View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 32

[Sidenote: University of Paris.]

[Sidenote: Abelard.]

About the latter part of the eleventh century a greater ardour for intellectual pursuits began to show itself in Europe, which in the twelfth broke out into a flame. This was manifested in the numbers who repaired to the public academies or schools of philosophy. None of these grew so early into reputation as that of Paris. This cannot indeed, as has been vainly pretended, trace its pedigree to Charlemagne. The first who is said to have read lectures at Paris was Remigius of Auxerre, about the year 900.[818] For the two next centuries the history of this school is very obscure; and it would be hard to prove an unbroken continuity, or at least a dependence and connexion of its professors. In the year 1100 we find William of Champeaux teaching logic, and apparently some higher parts of philosophy, with much credit. But this preceptor was eclipsed by his disciple, afterwards his rival and adversary, Peter Abelard, to whose brilliant and hardy genius the university of Paris appears to be indebted for its rapid advancement.

Abelard was almost the first who awakened mankind in the ages of darkness to a sympathy with intellectual excellence. His bold theories, not the less attractive perhaps for treading upon the bounds of heresy, his imprudent vanity, that scorned the regularly acquired reputation of older men, allured a mult.i.tude of disciples, who would never have listened to an ordinary teacher. It is said that twenty cardinals and fifty bishops had been among his hearers.[819] Even in the wilderness, where he had erected the monastery of Paraclete, he was surrounded by enthusiastic admirers, relinquishing the luxuries, if so they might be called, of Paris, for the coa.r.s.e living and imperfect accommodation which that retirement could afford.[820] But the whole of Abelard's life was the shipwreck of genius; and of genius, both the source of his own calamities and unserviceable to posterity. There are few lives of literary men more interesting or more diversified by success and adversity, by glory and humiliation, by the admiration of mankind and the persecution of enemies; nor from which, I may add, more impressive lessons of moral prudence may be derived.[821] One of Abelard's pupils was Peter Lombard, afterwards archbishop of Paris, and author of a work called the Book of Sentences, which obtained the highest authority among the scholastic disputants. The resort of students to Paris became continually greater; they appear, before the year 1169, to have been divided into nations;[822] and probably they had an elected rector and voluntary rules of discipline about the same time. This, however, is not decisively proved; but in the last year of the twelfth century they obtained their earliest charter from Philip Augustus.[823]

[Sidenote: University of Oxford.]

The opinion which ascribes the foundation of the university of Oxford to Alfred, if it cannot be maintained as a truth, contains no intrinsic marks of error. Ingulfus, abbot of Croyland, in the earliest authentic pa.s.sage that can be adduced to this point,[824] declares that he was sent from Westminster to the school at Oxford, where he learned Aristotle, with the first and second books of Tully's Rhetoric.[825]

Since a school for dialectics and rhetoric subsisted at Oxford, a town of but middling size and not the seat of a bishop, we are naturally led to refer its foundation to one of our kings, and none who had reigned after Alfred appears likely to have manifested such zeal for learning.

However, it is evident that the school of Oxford was frequented under Edward the Confessor. There follows an interval of above a century, during which we have, I believe, no contemporary evidence of its continuance. But in the reign of Stephen, Vacarius read lectures there upon civil law; and it is reasonable to suppose that a foreigner would not have chosen that city, if he had not found a seminary of learning already established. It was probably inconsiderable, and might have been interrupted during some part of the preceding century.[826] In the reign of Henry II., or at least of Richard I., Oxford became a very flourishing university, and in 1201, according to Wood, contained 3000 scholars.[827] The earliest charters were granted by John.

[Sidenote: University of Bologna.]

[Sidenote: Encouragement given to universities.]

If it were necessary to construe the word university in the strict sense of a legal incorporation, Bologna might lay claim to a higher antiquity than either Paris or Oxford. There are a few vestiges of studies pursued in that city even in the eleventh century;[828] but early in the next the revival of the Roman jurisprudence, as has been already noticed, brought a throng of scholars round the chairs of its professors.

Frederic Barbarossa in 1158, by his authentic, or rescript, ent.i.tled Habita, took these under his protection, and permitted them to be tried in civil suits by their own judges. This exemption from the ordinary tribunals, and even from those of the church, was naturally coveted by other academies; it was granted to the university of Paris by its earliest charter from Philip Augustus, and to Oxford by John. From this time the golden age of universities commenced; and it is hard to say whether they were favoured more by their sovereigns or by the see of Rome. Their history indeed is full of struggles with the munic.i.p.al authorities, and with the bishops of their several cities, wherein they were sometimes the aggressors, and generally the conquerors. From all parts of Europe students resorted to these renowned seats of learning with an eagerness for instruction which may astonish those who reflect how little of what we now deem useful could be imparted. At Oxford, under Henry III., it is said that there were 30,000 scholars; an exaggeration which seems to imply that the real number was very great.[829] A respectable contemporary writer a.s.serts that there were full 10,000 at Bologna about the same time.[830] I have not observed any numerical statement as to Paris during this age; but there can be no doubt that it was more frequented than any other. At the death of Charles VII. in 1453, it is said to have contained 25,000 students.[831]

In the thirteenth century other universities sprang up in different countries; Padua and Naples under the patronage of Frederic II., a zealous and useful friend to letters,[832] Toulouse and Montpelier, Cambridge and Salamanca.[833] Orleans, which had long been distinguished as a school of civil law, received the privileges of incorporation early in the fourteenth century, and Angers before the expiration of the same age.[834] Prague, the earliest and most eminent of German universities, was founded in 1350; a secession from thence of Saxon students, in consequence of the nationality of the Bohemians and the Hussite schism, gave rise to that of Leipsic.[835] The fifteenth century produced several new academical foundations in France and Spain.

A large proportion of scholars in most of those inst.i.tutions were drawn by the love of science from foreign countries. The chief universities had their own particular departments of excellence. Paris was unrivalled for scholastic theology; Bologna and Orleans, and afterwards Bourges, for jurisprudence; Montpelier for medicine. Though national prejudices, as in the case of Prague, sometimes interfered with this free resort of foreigners to places of education, it was in general a wise policy of government, as well as of the universities themselves, to encourage it.

The thirty-fifth article of the peace of Bretigni provides for the restoration of former privileges to students respectively in the French and English universities.[836] Various letters patent will be found in Rymer's collection, securing to Scottish as well as French natives a safe pa.s.sage to their place of education. The English nation, including however the Flemings and Germans,[837] had a separate vote in the faculty of arts at Paris. But foreign students were not, I believe, so numerous in the English academies.

If endowments and privileges are the means of quickening a zeal for letters, they were liberally bestowed in the last three of the middle ages. Crevier enumerates fifteen colleges founded in the university of Paris during the thirteenth century, besides one or two of a still earlier date. Two only, or at most three, existed in that age at Oxford, and but one at Cambridge. In the next two centuries these universities could boast, as every one knows, of many splendid foundations, though much exceeded in number by those of Paris. Considered as ecclesiastical inst.i.tutions it is not surprising that the universities obtained, according to the spirit of their age, an exclusive cognizance of civil or criminal suits affecting their members. This jurisdiction was, however, local as well as personal, and in reality encroached on the regular police of their cities. At Paris the privilege turned to a flagrant abuse, and gave rise to many scandalous contentions.[838] Still more valuable advantages were those relating to ecclesiastical preferments, of which a large proportion was reserved in France to academical graduates. Something of the same sort, though less extensive, may still be traced in the rules respecting plurality of benefices in our English church.

[Sidenote: Causes of their celebrity.]

[Sidenote: Scholastic philosophy.]

This remarkable and almost sudden transition from a total indifference to all intellectual pursuits cannot be ascribed perhaps to any general causes. The restoration of the civil, and the formation of the canon law, were indeed eminently conducive to it, and a large proportion of scholars in most universities confined themselves to jurisprudence. But the chief attraction to the studious was the new scholastic philosophy.

The love of contention, especially with such arms as the art of dialectics supplies to an acute understanding, is natural enough to mankind. That of speculating upon the mysterious questions of metaphysics and theology is not less so. These disputes and speculations, however, appear to have excited little interest till, after the middle of the eleventh century, Roscelin, a professor of logic, revived the old question of the Grecian schools respecting universal ideas, the reality of which he denied. This kindled a spirit of metaphysical discussion, which Lanfranc and Anselm, successively archbishops of Canterbury, kept alive; and in the next century Abelard and Peter Lombard, especially the latter, completed the scholastic system of philosophizing. The logic of Aristotle seems to have been partly known in the eleventh century, although that of Augustin was perhaps in higher estimation;[839] in the twelfth it obtained more decisive influence. His metaphysics, to which the logic might be considered as preparatory, were introduced through translations from the Arabic, and perhaps also from the Greek, early in the ensuing century.[840] This work, condemned at first by the decrees of popes and councils on account of its supposed tendency to atheism, acquired by degrees an influence, to which even popes and councils were obliged to yield. The Mendicant Friars, established throughout Europe in the thirteenth century, greatly contributed to promote the Aristotelian philosophy; and its final reception into the orthodox system of the church may chiefly be ascribed to Thomas Aquinas, the boast of the Dominican order, and certainly the most distinguished metaphysician of the middle ages. His authority silenced all scruple's as to that of Aristotle, and the two philosophers were treated with equally implicit deference by the later schoolmen.[841]

This scholastic philosophy, so famous for several ages, has since pa.s.sed away and been forgotten. The history of literature, like that of empire, is full of revolutions. Our public libraries are cemeteries of departed reputation, and the dust acc.u.mulating upon their untouched volumes speaks as forcibly as the gra.s.s that waves over the ruins of Babylon. Few, very few, for a hundred years past, have broken the repose of the immense works of the schoolmen. None perhaps in our own country have acquainted themselves particularly with their contents. Leibnitz, however, expressed a wish that some one conversant with modern philosophy would undertake to extract the scattered particles of gold which may be hidden in their abandoned mines. This wish has been at length partially fulfilled by three or four of those industrious students and keen metaphysicians, who do honour to modern Germany. But most of their works are unknown to me except by repute, and as they all appear to be formed on a very extensive plan, I doubt whether even those laborious men could afford adequate time for this ungrateful research. Yet we cannot pretend to deny that Roscelin, Anselm, Abelard, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham, were men of acute and even profound understandings, the giants of their own generation. Even with the slight knowledge we possess of their tenets, there appear through the cloud of repulsive technical barbarisms rays of metaphysical genius which this age ought not to despise. Thus in the works of Anselm is found the celebrated argument of Des Cartes for the existence of a Deity, deduced from the idea of an infinitely perfect being. One great object that most of the schoolmen had in view was, to establish the principles of natural theology by abstract reasoning. This reasoning was doubtless liable to great difficulties. But a modern writer, who seems tolerably acquainted with the subject, a.s.sures us that it would be difficult to mention any theoretical argument to prove the divine attributes, or any objection capable of being raised against the proof, which we do not find in some of the scholastic philosophers.[842] The most celebrated subjects of discussion, and those on which this cla.s.s of reasoners were most divided, were the reality of universal ideas, considered as extrinsic to the human mind and the freedom of will. These have not ceased to occupy the thoughts of metaphysicians.[843]

But all discovery of truth by means of these controversies was rendered hopeless by two insurmountable obstacles, the authority of Aristotle and that of the church. Wherever obsequious reverence is subst.i.tuted for bold inquiry, truth, if she is not already at hand, will never be attained. The scholastics did not understand Aristotle, whose original writings they could not read;[844] but his name was received with implicit faith. They learned his peculiar nomenclature, and fancied that he had given them realities. The authority of the church did them still more harm. It has been said, and probably with much truth, that their metaphysics were injurious to their theology. But I must observe in return that their theology was equally injurious to their metaphysics.

Their disputes continually turned upon questions either involving absurdity and contradiction, or at best inscrutable by human comprehension. Those who a.s.sert the greatest antiquity of the Roman Catholic doctrine as to the real presence, allow that both the word and the definition of transubstantiation are owing to the scholastic writers. Their subtleties were not always so well received. They reasoned at imminent peril of being charged with heresy, which Roscelin, Abelard, Lombard, and Ockham did not escape. In the virulent factions that arose out of their metaphysical quarrels, either party was eager to expose its adversary to detraction and persecution. The Nominalists were accused, one hardly sees why, with reducing, like Sabellius, the persons of the Trinity to modal distinctions. The Realists, with more pretence, incurred the imputation of holding a language that savoured of atheism.[845] In the controversy which the Dominicans and Franciscans, disciples respectively of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, maintained about grace and freewill, it was of course still more easy to deal in mutual reproaches of heterodoxy. But the schoolmen were in general prudent enough not to defy the censures of the church; and the popes, in return for the support they gave to all exorbitant pretensions of the Holy See, connived at this factious wrangling, which threatened no serious mischief, as it did not proceed from any independent spirit of research. Yet with all their apparent conformity to the received creed, there was, as might be expected from the circ.u.mstances, a great deal of real deviation from orthodoxy, and even of infidelity. The scholastic mode of dispute, admitting of no termination and producing no conviction, was the sure cause of scepticism; and the system of Aristotle, especially with the commentaries of Averroes, bore an aspect very unfavourable to natural religion.[846] The Aristotelian philosophy, even in the hands of the Master, was like a barren tree that conceals its want of fruit by profusion of leaves. But the scholastic ontology was much worse. What could be more trifling than disquisitions about the nature of angels, their modes of operation, their means of conversing, or (for these were distinguished) the morning and evening state of their understandings?[847] Into such follies the schoolmen appear to have launched, partly because there was less danger of running against a heresy in a matter where the church had defined so little--partly from their presumption, which disdained all inquiries into the human mind, as merely a part of physics--and in no small degree through a spirit of mystical fanaticism, derived from the oriental philosophy and the later Platonists, which blended itself with the cold-blooded technicalities of the Aristotelian school.[848] But this unproductive waste of the faculties could not last for ever. Men discovered that they had given their time for the promise of wisdom, and been cheated in the bargain.

What John of Salisbury observes of the Parisian dialecticians in his own time, that, after several years' absence, he found them not a step advanced and still employed in urging and parrying the same arguments, was equally applicable to the period of centuries. After three or four hundred years, the scholastics had not untied a single knot, nor added one unequivocal truth to the domain of philosophy. As this became more evident, the enthusiasm for that kind of learning declined; after the middle of the fourteenth century few distinguished teachers arose among the schoolmen, and at the revival of letters their pretended science had no advocates left, but among the prejudiced or ignorant adherents of established systems. How different is the state of genuine philosophy, the zeal for which will never wear out by length of time or change of fashion, because the inquirer, unrestrained by authority, is perpetually cheered by the discovery of truth in researches, which the boundless riches of nature seem to render indefinitely progressive![849]

Yet, upon a general consideration, the attention paid in the universities to scholastic philosophy, may be deemed a source of improvement in the intellectual character, when we compare it with the perfect ignorance of some preceding ages. Whether the same industry would not have been more profitably directed if the love of metaphysics had not intervened, is another question. Philology, or the principles of good taste, degenerated through the prevalence of school-logic. The Latin compositions of the twelfth century are better than those of the three that followed--at least on the northern side of the Alps. I do not, however, conceive that any real correctness of taste or general elegance of style was likely to subsist in so imperfect a condition of society. These qualities seem to require a certain harmonious correspondence in the tone of manners before they can establish a prevalent influence over literature. A more real evil was the diverting of studious men from mathematical science. Early in the twelfth century several persons, chiefly English, had brought into Europe some of the Arabian writings on geometry and physics. In the thirteenth the works of Euclid were commented upon by Campano,[850] and Roger Bacon was fully acquainted with them.[851] Algebra, as far as the Arabians knew it, extending to quadratic equations, was actually in the hands of some Italians at the commencement of the same age, and preserved for almost three hundred years as a secret, though without any conception of its importance. As abstract mathematics require no collateral aid, they may reach the highest perfection in ages of general barbarism; and there seems to be no reason why, if the course of study had been directed that way, there should not have arisen a Newton or a La Place, instead of an Aquinas or an Ockham. The knowledge displayed by Roger Bacon and by Albertus Magnus, even in the mixed mathematics, under every disadvantage from the imperfection of instruments and the want of recorded experience, is sufficient to inspire us with regret that their contemporaries were more inclined to astonishment than to emulation.

These inquiries indeed were subject to the ordeal of fire, the great purifier of books and men; for if the metaphysician stood a chance of being burned as a heretic, the natural philosopher was in not less jeopardy as a magician.[852]

[Sidenote: Cultivation of the new languages.]

[Sidenote: Division of the Romance tongue into two dialects.]

[Sidenote: Troubadours of Provence.]

A far more substantial cause of intellectual improvement was the development of those new languages that sprang out of the corruption of Latin. For three or four centuries after what was called the Romance tongue was spoken in France, there remain but few vestiges of its employment in writing; though we cannot draw an absolute inference from our want of proof, and a critic of much authority supposes translations to have been made into it for religious purposes from the time of Charlemagne.[853] During this period the language was split into two very separate dialects, the regions of which may be considered, though by no means strictly, as divided by the Loire. These were called the Langue d'Oil and the Langue d'Oc; or in more modern terms, the French and Provencal dialects. In the latter of these I know of nothing which can even by name be traced beyond the year 1100. About that time Gregory de Bechada, a gentleman of Limousin, recorded the memorable events of the first crusade, then recent, in a metrical history of great length.[854] This poem has altogether perished; which, considering the popularity of its subject, as M. Sismondi justly remarks, would probably not have been the case if it had possessed any merit. But very soon afterwards a mult.i.tude of poets, like a swarm of summer insects, appeared in the southern provinces of France. These were the celebrated Troubadours, whose fame depends far less on their positive excellence than on the darkness of preceding ages, on the temporary sensation they excited, and their permanent influence on the state of European poetry.

From William count of Poitou, the earliest troubadour on record, who died in 1126, to their extinction, about the end of the next century, there were probably several hundred of these versifiers in the language of Provence, though not always natives of France. Millot has published the lives of one hundred and forty-two, besides the names of many more whose history is unknown; and a still greater number, it cannot be doubted, are unknown by name. Among those poets are reckoned a king of England (Richard I.), two of Aragon, one of Sicily, a dauphin of Auvergne, a count of Foix, a prince of Orange, many n.o.blemen and several ladies. One can hardly pretend to account for this sudden and transitory love of verse; but it is manifestly one symptom of the rapid impulse which the human mind received in the twelfth century, and contemporaneous with the severer studies that began to flourish in the universities. It was encouraged by the prosperity of Languedoc and Provence, undisturbed, comparatively with other countries, by internal warfare, and disposed by the temper of their inhabitants to feel with voluptuous sensibility the charm of music and amorous poetry. But the tremendous storm that fell upon Languedoc in the crusade against the Albigeois shook off the flowers of Provencal verse; and the final extinction of the fief of Toulouse, with the removal of the counts of Provence to Naples, deprived the troubadours of their most eminent patrons. An attempt was made in the next century to revive them, by distributing prizes for the best composition in the Floral Games of Toulouse, which have sometimes been erroneously referred to a higher antiquity.[855] This inst.i.tution perhaps still remains; but even in its earliest period it did not establish the name of any Provencal poet. Nor can we deem these fantastical solemnities, styled Courts of Love, where ridiculous questions of metaphysical gallantry were debated by poetical advocates, under the presidency and arbitration of certain ladies, much calculated to bring forward any genuine excellence. They ill.u.s.trate, however, what is more immediately my own object, the general ardour for poetry and the manners of those chivalrous ages.[856]

[Sidenote: Their poetical character.]

The great reputation acquired by the troubadours, and panegyrics lavished on some of them by Dante and Petrarch, excited a curiosity among literary men, which has been a good deal disappointed by further acquaintance. An excellent French antiquary of the last age, La Curne de St. Palaye, spent great part of his life in acc.u.mulating ma.n.u.scripts of Provencal poetry, very little of which had ever been printed.

Translations from part of this collection, with memorials of the writers, were published by Millot; and we certainly do not often meet with pa.s.sages in his three volumes which give us any poetical pleasure.[857] Some of the original poems have since been published, and the extracts made from them by the recent historians of southern literature are rather superior. The troubadours chiefly confined themselves to subjects of love, or rather gallantry, and to satires (sirventes), which are sometimes keen and spirited. No romances of chivalry, and hardly any tales, are found among their works. There seems a general deficiency of imagination, and especially of that vivid description which distinguishes works of genius in the rudest period of society. In the poetry of sentiment, their favourite province, they seldom attain any natural expression, and consequently produce no interest. I speak, of course, on the presumption that the best specimens have been exhibited by those who have undertaken the task. It must be allowed, however, that we cannot judge of the troubadours at a greater disadvantage than through the prose translations of Millot. Their poetry was entirely of that cla.s.s which is allied to music, and excites the fancy or feelings rather by the power of sound than any stimulancy of imagery and pa.s.sion. Possessing a flexible and harmonious language, they invented a variety of metrical arrangements, perfectly new to the nations of Europe. The Latin hymns were striking, but monotonous, the metre of the northern French unvaried; but in Provencal poetry, almost every length of verse, from two syllables to twelve, and the most intricate disposition of rhymes, were at the choice of the troubadour.

The canzoni, the sestine, all the lyric metres of Italy and Spain were borrowed from his treasury. With such a command of poetical sounds, it was natural that he should inspire delight into ears not yet rendered familiar to the artifices of verse; and even now the fragments of these ancient lays, quoted by M. Sismondi and M. Ginguene, seem to possess a sort of charm that has evaporated in translation. Upon this harmony, and upon the facility with which mankind are apt to be deluded into an admiration of exaggerated sentiment in poetry, they depended for their influence. And however vapid the songs of Provence may seem to our apprehensions, they were undoubtedly the source from which poetry for many centuries derived a great portion of its habitual language.[858]

[Sidenote: Northern French poetry and prose.]

It has been maintained by some antiquaries, that the northern Romance, or what we properly call French, was not formed until the tenth century, the common dialect of all France having previously resembled that of Languedoc. This hypothesis may not be indisputable; but the question is not likely to be settled, as scarcely any written specimens of Romance, even of that age, have survived.[859] In the eleventh century, among other more obscure productions, both in prose and metre, there appears what, if unquestioned as to authenticity, would be a valuable monument of this language; the laws of William the Conqueror. These are preserved in a ma.n.u.script of Ingulfus's History of Croyland, a blank being left in other copies where they should be inserted.[860] They are written in an idiom so far removed from the Provencal, that one would be disposed to think the separation between these two species of Romance of older standing than is commonly allowed. But it has been thought probable that these laws, which in fact were nearly a repet.i.tion of those of Edward the Confessor, were originally published in Anglo-Saxon, the only language intelligible to the people, and translated, at a subsequent period, by some Norman monk into French.[861]

The use of a popular language became more common after the year 1100.

Translations of some books of Scripture and acts of saints were made about that time, or even earlier, and there are French sermons of St.

Bernard, from which extracts have been published, in the royal library at Paris.[862] In 1126, a charter was granted by Louis VI. to the city of Beauvais in French.[863] Metrical compositions are in general the first literature of a nation, and even if no distinct proof could be adduced, we might a.s.sume their existence before the twelfth century.

There is however evidence, not to mention the fragments printed by Le Boeuf, of certain lives of saints translated into French verse by Thibault de Vernon, a canon of Rouen, before the middle of the preceding age. And we are told that Taillefer, a Norman minstrel, recited a song or romance on the deeds of Roland, before the army of his countrymen, at the battle of Hastings in 1066. Philip de Than, a Norman subject of Henry I., seems to be the earliest poet whose works as well as name have reached us, unless we admit a French, translation of the work of one Marbode upon precious stones to be more ancient.[864] This De Than wrote a set of rules for computation of time and an account of different calendars. A happy theme for inspiration without doubt! Another performance of the same author is a treatise on birds and beasts, dedicated to Adelaide, queen of Henry I.[865] But a more famous votary of the muses was Wace, a native of Jersey, who about the beginning of Henry II.'s reign turned Geoffrey of Monmouth's history into French metre. Besides this poem, called le Brut d'Angleterre, he composed a series of metrical histories, containing the transactions of the dukes of Normandy, from Rollo, their great progenitor, who gave name to the Roman de Rou, down to his own age. Other productions are ascribed to Wace, who was at least a prolific versifier, and, if he seem to deserve no higher t.i.tle at present, has a claim to indulgence, and even to esteem, as having far excelled his contemporaries, without any superior advantages of knowledge. In emulation, however, of his fame, several Norman writers addicted themselves to composing chronicles, or devotional treatises in metre. The court of our Norman kings was to the early poets in the Langue d'Oil, what those of Arles and Toulouse were to the troubadours. Henry I. was fond enough of literature to obtain the surname of Beauclerc; Henry II. was more indisputably an encourager of poetry; and Richard I. has left compositions of his own in one or other (for the point is doubtful) of the two dialects spoken in France.[866]

[Sidenote: Norman romances and tales.]

If the poets of Normandy had never gone beyond historical and religious subjects, they would probably have had less claim to our attention than their brethren of Provence. But a different and far more interesting species of composition began to be cultivated in the latter part of the twelfth century. Without entering upon the controverted question as to the origin of romantic fictions, referred by one party to the Scandinavians, by a second to the Arabs, by others to the natives of Britany, it is manifest that the actual stories upon which one early and numerous cla.s.s of romances was founded are related to the traditions of the last people. These are such as turn upon the fable of Arthur; for though we are not ent.i.tled to deny the existence of such a personage, his story seems chiefly the creation of Celtic vanity. Traditions current in Britany, though probably derived from this island, became the basis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin prose, which, as has been seen, was transfused into French metre by Wace.[867] The vicinity of Normandy enabled its poets to enrich their narratives with other Armorican fictions, all relating to the heroes who had surrounded the table of the son of Uther.[868] An equally imaginary history of Charlemagne gave rise to a new family of romances. The authors of these fictions were called Trouveurs, a name obviously identical with that of Troubadours.

But except in name there was no resemblance between the minstrels of the northern and southern dialects. The invention of one cla.s.s was turned to description, that of the other to sentiment; the first were epic in their form and style, the latter almost always lyric. We cannot perhaps give a better notion of their dissimilitude, than by saying that one school produced Chaucer, and the other Petrarch. Besides these romances of chivalry, the trouveurs displayed their powers of lively narration in comic tales or fabliaux, (a name sometimes extended to the higher romance,) which have aided the imagination of Boccace and La Fontaine.

These compositions are certainly more entertaining than those of the troubadours; but, contrary to what I have said of the latter, they often gain by appearing in a modern dress. Their versification, which doubtless had its charm when listened to around the hearth of an ancient castle, is very languid and prosaic, and suitable enough to the tedious prolixity into which the narrative is apt to fall; and though we find many sallies of that arch and sprightly simplicity which characterizes the old language of France as well as England, it requires, upon the whole, a fact.i.tious taste to relish these Norman tales, considered as poetry in the higher sense of the word, distinguished from metrical fiction.

[Sidenote: Roman de la Rose.]

A manner very different from that of the fabliaux was adopted, in the Roman de la Rose, begun by William de Loris about 1250, and completed by John de Meun half a century later. This poem, which contains about 16,000 lines in the usual octo-syllable verse, from which the early French writers seldom deviated, is an allegorical vision, wherein, love and the other pa.s.sions or qualities connected with it pa.s.s over the stage, without the intervention, I believe, of any less abstract personages. Though similar allegories were not unknown to the ancients, and, which is more to the purpose, maybe found in other productions of the thirteenth century, none had been constructed so elaborately as that of the Roman de la Rose. Cold and tedious as we now consider this species of poetry, it originated in the creative power of imagination, and appealed to more refined feeling than the common metrical narratives could excite. This poem was highly popular in the middle ages, and became the source of those numerous allegories which had not ceased in the seventeenth century.

[Sidenote: Works in French prose.]

The French language was employed in prose as well as in metre. Indeed it seems to have had almost an exclusive privilege in this respect. "The language of Oil," says Dante, in his treatise on vulgar speech, "prefers its claim to be ranked above those of Oc and Si (Provencal and Italian), on the ground that all translations or compositions in prose have been written therein, from its greater facility and grace, such as the books compiled from the Trojan and Roman stories, the delightful fables about Arthur, and many other works of history and science."[869] I have mentioned already the sermons of St. Bernard and translations from Scripture. The laws of the kingdom of Jerusalem purport to have been drawn up immediately after the first crusade, and though their language has been materially altered, there seems no doubt that they were originally compiled in French.[870] Besides some charters, there are said to have been prose romances before the year 1200.[871] Early in the next age Ville Hardouin, seneschal of Campagne, recorded the capture of Constantinople in the fourth crusade, an expedition, the glory and reward of which he had personally shared, and, as every original work of prior date has either perished or is of small importance, may be deemed the father of French prose. The Establishments of St. Louis, and the law treatise of Beaumanoir, fill up the interval of the thirteenth century, and before its conclusion we must suppose the excellent memoirs of Joinville to have been composed, since they are dedicated to Louis X.

in 1315, when the author could hardly be less than ninety years of age.

Without prosecuting any further the history of French literature, I will only mention the translations of Livy and Sall.u.s.t, made in the reign and by the order of John, with those of Caesar, Suetonius, Ovid, and parts of Cicero, which are, due to his successor Charles V.[872]

[Sidenote: Spanish language.]

I confess myself wholly uninformed as to the original formation of the Spanish language, and as to the epoch of its separation into the two princ.i.p.al dialects of Castile and Portugal, or Gallicia;[873] nor should I perhaps have alluded to the literature of that peninsula, were it not for a remarkable poem which shines out among the minor lights of those times. This is a metrical life of the Cid Ruy Diaz, written in a barbarous style and with the rudest inequality of measure, but with a truly Homeric warmth and vivacity of delineation. It is much to be regretted that the author's name has perished; but its date has been referred by some to the middle of the twelfth century, while the hero's actions were yet recent, and before the taste of Spain had been corrupted by the Provencal troubadours, whose extremely different manner would, if it did not pervert the poet's genius, at least have impeded his popularity. A very competent judge has p.r.o.nounced the poem of the Cid to be "decidedly and beyond comparison the finest in the Spanish language." It is at least superior to any that was written in Europe before the appearance of Dante.[874]

[Sidenote: Early writers in the Italian.]

A strange obscurity envelops the infancy of the Italian language. Though it is certain that grammatical Latin had ceased to be employed in ordinary discourse, at least from the time of Charlemagne, we have not a single pa.s.sage of undisputed authenticity, in the current idiom, for nearly four centuries afterwards. Though Italian phrases are mixed up in the barbarous jargon of some charters, not an instrument is extant in that language before the year 1200, unless we may reckon one in the Sardinian dialect (which I believe was rather Provencal than Italian), noticed by Muratori.[875] Nor is there a vestige of Italian poetry older than a few fragments of Ciullo d'Alcamo, a Sicilian, who must have written before 1193, since he mentions Saladin as then living.[876] This may strike us as the more remarkable, when we consider the political circ.u.mstances of Italy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. From the struggles of her spirited republics against the emperors and their internal factions, we might, upon all general reasoning, antic.i.p.ate the early use and vigorous cultivation of their native language. Even if it were not yet ripe for historians and philosophers, it is strange that no poet should have been inspired with songs of triumph or invective by the various fortunes of his country. But, on the contrary, the poets of Lombardy became troubadours, and wasted their genius in Provencal love strains at the courts of princes. The Milanese and other Lombard dialects were, indeed, exceedingly rude; but this rudeness separated them more decidedly from Latin: nor is it possible that the Lombards could have employed that language intelligibly for any public or domestic purpose. And indeed in the earliest Italian compositions that have been published, the new language is so thoroughly formed, that it is natural to infer a very long disuse of that from which it was derived. The Sicilians claim the glory of having first adapted their own harmonious dialect to poetry. Frederic II. both encouraged their art and cultivated it; among the very first essays of Italian verse we find his productions and those of his chancellor Piero delle Vigne. Thus Italy was destined to owe the beginnings of her national literature to a foreigner and an enemy. These poems are very short and few; those ascribed to St. Francis about the same time are hardly distinguishable from prose; but after the middle of the thirteenth century the Tuscan poets awoke to a sense of the beauties which their native language, refined from the impurities of vulgar speech,[877] could display, and the genius of Italian literature was rocked upon the restless waves of the Florentine democracy. Ricordano Malespini, the first historian, and nearly the first prose writer in Italian, left memorials of the republic down to the year 1281, which was that of his death, and it was continued by Giacchetto Malespini to 1286. These are little inferior in purity of style to the best Tuscan authors; for it is the singular fate of that language to have spared itself all intermediate stages of refinement, and, starting the last in the race, to have arrived almost instantaneously at the goal. There is an interval of not much more than half a century between the short fragment of Ciullo d'Alcamo, mentioned above, and the poems of Guido Guinizzelli, Guitone d'Arezzo, and Guido Cavalcante, which, in their diction and turn of thought, are sometimes not unworthy of Petrarch.[878]

[Sidenote: Dante.]

But at the beginning of the next age arose a much greater genius, the true father of Italian poetry, and the first name in the literature of the middle ages. This was Dante, or Durante Alighieri, born in 1265, of a respectable family at Florence. Attached to the Guelf party, which had then obtained a final ascendency over its rival, he might justly promise himself the natural reward of talents under a free government, public trust and the esteem of his compatriots. But the Guelfs unhappily were split into two factions, the Bianchi and the Neri, with the former of whom, and, as it proved, the unsuccessful side, Dante was connected. In 1300 he filled the office of one of the Priori, or chief magistrates at Florence; and having manifested in this, as was alleged, some partiality towards the Bianchi, a sentence of proscription pa.s.sed against him about two years afterwards, when it became the turn of the opposite faction to triumph. Banished from his country, and baffled in several efforts of his friends to restore their fortunes, he had no resource but at the courts of the Scalas at Verona, and other Italian princes, attaching himself in adversity to the Imperial interests, and tasting, in his own language, the bitterness of another's bread.[879] In this state of exile he finished, if he did not commence, his great poem, the Divine Comedy; a representation of the three kingdoms of futurity, h.e.l.l, Purgatory, and Paradise, divided into one hundred cantos, and containing about 14,000 lines. He died at Ravenna in 1321.

Dante is among the very few who have created the national poetry of their country. For notwithstanding the polished elegance of some earlier Italian verse, it had been confined to amorous sentiment; and it was yet to be seen that the language could sustain, for a greater length than any existing poem except the Iliad, the varied style of narration, reasoning, and ornament. Of all writers he is the most unquestionably original. Virgil was indeed his inspiring genius, as he declares himself, and as may sometimes be perceived in his diction; but his tone is so peculiar and characteristic, that few readers would be willing at first to acknowledge any resemblance. He possessed, in an extraordinary degree, a command of language, the abuse of which led to his obscurity and licentious innovations. No poet ever excelled him in conciseness, and in the rare talent of finishing his pictures by a few bold touches; the merit of Pindar in his better hours. How prolix would the stories of Francesca or of Ugolino have become in the hands of Ariosto, or of Ta.s.so, or of Ovid, or of Spenser! This excellence indeed is most striking in the first part of his poem. Having formed his plan so as to give an equal length to the three regions of his spiritual world, he found himself unable to vary the images of hope or beat.i.tude, and the Paradise is a continual acc.u.mulation of descriptions, separately beautiful, but uniform and tedious. Though images derived from light and music are the most pleasing, and can be borne longer in poetry than any others, their sweetness palls upon the sense by frequent repet.i.tion, and we require the intermixture of sharper flavours. Yet there are detached pa.s.sages of great excellence in this third part of Dante's poem; and even in the long theological discussions which occupy the greater proportion of its thirty-three cantos, it is impossible not to admire the enunciation of abstract positions with remarkable energy, conciseness, and sometimes perspicuity. The first twelve cantos of the Purgatory are an almost continual flow of soft and brilliant poetry. The last seven are also very splendid; but there is some heaviness in the intermediate parts. Fame has justly given the preference to the Inferno, which displays throughout a more vigorous and masterly conception; but the mind of Dante cannot be thoroughly appreciated without a perusal of his entire poem.

The most forced and unnatural turns, the most barbarous licences of idiom, are found in this poet, whose power of expression is at other times so peculiarly happy. His style is indeed generally free from those conceits of thought which discredited the other poets of his country; but no sense is too remote for a word which he finds convenient for his measure or his rhyme. It seems indeed as if he never altered a line on account of the necessity of rhyme, but forced another, or perhaps a third, into company with it. For many of his faults no sufficient excuse can be made. But it is candid to remember, that Dante, writing almost in the infancy of a language which he contributed to create, was not to antic.i.p.ate that words which he borrowed from the Latin, and from the provincial dialects, would by accident, or through the timidity of later writers, lose their place in the cla.s.sical idiom of Italy. If Petrarch, Bembo, and a few more, had not aimed rather at purity than copiousness, the phrases which now appear barbarous, and are at least obsolete, might have been fixed by use in poetical language.

The great characteristic excellence of Dante is elevation of sentiment, to which his compressed diction and the emphatic cadences of his measure admirably correspond. We read him, not as an amusing poet, but as a master of moral wisdom, with reverence and awe. Fresh from the deep and serious, though somewhat barren studies of philosophy, and schooled in the severer discipline of experience, he has made of his poem a mirror of his mind and life, the register of his solicitudes and sorrows, and of the speculations in which he sought to escape their recollection. The banished magistrate of Florence, the disciple of Brunetto Latini, the statesman accustomed to trace the varying fluctuations of Italian faction, is for ever before our eyes. For this reason, even the prodigal display of erudition, which in an epic poem would be entirely misplaced, increases the respect we feel for the poet, though it does not tend to the reader's gratification. Except Milton, he is much the most learned of all the great poets, and, relatively to his age, far more learned than Milton. In one so highly endowed by nature, and so consummate by instruction, we may well sympathise with a resentment which exile and poverty rendered perpetually fresh. The heart of Dante was naturally sensible, and even tender; his poetry is full of simple comparisons from rural life; and the sincerity of his early pa.s.sion for Beatrice pierces through the veil of allegory which surrounds her. But the memory of his injuries pursues him into the immensity of eternal light; and, in the company of saints and angels, his unforgiving spirit darkens at the name of Florence.[880]