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. Thishypothesis 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.[c]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 manuscript of Ingulfus's History of Croyland, a blank being left in other copies where they should be inserted.[d]They are written in an idiom so far removed from the Provençal, 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 repetition 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.[e]
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.[f]In 1126, a charter was granted by Louis VI. to the city of Beauvais in French.[g]Metrical compositions are in general the first literature of a nation, and even if no distinct proof could be adduced, we might assume their existence before the twelfth century. There is however evidence, not to mention the fragments printed by Le Bœuf, 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.[h]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.[i]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 title 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 thesurname 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.[k]
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 class 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 entitled 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.[m]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.[n]An equally imaginary history ofCharlemagne 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 class 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 factitious taste to relish these Norman tales, considered as poetry in the higher sense of the word, distinguished from metrical fiction.
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 passions or qualities connected with it pass 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 thirteenthcentury, 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.
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 (Provençal 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."[o]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.[p]Besides some charters, there are said to have been prose romances before the year 1200.[q]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 ofwhich 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 Sallust, made in the reign and by the order of John, with those of Cæsar, Suetonius, Ovid, and parts of Cicero, which are, due to his successor Charles V.[r]
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 principal dialects of Castile and Portugal, or Gallicia;[s]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 ofSpain had been corrupted by the Provençal 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 pronounced 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.[t]
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 passage 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 Provençal than Italian), noticed by Muratori.[u]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.[x]This may strike us as the more remarkable, when we consider the political circumstances 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, anticipate 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 Provençal love strains at the courts of princes. TheMilanese 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,[y]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.[z]
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 passed 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.[a]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, Hell, 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 Tasso, 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 beatitude, and the Paradise is a continual accumulation 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 repetition, and we require the intermixture of sharper flavours. Yet there are detached passages 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 anticipate 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 classical 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 ofDante was naturally sensible, and even tender; his poetry is full of simple comparisons from rural life; and the sincerity of his early passion 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.[b]
This great poem was received in Italy with that enthusiastic admiration which attaches itself to works of genius only in ages too rude to listen to the envy of competitors, or the fastidiousness of critics. Almost every library in that country contains manuscript copies of the Divine Comedy, and an account of those who have abridged or commented upon it would swell to a volume. It was thrice printed in the year 1472, and at least nine times within the fifteenth century. The city of Florence in 1373, with a magnanimity which almost redeems her original injustice, appointed a public professor to read lectures upon Dante; and it was hardly less honourable to the poet's memory that the first person selected for this office was Boccaccio. The universities of Pisa and Piacenza imitated this example; but it is probable that Dante's abstruse philosophy was often more regarded in their chairs than his higher excellences.[c]Italy indeed, and all Europe, had reason to be proud of such a master. Since Claudian, there had been seen for nine hundred years no considerable body of poetry, except the Spanish poem of the Cid, of which no one had heard beyond the peninsula, that could be said to pass mediocrity; and we must go much further back than Claudian to find any one capable of being compared with Dante. His appearance made an epoch in the intellectual history of modern nations, and banished the discouraging suspicion which long ages of lethargy tended to excite, that nature had exhausted her fertility in the great poets of Greece and Rome. It was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts which tradition had ascribed to the demigods. But the admiration of Dante, though it gave a general impulse to the humanmind, did not produce imitators. I am unaware at least of any writer, in whatever language, who can be said to have followed the steps of Dante: I mean not so much in his subject as in the character of his genius and style. His orbit is still all his own, and the track of his wheels can never be confounded with that of a rival.[d]
Petrarch.
In the same year that Dante was expelled from Florence, a notary, by name Petracco, was involved in a similar banishment. Retired to Arezzo, he there became the father of Francis Petrarch. This great man shared of course, during his early years, in the adverse fortune of his family, which he was invincibly reluctant to restore, according to his father's wish, by the profession of jurisprudence. The strong bias of nature determined him to polite letters and poetry. These are seldom the fountains of wealth; yet they would perhaps have been such to Petrarch, if his temper could have borne the sacrifice of liberty for any worldly acquisitions. At the city of Avignon, where his parents had latterly resided, his graceful appearance and the reputation of his talents attracted one of the Colonna family, then bishop of Lombes in Gascony. In him, and in other members of that great house, never so illustrious as in the fourteenth century, he experienced the union of patronage and friendship. This, however, was not confined to the Colonnas. Unlike Dante, no poet was ever so liberally and sincerely encouraged by the great; nor did any perhaps ever carry to that perilous intercourse a spirit more irritably independent, or more free from interested adulation. He praised his friends lavishly because he loved them ardently; but his temper was easily susceptible of offence, and there must have been much to tolerate in that restlessness and jealousy of reputation which is perhaps the inevitable failing of a poet.[e]But every thing was forgiven to a man who wasthe acknowledged boast of his age and country. Clement VI. conferred one or two sinecure benefices upon Petrarch, and would probably have raised him to a bishopric if he had chosen to adopt the ecclesiastical profession. But he never took orders, the clerical tonsure being a sufficient qualification for holding canonries. The same pope even afforded him the post of apostolical secretary, and this was repeated by Innocent VI. I know not whether we should ascribe to magnanimity or to a politic motive the behaviour of Clement VI. towards Petrarch, who had pursued a course as vexatious as possible to the Holy See. For not only he made the residence of the supreme pontiffs at Avignon, and the vices of their court, the topic of invectives, too well founded to be despised, but he had ostentatiously put himself forward as the supporter of Nicola di Rienzi in a project which could evidently have no other aim than to wrest the city of Rome from the temporal sovereignty of its bishop. Nor was the friendship and society of Petrarch less courted by the most respectable Italian princes; by Robert king of Naples, by the Visconti, the Correggi of Parma, the famous doge of Venice, Andrew Dandolo, and the Carrara family of Padua, under whose protection he spent the latter years of his life. Stories are related of the respect shown to him by men in humbler stations which are perhaps still more satisfactory.[f]But the most conspicuoustestimony of public esteem was bestowed by the city of Rome, in his solemn coronation as laureat poet in the Capitol. This ceremony took place in 1341; and it is remarkable that Petrarch had at that time composed no works which could, in our estimation, give him pretensions to so singular an honour.
The moral character of Petrarch was formed of dispositions peculiarly calculated for a poet. An enthusiast in the emotions of love and friendship, of glory, of patriotism, of religion, he gave the rein to all their impulses; and there is not perhaps a page in his Italian writing which does not bear the trace of one or other of these affections. By far the most predominant, and that which has given the greatest celebrity to his name, is his passion for Laura. Twenty years of unrequited and almost unaspiring love were lightened by song; and the attachment, which, having long survived the beauty of its object,[g]seems to have at one time nearly passed from the heart to the fancy, was changed to an intenser feeling, and to a sort of celestial adoration, by her death. Laura, before the time of Petrarch's first accidental meeting with her, was united in marriage with another; a fact which, besides some more particular evidence, appears to me deducible from the whole tenor of his poetry.[h]Such a passion is undoubtedly not capable of a moral defence; nor would I seek its palliation so much in the prevalent manners of his age, by which however the conduct of even good men is generally not a little influenced, as in the infirmity of Petrarch's character, which induced him both to obey and to justify the emotions of his heart. The lady too, whose virtue and prudence we are not to question, seems to have tempered the light and shadow of her countenance so as to preserve her admirer from despair, and consequently to prolong his sufferings and servitude.
The general excellences of Petrarch, are his command over the music of his native language, his correctness of style, scarcely two or three words that he has used having been rejected by later writers, his exquisite elegance of diction, improved by the perpetual study of Virgil; but, far above all, that tone of pure and melancholy sentiment which has something in it unearthly, and forms a strong contrast to the amatory poems of antiquity. Most of these are either licentious or uninteresting; and those of Catullus, a man endowed by nature with deep and serious sensibility, and a poet, in my opinion, of greater and more varied genius than Petrarch, are contaminated above all the rest with the most degrading grossness. Of this there is not a single instance in the poet of Vaucluse; and his strains, diffused and admired as they have been, may have conferred a benefit that criticism cannot estimate, in giving elevation and refinement to the imaginations of youth. The great defect of Petrarch was his want of strong original conception, which prevented him from throwing off the affected and overstrained manner of the Provençal troubadours, and of the earlier Italian poets. Among his poems the Triumphs are perhaps superior to the Odes, as the latter are to the Sonnets; and of the latter, those written subsequently to the death of Laura are in general the best. But that constrained and laborious measure cannot equal the graceful flow of the canzone, or the vigorous compression of the terza rima. The Triumphs have also a claim to superiority, as the only poetical composition of Petrarch that extends to any considerable length. They are in some degree perhaps an imitation of the dramatic Mysteries, and form at least the earliest specimens of a kind of poetry not uncommon in later times, wherein real and allegorical personages are intermingled in a masque or scenic representation.[i]
English language.
None of the principal modern languages was so late in its formation, or in its application to the purposes of literature, as the English. This arose, as is well known, out of the Saxon branch of the GreatTeutonic stock spoken in England till after the Conquest. From this mother dialect our English differs less in respect of etymology, than of syntax, idiom, and flexion. In so gradual a transition as probably took place, and one so sparingly marked by any existing evidence, we cannot well assign a definite origin to our present language. The question of identity is almost as perplexing in languages as in individuals. But, in the reign of Henry II., a version of Wace's poem of Brut, by one Layamon, a priest of Ernly-upon-Severn, exhibits as it were the chrysalis of the English language, in a very corrupt modification of the Anglo-Saxon.[k]Very soon afterwards the new formation was better developed; and some metrical pieces, referred by critics to the earlier part of the thirteenth century, differ but little from our legitimate grammar.[m]About the beginning of Edward I.'s reign, Robert, a monk of Gloucester, composed a metricalchronicle from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which he continued to his own time. This work, with a similar chronicle of Robert Manning, a monk of Brunne (Bourne) in Lincolnshire, nearly thirty years later, stand at the head of our English poetry. The romance of Sir Tristrem, ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune, surnamed the Rhymer, a Scottish minstrel, has recently laid claim to somewhat higher antiquity.[n]In the fourteenth century a great number of metrical romances were translated from the French. It requires no small portion of indulgence to speak favourably of any of these early English productions. A poetical line may no doubt occasionally be found; but in general the narration is as heavy and prolix as the versification is unmusical.[o]The first English writer who can be read with approbation is William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman's Vision, a severe satire upon the clergy. Though his measure is more uncouth than that of his predecessors, there is real energy in his conceptions, which he caught not from the chimeras of knight-errantry, but the actual manners and opinions of his time.
Cause of its slow progress.
The very slow progress of the English language, as an instrument of literature, is chiefly to be ascribed to the effects of the Norman conquest, in degrading the native inhabitants and transferring all power and riches to foreigners. The barons, without perhaps one exception, and a large proportion of the gentry, were of French descent, and preserved among themselves the speech of their fathers. This continued much longer than we should naturally have expected; even after the loss of Normandy had snapped the thread of French connexions, and they began to pride themselves in the name of Englishmen, and in the inheritance of traditionary English privileges. Robert of Gloucester has a remarkable passage, which proves that in his time, somewhere about 1290, the superior ranks continued to use the French language.[p]RalphHigden, about the early part of Edward III.'s reign, though his expressions do not go the same length, asserts, that "gentlemen's children are taught to speak French, from the time they are rocked in their cradle; and uplandish (country) or inferior men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and learn with great business for to speak French, for to be the more told of." Notwithstanding, however, this predominance of French among the higher class, I do not think that some modern critics are warranted in concluding that they were in general ignorant of the English tongue. Men living upon their estates among their tenantry, whom they welcomed in their halls, and whose assistance they were perpetually needing in war and civil frays, would hardly have permitted such a barrier to obstruct their intercourse. For we cannot, at the utmost, presume that French was so well known to the English commonalty in the thirteenth century as English is at present to the same class in Wales and the Scottish Highlands. It may be remarked also, that the institution of trial by jury must have rendered a knowledge of English almost indispensable to those who administered justice. There is a proclamation of Edward I. in Rymer, where he endeavours to excite his subjects against the king of France by imputing to him the intention of conquering the country and abolishing the English language (linguam delere Anglicanam), and this is frequently repeated in the proclamations of Edward III.[q]In his time, or perhaps a little before, the native language had become more familiar than French in common use, even with the court and nobility. Hence the numerous translations of metrical romances, which are chiefly referred to his reign. An important change was effected in 1362 by a statute, which enacts that all pleas in courts of justice shall be pleaded, debated, and judged in English. But Latin was by this act to be employed in drawing the record; for there seems to have still continued a sort of prejudice against the use of English as a written language. The earliest English instrument known to existis said to bear the date of 1343.[r]And there are but few entries in our own tongue upon the rolls of parliament before the reign of Henry VI., after whose accession its use becomes very common.[s]Sir John Mandevile, about 1356, may pass for the father of English prose, no original work being so ancient as his Travels. But the translation of the Bible and other writings by Wicliffe, nearly thirty years afterwards, taught us the copiousness and energy of which our native dialect was capable; and it was employed in the fifteenth century by two writers of distinguished merit, Bishop Pecock and Sir John Fortescue.
Chaucer.
But the principal ornament of our English literature was Geoffrey Chaucer, who, with Dante and Petrarch, fills up the triumvirate of great poets in the middle ages. Chaucer was born in 1328, and his life extended to the last year of the fourteenth century. That rude and ignorant generation was not likely to feel the admiration of native genius as warmly as the compatriots of Petrarch; but he enjoyed the favour of Edward III., and still more conspicuously of John duke of Lancaster; his fortunes were far more prosperous than have usually been the lot of poets; and a reputation was established beyond competition in his lifetime, from which no succeeding generation has withheld its sanction. I cannot, in my own taste, go completely along with the eulogies that some have bestowed upon Chaucer, who seems to me to have wanted grandeur, where he is original, both in conception and in language. But in vivacity of imagination and ease of expression, he is above all poets of the middle time, and comparable perhaps to the greatest of those who have followed. He invented, or rather introduced from France, and employed with facility the regular iambic couplet; and though it was not to be expected that he should perceive the capacities latent in that measure, his versification, to which he accommodated a very licentious and arbitrary pronunciation, is uniform and harmonious.[t]It ischiefly, indeed, as a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse; but he springs like Antæus from the earth, when his subject changes to coarse satire, or merry narrative. Among his more elevated compositions, the Knight's Tale is abundantly sufficient to immortalize Chaucer, since it would be difficult to find any where a story better conducted, or told with more animation and strength of fancy. The second place may be given to his Troilus and Creseide, a beautiful and interesting poem, though enfeebled by expansion. But perhaps the most eminent, or at any rate the most characteristic testimony to his genius will be found in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales; a work entirely and exclusively his own, which can seldom be said of his poetry, and the vivid delineations of which perhaps very few writers but Shakspeare could have equalled. As the first original English poet, if we except Langland, as the inventor of our most approved measure, as an improver, though with too much innovation, of our language, and as a faithful witness to the manners of his age, Chaucer would deserve our reverence, if he had not also intrinsic claims for excellences, which do not depend upon any collateral considerations.
Revival of ancient learning.
In the twelfth century;
The last circumstance which I shall mention, as having contributed to restore society from the intellectual degradation into which it had fallen during the dark ages, is the revival of classical learning. The Latin language indeed, in which all legal instruments were drawn up, and of which all ecclesiastics availed themselves in their epistolary intercourse, as well as in their more solemn proceedings, had never ceased to be familiar. Though many solecisms and barbarous words occur in the writings of what were called learned men, they possessed a fluency of expression in Latin which does not often occur at present. During the dark ages, however, properly so called, or the period from the sixth to the eleventh century, we chiefly meet with quotations from the Vulgate or from theological writers. Nevertheless, quotations from the Latin poets are hardly to be called unusual. Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Horace, are brought forward by thosewho aspired to some literary reputation, especially during the better periods of that long twilight, the reigns of Charlemagne and his son in France, part of the tenth century in Germany, and the eleventh in both. The prose writers of Rome are not so familiar, but in quotations we are apt to find the poets preferred; and it is certain that a few could be named who were not ignorant of Cicero, Sallust, and Livy. A considerable change took place in the course of the twelfth century. The polite literature, as well as the abstruser science of antiquity, became the subject of cultivation. Several writers of that age, in different parts of Europe, are distinguished more or less for elegance, though not absolute purity of Latin style; and for their acquaintance with those ancients, who are its principal models. Such were John of Salisbury, the acute and learned author of the Polycraticon, William of Malmsbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger Hoveden, in England; and in foreign countries, Otho of Frisingen, Saxo Grammaticus, and the best perhaps of all I have named as to style, Falcandus, the historian of Sicily. In these we meet with frequent quotations from Livy, Cicero, Pliny, and other considerable writers of antiquity. The poets were now admired and even imitated. All metrical Latin before the latter part of the twelfth century, so far as I have seen, is of little value; but at this time, and early in the succeeding age, there appeared several versifiers who aspired to the renown of following the steps of Virgil and Statius in epic poetry. Joseph Iscanus, an Englishman, seems to have been the earliest of these; his poem on the Trojan war containing an address to Henry II. He wrote another, entitled Antiocheis, on the third crusade, most of which has perished. The wars of Frederic Barbarossa were celebrated by Gunther in his Ligurinus; and not long afterwards, Guillelmus Brito wrote the Philippis, in honour of Philip Augustus, and Walter de Chatillon the Alexandreis, taken from the popular romance of Alexander. None of these poems, I believe, have much intrinsic merit; but their existence is a proof of taste that could relish, though not of genius that could emulate antiquity.[u]