoped that +I might obtain all the four. This hope has still deceived me, +and I am made a fool by it. One day I will serve Him who +has given me soul, life, thought, whatever I have; the next +as a man I will strive for honor; then for wealth; on the fourth +day I am for ease. Thus inconstant, I have passed my entire +life."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Nothing accomplished—nothing even steadily aimed at. Nothing? With +characteristic buoyancy the gray-haired poet puts aside this sombre mood +of dissatisfaction with his fifty odd years. For in one point, at least, +he has been true. In this book, written only because his lady commanded, +he has spoken very many sweet words for worthy women, and throughout his +life he has been faithful to his love. "And I do believe that the very +true sweet God, through his very high goodness, will think on my +fidelity to her, and my constant service."</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/70b.png" width="200" height="105" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="neidhart" id="neidhart"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/71t.png" width="500" height="126" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, AND HIS +BAVARIAN PEASANTS.</h2> + + +<p>Our liveliest pictures of old German peasantry come, as we should +expect, from a singer of the knightly class. The masses had fewer and of +course less accomplished poets, and these would be most likely to please +their audiences by touching with the glamour of fashionable life such +work as they cared to make contemporary and imitative. Realistic social +transcripts usually come from culture. It may be that Neidhart von +Reuenthal had been brought up at the ducal court or in a castle, but +there is as good reason for conjecturing that his origin was among the +scenes of country life that he describes. Most of the courtly poets +belonged to the lower class of knights, and between this and the better +order of peasants there was no wide dividing line; indeed, a farmer with +a little land of his own and four free ancestors ("von allen vieren anen +ein gebûre," as Neidhart says bitterly of his enemy the swaggering Ber), +by the old Saxon law stood higher than a knight not of free blood. The +agricultural class in the thirteenth century was becoming more impatient +of the costly conflicts of their military superiors and was also +suffering severely from the pillaging domestic raids of lawless knights, +who, as they grew bolder, established centres of reckless free-booting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +to which they attracted wayward youth of the middle classes. Cities were +also getting larger, and the tradesmen joined with the established +gentry in thinking slightingly of the farming population. Accordingly +there was jealousy on one side and arrogance on the other, yet there was +still a meeting-place between the two classes. Depleted nobles would +marry daughters of wealthy peasants, and a gentleman whose fief lay +among well-to-do farmers might easily meet them in social relations.</p> + +<p>A grant from the Bavarian Duke evidently isolated Neidhart from his own +companions, and he appears to have mingled freely with the peasantry, +though we cannot determine how early the contact began. He was born in +the latter part of the twelfth century, we may say about 1185, perhaps, +and with the exception of absence on Leopold VII's crusade of 1217-1219, +he apparently kept his home in his native Bavaria until about 1230, when +he lost the Duke's favor and turned as a homeless wanderer to Austria, +where he received welcome and another fief. The last date inferred from +his songs is 1236, in connection with the Emperor's coming, and he was +dead before the composition of Meier Helmbrecht, which is earlier than +1250.</p> + +<p>So far as imitations prove popularity, he was one of the most popular of +mediæval poets. It is easy to understand the pleasure that his verses +must have given, striking as they did into a new field, and executed +with literary skill, full of verve and humor, and appealing to strong +class prejudice. We must think of him as a gentleman fond of society, of +refined courtly habits, with an aristocratic contempt for pinchbeck +upstarts, yet not unwilling now and then to play the good-natured +acquaintance with middle-class people.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> + +<p>Though he ranks as a knight, his tastes were not military. He was +lively, quick-witted, and satirical; clever at musical invention; +genuinely interested in poetry. Moreover, he gave early evidence of an +independent literary taste, that dared to yawn at the methods practised +by the great minnesingers of his youth. By his singing he had obtained +sufficient favor with the Duke to receive a fief though away among the +peasantry; yet rather than relinquish a home of his own, that constant +dream of his profession, he made the merriest and the best of the time +he needed to spend on his estate.</p> + +<p>The feeling for spring is largely an animal sensation, as the lambs in +the pasture, or dogs on the green, or little children remind us. The +comparison of loving something "as goats love the spring," goes back to +Greek literature. It has also been habitually associated with physical +sentiment, as the splendid proëmium of Lucretius suggests. With this +buoyancy of spirits and emotional susceptibility, serious minds touched +with poetry have associated various deep and beautiful moods. But the +moral element that enters into such spring poems as Wordsworth's, is not +present in mediæval literature. There we find poets feeling spring as +animals, as children, as lovers. Those were out-of-door generations; +hunting, riding, fighting, and enjoying themselves beneath the open sky, +were their chief employments. They found winter travel hard, for they +had no beaten roads; it caused a dreary interruption to their principal +engagements, and to a large extent confined them in narrow quarters, not +too comfortably warmed. In spite of all the amusements that could be +provided, the time must have dragged. If Romans could cry out as Ovid +did at the significance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> of spring, what must the season have meant to +the castled sons of central Europe. It is not strange then that their +nature-worship instituted in early times a festival to the genial +conqueror of frost and snow, and that this ceremony, as the old +superstitions died away, was continued in graceful traditions of village +customs. The first flowers or the earliest boughs in leaf served as the +signal for the ceremonial welcome of April or May. With widely varying +details, the youth of the parish would stream out to the fields or +woods, and come back singing spring catches, and dancing that long, +skipping forward step which they practised out-of-doors, carrying with +them trophies of the season. Sometimes they fastened the first violet to +a pole, and setting it up danced around it; sometimes they danced about +the first linden that appeared in leaf. It is the linden that the poets +are continually mentioning, whether in the centre of the courtyard or in +the field, and the tree suggests the social life of the old times as +happily as the pine under which Charlemagne sat, in the great chanson, +suggests the imperial master.</p> + +<p>Customs related in Herrick's <i>Going a-Maying</i>, such as the decoration of +the houses of favorites with early greenery and the processions of girls +and young men to the woods and fields, were familiar in Germany long +before. Exercises to welcome spring became not only a social but +even—so far as the rude country songs went—a literary habit. The +earlier ritual dance around some altar or symbol of the summer deity +grew into an entertainment from which all sense of its original +significance had passed away. These celebrations became the main social +feature of the warm months. At one time partners appear to have been +taken for the year (a passage in <i>Wilhelm Meister</i> reminds<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> us of this +usage), but not in the period before us. A summons to a holiday dance +(and the large number of church festivals made holidays frequent) was +usually given by a musician playing or singing through the street. The +young men and women, and not infrequently their elders, came to the +customary field, dressed for the gaiety; as they went along, tossing and +catching bright-colored balls. This favorite ball-playing, mentioned by +more than one poet of the age as a sign of spring, and especially +entered into by girls, often formed a prelude to the dance. For one +thing it gave the girls a way of choosing their partners, for the man +who caught the ball tossed by a girl, according to some usages, could +claim the right to dance with her. An anonymous poet of the thirteenth +century gives a lively picture of one of these scenes.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"All the time the young people are passing ball on the +street. This is the earliest sport of summer, and as they play +they scream. What if the rustic lad gives me a shove? How +rude he is as he darts here and there, flying and chasing and +playing tricks with the ball. Then two by two they have a +hoppaldy dance about the fiddle, as if they wanted to fly."</p></blockquote> + +<p>As one of the fellows holds the ball,</p> + +<blockquote><p>"What pretty speeches the girls make him, how they shriek, +how wild they get. While he's hesitating to whom he'll +throw, they stretch out their hands; now you're my friend +(geveterlin),—throw it down here to me ... Jiutelin and +Elsemuot hurry after it. Whoever gets it is the best one. +Krumpolt ran, and cried, 'Throw it to me, and I'll throw it +back.' In the scrimmage some of the girls get pushed down, +and an accident happens to Eppe, the prettiest one in the field. +But she picks herself up, and tosses the ball into the air. All +scream, 'Catch it! catch it!' No girl can play better than +she does; she judges the ball so well, and is such a sure catch."</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> + +<p>Another way of choosing partners was by presenting garlands, and one of +the prettiest of the spring customs was the walk to the fields and woods +after flowers for wreaths, either to give away or to wear. So one of the +Latin songs describes young people going out,—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Juvenes ut flores accipiant<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et se per odores <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'reficient'">reficiant</ins><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Virgines assumant alacriter,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et eant in prata floribus ornata, communiter."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It certainly is a genial phase of those old times, this out-of-door +companionship of lads and lassies, gathering flowers and "dancing in the +chequered shade." The custom has in a manner survived to our own day; in +England, for example, Mr. Thomas Hardy has introduced such scenes very +pleasantly in some of his novels, but the zest and universality of it +have not descended. Even in Elizabeth's England the hobby-horse was +forgot; and back in the thirteenth century the May-time amusements were +being frowned away. For preachers and moralists saw much evil in these +summer gaieties. It is the old story: Nature is such a puritanical +stage-manager that she likes to bring on a tragedy for the after-piece +to her pleasant comedy, and she is best satisfied when we take warning +from the practice and stay away from the play.</p> + +<p>The insane frenzies into which meadow dancing was carried on some +occasions, especially at the riotous midsummer festival, do not belong +to our subject. Neidhart assumes a flippant tone about matters of +conduct, but his treatment of the summer merrymakings is usually +innocent and agreeable. He comes as an artist, to the rude material +provided in the traditional village songs for these occasions, and +transfers to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> polished verse of Germany's already highly trained +lyrical school, that fresh and gay subject-matter that is so remote from +the formal phrases of most of his courtly predecessors. His songs are +lyric in their introduction, but almost invariably epic or dramatic in +the later stanzas, scarcely ever overstepping closely drawn lines. +Whereas, Walther von der Vogelweide's work in the popular poetry retains +the lyrical mood throughout, and is far less realistic, never, I +believe, treating a peasant element as such. Those lyrical preludes +attest Neidhart's deep sentiment for nature; we feel that, in spite of +the conventionality in them. He has the rare merit of an occasional +specific note, and he touches even the hackneyed expressions about birds +and flowers with a contagious buoyancy. Look at a few of these +introductions:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Hedges green as gold; the heath dressed in bright roses. +Come on, you fine girls: May is in the land. The linden is +well hung with rich attire; now hearken, how the nightingale +draws near."</p> + +<p>"The time is here: for many a year I have not seen a fairer. +The cold winter is over, and many hearts rejoice that felt its +chill. The woods are in leaf. Come then with me to the linden, +dear."</p> + +<p>"Summer, a thousand welcomes! Whatever heart was +wounded by the long winter is healed, its pain all gone. Thou +comest welcome to the world in all lands. Through thee, rich +and poor lose their sorrows, when winter has to go."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And another, which loses its effect if we neglect the long, swinging +metre:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The forest for new foliage its grey dress has forsaken;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And therefore now full many hearts to pleasure must awaken.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The birds to whom the winter brought dismay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have never sung so well as now the praises of the May.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The winter from the lovely heath at last has turned aside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there the blossoms stand, arrayed in colors gaily pied.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Above them May's sweet dews are lightly shed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, how I wish I had a wreath, dear friend, a lady said.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This stanza moves more quickly:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Forth from your houses, children fair!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Out to the street! No wind is there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sharp wind, cold snow.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The birds were dreary,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They're singing cheerily;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forth to the woodland go.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>After such opening stanzas comes the action of the song, almost always +an expression of a girl's longing to go to the dance, and her mother's +unwillingness. The burden of the remonstrances is that of the song in +<i>Much Ado</i>, "Men were deceivers ever"; and though some of the +conversations are amiable, often the two come to high words, and even to +blows. The girl cannot think of going without her best costume, and +this, in the prudent old domestic management, was always carefully +folded up, and kept under lock and key. "Who gave you the right to lock +up my gown?" a daughter demands. "You did not spin a thread of it. +Where's the key? now open the room for me." Finally, she obtained it by +stealth. "She took from the chest the gown that was laid in many small +folds. To the knight of Reuenthal she threw her colored ball." But +Neidhart grimly brings in her mother at the close.</p> + +<p>Another cries: "Bring me my fine gown. The gentleman from Reuenthal has +sung us a new song. I hear him singing there to the children. I must +dance<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> with him at the linden." Her mother warns her of what happened to +her playmate Jiute last year, "just as her mother said." But the +gentleman had sent her a lovely garland of roses, and had brought her a +pair of red stockings from over the Rhine, which she was wearing then; +and she had promised to let him teach her the dance. Another song +represents two girls talking of the same knight from Reuenthal: "All +know him, and his songs are heard everywhere. He loves me, and to please +him I will lace myself trimly, and go."</p> + +<p>Some of the mothers do more than remonstrate: "The wood is well in leaf, +but my mother will not let me go. She has tied my feet with a rope. But +all the same, I must go with the children to the linden in the field." +Her mother overheard and threatened to punish her. "You little +grasshopper, whither wilt thou hop away from the nest? Sit and sew in +the sleeve for me." The girl is impudent, and the poem ends with a +lively contest.</p> + +<p>Love is too strong. "He kissed me," one of them says, "and he had some +root in his mouth, so that I lost all my senses." Perhaps the high-born +poet bewitched these peasant-girls; he often assures us of it. One of +them is plighted to a farmer, and whenever he expects to find her at +home to entertain him, she joins the dancers, as toward evening "they +bend their way down the street," and throws her ball to the knightly +singer. Even the mothers themselves are sometimes caught by the desire +to dance with him, or at least with some of the men at the linden, and +in two or three of Neidhart's sprightliest songs the tables are turned, +and the daughter tries to keep her mother from the gaieties that her +years have outgrown. I have translated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> two of these summer dance songs +in their exact rhythms, and so literally as to make them appear almost +bald. In the first the nature opening may be omitted.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Mother, do not deny me,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forth to the field I'll hie me,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And dance the merry spring;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis ages since I heard the crowd<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Any new carols sing."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Nay, daughter, nay, mine own,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thee I have all alone<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Upon my bosom carried;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now yield thee to thy mother's will,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And seek not to be married."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"If I could only show him!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Why, mother dear, you know him,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And to him I will haste;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ah, 'tis the knight of Reuenthal,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And he shall be embraced.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Such green the branches bending!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The leafy weight seems rending<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The trees so thickly clad:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now be assured, dear mother mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">I'll take the worthy lad.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"Dear mother, with such burning<br /></span> +<span class="i2">After my love he's yearning,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Ungrateful can I be?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">He says that I'm the prettiest<br /></span> +<span class="i4">From France to Germany."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bare we saw the fields, but that is over;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now the flowers are crowding thro' the clover;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">At length the season that we love is here:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As last year,<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span><span class="i0">All the heath is caught and held by roses;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To roses summer brings good cheer.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thrushes, nightingales, we hear them singing;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With their loud music mount and dale are ringing:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the dear summer is their jubilee:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To you and me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It brings bright sights and pleasures without number;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heath is a fair thing to see.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Dewy grow the meadows," cried a maiden,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Branches lately bare are greenly laden:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Listen! how the birds are crowning May:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come and play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For, Wierat, the leaves are on the linden;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Winter, I ween, has gone away.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"This year, too, we'll dance till twilight closes;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Near the wood is a great mass of roses,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I'll have a garland of them, trimly made;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Come, you jade,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hand in hand with a fine knight you'll see me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dance in the linden shade."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Little daughter, heed not his advances;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If thou press among the knights at dances,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Something not befitting such as we<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There will be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trouble coming to thee, little daughter—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the young farmer thinks of thee."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Nay, I trust to rule a knight in armor;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How then should I listen to a farmer?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What! you think I'd be a peasant's bride!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She replied:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"He could never woo me to my liking,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He'll never marry me," she cried.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>At first Neidhart seems to have maintained friendly relations with the +young men of the district, for we find him addressing in amicable terms +even Engelmar, who later became his worst enemy, complimenting him upon +his room, in a song apparently designed for a dance at his house. But it +is difficult to believe that his critical genius would have gone long +without expression, and he presently began amusing himself, and courting +the admirations of others, by original snatches of songs that were +imitated from the <i>trutzstrophen</i> of humorous, rustic, and often roughly +personal verses, that were evidently in vogue among the country people +before Neidhart's day. Such jeering, gibing bits of peasant fun-making +would grow out of the custom of songs at these rural gatherings, like +the parallel practice sometimes found with us of country +valentine-parties, where personalities are touched off with the freedom +of anonymous and privileged license. We can readily imagine him +beginning with hits at one and another, that contained no deeper offence +than an inevitable tone of his amused sense of the ridiculous. But the +country gallants, already jealous of their elegant rival, whose +gentlemanly prestige and courtly accomplishments would naturally make +him attractive to their sweethearts, would be quick to take umbrage, and +boorishly ready to manifest their displeasure. Neidhart certainly +enjoyed at least as much of the poetic dower as "the hate of hate, the +scorn of scorn," and must have answered their sullenness and rudeness +with the contempt that falls with such a sting from gentility. Then +stung himself by their bad manners, he naturally composed sharper and +more direct stanzas, holding those who had offended him up to the +laughter of other men, and of the tittering damsels. It does not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> seem +probable that the most cutting and individualized of these attacks were +written to be sung at dances where the victims of the satire were +present. When we consider the violence and recklessness that +historically marked this whole class in the thirteenth century, we are +sure that the poet would hardly have survived some of the recitations. +Many of them he probably composed to gratify his possibly irritated +mood; for, as we shall presently see, his displeasure was deeper than +the vexation of wounded social pride. But they strayed easily to the +objects of their ridicule. As he strolled along the street, carrying his +fiddle, and stopping to amuse himself at one house or another with any +of the pretty girls whom he found idle like himself, he may have played +and sung the piece over which he had just been working, or the minor +singers who must have haunted him as he grew better known, would catch +up and repeat far and wide the witty verses. The piece at which he was +working, I said, for in an important sense the poems were professional +labor. The natural comparison of the minnesinger on his farm to Ovid +among the Goths, loses most of its force when we reflect that Neidhart's +absences from his various little Romes were in some sense at his own +pleasure, and that he must have kept riding about from castle to castle, +and have made frequent sojourns at his patron's court, in the exercise +of his now established musical vocation. The better his songs, the surer +his hold on the Duke's favor, and as his prestige might rise throughout +the country, the more cordial his greeting would be, and the more +generous his dismission whenever he chose to go. These mediæval poets +were more than careless rhymsters: painstaking labor was assumed as +necessary for success. Their poetry was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> as subtle and difficult as the +schoolmen's philosophy; though we may not care much for either, we at +least respect the skill with which they mastered self-enforced technical +difficulties. Arnaut Daniel's contest for a wager with another +troubadour (King Richard was to decide which produced the cleverer +poem), illustrates the statement that time was thought necessary for +composition. The Provençal biography tells us that the contestants were +shut up in separate rooms, and only ten days were allowed each for +preparing his song. In Neidhart's seclusion on his fief, then, he would +naturally make studies for his more important literary appearances, +studies in subject-matter, as well as in verse and music. And a large +number of his poems, at least considered in their entirety, must be +thought of as compositions intended for courtly audiences.</p> + +<p>It is to be presumed that Neidhart began by writing in the conventional +style of the love-singers. But his sense of humor and his originality +were too vigorous to allow him to continue in the polished and +monotonous manners of the school that reached its acme in Reinmar. He +possessed the creative faculty, and the rude village lyrics were a +sufficient suggestion of the new departure that he at once instituted +and consummated. He put in the place of lyrical elegies, lyrical +snatches of epic; and instead of gathering his epic materials from the +already familiar, even if not hackneyed, cycles of chivalry, he took +them from the real life, and that a growing life, of the German +villagers of his time. Their boorish manners and arrogant social +pretensions, their vulgar assumptions of elegance, and their jealous, +recklessly brutal tempers, he sketches vividly. His touch is not to be +called magical, there are no imaginative hauntings about the poems, +there is little fascination of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> subtle poetry in his expression or his +melodies. But his rude subjects are by no means treated rudely; he shows +excellent technique in those elaborately built stanzas; his tone rather +deepens than shrills in excited movements: in his dash and energy of +feeling, he retains artistic self-possession; while he is such an +iconoclast of sentimental poetry, that some have thought that Walther +had him in mind in his complaint of the new school. He invariably shows +sentiment for nature in his preludes, as well as sympathetic tones for +character, especially in what we may call his personal confessions. It +is indeed by virtue of this combination of qualities, as well as by his +novelty of subject, that he caught the approval of his age. Romantic +idealism was dying out, and a long period of coarse sensibility was +drawing on; while there was yet still some feeling for sentiment, and an +intellectual appreciation of artistic performance was, as usual, lapping +over the first stages of literary decadence. If we accept the view which +I have suggested, that at least as wholes many of Neidhart's songs were +intended only for the gentry, we may find it easier to meet the question +of their autobiographic and actual significance.</p> + +<p>It is possible to be unduly literal and too credulous of the historic +reality of whatever is found in an old literature. Especially in the +works of the minnesingers, some modern Germans appear unconscious that a +poet may relate fictitious experiences and sensations. As I have +remarked in an earlier essay, Cowley's love-poems had many mediæval +prototypes, and there seems no necessity for assuming a fact behind each +of Neidhart's statements. Why is it not reasonable to suppose that +having once made what we call a "strike" with some of his village +characters, he occasionally invented continuations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> or parallels? We may +go so far as to assert the possibility that the continual reappearances +of Engelmar, Neidhart's most recurrent character, who is always +associated with the beginning of his disasters, is due quite as much to +the fact that his early treatment of the famous snatching of a girl's +mirror proved, by virtue of the topic, or the melody, or both, a great +favorite, as to the incident in itself having been of the fateful +influence upon his life that is implied. In other cases, as in what we +may term the episode of the ginger-root, Neidhart certainly seems to be +referring to some of his most popular earlier songs, for no other reason +than that the reference would be agreeable to his audience and give a +sort of continuity to his work. One of these instances is almost +pathetic. The poet is old and song comes hard to him. After several +stanzas of unusually serious tone, he says that people ask him why he +does not sing as they are told he once did: they keep wondering what has +become of the peasants who used to be on Tulnaere-field. So he attempts +to conclude with a strain of his old satirical gaiety. "I'll tell of the +bold free ways of Limizun, who is yet worse than our friend who took +Friderun's mirror, or those who bought mail awhile ago at Vienna," as if +by the mention of these popular achievements of his younger wit he could +hide his dull present mood.</p> + +<p>So, too, as it appears to me, we may explain the recurrent complaints of +his unhappy loves and of his desires frustrated by one and another of +the boors. These lover's sorrows are just what we should expect from a +poet in Neidhart's relation to the fashionable love lyrics; he retains +something of the tone of despondent yearning that was deemed requisite +by all his predecessors, yet he gives it a piquant novelty by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +substituting irony and class animosities for vague and impersonal +wailings, and the sense of humor in these courtly woes in behalf of mere +peasant maidens would be a livelier attraction to the knights and ladies +of his polite circles than we might suppose. Surely Neidhart was the +victim of no deep passion for his rustic heroines. He may have been +amused by them, or even have liked them, and he certainly was enraged at +being interfered with or baffled by middle-class rivals; but his rôle is +more a Lothario's than a true lass-lorn wooer's. Imagine a peasant +farm-house with a large main apartment, such as Neidhart had in mind in +one of his earliest winter songs: "Engelmar, thy room is good; chill is +it in the dales: winter is hateful." The young farmers and the girls +come trooping in by pairs and little groups, dressed in their best, +smiling and gay: no better aid to imagining the scene could be desired +than Defregger's genial picture of a modern Tyrolese peasant party. It +is a change from the summer dances: "Winter, thy might will drive us +indoors from the broad linden. Thy winds are cold. Lark, quit thy +singing: both frost and snow have said thee nay; alas, for the green +clover. May, to thee I am loyal; winter is my bane." "Winter gives joy +to none but such as love the chimney-corner." They all think of the +change from their summer gatherings, and the singer strums his fiddle +and strikes into the nature prelude of his lyric, as they prepare to +begin the dance. Here is another opening, translated in the stanza +system of the original:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The green grass and the flowers<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Both are gone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before the sun the linden gives no shade;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Those happy hours<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span><span class="i4">On shady lawn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of various joys are over; where we played,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">None may play;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">No paths stray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where we went together;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joy fled away at the winter weather,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hearts are sad which once were gay.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>We are reminded again of Herrick in his lines to the meadows:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Ye have been fresh and green,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ye have been fill'd with flowers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ye the walks have been,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where maids have spent their hours."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The dance is under way now; if, as sometimes happened, they paid a +surprise visit, the guests have taken hold and made the room ready:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Clear out the benches and stools;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Set in the middle<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The trestles, then fiddle;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We'll dance till we're tired, merry fools.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Throw open the windows for air,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">That the breeze<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Softly please<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The throat of each child debonair.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the leaders grow weary to sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">We'll all say,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">"Fiddler, play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Us the tune for a stylish court-fling."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(They apparently piled the table-frames in the middle of the room in +place of the linden, about which they danced on the lawn.)</p> + +<p>The singer goes on to remind them of the preparation for the party:</p> + +<p>"I advise my friends to consult where the children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> shall have their +fun. Megenwart has a large room: if it like you all, we will have the +holiday party there. His daughter wishes us to come. All of you tell the +rest. Engelmar shall lead a dance around the table."</p> + +<p>Again: "Let Kunegunde know; we shall be blamed if no one tells her about +it, and don't forget Hedwig." Once more: "Come along, children, to the +farm-house at Hademuot's; Engelbrecht, Adelmar, Friderich, Tuoze, Guote, +Wentel, and her sisters all three; Hildeburg, pretty child; Jiutel and +her cousin Ermelint."</p> + +<p>Still again, in one of the cheerful early songs, before Neidhart's +bitter tone came in:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Now for the children who've been asked to the party. +Jiutel shall tell them all, that they are to step after the fiddle +with Hilde. 'Twill be a great dance. Diemuot, Gisel, are +going together; Wendel, too, Engelmuot, for Heaven's sake! +go out and call Künze to come.</p> + +<p>"Tell her the man is here; if she cares to see him, as she +has all the time been wishing to, let her put on a little jacket +and her cloak; I should prefer to have her come here, than to +have him find her there at home in her every day clothes.</p> + +<p>"Künze tarried then no longer, but came, as Engelmuot +bade her. She was in a hurry; quickly she dressed. Both +sides of her gown were red silk. The finest of girls! No one +could discover through the country, one I should be so glad to +give my dear mother for a daughter.</p> + +<p>"Haha! How she pleased me, when I saw what she +was; such hair, and red lips. Then I asked her to sit by me, +but she said: 'I don't dare; I've been told not to talk with +you, or even sit by you. Go and ask Heilke over there by +Vriderune!'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>"I hear dancing in the room," he sings at another time; "a crowd of +village women are there; two fiddles; when they pause, gay outbreak of +talking and laughing. Through the window goes the hubbub.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> Adelber never +dances but between two girls." Sometimes the knightly guest entered into +the gay interlude of conversation, entertaining a merry screaming group. +But when his moody vein, or vexation at some common man's successful +rivalry, dulled his social spirits, he would stand apart, or go to one +side with one of the peasant maids, and satirically note the men +scattered over the room. The young farmer's assumption of the dress and +manners of gentility, carrying arms, discarding rustic fashions, +affecting polite speech ("<i>Mit sîner rede er vlaemet</i>," Neidhart says of +one of them,—he talks like a fine gentleman from abroad),—all this was +ridiculous to the courtly poet, and his sense of the humor of it was +associated with the bitterness of social contempt. "Look at Engelmar, +how high he holds his head. What elegant style he has, at the dance, +with his showy sword; something different from his father Batze. His son +is a poor gawk, with his rough head. He puffs himself out like a stuffed +pigeon, that sits crop-full on a corn-chest." And again: "Did you ever +see so gay a peasant as he is? Good Lord! he is first of all in the +dance. His sword-band is two hands broad. Proud enough he, of his new +jacket; it has four and twenty small pieces of cloth in it, and the +sleeves come down over his hand."<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> "There are two peasants wearing +coats in the court style, of Austrian cloth. Uoze never cut them."</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> +<p>Then he goes on to say:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Perhaps you would like to hear how the rustics are dressed. +Their clothes are above their place. Small coats they wear, +and small cloaks; red hoods, shoes with buckles, and black +hose. They have on silk pouch-bags, and in them they carry +pieces of ginger, to make themselves agreeable to the girls. +They wear their hair long, a privilege of good birth. They put +on gloves that come up to their elbows. One appears in a fustian +jacket green as grass. Another flaunts it in red. Another carries +a sword long as a hemp flail, wherever he goes; the knob of +its hilt has a mirror, that he makes the girls look at themselves +in. Poor clumsy louts, how can the girls endure them? One +of them tears his partner's veil, another sticks his sword hilt +through her gown, as they are dancing, and more than once, +enthusiastically dancing and excited by the music, their awkward +feet tread on the girls' skirts and even drag them off. +But they are more than clumsy, they have an offensive horse-play +kind of pleasantry that is nothing less than insult. They +put their hands in wrong places, and one of them tries to get a +maiden's ring, and actually wrenches it from her finger as she +is treading the bending <i>reie</i>.</p> + +<p>"Why should I not be angry at his insolence? Yet I would +not mind the ring so much, if he had not hurt her hand."</p></blockquote> + +<p>And just so, Engelmar snatched her mirror from Neidhart's darling +Vriderune.</p> + +<p>This last, as has been said, is the most famous incident in the Neidhart +story. From it he dates all his misfortunes, and he reverts to it, over +and over, with bitterness that can hardly be regarded as merely ironical +humor. Yet numerous as the references are, there is a mystery about the +affair that has not been cleared up. It has been suggested that +Vriderune's way of taking the rudeness made it clear to Neidhart that it +was her peasant lover, and not himself, whom she really liked, but it +would seem more natural to associate the occurrence with something +violent. Possibly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> the poet's indignation at the boorish familiarity led +him to a personal attack, just as in another connection he threatens to +strike an obnoxious fellow, and the resulting quarrel may have been +taken up by friends of both, with such serious consequences that various +annoyances followed on their part, which he could only return by +insulting hits in his songs. The chances are all in favor of the poet's +having been a slighter man physically than these farm-workers, at one of +whom he sneers for the sacks that ride on his neck, and there are +suggestions in the pseudo-Neidhart poetry of his having had helpers to a +revenge. In one of these imitations it is said that through Neidhart's +injury thirty-two had their left legs cut off, an evident exaggeration +of an earlier imitation, where the writer reminds his hearers of what +happened to Engelmar for taking Vriderune's mirror, that he lost his +left leg and had to go on crutches. Such violent fights are +authentically reported at <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'merry-makings'">merrymaking</ins>s of the time, and as the +aristocratic leader of such a brawl, Neidhart no doubt would find his +subsequent residence among the peasants uncongenial. Yet why should he +manifest such reserve, at the same time that he mentions the subject so +constantly, referring to it long after he has left Bavaria? Is it +possible that his jealousy and hot blood drove him to some underhanded +attack in some such way as that in which a brilliant restoration poet +tried to punish a supposed injury? This ill reputation as an aristocrat +equally insolent and treacherous, might follow him to Austria; he would +hardly be pleased to acknowledge in his poem what he had done, while the +constant references to his injury in the insult of Vriderune, and the +misfortunes to himself which it caused may be regarded as half defensive +attempts to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> excite sympathy instead of disapproval. So much for +possible explanations of this curious literary enigma, out of which we +may make too much; for, as I have already suggested, Neidhart may only +be doing what novelists sometimes do when they repeat a popular hit in +characterization. At any rate, Vriderune seems to have been lost to her +upper-class lover, "and ever from that time I have had some new +heart-sorrow."</p> + +<p>Neidhart constantly reverts to the peasants' brutality and eagerness to +fight. "Look out for a brutish fellow named Ber. He is tall and +broad-shouldered; he scarcely can get in at the door. Fie, who brought +him here? He is the nephew of Hildebolt of Bern, who was pounded by +Williher." Lanze, again, "had got himself up for a champion, and thought +nothing could resist him. He put underneath a coat of mail. Snarling +like a bear he goes; so ugly is he, one were a child who withstood him." +And of another: "He wears a sword that cuts like shears, and a good +safety hat. Whoever you are, you may well keep out of his way. +Villagers, look out for him; his sword is poisoned. It's a well-tempered +Waidover, that sword of his."</p> + +<p>With such village-warriors, no wonder that the parties did not always +end cheerfully. With a resemblance to modern slang Neidhart tells how +they threaten to put sunshine through each other. The lively episode of +a quarrel over a rural gallant's presenting a young lady with a piece of +ginger, Neidhart says he cannot describe in full, for he came away. But +"each began screaming to his friends; one called loudly: 'Help, gossip +Wezerant.' He must have been in great difficulty to scream so for help. +I heard Hildebolt's sister shriek: 'Oh, my brother, my brother!'"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +Another dance ends with a milder disagreement. "Ruoprecht found an +egg—'I ween the devil gave it to him'—and threatened to throw it. Eppe +got mad, and dared him. Ruoprecht threw it at the top of his head, and +it trickled down over him." Sometimes, evidently, peacemakers +interfered, as they did in Frideliep's and Engelmar's disagreement about +Gotelint, so that the rivals did not fight, though "just like two silly +geese they went toward each other, all the rest of the day."</p> + +<p>Like all of those poets, Neidhart, though he says "I" very often, lets +us become but indifferent acquaintances. We read some of the mediæval +lyrists without feeling sure that we detect a single genuine personal +note; they had little of our modern sense of individuality. With +Neidhart we fare better than with most; yet, after all, we are hardly +sure that some of his personal confessions are not formally or +humorously assumed. Yet of one trait we are left in no doubt, his strong +German sense for the fatherland. With many other Bavarians, he went to +Syria and Damietta on the crusade of 1217-1219, led by Leopold VII. of +Austria, and he has left us two songs which, though certainly different +enough from the deep religious feeling of such crusade lyrics as +Hartmann's or Walther's, are unmistakably sincere. The first opens with +the minnesinger's usual spring and love-lorn stanzas, but Neidhart soon +drops conventionality with the exclamation, "For my song the foreign +folk here do not care: ah, blessings on thee, Germany!" It reminds us of +Walther: nothing is like the German home. He thinks of sending a +messenger, not we notice, to some town or castle, but to that village +where he left the loving heart from which his constancy never wavers, +and to the dear friends over-sea.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>"Tell them from us all that they should quickly see us there, +joyous enough, except for these wide waves. Bear my glad +service to my mistress, dear to me before all ladies, and say to +friends and kinsmen that I am well. If they inquire how +things are going with us pilgrims, tell them, dear boy, what ill +these foreign folk have wrought us. Haste thee, be swift; +after thee assuredly shall I follow, quick as ever I may. God +grant we may live to see the happy day of going home."</p></blockquote> + +<p>"We are all scarcely alive," he goes on; "the army is more than half +dead. Ah, were I there! By my beloved gladly would I rest, in mine own +place." "If I may only grow old with her!" he cries, and he breaks out +impatiently against those who keep delaying through August, instead of +moving westward. "Nowhere could a man be better off than at home, in his +own parish."</p> + +<p>At last the expedition, dissatisfied and worn, as the returning +crusaders always were, are on the confines of the longed-for country. We +can imagine the straggling company making their way along, their +minstrel riding among them, fingering the old violin that he has carried +over his shoulders all the two years, and thinking out a new song. He is +still a young man, or at least only approaching middle age, and thoughts +of home, friendship, love, and the spring gaiety of the village life, +crowd upon him with buoyant thrills; he strikes the strings more firmly, +and his voice rings out a home-coming lyric, full of life and feeling. +"The long bright days are come again, and with them the birds; it is a +long time since they sang so well. The winter-weary are gayer than they +have been for thirty years. Maidens, ye children, fine people all, let +your hearts be free to the summer joy, spring quickly in the carols."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dear herald, homeward go;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis over, all my woe;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We're near the Rhine!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Neidhart's poems are readily classified in two divisions, his songs for +summer and for winter. Both were probably sung as an accompaniment to +the dances, either of the peasants or of the upper class, though there +may be some doubt whether this is true of all the winter songs. Almost +invariably he opens with a nature-prelude, often an elaborate one, and +the temper of the songs is always congenial to the season, gay for +summer, and gloomy or critical for winter.</p> + +<p>There is no evidence that the difficulty with Engelmar was the occasion +of the poet's leaving Bavaria, but his unpopularity with the peasants +seems to have had something to do with the loss of his fief. He was cast +down at the thought of parting with Reuenthal, and said that he would +sing no longer, since the name under which his merry lines had been +known was taken from him; and with a play on the word, "I am put out +undeservedly, my friends; now leave me free of the name!" But after he +was settled by Frederich on an Austrian fief, he adapted himself +cheerfully to his new home. "Here I am at Medelicke, in spite of them +all. I am not sorry that I sang so much of Eppe and of Gumpe at +Reuenthal."</p> + +<p>The Duke gave him money and a house, in response to musical +solicitations, and Neidhart appealed for exemption from his heavy taxes, +that threatened to consume what his children needed. With our modern +ideas this system of literary patronage upon which mediæval poets +depended, and which usually required direct and even pressing +solicitation, seems painful to self-respect; we forget how lately it +flourished. In<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> those days when princely giving was an established +custom, and differed from a system of salaries mainly in being a less +regularly appointed income, a poet's request for a gift was scarcely +more than a modern author's reminder of an unpaid claim; there is +nothing of the unmanly dependence of Coleridge in these earlier +suppliants for aid. None of them asked more gracefully—even Chaucer is +not more delicately suggestive—than Neidhart in such lines as these:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Whoever had a bird who satisfied him with song through +the year, he would occasionally look to his bird-cage, and +give him good food. Then the bird could go on singing sweet +melodies. If he always sang well to meet the May, he should +be well cared for, summer and winter. Even the birds appreciate +kind treatment."</p></blockquote> + +<p>But the times were bad, and even a box of silver, and a house to put it +in, and remission of taxes, could not keep the poet gay as he passed +into later life. He composed penitential lyrics, after orthodox +precedents, of the love-singers, for they almost always grew old +seriously. On these we need not linger, though there seems a cry fuller +than the echo-note in his farewell to Lady Earth, and appeal for pardon +for some of his foolish songs: "Lord God of Heaven, give me thy +guidance; Might of all Might, now strengthen my heart, that I may win +soul's health, and partake ever-enduring joy, through thy sweet will." +But the wail of all of the thirteenth-century's serious minds, that +things were going "ever the lenger the wers" in Christendom, comes out +nowhere more deeply than in Neidhart's allegorical love-song to Joy of +the World, chiding her for her change of character during his long, +unrequited service:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>"False, shameless folk nowadays people her court, and her +old household, truth, chastity, good manners, none find these +any longer. My lady's honor is lame all over. She is fallen +so that none can rescue her. She lies in such a pool that only +God can make her clean. Men of wise mind be on your guard +before her, in church or on street: women of worth keep far +away."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Eighty new melodies he has sung in her service; this is the last, and +not the most joyous.</p> + +<p>To this closing period we may refer a few summer songs that are an +exception to the usually light-hearted verses of that form. Their +seriousness is all the more noticeable from their fair-weather setting; +for once, the spring is not a panacea. "A delightful May has come, but +alas, neither priest nor layman rejoices in its arrival. Were it the +Emperor who had come, we might rejoice. Trouble and sorrow dwell in +Austria." There is something here besides a sense that the joyousness of +simple free-living and the loyalty of love-service are passing away; he +attributes much of the social decline to national confusion and the +political unrestraint. Yet controversial as he is in social relations, +he has little of Walther von der Vogelweide's thoughtfulness and energy +in patriotic polemics. He drifts down the stream with a sigh.</p> + +<p>In the poem which Meyer's elaborate study of the order of his work +places last, though only conjecturally, he again considers his friends' +entreaty for more songs. The world goes too sadly, he says; as he had +said before that they must ask Troestelin to sing; he himself had no +longer a heart for poetry. Yet there is one pleasant story that he can +tell them: "to break down troubles comes one worthy to be praised; 'tis +May, with all his might." There is something pathetic in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> such songs, +that try to assume the cheerful strain in which the poet, now grown +gloomy, wrote while he was young. They remind us of the stray leaves +that we sometimes see caught up to their old home among the branches by +a sudden March gust; the brown leaves that will never again uncrumple +their green infancies, hover for a moment, then sink hesitatingly back +to the ground. In this one song, the nature stanzas are transferred from +the place of prelude to the conclusion. "May has conquered; wood and +heath have adorned themselves with their lovely attire; blue flowers are +here and the roses," and he ends with the old thought, that joyousness +and virtuous honor go together. As an idle fancy it is "pleasant if one +consider it," to regard these as the final words of this knightly singer +of mediæval country scenes, the last of the great figures of that old +German group, a parting reminder of the philosophy of a happy life which +mediæval lyrists often maintained so earnestly,—that the secret of good +living is blitheness of heart, and out-of-door life in spring and +summer. For many of these old poets the two terms were convertible; +their creed was surely a simple one.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/brdstow.png" width="200" height="67" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="helmbrecht" id="helmbrecht"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/100t.png" width="500" height="131" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>MEIER HELMBRECHT,</h2> +<h3>A GERMAN FARMER OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.</h3> + + +<p>The usual conception of the middle ages seems to consist of a few facts +and theories about the feudal system and the crusades, the names with +possibly some traits of a few eminent public figures and a general +impression of confusion and obscurity. Supplementing this central idea, +one usually sees a panel picture on either side. One, sunshine flashing +from the spears and armor of knights tilting in tournaments, and watched +by dimly beautiful women; in the distance a solitary knight pricking +over a plain, or, guided by the wail of an unseen and lovely captive, +making his way through forest haunts of giants and gnomes. The other, a +lowering twilight overhanging gloomy monastery walls, the shelter of +melancholy, hypocrisy, manuscript illuminations, and a barren, difficult +philosophy. Sunshine and twilight on either hand, and in the background +an impenetrable mist concealing the great masses of humanity, as well as +all concrete actual lives even of the great. A little information and a +little romance are unsatisfactory artists for a sketch of mediævalism. +We soon discover that there is a great deal behind such a picture of +soldiers living in wars, and in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> the tourneying pretence of war; or +schoolmen contending in brilliant logical panoply within and without +spectral philosophic fastnesses; or hermits, nuns, and monks fighting +against God's present that they might win His future; or marauders +beating down helplessness and innocence.</p> + +<p>Yet we may study the middle ages laboriously, and find ourselves still +confronted by the mist that hangs over the rank and file. Our curiosity +about these forgotten multitudes teases us. "How is it that you lived, +and what is it that you did?" we ask these distant prototypes of +Wordsworth's peasant. We come to discover that there is much behind our +slight old notion of chivalry and monasticism; though seven hundred +years have changed its conditions, life then and now is yet less +different than we had thought. But we find it difficult to acquire much +information about those social substrata on which the learned and the +polite classes rested. Clio is the most aristocratic of the ladies nine, +and that instinct of vitality whereby we count fame for ourselves +something desirable, makes us think with a certain compassion of great +armies of those generations filing sullenly on, not only as individuals, +but as whole masses, to the grave of oblivion. The little that we know +makes us sure only that they were wretched, their lives the most gloomy +of all the lives of gloomy ages.</p> + +<p>We may read thousands of pages of the literature of those days with +scarcely any addition to our knowledge of the work-a-day world, for most +of the poetry is romantic, and in its imitative phases mainly a +reflection of courtly customs and character. The middle ages in Germany +and France were anything but uncivilized, and the poetry of secondary +cultivation is,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> as was said in the last essay, likely to prefer +idealistic interpretation of its finest development to democratic +realism. Yet the student finds from time to time interesting material +for an account of the average life, and in the poet whom this essay is +designed to introduce to a modern audience, we obtain an extended study +in this side field of literary interpretation. He wrote not of high life +but of the middle classes, not in romance but in a literal yet at the +same time artistic manner that we may call a heightened realism. He +appears to have been himself one of the people, a poet who possibly made +his living by reciting poems of incident, and by singing at their +merrymakings, though of this there is no evidence. It has been thought +by some German scholars that he may have been a monk, but the +indications make rather against than for this view. We know in fact +nothing whatever about him except for one single line, in which he tells +us that his name is Wernher the Gardener.</p> + +<p>As was said, his poem is remarkable as being the heightened treatment of +a plain story of the peasant classes a little before 1250; it is +remarkable, too, for the liveliness and simple force of his treatment. +He is an artist—though he works in chalks instead of +water-colors;—unornamented, unassuming, he produces an impression of +personal power, moral seriousness, a clear eye for what he saw, and the +power to state it directly, one of the marks of a later and more +developed age. He has no little dramatic liveliness, a sense of humor, +and the pleasantest love for the plain beauties of character and +home-life.</p> + +<p>He tells the story of a farmer, Helmbrecht, and his wayward son. The boy +has been the admiration of his peasant family as the oldest child, +notable for his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> splendid yellow hair, and full of life and spirit. At +the time the poem opens he has grown to early manhood, dissatisfied with +the hidden and laborious life of tiller of the soil, vain of his +appearance, fond of fine dress, and ambitious to live easily and be +admired. He is petted and indulged by his mother and his sister +Gotelint, and when he desires a hood—a part of masculine costume much +affected by gallant youths—they provide him with one so fine that it +becomes famous far and near. Embroidery, as every one knows who is +acquainted with the mediæval arts, was the most artistic accomplishment +of the period. Ladies learned to embroider and weave the most +complicated and elaborate devices; handicraftsmen of all sorts put on +their work representations so copious that one sometimes wonders whether +the literary descriptions of them are not exaggerations. Can the +frequency and detail of these passages, we wonder, be a faintly +remembered tradition of the devices put by Homer on the shield of +Achilles, or by Vergil on the gates of the rising Carthage? At any rate, +tapestries, cloths, and garments, to say nothing of saddles and the +like, were covered by picture after picture, in almost every important +poem of the age. This young peasant Helmbrecht's hood was embroidered, +not, of course, by the rude country fingers of his mother and sister, +but by a clever nun, who had run away from her nunnery to enjoy the +pleasures of a lively youth. Many were the wages of farm-produce by +which she was persuaded to fit out the young man. The hood was covered +with birds, parrots, and doves; on one side were representations of the +siege of Troy and the escape of Æneas; on the other, the stout deeds of +Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, in their wars against the heathen +Moors. Behind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> adventures of old German legendary heroes, in the cycle +of Dietrich of Bern. In front, dances of knights, ladies, and of maidens +and young esquires—the favorite and mediæval dance, where the gentleman +stood between two ladies, holding the hand of each.</p> + +<p>After this acquisition the boy became ambitious for still more finery, +and was indulged in an elaborate costume that need not be described. +Such white linen, such a splendid blue coat, all covered with buttons, +gilded ones in double rows down the back, around the collar, and in +front of silver. About the shoulders little bells were hung, that rang +merrily when he sprang in the <i>reie</i>. Ah, very love-lorn were the +glances cast on him by women and girls at the dance.</p> + +<p>At last he is fully equipped by the love and sacrifice of his family, +and they are happy in his elegance, and contented with themselves +because the self-willed and capricious boy is pleased; when suddenly the +simple household is thrown into grief and anxiety by his announcement +that he is going to leave home. He must have a horse—there was none on +the farm—to complete his outfit as a gentleman, and then he will ride +away to some court and seek his fortune. In vain they remonstrate.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'My dear father, help me on. My mother and sister have +helped me so that I shall love them all my life.'</p> + +<p>"His father was troubled to hear that he was resolved to go, +but he said to him: 'I'll give you a fast horse for your outfit, +good at hedges and ditches, for you to have there at court. I'll +buy him for you willingly, if I can find one for sale. But, my +dear son, now give up going to court. The ways there are hard +for those who have not been used to them from the time they +were children. My dear son, now drive team for me, or if you'd +rather, hold the plough, and I'll drive for you, and let us till +the farm, so you'll come to your grave full of honors like me; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>at least I hope to, for I surely am honest and loyal, and every +year I pay my tithes. I have lived my life without hate and +without envy.'</p> + +<p>"But the son replied: 'My dear father, keep quiet and stop +talking; there's only one way about it, I'm going to find out +how things smack there at court. Your sacks sha'n't load my +back any longer. I won't load any more manure on your wagon, +and God hate me if I ever yoke oxen for you again, and sow +your oats. That's not the thing for my long yellow hair and +my curly locks, and my close-fitting coat, and my fine hood, +and the silk doves the women worked on it. I won't help you +farm any longer.'</p> + +<p>"'Dear son, stay with me. I am certain that farmer Ruoprecht +will give you his daughter, with lots of sheep and swine, and +ten cattle, old and young. At court you'll be hungry, you'll +have to lie hard, and give up all comforts. Now take my advice, +and it will be to your interests and credit. It very seldom +happens that a man gets along well who rebels against his own +station. Your station is the plough. My son, I swear to you +that the genuine court-people will make fun of you, my dear +child. Do as I say, and give it up.'</p> + +<p>"'Father, if I only have a horse I shall get on as well in the +court ways as those who were born there. Any one who saw +that hood on my head would swear a thousand oaths that I +never worked for you, or drove a plough through a furrow. +Whenever I put on the clothes my mother and my sister gave +me yesterday, I sha'n't look much as if I ever took a flail to +thresh wheat on the barn floor, or as if I ever drove stakes. +When I get my legs and my feet in the hose and cordovan +boots, nobody'll know that I ever made fence for you or any +one else. Let me have a horse, and farmer Ruoprecht may go +without me for a son-in-law. I'll not give up my future for a +wife.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The father goes on pleading with the boy to take advice and keep out of +the disorderly life he is likely to get into about a court. By the +silent assumption that his new master and his people will pillage from +the peasantry, we get a suggestion of the lawlessness of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> +country—which had grown worse during the long absenteeism of Frederic +II. But if the peasants catch you, he tells his son with energy, you +will fare much worse than one of the gentlemen would. They will take the +quickest revenge, and think that they are doing God service when they +find one of their own kind stealing.</p> + +<p>But the son only goes on to repeat that he will leave the farm. He talks +just as an ambitious country fellow will talk to-day about the slow life +and small profits. He becomes bolder and more insolent. If it were not +for that wretched horse he would be riding with the rest across fields +and dragging peasants through the hedges; the cattle would be lowing as +he drove them off. He says he can endure poverty no longer;—raising a +colt or an ox for three years, and then selling them for just nothing. +So his father traded a large piece of homespun, four good cows, two +oxen, three steers, and four bushels of wheat,—all worth about ten +pounds,—for a horse that could not have been sold for three ("alas for +the wasted seven!"), and the young man put on his finery, tossed his +head, and, looking around, jauntily declared that he could "bite through +a stone, or eat iron, he felt so fierce." If he could catch the Emperor +or the Duke, there would be some money coming in. "'Father, you could +manage a Saxon easier than me.'"</p> + +<p>When he calls upon his father to release him from the family control, +the latter assents, though with all his old reluctance. Indeed he cannot +let him go without one more appeal:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'I give you your liberty, my son. But take care that no one +yonder hurts your hood and its silk doves, or viciously tears +your long yellow hair. And I am afraid that at the end you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>will be following a staff, or some little boy will be leading +you.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Then once more, after a pause, comes the abrupt:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'My son, my own dear boy, give up going. You shall live +on what I live, and on what your mother gives you. Drink +water, my dear son, before you steal to buy wine. Austrian +pie, any one, fool or wise man, will tell you, is food fit for gentlemen. +Eat that, dear child, instead of giving an ox you have +stolen to some inn-keeper for a chicken. Your mother can +cook good broth; eat that, instead of giving a stolen horse for +a goose. My son, mix rye with oats sooner than eat fish in a +dishonored life. If you will not obey me, go. But though you +win wealth and great honors, never will I share them with you. +And misfortune—have that alone too.'</p> + +<p>"'You drink water, father, but I'll drink wine. Eat your +mush, but I'll eat what they call fricasseed chicken there and +white wheat bread; oats will do for you. They say at Rome +that a child takes after his godfather, and mine was a knight. +Thank God for giving me such high and noble ideas.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>But the old farmer replied that he liked much better a man who did right +and remained constant to it.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Even though his birth might be rather humble, he would +please the world better than a king's son without virtue and +honor. An honest man of lowly rank, and a nobleman who +was not courteous and honorable,—let the two come to a land +where neither is known, and the child of lowly birth will outrank +the high-born. My son, if you will be noble, on my word +I counsel you, do noble deeds. Good life is a crown above all +nobility."</p></blockquote> + +<p>There is the old thought, so common in literature from ancient authors +down to the poet of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and especially a favorite +with writers of the middle age. Possibly some of them caught it from +Boëthius, who expressed it more than once in the testament of wise and +generous character that he left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> to the world from his confinement at +Pavia, and that proved so singularly congenial to the mediæval mind; but +we need certainly not require the aid of origins to account for its +frequency. Aristocratic as many phases of the times were, there were a +number of important evening influences, conspicuously two: the church, +in whose monastery cloisters the rich and poor met together as brothers +of one impartial discipline, and from whose ranks members of low birth +might rise to be the peers of dukes; and the orders of chivalry, which +received approved squires from the middle class. Thus, in addition to +aristocracy of birth, there was a conditional gentility to which those +who had the claim of merit might aspire. But though the thought that +desert, and not descent, is the test for nobility, is so obvious in the +days when position carried with it so strong a connotation of power, and +when the upper strata of society bore down so hard and haughtily upon +the lower, we always feel satisfaction in coming upon a trim statement +of the fine old commonplace whose best mediæval expression we can quote +from a poet of our own language:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Look, who that is moost vertuous alway,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pryvee and apert, and moost entendeth ay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To do the gentil dedes that he kan,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Taak hym for the grettest gentil man."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"'Alas, that your mother bore you!'" the farmer exclaimed, when the +boy's only answer to his appeal was to declare his hair and hood better +fitted for a dance than for the plough or the harrow. "'Thou wilt leave +the best and do the worst'"; and he goes on to contrast the man who +lives against God and the good of others, followed by every one's +curses, with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> man who helps the world along, trying night and day to +do good by his life, and thereby honors God. This one, wherever he may +turn, has the love of God and all the world.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Dear son,' he says, 'that man you might be, if you would +yield to me. Till with the plough, and plenty of people will +be the better for your life, poor and rich; nay, even wolf and +eagle, and everything that lives on earth. Many a woman must +be made more beautiful through the farmer, many a king must +be crowned through the produce of the farm. Indeed, there is +no one so noble that his pride would not be a very small thing, +except for the farmer.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>How natural all this sounds,—agriculture the basis of society, tillage +of the soil alike useful and honorable. With what quiet manliness this +old German talks of the dignity of labor, with no touch of the modern +arrogance and discontent with the existing social condition. He will +keep to his rank in life, and be loyal to his station, yet, though he +looks up with a simple-hearted interest and wonder to the great world +above him, he reflects as he follows his plough that without him that +great world's pride "would be a very small thing." But there is a +quality here that is still finer: the undercurrent perception of "the +gospel of service." It is not only that honesty is the best policy, +though the peasant is shrewd, and appreciates the practical side too; +his conversation with the boy breathes the best nineteenth-century +spirit of the duty of making one's life valuable to others. That +sentence about working night and day to be useful, and thereby honoring +God, is no commonplace for our century, to say nothing of the +thirteenth. There is something pretty, too, in the touch of sympathy +with the animal<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> world; in some way, he feels that even the birds and +beasts must be better off for a good farmer.</p> + +<p>These times seem often savage in their cruelties and recklessness of +giving pain, but they have a gentle side as well, as may be seen in the +tales cited by Montalembert of friendly relations between monks and wild +beasts, and in examples collected by Uhland in his essay on the old +German animal literature. It is pleasant in connection with such +barbarities as we shall presently be reminded of in this very poem to +recall the myth versified by Longfellow, of the great minnesinger's +legacy to the monastery, conditioned on the brethren's every day placing +grain and water for the birds upon his grave; and more than one +authentic story is told like that of the Abbot of Hirsan, who, when snow +was deep in winter, would take oats from his barn to feed the birds.</p> + +<p>After the young Helmbrecht has begged God to release him soon from his +father's preaching,—"if you only had been a real preacher you might +have got up a whole army with your sermons for a crusade,"—and has +explained that instead of keeping on ploughing, he is resolved to have +white hands, and no longer need to feel mortified whenever he holds +ladies' hands at a dance, his father resorts to his last resource—an +appeal to superstition, that he has been keeping in reserve. He tells +him what he has been dreaming—three dreams that he interprets as +ominous of the loss of sight, feet, and arms, and worst of all, a final +dream of one of those sights so common for many centuries before and +after, but made no less dreadful by familiarity.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'You were hanging on a tree. Your feet were a fathom +from the ground. Above your head on a bough sat a raven, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>by its side a crow. Your hair was all tangled. On the right +hand the raven combed your head for you, on the left the +crow.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>But the hopeful rode gaily off through the bars, and came to a castle +where a warlike lord was glad to receive any addition to his force. +There he stayed for a year, leading the extreme bandit life of whose +outrages and oppressions we read so much during this troubled period. He +quickly obtained reputation as daring and merciless:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Into his sack he stuffed everything; it was all one to him. +Nothing was too small, nothing too great. Helmbrecht took +it all, rough and smooth, crooked and straight. He took +horses, cattle, jacket, sword, cloak, coat, goats, sheep. From +women he stripped everything, and well enough his ship went +that first year, 'its sails full.' But after a while, as people are +wont to think of going home, he took leave of the court, and +commended them to the good God."</p></blockquote> + +<p>They heard at the farm that he was coming on for a visit, and in +accordance with the ancient custom of giving a present to the bearer of +good news, the messenger received a shirt and pair of hose. But when the +young man himself arrived, "how he was received! Did they step forward +to meet him? Nay, they ran, all together; one crowded past another; +father and mother sprang as if they had never had a care." It is +touching to notice the suggestiveness of a single line in the poet's +description of the scene. The plain people understood that their son was +no longer one of them, and they knew how his earlier false pride must +have grown in this year's absence in the outer world. So in their +anxiety that everything should gratify this brilliant, wayward eldest +son of their admiration and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> hope, and that nothing should interfere +with his being pleased and gracious to their yearning, timid love, and +knowing how in the homely heartiness of their joy at seeing their young +master again the two servants would treat him at once in the old +familiar way of peasant-farm equality, they instructed their man and +their woman in what they thought to be polite salutation. So when the +guest appeared, "Did the woman and the man cry 'Welcome back, +Helmbrecht'? Nay, they did not; they had been told not to. They said: +'Master, in God's name be you welcome.'" There is a touch of humor in +their rushing forward and being the first to greet him, in their rude +good-feeling; but we also get a sense of tenderness from seeing the +father and mother keeping in the background, behind their daughter +Gotelint.</p> + +<p>Little education as there was in the middle ages, people fully +appreciated the elegance as well as the utility of a knowledge of +foreign languages, and no accomplishment was held more desirable. +Especially the Germans, representing an outlying civilization, would +send their sons, while still boys, to some French court to serve as +pages and acquire especially the language as well as other branches of +knightly culture. The praises of various heroes of French as well as +German romances, give to linguistic attainments a high place; Gottfried, +for example, in his account of the training of Tristan, who was the +typical gentleman of the romances, says that from the age of seven until +he was fourteen he was studying languages under the care of a tutor, by +travelling through different lands. Since this was the fashion, +imitations were sure to become popular, and a thin veneering of foreign +speech became the mark of a pinchbeck culture, just as it has<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> been so +frequently since. Accordingly, after the servants have cried out their +"Master, in God's name be you welcome," and Gotelint has thrown her arms +about her brother, the young gallant calls her his dear little sister in +a phrase of salutation touched with Low Dutch, which he follows by the +elegant "gratia vester." Then the younger children ran up, and last of +all the farmer and his wife, who greeted him over and over. He addressed +his father in French: "Deu sal"; his mother in Bohemian: "Dobraytra." +They looked at each other; four strange languages all together—there +must be some mistake.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"The housewife said: 'My dear, this is not our son. This +is a Bohemian or a Slav.' Her husband replied: 'It is a +Frenchman. My son whom I commended to God, certainly +this is not he, and yet he looks like him.' And Gotelint suggested: +'He answered me in Latin; may be he is a priest.' +'Faith,' put in the hired man, who had caught the phrase in +dialect, 'he has lived in Saxony or Brabant, for he said, "liebe +susterkindekin"; he must be a Saxon.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The old peasant was devoted and loving, but he had resolution and +self-respect under it all. He told the accomplished youth that before he +would take him for his son he must talk German. If he would do that and +declare himself Helmbrecht, well and good. He should have a chicken +boiled, and another roasted, and his horse should be well cared for. But +a Bohemian, or a Slav, or a Saxon, or a Brabanter, or a Frenchman, or a +priest, should be given nothing. The youth began to reflect. It was +getting late, there was no place near by where he could go; so he +concluded to waive his elegant manners, and speak in the old style. But +the shrewd peasant feigns incredulity, and decides to test his son a +little further. In vain the young man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> protests himself Helmbrecht. His +gentility must stoop to vulgar peasant identification, and tell what he +knows about the oxen on the farm. He rattles over all four of them, +Grazer, Black-spot, Rascal, and White-star, with a little praise for +two, and the reconciliation is accomplished. Thereupon the repressed +fondness and devotion obtain free expression. The father hurried out to +attend to the horse, the mother sent her daughter for a pillow and +cushion—"Run, now, and don't walk for it"—and makes a couch for him on +the bench close to the stove, so that he may have a nap while she is +preparing his dinner. When the boy woke the meal was ready, and Wernher +assures us that any gentleman might have enjoyed it. After washing his +hands, the usual first step in a meal, a dish of fine-cut sauer-kraut +was put before him, by it bacon, both fat and lean, and a rich mellow +cheese. Then there was as fat a goose as ever roasted on a spit—and +with what good-will they provided that extraordinary peasant luxury—a +roasted and a boiled chicken. A knight out hunting, and happening on +such a meal, would like it well. For besides this they had managed to +get delicacies in which peasants never think of indulging. "'If I had +any wine you should be drunk to-night,'" the farmer said; and he +added—with such a noble union of dignity, simplicity, and sentiment for +the plain homely blessings which he had appreciated and loved all his +life: "'My dear son, now take a drink of water from the best spring that +ever came out of earth. I know no spring fit to be compared with it, +except the one at Wankhûsen.'"</p> + +<p>"'Tell me, son,'" he continued, as they went on with their dinner, for +he could not wait to ask him, "'tell me how about the court fashions, +and then I will tell<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> you how they used to be when I was young.'" But +the son was too busy eating to stop to talk then, and he allowed his +father to relate his early reminiscences.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'When I was a boy,' he began 'and your grandfather +Helmbrecht had sent me to court with cheese and eggs, just as +a farmer does to-day, I took note of the knights, and marked +their ways. They were courteous and cheerful and had no +rascality about them in those days, such as many men and +women too have now. The knights had a custom, to make +themselves pleasing to the ladies, that was called jousting. A +man of the court explained it to me when I asked him what +they called it. Two companies would come together from opposite +directions, riding as if they were mad, and they would +drive against each other, as if their spears must pierce through. +There's nothing in these days like what I saw then. After +that they had a dance, and while dancing they sang lively +songs, that made the time go quickly. Presently a playman +came forward and struck in with his fiddle; at that the ladies +jumped up, and the knights went to meet them, and they took +hold of hands. That was a pleasant sight—the overflowing delight +of ladies and gentlemen, dancing so gaily, poor and rich. +When that was over a man came out and read about some one +called Ernest. Each could do whatever he liked. Some took +their bows and shot at a target; others went hunting: there +was no end to the kinds of pleasure. The worst off there would +be the best off with us now. Those were the times before +false and vicious people could turn the right about with their +tricks. Nowadays the wise man is the one who can cheat and +lie; he has position and money and honor at court, much more +than the man who lives justly and strives after God's grace.'"</p></blockquote> + +<p>We find here as in so many other places in thirteenth century poetry, +that the serious-minded were already looking back. Just as we have seen +Walther and Ulrich bewailing the lost sunshine of chivalry, Wernher +laments that the old-time honesty has gone, and with it the knightly +light-hearted honorable joys. Already,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> before 1250, there was a halo +about the chivalric court; ladies were honored, knights tourneyed for +their pleasure; dancing with them attracted gentlemen quite beyond +drinking bouts; the poet's narratives of old German heroes were yet in +fashion.</p> + +<p>All this seems amusing to the young man; what sappy and goody-goody +fashions those were. He thinks it manly to swagger about the new ways, +and tell how the fashionable cry is "Trinkà, herre, trinkà trinc!" It +used to be good breeding to dangle about pretty ladies, but the correct +thing now is just to drink. "'This is the kind of love-letters we have: +"You dear little bar-maid, fill up our cups. What a fool a man is who +wastes his life for women, instead of good wine." It's a genteel thing +to be sharp with your tongue, and get the best of people, and tell +clever lies.'"</p> + +<p>The old man hears, and with a sigh wishes back the day when gentlemen +shouted "Heyā, ritter, wis et fro!" in the tourneys, instead of these +new cries of riotry and pillage. The son would tell him more, but he has +ridden far and wishes to go to sleep. There were no linen sheets in that +farm-house, but Gotelint spread a newly washed shirt on his bed, and he +slept until high day. The next morning he displayed the gifts he had +brought: for his father, a whetstone, scythe, and axe; for his mother, a +fox-skin; for Gotelint, a head-dress with a band of silk and gold, +better fitted for a nobleman's child than for her; shoes with straps for +the farm-hand; and for his wife, a cloth to cover her hair, and a red +ribband. He remained at home for a week, and then he became restless to +return. His father again took up his entreaties, begging him in the +tenderest tones to stay from the bitter and sour life he has been +leading. As long as he lives he will share<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> what he has with him, even +if the young man will do nothing but sit still and wash his hands. Only +he must not go back.</p> + +<p>What, not go back with so much to do? Has not a rich man ridden over the +field of his god-father? Has not another rich man eaten bread with +crullers? And still a third, while eating at a bishop's table, loosened +his girdle? Each one must be taught better manners through wholesale +plunder of cattle, sheep, and swine, to say nothing of a boor who blew +the foam off his beer. He and some friends will give them a good +training, and he runs over the list of his bandit companions with the +cant names borne by each, such as Lambswallow, Hellbag, Bolt-the-sheep, +Coweater, Wolfthroat, and at last his own name, Swallow-the-land.</p> + +<p>We may pass by the exploits of which he boasts—the children of the +peasants near him eat water-gruel, their father's eyes he puts out, +their beards he draws with pincers, he binds them in ant-hills, or +smokes them in the chimney, and so forth, through a revolting list of +barbarities.</p> + +<p>The youth uncloaks himself as a full-fledged desperado, and his father's +short, stern warning in God's name of vengeance only throws him into a +passion, and he declares that, though hitherto on their raids he has +kept off his companions from the farm, instead of doing so longer, he +will give up his father and mother to their will. He reveals what had +been a main motive in his visit, an arrangement he had made with his +comrade Lambswallow to let him marry Gotelint. But of that brilliant +match her father's conduct has deprived the girl; also she will never +find another man who can give her such luxuries of dress and fare.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +Moreover, his sister was worthy of such a husband, and he stops to +repeat the tribute he had paid to her while discussing the alliance with +his friend. The lines bring before us a weird mediæval scene, to which +these reckless free-livers looked forward as their assured end, and +which they dreaded most from the lurid light thrown by superstition upon +the picture. The ghastly swinging of their corpses on the gibbet ("The +rain has drenched and washed us," Villon says two hundred years later, +"and the sun dried and blackened us. Magpies and crows have hollowed out +our eyes, and plucked away our beards and eyebrows."<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a>) troubled them +less than the thought that their falling bones must lie unburied, and +their lives be followed by no religious rites to mitigate the eternal +justice. French poetry has interpreted this phase of crime and misery in +Villon's <i>Epitaphe</i>; in English it has been interpreted by Tennyson in +<i>Rizpah</i>, at once the most intense and the most piteous of all his +poems, as free from self-consciousness as an early ballad, the most +pathetic expression in all literature of a mother's love, and kept out +of the category of the very greatest poems only by the intolerable +anguish of its emotion. In this old German story we find an +interpretation of it too; the briefest and much the simplest, yet not +without an unobtrusive power. Young Helmbrecht declares that he told his +comrade that he might trust Gotelint never to make him repent his +choice.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I know her," he represents himself as saying, "to be so +loyal—on this you may count—that she never will leave you +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>hanging long; she will cut you down with her own hands, and +carry you to your grave at the cross-roads, with incense and +myrrh—of this you can be sure. Nightly for a whole year she +will go about you. Or if, less fortunate, you are blinded or +crippled by the loss of hands or feet, the good, pure girl will +guide you with her own hand over all the paths of every land; +every morning she will bring your crutches to your bed, or cut +for you, even till you die, your bread and meat."</p></blockquote> + +<p>From the first, Gotelint has been under the fascination of her brother, +and as she hears his long account of the life the wife of Lambswallow +must live, she calls young Helmbrecht aside, and arranges to run away +from home and marry his friend. So at the appointed time she does, and a +great wedding feast, provided at the cost of many widows and orphans, +follows the curious mediæval marriage ceremony. In the midst of it a +strange foreshadowing of evil comes over her; she wishes herself back at +her father's simple fare; his cabbage was better than the luxury of +Lambswallow's fish. She tells her bridegroom that she is afraid +strangers are at hand to harm them, and even as the players are +receiving their gifts, the sheriff and his force break in upon the +revellers. All meet quick justice; nine are hung; Helmbrecht, the tenth, +is sent off blind, and with only one foot and one hand. "What the +forsaken bride suffered" let him tell who saw.</p> + +<p>The story works to its conclusion in a temper better fitted to the +thirteenth century than to ours. The poet feels no complaisance for an +obstinate wrong-doer. He says: "God is a worker of wonders, and this is +the proper lot of a youth who called his father an old peasant and his +mother a worthless woman." Nor does he stop with his own exclamation; he +tells in detail<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> how the blind and maimed fellow is brought by a boy to +the farm, only to receive his father's taunts and mocking. Brutal and +distressing as the passage seems, it is true to the age and to the +character of the sturdy old farmer. While there was hope he had borne +every insult; he had pleaded persistently, tenderly, and to every limit +of generosity and devotion. But when the youth had proved himself +susceptible to no claims of virtue or humanity, and, as a last stroke of +evil, had seduced his sister from an honorable life, further pity seems +sentimentalism. Before the boy's first departure his father had warned +him that he would take no part in any ill-won prosperity, and if +misfortunes came, they, too, must be borne alone. The foreign phrases +are on the father's lips this time, as the sightless cripple creeps up +to the farm-house door. He runs over the proud speeches that have thus +ended in shame and misery; nor will he listen to the entreaties for +shelter, even as a beggar, for a single night. "'Every one, the country +round, is cruel to me; alas! so you are now. In God's name give me the +charity you would give a poor sick man!'" But the farmer "laughed +scoffingly, even though it broke his heart, for this was his own flesh, +his child, who stood there before him blind." He struck the boy who was +leading the wretch, and drove them off. "Yet as they went away his +mother put a loaf of bread in his hand, as if he were a child." For a +year he crawled about, skulking in the woods and living on what he +might. Then one day, having wandered to the scene of some of his worst +crimes, a set of peasants catch sight of him, and recount to one another +what their farms, their babes, their daughters, had suffered from this +outlaw and his band. As they talk they tremble with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> hate and rage, and, +catching up a rope, they fulfil the last of the dreams that tormented +the anxious night of the father just before his son rode out, with his +rich clothes and fine horse and wonderful hood covering that long, +beautiful hair, to seek his fortune in a court.</p> + +<p>Why is it worth while to introduce to English readers this peasant tale +of the middle ages? Not on account of its antiquarian value, though it +is full of interesting suggestions of old manners. Nor primarily on +account of its literary significance, notwithstanding the tact and +nervous directness of Wernher's style, and the heightened realism of +treatment that gives him distinction beside the romanticists of the +time. Its main importance for us lies in that sense of the human unity +which we derive from such a story of a time so remote from our own, and +in most of its aspects so different. Many of the influences that render +man's life desirable—organized society, with respect for property and +personal safety, ease of living, humanitarian sensibility even to the +guiltiest suffering—we miss, and missing them we rejoice in the +progress of our age toward the light. But the traits whereby life in all +ages becomes estimable—simplicity of character, contentment with the +station of one's birth, if only one can live there with dignity and +usefulness; frugality, integrity, natural love which grows most tender +and yearning when the kinship of moral worthiness seems in danger of +dissolution—are our own best possession, and this identity of manhood +then and now makes us feel less strange among those distant and dimly +remembered generations. Thus serious writers offer to our study many +notable and interesting thoughts, and in their courtly poets we find +scores of delightful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> pictures of gracious and noble dames and knights +moving through the pleasures and pains of an ideal world. It is also +pleasant to listen to a poet from among the people, and to touch the +rough hand of an old German farmer, whose most brilliant recollection +was of the time when, as a boy, he carried eggs and cheese to one of the +courts of old-fashioned chivalry; whose virtue cast in a decadent era +had looked at life sternly, yet whose austerity was softened by a homely +simplicity through whose grace he grew old, with his heart true to his +plain home life and his family, even to the assurance that no drink +could be more refreshing than water from the spring on his own farm.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/angelshld.png" width="200" height="117" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="childhood" id="childhood"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 499px;"> +<img src="images/123t.png" width="499" height="118" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>CHILDHOOD IN MEDIÆVAL LITERATURE.</h2> + + +<p>When Homer described the pretty fright of Astyanax in his nurse's arms, +amid the parting of Hector and Andromache; when Vergil made Damon recall +the day when, as a little boy just able to reach up to the branches, he +saw his mother and the child who was to be his fate gathering +apples—the hyacinths of Theocritus were daintier—they struck two +chords of feeling, one charming, the other deeper and richer, which have +started vibrations whenever they have met a sympathetic reader ever +since. Because we are susceptible to the poetry of childhood we are +pleased to find that these ancient poets also cared for it. It adds a +personal touch to our feeling for them. It gives us a thrill of the +immortality of heart and its simplest, purest sentiment. There may be an +element of the fictitious in our feeling about childhood. Heaven may not +be about our infancy, those "sweet early days" may not have been "as +long as twenty days are now"; and they may not have been the types of +innocence, simplicity, the loveliness of the race taken at first hand +from nature, which we fancy them. But there is something beyond a +fallacy in this sentiment; it is in our purer and more refined moods +that we are sensitive to it. Like a whiff of spring smoke, or woodsy +odors, a reminder of our early life will sometimes throw us<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> into a +revery which is more than recollection. No one can write well about +children without sensibility to youthful emotion and some love for +family life. Whoever looks back with genial wistfulness upon his own +early days, and enjoys renewing them in the playthings of his fancy, can +hardly be without a vein of quiet refinement. When an age listens with +pleasure to such sketches, it is not barren of the homely affections, +nor uniformly given over to restless and unlawful passions. As one +wanders through the poetry of the middle ages, one observes the +frequency with which it mentions children.</p> + +<p>These passages, judged absolutely, may not be remarkable for insight or +tenderness, but in those days all emotional subjects were treated +crudely. Yet they are often interesting for themselves, and they show a +fact which many seem to question that the sentiments of simple family +life were felt by poets and people. So much has been written by critics +upon the worse side of the society of chivalry, that it is well to +recognize this other aspect of its affections. The public has frequently +been assured that those days knew nothing of true family sentiment. How +much truth there is in the statement that fashionable love disregarded +marriage, has been shown in a preceding essay. But on <i>a priori</i> grounds +we should disbelieve that general society was permeated by artificial +gallantry. Even were the testimony of lyrical lovers uniform, we must +recollect how conventional all their love-poetry was; most poets +composed on formal lines impersonally, in spite of their pronouns. One +of the troubadours, indeed, denied that this was possible when the +husband of his theme challenged him, in the lonely place where he was +hunting, by his liege truth to tell him whether<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> he had a lady love. +"Sire," he replied, "how could I sing unless I loved?" But in most poems +there was more business, or ambitious art, than nature. A large number +of these poets impress us as having just as little emotional veracity in +writing as had Cowley in <i>The Mistress</i>. Moreover, even if a school of +poetry, not conventionalized, should treat romantic and sensational +sentiment to the exclusion of domestic, it would prove nothing. What if +cynical critics some centuries hence should give Mr. Coventry Patmore a +place in their encyclopedias, simply on the ground that he was an +exception to the nineteenth-century belief that love ended at the bridal +altar? Possibly by that time love, poetry, and fiction may deal mainly +with domestic emotions after marriage, and then our own romances will +very likely appear strange.</p> + +<p>From one point of view those centuries were too akin to undeveloped life +to be prepared to represent it. Europe seven hundred years ago seems +like a vast nursery abandoned by its governess. The people are like +children of various ages and sizes, degrees of education, and innate +sense of right and wrong. Children are impulsive, passionate, selfish, +brutally inconsiderate; they are sometimes religious too. We find +apparently sporadic susceptibility to isolation and prayer. They cry at +trifles, and while their cheeks are still wet, they are smiling. Bright +and simple things please them; they are fickle and impatient; they love +lively music; when they are tired playing, nothing pleases them like a +story—they listen intently, credulously. When spring comes they can no +more help running and dancing over the grass, than sunbeams on a brook. +The gentler sit in the meadow making posies, while the rougher are +setting traps, and racing, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> fighting: but sometimes the rough boys +will come and play in the meadow, and be pleasant to the girls. All +these traits of children apply to the mediæval character, their +barbarisms, their ethical inconsistencies, their delight in stories (no +age has ever cared more for story telling), their love of play, their +passion for spring, and the rest.</p> + +<p>Undoubtedly the popular impression gives the period too little +joyousness. Mercurial childhood has capacity for sudden pleasures even +when life goes ill, and life frequently went very well even then. But +the mystery and grace of motherhood and dawning life are likely to +appeal to a calmer and more retrospective age. The seriousness that +takes pleasure in contemplating childhood is more serene and pensive +than the usual moods of an era undeveloped emotionally. So it would not +be a matter for surprise if the literary remains of those days had left +us mainly incidental references to children.</p> + +<p>Of such plain facts we have many, such as, for instance, that the little +ones were entertained with pet dogs, birds, and squirrels (apparently +never with cats), mice harnessed to a toy wagon, clay or wooden images +of animals, and tiny vessels after kitchen models, toy men, women, and +children, tops, and marbles; that they played blind man's buff, and many +games attended with songs. As early as the interesting Latin poem called +<i>Waltharius et Hiltgunde</i>, which at least in a popular version Walther +von der Vogelweide liked, we find the hero appealing to Hagen, by the +memory of the boyish games with which they had whiled away their +childhood, and over which they never had quarrelled.</p> + +<p>We obtain considerable information about customs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> of education also; +such as the attention paid to languages (a girl in a French romance is +said to have understood fourteen tongues), and Isolde knew French and +Latin as well as Irish. Boys were sent off on their travels early, going +especially to Paris. Weinhold's quotation from Hugo von Trimberg +illustrates the dangers that beset the pursuit of culture even then: +"Many boys go to Paris; they learn little and spend much. But yet no +doubt they see Paris."</p> + +<p>When Sir Philip Sidney derided the contemporary drama's habit of +carrying a play through a large part of the hero's lifetime, instead of +restricting the action to a developed episode, he made a poor criticism, +out of tune, as are other parts of his criticism, with the genius of +Elizabethan poetry. But the passage is interesting as a reminder of the +relation to that great literature of the romances which runs back +through the middle ages to the later Greek writings. Such narrations as +the <i>Daphnis and Chloe</i>, and the <i>Aethiopica</i>, introduce their central +characters while they are still children, and whether through +transmitted influence or independently, the same course is pursued by +the most important romance poems of mediæval France and Germany. To this +practice we owe pleasant domestic scenes of many a hero's early life, +and sometimes, indeed, a narration of early joys and sorrows of his +parents' love. The <i>Tristan</i> of Gottfried von Strassburg, for example, +begins well before the birth of its subject, with noteworthy romantic +episodes. This brilliant poem's account of the early years of chivalry's +typical fine gentleman illustrates the admiration paid to intellectual +training at a time when polite society in general was not well educated. +Tristan spent his first seven years under the care of his foster-mother, +learning<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> various lessons of good behavior; after that Rual li Foitenant +provided a master, and sent him off to acquire foreign languages in +their own lands, and "book-learning" as well. The luxurious temper of +his chronicler stops for a long sigh at the hardship of such training, +through the years when joyousness is at its best. So it is, he exclaims +in his studied style, with many youth; when life is in its first bloom +and freedom, away they are constrained to go from its free blossom. For +seven years this young prince was constantly kept busy with the +exercises of arms and horsemanship, in addition to his formal studies; +he also learned hunting, and all courtly arts, especially music. Then he +was called home to be prepared for his political career. The education +of children was assisted by not a few treatises on manners and morals, +such as <i>Babees Books</i>, as the old English called them. They are usually +manuals of etiquette, mediæval prototypes of such modern works as +<i>Don't</i>. Chaucer's Prioress had evidently studied the sections on table +proprieties, and her gentility, which was so tender-hearted, might well +have been developed under the admonishments of the ethical passages +which often accompanied them. For a tender age many of these precepts +were depressing. One of the gravest and most mature of these works is +called <i>Der Winsbeke</i>, with a sequel, <i>Die Winsbekin</i>, for girls, the +advice of a twelfth-century Solomon, which moralizes certainly as well +as most of its analogues. This stanza, for instance, shows a homely +dignity:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">That bright candle mark, my son,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">While it burns, it wastes away;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So from thee thy life doth run,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(I say true) from day to day.<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span><span class="i0">In thy memory let this dwell,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And life here so rule, that then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With thy soul it may be well.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What though wealth exalt thy name?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Only this shall follow thee—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A linen cloth to hide thy shame.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>These gnomic writings, running into a developed didacticism, are +illustrated by the song of Walther von der Vogelweide on the restraint +of eye, ear, and tongue. Whether this poet was the teacher of the young +King Henry, as some have thought, or gained his experience in humbler +ways, he evidently knew the trials of the pedagogue. "Oh, you +self-willed boy," he cries, "too small to be put to work in the field +and too big to whip, have your own way and go to sleep." As for +flogging, this prince of the minnesingers took the side of the Matthew +Feildes against the Boyers: "No one can switch a child into education; +to those whom you can bring up well, a word is as good as a blow." +Apropos of the teacher's view, we also find the pupil's feeling for his +teacher recorded in that little poem of the English school-boy, who was +late in the morning, and explained to the master that his mother told +him to stop and milk the ducks. The boy recounts the details of what +follows, and afterwards, instead of taking up his interrupted studies, +he words out a day-dream in which the master is turned into a hare, his +books into hounds, and the boy goes hunting.</p> + +<p>There is a grain of humor, too, at least for the modern reader, in a +much more sentimental child-play of the minnesinger Hadlaub. Though he +mainly echoes the love singers who wrote a hundred years before him, one +of the first songs in the collection of his poems raises a hope of +something more than the ordinary,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> though this only leads us on to +disappointment through the rest of his fifty-odd pieces. There is +something very natural about this picture of the lover catching sight of +his disdainful fair one playing with a little child. "She reached out +her arms and caught it close to her, she took its face between her white +hands, and pressed it to her lips and mouth and lovely cheek; ah, how +deliciously she kissed it!" What did the child do? "Just what I should +have done; threw its arms around her, and was so happy." When she let +the little one go, the lover went after it and kissed it just where her +lips had been, "and how that went to my heart!" Poor fellow! "I serve +her since we both were children," and this is the nearest apparently +that he ever came to the seals of love.</p> + +<p>But instead of delaying over estrays, pleasant scraps like those left us +by Heinrich von Morungen, for instance, one of the few minnesingers for +whom one really cares, we may pass on to three or four more detailed +examples from the thirteenth century, of household love and sympathy +with the poetry of childhood. But first I will translate a simple sesame +for opening again the early gates. The poet is known as the Wild +Alexander, but his mood was gentle and gracious when this revery of his +boyhood came upon him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There we children used to play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thro' the meadows and away,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Looking 'mid the grassy maze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the violets; those days<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Long ago<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Saw them grow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now one sees the cattle graze.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I remember as we fared<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thro' the blossoms, we compared<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span><span class="i0">Which the prettiest might be:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We were little things, you see.<br /></span> +<span class="i4">On the ground<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Wreaths we bound;—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So it goes, our youth and we.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Over stick and stone we went<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the sunny day was spent;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hunting strawberries each skirrs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the beeches to the firs,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Till—Hello,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Children! Go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Home, they cry—the foresters.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>So he goes on to tell how their childhood took as a pleasure the hurts +and stings that they received as they hunted for strawberries, and to +recall the warnings against snakes that the herdsman sometimes shouted +through the branches. Apart from its graceful manner, and the breezy +freshness of its universal childhood, the poem's specific touches are +unusual. "From the beeches to the firs," for instance, does not sound +mediæval aside from one's surprise that a German should have omitted the +linden. We need not be as old as was Lamb in 1820, to look back with a +touch of desire on the child, that other me, there in the background. +Perhaps there is the glamour of sentiment about that familiar +association of childhood with purity and moral grace. Yet the feeling +appeals to us as true beyond mere beauty, and many may read with +responsiveness these lines, hitherto unprinted, by one on whose lips, +just parted for their song, silence laid her finger:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Could I answer love like thine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All earth to me were heaven anew;<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span><span class="i0">But were thy heart, dear child, as mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What place for love between us two?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bright things for tired eyes vainly shine:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A grief the pure heaven's simple blue.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alas, for lips past joy of wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That find no blessing in God's dew!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From dawning summits crystalline<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><ins title="Transcriber's Note: change in indentation is faithful to the original">Thou lookest down</ins>; thou makest sign<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Toward this bleak vale I wander through.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I cannot answer; that pure shrine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of childhood, though my love be true,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is hidden from my dim confine:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I must not hope for clearer view.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sky, the earth, the wrinkled brine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would wear to me a fresher hue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all once more be half-divine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Could I answer love like thine."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The spiritual subtlety of such a mood certainly is beyond the mediæval +poets, yet we find pleasant proofs of sensibility to the tender, +unselfish nature of a loving child. Nowhere in such detail, perhaps, as +in the most familiar of Middle High German poems, the <i>Poor Henry</i>, of +Hartmann von Aue. The story is known in Longfellow's <i>Golden Legend</i>. +This is not the place to discuss that poem, which contains some charming +passages. The poet's treatment may be far from satisfactory, yet when he +calls his original the most beautiful of mediæval legends, he certainly +shows a more satisfactory side of extreme estimate than does Goethe, in +his curious fling at the poem (which we may notice he read in a +modernized form). He says it gave him a "physico-æsthetic pain," and +adds that the notion of a fine girl sacrificing herself for a leper, +affected him so that he felt himself poisoned by the book. This judgment +was pronounced in Goethe's later life, and is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> consistent with his +habitual want of sympathy with mediæval romantic literature. It shows, +moreover, a lack of historical adjustment, for the dreadful disease was +so common in the twelfth century that its repulsiveness was blurred for +Hartmann; yet he mentions it with the greatest reserve, though a +description of its appearance could hardly be more painful than the +famous conclusion of the <i>De Rerum Natura</i>. We are reminded of Goethe's +visit to Assisi, interesting to him only as the situation of some +remains of classical architecture.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p> + +<p>Hartmann von Aue ranks below his two great companions +in German narrative poetry, for he is more of +a translator than either Gottfried or Wolfram. His +distinction is in his style; he has a very agreeable way +of telling a story, and there is a quiet charm about his +diction. "How clear and pure his crystal words are +and always must be," is Gottfried's tribute. We come +to feel a personal liking for him, through his unaffected +interest in his characters, his unassuming ways and +the tact by which he lightens or deepens his accentuation. +We feel that he was a gentleman, and we do not +wonder at the kind regard in which all his fellow poets +held him. We like his refined moral seriousness and +that calm temperament of which he speaks in <i>Gregorius</i>. +The original for the <i>Arme Heinrich</i> is lost, +but though his introduction claims for himself no merit +beyond a careful selection out of the many books that +he takes pains to tell us he was learned enough to +read for himself, we are probably justified in feeling +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>that he took his heart into partnership when he made +the version, receiving from it touches that he did not +find in the earlier treatment. To appreciate the poem +we have to put ourselves into harmony with the wonder-loving, +credulous, and mystically religious world of +seven hundred years ago. Hartmann's simple earnestness +and unobtrusive tenderness and piety constitute +an ideal manner for the legend, and that ease of his +soul which he hoped would come through the prayers +of those who read the poem after his death, is perhaps +equally well secured if he knows how some of his +verses touch the sophisticated sense of to-day. He said +that he was actuated in writing by the desire to soften +hard hours in a way that would be to the honor of +God, and by which he might make himself dear to +others. He has succeeded. It is to the honor of God, +and it wins the affection of others, when a poet leads his +readers to a little well of pure unselfish love, hedged +about by a child's religious faith.</p> + +<p>The hero of the legend is a gentleman of position and feudal +possessions, whose free and generous career is cut short by an incurable +leprosy. It is in vain that he consults masters at Montpelier and +Salerno, the famous seats of medicine; and the honor and affection in +which a genial life had established him among his friends cannot save +him from becoming a social outcast. He disposes of his wealth between +the poor and the church, and retires to a fief whose tenant is willing +to receive his suzerain as a guest. Here, on a little estate, away from +all contact with the world, the gay lord resigns himself to the +companionship of the farmer and his wife, whose gratitude for his +kindness in the past distinguishes them among the multitude to whom his +amiable disposition had made him a benefactor and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> friend. There were +children in the family, the eldest a girl eight years old, when Henry +came. It was because their hearts were loyal that her parents were kind, +but she kept close by him because she loved to be there. She was always +to be found at his feet, and his affectionate nature liked her +companionship. He bought her a hand mirror, a riband for her hair, a +belt and finger ring, and whatever children care for. These gifts +attached her to him, yet the main secret of her love was the sweet +spirit that God had given her. After three years, as the family were +sitting together one day with their high-born guest, the farmer asked +him why it was that he had given himself up so hopelessly to his +disease, and Henry laid aside his reserve, and told for the first time +about his visit to the great physician at Salerno. The only remedy was +an impossible one. He might indeed be healed, but not unless a virgin +made a voluntary offering of her life. Alas, God was his only physician.</p> + +<p>The little girl, who was so inseparable a companion that he jestingly +called her his bride, listened as she was holding her sick lord's feet +in her lap. She could not get it out of her head (the old German idiom +is better, "out of her heart") the rest of the day, and when at night +she lay in her usual place at her father's and mother's feet, she felt +so sorry for her dear lord that she cried, and the warm tears fell on +her parents' feet, and woke them. When they asked her what was the +matter, she said that she thought they ought to be sorry, too; for what +would happen to them all if their lord should die? Some one else would +own the farm, and no one could ever be as kind to them as he had been. +They told her that was all true, but it could do no good to lament. +"Dear child, do not grieve. We<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> feel as badly as you do, but alas, we +cannot help him." So they hushed her, but all the night and the next day +she continued to be unhappy, and whatever else she was doing, she kept +thinking of this. When she went to bed, she cried again, till finally +she resolved to herself that if she lived till morning she would surely +give her life for her lord. Straightway from that thought, she became +light-hearted and happy, and felt free of all her cares, until it +occurred to her that perhaps Henry and her parents would not permit her +to make the sacrifice; whereupon the poor little girl burst out crying +again, and wakened her parents, as she had done the night before. It was +only with difficulty that they drew from her this simple speech: "My +lord might get well in the way that he told us, and if you will only let +me, I am what he needs for being cured. I am a maid, and rather than see +him pass away, I will die for him." A long dialogue follows, in which +the parents remonstrate with the daughter, who replies in a strain of +spiritual elation. She appeals not only to her parents' worldly +dependence on their master's goodness, but also to their desire for her +own highest welfare. How much better for her to pass to eternal life in +unstained childhood, only anticipating the death that must come some +time, no less unwelcome late than soon. Her parents ceased to +remonstrate, for they felt that the Holy Ghost was speaking through her, +as they listened to the visionary cry. Instead of taking, two or three +years hence, some neighbor for her husband, she will choose</p> + +<blockquote><p>"the Franklin, who is wooing me to a home where the plough +runs easily, where there is all abundance, where horses and +cattle never are lost, where no wailing children suffer, where +it is neither too warm nor too cold, where the old will grow +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>young, where is nor frost nor hunger, no kind of pain, but all +joy without toil; thither will I haste me, and forsake a farm +whose tillage, fire, hail, and flood destroy, so that one half-day +ruins the labor of a year. Then let me go to our Lord Jesus +Christ, whose grace is sure, and who loves me, poor as I am, +like a queen."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Unlike our modern analysts of character, Hartmann does not stop to +comment on the art of his delineation, and it is possible to miss the +tact with which he keeps his heroine's renunciation consistent with a +child's nature. Hartmann is not treating this character inartistically, +as a mere instrument for religious culture. Earnest speech of a +thoughtful parish priest; or phrases caught from the conversation of her +lord touched by his sorrows, with the age's feeling <i>de contemptu +mundi</i>, might have supplied her with some sentiments that seem beyond a +child's invention, and children's emotions are sometimes precocious, +especially in what seems a morbid religious development.</p> + +<p>Those are the years of faith, credulous belief that burns with the white +light of knowledge; a child's faith is a man's superstition. The peasant +maid's imagination sees heaven and salvation a fact so infinitely +desirable, that all dread of death was eliminated from the path of her +love. The joyousness of her sacrifice, too, instead of being a romantic +exaggeration, is far truer to life than a willingness touched with pain +and hesitation could have been. In a noble dread, austerely controlled, +lies Calvary's dignity and pathos. But her gratitude and impetuous love +for what seems to her simple mind a superior and infinitely deserving +object, reached that finest pitch of selfishness, where self-sacrifice +becomes the demand of impulsive egotism. To an enthusiastic temperament +love's passionate altruism<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> may be consummate self-will. As the little +maid came away from her deliverance, though she was happy in her lord's +restoration, she was less happy than as she went.</p> + +<p>For she did not have to die. In the tyranny of undeniable love, she +broke down the opposition of her parents, and although Henry indeed +hesitated, she pleaded so anxiously and drew such an eloquent sketch of +the advantage and gladness death would be to her, and the value of his +life compared with hers, that at last, genial and affectionate as he +was, the temptation to live by the sacrifice of a mere child's life (and +the feudal sense of possession ought not to be overlooked) was too +strong to be resisted. Compare the scene with the one in <i>Philaster</i>, +where Bellario wishes to offer herself for the man whom she loves with a +hopeless earthly sentiment:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8">"'Tis not a life,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>For her, continuance of life is only "a game that must be lost." But for +the nameless German girl there is no pathos in living, beyond the +thought of her master's death, and her sentiment was as childlike as +when it began, while she was only eight years old. Her love is a flame +that burns impatiently away from the taper that feeds it; for her +generous passion is after all a beautiful devoted wilfulness. When her +parents wept to lose her, and her lord wept at his own weak hesitation, +she wept above them all and her tears won the day. She rode with Henry +to Salerno, and was unhappy only because the journey was so long. The +great physician took her hand, and led her alone into a barred and +bolted room. Then he tried to frighten her and induce her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> to retract +her consent, but she only laughed until she became afraid that he would +not do his part, whereupon she broke out into an indignant scorn for his +unmanly weakness. When he bade her undress, she did so without a blush; +he bound her to his table, and took up his knife. He wished to render +death easy (so he told himself), and taking a whetstone to make the +knife sharper, he slowly whetted it—only as a pretext for delaying. The +gentleman outside found himself restless. He listened, then he tried to +look in and at last through a crevice in the wall he saw that "little +bride" who had been his main companion and comfort during those three +wretched years. By a fine touch of nature, the poet makes the sight of +her perfect loveliness as she lay waiting for her celestial bridal, the +force that broke the selfish charm which had enchained his manliness. He +beat on the door, he called, and when no response came, he burst his way +in. "The child is too lovely to die. For myself, God's will be done."</p> + +<p>It was now that her trial came, as she wailed and beat wildly at her +body, to force on him the life he was unwilling to take. She talked +bitterly and peevishly, as if she had been cheated of heaven through his +cruelty. But it was in vain, he dressed her again in the rich garments +which he had procured for the sacrificial journey, and they set out on +their return to their distant home, the sobbing girl and the leper. But +as they rode along, the divine might that seemed so near to mediæval +faith was their companion, and touching the incurable disease, fulfilled +love's miracle. Henry took their daughter back to the peasants, and gave +her rich gifts, while he presented them with the land which they had +farmed, and all its serfs and chattels. Then<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> he went back to his +estates, and to the welcome that the world was waiting to give him. By +and by, when his people insisted that he should marry, he called an +old-time conference about whom he should choose. There were numerous +suggestions, but the advisers did not agree. He listened, and then +telling them that unless they would approve his own choice, he should +never marry, he stepped to the side of "the dear little wife" who had +loved him as a leper.</p> + +<p>The romance of <i>Fleur et Blanchefleur</i>, which goes back, though not in +its present form, to the twelfth century, enjoyed such popularity that +it was translated into almost every European tongue. Indeed, in some +languages it is found in more than one version. The story tells of a +Saracen prince, whose royal father interrupts the smooth course of his +true love for a Christian girl. She was the daughter of a captive lady +in the palace of the Queen, and the royal boy and the bond girl had been +born on the same day. From his birth, the mother of Blanchefleur became +Fleur's nurse; the pagan law required that he must be suckled by a +heathen, but in all other ways the infants were treated like twins. They +slept in one cradle, and when they could eat and drink they were given +the same food. Thus they grew up together, until they were five years +old, when the King, seeing his child as fine and promising a boy as +could be found in any land, decided that it was time for him to begin +his education. He selected a master, but Fleur, when he was bidden to +study, burst into tears and cried, "Sire, what will Blanchefleur do? Who +will teach her? I never can learn without her." The King answered that +since he loved her so, Blanchefleur should go with him to school.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p> + +<blockquote><p>"So they went and came together, and the joy of their love +was still uninterrupted. It was a wonder to see how each of +the two studied for each; neither learned anything without +straightway telling the other. At nature's earliest, all their +concern was love; they were quick in learning and well they +remembered. Pagan books that spake of love they read together +with delight; these hastened them along in the understanding +and joy of love. On their way home from school, +they would put their arms about each other, and kiss. In the +King's garden, bright with all plants and flowers of various +hues, they went to play every morning, and to eat their dinner; +and after they had eaten, they listened to the birds singing in +the trees above them, and then they went their way back to +school, and a happy walk they found it. When they were again +at school they took their ivory tablets, and you might have seen +them writing letters and verses of love, in the wax. Deftly +with their gold and silver styles they made letters and greeting +of love, of the songs of birds and of flowers. This was all they +cared for. In five years and fifteen days, they both had learned +to write neatly on parchment, and to talk in Latin so well that +no one could understand."</p></blockquote> + +<p>When we follow the poem along, we find in the different versions many +familiar romance expedients, conventional incidents of the pathetic, +exciting, and marvellous, but the charm is in the unwavering love of +these twins, who from the hour of birth breathed together, even in their +sleep, yet no kin to each other, and blending brotherhood and sisterhood +with the other love of man and woman in perfection, since for neither +they knew the beginning. In this way the mediæval romance is even more +ideal than Beaumont's <i>Triumph of Love</i>, where Gerard and Violante +passed from the sentiment of childhood "as innocently as the first +lovers ere they fell."</p> + +<p>"Gerard's and my affection began," the heroine tells Ferdinand,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"In infancy: my uncle brought him oft<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In long clothes hither; you were such another.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The little boy would kiss me, being a child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And say he loved me: give me all his toys,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bracelets, rings, sweetmeats, all his rosy smiles;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I then would stand and stare upon his eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Play with his locks, and swear I loved him too.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For sure, methought he was a little Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He wooed so prettily in innocence<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That then he warmed my fancy; for I felt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A glimmering beam of love kindle my blood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Both which time since hath made a flame and flood."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In the early stages of Fleur's love-trials his parents attempted to +persuade him that Blanchefleur was dead, and to give confirmation to +their assertions they caused a superb tomb to be constructed, in a style +that is of considerable interest in the study of literary origins from +its obviously Oriental tone. Without delaying for its rich and curious +Eastern details, we may yet notice the sentiment in the figures of the +boy and girl that were placed upon it. "Never were seen images of fairer +children, or more like to the lovers. The image of Blanchefleur holds a +flower before Fleur, before her lover holds the fair one a rose of fine +bright gold; and before her, Fleur holds a blanched golden fleur-de-lis. +Close by each other they sit, a sweet look on their faces." A mechanical +device is so contrived that when the wind blew and touched the children +they embraced and kissed, and by necromancy they spoke to each other as +in their childhood, and thus said Fleur to Blanchefleur: "Kiss me, +sweet," and kissing him, she replied: "I love you more than all the +world."</p> + +<p>The story of Fleur and Blanchefleur was so popular that they became +identified with the characters of another romance, and were sung of as +the parents of Berte-as-graus-pies,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> the heroine of an attractive +legend, and the mythical mother of Charlemagne. In the poem that relates +her misfortunes after she has been sent from Hungary to France as the +wife of Pepin, we find a suggestion of the depth of sentiment that was +always associated with her legendary parents. She has been in France +almost nine years without their having heard from her, and Blanchefleur +determines to undertake a journey to see her child again before she +dies. The King, without opposing her desire, expresses a half +remonstrance that we may add to the other proofs in mediæval poetry, +that true love in our modern sense was familiar throughout those eras: +"Oh, my lady, how shall we be able to live so long without each other?" +Let us believe that in the Utopia where these lovers who loved from +their birth resided, they found, after their own sharp trials and the +trials of their daughter were safely over, a serene old age, out of +which they passed unconsciously some night, sleeping themselves away in +each other's arms.</p> + +<p>This love between boy and girl was attractive to the old narrative +poets. The greatest of them all touched the soul of young romance when +he said of Sigune and Schionatulander, "Alas, they are still too young +for such pain, yet 'tis the love of youth which lasts." Wolfram gives us +pretty touches of childhood as far back as the nursery; like that of a +mother and her ladies playing over the new-born baby, or of children +learning to stand by taking hold of chairs, and creeping over the floor +to reach them, or of Sigune's care to take her box of dolls with her +when she went away. "Whoever saw this little girl thought her a glimpse +of May among the dewy flowers." As she grew older, too, he describes +her, assuming the airs of a young<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> lady. "When her breasts were rounding +and her light wavy hair began to turn dark, she grew more proud and +dignified, though always keeping her womanlike sweetness." The story of +her love with Schionatulander has delightful stanzas; their long +love-pleading dialogue is much truer than most of the minnesingers' work +in its restraint and in the girl's coy sweetness. She is an earlier +Dorigen as she watches for the beloved who does not come, wasting many +an evening at the window gazing over the fields, or climbing to the +housetop to look. But what distinguishes the author of the <i>Titurel</i> +above his fellow-poets is his sentiment for something more than romance. +Children are dear to him, and the wife is dearer. His idea of love +consists no more in Dante's platonic mysticism than in passion and +inconstancy. Without transcendentalism its dominant tone is spiritual. +Compare an earlier lover's cry in the loveliest of French romances: +"What is there in heaven for me? I will never go there without +Nicolette, my sweet darling, whom I love so much. It is to hell that +fine gentlemen go and pretty, well-bred ladies who love." Compare that +Parisian type of feeling with this of Wolfram: "Love between man and +woman has its house on earth, and its pure guidance leads us to God and +heaven. This love is everywhere save in hell!" To such a poet we +naturally turn for the deepest mediæval note in the treatment of +childhood, and we do not listen in vain.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span></p><p>"What a difference there is between women," Wolfram exclaims. It seems +to him the way of modern womanhood to be disloyal, worldly, selfish, +like men: but in the days of which he writes in his chief poem there was +a lady Herzeloide, to whom after her husband's death in the wars, the +sun was a cloud, the world's joy lost, night and day alike, who for +heavenly riches chose earthly poverty, and leaving her estates went with +her retainers far into the unreclaimed forest to bring up her infant +safe from the strife and wiles of men. This only heritage of her lost +lord was the boy Parzival. She trusted that by hiding him away from all +knowledge of the world, she might always keep him her own. She exacted +an oath from her servants that they would never let him hear of knights +and knighthood, and while they cleared farming land in the heart of the +woods, she cared for the child. It was a desolate place, but she was not +looking for meadows and flowers; she gave no thought to wreaths, whether +red or yellow.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p> + +<p>The child grew into boyhood, and was indulged +in making bows and arrows. As he played in the +woods, he shot some of the birds. But after he saw +them dead, he remembered how they had sung, and he +cried. Every morning he went to a stream to bathe. +There was nothing to trouble him, except the singing +of the birds over his head: but that was so sweet that +his breast grew strained with feeling; and he ran to +his mother in tears. She asked what ailed him, but +"like children even now it may be," he could not tell +her. But she kept the riddle in her heart, and one +day she found him gazing up at the trees listening to +the birds, and she saw how his breast heaved as they +sang. It seemed to her that she hated them, she did +not know why. She wanted to stop their singing, +and bade her farm hands snare and kill them. But +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>the birds were too quick; most of them remained and +kept on singing. The boy asked his mother what +harm the birds did, and if the war upon them might +not cease. She kissed his lips:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Why am I opposing highest God? Shall the birds lose +their happiness because of me?"</p> + +<p>"Nay, mother, what is God?"</p> + +<p>"My son, He is brighter than the day; He took upon himself +the likeness of man. When trouble comes upon thee, +pray to him: his faithfulness upholds the world. The Devil +is darkness; turn thy thoughts from him, and from unbelief."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This passage is Wolfram's invention; the brilliant Gallic poet whose +romance he followed could not have contrived it. This sympathy with +nature belongs to our later era; it seems less strange to meet it in +Keats, when the boy Apollo wanders out alone in the morning twilight:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There was no covert, no retired cave<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though scarcely heard in many a green recess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He listened and he wept, and his bright tears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Went trickling down the golden bow he held."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>One recalls nothing in the two centuries which Wolfram touches that +equals this picture of the mother watching her child's baptism with the +sad and precious gift of soul, as he stands gazing upward in his forest +trance, or listening to his dawning perplexities, or teaching him his +first religious lesson, or jealous of the birds, because his dreamy love +for them dimly warned her of a mysterious growing soul that would not +remain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> within her simple call. Those lines in the <i>Princess</i> of the +faith in womankind and the trust in all things high, that come easy to +the son of a good mother, certainly are appropriate to Parzival, whose +faith held true and simple through his whole career as the foremost +knight of chivalric legend, living for a spiritual ideal, unseduced by +beauty and the ways of courts from loyalty to his first wedlock:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"True to the kindred points of heaven and home."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The description of Parzival's meeting with the knights, his mistaking +them in their bright armor for angels, and his eagerness to make his way +to Arthur's court are narrated by Chrestien with his own excellent +vivacity, and here Wolfram only follows.</p> + +<p>The Welsh version of the story in the <i>Mabinogi</i> of Peredur, though +disappointing, contains a naïve sketch of the boy's rustic attempt to +imitate the knight's trappings. But for the full tenderness of his +mother's parting as he goes out from home to the fierce world we must +turn again to the German.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p> + +<p>She kisses him, and as he rides away "runs a few steps after him" till +he has galloped out of sight and then she closes forever the eyes whose +light of motherhood shone like a star above the sea, over those +tumultuous years.</p> + +<p>All through these centuries there are poems to the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>Virgin, especially in Latin, which manifest similar +sensibility to infancy and motherhood. One of the +most pleasing belongs to England, and is written in +the commixture of Latin and the modern tongue, +which occasionally produces quaintly pretty effects. +The glorified Christ summons his mother, by the memory +of their kisses when she calmed him in sweet song, +to come and be crowned. "Pulcra ut luna"—lovely +as moonlight—"veni coronaberis."</p> + +<p>But perhaps the most delicate of all such sketches comes from an +unexpected source. A young lawyer in the town of Todi, whose early life +had combined pleasure with sufficient study to gain the doctorate, was +turned aside from a prosperous public career by the tragical loss of his +bride. Matthew Arnold has given a symbolism to the story of her death in +the sonnet beginning:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That son of Italy who tried to blow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The sorrow struck deep, even to the point of partial mania; the gay +young man forsook the world and devoted years to seclusion and religious +culture. Later in 1278, he entered the order of the Minorites, and ranks +as one of their delirious enthusiasts, a mystic poet, a reckless +satirist of evils in high places. His fanatic asceticism made him glory +in bodily torments and the world's scorn. The nickname, Jacapone, he +carried proudly, and even the harshness of Boniface VIII. could not +quell his zest for martyrdom. We should scarcely look to him for +sympathy with the sweet gaieties of the nursery, yet this little sketch +of the Virgin's life with Christ, the child, came from the same hand +that wrote the sorrows of the <i>Stabat Mater</i>.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah sweet, how sweet, the love within thy heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When on thy breast the nursing infant lay:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What gentle actions, sweetly loving play,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thine, with thy holy child apart.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When for a little while he sometimes slept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou eager to awake thy paradise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soft, soft, so that he could not hear thee, crept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And laidest thy lips close to his eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then, with the smile maternal calling, "Nay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Twere naughty to sleep longer, wake, I say!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The almost incoherent repetition of the word "Love," in one of his +poems, is suggestive of the man; despair for human love led to his +half-crazed absorption in the divine. Very sweetly sounds this sacred +meditation's echo of his recollection of the nights of his own +childhood, of which he has told, when his mother, as she waked, would +make a light and come and lean over his bed, till sometimes his eyes +would open to see her watching him there. His father did not spare the +rod for the careless boy, nor in later years did the father of his soul; +but the divine motherhood of memory and of present faith bent with +yearning eyes, we may be sure, over his anxious sleep in prison or in +the ascetic cell.</p> + +<p>But it was only the greatest of all these poets who could leave us the +lovely image of the new-born soul that comes forth in its simplicity +from the hand that loves it before its birth, playing like a young girl +who weeps and smiles. Yet Dante's principal sensation about childhood is +its helplessness, and the mother's eyes, which throw its aureole about +infancy, do not seem to have held their tenderest meaning for him. He +would never have gone beyond the original ten lines of</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She was a phantom of delight."<br /></span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>But he gives beauty to the child's frightened eyes when they meet its +mother's, and certainly the vision, whether real or imagined, toward the +close of the <i>Vita Nuova</i> will please forever. This straying love is +recalled to its old faithfulness by "the strong imagination" of a little +figure that is habited in red, just as it had appeared to him when, +perhaps in Folco's Florentine garden, the boy not quite nine fell in +love with the girl of eight.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Boccaccio's story of the falcon is too familiar to quote, though +it illustrates domestic love too well to be unmentioned. One hardly can +choose the best of its touches—the bright account of the boy running +over the fields with his mother's old-time lover, as he hawked, always +eying with a boy's eagerness for ownership the famous falcon, the only +remnant of Frederick's gay and wealthy life, which he had lost for the +unsuccessful love; or the picture of the mother again and again begging +the child, as he lay ill, to tell her something which he desired, so +that she might obtain it for him; until his feverish imagination +persuaded him that to have the wonderful falcon would make him well +again; or our thought of the impoverished gentleman, whose devotion had +lasted under the years of exile on his little farm, his hope departed, +who when suddenly visited by his widowed love, and finding nothing in +the larder, nor money, nor even anything valuable enough for a pledge to +secure some entertainment for her, desperately wrung the neck of his +precious bird; or the delicate hesitation and awkwardness of the lady +when she came to explain her errand, and the struggle, before love for +her child bent both pride and pity; or the lover's broken heart when he +found that his excess of devotion had cost him his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> only opportunity of +pleasing her. The whole may be read in a little play of Tennyson's later +years, or among the <i>Tales of a Wayside Inn</i>; but it is much better to +read it in the narrative of the Certaldesian. Tuscany has sent us down +no tenderer story.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/dmndvase.png" width="200" height="127" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="woman" id="woman"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/152t.png" width="500" height="127" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>A MEDIÆVAL WOMAN.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></h2> + + +<p>When Heloise was born, just after the twelfth century opened, Abelard, +through whom she was to experience the deepest ecstacies and the most +poignant distress, and by whose union with her life she was to become +the most famous mediæval woman, was a young man of twenty-two. He came +of a rather high-bred family in Brittany; his father, though an active +soldier, was interested in letters and took pains to have his children +instructed in the ornaments as well as the defence of life. This eldest +son, so attracted by his early lessons that he determined to sacrifice +his rights of primogeniture, and to renounce the distinction of a +knightly career for the life of study, while yet a youth started out as +a student-tramp, one of a multitude who wandered from town to town to +hear lectures on the seven topics that made up the educational +curriculum of the age. Through this entire epoch, for generation after +generation, this practice of student vagrancy continued: now the +intellectual centre was England, now France, now Germany; sometimes two +or three teachers would draw crowds to the exclusion of all other +schools, sometimes the numbers would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>divide up among scores of masters. Poor, rich, coarse, +refined, hard-working, indolent, quick-witted, stupid, +scholars, impostors,—these student crowds were an +extraordinary medley. To realize the irregularity and +the strangeness of their lives we have to read such a +story as Freytag quotes<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> from Thomas Platter, a wandering +scholar of the fifteenth century. Such German +students were perhaps of a lower grade than the young +men who travelled through France three hundred +years before, and the standard of scholarship may have +been inferior, but their general experiences must have +been similar, and most of Abelard's companions no +doubt were mentally crude, arrogant, superstitious; +many dissipated and even brutal. Yet some were +touched by the love of truth, and had vigorous minds, +well trained by application. The majority of these +better men were of course hedged in by the palisades +of Catholic tradition, and sought knowledge from the +past, rather than from independent present thought: +but there were some whose ideas were bolder, and who +kept proposing questions which their teachers did not +answer.</p> + +<p>The deferential attention with which Roscellinus and +William of Champeaux were listened to, was broken in +upon when the handsome youth Abelard appeared at +the schools of these leaders of European thought. The +strength of each was in dialectics, the topic which then +held intellectual interest to the practical disregard of +almost every other subject except the theology into +which it played, and they took opposite sides on the +absorbing problem of general terms. In the school of +each, Abelard rose as a disputant; he challenged his +teacher to argue with him as an equal until he triumphed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>in turn over the extreme Nominalist and the +extreme Realist. Then he set up schools of his own, +which he moved from place to place, as the intolerant +hostility of his vanquished chiefs and their upholders +required. His reputation steadily rose, and he drew +the largest and most enthusiastic following, for the +keenest young thought of the generation recognized in +him its natural leader.</p> + +<p>All independence and liberality of mind must be estimated relatively to +the age concerned. From our outlook Abelard seems a narrow and +constrained thinker, but to the churchman of the opening of the twelfth +century he was a rationalist, a daring explorer into the sacred +mysteries that must be accepted by the sealed eye of Faith. How absurd, +he exclaims, to teach what you cannot give reasons for believing. So he +tried to make belief a matter for intellectual comprehension; he argued +where others asserted, and made bold to modify current opinions which +his ingenuity, often childishly simple, could not explain. He had a +noble grasp upon some conceptions far beyond the reach of his +antagonists. He independently developed the ethical doctrine that the +value of conduct is in motive, not in act; he taught that the main worth +of the incarnation was to present the model of a perfect life; that the +man Christ Jesus was not a member of the Trinity; that the love of God +is as freely bestowed on sinner as on saint; that God could not prevent +evil, or he would have done so. For the sufferings that he endured in +teaching his pupils to use not credulity but unflinching independent +thought in their reflections even on theology, he deserves our grateful +admiration.</p> + +<p>When Abelard was thirty-eight years old he was at the height of his +reputation. Technical and abstruse<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> as his intellectual interests were, +he appears to have been anything but a dry-as-dust. Though as a logician +he had trained himself severely in precision of speech, the hesitating +and half-frozen way of talking that most exact thinkers fall into, he +seems to have escaped. We have a letter written about this time by a +canon named Fulcus, who, dwelling on Abelard's intellectual cleverness, +his power and subtlety of expression, makes special mention of the +sweetness of his eloquence; <i>limpidissimus philosophiæ fons</i>, he calls +him, too—philosophy's very clearest fountain. He was not only an easy +and agreeable speaker, he had also the advantages of an attractive +presence; he was a fine-looking man, in the prime of life.</p> + +<p>Now for about twenty years he had been a hero of the schools. The +philosophic and theological leaders of the age he had overthrown and +trampled on; the audiences that he had been at the first successful in +drawing had steadily increased. Established in Paris without +controversy, a canon of the church, in the chair of Notre-Dame, the +philosophical throne of France, he lectured to the best pupils of +Europe. Fulcus, in his letter to Abelard, described the geographical +extent of his influence thus:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Rome sent her sons to be taught by you, the former teacher +of all arts confessing herself not so wise as you. No distance, +no height of mountains, no depth of valleys, no road hard to +travel or perilous with robbers, hindered scholars from hastening +to you. The English students were not frightened by the +tempestuous waves of the sea between; every peril was despised +as soon as your name was known. The remote Britons, the +Angevins, the Picts, the Gascons, the Spaniards, the people of +Normandy and Flanders, the Teutons, and the Suevi, all about +Paris and through France, near and remote, thirsted to be +taught by you, as if they could learn nowhere else."</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p> + +<p>Such eminence had not come to him without effort. He had been a close +worker, secluding himself from society. "The assiduity of my application +to study," he says, "prevented my associating with refined ladies, and I +had hardly any acquaintance with women outside of the church." The +purity of his morals was only less famous than his intellect; he says +that the notion of associating, as many churchmen of the time did, with +coarse women was odious to him.</p> + +<p>But suddenly over this man already middle-aged, and, as one might +suppose, established in self-control mentally and physically, there came +a reaction. Reputation had become an old story, his enthusiasm for +philosophy seemed to dwindle when he believed himself the first +philosopher of the world; no doubt, too, the intellectual pressure of +his work had so worn upon him as to make a change of interests +impulsive. So Abelard turned to divert himself with immoral indulgences, +and at thirty-eight began the life of passion.</p> + +<p>Several years before this, a story had begun to circulate that another +canon of Notre-Dame, Fulbert by name, had a remarkable niece. She was +then only a little girl in a nunnery at Argenteuil, but year by year the +accounts of her precocity grew more astonishing, and by the time she was +sixteen we are told that she was talked about through the whole kingdom. +This was Heloise, and her uncle—people did not know whether he was +prouder or fonder of her. He brought her back to his own house near the +cathedral, and Abelard met her to find the reports of her learning had +not been exaggerated, and—something more interesting—to find that she +was not merely a scholar, that she was a genius. The modern accounts of +this famous story that I have seen (most of them mere imitations of one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +or two authors who really have taken the trouble to study the originals) +declare that Heloise was uncommonly beautiful, but there seems to be no +authority for this. Abelard says only, "<i>per faciem non infirma</i>"—"not +lowest in beauty, but in literary culture highest." Making allowance for +his rhetorical contrast, we may say, without intensives, that she was +attractive as well as brilliant.</p> + +<p>We should have to read a good many indecent chronicles, and get +thoroughly familiar with Don Juan prototypes, to find as cold-blooded a +story of seduction as this that follows. We have it from Abelard's own +pen, told in perfectly calm language, a clear-cut narrative without the +slightest tremor of confession about it. He was delighted with her +loveliness, her youth and innocence, her fame, and most of all with her +brilliancy. He says that he believed no woman whom he might honor with +his regard could resist the combination of his personal qualities and +his reputation. But he wished cultivated, congenial companionship in his +amours, and deliberately resolved to betray this girl of sixteen under +the disguise of her teacher. At his own application, Fulbert received +him as a lodger, the board to be paid by private instruction of his +niece. "He gave the lamb to me, a wolf"—such is Abelard's well-chosen +metaphor. She was to be taught at any hours, day or night, that her +tutor found convenient. She was to obey him in everything, and if he +thought fit it was enjoined upon him to discipline her with the rod. "To +such an extent," Abelard remarks, "was he blinded by his trust in his +niece, and by my reputation for strict morality."</p> + +<p>Nothing could be more repulsive than the coldly deliberate wickedness of +Abelard's plan, and it would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> be time thrown away to attempt any +extenuation of it. But the crime once committed, it is a relief to find +something in addition to brute passion present in the unscrupulous +seducer. The girl who had fascinated him, won from him as complete love +as his nature was capable of giving. Week by week he resigned himself +more and more to his happiness, he neglected the school, his lectures +were only the repetition of formerly acquired views, and he wooed +philosophy for no new truths. Even the perfunctory teaching that he did +grew irksome to him, and his knowledge of the great sadness, groans, and +lamentations that he tells arose among his followers, was powerless to +break the spell. For it was only a spell: he was pre-eminently an +intellectual man with superficial affections; his heart was given to +philosophy, and the only permanent passion of his life was ambition. But +little as the praise is, to that little extent it is to his credit that +where he had planned for himself a holiday from mental and moral +severity, in which he was to enjoy relaxation selfishly and viciously at +Heloise's undivided cost, he found his better nature captured by this +loveliest representative of womanhood in its fullest and most +exceptional combination of elements that mediæval history has made known +to us. After all, Abelard was not wholly destitute of the moral +sensibilities: I believe no narrator of this story has called attention +to his love for his old home in Brittany, or to his family's devotion to +him and reliance on his guidance, or to the tenderness with which he +mentions his mother. In spite of all the viciousness in his early and +the hardness in his later treatment of Heloise, we may credit him with +real affection for her, from the early days of his crime.</p> + +<p>For a man of Abelard's force and finish of mind,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> such a refined +companionship must have been the first of pleasures. There are +traditions, not to be accepted too credulously, that Heloise was a +larger scholar than her lover, and could read Hebrew and Greek—those +rarest accomplishments of mediæval learning. That at least she knew +Latin literature well, we have abundant evidence, and the most positive +proof that her scholarship was refined and appreciative, that she felt +poetry as well as understood it. Her mind responded also to the +theological interests of the thinkers of the age, she was at home in the +church fathers, and learned from Abelard the main principles of his +philosophical doctrine. In trying to conceive a character when +information is so fragmentary as ours here, we are no doubt in some +danger of making fanciful biography. Three letters of her own, several +of Abelard's to her, and his autobiography, a few slight contemporary +hints—these materials leave some important points of her character +undeveloped. But given certain suggestions, our imaginative instincts +cannot go far wrong, provided the inferences of sympathetic +interpretation are held in check by judgment. These guides teach us to +see in the girl Heloise an extraordinary combination of thoughtfulness +and bright temper, active thinking and religious deference, accurate +scholarship (after the fashion of mediæval schools) and æsthetic +sensibility, passion and maidenly delicacy. To this last quality Abelard +has borne complete testimony, and her own letters supply any evidence +needed. Absorbed though her whole nature was in her love, her lover +himself has let us know that her modesty had to be conquered more than +once by blows.</p> + +<p>Her mind was mastered by the greatness of his reputation, her eye was +taken with his beauty, her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> imagination was fascinated by his universal +charm: it is no wonder that she was flattered and bewitched into loving +him. But the completeness and devotion and ecstatic self-oblivion of the +love she gave him is a wonder. Her generous faith, though to an +undeserving object, communicates to the ineffective results of her life +an ideal value; by a supreme self-forgetting, she rendered herself +worthy to be always remembered.</p> + +<p>Abelard's was a stormy life in a stormy age, when the scholars fought +quite as bitterly as the soldiers, and the last forty-four years of +Heloise's life were the tragedy of being buried alive, unable to die. +But for a few months in this year 1118, both found perfect happiness. We +have a pretty picture outlined for us of the way their time went. +Abelard says: "We used to have our books open, but we talked more of +love than about the reading, there were more kisses than ideas. Love +made pictures of each of us in the other's eyes more often than we +turned our eyes upon the books."</p> + +<p>Every now and then this great philosopher appeared in a new rôle. As to +most of the highest men, Nature had given him a great deal more than +brains. He had a wonderfully fine voice, was fond of music, and as poets +in those days went, he was a poet. He had stopped constructing +dialectics, but his mind could not be inactive; so he took up the art of +song-writing and song-making, and wrote love-lyrics and many of them, +almost all directly in the praise of Heloise. Nor was he content to +praise her to her own ears alone; the man was past all prudence in the +violence of his new absorption. He let others hear them, and no doubt +his hateful egotism was flattered by the thought that the most +fascinating girl in all France would thus<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> become known as his mistress. +The lyrics at once caught the popular fancy; we hear of them as +spreading over the country, sung everywhere by the light-minded. Many +years later, Heloise wrote that if any woman's heart could have resisted +Abelard's other magic, to read his songs and to hear him sing them would +surely have conquered her.</p> + +<p>The neglect of his work, and the notoriety of these love-ditties after a +while made public Abelard's real relation to his pupil. Yet for some +time after the world at large understood it, the devoted uncle and +guardian of the girl heard nothing, and after the rumors did begin to +reach him, he obstinately refused to believe them. Nothing in the whole +history shows the essential goodness of Heloise more significantly than +the canon Fulbert's complete incredulity; for as the event proved, his +nature was not so gentle as to repudiate harsh thoughts without the +strongest prepossessions. When the truth was forced upon him, his +distress was so intense that even the cold-hearted Abelard was compelled +to pity him. But if Abelard pitied the uncle, how much greater his +distress for the niece, and greater still, unfortunately, his +apprehension for himself. Egotist he proved himself, but he proved +himself also Heloise's real lover. "First we lived together in one +house," he says, "but at last in one soul." In the crash of public +disgrace, "neither of us complained of personal suffering, but each for +the suffering that came to the other," and the bodily separation that +ensued, he says with a touch of real feeling, was "the greatest linking +of our souls."</p> + +<p>Soon after the separation, Abelard discovered that Heloise required more +care and comforts than the heart-broken and embittered Fulbert would be +likely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> to provide, and he devised and carried through a plan to take +her back to his own country, to his sister's house. There, amid the +scenes of her lover's boyhood, in that Brittany whose legend and poetry +have blessed us with so many of our loveliest romances, this heroine of +a deeper romance than any of fiction found a home for several months. We +may guess that the home was pleasant to her, for the lady with whom she +lived afterwards entered the abbey of which Heloise was prioress. +Abelard meanwhile was continuing his lectures in Paris, fearing—he +seems to have been at all times a great deal of a coward—the personal +violence from Heloise's family which the fierce habits of the age gave +him reason to anticipate. At last the distress of Fulbert touched his +better feeling into the wish to give him comfort, this long separation +from Heloise he found hard to support, and his fear of revenge +constantly increased. These motives induced a promise to rectify his +offence by marriage. He made only one condition—that the marriage +should be secret.</p> + +<p>On the whole, this is perhaps the most favorable exhibition of himself +that Abelard ever made. With all deductions for selfish considerations, +it is reasonable to allow some weight to moral feeling, and a good deal +more to devotion for the girl. This renders it all the sadder to find +him some sixteen years later referring to this best act of his life with +a feeble apology. "Let no one," he entreats, "wonder at my offer of +marriage, who has felt the power of love, and known how the greatest men +have been overthrown by woman."</p> + +<p>Even here when his feeling for Heloise seems strongest, we see that his +selfish ambition was stronger still. Secular as his tastes were, bound +to the church by his intellectual side only, he still hoped to rise to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +ecclesiastical dignities and power. From very early times the +disposition for a celibate clergy had been strong, and five years before +Abelard's birth Hildebrand had declared that no married priest should +have any part in the celebration of the mass. Quite apart from all +questions of marriage, Abelard seems to have had scarcely any chance of +distinguished clerical dignity; the student crowds might follow him, but +the leaders of the church were dead set against his rationalism; they +feared and hated the arrogant and progressive thinker. If Abelard had +acted like a man, and had openly chosen married love with the girl whose +mind and heart were, either of them, better than the best of life's +other gifts, the misfortunes of his distressed later career might have +been avoided, and Heloise, after a happy and lovely life, would be no +more remembered to-day than the flowers she had gathered, or the birds +she heard sing. But because the man, not quite unprincipled, was yet not +true, he brought death upon his own good name, and upon Heloise a +melancholy life with which she paid too dear for all the remembrance and +love that the ages have given her. To his selfishness we owe the +sweetest and saddest story which the middle ages have bequeathed us; but +we think of the words of Demodocus, as he recites in the Odyssey the +story of heroes dead: "This the gods contrived, and for these they +ordained destruction, so that the people of times to come might have a +song."</p> + +<p>His mind once made up, Abelard started for Brittany, to see the son of +whose birth he had just heard, and to take back the mother as his bride. +But when this resolution was known to Heloise, he met an unexpected +opposition. She said she did not wish him to marry her, and persisted in +her refusal.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span></p> + +<p>Unwomanly does it appear, this unwillingness of Heloise to become her +lover's wife? She knew Abelard's vehement ambition, the impossibility of +its being satisfied if he was known to be a married man, the practical +certainty that her family would prefer the redemption of her reputation +to her husband's success. So she told Abelard that to marry her would be +dangerous to him,—but still more, that it would be disgraceful. She +talked to him in the rôle of a learned and ascetic mediæval preacher; +she seems to draw a monk's rough robe about her girlish figure, to +disguise her tones, and to muffle her bright face in a cowl. We have +long, formally rendered objections, a crowd of citations from the Bible, +Cicero, Theophrastus, Jerome, Josephus, Augustine,—to prove marriage +less honorable than celibacy, devotion to knowledge a duty not to be +interfered with by the responsibilities and annoyances of a family, +conformity to the rules of the church the highest obligation. Her desire +for his own greatness completely overshadows her passion for his love. +He is already the first of philosophers, but if he has outrivalled +others, he must go on to surpass himself. For this, he must have quiet +and solitude, freedom for thought. She quotes a Roman maxim that all +things are to be neglected for philosophy. What monks endure through +love of God, the thinker ought to endure from devotion to truth. If +laymen and gentiles have lived thus continently, bound by no religious +profession, what does it become a clerk and a canon to do? "If you +regard not God, at least care for philosophy."</p> + +<p>"For what harmony is there," she asks, "between a scholar and a nurse, a +writing-desk and a cradle, books and spinning-wheels? Who when absorbed +in religious or philosophic meditation can endure hearing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span> children cry, +or having to listen to the lullabies of the woman who soothes them? Rich +people can get along, for they have abundant room and plenty of +servants; but scholars are not rich." She has difficulty in keeping +herself disguised: in the excess of her feeling she throws out her arms, +and discloses the gracious outline of the unselfish woman. Then, after +reasoning, come personal pleadings. Is he sacrificing himself for her? +She is content as she is. Now she holds him by the free gift of that +love and favor to which he would have a claim in marriage. Does he +believe she feels herself disgraced by this relation? To be called his +mistress is dear and ennobling to her. Years later when she was past her +middle life, she wrote to Abelard that "the name of mistress, or even of +harlot, was sweeter to me then the holier name of wife, so that by my +greater humiliation I might gain greater favor and less injure thy fame. +I call God to witness that if Augustus would have set me by himself at +the head of the whole world, it would have seemed to me more dear and +noble to be called thy mistress than his empress."</p> + +<p>Thus by argument, authority, protestation that her sacrifice is choice, +she tries to conquer his decision. Nay, she throws aside the cowl +entirely, and by her natural bright humor tries to banter him into +acquiescence. "And then think," she says in substance, "what a plague a +wife is to a man. Only imagine" (and she laughs, and Abelard laughs too, +at the inconceivable grotesqueness of the idea), "imagine what a shrew I +might turn out! I might treat you as Xanthippe treated <i>her</i> +philosopher." She reminds him of the passage where Jerome tells the +story about Socrates' wife having fretted and scolded and raged one day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +through the house with desperate temper, until she wound up by throwing +a basin of dirty water over him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He took it patiently, and wiped his head:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Rain follows thunder,'—that was all he said."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To Abelard's credit, this impassioned unselfishness strengthened, +instead of weakening, his resolution. Heloise was forced to yield, but +her instincts saw the dark shadows gathering about them: with sobs and +tears she exclaimed, "In the ruin of both of us not less pain is to +follow than was the love that came before."</p> + +<p>Leaving the child with his aunt the lovers returned to Paris; there they +were married in great secrecy, and at once separated. After this they +met but seldom, and then with careful precautions against their +interviews becoming known. Heloise's family, however, as she had feared, +determined to redeem her good name by announcing that Abelard had made +her honorable reparation. When people came to her and asked if it was +really true that she was the canon's wife, she denied the story angrily. +When her uncle and other relatives contradicted her contradiction, the +girl took religion's holiest name in vain, in her asseverations that +Abelard was not her husband. Fulbert lost all patience, and attempted by +cruelty and indignity to drive her to confess the truth. She told +Abelard of what she suffered, and one night he contrived to steal her +away from her uncle and to carry her back to her old nunnery at +Argenteuil, where she assumed most of the dress of the order, and +received only occasional visits from him.</p> + +<p>The conjecture that Abelard designed to keep her there, and as soon as +his attachment could be weaned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> to make her take the vows and thus save +himself from all further trouble, suggests itself to us to-day: with +greater force, it occurred to the people immediately concerned. The rage +of the uncle and his friends at Abelard's treachery, first and last, to +themselves, and at his heartlessness toward the girl whose worth they +understood so well, grew uncontrollable; they bribed a servant to admit +them to his house by night, and avenged themselves.</p> + +<p>Abelard's spirit was broken, as he saw all hopes of ecclesiastical +promotion at an end, and his fame turned to notoriety. Heretofore his +public appearances had made the sensation of a king's: "What region did +not burn to see you!" asked Heloise. "Who, when you walked abroad, did +not hurry to look at you, rising on tiptoe and with straining eyes?" But +now every look he fancied scornful.</p> + +<p>In this wild age there was always one refuge for the victims of the +world or of themselves. To the monasteries flocked all classes, from +fashionable knights broken down or unsuccessful or weary of conflict, to +the half-witted clowns sheltered and utilized as lay-brethren. Husbands +forsook their wives, and wives fled from their husbands, to take shelter +in the religious life. In this early part of the twelfth century, +monastic houses were multiplying like hives of bees, constantly sending +out from themselves colonies that quickly became parents of others. For +some time the tendency had been to an easier discipline than the +traditional, but at last asceticism had blazed out anew, and the rich +and luxurious Cluny paled in popularity before Clairveaux or the Grande +Chartreuse. In this single century the Cistercians expanded from one +abbey to eight hundred, a single one of which is said to have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> +controlled seven hundred benefices. The one meal a day, the hard manual +labor, the restricted sleep, the wearisome routine of prayer, reading, +and penance, won by their very severity and by the mystical impression +of sanctity and immortal safety which brooded about these retired +prisons of self-condemned sin.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Oh, hide me in your gloom profound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye solemn seats of holy pain,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>was the cry with which multitudes approached the gates that should +emancipate them from a freedom which did not satisfy. Ben Jonson's fear +lest his inclination to God might be</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Through weariness of life, not love of thee,"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>was realized in the case of numbers of convertites quite equalling and +probably far exceeding those who entered the ascetic orders from the +enthusiasm of visionaries. To this retirement, as a screen from the +world's curiosity and fancied mocks, Abelard now resolved to withdraw, +as his father and mother in their later lives had done before him. His +jealousy could not leave Heloise behind, so he told her of his purpose, +and hoped that she would volunteer to imitate him. But Heloise made no +such offer. In every way hers was a mind beyond her age, and the +unnatural harshness of cloistral discipline, its artificial dreariness, +its "hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell," seemed to her fine +insight untrue. Though she had suffered, she was yet in tune with life; +her heart assured her that innocent pleasure is the soul's hymn of +praise to God; bitterly as she shared her husband's misery, she saw no +reason for separating her life and his; most of all, she revolted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> from +the notion of professing religion with lip-service only. But Abelard +urged, insisted, even commanded, and, seeing it to be his wish, the +girl-wife yielded. She told herself that only she was responsible for +her husband's afflictions; except for her, his prosperity would have +continued undimmed; so the day was fixed on which, in her old nunnery, +she should take the vows of perpetual seclusion.</p> + +<p>It must have been a strange scene in that chapel at Argenteuil. Abelard +was there, still in his habit of a mere secular priest, there to make +sure that Heloise's impulses should not burst out again, and cast her +back into the world's sunshine. The bishop, attended by his priests, +stands at the altar: upon it lies a newly consecrated veil. The nuns, +kneeling in their accustomed places, are praying. All wait for the +votaress, but she is detained by a crowd of friends. There were many of +them there, as Abelard has told us, and they could not endure that this +girl, personally so charming, perhaps the most accomplished +intellectually of all the women of France, should consummate the +sacrifice that she had already in such large measure made. They knew her +love for the bright things of life, her beautiful zest for the joyous +and sympathetic, her eagerness in study, the grace of her strong, sweet +seriousness. Such a nature might be for a time bewildered at the loss of +the love of one of the most famous men living, yet if for a little while +they could keep her face unhidden by the veil, she might forget. So they +delay her outside the chapel, pleading with a heart that has made the +same pleas for itself before. Presently the door is pushed open and she +enters the oratory, her friends still about her. Even in the sacred +place they continue their entreaties, and Abelard's glance is anxiously +upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> her; but her eyes are downcast. "How they pitied her!" he has told +us; "they kept trying to hold back her youth from the yoke of monastic +rule, as from punishment intolerable." The bishop seems half pitiful, +half impatient; the nuns look up from their praying. Has the world +renewed its hold upon her? Will she snatch herself from God? Does he no +longer attract her? At this last moment is she hesitating?</p> + +<p>She was hesitating; the world did have a hold upon her. God? God had +never attracted her.</p> + +<p>In all the ceremonials of the Catholic Church, there can have been none +which has so combined sacrilege with loftiness of feeling as did the +scene which followed. From the silent, even wistful hearing that she has +been giving to her friends, Heloise suddenly starts away, and, as if +waking from a reverie, she moves with dreamy gesture toward her husband. +Her lips part, and what will be her last words as a lady of the world? +Some scriptural exhortation to her friends to follow her as she follows +Christ? A cry of exultant renunciation of the wilds of life's ocean, and +of contentment at the holy calm in the bosom of the church?</p> + +<p>The girl is weeping, and as she tries to control herself to speak, her +misery overcomes her, and she bursts into loud sobs. But it must have +been surprising to the listening ecclesiastics to hear the words which +at last got expression. It is probably the only time in the church's +history that a novice has taken her last vows with the prelude of a +quotation from a love speech in a pagan poem, directing it not to the +bleeding effigy of her present and eternal Master hanging above the +altar, but to a human lover at her side. Heloise "broke out as she could +between her tears and sobs," in a passage from one of the later books of +Lucan's <i>Pharsalia</i>:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span> surely as she spoke the lines, her voice grew +steady, and her eyes looked bravely through the tears:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Husband and lord, too worthy for my bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can Fortune thus cast down so dear a head?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fated to make thee wretched, why did I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Become thy wife? Accept the penalty;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I will endure it gladly."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I fancy that Abelard was quite as much impressed by the brilliant young +mind that could make so apt and scholarly a quotation from the Roman +classics, as by the heart which dared on the very margin of the altar to +fling back to the world and up to God this protestation of its +unfaltering human love, which took the vows of religion from no other +motive than to impose torture upon itself—an offering not to God, but +to Abelard.</p> + +<p>As she spoke the verses, she hurried to the altar. <i>Accipe pœnas, quas +sponte luam</i>,—her voice died away, the bishop received her, and covered +her forever with the veil.</p> + +<p>Heloise was only eighteen.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>The convent gates shut in all sight of her for the next ten or eleven +years. But in 1130, the nunnery over which she had become prioress was +broken up by the unfavorable decision of a suit for the land and +buildings which it occupied. This decade had brought abundant misery to +Abelard. His heresies in theology had been exposed, and he had been +compelled to burn a treasured book in which they were expounded, a +council had imprisoned him in an abbey where it was boasted that his +haughtiness was tamed by a course of vigorous whipping administered +under the abbot's supervision.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> There is something pitiful in the +thought of such physical and mental pride being under the control of +fanatical monks, ignorant and coarse, from whom he was glad to escape to +a desert east of Troyes, as a hermit. He had taught at intervals during +these years, and once for a season with a notable renewal of his early +success. Near Troyes, where he had built his hermit-shelter out of reeds +and stubble, in a desolate region infested by wild animals and a covert +for robbers, some vagrant student found the intellectual champion, and +reported at Paris his discovery. The news spread, and soon the desert +was populous. The students built a house for the master, apparently a +commodious one, and about it they made more temporary structures for +their own shelter. Not only the younger class of scholars besieged him +for instruction; older men, ecclesiastics who, as we are told, were wont +to grasp instead of giving, paid generously toward constructing a home +for the great philosopher. But he was world-weary, and soon retired +again to a bleak monastery on the Atlantic, in the lower part of +Brittany, where he became abbot of a set of half-barbarous monks, who +resented his austere rule and, so he tells us, tried repeatedly to +poison him because he interfered with their profligacy. While there he +had learned of Heloise's loss of her nunnery, and had established her +and her religious sisters in the buildings in Champagne that had been +standing unoccupied since he broke up that last school. "The Paraclete," +he had called the home, as a special invocation to the Holy Spirit and +as a tribute for the temporary comfort that he received there. Possibly +he himself conducted his wife thither, but it is equally likely that he +did not see her after he forced her into the church.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p> + +<p>For ten years he appears to have struggled on in Brittany, with no +intellectual associations, none of the notoriety with which he had been +so long pampered, in terror for his life, yet still working at his +philosophy of religion. At last he was impelled to talk of what he had +endured and was still enduring; to speak in the bitterness of his soul, +and get, perhaps, the consolation of pity. He composed a long and +immensely interesting autobiography, telling the whole story of his +youth, his later triumphs, his logical acumen, his love, his disgrace, +the injustice of his condemnation by the conservative church, the tumult +of his experiences in the lonely monastery of St. Gildas. The creditable +pages are calmly written, the shameful unflinchingly. He tells how +tremendous had been his love for Heloise, but he says nothing of loving +her still. The narrative reveals an egotist, but it reveals as certainly +one of the most striking characters of the Middle Ages.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>We find ourselves inevitably speculating upon the life of Heloise during +the sixteen or more years whose only recorded event is her removal from +Argenteuil to the Paraclete. It might be that a reaction in her love +would follow, when the grim captivity that she had dreaded so became yet +more hateful in its realization; she might lose her old gentleness; it +might become hopeless for her to try to adjust her spirit to its new +conditions and to devote herself to even a submissive piety. From +contemporary testimony we are sure that some of these possibilities did +not come true. She won respect and even devotion as an abbess, her house +prospered financially to her husband's undisguised surprise and +admiration, her life was pure from the least<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> fleck of reproach, or +criticism in any quarter. May we go farther, and say that her spirit did +adjust itself to its new conditions, and lose its pain in a submissive +piety? For such a result we should find many parallels in mediæval +religion; numerous accounts not to be cavilled at as legendary prove +that in these monasteries souls which had suffered found peace. Nay, +many a nun among these most refined groups of mediæval women, driven in +one way or another to forsake the hope of love and earthly happiness, +secured delight of heart in a sort of spiritual romance. As their +emotion grew more subtilized, as asceticism burned away material +impulse, some of the gentlest and most poetically endowed of these +religious recluses acquired a mystical compensation for their loneliest +sacrifice of life,—a divinely idealized personal love, too magical for +friendship, too impassioned and mutual for worship, where, the sexes +mysteriously spiritualized, translated womanhood should rest at last on +the breast of Christ. The final vow of religious consecration was the +nun's betrothal to the divine man; to make herself beautiful for his +bride she wasted her body by fasting and scarred it with the scourge; +the rough lath cross on the wall of her cell was his love token; love +messages came from him in her dreams; prostrated on the chapel flagging +she indited to him prayers that scarcely needed verse to become lyrics. +And when to such a mystic's contemplation the cloister sanctity seemed +too worldly, when her exhausted body found the walk from cell to chapel +too long a journey and she was compelled to stay in the coffin that for +years of nights had sweetly reminded her of the sure untwining of soul +and sense, when she could hear only faintly her sisters' thin chanting +of the hours, and felt her spirit quivering with new<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> sensations, vague, +awed, and eager, she understood that the waiting time was over, and her +espousal at hand. Her failing eyes see white processionals that come to +lead her to the banqueting house where the banner of His love shall be +over her; the music, which the dying so often hear, for her is a +marriage melody ringing from angelic harps and dulcimers; with new-born +strength and grace, mantled in new raiment, she floats upward to her +desire. And when space has been traversed the immortal vision bursts +upon her, a great poet has put in words her last thought this side +heaven:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"He lifts me to the golden doors,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The flashes come and go;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All heaven bursts her starry floors,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And strows her light below,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And deepens on and up! the gates<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Roll back, and far within<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To make me pure of sin.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sabbaths of Eternity,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">One sabbath deep and wide,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A light upon the shining sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Bridegroom with his bride."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But for Heloise there was no such resource. It is to natures more +ethereal and constitutionally religious that such fancies and dreams +appeal. The main feature of the matured Heloise is sanity and balanced +womanhood; she was too strong and intense to be a sentimentalist. Could +the nature which had once been caught into the clouds by the whirlwind +of love, beguile itself from the memory of that storm of rapture by a +visionary tempest raised with a fan? And yet there would be some +satisfaction if we could conceive her adjusting herself to the spiritual +life with closer accord,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> and passing even through the gates of +superstitious hallucination from the harsh religion of her day into the +inner sanctuary whose "solemn shadow is better than the sun," finding an +outlet for her quick emotions in this personal love for her new Master.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Heloise had been a nun some sixteen years when some one showed her +Abelard's so-called <i>Historia Calamitatum</i>. Apparently her husband had +forbidden her to write to him; but though she had kept a long silence, +she was a lover until death. This account of Abelard's sufferings and +perils broke her constraint; she could not help writing to comfort him +and to beg for news of his safety. What other love-letters equal the +intensity, the tenderness, the womanliness of these final appeals for +the broken love? Through their nervous pliancy one may learn as nowhere +else the reality of Browning's</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Infinite passion, and the pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of finite hearts that yearn."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In them appears also her strength of nature; they are the love-calls of +a woman who knows that the man she continues to set far above all the +rest of humanity is wronging her. She chides him for this long and +complete neglect, but there is a marvellous sweetness in her caressing +reproaches. She tells him to remember under what peculiar bonds she +holds him,—what sacred obligation of marriage, of love, and of devotion +he owes to her; she gave her honor to please him, not herself; she +sacrificed her tender age to the harshness of a monastic life not from +piety, but only in submission to his desire. "There was a time," she +writes, "when people doubted whether in our amour I yielded<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> to love or +to passion. But the end shows how I began; to please you, I have denied +myself all pleasures." She points out to him how differently the end +interprets his feeling for her. "It is common talk," she says, "that you +felt only gross emotions toward me, and when there was a stop to their +indulgence, your so-called love vanished. My dearest one, would that +this appeared to me only, and not to every one; would that I might be +soothed by hearing others excuse you, or that I could myself devise +excuses."</p> + +<p>She appears to entertain no hope that he will visit her, though she +hints longingly at the possibility; but he can at least do as much for +her as he does for others under obligations so far slighter, as much as +the example of the church fathers regarding the women of their flocks +teaches him to do,—he can write and tell her how he is, he can comfort +her love: or (and she appeals to the monk who may listen, even if the +old-time lover will not) he can send spiritual admonition to uphold her +slipping soul. Her heart put at rest, she can be so much freer for the +divine service. "When you wooed me for the pleasures of earth," she +reminds him, "you sent me letter after letter; with many songs you put +your Heloise in the speech of all, so that every street and house echoed +with me. How much more ought you now to excite toward God the one whom +then you aroused to sin."</p> + +<p>She tells him again of her complete absorption in him: "You are the only +one who can make me either sad or happy; you only can be my comforter. +The whole world knows how much I loved you," and she turns with a +half-shuddering reminiscence to the day she became a nun. "It was for +you, not for God—that sacrifice. From God I can look for no reward;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> +consider, then, how vain my trial, if by it I win nothing from you"; and +the woman for sixteen years a nun calls God—and remember that hers was +the God of mediæval superstition—to witness that she would have +followed Abelard, or gone before him, if she had seen him hastening to +hell.</p> + +<p>Her letters evidently moved the monk, for his replies were full of good +advice, and under the surface gave some indications of tender regard. +But the affection that we find is colorless and formal. No word of a +husband's gentleness, nor warmth of phrase, not a hint that he cherishes +happy memories of the old days of their union. They are the letters of +an old man, absorbed in himself, worn by the world, who has no capacity +for anything deeper than kind feeling. He calls her his sister, once +dear in the world, now dearer in Christ, begs her prayers for him living +and dead, and entreats that whenever he may die she will have his body +carried to her abbey, that the constant sight of his grave may move her +and her spiritual daughters to pray for his salvation. He gulps down the +<i>Lachrima Christi</i> of her exquisite love as if it were the small beer of +pietistic commonplace, and then looks disappointed to find that it was +not. For he ignores the soul of her letters, and composes complacent +treatises of twelfth-century ecclesiastical discipline designed to +subject her to a mechanical and lifeless asceticism.</p> + +<p>Heloise in answer reproaches him for his talk of death, like a brave +heart bidding him not by anticipation suffer before his time. The +knowledge of her husband's unhappiness is a renewed affliction, and she +owns that there is nothing but sorrow in her life. Like a daring +Titaness, she exclaims against God's administration of his world:</p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span></p> +<blockquote><p>"While we lived in sin, he indulged us; when we married, +he forced us to separate. Let his other creatures rejoice and +count themselves safe from the inclement clemency of the God +whom I almost dare to call cruel to me in every way. They +are safe, for upon me he has used up all the weapons of his +wrath, so that he has none with which to rage at others; nor, +if any remained, could he find a place in me wherein to strike +them."</p></blockquote> + +<p>After sixteen years' silence, this woman has broken into speech, and +unmasked confessions of her inner spirit will no longer be restrained. +She goes on as if carried by cyclone winds; she tells her far-off lover +what few nuns under terror of eternal death can ever have brought +themselves to confide to their confessors in scarcely audible whisper. +She calls up the scenes of their union; she confesses that visions of +that life are with her constantly: she bemoans the thoughts which "haunt +me sometimes, even at the holy mass." She was no calm northern woman; +she had nothing of the temperament that Shakespeare compared to an +icicle</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"That's curdied by the frost from purest snow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hangs on Dian's temple";<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>she was made to walk with love, under summer moonlight,—no sister of +Percivale, to forget thwarted desire in prayer beneath the frosty stars +of winter.</p> + +<p>"Help me," cries this victim of a gloomy religion, "for I do not find +how by penance to appease God, whom I still accuse of the greatest +cruelty. It is easy to confess and to torture the body; it is hard to +tear the soul from its desires. My mind keeps the same wish for sin; so +sweet was our happiness that I cannot be sorry for it. Most wretched +life, if I have endured so much in vain, destined to have no recompense +hereafter."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span></p> + +<p>Thus Heloise the woman and Heloise the abbess fight out the old problem +whether the training of life is by the use of its gifts, or by the +rejection of them; shall we play the full organ, or only the harsh reed +stops? The church taught her to condemn what nature taught her to +justify. The religious authority of all the dark ages confronted this +woman's instincts of life, and—to her honor—it could not quell them. +Yet conceive her wretchedness and the anguish of her mental struggle, +living as she did in the middle of Catholic mediævalism. When, after a +scanty rest, she left her cell at midnight, this artificial conscience +attended her to the long chapel service that followed, pointed at the +austere pages over which she bent in the study when the service was +over, kept calling her hypocrite as she chided and instructed the nuns +whom she is said to have ruled so wisely, snatched food and wine from +her hungry lips, with fast, pitiless lashing wielded the whip of +penance, haunted her sleep with its stern face. Yet the pleasures of +time were still honorable to her; the world <i>was</i> good; her love <i>had</i> +been beautiful; if her conscience prayed forgiveness for it, her heart +sang, because she had known it.</p> + +<p>To hear this bewildered voice crying to Abelard for his prayers because +in spite of the world's praise of her virtue she thinks herself a +hypocrite,—Oh, my only one, pray for me, for I cannot be sorry that we +loved—to hear this makes one glad that the time has passed for +identifying the devil with the world's laughter, and God with its +sobbing.</p> + +<p>She lived on as abbess of the Paraclete for twenty-one years after she +buried her husband. We cannot believe that as one set of feelings cooled +with age, her spiritual emotions grew more impulsive. In the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> +twenty-eight years which followed her last letter to Abelard, she no +doubt more and more mechanically went through the life of monastic duty, +her intellectual accord with the church leading her to an increasingly +calm performance of routine piety, her heart more and more silent—but +never dead. We fancy its main utterance an anticipation of that cry of +Clough's—"Submit, submit." Thus kindling with no spiritual ardor—(she +once confessed that her religious ambition did not rise so high as to +wish a crown of victory, or to have God's strength made perfect in her +weakness), she lived out her faithful and successful life as abbess of +the Paraclete, comforted—we may hope—by a continuance of the +intellectual consolations of her youth, and honored, as we know, by +church and world. If imaginary biography is ever safe we may employ it +here, and fancy that when she came to die she repeated what she had said +years before, that she should be quite content to be given just a corner +in heaven. I think as she lay waiting to be received there, she dreamed +of looking up from it, not at the ineffable glory, but at one human face +stationed highest among the masters in divine philosophy. Highest among +the masters! Less than a hundred and fifty years later, the great poem +of mediævalism forgot to give Abelard a place even among the penitents +of purgatory, and to-day except by special students he is remembered +only as Heloise's unworthy lover.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/brdstow.png" width="200" height="67" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span></p> +<p><a name="appendix" id="appendix"></a></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/183t.png" width="500" height="125" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + +<h2>APPENDIX.</h2> + + +<p>At the suggestion of the publishers the following brief notices of some +of the works and authors mentioned in these essays are added for +convenience of reference.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Æthiopica</span>, the oldest and most famous of the Greek romances. It narrates +the loves of Theagenes and Charicleia, and was written in his youth by +Heliodorus of Emesa, who flourished about the end of the fourth century, +and died as Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Alexander</span>, or as he is termed in some MSS. the Wild Alexander. A +South-German poet of the thirteenth century. Of his life scarcely +anything is known.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Chrestien de Troyes</span>, a French trouvère, who flourished in the second +half of the twelfth century. He may be regarded as the popularizer in +the French form of the cycle of tales that centre about the Round Table. +The most important of his poems is the one bearing the title, <i>Perceval +le Gallois</i> or <i>Li Contes del Graal</i>.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Comte de Champagne.</span>—See Thibaut.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Arnaud Daniel</span>, a Provençal poet, who died about 1189. He was +distinguished for the complicated character of his versification, and in +particular was the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> inventor of the verse called the <i>sestine</i>. He lived +for some time at the court of Richard I. of England. Dante in the +twenty-sixth canto of the <i>Purgatory</i> puts him at the head of all the +Provençal poets. He was also highly praised by Petrarch.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Daphnis and Chloe</span>, a Greek pastoral romance, the prototype of all the +pastoral romances which have been written in various languages. Its +composition is usually ascribed to a certain Longus, a Greek sophist, +who flourished about the beginning of the fifth century.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Freidank</span>, the composer of a Middle High German didactic poem, which +belongs to the first half of the thirteenth century. The name has been +considered by some to be merely allegorical. His work, which was +entitled <i>Bescheidenheit</i>, consists of over four thousand verses and +discusses religious, political and social questions. It was an +exceedingly popular work during the Middle Ages.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Gaces Brulles</span>, a French trouvère of the early part of the thirteenth +century. He was born in Champagne, but spent a portion of his life in +Brittany. About seventy of his <i>chansons</i> are extant.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Gottfried von Strassburg</span>, a German poet who flourished at the end of the +twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. His great work was +the epic entitled <i><ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'Tristran'">Tristan</ins> und Isolde</i>, continued by others after his +death. This took place somewhere between 1210 and 1220. Gottfried wrote +also many lyric poems.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Guillaume de Balaun</span> (or <span class="smcap">Balazun</span>), a Provençal poet of the twelfth +century. He was the lover of the lady of Joviac, in the Gévaudan. +Alienation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> having sprung up between them upon account of his assumed or +real indifference, his mistress would not restore him to favor unless he +should agree to extract the nail of the longest finger of his right +hand, and should come and present it to her with a poem composed +expressly for the occasion. The condition was fulfilled.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Johann Hadlaub</span>, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. His life was +spent mainly in Zurich. His compositions were principally love-songs and +popular songs dealing with the pleasures of autumn and harvest. A statue +was erected to him in Zurich in 1885.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Hartmann von Aue</span>, a Middle High German, belonging by birth to a noble +Swabian family, was born about 1170, and died between 1210 and 1220. He +wrote <i>Erec and Enide</i>, basing it upon the French poem with the same +title of Chrestien de Troyes. Another poem of his belonging also to the +Arthurian cycle is <i>Iwein</i>. The most popular of his works with modern +students is <i>Der arme Heinrich</i>. The details of its story have been made +known to English readers by Longfellow's <i>Golden Legend</i>, which is +founded upon it. Another work of his is entitled <i>Gregorius vom Stein</i>.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Heinrich von Morungen</span>, a German minnesinger, a knight of Thuringia, who +flourished at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth +century. His last years were spent at the court of Meissen. He wrote +many love-songs, many of which owe their existence to those of the +troubadours.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Heinrich von Veldeke</span>, a German poet of the twelfth century, who was of a +noble family settled near<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> Maastricht, on the lower Rhine. Besides the +love-songs and other pieces he wrote, he was the composer of the epic of +the <i>Eneide</i>, the first poem of the Middle High German epic poetry, +which reached its highest development in the writings of Hartmann von +Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Hugo von Trimberg</span>, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. From 1260 to +1309 he was rector of the collegiate school in the Theuerstadt, a suburb +of Bamberg. He is known as the composer of the <i>Renner</i>, a didactic +poem, in which the manners and customs of the time are largely depicted, +and the prevailing vices severely censured.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Jacopo da Todi</span>, or <span class="smcap">Jacopone</span>, an Italian poet, born about the middle of +the thirteenth century at Todi, in the duchy of Spoleto. He belonged to +the noble family of the Benedetti, began life as an advocate, but, on +account of the sudden accidental death of his wife, devoted himself to a +religious life and entered the order of Franciscans. He wrote many +religious poems in Italian, and also in Latin. To him in particular is +ascribed the composition of the famous <i>Stabat Mater Dolorosa</i>.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Neidhart von Reuenthal</span>, a German lyric poet of the thirteenth century. +He was of a noble Bavarian family, but spent part of his life in +Austria. His poems were written between 1210 and 1240, and are of +special interest for the descriptions they give of the customs of the +times.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span></p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Thibaut, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre.</span> He was born at Troyes +in 1201, and died in 1253. He is one of the most noted of the early +French poets.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Ulrich <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'von Lichtenstein'">von Liechtenstein</ins></span>, a +Middle High German poet, born about 1200, +and died in 1276. He was the author of the poem entitled <i>Frauendienst</i>, +described in this volume, and also of a didactic poem called +<i>Frauenbuch</i>.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Waltharius et Hiltgunde</span>, or simply Waltharius, a Latin poem of the tenth +century in hexameter verse, and consisting of between fourteen hundred +and fifteen hundred lines. Its authorship is unknown.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Walther von der Vogelweide</span>, the greatest German poet of the Middle Ages. +He was born about 1160, and died about 1230. He was of a knightly +family, though poor, and much of his life was spent at the courts of +several German princes and emperors. He wrote not only love-poems, but +in the contest that went on between the imperialists and the papacy, he +supported the side of the former in patriotic verses which had no slight +influence upon contemporary opinion. Both for matter and manner he stood +at the head of the poets called minnesingers.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Wernher the Gardener</span>, a German poet of the thirteenth century, who +composed, between 1234 and 1250, the story of <i>Meier Helmbrecht</i>. +Nothing is known with certainty of his life.</p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">Wolfram von Eschenbach</span>, a German poet, of noble birth, of the latter +half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. He died +about 1220.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span> His greatest work is the <i>Parzival</i>, which was completed +about 1210. It was founded, according to his own statement, partly upon +the <i>Conte del Graal</i> of Chrestien de Troyes, but more particularly upon +the work of a poet whom he calls Kyot, who is supposed by some to be +Guyot de Provins, whose romance of <i>Perceval</i>, not extant, is assumed to +be the original of Wolfram's poem. Another of his poems was the +unfinished <i>Titurel</i>, which contains the tale of the love of +Schionatulander and Sigune.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 200px;"> +<img src="images/angelshld.png" width="200" height="117" alt="Decoration" title="" /> +</div> + + +<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> <i>Lit. Fam.</i>, iv., 1.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Since this passage was written, I have met with the following +extract from a letter of Tennyson's, dated in 1874, though +with no direct reference to the experience being associated with +nature: "All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the +consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself has seemed to dissolve and to fade away into boundless being; and +this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the +surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an +almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it +were), seeming no extinction, but the only true life."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> Any student of Dante, who recalls his lovely early sonnet, +<i>Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io</i>, and compares it with +Shelley's almost parallel conception of lovers sailing away in +indivisible companionship, in the latter part of <i>Epipsychidion</i>, +will obtain an excellent illustration of this same difference of +feeling about the natural setting for a happy love. In Dante +the sentiment is vague, and only what is peaceful, while Shelley's +ideal haunt of lovers admits owls and bats with the ring-dove, +an "old cavern hoar" left unadorned, mossy mountains, +and quivering waves.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> We recall his great countryman's modern cry: "Wohin +es geht, wer weiss es? Erinnert er sich doch kaum, woher er +kam."</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A woman is never won by what is in one's thoughts:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . +<span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . +<span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . +<span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . +<span class="gap"> </span> . <span class="gap"> </span> . <br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of that she can know nothing."<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> With this extravagant but probably veracious incident, one +naturally compares the sacrifice of Guillem de Balaun's finger +nail.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> These poet lovers seem to have been frequently laughed at. +For instance, Pierre Vidal was promised in their amusement +anything by the ladies whom he loved. Na Alazais was so indignant +when he took encouragement to steal his one kiss, that +he was compelled to flee, and go with Richard to the East.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> We must remember that the unwillingness of the upper +grade of society to have peasants assume its styles of dress, +went so far that ducal edicts were issued forbidding them to +use coats of mail and helmets, or to carry any weapons. Bitter +complaints were made of their wearing any stuffs so fine as +silk, and clothes stylishly cut.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"La pluye nous a debuez et lavez,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz."<br /></span> +</div></div> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> I will not quote Goethe's famous disparagement of the +<i>Divina Commedia</i>, for the context indicates that it was uttered +petulantly. Still, he certainly did not care for Dante, or appreciate +him, though he recognized his eminence.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> It may be worth noting that Wolfram substitutes for the +French original's usual conventionality of a pretty watered +meadow, this harder and more appropriate setting.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> Tennyson might suitably enough have had the marriage of +Parzival and Condiuiramur in mind when writing the +Prince's aspiration. "Then reign the world's great bridals +chaste and calm." Such passages in Wolfram's poem as Book +iv. from line 666 and Book v. 676-682 may be commended to +the critics who see nothing in mediæval love that is pure or +faithful in the modern sense of marriage.</p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Petri Abælardi Historia Calamitatum. Petri Abælardi +et Heloissæ Epistolæ.</i></p></div> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <i>Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit</i>, iii., 14-34.</p></div> +</div> + + +<h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3> + +<p>Spelling and punctuation errors have been repaired.</p> + +<p>Ellipses in poetry have been spaced to preserve appearance of the +original; all other ellipses are standardized.</p> + +<p>Colons after "Liechtenstein" and "Helmbrecht" on Contents page, and variant +punctuation after the same terms in Chapter headings, were retained. +</p> + +<p>P. 21, (cp. Inf., 14, 30; 24, 5) in original "24" was at the end of a +line, and "5" at the beginning of the next, with no punctuation between.</p> + +<p>P. 47 original "midst of his prostestations" changed to "midst of his protestations."</p> + +<p>P. 76 original "reficient" changed to "reficiant."</p> + +<p>P. 92 original "merry-makings" changed to more frequent +"merrymakings."</p> + +<p>P. 93 original "Wezerant. He" changed to "Wezerant.' He" (single quote +added).</p> + +<p>P. 116 Hey[=a], [=a] indicates lower case "a" with macron. (Text version +only).</p> + +<p>P. 132 The change in indentation in the poetry, beginning at "Thou +lookest down," is faithful to the original.</p> + +<p>P. 174 "sister's thin chanting" changed to "sisters' thin chanting."</p> +<p>P. 184 original "Tristran und Isolde" changed to "Tristan und Isolde."</p> + +<p>P. 187 original "von Lichtenstein" changed to more frequent "von +Liechtenstein."</p> + +<p>The following variant spellings were used in the original equally, +and were retained: god-father and godfather, riband and ribband, +rose-bushes (second use is quoting the first=1 use) and rosebush, +Wendel and Wentel, "Arnaud Daniel" and "Arnaut Daniel," Aethiopica +and Æthiopica, Jacapone and Jacopone, sestine and sestina.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Mediæval Life and Literature, by +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIÆVAL LIFE AND *** + +***** This file should be named 37865-h.htm or 37865-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/6/37865/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature + +Author: Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37865] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LIFE AND *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LIFE + AND LITERATURE + + BY + + EDWARD TOMPKINS MCLAUGHLIN + + PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES + IN YALE UNIVERSITY + + + [Decoration] + + + G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + NEW YORK LONDON + 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND + + The Knickerbocker Press + + 1894 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1894 + BY + SARAH B. MCLAUGHLIN + + _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_ + BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + + Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by + The Knickerbocker Press, New York + G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS + + + + +[Decoration] + + CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + + INTRODUCTION v + + THE MEDIAEVAL FEELING FOR NATURE 1 + + ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN: THE MEMOIRS OF AN + OLD GERMAN GALLANT 34 + + NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL AND HIS BAVARIAN + PEASANTS 71 + + MEIER HELMBRECHT: A GERMAN FARMER OF THE + THIRTEENTH CENTURY 100 + + CHILDHOOD IN MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE 123 + + A MEDIAEVAL WOMAN 152 + + APPENDIX 183 + +[Decoration] + + + + +[Decoration] + +INTRODUCTION. + + +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin, the writer of the essays contained in this +volume, was born at Sharon, Connecticut, on May 28, 1860. He was the son +of the Reverend D. D. T. McLaughlin, a graduate of Yale College of the +class of 1834. His mother's maiden name was Mary Whittlesey Brownell. +She was the daughter of the Reverend Grove L. Brownell, who was settled +for many years over the Congregational church of Cromwell, Connecticut. +Thus it will be seen that the author of this work belonged on both sides +to what Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly called the Brahman caste of New +England. + +At the time of his birth his father was pastor of the Congregational +church of Sharon, Connecticut, but in 1866 left that place for Morris in +the same county. There he remained until 1872 when he gave up parish +duties entirely, and retired to Litchfield, which he thenceforward made +his permanent home. + +With the exception of a short time spent in the Litchfield Academy, the +son was fitted for college almost wholly by his father, who was himself +a finished scholar in Latin and Greek. He entered Yale in the autumn of +1879, and received the degree of A.B. in 1883. From the very beginning +of his university life he was distinguished for his interest in English +literature, and during the entire course of it displayed remarkable +proficiency in the pursuit of that study. To him, before his graduation, +fell the highest honors which the college has to bestow in that +department. + +After receiving his bachelor's degree he remained another year in New +Haven as a graduate student. During that time he devoted himself with +increased ardor to the special branches of study in which from the +outset he had been interested. In the following year he was made tutor +in English. This position he held until 1890, when he was appointed +assistant professor of the same subject. At the meeting of the +Corporation of the University in May, 1893, he was elected by it to the +chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. Happily married to a wife of +congenial tastes, who speedily learned to sympathize with him in the +studies which he had made peculiarly his own, he had every reason to +expect a long career of usefulness, which would be attended with +distinction to himself and would confer distinction upon the institution +with which he was connected. But his health had never been vigorous, and +in the very summer vacation following his appointment a fever, which +came upon him almost without warning, and which seemed at first of +slight importance, carried him off after an illness that lasted little +more than a week. He died on the 25th of July, 1893, at the age of +thirty-three. He lies buried at Litchfield. + +Such is a brief sketch of the life of the author of this volume. He had +at the time of his death many projects on hand, some partly carried out, +some only in contemplation. In 1893 he had edited a volume of +selections from English writers under the title of _Literary Criticism +for Students_; and since his death a school-edition of Marlowe's _Edward +II._, prepared by him, but left mainly in manuscript, has come from the +press. But these were in a measure tasks imposed upon him by the needs +of students, and not those undertaken in consequence of his own +inclinations. During the last year of his life, however, he had been +devoting himself to the preparation for publication of the following +essays. He had long been a student of mediaeval literature, not merely of +that found in the English tongue, but of the much fuller and more varied +work that had been produced at an early period on the continent. The +writers of France, of Germany, and of Italy, belonging to that period, +were in truth so familiar to him that he was sometimes disposed to +assume that general acquaintance with them on the part of others which +it is the fortune of but few to possess. Some results of this study he +now set about putting into permanent form. The first rough draft of the +essays here printed had been finished when the fatal illness fell upon +him that carried him away. + +There is no intention of apologizing either for the matter or the manner +of the pieces contained in this volume. They are in no need of it, and +in any event what is published must stand or fall upon its own merits. +Yet it is the barest justice to the author of these essays to state that +not in a single instance do they represent the final form they would +have assumed, had he lived to review and revise the first sketches he +made. In the case of two of them, which were nearest to the condition in +which they were ultimately to appear, evidences of their incompleteness +in his own eyes are plainly seen in the manuscripts. Against particular +passages and sometimes whole paragraphs there were marginal notes, +indicating that the expression was to undergo alteration of various +kinds. In several instances a place was marked for the insertion of a +transition paragraph which had apparently never been written out, though +its character was suggested. These, of course, had all to be +disregarded. The condition of things, furthermore, was much worse with +the four which had not been so fully completed as the two just +mentioned. In the case of these the matter had to be collected and +pieced together, at no slight expenditure of time and trouble, from +scattered leaves of manuscript, in which it was not always easy to trace +out the exact order. + +Unfortunately, one essay, intended to be the longest and most important +of all, could not be included in this volume. Professor McLaughlin had +been for many years an ardent admirer of Dante. To a study of the early +life of the great Italian poet he had devoted years of patient research. +It was the one subject in which he had the deepest interest, and upon +which he had expended the most labor, and he purposed to make the essay +dealing with it the principal piece in the work he was preparing. But, +as was not unnatural, it was the one essay which needed most the +revising hand of its composer. The gaps in it were too numerous and +important to justify its insertion in the unfinished condition in which +it existed, and this particular piece, upon which the author himself set +most store, has been reluctantly laid aside. + +But while it is simple justice to state the facts just given, it must +not be inferred that these essays, unfinished and even fragmentary as +they might have seemed to the writer, will so appear to the reader. Few +there will be who will detect that any part of them has failed to +receive the full attention to which it is entitled. Nor is it likely, +indeed, that the sentiments expressed in these essays would have +undergone any material modification, whatever changes might have been +made in the manner in which they were set forth. Doubtless some of the +points now found in them would have been amplified, others would have +been retrenched. Other views again, to which no allusion is made here, +would have been introduced. Still, so complete in themselves are the +essays in most particulars, that no thought of their incompleteness +would have arrested the attention of any save the smallest possible +number of readers, had not the condition in which they were left been +mentioned in this introduction. + +But even had these essays needed much more than they do the revising +hand of the author, none the less cordially would they have been +received by those who were familiar with his personal presence. +Especially is this true of students possessed of literary taste, who +have been under his instruction, and it is largely in compliance with +their wishes that the publication of this volume was determined upon. +For as a teacher Professor McLaughlin, though still young, had attained +eminence. He had in particular the rare quality of inspiring those under +him with the same zeal for learning and the same love of literature that +animated himself. + +The teacher of English, it must be confessed, has set before him a task +of special difficulty. In the case of other tongues the business of +translation, with the verbal and grammatical investigation implied by +it, must always constitute the principal part of the work of preparation +for the class-room; and the skill and knowledge with which it is +performed will of necessity be the main element in testing the +proficiency and success of the student. But in the case of English this +main part of the usual preparation has been reduced to a minimum. The +business has already been done at the pupil's hands. He knows, at least +after a fashion, the meaning of the words, even if he does not always +comprehend the meaning of the phrase or sentence as a whole in which +they are found. The hard task is, therefore, given the teacher of +English of starting in his instruction at the point where the teacher of +other languages ends. He is, furthermore, to make his subject one of +pleasure and profit to that select body of students, who are eager to +gain from the pursuit of it all the benefit possible. He is at the same +time expected to exact some degree of labor from those who, whether by +their own fault or the fault of others, have no interest in this +particular subject, if indeed they have interest in any subject +whatever. The temptation naturally presents itself to sacrifice the +former class to the latter. Especially does this appeal to instructors +who are deficient in the literary sense, or who possessing it, lack the +ability to arouse it in those under them. The easy process is resorted +to of turning the study into one of a purely linguistic character, in +which the discussion of words will take the place of the discussion of +literature. This is a cheap though convenient method for the teacher to +evade the real work he is called upon to perform, and while it may be +followed by some incidental advantages, it is almost in the nature of a +crime against letters to associate in the minds of young men, at the +most impressionable period of their lives, the writings of a great +author with a drill that is mainly verbal or philological. + +It was the rare fortune of Professor McLaughlin that he solved this +problem, presented to every instructor in English, with a felicity that +does not fall often to the lot of those engaged in the same occupation. +It was not so much in imparting knowledge that his peculiar distinction +lay; it was in his success in inspiring interest in the subject and zeal +for its prosecution. It is, therefore, more especially to those who have +been under his teaching that this little volume is addressed as a +memorial of one to whom many will acknowledge is due the first bent +their minds received to the study and appreciation of what is best and +highest in literature. What its author would have accomplished with his +remarkable powers of acquisition and assimilation, had he lived to carry +out and perfect plans which he had in contemplation, it is idle to +conjecture; and the world, which cares but little for what is actually +done in the field in which he was largely working, cannot be expected to +concern itself with that which was never more than projected. But there +are some to whom the result of his labors, shown in this volume, will +prove of interest for what it is; while to those who have known him +personally, it will, even in its comparatively imperfect state, furnish +a suggestive intimation of what might have been. + + T. R. LOUNSBURY + + YALE UNIVERSITY, + March 22, 1894. + +[Decoration] + + + + +MEDIAEVAL +LIFE AND LITERATURE + + + + +THE MEDIAEVAL FEELING FOR NATURE. + + +On the 26th April, 1335, Mt. Ventoux, near Avignon, was the scene of a +remarkable occurrence. Petrarch was the hero, and on the evening of that +day, while the impression was yet strong upon him, he wrote an account +of it to a friend. The incident was nothing less than climbing a +mountain for aesthetic gratification. That he cared to do it showed that +Petrarch was on the outskirts of mediaevalism. + +The narrative is so interesting that I may translate a part of it; for +the great humanist's letters are inaccessible to general readers. He +says that he had thought of climbing the mountain for many years, since +he had known the country from early boyhood, and the great mass of rocky +cliff, entirely rugged and almost inaccessible, was constantly and +everywhere visible. He took with him his brother and two servants. As +they were starting on the ascent, they fell in with an aged shepherd, +who tried to dissuade them. Fifty years before he had climbed to the +summit, moved by a boyish impulse--and he supposed himself the only one +who had ever done it; his recollections were full of awe and terror. +But the poet pressed on, beguiling the weariness, which at times +amounted almost to exhaustion, by moralizing on the labor as a type of +spiritual attainments. At the summit of the highest peak, "moved deeply +at first by that vast spectacle, and affected by the unusual lightness +of the air, I stood as if overwhelmed. I looked, and under my feet I saw +the clouds." His thoughts turned to the classical myths, and the history +of his beloved Italy. He recalled that ten years before, on that same +day, he had left Bologna and his studies. How many changes in his ways. +His wrong loves--he loved them no longer, or rather he no longer liked +to love them. He thought of his future. + + "Thus rejoicing in what I had gained, regretful of my + weakness, and pitying the common instability of human + affections, I seemed to forget where I was and why I had + come. At last I turned to the occasion of my expedition. The + sinking sun and lengthening shadows admonished me that the + hour of departure was at hand, and, as if started from sleep, + I turned around and looked to the west. The Pyrenees--the eye + could not reach so far, but I saw the mountains of Lyonnais + distinctly, and the sea by Marseilles; the Rhone, too, was + there before me. Observing these closely, now thinking on the + things of earth, and again, as if I had done with the body, + lifting my mind on high, it occurred to me to take out the + copy of St. Augustine's _Confessions_ that I always kept with + me; a little volume, but of unlimited value and charm. And I + call God to witness that the first words on which I cast mine + eyes were these: 'Men go to wonder at the heights of + mountains, the ocean floods, rivers' long courses, ocean's + immensity, the revolutions of the stars,--and of themselves + they have no care!' My brother asked me what was the matter. + I bade him not disturb me. I closed the book, angry with + myself for not ceasing to admire things of earth, instead of + remembering that the human soul is beyond comparison the + subject for admiration. Once and again, as I descended, I + gazed back, and the lofty summit of the mountain seemed to me + scarcely a cubit high, compared with the sublime dignity of + man."[1] + +In these sentences we find the new life and the old in the same mind. +Such an action would have been impossible for a genuine son of the +middle ages, but could Petrarch stand on a mountain top to-day, such an +outcome of it would be equally impossible. His feeling for nature was +intense even to a sense of the charm of ruggedness in hills, as +Burckhardt, who refers to this letter in his work on _The Italian +Renaissance_, shows by ample quotations; but the intense lover of nature +in the nineteenth century, though his ethical sense be as deep as +Wordsworth's, finds a different influence in such a scene. Indeed, read +in Wordsworth himself, the modern contrast: + + "Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth + And ocean's liquid mass, in gladness lay + Beneath him; far and wide the clouds were touched, + And in their silent faces could he read + Unutterable love. Sound needed none, + Nor any voice of joy; his spirit drank + The spectacle; sensation, soul, and form, + All melted into him; they swallowed up + His animal being, in them did he live, + And by them did he live: they were his life. + In such access of mind, in such high hour + Of visitation from the living God, + Thought was not; in enjoyment it expired. + No thanks he breathed, he proffered no request, + Rapt into still communion, that transcends + The imperfect offices of prayer and praise." + +How far apart is the piety of the two poets, how different their +absorption. This identification of the human mood with Nature, and the +spiritual elation that arises from the union, is thoroughly +characteristic of the present century. Wordsworth's peculiar beauty, as +Hartley Coleridge told Caroline Fox, "consisted in viewing things as +amongst them, mixing himself up in everything that he mentions, so that +you admire the man in the thing, the involved man." And Hartley's +inspired father uttered a great criticism on the modern feeling for +nature, when in the _Ode on Dejection_ he cried, + + "Oh, lady, we receive but what we give, + And in our life alone doth nature live." + +No literary contemporaries were ever more apart than Wordsworth and +Byron, yet _Childe Harold_ has the same note: + + "I live not in myself, but I become + Portion of that around me; and to me + _High mountains are a feeling_. + . . . . the soul can flee + And with the sky, the peak, the heaving plain + Of ocean, or the stars, mingle and not in vain." + +We discover the same sentiment, more delicately held, in Keats, as in +some of his sayings about flowers, and Shelley, speaking of the longing +for a response to one's own nature, says: + + "The discovery of its antitype, this is the invisible and + unattainable point to which love tends.... Hence in solitude, + or in that state when we are surrounded by human beings, and + yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers, and the + grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motions of the + very leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is found a + secret correspondence with our heart, that awakens the + spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and brings tears of + mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of + patriotic rapture, or the voice of one beloved singing to you + alone." + +Yet this spirit, with which our later poetry is almost everywhere +touched, "this mysterious analogy between human emotions and the +phenomena of the world without us," as von Humboldt expresses it, in its +present comprehensiveness is new to literature. To feel for mountains, +forests, or the ocean, with mingled awe, love, and ecstasy, seems so +natural to us, that we can hardly realize that Gray was striking a novel +and significant chord when he wrote at the Grande Chartreuse, "One of +the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... +Not a precipice, not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with +religion and poetry." + +In Petrarch's letter we observe the deficiency in absorbing enthusiasm +for the grander forms of nature, as well as his sense of the isolation +of such sentiment from true spiritual life. Yet this letter is the most +significant indication which we possess from the middle ages of a +capacity for enjoying the sublimity of heights. In _Praeterita_, Ruskin, +while describing his eagerness at the first sight of the Alps, as a boy, +has written two or three sentences that we may employ to illustrate the +contrast between Petrarch and his predecessors: + + "Till Rousseau's time there had been no 'sentimental' love of + nature ... St. Bernard of La Fontaine, looking out to Mont + Blanc with his child's eyes, sees above Mont Blanc the + Madonna; St. Bernard of Talloires, not the Lake of Annecy, + but the dead between Martigny and Aosta. But for me, the Alps + and their people were alike beautiful in their snow, and + their humanity; and I wanted, neither for them nor myself, + sight of any thrones in heaven but the rocks, or of any + spirits in heaven but the clouds." + +Others, beside the Bernards, men from whose culture and intelligence we +should expect fine appreciation, felt nothing august or inspiring in the +material world. So far as we have any record, the fourteenth-century +laureate was the first of the moderns to climb a mountain for the +aesthetic pleasure of the view. Burckhardt's suggestion that this honor +belongs to Dante, on the strength of a passage in the fourth canto of +the _Purgatory_, is surely not tenable; for the top of Bismantova +possessed a citadel in Dante's time to which business may easily have +called him. All through the middle ages, the lofty elevations between +central Europe and Italy were constantly being crossed. The most +cultivated men were going back and forth as couriers on business of the +Church, and the political relations, especially between Italy and +Germany, kept up a continual stream of travel. Yet one recalls no lines +in any mediaeval poem that describe or express sensations of the least +interest concerning the sights that have bowed the strongest souls of +our era, that have been felt by thousands, and put into words by so many +poets. + +There is, indeed, in the beginning of a passage from a famous scholar, +John of Salisbury, an apparent exception to this strange indifference; +but a few clauses correct the hasty judgment. Writing from Lombardy, he +explained why he could not send a letter from the Great St. Bernard: "I +have been on the mount of Jove: on the one hand looking up to the heaven +of the mountains; on the other, shuddering at the hell of the valleys; +feeling myself so much nearer to heaven that I was more sure that my +prayer would be heard." Yet this was due to no rapture of soul, +for--"Lord, I said, restore me to my brethren, that they come not into +this place of torment." He goes on to specify the perils of ice, +precipice, and cold, and nothing disturbs him so much as that his ink +was frozen. But there is not a suggestion of anything worth looking at. +Even Caesar, as von Humboldt reminds us, composed a rhetorical treatise +while crossing the Alps. But the poet of Vaucluse did climb a mountain +for the love of the view, and the very fact that his aesthetic attention +was distracted by ethical introspection is an indication of that serious +sensibility which was destined to become such an essential element in +our feeling for nature; what for every Wordsworthian is summed up in the +second mood of _Tintern Abbey_. + +This incapacity for appreciating mountainous sublimity involved a +blindness to the rugged and picturesque on smaller scales. In minor +chords, and in combinations of tone superficially discordant, we have +learned to recognize some of nature's richest harmonies; this is one of +our marks of development. Closely linked, too, with this first of modern +passions for nature, indeed unified with it by the qualities of strength +and massiveness, is our feeling for the ocean and great woods. + + "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, + There is a rapture on the lonely shore: + There is society where none intrudes, + By the deep sea, and music in its roar." + +Even deeper than the idea of companionship here is the mystical sense of +absorption into that physical world which seems the very dwelling-place +of the infinite soul, which finds one of its most remarkable +manifestations in an intense and almost defiant sensation of human +transitoriness and unimportance, and which is frequently blended with +very exultation in the reflection that presently we ourselves shall be +unified forever with the unconscious life that stretches out before us: + + "Rolled round in earth's diurnal course + With rocks, and stones, and trees." + +There is a strange fascination to the modern mind, in presence of the +majesties of nature, in this thought of humanity's return to the +earth-mother. Innumerable generations have come home to her, as many or +more are to be born that they may follow them, and she remains. Perhaps +we are never so serenely conscious of self, as in these rare moments +when we bear without a pang the thought of losing personal identity. +There is something more here than the certainty of at least +materialistic immortality, and the impression of infinite repose and +beauty. + +The projection of our immediate sensation into the long future silence +suffuses nature with pantheistic life, until the eager and buoyant +thrills of spiritual realization render one grateful to have been +permitted to gain such a sensation at what seems the trivial cost of +feeling oneself the mere creature of a day. Such a mood as this +certainly comes but seldom, but probably every one who has ever +experienced any imaginative sensibility to a grand landscape will recall +a heightened sensation that is beyond description.[2] + +But still stranger than the failure to catch the finer suggestions in +the more strenuous forms of nature, is the way in which such sights are +ignored. In southern Europe, mountains, storms, rocks, the ocean, are +scarcely ever described, even as objects of awe or terror. When in the +course of a story they have to be mentioned, the treatment is brief and +matter of fact. Heinrich von Veldeke in his famous epic, makes nothing +of his necessary introduction of a storm at sea, nor does Gottfried, or +indeed any one of this whole period. + +_Gudrun_, that epic of the people which deserves to stand near the more +famous _Niebelungen Lied_, treats constantly of the ocean, yet never +with any feeling except dread of shipwreck. This poem, however, shows a +more northern tone in one or two descriptions of winter, that are at +least elaborated. In the scene, for instance, when Herwig and Ortwin +arrive at the shore where Hildeburg and Gudrun, almost naked, are +washing the clothes for their cruel mistress, we find some realistic +touches, such as their trembling before the March wind, in which their +hair was streaming as they toiled on the beach, while before them the +sea was full of cakes of ice that had broken up under the early spring. +In another connection, too, the poet compares something to a thick +snowstorm, driven by mountain winds. The sense of fitness in a +sympathetic natural environment for the human action, that has been so +generally regarded in literature, as by Shakespeare, is indeed +occasionally found in mediaeval poetry; so in an interesting French +romance that relates the trials of a heroine who barely escapes with her +life, after the loss of everything dear: "The lady is in the wood and +bitterly she wails. She hears the wolves howl, and the screech-owls cry; +it lightens terribly, and the thunder is heavy, rain, hail, and +wind--'tis wild for a lady all alone." + +Exceptions occur now and then. Dante, for example, was impressed by the +mountains; no readers of the _Purgatory_ need to be reminded of his +experience in climbing them. The setting for a mood of unrealized love +in one of his lyrics is in winter, among the whitened hills: "He wooed +the lady in a lovely grassy meadow, surrounded by lofty hills." But the +arbitrary verbal repetitions of the _sestina_ modify the original face +of the image of the mountains towering about the lover's plain, and the +pensive beauty of the whole poem may be connected with an allegory. But +I believe that even in Dante we never catch the sense of exultation in +the earth's power and majesty. + +Our modern feeling for forests is not only at times sombre and +oppressive; we also derive a sense of sublime composure from them. This +latter sentiment was hardly shared by the mediaevals. Dante was only +following earlier poets when he located the opening of Hell by a gloomy +wood, and his repeated metaphor of life as a forest, "confusing," +"gloomy," and "dark," accords with the feeling of his age. He would not +have appreciated Chateaubriand. He has left us, however, a rare and +interesting reference to the soughing in the pines on the Adriatic, +which shows how well his ear could interpret its solemn beauty. The +mystical apple-tree, moreover, near the close of the _Purgatory_, whose +blossoms are so exquisitely defined, indirectly reminds us how +exceptional is a mention of fruit trees in flower. Yet the Provencal, +French, and German lyrics constantly begin with the joyousness of +spring, and the happy contrast from the season that destroys flowers and +foliage. Nothing is more conventional than these nature preludes. Over +and over, till we close our books impatiently, we hear reiterations of +the charm of spring and summer. There is a slender kind of grace and +sincerity that would lend interest to many of these, if they had come +down by themselves; but they lie together in books in wearisome +uniformity. A dandelion in April is much prettier than the dandelions in +June. These preludes are usually in keeping with the love-phrases that +follow, cold and imitative. For poets thought and felt in exterior +generalities, rather than in detachment and inner consciousness. Their +typical landscape may be seen in a passage from Gottfried von +Strassburg,--one of Germany's most brilliant poets--where Tristan and +Isolde have fled to the forest grotto, in fear of King Mark. The grotto +is fitted up luxuriously, in keeping with the temper of the entire poem, +but since it is in the wilderness, far away from roads or paths, in a +description of its surroundings we might certainly look for a sense of +the picturesque. But so far from caring for the wild and rugged, +Gottfried does not even like a quiet woodland simplicity. + + "Above the entrance stood three broad lindens, no more; but + below, stretching down the slope, were innumerable trees that + hid the retreat. On one side was a level stretch where a + fountain flowed, a fresh, cool stream, clearer than the sun. + Above it, too, stood three beautiful shady lindens that + shielded the spring from rain and the sun. Bright blossoms + and green grass struggled with each other sweetly on the + field. One caught also the delightful songs of birds which + sang more delightfully there than anywhere else. Eye and ear + each had its pleasure, there was shade and sun, air and + breezes soft and pleasing." + +He goes on to describe the lovers, in a passage from which I translate +the opening: + + When they waked and when they slept, + Side by side they ever kept. + In the morning o'er the dew + Softly to the field they drew, + Where, beside the little pool, + Flowers and grass were dewy cool. + And the cool fields pleased them well, + Pleased them, too, their love to tell, + Straying idly thro' the glade, + Hearing music, as they strayed. + Sweetly sang the birds, and then + In their walk they turned again + Where the cool brook rippled by, + Listening to the melody, + As it flowed and as it went: + Where across the field it bent, + There they sat them down to hear, + Resting there, its murmur clear. + And until the sunshine blazed, + In the rivulet they gazed. + +These lines are characteristic of Gottfried, even to the lingering +verbal repetition, and the picture certainly is pretty, as is the whole +account of the lovers' life that follows. Nothing in early German +literature comes closer to refined modern sensuousness than Gottfried's +best passages; there is a dreamy passion in them, and sometimes they +flash. His rich voluptuous strain has more of the poet than the +free-liver, and his general tone is curiously modern. It would be a +showy phrase to call his _Tristan_ the _Don Juan_ of the middle ages, +for the poems are very dissimilar, yet it is safe to say that we think +of Byron as we read him. Contrast these representative poets of the +thirteenth and nineteenth centuries in this matter of their feeling for +nature. For once among German settings we have a wild scene. But we +observe how studiously it is modified into the conventional meadow, with +trees in uniform little groups, a grassy field is sprinkled with +flowers, there is a spring, and the little stream that escapes from it +instead of tumbling down over a rocky bed into a glen, flows across the +field. Gottfried mentions mountains and rocks that lie round about, only +to point out that they are types of the difficulties and perils to be +undergone before reaching love's shrine. The almost inaccessible retreat +was necessary as a shelter for the fugitives from Mark's court; the poet +has done his best to obliterate the reality. If we turn to Byron, and +look for instance at that incomparable passage in which he relates the +early love of Juan and Haidee, we observe where he voluntarily places +his lovers: + + "It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, + With cliffs above and a broad sandy shore; + Guarded by shoals and rocks as by a host, + With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore + A better welcome to the tempest-tost; + And rarely ceased the haughty billows' roar." + + "And thus they wandered forth, and hand in hand, + Over the shining pebbles and the shells, + Glided along the smooth and hardened sand, + And in the worn and wild receptacles + Worked by the storms, yet worked as it were planned, + In hollow halls, with sparry roofs and cells, + They turned to rest; and each clasped by an arm, + Yielded to the deep twilight's purple charm." + +And, to pass over the description of sky, sea, moon, and starlight, that +follows, as elements in the nature-setting, notice the scene where Juan +is sleeping: + + "The lady watched her lover, and that hour + Of Love's, and Night's, and Ocean's solitude, + O'erflowed her soul with their united power, + Amid the barren sand and rocks so rude, + She and her wave-worn love had made their bower." + +It would be easy to parallel these two situations; the older by no means +ends with the middle ages, for Eden's "blissful bower" is no exception +in modern poetry before the romantic age: while in our own century +counterparts to this conception of untrained and strenuous natural +surroundings for even the happiest of emotions will occur to every +one.[3] The idle triteness in those inevitable scenes of spring, was +manifest to some of the poets themselves. So the Comte de Champagne +declares foliage and flowers of no service to poets, except for rhyming +and to amuse commonplace people. The great Wolfram himself derides the +conventionality of all romance narratives falling in spring and early +summer: + + Arthur is the man of May; + Each event in every lay, + Happened or at Whitsuntide + Or when the May was blooming wide. + +And Uhland cites from the lives of the troubadours the contemporaneous +criticism upon a minor poet of the twelfth century, who wrote in the +old style about leaves, and flowers, and the song of birds,--nothing of +any account. We may recollect that such criticisms go far back of the +middle ages: Horace glances at his contemporaries' conventional +descriptions of a stream hastening through pleasant fields. + +In the widely popular romances of Enid we find illustrations of Welsh, +French, and German treatment in the hands of leading authors, and there +is one point in the narrative where we may compare their feeling for the +natural environment. Readers of Tennyson will recall the passage in the +wandering, where, after one of Geraint's struggles with bandits, he +comes upon a lad carrying provisions. Chrestien's treatment of the +episode is clear and straightforward; the youth and two comrades are +taking cheese, cakes, and wine to the count's meadows for the haymakers. +The young man notices the travellers' worn appearance, and invites them +to sit down "in this fair meadow, under these ironwood trees," to rest +and eat. + +Hartmann von Aue (whose paraphrase of the French poem is, by the way, +far from the merit of his _Iwein_) narrates the incident in the same +manner, omitting the poetically specific touches of the haymaking, and +the shady spot in the field; but characteristically inserting some +courteous concern on the part of the young man, for the comfort of Enid. +But if we turn to the _Mabinogion_ we come upon something very +different: + + "And early in the day they left the wood, and they came to an + open country, with meadows on one hand, and mowers mowing the + meadows; and there was a river before them, and the horses + bent down and drank the water. And they went up out of the + river by a lofty steep, and there they met a slender + stripling with a satchel about his neck, and they saw that + there was something in the satchel, but they knew not what + it was. And he had a small blue pitcher in his hand, and a + bowl on the mouth of the pitcher." + +How charming it is, even to the lovely touch of color. We know here that +the unremembered writer saw nature and cared for it as we do. Indeed, +this mediaeval Welshman satisfies us quite as well as does even +Tennyson's transcript: + + "So through the green gloom of the wood they passed, + And issuing under open heavens beheld + A little town with towers, upon a rock: + And close beneath, a meadow gemlike chased + In the brown wild, and mowers mowing in it: + And down a rocky pathway from the place + There came a fair-hair'd youth, that in his hand + Bare victual for the mowers." + +There we have a simplicity treated with Tennysonian artifice, which +"victual" does not succeed in correcting; beautiful in its way, though +its way is perhaps not so fine as the prose. Yet we notice the modern +spirit in the appreciation of the "brown wild" as well as the meadow, +and out of the more general and evasive "steep" is developed the +picturesque "rocky pathway." + +Except for the interest in establishing these forms of +nature-appreciation from such older and more original sources, we might +have satisfied ourselves with illustrations of them from Chaucer's early +poems, where his descriptions are almost wholly derivative. His feeling +for "the smale, softe, swote gras," that was sweetly embroidered with +flowers; the earth's joyous oblivion of the cold, in her enthusiasm of +May; his constant delight in the "smale foules," and the like, are +purely conventional, though the unction with which he writes shows his +real enjoyment. There are touches in Chaucer, however, that we miss in +his romance predecessors, such as his eye for delicate effects--most +interesting as marking the growth of accurate observation and sensitive +rendering, like the description of twilight in _Troylus and Creyseyde_, +when + + "White thynges wexen dymme and donne + For lakke of lyght," + +or the graceful illustration in the same poem of a sudden troubling of +one's mood: + + "But right as when the sonne shyneth brighte + In March that chaungeth ofte tyme his face, + And that a cloude is put with wynde to flyght, + Which overspret the sonne, as for a space, + A cloudy thought gan through his soule pace." + +Such a touch makes us feel how modern he is. Yet he does not love the +picturesque. Under the influence of a Breton lay, he writes in the +loveliest of all his tales, of the rugged sea-coast on whose high bank +Dorigen and her friends used to walk (since "stood hire castel faste by +the see") and look down upon "the grisly rokkes blake," which, in her +apprehension for her lord's safe return, she would call "these grisly, +feendly rokkes blake." But we feel that even had Arviragus been at her +side she would never have regarded the coast as we should regard it. +Still we observe the advance in observation and literary expression. In +the _Knight's Tale_, the wild picturesque is employed again to connote +the terrible, but no poet, from Statius to Boccaccio, his guides in the +passage, had written such lines as his setting for the temple of the +God of War: + + "First on the wal was peynted a forest + In which there dwelleth neither man nor best, + With knotty, knarry, bareyne trees olde + Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to biholde, + In which ther ran a rumbel and a swough, + As though a storm sholde bresten every bough." + +Nothing even in _Childe Roland_ sketches desolating natural effects with +more power. Yet Chaucer had a superior, in the sympathetic eye and +adequate expression for the stern and stormy phases of nature, in a +countryman of whom perhaps he never heard. We do not know the name of +the author of _Sir Gawayn and the Grene Knyght_. But the poem marks on +the whole the noblest conception in our literature before Spenser. It +possesses moral dignity, romantic interest, simplicity, and directness, +united with deep seriousness of style, creative imagination in dealing +both with character and with nature. Chaucer wrote nothing so spiritual, +though much of course more artistic and poetically valuable. In regard +to this one matter of the interpretation of nature, it would be +difficult to point out passages in the whole range of mediaeval +literature so fine and so remarkable as such descriptions as follow, of +the northern winter scenes through which Gawayn passed on his weird +mission. + + A forest full deep, and wild to a wonder, + High hills on each side, and crowded woods under, + Of oaks hoar and huge, a hundred together. + The hazel and hawthorne were grown altogether + Everywhere coated by moss ragged, rough; + Many birds on bare branches, unhappy enough; + That piteously piped there, for pain of the cold. + + Wondrous fair was the earth, for the frost lay thereby; + On the mist ruddy gleams the sun cast, as on high + He coasted full clearly the clouds of the sky. + + They beat along banks where the branches are bare, + They climbed along cliffs where clingeth the cold, + The clouds yet held up, but 'twas ugly beneath. + Mist lowered on the moor, dissolved on the mountains. + Each hill had a hat, a huge misty cloak. + Brooks boiling and breaking dashed on the banks, + Shattered brightly on shore. + +That is what we find in the North, and such English feeling for the +sublime is nothing new; it goes far back beyond these lines into the +generations that seem misty as the air which their poets are wont to +describe. Mr. Stopford Brooke's recent volume on Anglo-Saxon poetry +makes it unnecessary to enter into the subject of old England's eye and +ear for nature. Its accounts of the sympathy for the bold and fierce +bear out what one might guess without knowledge--that the stern northern +climate and familiarity with ocean life found large poetical expression. +Luxury, southern artifice of sentiment and literary manner, had not +invaded the rugged men of the North; they delight in describing +elemental conflicts, and sometimes with studied elaboration. But if the +pictures of the German and French poets are uniform in their mildness, +those of these Anglo-Saxons are marked by their stormy aspect. We +exchange spring for winter. + +The same contrast holds true when we take up the Scandinavian poets; +they show much feeling and power, but little susceptibility to the +beauty of gentleness and grace. Mr. Brooke has remarked upon a +similarity between the _Tempest_ of Cynewulf and Shelley's _Ode to the +West Wind_. A closer parallel may be observed in the _Lines Among the +Euganean Hills_ and the so-called Helgi poet; where we find a curiously +identical image of rooks and hawks flying into the early morning with +wings sparkling from the mists through which they have passed. The Norse +poems are fond of screaming eagles, and ravens on the high branches. + +That weird northern imagination too has vivid pictures, as the shields +of the night-warriors shining in the waning moon. Nature also +occasionally speaks to their personal moods, both by harmony and +contrast. A poet's boat is swept fiercely by the tempest, as he dies +with thoughts of his "linen-clad lady" in his heart. Another watches the +sea dashing against the steep cliff, and thinks of his far-away love, in +the control of his rival. Like the early English, they feel exultation +in sea and storm. They know them intimately and their descriptions are +spirited and faithful. They love them, but they love fiercely, terribly, +as they do their women. Yet even as in their human passions, there are +tranquillities. "They rode their steeds through dewy dales and dusky +glens: the air, a sea of mist, shook as they passed by." We linger +behind the storming horsemen for a moment, to look back as the silence +steals in again through those dusky glens. + +But to return to what is our real subject, the sentiment for nature in +what we may term the polite literatures of mediaevalism. + +The reason for their feeling about winter is summed up in one of the +Latin student songs, "the cold icy harshness of winter, its fierceness, +and dull, miserable inactivity." It kept them within, when their +interests and concerns were so mainly out-of-door. The poets are for +ever singing in praise of spring, not so much because they loved it for +itself, as because it brought them a life that was gay and easy. They +seldom introduce touches of appreciation in their descriptions of the +wintry season. Snow may have appeared lovely to them, but we observe +Dante as doing something singular when he compares the talking of +ladies, which was mingled with sighs and tears, to raindrops +interspersed with beautiful snowflakes (_cp._ _Inf._, 14, 30; 24, 5), +and one of the most memorable lines in his friend Guido Cavalcanti's +poems is the one which mentions the dreamy sinking down of snow, falling +when the air is windless. The old-time gentlemen apparently hugged the +fire and drank of "their bugle-horn the wyn," and ate "brawn of the +tusked swyn," when winter came, instead of watching the snow, through +their little windows. + +There are many phases of nature which it seems to us impossible not to +notice and enjoy, of which we seldom find a trace. We should expect them +in the large body of lyrical verse, and still more in the copious +romance literature, which corresponds to the modern novel, both in +incident and in the invitation to bits of passing local color. Clouds, +for instance, aside from their glory of line and mass, and the grace and +loveliness of their lighter forms, are curious and oddly suggestive, as +Antony reminds Eros, and they are constantly before the eye; yet let any +reader of mediaeval poetry recall how imperceptible a part they play in +it, even as plain facts of description. A line in one of the Latin songs +expresses the feeling: their thought of clouds is, how delightful not to +see them. Moonlight, too, is seldom dwelt on as poetical; the most +romantic touch that comes to my mind in connection with it, is in +Chrestien de Troyes, where it shines over the reconciliation of +estranged lovers. Just as we find little notice of sunrise, sunset, +clouds, and moon, we find little feeling for the stars. They are +mentioned occasionally in a facile way, though scarcely ever with +manifest sentiment. There are two or three passages, however, in +_Aucassin et Nicolette_, that show the daintiest sort of sentiment for +moonlight and stars. Here, for instance, where the lovers are confined +for the sake of thwarting their love: + + "'Twas in summer time, in the month of May, when the days are + warm, long, and clear and the nights calm and cloudless. + Nicolette was lying one night in her bed, and she saw the + moon clearly shining through a window, and she heard the + nightingale singing in the garden and she thought of Aucassin + her lover, whom she loved so much." + +So making a rope of the bedclothes she lets herself down into the +garden. + + "Then she caught her gown by one hand in front and by the + other behind, and tucked it up on account of the dew which + she saw was heavy on the grass, and she went down through the + garden.... And the daisy-blossoms that she broke with the + toes of her feet, that lay over on the small of her foot, + were even black, by her feet and legs, so very white was the + dear little girl. Along the streets she passed in the shadow, + for the moon shone very clear, and she went on till she came + to the tower where her lover was." + +And again when the lover is in pursuit of her, after she had built +herself a lodge in what she thought a safe retreat; he does not know +where she is, and his thoughts are so absorbed that he falls and puts +out his shoulder, and then creeps into her vacant shelter: + + "And he looked through a break in the lodge and saw the stars + in the sky, and he saw one brighter than the rest, and he + began to say: + + 'Pretty little star, I see + Where the moon is leading thee. + Nicolette is with thee there, + My darling with the golden hair; + God would have her, I believe, + To make beautiful the eve.'" + +Yet even here there is nothing of the deeper sensibility to midnight +sky, common alike to ancient and modern seriousness. Yet we find notes +also of this. It is hard, for example, to think of giving up the +genuineness of Dante's letter refusing to return to Florence, if only +for the rare touch of everywhere seeing the sun and the stars (_nonne +solis astrorumque specula ubique conspiciam?_), that bears out such +evidences as the last word of each of the divine canticles and other +fine proofs that he felt the high wonder and peace of the stars at +night. Who can doubt that he did--that every deep nature always has? Yet +the poetical evidence for it is curiously scanty throughout these +centuries. It is a surprise to come upon such an exclamation as this of +Freidank's: "The constellations sweep through heaven as if they were +alive,--sun, moon, the bright stars,--there is nothing so wonderful!" + +Indeed, I can recall no writer to whom the material world seems to +suggest such inner sensations as he who called himself Freidank, the +German free-thinker. He was not much of a poet, so far as his verses go, +but his soul knew life as mystery. He also made one of the band of +reformers three centuries before Luther. He saw the corruption of the +Church, yet he revered the sacred institution; in spite of his faith, he +was a Christian rationalist. Some of his sentences almost startle us, as +words before their season: "If the Pope can forgive sins by indulgence, +without repentance, people ought to stone him if he allows any one to go +to hell." "God is constantly shaping new souls, which he gives to +men--to be lost. How does the soul deserve God's wrath before it is +born?" He is haunted by the secret of life: "How is the soul made? No +one tells me that. If all souls could be in a hand, none could see or +grasp their glory." "Earth and heaven are full of the Godhead. Hell +would be empty, were God not there." "Whatever the sun touches, the +sunlight keeps pure. However the priest may be, the mass is still pure. +The mass and the sunshine will always be pure." "I never cease wondering +how the soul is made. Whence it came, and whither it fares--the path is +hidden. Nay, I know not who I am myself.[4] Lord God, grant me that I +may know thee, and also myself." So when Freidank hears the roar of the +wind, its invisible might reminds his skepticism that the soul may well +be great, though none can see it: while he watches the wide mist which +no hand can seize upon, a symbolism of the soul comes to him again. He +is oppressed by the restless energy of being: "Our hearts beat +unceasingly, our breaths are seldom still:--and then, our thoughts and +dreams!" As he rides through spring, he observes the infinite diversity +of nature: + + Many hundred flowers, + Alike none ever grew; + Mark it well, no leaf of green + Is just another's hue. + +"Many a man looks out at the stars, and tells what wonders take place +there. Let him tell me now (something closer at hand), what is the weed +in the garden. If he tells me that truly, I shall be more ready to +believe the other." It is the germ of Tennyson's _Flower in the Crannied +Wall_. Nature's commonplaces hold the heavenly mystery in a common bond +with their own. Such subtle blendings of the outward and inward vision +could come only from a refined and pensive spirit--such as his who sums +up thus the discipline of life: "Many a time the lips must smile when +the heart weeps." + +One of the marked deficiencies of all these descriptions of nature is in +the indefiniteness of the terms employed. In minute accuracy, Dante, to +be sure, is one of the world's greatest masters; but elsewhere it is +rarely that we come upon anything concrete or specific. It is not until +centuries later, indeed, that, so far as nature goes, we find habitual +composition "with the eye upon the object," but, as it seems, most +mediaeval poets never carried their observation beyond the barest general +impressions. We do not expect Tennyson's "More black than ashbuds in the +front of March," or Browning's eye for the fact that when "the leaf-buds +on the vine are woolly," the red is about to turn gray. The outer +world's "open secret" is not open enough to make us demand minute +attention. But it is surprising that they did not more frequently record +easy impressions, and in their inventions introduce definite details. +The poetical effect of even apparently prosaic precision is at times +imaginative, but the art of this was kept for the later romanticists. + +There is a lyric, however (belonging, I believe, to the twelfth +century), by a poet of northern France, and written as a satire on the +love-romance literature of the age, which contains one or two happy +instances of just this missing trait. So charming it is in itself that I +have translated it as a whole, though it belongs to an essay on the +lyrical romances, instead of on nature. What a light touch the unknown +writer shows, what dainty fancy! Sir Thopas is hardly a parallel to this +blending of poetry with humor, a humor too gracious to be derisive, +whose genial satire sparkles and dances to meet its sister wave of +sentiment and beauty, till they ripple together, and each seems to have +absorbed the other. The opening stanza is the poet's introduction of +himself, and from the olive we may draw an inference respecting his +local associations: + + Will ye attend me, while I sing + A song of love,--a pretty thing, + Not made on farms:-- + Nay, by a gentle knight 'twas made + Who lay beneath an olive's shade + In his love's arms. + + 1. + + A linen undergown she wore, + And a white ermine mantle, o'er + A silken coat; + With flowers of May to keep her feet, + And round her ankles leggings neat, + From lands remote. + + 2. + + Her girdle was of leafage green; + Spring foliage, with a fringing sheen + Of gold above; + And underneath a love-purse hung, + By bloomy pendants featly strung, + A gift of love. + + 3. + + Upon a mule the lady rode, + The which with silver shoes was shode; + Saddle gold-red; + And behind rose-bushes three + She had set up a canopy + To shield her head. + + 4. + + As so she passed adown the meads, + A gentle childe in knightly weeds + Cried: "Fair one, wait! + What region is thy heritance?" + And she replied: "I am of France, + Of high estate. + + 5. + + "My father is the nightingale, + Who high within the bosky pale, + On branches sings; + My mother's the canary; she + Sings on the high banks where the sea + Its salt spray flings." + + 6. + + "Fair lady, excellent thy birth; + Thou comest from the chief of earth, + Of high estate: + Ah, God our Father, that to me + Thou hadst been given, fair ladye, + My wedded mate!" + +Everything here is definite and concrete, and how delightful the picture +all is. Such plastic art as the "rose-bushes three" is not unworthy of +the great modern poets of whom its magic and romantic definiteness +reminds us,--as the "five miles meandering of Alph, the sacred river," +or the "kisses four" with which the pale loiterer shut the eyes of La +Belle Dame sans Merci. The description of the nightingale on its high +branches, too, is a noticeably accurate touch, as we compare it, for +example, with Coleridge's nightingale descriptions. + +The explanation for the usual vague and indefinite description is not +found in saying that they could not describe minutely. We meet with +abundant details of such material interests as embroideries or armor. +There is artistic emotion in Villehardouin's account of the glorious +sight of Constantinople, as it rose before the crusaders, just as +distinctly as in Lord Byron's letter. But, to their simple eyes, nature +not only failed to suggest associated fancies, like Shakespeare's + + "Wrinkled pebbles in the brook," + +or Wordsworth's ash, + + "A soft eye-music of slow waving boughs," + +but they see natural objects as units, without lingering upon their +parts. When we find, for example, a line that marks the jerky flight of +a swallow, we are surprised at the specific touch; we look almost in +vain for such landscape details as the colors of autumn. Neidhart von +Reuenthal is marking his originality, when he speaks of the red +tree-tops, falling down yellow. + +The want of observation and the shallow sympathy with nature shown by +most poets before Dante are much more surprising than their preference +for placid effects. It is unusual, for instance, to meet such a +suggestive note of association as in the stanza by the Frenchman Gaces +Brulles: + + The birds of my own land + In Brittany I hear, + And seem to understand + The distant in the near; + In sweet Champagne I stand, + No longer here. + +This paraphrase, indeed, is unworthy of the charming simplicity of the +original. Surely, when Matthew Arnold made his sweeping characterization +of mediaeval poetry as grotesque, he forgot what a straightforward +evolution of narrative or of quiet sentiment, and what a transparent +expression, we find in some of these minor poets. They are as direct and +unadorned, as they are graceful. It is almost impossible to translate +them without substituting for the fresh and delicate touch, some +metaphysical warping of the idea, or some rhetorical consciousness in +words. What for instance could be more elegantly remote from the +grotesque than this literal translation of Brulles' expression of his +sensibility to the song-birds of his home: "The birds of my country I +have heard in Brittany; by their song I know well that in sweet +Champagne I heard them of old." + + * * * * * + +We may sum up these outline statements to this effect. + +The northern poets described storm, winter, the ocean, and kindred +subjects, with considerable force and fulness. In the cultivated +literatures to the south, natural description was mainly confined to the +agreeable forms of beauty; the grand, awesome, and inspiring were +scarcely felt, and the literal fact of their physical expression was +hardly ever noticed. The exterior world was not made a subject of close +observation, nor was its poetic availability realized as a setting for +action, or as an interpreter of emotion. + +The people of the north, through being habituated to severer weather, +not merely as a fact of climate, but from their rougher, less politely +organized habits of living, [we should especially observe their activity +on the sea,] regarded the violent seasons and aspects of nature with the +sympathetic acquiescence of custom. Moreover, this influence tended to +develop sturdier and more rugged character, race-temperament obviously +being in part a geographical result, which acts with the forces of +social organization, especially those that affect the moral qualities, +such as rude or luxurious living. This vigorous character was more +susceptible to impressions of native power, as well as from association +more interested in recalling them. Accordingly, we find the early +northern poetry an anticipation of the seriousness of modern English +literature, and, as well, of its unequalled recognition of physical +symbolisms of the sublime. Where the northern force blended with more +southern lightness and elegance, as it did in the _Mabinogion_, we find +a deeper poetic sentiment; where it coincides with moral earnestness, we +find such nature sensation as in the poetry of _Sir Gawayn_. But the +literature of the Germans and their romance originals, aim at courtly +levities; they artificialize sentiment and thought, as well as manner. +The deeper and more spiritually sympathetic minds did not as a rule +devote themselves to _belles-lettres_. The Church drew them into her +sober service, and even though they wrote, the close theological faith +was not favorable to their poetic expansion. Most of all, there was but +little individualism, and any artistic sensation of our modern complex +inner consciousness was still crude, even when it existed at all. + +One point, however, should be observed in any inquiry into the reasons +for the inadequateness of these ages' feeling for nature; that many +latent sympathies may never have found a voice. Many through the +centuries before our later ease of publication, may have felt the modern +sensations, without ever thinking of putting them into words. In any new +movement, of art as of practice, a great leader of expression is needed. +Men are sheep to their leaders in various admirations, and many genuine +aesthetic tastes are acquired, through stages of more or less unconscious +imitation. Browning puts this in an acute sentence where Fra Lippo Lippi +explains his usefulness as a painter: + + ". . . We're made so that we love, + First when we see them painted, things we have passed + Perhaps a hundred times, nor cared to see." + +There were few new departures, there was little originality, in the +methods of mediaeval literature. Descriptions of the physical world as a +field of power and sublimity would have fallen dead on the ears of a +public who had never dreamed that storm and cliffs were beautiful. What +if Wordsworth had tried to support himself and win fame by singing at +castles? Nor is it easy, though the taste has been established, to +describe a sunset, or the sublimity of the Alps. We say to each other +"How beautiful!" "How grand!" seldom more. Rare imagination and the tact +of genius are necessary to tell what we really need to show. The sense +of physical sublimity is complex. Its distinctive element is moral or +spiritual emotion. For a full delineation it requires a more subtle, +verbal repertory than those popular poets usually possessed. Yet these +modifications no longer apply when we come to Dante, and superior as his +interpretations are to his predecessors' we miss even in him, as we miss +in the great poets for four hundred years afterwards, appreciation of +the material world's sublimity. + +Macaulay and others have said that it was not until man had become the +master of nature that he learned to love its stern and violent aspects. +But thunder storms, for example, are as dangerous now as they ever were, +at least to a traveller. Still, Byron wrote of them with raptures amid +the Pindus mountains as his predecessors did not. + +Winter was scarcely colder or bleaker for mediaeval poets than for +Scottish peasants a century ago, yet Burns would sing as they could not: + + "E'en winter bleak has charms for me, + When winds rave through the naked tree." + +Others have accounted for this change by the era of science, with its +close scrutiny of the world, and its enthusiasm for physical knowledge. +But the scientist masters the world as a reality where the poet sees it +as a symbol. The two modern tendencies may be the result of a common +cause--that recognition of complexity, and disposition to observe, which +is a main fact in man's expansion. + +A better explanation may be found, I believe, in modern refinement and +ethical sensitiveness. + +Side by side with the new appreciation of nature may be observed a +steady growth in sensibility. Our modern moods of inward +contemplation--we are famous for them--our modern zeal for humanity down +to its lowest grades; nay, even our tenderness for the brutes, have been +distinguishing marks of the poet guides under whom we have learned to +appreciate our new physical symbolisms of human emotion. Modern +melancholy, as well, a melancholy more subtle and thoughtful, more +poetical too, than that of mediaevalism, has touched men with its pensive +fascination. Philosophical pantheism such as Wordsworth's or Tennyson's, +feels deity in nature; the new Christianity incarnates divinity in +universal man. Man is more than he used to be, his moods are deeper, his +thought freer. He seeks more ardently than of old, because with less +constraint, the mystery in whom he lives and moves and has his being. He +no longer quails before the majesty and awe of its forever elusive +presence. For he knows that though he cannot find it, it enfolds him +with love and beauty, it cries back to his passion and pain in winter +and storm; from the solemn mountains it reminds him of himself, an +unconquerable partner of its own eternity. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _Lit. Fam._, iv., 1. + +[2] Since this passage was written, I have met with the following +extract from a letter of Tennyson's, dated in 1874, though with no +direct reference to the experience being associated with nature: "All at +once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of +individuality, the individuality itself has seemed to dissolve and to +fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the +clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond +words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of +personality (if so it were), seeming no extinction, but the only true +life." + +[3] Any student of Dante, who recalls his lovely early sonnet, _Guido, +vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io_, and compares it with Shelley's almost +parallel conception of lovers sailing away in indivisible companionship, +in the latter part of _Epipsychidion_, will obtain an excellent +illustration of this same difference of feeling about the natural +setting for a happy love. In Dante the sentiment is vague, and only what +is peaceful, while Shelley's ideal haunt of lovers admits owls and bats +with the ring-dove, an "old cavern hoar" left unadorned, mossy +mountains, and quivering waves. + +[4] We recall his great countryman's modern cry: "Wohin es geht, wer +weiss es? Erinnert er sich doch kaum, woher er kam." + + + + +[Decoration] + +ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN. + +THE MEMOIRS OF AN OLD GERMAN GALLANT. + + +Any one who has read Freytag's excellent studies of German social life +will recall a curious illustration in his first volume of the lawless +violence of thirteenth-century knighthood, in the imprisonment of Ulrich +von Liechtenstein by his liegeman Pilgerin. The account not only proves +the author's point, but it goes on to suggest a good deal besides. For +the victim's unsophisticated and plaintive manner under his misfortune, +the fashion in which he relates what he suffered, his allusions to his +own life and character, and most of all to the consolations of his love, +are all stimulating to one's curiosity about the writer. When we go to +the mediaeval shelves of a German library we find this curiosity +satisfied in a long poem by the unfortunate Ulrich, and immediately we +are in that chivalric age which wins most of its romantic lustre from +its devotion to womanhood. + +If our guesses at a truth beneath the stories of widowed ladies rescued +from bandits of the forest and recreant knights, or of lovely ladies +rescued from worse than death by the capture of castles through the +prowess of generous champions--stories which every one knows and +incredulously likes--send us to a study of the times when they were +composed, we find that the age, when stripped of romantic +embellishments, in its actual life felt a sentiment for women unequalled +by earlier times. We wonder what caused it. Can it have been the +increase in the culture of the Virgin, that beautiful and beneficent +phase of mediaeval religion? In its larger development, this appears +rather the parallel expression of some common influence, these +adorations of the divine and human conceptions of woman seeming to be +mutually impulsive, and drawn alike from some undetermined tendency of +social and spiritual refinement. Or was it the Crusades? For a German +essayist has suggested that we may count this increase of sentimentalism +among their many influences upon western Europe; the beauty of the women +and the more luxurious habits of the East, its more effeminate +emotionalism, finding impressionable subjects in the hearts of those +stranger knights lying, wakeful for home, beneath southern stars. +Perhaps the conjecture is equally reasonable that the influence came +from French poets who, as they travelled with the early Christian +armies, caught such suggestions from snatches of oriental poetry. Yet it +seems more natural to regard the growth of knightly sentiment toward +ladies as the more delicate manifestation of a spontaneous increase of +social personality, which was stimulated by that general motion in mind +and heart which we observe in the progress of chivalric and crusadal +life, and based, as we must not forget, upon that Teutonic character, +whose ancient deference to woman is recorded by Tacitus side by side +with his account of knighting youthful soldiers with spear and shield. + +But, to waive the question of its origin, we find its main expression in +the old society, in that protracted and conventional wooing which, we +should remember, was not usually directed toward marriage. As gentlemen +grew hyperbolical and fantastic in their professions of regard and +devotion, feminine coquettishness and love of admiration naturally +became fastidious and exacting. Ladies grew arbitrary and capricious, +and began to demand substantial proofs of their lovers' concern for +them. It became a trait of elegant culture for a lady to pose as +inexorable, while still retaining her control over the wooer; while he, +complaisant to the sentimental fashion, sighed in a cheerful melancholy, +obeyed, adored, and waited. The mistress set tasks, often no trifles, +which the loyal subject must perform--hard feats of arms, long and +perilous journeys, abnegations of pride or comfort. When these were +accomplished, he sometimes returned to receive a new test, involving a +continued delay of his reward. These mediaeval ladies were as pitiless as +the mystic spiritual dictatress of Browning's _Numpholeptos_, to their +devotees: + + "Seeking love + At end of toil, and finding calm above + Their passion, the old statuesque regard." + +In the fourteenth century something of this romantic tyranny survived. +We find Chaucer, for instance, in one of his early poems, mentioning in +praise of his heroine that she did not impose dangerous expeditions to +distant countries, or extravagant exploits upon her lover: + + "And saye, 'Sir, be now ryght ware + That I may of you here seyn + Worshippe, or that ye come agayn.'" + +Extended probations, courtships long enough to satisfy Ruskin, were an +established convention. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the seventh book of +_Parzival_, represents Obie as indignantly telling her royal lover, who +has asked her to marry him after what seems to him a reasonable +love-making, that if he had spent his days for five years, in hard +service, under full armor, with distinction, and she had then said "Yes" +to his desire, she would be yielding too soon. + +Jane Austen, in the novel to which Trollope gave the palm of English +fiction before _Henry Esmond_, has expressed in Mr. Collins's address to +Elizabeth exactly the notion of the significance in a rejection, held by +well-bred gentlemen six centuries earlier: + + "'I am not now to learn,' replied Mr. Collins, with a formal + wave of the hand, 'that it is usual with young ladies to + reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to + accept, when he first applies for their favor; and that + sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third + time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have + just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere + long.'" + +But these exercises, as was suggested, were not usually directed toward +the altar. A characteristic of the age is the relation, less or more +sentimental, between a married knight and a lady not his wife; a +relation rather expected of the former, and countenanced in the latter. +This peculiar dual system of domestic and knightly love may be ascribed +to various influences, such as the prosaic influence of early and +dowered marriages, subject to parental arrangement, or the feudal life +which for considerable periods kept gentlemen away from their own homes +in residence in the larger castles, or the idleness of such a society, +or again the popularity of love-lyrics and romance-recitals, which +would tend to sentimentalize their audience. At any rate, it came to be +a fashionable idea that the highest love was independent of marriage, +and the most poetically inclined,--the troubadours and the +minnesingers--were famous for their impassioned and submissive service +of married ladies. It is from these poets' accounts of their own +love-trials that we learn most about this phase of mediaevalism, and in +their contented sufferings we see once more that the joy of all romantic +love is in the lover. + +Although there is danger of generalizing too widely from literary +indications, we may believe that chivalric society was appreciably +marked by formal amatory disciplines. Was it all for nothing these +ceremonial disciplines? Can it be that these Don Quixote prototypes, who +trifled away their frivolous days in lady-worship so trivial, did +anything to help the Prince to take Cinderella from the ashes? The +ashes, then the fairy coach; first the drudge, then the sentimental +plaything, then at last the friend. In those days, as perhaps always, +the lover objectified himself in his love, to the extent of finding in +her his own _ideal feminine_. The very fact that this self, which he +probably called into conscious life only as he created it in another, +represented the most refined side of his thought, as is shown in the old +poets' recurrent epithets of "constant, chaste, good," etc., made the +devotion a refining and dignifying experience, especially for the days +when men and women had less in common than they have now. These +lady-services, where the lover often was denied intimacy for a +considerable time, kept up the illusion which the devotee himself may +have half felt was sentimental and artificial. We may reply to little +Peterkin that some good did come of it at last, even for the more +commonplace of these servants of abstract womanhood. Even if the +"visionary gleam" left no permanent illumination, the men were better +for seeing it brightening through their darkness now and then. At its +best, lady-loving gave the mediaeval knights consideration for women and +a measure of gentleness. If it only stimulated some to fight hard, they +would have fought anyway, and the motive was a shade less brutal than a +directly selfish one. + +But such an eccentric social idea, especially when the poetic +exhilaration of its earlier hours has passed by, was sure to bring out +extravagant sentimentalists, whose romantic sensibility with no check +from practical judgment, ran wild steeplechases of nonsense. Such, for +example, was the Provencal poet, Peter Vidal, one of the most famous +troubadours, who carried his romantic infatuations so far that he became +crack-brained. The name of one of his ladies was Lupa, Mistress Wolf; +and if he had contented himself with assuming a wolfish device for his +coat-of-arms, as he did, and having himself called Mr. Wolf, he would +have done nothing very peculiar, for that age. But it occurred to him +that it would be a graceful symbol to wear a wolf's skin, and after he +had procured one which quite covered him, he got down on all-fours, and +trotted through the street; and all went charmingly until one day, while +he was exhibiting himself in this fashion about his lady's estate, a +pack of dogs was deceived by the metaphor, and the allegorical lover was +badly bitten before rescue arrived. + +But the most detailed example of mediaeval gallantry is that presented in +the work already mentioned, the autobiography of the thirteenth-century +minnesinger, Ulrich von Liechtenstein. The poem is a prolix narrative +of his amatory religion, extending through some sixteen thousand lines, +and containing a large number of lyrics composed in the wooing of two +ladies to whom he consecrated his literary and romantic life. We utterly +tire of the commonplaces in which he praises them. We reflect that not a +single specific incident is ever introduced to illustrate the inner +character of either; the descriptions have no color, except in the +heartlessness of the first beloved, whose virtue and humor alike Ulrich +apparently misses. Yet this presumably undesigned caricature of the more +poetic twelfth-century chivalric love gives important suggestions of the +times, and Ulrich himself is a knight and a poet worth knowing. + +The impression that his romance makes upon a modern reader is something +like that of a beetle hovering above a lily. He played zany to the +gentlemen of an early generation who had amused their leisurely lives by +courtly lady-service; as he emulated their feats of sentimental +gallantry, he stumbled and fell. The odd thing is that after each fall +he called for his tables: "Meet it is I set it down." Undoubtedly many +marvelled and admired, as they looked on: others marvelled and laughed. +Perhaps he mistook the laughter for applause. It may be that the sound +was lost in the applause of his own simple-minded complacency. But yet, +though this gallant was born to a foolish horoscope, his life gained a +good fortune denied multitudes who lived sensibly,--he saw the stars of +his destiny, and he loved them. Their combination caused a silly career, +yet individually they were admirable,--simplicity of nature, theoretical +reverence for womanhood, patient love, regard for stately old usages. +If defective eyesight makes a man fancy a burdock a rosebush, and if he +tends and cherishes the absurd idealization,--at least, the man has a +sentiment for roses. + +The earliest fact which Ulrich has confided to us, is that in his +childhood he used to ride about on sticks, in imitation of the knights, +and while in that simple age he noticed that the poetry which people +read, and the conversation of wise men which he overheard, kept +declaring that no one could become a worthy man without serving +unwaveringly good ladies, and that "no one was right happy unless he +loved as dearly as his own life some one whose virtue made her fitly +called a woman." Whereupon, he thought in his simplicity that since pure +sweet women so ennoble men's lives, he, whatever happened, would always +serve ladies. In such thoughts he grew up until his twelfth year, when +he began a four or five years' term as page to a lady who was good, +chaste, and gentle, complete in virtues, beautiful, and of high rank. +She was destined to give Ulrich much trouble, and the lover's sweet +solicitude began at once, as he started in his teens. For his constant +attention found nothing in her but what was good and charming, and he +feared--this boy of thirteen--that she might not care for him. His ups +and downs of fortune are reported for us in the popular mediaeval form +(used for example by Map, and one as late as by Villon), of a dialogue +between his heart and his body. Heart is hopeful, but Body has the +better wit. Yet even if she is too high-born to notice him, he will +always serve her late and early, and in the interim between his childish +page-waiting, and the bold knighthood to be his when he grows up, he +gathers pretty summer flowers, and carries them to her. When she took +them in her white hand, he was happy. + +As the time came near for him to leave her household, the youth grew +emotional: when at table water was poured over those lovely white hands, +he transformed her finger-glass into a tumbler. A German dry-as-dust has +laughed at Ulrich for this. + +But the tender little Teutonic blossom could unfold its youth no longer +in the sunshine of its lady-desire. The stern father appeared, and +transferred the lover, his "grief showing well the power of love," to +the service of an Austrian Margrave. "My body departed, but my heart +remained"; and Ulrich pauses for a moment to point out the strangeness +of the paradox. "Whenever I rode or walked, my heart never left her; it +saw her at all times, night and day." + +His new master was a knightly gentleman, professedly a lady-servant, and +the lessons that Ulrich had caught as a child from the conversation in +his father's hall were reinforced by this Margrave Henry. He was taught +the best style of riding, the refinements of address to ladies, and +poetical composition, and assured that whoever would live worthily must +be a lady's true subject. "It adorns a youth--sweet speech to women.... +To succeed well with them, have sweet words with true deeds." + +After four years of such instruction, his father's death called him home +to inherit his property, and he spent the three years that followed by +tourneying in the noviciate of knighthood. At Vienna, in 1222, during +the great festival in celebration of the marriage of Leopold's daughter, +where five thousand knights were present, and tourneying and other +entertainments of chivalry were mingled with much dancing, Ulrich made +one of the two hundred and fifty squires who received their spurs. But +the occasion was otherwise memorable to him, for here he saw his lady +again. She recognized him, and told one of his friends of her pleasure +at seeing become a knight one who had been her page when a little +fellow. The mere simple foolish thought that she would perhaps have him +for her own knight, as he tells us, was sweet and good, and put him in +high spirits. Indeed this was all the contentment which the blushing +young knight desired: + + "Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in + dreams?" + +Ulrich did not wake from his to do anything so practical as to speak +face to face with her, but gaily rode off to a summer of adventure in +twelve tournaments, wherein he invariably fared well, thanks to his +devotion. + +German sentiment has always shown a butterfly's sensibility to winter +and rough weather, and with the last of autumn, Ulrich's spirit grows +heavy. He longs to see his lady, he knows that now he would speak to +her. There are no tourneys to distract him, and in care of heart he +rose, lay down, sat, and walked. As it chanced, a cousin of his knew +this only lovely one, and the taxing office of a lover's confidante fell +heavily upon her, and remained for some years. After beating about the +bush with her for a while, he confessed the truth, only to receive +point-blank advice to give up so hopeless an aspiration. Never! on the +contrary she must help him in his perseverance by visiting the lady and +presenting her with a copy of the verses which Ulrich has been composing +for her as a confession of his love. His cousin consented, but her +mission resulted in a scornful rejection of the suit, softened by +compliments upon the poem. He was advised to abandon his quest, for the +lady seriously objected to his mouth. "Nothing but grim death can drive +me from her; I will serve her all my life," he exclaimed. But he felt +that the criticism upon his mouth was a fair one, and he determined to +pay attention to it. + +Poor Ulrich, with so much sentiment, yet with such physical +deficiencies; with such correct perception of the use of lips, yet +having such uninviting ones of his own. In one of his songs he tells us: + + When a lady on her lover + Looks and smiles, and for a kiss + Shapes her lips, he can discover + Never joy so great; his bliss + Transcends measure: + O'er all pleasures is his pleasure. + +But until he was quite in his twenties, his experience of this +blessedness must have been of those + + "By hopeless fancy feigned + On lips that are for others"; + +for Ulrich confesses to the deformity of what he calls three lips; that +is, a bad hare-lip. + +But this protagonist of mediaeval Quixotism has energy and nerve, as well +as sentiment. In spite of his cousin's dissuasions (this plain-minded +lady tells him to take the body God has given him, instead of arrogantly +improving upon his creation), Ulrich rides off to find the best surgeon +in the country, and submit to an operation. But the doctor decides that +the time of year is unsuitable; he must wait until winter is past, keep +his three lips until May. + +At last spring comes and Ulrich returns to the doctor. Upon the way he +meets a page of his lady's, to whom he confides the purpose of his +journey, and whose presence he secures as a witness. Early one Monday +morning the surgeon received his patient, laid out his instruments +before him, and produced several straps. At sight of the latter, martial +dignity recoiled, and Ulrich refused to allow himself to be bound. It +was to no purpose that he was told of the danger involved in even a +twitch; he said with spirit that he came of his own will, and if +anything happened amiss he alone would be to blame. Whereupon he sat +calmly upon a bench, and without a tremor allowed the surgeon to "cut +his mouth above his teeth and farther up. He cut like a master, I +endured like a man." + +Ulrich describes the discomfort which he experienced during the healing +of the wound, in details which give an unpleasant notion of the methods +of mediaeval surgery. As he was able to eat and drink scarcely anything, +he wasted in flesh, and his only comfort was the thought of her for whom +he had suffered. During the confinement, he composed another dancing +song in her honor, which, after his recovery he entrusted to his cousin, +who forwarded it with a letter of her own. Presently an answer came. The +lady is to spend the next Monday night near by, in the course of a +journey, and she will be very happy to see her friend's relative, and +learn from himself how things are. Time changes the significance of +letters, among other things. This lady-like note, which gave such a +heart-leap to Ulrich's sentimental hope, interests scholars to-day as +being the earliest prose letter in German. + +On Tuesday morning, when Ulrich appeared at the chapel where the lady's +chaplain was singing mass before her, she bowed without speaking. After +the service she rode off, and Ulrich had found no chance to meet her. +His cousin, however, told him that everything was favorable, and that +the lady would allow him to ride with her that day. So he galloped off +in gay spirits, and soon overtook the cavalcade. But alas for his +self-possession; when he reaches her his head drops and he cannot find a +single word. Another knight was riding with her. Ulrich's heart makes a +speech to his body, reproaching it for cowardice; "If you go on without +speaking to her now, she will never be good to you again." So he rides +up to her and gets a sweet glance, but still he cannot speak. Heart +nudges Body and whispers: "Speak now, speak now, speak now!" All through +the day Body tries, he tries over and over, but he cannot. Alas, as a +poet of his own day said: + + "Mit gedanken wirt erworben niemer wibes kint: + . . . . . . . + Des enkan si wizzen niht."[5] + +When they reach their lodging-place for the night, he wishes to assist +the only one in dismounting, but she is not sufficiently flattered by +his attentions to accept them; she says that he is sick and useless, and +not strong enough to help her down. The attending gentlemen laugh +merrily at that, and the ever sweet, constant, good, and so forth, as +she slides from her horse, catches hold of Ulrich's hair, without any +one's noticing it (however that can have been done), and pulls a lock +out by the roots. "Take this for being afraid," she whispers; "I have +been deceived by other accounts of you." Reproaching himself, and +wishing God to take his life, he stood gawkily where she left him, +absorbed in remorse for his awkwardness, until a knight admonished him +to step aside and allow the ladies to go by to their rooms. Whereupon he +rode off to his inn, and swore that he was ill. + +As he tossed restlessly through the night, he talked with himself as +usual, lamenting his birth, and assuring himself that should he live a +thousand years he could never again be happy. "Not to speak one word to +her! My worthlessness has lost my lady." But in the morning he rode up +to her on the street. No silence this time: "Thy grace, gracious lady! +Graciously be gracious to me. Thou art my joy's abiding place, the +festival of my joys." Like many shy people, Ulrich talked fluently +enough when he was once started, and he was only in the midst of his +protestations when the lady interrupted him. "Hush, you are too young; +ride on before me. Talking may hurt you, it never can help you. It would +be amiss for others to hear what you are saying. Leave me in peace; you +grow troublesome." Then she beckoned to another knight, and directed +that she should never again be attended by less than two gentlemen. + +It was in the book of lady-service that no repulse was a discouragement. +"This morning," says the heroine in Bret Harte's parody of _Jane Eyre_, +"this morning he flung his boot at me! Now I know he loves me." Ulrich +rode off, thinking that he had met with good success in telling her a +part of his love, before the interruption. + +Another summer passed in tourneying, and during another winter he tried +to amuse himself by making poetry for his lady. This time he sent her a +more pretentious tribute, his first "Buechlein," a poem of some four +hundred lines. Like most of its kind, it is formal, sentimentally +prolix, and supplicatory, yet not without a certain pleasant interest. +He begs her from the wealth of her loveliness to grant him some trifling +favor which she never can miss: + + What is worse the bloomy heath, + If a few flowers for the sake + Of a garland some one break? + +He wishes it were himself that the messenger is about to deliver to her: + + Little book, I fain would be, + When thou comest, changed to thee. + When her fair white hand receives + Thine assemblement of leaves, + And her glances, shyly playing, + Thee so happy are surveying. + And her red mouth comes close by, + I would steal a kiss, or die. + +But the unsatisfactory manuscripts were returned at once. The lady told +the bearer that she recognized the merit of the poetry, but she would +have nothing to do with it. Like many poets of those days when monks and +ladies constituted the educated classes, like his predecessor, the great +master of high mediaeval romance, Ulrich could neither read nor write, +and for such delicate personal affairs as correspondence with his lady +he depended upon his confidential clerk. This confidant of his passion +was absent when the "Buechlein" came back, but the eager eyes of the poet +looked through the pages over which they had evidently wandered before +he dismissed his labors to their fate, repeating the lines from memory +as he looked over the characters which should interpret his loving +patience to the lady who would not let him speak it to her; and as he +looked, he detected an addition to what he had sent, an appendix of ten +lines. The slighted letter found a home in his bosom, and for ten days +he awaited his secretary's return. His happy hopes--those ten days were +so cheerful. But when the little response was at last interpreted, away +with hopes and cheerfulness. To make plainness trebly plain, his cruel +correspondent had copied out three times the sentiment: "Whoever desires +what he should not, has refused himself." + +Summer again, and the lover has diversion in the sports of chivalry. Any +one interested in the details of mediaeval tournaments will find in +Ulrich's narrative a valuable and lively record of the tourney held at +Friesach in 1224. His sense for material splendor is well shown by his +full accounts of the costuming and tent equipments. The trustworthiness +of the minor points may be questioned when we recall that the +_Frauendienst_ was composed more than thirty years later, but as a +sketch of thirteenth-century chivalry, no doubt it is accurate. The +heralds running hither and thither, and shouting as they arranged for +the contests, with their cries to "good gallant knights to risk honor, +goods, and life for true women"; the squires crowding the ways, loud +noise of drums, flute-playing, blowing of horns, great trumpeting,--we +have the old picture, made vivid in English by Chaucer in the _Knight's +Tale_, and by Tennyson. + +Ulrich rode in disguise, prompted by the sentimentalist's +self-consciousness, always delighted in attracting attention and making +himself talked of. According to his own account, he did good hearty +tourneying, breaking ten spears with one antagonist, seven with +another, five with a third, six with a fourth, in a single day. The +meeting continued for ten days, and Ulrich grows prolix in his +particulars, though he is modest enough about his own exploits, +pronouncing himself neither the best nor the worst of the participants. +The accidents of jousting, through which many were left at Friesach with +broken limbs and other injuries, and the misfortunes which compelled +others to have recourse to the Jews for loans, did not disturb the +musical contestant. At the end he rode cheerfully off to his cousin with +another song for the same inattentive ear. She promised to report, as +she sent it, that no one in the great tourney had excelled him. + +This lyric is the poem by which modern German students of their old +literature have been best pleased, and we shall hardly dissent from +Scherer's commendation. For it is both a typical minnesong, in its +treatment of nature and love, and also fortunate in its union of +sentiment, force, finish, and a ring of personal meaning. Omitting two +of its stanzas, it goes as follows: + + Now the little birds are singing + In the wood their darling lay; + In the meadow flowers are springing, + Confident in sunny May. + So my heart's bright spirits seem + Flowers her goodness doth embolden; + For in her my life grows golden, + As the poor man's in his dream. + + Ah, her sweetness! Free from turning + Is her true and constant heart; + Till possession banish yearning, + Let my dear hope not depart. + Only this her grace I'll pray: + Wake me from my tears, and after + Sighs let comfort come and laughter; + Let my joy not slip away. + + Blissful May, the whole world's anguish + Finds in thee its single weal; + Yet the pain whereof I languish, + Thou, nor all the world, canst heal. + What least joy may ye impart, + She so dear and good denied me? + In her comforts ever hide me, + All my life her loving heart. + +But elegant and tender as in the original these verses are, their object +returned a slighting answer, and added that the messenger must not be +sent again. People would come to have suspicions. Ulrich made another +set of verses, and went off to another joust. There one of his fingers +was seriously wounded, and in his anxiety to save it he offered a +surgeon a thousand pounds for a cure. The treatment was unsuccessful, +and, after showing a good deal of temper, he went to a new surgeon, on +the way beguiling himself of his pain by composing another poem upon the +old theme. But a shock was at hand; a friend divulged to him his closely +kept secret. "This lady [still unnamed to us] is the May-time of your +heart." What though this friend believed that the lady cared for him? +"My head sank down, my heart sighed, my mouth was dumb," in terror lest +it might be through his fault that the object of his devotion had been +discovered. For secrecy was the first of a chivalric lover's virtues, +even about the object of his passion. Yet the pain was not without +compensation, inasmuch as this gentleman, who declared that he had +already kept the secret for two years and a half, volunteered to make +another appeal. So off to the home of the inexorable went anew the +story of unflinching devotion, the loss of a finger in a tournament for +her glory not unmentioned. Ulrich's cause was pleaded with fervor, and +in winning style. The lover was praised and prayed for. The song he had +sent was even sung, instead of being formally delivered. A faithful and +versatile legate was this proxy wooer, but it was all to no purpose. The +lady declared that she would grow old in entire ignorance of any love +but her husband's. She warned the messenger that Ulrich would find +himself in trouble if he should persist in annoying her with such +sentimental folly; she would not receive such attentions from the +highest-born--not even from a king. + +The news saddened, but did not cast down. "What if she refuses me?" +cried Ulrich; "that shall not disturb me. If she hates me to-day, I will +serve her so that later she shall like me. Were I to give up for a cold +greeting, could a little word drive me away from my high hope, I should +have no sound mind or manly mood. Whatever the true, sweet one does to +me, for that I must be grateful." But now another summer was over, and +he diverted himself by a pilgrimage to Rome. After Easter he returned, +on his way composing this sweetly conceived and rather pretty lyric: + + Ah, see, the touch of spring + Hath graced the wood with green; + And see, o'er the wide plain + Sweet flowers on every spray. + The birds in rapture sing; + Such joy was never seen: + Departed all their pain, + Comfort has come with May. + + May comforts all that lives, + Except me, love-sick man; + Love-stricken is my heart, + This drives all joys away. + When life some pleasure gives, + In tears my heart will scan + My face, and tell its smart; + How then can pleasure stay? + + Vowed constantly to woo + High love am I; that good + While I pursue, I see + No promise of success. + Pure lady, constant, true, + The crown of womanhood, + Think graciously of me, + Through thy high worthiness. + +The knight passed his summer in Steierland under arms, and after +pleasant experiences he sent his messenger again, only to have his suit +repelled with the same coldness and decision as before. The report was +even more discouraging, for the lady, who had been told of his losing a +finger in her service, had now learned that he still had it; nor was she +moved by the assurance that it was almost useless. The desire to keep +the wounded member had led him to large expense of money and time, but +he cared for it no longer. He set about the composition of another long +elegy, which explains how his heart loves her, and weeps for her favor, +as a poor and orphaned child weeps after comfort; so ardently he loves +her, that he gladly sacrifices anything, and as a pledge of his constant +fidelity, he sends her one of his fingers, lost in that service for +which it was born. + +After the poem was ready, he directed a goldsmith to make a fine case, +in which he enclosed it. But he put in something more; he had the +convalescent finger amputated, and sent it to the chiding critic as a +proof that he had not lied in saying that he had lost it for her. Yet +even this failed to please so unsympathetic a mistress. She said she +wondered how any one could be so foolish as to cut off his finger: he +would have been able to serve ladies better by keeping it. However, she +would retain the token of his consideration, but a thousand years of his +service would be lost on her. Ulrich was jubilant, for he was confident +that with this memento, she would always think of him.[6] + +Now a large idea visits this sanguine gentleman. Gone to Rome on a +pilgrimage, that is what he will pretend; he rigs himself out with a +wallet and staff which he obtains from a priest, and trudges off. But +something more novel and magnificent is haunting his ingenious mind. It +is to Venice that he goes--cautiously, so as not to be observed. Upon +his arrival, he takes lodgings in an out-of-the-way inn, so that no one +may hear of him. There he spends the winter, making a liberal +expenditure for costumes for himself and a retinue. He dresses himself +as Queen Venus, in complete feminine attire, even to the long braids of +hair which figure so prominently in the descriptions of the ladies of +that age. + +When spring came, he sent a courier over the route that he intended to +take on his journey homeward, with a circular-letter that contained a +list of thirty places at which Lady Venus would appear, and joust with +all contestants. A ring which makes beautiful and keeps true love, was +offered to whoever might break a spear against her. If she should cast a +knight down, he should become a loyal knight to women everywhere; if he +were to overthrow her, she would give him her horse. But to no one would +she show her face or hand. + +Thirty days later he started on his disguised errantry. His retinue +consisted of a marshal, a cook, a banner-bearer, two trumpeters, three +boys to take charge of three sumpters, three squires for the three +war-steeds, four finely dressed squires, each holding three spears, two +maids--good-looking, he tells us,--and two fiddlers. + + Who raised my spirits, fiddling loud + A marching tune, which made me proud. + +Behind these he rode himself, dressed, like the entire cavalcade, +entirely in white,--cape, hood, shirt, coat reaching to his feet, +embroidered silk gloves, and those hair-braids hanging to his waist. "In +my love-longing heart, I rejoiced thus to serve my lady." + +The narrative of this "Venus-journey" is prolonged, detailed, and +tedious, and only two or three episodes need be mentioned. At Treviso, a +crowd of women are gathered about his lodging, when he comes out on his +way to early mass, and he takes comfort in thinking how well-dressed he +is. In the church, a countess suggests kissing him, conformably to the +kiss of peace custom; the attraction is stronger than the desire for +disguise, and he lifts his veil. She sees that Lady Venus is a man, but +she kisses him nevertheless. "That raised my spirits," Ulrich confides +to us, "for a lady's kiss is delightful"; and he goes on to say that +"every one who ever kissed a lady's mouth knows that nothing is so sweet +as the kiss of a noble lady. A high-born true woman who has a red mouth +and a fair body, whenever she kisses a man he can judge of a lady's +kiss, and of it he is ever glad. A lady's kiss is still better than +good, and it fills a heart with joy." No wonder that many ladies +collected at his inn, to bid so sentimental a knight God-speed. From +their prayers he assures us that he gained good fortune, "for God cannot +slight ladies' petitions," an imputation of gallantry to God, for which +we find curious mediaeval parallels. + +Wherever the knight goes, numerous contestants are awaiting him, in this +idle age when no one had anything to do. Some of these, also, assume +disguises, one as a monk, another in female costume, his shield and +spear aesthetic with flowers. But the travelling combatant is always the +winner. At one point during the journey he steals off for a couple of +days to a place which he has never mentioned previously: namely, to his +home. The love-stricken lady-servant speaks with the most unaffected +simplicity of the joy with which he rode away to see his wife: + + "Who was just as dear to me as she could be.... The good + woman received me just as a lady should receive her very dear + husband. I had made her happy by my visit. My arrival had + taken away her sadness. She was glad to see me, and I was + glad to see her; with kisses the good woman received me. The + true woman was glad to see me, and joyously I took my ease + and pleasure there two days." + +This appears tautological, but it also seems sincere. + +But a wound was in store for his sensibility. One day he had gone to a +retired place for a bath, and his attendant had gone to bring a suit. +While thus left quite alone and unprotected, a lady sent by her servant +a suit of female garments, a piece of tapestry, a coat, a girdle, a +fine buckle, a garland, a ring with a ruby red as a lady's sweet mouth, +and a letter. To receive such a gift from a lady not one's love was +treason. He bade the page take the things away, but he would not; nay, +he presently returned with two others, carrying fresh beautiful roses, +which they strewed all about Ulrich in the bath, while he raged and +fumed to think of the insult offered to his unprotected condition. To +think of receiving a gift from any but his own lady! And, of all gifts, +a ring! + +The next present that came was received very differently. After all +these years of neglect, the mistress of his life sent Ulrich an +affectionate message, and a ring which her white hand had worn for ten +years, as a token that she took part in the honors which he was gaining, +and rejoiced in his worthiness. Possibly the knight's name was gaining +currency as genuinely valorous. But fancy his ecstasy! "This little ring +shall ever lift up my heart. Well for me that I was born, and that I +found a lady so true, sweet, blissful, lady of all my joys, brightness +of my heart's joys," and so forth. He was informed that many knights +were waiting to contest with him at Vienna. "What harm can happen to me, +since my lady is gracious? If for every knight there were three, I could +master them all." + +Outside of amorous and knightly themes, Ulrich's mind is not active, but +he occasionally shows a philosophical observation on social topics, as +in the present context, where he comments on female vanity in dress: + + "Woman's nature, young and old, likes many clothes. Even if + she does not wear them all, she is pleased to have them, so + that she can say, 'an if I liked, I could be better dressed + than other people.' Good clothes are becoming to beautiful + women, and my foolish masculine opinion is that a man should + take pleasure in dressing them well, since he should hold his + wife as his own body." + +Certainly Ulrich took pleasure in dressing himself well. + +The Venus-journey ended, and Ulrich counted up the results. Two hundred +and seventy-one of his spears had been broken, and he had broken three +hundred and seven; he had brought honor upon his lady by his loyalty and +valor; and had shown her constant devotion, even though he had +momentarily fallen in love with a bewitching woman at one of his +stopping-places, and taken advantage of his disguise to kiss various +fair ones at mass. Is it possible that the anonymous heroine heard of +such trivial infidelities? At any rate, the next visit of the messenger +brought a bitter dismissal, with cruel charges of inconstancy. She would +always hate him, and never hold him dear; she was angry with herself for +giving him a ring; she bade him return it at once. Alas, poor Ulrich! +Never had he entertained a false thought; if he had ever been guilty of +one, he would in no wise have survived it. "I sat weeping like a child; +from weeping I was almost blind. I wrung my hands pitilessly; in my +distress my limbs cracked as one snaps dry wood." Well may the poet +declare that exhibition of grief no child's play. As the lover and his +bosom friend sat weeping together, Ulrich's brother-in-law admonished +him that such behavior disgraced the name of knight; moreover, there was +no reason for melancholy now, when the champion ought to be happy in the +fine reputation just made. "If women hear how you are behaving, they +will always hate you for this weak mood." Ulrich tried to tell about his +grief for the lady whom he had served so long, but the strain was too +great: "The blood in truth burst out from my mouth and my nose, so that +I was all blood." It was perhaps natural for his friend to thank God +that "before his death he had been permitted to see one man who truly +loves." Yet he bade him be courageous. "Nothing helps so much with +ladies as good courage. Melancholy doesn't succeed with them at all. +Joyousness always has served well with women." + +Water is stable compared with Ulrich's temperament. Close upon the +anguish of this renewed rejection he goes home for a ten-days' visit +with his wife,--"my dear wife, who could not be dearer to me even though +I had another woman for the lady of my life." Within eight lines this +mercurial poet speaks of his comfort with his wife, and of the suffering +of his love-languishing heart. + +Another message from his dream brought a renewed expression of coldness. +She felt kindly to him, but she never would grant favor to any one. But +another song and messenger secure at last the promise of an interview. +Yet notice the conditions. Evidently this lady was a humorist, to whom +her former page was amusing when her less complaisant mood did not find +him tiresome. And perhaps she thought that he could not accept her +terms. She says she will see him if he will come the next Sunday morning +before breakfast, dressed in poor clothes, and in company with a squad +of lepers who have a camp near her castle. But even then he is to +indulge in no hope of her love. The distance is so great that he thinks +he will be unable to cover it in time; but he is told that he must, for +"women are very strange; they wish men constantly to carry out their +desires, and to any one who fails to do so they are not well disposed." +On Saturday he rode thirty-six miles, lost two horses by the forced +journey, very likely over rough country, and was wearied by the exertion +of so hard an effort. But he succeeded, and as soon as they reach the +neighborhood of the castle, he and his two companions put on poor +clothes--the shabbiest they could procure,--and with leper cups and long +knives for their safety among such outcasts of society, they go to the +spot where thirty lepers are huddled together. Mediaeval charity and +religion are illustrated by this incident; the miserable beggars explain +that a lady of the castle is ill, and therefore they often receive food +and money in recompense for their prayers for her recovery. Beating his +clapper like one of them, he goes toward the castle gate, and meets an +envoy maid who bids him beware of failing to obey every command +literally, and adds that her mistress will not see him yet awhile. That +personal vanity which always marked him had submitted to stains of herbs +to disguise his face, as well as to miserable and ragged dress, and off +he went, in the servitude of love, and sat among the lepers, ate and +drank among them--nay, even went about begging for scraps, which, +however, he threw under a bush. The foul odors and the filthiness of the +wretches about him made the day almost insufferable, but at last night +came, and he hid himself in a field of grain, getting well stung by +insects and drenched in a cold storm. But he told himself that "whoever +has in his troubles sweet anticipation, he can endure them." In the +morning he went to the castle again, and was encouraged to believe that +he would be received that evening. So he returned and ate with the +beggars; then he escaped to a wood, and with true old German +nature-sentiment, he sat down where the sun fell through the trees and +listened to the birds--many were singing--and forgot the cold. + +Toward evening he secured another interview with the maid, and received +directions for the night. He and his companion hid in the ditch before +the castle, skulking from the observation of the patrol, until well +after dark; then when the signal light appeared at a certain window he +went beneath it, and found a rope made of clothes hanging down. In this +he fastened himself, and hands above began to raise him, but when he was +half way up they could raise him no farther, and he was let down to the +ground. This happened three times; and yet, guileless Ulrich, you had no +glimmering that perhaps it was a joke? The companion was lighter than +his lord, and it occurred to the two that they had better change places. +So they did, and the substitute was lifted into the window by the +waiting ladies above, and then Ulrich himself arrived there. He was +given a coat (an accident below had compelled him to leave his on the +ground), and, blissful moment, he was ushered into the presence of the +woman whom he had so long served without even a glimpse. It was a +brilliant social scene which broke upon those enamoured eyes, indeed too +brilliant and too social to correspond with a lover's sentiment for +"dual solitude." His soul's desire, richly dressed, sat upon a couch, +surrounded by a bevy of ladies. Her husband, it is true, was not +present, but with an absence of tact (as it must have seemed to Ulrich) +she fell to talking about him and her complete happiness in his love. +Their mutual confidence is so strong that he is quite willing to have +her receive any visitors whom she pleases, and she added that her true +mind served him better than any safeguard which he could put upon her. +Awkward as such a line of conversation made it, Ulrich began to tell the +story of his heart, and entreats her to respond to his devotion. She +assured him that she had no thought of ever loving him; she had +consented to this interview only to assure him of her kindly feeling, +and satisfy him from her own lips that he must cherish no romantic hope. +If he continued to ask her to love him, he should lose her favor. "I was +horrified," he declares, "and started up at the threat." + +At this point in the interview he withdraws to talk to his cousin, who +was with other ladies in an adjoining apartment, and who advised him to +return and plead again. But an abrupt dismissal sends him into a moody +reflection, which culminates in a desperate resolve. Now or never; he +sends her word of his determination, and then rushes in and tells her +that if she will not say she loves him, he will kill himself then and +there. The lady sees that such a suicide would be compromising, and +tries to persuade him that perhaps she may some time. Ah, no such +coyness; she must confess her love to-night. Finally, as a last +resource, she thinks of employing the usual right of a courted +woman--putting her lover to a test of his devotion. He has already given +her so many that a trifling, a merely formal one will serve now. Let him +just get into the clothes-rope again and be lowered part way down, and +pulled back; then she will say she loves him. A glimmer of suspicion +flits over his mind, but she gives him her hand as a pledge, and he gets +into the rope. Now he is hanging outside the window, still holding the +dear hand, and such sweet things as she whispers, as she leans out--no +knight was ever so dear to her; now comes his contentment, all his +troubles are past now! She even coddles his chin with her disengaged +hand, and bids him kiss her. Kiss her! In his joy he lets go the hand he +was holding, to throw both arms about her neck, when suddenly he is +dropped to the ground so swiftly "that he ran great peril of his +life."[7] + +In the rooms above a score of voices ringing with laughter, on the +ground a too credulous child of Mars and Venus, cursing his day. Ulrich +spies a deep pool and is about to drown himself, when his companion +arrives with a little present sent by the lady. She promises--(the +gentleman afterward confesses that this is a falsehood of his own to +preserve Ulrich from despair)--that if he will return in three weeks, +she will assure him of her real affection. But now it is near day, and +they must hasten off; providentially there is a tournament awaiting +them, which will distract his attention. But he sends his friend back to +have a talk with the lady, who is in a rather humorous mood, and says +that Ulrich made so much noise when he fell that one of the guard +thought it was the Devil. But though she laughs, she evidently has had +enough of such fun, for she tells the messenger that if his lord wishes +her favor he must make the journey over-sea. Ulrich agrees to go, but he +is warned against the almost hopeless dangers of that most formidable of +pilgrimages; he is reminded that no one ever took such a perilous +journey except for God, and that he would surely sacrifice his soul, if +he lost his life thus for a woman. + +But one grows tired of the story, which runs on with ups and downs, over +the long thirteen years through which Ulrich served this lady. Toward +the end of the period he was plainly growing impatient. He wrote more +lyrics, which suggest here and there that devotion without love in +return is foolish, and that he is contemplating a change. Finally he +conceived himself treated shamefully (we are not told what the +discourtesy was which he could not idealize), and he made a final break +with his old worship. But now the time passed wearily, and he felt that +he must still have a lady to serve. "How joyfully once the days went by; +alas, no longer have I any service to render. How happy ladies' service +makes one." But the knight has learned the lesson of his trials, and +this time he arranges for a judicious passion. He runs over all his +female acquaintance, to see which of them he had best select. Finally he +fixes upon one who, of course, is beautiful and good, and wholly free +from change; who has finished manners and gentle ways, chastity and +force of character, and to her he offers his service, which she accepts. + +From this point in Ulrich's memoirs we have an increasing number of +lyrics; he likes them all, but complains that one or two were not +appreciated by the public, though whoever was clever enough to +understand his poetry, he tells us, did appreciate it. Perhaps we are +not clever enough to understand it all; but some of the songs, as he +himself says, "are good for dancing and very cheerful; the martial ones +were gladly sung when in the jousts fire sprung from helmets," and more +than one of his poems is a contribution to the graceful though minor +work of the later minnesingers. For example: + + Summer-hued, + Is the wood, + Heath and field; debonair + Now is seen + White, brown, green, + Blue, red, yellow, everywhere. + Everything + You see spring + Joyously, in full delight; + He whose pains + Dear love deigns + With her favor to requite-- + Ah, happy wight. + + Whosoe'er + Knows love's care, + Free from care well may be; + Year by year + Brightness clear + Of the May shall he see. + Blithe and gay + All the play + Of glad love shall he fulfil; + Joyous living + Is in the giving + Of high love to whom she will, + Rich in joys still. + + He's a churl + Whom a girl + Lovingly shall embrace, + Who'll not cry + "Blest am I"-- + Let none such show his face. + This will cure you + (I assure you) + Of all sorrows, all alarms; + What alloy + In his joy + On whom white and pretty arms + Bestow their charms? + +And again: + + Sweet, in whom all things behooving, + Virtue, brightness, beauty, meet, + Little troubles thee this loving, + Thou art safe above it, sweet. + My love-trials couldst thou feel + From thy dainty lips should steal + Sighs like mine, as deep and real. + + Sir, what is love? Prithee, answer; + Is it maid or is it man? + And explain, too, if you can, sir, + How it looks; though I began + Long ago, I ask in vain; + Everything you know explain, + That I may avoid its pain. + + Sweet, love is so strong and mighty + That all countries own her sway; + Who can speak her power rightly? + Yet I'll tell thee what I may. + She is good and she is bad; + Makes us happy, makes us sad; + Such moods love always had. + + Sir, can love from care beguile us + And our sorrowing distress? + With fair living reconcile us, + Gaiety and worthiness? + If her power hath controlled + Everything as I've just told, + Sure her grace is manifold. + + Sweet, of love there's more to tell thee; + Service she with rapture pays; + With her joys and honors dwell; we + Learn from her dear virtue's ways. + Mirth of heart and bliss of eye + Whom she loves shall satisfy; + Nor will she higher good deny. + + Sir, I fain would win her wages, + Her approval I would seek; + Yet distress my mind presages; + Ah, for that I am too weak. + Pain I never can sustain. + How may I her favors gain? + Sir, the way you must explain. + + Sweet, I love thee; be not cruel; + Thou to love again must try. + Make a unit of our dual, + That we both become an "I." + Be thou mine and I'll be thine. + "Sir, not so; the hope resign. + Be your own, and I'll be mine." + +The latter part of this prolix autobiography is occupied by a detailed +account of a long tourneying trip, which he contrived as a parallel to +his Venus-journey, this time under the disguise of King Arthur. But the +narration of that ends at last, and Ulrich becomes reflective upon the +seasons and his lady. "Whoever sorrows at winter, and is made glad by +summer, lives like the bird which rejoices in sunny May. How distressing +is bad weather! Yet whatever the weather, her goodness gives me joy +which storms cannot disturb." Presently he tells us his feelings about +the life around him, for the social critics of mediaevalism felt the +inequalities of fortune and happiness quite as strongly as do the +social critics of to-day. Some time earlier Ulrich, in criticising a +number of knights whom he met, showed a noteworthily refined feeling for +generous qualities, and resistance against hardness and selfish aims. In +spite of this love-singer's belief in cheerfulness ("no one does well to +be sad except about sins," he wrote), the roughness of the age troubled +him, as it had troubled earlier and greater authors of his nation. +"Instead of being good, the rich work one another harm; the only +profession is that of plundering, the service of ladies is forsaken. The +young men are spendthrifts, and with pillaging consume their youth." +Indeed, the golden hour of chivalry had struck when Ulrich wrote, in his +later life, just past the middle of the thirteenth century. But this +sentimental absurdity, whose fanciful devotion and melodramatic moonings +we find so preposterous, kept a strain of the higher manhood. He was +good-hearted; he believed in the refined side of life, so far as he knew +it; in a rough time and place he loved gentleness; though born with a +large streak of the fool, he had also a pleasant element of the +simple-minded gentleman; and as he grew old amid fading ideals, over +which he had hung with effeminately romantic faith, the brutal and +joyless hardness of men perplexed and saddened him. Yet his simplicity +was his trouble's best physician; nature, the beauty and goodness of +true womanhood, his sense of inner virtue as opposed to worldly +estimates, and his poetry--in these he found comfort. + +"Whatever people have done, I have been happy and sung of my love." + +After Ulrich has told the story of his worldly and sentimental career, +he stops to think over the cause to which that career has been +consecrated. Has he made a mistake? Never! "When beauty and goodness +unite in woman, she is admirable; one whose goodness is clothed with a +noble spirit wears the best of garments. Even though a woman has little +beauty, if she has the raiment of goodness, men yet call her fair. Be +sure that no clothes better become a lady than goodness--it is better +than beauty, though that is excellent. By goodness a poor woman will +become truly a lady, and this the rich cannot be without it; nay, +shapely and noble though she may be, without this she is still no +womanly woman." ... + +"Whoever loves the sight of pretty women," he goes on, "and will not +notice their goodness but only their bright charm, is like one who +gathers pretty flowers for their bright beauty's sake, and twines them +into a garland; then, finding that they are not fragrant, he is sorry +that he gathered them. But whoever understands plants, lets those grow +which have no sweet odor, and breaks off fragrant flowers." + +For over thirty years he has served ladies, and he knows no truth so +certain as this, that nothing equals the mutual happiness of a true +woman and a loving man. + +Yet sentiment can play only a minor part in life, after all. There are +four main objects of exertion, and upon these, as he ends his book, the +poet stops to reflect: The grace of God, honor, ease, and wealth. Some +strive for one, some for another, while others aim ineffectively at all, +win none, and hate themselves. + +And what has this old German gallant to say of himself? In all these +revelations of his life, we catch no suggestions of selfishness or +meanness, but while fancying himself enacting high chivalric drama, he +has been wearing cap, and bells, and motley, lance in his left hand, a +bauble in his right. Then, too, he has been so self-satisfied with his +role. Well, the play is finished now, and Ulrich is sitting in the +green-room, thinking. His coat is flung aside, with one last jingle the +bells fall to the floor, he has dropped his bauble, and as he bows his +head and in his musing runs his fingers through his hair, the coxcomb +falls too. It is here in the green-room that he speaks his epilogue: + + "Of this last class am I; I have lived my life trying not to + give up the three for any one. I desired and even hoped that + I might obtain all the four. This hope has still deceived me, + and I am made a fool by it. One day I will serve Him who has + given me soul, life, thought, whatever I have; the next as a + man I will strive for honor; then for wealth; on the fourth + day I am for ease. Thus inconstant, I have passed my entire + life." + +Nothing accomplished--nothing even steadily aimed at. Nothing? With +characteristic buoyancy the gray-haired poet puts aside this sombre mood +of dissatisfaction with his fifty odd years. For in one point, at least, +he has been true. In this book, written only because his lady commanded, +he has spoken very many sweet words for worthy women, and throughout his +life he has been faithful to his love. "And I do believe that the very +true sweet God, through his very high goodness, will think on my +fidelity to her, and my constant service." + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[5] + "A woman is never won by what is in one's thoughts: + . . . . . . . . + Of that she can know nothing." + +[6] With this extravagant but probably veracious incident, one naturally +compares the sacrifice of Guillem de Balaun's finger nail. + +[7] These poet lovers seem to have been frequently laughed at. For +instance, Pierre Vidal was promised in their amusement anything by the +ladies whom he loved. Na Alazais was so indignant when he took +encouragement to steal his one kiss, that he was compelled to flee, and +go with Richard to the East. + + + + +[Decoration] + +NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, AND HIS BAVARIAN PEASANTS. + + +Our liveliest pictures of old German peasantry come, as we should +expect, from a singer of the knightly class. The masses had fewer and of +course less accomplished poets, and these would be most likely to please +their audiences by touching with the glamour of fashionable life such +work as they cared to make contemporary and imitative. Realistic social +transcripts usually come from culture. It may be that Neidhart von +Reuenthal had been brought up at the ducal court or in a castle, but +there is as good reason for conjecturing that his origin was among the +scenes of country life that he describes. Most of the courtly poets +belonged to the lower class of knights, and between this and the better +order of peasants there was no wide dividing line; indeed, a farmer with +a little land of his own and four free ancestors ("von allen vieren anen +ein gebure," as Neidhart says bitterly of his enemy the swaggering Ber), +by the old Saxon law stood higher than a knight not of free blood. The +agricultural class in the thirteenth century was becoming more impatient +of the costly conflicts of their military superiors and was also +suffering severely from the pillaging domestic raids of lawless knights, +who, as they grew bolder, established centres of reckless free-booting +to which they attracted wayward youth of the middle classes. Cities were +also getting larger, and the tradesmen joined with the established +gentry in thinking slightingly of the farming population. Accordingly +there was jealousy on one side and arrogance on the other, yet there was +still a meeting-place between the two classes. Depleted nobles would +marry daughters of wealthy peasants, and a gentleman whose fief lay +among well-to-do farmers might easily meet them in social relations. + +A grant from the Bavarian Duke evidently isolated Neidhart from his own +companions, and he appears to have mingled freely with the peasantry, +though we cannot determine how early the contact began. He was born in +the latter part of the twelfth century, we may say about 1185, perhaps, +and with the exception of absence on Leopold VII's crusade of 1217-1219, +he apparently kept his home in his native Bavaria until about 1230, when +he lost the Duke's favor and turned as a homeless wanderer to Austria, +where he received welcome and another fief. The last date inferred from +his songs is 1236, in connection with the Emperor's coming, and he was +dead before the composition of Meier Helmbrecht, which is earlier than +1250. + +So far as imitations prove popularity, he was one of the most popular of +mediaeval poets. It is easy to understand the pleasure that his verses +must have given, striking as they did into a new field, and executed +with literary skill, full of verve and humor, and appealing to strong +class prejudice. We must think of him as a gentleman fond of society, of +refined courtly habits, with an aristocratic contempt for pinchbeck +upstarts, yet not unwilling now and then to play the good-natured +acquaintance with middle-class people. + +Though he ranks as a knight, his tastes were not military. He was +lively, quick-witted, and satirical; clever at musical invention; +genuinely interested in poetry. Moreover, he gave early evidence of an +independent literary taste, that dared to yawn at the methods practised +by the great minnesingers of his youth. By his singing he had obtained +sufficient favor with the Duke to receive a fief though away among the +peasantry; yet rather than relinquish a home of his own, that constant +dream of his profession, he made the merriest and the best of the time +he needed to spend on his estate. + +The feeling for spring is largely an animal sensation, as the lambs in +the pasture, or dogs on the green, or little children remind us. The +comparison of loving something "as goats love the spring," goes back to +Greek literature. It has also been habitually associated with physical +sentiment, as the splendid proemium of Lucretius suggests. With this +buoyancy of spirits and emotional susceptibility, serious minds touched +with poetry have associated various deep and beautiful moods. But the +moral element that enters into such spring poems as Wordsworth's, is not +present in mediaeval literature. There we find poets feeling spring as +animals, as children, as lovers. Those were out-of-door generations; +hunting, riding, fighting, and enjoying themselves beneath the open sky, +were their chief employments. They found winter travel hard, for they +had no beaten roads; it caused a dreary interruption to their principal +engagements, and to a large extent confined them in narrow quarters, not +too comfortably warmed. In spite of all the amusements that could be +provided, the time must have dragged. If Romans could cry out as Ovid +did at the significance of spring, what must the season have meant to +the castled sons of central Europe. It is not strange then that their +nature-worship instituted in early times a festival to the genial +conqueror of frost and snow, and that this ceremony, as the old +superstitions died away, was continued in graceful traditions of village +customs. The first flowers or the earliest boughs in leaf served as the +signal for the ceremonial welcome of April or May. With widely varying +details, the youth of the parish would stream out to the fields or +woods, and come back singing spring catches, and dancing that long, +skipping forward step which they practised out-of-doors, carrying with +them trophies of the season. Sometimes they fastened the first violet to +a pole, and setting it up danced around it; sometimes they danced about +the first linden that appeared in leaf. It is the linden that the poets +are continually mentioning, whether in the centre of the courtyard or in +the field, and the tree suggests the social life of the old times as +happily as the pine under which Charlemagne sat, in the great chanson, +suggests the imperial master. + +Customs related in Herrick's _Going a-Maying_, such as the decoration of +the houses of favorites with early greenery and the processions of girls +and young men to the woods and fields, were familiar in Germany long +before. Exercises to welcome spring became not only a social but +even--so far as the rude country songs went--a literary habit. The +earlier ritual dance around some altar or symbol of the summer deity +grew into an entertainment from which all sense of its original +significance had passed away. These celebrations became the main social +feature of the warm months. At one time partners appear to have been +taken for the year (a passage in _Wilhelm Meister_ reminds us of this +usage), but not in the period before us. A summons to a holiday dance +(and the large number of church festivals made holidays frequent) was +usually given by a musician playing or singing through the street. The +young men and women, and not infrequently their elders, came to the +customary field, dressed for the gaiety; as they went along, tossing and +catching bright-colored balls. This favorite ball-playing, mentioned by +more than one poet of the age as a sign of spring, and especially +entered into by girls, often formed a prelude to the dance. For one +thing it gave the girls a way of choosing their partners, for the man +who caught the ball tossed by a girl, according to some usages, could +claim the right to dance with her. An anonymous poet of the thirteenth +century gives a lively picture of one of these scenes. + + "All the time the young people are passing ball on the + street. This is the earliest sport of summer, and as they + play they scream. What if the rustic lad gives me a shove? + How rude he is as he darts here and there, flying and chasing + and playing tricks with the ball. Then two by two they have a + hoppaldy dance about the fiddle, as if they wanted to fly." + +As one of the fellows holds the ball, + + "What pretty speeches the girls make him, how they shriek, + how wild they get. While he's hesitating to whom he'll throw, + they stretch out their hands; now you're my friend + (geveterlin),--throw it down here to me ... Jiutelin and + Elsemuot hurry after it. Whoever gets it is the best one. + Krumpolt ran, and cried, 'Throw it to me, and I'll throw it + back.' In the scrimmage some of the girls get pushed down, + and an accident happens to Eppe, the prettiest one in the + field. But she picks herself up, and tosses the ball into the + air. All scream, 'Catch it! catch it!' No girl can play + better than she does; she judges the ball so well, and is + such a sure catch." + +Another way of choosing partners was by presenting garlands, and one of +the prettiest of the spring customs was the walk to the fields and woods +after flowers for wreaths, either to give away or to wear. So one of the +Latin songs describes young people going out,-- + + "Juvenes ut flores accipiant + Et se per odores reficiant + Virgines assumant alacriter, + Et eant in prata floribus ornata, communiter." + +It certainly is a genial phase of those old times, this out-of-door +companionship of lads and lassies, gathering flowers and "dancing in the +chequered shade." The custom has in a manner survived to our own day; in +England, for example, Mr. Thomas Hardy has introduced such scenes very +pleasantly in some of his novels, but the zest and universality of it +have not descended. Even in Elizabeth's England the hobby-horse was +forgot; and back in the thirteenth century the May-time amusements were +being frowned away. For preachers and moralists saw much evil in these +summer gaieties. It is the old story: Nature is such a puritanical +stage-manager that she likes to bring on a tragedy for the after-piece +to her pleasant comedy, and she is best satisfied when we take warning +from the practice and stay away from the play. + +The insane frenzies into which meadow dancing was carried on some +occasions, especially at the riotous midsummer festival, do not belong +to our subject. Neidhart assumes a flippant tone about matters of +conduct, but his treatment of the summer merrymakings is usually +innocent and agreeable. He comes as an artist, to the rude material +provided in the traditional village songs for these occasions, and +transfers to the polished verse of Germany's already highly trained +lyrical school, that fresh and gay subject-matter that is so remote from +the formal phrases of most of his courtly predecessors. His songs are +lyric in their introduction, but almost invariably epic or dramatic in +the later stanzas, scarcely ever overstepping closely drawn lines. +Whereas, Walther von der Vogelweide's work in the popular poetry retains +the lyrical mood throughout, and is far less realistic, never, I +believe, treating a peasant element as such. Those lyrical preludes +attest Neidhart's deep sentiment for nature; we feel that, in spite of +the conventionality in them. He has the rare merit of an occasional +specific note, and he touches even the hackneyed expressions about birds +and flowers with a contagious buoyancy. Look at a few of these +introductions: + + "Hedges green as gold; the heath dressed in bright roses. + Come on, you fine girls: May is in the land. The linden is + well hung with rich attire; now hearken, how the nightingale + draws near." + + "The time is here: for many a year I have not seen a fairer. + The cold winter is over, and many hearts rejoice that felt + its chill. The woods are in leaf. Come then with me to the + linden, dear." + + "Summer, a thousand welcomes! Whatever heart was wounded by + the long winter is healed, its pain all gone. Thou comest + welcome to the world in all lands. Through thee, rich and + poor lose their sorrows, when winter has to go." + +And another, which loses its effect if we neglect the long, swinging +metre: + + The forest for new foliage its grey dress has forsaken; + And therefore now full many hearts to pleasure must awaken. + The birds to whom the winter brought dismay, + Have never sung so well as now the praises of the May. + + The winter from the lovely heath at last has turned aside, + And there the blossoms stand, arrayed in colors gaily pied. + Above them May's sweet dews are lightly shed; + Ah, how I wish I had a wreath, dear friend, a lady said. + +This stanza moves more quickly: + + Forth from your houses, children fair! + Out to the street! No wind is there, + Sharp wind, cold snow. + The birds were dreary, + They're singing cheerily; + Forth to the woodland go. + +After such opening stanzas comes the action of the song, almost always +an expression of a girl's longing to go to the dance, and her mother's +unwillingness. The burden of the remonstrances is that of the song in +_Much Ado_, "Men were deceivers ever"; and though some of the +conversations are amiable, often the two come to high words, and even to +blows. The girl cannot think of going without her best costume, and +this, in the prudent old domestic management, was always carefully +folded up, and kept under lock and key. "Who gave you the right to lock +up my gown?" a daughter demands. "You did not spin a thread of it. +Where's the key? now open the room for me." Finally, she obtained it by +stealth. "She took from the chest the gown that was laid in many small +folds. To the knight of Reuenthal she threw her colored ball." But +Neidhart grimly brings in her mother at the close. + +Another cries: "Bring me my fine gown. The gentleman from Reuenthal has +sung us a new song. I hear him singing there to the children. I must +dance with him at the linden." Her mother warns her of what happened to +her playmate Jiute last year, "just as her mother said." But the +gentleman had sent her a lovely garland of roses, and had brought her a +pair of red stockings from over the Rhine, which she was wearing then; +and she had promised to let him teach her the dance. Another song +represents two girls talking of the same knight from Reuenthal: "All +know him, and his songs are heard everywhere. He loves me, and to please +him I will lace myself trimly, and go." + +Some of the mothers do more than remonstrate: "The wood is well in leaf, +but my mother will not let me go. She has tied my feet with a rope. But +all the same, I must go with the children to the linden in the field." +Her mother overheard and threatened to punish her. "You little +grasshopper, whither wilt thou hop away from the nest? Sit and sew in +the sleeve for me." The girl is impudent, and the poem ends with a +lively contest. + +Love is too strong. "He kissed me," one of them says, "and he had some +root in his mouth, so that I lost all my senses." Perhaps the high-born +poet bewitched these peasant-girls; he often assures us of it. One of +them is plighted to a farmer, and whenever he expects to find her at +home to entertain him, she joins the dancers, as toward evening "they +bend their way down the street," and throws her ball to the knightly +singer. Even the mothers themselves are sometimes caught by the desire +to dance with him, or at least with some of the men at the linden, and +in two or three of Neidhart's sprightliest songs the tables are turned, +and the daughter tries to keep her mother from the gaieties that her +years have outgrown. I have translated two of these summer dance songs +in their exact rhythms, and so literally as to make them appear almost +bald. In the first the nature opening may be omitted. + + "Mother, do not deny me,-- + Forth to the field I'll hie me, + And dance the merry spring; + 'Tis ages since I heard the crowd + Any new carols sing." + + "Nay, daughter, nay, mine own, + Thee I have all alone + Upon my bosom carried; + Now yield thee to thy mother's will, + And seek not to be married." + + "If I could only show him! + Why, mother dear, you know him, + And to him I will haste; + Ah, 'tis the knight of Reuenthal, + And he shall be embraced. + + "Such green the branches bending! + The leafy weight seems rending + The trees so thickly clad: + Now be assured, dear mother mine, + I'll take the worthy lad. + + "Dear mother, with such burning + After my love he's yearning, + Ungrateful can I be? + He says that I'm the prettiest + From France to Germany." + + Bare we saw the fields, but that is over; + Now the flowers are crowding thro' the clover; + At length the season that we love is here: + As last year, + All the heath is caught and held by roses; + To roses summer brings good cheer. + + Thrushes, nightingales, we hear them singing; + With their loud music mount and dale are ringing: + For the dear summer is their jubilee: + To you and me, + It brings bright sights and pleasures without number; + The heath is a fair thing to see. + + "Dewy grow the meadows," cried a maiden, + "Branches lately bare are greenly laden: + Listen! how the birds are crowning May: + Come and play, + For, Wierat, the leaves are on the linden; + Winter, I ween, has gone away. + + "This year, too, we'll dance till twilight closes; + Near the wood is a great mass of roses, + I'll have a garland of them, trimly made; + Come, you jade, + Hand in hand with a fine knight you'll see me + Dance in the linden shade." + + "Little daughter, heed not his advances; + If thou press among the knights at dances, + Something not befitting such as we + There will be + Trouble coming to thee, little daughter-- + And the young farmer thinks of thee." + + "Nay, I trust to rule a knight in armor; + How then should I listen to a farmer? + What! you think I'd be a peasant's bride!" + She replied: + "He could never woo me to my liking, + He'll never marry me," she cried. + +At first Neidhart seems to have maintained friendly relations with the +young men of the district, for we find him addressing in amicable terms +even Engelmar, who later became his worst enemy, complimenting him upon +his room, in a song apparently designed for a dance at his house. But it +is difficult to believe that his critical genius would have gone long +without expression, and he presently began amusing himself, and courting +the admirations of others, by original snatches of songs that were +imitated from the _trutzstrophen_ of humorous, rustic, and often roughly +personal verses, that were evidently in vogue among the country people +before Neidhart's day. Such jeering, gibing bits of peasant fun-making +would grow out of the custom of songs at these rural gatherings, like +the parallel practice sometimes found with us of country +valentine-parties, where personalities are touched off with the freedom +of anonymous and privileged license. We can readily imagine him +beginning with hits at one and another, that contained no deeper offence +than an inevitable tone of his amused sense of the ridiculous. But the +country gallants, already jealous of their elegant rival, whose +gentlemanly prestige and courtly accomplishments would naturally make +him attractive to their sweethearts, would be quick to take umbrage, and +boorishly ready to manifest their displeasure. Neidhart certainly +enjoyed at least as much of the poetic dower as "the hate of hate, the +scorn of scorn," and must have answered their sullenness and rudeness +with the contempt that falls with such a sting from gentility. Then +stung himself by their bad manners, he naturally composed sharper and +more direct stanzas, holding those who had offended him up to the +laughter of other men, and of the tittering damsels. It does not seem +probable that the most cutting and individualized of these attacks were +written to be sung at dances where the victims of the satire were +present. When we consider the violence and recklessness that +historically marked this whole class in the thirteenth century, we are +sure that the poet would hardly have survived some of the recitations. +Many of them he probably composed to gratify his possibly irritated +mood; for, as we shall presently see, his displeasure was deeper than +the vexation of wounded social pride. But they strayed easily to the +objects of their ridicule. As he strolled along the street, carrying his +fiddle, and stopping to amuse himself at one house or another with any +of the pretty girls whom he found idle like himself, he may have played +and sung the piece over which he had just been working, or the minor +singers who must have haunted him as he grew better known, would catch +up and repeat far and wide the witty verses. The piece at which he was +working, I said, for in an important sense the poems were professional +labor. The natural comparison of the minnesinger on his farm to Ovid +among the Goths, loses most of its force when we reflect that Neidhart's +absences from his various little Romes were in some sense at his own +pleasure, and that he must have kept riding about from castle to castle, +and have made frequent sojourns at his patron's court, in the exercise +of his now established musical vocation. The better his songs, the surer +his hold on the Duke's favor, and as his prestige might rise throughout +the country, the more cordial his greeting would be, and the more +generous his dismission whenever he chose to go. These mediaeval poets +were more than careless rhymsters: painstaking labor was assumed as +necessary for success. Their poetry was as subtle and difficult as the +schoolmen's philosophy; though we may not care much for either, we at +least respect the skill with which they mastered self-enforced technical +difficulties. Arnaut Daniel's contest for a wager with another +troubadour (King Richard was to decide which produced the cleverer +poem), illustrates the statement that time was thought necessary for +composition. The Provencal biography tells us that the contestants were +shut up in separate rooms, and only ten days were allowed each for +preparing his song. In Neidhart's seclusion on his fief, then, he would +naturally make studies for his more important literary appearances, +studies in subject-matter, as well as in verse and music. And a large +number of his poems, at least considered in their entirety, must be +thought of as compositions intended for courtly audiences. + +It is to be presumed that Neidhart began by writing in the conventional +style of the love-singers. But his sense of humor and his originality +were too vigorous to allow him to continue in the polished and +monotonous manners of the school that reached its acme in Reinmar. He +possessed the creative faculty, and the rude village lyrics were a +sufficient suggestion of the new departure that he at once instituted +and consummated. He put in the place of lyrical elegies, lyrical +snatches of epic; and instead of gathering his epic materials from the +already familiar, even if not hackneyed, cycles of chivalry, he took +them from the real life, and that a growing life, of the German +villagers of his time. Their boorish manners and arrogant social +pretensions, their vulgar assumptions of elegance, and their jealous, +recklessly brutal tempers, he sketches vividly. His touch is not to be +called magical, there are no imaginative hauntings about the poems, +there is little fascination of subtle poetry in his expression or his +melodies. But his rude subjects are by no means treated rudely; he shows +excellent technique in those elaborately built stanzas; his tone rather +deepens than shrills in excited movements: in his dash and energy of +feeling, he retains artistic self-possession; while he is such an +iconoclast of sentimental poetry, that some have thought that Walther +had him in mind in his complaint of the new school. He invariably shows +sentiment for nature in his preludes, as well as sympathetic tones for +character, especially in what we may call his personal confessions. It +is indeed by virtue of this combination of qualities, as well as by his +novelty of subject, that he caught the approval of his age. Romantic +idealism was dying out, and a long period of coarse sensibility was +drawing on; while there was yet still some feeling for sentiment, and an +intellectual appreciation of artistic performance was, as usual, lapping +over the first stages of literary decadence. If we accept the view which +I have suggested, that at least as wholes many of Neidhart's songs were +intended only for the gentry, we may find it easier to meet the question +of their autobiographic and actual significance. + +It is possible to be unduly literal and too credulous of the historic +reality of whatever is found in an old literature. Especially in the +works of the minnesingers, some modern Germans appear unconscious that a +poet may relate fictitious experiences and sensations. As I have +remarked in an earlier essay, Cowley's love-poems had many mediaeval +prototypes, and there seems no necessity for assuming a fact behind each +of Neidhart's statements. Why is it not reasonable to suppose that +having once made what we call a "strike" with some of his village +characters, he occasionally invented continuations or parallels? We may +go so far as to assert the possibility that the continual reappearances +of Engelmar, Neidhart's most recurrent character, who is always +associated with the beginning of his disasters, is due quite as much to +the fact that his early treatment of the famous snatching of a girl's +mirror proved, by virtue of the topic, or the melody, or both, a great +favorite, as to the incident in itself having been of the fateful +influence upon his life that is implied. In other cases, as in what we +may term the episode of the ginger-root, Neidhart certainly seems to be +referring to some of his most popular earlier songs, for no other reason +than that the reference would be agreeable to his audience and give a +sort of continuity to his work. One of these instances is almost +pathetic. The poet is old and song comes hard to him. After several +stanzas of unusually serious tone, he says that people ask him why he +does not sing as they are told he once did: they keep wondering what has +become of the peasants who used to be on Tulnaere-field. So he attempts +to conclude with a strain of his old satirical gaiety. "I'll tell of the +bold free ways of Limizun, who is yet worse than our friend who took +Friderun's mirror, or those who bought mail awhile ago at Vienna," as if +by the mention of these popular achievements of his younger wit he could +hide his dull present mood. + +So, too, as it appears to me, we may explain the recurrent complaints of +his unhappy loves and of his desires frustrated by one and another of +the boors. These lover's sorrows are just what we should expect from a +poet in Neidhart's relation to the fashionable love lyrics; he retains +something of the tone of despondent yearning that was deemed requisite +by all his predecessors, yet he gives it a piquant novelty by +substituting irony and class animosities for vague and impersonal +wailings, and the sense of humor in these courtly woes in behalf of mere +peasant maidens would be a livelier attraction to the knights and ladies +of his polite circles than we might suppose. Surely Neidhart was the +victim of no deep passion for his rustic heroines. He may have been +amused by them, or even have liked them, and he certainly was enraged at +being interfered with or baffled by middle-class rivals; but his role is +more a Lothario's than a true lass-lorn wooer's. Imagine a peasant +farm-house with a large main apartment, such as Neidhart had in mind in +one of his earliest winter songs: "Engelmar, thy room is good; chill is +it in the dales: winter is hateful." The young farmers and the girls +come trooping in by pairs and little groups, dressed in their best, +smiling and gay: no better aid to imagining the scene could be desired +than Defregger's genial picture of a modern Tyrolese peasant party. It +is a change from the summer dances: "Winter, thy might will drive us +indoors from the broad linden. Thy winds are cold. Lark, quit thy +singing: both frost and snow have said thee nay; alas, for the green +clover. May, to thee I am loyal; winter is my bane." "Winter gives joy +to none but such as love the chimney-corner." They all think of the +change from their summer gatherings, and the singer strums his fiddle +and strikes into the nature prelude of his lyric, as they prepare to +begin the dance. Here is another opening, translated in the stanza +system of the original: + + The green grass and the flowers + Both are gone; + Before the sun the linden gives no shade; + Those happy hours + On shady lawn + Of various joys are over; where we played, + None may play; + No paths stray + Where we went together; + Joy fled away at the winter weather, + And hearts are sad which once were gay. + +We are reminded again of Herrick in his lines to the meadows: + + "Ye have been fresh and green, + Ye have been fill'd with flowers; + And ye the walks have been, + Where maids have spent their hours." + +The dance is under way now; if, as sometimes happened, they paid a +surprise visit, the guests have taken hold and made the room ready: + + Clear out the benches and stools; + Set in the middle + The trestles, then fiddle; + We'll dance till we're tired, merry fools. + Throw open the windows for air, + That the breeze + Softly please + The throat of each child debonair. + When the leaders grow weary to sing, + We'll all say, + "Fiddler, play + Us the tune for a stylish court-fling." + +(They apparently piled the table-frames in the middle of the room in +place of the linden, about which they danced on the lawn.) + +The singer goes on to remind them of the preparation for the party: + +"I advise my friends to consult where the children shall have their +fun. Megenwart has a large room: if it like you all, we will have the +holiday party there. His daughter wishes us to come. All of you tell the +rest. Engelmar shall lead a dance around the table." + +Again: "Let Kunegunde know; we shall be blamed if no one tells her about +it, and don't forget Hedwig." Once more: "Come along, children, to the +farm-house at Hademuot's; Engelbrecht, Adelmar, Friderich, Tuoze, Guote, +Wentel, and her sisters all three; Hildeburg, pretty child; Jiutel and +her cousin Ermelint." + +Still again, in one of the cheerful early songs, before Neidhart's +bitter tone came in: + + "Now for the children who've been asked to the party. Jiutel + shall tell them all, that they are to step after the fiddle + with Hilde. 'Twill be a great dance. Diemuot, Gisel, are + going together; Wendel, too, Engelmuot, for Heaven's sake! go + out and call Kuenze to come. + + "Tell her the man is here; if she cares to see him, as she + has all the time been wishing to, let her put on a little + jacket and her cloak; I should prefer to have her come here, + than to have him find her there at home in her every day + clothes. + + "Kuenze tarried then no longer, but came, as Engelmuot bade + her. She was in a hurry; quickly she dressed. Both sides of + her gown were red silk. The finest of girls! No one could + discover through the country, one I should be so glad to give + my dear mother for a daughter. + + "Haha! How she pleased me, when I saw what she was; such + hair, and red lips. Then I asked her to sit by me, but she + said: 'I don't dare; I've been told not to talk with you, or + even sit by you. Go and ask Heilke over there by Vriderune!'" + +"I hear dancing in the room," he sings at another time; "a crowd of +village women are there; two fiddles; when they pause, gay outbreak of +talking and laughing. Through the window goes the hubbub. Adelber never +dances but between two girls." Sometimes the knightly guest entered into +the gay interlude of conversation, entertaining a merry screaming group. +But when his moody vein, or vexation at some common man's successful +rivalry, dulled his social spirits, he would stand apart, or go to one +side with one of the peasant maids, and satirically note the men +scattered over the room. The young farmer's assumption of the dress and +manners of gentility, carrying arms, discarding rustic fashions, +affecting polite speech ("_Mit siner rede er vlaemet_," Neidhart says of +one of them,--he talks like a fine gentleman from abroad),--all this was +ridiculous to the courtly poet, and his sense of the humor of it was +associated with the bitterness of social contempt. "Look at Engelmar, +how high he holds his head. What elegant style he has, at the dance, +with his showy sword; something different from his father Batze. His son +is a poor gawk, with his rough head. He puffs himself out like a stuffed +pigeon, that sits crop-full on a corn-chest." And again: "Did you ever +see so gay a peasant as he is? Good Lord! he is first of all in the +dance. His sword-band is two hands broad. Proud enough he, of his new +jacket; it has four and twenty small pieces of cloth in it, and the +sleeves come down over his hand."[8] "There are two peasants wearing +coats in the court style, of Austrian cloth. Uoze never cut them." + +Then he goes on to say: + + "Perhaps you would like to hear how the rustics are dressed. + Their clothes are above their place. Small coats they wear, + and small cloaks; red hoods, shoes with buckles, and black + hose. They have on silk pouch-bags, and in them they carry + pieces of ginger, to make themselves agreeable to the girls. + They wear their hair long, a privilege of good birth. They + put on gloves that come up to their elbows. One appears in a + fustian jacket green as grass. Another flaunts it in red. + Another carries a sword long as a hemp flail, wherever he + goes; the knob of its hilt has a mirror, that he makes the + girls look at themselves in. Poor clumsy louts, how can the + girls endure them? One of them tears his partner's veil, + another sticks his sword hilt through her gown, as they are + dancing, and more than once, enthusiastically dancing and + excited by the music, their awkward feet tread on the girls' + skirts and even drag them off. But they are more than clumsy, + they have an offensive horse-play kind of pleasantry that is + nothing less than insult. They put their hands in wrong + places, and one of them tries to get a maiden's ring, and + actually wrenches it from her finger as she is treading the + bending _reie_. + + "Why should I not be angry at his insolence? Yet I would not + mind the ring so much, if he had not hurt her hand." + +And just so, Engelmar snatched her mirror from Neidhart's darling +Vriderune. + +This last, as has been said, is the most famous incident in the Neidhart +story. From it he dates all his misfortunes, and he reverts to it, over +and over, with bitterness that can hardly be regarded as merely ironical +humor. Yet numerous as the references are, there is a mystery about the +affair that has not been cleared up. It has been suggested that +Vriderune's way of taking the rudeness made it clear to Neidhart that it +was her peasant lover, and not himself, whom she really liked, but it +would seem more natural to associate the occurrence with something +violent. Possibly the poet's indignation at the boorish familiarity led +him to a personal attack, just as in another connection he threatens to +strike an obnoxious fellow, and the resulting quarrel may have been +taken up by friends of both, with such serious consequences that various +annoyances followed on their part, which he could only return by +insulting hits in his songs. The chances are all in favor of the poet's +having been a slighter man physically than these farm-workers, at one of +whom he sneers for the sacks that ride on his neck, and there are +suggestions in the pseudo-Neidhart poetry of his having had helpers to a +revenge. In one of these imitations it is said that through Neidhart's +injury thirty-two had their left legs cut off, an evident exaggeration +of an earlier imitation, where the writer reminds his hearers of what +happened to Engelmar for taking Vriderune's mirror, that he lost his +left leg and had to go on crutches. Such violent fights are +authentically reported at merrymakings of the time, and as the +aristocratic leader of such a brawl, Neidhart no doubt would find his +subsequent residence among the peasants uncongenial. Yet why should he +manifest such reserve, at the same time that he mentions the subject so +constantly, referring to it long after he has left Bavaria? Is it +possible that his jealousy and hot blood drove him to some underhanded +attack in some such way as that in which a brilliant restoration poet +tried to punish a supposed injury? This ill reputation as an aristocrat +equally insolent and treacherous, might follow him to Austria; he would +hardly be pleased to acknowledge in his poem what he had done, while the +constant references to his injury in the insult of Vriderune, and the +misfortunes to himself which it caused may be regarded as half defensive +attempts to excite sympathy instead of disapproval. So much for +possible explanations of this curious literary enigma, out of which we +may make too much; for, as I have already suggested, Neidhart may only +be doing what novelists sometimes do when they repeat a popular hit in +characterization. At any rate, Vriderune seems to have been lost to her +upper-class lover, "and ever from that time I have had some new +heart-sorrow." + +Neidhart constantly reverts to the peasants' brutality and eagerness to +fight. "Look out for a brutish fellow named Ber. He is tall and +broad-shouldered; he scarcely can get in at the door. Fie, who brought +him here? He is the nephew of Hildebolt of Bern, who was pounded by +Williher." Lanze, again, "had got himself up for a champion, and thought +nothing could resist him. He put underneath a coat of mail. Snarling +like a bear he goes; so ugly is he, one were a child who withstood him." +And of another: "He wears a sword that cuts like shears, and a good +safety hat. Whoever you are, you may well keep out of his way. +Villagers, look out for him; his sword is poisoned. It's a well-tempered +Waidover, that sword of his." + +With such village-warriors, no wonder that the parties did not always +end cheerfully. With a resemblance to modern slang Neidhart tells how +they threaten to put sunshine through each other. The lively episode of +a quarrel over a rural gallant's presenting a young lady with a piece of +ginger, Neidhart says he cannot describe in full, for he came away. But +"each began screaming to his friends; one called loudly: 'Help, gossip +Wezerant.' He must have been in great difficulty to scream so for help. +I heard Hildebolt's sister shriek: 'Oh, my brother, my brother!'" +Another dance ends with a milder disagreement. "Ruoprecht found an +egg--'I ween the devil gave it to him'--and threatened to throw it. Eppe +got mad, and dared him. Ruoprecht threw it at the top of his head, and +it trickled down over him." Sometimes, evidently, peacemakers +interfered, as they did in Frideliep's and Engelmar's disagreement about +Gotelint, so that the rivals did not fight, though "just like two silly +geese they went toward each other, all the rest of the day." + +Like all of those poets, Neidhart, though he says "I" very often, lets +us become but indifferent acquaintances. We read some of the mediaeval +lyrists without feeling sure that we detect a single genuine personal +note; they had little of our modern sense of individuality. With +Neidhart we fare better than with most; yet, after all, we are hardly +sure that some of his personal confessions are not formally or +humorously assumed. Yet of one trait we are left in no doubt, his strong +German sense for the fatherland. With many other Bavarians, he went to +Syria and Damietta on the crusade of 1217-1219, led by Leopold VII. of +Austria, and he has left us two songs which, though certainly different +enough from the deep religious feeling of such crusade lyrics as +Hartmann's or Walther's, are unmistakably sincere. The first opens with +the minnesinger's usual spring and love-lorn stanzas, but Neidhart soon +drops conventionality with the exclamation, "For my song the foreign +folk here do not care: ah, blessings on thee, Germany!" It reminds us of +Walther: nothing is like the German home. He thinks of sending a +messenger, not we notice, to some town or castle, but to that village +where he left the loving heart from which his constancy never wavers, +and to the dear friends over-sea. + + "Tell them from us all that they should quickly see us there, + joyous enough, except for these wide waves. Bear my glad + service to my mistress, dear to me before all ladies, and say + to friends and kinsmen that I am well. If they inquire how + things are going with us pilgrims, tell them, dear boy, what + ill these foreign folk have wrought us. Haste thee, be swift; + after thee assuredly shall I follow, quick as ever I may. God + grant we may live to see the happy day of going home." + +"We are all scarcely alive," he goes on; "the army is more than half +dead. Ah, were I there! By my beloved gladly would I rest, in mine own +place." "If I may only grow old with her!" he cries, and he breaks out +impatiently against those who keep delaying through August, instead of +moving westward. "Nowhere could a man be better off than at home, in his +own parish." + +At last the expedition, dissatisfied and worn, as the returning +crusaders always were, are on the confines of the longed-for country. We +can imagine the straggling company making their way along, their +minstrel riding among them, fingering the old violin that he has carried +over his shoulders all the two years, and thinking out a new song. He is +still a young man, or at least only approaching middle age, and thoughts +of home, friendship, love, and the spring gaiety of the village life, +crowd upon him with buoyant thrills; he strikes the strings more firmly, +and his voice rings out a home-coming lyric, full of life and feeling. +"The long bright days are come again, and with them the birds; it is a +long time since they sang so well. The winter-weary are gayer than they +have been for thirty years. Maidens, ye children, fine people all, let +your hearts be free to the summer joy, spring quickly in the carols." + + Dear herald, homeward go; + 'Tis over, all my woe; + We're near the Rhine! + +Neidhart's poems are readily classified in two divisions, his songs for +summer and for winter. Both were probably sung as an accompaniment to +the dances, either of the peasants or of the upper class, though there +may be some doubt whether this is true of all the winter songs. Almost +invariably he opens with a nature-prelude, often an elaborate one, and +the temper of the songs is always congenial to the season, gay for +summer, and gloomy or critical for winter. + +There is no evidence that the difficulty with Engelmar was the occasion +of the poet's leaving Bavaria, but his unpopularity with the peasants +seems to have had something to do with the loss of his fief. He was cast +down at the thought of parting with Reuenthal, and said that he would +sing no longer, since the name under which his merry lines had been +known was taken from him; and with a play on the word, "I am put out +undeservedly, my friends; now leave me free of the name!" But after he +was settled by Frederich on an Austrian fief, he adapted himself +cheerfully to his new home. "Here I am at Medelicke, in spite of them +all. I am not sorry that I sang so much of Eppe and of Gumpe at +Reuenthal." + +The Duke gave him money and a house, in response to musical +solicitations, and Neidhart appealed for exemption from his heavy taxes, +that threatened to consume what his children needed. With our modern +ideas this system of literary patronage upon which mediaeval poets +depended, and which usually required direct and even pressing +solicitation, seems painful to self-respect; we forget how lately it +flourished. In those days when princely giving was an established +custom, and differed from a system of salaries mainly in being a less +regularly appointed income, a poet's request for a gift was scarcely +more than a modern author's reminder of an unpaid claim; there is +nothing of the unmanly dependence of Coleridge in these earlier +suppliants for aid. None of them asked more gracefully--even Chaucer is +not more delicately suggestive--than Neidhart in such lines as these: + + "Whoever had a bird who satisfied him with song through the + year, he would occasionally look to his bird-cage, and give + him good food. Then the bird could go on singing sweet + melodies. If he always sang well to meet the May, he should + be well cared for, summer and winter. Even the birds + appreciate kind treatment." + +But the times were bad, and even a box of silver, and a house to put it +in, and remission of taxes, could not keep the poet gay as he passed +into later life. He composed penitential lyrics, after orthodox +precedents, of the love-singers, for they almost always grew old +seriously. On these we need not linger, though there seems a cry fuller +than the echo-note in his farewell to Lady Earth, and appeal for pardon +for some of his foolish songs: "Lord God of Heaven, give me thy +guidance; Might of all Might, now strengthen my heart, that I may win +soul's health, and partake ever-enduring joy, through thy sweet will." +But the wail of all of the thirteenth-century's serious minds, that +things were going "ever the lenger the wers" in Christendom, comes out +nowhere more deeply than in Neidhart's allegorical love-song to Joy of +the World, chiding her for her change of character during his long, +unrequited service: + + "False, shameless folk nowadays people her court, and her old + household, truth, chastity, good manners, none find these any + longer. My lady's honor is lame all over. She is fallen so + that none can rescue her. She lies in such a pool that only + God can make her clean. Men of wise mind be on your guard + before her, in church or on street: women of worth keep far + away." + +Eighty new melodies he has sung in her service; this is the last, and +not the most joyous. + +To this closing period we may refer a few summer songs that are an +exception to the usually light-hearted verses of that form. Their +seriousness is all the more noticeable from their fair-weather setting; +for once, the spring is not a panacea. "A delightful May has come, but +alas, neither priest nor layman rejoices in its arrival. Were it the +Emperor who had come, we might rejoice. Trouble and sorrow dwell in +Austria." There is something here besides a sense that the joyousness of +simple free-living and the loyalty of love-service are passing away; he +attributes much of the social decline to national confusion and the +political unrestraint. Yet controversial as he is in social relations, +he has little of Walther von der Vogelweide's thoughtfulness and energy +in patriotic polemics. He drifts down the stream with a sigh. + +In the poem which Meyer's elaborate study of the order of his work +places last, though only conjecturally, he again considers his friends' +entreaty for more songs. The world goes too sadly, he says; as he had +said before that they must ask Troestelin to sing; he himself had no +longer a heart for poetry. Yet there is one pleasant story that he can +tell them: "to break down troubles comes one worthy to be praised; 'tis +May, with all his might." There is something pathetic in such songs, +that try to assume the cheerful strain in which the poet, now grown +gloomy, wrote while he was young. They remind us of the stray leaves +that we sometimes see caught up to their old home among the branches by +a sudden March gust; the brown leaves that will never again uncrumple +their green infancies, hover for a moment, then sink hesitatingly back +to the ground. In this one song, the nature stanzas are transferred from +the place of prelude to the conclusion. "May has conquered; wood and +heath have adorned themselves with their lovely attire; blue flowers are +here and the roses," and he ends with the old thought, that joyousness +and virtuous honor go together. As an idle fancy it is "pleasant if one +consider it," to regard these as the final words of this knightly singer +of mediaeval country scenes, the last of the great figures of that old +German group, a parting reminder of the philosophy of a happy life which +mediaeval lyrists often maintained so earnestly,--that the secret of good +living is blitheness of heart, and out-of-door life in spring and +summer. For many of these old poets the two terms were convertible; +their creed was surely a simple one. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTE: + +[8] We must remember that the unwillingness of the upper grade of +society to have peasants assume its styles of dress, went so far that +ducal edicts were issued forbidding them to use coats of mail and +helmets, or to carry any weapons. Bitter complaints were made of their +wearing any stuffs so fine as silk, and clothes stylishly cut. + + + + +[Decoration] + +MEIER HELMBRECHT, + +A GERMAN FARMER OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY. + + +The usual conception of the middle ages seems to consist of a few facts +and theories about the feudal system and the crusades, the names with +possibly some traits of a few eminent public figures and a general +impression of confusion and obscurity. Supplementing this central idea, +one usually sees a panel picture on either side. One, sunshine flashing +from the spears and armor of knights tilting in tournaments, and watched +by dimly beautiful women; in the distance a solitary knight pricking +over a plain, or, guided by the wail of an unseen and lovely captive, +making his way through forest haunts of giants and gnomes. The other, a +lowering twilight overhanging gloomy monastery walls, the shelter of +melancholy, hypocrisy, manuscript illuminations, and a barren, difficult +philosophy. Sunshine and twilight on either hand, and in the background +an impenetrable mist concealing the great masses of humanity, as well as +all concrete actual lives even of the great. A little information and a +little romance are unsatisfactory artists for a sketch of mediaevalism. +We soon discover that there is a great deal behind such a picture of +soldiers living in wars, and in the tourneying pretence of war; or +schoolmen contending in brilliant logical panoply within and without +spectral philosophic fastnesses; or hermits, nuns, and monks fighting +against God's present that they might win His future; or marauders +beating down helplessness and innocence. + +Yet we may study the middle ages laboriously, and find ourselves still +confronted by the mist that hangs over the rank and file. Our curiosity +about these forgotten multitudes teases us. "How is it that you lived, +and what is it that you did?" we ask these distant prototypes of +Wordsworth's peasant. We come to discover that there is much behind our +slight old notion of chivalry and monasticism; though seven hundred +years have changed its conditions, life then and now is yet less +different than we had thought. But we find it difficult to acquire much +information about those social substrata on which the learned and the +polite classes rested. Clio is the most aristocratic of the ladies nine, +and that instinct of vitality whereby we count fame for ourselves +something desirable, makes us think with a certain compassion of great +armies of those generations filing sullenly on, not only as individuals, +but as whole masses, to the grave of oblivion. The little that we know +makes us sure only that they were wretched, their lives the most gloomy +of all the lives of gloomy ages. + +We may read thousands of pages of the literature of those days with +scarcely any addition to our knowledge of the work-a-day world, for most +of the poetry is romantic, and in its imitative phases mainly a +reflection of courtly customs and character. The middle ages in Germany +and France were anything but uncivilized, and the poetry of secondary +cultivation is, as was said in the last essay, likely to prefer +idealistic interpretation of its finest development to democratic +realism. Yet the student finds from time to time interesting material +for an account of the average life, and in the poet whom this essay is +designed to introduce to a modern audience, we obtain an extended study +in this side field of literary interpretation. He wrote not of high life +but of the middle classes, not in romance but in a literal yet at the +same time artistic manner that we may call a heightened realism. He +appears to have been himself one of the people, a poet who possibly made +his living by reciting poems of incident, and by singing at their +merrymakings, though of this there is no evidence. It has been thought +by some German scholars that he may have been a monk, but the +indications make rather against than for this view. We know in fact +nothing whatever about him except for one single line, in which he tells +us that his name is Wernher the Gardener. + +As was said, his poem is remarkable as being the heightened treatment +of a plain story of the peasant classes a little before 1250; it is +remarkable, too, for the liveliness and simple force of his +treatment. He is an artist--though he works in chalks instead of +water-colors;--unornamented, unassuming, he produces an impression of +personal power, moral seriousness, a clear eye for what he saw, and +the power to state it directly, one of the marks of a later and more +developed age. He has no little dramatic liveliness, a sense of +humor, and the pleasantest love for the plain beauties of character +and home-life. + +He tells the story of a farmer, Helmbrecht, and his wayward son. The boy +has been the admiration of his peasant family as the oldest child, +notable for his splendid yellow hair, and full of life and spirit. At +the time the poem opens he has grown to early manhood, dissatisfied with +the hidden and laborious life of tiller of the soil, vain of his +appearance, fond of fine dress, and ambitious to live easily and be +admired. He is petted and indulged by his mother and his sister +Gotelint, and when he desires a hood--a part of masculine costume much +affected by gallant youths--they provide him with one so fine that it +becomes famous far and near. Embroidery, as every one knows who is +acquainted with the mediaeval arts, was the most artistic accomplishment +of the period. Ladies learned to embroider and weave the most +complicated and elaborate devices; handicraftsmen of all sorts put on +their work representations so copious that one sometimes wonders whether +the literary descriptions of them are not exaggerations. Can the +frequency and detail of these passages, we wonder, be a faintly +remembered tradition of the devices put by Homer on the shield of +Achilles, or by Vergil on the gates of the rising Carthage? At any rate, +tapestries, cloths, and garments, to say nothing of saddles and the +like, were covered by picture after picture, in almost every important +poem of the age. This young peasant Helmbrecht's hood was embroidered, +not, of course, by the rude country fingers of his mother and sister, +but by a clever nun, who had run away from her nunnery to enjoy the +pleasures of a lively youth. Many were the wages of farm-produce by +which she was persuaded to fit out the young man. The hood was covered +with birds, parrots, and doves; on one side were representations of the +siege of Troy and the escape of AEneas; on the other, the stout deeds of +Charlemagne, Roland, and Oliver, in their wars against the heathen +Moors. Behind, adventures of old German legendary heroes, in the cycle +of Dietrich of Bern. In front, dances of knights, ladies, and of maidens +and young esquires--the favorite and mediaeval dance, where the gentleman +stood between two ladies, holding the hand of each. + +After this acquisition the boy became ambitious for still more finery, +and was indulged in an elaborate costume that need not be described. +Such white linen, such a splendid blue coat, all covered with buttons, +gilded ones in double rows down the back, around the collar, and in +front of silver. About the shoulders little bells were hung, that rang +merrily when he sprang in the _reie_. Ah, very love-lorn were the +glances cast on him by women and girls at the dance. + +At last he is fully equipped by the love and sacrifice of his family, +and they are happy in his elegance, and contented with themselves +because the self-willed and capricious boy is pleased; when suddenly the +simple household is thrown into grief and anxiety by his announcement +that he is going to leave home. He must have a horse--there was none on +the farm--to complete his outfit as a gentleman, and then he will ride +away to some court and seek his fortune. In vain they remonstrate. + + "'My dear father, help me on. My mother and sister have + helped me so that I shall love them all my life.' + + "His father was troubled to hear that he was resolved to go, + but he said to him: 'I'll give you a fast horse for your + outfit, good at hedges and ditches, for you to have there at + court. I'll buy him for you willingly, if I can find one for + sale. But, my dear son, now give up going to court. The ways + there are hard for those who have not been used to them from + the time they were children. My dear son, now drive team for + me, or if you'd rather, hold the plough, and I'll drive for + you, and let us till the farm, so you'll come to your grave + full of honors like me; at least I hope to, for I surely am + honest and loyal, and every year I pay my tithes. I have + lived my life without hate and without envy.' + + "But the son replied: 'My dear father, keep quiet and stop + talking; there's only one way about it, I'm going to find out + how things smack there at court. Your sacks sha'n't load my + back any longer. I won't load any more manure on your wagon, + and God hate me if I ever yoke oxen for you again, and sow + your oats. That's not the thing for my long yellow hair and + my curly locks, and my close-fitting coat, and my fine hood, + and the silk doves the women worked on it. I won't help you + farm any longer.' + + "'Dear son, stay with me. I am certain that farmer Ruoprecht + will give you his daughter, with lots of sheep and swine, and + ten cattle, old and young. At court you'll be hungry, you'll + have to lie hard, and give up all comforts. Now take my + advice, and it will be to your interests and credit. It very + seldom happens that a man gets along well who rebels against + his own station. Your station is the plough. My son, I swear + to you that the genuine court-people will make fun of you, my + dear child. Do as I say, and give it up.' + + "'Father, if I only have a horse I shall get on as well in + the court ways as those who were born there. Any one who saw + that hood on my head would swear a thousand oaths that I + never worked for you, or drove a plough through a furrow. + Whenever I put on the clothes my mother and my sister gave me + yesterday, I sha'n't look much as if I ever took a flail to + thresh wheat on the barn floor, or as if I ever drove stakes. + When I get my legs and my feet in the hose and cordovan + boots, nobody'll know that I ever made fence for you or any + one else. Let me have a horse, and farmer Ruoprecht may go + without me for a son-in-law. I'll not give up my future for a + wife.'" + +The father goes on pleading with the boy to take advice and keep out of +the disorderly life he is likely to get into about a court. By the +silent assumption that his new master and his people will pillage from +the peasantry, we get a suggestion of the lawlessness of the +country--which had grown worse during the long absenteeism of Frederic +II. But if the peasants catch you, he tells his son with energy, you +will fare much worse than one of the gentlemen would. They will take the +quickest revenge, and think that they are doing God service when they +find one of their own kind stealing. + +But the son only goes on to repeat that he will leave the farm. He talks +just as an ambitious country fellow will talk to-day about the slow life +and small profits. He becomes bolder and more insolent. If it were not +for that wretched horse he would be riding with the rest across fields +and dragging peasants through the hedges; the cattle would be lowing as +he drove them off. He says he can endure poverty no longer;--raising a +colt or an ox for three years, and then selling them for just nothing. +So his father traded a large piece of homespun, four good cows, two +oxen, three steers, and four bushels of wheat,--all worth about ten +pounds,--for a horse that could not have been sold for three ("alas for +the wasted seven!"), and the young man put on his finery, tossed his +head, and, looking around, jauntily declared that he could "bite through +a stone, or eat iron, he felt so fierce." If he could catch the Emperor +or the Duke, there would be some money coming in. "'Father, you could +manage a Saxon easier than me.'" + +When he calls upon his father to release him from the family control, +the latter assents, though with all his old reluctance. Indeed he cannot +let him go without one more appeal: + + "'I give you your liberty, my son. But take care that no one + yonder hurts your hood and its silk doves, or viciously tears + your long yellow hair. And I am afraid that at the end you + will be following a staff, or some little boy will be + leading you.'" + +Then once more, after a pause, comes the abrupt: + + "'My son, my own dear boy, give up going. You shall live on + what I live, and on what your mother gives you. Drink water, + my dear son, before you steal to buy wine. Austrian pie, any + one, fool or wise man, will tell you, is food fit for + gentlemen. Eat that, dear child, instead of giving an ox you + have stolen to some inn-keeper for a chicken. Your mother can + cook good broth; eat that, instead of giving a stolen horse + for a goose. My son, mix rye with oats sooner than eat fish + in a dishonored life. If you will not obey me, go. But though + you win wealth and great honors, never will I share them with + you. And misfortune--have that alone too.' + + "'You drink water, father, but I'll drink wine. Eat your + mush, but I'll eat what they call fricasseed chicken there + and white wheat bread; oats will do for you. They say at Rome + that a child takes after his godfather, and mine was a + knight. Thank God for giving me such high and noble ideas.'" + +But the old farmer replied that he liked much better a man who did right +and remained constant to it. + + "Even though his birth might be rather humble, he would + please the world better than a king's son without virtue and + honor. An honest man of lowly rank, and a nobleman who was + not courteous and honorable,--let the two come to a land + where neither is known, and the child of lowly birth will + outrank the high-born. My son, if you will be noble, on my + word I counsel you, do noble deeds. Good life is a crown + above all nobility." + +There is the old thought, so common in literature from ancient authors +down to the poet of Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and especially a favorite +with writers of the middle age. Possibly some of them caught it from +Boethius, who expressed it more than once in the testament of wise and +generous character that he left to the world from his confinement at +Pavia, and that proved so singularly congenial to the mediaeval mind; but +we need certainly not require the aid of origins to account for its +frequency. Aristocratic as many phases of the times were, there were a +number of important evening influences, conspicuously two: the church, +in whose monastery cloisters the rich and poor met together as brothers +of one impartial discipline, and from whose ranks members of low birth +might rise to be the peers of dukes; and the orders of chivalry, which +received approved squires from the middle class. Thus, in addition to +aristocracy of birth, there was a conditional gentility to which those +who had the claim of merit might aspire. But though the thought that +desert, and not descent, is the test for nobility, is so obvious in the +days when position carried with it so strong a connotation of power, and +when the upper strata of society bore down so hard and haughtily upon +the lower, we always feel satisfaction in coming upon a trim statement +of the fine old commonplace whose best mediaeval expression we can quote +from a poet of our own language: + + "Look, who that is moost vertuous alway, + Pryvee and apert, and moost entendeth ay + To do the gentil dedes that he kan, + Taak hym for the grettest gentil man." + +"'Alas, that your mother bore you!'" the farmer exclaimed, when the +boy's only answer to his appeal was to declare his hair and hood better +fitted for a dance than for the plough or the harrow. "'Thou wilt leave +the best and do the worst'"; and he goes on to contrast the man who +lives against God and the good of others, followed by every one's +curses, with the man who helps the world along, trying night and day to +do good by his life, and thereby honors God. This one, wherever he may +turn, has the love of God and all the world. + + "'Dear son,' he says, 'that man you might be, if you would + yield to me. Till with the plough, and plenty of people will + be the better for your life, poor and rich; nay, even wolf + and eagle, and everything that lives on earth. Many a woman + must be made more beautiful through the farmer, many a king + must be crowned through the produce of the farm. Indeed, + there is no one so noble that his pride would not be a very + small thing, except for the farmer.'" + +How natural all this sounds,--agriculture the basis of society, tillage +of the soil alike useful and honorable. With what quiet manliness this +old German talks of the dignity of labor, with no touch of the modern +arrogance and discontent with the existing social condition. He will +keep to his rank in life, and be loyal to his station, yet, though he +looks up with a simple-hearted interest and wonder to the great world +above him, he reflects as he follows his plough that without him that +great world's pride "would be a very small thing." But there is a +quality here that is still finer: the undercurrent perception of "the +gospel of service." It is not only that honesty is the best policy, +though the peasant is shrewd, and appreciates the practical side too; +his conversation with the boy breathes the best nineteenth-century +spirit of the duty of making one's life valuable to others. That +sentence about working night and day to be useful, and thereby honoring +God, is no commonplace for our century, to say nothing of the +thirteenth. There is something pretty, too, in the touch of sympathy +with the animal world; in some way, he feels that even the birds and +beasts must be better off for a good farmer. + +These times seem often savage in their cruelties and recklessness of +giving pain, but they have a gentle side as well, as may be seen in the +tales cited by Montalembert of friendly relations between monks and wild +beasts, and in examples collected by Uhland in his essay on the old +German animal literature. It is pleasant in connection with such +barbarities as we shall presently be reminded of in this very poem to +recall the myth versified by Longfellow, of the great minnesinger's +legacy to the monastery, conditioned on the brethren's every day placing +grain and water for the birds upon his grave; and more than one +authentic story is told like that of the Abbot of Hirsan, who, when snow +was deep in winter, would take oats from his barn to feed the birds. + +After the young Helmbrecht has begged God to release him soon from his +father's preaching,--"if you only had been a real preacher you might +have got up a whole army with your sermons for a crusade,"--and has +explained that instead of keeping on ploughing, he is resolved to have +white hands, and no longer need to feel mortified whenever he holds +ladies' hands at a dance, his father resorts to his last resource--an +appeal to superstition, that he has been keeping in reserve. He tells +him what he has been dreaming--three dreams that he interprets as +ominous of the loss of sight, feet, and arms, and worst of all, a final +dream of one of those sights so common for many centuries before and +after, but made no less dreadful by familiarity. + + "'You were hanging on a tree. Your feet were a fathom from + the ground. Above your head on a bough sat a raven, by its + side a crow. Your hair was all tangled. On the right hand the + raven combed your head for you, on the left the crow.'" + +But the hopeful rode gaily off through the bars, and came to a castle +where a warlike lord was glad to receive any addition to his force. +There he stayed for a year, leading the extreme bandit life of whose +outrages and oppressions we read so much during this troubled period. He +quickly obtained reputation as daring and merciless: + + "Into his sack he stuffed everything; it was all one to him. + Nothing was too small, nothing too great. Helmbrecht took it + all, rough and smooth, crooked and straight. He took horses, + cattle, jacket, sword, cloak, coat, goats, sheep. From women + he stripped everything, and well enough his ship went that + first year, 'its sails full.' But after a while, as people + are wont to think of going home, he took leave of the court, + and commended them to the good God." + +They heard at the farm that he was coming on for a visit, and in +accordance with the ancient custom of giving a present to the bearer of +good news, the messenger received a shirt and pair of hose. But when the +young man himself arrived, "how he was received! Did they step forward +to meet him? Nay, they ran, all together; one crowded past another; +father and mother sprang as if they had never had a care." It is +touching to notice the suggestiveness of a single line in the poet's +description of the scene. The plain people understood that their son was +no longer one of them, and they knew how his earlier false pride must +have grown in this year's absence in the outer world. So in their +anxiety that everything should gratify this brilliant, wayward eldest +son of their admiration and hope, and that nothing should interfere +with his being pleased and gracious to their yearning, timid love, and +knowing how in the homely heartiness of their joy at seeing their young +master again the two servants would treat him at once in the old +familiar way of peasant-farm equality, they instructed their man and +their woman in what they thought to be polite salutation. So when the +guest appeared, "Did the woman and the man cry 'Welcome back, +Helmbrecht'? Nay, they did not; they had been told not to. They said: +'Master, in God's name be you welcome.'" There is a touch of humor in +their rushing forward and being the first to greet him, in their rude +good-feeling; but we also get a sense of tenderness from seeing the +father and mother keeping in the background, behind their daughter +Gotelint. + +Little education as there was in the middle ages, people fully +appreciated the elegance as well as the utility of a knowledge of +foreign languages, and no accomplishment was held more desirable. +Especially the Germans, representing an outlying civilization, would +send their sons, while still boys, to some French court to serve as +pages and acquire especially the language as well as other branches of +knightly culture. The praises of various heroes of French as well as +German romances, give to linguistic attainments a high place; Gottfried, +for example, in his account of the training of Tristan, who was the +typical gentleman of the romances, says that from the age of seven until +he was fourteen he was studying languages under the care of a tutor, by +travelling through different lands. Since this was the fashion, +imitations were sure to become popular, and a thin veneering of foreign +speech became the mark of a pinchbeck culture, just as it has been so +frequently since. Accordingly, after the servants have cried out their +"Master, in God's name be you welcome," and Gotelint has thrown her arms +about her brother, the young gallant calls her his dear little sister in +a phrase of salutation touched with Low Dutch, which he follows by the +elegant "gratia vester." Then the younger children ran up, and last of +all the farmer and his wife, who greeted him over and over. He addressed +his father in French: "Deu sal"; his mother in Bohemian: "Dobraytra." +They looked at each other; four strange languages all together--there +must be some mistake. + + "The housewife said: 'My dear, this is not our son. This is a + Bohemian or a Slav.' Her husband replied: 'It is a Frenchman. + My son whom I commended to God, certainly this is not he, and + yet he looks like him.' And Gotelint suggested: 'He answered + me in Latin; may be he is a priest.' 'Faith,' put in the + hired man, who had caught the phrase in dialect, 'he has + lived in Saxony or Brabant, for he said, "liebe + susterkindekin"; he must be a Saxon.'" + +The old peasant was devoted and loving, but he had resolution and +self-respect under it all. He told the accomplished youth that before he +would take him for his son he must talk German. If he would do that and +declare himself Helmbrecht, well and good. He should have a chicken +boiled, and another roasted, and his horse should be well cared for. But +a Bohemian, or a Slav, or a Saxon, or a Brabanter, or a Frenchman, or a +priest, should be given nothing. The youth began to reflect. It was +getting late, there was no place near by where he could go; so he +concluded to waive his elegant manners, and speak in the old style. But +the shrewd peasant feigns incredulity, and decides to test his son a +little further. In vain the young man protests himself Helmbrecht. His +gentility must stoop to vulgar peasant identification, and tell what he +knows about the oxen on the farm. He rattles over all four of them, +Grazer, Black-spot, Rascal, and White-star, with a little praise for +two, and the reconciliation is accomplished. Thereupon the repressed +fondness and devotion obtain free expression. The father hurried out to +attend to the horse, the mother sent her daughter for a pillow and +cushion--"Run, now, and don't walk for it"--and makes a couch for him on +the bench close to the stove, so that he may have a nap while she is +preparing his dinner. When the boy woke the meal was ready, and Wernher +assures us that any gentleman might have enjoyed it. After washing his +hands, the usual first step in a meal, a dish of fine-cut sauer-kraut +was put before him, by it bacon, both fat and lean, and a rich mellow +cheese. Then there was as fat a goose as ever roasted on a spit--and +with what good-will they provided that extraordinary peasant luxury--a +roasted and a boiled chicken. A knight out hunting, and happening on +such a meal, would like it well. For besides this they had managed to +get delicacies in which peasants never think of indulging. "'If I had +any wine you should be drunk to-night,'" the farmer said; and he +added--with such a noble union of dignity, simplicity, and sentiment for +the plain homely blessings which he had appreciated and loved all his +life: "'My dear son, now take a drink of water from the best spring that +ever came out of earth. I know no spring fit to be compared with it, +except the one at Wankhusen.'" + +"'Tell me, son,'" he continued, as they went on with their dinner, for +he could not wait to ask him, "'tell me how about the court fashions, +and then I will tell you how they used to be when I was young.'" But +the son was too busy eating to stop to talk then, and he allowed his +father to relate his early reminiscences. + + "'When I was a boy,' he began 'and your grandfather + Helmbrecht had sent me to court with cheese and eggs, just as + a farmer does to-day, I took note of the knights, and marked + their ways. They were courteous and cheerful and had no + rascality about them in those days, such as many men and + women too have now. The knights had a custom, to make + themselves pleasing to the ladies, that was called jousting. + A man of the court explained it to me when I asked him what + they called it. Two companies would come together from + opposite directions, riding as if they were mad, and they + would drive against each other, as if their spears must + pierce through. There's nothing in these days like what I saw + then. After that they had a dance, and while dancing they + sang lively songs, that made the time go quickly. Presently a + playman came forward and struck in with his fiddle; at that + the ladies jumped up, and the knights went to meet them, and + they took hold of hands. That was a pleasant sight--the + overflowing delight of ladies and gentlemen, dancing so + gaily, poor and rich. When that was over a man came out and + read about some one called Ernest. Each could do whatever he + liked. Some took their bows and shot at a target; others went + hunting: there was no end to the kinds of pleasure. The worst + off there would be the best off with us now. Those were the + times before false and vicious people could turn the right + about with their tricks. Nowadays the wise man is the one who + can cheat and lie; he has position and money and honor at + court, much more than the man who lives justly and strives + after God's grace.'" + +We find here as in so many other places in thirteenth century poetry, +that the serious-minded were already looking back. Just as we have seen +Walther and Ulrich bewailing the lost sunshine of chivalry, Wernher +laments that the old-time honesty has gone, and with it the knightly +light-hearted honorable joys. Already, before 1250, there was a halo +about the chivalric court; ladies were honored, knights tourneyed for +their pleasure; dancing with them attracted gentlemen quite beyond +drinking bouts; the poet's narratives of old German heroes were yet in +fashion. + +All this seems amusing to the young man; what sappy and goody-goody +fashions those were. He thinks it manly to swagger about the new ways, +and tell how the fashionable cry is "Trinka, herre, trinka trinc!" It +used to be good breeding to dangle about pretty ladies, but the correct +thing now is just to drink. "'This is the kind of love-letters we have: +"You dear little bar-maid, fill up our cups. What a fool a man is who +wastes his life for women, instead of good wine." It's a genteel thing +to be sharp with your tongue, and get the best of people, and tell +clever lies.'" + +The old man hears, and with a sigh wishes back the day when gentlemen +shouted "Hey[=a], ritter, wis et fro!" in the tourneys, instead of these +new cries of riotry and pillage. The son would tell him more, but he has +ridden far and wishes to go to sleep. There were no linen sheets in that +farm-house, but Gotelint spread a newly washed shirt on his bed, and he +slept until high day. The next morning he displayed the gifts he had +brought: for his father, a whetstone, scythe, and axe; for his mother, a +fox-skin; for Gotelint, a head-dress with a band of silk and gold, +better fitted for a nobleman's child than for her; shoes with straps for +the farm-hand; and for his wife, a cloth to cover her hair, and a red +ribband. He remained at home for a week, and then he became restless to +return. His father again took up his entreaties, begging him in the +tenderest tones to stay from the bitter and sour life he has been +leading. As long as he lives he will share what he has with him, even +if the young man will do nothing but sit still and wash his hands. Only +he must not go back. + +What, not go back with so much to do? Has not a rich man ridden over the +field of his god-father? Has not another rich man eaten bread with +crullers? And still a third, while eating at a bishop's table, loosened +his girdle? Each one must be taught better manners through wholesale +plunder of cattle, sheep, and swine, to say nothing of a boor who blew +the foam off his beer. He and some friends will give them a good +training, and he runs over the list of his bandit companions with the +cant names borne by each, such as Lambswallow, Hellbag, Bolt-the-sheep, +Coweater, Wolfthroat, and at last his own name, Swallow-the-land. + +We may pass by the exploits of which he boasts--the children of the +peasants near him eat water-gruel, their father's eyes he puts out, +their beards he draws with pincers, he binds them in ant-hills, or +smokes them in the chimney, and so forth, through a revolting list of +barbarities. + +The youth uncloaks himself as a full-fledged desperado, and his father's +short, stern warning in God's name of vengeance only throws him into a +passion, and he declares that, though hitherto on their raids he has +kept off his companions from the farm, instead of doing so longer, he +will give up his father and mother to their will. He reveals what had +been a main motive in his visit, an arrangement he had made with his +comrade Lambswallow to let him marry Gotelint. But of that brilliant +match her father's conduct has deprived the girl; also she will never +find another man who can give her such luxuries of dress and fare. +Moreover, his sister was worthy of such a husband, and he stops to +repeat the tribute he had paid to her while discussing the alliance with +his friend. The lines bring before us a weird mediaeval scene, to which +these reckless free-livers looked forward as their assured end, and +which they dreaded most from the lurid light thrown by superstition upon +the picture. The ghastly swinging of their corpses on the gibbet ("The +rain has drenched and washed us," Villon says two hundred years later, +"and the sun dried and blackened us. Magpies and crows have hollowed out +our eyes, and plucked away our beards and eyebrows."[9]) troubled them +less than the thought that their falling bones must lie unburied, and +their lives be followed by no religious rites to mitigate the eternal +justice. French poetry has interpreted this phase of crime and misery in +Villon's _Epitaphe_; in English it has been interpreted by Tennyson in +_Rizpah_, at once the most intense and the most piteous of all his +poems, as free from self-consciousness as an early ballad, the most +pathetic expression in all literature of a mother's love, and kept out +of the category of the very greatest poems only by the intolerable +anguish of its emotion. In this old German story we find an +interpretation of it too; the briefest and much the simplest, yet not +without an unobtrusive power. Young Helmbrecht declares that he told his +comrade that he might trust Gotelint never to make him repent his +choice. + + "I know her," he represents himself as saying, "to be so + loyal--on this you may count--that she never will leave you + hanging long; she will cut you down with her own hands, and + carry you to your grave at the cross-roads, with incense and + myrrh--of this you can be sure. Nightly for a whole year she + will go about you. Or if, less fortunate, you are blinded or + crippled by the loss of hands or feet, the good, pure girl + will guide you with her own hand over all the paths of every + land; every morning she will bring your crutches to your bed, + or cut for you, even till you die, your bread and meat." + +From the first, Gotelint has been under the fascination of her brother, +and as she hears his long account of the life the wife of Lambswallow +must live, she calls young Helmbrecht aside, and arranges to run away +from home and marry his friend. So at the appointed time she does, and a +great wedding feast, provided at the cost of many widows and orphans, +follows the curious mediaeval marriage ceremony. In the midst of it a +strange foreshadowing of evil comes over her; she wishes herself back at +her father's simple fare; his cabbage was better than the luxury of +Lambswallow's fish. She tells her bridegroom that she is afraid +strangers are at hand to harm them, and even as the players are +receiving their gifts, the sheriff and his force break in upon the +revellers. All meet quick justice; nine are hung; Helmbrecht, the tenth, +is sent off blind, and with only one foot and one hand. "What the +forsaken bride suffered" let him tell who saw. + +The story works to its conclusion in a temper better fitted to the +thirteenth century than to ours. The poet feels no complaisance for an +obstinate wrong-doer. He says: "God is a worker of wonders, and this is +the proper lot of a youth who called his father an old peasant and his +mother a worthless woman." Nor does he stop with his own exclamation; he +tells in detail how the blind and maimed fellow is brought by a boy to +the farm, only to receive his father's taunts and mocking. Brutal and +distressing as the passage seems, it is true to the age and to the +character of the sturdy old farmer. While there was hope he had borne +every insult; he had pleaded persistently, tenderly, and to every limit +of generosity and devotion. But when the youth had proved himself +susceptible to no claims of virtue or humanity, and, as a last stroke of +evil, had seduced his sister from an honorable life, further pity seems +sentimentalism. Before the boy's first departure his father had warned +him that he would take no part in any ill-won prosperity, and if +misfortunes came, they, too, must be borne alone. The foreign phrases +are on the father's lips this time, as the sightless cripple creeps up +to the farm-house door. He runs over the proud speeches that have thus +ended in shame and misery; nor will he listen to the entreaties for +shelter, even as a beggar, for a single night. "'Every one, the country +round, is cruel to me; alas! so you are now. In God's name give me the +charity you would give a poor sick man!'" But the farmer "laughed +scoffingly, even though it broke his heart, for this was his own flesh, +his child, who stood there before him blind." He struck the boy who was +leading the wretch, and drove them off. "Yet as they went away his +mother put a loaf of bread in his hand, as if he were a child." For a +year he crawled about, skulking in the woods and living on what he +might. Then one day, having wandered to the scene of some of his worst +crimes, a set of peasants catch sight of him, and recount to one another +what their farms, their babes, their daughters, had suffered from this +outlaw and his band. As they talk they tremble with hate and rage, and, +catching up a rope, they fulfil the last of the dreams that tormented +the anxious night of the father just before his son rode out, with his +rich clothes and fine horse and wonderful hood covering that long, +beautiful hair, to seek his fortune in a court. + +Why is it worth while to introduce to English readers this peasant tale +of the middle ages? Not on account of its antiquarian value, though it +is full of interesting suggestions of old manners. Nor primarily on +account of its literary significance, notwithstanding the tact and +nervous directness of Wernher's style, and the heightened realism of +treatment that gives him distinction beside the romanticists of the +time. Its main importance for us lies in that sense of the human unity +which we derive from such a story of a time so remote from our own, and +in most of its aspects so different. Many of the influences that render +man's life desirable--organized society, with respect for property and +personal safety, ease of living, humanitarian sensibility even to the +guiltiest suffering--we miss, and missing them we rejoice in the +progress of our age toward the light. But the traits whereby life in all +ages becomes estimable--simplicity of character, contentment with the +station of one's birth, if only one can live there with dignity and +usefulness; frugality, integrity, natural love which grows most tender +and yearning when the kinship of moral worthiness seems in danger of +dissolution--are our own best possession, and this identity of manhood +then and now makes us feel less strange among those distant and dimly +remembered generations. Thus serious writers offer to our study many +notable and interesting thoughts, and in their courtly poets we find +scores of delightful pictures of gracious and noble dames and knights +moving through the pleasures and pains of an ideal world. It is also +pleasant to listen to a poet from among the people, and to touch the +rough hand of an old German farmer, whose most brilliant recollection +was of the time when, as a boy, he carried eggs and cheese to one of the +courts of old-fashioned chivalry; whose virtue cast in a decadent era +had looked at life sternly, yet whose austerity was softened by a homely +simplicity through whose grace he grew old, with his heart true to his +plain home life and his family, even to the assurance that no drink +could be more refreshing than water from the spring on his own farm. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTE: + +[9] + "La pluye nous a debuez et lavez, + Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz; + Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez, + Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz." + + + + +[Decoration] + +CHILDHOOD IN MEDIAEVAL LITERATURE. + + +When Homer described the pretty fright of Astyanax in his nurse's arms, +amid the parting of Hector and Andromache; when Vergil made Damon recall +the day when, as a little boy just able to reach up to the branches, he +saw his mother and the child who was to be his fate gathering +apples--the hyacinths of Theocritus were daintier--they struck two +chords of feeling, one charming, the other deeper and richer, which have +started vibrations whenever they have met a sympathetic reader ever +since. Because we are susceptible to the poetry of childhood we are +pleased to find that these ancient poets also cared for it. It adds a +personal touch to our feeling for them. It gives us a thrill of the +immortality of heart and its simplest, purest sentiment. There may be an +element of the fictitious in our feeling about childhood. Heaven may not +be about our infancy, those "sweet early days" may not have been "as +long as twenty days are now"; and they may not have been the types of +innocence, simplicity, the loveliness of the race taken at first hand +from nature, which we fancy them. But there is something beyond a +fallacy in this sentiment; it is in our purer and more refined moods +that we are sensitive to it. Like a whiff of spring smoke, or woodsy +odors, a reminder of our early life will sometimes throw us into a +revery which is more than recollection. No one can write well about +children without sensibility to youthful emotion and some love for +family life. Whoever looks back with genial wistfulness upon his own +early days, and enjoys renewing them in the playthings of his fancy, can +hardly be without a vein of quiet refinement. When an age listens with +pleasure to such sketches, it is not barren of the homely affections, +nor uniformly given over to restless and unlawful passions. As one +wanders through the poetry of the middle ages, one observes the +frequency with which it mentions children. + +These passages, judged absolutely, may not be remarkable for insight or +tenderness, but in those days all emotional subjects were treated +crudely. Yet they are often interesting for themselves, and they show a +fact which many seem to question that the sentiments of simple family +life were felt by poets and people. So much has been written by critics +upon the worse side of the society of chivalry, that it is well to +recognize this other aspect of its affections. The public has frequently +been assured that those days knew nothing of true family sentiment. How +much truth there is in the statement that fashionable love disregarded +marriage, has been shown in a preceding essay. But on _a priori_ grounds +we should disbelieve that general society was permeated by artificial +gallantry. Even were the testimony of lyrical lovers uniform, we must +recollect how conventional all their love-poetry was; most poets +composed on formal lines impersonally, in spite of their pronouns. One +of the troubadours, indeed, denied that this was possible when the +husband of his theme challenged him, in the lonely place where he was +hunting, by his liege truth to tell him whether he had a lady love. +"Sire," he replied, "how could I sing unless I loved?" But in most poems +there was more business, or ambitious art, than nature. A large number +of these poets impress us as having just as little emotional veracity in +writing as had Cowley in _The Mistress_. Moreover, even if a school of +poetry, not conventionalized, should treat romantic and sensational +sentiment to the exclusion of domestic, it would prove nothing. What if +cynical critics some centuries hence should give Mr. Coventry Patmore a +place in their encyclopedias, simply on the ground that he was an +exception to the nineteenth-century belief that love ended at the bridal +altar? Possibly by that time love, poetry, and fiction may deal mainly +with domestic emotions after marriage, and then our own romances will +very likely appear strange. + +From one point of view those centuries were too akin to undeveloped life +to be prepared to represent it. Europe seven hundred years ago seems +like a vast nursery abandoned by its governess. The people are like +children of various ages and sizes, degrees of education, and innate +sense of right and wrong. Children are impulsive, passionate, selfish, +brutally inconsiderate; they are sometimes religious too. We find +apparently sporadic susceptibility to isolation and prayer. They cry at +trifles, and while their cheeks are still wet, they are smiling. Bright +and simple things please them; they are fickle and impatient; they love +lively music; when they are tired playing, nothing pleases them like a +story--they listen intently, credulously. When spring comes they can no +more help running and dancing over the grass, than sunbeams on a brook. +The gentler sit in the meadow making posies, while the rougher are +setting traps, and racing, and fighting: but sometimes the rough boys +will come and play in the meadow, and be pleasant to the girls. All +these traits of children apply to the mediaeval character, their +barbarisms, their ethical inconsistencies, their delight in stories (no +age has ever cared more for story telling), their love of play, their +passion for spring, and the rest. + +Undoubtedly the popular impression gives the period too little +joyousness. Mercurial childhood has capacity for sudden pleasures even +when life goes ill, and life frequently went very well even then. But +the mystery and grace of motherhood and dawning life are likely to +appeal to a calmer and more retrospective age. The seriousness that +takes pleasure in contemplating childhood is more serene and pensive +than the usual moods of an era undeveloped emotionally. So it would not +be a matter for surprise if the literary remains of those days had left +us mainly incidental references to children. + +Of such plain facts we have many, such as, for instance, that the little +ones were entertained with pet dogs, birds, and squirrels (apparently +never with cats), mice harnessed to a toy wagon, clay or wooden images +of animals, and tiny vessels after kitchen models, toy men, women, and +children, tops, and marbles; that they played blind man's buff, and many +games attended with songs. As early as the interesting Latin poem called +_Waltharius et Hiltgunde_, which at least in a popular version Walther +von der Vogelweide liked, we find the hero appealing to Hagen, by the +memory of the boyish games with which they had whiled away their +childhood, and over which they never had quarrelled. + +We obtain considerable information about customs of education also; +such as the attention paid to languages (a girl in a French romance is +said to have understood fourteen tongues), and Isolde knew French and +Latin as well as Irish. Boys were sent off on their travels early, going +especially to Paris. Weinhold's quotation from Hugo von Trimberg +illustrates the dangers that beset the pursuit of culture even then: +"Many boys go to Paris; they learn little and spend much. But yet no +doubt they see Paris." + +When Sir Philip Sidney derided the contemporary drama's habit of +carrying a play through a large part of the hero's lifetime, instead of +restricting the action to a developed episode, he made a poor criticism, +out of tune, as are other parts of his criticism, with the genius of +Elizabethan poetry. But the passage is interesting as a reminder of the +relation to that great literature of the romances which runs back +through the middle ages to the later Greek writings. Such narrations as +the _Daphnis and Chloe_, and the _Aethiopica_, introduce their central +characters while they are still children, and whether through +transmitted influence or independently, the same course is pursued by +the most important romance poems of mediaeval France and Germany. To this +practice we owe pleasant domestic scenes of many a hero's early life, +and sometimes, indeed, a narration of early joys and sorrows of his +parents' love. The _Tristan_ of Gottfried von Strassburg, for example, +begins well before the birth of its subject, with noteworthy romantic +episodes. This brilliant poem's account of the early years of chivalry's +typical fine gentleman illustrates the admiration paid to intellectual +training at a time when polite society in general was not well educated. +Tristan spent his first seven years under the care of his foster-mother, +learning various lessons of good behavior; after that Rual li Foitenant +provided a master, and sent him off to acquire foreign languages in +their own lands, and "book-learning" as well. The luxurious temper of +his chronicler stops for a long sigh at the hardship of such training, +through the years when joyousness is at its best. So it is, he exclaims +in his studied style, with many youth; when life is in its first bloom +and freedom, away they are constrained to go from its free blossom. For +seven years this young prince was constantly kept busy with the +exercises of arms and horsemanship, in addition to his formal studies; +he also learned hunting, and all courtly arts, especially music. Then he +was called home to be prepared for his political career. The education +of children was assisted by not a few treatises on manners and morals, +such as _Babees Books_, as the old English called them. They are usually +manuals of etiquette, mediaeval prototypes of such modern works as +_Don't_. Chaucer's Prioress had evidently studied the sections on table +proprieties, and her gentility, which was so tender-hearted, might well +have been developed under the admonishments of the ethical passages +which often accompanied them. For a tender age many of these precepts +were depressing. One of the gravest and most mature of these works is +called _Der Winsbeke_, with a sequel, _Die Winsbekin_, for girls, the +advice of a twelfth-century Solomon, which moralizes certainly as well +as most of its analogues. This stanza, for instance, shows a homely +dignity: + + That bright candle mark, my son, + While it burns, it wastes away; + So from thee thy life doth run, + (I say true) from day to day. + In thy memory let this dwell, + And life here so rule, that then + With thy soul it may be well. + What though wealth exalt thy name? + Only this shall follow thee-- + A linen cloth to hide thy shame. + +These gnomic writings, running into a developed didacticism, are +illustrated by the song of Walther von der Vogelweide on the restraint +of eye, ear, and tongue. Whether this poet was the teacher of the young +King Henry, as some have thought, or gained his experience in humbler +ways, he evidently knew the trials of the pedagogue. "Oh, you +self-willed boy," he cries, "too small to be put to work in the field +and too big to whip, have your own way and go to sleep." As for +flogging, this prince of the minnesingers took the side of the Matthew +Feildes against the Boyers: "No one can switch a child into education; +to those whom you can bring up well, a word is as good as a blow." +Apropos of the teacher's view, we also find the pupil's feeling for his +teacher recorded in that little poem of the English school-boy, who was +late in the morning, and explained to the master that his mother told +him to stop and milk the ducks. The boy recounts the details of what +follows, and afterwards, instead of taking up his interrupted studies, +he words out a day-dream in which the master is turned into a hare, his +books into hounds, and the boy goes hunting. + +There is a grain of humor, too, at least for the modern reader, in a +much more sentimental child-play of the minnesinger Hadlaub. Though he +mainly echoes the love singers who wrote a hundred years before him, one +of the first songs in the collection of his poems raises a hope of +something more than the ordinary, though this only leads us on to +disappointment through the rest of his fifty-odd pieces. There is +something very natural about this picture of the lover catching sight of +his disdainful fair one playing with a little child. "She reached out +her arms and caught it close to her, she took its face between her white +hands, and pressed it to her lips and mouth and lovely cheek; ah, how +deliciously she kissed it!" What did the child do? "Just what I should +have done; threw its arms around her, and was so happy." When she let +the little one go, the lover went after it and kissed it just where her +lips had been, "and how that went to my heart!" Poor fellow! "I serve +her since we both were children," and this is the nearest apparently +that he ever came to the seals of love. + +But instead of delaying over estrays, pleasant scraps like those left us +by Heinrich von Morungen, for instance, one of the few minnesingers for +whom one really cares, we may pass on to three or four more detailed +examples from the thirteenth century, of household love and sympathy +with the poetry of childhood. But first I will translate a simple sesame +for opening again the early gates. The poet is known as the Wild +Alexander, but his mood was gentle and gracious when this revery of his +boyhood came upon him: + + There we children used to play, + Thro' the meadows and away, + Looking 'mid the grassy maze + For the violets; those days + Long ago + Saw them grow; + Now one sees the cattle graze. + + I remember as we fared + Thro' the blossoms, we compared + Which the prettiest might be: + We were little things, you see. + On the ground + Wreaths we bound;-- + So it goes, our youth and we. + + Over stick and stone we went + Till the sunny day was spent; + Hunting strawberries each skirrs + From the beeches to the firs, + Till--Hello, + Children! Go + Home, they cry--the foresters. + +So he goes on to tell how their childhood took as a pleasure the hurts +and stings that they received as they hunted for strawberries, and to +recall the warnings against snakes that the herdsman sometimes shouted +through the branches. Apart from its graceful manner, and the breezy +freshness of its universal childhood, the poem's specific touches are +unusual. "From the beeches to the firs," for instance, does not sound +mediaeval aside from one's surprise that a German should have omitted the +linden. We need not be as old as was Lamb in 1820, to look back with a +touch of desire on the child, that other me, there in the background. +Perhaps there is the glamour of sentiment about that familiar +association of childhood with purity and moral grace. Yet the feeling +appeals to us as true beyond mere beauty, and many may read with +responsiveness these lines, hitherto unprinted, by one on whose lips, +just parted for their song, silence laid her finger: + + "Could I answer love like thine, + All earth to me were heaven anew; + But were thy heart, dear child, as mine, + What place for love between us two? + Bright things for tired eyes vainly shine: + A grief the pure heaven's simple blue. + Alas, for lips past joy of wine, + That find no blessing in God's dew! + From dawning summits crystalline + Thou lookest down; thou makest sign + Toward this bleak vale I wander through. + I cannot answer; that pure shrine + Of childhood, though my love be true, + Is hidden from my dim confine: + I must not hope for clearer view. + The sky, the earth, the wrinkled brine + Would wear to me a fresher hue, + And all once more be half-divine, + Could I answer love like thine." + +The spiritual subtlety of such a mood certainly is beyond the mediaeval +poets, yet we find pleasant proofs of sensibility to the tender, +unselfish nature of a loving child. Nowhere in such detail, perhaps, as +in the most familiar of Middle High German poems, the _Poor Henry_, of +Hartmann von Aue. The story is known in Longfellow's _Golden Legend_. +This is not the place to discuss that poem, which contains some charming +passages. The poet's treatment may be far from satisfactory, yet when he +calls his original the most beautiful of mediaeval legends, he certainly +shows a more satisfactory side of extreme estimate than does Goethe, in +his curious fling at the poem (which we may notice he read in a +modernized form). He says it gave him a "physico-aesthetic pain," and +adds that the notion of a fine girl sacrificing herself for a leper, +affected him so that he felt himself poisoned by the book. This judgment +was pronounced in Goethe's later life, and is consistent with his +habitual want of sympathy with mediaeval romantic literature. It shows, +moreover, a lack of historical adjustment, for the dreadful disease was +so common in the twelfth century that its repulsiveness was blurred for +Hartmann; yet he mentions it with the greatest reserve, though a +description of its appearance could hardly be more painful than the +famous conclusion of the _De Rerum Natura_. We are reminded of Goethe's +visit to Assisi, interesting to him only as the situation of some +remains of classical architecture.[10] + +Hartmann von Aue ranks below his two great companions in German +narrative poetry, for he is more of a translator than either Gottfried +or Wolfram. His distinction is in his style; he has a very agreeable way +of telling a story, and there is a quiet charm about his diction. "How +clear and pure his crystal words are and always must be," is Gottfried's +tribute. We come to feel a personal liking for him, through his +unaffected interest in his characters, his unassuming ways and the tact +by which he lightens or deepens his accentuation. We feel that he was a +gentleman, and we do not wonder at the kind regard in which all his +fellow poets held him. We like his refined moral seriousness and that +calm temperament of which he speaks in _Gregorius_. The original for the +_Arme Heinrich_ is lost, but though his introduction claims for himself +no merit beyond a careful selection out of the many books that he takes +pains to tell us he was learned enough to read for himself, we are +probably justified in feeling that he took his heart into partnership +when he made the version, receiving from it touches that he did not find +in the earlier treatment. To appreciate the poem we have to put +ourselves into harmony with the wonder-loving, credulous, and mystically +religious world of seven hundred years ago. Hartmann's simple +earnestness and unobtrusive tenderness and piety constitute an ideal +manner for the legend, and that ease of his soul which he hoped would +come through the prayers of those who read the poem after his death, is +perhaps equally well secured if he knows how some of his verses touch +the sophisticated sense of to-day. He said that he was actuated in +writing by the desire to soften hard hours in a way that would be to the +honor of God, and by which he might make himself dear to others. He has +succeeded. It is to the honor of God, and it wins the affection of +others, when a poet leads his readers to a little well of pure unselfish +love, hedged about by a child's religious faith. + +The hero of the legend is a gentleman of position and feudal +possessions, whose free and generous career is cut short by an incurable +leprosy. It is in vain that he consults masters at Montpelier and +Salerno, the famous seats of medicine; and the honor and affection in +which a genial life had established him among his friends cannot save +him from becoming a social outcast. He disposes of his wealth between +the poor and the church, and retires to a fief whose tenant is willing +to receive his suzerain as a guest. Here, on a little estate, away from +all contact with the world, the gay lord resigns himself to the +companionship of the farmer and his wife, whose gratitude for his +kindness in the past distinguishes them among the multitude to whom his +amiable disposition had made him a benefactor and friend. There were +children in the family, the eldest a girl eight years old, when Henry +came. It was because their hearts were loyal that her parents were kind, +but she kept close by him because she loved to be there. She was always +to be found at his feet, and his affectionate nature liked her +companionship. He bought her a hand mirror, a riband for her hair, a +belt and finger ring, and whatever children care for. These gifts +attached her to him, yet the main secret of her love was the sweet +spirit that God had given her. After three years, as the family were +sitting together one day with their high-born guest, the farmer asked +him why it was that he had given himself up so hopelessly to his +disease, and Henry laid aside his reserve, and told for the first time +about his visit to the great physician at Salerno. The only remedy was +an impossible one. He might indeed be healed, but not unless a virgin +made a voluntary offering of her life. Alas, God was his only physician. + +The little girl, who was so inseparable a companion that he jestingly +called her his bride, listened as she was holding her sick lord's feet +in her lap. She could not get it out of her head (the old German idiom +is better, "out of her heart") the rest of the day, and when at night +she lay in her usual place at her father's and mother's feet, she felt +so sorry for her dear lord that she cried, and the warm tears fell on +her parents' feet, and woke them. When they asked her what was the +matter, she said that she thought they ought to be sorry, too; for what +would happen to them all if their lord should die? Some one else would +own the farm, and no one could ever be as kind to them as he had been. +They told her that was all true, but it could do no good to lament. +"Dear child, do not grieve. We feel as badly as you do, but alas, we +cannot help him." So they hushed her, but all the night and the next day +she continued to be unhappy, and whatever else she was doing, she kept +thinking of this. When she went to bed, she cried again, till finally +she resolved to herself that if she lived till morning she would surely +give her life for her lord. Straightway from that thought, she became +light-hearted and happy, and felt free of all her cares, until it +occurred to her that perhaps Henry and her parents would not permit her +to make the sacrifice; whereupon the poor little girl burst out crying +again, and wakened her parents, as she had done the night before. It was +only with difficulty that they drew from her this simple speech: "My +lord might get well in the way that he told us, and if you will only let +me, I am what he needs for being cured. I am a maid, and rather than see +him pass away, I will die for him." A long dialogue follows, in which +the parents remonstrate with the daughter, who replies in a strain of +spiritual elation. She appeals not only to her parents' worldly +dependence on their master's goodness, but also to their desire for her +own highest welfare. How much better for her to pass to eternal life in +unstained childhood, only anticipating the death that must come some +time, no less unwelcome late than soon. Her parents ceased to +remonstrate, for they felt that the Holy Ghost was speaking through her, +as they listened to the visionary cry. Instead of taking, two or three +years hence, some neighbor for her husband, she will choose + + "the Franklin, who is wooing me to a home where the plough + runs easily, where there is all abundance, where horses and + cattle never are lost, where no wailing children suffer, + where it is neither too warm nor too cold, where the old will + grow young, where is nor frost nor hunger, no kind of pain, + but all joy without toil; thither will I haste me, and + forsake a farm whose tillage, fire, hail, and flood destroy, + so that one half-day ruins the labor of a year. Then let me + go to our Lord Jesus Christ, whose grace is sure, and who + loves me, poor as I am, like a queen." + +Unlike our modern analysts of character, Hartmann does not stop to +comment on the art of his delineation, and it is possible to miss the +tact with which he keeps his heroine's renunciation consistent with a +child's nature. Hartmann is not treating this character inartistically, +as a mere instrument for religious culture. Earnest speech of a +thoughtful parish priest; or phrases caught from the conversation of her +lord touched by his sorrows, with the age's feeling _de contemptu +mundi_, might have supplied her with some sentiments that seem beyond a +child's invention, and children's emotions are sometimes precocious, +especially in what seems a morbid religious development. + +Those are the years of faith, credulous belief that burns with the white +light of knowledge; a child's faith is a man's superstition. The peasant +maid's imagination sees heaven and salvation a fact so infinitely +desirable, that all dread of death was eliminated from the path of her +love. The joyousness of her sacrifice, too, instead of being a romantic +exaggeration, is far truer to life than a willingness touched with pain +and hesitation could have been. In a noble dread, austerely controlled, +lies Calvary's dignity and pathos. But her gratitude and impetuous love +for what seems to her simple mind a superior and infinitely deserving +object, reached that finest pitch of selfishness, where self-sacrifice +becomes the demand of impulsive egotism. To an enthusiastic temperament +love's passionate altruism may be consummate self-will. As the little +maid came away from her deliverance, though she was happy in her lord's +restoration, she was less happy than as she went. + +For she did not have to die. In the tyranny of undeniable love, she +broke down the opposition of her parents, and although Henry indeed +hesitated, she pleaded so anxiously and drew such an eloquent sketch of +the advantage and gladness death would be to her, and the value of his +life compared with hers, that at last, genial and affectionate as he +was, the temptation to live by the sacrifice of a mere child's life (and +the feudal sense of possession ought not to be overlooked) was too +strong to be resisted. Compare the scene with the one in _Philaster_, +where Bellario wishes to offer herself for the man whom she loves with a +hopeless earthly sentiment: + + "'Tis not a life, + 'Tis but a piece of childhood thrown away." + +For her, continuance of life is only "a game that must be lost." But for +the nameless German girl there is no pathos in living, beyond the +thought of her master's death, and her sentiment was as childlike as +when it began, while she was only eight years old. Her love is a flame +that burns impatiently away from the taper that feeds it; for her +generous passion is after all a beautiful devoted wilfulness. When her +parents wept to lose her, and her lord wept at his own weak hesitation, +she wept above them all and her tears won the day. She rode with Henry +to Salerno, and was unhappy only because the journey was so long. The +great physician took her hand, and led her alone into a barred and +bolted room. Then he tried to frighten her and induce her to retract +her consent, but she only laughed until she became afraid that he would +not do his part, whereupon she broke out into an indignant scorn for his +unmanly weakness. When he bade her undress, she did so without a blush; +he bound her to his table, and took up his knife. He wished to render +death easy (so he told himself), and taking a whetstone to make the +knife sharper, he slowly whetted it--only as a pretext for delaying. The +gentleman outside found himself restless. He listened, then he tried to +look in and at last through a crevice in the wall he saw that "little +bride" who had been his main companion and comfort during those three +wretched years. By a fine touch of nature, the poet makes the sight of +her perfect loveliness as she lay waiting for her celestial bridal, the +force that broke the selfish charm which had enchained his manliness. He +beat on the door, he called, and when no response came, he burst his way +in. "The child is too lovely to die. For myself, God's will be done." + +It was now that her trial came, as she wailed and beat wildly at her +body, to force on him the life he was unwilling to take. She talked +bitterly and peevishly, as if she had been cheated of heaven through his +cruelty. But it was in vain, he dressed her again in the rich garments +which he had procured for the sacrificial journey, and they set out on +their return to their distant home, the sobbing girl and the leper. But +as they rode along, the divine might that seemed so near to mediaeval +faith was their companion, and touching the incurable disease, fulfilled +love's miracle. Henry took their daughter back to the peasants, and gave +her rich gifts, while he presented them with the land which they had +farmed, and all its serfs and chattels. Then he went back to his +estates, and to the welcome that the world was waiting to give him. By +and by, when his people insisted that he should marry, he called an +old-time conference about whom he should choose. There were numerous +suggestions, but the advisers did not agree. He listened, and then +telling them that unless they would approve his own choice, he should +never marry, he stepped to the side of "the dear little wife" who had +loved him as a leper. + +The romance of _Fleur et Blanchefleur_, which goes back, though not in +its present form, to the twelfth century, enjoyed such popularity that +it was translated into almost every European tongue. Indeed, in some +languages it is found in more than one version. The story tells of a +Saracen prince, whose royal father interrupts the smooth course of his +true love for a Christian girl. She was the daughter of a captive lady +in the palace of the Queen, and the royal boy and the bond girl had been +born on the same day. From his birth, the mother of Blanchefleur became +Fleur's nurse; the pagan law required that he must be suckled by a +heathen, but in all other ways the infants were treated like twins. They +slept in one cradle, and when they could eat and drink they were given +the same food. Thus they grew up together, until they were five years +old, when the King, seeing his child as fine and promising a boy as +could be found in any land, decided that it was time for him to begin +his education. He selected a master, but Fleur, when he was bidden to +study, burst into tears and cried, "Sire, what will Blanchefleur do? Who +will teach her? I never can learn without her." The King answered that +since he loved her so, Blanchefleur should go with him to school. + + "So they went and came together, and the joy of their love + was still uninterrupted. It was a wonder to see how each of + the two studied for each; neither learned anything without + straightway telling the other. At nature's earliest, all + their concern was love; they were quick in learning and well + they remembered. Pagan books that spake of love they read + together with delight; these hastened them along in the + understanding and joy of love. On their way home from school, + they would put their arms about each other, and kiss. In the + King's garden, bright with all plants and flowers of various + hues, they went to play every morning, and to eat their + dinner; and after they had eaten, they listened to the birds + singing in the trees above them, and then they went their way + back to school, and a happy walk they found it. When they + were again at school they took their ivory tablets, and you + might have seen them writing letters and verses of love, in + the wax. Deftly with their gold and silver styles they made + letters and greeting of love, of the songs of birds and of + flowers. This was all they cared for. In five years and + fifteen days, they both had learned to write neatly on + parchment, and to talk in Latin so well that no one could + understand." + +When we follow the poem along, we find in the different versions many +familiar romance expedients, conventional incidents of the pathetic, +exciting, and marvellous, but the charm is in the unwavering love of +these twins, who from the hour of birth breathed together, even in their +sleep, yet no kin to each other, and blending brotherhood and sisterhood +with the other love of man and woman in perfection, since for neither +they knew the beginning. In this way the mediaeval romance is even more +ideal than Beaumont's _Triumph of Love_, where Gerard and Violante +passed from the sentiment of childhood "as innocently as the first +lovers ere they fell." + +"Gerard's and my affection began," the heroine tells Ferdinand, + + "In infancy: my uncle brought him oft + In long clothes hither; you were such another. + The little boy would kiss me, being a child, + And say he loved me: give me all his toys, + Bracelets, rings, sweetmeats, all his rosy smiles; + I then would stand and stare upon his eyes, + Play with his locks, and swear I loved him too. + For sure, methought he was a little Love, + He wooed so prettily in innocence + That then he warmed my fancy; for I felt + A glimmering beam of love kindle my blood + Both which time since hath made a flame and flood." + +In the early stages of Fleur's love-trials his parents attempted to +persuade him that Blanchefleur was dead, and to give confirmation to +their assertions they caused a superb tomb to be constructed, in a style +that is of considerable interest in the study of literary origins from +its obviously Oriental tone. Without delaying for its rich and curious +Eastern details, we may yet notice the sentiment in the figures of the +boy and girl that were placed upon it. "Never were seen images of fairer +children, or more like to the lovers. The image of Blanchefleur holds a +flower before Fleur, before her lover holds the fair one a rose of fine +bright gold; and before her, Fleur holds a blanched golden fleur-de-lis. +Close by each other they sit, a sweet look on their faces." A mechanical +device is so contrived that when the wind blew and touched the children +they embraced and kissed, and by necromancy they spoke to each other as +in their childhood, and thus said Fleur to Blanchefleur: "Kiss me, +sweet," and kissing him, she replied: "I love you more than all the +world." + +The story of Fleur and Blanchefleur was so popular that they became +identified with the characters of another romance, and were sung of as +the parents of Berte-as-graus-pies, the heroine of an attractive +legend, and the mythical mother of Charlemagne. In the poem that relates +her misfortunes after she has been sent from Hungary to France as the +wife of Pepin, we find a suggestion of the depth of sentiment that was +always associated with her legendary parents. She has been in France +almost nine years without their having heard from her, and Blanchefleur +determines to undertake a journey to see her child again before she +dies. The King, without opposing her desire, expresses a half +remonstrance that we may add to the other proofs in mediaeval poetry, +that true love in our modern sense was familiar throughout those eras: +"Oh, my lady, how shall we be able to live so long without each other?" +Let us believe that in the Utopia where these lovers who loved from +their birth resided, they found, after their own sharp trials and the +trials of their daughter were safely over, a serene old age, out of +which they passed unconsciously some night, sleeping themselves away in +each other's arms. + +This love between boy and girl was attractive to the old narrative +poets. The greatest of them all touched the soul of young romance when +he said of Sigune and Schionatulander, "Alas, they are still too young +for such pain, yet 'tis the love of youth which lasts." Wolfram gives us +pretty touches of childhood as far back as the nursery; like that of a +mother and her ladies playing over the new-born baby, or of children +learning to stand by taking hold of chairs, and creeping over the floor +to reach them, or of Sigune's care to take her box of dolls with her +when she went away. "Whoever saw this little girl thought her a glimpse +of May among the dewy flowers." As she grew older, too, he describes +her, assuming the airs of a young lady. "When her breasts were rounding +and her light wavy hair began to turn dark, she grew more proud and +dignified, though always keeping her womanlike sweetness." The story of +her love with Schionatulander has delightful stanzas; their long +love-pleading dialogue is much truer than most of the minnesingers' work +in its restraint and in the girl's coy sweetness. She is an earlier +Dorigen as she watches for the beloved who does not come, wasting many +an evening at the window gazing over the fields, or climbing to the +housetop to look. But what distinguishes the author of the _Titurel_ +above his fellow-poets is his sentiment for something more than romance. +Children are dear to him, and the wife is dearer. His idea of love +consists no more in Dante's platonic mysticism than in passion and +inconstancy. Without transcendentalism its dominant tone is spiritual. +Compare an earlier lover's cry in the loveliest of French romances: +"What is there in heaven for me? I will never go there without +Nicolette, my sweet darling, whom I love so much. It is to hell that +fine gentlemen go and pretty, well-bred ladies who love." Compare that +Parisian type of feeling with this of Wolfram: "Love between man and +woman has its house on earth, and its pure guidance leads us to God and +heaven. This love is everywhere save in hell!" To such a poet we +naturally turn for the deepest mediaeval note in the treatment of +childhood, and we do not listen in vain. + +"What a difference there is between women," Wolfram exclaims. It seems +to him the way of modern womanhood to be disloyal, worldly, selfish, +like men: but in the days of which he writes in his chief poem there was +a lady Herzeloide, to whom after her husband's death in the wars, the +sun was a cloud, the world's joy lost, night and day alike, who for +heavenly riches chose earthly poverty, and leaving her estates went with +her retainers far into the unreclaimed forest to bring up her infant +safe from the strife and wiles of men. This only heritage of her lost +lord was the boy Parzival. She trusted that by hiding him away from all +knowledge of the world, she might always keep him her own. She exacted +an oath from her servants that they would never let him hear of knights +and knighthood, and while they cleared farming land in the heart of the +woods, she cared for the child. It was a desolate place, but she was not +looking for meadows and flowers; she gave no thought to wreaths, whether +red or yellow.[11] + +The child grew into boyhood, and was indulged in making bows and arrows. +As he played in the woods, he shot some of the birds. But after he saw +them dead, he remembered how they had sung, and he cried. Every morning +he went to a stream to bathe. There was nothing to trouble him, except +the singing of the birds over his head: but that was so sweet that his +breast grew strained with feeling; and he ran to his mother in tears. +She asked what ailed him, but "like children even now it may be," he +could not tell her. But she kept the riddle in her heart, and one day +she found him gazing up at the trees listening to the birds, and she saw +how his breast heaved as they sang. It seemed to her that she hated +them, she did not know why. She wanted to stop their singing, and bade +her farm hands snare and kill them. But the birds were too quick; most +of them remained and kept on singing. The boy asked his mother what harm +the birds did, and if the war upon them might not cease. She kissed his +lips: + + "Why am I opposing highest God? Shall the birds lose their + happiness because of me?" + + "Nay, mother, what is God?" + + "My son, He is brighter than the day; He took upon himself + the likeness of man. When trouble comes upon thee, pray to + him: his faithfulness upholds the world. The Devil is + darkness; turn thy thoughts from him, and from unbelief." + +This passage is Wolfram's invention; the brilliant Gallic poet whose +romance he followed could not have contrived it. This sympathy with +nature belongs to our later era; it seems less strange to meet it in +Keats, when the boy Apollo wanders out alone in the morning twilight: + + "The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars + Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush + Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle + There was no covert, no retired cave + Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves. + Though scarcely heard in many a green recess, + He listened and he wept, and his bright tears + Went trickling down the golden bow he held." + +One recalls nothing in the two centuries which Wolfram touches that +equals this picture of the mother watching her child's baptism with the +sad and precious gift of soul, as he stands gazing upward in his forest +trance, or listening to his dawning perplexities, or teaching him his +first religious lesson, or jealous of the birds, because his dreamy love +for them dimly warned her of a mysterious growing soul that would not +remain within her simple call. Those lines in the _Princess_ of the +faith in womankind and the trust in all things high, that come easy to +the son of a good mother, certainly are appropriate to Parzival, whose +faith held true and simple through his whole career as the foremost +knight of chivalric legend, living for a spiritual ideal, unseduced by +beauty and the ways of courts from loyalty to his first wedlock: + + "True to the kindred points of heaven and home." + +The description of Parzival's meeting with the knights, his mistaking +them in their bright armor for angels, and his eagerness to make his way +to Arthur's court are narrated by Chrestien with his own excellent +vivacity, and here Wolfram only follows. + +The Welsh version of the story in the _Mabinogi_ of Peredur, though +disappointing, contains a naive sketch of the boy's rustic attempt to +imitate the knight's trappings. But for the full tenderness of his +mother's parting as he goes out from home to the fierce world we must +turn again to the German.[12] + +She kisses him, and as he rides away "runs a few steps after him" till +he has galloped out of sight and then she closes forever the eyes whose +light of motherhood shone like a star above the sea, over those +tumultuous years. + +All through these centuries there are poems to the Virgin, especially +in Latin, which manifest similar sensibility to infancy and motherhood. +One of the most pleasing belongs to England, and is written in the +commixture of Latin and the modern tongue, which occasionally produces +quaintly pretty effects. The glorified Christ summons his mother, by the +memory of their kisses when she calmed him in sweet song, to come and be +crowned. "Pulcra ut luna"--lovely as moonlight--"veni coronaberis." + +But perhaps the most delicate of all such sketches comes from an +unexpected source. A young lawyer in the town of Todi, whose early life +had combined pleasure with sufficient study to gain the doctorate, was +turned aside from a prosperous public career by the tragical loss of his +bride. Matthew Arnold has given a symbolism to the story of her death in +the sonnet beginning: + + "That son of Italy who tried to blow + 'Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song." + +The sorrow struck deep, even to the point of partial mania; the gay +young man forsook the world and devoted years to seclusion and religious +culture. Later in 1278, he entered the order of the Minorites, and ranks +as one of their delirious enthusiasts, a mystic poet, a reckless +satirist of evils in high places. His fanatic asceticism made him glory +in bodily torments and the world's scorn. The nickname, Jacapone, he +carried proudly, and even the harshness of Boniface VIII. could not +quell his zest for martyrdom. We should scarcely look to him for +sympathy with the sweet gaieties of the nursery, yet this little sketch +of the Virgin's life with Christ, the child, came from the same hand +that wrote the sorrows of the _Stabat Mater_. + + Ah sweet, how sweet, the love within thy heart, + When on thy breast the nursing infant lay: + What gentle actions, sweetly loving play, + Thine, with thy holy child apart. + When for a little while he sometimes slept, + Thou eager to awake thy paradise, + Soft, soft, so that he could not hear thee, crept, + And laidest thy lips close to his eyes, + Then, with the smile maternal calling, "Nay, + 'Twere naughty to sleep longer, wake, I say!" + +The almost incoherent repetition of the word "Love," in one of his +poems, is suggestive of the man; despair for human love led to his +half-crazed absorption in the divine. Very sweetly sounds this sacred +meditation's echo of his recollection of the nights of his own +childhood, of which he has told, when his mother, as she waked, would +make a light and come and lean over his bed, till sometimes his eyes +would open to see her watching him there. His father did not spare the +rod for the careless boy, nor in later years did the father of his soul; +but the divine motherhood of memory and of present faith bent with +yearning eyes, we may be sure, over his anxious sleep in prison or in +the ascetic cell. + +But it was only the greatest of all these poets who could leave us the +lovely image of the new-born soul that comes forth in its simplicity +from the hand that loves it before its birth, playing like a young girl +who weeps and smiles. Yet Dante's principal sensation about childhood is +its helplessness, and the mother's eyes, which throw its aureole about +infancy, do not seem to have held their tenderest meaning for him. He +would never have gone beyond the original ten lines of + + "She was a phantom of delight." + +But he gives beauty to the child's frightened eyes when they meet its +mother's, and certainly the vision, whether real or imagined, toward the +close of the _Vita Nuova_ will please forever. This straying love is +recalled to its old faithfulness by "the strong imagination" of a little +figure that is habited in red, just as it had appeared to him when, +perhaps in Folco's Florentine garden, the boy not quite nine fell in +love with the girl of eight. + +Perhaps Boccaccio's story of the falcon is too familiar to quote, though +it illustrates domestic love too well to be unmentioned. One hardly can +choose the best of its touches--the bright account of the boy running +over the fields with his mother's old-time lover, as he hawked, always +eying with a boy's eagerness for ownership the famous falcon, the only +remnant of Frederick's gay and wealthy life, which he had lost for the +unsuccessful love; or the picture of the mother again and again begging +the child, as he lay ill, to tell her something which he desired, so +that she might obtain it for him; until his feverish imagination +persuaded him that to have the wonderful falcon would make him well +again; or our thought of the impoverished gentleman, whose devotion had +lasted under the years of exile on his little farm, his hope departed, +who when suddenly visited by his widowed love, and finding nothing in +the larder, nor money, nor even anything valuable enough for a pledge to +secure some entertainment for her, desperately wrung the neck of his +precious bird; or the delicate hesitation and awkwardness of the lady +when she came to explain her errand, and the struggle, before love for +her child bent both pride and pity; or the lover's broken heart when he +found that his excess of devotion had cost him his only opportunity of +pleasing her. The whole may be read in a little play of Tennyson's later +years, or among the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_; but it is much better to +read it in the narrative of the Certaldesian. Tuscany has sent us down +no tenderer story. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[10] I will not quote Goethe's famous disparagement of the _Divina +Commedia_, for the context indicates that it was uttered petulantly. +Still, he certainly did not care for Dante, or appreciate him, though he +recognized his eminence. + +[11] It may be worth noting that Wolfram substitutes for the French +original's usual conventionality of a pretty watered meadow, this harder +and more appropriate setting. + +[12] Tennyson might suitably enough have had the marriage of Parzival +and Condiuiramur in mind when writing the Prince's aspiration. "Then +reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm." Such passages in +Wolfram's poem as Book iv. from line 666 and Book v. 676-682 may be +commended to the critics who see nothing in mediaeval love that is pure +or faithful in the modern sense of marriage. + + + + +[Decoration] + +A MEDIAEVAL WOMAN.[13] + + +When Heloise was born, just after the twelfth century opened, Abelard, +through whom she was to experience the deepest ecstacies and the most +poignant distress, and by whose union with her life she was to become +the most famous mediaeval woman, was a young man of twenty-two. He came +of a rather high-bred family in Brittany; his father, though an active +soldier, was interested in letters and took pains to have his children +instructed in the ornaments as well as the defence of life. This eldest +son, so attracted by his early lessons that he determined to sacrifice +his rights of primogeniture, and to renounce the distinction of a +knightly career for the life of study, while yet a youth started out as +a student-tramp, one of a multitude who wandered from town to town to +hear lectures on the seven topics that made up the educational +curriculum of the age. Through this entire epoch, for generation after +generation, this practice of student vagrancy continued: now the +intellectual centre was England, now France, now Germany; sometimes two +or three teachers would draw crowds to the exclusion of all other +schools, sometimes the numbers would divide up among scores of masters. +Poor, rich, coarse, refined, hard-working, indolent, quick-witted, +stupid, scholars, impostors,--these student crowds were an extraordinary +medley. To realize the irregularity and the strangeness of their lives +we have to read such a story as Freytag quotes[14] from Thomas Platter, +a wandering scholar of the fifteenth century. Such German students were +perhaps of a lower grade than the young men who travelled through France +three hundred years before, and the standard of scholarship may have +been inferior, but their general experiences must have been similar, and +most of Abelard's companions no doubt were mentally crude, arrogant, +superstitious; many dissipated and even brutal. Yet some were touched by +the love of truth, and had vigorous minds, well trained by application. +The majority of these better men were of course hedged in by the +palisades of Catholic tradition, and sought knowledge from the past, +rather than from independent present thought: but there were some whose +ideas were bolder, and who kept proposing questions which their teachers +did not answer. + +The deferential attention with which Roscellinus and William of +Champeaux were listened to, was broken in upon when the handsome youth +Abelard appeared at the schools of these leaders of European thought. +The strength of each was in dialectics, the topic which then held +intellectual interest to the practical disregard of almost every other +subject except the theology into which it played, and they took opposite +sides on the absorbing problem of general terms. In the school of each, +Abelard rose as a disputant; he challenged his teacher to argue with him +as an equal until he triumphed in turn over the extreme Nominalist and +the extreme Realist. Then he set up schools of his own, which he moved +from place to place, as the intolerant hostility of his vanquished +chiefs and their upholders required. His reputation steadily rose, and +he drew the largest and most enthusiastic following, for the keenest +young thought of the generation recognized in him its natural leader. + +All independence and liberality of mind must be estimated relatively to +the age concerned. From our outlook Abelard seems a narrow and +constrained thinker, but to the churchman of the opening of the twelfth +century he was a rationalist, a daring explorer into the sacred +mysteries that must be accepted by the sealed eye of Faith. How absurd, +he exclaims, to teach what you cannot give reasons for believing. So he +tried to make belief a matter for intellectual comprehension; he argued +where others asserted, and made bold to modify current opinions which +his ingenuity, often childishly simple, could not explain. He had a +noble grasp upon some conceptions far beyond the reach of his +antagonists. He independently developed the ethical doctrine that the +value of conduct is in motive, not in act; he taught that the main worth +of the incarnation was to present the model of a perfect life; that the +man Christ Jesus was not a member of the Trinity; that the love of God +is as freely bestowed on sinner as on saint; that God could not prevent +evil, or he would have done so. For the sufferings that he endured in +teaching his pupils to use not credulity but unflinching independent +thought in their reflections even on theology, he deserves our grateful +admiration. + +When Abelard was thirty-eight years old he was at the height of his +reputation. Technical and abstruse as his intellectual interests were, +he appears to have been anything but a dry-as-dust. Though as a logician +he had trained himself severely in precision of speech, the hesitating +and half-frozen way of talking that most exact thinkers fall into, he +seems to have escaped. We have a letter written about this time by a +canon named Fulcus, who, dwelling on Abelard's intellectual cleverness, +his power and subtlety of expression, makes special mention of the +sweetness of his eloquence; _limpidissimus philosophiae fons_, he calls +him, too--philosophy's very clearest fountain. He was not only an easy +and agreeable speaker, he had also the advantages of an attractive +presence; he was a fine-looking man, in the prime of life. + +Now for about twenty years he had been a hero of the schools. The +philosophic and theological leaders of the age he had overthrown and +trampled on; the audiences that he had been at the first successful in +drawing had steadily increased. Established in Paris without +controversy, a canon of the church, in the chair of Notre-Dame, the +philosophical throne of France, he lectured to the best pupils of +Europe. Fulcus, in his letter to Abelard, described the geographical +extent of his influence thus: + + "Rome sent her sons to be taught by you, the former teacher + of all arts confessing herself not so wise as you. No + distance, no height of mountains, no depth of valleys, no + road hard to travel or perilous with robbers, hindered + scholars from hastening to you. The English students were not + frightened by the tempestuous waves of the sea between; every + peril was despised as soon as your name was known. The remote + Britons, the Angevins, the Picts, the Gascons, the Spaniards, + the people of Normandy and Flanders, the Teutons, and the + Suevi, all about Paris and through France, near and remote, + thirsted to be taught by you, as if they could learn nowhere + else." + +Such eminence had not come to him without effort. He had been a close +worker, secluding himself from society. "The assiduity of my application +to study," he says, "prevented my associating with refined ladies, and I +had hardly any acquaintance with women outside of the church." The +purity of his morals was only less famous than his intellect; he says +that the notion of associating, as many churchmen of the time did, with +coarse women was odious to him. + +But suddenly over this man already middle-aged, and, as one might +suppose, established in self-control mentally and physically, there came +a reaction. Reputation had become an old story, his enthusiasm for +philosophy seemed to dwindle when he believed himself the first +philosopher of the world; no doubt, too, the intellectual pressure of +his work had so worn upon him as to make a change of interests +impulsive. So Abelard turned to divert himself with immoral indulgences, +and at thirty-eight began the life of passion. + +Several years before this, a story had begun to circulate that another +canon of Notre-Dame, Fulbert by name, had a remarkable niece. She was +then only a little girl in a nunnery at Argenteuil, but year by year the +accounts of her precocity grew more astonishing, and by the time she was +sixteen we are told that she was talked about through the whole kingdom. +This was Heloise, and her uncle--people did not know whether he was +prouder or fonder of her. He brought her back to his own house near the +cathedral, and Abelard met her to find the reports of her learning had +not been exaggerated, and--something more interesting--to find that she +was not merely a scholar, that she was a genius. The modern accounts of +this famous story that I have seen (most of them mere imitations of one +or two authors who really have taken the trouble to study the originals) +declare that Heloise was uncommonly beautiful, but there seems to be no +authority for this. Abelard says only, "_per faciem non infirma_"--"not +lowest in beauty, but in literary culture highest." Making allowance for +his rhetorical contrast, we may say, without intensives, that she was +attractive as well as brilliant. + +We should have to read a good many indecent chronicles, and get +thoroughly familiar with Don Juan prototypes, to find as cold-blooded a +story of seduction as this that follows. We have it from Abelard's own +pen, told in perfectly calm language, a clear-cut narrative without the +slightest tremor of confession about it. He was delighted with her +loveliness, her youth and innocence, her fame, and most of all with her +brilliancy. He says that he believed no woman whom he might honor with +his regard could resist the combination of his personal qualities and +his reputation. But he wished cultivated, congenial companionship in his +amours, and deliberately resolved to betray this girl of sixteen under +the disguise of her teacher. At his own application, Fulbert received +him as a lodger, the board to be paid by private instruction of his +niece. "He gave the lamb to me, a wolf"--such is Abelard's well-chosen +metaphor. She was to be taught at any hours, day or night, that her +tutor found convenient. She was to obey him in everything, and if he +thought fit it was enjoined upon him to discipline her with the rod. "To +such an extent," Abelard remarks, "was he blinded by his trust in his +niece, and by my reputation for strict morality." + +Nothing could be more repulsive than the coldly deliberate wickedness of +Abelard's plan, and it would be time thrown away to attempt any +extenuation of it. But the crime once committed, it is a relief to find +something in addition to brute passion present in the unscrupulous +seducer. The girl who had fascinated him, won from him as complete love +as his nature was capable of giving. Week by week he resigned himself +more and more to his happiness, he neglected the school, his lectures +were only the repetition of formerly acquired views, and he wooed +philosophy for no new truths. Even the perfunctory teaching that he did +grew irksome to him, and his knowledge of the great sadness, groans, and +lamentations that he tells arose among his followers, was powerless to +break the spell. For it was only a spell: he was pre-eminently an +intellectual man with superficial affections; his heart was given to +philosophy, and the only permanent passion of his life was ambition. But +little as the praise is, to that little extent it is to his credit that +where he had planned for himself a holiday from mental and moral +severity, in which he was to enjoy relaxation selfishly and viciously at +Heloise's undivided cost, he found his better nature captured by this +loveliest representative of womanhood in its fullest and most +exceptional combination of elements that mediaeval history has made known +to us. After all, Abelard was not wholly destitute of the moral +sensibilities: I believe no narrator of this story has called attention +to his love for his old home in Brittany, or to his family's devotion to +him and reliance on his guidance, or to the tenderness with which he +mentions his mother. In spite of all the viciousness in his early and +the hardness in his later treatment of Heloise, we may credit him with +real affection for her, from the early days of his crime. + +For a man of Abelard's force and finish of mind, such a refined +companionship must have been the first of pleasures. There are +traditions, not to be accepted too credulously, that Heloise was a +larger scholar than her lover, and could read Hebrew and Greek--those +rarest accomplishments of mediaeval learning. That at least she knew +Latin literature well, we have abundant evidence, and the most positive +proof that her scholarship was refined and appreciative, that she felt +poetry as well as understood it. Her mind responded also to the +theological interests of the thinkers of the age, she was at home in the +church fathers, and learned from Abelard the main principles of his +philosophical doctrine. In trying to conceive a character when +information is so fragmentary as ours here, we are no doubt in some +danger of making fanciful biography. Three letters of her own, several +of Abelard's to her, and his autobiography, a few slight contemporary +hints--these materials leave some important points of her character +undeveloped. But given certain suggestions, our imaginative instincts +cannot go far wrong, provided the inferences of sympathetic +interpretation are held in check by judgment. These guides teach us to +see in the girl Heloise an extraordinary combination of thoughtfulness +and bright temper, active thinking and religious deference, accurate +scholarship (after the fashion of mediaeval schools) and aesthetic +sensibility, passion and maidenly delicacy. To this last quality Abelard +has borne complete testimony, and her own letters supply any evidence +needed. Absorbed though her whole nature was in her love, her lover +himself has let us know that her modesty had to be conquered more than +once by blows. + +Her mind was mastered by the greatness of his reputation, her eye was +taken with his beauty, her imagination was fascinated by his universal +charm: it is no wonder that she was flattered and bewitched into loving +him. But the completeness and devotion and ecstatic self-oblivion of the +love she gave him is a wonder. Her generous faith, though to an +undeserving object, communicates to the ineffective results of her life +an ideal value; by a supreme self-forgetting, she rendered herself +worthy to be always remembered. + +Abelard's was a stormy life in a stormy age, when the scholars fought +quite as bitterly as the soldiers, and the last forty-four years of +Heloise's life were the tragedy of being buried alive, unable to die. +But for a few months in this year 1118, both found perfect happiness. We +have a pretty picture outlined for us of the way their time went. +Abelard says: "We used to have our books open, but we talked more of +love than about the reading, there were more kisses than ideas. Love +made pictures of each of us in the other's eyes more often than we +turned our eyes upon the books." + +Every now and then this great philosopher appeared in a new role. As to +most of the highest men, Nature had given him a great deal more than +brains. He had a wonderfully fine voice, was fond of music, and as poets +in those days went, he was a poet. He had stopped constructing +dialectics, but his mind could not be inactive; so he took up the art of +song-writing and song-making, and wrote love-lyrics and many of them, +almost all directly in the praise of Heloise. Nor was he content to +praise her to her own ears alone; the man was past all prudence in the +violence of his new absorption. He let others hear them, and no doubt +his hateful egotism was flattered by the thought that the most +fascinating girl in all France would thus become known as his mistress. +The lyrics at once caught the popular fancy; we hear of them as +spreading over the country, sung everywhere by the light-minded. Many +years later, Heloise wrote that if any woman's heart could have resisted +Abelard's other magic, to read his songs and to hear him sing them would +surely have conquered her. + +The neglect of his work, and the notoriety of these love-ditties after a +while made public Abelard's real relation to his pupil. Yet for some +time after the world at large understood it, the devoted uncle and +guardian of the girl heard nothing, and after the rumors did begin to +reach him, he obstinately refused to believe them. Nothing in the whole +history shows the essential goodness of Heloise more significantly than +the canon Fulbert's complete incredulity; for as the event proved, his +nature was not so gentle as to repudiate harsh thoughts without the +strongest prepossessions. When the truth was forced upon him, his +distress was so intense that even the cold-hearted Abelard was compelled +to pity him. But if Abelard pitied the uncle, how much greater his +distress for the niece, and greater still, unfortunately, his +apprehension for himself. Egotist he proved himself, but he proved +himself also Heloise's real lover. "First we lived together in one +house," he says, "but at last in one soul." In the crash of public +disgrace, "neither of us complained of personal suffering, but each for +the suffering that came to the other," and the bodily separation that +ensued, he says with a touch of real feeling, was "the greatest linking +of our souls." + +Soon after the separation, Abelard discovered that Heloise required more +care and comforts than the heart-broken and embittered Fulbert would be +likely to provide, and he devised and carried through a plan to take +her back to his own country, to his sister's house. There, amid the +scenes of her lover's boyhood, in that Brittany whose legend and poetry +have blessed us with so many of our loveliest romances, this heroine of +a deeper romance than any of fiction found a home for several months. We +may guess that the home was pleasant to her, for the lady with whom she +lived afterwards entered the abbey of which Heloise was prioress. +Abelard meanwhile was continuing his lectures in Paris, fearing--he +seems to have been at all times a great deal of a coward--the personal +violence from Heloise's family which the fierce habits of the age gave +him reason to anticipate. At last the distress of Fulbert touched his +better feeling into the wish to give him comfort, this long separation +from Heloise he found hard to support, and his fear of revenge +constantly increased. These motives induced a promise to rectify his +offence by marriage. He made only one condition--that the marriage +should be secret. + +On the whole, this is perhaps the most favorable exhibition of himself +that Abelard ever made. With all deductions for selfish considerations, +it is reasonable to allow some weight to moral feeling, and a good deal +more to devotion for the girl. This renders it all the sadder to find +him some sixteen years later referring to this best act of his life with +a feeble apology. "Let no one," he entreats, "wonder at my offer of +marriage, who has felt the power of love, and known how the greatest men +have been overthrown by woman." + +Even here when his feeling for Heloise seems strongest, we see that his +selfish ambition was stronger still. Secular as his tastes were, bound +to the church by his intellectual side only, he still hoped to rise to +ecclesiastical dignities and power. From very early times the +disposition for a celibate clergy had been strong, and five years before +Abelard's birth Hildebrand had declared that no married priest should +have any part in the celebration of the mass. Quite apart from all +questions of marriage, Abelard seems to have had scarcely any chance of +distinguished clerical dignity; the student crowds might follow him, but +the leaders of the church were dead set against his rationalism; they +feared and hated the arrogant and progressive thinker. If Abelard had +acted like a man, and had openly chosen married love with the girl whose +mind and heart were, either of them, better than the best of life's +other gifts, the misfortunes of his distressed later career might have +been avoided, and Heloise, after a happy and lovely life, would be no +more remembered to-day than the flowers she had gathered, or the birds +she heard sing. But because the man, not quite unprincipled, was yet not +true, he brought death upon his own good name, and upon Heloise a +melancholy life with which she paid too dear for all the remembrance and +love that the ages have given her. To his selfishness we owe the +sweetest and saddest story which the middle ages have bequeathed us; but +we think of the words of Demodocus, as he recites in the Odyssey the +story of heroes dead: "This the gods contrived, and for these they +ordained destruction, so that the people of times to come might have a +song." + +His mind once made up, Abelard started for Brittany, to see the son of +whose birth he had just heard, and to take back the mother as his bride. +But when this resolution was known to Heloise, he met an unexpected +opposition. She said she did not wish him to marry her, and persisted in +her refusal. + +Unwomanly does it appear, this unwillingness of Heloise to become her +lover's wife? She knew Abelard's vehement ambition, the impossibility of +its being satisfied if he was known to be a married man, the practical +certainty that her family would prefer the redemption of her reputation +to her husband's success. So she told Abelard that to marry her would be +dangerous to him,--but still more, that it would be disgraceful. She +talked to him in the role of a learned and ascetic mediaeval preacher; +she seems to draw a monk's rough robe about her girlish figure, to +disguise her tones, and to muffle her bright face in a cowl. We have +long, formally rendered objections, a crowd of citations from the Bible, +Cicero, Theophrastus, Jerome, Josephus, Augustine,--to prove marriage +less honorable than celibacy, devotion to knowledge a duty not to be +interfered with by the responsibilities and annoyances of a family, +conformity to the rules of the church the highest obligation. Her desire +for his own greatness completely overshadows her passion for his love. +He is already the first of philosophers, but if he has outrivalled +others, he must go on to surpass himself. For this, he must have quiet +and solitude, freedom for thought. She quotes a Roman maxim that all +things are to be neglected for philosophy. What monks endure through +love of God, the thinker ought to endure from devotion to truth. If +laymen and gentiles have lived thus continently, bound by no religious +profession, what does it become a clerk and a canon to do? "If you +regard not God, at least care for philosophy." + +"For what harmony is there," she asks, "between a scholar and a nurse, a +writing-desk and a cradle, books and spinning-wheels? Who when absorbed +in religious or philosophic meditation can endure hearing children cry, +or having to listen to the lullabies of the woman who soothes them? Rich +people can get along, for they have abundant room and plenty of +servants; but scholars are not rich." She has difficulty in keeping +herself disguised: in the excess of her feeling she throws out her arms, +and discloses the gracious outline of the unselfish woman. Then, after +reasoning, come personal pleadings. Is he sacrificing himself for her? +She is content as she is. Now she holds him by the free gift of that +love and favor to which he would have a claim in marriage. Does he +believe she feels herself disgraced by this relation? To be called his +mistress is dear and ennobling to her. Years later when she was past her +middle life, she wrote to Abelard that "the name of mistress, or even of +harlot, was sweeter to me then the holier name of wife, so that by my +greater humiliation I might gain greater favor and less injure thy fame. +I call God to witness that if Augustus would have set me by himself at +the head of the whole world, it would have seemed to me more dear and +noble to be called thy mistress than his empress." + +Thus by argument, authority, protestation that her sacrifice is choice, +she tries to conquer his decision. Nay, she throws aside the cowl +entirely, and by her natural bright humor tries to banter him into +acquiescence. "And then think," she says in substance, "what a plague a +wife is to a man. Only imagine" (and she laughs, and Abelard laughs too, +at the inconceivable grotesqueness of the idea), "imagine what a shrew I +might turn out! I might treat you as Xanthippe treated _her_ +philosopher." She reminds him of the passage where Jerome tells the +story about Socrates' wife having fretted and scolded and raged one day +through the house with desperate temper, until she wound up by throwing +a basin of dirty water over him: + + "He took it patiently, and wiped his head: + 'Rain follows thunder,'--that was all he said." + +To Abelard's credit, this impassioned unselfishness strengthened, +instead of weakening, his resolution. Heloise was forced to yield, but +her instincts saw the dark shadows gathering about them: with sobs and +tears she exclaimed, "In the ruin of both of us not less pain is to +follow than was the love that came before." + +Leaving the child with his aunt the lovers returned to Paris; there they +were married in great secrecy, and at once separated. After this they +met but seldom, and then with careful precautions against their +interviews becoming known. Heloise's family, however, as she had feared, +determined to redeem her good name by announcing that Abelard had made +her honorable reparation. When people came to her and asked if it was +really true that she was the canon's wife, she denied the story angrily. +When her uncle and other relatives contradicted her contradiction, the +girl took religion's holiest name in vain, in her asseverations that +Abelard was not her husband. Fulbert lost all patience, and attempted by +cruelty and indignity to drive her to confess the truth. She told +Abelard of what she suffered, and one night he contrived to steal her +away from her uncle and to carry her back to her old nunnery at +Argenteuil, where she assumed most of the dress of the order, and +received only occasional visits from him. + +The conjecture that Abelard designed to keep her there, and as soon as +his attachment could be weaned to make her take the vows and thus save +himself from all further trouble, suggests itself to us to-day: with +greater force, it occurred to the people immediately concerned. The rage +of the uncle and his friends at Abelard's treachery, first and last, to +themselves, and at his heartlessness toward the girl whose worth they +understood so well, grew uncontrollable; they bribed a servant to admit +them to his house by night, and avenged themselves. + +Abelard's spirit was broken, as he saw all hopes of ecclesiastical +promotion at an end, and his fame turned to notoriety. Heretofore his +public appearances had made the sensation of a king's: "What region did +not burn to see you!" asked Heloise. "Who, when you walked abroad, did +not hurry to look at you, rising on tiptoe and with straining eyes?" But +now every look he fancied scornful. + +In this wild age there was always one refuge for the victims of the +world or of themselves. To the monasteries flocked all classes, from +fashionable knights broken down or unsuccessful or weary of conflict, to +the half-witted clowns sheltered and utilized as lay-brethren. Husbands +forsook their wives, and wives fled from their husbands, to take shelter +in the religious life. In this early part of the twelfth century, +monastic houses were multiplying like hives of bees, constantly sending +out from themselves colonies that quickly became parents of others. For +some time the tendency had been to an easier discipline than the +traditional, but at last asceticism had blazed out anew, and the rich +and luxurious Cluny paled in popularity before Clairveaux or the Grande +Chartreuse. In this single century the Cistercians expanded from one +abbey to eight hundred, a single one of which is said to have +controlled seven hundred benefices. The one meal a day, the hard manual +labor, the restricted sleep, the wearisome routine of prayer, reading, +and penance, won by their very severity and by the mystical impression +of sanctity and immortal safety which brooded about these retired +prisons of self-condemned sin. + + "Oh, hide me in your gloom profound, + Ye solemn seats of holy pain," + +was the cry with which multitudes approached the gates that should +emancipate them from a freedom which did not satisfy. Ben Jonson's fear +lest his inclination to God might be + + "Through weariness of life, not love of thee," + +was realized in the case of numbers of convertites quite equalling and +probably far exceeding those who entered the ascetic orders from the +enthusiasm of visionaries. To this retirement, as a screen from the +world's curiosity and fancied mocks, Abelard now resolved to withdraw, +as his father and mother in their later lives had done before him. His +jealousy could not leave Heloise behind, so he told her of his purpose, +and hoped that she would volunteer to imitate him. But Heloise made no +such offer. In every way hers was a mind beyond her age, and the +unnatural harshness of cloistral discipline, its artificial dreariness, +its "hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell," seemed to her fine +insight untrue. Though she had suffered, she was yet in tune with life; +her heart assured her that innocent pleasure is the soul's hymn of +praise to God; bitterly as she shared her husband's misery, she saw no +reason for separating her life and his; most of all, she revolted from +the notion of professing religion with lip-service only. But Abelard +urged, insisted, even commanded, and, seeing it to be his wish, the +girl-wife yielded. She told herself that only she was responsible for +her husband's afflictions; except for her, his prosperity would have +continued undimmed; so the day was fixed on which, in her old nunnery, +she should take the vows of perpetual seclusion. + +It must have been a strange scene in that chapel at Argenteuil. Abelard +was there, still in his habit of a mere secular priest, there to make +sure that Heloise's impulses should not burst out again, and cast her +back into the world's sunshine. The bishop, attended by his priests, +stands at the altar: upon it lies a newly consecrated veil. The nuns, +kneeling in their accustomed places, are praying. All wait for the +votaress, but she is detained by a crowd of friends. There were many of +them there, as Abelard has told us, and they could not endure that this +girl, personally so charming, perhaps the most accomplished +intellectually of all the women of France, should consummate the +sacrifice that she had already in such large measure made. They knew her +love for the bright things of life, her beautiful zest for the joyous +and sympathetic, her eagerness in study, the grace of her strong, sweet +seriousness. Such a nature might be for a time bewildered at the loss of +the love of one of the most famous men living, yet if for a little while +they could keep her face unhidden by the veil, she might forget. So they +delay her outside the chapel, pleading with a heart that has made the +same pleas for itself before. Presently the door is pushed open and she +enters the oratory, her friends still about her. Even in the sacred +place they continue their entreaties, and Abelard's glance is anxiously +upon her; but her eyes are downcast. "How they pitied her!" he has told +us; "they kept trying to hold back her youth from the yoke of monastic +rule, as from punishment intolerable." The bishop seems half pitiful, +half impatient; the nuns look up from their praying. Has the world +renewed its hold upon her? Will she snatch herself from God? Does he no +longer attract her? At this last moment is she hesitating? + +She was hesitating; the world did have a hold upon her. God? God had +never attracted her. + +In all the ceremonials of the Catholic Church, there can have been none +which has so combined sacrilege with loftiness of feeling as did the +scene which followed. From the silent, even wistful hearing that she has +been giving to her friends, Heloise suddenly starts away, and, as if +waking from a reverie, she moves with dreamy gesture toward her husband. +Her lips part, and what will be her last words as a lady of the world? +Some scriptural exhortation to her friends to follow her as she follows +Christ? A cry of exultant renunciation of the wilds of life's ocean, and +of contentment at the holy calm in the bosom of the church? + +The girl is weeping, and as she tries to control herself to speak, her +misery overcomes her, and she bursts into loud sobs. But it must have +been surprising to the listening ecclesiastics to hear the words which +at last got expression. It is probably the only time in the church's +history that a novice has taken her last vows with the prelude of a +quotation from a love speech in a pagan poem, directing it not to the +bleeding effigy of her present and eternal Master hanging above the +altar, but to a human lover at her side. Heloise "broke out as she could +between her tears and sobs," in a passage from one of the later books of +Lucan's _Pharsalia_: surely as she spoke the lines, her voice grew +steady, and her eyes looked bravely through the tears: + + "Husband and lord, too worthy for my bed, + Can Fortune thus cast down so dear a head? + Fated to make thee wretched, why did I + Become thy wife? Accept the penalty; + I will endure it gladly." + +I fancy that Abelard was quite as much impressed by the brilliant young +mind that could make so apt and scholarly a quotation from the Roman +classics, as by the heart which dared on the very margin of the altar to +fling back to the world and up to God this protestation of its +unfaltering human love, which took the vows of religion from no other +motive than to impose torture upon itself--an offering not to God, but +to Abelard. + +As she spoke the verses, she hurried to the altar. _Accipe poenas, quas +sponte luam_,--her voice died away, the bishop received her, and covered +her forever with the veil. + +Heloise was only eighteen. + + * * * * * + +The convent gates shut in all sight of her for the next ten or eleven +years. But in 1130, the nunnery over which she had become prioress was +broken up by the unfavorable decision of a suit for the land and +buildings which it occupied. This decade had brought abundant misery to +Abelard. His heresies in theology had been exposed, and he had been +compelled to burn a treasured book in which they were expounded, a +council had imprisoned him in an abbey where it was boasted that his +haughtiness was tamed by a course of vigorous whipping administered +under the abbot's supervision. There is something pitiful in the +thought of such physical and mental pride being under the control of +fanatical monks, ignorant and coarse, from whom he was glad to escape to +a desert east of Troyes, as a hermit. He had taught at intervals during +these years, and once for a season with a notable renewal of his early +success. Near Troyes, where he had built his hermit-shelter out of reeds +and stubble, in a desolate region infested by wild animals and a covert +for robbers, some vagrant student found the intellectual champion, and +reported at Paris his discovery. The news spread, and soon the desert +was populous. The students built a house for the master, apparently a +commodious one, and about it they made more temporary structures for +their own shelter. Not only the younger class of scholars besieged him +for instruction; older men, ecclesiastics who, as we are told, were wont +to grasp instead of giving, paid generously toward constructing a home +for the great philosopher. But he was world-weary, and soon retired +again to a bleak monastery on the Atlantic, in the lower part of +Brittany, where he became abbot of a set of half-barbarous monks, who +resented his austere rule and, so he tells us, tried repeatedly to +poison him because he interfered with their profligacy. While there he +had learned of Heloise's loss of her nunnery, and had established her +and her religious sisters in the buildings in Champagne that had been +standing unoccupied since he broke up that last school. "The Paraclete," +he had called the home, as a special invocation to the Holy Spirit and +as a tribute for the temporary comfort that he received there. Possibly +he himself conducted his wife thither, but it is equally likely that he +did not see her after he forced her into the church. + +For ten years he appears to have struggled on in Brittany, with no +intellectual associations, none of the notoriety with which he had been +so long pampered, in terror for his life, yet still working at his +philosophy of religion. At last he was impelled to talk of what he had +endured and was still enduring; to speak in the bitterness of his soul, +and get, perhaps, the consolation of pity. He composed a long and +immensely interesting autobiography, telling the whole story of his +youth, his later triumphs, his logical acumen, his love, his disgrace, +the injustice of his condemnation by the conservative church, the tumult +of his experiences in the lonely monastery of St. Gildas. The creditable +pages are calmly written, the shameful unflinchingly. He tells how +tremendous had been his love for Heloise, but he says nothing of loving +her still. The narrative reveals an egotist, but it reveals as certainly +one of the most striking characters of the Middle Ages. + + * * * * * + +We find ourselves inevitably speculating upon the life of Heloise during +the sixteen or more years whose only recorded event is her removal from +Argenteuil to the Paraclete. It might be that a reaction in her love +would follow, when the grim captivity that she had dreaded so became yet +more hateful in its realization; she might lose her old gentleness; it +might become hopeless for her to try to adjust her spirit to its new +conditions and to devote herself to even a submissive piety. From +contemporary testimony we are sure that some of these possibilities did +not come true. She won respect and even devotion as an abbess, her house +prospered financially to her husband's undisguised surprise and +admiration, her life was pure from the least fleck of reproach, or +criticism in any quarter. May we go farther, and say that her spirit did +adjust itself to its new conditions, and lose its pain in a submissive +piety? For such a result we should find many parallels in mediaeval +religion; numerous accounts not to be cavilled at as legendary prove +that in these monasteries souls which had suffered found peace. Nay, +many a nun among these most refined groups of mediaeval women, driven in +one way or another to forsake the hope of love and earthly happiness, +secured delight of heart in a sort of spiritual romance. As their +emotion grew more subtilized, as asceticism burned away material +impulse, some of the gentlest and most poetically endowed of these +religious recluses acquired a mystical compensation for their loneliest +sacrifice of life,--a divinely idealized personal love, too magical for +friendship, too impassioned and mutual for worship, where, the sexes +mysteriously spiritualized, translated womanhood should rest at last on +the breast of Christ. The final vow of religious consecration was the +nun's betrothal to the divine man; to make herself beautiful for his +bride she wasted her body by fasting and scarred it with the scourge; +the rough lath cross on the wall of her cell was his love token; love +messages came from him in her dreams; prostrated on the chapel flagging +she indited to him prayers that scarcely needed verse to become lyrics. +And when to such a mystic's contemplation the cloister sanctity seemed +too worldly, when her exhausted body found the walk from cell to chapel +too long a journey and she was compelled to stay in the coffin that for +years of nights had sweetly reminded her of the sure untwining of soul +and sense, when she could hear only faintly her sisters' thin chanting +of the hours, and felt her spirit quivering with new sensations, vague, +awed, and eager, she understood that the waiting time was over, and her +espousal at hand. Her failing eyes see white processionals that come to +lead her to the banqueting house where the banner of His love shall be +over her; the music, which the dying so often hear, for her is a +marriage melody ringing from angelic harps and dulcimers; with new-born +strength and grace, mantled in new raiment, she floats upward to her +desire. And when space has been traversed the immortal vision bursts +upon her, a great poet has put in words her last thought this side +heaven: + + "He lifts me to the golden doors, + The flashes come and go; + All heaven bursts her starry floors, + And strows her light below, + And deepens on and up! the gates + Roll back, and far within + For me the Heavenly Bridegroom waits, + To make me pure of sin. + The sabbaths of Eternity, + One sabbath deep and wide,-- + A light upon the shining sea, + The Bridegroom with his bride." + +But for Heloise there was no such resource. It is to natures more +ethereal and constitutionally religious that such fancies and dreams +appeal. The main feature of the matured Heloise is sanity and balanced +womanhood; she was too strong and intense to be a sentimentalist. Could +the nature which had once been caught into the clouds by the whirlwind +of love, beguile itself from the memory of that storm of rapture by a +visionary tempest raised with a fan? And yet there would be some +satisfaction if we could conceive her adjusting herself to the spiritual +life with closer accord, and passing even through the gates of +superstitious hallucination from the harsh religion of her day into the +inner sanctuary whose "solemn shadow is better than the sun," finding an +outlet for her quick emotions in this personal love for her new Master. + + * * * * * + +Heloise had been a nun some sixteen years when some one showed her +Abelard's so-called _Historia Calamitatum_. Apparently her husband had +forbidden her to write to him; but though she had kept a long silence, +she was a lover until death. This account of Abelard's sufferings and +perils broke her constraint; she could not help writing to comfort him +and to beg for news of his safety. What other love-letters equal the +intensity, the tenderness, the womanliness of these final appeals for +the broken love? Through their nervous pliancy one may learn as nowhere +else the reality of Browning's + + "Infinite passion, and the pain + Of finite hearts that yearn." + +In them appears also her strength of nature; they are the love-calls of +a woman who knows that the man she continues to set far above all the +rest of humanity is wronging her. She chides him for this long and +complete neglect, but there is a marvellous sweetness in her caressing +reproaches. She tells him to remember under what peculiar bonds she +holds him,--what sacred obligation of marriage, of love, and of devotion +he owes to her; she gave her honor to please him, not herself; she +sacrificed her tender age to the harshness of a monastic life not from +piety, but only in submission to his desire. "There was a time," she +writes, "when people doubted whether in our amour I yielded to love or +to passion. But the end shows how I began; to please you, I have denied +myself all pleasures." She points out to him how differently the end +interprets his feeling for her. "It is common talk," she says, "that you +felt only gross emotions toward me, and when there was a stop to their +indulgence, your so-called love vanished. My dearest one, would that +this appeared to me only, and not to every one; would that I might be +soothed by hearing others excuse you, or that I could myself devise +excuses." + +She appears to entertain no hope that he will visit her, though she +hints longingly at the possibility; but he can at least do as much for +her as he does for others under obligations so far slighter, as much as +the example of the church fathers regarding the women of their flocks +teaches him to do,--he can write and tell her how he is, he can comfort +her love: or (and she appeals to the monk who may listen, even if the +old-time lover will not) he can send spiritual admonition to uphold her +slipping soul. Her heart put at rest, she can be so much freer for the +divine service. "When you wooed me for the pleasures of earth," she +reminds him, "you sent me letter after letter; with many songs you put +your Heloise in the speech of all, so that every street and house echoed +with me. How much more ought you now to excite toward God the one whom +then you aroused to sin." + +She tells him again of her complete absorption in him: "You are the only +one who can make me either sad or happy; you only can be my comforter. +The whole world knows how much I loved you," and she turns with a +half-shuddering reminiscence to the day she became a nun. "It was for +you, not for God--that sacrifice. From God I can look for no reward; +consider, then, how vain my trial, if by it I win nothing from you"; and +the woman for sixteen years a nun calls God--and remember that hers was +the God of mediaeval superstition--to witness that she would have +followed Abelard, or gone before him, if she had seen him hastening to +hell. + +Her letters evidently moved the monk, for his replies were full of good +advice, and under the surface gave some indications of tender regard. +But the affection that we find is colorless and formal. No word of a +husband's gentleness, nor warmth of phrase, not a hint that he cherishes +happy memories of the old days of their union. They are the letters of +an old man, absorbed in himself, worn by the world, who has no capacity +for anything deeper than kind feeling. He calls her his sister, once +dear in the world, now dearer in Christ, begs her prayers for him living +and dead, and entreats that whenever he may die she will have his body +carried to her abbey, that the constant sight of his grave may move her +and her spiritual daughters to pray for his salvation. He gulps down the +_Lachrima Christi_ of her exquisite love as if it were the small beer of +pietistic commonplace, and then looks disappointed to find that it was +not. For he ignores the soul of her letters, and composes complacent +treatises of twelfth-century ecclesiastical discipline designed to +subject her to a mechanical and lifeless asceticism. + +Heloise in answer reproaches him for his talk of death, like a brave +heart bidding him not by anticipation suffer before his time. The +knowledge of her husband's unhappiness is a renewed affliction, and she +owns that there is nothing but sorrow in her life. Like a daring +Titaness, she exclaims against God's administration of his world: + + "While we lived in sin, he indulged us; when we married, he + forced us to separate. Let his other creatures rejoice and + count themselves safe from the inclement clemency of the God + whom I almost dare to call cruel to me in every way. They are + safe, for upon me he has used up all the weapons of his + wrath, so that he has none with which to rage at others; nor, + if any remained, could he find a place in me wherein to + strike them." + +After sixteen years' silence, this woman has broken into speech, and +unmasked confessions of her inner spirit will no longer be restrained. +She goes on as if carried by cyclone winds; she tells her far-off lover +what few nuns under terror of eternal death can ever have brought +themselves to confide to their confessors in scarcely audible whisper. +She calls up the scenes of their union; she confesses that visions of +that life are with her constantly: she bemoans the thoughts which "haunt +me sometimes, even at the holy mass." She was no calm northern woman; +she had nothing of the temperament that Shakespeare compared to an +icicle + + "That's curdied by the frost from purest snow, + And hangs on Dian's temple"; + +she was made to walk with love, under summer moonlight,--no sister of +Percivale, to forget thwarted desire in prayer beneath the frosty stars +of winter. + +"Help me," cries this victim of a gloomy religion, "for I do not find +how by penance to appease God, whom I still accuse of the greatest +cruelty. It is easy to confess and to torture the body; it is hard to +tear the soul from its desires. My mind keeps the same wish for sin; so +sweet was our happiness that I cannot be sorry for it. Most wretched +life, if I have endured so much in vain, destined to have no recompense +hereafter." + +Thus Heloise the woman and Heloise the abbess fight out the old problem +whether the training of life is by the use of its gifts, or by the +rejection of them; shall we play the full organ, or only the harsh reed +stops? The church taught her to condemn what nature taught her to +justify. The religious authority of all the dark ages confronted this +woman's instincts of life, and--to her honor--it could not quell them. +Yet conceive her wretchedness and the anguish of her mental struggle, +living as she did in the middle of Catholic mediaevalism. When, after a +scanty rest, she left her cell at midnight, this artificial conscience +attended her to the long chapel service that followed, pointed at the +austere pages over which she bent in the study when the service was +over, kept calling her hypocrite as she chided and instructed the nuns +whom she is said to have ruled so wisely, snatched food and wine from +her hungry lips, with fast, pitiless lashing wielded the whip of +penance, haunted her sleep with its stern face. Yet the pleasures of +time were still honorable to her; the world _was_ good; her love _had_ +been beautiful; if her conscience prayed forgiveness for it, her heart +sang, because she had known it. + +To hear this bewildered voice crying to Abelard for his prayers because +in spite of the world's praise of her virtue she thinks herself a +hypocrite,--Oh, my only one, pray for me, for I cannot be sorry that we +loved--to hear this makes one glad that the time has passed for +identifying the devil with the world's laughter, and God with its +sobbing. + +She lived on as abbess of the Paraclete for twenty-one years after she +buried her husband. We cannot believe that as one set of feelings cooled +with age, her spiritual emotions grew more impulsive. In the +twenty-eight years which followed her last letter to Abelard, she no +doubt more and more mechanically went through the life of monastic duty, +her intellectual accord with the church leading her to an increasingly +calm performance of routine piety, her heart more and more silent--but +never dead. We fancy its main utterance an anticipation of that cry of +Clough's--"Submit, submit." Thus kindling with no spiritual ardor--(she +once confessed that her religious ambition did not rise so high as to +wish a crown of victory, or to have God's strength made perfect in her +weakness), she lived out her faithful and successful life as abbess of +the Paraclete, comforted--we may hope--by a continuance of the +intellectual consolations of her youth, and honored, as we know, by +church and world. If imaginary biography is ever safe we may employ it +here, and fancy that when she came to die she repeated what she had said +years before, that she should be quite content to be given just a corner +in heaven. I think as she lay waiting to be received there, she dreamed +of looking up from it, not at the ineffable glory, but at one human face +stationed highest among the masters in divine philosophy. Highest among +the masters! Less than a hundred and fifty years later, the great poem +of mediaevalism forgot to give Abelard a place even among the penitents +of purgatory, and to-day except by special students he is remembered +only as Heloise's unworthy lover. + +[Decoration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[13] _Petri Abaelardi Historia Calamitatum. Petri Abaelardi et Heloissae +Epistolae._ + +[14] _Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit_, iii., 14-34. + + + + +[Decoration] + +APPENDIX. + + +At the suggestion of the publishers the following brief notices of some +of the works and authors mentioned in these essays are added for +convenience of reference. + + +AETHIOPICA, the oldest and most famous of the Greek romances. It narrates +the loves of Theagenes and Charicleia, and was written in his youth by +Heliodorus of Emesa, who flourished about the end of the fourth century, +and died as Bishop of Tricca in Thessaly. + + +ALEXANDER, or as he is termed in some MSS. the Wild Alexander. A +South-German poet of the thirteenth century. Of his life scarcely +anything is known. + + +CHRESTIEN DE TROYES, a French trouvere, who flourished in the second +half of the twelfth century. He may be regarded as the popularizer in +the French form of the cycle of tales that centre about the Round Table. +The most important of his poems is the one bearing the title, _Perceval +le Gallois_ or _Li Contes del Graal_. + + +COMTE DE CHAMPAGNE.--See Thibaut. + + +ARNAUD DANIEL, a Provencal poet, who died about 1189. He was +distinguished for the complicated character of his versification, and in +particular was the inventor of the verse called the _sestine_. He lived +for some time at the court of Richard I. of England. Dante in the +twenty-sixth canto of the _Purgatory_ puts him at the head of all the +Provencal poets. He was also highly praised by Petrarch. + + +DAPHNIS AND CHLOE, a Greek pastoral romance, the prototype of all the +pastoral romances which have been written in various languages. Its +composition is usually ascribed to a certain Longus, a Greek sophist, +who flourished about the beginning of the fifth century. + + +FREIDANK, the composer of a Middle High German didactic poem, which +belongs to the first half of the thirteenth century. The name has been +considered by some to be merely allegorical. His work, which was +entitled _Bescheidenheit_, consists of over four thousand verses and +discusses religious, political and social questions. It was an +exceedingly popular work during the Middle Ages. + + +GACES BRULLES, a French trouvere of the early part of the thirteenth +century. He was born in Champagne, but spent a portion of his life in +Brittany. About seventy of his _chansons_ are extant. + + +GOTTFRIED VON STRASSBURG, a German poet who flourished at the end of the +twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century. His great work was +the epic entitled _Tristan und Isolde_, continued by others after his +death. This took place somewhere between 1210 and 1220. Gottfried wrote +also many lyric poems. + + +GUILLAUME DE BALAUN (or BALAZUN), a Provencal poet of the twelfth +century. He was the lover of the lady of Joviac, in the Gevaudan. +Alienation having sprung up between them upon account of his assumed or +real indifference, his mistress would not restore him to favor unless he +should agree to extract the nail of the longest finger of his right +hand, and should come and present it to her with a poem composed +expressly for the occasion. The condition was fulfilled. + + +JOHANN HADLAUB, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. His life was +spent mainly in Zurich. His compositions were principally love-songs and +popular songs dealing with the pleasures of autumn and harvest. A statue +was erected to him in Zurich in 1885. + + +HARTMANN VON AUE, a Middle High German, belonging by birth to a noble +Swabian family, was born about 1170, and died between 1210 and 1220. He +wrote _Erec and Enide_, basing it upon the French poem with the same +title of Chrestien de Troyes. Another poem of his belonging also to the +Arthurian cycle is _Iwein_. The most popular of his works with modern +students is _Der arme Heinrich_. The details of its story have been made +known to English readers by Longfellow's _Golden Legend_, which is +founded upon it. Another work of his is entitled _Gregorius vom Stein_. + + +HEINRICH VON MORUNGEN, a German minnesinger, a knight of Thuringia, who +flourished at the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth +century. His last years were spent at the court of Meissen. He wrote +many love-songs, many of which owe their existence to those of the +troubadours. + + +HEINRICH VON VELDEKE, a German poet of the twelfth century, who was of a +noble family settled near Maastricht, on the lower Rhine. Besides the +love-songs and other pieces he wrote, he was the composer of the epic of +the _Eneide_, the first poem of the Middle High German epic poetry, +which reached its highest development in the writings of Hartmann von +Aue, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and Gottfried von Strassburg. + + +HUGO VON TRIMBERG, a German poet, who flourished at the end of the +thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. From 1260 to +1309 he was rector of the collegiate school in the Theuerstadt, a suburb +of Bamberg. He is known as the composer of the _Renner_, a didactic +poem, in which the manners and customs of the time are largely depicted, +and the prevailing vices severely censured. + + +JACOPO DA TODI, or JACOPONE, an Italian poet, born about the middle of +the thirteenth century at Todi, in the duchy of Spoleto. He belonged to +the noble family of the Benedetti, began life as an advocate, but, on +account of the sudden accidental death of his wife, devoted himself to a +religious life and entered the order of Franciscans. He wrote many +religious poems in Italian, and also in Latin. To him in particular is +ascribed the composition of the famous _Stabat Mater Dolorosa_. + + +NEIDHART VON REUENTHAL, a German lyric poet of the thirteenth century. +He was of a noble Bavarian family, but spent part of his life in +Austria. His poems were written between 1210 and 1240, and are of +special interest for the descriptions they give of the customs of the +times. + + +THIBAUT, COUNT OF CHAMPAGNE AND KING OF NAVARRE. He was born at Troyes +in 1201, and died in 1253. He is one of the most noted of the early +French poets. + + +ULRICH VON LIECHTENSTEIN, a Middle High German poet, born about 1200, +and died in 1276. He was the author of the poem entitled _Frauendienst_, +described in this volume, and also of a didactic poem called +_Frauenbuch_. + + +WALTHARIUS ET HILTGUNDE, or simply Waltharius, a Latin poem of the tenth +century in hexameter verse, and consisting of between fourteen hundred +and fifteen hundred lines. Its authorship is unknown. + + +WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, the greatest German poet of the Middle Ages. +He was born about 1160, and died about 1230. He was of a knightly +family, though poor, and much of his life was spent at the courts of +several German princes and emperors. He wrote not only love-poems, but +in the contest that went on between the imperialists and the papacy, he +supported the side of the former in patriotic verses which had no slight +influence upon contemporary opinion. Both for matter and manner he stood +at the head of the poets called minnesingers. + + +WERNHER THE GARDENER, a German poet of the thirteenth century, who +composed, between 1234 and 1250, the story of _Meier Helmbrecht_. +Nothing is known with certainty of his life. + + +WOLFRAM VON ESCHENBACH, a German poet, of noble birth, of the latter +half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth. He died +about 1220. His greatest work is the _Parzival_, which was completed +about 1210. It was founded, according to his own statement, partly upon +the _Conte del Graal_ of Chrestien de Troyes, but more particularly upon +the work of a poet whom he calls Kyot, who is supposed by some to be +Guyot de Provins, whose romance of _Perceval_, not extant, is assumed to +be the original of Wolfram's poem. Another of his poems was the +unfinished _Titurel_, which contains the tale of the love of +Schionatulander and Sigune. + +[Decoration] + + + * * * * * + + +Transcriber's Notes: + +Spelling and punctuation errors have been repaired. + +Ellipses in poetry have been spaced to preserve appearance of the +original; all other ellipses are standardized. + +Colons after "Liechtenstein" and "Helmbrecht" on Contents page, and +variant punctuation after the same terms in Chapter headings, were +retained. + +P. 21, (cp. Inf., 14, 30; 24, 5) in original "24" was at the end of a +line, and "5" at the beginning of the next, with no punctuation between. + +P. 47 original "midst of his prostestations" changed to "midst of +his protestations." + +P. 76 original "reficient" changed to "reficiant." + +P. 92 original "merry-makings" changed to more frequent "merrymakings." + +P. 93 original "Wezerant. He" changed to "Wezerant.' He" (single quote +added). + +P. 116 Hey[=a], [=a] indicates lower case "a" with macron. (Text version +only). + +P. 132 The change in indentation in the poetry, beginning at "Thou +lookest down," is faithful to the original. + +P. 174 "sister's thin chanting" changed to "sisters' thin chanting." + +P. 184 original "Tristran und Isolde" changed to "Tristan und Isolde." + +P. 187 original "von Lichtenstein" changed to more frequent "von +Liechtenstein." + +The following variant spellings were used in the original equally, +and were retained: god-father and godfather, riband and ribband, +rose-bushes (second use is quoting the first=1 use) and rosebush, +Wendel and Wentel, "Arnaud Daniel" and "Arnaut Daniel," Aethiopica +and AEthiopica, Jacapone and Jacopone, sestine and sestina. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature, by +Edward Tompkins McLaughlin + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LIFE AND *** + +***** This file should be named 37865.txt or 37865.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/8/6/37865/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, JoAnn Greenwood, Bill Tozier +and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at +http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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