'Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour.'
'Whose echo rings through Scotland to this hour.'
But this subject has at present a more than historical interest. The paragraph referring to Scotland and its urgent educational needs in the Queen's Speech at the opening of this Session, followed by the immediate introduction of a bill by the Lord Advocate, which was promptly opposed by his political opponents, on the ground that it confessedly cuts off the parish schools from any connection with the Established Church, reminds us of perhaps the most cruel chapter in the whole history of suffering in 1843. The parish school-masters of Scotland have always been a most meritorious but very ill-remunerated set of men; and it might have been hoped that whatever severities a mistaken sense of duty might have led those in power to exercise towards the ministers and leaders of the Church after 1843, these humbler members not being themselves ecclesiastical officials, might have been allowed to remain in the possession of their hearths and homes. But it was not so. Many of the schoolmasters were elders of the Church. All of them were to a certain extent educated men, and took an interest in the questions raised as to the Church's right to be free from patronage and from civil dictation generally. The consequence was, that not a few of them came out along with the other laymen who followed the ministers in 1843, prepared to take their share of the pecuniary burdens which were thus brought upon the community. But this milder lot was not allowed them. They, too, like the ministers, had their Bartholomew's Day. They would gladly have clung to their humble daily work in the school-house, and more gladly still to the little home built generally at the end of it, during the week, with bare liberty on the Sabbath to join with either congregation in worship; but it was not to be. Throughout Scotland, every schoolmaster who joined with the Church in fulfilling its pledge of 1842, was at once ejected from his small house, and deprived of his smaller income; and the consequences to them and to their families were in many cases misery, approaching almost to starvation. The result to education was not disadvantageous; for the Free Church, having thrown upon it the burden of so many men deprived of bread, for no other crime than their attachment to itself, was in no mood to shrink from the duty. It at once added to the rest of its organization an education scheme. Homes were gradually built for the ousted schoolmasters, and in as many places as possible they continued to teach the same children of the same hamlets where they had previously dwelt. The Free Church has now, or had very recently, 620 schools and 645 teachers, and taught upwards of 60,000 of the youth of Scotland, many of whom were in the most remote and destitute parts; while its normal schools are reported by her Majesty's inspectors as the most efficient in Scotland. Yet for a proper national scheme, such as has for many years been desired in Scotland, the Free Church would at once be ready to give up an organization so interesting in its origin, and so powerful in its results. Some years ago, in the midst of the keenest opposition by the Conservative party and the Established Church, the choice of a teacher of any denomination was allowed to the heritors; and next year, whatever else is done on this most important subject, it is plain that the last strands of exclusive connection will be parted.
The remaining matter which may come before Parliament during the next session is one in which the other Voluntary and Presbyterian Churches of Scotland are quite as much interested as that which dates from 1843. It is the proposal to transfer the patronage of the churches from the few existing possessors, partly to the landowners, and partly to the communicants of the Established Church, but excluding other parishioners. A Committee was appointedin 1869 by the General Assembly, to watch over a legislative measure to this effect, and their first step was to go to the Prime Minister. In answer to Mr. Gladstone's questions, they explained that the chief reason for the sudden change of sentiment on the part of a body which had hitherto been distinguished by its uncompromising defence of the present rights of patrons, was a desire to conciliate the Presbyterians outside by a deference to their well-known views. On this point, and on the proposal generally, Mr. Gladstone requested that a formal memorial might be drawn up, not only 'because it is desirable that the Government should have in their hands some statement with some degree of authority,' but also to instruct 'the Parliament of the three kingdoms' in a matter which Scotchmen alone can be expected accurately to know.
The desired 'Statement on the Law of Church Patronage' has accordingly now been issued and transmitted to the Government, and will doubtless be laid on the table of the House. It is a very remarkable document, giving the ecclesiastical history of Scotland with great fairness until it comes down to quite recent times, but making it in consequence quite impossible for any Legislature with the least sense of justice to reconstitute church endowments in the way desired. It narrates how patronage was abolished in Scotland at the Revolution settlement; and how its restoration by an Act in 1711 (protested against by the Free Church in 1843 as altering a thing reserved from the jurisdiction of the Union Parliament) was 'one of the acts of a conspiracy for the purpose of bringing back the Stuart dynasty to the throne.' The Assembly of 1735 stated in an address to the King, 'That it was done in resentment against the Church of Scotland.' Bishop Burnet, present at the passing of the Act, says it was intended to 'weaken and undermine' the Church of Scotland. The 'Statement' then goes on to show how it was not merely the Free Church that protested against the outrage: the Assembly of 1812 protested that 'the Act abolishing patronage must be understood to be a part of our Presbyterian constitution secured to us by the Treaty of Union forever;' and for seventy years in succession thereafter the Assembly yearly instructed its Committee to attempt to get redress. Gradually, however, as the cold eighteenth century crept on, a party began to dominate in the Church which took the same view of patronage which was afterwards formulated by Dr. Mearns and Dr. Cook, and by the aid of the civil courts became finally triumphant in 1843. And thus followed the first secession. Ebenezer Erskine, a great name in those northern regions in that dark century, protested publicly that 'those professed Presbyterians who thrust men upon congregations without, and contrary to, the free choice their king had allowed them, were guilty of an attempt to jostle Christ out of his government.' He and three other ministers were thereupon deposed in 1733, and 'appealed unto the first free, faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.' The second secession, in 1752, was a still more exact parallel to the third great schism of 1843, for the founders of the Relief Church in 1752 were driven out, like Dr. Chalmers and his friends, because they refused to take a personal part in ordaining those whom the patron had presented, but whom the people refused to receive. These circumstances are very fairly narrated in the Statement, which farther refers to the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Law of Patronage in 1834, as giving 'the best summary of the historical and legal aspects of the question which we possess.' That Committee, it is stated, came to no definite finding, because the necessity for doing so was superseded by the Act of the previous General Assembly, giving the people a veto against an unacceptable presentee—an Act which was 'not passed without a full assurance from the law officers of the Crown in Scotland that it was quite within the power of the Church.' Within a year thereafter, however, a question arose as to this, and a narrow majority of the Scotch judges, backed by the House of Lords, held that it was not within their power. The Church at once took steps to appeal to the Legislature to correct the anomaly, and concede the power which was questioned; asking only that in the meantime the courts should not force them to take a part in violating with their own hands those rights of the Christian people which they had affirmed. The refusal to allow this brought on the disruption. The 'Statement' winds up with pointing out how 'the non-intrusion controversy thus passed into that of spiritual independence;' and 'it was on a question thence arising in regard to the respective provinces of the ecclesiastical and civil courts that the secession of 1843 actually took place.' They add, however, that though in 1836 the Church refused to condemn patronage altogether, and was satisfied with the supposed security of the Veto Act, in 1842 this as well as other matters came to maturity, and the General Assembly resolved, 'That patronage is a grievance; has been attended with much injury to the cause of true religion in thisChurch and kingdom; is the main cause of the difficulties in which the Church is at present involved; and that it ought to be abolished.' Far from conciliating opponents, however, this resolve was made part of the reason by the courts and the moderate party for driving its authors into disruption.
The candour and fairness of the earlier historical part of this memorial will always give it importance; but the gross inadequacy of the practical measures proposed has subjected it in Scotland to an unfair amount of ridicule. Dr. Cook, as the head of the moderate party, the proper representative of those who stayed in in 1843, at once protested against it, asserting that patronage is essential to the stability of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Tulloch, of St. Andrew's, as representing the broad section of the Church, repudiated it two days after. Mr. Story, the biographer of Dr. Lee, and Dr. Wallace, who is Dr. Lee's successor in Edinburgh, made haste to attack it also. The great difficulty within the Church seems to be the proposed refusal to admit all parishioners to vote for the parish minister. So long as he was appointed by a single laird or nobleman, who might be a stranger altogether, that difficulty was not felt. The people were excluded, but they were excluded equally. It is now proposed, however, that the minister should be paid by the whole country, but should be appointed by the communicants of the Established Church alone, excluding the members of the older and properly anti-patronage bodies, who have all the same creed, but whose principles of Church polity the Established Church, itself a minority of the nation, is only now adopting. It is clearly the vague sense of injustice and wrong thus caused which is at the root of the dissatisfaction everywhere expressed with the proposed measure, even by members and ministers of the Scottish Establishment itself. But another more important result has been the clear recognition that there is no chance of thereby 'conciliating' the older anti-patronage Presbyterians or uniting the Church. Last year we expressed the belief that any fair proposals or endeavours on the part of the Establishment would have the effect of at least producing a pause in the projected union of the voluntary Presbyterians outside. The 'Statement' to be laid before Parliament has had decidedly the effect of consolidating that union, and there is no doubt now that it will go on, though probably in the meantime rather by way of mutual co-operation. A very short time will see the Free Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church—all the large Presbyterian communities who have protested against patronage, and whose leading principle is the liberation of religion from State control—absolutely united in their work, and partitioning Scotland between them. It need not be said how hopeless is the proposal to choose this time for asking Parliament to reconstitute the endowment of a minority of the Scotch people at the expense of the whole, or how fatal to the Church the success of the scheme would be, even if it could be expected to succeed.
The movement is more likely to be in quite another direction. Dr. Wallace, in his paper on 'Church Tendencies in Scotland,' and some other men not belonging to his party in the Kirk, have rather indicated that the Highlands of Scotland, with which a large part of our paper has dealt, should be handed over from their own body to that disestablished church which for the last twenty-five years has with increasing success taken charge of it. In July last, this subject came up in the House of Commons, in the discussion upon Mr. M'Laren's Church Rates Abolition Bill for Scotland, a measure which its able and energetic mover has withdrawn, upon receiving a promise from the Government to introduce one next year upon their own responsibility. On some matters raised by this bill differences of opinion were expressed. Mr. Graham, member for Glasgow, said that he knew from experience that 'a large number of his constituents—the enormous mass of the people of Scotland—bitterly resented these compulsory assessments;' while his colleague, Mr. Anderson, opposed the bill as premature, on the ground that 'if, as is very probable, in the course of a few years the House should think proper to disestablish and disendow that Church, its property will have to be handed over to the State.' But the special matter of the Highlands, a scandal which even the friends of the Establishment are desirous to see wiped out at any expense, was brought forward by Mr. Ellice, who 'agreed with the hon. member for Edinburgh, that in many parts of the country the Church of Scotland was but the caricature of a Church, and that the presence of the Established Church, in places where it was only represented by five or ten persons, was a reproach to the Legislature. He hoped the Lord Advocate, when dealing with the question, would also deal with those useless churches and manses which were a standing reproach to common sense, and ought no longer to be supported.' The Lord Advocate was cautious in his rejoinder to this appeal, restricting his observations to the Highland churches and manses 'provided byParliamentat a time when the Church numbered a larger portion of the population than it does now.' With regard to these—the annual payments in connection with which form, perhaps, the most offensive example of mere waste of public money at present existing—the Government officer said, 'So far as I have been able to ascertain, it would be in accordance with good sense to make provision whereby that accommodation, which is not profitable either to the kingdom or the Church, might close.' Any money saved in this direction will almost certainly be devoted to the education of Scotland; for the Free Church will refuse a concurrent endowment which would include Roman Catholics, and the long Conservative battle against a good Education Bill beyond the Tweed, cannot be successful for ever. When the Scotch Presbyterians form their Union (in which as Mr. Gordon pointed out in Parliament, there is no reason why the members of the present Established Church should not join), they will undertake a weighty responsibility for the religious good of Scotland. But the weight which they unite to bear will be easy, compared to that crushing load which fell upon one of them in 1843, and which yet became to it only such a burden 'as wings are to the bird.'
Art. IV.—The Romance of the Rose.
(1.)Le Roman de la Rose.Nouvelle Édition. Par Francisque Michel. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 1864.
The study of pre-Renaissance literature belongs especially to the present century. A few ballads had been previously rescued from oblivion; a few names unearthed from the rubbish of centuries; but the great mass of writers who lived and flourished in what men used to call the Dark Ages had been utterly forgotten, names as well as writings, until the labours of Ampère, Fauriel, Raynouard, and others in France, as well as those of our own antiquarian scholars in England, brought them again to light within the last fifty years.
The literature thus revived has a value of its own quite independent of any literary merit, though this is by no means contemptible. It reveals to us not only the manners and customs of the time, the mediæval daily life, but, which is more important, the mediæval conditions and modes of thought, within such limits—too narrow, alas!—as the conventional rules of poetry allowed. But artificial grooves cannot wholly prevent a vigorous mind from running off the beaten track, and in spite of conventionalism, the reader comes sometimes, in the midst of sandy deserts of commonplace morality, monotonous repetitions, and thirsty verbiage, upon oases of such exceeding brightness and splendour, cooled with fountains so sparkling and foliage so luxuriant, that he feels he is repaid for all his trouble. And the country is by no means explored. As in the great goldfields of Australia, the big nuggets have disappeared and been gathered up long since; nevertheless there remain, for those who have patience to dig, plenty of smaller pieces of virgin gold, which may amply serve to reward their toil. But because all have not the time or the opportunity for this work, and because, after all, it lies a good deal out of the beaten track of scholars, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to invite them to come with us and visit, sparing themselves the trouble of looking for them, certain oases which lie scattered about in a vast Sahara of verse called the 'Romance of the Rose.' 'Rien n'est agréable et piquant,' says Sainte Beuve, 'comme un guide familier dans les époques lointaines.'
Our sketch of the book will be necessarily incomplete; nor could any ordinary limits of a paper suffice for its thorough examination. Its importance is evidenced by the fact that for two hundred and fifty years it was a sort of Bible to France; the source whence its readers drew their maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their history, and even their religion; and which, after having retained its popularity for a length of time almost unparalleled in the history of literature, was revived with success after the Renaissance, theonlymediæval book which enjoyed this distinction.
We shall endeavour to show some of the reasons of this long-continued success, and to prove that the book, once the companion of knights and dames, ofdamoiseauxanddamoiselles, has the strongest claims on the student of the Middle Ages; that it is not a congeries of dry and dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediæval fables, but a book full of ideas, information, and suggestion—a book warm with life.
France, whence it came, is indeed the mother of modern literature. Thence both Italy and England derived their inspiration. In the countries of Provence and Languedoc lingered longest the remains of the Latin civilization: there the lamp of learning, dwindled down at last to a mere speck, had yet flame enough to light the new taper ofthe troubadour; there was first heard the 'Nibelungen Lied;' there originated thetenson, thecanso, thesirvente, thechanson royale, thetriolet, and all the varied forms of mediæval poetry; and there was the chosen home of such philosophy and science as existed between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. English writers before the Elizabethan age copied openly and avowedly from French sources, taking plot, plan, and framework of their poems. Even Dante deferred to Provence, and owned that the troubadour led the thought of Western Europe. Other countries of Europe have little indeed in their early literature to compare with the treasures of the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil; and while, outside France, stand almost alone the great figures of Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, there is, within the circle of the Langue d'Oil alone, a constellation in which are the names of Marie de France, Rutebeuf, Jean de Meung, Charles of Orleans, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Eustache Deschamps, and François Villon, besides a host of minor poets whose works are little inferior, and who may still be read, if not always with delight, certainly always with profit. Scattered about in their writings is the whole of the mediæval life; by their light we can penetrate through the clouds of six hundred years, and bring those picturesque ages of colour and splendour back to our minds as brightly and vividly as we realize any battle-field in France by the pen of a special correspondent. And besides the mediæval life, with its habits and its thought, the student will trace in this poetry the gradual development of the true French Muse—her mockery, her satirical spirit, her cynicism, her incredulity, her curiosity, her want of reverence, with her inimitable wit and fresh buoyancy of spirit—a musegaillarde et moqueuse, unlike any other that the world has seen, whom to know is to love, though not always to respect. It is no fault of modern France if her old literature is not known as it deserves to be. Editions have been multiplied of the fabliaux, romances, poems, and chronicles which began with Wace and ended with Clement Marot. But as yet no great writer has taken up the subject as it deserves, and a consolidated history of the literature and thought of the Middle Ages, from the tenth century to the Renaissance, embracing as a whole, and not in unconnected parts, the writings of Italy, France, and England, with those of Spain and Germany, is a work which awaits the hand of some man who will devote to it the greater part of a lifetime. Materials for such a work amply exist; but he who undertakes it should bring to his task a knowledge of languages and an amount of reading rare indeed, and difficult to be found.
English readers principally know this 'Romance of the Rose' through the translation which is attributed to Chaucer. Whether it be really his or not is a matter which does not concern us here, and, to save trouble of explanation, we will refer to it as Chaucer's translation. It is unfortunate, in some respects, that it contains only a portion—viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission of 5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the portion contributed by Guillaume de Lorris, and as much of the remainder as fell in most readily with the humour of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy of monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amounting to about two-thirds of the whole, he has failed altogether in giving the spirit of the work; and those who read only Chaucer's version would certainly be at a loss to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting popularity which the book achieved.
The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the subject of considerable discussion among French critics. Pasquier speaks of its 'noble sentiments,' and considers that its object was moral—viz., to show that love is but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams of poetry; Villemain considers it a mere gloze on Ovid's 'Art of Love,' with amélangeof abstractions, allegories, and scholastic subtilties. Nisard deduces from its popularity a proof of its entire conformity with the spirit of the age—an almost obvious conclusion. Other writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for its success by the reputation which Jean de Meung enjoyed as an alchemist, and the belief that the great secrets of the science were to be found in the poem: a manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been small indeed. Others, among whom were Molinet and Marot—of whom more presently—thought its success was due to a double allegory which they found in it; while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest writers who have given any account of the book—both of them meagre, dry, and uninteresting—do not attempt to explain its popularity at all. There are sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into favour, which we hope presently to explain. The great success which it attained is illustrated by the number and weight of its assailants. Foremost among these was Gerson, the 'most Christian Doctor.' He callsit a book written for the basest purposes; he says that if there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he were offered fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather burn it: that those who have it ought to give it up to their father confessors to be destroyed: and that even if it were certain—which was unfortunately far from being the case, the contrary being presumable—that Jean de Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and ashes, it would be no more use praying for him than for Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so ecclesiastical, invective so angry, stimulated public curiosity more and more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to be burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied. Assailants came every day unto the field. Christine de Pisan, later on, took up the cause of her sex, and vindicated womankind from the sweeping charges made against them by the poet; while Martin Franc, who styled himself 'Le Champion des Dames,' wrote an elaborate apology for his clients, which has all the dreariness of the 'Romance of the Rose,' and none of its brightness. The one is a desert indeed; the other, as we have said, is a desert with oases.
The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. The earlier of these seems to have died about the time that his successor was born. Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came from the little town of Lorris, where, it is said, the house in which he was born is still shown. Two or three lines in the poem are cited to prove the date of his birth and death. These, however, are by no means to be relied upon. Thus, he tells us in his opening lines—
'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'
'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,
Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'
whence most writers have assumed that he died at the age of twenty, considering, we suppose, that it would not take a year to write the 4,670 lines which form his part. This would be, at least, quick writing, while internal evidence seems to us to point most unmistakeably to the bestowal of very careful thought, and therefore much time, upon the work. And the lines which follow shortly after have not received proper attention—indeed, hardly any modern writer on the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to have read the book at all. Here the poet says—
'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;Il a j'à bien cinc ans au mains.'
'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;
Il a j'à bien cinc ans au mains.'
which would make him five and twenty at least, a much more likely age, considering the work he had done, for his death.
At the close of his part of the book we get the following note by the scholiast, if we may call him so:—
'Çi endroit, trespassa GuillaumeDe Lorris et ne fist plus pseaume;Mais après plus de quarante ansMaistre Jehan de Meung li romansParfist, ainsi comme je treuve,Et ici commence son œuvre.'
'Çi endroit, trespassa Guillaume
De Lorris et ne fist plus pseaume;
Mais après plus de quarante ans
Maistre Jehan de Meung li romans
Parfist, ainsi comme je treuve,
Et ici commence son œuvre.'
That is,—
'Here William died; his song was done.When forty years had passed away,Sir John the romance carried on,And here commencing, told the lay.'
'Here William died; his song was done.
When forty years had passed away,
Sir John the romance carried on,
And here commencing, told the lay.'
While Jean de Meung himself says, prophesying after the event—
'Car quant Guillaume cesseraJehan le continueraAprès sa mort que je ne menteAnns trespassés plus de quarente.'
'Car quant Guillaume cessera
Jehan le continuera
Après sa mort que je ne mente
Anns trespassés plus de quarente.'
So that if we fix the date of Jean de Meung, we have that of Guillaume de Lorris. Now, there is nothing to help us, except a tradition that Guillaume died in the middle of the thirteenth century, and whatever internal evidence the book itself affords. Most writers, because the order of Knights Templars is mentioned as still existing, have been content to date the book at about 1306, the year before the destruction of the fraternity; but the poet mentions Charles of Anjou as King of Sicily. We have, therefore, a much lower limit, viz., the year 1282. Perhaps on closer examination, a range of years might easily be found in which the book was written. It is, however, sufficient for our purpose to date its authorship about 1280, and that of Guillaume de Lorris at 1240.
It is not all certain that the poet was very young when he feigned his dream. The hero of the poem is necessarily a young man. Early manhood is the period of vehement desire and passion. Twenty is the typical age of early manhood; that age may have very well been selected as the one best fitted for dreams of love and the adventures of a lover. We are, however, inclined to believe, on the whole, that the poem was written in quite early manhood. A tradition which only recalls one fact is generally true, and the one fact recorded of the poet is that he died quite young. Internal evidence, too, appears to support this view. His style bears marks which seem, though one may here be very easily mistaken, those of inexperience. His imaginative faculty is abundant, and even luxuriant. His descriptive power, fully employed in his portraits of abstract personifications, is very much above the average. He revels in picturesque accessoriesand details which his copious fancy has conjured up; and his pictures, if they have not always thetone, have all the vividness, with the wealth of work, which belongs to a young poet's early style. The versification, moreover, is cold, regular, and monotonous; there is nothing to indicate the possession of experience or the presence of passion. He had read Ovid, and used him freely to suit his own purposes; but he wants Ovid's sympathetic power, and tries to supply its place by a certain cold and mannered grace; his faults being attributable, in the assumption of his early death, more to inexperience and youth, than to any defects which years would not have removed. Considered in this light, his work remains an unfinished monument of early genius, chiefly redeemed from mediocrity by its collections of curiously constructed allegorical portraits, a work which would never have been rescued from oblivion but for the splendour of light thrown on it by Jean de Meung.
Chaucer's translation is exceedingly accurate, giving line for line, and almost word for word, save when he sometimes adds a line to enforce its meaning, or to make it clear. Thus, when translating the famous
'La robe ne faict pas la moyne,'
'La robe ne faict pas la moyne,'
he says—
'Habite ne makyth monk no frere;But clene life and devocioun,Makyth gode men of religioun.'
'Habite ne makyth monk no frere;
But clene life and devocioun,
Makyth gode men of religioun.'
The saying itself (for nothing in the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to be original), may be traced to Neckham, who died at Cirencester in 1217.
'Non tonsura facit monachum, nec horrida vestis,Sed virtus animi, perpetuusque vigor.'
'Non tonsura facit monachum, nec horrida vestis,
Sed virtus animi, perpetuusque vigor.'
The great ease of the translation makes it read almost like an original work, though we cannot agree with those who think that the translator has improved on his model. No literal translation, not even the very best, can be free from a certain stiffness and constraint.
The felicity with which difficult passages are occasionally rendered may be judged by the following lines, which contain a touch almost worthy of Shirley. It is, if our own experience be worth anything, excessively hard to translate. We subjoin original and translation, side by side.
'Les yex gros et si envoisiés,Qu'il rioient tousjors avantQue la bouchette par couvant.''Hir eyen greye and glad also,That laugheden ay in hir semblaunt,First or the mouth by couvenant.'
'Les yex gros et si envoisiés,Qu'il rioient tousjors avantQue la bouchette par couvant.'
'Les yex gros et si envoisiés,
Qu'il rioient tousjors avant
Que la bouchette par couvant.'
'Hir eyen greye and glad also,That laugheden ay in hir semblaunt,First or the mouth by couvenant.'
'Hir eyen greye and glad also,
That laugheden ay in hir semblaunt,
First or the mouth by couvenant.'
That is, her eyes began to laugh before her lips.
We must, as briefly as possible, set forth the action of the poem. It begins, like De Guilleville's 'Pilgrimage of Grace,' Chaucer's 'Court of Love' (borrowed, of course, from this), Alain de l'Isle's 'Complaint of Nature,' and so many other mediæval works, with a dream. In the month of May,—that season when the earth forgets the poverty of winter, and grows proud of her renewed beauty, clothing herself in a robe of flowers of a hundred colours; when the birds, silent during the long cold months, awake again, and are so joyous that they are fain,per force, to sing,—the youth of twenty summers wanders forth and comes upon the Garden of Delight (Déduit). We may remark here, how the walled garden, secured from the outer world, is the mediæval writer's only idea of scenery. Perhaps our modern craving for the picturesque would be greatly modified if we were uncertain, as our ancestors were, about wolves, bears, and brigands, whose admiration for wild scenes induces them to inhabit them.
The wall of the garden is painted with figures of all evil passions, such as Envy, Hatred, Avarice, and Hypocrisy (Papelardie), with those of Sorrow, Age, and Poverty. The youth is admitted at a wicket by the Lady Oyseuse (Idlesse), and wanders about, admiring the rows of strange trees, the birds and flowers, the peace and safety of the place. Presently he comes uponDéduithimself, whom Chaucer calls Myrthe.
'Ful fayre was Myrthe, ful long and high:A fayrer man I never sigh.'
'Ful fayre was Myrthe, ful long and high:
A fayrer man I never sigh.'
With him are all his courtiers, includingLéesce(Joy).
'And wot ye who came with them there?The Lady Gladness, bright and fair.'
'And wot ye who came with them there?
The Lady Gladness, bright and fair.'
With the company was the God of Love, accompanied byDoux Regard, bearing two bows: one of them was crooked and misshapen; the other straight, and beautifully wrought. This shows the different impressions of love, or its opposite, produced by the eyes. He had, too, ten arrows (the idea is borrowed from Ovid), five belonging to Love, viz., Beauty, Simplicity, Frankness, Company, and Fair Semblance; and five to Dislike, viz., Pride, Villany, Shame, Despair, and New Thought. Love was followed as well by Beauty, whose attendants were Riches, Largesse, Franchise, and Courtesy, asDamesd'honneur, each of whom had with her a lover, that of Largesse being 'sib to Arthur Duke of Bretaigne.' This is intended, of course, to show how different qualities attract love.
The garden is square; it contains all sorts of fruit trees, 'brought from the country of the Saracens;' these are set five or six fathoms apart; wells, fountains, and streams, soft grass and turf, and flowers of every kind. Round the stone-work of one fountain he finds written, 'Here died the fair Narcissus,'—an accident which enables the poet to narrate at length the full history of that unfortunate swain. Getting over his digression, the youth discovers a rosebush laden with roses and rosebuds, one of which he desires incontinently to pluck. Here his troubles begin. Love shoots at him with five arrows, and when he is sick and faint with wounds, calls upon him to surrender, and become his vassal. This he does, giving Love as a gage of fealty his heart, and receiving in return a code of rules which have been imitated by many subsequent poets, notably by Chaucer, in the 'Court of Love,' and by Charles of Orleans. He also receives as a mark of especial favour, Hope, Doux Penser, Doux Parler, and Doux Regard—Sweet-Thought, Sweet-Speech, and Sweet-Looks—as companions. He makes a rash and ill-considered attempt upon his Rosebud. But Danger is there with Malebouche, Shame (child of Trespass and Reason), and Chastity, the daughter of Shame. He is driven away, loaded with reproaches. His companions leave him, and while he is sitting dejected and despairing, Reason comes to him and argues on the folly of love.
'Love is but madness! I tell you true;The man who loves can nothing do.He has no profit from the earth:If he is clerk, he forgets his learning:If anything else, whatever his worth,Great is his labour and little his earning.Long and unmeasured and deep the pain:Short is the joy; the fruition vain.'
'Love is but madness! I tell you true;
The man who loves can nothing do.
He has no profit from the earth:
If he is clerk, he forgets his learning:
If anything else, whatever his worth,
Great is his labour and little his earning.
Long and unmeasured and deep the pain:
Short is the joy; the fruition vain.'
But the pleading of Reason, as generally happens in such cases, is quite useless. The lover
'For still within my heart there glowsThe breath divine of that sweet Rose,'
'For still within my heart there glows
The breath divine of that sweet Rose,'
goes next to a Friend (Ami), from whom he gets small sympathy, but much practical relief. Acting on his counsel, he begs pardon of Danger, who grants it sulkily. Danger in most mediæval allegories stands for the husband, but there is nothing to show that Guillaume de Lorris meant him to be understood in this sense, and we may without any violence take him to represent the natural guardian of the damsel. Getting Bel Accueil to accompany him, he goes once more to see his Rosebud, which he finds greatly improved. Venus obtains for him the privilege of a kiss. Shame, Jealousy, and Malebouche, are alarmed, and interfere. Danger turns everybody out. Jealousy builds a high tower, in which Bel Accueil is shut up, a prisoner, with Danger and Malebouche to guard him. Outside the tower sits the disconsolate lover, lamenting his misfortunes, and the mutability of love's favours, which he compares to those of Fortune, of whom he says:
'In heart of man,Malice she plants, and labour, and pain;One hour caresses, and smiles, and plays;Then as suddenly changes her face:Laughs one moment, the next she mourns;Round and round her wheel she turns,All at her own caprice and will.The lowest ascends, and is raised, untilHe who was highest was low on the ground,And the wheel of Fortune has quite turned round.'
'In heart of man,
Malice she plants, and labour, and pain;
One hour caresses, and smiles, and plays;
Then as suddenly changes her face:
Laughs one moment, the next she mourns;
Round and round her wheel she turns,
All at her own caprice and will.
The lowest ascends, and is raised, until
He who was highest was low on the ground,
And the wheel of Fortune has quite turned round.'
And at this point the poet died—'trespassa Guillaume de Lorris.' Had he lived to complete his work we should had a complete Ars Amoris, fashioned on the precepts of Ovid, and clothed in an allegory—cold, monotonous, bloodless—though graceful, fanciful, and not devoid of poetic taste.
Perhaps we should have had more than this. In its simple, first meaning, it is not difficult for anyone to make out. Idleness or Leisure alone makes Pleasure possible; through Idleness we enter into the garden of Delight, where love wanders. Youth is the season of love, and Spring is an emblem of youth. The escort of Love is the collection of qualities which belong to the time of youth, and make it happy, such as beauty, wealth, and courtesy. What has Reason to do with Love? Who can advise but an experienced friend? The only possession that the vassal can give to Love the suzerain is his own heart; the chief aid to success is Bel Accueil—'fair welcome'—while Envy, Shame (for fear of Malebouche—Calumny), Jealousy, and Chastity protect the maiden.
So far all is clear and easy to be read. Was there not, however, under an interpretation as easy as that of Bunyan's Holy War, a second and a deeper meaning? It is a question not easy to answer. Molinet, the dull and laborious Molinet, who published, towards the end of the fifteenth century, an edition of the book in prose,
'Le Roman de la RoseMoralisé cler et netTranslaté en rime et prosePar votre humble Molinet,'
'Le Roman de la Rose
Moralisé cler et net
Translaté en rime et prose
Par votre humble Molinet,'
pretends not only that there is a hidden meaning, but also to discover what this hidden meaning was. 'The young man,' he tells us, 'who awakens from his dream is the child born to the light: he is born in the month of May, when the birds sing: thesinging of the birds is the preaching of holy doctors(!)' He dresses, in his dreams, to go out. This is the entrance of the child into the world, enveloped in human miseries: the river represents Baptism: the orchard is the Cloister of Religion; outside it, because they cannot enter therein, or have no share or part in paradise, are the figures of human vices.Déduitis our Lord; Léesce is the Church; Love is the Holy Spirit; the eight doves of Venus's chariot are the eight Beatitudes; and the combat between Love and the guardians of Bel Accueil is the perpetual conquest between good and evil. Even the story of Narcissus is not without its meaning; and the pine which shades the fountain is the tree of the Cross, while the fountain itself is the overflowing stream of mercy. Love, again, in the latter part, stands for our Saviour; homage to him is the profession of faith of a novice; the commandments of Love are the vows of chastity and poverty. Even the legend of Virginia is an allegory; the maiden being the soul, and Appius the world. This position he strengthens by deriving, after the fashion of the philologists of the period, the name of Appius froma, privative, andpius.
Clement Marot, on the other hand, in his edition, where he turned the language into French of his own day, and thereby utterly spoiled it, finds an interpretation of his own, quite as ingenious and quite as improbable as that of Molinet. The Rose is the state of wisdom, 'bien et justement conforme à la Rose pour les valeurs, doulours, et odours qui en elle sont: la quelle moult est à avoir difficile pour les empeschements interposez.' It was a Papal Rose, made of gold, and scented with musk and balm; of gold, on account of the honour and reverence due to God; scented with musk to symbolize the duties of fidelity and justice to our neighbours; and with balm because we ought to hold our own souls clear and precious above all worldly things.
Or, the Rose is the state of Grace, difficult for the sinner to arrive at, and fitly symbolized by the flowers which had sufficient virtue to transform Apuleius from an ass back to his human shape.
Or, again, the Rose was the Virgin Mary—the Rose of Jericho, pure and spotless, and not to be touched by human hands.
Fourthly: it was the rose which the Queen of Sheba gave to Solomon, which signified eternal happiness. The interpretations of Molinet and Marot are both manifestly absurd, and represent the pedantic trifling of a time when the taste for double allegories had been carried to a ridiculous extent. And as for Jean de Meung's part, there are plenty of touches in it which show that the writer, though no heretic, had little sympathy with church matters; and would certainly not be disposed to spend his time in laboriously concocting a riddle of twenty thousand lines, the answer to which was to be found in the Romish creed. And in Guillaume de Lorris himself, it is difficult to find a word for or against the Church.
He was, no doubt, mindful of the stern lesson read to heretics in the crusade of Provence, fresh in all men's recollection. But he had been nurtured and fed on the poetry of the troubadours; the form of his verse and the turn of his thought were Provençal. Was it likely that so young a writer should escape the spirit of the literature while he studied its form? And since in a time of violent religious excitement, he can find no word of sympathy for a church which persecutes, is it not probable that his sympathies are, if not with the Church persecuted, at least with the people? The probability, moreover, of there being a double allegory in the 'Romance of the Rose,' as planned originally by Guillaume de Lorris, appears to us to be strengthened by a further consideration of the Provençal literature and the line of its development.
Love, in a time when life had few pleasures and distractions to offer—when these were generally only to be snatched in the intervals of fighting—became not only the symbol of all life's joy, but grew into a kind of religion. It had its own ritual, its ceremonies, its sacraments, its lessons, and its hymns. Aged poets were its bishops, the guardians of its forms; young poets its priests; instead of the images of saints, were living women, and instead of the procession and the chant, were the love song and the dance. It was nothing new to the Provençal to celebrate the religious worship with a dance. He alone, among Christians, preserved a custom handed down from old pagan times, and as late as the sixteenth century, the worthy people of Marseilles welcomed Christmas in this way.
The other sex would naturally offer few obstacles to a homage which, though it sometimes destroyed their virtue, always flattered their vanity, and invested them with a power which was beyond that of kings. Princes, indeed, might make men rich, but women alone could make men happy. An accurate knowledge of love'sceremonies became part of the education of a gentleman; these were reduced, like those of chivalry, to a sort of code; questions of law, so to speak, arose, which were tried with great solemnity at courts of law where ladies were judges; appeals from these decisions were often made to higher courts, and there is every reason to believe that theArrêts d'Amour, numerous examples of which are given in the work of Martial d'Auvergne, were courts as serious and as gravely disputed in times of peace, as those which decided other differences of opinion. From being, therefore, the legitimate end of a young man's hope, the chief solace of his life, love grew gradually to be surrounded by all sorts of restrictions and ceremonies, and losing its charm of spontaneity and freedom, was idealized until it lost itself, and became the mere shadow of a poetic dream. As every idea, pushed beyond its legitimate limits, provokes some kind of rebellion, two streams of thought presently diverged from the main channel, one of them, with which we have nothing to do, satirical, cynical, earthly and gross; the other, religious. Sexual love is only possible, or is strongest when life is young and the blood is strong and hopeful; as years creep on and the end of things approaches, its insufficiency to satisfy the cravings of the soul must become, even to its most ardent votary, more and more deeply apparent. The days when a smile from his mistress made him, according to the rules of the craft, happy, or a frown miserable, would leave behind them, when they had passed away, an increased sense of the real seriousness of life; while at the best of times, the art of love would not be felt as anything but elegant trifling, and the passion which it excited, transitory. Women, too, the object of all this homage, were really, though they might not know it, degraded by what was intended to do them honour. And let those who lament the subjection of the sex, own that the extravagant honour paid to ladies in the Middle Ages has had something, at least, to do with it. From some such feelings as the above, we believe it came to pass that the poet began first to imagine, and then to contrive, for his love songs a deeper and a mystical meaning. The sentiment of nearly all the Provençal poets, as regards women, was delicate, elevating to themselves, and enthusiastic. Women are to men, in the poet's imagination, what heaven is to earth; their gentleness contrasts with man's ferocity, their weakness with his strength, their strength with his weakness. Love is the principle of all honour and merit, the mainspring of every noble action; its desires and its pleasures are only legitimate, inasmuch as they are as a stimulus to the painful duties of chivalry; the springs of poetry are in love; without love there is nothing that civilizes, softens, or elevates. But earthly love, so high, so pure, so separated from the common instincts of the world, is but a type of that infinitely higher and purer heavenly love. All the allegories of the poets are to be read in a deeper sense by those who are initiated into the mysteries, and when a poet sings songs of love, he is singing songs of a mysterious religion.
That this was the case with all the troubadours, or even with most of them, we do not affirm; that it was at one time believed to be true of all of them seems tolerably clear. And no doubt many an honest bard, quite simply putting down his thoughts about his mistress's lips, or the tangles of her hair, would have been astonished to hear that he was preaching the glories of the Virgin, or advocating a free and Pope-less Church. On the supposition that Guillaume de Lorris was one of those who had learned from the troubadours the art of double allegory, and that he conveyed religious teaching under this disguise, we should expect to find the key to his poem in the religious difficulties of his time. It is not, at least, difficult to get at these.
The people of Provence[51]had always mixed freely with the educated Mahometans of Spain, and the wealthy Jews who lived among them: their own Christianity sat lightly upon them, as a cloak, the fashion of which might at any time be altered; theology was held in universal disesteem, and the priesthood, taken from the lowest strata of society, were objects of pity and contempt: a widespread heresy existed, which does not appear to have had much, if anything to do with modern Protestantism, holding 'erroneous views' on Baptism and the Eucharist, rejecting the Old Testament, denying the authority and necessity of the priesthood, and even repudiating, in some cases, marriage itself. It was growing rapidly not only in Switzerland and Languedoc but also in theNord, in England, and in Germany, by means of wandering bards, who scattered their new doctrines broadcast wherever they went. By local persecutions and burnings, attempts were made to stop it, but in vain; and Rome saw with consternation a province the most cultivated, the most richly endowed with genius, the most wealthy, that from which the greatest help for the Church was to be expected,a prey to free thought of the most unbridled kind.
As soon as persecution began, or even suspicion of the truth, the poets would see the necessity for veiling their thoughts under carefully-constructed allegories, and while they chanted a monotonous refrain on one of the many rules of love, secretly inculcated a code of doctrines more subversive than any the Church had yet combated. Occasionally we hear a voice which speaks aloud, and plainly enough, to let us know the kind of thing that was whispered. Thus Fauriel gives the following from Pierre Cardinal.[52]He is considering the insoluble problem of suffering and evil, and cries, with a boldness that has more despair than blasphemy in it—'At the Last Day I shall say, myself, to God that He fails in His duty to His children if He thinks to destroy them and plunge them into Hell.... God ought to use gentleness and to keep His souls from trespass.'
Voluptuous, loose in morals, satirical, and careless as these poets were, they yet have the merit of boldly using thought, and carrying conviction to its logical and legitimate end. They anticipated the movement of the fifteenth century, without its knowledge and higher light: their penalty was extermination, thorough and complete. The land was destroyed; its cities burned; the people massacred; Pope and kings combined to make a desert, and to call it peace.
What could the Church do more? What indeed, could she do less? For the war was a struggle for existence, and the heresies of Provence were only the most formidable in a general movement of free thought which shook the powers of Rome to its very foundations. But one thing the Church could not do. The flame of insubordination and opposition could be handed down in secret. Things that could not be attacked openly, might be attacked secretly. There were secret societies in the Middle Ages, which had a real and definite object, the danger and the terror of the Church.[53]And to this day Rome excommunicates the members of all secret societies, whether the mild and convivial Freemason or the bloodthirsty Fenian. The Society of Jesus is the only secret society to which a Roman Catholic may belong. Guillaume de Lorris belongs to a time when doctrine was secretly assailed; his successor, Jean de Meung, to a time when practice was openly assailed. For men very soon left off attacking their enemies by allegory, and Guillaume de Lorris, if he was indeed one of that school, was one of its last disciples.
Whether he was, or was not, can never now be satisfactorily answered. He left his poem unfinished, hardly, perhaps, begun. Whatever has to be said on the subject of its original plan, must be necessarily conjectural. We incline, on the whole, to believe that he did have a religious purpose, which was not understood by Jean de Meung; that one who bears in mind the religious history of Provence as well as the character of its situation, may well construct an interpretation of the work of Guillaume de Lorris far more probable and consistent than that of Molinet or of Marot.
Jean de Meung, so-called because he was born at the little town of Meung, in the department of Loiret—
'De Jean de Meung, s'enfle le cours de Loire.'
Jean Clopinel, Limping John, because he was lame, finding himself, some forty years later, with his head stuffed full of all the learning of his time, and nearly bursting with sentiments, convictions, and opinions, on religion, politics, social economy, and science, began, one may suppose, to cast about for some means of getting rid of his burden. Lighting on the unfinished and half-forgotten work of Guillaume de Lorris, he conceived the idea of finishing the allegory, and making it the medium of popularizing his own opinions. He could hardly have hit upon a readier plan. It was not yet a time for popular science; there were no treatises in the vernacular on history, theology, and political economy, and the only way of getting at people was by means of rhyme. But Jean de Meung was no allegorist, and no storyteller. He took up the tale, indeed, where his predecessor left it, and carried it on, it is true, but in so languid a manner, with so many digressions, turns and twists, that what little interest was originally in it goes clean out. Nothing can well be more tedious than those brief portions devoted to the conduct of the story. It finishes, somehow. Love calls his barons together, is defeated, sends an embassy to his mother, Venus, who comes to his assistance; the fortress is taken, Bel Accueil is released, and the Rose is plucked. In the course of the poem, Malebouche gets his tongue cut out, Déduit, Doux Regard, Léesce, Doux Penser, and others drop out of the allegory altogether; the Garden is forgotten; all the little careful accessories of Guillaume de Lorris, such as the arrows ofLove and his commandments, are contemptuously ignored. Those that remain are changed, the Friend in the second part being very different from the Friend in the first, whileRichesseappears with a new function. Every incident is made the peg for a digression, and every digression leads to a dozen others. The losses of the old characters are made up by the creation of new ones, and, in Faux Semblant, the hypocrite and monk, Jean de Meung anticipates Rabelais and surpasses Erasmus.
Between Guillaume de Lorris and his successor there is a great gulf hardly represented by the forty years of interval. Men's thoughts had widely changed. The influence of Provençal poetry was finally and completely gone, and its literature utterly fallen, to be revived after many centuries only by the scholar and the antiquarian. More than this, the thoughts and controversies of men which had turned formerly upon the foundations of the Christian faith, now turned either on special points of doctrine, or on the foundation and principles of society.
No writers, so far as we remember, have noticed the entire separation between the two parts of the romance. They are independent works. Even the allegory changes form, and the idea of thetrouvère, Guillaume, was lost and forgotten when his successor professed to carry it on.
In passing from one to the other, the transition is like that from a clear, cold, mountain stream to a turbid river, whose waters are stained with factory refuse, and whose banks are lined with busy towns. The mystic element suddenly disappears. Away from the woodland and the mountains and among the haunts of men, it cannot live. The idea of love becomes gross and vulgar. The fair, clear voice of the poet grows thick and troubled; his gaze drops from the heavens to the earth. It is no longer atrouvèrebent on developing a hidden meaning, and wrapping mighty secrets of religious truth in a cold and careful allegory; it is a man, eager and impetuous, alive to all the troubles and sorrows of humanity, with a supreme contempt for love, and for woman, the object of love, and a supreme carelessness for the things that occupied the mind of his predecessor. We have said that new characters were introduced. The boundaries of the old allegory were, indeed, too narrow. Jean de Meung had to build, so to speak, the walls of his own museum. It was to be a museum which should contain all knowledge of the time; to hold miscellaneous collections of facts, opinions, legends, and quotations, than which nothing can be more bewildering, nothing more unmethodical, nothing morebizarre.
As a poet he is superior, we think, to his predecessor, though Guillaume de Lorris can only be reckoned as a second-rate versifier. He is diffuse, apt to repeat himself, generally monotonous, and sometimes obscure. His imagination is less vivid, and his style less clear, than those of Guillaume de Lorris. Occasionally, however, passages of beauty occur. The following, for example, diffuse as it is, appears to us to possess some of the elements of real poetry. The poet is describing a tempest followed by fair weather. Nature weeps at the wrath of the winds:—