THE MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW
VOLUME IX
1914
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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THE
MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW
A QUARTERLY JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE STUDY
OF MEDIEVAL AND MODERN LITERATURE
AND PHILOLOGY
EDITED BY
J. G. ROBERTSON G. C. MACAULAY
AND
J. FITZMAURICE-KELLY
VOLUME \X
Cambridge :
at the University Press
1914
INDEX
ARTICLES.
ALDEN, RAYMOND MACDONALD, The Mental Side of Metrical Reform
BARRIER, P., FILS, Deux Noms de Poissons
BRADLEY, A. C., Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life3 CROSLAND, JESSIE, 'Von dem Bliimlin Vergissmeinnit.' A Middle- High-German Poem . . . . . . .
DODDS, MADELEINE H., The Problem of the ' Ludus Coventriae '
KENWOOD, SYDNEY H., Lessing in England
LAURENCE, J., Authorities on English Pronunciation .
LONG, PERCY W., Spenser's 'Muiopotmos'
63,
PAGE
297 190 441
359 79
197, 344 53 457
145, 324, 463 12 173
MACAULAY, G. C., The 'Ancreri Riwle' ...
MEISNEST, F. W., Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
MOORE, E., The 'Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
POPE, MILDRED K., Four Chansons de Geste : a Study in Old French
Epic Versification, in, iv ........ 41
ROBERTSON, J. G., Notes on Lessing's 'Beytrage zur Historic und
Aufnahme des Theaters,' in, iv ....... 213
ROBERTSON, J. G., Soren Kierkegaard ....... 500
ROOKER, T. K., The Optimism of Alfred de Vigny .... 1
TOYNBEE, PAGET, The S. Pantaleo Italian Translation of Dante's Letter
to the Emperor Henry VII (Epist. vn) ..... 332 TUTTLE, EDWIN H., Notes on Romanic Speech-History ... 493 WILLIAMS, W. H., ' Palamon and Arcite' and ' The Knightes Tale' 161, 309 WILLOUGHBY, L. A., An Early Translation of Goethe's ' Tasso ' . 223 WOODBRIDGE, BENJAMIN M., A French Precursor of Lesage, Gatien de
Courtilz, Sieur du Vierger ........ 475
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
CHAMPENOIS, J. J., A Visit to Paris in 1749 ..... 514
CLARK, RUTH, Horace Walpole and Mariette ..... 520 CRAWFORD, J. P. WICKERSHAM, Notes on the ' Amphitrion 5 and ' Los
Menemnos ' of Juan de Timoneda ....... 248
FEUILLERAT, ALBERT, An Unknown Protestant Morality Play . . 94 FEUILLERAT, ALBERT, Performance of a Tragedy at New College,
Oxford, in the Time of Queen Mary ...... 96
FISCHER, WALTER, Somaize and Sorel ....... 375
GARDNER, EDMUND G., Three Notes on the ' Divina Commedia ' . 101
GRAVES, T. S., A Tragedy of Dido and Aeneas acted in 1607 . . 525
vi Index
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES cont. PAGE
GREG, W. W., A Ballad of Twelfth Day ... ''. . . 235
GRIERSON, H. J. C., A Note on the Text of 'As You Like It,' II, i, 5 . 370
GRIERSON, H. J. C., Donniana 237
GUTHKELCH, A. C., Swift's 'Tale of a Tub' 100 HOLL, KARL, Sheridan's 'Verses to the Memory of Garrick' and
Schiller's ' Prolog zum Wallenstein.' 246
JOURDAIN, E. F., 'La Journee des Dupes' 516
JOURDAIN, E. F., and J. EVANS, A Note on an Allusion to Rome in
the ' Divina Commedia ' . . . . . . . . . 381
LAFLEUR, PAUL T., Sainte-Beuve, Balzac, and Thackeray . ' . . 517 LAWRENCE, W. J., ' Epithalamium upon Lady Mary Cromwell's
Marriage' 374
LAWRENCE, W. J., 'Soliman and Perseda' ...... 523
LOWES, JOHN L., Chaucer's Friday 94
MCLAUGHLIN, W. A., An Episode in Victor Hugo's ' Notre Dame de
Paris' 246
SEDGEFIELD, W. J., The Place-Name 'Hale,' 'Haile,' 'Haugh,' 'Eale' 240
SMITH, G. C. MOORE, Herrick's 'Hesperides' 373
SMITH, G. C. MOORE, Matthew Roydon 97
SMITH, G. C. MOORE, Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' LI, 10 f. . . . 372
SMITH, HERBERT, Two English Translations of Schiller's 'Wallenstein' . 243
TERRACHER, A., Une source possible de ' Salammbo ' . . . . 379
TOYNBEE, PAGET, The Etymology of ' Buckram ' 243
TUTTLE, EDWIN H., Rumanian 'Geana' . . . . . . 251
WELLS, JOHN EDWIN, 'A Luue Ron' and 'Of Clene Maydenhood' . 236
WHITE, ALBERT B., Early Uses of ' Parliamentum ' .... 92
WILLOUGHBY, L. A., Goethe's 'Tasso' in England .... 382
WILSON, F. P., Marston, Lodge, and Constable 99
WORRALL, WALTER, ' Herkinalson ' 242
DISCUSSION.
VERRIER, PAUL, English and French Metric 385
REVIEWS.
Akerlund, A., History of the Definite Tenses in English (A. C. Paues) . 410
American Poems, ed. by W. C. Bronson (G. E. Hadow) . . . 540
Aydelotte, F., Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (F. P. Wilson) . 391 Bacon, G. W., Life and Works of Juan Pe"rez de Montalvan (M. A.
Buchanan) . . . . . . ... . . . 556
Baldensperger, F., La Litterature : Creation, Succes, Dur^e (0. Elton) . 389
Borgerhoff, J. L., Le Theatre anglais k Paris (A. Tilley) . . . 415
Bosson, 0. E., Slang and Cant in Jerome's Works (A. C. Paues) . 410
Braga, Th., Historia da Litteratura Portugueza, n. (A. F. G. Bell) . 553
Brilioth, B., Grammar of the Dialect of Lorton (W. J. Sedgefield) . 409
Cairns, W. B., History of American Literature (G. E. Hadow) . 398
Cambridge History of English Literature, x (C. van Doren) . . 254
Index vii
REVIEWS cont. PAGE
Cervantes Saa.vedra, M. de, Don Quijote, transl. by Robinson Smith
(A. F. G. Bell) 554
Charlton, H. B., Castelvetro's Theory of Poetry (J. G. Robertson) . 280 Classen, E., Vowel Alliteration in the Old Germanic Languages
(A. Mawer) . % 105
Delattre, F., Robert Herrick (F. S. Boas) . . . . . . 530
Donne, J., Poems, ed. by H. J. C. Grierson (E. K. Chambers) . 269 Drummond, W., of Hawthornden, Poetical Works, ed. by L. E. Kastner
(G. C. Moore Smith) 262
Efvergren, C., Names of Places in a Transferred Sense (A. C. Paues) 410
Elson, C., Wieland and Shaftesbury (J. G. Robertson) . . . 424 Farnsworth, W. O., Uncle and Nephew in the Chansons de Geste
(M. K. Pope) 278
Figueiredo, F. de, Historia da Litteratura Portuguesa (1825 — 1900)
(A. F. G. Bell) 418
Fitzmaurice- Kelly, J., Litterature espagnole (H. A. Rennert) . . 275
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, J., Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (H. A. Rennert) 421
Gadde, F., On the Suffixes -ery, -age and -ment in English (A. C. Paues) 410 Gillet, J. E., Moliere en Angleterre (J. J. Champenois) . . 127, 430
Goethe, J. W. von, West-Eastern Divan, transl. by E. Dowden (J. Lees) 426 Goethe, J. W. von, Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission, transl. by
G. A. Page (J. Lees) 426
Gossouin, Maltre, L'Image du Monde, ed. par H. 0. Prior (A. Terracher) 416
Grammont, M., Le Vers frangais (T. B. Rudmose-Brown) . . . 549
Grant, W., Pronunciation of English in Scotland (H. Mutschmann) . 273
Gray, T., Essays and Criticisms, ed. by C. S. Northup (J. W. H. Atkins) 113
Grudzinski, H., Shaftesbury's Einfluss auf Wieland (J. G. Robertson) 424 Hebrew-German Arthurian Legends, ed. by L. Landau (L. A. Wil-
loughby) 558
Higginson, J. J., Spenser's Shepherd's Calender (G. C. Moore Smith) 394
Howell, A. G. Ferrers, San Bernardino of Siena (J. T. Mitchell) . 423
Jewett, S., Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe (A. F. G. Bell) . . 419
Johnston, H., Phonetic Spelling (H. Alexander) ..... 427
Jones, J. Morris, Welsh Grammar (E. C. Quiggin) .... 281
Jonson, B., Cynthia's Revels, ed. by A. C. Judson (W. W. Greg) . 259
Lanuert, G. L., The Language of Robinson Crusoe (A. C. Paues) . 410
Leeb-Lundberg, W., Word- Formation in Kipling (A. C. Paues) . . 410
Lefranc, A., Grands Ecrivains fran§ais de la Renaissance (A. Tilley) 543
Martino, P., Le Roman Realiste sous le Second Empire (A. Tilley) . 412 Masterpieces of the English Drama, ed. by F. E. Schelling (G. C.
Macaulay) Ill
Michaelis, H., and D. Jones, Phonetic Dictionary of the English
Language (H. C. Wyld) 107
Mutschmann, H., The Place-Names of Nottinghamshire (W. J.
Sedgefield) 405
Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, chosen by A. Quiller-Couch (G. E.
Hadow) 115
Palm, B., Place of the Adjective Attribute in English Prose (A. C. Paues) 410
viii lydex
REVIEWS cont. t PAGE
Patience, ed. by I. Gollancz (J. H. G. Grattan) I 403
Pellisson, M., Les Comedies-Ballets de Moliere (A. Tilley) . . 548
Primitiae, by Students of the University of Liverpool (N. Hepple) . 536 Reynolds, M., Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth
(F. W. Moorman) 110
Robertson, J. M., The Baconian Theory (J. Dover Wilson) . . 527 Salusbury, Sir J., and R. Chester, ed. by Carleton Brown (G. C. Moore
Smith) 533
Serner, G., The Language of Swinburne's Lyrics and Epics (A. C. Paues) 410
Tupper, F., The Riddles of the Exeter Book (R. W. Chambers) . 271 Turquet-Milnes, G., Influence of Baudelaire in France and England
(K. M. Linton and T. B. Rudmose-Brown) 122
Vie de St Remi, La, ed. par W. N. Bolderston (P. Barbier, fils) . 117
Wyatt, A. J., Old English Riddles (A. R. Skemp) . . . . 400 ,
MINOR NOTICES.
Association Phonetique Internationale, The (W. Vieler) . . . 285
Austin, H. D., Citations in Ristoro d'Arezzo's Composizione del Hondo 429
Beowulf, ed. by W. J. Sedgefield 429
Boynton, P. H., London in English Literature 283
Browning, R., The Ring and the Book, ed. by E. Dowden . . 132
Chinard, G., L'Amerique et le re~ve exotique dans la litterature frangaise 284
Choisy, L. F., Alfred Tennyson 132
Deutsche Literaturdenkmale, Nos. 146—150 . . . . . 560
Dyboski, R., Shakespeare : Dzieta Dramatyzne . . . . . 134 Gabrielson, A., Influence of w- in Old English as seen in Middle
English Dialects ... 133
Gillet, J. E., Moliere en Angleterre 430
Grandgent, C. H., Dante's Divina Commedia: Paradiso . . . 134 Greg, W. W., Twelve Early MSS. in the Library of Trinity College,
Cambridge 560
Henderson, T. F., The Ballad in Literature . . . , . 131
Hurd, R., Letters on Chivalry and Romance, ed. by E. J. Morley . 131
Klaeber, F., The Later Genesis ,. . . . 282
Lancaster, H. C., Pierre Du Ryer 285
Lowell, J. R., Poems 132
Rossetti, D. G., Poems and Translations 283
Soames, L., Introduction to English, French and German Phonetics 284
Soames, L., The Teacher's Manual 284
Winther, F., Das gerettete Venedig 561
NEW PUBLICATIONS , 136, 287, 432, 562
VOLUME IX JANUARY, 1914 NUMBER 1
THE OPTIMISM OF ALFRED DE VIGNY.
IT has been a custom to look upon Alfred de Vigny as the pessimist-poet, to consider him as a philosopher for whom no gleam of light ever broke through the clouds which overhang our universe, who looked upon life as a prison house from which there was no escape, where it was our destiny to kill the endless days and nights in picking shreds of oakum, and who thought of death as a release only because it was annihilation.
This curiously distorted view of the philosophy of one of France's greatest poets arises from various causes : and perhaps the not least important is our misguided habit of reading the works of poets in anthologies. Alfred de Vigny is known to the majority of cultivated Englishmen from Mo'ise, La Golere de Samson, and La Mort du Loup, all of which belong to a period of his life overshadowed by the blackest pessimism — dark indeed, but yet transient.
In penetrating beyond the exterior beauty of a poet's verse to the thought embedded in that world of metaphor and imagery the reader will not rest content with a study of isolated masterpieces, but con- sidering biographical and chronological evidence, will follow the de- velopment of the poet's mind : and he will give, above all, credence to his last and most mature work in forming an estimate of his philosophy. It is my purpose .to apply this method to the verse of Alfred de Vigny and to point out that, in my opinion at least, the poet closed his life, in full mental vigour, upon a note of optimism.
I.
All the early influences which combined in the formation of the poet's personality tended to emphasize a melancholy disposition that nature had bestowed upon him. The very town — Loches — where he was born, in its sombre gloom, seemed to watch with stern regret the laughing children who played along its streets. And, further, Alfred de Vigny was of aristocratic birth : his parents under the Terror had been thrown into the prison of his native town ; he inherited all the odium of a banished class. From childhood he knew the spirit of that M. L. R. ix. 1
2 The Optimism of Alfred de Vigny
1 divine solitude ' of soul, under whose protecting wings he lived and wrote and died. When still young he was taken to Paris and sent to school, a period of his life filled, it seems, with bitter memories. ' Le college bien triste et bien froid me faisait mal par mille douleurs et mille afflictions,' he writes to Brizeux in 1831. His ancestry, his feminine temperament and dreamy nature, did little to bring him favour in the eyes of his boisterous comrades. The days were spent in constant reverie, and his keen sensitive mind, busying itself with continual introspection, developed inevitably all the symptoms of patho- logical melancholia.
Beyond these personal influences, which all encouraged any in- dividual bent towards pessimism, there was one still more potent. Alfred de Vigny was a romantic, and sufficiently a child of his age to suffer from the * mal du siecle.' In the nineteenth century the poet was by very definition oppressed with the burden of life, the enigmas of the universe : he was, in the words of Victor Hugo, the ' poete au triste front.' The gloomy silhouette of the Byronic hero always loomed on the horizon.
However, in his earliest poems de Vigny escapes more often than his contemporaries from that spirit of bitterness towards life which characterised much of his maturer verse. La Dryade of 1815 is an idyll all of delicate fancy. Symetha, written in the same year, bears no mark of parentage to La Colere de Samson.
Tu pars ; et cependant m'as tu toujours ha'i, Symetha ? Non, ton cceur quelquefois s'est trahi : Car, lorsqu'un mot flatteur abordait ton oreille, La pudeur souriait sur ta levre vermeille : Je 1'ai vu, ton sourire aussi beau que le jour : Et 1'heure du sourire est 1'heure de 1'amour.
And in Le Bain (1817) we have an ode breathing something of the voluptuous spirit of Keats.
The despondency of his early years we may consider then as the disease of youth that environment and the 'Zeitgeist' had fostered. It was when the poet passed into manhood that he entered at the same time into the shadow of a deep and profound pessimism.
II.
In 1820 de Vigny wrote La Fille de Jephte: he was then twenty- three years of age, and in this poem he strikes the motif of all his pessimistic verse — the suffering of the innocent. It was indeed one of the problems of existence which haunted the minds of all the
J. K. HOOKER 3
thinkers of his generation. In our poet's verse it is seen under every guise : God is depicted as one who takes pleasure in blood, and for a sacrifice demands the daughter of Jephta. Moses from the Mount Nebo asks what evil he has done to have been chosen the elect of the Almighty.
We have been thrown into the world, the poet constantly says in his Journal, and as in a prison we are forced to do our sentence of penal servitude for life, yet we know not what wrong we have done.
C'est la vapeur du sang qui plait au Dieu jaloux !
Joseph de Maistre, a philosopher of' the same epoch, preached frankly the vicarious theory: humanity, he said, has been guilty from the time of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden; it is sin that is ever accumulating, and so all humanity must suffer, the just and the unjust, that the common debt may be paid off. To Alfred de Vigny the theory was in itself repugnant. For him, rather, the world had been left in ignorance ; and on the last day God would appear to justify Etimself before humanity, sitting in judgment.
De Vigny was brought up as a Catholic, but slowly lost the faith of his childhood. His religious beliefs were, however, far from clear; he used the term ' God ' loosely, sometimes in the singular, and at other times in the plural ; at moments of keen suffering, as at the deathbed of his mother, he prayed again to the God of his early years. And, moreover, in his bitterest accusations against the Creator, he seemed never to question the existence of a Divine personality. Elsewhere, his conception appears vaguer and less precise.
Torn by mental doubt, Alfred de Vigny was at the same time sub- jected to physical miseries. He himself was a constant invalid. Also many years of his life were spent in nursing his mother and his wife. Yet the keenest suffering was to come, when he was betrayed by the only woman who had ever awakened within him a love that was both passionate and ethereal ; it was when he left for the last time the presence of Madame Dorval that the mysterious sorrows of life most completely held him.
It was between the years 1835 and 1850 that Alfred de Vigny was plunged in the deepest pessimism. The world offered him nothing but deception and disillusion. If we take the three great themes of highest poetry — Love, Nature, and the Divine — we shall find in his attitude to each of them a blank despair. Of Love, he says : ' Et plus ou moins, la Femme est toujours Dalila' (La Colere de Samson) ; of
1—2
4 The Optimism of Alfred de Viyny
Nature : ' On me dit tine mere, et je suis une tombe ' (La Maison du Berger) ; and of the Divine : ' Le ciel reste noir, et Dieu ne repond pas ' (Le Mont des Oliviers). No pessimism could be more complete. Man is solitary upon the earth. 'The cowardly animals go in packs/ he said, ' the lion walks alone in the desert.' So the great man will scorn to give any sign of his misery, but will live and die in silence.
The pessimism of de Vigny has about it something that is sublime, since it is so superbly impersonal. His own sorrow he sinks into the sorrow of the whole human race. He passes from the particular to the universal. It is the soul of humanity that finds expression in his poetry. From the depths of his pessimism rises a sublime altruism.
III.
It was necessary to sketch rapidly the periods of pessimism through which de Vigny passed before approaching the main theme of this paper, which is to suggest that those periods were transitory, and that through the first impenetrable darkness of his early manhood there pierced a shaft of light, which towards the end of his life dispersed the thickening shadows, and showed him through all the tangled misery of the world — a purpose.
Sur la pierre des rnorts crott 1'arbre de grandeur.
(La Bouteille d la Mer.)
Alfred de Vigny seems never to have accepted the creed of the atheist. He believed in the existence of a personal God, but He was a God indifferent or cruel : the God of blood or the God of cold disdain and eternal silence. The former conception was that of his early years, but the latter replaced it, as his mind developed and reacted against the repulsive doctrine of Joseph de Maistre, justifying the suffering of the innocent. The poet himself said : ' Ne peut-on supposer un Dieu qui ait cree les constellations et les planetes en demeurant aussi indifferent a 1'homme que 1'homme a la fourmiliere ? ' This conception too was of necessity transient. The picture of a Creator resting in complete indifference to the work of His hands is one that has never brought satisfaction to the human mind. Such a philosophy is inevitably but a prelude, either to atheism or some more complicated conception of the Divine Being. De Vigny 's virile activity of mind, which looked upon struggle as the noblest of privileges, united to the delicate sensi- tiveness of a poet, saved him from the former. Slowly he developed a philosophy, which, while making no attempt to diminish anything of the black sorrow of life, gave to that sorrow a meaning and a hope :
J. K. ROOKER 5
the conviction that what was sown in sacrifice to-day would take root and bear its harvest for the generations to come. Life for Alfred de Vigny was in its essence evil, but in that very evil lay man's great opportunity. For if life were good, where lay the impulse to active struggle ? If Providence regulated every detail in human history, who was man to set himself up against God ? Rather, it was the very certitude that life was indeed evil and that man might transform it which had given the incentive power to all the great creations of religion, philosophy, art and science. God was apart from the world, but not so far as to let human effort waste itself in space.
Jetons 1'oeuvre a la mer, la mer des multitudes : • — Dieu la prendra du doigt pour la conduire au port.
(Bouteille a la Mer.]
Que Dieu peut bien permettre a des eaux insensees De perdre des vaisseaux, mais non pas des pensees.
(Bouteille a la Mer.}
The poem from which I have taken these two quotations is perhaps the fullest expression that we have of de Vigny's mature philosophy. It was written in the October of 1858, five years before his death. The symbol is that of a vessel wrecked off the Straits of Magellan ; the captain realising that the ship is sinking writes in haste a warning to future sailors, puts the precious document into a corked bottle and throws it out to sea. The ship sinks together with the captain and crew. The fragile bottle then becomes the hero of the poem, and is cast up finally on the shores of France.
In other words it is the sacrifice of the individual to the progress of the race ; the God to whom the poet turns in his supreme moments is the ' God of Ideas,' who will not let perish one single disinterested thought of a human mind. The captain and every thinker are isolated in the world — looking for help alone from
la forte foi dont il est embrase : .
il pense
A celui qui soutierit les poles et balance L'equateur herisse des longs meridiens.
And the sacrifice is not sterile :
mais il faut que la terre Recueille du travail le pieux monument. C'est le journal savant, le calcul solitaire, Plus rare que la perle et le diamant:
Aux voyageurs futurs sublime testament. Qu'il aborde, si c'est la volonte de Dieu.
6 The Optimism of Alfred de Vigny
The captain's faith was firm :
II sourit en songeant que ce fragile verre Portera sa pensee et son nom jusqu'au port ; Que d'une lie inconnue il agrandit la terre ; Qu'il marque un nouvel astre et le confie au sort.
Et qu'avec un flacon il a vaincu la mort.
The poet then tells of the seas over which the sealed bottle must first traverse, the coasts it must first pass,
Seule dans 1'Ocean, seule toujours ! — Perdue Comme un point invisible en un mouvant desert,
till it reaches at last its destined port. And the poem ends with four verses of superb optimism, a rush of enthusiastic verse (the italics are mine) :
Souvenir eternel ! Gloire a la decouverte
Dans 1'homme ou la nature, egaux en profondeur,
Dans le Juste et le Bien, source a peine entr'ouverte,
Dans 1'Art inepuisable, ablme de splendeur !
Qu'importe Voubli, morsure, injustice insensee,
Glaces et tourbillons de notre traversee?
Sur la pierre des morts croit I'arbre de grandeur.
Get arbre est le plus beau de la terre promise,
C'est votre phare k tous, Penseurs laborieux !
Voguez sans jamais craindre ou les flots ou la brise
Pour tout tresor scelle du cachet precieux.
Lor pur doit surnager, et sa gloire est certaine :
Dites en souriant comme ce capitaine :
' Qu'il aborde, si c'est la volonte des dieux ! '
Le vrai Dieu, le Dieu fort, est le Dieu des idees.
Sur nos fronts ou le germe est jete par le sort,
Repandons le Savoir en fecondes ondees :
Puis, recueillant le fruit tel que de 1'ame il sort,
Tout empreint du parfum des saintes solitudes,
Jetons Voeuvre a la mer, la mer des multitudes:
— Dieu la prendra du doigt pour la conduire au port!
This poem has been described as pessimistic ! while one modern critic is sufficiently generous to refer to its philosophy as an ' optimisme desespereY For my part I find in these verses no element of despair, but rather the joyful conviction that a purpose of progress runs through the universe, that human struggle towards an ideal is never wasted, that on the failures as well as the successes of past ages the future generations are built. ' La race humaine,' said de Vigny towards the end of his life, ' a fini par comprendre que sa pensee est la creatrice des mondes invisibles.'
The supreme virtue is plainly indicated in this poem as the virtue of self-sacrifice. Alfred de Vigny never lost the deep mark that the religious training of his childhood had left upon him : he was moreover,
J. K. HOOKER 7
by temperament, religious. In later life a constant study of the Bible filled many of his solitary hours : and more than once in his Journal he offers homage to the moral beauty of Christ, shown in the self- sacrifice of his death. This eminently Christian quality was deeply ingrained in the poet's conception of a moral ideal. As early as 1843, in La Mart du Loup, the sacrifice of the parent for his young was held up in immortal poetry to the admiration of mankind. But then the sacrifice was barren. The young had but to follow in the steps of their parent, completing the endless cycle of blood and carriage. ' Souffre et meurs sans parler,' said the poet, for the horizon was thrown into shadow by the heavy mantle of death. But the captain in La Bouteille a la Mer (1858), in his last moments, sang of the future blessings that his death would transmit to the human race. In 1847 Alfred de Vigny wrote :
Sacrifice, 6 toi seul peut-6tre es la vertu !
Yet it was not till the last years of his life that a definite meaning, filled with a vital hope, lit up the sublime altruism that the poet had always sung. In the Bouteille a la Mer, that meaning finds its clear and ultimate expression.
Complete annihilation of All is an idea in itself repulsive to the human mind. Alfred de Vigny at one moment in his intellectual career seemed trembling on the brink of this abyss. Yet to the keen observer, the final course that he would take might have been foreseen. From his first childhood, his veritable world was a world of dreams. It was the one universe that escaped the laws of decay and death, which ruled all else. Its existence was to him a conviction, for from its depths proceeded the forces that moved his inner being, that directed the whole conduct of his life. ' The individual only becomes regenerate by the power of an idea.' His God was the ' God of Ideas ' : Le vrai Dieu, le Dieu fort, est le Dieu des idees ;
that is, not ideas which have become God, as a French critic suggests1, but a God whose sole interest is in the Idea, a God who is indifferent to the groans of the physical universe, but who will not let perish one single human thought :
Que Dieu peut bien permettre & des eaux insensees De perdre des vaisseaux, mais non pas des pense'es :
and the whole poem shows that de Vigny might well have added to the vessel, the captain and his crew.
1 M. Dorison : ' Le Dieu des idees, qu'est-ce autre chose que lea ide"es devenues Dieu?'
8 The Optimism of Alfred de Vigny
A study of his verse makes it evident that de Vigny 's conception of God was a personal one. The poet from the bitterness of life was driven to conceive first of the Deity as heartless and cruel, standing apart from his creation in eternal indifference ; but this conception, we have already attempted to show, was by its very essence a transient one. Yet still the facts of life prevented his belief in a Christian Providence ; the alternative that he chose was inevitable, he accredited to God the protection of what was to him the supreme reality in life : the invisible World of Ideas.
I pass now to the second aspect of the poet's optimism. It is intimately connected with the first which I have been studying: the qualities of force and eternity contained in the Idea. It is, in brief, the sociological application of that doctrine. Alfred de Vigny believed in the regeneration of humanity : it would hardly be too much to say that he dreamed a social Utopia.
This side to the poetry of de Vigny has been too often ignored1, yet much of his verse is only understood after the social element has been fully grasped. Indeed the ultimate value of any theory can only be felt at the moment of realisation, just as the ultimate value of any artistic conception is only perceptible at the moment of its expression. De Vigny did not shrink from boldly applying his theory to the world of reality. From the Idea was to come all power of transformation. This was the supreme work of the poet and the thinker; this was the full meaning of the virtue of self-sacrifice ; this was the final j ustification of suffering and pain.
As early as 1831 de Vigny predicts the birth of a new world : out of the blazing furnace of the Revolution of 1830 France would come purified and regenerated. The metal would be fluid and molten ready to take shape from new thoughts and new ideals :
— Oui, c'est bien une Roue : et c'est la main de Dieu Qui tient et fait mouvoir son invisible essieu. Vers le but inconnu sans cesse elle s'avance. On le nomme Paris, le pivot de la France.
— Je ne sais si c'est mal, tout cela : mais c'est beau ! Mais c'est grand ! Mais on sent jusqu'au fond de son ame Qu'un monde tout nouveau se forge k cette flamme. Ou soleil, ou com&te, on sent bien qu'il sera, Qu'il brule ou qu'il eclaire, on sent qu'il tournera, Qu'il surgira brillant k travers la fumee, Qu'il vgtira pour tous quelque forme anime'e,
1 M. Dorison has written an interesting study on this aspect of de Vigny 's work, to which I would express my debt: Un Symbole Social : Alfred de Vigny, Paris, 1894.
J. K. HOOKER
Symbolique, imprevue et pure, on ne salt quoi,
Qu'il sera pour chacun le signe d'une foi,
Couvrira, devant Dieu, la terre comme un voile,
Ou de son avenir sera comme 1'etoile,
Et, dans des flots d'amour et d'union, enfin
Guidera la famille humaine vers sa fin,
Mais que peut-dtre aussi, brulant, pareil au glaive
Dont le feu dessecha les pleurs dans les yeux d'Eve,
II ira labourant le globe comme un champ,
Et semant la douleur du levant au couchant.
Si la force divine
Est en ceux dont 1'esprit sent, prevoit et devine, Elle est ici — Le Ciel la revere. —
Mais les cendres, je crois, ne sont jamais steriles.
— Ensuite, Voyageur, tu quitteras Tenceinte,
Tu jeteras au vent cette poussiere eteinte,
Puis levant seul ta voix dans le desert sans bruit,
Tu crieras: ' Pour longlemps le monde est dans la nuitf
This indeed is but the first cry of hope. The poet saw for a moment a ray of pure light amid the lurid glare of revolutionary France; but he was careful to note that ray, and to cling to its memory. The reader cannot fail to notice the rush of trembling enthusiasm which animates these verses, before darkness closes once more upon the heavens. It is the spirit of desperate desire, to be transformed later into ardent faith.
In 1844 the hope that Alfred de Vigny had nourished, when France was passing through the throes of a revolution, became clearer and more insistent. In those throes he had seen the birth of a new spirit which was to give fresh life to the world ; but the actual day was still far off. And even thirteen years later he sings :
Le jour n'est pas leve. — Nous en sommes encore Au premier rayon blanc qui precede 1'aurore Et dessine la terre aux bords de 1'horizon.
Mais notre esprit rapide en mouvements abonde ; Ouvrons tout 1'arsenal de ses puissants ressorts. L'invisible est re"el. Les ames ont leur monde Ou sont accumules d'impalpables tresors.
(La Maison du Berger, 1844.)
We see here the same conviction that in the realm of thought worlds are made and unmade; that mind is the moulding force in human history ; yet the optimism is purer, there are no saving clauses, but only a sure hope in the destiny of the race. It is notable too that humanity shall work out its own salvation, that the health-giving spirit
10 The Optimism of Alfred de Vigny
shall proceed from its own heart. For the soul of man possesses its treasure-house. At this point then de Vigny 's optimism,. if not much stronger, had become at least more certain of itself. The cool tran- quillity of the verses carries even more power, a deeper sense of certitude, than the burning fever which animated the excited poetry of Paris. His belief in the future was becoming more matured as he gave to the consideration of his theories long-searching study and profound thought.
In La Maison du Berger de Vigny had written :
Diamant sans rival, que tes feux illuininent Les pas lents et tardifs de 1'humaine Kaison !
In 1862 he took up the same metaphor and in a poem entitled Les Oracles defined the full meaning he gave to the symbol of the diamond, the fairest legacy that the races of the world left the generations that came after them :
Le Diamant ! C'est 1'art des choses ideales,
Et ses rayons d'argent, d'or, de pourpre et d'azur,
Ne cessent de lancer les deux lueurs ^gales
Des pensers les plus beaux, de 1'amour le plus pur.
II porte du genie et transmet les empreintes.
Oui, de ce qui survit des nations eteintes,
C'est lui le plus brillant tresor et le plus dur.
And on March 10, 1863, just six months before his death, the poet proclaimed at last his faith in imperishable verse :
Ton regne est arrive, Pur Esprit, roi du monde ! Quand ton aile d'azur dans la nuit nous surprit, Deesse de nos mceurs, la guerre vagabonde Regnait sur nos aieux. Aujourd'hui, c'est 1'Ecrit, L'ECRIT UNIVERSEL, parfois imperissable, Que tu graves au marbre ou tratnes sur le sable. Colombe au bee d'airain ! VISIBLE SAINT ESPRIT.
(U Esprit Pur, 1863.)
These lines, among the last that Alfred de Vigny ever wrote, are tinted by no shadow of pessimism, but coloured with the brilliant hues of hope for the future. And still further, they are the song of triumph for past hopes that have been realised, for great ideals that have been achieved. His optimism now is pure with a crystal clearness, no more clouded by storms of misery and doubt : he sees through the over- hanging mists, beyond into the endless stretches of the heavens — ' the long savannahs of the blue.'
The optimism of Alfred de Vigny gathers strength from the fact that it runs counter to all the early tendencies of his youth, to the accumulated influence of his environment, and to the first development
J. K. HOOKER
11
of his manhood. It was not an empty satisfaction with the world as it is : it sprang from a profound conviction of the power of evil. It was not the natural sequence to a life of thoughtless ease and to the gift of a silver spoon at birth : it rose from the very depths of despair and sorrow. It was not, finally, the mere swing of the pendulum, a rapid traverse from utter disenchantment to wild hopefulness : it was the last stage in the gradual development of a profound mind. There was no throwing off the mantle of the past and taking on the silken cloak of the present : there was no renouncement and denial of ex- perience, to make possible the acceptation of a new theory. Every link in the chain of mental progress was fast riveted, and together they formed one harmonious whole. The clouds had hidden from Alfred de Vigny, from the very first, their silver lining : and when the poet painted them he remained true to the experience of his life, making them heavy with shadow and gloom : yet their most consistent efforts could not prevent him from piercing at last the dark exterior and reaching the inner light.
Looking back over his own life and over that of the men of his generation, reflecting over the course of human history, he saw that, where cities had disappeared and where empires had been swallowed up, there remained to the world the intangible gifts which they had offered —the Idea persisted, after the mind which gave it birth had passed away.
The thinkers were the rulers of the world : yet thought in itself was not sufficient to turn the great wheel. Alfred de Vigny was a poet, and knew the barrenness of pure thought, the sterility of erudition. It was Love with his magic touch that breathed the spirit of life into the Idea, which gave it power over men. ' Avec la science et 1'amour on fait tourner le monde ! ' From the union of these two germs of life was born the optimism of Alfred de Vigny.
J. K. ROOKER.
LONDON.
WIELAND'S TEANSLATION OF SHAKESPEARE.
COMPARATIVELY early in life did Christoph Martin Wieland become interested in English literature. During his school-days at Kloster- bergen (1748-50) he read Richardson's Pamela in a French translation. His actual study of the English language, however, did not begin until after he had entered the University of Tubingen in 17521. One of the first English poets in whom he was interested was James Thomson, the influence of whose Seasons is evident on Wieland's early writings2 ; and his friendship with Bodmer and residence in Zurich (1752-54) naturally turned his attention to Milton. The pathetic ' letters ' of the English poetess Elizabeth Rowe nourished his emotional nature and furnished materials for his Brief e von Verstorbenen an hinterlassene Freunde (1753); and still more was he captivated by the sweet melancholy of Edward Young's Night Thoughts3. The attraction which Young had for him was, however, of short duration. Richardson also made a strong appeal to Wieland, and the influence of that writer is to be seen, not merely in the theme of his domestic tragedy, Clementina von Porretta (1760), but also in his moral story, Araspes und Panthea (1758)4. Another of his early dramas, Lady Johanna Gray (1758), shows his dependence on the English dramatist Rowe. Swift does not seem to have appealed very strongly to him5, but Prior was a particular favourite6; and in his Der neue Amadis, he is directly indebted to Spenser's Faerie Queene"7. A greater influence than any of these writers was, however, that of Shaftesbury, whom Wieland accepted as his teacher after he abandoned Young in 17568.
1 Cf. letter to Schinz, March 26, 1752 (Ausgewdhlte Briefe, i, p. 55).
2 K. Gjerset, Der Einfluss von Thomsons Jahreszeiten auf die deutsche Literatur des 18. Jahrhunderts, Heidelberg, 1898, pp. 36 — 40 ; also Koberstein, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalliteratur, 5. Aufl., in, p. 118.
3 J. Barnstorff, Youngs Nachtgedanken und ihr Einfluss auf die deutsche Literatur, Bamberg, 1895, pp. 58—63.
4 E. Schmidt, Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe, Jena, 1875, p. 46.
5 Cf. Schnorr's Archiv fur Literaturgeschichte, xin, p. 496.
6 Wukadinovic, Prior in Deutschland, Graz, 1895, pp. 48—58.
7 L. Lenz, Wielands Verhaltnis zu Spenser, Pope und Swift, Hersfeld, 1903.
8 Allgemeine deutsche Biographic, XLII, p. 412 and Wieland's Werke (Hempel) i, p. 20.
F. W. MEISNEST
13
The first reference to Shakespeare is found in a conversation on March 15, 1755, with Magister F. D. Ring, reported in the latter's diary :
Am Sonntag den 15. Marz [1755] fvihrte ich nach der Predigt den Herrn Nolten S. Min. Cand. aus Berlin zu Wieland, der von Shakespear viel schwatzte und glaubte, er werde ewig der Englander Bewunderung bleiben, ohngeachtet er manch- mal gigantische Vorstellungen hat und alle Teufel aus der Holle auf's Theater bringt1.
Most important for the purpose of showing Wieland's attitude towards and his appreciation of Shakespeare's works is his letter of April 24, 1758, to Zimmermann. After censuring Voltaire for his violent denunciation of Shakespeare he writes :
Vous connoissez sans doute cet homme extraordinaire par ses ouvrages. Je 1'aime avec toutes ses fautes. II est presque unique a peindre d'apres la nature les hommes, les mo3urs, les passions ; il a le talent precieux d'embellir la nature sans lui faire perdre ses proportions. Sa fecondite est inepuisable. II paroit n'avoir jamais etudie que la nature seule. II est tantot le Michel-Ange tantot le Correge des poe'tes. Ou trouver plus de conceptions hardies et pourtant justes de pensees nouvelles, belles, sublimes, frappantes, et d'expressions vives, heureuses, animees, que dans les ouvrages de ce genie incomparable ? Malheur a celui qui souhaite de la regularite a un genie d'un tel ordre, et qui ferme les yeux ou qui n'a pas des yeux pour sentir ses beautes uniquement parce qu'il n'a pas celle que la piece la plus detestable de Pradon a dans un degre plus eminent que le Cid2.
No such intelligent, enthusiastic praise had been given to Shake- speare by any of the other prominent German critics or scholars previous to this time, not even by Lessing, Nicolai, or Mendelssohn.
Just when arid through what means Wieland first became interested in Shakespeare cannot be definitely decided. Possibly the appreciative remarks on Shakespeare and the potentialities of English tragedy in Beat de Muralt's Lettres sur les Anglais (Berne, 1712 ; Zurich, 1725 ; Cologne, 1726) may have directed his attention to the English poet3. Other possible sources were Voltaire's works, of which Wieland con- fessed himself a constant reader and admirer4 ; and even Gottsched, who was to him in his youth a 'magnus Apollo5,' may have been instru- mental in interesting him in Shakespeare. The English periodicals, the Tatler, Spectator, and Guardian, were familiar to Wieland in his
1 Schnorr's Archiv, xm, p. 495.
2 Ausgewdhlte Brief e, i, 271. Cf. the strikingly similar comparison by Martin Sherlock, A Fragment on Shakespeare, 1786 : ' To say that he possessed the terrible graces of Michael Angelo, and the amiable graces of Correggio, would be a weak encomium: he had them and more.' (Quoted from Charles Knight, Studies of Shakspere, London, 1868.)
3 Cf. Otto von Greyerz, B. L. von Muralt, Berne, 1888 ; M. Koch in Englische Studien, xxiv, p. 317; also Bottiger, Literarische Zustdnde und Zeitgenossen, Leipzig, 1838, i, p. 174.
4 Cf. Wieland, Ein Wort iiber Voltaire besonders als Historiker (1773) ; (Werke, ed. Goschen, 1839-40, xxxvi, p. 174).
5 Letter to Bodmer, March 6, 1752 (Ausgewdhlte Brief e, i, p. 46).
14 Wieland1 s Translation of Shakespeare
school-days ; while the Leipzig journal, Neue Erweiterungen der Erkenntniss und des Vergnugens (1753), contained a translation of Rowe's Life of Shakespeare. Lastly, Nicolai's Briefe iiber die itzigen Zustdnde der schonen Wissenschaften (1754) and Young's Essay on Original Composition (1759; translated, 1760), with their important references to Shakespeare, were no doubt known to him.
The immediate suggestion for translating Shakespeare was probably derived from various sources. Gervinus believed that if it had not been for Lessing's recommendation of a translation of Shakespeare's masterpieces (Litter aturbriefe, No. xvn), Wieland would not have undertaken the task1. The fact is that Wieland cared little for Lessing's opinions at this time. When Mendelssohn subjected Wieland's tragedy Clementina von Porretta (1760) to a severe criticism (Litteraturbriefe, Nos. cxxm, cxxiv), Wieland remarked : ' der Miss- achtung meiner Clementina von Lessing und Compagnie achte ich nicht mehr als des Summens der Sommermticken oder des Quackens der Laubfrosche2.' Far more significant to Wieland must have been the urgent demand for a translation of English stage-plays, especially those of Shakespeare, contained in a review of Neue Probestucke der englischen Schaubuhne (3 vols., Basel, 1758) in the Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (vi, 1760, pp. 60-74). The work reviewed contains Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet in iambic blank verse, besides dramas by Young, Addison, Dryden, Otway, Congreve and Rowe, all translated from the original ' von einem Liebhaber des guten Geschmacks.' The reviewer directs translators to Shakespeare as follows :
Wir haben schon mehr als einmal gewiinscht, dass sich em guter Uebersetzer an die englische Schaubuhne wagen, und seine Landsleute hauptsachlich mit den vortrefflichen alteii Stiicken des Shakespear, Beaumont und Fletcher, Otway, und andern bekannt rnachen moehte. Es wiirde vielleicht fur die deutsche Schaubuhne weit vortheilhafter gewesen seyn, wenn sie jenen nachgeahmt hatte, als dass sie sich die franzosische Galanterie hinreissen lassen, und uns mit einer Menge hochst elender, obgleich hochstregelmassiger Stiicke bereichert hat.... Wir empfehlen hauptsachlich dem Uebersetzer die Shakespeareischen Stiicke : sie sind die schonsten, aber auch die schwersten, aber um deste eher zu iibersetzen, wenn man niitzlich seyn will3.
1 Geschichte der deutschen Dichtung, 5th ed., iv, p. 422, a view which is concurred in by Dr Merscheberger (Shakespeare- Jahrbuch, xxv, p. 209).
2 E. Schmidt, Richardson, Rousseau und Goethe, p. 48.
3 In January 1759 Nicolai surrendered the editorship of the Bibliothek to Ch. F. Weisse. But this review with its significant reference to Shakespeare is not in accord with the views of either of these editors. Both violently opposed entire translations of Shakespeare, as is evident from their reviews of Wieland's translation in the Allg. deutsche Bibliothek (i, 1, 1765, p. 300) and Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (ix, 1763, p. 259). It seems probable that Joh. Nic. Meinhard was the author of the above review, which is quite in accord with his views and attitude (cf. Denkmal des Herrn Joh. Nik. Meinhard von Friedr. Just Eiedel, Sammtlichte Schriften, Wien, 1787, vol. v, pp. 97—158).
F. W. MEISNEST
15
No doubt the immediate and most direct call for translating Shakespeare came to Wieland from his friend W. D. Sulzer, who upon returning a volume of Wielarid's copy of Shakespeare (Jan. 14, 1759), expressed the hope that some skilful genius would translate and analyse Shakespeare's plays in the manner of Brumoy's Theatre des Grecs (see below, p. 25).
Furthermore the decade 1760-70 was characterised by an awaken- ing of interest in English literature. Gottsched and his followers had lost their prestige, and the younger writers looked to England for their literary standards. In 1760 the Shakespeare cult, inaugurated by the forerunners of the ' Storm and Stress ' movement — Lessing, Nicolai, Mendelssohn, Weisse and Meinhard — was well established. The French had their translation of Shakespeare by La Place, although it was very imperfect and incomplete. Besides the three scenes of Richard III (I, ii; IV, iv, 1-195 ; V, iii, f 08-206, Globe ed.), which appeared in Neue Erweiterungen der Erkenntniss und des Vergnugens (Leipzig, 1755), only two dramas had been translated into German: Julius Caesar by von Borck (1741) and Romeo and Juliet. The time was auspicious for a complete German Shakespeare.
Soon after Wieland came to Biberach (1760) as 'Ratsherr' and ' Kanzleidirektor,' he was appointed director of the local theatrical society (Jan. 7, 1761), which had existed since 1686, and was composed of artisans and tradesmen of the town1.
The successful presentation of his Lady Johanna Gray on the stage at Winterthur, Switzerland, on July 20, 1758, by the famous Ackermann company was heralded throughout the land, and much was expected of him. To meet this expectation he translated and arranged the Tempest for the stage. The performance in September, 1761, was received with great applause, and Wieland was encouraged to continue his work. He translated twenty-two dramas, published by Orell, Gessner and Co., Zurich, between 1762 and 1766, in eight volumes2.
1 Dr L. F. Ofterdinger, Geschichte des Theaters in Biberach (Wilrttembergische Viertel- jahreshefte, vi, 1883, pp. 36 — 45), gives the most complete account.
2 Vol. i : Pope's Preface, Mids., Lear; n: A.Y.L., Meas., Temp.; m: Merch., Tim., John; iv : Caes., Ant., Err.-, v: Rich. 2, 1 Hen. IV, 2 Hen. IV ; vi: Much Ado., Macb., Two Gent. ; vii: Rom., Oth., Tw. N. ; vin : Haml., Wint., Eowe's Life of Shak. (abridged). Various editions or reprints of at least some of the volumes appeared. Of the four copies of Wieland's translation which I have seen, two contain-the 'Account of the Life of Shakespeare' in vol. i, following Pope's 'Preface,' instead of in vol. vin. In one of the copies vol. i bears the date 1764 instead of 1762. The translation is now easily accessible in the splendid new edition of Wieland's Ubersetzungen, Herausg. von Ernst Stadler, 3 Bde. Berlin, Weidmann, 1909-11.
16 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
WIELAND'S SOURCES.
In order to realize fully the immensity of the task, we must consider that Wieland undertook the work without a Shakespeare library. There are no indications in his translation or writings which show that he used even the meagre critical works on Shakespeare in existence at that time, as : Theobald's Shakespeare Restored (1726), Samuel Johnson's Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth (1745), Upton's Critical Observations on Shakespeare (1746), Edwards's The Canons of Criticism and Glossary, being a Supplement to Warburtons Edition of Shakespeare (1748), Grey's Critical, Historical and Explana- tory Notes on Shakespeare (2 vols., 1755). According to all past investigations his working library consisted of three works: Warbur- ton's edition of Shakespeare's Works (8 vols., Dublin, 1747), Boyer's French-English and English-French Dictionary (2 vols., Lyons, 1756), and a dictionary of Shakespearean Words and Phrases, which his friend La Roche recommended to him as* indispensable, but whose author's name Wieland had forgotten1.
Johnsons Dictionary.
Although no reference is to be found in Wieland's writings to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (2 vols., London, 1755), which was the most comprehensive dictionary at the fcime and was well known throughout Germany, it seems quite incredible that a translator of Shakespeare should attempt his difficult task without it. A careful comparison discloses a few translations which point very strongly to the use of Johnson's Dictionary. It is evident that only those passages can be considered which contain unusual words not explained in any of the works in Wieland's possession, as Warbur ton's Shakespeare, Boyer's Dictionary, Ludwig's Dictionary, or whose meaning cannot be readily ascertained from the context2.
1 Seuffert, Prolegomena zu einer Wieland- Ausgabe, Berlin, 1905, in 6; Bottiger, Litterarische Zustdnde, vol. i, p. 196 ; Stadler, Quellen und Forsch., cvn, pp. 21-2. Brief glossaries were appended to the editions of Eowe (1714), Hanmer (1744) and Hugh Blair (1753) ; but I could find no work corresponding to that recommended by La Eoche.
2 Boyer, The Royal Dictionary, French and English and English and French, London, 1764, as well as Ludwig, Teutsch-Englisches Lexicon, 3. Aufi. 1765, and Ludwig, English, German and French Dictionary, 3. Aufl., Leipzig, 1763, were used in this investigation. The Dictionary by Ludwig, which Wieland may have used, was fully as complete as Boyer's and perhaps more extensively used in Germany. It is mentioned by Weisse in his review of the first volume of Wieland's translation in the Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (ix, 261, 1763) : ' Jeder Leser muss so billig seyn, sich zu erinnern, dass zur Uebersetzung eines Shakespeare mehr als Ludwigs Worterbuch vonnothen.' Unless otherwise specified, all references to Shakespeare's works are to The Globe Edition and Wieland's Gesammelte Schriften, 2. Abt. Ubersetzungen, hersg. von Stadler, 3 Bde. Berlin, 1909-11.
F. W. MEISNEST 17
Lear, n, 1, 67 : 'When I dissuaded him from his intent, And found him pight to do it.' W., i, 116: 'Als ich ihn von seinem Vorhaben abmahnte, und ihn so entschlossen fand.' Johnson's Diet. : ' pight, determined. I found him pight to do it. Shakesp.'
Lear, II, 2, 167 : ' Good king, that must approve the common saw.' W., I, 123: 'Du guter Konig must izt das alte Sprilchwort erfahren.' Johnson: 'saw, saying, maxim. Good king, that must approve the common saw, etc. Shakesp.'
Lear, n, 4, 178: 'To scant my sizes.' W., I, 128: 'Du bist nicht fahig...mi> an meinem Unterhalt abzubrechen.' Johnson: 'sizes, a settled quantity. In the following passage it seems to signify the allowance of the table : whence they say a sizer at Cambridge. " 'Tis not in thee, To cut off my train, to scant my sizes, etc." Shakespeare's King Lear' For Wieland to have divined this rare meaning, which is specifically Cambridge use (see N.E.D., s.v.), would have been remarkable.
Haml. n, 2, 362 : ' escoted.' W., 3, 430 : ' salariert.' Johnson : ' To pay a man's reckoning ; to support. What, are they children ? Who maintains them ? How are they escoted ? Shakespeare's Hamlet.' Here Wieland may also have learned the correct interpretation from the foot-note 'escoted, paid' in Johnson's edition of Shakespeare's Works.
Macb. iv, 1, 37: 'a baboon's blood.' W. : 'ernes Sauglings Blut.' Johnson: 'baboon [babouin, Fr. It is supposed by Skinner to be the augmentation of babe, and to import a great babe]. A monkey of the largest kind.' Wieland undoubtedly was misled by this curious etymology in Johnson's Dictionary, who got it from Stephano Skinner's Etymologicon Linguae Anglicanae (London, 1671). The same occurs also in Nathan Bailey's An Universal Etymological English Dictionary (London, 1740), but not in Boyer. It is quite improbable that Wieland should have mistaken ' baboon ' for ' babe ' as Stadler (Q.F., evil, p. 42) supposes. Furness (Macbeth ed.) has it charged to Eschenburg : ' He mistook baboon for baby ',. . .&nd, so far will a naughty deed shine in this good world, this baby of Eschenburg's has been adopted by Schiller (of course), Benda, Kaufmann and Ortlepp.'
Shakespeare Editions.
Undoubtedly Wieland had no opportunity to examine the various Shakespeare editions before selecting Warburton's: The Works of Shakespeare (Dublin, 8 vols.), with its numerous wild conjectures, as the basis for his translation. Being extensively advertised as superior to all
M. L. R. IX. 2
18 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
other editions, ' furnishing the genuine text, collated with all the former editions, with critical and explanatory notes,' etc., it was but natural that Wieland should choose it. Even Eschenburg approved his selection : ' Herr Hofrath Wieland bediente sich freylich nur der Warburtonschen Ausgabe, und er hatte sehr Recht, dieser den Vorzug zu geben1.'
The most reliable text, as well as commentary, was contained in one of the later editions of Theobald's The Works of Shakespeare (London, 7 vols., later editions in 8 vols. : 1740, 1752, 1757, 1762 and 1767)2.
While collating the passages wherein Wieland deviated from War- burton, without any thought of his having used other editions, I noticed that all the similarities to Johnson's edition were in Hamlet and Winters Tale in the last volume of the translation. If these were all accidental, then similar results might be expected from the other seven volumes. To my surprise no definite similarities were found. When I discovered that Johnson's The Plays of William Shakespeare (8 vols., London) were published in October, lY653, and Wieland's last volume in 1766, my suspicions were aroused4. There is then the time from Oct. 1765 to Sept. 1766, or about ten months, when it was possible for Wieland to have used Johnson's edition.
Very probably Wieland had only Warburton's edition in his posses- sion. But in some way or other he must have had access to other editions and works, either in the extensive library of his friend Graf Stadion, who was a student of English literature, and at whose home Wieland frequently visited while working on the translation, or in some of the libraries adjacent to Biberach, as Zurich or Geneva. He no doubt borrowed books from Zurich, and now and then asked his friend Gessner to look up references for him. Thus he writes on Sept. 30, 1762, to his publishers at Zurich :
A pro po, das englische Wort, dessen deutschen A equivalent ich nicht habe finden konnen, ist nicht spider, sondern spinner ; spider 1st bekannt und heisst eine Spinne. Spinner aber bedeutet, wie ich glaube, eine Art von ungiftigen Spinnen, die einen kleinen aschfarbnen Leib und sehr lange Beine haben und bey uns in Schwaben
1 Shakespeares Schauspiele, xm, p. 469.
2 The Works of Shakespeare, London, 1767, in Wieland's library at his death (Seuffert, Prolegomena, in, p. 6), must have been the 1767 edition of Theobald.
3 Diet, of National Biog., xxx, p. 14.
4 According to Wieland's letters he translated vol. vm between Nov. 7, 1765 (Denkwilrdige Brief e, i, 26) and May 8, 1766, when the last manuscript was sent to the publishers. Sept. 4, 1766 Wieland received three printed copies of vol. vm (Schnorr's Archiv, vn, pp. 505 and 506).
Stadler (QF., cvi, pp. 13 — 19) gives a very complete collation of all references in Wieland's letters to his translation.
F. W. MEISNEST 19
Zimmermanncheu genannt werden. Ich habe im Linneus nichts davon gefunden. Der Hr. Canonicus Gessner aber wird Ihnen vermuthlich die Auskunft dariiber geben konnen1.
In the numerous footnotes Wieland refers only once to other Shakespeare editors, but this reference is significant. In a half-page footnote Warburton attempts to justify his division of lines among Lysander and Hermia (Mids., I, 1, 168), which Wieland properly rejects : ' Warburton schreibt also alien alten und neuen Ausgaben unsers Dichters zuwider diese schone Rede : Bey Amors starkstem Bogen, u.s.w. (i, 1, 169 — 176) dem Lysander, und nur die zween letzten Verse (177 — 8) der Hermia zu.' In Warburton's note no mention is made of other editors. In ' alien alten und neuen Ausgaben unsers Dichters/ Wieland must have included Theobald's (probably also Hanmer's) edition; furthermore, he must have examined the edition himself, or had some one to do it for him, since his Statement is true.
The following parallel passages, of which some are quite conclusive, others more or less corroborative, are intended to prove that Wieland used or had access to Theobald's and Johnson's editions, using the latter only in the last volume of his translation.
Theobald's Edition.
(1) HamL, ill, 4, 88 : ' And reason panders will.' W. : 'Und Ver- nunft die Kupplerin schnoder Luste wird.' Theobald : ' Suffers reason to be the Bawd to appetite2.'
(2) Macb., I, 3, 21 : 'He shall live a man forbid.' W. : 'Und so soil er in der Acht Siech und Elend sich verzehren.' Theobald : 'Forbid, i.e., as under a curse, an interdiction.' Johnson : 'Forbid, to accurse, to blast.'
(3) Lear, i, 4, 322 : ' The untented woundings of a father's curse.' W. : ' Die unheilbaren Wunden des Fluchs eines Vaters.' Theobald : ' A wounding of such a sharp inveterate nature, that nothing shall be able to tent it, or reach the bottom, and help to cure it.' Johnson : ' Untented, having no medicaments applied.'
(4) Wint, I, 2, 41 : ' To let him there a month behind the gest Pre- fix'd for's parting.' W. : 'So will ich's euch dagegen schriftlich geben, dass ihr ihn einen Monat liber den bestimmten Tag der Abreise
1 Schnorr's Archiv, vn, p. 492. Wieland must have inquired about 'spinners' in Mids,, n, 2, 21 : ' Hence you long-legg'd spinners.'
2 Unless specified, Theobald's notes or readings are not found in Warburton's, Johnson's, or Hanmer's editions, nor in Johnson's or Boyer's Dictionaries. References to Theobald are to the 1752 edition.
2 2
^0 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
behalten sollet.' Theobald: 'I have not ventured to alter the Text, tho', I freely own, I can neither trace, nor understand, the phrase. I have suspected, that the poet wrote : behind the just, i.e., the just, precise time.' Warburton : 'Behind the gest. Mr Theobald thinks it should be just. But the word gest is right, and signifies a stage or journey.' Johnson's ed. contains Warburton's note, but not Theobald's, whose conjecture has been universally rejected.
(5) HamL, II, 2, 354: 'An aery of children, little eyases/ W.: 'Ein Nest voll Kinder,... kleine Kichelchen.' Theobald: 'Little eyases, i.e., Young nestlings, creatures just out of the egg.' (The same in Johnson.) Johnson's Diet. : Eyas, ' A young hawk just taken from the nest not able to prey for itself. Hanmer! Boyer's Diet. : Eyess. ' A young hawk just taken from the nest.'
Johnsons Edition.
(1) HamL, I, 4, 17 : 'This heavy-headed revel east and west makes us traduced and tax'd of other nations.' W.: 'Diese taumelnden Trink- Gelage machen uns in Osten und Westen verachtlich, und werden uns von den iibrigen Volkern als ein National-Laster vorgeworfen.' War- burton : ' i.e., this reveling that observes no hours, but continues from morning to night.' Johnson : ' I construe it thus : This heavy-headed revel makes us traduced east and west, and taxed of other nations.'
(2) HamL, I, 2, 47 : ' The head (' blood,' Warb.) is not more native to the heart, the hand more instrumental to the mouth, than is the throne of Denmark to thy father.' (' Than to the throne of Denmark is thy father.' Warb., Johns.) W. : ' Das Haupt ist dem Herzen nicht unentbehrlicher, noch dem Munde der Dienst der Hand, als es dein Vater dem Throne von Dannemark ist.'
For 'blood' instead of 'head' Warburton gave such an ingenious explanation that Hanmer accepted it for his second edition of Shake- speare. Johnson rejected this conjecture, but adopted the second (vm, p. 140) : ' Part of this emendation I have received, but cannot discern why the head is not as much native to the heart, as the blood, that is, natural and congenial to it, born with it, and co-operating with it.' Wi eland and Johnson agree in both particulars.
(3) Haml, I, 5, 77: 'Unhousel'd, disappointed ('unanointed/ Warb., < unappointed,' Theob.), unaneled.' W.: 'Ohne Vorbereitung, ohn Sacra- ment, ohne Fiirbitte.' Warburton : ' Unhousel'd, without the sacrament being taken. Mr Pope. Unanointed, without extreme unction. Mr Pope. Unanel'd, no bell rung. Mr Pope! Theobald accepted Pope's
F. W. MEISNEST 21
i
explanation for unhousel'd. For unanointed he put unappointed, ' i.e., no Confession of Sins made, no Reconciliation to Heaven, no Appoint- ment of Penance by the Church. . . . Unaneal'd must signify unanointed, not having the extreme unction.' Johnson (vm, p. 167) : 'Disappointed is the same as unappointed, and may be properly explained by unpre- pared.' This Wieland translated with : ' ohne Vorbereitung.'
(4) Haml., in, 1, 107 : ' That if you be honest and fair, your honesty should (' you should,' Warb., Theob.) admit no discourse to your beauty.' W. : ' Wenn ihr tugendhaft und schon seyd, so soil eure Tugend nicht zugeben, dass man eurer Schonheit Schmeicheleyen vorschwaze.' Johnson (vin, p. 157) : ' The true reading seems to be : You should admit your honesty to no discourse with your beauty.... The folio reads : your honesty should admit no discourse to your beauty', which was translated by Wieland and is the present accepted reading. War- burton, Theobald and Hanmer have the same text (quarto) and have no footnote.
(5) Haml., I, 3, 122 : ' Set your entreatments at a higher rate Than a command to parley.' W. : ' Sezt eure Conversationen auf einen hb'hern Preiss als einen Befehl, dass man euch sprechen wolle.' Johnson (vin, p. 157): ' Intreatments here means company, conversation, from the French entretien.'
(6) Haml., II, 2, 362 : 'How are they escoted'? Johnson (vin, p. 195): 'Escoted, paid.' (See above, p. 17.)
(7) Haml., II, 1, 71 : ' Observe his inclination in (' e'en,' Warb.) yourself.' W. : ' ' Ihr miisst trachten, dass ihr durch euch selbst hinter seine Neigungen kommt.' Johnson (vin, p. 175) : ' But perhaps in yourself means in your own person, not by spies.' Warburton's reading might possibly have suggested the same translation.
(8) Haml., II, 2, 362 : ' Will they pursue quality no longer than they can sing ? ' W. : ' Werden sie das Handwerk nur so lang treiben, als sie singen kb'nnen ? ' Johnson (vin, p. 195) : ' Will they follow the profession of players no longer than they keep the voices of boys ?'
(9) Haml., I, 3, 133 : 'I would not have you so slander any moment's leisure As to give words or talk with the Lord Hamlet.' W. : ' Ich mochte nicht gern, ...dass du nur einen einzigen deiner Augenblike in den Verdacht seztest, als wisstest du ihn nicht besser anzuwenden, als mit dem Prinzen Hamlet Worte zu wechseln.' Johnson (vm, p. 158): 'I would not have you so disgrace your most idle moments, as not to find better employment for them than Lord Hamlet's con- versation.'
22 Wieland' s Translation of Shakespeare
(10) HamL, II, 2, 52 : ' My news shall be the fruit to that great feast/ W. : 'Meine Neuigkeit soil der Nachtisch von diesem grossen Schmause sein.' Johnson (vm, p. 180) : ' The fruit, The dessert after the meal.'
(11) HamL, IV, 4, 33 : 'What is a man, If his chief good and market of his time, Be but to sleep and feed' ? W. : * Was ist ein Mann, wenn alles was er mit seiner Zeit gewinnt, Essen und Schlafen ist ? ' John- son (vm, p. 255) : ' If his highest good, and that for which he sells his time, be to sleep and feed.'
(12) Wint., 1, 2, 186 : ' O'er head and ears a fork'd one ! ' W. : ' Uber Kopf und Ohren gehornt.' Johnson (li, p. 243) : ' A fork'd one— That is, a horned one ; a cuckold.'
(13) Wint., m, 2, 146 : ' The prince your son, with mere conceit and fear Of the queen's speed, is gone.' W. : ' Der Prinz — euer Sohn — die Alteration liber das Verhor der Konigin — er ist todt.' Incorrect, after Johnson (li, p. 279): 'Of the event of the queen's trial.' Johnson's Diet. : ' Speed, success, event of any action.'
(14) Wint., v, 2, 176 : 'And I'll swear to the prince thou art a tall fellow of thy hands.' W. : ' Ich will dem Prinzen schweeren, dass du ein plumper Kerl mit deinen Handen seyst.' Johnson : ' Tall in that time, was the word used for stout.' Johnson's Diet. : ' Sturdy, lusty.' Boyer: ' Haut, grand.' Wieland was misled by Johnson's note, since the con- text suggests the opposite meaning.
La Place's Translation.
The first book which brought a more or less systematic account of Shakespeare and his dramas to the continent was Luigi Riccoboni's Reflexions historiques et critiques sur les differens Theatres de V Europe (1738 ; pp. 156 — 178). Whether Wieland was acquainted with this work, which contains a brief sketch of Shakespeare's life and synopses of his important dramas, could not be determined. However, it is quite certain that he was familiar with Pierre Antoine de La Place's Le Theatre Anglois (London, 1746-8, 8 vols.), of which the first four volumes are devoted to Shakespeare1.
In a footnote to Der Kaufmann von Venedig (vol. II, p. 3) Wieland says :
1 Vol. i: Discours sur le Theatre Anglois (118 pp.), Vie de Shakespeare (24 pp.), Oth., rlen. VI ; vol. n : Rich. Ill, Haml. , Macb. ; vol. in : Preface du Traducteur (26 pp.), Cymb., Caes., Ant. and synopses of John, Rich. II, 1 Hen. IV, 2 Hen. IV, Hen. F,
1 Hen. VI, 2 Hen. VI, Hen. VIII, Lear, Tit., Cor., Troil., Rom.; vol. iv: Tim., Wiv., La Pucelle, par Fletcher, and synopses of Temp., Mids., Two Gent., Meas., Much Ado, Merch., L.L.L., A.Y.L., Shrew, AIVs Well, Tic. N., Err., Wint.
F. W. MEISNEST 23
Die hauffige und riihrende Schonheiten desselben alle Augenblike durch un- gereimte Abialle, aufgedunsene Figuren, frostige Antithesen, Wortspiele, und alle nur mogliche Fehler des Ausdruks entstellt zu sehen, 1st so widrig, dass der Ueber- sezer sich nicht hat enthalteri konnen, an vielen Orten sich lieber dem Vorwurf, der den Franzosischen Uebersezern gemacht zu werden pflegt, auszusezen, als durch eine allzuschiichterne Treue dem Shakespear zu Schaden, und den Leser ungeduldig zu machen.
The above reference may be to French translators in general, but more probably to La Place's Shakespeare, since no other French transla- tion of the dramas was published until Le Tourneur's in 1776. The fact that Wi eland speaks of ' den Franzosischen Uebersezern ' may be due to his not having known that La Place was the translator, since his work was published anonymously. Furthermore, it must have been generally known to scholars, since it was extensively reviewed in both French and German periodicals. The Journal de Trevoux devoted at least seven articles to it1. Voltaire violently denounced it on account of its many omissions and too free adaptations2. It called forth Fiquet du Bocage's Lettre sur le Theatre Anglois, avec une Traduction de I' Avar e de Shadwell et de la Femme de Campagne de Wicherley (1752, 2 vols.), which was reviewed in Gottsched's periodical: Das Neueste aas der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit (Leipzig, 1753, vol. in, pp. 128 — 136). Here, too, the same criticism is made concerning La Place :
Die Franzoseu werden mehr und mehr auf ihre Nachbarn, sonderlich auf die Englander und Deutschen aufmerksam. Ausser andern Beweisen erhellet solches auch, aus diesem Schreiben iiber die englische Schaubiihne. Es hat schon vor kurzem ein gewis^er Mr. de L. P. ein Theatre Anglois- iibersetzet herausgegeben. Der Verfasser dieses Briefes will ihm seinen Werth nicht absprechen : er will aber auch seinem Freunde nicht rathen, daraus einen andern Begriff von der englischen Biihne anzunehmen, als welchen er ihm bisher beygebracht. Er hat namlich seinem Originale sehr geschmauchelt, und aus den englischen dramatischen Stiicken gerade nur das Beste genommen, welches den Franzosen gefallen konnte. Man wiirde sich aber sehr irren, wenn man glauben wollte, man hatte nun daraus den Shakespear und Ben Jonson recht naeh dem Leben kennen gelernet. Es war namlich nicht rathsam, alles wunderliche, unordentliche und niedrige Zeug aus des erstern Trauerspielen, einem franzosischen Leser bekannt zu machen. Bloss der ernsthafteste Inhalt des Trauerspiels konnte seinen Augen gefallen : hergegen die langen und pobelhaften Gesprache, die oft sehr libel angebracht worden ; die gar zu hochtrabenden und fast begeisterten Stiicke voller Galimatias, die bin und wieder vorkommen, u. d. m. schickten sich gar nicht dazu. Darum hat Herr von L. P. sie kliiglich ausgelassen. (Coming more directly to Shakespeare's plays the review continues) : Behiite Gptt, dass dieselben nicht ganz und gar lebendig dargestellet werden ! Man ist gliicklich, dass man nur etwas weniges von ihrien sieht. Wer mag wohl von alien seltsamen Einfallen, Reden und Ausschweifungen Nachricht haben, die ein grosser Mann gehabt und begangen, den man ins Tollhaus hat bringen mussen ? Diese Verglei- chung wird einem Englander hart bediinken : allein sie schieszt nicht weit vom Ziel. Es giebt schone Stiicke irn Shakespeare : allein auch ein Narr sagt bisweilen was
1 Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, p. 224.
2 Lounsbury, Shakespeare and Voltaire, p. 174.
24 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
gescheidtes. Dem Pobel zu gefallen, mengt er auch viel niedertrachtiges und possierliches Zeug init unter. Das alles hat Herr L. P. unterschlagen, ja manches schlechte Stiick des Originals durch seinen eigenen Witz verschonert.
In the main this review is correct. La Place followed the general plan of Brumoy's Le Theatre des Grecs, translating the best and most important passages and giving synopses of the rest. Only one drama, Richard III, is complete. A footnote says :
Cette Piece est traduite aussi litteralement, qu'il est possible (du moins a 1'Auteur de cette traduction) de rendre en Fra^ois ce que 1'Original a de hardi, & de singulier. Ceux qui possedent le langage de Shakespear, ne trouveront surement rien d'outre dans la maniere dont on a tache de le transmettre dans notre Langue.
Nine dramas are translated more freely; occasional passages and scenes are in verse — usually in Alexandrine rhymed couplets ; synopses are given of the omitted scenes. The synopses of twenty-six dramas vary from two to nine pages for each drama. Stage directions are more numerous and complete than in any of the editions of Rowe, Pope, Theobald, Hanmer, or Warburton. The entrance or exit of a player is the basis of scene-division, giving many more scenes in each drama than in any of the above-mentioned editions. This indicates that La Place must have used as his original a stage-edition of Shakespeare, very probably : The English Theatre : a Collection of Tragedies and Comedies from the most celebrated Authors (London, 1731-3, 26 vols.).
Of the ten dramas translated by La Place, six are translated by Wieland : Oth., HamL, Macb., Caes., Ant. and Tim. A careful examina- tion of Oth. and a general comparison of the other five dramas in both translations show no traces of direct dependence of Wieland upon La Place. Occasionally the same scene is summarized in both translations, but just as frequently it is translated in one and summarized in the other. The passages omitted in both translations rarely correspond. La Place's translation contains but one comedy (Wiv.)t Wieland's has ten. However some parallels exist which may or may not indicate dependence. La Place's translation begins with a lengthy discourse on the English stage; Wieland's with Pope's Preface. La Place's Vie de Shakespeare is largely a summary - of Rowe's Life of Shake- speare ; Wieland's Lebens- Umstdnde, etc., is a translation of the same (with a few passages omitted). The pages of La Place are .frequently provided with foot-notes similar to those in Wieland. Both translate the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet and make similar remarks : ' Je n'ai tente de traduire cette Scene, que parce qu'elle est fameuse en Angleterre ; & a cause de sa rare singularite ' ; ' man wurde diese ganze Scene eben sogern ausgelassen haben, wenn man dem Leser
F. W. MEISNEST
25
nicht eine Idee von der bertichtigten Todtengraber- Scene hatte geben wollen.' From the standpoint of scholarship and advanced criticism La Place's Discours sur le Theatre Anglois remained unequalled until the appearance of Samuel Johnson's Preface to his edition of Shakespeare (1765). This discourse may well have contributed to Wieland's con- ception of Shakespeare.
It is possible that a more careful and detailed comparison of the two entire translations might produce more positive results. The task, however, seemed fruitless. The plan and purpose of the two translators were altogether different. La Place's Shakespeare is little more than a book of samples, whereas Wieland's, so far as it goes, is fairly complete. The one drama (Rich. Ill) which La Place translated completely and rather literally, Wieland did not translate at all, and the difficult and doubtful passages in the other dramas, where Wieland occasionally varied from his original (e.g., HamL, I, 5, 77: 'Unhousel'd, disappointed, unaneled '), La Place invariably omitted. This makes it difficult if not impossible to give positive proof of Wieland's dependence upon La Place by a comparison of the two translations.
PURPOSE AND CONCEPTION.
In order to do full justice to Wieland's translation it is necessary to take into consideration the attitude of contemporary critics and scholars towards such an undertaking. Custom had practically made it a fixed principle that the great foreign classics be made available by means of partial translations and synopses. This is what Brumoy in his Theatre des Grecs (1730) and La Place in Le Theatre Anglois (1746) had done. Thus Homer had been treated in Pope's translation (1715), and Milton's Paradise Lost in Bodmer's version (1732). Meinhard's Versuche uber den Gharakter und die Werke der besten italienischen Dichter (1763-4) followed the same plan. Sulzer had suggested this method in his letter of Jan. 14, 1759 :
Wenn doch ein geschickter Kopf die Arbeit iibernehrnen wollte, diese Schau- spiele im Deutschen so zu analysiren, wie Pere Brumoy rnit dem griechischen Theater gethan hat. Soweit ich gekommen bin, ist kein Drama, das man ganz iibersetzen diirfte. Man wiirde nur den Plan derselben durchgehen, die Scenen oder Stellen aber, welche wirkliche Schonheit besitzen, auszeichrien und alles auf eine kritische Manier verrichten1.
Weisse in the Bibliothek der schdnen Wissenschaften (ix, 261, 1763) in the review of Wieland's first volume insisted on Brumoy's plan :
1 Briefe von Sulzer, Geilfuss, 1866, p. 8.
26 Wieland' s Translation of Shakespeare
Wir glaubten also, dass wenn ja mit dem Shakespear in unsrer Sprache etwas vorzunehmen ware, dass man den Weg des Brumoy mit dem griechischen Theater einschlagen sollte, und einen Anszug von Scene zu Scene liefern, um die Oekonomie des Stiicks, und die Situationen, die Shakespear oft so gliicklich herbey zu ftihren weiss, nicht zu verlieren, die schonsten und besten Stellen und Scenen aber ganz zu ubersetzen.
In 1788 the same periodical, reviewing Eschenburg's Uber W. Shakespeare, still insisted upon its former judgment :
Wie sehr ware es also nicht zu wiinschen gewesen, Hr. Wieland hatte gleich damals den Weg eingeschlagen, auf den jene Rec. hinzeigte. Er war ganz der Mann dazu, ihn wurdig zu betreten....Wir wiederholen den Wunsch, dass man den Deutschen nur eine Auswahl der schonsten Scenen Shakespears und von den iibrigen einen blossen Auszug und keine wortliche Uebersetzung geliefert haben mochte, die sowohl dem Publikum, als dem Dichter selbst, der sich nun aus der- selben, und gleichsam als unsern Zeitgenossen beurtheilen lassen muss, mehr geschadet als genutzt hat.
Even Lessing in his 17th Litteraturbrief (1759) recommended a translation of Shakespeare with the proviso : ' mit einigen bescheidenen Veranderungen.' With Garrick omitting the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet on the Drury Lane stage in London, and playing Shakespeare's plays in an abridged and expurgated edition ; with critics like Weisse, Nicolai and Gerstenberg publicly proclaiming the impossibility and undesirability of systematically translating Shakespeare, all the more credit is due to Wieland for boldly attempting the difficult task with a purpose far in advance of his time :
Es kann eine sehr gute Ursache haben, warum der Uebersezer eines Originals, welches bey vielen grossen Schonheiten eben so grosse Mangel hat, und iiberhaupt in Absicht des Ausdruks roh, und incorrect ist, fur gut findet, es so zu iibersezen, wie es ist. Shakespear ist an tausend Orten in seiner eignen Sprache hart, steif, schwiilstig, schielend ; so ist er auch in der Uebersezung, denn man wollte ihn den Deutschen so bekannt machen, wie er ist. Pope hat den Homer in Absicht des Ausdruks ver- schonert, und wie die Kenner, selbst in England sagen, oft zu viel verschonert. Das konnte bey einem Homer angehen, dessen Simplicitat sich schwerlich in irgend einer Sprache, welche nicht die eigentlichen Vorziige der griechischen hat, ohne Nachtheil des Originals copieren lasst. Bey unserm Englander hat es eine ganz andere Bewandtniss. Sobald man ihn verschonern wollte, wiirde er aufhoren, Shakespear zu seyn.
Thus Wieland defended his translation in the last volume (ill, p. 566), against the severe criticisms of Weisse, Nicolai and Gerstenberg. Again in Teatscher Merkar (ill, pp. 187, 17 73), referring to the proposed new edition of his translation he says :
Der Verbesserer wird nur zu manche Stellen, wo der Sinn des Originals verfehlt oder nicht gut genug ausgedriickt worden, und iiberhaupt vieles zu polieren und zu erganzen finden. Aber mochte er sich vor der Verschonerungssucht hiiten, unter welcher Shakespears Genie mehr leiden wiirde, als unter meiner vielleicht allzu gewissenhaften Treue ! Mein Vorsatz...war, meinen Autor mit alien seinen Fehlern zu iibersetzen ; und dies um so mehr, weil mir dauchte, dass sehr oft seine Fehler selbst eine Art von Schonheiten sind.
F. W. MEISNEST 27
That Wieland speaks of the faults of Shakespeare in connection with his beauties is not surprising and is no disparagement of his con- ception of the great dramatist. In the preface of every Shakespeare edition of that time we find his 'faults' enumerated and extensively discussed. Even Samuel Johnson who perhaps expressed the most advanced view on Shakespeare in the eighteenth century, said in his Preface (1765) : 'Shakespeare with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. I shall shew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration,' whereupon he proceeds to discuss not less than twelve defects. Critics universally attributed these faults, following the dictum of Alexander Pope in his Preface (1725), to the perverted taste of the populace for whom Shakespeare wrote. Wieland had a more rational explanation (Merkur, in, p. 184, 1773):
Die wahre Quelle dieser Mangel liegt nicht, (wie man zu sagen gewohnt 1st), in der Ansteckung des falschen Geschmacks seiner Zeit, — denn ein Geist wie der seinige lasst sich nicht so leicht anstecken — noch in einer unedlen Gefalligkeit gegen denselben — denn wie frey und stark sagt er nicht im Sommernachts-Traum und im Hamlet den Dichtern, den Schauspielern und dem Publico die Wahrheit ? — sie liegt in der Grosse und in dem Umfang seines Geistes. Sein Genius umfasst, gleich dem Genius der Natur, mit gleich scharfem Blick Sonnen und Sonnenstaub- chen, den Elephanten und die Milbe, den Engel und den Wurm ; er schildert mit gleich meisterhaftem Pinsel den Menschen und den Caliban, den Mann und das Weib, den Helden und den Schurken, den Weisen und den Narren, die grosse und die schwache, die reizende und die hassliche Seite -der menschlichen Natur, eine Kleopatra und ein Austerweib, den Konig Lear und Tom Bedlam, eine Miranda und eine Lady Macbeth, einen Hamlet, und einen Todtengraber. Seine Schauspiele sind, gleich dem grossen Schauspiele der Natur, voller anscheinenden Unordnung ; — Paradiese, Wildnisse, Auen, Siimpfe, bezauberte Thaler, Sandwiisten, fruchtbare Alpen, starrende Gletcher; Cedern und Erdschwamme, Rosen und Distelkopfe, Fasanen und Fledermause, Menschen und Vieh, Seraphim und Ottergeziichte, Grosses und Kleines, Warmes und Kaltes, Trocknes und Nasses, Schones und Ungestaltes, Weisheit und Thorheit, Tugend und Laster,— alles seltsam durch- einander geworfen — und gleich wohl, aus dem rechten Standpuncte betrachtet, alles zusammen genommen, ein grosses, herrliches unverbesserliches Ganzes !
How infinitely superior is this view of Shakespeare to that of Voltaire, which is nowhere more tersely described than in Wieland's own words (Merkur, in, p. 184, 1773):
Es ist leicht, dem Sophisten Voltaire, (welcher von dem Dichter Voltaire wohl zu unterscheiden ist), der weder Englisch genug weiss, um ihn zu verstehen, noch, wenri er Englisch genug konnte, den unverdorbnen Geschmack hat, der dazu gehort, seinen ganzen Werth zu empfinden— es ist leicht, sage ich, diesem Voltaire und seines gleichen nachzulallen : Shakespear ist unregelmassig ; seine Stucke sind ungeheure Zwitter von Tragodie und Possenspiel, wahre Tragi- Komi- Lyncp- Pastoral-Far^en ohne Plan, ohne Verbindung der Scenen, ohne Einheiten; ein geschmackloser Mischmasch von Erhabnen und Niedrigen, von Pathetischen und Lacherlichen, von achtem und falschem Witz, von Laune und Unsinn, von Gedanken
28 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
die eines Weisen, und von Possen, die eines Pickelherings wiirdig sindj von Ge- mahlden, die einem Homer Ehre brachten, und von Karrikaturen, deren sich ein Scarron schamen wiirde.
OMISSIONS.
Although it was Wieland's general purpose to translate Shake- speare's plays just as they are, nevertheless in the strict sense not one drama is translated completely. The important dramas are nearest to being complete : Mids., Temp., HamL, Caes., Rom., Lear, Macb., Oth., and Merck. The greatest omissions occur in : Tw. N., Gent., Much Ado, Wint., 1 and 2 Hen. IV. In only one drama is an entire act missing (Tw. N., v). In addition sixteen entire scenes (Globe ed.) are lacking: Macb., m, 5; Much Ado, v, 3; A.Y.L., in, 3; v, 1; Wint., 1, 1; iv, 1 and 3; 1 Hen. IV, n, 1; m, 3; 2 Hen. IV, n, 4; v, 4; Tw. N., i, 3; n, 3; m, 2 and 3; iv, 1. Usually a brief synopsis of the omitted passage is given, which occasionally appears in a footnote (2 Hen. IV, n, 1, 112 — 209). As typical examples of these synopses I would refer to 1 Hen. IV, n, 1, 1— 5Y and 58—106 (Stadler's edition, n, pp. 497—8).
In the following the first figure indicates the number of times longer omissions, i.e., entire speeches or scenes, occur, and the second the corresponding number of times synopses are given : Tw., 11 — 9; Gent., 8—1 ; Wint., 13—3 ; 1 Hen. IV, 4—3 ; 2 Hen. IV, 10—4; Rom., 4—3 ; Much Ado, 6 — 2 ; HamL, 3 — 2 ; Lear, 1 — 0.
Occasionally sample passages are translated only to give the reader an idea of the original. Thus the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet, with the exception of the songs, is translated with the explanation :
Man wiirde diese ganze Scene eben sogern ausgelassen haben, wenn man dem Leser nicht eine Idee von der beriichtigten Todtengraber-Scene hatte geben wollen.
After translating a part of the tavern scene (1 Hen. IV, II, 4) Wieland adds :
Diese unvollkommene Probe wird den Leser vermuthlich geneigt machen, dem Uebersezer in Absicht der Falstaffischen Scenen Vollmacht zu geben, dariiber nach eignem Belieben zu schalten. Man muss ein Englander seyn, diese Scenen von Englandern spielen sehen, und eine gute Portion Pounsch dazu im Kopfe haben, um den Geschmak daran zu finden1.
Omissions occur most frequently in the last act of a drama, so that Wieland was guilty of the same charge which he brought against Shakespeare in his excuse for omitting the last act in Twelfth Night :
Man weiss. schon, dass die Anlegung des Plans und die Entwiklung des Knotens diejenigen Theile nicht sind, worinu unser Autor vortrefflich ist. Hier scheint er,
1 Of. also 2 Hen. IV, n, 1, 67—122.
F. W. MEISNEST 29
wie es ihm mehrmal in den fiinften Aufziigen begegnet, begieriger gewesen zu seyn, sein Stiik fertig zu machen, als von Situationen worein er seine Personen gesezt hat, Vortheil zu ziehen. Wir werden uns daher begniigen, den blossen Inhalt jeder Scene auszuziehen.
In Hamlet all of the longer omissions are in the last act (v, 1,112 — 26; 2, 1—218 ; 2, 406—14) ; also in Mids. (v, 1, 378—445). On the other hand six of the thirteen longer omissions in Wint. are in the fourth act (iv, 1, 1—32; 3, 1—135; 4, 220—60; 4, 322—39; 4, 469—604; 4, 636—82).
The omission of single words and short expressions is more or less frequent in all dramas, e.g., 135 in Hand., 40 in Wint. and 25 in Lear. In regard to omissions Wieland was more faithful to the original text in the dramas first translated than in the last.
The reasons for these omissions seem to be various. Episodes, interludes, or parts which the translator regarded as unessential to the plot, are left untranslated. Concerning the Hamlet-Horatio scene (v, 2, 1 — 80) Wieland says : ' Da diese ganze Scene nur zur Benach- richtigung dient, so waren zwey Worte hinlanglich gewesen, ihnen zu sagen was sie ohnehin leicht errathen konnten.' Usually parts consisting of clown or rabble scenes, interspersed with songs, puns, ambiguous or vulgar expressions are pronounced untranslatable. Footnotes like the following are frequent :
Hier folgt im Original eine Zwischen-Scene von der pobelhaftesten Art, die des Uebersezens nicht wiirdig ist (A. Y.L., in, 8). Hier haben etliche non-sensicalische Zeilen ausgelassen werden mussen (Rom., I, i, 205 — 6). Man hat gut gefunden, diese Rede zu verandern und abzukiirzen. Sie ist im Original die Grundsuppe der abgeschmaktesten Art von Wiz, und des Characters einer Mutter ausserst un wiirdig (Rom., i, 3, 79 — 95). Hier folgt im Original eine uniibersezliche Zwischen-Scene zwischen dem Narren, seiner Liebste, und zween Pagen, die ein Liedlein singen ' (A. Y.L., v, 3).
For Falstaff's : 'Away you scullion ! you rampallian ! you fustilarian! I'll tickle your catastrophes' (2 Hen. IV, n, 1, 65), Wieland inserts: 'Dumme Schimpfworter.' Falstaff's reply to the hostess: 'I think I am as like to ride the mare, if I have any vantage of ground to get up ' (2 Hen. IV, n, 1, 84—5), is dismissed with 'Eine Zote.' The many puns are usually omitted and declared untranslatable : ' Der Spass ligt hier in einem Wortspiel, das sich nicht libersezen lasst ' (Meas., iv, 2, 3 — 5). Metaphorical expressions, proverbial sayings and general reflexions within speeches are frequently omitted. Likewise passages of difficult or doubtful meaning, especially when accompanied with Warburton's or Pope's conjectural explanation (HamL, I, 1, 93 — 5 ; I, 4, 36 — 8 ; iv, 3, 63), and those lines regarded by Warburton as interpolations (HamL,
30 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
m, 2, 34 — 6 ; Lear, in, 1, 8 — 9) are usually omitted. Most of the songs and rhymed passages are lacking.
The omission of the entire fifth act in Twelfth Night, the last drama of vol. vn, as well as the relatively larger number of omissions in the last drama of each of the last four volumes (2 Hen. IV, Two Gent., Tw. N., Wint.), was undoubtedly due to the size of the volumes as determined by the publishers. According to the agreement each volume was to contain three dramas, for which Wieland received 12 louis d'or and fifty free copies1. From Wieland's letters to Salomon Gessner we may judge that the size of each volume was about 30 sheets, or 480 pages2. But the average number of pages for the eight volumes is only 439, or consider- ably less than 30 sheets. Vol. vn already had two large dramas : Romeo and Othello, which filled 403 pages. Another complete drama would have increased it to over 600 pages, or far beyond the average. Hence the necessity of abridging Twelfth Night.
ADDITIONS.
Wieland occasionally adds words, phrases, and even entire sentences which do not occur in the original text. About fifty such additions are found in Haml. ; fewer in Oth. and Wint., and practically none in Lear. Usually these additions serve to elucidate or emphasize an idea. Haml., I, 4, 29: 'Or by some habit that too much o'er-leavens The form of plausive manners,' ' oder wegen irgend einer angewohnten Manier, einer Grimasse oder so etwas, welches mit dem eingefiihrten Wohlstand einen allzugrossen Abstand macht.' Haml., II, 2, 528: 'Run barefoot up and down,' 'Wie sie, in Verzweiflung, mit nakten Ftissen auf- und niederrannte.' Haml., II, 2, 459 : ' An excellent play, well digested in the scenes,' ' ein vortreflfliches Stiik, viel Einfalt und doch viel Kunst in der Anlage des Plans, und die Scenen wol disponiert.' Courteous expressions are sometimes inserted. Haml., II, 2, 95 : ' More matter with less art,' 'Mehr Stoff mit weniger Kunst, wenn ich bitten darf.' Haml., II, 2, 451 : ' We'll have a speech straight,' ' eine htibsche Scene, wenn ich bitten darf' The numerous stage-directions added by Wieland indicate that he used some stage edition, very probably The English Theatre, London, 1761, 14- vols., which may contain Shakespeare's plays. This was in his library at his death3. Wint., I, 2, 86 : ' Leontes. Is he
1 Schnorr's Archiv, vn, p. 491.
2 Cf. Wieland's correspondence on the size of vol. vm, in Denkwiirdige Brief e, pp. 26 f.
3 Seuffert, - Prolegomena in, p. 6. It was impossible to locate any edition of The English Theatre (1731-3, 26 Vols., 1742, 16 Vols.) prior to 1765 in the British Museum or any of the large University libraries of Germany, England and United States. The edition (8 Vols., 1765) in the Staatsbibliothek of Munich does not contain Shakespeare.
F. W. ME1SNEST 31
won yet ?' ' Leontes (der sich eine Weile von ihnen entfernt hatte, urn sie zu beobachten, und izt wieder auf sie zugeht, zu Hermione). 1st er nun gewonnen ? ' Wint., in, 2, 143 : ' Servant. My lord the king, the king!' ' Bedienter (erschroken und zitternd). Gnadigster, Gnadigster Herr....' Lear, ill, 4, 12: 'the tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else Save what beats there,' 'der Sturm in meinem Gemiith nimmt meinen Sinnen alles andre Gefuhl, als was hier schlagt (Er zeigt auf sein Herz).' Lear, iv, 2, 21 : ' Wear this, spare speech ; decline your head ' (Warburton). ' Traget diss (sie giebt ihm ich weiss nicht was), sparet die Worte, (leise) drehet den Kopf ein wenig.' (Of. also Lear, iv, 6, 41 ; iv, 7, 70 ; Tim., in, 6, 92.)
INCORRECT TRANSLATIONS.
The various incorrect translations in every drama are due to mis- understanding of the English text, incorrect text or commentary, or arbitrary changes, distributed in three dramas as follows:
Due to Hand. Lear Wint.
(1) Misunderstanding .... 59 28 19
(2) Incorrect text or commentary 27 33 8
(3) Arbitrary change .... 17 3 4
103 64 31
In general about one half of the incorrect translations are due to a misunderstanding of the text and an insufficient knowledge of the English language. The following examples are taken from Hamlet. I, 1, 174: 'and I this morning know Where we shall find him most conveniently.' W. : ' Wir werden diesen Morgen schon erfahren, wo wir ihn zur gelegensten Zeit sprechen konnen.' n, 2, 355 : ' little eyases, that cry out at the top of question, and are most tyrannically clapped for't.' W. : ' Kleine Kichelchen, die beym Haupt-Wort eines Sazes aus alien Kraften ausgrillen, und auch jammerlich genug geschlagen werden, bis sie es so gut gelernt haben.'
The various uses .of the word ' that ' were at times misunderstood. HamL, I, 2, 31 : ' in that the levies, The lists and full proportions, are all made Out of his subject.' W. : Es sind alle Umstande, die Anzahl seiner angeworbnen Truppen, die Namen der angesehendsten Theil- nehmer seines Vorhabens, und seine ganze Starke hierinn (i.e., the letter) enthalten. HamL, n, 2, 292 : ' That you must teach me.' W. : ' Dass ihr mich ausforschen sollt.' HamL, u, 2, 439 : 'for look, where my abridgment comes.' W. : ' Aber da kommen die ehrlichen Leute, die mir
32 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
heraushelfen.' HamL, I, 2, 204: 'thrice he walk'd... Within his trun- cheon's length.' W. : ' Dreymal gieng er...mit seinem langen Stok in der Hand, hin und her.'
From one-third to one -fourth of the incorrect translations are due to Warburton's misleading textual conjectures or explanations. HamL, I, 2, 167: 'Good even, sir' ('morning, sir,' Warb.); W.: 'Guten Morgen.' Haml.,1, 3, 79 : 'And it must follow, as the night (light, Warb.) the day '; W. : 'Denn daraus folget so notwendig als das Licht dem Tage.' HamL, I, 4, 73 : ' Which might deprive (deprave, Warb.) your sovereignty of reason' ; W. : 'Welche euern Verstand verwirren...konnte' (Warb.'s note : ' i.e., disorder your understanding'). HamL, n, 1, 79 : ' his stockings foul'd' ('loose,' Warb.); W.: 'Seine Strtimpfe nicht aufgezogen.' HamL, ill, 3, 66 : 'Yet what can it when one can not repent' ('can but repent/ Warb.) ? W. : ' Aber was vermag blosse unfruchtbare Reue ? ' HamL, m, 4, 51 : ' Queen. Ay me what act, That roars so loud, and thunders in the index ? ' (Queen. Ay me ! what act ? HamL : That roars so loud, it thunders to the Indies. Warb.). W. : ' Konigin. Weh mir, was fur eine That ? HamL : Die so laut briillt, dass sie bis in die Indien donnert.'
Occasionally incorrect and inaccurate translations are due to arbitrary changes. Thus a mere word may be changed : HamL, in, 1, 62: 'heartache,' 'Kopfweh'; IV, 7, 183: 'melodious lay,' 'Schwanen^ Gesang'; IV, 1, 10: 'a rat. a rat!' 'eine Maus'; I, 1, 50: • It is offended,' ' Es ist unwillig.' Entire sentences may be changed : HamL, ill, 2, 9 : '0, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the ground- lings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise/ W. : ' O, es ist mir in der Seele zuwider, wenn ich einen breitschultrichten Ltimmel in einer grossen Peruke vor mir sehe, der eine Leidenschaft zu Fezen zerreisst, und um pathetisch zu seyn,sich nicht anders gebehrdet, als wie em toller Mensch; aber gemeinig- lich sind solche Gesellen auch nichts anders fahig als Lerm und seltsame unnaturliche Gesticulationen zu machen.' HamL, IV, 7, 174: 'There... Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook.' W. : ' Wie sie nun an diesem Baum hinankletterte...<7fo'fcc/ite der Boden mit ihr, und sie fiel mit ihren Kranzen in der Hand ins Wasser.' HamL, IV, 3, 7 : 'To bear all smooth and even, This sudden sending him away must seem Deliberate pause.' W. : ' Glliklicher Weise fiigt es sich, dass dieser Vor fall zu seiner plozlichen Verschikung einen Vor wand giebt.'
F. W. MEISNEST 33
In addition to the more obvious incorrect translations there are a number of minor inaccurate translations in every drama. About forty occur in Hamlvt, as: I, 1, 2 : 'Nay, answer me.' W.: ' Nun, gebt Antwort/ (Steevens : ' i.e. me who am already on the watch'). I, 3, 1 : 'My necessaries are embarked.' W. : 'Mein Gerathe ist eingepakt.' iv, 7, 171: 'That liberal shepherds give a grosser name.' W. : ' Denen unsre ehrlichen Schafer einen natiirlichen Namen geben.'
FREE TRANSLATIONS.
In regard to translating freely or literally Wieland did not follow a uniform course. The dramas translated first, as Mids., Lear, are too literal, those last are too free, as Haml., Oth., Wint. Only four passages translated too freely were discovered in Lear to over forty in Hamlet. No doubt Wieland was influenced by Weisse's criticism (Bibl. der Sch. Wiss., IX, 262, 1763): 'Die allzu sklavische wortliche Uebersetzung macht sie oft ekel und unverstandlich ' in his review of Vol. I, as well as by Voltaire's violent denunciation of literal translations : ' Malheur aux feseurs de traductions litterales, qui, traduisant chaque parole, enervent le sens! C'est bien la qu'on peut dire que la lettre tue, et que 1'esprit vivifie,' in his Lettres sur les Anglais (xvin, 1734). As a model Voltaire added a ridiculously free translation of Hamlet's soliloquy: ' To be or not to be ' in rhymed verse. The same appears also in Voltaire's: Appel a toutes les Nations de V Europe (1761), accompanied by an extremely literal translation in prose, grossly exaggerated. The latter essay was reprinted in 1764 under the title: Du Theatre Anglais par Jerome Carre1. To this essay Wieland must refer in a footnote to Rom., I, 1, 125 :
' Madam, an hour before the worshipp'd sun Peer'd forth the golden window of the east.' W. : ' Madam, eine Stunde eh die Sonne aufging. Im Original : Eh die angebetete Sonne sich durch das goldne Fenster des Osten sehen liess. Es ist nichts leichteres, als durch eine allzuwb'rtliche Uebersezung den Shakespear lacherlich zu machen, wie der Herr von Voltaire neulich mit einer Scene aus dem Hamlet eine Probe gemacht, die wir an gehorigem Ort ein wenig naher untersuchen wollen2.'
The following are typical examples of free translations : Lear, I, 1, 155 : ' Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sound Re verbs no hollowness.' W. : ' Meynest du, ihr Herz sey weniger voll, weil es einen schwachern Klang von sich giebt, als diejenigen, deren hohler Ton ihre Leerheit wiederhallt.' Haml., in, 2, 6 : 'for in the very torrent,
1 Jusserand, Shakespeare in France, p. 369.
2 This further investigation was not made.
M. L. R. IX. 3
34 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
tempest, and, as I may say, the whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.' W. : ' Denn selbst in dem heftigsten Strom, Sturm und Wirbelwind einer Leiden- schaft mlisst ihr eure Bewegungen so gut in eurer Gewalt haben, dass sie etwas edels und anstandiges behalten.' HamL, IV, 1, 30 : ' and this vile deed We must, with all our majesty and skill, Both countenance and excuse.' W. : f Und was diese bose That betrifft, so werden wir alles unsers Ansehens und unsrer Klugheit nothig haben, um ihren Folgen vorzubauen.'
Wieland occasionally resorts to free translations in doubtful or obscure passages. Lear, II, 2, 131 : ' None of these rogues and cowards But Ajax is their fool.' W. : ' Es ist keiner von diesen Schlingeln und Memmen, der nicht den Ajax zu seinem Muster mache.' HamL, I, 2, 65 : 'A little more than kin, and less than kind.' W. : ' Lieber nicht so nah befreundt, und weniger geliebt.' Haml., n, 2, 463 : ' nor no matter in the phrase, that might indict the author of affectation' (affection, Warb.). W. : ' Keine Redensarten noch Schwiinge, worinn man statt der redenden Person den sich selbst gefallenden Autor hort.' Haml., in, 2, 25 : ' to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.' W. : ' Der Tugend ihre eigne wahre Gestalt und Proportion zu zeigen, und die Sitten der Zeit, bis auf ihre kleinsten Ztige und Schattierungen nach dem Leben gemahlt darzustellen.'*
Verbose translations occur rarely in the first dramas translated, but frequently in the last ones. Hand., I, 1, 33: 'What we have two nights seen.' W. : 'Deren Inhalt wir doch zwo Nachte nach einander mit unseren Augen gesehen haben.' Haml., 1, 1, 146: 'And our vain blows malicious mockery.' W. : ' Und unsre eiteln Streiche beweisen ihm nur unsern bosen Willen, ohne ihm wiirklich etwas anzuhaben.' HamL, I, 2, 15: ' which have freely gone With this affair along. For all, our thanks.' W. : ' Und erkennen mit gebiihrendem Danke, dass ihr uns in diesem ganzeri Geschafte durch eure einsichtsvollen Ratschlage so frey und gutwillig unterstiizt habt.' HamL, I, 3, 59 : ' Give thy thoughts no tongue, Nor any unproportion'd thought his act.' W. : ' Gieb deinen Gedanken keine Zunge, und wenn du je von unregelmassigen tiber- rascht wirst, so hiite dich wenigstens, sie zu Handlungen zu machen.' HamL, in, 2, 2 : ' trippingly on the tongue.' W. : ' Mit dem natiir- lichen Ton und Accent, wie man im gemeinen Leben spricht.'
In the last dramas longer passages are occasionally contracted into a few words giving the general idea. HamL, I, 2, 124 : ' in grace
F. W. MEISNEST 35
whereof, No jocund health that Denmark drinks to-day But the great cannon to the clouds shall tell, And the king's rouse the heavens shall bruit again, Re-speaking earthly thunder.' W. : ' Dass dieser Tag ein festlicher Tag der Freude seyn soil.' Haml, iv, 7, 89 : ' so far he topp'd my thought, That I, in forgery of shapes and tricks, Come short of what he did/ W. : ' Er ubertraf alles, was man sich davon einbilden kan.' Haml., v, 1, 236 : ' Imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away : 0, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw ! ' W. : ' Und so kan der Welt-Bezwinger Casar eine Spalte in einer Mauer gegen den Wind gestoppt haben.'
RHYMED VERSE.
Undoubtedly the greatest defect of Wieland's translation is his treatment of the various kinds of verse-forms. The omission of most of the songs and rhymed passages called forth the severe criticism of Herder who pronounced the translation ' barbaric ' and translated them himself. Apparently Wieland's original purpose was to translate all verse as well as prose ; for in the first drama translated, Mids., only one (v, 1, 378 — 445) of the eighteen songs contained therein was omitted. But he soon found this task too laborious. The following table shows the number of songs and rhymed passages translated and omitted in thirteen dramas : Rom., 0 — 2 ; Mids., 17 — 1 ; Temp., 3 — 5 ; A.Y.L., 5—8; Wint., 0—6; Merch., 3—1; Tim., 0—1; Meas., 0—1; 2 Hen. IV, 0—4; Much Ado, 0—3; Two Gent., 0—1; Lear, 6—10; Haml., 11—3; total translated 45, omitted 461.
About three-fourths of the songs translated by Wieland were accepted by Eschenburg. From Mids. Schlegel borrowed four (i, 2, 33_40; v, 1, 281—92; 1, 300—11; 1, 331—54). One of Wieland's best translations is Bottom's song in Mids., I, 2, 33 — 40 : ' The raging rocks,' etc. W. : ' Der Felsen Schooss Und toller Stoss Zerbricht das Schloss der Kerkerthiir, Und Febbus Karr'n, Kommt angefahr'n, Und macht erstarr'n, Des stolzen Schiksals Zier!' The thought as well as the metre of the original is here well preserved. Also Thisbe's song was successfully reproduced (Mids., v, 1, 331 — 54): 'Asleep, my
1 Songs translated are : Mids. all except v. 1, 378-445. Temp., i, 2, 396-407 ; n, 1, 300-5; v, 1, 88—94. A.Y.L., n, 5, 1-8 ; 5, 52-9; in, 2, 93-100 ; 2, 107-18 ; iv, 3, 40-63. Merch., n, 7, 66-73; 9, 63-78; HI, 2, 132-9. Lear, i, 4, 154-161; 4, 235-6; 4, 340-4; m, 2, 81-94; 4, 144-5. Haml., n, 2, 116-9; 2, 426-7; 2, 435-7; in, 2, 282-5; 2, 159-61; iv, 5, 23-6; 5, 29-32; 5, 37-9; 5, 48-55; 5, 59-66; 5, 164-7; 5, 187-98.
3—2
36 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
love/ etc. With few minor changes, as ' Wangen blass ' for ' lily lips/ with the same number of lines it reproduces the metre and spirit of the English text. Schlegel saw fit to change only the last six lines of this song. Other good translations are : A.Y.L., ill, 2, 93 — 118 : ' From the east to western Ind/ where the ind-rhyme is preserved throughout, but 11. 109—114 are omitted; A.Y.L., iv, 3, 40—63: 'Art thou god to shepherd turn'd ' and Ophelia's Valentine song : HamL, IV, 5, 48 — 55 : 'To-morrow is Saint Valentine's day ' ; also HamL, iv, 5, 23 — 26 : ' How should I your true love know/ and Mids., n, 2, 9 — 26 : ' You spotted snakes with double tongue/
Only once did Wieland put a song into prose — Ariel's song summoning the thieves : Temp., iv, 1, 44 — 48 : ' Before you can say " come " and "go"'; the short o-rhymes he thought could not be translated.
The rhymed passages so frequent in Shakespeare, especially at the end of scenes or acts, generally appear in prose (Lear, I, 4, 154 — 161 ; 4, 235 — 6 ; 4, 340 — 4). Nerissa's lines form an exception : Merch., II, 9, 82—3 :
The ancient saying is no heresy, Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.
Das alte Spriichwort ist nicht Kezerey, Hangen und Weiben steht nicht jedem frey.
Concerning the rhymed verses in Romeo and Juliet Wieland properly remarks :
Es ist em Ungliik fur dieses Stiik, welches sonst so viele Schonheiten hat, dass ein grosser Theil davon in Reimen geschrieben ist. Niemals hat sich ein poetischer Genie in diesen Fesseln weniger zu helfen gewusst als Shakespear; seine gereimten Verse sind meistens hart, gezwungeu und dunkel ; der Reirn macht ihn immer etwas anders sagen als er will, oder -nothigt ihn doch, seine Ideen iibel auszudriiken. . . . Shakespears Genie war zu feurig und ungestum, und er nahm sich zu wenig Zeit und Muhe seine Verse auszuarbeiten ; das ist die wahre Ursache, warum ihn der Reim so sehr verstellt, und seinen Uebersezer so oft zur Verzweiflung bringt.
A delicate trace of Wieland's leanings to anacreontic tendencies manifests itself in Hamlet's letter to Ophelia, where this prompted him to add an extra line : HamL, n, 2, 116 — 19 :
Doubt thou the stars are fire ;
Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.
Zweifle an des Feuers Hize, Zweifle an der Sonne Licht, Zweifle ob die Wahrheit Liige, Schonste, nur an deinem Siege Und an rneiner Liebe nicht.
F. W. MEISNEST 37
Of the four witches' scenes in Macbeth Wieland translated only the first two (i, 1 and 3, 1 — 37). The other two he said were scarcely translatable into any language on account of their metre and rhyme. He took great pains with the first two, acknowledging however his inability to express 'das Unformliche, Wilde und Hexenmassige des Originals.' The lines
When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won
baffled him, as they have every translator since, necessitating a para- phrase; 'denn wer wollte den Ausdruk und Schwung dieser Verse deutsch machen konnen ? '
RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE.
Wieland's translation not only awakened a new interest in Shake- speare in Germany, but also renewed that bitter warfare begun by Gottsched in 1741 upon the appearance of Caspar von Borck's transla- tion of Julius Caesar. The opposition now was no longer directed against the poet, but against the translation, especially against the plan of entire translations of the dramas. The most violent attacks were made by the Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (ix, 257 — 70, 1763)1, the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek*, Gerstenberg in his Brief e uber Merkwurdigkeiten der Litteratur, Nos. 14 — 18, 1766, and Herder in his Erste Sammltmg der Fragmente, 4. kritisches Wdldchen, and private letters (Lebensbild, vol. in). On the other hand the translation was defended with somewhat less enthusiasm and occasionally with reservations, by the Neue Zeitungen von gelehrten Sachen, Leipzig, 1763,
1 Eschenburg, Vber W. Shakespeare, p. 506, attributed this review to Meinhard. According to Weisse's biographer (Bibl. der schonen Wiss. LXX, 203, 1804) Weisse was the author: ' Unter seinen eigenen Recensionen ist wohl die bedeutendste die von Wielands Uebersetzung des Shakespear.' This is probably Jordens' (Lexikon, v, 404) authority for Weisse's authorship.
2 i, 1, 300, 1765, by Nicolai ; xi, 1, 51—9, 1770, small part by Nicolai. In a letter to Wielaud, Feb. 6, 1770, Nicolai reveals the authorship : ' Ich iibersende Ew. H. das erste Stuck des xi. B. der A. D. B[ibliothek] ; die darin enthaltene Anzeige Ihres Deutschen
Shakespears und Ihres Idris sind zwar nicht von mir der Anzeige des Shakespears
habe ich die Erklarung S. 51, 52 und 54 selbst eingewebt. Ich gestehe es Ew. H., dass ich der Verf. der Anzeige der ersten Theile Ihres Shakespears in des. 1. Bds. 1. Stiicke bin. Es ist mir sehr unangenehm, dass ich durch die dariu gebrauchten nicht genug abge- messene Ausdriicke, Ihnen wahrhaftig wider meine Absicht Gelegenheit zum Missvergniigen gegeben habe. Durch die gedachte offentliche Erklarung (i.e., pp. 51, 52, 54) suche ich meine wahre Meinung in ein naheres Licht zu setzen, und wenn Ew. H. auch nicht vollig damit zufrieden sein sollten, so kann sie wenigstens zur Bezeugung meiner aufrichtigen Hochachtung gegen Ihre Verdienste, dierien, die auch bey einer nicht volligen Uberein- stimmung der Meinungen bestandig bleiben wird.' Otto Sievers, Akademische Blatter, 1884, p. 268.
38 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
Nos. 3, 58, 81 ; 1764, Nos. 58, 97 ; Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen, 1764, Nos. 26, 96, 156; 1766, No. 7; by Uz, Klotz, K. A. Schmid, Lessing, Goethe and Schiller1.
Dr Stadler's excellent discussion of the reception of Wieland's Shakespeare may be supplemented by the following references. Severe judgment is pronounced upon Wieland's work by the reviewer of Meinhard's translation of Henry Home's Elements of Criticism in the Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek (1766, vol. n, 1, p. 36):.
Wie gut diese Uebersetzung sey, kann der Augenschein gleich frappant lehren, wenn man nur ein paar Stellen aus dem Shakespear nach dieser Uebersetzung gegen die steife, geschmacklose Uebersetzung halt, die jetzt in der Schweiz erscheint, und wodurch dieser grosse englische Dichter mehr entstellt als in unsre Sprache heriiber getragen worden.
The signature ' B ' to this review corresponds to ' Westfeld/ in Parthey's Mitarbeiter an der Allgemeinen deutschen Bibliothek.
In a superficial review (signed ' Dtsch ') of C. H. Schmidt's Theorie der Poesie in Klotz's Deutsche Bibliothek der schonen Wissenschaften (Halle, 1768; vol. I, p. 3) Wieland's translation receives favourable mention :
Eben so ist es Ihnen, mein Herr S., mit Wielanden gegangen. 1st es nicht wahr, jetzt wiirden Sie ihr Urtheil von seinem Shakspear gerne zuriicknehmen, nachdem Sie Lessings Dramaturgic gelesen haben ? Schon lange zuvor habe ich geglaubt, dass Wielands Uebersetzung so schlecht nicht ist, als es den Kunstrichtern gefallen hat, sie abzumahlen. Diese Herren wollten uns, wenn es Ihnen gegliickt hatte, die besten Schriften aus den Handen kritisireri, die nicht aus ihrer Litteraturschule herstammten. Sie, Herr Schmidt, und Herr Fll. und wie sie weiter heissen, mb'gen einmal cine Uebersetzung von Shakspear liefern, die die Wielandsche iibertrifft. Sie soil uns willkommen seyn : allein bis dahin bitte ich Sie, erlauben Sie uns andern, die Wielandsche Arbeit nicht schlecht zu nennen.
The estimate of Wieland's Shakespeare in Jordens' Lecdkon deutscher Dichter und Prosaisten (Leipzig, 1810, vol. V, p. 404) — the standard work of reference of that time — may be regarded as expressing the sober and final judgment of the eighteenth century:
Durch diese Uebersetzung (ein schweres Unternehruen, da die Bahn zu brechen war) hat sich Wieland um den theatralischen Geschmack in Deutschland grosse Verdienste erworben. Seine Verdeutschung und Lessings Anpreisungen zogen die Aufmerksamkeit auf den Englischen Dichter; man las, man studirte, und bekam allmahlig andere und bessere Begriffe von Menschendarstellung in theatralischen und andern Werken.
Wieland's translation and the interest and criticism which it en- gendered brought about two significant results : first, the introduction of Shakespeare upon the German stage and secondly, a demonstration
1 Cf. Stadler, Q.-F. cvn, pp. 75—94.
F. \V. MEISNEST 39
of the fact that a translation of Shakespeare was not only possible but desirable.
After the first successful performance of the Tempest on the stage at Biberach (1761) in Wieland's version this small Swabian town became the centre of a Shakespearian cult. The Tempest was the greatest favourite on this stage and the most frequently repeated. Macbeth (1771-2), Hamlet (1773-4), including the gravediggers' scene which even Garrick had expunged, Romeo and Juliet (1774-5) were each performed four times, and Othello (1774), As You Like It (1775), and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1782) each three times in the years indicated — and all in Wieland's version. At least two members of the Biberach dramatic society of which Wieland was director (1761-9),* Karl Fr. Abt and his wife, became leading members of various theatrical companies and carried the news of the Shakespeare performances at Biberach to the principal cities of northern and central Germany. With Madame Schroder they established the first German theatrical company at The Hague (1774) and in 1780 the first at Bremen, of which Abt was the director. Of Frau Abt in the role of Hamlet at Gotha (May 10, 1779) it is said: 'Madame Abt hat die Rolle des Hamlet gottlich gespielt1.'
In 1773 Hamlet was performed at Vienna in Heufeld's version based on Wieland's translation, and three years later after Friedrich Ludwig Schroder had seen Hamlet on the stage at Prague, he hastened home and within a few days completed his version of the play, which was given Sept. 20, 1776, in the Hamburg theatre.
In making a complete and faithful translation of the great master- pieces his chief aim and purpose, Wieland was in advance of most of the best scholars and critics of his time, such as Weisse, Nicolai, Herder and Gerstenberg, who either opposed all translations of Shakespeare, or at most favoured the translation of selected passages with synopses of the remainder. His high ideal was best realised in Midsummer Night's Dream, where the metre, style and spirit of the original were so successfully reproduced that Eschenburg accepted the entire translation without averaging more than two or three changes, mostly formal, to a page. The rabble-scenes and the Pyramus and Thisbe play were exceptionally well done. Schlegel adopted the former with few changes and the latter without any. But often Wieland failed to accomplish his high aims, as is most evident in the Tempest and Romeo and Juliet.
1 Ofterdinger, Geschichte des Theaters in Biberach, Wiirttembergische Vierteljahreshefte, vi (1883), pp. 113-126.
40 Wieland's Translation of Shakespeare
Shakespeare's subtle phraseology, his puns and quibbles often caused Wieland to despair. His much condemned 'footnotes' indicate that his attitude towards Shakespeare underwent temporary changes during the progress of the • work, yet his general conception remained firm. Contemporary critics misjudged and greatly undervalued his work. He possessed a great part of the genius of a translator, but he lacked the patience and perseverance necessary for such a gigantic piece of work.
F. W. MEISNEST. SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, U.S.A.
FOUK CHANSONS DE GESTE : A STUDY IN OLD FRENCH EPIC VERSIFICATION1.
C. 'ALISCANS.'
THE Aliscans2 is a remaniement of the latter part of the Chanson de Willelme and the Chanson de Rainoart, but in its metrical form it. stands nearer to the Chanson de Roland than to its prototype. The 'ballad note' has died away; the refrain has disappeared3 and so too have the two-lined, three-lined and four-lined strophes and all the more literal repetitions. Retained are those types only found in the Chanson de Roland — the linking of the strophes and the ' laisses similaires.'
The linking device is employed with great frequency ; the repetition is less literal than in the Willelme but there is so much of it that its effect is thoroughly tiresome. Movement is checked far too completely.
in. 1. 57. Et Viviens se combat par a'ir
Devers 1'Archant, mais pres est de morir, Par mi ses plaies voit ses boiaus issir.
IV.
Viviens est en milieu de 1'Archant, Et sa boele li vait del cors issant;...
93. Vers les vachiers s'eu vet esporounant ! Diex pent de 1'ame, sa fin va aprochant !
v.
Viviens torne, ke mais ne veut fuir, Vers les vachiers, qui diex puist maleir !
109a. Li quens Bertrans fu molt de grant air : Quant les vachiers voit a torbes venir Mout les redoute, ne vos en quier mentir Ne set ke faire, vers aus n'osa guenchir.
VI.
Li quens Bertrans voit venir maint vachier
De la maisnie au Sarasin Gainer....
Li quens Bertrans ne les ose aprimier....
1 Continued from The Modern Language Review, Vol. vin, p. 367.
2 Ed. Wienbeck, Hartnacke and Easeh.
3 The ' short ' line that ends the laisse in so many of the William epics seems to have no connection with the refrain of the Willelme.
42 Four Chansons de Geste
The 'laisses similaires' of Guillaume's regret over Vivien are retained, greatly elaborated ; five long laisses take the place of the former three. The advantage is not wholly on the side of the poet of the Aliscans — one misses something of the naivete and simplicity of the older poem but the remanieur knows better how to secure movement and work up to a climax and he has heightened the pathos by bringing in Vivien's relations with Guiborc.
No ' laisses similaires ' are found setting forth the successive phases of a single episode as in the Roland and more roughly in the Willelme and the Rainoart1, but the scene in which the arrival at Orange of the different members of the 'geste' with their forces is depicted is not unlike in character. Literal repetition is for the most part avoided here but the laisses are similar in movement and work up to the same climax.
4129. Par devers Termes s'est li quens regardes, De cevaliers voit iiii mile armes, Les hantes roides, les gonfanons fermes, As nueves targes, as destriers sejornes... Ernaus i fu, li preus, li aloses, Ciex de Geronde, qui tant est redoutes. Li quens Guillaumes le reconut asses, As grans banieres les a bien ravises. ' Dame Guibors ' dist li quens, ' or vees ! Ves la Ernaut et ses riches barnes, Ne la garra Tiebaus ne Desrames. Demain sera Bertrans desprisones.' ' Sire,' dist ele, ' or verrons ke feres, Com Vivien no neveu vengeres.' Ains ke Guiborc ait ses dis parfines, Sont descendu desous Orenge es pres, Tendent lor loges et pavilions et tres Or croist la force dant Guillaume au cort nes.
LXXXVII.
Endementiers k'il ont leur tres bastis Et establerent et cevaus et rorichis, Guillaumes guarde par mi .i. pin antis Et voit venir Buevon de Commarchis, En sa compaigne x mile fervestis As hantes roides, as confanons trelis, As nueves targes, as destriers Arabis. D'autre part vint ses peres Aimeris. A iii.m. as vers iaumes brunis De herbonois ki les cuers ont hardis. Li quens Guillaumes les a molt bien choisis, Dame Guiborc les moustre li gentis : ' Vees comtesse, la vient en eel larris Une compaigne molt grant as pignons bis. Chou est mes peres, Aimeris li floris, Et d'autre part Buevon de Commarchis Ki en prison a anbes ii ses fis
1 Cf. the family's different offers of assistance, 2551—2573.
MILDRED K. POPE 43
En Alischans, ou paieu les ont pris Aveuc Bertran, dont mes cuers est maris. Mais se diex plaist, ki en la crois fu mis Nous les ravrons, ains ke past le tiers dis Ne la garra Tiebaus li Arabis Ne Desrames s'il ne s'en est fuis.3 'Diex' dist Guibors, 'je vos en rent merchis.' Guillarne enbrace an cort nes le marchis, Les iex li baise et la bouce et le vis. Et cil descendent sous Orenge el laris, Tendent leur loges et leur tres ont bastis ; Or croist la force Guillaume le marchis....
LXXXVIII.
Endementiers ke cil vont herbergant K'il vont ronchis et cevaus establant, Guillaumes garde sor destre en .i. pendant Si voit venir dant Bernart de Brubant En sa compaigne maint cevalier vaillant. iii mile furent, cascims ot jaserant Et bon escu et bon elme luisant. ' Dame Guiborc,' dist li quens en riant, 'Ves la Bernart, ki la vient cevaucant. Bien le conois a eel destrier baucant.... Mar i entrerent Sarrasin & Persant ! Chier la quit vendre la mort de Viviant, Ke laissai mort deseur 1'erbe en 1'Ardant, A la fontaine, dont li dois sont bruiant. Ot le Guiborcs, de pitie va plorant.' ' Sire,' fait ele, ' Jesus vos soit aidant.' Li quens Bernars est descendus a tant Desous Orenge en .i. pre verdoiant. Li cevalier furent tuit descendant Et escuier et gar$on & serjant. De leur tres tendre se vont forment hastant. Or va Guillaume molt grant force croisant.
Structure of the Strophe.
The only introductory device apart from the linking is the use of a descriptive line or a descriptive summary in general terms.
693. Li quens Guillaumes ot molt le cuer dolant, Molt fu iries et plains de mautalent.
1840. Molt fu li deus en Orenge pesans.
217. Grans fu 1'estors, par verte le vos di, Preu sont li conte et parent et ami, Ne se fauront tant com il soient vif.
5578. En Alischans ont molt grant caplison Paien glatisent et urlent com gaignon.
5623. Biaus fu li jors et li solaus luist cler Et la bataille fist molt a redouter. En .cc. lieus i veissies capler, Cors et buisines et olifans soner, Molt hautement ensegnes escrier Paiene gent et glatir et huller Et sor Franceis guencir et trestorner....
44 Four Chansons de Geste
The strophe end is more varied but much less so than in the Roland ; fewer devices are used, and one or two recur with wearisome frequency.
A number of strophes, considerably fewer in proportion than in the Roland, end off with the speech of one of the personages1, but the chorus-like speech, so frequent in the older poem, is never found. The line of foreboding that concludes a few of the Roland laisses is elaborated and often replaced by several lines of description of coming events.
end vin, 1. 215. Lors renovele li estours moult pesans. Maint gerxtil home perdi iluec son tans, Ki puis ne vit ne fame ne enfans.
end ix, 1. 254. Cele bataille ont li nos desconfi ;
Mais dusqu'a poi seront grain et mari Se dex n'en pense por la soe merci.
end L, 1. 1786. Mes Rainouars les fera parjurez,
Se diex li sauve son grant tinel quarrez. Mar i entrerent paien en eel regnez : Anchois qu'on soist el mois d'aoust les blez, N'i voudroit estre li meillor arivez Por trestot 1'or qui onques fust fondez.
Otherwise the only other device used is an innovation, characteristic of the method of recital but without aesthetic value — the direct appeal of the jongleur to his audience.
end xxxi, 1. 971. Fiere cha^on, qui oi'r la voudra, Face moi pes, si se traie en enca ; Ja en sa vie mes si bone n'orra.
end xcix, 1. 4902. Fiere bataille ki or velt escouter
Face moi pes si lest la noise ester :
Ja mais meillor n'orra nus horn chanter2.
end LXXXIII, 1. 3952. Cancon bien faite ki oir le vaura, Face moi pais et si se traie en 6a. Onques gogleres de melleur ne canta : Si com Guillaumes Vivien vengera, Et Rainouars ki le tinel porta, Le palasin Bertran desprisona, Et Guielin et Guichart delivra, Com au deable Haucebir combatra,' Par mi ses armes son grant tinel brisa Grant duel i ot, quant il fraint et quassa Mes neporquant trestot 1'escervela. Ne fust 1'espee ke Guibors li dona, K'il avoit dainte, dont il se ramembra, A .i. seul cop Golias en trenca : Mors fust le jor, mais si les esmaia, K'ainc Sarrasins puis ne li trestorna.
1 So laisses x, xvm, xix, xxxiv, xxxv, xxxvi, XL, etc.
2 Cf. cvi.
MILDRED K. POPE 45
The change of assonance never falls so clumsily in the Aliscans as was permitted in the Willelme\ Here and there a speech is divided between two laisses2 but no incident is cut awkwardly in two. On the other hand the nice coincidence of strophe and incident observable in the Roland is also absent. Composite strophes are almost as frequent as simple ones, many containing three or four totally different themes. So in laisse IV, containing 35 lines, we have described : Vivien's con- dition, his onslaught on the pagans, the arrival of the maisnie Gorhant and their appearance, Vivien's flight, his remembrance of his vow and his repentance. Laisse VI, 39 lines long, contains the account of Bertran's discovery of the enemy with Vivien among them, Vivien's call to him, Bertran's answer and onset, Vivien's swoon and the. arrival of Haucebier and his army.
Strophes like these might be continued indefinitely. There is no real reason why they should end where they do. They may be furnished with a beginning and an end, but they have lost all individuality. Already the delicate balance of the lyrical and epic elements in the Roland has been disturbed ; narration has got the better of song ; the Aliscans is more than half-way to the epic chronicle.
D. 'GARIN LE LORRAIN3.'
With Garin le Lorrain the chronicle stage is all but reached. The strophe structure is virtually destroyed, the language often prosaic, the repetitions without trace of emotional appeal.
Repetitions.
The repetitions of a kind are by no means infrequent — few, if any, of the numberless encounters can be set before us without recourse to the formulae ' La veissiez,' or ' Qui ve'ist (oist).'
La veissiez tant paveillons verser, Tant chevaliers morir et craventer Tant Sarrasins et huchier et crier4.
Qui done ve'ist Huon de Cambresis De bon vassal li poi'st remembrer5.
Every one of the many journeys and goings and comings reaches its conclusion with the phrase 'Jusqu'a (Tresqu'a)...ne prinrent (prent) fin6.' One recurrent phrase — ' Merveilles puis oir ' — serves to denote surprise,
1 Cf. above, p. 360. 2 Cf. Aerofles' speech in XL and XLI.
3 Ed. P. Paris, Paris, 1833. 4 i, p. 13 and so on p. 14, 25, 28, 58, etc.
5 i, p. 174, cf. ii, 59, 83, 138, etc. 6 So on i, pp. 15, 56, 88, 91, 92, etc.
46 Four Chansons de Geste
and the still more frequent ' a poi n'enrage vis1,' to express overpowering emotion of any kind. One stereotyped line still serves to depict an ordinary recurrent incident, and so the line ' L'esve demandent, au mangier sont assis' occurs three times2, and the line ' Lieve la noise, si enforce li cris ' twice3. The same proverbial expression may sum up the situation for two or more persons and so Bauduin de Flandres and Guillaume de Monclin define their attitude to the problem that confronts them by the saying : ' Qui son nes coupe, il deserte son vis4.'
But repetitions like these have obviously no poetic function. They are due to the limitations of the poet's vocabulary and lack of flexibility in his style. Once only, in the lines concluding laisses 1 and 2 of the second chanson, does one get something of the emotional effect of the Willelme type of repetition :
Li rois fu joienes, n'iot point de raison Ne le douterent, vaillant un esperon5.
Li rois fu Jones, si ne se pot aidier,
Ne il nel prisent vaillant un sol denier6.
Elsewhere and even in the use of some of the above-mentioned formulae the poet is evidently striving after variation of phrase. In none of the numerous sentences beginning 'La vei'ssiez,' etc., is the conclusion put in precisely identical terms, and in the rendering of the messenger's reports the change from the old literal plan shows clearly.
Once only do we get partial repetition, in Hardre's announcement of the decision just made by the King and Council :
' Kois, prens conseil au los que je te dis : Ivers ira si revenra avris, Erbe croistra par chans et par larris, La paisteront li bon cheval de pris ; Adonc irons, se il se puet tenir.'...
Premier parla Hardres au poil flori : ' Signor message, entendez envers mi, Mori sire avez trouve moult degarni Ivers ira, ci revenra Avris, Adonc irons, car pre seront flori, Et paisteront cil destrier arabi7.'
Elsewhere the reports are always given in varied form. A good example is the messenger's summary of Begon's haughty challenge to each member of the opposing family :
1 So on i, pp. 39, 41, 43, 54, etc. 2 So on i, pp. 112 and 147; n, 178.
3 i, pp. 165, 167 ; n, 204. 4 i, 160 ; n, 133.
5 Vol. i, p. 129. 6 Vol. i, p. 131. 7 i, p. 77.
MILDEED K. POPE 47
' Messagiers, freres, encores le te dis : Dites Fromont de Lens, le poestis, Que j'ai donne le cheval Fromondin, Maugre Bernart, le signer de Naisil, Haim de Bordelle, et le conte Harduin ; Maugre en aient Trestuit li Poitevin, Si le donrai mon nevou Rigaudin1.'
Et dit li mes : ' Encor a il plus dit. Begues vous mande que malgre vostre vis Et le parage, quanque de vous a ci, Si avra il le cheval Fromondin1.'
Passages like this are evidently far removed from the simplicity of method of the Willelme.
In another and more important type of repetition the technique of the Roland and the Willelme poet is no longer followed : the" 'laisses similaires' are practically eliminated, not only in the relation of incident or conversation but also in the laments over the dead. Ordinarily, and this is typical of the lowering of the emotional pitch of the poem, the regrets are given in a concise line or two or even merely summarised :
Tant mar i fustes frans chevaliers gentis Qui vous a mort il n'est pas mes amis2.
Desor Guillaume de Poitou le guerrier Vei'ssiez toz plorer et larmoier. Droes regrete son fil ancor legier3.
Begon's death indeed calls forth longer and more elaborate laments from Garin and Fromont, but even here the old model is no longer exactly followed. The two parts of Garin's regret are separated by a swoon but we find both included in the same strophe :
' Ha ! sire Begues,' li Loherains a dit,
' Frans chevaliers, corajeus et hardis !
Fel et angris centre vos anemis
Et dols & simples a trestoz vos amis,
Tant mar i fustes, biaus freres, biaus amis !
Tant as perdu, Girbert, biaus sire fils !
Terre ! car ouvres, si recois moi, chaitis,
Ce est domage, se je longement vis.'
Garins se pasrne, que ne se pot tenir.
Au relever or oez que il dist :
' Por coi, biaus freres, vos a Fromons ocis ?
Ja disoit il qu'il ere nostre amis ;
La pais fu faite devant le roi Pepin.
Or vos ont mort ! Ja n'en puissent joir !
Mais par celui qui le mont establi,
Ne plaise Dieu qui onques ne menti
Qu'il en soit fait accordance ne fin
Tant qu'il en soit detrenchies et ocis4.'
1 n, pp. 154 and 155. 2 i, p. 266.
3 Hj p. 177. 4 n> pp. 262, 263.
48 Four Chansons de Geste
Fremont's outburst of mingled anger, sorrow and self-pity comes nearer the technique of the Roland, for it is on two assonances and shows some repetition, but each laisse contains much more than the regret and its latter part turns into a sketch of the scheme of action best for him to follow :
end ix.
'Fis a putain,' dit Fromons au vis fier,
' Vous moi disiez ocis aviez brenier,
Un veneor, un gloruton pautonnier ;
Non 1'avez, voir, mais un bon chevalier,
Le plus cortois et le mieus enseignie
Qui portast armes, ne montast en destrier.
Fis a putain, com m'avez engignie ! '
x.
' Fis a putain,' li quens Fromons a dit ;
Vous moi disiez brenier avez ocis ;
Non 1'avez, voir, Diex vos maudie vis !
Ains avez mort un chevalier gen til.
Begon a non dou chastel de Belin,
La niece avoit 1'empereor Pepin,
Si est ses nies li Bourguignons Aubris,
Gautiers d'Hanau, Hues de Cambrisis.
En si grant guerre m'avez hui ce jor mis,
N'en isterai tant com je soie vis.
Las! or verrai mes grans chastiaux croissir
Et ma contree esillier & laidir
Et moi rneismes en convenra morir
Et si ne 1'ai ne porchascie ne quis.
Or sai je bien comment porrai garir ;
Je vous penrai qui lui avez ocis,
Ens en rna chartre ferai vos cors gesir,
Thiebaut premier, mon nevou qui le fist, etc....'1
Structure of the Strophe.
In the structure of the strophe the change of technique is equally far-reaching though masked to some extent by survivals from the past : just as in the Chanson de Roland the laisse is not infrequently intro- duced by a descriptive line, reserved, it would almost appear, for this purpose, for none occur in the interior of the strophes.
laisse v. Grans fu la noise et enforcies li cris. laisse xin. Grans fu la noise et fiers fu li hustis.
laisse xv. Grans fu la noise et grans li chaplei's, La dolors grans et enforcies li cris.
laisse xvi. Grans fu la joie du Loherenc Hervi, etc.
A fair proportion of the strophes have no distinctive conclusion, though here also the old technique still obtains to a considerable
1 ii, pp. 244, 245.
MILDRED K. POPE 49
extent. Very occasionally there appears a line of emotional content, an expression of sorrow or pity, wish or imprecation :
i. Oil sont dolent qu'ont la parole oi.
v. Dont grant dueil fu par tres tot le pai's.
ix. Diex le consant, qui forma Moysant.
xxx. Li roi i sunt. Dame Dex les confonde.
The short chorus-like speech so noticeable in the Roland never appears, but the end of the laisse not infrequently coincides with the end of a speech of one of the characters1.
Linking of the strophe is also practised by the poet though in its very slightest form. Verbal repetition is very rare, and appears to be^ almost confined to the second part : e.g.
Vol. II, end x. Vienent a Biaune, se logierent en qui.
beginning xi. A Biaune vinrent ou li os se loja.
end xvi. Tex s'en issit qui ains puis n'en revint.
xvn. Del chastel issent trestuit communalment.
More ordinarily the phrase is varied and in all instances the linking concerns only the last line or two of the one laisse and the first line or two of the subsequent one. It is the method of Turold rather than of the Aliscans poet.
Vol. I, end xi. Paien 1'entendent, moult sont en grant frisson.
xii. Celle nuit furent paien moult effree
Tous li plus cointes n'ot talent de chanter.
end xxv. El palais monte...
...Chascuns son ostel prent.
xxvi. Herbergie sont Franceis & areste.
end xxvn. Malades fu, s'en pese a maint baron. El lit le cochent, sans nule arestison.
xxvni. Durement fu enfers li rois Pepins,
Chargies de mal et durement souspris.
In so far then as the beginnings and endings of strophes are concerned, the Garin poet still has much in common with the older tradition. It would seem from this that he must have had the feeling for the individuality of the strophe that underlay the traditional method and yet in his treatment of the body of the strophe he shows no sign of this. The strophes, many of them, instead of forming compact wholes, consist of strings of strophes arbitrarily linked by the same assonance. It is not only that so many are exceedingly long2 and highly composite,
1 So laisses n, vr, vn, xm, xv, etc.
2 A single laisse may contain over 600 lines.
M. L. R. IX. 4
50 Four Chansons de Geste
the more significant fact is that their structural unity is entirely destroyed. The break is often greater between episodes linked by one assonance than it is between the separate laisses, and many a strophe falls apart into several others, complete not only in matter but also in form, introduced and concluded by the customary intro- ductory and concluding formulae or lines1.
Take, for example, laisse xxn of the first chanson. It contains eleven separate themes and might be split up into almost as many strophes, with appropriate finish and introduction, were it not for the unity of assonance. We have described in it :
(1) The council held to determine the action to be taken with regard to the invasion of Richard, Duke of Normandy, and ending with comment speech :
' Diex,' dist chascuns, ' quel baron avra ci ! Se il vit gueres, mort sunt si anemi.'
(2) The campaign, with a normal type of introductory and con- cluding lines :
De Lengres partent un poi apres midi... Enserre 1'ont ensi com je vos di.
(3) The negotiations between Begon and Richard, introduced with the line ' Begons apele le vassal Amauri,' and ended with a speech, ' Volontiers sire, li dux Richars a dit.'
(4) The summary of the terms, introduced with : ' Je que diroie ne conteroie ci.'
(5) The decision of the king to get back for Garin his paternal fief, concluded with the line, ' Esmaie furent moult la gent du pais.'
(6) Hardre's successful negotiations with the town of Metz, in- troduced by the line, ' Or entendez que li dux Hardres fist.'
(7) The news of the incursion of the Saracens and the arrival of Thibaut's messengers, introduced with the line : ' Huiines comencent merveilles a venir.'
(&) The council to discuss the question of rendering help to Thibaut, introduced with the line : ' Li rois 1'entent, si en bronche le vis/ and ended again with one of the regular short concluding speeches: 'Dit 1'empereres : " Et je 1'otroi ensi."'
(9) The reply given to the messengers and their lament, ending with the wish : ' Or nous secoure li rois de paradis.'
(10) The arrival with the Lorrains, beginning with the line :
1 For example, i, p. 16 Lairons des mors & chanterons des vis. p. 51 Or vous lairons et endroit de Herir
Dirons des Hongres, que Diex puist maleir.
MILDRED K. POPE 51
'A 1'ostel ert li Loherans Garins,' and ending with Fremont's ac- quiescing remark, ' " Vollentiers, sire," Fromons li respondit.'
(11) The meeting of the Lorrains and the messengers.
An amorphous strophe of this type is clearly a mistake. The change of assonance, when it is reached, serves no purpose. Continuous narrative has triumphed over the older more emotional presentment of situa- tions and actions, and has no business to keep on with the old outworn form. The same tendency we may add manifests itself in the style which has become so general and matter of fact in tone that the use of verse at all seems to be wholly out of place. For passages like the following prose is the only appropriate medium of expression :
De Lengres partent, un poi apres midi, "*
Cinq cent baron qui tuit furent ami.
Tant ont erre, ce sachiez vous de fi,
Qu'a Paris vienent droit a un sarnedi.
La nuit i jurent, et s'en vont au matin,
Et chevalcherent a force et a estrif.
En Normendie s'enbatent un mardi.
Les chasteaus prenent, mainte vile ont croissi,
Et maintes proies par les chans acoilli.
Gil Normant fuient car moult sunt esbai.
Li dues Richars n'estoit pas loing de ci,
II repaira au chastel de Poissi ;
Et li dues Begues la parole entendi
Que pres de lui furent si anemi.
Li vassaus monte qu'il ot le cuer hardi
A bien set ceris chevaliers fervestis ;
Au chastel vindrent ains que fust esclarci.
As quatre portes ont lor gent establi,
Enserre 1'ont ensi com je vous di.
I, xxn, pp. 68, 69.
Que vous diroie? la pais ont establi,
II s'entrebaisent et furent bori amin.
D'anibedui pars delivrerent les pris.
Li os s'en va et chascuns s'en parti.
Li rois de France s'en va droit a Paris,
Li dus de Mez va veoir Biatris,
Begues remaint de ca en son pai's.
Entre Garin, Guillaume de Monclin,
Et de Verdun le riche Lancelin,
Tuit vont ensemble, et furent bon amin.
Li Loherens vint de nuit a Monclin,
Li quens Guillaumes moult bon ostel li fist,
La nuit delivre la dame d'un bel fil
Li Loherens a batesme le tint,
Et par chierte U mist a nom Garin.
En filolage li laissa et guerpi
Un des marchies de Mez, ce n'est avis,
Qui vaut cent livres de deniers parisis.
La pas dura sept ans et un demi
Entre aus n'en ot ne noise ne hustin.
Vol. II, pp. 211—2, end song n.
4—2
52 Four Chansons de Geste
Garin le Lorrain has indeed very great qualities of its own : its story is excellently conceived, its personages, heroes and villains, stand out with a sturdy individuality rarely surpassed or equalled in the literature of the time, but it shows clearly that the old epic form is doomed, that it is indeed already a thing of the past when the poet is unhampered by tradition. The Aliscans remanieur and those who like him worked on older poetic material might retain and did retain till much later something of the earlier epic form — notably the ' laisses similaires ' and the strophe linking — but the maker of Garin le Lorrain had no such help or hindrance. He, unlike twelfth century epic writers, if modern scholarship is right in its conclusions1, worked freely, creating out of his own imagination the vigorous personalities and the long drawn-out feud that makes the subject of his poem. Up till now the historians have succeeded in finding no shred of evidence for the existence in fact of the quarrel between the Lorrain and the Bordelais. The originality of the poem appears to me to find ample corroboration in its metrical form. The characteristics that mark it — the destruction of the strophe, the absence of 'laisses similaires' and of the earliest types of repetition — belong, if we are not mistaken, alone to those narrative poems of the twelfth century that have little root in popular tradition, no previous existence in verse.
(To be continued.)
MILDRED K. POPE. OXFORD.
1 Cf. F. Lot, L'elemeut historique dans Garin le. Lorrain. (Etudes d'histoire, dediees a G. Monod.)
AUTHORITIES ON ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION.
THERE are unmistakable signs that the Englishman's burden in the matter of spelling, irksome to himself and well-nigh intolerable to foreign students of English, will not continue to afflict humanity for, many more generations. So high an authority as the present Poet Laureate has declared it in his judgment 'absolutely certain that if the English language continues to be spoken, it will come to be written phonetically1.' When that day does come, dictionaries will give English words phonetically, in the first column of each page, as in the Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language, published at Hanover this year2 ; although it will no doubt be needful for a lengthened period, perhaps for centuries, to add afterwards the modern conventional spelling as well — for pala3Ographical purposes.
The change would add wings to the speed with which English is already moving on to become the lingua franca of mankind. For example, on the Trans-Siberian Railway one may hear foreigners of mixed nationalities talking together in English, as the only language understood by all of them ; and lectures at educational institutions, both in Japan and China, are given in English by lecturers not Englishmen, as the only medium of intercourse possible between them and their auditors.
It is not until one begins to teach English to foreigners that one realizes what a great clog upon the progress of our language towards cosmopolitan acceptance our present system of spelling is. One of our leading English papers, published in Japan, recently devoted a leading article to its difficulties, saying very truly, ' The foreign teacher of English in a Japanese school can hardly fail to feel ashamed sometimes of the vagaries of English spelling.... The Japanese youth has to learn the spelling of the majority of English words as he learns his own ideographs, imprinting the word as a whole in his memory.'
1 Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, 1910.
2 Written by H. Michaelis and 1). Jones.
54 Authorities on English Pronunciation
But that phonetic spelling will, as the Poet Laureate thinks, do much to arrest that process of ' degradation,' as he calls it, which has been going on in the pronunciation of English words ever since primitive times, is not likely. The approximately phonetic spelling of our fore- fathers did not hinder the changes which converted the language of Alfred into that of Chaucer; but the spelling followed, if it did not keep pace with, the pronunciation.
' Degraded ' as it was, the English of the fourteenth century served Chaucer's turn well, as the still more 'degraded' English of the sixteenth century, which Sidney praised for its ability ' to utter sweetly the conceit of the mind,' did Shakespeare's. Seventeenth century English sufficed for the organ-music of Milton's verse; nineteenth century English for all the varied harmonies of Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. And still there is ' much music, excellent voice ' in the English language, as who knows better than the Poet Laureate ? Nor is it to be thought of that, so long as they retain nobility of character, Englishmen will ever cease to speak in words of noble sound. 'Nature,' says Mr Bridges regretfully, 'is now always Neycher. Tuesday is generally Cheusdy, and tune will very soon be chiune! Who cares ? Chin was formerly kin (O.E. cin), and church, kirk (O.E. circe], but our withers are unwrung by the recollection. At present, no doubt, the pronunciations cheusdy and chiune are bad, because they are not yet sanctioned by educated usage; therefore the Phonetic Dictionary very rightly spells these words tju:zdi and tju:n, but gives neit/a for nature, whilst even the N. E. D. allows ne^t/aj. For pronunciation, as for diction, usus is the sole arbiter loquendi ; and it is the business of the phonetician, as of the grammarian, to ascertain and publish what the best usage of his time actually is, not to say what it ought to be. But it will be found that for pronunciations, as for words, the rule holds good, that the newest of the old and the oldest of the new are the best.
The two outstanding needs in connection with this whole matter are (i) authoritative information as to what is, for the time being, the best pronunciation of each English word in ordinary use, and (ii) an accredited system of phonetic transcription.
As regards the first point, two leading phoneticians of the day, Mr Walter Kippmann and Mr Daniel Jones, direct us to the speech of educated persons of the London district as a standard of correct usage. But can any local standard be a satisfactory one to Englishmen in general ? Could not a class standard be discovered which would be more generally acceptable ? And does not that class consist of the
J. LAWRENCE 55
great body of English men and women who have passed through our best educational institutions, particularly our public schools and univer- sities ? May we not say that there is sufficient uniformity in the mode of speaking English current among those so educated to form, as it were, a dialect ; and, if so, does it not provide the true Attic standard of our tongue ?
If the English Association would take this matter up with as much zeal as the Philological Society showed when it set on foot the New English Dictionary, how much might be accomplished ! Local com- mittees to discuss pronunciations might meet at various centres in England, whose recommendations might afterwards be decided upon by a representative committee to meet in London, composed of delegates- from all the provincial committees.
But before such a work could be entered upon it would be necessary to agree on a phonetic alphabet to be used by all who should engage in it.
Of existing phonetic alphabets the two which would have most chance of being selected are probably those employed in the New English Dictionary and the Phonetic Dictionary respectively. The one put forward by the Poet Laureate is too elaborate to be written easily, and in spite of its fifty-eight symbols is acknowledged by its author to be imperfect. Its aim is not to be scientifically accurate, but to be pleasing to the eye, on the ground that 'the aesthetic objections to phonetic spelling can only be met by showing a good-looking phonetic alphabet,' for ' Phonetic spelling is full of horrors.' But the horrors are purely relative ones, and would cease to be felt in a generation or two; whereas the horrors of the conventional spelling are real and lasting.
No doubt the passage from Burke looks better at first sight in the Poet Laureate's script than in that of the International Phonetic Association, especially to anyone who has spent pleasant days over an Anglo-Saxon manuscript. But it is the outside of the cup and the platter only which is agreeable ; the contents are nauseous. What ear could endure to hear Burke's sentences, naturally so rhythmical, hammered out in the way which would be requisite to give all the a's in and, a, similar, as, naturally, that (relative), that (conjunction), affection, arising, character the same pronunciation, in accordance with the Poet Laureate's transcription, in which they are all represented by the same symbol ?
In the system employed by the editors of the New English Dictionary scientific accuracy has been aimed at with the most
56 Authorities on English Pronunciation
sedulous care. Every separate vowel and consonant of the English language distinguishable by them seems to have been provided with its separate symbol, and their phonetic alphabet, given in the ' Key to the Pronunciation' prefixed to each volume of the Dictionary, contains about a hundred distinct forms.
To employ such a system with entire consistency and accuracy must obviously be extremely difficult, and it is not surprising that in spite of the skill of the editors, and the vigilance of their trainbands, and of the Clarendon Press readers, even printer's errors have crept into the text of the Dictionary.
Thus twice at least — in eligible and in mortgage (verb) — the letter g is used instead of d5 to indicate a soft, or spirant sound. The dot which indicates the stressed vowel is omitted in the transcriptions of compound (vb.), littery, and ran-tan, whilst in the alternative transcription of Parisian it is put in the wrong place, preceding instead of following the i. In ranunculus the colon (which indicates secondary stress) is used instead of the dot ; in peritonitis it is omitted after the pe though space is left for it. The word denominational has two chief stress marks ; so apparently has sanguification, but here for a great wonder the Clarendon Press type is defective, as it is again in the transcriptions of cave (vb. 4) and salvation.
The use of the sign ^ to indicate obscuration has caused some trouble. In the alternative transcription of because it is used in the ordinary way as a sign of quantity ; in the transcriptions of affiliate (ppl. a), habilitate, holography, haplology, latinity, parcemiac it seems to be wanting.
For pasting we find e1 instead of e1, as for paste ; in the transcription of detritus we have ei for ai. The letter x instead of ks is used in the transcription of elixir.
These slips in a work of such magnitude as the New English Dictionary are of slight importance, though the one -first mentioned led a young Japanese pupil of mine into supposing that eligible is pronounced with a hard g. But few as they are, they suffice perhaps to show what we might expect if this system of transcription were employed in the printing of books of which the accuracy was less carefully safeguarded than that of those printed by the Clarendon Press.
Inconsistencies in the use of the phonetic symbols are of far more importance, and these, I think, are not wanting in the New English Dictionary.
J. LAWRENCE 57
To begin with, ' the mark of obscuration ' ^ which is supposed ' to indicate at once the theoretical and the actual pronunciation' of the vowel sign over which it stands (cf. N. E. D., vol. i, p. xxiv) is often found over a, which represents a vowel not heard in stressed syllables in Modern English, except in certain dialects. Thus we find a in the transcriptions of acquaint, acquire, acquit, adjudge, adjust, adjourn, adjoin, astound, whereas in those of admire, advice, advert we find £. That the ' theoretical ' pronunciation of acquire is not a but SB, just as it is of admire, we may see from acquisition, where the secondary stress on the first syllable preserves the clear vowel, viz., ae. Cf. again analysis, salute, human, transcribed with a, and analytic, salutation, humanity, with ae ; and similarly in very many such pairs. En passant, the doubt may be expressed whether the 'actual' pronunciation of initial a in acquaint etc. differs appreciably from that of initial a in admire . etc. The Phonetic Dictionary represents the initial vowel of all eleven words by a. Again in the case of unstressed e the mark of obscuration is often not used, as in linen, transcribed with ?en, leaden with 'n. It may be answered that in these words the pronunciation of e does not ' approach or fall into the sound of the mid- mixed vowel a ' (N. E. D., I, p. xxiv). But does it do so in the case of remain, transcribed with £ ? Or is the first i of vanity, which is given as I, sounded approxi- mately as a ? (Cf. the ' Key '.)
It appears, then, that little purpose is served by the use of the mark of obscuration, for at present, at all events, the conventional spelling indicates in general clearly enough the original of the vowel a in a word as pronounced.
Still less happy is the use in the New English Dictionary of the 'avowedly ambiguous' symbol a to represent the vowel in pass, command, < variously identified by different speakers with a in man, and a in father ' (N. E. D., I, p. xxiv). Surely in the case of pass at any rate it is not a matter of indifference which pronunciation is used ; and so again for path, past, pastor, pasture, bath, basket, cask, clasp, class, flask. In these, and a host of like words, the, use of the ambiguous symbol a puts a dialectal pronunciation on the same footing as the educated one. If, in concession to Northern usage, ae is permitted in these words, in concession to Southern, a might have been permitted in ass, which one may hear pronounced with that vowel in Devonshire even by clergymen. Moreover, according to the late Dr R. J. Lloyd, it is rather the French a of patte than the South English ae of man that is heard half-long in the Northern pronunciation of words like glass, chaff, cast (spelt in the
58 Authorities on English Pronunciation
N. E. D. with a). That is, the real Northern vowel in such words is not a front vowel like S. Eng. ae, but is more retracted.
The diacritical mark v to indicate ' the doubtful length of the o in off, soft, lost (by some made short as in got, by some long as in Corfe, by others medial) ' has also been used in the N. E. D. not very consistently. Why do we find it for malt, salt, but not for halt, halter, which are both given with $ ? The vowel of halter, at least, is not longer than that of salt. So again palter is given merely with 9, whilst for falter both 9 and 9 are allowed. The Phonetic Dictionary, more consistently, gives the vowel in all these words as O' (i.e., as short or long at will).
It was perhaps well in a work like the New English Dictionary to call attention to the difference said to be made by some between the vowels in fir and/w/r, though the statement (N. E. D., I, p. xxiv) that they are 'discriminated by the majority of orthoepists' may be questioned, seeing that they have been recognised as identical since early in the seventeenth century1. The difference is merely one between a raised and a lowered variety of 9, and is hard to learn from a pronouncing dictionary. Mr Burch, in his Pronunciation of English by Foreigners (p. 42), recommends a quaint experiment (pinching the nose) by which to recognise when Sir, girl, pearl are pronounced truly. The pronunciation of girl as ' gurl/ we are told by him, stamps the speaker as not being of the caste of Vere de Vere. But this word is quite an exceptional one. Miss Soames tells us that though aiming at the pronunciation goel (oe as in turn) she really pronounced the word ' something like ea in pear.' And to this pronunciation ladies in general, perhaps, incline. Neither Dr Lloyd, Mr Rippmann, nor the authors of the Phonetic Dictionary distinguish the vowels of fir and fur. The same thing is true of the vowels in watch and Scotch, which the N.E.D. represents differently, though allowing that they are ' identified by many ' (!).
There is certainly more justification for the distinction made in the N. E. D. between the vowels in such pairs as law, lore— maw, more — saiv, soar which are identified in the Phonetic Dictionary, as by Mr Rippmann and other phoneticians. Dr R. J. Lloyd, however, in his Northern English retains the distinction once generally made between them. For him the vowel in more is the same as that in no, except for the diphthongal element in the former ; whereas mourn and morn (both spelt mo:n in the Phonetic Dictionary) are represented by him with o: and o: respectively. Similarly the N. E. D. gives us 6a for bourn, but § for born.
1 See 0. Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar, p. 319, §§ 11, 12.
J. LAWRENCE 59
This represents, I believe, my own pronunciation, unless I too have caught the haw-yaw-baw style of speaking more than I am aware. But how long has the maw pronunciation of more been current English ? In 1872, when the professors of Latin at Oxford and Cambridge, (Palmer and Munro), issued their syllabus of proposed pronunciation of Latin, they actually took the word more to illustrate the value of Latin 6, directing that this should be pronounced * as Italian closed o : nearly as in German ohne, English more!
Therefore, before we accept the pronunciation of the London phoneticians for more etc., there should be some enquiry made as to its prevalence.
It is, however, in the transcription of unstressed syllables that we find the greatest difference between the New English Dictionary and the Phonetic Dictionary. The former with its fuller equipment of symbols aims at representing nuances which the latter ignores.
For example, the termination in -ate when adjectival is represented in the N. E. D. by -et, -£t, and e*t in accurate, articulate, and celibate respectively. The symbol e, however, is, I think, not used in this termination except in the first volume, and e*t occurs but seldom in adjectives: maculate is given as -e*t but immaculate as -#t The Phonetic Dictionary gives -it for the foregoing words (omitting macu- late), a pronunciation which I am free to confess has a cockney sound to my ears. For articulate the pronunciation -eit is also permitted by it. I should myself give -ot in each case. Mr Rippmann, too, gives us -at for celibate, fortunate, but -it for private.
Again, substantives in -ate are represented in the N. E. D. as -et, -#t, or -6*t. Thus for advocate, aggregate we find -et; for dictate, estimate, and the scientific terms carbonate, manganate, nitrate and precipitate, -£t ; for aggregate, correlate, reprobate, and for acetate, methylate, -e1!
The Phonetic Dictionary on the other hand gives either -it or -eit for advocate, nitrate, acetate , for dictate -eit (probably the general pro- nunciation); for aggregate, reprobate, -it(!).
Verbs in -ate are transcribed -e*t in the N.E.D., -eit in the Phonetic Dictionary and in Mr Rippmann's Specimens. The London phoneticians make the diphthong long, as in hate, mate (N. E. D. h^t, meH), and with reason, for in such verbs there is usually a secondary stress on the last syllable.
What distinction is intended between -et and -£t in the N. E. D. is not explained. In vol. I, p. i, separate (adj.) is given with both
60 Authorities on English Pronunciation
pronunciations, thus: -et (-It), though in its place in the Dictionary we find only -It for it. Probably e represents a more open vowel than £. It is given in cases where in the Phonetic Dictionary we find 9, and especially before liquids and nasals : thus angel is given in the N. E. D. as -el, in the Phonetic Dictionary as -al, -1 ; and for conscience we find -ens in the N. E. D., but -ans, or -ns in the Phonetic Dictionary. In such positions, however, the N. E. D. transcription is not uniform. We find with e, ashen, aspen, children, linden ; with e, anthem, chicken, kitchen, linen ; with a, enlighten, mitten ; with ', enliven, kitten. The Phonetic Dictionary omits ashen, gives aspen as -an, -en, or -in ; children as -an or -n ; linden as -an ; anthem as -am ; chicken, kitchen, linen as -in ; enlighten, enliven, kitten, mitten as -n. Again the N. E. D. transcribes chisel, gravel, crewel, fuel, gruel with -el ; cruel with -el ; hazel, grovel, ousel with -'1. The Phonetic Dictionary allows either -il or -al for crewel, cruel, fuel, gruel ; either -al or -1 for gravel, hazel ; and only -1 for chisel, grovel, ousel. Both for the words in -en and -el it seems to me that the Phonetic Dictionary pronunciations are the more correct and consistent. The same remark will apply to the N.E.D. and the Phonetic Dictionary transcriptions, respectively, of words in -ery. Thus the New English Dictionary gives -eri for buttery, bravery, flattery, nunnery; but -ari for battery, butchery, gunnery, peppery. Are we to suppose that in the first set of words the ' theoretical pronunciation ' of the ending is -eri, but in the second set not ? The Phonetic Dictionary gives -ari in all these cases.
Other cases in which it is difficult to follow the transcriptions in the New English Dictionary are :
(i) gerundive (dser-) ; gerundial
(ii) almoner, analogy (6) ; apothegm, astrolabe (#); asphodel (O).
(iii) asphodel (-el) ; pimpernel (-el).
(iv) audacity (9-) ; authority (9-, 9-, 9-).
(v) carriage (-id5); cabbage, marriage (-ed5); equipage (-eds) ;
heritage, presage (-Id3). (vi) decomposition (dt-); decentralization (dt-); demagnetize (dt-);
devitrify (d$-).
(vii) nobody (-b»di) ; somebody (-b$di). (viii) parterre, partake, partition (-a-) ; barbaric, carnivorous,
harmonious (-a).
J. LAWRENCE 61
(ix) paralytic, paregoric (par- ) ; paronomasia (par-).
(x) piteous (-tias); duteous (-tfes); hideous (-dias); beauteous (-t'as).
(xi) anxiety (-eti) ; dubiety (-fti) ; propriety (-eti). (xii) albeit ($1-) ; already (9!-) ; almighty (9!-).
(xiii) buckram (-am); madam (-am); macadam (-am); buxom, income (-»m) ; halidom (-am).
In most, if not all, of these cases the Phonetic Dictionary, so far as it gives the words, seems to me the better guide.
Discrepancies like the foregoing appear to illustrate what the Poet Laureate says with regard to the difficulty of carrying out ' any scheme of scientifically accurate phonetic writing,' namely, that ' as the distinc- tions become more delicate, they become at the same time not only more difficult both to indicate, to identify, and to observe, but also more uncertain to establish : so that the learner finds his powers most taxed in matters of least importance and authority.'
It is chiefly in the representation of vowels, of course, that the difficulty lies. So far as consonants are concerned, there is little difference between the dictionaries.
For words in -nch it is worth pointing out that the New English Dictionary allows only -nj, except in the case of a few words in p-, e.g. paunch, pinch, which are given as -n*/. The Phonetic Dictionary more liberally permits both -nj and -ntj".
The Phonetic Dictionary with its comparatively few symbols (about thirty-nine) was not exposed to the pitfalls which have beset the path of the New English Dictionary.
Until it appeared I had looked upon the latter as our only safe comprehensive authority for the pronunciation of English words; and a year ago, when I first seriously began the investigation of which this paper is a result, I thought the delicate system of transcription of the New English Dictionary more satisfactory than the rougher methods of the International Phonetic Association.
This opinion has gradually given way during the last twelve months to the conviction that the N. E. D. editors, in attempting the perilous task of differentiating the pronunciations of words which to the ordinary ear sound exactly alike, have fallen into inconsistencies which cannot fail to baffle the learner (especially if he be a foreigner), who strives to adapt his pronunciation to their teaching.
62 Authorities on English Pronunciation
It is not without compunction that I point out these specks of dust which in the course of a quarter of a century have gathered on the majestic robes of the New English Dictionary, for few can of late years have had more cause to be grateful to it for help in their work than I. But if our great Dictionary itself is proved to be no infallible guide in regard to pronunciation, the point for which I am contending is established.
There needs a large Commission of Enquiry on the subject of English Orthoepy ; the pronouncements of a few scholars, however eminent, can settle nothing: referendum est.
J. LAWRENCE.
TOKIO.
THE 'ANCREN RIWLE.'
PROSPECTS have been several times held out of a new edition of the Ancren Riwle, the most important prose text of the earlier Middle English period. There seems, however, to be no immediate likelihood of getting it ; and meanwhile we are dependent upon the text edited by Morton for the Camden Society as long ago as 1853, based upon a manuscript which departs widely from what seems to have been the original form of the text. A considerable number of difficulties are to be found in Morton's text which can be removed by collation of the other manuscripts, but these have never been made available for critical purposes. Morton, indeed, gave a certain number of various readings from two of them, and sometimes proposed an emendation of the text on the basis of these readings, but his collation is very un- systematic, and the manuscript which presents by far the most accurate text was not seen by Morton, and has never been utilised at all, so far as the public is concerned.
I have recently made a complete collation of this manuscript (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402) with Morton's text, and propose to publish a selection of the results, together with the readings of all the other thirteenth century manuscripts in the passages dealt with. This collation has the practical effect of removing most of the textual difficulties, and of setting right in a good many instances the connexion of sentences and the punctuation. In addition to this, attention will be especially called to several passages of considerable interest which are found in the Corpus manuscript, and to some extent in others, but have never as yet been printed.
As a preliminary to this textual work, I propose to investigate the relation of the English Ancren Riwle to the existing French and Latin versions.
64 The ' Ancren Riivle*
I.
THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE.
Morton, in the Preface to his edition, stated that a manuscript copy of the Ancren Riwle in Latin and another of the same book in French had formerly existed among the Cotton MSS. (Vitellius E. vii and F. vii), but that both these had been destroyed in the fire of 1731. This statement has been repeated by others, and apparently no regard has been paid to the fact that many of the manuscripts reported as destroyed in that fire, or so damaged as to be useless, have in recent years been very carefully and skilfully restored. As a matter of fact MS. Cotton, Vitellius F. vii may be said to have been completely restored ; that is, all the leaves of it exist, and though they are shrunk and to some extent discoloured, the writing upon them may, I think, be almost completely made out, except in the case of a line or two at the top of each page. The other book mentioned (Vitellius E. vii) has suffered far more severely, and only a part of it has been to any extent restored. Moreover, the existing leaves are so much damaged that it is impossible to read the book continuously anywhere, and we can only judge of its nature by such fragments as we are able to make out.
Let us deal first with the French book, Vitellius F. vii.
This is a folio of 164 leaves measuring on an average now about 8-| inches in height, but formerly more, written in two columns to the page, 43 lines to the column, in a good hand, probably of the beginning of the fourteenth century. The article with which we are concerned occupies the first part of the volume, ff. 1 — 70. The treatise which these leaves contain is identical with that which we have in English under the name of Ancren Riwle (or Ancrene Wisse). The two books indeed correspond so minutely, that it is impossible not to feel that one must have been directly translated from the other. It should be mentioned, however, that at a certain point in the French book there is a considerable omission, evidently caused by loss of leaves in the manuscript from which it was copied. On f. 31 the text passes without any visible break from p. 166, 1. 10, to p. 208, 1. 11, of Morton's edition, the transition being effected, without regard to sense, as follows: 'lessez le siecle ceo dit il et venez a mei cest la fin ouekes coment la ceue point et vistement fuiez vous ent a veoir ceo qe vous soiez enuenimee.' The amount that is omitted would about correspond to the contents of eight leaves in a manuscript of the same form as this, and it is reason-
G. C. MACAULAY 65
able to suppose that a whole quire had been lost in the book which the copyist had before him.
In a case of this kind the a priori probabilities are of course in favour of the supposition that the English was translated from the French ; and this presumption is greatly strengthened by the occurrence of so many French words in the vocabulary of this early text. It is true that the French manuscript which we possess is later in date than the thirteenth century copies of the English A ncren Riwle ; but it is clearly not an original, as is proved by the omission mentioned above, and it may be very far removed in date from the original. The language is not consistently of one period, but shows some older Anglo-Norman forms, together with others which are later, and have been influenced' by central French. Whatever language, however, may have been first adopted for the book, we may say with some confidence that it was written in England1.
The evidence that the English text is actually a translation from the French is, I think, convincing. A considerable number of passages may be cited in which it seems clear, for one reason or another, that the French has a better claim to be regarded as the original than the English. I select some of these, giving references* always to the page and line of Morton's text, which for convenience I cite in the quotations.
P. 24, 1. 11: 'entour eel houre come len chante messe en toutes religions,' and a few lines lower, 'quant prestres seculiers chauntent lour messes.' The English text looks like a misunderstanding of this, 'abute swuch time alse me singeS messe in alle holi religiuns,' and below, ' hwon )?e preostes of Se worlde singeS hore messen.' In the original of course the distinction is between the regular and the secular clergy; and perhaps this may be intended in the English version.
P. 40, 1. 12 : ' Dame seinte marie pur icele grant ioie qe parempli toutes les altres • quant il vous receut en sa tresgrande ioie ' ; that is, ' for the sake of that great joy which fulfilled all the rest ' etc. The English text has ' uor )?e ilke muchele blisse J?et fulde al J?e eorSe,' where ' eorSe ' is probably a corruption of ' oSere.' One manuscript indeed has 'alle )?eode ' corrected later to 'alle oJ?ere'V The French text gives the sense that is required, and cannot have been derived from the English, with the misleading word 'fulde.'
P. 50, 1. 1 : ' Pur iceo mes trescheres soeres le mielz qe vous unqes
1 The passage corresponding to p. 82, 1. 13 is written at the top of a column, and for the most part cannot be made out, but the word 'Angleterre' seems to be pretty distinctly visible.
2 MS. Cotton, Cleop. c. vi.
M. L. R. IX. 5
66 The 'Ancren Riwle'
poez:" gardez voz ouertures y tout soient eles petites.' English: 'Uorjmi mine leoue sustren, j?e leste ty ge euer muwen luuieS our furies, al beon heo lutle.' There seems here to have been a confusion in the translator's mind or eye between ' mielz ' and ' meinz/ and he made the best he could of 'gardez' accordingly.
P. 66, 1.11: Noiez pas nature de geleyne • la geleine quant ele ad ponus(?) ne...fors iangler* me qe gaigne ele de ceo' vient lachaue... li told ses oees et deuoert toutz dunt ele dust mener auant pigons vifs. Tout ausi la chawe denfer le diable, etc.1 English: 'Nabbe heo nout henne kunde. pe hen hwon heo haueS ileid, ne con buten kakelen. And hwat bijit heo J?erof ? KumeS ]?e coue anonriht 7 reueS hire hire eiren, 7 fret al ty of hwat heo schulde uorS bringen hire cwike briddes : 7 riht also J>e luftere coue deouel/ etc.
In the first place ' Noiez pas ' means ' Do you not hear ? ' (i.e. ' Have you not heard ? '), an expression which occurs also elsewhere in this text in introducing illustrations2. This seems here to have been confused with ' Neietz pas,' ' Do not have.' Then as to the rest of the sentence, the French seems to throw light on what has hitherto been a difficulty in the English texi, namely the use of the word ' coue.' In the French, ' chaue ' and ' chaw6 ' are clearly substantives, and stand for the name of a bird, that which is given in Godefroy with the forms ' choe,' ' choue/ 'chave,"cave,"kauwe,' meaning 'owl' or sometimes 'jackdaw'('monedula'). (I leave aside the question whether these are actually all forms of the same word.) Probably in the original French text the word may have been ' caue ' or ' kaue,' and ' caue ' is the form found in the better English manuscripts. In any case the meaning is clear in the French and obscure in the English, apparently from a misunderstanding. The French says that when the hen cackles, the jackdaw comes and devours her eggs ; and so the 'jackdaw of hell,' the devil, comes and devours the good works of the anchoress who chatters about them. In the English text there has apparently been a confusion between ' caue ' as the name of a bird (unknown in English) and the adjective 'caue' from OE 'caf.' The fact that an adjective was understood by some readers in both places is shown by the substitution in one manuscript3 of 'geape' in the earlier clause and of ' luSere ' in the later, for ' caue.' The expression 'jackdaw of hell ' may be parallelled from other passages of the Ancren Riwle, e.g. ' corbin of helle,' ' cat of helle.'
1 This passage is difficult to read, and I cannot make it all out with certainty. . 2 E.g. ' Me surquide sirer noyez vous qe dauid lami dieu,' etc. (p. 50, 1. 10). 3 Cotton, Titus D, xvm.
G. C. MACAULAY 67
P. 128, 1. 23: 'ausi le fet entre multes ascune maluree recluse/ * so do some unhappy recluses among many ' : that is, a few of the many that there are. The English is ' ase deS, among moni rnen, sum uniseli recluse,' which is meaningless.
P. 136, 1. 13. 'Si auant come ele puit seit ludith cest vine dure/ 1 let her so far as she can be Judith, that is live hardly.' The English has ' ge, uor so heo mei beon ludit, J>et is libben herde ' ; but the expression ' uor so ' is not justified by the sense, for the preceding sentence has no reference to any conduct like that of Judith, whose example is introduced here as an additional point.
P. 138, 1. 5 : 'si tost come ele sent qele trop ensuagist,' 'as soon as, she feels that it has grown too fat.' English, ' so sone heo iueleS )?et hit awilegeS to swuSe.' The idea of fatness in reference to the ' fat calf ' spoken of above is more appropriate than that of wildness, and it looks as if there had been some confusion of the rare word ' ensuagir ' with some such supposed verb as ' ensauuagir,' ' to grow wild.'
P. 150, 1. 13 : ' perd la moestesce de la grace dieu,' ' loses the moisture of the grace of God,' the appropriate form of expression, as the metaphor is of the drying up of a branch. The English is ' forleoseS )?e swetnesse of Godes grace,' which is vague and conventional.
P. 222 (last line) : ' prisent et eshaucent 1'amoyne qele fet.' The original reading of the English here is 'herieS 7 heueS up )>e elmesse ty heo deft.' This use of ' hebben up ' in the sense of ' extol ' will hardly be found except as a translation of ' exaltare ' or ' eshaucer,' and the change to ' gelpeS of ' in the Nero version of the text indicates that it was felt to be awkward.
P. 230, 1. 10 : ' Seinte Marie come forement se prist a ces pores/ ' Saint Mary, how violently it acted on those swine.' The original reading of the English text is ' Seinte Marie, swa he stone to J?e swin/ a somewhat unusual expression, which arises, I am disposed to think, from a misreading of ' prist ' as ' puist/ the preterite of ' puir.'
P. 286, 1. 27: 'To much felreolac kundleS hire ofte. Vreo iheorted je schule beo. Anker, of oSer freolac, haueS ibeon oSerhwules to freo of hire suluen.' This as it stands is nonsense. The French is needed to explain it. ' Trop grant franchise engendre cest souent • franche de queor deuez vous estre : Recluse nest daltre chose franche • ad ascune foiz estee trop franche de lecheresse sei meismes.' (The last words are corrupt and should be perhaps 'trop franche de legeresce de sei meismes.') . This means, with reference to the practice of collecting alms by recluses, ' It often produces too great freedom. Free of heart
5—2
68 The 'Ancren Riwle'
ye ought to be ; but a recluse must not be free of any other thing. Sometimes a recluse has been too free of her own person.'
P. 288, 1. 23: ' foS on ase to winken 7 forte leten j?ene ueond iwurSen.' This seems to come from the misunderstanding of the French: 'comence auei come de cloigner de lesser lenemi couenir,' ' begins also to incline to allow the enemy to come to terms.' The word ' cligner ' (' cloigner ') is the same as ' cliner ' (Lat. ' clinare ') and was used in French of the thirteenth century for ' to incline ' or 'to close the eyes.'
P. 318, 1. 3 : ' Sire ceo fu fet od tiel homme • 7 nomer donqe • ou moigne ou prestre ou clerc • 7 de eel ordre • vne femme espouse r lede chose a femme tiele come ieo sui.' The English is, ' Sire, hit was mid swuche monner' 7 nemnen ]?eonne — munuch, preost, o5er clerk, and of )>et hode, iwedded mon, a loSleas J?ing, a wummon ase Ich am.'
The French here (except for ' vne femme espouse ' for ' vn homme espous,' caught from three lines above) makes good sense and accounts fairly for the English, which in itself is very unsatisfactory.
P. 416, 1. 25 : ' Kar dunqe lui couendra penser del forage la uache del louer le pastour de querre la grace de mosser1 • mandir le quant il les enparke- 7 nepurquant rendre les dampnages.' English, 'Vor )?eonne mot heo ]?enchen of ]?e kues foddre, and of heorde-monne huire, oluhnen j?ene heiward, warien hwon me punt hire, .7 gelden, J?auh, J?e hermes.' It must often have struck readers of the English as a strange assumption that the anchoress would be under the necessity of ' cursing ' the haywarcl for impounding her cows. The word * warien ' no doubt arises from a misunderstanding of ' mandir ' as * maudire.' However, the ' n ' is quite plain, and the word is perhaps for ' mandier ' (i.e. 'mendier'), 'to entreat,' or 'supplicate2.'
P. 420, 1. 6 : ' seez od .chaudes kuueles.' In reading the English one is struck by the awkwardness of the expression ' beoS bi warme keppen.' The French of course means ' sit with warm head-coverings on,' and ' seez ' has evidently been mistaken for ' seiez3.'
Against the cumulative effect of such passages as these there is very little that can be opposed on the other side. It may be argued
1 The word 'mosser' in the French is probably, as M. Paul Meyer suggests to me, for ' messer,' 'messier' (the officer whose duty it was to keep cattle from trespassing on vine- yards or other crops), and precisely corresponds to the English 'heiward.'
- It must be observed, however, that the ordinary form 'mendiant' occurs on f. 67 (cf. p. 414, 1. 10).
3 Actually ' seez' occurs as present subjunctive of « estre' in the passage corresponding to p. 378, 1. 27 ; but ' soiez/ used repeatedly as imperative just below this, p. 380, 11. 4, 7, is the usual form; and this was no doubt earlier represented by ' seiez ' (or ' seietz ').
G. C. MACAULAY 69
perhaps that the French text contains some words which would be more likely to occur in a translation from English than in an original work. For example we find the words 'housewif and ' huswiferie ' ; 'ele nest pas housewif (f. 67 v°), 'Recluse qad anmaille resemble housewif sicome fu Marthe ' (f. 68), ' huswiferie est la part Marthe (f. 67 v°). There is no reason, however, why these words should not occur in Anglo-Norman as written in England. They have not hitherto been recorded, but ' hosebaunde ' and ' husbonderie ' are found. Besides these we have 'kappes' ('chaudes kuueles qe Ten appele kappes' f. 68), a word which is here definitely introduced as English, though it might very well occur in French, and near the same place ' wimple,' which is Anglo-Norman for ' guimple.'
One more point should be mentioned. On p. 240 of Morton's edition we have six lines of rhyming English verse in the long metre of the Poema Morale. The substance of these is given in the French version in prose : ' Pensiez souent od dolour de voz pecchez • pensez de la dolorouse peine denfer de les ioies de ciel • pensez de vostre mort demeisne • de la mort nostre seignour an la croiz,' etc. The fact that the English version of this is in metre and rhyme may fairly be taken to prove that here the English is the original. I take it, however, that these lines are not by the author of the Ancren Riwle, but are a quotation both in the French and the English versions, that the French writer, who was no doubt an Englishman, turned them into French prose when he adopted them for his purpose, and that the English translator, being familiar with the original, quoted them as verse. Something of the same kind probably occurred as regards the English proverbial saying which occurs on p. 96, ' euer is J?e eie to the wude leie,' which appears in the French as ' touz iours est loil aloeur de bois/ but was naturally given in English in its popularly current form.
It may be observed that the French text, as we have it, contains four of the longer passages which are found in the Corpus MS. but not in Morton's text, though some of these are rather differently placed. Other variations are as follows: on p.' 412, 1. 26 ff., the directions about meat and drink are somewhat more elaborate in the French than in the English texts, the usages of the Canons of St Augustine and of the Benedictines being particularly cited : the play upon the words * eiSurles ' and ' eityurles,' p. 62, 1. 18, belongs, as may be supposed, to the English only, and so also does the explanation of the word ' tristre,' p. 333, 1. 28 : such an expression as ' pis is )?et Englisch,' p. 272, 1. 22, is
70 The 'Ancren Riwle'
represented by 'C'est le francoys.' It may be noted that on p. 318, 1. 7, where Morton's text has 'eode o5e pleouwe ihe chircheie,' but where the older reading is * Eode o ring i chirch gard/ the French has ' alai en carole en cimitiere.' In general, as will be seen later, the French text supports what seem to be the original readings, as opposed to those of the manuscript followed by Morton.
From this we turn to the Latin version represented by MS. Magd. Coll. Oxford, 67, and by the remains of MS. Cotton, Vitellius E. vii. This latter book, as we have said, has suffered very severely by the fire and only a small portion of it has been in any degree restored. In Smith's Catalogue (1696) Article 6 of this manuscript is thus described : ' Regulse vitas Anachoretarum utriusque sexus scriptse per Simonem de Gandavo, Episcopum Sarum, in usum sororum.' Directly after this follows the title of the treatise De Oculo. But the British Museum Department of MSS. possesses a copy of this early catalogue with manu- script additions made before the fire, from which we learn that the book consisted altogether of 196 leaves, that Art. 6 began on f. 61 and extended to f. 133, where a new article began, described as 'Regula anchoretarum ex superiore (ut videtur) extracta.' Thus Art. 6 of Smith's Catalogue is given as consisting of two separate articles. What the extent of the second of these two was we do not know, because the indication of the leaf at which the next article begins has been cut off by the binder1. But this article, the treatise De Oculo ascribed to Robert Grosseteste, which concluded the volume, must have occupied at least forty-five leaves of the manuscript, and therefore cannot have begun much later than f. 150. It seems pretty certain from the remains which exist, that the article which extended from f. 61 to f. 133 was the Latin version of the Ancren Riwle, and the shorter treatise which followed it was one written for anchorites of the male sex, and independent of the other, not extracted from it, as suggested in the manuscript additions to the catalogue. Altogether of these two treatises thirty -nine leaves are represented in the existing volume, numbered at present ff. 13 — 25 and 27 — 53 2. The last five leaves, ff. 49 — 53, do not belong to the Ancren Riwle, but no doubt to the treatise which followed it. We have therefore portions of thirty-four leaves of the Ancren Riwle in its Latin version, some fairly
1 For information with regard to these manuscript additions to the catalogue I am indebted to Mr J. P. Gilson, Keeper of the Manuscripts.
2 f. 26 has been placed among these by mistake, being a leaf of the treatise De Oculo, while ff. 33, 34 are two portions of the same original leaf.
G. C. MACAULAY 71
well preserved, others mere fragments, in which it is difficult to make out more than a few consecutive words, and at present these leaves are very far from being arranged in the proper order, though here and there we find several consecutive1. The Latin version which we have here is the same as that of the Magdalen College manuscript, with one important difference. The Magdalen MS. omits the eighth part, dealing with ' the External Rule ' (or with ' Domestic Matters ' as it is headed by Morton), but the Cotton MS. contained this, and considerable portions of it are preserved on ff. 45 — 48, which correspond roughly to pp. 408, 20 — 426, 14 of Morton's edition. The Cotton MS. seems to be of the former half of the fourteenth century, while the Magdalen College book can hardly have been written much earlier than 1400. It may be* assumed that Smith found at the beginning of it the ascription of authorship to Simon of Ghent which he cites in his catalogue. The same ascription occurs, as is well known, in the Magdalen manuscript.
It seems still to be considered possible in some quarters that this Latin version is the original, and that the English Ancren Riwle was derived from it2. The argument to that effect by E. E. Bramlette, in Anglia, vol. XV, pp. 478 — 498, deserves attention, because it is evidently founded upon a careful study of the Magdalen College manuscript, or rather of the copy of it furnished to him by Kolbing. We cannot, however, accept his conclusions. He has succeeded in invalidating a few of Morton's arguments, but he is far from having established, or even rendered probable, the thesis which he maintains. As, however, he is the only upholder of that view whose arguments are worth much attention, I think it right to deal with his points seriatim.
First as to his criticism of Morton. (1) He is right in saying that we cannot draw conclusions from the use of 'Rykelotam' or 'kykelotam' in the Latin text3, until we know something more of the history and meaning of the word. His own theory about it is very improbable. (2) It is perhaps true that 'kagya' might have been used for 'cage' without the influence of the English. (3) It is probable that ' tale ' on p. 226, 1. 14, does mean 'narratio' and not 'numerus' ; and (4) it seems likely 'herboruwe/p. 340,1. 12, really corresponds to the Latin 'herbarium,'
1 I have succeeded in identifying all the leaves except f. 13, which is a very small fragment, with no very significant words legible.
2 Wanley threw out the idea, probably on a rather cursory inspection of the Cotton MS. No doubt, on ascertaining that the Latin and the English corresponded generally to each other, he assumed without further investigation that the Latin was the original.
3 It is uncertain whicli of these forms we actually have, for the 'E' and the 'k' of the scribe are not distinguishable with certainty. Probably it is 'Bykelotam,' because the English MSS. for the most part have 'rykelot,' which is no doubt the true reading. The French text has ' rigelot.'
72 The 'Ancren Riwle'
by confusion of form. Finally (5) it is clear that the reading ' sum of hore ' (for ' sum of ham '), p. 222, 1. 31, cannot here be sustained. The true reading is 'sum hore1.' But beyond this Bramlette scores nothing with any certainty against his opponent. The most important points remain practically untouched. The quotation in English of the proverb * Euere is the y}e to )?e wode Iy3he' (p. 96); the use of the English word ' hagges ' (p. 216), to which may be added ' packes ' (p. 168) ; the corre- spondence of ' uoraci ' to ' urakele ' (p. 204), of ' audire ' to ' vren ' (p. 286), and of ' corpus ' to ' bode,' which seems to be the true reading of the English text (p. 400), are all strongly in favour of the view that we have here a Latin translation from the English and not the reverse ; and Bramlette's suggestion to account for some of these, as well as for other difficulties, viz. that the Latin text which we have has freely incorporated glosses written in the margin of an earlier manuscript, is extremely improbable. We shall not easily find Latin manuscripts of the thirteenth or fourteenth century with English glosses, and the Magdalen MS., though it has mistakes, certainly does not suggest the idea of being carelessly written or grossly corrupt. The text corresponds closely with that of the earlier Cotton MS., so far as we are able to compare them, and we must assume that it fairly represents the original, except as regards the avowed omission of the eighth part.
As regards the saying ' Euere is the y}e ' etc., Bramlette says it is quoted in English because it is a proverb. He does not seem to realise how very unusual it is to find proverbs quoted in English in an original Latin book of that period. Incidentally it may be observed that his explanation of the expression ' wode ly}he ' is quite an impossible one2.
The word 'hagges' (represented by ' heggen ' in Morton's text) might well be found difficult by a Latin translator. Instead of being, as Bramlette says, ' too common a word not to have been understood by every one ' it was in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries very unusual. This place is in fact the only instance which has been found of its occurrence in the English of the thirteenth century, and there seems to be only one example of it known in the fourteenth ; moreover, its exact meaning in these early instances is uncertain. The French
1 The French text however has no equivalent of the clause, but after 'houswif de sale • ' proceeds « quide qele bien face sicome fols ' etc. The scribe of the Pepys MS. evidently felt that there was some awkwardness in the introduction of the ' meretrix ' idea, and endeavours to explain it by an antithesis between ' the devil's whore ' and ' the spouse of Christ.' I am disposed to think that 'sum hore' means after all 'one of them.'
2 In the case of another English saying quoted the text is hopelessly corrupt, viz. p. 62, 1. 18, ' in anglico bene dicitur • Ey3e et herdes • id est scheuen • quia multum id est multum dampnum multis fecerunt.' All that we can say is that Bramlette's explana- tion must certainly be wrong.
G. C. MACAULAY 73
here has ' eels seet estries,' but a Latin translator of the English might well hesitate.
In the passage on p. 204, where we have in the English ' et tisse urakele worlde ' and in the Latin ' a uoraci mundo,' it is clear that 'urakele' (i.e. 'frakele') meaning 'dangerous' or 'treacherous' gives the meaning that we want, and that ' uoraci ' is quite beside the mark. Again on p. 286 * uren ' (' vren ') supplies the meaning required, and connects both with what goes before and with what follows, ' Redunge is god bone,' ' Leccio est bona oracio.' It is probable indeed that this is not a case of misunderstanding, but thus the Latin translator, scandalised *by the recommendation to pray less and read more, which is contrary to the usual teaching, but quite in harmony with the sound common sense of the Ancren Riwle, deliberately wrote 'audire' rather than ' orare.' Brarnlette's suggestions as to the word ' vren ' in the English text are quite inadmissible. The ' uri ' of the Corpus and Cleopatra MSS. and the ' preyen ' of the Vernon text shew quite clearly what the word is with which we have to do.
The correspondence of ' bode ' and ' corpus ' (p. 400) depends upon variation of text in the English manuscripts. The question, however, is not at all of the ' body ' of the lover, but of his ' offer,' as anyone must see who reads the passage ; and the reading ' bode ' given in the Nero MS. is probably the true one, in spite of the fact that the rest agree in
* bodi.' The reading of the French text appears to be ' encontre mon ofre.'
The positive evidence which Bramlette adduces as favouring Wanley's view does not in fact help it much. He notes especially the following : (1) P. 2, 1. 22, ' isti dicuntur boni autonomatice,' where the Magdalen MS. has ' Isti dicuntur boni anachorite.' Here the true reading is almost undoubtedly ' antonomasice ' (the Corpus MS. has
* antomasice ') meaning ' per antonomasiam,' i.e. by substitution of this for their true name. The reading ' anachorite ' is a senseless corruption. (2) P. 8, 1. 22, 'J?e isihS J?ene gnet 7 swoluweS )?e vlige/ where the Latin has ' colantes culicem et tamen glutientes camelum.' Here the sober sense of the author was unable to accept the oriental hyperbole, and changed the saying into what seemed a more reasonable form, suggesting the idea of straining the midges out of the drink, but swallowing the much larger flies. On the other hand the Latin translator, who is always particular about the fulness and accuracy of quotations, naturally returns to the camel, and adds the Biblical reference. The originality lies with the English (or French) author, and is not in the least
74 The 'Ancren Riwle'
suggestive of a translation. (3) P. 64, 11. 15—20. The difficulty is solved by the punctuation of the Corpus manuscript (which is also that of all the rest except Morton's), 'mid godes dred. To preost on earst Confiteor,' etc. It is evident that two kinds of visitors are thought of, and that the whole of the latter part of the passage refers to an interview with a spiritual adviser. (4) P. 66, 11. 9 — 15, the word 'coue' (or 'kaue') is to be accounted for in a different manner, as we have seen. (5) P. 70, 11. 12 — 15, the Latin version only shews that the translator was acquainted with the original passage of Anselm, which we should expect from what we know of him otherwise. (6) P. 72, 1. 8, Bramlette assumes that the abbreviation- used here stands for 'senteneie': it might just as well be for 'Seneca1/ and he neglects the stop after the word. As to the saying not being found in Seneca's writings, that is the case with a very large number of the sayings which were fathered upon him. (7) P. 124, 1. 13, the word ' aerem ' in the Latin is right, and the best manuscripts of the English text have 'eir.' (8) P. 140, 11. 7 — 9. No argument can be founded on this passage, so far as I can see. (9) P. 232, 1. 16, 'fastigia' is right, no doubt ; but it is also the reading of the best English manuscripts. (10) P. 234, 1. 2, Bramlette says that ' he sei$ ' in this position is unintelligible. The only fault is in the punctuation : ' The third reason why thou shouldest not be quite secure is, he saith, because security produces carelessness/ This use of 'vor' is quite established. The person referred to is, no doubt, St Augustine, who has been quoted just above in support of the second reason. The author of the Latin version characteristically supplies a reference, though not one by which this latter passage can easily be found2. (11) From the passage quoted under this head no inference can be drawn. (12) P. 254, 1. 21, ']?e brune of golnesse,' represented in the Latin by ' flam ma odii.' Hatred, no doubt, is the main subject, and is typified by Samson's foxes, which had their tails tied together and their heads averse, but the fire-brand at the tail has an additional significance, which the Latin fails to bring out. (13) P. 290, 1. 24, the expression used in the Latin 'in ara crucis' was, as Bramlette shews, an established one, and may well have been used by a learned translator, though it did not occur in the text which he was translating. (14) P. 296, 1. 13, ' pe sparke J?et wint up/ corre-
1 It is not quite the regular abbreviation of either, but would be understood by the context. The French text has written in full, ' Seneca. Ad summam volo,' etc.
2 He says ' sicut dicitur in glosa epistole ad rom.' He has just above given us a reference to Augustine ' in glosa i ad Cor. 8,' which proves to be a comment on that text in the treatise De Trinitate.
G. C. MACAULAY 75
spending to ' Sintilla que accendit.' The idea in the English text is of a spark going up the chimney and alighting on the thatch, which for a time smoulders, and then breaks into flame. The Latin expression gives good enough sense, but 'accendit' is probably for 'ascendit,' a common confusion, as Bramlette shews1.
The rest of the argument depends upon comparison of the two texts with a view to passages omitted or inserted. Passages are found in the Latin which are not in the English text as edited by Morton. A good many of these are simply citations from the Bible or the Fathers, which the author of the Latin text was apt to supply when he saw an opportunity : many of them, however, are to be found in other texts of the English Ancren Riwle. As regards passages which' are not purely of this character, some of the most important are found in other English texts, especially the Corpus MS. This is the case, for example, with that which Bramlette quotes in full as the longest (coming after p. 198, 1. 30) ; and also with those referred to as occurring at p. 96, 1. 20 ; p. 98, 11. 9, 16, 17 ; p. 200, 1. 22 ; p. 202, 1. 2 ; p. 284, 1. 17. In other cases, as p. 96, 1. 1, the argument is confused or destroyed by the introduction of irrelevant quotations in the Latin version. It must be observed that in several cases Bramlette counts his passages twice, under the head of citations, and also as independent portions of the text, e.g. p. 118, 1. 20, where the passage of forty words which he notes as original is entirely composed of quotation; and much the same is true of p. 302, 1. 14, where the Latin version has a reference to the parable of the Prodigal Son in place of the rather obscure allegory of Jacob and Judah in the English text, and of p. 324, 1. 8, where the Latin version quotes in illustration two hexameter verses of common occurrence, ' Crux, aqua, confiteor,' etc. This disposes of nearly all the passages mentioned by Bramlette, except the first two, one at p. 34, 1. 12, where in place of an omission of many pages a few reflections are put in about attendance at public worship, with con- ventional references to the Pharisee and the Publican and Noah's raven and dove; and the other at p. 82, 1. 17, where we have a passage of
VIZ
wule
thou shalt smart for his sin. A'dog will readily enter,' etc. The Latin has ' pro alterius crimine punietur,' leaving out 'ase mon sei'5, }>u schalt acorien \>e rode, f is,' and for a very simple reason probably, viz. because these were not contained in the English text which he had before him. They occur, in fact, so far as I know, only in the Nero MS. The translator then introduces the succeeding proverb with the words ' vulgariter dicitur,' which is a very natural insertion. There is no question therefore of the transference of ' ase mon seift ' or its equivalent from one clause to another.
76 The 'Ancren Riwle'
sixteen lines about Christ and Antichrist, truth and falsehood, of which I do not know the origin, but which is sufficiently commonplace in idea. On the whole the passages in the Latin which do not appear in the existing English manuscripts are such as a translator with a taste for quotation might naturally add to his text.
The case is very different with the passages which are found in the English but not in the Latin. Setting aside the absence of the eighth part in the Magdalen MS., which, as we have seen, is due to a scribe, we have the almost total suppression of the first part, which must have occurred in the Cotton MS. also1. This part, which occupies more than sixteen pages in Morton's edition (pp. 14 — 48, even numbers only), is reduced to two pages of the manuscript, the pages of which contain somewhat more than those of the Camden Society book. It is obvious that this disproportionate brevity cannot have been intended by the original writer, though from the nature of the contents of the first part it is easily intelligible that a translator should omit or abbreviate it. Then secondly, most of the passages are wanting in the Latin which contain personal references to the sisters, as p. 2, 1. 10 ; p. 4, 1. 14 ; p. 48, 11. 2—4 ; p. 50, 11. 20—24 ; p. 84, 11. 22—25 ; p. 114, 11. 24—116 ; p. 116, 11. 2—10; p. 192, 11. 11—27; p. 216, 1. 24; p. 286, 11. 26—29; p. 288, 1. 3 ; p. 308, 11. 14—16. Of these passages one, that on p. 192, is absent from most of the English manuscripts ; but in the other cases we seem to see a systematic attempt to get rid of the personal character of the address2 ; and this is accompanied by another difference of some importance between the two texts. Whereas the English Ancren Riwle is addressed exclusively to women, the Latin endeavours, rather awkwardly, to adapt itself to men also : e.g. (p. 64), ' Cum ad loquitorium accedit religiosus vel religiosa etc....fiunt magistri eorum quorum de- berent esse discipuli. Cum enirn recesserit is qui venit dicit iste vel ista uerbosus vel uerbosa.' An absurd instance is p. 6, 1. 14, where we have 'quidam senes et turpes de quorum casu minus timetur.' This attempt is not consistently carried through, and for the most part the Latin, like the English, has to do with anchorites of the female sex ; but so far as this principle is departed from, it is clear that there is an
1 In MS. Vitellius E. vii the Latin version of the Ancren Riwle occupied seventy-three leaves, of which thirty-four are represented in the existing remains. By a simple calcula- tion founded upon the contents of these leaves we find that the text of the first seven parts cannot have been materially longer than that of the Magdalen MS., and hence it is practically certain that the first part was similarly treated in this copy.
2 It is not the case, as Bramlette suggests, that the personal remarks in the English version interfere with the connection and sequence of ideas, and so prove themselves to be additions.
G. C. MACAU LAY 77
interference with the original purpose. Finally, the style of the Latin version throughout is far more concise than that of the English, and often expresses with a dry scholastic brevity what is in the English more fully and agreeably set forth. There is for the most part a want of those amenities of style by which the Ancren Riwle in English and in French is happily distinguished, and humorous or characteristic touches are usually omitted. It would be strange indeed if a translator from the Latin in the thirteenth century had shewn so much independence and effected so great an improvement in his text as we should have to acknowledge here, if we supposed the Latin version of the Cotton and Magdalen manuscripts to have been the original either of the English or of the French text.
If it be concluded that the Latin is in fact a translation from the English, we may obtain confirmation of this view from many passages besides those cited by Morton : e.g. p. 94, 1. 14, ' quarto propter ampli- orem mercedem eternam. Sic enim disposuit deus,' etc., the connexion being entirely destroyed; p. 96, 1. 19, 'pro morte sustinenda nollem feditatem aliquam cogitare erga te,' which surely no one would have written who had not the English ' uor te ]?olien deaSe ' before him : in the passage added after p. 198, ' Maledicta et amens res- os tale magis fetet coram deo,' etc., where the English (Corpus MS.) is ' Me Binges amansede nuten ha "p hare song ant hare bonen to godd stinkeS fulre,' etc. p. 212, 1. 16 ' est protector cultellorum' for 'is his knifworpare.' Such variations as these, and the text is full of them, are more probably explained by supposing translation from the English with partial misunderstanding than in any other way ; and the literal reproductions of passages such as we have on p. 318, 1. 5, where the English text is unsatisfactory, points in the same direction. Moreover it is to be noted that the variations of the English manuscripts, when they are closely studied, are found to cast additional difficulties in the way of the theory of a Latin original. Mtihe, for example, though a supporter of this theory, is driven by his examination of the Titus MS. to the most improbably complicated suggestions1.
Finally, those who uphold this theory have to deal with the fact that the Latin version which we possess is definitely associated with the name of Simon of Ghent, bishop of Salisbury, who died in 13 15. The attribution of authorship is not a mere casual one. It occurs as a rubric at the beginning of the text of the Magdalen MS., and was no
1 In his dissertation Uber den im MS. Cotton, Titus D. xvin enthaltenm Text des « Ancren Riwle,' Gottingen, 1901.
78 The 'Ancren Riwle'
doubt found in the original from which this manuscript was derived. ' Hie incipit prohemium venerabilis patris magistri Simonis de Gandauo, episcopi Sarum, in librum de vita solitaria, quern scripsit sororibus suis Anachoritis apud Tarente.' This ascribes authorship of the Latin book to one who lived too late to have been the author of the English ; and we must suppose that he was at least responsible for this Latin version, here treated as an original book. It should be noted that the theory of the connexion of the Ancren Riwle with ' Tarente ' depends entirely on this statement, and such a connexion must hot be assumed with regard either to the English or the French texts. We know nothing of the family of Simon of Ghent, but it may be supposed that English was not the native language of his sisters, and they may well have understood Latin better. The partial adaptation of the book to the use of anchorites of the male sex also, was no doubt owing to a desire to make it more generally useful1.
CAMBRIDGE.
(To be continued.)
G. C. MACAULAY.
1 In declining the suggestion that the Ancren Riwle was originally written in Latin, we must not, of course, fail to note its obligations to earlier Latin books dealing with the same subjects, as for example the Exhortatio ad Virginem deo dedicatam by S. Caesarius, and especially Aelred's 'Epistola ad sororem inclusam,' which in fact is once referred to by name in the Ancren Riwle (p. 368), and from which several particular precepts seem to be derived, as the warnings against the possession of cattle, against large hospitality and almsgiving, and against keeping a school, the suggestion of caution in choosing an elderly and thoroughly trustworthy confessor, and some of the precepts about dress and adornment. The parts that deal with sins, confession and penitence naturally have something in common with other treatises on the same subjects ; and the morals drawn from the supposed nature of the ostrich, the pelican and the night-raven are, more or less, the common property of medieval writers : see especially the treatise De Bestiis (Lib. i), printed in Migne's Patrologia, vol. CLXXVII.
THE PROBLEM OF THE 'LUDUS COVENTBIAE.'
THE cycle of plays known as the ' Ludus Coventriae ' exists in a single MS. (British Museum Cotton MS. Vespasian D. viii) which bears the following notes :
(1) The date 1468.
(2) At the beginning the signature ' Robert Hegge, Dunelmensis,' and before the 29th play ' Ego KH. Dunelmensis, Possideo : Ov
(3) On the fly-leaf in an Elizabethan hand 'The plaie called Corpus Christi.'
(4) On the fly-leaf in the hand of Richard James, Sir Robert Cotton's librarian c. 1630: ' Contenta Novi Testamenti scenice expressa et actitata olim per rnonachos sive fratres mendicantes : vulgo dicitur hie liber "Ludus Coventriae," sive ludus Corporis Christi: scribitur nietris Anglicanis.'
The fourth note is the only evidence upon which the name usually given to the manuscript is founded, and at the one point upon which James's evidence can be tested, he breaks down. He says that the contents are from the New Testament. This shows that he had not read or even examined the manuscript, as the first seven plays are founded upon the Old Testament ; then follow two plays on apocryphal gospels, while the tenth opens with a medieval allegory. It is not until half-way through the tenth play that the New Testament is at last reached. James's evidence therefore is by no means satisfactory. He apparently knew and cared nothing about the contents of the manuscript, and the form that his blunder takes suggests that he was equally careless of its history, for his mistake can be traced to a probable source.
The Coventry Corpus Christi cycle was exceptional in that it consisted only of New Testament plays. It survived later than most of the other mystery cycles ; and plays, though perhaps not the old ones, were still performed at Coventry as late as 16061. In 1630 some memory of these plays probably survived in literary circles, as curiosities
1 Chambers, The Mediceval Stage, n, 362.
80 The Problem of the 'Ludus Coventriae'
of the old popish days, when there were still monks and friars in the country, and James, stumbling upon a volume of plays which evidently belonged to those times, may have jumbled up all these fragmentary ideas into his note. Probably he did not know that Corpus Christi plays were acted at other places besides Coventry.
James's error might have been detected long ago, but for a very curious coincidence. Dugdale, when writing his History of Warwick- shire, examined the manuscript of the ' Ludus Coventriae.' In a rather late compilation of the annals of Coventry he found a note that in 1493 the King ' came to se the playes acted by the Gray Freirs.' Another version of the annals states that the King came to see the plays ' at the Grey Friars/ and it seems probable that ' by ' in the first quotation is equivalent to ' beside.' Unfortunately Dugdale was misled by James's note, and imagined that the plays were acted by the Grey Friars in person1.
It is not necessary to go into the ingenious conjectures to which this blunder has given rise. The idea that the plays were performed by the Grey Friars of Coventry has now been abandoned by most authorities, and the present theory is that the cycle was performed by strolling players, and did not belong to any one town. Yet there are difficulties in this hypothesis. All the available evidence goes to show that the strollers performed single plays, which lasted not more than two or three hours. The companies also seem to have been small, con- taining as a rule about half a dozen players. The ' Ludus Coventriae ' is so long that it would take nearly a week to act (see below). The scenes often require a great many characters, and extra persons are sometimes introduced quite unnecessarily, as for instance the priests and handmaidens who wait on Mary in the Temple. It is true that the whole easily splits up into separate plays, but it seems to have been arranged deliberately, if clumsily, as a cycle. The purpose for which this was done is undiscovered.
The manuscript of the ' Ludus Coventriae ' opens with a Prologue spoken by three Vexillators or standard-bearers, who announce the order of the pageants which are to follow. Every commentator upon the text has noticed that the pageants promised in the Prologue do not exactly correspond with those given in the text, but no complete com- parison of the two lists has yet been made ; in fact, the only modern editor of the manuscript, Halliwell-Phillipps, expressly stated in his edition of it for the Shakespeare Society that 'in the order of the 1 Craig, The Coventry Corpus Christi P/ai/s, E.E.T.S., p. xxii.
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS
81
pageants, I have not regarded the speeches of the vexillators.' Very interesting results, however, are to be obtained from a point-for-point comparison such as is given in the table below. Halliwell-Phillipps's numbering is noted for the sake of reference, but the plays of the text have been re-divided in order to make them correspond as closely as possible to the Prologue. The differences between the two, which are in italics, are therefore only those which are absolutely irreconcilable.
PROLOGUE. Introductory stanza, spoken by 1st Vex.
1st pageant. One stanza by 2nd Vex. The Creation of Heaven, the Fall of Lucifer.
TEXT.
1st play [H.-P. i to end of st. 9]. The Creation of Heaven, the Fall of Lucifer, the Creation of Earth. [The Five Days of Creation cannot be divided from th# Fall of Lucifer without breaking a stanza in two.]
2nd play [H.-P. i last 3 st. and ii]. The Day of Rest, the Temptation and Fall of Man.
3rd play [H.-P. in]. Cain and Abel.
4th play [H.-P. iv]. The Building of the Ark, the Death of Cain, the Flood.
5th play [H.-P. Isaac.
v]. Abraham and
6th play [H.-P. vi]. Two Tables of the Law.
Moses and the
7th play [H.-P. vn]. The Prophets.
2nd pag. Two st. by 3rd Vex. The Six Days of Creation, the Tempta- tion and Fall of Man.
3rd pag. One st. by 1st Vex. Cain and Abel.
4th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Building of the Ark, the Flood.
5th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. Abraham and Isaac.
6th pag. One st. by 1st Vex.
Moses and the Two Tables of the Law.
7th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Prophets.
These seven plays are all in the same style; they are short and straightforward, keeping strictly to the Bible narrative, except for the Fall of the Angels, and the Death of Cain, which are treated very briefly. There are no subordinate incidents, comic relief, or allegorical characters. The stage directions are few and all in Latin. The scenes are sometimes divided by the directions 'introitus Noe/ 'explicit Moyses,' etc.
8th play [H.-P. vin]. Prologue, spoken by Contemplacio.
The Barrenness of Anna.
9th play [H.-P. ix]. Prologue by Contemplacio.
The Dedication of Mary in the Temple [the fifteen psalms of Mary].
10th play [H.-P. x]. Prologue by Contemplacio [printed by H.-P. as the epilogue of the last play].
The Betrothal and Marriage of Mary.
There is no 8th pageant in the Pro- logue.
There is no 9th pageant in the Pro- logue.
10th pag. Two st. by 3rd Vex. and one st. by 1st Vex.
The Betrothal and Marriage of Mary.
M. L. R. ix.
6
82 The Problem of the ' Ludus Coventriae*
PROLOGUE. TEXT.
llth pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. llth play [H.-P. xi]. Prologue by
The Salutation and Conception. Contemplacio.
Scene in Heaven between the virtues Justice, Truth, Mercy and Peace, and the Three Persons of the Trinity, the Saluta- tion and Conception.
12th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. 12th play [H.-P. xn and first 22 lines
The Return of Joseph. of xiii]. The Return of Joseph.
There is no 13th pageant. 13th play [H.-P. xm]. Prologue by
Contemplacio.
The Visit of Mary to Elizabeth. Epi- logue by Contemplacio explaining the origin of the ' AveJ ' Benedictus ' and ' Magnificat. ,'
This section is separated from the rest of the series by the prologues and epilogue of Contemplacio. The plays are divided from each other by the prologues. The style is different from that of the earlier plays. The object of this cycle dealing with the Girlhood of the Virgin is to explain the origin of those parts of the church service which relate to her. The scenes are very long and long-winded. Allegorical characters are introduced freely. There is an attempt at humour in the aged Joseph, who does not want a young wife, but the writer jokes with difficulty. The stage directions are fairly full, partly in Latin, partly in English.
14th pag. One st. of four lines only 14th play [H.-P. xiv]. The Trial of by 1st Vex. Joseph and Mary.
The Trial of Joseph and Mary.
15th pag. One st. of four lines only 15th play [H.-P. xv]. Joseph and the by 2nd Vex. Midwives, the Birth of Christ.
Joseph and the Midwives, the Birth of Christ.
Unlike the foregoing plays, which were all intended to edify, these two are broadly comic. There are no allegorical characters, unless the two detractors in the 14th play, Bakbytere and Reyse-sclaundyr, count as such. The stage directions are fairly full and all in Latin.
16th pag. One normal st. by 3rd Vex. 16th play [H.-P. xvi]. The Adoration
The Adoration of the Shepherds. of the Shepherds.
15th (sic) pag. One st. by 1st Vex. 17th play [H.-P. xvn]. Herod and
Herod and the Three Kings, the the Three Kings, the Adoration of the
Adoration of the Three Kings. Three Kings, the Flight of the Three
Kings. \The scene of the Adoration is added in a different hand. H.-P. n.]
This is omitted entirely in the Pro- 18th play [H.-P. xvin]. The Purifica- logue. No place is left for it in the tion. In the margin of this play is numbering. written the date 1468.
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS
83
PROLOGUE.
16th (sic) pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt.
17th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. The Death of Herod.
TEXT,
19th play [H.-P. xix to st. 14]. The Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into Egypt.
20th play [H.-P. xix to end]. The Death of Herod.
The 16th, 17th, 19th and 20th plays form a complete cycle, into which the 18th seems to be interpolated. In the 18th play there are full stage directions, partly in Latin, partly in English. In the rest the directions are very short and in Latin only. There is no division into scenes, and the whole appears to have been intended to be acted continuously. The allegorical characters of Death and the Devil are introduced. There is one attempt at humour in the Shepherds' pla;f. The flight into Egypt is treated very briefly.
Christ and the
18th pag. One st. by 1st Vex. Christ and the Doctors.
19th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex.
The Baptism of Christ, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, Christ goes into the Wilderness.
20th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. The Parliament of Devils, the Tempta- tion of Christ.
21st pag. One st. by 1st Vex. The Woman taken in Adultery.
22nd pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Raising of Lazarus.
21st play [H.-P. xx]. Doctors.
22nd play [H.-P. xxi]. The Baptism of Christ, the Descent of the Holy Ghost, Christ goes into the Wilderness. [The first speech of John the Baptist is added in another hand. H.-P. n.]
23rd play [H.-P. xxn]. The Parlia- ment of Devils, the Temptation of Christ.
24th play [H.-P. xxin]. taken in Adultery.
The Woman
25th play of Lazarus.
xxiv]. The Raising
These five plays are simply written, and have no allegorical characters, except the devils. The stage directions are few and in Latin. The beginnings and ends of the plays are sometimes marked by such phrases as ' Modo de doctoribus disputantibus cum Jhesu in tempio/ ' Hie incipit de suscitatione Lazari,' etc. The agreement of the scenes with the description in the Prologue is remarkably close.
26th play [H.-P. xxv]. Prologue by Lucifer. The Council of the Jews to destroy Christ.
27th play [H.-P. xxvi]. Philip and James find the ass and the foal, the Preaching of Peter and John, the Entry of Christ into Jerusalem, the Healing of the Blind, Christ's Lament over Jerusalem.
28th play [H.-P. xxvn]. The Last Supper at the House of Simon the Leper, the Woman with the Ointment, Judas sells
Christ.
This is omitted altogether from the Prologue, and no number is left for it.
23rd pag. First four lines of st. by 3rd Vex.
The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.
24th pag. Completion of st. by 1st Vex.
The Last Supper, Judas sells Christ.
6—2
84
The Problem of the l Lucius Coventriae'
PROLOGUE.
25th pag. One normal st. by 2nd Vex. The Garden of Gethsemane, the Be- trayal of Christ.
None of this is mentioned in the Pro- logue, nor is any number left for it.
26th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. The Trial of Christ before Caiaphas, the Denial of Peter.
This is not mentioned in the Prologue, and there is no number left for it.
27th pag. One st. by 1st Vex. Christ and the Three Thieves before Pilate. Pilate's Wife goes to bed.
28th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Remorse and Death of Judas.
29th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex.
The Dream of Pilate's Wife, the Trial of Christ and the Three Thieves before Pilate.
30th pag. One st. by 1st Vex. The Crucifixion, the Virgin and St John.
31st pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Miracle of Longinus, the Descent into Hell.
32nd pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. The Burial of Christ, Pilate's Three Soldiers.
33rd pag. One st. by 1st Vex. The Resurrection, Christ appears the Virgin.
to
TEXT.
29th play [H.-P. xxvm]. The Garden of Gethsemane, the Betrayal of Christ, Mary Magdalen brings the news to the Virgin.
30th play [H.-P. xxix]. Prologue, a Procession of the Apostles, with John the Baptist and St Paul, expounded by two doctors, then a speech by an expositor [the speech is headed Contemplacio, but there is no name in the stage direction]. The expositor states that last year they showed the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper and the Betrayal of Christ, — this year they will proceed to His Trial and Pas- sion. There follows a scene between King Herod and his Two Soldiers.
31st play [H.-P. xxx]. The Trial of Christ before Caiaphas, the Denial of Peter, the Remorse and Death of Judas. [The last a short episode in eight lines.]
32nd play [H.-P. xxx]. Pilate and before Herod.
Christ before
These scenes take place further on ; they occur twice in the Prologue.
This is a very short incident which occurs above.
33rd play [H.-P. xxxi and xxxn to
st. 18]. Prologue by Satan, the Dream of Pilate's Wife, the Trial of Christ and the Three Thieves before Pilate.
34th play [H.-P. xxxn st. 18 to end]. The Bearing of the Cross, Veronica's Handkerchief, the Crucifixion, the Virgin and St John.
35th play [H.-P. xxxm]. The Descent into Hell.
36th play [H.-P. xxxiv and xxxv to st. 23]. The Miracle of Longinus. The Burial of Christ, the Three Soldiers.
37th play [H.-P. xxxv to end]. The Resurrection, Christ appears to the Vir- gin, Pilate and the Soldiers.
The 26th to 37th plays form a complete Easter play, which was intended to be acted one half in one year and the second half in the next year. It is long and elaborate. The stage directions are very full and in English. The action takes place on different scaffolds, but there is no division into scenes, and it is evidently meant to be acted continuously. This section is imperfectly described in the
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS
85
Prologue, where the order of events is often misplaced. The cycle clearly begins with the Devil's long Prologue to the 26th play, but the end is not so distinctly marked. The reason for this will be discussed below.
PROLOGUE.
34th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex.
The Three Maries at the Sepulchre, the Message of the Resurrection, Peter and John.
35th pag. One st. by 3rd Vex. Mary Magdalen at the Sepulchre.
36th pag. One st. by 1st Vex. The Pilgrims of Emmaus.
37th pag. First four lines of st. by 2nd Vex.
The Incredulity of Thomas.
38th pag. Completion of st. by 3rd Vex.
The Ascension, the Apostles comforted by Angels.
39th pag. Normal st. by 1st Vex. The Descent of the Holy Ghost.
This is in a different handwriting and is not mentioned in the Prologue.
40th pag. One st. by 2nd Vex. The Day of Judgment.
Concluding stanza by '3rd Vex. which
mentions N town, and states that the
plays will be performed there on Sunday.
The last plays, except the interpolated Assumption play, are simple and scriptural. The stage directions, with one exception, are in Latin and are few in number. There are no allegorical persons. The scenes are sometimes divided by the directions ' Explicit apparicio Mariae Magdalen,' ' Hie incipit aparicio Cleophae et Lucae,' etc.
The Prologue is in stanzas of fourteen lines. It is spoken by the three Vexillators in turn, and normally each has a stanza, but although they never speak out of order, sometimes two stanzas are assigned to one Vexillator, and sometimes one stanza is divided between two. This gives rise to the suspicion that the Prologue has been altered from its original form, and that these changes were necessary in order to fit in the Vexillators each in his turn.
Further examination confirms this suspicion. It is noticeable that parts of the Prologue describe the pageants very accurately, while in
TEXT.
38th play [H.-P. xxxvil The Three Maries at the Sepulchre, the Message of the Resurrection, Peter and John.
39th play [H.-P. xxxvn]. Mary Mag- dalen at the Sepulchre.
40th play [H.-P. xxxvm to st. 30]. The Pilgrims of Emmaus.
41st play [H.-P. xxxvm st. 31 to end]. The Incredulity of Thomas.
42nd play [H.-P. xxxix]. The Ascen- sion, the Apostles comforted by Angels, the Choosing of Matthias.
43rd play [H.-P. XL]. The Descent of the Holy Ghost.
44th play [H.-P. XLI]. The Death, Funeral, Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin.
45th play [H.-P. XLII]. The Day of Judgment. [Incomplete.]
86 The Problem of the 'Ludus Coventriae'
other parts the description is incorrect; some pageants are omitted, although numbers are left for them in the Prologue, others are omitted altogether, and two scenes are described in the Prologue which do not occur in the manuscript. The concluding stanza of the Prologue states that:
Of holy wrytte this game xal bene And of no fablys be no way.
but so far is this from being the case, that the manuscript contains more legendary matter than any of the other extant cycles, except the Cornish. On the other hand it is these legendary portions which are most often omitted or misdescribed in the Prologue.
It may be inferred that the Prologue, including the last stanza, was originally written for a cycle of plays belonging to N— - town. Later
a number of other plays were interpolated into the N town cycle,
and the Prologue was expanded to include them, but the alteration was performed clumsily and incompletely ; perhaps it was undertaken rather to serve as an index to the manuscript than as a proclamation, although of course it could be used for the latter purpose if necessary.
From this reasoning it follows that there are two marks which must distinguish the original N— - town plays from the interpolations. In the first place they must be described accurately by the Prologue, and in the second place they must be founded upon stories from the Bible.
The first seven Old Testament plays differ from the Prologue only in two points, one slight difference in order, and one small omission. They are therefore probably part of the N— - town cycle. Then comes a long interpolation, very imperfectly described in the Prologue, and the N— - town cycle is not resumed until the 21st play [H.-P. xx] ' Christ and the Doctors.' This and the four following plays have a closer correspondence with the Prologue than any other part of the
text, and they may therefore be regarded as certainly N town
plays.
There follows another long interpolation, which is very incompletely treated in the Prologue. Here however the discrepancies throw further light on the N— - town series. As the events of any Easter cycle were necessarily much the same, the compiler seems to have been content to leave most of the stanzas in the Prologue which described
the N town Easter plays, although they do not correspond very
closely with . those which he substituted. In the N— - town plays there was no scene between Mary Magdalen and the Virgin, no Herod, no Bearing of the Cross, but on the other hand Pilate's wife appeared
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS 87
in two scenes, while in the text she only comes on once, and there was a complete play on the Remorse and Death of Judas, which is only a minor incident in the text.
From the play of ' The Three Maries at the Sepulchre ' onwards the plays correspond with the Prologue, except that the latter omits the choosing of Matthias, a short episode in the Pentecost play. These
plays were therefore probably part of the N town cycle, with the
exception of ' The Death, Funeral and Assumption of the Virgin.' This play 'is in a different hand, and is written on a separate quire of different paper. But it was incorporated at the time of the original writing of the manuscript... for it is both corrected and rubricated by the hand of the scribe who wrote the bulk of the cycle1.'
This series of plays on the whole fulfils the promise of the Prologue and is founded on Holy Writ. The biblical events are sometimes wrongly grouped, as in the 6th play, where the incident of Moses and the Burning Bush is made the preliminary of Moses and the Tables of the Law. Sometimes, too, the Bible narrative is expanded; the Temptation begins with a Parliament of Devils, — the death of Lazarus and the lamentation of his sisters with their consolers are given in full, and so forth, — but these are expansions on the lines of the text, not wholly extraneous additions. The supposed N— - town plays have other characteristics in common. They are frequently divided up into separate plays by such directions as ' introitus,' or ' hie incipit ' at the beginning, and 'explicit' or 'Amen' at the end. The stage directions resemble those in the York cycle, being short and entirely in Latin. There are no comic incidents or allegorical characters ; the aim of the whole is didactic, and the plays seem to be earlier in form, though not in language, than the others in the manuscript. The Prologue states 'that the plays were performed at N- - town on a Sunday. They cannot therefore have formed a Corpus Christi cycle, as that would have taken place on a Thursday, but it may have been a Whitsun cycle.
About the year 1468 someone took this old cycle of plays and amalgamated with it several other cycles which he had before him. His object was twofold, — to convey instruction and to honour the Virgin, — and he selected all his plays with a view to these ends. Between the end of the Old Testament plays and the beginning of the New Testament he interpolated the cycle of ' The Girlhood of the Virgin.' This is complete in itself, and would be appropriate for
1 W. W. Greg in the Athenasum for Sept. 13, 1913. Halliwell-Phillipps was therefore mistaken when he took it for a later addition.
88 The Problem of the 'Ludus Coventriae'
performance on St Anne's Day by a religious guild of St Anne or of the Virgin. It was included by the compiler because it fell in so well with his purpose, as it is very didactic, and written in praise of the Virgin. He inserted some stanzas descriptive of the cycle in the Prologue, and left numbers for others which he never wrote.
The 14th and 15th plays [H.-P. XI v and xv] appear to come from
some craft-guild plays other than those of N town, as the stanzas
relating to them in the Prologue are evidently insertions. These are the only plays in the whole manuscript where the treatment is avowedly comic. They were probably included as part of the history of the Virgin.
The Nativity plays, or rather play, as it is evidently meant to be acted continuously, forms a separate Christmas series, distinct in style and language. The compiler must have chosen it on account of the impressive 'Death of Herod,' which is the best scene in the whole manuscript, but he was not quite satisfied, because there is so little in it about the Virgin, and he therefore inserted the play of ' The Purification.' This play was perhaps taken from some other Christmas series. It is not mentioned in the Prologue, and therefore cannot belong to N— - town, and it has so little affinity to the 14th and 15th plays that it probably is not connected with them.
After the five N— - town plays comes a wholly different interpola- tion, an Easter play which was intended for representation in two successive years. As it is very didactic and assigns an important place to the Virgin, the compiler inserted it instead of the N— - town Easter series. The beginning and middle of this Easter cycle are clear, but the compiler seems to have cut off the end, and substituted the
rest of the N town plays. The Resurrection play contains a speech
from the thirteenth century East Midland poem of ' The Harrowing of Hell1 ' and the very elaborate stage directions in English resemble those of the morality play ' Mind, Will, and Understanding2.'
In most of the plays which are here called interpolations the matter is to a great extent legendary, and the lines of the Prologue which promise that they shall be founded on Holy Writ are not applicable. ' The Girlhood of the Virgin ' is based upon the . apocryphal ' Birth of the Virgin' and ' Protevangelion of James.' The scene between the four 'Daughters of God,' Truth, Mercy, Peace, and Justice, at the beginning of the tenth play, is a favourite medieval allegory which was
1 A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays, p. xxxviii.
2 Pollard, The Macro Plays, E.E.T.S., pp. xix— xx n.
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS 89
also dramatised in 'The Castle of Perseverance/ a morality of c. 1425 l. The scriptural narrative is not reached until the Salutation. ' The Trial of Joseph and Mary' is entirely apocryphal ; so are the Cherry tree Story and the episode of Joseph and the Mid wives in ' The Birth of Christ.' The Christmas play keeps closer to the Bible, but contains the addition of the Death of Herod. The Easter cycle includes the legends of St Veronica, the Appearance to the Virgin, and the Descent into Hell, besides numerous small additions to and deviations from the New Testament.
Thus in order to discover the origins of the ' Ludus Coventriae ' it
is necessary to identify not merely N town, but five other places
where five different cycles were performed. It has recently been, suggested with some probability that ' The Girlhood of the Virgin ' was the cycle performed at Lincoln2. Setting aside this complicated problem, there remain the questions of why and where the present compilation was made. It seems probable that the whole cycle was arranged for representation on some particular occasion. It is so long that it can scarcely have been acted often ; the whole performance must have taken nearly a week. The cycle dealing with ' The Girlhood of the Virgin ' required a whole day, as Contemplacio makes clear in the Prologues. The Easter plays required two days. The other plays were shorter, but in order to put these cycles in their proper places, it would be necessary to spread the acting over six days thus :
1st day. The seven Old Testament plays.
2nd day. The Girlhood of the Virgin.
3rd day. Twelve plays, beginning with the Prologue to ' The Trial of Joseph and Mary ' and ending with Christ's prophecy of His death at the end of 'The Raising of Lazarus.'
4th and 5th days. The Easter plays.
6th day. Seven plays beginning with the lament of the Maries and ending with the Day of Judgment.
With regard to the question of the locality to which the MS. belongs, its wanderings may be traced for one or two steps. Robert Hegge of Durham was the owner previous to Sir Robert Cotton. Hegge died suddenly in 1629 at the age of thirty. He and James, Sir Robert's librarian, both belonged to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and James probably acquired the manuscript after Hegge's death. Robert Hegge was the author of The Legend of St Cuthbert. His
1 Pollard, The Macro Plays, E.E.T.S., pp. xxiii, xxxix.
2 Hardin Craig in the Athenaeum for Aug. 16, 1913.
90 The Problem of the l Ludus Coventriae'
father, Stephen Hegge, a public notary of Durham, was also an antiquary, who made copies of his son's book and of The Rites and Monuments of Durham (1593), now in Bishop Cosin's Library at Durham1. Kobert Hegge's maternal uncle Robert Swift had a large library, of which he bequeathed the greater part to his ' true brother and friend' Stephen Hegge in 1599-16002. Thus Robert Hegge belonged on both sides to families who delighted in books and in the antiquities of their native town, and it seems possible that he found the MS. of the ' Ludus Coven triae ' at Durham.
It is tempting to suppose that the MS. contains the Corpus Christ! plays which were undoubtedly performed at Durham in the fifteenth century3, but the language in which the plays are written makes this theory untenable. All the plays are in the dialect of the East Midlands except the addition of 'The Death, Funeral, Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin,' which bears some traces of the northern dialect. It is also northern in treatment, as it assigns a very important place to the incidents of 'The Funeral of the Virgin.' Plays on this subject were performed at York and at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but it is not mentioned anywhere else, although the 'Assumption' was very popular. It may be conjectured that the manuscript drifted to Durham in the course of the sixteenth century, but the compilation must have been made in the Midlands.
The two extant collections of morality plays, the Digby MS. and the Macro MS., are both connected, rather vaguely, with the monastery of Bury St Edmund's. The former once belonged to Miles Blomfield, and there was a monk of that name at Bury St Edmund's in the sixteenth century. The latter was found among papers which were said to have come from the monastery. Both contain the morality of ' Mind, Will and Understanding,' otherwise called 'Wisdom/ which has a certain affinity to the Easter cycle in the ' Ludus.' There were Corpus Christi pageants maintained by the craft guilds of Bury St Edmund's, but it is not certain whether these were plays or dumb-shows4. The MSS. of craft-guild plays were sometimes deposited in religious houses for safe-keeping; for instance the York plays were kept at the Holy Trinity Priory, and the Wakefield plays at Woodkirk Priory. If the .monks of Bury St Edmund's were in the habit of transcribing plays,
1 Fowler, The Rites and Monuments of Durham, Surtees Soc., p. ix.
2 North Country Will*, Surtees Soc., in, 175.
3 Dur. Curs. Rec., No. 44, m. 9 and No. 47, m. 14 d, P.B.O., printed in Victoria County History of Durham, n, 256, and Surtees, History of Durham, iv (2) 21.
4 Chambers, Mediceval Stage, n, 343.
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS 91
and the guild plays of the town were also kept at the Abbey, an enter- prising clerk who wished to compile a cycle for some particular occasion would find quite a large collection to work upon, and it must have been out of such a collection as this that the ' Ludus Coventriae ' was composed. The evidence is very slight, but rather suggestive ; such as it is, it points to Bury St Edmund's as the home of the manuscript.
MADELEINE HOPE DODDS.
GATESHEAD.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
EARLY USES OF ' PARLIAMENTUM.'
The student of mediaeval institutions is to-day becoming keenly aware of the neglect of language study as a means of arriving at historical truth. No less an institution than the English Parliament has thus far failed to profit, in any important way, from philology. Such words as concilium, consilium, and curia, as used in England, have never been subjected to comprehensive, painstaking investigation. Even early uses of parliamentum itself, as it is the object of this note to show, have passed unnoticed.
Speaking of central assemblies in England, Stubbs has said that the name of parliament was first applied to them 'by a contemporary writer in 1246, namely by M. Paris, iv., 5181.' Dealing with the same period and subject, Gneist says: 'Shortly afterwards,... the name "parliamentum" occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244; Matth. Paris, 1246),...2.' And both writers note Henry Ill's 'retrospective' use of the word, in 1244, in connection with the assembly which extorted Magna Charta from John3. On this point, one or other of these classical authorities has been followed by later writers, practically all of the standard manuals and text-books reproducing the substance of the statements just cited4. It is, I believe, worth while to point out that there were in England several earlier uses of the word in the connection under consideration5.
1 Const. Hist, i, § 159. 2 Hist, of the English Constitution, i, 316.
3 'Parliamentum Eunimede, quod fuit inter Dom. Job. -Regem patrem nostrum et barones suos Angliee (Rot. Claus. 28 Hen. III.).' Ibid.
4 The New English Dictionary adds nothing. Its citation of a use of the word for 1237 in M. Paris's Historia Minor, n, 393 is of no value, for the minor chronicle was a revision and abridgment of the Chronica Majora, and was begun as late as 1250.
5 An instance occurs between the two dates pointed out by Gneist, viz. in 1245 : ' Henricus rex tenuit parliamentum suurn Londoniae xv. kal. Aprilis de tribute Papae.' Ann. Winton., 90. The term is applied to an ecclesiastical assembly in 1240 : ' Dominus Otto legatus tenuit magnum parliamentum, cum episcopis et abbatibus apud Londoniam in octavis Omnium Sanctorum.' Ann. Theokesb., 116.
Miscellaneous Notes 93
Matthew Paris used it in 1242 : ' Convocatur generale parlamentum Londoniis die Martis ante Purificationem beatse Virginis1.' There is no doubt as to the nature of this assembly ; a few sentences further on, it is referred to in these words : ' De concilio magno quod cum indigna- tione magnatum solutum est.' Later in this year is to be found an official use of the word in those same Close Rolls in which Stubbs and Gneist found the first instance two years later. Furthermore this is not a ' retrospective ' use, but refers to a meeting to be held the next month : ' Mandatum est G. de Segrave, justiciario foreste, quod permittat J. de Nevill' habere balliam suam de Sothour' et Stawd' usque ad parliamentum regis quod erit Lond' a die Sancti Johannis Baptiste in unum mensem, quo tune venire nullatenus omittat2.' To cite Matthew Paris again, we find him using the word in an interesting way in 1239. The Pope was dismayed by the outcry which his monetary demands had occasioned in England, and, as a concession, had recalled his legate. ' Rex vero, cum audisset, timens sibi de parla- mento futuro in octavis Paschse, in quo adventum speraverat electi Valentini, et confidens de praesentia legati, coepit nimium contristari et timere,'...3. The King took strenuous measures to the end that the legate's stay might be prolonged. He was successful, and that the parliamentum actually assembled is evidenced by the statement 'Quod comperientes nobiles, qui Londoniis infecto negotio suo et timentes legati muscipulas venerant, et comperientes vulpina diverticula regis, recesserunt indignantes, et regis verba sicut sophismata detestantesV There is no reason to suppose that Matthew Paris' use of parliamentum for 1246 was more strictly contemporaneous than for 1242 and 1239. His independent work as chronicler at St Albans is well known to have begun in 1236. The earliest case which I have yet found of this kind of use of the word is in the Worcester Annals for the year 1223 : ' Henricus rex tenuit magnum parliamentum apud Wygorniam cum magnatibus Anglise, inter quos fuit rex Scotise cum baronibus suis5.' This description leaves no doubt of the kind of assembly to which the chronicler applied the name ; but the contemporaneousness of this part of the Worcester Annals cannot be proved.
ALBERT BEEBE WHITE.
MINNEAPOLIS.
1 M. P. iv, 180. The Flores Hist, (n, 252), which is here closely following Matth. Paris, varies the language : « Imminente autem Purificatione et die generalis parlamenti, convenit tota Anglise nobilitas ' .. . It is likely, however, that this was written a few years later.
2 The letter is dated June 30. Close Bolls (1237—1242), p. 447.
3 M. P. Hi* 526. 4 J/. P- in, 531. 5 Ann. Wigorn., 415.
I
94 Miscellaneous Notes
CHAUCER'S FRIDAY.
Right as the Friday, soothly for to telle, Now it shyneth, now it reyneth faste, Right so can gery Venus overcaste The hertes of hir folk ; right as hir day Is gerful, right so chaungeth she array. Selde is the Friday al the wyke y-lyke1.
Whether or not the passage below is the source of Chaucer's lines (and it seems fairly probable that it is), the account of Friday there given explains completely all the details of Chaucer's reference. The extract is from Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum:
Quintus autem planeta, propter effectus quos exercet in inferioribus, calidus
dicitur et humidus Sicut igitur scientia terram inhabitantibus utilis est, ita et
Venus terrenis planeta est benevolus et benignissimus. Hinc est quod sexta feria, in qua Venus dominatur, fere semper aliam faciem prcetendere mdetur quam cceteri dies hebdomadce. Cujus rei ratio haec est. Ornnia corpora infe.riora caloris et humoris beneficio nutriri perspicuuna est. Si igitur pluvise abundaverint in aliis diebus, opus est remedio caloris, qui humorem ex parte desiccet et aeri serenitatis gratiaui conferens, mortalibus Isetitise hilaris solatium adducat. Venus itaque, quse calidus planeta est, caloris effectum exercet, et serenitatem adducit, quse gratior est post nubilum. Si vero calor in praecedentibus diebus dominatus fuerit, necessaria est humiditas sequens, quam Venus, quse humida est, die cujus horam primam sibi vendicat, inducit2.
The ' gerfulness ' of Friday, that is, has no reference to any uncertain glories of the day itself within its own compass. It is not on the same Friday that ' Now it shyneth, now it reyneth faste.' The allusion, as Neckam's words make clear, is to sunshine on Friday, when it has rained the rest of the week, and to rain on Friday, when the other days have been fair. Venus's day is not ' gerful ' in that it passes, like an April day, from sun to shower. The second line above is but another wording of the statement in the sixth. If we modern readers see two ideas instead of one, it is merely because we are modern readers. The pilgrims knew.
JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES.
ST Louis.
AN UNKNOWN PROTESTANT MORALITY PLAY.
Some years ago, while I was searching the Loseley MSS., I came across the mention of a play which, if I am not mistaken, is unknown to the historians of the English drama. It was, at first, my intention to reserve this document for a volume on The Revels in the Time of King Henry VIII, which is in preparation. But, as it will probably
1 Canterbury Tales, A 1534—39. 2 Bk. i, cap. vn (Rolls Series, p. 43).
Miscellaneous Notes
95
take longer than I had anticipated before the book in question can be printed, I think it may be of use to publish this fact without further delay.
The mention to which I have just alluded is to be found in a note written in one of the Revels Office books (Loseley MS. 17) giving a list of ' Goldys & Sylkes Recey ved owte of the greate warderobe and Elles wheare ' * Anno xxxvijmo Regni Regis Henrici viijui ' (at the top of f. 1 has been added the date xxiiij Decembre A° xxxvij), and also in August of the following year. The note, which is written on the reverse of the last folio, runs as follows:
scoler gen?, preste prentes of
London Colyer
vertue zele Insolens diligens old blynd Custom
Hunger of Knowledge ^Thomas of Croydon
So far as I can judge, this is a memorandum jotted down by one of the officers of the Revels — probably the Clerk — in view of the performance of the play at Court. The first column indicates not, as might be supposed, the names of some of the 'dramatis personae,' but the way in which the personages enumerated in the second column were to be represented1. Thus interpreted the note tells us that there were six actors in the play : Vertue or Zeal dressed as a scholar2, Insolence and Diligence, both being gentlemen, the Roman Catholic Creed impersonated by a priest, Hunger of Knowledge by an ap- prentice of London, and, finally, the popular figure of the Collier of Croydon.
Though this is a mere list of 'dramatis personae' it is sufficient to give us an idea of what the play must have been like. It was a morality of that later hybrid species which admitted types of con- temporary life, generally comic figures, by the side of pure abstractions — a good example of such moralities being supplied by U. Fulwell's Like Wil to Like, in which Thomas of Croydon played also a prominent part. It must have been of decidedly Protestant tendencies, probably
1 From the handwriting it appears that the names in the first column were not written at the same time as the names in the second column.
2 The word ' scoler ' is clearly in the singular, so that this seems to point to one personage for Vertue or Zeal; in the next line, on the contrary, the abbreviated word gen?, must be in the plural, for Insolence and Diligence can hardly have been the same person, though one actor may have taken both parts. It should also be said that ' diligens ' is an addition.
96 Miscellaneous Notes
setting forth the efforts of the scholar of the time — a type just then evolving and a perfect model of vertue — and of the true gentleman, here called Diligence, in their opposition to the evil influence of 'Old blind Custom ' or the Roman Catholic Clergy, who, we may imagine, consorted with the mischievous gentleman whose name was Insolence. To the side of the ' virtuous ' personages belonged that favourite of London audiences, the 'prentice, who in this case — and somewhat unexpectedly — seems to have been conspicuous for his thirst for knowledge. Good, simple Thomas of Croydon supplied the comical episodes of the play.
It is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to the date of the play. As has already been said, the play is recorded in an account book containing receipts of Wardrobe Stuff from December 1545 to August 1546. But as the memorandum was written on the cover of the book, this affords no proof that the play belongs to the period covered by the accounts. It is, however, highly improbable that the officers of the Revels should have written the note in this book had not this book been just in use at that time in the office. If so, two dates are possible. Either the officer of the Revels made the memorandum at the time the accounts were being drawn, i.e. between December 1545 and August 1546, and the morality, therefore, was performed in the last years of King Henry VIII's reign; or the memorandum was made a little later on, about May 1547, for we know that in that month the officers of the Revels must have used the book for an inventory which they were then making (cf. Feuillerat, The Revels at Court in the time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary in Bang's Materialien), and the morality would belong to the early years of King Edward VI's reign. Between these two possible dates it is difficult to choose.
ALBERT FEUILLERAT. RENNES.
PERFORMANCE OF A TRAGEDY AT NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD, IN THE TIME OF QUEEN MARY.
Though the document used below is printed in my book The Revels at Court in the Time of King Edward VI and Queen Mary, I may call the attention of the readers of the Modern Language Review to another unknown play of the time of Queen Mary. The letter which supplies us with information regarding this play was written by three
Miscellaneous Notes 97
members of the Privy Council — Sir Robert Rochester, Sir Francis Englefield and John Bourne — to request Sir Thomas Cawerden, the Master of the Revels, to lend the suits of apparel necessary to set forth a ' learnyd Tragedye ' which the fellows and scholars of New College, Oxford, intended to perform at Christmas.
Unfortunately the letter does not give any details concerning the subject of the play; all that we learn is that the play was written 'to the glorie of god and increase of learnyng,' an object eminently laudable but rather vague. We know, however, that it was a historical drama, for the list of the 'dramatis personae' which is given at the end of the document contains three kings, two dukes, six councillors, one queen, three gentlewomen and a young prince^ This list, besides, permits us to infer that the tragedy must have been of the same type as Gorboduc and contained allusions to the political questions of the time. Lastly, a play recommended by three of Queen Mary's Councillors was undoubtedly of Catholic tendencies. In imitation of what was a courtly custom, the tragedy was to be pre- ceded or followed by a ' fayre mask ' of six masquers with four torchbearers.
The date at which the performance took place must remain uncertain, though the names of the Councillors who signed the letter on the 'xixth of December' enable us to fix the date between certain narrow limits ; for this letter cannot have been written before Mary's accession in 1553 or later than December 1556, for Sir Robert Rochester died on November 28, 1557. At any rate, the tragedy performed at New College must have been one of the earliest purely historical dramas on national or foreign themes represented in Tudor times.
ALBERT FEUILLERAT.
RENNES.
MATTHEW ROYDON.
Professor W. Bang of Louvain in a paper called ' Roydoniana ' recently published under the auspices of the Academic Royale of Belgium has made a contribution to the very little that is known of Sidney's elegist, Matthew Roydon. To this contribution I am able to make the following small addition.
In Close-Roll 1144 (24 Eliz. Part 24) a Matthew Royden, who is doubtless the same man, of 'Davies' or 'Thavies' Inn, gentleman, M. L. R. ix. 7
98 Miscellaneous Notes
appears on 6th January 158J as promising to pay a London goldsmith, Henry Banyster, £40 by the Feast of the Purification (February 2) following. The document runs much as follows:
Matheus Royden de Davyes Irine in holborne in Com. Midd. generosus Jeronimus Skyers de Ciuitate London generosus & Nicholaus Skyers de ffurnyvalls Jnne in Holborne predict, generosus... recognoverunt se debere et eorum quilibet recognovit se debere Henrico Banyster ciui & Aurifabro London Quadragint. libras legalis monete Angl. soluend. eidem Henrico Banyster aut suo cto Attorn, hered. vel executoribus suis in fest. purificacois be. marie virginis px. futur. post dat. huius Recognicois et nisi fecerint aut eorum vnus fecerit volunt & concedunt & eorum quilibet vult & concedit pro se hered. & executoribus suis per presentes quod tune pdicte quadraginta libre leuentur de bonis cattallis terris ten. & hereditament, ipsorum Mathei Royden Jeronimi Skyers & Nichol. Skyers. ..ad opus et vsum eiusdem Henrici Banyster sexto die Jan. anno Eliz. vicesimo quarto.
As Roydon's name appears first, I suppose that the debt was his, and the other two men were his sureties.
A pedigree of a family named ' Skiers ' which had been settled near Doncaster is given in Joseph Hunter's South Yorkshire, II, p. 101. Several members of the family are named Nicholas, but none Jerome. As the Skyers were apparently Roydon's nearest friends, I hoped that by identifying them I might get a clue to the particular family to which Matthew Roydon belonged. This, however, I have not done.
Davies (or Thavies) Inn and Furnival's Inn were Inns of Chancery, as distinguished from Inns of Court. They were hostels for students of law attached to Lincoln's Inn. It was not possible for their students to be called to the bar unless first admitted to one of the Inns of Court : and this step Matthew Roydon seems not to have taken.
There is apparently an allusion to someone of the name Roydon in a nameless play (it might be called ' Microcosmus '), to be dated probably after 1603, preserved in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge (MS. R. 10. 4) :
Ha ha he Jecorino. Roidonensis pol est haec insania : ridet strenue.
There seems to be a pun on ' ridet ' and ' Roidon,' but I have no idea what Roydon is in question, nor even if Roydon was a man, or one of the places which bear the name.
G. C. MOORE SMITH. SHEFFIELD.
Miscellaneous Notes 99
MARSTON, LODGE, AND CONSTABLE.
The three following extracts from Add. MS. 11,402 in the British Museum are of literary interest, yet do not seem to have attracted any attention. The manuscript in question is a summary of the Privy Council Registers for the years 1550 to 16101.
The entry referring to Marston is tantalisingly brief. I have no conjecture to offer with regard to the cause of his imprisonment.
The second is an interesting piece t>f supplementary evidence with regard to Lodge's recusancy. On January 17, 1610, he wrote thanking Sir Thomas Edmondes for having enabled him to return to England in peace and quietness2. The extract printed here shows the result of Edmondes's influence.
The third entry also deals with a recusant who happened to be a poet. Constable had been imprisoned in 1604 for his religion and on suspicion of disloyalty. In 1610 he again became embroiled with the government, and left the country never to return. He died at Liege, October 9, 1613.
[Fo. 141 recto. 8 June, 1608.] John Marston comitted to newgate.
II
[Fo. 150 verso. 28 January, 1610.]
A Ire to the Clarke of the peace of the County of mMd' and Towne clarke of the Citie of London that if any Endictment be alreadie or shalbe hereafter preferred against Thomas Lodge dr of Phisicke for his recusancie to detaine it in their handes & certifie the LLS: thereof wthout any pro- ceedinges vntill they haue made the LL8: acquainted therewth.
1 The original registers for the years 1601 to 1613 were burnt in the fire at Whitehall on January 12, 1619. See P. C. Eegister (in P. E. 0.), No. 30, fo. 73.
3 A transcript of this letter made by Thomas Birch is in Add. MS. 4164, fo. 211.
100 Miscellaneous Notes
III [Fo. 159 verso. 31 July, 1610.]
A passe for Henrie Constable to depart out of
his mate8 dominions, and not to returne wthout
speciall directions and warrant in that behalf
and to take wth him one man and 100U in mony &c
and that he dept wthin x dayes after the
date hereof.
F. P. WILSON. OXFORD.
SWIFT'S 'TALE OF A TUB.'
Since writing the article on Swift's Tale of a Tub which appeared in the Modern Language Review for July 1913, I have seen in the Bodleian Library two other copies of The History of Martin. One (Godwin Pamphlets, 1999) appears to be identical with that numbered (c) in my article (p. 311), but the imprint is even more badly cut than in the British Museum copy. The other (Godwin Pamphlets, 1911) appears to be identical with the first in text, but has a different title page :
THE HISTORY OF MARTIN. BEING A Proper SEQUEL to The Tale of a Tub. WITH A DIGRESSION concerning the Nature, Usefulness, and Necessity of W7ARS and QUARRELS. By the Rev. D— N S— T.
Not sparing his own Clergy Cloth, But eats into it like a Moth.
To which is added, A DIALOGUE between A— P— e, Esq. ; and Mr. C — s C — ffe, Poets, in St. James's Park. LONDON : Printed for T. TAYLOR, at the Rose, in Exeter- Exchange. MDCCXLII.
The sentence * No other copy of this edition is known ' should be deleted in my article (p. 311, 1. 22): but this correction in no way affects my argument.
A. C. GUTHKELCH. LONDON.
Miscellaneous Notes 101
THREE NOTES ON THE 'DiviNA COMMEDIA.' I.
The 'Messo del Cielo' (Inf. ix, 64—105).
IT is obvious that Dante's City of Dis is the Vergilian Tartarus, over the gate of which no power of man, nor even the dwellers in the sky, can prevail (A en. vi, 552 — 556) :
Porta adversa ingens, solidoque adamante columnae,
vis ut nulla virum, non ipsi exseindere ferro
caelicolae valeant ; stat ferrea turris ad auras,
Tisiphoneque . sedens, palla succincta cruenta, „
vestibulum exsomnis servat noctesque diesque.
The Sibyl herself could not lead Aeneas through it (ibid. 563) : Nulli fas casto sceleratum insistere limen.
Therefore, treading in the footsteps of Aeneas, Dante cannot obtain through Vergil unaided what the latter in his poem could not give to the father-elect dell' alma Roma e di suo impero. Allegorically, reason by itself is not sufficient to answer Lear's question : ' Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts ? ' But the Sibyl tells Aeneas that, though he may not enter Tartarus, she has been there (Aen. vi, 564—565) :
Sed me cum lucis Hecate praefecit Avernis,
ipsa deum poenas docuit, perque omnia duxit.
Borrowing a hint from Lucan (Phars. vi, 621 — 623), Dante substitutes Erichtho and her witcheries for Hecate and her guidance, in the curious passage in which Vergil speaks of his previous descent into the lowest circle of Hell (Inf. ix, 22—30 ; cf. D'Ovidio, Studii still a Divina Corn- media, pp. 97—101, 233—235 ; Moore, Studies in Dante, i, pp. 234—237 ; and, for the possible allegorical significance of the passage, L. Filomusi Guelfi, Novissimi studii su Dante). Thus, the whole inspiration of this canto is purely classical, and we should expect that, when the divine aid comes to open the gate, it should come in a classical form — although the sound of tempest that heralds the advent of the niesso del cielo (Inf. ix, 64 — 69) is intentionally reminiscent of the advent of the Paraclete in the Acts of the Apostles: 'And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind.' There are four different views as to the identity of this messo del cielo: (i) that he is Mercury (Pietro Alighieri and Benvenuto da Impla) ; (ii) that he is an angel (the Ottimo, Francesco da Buti, and the majority of commentators) ;
102 Miscellaneous Notes
(iii) that he is Aeneas with the golden bough (the Duke of Sermoneta and Giovanni Pascoli) ; (iv) that he is Christ (Fornaciari). The third alternative depends on the assumption that Dante's question, discende mai alcun del primo grado (Inf. ix, 17), refers to the messenger, whereas the allusion is clearly a covert one to Vergil himself, to know if he is really able to overcome the opposition and guide him further. The fourth (apart from theological considerations) seems contradicted by Dante's own bearing towards the mysterious figure. As to ^ne second, we observe that, when an angel first appears, Vergil bids Dante bend his knees and fold his hands (Purg. ii, 28 — 30), whereas here he is simply to keep quiet and bow down to him (Inf. ix, 85 — 87) ; also the line, omai vedrai di si fatti officiate, surely implies that the angel pilot is the first of these celestial beings that the poet has seen. Again, the speech of the messo del cielo at the threshold is mainly composed of mythological elements — he refers to the Divine Will (Inf. ix, 94 — 96), but speaks also of the fates and alludes to the handling of Cerberus by Hercules (97 — 99). Unlike the Purgatorio, all the symbols and types in the Inferno are more or less from classical mythology. Further, there are obvious resemblances in this episode with Vergil's description of Mercury's flight to earth to bid Aeneas proceed on his destined mission when delayed by his entanglement with Dido, in the fourth of the Aeneid, and with the account given by Statius of Mercury bringing up the ghost of Laius from the shades at the beginning of the second of the Thebaid. Thus, Am, iv, 239—246 :
Primum pedibus talaria nectit aurea, quae sublimem alls sive aequora supra seii terram rapido pariter cum flamine portant. Turn virgam capit — hac auimas ille evocat Oreo pallentes, alias sub Tartara tristia mittit ; dat somnos adimitque, et lumina morte resignat — ilia fretus agit ventos, et turbida tranat nubila.
The rapido cum flamine, the ventos, the turbida nubila, all suggest the imagery of the coming of the messo del cielo (Inf. ix, 64 — 69) ; alias sub Tartara tristia mittit is repeated in the flight of the ruined souls towards the dismal city at his approach (79 — 80); lumina morte resignat corresponds with Vergil at the messenger's advent freeing Dante's eyes, which he had previously kept covered lest he should see the Gorgon and become eternally dead (55 — 60, 73 — 75). Again, not only can similar resemblances (including a special reference to Styx) be traced with Statius (Theb. ii, 1 — 6), but one passage from the latter is almost verbally reproduced: Infernaque nubila vultu Discutit (Theb. ii, 56—57)
Miscellaneous Notes 103
here becoming : Dal volto rimovea quell' aer grasso ( Inf. ix, 82). That Hermes was the messenger of heaven, as also the conductor of shades between the upper and lower worlds, was of course a commonplace of mythology. Dante is bidden do him reverence, but this is not adoration (cf. Par. iv, 61 — 63). With Mercury's winged sandals, the messenger crosses the Styx colle piante ascitttte (Inf. ix, 81) ; with the verghetta, Mercury's staff, the caduceus, he opens the gate without resistance (89 — 90). If a justification is needed for this christianising of Mercury in angelic form, it may be found in the Gonvivio (ii, 5), where Dante connects the beneficent deities of the Gentiles with the Christian conception of celestial intelligences or angels. He can effect more than Vergil's caelicolae, and now represents, not the might of eloquence (as Benvenuto suggests), but the power of divine grace, because ultimately, like Dante's Fortuna, he is akin to the altre 'prime creature (Inf. vii, 95), the ministri e messaggier di vita eterna (Purg. xxx, 18).
II.
The penalty of Manfredi (Purg. iii, 136 — 141).
Ver & che quale in contumacia more
Di santa Chiesa, ancor che al fin si penta,
Star gli convien da questa ripa in fuore Per ogni tempo, ch' egli & stato, trenta,
In sua presunzion, se tal decreto
Piu corto per buon preghi non diventa.
The significance of this insistence on the number thirty in Manfredi's penance has hardly been fully grasped by the commentators. It occurs also in one of the visions of Mechthild of Magdeburg, who sees a scholar, who has been cut off by violence in the midst of his sins, saved because of an internal sigh of repentance at the last, but doomed to thirty years' purgation, that being the length of time that he had lived alienated from God per stultam superbiam (Lux Divinitatis, vi, 12). Similarly, we find the number thirty in one of the purgatorial stories told by St Gregory, where a monk remains in the purifying fire for thirty days, and is then delivered by St Gregory having masses offered for him on thirty more consecutive days (Dialog, iv, 55). The number was probably suggested to Dante by the practice, which is older than St Gregory's time, of offering special prayers for one dead for thirty days after death, especial stress being laid on the thirtieth day. St Ambrose, in his sermon on the death of Theodosius, cites in support o f this practice the text in Deuteronomy, xxxiv, 8, where ' the children
104 Miscellaneous Notes
of Israel wept for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days.' Later arose the further practice of what was called ' the trental of St Gregory,' in which thirty special masses, of various feasts, were said for the soul departed at intervals through the year. Thus the number, regarded by the Church as specially significant in aiding those who had died within her communion, becomes with Dante the measure of delay in the admission to purification of those who had died in contumacy and rebellion — even when, as in the case of Manfredi, it was rebellion against a decree in itself unjust, as being an abuse of spiritual power for political ends.
III.
Dante s allusion to Marcellus (Parg. vi, 124 — 126).
Che le citta, d' Italia tutte piene
Son di tirarmi, ed un Marcel diventa Ogni villan che parteggiando viene.
The precise interpretation of this terzina depends upon whether we suppose that Dante had the words of Lucan or those of Vergil in his mind. In the former case, which is the view of Dr Moore and Dr Toynbee, Dante's allusion is to Phars. i, 313 :
Marcellusque loquax et nomina vana Catones ;
where Marcellus is mentioned as one of Caesar's opponents, the reference being to Marcus Claudius Marcellus, the consul, who urged the Senate to deprive Caesar of his command. The meaning here would be that every rustic countryman who comes to the front in the factions becomes, like Marcellus, an opponent of the Empire. On the other hand, Pietro Alighieri holds that Dante's reference is to Aen. vi, 855 — 856, where Vergil speaks of another and earlier Marcellus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who defeated the Gauls and took Syracuse:
Aspice, ut insignis spoliis Marcellus opimis ingreditur, victorque viros supereminet omnes.
I would suggest that Pietro Alighieri is on the right track, but that the poet is combining these with another line in the same book. Dante's un Marcel diventa is surely simply Vergil's famous ta Marcellus eris (Aen. vi, 883), applied here with a satirical intention. Such a rustic leader of faction, whether for or against the Empire, becomes in his own eyes and in those of his friends another Marcellus, a mighty figure in history like the Roman soldier of old, insignis spoliis opimis, who, as a latterday victor, viros supereminet omnes.
EDMUND G. GARDNER.
MILL HILL.
REVIEWS.
Vowel Alliteration in the Old Germanic Languages. By E. CLASSEN (University of Manchester Publications, Germanic Series No. 1.) Manchester : University Press. 1913. 8vo. xvi + 91 pp.
In this short but scholarly study we have a critical discussion of one of the vexed questions in Old Germanic metric, viz., why it is tKat while only like consonants alliterate with one another, any one vowel may alliterate with any other. Real alliteration of entirely different vowels is of course an impossibility. The very term alliteration pre- supposes some element of similarity between the alliterating sounds, and from the days of Rapp onwards various theories have been advanced as to what this element of similarity may be.
The earliest explanatory theory was that commonly known as the glottal-catch theory which said that the element of similarity consisted in the fact that all initial vowels alike in the Old Germanic languages began with a well-marked glottal catch, sufficiently strong to make them alliterate one with another. The theory of a universal glottal catch in the Old Germanic languages is non-proven, and perhaps must always remain so for lack of evidence for or against it. The two chief points which the writer of this study makes against it are that it is difficult to see how the glottal catch could have sufficient phonetic distinctness to be used for alliterative purposes by men of the average degree of phonetic consciousness, and if it really had a highly distinc- tive quality why did it not receive the honour of a separate symbol like the Hebrew and Arabic spiritus lenis ? The second theory is that first advanced by Jiriczek, viz., that all vowels alike have a certain sonority which distinguishes them from consonants, and that this element of sonority marks them off sufficiently definitely for any one vowel to be allowed to alliterate with any other vowel by reason of its distinctive sonority. Mr Classen here shows that the theory again breaks down because we can hardly imagine the average man to have sufficient phonetic consciousness to feel that there was any greater phonetic similarity between the vowels i and a than between the consonants b and p, indeed the similarity is acoustic rather than phonetic.
The third theory is that advanced by the Swedish scholar Axel Kock, viz., that alliterating vowels were originally identical just as alliterating consonants are, but that the vowels were more subject to phonetic change, and that as a result we get first traditional alliterations, i.e., alliterations which were once true but are so no longer, and then, under
106 Reviews
the influence of these traditional alliterations, fresh alliterations of vowels which have never been identical. At the same time new identical alliterations between vowels once different but now similar (owing to phonetic change) will arise. It is chiefly in support of this theory that the present study has been written, and Mr Classen makes an elaborate study of practically all those lines of Beowulf which show vowel-allitera- tion, of four poems from the Edda and of some 1400 lines of the Heliand* with a view to testing the theory. The work has been done with great thoroughness and accuracy, and the results are favourable to the theory, but there are admittedly several factors which make an exact determination of percentages impossible. Chief among them is the impossibility of determining whether one of the three alliterating vowels may be the result of accident. The one result which stands out clear beyond the possibility of doubt is that there always was a prefer- ence for identical vowels in the old alliterative poetry, a view entirely opposed to that commonly taken.
With regard to the theory, as a whole, two criticisms may be offered. First, the whole theory is largely dependent on the question of how far we can believe the phraseology of Germanic poetry to have been tradi- tional from the days when the vowels existed in their Primitive Germanic form, for it is clear that none of our poems goes back in any shape or form to a period anything like as early as that. Making every allow- ance for the evidence for the existence of Germanic poetry from the earliest times and for the similarity of phrasing which exists between the poetry of the various Germanic tongues it does not seem that there could have been a sufficient body of traditional poetic phraseology to justify the large number of purely traditional alliterative rhymes which are to be found in the earliest monuments. Secondly, the theory of original identity is supported by the quotation of certain lines containing what the author calls 'approximately identical' vowels. Thus any vowel in the series a-te-e-i may be considered identical with its immediate neighbour for purposes of alliteration, i.e., a may alliterate with #2 and a? with e. This seems to assume too high a degree of phonetic consciousness ; when once you depart from the principle of absolute identity the untrained ear would probably see no more reason for alliterating a with se than with e. If you once allow any margin of difference, why should you not go on and alliterate such sounds as b and p ?
One piece of evidence in support of their theory seems to have been overlooked by the upholders of the identity theory, viz., the existence of traditional consonant alliteration in the case of the two sounds repre- sented by each of the symbols c and g. Here the traditional allitera- tion was maintained after the sounds had developed into both velar and palatal forms.
One slight defect in the book must be mentioned. The somewhat lengthy passages quoted in the Introduction from various German writers on metric should have been translated in the same way as the passage from the Swedish of Axel Kock is. There are unfortunately
Reviews 107
many students of Old English poetry, who are not familiar with German, and it is a pity that they should be debarred from a full understanding of a book which is full of interest for them.
ALLEN MAWER.
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.
A Phonetic Dictionary of the English Language. By HERMANN MICHAELIS and DANIEL JONES. Hanover: Carl Meyer. 1913. 8vo. 450 pp.
This is a work of four hundred and fifty pages or so, very clearly printed, in double columns. The ordinary words of the English vocabulary, and many others, are set down in the script of the Association Phonetique, so as to indicate, as exactly as may be, the received pronunciation. Thus the book should be useful to foreigners and others who, for one reason or another, are ignorant of the pronunciation of Standard English. The only drawback is, that many persons will probably be unable to find the word they want ; not because it is not in the book, for the vocabulary is copious enough, but because the words are entered under the phonetic spelling, the ordinary spelling being given after this. This means that the reader must first be very familiar with the notation used, and next must know the pronunciation of the word, at least with close approximation, before he can find it. If he knows it, why should he take the trouble to look it up ? Personally, I had no difficulty in finding any word I sought, but then I am not altogether unused to the various methods known as phonetic notation, whereby the appearance of words is disguised. For practical purposes, would it not have been better to put the ordinary spelling first ?
One praiseworthy feature of the book is that the pronunciation of a large number of proper names is given, including many family names. Another good point is that in the case of all words the pronunciations given, so far as I have been able to test, by taking a good many crucial words, and by reading through many consecutive pages in various parts of the book, are really those in use among good speakers, and not fanciful, bogus concoctions. If such a book as this was really wanted, in spite of the innumerable other dictionaries, published here and abroad, giving the pronunciation of English, then this is a good and useful book of its kind, apart from the practical drawback noted above.
It were much to be wished that foreign publishers would stick, or sew, or rivet the pages of their books together, in such a way that they do not tumble to pieces on being opened. The copy before me has paper covers, and a good shake would reduce it, I suppose, to several dozen bits. A cloth-bound copy, on the other hand, which I owe to the generosity of the publisher, is quite strongly fastened together. As the latter only costs one mark more than the flimsy paper copy, I strongly recommend intending purchasers to get the book in its bound form.
There are a few remarks on a different subject of a rather laughable character, which I should like to make before closing this short notice.
108 Reviews
On p. vii it is stated that * the phonetic alphabet used in this book is that of the International Phonetic Association, which is now the most widely used of any phonetic system! (The italics are mine.) A footnote on the same page informs us that 'This system is used in several hundred books. A list of the two hundred most important is given in a booklet entitled the Principles of the International Phonetic Association (obtainable from D. Jones, University College, London, W. C., price 6cL).' At the end of the Dictionary is a ' List of Books, etc., recommended for the study of English pronunciation.' Another note tells us 'In the books marked with an asterisk, the pronunciation is -represented by means of the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association.' Of the twelve books cited under the heading ' Phonetic Theory,' only two lack the asterisk — both by Sweet, though others of his are omitted. Of the nine ' Phonetic Readers,' all have the asterisk ! Of the eight ' Pronouncing Dictionaries,' four lack the asterisk, including the N.E.D. and the Concise Oxford Dictionary. There are six works on the History of English Pronunciation quoted, including Victor's Shakespeare's Pronunciation, which is in two volumes. The only ones without the asterisk are Ellis' Early English Pronunciation, Sweet's History of English Sounds, and a humble effort of my own, which I only mention lest it should be thought that I have any personal grievance. To any one familiar with the ' literature ' of this subject, this list must appear somewhat meagre, in all its departments. The number of asterisks may also strike the innocent reader as remarkable, and still more so, the conspicuous absence of works which he would naturally expect to find. If he is ignorant of the subject, the reader will naturally suppose that all scholars of repute use the alphabet of the International Phonetic Association. What an important Association ! It has all the good things wholly to itself! But we turn back to p. vii, and we begin to see a glimmering of light. By way of throwing a rather more powerful ray, I will quote a passage from an article by Schroer in a recent number of the Germanisch-romanische Monatschrift, see pp. 413 — 414 of the current year.
Victors Bticher und Arbeiten wird man immer lesen mid verwerten, ob sie die Transskriptionsweise der Association Phonetique verwenden oder nicht ; was an sich wertvoll ist, wird verwertet, auch wenn der Verfasser es einem schwer oder unbequem macht. Man konnte es, und sollte es auch niemanden verargen, weun er nicht nur aus selbstvergessenem Verzicht auf eine eigerie Transskriptionsweise, sondern aus Uberzeugung von der Fiirtrefflichkeit der der Association Phonetique diese uberall anwendet und dafiir wirbt. Aber ganz anders ist es, wenn die wirkliche oder angebliche Verwendung der Transskriptionsweise der Association Phonetique als besondere Empfehlung, ja als Empfehlung mit gewissermassen auschliessender Bedeutung geltend gemacht wird ! Wenn in den Prospekten der Association Phonetique oder im * Maltre Phonetique ' kimterb'unt Spreu unter Weizen allein wegen der Transskriptionsweise der Association Phonetique als empfehlenswert mit Sternchen versehen wird, wie Jespersen so amiisant hervor- gehoben hat,- oder wenn Jones in seinem kiirzlich erschienenen Biichlein ' Phonetic- Readings in English,' unter den ' Books etc. Recommended for the Study of English Pronunciation ' es sorgfaltig vermeidet, wesentlich anders transskribierte Werke zu erwahnen, so ist das doch eine bedenkliche Erscheinung, sowohl vom Standpunkte der Wissenschaft als auch von dem der Schulinteressen ! Mit dankenswerter
Reviews
109
Oftenheit versicherte mich in Frankfurt der Namhafteste unter den Anhangern der Association Phonetique, dass sie fest entschlossen seien, alles, was sich nun nicht fiigt, zu boykottieren oder zu ignorieren, d. h. sowohl literarisch totzuschweigen als auch von den Schulen fernzuhalten. Es wird daher nach diesem Grundsatze fur das miserabelste Machwerk geniigen, sich der Transskription der Association Phonetique zu bedienen oder wenigstens zu behaupten, sich zu bedienen, urn gunstiger Aufnahme und Forderung sicher zu sein, so wird andrerseits alles andere, was dieses sacrificium intellectus nicht raitmacht, aus dem Gesichtskreise der Phonetiker und Schulreformer auszuscheiden haben ? ' Roma locuta — causa nnita est.'
I have not the remotest idea who the ' Namhafteste ' of the Associa- tion may be. He has probably been called to account by this time for the engaging candour of his conversation with Professor Schroer, and I hope that in addition, ' his own thoughts drive him like a goad ! ' The revelation is pleasant. ' A nice marality, stap my vitals ! ' It is well that the sinister plot exposed by Professor Schroer should be thoroughly and widely shown up. It may be doubted whether the veto of the Association would influence in the smallest degree the opinion of scholars, but an ignorant public might well be misled. No doubt all the respectable members of the Association Phonetique, and Mr Jones among them, will repudiate the suggestion that they would participate in any such policy of boycott as that described. But it must be very unpleasant for those concerned to have such things even whispered about at Congresses.
Meanwhile scholars of the standing of Mr Jones — now the successor in Oxford of a very great man — should avoid the faintest suspicion of countenancing a policy which it would be very difficult to speak of in measured terms, if one took it seriously. But I prefer to look at it in a comic, rather than a tragic light. There is something piquant in the idea of this plot which is ' given away ' by the mysterious yet eminent person referred to by Professor Schroer, a plot cousu de fil blanc, and lighted up by the blazing of innumerable stars, throughout the pages, I suppose, of most of the 'several hundred books '...a list of which is obtainable from Mr Jones for the modest sum of sixpence !
Perhaps Professor Schroer was misinformed; perhaps the excessive proportion of starred books over non-starred, and the total omission by Mr Jones of other well-known authorities, from his lists, are only coincidences ; perhaps the use, or the reverse, by a writer, of a particular method of transcription has not weighed with Mr Jones in his choice of books ; perhaps no one ever proposed, or intended, to boycott writers who use a different notation from that of the Association. Let us hope that all this is the case. If so, then let the mare's nest be destroyed. Everybody, including Professor Schroer, will, I am sure, be charmed to have this done by some responsible member of the Association, and to find that for the future there is nothing in the works emanating from this quarter, which suggests for a moment anything to the contrary. If, on the other hand, things remain as they are, perhaps it is of no great consequence.
H. CECIL WYLD. LIVERPOOL.
110 Review*
The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Words* worth. By MYR A REYNOLDS. Chicago: University Press. 1909. 8vo. 388 pp.
The chief shortcoming in this book lies in its title. Only about one half of the volume is concerned with English poetry : the rest deals with the growing interest in Nature which found a place in the novel, in works of travel, in gardening and in landscape painting, during the course of the eighteenth century. It will thus be seen that Miss Reynolds has- taken a comprehensive view of her subject. Within the last generation we have begun to learn the value of comparative criticism, to examine the literary movements of any given nation in relation to those of other nations, and to realise, in the memorable words of Matthew Arnold, that ' for intellectual and spiritual purposes, Europe is one great federation, bound to a joint action and working to a common purpose.' In this volume on the artistic interpretation of Nature, another form of comparative criticism has been attempted. Miss Reynolds is not interested in a comparison of Thomson's painting of nature and country life with that of Haller or Gessner, nor is she concerned with the influence of Rousseau on the early English romantic poets ; but, with admirable discernment, she has recognised the oneness of the artistic impulse, and has shown us that poetry was only one of many channels along which new currents of thought and feeling flowed in the course of the eighteenth century. Her pages help us to see that the same awakening of interest in the beauty or sublimity of Nature which appears in Thomson's Winter or Cowper's Task, manifests itself also in the paintings of Gainsborough arid Richard Wilson, and in the garden-designs of ' Capability Brown/ Ruskin's Modern Painters first pointed the way to this form of comparative criticism, and further pro- gress was made by Alfred Biese in his Enttuickelung des Naturgefuhls im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit (1892); but Miss Reynolds, working within a narrower field, has been able to apply their methods with much greater thoroughness.
Miss Reynolds passes too lightly over the relation of the artistic treatment of Nature to the first principles of a?sthetics, and has nothing to say about Burke's ingenious, if perverse, Essay on the Sublime and the Beautiful ; at times, too, her detailed criticism is in danger of obscuring the broad outlines of the movement which she is tracing. But we owe her a debt of gratitude for rescuing from oblivion works which, though of slight intrinsic value in themselves, yet indicate the general progress of taste within the period. In this connection reference must be made to her treatment of the poets of the Lake District — John Dalton, John Brown, John Langhorne, and Richard Cumberland, who showed a very real appreciation of the mountains, lakes and streams of Cumberland and Westmorland while Wordsworth was still in his cradle. Generous praise is given to the much decried author of The Mysteries of Udolpho, of whom Miss Reynolds says that ' no poet has given so much of the real forest feeling as Mrs Radcliffe,' and nothing could be
Reviews 111
more helpful in indicating the change of feeling towards Nature which came over artists and travellers in the second half of the eighteenth century than our author's comparison of the strictly utilitarian outlook of Arthur Young's early books of travel with the enthusiastic delight in wild and romantic landscapes which he displays in the records of his later tours.
In conclusion, the best wish that can be expressed for Miss Reynolds' able and well-written treatise is that it may be the forerunner of other works of a similar nature, in which something of the same catholicity of taste may be displayed, and the intimate relation of the art of poetry to kindred arts, and more particularly to that of painting, be recognised with equal discernment.
F. W. MOORMAN.
LEEDS.
Masterpieces of the English Drama. General Editor, FELIX E. SCHEL- LING. New York, Cincinnati and Chicago : American Book Company. 1912. 8vo.
Christopher Marlowe. With Introduction by WILLIAM LYON PHELPS. 426 pp. Beaumont and Fletcher. Edited by FELIX E. SCHELLING. 414 pp. Webster and Tourneur. With Introduction by ASHLEY H. THORNDIKE. 464 pp. Philip Massinger. Edited by Lucius A. SHERMAN. 416 pp. William Cong r eve. With Introduction by WILLIAM ARCHER. 466 pp.
This collection of volumes, containing select plays of the leading English dramatists (apart from Shakespeare) with introductions and notes, more or less resembles the well-known ' Mermaid Series ' ; but as no more than a single volume is allotted to any one author, the number of plays selected is in some cases much smaller. A single volume is enough to contain all that is of first importance in Marlowe's or Congreve's dramatic work, and something less than a volume will perhaps serve for Webster ; but Beaumont and Fletcher are very inadequately represented by four plays, and the same may be said, though rather less emphatically, of Massinger. On the other hand, the allowance of notes is much more generous than in the Mermaid editions.
The Marlowe volume includes, as we have said, all that is essential, the two parts of Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus (only in the shorter form, however), The Jew of Malta and Edward the Second. The introduction by Professor Phelps is sufficient. We are not told who is responsible for the text and notes, and the former at least can hardly be regarded as entirely satisfactory. It is noted that ' Editorial interpolations in the way of readings have in all cases been enclosed in double brackets.' On examination, however, we find that this is only the case where a word is inserted by conjecture ; other variations of text without original authority are admitted without any distinctive mark. In the
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of these cases is the editorial deviation marked, and in most of them it is not justifiable. (In in, 2, 89, 'of monstrous rock/ and 111, 'with his horse,' it may be supposed that we have to do with misprints.)
Professor Schelling is the editor of the Beaumont and Fletcher, and we have no quarrel with it except the limitation in scope of the selection. The plays given are Philaster, The Maid's Tragedy, The Faithful Shepherdess and Bonduca, and the editor . admits that the ' endeavour to represent Beaumont and Fletcher adequately by the choice of four plays is a hopeless one.' He consequently abandons the attempt to represent the comedies altogether. Accepting this limitation, we can only say that it seems a pity to omit A King and No King in any selection from Beaumont and Fletcher. The editor, however, has worked in a competent manner within the limits imposed by the plan of the series.
Webster and Tourrieur appear together with an introduction by Professor Thorndike, which gives an interesting account of the type of tragedy to which the plays of Webster belong. Webster is here repre- sented by The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi and Appius and Virginia', Tourneur by The Revengers Tragedy only. Appius and Virginia might well have been omitted. The editor justly remarks that it is not characteristic of Webster, and in fact it is probably not his. This omission would have made room for The Atheist's Tragedy, the only extant play which is ascribed to Tourneur on contemporary evidence. The metrical characteristics of The Revenger s Tragedy are indeed so different, that * it is difficult to suppose that these two plays are by the same author. Incidentally we may observe that The Atheist's Tragedy is by no means such a poor performance as the editor seems to suggest. On what grounds does he say that it was ' acted about 1603 ' (p. 14) ?
The volume of Massinger includes The Roman Actor, The Maid of Honour, A New Way to pay Old Debts, and Believe as You List. In the place of this last it might have been better to select The City Madam. The account of Massinger's dramatic career given in the introduction can hardly be considered satisfactory. Professor Sherman here suggests a difficulty in accounting sufficiently for the dramatist's activity during the first years of his life in London, and leaves out of account almost entirely the fact that from 1612 to 1625 (when Fletcher died) he must have been almost constantly engaged in producing that important part of his dramatic work which, owing to his own characteristic modesty, passed, and still passes, under the name of Beaumont and Fletcher. The editor does not seem at all to appreciate the fact that his joint authorship of a large number of these plays can be proved by quite unmistakeable evidences of style — apart from the external testimony of his friends — and that the portions written by Massinger can for the most part be clearly distinguished.
Congreve is represented by his three principal comedies together
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with The Mourning Bride. The notes are too elementary. Readers of Congreve surely do not need to be told who Judas Maccabeus was, or to have the epithet ' Machiavelian ' explained to them. In many respects, however, the notes are really useful, especially as regards the localities of London in the seventeenth century ; and Mr Archer's introduction gives us an interesting and valuable appreciation of the spirit of Congreve's comedy, as compared with that of the rising school repre- sented by Farquhar and Steele. He discusses also at considerable length the reason for the comparative failure on their first production of The Doable Dealer and The Way of the World. The answer is a very simple one, however. With all their brilliancy of character-drawing and dialogue, they are badly-constructed plays, and badly constructed in such a way as to puzzle both audiences and readers. Congreve's defence of The Double Dealer shows clearly that he was aware of its weaj: points : ' I must take the boldness to say, I have not miscarried in the whole; for the mechanical part of it is regular. ..I made the plot as strong as I could, because it was single ; and I made it single, because I would avoid confusion, and was resolved to preserve the three unities of the drama.' Mr Archer's remark upon the play is a good comment on this: 'What wonder if audiences were at first baffled and fatigued by the effort to follow the outs and ins of this labyrinthine plot ! '
In spite of the weak points which we have noted, this seems to be on the whole a very useful series for practical purposes, and no doubt will have a wide circulation.
G. C. MACAULAY.
CAMBRIDGE.
Essays and Criticisms by Thomas Gray. Edited by CLARK SUTHER- LAND NORTHUP. (Belles Lettres Series.) Boston and London : Heath. 1909. 8vo. liii + 378pp.
A volume which aims at presenting in a convenient form Gray's critical prose is one which will commend itself to many readers, and Dr Northup's attempt at bringing together his scattered material has resulted in a most interesting and useful little volume. Such a collec- tion was bound to be disconnected and fragmentary. One section of the material, the remarks on metre and rhyme, on Lydgate and Daniel for instance, was originally intended to form part of Gray's proposed History of English Poetry : the rest, drawn from his letters, represents the stray utterances of the poet on the literary work of his day. Taken altogether, however, they form a well-chosen selection of passages, giving a clear idea of Gray's critical achievement, and the work will undoubtedly be welcomed as a useful contribution to the study of English criticism.
Dr Northup, it may be noted, has compiled his volume with the general reader in view, and as a result, his editorial work errs, if anything, on the side of liberality. It may, for instance, be doubted
M. L. R. IX.
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whether a detailed sketch of the poet's life was needed in a work of this kind, or whether notes on Bishop Hall's Satires and Dr Donne were necessary for the intelligent reading of the text. But apart from this, the assistance so generously given, is undoubtedly of a most helpful kind. The editor has spared no labour in explaining the less familiar allusions in his text and in placing the reader in the position of Gray's contemporaries : and while his comments 'throughout are eminently judicious and scholarly, the carefully drawn-up Index at the end bears the same marks of thoroughness and sound judgment.
It is, however, in his appreciation of Gray's work as a critic that the editor falls short of the possibilities of his subject, and one would willingly have foregone some of the less relevant details for a more adequate discussion of Gray's actual performance. Thus the attempt to place Gray in the critical development cannot be said to have been wholly successful. Something more was surely needed than an indica- tion of those earlier tendencies from which he, as it were, revolted. His departure from the neoclassical, the rationalistic, and the moralistic standards of the seventeenth century critics was, of course, a point which had. to be made quite clear, though Dr Northup's summary treatment of this matter seems likely to make serious demands upon the general reader. But Gray had also affinities with some of those earlier critics, and these also it was necessary to bring out. He may, in fact, be said to carry on the tradition of the earlier 'school of taste,' for he would have agreed with Howard and Dryden, St Evremond, Mere, and a host of others, that judgment in literature depended after all upon literary ' taste.' His judgment was undoubtedly based on impression, not rules : what he looked for in literature was an emotional, a moving, power: and like Temple he was prepared to seek it in our earlier native literature. His position would, moreover, have been yet more clearly denned by some indication of the relation in which he stood to later critics like Kurd, Warton arid Young. As it is, this section of the Introduction must be said to be wanting in grip, a remark which holds true also of the section which follows, in which Gray's qualities as a critic are briefly analysed. To note Gray's disinterestedness, his sound scholarship, wide sympathies and sense of humour, is to give but an inadequate account of those qualities which made him a critic. Along with these things there went a singularly sensitive mind, a fastidious taste, and above all, a most happy gift of expression, from which was derived so much of the charm of his remarks. In a few lines he could communicate the flavour of a work or hit off in as many words the features of a favourite : and his sense of humour which, without doubt, gave sanity to his judgment, with equal certainty added spice to his manner of expression. Thus he followed Dryden in making criticism an attractive business, by infusing a personal element into what he wrote. And in this connection the very form of his work is not without its significance. In place of the formal essays and treatises of an earlier generation we have here the letters of a man of taste dealing with literature in the concrete for the amusement of himself and his
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intimates. Occasionally he drops remarks upon such matters as the Chorus or the use of technical language in poetry, but we are worlds away from the arid discussions of the preceding century. It is with actual literature that he chooses to deal, and we of a later age can commend his hoe-work as he wages war with the weeds of undue personifications and descriptions and meaningless diction in poetry.
Dr Northup, then, is not seen at his best in the sections which deal with these particular matters, though that does not seriously detract from the value of his work. To have given to the student in a handy form the material for forming his own conclusions would in itself have been a useful piece of work. Presented as it is here with much scholarly care, that material becomes yet more full of meaning. And it may confidently be said that his volume will be appreciated by more than one class of reader, and will help to throw light on a none too familiar side of Gray's literary activity.
J. W. H. ATKINS.
ABERYSTWYTH.
The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. Chosen by ARTHUR QUILLER- COUCH. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1912. 8vo. xv + 1021 pp.
Lovers of poetry must ever be grateful to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch for inaugurating the excellent series of Oxford Books of Verse by the best anthology of English Verse ever made. Now he has added to our debt by compiling a volume of Victorian poetry — gracefully dedicated to his future friends and pupils at the sister university. The difficulties of such a task must necessarily be sufficient to stagger the stoutest courage : as the editor himself confesses in his most disarming of prefaces, it ' is less of a difficulty than an impossibility : since he who attempts on his contemporaries such assaying as these pages imply, attempts what no' man can do.' Moreover Professor Quiller-Couch was confronted by the further problems, first of determining the exact limits of the ' Victorian ' period, and secondly of deciding whether or no to include in this volume poems which had already found a place in the earlier anthology. In both cases he decided boldly and wisely. He has used the term Victorian as freely as we use the term Elizabethan, and with the same fundamental soundness of judgment; and he has refused to exclude poems which he had used before, and so to condemn himself to anthologizing the second-rate and clearing the ground for an ' Oxford Book of Worst Verse.' The result is a catholic collection of poems, ranging from those of Walter Savage Landor, whose first volume of poems was published more than forty years before Queen Victoria came to the throne, down to those of such ' Georgians ' as Mr Masefield and Mr Alfred Noyes. Wordsworth and his immediate circle are omitted, as belonging to the former age.
The love of anthologies is no new thing. From King Alfred down- wards men have delighted in collecting passages from their favourite authors, and there is always a certain interest in seeing in what
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directions lie the tastes of others. We like to have the hall-mark of ;i scholar's approval set upon our own favourites, and the omission of some poems which we should have included, and inclusion of some which we should have omitted, is no more than the addition of that personal equation which gives a living interest to all forms of criticism. To wander round so rich and varied a flower-garden with ' Q ' to call our attention to this blossom and that, to point out a delicate rock- plant there and a bed of lilies here, is an ideal occupation for a summer's day. These are not fields of asphodel trodden by the immortals, but pleasant paths winding among the freshness and fragrance of an English garden in May. Never since the great outburst of song in the seventeenth century has there been so large a number of poets — minor poets it may be, but with lips that have been touched by a coal from the divine altar. Victorian lyrics lack something of the direct- ness and spontaneity of the Elizabethan songs ; nor have they the intensity of awe and rapture which marks the hymns of Vaughan or Crashaw ; but their delicacy of workmanship, their obvious sincerity and tenderness have a- peculiar charm of their own. Now and then we find a song of frank happiness such as Dean Beeching's Going down Hill on a Bicycle or a call to arms such as Drakes Dram, but for the most part even in such as these there is a note of melancholy, a resolute courage which is determined to be master of its fate, rather than a gay delight in adventure. On the whole the selections show a rather curious sameness of tone considering how many decades they cover. The latest developments of English verse, such as Mr Masefield's narrative poems, could obviously not be included in an anthology of this sort ; we cannot tell whither this new spirit is calling us, and while we feel the future full of promise we do not know what the fulfilment may be. Meanwhile the poets of the last hundred years, Irish, English, Scottish, American, show close kinship one with another. Imperialist and socialist, lover of nature and cockney-bred, they are all sons and daughters of one age, an age which cares intensely for accuracy in little things, which loves to dwell on the beauty of
Rose plot
Fringed pool
Fern grot — or note how7
The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam ; The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore home. The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volley'd out ; And I vow we sniflf'd the victuals as the vessel went about, —
which has infinite tenderness for ail things young and helpless, but tends to mingle the thought of death with that of life ; and above all, an age of deep, if not passionate, religious emotion :
All dies;
L'o, how all dies ! O seer,
And all things too arise:
All dies and all is born ;
But each resurgent morn, behold more near the Perfect Morn.
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* For my part/ says the editor, ' I rise from the task in reverence and wonder not only at the mass (not easily sized) of poetry written with ardour in these less-than-a-hundred years, but at the amount of it which is excellent, and the height of some of that excellence ; in some exultation too, as I step aside and... gaze after the stream of young runners with their torches.'
GRACE E. HADOW.
ClRENCBSTER.
La Vie de St Rend, poeme du xiiie siecle, par Richier. Publie pour la premiere fois d'apres deux MSS. de la Bibliotheque Royale de Bruxelles. Par W. N. BOLDERSTON. London : Henry Frowde. 1912. 8vo. 356 pp.
La disposition generale des matieres, dans cette edition, me parait bonne. II y a d'abord une introduction (pp. 5-38) qui comprend une courte vie de St Remi, puis les renseignements sur les MSS. du poeme, sur 1'auteur, sur les sources, sur la versification, sur le dialecte, le tout suivi d'une bibliographic concise et de deux appendices dont le premier rapproche les vv. 1520 sq. de la Vie de St Remi du passage qui lui correspond dans la Vita beati Remigii de Hincmar et le second contient la Visio Karoli Calvi d'apres BN lat. 12710 corrige en quelques endroits a 1'aide de BN lat. 14117. Les 8234 vers de la Vie de St Remi occupent les pp. 39-338. Viennent ensuite une analyse et des notes (pp. 339-346), un glossaire (pp. 347-351), enfin une table des noms propres (pp. 352-356).
Mais si la disposition generale des matieres est bonne, on n'en pent dire autant du traitement de ces matieres. D'une fagon generale, tout ce qui concerne 1'etude de la langue du texte — et c'est pour une edition comme celle que nous avons sous les yeux un point capital — a ete fait d'une facon trop sommaire et trop negligente. Je m'arrete, par exemple, a ce qui est dit du dialecte aux pp. 19 sq. et pour ne pas prendre trop de place, je me bornerai a critiquer ce qui se rapporte aux voyelles (pp. 19-21). ' A developpe quelquefois un i...' nous dit-on, ' surtout devant n mouillee.' Mais \'i de montaigne etc. n'est pas autre chose qu'une graphic qu'on trouve aussi dans le francais normal1 et qui indique le mouillement de la nasale. ' Au devient a dans mavais 2660, as 1182, ara 5936.' Mais voila d'abord des cas fort differents. Et puis as n'est pas pour uri anterieur aus ; c'est as qui, comme dans le frarigais normal, est primitif. De meme ara, n'est pas pour aura, c'est une forme des dialectes du N. Est qui correspond au fr. normal aura. ' Ei est devenu i dans chair 4344.' Non pas: chmr, che'ir est un doublet de cheeir dont 1'origine doit etre analogique. 'E (du latin a libre et accentue) s'ecrit tant6t e, tantot ei...' C'est juste; mais pourquoi citer parmi les exemples : decreit 1050 ? Les constatations faites pour les
1 Mr Bolderston fait preceder ses remarques sur les voyelles par la phrase: 'Nous faisons la comparaison avec le franQais normal.'
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voyelles toniques se reduisent a peu de chose ; pour les voyelles atones a peu pres a rien du tout. ' E muet s'e'crit une fois oi dans demoustroi- rnent 2380.' Au vers 2380 on lit demon stroison et le MS B ecrit, parait-il, demon strision. Que faut-il en penser ? ' Ai, ei, oi, i s'ecrivent indifferemment... ' Non pas : on trouve bien signor, grignor mais non pas soignor, groignor. ' E et a devant r et v avaient, je crois, une pro- nonciation mixte entre les deux sons...' Devant r,je veux bien; cela se retrouve en fran9. normal; mais devant v c'est autre chose et les exemples cites grevee : eslavee 299-300, eslava 1778 ne prouvent rien ; c'est Mr B. qui 1'a dit lui-meme (p. 19) : 'la plupart des rimes sont doubles, mais il serait dangereux de baser la-dessus des conclusions sur la qualite des voyelles penultiemes.' '0 est devenu e dans dener...et enor!. Pour enor, il s'agit d'une dissimilation du premier o de honorem. Mais pour dener, je n'y crois guere. Mr B. cite: dena: amena 1839-90; donner : pener 2009-10; denee 2588. Donner: pener ne prouve rien; denee a ete corrige au vers 2588 en devee ; enfin dena de 1889 peut tres bien, devant donna du MS B, etre corrige en dona. ' U devient ou devant une voyelle : louissiaus 1727; moez 1772 mais muer 1501; mouire 3462 (MS B ecrit muire) ; fouir 3383 ; bouiron 6266.' Je donnerai plus loin mes raisons pour corriger louissiaus 1727 en loinsiaus', moez 1772 a et6 corrige dans le texte en moez et n'a done rien a faire avec muer', au v. 3462 la le^on muire du MS B est la bonne (le mot rime avec destruire) ; dans les deux autres cas la voyelle est atone. ' B devient u dans ausolu 4231 mais absolue 6478.' Une remarque analogue sur P se trouve a sa place dans la discussion sur les consonnes. D'apres ces quelques remarques, on pourra apprecier la valeur des quelques pages que Mr B. consacre au dialecte de son auteur.
La Vie de St Remi est censee etre de la deuxieme moitie du xiiie siecle. Le texte a ete etabli sur le MS A (MS Brux., Bibl. Roy., 6409) ecrit vers 1300. Les variantes, citees au bas de la page, sont, sauf ex- ception, celles du MS B (MS Brux.; Bibl. Roy., 5365), ecrit vers 1360. D'une facon generale, la transcription du texte parait avoir ete faite avec un certain soin. II faudrait corriger ademutierent 530 en ademucierent (Godefroy a mucier, demucier mais non ademucier)', coingnie': empoingnie 4339-40 en coingnie : empoingnie ; provence 5503 en Provence ; costeil 7394 en costeit. N'ayant pas a ma disposition les MSS dont s'est servi Mr B., il m'est impossible d'aller beaucoup plus loin dans la critique de la transcription du texte que je me vois force de laisser a d'autres. Je me contente done de dire que, dans ce long poeme, il reste encore des passages peu clairs, du moins dans leur syntaxe, cf. vv. 5563-5.
Pour la partie du livre de Mr Bolderston qu'il intitule : Analyse et notes, on peut y trouver trois parties : (a) une analyse du poeme qui est des plus sommaires, accompagnee de renvois au texte de Flodoard et de Hincmar ; (b) quelques notes ou Mr Bolderston fait des rapprochements, d'ailleurs peu probants, entre divers passages de la Vie de tit Remi et des passages qui proviennent surtout des osuvres de Chrestien de Troyes et de Raoul de Houdenc; (c) quelques rares notes d'ordre philologique — ily en a dix, je crois, sur des mots qu'on lit au vv. 7, 211, 984, 2629, 4147,
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4794, 4964, 6051, 7066, 7093. Toutes ou presque toutes auraient du trouver leur place au glossaire. En effet six de ces notes consistent a nous dire qu'aubre, engluer, parfaissement, deespis, rengrignorir, escrinolet, ne sont pas dans Godefroy ou d'autres dictionnaires. Encore faut-il noter qu'engltter est dans Godefroy, mais parce que c'est un mot du fran£ais moderne, atteste d'ailleurs depuis le xiie siecle, il faut le chercher au Complement.
La partie qui m'aurait le plus interesse mais malheureusement aussi la partie la plus faible de cette edition, c'est le glossaire qui ne cornporte que cinq pages a peine. Je crois qu'il est juste de dire que dans 1'edition princeps d'un texte en vieux fran9ais de 8234 vers on s'attend a davantage. Mais le glossaire prete a la critique de bien d'autres facons. On peut considerer comme fautes d'irnpression orchel pour orchal, 7758, et louisiaus pour louissiaus 1727, car on troupe orchal, louissiaus dans le texte. Cependant pour louisiaus le doute vient a Fesprit en lisant dans le glossaire ; ' louisiaus, luisel, s.m. 1727 lumiere.' On peut y voir un effort pour rapprocher louissiaus de luisel ' lueur' dont Godefroy ne donne qu'un exemple, et qu'on ne trouve pas dans le texte de la Vie de St Remi. En effet si Ton se reporte au texte, on trouve que le sens de ' lumiere ' ne convient nullement. Les vv. 1726-7 :
Et celle tempeste apesant
Qui par louissiaus s'amonceloit,
veulent dire : ' et apaisant cet orage qui s'amoncelait en grosses masses ' ou quelque chose de semblable ; et il faut voir dans louissiaus le mot loissiaus ou peut-etre loinsiaus, puisque c'est la forme de predilection de 1'auteur (voir les vv. 7666, 7749, 8114), et lui attribuer le sens de ' pelotons ' (cf. Godefroy a luissel).
Cela mene a dire que les erreurs d 'interpretation sont par trop nombreuses. C'est ainsi qu'on lit au glossaire : ' aers, 6771 en arriere ' (si Ton se reporte au v. 6771, on voit qu'aers est le part, passe d'aerdre et veut dire 'attache, fixe'); ' bondon, s.m., 1581, ventre' (un coup d'oeil au v. 1581 prouve qu'il s'agit du fr. bondon ' bonde de tonneau ') ; ' briconie, s.f., 5563, acte lache, coquin ' (que vient faire ici coquin ? faut-il comprendre d'un coquin ? une briconie est un acte de bricon, c.a.d. de fou) ; ' damz, s.m., 5660, dommage, malheur ' (au passage indique dame veut dire ' maitresse ') ; 'descochier, 7030, decharger ' (c'est le fr. decocher pris au sens absolu) ; ' despoise, 7786, matiere ' (au v. 7786 despoise indique un melange de cuivre et d'argent pour diminuer le poids et la valeur de la monnaie) ; 'dileution, s.f., 1095, delices' (veut dire ' dilection, amour'); ' encovenir, 830, ' embarrasser ' ; 'livrison, livraison, s.f, 7541, mauvais traitement' (livraison est 1'action de livrer, de donner ; le mot est employe au v. 7541 dans un sens concret) ; ' maisiere, s.f, 1562, maison ' (rien n'indique que le mot n'ait pas le sens ordinaire de ' muraille ') ; ' oes, 1839, ceuvre ' (veut dire •' necessite, usage'); l paelle, s.f. mesure ' ; 'parent, adv., 4095, dans les environs'; ' periceus, 199, dangereux ; preeceus, 1172' (1'etude du contexte me fait croire qu'il s'agit du v. fr. pereceus ' paresseux ') ; ' prinseignier, 2864,
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baptiser ' (aux vv. 2864-5 on lit : ' qu'il le prinseignast Et baptisast ' : traduire prinseignier par ' marquer (prealablement) du signe de la croix'); ' ravenir, 386, se repeter' (veut dire 'advenir, arriver de nouveau ' ; la traduction ' se repeter ' ne convient pas au contexte) ; 'recroire, 3539, renoncer' (il s'agit du verbe se recroire de 'renoncer a la croyance a ') ; ' rois, s.m., 5390, petit faisceau ' (il s'agit d'un filet et rois est le fr. mod. rets) ; ' rooignier, 311, trancher' (veut dire ' tonsurer ') ; . ' rotu-re, s.f., 5601), rupture'; ' sor under, 1582, en tourer ' (veut dire ' deborder ') ; ' soudeer, 746, payer ' (au v. 746 veut dire ' prendre a son service ') ; ' trebuche, si, 5390, lutte, machine de guerre ' (au v. 5390, trebuches est le pluriel du regime trebuchet. s.m., et il a le sens du fr. mod. trebuchet).
Le glossaire donne encore : ' aviron, 984, ? support ' ; au v. 984. aviron veut dire tout simplement ' gouvernail ' et le mot s'explique par un rapprochement avec le governes du v. 985. Quant a la mention : ' deduier, 876-82, s'amuser/ il faut dire que la forme analogique deduwut du v. 876 n'implique en aucune facon un infinitif deduier : c'est le part, present du verbe se deduire. Je note encore : ' haitie, 4435, rejouie ' ou il faut corriger en rejoui ; et ' volpille, s.f, 4875, renard ' ou il vaudrait peut-etre mieux mettre renarde. Corrigez aussi enfes (a sa place alphabetique dans le glossaire) en enfes.
II ne me parait pas que le glossaire ait ete fait d'apres un systeme quelconque. A defaut d'un glossaire complet, un bon glossaire de la Vie de St Remi clevrait contenir : (a) tous les mots et les sens de 1'anc. frangais qui sont rares, ex. g. ceux qui ne sont pas dans le Godefroy ou qui n'y sont attestes que dans un ou deux textes ; (b) tous les mots du francais moderne dont on ne connait pas d'exemple anterieur a la date supposee du texte et peut-etre meme ceux qui sont attestes pour la premiere fois dans d'autres textes de la meme epoque ; (c) tous les mots qui par leur forme ou leur sens donnent lieu a des remarques critiques. Or, parmi les mots plus specialement vieux-frangais, le glossaire cite carrogier e"t resrener comme n'etant pas dans le Godefroy ; mais man- quent aussi au Godefroy abitacle, contretnendement, descombreement, majestire, pidlentine qui sont dans le glossaire mais sans mention jmrticuliere ; et on pourrait aj outer comme manquant au Godefroy entrefailles,v. 348, et ranloinsela, v. 8113, qui ne sont pas dans le glossaire. Parmi les mots du v. fr. qui manquent au glossaire et qui devraient s'y trouver, je citerai : asoupe, 1989 (voir Godefroy a achoper) ; atireement, v. 2396 (un seul ex. dans Godefroy) ; barbarans, sb., v. 3092 (un seul ex. dans Godefroy tir£ de Horn) ; artillier, v. 5631 (pour le sens).
Le glossaire contient un nombre considerable de mots qui existent toujours dans le frangais moderne. Mais pourquoi a-t-on insert aviver ' animer,' par exemple, ou encore chenus ' aux cheveux blancs ' ? c'est ce que je ne saurais dire. II suffira peut-etre de faire observer que pour ma part j'aurais omis tous les mots du francais moderne que Mr B. a cm devoir noter et que Ton ne trouvera, a leur place alphabetique dans le glossaire, aucun des mots du fra^ais moderne, qui, a la lecture du texte, m'ont paru int£ressants par leur date. Parmi ceux-ci; je citerai :
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anniversaire, 6444 ; acheteor, 5726 ; chevrel, 6609 ; conquest, 3164 : corretier, 5708 ; malencontre, 4597 ; memorial, 7021 ; poterie, 4304 : ressaisir, 7275 ; retraite, 3465 ; en effet, tons ces mots sont attestes pour la premiere fois, d'apres le Diet. Gen., dans des textes de la deuxieme moitie du xiiie siecle. Encore plus importants sont les mots que le Diet Gen. n'atteste que depuis le xive siecle (ou plus tard). Je donne ici une liste complete de ceux que j'ai trouves1 :
1. absolument (8* R., v. 1899, absoluement ; DG: xive s., Oresme);
2. assidiiment (Sf R., v. 5087, assiduement ; DG: 1541, Calvin) ;
3. attiseur (S* R., v. 7717, atiseour; DG : 1615, R. Gaultier) ;
4. bondon (& R., v. 1381 ; DG : xiiie-xive s., Mace de la Charite);
5. coutumierement (8t R.,v. I353,coustumierement', DG: xive-xves.,
Chron. de Boucicaut) ;
6. decrepit (& R., v. 6052, decrepis ; DG : fin xve s., Martial
d'Auvergne, descrepy) ;
7. delogenient (8* R., v. 2722, deslogement ; DG: xives., Duquesne);
8. devier (S* R., v. 5994 ; DG : xive s., Oresme) ;
9. dialecticien (& R., v. 5278. dialeticien ; DG : 1546, Rabelais,
iii, 19, dialecticien', xiiie s., Vie de Sfc Catherine dialetien);
10. gracieusement (& R., v. 4279 ; DG: 1302, Lettre de Philippe le
Bel);
11. implorer (Sf R., v. 3405, emplorer; DG: 1549, R. Estienne,
implorer) ;
12. injonction (Sf R., v. 7385, injoncion ; DG : 1348, Varin, Arch.
admin, de Rheims, injunction) ;
13. .meneur (8t R., v. 1554, meneor ; D£ : 1308, texte dans
Godefroy) ;
14. precieusement (Sf R., v. 4280 ; ££: 1539, R. Estienne);
15. prostration (S1 R., v. 1567 ; DG: xive s., J. Golein);
16. reclusion (S6 R., v. 5012 ; DG : 1642, Oudin) ;
17. rhethoricien (S* R., v. 3070, rethorien\ DG : xive s., Oresme,
rettoricien) ;
18. secondement (8f R., v. 4862; DG: 1314, Mondeville) ;
19. semainier (S1 R., v. 5805 ; DG : xvie s., Bonivard) ;
20. solitaire men t (S* R., v. 1654 ; DG : xve s., Monstrelet) ;
21. souillure (S1 R., v. 3499, soilleure; DG : xvie s., Marot,
souilleure) ;
22. virginalement (S* R., v. 7472, virgineument ; DG : xive s.,
Menagier, virgin alement).
Si j'ai fait un aussi long compte rendti de cette edition, c'est d'abord sans doute parce que le texte de la Vie de St Remi m'a interesse au point de vue lexicographique, mais c'est aussi pour montrer 1'interet que je prends a cette publication. Je suis charme de voir que I'Oxford University Press a entrepris de publier un texte en v. francais d'une certaine importance sinon litteraire du moins linguistique. Ensuite,
1 Dans cette liste S* R. = Vie de St Remi ; DG = Dictionnaire General.
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cela m'a fait un veritable plaisir de voir qu'un jeune anglais avait entrepris de son cote le travail quelque pen rebutant de faire cette edition d'un poeme en v. francais de 8234 vers. Les etudiants des universites anglaises qui choisissent les langues modernes comme sujet special se tournent presque tous vers les etudes litteraires qui ne demandent pas une preparation pour eux aussi ardue que celle des etudes linguistiques. Aussi faut-il tenir compte a Mr Bolderston de son bon vouloir. Si j'ai du critiquer 1'oeuvre de debut qui atteste du rnoins chez lui une louable ambition, j'espere que mes critiques ne feront que stimuler en lui le desir de vaincre.
PAUL BARBIER FILS. LEEDS.
The Influence of Baudelaire in France and England. By G. TURQUET- MILNES. London : Constable and Co. 1913. 8vo. viii + 300 pp.
For the first time, in English, a book has been devoted to a serious study of Baudelaire and his influence. Mrs Turquet-Milnes is to be congratulated on a very careful and painstaking piece of work, which no student of nineteenth- century French literature can afford to neglect. The reserves we feel bound to make in praising her book must not be taken to imply any want of appreciation of what is, in many respects, a most noteworthy study of Baudelaire and of some of his contemporaries and successors. With the influence of Baudelaire on painting and music we do not propose to deal. A literary critic does not feel at home in discussing such topics, and we cannot help feeling that the book would have gained by concentration on Baudelaire himself and on those other writers who can, in any real sense, be considered Baudelairians.
It can scarcely be said that Mrs Turquet-Milnes has done complete justice to her subject. She has not altogether understood the apparently contradictory personality of Baudelaire. She demurs, and rightly, to the view that has long prevailed of Baudelaire as a decadent and a lover of evil, an exponent or apologist of sin. But she finds in him pursuit of sensation at any, cost, and a sacrilegious pleasure in the pursuit of evil Here we entirely disagree with her. Baudelaire had an intense and passionate horror of sin : but, though he fell continually into sin, love of sin found no place in his nature. His was a personality at once profoundly spiritual and overwhelmingly sensual, doomed by that clash of contradictories to sorrow, and, except by miracle, despair. Men have been, as he was, spiritualists, ' surcivilises,' of exquisite refinement, quiveringly sensitive, and have yet been happy. Men have been simple pagans and yet found beauty in life. But Baudelaire was both at once, and for such a nature acute suffering is inevitable. His (Euvres Posthumes, especially Mon cceur mis a nu, and his other diaries, are probably the most terrible documents ever put upon paper, revealing as they do the gradual conquest of a great soul by despairing cynicism. " •
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The Baudelairian legend may be set aside by the student of Baude- laire's life. His extravagances were merely the cynical armour of his sensitiveness : they were, we think, absolutely adventitious to his real nature. The two great influences of his life were Jeanne Duval and Madame Sabatier, his evil genius and his good angel. Jeanne Duval stands for all the shame and awfulness of sin. The poet, unable to tear himself away from her, came through her fatal and degrading attraction to despise all women, and to lose all faith in the highest aspirations of the soul. In her he found neither peace nor joy. No bond of sympathy existed between them except the most shameful. Mrs Turquet-Milnes' ' explanation of the attraction Jeanne Duval held for him ' errs in too great delicacy. She is not a living woman used ' as a means of re- habilitating the attractions of the past.' With her Baudelaire found only ' the expense of spirit in a waste of shame.' But Madame Sabatier awoke in him all the dormant nobility of his being : his love for her was far removed from all degradation. She was for him
1'ange gardien, la Muse et la Madone.
She haunted him like a beautiful dream, like some spiritual presence ever with him, leading him from the slough of despair into paths of beauty, into the fields of peace. But he was haunted, too, by another vision — the vision of his past self. He feared to find in Madame Sabatier another Jeanne, but above all he feared himself: and so, though his love was returned, he made the supreme refusal, he rejected the hope and redemption which love alone could give him, and fell thenceforward through lower and ever lower depths of shame and despair, to a welcome death.
His soul was the soul of a god, but of a god possessed of a demon. Dragged incessantly towards the abyss, he fell times without number, but never without remembering whence he fell. We do not see him wallowing in forbidden delights. We see Lucifer as lightning fallen from heaven, bathed in the fire of Hell, racked with tortures too awful to be named.
Mrs Turquet-Milnes thinks differently ; but to us it seems impossible to mistake the meaning of such lines as
Dans ton lie, o Venus! je n'ai trouve debout Qu'un gibet symbolique ou pendait mon image. O Seigneur, donnez-moi la force et le courage De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans degotit.
Strength and courage to overcome his own self-loathing — that is indeed the great thing wanting in Baudelaire. The Fleurs du Mai are full of desperate loneliness, of unspeakable ennui.
His soul has never found satisfaction. In a barren, dreary solitude of contemplation he passes judgment on the body that has dragged him down, and the punishment falls speedily — the remorse that no wine nor drug can assuage, the heavy burden of despair that nothing can lift, an utter weariness of being that only one thing can cure.
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There are two rays of hope in his darkness, love and death; and the first being quenched, he turns towards death as his only possible salvation.
C'est la gloire des Dieux, c'est le greriier mystique, C'est la bourse du pauvre et sa patrie antique, C'est le portique ouvert sur les cieux inconnus.
Thus Mrs Turquet-Milnes seems to us to have failed to appreciate (p. 17) the absolutely essential feature of Baudelaire's temperament. She considers him as a type rather than as an individual, and this, we should say, is the fundamental defect of the book.
Nor has she fully appreciated Baudelaire's attitude towards Art. She has not sufficiently distinguished Baudelaire's 'ideal beauty' as ultimately incarnated in Madame Sabatier from the dangerous seduction of a mere plasticism which so powerfully tempted him in Jeanne Duval. Where he seems to adhere to the orthodoxy of ' 1'Art pour FArt,' to be simply a disciple of Gautier, Jeanne Duval and all she stands for is the explanation. But Baudelaire struggled to free himself from her obsession, in Art as well as in Life. And in Art he succeeded, while in Life he failed. The higher Baudelaire found in Art his only consolation and hope. He attempted to gain in poetry that self- expression which in its fulness life had refused him. His verse is always sincere and passionate. Herein lies the explanation of his often seemingly self-contradictory attitude towards ' 1'Art pour 1'Art.' Art to him was absolute : an end in itself. Yet it was not the merely formal decoration that it was for Gautier. In Art Baudelaire sought rather an escape from the ' gout immodere de la forme ' than an ex- ploitation of it.
His article on ' 1'Ecole pai'enne ' is proof enough of this. To Baudelaire plasticity was too closely allied to sensuality to be any- thing but a curse. ' La plastique 1'a empoisonne, et cependant il ne peut vivre que par ce poison.' There is nothing plastic about Baude- laire's verse : it is intense, passionate, even tortured, rising to infinite heights of aspiration, falling to infinite depths of despair. It is never without an intellectual substructure. ' Congedier la passion et la raison, c'est tuer la litte'rature.' Never does Baudelaire look at the world merely ' sous sa forme materielle.' And yet he will not prostitute his Art to a purpose: Art is, it has and can have no purpose. In that sense must be interpreted his Art for Art's sake utterances. But Art will not be irresponsible dreaming or fresco or arabesque: Gautier's ' metaphores qui se suivent ' are poles apart from the fiery intensity and passionate sincerity in self-analysis of Baudelaire.
The ' diabolism ' so often noticeable in Baudelaire's conception of Beauty is due in part to the effort of the disappointed sensualist to 'commit the oldest sins a thousand different ways.' But it has also a nobler cause : the clash and strife of his two natures, and the opposed attraction of the two types of beauty that appealed to him, the plastic and the spiritual, and the despair and horror engendered by the hope- lessness of his struggle to free himself from the lower obsession.
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Pagans have worshipped plastic beauty without remorse : Baudelaire, the spiritualist, could not.
Apart from the form of his work, with which Mrs Turquet-Milnes hardly professes to deal, Baudelaire had in no real sense any prede- cessors. Gautier was a simple pagan. Aloysius Bertrand and Petrus Borel, on whom Mrs Turquet-Milnes has written illuminating and interesting essays, have no relation whatever to Baudelaire. The treatment of Baudelaire's posterity is, also, besides being very uneven, to a considerable extent beside the point. ' Baudelairism ' has very little to do with Baudelaire. Mrs Turquet-Milnes' definition of ' Bau- delairism ' applies excellently to most of the so-called followers of Baudelaire, who made of themselves just what Baudelaire himself was not, lovers of sin. They had not, as Baudelaire had, that double nature which made him fear degradation even in the holiest relations of love. They had not that ' degout d'aimer ' which only such a nature las Baudelaire's can possibly know.
The most Baudelairian of the contemporaries of Baudelaire was certainly Barbey d'Aurevilly. He, like Baudelaire, is an intensely moral writer : perhaps (and we do not forget Lex Diaboliques}, with Baudelaire, the most intensely moral of all French writers : he has branded vice, which he loathed with all the Baudelairian loathing, as no other writer has ever branded it, as only Leon Bloy could have done, or Baudelaire himself. He himself was not a Baudelaire. But his characters are. The terrible Abbe de la Croix-Jugan of the Ensorcelee is a character that can never be forgotten. Mrs Turquet-Milnes, as might be expected, sees in Barbey ' a curious impiety ' which made him write Les Diaboliques. Barbey was not impious here or anywhere. He is in the terrible stories of Les Diaboliques just as intensely Catholic and moral as in any other of his works. But he is a moralist for strong men and women who do not fear the truth. The brave he purges by terror: the weak he destroys. Leon Bloy, in his study of Barbey d'Aurevilly, calls the Diaboliques a 'document implacable qu'aucun moraliste n'avait apporte- jusqu'ici, dans un ciboire de terreur d'une ailssi paradoxale magnificence.' Mrs Turquet-Milnes is right in saying that ' at his greatest, he is as great as Balzac.' He was even greater.
Verlaine was not a Baudelairian either in the real sense or in any other. Tossed helplessly, without any serious struggle, between hysterical Catholicism and nameless orgies of vice, without any in- tellectual outlook or definite philosophy of life, he was in every way less than Baudelaire. His was not a great soul. He was simply a drunken profligate afflicted with unmanly spasms of remorse, who wrote a few beautiful and haunting lyrics amidst a mass of mediocre and even filthy scribbling. No high morality lights the awful darkness of some of his verse : his lapses are redeemed by no intense and passionate aspiration after purity.
The chapter of ' Living Poets ' (iv, xi) is by far the weakest in the book. Mrs Turquet-Milnes should have made up her mind whether she meant to include them or not. Baudelaire and Barbey d'Aurevilly
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are, in some ways, the most significant figures in the French literature of the nineteenth century. They are with the lesser men who gathered round them 'those who have expressed its temper' (p. 17) and made it different from any other century (that is, if we forget the whole scientific and materialist movement of the time). The writers of the last decade of the nineteenth century belong really to a new movement, one of faith and hope, which might take as its motto Viele-Griffin's line :
Rejouis-toi et sache croire,
or his
II n'y a pas de fatals desastres, Toute la defaite est en toi !
The most essentially Baudelairian of contemporary poets — Henri de Regnier, whose L'Homme et la Sirene, e.g., is intensely Baudelairian in the true sense— is not even mentioned. Gilkin, the most conspicuous of contemporary dispensers of blasphemy — a Baudelairian in the other and bad sense — shares a similar fate.
We cannot devote much space to Part V, on the Baudelairian Spirit in England. To classify Mr George Moore as a Baudelairian, in spite of his real or affected love of Baudelaire, is to insult Baudelaire's sin- cerity and intensity. Mr Moore is certainly not ' Baudelairian in this sense that, though ceaselessly incredulous, he pretends to believe in this movement of Irish faith ' (p. 257) or in the Protestantism to which he was converted. There can be no conflict in Mr Moore's nature. He is a maker of epigrams and sometimes of beautiful sentences, a devotee of ' FArt pour 1'Art ' in its narrower sense. He is not a great tortured soul rent between Moloch and God. And when it comes to finding Baudelairism of any kind whatever in the mysticism of ' M.' (Mr George W. Russell) or in Synge, then it is time to protest. We doubt if ' M.' at least has ever read a word of Baudelaire or knows anything whatever about him. No two men could be further apart, in their lives or their work.
Swinburne no doubt admired Baudelaire. But he was a pagan. Nothing could be less Baudelairian, e.g., than the Ave atque Vale written in memory of Baudelaire and quoted by Mrs Turquet-Milnes. It would be difficult to misunderstand Baudelaire more completely. He sought no redemption from virtue, nor to him were the roses and raptures of vice other than charnel blossoms of Hell and the bark of Hell's hounds. He took the mingled metal of his soul, gold and bronze and dross, and found relief for his pain in beating it and working it into gorgeous filigree and arabesque, with here and there a terrific panel for the vestibules of Hell. But unlike Swinburne, at least the earlier and so-called Baudelairian Swinburne, he did not attempt to make vice or sin beautiful or attractive.
Mrs Turquet-Milnes is of course consistent, though wrong, in finding that 'Swinburne's idea of extracting " exceeding pleasure out of extreme pain..." is a Baudelairian one' (p. 225).
Wilde is certainly nearer Baudelaire, at least in his later work
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where the soul of the poet cries from the depths of shame. But in so far as he was a Swinburnian and a pagan — and it seems that Wilde's spiritual nature only awoke after he had drained the cup of pleasure — he has no relation whatever to Baudelaire. It is quite un-Baudelairian to celebrate Swinburne as one who
Hath kissed the lips of Proserpine
And sung the Galilaean's requiem, (p. 239.)
Many a poet beside Baudelaire has distrusted the ' idea of progress ' and has hated democracy (p. 240). We cannot follow Mrs Turquet-Milnes in finding in this ' aristocratic attitude ' any proof of Baudelairian influence.
Before closing we must say a word as to Mrs Turquet-Milnes own style. Although we differ from her on some points, we have no small measure of admiration for her thought — but we have no word of praise for the prose in which she has clothed it. It jars upon the ear like a solo on the kettle-drum : it is as jog-trot as 'the butter- women's rank to market' — totally devoid of rhythm and harmony of phrase. The effect is a continual staccato which at times becomes nerve-racking. We think that Mrs Turquet-Milnes might considerably increase her po- pularity, without reducing the lucidity of her prose, if she would remember that the full-stop is not the only mark of punctuation in use in English.
The bibliography should have mentioned M. Cassagne's La Theorie de L Art pour I' Art, indispensable to all students of the period; and M. T. de Visan's L' Attitude du Lyrisme Contemporain, if only to make it clear that despite a sonnet of which Mrs Turquet-Milnes makes too much (she is not alone in this), Baudelaire and the ' Symbolists ' have very little, if anything, in common.
K. M. LINTON,
T. B. RUDMOSE-BROWN.
DUBLIN.
Moliere en Angleterre, 1660-1670. By J. E. GILLET. Paris : Champion. 1913. 8vo. 240 pp.
In a merry passage written in 1665, Sprat declared that the English ' have far exceeded ' the French ' in the representation of the different humours. The truth is, the French have always seemed almost ashamed of the true comedy, making it not much more than the subject of their farces.' Sprat's contemporaries did not apparently share his opinion. In 1663 or 1664, Davenant borrowed the second act of The Playhouse to be let from Sganarelle ; adaptations by various playwrights followed in quick succession, and, from 1663 to 1670, no less than eleven other plays were indebted to Moliere's art. How Moliere was first brought to the notice of the English public, what were Tartufe's and
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Alceste's naturalisation papers on British soil, are the points dealt with at great length in the present essay.
M. Gillet claims to have verified and completed the accounts given of the subject by previous scholars : ' Pour saisir le fil de la continuite historique, il fallait s'arreter a ces debuts modestes avec une attention rninutieuse, ne negliger aucun detail de bibliographic ou d'histoire theatrale — Je me suis attache a traiter 1'epoque des origines avec une patience et une prudence speciales....Voici done un travail assez sec, mais, je 1'espere, precis et complet et vide d'hypotheses risquees et d'amplifications ' (p. 4). This is well said and here was the right way to do good and unselfish service in the cause of literary history. It may be wished, however, that the many opponents of the so-called bibliographical method and some of its friends would realize its main disadvantage, which is its treacherousness in the hands of an over- confident and unskilled workman ; briefly speaking, ' n'est pas biblio- graphe qui veut.'...As they stand, M. Gillet's investigations display much labour arid are likely to benefit students of comparative literature ; for instance, his list of the dates of production of early English Molieresque plays (pp. 200 — 208) and his reprint of parallel passages from John Lacy, John Caryll, Matthew Medbourne, and Thomas Betterton (pp. 146 — 199) can hardly be dispensed with. The greater pity it seems, therefore, that M. Gillet should have wandered far from his own professed and very high ideal. In fact, a good opportunity has been lost of giving a final answer to an interesting question.
First, M. Gillet's analysis of his sources of information (pp. 7 — 10) is unsatisfactory. Instead of being told, however candidly, that 'apres avoir etudie Moliere dans le texte de MM. Despois et Mesnard, il fallait se familiariser avec la litterature molieresque,' we should have preferred to know to what precise extent the present contribution is based upon Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets, Giles Jacob's Poetical Register and Van Laun's articles in the Molieriste. Similarly, we should like to have seen Mr Harvey Jellie's Sources da theatre anglais a 1'epoque de la Restauration and Mr M. Kerby's Moliere and the Restoration Comedy, briefly dismissed as feeble attempts at criticism. Not so ; Mr Kerby is severely taken to task : .' et ceci est plus grave — 1'auteur ne mentionne que sept sur douze des pieces que nous allons bientot examiner et ne leur consacre en tout que seize pages' (p. 10). True, but in 1691, Langbaine traced out pilferings from Moliere in Davenant's Playhouse to be let (1), Flecknoe's Damoiselles a la Mode (2), Dryden's Sir Martin Mar-all (3), Shadwell's Sullen Lovers (4), Sedley's Mulberry Garden (5), Dryden's Evening's Love (6), Lacy's Dumb Lady (7), Caryll's Sir Solomon (8), Medbourne's Tarta/e or the French Puritan (9). Betterton's Amorous Widow (10) was added to this list by Giles Jacob, and Van Laun made valuable suggestions. Lastly, Moliere's influence on Etheredge in The Comical Revenge (11) and She woud if she cou'd (12) did not pass unnoticed by Mr Edmund Gosse and Mr A. W. Verity. Our conclusion is that the making up of the above list is not due to M. Gillet's efforts, as might be inferred from his preface. His reticence,
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on one hand, and his useless comments, on the other, cannot be justified ; however, they mean that our author has wished to do better and to claim more than he could.
The truth is that, in many a case, M. Gillet has omitted to acknow- ledge what he necessarily owes to his authorities. There are but three insignificant references to Langbaine in the chapter on An Evening's Love, yet Langbaine wrote, with some precision : ' This play is, in a manner, wholly stolen from the French, being patched up from Corneille's Le feint Astrologae, Moliere's Depit amoureux and his Les Precieuses ridicules, and Quinault's Lamant indiscret, not to mention little hints borrowed from Shakespeare, Petronius Arbiter, etc. The main plot of this play is built on that of Corneille's or rather Calderon's
play called EL Astrologo fingido Aurelia's affectation in her speech,
p. 31, is borrowed from Moliere's Les Precieuses ridicules ; the scene between Alonzo and Lopez, p. 39, is translated from Moliere's Depit Amoureux, Act II. Sc. 6 ; Camilla's begging a new gown of Don Melchor, p. 61, from the same, Act I. Sc. 2. The love quarrel between Wildblood and Jacinta, Maskall and Beatrix, Act IV. Sc. the last, is copied from the same play, Act iv. Sc. 3 and 4...V We hear that, in Sir Martin Mar -all, Dry den 'fait aussi des emprunts...au roman de Francion de Sorel, a Voiture dont il traduit tres gentiment la chanson L'amour sous sa loy...et enfin a une piece de Shakerley Marmion' (p. 60). Let us now turn to Langbaine (op. cit., p. 170): 'There are several other turns of the plot copied from other authors as Warner's playing on the lute instead of his master. ...See Francion written by M. du Pare, lib. 7. Old Moody and Sir John being hoisted up in their altitudes is taken... from Shakerley Marmion's Fine Companion, Act iv. Sc. I2. The song of Blind Love to this hour... is translated from a song made by M. de Voiture, though I must do Mr Dryden the j ustice to acquaint the world that he has kept to the sense and the same measure of verse.' And why should M. Gillet have thought it fit, not only to transcribe, but also to correct Gerard Langbaine ? ' Langbaine que suit docilement M. Halliwell (Diet of Old Engl Plays), refere le passage en question a la Francioti de M. du Pare !. . .Dryden 1'a emprunte a la Vraie histoire de Francion composee par Charles Sorel, pp. 281 — 282 de 1'ed. Colombey, Paris, 1858.' In the first place, Langbaine has M. du Pare, not M. du Pare, and Halliwell writes M. du Pare, but these are trifles ; in the second place, the mark of exclamation may be transferred to M. Gillet himself, who will consult Colombey 's edition of Francion (Avant-propos, p. 4) with profit : ' Sorel n'a jamais cesse de decline r la paternite de Francion... La premiere edition de ce livre...est intitulee : "Histoire comique de Francion, fleau des vicieux." Presque toutes les autres editions portent ce titre uniforme : " La vraie histoire comique de Francion composee par Nicolas de Moulinet, Sieur du Pare3.'" Further
1 Langbaine, op. cit., pp. 163 and 164.
'2 M. Gillet points out (note 5, p. 60) ' 1'erreur de Laiigbaiue qui reuvoie a iv, 3.' Langbaine has ' Act 4, sc. 1 ' and his reference is the right one.
3 Cf. the first English translation (1655): The Comical History of Francion. ..by M. de Moulines, sieur du Pare... etc.
M. L. R. ix. 9
130 Reviews
on (p. 109), 'Langbaine nous assure que le Tartufe [Medbourne's adaptation] fut reyu par des applaudissements universels.' Not so, indeed : ' This play was received with universal applause on our English stage, if we believe our author, and is accounted by him the masterpiece of Moliere's productions/ One more instance of first-hand knowledge and accurate scholarship: Betterton's Amorous Widow was produced sometime in 1670: 'C'etait 1'epoque ou Ton representait chaque annee, au 9 novembre, fete du Lord-Maire, The London Cuckolds de Ravenscroft, farce pleine d'outrages envers les paisibles habitants de la Cite' (p. 115). This passage is practically by Van Laun, according to whom and many others Ravenscroft's play was first performed in 1682: 'On avait 1'habitude de representer cette piece... le jour meme de 1'installation du lord maire de Londres, pour montrer le mepris qu'on ressentait pour les gens de la Cite1.' I need not insist upon other blunders; several foot- notes are incomplete and one of them (p. 49) refers to a passage in the appendix which I have not been able to discover ; the English transla- tion^) (footnote, p. 225) of Sprat's Observations on Monsieur de Sorbteres Voyage into England will not be found anywhere; lastly, Andrew Marvell did not write ' Fleckno, un pretre irlandais a Rome ' (p. 40).
Failing as a scientific bibliographer, M. Gillet also fails as critic On the whole, his appraising of Moliere's fortune in the first ten years of the Restoration, is correct (p. 134). Moliere's simple plots did not prove suitable to the native taste for a great ' variety of actions ' and ' many other little contrivances2 ' ; his conception of ' 1'honnete homme ' and his ethical tendencies were not understood ; alone, some characters of his, thanks perhaps to their affinities with Jonsonian humours, succeeded in leaving a lasting mark on English literature; the deformations they underwent bear witness to the brutal realism and coarseness of the age3. My quarrel with M. Gillet is that his few judicious remarks have to be rescued out of a jumble of unfit materials ; his literary sense either runs away with irrelevant scraps of information, or indulges in sayings like the following : 'II se fait ainsi que Sam Weller, des Pickwick Papers, est un descendant authentique, d'une part, des valets espagnols que Smollett a empruntes a Lesage, d'autre part, de 1'immortel Dufoy- Mascarille' (p. 140), ' Et ne vous recriez pas sur la corruption de la societe anglaise. ...Au point de vue de la moralite, Charles II et Louis XIV se valent. ...La difference entre les deux pays etait que 1'un ignorait 1'art du vernis ' (p. 138). Sam Weller will have a ready answer, and this ' art du vernis,' whatever is meant by it, was not a little respon- sible for Moliere's career and genius. Again — but here an error of judgment is tacked on to an error of fact: 'ATorigine, ne 1'oublions pas, leur curiosite [of the founders of the Royal Society] s'etendait a la litterature. ...La Royal Society, avant de devenir exclusivement scien- tifique, etc....' (p. 15).
1 Van Laun in Le MoKeriste, Nov. 1880, p. 238. Cf. Halliwell, Diet, of Old Enyl. Plays, under The London Cuckolds.
2 Sprat, Observations on M. de Sorbiere's Voyage into England, p. 168.
3 Cf. Dufoy in The Comical Revenge and Mascarille.
Reviews
131
My sole object in giving so much room to the present work has been to defend the bibliographical method. But surely, this method does not demand that French should be butchered on every possible occasion; it does not even approve of such an expression as ' une farce de Moliere, farce un peu longuette ' (p. 26).
J. J. CHAMPENOIS.
LONDON.
MINOR NOTICES.
An attractive little volume among the 'Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature ' is The Ballad in Literature by T. F. Henderson (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1912). The book consists of four chapters: 'The Literary Form, Character and Sources of the Ballad/ 'Ballad Themes,' 'The Origin and Authorship of Ballads,' and 'The Later British Ballads.' The most important is the third, in which the views of communal composition developed by Professor Kittredge and Pro- fessor Gummere are subjected to a searching criticism, which, it must be said, seems to be to a great extent successful, at least as against the more extreme positions, and the essential differences between their views and those of Child are effectively pointed out. Speaking of the ballad of Robyn and Oandeleyn Mr Henderson concludes : 'Any one who chooses to believe that the genius of the improvising throng and the chance of blind tradition are, together, sufficient to account for the production of this fine ballad, may be left in the possession of his conviction : my own mental faculties will not permit me to conceive its possibility.' As a convenient popular guide to the subject this little handbook may be heartily recommended.
We are indebted to Miss Edith J. Morley for an attractive reprint of Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (London, Frowde, 1911) together with one of his dialogues relating to ' the golden age of Queen Elizabeth.' It was time that these should be made more accessible than they hitherto have been. No separate reprint had appeared for more than a century, and, apart from the early editions, all that was available was the collected edition of the works of Hurd, and this was published as long ago as 1811. By way of introduction to this most interesting text, we are given an outline of the author's life in the form of autobiographical notes ' found among his papers after his decease ' : also a well- written essay on the significance of the Letters, the substance of which leaves little to be desired. Miss Morley has contrived to emphasise just those features of Hurd's work which most needed
132 Minor Notices
emphasis: his contention as to the poetic possibilities of Gothic man- ners and superstitions ; his criticism of the Faery Queene, together with the theory involved that ' a poem must be judged according to the ideal which the poet set before himself; his enthusiastic defence of ' the fairy way of writing,' which 'looks like the foreshadowing of Coleridge's defence of supernatural subjects and of the romantic belief in tlje worth of the imagination and of imaginative conceptions.' In this light, the Letters on Chivalry and Romance may serve as an introduction to nineteenth century criticism, and they here form a little volume which no serious student of English literature can afford to -neglect.
J. W. H. A.
The object of M. Choisy's study of Tennyson (Alfred Tennyson, son spiritualisme, sa personalite morale, Geneve, Kiindig, 1912) may easily be misunderstood, and has been misunderstood by some reviewers. He refers in his preface to Taine's judgment of Tennyson as one-sided, 'II n'a vu qu'un cdte du caractere de Tennyson; il n'a considere en lui que 1'artiste epris de beaute et n'a pas recherche 1'homme intime, le penseur, le reveur, 1'homme de sentiment,' and it is his object to correct and supplement this view by an account of the intellectual and spiritual elements in the poet's work. We at the present time value Tennyson more highly as an artist than as a thinker, and therefore M. Choisy's estimate of him has been by some judged to be out of date. This, however, is not the true view to take of it. Taine's account unquestionably needs to be supplemented, and M. Choisy has supplied a review of the ethical, intellectual and spiritual side of Tennyson's work, which may well be interesting to his readers. Naturally he con- cerns himself chiefly with the poems which chiefly illustrate this side, The Palace of Art, The Vision of Sin, In Memoriam and the Idylls of the King. We have no reason to complain of M. Choisy's self-imposed limitations, and we need only say that he has produced a book worthy to rank with the other excellent studies of English poets which have been produced in recent years, in France.
In the admirable series of ' Oxford Poets ' we have recently had The Ring and the Book, with an introduction by the late Professor Dowden, and Poems of James Russell Lowell (London, H. Frowde, 1912). Both are very convenient and readable volumes, well printed on good paper, like the rest of the series, and wonderfully cheap. Dowden's introduc- tion to The Ring and the Book deals chiefly with the relation of the poem to its original source, and points out how, if we accept the poet's metaphor of the ring, we must reverse its application: ' the gold is con- tributed by Browning's imagination; the alloy is the fact or alleged fact as set forth in the book.' The volume has four facsimile pages from the ' square old yellow book,' now fairly well known by Nodell's reproduction.
Minor Notices
133
Of Lowell's poems we have here not a quite complete collection, but none are missing that will be much missed, only a few of the less important pieces contained in the last volume of the Riverside edition. We quote the concluding lines of the speech of the Smith Professor of Modern Languages at the Commencement Dinner, 1866, not only because of the interest of their subject-matter to ourselves, but because we shall thereby have the opportunity of silently correcting two misprints, the only ones that we have observed in the volume :
Let me beg, Mr President, leave to propose
A sentiment treading on nobody's toes,
And give, in such ale as with pump-handles we brew,
Their memory who saved us from all talking Hebrew, —
I give you the men but for whom, as I guess, sir, Modern languages ne'er could have had a professor, The builders of Babel, to whose zeal the lungs Of the children of men owe confusion of tongues ; And a name all-embracing I couple therewith, Which is that of my founder — the late Mr Smith.
Acting on a suggestion made by Professor Luick, Dr Arvid Gabrielson has prepared a volume on The Influence of W- in Old English as seen in the Middle English Dialects (Eranos' Forlag, Goteborg, 1912). The aim of the work is to consider the M. E. development of those words which in O.E. show the active influence of iv in a following diphthong or single vowel. The first part contains an analysis of M.E. forms found in certain texts representative of the earliest forms of the various M.E. dialects, while the second summarises the results of each type of ^-influence. A final chapter discusses the bearing of these results on the question of the dialects of Old and Middle English. A large mass of material has been accumulated, but Dr Gabrielson's arrangement of his matter is good, and the wood is not lost sight of for the trees, as is often the case with a thesis of this kind. There are occasional excursus of more general interest, as in the discussion of the existence of the -it- vowel in the West Midland dialect, and here the author shows himself well able to strike out on independent lines of his own. There are also some interesting notes on the history of certain words. In the case of stalwart (§ 312) the suggestion is made that the development of O.E. stcel-iueor}>, stcelwier]>e to M.E. stalwar-d, -t, is due to substitution of a weak-stressed form of the suffix -iveard (actually found in O. E. as -word) for the regular -wur]>, worlp. Dr Gabrielson explains in the same way such forms as Jedward, in Barbour's Bruce, for the more usual Jedworth. It is difficult however to see in what way the suffix -ivard, otherwise unknown in place-names could thus be brought in. The change is fairly wide-spread, as exemplified in the Northumberland place-names Staiuard and Ewart of which earlier forms are Staworth and Eworth. Dr Gabrielson half promises a later volume dealing with ^-influence in Modern English
134 Minor Notices
dialects. It is to be hoped that he will see his way to fulfilling this promise.
A.M.
A notable service has been rendered to the study of Shakespeare by the translation into Polish of the whole of his plays under the general editorship of Professor Roman Dyboski, who holds the chair of English Literature in the University of Cracow (Wil Ham Shakespeare: Dzieta Dramatyzne. 12 vols. Warsaw and Cracow, Gebethner; Wolff & Co., 1911 — 13). The editor's general introduction deals with the life of Shakespeare and general aspects of Elizabethan England, the chronology of Shakespeare's works, the conditions of his stage, and the old editions, together with a survey of his fame and influence at home and abroad. His prefaces to the several plays discuss their literary sources, and the plays themselves from a technical point of view. Against certain of the plays is set the background of others of the same type in English literature — thus, The Merry Wives and Othello are examined in their relation to the domestic drama, As You Like It to the pastoral, Julius Caesar and Hamlet to the revenge plays, King Lear to the long and continuous sequence of English allegorical poetry. In cases of disputed authorship, the editor inclines to conservatism, not regarding artistic unevenness as sufficient ground for the assumption of a second hand at work in the composition of a play ; and in particular difficult instances, such as that of Troilus and Cressida, he shews himself unwilling to resort to explanation by means of supposed 'first sketches' and later re-handlings. As an appendix to the work, Dr L. Bernacki furnishes an account, partly based on unpublished documents, of the beginnings of Shakespearean study in Poland at and under the influence of the court of her last king.
With the present instalment (Paradiso) Professor Grandgent com- pletes his edition of Dante's poem (Dante's Divina Commedia, edited and annotated by C. H. Grandgent. Boston : D. C. Heath & Co.), the first and second parts of which were noticed in the Modern Language Review at the time of their publication (Vol. v, pp. 124-6; Vol. VII, pp. 421-2). As in the previous volumes, the editor has availed himself largely of Professor Torraca's commentary ; but his references are still to the first edition of this work (1905), instead of to the revised and corrected edition issued in 1908. Mr Gardner's Ten Heavens and Signer Busnelli's recently published II Concetto e VOrdine del Paradiso Daniesco have also been in constant requisition, as well as the admirable articles on La Costruzione del Paradiso Dantesco of Professor E. G. Parodi, the accomplished director of the Bullettino della Societa Dantesca Italiana, so that as far as the specialist literature of his subject is concerned Professor Grandgent's equipment leaves little to be desired. We have noticed a few statements which call for remark or for correction. On
Minor Notices
135
p. 30 Professor Grandgent observes, ' it is curious that the planets with feminine names — Luna and Venus — show only the spirits of women.' In the Heaven of the Moon, it is true, only women appear ; but in the Heaven of Venus, besides Cunizza and Rahab, Dante sees and converses with the troubadour Folquet, and Charles Martel, the titular King of Hungary, his meeting with whom is one of the most pleasing episodes in this cantica of the poem. In the note on Par. VI. 59 Professor Grandgent follows Scherillo in taking Era, the Araris of the Romans, to be, not the Saone, according to the usual acceptation, but the Loire. That some Italian writers, Petrarch and Matteo Villani, for instance, identify the Era with the Loire is well known : but its identification with that river by Dante in the present passage seems to be precluded by the fact that the list of rivers here given is borrowed direct from Lucan (Phars. I, 371 ff.), and he makes the Araris (Era) fall into the. Rhone (' Rhodanus raptim velocibus undis In mare fert Ararim'). On p. 95 it is stated that Siger died at Rome, whereas he actually met his death at Orvieto, ' Nella corte di Roma ad Orbivieto,' as we know from the Italian adaptation of the Roman de la Rose. On the same page Professor Grandgent speaks of the 'huge' encyclopaedia of Isidore of Seville. The Origines is a work of quite modest proportions. Probably Professor Grandgent was thinking of the Speculum of Vincent of Beauvais. Reference is made on p. 141 to the 'impassioned speech' of Queen Guenever, which is said to have been the occasion of the cough of the Lady of Malehaut men- tioned by Dante. The Queen made no speech ; it was her question of Lancelot, ' Par la foi que vos me devez, dont vint cest amor que vos avez en moi mise si grant et si enterine ? ' which gave rise to the inci- dent of 'quella che tossio.' On p. 147 the date of the death of the Marquis Hugh of Brandenburg is given as 1007. This is an error (apparently copied from Professor Torraca's commentary) for 1001. There is a misprint (antico for antica) in the note on Par. xv, 97.
P. T.
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VOLUME IX
APRIL, 1914
NUMBER 2
THE 'ANCREN RIWLE1.'
II.
THE ENGLISH TEXT. The following are the manuscripts of the Ancren Riwle in English :
B. Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 402. Leaves of 8f" x 6", a larger size than any other thirteenth century copy : very clearly and regularly written in a hand of the first half of the thirteenth century, the same throughout, in single column, 28 lines to the page. The text occupies ff. 1 — 117, but two leaves are lost between ff. 14 and 15, con- taining the text corresponding to p. 56, 1. 24 — p. 64, 1. 8 of Morton's edition (' dude ]mrh ' — ' eie sihfte one ') as well as the beginning of a passage which does not occur in Morton's text. The book is entitled Ancrene Wisse2, and a footnote on the first page states that it once belonged to the Church of St James of Wigmore (that is, Wigmore Abbey) to which it was presented by John Purcell at the instance of Walter de Ludlow senior, the Precentor3. This manuscript, apart from the additional passages that it contains, which will be dealt with later, undoubtedly gives us the most correct text. It is exceptionally accurate in the matter of punctuation, and (it may be particularly remarked) usually distinguishes questions by a note of interrogation4. I have called it B (from Benet College), the letter C being already appropriated.
T. Cotton, Titus, D. xviii. Leaves measuring 6£" x 4J" written in double column, 20 — -30 lines to the column : first half of the thirteenth century. The Ancren Riwle occupies if. 14 — 105, imperfect at the
Ancren Kiwle ' does
1 Continued from p. 78.
3 This seems to be the only title which has original authority, not occur in any of the MSS., so far as I know.
3 The expression is ' ad mstanciam fratris Walter! de ~Lode\aive senioris t?mc precewtoris.' The surname k de Lodelawe ' or ' de Lodelowe ' frequently occurs in the episcopal Eegisters of Hereford, but I think we may pretty safely identify this man with the * Walter de Lodelawe senior ' who is mentioned among the leading Canons of Wigmore about the year 1300 : see the Eegister of .Richard de Swinfield (Cantelupe Society, 1909) under date 13 Oct. 1299. He was elected Abbot in 1302, but declined the office.
4 This is sometimes done also in the other MSS.
M. L. R. IX.
10
146 The 'Ancren Riwle'
beginning, having lost the text corresponding to pp. 2 — 42 of Morton's edition. The manuscript has also lost one leaf between ff. 39 and 40 (pp. 142, 15—146, 12), and another between ff. 68 and 69 (pp. 272, 26—276, 25).
N. Cotton, Nero, A. xiv. Leaves measuring 5f " x 4J", written in single column, about 30 lines to the page: first half of thirteenth century. The Ancren Riwle occupies ff. 1 — 131. This is the text printed by Morton for the Camden Society.
C. Cotton, Cleopatra C. vi. Leaves of about 7f" x 5f" : ff. 3—197 contain the Ancren Riwle, written in single column with wide margins, 20 — 24 lines to the page, in a hand of the thirteenth century, probably a little later than the manuscripts described above. Some blank spaces are left at the end of quires, as if several scribes had been engaged on the book, but the handwriting looks the same throughout, apart from the corrections and glosses. One blank page (f. 56 v°) has been filled up in a later hand with matter which has nothing to do with our text There are many alterations and additions in various hands, the altera- tions being often for the worse and with a view to the substitution of a more modern or familiar form ; but in a good many instances correc- tions, and in two cases additional passages, have been introduced from a manuscript of which the text must have resembled that of B. Morton in the readings cited from this MS. has not always sufficiently dis- criminated between the original readings and the later alterations. In some cases there are marginal comments added, and there is a tendency to add proverbial expressions or familiar details.
G. Caius College, Cambridge, 234. Leaves of 5i"x3f": ff. 1— 93 r° (pp. 1 — 185) contain portions of the Ancren Riwle, written in single column, about 20 lines to the page, in a small, neat hand of the thirteenth century. We have here a number of extracts, written without any indication of gaps* and not arranged throughout in the order of the book, but in two distinct series. The contents are as follows, in the order in which they come, indicated by page and line of Morton's edition : pp. 120, 27— 126, 22 ; 144,11—146,6; 148,19—152, 19; 298, 7—378, 3 ; 392, 16—400 (end) ; 98, 11—104, 13 ; 164, 1—174, 2 ; 196, 28—218, 2 ; 248, 16—296 (end). The book contains, therefore, rather less than half of the whole text. I have called it G, from Gonville and Caius College, to which it belongs1.
1 I have to thank Mr Schneider, the College Librarian, for kindly placing this book at my disposal.
G. C. MACAULAY
147
V. Vernon MS. in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. The Ancren Riwle originally occupied ff. 371 v° — 392 v° of this manuscript, but three leaves have been cut out, viz. ff. 389—391, containing pp. 360, 23—420, 7 of Morton's text, and after this the conclusion from p. 420, 9 is omitted, with the exception of p. 422, 1 — 10. Public attention can hardly be said to have been called to this, the most important fourteenth century copy. There is no reference to it in Halliwell's account of the contents of this MS., and the only public mention of it with which I am acquainted is an obscure allusion by Bramlette in Anglia, xv, p. 478. The reference is in this form : ' There is also a Norman- English MS. in the Vernon collection/ and in a note, ' I am indebted to Prof. Dr Eugen Kolbing for this information.' Evidently he did not understand what Kolbing told him. No meaning can be attached to the expression ' Norman- English ' in this connexion, and ' the Vernon collection ' is not a very intelligible reference to the Vernon MS. In spite of the mas- sive proportions of the Vernon MS., it is certainly surprising that so extensive a work as the Ancren Riwle should have remained hidden in its recesses for so long. The text of this copy of the Ancren Riwle is, like the rest of the MS., of the latter part of the fourteenth century and in the south-western dialect. The text contains several of the additional passages which are found in the Corpus MS.
P. A fourteenth century version of the Ancren Riwle, entitled < The Recluse,' in Pepys MS. 2498 (Magd. Coll. Camb.), to which atten- tion was called by Miss Paues in Englische Studien, xxx, 344 \ It occupies pp. 371 — 449 of a folio MS. lettered on the back 'Wicleef's Sermons.' We have here, however, an adaptation or paraphrase rather than a copy of the original text, and some of the characteristic features are lost by an attempt to make the Rule applicable to men as well as women. In many places the text is so much altered, or so cor- rupt, as to be almost unrecognisable, and there is much omission, especially in the seventh and eighth parts. Also many passages, some of considerable length, are added, especially one on the visions of the Apocalypse, pp. 446 — 48. Some of the additional passages of the Corpus MS. are contained in this book also. The dialect is Midland, but with some South-western characteristics.
In addition to these there is a fragment of another fourteenth century copy, which was published by Professor Napier in the Journal
1 This text has recently been published, ed. J. Pahlsson, Lund University, 1911. I have to some extent used this edition. For access to the manuscript I have to thank Mr Gaselee, the Pepysian Librarian.
10—2
148 The 'Ancren Riwle'
of Germanic Philology, vol. II, p. 199. The contents of this correspond to pp. 138, 25—142, 24 of Morton's edition.
It is not my intention to discuss in detail the questions of dialect which are involved ; but in a general way it may be said that the MSS. B, C and G constitute a group resembling one another closely in forms of language, and belonging to that particular development of the Southern dialect, on the borders of the Midland region, which is exemplified in the early lives of St Katharine and St Juliana, the purest form of this appearing in B, which is also distinctly the earliest in time of our manuscripts1. The Cleopatra MS. (C) differs from B chiefly in the substitution of ' ch ' for ' h ' final or followed by a con- sonant, as ' ach,' ' licht,' ' echnen,' and of ' 5 ' for ' h ' between vowels, as in ' majen,' ' maregen.' Occasionally we find ' o ' or ' oa ' for ' a,' as 'holdeS,' p. 8, 1. 12 (of Morton's edition), 'oa,' p. 154, 7, ' }>oa,' p. 188, 15 ; and occasionally also ' w ' for ' 5 ' between vowels (esp. after ' u '), e.g. 'buweS' for 'bugeS,' p. 266, 14, 'smuwel,' p. 278, 302. The Caius copy (G) closely resembles B in language, but the scribe regularly writes ' g ' for ' 5,' and usually gives us such forms as ' ]?at,' ' after/ ' lechecraft ' (for ' J?et,' ' efter,' .' lechecreft '). The initial ' v ' (' u ') for ' f/ which is frequent in B, hardly occurs in this text, and occasionally we find here 'richt' for 'riht,' p. 168, 1, 'ach' for 'ah' (e.g. p. 3(H, 6), 'more' for 'mare,' 204, 11, and 'salt' for ' schalt.'
T has for its basis a text of the same kind, but was evidently written by a North Midland scribe, who while retaining to a great extent the phonological basis, has pretty systematically altered the inflexional system, and has also introduced a sprinkling of more Northern words and forms3. Thus the ending ' es ' or ' is ' occurs in the third person singular of the present indicative of verbs in nearly six-sevenths of the whole number of examples, and the ending '-en,' as compared with ' eS,' for the plural of the present tense occurs in a much larger propor- tion still (with very occasional instances of ' es '). Again in the plural of substantives ' es ' is usually substituted for ' en.' At the same time Miihe has shown that in certain passages the case is reversed, and we have a large predominance of the Southern inflexional forms, the suggestion being that in some portions of his work the scribe tired of
1 The language of B will be sufficiently illustrated by the passages from this manuscript which 1 propose to print later.
2 For other points I may refer to Miss Irene Williams's paper in Anglia, xxvn, p. 300.
3 See the dissertation by Theodor Miihe, Gottingen, 1901, Uber den im MS. Cotton, Titus D. xviii e.nthaltenen Text der ' Ancren Riwle'\ a very painstaking and useful piece of work, in spite of defective arrangement and quite untenable views as to the origin of the text.
G. C. MACAULA.Y
149
his task and copied mechanically what he had before him, which pre- sumably was a Southern text more or less resembling that of B in its language forms. In a very few instances, five altogether according to Mtihe, ' o ' or ' oa ' appears for ' a.'
The characteristics of the text presented by N are well known from Morton's edition. It is distinguished from all those that have been mentioned by features characteristic in this period of the purely South- western dialect, especially by the systematic use of ' o ' (' oa ') for ' a,' the regular substitution of ' w ' for intervocalic ' h ' or ' 5 ' after a back vowel or semivowel, and the development of diphthongs before ' h ' final or before a consonant, and sometimes before 'w/ as in 'heih/ 'seiht,' ' auh/ ' ouh/ 'brouhte,' ' touweard.' To. some extent also* the vocabulary is different, French words being substituted in some cases for English, as ' blamen ' (p. 64) for ' lasten,' ' kunfort ' (p. 236) for ' elne,' ' peintunge ' (p. 392) for ' litunge ' ; or English words and phrases of a more current kind, for others that were going out of use, as ' stol ' for ' scheomel,' ' vort ' for ' aSet,' ' swuch ' for ' jmllich/ ' oueral ' for ' ihwer,' ' ne cweS he neuer a word ' for ' cwich ne cweS he neauer. Corruptions of the text have sometimes found their way in from misun- derstanding, as p. 58, 9, 'falleS to hire' for 'feaheS hire/ 138, 11, 'fret swuSe well' for ' freotewil ' (adj.), 178, 26, 'one wiSuten sunne'; and there are also a good many wrong connexions of clauses. It should be observed moreover that the style is often less vigorous or more diffuse. A few characteristic examples may suffice. Where B has ' Jnirh blod is in hali writ sunne bitacnet' (p. 112, 25), we read in N, ')mruh blod is bitocned sunne ine holi writ,' a less forcible and rhythmical order of the words ; for ' wa we moten don hit ' (p. 138, 19), N gives us ' We moten )>auh don him wo ' : for ' Betere is ga sec to heouene ]?en hal to helle' (p. 190, 2) we have 'Betere is forte gon sic tou ward heouene )>en al hoi tou ward helle ' ; and for ' an ancre windfeallet ' (p. 122, 13 f.), we have ' an ancre J?et a windes puf of a word auelleS ' ; for ' tweame ham, ba falletS ' (p. 254, 5 f.) we have ' to deale eiSer urom o$er, 7 boSe ualleS.' As regards the language, the text of N represents a fuller de- velopment 1 ; but we must not understand that the form of dialect which we have here was necessarily later in time than that which we find in the other manuscripts. The Corpus manuscript (B) can hardly be earlier
1 It must be noted, however, that the reviser whose text is represented by N was in the matter of grammatical inflexions in some respects 'earlier' than B, especially in regard to pronouns, articles and demonstratives. Thus we have the accusative form 'hine' for 'him,' 'on one wise' (p. 6) for 'on a wise,' 'swuchne mon ' (p. 96) for ' swuch mon,' ' J>esne ston ' (p. 139) for ' \>es simstan,' ' wiuene ' (p. 158) for ' wiues,' ' enne floe ' (p. 202) for 'a floe.'
150 The 'Ancren Riwle'
than 1230, because in two of its additional passages it has mention of the Franciscan and Dominican friars as established in England. The Nero manuscript seems also to have been written in the former half of the century, and therefore cannot be many years later than B, and is probably earlier than C. The difference is chiefly one of locality, and in a certain part of the Southern dialect-region the language of the ' Katherine-group ' seems to have attained for the time almost to the position of a literary' standard, and so to have secured a relative permanence of form, while in other parts of the same region change was proceeding more rapidly.
As regards the mutual relation of these manuscripts it is impossible perhaps to speak very decidedly. In a very large number of instances N stands alone in its readings against a consensus of the other copies : but it has some affinities both with C1 and (more especially) with T2, and in particular it agrees with these two manuscripts (as well as with G, so far as the testimony of that text is available), in regard to the omission of a considerable number of passages which are found in B and to some extent also in the Vernon and Pepys copies. One passage indeed, p. 24, 16—29, is found in N only, and another, p. 192, 11—194, 12, belongs in its entirety to N alone, but while omitted altogether o j in BVP, it is partially found both in C and in T. ^ With regard to the additional passages of the Corpus manuscript (so they may be called in relation to the current text of the Ancren Riwle) it is necessary to enter into some detail. Taking into account only those of some importance, both longer and shorter, we have the following general results. Of nineteen such passages occurring in B, eleven seem to be peculiar to that text, seven are contained in the Vernon text (with some variations and omissions), and the remaining one is found in C, but only by the correction of a somewhat later hand. Of the passages given in the Vernon text, four appear also (in more or less altered form) in the Pepys MS., and in one other case the passage has been added by a later hand in the margin of C. That is to say, B alone of the English copies, so far as my information goes, has the passages occurring at or after the follow- ing places in Morton's text, viz. p. 42, 30 ; 64, 8 ; 68, 2 ; 206, 19; 254, 29 ; 256, 7; 262, 4; 420, 1; 420, 16; 424, 2; 430, 10: BC have the longer form of the passage at 416, 12, but C only by later correction ; BV alone the passages at 108, 173, 200, 23; BVC the passage at 420, 7 (but V
1 As for example in the readings of p. 224, 16; 228, 1; 258, 7; 260, 16; 284, 21, etc.
2 As 192, 21 ff. ; 196, 15; 204, 21 ff.; 208, 22; 214, 4; 222, 8, 30; 268, 13, etc.
a This, however, is not inserted by the scribe of the Vernon MS. in its proper place, but at the end of the Ancren Riwle.
G. C. MACAULAY 151
imperfectly and C by later insertion) ; and BVP the passages at 198, 9 ; 198, 30; 200, 27; 202, 21. It must be added that the French text, as we have it, gives the passages at 42, 30; 64, 8; 68, 2, and 108, 17 (the last in a different place from that assigned to it in B): and it should be remem- bered that the text of the French is defective for pp. 166, 11 — 208,11. The Latin version contains the passages at 198, 9; 198, 30; 200, 23; ' 202, 2 ; of which three are given by BVP and the remaining one by BV. P* That some at least of the additional passages are interpolations, and were not contained in the original text of the Ancren Riwle, seems practically certain; and in particular it may be noted that the additions made on pp. 200 and 202 are to some extent inconsistent with the context as given in B as well as in other manuscripts. We are told, for example, p. 20Q, 11, that the Serpent of Envy has a brood of seven, and in accordance with this seven are enumerated ; but in B V (as well as in the Latin version) the enumeration is extended to an eighth, ninth and tenth': again, p. 200, 26 we are told in all the texts that the Unicorn of Wrath has six whelps; but in BVP, after the six have been duly mentioned, a seventh is added. Considering this, and also the unanimity with which the whole number of passages is rejected by the other thirteenth century manuscripts, so far as their original texts are concerned, I am disposed to think that they may be regarded as interpolations gener- ally, and that we must assume that CTNG, though much inferior in general correctness of text to B, yet represent a more original form in this respect. The English Ancren Riwle, then, is to be thrown back to an earlier date than that of the earliest existing manuscripts, which, as we have seen, can hardly be dated earlier than 1230. We must recognise the existence of two distinct groups of manuscripts, those that have been interpolated to a greater or less degree in the manner which I have indicated, viz. BVP, and the remainder, which better preserve the general form of the original text, though less correct and less near to the original in other respects than B2. It follows that the French text, as we have it now, is also to some extent interpolated, containing as it .does three of the passages which are in the English text peculiar to B3, and one which is found in BV only. The question therefore arises of the mutual influence of the
1 V is defective from p. 360, 23 to 420, 7, and after this point has only a few lines corresponding to the remainder of Morton's text (420, 7—9 and 422, 1—10), and P gives very little of the concluding part, pp. 420—430.
2 N, however, as we have seen, has one passage peculiar to itself, and another which is partly shared by CT, but omitted by the rest.
3 Among these is one of the passages which mention the Friars : ' Noz freres prechours et noz freres menours sunt de tiele ordre' etc. (f. 68).
152 The ' Ancren Riwle'
French and English texts, after the translation into English had been made. Either some passages may have been added to the French text, and thence by the scribe of B transferred to the English, together with other contributions of his own : or possibly a copyist of the French text may have been acquainted with B, or some similar manuscript, and have endeavoured to amplify his copy by translation of the longer English additions : and in this case we may suppose that after a certain time he ceased to consult the English manuscript for this purpose, and so the fact might be accounted for that the first four of the additional passages appear in our French text, but after these no more.
In the following textual notes I have selected such variations of B from Morton's edition as seem to be of most interest with a view to the restoration of a sound text or the elucidation of the meaning. I have taken no account for the most part of variants in regard to the Latin quotations, and the longer additional passages have been reserved for printing separately. It will be understood that all the thirteenth century MSS. cited have ' p ' for ' w,' and in accordance with the usual practice I have substituted 'w.' The Caius MS. (G), however, makes no consistent difference between ' p ' and ' )?,' and I have as- sumed the letter which seems to be intended in each case. Simi- larly in the same MS. ' d ' is frequently written for ' $ ' (sometimes also ' S ' for ' d ') and I have not thought it worth while always to take note of this feature, when it evidently arises from care- lessness. Except in the cases of ' 7 ' for ' and,' and ' -p ' for ' J?et ' or 1 )?at,' I have expanded abbreviations and contractions, and it does not seem to be worth while to indicate them specially. There are very few in B, and those in the other MSS. offer no difficulty. In every passage referred to I have given the readings of all the thirteenth century copies except N, but the fourteenth century MSS. are referred to only occasionally, except where it is a question of an additional passage. In the place where B is defective, 56, 24 — 64, 8, the primary collation is with C. Sometimes the text of the French is cited in parentheses, as ' Fr.' The reading of N is given with the rest in cases where Morton has not correctly followed the manuscript. In some of these instances I follow Kolbing's collation1, as 58, 5 ; 72, 3 ; 98, 4 : but in several places his report needs to be supplemented or corrected, as 24, 10 ; 56, 10 ; 62, 24 ; 78, 28 ; 148, 1 ; 238, 11 ; 176, 11. A multitude of slight varia- tions are passed over without notice, but a few differences of pretty regular occurrence may be mentioned here. Morton's manuscript has ' vort '
1 Jahrbuch fttr rom. und engl. Sprache und Literatur, xv, pp. 180 ff.
G. C. MACAULAV 153
(' until ') regularly for ' aSet/ ' swulche ' for ' jmllich ' or ' Jmlli,' ' wiSute,' ' wiSinne ' usually for ' utewiS,' ' inwis,' ' oueral ' for ' ihwer/ ' )?er abuten ' for ' ]?er onuuen/ ' scheomeful' for 'scheome' (adj.), ' jemeleaste ' for ' jeameles ' (subst.), ' menke ' for ' menske/ ' ]?erefter,' ( )?eruppe ' for ' J?refter,' ' )?ruppe,' ' mid ' for ' wiS,' ' hure 7 hure ' for ' lanhure,' etc. In most of these cases CGT are in agreement with B.
In passages where two or more manuscripts give the same reading with slight variation of form or spelling, I often cite them together adding a note of the variation in parentheses after the letter which indicates the manuscript. Thus ' Jmrh jemeles gluffeS BC (]?urch) ' means that C agrees with B except in giving ' Jrnrch ' for ' j?urh.' With regard to the punctuation, it is that of the manuscripts ; but I Jiave regularly substituted an ordinary comma for the K which is used as the equivalent of a comma.
The references are to pages and lines of the Camden Society Text, ed. Morton.
2, 7 \>e rihte luuie$ ]?e • J>eo beo$ rihte \>e limie$ efter riwle1 B \>eo richte luuieft ]>e • J>eo beoft richte • J?e liuieS efter riwle C J>eo ]>e riht IvuieS ]?e • t beoft riht J?eo • ]>et libbe^ efter riwle N 11 7 make^ BC knotte] cnost2 B cnoste C knoost P 12 J>e segge B $ segge C 20 antomasice BV antonomatice N acthonomasice P (C omits 1. 14 — p. 4, 1. 5). Read antonomasice3.
4, 8 liggen] singen BC syngen V wakien BCN 17 f>e licome] ha B heo CV 24 woe] woh B woh • scraggi4 7 unefne C (by correction from J>ong) woii} V.
6, 2 ha is eauer 7 an wrS ute changunge • B heo is eauer an • wrS vten changinge C 6 locunges efter \>e uttre riwle B locunges Efter J>eo uttere
riwle C 7 nis om. B (C has istalt substituted for nis heo italt) 8 here]
hearde B harde C 14 eSelich B feble C atelich V (leide Fr.) luuelich BN louelich V strong C (amiable Fr.) *16 don om. BC 24 of his herre BC.
8, 11 ich riwle] ich write BC 12 haldeS alle B holde$ alle C 25 icleopet B icleoped C.
10, 8 i J?e world sumrne • Nomeliche B summe In \>e world Nomeliche C.
12, 4 f . per as monie beo$ igederet to gederes, J>er for anrednesse BC (}?ear... igedered) 8 wiiS hare habit BC (abit) 9 ofterhwet • ha seiseft ^ B
o$er hwet • ha seie$ t C 17 godd B god C 22 trichung B trichi C (by
alteration perhaps from truchung) werieiS BC 23 ase tole B tol C (glossed lome) 24 ase a schelchine] as Jmften B an Jmt'ten C After 25 rubric heading, an Boc is todealet in eahte leasse Bokes B om. C.
14, After 25 rubric heading Her biginneS \>e earste boc of vres 7 vreisuns \>e gode beo$ to seggen B om. C.
16, 1 up aheuene ehnen B up heuene echnen C (heuene crossed out later} 8 euch time t se maheu sitten se oiSer stonden B hwenne se masen sitte &e o'Ser stonden C (sitte se by correction from sitten) 12 gretunges BC 27 add ine
1 So also V, ' Jmlke be)? rihte, ]?at louej? after rule,' but P, ' Hii ben ri3th J?at lyuen after ri3th reule. '
2 ' Cnost ' is doubtless the true reading, though the word seems not to have been hitherto recorded. It must be from the stem of O.E. 'cnossian,' and means here ' bruise' (as the result of a blow). The phrase is ' without bruise or scar.' C has a marginal note added to 1. 14, in which the expression ' cnosti 7 dolki ' (adj. ) occurs.
3 That is, ' per antonomasiam.'
4 A very early use of this word, meaning ' rough.'
154 The 'Ancren Riivle'
munegunge of godes fif wunden B In be munegunge of \>e vif wunden of gode C (of gode crossed out).
18,14 icruchet B icrucket Q (altered from icruccet) 15 onlicnesses] ymagnes B imaiges C (altered from imaines) 17 ei] sef ei B sef ani C 21 duneward seggeft B duneward 7 segeS C.
20, 14 f. ed te messe i be muchele Credo • ed ex Maria. . .factus est B ed be masse • In be muchele crede ex maria... factus est C 24 7 hwen se slepe$ • efter slep BC (wenne) 25 ff. bute hwen se feasted • I winter biuore rnete hwen se al ueaste$ • be sunnedei bah efter mete for se eoteS twien 1 B bute hwenne se festeft • I winter bifore mete hwenne se alfesteft • }>e sunnendei efter mel • for se eoteS twien C.
22, 1 arisen] rungen BO 6 eft from ower complie abet efter pretiosa B From ouwer conpelin oftet preciosa C 17 suffragi.es BC 19 After muchele betere add In a mel dei we seggeft ba • placebo 7 dirige efter be mete graces I twi mel dei efter non • 7 se alswa mote don B om. C 22 unnen BC.
24,10 serue] erue BCN 12 7 ure B antvreC 16—29 Vre leawede— reade om. BC.
26, 1 f. as se beo$ breo an godd alswa se beoft an mihte BC (ase...aswa...michte) 3 f. to J>e wisdom seli sune • to be luue hali gast • BC 4 f. sef me an almihti godd brile i breo hades • bes ilke breo Binges B sef me bu an almihti god brile In breo hades beos ilke breo Binges C (altered from sef me aa mihti god etc.).
28, 7 hare brokes B heore strundeu C heore brokes V.
30, 19 weoredes BC.
34, 11 f. haldeft him heteueste abet he habbe isettet ow al ^ se eauer easkift B haldeS him hetefeste o«et he habbe isettet on al t se wulleS C 15 his derue pine B his deorewurSe pine C his harde pyne V.
36, 20 ff. According to BC the five prayers are ' Deus qui sanctam,' ' Adesto,' ' Deus qui pro nobis,' 'Deus qui unigeniti,' ' luste iudex,' with 4O beata.'
38, 21 efter his derue dea« B efter his derfe dea« C.
40, 5 f. forte abrusmin i bruh • se wurSliche 7 se mihtiliche on hali bursdei stihe B for to prisunen I bruch, swa wurSliche 7 michteliche on hali buresdei stisin C 12 f. al be eorSe B alle be obere C (altered from alle beode).
42, 15 sitte$ BC 19 mei stutten BC 25 f. of J>isse worde — psalmes
om. BC 26 f. ant al ]?is ilke ureisun efter hire fif heste blisses • eorneft bi fine • tele i ]>e antefnes BC (blissen eorne$. . .in )>e antempnes) 28 buten ane imearket B imarked bute an C After 30 (last line) twenty-four lines added B2 om. CVP.
44, 6 ow eche B echi ow C (altered from echeiS) ow eches T.
46, 26 Jmrh semeles3 gluffeS BC (Jmrch) ]mrh semles gliffen T.
48, 2 f. Hwet se beo nu ]>erof, |>eose riwlen herefter ich walde ha weren BC (J>eos riulen)4 After 4 rubric Her Biginneft be ober dale of be heorte warde burh be fif wittes B om. CT 7 iloket B iloked CT 8 spekunge] smechunge BC smecchinge T 11 moni liht lupe BTC (licht) (meint legier assaut Fr.)
14 seide] rneande B meanede C meanede him T.
50, 15 teke be bitacnunge5 B tekebe bitacninge T techen be bitacnunge C 18 istekene] itachet BCT 25 dotie6 B adotie T adotien C (by correction)
doten V.
52, 8 be wise folhe i wisdom, 7 nawt i folie BC (folese...naut) £e wise folhe iwisedom 7 nawt ifolie T 15 aide moderB aldemoderCT 16 neowe] sunne BCT synne V 20 turnde] toe BCTV 23 com be dede BV com to dede C com )>e deaft T.
1 The meaning of this is, ' Nones in summer after meat, or if you sleep (in the afternoon) after sleep, except when you are fasting. In winter before meat, even when you are fasting ; but on Sunday after meat, because you have two meals. '
2 The length of added passages is indicated by lines in B. } ' semeles ' (subst.) is the regular form in these MSS.
4 T has a different sentence: 'pis ruile herafter muche nede is wel to loke $ godd giue ow grace • for hit spekes of be fiue wardains of be heorte,' omitting 'Ich wolde— iholden.'
5 This is obviously the true reading : ' in addition to the meaning.'
6 ' dotie 7...wede,' ' play the fool and go mad.'
G. C. MACAULAY 155
54, 4 hwat] as BCT 10 louerd] were BCT 13 Habbe BC Haue T
18 also het was] as dyna het B alswa Dina het T huchte dina C.
56, 1 ah dude of j» BT (dide) ach of j> C 5 ahelich B aselich C hehlich T 7 wlite BCT 10 Me surquide sire B Mesurquidesire T Me sire C Me
surquiderie N 14 was }ms Jmrh on eie wurp] }>es Jmrh an ehe wurp B ]>es J>urch an eche wurp C pus J?urh an ehewarp T (Cestui par un iet del oil Fr.).
56, 24 ff. After weopmen, auh B is defective to sihfte one, 64, 8.
58, 5 helden] selden CN selde T 9 f. al J>et J>e feaseS hire C (set altered to
j?et) Al set ^ feahes ow T1 10 ful lime] fol luue C (altered from fol lokig) ful lime T 17 ha is witi C se arn schuldi T 21 )m t vnwrisd C Jm t unhules T 26 fullen C fillen T J?e fondunge ]?e J?urch J?e 7 et J>e awacnede C (altered from... hwer jmrch J?e dede...) }>e fondinge ^ of J?e )?urh }>i dede wacnede T.
60, 2 7 bote )m schriue }?e )?rof, Jm schalt acorien hire sunne T 7 buten }m beo iscriue J>erof acorien his sunne C 10 in a cuple C (from in ane) inaweie T
18 lafdies chastete T, lauedi chastete C (altered apparently from lauedies)
23 And hit is softes weilawai neh idon T 7 hit is weilawei nech ido C (hit % correction).
62, 1 wite hire ehne T wite hire echnen C t euer is] }>erefter C J?r£fter T 7 — 11 Ne aboutie — grunde om. C 7 ne tote ha nawt T 10 iblind earst T 16 for hwon j? heo machten C ($ added later) forhwi -p ha muhten T 17 f. tunen hire eityurl asein \>e dea$ of saule C tuinen hire eityurl to sain deaft of sawle T
24 f. mis]?enche • Hu dele ^encheft me C mjs]?enke • Hu deale • hwat seis he ? Benches mon T mis J?enche • v • deale hwat seift he • Jjencbeft me N.
64 Before pis is nu, 1. 8, a passage of which the beginning is lost, but about thirty-nine lines remain* B om. CTVP 18 f. mid godes dred • To preost on earst Confiteor • 7 ]?refter Benedicite • B wi8 godes dred • To preost on earst Confiteor • }?refter Benedicite • T mid godes dred to ]>reeost an earst confiteor • 7 }?er efter benedicite • C (od doute de dieu al prestre • Al comenchment dites Confiteor etc. Fr.)
19 £ he ah to seggen • hercnift hise wordes3 BT (Hercnes) hercnrS hise wordes C
22 blamen] lastin BC laste T 23 )>e sit 7 speke$ toward hire BC (towart) j> sittes 7 spekes toward him T 24 forwurSeft BC bicumes T.
66, 4 talde him al \>Q lesceun BC (lecun) T (lescun) 5 ilered] ired BCT 10 — 20 (Vor}?i ancre— beon of hit) om. C 13 kimeS }>e kaue B dimes te seape T come)? J>e knaue V come]? J>e kerne P (vient la chaue Fr.) al t of hwat heo] of t BT 14 J>e caue deouel B J>e luflere deuel T )>e knaue deuel V [>e deuel P (la chawe denfer le diable Fr.) 20 of hit] o lut B of lut N (T omits
this clause) 23 inwardluker BC inwardeluker T 27 wedde BT madde C.
68 After 1. 2 an additional passage of seventeen lines B om. CTV 6 stude BN stunde T (bute sef se him nabben C) 8 After bilohen add as iosep i Genesis of J>e gale leafdi B om. CT 14 binime] reaui B reauin C reaue T 17 ff. t se seo$ ]>er ]mrh • 7 neomeiS oSerhwhile to ower wummen }>e buses )mrl • to oj>re, J>e parlur • Speoken ne ahe se B ^ se seon J?er ]?urh 7 nimen ofter hwile • To owre seruanz |?e huse windohe • To of re, }?e parlurs • Speke ne ahe se4 T \>e se name's )>er J>urch to ouwer wimon )?e bus furl, J>e parlures to }>e of»re C (omitting the rest)
23 meidnes B meiden C seruaunt T hire feire B him feire T hire C5.
70, 1 openen] unsperren B ondsweren ed C opnin T 17 ne ower eare ne drinke BC (ouwer) Niowre eares, ne drinke T 18 ower ehJmrhsperre'S to B spared ouwer ech Jmrles C owre ebejmrl sperres to T 25 he beo J>e BCN (T om. 70, 21 ne ne preche— 72, 7).
1 Eead 'al set be feaheft hire,' 'moreover all that adorns her.' The reading of N is palpably wrong.
2 The purport of what is lost may be recovered from the French.
3 The passage is thus paraphrased in the Pepys MS. (after 'godes dred ') : ' And 3if hii schullen speken to preest hii owen to saien her • Confiteor • and after Benedicite dominus • And t>an here)? woordes J?at be)? nedeful to heren.' This gives the sense more clearly.
4 T gives what is doubtless the correct punctuation : ' 7 nimen oj?er hwile ' refers of course to the sacrament. This is supported also by the French.
5 C continues thus, ' 7 heo schal habbe leaue to gladien hire fere 7 for to ondsweren ' etc.
156 The 'Ancren Riwle1
72,1 witene as hali chirche larewes B lokinC 3 reaui BC reauie N 3f. }>e de$ al to wundre B •£ deft alto wunder C 13 }>a ha hefden B J>a ha haueden T J>a heo C (om. hefden) 16 wordes fostrilt 7 bringeft for$ chaffle • On otter half as he seiS B wordes fostermoder 7 bringeS for5 chefle • On otter half as heseifl C (fostermoder by alteration probably from fostrild) wordes fostrild £ bringes for5 chauele • On otter half as he seis T 23 hehin B hechen C hehen T 24 low- si-S B letes T (C om. ase de$ muchel— adun sone).
74, 9 ane brethren B ane bre$re CT 24 slubbri B slibbri C slibri T.
76, 6 he speke« BC we speken T 14 pleieS B pleideS C moten T 16 heou- e$ toward me hehe ower honden B heoueft toward me up ower honden C heiien toward me hehe owre honde T.
78, 3 bone] bisocne BCT 28 spetteS ut] sweteS ut BN (vt) sweteS C swetes T.
82, 9 otter hwiles • peose beotS alle ischrapede ut of ancre riwle • pe swuch BC (riule • t swich) otter hwiles • peos arri alle ischraped vt of ancres riwle j> swuch T 1 1 wordes] sneateres BT sneates C 24 speketS ham B ham speketS C spekes homT.
84, 4 f. sef he walde pile win 7 toteoren B set walde he pilewin 7 to teoren C Jet walde he picken 7 to teren T 8 sunne] wunder BCT 25 to-her] low her B lo here C lo her T.
88, 1 culche$ BC culches T 8 healp B halp CT 14 ueole] i feole B ifeole C imoni T 14 f. ah onont J?is J>ing wa is me }>eruore ne mei ham namon
werien BT (Ah...tis J?ing -...J>er fore • ne mai) Ach anonden )>is }>ing wa is me )>er fore ne mei nan mon hit werien C (neust tvritten above anonden and for added before ne mei) 25 rikelot BT kikelot (glossed piot) C (rigelot Fr.).
90, 13 he sei« bi him seolf BC he seis bi him self T 15 After gelusie add Jmhte him nawt inoh iseid • f he is gelus of J>e, bute he seide J>erto, wr$ muche gelusie BT (puhte...seif>... gelus • Bute) Ne jmchte naut inoch iseid ty he is gelus of |>e bute he seide J>er to • witS muche gelusie C.
92, 2 Jniig] |?rung BC J>ring T euch nurtS eortSlich B uch eorSlich nurS C euch murhtte eorSlich T 3 ]?er noise ne cumetS] NurS ne kimeft B Nur8 ne hire kime$ C Noise ne cumes T 7 leome BCT 24 agrupie asean ham]
uggi wrS ham BT grise wi^ ham C 25 uor to ontenden] \>e ontenden B |>e onteride C to ontende T 27 f. al }>e englene weoret • al \>e halhene bird B alle J>e englene rute 7 alle \>e halesene hirde C al J>e engl'ene ferd • Alle halehenes bird T.
94, 23 f. Ah ancres bisperret her, schulen beo J>er BT (bisperred...schule) Ach ancres j> bi sparred her • schule beo |>er C 24 lihture beon] lihtre ba B lichtre ba C lihtere ba^e T 24 ff. 7 i se wide schakeles • as me ser§ pleien in heouene large lesewen B 7 in swa wide schakeles as me seifl pleisen in heouenes large lesewe C 7 ij?e wide schaccles as mon seis pleien in heuene large leswes T.
96, 4 derue domes BC dearne domes T 12 luue BCT 20 After touward te add 7 swereS deope aj>es B om. CT 20 f. ah )>ah ich hefde isworen hit luuien ich mot te • Hwa is wurse )jen me ? Moni slep hit binime^S me • nu me is wa B Ach )>ach ich hefde isworen luuien ich mot J?e • hwa is wurse J?ene \>e $ on slep hit bi nime'S me • Nu me is wa C Ah J>ah ich hafde sworn hit • luuen imot te • Hwa is wurse }>en me • Moni slep hit reaues me • nu me is wa T 24 eauer is j?e ehe to J>e wude lehe • eauer is J>e heorte B1 eauer is J>e echse to }>e wodelese 7 J>e halte bucke climbed J?er uppe • twa 7 }?reo hu feole beo^ J>eo • }>reo halpenes makel5 apeni • amen • 7 eauer is }>e heorte C eauer is tat ehe to J>e wide lehe • Eauer is te heorte T.
98, 4 feondschipe BN feonschipe T freonchipe C 9 ff'. wendeS ow from-
ruard him alswa as ich seide, )>ruppe • Sawuin ow scolnen • ne matin him betere, ne mahe se o nane wise B wendet anan from ward him swa as iseide • sauuen iow seoluen 7 maten him, betere ne muse se on nane wise C wendes ow f ram ward him alswa as iseide • Sauuen ow seluen ni maten him betere, ne muhe se o nane wise T 23 misdon] ido BG idon T (C om. Seie— misdon |>e) 24 ff. hwite] wlite BCTG.
1 The proverb is given in a fuller form in the N text. The addition in C ' 7 \>e halte bucke climbed ber uppe' may indicate as the origin of the saying the idea of an enclosed wood in which the does are kept apart from the bucks. What follows in this MS. seems to be merely nonsense suggested to the scribe by the quotation of a proverbial saying.
G. C. MACAULAY
157
100, 1 turn ham ba B turne ba C turn ba G tuin bafte T 15 f. to hercwile
7 to speokele ancres BC (om. to... to) to hercninde 7 to spekele ancres T te hercwille ancres G 20 telest her to Intel BT (tellest) tellest herto Intel G tellest }>er of lutell C 21 mine... mine] }>is...J>is BG }>isse...]?is C his. ..his T 27 ut totunge BC ut totinge TG 30 a ful bucke BCTG.
102, 4 claurede] cahte B clahte T clachte CG 5 cauhte] lahte BT lachte C (hire, 7 cauhte mid his cleafres om. G) 8 After sunne add 7 bireafde hire ed an cleap }>e eorfte 7 ec }>e heouene BC (et...om. ec) G (birefde...at an clap) T (Beafde... at a clap...heuene) 10 to himmere heile • hire to wrafter heale B to himmere heale C to wrafter heale T welere to uwelleer hele G 1 7 ff. After wummen (second time) se nu her, do j?er to j? schalt 7 tu wel wulle elles hwer beo feier, nawt ane bimong wummen, ah bimong engles B se nu her do J>er to • ^ schalt 7 J>u wel wule elles hwer beo f eiser • naut ane bi mong wimmen • ach bi mong engles C ah bimong engles T (om. seift ure — wummen and \>u meiht — engles) ge do nu herto }?erto • J>at salt gif }ni wel wult elles hwer beon feir nawt ane bi mong wummen • ah bi mong engles G 22 pu] J>e BG t CT 24 Cusse me BGT cus me C 24 f. mid cosse of }>ine] wift fte coss of his B wift cos of his TG wift }>i C.
104, 5 inwift wah ofter wal BTGC (wach) 11 J>e heorte] J>e ham B J>at feam G \>e hus T heo C 12 habbe BCTG 14 ah is smechunge B ah smecchinge T ase smechunge C 20 me ne recche BT i ne reche C 24 After huse add 7 muhlinde J?iriges B 7 mulede Binges T 7 of uuele Binges C.
106,8 truiles...betruileftB truseles...bitruleft C trufles...bitruflesT 29 ancre BC anker T.
108, 17 After this about sixty lines added in B om. CTV (but added in V at the end, f. 392) 27 wittes om. (both times) BCT.
110, 14 te oj?re B J>oSre C te oftre T 26 com] lihte BT lichte C.
112, 5 he hefde in] hefde his BC hafde his T 6 derue BT derfe C hit BCT
8 reopunge j?rof 7 te hurt BT (repinge) hurtunge |?rof C 10 Auch euerich] Euch BT Vch C 19 7 ofte berebarde om. BT (C om. }>et was— berebarde)
114, 19 ase he is] as his BCT.
116, 9 enne elpij anlepi BTC.
118, 3 agein woh of word t me seift ow B asain woh of word t mon seis ow T asein word • of word ^ me seift ou C (all om. mis) 20 a mon bibled BT mon islein C.
120, 3 f. pis is of euch sunne soft hwi blod hit bitacneft 7 norneliche BC (sinne by alteration)1, pis is of euch sunne soft • hwi blod hit bitacnes 7 nomeliche T 14 nis he BT ne is he C 17 auh so sone so] Sone se BT sone se C.
122, 1 ne to drauhft rne J?e eorfte om. BCTG 4 cundel BCTG 9 f. ne cweft he neuer a word] cwich ne cweft he neauer2 B cwich ne cweft he neauere TG quic ne queft he neauer an word C quich ne cweft he neuere V 12 of om. BCTG 13 f. of an ancre — auelleft] of aricre windfeallet B of ancre wind failed C of anker wind fallet T of a mon wind failed G 23 After gledliche add 7 bed for ham J>e ham seriden him BT (j>) G (Jwit) 7 bed for ham J>e schenden him C J>et is
cneolinde om. BGCT.
124, 1 f. let him 7 t gleadliche breide J>i crime B let him 7 tat gladliche breide }>i crune T let him 7 J?at gladliche br,eyderi }>e crune G let him gledliche breide Jn crune C 3 J>e o}>res hond BG (oj>eres) C (hont) his bond T 7 makest lome }>rof to timbri mi crime BC (om. ]?rot') G (|?erof) makes me lorne ]>rof, to timbri mi crune T 9 god] freame B freome C fremen G god T 14 bute \>e eir ane BCG bute }>e eares ane T 23 Alle cunneft wel] 7 cunneft BCG (arid) 7 cuimis T 26 wurpe] duste BCTGV.
128, 9 reopen 7 rimien BC (ropin) repen 7 rinen T 11 fret swufte wel] freotewil B fretewil C freatewil T 22 Auh Dauid— }>ider in] Ah Saul wende ]?ider in BT Ach Saul wende J>ider C.
1 Morton's text wrongly prints ' Hvvu blod — wreftfte ' as the heading of a section, with no authority.
'2 This phrase 'cwich ne cweft,' 'spoke not a word,' occurs also in the Legend of St Katharine, 1261, but is wrongly explained in the N.E.D. under 'quetch' v.
158 The 'Ancren Riivle'
130, 15 hearde B harde CT 19 bitocned] icleopede BC iclepede T.
132, 5 ff. steorc] strucoin B strucion C ostrice T 10 riurS wr$ wengen,
obres nawt hiren • j> is leote of B nurS wrS wengen • j? is lete of C dune wrS wenges • •£ is lete of T (noise des eles nient seons mes altrur • ceo est face semblant Fr.) 20 uppart B upwart C vpward T upard N.
136, 6 f. ne bearf bu B ne }>arf bu C rie barf be T 18 After Englis add $ slea$ gasteliche ben deouel of helle • ludith, Confessio B )>e sleaft gasteliche be deouel of helle • ludit confessio C •£ sleas gasteliche be deouel of helle • ludith interpretatur confessio T.
138, 1 uet keif] feat meare B fat mare T forfrete mare C 2 be feond B te feond T es C.
140, 2, 4 wel neih] for neh BT for nech C 8 be cubbel to be ku, ober to be ober beast ^ is to recchinde, 7 renginde abuteh1 B f>e custel to be ku, oj?er to be beast -J> is to raikinde T to be reciter o$er to an ofter beast t is to reachinde abuten C 10 f. loiter to feiterin wift be sawlen B footer to foitere wift be sawles T forto feftere wrS be saule C 21 cointe 7 couer BT cointe 7 kene C curre BC cokT.
142, 12 f. schal ancrin o be ancre • bet heo hit swa halde BC (on be...holde) schal aricret beo o be anker • j> ho hit swa sy halde T 18 sturelj neauer • ancre
wunung B stut neaure ancre wununge' C 2.
144, 27 After nowiht add nowiter ne ne here-3 B om. CG.
146, 3 hit is uuel to BCG 7 selpen Of god dede om. BCG 4 huden] heolen BCG 26 treowefl] trochrS B trochieS C mangen T.
148, 1 minimum] nummuin BN numum T Mumuit (?) C 15 heole 7 hude BC heole 7 huide T.
150, 3 adeadeft be treo hwen ETC (hwenne) benne adedet be rote treo, hwen G 9 wrrS BC wrid G hules T.
154, 7 aa me ifint B oa me fint C mon findes T 87 ber godd edeawde ham 7 schawde him seolf to harn • 7 sef B 7 ber god schawede him seolf to ham • 7 sef C 7 ter godd visited ham • 7 scheawede him self to ham • 7 sef T 19 turnel weride BCT.
156, 15 beowiste £ is wununge bimong men B bimong men iwist C beust bimong men T 22 his suheite BT (C om. 7 tet — suwefle).
158, \(end] wordes] beawes BCT 14 barain] bereget B barainse T (C om. of barain) unspende B vn spennede C vnspende T 22 Wumme BCT
160, 1 burh beowiste B burh bewiste T forhewes3 C 5 ifulet B ifuled C ifuilet T 8 0 be muchele B be muchele CT 13 stude] lif BC stude T bigeaten] prominences BT pre eminences C 18 After lif? add ne fond te engel hire in anli stude al ane BC (font be) T (Ne).
162, 6 bi ham i fehte B bi ham i be fecht C bi him ibe feht T 16 softliche be bisete of anlich lif • as beo be duden BC (anli) soSliche be bejeate of anliche lif = as ta t diden T.
164, 8 kecche] lecche BTG leche C 17 thesaurum istum in BCG thesaurum inT
166, 16 stol] scheomel BC sheomel G schamel T.
168, 1 beggilde BCGT 2 burgeise to beore purs BCG Burgeise to bere purs T 6 ben be o$er beo be sei«4 BG (bene) benne be o«er ^e seiS C ben he o«er heo t seis T 10 hare liuene'S B hare liuena-S G hare bileoue C (T omits the clause] 22 farniliarite • muche cunredden • forte beo B familiarite • Muchel cuSbradden • forte beon G j> is to beo C familiarite • Muche cuftredne • for to be T.
170, 15 f. sawueft burh ham muche folc • Monie BC (sauue'S burch) G (muchel floe) T (sauue'S... Moni).
172, 5 f. folhede ham 7 brec ut B, folesede ham • wende ut CG (folehede) T (folhede) 12 twinges] ut runes BCG tinflendes T Semeis stude wes ierusalem
1 The Vernon MS. and the fragment published by Prof. Napier both support this. T is defective from p. 142, 15 to p. 146, 13.
3 That is, ' for he wes.'
4 That is, ' than the man or the woman who saitb.'
G. C. MACAULAY
159
•p he schulde in huden him B Semeis stude wes i Jerusalem • bat he shulde huden him G Semey wes iursalem j> he schulde in huden him C Semeis stude was in Jerusalem t he schulde in huiden him T 19 burfte BG burfte C Jmrte T 20 bah a clot of eorfte j> is hire licome BTG (eorfte • J>at) C (bach an clod).
174, 19 bitrept utewift B bitrepped utewift C bitrappet utewift T 20 te geal forke • j> is be wearitreo B be galeforke • be waritreo C tegalheforke • be waritreo T 22 biswike wift sunne • 7 weiti B biswike onon summe wise • 7 weiti C Biswike osum wise 7 weiten T 22 f. his cleches BC (hise) hore clokes T.
176,11 bituneft] timeft BC bitimeft N times T.
178, 19 ne ne mei] he ue mei B henemei C henemai T 26 one wiftuten sunne] ane wift uten * BTC.
180, 7 oriont ^ ha is pine • licunge wift uten licomes heale B onont •£ he is ipinet likinge wift uten licomes heale T licomes heale wift uten, is licunge C 14 f. ofter i bing wift uten, ofter of bing wift uten B twint wift uten • ofter of bing wift uten C ofter ibing wift uten ofter obing wift innen T 22 f. misliche unbeawes BCT (mislich).
182, 9 hat forte bolien • ah na bing neclenseft gold, as hit deft be sawle B hat for to bolien • Ach nan fur ne clenseft be gold as hit deft be saule C hat for to Jtolien • Ah na bing ne clenses gold, at hit dos te saule T 10 lecheft BC ekes T 11 f. Vor moni— sent om. BCT 16 leche] heale BC leche T 21 bi goldsmift BCT (ti) 24 hwilinde wa BCT.
184, 11 vile be lorimers habbeft B file • t lorimeres habben T file C.
186, 5 schrepeft] scratleft B schindleft C scrattes T 14 eil BCT.
188, 4 bunkin2 B buncin C berien T bunsen V bet wa bift him bes Hues B 1> wa bift him hise Hues C ^ wa beon beos Hues T 6 schulen wullen BC (schule) T (wille) 12 blodi strundes striken adun 7 leaueden dun to ber eorfte • his swete bodi3 B blodi strunden strenden adun 7 leafden his swete bodi C blodi strundes streamden • 7 leafden his swete bodi T blodi stremes oornen adoun and laueden, His swete bodi V 20 to t tet he bolede BC (j> be) to t he bolede T 21 reacheft BC reaches T 25 bi swincful B swingful C swincful T.
190, 8 chapede B chepede C cheapede T 9 sif me cheape et ow om. BCT 18 7 hwa wes mare priue wift be king of heouene hwil he her wunede BC (be hechse king) T (was...heuene) 27 eisfule wiht B eilful bing C ahefule bing T fertul bing V.
192, 11—194, 12 om. BVP* 192, 13 Vor mid— 194, 2, mede om. C 192, 11—20 uoure om. T (The text o/192, 21 — 194, 2 as given by T differs considerably from that o/N)5.
194, 14 bet limpeft] licunge be limpeft BC likinge ^ limpes T.
196, 15 put] sput BC puttes T.
198, 5 stinginde BG stinkinde TCV 9 After deft add ofter seift • ofter haueft wlite ofter wit • god acointance • ofter word mare ben an ofter • Cun ofter meistrie • 7 hire wil forftre • ant hwet is wlite wurft her • gold ring i suhe nease • acointance i religiun • wa deft hit ofte • al is uana gloria • be let eawiht wel of BV (down to ofte)6 om. CGT 13 ofter ei lahres Tare BG (laheres) oder ani lahedres lare T om. C 16 After ualleft add ofter is to ouertrusti up o godes grace • ofter on hire
1 That is, ' external only. '
2 This form is noticeable : see N.E.D. ' bunch (u1).'
3 In the readings of B and V, 'leaueden,' 'laueden,' we have to do with the verb * lauien ' from O.E. ' lafian,' used intransitively with the meaning ' flow,' ' run,' as in the passage quoted in N.E.D. , ' laue v1,' 3 b. The words ' dun to ber eorfte ' in B are perhaps an explanatory addition. The reading of CTN is due to misunderstanding of this verb, and confusion with ' leauen ' (' leuen ') from O.E. ' laefan.'
4 P, however, has something corresponding to 194, 2 — 5.
5 It is as follows : ' Mine leue childre be nesche dale is to drede swifte as is te harde of beose fondinges -p arn utti e ihaten As is plente of mete ofter of claft 7 of swiche binges • Olhtninge ofter hereward mihte sone make sum of ow fulitohen sif se neren be heudere • Muche word $ is of ow • hu gentille se beon • sunge of seres sulden ow • 7 bicomen ancres • forsoken worldes blisses • Al bis ' etc.
6 P also has a part of this passage in altered form.
160 The 'Ancren Riwle'
seolueii • to bald up on ei mon ~fi is fleschlich as heo is 7 mei beon itemptet BV (down to ei mon) om. CGT 17 After Inobedience add nawt ane be ne buhe$ • ofter grucchinde de« • otter target to longe • B om. CGT 21 lauhweff] lihe« BG liseft C lihes T 30 After riote about twenty-seven lines added BVP om. CGT.
200, 6 f. for ber ich feiteri on a word tene o$er tweolue1 BG (ober tene) T (i federe on an) (C om. Auh se — tweolue) 9 iseouwed] iheowet BT iheowed C ishowed G 17 an latest BGG an of alle lafteste T 22 After Schornunge about seventeen lines added BV om. CGT 27 After Wodschipe add Bihald te ehnen 7 te neb hwen wod wreaftSe is imunt • Bihald hire contenemenz • loke on hire lates • Hercne hu be rmr$ geaft • 7 tu maht demen hire wel ut of hire witte BVP om. CGT.
202, 2 After eihte about five lines added BVP om. CGT 3 Beore B beore CGT 6 herde] earh B arch C erh G hard T 10 stut BC stunt GT 20 fest- schipe • prinschipe of seoue BT (fastschipe) festshipe prinshipe of seoue G fest- schipe principe of seoue C.
204, 5 bet is, icharged om. BCGT 9 pigges] gris BCG Grises T 11 f. I drunch mare ben i mete beoiS beos gris iferhet B Idrunch mare benne i mete • Nu beoft beose gris ifareset C Idruch more ben imete beos beos gris ibostred G i drinch mare ben imete beo$ beos grises iferhet T 21 ft'. On is— J>ideward] ful wil to t furSe wi« skiles settunge • helpen obre biderward B ful wil to J>at ful-Se wid skiles gettunge • o)>er helpen Jdderward G ful wil • •£ ful'Se wi~S schiles settunge • helpen ani o'Ser
]>iderward C ful wil to t ful^Se wi'S skiles seatinge • t is hwen ^e skil 7 te herte ne wifl seit$ nawt • bote likeft wel 7 serneiS ^ flesch hire to prokieiS • Helpen ofter hiderward T 24 weote BCGT.
206, 2 keaftB caft GT om. C 13 fundlesBCGT idon] icwerict B acwenht C icwent G i cwenched T 15 Culche BCGT 17 brune cwench BCGT (brun) 19 After dedbote add £e J>e of swucches nute nawt • ne Jmrue se nawt wundrin ow ne Jjenchen hwet ich meane • Ah seldeft graces godd j> se swuch uncleannesse nabbeft ifondet • 7 habbe^S reowSe of harn be i swuch beoiS ifallen • B om. CGTP hwul hwi BGT huC.
208, 16 nis hit te spece of prude inobedience ? Herto failed B nis hit of prude inobedience • her to failed C nis hit of prude • Inobedience • Her to failed T nis hit of prude inobedience ? Herto failed G 18 Neomunge of'2 B Neominge of GT neoming of (without punctuation] C 22 lure] bisete BC bigete G lure T (of his lure ofter of his bisete C) 23 teohefti mis B teonSen mis C To the heben mis G tihede mis T Tenthynge amis V 24 After lone add oSer ber wi$ mis fearen B om. CGT 26 bitaht BT bitacht C bitahted G 28 Alswa is dusi heast BTG (hest) alswa • i dusi heast C 29 f. abiden • ne teache BC (teachen) abiden • Ne teachen G abide • Ne teache T (so also Fr.).
(To be continued.)
G. C. MACAULAY. CAMBRIDGE.
1 That is, ' for there I am loading ten or twelve words upon one ' : cp. p. 204, 3.
2 This begins a new sentence.
'PALAMON AND ARCITE' AND THE 'KNIGHTES TALE.'
IN the preface to the translation of Ovid's Epistles Dryden dis- tinguishes three kinds of translation — metaphrase, paraphrase, and imitation. Metaphrase he defines as turning an author word by word and line by line from one language into another, as Ben Jonson translated the Ars Poetica of Horace. Paraphrase is translation with latitude, 'where the author is kept in view by the translator, so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense ; and that too is admitted to be amplified but .not altered.' He takes Waller's translation of the fourth book of the Aeneid as an example of this kind. Imitation not only varies the words and sense but occasion- ally forsakes them, taking only general hints from the original, and ' running division on the ground-work,' as Cowley treated Pindar and Horace.
In modernising Chaucer Dryden adopts the second of these methods. He does not tie himself, he tells us, to a literal translation, but often omits what he judges unnecessary, or not of dignity enough to appear in the company of better thoughts. In other places he adds something of his own where his author seems deficient, or has not given his thoughts their true lustre, ' for want of words in the beginning of our language.' The beauties he loses in some places he gives to others which originally had them not.
Comparing Palamon and Arcite with the Knightes Tale we find that Dryden's purpose generally seems to be to make the language more pointed, epigrammatic, and antithetical ; to render the vague more definite, and the allusive more explicit; to fill in outlines and to complete pictures; to make the narrative logical and consistent; to supply missing links in the chain of thought ; to dignify, polish, and adorn ; in short, to array what he considered to be the primitive and crude simplicity of Chaucer's language in the elegant and ornate court- dress of Restoration rhetoric.
M. L R. IX.
11
162 ' Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
When it is remembered that there are only about seven lines in Palamon and Arcite adopted from the Knightes Tale without change (except in spelling), it will be seen that to give an exhaustive list of variations would practically mean reproducing the two poems in full. It will be enough to give a few of the more striking examples of each case, classified under the two heads -of omission and addition, as defined by Dryden himself, adding a third class of general changes made for various reasons. The Knightes Tale will be indicated, by K., and the three parts of Palamon and Arcite respectively by P1., P2., and P3. It will be noticed that Dryden at first follows his original with fair fidelity, but gradually takes more and more liberties, making large additions and extensive changes, sometimes without apparent reason.
I. OMISSIONS.
Colloquial expletives are omitted, such as 'this is the short and playn ' (K. 233), ' ther nys namoore to saye ' (K. 264), ' ther nys no remedye' (K. 416), 'what nedeth wordes mo?' (K. 857), 'I kan say yow no ferre' (K. 1202).
Similarly, longer colloquialisms, introduced by Chaucer to maintain the vraisemblance of the story as told by the Knight, are omitted or changed, as unsuitable for a narrative poem. Such are :
Why sholde I noght as wel eek telle yow al
The portraiture that was upon the wal? K. 1109—10.
Of this bataille I wol namoore endite,
But speke of Palamoun and of Arcyte. K. 1883—4.
When Chaucer uses two similar illustrations, Dryden sometimes omits one. Thus,
The fallynge of the toures and of the wallet*
Upon the mynour or the carpenter, K. 1606—7.
is reduced to
And Miners, crush'd beneath their Mines are found. P3. 415.
Sometimes a speech is omitted as implied in the narrative. So, when a woman in travail invokes the aid of Lucina (K. 1225 — 8), the - words of her prayer, ' Helpe, for thou mayst best of alle,' are left out in P2. 654.
Expressions or incidents unpleasing to modern taste, or inconsistent with conventional conceptions, are frequently omitted. In the descrip- tion of the statue of Mars Dryden omits the couplet,
A wolf ther stod biforn hym at his feet
With eyen rede, and of a man he eet. K. 1189—90.
W. H. WILLIAMS 163
The touch, ' Ther-with he weep that pitee was to heere ' (K. 2020), is omitted in P3. 919 as inconsistent with the conventional idea of the heroic character of Theseus. In K. 2050 Egeus and Theseus bear- vessels 'ful of hony, milk, and blood, and wyn.' Dryden omits the blood in P3. 946.
Sometimes we miss realistic details apparently regarded as ' not of dignity enough to appear in the company of better thoughts.' In the account of the festival in Theseus' palace Dryden omits the homely detail,
What haukes sitten on the perch above,
What houndes liggen in the floor adoun. K. 1347 — 8.
Chaucer makes Arcite, after falling from his horse, lie 'as fclak as any cole or crow' (K. 1834). This is dignified into 'black was his Count'nance ' (P3. 705). At the funeral of Arcite Palamon appears * With flotery berd and ruggy asshy heeres ' (K. 2025). In Dryden's description, ' His Aubourn Locks on either shoulder flow'd ' (P8. 924). In ' wel may men knowe, but it be a fool ' (K. 2147), Dryden omits the latter clause.
At other times details are left out, seemingly as unnecessary and superfluous. This would appear to be the reason for the omission of the second line of the couplet,
Wel coude he peynten lifly, that it wroghte ;
With many a floryn he the hewes boghte. K. 1229—30.
After the tournament Chaucer says that they were glad that none were slain, though all were sorely hurt, especially one ' That with a spere was thirled his brest boon ' (K. 1852). There is no hint of this in P3. 724. So, in the description of Arcite's funeral, Dryden omits the concluding couplet,
And how that lad was homward Emelye;
Ne how Arcite is brent to asshen colde. K. 2098 — 9»
Similarly, anything that might appear out of keeping with the general tone of the passage is excluded. This may explain the absence of the second clause in ' yet song the larke, and Palamon also ' (K. 1354). The phrase, ' in this wrecched world adoun ' (K. 2137) does not appear in P3. 1032, perhaps as out of harmony with the 'Golden Chain of Love.'
The desire to avoid repetition seems to cause other omissions. Thus, 'hath everich of hem broght an hundred knyghtes' (K. 1241) is not inserted, as virtually repeating, ' that everich sholde an hundred knyghtes brynge' (K. 1238). ' Lene me youre hond' (K. 2224) is
11—2
164 'Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
struck out of P3. 1129, as implied in ' taak youre lady by the hond ' (K. 2235).
In a few passages Dryden apparently scents an anticlimax. After mentioning ' clooth of gold ' and ' perrye ' as part of the funeral pile, Chaucer adds, 'and garlandes, hangynge with ful many a flour' (K. 2079). This is not found in P3. 977. So, in K. 2090, after jewels, shields, and spears have been cast into the funeral fire, some throw in their 'vestimentz whiche that they were,' but Dryden says nothing of this (P3. 989).
Occasionally, one cannot help suspecting that archaic words or phrases are 'omitted through ignorance of their meaning. Thus, the obsolete word ' shepne ' may be responsible for the absence of the line, 'The shepne, brennynge with the blake smoke' (K. 1142), in the description of the temple of Mars. So, ' shode ' may account for the disappearance of 'The nayl y-driven in the shode a-nyght' (K. 1149), in the picture of the suicide. Lycurgus' wolf-hounds, ' Colered of gold and tourettes fyled rounde' (K. 1294), lose the second part of their adornment in P3. 59, and only 'Collars of the same their Necks surround.' In the description of the tournament the line, ' He feeleth thurgh the herte-spoon the prikke' (K. 1748), is omitted.
II. ADDITIONS.
Epithets are constantly added. In K. 155 — 6 Arcite and Palamon are introduced without epithets. In the corresponding passage, P1. 155 — 6, they appear as 'much fam'd in Fields' and 'valiant' respectively. In K. 840 Theseus was 'war of Arcite and Palamon,' while in P2. 242 ' he saw proud Arcite and fierce Palamon.' ' Antonius ' (K. 1174) becomes (with a reminiscence of Dryden's All for Love, or the World well -lost) 'Antony, who lost the World for Love' (P2. 607). A typical instance is P3. 959 — 64, where, out of a bare enumeration of twenty-one trees in K. 2063 — 5, Dryden selects ten, adding epithets to eight.
Similarly, illustrations are sometimes added to embellish the passage. Thus, the plain statement that 'dukes, erles, kynges' came to help Arcite (K. 1324) is not unhappily heightened by the addition, ' Like sparkling Stars, though diff'rent in Degree' (P3. 95). Theseus' old father Egeus had seen the vicissitudes of ' loye after wo, and wo after gladnesse' (K. 1983). Dryden adds, 'Alternate, like the Scenes of Day and Night ' (P3. 882).
'. H. WILLIAMS 165
frequently added to complete the scene, or for pictorial effect. In K. 912 Theseus simply ' hadde compassioun of wommen.' Dryden adds the touches ' he look VI under with his Eyes ' (P2. 340), and ' he shook his Head ' (P2. 342). To the ' knotty, knarry, bareyne trees olde' (K. 1119), in the forest painted on the wall of the temple of Mars, he adds, 'A Cake of Scurf lies baking on the Ground ' (P2. 534). Diana's 'smale houndes al aboute hir feet' (K. 1218) become 'That watch'd with upward Eyes the Motions of their Queen' (P2. 645). The picture of Diana herself, ' with bo we in honde ' (K. 1222), is elaborated
into
Her Legs were Buskin'd, and the Left before,
In act to shoot, a Silver Bow she bore. P2. 646—7.
When the hundred lords who accompany Emetreus 'been... in the toun alight' (K. 1331), the scene is developed in P3. 104 by adding ' Rich Tap'stry spread the Streets, and Flow'rs the Pots adorn.' When Emily prays to Diana (K. 1438), Dryden describes her, like Cophetua's beggar maid, as 'kneeling with her Hands across her Breast' (P3. 213). In Arcite's prayer to Mars, ' And hem fortunest as thee lyst devyse ' (K. 1519), is expanded into
Terrour is Jbhine, and wild Amazement flung
From out thy Chariot, withers ev'n the Strong:
And Disarray and shameful Rout ensue,
And Force is added to the fainting Crew. P3. 302—5.
After describing the march of the troops through Athens, Dryden adds
The Fair from high the passing Pomp behold;
A Rain of Flow'rs is from the Windows roll'd. P3. 532—3.
In the account of the joust, ' In goon the speres ful sadly in arrest ' (K. 1744) becomes
Their Vizors clos'd, their Lances in the Rest,
Or at the Helmet pointed, or the Crest. P3. 583—4.
And afterwards Dryden adds
The Steeds without their Riders scour the Field.
The Knights unhors'd, on Foot renew the Fight. P3. 600—1.
When Arcite, after his fall, ' lay as he were deed ' (K. 1832), the pictorial touch, ' He quiver'd with his Feet,' is added (P3. 704) ; and the description of the treatment of the wounded (K. 1853), is completed by 'The Surgeons soon despoil'd 'em of their Arms' (P3. 725). So, when Theseus laid Arcite, ' bare the visage, on the beere ' (K. 2019), Dryden colours the austere outline by the addition, ' Menac'd his Countenance, ev'n in Death severe' (P3. 917).
166 'Palamon and Arcite' and the ' Knightes Tale'
Additions sometimes seem to be made for the purpose of completing the enumeration. Thus ' Fowl ' is added to ' neither Beast nor Humane Kind ' (P2. 532—3) ; ' Emeralds ' to pearls and rubies (P3. 69) ; ' Myrtle to laurel (P3. 87) ; so, after ' a coroune of laurer ' (K. 2017), Dryden adds, ' mix'd with Myrtle ' (P3. 913). ' Cracchynge of chekes, rentynge eek of heer' (K. 1976), becomes
Old Men with Dust deform'd their hoary Hair,
The Women beat their Breasts, their Cheeks they tear.
P3. 871—2.
Occasionally circumstances are added to ' credibilise ' the incident. So, in describing Palamon's escape from prison, Dryden represents the night as 'moonless' (P2. 13). The material representation of sighs and tears on the walls of the temple of Venus (K. 1062), is made more palpable by paraphrasing as 'issuing Sighs that smoak'd along the Wall,' and ' scalding Tears, that wore a Channel where they fall ' (P2. 474, 476). When Theseus announces his decision (K. 1798—1801), Dryden adds, in order to explain how the multitude could hear,
The Sound of Trumpets to the Voice reply'd,
And round the Royal Lists the Heralds cry'd. P5. 662—3.
To account for the inflammability of the funeral pyre, we find in P3. 958, ' with Sulphur and Bitumen cast between, to feed the Flames.' When Emily is bestowed on Palamon, Dryden makes Theseus justify the betrothal by saying 'since Emily By Arcite's Death from former Vows is free' (P3. 1125).
Explanatory statements are often added. ' The Butcher, Armourer, and Smith ' (P2. 598), are further described as, ' All Trades of Death that deal in Steel for Gain.' The ' thre formes ' of Diana (K. 1455), are explained, ' as thou art seen In Heav'n, Earth, Hell, and ev'ry where a Queen' (P3. 232 — 3). Emily's vow to Diana, 'I wol thee serve' (K. 1472), is made more explicit by adding, ' And only make the Beasts of Chace my Prey' (P3. .247). And when she is 'astoned' at the answer of the goddess (K. 1503), the reason is given in P3. 284, because she is ' Disclaim'd, and now no more a Sister of the Wood.' Saturn's statement that he is the cause of the 'cherles rebellyng' (K. 1601), is explained by continuing, ' I arm their Hands, and furnish the Pretence ' (P3. 409). The purpose of the bier sent by Theseus (K. 2013), is rather unnecessarily defined as, ' On which the lifeless Body should be rear'd ' (P3. 909). The reason for putting ' a swerd ful bright and kene ' (K. 2018), in the hands of the dead Arcite, is stated to be that it might serve as 'The warlike Emblem of the conquer'd Field' (P3. 915). So
W. H. WILLIAMS
167
the reason why mortals may 'the dayes wel abregge' (K. 2141), is given as ' for Will is free ' (P3. 1036). The principle that ' every part dirryveth from his hool' (K. 2148), is explained by adding, 'but God the Whole ; Who gives us Life, and animating Soul ' (P3. 1042). In the next line, where Chaucer states that nature has not taken its beginning from any part, Dryden supplies the step, ' which the Whole can only give ' (P3. 1045).
Additions are also made to give further explanation of phrases or usages not familiar to the eighteenth century. 'Thus artow of my conseil ' (K. 283), is explained by adding, ' and the Friend Whose Faith I trust, and on whose Care depend ' (P1. 301 — 2). Chaucer's reference to ' positif lawe ' (K. 309) is transformed into ' Laws are not positive ; Loves Pow'r we see Is Natures Sanction, and her first Decree ' (P1. 329 — 30). Dryden of course completely fails to understand ' positif law ' (i.e. ' lex positiva,' the law added by merely human authority, as opposed to the law of nature).
Sometimes the addition takes the form of explicitly stating what Chaucer leaves to be inferred from the context. Thus, ' To hym that meneth wel it were no charge' (K. 1429), is completed by adding, 'but for the rest, Things Sacred they pervert, and Silence is the best' (P3. 205—6).
So details implied, but not explicitly stated in the original, are sometimes supplied. After 'al styntyd is the moornynge and the teres' (K. 2110), Dryden adds, 'and Palamon long since to Thebes return'd' (P3. 1005).
A connecting couplet is often added to facilitate the transition from one scene to another. The entrance of Arcite into the lists (K. 1722), is introduced by the couplet,
Now chang'd the jarring Noise to Whispers low,
As Winds forsaking Seas more softly blow. P5. 554—5.
The transition from earth to heaven, from the victory of Arcite in the lists to the dismay of Venus, the patroness of Palamon, is made less abrupt by the lines,
Arcite is own'd ev'n by the Gods above,
And conqu'ring Mars insults the Queen of Love.
F*. 667—8.
Similarly, the transition from the festivities after the tournament to the death-bed of Arcite (K. 1885), is effected by adding the couplet,
Meanwhile the Health of Arcite still impairs;
From Bad proceeds to, Worse, and mocks the Leeches Cares.
P:J. 749—50.
168 'Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
Conditions are sometimes supplied to make the statement more complete. Before the statement,
And certeinly a man hath moost honour,
To dyen in his excellence and flour, K. 2189 — 90.
Dryden inserts the condition, 'cou'd we chuse the Time, and chuse aright ' (P3. 1088).
Reasons and causes of actions are sometimes added. When Theseus finds Palamon and Arcite fighting, Palamon prays him, 'Ne yeve us neither mercy ne refuge' (K. 862). Dryden adds the reason, 'for Grace is Cruelty ' (P2. 269). Similarly, he accounts for Arcite's casting his eyes upon Emily,
Thurgh a wyndow, thikke of many a barre of iren, K. 219.
as he was ' in the chambre roinynge to and fro,' by adding that he was ' with walking giddy, and with thinking tir'd ' (P1. 228).
Dryden is rather fond of adding classical allusions. Where Palamon simply says of Emily,
I noot wher she be womman or goddesse;
But Venus is it, soothly, as I'gesse, K. 243 — 4.
Dryden embroiders the passage with misplaced erudition :
A Glance of some new Goddess gave the Wound,
Whom, like Acteon, unaware I found.
Look how she walks along yon shady Space,
Not Juno moves with more Majestick Grace ;
And all the Cyprian Queen is in her Face. P1. 257 — 61.
So in P2. 512 Venus is described thus:
Smiling she seem'd, and full of pleasing Thought : From Ocean as she first began to rise.
After mentioning the lions and the leopards round Emetreus, Dryden adds
So Bacchus through the conquer'd Indies rode,
And Beasts in Gambols frisk'd before their honest God.
P3. 99—100.
In the same way he occasionally introduces classical tags, such as 'each an Army seem'd alone' (P3. 8); 'unknowing how to yield' [Horace's cedere nesvius] (P3. 309) ; ' the Publick Care ' [Horace's publica cum] (P3. 315); 'and while we live, to live' (P3. 1114).
Additions of pseudo-classical imitations, probably under the influence of his translations of Virgil and Ovid, are frequent. After describing
W. H. WILLIAMS 169
the assemblage of the crowd on the morning of the tournament Dryden adds
confus'd and high
Ev'n from the Heav'n was heard a shouting Cry ; For Mars was early up, and rowz'd the Sky. The Gods came downward to behold the Wars, Sharp'ning their Sights, and leaning from their Stars.
P3. 438—42.
After saying that Mars triumphed over Venus, Dryden adds
So laugh'd he, when the rightful Titan fail'd,
And Jove's usurping Arms in Heav'n prevail'd: P3. 669 — 70.
At the funeral of Arcite, Palamon's ' ruggy asshy heeres ' (K. 2025), are transformed into * aubourn Locks, which to the Fun'ral of his Friend he vow'd ' (P3. 925). The ' loud shoutynge ' (K. 2095), with which the Greeks thrice rode about the fire, becomes ' Hail, and Farewell, they shouted thrice amain ' (P3. 994) — a reminiscence of Catullus' farewell to .his dead brother, 'in perpetuom, frater, aue atque uale ' (ci. 10), or Virgil's 'salue aeternum mihi, maxume Palla, aeternumque uale' (Aen. xi. 97—8).
Frigid conceits, not found in the original, are frequently added. Chaucer makes Arcite exclaim, ' Ye sleen me with youre eyen, Emelye ! Ye been the cause wherfore that I dye ! ' (K. 709 — 10). Dryden makes him add
Of such a Goddess no Time leaves Record,
Who burn'd the Temple where she was ador'd. P2. 115 — 6.
In describing the picture of the woman in travail calling upon Lucina, Chaucer says simply, ' Wei coude he peynten lifly, that it wroghte ' (K. 1229). Dryden adds
That Nature snatch'd the Pencil from his Hand,
Asham'd and angry that his Art could feign
And mend the Tortures of a Mothers Pain. P2. 656—8.
Occasionally purple patches of description are introduced. In Chaucer's account of the tournament (K. 1741 — 77), there is nothing- corresponding to the 12 lines inserted by Dryden, beginning 'A Cloud of Smoke envellops either Host,' and ending ' But Men and Steeds lie grov'ling on the Ground ' (P3. 587—98).
Topical or local allusions are sometimes added. After saying that Theseus ' thought his mighty Cost was well bestow'd ' (P2. 660), Dryden adds
So Princes now their Poets should regard ; But few can write, and fewer can reward.
170 'Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
Where Chaucer merely speaks of 'Engelond' (K. 1255), Dryden adds 'an Isle for Love and Arms of old renown 'd' (P3. 17); and three lines further,
And had the Land selected of the best,
Half had come hence, and let the World provide the rest.
P3. 20-1.
After describing how Mars laughed at Venus, he inserts the couplet,
Laugh'd all the Pow'rs who favour Tyranny;
And all the Standing Army of the Sky. P3. 671—2.
• Once he adds a couplet, apparently prompted by his love of
astrological technicalities. When Saturn was reconciling the difference between Venus and Mars (K. 1592), his relation to both is thus described :
By Fortune he was now to Venus Trin'd,
And with stern Mars in Capricorn was joiird. P3. 389 — 90.
So, a few additions are due to his fatalism. ' Som tyme an ende ther is of every dede' (K. 1778), is expanded into
At length, as Fate foredoorn'd, and all things tend
By Course of Time to their appointed End. P3. 636—7.
In Theseus' speech to Emily, after 'gentil Palamon, thyn owene knyght, That serveth yow with wille, herte, and myght ' (K. 2219—20), Dryden adds ' And well deserv'd, had Fortune done him Right ' (P3. 1124).
Circumstances required by modern custom are sometimes added. When Arcite lay 'as blak as any cole or crowe' (K. 1834), Dryden adds that they ' lanc'd a Vein, and watch'd returning Breath ' (P3. 709).
A very common device is the addition of an epigrammatic, anti- thetical, 'conceited,' or paradoxical sentence, to sum up, or make the passage more pointed. Before Saturn composes the strife between Venus and Mars, Dryden introduces the line, ' He sooth'd the Goddess, while he gull'd the God' (P3. 392); and after his speech ends the episode with the words,
Th' Expedient pleas'd where neither lost his Right: . Mars had the Day, and Venus had the Night. The Management they left to Chrond's Care. P3. 424 — 6.
Chaucer simply compares Arcite to a tigress robbed of her whelp, and Palamon to a lion maddened with hunger (K. 1768 — 75). Dryden
W. H. WILLIAMS 171
turns the passage into a simile of a tiger and a lion fighting over a bullock, and ends with the unhappy couplet,
They bite, they tear; and while in vain they strive,
The Swains come arm'd between, and both to distance drive.
ps. 634—5.
After that passage of incomparable pathos in Arcite's dying speech,
Now with his love, now in his colde grave,
Allone, withouten any compaignye, K. 1920 — 1.
we find the unnatural conceit,
This Fate is common ; but I lose my Breath,
Near Bliss, and yet not bless'd before my Death. P:i. 798—9.
It is a pity that Dryden did not think of his own criticism on a similar passage in Ovid. ' Wou'd any Man who is ready to die for Love, describe his Passion like Narcissus ? Wou'd he think of inopem me copia fecit ?...If this were Wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor Wretch was in the Agony of Death ? ' So, instead of imitating Chaucer's reserve in leaving Emily's surrender to be understood rather than described, he cannot resist the temptation of adding an epigram- matic couplet :
He said ; she blush'd ; and, as o'eraw'd by Might, Seem'd to give Theseus. What she gave the Knight.
P:J. 1135—6.
Some of the additions are inconsistent with the magnanimous and chivalrous spirit of the original. Palamon's laconic answer, ' I graunte it thee ' (K. 762), to Arcite's proposal, loses dignity in Dryden's ' his promise Palamon accepts ; but prayd To keep it better than the first he made ' (P2. 162 — 3). When Arcite says that he will hang all the arms of his company in the temple of Mars, Dryden makes him add, ' and below, With Arms revers'd, th' Atchievements of my Foe' (P3. 343 — 4). To Palamon's sorrow that he may not fight again (K. 1795) we find the addition,
And worse than Death, to view with hateful Eyes
His Rival's Conquest, and renounce the Prize. P:5. 656 — 7.
Some additions or changes are made to avoid the appearance of anachronism. When Chaucer compares the mourning at the death of Arcite to the weeping ' Whan Ector was y-broght al fressh y-slayn To Troye' (K. 1974), Dryden adds ' but Hector was not then ' (P3. 870). In K. 2241—2, where Chaucer makes the Knight some 2000 years after the event breathe the prayer,
And God, that al this wyde world hath wroght, Sende hym his love that hath it deere aboght,
172 'Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Kniyhtes Tale'
Dryden changes the wish into a statement of fact :
Thus Heav'n, beyond the Compass of his Thought,
Sent him the Blessing he so dearly bought. P:!. 1152 — 3.
The rhyme seems to cause some additions. In the temple of Venus Chaucer says of Cupid, ' A bowe he bar and arwes brighte and kene ' (K. 1108). Dryden turns this :
His Hands a Bow, his Back a Quiver bore,
Supply'd with Arrows bright and keen, a deadly 'Store.
P2. 522—3.
In the tournament the original has
The helrnes they to-hewen and to-shrede,
Out brest the blood with stierne stremes rede. K. 1751.
This becomes
Hauberks and Helms are hew'd with many a Wound ; Out spins the streaming Blood, and dies the Ground.
P3. 603—4.
At the funeral of Arcite the noblest of the Greeks carried the bier upon their shoulders ' with slake pas ' (K. 2043). Dryden adds ' and often staid,' apparently to rhyme with ' the Corps convey 'd ' (P3. 940).
(To be concluded.)
W. H. WILLIAMS. HOBART, TASMANIA
THE 'BATTIFOLLE' LETTERS SOMETIMES ATTRIBUTED TO DANTE.
IT will be within the knowledge of all students of Dante that about twenty-four or thirty years ago there broke out a kind of epidemic of scepticism in regard to his works, and also (as we might add) to the authorship of many of the Books of the New Testament. It became a kind of fashion1 to raise ingenious critical objections which often repre- sented merely subjective impressions of the writer dogmatically pro- pounded. These being often as incapable of formal refutation as of formal proof, were claimed by their authors to be unanswered and there- fore unanswerable. It is quite notorious that the tide has turned in the field of theological criticism, but of that we have nothing more to say now. It has also turned very remarkably in respect of the works of Dante. It is not surprising that such negative criticisms as those of Dr Prompt now only provoke a smile, when we find him boldly enu- merating not only the Quaestio and the Epistles, but even the De Monarchia among 'Les ceuvres apocryphes de Dante/ and describing the author of the last named work as ' the personage who composed this barbarous and abominable book,' So again a certain Canonico Moreni is quoted as rejecting, in addition to all the works above mentioned, also the De Vidgari Eloquentia, as 'stuff (roba) written in a bar- barous style, and including words not even found in Ducange ' ! It is difficult now to imagine how such criticisms could ever have been taken seriously. They are scornfully, but aptly, described by Novati as ' incredulita aprioristica, e scetticismo elevato a sistema.'
But in regard to the genuineness of the Epistles there are some special considerations to be borne in mind and admitted. It must not> be forgotten that the external evidence for the minor works of an author of distant date, especially those of a local, personal or ephemeral interest, such as his letters, is liable to be slender, and often can scarcely be otherwise. Thus the field is left open for the display of
1 It has been well characterized by a recent writer as « quell' andazzo di una ventina di anni fa.'
174 The 'Battifolle* Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
literary and critical ingenuity on grounds of internal evidence. It is a very cheap and easy exercise. It is scarcely possible to imagine any process of argumentation more perilous and untrustworthy, unless it be the much abused ' argument urn e silentio,' which is indeed but one familiar form of it. At the period to which I am referring, the defence of all but three of the Epistles commonly ascribed to Dante was very generally abandoned. This wholesale ' slaughter of the innocents ' was confidently insisted on as altogether necessary by (among others) Bartoli and Scartazzini. A reservation was indeed generally made in favour of Epistles vi, vn, and vm, on the ground that they were attested by Villani. But even here Scartazzini saw a possible way of escape by suggesting that the mention by Villani may have itself prompted the ingenuity of a forger to compose those which have come down to us, the original letters known to Villani, together with others that he mentions, having probably been lost !
The total number of letters attributed at one time or another to Dante is fourteen. One of these, written in Italian, and professing to be addressed to Guido da Polenta, is still, I believe, universally rejected. But there would probably be no strong protest raised now against admitting as many as ten to be at least within the possibility, not to say probability, of genuineness. In some cases there is indeed little or no evidence beyond a vague prevalent tradition ; yet on the other hand positive adverse evidence on internal grounds is in no case strong enough to justify the unqualified rejection of any of them.
We may be content to admit them at any rate as dvriXeyo^eva, remembering that that term when applied to several Books of the New Testament did not involve their exclusion from the Canon.
There remain then the three so-called * Battifolle ' letters, which have generally been rejected unhesitatingly. But when we find so distinguished a Dante scholar as Prof. Novati demanding a recon- sideration of the question, we can scarcely regard it as finally closed. It should also be noticed that the probable genuineness of these letters was vigorously maintained by Corrado Ricci in his elaborate work ' Ultimo Rifugio di Dante, published as long ago as 1891 (pp. 17, 18). have lately found that earlier still, in 1882, Scheffer-Boichorst expressed a very strong opinion in favour of the Dantesque authorship of these letters, 'ich muss mich durchaus fur Dantes Autorschaft erklaren.' He even goes so far as to say ' sowohl Sprache wie Gedanken lassen mir keinen Zweifel1.'
1 Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, vi (1382), p. 645.
E. MOORE 175
At the same time they have been so almost universally rejected by editors of Dante's works that they are rather difficult of access. They have been very rarely printed : only so far as I know by Torri in 1842 (a work now out of print and very difficult to obtain), and by Giuliani in 1882. We have now, however, the advantage of a critical text published by Dr Toynbee, but this is at present only to be found in The Modern Language Review for January 19121. But it appears necessary to reprint the Letters here, since the discussion which follows would be quite unintelligible to any readers without the actual text before them. The following is Dr Toynbee's critical text, with the orthography of the MS. modernized, and punctuation supplied, as is usual in the printed editions of Dante's Epistles and other vLatin works.
LETTER I.
Gloriosissimae atque clementissiniae dominae, dominae .M., divina pro- videntia Romanorum Reginae et semper Augustae, .G. de Battifolle Dei et adiuvalis magnificentiae gratia Cornitissa in Tuscia Palatina tarn debitae quam devotae subiectionis officium ante pedes.
Gratissima regiae benignitatis epistola et ineis oculis visa laetanter et manibus fuit assunapta reverenter ut decuit. Cumque significata per illam mentis aciem penetrando dulcescerent, adeo spiritus lectitantis fervore devo- tionis incaluit, ut numquam possint superare oblivia, nee memoria sine gaudio 5 memorare. Nam quanta vel qualis ego ? Ad enarrandum mihi de sospitate consortis et sua (utinam diuturna) conjunx fortissirna Caesaris condescendat ? Quippe tanti pondus honoris neque2 merita gratulantis neque dignitas postula- bat. Sed nee etiam inclinari humanorum in graduum dedecuit apiceni, unde velut a vivo fonte sanctae civilitatis exernpla debent iriferioribus emanare.
10 Dignas itaque persolvere grates non opis est horninis, verum ab homine aiienum esse non reor pro insuftieientiae supplemento Deum exorare quando- que. Nunc ideo regni siderii justis precibus atque piis aula pulsetur, et im- petret supplicantis aftectus quatenus mundi gubernator aeternus condescensui tan to praemia coaequata retribuat, et ad auspitia Caesaris et Augustae dexteram
15 gratiae coadiutricis extendat, ut qui Romani Principatus imperio barbaras nationes et cives in mortalium tutamenta subegit, delirantis aevi familiani sub triumphis et gloria sui Henrici reformet in melius.
LETTER 2.
Serenissimae atque piissimae doininae, dominae .M., coelestis misera- tionis intuitu Romanorum Reginae et semper Augustae devotissima sua .G. de Battifolle Dei et Imperii gratia largiente Comitissa in Tuscia Palatina flexis humiliter genibus reverentiae debitum exhibere.
Regalis epistolae documenta gratuita ea qua potui veneratione recepi, intellexi devote. Sed cum de prosperitate successuum vestri felicissimi cursus familiariter intimata concepi, quanto liberis animus concipientis arriserit, placet potius comrnendare silentio tamquam nuntio meliori: non enim verba ") significando sufficiunt ubi mens ipsa quasi debria superatur. Itaque suppleat regiae celsitudinis apprehensio quae scribentis humilitas explicare non potest. At quamvis insinuata per literas ineffabiliter grata fuerint et iucunda, spes amplior tamen et laetandi causas accumulat, et simul vota iusta confectat.
1 Modern Language Revieic, vn, pp. 19-24. '2 MS. atque.
176 The 'Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
Spero equidem, de coelesti provisione confidens, quam numquam falli vel
10 praepediri posse non dubito, et quae hurnariae civilitati de principe singular!
providit, quod exordia vestri regni felicia semper in melius prosperata
precedent. Sic igitur in praesentibus et futuris exultans de Augustae dementia
sine ulla haesitatiorie recurro, et suppliciter tempestiva deposco, quatenus me
sub umbra tutissima vestri culminis taliter collocare dignemini ut cuiusque
15 sinistrationis ab aestu sin] semper et videar esse secura.
LETTER 3.
Illustrissimae atque piissirnae dominae, dominae Margaritae, divina provi- dentia Romanorum Reginae ct semper Augustae fidelissima. sua .G. de Battifolle Dei et imperialis indulgentiae gratia Comitissa in Tuscia Palatina cum promp- tissima recommendatione se ipsarn et volimtarium ad obsequia famulatum.
Cum pagina vestrae serenitatis apparuit ante scribentis et gratulantis aspectum, experta est mea pura fidelitas quam in dominorum successibus tarn1 subditorum fidelium collaetentur. Nam per ea quae continebantur in ipsa, cum tota cordis hilaritate concepi qualiter dextera summi regis vota Caesaris et 5 Augustae feliciter adimplebat. Proinde gradum meae fidelitatis experta petentis audeo iam inire officiurn. Ergo ad audientiarn vestrae sublimitatis exorans et suppliciter precor et devote deposco quatenus mentis oculis intueri dignemini praelibatae interdum fidei puritatem. Verum quia nonnulla regalium clausura- rum videbatur hortari ut, si quando nuntiorum facultas adesset, celsitudini regiae
10 aliquid peroptando de status mei condition e referrem, quam vis quaedam praesumptionis facies interdicat obedientiae, tamen suadente virtute obediam. Audiat ex quo iubet Romanorum pia et serena maiestas quoniam tempore missionis presentium coniunx praedilectus et ego, Dei dono, vigebamus in- columes, liberorum sospitate gaudentes, tanto solito laetiores quanto signa
15 resurgentis imperii meliora iam saecula promittebant.
Missum de castro Poppii xv. Kalendas lunias faustissimi cursus Henrici Caesaris ad Italiam anno primo.
The problem of these three ' Battifolle ' letters is quite different from that of the others. The evidence for them is extremely slender. It really amounts only to this, that they are found in a single MS. (Vat. Palat., 1729), which contains six of the commonly received Epistles of Dante, in the midst of which, not after or before them, these three ' Battifolle ' Letters are found embedded. The MS. is a fairly early one, dated 1394, and so just within the limits of the fourteenth century, and only about seventy years after Dante's death2. The nine Epistles or Letters occur in the MS. in the following order: (1) Epist. vu (to Henry VII); (2) Epist. VI (' Scelestissimis Florentinis intrinsecus ') ; (3) (4) (5) the three Battifolle Letters; then the four Epistles usually numbered II, in,
1 There is evidently some corruption here. It looks as if a short-sighted copyist, mistaking the meaning of quam, thought to emphasize the antithesis of dominorum and subditorum by inserting tarn. Somehow the subject of collaetentur seems to have dropped out. Pectora, corda and animi have been suggested e conj., but none of them seem to have any relation to td.
2 The whole contents of the MS. are as follows (auct. Witte, de Monarchia, p. Iviii. See also Dante-Forschungen i, p. 474):
(1) Twelve Eclogues of Petrarch.
(2) De Momrchia.
(3) Nine Epistles attributed to Dante. .
I
E. MOORE 177
I and V, in this order. Now observe (a) the three Letters in question are introduced without note or comment, but from the position they occupy, and the company in which they occur, the copyist evidently had no doubt they were to be attributed to Dante. (6) There is nothing in any of the letters to suggest any connexion with Dante as their author, or any relation to anything in his life or history, (c) Further than this, the writer of the letters distinctly professes to be some one else. They 'are written in the name of the Countess Gherardesca di Battifolle, not Catarina, as printed by Giuliani, since the initial letter, which alone is found in the MS., is clearly a G. (There were two Counts Guido di Battifolle, the wife of one was Gherardesca, and the wife of the other Catarina1.) The letters* are addressed to Margherita di Brabante, the wife of the Emperor Henry VII.
All this makes the insertion of these letters in the MS., without note or comment, in the middle of six others indubitably presented as written by Dante, very surprising. How came this about in the teeth of such very strong prima facie evidence to the contrary presented by the letters themselves ? It seems only accountable on the supposition of the existence of a strong backing of tradition, though we have no other trace of this. Indeed, the greater and more obvious the prima facie difficulties, such as we have already pointed out, the stronger is the case for the existence of such a tradition to overbear them. Its exist- ence must be presupposed as has been that of an unknown and invisible planet to account for some otherwise unexplained action of other visible bodies. This consideration at least contributes something to reinforce the scanty evidence otherwise adducible for these Letters. For, after all, any tradition, however weak, is an asset to be reckoned with, as far as it goes. It is not to be summarily dismissed as worthless without some reason appearing against it beyond its weakness. It at least holds the field till it is overthrown. Tradition is not itself a zero, or still less a minus quantity, as would seem to be assumed by the practice of some critics, which has been thus characterised by Bishop Creighton: — 'We have been taught (he says) by a long series of sceptical inquiries to take almost for granted that if according to an ancient tradition a famous event happened in some particular spot, it must really have happened some- where else ; unless, indeed, it never happened at all.'
The problem presented by these letters then is a very peculiar one, and indeed unique in another way. There is no question of deliberate forgery, for they do not claim or pretend to be written by Dante. The
1 Kicci, Ultimo Rifugio, p. 17. M. L. R. IX. 12
178 The 'Battifolle ' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
circumstances under which they were written by him (if at all) are thus explained. In the spring of 1*311 Dante was in Tuscany, following with eager anxiety the progress of Henry VII in Italy. That, at any rate, is certain. Also, more definitely, that he was in the Casentino is proved by the colophons to his Epistles VI and vn, both of which are stated to have been written ' sub fonte Sarni ' in March and April of that year. That he was there definitely as a guest of a branch of the Battifolle family, is also assigned to tradition by some writers1. But I have not been able to trace the 'existence of such a tradition independently of these letters. His probable hostess, the Countess Gherardesca di Battifolle, having the privilege of writing on friendly terms concerning her family affairs to the Empress, naturally desired that her communications with so exalted a personage should be couched in the most respectful and formally correct terms. She is thought- therefore to have availed herself of the help of her distinguished guest in the composition of these letters. Some writers have sneered at the idea of Dante acting as 'secretary' to this lady, as though it were altogether infra dignitatem for so great a man ; as if he were to be imagined as a sort of Hercules spinning wool for Omphale. But to him the task of writing these letters would be no piece of literary drudgery, but rather a congenial work, as bringing him into some kind of relation with the great Emperor, for whom his adoration was so profound, that, as we know, he addresses him in language that we can scarcely conceive to have been applied to any merely human being without profanity (see Epp. v, VI, vn). We may also be allowed to suppose that the good Countess would not be so familiar with Latin composition (which was naturally to be employed in a letter to such high quarters) as to be indifferent to such a unique opportunity of getting the work executed in the best possible style. We remember how in the Vita Nuova, § 25, 11. 45 seqq., Dante attributes the habit of writing love poetry in the Volgare instead of Latin — a practice (he adds) not yet a hundred and fifty years old — to the consideration that the language had to be intelligible 'a donna, alia quale era malagevole ad intendere i versi Latini.' Besides it was not only a question of writing in Latin, but also in the courtly language and style required in addressing royalty. There would probably be, in the quaint language of Bishop Latimer, ' a plentiful lack ' of any such ' ready writers ' in the recesses of the Casentino. For in the language of Dante : Noii era impresa da pigliare a gabbo. 1 E.g., Witte, Dante-Forschungen, i, p. 487.
E. MOORE 179
The question now arises whether there is anything in the internal evidence of the letters themselves either favourable or adverse to the tradition of their Dantesque authorship.
It is obvious to remark at once that if these letters were composed in the manner and under the conditions already described, we cannot expect much help from internal evidence either favourable or adverse. Let us take first the considerations commonly urged as adverse.
In regard to general objections such as these, viz. (a) that there is nothing to connect these letters as they stand with Dante in any way whatever ; and (6) further, that they definitely profess to be written by some one else, we may point out that the former objection would apply precisely to the three Epistles numbered I, II and ill ; and indefed both would apply to Epistle i, which is addressed to the Cardinal Nicholas of Ostia in the names of Alexander, the ' Captain,' and the Council and general body of the party of the Bianchi at Florence.
But more definitely it is urged :
(1) That the style is pompous and fulsome and the expressions of the writer almost grovelling in their humility. But in regard to this and all similar objections it is obvious to reply that Dante here is not supposed to be speaking for himself, but writing ' to order,' and ex- pressing 'by desire' the feelings and sentiments of another. Further that he is bound (as we said) to adopt the conventional and artificial language of a courtly document. But it is not uninteresting to observe that the same criticism has been urged with a view to the rejection of Epistle x. There Dante is confessedly speaking in his own name and describing his own feelings towards his patron Can Grande. Now Can Grande with all his greatness, and however highly Dante estimated both his public services and his private friendship, stood on a much lower level than the Emperor and his Court. Yet there is not much to choose between the humble language of these letters and that of the first four sections (the dedicatory portion) of Epistle x. Courtly lan- guage is as artificial and conventional as that of literary dedications, so that we might take refuge, if necessary, in the defence made by Dr Johnson of the recognised style of dedications — ' Sir, the known style of a dedication is flattery, it professes to flatter.'
(2) It is objected that the occasion and contents of the letter are altogether trivial and commonplace and unworthy of the pen of Dante. The same answer as before might suffice for this too, but as the objec- tion has also been urged with more force against others of the Epistles purporting to be written by Dante, and in his own name (notably
12—2
180 The 'Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
No. in, that addressed to Moroello Malaspina) one may say a few more words about it.
There must be large tracts of commonplace in the most exalted lives in all the paths and positions of life, even for the greatest names in politics, religion, literature. Sydney Smith once made the calcu- lation of the months or years occupied in any life of about seventy years in sleeping, dressing, eating, walking, gossiping, and even, as he added, in his own case, shaving. It is curious to find this argument from triviality or commonplace in details urged in early Christian ages (and noted, though of course not accepted, by St Jerome) against the admission to the Canon of the second and third Epistles of St John and the Epistle to Philemon. Also some passages in the Pastoral Epistles were subjected to a similar censure ; such as 'Prepare for me a lodging' — ' Bring the cloak which I left at Troas ' — or again, ' Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake,' etc. Nor, in the last mentioned instance, is the difficulty removed, perhaps it is even increased, if the teetotal lecturer's exegesis be accepted, that the word 'use' implies that it was to be limited to ' external application only ' ! We may readily then grant that even in his own ordinary correspondence and familiar inter- course with friends Dante could not be expected (or desired) to have maintained the Divina Commedia level of style, or what we might perhaps call the ' Ercles' vein.' Indeed the context of that expression contemplates the possibility of even the lion ' roaring like a sucking dove.'
Still (3) it is somewhat absurdly asked, why or how should such trivialities have been preserved ? The obvious answer is, By pure and blind chance. We are all familiar with the survival of scraps of what we call utter rubbish among our possessions, just as we know only too well the capricious freaks of our memory both in ' what it takes away, and what it leaves behind.' We know too how some of ' the treasures of Egypt ' consist of ocrrpatca, whose interest both for their writers and recipients was so transient that they were deliberately thrown away. Yet after 2000 years and more they have an interest which has no relation to their intrinsic value at any time.
There is unhappily no ' Natural Selection ' or ' Survival of the Fittest ' to be looked for in regard to the letters of Dante. There was never any attempt at collecting or editing, much less at selecting from, his correspondence, which on the authority of his biographers was some- what copious. Boccaccio states that several of his letters were still extant, and Lionardo Bruni, who died in 1444 (as much as fifty years
E. MOORE 181
later than the date of this MS.), says he had seen several autograph letters of Dante and he describes minutely the character of his hand- writing. It is quite likely that, among so many, gome of little value or interest should have chanced to survive. It must be confessed that in some modern biographies of great men letters are published, even after the power of selection has been, or may be supposed to have been, exercised, where a similar estimate of the value of their contents might incline the enlightened critics of future generations to dispute their genuineness.
The contents of the MS. in which these letters are found appear to be the nearest approach to a ' collection ' of Dante's correspondence extant. The copyist seems to have had access to a packet or bundle of letters attributed to Dante, for there are gathered here as many as nine. No other MS. existing has more than three, viz. one in the Laurentian Library (marked xxix, 8) which contains those numbered iv, VIIT, and ix, none of them corresponding with any in this Vatican MS. or indeed in any other existing MS. There is happily a prospect of this Laurentian MS. being published in a photographic facsimile very shortly, but only in fifty copies. It has been proved to be in the handwriting of Boccaccio, and the reproduction now promised is in honour of the sixth centenary of his birth, which occurred in the year 1913.
To return now to the question of internal evidence. Here again we cannot expect much help if we seek for positive traces of Dante's style, though I think we may confidently say that it yields no adverse evidence of any relevancy. The 'native hue' of Dante's writing is disguised by the admittedly conventional style (as we have noted already) of complimentary and official Court language, the adoption of which was almost as much de rigueur as the technicalities in the com- position of a legal document. We can scarcely imagine even a Ruskin betraying the characteristic richness of his style in drafting a lease or a legal bond. But there are some small touches even here in which we may perhaps detect echoes of Dante's language, just as even in a purposely disguised handwriting some peculiarities of the writer often betray themselves. And at any rate there are, I think, at least three arguments of a somewhat substantial character : (1) from the titles of the three Letters ; (2) from the colophon of the third Letter ; (3) from a clear reminiscence of a passage of Virgil in the first Letter.
I would first notice that for some unexplained, and to me unin- telligible, reason Torri (who is followed by Giuliani) alters the order of
182 The 'Sattifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
the Epistles as found in the MS., the only MS., it will be remembered, in which they have been preserved. Instead of the MS. order 1, 2, 3, they are printed in the order 3, 1, 2. They have been given above (pp. 175, 176) in the order in which they occur in the MS.
(1) It should be observed that in the case of all the Epistles of Dante the titles are of two kinds. First, those which are in the language of the author of the Epistle itself, and secondly those which are obviously prefixed by the scribe. The former have an authority equal to that of the letter to which they are attached : the latter have none, any more than the subscriptions to some of the Epistles of St Paul.
The titles to the three letters before us belong to the former class, and so also do those which introduce the following among the Epistles as usually printed : — Nos. I, IV, v, VI, VII, and x. But Nos. II and III clearly belong to the latter. Epistle VII is preserved in three MSS.1, of which two have the author's title, and the third, viz. this Palatine MS., only a scribe's title. Now let us refer to the title of the first Letter. It ends with the words ' officium ante pedes,' without any verb. The omission of a main verb in such epistolary formulae is extremely com- mon. (It occurs for instance in the three Pastoral Epistles in the New Testament.) We find such an omission in all the titles of the three Letters now before us. So it is again in the title of Epistle IV of the Oxford Dante, and in fact also in that of Epistle vn, when the reading of the two MSS. in which that Epistle occurs is restored, as it should be, viz. ' osculum ante pedes,' instead of the arbitrary alteration of editors, ' osculantur ante pedes.' But further, with this corrected reading, we have a very close parallel to the title of this first Battifolle Letter. In Epistle vn we have ' osculum ante pedes,' in this Letter ' officium ante pedes.' Reasons may easily be suggested for the variation 'officium' in this very humble and dutiful address of the Countess. Also osculum in the other case corresponds with 11. 42, 43 in the body of that Epistle.
(2) Next as to the colophon attached to the last of these three letters.
We have already referred to the colophons of Epistles VI and VII as evidence of the presence of Dante in the Casentino at this date. They are dated March 31 and April 17 respectively2. Now the third of the
1 Viz. 'Vat. Palat. 1729,' Borne; 'Pantaleo,' Bibl. Vitt. Em., Kome; ' Marciana, Cl. Lat. xiv Cod. 115,' Venice.
2 In the case of Ep. vn this MS. (Palat.) has no colophon. Codd. Ven. and Pant, have distinctly xv (and not xiv) for the day of month, and there is no numerical date for the year, which would be clearly superfluous. (Frat. and Giul. have such a date, and
E. MOORE 183
is dated May 18. So not only do these three dates very closely correspond, but it is remarkable that the date of the year is given in precisely the same terms in all these three cases, viz. : ' faustissimi cursus Henrici Caesaris (or divi Henrici) ad Italian! anno primo.' We may note that ' felicissimus cursus ' occurs also in the body of Letter n sab init. Indeed the similarity of the terms of the colophon is the only direct correspondence in these Battifolle Letters with a recognised Dantesque formula. Now if the question of forgery were at issue, such a marked correspondence would clearly be liable to a suspicion, Avhich cannot be held to attach to it when the motive for any such imitation is entirely absent. But if Dante were composing a letter in set terms on behalf of, and in the name of, his hostess the Countess, it does seem quite natural that he should suggest, instead of the prosaic date, the formula which he had adopted in two other letters written in the previous few weeks by himself. It was expressed in terms relating to the stirring events by which his own mind and that of his hostess were entirely obsessed, and which are conspicuous in the subject-matter of the letter itself. It was a formula that would appeal both to the sender and receiver of the letter as being most appropriate. The date is given as though it had relation to a new Anno Domini, starting from the Advent of him whom Dante elsewhere, with question- able reverence, greets as a new Messiah. The date was the inauguration of ' meliora saecula,' as we read in the last words of the letter. We are reminded how with similar hopes the French Revolutionists in 1793 began to date their years from the inauguration of the new regime. Now this identical formula for the date could not possibly have occurred to any other writer, unless to one who was consciously endeavouring to imitate or personate Dante, of which there is no trace or motive here discernible.
(3) Another passage of even greater weight — since there can be no possible suggestion here of any deliberate copying of a definite formula existing elsewhere — is found in the first of these letters (11. 10 — 14). Indeed I may say that it was the occurrence of this passage that first made me suspect that these letters might perhaps after all be genuinely attributed to Dante. After describing in flattering terms the honour clone and the extreme condescension shewn by the Empress to the writer in her friendly communications, she proceeds : — ' Dignas itaque persolvere grates non opis est hominis ; verum ab homine alienum esse
also ' xiv ' as supra. Witte, who omits the date of the year, reads ' xi.') I have already noticed that in this MS. Ep. vn has only a scribe's title, so that the regular title and colophon are for some reason both absent from this MS. in the case of Ep. vn.
184 The 'Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
non reor, pro insufficientiae supplements, Deum exorare quatenus
mundi gubernator aeternus condescensui tanto praemia coaequata re- tribuat.' Who can fail to recognize here the familiar Virgilian passage in Aen. I, 600—605 :
Grates persolvere dignas
Non opis est uostrae, Dido, nee quidquid ubique est Gentis Dardaniae, magnum quae sparsa per orbem. Dl tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid Usquam justitia est, et mens sibi conscia recti, Praemia digna ferant.
Now we can scarcely imagine that such a classical allusion should have occurred spontaneously to the Countess. On the other hand, we do know that this passage was very familiar to Dante, for it is quoted, or distinctly recalled by him in at least two, and I think we may say three, places in his works. They are these :
Ep. i, ii, 11. 39 — 44 : Quis vobis dignas grates persolvere attentabit ? Nee opis est nostrae, pater, nee quicquid Florentinae gentis reperitur in terris: sed'si qua coelo est pietas quae talia remunerando prospieiat, ilia vobis praemia digna ferat.
This is quite a complete and explicit quotation slightly adapted. Then again Par. iv, 121—123 :
Non e 1' affezion mia tanto profonda
Che basti a render voi grazia per grazia; Ma quei che vede e puote a cid risponda.
Naturally here the verbatim reproduction is less precise, but in both cases the twofold divisions of the original passage are clearly marked : (1) the inadequacy of the speaker's expression of gratitude ; (2) the pious wish that a Higher Power would supply that deficiency.
But besides these two passages we may notice yet a third in which the expression ' praemia digna ' occurs, viz. in Epistle II, 1. 8, where Dante says of the lately defunct Alexander Count of Romena, ' super astra nunc affluenter dignis praemiis muneratur [or remuneratur].'
Returning to the passage in this first Battifolle Letter, the indirect reminiscence of the Virgilian passage seems to me even more sig- nificant than a formal quotation. The writer's mind was so familiar with the words that his own thoughts tended spontaneously to express themselves in its terms. And this, as we have shewn by other references, would certainly be characteristic of Dante. We may also perhaps note that the other most explicit reproduction of the passage occurs in that Epistle I, which, just like the present letters, has been traditionally ascribed to Dante though written in the name of others. Thus there can be no suspicion in either case of the quotation possibly serving the purpose of a forger.
E. MOORE 185
Next there are several words or expressions which seem to me to have a Dantesque flavour, but I hesitate to lay too much stress upon them as I am not sufficiently familiar with the style of contemporary Latin writing to know whether they are at all distinctive. But if not distinctive, they are at least such as would be natural to Dante, as appears from their occurrence in the other writings attributed to him.
These at any rate are some that have struck me.
(1) In the third of these letters (1. 8) there is a word the meaning of which I at first rendered quite wrongly, and indeed the Italian trans- lation by Torri does the same, viz. 'praelibatae.' We observe that at the beginning of the letter the absolute sincerity of the writer's devotion to the Empress is insisted upon ; and in the middle of the letter the subject is reintroduced with the words ' praelibatae fidei puritatem.' I did not at first realize that ' praelibatae ' here means simply ' afore- mentioned,' or ' before touched upon/ Dante so uses it in Epistle vm, 63 : ' Quod si de praelibato precipitio dubitatur' — 'If there is any doubt as to the above-mentioned overthrow.' The word occurs again in this sense in V. E. I, iv, 49, ' contra superius praelibata ' — ' contrary to what has been indicated above' : and again, in V. E. u, viii, 9, 'si bene com- miniscimur omnia praelibata.' I observe that Ducange gives ' supra- dictum ' as one meaning of ' praelibatum,' with an example from some formal document, but there is nothing to shew whether it was a common usage in ordinary writing. Dante at any rate so uses it three times elsewhere.
(2) Then again the word ' Augusta ' for the ' Empress ' occurring in all these three letters. This may not perhaps be uncommon, I do not know. At any rate Dante applies it to the Virgin, as the ' Regina Coeli ' in Par. xxxii, 119 :
Per esser propinquissimi ad Augusta.
Also 'Augustus' is applied to Henry four times in Dante's Epistles. Note especially v, 1. 27 : ' Henricus, Divus et Augustus et Caesar.' So here in the third of these letters we have ' Yota Caesaris et Augustae.'
(3) The expression ' mentis oculis ' (Letter 3, 1. 7) occurs twice again in the Epistles ascribed to Dante, viz. v, 163 and n, 30. It is also found in Mon. n, i, 17. So that it occurs at any rate three times elsewhere in his reputed works, and we may also add, as similar, Conv. n, v, 117, ' soverchia gli occhi della mente umana,' and Par. x, 121,
Or se tu 1' occhio della mente trani.
186 The ' Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
The expression perhaps may hardly be considered distinctive, but at any rate it is thoroughly Dantesque.
(4) Next, at the end of Letter 1, we reac^ ' delirantis aevi familiam sub triumphis et gloria sui Henrici reformet in melius.' Compare with this the description of Henry as 'delirantis Hesperiae domitorem ' in Epistle vi, 1. 87.
(5) There is a curious expression in the third letter (1. 8) where the writer, referring to the royal letter already received, says ' nonnulla regalium clausurarum videbatur hortari.' With this we may compare Epistle ix, 1. 25, ' literae discretius et consultius clausulatae.'
(6) We may perhaps notice ' quanta vel qualis ego ' in the first of these letters, 1. 5 : for a similar combination is found in Par. ii, 65 ; xxiii, 92 ; xxx, 120, in the Italian, and in Epistle I, 1. 7, and Epistle x,
1. 585, in the Latin works.
(7) At the end of the third Letter we have the words ' signa resurgentis imperii meliora jam saecula prornittebant.' Compare with this Epistle vii, 1. 20, * nova spes Latio saeculi melioris effulsit.'
(8) Again we may note the phrase ' humanae civilitati ' in the second letter (1. 10), and compare Mon. I, ii, 50, 'finis universalis civilitatis humani generis ' ; and again in the following Chapter, 1. 3, ' finis totius humanae civilitatis.' Further not only the phrase but also the sentiment expressed in this passage of the letter resembles Conv. IV, 4 init. — 'Lo fondamento radicale della Imperiale Maesta...e la necessita della umana civilta.'
(9) The passage last quoted (from Letter 2, 1. 10) contains ap- parently a somewhat strange use of the preposition de with 'providere' : 'humanae civilitati de principe...providit.' We may compare V. E. I,
2, 1. 35, ' Animalibus...de locutione non oportuit provideri.' In the previous sentence (1. 9) we have another rather singular combination : ' de coelesti provisione confidens.' The same construction is found in V. E. n, 4, 1. 78, 'de solo ingenio confidentes '; and in Mon. I, i, 11. 36, 37, •' non tarn de propria virtute confidens quam de lumine Largitoris illius.' Possibly we might also note Mon. in, 3, 57, ' de illarum praevalentia. . . sperantes.'
(10) The use of the word insinuare which we find in Letter 2 (1. 7) in the sense of to 'set forth' or 'communicate' = €fjL<j>avi£eiv (as Ducange says), may possibly be too common in medieval Latin to lay much stress upon, but at any rate Dante thus employs the word no less than three times in Epistle x, viz. 11. 538, 548, 577 \
1 See note on this word in Studies in Dante, in, p. 336.
E. MOORE
187
(11) The same consideration may perhaps have to be applied when quatenus is used in the sense of ut, as it is in each one of these letters, viz. in 1, 1. 13; in 2, 1. 13; and in 3, 1. 7. Anyhow Dante so uses it elsewhere at least three times, viz. Epistle I, 1. 63 ; n, 1. 38 ; and De Man. I, i, 6.
(12) Then in 11. 4, 5 of Letter 2 we have some thoroughly Dantesque thoughts, viz. (a) the inadequacy of language to express thought; and (6) that this is because sometimes the mind is so elevated as to be, as it were, ' inebriated ' by the strain put upon it.
For (a), see Par. xxxiii, 54, ' il mio veder fu maggio che il parlar nostro,' and Epistle x, 1. 575, 'multa per intellectum videmus quibus signa vocalia desunt.' Add also Cam. II, 1 — 18, prefixed to Conv. Tratt. ill ('Amor che nella mente,' etc.) ; and the commentary on this in Chapter iv, 11. 16 — 22 ; especially 1. 38, ' la cortezza del nostro parlare, lo quale dal pensiero e vinto.' The thought is too familiar to need further references; but a remarkably close parallel to the words (Letter 2, 1. 4) 'placet potius commendare silentio tanquam nuntio meliori ' may be found in Conv. iv, v, 11. 140 seqq. in the apostrophe to Cato : ' Chi presumera di te parlare ? Certo maggioramente parlare di te non si puo che tacere! Then Dante goes on to quote St Jerome's language about St Paul, of whom he declares ' che meglio e tacere che poco dire.'
(6) As to the metaphor of an ' inebriated ' mind (which Dante probably borrowed from the Vulgate in Ps. xxxv, 9), comp. Conv. in, viii, 133, ' quivi s' inebria 1' anima.' Add also Inf. xxix, 2, and Par. xxvii, 3. Also ib. 1. 5 :
Mia ebbrezza Entrava per udire e per lo viso.
(13) Note further the expression ' de principe singulari ' in Letter 2, 1. 10 for a Universal Monarch, and compare this with the title to Epistle vii, ' Domino singulari, domino Henrico.'
(14) Lastly, we might perhaps notice the phrase 'Romanus Princi- patus' in Letter 1, 1. 15. Compare ' sacratissimi Caesarei Principatus... Vicarius ' in the title to Epistle x. ' Principatus ' is common in the De Mon., and the actual expression ' Romanus Principatus' occurs there twice. Also Dante appears to use the word ' Principatus ' in a sense oscillating between the concrete and abstract, Prince and Princedom, Emperor and Empire. Sometimes too we find the abstract term when the concrete would seem more natural, as distinctly in Parg. x, 74, ' 1' alta gloria Del roman principato ' (i.e. Trajan). Here, as might be
188 The 'Battifolle' Letters sometimes attributed to Dante
expected, the inferior and slightly supported variants ' Principe ' and ' Prince ' are both found as lectiones faciliores. There seems to me to be a curious parallel to this in Cowley's Discourse concerning the Govern- ment of Oliver Cromwell, where the ' strange and terrible apparition ' visiting him is made to announce himself thus: 'I am called the North- West Principality, his Highness the Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and the dominions belonging thereunto.' Ducange does not mention any such use of 'Romanus Principatus' for the Emperor or Empire, nor is the expression apparently to be found in Classical Latin, though ' principatus alicuj us ' (e.g. Neronis) for the reign of is natural enough. The only recognition of the word by Ducange is as the title of one of the orders of Angels. We might perhaps, I think, infer from this that the title ' Romanus Principatus ' for the Emperor or Empire was not in ordinary use.
We may now perhaps sum up the arguments so far offered from internal evidence under four heads:
1. The language of the titles to the three letters.
2. That of the colophon to the third letter.
3. The distinct Virgilian reference in the first letter. .
4. The correspondence of words, expressions and thoughts with those occurring in other works of Dante, or such as are generally attri- buted to him.
Many of these last parallels, taken separately, may seem weak and inconclusive, but we can scarcely ignore the cumulative force derived from the occurrence of so many similarities of expression within such narrow limits; especially if tve take into account that both the subject- matter of the letters and the conventional character of the composition, tend to throw some disguise over the writer's ordinary style. Some of them, it is true, may very likely be nothing more than ' terms of speech commonly used in those days.' But at least they are such as are found elsewhere in Dante, and therefore are quite consistent with his tra- ditional authorship. On the other hand, there is I believe nothing that can be pointed out as inconsistent with it, either in language or in sentiment.
The same may be said of the regular observance of the rules of the Cursus. .For whether the letters are genuine or not, this is nothing more than was to be expected at that time. It is not a discriminating test, though the disregard of such rules would have formed a serious objection.
E. MOORE
189
It must be regretfully admitted that the letters, even if genuine, have scarcely any intrinsic value or interest. They throw no light on Dante's history or character. But it is absolutely futile (as Novati protests) to argue ' indegna di Dante e quindi apocrifa.' Their main interest is that which attaches to any personal relic (if such they be) of so great a man. And we know that some other relics are very highly prized by those who are assured of their genuineness, for which no intrinsic value can be claimed, or any scientific interest.
E. MOORE.
THE PRECINCTS,
CANTERBURY.
DEUX NOMS DE POISSONS.
1. FR. ecade, ANGL. shad, etc.
D'APRfcs le Nouv. Larousse Illustre, ecade est un nom populaire de 1'alose. Ou? C'est ce qu'on ne nous dit pas. Si le mot existe corame nom populaire de 1'alose, c'est sur la cdte nord de la France que j'irais le chercher.
En effet ecade = clupea alosa Cuv. me parait clairement venir d'Angleterre. Car je ne crois pas qu'il faille compter avec un all. Schad ou Schade = clupea alosa Cuv. que Falk et Torp, Norw.-Ddn. Etym. Wtb., citent, tout a fait a tort a mon avis, a 1'article qu'ils ont consacre" au norv. skate = raia batis L. ; on peut se reporter a Farticle sur 1'all. dial. schade — silurus glanis L. dans le Deutsches Wtb. de Grimm pour voir combien minces sont les indications sur un all. Schad — clupea alosa Cuv. ; d'ailleurs, comme la clupea alosa Cuv. est un poisson de mer qui remonte les rivieres, un all. Schad, en supposant qu'il ait 'existe, serait emprunte au bas-allemand et c'est dans les dialectes neerlandais ou scandinaves qu'il faudrait chercher le type primitif auquel serait emprunte un fr. dial, ecade.
D'autre part, en Angleterre, le mot shad = clupea alosa Cuv. -est atteste depuis plusieurs siecles et Conrad Gesner des 1558 le cite sous la forme schade ou schadde ; il remonte a un anglo-saxon sceadd que je crois etre d'origine celtique. II faut le rapprocher de 1'irl. scatan, gall. ysgadan ' harengs ' et comparer 1'angl. mother of herrings = clupea alosa Cuv. et le norm, alose de Dieppe = clupea harengus L. (quand il est frais) d'apres Holland, Fa. Pop., XI, 235. Le mot shad parait etre surtout employe dans la valise de la Saverne ou Ton distingue Yallis shad = clupea alosa Cuv. de la twaite shad = clupea finta Cuv. Dans le Shrop- shire on trouve shad salmon 'a small salmon of from 5 to 8 pounds weight so called by the old Severn fishermen because they arrived with the shad ' ; tandis que dans le sud du Worcestershire shad salmon, par confusion sans doute se dit de 1'alose elle-meme (Wright, Dial. Diet.
PAUL JBARBIER FILS
191
art. shad-salmon). De meme, dans le Shropshire, shad-bird = totanus hypoleucus Temminck s'explique par ce fait que le chevalier guignette arrive en meme temps que 1'alose (vers la fin d'avril).
Si Ton quitte la vallee de la Saverne, a mesure qu'on s'avance vers le sud-ouest, la forme shad est remplacee par la forme scad. Ainsi dans le West Somerset, d'apres le Dial. Diet, de Wright scad indique le tout petit saumon comme shad-salmon dans le Shropshire et sans aucun doute pour les memes raisons. L'angl. scad — trachurus Linnaei Malm. est dans le New Engl. Diet, avec des premiers exemples de 1602 et 1672 qui font croire que c'est un mot originaire du Cornwall ou d'ailleurs il existe encore car mon beau-frere, Mr J. H. Duncan, a pu me citer le mot pour le village de Porthgwarra. Or ici encore scad est primitivement un nom de la clupea alosa Cuv. ; De la Blanchere, Nouv. Diet. des^Peches, p. 15, dit qu'on donne au trachurus Linnaei Malm, le nom d'alose bdtarde et quelquefois de fausse alose quand il remonte les fleuves en meme temps que la clupea alosa Cuv.
II me parait done raisonnable de croire que 1'angl. scad = trachurus Linnaei Malm., originaire du Cornwall, etait, a proprement parler, un nom de la clupea alosa Cuv. ; que comme tel il avait e" te emprunte aux pecheurs du Cornwall par les pecheurs de la Normandie a une. epoque relativement ancienne, a en juger par 1'etat phone'tique de la forme ecade. Ecade ferait done pendant au norm, vra = genre labrus Cuv., que j'ai explique comme un emprunt au cornique wrah (cf. angl. wrasse = genre labrus Cuv. qui viendrait du dim. corn, wrahes) dans la Revue des Langues Romanes, LI, 406, et qui sous la forme vrac est atteste dans un texte normand de 1557 (Revue d. Lang. Rom., LIT, 129).
2. FK. merlus, LAT. mZrula, etc.
Dans la deuxieme edition du Latein. Etym. Wtbuch de A. Walde (1910), mtirula est considere comme etant probable men t pour *m<tsulaet 1'aiiteur le rapproche du gallois mwyalch (corn, moelh, bret. moualch) ' merle ' et du v. h. a. meisa (anglosax. mase, v. isl. meisingr) ' mesange.' Aucune mention n'est faite de la forme masculine merulus, attestee cependant par Vauctor Philomelas et fortement represented dans les langues romanes. Or merulus, m%rula pourraient tres bien etre des diminutifs d'un type merus, m%ra.
Parmi les oiseaux du genre turdus L., 1'espece turdus merula L. se distingue si bien des autres especes par son plumage noir qu'on ne la confond guere avec elles. Ainsi le nom du merle ne sert-il jamais aux grives; de meme, parmi les noms de grives, vseul mauvis indique
1 92 Deux Noms de Poissons
quelquefois le merle et cela surtout dans le domaine du wallon, du rouchi, du picard (Rolland, Fa. Pop., n, 246). Un coup d'ceil donne aux pages 245 et suivantes du ne volume de la Faune Populaire de Rolland montre que presque tous les noms des merles en France sont des repre- sentants du lat. merula ou des derives de ce type. Aucun nom du merle ne presuppose une forme anterieure a merula.
Les noms des merles ont servi a indiquer des poissons. Dans tous les cas que je citerai, c'est la couleur sombre du dos du poisson qui parait avoir servi de terme de comparaison. On pent faire le classe- ment qui suit :
I. Famille des Gadidae Giinther (genres gadus Giinth., gadiculus Guich., merluccius Giinth.). II s'agit ici du type *mer(u)lilceits qui, sous une forme tantdt masculine tantdt feminine, s'est sans doute dit d'abord du merluccius vulgaris Fleming ; il s'appelle marloz a Malte, mirruzzu en Sicile, merluzzo a Naples, merluzzu a Cagliari ; 1'ital. merluccio, merluccia, le prov. merlus, merlusso, le fr. merlu(s) (voir un exemple du fr. merlusse date de 1682 dans Rolland, Fa. Pap., n, 215), 1'esp. merluza se disent aussi de ce poisson. Mais les derives de *meruluc$us ont passe a la plupart des poissons des genres gadus Giinth. et gadiculus Guich. : cf. en Sicile mirruzzu impiriali = gadus merlangus L., mirruzzu di varu = gadus pollachius L., mirruzzeddu = gadus minutus L. ou gadiculus argenteus Guich. En Galice melruza, merluza se dit du gadus aegle- finus L. Et il serait facile d'aj outer a ces indications. Dans son nouveau dictionnaire etymologique, M. Meyer-Llibke, aux articles 5143 I'ticius et 5534 m&rula, hesite toujours entre (a) maris lucius parfaitement admis- sible au point de vue du sens (voir le catal. lluz, llus = merluccius vul- garis Flem. dans Carus, Prodr., n, 574, et cf. Fall, hecht, meerhecht — merluccius vulgaris Flem.) mais qu'il est a peu pres impossible d'admettre si Ton se place au point de vue de la phonetique et (b) *meru- luceus qui lui parait difficile au point de vue de la semantique. C'est le type *m%ruluc$us que je tiens a defendre. On remarquera d'abord que ce type est parfaitement admissible d'abord au point de vue mor- phologique, puis comme nom de poisson : cf. le sicil. cavadduzzu, Naples cavalluccio = hippocampus guttulatus Cuv., sicil. gattuzzu (jattuzzu), Naples gattuccio, Genes gattusso = scyllium canicula Cuv. ou encore le sarde canuzzu — galeus canis Bonap. qu'E. Marcialis cite dans son Piccolo Vocabolario Sardo-Italiano ; dans chacun des cas cites le suffixe -uceus est attache a un nom d'animal, caballus, coitus ou canis. Maintenant pour la semantique j'ai deja dit que j'explique 1'application de *rn%Mu- tis au merlucius vulgaris Flem. par la couleur foncee du dos du poisson,
PAUL BARBIER FILS 193
et cette note montrera que le nom du merle a ete donne a d'autres poissons pour cette raison ; pour les gades en particulier et surtout pour le merluccius vulgaris Flem. c'est pour les couleurs foncees du dos qu'ils ont aussi regu les noms de Fane (cf. mes notes 89 asellus, 60 et 106 grelin, 128 abadejo dans la Revue des Lang. Rom., LII, 112, LIII, 26, 40, Liv, 149). La forme frangaise merluche qui parait pour la premiere fois dans les oeuvres de Madame de Sevigne ne vient pas de 1'ital. merluccio comme 1'affirme Fart. 5534 du dictionnaire de Meyer-Lubke, pas meme de 1'ital. merluccia comme je 1'avais d'abord pense ; on pourra se reporter a mes notes 191 bertagnin, 224 labardone et 251 pijota (Rev. d. L. Rom., LVI, 176, 206, 222), pour voir que c'est plutot 1'Italie qui a emprunte quelques noms de merluches aux peuples du nord. Etant do>nne les relations de Mme de Sevigne avec la Bretagne, il est tres admissible que merluche vienne des cotes de 1'Ouest de la France (cf. le Diet. Gen. a merluche) ou il est le nom ordinaire du merluccius vulgaris Flem. (cf. auvergn. marlucko dans Mistral a merlusso). II est interessant aussi de remarquer que merluche est cite pour Orleans et marluche pour le centre de la France comme noms de la femelle du turdus merula L. dans Holland, Fa. Pop.y II, 246. — Reste a dire quelques mots sur le fr. merlan. M. Meyer-Liibke, a son art. 5534, semble admettre definitivement parmi les derives de mgrtila la serie suivante : v. fr. merlenc (>it. merlango), fr. merlan (> it. merlano, esp. merlan). Ici certaines observations sont a faire. Le fr. merlan est a proprement parler un nom du gadus mer- langus L. bien qu'on s'en sert pour indiquer d'autres gades (ex. g. merlan jaune= gadus pollachius L. etc.); d'autre part le gadus merlangus L., tres rare sur les c6tes mediterraneennes de FEspagne et de la France et sur la cote ouest de FItalie, n'a guere de nom populaire pour ces pays. Pour Fetymologie de merlan, le Diet. Gen. admet aussi Fexplication par merula et suppose que le suffixe est germanique et cette hypo- these est appuyee par la forme picarde merlin. On est done tente de rattacher au fr. merlenc, merlan, diverses formes provengales, italiennes et espagnoles. Cependant je ne vois deja pas comment on derivera 1'ital. merlango du v. fr. merlenc', je ne trouve pas merlango dans les dictionnaires et je soupgonne que c'est un mot savant caique sur le merlangus de Linne : celui-ci est a son tour une forme du bas-latin qu''on trouve dans les textes medievaux a cote de merlengus et merlingus. Plus difficile encore est le prov. merlengo, sb. f., nom du merluccius vul- garis Flem., qui semble representer *merlinga, et qu'il est en tout cas difficile de rattacher plus etroitement au v. fr. merlenc. II est bon aussi de rappeler qu'a cote de Fit. merlano que donne M. Meyer-Ltibke, de M. L. R. ix. 13
194 DeMx Noms de Poissons
1'esp. merlan (=gadus merlangus d'apres les listes de Nemnich, publiees de 1793 a 1798), le prov. merlan (depuis Cette jusqu'a Nice, nom du merluccius yulgaris Flem.), un ital. merlana est glose par le Florio de 1688 ' a whiting or merlan fish ' et un prov. merlano est donne par Mistral comme synonyme de mouno ' sorte de poisson de roche du genre merlan.' Quelle est 1'origine de ses diverses formes feminines qui rappellent merluccia a c6te de merluccio ? — On peut ter miner en disant que divers dictionnaires italiens du xvne se, le Duez de 1660 et le Florio de 1688 entre autres, citent Tit. merlo aussi bien que 1'it. merla comme nom du merlan. II est clair que si Ton peut accepter cette indication — et n'oublions pas que par 'merlan il faut comprendre tres probablement le merluccius vulgaris Fl. et non le gadus merlangus L. comme je 1'ai explique plus haut — que 1'explication de Tit. merluccio etc. par un type *meruluceus devient a peu pres certaine.
II. Famille des Labridae Gtinth. (surtout 1'espece labrus merula L.). Malte mirli, sicil. turdu merru, Catane merra (Carus, Prodr., II, 597), prov. merle (1554 Rondelet, De Pise. Marin., p. 172), noms du labrus merula L. Parmi les noms franyais, Littre donne merle et merlot1 qu'on trouve deja dans Lacepede, Hist. Nat. des Poiss., in (1800), p. 492 ; je crois que merle remonte en definitive au prov. merle de Rondelet ; voir aussi Cotgrave a merle de mer. Ajoutons comme noms du labrus merula L., 1'esp. merlo, mirlo (Nemnich), le port, melro (Nemnich), melroa (Michaelis). A Tile d'Elbe merlo = labrus turdus L. (= ? labrus turdus Cuv.) d'apres Koestlin cite par Rolland, Fa. Pop., ill, 154. — Pour les noms de 1'ane donnes au labrus merula L. pour les couleurs foncees du dos, voir la note 141 burrinho (Rev. d. L. Rom. Liv, 159).
III. Famille percidae Giinther (sous-famille serraninae Giinth.). Trieste et Venise merla di mar=serranus scriba Cuv. dans Carus, Prodr., II, 613.
IV. Famille scombridae Giinth. (sous-famille stromateinae Giinth.). Fr. merle = centrolophus pompilus Cuv.
Ayant donne les indications dont je dispose sur les noms de poissons qui sont des noms de merles, je vais maintenant reunir d'autres noms de ces memes poissons qui paraissent remonter a un type ante'rieur a meriilus, merula, en suivant Fordre etabli ci-dessus :
I. Famille des Gadidae Gunth. — On trouve 1'esp. mero — gadus pollachius L. ex. g. dans le Diet, of the Spanish and English Languages de Neuman et Baretti, ed. 1837.
1 merlot est dej& dans le Diet, d'hist. nat. de Valmont de Bomare (I6re edn., 1765) a 1'art. merle, nom de poisson.
PAUL BAPvBIER FILS 195
II. Famille des Labridae Gtinth. — D'apres Rolland, Fa. Pop., in, 154, citant VEnsayo de Cornide (1788), 1'esp. mero de costa = labrus turdus L. Nemnich en 1793 — 8 donne 1'esp. mero de costa = labrus merula L.
III. Famille des Percidae Gtinth. (sous-famille serraninae Giinth.). Parmi les noms de serrans on a: 1'esp. mero = par acentropristis hepatus Klunz (Cams, Prodr., n, 609) ; le galic. et esp. mero (cf. Baleares neru, Ivi$a nera, Naples cernia nera = cerna gig as Bonap.), Pyr. Or. mero (Rolland, Fa. Pop., in, 181), prov. meroun, merou, Genes meu = cerna gigas Bonap. (cf. Cams, Prodr., II, 610); esp. mero de altura = serranus scriba Cuv., esp. mero bort = serranus cabrilla Cuv. (Carus, Prodr., n, 612, 613). C'est du prov. merou qu'est pris le fr. merou dont Lacepede s'est servi dans holocentre mdrou1 (Hist. Nat. des Poiss., IV, 376), et dont Cuvier a fait un nom generique (Regne Animal, II (1829), 140), ex. g. le merou brun = cerna gigas Bonap.
II est clair que les noms que nous venons de citer partent d'un type merus, sauf le prov. merou qui serait un derive en -onem de ce type. Etant donne que merus et merulus s'appliquent aux memes poissons, il me semble infiniment probable que merulus doit etre considere comme un diminutif de merus. Je me demande seulement s'il faut identifier ce merus avec le masculin de 1'adj. mer-us, -a, -um (Meyer-Ltibke, art. 5535) surtout atteste en latin au sens de ' pur/ Que merus ait servi d'adjectif de couleur, c'est ce que presupposerait 1'explication par ce mot du roum. mneru * bleu ' dans Puscariu, Human. Etym. Wtbuch, art. 1099 ; cf. aussi roum. meriu 'vert,' et noter que Pedersen, Vergl. Gramm. d. Kelt. Spr. (1908), I, 91, rapproche du lat. purus le v. irl. ur 'vert.' Mais sans insister sur ces hypotheses, si Ton se tourne vers la peninsule iberique ou surtout merus a surve'cu comme nom de poisson, on peut trouver quelques indices :
(1) le galic. mera, merada 'niebla hiimeda que hace dano al centeno, cuando esta en flor' (Valladares Nunez, Diccion. Gallego-Castillano, 1876), parait indiquer quelque chose comme la nielle des ce'reales, noire et grasse au toucher ; cf. fr. nielle < lat. nigella, prov. negrihoun ' nielle.'
(2) le port, mera 'a sort of liquor extracted from small pieces of wood of the wild olive-tree when it is green. It is used by shepherds and farriers to cure their sheep and horses ' (Vieyra, Portug. Engl. Diet., ed. 1794). L'esp. miera, le port, mera sont generalement expliques par
1 On a d£ja persegue merou dont s'est servi Bonnaterre dans les Planches de I' Encyclo- pedic Methodique.
13—2
196 Deux Noms de Poissons
' huile de genievre ' ; il s'agit de 1'huile de cade extraite du bois du juniperus oxycedrus et qui a longtemps servi centre la gale des moutons et les ulceres des chevaux. Peut-etre pourrait-on rapprocher le prov. merihoun ' marc d'olives, de noix, de raisin ' dans les Alpes Maritimes (Mistral) et le prov. meriho, nom d'un raisin dit aussi moarihoun.
(3) le portug. mera ' bars, barsch ' (Michaelis). Le dos a rayures foncees de la perca fluvicitilis L. lui a procure bien des noms : cf. le grec TrepKr), le lat. perca et voir ma note 113 persegue (Rev. d. L. Rom., LIII, 45).
Les exemples citds font croire que merits a eu le sens de ' fonceY En latin Tadj. merus s'employait constamment avec vinum (cf. le napol. miere ' vin pur ' dans Meyer-Liibke, art. 5535) ; on sait que le fr. mere goutte (ou mere < mera) est le nom du premier vin qui coule de la ven- dange avant que le raisin ait e'te foule ; comme la premiere liqueur est la plus foncee merus aurait passe facilement de ' pur, sans melange ' a ' fonce.' II est sur que ce second sens a du se developper de fort bonne heure si merula vient de merus puisque merula ' merle ' est deja dans Varron. II faudrait admettre que le sens ' fonce ' est reste populaire puisqu'il n'est pas atteste dans les textes.
PAUL BAKBIER FILS.
LEEDS.
LESSING IN ENGLAND.
IT is no easy task to estimate the influence of Lessing on a literature which knew him almost entirely by indirect means. Once the compara- tively few translations of his works have been carefully studied, once the few indications of their influence have been traced, therevremains only the method of laborious search through the works (for the most part un-indexed) of those who might possibly have known Lessing at first-hand. There were not many such in the eighteenth century, and but few more in the early part of the nineteenth ; whence it comes that the number of English books quoted gives a most inadequate idea of the multitude actually consulted. It is evident that a compilation of all the English references to Lessing would require a space of more than one life-time, and in the opinion of the present writer the utility and even the interest of such a work would be questionable. The following pages claim to be only a record of discoveries indicating the more or less intelligent interest aroused by Lessing in England and America; and if high admiration for the great German has brought about the inclusion of much which cannot definitely be said to further this aim, yet a sincere effort has been made to avoid those purely subjective ' discoveries ' to which German criticism is so prone.
I.
TRANSLATIONS OF LESSING. (a) Fables, Epigrams, Poems and Minor Dramas.
The first of Lessing's works to appear in English was the Fables, well translated by John Richardson of Eworth, in 1773. The version attracted the attention of at least one critic of the day; for in the Monthly Review's notice of Laocoon the following passage occurs : ' Mr Lessing is well-known in the republic of letters, by several works, and particularly by his very ingenious Fables/ It is of course possible that the reviewer, who (though in his notice ' Mablerey ' stands for ' Mahlerey ' and umlaut is ignored) evidently had some small knowledge of German,
198 Leasing in England
knew the work in the original language ; but from the fact that the Fables alone are cited as one of the ' several works ' it seems reasonable to conclude that the reviewer had read Richardson's translation. It is, however, certain that the work was a comparative failure in its English form1. Other translations (the first together with the treatises on the Fable and on the Epigram in the only extant English version) appeared in 1825, in 1845, and in 1860. A German and English edition, London, 1829, 12°, remains to be mentioned.
William Taylor of Norwich, to whom fuller attention will be devoted later, translates twenty-five of the Epigrams and includes four of the Fables from Richardson's edition in his Historic Survey. The same work also contains a rimed version of Der Adler und die Eule. Die Schwalbe occurs in the Weekly Magazine, n, 82.
Of other poems, An eine kleine Schone was translated in the Weekly Magazine of Philadelphia in May 1798. Die Namen appeared in Harley's version in the Portfolio (Philadelphia) for January, 1803, ill, 25. S. T. Coleridge's original effort was given to Cottle and is to be found in the latter's Reminiscences (1847), p. 288. It runs thus :
MY LOVE.
I asked my love, one happy day,
What I should call her in my lay.
By what sweet name from Rome or Greece :
Iphigenia, Clelia, Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, or Doris,
Dorimene or Lucrece?
'Ah!' replied my gentle fair,
1 Beloved ! what are names but air ?
Take whatever suits the line :
Call me Clelia, call me Chloris,
Laura, Lesbia, or Doris,
Only, only, call me thine.'
The same poem appeared as Names in the 1835 edition of Coleridge's works, with alterations. It was given to Cottle as a translation from Lessing : and the debt is further acknowledged in Biographia Literaria. The fact that Coleridge indicated the authorship of this one piece, and announced five epigrams which accompanied it (On a bad Reader of his own Verses, two On Liars, one On observing a Lady licking her Lap-dog, one On a Writer of Fugitive Verse) as translations from the German, would seem to be the chief ground for the following statement by Brandl, p. 263 : 'Er...lieferte eine lange Reihe von gereimten Spriichen
1 As it was published at York, the London reviews have no mention of it. See also a notice of Lessing in Bichardson's preface to Wieland's Agathon, p. iv. London, 1773, 8vo.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 199
(bei Pickering1, n, 161 — 178), welche sich bei naherem Zusehen fast alle auf Lessing zuriickfiihren lassen, wie er selbst gegen Cottle (S. 287) andeutete.' Goedeke has ' darch S. T. Coleridge, vgl. Brandl ' — an unusually vague reference for Goedeke. Perhaps the compilers of the invaluable Grundriss lacked enthusiasm for Brandl's ' Zuriick- fuhrung.'
Five epigrams are translated by G.H. Lewes in his notice of Lessing in the Edinburgh Review, Vol. LXXXII (1845), pp. 451 — 70. Three are to be found in the Philosophical Repository of Philadelphia, Vol. v (1805), p. 128.
Of the early comedies, Der Freygeist and Der Schatz were translated by the Rev. J. J. Holroyd and published in 1838. His version*- formed a basis for the second and last appearance of these works in English — in Bohn's Library (1878). Of Holroyd's translation the editor (Ernest Bell) says in his preface : ' though it rendered the spirit of the original very successfully, [it] did not pretend to be literally accurate, and, with a view to obtaining greater literalness... considerable alterations have been introduced.' The collection included besides Der Freygeist and Der Schatz, Damon, Der junge Gelehrte, Die Juden and Die alte Jungfer. Bell's desire for ' literalness ' leads him to tolerate passages that are quite un-English: 'my so tender love' (Damon, sc. iv), 'you are such a dried fool, such a stockfish' (Gelehrte, Act n, sc. xi), 'such a little book will surely let itself be read ' (ibid. Act n, sc. iv), ' by mistrustfully suddenly withdrawing myself (ibid. Act in, sc. ix), are a few examples. In Die Juden, sc. II, the humour of Krumm's ' von einer sehr gefahr- lichen Gefahr ' is lost in the English ' from a very great danger.' The translation is not always even literally correct : in the Freygeist, Act iv, sc. iii, ' schmachtend ' is ' solid ' and ' Sammelplatz ' is ' fountain.' .
Damon, Der junge Gelehrte, Die Juden and Die alte Jungfer appeared in Bohn's Library for the first and last time in English. William Taylor gives in his Historic Survey a delightfully fresh and ' English ' translation of an extract from Act II, sc. xi of Der junge Gelehrte, an example of what might have been substituted for the bald version in Bohn : but it is difficult to see what good purpose can be served by labour expended on so mediocre a work. With the exception of Der Freygeist (which has always seemed to the present writer to be a greatly underrated comedy) the early plays of Lessing may be consigned to not unmerited oblivion.
1 William Pickering published the Poetical and Dramatic Works of Coleridge, London, 1877. Re-issued by Macmillan in 1880.
200 Lessing in England
Writing to Southey, June 23, 1799 (Robberds, I, p. 286), William Taylor asks : ' To what Spanish poet is Lessing indebted for the annexed six lines ? He gives them as a translation. I suspect their originality ' :
Yesterday I loved,
To-day I grieve,
To-morrow I die :
Yet shall I think,
Both to-day and to-morrow,
Gladly of yesterday.
In the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1840 (Vol. xxvy pp. 233—53) will be found a capital rendering of the epigram on Voltaire, together with three others and four fables. Seven epigrams are included (pp. 346 — 7) in W. Davenport Adams' collection (undated, London), called English Epigrams.
(b) Miss Sara Sampson, Minna von Barnhelin, and Emilia Galotti.
Sara did not, as stated in the preface to Lessing's Dramatic Works, London, 1878, Vol. II, appear for the first time in English in Bohn's Library. An American translation, ' by a citizen of Philadelphia,' was published in that city in 1789 \ The version in Bohn is the last: and though fairly translated it does not seem to have aroused any great interest. Sara has never appeared on the English stage, where its Germanized English dramatis personae would probably make it ridicu- lous. It was known to Henry Mackenzie2, in a French translation. He finds Sara too weak and Mar wood too vicious, while Sir William is 'insipidly drawn, and awkwardly introduced.' He thinks the use of a predictive dream (here arid in L 'esprit fort) faulty, since it anticipates the conclusion.
Minna was translated into English for the first time by Major James Johnstone in 1786. The preface shows some knowledge of the state of literature in Germany. The style of the translation is remarkably good, though many liberties are taken and are thus excused in the dedication to the Queen : ' I own, this play and Lessing's are materially different ; but I have endeavoured to make it what he would have done, had he written at the present moment and for an English audience.' The comedy was produced on July 24 at the Haymarket Theatre. Major von Tellheim is promoted to be Colonel Holberg: Minna appears as
1 See W. Todt's admirable study, Lessing in England, Heidelberg, 1912, pp. 18, 60.
2 An Account of the German Theatre, in Transactions of the Eoyal Society of Edinburgh, n (1788), pp. 154 f.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD
201
Caroline, Countess of Bruchsal : and Riccaut becomes Bellair, ' a French officer.' The prologue contained the lines :
Leasing, a German bard of high renown, Long on the Continent has charmed the town : His play 's as much applauded at Vienna As here the School for Scandal or Duenna.
Baker (n, p. 1641) says: 'This play, which is simple and pleasing, is taken from the German of Lessing : the language is spirited, with a happy mixture of humour and sentiment. It was well acted, and ran nine nights.' The same authority (i, 410) states that the translation appeared in July 1786, and ascribes it to Johnstone. Oulton2 (i, 152) remarks : ' July 24. The Disbanded Officer : or Countess of Bruchsal, a Comedy, taken from the German, and ascribed to Major Jehnson. Very well received.' J. L. Haney3 says that the play ran for eleven nights ; but he does not name his authority. The European Magazine has the following notice : ' 24th of July. A new comedy, called The Disbanded Officer, or, The Countess of Bruchsal, was performed at the Theatre Royal in the Haymarket. [Here follows the cast : the parts of ' Colonel Holberg ' and ' Caroline, Countess of Bruchsal ' were assigned to Mr Palmer and Miss Farren, to whom the critic says ' the author owes great obligations4.'] The scene lies in a hotel at Berlin. The fable of this comedy, which is taken from the German, is simple and pleasing, though the whole part of .the Frenchman might have been omitted without injury to the piece.' The European Magazine says that the comedy was played four times in July, five times in August, and once in September. The Critical Review and the Monthly Review gave long and favourable notices, with selections from the text : the English Review was not so friendly ; evidently Minna was too popular for its fancy. ' Though Lessing,' it says, ' has probably little claim to the elevated rank that has been assigned him by his injudicious admirers, he is not, we think, entirely destitute of merit.... We are ourselves acquainted with some of his performances which we do not recollect with disgust.' It would be interesting to know which of his ' performances ' were thought good enough to be damned with such faint praise; perhaps the criticism has the same intent and value as Polonius' ' That's good; mobled queen is good.' Colman, the reviewer is disposed to think, about represents Lessing's merits as a dramatist.
1 Biographia Dramatica, by-D. E. Baker, London, 3rd ed., 1812.
2 A History of the Theatres of London, by W. C. Oulton, 2 vols. London, 1796.
3 Americana Germanica, iv (1902), pp. 142 f.
4 Johnstone is probably meant ; if not, the critic's ignorance of the date of Lessing's death need surprise nobody.
202 Les$ing in England
After the performance in September 1786, The Disbanded Officer disappeared from the London stage : but the Theatrical Register of York records its production in that city. Some slight alterations were introduced ; ' a Boy ' is among the dramatis personae and the names are somewhat altered. The notice runs: 'This piece, though here and there interspers'd with a few flashes of the comic kind, cannot be con- sider'd as any extraordinary production. 'Tis true there is something of generosity in Warmans (Werner), which pleases the imagination : especi- ally when the gloomy situation of Colonel Holberg is consider'd. The stratagems of the Baroness are sometimes worthy of attention, as well as those of her fair servant Lisetta : nor can less notice be paid to the blunt, tho' faithful services of Rohlf V It is comforting to think that London criticism, bad as it was, rarely sank quite so low as this.
Genest2 (vi, pp. 413 £), after a sketch of the plot, proceeds: 'The plot of this comedy is too slight for five acts, but on the whole it is a pretty good play. It was adapted to the English stage by Johnstone from the German of Lessing. A regular translation of Lessing's play was published in 1799 as The School for Honour.'
This second translation is good in point of style and admirably printed. It is anonymous, and, according to the Biographia Dramatica, it was never acted, though the original was to be preferred to most of Kotzebue's and Inland's pieces.
The next translation was by Fanny Holcroft in 1806, under the guidance of her father, Thos. Holcroft. There are some, though few, omissions : these are justified by the father in his introduction (p. 260). ' Passion,' says he, ' is here verbose : it almost wearies, yet the translation has been freely curtailed by my daughter and myself.' He perceives, it seems, like critics of a later day, a fundamental difference between the two nations : the one loving to dwell for long upon a single emotional picture, the other Athenian in its taste for constant change. Holcroft does not point this difference : but it is the cause of most that he censures as faulty in his somewhat long introduction, which is well worth reading.
The other versions of Minna are by Holroyd, Wrankmore, Bell and Maxwell. A translation by Robert Harvey, Love and Honour, was apparently never printed. Taylor says it was 'elegantly translated under the title of " Love and Honour," by the late Robert Harvey, Esq., of Catton, near Norwich.' For another version, remarkable only for
1 Just ; the spelling also of Genest. The London cast had 'Rolf.'
2 Some Account of the English Stage, etc., by John Genest, 10 vols. Bath, 1832.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD
203
shameless baldness and constant errors, see Democratic Review, xxiv (New York, 1849), pp. 176, 225, 345, 436, 535, xxv, p. 56.
The English public was first introduced to Lessing's Emilia Galotti by Henry Maty in his New Review, ix (1786), which contained a selection of scenes connected by a condensed story of the plot. The translation is very creditable. Oulton says (n, 167): 'October 28 [1794] Emilia Galotti, a Tragedy, which had been long in agitation. It was translated by several from the German ; one person (a miniature-painter) insinuated that the present translator (whose name was concealed1) availed himself of a copy, which he had shewn him ; at any rate the tragedy, from a ludicrous circumstance of a picture, was laughed at, and consequently perished.' The European Magazine for November, 1794, remarks: ' Emilia Galotti, a Tragedy translated from Lessing, was acted the first time at Drury Lane. [Here follows cast: Mrs Siddons was 'Countess Orsina.'] This Play... exhibits in a strong and forcible manner the horrors arising from the unrestrained exercise of power, as well as the unrestrained indulgence of the passions. The subject is not, however, well chosen, though in many parts the spectator was interested very powerfully in the fate of the different characters, which in all parts were well performed.' Cumberland wrote the prologue : it was a com- parison between the poor staging of Shakespeare's day and his own ; while Colman supplied the epilogue, which expressed delight that the events of the piece could not happen in England, and that the King of England had too many children himself to wish to ruin other men's daughters. The Gentleman's Magazine notes that the play was thrice repeated, on Oct. 30 and on Nov. 1 and 4 [1794]: but the careful 'Genest (vn, pp. 180 f.) says : ' Oct. 28. Never acted [i.e. a novelty], Emilia Galotti [here follows cast with descriptive additions in the manner of Genest]. This play was translated from the German. It was acted only three times, but it deserved a better fate. Mrs Siddons had only one scene, but that was completely in her line of acting. Emilia Galotti was not printed at this time, but a translation of Lessing's play, by Thompson, was published in 1800.' He thought it 'an interesting play ' ; but ' the catastrophe might perhaps be altered for the better. As it now stands, it rather excites disgust than pity. Emilia's case is not so desperate as that of Virginia.'
It is difficult to account for the failure of Emilia in London. It was produced as the first novelty of the season at a great theatre, the cast was brilliant, and two of the foremost dramatists of the day had a share 1 Goedeke gives it as Berrington.
204 Lessing in England
in presenting it. Genest, indeed, in the passage above quoted, put his finger on the weak spot in the tragedy. But the weakness seems to have escaped earlier critics, and cannot be adduced as a cause for failure1.
Next to Thompson comes Fanny Holcroft once more with a transla- tion of Emilia in 1805. This was reprinted at Philadelphia in 1810. The preface is interesting. The following is an extract : ' The chief defect in this tragedy is that it is written in an explanatory, .colloquial and prosaic style : but this is what may be almost called the mortal sin of German literature : it has never yet attained that laconic indication of the passions, which is best calculated to express their rapid, confused and desperate course. In other respects Emilia Galotti is a masterpiece ...[it] only requires a master to lop away its superfluities, preserve its beauties, and link them in quick and poetical succession, to render it perhaps the finest modern tragedy known to the stage2.'
A wretched translation is to be found in the Democratic Review, Vol. xxn. Other versions will be found noticed in the list of transla- tions appended to this article.
(c) Nathan der Weise.
R. E. Raspe, a German exile who, says Lounsbury3, ' had left his country for his country's good/ won the praises of the Monthly Review for his Tabby in Elysium of Zacharia and its censure for his Nathan the Wise, both of which appeared in 1781. The Monthly thus gently chides Raspe through Lessing. ' One design of this drama is to shew, what surely no person was ever silly or illiberal enough to doubt of, or deny, that men of virtue and principle are to be found among the professors of every religion. Another object which the author has in view is, to insinuate that the Christian, the Jew and the Mahomedan have each of them equal reason to believe their own religion the true one. The inference from this is, that as all cannot be true, it is most probable that all are false. So much for the philosophic candour, which, according to the Preface, breathes through the whole of this composition. Con- sidered merely as a drama, whatever may be the author's reputation in Germany, it is unworthy of notice. We are sorry to see the time, and
1 W. Davenport Adams, A Dictionary of the Drama, London, 1904, i, p. 459, says that it was produced at St James' Theatre, London, in 1852, with Henry Devrient as Appiani.
2 A. H. Japp (German Life and Literature, London, 1880) refers to a production of Emilia at the Surrey Theatre, London, ' some years ago.'
3 Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, New York, 1901, p. 87.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD
205
the very respectable talents of Mr Raspe employed to so little advantage, either to the public or himself.'
Like most of the Monthly Reviews notices the above, with all its lack of insight, cannot be censured as ignorant or insincere. After all, the doctrines it thinks it sees in Nathan might be expected to spring to the sight of any ordinary person who should read it for the first time1; and though the condemnation of the drama as a drama is absurdly extravagant, yet even here there is a grain of truth. Nathan has never been acted in English, and its production on a stage which is almost purely a commercial institution is well-nigh unthinkable. The work, as I hope to show, has been valued fairly highly in our country as a didactic poem ; but as a drama it has never appealed to Englishmen, and one may almost safely prophesy that it never will.
To return to Raspe. The Critical Review, a journal more full- blooded and more ignorant than the Monthly, referred to the work as ' a heap of unintelligible jargon, very badly translated from the German original, written it seems by G. E..Lessling2. The translator informs us in his preface that the author of this drama stands very high in the opinion of his countrymen, because he stands foremost among the late reformers, to whom Germany is indebted for its present golden age of literature. The reader will here please observe that this German author, in the elegant language of his translator Mr Raspe, stands because he stands : we wish he may not fall, because he falls infinitely beneath all criticism: and can only say that if this is the golden age of German literature, it appears, at least by this specimen, to put on a very leaden appearance.' With regard to this notice, it will be observed that it contains nothing to show that Raspe had been read further than his preface, the ' elegant language ' of which was quite probably taken as sufficient ground for denouncing the whole work as worthless, and as meet subject for a despicably feeble jest.
No one, English, German, or American, seems to have found a good word to say for poor Raspe. Erich Schmidt (Lessing, n, p. 412) mentions his 'schlechte Prosa'; Danzel (Beilage zu S. 213, S. 29) and Dlintzer (Erlauterungen, S. 25) have non-committal notices; Herzfeld (William Taylor von Norwich, Halle, 1897) says : ' Zum Teil lag wieder die Schuld [dass Nathan keinen Beifall fand] an der schlechten Ubersetzung (in
1 Thomas Paine, Age of Reason, Chap. I, drew greatly similar conclusions from a superficial comparison of the three religions.
2 Lounsbury ridicules the CriticaVs insolent criticism ' of a great writer whose name it was not even able to spell correctly ' : but he should have done even the Critical Revieiv the justice of reporting it correctly. It says ' G. E.,' not ' Gr. T. Lessling,' as he has it.
206 Lessing in England
Prosa 1781 erschienen) Sie ist hochst ungenau, vergreift sich voll-
standig im Ton und lasst Stellen, die grossere Schwierigkeiten bieten, eirifach aus.' All this is true ; and yet Raspe's translation is a greatly more creditable performance than the more ambitious efforts of Reich and ' E. S. H.,' about which we shall have something to say later1.
We now come once more to the great name of William Taylor of Norwich, one of the few ' Vermittler ' of Lessing's genius who were at once scholars and poets. Taylor tells us that his translation2 of Nathan was 'from the entire work; it was undertaken in March 1790, when questions of toleration were much afloat, and was printed the following year for distribution among the translator's acquaintance. In 1805 a second edition was published by Sir Richard Phillips in London. This reprint varies little from the preceding, but has undergone several corrections.'
It is ungracious to criticise so fine a piece of work as Taylor's Nathan by calling attention to a few obvious mistranslations and obscurities and bold retentions of the German idiom. Lessing's own noble mind would have disdained such a method : one feels that here he would have refrained from analysis and have been content to regard the work as a philosopher does the world8. But Taylor's mistakes have been copied ; and, as I hope to show, at least one subsequent version of Nathan owes its chief merit to a partial avoidance of his faults. It is therefore necessary to point out that ' so zieh' ich in die Gabel ' (Act II, Sc. i) does not mean 'I take the pawn' any more than 'I castle' (Willis) or ' I withdraw into this corner ' (E. S. H.), and that therefore Herzfeld's ' Hier [in der Schachspielszene] sind die Schwierigkeiten,
welche der Dialog, sowie die technischen Ausdrucke bereiten,
glanzend iiberwunden ' is an overstatement. ' Delk ' (Act H, sc. ix) is not 'staff/ but Boylan and Wood have it so, no doubt on Taylor's authority; nor is 'Unterschleif 'deficits' (Act II, Sc. ii), a mistake copied by Wood, Corbett, Boylan and Jacks, while E. S. H. character- istically omits the word altogether. Willis, Reich and Maxwell translate correctly ' embezzlement.' A passage from the fourth Litter aturbrief*
1 A remark of Lounsbury's (Shakespeare as Dramatic Artist, p. 87) makes it clear that he did not know Baspe's version.
2 It occupies the end of Vol. i of the Historic Survey ; for re-issues of his Nathan see list of translations.
3 Litteraturbriefe, xvi.
4 'Am wenigsten aber sind sie [die Ubersetzer] vermogend, ihrem Originale nach- zudenken. Derm waren sie hierzu nicht ganz unfahier, so wiirden sie es fast immer aus der Folge der Gedanken abnehmen konnen, wo sie jene mangelhafte Kenntnis der Sprache zu Fehlern verleitet hat.'
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 207
exactly expresses one's opinion of such blind following of the accidentally and momentarily blind.
Taylor's refined taste, scholarship and poetic feeling would, in a man of less originality, have made a translator second to none ; but that priceless individuality which, had he chosen, might have won him the fame of a great author, proved a fatal bar to outstanding eminence as an interpreter of others. No person with any worthy knowledge of Lessing's works can say, on reading Taylor's Nathan, that the poem is as it would have been had Lessing been an Englishman. In fact, the coupling of that great name with the wayward quaintness, the vague playfulness, the affected spellings and the original idiom of Taylor is almost laughable. Yet this must be the ultimate test of translation; and under that test Taylor's Nathan fails1.
R. Dillon Boylan, in collaboration with H. G. Bohn2, produced the next translation. It owes much to Taylor — even some of its mistakes, as we have already seen. Sometimes there is mere copying, as in Act in, sc. x, 'it vibrates not responsive.' Yet Boylan or Bohn, or both, have on the whole improved on Taylor; the latter's peculiarities are generally avoided without injury to the Shakespearean flavour of the poem.
About the next translation, that of Reich, it is difficult to speak seriously. ' Es gehort wirklich eine rare Stirne dazu, in einer fremden Sprache, die man nicht vollkommen versteht, Verse zu machen3.' Reich's ' rare Stirne ' makes ' es sei denn, dass ' ' it be then that ' (Act I, sc. ii), perpetrates the Teutonic impossibility 'that our dear Lord Himself has been a Jew ' (Act IV, sc. vii) and absurdities like ' Well, Knight? You turn your face off?' (Act ill, sc. ii). 'You startle?' (Ihr stutzt ? — Act v, sc. viii). ' I will not be refined ' (' Ich will nicht fein sein ' — Act iv, sc. i). There is hardly a page without some offence to English idiom : one even doubts sometimes if Reich really understood the original. The first and other examples above would seem to cast such a doubt.
1 There is here, perhaps, some small danger of misunderstanding. The present writer yields to none in his admiration for Taylor, and finds his style, quaint as it is, extremely fresh and delightful. Yet no worse translator for Lessing can be conceived than a man mystic and imaginative, prolific indeed in ideas, yet diffuse and apparently incapable of ordered and long continued thought. His affectations and neologisms are severely censured by G. E. Griffiths in a letter to Taylor dated Feb. 16, 1799 (Robberds, i, pp. 195 — 202), and by Southey (ibid., i, p. 452). Taylor vigorously defended himself (ibid., i, p. 228, and Monthly Magazine, xii, ' Counterplaint '). Some of Griffiths' objec- tions are absurd: e.g., he censures 'rehabilitated' as 'not English.' He was a son of Dr E. Griffiths, editor of the Monthly Magazine, for which Taylor wrote. In Eobberds (i, pp. 209—11) will be found also Dr Aikin's gentle reproaches. For a delightful example of Taylor's original style see Robberds, i, p. 417.
2 So says Lowndes, Bibliographical Manual, 2nd ed., London, 1864.
3 Litteraturbriefe, 39.
208 Lessing in England
Willis, being an Englishman, naturally was more successful than Reich ; but he was sometimes even less intelligent. What, for instance, shall we say of a translator who could thus render Recha's outburst ' Wem eignet Gott ? ' etc. (Act in, sc. i) :
Who may compare with God ? What God were he Whom man might measure him withal ?
There is no excuse for such a blunder. Willis translated several medical works from the German1. Let us hope he killed no trustful readers by such sheer misinterpretations of the original. There are occasional sins against taste, too : the Templar's ' Kaufe nichts ' (Act I, sc. vi) was meant to be a rude and blunt rebuff; and 'I am no buyer — I lack nothing' is just simply not a translation. Again, in Act v, sc. vi Willis interpolates a metrical version of: 'Der aus Buchern erworbene Reichtum fremder Erfahrung heisst Gelehrsamkeit. Eigene Erfahrung ist Weisheit. Das kleinste Kapital von dieser ist mehr wert als Millionen von jener2' without apparent excuse. He occasionally falls into the baldest literalism; e.g., Act n, sc. ix: 'gleichwohl gait es keine taube Nuss,' 'and yet the stake was no such hollow nut.' Willis evidently chose Byron as his model rather than Shakespeare. Yet Lessing's verses go better into a Shakespearean mould than into any other. Boylan and Maxwell both appreciated this fact, and as a result produced more successful versions.
The Nathan of E. S. H. is apparently the work of a lady3. It is in prose and avowedly abridged : in point of fact, it contains a great deal that is not Lessing at all. Though the book is thoroughly below serious criticism, a few extracts must be given to show reason for so short a notice here. Thus (Act v, sc. iv) ' sie ist so schlecht und recht,' etc., becomes "Tis so monotonous: One page just like another — and so ugly ! ' Here is Recha's penultimate speech in Act III, sc. iii. ' Bring thy embroidery. How tastefully these golden leaves are wrought ! My fingers cannot even yet compete with thine.' After which follows a correct rendering of the real speech. From a purely theatrical point of view the condensation of speeches is not always unhappily managed : e.g., Recha's account of Daja's prayer in the ruined chapel (Act v, sc. vi) : but the abridgments frequently result in less than a paraphrase, entirely marring the poet's meaning : e.g., Nathan's speech in Act I, sc. i, ' ich iiberdenke mir,' etc.
1 Dictionary of National Biography, art. Kobert Willis ; Lancet, 1878.
2 Lachmann's Edition, xi, ii, p. 402 (from ' Selbstbetrachtungen,' etc.).
3 See list of translations, which will be appended to the concluding instalment of this paper.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 209
Victor Hugo would probably have called Andrew Wood ' 1'homme a 1'inversion' and thus have damned him. The following few examples will show if such were his deserts :
Then write at once To our old friendship of divorce a bill ! (Act I, sc. iii.)
He concludes That God for great things must have you preserved. (Act i, sc. v.)
And if
They in a hurry haply could a chance Of us successfully attacking get. (Act u, sc. i.)
Why must I the poor girl have so to risk exposed. (Act v, sc. v.)
I need
Regarding that only to her myself Excuse. (Act v, sc. v.)
That she a mother let me miss so little. (Act v. sc. vi.)
Wood may be said entirely to lack real poetic sense. The best that can be said of his work is that it is fairly correct — small praise indeed for a work of art.
Corbett's translation is good and correct; but he has not the art of the unobtrusive cheville. His work contains some awkward in- versions; e.g.,
the proper Dervish Would not allow one aught of him to make. (Act i, sc. iii.)
But here he shows a great advance on Wood. His expression is sometimes most unhappy : e.g.,
the greatest miracle
Is that the real true miracles should become So commonplace and cannot otherwise. (Act i, sc. ii.)
Jacks is generally correct : but he is a writer of most clumsy and unmusical verse. In his preface he says that he did not feel ' bound by rigid rules of dramatic versification as long as the language flowed smoothly ' — which it very rarely does. He has an irritating habit of making enjambement unpleasant by ending the line with an article or other unemphatic word. Examples will be found below. Besides those borrowed from Taylor two bad mistakes occur: in Act I, sc. ii, the passage: 'ein Mensch, wie die Natur sie taglich gewahrt' stands as ' a man of nature's daily nourishing,' the translator having possibly read 'gewahrt' as 'ernahrt'; and in Act I, sc. vi, 'Sina' is 'Sinai.' Here are a few examples of the abuse mentioned above :
Contains your Cloister many such as you? (Act i, sc. v.)
Good brother, if I but knew the Inner contents of this letter. (Act i, sc. v.)
M. L. R. IX. 14
210 Lessing in England
and knows a
Secret, potent word, which makes their Seals unloose. (Act n, sc. iii.)
It cannot, of course, be supposed that the poetic taste which dictated such passages can be even mediocre. If a translator is not prepared to obey the ' rigid rules of versification ' he has no business to write verses at all. Jacks, without a tithe of Taylor's talent, has tried to do as he did — to impress his own image and superscription on Lessing.
It is pleasant to turn at last to a worthy English Nathan of our own day. Maxwell is a tasteful, a reverent and a correct translator, though he is occasionally wrong. For example, Al-Hafi's ' trotz einem ' in Act I, sc. iii, is not: 'just as much as e'er another,' while British lack of practice in tutoiement is no doubt responsible for :
come, let me hug thee, man : I hope at least I still may call you friend.
In Act II, sc. ii, we meet with an extraordinary paraphrase which would seem without reason or authority :
Ich nicht. Ich denke, dass ich hier sie in Empfang soil nehmen.
Not I : but yet I thought they must have come And that belike you now had sent for me To take them over.
The statement in the note to p. 255 is highly arguable : but these are only trifles, and more than outweighed by the real merits of the work. Maj.-Gen. Maxwell's Minna has already been referred to : it is a later work than his Nathan, and not quite so successful. He should not spend his time on prose while our other translators find it so difficult to produce good English iambics ! Let any speech of some length be compared in the versions of Keich, Willis, Jacks, Corbett and Maxwell. The result will cheer those inclined to mourn past standards and lost art.
(d) Laokoon.
In Goedeke (2nd ed., iv, p. 144) used to stand 'Laokoon. Ins Englische 1767 8vo.' Many have tried to guess on what authority the statement was made. Haney's conjecture1, that it was a result of the translated title in the Monthly Review notice, seems most reasonable. The partial translation by Thomas de Quincey in Blackwood's Magazine for 1826 and 1827 seems to have been the first appearance of Laokoon
1 Americana Germanica, iv (1902), p. 142.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 211
in English. Ross's version, which G. H. Lewes called ' an inestimable book to English readers1/ was published in 1836, and is mentioned as rare in America by a writer in the American Whig for 1851. E. C. Beasley's followed in 1853. In 1874 appeared two translations, the American and more correct by Ellen Frothingham, the English and more interesting by Sir R. Phillimore. We can forgive the mistakes of the latter (they have already been pointed out and censured, none too gently2) in virtue of a very useful and painstaking introduction, to which we shall have to refer at some length in the next section of this article. Miss Frothingham's work is good here and in Nathan, so also is that of Ronnfeldt, whom Goedeke calls ' Ronnefeldt ' with unusual inexactitude for the new edition, at least.
(e) Other Translations.
The Hamburgische Dramaturgic was long in gaining a hearing in England ; and even now we have only one fairly .complete translation, that by Helen Zimmern, 1879. Ronnfeldt gives a selection — a mere collection of aphorisms. The work was notoriously unknown when J. Sully 's essay on it appeared3; the Cornhill* could truthfully call this * the only account of it in our literature.' Taylor must have been well acquainted with the book : but for some reason its greatness does not seem to have struck him. Indeed, his little-known epigram5 might be held to prove a low opinion if epigrams could be thought to prove anything. Mackenzie mentions 'le dramaturgic de Hambourg,' and adds : ' His plays, accordingly, though not exactly conformable to the Aristotelian standard, approach pretty near to it in the observation of the unities. He is said to have got into a dispute with Goethe on this subject, in which, from a degree of timidity [!] in his nature, he rather yielded to his antagonist.' William Preston6, girding against the ' Gothic ' elements in the German tragedy of 1802, says (p. 33), ' The German language was improving rapidly under the culture of Gessner7,
1 The Inner Life of Art, in The Principles of Success in Literature, Scott Library, London.
2 See list of translations.
3 Sensation and Intuition, London, 1874, pp. 312 — 35..
4 xxxvm (1878), pp. 189—206.
5 'Lessing comments Aristotle as divines the Bible; so as to extort his own critical opinions from the oracle/ (Monthly Magazine, 1801 (ii), p. 224.)
6 Reflections on the Peculiarities of Style and Manner in the late German Writers, in Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vin (1802), pp. 15 f.
7 Gessner was a great man to the eighteenth century English critic ; Anne Plumptre has a phrase ' Lessing, and even Gessner.' At p. 61 of Preston's paper he is again put before Lessing. Blair (Lectures, in, p. 123) calls him the most successful of the moderns in pastoral poetry.
14—2
212 Lessing in England
Wieland and Lessing, and would have received the polish and perfection requisite to make it classical, had succeeding writers trod in their foot- steps : but the temperate and judicious manner, the chaste simplicity, and sober graces introduced by them, and formed on a study of the antique, did not satisfy the aspiring writers of the new School.' Henry Maty, in his New Review for 1785 (vm, p. 106), has evidently not seen the book if we may take his silence as proof. Blackwood's Magazine, xviii (1825), p. 286, has a notice of the Hamburgische Dramaturgic : and from then on most authoritative reviews of Lessing have at least some mention of it.
It may here be noted that the book under consideration supplies at least two of the passages by which Lessing is known to the English public in the same sense as Chaucer is known by the ' French of Paris ' line from the Prologue. The passages from the Dramaturgic are the hackneyed and misunderstood renunciation of claims to poetic genius and the comparison between Aristotle and Euclid. Together with the ' Offer of Truth ' from the Duplik, one or two of the Axiomata out of their setting, and the story of the rings from Nathan, they recur with nauseating persistence in the essays of those engaged to 'write up' almost unknown Lessing for some special occasion.
Of smaller works Wie die Alien den Tod gebildet, translated by E. C. Beasley, appeared along with the Hamburgische Dramaturgic in 1879, its first and last appearance. The Faust fragment was included in Lord F. Leveson-Gower's translation of Goethe's great work. In Macmillan's Magazine1 the seventeenth Litteraturbrief is in great part translated in an article on Lessing's Faust by T. B. Saunders. Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts was done into excellent English by the great F. W. Robertson,, of Brighton, in 1858. The earlier version by Crabb Robinson is included in the list of translations.
(To be concluded.)
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD.
GRESFORD.
1 LXII (1890), pp. 180—8.
NOTES ON LESSING'S 'BEYTRAGE ZUR HISTORIE UND AUFNAHME DES THEATERS1.'
III. TRANSLATIONS FROM THE FRENCH AND ITALIAN.
(a) Voltaire s 'Lettres Anglaises!
THIS translation of two of the Lettres anglaises is generally attributed — on what ground, I do not know — to Mylius2 ; but the ascription may stand. There are expressions and phrases in the translation which, no doubt, recall Mylius rather than Lessing; Voltaire's description of Dryden as an 'auteur plus fecond que judicieux ' is, for instance, rendered : ' Er war ein Schrifbsteller von mehr Witz als Beurtheilungs- kraft,' a frequently repeated phrase in the article with which Mylius opened the Beytrage. The translation, which was not the first into German3, was made from either the Amsterdam edition of Voltaire's (Euvres (1738 — 39, Vol. iv), or, with greater probability, from the Geneva edition of the (Euvres melees (1742, Vol. iv)4, and is fluent and, on the whole, literal.
Whether we be convinced of Mylius's handiwork in the translation or not, it is perhaps open to question, if he is to be held responsible for the two footnotes which are added to the translation. The first of these :
Weil der Herr von Voltaire beynahe der einzige ist, der unter seinen Laudsleuten unparteyisch und vortheilhaft von der Schaubiihne der Englarider geurtheilet hat, so haben wir fur billig gehalten seiner Urtheile und Nachrichten davon uns zuerst zu bedienen. So riihmlich den Englandern der Beyfall des Herrn von Voltaire ist, so wenig nachtheilig konnen ihnen die seichten und imgegrundeten Spottereyen des Abbe le Blanc seyn (p. 96),
1 Continued from Modern Language Review, vol. vm (October, 1913), p. 532.
2 Cp. Muncker, Schriften, iv, p. 82; Consentius, A.D.B., LII, p. 553; E. Schmidt, Lessing, i3, pp. 177 f., although in the preface to his edition of Lessings Ubersetzungen aus dem Franzosischen Friedrichs des Grossen und lroltaires (p. v), the last-mentioned is inclined to think that Lessing might have been responsible for the present translation.
3 ' Man hat zwar schon eine Uebersetzung dieser Gedanken in der Sammlung ver- schiedener Briefe des H. von Voltair, die Engellander und andere Sachen betreffend. Aus dem Franzosischen iibersetzt und mit einigen Anmerkungen begleitet von N**. Jena 1747. 8. S. 273 — 300. Allein jene hat den Vorzug von dieser und ist mit einer Critick begleitet' (Berlinische Bibliothek, iv, i, p. 137).
4 Cp. G. Lanson's critical edition of the Lettres philosophiques, Paris, 1909.
214 Notes on Lessing's 'Beytrage zur Historic,' etc.
is of little significance and is only an echo of condemnatory reviews of the Abbe le Blanc's Lettres sur les Anglois et Francois in Gottsched's Neuer Buchersaal, vn and vm (1748 — 49). But it is tempting to trace in the general style and in the rhetorical questions of the second note Lessing's hand rather than Mylius's1. The note — I quote it at length as having a certain intrinsic interest — is sug- gested by Voltaire's reference to Plautus and Aristophanes at the end of the letter on Comedy (pp. 108 f.) :
Es ist in der That kein allzuriihmliches Gestandniss, welches der Herr von Voltaire hier thut. Man kann sicher daraus schliessen, dass er weder den Plautus noch den .Aristophanes gelesen hat. Ein Gelehrter kann sich eben sowohl zu einem Griechen oder Romer machen, als er etwa ein Deutscher oder ein Franzose ist. Hat man denn nicht Hiilfsmittel genug, die Sitten, die Gebrauche und die Charaktere sowohl der Griechen als der Romer, kennen zu lernen ? Freylich, wer den Aristo- phanes, zum Exempel, lesen will, ohne eine genaue Kenntniss der damaligen Staatsverfassung in Athen zu haben, der wird ihn bald mit Verdruss aus den Handen legen. Allein es ist ja seine eigne Schuld. Wer sich iibrigens die Miihe nimmt, auch die Scholiasten dieses Poeten mit zu lesen, der wird sich gewiss nicht beschweren diirfen, dass ihm eine Anspielung, oder sonst eine merkwiirdige Stelle dunkel geblieben sey. So viel raume ich ein, dass freylich der Herr von Voltaire mehr Vergniigen in Lesung eines franzosischen und englischen Lustspieles finden wird, als in einem romischen oder griechischen, aber gewiss aus keiner andern Ursache, als weil er jene mit weniger Miihe hat verstehen lernen, als zum Verstand- niss dieser erfodert wird. Gehoret denn iibrigens die Abschilderung eines Geizigen, eines Prahlers, eines Schmarotzers, nicht eben sowohl alien Volkern, als Oedipus und Elektra 1 Die Scherze und Anspielungen sind ja auch nicht dasjenige, was uns in einem Lustspiele am meisten vergniigen muss. Findet denn der Herr von Voltaire kein Vergniigen an sinnreichen Verwicklungen, an ausgesuchten und wohlangebrachten LehrSpriichen, an beissenden Verspottungen der Laster ? Diese sind bey alien Volkern einerley, und nur in der Art sich zu zeigeu, andern sie sich etwas weniges. Das beste isj, dass das, was der Herr von Voltaire hier sagt, nur das Bekenntniss seines eignen Geschmacks ist, und dass niernand verbunden ist, den seinigen darnach zu verbessern.
Remembering, however, Mylius's preoccupation with Aristophanes, a few years before2, I do not think there is sufficient ground to deprive him of the notes to his own translation.
(6) Corneille s ' Trois DiscoursJ
A comparison of the translations of the three Discours of Corneille reveals a noticeable difference in quality between that of the first and those of the other two ; and this difference is borne out by the fact that the first was evidently translated from the 1663 Paris edition of the Theatre de Corneille (or a Dutch reprint of it), the translator's original
1 E. Schmidt also, I find, hints at the possibility of Lessing's authorship.
' Beurtheilung des Plutus des Aristophanes,' in Bemiihungen zur Bef order ung der Critik und des guten Geschmacks, i (Halle, 1744), pp. 420 ff. Cp. Lessing's Schriften, vi, p. 404.
J. G. ROBERTSON
215
of a characteristic passage running : ' Je hasarderai quelque chose sur trente ans,' while the final editions have 'cinquante1.' On the other hand, for the last Discours a later edition was clearly used, or at least consulted2. I should not, however, like to say that the differences are sufficient to justify us in inferring that they were by different hands ; it is perhaps enough to assume that they were made at different times, the first suffering probably from lack of experience on the translator's part.
On the whole, the translation is a good one, and in the second and third sections, at least, superior to that of Voltaire's Letters. If, conse- quently, Mylius is the translator of Voltaire, as seems probable, the Corneille translation cannot be by him, and the question is, can Lessing himself — the other 'Verfasser' of the Beytrdge — be claimed as the author ? It appears to me extremely probable. But it is difficult to find anything to support — or refute — this impression in the text itself3; and the kind of criticism which assumes that a translation must be by Lessing because it is superior to another known to be by Mylius, is to be deprecated. As a matter of fairness, there was every reason to expect that the twenty-seven year old Mylius should have turned out better work of this kind than the inexperienced, twenty-year old Lessing. The first Discours shows peculiar spellings of proper names (e.g. ' Rodegune,' ' Rodrig ') ; but the translator by no means does his work mechanically. For instance, on p. 90, he translates Corneille's ' une nouvelle sorte de personnages, qu'on a appeles prostatiques, parce qu'ils ne paroisserit que dans la protase ' by : ' eine neue Art von Personen, die man personas protacticas oder prostaticas nennte, weil sie nur in Trporaaei, oder ini Anfange des Stlicks vorkamen,' learning which evidently comes from the preface to Donatus's commentary on Terence's Andria. And Lessing's familiarity with Terence is beyond question.
Perhaps the best argument in favour of Lessing's authorship is to be sought in the fact that, seventeen years later in Hamburg, when he had occasion to discuss Corneille in the Dramaturgic, he turned to this old translation, and quoted it, often with very little alteration or
1 Eegnier's edition, i, p. 16; Beytrfiye, p. 56. 1660: P. 59 ' befiirchten,' 'craindre' (1660: ' prendre garde'); P. 64 'ersetzen,'
Other variants exclude the edition of
sup- pleer' (1660 : 'reparer ').
3 E.g. p. 551 'Ammon' (in the early editions: 'Timante'); cp. also p. 556 with Kegnier, p. 107.
3 I need hardly refer to the suggestion made in Klotz's Deutsche Bibliothek, iv (1769), p. 507, that Lessing must have translated the second Discours because he uses the phrase ' Mitleiden und Furcht,' but this, as Danzel has shown (p. 176), was the obvious translation of Corneille's ' pitie et crainte.'
216 Notes on Leasing s 'Beytraye zur Historic,' etc.
improvement, in some cases quite literally1. Would he have done this, or, indeed, have remembered the translation in the Beytrdge at all, had it not been his own ?
(c) Riccoboni s ' L'Art du Theatre.'
I have virtually nothing to add to Boxberger's plea for Lessing's authorship of this translation in the Hempel edition2, which is con- vincing. He bases his claim on the character of the translation3, which is quite on a level with that of the Discours of Corneille, and on Lessing's letter to his father of November 2, 1750, where he says: 'Ich habe... das ganze vierte Stuck der theatr. Beytrage besorgen mtissen, was eigentlich schon diese Messe hatte sollen fertig werden, und diese Arbeit hat mich bis an vergangnen Sonnabend nicht liber eine Stunde Herr seyn lassen4.' Had Lessing not been the translator of Riccoboni — or, one might add, the third Discours of Corneille — Boxberger reasons, his work on the fourth part would have been too slight to have been referred to in such terms.
The title of the original work is : L'Art du Theatre. A Madame ***. Par Frangois Riccoboni. Paris, 1750. 8vo. 102 pp., and a review of it appeared in the Berlinische priv. Zeitung, 88. Stuck (July 23, 1750)5 presumably by Lessing, a passage being cited there from the present translation.
(d) Macchiavelli s 'Clitia!
This is one of the few contributions to the Beytrdge, the authorship of which is quite beyond doubt. It is by Mylius. In the ' Vorbericht des Uebersetzers,' which was of fatal significance for the future of the journal, Mylius apologised for offering this translation by saying : ' Fragt man mich, warum ich nicht lieber ein gutes, als ein mittelmassiges Stuck gewahlet habe ? so bitte ich, mir erst ein gutes Stuck von dem italienischen Theater zu nennen. Ich weis die Antwort hierauf, ohne sie zu horen. Man wird sagen: so hatte ich ja das Uebersetzen aus dem
1 Cp. particularly the Corneille quotations in Stuck 75, 82 and 83 of the Dramaturgic with the Beytrdge, pp. 221 f., 215, 224 ff.
2 Vol. xi, part i, pp. xv f.
3 F. L. W. Meyer in his Schroder (n, 2, p. 181), speaks of this translation as one 'die Lessing ungliicklicherweise seinem zu fliichtigen und dem Gegenstande nicht gewachsenen Mitarbeiter iiberliess ' ; but the fact that Schroder himself was the author of a version of Riccoboni's book had no doubt something to do with Meyer's depreciation of Lessing's. Goedeke also thought that Mylius had written it, and saw in it one of the reasons for the breaking-off of the partnership.
4 Schriften, xvn, p. 20.
6 Schriften, iv, pp. 198 f. The book was very generally noticed by the French reviews.
J. G. ROBERTSON 217
italienischen Theater gar konnen bleiben lassen.' Mylius, however, was here merely expressing an opinion which was universally held by the French critics. D'Aubignac, for instance, had said : ' II ne faut pas dire non plus que la Comedie des Italiens ait pris la place de celles de Plaute et de Terence, car ils n'en ont garde ny la matiere ny la forme.... Et ie m'estonne comment il est arrive que les enfans des Latins soient si peu scavans en 1'Art de leurs Peres1.' While Lessing, who, at this time, knew little more about the Italian comedy than Mylius, merely based his indignation on the fact that Riccoboni wrote his Histoire du Theatre italien in French with a view to refuting just such opinions. Riccoboni says, for instance, in that work2:
La Clitia est prise de la Casina de Plaute, mais la Mandragola est^toute de 1'invention de 1'Auteur : c'est une des bonnes Comedies que nous ai'ons, mais je ne voudrois pas dire qu'elle fut la meilleure. Parmi un nombre de tres-bonnes Comedies qui sont dans mon Catalogue, il y en a plusieurs qui pourroient lui disputer cet avantage et meme 1'emporter. Un Auteur Fran9ois s'est hazarde de dire dans un Livre imprime depuis quelques annees, que les Italiens n'ont d'autre Comedies que la Mandragola : il seroit a souhaiter qu'il eut lu les bonnes Pieces de ce Catalogue, il n'auroit pas dit que la Mandragola est la seule Piece ni m§me la meilleure Piece que nous ai'ons.
IV. THE ' THEATERBERICHTE.' (a) Paris.
Danzel expressed the opinion that this and the subsequent reports on the theatre in Paris might have been sent in by J. Melchior Grimm, with whom Mylius had come interpersonal contact in Leipzig3. Foot- notes to the two first articles4 explain that they are not ' von uns,' that is to say, not by Lessing or Mylius. As a matter of fact, they are merely translations from a new journal published by Pierre Gosse at the Hague and entitled : La Bigarure, ou Meslange curieux, instructif et amusant de Nouvelles, de Critique, de Morale, de Poesies, et autres matieres de Litterature, d'Evenements singuliers et extraordinaires, d'Avantures galantes, d'Histoires secrettes, et de plusieurs autres
1 Le Pratique du Theatre, Paris, 1657, n, ch. x, p. 188 ; or, for that part, Mylius may be only reflecting Gottsched's views (Critische Dichtkunst, n, ch. xi, 2nd ed. (1737), p. 695) : 'In der That hat man aus der Erfahrung gesehen, dass das italienische Theater seit etlichen Jahrhunderten gar nichts kluges hervorgebracht hat. Ihre besten Comodien enthalten nichts, als Eomanstreiche, Betriigereyen der Diener, und unendlich viel abge- schmackte Narrenpossen.'
2 Vol. i, pp. 149f.
3 Vol. i, p. 179.
4 'Wir haben diese Nachrichten von guter Hand. Die darinn gefallten Urtheile kommen nicht von uns, sondern selbst aus Paris' (p. 110); and ' Wir erinnern nochmals, dass die unter dieser Aufschrift befindlichen Urtheile nicht von uns herriihren, sondern aus Paris kommen ' (p. 287).
218 Notes on Lessing's ' Beytrcige zur Historie,1 etc.
Nouveautes amusantes, avec des Reflexions Critiques sur chaque Sujet. La Haye, 1749. The extracts in the Beytrdge are from ' Lettres d'une Dame de Paris, a une Dame de ses Amies/ that in the ' Erste Stiick ' being from the first number of the Bigarure, pp. 8 — 16, and from the third number, pp. 26 f. and 29 — 32. The article in the second ' Stuck ' comes mainly from No. 6 and No. 9 of the French journal1.
While the question as to the actual translator of these articles, whether Lessing or Mylius, remains necessarily undecided, the fact that Lessing was familiar with the Bigarure no doubt gives some reasonable ground for ascribing them to him. In a review of Gottsched's new iournal, Das Neueste aus der anmuthigen Gelehrsamkeit, in the Critische Nachrichten aus dem Reiche der Gelehrsamkeit, St. 13, March 26, 1751 2, Lessing — and there is, I think, no reason to doubt his authorship of this review — mentions the French journal ; and Guhrauer claimed for him two reviews of the Bigarure in the Berlinische priv. Zeitung, St. 133 and 149 (November 6 and December 13, 1749)3. The second of these, the story of the quarrel between admirers of Voltaire and Crebillon, passed over into the Beytrdge.
The third article on the Paris theatres, which does not profess to come from Paris, consists almost exclusively of statistics. I have not yet been able to ascertain the source, but the materials concerning the ' Theatre italien ' come, directly or indirectly, from the first volume of L. Riccoboni's Le Nouveau Theatre italien, 13 vols., Paris 1729 ff. Here again there is no evidence to help us to decide whether Lessing or Mylius was the compiler. 4
(b) Berlin (Dresden, Stuttgart).
Of the notices of 'Das Theater in Berlin' Muncker says4: 'Die Nachrichten Uber das Berliner Theater erhielt Lessing hochstwahrschein- lich auch schon in der stilistischen Fassung, in der er sie abdruckte, von fremder Hand, wofern nicht Mylius sie geliefert haben sollte. Hochstens konnte Lessing die eine oder andere Zwischenbemerkung darin einge- schaltet haben.' And he quotes a number of characteristic passages5
1 The critic of the Berlinische Bibliothek remarks ironically (Vol. iv, i, p. 138) : ' Theatralische Neuigkeiten aus Paris ; von welchen die H. Verf . versichern, dass sie solche von guter Hand haben ; vielleicht haben sie solche hernach auch dem Yerleger der Bigarrtire mitgetheilet.'
a Schriften, iv, p. 219. Cp. B. A. Wagner, Lessing -Forschun gen, Berlin, 1881, p. 157.
3 Danzel and Guhrauer, i, pp. 509, 513 f. Muncker reprints these notices (iv, pp. 39 f., 42 f.), but regards them as doubtfully by Lessing.
4 Schriften, iv, p. 82.
5 I should be inclined to excerpt considerably more of the account of Frederick's relations to the theatre (p. 124) as characteristic of Lessing's style, and from the second
J. G. ROBERTSON
219
which — if it were a question as to whether they had been written by Mylius or Lessing — there could be no difficulty in ascribing to the latter. Muncker then adds : ' Ob Lessing diese Worte geschrieben hat, muss dahingestellt bleiben ; dass sich aber seine etwaigen Zuthaten zu dem Aufsatz tiber das Berliner Theater weiter erstreckt hatten, darf wohl entschieden bezweifelt werden.'
In view of the punctiliousness with which the editors, as we have just seen, drew attention to the fact that the French articles were not by them, we might perhaps infer that the Berlin reports were written either by Lessing or Mylius. Further, the view that Lessing touched up and inserted sentences into an article by another hand seems to me extremely improbable, not to say unnecessary. For what difficulties — assuming that the style at times points clearly to Lessing's"*hand — stand in the way of ascribing the present articles entirely to Lessing ? The only one seems to be that they show an interest in the ' unGerman ' theatre of Berlin, which does not correspond with Lessing's attitude in later life. But surely there was no reason that the Lessing of 1750, the Lessing who published a journal in furtherance of Gottsched's ' Historic des Theaters,' and to whom it was of vital concern to get into touch with influential circles in Berlin, should not have written them ? ' Wir machen,' the article begins, ' in unsrer neuesten Geschichte des Theaters billig mit Berlin den Anfang, da bekannt ist, was an dem dasigen Hofe fur ein guter Geschmack, wie in den schonen Wissenschaften tiberhaupt, also insbesondre in Ansehung des Theaters herrschet1.'
There is nothing to add concerning the reports of the theatres in Dresden and Stuttgart. They are, in form, close imitations of the Berlin articles, and so valueless that the question of their authorship hardly matters. They may have been put together by Mylius or Lessing on the basis of information received from these places ; but the Dresden notice might well have been sent by H. A. Ossenfelder, who, according to Reichardt's Theaterkalender auf das Jahr 17792, had ' Antheil an den Beytragen zur Geschichte,' etc., and the Stuttgart information may, with as great probability, have been supplied or obtained by the publisher there.
article a passage like (p. 284) : ' Sie halt sich itzo bey diesem gelehrten Freunde auf, und sagt selbst offentlich, dass sie verheirathet sey. An wen? Das ist leicht zu erachten. Doch ist bey dieser Heirath das Ceremoniel nicht betrachtet worden.'
1 Page 123. Cf. the comment of the Berlinische Bibliothek, I.e., pp. 138 f.
2 Page 124. Cp. Danzel, i, p. 58.
220 Notes on Leasing s 'Beytrdge zur Historic,' etc.
(c) Freiberg.
Karl Lessing made the following statement concerning the * Nachricht von einem in Freyberg aufgefuhrten Schulschauspiel/ the final item in the Beytrdge : ' Die Nachricht von einem in Freyberg aufgefuhrten Schulschauspiele des Rektors Biedermann, die von dort eingeschickt war, und die Mylius vermuthlich ohne Lessings Wissen einriickte, tadelte sein Vater nicht weniger [i.e. than the review of Gregorius]; den er war ein Freund von diesem gelehrten Schulmanne1.' And the view has been already referred to, that Mylius's indiscretion brought about the dissolution of partnership between Lessing and himself2.
There are, however, several difficulties in the way of accepting Karl Lessing's statement. In the first place the contribution is dated ' Freyberg im November 1749 ' ; it must consequently have been in the hands of the editors from the very beginning, and could not have been unknown to Lessing. In the second place, we have Lessing's own assurance that he had the sole responsibility of bringing out the fourth part3, and consequently there could have been no question of the article being inserted without his knowledge or consent. Further, if Lessing's connivance in the publication is not to be denied, is there any reason to think that Lessing, who had already shown little consideration in attacking a scholar like Gregorius4, who enjoyed considerable repute and was, moreover, connected with Lessing's own native town, should have hesitated in attacking, in what the Berlinische Bibliothek called5 ' eine sehr hamische und beissende Art, den gelehrten und geschickten Recktor Hrn. Biedermann.' If it were a question of justification, we should be inclined to say that there was, if anything, more reason for this attack than that on Gregorius. The contribution itself, which could not possibly have been written by either Lessing or Mylius— the
1 G. E. Lessivg's Lebcn, Berlin, 1793, i, p. 107.
2 See vol. vm, p. 514. a See above, p. 216.
4 As I have nothing of importance to add to what has already been said of Lessing's review of ' Werenfels' Rede zu Vertheidigung der Schauspiele/ it may be disposed of in a footnote. I have not been able to compare with Gregorius's translation that in the Critische Beytriige vm (1742), pp. 598 ff.— it was by Mylius— which Lessing claims as superior. But to judge by the criticism in Fabricius's Critische Bibliothek (Vol. n, St. 2, Leipzig, 1750, pp. 157 ff.) of Gregorius's version and Gregorius's own defence in that same periodical — a defence in which he places a page of his own translation side by side with Mylius's— Lessing was somewhat prejudiced in favour of his colleague. Possibly this controversy might be brought into connection with Lessing's attack ; Gregorius's reply is dated ' 20 des Heumonats, 1750.' A note might be added to p. 178, 11. 28 ff. , to the effect that the opera, II Sogno di Scipione is discussed in the Neue Biichersaal, Vol. n (1746), St. 4, pp. 359 ff., ' Platon's Urtheil von der Poesie ' in St. 5, pp. 416 ff.
5 Vol. iv, St. vi, p. 824.
J. G. ROBERTSON
221
jocose style is entirely foreign to either — is introduced by a prefatory note which I would like to claim for Lessing himself:
Wir riicken folgenden Anfsatz von diesem Schulschauspiele so em, wie wir ihn aus Freyberg erhalten haben. Das Schauspiel selbst haben ^dr auch gedrukt und geschrieben gesehen. Da es nichts von einem Schauspiel, als einige geringe Zufallig- keiten, an sich hat, so haben wir es nicht fiir wiirdig gehalten, desselben in unserer Monatschrift zu gedenken. Weil aber doch unsere Absicht die Aufnahme des Theaters ist, durch dergleichen ungereimte Unternehmungen gewisser Schulmanner aber der Geschmack junger Leute sehr verderbet und also das Aufnehmen des Theaters gehindert wird : so haben wir wenigstens einer fremden Critik dariiber eirien Platz nicht versagen wollen. Wir verehren iibrigens die Verdienste des Herrn Biedermanns, als Verfertigers dieses Schauspiels, in andern Theilen der Gelehrsam- keit, wiinschen aber sehnlich, das er sich mit dem Theater nichts mehr zu schaffen machen wolle. Auch zur Dichtkunst iiberhaupt ist er nicht gemacht. Er hat einige schone Arien des blinden freybergischen Dichters Herrn Euderleins, auf eine jamraerliche Weise gemishandelt. Doch wir kommen zu der Nachricht. Hier ist sie1.
There is an echo of this introduction in what was, no doubt, a defence of the article in Lessing's letter to his father of February 8, 1751, when he wrote2 : ' Wieder den H. Biedermann ist hier mehr als eine Kritik zum Vorscheine kommen ; so wohl in beyden Zeitungen hat man ihn herrurngenommen, als auch in besonders gedrukten Blattern. Man hat ihm zu viel gethan, und man hatte nicht vergessen sollen, dass er ein Mann sey der sonst Verdienste hat.'
The chief claim which I have endeavoured to make good in the above notes is that, while Lessing's authorship of the ' Critik liber die Gefangnen des Plautus' can no longer be upheld, he had a greater share in the contents of the Beytrdge than he has hitherto been credited with. ' Der grosste Theil der darin enthaltenen Aufsatze ist aus meiner Feder geflossen.' There is, it seems to me, no reasonable ground for throwing doubt on this "statement.
To look at the matter for a moment statistically. Ascribing to Lessing the utmost that I have suggested could be by him, that is to say, the ' Vorrede,' the four Plautus items, minus the 60 pages of the ' Critik,' the Corneille and Riccoboni translations, the Werenfels review and all the Paris and Berlin theatre-reports, as well as the introductory note to that from Freiberg, this gives him about 426 pages to his credit. Estimating the entire contents of the volume at 616 full pages, his share would amount to 69 per cent., which does not seem excessive in view of his own statement. By depriving him of the theatre notices, we reduce the percentage to something over 57, and if we take away the Corneille translations as well, to only 37 per cent. From this one
i Pages 596 f. 2 Schriften, xvn, p. 26.
222 Notes on Lessings 'Beytrdge zur Historic ,' etc.
sees, at least, how significant for Lessing's 'grossten Their are the 125 pages from Corneille. If his statement is to be upheld at all, these obviously cannot be excluded from the list of his own contributions.
I have, I might add, attempted to verify the above conjectures on the ground of style and orthography; but without arriving at any satisfactory results1. Consentius has already shown2 that the tests on which earlier investigators laid stress — the omission of the auxiliary, the spelling ' betauern ' and the like — are of little use in determining Lessing's share in the Berlinische privilegirte Zeitung; and obviously such tests are still less reliable in a journal where we have no means of estimating the extent and nature of editorial supervision to which the articles were subjected.
J. G. ROBERTSON. LONDON.
1 As regards orthography, for instance, Lessing seems to prefer ' italianisch,' which occurs in the ' Vorrede,' 'Corneille,' 'Paris' and 'Berlin'; Mylius ' italienisch ' ; but in 'Plautus' I find once 'italienisch.' The spellings ' erwegen,' 'Erwegung' occur in 'Voltaire,' 'Corneille,' 'Plautus' (also 'erwehnten' here); 'erwagen' in 'Beweis.' 'Betauern' occurs three times in the 'Vorrede,' once in the ' Critik.' In the 'Vorrede' I find ' itzo,' ' jetzt,' 'itzig ' ; in ' Plautus ' ' jetzt, ' jetzig ' ; whereas Mylius in the ' Clitia ' seems to use only ' itzo ' ; in the ' Critik ' we find ' itzt ' and ' anitzo.' ' Betriegerisch ' in ' Plautus ' ; but also ' Betriiger ' ; and ' Betrieger ' in ' Voltaire,' ' betriigen ' in ' Corneille,' and ' Betriigerey ' in ' Critik ' and ' Clitia.' The form ' genennt ' occurs both in ' Plautus and ' Corneille.'
2 E. Consentius, Lessing und die Vossische Zeitung, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 9 f., 14 f.
AN EAELY TRANSLATION OF GOETHE'S ' TASSO.'
CHARLES DBS VCEUX, afterwards Sir Charles Des Voeux, whose translation of Tasso forms the subject of the present paper, was one of the many young Englishmen whom the fame of Goethe attracted to Weimar at the beginning of last century. Born in 1802, he was descended from a distinguished Irish family. He matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford, on Feb. 8, 1821; in Michaelmas Term, 1824, he took a second class in classics, and was admitted to the degree of B.A. on Nov. 17, 1825. He was entered that same year at Lincoln's Inn. In 1826 he went to Weimar, where he spent some time (how long I am unable to state) acquiring a knowledge of the German lan- guage1. He was a persona grata at court and left pleasant memories behind him2. He was also intimate in the circle of Goethe and his friends, and the poet conceived sufficient regard for him to commission Schmeller to paint his portrait3. It is pleasant to think that he may have been one of those young gentlemen whose polished manners and self-assurance drew from Goethe the famous remark to Eckermann on Englishmen. He was in especial favour with Goethe's daughter- in-law, and was a contributor to her Chaos4. Ottilie, if we may believe a contemporary, with her partiality for handsome Irishmen, seems actually to have fallen in love with him in her characteristic impulsive manner5. It is at least certain that both she and Goethe,
1 He took lessons with a certain Dr Friedrich A. W. Weifienborr, who was also Thackeray's teacher. See Carl Schiiddekopf, Goethes Tod, 1907, p. 181.
2 Sir Frederick des Vceux, the present baronet, who courteously supplied me with such biographical data as were accessible to him, writes as follows : ' When I was at a tutor's in Weimar in the early seventies, the then Grand Duke often spoke to me about the Charles des Voeux you mention, and told me how popular he was in the Weimar circle of Goethe's days.'
3 E. C. Alford's List of Englishmen present at Weimar (English Goethe Society's Publications, No. v, 1890, p. 191).
4 L. von Kretschman, Weimars Gesellschaft und das Chaos (Westermanns Illustrierte Deutsche Monatshefte, 1892, pp. 252 seq.).
5 Aus Goethes Freundeskreise, Erinnerungen der Baronin Jenny von Gustedt herausg. von Lily von Kretschman, 1892, p. 157 : ' ich kann Des Voeux nicht vergessen, ich schrieb davon an H.' P. 159 : ' Da stehe ich nun den ganzeii Tag am Fenster und warte auf den Briefboten und denke dazwischen an D.' Eeprinted as : Im Schatten der Titanen herausg. von Lily Braun, pp. 116 seq. This is confirmed by the second volume of Aus
224 An Early Translation of Goethe's 'Tasso'
took the utmost interest in the Tasso translation. Des Voeux had a special copy printed for Goethe, in large octavo size, that the poet might find it convenient to make his own annotations and sugges- tions in the margin1. This Goethe actually seems to have done, as we know from entries in his diary2. He occupied himself with the translation during several days in March 1827, he discussed difficulties with Des Voeux himself and consulted Eckermann3. Ottilie, who, as we know from her contributions to the Chaos, was no mean English scholar, furthered the translation with loving care. One of her friends even refers to it as ' ihre Tasso Ubersetzung4.' This is obviously an exaggeration, but it is significant that it was Ottilie who saw the second edition of 1833 through the press. The work is thus in a sense a collaboration of Goethe, Ottilie and Des Voeux, in which the latter clearly bore the brunt of the work. Hence the sympathetic interest with which Goethe followed its fortunes and his evident disappoint- ment at Carlyle's unfavourable criticism. At the same time it enhances its importance for us ; and now that we are able to read between the lines, the following letters and documents possess an additional interest. Of Des Vceux' subsequent career I have been able to discover but little. He entered the diplomatic service and was appointed attache to the British embassy in Berlin. He was afterwards transferred to Constantinople, but resigned on account of ill-health, and became secretary of legation at Brussels. He remained the whole time in close touch with the Weimar circles, in which he was an occasional visitor. He married in 1832 a Miss Law, daughter of Lord Ellen- borough, and died on Aug. 9, 1833. His widow afterwards married Sir Charles Dallas, a college friend of her first husband5. In 1827 Des
Ottilie von Goethe's Nachlafiher. von W. von Ottingen (Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 28. Band) which appeared when these sheets were already in print. Ottilie was very much in love with Des Voeux. Her letters are full of passionate protestations, of bitter reproaches at his long silence, of despair and resignation at the news of his approaching marriage. She was sufficiently jealous to refuse his widow's request to permit a portrait of Des Vceux, which she possessed, to be copied. Ottilie expressed her indignation in a poem entitled ' Die Paria an die Eaja,' p. 423.
1 See Goethe's letter to Zelter, below p. 227.
2 The passages in question have been conveniently collected by H. C. Graf, Goethe tiber seine Dichtungen, n. Teil, v. Band, pp...354 seq. The entry on March 5 is the most important : ' Beschaftigte inich mit der Ubersetzung des Tasso. Suchte manches zu beseitigen und vorzubereiten.'
3 On March 7: 'Mittag Dr Eckermann. Es ward ihm die Ubersetzung des Tasso vorgelegt.'
4 Lily von Kretschman, I.e., p. 160 ; cp. also p. 159.
5 For the above information I am indebted, partly to the kindness of Sir Frederick des Vosux, and partly to the following sources: G. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, 1888, vol. iv ; C. L. Shadwell, Registrum Orielense, vol. n, pp. 353, 357. The numerous references in vol. 28 of the Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft mentioned above. An anony- mous notice in Eraser's Magazine, xv, p. 641, May 1837 (Melange from the Journal and
L. A. WILLOUGHBY 225
Voeux published his translation of Goethe's Tasso. 'Torquato Tasso, a Dramatic Poem from the German of Goethe : with other German Poetry. Translated by Charles Des Voeux, Esq., London, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, & Co., 1827 V It was preceded by a short Dedica- tion ' To the illustrious author of Torquato Tasso, to whose approving
Notes of an Employe), quoted by Biedermaun, Goethes Gesprdche, 1911, vol. v, p. 184. The passage in question runs : ' poor Des V[oeux] whose early death deprived both literature and diplomacy of a growing ornament.' On Sept. 21, 1827, he sends Goethe a book from England (Brief e, Weimar-Amtgabe, iv, vol. xliii, p. 73). On May 14, 1830, Goethe writes to his son: ' Herr Des Voeux ist hier durch, nach Constantinopel. In Hoffnung und Vermuthung, dafi er euch treffen werde hat man ihm allerlei Depeschen mitgegeben. Er geht nach Venedig, von da nach Ancona (Weimar- Ausgabe, iv, vol. xlvii, p. 63). Compare also the entries in Goethe's Diary mentioned above : Oct. 7, 1829 : ' Herr Des Vceux, Ubersetzer des Tassos, gegenwartig in Berlin bei der englischen Gesandtschaft ' ; May 9, 1830 : ' Herr Des Voeux von der englischen Gesandtschaft aus London war angekommen ' ; May 10, 1830: 'Herr Des Voeux nach Constantinopel reisend.' Mention is made of him in a letter written to Goethe by Crabb Robinson and published in the Diary, Reminis- cences and Correspondence of H. C. Robinson, ed. by T. Sadler, 1872, p. 53 (quoted also in the Goethe-Jahrbuch, xr. Band, p. 115) : ' I avail myself of the polite offer of
Mr Des Voeux to forward to you ' 'Recently Des Voeux and Carlyle have brought
other of your greater works before our public.' The unpublished Diary of Crabb Robinson in Dr Williams' Library contains the following entry for February 2, 1829: ' I finished this morning a letter to Goethe, and in the evening I wrote letters to Knebel and Voigt, all of which were taken by Des Voeux, who promised to send them next day to the Foreign Office.' A letter of Ottilie to Crabb Robinson of Sept. 10, 1832, has the following reference: 'Des Voeux kam nach Frankfurth, wie wir schon abgereist waren ' (published by R. Priebsch in the Zs. f. Bilcherfreunde, 1911/12, i, p. 43). Compare also the extracts from Knebel's letters to Crabb Robinson printed below.
1 Des Voeux' 2\isso was the first English rendering to be actually published. It is not generally known, however, that William Taylor of Norwich had seriously considered the translation of Goethe's Tasso as far back as 1810. The following extract from an unpublished letter to Crabb Robinson in Dr Williams' library possesses an additional interest, as Taylor's estimate of Tasso in his Historic Survey (vol. in, p. 322) is entirely inadequate :
NORWICH, 9 September 1810
MY DEAR, SIR,
In consequence of yours of 25 August, I have been reading anew the Torquato Tasso with an eye to translation. Antonio is a good delineation : and the poet's character is yet more consummately well drawn, and accords with history as with nature. Werter's irritability reappears in it, justified by a higher sense of conscious greatness and darkened by a Rousseau-like vein of mistrust. But these two are all.
To me the female characters do not appear so exquisitely depicted. They are merely the polished women of modern life. If the princess, instead of being shocked at Tasso's kiss, and uttering the critical hihwegl had fallen in with his enthusiasm, she would have retained him. She would then have behaved, not like a lady, but like a heroine.
The second act is wailing. Alphonso is throughout insipid, and the catastrophe is vexatious. Notwithstanding the truth of psychology with which these delicate em- barasments are brought out and worked up, the dissatisfaction, which they occasion, inequitably associates itself with one's estimate of the poem, converting moral into aesthetic displeasure. The early complacence of the reader decays in spite of the increased stimulation.
The beauties of the poem however are numerous, are exquisite, but are adapted only for refined judges. Our English public is not very refined, and never appreciates a work in proportion to the intellectual excellence of the writer, but by a coarser regard to utility, decency, propriety, domestic convenience, and conversational importance. We have no moral tolerance for the freaks of genius, no intellectual tolerance for the darings of philosophy, and must consequently be content to produce mediocrity and to be ruled by narrow minds in lieu of prospective wisdom. The entire works of Goethe would not suit here: he has attained that divine morality which looks down on all forms of human conduct with equal eye, and sees in the lewdness of Faustus, or the purity of Ifigenia,
M. L. R. IX. 15
226 An Early Translation of Goethe s 'Tasso'
kindness and encouragement the following translations owe their completion, they are most gratefully inscribed by one of his sincerest admirers.' The introduction contains a brief appreciation of the poem and its characters.
This translation seems to have passed almost unnoticed in England, at a time, moreover, when the reviews and journals of the day were full of critical appreciations of German literature. Yet it did not escape the attention of that most assiduous and enthusiastic admirer and interpreter of Goethe in England, -Henry Crabb Robinson1. Even before its appearance he had been informed of its inception by his friend Major von Knebel. In the Correspondence of Crabb Robinson, still lying unpublished in Dr Williams' Library, there is the following letter from Knebel to Crabb Robinson, dated from Jena, March 1, 1827:
In diesen letzten Tagen besuchte mich Hr. Des Voeux, ein Irlander, von Weimar aus, hier. Er 1st ein ungemein unterrichteter feiner junger Mann und hat sich in kurzer Zeit der deutschen Sprache sehr bemachtigt, so dafi er jetzt Gothes Tasso und andere Gedichte ins Englische iibersetzt. Er denkt in weniger Zeit jetzt nach London zuriick zu kehren.
Dieser hat mir versprochen ein kleines Packet an Sie, lieber Freund, nach London mitzunehmen, und deshalb wag' ich es ihm dieses mitzugeben . . . .
And again, on May 24, 1828, Knebel reports to Crabb Robinson :
Hr. Des Voeux ist bei rnir gewesen, und ich habe semen Tasso von ihm erhalten. Noch habe ich nicht viel darin studirt. Es ist schwer den Italienischen Wohlklang zu ersetzen2.
Des Voeux presented a complimentary copy to another of his
but that exact adaptation of effect to cause, of conduct to motive, which characterizes the constitution of things.
By the bye, your preference of the Torquato to the Ifigenia does not accord with my translater's predilections. You call Ifigenia half a Christian, as if her character were out of costume. Surely hers are no Christian virtues. Frankness, generosity, courage, are not of gospel growth, but rather chastity, tenderness, and meekness. Itigenia appears to me to be derived from the Neoptolemus in Sofocles' Philoctetus. There is, perhaps, both in Goethe and in Sophocles, some anachronism in placing so early in the social progress a character which refinement is requisite to form. The noble is that idea of human excellence least to be expected from the savage.
You ask about the Monk of Libanon — three acts of it I have already translated, and would finish it, if a prospect offered of any bookseller's taking it off my hands — it contains but one very fine scene, the delirium of Saladin.
[A political paragraph....]
If you can trust me again, when you have any new German books worth reading, I shall be thankful for a knowledge of them
and am sincerely Yours
W. Taylor Jr
1 On Crabb Robinson and the part he played in familiarizing his fellow-countrymen with Goethe and German literature cf. the article by J. M. Carre in the Revue Germanique, vin, No. 4, pp. 385 seq.
2 I am indebted to Professor K. Priebsch for the reference to these letters.
L. A. WILLOUGHBY 227
Weimar friends, Adele Schopenhauer. She writes from the Rhine to Goethe on November 10, 1827 :
Der mir von Herrn Des Vceux geschenkte Tasso machte Aufsehen und erregte bei denen, die ihn sahen, warme Theilnahme. Die englische Sprache breitet sich auch dort [in Frankfurt] sehr aus und bald wird man fast keine andere Litteratur anerkennen, als die neuere englische1.
On May 28, 1829, Goethe received a copy of the published work, a copy which is still preserved in Goethe's library at Weimar2. Goethe had already written to Zelter concerning it on March 29 3 :
Doch ist mir in dieser letzten Zeit eine ahnliche Pein geworden. Ein Englander, der wie andere urn nicht Deutsch zu lernen nach Deutschland gekommen war, verfiihrt durch geistreich gesellige Unterhaltung und Anregung, machte den Versuch, meinen Tasso in's Englische zu iibersetzen. Die ersten Probestellen waren nicht zu verwerfen, im Fortsetzen ward es immer besser, nicht ohne Ein- greifen und Mitwirken meines hauslichen, wie eine Schraube ohne Ende sich umdrehenden Sprach- und Literaturkreises.
Nun wiinscht' er, dafi ich das ganze Stuck gern und mit Bequemlichkeit durch- lesen mochte, deshalb lieB er sein Concept in grofi Octav, mit neuen Lettern, sehr anstandig abdrucken4, und ich ward dadurch freylich compromittirt, dieses wunder- liche Werk, das ich, seitdem es gedruckt ist, nie wieder durchgelesen, solches auch hochstens nur unvollstandig vom Theater herab vernornrnen hatte, mit Ernst und Sorgfalt durchzugehen. Da fand ich nun, zu meiner Verwunderung, mein damaliges Wollen und Vollbringen erst wieder am Tage, und begriff, wie junge Leute Ver- gniigen und Trost finden konnen, in wohlgestellter Rede zu vernehmen, dafi andere sich auch schori einmal so gequalt haben wie sie selbst jetzt gequalt sind. Die Ubersetzung ist merkwiirdig, das wenige MiBverstandene ist nach meiner Bemerkung abgeandert, der Ausdruck kommt nach und nach immer besser in Flufi, die letzten Acte und die passionirten Stellen sind vorziiglich gut.
On January 1, 1828, Goethe wrote to Carlyle, asking his opinion of the translation5:
In das Kastchen lege noch einige literarisch-sittliche Bemerkungen, und frige nur die Anfrage wegen eines einzigen Punctes, der mich besonders interessirt, hier bey ; sie betrifft Herrn Des Vceux, dessen Ubersetzung des Tasso nun auch wohl in Ihren Handen ist. Er verwendete seinen hiesigen Aufenthalt leidenschaftlich auf das Studium einer ihm vorerst nicht gelautigen Sprache und auf ein sorgfaltiges Ubertragen gedachten Dramas. Er machte mir durch eine gedruckte Copie seines Manuscriptes die Bequemlichkeit, seine vorriickende Arbeit nach und nach durch- zusehen, wobey ich freylich nichts wirken konnte, als zu beurtheilen ob die Ubersetzung, insofern ich englisch lese, mit dem Sinn, den ich in meine Zeilen zu legen gedachte, ubereinstimmend zu tirideri ware. Und da will ich gern gestehen, daB, nach einiger Ubereinkunft zu gevvissen Abanderungen, ich nichts mehr zu
1 Edited by L. Geiger, Goethe-Jahrbuch, vol. xix (1898), p. 61.
2 See Graf, I.e., p. 359.
3 Weimar-Ausgabe, Briefe, iv, xlii, p. 103.
4 This is confirmed by B. Gans in a ' conversation ' with Goethe. Biedermann, Goethes Gesprdche, m, p. 437: 'So habe zum Beispiel ein Englander seinen "Torquato Tasso" in's Englische iibersetzt, und weil er ihm nicht zumuthen wollte, ein Manuscript durch- zusehen, so habe er dasselbe in Einem Exemplare drucken lassen und ihm, damit er seine Bemerkungen machen konne, iiberreicht.'
5 C. E. Norton, Correspondence between Goethe and Carlyle, 1887, pp. 36 seq. Weimar- Ausgabe, Briefe, iv, xliii, p. 221.
15—2
228 An Early Translation of Goethe s 'Tasso'
erinnern wusste, was mir fiir das Verstandniss meines Werkes in einer fremden Sprache ware hinderlich gewesen. Nun aber mocht ich von Ihnen wissen, in- wiefern dieser Tasso als Englisch gelten kann. Sie werden mich hb'chlich ver- binden, wenn Sie mich hierliber aufklaren und erleuchten ; denn eben diese Beziige vom Originale zur Ubersetzung sind es ja, welche die Verhaltnisse von Nation zu Nation am allerdeutlichsten aussprechen und die man zu Forde- rung der vor- und obwaltenden Weltliteratur vorzuglich zu kennen und zu beurtheilen hat.
With this letter to Carlyle still in his mind, he expressed himself in similar nattering terms to a Mr Granville, who .visited him on January 2, 1828:
The patriarch poet seemed far more satisfied with the translation of Tasso by Mr Charles Des VOBUX. He said: 'I understand English & ma maniere, quite sufficiently to discover in that gentleman's recent translation, that he has rendered all my ideas faithfully. Je me lisais moi-m^me dans la traduction. It is for the English to determine, if, in adhering faithfully to the ideas of the German original, Mr Des Voeux a conserve les regies et n'a pas trahi le genie de sa langue. Je n'en suis pas juge: peut-etre le trouvera-t-on un peu trop Allemand...1.'
Carlyle replied to Goethe's letter on April 18, 18282:
But I must not neglect to speak of Mr Des Vceux's ' Translation ' of your Tasso, concerning which you honour me by asking my opinion. Sorry am I to be forced to call it trivial, nay altogether unworthy. No P^nglish reader can here obtain any image of that beautiful Drama, or, at best, such an image as the rugged, bald and meagre school versions of Homer, may give him of the Iliad.
More than once I had to turn to the original even for the meaning, nay, in some instances the Author himself seems not to have known it; for, ich soil (p. 69) is rendered by / t0iZ£,.thus expressing a purpose instead of an obligation; and (p. 78) erreicht is mistaken for darreicht and translated, not attains but pre- sents, to say nothing of ivacker, everywhere translated by valiant, which means only kilhn ; and klug by shreiud (properly : scharf, scharfsinnig) ; Faun (p. 60) by fawn (Rehkalb, probably a misprint), and (p. 77) meine Hand fSchlag' ein! by my hand to shake, literally and properly: hier ist meine Hand — zu schiitteln! Instead of general observations I once thought of drawing your attention to some single passage ; for example, to Antonio's truly graceful character of Ariosto, in Act I, to show in detail how the fine spirit has evaporated in the transfusion, and nothing remains to us but such a caput mortuum as 'source of love or child of glory,' 'talent's power,' 'spirit forms and yet in person'; and worst of all in • juggle FORMED by sportive Cupid,' which indeed is a ne plus ultra both in sense and expression. But I have already occupied you too long with such a matter, con- cerning which nothing but your request could have authorised me to say one word. In short, this translation is like our common translation from the German works ; which no reader of that language ever willingly looks into ; passable, or at least only mildly condemnable, when they deal with Kotzebues and Hoffmanns ; but altogether sacrilegious when they fix on Fausts and Tassos.
Goethe was obviously rather disappointed by the severity of this review, but not altogether convinced by Carlyle's arguments for on July 13, 1828, he wrote to Ottilie:
1 Biedermarm, Gesprache, vol. in, p. 485; quoted also by E. Griinewald. Goetlie- Jahrbuch, vol. xxix, p. 42.
2 Norton, Correspondence, p. 87.
L. A. WILLOUGHBY 229
Den Tasso betreffend sag ich Folgendes : allerdings habe Carlyle wegen der Ubersetzung befragt, um iiber das Verhaltniss derselben zu den englischen Sprach- forderungeri gewisser zu werden; seine Erwiderung war nicht giinstig, und da ich die Sache mit leeren Phrasen nicht abthun wollte, so hielt ich inne um zu erwarten, wie die Foreign Reviews sich dariiber allenfalls auslassen wiirden. In diesen hatte ich aber bis zu spater Erscheinung meines Heftes nichts gefunden und so mufite ich schweigen, bis etwa die Folge das Weitere ergabe1. Ich hatte gewiinscht, dafi dir fiir Antheil uud Bemiihung ein freundlicheres Resultat ware zu Theil geworden 2.
Goethe's letter seems to have crossed with one which Ottilie wrote to him on July 16, 18283:
Noch eine Frage, bester Vater, habe ich auf dem Herzen. In der Anzeige, was der Inhalt von ' Kunst und Alterthum ' sei, fand ich auch iiber den ' Tasso ' aufge- zeichnet ; doch ist dieses nun nicht darin enthalten. Sollte dies Weglassen nicht mit einem ungiinstigen Urtheil Carlisles iibereinstimmen ? Dafi es nicht zu Vor- theil Des Vo3ux' sei, dachte ich immer, da es Ihnen sonst gewiB Freudefgegeben, es mir mitzutheilen.
Des Vceux' translation of Tasso is not, indeed, a work of supreme excellence, but it certainly does not deserve the harsh censure which Carlyle passed upon it. It was a labour of love, inspired by the presence and encouragement of the great poet himself, and under- taken with a sincere desire to bring home to his fellow-countrymen another of the great works of German literature. One might have expected that an aim so completely in accordance with Carlyle's own avowed professions would have secured for the attempt his serious and sympathetic attention. Yet Carlyle, with all his enthusiasm for German literature, was singularly unfair to other critics and trans- lators who disputed the field with him. His review of William Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry was marred by the same inaccuracies and wilful misrepresentations, as we shall notice in his Tasso criticism4.
But there is evidence to show that Carlyle's examination of the translation was most cursory. He limited himself obviously to the
1 The only notice of Des Vceux' Tasso I have found in the English periodicals is in the Monthly Review, vol. vi (1827), pp. 182—197, which deals rather with the original than with the translation. Yet that other such reviews appeared seems probable from the following notice in the matter fiir literarische Unterhaltung , No. 296, Dec. 23, 1828, p. 1184: 'Goethe's "Tasso" nach England verpflanzt. Dieses Meisterwerk ist jetzt von einem Hrn. Karl des Voeux in das Englische, und, wie die Kritiker jenes Landes sagen, sehr gut iibertragen worden. Aufierdem hat Hr. d. V. aber auch noch dem Bande einzelue Dichtungen von verschiedenen andern deutschen Dichtern in Uebersetzung als Proben dermaliger deutschen Poesie beigeiugt. Hieriiber wird jedoch geurtheilt: "Einige dieser Sachen sind zwar einfach, aber ohne Natiirlichkeit ; man fuhlt, dafl sie im Ge- schweifie des Angesichts entstanderi. So tragen sie den Fehler der Neuerer in der Poesie an sich, den namlich, eine Naivetat und Grazie zu affectireu, die vollig unertraglich ist." '
2 Briefe, iv, xliv, p. 214. :j Aus Ottilie von Goethes Nachlafi, I.e., p. 209.
4 Georg Herzfeld, William Taylor von Norwich, 1897, p. 51: 'die Mangel und Liicken sind nicht iramer von Carlyle richtig erkannt, und gar" nicht selten sind seine Ausstellungen als unbegriindet zu widerlegen.'
230 An Early Translation of Goethe s 'Tasso'
few pages from which his extracts are drawn — Antonio's character- isation of Ariosto in Act I, Scene IV, and pp. 60 to 78. Nor are his strictures always justified : ' wacker ' can, and does very often mean 'valiant/ 'shrewd' may be an excellent rendering of 'klug.' What the meaning may have been in the particular instances which Carlyle had in view I am unable to say, because he omits to give either the context or the reference. Not but that Des Voeux' translation does contain mistakes; had Carlyle studied the text very carefully he would have found even worse faults than the peccadillos he himself unfortunately singled out1. Yet the fact that in the 3450 lines of the play I have been able to discover so few blunders is itself a testimony to the accuracy of the translation. That is the great merit of the work : it is essentially literal, almost too literal at times, as Des Vceux himself acknowledged when he came to prepare his second edition. Occasionally, it is true, we get some of the bombast of which Carlyle fell foul in his letter. There is no defence for a line such as the following: 'Futurity's effulgent clouds' compared with Goethe's 'Der Zukunft goldne Wolke.' The translation certainly lacks ' den . itali- enischen Wohlklang' of which Knebel wrote ; but no translator, however skilful, could have reproduced the classic form of his author. On the other hand Des Vceux not unfrequently finds a happy rendering, an apt turn of expression, which does credit to himself and the original. The following example, taken at random, must serve to illustrate this trait.
Tis only galley-slaves that know themselves, Who pant in chains on one contracted bank.'
is a very creditable rendering of:
3339 : Nur die Galeerensklaven kennen sich,
Die eng an eine Bank geschmiedet keuchen.
But he is not always so fortunate :
1 1.260: 'Und losgesprochen sein auf lange Zeit'; 'And shall be pardon'd for his tardiness.' 389: 'Dafi Freunde seiner schonend sich erfreuen'; 'That friends might spare him and enjoy themselves.' 482 : ' Es lebe der zum erstenmal Bekranzte ! ' ; ' Live for the first time now with garland crowned!' 1599: 'Wo schwarmt der Knabe hin?'; ' Where roves the boy ? ' 1984 : ' und rechtest wie mit Fremden ' ; ' and, as with a stranger count' — ('rechten' confused with 'rechnen'!). 1987: 'da merkt man auf; 'then we remark.' 2318: 'Oglaube mir'; 'rely on me.' 2610: 'Man mufi geschaftig sein sobald sie reift'; 'One must be occupied, so soon 'tis gone' ('reift' mistaken for 'reist'!). 2631: 'Der heitre Wandel mancher schonen Tage'; 'The stroll serene of many a beauteous day.' 3127: 'Wie viele tausend stumme Lehrer winken | In ernster Majestat uns freundlich an ! ' ; ' How many thousand mute instructors wink \ On us with kind yet earnest majesty!'
L. A. WILLOUGHBY 231
But would'st thou clearly know what is becoming ; That only from exalted woman ask. and
At licence, man ; decorum, woman aims.
strike us as very unequal to the well-known original lines, perhaps just because they are so well-known. Des Voeux himself was not altogether satisfied with his translation and almost immediately considered the publication of a revised edition. Again Ottilie helped him to the utmost of her ability. On Oct. 23, 1828, she made the following entry in her diary : ' Ich schrieb an Des Voeux und kopierte ihm alle Stelien, die ich glaubte zu andern waren1.' There is a further entry for Nov. 26, 1831 : ' Ununterbrochen an " Tasso " abgeschrieben2.' During these years Des Vceux' correspondence is full of references to theif common undertaking3. Finally Ottilie wrote to him on Aug. 21, 18324:
Vorgestern erhielt ich aus Frankfurth den 'Tasso,' lind da der Druck nicht beginnen kann, bis Sie bestimrut haben, wieviel Exemplare gedruckt werden sollen, so sende ich Ihnen Papier und Druckproben zur Wahl. Haben Sie die Giite, was Sie wahlen wieder zuriickzusenden und die Exemplare zu bestimmen, so wie auch, ob Sie die Vorrede lassen wollen. Sollteri Sie noch eine andere Vorrede wollen, so hat es Zeit damit, da dies imrner zuletzt gedruckt wird. Es hat mich iiberrascht zu sehen, dafi Sie Sich mit dem Deutschen aufs neue zu beschaftigen scheinen. ' Cassandra ' soil doch mit abgedruckt werden ? Es war friiher Ihre Meinung, einige Ihrer eignen Gedichte bei einer neuen Ausgabe hinzuzufiigen ; ist das nicht mehr Ihr Wille I
In 1833, there appeared at Weimar the second edition5 of Torquato Tasso 'revised and corrected, with additions.' Besides the above- mentioned Dedication and Introduction of the first edition, there is a note by Ottilie von Goethe, which tells of the history of this Tasso translation :
My friend Mr Des Voeux wrote in June 1832 to me: 'I have completed my alterations of Tasso, making it more English, — and very little less literal. I will send it to you, if you like to have it. Perhaps you might think it well to have it printed at Weimar — under your superintendence if you please.' According to his wish the printing was not only begun but finished, with the exception of the dedication. I wrote to him about it and received no reply — I wrote again, — the answer was the news of his death.
Ottilie von Goethe
geb. von Pogwisch.
There are considerable discrepancies between the two texts, the changes in the second edition being mainly in the direction indicated by Des Voaux in his letter to Ottilie. It is less literal, but more
1 Aus Ottilie von Goethes Nachlafi, I.e., p. 223.
2 Nachl/ifi, p. 320. 3 I.e., p. 405. 4 I.e., p. 374.
5 Both the first and second editions are noticed by E. Oswald, Goethe in England and America (Publications of the English Goethe Society, No. xi). Second edition revised and enlarged by L. and E. Oswald. 'l909, p. 52.
232 An Early Translation of Goethe s 'Tasso'
polished and better English. He cuts out many juvenilities, avoids periphrastic constructions with do and did for the sake of the metre. On the other hand there is a noticeable tendency to high-flown or archaic language which was absent from the first edition1. To some extent this militates against this new edition which is, nevertheless, a marked improvement on the first. In printing and paper it is inferior to the English work; in other respects it is an exact replica of the English version, to which it corresponds exactly in size and pagination.
In conclusion, I cannot do better than quote a connected passage from the work. It will afford not only an insight into the quality of the translation itself, but also a comparison between the two texts, as I print the variant readings of the 1833 edition in a foot-note.
Act n, Scene I, 1. 978 2:
(O welches Wort spricht meine Fiirstin aus! Die goldne Zeit wohin ist sie geflohen ?)
Oh ! what a word my princess has pronounc'd !
The golden age, oh ! whither is it flown ? 980 For which in vain now ev'ry heart doth long!
The time when o'er th' unshackled earth mankind
Like sportive herds in gay delight did roam :
And in the flow'ry meed some aged tree
To shepherds and their mates did lend its shade, 985 The half-grown bush its tender twigs entwin'd
Round longing love securely- confident :
While clear and still upon the stainless sand
The gentle stream the tender nymph embrac'd —
And when amid the grass the startled snake 990 Innoxious lost itself ; the shameless faun
Did fly amain by valiant youth repell'd :
When ev'ry bird that skimm'd th' unbridled air,
And ev'ry beast that roam'd o'er mount and dell,
To man then said, ' what pleases is allow'd.'
Besides the above translation of Tasso the volume contains, as its title-page implies, a selection of miscellaneous German poems, preceded by a brief biographical sketch of each author. There are poems by Biernacky, Schiller, Uhland, Burger, Holtz, Eichendorff, Goethe. The selection, though agreeing in the main, is not identical in both editions. There are some omissions in the second edition, especially from Goethe,
1 go A (1827 ed.): repair B (1833); has A: hath B; tried A: strove (B) ; depriv'd A: reft B ; see A : contemplate B ; near A : proximate B ; sent A : transmitted B ; please A : gratify B ; drink A : potation B.
2 Variants: 978 hath. 980 In vain is ev'ry bosom longing for it! 982 Wander'd like sportive herds in gay delight; 983 When, mead. 984 Lent shepherds and their mates its friendly shade. 985 And when the half-grown bush its twigs entwin'd. 990 fawn A; and the bold satyr B. 991 By valiant youth repell'd sought flight amain. 994 VVhisper'd to men.
L. A. WILLOUGHBY 233
whilst it includes additional poems by Mtichler, Zach. Werner, Heine, Grillparzer and J. P. Uz.
Of special interest is an original poem of Des Vceux (which only appeared in the first edition) entitled 'Adele. A Wish.' I offer the suggestion that it refers to Adele Schopenhauer and her love for Heinke. Des Vceux was apparently on intimate terms with her. From her letter to Goethe quoted above we know that he sent her his Tasso. As an original piece of work it is perhaps worth quoting :
AD&LE A WISH
I begg'd to catch one word of friendly sound,
Which might some tidings from my love convey: _
The days, they roll their dull resistless round ; To you, ye nights, in suppliant tones I pray !
And since the sunny glance displays no more What best my fond heart lov'd — his image1 dear;
Oh ! bring in dreams ! and 'mid the starry lore, Oh! let me read his name in yonder sphere!
We shall obtain a more favourable impression of Des Vceux' poetic powers if we turn to his contributions to the Chaos. The poem entitled 'Lasting Love/ published in No. 7, p. 26, is a good specimen of his work.
LASTING LOVE
Give me the heart that knows no change,
Whose ev'ry whisper'd sigh is mine, Which in its most extended range
Still answers to my love — 'I'm thine.'
The veriest stoic must have felt
In some propitious sunny hour His frozen heart relax and melt
Beneath young Beauty's radiant pow'r.
Oh ! give me not such transient love,
That scarce outlives one summer's day; But give me bliss enjoy'd above,
That will not, can not waste away!
'Tis vain, oh ! woman, dry those tears ;
Such feelings dwell not here below; Or, if they tenant earthly spheres,
'Tis not in Man's cold heart they glow.
Man only loves a little while,
When Exstacy and Passion bloom ; But Woman wears a lasting smile
That gleams above young Passion's tomb!
The flame of love in her fond breast
Is like the subterranean fire, Which smoulders on, tho' still represt,
Still, still refusing to expire !
234 An Early Translation of Goethe's lTasso'
This poem -aroused such interest among the readers of the Chaos that two of them were induced to attempt German versions. In No. 12 (Beilage) Karl von Holtei published a translation which began :
Gieb mir das Herz: unwandelbar, bestandig, Aus dern jedweder Hauch und Seufzer mein, Aus dessen ganzem Umfang, stets lebendig Die Antwort meiner Lieb' ertont: "nur dein!"
De la Motte Fouque treated the same theme in variations in No. 29, p. 115.
If we can trust L. von Kretschman, in the article quoted above in Westermanris Monatshefte, p. 258, it would appear that Des Vceux was also the author of a German poem in memory of the Duchess Luise, which appeared in a Beiblatt to No. 23 of the Chaos. The 'Nachruf in question is of very high order both in form and matter:
Auf zu den Wohnungen
ewigen Friedens,
auf zu des Urquells
goldenem Lichte,
schwebe, befreite
himmlische Seele,
hier aus den Schmerzen
der Trennung — des Sehnens
auf zu den Sternen
den himmlischen Flug....
If Des Voeux could write such German, he was indeed fully qualified to undertake the translation of Tasso. Unfortunately there is con- siderable uncertainty as to whether the lines are his. The author of Weimars Gesellschaft und das Chaos assigns the nine separate contri- butions to this number to ten different names. There is indeed one contribution in English amongst them, but this is signed ' Elvire,' the pseudonym for Mr Plunkett. In view of this discrepancy it is impossible to state definitely the authorship of the above ' Nachruf.'
L. A. WlLLOUGHBY. OXFORD.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES
A BALLAD OF TWELFTH DAY. (Mod. Lang. Review, vol. vm, p. 64.)
IN the Trin. Coll., Cambridge, MS. B. 14. 39 the leaves following this ballad contain a long poem on Bible history. In the lower margins of some of the pages are faint scribblings in red chalk apparently in the same hand as the text, certainly contemporary. It was not till after I had printed the ballad that I discovered that these scribblings consist of four stanzas of the same. As anything which can throw light on this very difficult text seems worth recording I print below as much of the scribble as I have been able to decipher. Doubtful letters are printed in italic and where the text is wholly illegible a dot indicates the space of probably one letter.
fol. 36a.
. . . tede
of ]>e burw heo gune \\fie al for 25
>e stre was bo fin sutell 7 seiie . . to . . die
to hi |>at weldet sone 7 mone bios
lowe he liste ut of is t'ne • to salue us alle q . . . 7 d . . . .
fol. 36b-37a. ... go . is wille wrche fe riste wise kine wit utte roust 37
ne wkinc ful hei corun iborun was i a asse bos .
he wrede ane criine of )mrne • T worde he weld wit ute scuis
Jm mo J?at fu ne beo lore • for alle dedes fat )m dous
fol. 37b-38a. . . . Twtiis werun acnen ysete 7 herit fat child of hede hewe • 29
heo lutel were J?e J>eit for kinc heo hi wl wel a cnewe
es fe hauet igret • ibrout heo habbit a p'sent neowe •
6it pei h'rodes lont fur saken a angel us saide he nas nout t . . .
fol. 41b-42a.
]>eis kinchis weren bofe some 7 saite • 7 vnd' fonke was here sonde • dude he wel to . . 33 a slepit al fat alke neitte • asse trewe wit ute nit 7 onde stede • de . .
Jy . . om on angele 7 he a waste • 7 >ene riste \\ei he taitte harnard i to h're how ....
It is unfortunate that while in several passages where the full text is corrupt these jottings seem to offer a different reading, this reading is either illegible or unintelligible.
236 Miscellaneous Notes
25. lifie, doubtful; perhaps from lij>an = go, travel: text riden. lede perhaps belongs to 1. 26.
37. wrche, wurehen, work : text wrouten.
38. wkinc, k altered from h.
bos . , the missing letter might be equally well e or t.
39. weld, text ede.
40. dous, this preserves the rime ; text doest.
30. J>ett, for yeit, a misreading of y ( = » for y ( = y \
wl, i.e. vul, pull.
32. The- reading at the beginning of this line appears to be different from that in tlie text : saken here does not bear out the proposed emendation. 35. b . . om, no doubt /'com.
W. W. GREG.
CAMBRIDGE.
'A LUUE RON' AND 'Or CLENE MAYDENHOD.'
Apparently attention has not been called to the similarities between A Luue Ron, ascribed to Thomas de Hales in MS. Jesus College, Oxford, 29 f. 260 r, c. 1275 (E. E. T. S. 49, p. 93 ff.), and Of Clene Maydenhod in MS. Vernon f. 299, c. 1370—80 (E. E. T. S. 25 appendix; E. E. T. S. 117, p. 464 ff.).
Both pieces are in four-stress lines abababab, the later in seventeen stanzas, the earlier in twenty-six stanzas with two extra final lines.
In the matter and the rime-sounds of stanza 1 the pieces are similar, with some verbal coincidences :
Luue Ron. Clene Maydenhod.
A Mayde cristes me bit yorne. Off a trewe loue dene & derne
\at ich hire wurche a luue ron. I-chaue I-write )>e a Ron,
For hwan heo myhte best ileorne. How ]>ou mai3t, jif >ow wolt, lerne
to taken, on oj>er so)> lefmon. ffor to loue |>i letumon,
J;at treowest were of alle berne. pat trewest is of alle berne
and best wyte cuj>e a freo wymmow. And most of loue chacche con.
Ich hire mile nowiht werue. Beo war, for he is sumdel steorne,
ich hire wule teche. as ic con. His e}e is euere J?e vppon.
The similarities between the groups of ideas of the poems is shown in the following synopses, the first of A Luue Ron, the second of Clene Maydenhod :
I. sts. 2 — 11, the fickleness of earthly love and of earthly lovers and the transitoriness of both, st. 11 ending with two verses indicating intention to direct to a true love; II. sts. 12 — 14, the charms of Christ, and His invitation to the maiden to be His bride ; III. sts. 15 — 17, the glories, the durableness, and the bliss of Christ's abode ; IV. st. 18, the bliss of the sight of Christ ; V. st. 19, He has given the maid a precious treasure, more than silver and gold, that she is to guard carefully; VI. sts. 20 — 23, the gift is a precious gem that lost cannot be found,
Miscellaneous Notes
237
that is more precious than all the jewels, and it is called ' Mayden-hod ' ; VII. sts. 24 — 26, address to the maid to take the best, to choose Christ, to learn these verses and to teach them to other maids, to sing them and to do as they bid — and may God be with her and bring her to His bridal place in Heaven.
I. st. 2, the sweetness and the fairness of Christ, and His faithfulness in love; II. sts. 3 — 6, the vanity and transitoriness of earthly love and the fickleness of the earthly lover, ending with commendation of Christ as lover; III. sts. 7 — 11, the claims of Christ, and His invitation to the maiden to be His bride; IV. st. 12, the streets of gold, the joyful song, and the bliss of Heaven, that are for her if she love Christ aright ; V. sts. 13 — 14, Christ's love of chastity, if she would please Him let her keep chaste — let her never lose the ' maiden gem ' (' Mayden^Beige '), for lost it cannot be found; VI. sts. 15 — 16, Clene Maidenhod more precious than gold of Araby, rings, and gem-stones, the treasures of Asia or all the world — who will lock this gem in a sweet love-ring shall ever shine bright as the sun and have favour of God and glory among men; VII. st. 17, a prayer to Christ to aid to live a chaste life and to win the bliss of Heaven.
It will be seen that the order of the groups of ideas is the same in the two pieces, except in the location of part of the declaration of Christ's claim in st. 2 of Clene Maydenhod instead of with sts. 7 — 1 1 ; and in the shifting to st. 3 of elements in the end (st. 11) of the corre- sponding group of A Luue Ron.
Further, especially close similarity in phrasing and identity of wording of ideas that are similar or identical, identity in one or both of the rime-sounds, and frequently identity of rime- words, are found between Luue Ron, st. 2, Clene Maydenhod, st. 4 ; L. R. st. 6, G. M. st. 5 ; L. R. st. 11, C. M. st. 3 ; L. R. st. 12, C. M. st. 7; and L. R. sts. 13—14, C. M. sts. 10—11.
JOHN EDWIN WELLS. BELOIT COLLEGE, U.S.A.
DONNIANA.
Hymn to God, my God, in my sicknesse 1. 6,
Whilst my Physitians by their love are growne.
In the note which I added at the last moment to my edition of Donne's poems, I attributed the reading ' Loer ' (which I took to represent ' Lore ') to the copy of this poem in Sir Julius Caesar's papers
238 Miscellaneous Notes
(Add. MS. 34, 324). It was so given in the copy made for me and I had not time to verify. On examining the MS. myself this spring I found the true reading was * Love.' The Undertaking. 11. 4—5,
It were but madness now to impart The skill of specular stone
and To the Countesse of Bedford (' Honour is so sublime perfection '), 11. 28—30.
You teach (though we learne not) a thing unknown To our late times, the use of specular stone, Through which all things within, without were shown.
In my note to the first of these passages I conjectured that Donne referred here to crystal-gazing ; and Mr Chambers suggests a reference to Dr Dee's 'show stone.' The following extract from the Sermons 50. 27. 230 seems to show that Professor Norton was right in taking ' specular ' to be equivalent simply to ' translucent ' — a stone which, cut in the right way, had the properties of glass : ' The heathens served their Gods in Temples, sub dio, without roofs or coverings, in a free opennesse ; and, where they could, in Temples made of Specular stone, that was transparent as glasse, or crystall, so as they which walked without in the streets, might see all that was done within.' Could some classical scholar say what is Donne's authority for this statement?
My attention was called last year, just after my edition had appeared, by Mr Geoffrey Keynes to a copy of the 1633 edition of Donne's Poems with corrections in a seventeenth century hand, which is in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. I visited this library in 1911, to examine a manuscript to which my attention had been drawn by Mr Chambers' edition of Donne's Poems, but the librarian being absent at the time, I left without knowing anything of this corrected copy, of which Mr Chambers (an alumnus of Corpus) makes no mention. A careful list of the corrections has been made for me by Mr Frederick Rose, from which it is clear that they are generally negligible. The corrector had come into possession of a copy of the 1635 or 1639 edition and simply entered the later and generally inferior readings in place of those of 1633. The following items, however, are of interest.
The corrector inserts (from the 1635 edition) the Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam, but transfers ' Incerti ' to the end and writes beneath it ' R. B.' He apparently attributes the lines to the R. B. who wrote the elegy ' In memory of Dr Donne ' beginning
Donne dead ? 'Tis here reported true though I Ne'r yet so much desir'd to heare a lye.
Miscellaneous Notes
239
I have suggested in my notes that the author of these lines was Ralph Brideoak who proceeded M.A. at Brasenose College in 1636, and contributed an Elegy on Jonson to Jonsonus Virbius in 1638. His Elegy on Donne (if it be Brideoak) closes with an Epitaph. If the corrector were an Oxford man himself, it is quite probable that he knew Brideoak. The Elegies throughout bear witness to the popularity of Donne with the young Oxford and Cambridge men of the thirties. .
In The Curse, 11. 14 — 16, it will be remembered that for the text of 1633 which runs,
In early and long scarcenesse may he rot, For land which had been his, if he had not Himselfe incestuously an heire begot.
the editions 1635-69 substitute another version :
Or may he for her vertue reverence One that hates him onely for impotence, And equall Traitors be she and his sense.
The corrector inserts these lines at the foot of the page and adds :
' It seems this is the right for ye other is a conceite of Marstons in his satyres.
Now tell me Ned w* may that gallant be Who to obtaine intemperate luxurie Cuckolds his older brother, gets an heire Whereby his hopes are turned to despaire.
I am for priuitie Sr & Donne was never an Imitator.'
I had noted this and some other parallels to Donne's work in Bullen's edition of The Works of Marston, but at the last forgot to insert them. I do not think, however, that they establish the corrector's point. The lines are taken from the Scourge of Villainy, Satire X. ' Satira Nova. Stultorum plena sunt omnia. To His Very Friend, Master E. G.' This satire was added in 1599. By that time copies of Donne's witty poems may have already been in circulation at any rate among Donne's friends ; and the E. G. who is Marston's ' very friend ' may be the E. G. to whom Donne addressed the verse-letter first printed by Mr Gosse. See my Poems of John Donne I, p. 208.
H. J. C. GRIERSON.
ABERDEEN.
240 Miscellaneous Notes
THE PLACE-NAME ' HALE/ ' HAILE,' ' HAUGH,' ' EALE.'
This name, together with its plural ' Hales,' l Hailes,' etc. is fairly common in England and Scotland. In the case of ' Hale,' Lanes., Wyld cites the early forms Halas, Halgh, Hales, Hale. From these it is clear that the Lanes, pi. n. Hale and the Scottish and north England dialect word hough, which also occurs in pi. ns., have the same origin, viz. O.E. halh. Before discussing the meaning of halh we may consider the* meanings of the modern dialect words haugh, hale, eale. According to the English Dialect Dictionary [E.D.D.] haugh, which is used only in Scotland and the north of England, means 'low-lying, level ground by the side of a river.' Hale, used in Lanes, and Lines, and the Midland counties, means (1) 'a piece of flat, alluvial land by the side of a river; a sandbank ' ; (2) ' a triangular corner of land, a " gair " ; a bank or strip of grass, separating lands in an open field.' Eale, also spelt eel, is used in Northd., and means 'low, flat marshy ground by the side of a river; a haugh.'
These three words are all derived by N.E.D. from O.E. healh, to which the meaning ' nook,' ' corner ' is given. In O.E. charters the following forms occur in a number of local names :
Nom. and Ace. Sing. healh, halh, heal.
Dat. Sing. hale.
Nom. and Ace. PL healas, halas.
Dat. Plural. halan.
These forms are preceded by a noun in the gen. case, which is either a personal name or a common noun, or else the adj. east or west. They occur also as prefixes in the names Halhford, healhtune (see Middendorf, Altenglisches Flurnamenbuch, pp. 69, 70). How are we to interpret these forms ? Bosw. -Toller under healh says ' a word of doubtful meaning.' The only instances in O.E. of healh, halh cited by Bosw.-Toller, apart from place-names, are the two following : (1) ' On J?am hale his cyrcan,' Life of St Guthlac ; (2) ' on halum/ which translates in abditis of the Psalter. There is further a third instance, ' gefeall him in anan heale/ in the Vision of Leofric, edited in Trans, of the Philol. Soc. for 1908 by A. S. Napier. In each of the above cases the word in question clearly means 'corner,' 'recess.'
In Middle English hale means ' corner,' ' cranny,' as in two passages cited by Stratmann-Bradley : (1) 'in one swi)?e di^ele hale,' in the poem known as the Owl and the Nightingale, 1. 2. (2) 'From hale to hurne/ in
Miscellaneous Notes 241
an early Mid. English Psalter. Hume is O.E. hyrne, 'corner,' 'angle.' We are thus led to the conclusion that in the pi. ns. occurring in O.E. charters the element healh, halh must have the meaning of ' corner ' or ' angle.' How then are we to account for the meaning of the modern dialect words haugh, hale, and eale ? N.E.D. suggests that a ' haugh ' originally meant the 'corner or nook of land in the bend or angle of the river.' In support of this suggestion we may instance O.E. hamm, ' inner or hind part of the knee,' the modern form of which, ham, occurring frequently in pi. ns., is defined by E.D.D. as ' flat, low-lying pasture land near a stream or river.' According to H. Jellinghaus, Die Westfdlischen Orts- namen, the Low German word ham, which is the same as O.E. hamm, is used of a creek or cove, a corner of land by the water, generally overgrown with grass, and serving as pasture. Thence, he^says, M.L. German ham, hamme meant pratum, pascuum (Stenton, in his paper on Place-names of Berkshire, says that hamm and halh have much the same meaning, and wherever one is common in pi. ns., the other is rare). The meaning ' angle ' for halh also explains the second meaning of ' hale,' cited above from E.D.D., viz. ' a triangular corner of land.'
It remains to say a few words on the forms haugh, hale, eale. The first, the Middle English forms of which are halche, hawch, hawgh, is a normal development from O.E. halh ; cp. the Scottish saugh, sauch from O.E. salh 'willow.' The second is Middle English hale, derived from O.E. inflected cases, hale, halum, etc., which must have had a short stem-vowel in the late O.E. period, as well as a vowel length- ened after the dropping of h. In eale or eel the initial h has been dropped, as frequently in dialects, and the stem-vowel raised (after being fronted) to [I],' which is also quite usual in some northern dialects in the case of O.E. short a in an open syllable. In conclusion it may be noted that the Old Norse word hali ' den,' ' wild beast's lair,' is used in Norse place-names, according to R-ygh, with the meaning 'long, narrow, winding road,' also 'long, tongue-like projection on a hill or mountain.' It is possible that this Old Norse word may have been used in some parts of England and confused with the inflected forms of O.E. halh.
W. J. SEDGEFIELD. MANCHESTER.
M. L. R. IX. 16
242 Miscellaneous Notes
' HERKINALSON.'
This odd-looking word had some currency in the earlier half of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as the following quotations will show.
(1) Bp Jewel, A Defence of the Apologie Part 4 (ed. 1567), p. 380, in a lively handling of the legend of Pope Joan, writes :
For thus he saithe in effects, What if the Pope were Hermaphroditus, an Herkinalson, that is to saie, a man, and a woman bothe in one ?
(2) T. Kendall, Flowers of Epigrams (1577) sig. A (= Spenser Society's reprint p. 17):
My mothers tyme of trauaile came,
her throwes and thrutches past : A mungrill Herkinalson, she
did bryng me forthe at last.
This is a rendering of the line
lam, qui sum natus, Hermaphroditus eram
of a well-known medieval epigram which may be found in Riese, Anthologia Latina No. 786, or in Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min. vol. 4, p. 114.
(3) Arthur Golding, The Trewnesse of the Christian Religion (1587), ch. xxvi, p. 458 :
Concerning the creation of Man, the ^Egiptians say hee was created both Male and female. Herevpon Plato gathereth that he was a Manwoman or Herkinalson.
The original has
...Platon en a retire qu'il fut fait Androgyne, ou Hermaphrodite.
(De la Verite de la Religion chrestienne : par Philippes de Mornay, Anvers 1581, p. 620.)
(4) Lastly, in a long and entertaining enumeration of ' sprites ' and monsters, occurs this line :
herrnafrodites, herkinnalsons, Eatons> pickehornes, & lestrigoni.
The Buggbears in, iii, 71, in R. W. Bond's Early Plays from the Italian p. 117. The date of this anonymous composition is very probably circa 1565.
These instances of the word leave us in no doubt as to its meaning. Its etymology is not so evident. (Mr Bond, in his note on the Buggbears passage, has made a suggestion improbable as to form and bearing no relation to the meaning of the word.) Can it be that ' Herkinalson ' was deliberately invented by some Tudor wit as a vernacular rendering of ' Hermaphroditus ' — that it is made up of a male and female English
Miscellaneous Notes 243
name ? The latter part will then represent ' Alison.' The dissyllabic form actually occurs in Jacke Jugeler, where the character styled in the Dramatis Personae 'Ales trype and go1 ' appears later as ' Aulsoon tripe and goo ' (ed. Grosart p. 40). The former part, ' Herkin/ looks like a diminutive of ' Herry ' or ' Harry.' Such diminutives were fairly numerous — ' Jankin,' ' Wilkin,' ' Tomkin,' etc. Of ' Herkin ' or ' Harkin ' I have as yet come across no instance in our early literature ; but it has survived (like Hodgkin, Wilkins, etc.) in the surnames Harkin and Harkins.
WALTER WORRALL. OXFORD.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF 'BUCKRAM.'
In the New English Dictionary the etymology of this word is discussed at some length, but inconclusively, the final verdict being that 'of the ultimate etymology nothing is really known.' Among other suggested derivations that from Bokhara is mentioned, only to be rejected. Yet this is the derivation accepted unhesitatingly by MM. Hatzfeld and Darmesteter in their Dictionnaire General, in which bougran is described as ' deriv6 de Boukhara, ville d'Asie, d'ou venait au moyen age ce tissu, beaucoup plus fin que le bougran de nos jours. Le suffixe de derivation (an non ain) indique que le mot fran9ais est emprunte a une forme italienne aujourd'hui inusitee, bucherano.' I now find this etymology endorsed by the distinguished philologist, M. Antoine Thomas, who in a note on the word bocaran, in his edition of L' Entree d'Espagne, recently issued by the ' Societe des Anciens Textes Fran^ais,' says ' Bocaran designe proprement une etoffe fabriquee a Boukhara.'
PAGET TOYNBEE.
BURNHAM, BUCKS.
Two ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF SCHILLER'S ' WALLENSTEIN.'
1. In modern bibliographies (e.g. Goedeke, and Rea, Schiller's Dramas and Poems in England, London, 1906, p. 146) the list of translations of Schiller's Wallenstein begins with Coleridge's translation of the Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod, 1800, and passes then to ^George Moir's translation of these dramas in 1827.
1 i.e., Alice Trip-and-go.
16—2
244 Miscellaneous Notes
The Biographia Dramatica of Baker, Reed and Jones, 1812, how- ever, records the following (Vol. ill, p. 149) : ' The Piccolomini s. Drama, in five acts ; with a Prelude, entitled, Wallensteiris Camp. Written by Frederic Schiller and rendered into English by a Gentleman. 8°. 1806. In this translation, Schiller himself would hardly recognise his own drama. Never performed.' An entry in Lowndes's Bibliographical Manual reads : ' Piccolomini, a drama, translated, Lond. 1805. 8°.' It is in all likelihood this translation which is also noticed in the Monthly Review, Vol. 50 (1806), p. 329 : ' The Piccolomini' s, a Drama in five Acts. From the German of Schiller. 8°. Chappie. This Drama is so disfigured by the translator, that it would be an act of great injustice to criticise it as a work of Schiller.'
Of this translation, however, which is not in the British Museum, there would appear to have been hitherto no other record than the above. But the University Library here has a copy of a translation of Wallenstein, which is probably what is referred to in the above entries. It comprises Wallenstein s Camp and The Piccolomini s. In the copy before me, they are bound together, but, as each has its own pagination, they may have been published separately. Only The Piccolomini s has a title-page. It reads : ' The Piccolomini's : a Drama in five acts. From the German of Schiller ... Albion Press: published by J. Cundee, [London], and sold by C. Chappie, 1805.' But though the title-page of the Camp is wanting, the paper, print and general arrangement leave little room for doubt that the two translations belong to one another. Any possible doubt is removed by the fact that the water-mark on the paper in both parts is ' 1804.' It may therefore be taken as certain that the date of the Camp is also 1805.
The preface to the Piccolominis concludes with the following sentence : ' This play, with its sequel, " The Death of Wallenstein," intended for publication in a few days, are considered the Chef d'Oeuvres of the incomparable Schiller, whose transcendent genius, the English author is conscious of his utter inability to transfuse, or do justice to in the present work.' (The italics are mine.) But even the Biographia Dramatica does not record this translation of Wallensteins Tod. If, however, it was actually completed (and the preface is so exact about the matter that one might fairly come to that conclusion), this transla- tion has the distinction of being the earliest complete translation of Wallenstein in English.
Further, whether or not Wallensteins Tod was actually translated, it is in any case much the earliest translation of the Lager, Leveson
Miscellaneous Notes 245
Gower's translation, which has been hitherto regarded as the earliest, only appearing in 1830.
None of the contemporary bibliographical works afford any clue as to the identity of the translator.
2. But Leveson Gower's translation of the Lager (1830) cannot even be allowed the second place in regard to chronology. George Moir, who published a translation of the Piccolomini and Wallensteins Tod in 1827, has not, till lately, been credited with a translation of the Lager. In fact, in his preface of 1827 he says himself: 'Unfortunately this
singular drama [the Lager] defies translation The idea has therefore
been abandoned after several attempts and with much reluctance.' But The Cabinet of Friendship, a Tribute to the Memory of the Late John Aitken (London, 1834) has on pp. 190 — 244 a complete translation of the Lager, bearing the name of George Moir. There is a note on p. 190 to this effect : ' The following translation was completed, and consider- able extracts from it published in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. IX, some months prior to the appearance of Lord Leveson Gower's trans- lation.' No. ix of the Foreign Quarterly Revieiu appeared in November 1829. The extracts of which Moir speaks occurred in a review on pp. 41 — 73 (obviously by Moir himself) of ' Walstein. Tragedie en cinq Actes. Par P. Ch. Liadieres; represented sur le Theatre Fran£ais le 22 Octobre, 1828. Paris 1829.' The review deals mainly with Wallensteins Lager, which it describes and appreciates with only occasional reference to the French work. The extracts amount altogether to about 700 lines and include the whole of Scene I, the whole of Scene VI and the Sermon of the Capuchin. They differ only occasionally, and only in individual words, from the complete translation in the Cabinet of Friendship.
According to Moir's statement, therefore, the translation must have been completed in 1829. It was probably this translation which was reprinted in Boston in 1837 (see Lieder, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. vui, 1909, pp. 272 — 273).
Moir is therefore the second, if not the first, translator of the whole of Wallenstein in English.
HERBERT SMITH. GLASGOW.
246 Miscellaneous Notes
SHERIDAN'S 'VERSES TO THE MEMORY OF GARRICK' AND SCHILLER'S 'PROLOG ZUM WALL'ENSTEIN.'
Soweit rair bekannt ist, wurde noch nie auf die Ahnlichkeit auf- merksam gemacht, die zwischen Sheridan's Verses to the Memory of Garrick und Schillers Prolog zum Wallenstein besteht. Beide Dichter betonen die Verganglichkeit der Schauspielkunst im Vergleich zu der Kunst des Malers, des Bildhauers und des Dichters. 'Schnell und spurlos geht des Mimen Kunst, Die wunderbare, an dem Sinn voriiber ' : 1 All perishable ! like th' electric fire.' Beide zeigen, wie der Mime muss 'geizen mit der Gegenwart'; Sheridan fiihrt diese Ausnutzung jeden Augenblicks starker aus seinem Ziele entsprechend, Garricks Kunst zu preisen. Beide aber stimmen tiberein, dass der Mime
Muss seiner Mitwelt machtig sich versichern Und im Gefiihl der Wiirdigsten und Besten Ein lebend Denkmal sich erbaun — So nimmt er Sich seines Namens Ewigkeit voraus, Denn wer den Besten seiner Zeit genug Gethan, der hat gelebt fiir alle Zeiten.
Where is the blest memorial that ensures
Our Garrick's fame? — whose is the trust? — 'Tis yours....
Still in your heart's dear record bear his name ; Cherish the keen regret that lifts his fame ; To you it is bequeath'd — assert the trust, And to his worth — 'tis all you can — be just.
And with soft sighs disperse th' irreverent dust Which Time may strew upon his sacred bust.
Die Ahnlichkeit des Versbaus ist offerisichtlich.
KARL HOLL. READING.
AN EPISODE IN VICTOR HUGO'S 'NOTRE DAME DE PARIS.'
At its very appearance Notre Dame de Paris was welcomed by reviewers as a work remarkable for its erudition. ' Le premier volume surtout renferme toutes les connaissances que Ton acquiert dans une vie de benedictin1/ wrote one critic. Another said : ' Pourquoi M. Victor Hugo ne se presenterait-il pas a 1' Academic des Belles Lettres? S'il faut avoir fait des preuves de 1'erudition, il y en a dans ce livre2.' Theophile Gautier in his Prospectus pour Notre Dame de Paris mentioned the
1 L. (Paul Lacroix) Mercure du XIXe siecle, mars— avril, 1831.
2 N. (Nisard) Journal des Debats, 15 juin — 11 juillet, 1831, published also in Nisard, Ecole romantique (1891), p. 121.
Miscellaneous Notes 247
' science de benedictin,' the ' deux milles in-folios compulses/ ' une erudition a effrayer un Allemand du moyen age acquise tout expres1.' Even Salvandry in his Discours de Reception spoke of the 'connaissance minutieuse de 1'epoque, la fidelite inepuisable des moeurs et du langage2.'
Nor is this the fulsome praise of flattering admirers. Some years ago, a French critic and philologist, M. Edmond Huguet, published a considerable study of some of the sources of Notre Dame, following Hugo's own indication of his authorities. The inevitable conclusion is that Hugo knew some of them a fond and had read others with great care. In fact it might be said of almost every one of Hugo's state- ments what M. Huguet says of the description of the Palais ' si detaillee ' and ' tres documentee ' — ' a 1'appui de chaque phrase on peut citer un texte3.'
In that work swarming with wonderful descriptions, one of the most striking, it may be remembered, is that of the attack on the Cathedral by the ' truands.' ' Indeed, nothing can exceed the vivid painting, the rich colours, and the fine grotesque illuminations4 ' of this scene. In his wild efforts to save Esmeralda, Quasimodo from the top of the Cathedral hurls down on the surging mob an enormous beam which sends them scattering in all directions. Soon, however, the attack is resumed. Frenzied with anguish, Quasimodo suddenly notices the ' gouttieres de pierre qui se degorgeaient immediatement au dessus de la grande porte.' His plan was quickly formed. Workmen had been repairing about the roof. They had left wood and lead. These Quasimodo places ' devant le trou des deux gouttieres, il y mit le feu avec sa lanterne.' The ' truands ' were gathering for a last sally — ' un hurlement, plus epouvantable encore que celui qui avait eclate et expire sous le madrier, s'eleva au milieu d'eux. Ceux qui ne criaient pas, ceux qui vivaient encore, regarderent. Deux jets de plomb fondu tombaient du haut de 1'edifice au plus epais de la cohue'. . . . ' Audessous de cette flamme, audessous de la sombre balustrade a trefles de braise, deux gouttieres en gueules de monstres vomissaient sans relache cette pluie ardente qui detachait son ruissellement argente' sur les tenebres de la fa£ade inferieure5.'
1 Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, pp. 91 — 94. All the above are quoted in extenso in the appendix to Notre Dame de Paris, Ollendorf , MDCCCCIV.
2 Quoted by L. Maigron, Le Roman historique, 1898, p. 332, note 1.
3 Huguet, Quelques Sources de 'Notre Dame, de Paris,' R.H.L.F., 8e annee (1901). pp. 48, 425, 622.
4 Gentleman's Magazine, January, 1834, p. 82.
5 Notre Dame, Livre x, Ch. iv, Un maladroit ami.
248 Miscellaneous Notes
However striking, masterly, and powerful this scene may be, it is not all made up of flimsy poetic fancy : at bottom it has its gerrn of truth. Such things as Hugo here describes did actually take place. The following seems to be a case in point, where we have the fire, the edifice, the patriarch, and his company celebrating their feast.
' Albert Goffuin, chapelain, est condamne par sentence du 7 Janvier 151f sur la requisition du promoteur du chapitre a huit jours de prison pour avoir jete* du feu du haut du portail ou il etait place sur le patriarche et ses consors dans le temps qu'ils celebraient leur fete la veille de 1'Epiphanie1.'
May we not, with some show of truth say of Hugo what he himself said of his great model in the. field of historical romance : * Peu d'historiens sont aussi fideles que ce romancier2 ' ?
W. A. M°LAUGHLIN.
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN, U.S.A.
NOTES ON THE 'AMPHITRION' AND 'Los MENEMNOS' OF JUAN DE TIMONEDA.
Three plays of Juan de Timoneda, La Comedia de Amphitrion, La Comedia de los Menemnos and Comedia llamada Cornelia, were published in 15593. The Comedia de Amphitrion contains a prologue recited by Bromio, an old shepherd; Pascuala, his daughter and two young shepherds, Morato and Roseno. After an introductory song, Bromio urges Pascuala to declare her preference for one of her suitors, Morato or Roseno, both of whom have served her faithfully. The maiden replies that she will indicate her choice by a sign, and turning to the young men, says :
' Sus : Toma, Roseno, esta mi guirnalda, y dame la tuya, Morato. Declarado queda ya, padre mio, a quien mas destos ama mi corazon.'
After her departure, the lovers dispute as to the meaning of her enigmatical reply. Each adduces good reasons why he should be
1 Dom Grenier, Introd. a Vhist. gen. de la Province de Picardie, 1856 — Mem. de la Soc. des Antiquaires de Picardie; Docs, inedits, in, p. 371, referred to by E. K. Chambers,
. The Medieval Stage (i, 304), who mentions in the same connection, among others, Kigollot and Hide who note the same case. It is to the kindness of my friend and colleague, Professor C. P. Wagner, that I owe the transcript of the text as quoted.
2 Hugo, Walter Scott : a propos de Quentin Durward in Litterature et Philosophic Melees.
3 These three plays are re-published in the Obras completas de Juan de Timoneda publicadas por la Sociedad de Bibliofilos valencianos, Vol. i, Valencia, 1911. Los Menemnos was re-printed by Moratin, Origenes del teatro espanol, Biblioteca de autores espafioles, Vol. n, and by Ochoa, Tesoro del teatro espanol, Vol. i, Paris, 1838.
Miscellaneous Notes 249
considered the favoured one, and Bromio finally suggests that they refer the question to the most subtle and enamoured wits in the land. The young shepherds agree, and Bromio addresses the audience as follows : ' Nobles y apassionados Senores y senoras : la quistion suso dicha dexamos en mano de vuestras mercedes para que declaren a qual destos dos zagales ama y quiere mas esta zagala; que manana bolueremos por la respuesta.' Morato and Roseno then state the argument of the play, and the prologue ends with a song beginning :
Dinos, zagala, qual de los dos es el tu amado?
This casuistical discussion is derived from the first question in the fourth part of Boccaccio's Filocolo. It will be recalled . that while searching for Biancofiore, Filocolo is obliged by reason of a storm to stop at Naples, where he is cordially received by Fiamrnetta and her merry companions. One afternoon, Fiammetta suggests that they amuse themselves by proposing questioni d'amore for solution to a king who shall be elected by her comrades. She herself, however, is chosen as queen, and thirteen subtle questions are offered of the same type as the troubadours discussed in their tenzoni. The first is identical with the subject treated in the prologue of Timoneda's A mphitrion.
In the Italian version, a young girl is urged by her mother to express her preference for one of her two suitors. 'Disse la giovane: cio rni piace; e rirniratili amenduni alquanto, vide che 1' uno avea in testa una bella ghirlanda di fresche erbette e di fiori, e 1' altro senza alcuna ghirlanda dimorava. Allora la giovane, che similemente in capo una ghirlanda di verdi fronde avea, levo quella di capo a se, e a colui che senza ghirlanda le stava davanti la mise in capo ; appresso quella che 1' altro giovane in capo avea ella prese e a se la pose, e loro lasciati stare, si torno alia festa,' etc. Except that Timoneda substituted the father for the mother of the maiden, the two versions agree in their essential parts1.
1 This theme is first suggested in the Babylon ica of lamblichus of the second century A.D. and was frequently treated in medieval and Renaissance poetry. See the interesting article of Signor Pio Kajna, 'Una questione d'amore,' published in Raccolta di studii critici dedicata ad Alessandro D'Ancona, Firenze, 1901, pp. 553 — 68, and Adolfo Gaspary, Storia della letteratura italiana, Vol. n, parts prima, pp. 325 — 26. The Congrega dei Kozzi of Siena amused themselves with Dubbi, Casi and Quistioni of the same type, C. Mazzi, La Congrega dei Eozzi, Firenze, 1882, Vol. i, 124 ff., and similar games were popular in Italian society in the sixteenth century, Eenier, Giorn. stor. della left, italiana, Vol. xm, 382 ff.
Somewhat similar questions are discussed in the Clarco y Florisea of Nunez de Keinoso, Biblioteca de autores espafioles, Vol. in, pp. 442 — 43. See the interesting article
250 Miscellaneous Notes
The episode of the Thirteen Questions was translated into Spanish by D. Diego Lopez cle Ayala, assisted by Diego de Salazar. This translation was published at Seville in the year 1546 with the title Laberinto de Amor, and again at Toledo the same year with the title, Trece questiones muy graciosas sacadas del Philoculo del famoso Juan Bocacio. It has already been pointed out that the anonymous Spanish Question de Amor1 treats a subject analogous to the second and fifth questions of the Filocolo. The theme of the gifts recalls Lope de Rueda's Coloquio llamado Prendas de -Amor.
La Comedia de Amphitrion purports to be a translation, or rather an adaptation, of the Amphitruo of Plautus. It is certain, however, that Timoneda simply made a stage version of the translation of the Amphitruo by Francisco Lopez de Villalobos which first appeared in the year 1515. The two versions agree textually in many places and the last scene of Timoneda's play is derived with unimportant changes from the complimiento de la comedia, sacado de otro original, in which Villalobos aims to offer a more satisfactory ending to the Latin play2.
The Comedia de los Menemnos is preceded by a prologue in which Cupid and three shepherds, Ginebro, Climaco and Claudino, are the characters. The shepherds, enamoured of the shepherdess Temisa, present themselves before Cupid, asking him to decide which of them the maiden should prefer. Claudino has boasted to Temisa of his physical strength, Climaco has assured her of his sincerity and generosity, while Ginebro has urged his suit on the plea of his prudence and wisdom. Cupid asks which of the lovers she has chosen, and Climaco replies that Ginebro has been the favoured one. Cupid approves this choice, declaring that neither the strength of Hercules nor the generosity of Alexander the Great will satisfy a discreet woman, but only the fruits of real knowledge. The rejected suitors are satisfied with this decision, and recite the argument of the play.
The subject of this prologue is identical with the theme treated in the third questione d'amore of the Filocolo. One of the ladies tells Fiammetta that from among her suitors, she has chosen three as most worthy of her love : ' de' quali tre, 1' uno di corporate fortezza credo
of Professor Eudolph Schevill, Some Forms of the Riddle Question and the Exercise of the Wits in Popular Fiction and Formal Literature, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, Vol. n, No. 3, p. 223. Certain casos de amor are proposed in the prologue to Timoneda's Comedia llamada Cornelia, and a question de amor forms the subject of the prologue to Alonso de la Vega's Comedia de la Duquesa de la Rosa (1569).
1 Pio Eajna, Le Questioni d'amore nel Filocolo, Romania, Vol. xxxi, pp. 28—81, and Menendez y Pelayo, Orifjenes de la novela, Vol. i, pp. ccci — cccii and cccxxvii — cccxxx.
2 The version of Lopez Villalobos is re-published in Vol. xxxvi of the Biblioteca de autores espanoles.
Miscellaneous Notes
251
che avanzerebbe il buono Ettore, tan to e ad ogni prova vigoroso e forte; la cortesia e la liberalita del secondo e tanta, che la sua fama per ciascun polo credo che suoni ; il terzo e di sapienza pieno tanto, che gli altri savii avanza oltra misura.' She concludes by asking the advice of Fiammetta, who decides the question in favour of the learned man, as is done by Cupid in Timoneda's prologue.
The Comedia de los Menemnos purports to be a translation of the Menaechmi. As a matter of fact, Timoneda simply borrowed the most important incidents from Plautus and gave the new version a Spanish setting and atmosphere. The parasite Peniculus has become the conventional simple and the scenes in which he takes part show the widest divergences from the Latin original. The figures of the doctor Auerroyz and his servant Lazarillo were probably borrowed from Ariosto's II Negromante, which is also the chief source of Timoneda's Comedia llamada Cornelia. The Amphitrion and Los Menemnos are interesting as the first attempts to produce Plautus on the Spanish stage, and the relation of the prologues to Boccaccio's Filocolo offers additional proof of the dependence of the Spanish pastoral drama upon Italian models.
J. P. WlCKERSHAM CRAWFORD. PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
RUMANIAN 'GEANA.'
In Rumanian we find geand < gena and gene < genae beside bine < bene, tindr1 < teneru. The difference between geand and gene is normal, due to the influence of the final vowels2; but that between gene and bine seems strange, the i of bine being a regular development. Tiktin assumes that Latin gena had long e3 ; but it is hard to see how that would help matters, in view of normal i < e before n : cind < cena, plind < plena, vine4 < uenae. The difficulty can be explained, however, if we assume that quantity was distinguished in early Rumanian. Italian has long stressed vowels in vedo and vidi, but short ones in vedono and visto, free vowels being long in paroxytones but not else- where5. Something of this kind must have once existed in Rumanian
1 Also tmar with vowel-harmony ; compare inimaior*inima < anima, femeie <.familia, iiorod = Slavonic narod 'folk.'
2 Tiktin, Rumanisches Elementarbuch. Heidelberg, 1905, p. 32.
3 Tiktin, I.e., p. 24.
4 Singular vinii, with i (a sound like Polish y) due to v ; compare vaz < *vedzu < uideo. r> Malagoli, Ortoepia e ortografia italiana moderna, Milano, 1905, p. 164.
252 Miscellaneous Notes
and the other Romanic tongues : compare French dette < debita and doit < debet.
The normal developments of Rumanian stressed vowels are as follows : a < a, ie <e, e<e, e < /i, i <l, o < o, u<u. Closer sounds are developed before intervocalic n, and before any nasal followed by an oral consonant: lina<lana, vine < uenit, bun <bonu, f ring <frango, minte < mente, munte < monte. But double nasals cause no change : an < annu, lemn < liijnu1 (lignu), somn < somnu. A following open vowel causes fractural developments : tot < totu, but toatd < tota, toate < totae ; negru < nigru, but neagrd < nigra ; piatrd < petra ; vede < *veade (= Macedonian veade = Istrian vede) < *vede < uidet. The curious development e < ea < e is attested by words that have lost e, as aved = avere'2 < habere.
As Rumanian distinguishes ie < e and e < e, we may consider its primitive vowel-system to have been a e e i o u. The various altera- tions of e and e can be explained as follows :
|
teJcso |
teksat |
tenet |
genae |
gena |
tempus |
teneru |
plena, |
|
UX- |
itex- |
U- |
$*- |
K- |
tem- |
te- |
pie-, |
|
tet- |
tee- |
tee- |
dzee- |
d&et- |
tem- |
te- |
pie-, |
|
tic- |
tl€- |
tif- |
dzie- |
dzie- |
tem- |
te- |
pie-, |
|
tsie- |
tsie- |
tsie- |
<&- |
dzf- |
tem- |
te- |
pie-, |
|
tse- |
tse- |
tsi- |
<&e- |
dze- |
tim- |
ti- |
pli-, |
|
tse- |
tsea- |
tsi- |
dzea- |
dzea- |
tim- |
ti- |
pli-, |
|
tses |
tseasd |
tsine |
dzene |
dzand |
timp |
tindr |
plind. |
In the foregoing table all hyphenated forms are theoretic ; stressless syllables are left out, as their relative chronology can hardly be deter- mined. The time when % was lost is not known; in a few words we find ps<fs<'xs< ks, parallel with normal pt<ft<yt< kt.
Those who are familiar with the history of French arid Portuguese know that a checking nasal causes change more readily than a nasal of the next syllable. We may therefore assume, as the first step, that close e was developed in the derivative of tempus, while the sound e remained open in tenet. At the same time short close e was formed in the first syllable of teneru, because of nasal influence, while tenet (tenet) and *$ene kept stressed long e. Such a difference in the treatment of long and short vowels has many historic parallels: modern Greek i<e<a beside a < a < a ; English o = Scotch e < a (whole = hale) beside less altered derivatives of short a; German a<e (Tat 'deed')
1 For Latin gn = yn, see my note on lignu in the Modern Language Review for last October (vin, pp. 486 ff.). The symbol e means open e ; 3 = Rumanian a ; x~ German ch in acht ; ij = English final ng ; Q = Hungarian gy.
2 All infinitives have double forms, with and without -re.
Miscellaneous Notes 253
beside e < e ; Germanic o <o beside a < o ; Slavonic a < a beside o < a ; French e or ai from free a, beside checked a kept nearly unchanged. The Rumanian sound e developed through ee to ie, and the z was absorbed by z ; in the same way i has been absorbed by s in the Tuscan utterance of cielo1. Later the i of ie altered t to te, parallel with dece > *diece > zece and dico > zic, which are still pronounced with dz in Moldavia2; and by partial assimilation I'e became ie. Before a checking nasal, and before intervocalic n, each vowel became a degree closer : ie >ii = i; e>i; e>e. Then the semi-vowel i (perhaps voiceless) was lost after s, the earlier development of si to si being no longer active. When *plen9 had become plin&, there occurred fractures due to a following open vowel, and in some cases simple vowels were formed again : these changes need not be discussed here, as they do not concern the rest of the development. The key to the whole problem lies in the fact that dz existed much earlier than ts, and thus the first elements of ie and ie disappeared at different times.
EDWIN H. TUTTLE. NEW HAVEN, CONN., U.S.A.
i Malagoli, I.e., p. 28. 2 Tiktin, I.e., p. 60.
REVIEWS.
The Cambridge History of English Literature. Edited by Sir A. W. WARD and A. R. WALLER. Vol. x. The Age of Johnson. Cam- bridge: University Press. 1913. 8vo. xv + 562pp.
The tenth volume of The Cambridge History of English Literature brings its account to the death of Johnson, reserving, however, for later treatment the plays of Sheridan and the earlier writings of Burke, Bentham, Blake, Cowper and Crabbe, as well as various minor authors like Thomas Amory, Henry Brooke, as playwright, and Thomas Day, when the bulk or tone of their writings belong to the next age. For the most part, too, the authors here dealt with did their work after Johnson came to London. Professor Nettleton's chapter ' The Drama and the Stage,' Mr Thompson's ' Thomson and Natural Description in Poetry,' and Professor Saintsbury's ' Young, Collins and Lesser Poets of the Age of Johnson,' indeed, go back to a day before The Beggars Opera and The Dunciad ; Professor Ker's * Literary Influences of the Middle Ages ' naturally begins with Hickes and Temple ; Mr Shaw's ' Literature of Dissent' covers the period 1660 — 1760; Archdeacon Hutton's 'Divines' extends from Samuel Johnson 'the Whig' (d. 1703) to the Wesleys. But to a notable degree the subjects of the book belong, by chronology as by temper; to the generation which takes its literary name from Dr Johnson.
It will be noticed that the title originally announced for this volume, The Rise of the Novel : Johnson and his Circle, has been modified to The Age of Johnson. As a matter of fact, however, the novelists take the place of honour in the first chapters. M. Cazamian, opening the book with ' Richardson,' furnishes a remarkably compact exposition and a just and subtle critique. His analysis of Richardson's first popularity and subsequent loss of it, and his account of the foreign influence of the novels, calls for special acknowledgment. Mr Child, following with * Fielding and Smollett,' who share a chapter, emphasizes biographical facts rather than criticism. Disputed points he avoids. For instance, he does not even mention An Apology for the Life of Mrs Shamela Andrews (1741), already cited by M. Cazamian (p. 6), which, although one cannot be sure Fielding wrote it, was before Joseph Andrews in parodying Pamela and first gave to Squire B. the fuller name of Booby. Professor Vaughan writes on ' Sterne, and the Novel of his Times.' The discussion of Sterne's qualities is full, the analysis of his sentimentalism
Reviews 255
accurate. Mackenzie and Brooke, the romance of terror as practised by Walpole and Clara Reeve, and the ever-delightful Fanny Burney come in for due notice.
One misses in these chapters, however, adequate comment on the flood of minor fiction which had begun to rise before Johnson's death and which indicates, as much as the work of the greater men, the tastes of the time. Francis Coventry's Pompey the Little, or the Life and Adventures of a Lap-Dog (1751), and Charles Johnstone's Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea (1760), chief examples of a long-continued tradition, are not mentioned, although Chrysal is cited in a later chapter for its account of Medmenham (p. 524) ; Sarah Fielding, credited in passing with David Simple, is denied a bibliography; the testimony of Charlotte Lennox's Female Quixote (1752) and George Colman's Polly Honeycombe (1760) to the contemporary fashion in heroines, is overlooked. Rasselas, of course, and The Vicar of WakefielcL, are dis- cussed elsewhere, as are the novels of Richard Graves, who receives high and, in the main, merited praise from Archdeacon Hutton in the half chapter on ' The Warwickshire Coterie.' But taken as a whole, these various treatments still leave to special books on the novel the task of tracing its rise and flowering in the eighteenth century.
Certain additions to the bibliography would assist the close student : Charlotte E. Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners (New York, 1911) ; George Saintsbury, The English Novel (London, 1913) ; Fielding, Selected Essays, ed. G. H. Gerould (Boston and New York, 1905); A. Wood, Einfluss Fieldings auf die deutsche Literatur (Yokohama, 1895) ; Austin Dobson, ' Fielding's Library/ in Eighteenth Century Vignettes, in ; F. B. Barton, Etude sur I influence de Laurence Sterne en France au dix-huitieme siecle (Paris, 1911); Walter Bagehot, ' Sterne and Thackeray,' in Literary Studies, II ; Sir Walter Scott, 'Johnstone/ 'Mac- kenzie,' 'Bage/ in Lives of the Novelists : William Beckford, The Episodes of Vathek, ed. L. Melville (London, 1912); Austin Dobson, ' The Female Quixote,' in Eighteenth Century Vignettes, I, and ' Polly Honeycombe,' ibid., in; J. ten Brink, De roman in brieven, 1740 — 1840; eine proem van vergelijkende letterkundige geschiedenis (Amsterdam, 1889).
Johnson and his immediate circle, after more than a century of dis- cussion, present a real problem to the critic who wishes to steer equally clear of triteness and eccentricity. Mr Nichol Smith, dealing with 'Johnson and Bos well/ and Mr Dobson, with 'Goldsmith/ have solved the problem by keeping close to facts, giving precise and detailed biographies, and building upon facts such comment as is needed to complete the account. Mr Nichol Smith's chapter, the longest in the book, scrupu- lous, sensible, has the virtue of remembering Johnson's works even in the presence of Johnson the man, for Mr Nichol Smith believes, very justly, that Johnson's ' writings give us his more intimate thoughts, and take us into regions which were denied to his conversation' (p. 158). The period of writing, consequently, comes in for larger proportions than the period of talking ; Johnson's books and ideas receive more attention than his personal habits. The treatment of Boswell is shrewd and
256 Reviews
reasonable. As for Goldsmith, he here finds a critic whom tastes, learning, and art have fitted for the delicate task of interpreting an author scarcely second to any in English for essential charm. Lightly, firmly, pointedly, Mr Dobson has built up the figure of Goldsmith out of the facts of his life and work.
The bibliographies to these chapters are admirable, and that for 'Johnson and Boswell' particularly full. Chalmers' English Poets, how- ever, ought hardly to be called a later edition of Johnson's Poets (p. 462), even though it includes the Lives. One might add Dr Johnson and Fanny Burney. Being the Johnsonian Passages from the Works of Mme DArblay; ed. C. B. Tinker (New York, ' 1911), and H. Sollas Gold- smiths Einfluss in Deutschland im 18. Jahrhundert (Heidelberg, 1903).
Other members of Johnson's circle are noticed in other chapters. Garrick appears both as actor, in Professor Nettleton's chapter, and as letter- writer, in Mr Wheatley's 'Letter- Writers.' This last chapter takes account, likewise, of the correspondence of Fanny Burney, Hannah More, and Mrs Elizabeth Montagu, and of the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, as well as of such persons of note, though not precisely followers of Johnson, as Horace Walpole, Lord Chesterfield, and Gilbert White. A result of this grouping is that Reynolds and White, while treated with discrimination in the text, seem from Mr Wheatley's biblio- graphy never to have been discussed except by various editors of the Discourses and Selborne, or, indeed, to have written anything else. Reynold's three letters to The Idler, however, are given in the Johnson bibliography.
The literary heretics of the age receive due consideration. Mr Thompson's discussion of Thomson emphasizes ' the attraction which Milton exercised upon the method of natural description and upon the diction of The Seasons' (p. 96). In his analysis and illustrations of the pictorial methods of Thomson, Mr Thompson excels; his evidence, in the bibliography, as to Thomson's foreign influence is careful, although he might perhaps to advantage have cited Texte's Rousseau, Bk ill, Ch. iii, for notes on Thomson's reception in France. With Thomson are included Jago, Somervile, also spoken of in ' The Warwickshire Coterie,' and Lyttelton, some of whose writings have been omitted, it does not appear on what principle, from his bibliography, along with his Memoirs and Correspondence from 1734 — 73: ed. R. Phillimore (London, 1845). A more important omission is Myra Reynolds, The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth (Chicago, 1909, 2nd ed.). Professor Saintsbury, too, touches figures whom Johnson did not wholly approve, in Young, Collins, Dyer, Shen- stone, and Akenside. As a rule, Professor Saintsbury agrees with Johnson ; Young is admitted to be 'a man of genius and a poet,' but censured for extraordinarily bad art ; Collins has been put with the ' lesser poets' because of the singular irregularity which makes Professor Saints- bury call him, at his worst, a mere ' poetaster of the eighteenth century ' (p. 143). Dyer and Green Professor Saintsbury likes ; he justifies Akenside and Smart; with Blair, Armstrong, Glover, Beattie, and
Reviews 257
Falconer he is kind but firm. One of the most interesting critical hints of the chapter is the suspicion that almost all eighteenth century blank verse was at least half-consciously burlesque (pp. 147 — 8). In the bibliography no reference is made to Collins, Poems, ed. W. C. Bronson (Boston, U.S.A., 1898) ; J. Schaaf, Richard Glover. Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1900); O. Daniel, William Shenstones 'Schoolmistress' und das Aufkommen des Kleinepos in der neuenglischen Liter atur (Berlin, 1908).
The late Mr D. C. Tovey's chapter on Gray has a peculiar interest as the last word spoken by a Gray specialist of long devotion. The few incidents of Gray's life are given in detail ; but even then space remains for close comment on the Elegy, The Progress of Poesy, and The Bard. Mr Tovey insists on the superiority of Gray's letters to Walpole's in ' depth and pathos ' (p. 135) ; he would not have been less interesting if he had cared to speak more of Gray's scholarship. For Mason, his predecessor in editing Gray's letters, Mr Tovey has no patience. Three contributions to the literature concerning Gray deserve mention which Mr Tovey does not make ; C. E. Norton, The Poet Gray as a Naturalist (Boston, U.S.A., 1903); H. E. Krehbiel, ' A Poet's Music,' in Music and Manners (New York, 1898); A. S. Cook, A Concordance to the English Poems of Thomas Gray (Boston and New York, 1908).
Gray, of course, is spoken of in the chapter on 'The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages,' where Professor Ker calls ' Gray's two translations from the Icelandic... far the finest result of those antiquarian studies' (p. 225). The account of ' those antiquarian studies ' here given must elicit admiration from every reader for its wide learning, its imperturb- able sense, and its sympathetic judgments in dealing with a subject which has too often suffered from the distortion of special pleaders. Medieval architecture, Professor Ker insists, had more to do with the new movement than medieval poetry, which was not always branded as 'Gothick': witness Addison's praise of Chevy Chace as opposed to the ' Gothick ' imitators of Cowley. Even Chatterton, though he cared for medieval life and manners and wrote about them, yet kept his medieval tastes distinct from his poetry, in which his real master was Spenser. Professor Ker will not confuse medievalism with romanticism. The modest medievalism of Percy's Reliques, he says, has affected subsequent poetry more than Ossian or Walpole. But medieval studies did not disturb Johnson's rule as Ossian did. In his account of the Ossianic forgeries, Professor Ker, as scholar, points out that Macpherson was a ' historical and antiquarian fraud ' (p. 227), but, as critic, he soundly maintains that Goethe and Napoleon were not enthusiastic about the philological but the poetical qualities of the windy epics. The real bearings of this whole matter are not likely soon to be better stated.
Professor Nettleton's ' Drama and the Stage,' the most considerable treatment of the eighteenth century English drama as yet published, is in anticipation of the same author's recently announced English Drama of the Restoration and Eighteenth Century. A somewhat crowded text, accompanied by an excellent bibliography, outlines every
M. L. R. ix. 17
258 Reviews
dramatic tendency of the age, sentimental comedy, classical tragedy, pantomime, ballad opera, domestic tragedy ; defines the influence of Voltaire; records the stage activities of Fielding and their close at the Licensing Act ; discusses the career of Garrick ; and says what can be said about the reaction against sentimental comedy without encroaching upon the accounts of Goldsmith and Sheridan. Professor Nettleton's very wide researches make even minute corrections difficult, but it may be pointed out that Tlie Fatal Extravagance, conjecturally assigned by him to Aaron Hill (p. 434), has been since shown to be Hill's without any doubt (Dorothy Brewster, A aron Hill, New York, 1913, pp. 97-8).
Of the two chapters on ' Historians,' ' Hume and Modern Historians ' has been given to Mr William Hunt, and 'Gibbon,' with the other writers on ancient history, to Sir A. W. Ward. These are solid and well- balanced treatments, which allow Hume full praise for his art, Robertson for his considerable measure of historic sense, and Gibbon for his con- summate union of the qualities needed to make him the first of English historians, without, at the same time, any forgetfulness of the defects which the age imposed. The less important historical writers are judiciously reviewed.
The literature of theology has been divided between Archdeacon Hutton, who writes on the ' Divines,' and Mr Shaw, to whom fell ' The Literature of Dissent (1660 — 1760).' The first reverts more than once to ' the benumbing influence of Tillotson ' (p. 353), who is blamed for the dulness of his followers, a formidable censure. On the whole, the showing is not a rich one for the orthodox Church, if one excepts the exquisite Sacra Privata and the weighty work of Bishop Butler. The Methodists are more important, even though they must be held re- sponsible for James Hervey, and Whitefield and the Wesleys are per- sonages of enduring interest. Mr Shaw's is a worthy account of a notable movement which put forth literature of incredible dulness. Dissent, he shows, was tolerant only when laymen had taught tolerance. Thereafter, the chief tendency of the three dissenting bodies was towards unitarianism. In his appendix, a 'List of Nonconformist Academies (1680 — 1770),' Mr Shaw renders a real service.
Wilkes, Churchill, Junius are the three figures who fill the chapter by Mr Previte-Orton on 'Political Literature (1755 — 1775).' Interesting years and interesting men, they are treated in a clear and well-informed manner which shows Wilkes for the demagogue, and Churchill for the bludgeon, which he was. Mr Previte-Orton gives the arguments for Sir Philip Francis' authorship of the Junius letters, but he does not finally pronounce upon the matter. In reading his chapter one gets the sense of an astonishing violence of feeling in the political air and misses the impassioned eloquence of Burke.
As historian, Hume was praised chiefly for his art : as thinker, he is admitted by Professor Sorley in the chapter ' Philosophers ' ' to rank as the greatest of English philosophers' (p. 324). In his exposition and criticism of Hume's thought Professor Sorley is admirable. For Adam
Reviews 259
Smith he performs the same functions with the same success. Then he proceeds to outline the doctrines of the men who more or less needlessly followed Hume, Hartley, Tucker, Richard Price, Priestley, and the very popular Paley, closing with the powerful reply to Hume of Reid and the commonsense school which really makes an advance from the hope- less end to which Hume seemed to have brought speculation.
In spite of careful proof reading, some errors have escaped correction : p. 41, 1. 11, for North Briton read Briton ; p. 309, 1. 18, for John read Joseph ; p. 320, note, for Edinburgh Review, July 1808, read Knight's Quarterly Magazine, November 1824; p. 344, 1. 22, for (1771) read (1772); p. 387, 1. 22, for Micaijah read Michaijah ; p. 411, 1. 10, for W. H. read W. L. ; p. 412, 1. 4 from bottom, for W. read W. L. ; p. 421, 1. 17 from bottom, for Vienna (?) read Brieg; p. 436, 1. 13 from bottom,/or Scanderberg read Scanderbeg; p. 522, L 19 from bottom, for Roughead read Ruffhead ; p. 525, top, for X read XVII. In the indSx, Richard Cumberland (1631 — 1718) the bishop is confused with Richard Cumber- land (1732—1811) the dramatist.
CARL VAN DOREN.
NEW YORK.
Cynthia s Revels, or, The Fountain of Self -Love by Ben Jonson. Edited by ALEXANDER CORBIN JUDSON. (Yale Studies in English, XLV.) New York : Henry Holt and Co., 1912. 8vo. Ixxviii + 268 pp.
The present instalment of the Yale edition of Jonson's plays is a commendably careful, sane and accurate piece of work. The text is a very faithful reprint of that in the 1616 folio of the author's works and an attempt has been • made to collect all the readings in which different copies of the original vary. In some cases three distinct stages of correction can be traced in the various formes. Variation between different copies of the quarto of 1601 seerns also to be esta- blished. The evidence thus collected is of considerable interest, for one would have thought that Jonson of all people would have insisted on the printers awaiting his final corrections before beginning press work. Yet it seems probable that of certain sheets at least half the copies printed were more or less incorrect.
In the editorial apparatus the student will find most things that he needs to know, as well as some that he does not. The notes would have benefited, like those in most other volumes of this series, by greater severity of pruning. As it is, they rather create the impression that the editor felt bound to comment on every phrase of Jonson's that caught his attention, and what he found to say is not always very much to the point. It seems hardly wrorth while explaining that beaver hats were still highly esteemed in the time of Pepys, or that the chewing of cloves was common even in Jonson's day — -is it a habit now ? It was hardly worth recording a conjecture which in v, iv, 250 ' takes ye to be
17—2
260 Reviews
the English the' for it is a vulgar error to suppose that ye can ever stand for the. Possibly it is necessary to inform some readers that Phoebe is Diana, Priapus the ' god of procreation,' the Duke of Ferrara an important noble of Italy, or that by 'the Emperor' seventeenth- century writers meant ' the Emperor of Germany ' (which is incorrect). A venerable pedantry reappears when in the notes the name EVTHVS becomes the abortion ' Evthvs.' It was open to Jonson to leave the number ambiguous when he wrote ' philosophers stone ' : Dr Judson decides it wrongly when he prints ' Philosopher's Stone,' it is the lapis philosophorum. The note on the epilogue contains a portentously solemn rebuke of Jonson's overweening conceit. It was insolent and outrageous but it was not nai've, and Jonson was fully aware of the humour of it. His 'good resolution' if it ever existed was expressly made to be broken. As regards the ' piece of perspective ' (Ind. 154) there can be no reasonable doubt that painted scenery is meant. Critics, says the editor, ' incline to the view that there was none used at this time on the public stage,' and he cites Cambridge Hist of Eng. Lit. VI, 303. This reference is wrong; he is probably thinking of Mr Child's remark : * Painted scenery on the public stage there was none ' (ibid, vi, 269), though this is qualified by the admission that ' there can be little question that painted scenery was not unknown ' (ibid, vi, 271) in court and university performances. But Henslowe had the City of Rome among his properties at the Rose in 1598, and this can hardly have been anything else than a painted cloth.
The introduction, if somewhat discursive, is both useful and read- able. It was perhaps hardly worth while attempting to bring out the resemblance between Earle's and Jonson's gallants by means of a parallel analysis, for their features are somewhat commonplace. It is rather difficult to know what weight to attach to the similarities between Jonson's play and the academic Timon : the parallel extracts are very far from convincing. But the sections in which the editor discusses the allegory of the play and the identification of the characters are excellent. Of particular interest are the arguments advanced in support of Ward's suggestion that Acteon is Essex. But here there is an error. The date 1600, given to the play in the folio, implies that it was acted before 1 Jan. 1601, not 25 March as Dr Judson thinks (p. xxviii). For Jonsoii's practice was to begin the year as we do (see Thorndike, Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere, p. 17). Cynthia s Revels had, therefore been not only written but acted before Essex's death. Since, however, the editor anyhow regards the Acteon passages as insertions this does not affect his argument. It looks rather as though the allusions had been added for a court performance, but none by the Chapel Children is known between 22 Feb. 1601, when Essex was still alive, and 6 Jan. 1602, when we may presume that the quarto (entered 23 May 1601) had already appeared. And here in passing it may be regretted that the editor should merely have referred incidentally to the entry in the Stationers' Register, for though the identification of ' Narcissus the fountaine of self love ' with ' The
Reviews 261
Fountaine of Selfe-Loue, or Cynthias Reuells ' is probable, it cannot be regarded as beyond question.
A more careful revision of proofs might have obviated a certain number of errors in Dr Judson's pages. Furness surely did not print his text of Othello from the folio of 1632 (p. xxi) ? It was the division of scenes, not acts, that Gifford altered (p. xix). It is in Act in not Act n that Hedon and Anaides plot against Crites (p. 1). It was for a lean dearth, not a lean death, that Sordido prayed (p. Ixviii). In discussing Satiromastix (p. Ivi) it might perhaps have been worth observing that the blanketting which Horace gets is probably that with which Anaides threatens Crites in in, ii, 8.
I have already referred to Dr Judson's work upon the different states of the various sheets in point of correctness. By dint of great labour he has attained really valuable results, but his work is that of a man wholly unversed in such investigations. It is all the more to his credit that he has found his way through the maze of typographical technicalities. But I pity the literary student who tries to follow his account of them. For one thing he is lamentably careless in expression. He knows the difference between a copy and an edition, and draws attention to it, yet he writes 'she based her text on one edition, and printed, as foot-notes, the variants from two other copies of the same edition ' (p. xiii). He means ' one copy of a certain edition.' Again he writes ' the folio copy in the Yale University Library ' when he means the ' copy of the folio.' But he is also entirely ignorant of the technical vocabulary he requires. The ' whole sheet ' is not, as he says, * the two pages printed at the same time from a single forme.' ' Each sheet (technically speaking) of the folio consists of three sheets of four pages each ' (p. xiv) is nonsense. So are several other statements he makes. He struggles valiantly to make his meaning clear by inserting paren- theses such as : ' using " sheet " in the sense of one side of a signature ' (p. xvi), but in fact only wraps it in a denser fog. His remark, ' Apparently the binding was postponed till a large part of the printing, perhaps all of it, was done ' (p. xiv), shows that he has not realized that normally all the copies of a given sheet would be printed on one side before the printing of the opposite side was begun. All this confusion does not in the least impair the value of the tables he gives on pp. xv and 153, and those already familiar with the subject will have no difficulty in seeing what he is driving at ; but it will save editors and their readers a world of trouble if they will mark and remember the following elementary facts. A 'page' is what one naturally takes it to be. Two pages facing one another form an ' opening.' Two pages back to back constitute a ' leaf.' The number of leaves that are sewn together constitute a 'gathering' (also sometimes called a 'quire' or, less properly, a ' signature '). The whole piece of unfolded paper that goes into the printing press at once is a ' sheet.' One side of a sheet, which is all that gets printed at one pull, is called a ' forme.' In a folio a sheet makes two leaves, in a quarto four, in an octavo eight. In a folio a forme contains two pages, in a quarto four, in an octavo eight.
262 Reviews
The forme containing the earliest page is called the outer, the other the inner, forme. A gathering consists in a folio most usually of three sheets, in a quarto or octavo normally of one. The difficulties that may arise from a misuse of these terms will be understood when it is mentioned that Dr Judson uses ' sheet ' to mean either sheet, forme, or gathering, and that he also calls a sheet a ' signature.' A word is wanted to describe the double sheet, i.e. the two leaves that hang together when a cut book is taken to pieces. This is a sheet if the book is a folio, but not if it is any other size. Perhaps the old term ' arcus ' might be revived.
I should like to take this opportunity of directing the attention of all readers and especially of all editors of Elizabethan works to an admirable article by Dr R. B. McKerrow which gives in detail most of the bibliographical information which literary students require and generally do not possess. It will be found in vol. XII of the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society.
W. W. GREG.
LONDON.
The Poetical Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden. With 1 A Cypresse Grove! Edited by L. E. KASTNER. Manchester : University Press. 1913. 8vo. 2 vols. cxx + 254, xviii + 434 pp.
Readers of the Modern Language Review have been long acquainted with Professor Kastner's labours in connexion with Drummond. In an article published in the Review in October 1907 (vol. ill, p. 1) he showed that Drummond not only owed much to Italian poets, as had been pointed out by Mr W. C. Ward, but had adapted to his uses many poems of Desportes : and in a later article (vol. IV, p. 329) he showed that Drummond was under further obligations to other poets of the Pleiade, especially Ronsard and Pontus de Tyard. These preliminary studies have led to a complete edition of Drummond's Poems.
Professor Kastner's Preface shows clearly what he set himself to do, and, we may add, what he has done. He has given a trustworthy text according to the original editions of the several works, accompanied by a complete record of variants, and in the course of this part of his task he has made an interesting bibliographical discovery with regard to Phillips' edition of 1656. In the text he has kept the old punctuation, on the ground that it represents Drummond's own preference for a punctuation ' based rather on rhythmical than on logical considerations.' Secondly he has given the world his remarkable discoveries of Drummond's indebtedness to previous poets, discoveries which cannot but seriously affect Drummond's reputation. Thirdly he has compiled a complete critical bibliography of the early editions of Drummond's works in verse. Fourthly he has examined the Hawthornden manu- scripts, used them to correct the text of the posthumous poems, and from them brought to light poems of Drummond's never published
Reviews 263
before. Lastly he has discussed the authenticity of supposed portraits of the poet. Even this enumeration does not cover the Notes of an expository kind which complete the work.
In his Introduction Professor Kastner touches on various interesting points, such as the exotic character of Scottish poetry in Drummond's day, the general neglect of Spanish poetry by the Elizabethans, the question whether Phillips in his appreciation of Drummond was echoing the sentiments of his uncle John Milton. He shows that Drummond imitated or translated among French poets chiefly Ronsard, Desportes, Tyard, Passerat, Du Bartas ; among Italians, Tasso, Guarini, Marino ; among Spaniards, Boscan and Garcilaso. Further that he was steeped in Philip Sidney's poetry, occasionally quoted Shakespeare, and was acquainted with the Greek Anthology and with Latin poets of the Renaissance. As to Drummond's 'conveyances' from these authors, Professor Kastner shows that ' imitation ' was enjoined by the Pleiade, but with the qualification that the imitating poet should convert what he took into flesh and blood. Much of Drummond's work is in accord- ance with the precept : but at least a third, according to his editor, is little more than skilful translation, unacknowledged, and it can hardly be doubted that even the poems whose sources have not yet been found are in general of the same character as the rest. The general conclusion is thus stated : ' In one half roughly of his verse he may justly lay claim to a high rank as a poet of the school of imitation : he adapted, but his adaptations are impregnated with a charm essentially his own, and clothed in a form well-nigh impeccable. Nevertheless even as an imitative poet, he cannot pretend to the highest rank : for that, his range is too limited, confined as it is to some hundred and thirty sonnets, about the same number of madrigals and epigrams, arid less than a score of longer pieces. In his remaining poetic achievement Drummond is an imitator pure and simple.'
And now for a few points of detail :
Vol. I, xvii, 1. 4 from bottom, ' no uncommon.' Query, ' no common ' ?
xxvi, 1. 6. 'About thirty years later [than 1562 apparently] Sir Philip Sidney in the added sonnets... in the third edition of Arcadia 1598, included two lyrics.' This might be misleading to a reader who did not remember that Sidney died in 1586.
xxxiv, 1. 8 from bottom. 'His [Drummond's] adherence, etc
helps to understand why he did not write any more poetry after 1623.' As Professor Kastner prints a good deal of poetry written by Drummond after 1623, I suppose the date must be wrongly given.
xxxix, 1. 10. The inconvenience of a rigid adherence to old punctuation is seen here, where we have
Bank, where that arras did you late adorn, How look ye elm all withered and forlorn ?
for ' Bank, where [is] that arras [that] did you late adorn ? ' etc.
Such difficulties are not common, and a general adherence to Drummond'3 punctuation was, I think, the right course for an editor.
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But the punctuation has peculiarities which needed to be pointed out. The note of interrogation for instance serves sometimes for a note of exclamation (e.g. I, p. 40 Sonnet XLIV, p. 125 Madrigal LXIII) : it is fre- quently appended to indirect questions (p. 46 Mad. IX, p. 68 top) or to conditional clauses (p. 54 Son. vi, p. 66 1. 61, p. 71 11. 205-212, etc.) : it is often repeated in a single clause (p. 56 top, p. 93 11. 22-24, p. 109 Mad. xxiv, p. 129, etc.). It is sometimes inserted in the apodosis of a conditional sentence, e.g. p. 34 Son. xxxvu, 1. 7.
Ixxxiii, 1. 3 from bottom, ' this time [1656] the editor was not Mr Hall.' The probable explanation is that John Hall (the famous poet of St John's College, Cambridge and Gray's Inn) died on August 1st of that year.
civ.
Fame...
Hovers about his Monument, and brings
A deathlesse trophy to his memory;
Who, for such honour, would not wish to dye?
Edward Phillips in these lines is clearly thinking of the conclusion of his uncle's elegy on Shakespeare :
And so sepulchred in such pomp dost lie That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.
Professor Kastner has performed the tasks which chiefly interested him with so much thoroughness and has brought to light so much that is new and important that one need not be accused of finding serious fault with him if one says that his notes are rather less satisfying than his excursuses. Apart from their detailed references to Drummond's sources they seem to have been compiled in a rather perfunctory manner, and while not giving us quite all we want, to contain a good deal of information which is hardly required in a work of such pre- tensions. A great many notes are devoted to explaining the most obvious classical allusions such as Tyrian purple, Danaes Lap, Psyches Louer, Cyclades, noting Delos, Zeuxis, the Idalian Queene, the Thracian Harper, Citherea, Hybla, Enna, Phlegethon, the Saturnian World, Proteus, etc. Others are given to the most ordinary idioms of Eliza- bethan English, e.g. (II, p. 411) 'Nor blame mee not: nor followed by another negative is now obsolete.' Other notes again explain rimes which in Modern English would be false rimes. While this is valuable, perhaps it would have been better to have had a short excursus on Drummond's phonology, instead of getting the information in scattered notes.
Professor Kastner is highly qualified for this phonological work, and Drummond's rimes present a number of interesting problems, not dealt with. Thus we have thoughts : draughts — laughter : daughter — see : die — thee : flie — mead : head, feed — China : been a — eyne, eine : brine, divine, seene, greene — eyes : twise — waste : cast, wast — abisme : time — waue : deceaue — waues : lawes — would : old — light : weight —
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moon : broone (brown) — anadeame : inflame, beame — anadem, diadem : gem, stem — ' tides ' appears in the spelling ' teeds.1
How did Drummond pronounce ' Townes raz'd and rais'd ' (I, 77) ? George Herbert has the same collocation in his poem The Temper (' It cannot be '). One may notice the fall of the accent in ' melancholic ' ' melancholic,' ' carriere,' ' infamous,' ' climacteric,' ' Peru,' ' governe ' (I, pp. 131, 182), 'menace/ 'envyous,' ' Discard.' 'Thebes' in the genitive is twice dissyllabic, ' Creature ' is trisyllabic. Is the following note correct (I, 192) ? ' sterue: a Scots form of starve still found to-day in the form stirve in the Shetland Isles. By printing " starve," modern editors ruin the rime with " serve." ' Surely in Elizabethan English ' serve ' was pronounced ' sarve,' and the form ' sterve ' would have the same sound.
To turn again to points of detail.
Vol. I, p. 5, Son. v, 1. 4, 'this All.' This expression for j this Uni- verse ' is used by Drummond at least fifteen times, and ' this Round ' almost as frequently.
p. 7, Son. ix,
0 come, but with that Face To inward light which thou art wont to show.
Perhaps Milton had this in mind when he wrote Sams. Ag. 162.
p. 9, Song (1). Professor Kastner has not remarked that in this Song and in Sonnet xiv, p. 20, Drummond seems to be experimenting in the alternation of masculine and feminine rimes.
p. 10, bottom. ' Chasbow ' (a poppy) needed a note.
p. 26, Son. xxv. Professor Kastner sees in this Sonnet a suggestion for Milton's Sonnet to the Nightingale. Perhaps another expression of Milton's (Comus, 1. 560) ' I was all ear ' was suggested by this same sonnet of Drtimmond's :
Me thought... a noyce Of Quiristers...did wound mine Eare, No soule, that then became all Eare to heare.
(' No ' is of course corrective, as very frequently used by Drummond.)
Perhaps Milton's ' Sad Electra's poet ' (Sonnet vm) was similarly suggested by Drummond's 'sad Electra's Sisters' (Moeliades 140, 1, p. 79).
p. 21, Son. xvi, 1. 6. 'Amphions of the Trees' recalls Keats' < Dryad of the trees.'
p. 27, Son. xxvii, 1. 3, ' into ' = ' in/ as II, 248, 1. 20.
p. 41, Son. XLVI, 1. 5, the epithet 'musket' according to the N.E.D. = ' musk-cat.' On p. 150, 1. 305 we have the form 'musked' with a different history.
p. 44, Son. L, 1. 8. '' His (the Sun's) golden Coach.' Cp. 114, bottom, 'her (the Moon's) Coach,' II, 164 'the dayes bright Coach-man' and again 263, 1. 1. Perhaps there is some recollection of Sylvester here. The latter calls the sun a postillion who never comes to the end of his journey, and invokes the Holy Spirit to be his coachman (Courthope Hist, of Poetry, in, 90).
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p. 163. ' Trophonius: a legendary hero of architecture.' Query 'of antiquity ' ? or ' of Orchomenus ' ?
p. 166. ' " Best companied when most I am alone " suggests
Seem most alone in greatest company,
in Sonnet xxvn of Astrophel and Stella.7 Sidney gives the converse of Drummond's thought, which is perhaps directly due to Scipio's saying, as reported by Cato. ' nunquam se...esse... minus solum, quam quum solus esset' (Cic. de Of. in, 1).
p. 168. Is * the first two tercets ' of a Sonnet (meaning the first six lines) an allowable expression ?
p. 179. A long note on the omission of 'have' before a past participle ' Why should I beene,' etc. This usage is found several times in Drummond. Other examples of it will be found in this Review, vol. v, p. 346.
p. 202, ' passed Pleasures double but new Woe.' Mr Paget Toynbee is quoted as suggesting that this is a reminiscence from Dante's Inferno,
Nessun inaggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria;
and the editor remarks that there is very little trace of the influence of Dante in Drummond. It is not necessary to suppose that Drummond was indebted to Dante for a sentiment found in Boethius, de Consol. II, Pr. 4, ' infelicissimum genus est infortunii fuisse felicem,' in Chaucer, Troilus, iii, 1. 1625, and in Greene, Nashe, etc.
p. 205. ' I curse the Night, yet doth from Day rnee hide.' Professor Kastner explains ' doth ' as a Scotticism for 'do.' I should suggest that ' yet ' has arisen from ' y Y the common contraction of ' that.' If, as Professor Kastner says, ' The Pandionean Birds ' in the next line are nightingales, Drummond recurs there to the night, and does not carry on the thought that he hides himself from the day. On the other hand if Professor Kastner is right in the first line, 'the Pandionean Birds' probably include swallows.
p. 229, ' xvi.' A note might have been given on 1. 10, ' Poore one no Number is,' a medieval doctrine which is constantly played on by the Elizabethans (Lyly, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Anton, etc.). Owen has an epigram ' Unitas non facit numerum.'
YoLII. Flowres of Sion. It is not, I think, pointed out how many of these Sonnets are variants of Sonnets previously printed. Thus I will be found vol. I, p. 86 ; v and x, I, 87 ; xv and Poem ii, I, 88 ; xvm and Poem iii, I, 89 ; xx, I, 91 ; xxn, I, 90.
p. 18, 11. 31, 32.
What late was mortall, thrall'd to every woe, That lackeyes life, or vpon sence doth 'grow, Immortall is.
Professor Kastner (p. 335) takes ' lackeyes ' as ' a spelling for the dissyllabic archaic form lackes' used to suit the exigencies of the metre. The word is surely 'lackeys,' 'waits on as a lackey.' See N.E.D.
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p. 32.
Redeame Time past, And Liue each Day as if it were thy Last.
This clearly suggested the lines in Ken's hymn ' Awake my soul,' as given in Hymns Ancient and Modern :
Redeem thy mis-spent time that's past, And live each day as if thy last.
I am not sure however if these two lines are by Ken or some more modern adapter. In Palgrave's Treasury of Sacred Song the lines corresponding to them in Ken's hymn run thus:
Thy precious time mis-spent, redeem ; Each present day thy last esteem.
p. 129, iv, 9. 'Tramontane' not explained. ^
p. 130, 1. 29. ' Paranymph,' seems to mean ' royal favourite ' rather than ' effeminate man.'
p. 170. 'The Dammaret ' not explained, p. 205.
Kirke and not church, church and not kirke, 0 shame ! Your kappa turne in chi, or perishe all.
Cp. the motto below the ' Emblem ' in Eikon Basilike To X? ovoev tfoifcrjae TTJV iroXiv ovSe TO Kavrvra, which perhaps means 'The Ch[urch] harmed not the state nor yet the K[ing].' This, and probably the pre- sent passage less directly, goes back, as Professor Bensly informs me, to Julian, Misopogon, 357 A (ed. Spanheim, 1696). Cf. also the refer- ence 360 D. Here the 77-0X^9 is Antioch, X is explained as X/KCTTO?, and K as Kwvcnavrios.
p. 245, bottom : ' On the Isle of Rhe' :
Charles, would yee quaile your foes, haue better lucke; Send forth some Drakes', and keep at home the Ducke.
Professor Kastner writes : ' To understand properly the pun in the second line it is necessary to remember that a " drake " was a species of cannon, and that " duck " is the Scottish pronunciation of " duke." '
It would seem more natural to contrast Buckingham with Sir Francis Drake than with a cannon. I am not sure, however, that the editor's explanation is not right. One of the disgraces sustained in the expedition was the capture of four English ' drakes ' by the French. The form * duck ' for ' Duke ' (not confined to Scotland) is illustrated in Notes and Queries of 29 November 1913, where it is stated that in connexion with this same Duke of Buckingham the register of Ports- mouth Church has the record ' my lord duckes bowels wear burried the 24th. Augfc. 1628.'
p. 249. To the Memorie of his...beloaed Master, M.F.R. The note tells us that ' John Ray was Professor of Humanity in the University of Edinburgh while Drummond was a student there.' It does not explain however how John Ray comes to be designated as ' M. F. R/
268 Reviews .
p. 258, 1. 41, ' coronet anademe,' one word was no doubt to be deleted. p. 268, bottom :
Thy perfyt praises if the vorld void writ Must haue againe thy selff for to end it.
Should not the last words be ' endit ' (= endite) ? Cp. the end of Mad. LXXVII (I, p. 133).
p. 289. Vindiciae against the Commons for B. C. Can ' B. C.' stand for ' Bishop of Canterbury,' sc. Laud ? If so, Drummond did not write the lines on the Bishops, p. 293. 11. 13, 14.
Who deeme men like to him to be great evills, May God to preach to them raise vp some else.
I cannot think that ' else ' is, as suggested, a mistake for ' esle ' (live coal) which would not rime. The obvious rime to ' euills ' is ' deuills,' and for this ' else ' is, I think, a humorous Trapa TrpoaBo/cLav.
p. 295, 1. 57, ' foster.' Query ' softer ' ?
p. 296. These severe warnings ' For the Kinge ' seem to me far more appropriate to James than Charles, and, if so, are a remarkable revelation of the opinion held of his behaviour. The reference (p. 297, bottom) to ' figges of Spaine ' seems also to belong to the early part of the century. The love of hunting (11. 71, 72) was rather James's than his son's. Drummond seems to have held James in higher respect than he did Charles, and can hardly have written the lines.
pp. 300-318. These hymns are all translations from very well-known Latin hymns, though we are not told so in the note. Thus i is ' Quern terra, pontus, aethera' (H. A. Daniel, Thesaurus Hymnologicus, I, 172); ii, 'Te lucis ante terminum' (i, 52) ; iii, 'Stabat mater dolorosa' (n, 131) ; iv, ' Christe redemptor gentium ' (i, 78) ; v, ' Salvete flores martyrum ' (i, 124); vi, 'Caelestis urbs Jerusalem' (i, 239); vii, 'lesu corona vir- ginum ' (i, 112) ; viii, ' Creator alme siderum ' (i, 74) ; ix, ' Lucis creator optime ' (i, 57) ; x, ' Immense coeli conditor ' (i, 58) ; xi, ' Telluris ingens conditor ' (i, 59) ; xii, 'Coeli Deus sanctissime ' (i, 60); xiii, ' Magne Deus potentiae' (i, 61); xiv, 'Plasmator hominis Deus' (i, 61); xv, 'O lux beata trinitas ' (i, 36) ; xvi, ' Audi benigne conditor ' (i, 178) ; xvii, ' lesu nostra redemptio ' (I, 63) ; xviii, ' Veni Creator spiritus ' (i, 213) ; xix, ' Quicumque Christum quaeritis' (i, 135); xx, "Tibi Christe splendor patris' (i, 220).
I have perhaps devoted too much space to very small points. Seldom has it been given to an editor to contribute so much that is new to the right appreciation of an author as Professor Kastner has contributed in these volumes. Whether Drummond's shade has given him its unmixed blessing, is perhaps doubtful. But *in spite of the destructive effect of his editor's discoveries, Drummond remains still a genuine poet. It is true that in his longer poems he can be dreadfully turgid and wearisome : take for example his ' Shadow of the Judgement ' where the appended words ' The rest is desired ' provoke a smile. But in his Sonnets he has been forced to compress his thought and attains great excellence, an
Reviews 269
excellence which is by no means entirely due to his borrowings from others. Sonnet xxxn (I, 30) is borrowed largely from Desportes : but Desportes gives no hint for the fine lines,
If this vaine world be but a sable Stage
Where slaue-borne Man playes to the scoffing Starres.
If Professor Kastner has narrowed the field of Drummond's achieve- ment, he has also confirmed his title to what is left.
G. C. MOORE SMITH.
SHEFFIELD.
The Poems of John Donne. Edited from the old editions and numerous manuscripts, with Introductions and Commentary by HERBERT J. C. GRIERSON. 2 vols. Oxford : Clarendon Press. lt)12. Svo. xxiv + 474, cliii + 276 pp.
The reputation of Dr John Donne has sensibly advanced during the last decade. Possibly it stands now higher than ever it did since a new manner of writing first displaced his as a model for the versifiers of the Restoration. And this revaluation, for which men of letters, caught by the essential poetry in Donne, and literary historians, discerning his unique influence upon the fashioning of Caroline verse, are almost equally responsible, now receives its appropriate seal in Professor Grierson's elaborate and critical volumes, which present one of the most difficult of wTiters in a far more satisfactory guise than that of the editions pour servir hitherto available. The central feature of Professor Grierson's work is the systematic taking into account, for the first time, not only of the printed seventeenth century texts, practically none of which appeared during Donne's lifetime, but also of a number of those manuscript collections, in which his verse received its wide, and, after he became Doctor and repented of his youthful frailties, almost surreptitious, circulation amongst his own contemporaries. Professor Grierson has not of course attempted to collate every one of the innumerable commonplace books in which handfuls of Donne's verses were written out in company with those of other admired poets of the day. The labour of such a task would have been wholly incommensurate with its critical outcome. But he has worked through many of these, together with all that he found available of the more important volumes which may be regarded as specialist collections, on a smaller or a greater scale, of Donne. In all he has examined between twenty and thirty manuscripts, and ' with the feeling recently,' he tells us, ' of moving in a circle — that new manuscripts were in part or whole duplicates of those which had been already examined, and confirmed readings already noted but did* not suggest anything fresh/ The results of this extensive investigation are incorporated in an apparatus criticus, and with their aid the editor is enabled, at any rate in certain groups of poems, to suggest considerable improvements in the traditional
270 -Revieivs
text of the seventeenth century editions. He expresses an opinion that the evidence of the manuscripts also serves to confirm the authority of the first, and admittedly the best, of those editions, that of 1633. I own that I find it a little difficult to follow his reasoning on this point. The general concurrence of the text of 1633 with the manuscripts examined seems to me to prove little more than that this text fairly represents the manuscript tradition as the publisher or editor of 1633 found it. It would surely have been a more indisputable evidence of authority, had it differed notably from the current manuscript tradition, for that would have suggested the possibility of its having been printed from Donne's original manuscripts or early copies of these, instead of being compiled, as it appears to have been, from copies which had undergone a lengthy process of transcription from hand to hand. And it still remains possible, so far as any external evidence is concerned, that some of the new readings introduced in 1635 or 1649, even although they have little or no manuscript support, may none the less derive more immediately, through some authoritative channel, from such an original source, than either the text of 1633 itself, or the manuscripts cognate to it. For Professor Grierson's labours, fruitful as they are in many directions, have not done much to dispel the very considerable bibliographical mystery that hangs about the early prints. We do not know who, if anyone, aided the printer in an editorial capacity. Professor Grierson guesses Henry King for 1633, just as one may guess Izaak Walton for 1635. We do not know why it was thought desirable to alter the grouping of the poems in 1635, or why the new grouping, with its rather notice- able group-titles, confesses the influence of a collection closely analogous to the so-called O' Flaherty MS., which was itself obviously prepared for publication before the 1633 volume appeared, and contains a text which in certain particulars may be said to take sides with 1635 against 1633 and the bulk of the manuscripts. We do not know who prepared this manuscript. John Donne the younger has been suggested, but this happens to be just the one impossible name, since a poem by John Donne the younger to his father has been carelessly included, as if it were a poem by John Donne the elder himself. And least of all do we know the circumstances which led John Donne the younger to represent to Archbishop Laud in 1637 that some of the poems already in print were none of his father's, and then, after getting a power of control over reprints, to take no apparent steps to enforce it against the 1639 edition, and when he did intervene in 1650, to eliminate nothing, but on the contrary add a good deal, some of it of very questionable value and even authenticity. It should perhaps be added that a controversy as to the precise degree of ' authority ' vested in the 1633 text is not of the first importance. However positively an editor may think that he can vindicate his right to be 'eclectic,' he will still find himself, as a rule, exercising his option in favour of 1633 as against 1635 or 1649. And I should be the first to admit that there are many passages in which Professor Grierson has been wholly successful in rehabilitating a 1633 reading which his predecessors had
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improperly discarded ; successful, as a rule, I should add, not by bringing manuscript evidence to bear, but by a greater patience than that of his predecessors in tracing the logic of Donne's thought, or a more abundant knowledge of scholastic writings and of the parallel passages in Donne's controversial and homiletic books.
To his work on the text, not forgetting the punctuation, and to a rich illustrative commentary, Professor Grierson adds a careful study of the sources of Donne's poems, and reaches some interesting results. He is, I think, quite successful in demonstrating the probability that a whole group of poems, amongst which are some ascribed to Donne in 1635, are to be assigned to the little-known writer, Sir John Roe. He has identified the author of the well-known verses beginning 'Absence, hear thou my protestation ' with John Hoskins, and makes us regret the more, that the volume of poems ' bigger than those of Dr Donne,' which Aubrey tells us that Hoskins left behind him, has eithej1 vanished or escaped observation. And he has interested me much by the suggestion, for which there is a trifle of manuscript corroboration, that one of the several sets of verses, that beginning ' Death, be not proud,' on the untimely death of Cecil Bulstrode, may possibly be not by Donne, but by Lucy, Countess of Bedford. But it is ticklish work, allocating Jacobean adespota. The manuscript attributions are often inconsistent, and the themes and manners often common property. I have tried elsewhere to show that the best claim to the verses ' Victorious beauty, though your eyes,' which Professor Grierson gives to the Earl of Pembroke, is probably that of Aurelian Townshend..
E. K. CHAMBERS. PINNER.
The Riddles of the Exeter Book. Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary by FREDERICK TUPPER, Jr. Boston: Ginn and Co. 1910. 8vo. cxi + 292 pp.
' Learning,' said Bacon, ' would be yet more advanced if there were more intelligence mutual between the universities of Europe than now there is.' We are apt in these days to think complacently that the literary isolation of the seventeenth century is a thing of the past. And it gives the student something of a shock to realise, that in a small subject such as Anglo-Saxon, where workers at home and abroad are supposed to be in rapid communication, so important a text as Professor Tupper's Riddles of the Exeter Book can be published in America, and can have made at the end of four years so little impression in England. One cannot but suspect that the fault must lie to a great extent with the publishers, and that the work can hardly have been advertised in this country as it should have been. Yet, after all allowances, it is astonishing how little is at the present moment known here of Pro- fessor Tupper's magnificent edition, even amongst those who are working steadily at Anglo-Saxon texts. For example, the Athenceum reviewer
272 Reviews
of Mr Wyatt's edition of the Riddles makes no mention of Professor Tapper's1.
The present reviewer has to plead guilty to a more serious act of ignorance. Nearly two years ago he published in Anglia the result of an investigation of Robert Chambers' transcript of the Exeter Book, now preserved in the British Museum. This transcript, made in 1833, when the Exeter Book was in a better condition than now, enables us to restore some of the lost letters in the minor poems. The article in Anglia pointed out how certain passages in the ' Husband's Message ' could be cleared up by means of the transcript, and predicted that it would prove even more useful in restoring the mutilated passages in the Riddles. The writer was not aware how mlly and well this evidence had already been used in the preparation of Tupper's text of the Riddles.
This is probably the best edition of any Anglo-Saxon text which has been attempted. And its editor is certainly right in claiming that the text he has chosen is 'the most difficult in the field of Anglo-Saxon.' The completeness of the introduction, with, its extraordinary knowledge of the riddle-literature of many nations and ages, and the fullness of the explanatory notes and glossary are all that can be desired. But, in addition to this, it has been Professor Tupper's good fortune, by means of the renewed scrutiny of the Exeter Book, and by the use he has made of the transcript of 1833, to produce a text which is a great advance upon any preceding one. Excellent introductions and glos- saries we have a right to expect, but at this time of day it happens very seldom that an editor is able to add so materially as Professor Tupper has done to the accuracy of the text he is studying. In the most damaged and mutilated passages the recovery of a single letter may be of the utmost value : such a letter may confirm, or (much more probably) confute, the favourite conjectural restoration of the passage. After all, an examination of the manuscript will often settle a problem better than disputatious articles running to thousands of words. It is the more to be regretted that scholars have spent so much time in discussing the possibilities of the manuscript reading this or that, instead of looking at the manuscript to see what it actually does read. In the Riddles, more than in most texts, we have had innumerable erudite and even plausible restorations of mutilated passages — all built upon the insecure foundation of an imperfect collation of the manuscripts. There is something pathetic in the thought of the many German scholars who, in the middle of the nineteenth century, having merely Thorpe's edition before them, were spending painful hours in trying to fill in some of the most puzzling gaps, where portions of the text of the Riddles had been burnt away. A visit to England and an examination of the Exeter Book would have sufficed to show them that the word suggested could never, by any possibility, have stood in the place allotted to it. Few studies support the words of the preacher as to the vanity of things in general, and of the making of books in particular, more conclusively
1 Atherusum, Dec. 7, 1912.
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than does an investigation of the history of the conjectural emendation of the Riddles of the Exeter Book.
To turn from this lament to Professor Tupper's edition. Here at last there is no building upon the sand. First of all the text is fixed, to every letter and fragment of a letter. Then, in matters of interpre- tation and solution, the editor uses, not any individual, sharp-sighted cleverness, but a methodical comparison of the ways of riddle- writers throughout the centuries. In this Professor Tupper's method forms a remarkable contrast to that of, for example, Professor Trautmann. Although Trautmann's conjectures are always clever, often brilliant, and sometimes convincing, they are apt to be vitiated by a want of the historical method ; and his own readiness to withdraw solutions pre- viously offered by himself, whilst it shows a praiseworthy alertness of mind, shows also how little claim to finality many of his solutions have.
Yet in one respect Professor Tupper himself has made^an extra- ordinary change since the publication of this edition. He summarises the result of his enquiry thus :
' The Riddles were not written by Cynewulf : all evidence of the least value speaks against his claim. It seems fairly certain that they are products of the North. Their place as literary compositions (not as folk-riddles) in one collection, and their homogeneous artistry, which finds abundant vindication in a hundred common traits, argue strongly for a single author, though a small group of problems brings convincing evidence against complete unity. That their period was the beginning of the eighth century, the hey-day of Anglo-Latin riddle-poetry, is an inviting surmise unsustained by proof.' (Page Ixxix.)
In the meantime Professor Tupper has become convinced that the so-called First Riddle, which in his edition he passed over as ' demanding no place here,' is in reality an enigma which conceals the name of Cynewulf, and so shows us who is the author of the Riddles. The lot of a convert is seldom an easy one, and Professor Tupper has been in- volved in a good deal of controversy, which is by no means over yet. Into this controversy, however, a reviewer of this edition has no call to enter, since the Cynewulfian authorship is not here asserted. The reviewer has the much more pleasant duty of thanking Professor Tupper for an edition of the most difficult text in Anglo-Saxon literature ; an edition so excellent that it approaches finality as nearly as such approach is possible.
R. W. CHAMBERS*
LONDON.
The Pronunciation of English in Scotland. By WILLIAM GRANT. Cambridge: University Press. 1913. 8vo. xvi + 207pp.
Mr Grant is Lecturer on Phonetics to the Provincial Committee for the Training of Teachers at Aberdeen, and his book is intended primarily for the use of students in Scottish Training Colleges. It is a very useful book, and will no doubt promote the cause of phonetics in the North. The book is not so much a study of dialect speech as a practical
M. L. R. ix. 18
274 Reviews
handbook of what the author calls ' Polite Scotch.' Thus the statements are made in a more or less didactic spirit. A standard is set up and recommended for general acceptance; and Scotchmen a,re even advised to discard their own peculiar intonation in favour of that of Southern English. We will refrain from entering into a discussion as to whether it is desirable or even possible to prescribe a uniform pronunciation for so large and diversified a country as Scotland. Uniformity can only be brought about by slow and steady development accordirig to the laws of adaptation to natural surroundings, and the survival of the fittest. The few phonetic lessons which can at best be given to a small number of people, many of whom have neither sympathy nor aptitude for the subject, will not materially accelerate the natural process of unification. The monstrous and ill-conceived scheme of imposing the so-called stage-pronunciation upon the German schools was quickly abandoned, having met with widespread resistance from both teachers and pupils. Whether a similar movement in favour of ' Polite Scotch ' will result in similar resistance remains to be seen.
It is interesting to observe in what directions things are moving in Scotland at the present time. The Scottish language, that peculiar form of the Old Northumbrian dialect, has shared the tragic fate of the once vigorous and promising Low German idiom. Scotland did not, nor could it, enjoy the advantage of that political independence which accounts for the rise and establishment of the Dutch language as a literary form of speech; nor are we prepared to say whether such independence — political and linguistic — would have added to the in- tellectual or material prosperity of the Scottish nation. Long before the Union of the Crowns in 1606, the Scottish language had been invaded by southern words and idioms, and after the Union of the Kingdoms its influence rapidly declined. In 1825, Jamieson the lexicographer and ardent patriot woefully remarks, that many of his nation ' not only in the higher but even in the middle ranks of life now affect to despise all the terms or phrases peculiar to their country, as gross vulgarisms.' They imitated the standard English of their period, and Mr Grant justly remarks that the language of the educated Scotchman is, broadly speaking, eighteenth century English pronounced with Scotch sounds, English in the mouths of the Lowlanders; just as standard German is High German as spoken by the Low Germans, and standard Italian, as some will have it, 'lingua toscana in bocca romana.' The most out- standing features of Scottish dialects are, therefore, lost in 'Polite' speech : the gh is mute in night, right, etc. ; the Old English u in house is diphthongised ; Old English a is represented by a rounded vowel, and Old English o is u or something like it, instead of being a rounded front vowel. On the other hand, Scotch differs from southern English in retaining the undivided, uniform vowels e (mid-front-narrow), and o (mid-back-narrow-round) in words like hate and coat ; in pronouncing r as a distinctly trilled consonant in all positions, though there seems to be an ever-growing tendency to replace the point-trill by the uvular variety. There exist, of course, other points of difference clearly
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exhibited in Mr Grant's book, which, however, we must not dwell upon here.
Mr Grant distinguishes three Styles of pronunciation or delivery. We cannot but express some doubts as to the wisdom of including the first, or oratorical one. It seems to be nothing more than an affected, not to say objectionable, form of speech, chiefly characterised by an artificial enunciation of the unstressed vowels according to the spelling. We do not think its use should be encouraged — least of all by a philologist with an historical training — and doubt very much whether the best speakers ever do use it at all. Advocates of this soi-disant more dignified pronunciation would do well to ponder the words of Hugh Blair, who, writing more than a hundred and thirty years ago, advises intending public speakers to bear in mind this ' capital direction,' viz., ' to copy the proper tones for expressing every sentiment from those which Nature dictates to us, in conversation with -ethers ; to speak always with her voice ; and not to form to ourselves a fantastic public manner, from an absurd fancy of its being more beautiful than a natural one.'
Mr Grant adds a large number of texts in phonetic transcription, which are worked out and printed with surprising exactitude, creditable both to the author and the Press. There are but few renderings of real dialect speech. Many poets are represented, from Shakespeare to Calverley, but the foreign student interested in things Scottish will search in vain for a passage from Burns. Why is that so ? .Is it because no one knows how the national bard ought to be read, or because every Scotchman has his own peculiar views on the subject ? We wish Mr Grant would next apply his eminent skill and knowledge to compiling a separate book containing transcriptions of Burns' work, in various styles and dialects, as pronounced by the town-dwellers and humble country-folk in different parts of the country. By these means he would earn the gratitude of numerous lovers of the literature of his nation.
HEINRICH MUTSCHMANN.
NOTTINGHAM.
Litterature espagnole. Par JAMES FITZMAURICE-KELLY. 2e Edition, refondue et augmeritee. Paris, Armand Colin. 1913. pp. xv + 494, and Bibliographic, pp. 78.
Historia de la Literatura Espanola. Por JAIME FITZMAURICE-KELLY, Individuo de la Academia Britanica; C. de las RR. Academias Espanola y de la Historia. Madrid, Libreria General de Victoriano Suarez. 1913. pp. xi + 579.
Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly's Litterature espagnole (translated by Henry D. Davray) first appeared in 1904. It was undoubtedly the best manual of Spanish literature that had appeared in any language down to that date. Since then investigations in this field have not
18—2
276 Reviews
been at a standstill, and, the edition being exhausted, the author, instead of revising it and bringing it to date by means of notes or corrections, decided to rewrite the book, and the result is an entirely new work, in which, at most, a few phrases of the old edition have been retained. The author, moreover, resolved to be his own translator, and his work shows a mastery of French style rarely acquired by a foreigner.
At the same time that this French edition was issued, a Spanish version appeared at Madrid, and as no translator's name is mentioned on the title-page, it is to be presumed that this Spanish version is also the work of Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly, a tour de force that is certainly very remarkable.
That the author has succeeded in greatly improving the first edition, excellent as that was, a careful comparison of the two works will at once show, and while the same division into periods is retained, the treatment is quite independent. Chapter I (Introduction) is entirely new. In the old edition it occupies forty pages, in the new only ten. Personally, I wish the author had retained some of the fine pages in the first edition, but something had to go by the board to make room for other matter, and it is interesting to see what the author chose to discard. On the whole, the new chapter, from the view-point of our present knowledge is no doubt an improvement upon the old.
Most of the additions seem to be made in Chapter IV (L'Epoque didactique, 1295-1406), from sixteen pages to thirty-two, and Chapter V (L'Epoque de Jean II, 1406-1454) from eighteen pages to thirty- four. Here the additional space at his disposition has enabled Prof. Fitzmaurice-Kelly to go into much greater detail — the Archpriest of Hita, Don Juan Manuel, the Poema de Alfonso Onceno and Pero Lopez de Ayala are treated at length — and the Cantar de Rodrigo is discussed in connection with the Poema de Alfonso Onceno, instead of in the Epoque anonyme, as in the first edition. On the whole this chapter is a vast improvement over the older form. The same may be said of the Epoque de Jean II. Since Prof. Fitzmaurice-Kelly 's book was published, or rather while it was in the press, Prof. Crawford has shown that the first, third, fourth and fifth chapters of the Vision delectable of Alfonso de la Torre are taken from the Etijmologiae of Isidore of Seville • and the Anticlaudianus, while the second Chapter finds its source in a part of Al Ghazzall's treatise on Logic contained in his Makdsid al-Faldsifa (' The Tendencies of the Philosophers,' Romanic Review, Vol. iv, p. 58). Chapter VI (L'Epoque d'Henri IV et des Kois Catholiques, 1454-1516) contains a discussion of the Romances. Here again the treatment is in much greater detail — six additional pages being devoted to them. There is no more fascinating subject in Spanish literature than these romances — these haunting ballads which we have been told are so ancient — some of them dating back, it is alleged, to the twelfth century, and we should like to believe it, but, alas ! their antiquity has been gradually diminishing. The Cantares de gesta, in which they are said to have had their origin, and which were at
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first destined for the aristocracy, passed, at the period of their decadence from the castle to the public square ; from fragments of these cantares, as they were recited by the jongleurs, the people are assumed to have created these romances spontaneous^. This change is said to have taken place at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and the oldest romances are, therefore, merely fragments, more or less modified, of the latest cantares de gesta. This is the theory of Menendez Pidal, and it is certainly attractive. It has recently been minutely examined, with his accustomed acumen, by Foulche-Delbosc (Essai sur les origines du Romancer o, Prelude. Paris, 1912), and it must be admitted that the beautiful structure reared by the distinguished Spanish critic is tottering. Discussing the romances fronterizos, which are said to have their origin in contemporary events, Foulche-Delbosc shows that three romances, classed among the earliest by Menendez Pidal are founded upon wholly imaginary events — a fact, indeed, that "had been admitted long ago by Menendez y Pelayo for the ballads concerning Don Rodrigo Giron, the Master of Calatrava. It is undoubtedly true, as M. Foulche-Delbosc says, that in the present state of our knowledge, it is premature to establish a chronological classification of the romances. But it is impossible, in the space at my command, to review every chapter of this excellent work in detail, and while it is hard to dis- criminate where the work is all of such a uniformly high order, still, perhaps one of the best chapters in the volume is the one dedicated to the Epoch of Lope de Vega (1598 — 1621); this preference is due more to the fact that it contains most of the greatest names in Spanish literature, than to any other reason. Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly (p. 297) seems to have some doubt as to the identity of the Felices de Vega who died in 1578 ; it is, however, almost as certain as anything can be without positive proof, that the bordador who died in that year was Lope's father.
It may be added that the nineteenth century receives in this edition a much enlarged treatment, the work being brought down to the present day in the last chapter ' La litterature depuis 1868.' Lastly, the bibliography is easily the best and most complete that has yet been published : here the reader will find recorded every book and every article of any importance that has appeared down to the year 1913. Taking it all in all, Prof. Fitzmaurice- Kelly's Litterature espagnole is a work of the first order, and is indispensable to every student of Spanish literature.
H. A. RENNERT.
PHILADELPHIA, U.S.A.
278 Revieivs
Uncle and Nephew in the Old French Chansons de Geste. A Study in the Survival of Matriarchy. By WILLIAM OLIVER FARNSWORTH. New York: Columbia University Press. (London: H. Milford.) 1913. 8vo. xii + 267pp.
Dr Farnsworth's main thesis is interesting and quite unworked. He aims at showing that a matriarchal state of society has left clear traces in tradition and sentiment, if not in legal institutions, in the extant chansons de geste. He has read widely and observantly in the field of the Old French epic— some '300,000 verses,' as he is at some pains to inform us — but he prejudices his case very greatly by the lack of critical method he shows in sifting his material and the bias he occasionally displays in his interpretation of the texts he is using. The most flagrant example of misrepresentation is found in his treatment of Raoul de Cambrai. Readers who relied on the presentment of the story of this epic given by Dr Farnsworth, his analysis of motive and account of the relationship between the characters, would here be greatly misled. It is obvious, indeed, that when a poem has for its personages (1) an uncle on the mother's side (Louis), neglectful of all" avuncular duties ; (2) an uncle on the father's side (Guerri le Sor), careful to fulfil all the obligations of relationship, and (3) a ' nourri ' (Bernier), who accounts his duty to his lord above the ties of kinship, it can only be made to yield strong evidence for the 'survival of matriarchy' by a rather deft manipulation. Indeed Dr Farns- worth only succeeds by misrepresenting Bernier's motives for leaving Raoul (cf. pp. 69 — 70) and by omitting to note highly significant facts, such as the exact relationship of the respective uncles, the unfairness of the treatment meted out by Louis to Raoul. and the mother's charge to Guerri le Sor to look after Raoul1. It is only fair to Dr Farnsworth to add that the extant poem of Raoul de Cambrai, the work of a remanieur of the worst type, a man poverty-stricken in vocabulary and without any real grasp of the situation, lends itself very readily to misinterpretation, and that no other of the chansons de geste that he deals with appears to me to be so gravely misrepresented, though minor inexactitudes are here and there observable.
More damaging still to his presentment of his case is the lack of critical method shown in the collection and use of his material. In theory Dr Farnsworth is fully apprised of the conditions that determine the validity of the evidence he has collected, but in practice he has not been able to bring himself to regard them. One sympathises — his store of material would have been so singularly depleted if he had been strict with himself — but the result is none the less unfortunate. He is aware, for instance, that throughout the chansons de geste literary tradition often exercises a potent influence on the construction of plot, the shaping of a scene, the presentment of character or motive of action, but none the less do we find that undoubted imitations or late literary
1 The importance of this charge is exemplified in the Chanyun de Willelme, where Guiborc's similar charge induces William to neglect his own nephew Girart in order to bring back the body of Guiborc's renegade nephew Guischart
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epics like Fouques de Candie, the Enfances Vivien, Anse'is de Cartage, to say nothing of poems like Renaut de Montauban and the Chanson des Saisnes, whose precise character is yet undetermined, are accepted as supplying as cogent evidence as the older Willelme or Roland or Raoul de Cambrai. Again the author knows — he is careful, indeed, to explain it to us in his Introduction — that nies is a highly ambiguous word, used to denote ' grandson ' and ' kinsman,' as well as ' nephew/ but later on examples are quoted in support of his thesis in which no proof is given that 'nephew' is the precise significance of the term. Thirdly and most important of all, Dr Farnsworth, in pp. 44 — 197, i.e. the main part of the book, treats all nephews and all uncles as if they were all equally significant from his point of view, attempting no distinction between sister's and brother's sons, nor between maternal and paternal uncles, though in some cases the relationship is clearly stated in the chanson de geste itself or can be readily deduced!
The short chapter IV (a) and the Appendix A, in fact, really contain all the evidence which has direct bearing on the subject, though perhaps more might be gleaned by a careful sifting of the preceding chapters. The book is thus half as long again as it should have been, and its few facts and observations of undoubted interest lie submerged in a mass of inconclusive matter. It may indeed well be the case that the proverb 'Ainz venge nies que fraire' found both in Fouques de Candie and Aye d Avignon, and the comparatively frequent use of the appellation ' fiz de sa serour ' are not without significance ; it is possibly no mere coincidence that Roland and Vivien, heroes in the two oldest extant epics, are both sister's sons, but these few facts undoubtedly form a somewhat narrow and precarious basis for the construction of a theory. If theory we must have, however, if these few facts are held to be so significant as to demand an explanation, it will assuredly not follow the lines suggested by Dr Farnsworth. The survival of ' nephew right,' if it is proved for the chansons de geste, will be found to owe its existence in them to no mere literary tradition ; there can be no question of obscure heritage of past ages, much less of actual filiation between the French and Germanic epic or legend. The chansons de geste are indubitably the product of the age that created them, i e. of the eleventh (tenth ?) centuries on Professor Bedier's showing. They reflect the social organisation, the customs and sentiments of their own age : ' Germanic ' they may appear to us now, but that is only because the society they depict was still strongly Germanised. If after more critical investigation Dr Farnsworth's main thesis is substantiated, and the survival of nephew right is found to be duly attested in the French epic either as custom or sentiment, it is safe to predict that like kin solidarity1 and other Germanic features, it will be found existing in the same form in the social organisation or social conscience of the age.
MILDRED K. POPE.
OXFORD.
1 Of. on the survival of kin solidarity in Northern France, Kindred aivl Clan in the Middle Ayes and after, by Bertha Surtees Phillpotts. Cambridge. 1913.
280 Reviews
Castelvetro's Theory of Poetry. By H. B. CHARLTON. (Publications of the University of Manchester. Comparative Literature Series, i.) Manchester : University Press. 1913. 8vo. xv + 221 pp.
Students of European criticism have cause to be grateful to Mr H. B. Charlton for his careful study of Castelvetro's translation and commentary on Aristotle's Poetics, and they will look forward eagerly to his promised edition — we trust, however, that Mr Charlton has not underestimated the magnitude of the task, not to speak of the difficulty of finding a publisher — of that most original and advanced interpretation of the sixteenth century. With the exception of two or three modern reprints — minus the commentary — of Castelvetro's trans- lation of the Poetics there are only two editions available, the Viennese one of 1570 and the considerably altered Basel edition of 1576 ; it is on the second of these that Mr Charlton has based his study. We have had occasion to test Mr Charlton's analysis of Castelvetro's commentary, and can commend its general clearness and accuracy ; his book contains a well-considered statement of Castelvetro's position in the critical move- ment of the time. But his last chapter would have gained in value, had he wandered less far afield in the search for literary illustrations. To establish Castelvetro's position in the history of criticism demands, in the first instance, a careful study of the critical theories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ; but it does not need a range of comparison extending to Lessing and Hegel and even to still more recent critics; and Mr Charlton would have done well to resist the journalistic tendency of drawing into his illustrations English books of our own day. One is tempted to ask what have Mr Hardy's Tess of the D' Urbervilles or Synge's Riders to the Sea to do in this galere ?
A more serious criticism might be brought against the present book on the ground, not of giving us too much, but of not giving us enough. The introductory chapter on Castelvetro's life is extremely meagre and might have been amplified and vitalised. He has not made all the use of Muratori's life of Castelvetro which he ought to have made — even in respect of Castelvetro's Aristotelian studies; and he might have con- sulted with advantage, not merely Cavazzuti's book, which he mentions as not having seen — it is a good dealmore than a 'brief statement '- but also Tiraboschi's Biblioteca modenese, and Saiidonnini's Castelvetro e la sue famiglia (Bologna, 1882). Castelvetro was an interesting and even fascinating personality, whose biography was well worth writing ; a stormy soul whose hand was against every one, a man with an inde- fatigable power of making enemies, and a bold thinker whose heresies were not limited to Aristotle, but went as far as sympathy with the Protestant Reformation — Saudonnini has an interesting chapter on this point — a crime which led to his excommunication and flight from Italy under dramatic circumstances.
Then, again, there is a wide field which Mr Charlton has left uninvestigated ; but a field he cannot afford to overlook when he comes to edit the Poetica d' Aristotile itself, and that is the source of
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Castelvetro's ideas. Mr Charlton draws Scaliger into his consideration, and gives us a comparison of Castelvetro's standpoint with that of Minturno ; but this is not enough, for Castelvetro was in close touch with all the Greek erudition of his time; and he stood in personal relations to Robortelli and Vettori. Obviously, an adequate account of Castelvetro's position as an Aristotelian interpreter cannot afford to disregard his relations and indebtedness to these as well as to other predecessors ; to Robortelli especially, it seems to us, he was indebted for some of his principal ideas. Of German studies Mr Charlton would find it useful to consult, besides Otto's edition of Mairet's Silvanire, which he knows, J. Ebner's Beitrag zu einer Geschichte der dramatischen Einheiten in Italien (Erlangen, 1898).
Another point which would help materially to establish Castelvetro's position in the history of criticism is the subsequent history of his ideas and influence. A chapter might have been devoted to the., reception of his ideas by his immediate successors, Buonamici, Piccolornini, Paolo Beni ; to the attitude of the French critics from Mesnardiere to Dacier to Castelvetro, and to his influence on Louis Racine and Marmontel, through whom he became a force in French, and through French, in European criticism of Aristotle in the eighteenth century.
We trust that this study will only be the beginning to more such monographs on Aristotelian interpretation since the Renaissance ; for it cannot be sufficiently emphasised that what matters for the history of criticism and for the moulding of critical ideas is not what Aristotle really said and meant, but what successive generations of critics believed he said and meant.
J. G. ROBERTSON.
LONDOX.
A Welsh Grammar Historical and Descriptive. By J. MORRIS JONES. Phonology and Accidence. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1913. xxvii 4- 477 pp.
The author of this long expected and ambitious work has for many years exercised a kind of literary dictatorship in Wales and it would seem that he aspires to a similar position as a grammarian. The appear- ance of his grammar was hailed by his countrymen as an event of national importance and a dinner was held under the auspices of the Cymmrodorion Society in London last summer to celebrate the occasion. Such celebrations, whether in connection with Celtic studies or other things, are little to the taste of the critical observer, and this work is bound to call forth severe criticism in competent quarters, though it will be readily admitted that the Bangor professor has greatly increased in knowledge and breadth of outlook since the publication of The Welsh People. As a detailed notice would be out of place in the pages of this Review, these remarks will be confined to the more general aspects of the work. The purely descriptive portion of the grammar will be warmly welcomed by all interested in the language of Wales, and it is a matter of regret to many that the author has not limited the book to this. He
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gives us here the results of his intimate acquaintance with the language of Welsh poetry, and these are of the utmost importance. Possibly he may be induced to republish this part of the work in a separate form. As it is, the book is seriously overweighted with philological matter. The works of Thurneysen and Pedersen have been extensively drawn upon, and the author has evidently studied carefully the writings of Hermann Hirt. The history of the Celtic languages is full of obscurities, and the proper place for full discussion is a comparative grammar of the whole group. Prof. Morris Jones is inclined to treat all such knotty points in too great detail and frequently forgets that Welsh is not the only representative of Celtic with which we are familiar. Moreover, apart from obvious mistakes which are being pointed out by others, these excursions into philology often produce a bewildering effect. In moderation and self-criticism the work compares unfavourably with Pedersen's Vergleichende Grammatik. I should like in conclusion to express the hope once again that the descriptive portion may be issued in a separate and possibly extended form.
E. C. QUIGGIN. CAMBRIDGE.
MINOR NOTICES.
A useful addition to the ' Englische Textbibliothek ' published by Dr Hoops is an edition by Professor Klaeber of The Later Genesis with other Old English and Old Saxon texts relating to the Fall of Man, for the use of students (Heidelberg, WTinter, 1913). The bibliography, notes, etc., are in English. Considering the close connexion of the Old Saxon with the Old English versions of the story, it is an advantage with a view to teaching to have them thus given side by side, and it is hardly necessary to say that the editor has done his work admirably. The English texts, besides those of the Genesis, include short extracts from Guthlac, Phoenix, Christ and Juliana ; the Old Saxon are Fragment I of the O.S. Genesis arid two passages from the Heliand. The bibliographical information is full and very valuable ; but for the use of students it would have been desirable that an introduction should have been prefixed, giving all necessary informa- tion about the nature, origin and mutual relations of the texts dealt with. To those especially who do not read German the bibliography will not be very useful. But perhaps Dr Klaeber finds that when he refers his pupils in the University of Minnesota to Heinze, Zur ae. Genesis, or Sievers, A Itgermanische Metrik, they obtain these books and read them. If so, they differ from students in this country. The notes, admirable in most respects, are from the point of view of students less practically useful than they might be, because of the superabundance of references to authorities. For example, on the etymology of neorxnawang the editor refers to no less than thirteen authorities, but himself expresses no opinion.
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w
The Londoner, familiar with the every-day aspects of the town in hich he does his business or pursues his pleasure, is apt at times to overlook its historical and literary associations, and it is quite proper that he should be occasionally reminded of them by the intelligent American visitor from Chicago. Mr Percy H. Boynton, in his book entitled London in English Literature (University of Chicago, 1913), has distinctly filled a void. He does not profess to give us any very original results. ' Nothing,' as he says, ' is included in the volume which cannot be easily traced by reference to standard works on* London and obvious sources in literature.' His object is 'to give an idea of London atmosphere in the various literary periods, to expound the chief places of interest for successive generations, and to make a reasonably generous selection from old and new engraving and photo- graphs.' In pursuit of this object he has produced a very useful and readable volume, and the reproductions of engravings form- a particu- larly interesting feature of it. The maps are Braun and Hogenberg's Map of London in 1572, Hollar's plan showing the effects of the Great Fire, Evelyn's design for re-building the City after the Fire, and the London Magazine Map of London in 1761. Then there are views of London Bridge and St Paul's reproduced from Hollar's engraving, 1647, and pictures of many memorable scenes and buildings, Sir Paul Pindar's house in Bishopsgate Street, the old Fountain Inn in the Minories, a sermon at St Paul's Cross in 1620, the executions of Stratford and of Charles I, the banquet at the coronation of James II, an execution at Tyburn (after Hogarth), interiors of Coffee-houses, Vauxhall and Ranelagh Gardens, Dr Johnson's quarters in the Temple, the Little Sanctuary in 1808, and so on through the Regency to Victorian days, to Dickens, Thackeray and Besant. The only faults we have to find are, first, that the illustrations are not brought closely enough into connexion with the text, which seems indeed to have little or no consciousness of them, and secondly, that though the views and plans look well at the first glance, the process by which they are produced does not stand the test of minute examination.
In the Oxford Edition of Standard Authors we have now Poems and Translations (1850- — 1870) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (London, H. Milford, 1913). This edition is of course limited by the conditions of existing copyright. It consists in the first place of a reprint of the 1870 edition of Poems, in which, it should be noted, we have the ' Sonnets and Songs towards a work to be called " The House of Life," ' and not the completed 'House of Life' itself, which appeared in 1881. To these are added four poems and the prose story ' Hand and Soul/ from The Germ, and The Early Italian Poets in the form in which that book appeared in 1861, that is with the ' Poets chiefly before Dante ' as the first part and ' Dante and his Circle ' as the second. It is interest- ing to get reprints of these earlier editions, as it were by the operation of natural causes, and of course the dates given are sufficient to remind
284 ' Minor Notices
the public of the difference between this and a complete collection of Rossetti's work. Apart from ' The House of Life ' the most important additions to the poems made later than 1870 are ' Rose Mary/ ' The White Ship' and 'The King's Tragedy,' published in 1881. The volume which the Oxford University Press gives us is, like the others of the series, excellently printed and very cheap. The reprint of The Early Italian Poets, which includes Rossetti's translation of the Vita
Nuova, is especially to be welcomed.
«
Messrs Macmillan have sent us Miss Laura Soames' Introduction to English, French and German Phonetics and The Teachers Manual, Parts I and II, edited by Wilhelm Vietor. As the editor says in the Preface to the first of these volumes, ' the most striking innovation will be seen in the adoption of the international alphabet of the Association Phonetique.' That this is an improvement may be doubted ; indeed, many will regret that this step should have been taken at all. The original text remains practically unaltered, new matter being relegated to the foot-notes supplied by Professor Vietor and his equally competent collaborators. The Introduction, which, in spite of its modest title, is the most ambitious of the three books, should strongly recommend itself to all who wish to make a serious study of general phonetics with a view to acquiring and teaching the principal modern languages. Miss Soames' style is delightfully simple, lucid and pleasant to read. Her treatment of this highly technical subject is full of charm, and will appeal even to those who look upon phonetics as a dull and mechanical pursuit. The two parts of the Manual deal with English sounds, and the Phonetic Method of teaching children to read.
H. M.
M. Chinard in his L'Amerique et le reve exotique dans la litterature franpaise au XVII* et au XVIIIe siecle (Paris, Hachette et Cie, 1913) successfully continues the quest which he began two years ago1. As in his earlier volume the works that he notices fall into two categories, accounts of the New World, and writings which show their influence. Of the former class the most remarkable from a literary point of view are those of Lescarbot (Histoire de la Nouvelle France 1609), Jean Mocquet (1616), le Pere Du Tertre (1654 and 1667), Lahontan (1703), the Jesuit fathers Lafitau (1724) and Charlevoix (1730, 1744, 1756), and Bougainville, whose Voyage autour du monde (1771) inspired his friend Diderot's characteristic Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville. It is with Lahontan's writings, especially with his Dialogues avec un sauvage, that the idea of the superiority of savage life to civilisation definitely entered French literature and profoundly affected French thought. Rousseau's debt to these Dialogues and to the writings of the Jesuit fathers, who equally with the cynical Lahontan found much to admire in the Indian savages, is traced by M. Chinard in a chapter of much piquancy. On the whole,
1 See Modern Language Eevieiv vn, 536 ff .
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readers will find plenty of entertaining matter in this excellent volume, which is at the same time a valuable contribution to the study of eighteenth century thought. The only thing that it lacks is an index.
A. T.
Professor Lancaster has followed up his dissertation on French Tragi-comedy (1907) by another contribution to the history of the French classical drama, entitled Pierre Da Ryer (Washington, 1913), which shows the same thorough and careful work as its predecessor. Du Ryer (circ. 1600 — 1658) was an exceedingly industrious man of letters, who led a life of honourable poverty. As a dramatist he is well worth study, partly for himself, but chiefly for the light that he throws on his great contemporary, Corneille, and on the early beginnings of the classical drama. He wrote in all nineteen plays, of which six were tragedies, one a comedy, one a pastoral, and the rest tragi-comedies, and it is interesting to notice how in the matter of tragedies" and tragi- comedies he closely followed the prevailing fashion. One important point Prof. Lancaster has not been able definitely to decide, and that is the exact date of the production of Du Ryer's first tragedy Lucrece, in which all the unities are preserved, though as in the Cid two rooms of the same house are used. The play was printed in July, 1638, and according to Prof. Lancaster was probably first acted in 1636. If so it was prior to the Cid, which was produced at the earliest in December, 1636. Du Ryer's masterpiece, Scevole, according to Prof. Lancaster, was first played 'about 1644,' but the Illustre Theatre of Moliere and the Bejarts certainly bought it before September of that year, and probably played it soon afterwards. As regards Du Ryer's one comedy, Les Vendanges du Suresne (circ. 1633), one would like to have seen the question considered whether Moliere owed anything to it.
A. T.
THE ASSOCIATION PHONETIQUE INTERNATIONALE.
In his interesting review of Michaelis and Jones' Phonetic Dic- tionary (Mod. Lang. Review, Vol. ix, pp. 107 — 109) Professor Wyld has a fling at the Association Phonetique Internationale. I make no doubt that most of the members of that ' important Association ' are able to understand a joke. But in this case the joke was put in such terms that an unsophisticated reader might take it seriously. Besides, Pro- fessor Wyld reiterates certain charges made against the Association by my friend and colleague Schroer, e.g., in an article printed in the Gemnanisch-romanische Monatsschrift for 1913, Vol. V, pp. 413, 414, which were refuted by me in a subsequent number of that periodical (Vol. V, pp. 489, 490). As my rejoinder had evidently not come to Professor Wyld's knowledge when he wrote his review, and has probably escaped many other readers of the Modern Language Review, I take the liberty of repeating that the asterisk (or dagger) has never been used
286 Minor Notices
by the Association as a means of recommending, but simply of indi- cating books in which the alphabet of the Association is employed. As regards the supposed boycotting or ignoring of everything that does not comply with the alphabet of the Association, we naturally wish to see that alphabet adopted in class-books as well as in phonetic works of a scientific character ; for we are aware that nothing stands more in the way of the general spread of phonetics than the multifariousness of phonetic transcription, and that the alphabet of the Association is in fact ' the most widely used ' of all the existing phonetic scripts. If, however, Professor Schroer has been told that we intend to make books employing different systems fall dead from the press or to keep them away from the class-room, his ' mysterious yet eminent ' informant cannot have been in earnest. Surely it would not be possible for members of the Association to engage in a plot without the leaders of the Association having any knowledge of it ! I am prepared to say that we as a body agree with Schroer in thinking that whatever is valuable in itself ought to be turned to account, even if that is made difficult or inconvenient by the author. I, for one, heartily recommend, e.g., Schroer's excellent Englisches Aussprachworterbiich to all persons interested in English phonetics, although it unfortunately does not employ the alphabet of the Association Phonetique Internationale.
W. VlETOR.
MARBURG A. D. L.
We regret to have to announce that Dr Oelsner has resigned the editorship of the Romance section of the Review. From the July number on, Professor James Fitzmaurice-Kelly has undertaken to be responsible for that section, and correspondence relating to Romance matters should be addressed to him at The Old Hall, Aigburth, Liverpool.
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VOLUME IX JULY, 1914 NUMBER 3
THE MENTAL SIDE OF METRICAL FOKM.
Theories of metre are notoriously matters of heated and seemingly irreconcilable debate. One reason for this may doubtless be found in the character of the phenomena concerned. Metrical form is,, based on certain relations of sounds ; but these sounds are not accurately repre- sented by the symbols used in the printing of verse. The chief constituent elements of rhythm are generally considered to be stress and time, and neither the stress nor the time of the sounds of verse is indicated by the poet when he publishes his product, with anything like the clearness which the musician attains through the symbols available for his art. The reader of verse is therefore left, within certain limits, to interpret the rhythm subjectively — we know with what differences both of theory and practice. But, more than this, verse is read silently quite as often as aloud, and the rhythm of it is perceived mentally — that is, some assumed rhythm is perceived for it — even when none is audibly expressed. Nor can we be easily certain that the expressed rhythm, when it finds vocal utterance, is identical with that which has been mentally perceived in silent reading or with that which is mentally conceived at the moment of oral expression. We may even be fairly sure that to some extent it is -not the same.
I suppose that all the statements made in the foregoing paragraph are sufficiently obvious and commonplace, with the exception of the last ; and it is the purpose of this paper to explain and illustrate that. That the fact of some divergence between rhythmical form as conceived and as expressed is not altogether obvious, or well understood, would seem to be shown by such considerations as these : that it is not explained in the standard works on metrics; that in certain discussions of the subject it appears that one party is thinking of what is .heard, the other of what is only conceived ; and that there is an increasing tendency to use physical means of analysing metrical form (as by phonographic records and the like) with the implied assumption that these must tell us the whole truth.
M. L. R. IX. 20
298 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
I shall undertake, in discussing this obscured mental side of metrical form, to proceed from what is universally admitted to what is not ; for of course some sorts of divergence between rhythmical sound as conceived and as expressed are understood by everyone, and we may profitably pass from these to more complex and uncertain phenomena which the same principle may help us to analyse.
To begin, then, with an undisputed principle, it has been observed that the rhythm of verse may be dependent on silences (that is, silent periods) as well as on sounds. This is the phrasing of Sidney Lanier, who discussed the matter fully on the basis of analogies between verse and music. All respectable treatises now point out phenomena like the pauses or rests in such lines as 'Break, break, break' and 'Auld lang syne'; while some discuss special metres in which such intervals are used more constantly, — like that of Meredith's ' Love in the Valley,' the opening line of which,
Under yonder beech-tree single on the greensward,
cannot be understood without apprehending that certain syllables are omitted from the rhythmical type, but may be found fully expressed in the line
When at dawn she sighs and like an infant to the window.
Now it is evident that this kind of variation means that a unit of time is perceived for which no sound is heard. But we may go a step further, and be reasonably sure that the pause which might be regis- tered phonetically does not correspond exactly with the temporal unit which it is conceived to represent. Even in music, where the element of speech-habit is not present to complicate the situation, it is often observed that the full time is not given to a rest the theoretical value of which is nevertheless perceived. I am not saying whether this ought to be true, either in verse or music, — whether it is good reading to let the natural speech-impulse hurry over a metrical pause the observance of which is necessary to the full expression of the rhythm. I remark only that it very often happens, and that here we have a relatively simple example of the possibility of divergence between rhythm con- ceived and rhythm expressed.
In the same connection it has been noticed that, though omitted syllables, are usually the unstressed ones, a rest may even fall — again as in music — on the stressed place in the measure. It is disputed whether this is the sufficient explanation of a famous line of Shakespeare's — Than the soft myrtle. But man, proud man ; —
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN 299
but this is only because one hesitates to accept a verse so much at variance with the syllabic structure of this particular metre. No one, I suppose, questions the possibility of passing over the third stress in the line, thinking it, so to say, in silence. And this prepares us naturally for the fact that syllables which are present and pronounced may be thought of as stressed and yet be uttered without stress. The indubitable examples of this are found at the end of the line, and are made more conspicuous by rhyme. We constantly find ' liberty,' 'wilder- ness,' 'messenger,' 'perishing,' 'reverent,' ' inconsolably,' and the like, in the final position, rhyming either with similar terminations or — more commonly — with fully stressed syllables like ' free,' ' bless,' and ' sing.' That the mind of the reader conceives of them as stressed is clear from the fact that we do not recognise rhyme as existing, at any rate in its function as an organiser of the stanza, except in the case of stressed syllables. In some cases of this sort a certain number of readers pronounce the final syllable with a slight secondary accent, — readers who always give metrical form the benefit of the doubt ; but these are the minority, and in few or no cases does the pronunciation indicate the important rhyming stress which we may assume is associated with the syllable mentally.
From this it is scarcely a step to the observation that the same thing is constantly occurring in other positions, where it attracts even less attention. Lines like these —
And catch the manners living as they rise And Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas Her hand dwelt lingeringly on the latch Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me —
are variously explained by various critics, when it comes to a question of terminology. Professor Mayor indicates a ' pyrrhic ' foot ; Professor Bright finds a compensating 'pitch accent'; M. Verrier speaks of 'weakened strong syllables'; others note a slight 'secondary accent.' Doubtless the reading of such lines varies almost as widely. But the one thing which seems to me to be indisputable is that there is present in all cases a certain conception of the metrical form, naturally assumed by any reader familiar with the general rhythm represented, which is either wholly discarded or only partially represented in actual utterance. I have found a clear account of this matter only in the writings of Mr Omond ; see especially his letters to the Academy on 'Inverted Feet1,' in the first of which occurs the following important remark :
1 October 3 and 10, 1908.
20—2
300 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
' Speech stress and metrical accent are two different things, not to be confounded. Half the mistakes of prosodic theory come from supposing that a mental beat must needs receive physical expression1.'
So much for the perception of -stresses not actually represented in utterance. Let us next turn to the still more difficult matter of the time-intervals which are, in theory, measured by the stresses. Here we are confronted by the whole warring company of those who discuss 'isochronous' verse, 'alternating' verse, 'equivalent' feet, musical measures, and the rest. I shall avoid the more controverted details, simply observing that it seems to have been abundantly proved that rhythm, in the abstract, is dependent on equal time-intervals between stresses, but on the other hand we all know reputable readers of verse who manage to get on without them. I may say that I do not count myself among these readers ; for me the stable time-interval is always present in consciousness, though I do not know how fully experiment would show me to observe it in practice. It seems likely, then, when we once admit diversity of habit, as well as of theory, among readers who may claim to be duly appreciative of verse, that the case with the intervals between the stresses is like that with the stresses themselves, namely, the idea of regularity overtops its expression. And in testi- mony of this I can quote no better authority than M. Verrier, since he is one of the ablest defenders of ' isochronism,' and claims to have proved its actual existence in the tempo of properly read and recorded verse. ' Not only,' he says, ' is absolute equality of measures and feet impossible, it is not even desirable; to express the variations of feeling, one must change the tempo at every moment. But through accidental irregularities and artistic variations, when they do not exceed a fairly high percentage, the impression of rhythm persists. A subjective reality, isochronism exists only as a tendency and an illusion. It is in this sense that it is the principle of rhythm2.'
The next matter to which I shall apply our principle is rather less important than the question of the time-units of verse, but perhaps
1 The italics are mine. The same idea appears in the interesting unsigned article on ' English Prosody ' found in the Quarterly Review of July, 1911 : ' So long as the structure of a verse shows either in itself or in its context the number of accents which it ought to have and the places where they ought to fall, so long as the mind hears the implied accents in their places, the number and position of the accents which actually occur is of no consequence.' (p. 93. Again the italics are mine.)
2 Questions de Metrique Anglaise, 1912, p. 7. (This pamphlet, primarily a reply to M. Verrier's critics, will be found a convenient summary of the views which are developed at length in the volumes of the Essai sur les principes de la metrique anglaise.) But why, if this is true, does M. Verrier object so strenuously to the remark of Mr Eudmose-Brown that 'metrics and phonetics do not necessarily divide speech into tbe same groups'? (Modern Language Review, vol. vn, p. 527.)
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN 301
even more disputable; I mean the matter of the fundamental character of ' rising ' and ' falling ' rhythm. Is this distinction a real one, or only a matter of convenient counting ? Does it inhere in the movement of an entire composition, or only in single lines ? Is it based on verbal phrasing, or on arbitrary metrical measurements ? The answers are almost as conflicting as can be conceived. At one extreme stand those who accept musical notation as adequate for the representation of English metres, and who therefore make no distinction between iambic and trochaic verse, except that the former involves ' anacrusis ' and the latter does not. Of this position the most noteworthy representative, I take it, is Mr William Thomson1. At the other extreme stands so distinguished and penetrating a critic of verse as Professor Saintsbury, who finds that to call iambic and trochaic scansion identical 'is as though a man should say that blue is the same as orange.' That they are ' utterly different ' his ear informs him, 'without phrase and without appeal2.' Between these stands Mr Omond, who believes that iambic and trochaic forms are ' really subdivisions of the same metre/ yet deprecates the use of the musical — or any similar — notation for purposes of analysis, since it seems to imply that our most common metres show an incomplete foot, a solitary word, at both the beginning and the end of every line3. Quite different, again, is the position of M. Verrier, who recognises the difference between rising and falling rhythm, but makes it depend on word phrasing and so on the character of each line taken independently4.
Now these varying opinions seem to me to be exceedingly instructive, if puzzling, — all the more, I may add, because the four critics in ques- tion happen to be the four, among living writers, for whose judgments on metrical subjects I have come to have most respect. For the sake of clearness in discussion, and not for argument's sake, I shall say at once that my own^ opinion is practically identical with that cited from Mr Omond. When I listen to my watch I hear a double rhythm con-
1 The Basis of English Rhythm, 1904.
2 History of English Prosody, vol. in, p. 530.
3 A Study of Metre, p. 61.
4 Thus he calls 'Heart within and God o'erhead' rising rhythm, because (if I understand aright) the phrases terminate with the accent, and ' Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves' falling rhythm, conversely. (Questions, pp. 13, 14.) And he finds it inconceivable that these two lines —
Gathering up from all the lower ground — Innocent lambs ! they thought not any ill —
should be treated, the one as in falling rhythm, the other as in rising, when they are of almost identical metrical form and phrasing. ' To pronounce in one way and scan in another,' he exclaims, ' what a singular analysis ! '
302 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
stantly persisting, which might be described as sounding 'chick-che- chick-che-chick-che,' ad infiniium. One of the two sounds is clearly stressed, in comparison with the other, and I am never in doubt as to which it is. But I can at will group the sounds in pairs according to either of these schemes :
Chick-che, chick-che, chick-che, chick-che Che-chick, che-chick, che-chick, che-chick.
There is no pause between any two of 'them ; the pause I postulate in either grouping is a fiction of my rnind. If I knew how the watch had started going when it was first wound up — whether it began with the • chick ' or the ' che ' — I should have a certain prejudice in favour of the grouping beginning with that sound ; but as I do not know, I have no prejudice. If I put the watch to my ear without any preconceived grouping in mind, I notice that I am likely to hear what I may call the trochaic form (chick-che, etc.), which I take to be due to the fact that I hear the louder sound first, and it seems to start off the rhythm. But if, before putting the watch to my ear, I set up the iambic rhythm in my consciousness, it is at once heard and maintained. Now in the case of rising and falling rhythm in verse, I find myself in a very similar state, with the exception that in verse, of course, there are several perceptible causes of prejudice in one direction or another. Since lines of verse are always printed separately, my perception that a given verse starts out with the unaccented syllable leads me naturally to think of its rhythm as in iambic form, — unless I presently discover that the greater number of the neighbouring verses begin with the accented syllable, in which case I change my conception and have no difficulty in fitting the same verse to the trochaic scheme. Since I am unaccustomed to modern poetry in which initial syllables are freely dropped (as in Chaucer's ' Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed '), I find it difficult to conceive of a line like ' Waken, lords and ladies gay ' as iambic metre with initial truncation. But if I should find it in a connection like this :
At length upon the harp with glee A lively air began to play : ' Waken, lords and ladies gay ! '
I should then tit it to the iambic scheme at once, and, so far as I can see, with no difference of reading from that adopted in the first instance. In other words, while, like most conventionally trained English readers, I have the contrasting concepts of rising and falling metre firmly fixed
RAYMOND' MACDONALD ALDEN 303
in mind, I have reason to believe that they are nothing more than concepts, alterable at will and not represented in utterance1.
This personal account of my attitude toward the iamb-trochee con- troversy has not, I repeat, been offered as argument, but rather in order to contrast it with the attitude of those readers of verse who are represented by Mr Saintsbury. Mr Saintsbury tells us, it will be recalled, that his ear 'at once informs' him that
When the Brit- ish war- | rior Queen is an entirely different metre from
When the British | warrior | Queen.
And I am far from thinking that the pronouncement of his ear is not to be respected. Only I wish to know just what it means, and venture to suspect that it was not his ear that really made the pronouncement. It does not mean, I suppose, that any different pauses — amounting even to ' the division of the twentieth part of one poor scruple ' — are left between the syllables forming the iambic feet in the one case and the trochaic feet in the other, for Mr Saintsbury does not conceive his metrical feet as having any connection with verbal phrasing2. Having read all that he has written on the subject, so far as I know, I do not observe that he asserts any specific difference in the reading of a line in rising rhythm from that of a line made up of the same words in falling rhythm. All that I learn is that ' the base-rhythms of the two plans are diametrically opposed,' and that the ' poetical effect ' is of two characters. To Mr Omond, on the other hand, who has equally well demonstrated his competence as a witness in this case, the base- rhythms are not opposed. I suspect, then, that we have to do here, not with the method of reading verse aloud, nor on the other hand with mere terminology, but with some aspect of mental rhythm, so to say, which has not yet been carefully investigated.
Before leaving this topic I wish to return for a moment to M. Verrier. His interpretation of rising and falling rhythm, it will be recalled, is based on verbal phrasing, and for this reason it is difficult to align his discussion of the subject with others. For myself, I find his analysis of the more delicate syllabic groupings of verse-syllables exceedingly sug- gestive, as I do the corresponding analyses of Mr Saintsbury in the
1 The last phrase is perhaps not wholly accurate. I am inclined to think that, other things being equal, I read verse opening with the stressed syllable (trochaic) somewhat more rapidly than that of the more familiar sort (iambic). See in Omond's English Metrists, page 231, a summary of experiments made by certain psychologists concerning this question, — with, unfortunately, conflicting results.
2 See History of English Prosody, vol. in, p. 526 note.
304 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
case of what he calls the ' fingering ' of lines, — that which makes the difference between
The thunder of the trumpets of the night and
The sound of blaring horns upon the night.
And if M. Verrier wishes to call this the difference between falling and rising rhythm — which may obviously, in that case, change in every line — one need not object, provided the terms are understood. It would seem safer, however, to distinguish the lines as characterised by ' feminine ' and ' masculine ' phrasing. But this is not at all the same thing as our problem of rising and falling rhythm as generally under- stood,— the question of the continuous march or run of the metre ; and it seems to me that in confusing the two things M. Verrier has given us a striking example of the need for considering the subject of this paper. ' To pronounce in one way and scan in another,' we have found him saying, is absurd. Again, with reference to the practice of calling certain long syllables ' dissyllabic in effect,' and of regarding others as hypermetrical or * not counting in the metre,' he exclaims : ' To count syllables which do not exist, and not count those that do exist — an odd analysis1.' But the whole trend of our discussion has been to the effect that this is exactly what we are frequently doing, — pronouncing one thing and thinking of another ; uttering two syllables and feeling that they have the value of one or of three ; speaking without a stress but imagining the stress ; keeping the mind on the type and the voice on the exception. Hence the mere physical facts, as reported — for instance —by M. Verrier's records, valuable as they doubtless are, do not tell us the whole truth. They do not tell us that ' Gathering up from all the lower ground ' follows the line, ' Then methought I heard a mellow sound,' and that the reader is therefore likely to set it to the trochaic movement ; while ' Innocent lambs ! they thought not any ill ' is from a blank- verse drama based throughout on the iambic scheme, so that
1 Questions, p. 22. I may say that I am far from sharing the easy contempt which has been shown by certain English-speaking reviewers of M. Verrier's investigations, who have not hesitated to imply that his acquaintance with our language is not above suspicion. Having myself learned with certainty that his English — including his ability to read English verse— is about as faultless as any foreign scholar's could possibly be desired to be, I am not able to explain my dissent from some of his opinions so cheaply. Yet it may not be inconsistent to suggest that on the particular matter under consideration here, involving not so much accuracj' of ear or tongue, as understanding of racial concepts of metrical form, M. Verrier may have been led to neglect matters which seem to us to be vital realities but which could not well appear to one not born to the language. The conception of a continuous rising or falling rhythm, apart from the actual phrasing of syllables, would seem to be a matter of this kind.
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN 305
the normal English reader has his sense of rhythm set to that. Nothing, indeed, could be more fatal to the right reading of English metres (whether silent or audible) than to fail to conceive of some fundamental rhythm as flowing ever underneath each poem. If each line were to be analysed by itself alone, verse would almost cease to be verse. For, as Mr Omond puts it, ' The very same words, with the very same natural stresses, may be prose or verse according as we treat them. The difference is in ourselves, in the mental rhythm to which we uncon- sciously adjust the words1.' Another admirable statement which bears on our whole subject.
In the last place, I wish to apply our principle to one more mooted question, the problem of the at once temporal and syllabic character of the metrical foot in iambic pentameter. In the general literature of English metrics, we sometimes find the foot defined as a time-interval, and sometimes as a group of two or three syllables unified by an accent. The latter idea, which for a long time prevailed because it is so easily handled in a superficially pedagogical fashion, has had its weaknesses abundantly revealed by recent criticism. It has been shown that the time-interval is the only constant unit which may logically be postulated of rhythm, and that the boundaries of these time-intervals do not by any means correspond with exactness to those which divide syllables into pairs2. On the other hand, the great majority of metrists, in- cluding such skilled expositors as Professor Mayor and Professor Saintsbury, continue to divide double or dissyllabic metres into pairs of syllables, treating these as approximately equivalent to metrical ' feet.' What is even more important, this habit of thought can be shown to have some warrant in the practice of the poets who write in our standard metre, iambic pentameter. For all students of verse learnj despite what they are told of the liberty of 'substitution' or 'equiva- lence ' in our prosody, that in this metre they may not expect to find lines of fewer than the normal ten syllables. Why is this ? I know of but one possible explanation : that the poets themselves have a syllabic conception of at least this metre, and its constituent units.
In this connection one should recall an important remark made by Mr Robert Bridges : ' Of every line [of heroic verse] the hearer can say at once of how many syllables it is composed, whether of nine, ten,
1 The Academy, Oct. 10, 1908.
2 See, for instance, Mr Omond's discussion of the matter in A Study of Metre, which might be summarised in the remark that 'time-spaces exist apart from the syllables embedded in them ' (page 53), and M. Verrier's evidence to the effect that he found fairly equal intervals between stressed vowel and stressed vowel, as distinguished from measuring from syllable to syllable.
306 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
eleven, or twelve. But he will not observe a variety in the number of stresses in the same way,... nor will the hearer be able to say readily at the close of any line how many true stresses it contained. This is syllabic verse. Of stressed verse exactly the contrary is true.... Hearer and reader alike are indifferent as to the number of syllables which go to make the line ; nor, as each line is read, can they say how many syllables have gone to make it. But if a stress be omitted, they per- ceive the rhythm to be unsatisfactory1.' Now I cannot follow Mr Bridges in the inference he draws from these statements, nor do I think it accurate to say (or to imply) that an omitted stress is necessarily unsatisfactory in lyrical measures but a matter of indifference in the pentameter. In both cases the omitted stress may occur, and in either case it may be accounted for by the undisturbed concept of regular stresses which has already been discussed. But I take it that the main fact set forth by Mr Bridges, the peculiar evidences of the syllabic concept of metrical form which appear in the ' heroic ' metre, is un- deniable. On the other hand I believe it has been abundantly shown that this metre does not lie outside the general scope of the rhythmical laws governing our poetry, — that of theoretically equal time-intervals included. We have here, then, two different concepts existing simul- taneously, neither of which is perfectly represented in the phonetic actuality. They may be in no way inconsistent with each other, but at times they are. In the line ' The one remains, the many change and pass,' it might be said that the syllabic and the temporal concepts of the first four syllables (or two feet) exactly coincide ; whereas in the case of the next four syllables they are somewhat at variance. I shall not court controversy by attempting to analyse the line further2, or to indicate just how it should be uttered. But I feel sure that for one group of readers the temporal foot-concept would dominate, and tend to influence the vocal rendering ; that for another the syllabic concept would dominate, with a slighter tendency to influence the actual reading ; and that for some of us, who have interested ourselves in the conflicting cross-currents of metrical theory and their historical develop- ment, both concepts are present, and both, in a sense, are justified. Moreover, I believe that we cannot understand or teach the nature of this extraordinary ' heroic ' metre, and its place in the poetry of the race, until we notice and admit the existence side by side of the habit of mental syllabification of its iambic feet (which is easy to account for
1 Milton's Prosody, pp. 111—112.
2 Its scansion is discussed by Mr Omond in A Study of Metre, p. 79.
RAYMOND MACUONALD ALDEN 307
historically) and the apprehension of their temporal — or more purely rhythmical — character l.
These are some of the ways in which we may trace the workings of- the general principle that there is a mental side to metrical ideas which often may, and sometimes must, be distinguished from the physical or auditive side. Of course none of the instances I have noted are discoveries newly announced, but I have brought them together because it seems to me that their common significance has been inadequately recognised. When I began the study of metrics, some years ago, I felt, like most others who have a strong interest in the rhythm of poetry, that I perceived the real metrical forms which the poets had in mind, that my reading of their lines agreed wi£h my per- ceptions, and that in time I should be able to persuade all who would listen to me that my interpretations were right. I also hoped, before anything of the kind had been done, or at any rate reported, to devise some physical apparatus by which I could record the right reading of verse, and show that my views of its nature were supported by phonetics. Fortunately or unfortunately, neither my mechanical skill nor that of the friends from whom I sought help was equal to the creation of such devices as are now common in psychological laboratories. But I was gradually consoled by becoming conscious, first, that even if I made accurate records of my own reading of verse, nothing would be proved for the reading of any one else ; further, that if I obtained records from several good readers, it was by no means certain that they would be identical in effect ; and finally, that in case the physical facts should go contrary to the theories of myself and others, we might still be unconvinced that our theories were wrong. All these suspicions have been abundantly verified by the reception which the researches of M. Verrier and others have met with. I must repeat that I am far, from scorning such researches ; if they can ever be accumulated to an extent which will make generalisation at all safe, and enable us to discard the errors of the personal equation, I still suppose that much will have been gained. But in the meantime, while the psychologists are. helping us to study metrics on the physical side, shall we not also have to call on them for aid in considering its more purely psychical aspects ? Perhaps in time they will be able to show us why it is that Mr Saintsbury finds iambic and trochaic metres as different as blue and orange, while Mr Thomson (breathing the same northern air) perceives
1 On this matter I may refer to some further remarks in my Introduction to Poetry (1909), pp. 239 and 272 (notes).
308 The Mental Side of Metrical Form
no difference save what may be expressed by indicating an anacrusis or ' catch ' ; why I persist in feeling and trying to express equal time- intervals, even when reading Milton and Shakespeare, while my neighbour feels them in lyrical measures but abandons them in blank verse. In some cases a study of the personal equation might help ; in some cases psychology might show that one concept is, on the whole, normal and the other abnormal; in still others (as I have tried to suggest in the case of the last topic which has been -considered in this paper), it might show that both concepts, though at variance, may be held in consciousness simultaneously.
At any rate, some attention to this aspect of metrics may further the development of the most important condition of progress in any science, the open mind. This, it is to be feared, has not been the characteristic grace of the students of our subject. The ' trochaisers,' says Mr Saintsbury (meaning all who can read iambic verse as trochaic, on a pinch), are ' prosodically rhythm-deaf.' Those who scan by tra- ditional feet, says M. Verrier (including, of course, Mr Saintsbury), are like the German naturalist who retired into his study to construct the idea of a camel from his inner consciousness. M. Verrier, says Mr Rudmose-Brown, is guilty of errors which ' work havoc with all sanity,' which become ' the merest and most pernicious nonsense.' Mr Bridges, says Mr Thomson, exhibits misty preconceptions ' which would be at once dispelled by an appeal to the ear and to ordinary observation.' These are the compliments which we prosodists exchange. But it is not by their aid that science is furthered or converts made. Perhaps, I suggest finally, psychology ^nay help us to recognise that any concept of rhythm held by a presumably competent reader of poetry is in itself one of the phenomena on which the whole science of metrical form must be based.
RAYMOND MACDONALD ALDEN.
URBANA, ILLINOIS, U.S.A.
'PALAMON AND ARCITE' AND THE 'KNIGHTES TALE1.'
III. GENERAL CHANGES.
Very common and characteristic is the substitution of ornate synonyms for simple names or words. ' Due Perotheus ' (K. 344) becomes 'this young Thessalian Prince' (P1. 368); 'Dyane' (K. 824) becomes 'the Goddess of the Silver Bow' (P2. 232); and again, 'Dyane of chastitee ' (K. 1054) is paraphrased as ' Queen of Night, Who takes in Sylvan Sports her chaste Delight ' (P2. 465 — 6). Emily has various synonyms, such as ' the blameless Maid ' (P3. 249), ' the Royal Virgin ' (P3. 283) ; while Theseus appears as ' th' Athenian Chief (P3. 484), ' the Royal Judge ' (P3. 658), and ' he, their King ' (P3. 893). Palarnon and Arcite are each called 'the Captive Knight' (P1. 371, P2. 3); while Arcite, according to circumstances, becomes ' the victor Knight ' (P3. 687), and 'the Dead' (P3. 895). 'The hevene ' (K. 1703) is changed into 'the vaulted Firmament' (P3. 524); ' melodye ' (K. 1707) becomes 'the Warlike Symphony' (P3. 529); 'estward' (K. 1727) is ' the Rising Sun ' (P3. 563). ' The brest ' (K. 1941) is dignified as ' the Seat of Life ' (P3. 838), and the fauns (K. 2070) as ' the Woodland Train ' (P3. 967).
Simple and natural phrases are made artificial and rhetorical. ' To love' becomes 'serve the Fair' (P2. 150), or 'aspiring to the Bed of (P2. 284). ' A brook ' (K. 835) is ' the Crystal Flood ' (P2. 240). ' Sle ' (K. 864) is conventionalised into ' sheath the Sword of Justice on ' (P2. 271). ' Ride ' (K. 1301) is 'bestride the Steed ' (P3. 66), and ' go to reste' (K. 1632) is 'compose their Bodies in Sleep' (P3. 434). Yellow hair becomes ' Amber-colour'd ' (P3. 72). and a high nose ' aquiline ' (P3. 74). ' Fyve and twenty yeer ' (K. 1314) is paraphrased as ' Nature's youthful Prime' (P3. 82), and 'gan she hye ' (K. 1416) as
1 Concluded from p. 172.
310 ' Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
' address'd her early Steps ' (P3. 191). The direct 'I wolde have fully possessioun of Emelye ' (K. 1384) is conventionalised into 'in my divine Emilia make me blest ' (P3. 161). ' And ever mo, un-to that day I dye ' (K. 1554) is expanded into a couplet :
And while these Limbs the Vital Spirit feeds,
While Day to Night, and Night to Day succeeds. P3. 345 — 6.
Passages of simple beauty and pathos are often made artificial and unnatural. When Palamon from his dungeon caught sight of Emily walking in the garden, he thought she was the goddess Venus, and fell on his knees, and said :
Venus, if it be thy wil Yow in this gardyn thus to transfigure Bifore me, sorweful, wrecche creature. K. 246 — 8.
The pathetic humility and melancholy of the last line are lost in the artificial
If thou art Venus, (for thy Charms confess
That Face was form'd in Heav'n) nor art thou less;
Disguis'd in Habit, undisguis'd in Shape. P1. 262 — 4.
Among many examples of the vicious taste of the period one of the worst is Dryden's treatment of the poignant pathos of Arcite's dying words to Emily :
Alias, the wo! alias, the peynes stronge,
That I for yow have suffred, and so longe !
Alias, the deeth ! alias, myn Emelye !
Alias, departynge of our compaignye ! K. 1913 — 16.
This heart-broken sob is too simple for eighteenth century rhetoric. It masquerades in courtly patches and brocade as
How I have lov'd, excuse my faltring Tongue,
My Spirits feeble, and my Pains are strong:
This I may say, I only grieve to die
Because I lose my charming Emily.
To die, when Heav'n had put you in my Pow'r,
Fate could not chuse a more malicious Hour! P3. 786—91.
Very characteristic of Dryden's method is the embellishment of passages that seemed bare and unadorned. Two typical instances must suffice. Theseus' illustration of the mutability of things from the oak, as Chaucer writes it, is impressive in its simplicity :
Loo the ook, that hath so long a norisshynge
Fro tyme that it first bigynneth sprynge,
And hath so long a lif as we may see,
Yet at the laste wasted is the tree. K. 2159-62.
W. H. WILLIAMS 311
This appears in Dryden, admirably expressed, but with an effect of a totally different kind,
The Monarch Oak, the Patriarch of the Trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow Degrees:
Three Centuries he grows, and three he stays,
Supreme in State; and in three more decays. P3. 1058—61.
In the assembly convened at Athens after the death of Arcite, when Theseus had sent for Palamon and Emily —
Whan they were set, and hust was al the place,
And Theseus abiden hadde a space
Er any word cam from his wise brest,
His eyen sette he ther as was his lest,
And with a sad visage he siked stille,
And after that right thus he seyde his wille. K. 2123—8.
Dryden describes the scene thus :
And first soft Whispers through th' Assembly went:
With silent Wonder then they watch'd th' Event:
All hush'd, the King arose with awful Grace,
Deep Thought was in his Breast, and Counsel in his Face.
At length he sigh'd; and having first prepar'd
Th' attentive Audience, thus his Will declar'd. P3. 1018—23.
Dryden often loses the racy and humorous touches of the original by ' dignifying ' what he thought low. When Theseus found Palamon and Arcite fighting, he said :
But this is yet the beste game of alle,
That she, for whom they han this jolitee,
Can hem ther-fore as muche thank as me.
She woot namore of al this hoote fare,
By God, than woot a cokkow or an hare. K. 948 — 52.
Dryden's paraphrase completely loses the spirit of the passage :
This is not all ; the Fair for whom they strove
Nor knew before, nor could suspect their Love,
Nor thought, when she beheld the Fight from far,
Her Beauty was th' Occasion of the War. P2. 374—7.
Grandiloquent or hyperbolical language is frequently substituted for the simple and homely vernacular of the original. In K. 1710 the city before the tournament was hanged 'nat with sarge.' In P3. 535 this is changed into ' Horses Hoofs, for Earth, on Silken Tap'stry tread.' After the victory of Arcite the heralds 'yolle and crie' (K. 1814). Dryden dignifies this into 'Arcite, Arcite, Heav'n and Earth resound' (P3. 684). The racy ' Farewel, phisik ! go ber the man to chirche ! ' becomes
For Physick can but mend our crazie State,
Patch an old Building, not a new create. P3. 768 — 9.
312 l Palamon and Arcite' and the lKnightes Tale'
Despite the precedent of Homeric heroes Palamon's 'howling' at the funeral of Arcite (K. 1959) is too undignified for the taste of Dryden's time. Not only the language but the fact is changed :
In Palamon a manly Grief appears ;
Silent he wept, asham'd to shew his Tears. P3. 854—5.
Expressions or incidents displeasing to modern taste are altered. Thus in the frescoes on the wall of the temple of Mars Chaucer sees 'The sowe freten the child right in the erode!' (K. 1161). Dryden changes this into ' The new-born Babe by Nurses overlaid ' (P2. 590). So Actseon's hounds 'freten hym ' in K. 1210, but 'their mistaken Master slew ' in P2. 630. Emily's vow to Diana, ' Ne nevere wol I be no love, ne wyf (K. 1448), takes the form of 'Nor know the Name of Mother or of Wife ' (P3. 224).
A ' pointed ' couplet is sometimes substituted for a simple collo- quialism. So, when the Knight marks the transition from the preparations for the tournament to the prayers of Palamon and Arcite by saying to his audience ' now cometh the point, and herkneth if yow leste ' (K. 1350), Dryden substitutes this :
The Rivals call my Muse another Way,
To sing their Vigils for th' ensuing Day. P3. 117 — 8.
Dryden is especially fond of filling in an outline, or elaborating a sketch into a picture. Thus, ' the smylere, with the knyf under the cloke' (K. 1141), becomes
Next stood Hypocrisie, with holy Lear:
Soft, smiling, and demurely looking down,
But hid the Dagger underneath the Gown. P2. 564 — 6.
'The slaughtre of Julius' (K. 1173) is developed into ' Mars his Ides, the Capitol, The Seer in vain foretelling Caesars fall' (P2. 604—5). 'Sampsoun shakynge the piler' (K. 1608) is enlarged into 'when Pillar d Hall Fell down, and crush 'd the Many with the Fall' (P3. 416—7). A London crowd must have suggested to Dryden this expansion of 'Unto the seettes preesseth al the route' (K. 1722):
Scarce were they seated, when with Clamours loud
In rush'd at once a rude promiscuous Crowd :
The Guards, and then each other overbare,
And in a Moment throng the spacious Theatre. P3. 550 — 3.
A scene or picture is often developed from a single word or phrase. Thus, from the word 'huntyng' in K. 1197 Dryden developes the full scene in detail :
W. H. WILLIAMS 313
A Sylvan Scene with various Greens was drawn, Shades on the Sides, and on the midst a Lawn: The Silver Cynthia, with her Nymphs around, Pursu'd the flying Deer, the Woods with horns resound.
P2. 619—22.
' Yet song the larke ' (K. 1354) supplies the picture (unfortunately not true to nature) :
The tuneful Lark already stretch'd her Wing,
And flick'ring on her Nest, made short Essays to sing.
P3. 122—3.
Perhaps the most flagrant instance is the elaboration of the simple line, 'tho sente Theseus for Emelye' (K. 2122), into the artificial passage,
The Monarch mounts the Throne, and plac'd on high, ^
Commands into the Court the beauteous Emily :
So call'd, she came; the Senate rose, and paid
Becoming Rev'rence to the Royal Maid. P3. 1014—17.
Occasionally mythological allusions are expanded and made more explicit. Thus, in K. 1224, Diana is said to cast her eyes down ' ther Pluto hath his derke regioun.' This is explained, in P2. 651, 'as seeming to survey The dark Dominions, her alternate Sway/
Some changes are due to the desire for symmetry, parallelism, or contrast. After describing Lycurgus, the champion of Palamon, Chaucer introduces Emetreus simply as coming 'with Arcita' (K. 1297), but Dryden adds the antithetical phrase ' to match this Monarch ' (P3. 62). The description of his freckles, 'Bitwixen yelow and somdel blak y-rneynd' (K. 1.312), becomes 'Whose Dusk set off the Whiteness of the Skin' (P3. 77). Saturn's 'drenchyng in the see so wan,' and 'prison in the derke cote ' (K. 1598 — 9), are antithetically expressed as
Mine is the Shipwreck, in the Wat'ry Sign; And in an Earthy, the dark Dungeon mine.
ps. 401—2.
Vague, allusive, or obscure expressions are made more explicit and developed into circumstantial detail. 'And dide with al the contree as hym leste ' (K. 146), said of Theseus after the capture of Thebes, is explained as 'The Country wasted and the Hamlets burn'd' (P1. 138). The entry to the temple of Mars is ' gastly for to see ' (K. 1126). This becomes 'blind with high Walls; and Horrour over Head' (P2. 549). Conquest, ' sittynge in greet honour' (K. 1170), is developed into 'with Shouts, and Soldiers Acclamations grac'd ' (P2. 601). The allusive 'for which Dyane wroghte hym care and wo' (K. 1214), with reference to Meleager's mother burning the brand which sym- bolised his life, is expanded into
M. L. R. IX,
21
314 'Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
Diana's Vengeance on the Victor shown ;
The Murdress Mother, and consuming Son. P2. 637 — 8.
Similarly, the general is often developed into the explicit. ' Wonder longe' (K. 796) becomes 'two long Hours' (P2. 198). 'Hir servyse' (K. 945) is defined as, ' for seven long Years, on Duty ev'ry Day ' (P2. 368). Arcite's grief at losing the sight of Emily when he escaped to Thebes is expressed in general terms :
So muche sorwe hadde nevere creature
That is, or shal, whil that the world may dure. K. 501—2.
This loses immeasurably in expressiveness, and becomes melodramatic, when particularised :
He rav'd with all the Madness of Despair,
He roar'd, he beat his Breast, he tore his Hair. P1. 522 — 3.
The god of love can make ' Of everich herte as that hym list devyse ' (K. 932). This is specialised into
He blinds the Wise, gives Eye-sight to the Blind;
And moulds and stamps anew the Lover's Mind. P2. 354 — 5.
Such a place as the lists constructed by Theseus for the tournament ' was noon in erthe ' (K. 1038), but, according to Dryden, ' Rome never saw' (P2. 451).
Sometimes the materials are re-arranged in an order more regular and logical, or more pointed and rhetorical, than the natural and unaffected style of the original. After mentioning Theseus' banner (K. 108), Chaucer has eight lines describing his journey, and in the next paragraph (K. 117) returns to the banner, which is then described. Dryden brings the mention and the description of the banner together (P1. 108 — 14). In the s'cenes pourtrayed on the walls of the temple of Diana (K. 1193—1230) the story of Daphne (P2. 631—2) is transposed so as to bring Actaeon (P2. 625 — 30) into closer connexion with Diana. In P3. 403 — 7 Dryden transposes K. 1609 so as to bring 'maladyes colde ' into connexion with the other physical manifestations. In the description of the tournament the position of the line ' the jelous strokes on hir helmes byte' (K. 1776) is changed to follow K. 1767, to finish the account of the contest between Palamon and Arcite before beginning the simile of the lion and the tiger; and the wounding of Emetreus (K. 1787 — 9) is placed before the capture of Palamon and the unhorsing of Lycurgus (K. 1780 — 6) to keep together the account of Emetreus (P3. 640—7).
W. H. WILLIAMS 315
Sometimes the abstract is turned into the concrete, as when 'the tresoun of the mordrynge in the bedde ' (K. 1143) becomes
Th' assassinating Wife, the Houshold Fiend;
And for the blackest there, the Traytor-Friend. P2. 567—8.
The general is often specialised, and, conversely, the special generalised. As examples of the first change we find ' smale houndes ' (K. 1218) converted into 'little Beagles' (P2. 644). 'Newe gyse ' (K. 1267) becomes
This on his Helmet wore a Ladies Glove,
And that a Sleeve embroider'd by his Love. P3. 36 — 7.
The hundred lords who accompanied Arcite armed ' ful richely in alle maner thynges' (K. 1323) have 'Words and Devices blaz'd on ev'ry Shield' in P3. 92. The 'craftes stronge' of Mars (K. 1551) appear as 'War, and stern Debate, and Strife Immortal' (P3. 339); and the 'maladyes colde ' of Saturn as 'Cold shivering Agues,... throtling Quinsey,...Kheumatisms' (P3. 403 — 7). The squires in Chaucer were ' no thyng ydel ' in preparing for the tournament (K. 1647). Dryden specifies their occupations :
another held the Lance : A third the shining Buckler did advance. P3. 455 — 6.
When the Greeks rode thrice round the fire ' with a loud shoutynge ' (K. 2095), it is ' Arcite s name they thrice resound,' in P3. 993. 'Who that baar hym best in euery poinct ' at the funeral games (K. 2104), in Dryden 'with Gantlets gave or took the Foil' (P3. 1001).
The converse substitution of the general for the special is also frequently found. The statue of Mars ' bigan his hauberk rynge ' in K. 1573, but 'clash'd his Arms' in P3. 370. The 'stranglyng and hangyng by the throte ' (K. 1600), which Saturn claims as one of his prerogatives, is weakened into ' wilful Death, resulting from Despair ' (P3. 405). ' Al that Monday' (K. 1628), when they joust and dance before the tournament, loses some of its realism as 'all the Day' in P3. 431. In K. 1656 groups of people walk up and down in the palace^ 'heere thre, ther ten,' but in P3. 470 'In Knots they stand, or in a Rank they walk.' The ' drynke of herbes ' (K. 1890) that foiled to help Arcite becomes 'inward Remedies' (P3. 756); just as the cloth of gold spread on his funeral pyre (K. 2078) becomes ' rich Array ' (P3. 977).
Diffuse phrases are frequently condensed. So, 'the mynstralcye, the service at the feaste...the riche array of Theseus paleys' (K. 1339—
21—2
316 ' Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
41), is abbreviated into ' The Royal Treat ' (P3. 111). Palamon's prayer to Venus that he may win Emily though he lose the victory :
I recche nat, but it may bettre be,
To have victorie of hem, or they of me,
So that I have my lady in myne armes, K. 1387 — 9.
is reduced to one line, ' Possession, more than Conquest, is my Care ' (P3. 164). So, when Emily prays to Diana to quench 'al hire hoote love and hir desir, And al hir bisy torment and hir fir ' (K. 1461 — 2) the effective tautology is lost in ' their not Fire ' (P3. 236). A striking instance is the reduction of ' Pypes, trompes, nakers, clariounes ' (K. 1653), to the single word 'Trumpets' (P3. 464). Sometimes the condensation may be regarded as an improvement, as when the rather diffuse and tautological sentence
Considereth eek how that the harde stoon
Under oure feet, on which we trede and goon,
Yit wasteth it. as it lyth by the weye, K. 2163—5.
is more tersely expressed as ' So wears the paving Pebble in the Street ' (P3. 1062). But at other times much of the poetry and pathos evaporates in the compression, as when
That gentle Palamon, thyn owene knyght, That serveth yow with wille, herte, and myght, And evere hath doon, syn that ye first hym kriewe,
K. 2219—22. is weakened into
Long Love to her has born the faithful Knight. P3. 1123.
Metaphor latent in the language is sometimes developed. When the wrath of Theseus was appeased by the supplication of the women, ' aslaked was his mood, For pitee renneth soone in gentil herte ' (K. 902 — 3). The metaphor implied in 'aslaked' is expanded into 'For yet his Rage was boiling in his Blood' (P2. 329); and 'renneth'
becomes
As softest Metals are not slow to melt,
And Pity soonest runs in gentle Minds, P2. 331 — 2.
Before the tournament Chaucer says the palace was full of 'peples up and doun' (K. 1655). Dryden turns this, not ineffectively, into
The Palace-yard is filled with floating Tides,
And the last Comers bear the former to the Sides. P3. 466 — 7.
Metaphor is sometimes expanded into simile. Theseus asks, why grudge the escape of Arcite from ' this foule prisoun of this lyf ' ? (K. 2203). This, expressed as a simile, appears in P3. 1105 — 6 as:
With Grief as just, a Friend may be deplor'd, From a foul Prison to free Air restor'd.
W. H. WILLIAMS 317
The simile latent in ' I rede that we make of sorwes two 0 par-fit loye ' (K. 2213 — 4), is thus poetically developed :
Ordain we then two Sorrows to combine,
And in one Point th' Extremes of Grief to join;
That thence resulting Joy may be renew'd,
As jarring Notes in Harmony conclude. P3. 1115 — 8.
The allusive is sometimes expanded into the circumstantial. Mercury appears to Arcite in a dream arrayed ' As he was wrhan that Argus took his sleep ' (K. 532). The allusion is explained in detail in P1. 551 — 2 as ' when, at his Sire's command, On Argm Head he laid the Snaky Wand.'
Passages are often expanded to make the meaning more explicit. When Saturn endeavoured to stay the strife between Mars .and Venus, ' Al be it that it is agayn his kynde ' (K. 1593), the clause is para- phrased thus:
Though sparing of his Grace, to Mischief bent,
He seldom does a Good with good Intent. P3. 383—4.
Arcite's ' baner reed ' (K. 1725) becomes
Red was his Banner, and display'd abroad,
The bloody Colours of his Patron God. P3. 560—1.
After the tournament Theseus ' Conforteth and honoureth every man ' (K. 1858). This appears in P3. 730—1 as follows :
Comforts the Sick, congratulates the Sound; Honours the Princely Chiefs, rewards the rest.
The divine ordinance that the type shall endure ' by successiouris, And nat eterne' (K. 2156) is with advantage to clearness developed into this :
That Individuals die, his Will ordains ;
The propagated Species still remains. P3. 1056 — 7.
One of the most characteristic features of Dryden's version is the expansion and elaboration of simple expressions. ' That hast the sighte of hire' (K. 381) is paraphrased as 'Thou on that Angels Face maist feed thy Eyes' (P1. 401), and 'Thou daily seest that Sun of Beauty shhie ' (P1. 403). When Chaucer simply says (K. 891—2) that Emily and all the ladies in the company began to weep, Dryden elaborates the passage into
Through the bright Quire th' infectious Vertue ran;
All dropp'd their Tears, ev'n the contended Maid. P2. 313—4.
' This day fifty wykes ' (K. 992) becomes, with some advantage to the
meaning,
the Day when this returning Sun To the same Point through ev'ry Sign has run. P2. 407 — 8.
318 ' Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
1 Sonday nyght, er day bigan to sprynge ' (K. 1351) is embellished into :
'Twas ebbing Darkness, past the Noon of Night ;
And Phospher on the Confines of the Light,
Promis'd the Sun. P3. 119—21.
A remarkable instance is P3. 129 — 44, where Dryden developes the line, 'Faireste of faire, o lady myn, Venus/ into an elaborate apostrophe to the love-goddess, consisting of sixteen lines. When Palamon promises Venus that he will her 'trewe servant be' (K. 1377), Dryden makes him vow
In Love to be thy Champion, and thy Knight ;
A Servant to thy Sex, a Slave to thee. P3. 156—7.
And, after praying Venus to let him have his lady in his arms, his simple ' and if ye wol nat so ' (K. 1396), is exaggerated into
But if you this ambitious Pray'r deny,
A Wish, I grant, beyond Mortality, P3. 175—6.
When Arcite pleads that he is ' yong and unkonnynge ' (K. 1535), Diyden cannot resist the temptation of translating the homely phrase into the conventional language of Restoration gallantry:
For I am young, a Novice in the Trade,
The Fool of Love, unpractis'd to persuade ;
And want the soothing Arts that catch the Fair. P3. 325—7.
Instances are almost innumerable, but this, from Theseus' address to Emily, is typical of Dryden's method of ' giving Beauties ' not found in the original. ' Lat se now of youre wommanly pitee ' (K. 2225) is embellished into
Pity is Heav'ns and yours: nor can she find
A Throne so soft as in a Woman's Mind. P3. 1133—4.
Vigorous lines are sometimes diluted into couplets by weak additions. Thus, in the description of the combatants in the lists, * With myghty maces the bones they to-breste ' (K. 1753) is expanded into
The mighty Maces with such haste descend,
They break the Bones, and make the solid Armour bend.
P3. 605—6.
Perhaps the worst example is the change of Arcite's pathetic wail, ' Allone, withouten any compaignye ' (K. 1921), into :
Never, O never more to see the Sun !
Still dark, in a damp Vault, and still alone! P3. 796—7.
Archaic words and phrases are modernised. Thus, ' Blast and hollow Rore ' (P2. 550) is substituted for ' rage and veze ' (K. 1127). Lycurgus
W. H. WILLIAMS
319
looks like a lion (P3. 43), instead of ' lik a griffon' (K. 1275), and his ' brawns ' are converted into sinews (P3. 45). Sometimes the modernis- ing causes anachronism, as when Dryden mentions among the frescoes on the walls of the temple of Venus ' Balls by Night ' (P2. 493).
The archaic terms are often paraphrased. The day of the tournament which was 'the bataille to dareyne' (K. 1239) is explained as the day ' when Fortune shou'd decide Th' important Enterprize, and give the Bride ' (P3. 1, 2). The ' sparth ' of one of the combatants becomes a ' double-biting Ax, and beamy Spear ' (P3. 480). The ' Oo ! ' of the herald (K. 1675) is explained as ' Silence is thrice enjoin'd ' (P3. 496).
Occasionally a more familiar instance is substituted for one less known. In the temple of Mars
Depeynted was the slaughtre of Julius, Of grete Nero, and of Antonius.
K. 1173—4.
For Nero Dryden substitutes ' the last Triumvirs, and the Wars they move ' (P2. 606), perhaps as being more in keeping with Antony.
Or a modern analogue takes the place of the original expression. When the names of the combatants were read before the tournament, 'That in hir nombre gyle were ther noon ' (K. 1738), Dryden, writing from the standpoint of the eighteenth century, changes the expression into this :
to shun with Care, The Fraud of Musters false, the common Bane of War.
pa. 574—5.
The na'ive exaggerations of the primitive story are often modified. Thus, the wreath of gold on the head of Lycurgus, ' arm-greet, of huge wighte ' (K. 1287), becomes merely ' ample ' (P3. 53), and the epithet is transferred to his forehead. So, his ' sparth of twenty pound of wighte ' (K. 1662), asks ' Gygantick Force to rear ' (P3. 481). For the ' arms ' of the funeral pyre which stretched twenty fathoms (K. 2058) is substituted ' the Bottom ' (P3. 955).
Similarly, unusual characteristics are sometimes normalised. The ' bright citryn ' eyes of Emetreus (K. 1309) become ' blue ' (P3. 74).
Technical terms are sometimes substituted for general. The 'tame' eagle, which Emetreus bore upon his ' hand ' in K. 1319, becomes ' reclaim'd,' and is carried on his ' Fist ' in P3. 88 — 9. Chaucer makes Palamon say to Venus ' Youre vertu is so greet in hevene above ' (K. 1391); but Dryden translates this into the jargon of astrology :
With smiling Aspect you serenely move
In your fifth Orb, and rule the Realm of Love.
P3. 167—8.
320 'Palamon and Arcite' and the ' Knightes Tale'
Similarly, ' the nexte houre of Mars ' (K. 1509) is changed into
The next returning Planetary Hour
Of Mars, who shar'd the Heptarchy of Pow'r. P3. 290—1.
Conversely, technical language is occasionally converted into con- ventional poetic diction. The ' thridde houre in-equal ' (K. 1413), when Palamon went to the temple of Venus, becomes ' Now Morn with Rosie Light had streak'd the Sky' (P3. 189).
Some changes are caused by rationalising or christianising the old mythology. Thus, in K. 1441, Diana is called 'Queene of the regne of Pluto,' being identified with Proserpine. Dryden changes this to :
Queen of the nether Skies, where half the Year
My silver Beams descend, and light the gloomy Sphere,
P3. 217—8,
with reference to the moon. When Arcite died, ' ther Mars his soule gye ' (K. 1957) becomes :
The Soul of Arcite went, where Heathens go,
Who better live than we, though less they know. P3. 852 — 3.
Diffuse language is condensed and modernised. When the spectators were walking up and down before the tournament, discussing the chances of the combatants, ' some seyden thus, somme seyde it shal be so ' (K. 1658). Dryden renders this, ' their Wagers back their Wishes ' (P3. 474). The heralds ' lefte her prikyng up and doun ' in K. 1741, but ' retir'd ' in P3. 578. The condensation is sometimes apparently for the sake of antithesis, as when ' No maner shot, ne polax, ne short knyf ' (K. 1686) is changed into 'Slings afar, and Ponyards Hand to Hand' (P3. 507).
Details are sometimes changed to conform to modern customs. In the description of Arcite's funeral Theseus ' leet forth thre steedes brynge ' (K. 2031). Dryden changes this to ' the Steed that bore him living to the Fight ' (P3. 930). Instead of being covered with his arms (K. 2033), it was ' cover'd with th' Achievements of the Knight ' (P3. 930).
Some changes seem due to misunderstanding of the original. 'Boars' is substituted (P2. 589) for ' bears ' in the line ' The hunte strangled with the wilde beres ' (K. 1160); and 'on his styth ' (K. 1168) is changed into 'or the Scythe' (P2. 599). 'A paire plates' (K. 1263) is wrongly applied to the legs instead of to the breast (P3. 35). ' Alauntz ' [i.e. wolf-hounds] is rendered ' Greyhounds ' in P3. 55 ; and ' emforth ' (K. 1377), a preposition meaning ' according to,' suggests
W. H. WILLIAMS
321
the verb 'enforce' in P3. 155. 'Men may the olde at-renne and noght at-rede ' (K. 1591) is mistranslated thus :
For this Advantage Age from Youth has won,
As not to be outridden, though outrun. P3. 387 — 8.
When Saturn swears to Venus ' by myn heed ' (K. 1812), Dryden, not noticing that heed means ' head/ turns the phrase ' mine the Care shall be' (P3. 681). In K. 1831 Arcite's horse ' pighte hym on the pomel of his heed.' Dryden, misunderstanding pomel as the pommel of a saddle, paraphrases ' o'er the Pummel cast the Knight ' (P3. 702). After the tournament Theseus proclaimed ' the gre,' i.e. the superiority of one side as well as of the other (K. 1875). In rendering this ' with ease were reconciled the diff'ring Parts ' (P3. 745), Dryden seems to have thought that the gre meant ' they agree.'
Occasionally the exigencies of the metre seem responsible for the change, as when the company 'of oon and oother ' (K. 1715) proceeds ' by Three and Three/ to rhyme with ' Degree ' in the next line (ps 540—1).
One change at least is due to the disregard of punctuation. Even in the text used by Dryden, and printed at the end of the ' Fables ' (1700), we find the following passage thus punctuated :
All stinten is the m urn ing and the teres
Of Grekes, by one generall assent. K. 2110 — 1.
But Dryden connects the last line with the following paragraph thus :
When, by the Grecians general Consent,
At Athens Theseus held his Parliament. P3. 1006—7.
Some changes are consequential on other changes. Arcite, after
his fall,
was yet in memorie and alyve, And alwey criynge after Emelye. K. 1840 — 1.
To be consistent with the addition that they had ' lanc'd a Vein, and watch'd returning Breath ' (P3. 709), this is changed into
At length he wak'd, arid with a feeble Cry,
The Word he first pronounc'd was Emily. P3. 715 — 6.
' Al that is engendred in this place' (K. 2139) becomes 'those perish- able Forms ' (P3. 1033) to agree with the addition ' though the Forms decay ' (P3. 1030).
Some changes are made to avoid repetition. In Emily's prayer Niobe is substituted for Actseon as an example of Diana's vengeance (P3. 221), apparently because Actseon was similarly mentioned before in the description of the temple (K. 1207). The ' hondred of his parte ' who entered the lists with Arcite (K. 1724) become 'his Train'
322 ' Palamon and Arcite' and the 'Knightes Tale'
(P3. 558) because the number had been mentioned before in ' that everich sholde an hundred knyghtes brynge ' (K. 1238). So, 'the Women mix their Cries ' (P3. 997) is substituted for ' And thries how the ladyes gonne crye ' (K. 2097), to avoid the repetition of ' thrice/ already used five times in four lines (P3. 992 — 5).
Similarly, two phrases are sometimes contracted into one to avoid apparent repetition. In the preparation for the tournament, 'helmes bokelynge...with layneres lacynge ' (K. 1645 — 6) becomes 'one lac'd the Helm ' (P3. 455). In the death scene of Arcite, the two lines, ' Ne may the venym voyden ne expelle ' (K. 1893), and ' Is shent with venym and corrupcioun' (K. 1896), are combined and condensed into 4 Nor can the Good receive, nor Bad expel' (P3. 761). In K. 2147 Chaucer uses the phrase, ' may men wel discerne,' and, in the next line but one, ' wel may men knoWe.' Dryden condenses both into one word, 'sure' (P3. 1041). So, 'partie, ne cantel' (K. 2150) becomes 'a Part' (P3. 1044); and 'duetee and honour' (K. 2202) becomes 'Honour' (P3. 1102).
Native words are sometimes superseded by latinisms, especially by Virgilian phrases. Thus, Palamon addresses Venus as 'doughter of Jove ' in K. 1364, but as ' Increase of Jove ' \Iouis increment urn] in P3. 146. Emily's maidens have 'the homes fulle of meeth ' in K. 1421. In P3. 195, 'The plenteous Horns with pleasant Mead they crown* [uina coronant].
In the foregoing quotations it will be seen that Dryden has sometimes the advantage over his original, as might have been expected, in logical connexion or in force of expression : and further examples of this might easily be cited, e.g. the exclamation of Palamon, P2. 270 f.,
Me first, 0 kill me first, and cure my woe Then sheath the sword of justice on my foe ;
or the reflection of Theseus, P2. 366 f,
See how the madmen bleed ! behold the gains With which their Master, Love, rewards their pains !
As regards poetical treatment, a good example of his more successful method may be seen in his description of the temple of Venus. As it stands in Chaucer the passage reads thus :
Nat was foryeten the porter Fdelnesse,
Ne Narcisus the faire of yore agon,
Ne yet the folye of Kyng Salamon,
Ne yet the grete strengthe of Ercules,
Thenchauntementz of Medea and Circes,
Ne of Turnus, with the hardy fiers corage,
The riche Cresus, kaytyf in servage. K. 1082—8.
W. H. WILLIAMS
323
This appears heightened and embellished in Dryden as :
Before the Palace-gate, in careless Dress,
And loose Array, sat Portress Idleness :
There, by the Fount, Narcissus pin'd alone ;
There Samson was ; with wiser Solomon,
And all the mighty Names by Love undone :
Medea's Charms were there, Circean Feasts,
With Bowls that turn'd inamour'd Youth to Beasts.
P2. 500-'
Here we may notice the picturesque addition of the phrase, ' in careless Dress and loose Array/ to the bare ' porter Ydelnesse,' and the change to the feminine in ' Portress Idleness ' ; the legend of Narcissus sufficiently suggested by the touches 'by the Fount,' and 'pin'd alone ' ; the substitution of Samson for Hercules, partly to pair with Solomon, partly as a better example of the power of love ; tne explana- tion of 'thenchaunternentz of Circes ' by adding ' With Bowls that turn'd inamour'd Youth to Beasts ' ; and lastly, the j udicious omission of Turnus and Croesus as inappropriate instances. But the place where Dryden has most decisively risen to the height of the occasion is in the philosophical reflections of the final speech of Theseus, P3. 1024 ff., where he has rendered his fine original with an added vigour and eloquence which fully justify the expansions that he has admitted. It is in this kind of exposition that Dryden finds himself most at home and displays the surest touch ; and for the sake of this passage we may well pardon many of the faults in his version to which we have called attention.
W. H. WILLIAMS. HOBART, TASMANIA.
THE 'ANCREN RIWLE1.'
THE ENGLISH TEXT (Continued).
I complete now my comparison of the Corpus MS. with Morton's text.
p. 210, 1. 19 bemeres deft • makieft BG (Makiefl) bemere deft • makeS C bemere de$ • Maken T 22 o fowr half B on four half C afour half G o fowir half T.
212, 4 ff. bihalde$ o luffc sef }>er is eawt to edwiten • ofter ladliche biderward schuleft mid eifter • Hwen ha ihereft B bi halt o luft • sef ber is eawet to edwiten ofter • ladlic{ie biderwart schuletf wi$ eifter • hwen ha ihereft C bihalded aluft gif ber is out to et wite ober, laftliche biderward shuleS mid eiber • Hwen ha ihereft G bihaldeft o luf sif ber is ewt to edwiten • ofter loken laftliche biderward • sculeft mid ei$er Hwen ha iheren T 6 skleatteft B scletteft C skletteS G sclattes T 22 asneasen B asnesen G sneseri C sneasin T 25 tutel BCGTN eare BT
earen G arm C 27 f. Idel 7 semeles is bes deofles bearnes slep B Idel 7 gemeles is bes deoueles bernes slep G idel 7 semeles is wel be deofles bearnes slep C (semeles by early correction from scheomeles) Idel 7 semles is tis deueles barm slep T (oediuesce 7 negligence est le dormir al filz del diable 7 a la fille Fr.).
214, 2 echeliche BGT ateliche C 4 eskibah2 B eskebah G eskebach C askebaSe T 7 IrS euer i$en asken om. BGCT 6 peaftereft B paftereS CG
PuSeres T 12 ine ham] burh ham BCGT 16 hwitel BCT bwitel (altered from witel) G 21 crohhe BGT crochse C 22 bismuddet 7 bismulret BT (bismurlet) bi smuiSeled 7 bi smeored C bi smudded 7 bi smured G 23 MeaSeleft mis wordes BGC (Ma«ele$)T (mafleles).
216, 1 feondes fode] feoile3 B feondes fode CGT (la pouture del enemy Fr.) 3f. kealche cuppe B kelche cuppe GT keache cuppe C 6 druncwile BCG
drunkensume T 19 put BCGT 26 fule] feor B om. CGT.
218, 11 be om. BT hire C chere BCT 16 went te grimme to« to
BTC(be) he] ha CT he B.
220, 22 falsi-S a treowe BC falseS be treowe T 31 breasten B bresten C brastin T.
222, 8 Osee BCT4 15 ne mei ich BC ne mai i T 17 dreaieS B dreieS C draheS T 30 halle BC helle T (sale Fr.) 30 f. makeS sum bore5 BC makieft monie hore T 32 flatrrS B flattered C faltreS T selpeiS
of] heoueiS up B heueS up CT.
1 Continued from p. 160.
2 Whatever the second element ' -bah ' or ' -bach ' may be, it can hardly have anything to do with ' bathe.' The French has ' enfant qest touz iours entour le ceindre.'
3 This reading can hardly have arisen from ' feondes fode.' I suspect 'feondes fouaile' (or ' fewaile '), in the sense in which ' fowayle ' is used in Goer de Lion, and ' fwaill ' in Barbour's Bruce : see N.E.D. under ' fuel.'
4 B omits the second quotation, ' et alibi — nescivit ' ; T reverses the order, attributing ' Traxerunt ' etc. to Solomon, and ' Alieni ' etc. to Hosea. C gives both to Hosea.
5 The Latin version has ' meretrix,' but the French has nothing corresponding to this, and I am inclined to suggest that it may be equivalent to 'heora sum,' 'a certain one of them,' though 'hare' is the regular form for B. In the Genesis and Exodus such expressions as ' ilc here,' ' here non,' frequently occur. *
G. C. MAC A UL AY 325
224, 12 igan o dweole BT igan adweolefl C 17 chetel] feh BT fech C
21 wiltes, •£ he ow ne bichearre B wiltes • •£ he ow ne biwrenche C wiles ^ he ow ne biwrenche T 30 seac1 B set CT.
226, 17 bet om. EOT.
228, 1 anred luue BT (anrad) (lif of) ancre luue C 5 lowse BT lousse C. 230, 11 he stone B he stanc T he stong C 12 him... him BCT 13 hire B his CT 17 sting BCT.
234, 12 wodeliche BC wodliche T 16 icorene BT corne C (esluz Fr.)
22 Beo BT beo C.
236, 17 unbone hise te$ i be temptatiun BT unbone hise te$ ibe fondunge C.
238, 11 i wreastlunge B inwrestlunge C iwrestlinge T rSe wrastlunge2 N 17 meadluker BC meaftluker T wrinnrS B wrinneft C wrSereS T 18 f. anewile heorte B an wille heorte C anwille of herte T 26 swete ane hwule] a pine B apine T of win C.
240, 2 gluccheS B glucheS C glucches T 24 of heorte om. BCT 25 ff. ec and 7 om. throughout BCT 26 of godes deaft o rode BT (o godes) of godes deft on ro'de C 27 be grimme dom of dornesdei, munneft ofte ofte i mode B be grimme dom of domes dai, nim ofte i mofte T be grimme dom of dornqgdei nim ofte in heorte C 28 his] hire BCT.
242, 3 segge • Efter ower sunnen • hwen se BC (sunnen hwen) seie after owre sunnes • hwen se T 7 for na lickre ne beo^S ha to be wunne of heonene • Ne to be wa of helle ben is schadewe to ~p bing £ hit is of schadewe B for nan sikere ne beoft heo C for na lickere neren ho T 11 To childene ha beo$ be flectf a peinture B To childene ha beo"S • ^ fleo~S an peintinge C To childene ho is •£ fleos adepeinture T 24 beoues] burgurs3 B beoues T om. C.
244, 17 heteueste BC hetefaste T.
246, 9 he beo BCT 31 Nule ich...namare BC (Nulle) Nuli...na mare T nullich...nam more N.
250, 1 Hwa halt wrea'Sfte be bihalt BC (wra&te) Hwase haldes wraftSe • Bihalde T 7 beo schulen beo best edhalden B beo beod best athalden G he wule t beon best ed halden C wiln best beo wr$ halden T 19 ontfule ofter feol iheortet B ondfule • ober feol iheorte G ondfule • ofter feolle iheorted C ondfule • ofter fel iherted T.
252, 2 tweamen BC twinnen GT 10 slubbri B slubri G slibbri C slibri T 13 euchan halt him bi ober B euchan wreofte'S him bi ofter C uch an wreoded him bi obere G euchan leones him to o$er T 21 we witen BCGT 22 slubbri BG slibbri C slibrinesse T 25 f. Wa eauer be ane B wa is eauer be ane C wa is eawer ben ane G wa eauer i> is ane T 30 hwon] for BCGT.
254, 4 f. fallen, undersete hit B fallen me underset hit C fallen • me underfesteft hit G fallen • Vnderset hit T 5 f . tweam ham, 7 ba failed B twem ham atwa 7 ba ha failed C Totwin ham, 7 ba failed G To twinne ham, 7 ba«e fallen T 6 f. i binges utewrS neome'S BG of binges utewrS mmeS nu C ibinges utewiiS nimes T 25 Al bis is iseid mine leoue sustren • •£ BG (trend) Al bis is iseid t C Al bis is iseid mine leue childre t T 26 wr$ luueful semblant BGT (semblaunt) mia luueful semblant C 29 After anima una about twenty-seven lines added B om. CGTP.
256, 7 After tunge about six lines added in B om. CGTVT 12 pece B peche GT mantel C4 24 nawt ane to neomen BGC(naut)T(nimen) 25 (After witleas) ah set j> is leasse t ha eanes ne bihalde beron B ach t eanes ne bihalde ber on C bat he eanes bi halde ber on G ^ ha eanes bihalde bron T.
258, 16 wr$ uten be ebren capitale BC (edren) wrSuten be eddren capitale G wrS be eddre capitale T 18 scurgunge BG schurgen C schurginges T.
1 Apparently representing the strong preterite of O.E. ' sican.' Elsewhere (p. 330, 1. 6) this MS. gives 'seac' representing the preterite of O.E. 'siican.'
2 ' winstlunge ' in Morton's text is a misreading of the MS.
3 The N.E.D. has no example of any form of 'burglar' in English earlier than the sixteenth century, though ' burgator ' and ' burglator ' are cited from the Anglo-Latin of the thirteenth.
4 The French has, ' kar vn petit cloutet • puit mult en ledir vne grand piece entiere. '
326 The 'Ancren Riwle'
260, 1 biwrabbet B biwrabbed C bi wrabbed G iwarbbet T 16 gnuddeden \>e curnles ut BTG (curneles) gnudden ]>e cornes C 18 steort naked BT (naket) steortnaked C stertnaked G.
262, 3 heron mistrum mel of B her on of mistrume mel • of C her on of mistrume mel • of G |>er on • of mistime meal of T 4 After pitaunce nearly twenty -three lines added B om. CGTVP 8 f. God wot — uihtefl] hwa se inward- liche bihalt ham, fehteft BG(?io stop) god wat hwase inwardliche bihalt ham fechteft C hwa se inwardliche bihaldes ham fehten T 23 biwrixlet BCT Biturnd G lite B liche CGT 24 heouwe] furme BCGT 25 And] Ah BGT
ach C 27 Hwerto neodeft ow BGC (hwerto) Hwer to nedes ow T.
264, 1 f. no wunder nisj wunder is BCT om. G (merueille est Fr.) 5 israel godes folc BGT israel godes floe C 10 fluht BT flucht CG 23 we mahen B we muse C we muhen T mei G.
266, 1 luddre 7 meadlesluker BC(medlasluker)G(medlesluker)T(mea'Sleslukere) 17 wenden anon ouer awei] wenden ouer BCTG(ower) 22 Do he serS |>is en- chearre BC(anchere)G(eancherre) Do he seis J?is anchere T 23 schec me wr3 schrift adun B sleft me wift schrifte adun C schech me adun wiS shrift G Schet me wift schrift T 28 fealh swa i uuel wune1 B falch swa iful wune C felh swa i ful wune G fel swa in ful wune T.
268, 9 deft • red • oj?er singed B deft red ofter singed C deft • ret o}>er singed G deft • Bed o«er singeS T 12 wiltfule BG widfule C wilfule T 13 sulunges BC bulunges G siscinges T 19 f. J?ine gost] \>i chast BTC(j?in) J>i castiernent G
27 wis liste BCGT.
270, 3 f. he de^ — heuinesse] clauses transposed BCGT 6 ne dest tu hit i nowSer time B ne dest hit noufter time C nedestu hit nowfter time G ne dos tu hit itime T 26 J>et om. BCGT 26 f. ah to windwin B ach to windwe C ah to windwe T ahte windwin G.
272, 1 )>e deofles chef BCG (deoueles) J deoueles chaf T 24 fele« wrS hire i speche BG (aspeche) feoleft anan wrS hire ispeche C feoles wift hire ispeche T.
274, 8 f. nes...nes...wes B nis..,nis...is GC2 25,27 swealm B swalrn CG
28 Dreori of longurig B dreori of longunge G dreorischipe of longunge C dreori uor longinge N 29 7 al •£ of ham Howe's • 7 seoueft BC (no stop) 7 alle )>at of ham flowed • 7 geowefl G.
276, 9 Ne kimeft BG ne kimeS C 11 Deale drue spritlen beorefl win berien • Breres, rose blostmen B Dele • druse spritlen beoreft win berien • breres rose blosmen C Deale drue sprutelen beoreiS wine berien • Breres Rose blosmen G 17 nart tu fulfte fette • ne bist tu B Nart }m nu ful$e vette • Ne bist J?u C Nartu furSe fette • Ne bistu G.
278, 7 f . t tu wenest godd B ]?at }>u wenest god G t tu wenes God T t }>u wenest good C 30 lutel] sutil BCG sutel T 7 swa gentilliche smeal 7 se
smuhel3 B 7 swa smuwel ^(altered later to smuhel) 7 swa smuhel GT.
280, 7 J>e Jmrs BT \>Q Jmrse CG 13 swong ham BC swuong ham G swang ham T 18 bilurd B bi lurd C bilurt GT 23 smiten • Hwa se4 BGT smiten hwase C.
282, 10 deope] halwende B halwinde G halewinde CT.
284,16 uileJlimeC file BT }>ile G After misdeft J>e add lime is J>e frensch
of file B lime is \>e [frencs of file] C 6 Lime is }>e frenhs of tile G om. T iren]
or BCT ore G After 1. 17 add ant rusted \>e swiftere ^ me hit scureft hearde 'i
Gold • seluer • Stel • Irn • al is or B Arusted ]?e swiftere • J>at me hit scured harde 1
1 'fealh' ('falch,' 'felh') here must be from O.E. 'feolan,' which seems not to have been recorded hitherto in M.E. The French is 'deuint en eel orde coustuine.' Cp. p. 272, 1. 24.
2 T is defective from 272, 26 to 276, 25.
3 Cp. O.E. ' smiigan,' ' smygel. '
4 This, with a comma instead of a full stop after 'eor5e,' 1. 24, is evidently the true reading and punctuation.
5 After this C has iu the original text ' )>e file fret of }>eiren • Nis hit acurset • or • }?et iwurfteft swartf re ' etc. By a somewhat later hand ' ]>eiren ' is cut out and there is written above the Hue 'J?e irn \>e rust 7 tet ragget 7 makeS hit uwit 7 smefle.'
327
Gold • seoluer • Stel • iren • al is or G 7 rustes te swrSftre •£ mon hit scures harde, Gold • Sillier • Irn • stel al is or T1 21 godes nep2 BG godes nap TV godes neb C.
286, 16 uri leasse B wrin lasse G uri lesse C (altered later apparently to prein be lesse) ure lesse T preyen lesse V 19 wur$ BCT burh G 29 A new paragraph begins Galnesse BCGT (BO in the French, Lecherie).
2138, 9 bispottift BG bispoteft C bispotten T 10 spotle] speckes BGT speches C 14f. as wes spot ear BCG (er) as was spotte ear T " 19 bu reade boht BGTC(bocht) (vous rouge pensee Fr.) 21 ter nere BT ber nere G ber nis C 22 draheft to hire unlust BG draseft to hire unlust C drahes to him unlust T (se treit a son mal desir Fr.) 23 amainet B amained G amaset CT (tresvasee Fr.) 26 eruh] curre BGTV cuard C (altered from curre) (couard Fr.).
290, 2 vlien] flehen BG flesen C flehes T (musches Fr.) 16 halsinde BCG halsande T 23 spuse] bune BG bugging CT.
292, 9, 14 dulle BCT dulte G 19 holes] hudles BCGT 29 dragse B drase C drah G drahe T.
294, 11 gure blod BCT red blod G 17 stinkinde BCGT 28 f. sunge foxes he serS ure lauerd ]>e strueS be win sardes • -p beoft be earste procunges be strueft ure sawlen B seunge foxes he serS ure lauerd be struck be winssardes . t beoS ure saulen C gunge foxes • bat beod be eareste preocunges • he seid ure lauerd • be destruet be win garges G sunge foxes • be earst prokinges He seis ure lauerd •£ struien be winseardes • ^ arn ure sawles T.
296, 10 to eani bing eawt ouer mete B to ariimon • ewicht oner mete C to animon awiht ouer mete T to ani fleshlich Lime • owhtt owermete G 12 outende alle hire wanes BG (tende) tende al hire eastres C brohte o brune alle hire wanes T 17 mutlefl B mudleft C inucheleft G muccles T 19 on elpi] anlepi B an lepi C an anleapi G lepi T.
298, 1 feorSe BCT 3 is schrift be beheueste • Of hit schal BC (schrifte...of) T (schrifte...biheouest) 15 selt B gelt G seldes T (C omits the sentence).
300, 5 Judit om. BCGT 16 bihat BCG bihet T 26 bet] ba BGT boa C.
302, 9 sunegede BCG (bifore be sunehinge T).
304, 6 is ipaied] let of BCG letes of T 32 }>rote BCT breote GN.
306, 3 swart lei up in to be ski wes BT(leie -)G(into be skues)C(into be skies altered from skiwes) 8 monne dom B monnes dom C mine dom G (forhohe- den)mi dom T.
308, 7 7 te ful J>e is icnawen, Biuore godd is oberweis B 7 be ful bifore god is ofterweis icnawen C (altered later to 7 be ful be is icnawen before god is ofterweis) 7 be ful bat is icnawen, biuoren god is oberneis G 7 ful •£ is icnawen • Bifore godd is o]?er weis T 9 unwreien] werie BCG were T 19 After neuer add ludas streonede of thamar, phares 7 zaram • Phares, diuisio • zaram, oriens interpretatur • \>e gasteliche bitacnrS tweamunge from sunne • 7 i be heorte brefter arisinde grace B om. CTGP.
312, 9 unseli B unseinede C unsegene G vnsehene T (inaluois Fr.) 20 hu me seddeft3 BCG (gedded) hwat mon seddes T.
314, 10 f. nawiht for hwon he beo BG nawicht barfore he beo C na bing for hwi he beos T 20 ropunge t he BT (ropinge) ropunge, bat he G roping t C (altered later to bidding •£).
316, 1 rungi BG rungge C rungen T 25 unwreo BCG Vnwreoh T.
318, 7 Eede o Ring i chirch sard B eode on ring C Eode o ringe ichireward G Eode in Ring i chirche seard T 11 stude, o$er me seoluen • I chirche B stude • ofter me seoluen ichirche C stude • ober me seolf • Ichirche G stude o'Ser me seluen • I chirche T 26 seggen al be wise BCGT (segge).
320, 1 tellen al— 9, sixte totagge om. B (ins. GCT) 3 forseme C for seme T forgemen G.
322, 2 scheome4 BCG scheme T.
1 C has added in the margin, ' Golt • seluer • stel • irn • coper • Mestling • breas • al is iclfeopet or.'
2 Obviously the true reading. The French is 'hanap dieu.'
3 That is, ' what is commonly said.'
4 This adjectival use occurs several times in our texts : e.g. 390, 9.
328 The 'Ancren Riwle'
324, 19 ff. Circumdederunt— beatunge (326, 7) inserted after longe (328, 4) BG as text T om. C.
326, 26 f. 7 risede 7 mengde him seoluen ' • 7 seide BG(geiede) 7 risede • 7 mende him seluen 7 seisede C 7 resede 7 mengde him seluen 7 seide T.
328, 8 ff. So me deoppre— up follows beatunge (326, 7) BG ins. here CT.
330, 2 truandise • hudeS BG truandise • hut C truandise • Hudes T 4 derue BGT deore C 8 f. wiiS bus anewil ropunge halseft efter B wift bus anwil halsunge • ropeS efter CG wift bus anwil hailsinge Ropes after T 31 is a sacrement • 7 euch sacrament haueft BG is ansacrament • 7 euch sacrement haueS C is a sacrament • And euch sacrament haues T.
332, 4 bla BCG blac T 9 totagges BCGT.
334, 1 heare B hare CT best G . tilde«...him BCG tildes... him T 6 wrS hope wrS ute dred, j»et is wiS ouertrust BG (uten...ouer trust) wi$ hope wift uten dred • ^ is wift oner trust CT 7 be seift BCT bat seift G 15 beoft to grimme robberes ieuenet B beo$ to grim me robberes CG(grime) arn euenet to grimme robberes T 25 were 7 wif 7 wenchel BCGT 27 nis inne BCGT.
"338, 6 forgneaieft B for gneieft CG for gneies T 14 unfreinet BGT vnfreined C 21 f. were his, as he bere hire in his purs • to neomen up o grace brin B were his to neomen up grace brin C were his to neomen uppen grace wrien G were his • to nimen up o grace brin T.
340, 1 betere is o bene no2 BG (his) betere is o benne no T betere is • oa • benne noa C 12 herbearhe B erber C herberhe T herebere G 27 Inoh is t tu BC(inoch)G (bat bu)T(seie •)•
8 7 trude BG 7 trudde CT 19 f. ouer gold or, 7 simmes B ofer golt hort 7 simmes C ouer gold hord 7 simmes TG (gimmes) 24 ende • of alle BG ende-'OfalleCT.
344, 3 schorn] ischakeBCG(yschake) inschakeT 25 beafunge B bafunge C bauunge G.
346, 4 After abuten add Ant set of bis inohreafte him walde bunche wunder B om. CGT 5 f. culle al be pot ut BTG (cul) culle as be pot ut C 20 on iunne] engoini B an geonni C en gunne G eniunse T enioyne V (euiong Fr.)
22 sum lutlesihweat B sum lutles hwet C sumlutles wet G surn litles hwat T
23 as a salm ofter twa • Pater nostres BC (ansalm...pater)G(a psalm •)T(asalme). 348, 5 derf BCT (G omits 348, 3—9).
350, 21 edstuteS B stutteff C at stondet G atstonden T.
354, 10 ordre • be habbeS B o^Sre be habbe^ C obre be habbet G oflre ^ hauen T 11 auh om. BCGT 14 ah beou itald unwurS, ne scheome B Ach beon itald unwurS ne scheome C 7 beon itald unwurS • ah scheome G ah beo itald for unwurS ne schome T.
356, 11 wel mei duhen3 B wel mei don C wel mai buhien G wel mai dohen T 27 ich telle — her] ich cleopie eauer her • beon BC (her, beon) ich cleopie eauer her beon G i clepie eauer to beo T 31 truke'S ow nawt • I beos BC truke eou nawt • I beos G trukes ow nawt • I beose T.
358, 1 is in, blissiS B is in • blissrS C is inne, blissed G is in blisses T 27 boleden BCT bolie-S G.
360, 12 f. acemin BC acemen T acemeien G.
362, 8 bune BCGT 21, 23 tolaimet B to laimet C to limet...to limed T to limeiS...to limed G.
364, 13 forded B forbed G fordes T ...ded C (erasure] 17 buten om. BCGT 27 nede sune] nefde sunne BCG nauede sunne T.
1 i.e. 'trembled and was disturbed.'
2 ' Better is ever than never,' i.e. ' any time than no time.'
3 Cp. 418, 15. These passages support what the N.E.D. calls 'the unfortunate conjecture of Latham ' that in such phrases as ' that will do very well ' there has been a confusion between ' do ' and ' dow. ' The French is here illegible, but in 418, 15 we have ' ne puit chaler de voz draps,' and here too the word ' chaler ' seems to be visible. Probably here the meaning is 'but that does not matter.' So also in the passage added in B at p. 64, 1. 8 (f. 15, 1. 19) ' berof wel mei duhen ' means « that does not matter.'
G. C. MACAULAY 329
366, 4 After berof add swa him agras ber asein t B om. CGT 20 bultefc BOG bultes T (with corresponding forms in 11. 22 f.).
368, 2 vuele iheowed] elheowet1 B el iheowet G el iheowed C helhewet T bauh] t BT bat G . . C (erased] 11 pinsunge BCG pinsinge T (so also 370, 1) 20 ber] bredde BCT brede G.
370, 11) ff. auh forto — religiun] ah beon brefter se ancreful nomeliche religius B Ach beo berefter se angerful nomeliche religius C Ah beon ber after se estfvil nomeliche religiuse G Ah beo brefter se angerful T 23 deciples] lechecreft BC lechecraft GT.
372, 12 f. igast, t he forseme BC (no stop} igast • t he forseome T agast • bat he forgeme G 19 bohten2 B brohten GT brochten C 29 ifeiet BT iveiet C iueied G.
374, 15 sker BC siker GT.
376, 24 And] ah B 7 G (C omits this sentence and T omits Aromaz — thuris, 24—26).
378, 2 He] be BG beo C t T 9 ff. beonne— wowes] Beo se ibunden iriwrS fowr large wahes BT (be fowr) beo se ibunden inwrS four large wases C.
380, 2 scharpschipe BCT 6 After surine add £ is • bing swa iseid ofter idon, •£ me mei rihtliche turiien hit to uuele • 7 sunegin brefter ber burn, wr$ mis boht • wift uuel word • on hire • on obre • 7 sungin ec wr$ dede B om. CT 19 hire seolf, he ouerleape'S • ne trust nawt se wel B hire leof ouerleape'S Ne trust naut se wel C hire self • ouer leapes • ne trustes him nawt T 21 ant he leaped oner ham BC (7) T (7 he leapes).
382, 7 f. heard, soft luue lihteS hit 7 softeS 7 sweteft B hart luue lichteS hit 7 softe'S 7 sweteft C hard t luue ne lihtes hit * 7 softes 7 swetes T 11 f. luue of sunne B luue summe C luue sunne T 13 middel • beh • 7 earmes B middel • b.eh 7 armes TC(bech) 18 wiuene BT monne C 25 beof inume B beof inumen CT.
384, 2 pinsunges BC pinsiriges T 16 spade] spitelsteaf B spitel stef C spitel staf T.
386, 26 freolec BC freolaic T.
390, 6 buften BC buftin T 9 scheome dea$ efter al bi weane B scheome dea$ C schome dea« T 11 be bi dea« seche« BC t ti dea« sechen T 29 efter monies wene set B efter monies wene, set C after monnes wene iset T.
392, 9 After wille add bu hauest us icrunet • scheld he serS of god wil BC (icruned • Scheld) bu haues us icrunet • Scheld he seis of god wil T 17 f. litunge BCG litinge T.
394, 12 kumen ham B cumen ham CT cume-n horn G 13 leten B lete C leoten G leaten T 16 seiseS B serS CG seis T.
396, 15 gurdel BCG girdel T.
398, 9 After hire add Ah ha is breouald • i widewe had • i spus had • i meidenhad • be heste B om. CGT 10 •£ me bugge hire, buggen hire 1 ofter wi« B t nie bugge hire • hu ? ofter wi^S C bet me bugge hire • buggen hire, hu, ober wi8 G •£ mon buggen hire • Hu ofter wi^S T 26 Creasuse wule, be wes kinge richest B creisuse weole C cresoles weole G cressuse weole T.
400, 1 bodi BCGT.
402, 21 herde] earre B arre C om. T.
404, 12 makeden] duden B diden T bude C.
406, 11 After onswerien add alle wa ha duden me • ne na luue ne ahte ich ham • B om. CT 7 siggen om. BCT 12 hit... hit BCT.
408, 9 streche BC strech T 15 of his luue leaskeS B his luue trukefl.C his luue manges T (samour guerpist Fr.) 19 se witerliche ich bi his ahne B se witerliche ich • bi his achne C sea witerliche Ich bi hise ahne T.
412, 10 Tweofte dei • Condelmeasse dei • B3 ii, twelfte dai • iii, Condelme»se dai T 13 witsunne dei • Midsumerdei • B viii, witsunen dai • ix, Mid sumer dai • T
1 I take this to mean ' discoloured ' (' strangely coloured') : cp. O.E. elbeodig, etc.
2 Cp. p. 376, 1. 1.
:' Roman numerals are written above the line throughout this list in B.
M. L. R. IX. 22
330 The 'Ancren Riwle'
Hwitesunedei • Midsumeresdei • N l 19 se muwen — nexte] beoft hit be neste BC beos hit te neste T 22 f. and umbridawes and soing dawes, and uigiles. I beos dawes om. B 24 [eten] nout hwit] nawt eoten hwit B eote nan hwit C ete na hwit T 25 After sunendawes one add hwen se beoiS in heale 7 i ful strengfle • ah riwle ne tweast nawt seke ne blodletene B om. CT 26 ouer feble • Potage eoteft BC (ouerfeble)T (eotes).
414, 7 hare meadlese nurS B hare medlaseschipe C hore meadlese nowse T 24, 26 mea$fulliche...meaftfulliche B gnedeliche...naruliche C (altered later to me$fulliche...me8fulliche) gnedeliche...narewlich T.
416, 4 f. riche — tilien] chirch ancres be tilie^ B riche ancres \>e tilie~S C riche ancres £ tilien T 6 Ne wilni ha nawt B Ne wilni naut C Ne wilne nan T 7 gnedure B gredure C gredire T 8 for hwon •£ gredihesse beo rote of t gederunge of hire bitternesse • al beoft2 B beo gredinesse rote, of hire bitternesse • Alle beo$ C Beo gredinesse rote of hire bitternesse, alle beon T 9 spruteft BC spruten T 12— ] 9 Wummen — gingiure] The text of B will be given later. T agrees essentially with N, and so also the original text of C and the French. C has been corrected later so as to agree in the main with B 12 f. bah se spearien hit on ow B J?ach se sparien hit on ow C bah se sparen hit on ow self T.
418, 1 hwen he punt hire BCT(pundes) 4 ku...heo] hit... hit BCT 7 chepilt • •£ is buS forte sullen efter bisete B chepilt C (be bu8 etc. added later] chapmon T 8 After helle add bing bah •£ ha wurcheft ha mei burh hire meistres read, for hire neode sullen • Hali men sumhwile liueden bi hare honden • B ping bah t ha wurcheft, ha mei wel burch hire meistres read for hire neod sullen • bah swa dernliche as ha mei for misliche monne wordes C (by later addition} om. T 9 f. cla'Ses • ne boistes • ne chartres •• Scoren ne cyrograffes • ne be chirch uestemenz • ne be calices B cla'Ses Nawt te chirche uestemenz ne be chaliz T om. C 22 After i-gurd add swa leofteliche bah •£ se mahen honden putten ber under • Nest lich nan ne gurde hire wi$ na cunne gurdles, bate burh schriftes leaue B om. CT ilespiles B ylespiles CT 23 ou] hire BCT 24 breres • ne biblodgi B breres ne bibloftgi C breres ne blodeke T.
420, 1 After leaue about five lines added B om. CT Ower schou i winter
beon meoke • greate 7 warme B Ower scheon beon greate 7 warme CT (Owre schon) 3 After baruot add j lihte scheos werien B om. CT 4 After likeS add Ischeoed ne slepe se nawt • ne nowher bute i bedde B om. CT 5 After ueste add ah eauer is best be swete 7 te swote heorte • Me is leouere ^ se bolien wel an heard word, ben an heard here B om. CT 6 After wimpel-leas add 7 se wel wullen B added later C om. T3 7 hwite ofter blake B blake C (altered later to o'Ser hwite o'Ser blake) om. T After ueiles nineteen lines added in BV4 om. T
added later in the margin C 11 After habben add A meoke surpliz se mahen in hat sumer werien B om. CT 13 After seolke add ne laz buten leaue B added later C (T omits 12 — 14, Ne makie — chirche clones) 15 na swuch bing B Nan [swuc] bing C5 Na bing T 16 After leaue about fourteen lines added B om. CT.
422, 1 After suluen add 7 feden sef neod is B om. CT (added later in C) 11 mei, bauh, techen] mei learen BC (T om. 11 — 13 Hiremeiden — one) 12 pliht of B dute of C among wepmen • ofter bimong gromes B biniong gromes C
13 After one add bah bi hire meistres read ha mei sum rihten 7 helpen to learen B om. CT (added later in C) 15 After idodded add ofter sef se wulleft ischauen B om, CT (added later in C) 16 After heaued add beo bi be her ieueset, hwa se swa
1 C is here defective, having lost a leaf between ff. 189 and 190, with text corresponding to Morton, p. 410, 7 to 412, 14. A part of this, down to the end of Part vii, is supplied by a later hand on f . 198.
2 That is ' If greediness be the root of this collecting, that is of its bitterness, all the boughs are bitter ' etc. The French has ' Si couoitise est racine de sa amertume toutes sunt les branches ameres' etc. The text of B is apparently a development by way of explanation.
3 T omits all mention of wimples and veils here, and says only 'Habbes warme cappes.
4 V Las only a part of this passage : about two lines are missing at the beginning of it owing to loss of a leaf, and about eight are omitted at the end.
5 'swuc' added later.
0. C. MACAULAY 331
is leouere B om. CT (hwa se wule ieveset • ah ha mot oftere weschen 7 kemben hire holuet added later in C).
424, 2 After wulleS eight lines added B om. TO1 5 ful uriorne wrS uten euch tiffunge • ofter a lutel Jmftene, o$er of feier ealde B ful unorne ofter of feiger ealde C (o$er a lute jmhten added later] ful unorne • offer feir ealde T 24 Hare cop beo hehe isticchet • 7 bute broche B hare cop beo hechge isticched wr$ ute broche C (T om. 23 — 25 hore heued — open heaued) 25 unleppet B unlepped C 26 na mon • rie cuS mon ne cunnes mon • ne for na cuSSe cluppen BC (nan...cunes ...nan)T(ni for).
426, 14 Sahtnesse BT sachtnesse C 15 wre««e] leatfSe B laflSe CT 17 de« hond j? ilke B de$ j> ilke C dos hond to ^ ilke T.
428, 4 gruchesi B (ch written later over erasure, probably of one letter) gruuesi C gruse T 8 uort mid-morwen] aftet prime BT oftet prime C 10 bute mete 7 hure •> ha mei flutte bi B bute mete 7 claft t ha mei flutte bi CT (ho mai) 11 godd, hwet se tide of \>e ancre2 BC(god) godd hwat se tide of J>e anker T 14 ehe of hope BT ege of hope C (oil desperance Fr.) 16 ne bu$ me nawt blisse BC (naut)T (bue$ mon) 20 f. iwurset • On ofter half }>urh3 J?et ha sungi« B iwurset • On oiSer half sef ha sunge-S C wursnet • On ofter half sif ho sunehefl T.
430, 10 After Amen about sixteen lines added B om. CT 14 mi muchele hwile B muche hwile CT 21 drehe$ 7 dreaieft B dreheiS 7 dreise-S C drehen ofter drehden T 25 f. wift an aue, for him £ swonc her abuten BC (\>e swong) T (t swanc) 26 Inouh— Intel, added later C om. T 27 After lutel add Ex- plicit • Ijjench o |>i writere i )>ine beoden sumchearre, ne beo hit ne se lutel • Hit turned J?e to gode, •£ tu bidest for o)>re B om. CT.
(To be concluded.)
G. C. MACAULAY.
CAMBRIDGE.
1 This passage, except the first sixteen words, is added in the margin of C after the note on wimples, p. 420.
2 The meaning is 'Let no one mistrust God, whatever may happen to the anchoress, or think that he will fail her.' The French is, ' Nule ne mescroie dieu qeiqe auienge de la recluse qil lui faille. '
3 Altered later to 'sef.'
22—2
THE S. PANTALEO ITALIAN TRANSLATION OF DANTE'S LETTER TO THE EMPEROR HENRY VII (EPIST. VII).
There exist two early Italian translations of Dante's letter to the Emperor Henry VII (Epist vn). The first, which was undoubtedly executed in the fourteenth century, has, so far as is known, been pre- served in one MS. only (of Cent, xiv), namely Cod. S. Pantaleo 8 in the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele at Rome. This translation has not hitherto been printed. The second, which at one time was attributed to Marsilio Ficino (1433 — 1499), but which probably dates from towards the end of the fourteenth century, has been preserved in at least ten MSS. (two of which have been assigned to Cent, xiv, while the remainder belong to Cent, xv)1, and has many times been printed2.
That these two translations are the work of different hands, a com- parison of the text of the former (now printed for the first time) with the renderings of the later version (where they differ), as given below in the apparatus criticus, will prove beyond question3.
The same MS. (Cod. S. Pantaleo 8) which contains the earlier translation, contains also, following immediately after it, but transcribed by a different copyist, the Latin text of the letter (a transcript of which was printed in a previous number of this Review41). How far this trans- lation was made direct from the Latin text in the same MS. (which is the earliest of the three MSS. in which Epist. VII has been preserved), and how far, consequently, it can be regarded as an independent authority, is an interesting question. On the one hand, there are several remarkable coincidences, three of them involving the same blunder, which seem to point to a close relation between the two. On
1 See P. Wagner, Die Echtheit der drei Kaiserbriefe Dantes im Lichte der Kritik (Koln, 1907), pp. 10—11.
2 See Fraticelli, Opere minori di Dante (Firenze, 1892), Vol. in, pp. 462—3; see also Mod. Lang. Eev. vn, 4 — 5.
3 It will be noted at the same time that the earlier version is, as a rule, far more correct than the later one.
Vol. vii, pp. 208—14.
PAGET TOYNBEE 333
the other hand, there is the no less striking fact that in a large number of instances the translation is markedly at variance with the accompany- ing Latin text ; from which it is evident that the translator cannot have been dependent upon the S. Pantaleo Latin text alone for his version, but must have had before him some other textual authority. It follows, therefore, that the Italian translation contained in this MS., which in one instance1 offers a more correct reading than any of the extant MSS. of the Latin text, has a certain independent value of its own, as representing a text of the original which has since disappeared. The chief coincidences between the Italian translation and the Latin text in the S. Pantaleo MS. are the following :
In the title, al gloriosissimo etfelicissimo triunf actor e2 = gl&riosissi mo atque felicissimo triumphatori (where the Venetian MS.3 reads sanctis- simo triumphatori, while in the Vatican MS.4 the title is wanting). In § 1, crudelmente5 = impie (Vat. impios ; Ven. impie).
sole innangi desiato6 = Titan preoptatus (so Vat. ; Ven. preci-
pitatus). In 1 4, la voce discesa del cielo1 — vox a nubibus (Vat. a nubis ; Ven.
Annubis).
In § 7, li suoi custumi anchor a intorbeano li cor si del fiume d'arno* ; = sarni fluenta torrentis adhuc ritus inficiunt (Vat., Ven. rictus}.
nello amore del padre9 = in amore patris (Vat. in Ginare patris ; Ven. in Cinere posita).
It will be noted that in each of these last three passages, the blunder of the S. Pantaleo Latin text (a nubibus for Anubis ; ritus for rictus ; and in amore patris for in Ginyrae patris) is faithfully reproduced in the translation.
The principal divergences, on the other hand, which are far more numerous than the coincidences, are as follows :
1 Namely in § 3, where all three MSS. of the Latin text read Augustum, the translation lias strectecqa, representing angustum, which is undoubtedly the correct reading.
2 Here the later translation is in agreement.
3 Cod. Marc. Lat. XIV. For a transcript of this text, see Mod. Lang. Rev. Vol. vn, pp. 433—40.
4 Cod. Vat. Palat. Lat. 1729. For a transcript of this text, see Mod. Lang. Rev. Yol. vn. pp. 6 — 12,
5 Here again the two translations are in agreement.
6 Here the later translation has sole molto desiderato, the translator having evidently read peroptatus.
7 So the later translation.
8 The later translation has li suoi inganni avvelenenano.
9 The later translation has nelfuoco degli abbracciamenti del padre.
334 S. Pantaleo Ital. Trans, of Dante's Epist. VII
In § 1, soperbo inimico1 = inplacabilis hostis (so Vat., Ven.).
spollio = denudare (a blunder for denudavit, the reading of
Vat., Ven.).
piangeremo2 = deflevimus (so Vat, Ven.). In § 3, le rasione (i.e. le ragionis) — vita (a blunder for jura, the
reading of Vat., Ven.). Lombardia4 = liginerani (a blunder for ligurum, the reading
of Vat., Ven.). strectecga = Augastum (a blunder, which is common also to
Vat., Ven., for angustum).
In § 4, confortando = coartando (a blunder for cohortando, the read- ing of Vat. ; Ven. cohartando). i regni deli romani = Romanaque tellus (Vat. Ven. Romanaque
regna).
In § 5, gli altri5 — Latinos (so Vat. ; Ven. Latino). antiguardiamo6 = precaveant (so Vat., Ven.). altri consigli1 = alta consiglia (so Vat., Ven.). In § 6,solicitamente8 = instanter (so Vat., Ven.).
vergeando9 = virulente (Vat. virulenter', Ven. via terre). In § 7, rabbia10 = sanie (so Vat. ; Ven. fumo).
con malvagio vageiamento11 = improba pro capacitate (Vat. Ven.
improba procacitate). adrende (for adtende) = adtendat (so Vat. ; Ven. accendit, for
attendit). convengono12 = non conveniunt (so Vat. ; Ven. etiam c.).
Here we have no less than seventeen passages where the translation exhibits a marked divergence from the S. Pantaleo Latin text ; in five of which, moreover, blunders (denudare for denudavit ; vita for jura ; Augustum for angustum', coartando for cohortando', pro capacitate for procacitate) in the latter are corrected in the translation.
As in the case of the previous transcripts, contractions have been expanded, the expansions being printed in italics. The punctuation of the MS. has been preserved. The folios of the MS. [137 ro— 140ro] are indicated in the transcript; as are the lines (numbered in round brackets)
I So the later translation. 2 The later translation has piangemo. 3 So the later translation. 4 So the later translation.
5 The later translation has i Latini. 6 The later translation has guardino avanti. 7 The later translation has alti c. 8 The later translation has instantemente.
9 The later translation has essendo verdi. 10 So the later translation.
II The later translation has con malvagia sollecitudine. 12 The later translation has non c.
PAGET TOYNBEE 335
of each separate folio. For convenience of reference, the text has been broken up into paragraphs, numbered [in square brackets] to correspond with the numbering of the sections of the Latin text as printed in the Oxford Dante ; and the title, which follows on continuously with the text in the MS., has been detached and printed as a separate paragraph. The Italian text is accompanied in the MS. by a certain number of marginal glosses. These have been disregarded, partly because many of them are more or less undecipherable, and partly because such as are decipherable are useless for the purposes of the present article1.
The five principal printed texts of the later Italian translation of this letter are referred to in the apparatus criticus as follows :
D1. = Doni (1547)2; D2. = Doni (1552)3; B. = Biscioni (1723)4; M. = Mou- tier (1823)5; W. = Witte (1827)6.
[fol. 137ro]. Episfola missa ad Regera romanorww per dantem allegherij florentinum7.
(2) Al gloriosissimo / et felicissimo trmnfactore et singulare (3) signore Messere8 Henricho9 / per la diuina prouidentia Re (4) de romanj / et sempre acrescetore10 / I soi deuotissimi Daw-(5)-te aleghieri fiorentino / et exbandito non meriteuole-(6)-me?ite11 / et Vniuersalmente tucti I toscanj 12 che pace desidera-(7)-no / ala terra denarasi ai pedi / basci mawdano13.
[ § 1.] Sicchome (8) testimona lo smisurato amore deuino14 / ad noi fo lassa-(9)-to hereditagio di pace15 / ad cio che nela sua merauil-(lO) -liosa16 dolcec9a / lasprecce dela nostra milicia / sahu-(ll)-miliassero
1 The childish nature of these glosses may be gathered from the following specimens — ' militia, cioe cauallaria, le nostre operetioni sono una caualeria in questo mondo ' (§ 1, 1. 10); 'Absentia, cioe non presentia' (§ 1, 1. 15); ' inuiti. cioe cholui che non uole ' (§ 1, 1. 15).
2 Prose Antiche di Dante, Petrarcha, et Boccaccio, Fiorenza, 1547 (pp. 9—12).
3 La Zucca del Doni, Vinegia, 1551 — 2 (' I Frutti,' pp. 69—73).
4 Prose di Dante Alighieri e di Messer Gio. Boccacci, Fireuze, 1723 (pp. 211 — 15).
5 La Cronica di Giovanni Villani, Firenze, 1823 (Vol. vm, pp. Ixv — Ixxi).
6 Dantis Allighieri Epistolae quae extant, Patavii, 1827 (Kpist. vi, pp. 31—47).
7 Dl.D2.B.W. Pixtola di Dante Alighieri Poeta Fiorentino all' Imperator' Arrigo di Luzimborgo (Da. Lucimborgo; B.W. Luzimburgo).
8 M. omits Messere.
9 D^.B.M.W. Arrigo.
10 D2. accrescitore di tutti i beni.
11 D^D^B.M. e non meritevolmente sbandito', W. e non meritame.nte s.
12 D^D^B.M.W. e tutti i Toscani universalmente..
13 Dl.D2.B.M. W. mandano bad alia terra dinanzi a (B.M.W. a') vostri piedi.
14 D^B.M.W. Testificando laprofondissima dilettione di Dio; D2. T. lap. elettione di D. fatta in voi.
15 Di.B.M.W. a noi e lasciata la heredita (B. redita) della pace; D2. a n. e I. per la h. d.p.
16 D^D2. omit maravialiosa.
336 S. Pantaleo Ital. Trans, of Dante s Epist. VII
et in quello uso meritassimo lalegrecge (12) dela trmnfante patria1. Ma la inuidia de lo antico et so-(13)-perbo Inimico2 sempre mai / et occultamente adguatando / (14) la prosper! tade humana / alquawti uolenti deseredando3 per (15) labenscentia4 del defendetore5 / Nui altri Inuiti spollio (16) crudelmmte6. Quinci e che nui longamente sopra i fiumi / (17) dela confusione piangeremo7 et li aiutorij del iusto Re pre- (18)-gauamo8 che9 despergesse la tiraraiia del crudele10 tiranno / (19) et nui11 nela nostra iustitia reformasse. .Comimque tu (20) successore de cesare et daugusto12 passando y gic^hi da-(21)-ppenino / recasti le honoriuili13 ensengne tarpie14 / incoft-(22)-teneftte15 li luonghi sospiri sostarono / et li deluuij de le (23) lagrime mawcarono. Et si come sole iwnai^i desiato16 / (24) leuaralosi noua17 speran9a de melgliore seculo a ita- (25)-lia resplendeo / allora molti antiuegendo alloro de-(26)-siderij 18 / In canto19 con uergilio cantauano / Chosi i re-(27)-gni de Saturno chome la uergene retornawdo20.
[ § 2.] Ma (28) per qhel21 nostro sole22 / o per che lo sbollientameftto del disi-(29)-derio / o la uerita apspera23 questo admowischa24 / gia se crede (30) stare fermo o tornare in dietro25 / ne piu de meno [fol. 137 vo]
1 D1. mitighiamo V asprezza della vittoriosa patria del delo; D2. mitighiamo V asprezza et acquistiamo la palma vittoriosa del cielo ; B. la speranza della nostra cavalleria s' aumiliasse: neW uso d' essa meritassimo V. allegrezze della vittoriosa patria del cielo; M.W. V asprezze d. n. c. s' aumiliassero, nell' uso (W. e nelV u.) d> essa m. I' a. d. v. p. d. c.
2 D^D-.B.M.W. ma la sagacitade e la persecutione delV antico superbo (B. e superbo) nimico.
3 D1. il quale sempre e nascosamente perseguita la prosperita de disiderando morti coloro i quali consentiro et vollero; D2. il q. sempre nascosamente p. la prosperitade d. m. c. i q. c. et v. ; B.M.W. il q. sempre e nascosamente agguata la prosperitade umana (M. omits umana) disertando molti, i quali consentirono e vollero (M. vollono).
4 Sic ; in the marginal gloss, absentia.
5 Di.D2. del tuo valore ; B.M.W. del tutore.
6 D*.Df.B.M.W. noi altri non volenti crudelmente spoglio.
7 D^D^B.M. piangemo', W. piangemmo.
8 T)l.D2.]&.M.. continuamente addomandiamo ; W. c. addomandammo.
9 D^D^M. lo quale ; B.W. il quale. 10 B. superbo.
11 D1.D2.B.M.W. et che noi.
12 D^D2. di Cesare Augusto ; B.W. di C. e di A ; M. di C. ed A. 13 Sic.
14 D^D^B.M.W. glihonorevoli segni Eomani di (D^D2. da] monte Tarpeo recasti.
15 D^.B.M.W. alpostutto. w D^D2. B.M.W. il sole molto desiderato.
17 Di.D2. B.M.W. cosl la nuova.
18 D^D2. veggiendo i loro desiderii; M. veggendo il loro desiderio; B.W. vegnendo innanzi a1 loro desideri.
19 D1.D8.B.M.W. ingioia.
20 D1. con Vergilio : ecco i regni di Saturno con la vergene ritornano, cantavano ; D2. cantavano con V.; Ecco i. e. di S. c. la v. ritornano; B.M.W. con V. cosl i r. di S., come la v. ritornando, cantavano.
21 So apparently MS.; D1.D2.B.M,W. Ma ora che.
_.22 D^D^M. la nostra speranza, doe che (M. omits doe) vorremmo che gia fosse; B.W. la nostra speranza (omitting doe... gia fosse).
23 So apparently MS.
24 D^D'-'.B.M.W. o V effetto del desiderio, o lafaccia della veritd ammonisca (M. monisca) questo.
25 DJ.D2. B.M.W. gia si crede che tu dirnori costl, o pensasi che tu torni indietro.
PAGET TOYNBEE
337
chome se yosue / o el figliolo damos1 el comandasse. Sia-(2)-mo corcstructi nela certec£a dubitare2 / et in rompere ne-(3)-la uoce del batista / cosi3 se tu collui loquale die4 uemre (4) o aspectamo vn altro5 ? Et auenga che la longa sete / si (5) chome ella furiosa6 sole fare / pieghi in dubio le cose (6) certe7 / per che so/mo dapresso8 / niente meno In te credia-(7)-mo et speramo9 / affermando10 te essere ministro de deo / (8) figliolo dela chiesia et promoruitore11 dela romana glona12. (9) Impero che io13 che scriuo / cosi per me chome per li altri / (10) si chome se comiene alaraperiale magestate / Vidi te be-(ll)-negnissimo / et odi14 te pietosissimo15 / quando le mei mano (12) tocaro16 li tuoi pedi / et li mie labij17 pagaro el debito18 / quart-(13)-do sessulto et in nelo19 spirto meo20 / quando infra me dissci / (14) con mecho stesso21 / Eccho langelo22 de dio loquale tolle le pec-(15)-cata del mo^do23.
[§3.] Ma noi ce merauigliamo / che si tarda (16) pigreca facia dimoro24 / quando tu gia longamewte nella (17) ualle del po25 no26 altra- menie abandoni oblij / et lassci tos-(18)-cana27 / che se tu arbitrassi28 / che lerasione delo impmo (19) da defendere ritornare / con li confimj de lombardia29 / non (20) pensando alpostucto si come arbitramo nuy30 /
. come (B.M. come se) Josue ilfigliuolo di Amos; W. come se J. o ilf. di A.
2 DaJ)2.M. dubitare nella certitudine ; B. a dubbiare nella c. ; W. a dubbiare nella incertudine.
3 D^D^M.W. e rompere (M. irrompere) nella voce del Battista cosi; B. e rompere nella voce coal.
4 D^D^.B.W. dovevi; M. doveva. 5 D1. noi altro.
6 D^D2. B.M.W. la furiosa.
7 D'.D2. quelle cose le quali sono certe; B.M.W. quelle c. le q. erano c.
8 D^D-. B.M.W. pero ch' elle erano presso. 9 D^D^B. speriamo e crediamo. 10 D^D2. fennando. n Sic, for promovitore.
12 D^D^B.W. ef. d. c. e p. d. r. g.; M e f. e p. della romana chiesa.
13 D1. I. e io; D2.B.M.W. I io. 14 D1. vidi.
15 D2. viddi la tuafaccia benignissima et pietosissima.
16 The a of this word, which had been accidentally omitted, is inserted above the line in MS.
17 D^D2. e gli altri miei sensi ; B.M.W. e le labbra mie.
1S DW.B.M.W. il loro debito. 19 Sic.
ao Dl.D2.B.M.W. quando si esulto in me Io spirito mio.
21 D^D2. quando iofra me dissi meco stesso ; M.W. quando io infra me dissi meco.
22 Sic.
23 D^D2. ecce agnus Dei, ecce qui tollit peccata mundi ; M.W. ecce agnus Dei qui t. p. m. ; B. omits quando... mundi.
24 D1.D2.B.M.W. Ma che con si (D^D2. cosi) tarda pigrezza dimori, noi ci maravigliamo. 26 D^D2. quando tu molto tempo gia vincitore nella voile dimori (D2. nella valle ti posi) ;
B. quando gia molto tu vincitore nella valle del Po dimori; M.W. quando tu, molto tempo gia, v. n. v. d. P. d.
26 Sic.
27 D^B.M.W. non lungi Toscana abbandoni, lascila, et dimentichila ; D2. et T. abbandoni ; lasciala et dimenticala.
« Di.D2. B.M.W. arbitri.
29 D^D2. che i confini di Lombardia siano atti a difendere le ragioni dello Imperio ; B.M.W. che intorno a1 confini di L. siano (M. sieno) intorniate le regioni da difendere V imperio (B. d. Imperio).
confini di L,. siano (M. sieno} . B.M.W. non e cosi al postutto siccome (B. come) noi pensiamo.
338 S. Pantaleo Ital Trans, of Dante s Epist. VII
pero che1 (21) la gloriosa signoria de li romanj non se restrigne2 con li (22) terminj ditalia / ne co3 li fimj de Vropia / la quale ae tre (23) corni4 certo auengna chessa sofferendo forc.a abia / (24) ritiritti5 li suoi terminj in strectecga / ora puoi toccano6 (25) dentera rasione da ongni parte el mare occeano7 ape^a (26) se dengnerei dessere centa / co la sua desutile unda8 (27) Impercio chele sc^'pto a noi9 / Nascera el troiano Cesare [fol. 138 ro] dela bella schiacta / elquale coftfinera10 lompmo col mare (2) oceano / et la fama cole stelle. Et corzcio sie cosa che Oc-(3)-tauiano augusto comawdasse vniuersalmmte / il mondo (4) fosse scHpto11 / si come el nostro hue acceso con la fiamma (5) dello eterno foco / euaw- geli9ando mughiasse32 / Octauiano (6) now nauesse deuulgato el comada- mento13 del corte del uistissi-(7)-mo prmcipato lunigenito figliolo de deo / facto homo. (8) no?i nauebre allora uoluto nasscere dela uergene / ad (9) confessare essere sobto posto aquella lege / secundo che (10) la natura che li auea presa14 / Certo el figliolo de dio / al (11) quale se conuenea adempire ongni iustitia / non nauere-(12)-be confortato fare cosa iniustitia15.
[§ 4.] Vesgongnnesi dunqua (13) stare16 Impedicato17 si longamente in una stretissima Aia18 (14) del morido / collui loquale19 tucto el mondo
1 D^M. imperciocche ; D2. imperoche] B.W. perdocche.
2 D1.D2.B.M.W. non si strigne. 3 Sic.
4 DXJ)2.B.M.W. ne con lo spazio d' Eurova in tre parti divisa.
6 Sic. 6 sic.
7 DKD2. Et certo s' ella, la quale do ha sq/erto, forza contrahera, doe raccogliera insieme, quello che ella regge da ogni parte di ragione non corrotta, aggiungendo V onde del Mare Ampjiitrito il quale e in Greda; B. E s' ella, la quale ha sofferta forza contradia, raccogliera da ogni parte quello, che la regge a ragione non c., a. V o. del M. A.; M. E certo, se essa Roma, la quale do ha sofferto, forza contraera, doe raccogliera insieme quello cK ella regge da ogni parte di ragione non c., a. V o. del m. A., il quale e in Greda; W. E s' ella, la quale ha sofferta forza, contraera quello ch' ella regge da ogni parte, di ragione non c., a. V o. del m. A.
8 D1.D2.B.M.W. appena degnera d' esser cinta con la non utile onda del Hare Oceano.
9 DJ.D2. E in verita egli e scritto ch' egli • B.W. E in v. egli e s.', M. E in v.es. ch' egli.
10 D1.D2.B.M.W. terminera.
11 D^D^.B.M.W. comandasse che'l mondo universalmente fosse scritto (B.M.W. descritto).
12 DX.D2. siccome il n. bue (D2. omits bue) San Luca evangelizante, doe lo Spirito santo con la fiamma dello eterno fuoco mughia (D2. »crive) ; B. s. il n. b. santo L. Evangelisto, acceso della f. d. e. f. m. ; M. s. il n. b. S. L. evangeJizzante, doe lo Spirito santo, acceso delta f. d. e. f. m.', W. s. il n. b. evangelizzante, acceso della f. d. e. f. m.
13 Sic.
14 D^D^B.M.W. s' egli non avesse aperto il comandamento della corte del giustissimo prindpato V unigenito figliuolo di Dio fatto uomo a confessare s2 esser suddito secondo la natura ch1 egli avea presa all' ordinamento d' Ottaviano, non avrebbe allora voluto nascere della Vergine.
15 Sic-, IXD^B.M.W. In verita egli non avrebbe confortato V uom giusto (B. il giusto; W. I' ingiusto), al quale si conviene (W. convenne) adempiere ogni giustizia.
16 D».D8.B.M.W. di stare. v DJ.Da.M. implicate.
18 D1.B.M.W. in una aia strettissima; D2. in una anima strettissima.
19 B. al quale.
PAGET TOYNBEE
339
aspecta / et non (15) descorra dal sguardo doctauiano1 / pero che2 toscana tira-(16)-nescha/nela fidanga delo indusio se conforta. Et con-(l7) -tinuame/ite confortando la soperbia de malingnj. Noiie forge (18) raunano3 adiongendo presontione ad-4 presontione. Into-(19)-ni un- altra uolta quella uoce5 de curio In6 cesare / in (20) fino che le parte non fermate dalcuna fortecga / anno (21) paura / toglie uia ongnj demo- ranga / londugio sempre (22) noque ale cose aparechiate / pare fatiga et paura / (23) co?? magiore percco7 se demarcdano8. Intoni anchora9 la uo- (24)-ce10 descesa del cielo11 increpando contra enea12 / se neuna gloria (25) de tante chose de moue / ne tifforci daffatigarti per (26) toi lodi / guata Ascanio loquale cresce / et la speranca (27) de lulio tuo herrede / al quale el rengno ditalia [fol. 138 vo] I regni deli rornani debbero essere dati13/
[§ 5.] Certe gioa?mj (2) reale14 tuo primo genito / et Re elquale dietro el tramotare15 (3) del sole che se leua16 / la seguewte suceesskwe del mo/ido17 aspecta (4) ad nui e18 un altro Ascanio / elquale seguendo lorme del (5) grande padre / contra quelli de turno19 In ongni logo cho-(6)-me lione Incrudilerae / et uerso agli altri20 chomo21 Angnolo (7) sa humiliarae22 anti guardiamo23 li altri24 consigli del sa-(8)-cratissimo Re che25 el celestiale inditio per quelle parole de (9) samuel now renasprt'sca26 / quando tu eri picciolo denangi (10) ad gli occhi toi27 / non fusti tu facto capo ne y tribi disra-(ll)-el / et te el segnore vnse in Re28 / et misete In uia29 /
1 D^D^B.M. d' Ottaviano Atigusto ; W. d' Augusto.
2 Di.DS.B.M.W. che.
3 D'.D^B.M.W. raguna. 4 Sic.
5 D^D^B.M.W. I. dunque (M. adunque) in te ancora (T>l.D2M. omit ancora) q. v.
6 Di.D2.B.M.W..a. 7 Sic.
8 D^D^B.M. give this quotation in the original Latin ; D1. omits the last line ; W. leaves the quotation blank.
9 D1.Da.B.M.W. a. in te. 10 DUP.B.M.W. quella v. 11 Di.Da.M. da c. ; B.W. dal c. 12 DW.M. contra d' E.
13 D^D^B.M. give this quotation in the original Latin ; W. leaves it blank.
14 D^D^B.M.W. Giovanni reale in verita. 15 Sic.
16 D^D2. il quale ha seco i freni della luce, c'hora si lieva; B.M.W. II q. dietro alia fine della 1. ch' ora si I.
17 D^D2. la successione del mondo ; B.M.W. la s. d. m. che segue.
18 Di.D2. e; B.M.W. e.
19 D^D2. contra quello Turno; B. contra a quelli di Turno, contra i nemici; M.W. c. a q. di T.
20 D^D2. come I. incrudelito verso i Latini; B. c. I. incrudelira ; e verso i Latini nelli fedeli amid ; M. c. I. incrudelira, verso i L.; W. c. I. incrudelira, e v. i L.
21 D1.D2.B.M.W. siccome.
22 Sic-, Di.D2. s' humiliara; B. s' aumiliara; M.W. s' umiliera.
23 Di.Ds.B.M.W. Guardino avanti. 24 D^Ds.B.M.W. alti.
25 Di.D.M. re, doe di te, che', B. re, doe a dire, che; W. re, che.
26 D^D^B.M.W. si rinasprisca.
27 D1.Da.B.M.W. d. allafaccia tua.
28 Di.D2. et il Signore unse il re; B. e te il S. u. in re ; M.W. e il S. u. te re.
29 Di.D2. e miseti (D2. misseti) in signoria in via ; B.M.W. e m. il Signore in v.
340 S. Pantaleo Ital. Trans, of Dante s Epist. VII
et disse (12) uaoccidi li peccatori damalech1 et dagay non perdonare2 / et (13) uendica3 collui che4 ti mawdo dela gente bestiale / et dela sua (14) afrectata solennitate5 / liquali In ueritade / cio Amalech et (15) Agay sonno decte chosi resonare6 /.
[§6.] Tu cosi uernegiando (16) chome faciendo la pn'mauera7 / a milano te stai8 / et pensi ex-(l7)-pegnere9 per lo tagliamento deli capi / lauenenosissima10 Idra / (18) Ma secte11 recordase / dele12 magnifiche cose gloriosamente facte13 (19) da hercule14 / tu conoseereste te essere15 cosi inganato / chome (20) fue elli / alquale16 per dampno crescea el pestilentioso animale / (21) reppululando con molte teste17 / In fino atanto / che quello ma??-(22)-gnammo solicitanie?ite18 / taglio el capo dela uita / Certo non (23) uale19 addiradicare li albori / li tagliamenti20 de rami / Angi (24) allora moZlto piu uergeando ramiscono21 Infino che22 lara-(25)-dice sono intere danno alime?ito23. O prmcepe solo del mondo / (26) che anuntiarae tu auere facto24 / qua?ido tu adurai pie- (27)-gato el collo dala contumace25 Cremona26 non serefara allora [fol. 139ro] una non pensata rabbia27 ad Brescia / o ad Pauia28 / si fara cer-(2)-to / et quando quella altresi resedara flagellata29 / incontenente
(3) unaltra rabbia / reenfiara30 ad uergelli / o a b^rgamo31 / o altroue.
(4) Infino atanto / che fie tolta uia32 la radiceuole33 cagione di quesfco
1 B.W. insert here imperciocche tu se' sacrato in re, acciocche tu percuota il popolo d1 Amalech.
2 D'.D2. e altre d* agagi non perdoni; B. e al popolo d' A. n. p. ; M.W. e al re d' Agag n. p.
3 W. vendichi. * D^D2. B.M.W. il quale.
5 Di.D^.B.M.W. solennitade affrettata.
6 B. le quali cittadi Amalec ed Agagi dicono sanarsi (sic) ; D1.D2.M.W. oniit.
7 D^D'IB.M.W. Tu (D>.D2. omit tu) cosi vernando come tardando.
8 Di.D2^.)!^.^. a M. dimori. 9 D^D^B.M.W. spegnere.
10 The ne of this word, which had been accidentally omitted, is inserted above the line in MS.
11 Sic. 12 DW.B.M.W. Ma se tu ti ricordassi le.
13 Di.DS.B.M.W./atte gloriosamente . 14 D^D^.B.M.W. Alcide.
15 D^D^B.M.W. tu cowsceresti che tu se'. 16 D^D^B.M.W. come colui al quale.
17 D1^2^.^!^. il pestilentioso animale ripolando (D2. ripollulando ; M. rampollando ; W. ripollolando) con molte teste per danno cresceva.
18 D^D2. constantemente; B.M.W. instantemente.
19 Di.D^B.M.W. In verita.egli non vale. 20 D1.D2.B.M.W. lo tagliamento.
21 D1^'2.!^. anzi ancora moltiplicano, essendo verdi rami (M. v. i. r.); B.W. a. a. moltiplicando, essendo verdi, rifanno rami.
22 D^D'^M. insino a tanto che ; B.W. infino a t. che.
23 D1.D2.B.M.W. le radici sono (W. sieno) sane acciocch' elle dieno alimento.
24 D1^2. che te principe solo del mondo chiameranno ; B.M.W. che, o Principe s. d. m., annunzierai tu averfatto (M. che avraif.).
25 Di.D2. contumacia. ™ D2. In C.
27 D^D^B.M.W. non si rivolgera (B. volgera) la subita rabbia.
28 D*.D2.B.W. o in B. o in P. ; M. in B. o in P.
29 DM^.B.M.W. la quale altresi quando ella sara stata flagellata (D1. stara /.).
30 D1.D2.B.M.W. si rivolgera. 3i Di.D^B.M.W. o in V. o in B.
32 Da.D2.B.M.W. et infino a tanto (B. infinattanto) andrd facendo cosi che sia tolta via.
33 M.W. radicale.
PAGET TOYNBEE
341
(5) pk^ighore. / Et che diuelta1 la radice2 di tanto errore / li pun- (6)-genti rami col troncho Inardiscano3.
[§7.] O excellentissimo prm-(7)-cipe del principe4 / Ingnori tu& e non comprendi / dela uiduta6 de-(8)-la summa alte9a / done / cio e Firenge la uolpicella7 de" questo (9) poc9o serraguacta / secura dali caciatori8? Certo questa pie-(10)-na de peccati/non bee nel corente po / /me nel to teuere9 / (11) ma li suoi custumi anchora Intorbeano / li corsi del fiume / (12) darno10 / Et forsi tu nola11 sai / Firen^e crudele pistilentia (13) e chiamata12 / Questa e la uipera / uolta nel uewtre dela madre / (14) questa e la pecora inferma/ laquale co/itamina col suo (15) tocchamercto13 la gregge14 del suo signore / Questa e Mirra sce-(16)-lerata et Impia laquale senfiamo15 nello amore del pa-(l7)-dre16 Questa e quella amata impaciewte / laquale caciando17 (18) el fatato matHmomo / no18 timeo de cowsentire / in quello generoly / (19) elquale y fati negauano / Ma furiosamewte20 a bactaglie / el (20) chiamoe et ala perfine21 male ardita soffacendo / con un laccio (21) sem picchoe22 / Veramewte Firen9e seffor9a desqua?-ciare (22) la madre /con ferita di uipera23/infino chella24 aguc9a le / (23) corna / del rebbelamercto / contra ad Roma25 / laquale la fece ala (24) sua26 Imagine / et similitudine. / Veramente cacia fore (25) uitiosi27 furni28 / e suaporando la rabbia29 / et quindi30 le uicir?e (26) pechore / et rum sapeuoli infermano31 / ment?e che alacciawdo (27) con false losinghe, et cone/fignimewti / rauna con secho / [fol. 139 vo] li suoi
Tebro) questa
I D^D-.B.M.W. e divelta. 2 D2. la barba.
3 Sic; D^B.W. col tronco i p. r. inaridiscano (D^B. inaridiscono) ; D2. et tronco i p. r.y ch1 ancora non inaridiscono ; M. che 'I tronco e1 p. r. inaridiscano.
4 Sic. 5 D^D^B.M.W. Signore tu e. p. d. p. sei.
6 D^D'^B. nello sguardo; M.W. dallo s.
7 D1.D2.B.M.W. ove la v.
8 D^D'^.B.M.W. sicura da' cacciatori rigiaccia (D2. r. o si riposi).
9 D^D2^.!^^. in verita non nel corrente Po, ne nel tuo Tevere (D frodolente bee.
10 D^B.M.W. ma V acqua (M.W. V acque) del fiume a' Arno ancora li suoi inganni avvelenano; D2. ma de V acqua d. /. d' A. et quella anchora con li suoi i. avvelena.
II D^.B.M.W. nol.
12 DT.B.M.W. F. questa crudel morte e c. ; D2. che F. chiama questa c. m.
13 D^D'^B.M.W. col suo appressamcnto contamina.
14 Di.D2. le glorie; B.M. le gregge. « Di.D2.B.M.W. s' infiamma.
16 D^D2^.!^^. nelfuoco degli abbracciamenti del padre.
17 D^.B.M.W. rifiatato. 18 Sic. 19 Da.D2.B.M.W. non teme di prendere q. g.
ao D^D^B.M.W. furialmente.
21 D^D^B.M.W. alia fine.
22 D1.D2.B.M.W. pagdndo il debito con un laccio s' impicco.
23 D1^2^^^. Veramente con ferita di vipera si sforza di squarciar la madre.
24 B.W. infino a tanto ch' ella. 25 D^D-.B.M. contra R.; W. contro R. 26 D1.Da.B.M.W. di sua. 27 D^D^B.W. i viziosi; M. i velenosi.
-8 D2.B.W. fummi; M.fiumi. . 29 D^D^B.M.W. accendendosi la r.
30 B. quivi.
31 D1^2. le pecore vicine e simplici s' infermano ; B.M.W. le p. v. e strane s' i.
342 S. Pantaleo Ital Trans, of Dante's Epist. VII
uicini / et quelli raunati fa impagire1. Veramente (2) ella arde neli carnalj desiderij del padre2 / mentre che con3 / (3) maluagio uageia- mettto4 / sefforga5 de corompere contra te6 (4) el cowsentimento del sommo powtifice elquale e padre del (5) padri. uerameftte contmria al ordenamento de deo7 / adorando li-(6)-dole dela sua propriti uohwtade infino che8 la pac9a aduendendo9 (7) despregato / el so legitimo Re / non se uergongna de patto-(8)-ire con non so Re / ragione no sue per potentia de male-(9)-fare 10. Ma la femina furiosa adrende11 el12 laccio con loqua-(10)-le ella se lega / pero clie spesse uolte / alcuno13 e dato14 (11) in maluagio sewno / ad cio che poi che elli uedato facia15 (12) quelle cose che se conuegnono16 / lequali opere / adue?*gna (13) chesse siano non iuste17 / le pene desse so/mo cognosciute / (14) essere18 dengne.
[§8.] Addunqua rompi le demorarcge / e secondo (15) disay19 prendi20 fidan9a degli ochi del tuo sengnore Ideo (16) sabaot'/ denangi alquale tu adopm / et questo golia con (17) la rombola21 dela tua sapientia / et cole pietre22 dele23 tue (18) forge abacti24 pero che la25 sua caduta / la nocte colorabra26 (19) dela paura27 coprira / loste28 deli filistei / fugiranno li filistei / (20) et sera29 libero Israel allora la heredita nostra / laqwale / (21) noi piagnemo senga riposo30 essere ci tolta / Interamente31 (22) ci serra restituita / Et sichome noi32 ricordandoci essere / (23) in esilio dela santa lerusalem / piangnemo in babe-(24)-llorcia33 / Chosi allora34 citadinj
1 D^D2. mentre che allacciando con false ragunate fa impazzare ; B.M.W. m. c. a. con false lusinghe, e con fingimenti raguna con seco i suoi vicini, e quelli ragunati fa i.
2 D^D.s.B.M.W. ella incende (B. se encende; W. «' incende) e arde ne' diletti (D^D2. letti) carnali del p.
3 D^D2. omit con. 4 Dl.D2.B.M.W. malvagia sollecitudine. 5 D1.Da.B.M.W. si sforza. 6 D2. omits contra te.
7 DT.D2.M. Veramente contraria di Dio.
8 M.W. infino a tanto che. 9 Sic.
10 DJ.D2. ella avendo spregiato il signore legitimo; et la pazza non si vergogna a pattovire ragioni non sue, et potentia di malfare] B.M.W. ella a. s. (M. dispregiato) il suo re (M. il signore) L, la p. (M. e la p.) n. si v. a p. con non suo re r. n. s. per p. di m. f.
11 Sic • D^D^B.M.W. attende. 12 D1.D2.B.M.W. al.
13 DJD2. che uno. 14 D^D2^^. mosso ; W. messo.
15 D^D^M. acciocche mosso vifaccia ; B. a. in esso vif.; W. a messovi f.
16 D^D2. q. c. le quali si c. ; B.W. q. c. che non si c. ; M. q. c. le quali non si c.
17 D1.D*.B.M.W. avvegnache sieno ingiuste. 18 W. d1 esser.
19 Di.D^B.M.W. d., alta schiatta d' Isaia (W. Isai).
20 T>l.prendici; M.W. prenditi.
21 B.M.W. frombola. 22 B.M.W. colla pietra.
23 D^D2. omit dinanzi al quale .. .pietra della.
24 D1. Tuaforza a. ; B.M.W. tua fortezza a. ; D2. Tua forza talforza a.
25 D1.D2.B.M.W. nclla. 26 D^D^B.M.W. caduta, V ombra. 27 B. della tua p. 28 D^D^.B.M.W. V esercito.
29 D^D^/ami.
30 Dl.D2.B.M.W. la quale noi (B.W. omit noi) senza intervallo (M. intervalli) piangiamo.
31 D^D2^^^. incontanente.
32 D1^2^^. Et come noi ora ; B. Siccome noi ora.
33 D^D'^.B.M.W. r. che noi siamo di Oerusalemme santa in esilio in Babilonia piangiamo.
34 Di.D2. hora.
PAGET TOYNBEE
343
dessa / exispirando im pace (25) releueremo in allegrecga / le miserie dela confusione1.
[fol. 140 ro] Scripta in toscana sobto la fonte darno / a die xvj2 (2) daprile3 nellawno primo del corrimeftto ad italia4 del de-(3)-uino Henrigo felicissimo5.
PAGET TOYNBEE.
FlVEWAYS, BURNHAM, BUCKS.
1 D1.D2.B.M.W. cittadini e respiranti (D^D2. ?. c. r.) in pace ed in allegrezza (D^D2. allegrezze) le miserie delle confusioni rivolgeremo.
2 M. 16. 3 Di.D^B.M.W. del mese d1 Aprile MCCCXI (M. 1311). * D^D^B.M. del coronamento d' Italia.
5 Dl.D2.B.M. dello splendidissimo ed onoratissimo Arrigo ; W. del divino e felicis- simo A.
LESSING IN ENGLAND.
IP!
THE INFLUENCE OF LESSING IN ENGLAND. (a) Aesthetic Influence.
There can be no doubt whatever that the influence of Lessing on the science of aesthetics in England has been profound: and there can be no doubt in the mind of any who have made the attempt that it is very difficult to trace. Mere references to the name are not infrequent from about 1820 on : but in the vast majority of cases they betray no significant acquaintance with Lessing, still less any desire to show how great things he has done for us.
Sir Robert Phillimore (pace the able but uncharitable New Englander) met a real need in his Laocoon, or rather in the preface thereto : for he devotes Section ill to a discussion of the influence of the Laokoon in England. He says (and personal research confirms the view) that Reynolds, in his Discourses (1769 — 90), makes no reference to Lessing : but that passages almost identical in spirit may be found in Laokoon and the Discourses. Of such passages Phillimore quotes eight ; the first is : ' A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit ' ( Works, I, p. 348, 4th Discourse), and another is : ' Invention in painting does not imply the invention of the subject, for that is commonly supplied by the poet or historian. With respect to the choice, no subject can be proper that is not generally interesting. It ought to be either some eminent instance of heroic action or heroic suffering. There must be something either in the action, or in the object, in which men are universally concerned, and which powerfully strikes upon the public, sympathy .' The opposition of the German and the Englishman on the subject of allegorical painting only serves to render more con- spicuous their marked agreement on other points.
1 Continued from Modern Language Review, vol. ix, p. 212.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 345
John Opie lectured at the Royal Academy in 1807. He makes no reference to Lessing, but he also has a similar passage on the choice of the critical moment1. In Copleston's lectures, too, much the same ground is covered as in the Laokoon. Phillimore believed that Copleston was not acquainted with Lessing's work, though the points of resemblance in matter and manner are striking. Phillimore calls special attention to the appeal to Homer as authority2.
It seems impossible to decide whether these and similar parallelisms of thought were the writers' own, borrowed from earlier critics, or echoes of the Laokoon. Nothing is easier than to see what one wishes to see : but in the case of the Laokoon at least it behoves one to remember that the work deals with the fundamentals of the art of expression, and that clear-headed thinkers of any age or nation may reasonably be expected to have essentially the same ideas on first principles. With regard to Reynolds, I have been unable to find, in his own works or in those of contemporaries, the smallest indication that he was able to read German, which in the case of the Laokoon was in his day a necessity. Even Maty can only say : ' I am informed that the Laocoon is extremely good,' and Maty was a professed linguist. As for Opie and Copleston, I am inclined to think that they were not indebted, at least directly, to the Laokoon.
1 Henry Fuseli,' says Phillimore, ' first of all English Professors of Painting ... did full justice by name3 to Lessing's Laocoon, upon the principles of which his third lecture "On Invention" is in great measure founded.' That Fuseli, a Swiss, should thus be the first is not surpris- ing under the circumstances. Careful research has given me no reason to doubt the truth of Phillimore's statement. He gives one extract from Fuseli4 which is a mere re-statement of Lessing's theory of successive and momentary action as the proper subjects respectively of poetry and the plastic arts.
Phillimore next (p. xxxvi) refers to Philips, who succeeded Fuseli in 1824, as showing himself 'in one of his very eloquent lectures ... imbued with the principles of the Laocoon.'
Phillimore deals only with the works of painters. As far as I have been able to discover no one has hitherto attempted to trace the influence of the Laokoon on English sculptors. I had hoped to find
1 Lectures on Painting, London, 1809, Lecture n, read at the Eoyal Academy, Feb. 23, 1807, pp. 61—3.
2 Praelectiones Academiae, London, 1813, n, p. 17.
3 In a footnote to the first page of the lecture cited.
4 Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli, ed. by Knowles, 1831, in, pp. 133 f.
M. L. R. IX. 23
346 Lessing in England
some indications of their indebtedness through Thorwaldsen and possibly through Canova : but careful examination of the works of and literature relating to Gibson, Westmacott, Chantrey and Wyatt remained quite fruitless. Only in the lectures of Flaxman could I find any reference which might possibly indicate acquaintance with the work of Lessing : and even in this single case it would be bold to state as a certainty that Flaxman had the Laokoon in his mind's eye. Yet the passage is very interesting : and it is exceedingly likely that Ross' translation of 1836 was known to the English sculptor. It is from Lecture vi, p. 148 x :
First, a poet speaks by words, The painter and sculptor by action.
Action singly, or in series : — the subject of composition being comprised in the arts of design ; thus the story of Laocoon is told by the agony of the father and sons, inextricably wound about in the folds of serpents.
This one example of Flaxman's styleless English is the only passage in which he gives reasonable evidence of knowing Lessing even by name.
Macaulay knew Ross' translation, and read it repeatedly. It filled him, he said, with wonder and despair, so far did it seem beyond his own power of accomplishment2. He told G. H. Lewes that the reading of it formed an epoch in his mental history, and that he learned more from it than he had ever learned anywhere. It is interesting to compare a passage from the essay on Moore's Life of Lord Byron3, in which he shows that doctrines of Lessing had taken firm possession of his mind.
De Quincey's partial translation has already been noticed : it is the noblest English prose in which Lessing's thoughts have ever been clothed. He says elsewhere4 : ' Lessing was the first German who wrote prose with elegance.' De Quincey was certainly the first and last genius to translate it.
Later critics have sometimes been more concerned to point out the defects of the Laokoon than to show wherein its greatness lies. Tucker5 says : ' it has perhaps influenced more minds than any other work on aesthetics ever written except those of Aristotle and Longinus. To countless others besides Macaulay it has been their first illumination of
1 Lectures on Sculpture, 2nd Edition, London, 1838.
2 Life and Works of Goethe, 1855, in footnote to p. 56. Cp. also Phillimore, p. xxxvi but he spells the name wrongly and gives a false reference to page.
3 Works, London, 1875, v, p. 403.
4 Essay on Rhetoric.
» T. G. Tucker, The Foreign Debt of English Literature, London, 1907, pp. 240 f.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 347
the everlasting principles of beauty.' But Upcott1, Perry2 and Mitchell3 have faults to find. The latest and most violent attack on Lessing is that by Babbitt4 of Harvard. In his Preface (p. viii) he accuses Germans, and with them Hugo Bliimner, whose edition he used, of ' conventional admiration.' Bliimner says that the Laokoon killed descriptive poetry, and Babbitt denies it even for Germany. He adds (p. ix) that Lessing made no attempt to reduce to order the true confusion of the arts, a pseudo-classical or 'romantic' confusion seen already in Rousseau and Diderot ; showing itself, for example, in attempts to get with words the effects of music and painting. At p. 35 is Babbitt's own estimate of Lessing. The more we study the Renaissance, says he, and 'the remoter classical background,' ' the more we shall agree with Lessing himself that in him was no living fountain.' ' If the Germans are to justify the high claims they make for Lessing as a critic, they must rest them on other grounds than his intellectual originality or the fineness of his taste.' But, as Goethe said, it was not his intelligence, but his masculine character that told : and here Babbitt advances the aged and hackneyed analogy of Lessing and Luther, both protesting pollution of clear springs. ' If we approach his critical writings without precon- ceived notions or conventional admiration, we shall admit that there is something about them that ... is foreign, remote and disconcerting. He usually judges not from the immediate impression, but by certain fixed laws and principles which he proceeds to found upon Aristotle ' (p. 40).
In an admirable essay Rolleston5 remarks : ' Travel back to the close of the eighteenth century ... by what road we will, and again and again we shall find Lessing as a pioneer at the head of it. He who reads Modern Painters reads Lessing: he who reads Essays and Reviews reads Lessing.' This is quite true, but the absence of acknow- ledgment6 in both the above and many other cases renders the task of tracing influence very difficult. In the case of Coleridge it is easier, and to him we shall devote a special section.
Sully7 says that by deducing the distinction between poetry and ' painting from the nature of their respective media, he undoubtedly pioneers the true road of modern aesthetics. Bosanquet8 makes this
1 L. E. Upcott, An Introduction to Greek Sculpture, Oxford, 1899, p. 119.
2 W. C. Perry, Greek and Roman Sculpture, London, 1882, pp. 525 f.
a L. M. Mitchell, A History of Ancient Sculpture, London, 1883, pp. 601, 605.
4 Irving Babbitt, The New Laokoon, London, 1910.
5 Lessing and his Place in German Literature, in the Contemporary Review, LXIV (1893), pp. 237 f. Eeprinted in Studies in European Literature, Oxford, 1900.
6 I have been unable to find any reference to Lessing in the works of Euskin.
7 Encyclopedia Britannica, 9th ed., article 'Aesthetic.'
8 History of Aesthetics, London, 1892.
23—2
348 Lessing in England
clear (pp. 223 £). He gives a good translation of the first six paragraphs of Section xvi of the Laokoon. At p. 230, speaking of Wie die Alien etc., he calls the manner of treatment ' perhaps the first simple and popular rapprochement between genuine Greek feeling and the profound convictions of modern life ; and in this respect [he] anticipated the dawn of a new era in which Greek art and intelligence were felt to possess a real message for humanity.' After a masterly exposition of Lessing's view of Katharsis he says that though his doctrines, partially failed of practical effect, 'yet in the preparation of data for modern aesthetic science there has been no much more potent influence than this co-ordination of the more comparable poetic forms of the antique and modern world1.'
Saintsbury (A History of Criticism, Edinburgh, 1904) has an interesting passage in which he says that Pater's deliberate blending of different arts in method and process '...has been set on foot by Lessing, in the very act of depreciating and exposing clumsy and blind anticipations of it.'
The Quarterly Review2 has an able article on Sophocles and the Greek Genius, in which great regret is expressed that Lessing never completed his work on the subject. ' Even now, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, we must regret that Lessing did not achieve what he projected, for he combined what are so rarely combined in adequate measure, passion and erudition. He was not a poet who had failed, but rather a critic who had succeeded in creative literature ...he would have treated a great poet as only a great poet can.' The reviewer translates, as the best indication of Lessing's attitude, ' his own noble words ' from the Preface to Sophokles [' Man gewinne aber einen alten Schriftsteller nur erst lieb...keine Grammatiker, keine Literatoren '].
(6) Coleridge.
Coleridge's first acquaintance with Lessing was gained through the Fragmente eines Ungenannten. In a letter to Benjamin Flower, dated April 1, 17963, he thus refers to the work : 'The most formidable Infidel is Lessing, the author of Emilia Galotti : I ought to have written was, for he is dead. His book is not yet translated, and is entitled, in
1 Page 239. He refers, of course, to the Dramaturgic.
2 cxcvm (1903), pp. 319 f.
3 Biograpiiia Literaria, London, 1847, n, p. 359.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 349
German, " Fragments of an Anonymous Author." It unites the wit of Voltaire with the subtlety of Hume and the profound erudition of our Lardner. I had some thoughts of translating it, with an Answer, but gave it up lest men whose tempers and hearts incline them to disbelief, should get hold of it: and though the answers are satisfactory to my own mind, they may not be equally so to the minds of others.'
Soon after landing in Germany in 1798, Coleridge, in company with Wordsworth, visited Klopstock. At that time, he says, he was ignorant of Lessing save by name. Wordsworth showed nearer information by complaining of Nathan as tedious. The second of Satyrane's Letters has an account of Lessing's portrait. At the beginning of September he could write to his wife that Lessing was the chief object of his admiration. Brandl says (p. 248) : ' Mit dem Bilde des Mannes vor Augen warf er sich auf dessen Schriffcen, vor allem wohl auf die Dramaturgic ... Sie leitete ihn an, die englische Kunstkritik zu reformiren . . . Was Coleridge jetzt von Lessing gewann, hat er mit unverbltimter Offenheit selbst bekannt,' and proceeds to quote the passage from the Biographia Literaria, xxni: ' I should not perhaps go too far' etc. Shawcross1 rightly remarks that Coleridge is in this passage hardly fair to his own countrymen ; but it is an excellent appreciation of Lessing as Shakespeare critic and creative artist. In the Canterbury Magazine (i, p. 121) is the famous protest against Wordsworth's state- ment (in the preface to the second edition of Lyrical Ballads) that Germans had in some respects forestalled Englishmen in a right under- standing of Shakespeare. ' Mr Wordsworth . . . has affirmed in print that a German critic first taught us to think correctly concerning Shakespeare.' Coleridge seems to have thought that the ' German critic ' to whom Wordsworth did not refer was A. W. Schlegel. Shawcross points out that his own tribute to Lessing (Biographia Literaria, xxin) was much more of a concession than Wordsworth's : and that it is not necessary to regard the tribute as an acknowledgment of his own debt. Yet Brandl would seem here to be on the right track. Parallelisms of thought in the lectures, etc., are too frequent to be accidental2. But Brandl goes too far in supposing that Lessing was the opener of a sealed book. It is more reasonable to think that Coleridge was confirmed in opinions, already acquired from others or privately formed, by the
1 Biographia Literaria, edited by J. Shawcross, Oxford, 1907.
2 Cp. Biographia Literaria, 1817, i, p. 23; n, pp. 256 f., Lecture, May 14, 1818, also Bohn 389, with Hamburgische Dramaturgic.
350 Lessing in England
authority of the German critic1. His real debt to Lessing consisted in the discipline of critical method. He does not admit as much : but he calls him the ' most acute of critics ' (Biographia Literaria, x) and takes the trouble to translate in his own defence (Ibid, xxi) part of Anti- quarische Briefe, LVII.
That restrained and able critic, J. L. Haney, in his short work, The German Influence on S. T. Coleridge (Philadelphia, 1902), advances a very sane view. He says (p. 40) : ' in developing the general ideas indicated by Lessing, both critics [Coleridge and Schlegel] would naturally coincide in certain utterances, with no more interdependence than their common obligation to Lessing2... It is not a difficult task to read a great amount of German influence into Coleridge's work by insisting on the misleading doctrine that general similarity of thought necessarily implies direct connection3. The success of a study in com- parative literature on that basis is limited only by the critic's store of reading and his memory.' Haney 's object of attack here is almost certainly Brandl4.
It is greatly to be regretted that Coleridge never wrote his pro- jected Life of Lessing, and still more that he never produced a complete translation, as he promised Cottle (Cottle, p. 289). He stated his intention to write the 'Life ' in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood, May 21, 1799 (Cottle, pp. 425 f.), and seems to have been really in earnest if we may judge from the very frequent references he makes to it. Earlier than to Wedgwood he wrote on January 4, 1799, to Thomas Poole on the same subject ; and again on December 24, 1799, this time to Southey. But on January 25, 1800, he wrote (to the same) : 'As to myself, Lessing is out of the question,' though to Sir Humphry Davy on October 9 of the same year he again proposed ' to attack ' the work, albeit the 'Essay on Poetry' was 'still more at his heart5.' Southey
1 See Shawcross, note to Biographia Literaria, xxm : also Saintsbury, History of Criticism, iv, p. 223. As affording some small support for the theory ventured above (that Lessing mainly refreshed Coleridge's memory) it is interesting to note the mention in Biographia Literaria, xxn, of Davenant's forestalment of Lessing's ' Dramatiker kern Geschichtsschreiber ' in Hamburgische Dramaturgic, xix.
2 But see Satyrane's Letters, n (pp. 261 f., in Bohn's edition) for some fairly advanced Shakespeare criticism, and for Coleridge's remark : ' this last sheet [which contains the passage] I might have written without having gone to Germany.'
3 Coleridge himself warned his readers in similar terms anent his relation to Schelling (Biographia Literaria).
4 Who, for instance (p. 281), is able to trace great part of Lamb's view of Shakespeare back to Lessing through Coleridge. Brandl is, however, always interesting, if sometimes too suggestive. He would appear, for example, to be quite justified in tracing Coleridge's ' Selbstkritik ' of Osorio (Carlyon, Early Years and Later Reflections, i, p. 143) to the influence of Hamburgische Dramaturgic, i.
5 All these letters are included in Letters of S. T. Coleridge, ed. by E. H. Coleridge, 2 vols. 1895.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD
351
enquired in March 1801 : ' Must Lessing wait for the Resurrection before he receives a new life ? ?1 Sou they, writing to William Taylor September 1, 1799 (Robberds, I, p. 294), announces the work; Taylor on October 18 of the same year tells Sou they it ' may well be made as interesting as Warton on the Genius and Writings of Pope ' (Robberds, I, p. 296). Southey again refers to it in a letter to Taylor from Lisbon, November 26, 1800 (Robberds, I, p. 363) : but in 1805 he informed Taylor that although Coleridge had made ample collection for the work nothing was ever written (Robberds, II, pp. 75 f.). Brandl says (p. 300) that he gave up the idea in 1803 on the appearance of Godwin's work on Chaucer, which fired him with a desire to criticize that poet by com- parison with his contemporaries, predecessors and followers: and Shawcross, in his edition of the Biographia Liter aria (Oxford, 1907), remarks : 'But all that Coleridge had to learn from Lessing was quickly learnt : and the abandonment of the projected Life was probably not more due to vacillation of purpose than to his loss of interest in the subject itself.'
No other work of Coleridge's shows the impress of Lessing's influence so unmistakeably as the Confessions. Brandl (p. 412) gives an excellent sketch of the Englishman's indebtedness in this book, and Cairns2 observes (p. 209) : ' Coleridge in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit has taken substantially the same ground with Lessing.'
(c) Theological Influence.
Lessing's religious views, possibly because of their largely negative character, were never gathered up by himself into a dogmatic system ; whence it comes that his ideas on the subject, valuable as they are, have really influenced those only who could make a worthy acquaintance with his works. Even to-day, among cultured Englishmen, the religion of Lessing stands often for a vague Theism on the strength of a super- ficial acquaintance with Nathan der Weise. Save on the ground of his Unitarian prejudices it is difficult to account for the somewhat similar attitude of William Taylor, who, for example, mentions Lessing's name as one of those authors who strengthened the convictions of Dr Frank Sayers, a prominent member of Taylor's sect3. He tell us in his Survey
1 Life and Correspondence of E. Southey, 1849, n, p. 139.
a J.'Cairns, Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, Edinburgh, 1881, pp. 184—217.
3 Collective Works of the late Dr Sayers, to which have been prefixed some Biographic Particulars, by W. Taylor of Norwich. Norwich, 1823, Vol. i, p. xxi. See also Quarterly Revieiv, LXXIII (1844), p. 65.
352 Lessing in England
that his own translation of Nathan 'was undertaken in March 1790, when questions of toleration were much afloat,' being intended, pre- sumably, to help that cause. He further states that Cumberland's comedy The Jew, which promoted toleration of the race in England, drew inspiration from German sources : but whether from Lessing or no I have been unable to determine1. The Observer of Cumberland also has an attractive Jew : and there is of course Joshua too in Smollett's Count Fathom*. In fact, there was a wave of toleration at the end of the eighteenth century. It produced ' philanthropic Jews, virtuous courtezans, tender-hearted braziers, sentimental rat-catchers3 ' ; and it would be bold indeed even to suggest that Lessing had anything to do with it.
That extraordinary person, Herbert Marsh, Bishop of Peterborough, seems to have been the first to recognize Lessing's theological im- portance. He published his annotated edition of Michaelis' Einleitung in 1793 — 1801. He quotes, without acknowledgment, in a note to Vol. I, p. 72 : ' The truth of Christianity might subsist without a single record : for who would undertake to demonstrate, that, if the New Testament were annihilated, our religion would therefore cease to be true ? ' But he mentions Lessing in a note to Vol. I, p. 76, where he says : ' The Wolfenbiittel Fragments, though published, were not written by Lessing.' Further references by name are in Vol. ill, pp. 5, 31. In a Dissertation of 1801 Marsh gives an account (pp. 21 — 5) of Lessing's theory of the origin of the Gospels, which forms part of the Theologischer Nachlass published in 1784. Marsh adopted the theory in company with Niemeyer, Michaelis, 'Halfeld and Paulus.
Pusey published in 1828 his great Historical Enquiry. The apparent rarity of the book, its importance for our subject, and its lack of index, must excuse my lengthy excerpts. Pusey, who even now is blamed for ' narrowness,' was the first Englishman to do full and under- standing justice to Lessing the theologian. At p. 51, Part I, he says : ' There are few probably who would not have been confirmed in their difficulties by such an antagonist as Goze, who seems to have sought a triumph over, rather than the conviction of his sceptical, but probably more Christian opponent.' In a footnote he adds : ' I know not any man whose scepticism gives one more pain, excites more regret, than
1 The play was certainly very popular, as a glance at the ' Theatrical Eegisters ' of the Gentleman's Magazine (1794) will show. See William Mudford's Life of Cumberland (1812), pp. 549—52.
2 See also Maria Edgeworth's Harrington.
3 Satyrane's Letters, n (p. 261 of Bonn's edition).
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD
353
that of Lessing — He first pointed out the impregnable bulwark of religion against all scientific objections, which has since been philo- sophically justified, that the foundation, the original seat of religion is in the feeling, not in the understanding.' He then proceeds to translate passages of Lessing, collected in Twesten's Dogmatik, in support of his view. At p. 155, Part I, he further remarks : ' It is difficult to appreciate how far Lessing stood within Christianity : how far his high value for it went beyond an objective esteem for its contents : how far his conception of " its internal holy truth " enabled him to overcome his historical and doctrinal difficulties and his inclination to Pantheism, and to appropriate it to himself independently of its historical basis. A too predominant indulgence of the taste for elegant literature and the arts, in which he was so great a master, seem [sic] to have enervated in him the moral earnestness, and precluded him from the self-knowledge, necessary for a thorough and satisfactory examination ; and though he perhaps rightly preferred Pantheism to the then existing systems, he had neither boldness to take the saltum mortalem, by which Jacobi escaped it, nor a philosophy sufficiently deep to see the deficiencies of Pantheism itself.' In a footnote Pusey observes that in Uber die naturliche Religion Lessing explains Christianity by means of Pantheism. ' Yet whatever place he may himself have occupied, he rendered con- siderable services to Christianity... he restored the key to the right understanding of the Old Testament as the preliminary education of the human race, and removed the superficial objections against the particularism of the earlier revelation, and the omission of a future state ; and which was yet more important, the change which he mainly produced in the too abstract systems of the then Apologists, and his referring to the Bible itself as its own best, or, as he held, its only advocate. He further... pointed out the limits of the empire of reason by admitting that though reason must decide whether a given system be a revelation or no, yet if it find in that revelation things it cannot explain, this should rather determine it for it than against it. . ..the ser- vices... which he rendered were, it seems, rather external to Christianity, in preparing the way for a higher order of Christian apologetic authors, than any direct illustrations of its truths.' In a footnote- Pusey adds, anent the Erziehung, that ' his concise but deep and much-containing essay... has... much that is valuable,' though 'A Christian would indeed defend some things differently, and the Pantheistic scheme lies as the basis.' In another footnote (pp. 149 f.) he refers also to Lessing's figure of the wall between religion and philosophy, etc. : while in yet another
354 Lessing in England
(p. 136) he quotes the insistent claim that ' the inward holy truth ' must precede historical and doctrinal understanding. There is further reference to Lessing (in answer to Rose's attack) in Part II, p. 53.
Rose's attack is unimportant for us : his knowledge of Lessing was apparently at second-hand. The next person who calls for notice is Bishop Connop Thirlwall, the able translator of Schleiermacher. In his Eighth Charge (1863 ; Vol. II, p. 78) we find : ' An eminent writer of the last century; who may be called the father of German rationalism, startled his contemporaries by the assertion, that as religion was before the Bible, so it might continue to subsist though the Bible should be lost.' Thirlwall proceeds to say that if the religion meant were Christianity, the proposition is ' an idle surmise, impossible to verify ' ; if Natural Religion, it is treating Christianity as only a form of that. In a footnote he complains that neither Gurlitt1 nor Farrar2 accurately reports Lessing, and gives a translation of Axiomata, v, vi and vm.
In Home's Introduction, IV (London, 1856), p. 646, is the extra- ordinary statement that Lessing 'asserted in 1784' his Gospel hypothesis. The edition referred to (the tenth) is that of Samuel Davidson, the liberal N.onconformist, who ought to have known better.
Next in order comes Temple's essay in Essays and Reviews, 1861. The Erziehung had already appeared in Robertson's translation (1858), and there is little doubt that Temple drew his inspiration thence, though the Contemporary Review for 1862, pp. 445 £, and the Quarterly Review, 1862, p. 472, give parallel passages from Hegel's Philosophie der Geschichte. Sandford 3 admits ' acquaintance ' with Hegel, but ascribes chief influence to Kant and Coleridge. In any case Lessing would seem to be the ultimate source, for Hegel makes no secret of his obligations. No. 1 of Replies to Essays and Reviews, by Goulburn, is a direct charge of indebtedness to Lessing. I have been unable to find in Goulburn's other works the least evidence that he could read German. He quotes in full Sections 72 — 75 from the translation of Robertson, and faintly praises Lessing, though he finds him sometimes ' extravagant ' and ' flagrantly unsound.' He admits his own ' narrow acquaintance ' with German theology.
W. E. H. Lecky in his History of Rationalism says that Lessing, with Kant, did most to supply the principles of Biblical criticism. Appreciations of and references to Lessing's theological position will
1 Theologische Studien, 1863, p. 763.
2 Bampton Lectures, 1862, p. 319.
3 E. G. Sandford, Frederick Temple; an Appreciation, London, 1907, p. 232. Memoirs of Frederick Temple, by seven friends, ed. by E. G. Sandford, London, 1906, vol. n, p. 607.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 355
be found in rich number in English theological literature since the days of Marsh and Pusey.
Modern acquiescence in Lessing's doctrine of the uselessness of history as a foundation for religious belief is seen perhaps in its extreme form in the opinions of the Abbe Loisy and his school1.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. TRANSLATIONS AND NOTICES.
1. Fables from the German. Translated by J. Richardson. York, 1-773. 8vo. [See Monthly Review, xxxvi (1767), p. 575; LII (1775), p. 444.]
2. Nathan the Wise. A philosophical drama. Translated by R, E. Raspe. London, 1781. 8vo. [See Westminster Magazine, 1781, p. 549; Critical Review, LII (1781), p. 236; Monthly Review, LXVI (1782), pp. 307 f.]
3. A Critical Essay on Oil-Painting. Translated by R. E. Raspe. London, 1781. 4to. [See Monthly Review, LII (1775), p. 444 ; Critical Review, LI.]
4. The Disbanded Officer, or the Baroness of Bruchsal. A comedy. London, 1786. 8vo. [Monthly Review, LXXV (1786), pp. 139—42; Critical Review, LXII (1786), pp. 203 f.; English Review, vm (1786), pp. 348—55; Theatrical Register (York), i, p. 30; European Magazine (1786), p. 61.]
5. Emilia Galotti. [Partially translated, with a connecting narrative by Henry Maty, in A New Review, ix (1786), pp. 38—49, 122—5.]
6. Lucy Sampson, or the Unhappy Heyress. Translated by a Citizen of Philadelphia. Philadelphia, 1789. 8vo. [See Todt, Lessing in England, p. 60, Anm. 33.]
7. A Dissertation on the Dramatic Art. [In The Literary Magazine and British Review, n (1789), pp. 340—4.]
8. Nathan the Wise. A dramatic Poem, written originally in German. [By- William Taylor of Norwich.] Norwich, 1791. 8vo. Reprinted (a) in Historic Survey ; (6) London, 1805 ; (c) Tauchnitz Collection of German Authors, Leipzig, 1868 ; (d) Cassell's National Library, No. 38, London, 1886. [Annual Review, vi, p. 634; Poetical Register (1805), p. 501; Edinburgh Review, vm (1806), pp. 149 f. ; British Critic, xxvn (1806), p. 549; Monthly Review, XLIX (1806), pp. 243—8; Retrospective Review, x (1824), pp. 265—85. Cp. also Robberds' Memoir, n, pp. 129, 135.]
9. The Fatal Elopement. A Tragedy. [In The Lady's Magazine, 1799—1800.]
10. Emilia Galotti. [Translated by Berrington, and in all probability never printed.] London, 1794.
11. The School for Honour, or the Chance of War. A Comedy in five acts. Translated from the German of Lessing. London, 1799. 8vo. [Monthly Review (1799), xxx, p. 211 ; Critical Review (1799), xxvn, p. 114 ; British Critic, xvn (1801), p. 314.]
1 See the American Journal of Theology, October, 1911, p. 587. For a succinct statement of the same position see also Dr G. Salmon, Evolution and Other Papers, London, 1906, p. 42.
356 Lessing in England
12. Emilia Galotti. A Tragedy in five Acts. Translated by Benjamin Thompson. London, 1801. 8vo. [In Vol. vi of The German Theatre. See Poetical Register, I, p. 458.]
13. Emilia Galotti. A Tragedy in five Acts. Translated by Fanny Holcroft. London, 1805. [In Vol. I of The Theatrical Recorder, by Thomas Holcroft. Eeprinted January, 1810, as supplement to The Mirror of Taste and Dramatic Censor (Phila- delphia), Vol. i. See also ibid, n, pp. 95 f. and pp. 204 f., for T. Holcroft's Remarks.}
14. Minna von Barnhelm. A Comedy in five Acts. Translated by Fanny Holcroft. London, 1806. [In Theatrical Recorder, n, pp. 213—60.]
15. The Education of the Human Race. [Translated by Crabb Robinson in The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, I (1806), pp. 412 f. The same volume (pp. 183—5) contains also Robinson's version of Eine ParabeL Another translation of this is The Palace on Fire in The German Museum, in, p. 345.]
16. Faust. [Translated in Lord F. Leveson-Gower's version of Goethe's Faust. London, 1823.] [Edinburgh Review, XL (July, 1824), by Hazlitt ; Macmillan's Magazine, LXII (1890), pp. 180—8, by T. B. Saunders.]
17. Fables and Epigrams; with Essays on Fable and Epigram. From the German of Lessing. London, 1825. 8vo.
18. Laocoon. [Incompletely translated by De Quincey in Blackwood's Magazine, xx (1826), xxi (1827). See also xvi (1824), pp. 312—6.]
19. G. E. Lessing 's Fables. In three Books. London, 1829. 8vo. [German and English. See Athenaeum (1828), p. 691.]
20. Laocoon, or the Limits of Poetry and Painting. Translated from the German of G. E. Lessing by W. Ross. London, 1836. 8vo. [See American Whig Review, xni (1851), p. 17.]
21. Three Comedies. Translated from the German of G. E. Lessing. By the Rev. J. J. Holroyd. Colchester, 1838. 8vo. [Freygeist, Schatz and Minna.}
22. Fables and Parables. From the German of Lessing, etc. London [1845]. 12mo.
23. Emilia Galotti. [Democratic Review (New York), xxn (1848), pp. 511 f. : Act i; xxin (1848), pp. 237 f., 348 f. : Acts ii and in ; pp. 421 f., 525 f. : Acts iv and v.]
24. Minna von Barnhelm. [Democratic Review, xxiv (1849), pp. 176, 225, 345, 436, 535 f. : Acts i— iv ; xxv (1849), pp. 56 f. : Act v.]
25. Emilia Galotti. A Tragedy. Translated by R. D. Boylan and H. G. Bohn. London, 1852. 8vo. [Re-issued in the collection of 1878.]
26. Laocoon : an Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Translated from the German by E. C. Beasley. With an Introduction by T. Burbridge. London, 1853. 8vo. [Re-issued in the collection of 1879, and in Bonn's Shilling Library, 1888. See New Englander, xxxiv (1875), p. 555.]
27. The Education of the Human Race. From the German of G. E. Lessing. [By F. W. Robertson of Brighton.] London, 1858. 8vo. [3rd Ed., London, 1872. 16mo. 4th Ed., revised by C. B. Robertson, London, 1896. 16mo.]
28. Minna von Barnhelm; or a Soldier's Fortune. A Comedy in five Acts, from the German. Translated into English, together with notes in German, by W. E. Wrankmore. Leipzig, 1858. 8vo.
29. Lessing' s German Fables in prose and verse. With a close English Translation and brief Notes. London, 1860. 8vo.
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD 357
30. Nathan the Wise; a Dramatic Poem in Jive Acts. Translated from the German with a Biography of Lessing and a Critical Survey of his Position by Dr A. Reich. London, 1860. 12mo.
31. Cambridge Free Thoughts and Letters on Bibliolatry. Translated from G. E. Lessing by H. H. Bernard, edited by I. Bernard. London, 1862. 8vo. [Contains Eine Parabel, Axiomata, and Anti-Goeze.]
32. Nathan the Wise. Translated by E. Frothingham. Preceded by a brief Account of the Poet and his Works [signed H. H. ? Herman HagerJ and followed by K. Fischer's Essay on the Poem. New York, 1868. 12mo.
33. Nathan the Wise : a Dramatic Poem. From the German. With an Intro- duction on Lessing and the Nathan, its antecedents and influence, by R[obert] W[illis], M.D. London, 1868. 8vo. [See London Society, LVIII (1890), pp. 577 f. Lessing by Joseph Forster, with quotations in Willis's translation.]
34. Emilia Galotti. Translated by C. L. Lewis. Leipzig, 1868. 8vo. [In Vol. ix of Tauchnitz's Collection of German Authors.]
35. Laocoon, an Essay upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry. Translated by E. Frothingham. Boston, 1874. 8vo. [London, 1874. Reprinted, Boston, 1880 and 1887.]
36. Laocoon. Translated from the Text of Lessing, with Preface and Notes by Sir Robert Phillimore. With Illustrations. London, 1874. 8vo. [See New Englander, xxxiv (1875), pp. 555 f., an able and damaging criticism by F. Carter.]
37. Nathan the Wise: a Drama in five Acts. Abridged and translated from the German by E. S. H. London, 1874. 4to. [In prose. The publishers are unaware of the identity of the translator, all concerned in the publication being long since dead.]
38. Nathan the Wise : a Dramatic Poem. Translated into English verse by Andrew Wood. London, 1877. 8vo.
39. The Dramatic Works of G. E. .Lessing. Translated from the German : edited by Ernest Bell. With a short Memoir by Helen Zimmern. 2 vols. London, 1878. 8vo. [A complete collection, save for fragments. Nation, xxvin (1878), p. 154.]
40. Selected Prose Works of G. E. Lessing. Translated from the German by E. C. Beasley and Helen Zimmern. Edited by Edward Bell. London, 1879. 8vo. [Contains Wie die Alien den Tod gebildet (Beasley) and Hamburgische Dramaturgic (Zimmern). See Nation, xxix, p. 390.]
41. Fragments from Reimarus, consisting of brief Critical Remarks on the Object of Jesus and His disciples, as seen in the New Testament. Translated from Jthe German of G. E. Lessing. London, 1879. 8vo. [Edited, but not translated, by the Rev. C. Voysey.]
42. Lessing' 's Nathan the Wise. Translated into English Verse by E. K. Corbett, with Introduction and Notes. London, 1883. 8vo.
43. Nathan the Wise. Translated by William Jacks. Introduction by F. W. Farrar. Edinburgh, 1894. 8vo.
44. The Laocoon and other Prose Writings. Translated and edited by W. B. Ronnfeldt. London, 1895. 8vo.
45. Nathan the Wise, Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Major- General Patrick Maxwell. London, 1896. 8vo.
46. Minna von Barnhelm, or a Soldier's Luck. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Patrick Maxwell. London, 1899. 8vo.
358 Lessing in England
The fragmentary translations indicated in the following works are also of some small importance on account of their comparatively early date.
German Poetical Anthology. By A. Bernays. London, 1829. 8vo. [pp. 46 f. : 'The Three Kings'; notice of Lessing, pp. xix, xx; Taylor's Nathan and Survey referred to, p. xlviii.]
Fragments from German Prose Writers. Translated by Sarah Austin. London, 1841. 8vo. [Extracts, pp. 20, 22, 30, 40, all admirably translated. Notice of Lessing, p. 295. See also Mrs Austin's Characteristics of Goethe, London, 1834, n, p. 140, and an important article (signed ' S. A.,' in all probability from her pen) in Blackwood's Magazine, xvm (1825), pp. 286 f. Mrs Austin was one of the Taylors of Norwich.]
SYDNEY H. KENWOOD.
GlGGLESWICK.
<VON DEM BLUMLIN VERGISSMEINNIT.'
A MIDDLE-HIGH-GERMAN POEM.
Vom dem blumlin Vergissmeinnit is the title of a hitherto unpub- lished poem contained in the Add. MS. 24,946 of the British Museum (fol. 53 f.). This manuscript, which belongs to the fourteenth or early fifteenth century, has been sufficiently described by Baechtold, Deutsche Hcmdschriften aus dem Brit. Museum, and R. Priebsch, Deutsche Hand- schriften in England, II (1901), p. 215 f.1 The poem itself is immediately preceded in the MS. by 37 poems of the Teichner — an Austrian poet of the fourteenth century and author of a number of didactic poems — and is entered by the same hand as these. The same MS. also contains two of Peter Suchenwirt's poems, viz. di schon abenteuer (fol. 8) and der widertail (fol. 148), both of which are similar in nature to our poem and open in almost exactly the same way, i.e., with a description of the 'maienzeit.' Such openings are however characteristic of this period2.
Vom dem blumlin Vergissmeinnit belongs to the class of poems generally known as Spruche or Spruchgedichte, very common in Germany at that epoch. It bears a strong resemblance both in form and contents to a poem contained in the collection known as the Liederbuch der Clara Hdtzlerin entitled Von manigerlay plumlin which treats of the symbolic meanings of flowers. But this similarity was almost inevitable in two poems of this type which treat of the same subject. The method of treatment varied little in the allegorical love poetry of the fifteenth century, and the descriptions had become so stereotyped that we meet on all hands such lines as :
gruenes gras was sin obdach. gen der liechten sunnen prehen. die vogel sungen in den esten. etc.
1 Professor Priebsch first drew my attention to the poem and has also aided with his advice, especially in respect of the metre of the poem.
2 Of. K. Matthaei, Das weltliche Klosterlein (Dissert.), Marburg, 1907, p. 30.
360 ' Von dem blwnlin Veryissmeinnit '
Moreover, the subject treated was a favourite one and did not lend itself to great originality. From the earliest times flowers have been endowed by popular tradition with certain qualities, and during the middle ages it became a favourite practice to symbolize the quality by means of the flower. The same sort of symbolism was much in vogue with regard to colours, and it is difficult to say whether the colours1 lent their symbolic qualities to the flowers or the flowers to the colours. There is a good deal to be said for the former of these two possibilities, as the poems which are earlier in date seem to refer more exclusively to the colour, whereas the later poems merely endow the flowers with the virtues of their respective colours. Thus ' rot brynnt in der lieb y and ' plan bedeutet stattikeit ' were common traditions before the rose had become the symbol of passionate love or the forget-me-not that of constancy.
As regards this latter flower and its suggestive name, there are many legends current in Germany which purport to account for its peculiar significance2.
It is impossible to say with certainty when or where the name originated, but at all events it scon became very popular with the poets, and opinion was unanimous as to the qualities of the flower. These are summed up in a short prose treatise of the fifteenth century (cf. Grimm, Altdeutsche W alder, i. 151) which runs as follows: 'ein blumelin heisset Vergissmeinnit, dem das enpholen wirt, der magk woel frohlichs muts sin ; der iss von ime selbe dregt, der wiele [=wolle] sins liebs nit vergessen zu keiner zit.' The flower itself cannot be identified with any degree of certainty. The early botanical dictionaries are not always in accord with each other and are far from being trustworthy. Grimm has identified the forget-me-not with the ' Wunderblume ' or ' Schliisselblume,' but this does not seem to have been the view of the older botanists. Lyte (Histoire des Plantes, 1557) gives ' Schliissel- blume ' as the German equivalent for the ' petit-bouillon,' an entirely different flower. For '1'herbe au scorpion' he gives the German ' hasenoore ' (=' aureille de lieure ') which corresponds to the early Eng-
1 Matthaei, op. clt., pp. 27 f.
2 Cf. Warnke, Pflanzen in Sitte, Sage und Geschichte; also Folkard, Plantlore, Legend and Lyric, which contain most of the ordinary legends. A less known one is to be found in Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Horae Belgicae, xn, p. 49, where, quoting from Frisch, Worterbuch, i, p. 346, he says : ' 1st eigentlich ein Kraut, dessen Blumenstengel oben in einem Schnecken King liegt, und viel Bliitknopflein hat, von denen alle Tage einige aufbliihen, bis auch die Spit/e gerade wird. Von welcher Blume einige in Scherz erne Application auf das Andenken der Freundschaft und der Liebe gemacht, welche immer neu aufbliihen soil und deswegen einander diese Blume gezeigt, wovon ihr der Name Yergissmeinnicht geblieben ist.'
JESSIE CROSLAND 361
lish name ' mouse-ear scorpion grass ' often applied to the ordinary forget-me-not (Myosotis palustris). Hieronymus Bock (1560) classifies the forget-me-not under ' gamander,' and gives as variants the names ' blomenderlin,' ' gamanderlin,' ' Weiberhelfft,' ' Frauenbiss,'. . .' darumb dass das Krautlein in der mitten seines Herzn beraubt ist | bluet auf beden seitten mit bloen blumlin | wie gauchheil...u.s.w/ (cf. Krduter- buch, LXXV). Lonicerus (Krduterbuch, 1560) informs us concerning the ' Vergissmeinnicht (item frauenbiss, helfft),' that 'die Wurzel angehenckt soil die Biiler holdselig und werdt machen.'
But it was a more scientific age which transferred the virtues of the flower to the root and, in order to take account of the poetical signi- ficance of the flower, we must go back a century and a half, to a time when it formed one of the conventional themes of amorous conversation. For instance, in the German adaptation of an Italian work entitled Pluemen der Tugend, and composed in 1411 by Hans Vintler, we read
(1. 8554 f.) :
und mit frauen minnigleich soil man reden von claiden reich und von pluemen vergissmeinnitt und von hiibschen minne sitt, etc.
It is noticeable that no mention is made of the flower in the Italian original of this poem1, and here let it be remarked that the forget-me- not plays but a slight rdle in the popular poetry of either France or England compared with that of Germany, where it seems to have laid hold of the popular imagination. In France, for instance, there is little proof of its popularity beyond an occasional reference2. The same is true of England as may be seen from the fact that Coleridge, when he wrote 'the gentle gem, the sweet forget-me-not,' was obliged to add an explanatory note in his first edition as to what flower he referred to under this name — and this, although as early as 1532 the name appears in . Palsgrave's Dictionary, where ' une fleur de ne m'oubliez-mie ' is translated literally by ' a flour of forget-me-nat ' (cf. Dewes, Introduction to Palsgrave, ' Eclaircissement de la langue frangaise' 1582).
1 ' Con donne si dei contare di cose di cortesia e di alegrezza e d'amore, e di belle gioje e di vestimenta, e di cose di masserizie.'
2 Cf. for instance Charles d'Orleans, Rondeau -LI:
Et a elle presenteray
Des fleurs de ne nroubliez-mie.
Cf. also Bibl. de Vficole des Chartes, 6ifeme Serie, i, p. 473 (16th c.) : 'Ung autre dyamant taille en fleur de ne m'oubliez mie.' The French name occurs also in a poem formerly attributed to Chaucer but which is of later date, viz. The Assembly of Ladies, 59 f. : 'And how they were acompanyed with mo | Ne m'oublie-mies and sovenez also ' (cf. Skeat's Ed. of Chaucer, vn, p. 69). But such examples are mere isolated ones and are far from being 'popular.'
M. L. R. IX. 24
362 ' Von dem blumlin Vergissmeinnit '
In Germany, on the other hand, there is hardly a collection of popular songs but contains some evidence of its widespread popularity. Here, as mentioned above, it seems to have been the symbolic inter- pretation of the colour blue which first led to the adoption of this flower as a token of constancy. Instances abound of the veneration in which the colour blue was held1 — so much so that 'blautragen' (cf. Lassberg, Liedersaal, II, p. 178) became a synonym for being constant in love2. Hence the importance of the ' blue flower/ so well suited for wreaths and garlands and much beloved of the poets3. Thus the way was paved for the advent of the ' Vergissmeinnicht,' and we find a mention of it already in a poem attributed to Hermann von Sachsenheim (cf. K. Geuter, Studien zum Liederbuch der Klara Hditzlerin) and entitled Von einem Wurtzgarten (11. 78f.):
Ich fand auch da in liechtem schein Vergissmennit das blumlein Des farb je scheint in statikait Verschwunden was all mein laid.
Henceforward one has only to study the different collections of German Volkslieder to have ample evidence of the popularity of this flower in poem and song. We find it in a Lower Rhenish MS. of the fifteenth century as one of the seven 'roeselein' which go to make up a symbolic wreath4, and again in the Munchener Liederbuch5 with a play on the words:
Ein plumlein heist vergissnichtmein das ist mir durre worden min lip das hat gedencknitmein geflanczt yn yre hercze u.s.w.
It figures considerably in the poems contained in the Ambraser Lieder-
1 Cf . ' Nun sag mir darnach was ist blaw | Ich sprach das ist stattigkait | der hertzen- lieb gen lieb treitt!' (Liederbuch der Klara Hdtzlerin, No. 21); 'Plau bedeutet stattigkait' (Ib., No. 19) ; ' di ain trug bla in staetigkait ' (Suchensinn, Der Widertail), also Ein Red von der Minne by the same author where Frau Minne complains : ' das maniger plab durch staete trait | da von so went er staete sein,' and many others. For the symbolic meanings of the various colours cf. W. Gloth, Das Spiel von den sieben Farben. Teuionia, Heft i, 1902.
2 The idea of wearing colours probably originated in France. Cf. Christine de Pisan, (Euvres poetiques, 3, 298, 'bleu porter.' Cf. G. Paris, Chansons du XVe siecle, No. XLII : 'Et blanche livr^e porter Chascun un blanc chapperon. ' Cf . ' II te fauldra de vert vestir | C'est la livre"e aux amoulreux,' Ib. XLIX, etc. Cf. also Kaynaud, Rondeaux et autres poesies du xve siecle, Paris, 1889, Nos. 2, 37, etc.
3 Cf., for instance, a short poem of the fifteenth century preserved in a Karlsruher Handschrift (see Mones, Anzeiger, v, p. 334):
und wend ir horen, was mir daz liebste si,
daz plawe pliimlin das stat gar nach da bi,
daz plawe tiitet stat,
der kule wind hat mir den weg verwat, u.s.w.
Cf. Liederbuch der Klara Hatzlerin, n, pp. 96 f. : 'ain plawe plumen sy abprach,' and many others.
4 Euphorion, vm (1901), p. 52.
5 Published in the Zeitschriftfttr deutsche Phil., xv, p. 113.
JESSIE CROSLAND 363
buck (1582)1 and amongst the sixteenth century poems contained in the Deutscher Liederhort2. It finds a place in the allegorical poems dealing with love3 ; it is reckoned among the ' geistlichen Blumen ' in a poem of the sixteenth century4, and in a Middle German paraphrase of the book of Job5 where, although the name is not mentioned, yet it is obvious that a reference is made to this flower.
But it is unnecessary to multiply examples6. Enough has been said to indicate the place which the ' Vergissmeinnicht' occupied in German lyric poetry of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and we now proceed to examine more in detail the poem of which the text is published below.
The metre of the poem is that of the majority of Spruchgedichte in the fifteenth century, viz. rhyme-pairs with regular alternation of dip and lift. The majority of lines present the customary four feet and, in the effort to obtain these, the natural accent has sometimes been violated ; cf. lieblich, 1. 18, billich, 1. 100, cf. also 11s. 21, 30, 72, 88, 120, 155. Several lines which appear at first sight to contain only three lifts in spite of their masculine ending can be brought into conformity with the rest by means of a very slight alteration in the text (cf. rhyme-pairs 41-42, 73-74, 133-134).
The question of the extent to which ' mehrsilbige Senkung ' is allowed, is rendered difficult by the unreliability of the only text we possess of the poem. In many cases it can be avoided by the syncope of an e, more often than not in the prefix ge-.
44. Ich gdacht in meinem mut : nu schweig. 75. Gotwilkum gsell was schafstu hie ? etc.
Infinitives such as singn, wanckn, etc., are treated as monosyllabic, as is proved by the rhyme paum : anschawn, 71-72.
On the other hand omission of the dip between two lifts is not uncommon and may be due to a predilection of the poet for ' beschwerte Betommg,'
cf. 32. Mft der hannd wds ich snell. 35. Niemand mich des erwe*nt. 77. Und zuckt meinen hiit ab.
cf. alsoil44 (or read ferte ?) and 145 (hinefur ?).
1 Ed. J. Bergman, cc, 2; ccvin, 4; ccxxvn, 18.
2 Eck und Bohme, Deutscher Liederhort, pp. 38, 381, 397, etc.
3 Cf. Mittelhochdeutsche Minnereden, i, herausg. von K. Matthaei (Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, xxiv), 12, 9 and 13, 317.
4 Cf. Wackernagel, Kirchenlieder, in, p. 288.
5 Die mitteldeutsche poetische Paraphrase des Buches Hiob. T. E.Karsten (same series, xxi), p. 27, 11. 1693-7.
6 Further reference might be made to Ditfurth, Yolks- und Gesellschaftslieder aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrh., e.g., No. 39, Ade; Uhland's Volkslieder, 54, 55, 57, 58; Des Knaben Wunderhorn, i, 239, etc.
24—2
364 ' Von dem blumlin Vergissmeinnit '
Another tendency of the poet may be noticed, viz. the frequency with which he accentuates the personal pronoun immediately preceding the verb, especially at the beginning of a line.
1. I6h kam in des mayenzeit 11. I6h mocht[es] nit lennger Ian
I6h muest in den anger gan 131. Ich stuend aiif mid wollt von dann, etc.
On the other hand in many lines we find an 'Auftakt' of two syllables; cf. 11s. 30, 46, 68, 94, 154; 157.
The rhymes are in general pure, and those which do not appear so can be accounted for by the dialect in which the poem is written, viz. that of Bavarian Austria. Characteristic also of this dialect is the strong tendency to apocope and syncope which marks many of the rhymes. Cf. erblickt (pret.) : geschickt (p.p.) ; trawret : mawret (63— 64); pawm (dat.) : anschawn (71-72) ; ticht : nicht (123-4); erwent (=erwendet) : end (35-36), etc.
To the same dialect we may ascribe the following peculiarities in the rhymes :
(1) Vowels a : a, cf. dann : han 131-2 ; gach : sach 13-14 ; statt :
gat 157-81.
e : e (before r), cf. her : mehr 79-80; er : her 135-62. ei (>i) : ei (>ei), cf. schein : rein 9-10; rubein : rein
29-303. ai ( >ei) : ai ( >age), cf. lait : gesait 125-64.
(2) Consonants m : n, cf. pawm : schawn 71-2.
z : s, cf. baz : gras 43-4.
w : b, cf. tau : laub 57-85.
Difference of final t, cf. tall : manigfalt 3-4.
Other characteristic forms are : ' west,' 1. 84 6 ; in the inner part of the line, the preterite ' hiet ' (from han), 1. 29, and the construction of 'vor' with the genitive, 11. 66, 100 and 1457. These forms, together with those noticed under the vowels and consonants, are sufficient to indicate the home of the original.
It only remains to say that a complete reconstruction of the text is impossible as the ' Uberlieferung ' of the poem is far from perfect.
1 Cf. Weinhold, Bairische Grammatik, § 36. 2 16. § 48.
3 Cf. Zwierzina, Z. f. d. A., XLIV, p. 393. 4 Ib. p. 363.
5 For m : n and w : b, cf. Weinhold, loc, cit., §§ 125 and 169. « Weinhold, Mhd. Grammatik, § 419. 7 Cf. Zwierzina, loc. cit., p. 27.
JESSIE CROSLAND 365
Several of the lines appear to me to be clearly interpolations and they have therefore been relegated to the notes. Smaller interpolations consisting of a word or syllable have been enclosed in round brackets. Additions made to the text are denoted throughout by square brackets.
VON DEM BLUMLEIN VERGISSMEINNICHT.
Ich kam in des mayenzeit
auf ainen gruenen anger weit,
der stund in ainem tiefen tall :
da sach ich pluemen manigfalt
gegen der liechten sunnefn] prehen. 5
Ich gedacht : ' ich mu.es (die) ansehen,
wie der may sey getziert
und jeglichs bluem[e]lein formiert.'
gegen des liechten mayen schein
die blumlein waren liecht und rein. 10
Ich mocht[es] nit lennger Ian,
ich muest in den anger gan:
(und) zu den plumen was mir gach ;
manigs hubsch plumlem ich da sach
sich auftun gen der sunnen 15
in frewden und in wunnen.
Doch sunderlich ich ains erblickt,
das was gar lieblich geschickt;
darauf lag ain trop[e]flein
von tau als war es rein perlein1, 20
es2 het sich lieblich geschmuckt3
und zartlich auf seiri kraut getruckt
und pflag da senfter morgenrue,
ich trat ain wenig bas hintzue.
Da ich das [bluemlein] ansach 25
gruenes gras was sein ob(e)dach,
es4 was plab als der safier rein,
1 The MS. has not been strictly adhered to in this passage, as the sense rendered a transposition of the lines necessary. Lines 21 and 22 in the MS. have become 11. 25 and 26 in the printed text. The two following lines which follow 1. 26 in the MS. seem to me to be an interpolation :
Da sach ich pluemen manigfalt
Sunder merkt ich aines bluemlein gestalt.
2 MS. das bluemlein. 3 MS. gesclmuckt. 4 MS. das.
366 ' Von dem blumlin Veryissmeinnit '
teuf darin stuend ain rubein1,
den man lieblich hiet paliert:
also was das bluemlein geformiert. 30
Mitten ain das was rein gell.
Mit der hannd was ich snell,
ich naigt mich dar und prach es ab;
ich gedacht: 'seit ich[s] nun hab,
niemand mich des erwent, 35
Ich will sein komen an ain end,
ob mir jemand [kumt] entgagen,
der mir kund[e]...sagen,
wie das pluemlein sey genant,
das ich da hab in meiner hand.' 40
Ich ging [ain wenig]2 fur mich bas
durch feyel und[e] gruenes gras,
und kam auf ainen smalen steig.
Ich gedacht in meinem mut : ' nu schweig !
Nu will ich gen als lanng und vil, 45
ob ich kom des angers an ain ziel,
ob mir jemand tat bekant,
wie das bluemlein war genant.
Der steig mich trug durch ain wild(es) hag,
vor dem ain schoner gart[e] lag, 50
da sach ich erst den mayenglantz3.
Die pawme4 waren voll5 blued[e] gantz,
die fogel sungen in den (gruenen) esten
gen der liechten su[n]nen glesten;
keines ward nie nas von tau, 55
si sassen in dem gruenen laub
und wurden also lustlich singn
und mit suessem sang[e] klingen,
das ich es nit verloben kan.
Jeglicher vogel der hueb an 60
mit seinem besundern gesanck,
das es under ainander klanck.
Ich horte niemand, der da trawret.
Der gart[e] was schon umb[e]mawret ;
1 MS. das stuend tief in ainem rubein
das was plab als der saner rein.
2 Of. 1. 65. 3 mayengantz. 4 pawn. 5 von.
JESSIE CROSLAND
367
ich ging ein wenig bas hinfur 65
da sach ich vor mein aine thur1 ;
die was offen, ich gie hinein,
da ersach ich aine frawen rein :
da ich sie erst anblickt[e]
von herzen ich erschrickt[e] 70
und naigt mich hinder ainem pawm,
ich wollt ihr schon haimlich anschavvn.
Da sie mich [erst] ersach,
sie ging zu mir und[e] sprach :
' Gotwilkum gesell was schafstu hie ? ' 75
Ich naigt mich nider auf ain knie
und zuckt meinen hiit ab.
Sie sprach : ' setz auf, lieber knab,
was schafst hie oder wannen kumst her,
warm ich in manig zeit nie mehr 80
kainen alls gern hab gesehen,
das muess ich in warheit jehn.'
Ich sprach :] ' frau, ich gen irr und han geprest,
genad, frau, wann ich gern[e] west,
wie das bluemlein war genant, 85
das ich hie hab in meiner hant;
wist ir nit des bluemleins kraft ?
durch2 aller frauen gesellschaft
und durch ewr er und tugend
erfreu[e]t mir mein herz und jugend, 90
und tttet mir das bluemlein nennen
oder was ich dabey sull erkennen.'
Sy sprach gar tugendlich : ' das soil sein3.
setz dich nyder, auf die trewe mein
so will ich dir es thun bekantt.' 95
Sy graif mir her nach mein[er] hant
und zoch mich zu ir sitzen nider;
ich wischt balld auf von ir wider:
'Nam frau, ich will tugendlich4
sten vor ewr als ist billich.' 100
Sy sprach : ' du sollt sitzen zu mir,
1 ain thor. 2 tuet es durch. 3 gesell das soil sein.
4 MS. - Nain frau tugendlich.
Ich will sten vor ewr als billich ist.
368 * Von dem blumlin Vergissmeinnit '
so will ich das beschaiden dir,
des du hast gefrag[e]t mich;
nu wol her und setz[e] dich.'
Also setz[t] ich mich zu derselben stund, 105
da sprach sy aus irem rotten mund :
' Vergissmeinnit ist es genant
und ist frawen (und mannen) wol erkannt,
die da tragen statikait.
Vergissmeinnit bringt '(oft) lieb und laid. 110
Wann lebt yender ain fraw so gut,
die da tregt vessten statten mutt,
hallt sy das bluemlein in ir(e)m hertzn,
Ir tut senen haimlich(en) schmertzn,
und pfligt sy das bluemlein eben und schon 115
so hat sy (oft) frewd widerumb zu Ion,
und gutten niut in haimlichait;
Vergissmeinnit bringt (oft) lieb und laid,
Vergissmeinnit die edel(e)1 frucht,
wer ir newst, der hat (die) sehnsucht 120
und hat haimlich wol und ach
und gramlichen2 ungemach.
Was man auch syngt oder ticht,
dabei mues sein vergissmeinnicht :
also bringt es lieb und laid. 125
Von dem bluemlein hab ich dir nu gesait.'
Ich sprach : ' gnad, frau, ich hab zu danck(e)n
mit gantzen trewen on alles wanckn,
das ir mir trewlich habt gesagt
was ich ew. ..hab gefragt.' 130
Ich stuend auf und wollt von dann :
'Genad, fraw, lat mich urlaub han.'
Sy sprach : ' gesell nu beit,
du kumst noch [zue] gutter zeit.'
Ich sprach : ' nein [frau], zeit hat er.' 135
Sy graif mich nach dem arm[e] her.
'Gesell3, merck, was ich dir ratn will:
gib alien frewden ein schnelles ziel,
gedenck, ein widerkern tut gar woll.
1 ist ain edele. 2 gamlichen.
3 und sprach : gesell, etc.
JESSIE CROSLAND
369
140
Bis fest, stat und sprich frawen wol,
bis verschwigen trau niemand zu vil.'
'Genad frau, gern ich es tun will.'
'Nun will ich dich nit lennger halten1,
Gott mues deiner fart walltn.'
Sy gie vor mein hinfur 145
und wartet meiner bei der thur2.
Also schied ich von der zarten,
sy tett mir selbst auf den garten
und gab mir lieblich disen segen :
'Gott mues dein[er] ymer pflegen 150
und[e] haben in seiner pflicht.
Mein hort, halt dich des (bluemlein) vergissmeinnicht.'
Ich sprach : ' furwar, fraw, das soil sein
unvergessen (ewicklich) in dem herzen mein.'
Sy sprach :] * Vergissmeinnit, das edel pluemlein, 155
pflanz (mir) in den garten des hertzen dein,
und der zawn, der umb den garten gatt,
soil sein 3nitliebers an aller statt.'
JESSIE CROSLAND.
LONDON.
1 aufhalten.
2 After 1. 146 in the MS. stand the following lines which seem to me to be an inter- polation :
Ich gund hinder der thur still stan
Sy sprach willtu nit furbas gan
Nain fraw ir muest belieben hie
Sy sprach sag mir allswie
Gee fur dich es ist dir umsunst
Ich tue in meinem gartn wes mich verlust.
3 nitliebers und vergissmeinnit.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT OF 'As You LIKE IT/ II, i, 5.
Some of the earlier critics' emendations of the text of Shakespeare have been accepted with such unanimity that many editions print them without comment, and it is with a feeling of surprise that one realises sometimes how much there is to say for the displaced text of the Folio. Such an instance occurs in the well-known speech of the Duke in As You Like It, n, i, of which the following are the opening lines :
Now my Coe-mates, and brothers in exile : Hath not old custome made this life more sweete Then that of painted pompe ? Are not these woods More free from perill then the enuious Court ? Heere feele we not the penal tie of Adam, The seasons difference, as the Icie phange And churlish chiding of the winters winde, Which when it bites and blowes vpon my body Euen till I shrinke with cold, I smile, and say This is no flattery: these are counsellors That feelingly perswade me what I am : Sweet are the vses of aduersitie, etc.
In the fifth of these lines Theobald's correction of ' but ' for ' not ' has been universally accepted, so much so that Professor Herford and the editor of the play in the ' Caxton Shakespeare ' print ' but ' without a word of comment. Yet ' but ' is quite certainly wrong, and the text of the Folio right. The long discussion of the passage which the Variorum Edition reproduces from the different editors is vitiated throughout by the assumption that ' Here feel we not ' is an assertion. For the printer of the Folio has made one mistake : he has omitted the mark of interrogation. Anyone acquainted with older punctuation will recognise how this has happened. To-day a printer would place the mark of interrogation at the end of 1. 11 of the above extract. But the older printers quite naturally disliked reserving the indication of a question to the end of a sentence, when the interrogative aspect of the sentence had become overshadowed by a statement. They often inserted it once or twice in the course of the same sentence. The natural place for the
Miscellaneous Notes 371
interrogative in the case in question would be after the seventh line, or perhaps after both the fifth and the seventh. This tended, on the other hand, to obscure the continuous flow of the sentence. In the present case, what began as a question passed into a statement and the question mark was lost.
That the Duke is asking a question, and that ' not ' is the correct reading, is clear at once from the rhetorical parallelism and from the sense. Note the parallelism ' Hath not old custome... ' ; ' Are not these woods...'; ' Heere feele we not ' But the sense is still more con- vincing evidence. The point of the Duke's argument, the text on which he bases his discourse
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
is obscured by changing 'not' to 'but.' He asks three questions regarding their life in the forest compared with their former life at Court : (1) Has custom not made it sweeter (because it is more simple) than the pomp of Court ? (2) Is it not a safer life than that of the Court, where everyone who prospers is the object of others' envy? (3) Is it not a sincerer life, teaching us what we really are, than the Jife of the Court where we were surrounded by flatterers ?
Instead of complaining that he has to bear the penalty of Adam (though 'but the penalty' and nothing more) he reckons the fact that we do feel this penalty as the greatest of the boons which their sylvan life has conferred upon them. It is because we have learned to smile and say :
This is no flattery: these are counsellors That feelingly persuade me what I am,
it is because of this that we are able to say from the heart : Sweet. are the uses of adversitie...
One might press the argument farther and ask what ' but ' really means. The ' seasons difference ' is (according to tradition) one of the penalties of Adam's sin, but so are the other evils the Duke has men- tioned, with every other consequence of sin. He is not contrasting the ' seasons difference ' with the ' pomp ' and ' envy ' of the life at Court. He is contrasting the sincerity of the icy wind, which knows no diffe- rences of rank, with the flattery of courtiers and counsellors. The thought is akin to Lear's
Take physic, pomp ; Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel...
and the boatswain's ' Hence ! What care these roarers for the name of king ? ' and Canute's lesson to his flatterers.
372 Miscellaneous Notes
I have noticed since this obvious error struck me, that an anonymous correspondent of the Gentleman s. Magazine in 1784 made this emendation, inserting a mark of interrogation after ' winde.' No editor discussed it, and though the Cambridge editors record the fact, it is not referred to in Aldis Wright's Clarendon Press edition.
H. J. C. GRIEKSON. ABERDEEN.
SHAKESPEARE, ' SONNETS ' LI, 11. 10 f.
Therefore desire, of perfect'st love being made, Shall neigh — no dull flesh — in his fiery race.
It is a risky thing to propose an emendation of the text of Shake- speare. One feels that there if there is anything in it, others would have proposed it before— or, in fact, have done so.
I cannot think however that the above lines as given by the Cam- bridge editors are Shakespeare's. Nor am I satisfied with the emenda- tions mentioned in the editors' note.
The original text has ' naigh noe dull flesh/ Malone reads ' neigh (no dull flesh)' and conjectured 'neigh to dull flesh.' ' Staunton con- jectures that neigh is corrupt, wait no dull flesh, Bulloch conj. neigh, no dull flesh, Dowden. need no dull flesh, Kinnear conj.' (Cambridge Editors.)
I suggest ' weigh no dull flesh.'
In the preceding sonnet the poet tells us that when he is riding away from his friend,
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe, Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me, As if by some instinct the wretch did know His rider loved not speed, being made from thee.
In the present sonnet the situation is reversed. The poet imagines that he is returning to his friend :
Then can no horse with rny desire keep pace ;
Therefore desire, of perfect'st love being made,
Shall weigh no dull flesh in his fiery race ;
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade ; Since from thee going he went wilful-slow, Towards thee I'll run and give him leave to go.
Desire, which is identified with love, refuses to keep the slow pace of the horse. It will be no burden to his back. But as the horse,
Miscellaneous Notes
373
seemingly out of sympathy with the poet, wilfully went slow on the outward journey, he shall not now be spurred to a speed beyond his powers. Love or desire will fly ahead, and leave the beast to walk.
G. C. MOORE SMITH.
SHEFFIELD.
HERRICK'S ' HESPERIDES.'
What is the meaning of this title ?
We know that Herrick published his poems in 1648 when he came up to London at the age of fifty-seven, after being ejected -from his Devonshire living. Professor Moorman in his admirable book on Herrick would therefore understand ' Hesperides ' to mean ' Children of the West Country,' and we cannot deny that this explanation is both possible and attractive.
Another explanation is however suggested by Herrick's dedicatory lines to Charles, Prince of Wales, which it is worth while to quote in full:
Well may my Book come forth like Publique Day,
When such a. Light as You are leads the way:
Who are my Works Creator, and alone
The Flame of it, and the Expansion.
And look how all those heavenly Lamps acquire
Light from the Sun, that inexhausted Fire :
So all my Morne, and Evening Stars from You
Have their Existence, and their -Influence too.
Full is my Book of Glories; but all These
By You become Immortall Substances.
Herrick calls his poems ' my Morne, and Evening Stars.' This suggests that he meant by ' Hesperides ' — ' Daughters of the Evening Star,' i.e. ' Poems of Later Life,' or, if he remembered that Hesperus was also Phosphorus, the Morning Star (cp. In Memoriam, cxxi), ' Poems of youth and of old age.'
So much of this note was written when Mr Macaulay suggested to me a third explanation of ' Hesperides.' He points out that the word was often used by our poets to mean not the nymphs, but the gardens in which they dwelt (see N.E.D. where, however, the examples are badly classified). Thus Greene writes: 'The fearful dragon.... That watched the garden called Hesperides ' (Friar Bacon, IX 82) ; Shake- speare, ' a Hercules, Still climbing trees in the Hesperides ' (Loves Labours Lost, IV, 3. 341) ; ' Before thee stands this fair Hesperides With
374 Miscellaneous Notes
golden fruit ' (Pericles, i . 1. 27) ; Milton, ' ladies of the Hesperides ' (Par. Regained, II 357).
Mr Macaulay would even see this meaning in Herrick's poem ' To Virgins ' (ed. Grosart II 27) :
Rosamond was in a Bower Kept, as Danae in a Tower:... Be ye lockt up like to these, Or the rich Hesperides : . . . Notwithstanding Love will win, . Or else force a passage in.
Here however the Virgins are compared first to Rosamond and Danae, and then to the Hesperides, and it seems more natural to consider that the Hesperides are here the nymphs.
However, even putting this passage aside, we have abundant evidence of the use of ' Hesperides ' to mean ' the islands or gardens of the west/ and so we get a third possible explanation of Herrick's title.
G. C. MOORE SMITH.
SHEFFIELD.
' EPITHALAMIUM UPON LADY MARY CROMWELL'S MARRIAGE.'
Relative to Miss Edith S. Hooper's important contribution in Modern Language Review, VIII, 540, perhaps I may draw attention to the pro- bability that the ' Epithalamium upon the Marriage of the Lady Mary, Daughter to his Highness, with the Lord Viscount ffalconbridge, to bee sung in Recitative Musick,' entered at Stationers' Hall by Henry Herringman, in association with D'Avenant's 'Poems on Several Occasions,' on December 7, 1657, was the work of Andrew Marvell. In Marvell's Works, ed. Grosart, 1873, I, 139 if., are to be found two lyrical dialogues entitled ' Two Songs at the Marriage of the Lord Fauconberg and the Lady Mary Cromwell,' the first between Endymion and Cynthia, with a chorus, and the second sung by Hobbinal, Phillis and Tomalin. I think it is to these, and not to any second Epithala- mium, that Sir Henry Herbert mistakenly refers. His blunder was probably due to the circumstance that D'Avenant had Marvell's two songs suitably rendered at his ' New Theatre/ otherwise the small and inconvenient room in Rutland House, Charterhouse Yard, turned by him into a temporary playhouse in 1656. The new theatre (opera- house would have been the better term) was opened in May with ' The
Miscellaneous Notes 375
First Dayes Entertainment by Declamation and Musick after the Manner of .the Ancients,' an oratorical-cum-lyrical performance which was published in the same year. A contemporary account says ' the music was in a covered place and concerted, ending with new songs relating to the victor, etc.' (State Papers, Dom. Ser., Interregnum 1656, Vol. cxxvin, No. 108). Since the scene of the entertainment was Athens, and the songs to the victor, otherwise Cromwell, were not included in the book, I am inclined to identify them with the ' Essay for the New Theatre representing the Preparacon of the Athenians for the Reception of Phocion after hee had gained a victory.' But in the absence of the poems the point is difficult to settle.
Miss Hooper's discovery is valuable in two respects. It shows that Rutland House was still being used for entertainments in 1657 ; and it also shows the methods whereby D'Avenant succeeded in obtaining per- mission to give musical representations in spite of puritanical opposition. There was a potent reason for this lavish adulation of Cromwell and his family. By throwing repeated sops to Cerberus D'Avenant was enabled in 1658 to open the old Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane with his operas.
W. J. LAWRENCE.
DUBLIN.
SOMAIZE AND SOREL.
In three ingenious articles1 Mr Warshaw endeavours (1) to establish the ' non-entity of Somaize as an actual person,' and (2) to identify him with Charles Sorel. the author of Francion and the Berger extravagant. As Mr Warshaw expresses his ' desire to open that subject for discussion/ I proceed to examine his more important evidence.
I. With Larroumet, Mr Warshaw places Somaize's literary activity in the years 1657 — 1661 2. M. E. Roy, in an article on Les premiers cercles du XVIIe siecle*, quotes several other works which Somaize is supposed to have written after 1661 :
1663 : He contributes to Les Delices de la Poesie Galante de plusieurs celebres auteurs de ce temps, Paris, Jean Ribou ;
1666 : Le Secret d'etre toujours belle, Paris, Billaine4 :
1 Of. The case of Somaize, The Identity of Somaize I and II, in Modern Language Notes, Feb. 1913, Feb. and March 1914.
2 Larroumet, Etudes de Litterature, p. 4, and Case of Somaize, p. 33.
3 In Revue d'Hist. litt. de la France, vol. iv, 1897, p. 13 ff.
4 Also quoted by Mr Warshaw, without date ; see Case of Somaize, p. 36.
376 Miscellaneous Notes
1667 : La PTiilis de Scire, Pastorale du comte Bonarelli, traduite en vers libres, Paris, Ribou1.
II. The Songe du Resveur (1663), a reply to Somaize's Pompe funebre de Scarron, Mr Warshaw considers to be an attack by Somaize on himself — an attack written for the sake of notoriety2. But the whole tone of this work, despite its wretched verses, is one of righteous indignation; the references to Somaize are couched in terms of deep contempt ; his punishment, after his humble excuses to Moliere, is most humiliating: stripped of his clothes, the author is tossed in a horse blanket. Throughout he appears as a poor wretch, who sells Moliere's Precieuses Ridicules to a publisher [Jean Ribou] for a paltry hundred francs3, and obtains money enough to buy clothes by stealing the Cocu Imaginaire4. The anecdote which relates that in a certain salon he tried to pass off Du Ryer's Cleomedon as his own work (ib. p. 18) like- wise bears the stamp of truth. The following is Apollo's opinion of this ' archigredin ' (ib. p. 20) :
Quoi ! cet escrivain du Pont Neuf, Qui n'a pas pour avoir un oauf, Dit Apollon, tout plein de rage, Est cause de tout ce ravage? Ce singe qui ne feroit rien, S'il ne pilloit les gens de bien, Ce fils aisne de 1'ignorance, Peut done avoir cette impudence ?
These traits render Mr Warshaw's hypothesis improbable, and the Songe du Resveur may safely be considered as the work of a friend of Moliere's. Furthermore, while in 1660 Somaize was thus both slandering and plagiarizing Moliere to earn a few pence, Sorel was still ' premier historiographe de France/ making an honourable living by his pen5. Had he wished to belittle Moliere, Sorel could have struck effectively by pointing out how Moliere had borrowe'd from him. Ignorant of the facts, Somaize contents himself with accusing Moliere of plagiarising the Abbe de Pure's Precieuse, a groundless charge, as shown by M. Roy (ib. p. 268).
III. Somaize's boast that the French Academy met two or three times on his account6 is satisfactorily explained by the twenty-third prediction of the Grand Dictionnaire (ed. Livet, p. 190): The Pompe
1 Privilege granted to A. B. D. S. = Antoine Baudeau de Somaize.
2 Case of Somaize, p. 35.
3 Le Songe du Resveur, reprinted by P. L. Jacob, Geneva, 1867, p. 17.
4 Ib., p. 16. The Cocu Imaginaire, however, is not attributed to Somaize, but to another 'sot ... inf ame. '
5 E. Hoy, La Vie et les (Euvres de Charles Sorel, p. 343.
6 Identity of Somaize I and II, point 14.
Miscellaneous Notes 377
Funebre de Scarron will cause the ' forty barons ' to assemble. This explanation is also accepted by Larroumet (op. cit., p. 27).
IV. The three passages in which Sorel refers to the Dictionnaire des Precieuses deserve special attention. The first mention is made in his Bibliotheque Fran^oise, Paris, 1664, p. 171 : ' II y a aussi le Diction- naire du Langage des Pretieuses & leur Dictionnaire Historique, auec leur Comedie en Prose.' Mr Warshaw1 finds it strange that Sorel should have listed these works here, 'when dealing with the romans comiques! However, he is not exactly dealing with this genre, since the passage is taken from a paragraph in which, by way of digression, he considers 'quantite de petites Pieces particulieres qui paraissent sous diuerses formes ' (ib. p. 170).
The second passage, also quoted by Mr Warshaw (ib. p. 81), is found in the same Bibliotheque Francoise, p. 360, in Sorel's own list of works attributed to himself: 'II y a en quelques autres lieux plusieurs Pieces faites a 1'imitation des premieres. On a fait vne Lotterie d Amour, on a fait vn Dictionnaire du Langage precieux, & I'inueiition de cela est dans vn certain Catalogue de Liures plaisans pour les Benefices de la Lotterie.' This passage may seem to tell in favour of Mr Warshaw's contention : the Lotterie d' Amour is ' generally conceded to be Sorel's ' : why should he mention the Dictionnaire together with this Lotterie if the Dictionnaire were not also his ? Another explanation is possible. The content of the entire paragraph is Sorel's very broad-minded attitude toward plagiarism ; he continues : c II y a beaucoup d'ouurages encore, soit Romans ou Comedies, qui ont tire quelques sujets des Liures precedens. Mais les larcins qu'on fait aux Autheurs, ou les honnestes imitations leur sont a honneur2.' Sorel's Lotterie d Amour is therefore not the one italicized, but rather the work which contains the ' Catalogue de Liures plaisans ' in question, and,, as in the case of the Dictionnaire, Sorel maintains his priority. Some such explanation is also advocated by M. Roy (Ch. Sorel,. p. 281).
The crucial passage, however, is contained in Sorel's Connoissance des bons livres, chapter IV, Du nouveau langage franpois3. He first quotes extensively from his own Discours sur VAcademie Francoise (1654) and his Loix de la Galanterie (second edition, 1658) — carefully
1 Identity of Somaize II, p. 81.
2 This passage also explains Sorel's silence concerning Moliere's borrowings from his works.
3 Amsterdam, 1672, pp. 409 — 410, partially quoted by Mr Warshaw, Identity of Somaize II, p. 81.
M. L. R. IX.
25
378 Miscellaneous Notes
noting date and editions, but naturally omitting the name of the author. Then he continues :
Vers ces temps-la on fit imprimer quatre Volumes d'un Livre intitule, La Precieuse, ou le Mystere des Ruelles. De certaines personnes y estoient introduites, lesquelles parloient & agissoient autrement que les autres. Ce Livre donna sujet a une Comedie Italienne de ce nom, laquelle fut imitee en Frangois, sous le titre des Fausses Precieuses1. Celles-cy tenoient quelque chose du nouveau langage, ou d'un langage choisi. II y eut aussi le Dictionnaire Historique, Poetique, & Geographique des Precieuses, Livre d'une invention tres-galante, mais tres-mal executee parce que ceux qui ont compose cet Ouvrage, ayans travaille' sur de faux Memoires, ont donne plus ou moins d'&ge aux Dames qu'elles n'avoient. Us leur ont attribue des qualitez qui ne leur convenoient pas, & ont racontd leurs avantures au plus loin de ce qui en est arrive". Outre cecy, 1'insolence estoit horrible, d'aller faire imprimer des Clefs qui expliquoient tous les noms empruntez, pour plusieurs personnes connues. Nous n'alleguons ce Livre que parce qu'il est remply de plusieurs fagons de parler tout extraordinaires. On a imprime a part, Le Dictionnaire du Langage des Pre- cieuses^ ou 1'on trouve de semblables termes, qui sont fort pleins d'emphaze & de periphrazes qu'on peut estimer ridicules. Aussi croit-on qu'on a enchery sur la verite, & que s'il y a la quelques mots dont se servent de certaines personnes, les autres ont este invente a leur imitation.
Mr Warshaw is probably right in warning us not to take Sorel's indignation too seriously. On the other hand, we believe that this passage gives the clue to the real authorship of the Dictionnaire. It was evidently compiled in collaboration2, and Somaize was (so to say) the editor in chief.
But since Sorel so persistently refers to the Dictionnaire, we propose the following hypothesis as an alternative to Mr Warshaw's thesis : Sorel had been one of the most zealous and scientific contributors. Others, however, like the uncritical Somaize, had grossly exaggerated things, and Sorel finally discontinued his collaboration. Nevertheless he considered the Dictionnaire as a valuable contribution to the study of the precieux movement. This is especially shown by the fact that he quotes from it extensively in a later passage of the Gonnoissance des bons livres*. Out of the twenty-three precieux expressions mentioned, twenty-two are taken from the Dictionnaire des Precieuses4.
WALTHER FISCHER. PHILADELPHIA, PENN. U.S.A.
1 Sorel evidently refers neither to Moliere's nor to Somaize's Precieuses, but to Gabriel Gilbert's Vraie et Fausse^Precieuse, played by Moliere's troup in 1660. This play is not usually connected with the Abb£ de Pure's novel. Cf. V. Fournel, Les Contemporains de Moliere, vol. n, p. 5.
2 Larroumet, op. cit., p. 34, points out differences in style which betray such a collabo- ration.
3 Pp. 469—470. .See Roy, Ch. Sorel, p. 287 and Identity of Somaize II, p. 81.
4 The only expression which we cannot find in the Dictionnaire is the paraphrase for marriage : L'amour ftny & VAbysme de la Liberte.
Miscellaneous Notes 379
UNE SOURCE POSSIBLE DE 'SALAMMBO.'
Lorsque Salammbd, allongeant son bras nu, lance centre Matho, tout rayonnant du zaimph qui 1'enveloppe, ses imprecations vengeresses, elle s'ecrie :
...Que Gurzil, dieu des batailles, te dechire ! que Mastiman, dieu des morts t'etoufte1!...
Mastiman inquieta M. Froehner qui mit en doute son existence et ecrivit dans la Revue Gontemporaine? :
...la plupart des autres dieux invoques dans Salammbo sont de pure invention. Qui a jamais entendu parler d'un Aptouknos, d'un Schaoul ou d'un Mastiman ?
A quoi Flaubert repliqua en indiquant ses sources:
...vous affirmez avec la m£me...candeur que 'la plupart des autres dieux in- voques dans Salammbo sont de pure invention ,' et vous ajoutez : ' Qui a entendu parler. . .d'un Mastimann 1 ' II est mentionne comme Dieu par Corippus (V. Johanneis et Mem. de V Academic des Inscriptions, t. xn, p. 18 13).
Voila qui est precis. Trop precis meme : car, si Ton fait les verifica- tions sollicitees par Flaubert, on trouve que Corippus mentionne en effet Mastiman en sa Johannide*, sans indiquer toutefois tres nettement que c'est un 'dieu des morts'; au t. XII, p. 181 des Memoires de I'Academie des Inscriptions (ancienne serie) commence un article de M. Saint-Martin, intitule Observations sur un passage de Salluste relatif a V origine persane des Maures et de plusieurs autres peuples de I' Europe septentrionale, article ou il n'est question ni de Gurzil ni de Mastiman.
Y a-t-il la une erreur comme il y en a tant dans les renvois qu'a faits Flaubert a ses sources ? Ce n'est pas impossible ; il est pourtant difficile de 1'admettre, puisque nous savons a n'en pas douter que Flaubert a lu et la Johannide5 et le memoire de Saint-Martin6.
La solution de ce petit probleme est sans doute la suivante: Flaubert aura pris ses notes dans un ouvrage de seconde main ou il trouvait cote a cote 'Gurzil, dieu des batailles, Mastiman, dieu des morts ' et le renvoi exact au memoire de Saint-Martin ; mais il n'aura
1 Salammbo, edition originale, p. 124 ; ed. Conard, p. 107 (les autres renvois seront faits & cette edition).
2 31 decembre 1862, t. LXV, pp. 859—860.
3 Revue contemporaine, t. LXVI, p. 416. Cf. Correspondance, in, p. 354.
4 Ed. I. Bekker, Bonn, 1836, iv, 69 (Mastiman ferum) et vn, 307-309 (v. infra) : en ces deux passages Mastiman est cite en compagnie de Gurzil.
5 Cf. Salammbo, p. 447 : ' Corippus : Johannis m'a e"te" fort utile pour les anciennes peuplades africaines.'
6 Cf. Salammbo, p. 446: Flaubert a analyse" fort exactement ce memoire: '...Un passage de Salluste (Jugurtha) peu remarque parle d'une invasion assyrienne conduite par Hercule sur les cotes d'Afrique . . . ' et a renvoye aux Mem. Acad. Inscr., t. xn, ancienne serie.
25—2
380 Miscellaneous Notes
pas remarque, en repondant a M. Froehner, que le memoire de Saint- Martin etait cite a propos d'autre chose que de Mastiman. Get ouvrage existe : c'est la traduction du livre de Creuzer que, de 1825 a 1852, Guigniaut publia avec eclaircissements et notes sous le titre Religions de Uantiquite ; on y lit * :
...Les peuples de la Marmarique adoraient encore, au vie siecle, ime divinite qu'ils appelaient Gurzil, et a laquelle ils associaient le culte d'Ammon, emprunte aux Egyptiens. Nous ignorons quelle etait la nature de ce Gurzila, dont Corippe qualifie les simulacres dhorrida11. II parait avoir ete le Mars de cette peuplade.
Les Maures ou Numides, peuple d'origine medique, suivant Salluste, et ainsi qu'a cherche & le demontrer Saint-Martin0, adoraient un dieu infernal qu'ils riommaient Mastimand... Corippe donne & Mastiman 1'epithete deferus, parce que les Maures lui sacrifiaient des victimes humaines. C'est ce qui fait dire a ce poete : Mastiman alii : Maurorum hoc nomine gentes Tsenarium dixere Jovem, qui sanguine multo Huinani generis mactatur victima pesti.
Job. vii, 307-9.
" Corippi Johannidos vm, 303, ed. Bekker, p. 152. & Johann. n, 109, p. 47.
c S. Martin, Mem. de VAcad. des Inscript. et Belles-lettres, t. xn, p. 181 sq. d Coripp., iv, 682.
De ce texte Flaubert pouvait tirer, beaucoup plus aisement que de Corippus, ses indications sur la nature des dieux Gurzil et Mastirnan, et cette page, lue — ou relue — sans doute un peu vite a 1'occasion d'une polemique de presse, lui fournissait en outre son renvoi ' precis.'
Cette me'prise n'est qu'une amusante ve"tille, qui a son importance, s'il est etabli ainsi que Flaubert a utilise la traduction de Creuzer en preparant Salammbo. Des 1848 au plus tard il la pratiquait2, et nous savons qu'il s'en servit pour La Tentation de Saint Antoine de 18743 ; mais on n'en decouvre nulle mention dans les lettres et les notes jus- qu'ici publiees et qui se rapportent a la preparation du roman carthagi- nois. C'est par pur hasard, selon toute vraisemblance ; quoi qu'il en soit, il vaudrait peut-etre la peine de rechercher si Flaubert ne doit pas plus au fran9ais de Guigniaut qu'au latin de Corippus, de Selden et de Braunius, ou a 1'allemand de Movers.
A. TERRACHER. LIVERPOOL.
1 T. ii, 3e partie, Paris, 1849, pp. 1035-1036 (note 13— de A. M[aury]— sur la religion des Carthaginois).
2 Maury aurait pu la lui signaler; cf. Correspondance, i, 298 (lettre a Du Camp, 3 avril 1848) : ' je lisais les religions de Vantiquite de Kreutzer ' (on sait que le titre de 1'ouvrage allemand est Symbolik...).
3 V. La Premiere Tentation de Saint Antoine publie"e par Louis Bertrand, Paris, 1908, p. 299.
Miscellaneous Notes 381
A NOTE ON AN ALLUSION TO ROME IN THE 'DiviNA COMMEDIA.'
As Dante visited Rome in the year of Jubilee, A.D. 1300, allusions to the city are naturally to be found in the pages of the Divina Corn- media. The word ' Rome ' occurs seventeen times, mostly in relation to historical events. There are also allusions to the Tiber and the Castle of St Angelo : and the Vatican and the old basilica of St Peter have furnished Dante with illustrations to his poem.
Among these allusions is one upon which it seemed possible that more light might be thrown by a further examination of the topo- graphy of the city. This is in Inf. xvm, lines 28 — 33 :
*
Come i Roman, per 1' esercito molto
L' anno del Giubbileo, su per lo ponte
Hanno a passar la .gente modo tolto : Che dall' un lato tutti hanno la fronte
Verso il castello, e vanno a Santo Pietro,
Dall' altera sponda vanno verso il monte....
Here 'lo ponte' refers of course to the Ponte di Sant' Angelo, then the only bridge over the Tiber at that part of the city. 'II monte' has been variously conjectured to be the Janiculum, or Monte Giordano. The first solution to be proposed, viz. the Janiculum, has been repeated by nearly all commentators. When, however, it was observed that the Janiculum was on the same side of the river as St Peter's, some explained the difficulty by remarking that the bend in the Tiber would bring the Janiculum into sight on crossing the bridge, although it could not be reached except by returning to the Vatican side : others suggested Monte Giordano, an elevation on the opposite side of the river to the Vatican, but some distance away from it, and unassociated with pilgrims. In fact, this hill was of late mediaeval formation : of small importance, it was reached by a narrow and inconvenient road. This later explanation, then, is not generally accepted1. Would it be possible to admit as an alternative Monte Brianzo ? This was an ancient hill, marked in maps representing Rome of the fourth century. It was on the opposite side of the river from St Peter's, and thus fulfils the requirements of the text. The Via di Monte Brianzo which led from the hill to the Ponte di Sant' Angelo was part of the great pilgrimage road to the Basilica. It was originally a road of consider able width, but the recent embankment of the Tiber, which, by
1 See Dr Paget Toynbee's Dante Dictionary and Dr Butler's edition of the Inferno
382 Miscellaneous Notes
necessitating the removal of houses on the bank, has exposed the opening of the Via di Monte Brianzo, has also narrowed the road itself and disguised its historical importance. At the junction of the bridge and of the road still stands the ancient Albergo dell' Orso, where Dante is said to have stayed. One ancient window remains on the outside wall of the building, and the interior is said to be practically as it was in Dante's time. Along the road to Monte Brianzo were the shops of the Florentine bankers and goldsmiths, where the Florentine pilgrims congregated1. It would therefore be reasonable to suppose that to a Florentine Monte Brianzo would be ' II Monte.' The hill was levelled about 1870 when many new buildings were erected there.
E. F. JOURDAIN.
J. EVANS. OXFORD.
GOETHE'S ' TASSO ' IN ENGLAND.
On page 225, note 1, of the present volume of the Modern Language Review, I printed a letter from William Taylor to Henry Crabb Robinson concerning Goethe's Iphigenie. By an unfortunate oversight on my part, this letter was there described as unpublished ; whereas it was actually edited by J. M. Carre* in his article in the Revue Germanique, vol. vin, no. 1, p. 36.
In this same article M. Carre refers to a fragmentary translation of Goethe's Tasso made by Crabb Robinson during his first stay in Germany, and to which allusion is. made in the published Diary. M. Carre was fortunate enough to discover this translation in a bundle of loose papers amongst the Crabb Robinson documents in the Dr Williams' Library. I take the opportunity of giving a more detailed account of the fragment in question.
The allusion in the printed friary*, which is taken from a letter to his brother, Thomas, dated November 14, 1802, is as follows : ' After,, perhaps, an unsuccessful attempt to pen a few English iambics in a
, x See Eodolfo Lanciani, The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome, where he says that the year 1800 is ' usually called the Giubileo di Dante, because the divine poet is said to have visited Eome on that occasion, and to have met there Immanuel ben Salomo, from whom he learned the few Hebrew words which appear in the "Divina Commedia"/ Lanciani also favours the tradition that Dante lodged in the Albergo dell' Orso.
2 Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence of Henry Crabb Robinson, edited by T. Sadler, 1872, vol. i, p. 64.
Miscellaneous Notes 383
translation of Goethe's Tasso, I shall read in bed some fairy tale, poem, or other light work.'
The translation did not apparently progress very far. All that has been preserved are Act I, Scene 1, in its entirety, and eighteen lines of Scene 2, and it appears probable that this is all that was ever com- pleted. At least the MS. in the Dr Williams' Library is the original sketch, as is shown by the numerous variants and corrections. Further it breaks off suddenly, although there are still several blank sheets available. One can only conclude that, as in the case of his trans- lation of the Die Piccolomini, he grew weary of the magnitude of the task he had set himself. He may easily have been discouraged by the ill-success of his translation of Anton Wall's Amatonda1, which, in spite of the good wishes of Coleridge and Lamb, ' fell dead from the press.' Robinson goes on to tell us how the failure of this literary venture ' made me willing to devote myself honestly to the Law, and so saved me from the mortification that follows a little literary success2.' Henceforth he restricted his endeavours to encouraging others to attempt what he felt was beyond his powers. And again, the appear- ance of Des Voeux' Tasso in 1827 rendered superfluous his own under- taking.
On the whole, it cannot be said that the discontinuation of Robinson's Tasso translation is much to be deplored. Keen as was his appreciation of literature, his poetic abilities were not of a very high order. The chief, perhaps the only merit of his version, is its fidelity to the original text. The deviations from the actual letter of the original are so few, that in the 245 lines of the translation I can only point out three insignificant examples3. This fidelity is such as to impair the value of the translation ; it reads occasionally very wooden, almost un-English. The following quotation will sufficiently illustrate this tendency and must also serve as a sample of the translation :
1. 58. Sehr leicht zerstreut der Zufall, was er sammelt. Bin edler Mensch zieht edle Menschen an Und weifi sie fest zuhalten, wie ihr tut. What Chance unites, Chance can destroy again. A noble Soul draws noble Souls to it And binds them fast, as you have ever done.
1 Amatonda. A Tale from the German of Anton Wall. London : Longman, Hurst, Eees, Orme and Brown, 1811.
2 Diary, 1872 ed. i, p. 187.
3 L. 7 'We here resemble happy village girls' (' Wir scheinen recht begliickte Schaferinnen ') ; 1. 21 'At times like these, to come to our retreat' ('In diesen Tagen schon aufs Land gebracht ') ; 1. 42 ' Do not, Princess, / In an hour of Bliss remind me that that / Bliss so soon will end ' (' Erinnere mich in diesen holden Stunden, / 0 Fiirstin, nicht, wie bald ich scheiden soil ').
384 Miscellaneous Notes
To you and to your Brother, Minds are bound
Worthy of your's. And you still emulate
Your glorious Ancestors. Here first the light
Of Science and free thinking1 spread abroad,
Whilst the thick night of Barbarism hung
Over the world besides. When but a Child,
The Names Hippolitus and Hercules
Of Esta rung2 full in my Ear. I heard
My father often speak of Ferrara
With Rome and Florence : I have often longed
To be there, and my wish is here fulfill'd. .
Petrarch was welcom'd and was honour'd here,
And Ariosto found his Modells here.
There is not a great Name in Italy
Which has not been a guest here in this house.
And it is advantageous to receive
A Genius as guest, for he returns
Your hospitable gift by one more rich.
The spot in which a good man has reposed,
Is sanctified to Ages far remote,
And after Centuries past his Word, his Deeds,
For his Descendants all resound again3.
Robinson's Tasso translation, although easily on a level, if not superior to that of Des Voeux, cannot for a moment compare with that of the accomplished translator Miss A. Swanwick4. The latter so fulfils the ideals of a translation, that it faithfully reproduces the text of the original, and yet reads like an original. Robinson's translation was successful only on the former count. Its interest to us to-day is purely historical. It is yet a further testimony of Robinson's untiring activity in the cause of German literature in England5 and for that reason deserves a place, however humble, in any history of Anglo-German literary relations in the early nineteenth century.
L. A. WlLLOUGHBY. OXFORD.
1 Variant: of lib'ral thought ('Der Wissenschaft, des freien Denkens'). a MS. wrung.
3 Variant : revive.
4 I have in mind the revised edition of 1875. ( The Dramatic Works of Goethe, vol. viu, Bonn's Library.)
5 Crabb Kobinson was indefatigable in this respect. J. M. Carre in the Archiv fur neuere Sprachen 1913-14, p. 425 publishes evidence of Kobinson's interest in Whewell's translation of Hermann and Dorothea. Intending translators turned for information, as a matter of course, to Eobinson, as the chief English authority on Germany and the Germans.
DISCUSSIONS.
ENGLISH AND FRENCH METRIC. See Modern Language Review, vol. vin, pp. 104 — 108.
In the conclusion of my preceding article, I declared that I did not wish to discuss any further with my reviewer. As he has changed his tone, may I not change my mind ? After debating the question with myself for a long time, I think I may — and ought : principles are at stake, and it is every one's duty to stand and fight for his own as best he can. I therefore salute my adversary with my sword, in acknow- ledgment of the courteous style of his last attack — and I parry.
Metric is certainly a science of observation : we metrists neither make the lines we study nor have any right to rebuild them. Must a countryman of Bacon and Locke be reminded that the first principle in a science of observation is merely and simply to observe ? This is what I do. When classing and explaining what we have observed, we should of course conform to the laws of logic. This also I try to do. At any rate I have never denied the 'law of causation,' or the fact (not law !) 'that twice two is four,' or the like. When I meet the word 'merrily' in a line, for instance, I always count three syllables, — Professor Rudmose- Brown sometimes three and sometimes two. That is, I profess that 1 + 1 + 1 is always three, — Professor Rudmose-Brown that it may be either three or two, in adjustment 'to a fixed and definite metrical scheme.' When a line is divided in everybody's pronunciation into falling rhythmic groups, I cannot but regard the rhythm as falling, though Professor Rudmose-Brown maintains that it must be now falling and now rising, in accordance with 'what is fundamental in all metrical investigation.' I wonder what 'physicists' and 'mathematicians' would think of his 'science.'
My 'polemic' about rising and falling rhythm is said to 'prove nothing.' Why ? Because my division into rhythmic groups, on which it rests, differs from my scansion into bars. Of course it does. And so do musical phrases from musical bars. A bar, i.e. the interval between two beats, is neither falling nor rising (though it rather reminds of the falling scansion, as it begins with the strong syllable). A rhythmic group, i.e. a group consisting of a strong syllable and the weak ones connected with it, can be rising, falling, rising- falling, or, if a compound one, falling-rising.
In the following lines the scansion into bars is indicated by the
386 Discussions
position of the beats (italics), the division into rhythmic groups by the grouping of the symbols V (strong) and 'w' (weak) as well as by different blanks :
To pass his days in peace among his own ws ws ws ws ws
Beautiful Paris, evil-hearted Paris sw\v sw sw sw sw
Strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure s wws wws wws wws wws (w)
It is easy to see that both bars and rhythmic groups exist together in the poetical reading of these and any other lines.
But the 'feet' and the 'rising' or 'falling' rhythm of traditional metric often exist on paper only, i.e. in mere theoretical 'schemes.' No pouring of the 'phonetical liquid . . . into metrical bottles/ as Professor Rudmose-Brown puts it, or any other metrical hocus-pocus whatever, can allow us to chop the last two lines in actual pronunciation into orthodox 'iambs' or 'dactyls':
Beauti ful Par is, e vil-heart ed Par is. Strong with the strength of t.he race to com mand, to o bey, to en dure.
Professor Rudmose-Brown appeals to the authority of MM. Rousselot, Passy, de Souza, Landry and Legouis, in order to teach me the position of stress and beat in the French Alexandrine. This, of course, 'part d'un bon naturel,' as La Fontaine has it. But it sounds to me — by his leave — rather amusing: all these gentlemen, except M. de Souza, are personal acquaintances of mine, some of them very intimate ones, and I know that we fully agree in this respect. I have repeated over and over again, even in my preceding article, what we all think and pro- claim : (1) our stress always rests in 'dictionary pronunciation' on the last full syllable of isolated words, but it often shifts in sentences and even separate word-groups ; (2) our normal Alexandrine contains four beats, but the weak syllables, as well as in English and German verse, are not all of them equally weak. This is exactly what my colleague and friend Professor Legouis says and illustrates in the passage quoted against me. I certainly admit his competence, but not a confessed misrepresentation of a very clear statement of his. None of us either pronounces or scans
Le soleil le revet d'eclatantes coulewrs.
I assure Professor Rudmose-Brown that no 'French ear is satisfied with the adjustment.'
He urges, as a sort of proof, that I myself scan a French Alexandrine — quite a different one ! — 'iambically' :
Le grand | feuilla j ge vert j autour | de moi | chantait.
Discussions 387
The 'iambic scansion/ though adduced in my book by way of com- parison, is not mine. This appears from the accompanying foot-note: 'Je divise en pieds d'apres le procede qu'on applique aux vers anglais et j'imprime en gras les syllabes accentuees' (Vol. i, p. iv). Any reader of my Metriqiie knows that I neither approve of the traditional scansion of English verse nor identify 'beat' with 'stress.' My scansion is the following (the durations are indicated by figures, 1 = a quaver, and the beat by italics) :
Le grand feuillage vert autour de moi chantait. x 2 f f i * f } i ..-* 2 *
Neither do I admit that the scansion of French lines can be deduced from that of English lines, or conversely. Here, though charged by him with suggesting the contrary, I fully agree with Professor Saints- bury. I certainly applied the traditional English scansion to a few French lines, but only in order to show its want of logic. I might as well have chosen, say, a row of houses.
A Frenchman's first impression of English verse illustrates the difference between our rhythms, especially with regard to our respective Alexandrines. Even though an English regular 'tumbling verse' or 'anapaestic dimeter' at once sounds to French ears like verse, by reason of its four beats and twelve syllables, both of which remind of our Alexandrine, the two metres differ greatly. Not only is the beat much stronger in the English than in the French verse — and this constitutes an essential, characteristic feature — but the time is on the whole triple in the former and duple in the latter :
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold1. 11X1 1 1 \11113 Le soleil le revet d'eclatowtes coulewrs. 112112 1121 12
Discussion is not always palatable. But it is a real pleasure, a real profit too, when you meet solid reasons, founded on facts. One of the best English metrists has raised an objection of this sort, in our private correspondence, against applying the same scansion to 'iambic' and 'trochaic' verse, i.e. against regarding every initial weak syllable as an anacrusis : 'Find me in Shakespeare's sonnets, in Paradise Lost, in the Idylls of the King, a line which distinctly contains only nine syllables, and I will reconsider the question.'
I answered, thinking of the only verse he mentioned: 'Why should the anacrusis be suppressed without syllabic compensation of some sort any more than any other weak syllable ?'
He replied: 'The singular thing is that it is habitually so sup- pressed in octosyllabic verse, but not in decasyllabic, and I have never seen any satisfactory reason assigned for this difference.'
1 I need hardly remark that the quavers (1) are not exactly equal in practice, which is also the case in song. When the variations are pretty constant, we had better note them. In the present instance Mr William Thomson reads thus: 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1\, 1, i. 1%, f » I, 3. According to him two lines only in the poem are purely ' triple,' viz. : The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown, — And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal.
388 Discussions
The reason, to me, is obvious.
There are in English poetry two great classes of metres : beat- verse and syllabic verse. In both, of course, the rhythm is accentual, i.e. rests on the isochronous recurrence of a beat marked by intensity according to the natural accentuation of the language.
In beat-verse, which is genuinely native, weak syllables may be suppressed or doubled without any compensation whatever. Such is the metre of Christabel — not an octosyllabic, but a four-beat verse. In syllabic verse, which is mostly borrowed from the French, no syllable may be suppressed or doubled without a compensating addition or omission in another bar. Such is the metre of the real octosyllabic, as in the Lady of the Lake, and of heroic verse. Contamination is not rare : beat-verse often tends to be syllabic, syllabic verse to freedom in the treatment of weak syllables.
These two classes of metres, beat-verse and syllabic verse, also existed in Greek poetry, almost for the same reasons, — though, of course, on a quantitative basis. I am writing a paper on the subject.
As the above-mentioned correspondence bears on the two methods at issue, viz. iambic scansion versus anacrusis, I have thought it right to discuss it here.
To return to Professor Rudmose-Brown. De minimis non curat praetor : 'As long as we are at variance on first principles,' he will ignore 'minor matters of divergence, however important.' Our principles are certainly not the same. Let us sum up the discussion. (1) When a word undoubtedly consists of three syllables, like ' merrily,' I count it for three syllables in any line whatever, he for three in some and for two in others, so that it may fit into his 'metrical bottles.' (2) When verse undoubtedly consists of falling rhythmic groups, I regard the rhythm as falling, he as falling or rising out of consideration for the aforesaid 'metrical bottles.' (3) When a French authority asserts that the French Alexandrine contains four beats, I take the statement for what it says and means, he as a proof that the French Alexandrine contains six beats. 'On one point and on one point only' does he accept my 'correction.' I must therefore assume that he still deems it a 'want of common sense' on my part when I try two hats on one head in order to see which fits. This, too, much more than my joke on L. Reinach, is a question of principles.
PAUL VERRIER.
PARIS.
REVIEWS.
Lei Literature: Creation, Succes, Duree. Par FERNAND BALDEN- 8PERGER (Bibliotheque de Philosophic scientifique}. Paris : Flam- marion. 1913. 8vo. 330 pp.
This original, rather tough little book explores, and^ that with skilled woodcraft, a region only half-cleared in the jungle of Poetic. Its aim is described (p. 3) as :
...& philosopher sur la vie des formes litteraires et k offrir, a distance egale de 1'esthetique, de 1'histoire et de la sociologie, quelques considerations generates...
The life of forms : both the terms need explaining in this context. The second of them receives the widest possible range. It covers the literary mould, species, or genre ; and every element in the structure of a given species ; and also every constituent of style, language, or rhythm. As for the word ' life/ its import is partly denned by the sub-title, which indicates first of all the creative process, or inner laboratory, of art ; then the connexion between the work of art and the society, or public, in which it arises : and, lastly, its relationship with posterity. The third of these aspects is clearly an extension of the second ; and M. Baldensperger's inquiry really circles, sometimes a trifle confusedly, round two foci, or points in which many pathways meet. One of these foci is" the artistic process itself, as it is shaped by the artist's personal vision, by the appeal of the past of art, or by the art of other lands and languages. In M. Baldensperger's hands, this is not quite the same as the field, so much and often so crudely tilled already, of ' comparative literature ' ; though it supplies many shrewd cautions and reserves as to the method of cultivating that field.
There is not much about sources and origins; the weight is duly laid on what the artist does, rather than on what he receives ; and the chapter on the ' effort towards expression,' an essay in the psychology of creation (pp. 15 — 53), touches with tact and wide knowledge on themes like 'le point genetique,' or the flash in which Montesquieu or Gibbon saw in advance the shape and purport of a great work (a similar Promethean divination is, I believe, assigned to the inventor of the steam-hammer) ; the starting-point offered to a poet by a single word, phrase, or line ; the stages of ' half-creation ' at which the work often stops — ' 1'art qui demontre, la piece a these, et la musique a programme ' ; and the final achievement, now brought to birth and ' a being
390 Reviews
distinct from its author.' Some wise cautions follow (which Dr Brandes and Mr Frank Harris might equally take to heart) against the wrong way of ' finding the author in his work/ or ' 1'indiscret souci des equiva- lences.' But, though the work of art has become ' distinct/ it is none the less individual; and, above all, it has arisen, like all individual things, out of a certain resistance to the world around it. This brings us to the second ' focus ' of M. Baldensperger's reflections and to the most suggestive part of his work. Suggestive, tentacular, wary : — that is his method, rather than dogmatic or conclusive. His style tends to be abstract and densely-packed ; his material is very rich ; and here I can only pick out one of his guiding clues.
The two chapters called ' L'initiative des inadapte's ' and ' La litterature, expression de la societe' furnish one of these clues, and well show the writer's habit of mind. We are all familiar equally with the notion of the artist as a rebel, breaking away alike from the social and the artistic formulae around him ; and with the other notion that his work is an f expression/ product, or index of the life and temper of his age. Plainly there is truth in both ideas ; and, as plainly, they take some reconciling, and have to be so denned as to accord. The artist — in this case the writer — is reared in a world not only of code and custom but of forms — a stock of moulds, technique, phrases, words, rhythms, which are part of the matter that is given him. These, in themselves, are paralysing. If he is merely in a state of complacent harmony with them, he becomes an expounder and repeater, and he does nothing. He must therefore be, essentially, ' inadapte/ and defy them, just as he must react against, and upon, the prevalent moral or emotional atmosphere, if he is ever to do anything. But then he also depends upon these same conditions for his nourishment ; he must have ' de qui tenir.' The solutions of this problem, or antinomy, are of course infinite. The ' initiative/ or reaction, as M. Baldensperger points out, may take quite opposite shapes.
Faut-il rappeler tant de nevroses dont la litterature a recueilli le benefice, tant de degenerescences converties en originalites, et la these qui, en consequence, a confondu la superiority intellectuelle avec 1'exaltation nevropathique... ! (pp. 116—7).
Rousseau, Heine, Leopardi are examples, of differing kind. England has been rich in such children, but Anglo-Saxon opinion has always censured, or deprecated, or apologised for them. They usually imply, as in the case of Swift, some revulsion on the part of Nature against an excess of the prosaic, or conventional, or purely rational element around them. But the revulsion may equally well be in the other direction. There are those who are ' inadapt6s par trop de robustesse d'esprit/ in a flabby or sentimental age. M. Baldensperger cites the authors of Hermann and Dorothea and of La Princesse de Cleves ; and we might name Jane Austen, keeping her head among the sensation- mongers of her youth. But, with all this, in what sense does literature ' express ' the society in which it was born ? Here, again, there is only room to point to some of M. Baldensperger's pages, leaving wholly un-
Reviews 391
described his instructive chapters on ' L'appel a 1'etranger,' ' Le recours au passe national/ ' Le succes,' ' La renomme'e.'
Some capital fallacies are pinned out in the chapter on ' La trans- formation des idees directrices.' The greatest of social and political changes need not at once bring about a corresponding revolution in letters. Sometimes those changes have been already registered (p. 85) in art, and also in the world of ideas, and this very registration has propelled a material upheaval, as in the leading case of the French Revolution. But often, as in that very instance, or as in Germany after 1870, or in Italy about 1800, literature, instead of at once responding to outward changes, has gone on for a while living on the capital of forms and feelings bequeathed from the age before. Yet only for a time ; for the ' idees directrices ' tell presently, or in the long run ; and some striking pages (103 — 7) trace, in large outline, the ways in which the complexion of literature has altered in obedience to successive phases of thought — Cartesian, deistic, revolutionary, pantheistic, and pessimistic. Lastly, the chapter on ' Les synthetismes nationaux ' is a first-rate antidote to rash theorising about racial or national ' characteristics '- the most fruitful error ever exploited by politicians or literary his- torians. ' Qui est I'Anglais absolu ? ' (p. 305). All the definitions either destroy one another, or overlook the destructive exceptions. It would be agreeable to enlarge on the point, or to canvass at length some of M. Baldensperger's theses, but to do so would require a whole number of this Review. His book, to say no more, has remarkable antiseptic qualities.
OLIVER ELTON.
LIVERPOOL.
Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds. By FRANK AYDELOTTE. (Oxford Historical and Literary Studies, Vol. I.) Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1913. 8vo. xii + 188pp.
Mankind has always taken a surreptitious interest in the ways of its rogues and vagabonds. The romance of their lives and the dexterity of their trades have compelled our attention if they have not won our admiration. In these circumstances it is the more remarkable that no one before Mr Aydelotte has given a complete history of their habits and devices during the last century in which they may be said to have practised the profession in the 'grand style.' C. J. Ribton-Turner published in 1887 a History of Vagrants and Vagrancy, but the width of his scheme only enabled him to devote a few pages to the rogue of the sixteenth century. Similarly the Elizabethan rogue-pamphlets have received no adequate treatment, though Professor F. W. Chandler mentions most of them in his Literature of Roguery. We are in need of a book which while concentrating upon the roguery of the sixteenth century will combine the historical aspect with the literary, and so give us the complete picture. This need Mr Aydelotte's book meets, for it
392 Reviews
shows us the rogue not only as he appeared to Harman, Greene and Dekker, but also as he appeared to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of London, to the Privy Council, to the Justices of the Peace throughout the country, and to Parliament.
Mr Aydelotte's admirable account of the Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds is based on much reading and original research. The mass of available material is enormous, and in his selection of the material the author has exercised a wise discrimination. There are one or two points which might perhaps have received some development, and others which need some qualification, but this is not to- subtract from the substantial value and accuracy of his work as a whole.
In his introductory chapter on 'The Origins of Roguery' Mr Aydelotte attributes the great increase of the vagrant class in the sixteenth century to enclosures and the conversion of arable land into pasture. In so doing he agrees with most modern economists, but his treatment of the subject shows no acquaintance with the more recent works of such writers as Leadam1, Gay2, and Tawney3, and the question of what exactly ' enclosures ' were, by whom and in what counties they were chiefly made, or of the credibility of the contemporary satires of such writers as Brink low, Crowley and Fish receives no adequate treatment. This question of enclosures is as important in a study of the origins of cony-catching as of begging. Many of the unfortunate people who were turned adrift from the plough sought shelter in towns, infesting and enlarging the slums, fostering the plague, and forming a section of the cony-catching crew who lived by means of their wits4. This latter aspect Mr Aydelotte ignores, but it is an important one. Hedged in on the one hand by Statutes against vagrancy, on the other by Statutes against overcrowding, the poor, it will be seen, fell between two stools, ' for if the poor being thrust out of their houses go to dwell with others, straight we catch them with the Statute of Inmates ; if they wander abroad, they are in danger of the Statute of the poor to be whipped5.'
Mr Aydelotte is on safer ground in dealing with the Arts of Begging and Cony-Catching and with the Rogue-Pamphlets. The distinction between a beggar and a cony-catcher was very real in the sixteenth century. The former class was represented by the wandering beggar, the latter by the sharpers who haunt all large towns and trade upon the folly of ignorant people. Roughly speaking the great representative of the former class is Autolycus, of the latter Falstaif. The characteristic which they held in common is that both despised honest labour and preferred to live by their wits. Their motto was that of the profligate apprentice in
1 The Domesday of Enclosures (2 vols., 1897).
2 Trans. Eoyal Hist. Soc., New Series, vol. xiv (1900). Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xvn (August, 1903).
3 The Agrarian Problem in The Sixteenth Century (1912).
4 It was against such people that the long series of Statutes and Proclamations against Inmates, beginning with Elizabeth's First Housing Act in 1589 (31 Eliz. c. 7), were directed.
5 D'Eices Journal. Speech of Cecil, 1597 (quoted by Tawney, op. cit., p. 279).
Reviews 393
Eastward Ho (n, i) : 'he that has wit, let him live by his wit ; he that has none, let him be a tradesman.'
We could have wished that Mr Aydelotte had devoted more space to a consideration of the Sanctuaries of Elizabethan London. He comes to the conclusion that in those days the sanctuaries were not especially the haunts of rogues and cony-catchers, and did not secure immunity from arrest. But he has overlooked a document which tends to upset this theory and which incidentally mentions three sanctuaries which had escaped his attention. The document in question is a petition of the Lord Mayor and citizens of London for an examination of the rights of the franchises and liberties of the sites of the lately dissolved monas- teries of the Blaqk Friars, White Friars and Christ's Church near Aldgate1.
Another interesting question upon which this book sheds no light is how far the authorities resorted to transportation in their treatment of rogues and vagabonds. Such treatment was so delightfully simple that one would have thought that it would have commended itself to the authorities. In September, 1603, incorrigible rogues were ordered to be transported to ' the new fownd Land, the East or west Endies, ffrance, Germanie, Spaine, and the Low Countries or any of them2,' but I am not aware how far this method was adopted in Elizabethan times.
There is only space to indicate briefly the new light which Mr Aydelotte has thrown upon the Rogue-Pamphlets and their re- lation to one another. He has dragged from an undeserved oblivion A manifest detection of the moste vyle and detestable vse of Diceplay (1552 ?), which is the father of a numerous progeny of cony-catching pamphlets, just as Awdeley's Fraternitye of Vacabones (1561) and Barman's Caueat or Warening for Commen Cursetors (1566) are the fathers of an equally numerous progeny of beggar pamphlets. He has exposed the plagiarising proclivities of Greene, Rowlands and Dekker more thoroughly than any of his predecessors, and he has proved con- clusively that the author of Martin Mark-all, Beadle of Bridewell was not Samuel Rowlands but Samuel Rid. Moreover, he has substantiated the authenticity of Harman's work by giving numerous instances of cases in which the names of rogues and vagabonds mentioned by that worthy occur also in official documents.
It remains to mention that this volume is the first of the Oxford Historical and Literary Studies issued under the direction of Professors C. H. Firth and Sir Walter Raleigh. It would surely have been more convenient for the majority of readers if the title of the book had been put on the cover as well as the name of the author, but in all other
1 Hist. MSS. Comm., Appendix to 7th Report, Molyneux MSS., p. 665 a — ' of late certen lycensius people geven to wicked lyving and being receptors of thyfes, and comeii colorers of stollen goodes besides the greate repaire of lewde and wicked weomen, fugytives, clippers, fylers and washers of the quenes highnes coyne, and over this the same places are at this present tyme the comen receiptacles of all lewde people repayring to the same citie, in which places offenders bene shrowded as in sanctuaries, affirming that no maiestrate vnder the Quenes highnes hath to doe with them.'
2 Add. MS. 11,402 (in the British Museum), f. 91.
M. L. R. IX.
26
394 Reviews
*
respects the book is produced in a manner that leaves nothing to be desired. It should be added that illustrations are given from con- temporary woodcuts and from etchings by Rembrandt and Callot, all well chosen and admirably reproduced.
F. P. WILSON. OXFORD.
Spenser's Shepherd's Calender in relation to Contemporary Affairs. By JAMES JACKSON HIGGINSON. (Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature.) New York: Columbia University Press. 1912. 8vo. xiv + 364 pp.
So much reading, so much ingenious speculation, so much careful examination of other people's theories have gone to the making of this book, that one is disappointed to lay it down with the feeling that the positive results attained have been but small. Perhaps the most valuable part is the introductory portion in which a picture is drawn of the state of the English Church under Elizabeth and the aims of the early Puritans. The account is drawn from many sources and gives the reader the right atmosphere for the understanding of Spenser's point of view.
After his Introduction Dr Higginson discusses the four controversial Eclogues, those for February, May, July and September. All these he believes to have been written at Cambridge, the first as early as 1573.
In the apologue of the Briar and the Oak in the February Eclogue Mr Higginson would see a reference to the fall of the Duke of Norfolk, through the supposed machinations of Burleigh. One would have thought that a Duke of Norfolk who was a wooer of Mary Queen of Scots would not appeal to the sympathies of a Puritan, but the author does a good deal to remove this objection. It is difficult however to see the applicability to Burleigh of 11. 119—123 and 11. 228—237. Even if it was supposed in 1573 that Burleigh had lost the Queen's favour in consequence of the part he took in the ruin of Norfolk, one can hardly understand Spenser's printing the lines in 1580 when the misconception had become apparent. This ingenious speculation then must be pro- nounced not proven.
Piers and Palinode, the interlocutors in the May Eclogue, are according to our author, Thomas Preston and Andrew Perne. The date of the Eclogue is given as 1575-6. The story of the Fox and the Kid receives a double interpretation. Primarily, the Fox represents the Anglican party (Higginson agrees with Herford in seeing in the Eclogue a satire rather on the English Church than on the Church of Rome), the Goat, the Primitive Church, the he-goat Christ, the Kid the Puritans. But further the Fox stands for Burleigh, the Goat for Lady Essex and the Kid for her son, Robert, Lord Essex, who was Burleigh's ward. As however Essex's father, Walter, the first earl, was alive till
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September 1576, it becomes necessary to suppose that Spenser re- touched his Eclogue to bring in this second allegory about 1579.
Mr Higginson advances his theory with becoming diffidence, and it is not likely to be treated seriously. It bristles with difficulties small and great. Burleigh's relations to a ward and to his ward's mother are hardly likely to have been satirized by a member of the University of which he was Chancellor.
In his interpretation of the July Eclogue, Mr Higginson agrees with previous critics that Morell is Aylmer and Algrind Grindal. Of the interlocutors he would take Thomalin to stand for a Puritan Thomas Wilcox (Cartwright being at this time abroad), while Palinode, being Thomalin's friend, cannot be Dr Perne, for whom Palinode stood in the May Eclogue.
In the September Eclogue, the author refuses to accept Grosart's theory that Koffy is Bishop Young of Rochester, the late Master of Spenser's college, Pembroke Hall, and that Lowder is Lloyd, Chancellor of the Rochester diocese. (Incidentally he confuses John Young, Master of Pembroke Hall 1553-1559, and his namesake Master 1567- 1578.) He points out that 'Raffy' was already a shepherd-name in Marot, and holds that this sufficiently accounts for ' Roffy.' For his own interpretation he has recourse to an obscure quarrel between Bishop Cox of Ely (= Roffy), his brother-in-law, Auder (Lowder), and Lord North of Kirtling (the Wolf). The last identification is bold, as Mr Higginson himself shows that Lord North was brother-in-law and a close friend of Lord Leicester. Probably all this ingenuity would have been spared if Mr Higginson had been aware of the inscription in Gabriel Harvey's hand in a book now belonging to Professor Gollancz: 'Ex dono Edmundi Spenserij, Episcopi Roffensis Secretary. 15781.'
In Diggon Davie, one of the interlocutors in the Eclogue, Mr Higginson would see Richard Greenham, rector of Dry Drayton, Cambs.
In the November dirge the author inclines to Malone's theory that Dido stands for an illegitimate daughter of Leicester (Lobbin) by Douglas, Lady Sheffield. He supports the case by some strange arguments, e.g. that Lady Sheffield was deserted like Dido, and that she lived at Sheen and Spenser speaks of his Dido as 'the great shephearde his daughter shene.' He shows however that the only statement for the existence of such a daughter of Leicester's is con- tained in the libellous Leicester's Commonwealth (1584), and if she existed we know nothing at all of the date of her death.
As against the theory put forward in the Modern Language Review, vol. n, p. 346 (July 1907), and, as Mr Higginson shows, suggested a year earlier by Mr P. M. Buck, jr, in Modern Language Notes, xxi, p. 80, that Dido was Ambrosia Sidney, Mr Higginson very reasonably argues that in this case we should expect the poet's condolence to be offered rather to Philip Sidney, her brother, than to Leicester, her uncle. When however he says that ' another reason [for the theory] — thp con-
1 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, p. 173, 1. 18.
26—2
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jectured closeness of the bond between Philip and his sister Ambrosia on the score of the nearness of their ages — must be thrown out of court, for Ambrosia was six years the younger ' he is making an assertion for which he has no justification. He writes (p. 236, note) : ' Mr Smith makes the mistake of supposing that Ambrosia Sidney was born in 1555. A reference to the State Papers disproves this assertion (CaL State Papers Foreign, 1560, p. 350), for Ambrosia was born at Hampton Court early in October 1560 and enjoyed the honor of having Queen Elizabeth for god-mother.' This note is not exactly ingenuous. The State Papers do not give the name of the daughter born to Lady Sidney in Oct. 1560, — presumably as the Queen's god-daughter she was called Elizabeth. On the other hand when Ambrosia Sidney was buried at Ludlow in February 1574/5 she was described, as stated in the Modern Language Review, loc. cit., as ' nearly twenty years old/ Whether she is Dido is a different question : at any rate she was less than a year younger than her brother Philip, who must doubtless have felt her loss very deeply.
The attempt to ascertain the course of Spenser's life between the year 1576, when he took his M.A. degree, and the year 1579, when we find him in the employment of Lord Leicester, is of course greatly affected by Mr Higginson's ignorance of the fact that in 1578 he was Secretary to Bishop Young of Rochester. This fact at once explains E. K.'s gloss on the June Eclogue : ' The Dales (1. 21). The Southpartes, where he now abydeth, which thoughe they be full of hylles and woodes (for Kent is very hyllye and woodye...) yet in respecte of the North - partes they may be called dales. For indede the North is counted the higher countrye.' Here Dr Higginson is obstinate enough to maintain that 'Kirke merely selects Kent as typical of the [South partes] and... does not state that Spenser dwelt in Kent ' (p. 296).
In the light of our new knowledge, we shall probably see Spenser's relation to Bishop Young alluded to in ' the Sou them e shepheardes boy * (April, 1. 21) — on which E. K. writes: 'Seemeth hereby that Colin perteyneth to some Southern noble man, and perhaps in Surrye or Kent ' ; and we shall find a similar allusion to the Bishop in the last of Harvey's Three Letters: 'Imagin me to come into a goodly Kentishe Garden of your old Lords, or some other Noble man ' (quoted p. 320r and taken as implying that Spenser had now lost his employment with Leicester). We shall understand Spenser's reference to the 'salt Medway ' (July, 1. 79) and his stanzas on the marriage of the Thames and Medway (F. Q. IV, xi) if he lived for a time at Rochester. Again, if Spenser was in Young's service, and not Leicester's, at the time he praised Grindal, the difficulty mentioned by Higginson on p. 306 receives some explanation. In Mr Higginson's view the part of Spenser's life between 1576 and his entering Leicester's service was spent in or near Cambridge, though why he should be there after he had taken his M.A. degree is not shown. When Hobbinol (June, 1. 19) addresses Colin Clout, ' Leave me those hilles where harbrough nis to see ' (E. K.'s gloss, ' that is in the North countrye, where he dwelt '). we must understand
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that Hobbinol — himself at Cambridge or Saffron Walden, — is urging Spenser to leave Cambridge, poetically identified with the Gogmagogs, and resort to London. But now that we know that the employment he found was with the Bishop of Rochester, it becomes impossible to suppose that Cambridge stands for the ' Northpartes,' in respect of which the * Southpartes ' ' be called dales.' What Englishman, especially what Cambridge man, ever thought of Cambridge as in the North, or as more hilly than Kent ? Mr Higginson has indeed found two cases of Norfolk being spoken of as the North, but even Norfolk is not Cambridge : and in this eclogue the contrast is not merely between North and South, but between hills and dales.
Mr Higginson, following Long, argues strongly against our attaching importance to Grosart's locating of Spenser during his courtship of Rosalind in North- West Lancashire : and I think we may so far agree with the critic. But that Spenser was somewhere in the North and not in the neighbourhood of Cambridge seems to me the natural con- clusion from the evidence. We know that Harvey was in York in August 15761, a month after Spenser took his M.A. degree, and I cannot help connecting this journey with that which Spenser presumably made just at this time.
From Harvey's reference in the last of his three letters (23 April, 1580) to 'gentle Mistresse Rosalinde' who 'once reported [Spenser] to have all the Intelligences at commaundement, and an other time, Christened her Segnior Pegaso,' we should naturally conclude that Harvey had himself met ' Rosalind.' If Harvey travelled North with .Spenser, we can see that he might have done so, even though ' Rosalind's ' home was in the North.
According to our author Rosalind is neither Grosart's ' Rose Dineley ' nor P. W. Long's ' Elizabeth North,' but a lady of high position for whom Spenser had a merely conventional passion. He quotes Long's remark that ' Rosalind ' would be a passable anagram for ' Clorinda,' the name by which Mary Sidney signed her lament for her brother. We are now dealing however with a time when Mary Sidney was only twenty-one or twenty-two. Mr Higginson himself does not think that E. K.'s words are to be taken as meaning that Rosalind is an anagram on the lady's real name.
Mr Higginson's treatment of Spenser's relation to Sidney and of the question of the existence of an ' Areopagus ' or literary Academy appears to be very sound. He points out that the Shepherd's Calender cannot be taken as a manifesto of any views held in common by Spenser and Sidney, though he thinks that in his later works Spenser approximated to Sidney's views. When however, Mr Higginson says (p. 258) that all the information which is supposed to vouch for the existence of an Areopagus, ' is agreed to lie solely in the five Harvey-Spenser letters ' of 1579-80, he seems to overlook Giordano Bruno's account of meetings in London (c. 1584) in which Philip Sidney, Fulke Greville and Dyer took
1 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, pp. 16, 174, 1. 29.
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part. ' We met/ he says, ' in a chamber in the house of Sir Fulk Greville...to discuss moral, metaphysical, mathematical and natural speculations1.'
Mr Higginson (p. 164) takes 'Wrenock' to stand for 'Pembroke Hall.' This we cannot accept.
The book has a few slips, as 'lodicus' (p. 178) for 'lodocus/ ' Stersichorus ' (p. 203) for ' Stesichorus,' 'Penhurst' (p. 296) for ' Penshurst/ ' Gratulationis Valdinensis ' (p. 300) and ' Gratulationes Valdenses ' (p. 303) for ' Gratulationes Valdinenses.' The word ' demise ' (p. 132) is used for 'decease/ 'advocation' (pp. 116, 268, 281) for ' advocacy/ and ' reformations ' (p. 280) for ' reforms.' There is nothing however to detract from the recognition due to the author for a work abounding in knowledge of facts and in ingenious speculations. That all these speculations should commend themselves to other minds, even Mr Higginson would hardly expect.
G. C. MOORE SMITH.
SHEFFIELD.
A History of American Literature. By WILLIAM B. CAIRNS. New York : Oxford University Press. 1912. 8vo. vii + 502 pp.
We have so long been accustomed to hear Americans talk of them- selves as a young people, and to find ourselves expected to pass lenient judgment on the exuberance of youth, that we are apt to forget that an older civilization lies behind the United States, and that the bonds with the mother country were numerous and close-knit. ' The first book written in America (Captain John Smith's account of Virginia) was published three years before the King James version of the Bible, four years before any of Bacon's Essays took their final form, and a generation before the religious and political writings of Jeremy Taylor and Milton/ The first book printed in America (the Bay Psalm Book) was published in 1640. These two classes of books — travel and theology — cover most of the literature produced during the first century or so of American development. Explorers write accounts of their adventures — interesting enough but with scant literary pretensions — and Pilgrim Fathers lose themselves in the sandy desert of theological controversy. Cotton Mather is said to have produced over 388 works including An Essay upon the Good that is to be Devised and Designed ; Sermons occasioned by remarkable Thunder- Storms ; Pillars of Salt : An History of Criminals executed', etc., etc. Profitable reading no doubt, and edifying to the stern New Englander of the early eighteenth century, but matter for the historian of literature, rather than for the reader of to-day. The names of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton are as well known on this side of the Atlantic as on the other, but less as men of letters than as men of action; it would probably be hard to find many Englishmen
1 I. Frith, Life of G. Bruno, p. 128.
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who had so much as a bowing acquaintance with Poor Richard's Almanac or Hamilton's essays in the Federalist. Not until 1809 do we come to the first of a group of names familiar to every reader as a matter of course — Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, Emerson, Thoreau, Lowell, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poe, Walt Whitman.
Dr Cairns has dealt ably with the vast mass of material at his disposal. With remarkable skill he has contrived to give some im- pression of the personality of each of the more important authors mentioned and not infrequently to suggest the literary and political atmosphere of the time. His thumb-nail sketch of Franklin, for example, is admirable. The fairness and open-mindedness of his criticisms are incontestable, and while we may regret his cursory dismissal of that delicate and fanciful genius Theodore Winthrop, such instances are very few, and are doubtless accounted for by the truth of the final comment : 'Few persons now read his works.' It is not only difficult, it is im- possible to make a book of this sort anything more than a mine of information in which the student may find much useful knowledge. Nothing could weld such an enorrhous number of condensed biographies and critical essays into a work of art, but the sanity of Dr Cairns's judgment and the flashes of humour which lighten his pages from time to time raise his work far above the level of the ordinary reference book. The account of Alcott at 'Fruitlands' (p. 243) occupies only a few lines, but is irresistible : ' No animal products were to be eaten, and the soil was not to be insulted by the admixture of manures of animal origin. The rights of worms and insects were to be respected. No vegetables were to be eaten which, like the potato, grew downward instead of aspiring.' It must have been a hungry life. Sometimes, indeed, Dr Cairns's humour leads him into quotation which presses perhaps a little unduly on the author in question. It is consoling for a young poet to reflect that Emerson wrote such lines as
Erect as a sunbeam
Upspringeth the palm ; The elephant browses,
Undaunted and calm,
but when there is such limited space in which to discuss Emerson's work as a whole, the quotation tends to over-emphasize a weakness. The same is true of the quotations from Walt Whitman. Dr Cairns does him ample justice in the text, but finds no room for any passage from his finer works, only for instances of deliberate defiance — interesting and valuable in themselves, but needing some qualification.
The wise determination to confine himself to authors no longer living, keeps Dr Cairns from more than the briefest mention of certain interesting developments of modern American literature — the short story as treated by Miss Mary Wilkins, for instance, or the wit and wisdom of ' Mr Dooley.' Of American humour as a whole he writes wisely and convincingly. The criticism of Mark Twain is one of the best things in the book: ' He took the so-called "American humor"-
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the humor of excessive statement and juxtaposition of irrelevant ideas — and showed that in the hands of a literary artist it was a form worthy of respect. But in essentials his relations are always with Artemus
Ward rather than with Oliver Wendell Holmes If Mark Twain was
taken too lightly at first, he was taken seriously, perhaps too seriously, in his later years. Readers who discovered that he was something more than a newspaper joker began to hail him as a philosopher, and he himself undertook to express opinions on a variety of subjects ranging from foreign missions to politics.' In speaking of Hawthorne he dis- criminates sharply between the moralist and the psychologist : ' His recurrence to the thought of sin in the world seems at first sight a Puritan characteristic, but he was concerned not with forgiveness and salvation in the theologian's sense, but with the effects of sin on the soul.' There is nothing very profound in this, but it hits the nail on the head with perfect precision, and the faculty for so doing marks Dr Cairns's work throughout.
In dealing with the literature of half a continent the difficulties of classification and grouping are necessarily great. The method taken in this volume, of geographical grouping, undoubtedly makes for clearness, and has the additional interest of enabling the reader to grasp some- thing of those distinctions of thought and feeling which mark, what one is tempted to call the various nationalities of the United States. North, South, East, West, Middle States, all have contributed something to that complex product which we call American literature, and there is real value in the endeavour to trace the various lines of development. Dr Cairns is to be congratulated on the thoroughness with which he has achieved his task. It would be of great interest if some day he would use his material in less condensed form and would develop some of the many subjects which are suggested in this present volume.
G. E. HADOW.
ClRENCESTEB.
Old English Riddles. Edited by A. J. WYATT. (Belles Lettres Series.) Boston, U.S.A., and London: Heath. 1912. 12mo. xxxix + 193 pp.
Mr Wyatt's volume does not attempt to compete with the illuminating edition of the Riddles by which Professor Tupper earned the gratitude of students of Old English. It is evidently intended for undergraduates in the second or third year of Old English work, or for general readers whose knowledge of the language is respectable but not advanced ; and it meets the needs of this audience better than any other edition. Occasionally, it is true, Mr Wyatt's instinct as a teacher fails him. In discussing the gender of the unknown solution (Introduction, section viii) he makes out a case against the ' extreme position ' of Cosijn and Trautmann ; but his own conclusion is vague, and he does not indicate the element of truth in the theory which he rejects. On p. xiv, his
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statement that Ebert ' found ' that Aldhelm borrowed from Symphosms, and the Exeter Book riddler from Tatwine and Eusebius, may cause misunderstanding, in spite of the general warning against Ebert's inaccuracy. It is not until pp. xix, xx, that the facts are correctly stated. Above all, it is regrettable that an edition of this kind should give no systematic account of the literary worth of the riddles. In section ix, on ' Style,' Mr Wyatt gives one small page of original comment and one of quoted general appreciation; and in section iv ('Classi- fication '), he distinguishes between the learned and the popular elements. That is all — a meagre total. The omission of introductory comment on the riddle as a general literary type, and on analogues of the Old English riddles, is less serious ; here the student can turn to Professor Tupper's edition, which from this point of view is excellent.
With these reservations, Mr Wyatt's work deserves warm praise. Perhaps no other O.E. text offers such temptations to rash* ingenuity, but Mr Wyatt has resisted them resolutely. The text is sound and wisely cautious, ' doubtful emendations being kept to footnotes. The notes, similarly, are really helpful and not too elaborate. Especially satisfactory is Mr Wyatt's undogmatic attitude about solutions: 'My chief concern is to put the student, as far as space permits, in a position to decide for himself (p. 89). Only one definitely new solution is offered: 'helmet/ for no. 61, instead of 'shirt' suggested by Dietrich and supported by Tupper, and ' coat of mail ' suggested by Trautmann. I share Mr Wyatt's view that a man's head-covering is intended (it need not be a helmet); to his arguments may be added that this solu- tion agrees better than either of the others with the suggestion for which this double entendre riddle is really constructed. His slight modifications of other solutions are all suggestive : no. 24, ' Magpie ' (= higora) instead of ' jay ' ; no. 52, ' two buckets in a wrell ' adding the defining phrase ; no. 70, ' iron (ore) ' instead of ' iron helmet ' or ' dagger '; no. 118, 'ore, metal, money' instead of 'gold'; no. 90, 'Hoc' (with double sense of 'book' and 'beech') instead of 'beech.'
The Introduction offers little that is new, but gives a lucid summary of current opinions on the chief problems of the Riddles. The short account of the Latin riddles (Section ii) is just and admirably concise, and their influence on the O.E. riddles is indicated in a very convenient summary (p. xx). Section iii deals fully with ' the quondam first riddle.' In the course of an excellent review of the chief articles on this difficult and fascinating poem, Mr Wyatt allows his own opinion to appear : ' It seems that Bradley's view is the right one in essentials: the poem is the monologue of a woman bewailing her absent lover who is in danger. Whether it may be assigned to a Teutonic legend, and if so to which, there seems to be as yet no sufficient evidence to show.' Some new arguments are given in refutation of Professor Tupper's attempt to revive the theory that the poem is a cryptogram to which the solution is ' Cynewulf.' Mr Wyatt shows that the alleged evidence in support of this view is gained at the cost of violence both to forms and to meanings of words, and of most arbitrary use of the suggested parallelism in
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method with the Icelandic rimur. This section is over-long for the general scale of the introduction, but it justifies itself as a valuable object-lesson in the weighing of evidence.
With regard to the authorship of the riddles, Mr Wyatt once more walks safely in the middle path : ' Cynewulf may have written some of them/ but ' the plain fact is that there is not a particle of evidence for assigning one single riddle to him or to any other nameable person.' So with regard to unity of authorship and date : ' With the assumption of one poet and a necessarily eighth-century collection of his works I cannot agree. Just as the Codex .itself is a collection, so I think it must be regarded as a possibility that the compiler of the Codex, whose date is quite uncertain, drew from more than one smaller collection of riddles. But it is probable that the great majority of the riddles were first written down in the great century of O.E. poetry, which was also that of our riddlers in Latin, with the exception of Aldhelm.' General statement of this kind is probably the best for Mr Wyatt's immediate purpose ; but it may be permissible to express the hope that in due place and season Mr Wyatt will marshal the new evidence which his wide and careful labours must surely have unearthed. Facts are so much needed in this matter where now discussion turns constantly on mere impressions and opinions. Madert's valuable dissertation showed what results could be gained by work on phonology and inflections and syntax ; but it might still be supplemented. Work is needed, too, on vocabulary, style (we have had general impressions in plenty, but no careful analysis and comparison of the word-groupings of the riddles), metre, and arrangement, not with regard merely to opening and closing formulas, but to the general construction of each riddle.
There are a few misprints and slips : p. xxi, 1. 7, for ' cymeS ' read ' cymeS ' ; p. xxxvi, 1. 21, for ' his ' read ' hio ' ; p. 77, 1. 29, for 'Hickelier' read ' Hicketier ' ; p. 128, 1. 11, for ' ie ' read ' ic ' ; p. 167, 1. 10, for ' hofer ' read 'ofer.' The verse is wrongly divided in no. 79, 1. 4. Hicketier's argument on the runes of no. 64 is certainly far-sought, but the ironic footnote, 'This intimate knowledge of the Englishman of the eighth century fills me with envy,' reads awkwardly after the praise of another scholar on p. xiv : ' By an effort of sympathetic imagination Dietrich enabled himself to see and think with the eyes and mind of an eighth- century Englishman.' But these are trifles: Mr Wyatt's book should certainly find a wide audience, as the most convenient edition, for class use, of material which should be in the hands of every student of Old English literature.
A. R. SKEMP. BRISTOL.
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Patience, An Alliterative Version of Jonah. (Select Early English Poems, vin.) Edited by I. GOLLANCZ. London : H. Milford. 1913. 4to. x + 60 pp.
The need of a sound edition of this poem has long been felt ; for a more widespread study of Middle English has rendered the work of a generation ago in many respects out of date. It is good for the reputa- tion of English scholarship that this need has been met by Professor Gollancz ; and the style and appearance of the present volume establish an excellent precedent.
The Introduction is concise. The editor has something new and interesting to say about the history of the manuscript. He does not quote in full what he has already published on the Alliterative Poems : but he gives full and detailed references to the whole literature of the subject.
To Professor Gollancz belongs the credit of detecting the quatrain arrangement of Cleanness and Patience. It is no disgrace to previous investigators that they have failed to observe this arrangement ; for the division-marking in the manuscript is not forced upon the eye. For example, on the page which is reproduced in this edition, it is by no means obvious ; but in the large majority of cases, it is sufficiently clearly indicated — when once one's attention has been drawn to it.
There is no need to attempt a list of Professor Gollancz' valuable additions to our knowledge in the elucidation of the text. We may perhaps instance his explanations of Mergot, Raguel, tramme, breed fysches', his interpretation of per (1. 188), of by sure (1. 117), of lyknyng of pewes (1. 30), of him wyth — ' compared with him ' (1. 300) ; his summing-up of the hurrok difficulty. Better than impertinent praise, will be a frank criticism of details, and students who have realised the difficulties of an editor's task in the case of such a text as this will not mistake such criticism for condemnation1.
11. 54-6. Professor Ker has pointed out that although the N.E.D. gives no instance so early of make = ' constrain ' with ellipse of the infinitive, the meaning of ' cause a person to do ' is old. He compares Alex. 1747, ' Made to be meke, malegreve his chekis.' ' Much,' he explains, ' is here an elliptical ejaculation, apodosis to " }if he ne me made," according to a common idiom — as for instance : " Lucky for you, if you get off with a flogging!" " Good, if only it lasts!"' Further, he has drawn atten- tion to the inaccuracy of Morris's translation of bongre (1. 57). There is, he points out, no instance of a prepositional use of this word : bongre is here a noun absolute. It is to be regretted that Professor Ker's interpre- tation of this passage has not been adopted, viz. : ' Lucky if he did not make me (run his errand) ; and then must I endure rebuke, and disfavour for my guerdon, when I might have bowed to his bidding, with his good favour for my recompense.'
1 For many of the interpretations offered here I am indebted to Professor Ker, with whom I have been privileged to discuss at various times most of the difficulties in this poem.
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104, 338. Spak. The word connotes not merely speed but skill. The meaning ' smartly ' suits all the cases in these poems.
Ibid. Spare. This rare word occurs three times in these poems, in two cases with uncertain meaning. Better than making two separate guesses, will be to 'start from the assumption that in all three places the word is the same, the adjective ' spare/ though with different shades of meaning. In Gawayne, 901, though the translation is 'moderate,' ' delicate,' the actual meaning is the primary one, ' scanty.' I would give a closely-akin meaning to Patience, 338, viz. ' bare.' The poet has, I think, expanded the simple 'in aridam' of .his original into 'upon a bare strip of dry land.' The following passage suggested to me by Mr P. G. Thomas seems to confirm this view, viz. Golagrus and Gawain, 1. 112, ' sped hym on spedely on the spare mure.' Patience, 104, remains still unsolved ; but I hazard ' taut bow-line.' A closely similar idea of fitness, good condition, lack of flabbiness, is found in our expression 'a spare and wiry man.'
116. sotf. Professor Ker's interpretation 'travelled' (cp. O.N. soekja) makes the sense clearer.
117, 347. lisse is not 'yes,' 'yea,' but 'oh yes/ Ger. ' doch/ Fr. 'si.' 122. J?a3 [30] be stape [in] fole. Emendation of he is unnecessary :
Professor Ker translates ' any one of you/ and Zupitza's stape-fol '<steap + fol is too plausible to be neglected.
143, 472. bush. The old etymology ought not to be dismissed without comment.
216. ruyt hym. A possible derivation is O.Fr. se ruer.
219. Hef and hale is explained by Professor Ker as an ejaculation : * " Heave and haul " was the cry.'
230. luche. I incline to regard this as a ' ghost-word/ and so to emend to lanche.
256. warlow. The more general meaning ' monster ' is found several times in the Destruction of Troy.
259. lyue. The meaning ' live/ given in the Glossary, makes the passage difficult of translation and is without doubt a slip. The corn- fusion of leue and lyue is common in M.E.
289. hit to is probably not ' betook himself ' but ' hit upon.' Cf. Destruction of Troy, 13495, ' The hauyn j?at he hit to.' . 292. bulk. The N.E.D. etymology is worth recording.
320. man needs comment. Does it mean ' Sir/ cf. renk three lines below ; or shall we interpret ' am I fallen, a mere mortal ' ?
350, 489. lauce. The old reading lance is preferable. Surely in 1. 350 the metaphor is from archery : ' The arrow is fitted to the string. Speed it forth.'
354. On = ' only.' Why not ' press on ' ?
375. dymly. The editor and Professor Ker translate 'gloomily/ Matzner and Morris ' secretly.' I suggest tentatively ' in hazy striving ' : cf. Acts xvii, 23, 'quod ignorantes colitis.'
. 380. hit = l struck/ 'fell/ 'flung himself.' Cf. Gawayne, 427, ' |?e fayre hede fro }>e halce hit to ]>e er]?e.'
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391. There is a misprint of soured for sowed in the quotation from Minot.
435. farandly. The meaning 'pleasantly' seems to be better sup- ported than ' becomingly ' by three out of the four other instances in these poems, viz. Pearl, 865, Cleanness, 1785, Gawayne, 101. (The other instance, Cleanness, 607, is indecisive.)
449. lylled. The etymology suggested by the N.E.D. is not well supported. I suggest that the word means 'hung down,' and is the variant of loll, used late in literature (v. N.E.D.) of a dog's tongue. Further investigation is needed.
451. nos. Professor Gollancz derives unnecessarily, I think, from O.N. os, an inlet. I translate either ' porch ' or ' breathing-hole.' The meaning 'projection' is attached to nosu already in O.E. Professor Ker suggests that it is possibly 'an usche,' from O.Fr. uis, 'a door/
454. wype. I should not hesitate to emend to 'webe.'i Cf. lyue, 1. 259.
493. hot lykker to rytf. A fuller note would be helpful.
530. for. Professor Ker's interpretation, ' in spite of,' gives the best sense.
One would like to see more notes on points of Syntax : on the Relative, e.g. 11. 155 and 333 ; on Word-order, e.g. 1. 351 ; on the Verb ' to be,' e.g. 11. 201, 260 ; on the Adverb, e.g. 1. 243 ; on difficulties such as are presented by 11. 48, 202, 503. A few readers, possibly, may despise such aid : the majority will be grateful for it. There are some few peculiarities of spelling worthy of explanation to the general reader, e.g. the use of tz, the occurrence of gh for etymological w. Nor would it be superfluous to draw attention to the frequent use of substantives differing nothing in form from adjectives, e.g. derk, ronk, unsounde, and, probably, drye. In the case of rare words and phrases, e.g. runishly, full joynt, maiigre his mun, swete, it would be a help to the student to give parallels. Morris's quotations illustrating the last word are worth reprinting.
We shall look forward with pleasure to the speedy issue of the other volumes of this attractive Anthology of Early English Poetry.
J. H. G. GRATTAN.
LONDON.
The . Place-names of Nottinghamshire. By HEINRICH MUTSCHMANN. (Cambridge Archaeological and Ethnological Series.) Cambridge : University Press. 1913. 8vo. xvi + l79pp.
It is once more our pleasant task to review a book on English place- names by one of Professor Wyld's pupils. This branch of philological studies would seem to be ' booming,' and the late Canon Taylor would take a less pessimistic view of the study of place-names if he could but see the rapidly extending row of books on the subject. Dr Mutschmarm,
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whose Phonology of the North-eastern Scotch Dialect shows that he was competent to undertake the philological investigation of place-names, has in this book treated the Nottinghamshire names in much the same manner as that in which Mr Alexander treated the names of Oxfordshire, on the lines laid down by Professor Wyld in the Place-Names of Lancashire. In a brief Introduction the conditions and methods of investigation are stated. At the end of the volume there is a summary of exemplifications of phonological laws afforded by Nottinghamshire names, lists of words and personal names forming elements of the place- names, a short note on some of the commoner suffixes, and lastly, a list of sources and books consulted. On the whole, the investigation appears to have been conducted on sound lines. Dr Mutschmann is clearly strong on phonology and insists on accounting for every letter and sound-change. Still, even in this field he does not make everything quite clear. Thus, for example, the statement that the change from d to t in Attenborough is ' perhaps due to dissimilation ' might have been amplified ; also the statement that the t of Bestwood is derived from an earlier k by assimilation is intelligible only to the expert. To explain the loss of r from Harplesthorp, an early form of Appesthorpe or Habblesthorpe, by the formula r-l-r > [~]-l-r requires a rather close acquaintance with Zachrisson's Study of Anglo-Norman Influence on English Place-Names. The fact that the s of Basford is voiceless in the modern local pronunciation is no proof that it represents O.E. ss ; moreover it is somewhat rash to assume on the evidence of a single early form that a lengthening of a (or ce) took place before s(s) in early M.E. Other instances are required to support this assumption. If, as seems the case, the a of the M.E. form Baseford was long, we have to assume an O.E. form Basa rather than Bassa, that is, if we regard a pers. n. as the original. The statement, s.v. Barton-in-Fabis, that the hypothetical O.E. word *bcerllc, the ancestor of the modern 'barley,' may have influenced bere-tun, changing the e into ce, cannot in our opinion be admitted. In a certain number of instances Dr Mutschmann has, we think, put forward very fanciful and even quite inadmissible ex- planations. Such explanations will always be made even by experienced philologists, if they fail to take into account the prosaic, matter-of-fact, practical attitude of both the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavian settlers when giving names to the places where they lived. It would almost seem indeed as if the more cautious and accurate an investigator is in matters of phonology, the more uncritical his suggestions of origins are likely to be. .Take, for example, the suggestion that Awkley may come from Ealce, 'a mythological person or deity.' Here Dr Mutschmann has, we think, been led astray by Middendorff. A more prosaic suggestion would be 'the lea or meadow of a certain Alca.' The derivation of Averham from O.E. cet ceftrum, ' at the waters, streams/ we find difficult to accept, notwithstanding Dr Mutschmann's ingenious attempt to explain the sound-changes involved. He has to admit that O.E. wdre does not occur elsewhere in English pi. ns. We prefer a pers. n., possibly jElfgar, and either O.E. ham 'home,' 'farm,' or O.E. hamm,
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' meadow by river.' We do not think that Bathley meant ' the lea of the bath, the meadow containing a bathing-place/ and the reference to Caesar's mention of the fondness of Germans for bathing in the open leaves us cold. Dr Mutschmann's second suggestion, the pers. n. Bada, is much better. Bestwood is certainly not 'the enclosed wood where deer are preserved'; the earlier forms Besekwood, Beskewood require another explanation. It is highly improbable that the river-names Blyth and Idle are respectively from O.E. blffie 'blithe,' 'calm,' and O.E. idel. The last-mentioned word has the meaning ' brilliant ' assigned to it by Dr Mutschmann on the strength of its connection with aWw. The suggestion that Spalford is derived from O.E. spald ' saliva,' ' foam ' and means ' the foamy ford ' is picturesque. Cuckney cannot mean ' at the quick, running water or brook,' as the O.E. cwic did not mean * rapidly moving ' but ' living,' ' alive.' The first element here is probably a pers. n.; the second is O.E. eg, 'island.' For Harwell Dr Mutschmann offers two explanations, (1) 'at the spring or brook of the Danish army,' (2) ' the fiercely boiling spring.' Again too picturesque. We prefer a pers. n., possibly Hereweald. Next comes Lowdham, for which after making the excellent suggestion Luda, a pers. n., Dr Mutschmann goes on to suggest O.E. hlud, ' loud,' in the sense of ' stormy/ ' windy,' com- paring the ventose of the French revolutionary calendar. These fanciful nights invariably require so much illustration by far-fetched parallels. Merrils Bridge does not mean ' the bridge by the pleasant slope,' from O.E. seo myrige helde; it means 'the bridge named after Mcerhild or Merehild,' a woman. This is shown by the early forms Mirield, Miriel. Similarly, Mirfield is hardly se myrige (rea,d,myriga) feld 'the pleasant plain, or field.' Oldcoates or Ulcoates, judging by the early forms, means not ' the houses of the owl/ but ' the cots or sheds of Ulf or Ulla.' Rufford is probably named after a man named Ruga, and does not mean ' the rough ford.'
We next come to derivations which, though not fanciful, are in our opinion incorrect. Kingston is the pers. n. Cynestan rather than ' the royal stone.' Kneeton or Kneveton cannot, judging from the early forms, come from O.E. cnihta tun, ' the farmstead or settlement of the servants.' Dr Mutschmann bases this derivation on Knighton, taken from the map in Camden's Britain, 1695, and then actually attempts to show that the v of the early forms Cheniveton, 1086, Chnivetun, 1190, Knyveton, 1284, and Kenyveion, 1291 comes from an earlier hi He takes this v ' to represent the faint palatal open consonant of the early M.E. Knighton, as it appeared to the Normans who were unfamiliar with that sound/ The Norman scribe comes off rather badly in this book; but he seems to be the latest deus ex machina in place-name investigation. We would suggest as the origin of Kneeton the common woman's name Cynegifu or Goengifu. The latter form occurs as Cheneue in a charter (Searle). The sound-changes would be as follows : Goengi- fetun > Ken^ivetun [kenjivetun] (with shifting of stress from the first to the second syllable) > Keniveton > Kniveton ; see Wyld's preface to Alexander's Oxfordshire Place-Names.
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Lastly, we venture to offer some suggestions in the case of names for which Dr Mutschmann can offer none, or where we disagree with, but cannot disprove, those made by him. The first element of Beeston and Beesthorpe is probably the pers. n. Beaga, or else Beag-, the first element of O.E. pers. n. Beag would become Beh in M.E. and its gen. case would become Bes. An alternative to O.E. beofor, ' beaver ' as the first element of Bevercoates may be sought in the pers. n. Bealdfrift, the development being Bealdfrift > Belfrift > Bevre. Another possible origin for the first element of Bothamsall is the pers. n. Beaduhelm or Beadumund. Dr Mutschmann does not make it clear how Bodwine could give the Bodmes- or Bodemes- of the early forms ; it would give rather Bodin-, Boding-, as in the pi. n. Boddington. Brecks should riot be explained by O. Icel. brekka, ' slope,' for this occurs in English in the Danish form brink. The E.D.D. under ' break,' v. also spelt ' breck,' gives the following among other meanings : ' a piece of ground broken up for cultivation or other purposes ; a piece of unenclosed arable land ; a large division of an open cornfield.' It occurs in several pi. names, as Norbreck, Esprick, Sunbrick, Lanes.; Haverbrack, Westm.; and Breaks, a farm in Cumb. The word is probably connected with O.E. brecan, 'to break/ The first element of Chilwell is more likely a pers. n. CM or Cille than the hypothetical O.E. word *celd, *cild. Eakring may be the same word as that which forms the first element of Accrington, Lanes., the early forms being very similar in both cases. The first element of Farndon and Farnsfield is more probably the pers. n. Fcerwine than the O.E. fearn, ' fern.' Gotham is rather ' the goat meadow ' than ' the home of the goats,' the terminal being O.E. hamm, ' riverside meadow.' Here it may be mentioned that Dr Mutschmann is mistaken in thinking that the exact sense of O.E. healh is 'very uncertain' (s.v. Hallam); it means ' river meadow ' like hamm, and not ' valley ' as Dr Mutschmann thinks. Hayton may mean ' enclosure or field in the hay ' rather than 'farm in the heath.' The first element of Hempshill may be the pers. n. Heahmod. The first element of Nettleworth may be a pers. n. such as Niftwulf, altered by 'popular etymology.' It is by no means certain, a*s Dr Mutschmann thinks, that Ox ton means ' the ox-enclosure.' The first element may be a pers. n. such as Oca, or it may even be a shortened form of Oscytel. An alternative suggestion for Ruddington is the pers. n. Hroftwine, of which Searle cites a form Rothin. The first element of Sere ve ton may possibly be the pers. n. Sceorfwine. Scrooby may come from the pers. n. Scrob cited by Searle. The first element of Sneinton may be the gen. case of the pers. n. Snodda, the early form Snotinton being perhaps due to the influence of Snotingham, the early form of Nottingham. The statement that the spelling -holm of the early forms of Sowlkholme is due to confusion with the pi. n. element -holme, and that the original form in this name was O.E. cumb, ' valley,' seems to be quite unsupported. Holm is here the original form. An alternative suggestion for Tiln is the pers. n. Tilwine ; Searle cites alscT the name Tilne. Trowell cannot come from O.E. treow, ' tree,' as all the early forms but one show o. Dr Mutschmann's attempt to justify his
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derivation on phonological grounds does not convince. The origin may possibly be the O.N. pers. n. foraldr or forwaldr, Anglicised to furweald or Ipurwold. If this be right, metathesis of the r took place. The first element of Tythby may be O.E. teofta, teogefta, ' tenth/ which has given the modern ' tithe.' The first element of Wimpton and Winthorpe is rather Wigmund than Winemund. On the evidence of the early forms Winkerbum, Wingeburne, it is surely simpler and more correct to derive Winkburn from the pers. n. Wingcer or Winegcer, than to state an elaborate case in favour of a hypothetical O.E. adjective *wincol, allied to wincian, ' to blink, wink.' The first element of Wiseton and perhaps also of Wysall is Wig, Wiga rather than Wisa. In connection with Staythorpe we may note that Searle cites the pers. n. Steorra. The early forms of Gamston are identical with those of Gamblesby, Cumb. The early forms of Leverton point to the pers. n. Leofgar as the first element. *
It must not be thought from the above rather detailed criticism that Dr Mutschmann has made a bad book ; on the contrary it is a distinctly good book and reflects much credit upon him. We hope he may undertake the place-names of other English counties.
W. J. SEDGEFIELD. MANCHESTER.
A Grammar of the Dialect of Lorton. By BORJE BRILIOTH. (Publica- tions of the Philological Society, I). Oxford: University Press. 1913. xi + 198 pp.
For some time past it has been recognised by students of our language that there is urgent need of a detailed study of our dialects before the opportunity vanishes for ever. Even now there are com- paratively few localities in England where the pure dialect has survived in its entirety, that is to say, not merely in pronunciation but also in vocabulary, idiom, grammar and syntax. The old people, those depositories of tradition, are passing away, and in a few years the modern substitute for the pure dialect, viz. the local variety of Standard English, will reign supreme. When that day arrives, the study of living dialect in England will be over. Since so few Englishmen care to study their own speech seriously, we must be grateful to those foreign scholars who do the work for them. It is especially fitting that a Scandinavian, a countryman of such first-class authorities on English philology and dialect study as Erik Bjorkman, Eilert Ekwall and others, should have undertaken the investigation of the Cumberland dialect, which has been so profoundly modified by West Scandinavian settlement. Dr Brilioth was well advised by Professor Wright to choose a Cumberland dale for his researches in English dialect, for there, ' more than elsewhere, the conditions make for purity of the local speech. In obtaining his material Dr Brilioth was equally fortunate, for not only
M. L. E. ix. 27
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was he able to hear natives speak to each other in an unconstrained manner, but was further assisted in recording the dialect forms by a native of education. The phonology is, as might be expected in a scientific study, treated in great detail, covering ninety-five pages, while the grammar proper covers thirty-five. In the appendix some valuable matter is brought together in a list of nearly three hundred Scandinavian loan words occurring in the Cumberland dialect, and specimens of the Lorton dialect in phonetic transcription. .Finally there is a glossary, with references, of all the dialect words recorded in the book. The treatment throughout is clear and adequate, and bears witness to keen and patient observation directed by a thorough knowledge of the earlier stages of the language and the principles of its development. In conclusion we may express the hope that Dr Brilioth may be able to continue his researches in the field of English dialect study, and that other scholars may be induced to follow his example.
W. J. SEDGEFIELD.
MANCHESTER.
Word-Formation in Kipling. By W. LEEB-LuNDBERG. Lund : Lindstets Univ. Bokh. (Cambridge: Heffer.) 1909. 8vo. x + 116 pp.
Names of Places in a Transferred Sense in English. By C. EFVERGREN. Lund: Gleerupska Univ. Bokh. (Cambridge: Heffer.) 1909. 8vo. xii + 123 pp.
The Language of Robinson Crusoe. By G. L. LANNERT. Upsala: Almquist and Wiksell. (Cambridge: Heffer.) 1910. 8vo. xxxviii +125 pp.
The Language of Swinburne s Lyrics and Epics. By G. SERNER. Lund : Berlingska Boktryckeriet. 1910. 8vo. viii + 138pp.
On the History and Use of the Suffixes -ery, -age and -ment in English. By F. GADDE. Lund : Gleerupska Univ. Bokh. (Cambridge : Heffer.) 1910. 8vo. viii + 143 pp.
The Place of the Adjective Attribute in English Prose. By B. PALM. Lund: Berlingska Boktryckeriet. 1911. 8vo. xiv+173pp.
The History of the Definite Tenses in English. By ALFRED AKERLUND. (Cambridge: Heffer.) 1911. 8vo. x + lOlpp.
Slang and Cant in Jerome K. Jeromes Works. By 0. E. BOSSON. (Cambridge : Heffer.) 1911. 8vo. 79pp.
Within the last ten years there has been a rapid development of English studies in Sweden. There existed originally at each of the two old State Universities of Upsala and Lund only one professorship of ' Nyeuropeisk lingvistik ' (Modern European Philology), the unfortunate holder of which had to lecture and examine in English, French and
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German, and their kindred dialects and tongues. Later on a separate chair was established for Romance languages, the immediate result of which was an extraordinary influx of students to this department and consequent increase in the quality and amount of original work produced.
English and German remained, however, as ' Germanska sprak,' unwilling yoke-fellows up to the beginning years of the twentieth century — more definitely 1903 — when after vigorous efforts and peti- tionings on the part of those interested, the Swedish Riksdag finally voted sufficient funds for the establishment of separate professorships of English and German at the two older universities. Some years later that great friend of learning, Andrew Carnegie, gave £10,000 to found a chair of English Language and Literature at Gothenburg.
As in the case of the Romance languages the immediate result of the separation of English from German was a rapid development and growth of the subject both at Upsala arid Lund; and the interest for English studies received a further impetus through the appointment of young and energetic scholars to these newly established chairs as they successively fell vacant, viz. Eilert Ekvall at Lund and Erik Bjorkman at Upsala, both trained chiefly under Noreen and Morsbach, and both endowed with that breadth of outlook, combined with extreme delicacy and care in the handling of detail, which is so marked a characteristic of their two brilliant teachers.
At Upsala and Lund as a consequence no particular period or branch of English is set apart for encouragement and study. The speech- sounds of the eighteenth century are held as worthy of notice as those of the eighth, morphology and syntax receive due attention, and the vulgarisms, cant and slang of the present day are investigated as zealously as the diction of the poets.
Students of British universities cannot but marvel at and envy an academic system and teaching which results in the production of research work of such a high character as the treatises enumerated above. With the exception of Bosson's paper on ' Slang and Cant in Jerome's Works ' they all emanate from Lund or Upsala, and were originally published as theses for the attainment of the doctor's degree at these universities. They are all written in English, style and contents being equally good, and testifying to the strictly scientific method and excellent training provided for candidates for the highest academic honours at these small and comparatively poor Swedish universities. Comparisons are invidious, but one cannot help hoping that some day research work in the different branches of English will be organised at British universities on as broad and comprehensive a basis as appears to be the case in Sweden.
Generally speaking English receives a great deal of attention both at schools and universities in Sweden. In Gothenburg experiments are carried on with English as a foundation language, but as a rule it is started in the fourth form, that is about six years before the final ' student examen ' or abiturium.
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At Lund during the present academic year there are close on forty graduate and undergraduate members taking English as one of their chief subjects, and of these eight are reading for their ' Licentiat ' or M.A., and simultaneously starting or carrying on research work for the Ph.D. degree, to which they afterwards proceed almost without excep- tion.
In conclusion, it . is a pleasure to acknowledge our indebtedness to Mr C. E. Fearenside, Lector in English at Lund, for arranging these and other similar treatises for British publication, and to the enterprising firm of W. Heffer and Sons, Cambridge, for placing them before the public.
A. C. PAUES.
CAMBRIDGE.
Le Roman Realiste sous le Second Empire. By PIERRE MARTINCX Hachette et Cie. 1913. 8vo. 311 pp.
The novels of Murger and Champfleury, Madame Bovary, Feydeau's Fanny, Duranty's Le Malheur d'Henriette Gerard, the novels of the Gon- courts, Zola's Therese Raquin, all, with the exception of the immortal Madame Bovary, are fast mingling with the snows of yesteryear. But none the less, M. Martino, with these for his chief documents, has- written an interesting chapter of literary history, treating it with im- partiality arid insight.
The realistic campaign was not at the outset concerned with litera- ture. It was opened in 1848 by the painter, Courbet, and it was he, or one of his friends, who invented the word Realisme. His famous picture, now in the Louvre, of L' Enterrement d'Omans, dates from 1851. Naturally this revolutionary spirit, who signed himself 'Courbet sans ideal et sans religion/ aroused violent opposition, and Th. de Banville and Ph. Boyer were not without justice on their side, when in their satirical comedy, Le Feuilleton d Aristophane, they made Realista say:
Faire vrai, ce n'est rien pour etre realiste : C'est faire laid qu'il faut.
Among Courbet's friends who met at a brasserie in the Rue Haute- feuille and listened to his doctrines the most assiduous was Champfleury. It was he who carried the propaganda into the domain of literature and published in 1853 Les Aventures de Mile Mariette, a novel d clefs of the Bohemian society which he frequented. In the preface he defined Realism as * the choice of modern and popular subjects,' and elsewhere he declared that the essential formula was ' sincerity in art.' To attain this, subjects should be chosen from the life of the lower middle class — the class to which Champfleury himself belonged. For this reason he greatly admired the work of Henry Monnier, whose M. Prudhomme he declared to be the greatest figure of the nineteenth century. Monnier's Scenes populaires had appeared as far back as 1829, but it was not till
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about 1855 that these sketches, which with their literal transcript of commonplace conversation are unreadable at the present day, were hailed as examples of the realistic doctrine. About the same time Stendhal, whose wider influence did not begin till a quarter of a century later, began to have a limited popularity. But the chief god of the rising realistic school was Balzac. It was Champfleury who was selected by his widow, Mme Hanska, to edit his unpublished writings, and among the artists who illustrated the edition of his works published by Hous- siaux in 1855 was Monnier. In 1856 Champfleury founded a Gazette, which only reached two numbers. But its successor, Realisme, of which the chief inspirer was Duranty, led a flickering life from July 1856 to May 1857.
As M. Martino is dealing almost exclusively with novelists who definitely hoisted the banner of Realism, it is perhaps natural that he should make no reference to influences other than those *which the realists themselves inscribed on their flag. But he might with advan- tage have briefly noted the forces which contributed to a favourable reception of their theories. These were, firstly, the growing reaction against Romanticism ; secondly, the rising current of scientific and positivist thought ; thirdly, the increase of observation among the Romanticists themselves, as shewn by Vigny's Servitude et grandeur militaires (1835), George Sand's rustic novels from Jeanne (1844) onwards, and above all the work of Merimee. M. Faguet says that Merimee was a 'realiste hors France,' but though this is true of Colomba and Carmen, it does not apply to the admirable tale of Arsene Guillot (1844), the scene of which is laid in contemporary Paris.
While Realisme was running its fitful course, Madame Bovary was published in the Revue de Paris (October 1 — December 15, 1856), and as the object of a sensational prosecution (January and February, 1857) at once attracted the attention of all literary Paris. To quote M. Faguet again, ' it founded realism in France.' But, says M. Martino, the author of Madame Bovary is not at all a realist in the ordinary sense that the word has acquired in the language of criticism. ' Flaubert,' he adds, ' never recognised the masters of the realists as his own. He felt no enthusiasm for Balzac... he did not understand Stendhal, he had a con- tempt for Champfleury.' The exactitude and impartiality of his observation are the result of his artistic conscience, of his theory of 'art for art.' All this is true, but it only means that Flaubert, a man of genius, arrived at realism by a different route to that of Champfleury and Duranty. If Madame Bovary and L1 Education senti- mentale are not true realistic novels, so much the worse for the realistic novel. Among those who recognised the importance of Madame Bovary were Sainte-Beuve, who ended his causerie of May 4 1857 with the words ' Anatomistes et physiologistes, je vous retrouve partout,' and Taine who, writing to J. J. Weiss on January 25, 1858, declared that he knew of no finer novel since Balzac. Nine days after writing this the first of his famous articles on Balzac appeared in the Journal des Debats. About the same time he published his Essais de critique et
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d'histoire, which contained articles on the English realists, Thackeray and Dickens. 'Taine,' says with truth M. Martino, 'was the philo- sopher of realism.' His criticism performed the same services for the realistic movement as Sainte-Beuve's had done for Romanticism. The triumph of the realistic novel was assured. It was a sign of this triumph that Sainte-Beuve welcomed with more unqualified praise than he had given to Madame Bovary Feydeau's very inferior and now wholly forgotten novel of Fanny, which appeared in 1858 and captured the suffrages alike of the critics and the general public1.
In 1860 realism was reinforced by the appearance in the field of the Goncourt brothers, who for ten years previously had been producing patient and minute studies of eighteenth century art and society, and were also eager collectors of artistic treasures. Thus they brought to their work the method of the trained researcher, and the passion for novelty of the collector. But they had spent their days in cloistered seclusion, they were ignorant of life and martyrs to nervous dyspepsia. As good realists they founded their novels on the personal experiences of themselves and their friends, but they showed a preference for morbid subjects arid abnormal characters, and they treated these in a pessi- mistic spirit which was characteristic of the age, but which also closely reflected their own nervous and over-excited temperament. ' Our work,' wrote one of them to Zola, ' is the result of nervous disease.' It was only too true : in 1870 the younger brother, Jules, died of over-work. It was not till nearly ten years later, when French pessimism and materialism had reached their highest pitch, that their novels met with favour, thanks chiefly to the noisy intervention of Zola. For it was largely under their influence that the latter, who made his realistic debut with Therese Raquin at the close of 1867, transformed Realism into Naturalism and developed his theory of the scientific novel. It was from the Goncourts that he learnt to stuff himself with documents, to pay attention to minute details, to study manners rather than characters, and types rather than individuals, and to choose these types from the lowest and most degraded classes of humanity. But he was also influenced by Stendhal, Balzac, and Flaubert, by Sainte-Beuve and Taifle> and above all by Claude Bernard, whose remarkable Introduction a la medecine experimentale appeared in the same year (1865) as Germinie Lacerteux and made a great impression on the literary as well as the scientific world. Thus Emile Zola, the virtuous bourgeois, who had imagination and feeling, and even a streak of genius, who could paint large canvasses and look out on wide horizons, was driven by a pedantry that was the fruit of ill-digested reading to produce the dullest novels that have ever caught the applause of an undiscerning public.
But Zola's work as a whole does not fall within the scope of M. Martino's narrative, which stops at 1870, and he can therefore only chronicle the opening of the last phase of the realistic novel, the phase which led through a clamorous success to its ultimate downfall. The Roman Realiste, in the strict and historical sense of the term, was 1 Sainte-Beuve's praise was considerably modified later.
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a failure ; unless we are to include in it Madame Bovary it produced no work of real genius. But we must not forget, when we glibly use the word realism as a current term of criticism, that it was the invention of Champfleury and his friends, and that it was applied by them to a type of novel of their own making. Nor must we forget that stripped of unessentials their conception was a reasonable one, for it was simply this, that the novelist should describe sincerely the life that he knows best. In Champfleury 's case it was Bohemian life, but that was an accident and not an essential. The misfortune was that his reasonable theory was complicated by needless and harmful accretions. Because Balzac carried to excess his love of material description, his would be disciples must needs do the same. Because Champfleury described the Bohemian life that he knew, his successors must needs confine themselves to the life of the lower classes, which they did not know. Edmond de Gon- court indeed recognised this fallacy at last. ' Realism,' he says in a passage written in 1879 and quoted by M. Martino, ' has not the sole mission to describe what is low, repulsive and foul ; it has come into the world also for the purpose of delineating in an artistic style (dans de Vecriture artiste] that which is elevated, beautiful and of a sweet savour.' Frenchmen realised this a few years later when they began to read Turgenieff, Tolstoy, and George Eliot. The realism of the Gon- courts and Zola was after all a sham realism, and that not only because they described life which they did not know at first hand, but because they had not the temperament of true realists. The Goncourts were nervous pessimists, Zola was a romantic pessimist ; ' to see life steadily and see it whole' was for all three an impossibility.
ARTHUR TILLEY. CAMBRIDGE.
Le Theatre anglais a Paris sous la Restauration. Par J. L. BORGERHOFF. Paris: Hachette et Cie. 1912. 8vo. 245pp.
The performances of the English actors at Paris in 1827 and 1828 have an historical importance, for they throw light on the question of Shakespeare's influence on the Romantic drama. For this reason, M. J. L. Borgerhoffs Le Theatre anglais 'a Paris sous la Restauration is a welcome contribution to literary history. The permanent members of the company comprised William Abbot, the manager, and Miss Smithson, while Listen, Charles Kemble, Macready, and Kean, the four leading English actors, joined them in turn for short periods. Thus the French had an opportunity of seeing Shakespeare's great tragedies, though in the mutilated form in which they were presented in those days, more or less adequately interpreted. The performances drew crowded houses and the criticisms on the whole were very favourable. Those of Charles Magnin and Duvergier de Hauranne in the Globe showed special insight. Of these criticisms, as they appeared from time to time in the Globe,
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the Reunion, the Journal des Debats, the Quotidienne, the Pandore, M. Borgerhoff gives an excellent analysis. We learn that Kemble was successful as Hamlet and Romeo, but much less so as Othello, in which part Macready was preferred not only to him but to Kean. Kean's Shylock, however, roused the Parisians to enthusiasm. 'He invested him,' says Fanny Kemble, ' with a concentrated ferocity that made one's blood curdle.' Miss Smithson, according to the same authority, ' received a rather disproportionate share of admiration,' for her reputation in this country was only moderate. But the Irish beauty conquered the hearts of the Parisians, especially that of Berlioz, with whom, as is well known, she made an unhappy marriage.
The last chapter of the volume deals with the effect of the repre- sentations, especially on the romantic movement. It was under the influence of the first performances of Hamlet, Othello, and Romeo and Juliet that Hugo began to write his famous preface to Cromwell. Dumas was filled with enthusiasm. ' It was only then,' he says after seeing Hamlet, ' that I realised what the drama could be. ... For the first time I had seen real passions on the stage, inspiring men and women of real flesh and blood.' Possibly Shakespeare served as an inspiration rather than a model. But the whole question of his influence on the romanti- cists is a difficult one, and M. Borgerhoff might have considered it rather more closely.
ARTHUR TILLEY.
CAMBRIDGE.
L'Image du Monde de Maitre Gossouin. Redaction en prose. Texte du Manuscrit de la Bibliotheque Nationale Fonds Francis No. 574, avec corrections d'apres d'autres manuscrits, notes et introduction. Par 0. H. PRICE. Lausanne et Paris : Payot et Cie. 1913. 8vo. 216 pp.
Parmi les oeuvres didactiques du moyen age ecrites en langue vulgaire, I'lmage du Monde est la plus ancienne des encyclopedies (milieu du xuie siecle). II en existe trois redactions en vers (encore inedites) dont les dates et les rapports n'ont pu jusqu'ici etre deter- mines de faQon certaine1; on en possede aussi une redaction en prose qui suit de tres pres le texte de la plus ancienne des trois redactions en vers : c'est cette redaction en prose que publie M. Prior.
Son edition n'est, stricternent parlant, ni une edition diplomatique, ni une edition critique. M. Prior imprime le texte du MS. fr. 574 de la Bibliotheque Nationale (de'signe par A) parce que c'est sur ce MS. qu'a e*te copi6 le MS. Royal 19 AIX. du British Museum, base de la traduc- tion en anglais de Caxton (Mirrour of the World, 1481). Ce detail n'empeche pas que le choix du MS. A reste arbitraire (v. pp. 22-23) ; toutefois, il y a si peu de differences entre les divers MSS. — chose naturelle pour une oauvre didactique — que cet arbitraire n'a rien de 1 Of. E. Faral dans Romania, XLIII, p. 280 sq.
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grave. Les abreviations du MS. sont resolues en caracteres italiques — ce qui semble annoncer une edition quasi diplomatique; mais M. Prior complete et corrige le texte de A a 1'aide d'autres MSS. eb imprime en caracteres gras les passages ou Ie9ons Strangers a A — ce qui est un semblant d'edition critique. L'effet est quelque peu desagre'able a 1'oeil. Au-dessous du texte ainsi presente sont indiquees toutes les variantes du MS. Bibl. Nat. fr. 25344 (designe par E) et quelques variantes empruntees a d'autres MSS. Comme, dans la plupart des cas, les variantes de B sont purement graphiques, il eiit peut-etre ete pre- ferable d'alle'ger 1'appareil critique en consacrant dans 1'Introduction quelques pages precises a une e"tude systematique des graphics de B. II y a quelque bizarrerie dans la facon dont M. Prior presente les variantes de B : les italiques n'y indiquent plus, comme dans le cas de A, la resolution des abreviations; elles indiquent les lettres qui different de celles des mots correspondants de A. M. Prior aurait du signaler quelque part la double signification de ses italiques.
Le texte est, a 1'ordinaire, satisfaisant. Voici quelques menues observations : p. 59, 1. 1, il n'y a aucune raison d'introduire est apres li douziesmes ; p. 67, 1. 3, lire Ja rii a or a ; p. 103, 1. 7, supprimer trois ou .Hi. ; p. 126, 1. 5 du texte, lire senprent; p. 129, 1. 14, p. 136, 1. 17 et passim, lire eaue ; p. 137, 1. 12, lire et li espreviers ; p. 141, 1. 2, lire rii ; p. 178, 1. 7, lire viiiA; p. 182, 1. 25, lire s entente', p. 191, 1. 6, lire le siecle, qu'il....
M. Prior a pris soin de marquer les correspondances exactes entre chaque chapitre de la redaction en prose et les vers de la premiere redaction ; quelques notes expliquent, a 1'ordinaire avec clarte, les passages difficiles ou donnent des indications — parfois discu tables1 — sur les graphics dialectales de A. D'autres notes renvoient aux sources vraisemblables de V Image du Monde : mais, M. Prior traitant aussi des sources dans la deuxieme partie de son Introduction (pp. 27-54), je crois qu'il eut mieux valu, pour eviter des repetitions et des renvois superflus, ne pas morceler ainsi ces indications qui, en outre, exigeraient parfois une determination plus precise et critique.
La premiere partie de 1'Introduction (pp. 1-26 2) (datation des< redactions en vers et discussion des theories de Langlois; nom de 1'auteur — qui serait Gossouin et non Gauthier de Metz ; description et essai de classement des MSS.) est judicieuse, et les tables (noms propres cites dans Vintage du Monde, index des matieres qui y sont traitees et bibliographic des sources) seront tres utiles.
II eut ete possible, ce semble, de simplifier la presentation du texte et souhaitable de resserrer la composition ; il reste toutefois que le livre tres soigne de M. Prior est une vraie contribution a notre connaissance
de la science du moyen age.
A. TERRACHER.
LIVERPOOL.
1 P. 69 : er & cote de -ier apres palatale n'est pas necessairement anglo-normand dans un MS. £crit au xive siecle.
2 P. 2, n. 3, liref0. 81 c.
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Historia da Litteratura Romantica Portuguesa (1825 — 1870). For FIDELINO DE FIGUEIKEDO. Lisboa : A. M. Teixeira. 1913. 8vo. Pp. 322.
Historia da Litteratura Realista (1871 — 1900). For FIDELINO DE FIGUEIREDO. Lisboa: A. M. Teixeira. 1914. 8vo. Pp. 313.
As the opening pages in the earlier of these works deals with Portuguese literature in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and the later volume embraces many authors still living, the two books together contain a complete history of Portuguese literature in the nineteenth century. The impression left by that literature is apt to be somewhat dismal, because it is an impression of wasted talent : the capacity is constantly more than the achievement. There existed, and there exists, no wide literary public in Portugal. One is inclined to say that the number of writers exceeds the number of readers : at all events the Portuguese writer who wishes to belong to this or that school usually turns to some other country than his own. It was the charm of Joao de Deus' poetry that he had no such wish and succeeded in being natural. Most Portuguese writers, however, are keenly receptive of foreign influences and, owing to the absence of candid criticism in Portugal, have been tempted to exaggerate the defects of their models. Snr. Fidelino de Figueiredo brings out very clearly the lack of any directing criticism and the superabundant production in Portuguese literature. Fortunately the deficiency is 'now in some degree made good ; for here is a critic, sincere and concrete in his criticisms (he does not as a rule traffic in abstractions, although very much occupied with literary schools and systems and definitions), and likewise a critic who does not shrink from severity. It is perhaps a little disquieting that he should 'frankly prefer' to national themes and a study of the Portuguese sixteenth-century writers ' cosmopolitan curiosity and receptivity ' ; but no doubt Portuguese writers might benefit by studying English, German or Spanish literature instead of concentrating their attention on that of France (Germany, indeed, had an influence on Herculano and Oliveira 'Martins and Quental, but traces of Spanish and English influence are but slight in modern Portuguese literature).
The outstanding figures of Snr. Figueiredo's first volume are Almeida Garrett and Alexandre Herculano; in the second Anthero de Quental. Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins and Jose Maria de E£a de Queiroz. That Portugal in the nineteenth century produced a considerable number of men of great literary gifts cannot be denied j but, as to works that will live, there is little beyond Herculano's history, a few lyrics of Garrett and his play Frey Luiz de Sousa, Joao de Deus's Flores do Campo, a few sonnets by Anthero de Quental, one or two novels by Ega de Queiroz, and possibly a few lyrics from Snr. Guerra Junqueiro's volume of poems : Os Simples (1892). Diffuseness, imita- tion, insincerity too often marred the writing of Portuguese authors, and works were written deliberately in the manner of Victor Hugo or
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Baudelaire or Zola. This imitativeness was especially felt in the realistic school. Realism in Portugal, says Snr. Figueiredo, 'was not derived from romanticism by a slow and logical process, as in France, but was a foreign fashion imposed aggressively.' The result was exaggeration, and it was only towards the close of his life that E$a de Queiroz, for instance, produced work of real strength and originality. His writing continued to improve steadily from the first ; because he had the will to discipline himself to work more national and sincere some of his books will endure. The same strong will marked Herculano and Oliveira Martins. These were instances of writers placing restrictions upon their work without any help or encouragement from Portuguese critics.
Snr. Figueiredo's appreciations are welcome because they do not merely dabble in eulogy. He has the courage to say of Snr. Gomes Leal that ' his work does not correspond to the capacity of its author, and is an example of how greatly his work may injure a writer who has not attained an accurate knowledge of his own literary bent and has had no honest sincere criticism to help him/ The ordinary Portuguese critic describes Snr. Gomes Leal as the great, the illustrious poet, and does not read his poems. Snr. Figueiredo has read them and does not wholly condemn them. Of that strange poem by Dr Theophilo Braga, A Visdo dos Tempos, originally published in 1864 and augmented to four large volumes thirty years later, he declares that the best parts are the argument in prose at the beginning of each volume, and points out that it is a work ' of no inspiration, in which bad taste and prosaic verses abound.' Such .pungent criticisms are necessary in Portugal, where the constant output of voluminous works of slight literary value deters many from studying Portuguese literature. And this is regret- table because there are not a few flowers, of real beauty and, moreover, of form and scent peculiarly Portuguese, among all this mass of Weeds.
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JOAO DO ESTORIL.
Folk-Ballads of Southern Europe. Translated into English Verse by SOPHIE JEWETT. New York and London : G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1913. 8vo. Pp. x, 299.
It is interesting, writes Miss Jewett in her introduction, ' to notice the ways in which the ballads of the Romance countries differ from those of the North. I have found fewer long narrative ballads ; on the other hand, the dramatic ballad, which is so noble in the British collections and quite as frequent there as the narrative ballad, is in Southern folk-song even more noteworthy. Edward Edward, Lord Randal and Donna Lombarda illustrate the best that is possible to the dramatic ballad. If they do not interest and thrill us, we may as well give over the study of balladry, for it will not yield us greater examples/
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Certainly there is fine drama in the scene between Donna Lombarda and her husband, and her answer, when he suggests that the wine which she has poisoned has a cloudy look, is magnificent and worthy of the Clytemnestra of Aeschylus :
There came the sea- wind last night at sunset, It clouded the wine.
Another Piedmontese ballad consists of a dialogue between mother and son, with a refrain. Thus in form it closely resembles the early Portuguese Gantigas, in which the dialogue is between mother and daughter : ' Daughter whence come you so white and so fair ? ' The Piedmontese love-ballad, UAvellenato, begins :
Where were you yestere veiling Dear son so fair and noble ?
Nearly a third of the fifty-five ballads here printed and translated are Piedmontese. In the case of The Three Students of Toulouse it would have been better to give the French version. French, Proven9al and Catalan versions exist, and the Piedmontese text here given is almost certainly translated from the French. Some of it indeed is scarcely even translated, as, for instance, testa al giudise a ja cupe (' he has cut off the head of the judge '). Some of Miss Jewett's translations do not quite succeed in maintaining the dignity of the original, a difficult task in rendering poems which can steer so near the ridiculous without ceasing to be sublime. Thus her distich
The father quickly marries another Giving his children a stepmother
is ludicrous. Of this ballad (La Madre Risuscitata) Miss Jevvett says : * The theme of a mother-ghost stealing from her grave to care for her misused children does not belong to British balladry, but is common in Continental folk-lore, both Germanic and Southern, being of widest diffusion in France.' Mrs Woods has used it with great effect in her Ballad of the Mother :
In the dead of the night the children were weeping. The mother heard that where she lay sleeping, And scratched at the coffin lid.
Some mistranslations must be noticed. Bermella is translated ' green ' instead of ' red ' ; bermelleta ' light green.' Beveune, Senyor should be rendered not ' Oh, drink again Senor ' but simply ' Drink.' So to render Massa me las cremariau ' How your hands are scorching my hands' loses the point, since the wife here, less daring than Don Juan in El Burlador de Sevilla, refuses to touch the hand of the. dead. She says : they would burn her too much. A more serious because a more insidious defect is the number of unnecessary additions which by no means add force to the narrative. Instances may be found on every page. Bucheta morta becomes ' dear little dead mouth,' un berganti ' a splendid ship,' fieta ( pretty maiden,' tre giuvenin de scola ' three gay
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young students.' That is not to say that Miss Jewett's translations are not often very spirited and excellent, only they would have gained here and there by compression, just as the form ' Catalonian ' in the intro- duction might with profit become ' Catalan.'
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JO.AO DO ESTORIL.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a Memoir. By JAMES FITZMAURICE- KELLY. Oxford : Clarendon Press. 1913. xx + 228 pp.
Since the publication of Navarrete's excellent Vida de' Cervantes in 1819 many important documents have been brought to light concerning the author of Don Quixote. By far the greatest number of these dis- coveries has been made in recent years and are due to * the patient investigations of the late Cristobal Perez Pastor. Spanish scholars had almost been resigned to the thought that, so far as Cervantes was con- cerned, the world probably knew all that would ever be known, when in 1897 PeVez Pastor published a volume of Documentos Cervantinos, followed in 1902 by a second volume, in which that untiring investigator made known no less than 161 new contemporary documents, many of which were of the greatest interest and importance. The world of Spanish letters owes a debt of lasting gratitude to this humble priest, to whose researches are due more new facts concerning the greatest of Spaniards than all other investigators put together had yet dis- covered.
This mass of new matter concerning Cervantes published by Sr. Pe'rez Pastor has made a new life of Cervantes a necessity, and in the light of these new discoveries Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly has written this volume, which he styles a ' Memoir.' The task could not have fallen into better hands, for long years of study and many publica- tions concerning this, his favourite author, have caused him to be recognised as an authority second to none in this field. As co-editor with the late Mr John Ormsby, he published the first critical edition of Don Quixote (London, David Nutt, 1898), and he is also the author of an excellent Life of Cervantes (London, 1892), which he capriciously despises.
The contrast between this Life of Cervantes and the Memoir before us could hardly be greater. The earlier book is replete with the charm of literary style for which the author is so well known, while this new volume is a ' plain, unvarnished tale,' a straightforward, logical, grim recital of facts, with no digressions into the realm of conjecture. Pro- fessor Fitzmaurice-Kelly thus states his purpose : ' My aim has been to give every known fact about Cervantes, suppressing nothing, ex- tenuating nothing, unswayed as far as possible by the natural bias which we all have in favour of a great creative genius whose subtle charm has fascinated successive generations for three centuries. Against this inevitable prepossession I have been constantly on guard. As it
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happens, Cervantes needs no apologist : he is one of those rare men who can afford to have the whole truth told about them. In this belief I have tried to make my record as full and exact as possible.'
The author has fulfilled his purpose admirably : his record is as full and exact as present knowledge can make it. And this story of the life of Spain's greatest son, in which every statement is supported by a document in the foot-notes, though written in the most straightforward, logical manner, and wholly unadorned, is of absorbing interest from cover to cover : for into the chequered career of Cervantes were crowded a series of events rare in the lives of men. And while this story as here related tells us much that is new, there are many blanks left in Cervantes's life ; in fact of the first twenty years we know absolutely nothing save the date of his baptism. We do not know where he received his schooling. Doubtless he studied his prim eras letras at Alcala de Henares, the city of his birth. The fine flowing hand that Cervantes wrote and the fact that all his sisters were able to write (an unusual thing in those days), all point to the fact, however, that his early training was careful, for if Cervantes's father — a poor apothecary surgeon — paid such attention to the education of his daughters, it is reasonable to suppose that he was even more solicitous about the school- ing of his sons. Of one thing, however, we may be reasonably certain : Cervantes never studied at the University of Alcala. Moreover, there is much doubt concerning the exact dates of many known events in his life. When was he camarero to Cardinal Acquaviva ? When did he enlist in the army ? We find that in 1569, at the age of 22, he was living in Rome. As camarero to the Cardinal ? Cervantes's father, however, states (in a document still preserved) that his son was a soldier in 1568. If this be true it leaves no room for Cervantes's services in the Cardinal's household, for Acquaviva did not quit Madrid till December 2, 1568.
We are therefore at sea concerning the date of Cervantes's enlistment. We only know that he joined the army before the autumn of 1570 ; that he fought valiantly against the Turk ; and that he was thrice wounded on that fateful October 7, 1571, at Lepanto, which Cervantes proudly called * the grandest occasion the past or present has seen or the future can hope to see.' Concerning the period subsequent to Cervantes's return from his Algerine captivity, December 18, 1580, we are now somewhat better informed. Sometime between the close of 1583, when he had finished his pastoral romance, the Galatea, and the spring of 1587 when he entered on the King's commission as a commissary for the Armada — Cervantes was writing those plays for the public stage which he assures us were so successful and which escaped the showers of pepinos with which the mosqueteros gave palpable evidence of their dis- approval. And though Cervantes longed for the plaudits of the pit, nature had not intended him for a playwright, and with the advent of Lope de Vega he admits that this vocation, too, was gone, and he cast about for some permanent employment. As Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly says : ' He was learning that, as a means of livelihood, the pen is even
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feebler than the sword : it was a lesson that he learned slowly and unwillingly.' Cervantes became a purveyor for the Armada and sub- sequently was employed to collect the King's taxes. But we cannot follow Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly through this long and wretched story, in which we find Cervantes in and out of gaol for various indis- cretions. The whole narrative of his subsequent life is one of squalid misery — living constantly from hand to mouth. Even in 1605, after the publication of the first part of the Don Quixote, when the name of the Manchegan Knight was on every tongue, we find Cervantes living in a tenement in the Calle del Rasiro in Valladolid — in one of the poorest quarters of the city, near the public slaughter-houses. Nor was fortune more kind to him after his death : buried in the convent of the bare- footed Trinitarian nuns in the Calle de Cantarranas at Madrid, no stone marks his grave, which can no longer be identified.
A word may be said concerning the portrait of Cer\*antes in this volume. The original was discovered in 1911, and now hangs on the falls of the Royal Spanish Academy. It bears the name of the painter [uan de laurigui, and the date 1600. Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly shows how extremely doubtful is the attribution of this portrait to Jauregui, who was, so far as we know at present, between 15 and 17 years old in 1600. In other words the statement : 'there is no authentic portrait of Cervantes ' is, in all probability, still true.
In conclusion, this Memoir of Cervantes is, in every way, an admir- able piece of work : it is a stern record of facts, which the student may consult with absolute confidence, because the testimony is sifted by a scholar of incontestable competency.
HUGO A. RENNERT.
PHILADELPHIA, PENN. U.S.A.
San Bernardino of Siena. By A. G. FERRERS HOWELL. With a chapter on S. Bernardino in Art by JULIA CARTWRIGHT (MRS ADY). London: Methuen and Co. 1913. 8vo. xvi + 373pp.
This book tells the story of a great preacher. Soon after the death of S. Francis in 1226 sects aijpse within the Franciscan order. Dante (Par. xii. 124) blames equally Ubertino of Casale, the leader of the Zealots or Spiritual Franciscans, and Matthew of Acquasparta, the leader of the Conventuals or laxer party. Mr Howell traces the history of the dispute through the troubled days of the Avignonese popes and the great schism. S. Bernardino was born in 1380, and was therefore ' in the middle of life's journey' when that picturesque condottiere Pope John XXIII was deposed by the Council of Constance in 1415. When the Saint died in 1444 a reformation of the Franciscans had been effected by his piety and influence, and a revival of religion had taken place throughout Italy.
In the north of Europe at this time religion found mystical expres- sion in the products of the cloister, such as the Imitatio Christi, while
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in the south there were great popular preachers who produced a mighty if transient impression. San Bernardino journeyed from city to city, and wherever he went crowds thronged to listen to him. His attractive saintly personality and winning eloquence stirred and swayed his hearers. Talami or bonfires of vanities were set up as they were fifty years later in Savonarola's time. Long-standing feuds were healed and enemies reconciled. His sermons must have been most interesting to listen to. The framework of the sermon had been most carefully thought out, articulated and written down. He preached with intense earnestness. Religion was to him the one thing which mattered; and he enforced its lessons in direct practical appeal.
A representation of the sacred monogram which he loved to display may still be seen, emblazoned in bronze on a blue ground, -on the topmost story of the Palazzo Pubblico overlooking the Piazza del Campo, in which the saint so often preached, at Siena.
The beautiful little oratory dedicated to him at Perugia and the series of frescoes of incidents in his life painted by Pinturicchio in S. Maria in Aracoeli, in Rome, are well known. These and many other memorials are well described by Mrs Ady, whose chapter on S. Bernardino in Art adds much to the value of this scholarly and interesting book.
Mr Howell's study has been a labour of love, and S. Bernardino deserves all the care which has been bestowed upon him.
The saint's humility, attractiveness and gaiety remind one of S. Francis, and by bringing back the Franciscan order two hundred years after the founder's death to .their early ideals, he became the second founder of the Friars Minor,
JOHN T. MITCHELL.
WAVERTREE, LIVERPOOL.
Shaftesburys Einfluss auf Chr. M. Wieland. Mit einer Einleitung uber den Einfluss Shaftesbarys auf die deutsche Literatur bis 1760. Von HERBERT GRUDZINSKI. (Breslauer Beitrdge zur Literaturgeschichte, xxxiv.) Stuttgart : J. B. Metzler.* 1913. 8vo. xii +143 pp.
Wieland and Shaftesbury. By CHARLES ELSON. (Columbia University Germanic Studies.) New York: Columbia University Press. 1913. 8vo. xii + 143 pp.
Wieland occupies a peculiar position among the German classical poets in so far as he has been almost more extensively ' written round ' than any of his contemporaries, but has not yet been made the theme of a biography worthy of the name. His life and works are a favourite hunting-ground for the young ' doctorand,' and we are liberally, perhaps over-liberally, supplied with studies on Wieland's relations to this writer and to that, and on special aspects of his life. Strange to say, however, no one, until quite recently, has thought of providing us with a monograph
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on his relations to Shaftesbury, all the stranger with Goethe's famous apophthegm staring us in the face that Wieland was the ' twin-brother ' of the English thinker. The two dissertations before us were written independently of each other, and are to a certain extent supplementary. The German author casts his net wider and introduces his special investigation with a sketch of Shaftesbury's influence in Germany before 1760; the American restricts himself more strictly to his theme. Dr Grudzinski is, no doubt, right, when he states that the influence of Shaftesbury on English literature has not yet been estimated at its full value ; but his own indications as to where this influence is to be sought, do not carry us any farther than we were before ; and his section on Shaftesbury's successors in England is exceedingly meagre. The strength of his work lies in his wide and just survey of Shaftesbury's influence in Germany. He shows how the anti- metaphysical strain in Shaftesbury's thought blended with the general tendencies of the ' Auf klarung ' and prepared the way for new developments ; and, while realising the difficulties of keeping apart the philosophy of Leibniz and Shaftesbury, he clearly sees that it was just in the fusion of these two systems that the basis was obtained on which the whole fabric of 'humane classicism' in Germany was erected. The work of Goethe and Schiller would have been impossible, or, let us say, much more Latin in character, without that striving towards a harmony between life and poetry which came direct from the English philosopher ; Schiller's plea for the perfectibility of the race through the instrument of the beautiful, a plea set up in contrast to the harsher ideals of the Kantian philosophy, is unthinkable without Shaftesbury.
In matters of detail Dr Grudzinski has much to say that is valuable ; he puts old facts in a new light and gives a truer picture of the precise character of Shaftesbury's influence in Germany. He denies, for instance, that that influence is to be found in the works of the Swiss critics published in the early forties ; and we might suggest that such points of contact as have been shown to exist, might be explained by reference to older Italian aesthetic ideas, which, if we are not mistaken, have also- left their traces on Shaftesbury's speculation. On the other hand, Dr Grudzinski lays more stress than has hitherto been done on the influence of Shaftesbury on Gellert.
We miss in Dr Elson's discussion of general matters the sense for proportional values which we have praised in the German dissertation ; and this, notwithstanding the fact that, in his general account of Shaftesbury's philosophy, he relies — for a nori- German writer we cannot but add unduly — on German sources of information. He fails, it seems to us, to lay sufficient emphasis on just those aspects of Shaftesbury's thought — his aesthetic theory, for instance, and the specific questions involved in the term 'enthusiasm' — which played so large a rdle in Germany. On the other hand, Dr Elson gives us a much more detailed and careful investigation than Dr Grudzinski into the data illustrating the English philosopher's influence on Wieland ; his work seems to us in this respect well-nigh exhaustive, and it is marked by discrimination
M. L. R. IX. -28
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and good taste ; the indebtedness of Wieland to Shaftesbury is here, we feel, settled once and for all. Wieland, such are the general conclusions to which we are brought, probably came under Shaftesbury 's influence as early as 1752 ; from 1755 onwards that influence became a factor of the first importance in his life ; and 1758 was the year of his most intensive preoccupation with the English philosopher. It was to Shaftesbury more than to any other force that was due that great crisis in Wieland's spiritual life which induced him, towards the end of the fifties, to forsake the 'atherischen Spharen' for more earthly paths.
J. G. ROBERTSON. LONDON.
West-Eastern Divan. By JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. In Twelve Books. Translated by EDWARD DOWDEN. London : J. M. Dent and Sons. 1914. 8vo. xvi + 195 pp.
Wilhelm Meisters Theatrical Mission. By JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE. Translated by GREGORY A. PAGE. With Introduction by HARRY MAYNC. London : William Heinemann. 1913. 8vo. xxxiv + 342 pp.
Dowden's version of Goethe's Divan is remarkably good. It reveals what is a rather rare combination in English translations, accurate German scholarship, scrupulous fidelity to the original and great metrical skill. The ingenuity with which he imitates a metrical form and com- pletes a complicated system of rhymes without having recourse to the usual grotesque padding, paraphrasing or omission, excites a feeling of admiration, if not of envy. The metre is not always exactly the same as in Goethe, but the content and frequently, too, the flavour of the original are skilfully transmitted. There are few slips. Gebannt in I, 17 means ' spellbound/ not ' exiled.' ' Destructions ' in v, 5 is a misprint for 'distinctions ' probably, and ' all-lessening ' in vni, 51 for ' all- lessoning.' Only the difficult passage in xn, 12 is wrongly rendered :
Derm ein Pfeiler, durchgegraben, Fiihrt zu scharfbenarnsten Schatzen,
* For a pillar, all-engraven, points to treasure that lies hidden.' On the other hand, translations like ill, 3 and vii, 10 are well-nigh perfect. In the Poems, a collateral volume, we find renderings of some of Goethe's early pieces, but, as Mrs Dowden points out in the Introduction, which is a model of grace and literary taste, they were never corrected by the author. ' Name ' on p. 231 should probably be ' Home.' These transla- tions were well worth publishing. They are of the few that may be recommended to the student or the general public.
In a prose translation the task is much easier, yet we have little reason to boast of our renderings of the German classics. Page's book is characteristic. There are many happy translations, the work is not bad, but we feel that it might have been so much better. The misprint,
Reviews 427
in two places, of the name of a well-known German professor, who con- tributes the Introduction, is a case in point. In the text, again, there are many errors, which a competent reviser would have noted at once. Ein paar Kasten (i, 5) does not mean ' two dressers.' Schauspiel (i, 5) is rendered ' tragedy,' though called eine Komodie a few lines back. Krahen are not 'cranes,' nor Naturgefilhl 'native feeling.' Englisch, in I, 20, does not mean 'English ' but 'angelic.' There is nothing typically English in a white night-gown. In i, 21 the words was nach seiner bisherigen Bestimmung schmeckte von Buchern und sonst are wrongly rendered, ' whatever, according to his previous opinion, savoured of books and the like.' Sich zu vergleichen (n, 2) means 'to come to an agreement,' not ' to compare each other.' ' Imagery ' (ii, 2) should be ' image.' Eine Fdhrte (ii, 3) cannot mean ' a cart ' — a mistake made by Carlyle too — but ' one track ' or ' one scent.' Mit dem Rocken (ii, 3) means ' with the distaff,' not ' with her skirt.' The note on p. 89 is inept, as Schreibtafel here means ' note-book,' as might be expected, certainly not ' writing-desk.' In III, 8 : ' while the Directress declared ' should be ' while he declared to the Directress.' ' On her stool ' (TV, 9) should be ' close to his chair.' ' The smallest thing that happens can be seen ' (iv, 9) should read, ' Very little that happens.' ' With our hero ' (iv, 12) should be ' against our hero.' Thus the sense is perverted right and left. In V, 3, 'But it was not much longer' is just the reverse of es wdhrte noch lange and der ihr nicht passte (vi, 1) becomes ' which suited her well.' ' Gottinger students ' is not English, and the German idiom, ' What were not the Germans ! ' sounds equally harsh. These errors — and more might be added — must be noted with regret, for the Ur-meister is of great interest, even to those who read Goethe only in translations. The philological interest of the original, as an example of Goethe's early prose style, naturally disappears. But much remains. There are more detailed reminiscences of Goethe's youth and a fuller account of his attitude towards the eighteenth century drama, especially of his own earlier efforts in this field. The discussion of Corneille's discourse on ' The Three Unities ' is especially interesting ; so, too, the enquiry into the origin of our pleasure in the drama. The stages in the growth of the novel — and the pruning too — are now clearly revealed, and the list of Goethe's characters is increased by two.
JOHN LEES. ABERDEEN.
Phonetic Spelling. A Proposed Universal Alphabet for the rendering of English, French, German and all other Forms of Speech. By Sir HARRY JOHNSTON. Cambridge : University Press. 1913. 8vo. pp. vi + 92.
The object of the alphabet explained in this book is twofold. It is an attempt to solve the immediate practical problem of the transcrip- tion of African and other languages for the explorer and the missionary,
28—2
428 Reviews
and to devise a phonetic notation which may in time be adopted uni- versally. The two problems seem to be essentially different and to call for separate treatment. It is obvious that many things which would be admitted into a notation which is to be mainly utilitarian and practical would be undesirable in the more ambitious scheme of a universal script, and conversely that a universal alphabet would be too elaborate for the special purpose in question.
Another fact that will lessen the value of this alphabet is that it is based on the standard forms of each particular language, and dis- regards dialectal variations to a very large extent. One of the most fruitful uses to which a phonetic notation can be put is to record the facts of dialect speech, and a system which does not provide the means to do this will hardly commend itself for general use to the philologist.
The notation that the author advocates seems to offend against phonetic principles in several ways. In the specimen on p. 49 I find the following points : (1) The same symbol (d) is used for two different sounds in ' fiksd,' fixed and ' stsendad,' standard. (2) Double letters are retained in certain words to represent a single sound, in other cases a single letter is used. Compare 'lettoz,' letters, 'spellin,' spelling, ' pozessez,' possesses and ' wil,' will. (3) The sound which in the speech of most people is the 'unstressed' vowel 8 is represented in three different ways. First, the symbol o is used in the words 'pyuoli/ purely, 'lettoz/ letters, 'yib'z,' years. This is the same symbol as the author uses in the words ' fost,' first, ' wodz,' words. Secondly, certain words have the symbol a which is used for the vowel in ' sam/ some, ' wan,' one, ' ap,' up. Examples are ' akyut,' acute, ' andar,' under, ' stsendad,' standard. Thirdly, a number of words retain their original vowel, e.g. ' sistem,' system, '-iven,' even, ' kaersektor,' character, ' piriod,' period. This threefold representation does not seem to correspond to any real distinction in speech.
It is to be feared that the alphabet will not achieve the purpose of its author. At the same time we are indebted to him for a welcome contribution to a very important and very practical problem. Not the least important result of the adoption of such an alphabet would be, as the author points out, the immense gain to students of non-European languages in being able to work at such languages in a Latin script. It will be remembered that the late Dr Sweet in his Practical Study of Languages advocates the same thing, and it is time that the fetish of the necessity of studying these languages in their native characters was abandoned. The gain to culture would be very great.
HENRY ALEXANDER.
GLASGOW.
Minor Notices
MINOR NOTICES.
We welcome the publication of a second edition of Professor Sedgefield's edition of Beowulf (Manchester University Press, 1913). Considerable changes have been made, as the result of criticism and of the editor's own experience in using the book in class, and the result is a decided improvement. A considerable part of the intro- duction has been rewritten, with reference partly to recently published books, such as Professor Chadwick's Heroic Age, and a fuller and better account is given especially of the probable origin of the poem and of the historical or legendary subject-matter, together with a sounder criti- cism of the supposed mythical elements. There is here a good deal of matter added, and greater clearness of exposition resulting from rear- rangement. In the text the long vowels and diphthongs have now been marked throughout, and a good many of the conjectural emenda- tions which in the first edition were introduced into the text have now been either discarded or relegated to the notes; as for example in 11. 204, 414, 991, 1107, 1543, 2766. In some instances, however, new emendations are substituted, as 11. 304 and 489, in the latter case, as it seems, without adequate justification, indeed the new and rather startling suggestion which is here introduced into the text is hardly even discussed. The notes have been revised and added to, and in the glossary 'a number of Germanic, especially Gothic, parallel forms have been included.' A summary of the story of Grettir Asmundarson is added now as an appendix ; and this reminds us that the chief thing that we still require in this edition is a fuller treatment of the relation between the Beowulf story and the Scandinavian sagas which either in general or in various details resemble it.
Mr H. D. Austin's thesis, Accredited Citations in Ristoro D'Arezzo's Composizione del Hondo, a Study of Sources (Johns Hopkins University Dissertation, 1911), lays before us the results of long and careful re- searches in a field that has not been too often explored. Many a difficult question has been solved with such scholarly acumen that we look forward to the book on Ristoro's sources, for which the present thesis is a preparation, in the hope that the book will throw light on a wider problem which concerns all students of the later Middle Ages and especially all students of Dante. It is possible that Dante was acquainted with the Composizione, but Dante scholars regard Ristoro not merely as a secondary source for the poet's scientific information, but also as a writer who lived in Dante's time and studied in conditions not widely different from those in which Alighieri was himself.
We learn from this thesis that a number of quotations from Ptolemy, Abu Mansur, Sedulius and possibly even from Aristotle were introduced by Ristoro without any direct knowledge of these authors' works. Such
430 Minor Notices
conclusions justify the attitude of modern scholars who are chary in attributing a wide range of learning to mediaeval writers. Books were scarce and difficult of access ; hence we can never be too careful in admitting that Ristoro or Dante or any other of their contemporaries knew any of even the standard works of their own days. Compilations such as Isidore's Origines, which Mr Austin thinks was probably known to Ristoro, provided students with information and with quotations, and students in the Middle Ages felt no scruples in making use of such compilations without any direct reference to the sources. Its scholarly method, its careful research, and its far-reaching indirect results, lend a special interest to this thesis.
C. F.
Dr J. E. Gillet writes to us from the University of Wisconsin as follows: 'In your issue of January 1914 there appears (pp. 127-131) a review of my study of Aloliere en Angleterre, 1660-1670. Whilst pointing out a few small errors which I admit, the writer ignores the positive features of my study (the conclusion and the appendices excepted !) and, with much quoting of texts, conveys the impression that the work is inaccurate and dishonest. The following statements will bring out the misleading nature of his review.
The reviewer insinuates that I am too reticent as to my authorities. There is not a word in my book which would lead readers to infer that the list of borrowings from Moliere is solely due to my efforts. Every predecessor in the field is mentioned in the preface. Mr Van Laun is given due credit. The amount of consideration due to Mr Kerby or Mr Jellie is a matter of personal opinion. " The truth," says your reviewer, "is that, in many a case, M. Gillet has omitted to acknow- ledge what he necessarily owes to his authorities." There are but three insignificant references to Langbaine in the chapter on An Evening's Love (p. 129). Yet on p. 89 I refer to the very page of Langbaine which your reviewer quotes as a proof of reticence. In my introduction reference is made to Langbaine whom I endeavoured — not to reprint, but — to complete and correct. My success may be tested by turning to what Langbaine, quoted at length by your reviewer, says "with some precision " about An Evening's Love. He mentions Corneille, and two plays of Moliere's, from both of which the following borrowings are given : 1. Les Precieuses Ridicules (no further indication). 2. Le Depit Amoureusc, ii, 6. 3. Ib., i, 2. 4. Ib., iv, 3-4. I restrict and specify 1, complete 4 and increase the list by two borrowings from Le Depit Amoureux. I correct Van Laun's, Scott's and Jellie's statements with regard to this play, and refer to traces in four other plays of Moliere's. I again correct Langbaine's reference to Le Depit Amoureux, iv, 4. He mentions Shakespeare ; I acknowledge it (p. 89, n. 1) and point out the trace, besides indicating a reminiscence from Ben Jonson's Epicoene. Langbaine mentions Petronius, and this is acknowledged on p. 89, n. 10. I mention Mile, de Scudery and give Mrs Pepys due
Minor Notices
431
credit for having also noticed the likeness between the play and Ibrahim. So much for An Evening's Love. Your reviewer's remarks about Sir Martin Mar-all could be met in the same way. I admit an error in charging Langbaine with a wrong reference to The Fine Com- panion (p. 60, n. 3) ; but as the right one is given, this may appear pardonable. Your reviewer proceeds to cite what he sneeringly calls " one more instance of first-hand knowledge and accurate scholarship.'" The sentence about Ravenscroft I admit to be ambiguous, but I fail to see why the reviewer should imply that the statement was borrowed from Van Laun without acknowledgment. The Toiler and Cunning- ham's Nell Gwyn, quoted by me, are surely sufficient authority. Even reviewers are not infallible. Your reviewer charges me with " an error of judgment " "tacked on to an error of fact" (p. 130) in connection with my statement that the Royal Society, a few years after its inception, lost its touch with literature and became strictly scientific (p. 15). Where is the error of judgment ? Where the error of fact ? Can it be that your reviewer confuses the Royal Society with the Royal Society of Literature ? I maintain my claim to have verified and completed the accounts given of the subject by previous scholars ; and to have synthetized, restricted, ignored or (in almost every case, silently) cor- rected hundreds of statements. The foot-notes would have swamped the text, had I pointed out every error of commission (and especially of omission) to be found in all my predecessors. Your reviewer calls me a failure in criticism, but his gratuitous assertion does not amount to proof. I waive his accusation of cruelty to the language ; were it true, the Journal des Debats would scarcely have filled a long and apprecia- tive feuilleton (September 22, 1913) with passages almost paraphrased from my work. Nor would the Royal Academy of Belgium have published it. On the whole, this high-handed piece of criticism (or shall I say attack ?) brings out less than half a dozen minor slips1. I am glad that they have been pointed out, however ungraciously ; they are usually mentioned as a mere appendix to real criticism. Even your reviewer admits that the conclusions of the work are sound, the appen- dices " indispensable." Why, then, should he take advantage of a few small mistakes to draw sweeping conclusions about author and work, and place them both in a false light ? I have myself had occasion to review the book on Moliere in England which preceded mine (e.g., Contemporary Review, Literary Supplement, March, 1913) and to point out in it a number of slips ; but I should be sorry indeed had those shortcomings tempted me to adopt the acid and overweening tone of your reviewer.'
1 The text referred to on p. 49 was cut out after the reference had been printed ; on p. 225, n. 1, after ' anglais ' the words 'et public ' were accidentally omitted ; on p. 40 the fact that I had just stated Flecknoe's nationality led me to write ' irlandais ' instead of ' anglais.'
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OCTOBER, 1914 NUMBER 4
NOTES ON SHELLEY'S 'TRIUMPH OF LIFE.'
The Triumph of Life, Shelley's last long poem, was left unfinished, and what was written was evidently left unrevised. The manuscript was no doubt difficult to decipher, and Mrs Shelley's version of it has been changed and, for the most part, improved by re-examination of the MS. (now apparently lost) and by conjectural emendation. But, apart from doubts as to the text, the fragment, intensely interesting as the last presentation of Shelley's way of regarding life, is not, as a whole, quite easy to understand ; and it also contains passages the meaning of which is, at least at first, obscure. The following notes deal with some of these passages, but I must first say something on two special influ- ences visible in the poem. Unless notice is given, I quote the Oxford edition of Shelley's poems (Hutchinson's text). I refer to the poem as T. L., or, where no doubt could arise, give merely the number of the line referred to.
I. Influences. Dowden long ago pointed out that the immediate suggestion of the poem is to be found in Petrarch's Trionji. These form a series of six poems in terza rima, describing in turn the triumph of Love over man, especially in his youth ; the triumph of Chastity over Love ; that of Death over all mortality; that of Fame over Death ; that of Time over Fame; and that of Divinity over Time. Shelley owes little to the last five of the Trionfi, but a good deal to the first, as a few words will show. Here Petrarch, lying in early morning on the grass in a solitary place, and wearied with sad thoughts of the past, falls asleep. In his sleep he sees a great light, and within this light four white coursers drawing a car, in which sits Love, like a conqueror in a Roman triumph. Around the car he sees innumerable mortals, dead and alive ; and one o'f them, a friend who recognizes him, points out and describes to him the most famous of the victims. Here we have in outline the main scheme of Shelley's fragment. A number of
M. L. R. ix. 29
442 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life'
\
minor coincidences may also be traced1 ; but my business is not with these, nor indeed with the Trionfi at all, but with another 'source,' which has not, I believe, been noticed, which may itself have suggested the idea of the Trionfi, and which contributed, I think, independently to The Triumph of Life.
The style in parts of this poem is evidently influenced by that of Dante, much more so than by the style of Petrarch, and Dante is alluded to in lines 471 ff. (475, should run 'In words of hate and awe the wondrous story ' : see Locock's edition). But something more than this influence comes from Dante. Shelley,' it will be remembered, translated part of Canto xxviii of the Purgatorio. There we learn that the poet, having reached the ' divine forest ' of the Earthly Paradise, leaves the mountain-side to explore it. The soil exhales fragrant odours, the boughs quiver in the sweet breeze, the leaves murmur, and the birds welcome the early morn with their songs. Dante comes to a stream, and stays his steps to admire the flowers on the opposite bank ; and on this bank there suddenly appears to him,
si com' egli appare Subitamente cosa che disvia Per maraviglia tutt' altro pensare,
a lady (Matilda), who is moving along the bank, singing and gathering flowers.
Now this is almost precisely the scenery amidst which Rousseau, in the Triumph of Life, sees, in the morn of life and of the day, a Shape which glides along a stream in a forest — a Shape whose moving feet
seemed as they moved to blot The thoughts of him who gazed on them.
1 I owe almost all the following notes to the kindness of Miss Stawell, who has a paper on The Triumph of Life in the fifth volume of English Association Essays and Studies, 1914, (1) Cf. the friend's divination of Petrarch's feelings and future (T. d'Amore, i, 58 ff.) with T. L. 302 ff. and perhaps 327 ff. (2) Cf. ib. 91, the conquerors conquered, with T. L. 235. (3) Cf. ib. iv, 94-5, the sound of the horses' wings, with T. L. 97-8. (4) Cf. T. d.Morte, i, 13-16, the fewness of Laura's companions untouched by the power of Love, with T. L. 128. (5) Cf. ib. 39, night before evening, with T. L. 214-15, 485-fi. (6) Cf. ib. 54, and ii, 22, 28, 34, the worthlessness and delusiveness of life, with the drift of T. L. (7) Cf. ib. 83-4, 'gems,' 'sceptres,' 'crowns,3 'mitres,' with T. L. 132-3, 210. (8) Cf. ib. 91-2, the vain toil of life, with T. L. 66. (9) Cf. ib. ii, 14, 'pubblico viaggio,' with T. L. 43. (10) Cf. T. d. Fama, the famous conquerors, rulers, poets, writers, thinkers, •with the similar division of the captives in T. L. (11) Cf. ib. ii, 11-12, Alexander over- running the world from Pella to India, with T. L. 263-5. (12) Cf. ib. 15, opportunity and glory, with T. L. 219-24. (13) Cf. ib. 85 ff. , Petrarch almost weary of watching, with T. L. 231-2. (14) Cf. ib. iii, 106 ff., the great thinkers who went wrong, with T. L. 211- 15. (15) Cf. T. d. Tempo, the opening, with the cancelled opening of T. L. (16) Cf. ib. 32 ff., the extreme swiftness of the sun, with T. L. 1 ff. (17) Cf. T. d. Divin. 1-81, Time swallowed up in Eternity; and especially 28-9, the three parts of Time reduced to one only, which no longer moves; with T. L. 99-105, where the four faces may represent past, present, future, and eternity. (18) Cf. ib. 41, the sun's path through the Zodiac directing the labours of men, with T. L. 15-20. (19) Cf. ib. 43, 46, 82, 86, 'happy he who,' etc., with T. L. 547 (one of some additional lines, published only in Locock's edition).
A. C. BRADLEY
443
And the stream in Dante is Lethe, and in Shelley it sings a ' Lethean song.' And the place, in Shelley, is close to that ' orient cavern ' which is evidently an image of birth, while in Dante it is
questo loco eletto All 'umana natura per suo nido.
This is not all. In the next Canto of the Purgatorio we learn that, while the lady and Dante are moving slowly along the opposite banks of the stream, suddenly a lustrous light flashes through the forest, like lightning except that it continues and grows brighter. And then there enters the Triumphal Car of the Church. Just so in Shelley's poem, after Rousseau has questioned the Shape (as Dante had questioned Matilda), suddenly there ' bursts ' on his sight the glare of the car of Life, whose coursers (we know from the description earlier in the poem) are lost in ' thick lightenings.'
Naturally, there is no likeness in the meanings of Matilda and of the ' Shape,' and little likeness in the two cars ; but it seems certain that, in the points noted above, Shelley's imagination has been influenced by these Cantos of the Purgatorio, and some minor points may be briefly noticed, in which the same influence may be surmised. (1) Cf. the ' Janus- visaged ' charioteer, who, if his eyes were not banded, would see all that is, has been, or will be done (T. L. 104), with the three-eyed attendant in Purg. xxix, 132 (Prudence, who sees past, present and future). (2) Cf. the reference to Iris in Rousseau's vision (T. L. 356) with Purg. xxix, 77 and xxi, 50. (3) Cf. the reflections in water (T. L. 345 ff.) with Purg. xxix, 67-9, xxxi, 121. (4) Cf. the metaphor of the brain being stamped (T. L. 405 ff.) with Purg. xxxiii, 79-81. (5) Cf. the emotional effect of the repetition of ' Virgilio ' in Purg. xxx, 49 ff. with that of 'Me' in T. L. 461 ff, lines which also recall Dante's remorse under the reproaches of Beatrice (xxxi). (6) Cf. the question 'And what is this ? ' (T. L. 177) with ' Che cosa e questa ? ' in Purg. xxix, 21. (7) The fact that Shelley sees his vision at dawn may possibly be due to Purg. ix, 13 ff. and xxvii, 92 f. (8) Possibly Purg. xxxiii, 53-4 may give a hint as to the further course of the Triumph of Life, though I do not think this very probable. (9) Cf. 315-6 with Purg. xxviii, 25-8. (10) Cf. 210 with Purg. xxvii, 142. (11) Cf. 32 with Purg. xxxii, 71.
II. The Introduction (1-40). The poem begins,
Swift as a spirit hastening to his task
Of glory and of good, the Sun sprang forth
Rejoicing in his splendour,
29—2
444 Notes on Shelley's 'Triumph of Life
and (15 ff.) Shelley tells how he saw everything,
continent,
Isle, ocean, and all things that in them wear The form and character of mortal mould, Rise as the Sun their father rose, to bear Their portion of the toil, which he of old Took as his own, and then imposed on them.
In the Notes on Passages in Shelley printed in this Review (Oct. 1905) I called attention to the likeness of these lines to the quatrain in The Boat on the Serchio which follows a description of sunrise :
All rose to do the task He set to each,
Who shaped us to his ends and not our own ;
The million rose to learn, and one to teach What none yet ever knew or can be known1.
In these passages the sun is the representative of. or for the moment is identified with, the ultimate good, or source of all good, or (as Shelley occasionally calls it) God ; and it is the opposite of that which is called in this poem ' Life.' Hence the glare of the car, or of Life, obscures or dims the sun (77, 148). The elect spirits who leave Life while they are still young fly back to their 'native noon' (131 : cf. Hellas, 223). The soul of Rousseau was ' lit ' by a ' spark ' from ' Heaven ' (201). Medieval theology made a 'shadow' between man and 'God,' or an eclipse of the ' true sun ' (289 ff.). The Shape that appears to Rousseau is ' all light/ appears in the sun's reflection on water, wanes in the glare of the car, is a ' light of Heaven ' (348 ff., 412, 429). (I may note in passing that, in spite of the difference of tone in the two poems, there is a strong like- ness between this Shape and the Witch of Atlas.)
The metaphor by which God, or any representative of God or the supreme good, is identified with the sun, is, of course, extremely common. Shelley's development of it is clearly influenced by two of his favourite authors, Plato (especially in the famous passage, Rep. vi, 508 f.), and Dante. Without enlarging on the general influence of the latter, who several times speaks of God as the sun, I will point out two examples in this Introduction.
(1) Shelley writes of the sun as the ' father ' of ' all things that wear the form and character of mortal mould'; and Dante (Par. xxii, 116) had described the sun as
Quegli ch' & padre d' ogni mortal vita.
1 ' All' here does not mean merely all men. I take « one ' in the third line to be the same as « He,' the One contrasted with the Many in Adonais and here represented by the sun. The last line recalls 'the Power unknown' of the Ode to Liberty, xvi. I cannot go into the difficulties raised by Shelley's ideas or language.
A. C. BRADLEY 445
(2) Shelley (22) speaks of ' the stars that gem the cone of night.' The cone of night is the conical shadow which the earth casts into the sky. Cf. Prom. Unb. iv, 444,
I spin beneath my pyramid of night, Which points into the heavens:
Epip. 228, ' the dreary cone of our life's shade ' ; Adon. xl, ' He has outsoared the shadow of our night ' ; Hellas, 943, ' pyramid.' I do not think the idea appears before Prom, iv (end of 1819). Shelley might have got it from Paradise Lost, iv, 776, or, I suppose, from an account of the Ptolemaic astronomy, but he would have been struck at once by the words (Par. ix, 118),
Da questo cielo, in cui 1' ombra s' appunta Che il vostro mondo face. -s.
Cf. ' s' appunta ' with the quotation from Prometheus above. ' Questo cielo' is the Third Heaven, that of Venus, which, according to the astronomy followed by Dante, is the farthest point reached by the shadow of the earth ; and it is ' the sphere whose light is melody to lovers ' (T. L. 479) where however the immediate reference is to the first Canzone of the Convivio. Shelley translated this Canzone, and it is interesting to notice that he misinterprets it in a manner which shows that he cannot have read Dante's own interpretation.
III. The Charioteer.
The coming of the car in which the conqueror Life sits (7.4 ff.) is heralded by ' a cold glare, intenser than the noon, But icy cold/ which obscures the sun with blinding light. The winged coursers which draw it are 'lost in thick lightenings.' It is guided by a ' Janus-visaged Shadow,' with four faces. The next lines, as they appeared in most1 of the texts until 1870 (Rossetti's first edition), run thus:
All the four faces of that charioteer Had their eyes banded ; little profit brings Speed in the van and blindness in the rear, Nor then avail the beams that quench the sun Or that with banded eyes could pierce the sphere Of all that is, has been, or will be done; So ill was the car guided — but it past With solemn speed majestically on.
Here the word ' that,' in 1. 5 of the quotation, must apparently be taken
as a relative referring, like ' that ' in 1. 4, to the ' beams ' in 1. 4. But
this, in Rossetti's judgment, yields no sense. He therefore put a colon
1 In one at least there is a comma at the end of 1. 4 of the quotation.
446 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life'
at the end of 1. 4, and in 1. 5 printed ' that ' in italics. The meaning would then be as follows : The speed of the coursers in front is rendered almost useless by the blindness of the charioteer behind them ; and in this state of things the glare of the chariot avails little ; though, if the eyes of the charioteer were not banded, he could see everything done in the past and future as well as the present. 'Or that with banded eyes' would mean, ' If matters were otherwise, that being whose eyes are banded.'
Rossetti's interpretation has been adopted by almost all editors since 1870. But Mr Locock, in his recent valuable edition, has rejected it and has offered another: 'The beams which quench the sun [the keen eyes of the charioteer], and which, even though the eyes are banded, could pierce the sphere, etc., are of no avail for guiding the car. Destiny may know the past, the present, and the future, but cannot guide the course of Life in accordance with his knowledge.' Mr Locock adds : ' the repetition of " banded " is evidently weak. Possibly it is a corruption of some such word as " bared." '
This interpretation, if I understand it rightly, appears to me well- nigh impossible. (1) The lines leave, surely, the strongest impression that Shelley is insisting on the blindness of the charioteer, and not on any unmentioned disability of his ; and otherwise it is difficult to see why he should refer to the blindness at all. (2) The interpretation not only ignores the words ' Nor then,' but seems to be quite incom- patible with them. ' Nor then ' surely means ' nor, under this condition of speed in the coursers and blindness in their driver,' i.e. in effect, ' nor, when the driver's eyes are bandaged ' ; and it is nonsense to say, * nor, when his eyes are bandaged, can these same eyes, which can see through the bandages, be of any use.' (3) Every reader naturally takes the glare that obscures the sun (77) to be the same as, or to proceed from, 'the beams that quench the sun' (102), beams which however, on Mr Locock's interpretation, are, or come from, the eyes of the charioteer. Yet Shelley follows up the mention of the 'glare' by a reference to the 'rushing splendour' of the chariot', and when later (148, 412, 434, 442, 533) he refers to the glare, he attributes it once, it is true, to Life herself, but twice to the car, and never to the charioteer, to whom indeed he does not allude again at all. Everything, it seems to me, combines to show that the glare and the beams are the same, and that neither comes from the bandaged eyes of the charioteer.
It is perhaps worth while to remark that, if we adopted some such word as ' bared ' instead of ' banded,' it would be possible to wring the
A. C. BRADLEY 447
following sense out of the lines without adopting Rossetti's change of construction : ' The charioteer being blind, there is little use in that glare of the car which quenches the sun, and which, if his eyes were bare, could reveal to him all that is, has been, or will be done.' But I am sure that Mr Locock would at once rightly set aside such a way of taking ' with bared eyes,' not to speak of the trouble as to 'Or.'
His reason for rejecting Rossetti's emendation is his inability to think that the expression 'that with banded eyes' could have been used by Shelley for ' that charioteer with banded eyes.' And I share his feeling on this point so far that until lately I have hesitated to accept the emendation. But I suggest that Shelley here, as so often in this poem, is influenced by Dante. Dante will wjite ' quel di Gallura,' 'quel di Beccaria,' 'quel da Este,' 'quel da Pisa,' 'quel dalle chiavi ' (see Blanc's Vocabolario)1. Though there appears to be no in- stance of ' quel ' with ' con ' after it, it seems not unlikely that Shelley, under this influence, may have ventured on the queer phrase ' that with banded eyes.' And he may have preferred it to the more English phrase ' he with banded eyes ' because he wished to avoid the ascription of sex to this mysterious being.
That the charioteer is Destiny or Necessity seems almost certain from Hellas, 711, 'The world's eyeless charioteer, Destiny'; Prologue to Hellas, 121, 'Art thou eyeless like old Destiny.' Cf. 'Necessity, whose sightless strength,' Revolt of Islam, ix, xxvii. It should be noticed that, in the passages referred to, Destiny is called ' eyeless ' by a chorus of women who have the misfortune to be Christians, and by Satan, who also (except in Milton) is regarded by Shelley with disap- proval ; whereas in the Triumph, speaking in his own person, Shelley says that Destiny is far from eyeless, though his eyes are banded ; and when he wrote Queen Mob, some ten years before — a poem in which 'destiny' is used only in the sense of the end to which a being is destined — he identified Necessity with ' the universal Spirit ' or ' Spirit of Nature,' and declared that nothing in the universe was unrecog- nized or unforeseen by it (vi, 189, 197-8). I am not suggesting that the Charioteer is 'the universal Spirit,' but am calling attention to material which must be considered in any attempt to interpret him and the meaning of his all-seeing eyes and of their bandages.
1 Miss Stawell has pointed out to me that in the Trionfi Petrarch has the same usage : T. della Fama, ii, 151, 'quel di Luria' ; iii, 53, 'quel d'Arpino'; T. del Tempo, i, 116, quel di fuori.'
448 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life'
IV. 138 ff. The description of the dancers recalls, in some respects, Shelley's description of a dance of Maenads sculptured in relief on the pedestal of a statue of Minerva in the Gallery of Florence : ' Nothing can be conceived more wild and terrible than their [the ?] gestures, touching, as they do, the verge of distortion, into which their fine limbs
and lovely forms are thrown The tremendous spirit of superstition,
aided by drunkenness, producing something beyond insanity, seems to have caught them in its whirlwinds [cf. 144], and to bear them over the earth, as the rapid volutions of a tempest have the ever-changing trunk of a waterspout.... The hair, loose and floating, seems caught in the tempest of their own tumultuous motion [cf. 147] ; their heads are thrown back, leaning with a strange delirium upon their necks, and looking up to heaven, whilst they totter and stumble even in the energy of their tempestuous dance' (Essays and Letters, ed. 1852, ii, 215-16). The 'tremendous spirit' in the present passage seems to be mainly that of sexual excitement. Cf. the meeting and dissolution of two clouds in a thunderstorm with the ' electric poison ' of Epip. 259. And cf. 137, which must refer, not to the people first seen by the poet (44-73), but to those he is going on to describe in 138-64.
V. 161-4.
Yet ere I can say where — the chariot hath Passed over them — nor other trace I find But as of foam after the ocean's wrath Is spent upon the desert shore.
The words ' ere I can say where ' appear so pointless that Mr Locock conjectures "Ware' for 'where.' MostYeaders probably will reject this at once on instinct ; and it is also open to the objection that, if ' where ' was Mrs Shelley's correction of the ' ' Ware ' of the MS., the latter would hardly have escaped Mr Garnett's eye. But, if we reject ''Ware' (as I must), we ought to thank Mr Locock for insisting on the difficulty he attempts to meet. I can only suggest that ' ere I can say where ' developes the meaning of the apparently otiose preceding words, ' nor is the desolation single,' while its own meaning is developed by the words that follow it. Those who fall fall so thickly that, after they are crushed, they form a line as unbroken as that of the foam left by a receding wave; and, they falling thus, and the chariot passing over them so quickly, the spectator cannot, as they are being crushed, dis- tinguish the several points at which they are crushed. (If Shelley were as popular as Shakespeare some commentator, English or foreign, would long ago have discovered that 'where' ought to be 'Whoa!" I hope
A. C, BRADLEY 449
I need not add that this remark does not glance in the smallest degree at Mr Locock, whose work I heartily admire.)
VI 254-9.
All that is mortal of great Plato there Expiates the joy and woe his master knew not; The star that ruled his doom was far too fair, And life, where long that flower of Heaven grew not, Conquered that heart by love, which gold, or pain, Or age, or sloth, or slavery could subdue not.
These lines come in the poem later than those dealt with in my next note, but are taken first for a reason which will appear there.
Plato, or his phantom (253), is one of the captives chained to the car, and so distinguished from the crowds which precede,, surround, and follow it ; the primary and most obvious distinction being one between the famous victims, who are unforgotten, and those, the immense majority, who, in Milton's words,
Grow up and perish, as the summer-fly, Heads without name, no more remember'd.
Besides these two classes there are * the sacred few ' who were never conquered by Life and therefore do not appear in the pageant. Of these Socrates is one.
This being so, the main meaning of the lines is clear. Plato, on earth, experienced a joy and woe depriving him of that complete self- mastery which Socrates possessed ; and this joy and woe arose from love. Love was the one lure by which Life succeeded in enchaining Plato. Shelley would surmise this from his reading of the Phaedrus and the Symposium, which latter dialogue was translated by him and contains the evidence of Socrates' self-control in love.
But what is the meaning of the words ' where long that flower of Heaven grew not ' ? What is this flower of heaven which did not grow long in life, i.e. on earth ? It seems at first impossible that it should be the ' star ' of the preceding line, the star of love ; and certainly im- possible that it should be Plato himself, whose ' age ' is mentioned two lines after. This question, until lately, neither I nor anyone whom I consulted could answer, and I will not trouble the reader with our struggles, since the explanation now appears to me perfectly simple and certain.
' Aster ' in Greek means ' star.' ' Aster ' in English (and in Greek) is the name of a flower. ' Aster ' was the name of the youth of whom Plato, according to a probably baseless tradition, was enamoured. And
450 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life'
this youth, as Shelley (for a reason to be mentioned) assumed, died young. The interpretation which follows is obvious.
It would be confirmed, if it needed confirmation, by the fact that Shelley translated two epigrams attributed by the same tradition to Plato, and supposed to be addressed to Aster. The first formed the motto to Adonais, and the translation was published by Mrs Shelley under the title To Stella:
Thou wert the morning star among the living,
Ere thy fair light had fled : Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving
New splendour to the dead.
The 'flower of heaven,' therefore, did not 'grow long' in 'life.' The other epigram is translated in Revolt of Islam, IX, xxxvi :
4 Fair star of life and love,' I cried, ' my soul's delight,
Why lookest thou on the crystalline skies ? O, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night, Which gazes on thee with its thousand eyes.3
In both translations, it will be noticed, Shelley introduces the epithet ' fair,' which reappears in the lines from T. L.
The Aster story, and the epigrams, are given in Diogenes Laertius (iii, 29), a writer whose name appears in Mrs Shelley's list of authors read by her husband in 1814-151.
VII. 239-42.
For in the battle Life and they did wage, She remained conqueror. I was overcome By my own heart alone, which neither age, Nor tears, nor infamy, nor now the tomb Could temper to its object.
Rousseau, who is speaking, and who is not one of the captives chained to the car, is contrasting himself with certain captives contem- porary, or nearly so, with himself. He cannot mean that he fought with Life and ' remained conqueror ' ; for he is following the car and is being hurried by the conqueror he knows not where (304). But to discuss the whole meaning of the lines would be to discuss the scheme and signifi- cance of the whole poem. I wish to isolate, so far as possible, the small question of the relative clause beginning ' which neither age/
Shelley was fond of the verb ' temper,' and increasingly so towards the end of his life, the increase being probably due to the influence of
1 Miss Stawell has suggested to me that Shelley may have used the phrase ' flower of heaven ' not, or not only, because he thought of the flower called aster, but from a recol- lection of ^UTOV ovpdvLov in Timaeus 80 A, where Plato speaks of man as ' a heavenly plant, not an earthly.' The word ' slavery,' as she also reminds me, refers to the tradition that Dionysius had Plato sold into slavery.
A. C. BRADLEY
451
Italian poetry (the verb appears about ten times in the Commedia, e.g. Purg. xxviii, 3, translated by Shelley ; in Petrarch, e.g. T. d. Morte, ii, 90 ; and, I may add, in some verses by Emilia Viviani, Dowden, ii, 379). Where he uses ' temper to,' the meaning seems to be to modify, usually to moderate or subdue, this or that so as to make it suitable to this or that : see Q. Mab, iv, 221, the reference to Purg. above, Charles I, n, 40, T. L, 8 and 2761.
What then is the meaning of ' temper to its object ' ?
(1) 'Object' may = purpose or aim, and 'its' may refer to 'age/ etc. Infamy, e.g., an agent of Life, could not subdue Rousseau's heart into conformity with infamy's purpose.
(2) Dowden must have construed the phrase otherwise. From Life of Shelley, ii, 506, and Transcripts and Studies, 106,^it follows that he took 'its' to refer to ' heart,' and 'object' to mean object of desire, and understood the passage thus: This (object) had really only a rela- tive value ; age, etc., could not subdue or moderate the heart so as to make it suit this relative value of its object ; the heart persisted in pursuing that object as absolutely good. The desire in question he seems to identify with love (in the narrow sense), and he thinks Plato's failure the same as Rousseau's, except that his love was nobler. So- crates, on the other hand, did temper his heart to its object. ('Object/ I note, may quite well mean objects, or whatever from time to time was the object.)
This interpretation is attractive, and it seems to correspond with Shelley's conception of Rousseau ; and yet I do not find it convincing. One cannot argue about one's ' instinct ' that Shelley did not mean this or that, though one cannot help giving weight to it ; but there is an objection to this interpretation that can be formulated. The passage has a strong formal resemblance to the Plato passage considered in the preceding note, and the two are separated by only a few lines. In both, certain things are mentioned which fail to subdue, or to temper, the heart. Now, in the Plato passage, the success of those things would have been bad ; but, in the Rousseau passage as construed by Dowden, it would have been good. I do not say that this obstacle is fatal ; but, considering the likeness and the proximity of the two passages, it seems to me most probable that in the Rousseau one, as in the Plato one, the possible success of the agents is imagined as bad.
(3) Shelley more than once quotes Shakespeare's words about his
1 The meaning here seems to be : The great ancient poets, in expressing passions which they had quelled, subdued the expression of them so as to make it suit (i.e. not injure) readers moved by those passions.
452 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life*
nature being almost ' subdued to what it works in.' It is possible then to take our passage to mean : Age, etc., could not subdue Rousseau's heart into conformity with its element, the objects or things surround- ing it; these objects being conceived as inadequate to the heart, and its possible subdual as bad. The difficulty here is that ' object,' in the required sense, is naturally used only for an object of perception (or imagination or thought), while the 'object' of a heart can only natur- ally mean an object of desire, love, etc. (nor would it be natural for Shelley to write 'object' in the singular, if he meant what is supposed by this interpretation). Still, if one could believe that Shelley meant what is supposed, one would be satisfied with the meaning, if not with the writing.
(4) It had occurred to me that possibly ' object ' is a misreading of 'abject,' which Shelley uses as a substantive in Prom. Ill, iv, 140 :
Until the subject of a tyrant's will Became, worse fate, the abject of his own.
In that case, 'its' would refer to 'age,' etc., and 'temper to its object' would mean ' transform into its slave.' But this rendering would in- volve a use of ' temper to ' for which I can find no parallel in Shelley.
On the whole, though I should like to believe in interpretation (2) or (3), I think (1) the most probable.
VIII. 327-30.
Thou wouldst forget thus vainly to deplore Ills, which if ills can find no cure from thee, The thought of which no other sleep will quell, Nor other music blot from memory.
Rousseau is describing to the poet the ' oblivious valley,' with its ' lethean ' stream, where he awoke and where, after a time, the Triumph appeared to him. ' No other sleep' or ' music ' means no other than the sleep and music of this valley.
The lines have a deep and pathetic interest, because they tell us the nature of the thoughts referred to in lines 21-2, thoughts which had kept the poet wakeful through the whole night. They ' must remain untold,' he had said ; and so, as regards their detail, they do ; but their bearing is here disclosed. They were broodings over, and perhaps self- reproaches concerning, the ' ills ' of his past years. And thus the lines recall earlier poems, and also some passages in late letters ; e.g. that where he says of Faust, 'It deepens the gloom and augments the rapidity of ideas, and would therefore seem to me an unfit study for any person who is a prey to the reproaches of memory and the delusions
A. C. BRADLEY 453
of an imagination not to be restrained' (to John Gisborne, April 10, 1822).
The lines, however, are not free from difficulty. (1) They would naturally imply that Shelley has just been deploring in Rousseau's hearing (' thus ') some ills of the past. But this is not so. How then does Rousseau know that Shelley is, or has been, deploring such ills at all ? We might answer that Rousseau reads this in his face, and does this with ease because in very important respects (as we readily gather from the poem) Shelley resembles him. But here again we have, I think, the influence of Dante, since in various passages of the Cam- media Virgil is represented as knowing what is passing in Dante's mind. Possibly, too, we should remember ideas which appear elsewhere in Shelley and (e.g. 31 ff.) in the Triumph (though they are not developed in the fragment written) — ideas of a mode of being, other than ' life ' ; pre-existent, perhaps post-existent, possibly somehow subsistent below ' life ' and even now accessible to some extent ; a mode of being or experience in which Rousseau and Shelley (or what of them is not ' mortal,' 254) are in closer contact than that of two waking men.
(2) What is the meaning of the qualification ' if ills ' ? The ob- vious answer is that Rousseau disclaims such a knowledge of Shelley's past as would enable him to judge whether Shelley's ills really were ills, while he is sure that in any case it is vain to deplore the past. (That remorse is irrational and purely mischievous was a tenet of Godwin's to which Shelley had been wedded, whether or no he still felt sure of its truth.) But I am not certain that this answer is right. The words may imply a doubt on Shelley's own part about the ills that haunted him. Life, he may have felt, is so inexplicable, and so much ill seems to spring from what we once thought good and even superla- tively good, that we can have no certainty as to the ultimate ill of what seems, and even haunts us as, ill. Possibly, again, he is using the idea which often appears in his writings, and best in the conclusion of the Sensitive Plant, that everything in life except what is ' pure ' or ' divine' is ' unreal,' or ' phantasmal,' or a ' mockery.'
IX. 334.
Like this harsh world in which I wake to weep.
I wish to withdraw a suggestion in the Notes on Passages already referred to, that ' wake ' is a misreading of ' woke.' Line 4MO, ' Through the sick day in which we wake to weep ' (to which Mr Locock has drawn attention) shows that Rousseau regards himself as living still, like
454 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life
Shelley, through a ' day ' consisting of many days. ' This harsh world ' is, of course, an echo from Hamlet.
X. 343-4.
And, as I looked, the bright omnipresence Of morning through the orient cavern flowed.
It will be found on investigation that this cavern, already mentioned in 313, is ' orient ' in the sense that it is an opening in the mountain which rises on the eastern side of the valley where. Rousseau stands. The cavern therefore opens to the west. How then can the rising sun flow through it ? This question, with" others about the passage that follows, can be answered, I believe, only on the hypothesis that the cavern is not a cavern in the usual sense, but the roofed opening of a deep gorge or ravine which rends the mountain from top to bottom, and through which the morning sun shines.
This was suggested to me by the obscure description in Alastor, be- ginning at 351, where also a 'cavern' appears which seemed intelligible only on the same hypothesis. The reader may compare the following passages, in some of which ' cavern ' seems to be used in a loose way (I do not mean that he will find the same hypothesis necessary in them). In Revolt of Islam, VI, xxix, a stream appears to flow through caverns. In Cenci, in, i, 243 ff., a mountain ' yawns ' into a ' ravine/ as here it 'yawns into a cavern' (313). In Triumph, 71, Epip. 441, Athanase, 182, 'cavern,' though it does not mean what I take it to mean here, seems not to be a hollow in something hard like rock, ice, or even earth, but a deep woody recess.
XL 384-5.
and soon
All that was, seemed as if it had been not ; And all the gazer's mind was strewn beneath Her feet like embers; and she, thought by thought, Trampled its sparks into the dust of death.
'She' is the 'Shape,' who might therefore be hastily taken for a malevolent being; and this mistake might be confirmed by the fact that Rousseau's draught from her crystal glass is followed by the appearance of the car. To interpret this fact would take too long ; but what Shelley describes in the lines quoted is the effect of a revelation of the ideal in obliterating the modes of thought and feeling habitual before that revelation. The 'death' of the last line is the ' Death ' of Epip. 72,
She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, And lured me toward sweet Death;
A. C. BRADLEY 455
or the ' radiant death ' which the moth seeks in the star (Epip. 223). Cf. Rosalind, 1125-9. In the lines following our quotation the trampling of the sparks is compared, not with the extinction of day by night, but with the ' treading out ' of the lamps of night by day, and the Shape is said to come like day, making the night a dream. That the Shape is a thing of light or, like the Wii^h of Atlas, a daughter of the Sun, i.e. some manifestation or other of the ideal, is certain. Cf. note on the Introduction; also Witch of Atlas, xii, and for her 'crystal bowl/ Ixix ff.
XII. 425-6.
The presence of that Shape which on the stream Moved, as I moved along the wilderness.
We have not heard of this ' wilderness ' till now. The first thought of a reader will probably be that it is, in the common phrase, the wilder- ness or desert of life. He may then reflect that the beautiful forest- valley so far described seems to leave no room for a wilderness, and may conclude that this forest-valley itself is what Shelley means by 'wilderness/ since that word is occasionally used by him not for a desert place but for a beautiful wild place. Shelley, however, after mentioning the wilderness again (443), calls it a ' desert ' (449) ; and that word he always uses with its common meaning. I believe this wilderness or desert is simply the ' path,' ' track/ or ' way ' (433, 459, 518, 535), along which the Triumph advances through the forest. This is the same 'way' which, at a further stage in the advance of the Triumph, after it has ascended the western slope of the valley (470), has become that 'public way, thick strewn with summer dust/ which the poet himself sees -covered by the people in front of the car (43). I think this, not only or chiefly because of the difficulty of finding room for a wilderness or desert in the usual sense, but because the idea fits in with all the passages where the words occur. Thus, in 425-6, Rousseau, joining the procession, moves ' along the wilderness/ while the Shape, now dim, moves, parallel with him, on the stream in the forest. It keeps its ' obscure tenour ' ' beside my path ' (433). Directly afterwards Shelley writes, of the Triumph and its car,
And underneath aethereal glory clad The wilderness;
i.e. the ' track ' or ' way ' under the car (442). Then he says (447) that
some of the crowd
upon the new
Embroidery of flowers, that did enhance The grassy vesture of the desert, played, Forgetful of the chariot's swift advance;
456 Notes on Shelley s 'Triumph of Life'
that is to say, they played on the flowery grass with which the forest clothed the sides of the track — the edges of ' that path where flowers never grew '(65). The forest with its grass and flowers, its streams and birds and breezes, is the realm not of Life but of the ideal. It is ' la divina foresta/ and the home of the Golden Age of the old poets (Purg. xxviii, 2, 139 ff.). ' Life's rough way,' ' the broad highway of the world' (Epip. 71, 157), which ' crosses ' (435) or runs through this forest, is ' the desert of our life ' ^Prorn. n, i, 12)1.
A. C. BRADLEY. LONDON.
1 I do not mean, of course, that this imagery is used consistently throughout Shelley's poems. In Epip. 249, 321, our life itself is a forest, wintry and obscure, a wilderness of thorns. I take this opportunity of correcting a mistake in Notes on Passages, etc., 1905, no. 16, where I expressed misgivings about the word 'kill' in Epip. 557. Mr Rossetti reminded me, to my shame, that it is a reminiscence of Troilus and Cressida, iv, ii, 4.
SPENSER'S 'MUIOPOTMOS.
TBE late Professor Francis James Child, whose memory must ever be revered by those who had the privilege of studying under him, summed up his view of Muiopotmos as follows1: 'An enthusiastic critic has pronounced this airy little poem the most beautiful thing in Spenser out of the magic circle of the Fairy Queen; but with all its graces, it is deficient in that minute pencilling of nature which the character of the piece required, and though carefully elaborated, it is not picturesque. If Muiopotmos be meant for anything more than a simple tale of a spider and a fly, or a fable with the general moral of the insecurity of youth and happiness, the enigma which it contains defies solution.' I do not propose to discuss Professor Child's excep- tional distaste for Muiopotmos, which leads him here to take issue with Christopher North2, but to offer a solution of the enigma which throws some light on Spenser's personal interests and his method of treating the subject.
The first hint that more may be meant than meets the ear appears in the preface to Ralph Church's edition of the Faerie Queene3 : 1 Whether it [Muiopotmos] alludes to the death of any promising Youth, we know not.' More positively George L. Craik declares4: 'The narrative thus solemnly introduced can hardly be a mere story of a spider and a fly.' He considers the poem a ' veiled representation ' of 'real events.' This suggestion J. W. Hales adopted5. On the other hand most editors and commentators, among them Jortin, Todd, Mitford, G. S. Billiard, R. W. Church, A. B. Grosart, R. E. N. Dodge, and
E. de Selincourt either are silent or regard its story as 'a mere nothing ' ; while J. P. Collier, having in mind Hey wood's The Spider and the Fly6, remains undecided. Lowell, however, in his essay on
1 The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Boston, 1855. p. xxxv.
2 Blackwood's Magazine, Nov., 1833. Equally appreciative comments are made by
F. T. Palgrave (Grosart's Spenser, iv, Ixx) and by J. K. Lowell in his essay on Spenser.
3 London, 1758, i, p. xxv. 4 Spenser. London, 1845, i, pp. 172-3. 6 The Globe Spenser, p. xlvi.
6 The Works of Edmund Spenser. London, 1862, i, p. Ixxxvi. Heywood's poem presents no parallel with Spenser's.
M. L. R. IX. 30
458 Spenser s 'Muiopotmos'
Spenser1, is convinced that ' in Clarion the butterfly he has symbolized himself; and Palgrave suggests2 that Clarion 'represents the ideal of a gallant youth.' To the contrary, Nadal in his unconvincing argu- ment3 that Spenser here imitates Chaucer's Sir Thopas and Nuns Priest's Tale, would remove all occasion for allegorical interpretation. The poem, it will be recalled, is dedicated to Lady Carey, the court patroness to whom Spenser was at the time paying the poetic tribute of conventional amorous service. It is in his dedication of this poem that Spenser avows to her : * I haue determined to giue my selfe wholy to you, as quite abandoned from my selfe, and absolutely vowed to your services.' Lest any doubt the purport of these words (paralleled though they are in Amoretti xxix), I cite the following passage from Gascoigne4 :
He wrote unto a Skotish Darne whom he chose for his mistresse in the French Court, as followeth.
Lady, receyve,... This ragged verse,...
Too base an object for your heavenly eyes, For he that writes his freedome (lo) resignes Into your handes: and freely yeelds as thrall His sturdy necke....
On a similar occasion, in Grange's The Golden Aphroditis, the hero declares: 'Lady... I am content to yeelde my selfe thy man and not mine owne.'
Since Spenser accompanies this dedication of himself to Lady Carey with a poem, one looks for a measure of appropriateness in its theme. And that the poem must have had for Lady Carey at least a certain esoteric significance is evident5 from his parting request : ' Of all things therein according to your wonted graciousness to make a milde construction.' Her natural interpretation of the poem must therefore be such as she would be likely to make with mingled feelings of pleasure and displeasure.
Again, since Spenser in choosing on this occasion to treat the capture and death of a butterfly in the web of a spider, adopted the stanza of Ariosto and a mock heroic tone6 :
I sing of deadly dolorous debate,
Stir'd up by wrathfull Nemesis despight,...
1 North American Review, April, 1875, p. 365. 2 Grosart's Spenser, iv, p. Ixx.
3 Mod. Lang. Association, Publ., December, 1910, pp. 640-656. It is noticed, perhaps adequately, by R. E. Neil Dodge in 'A Sermon on Source-Hunting.' Modern Philology, October, 1911, pp. 211-223.
4 Cunliffe's Gascoigne, i, p. 331.
5 Nadal (pp. 643-4) regards this as entreating charitable judgment for aesthetic deficiencies. But construction will bear no other sense than ' take my good meaning. '
6 Dodge's Spenser, p. 116.
PERCY W. LONG 459
one can hardly fancy that so serious a subject as Craik suggested — an actual death — would be felt to be in good taste. Comparison with Daphnaida and Astrophel will emphasize the incongruity. Rather, the subject must be of the graceful, buoyant nature of the poem — must admit of pleasantry. And such a subject, in fact, must have been so immediately apparent to the Elizabethan court circle that comment would appear supererogatory.
Every schoolboy who had read his first eclogue of Mantuan — and that Spenser knew Mantuan well is evident from frequent imitations and acknowledgments in the Shepherds Calendar — would be familiar with the lines (42, 43) :
me mea Galla suo sic circumvenerat ore
ut captam pedicis circumdat arenea muscam. «*
Turberville in 1567 had translated these lines as follows :
My little girle that Galba hight
had so entrapped mee With feature of hir friendly face
and lookes of louyng eye, As in hir crafty cobweb doth
Arachne catche the flye.
The suggestion will be conveyed at once that Spenser in Muiopotmos represents his captivity to the charms of Lady Carey. To figure his beloved as a spider — a ' cursed creature ' — in a poem dedicated to her- self may appear indeed to require a ' milde construction.' Yet it will be noted that Spenser nowhere dwells on the physical deformities of the spider — as would be natural — in contrast to the elaborate description of the graces of Clarion. Moreover, Renaissance precedent was ample for the comparison of one's beloved to various cruel and sanguinary monsters. Spenser himself in the Amoretti compares Elizabeth to a lion and lioness (Amor, xx), a panther (Amor, liii), and a tiger (Amor. Ivi). As Aragnoll is a tyrant (1. 433), he complains of his lady's tyranny (Amor, xliii and Sonnet to Lady Carey): as Aragnoll sheds the butterfly's blood (1. 439), his lady is guilty of ' spilling guilt- lesse blood ' (Amor, xxxviii). Indeed, Gascoigne had addressed one of his ladies, in A Sonet written in prayse of the browne beautie1, using this very simile of the spider and the fly :
The thriftless thred which pampred beauty spinnes, In thraldom binds the foolish gazing eyes: As cruell Spiders with their crafty ginnes,
the sir
In worthlesse webbes doe snare the simple Flies. 1 Cunliffe's Gascoigne, i, p. 332.
30—2
460 Spenser s 'Muiopotmos '
It should be evident what general interpretation the Elizabethan reader would give of the poem as a whole. To press the parallel further, looking for minute correspondences in the equations Clarion = Spenser, and Aragnoll = Lady Carey, would be to encounter at once evidence that the poet had no such intention. It is forbidden by the long passage adapted from Ovid's Metamorphoses ; it is anticipated by the fact that both spider and butterfly are male1. One would not press too closely the details of Ko Ko's song in the Mikado about the little tomtit. It is sufficient for his purpose to point the moral :
And if you remain callous and obdurate, I Will perish as he did, and you will know why.
Mr J. C. Smith, alluding to Muiopotmos in an article on the Amoretti*, perceived as through a glass darkly the purport of the poem. He would have, with finer courtesy, Spenser to be the spider, and the lady to be the butterfly. He sees its inspiration not in literary convention but in the personal experience of lady and poet. The point of departure is given by Spenser's sonnet (Amor. Ixxi) concerning Elizabeth's embroidery :
I joy to see how in your drawen work,
Your selfe unto the Bee ye doe compare;
and me unto the Spyder that doth lurke,
in close awayt to catch her unaware.
Right so your selfe were caught in cunning snare
of a deare foe, and thralled to his loue.
Mr Smith suggests: 'What is this, in effect, but the theme of Muiopotmos ? Is it fanciful to infer that the sight of Lady Carey at just such a piece of "drawn-work" may in fact have inspired that poem ? '
It must be said at once that the sonnet can hardly precede the poem. The former represents intimacy after the relations of lover and mistress are fully established; whereas Muiopotmos represents the lover's prior vow of service. Moreover, from its place in the sequence after Easter (Amor. Ixviii) in the second year, it cannot refer to a date earlier than 1591 — a date therefore subsequent to the printing of Muiopotmos in 1590.
It is only shortly before the second Easter that Spenser represents his love as yielding. To have represented it in Muiopotmos would, then, have reversed not only the convention of the literary theme,
1 It might be urged that the spider represents only the lady's cruelty and disdain, her ensemble of qualities being the garden in which Clarion disports himself (11. 161-208 and 241-8). Spenser likens his lady's lips to such a garden (Amoretti Ixiv). This, however, seems over-subtle.
2 Mod. Lang. Rev., July, 1910, pp. 279-80.
PERCY W. .LONG 461
but equally the facts in the case. Again, Spenser's representation (Amor. Ixvii) of the lady's yielding — as a deer voluntarily approaching to the tired huntsman — is incongruous with the enmeshing of Clarion by Aragnoll.
Rather, the sonnet is to be taken as a retort to the poem. Referring as it does to a period after the poem was not only dedicated but printed, its intention as an allusion seems indisputable. If so, the allusion would have the more point if it were antithetical. Indeed, Spenser's lady is represented earlier (Amor, xxix) as wresting Spenser's thought to suit her ends :
See how the stubborne damzell doth depraue iny simple meaning with disdaynfull scorne : and by the bay which I unto her gaue, ^
accoumpts my selfe her captiue quite forlorne.
The bay (quoth she) is of the victours borne,...
The sonnet, therefore, contrary to Mr Smith's suggestion, displays not the theme of Muiopotmos, but the pointed reversal of its theme.
There is, indeed, a sonnet (Amor, xxiii) in which Spenser represents himself as the weaver of the web. It occurs just after the first Easter sonnet, and therefore probably prior to the writing of Muiopotmos. In it Spenser alludes to Penelope's web woven to discourage her suitors. So, he says, his lady renders naught his machinations :
For all that I in many dayes doo weave
In one short houre I tinde by her undonne...
Such labour like the spyders web I fynd,
Whose fruitlesse worke is broken with least wynd.
Here, to be sure, the poet plays the part of the spider ; and Mr Smith's case would have benefited by citation of this instance. The sonnet might have seemed an opportune approach to the poem. Nevertheless, at that stage in the complimentary courtship the poem would appear a presumptuous prophecy of success, quite out of keeping with the poet's conventional attitude of humble solicitation and despair. Moreover, in this event there would have been no poirit in omitting all description of the physical deformities of the spider.
The snare in which the lady entangles her lover, on the other hand, is not only conventional in Renaissance love poetry — a fact which in itself renders unnecessary the assumption of an inspiration from real life — but occurs in Spenser's love poetry much earlier than the mention of his lady's drawn work. In the sonnet (Amor, xxxvii) devoted to a 'net of gold' in which Elizabeth attires 'her golden tresses,' he questions :
462 Spenser s 'Muiopotmos'
Is it that mens frayle eyes, which gaze too bold,
She may entangle in that golden snare,
And being caught, may craftily enfold
Theyr weaker harts, which are not wel aware?
Indeed the conception of network as a feminine lure to love, comparable to the spider's web, appears in Spenser in Book n of the Faerie Queene. The passage, however lately written, will hardly be taken as suggested by his courtly mistress in propria persona, since it occurs in his description of the evil witch Acrasia (n, xii, 77), representative of physical pleasures unallied to the higher Platonic inspiration of her eyes which (Amor, viii) ' lead fraile mindes to rest In chaste desires, on heavenly beauty bound.' Quite otherwise he represents Acrasia as ' dight to pleasant sin,' reposing on a bed of roses :
Arayd, or rather disarayd, All in a vele of silke and silver thin, That hid no whit her alablaster skin, But rather shewd more white if more might bee: More subtle web Arachne cannot spin....
In short, we may take Muiopotmos as a rather extended treatment of a theme familiar to Elizabethan love poetry. It is indeed ' carefully elaborated ' ; but the foregoing explanation will probably make clear why that 'minute pencilling of nature,' the absence of which vitiated the poem for Professor Child, was in this instance not germane to Spenser's purpose. Although the poem be little more than 'the mere tale of a spider and a fly,' Lowell is right in maintaining that Clarion represents Spenser. And the occasion which prompted it explains in a measure why Lowell should find in what overtly purports to be a catastrophe 'the most airily fanciful of his poems, a marvel for delicate conception and treatment, whose breezy verse seems to float between a blue sky and golden earth in imperishable sunshine.'
PERCY W. LONG.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
THE 'ANCREN RIWLE'1
III
THE ADDITIONAL PASSAGES
A good deal of interest attaches to the passages which are found in the Corpus MS. and not in the other thirteenth century copies of the English text. Though they may be additions to the original book, yet they cannot be of much later date, and they add both further illustra- tions of the life of the period, and further materials for the study of the language. They vary, of course, considerably in importance : some are quite short, and others are of no great interest. It is interesting, however, to note in the second of the passages cited the precautions urged upon the anchoress with regard to shewing herself unveiled and the fact that they are expressly extended to the case of a bishop's visit, and also how in the third she is advised, while shewing all proper respect to a friar, to make her confession to him, if at all, in very guarded and general terms, a counsel that is quite in the spirit of other passages in the Ancren Riwle, which suggest distrust of those confessors who are not thoroughly known and tried, e.g. p. 344. Still more important is the next (4), which contains writing as eloquent and forcible as is any- where to be found in the Ancren Riwle ; while the succeeding addition (5) is full of interest from its references to social manners and to methods of artificial adornment. In the eighth passage we note the desire of the writer to bring all the communities of anchoresses in England as far as possible under one rule, so that the separate societies of London, Oxford, Shrewsbury and Chester may all be as one convent. Those whom the writer addresses are spoken of as the ' mother house ' from which others have taken their rise, and he seems to point to some irregularity which is to be regretted. In the later passages a number of details are added also to the precepts on domestic matters which we have in the concluding part. It is satisfactory to be able to record the emphatic testimony in favour of cleanliness, 'Nes neauer fulSe godd leof/
1 Concluded from p. 331.
464 The 'Ancren Riwle'
A considerable amount of linguistic material is also to be found in these texts. Already in the course of collation several occurrences or uses of words have been noted in the text of B which have not hitherto been recorded in Middle English1; and the additional passages yield a further harvest of considerable interest. Some examples are here given under the reference numbers of the passages :
(4) sacurne, apparently meaning ' scornful ' ; meanildes, ' com- plainers/ cursildes, ' cursers/ chidildes, ' chiders/ with the feminine termination which we have in 'grucchild/ p. 108, 1. 9 (also in 'this passage), and ' cheapild,' p. 418, 7 ; dig gin, a much earlier example than those hitherto recorded ; peonsin, meaning ' to be fretful/ so ' pense ' in East Anglian dialect (see N.E.D. ' pense ') ; sinecin hire wordes (?), corresponding to ' engressement et anguissousement parler ' in the French : (5) crenge in the sense of 'strut,' probably from the idea of turning the neck about in an arrogant manner, as in the phrase ' crenge wiS swire,' which occurs in the same passage lower down, and also in Seinte Marherete, ' crenchen [mid] swire ' ; binde seode mid te muft, ' purse up the mouth,' evidently the O.E. ' seod/ ' purse,' which does not seem to be elsewhere recorded in M.E. ; scuter signe, corre- sponding to the Latin 'derisorium signum/ cp. O.N. 'skuta/ 'skutyrSi'; ouegart, ' excessive,' cp. ' ouengart,' ' awgart,' ' ougard ' (subst.) in the Cursor Mundi', scleaterunge, 'smearing over,' cp. 'slat/ 'slatter' (N.E.D.)', fluftrunges (?) ', bencin(?): (6) grennen, 'entrap,' much earlier than any previously recorded example in M.E. : (8) teowi, perhaps akin to ' tew ' (verb), cp. N.E.D. ' tewsome ' ; meapeft, (apparently) ' wanders/ cp. N.E.D. ' map/ v2, and ' mope ' ; teilac, perhaps from ' teag ' and ' -lac/ meaning 'entanglement' : (11) cumeft iswenchet: (14) criblin(T)\ taueles, perhaps 'lace/ i.e. 'lace-making/ cp. Fr. 'tavelle': (16) earunder, ouerunder, 'before undern/ 'after undern'; for 'ouerunder' see N.E.D. ' mid-ouerundern/ and Mod. Lang. Review, vol. vin, p. 163 ; ticki togederes, ' touch one another/ or ' tickle one another/ a verb which is not recorded elsewhere in English earlier than the 16th century, though ' tickle ' is found in the 14th.
Of the nineteen passages enumerated above (p. 150) the three shortest have already been given in the collation, and the remainder are
1 For example: cnost, 2, 11; xemeles (subst.), 46, 26; sneater (subst.), 82, 11; cwich ne cweft, 122, 9; trochen ( = exchange), 146, 26; prinscipe ( = niggardliness), 202, 20; seac, 224, 30; childene ( = childish), 242, 11; burgur, 242, 24; fealh, 266, 28; smuhel, 278, 7; ragget (subst.), 284, 16(0); amainet, 288, 23; dragse, 292J 29; ^eddeft ( = commonly say), 312, 20; scheome ( = shameful), 322, 2 etc. ; yschake ( = violent), 344, 3; wel mei duh'en, 356, 11; tolaimet, 362, 21; elheowet, 368, 2; leasken of, 408, 15; tweast, 412, 25; gruuesi, 428, 4.
G. C. MACAULAY
465
here printed. In these the abbreviations have been expanded, and are indicated by italics, except in the cases ' 7 ' and ' -p ' ; the punctuation is that of the manuscript, but for S a comma is regularly substituted. In cases where the passage is found in other English manuscripts, in the French text, or in the Latin version, readings from these are cited where they are of any interest. It may be remarked that in a few places the passages which are found also in the French text seem to afford evidence that this latter is the original ; for example in the second passage the expression ' dreit par la veniance dieu ' is a more natural one than ' Jmrh riht godes wrake/ in the third, ' seggeS • ear ]?en he parti, mea culpa ' looks like an incorrect translation of 'dites auant ceo qil partient- mea culpa,' and in the fourth, ' ele deit asseer ses paroles ' is certainly prefer- able to ' jef ha setteS hire J>ohtes,' which indeed is nonsense as it stands. On the other hand the French ' telde ' (i.e. ' telde ') looks like an adapta- tion of the English word, but there may have been an Anglo-French verb ' telder,' used in this technical sense.
(1) After Morton, p. 42, 1. 30 (last line). This passage is found also in the French, f. 8, standing here a few lines later (after ' awakenen/ p. 44, 1. 9).
f. 10 v° pus ich biginne mine auez oSerh wiles1.
Leafdi swete leafdi swetest alre leafdi • leafdi leouest leafdi • lufsumest leafdi • O pulcherrima mulierum • leafdi seinte Marie deorewurSe leafdi • leafdi cwen of heouene • leafdi cwen of are • leafdi do me are • leafdi meiden moder • Meiden godes moder • ihesu cristes moder • Meiden of milce • moder of grace • O uirgo m'rginum Maria mater graci'e mater mismcordie • tu nos ab hoste protege & hora mortis suscipe • per tuum virgo filium per patrem paraclitum assis presens ad obi turn nostrumque muni exitum • Gloria tibi domine qui nate es de uirgine j cetera • Ant fallen to )?er eorSe • 7 cussen hire wiS ]?is leaste uers • Hwa se is hal iheaf- det • 7 tenne auez tene 7 tene togederes • ]?e teoheSe eauer jms forS • Aue Maria gratia plena dominus tecum • benedicts, tu in mulieribus 7 bene- dictus fructus uentris tui • Spiritus sanctus superueniet in te et uirtws altissimi obumbrabit tibi • ideoque & quod nascetwr ex te sanctum vocabitwr filiws dei • Ecce ancilla dommi fiat im'Ai secundum uerbum tuum • 7 cusse J?e eorSe on ende • oSer degre oSer benc oj>er sumhwet herres • 7 biginnen • leafdi swete leafdi as ear ]>Q forme tene • of2 ]?e fifti cneolinde up 7 dun • J?e oj?re cneolinde iriht up stille • buten ed te aue marie sum semblant wiS J?e oSer cneo alutel3 • j?e ]?ridde tene adun up o J?e elbohen riht to J?er eorSe • J?e feorSe, )?e elbohen o degre oSer o bench •
1 This sentence is omitted in the French.
2 ' of ' inserted later. It is evidently required by the sense, and the stop before it should follow 'ear' (Fr. les primers dis de cynqwante).
3 fors qe al aue face ascune semblance del un genoil vn petit Fr.
466 The 'Ancren Riwle'
ant eauer to J?e aue lute wiS }>e heaued • J?e fifte te*ne stondinde • ant eft biginne f>e turn as in j?e
(2) Between ff. 14 and 15 two leaves are lost in B, which contained from p. 56, last line, ' dure Jnirh,' to p. 64, 1. 8, ' sihSe one,' and also the beginning of a passage which is not found in the other English manu- scripts, but occurs in the French text at the same point. The portion which is lost in B, equivalent perhaps to about fifteen lines of Morton's text, may be partly recovered from the French text, .which begins thus (f. 11 v°):
Ore pur ceo toutes les ouertures de toutes voz fenestres ausi come ci deuant a la vewe de touz homwes vnt este closes ausi soient ca en apres. Et si plus fermement poient, plus fermement soient closes. Generale reule est. Toutes celes qe bien les clusent, dieu bien les garde. Et toutes celes qe ____
Here begins f. 12, and the upper part of the first column of it is not very legible. Though a good deal may be read, no very satisfactory sense can be made out till near the place where the English begins :
7 od eel meismes se soillent 7 coroucent les oilz dampnedieu qui regarde la traison dedenz le fol queor. Nient solement chescune charnele maniere, mes ensement chescune fole parole est leide vilainie etc.
The English text, after the break in the manuscript, is as follows :
f. 1 5. traisun inwiS ]?e gale heorte • nawt ane euch fleschlich hond- lunge, ah jetten euch gal word, is ladlich vilainie 7 godes gromes wurSe )?ah hit ne weoxe forSre bitweone mon 7 ancre • Nu J>urh riht godes wrake1 geaS hit forSre 7 for5re 7 bikimeS ofte 7 ear me least wene in to |?et fule sunne • we hit habbeS weilawei iherd of inohe • Ne leue na mon ancre j?e let in monnes ehe to schawin hire seoluen • Ouer al •)? je habbeS iwriten in ower riwle of Binges wiS uten, )?is point J?is article of wel to beo bitunde, ich wulle beo best ihalden • To wummon J?e wilneS hit, openeS ow o godes half • jef ha ne spekeS nawt j?rof, leoteS swa iwurSen • bute gef £e dreden ty heo )?refter beo iscandlet2 • Of hire ahne suster haueS sum ibeon ite?wptet • In toward ower weoued3 ne beode ge namon for te bihalden • ah gef his deuociun bit hit 7 haueS grant4, draheS ow wel inward • 7 te ueil adun toward ower breoste • ant sone doS ]?e claS ajein 7 festniS heteueste • gef he lokeS toward bed5 oSer easkeS hwer ge liggeS, ondswerieS lihtliche • Sire )?erof wel mei duhen6 7 haldeS ow stille • jef bischp kimeS to seon ow, hihiS sone towart him • ah sweteliche bisecheS him jef he bit to seon ow, f je moten ]?er onont halden ow towart him, as je habbeS idon 7 doS to alle o]?re • jef he wule allegate habben a sihSe, lokiS ^ hit beo ful scheort • J>e ueil anan adun • 7 draheS ow bihinden • An ancre wearnde eadmodliche sein martin hire sihSe • ant he )?eruore dude hire )?e menske -p he neauer ne dude to nan oj?er • Ant
1 Ore dreit par la veniance dieu Fr. 2 qe apres le prengent a mal.
3 vostre altier. 4 eit le grant.
5 Sil regarde vers le lit. 6 de ceo ne te estuit chaler.
G. C. MACAULAY
467
heruore hire word is apet cume pis dei iboren in hali chirche1 • for as we redeS of hire • Hwase wule2 hire windowes witen wel wiS pe uuele, ha mot ec wiS pe gode • Hwen se je moten to eani mon eawiht biteachen, pe hond ne cume nawt ut • ne ower ut ne his in • Ant jef hit mot cumen in, ne rine nowper oper • Heo is siker sei<5 hali writ, pe feor from grunen3 draheS hire • 7 peo pe luueS peril, i peril ha schal fallen • Qui caret laqueis4 securus est • 7 qui amat pmculum, incidet in illud • pe deofles grune is ofte itild5 • per me least weneS • Nis nan 'p nis dredful • -p ha nis ilecchet • for godd nule wite nan -p is se fol hardi • pet ha ne wit wearliche wiS him hire seoluen • pis is nu of pis wit in oh iseid • etc.
(3) After p. 68, 1. 2, B (f. 16 v°) has the following passage, which occurs also in the French, f. 14 :
f. 16 v°. Vre freres prechours 7 ure freres meonurs beoS of swuch ordre "p al folc mahte wundrin gef ei of ham wende ehe thwart te wude lehe6 • for pi ed euch time "p eani of ham jmrh chearite kimeS ow to learen 7 to frourin i godd • jef he is preost seggeS • ear pen he parti7, mea culpa • Ich schriue me to godd almihti 7 to pe • 'p ich as ich drede riht repentant neauer nes of mine greaste sunnen -p ich habbe ischawet to mine schrift feaderes • Ant tah min entente beo to beten ham her inne, ich hit do se poureliche • 7 sunegi in oSre deihwamliche8 seoSSen ich wes nest9 ischriuen • 7 -p wes penne10 7 of pe 7 nempnin11 • Ich habbe pus isunget 7 segge o hwucche wise as hit is iwriten ow in ower schriftes boc towart te ende prof • 7 aleast seggeS • pis 7 muche mare • Confiteor • 7 bide him underuo pe speciale in his god12 • 7 ponke him of his inturn13 7 bisech him aleast greten pe 7 te14 • ant "p ha bidden for pe. WiS uten witnesse etc.
(4) After p. 108, 1. 17. This is found in the Vernon MS. at the end of the Ancren Riwle text, f. 392. It is also in the French, f. 12 v°, immediately following the passage (2) cited above. It is to be noted however that the place assigned to it in B is obviously the right one.
f. 28 v°. O seiS sein ierome15 • Quomocfo obscuratum est aurum opti- mum jcetera • O weilawei weilawei • hu is gold ipeostret hu is feherest heow biturnd 7 forweolewet • pe apostle spekeS to swucche grimliche as o wreaSSe16 • Quis uos fascinauit 7 'cetera vt cum spiritu ceperitis, carne consunmamini • Me hwuch unseli gast haueS swa bimalscret ow • "p ge i t bigunnen 7 i flesch wulleS endin • pe gastelich lif bigunnen i pe ali gast, beoS bicumene al fleschliche • al fleschliche iwurSen lahinde lihte ilatet • ane hwile lihte iwordet an oSer luSere iwordet estfule • 7
1 Et est pur ceo son renoun en seinte eglise desques al iour dui.
2 Kar sicome nous lisoms de lui, qi voudra.
3 larcons for lacons Fr. 4 cauet laqueos Fr. 5 telde Fr.
6 tornast loil vers le cour del boes. 7 dites auant ceo qil partient • mea culpa.
8 O.E. ' dseghwamlice ' ( = daily). The French here has ' mortelement.'
9 procheinement. 10 ce fust dunqe. n a celui, 7 le nomer.
12 vous receiure especial en dieu. ls venue. 14 saluer celui 7 celui.
15 li prophete leremie. 16 Ac nout withouten serwe added in V.
468 The 'Ancren Riwle'
sarcurne • 7 grucchildes1 • meanildes • ant get -p wurse is • cursildes2 7 chidildes bittre 7 attrie wiS heorte to bollen • Bihofde nawt f swuch were leafdi of castel • hoker 7 hofles Jnng is -p a smiret ancre 7 ancre biburiet. for hwet is ancre hus bute hire buririesse, 7 heo schal beo greattre ibollen • leafdiluker leoten of .)?en a leafdi of hames3 • gef ha makeS hire wra5 ageines gult of sunne • gef ha sette<5 hire wordes4 swa efne "p ha ne Jmnche ouersturet5 • ne nawt ilead ouer skile, ah inward - liche6 7 soSliche wiS uten hihSe 7 hehschipe in a softe steuene • filia fatua in deminoratione erit • J?is is Salamones sahe • -p hit limpe to ei of ow, godd ne leue neauer • Gang dohter iwurS as mone i wonunge • ]?riueS as ]?e cangun se lengre se wurse • ge as ge wulleS waxen 7 nawt wenden hindward, sikerliche ge moten row en7 agein stream wiS muchel swine breoken forS, 7 gasteliche earmSes • stealewurSliche sturien8 • 7 swa ge moten alle • for alle we beoS i pis stream • i J?e worldes wode weater pe bereS adun monie • Sone se we eauer wergiS 7 resteS us i slawSe, lire bat geat5 hindward • 7 we beoS pe cang dohter pe gaS woniende • J?e wlecche }>e godd speoweS as is iwriten her efter • ]?e bigunnen i gast • 7 i flesch endiS • Nai nai ah as iob seiS • )?e delueS efter golthord • eauer se he mare nahheS hit, se his heortes gleadschipe makeS him mare lusti • 7 mare fersch to diggin • 7 deluen deoppre 7 deoppre, aSet he hit finde • Ower heorte nis nawt on eorSe • for j? i ne J?urue ge nawt delueri dunewardes • ah heouen uppart ]?e heorte • for "p is ]?e uprowunge agein )?is worldes stream, driuen hire ageinward to deluen j?e golthord -p up is in heouene • ant hwet is ^ deluunge ? geornful sechinde J>oht • hwer hit beo hwuch hit beo • hu me hit mahe ifinden • ]?is is )?e deluunge • beon bisiliche 7 geornfulliche eauer her abuten • wiS anewil girnunge • wi5 heate of hungri heorte, waden up of un]?eawes9 • creopen ut of fiesch • breoken up ouer hire • astihen up on ow seolf wi<5 heh }?oht towarS heouene • swa muchel )?e neodeluker ^ ower feble tendre flesch heardes ne mei J>olien • Nu ]?enne )?er agein geoueS godd ower heorte • i softnesse • i swetnesse • in alles cunnes meoknesse • 7 softest eadmodnesse • nawt nu granin 7 peonsin • ]?refter hehi steuene • wreaSen hire unweneliche • sinecin hire wordes10 • wrenchen aweiward • wenden ]?e schuldre • keaste j?e heaued swa •p godd heateS hire 7 mon hire scarneS • Nai nai ripe wordes • lates ripe11 7 werkes bilimpeS to ancre • Hwen wordes beoS eadmodliche 7 soSfestliche iseide, nawt fulitoheliche ne babanliche, f>enne habbeS ha burSerne to beo riht understonden12 • Nu is j?is al iseid "p ge efter ihesu crist }>e me gurde ine muS 7 galle gef to drinken • wi5 muSes sunne witen ow • 7 j?olie3 sum derf i -p wit as he wes J?rin ideruet • In his eare etc.
I estfule — grucchildes] heij hertet- scornynge- Grucchinge V. 2 cursinges V.
3 vne grande dame de terres Fr.
4 ele deit asseer ses paroles (without 'if').
5 frowelement qele napierge trop moeuee Fr.
6 parfundement. 7 naggier.
8 les braz espiritals iugerousement mouer.
9 gwaer sus hors de male tecches.
10 smyten hire wordes V engressement et angoisousement parler Fr.
II angri wordes angri leitis V.
12 ount eles chargee de estre bien entendue Fr.
G. C. MACAULAY
469
(5) After ' note,' p. 198, 1. 30. This passage is found in V, and with some differences in P. Also in the Latin version of the Magdalen College MS.
f. 52 v°. pe teoheSe is Contentio • -p is strif to ouercumen p te oj?er funche underneoSen awarpen 7 crauant • ant heo meistre of )?e mot • 7 crenge1 ase champiun )?e haueS bijete J?e place. I ]?is unbeaw is upbrud • 7 edwitunge of al •p nuel "p ha mei bi j?e oSer of j?enchen • ant eauer se hit biteS bittrure, se hire likeS betere • )?ah hit were of j?ing J?e wes biuore gare arnendet • Her imong beoS oSerh wiles nawt ane bittre wordes, ah beo<5 fule stinkinde scheomelese 7 scheritfule • sum chearre mid' great sware • monie 7 prude wordes wiS warinesses 7 bileasunges • Herto falleS euenunge of ham seolf • of hare cun • of sahe oSer of dede • ]?is is among nunnen • 7 gaS wits swuch muS seoSSen ear schrift ham habbe iweschen to herie godd wi(5 loftsong • oSer biddeS him pn'uee bonen • Me Binges amansede nuten ha ^ hare song ant hare^bonen to godd stinkeS fulre to him 7 to alle his halhen, )?en ei rotet dogge • pe eal- leofte hwelp is ifed wiS supe?~sticiuns2 • wiS semblanz 7 wiS sines • as beoren on heh -p heaued • crenge wiS swire3 • lokin o siden • bihalden on hokere • winche4 mid ehe • binde seode mid te muS5 • wiS hond oSer wiS heaued makie scuter signe6 • warpe schonke ouer schench • sitten oSer gan stif as ha istaket7 were • luue lokin o mon • speoken as an innocent 7 wlispin for J?en anes8 • Her to falleS of ueil of heaued claS • of euch oSer cla<5 • to ouegart acemunge9 oSer in heowunge • oSer ipinchunge • gurdles ant gurdunge o dameiseles wise • scleaterunge mid smirles fule fluSrunges10 • heo win her • litien leor • pinchen bruhen oSer bencin ham uppart wi5 wete fingres11 • Monie o]?re etc.
(6) After ' Schornunge,' p. 200, 1. 23. This is contained in V, except the last sentence, and is also in the Latin version.
f. 53 v°. pe eahtuSe is suspitio ty is misortrowunge bi mon oSer bi wummon wiS uten witer tacne • J?enchen • )?is semblant ha makeS • ]?is ha seiS oSer de8 me forte grennen12 • hokerin oSer hearmin • 7 ^ hwen J?e o]?er neauer )?ideward ne J?encheS • Herto falleS fals dom ty godd forbeot swiSe • as }>enchen oSer seggen • je ne Iuue6 ha me nawt • Herof ha wreide me • lo nu ha speokeS of me ]?e twa • ]?e J?reo • oSer j?e ma
1 crenche V criej> P.
2 wrS super sticiuns om V P has semblaunce is ano)?gr whelp • \>at is wi> signes • bereande heise etc. (Undecimzts catulws leonis superbie est- natus superbie & iste nutritur gestibus et sigwis sicut capud extollere etc. Lat.)
3 collum curuare Lat. 4 wynken V wynk P.
5 maken mouwe -with \>e mouj^e V bende wi}> ]?e mouj> P (ore cachinnare Lat.)
6 maken mony a scorn V Scornen P (derisorium signum facere Lat.)
7 I • steken V stichen P.
8 innocenter loqui aut blese exproposito Lat.
9 ouer gart semynge V ouer girt as meninge P.
10 flitterynge P.
11 Browes whinrynge ofyur bensen ham upward with wete strykynges V browes whinering oi\>er benchen hem vp ward wij> wete strikynges P superciliorum decapillacione uel eorwm execcione cum liuida striccione Lat.
12 greuen V (grenen?).
470 The ' Ancren Riwle*
pe sitteS togederes • swuch ha is 7 swuch 7 for uuel ha hit dude • I jmlli poht we beoS ofte bichearret • for offce is god -p punches uuel • 7 for pi beoS al dei monnes domes false • Herto limpeS alswa luftere neowe fundles 7 leasunges ladliche purh ni'S 7 purh onde • pe niheSe cundel is sawunge of unsibsumnesse of wreaSSe 7 of descorde • peo pe saweS pis deofles sed, ha is of godd amanset • pe teoheSe is luSer stilSe • pe deofles silence • "p te an nule for onde speoken o pe oper • ant pis spece is al swa cundel of wrea$5e • for hare teames beoS imengt ofte togederes1 • Hwer as ei of peos wes • per wes pe cundel etc.
(7) After ' eihte,' p. 202, 1. 2. This is found also in PV and in the Latin.
f. 54. pe seoueSe hwelp is • don for wreaSSe mis • oSer leauen wel to don • forgan mete oSer drunch • wreoken hire wiS teares jef ha elles ne mei • 7 wiS weariuwges hire heaued spillen o grome2 • oSer on'oper wise hearmin hire i sawle 7 i bodi baSe • peos is homicide 7 morSre of hire seoluen • pe Beore etc.
(8) After p. 254, 1. 29 :
f. 69. Pax uobiscum • pis wes godes gretunge to his deore deciples • GriS beo bimong ow • ge beoS pe ancren of englond swa feole togederes • twenti nuSe oSer ma • godd i god ow mutli3, -p meast griS is among • Meast annesse 7 anrednesse • 7 sometreadnesse of anred lif efter a riwle • Swa 'p alle teoS an • alle iturnt anesweis, 7 nan frommard oSer • efter -p word is • for )?i je gaS wel forS 7 spedeS in ower wei, for euch is wiSward o]?er in an manere of liflade • as J>ah ge weren an cuuent of lundene 7 of oxnefort • of schreobsburi, oSer of Chester • J>ear as alle beoS an wiS an imeane manere • ant wiS uten singularite • j? is anful frommardschipe • lah ]?ing i religiun • for hit to warpeS annesse 7 manere imeane, •p ah to beon in ordre • J>is nu |?enne •p je beoS alle as an cuuent • is ower hehe fame • )?is is godd icweme • )?is is nunan wide cuS • swa )?et ower cuuent biginneS to spreaden toward englondes ende • ge beoS as )?e moder hus •p heo beoS of istreonet • je beoS ase wealle • jef fe wealle woreS, )?e strunden woriS alswa • A weila gef je woriS ne bide ich hit neauer • gef ei is imong ow )?e geaS i singularite • 7 ne folheS nawt j?e cuuent • ah went ut of |?e floe ^ is as in a cloistre -p ihesu is heh priur ouer • went ut as a teowi schep 7 meapeS hire ane in to breres teilac • in to wulues muS toward te prote of helle • jef ei swuch is imong ow, godd turne hire in to floe • wende hire in to cuuent • 7 leue ow )?e beoS ]?rin • swa halden ow prin • -p godd J?e hehe priur neome ow on ende J?eonne up, in to )?e cloistre of heouene. Hwil ge haldeS ow in an, offearen etc.
(9) After ' tunge,' p. 256, 1. 7 :
f. 69 v°. 7 segge anan rihtes • Vre meistre haueS iwriten us as in heast to halden • -pe we tellen him al -p euch of oj?er hereS • ant for J>i
1 and \>i$ spece — togederes om V.
2 to teren her here for tene P.
3 The word might perhaps be ' mucli,' but we have « mutle'S ' (apparently) with v.l. 'mudle«,'p. 296.
C. MACAULAY 471
loke pe "p tu na ping ne telle me, "p ich ne muhe him tellen • pe mei don pe amendement • 7 con swaliches don hit • -p ich 7 tu baSe gef we beo5 i pe soS, schule beon unblamet. Euch noSele warni etc.
(10) After p. 262, 1. 4 :
f. 71. Of na mon ne of na wummon ne schule ge makie na man • ne pleainin ow of na wone • bute to sum treowe freond "p hit mei amendin • 7 godin ham oSer ow • ant -p beo prmeliche iseid as under seel of schrift •p ge ne beon iblamet • gef ge of ei ping habbeS wone, 7 sum freond georne freini ow gef ge ei wone habbeS • gef ge hopieS god of him, ondswerieS o pis wise • lauerd godd forgelde pe • Ich drede mare ich habbe pen ich were wurSe • ant leasse wone ich polie pen me neod were • gef he easke<5 geornluker • ponkiS him georne • 7 seggeS • Ich ne dear nawt lihen o me seoluen, wone ich habbe ase riht is • Hwuch ancre kimeS in to ancre hus to habben hire eise • ah nu pu wult hit alles witen, vre lauerd te forgelde • pis is nu an ping -p ich hefde neode to • 7 pus" bid ure riwle •p je schawin to gode freond as opre godes poure doS hare meoseise wiS milde eadmodnesse • ne nawt ne schule we forsaken pe grace of godes sonde, ah ponkin him georne leste he wreaSe him wiS us 7 wiSdrahe his large hond 7 prefter wiS to muche wone abeate ure prude • ant nis hit muchel hones hwen godd beot his hond forS puttinde hire agein segge • Ne kepe ich hit nawt haue pe seolf • Ich wulle fondin gef ich mei libben her buten • purh pis ich habbe iherd 'p of swuch -p nom uuel ende •
Ajein leccherie etc.
(11) Morton, p. 416, 11. 12 — 22. This passage is given in the follow- ing expanded form in B, and the original text of C has been altered in accordance with this.
f. 112v°. Wummen • 7 children • 7 nomeliche ancre meidnes pe cumeS iswenchet for ow • pah ge spearien hit on ow, oSer borhin oSer bidden hit, makieS ham to eotene wiS chearitable chere • 7 leaSieS to herbarhin • Na mon ne eote biuoren ow bute bi ower meistres leaue • general oSer special • as of freres preach urs • 7 meonurs • special, of alle opre • Ne leaSie ge nane opre to eoten ne to drinken, bute alswa purh his leaue • liht is me seiS leaue • Nawiht ne §irne ich "p me for swucche boden telle ow hende ancren • Ihwear pah ant eauer gemeS ow "p nan from ow purh ower untuhtle ne parti wiS scandle •
Ed gode men neomeS al -p ow to nedeS • Ah -p lokiS ow wel • -p ge ne kecchen pe nome of gederinde ancren • Of mon -p ge misleueS purh his fol semblant oSer bi his wake wordes, nowSer ne neome ge ne leasse ne mare • neode schal driuen ow forte bidden ei ping • pah eadmodliche schawiS to gode men 7 wummen, ower meoseise • ge mine leoue sustren bute gef neod ow driue 7 ower meistre hit reade • ne schulen habbe etc.
(12) After ' leaue,' p. 420, 1. 1:
f. 113 v°. nohwer ne binetli hire • ne ne beate biuoren • ne na keoruunge ne keorue • ne ne neome ed eanes to luSere disceplines •
472 The 'Ancren Riwle*
temptatiuns forte acwenchen • ne for na bote agein cundeliche secnesses • nan uncundelich lechecreft ne leue ge ne ne fondin • wiS uten ure meistres read, leste ow stonde wurse • Ower schon i winter beon meoke • greate 7 warme -.etc.
(13) After ' ueiles,' p. 420, 1. 7. This passage is incompletely given in V, partly owing to the loss of the preceding leaf, and partly to omission at the end. It is also added in the margin of C, with omission of the last two lines, ' Tojeines — oSerh wiles.'
f. 113 v°. Ancren summe sungiS-in hare wimplunge, na leasse ]?en leafcjis • Ah )?ah seiS sum -p hit limpeS to euch wummon cundeliche forte werien1 wimpel • Nai • wimpel ne heaued claS2 nowSer ne nempneS hali writ, ah wriheles ane • Ad corinthios • Mulier uelet caput suum • wummon seiS ]?e apostle • schal wreon hire heaued • wrihen he seiS nawt wimplin • wrihen ha schal hire scheome • as cue sunfule dohter • i mungunge of J?e sunne f schende us on earst alle • ant nawt drahe )?e wriheles to tiffunge 7 to prude • Eft wule ]?e apostle ty wummon wreo i chirche hire neb getten • leste uuel }>oht arise ]?urh hire onsihSe • Et hoc est propter angelos • Hwi benne ]?u chirch ancre iwimplet openest ]?i neb to wep- monnes ehe, togeines ]?e sist men3, spekeS J?e apostle • gef }m j?e ne hudest • ah gef "p ei ]?ing wrihe<5 )?i neb from monnes ehe • beo hit wah beo hit claS • i wel itund windowe • wel mei duhen ancre of otter wim- plunge • Tojeines J?e Ipe ]>us- ne dest, spekeS )?e apostle nawt tojeines o)?re • ty hare ahne wah wriheS wi5 euch monnes sihSe • )?er awakeniS ofte wake )?ohtes of • 7 werkes oSerh wiles4. Hwa se wule beon isehen etc.
(14) After ' leaue/ p. 420, 1. 16 :
f. 114. namare j?en neomen • *p je ne seggen him fore, as of oSre Binges • kun o<5er cuSSe • hu ofte je underuengen • hu longe je edheolden • tendre of cun ne limpeS nawt ancre beonne • A mon wes of religiun • 7 com to him efter help his fleschliche broSer • 7 he tahte him to his J?ridde breSer • j?e wes dead biburiet • ]?e ondswerede wundrinde • Nai qwo-S he nis he dead ? ant ich quati ]?e hali mon am dead gasteliche • Na flesch- lich freond ne easki me fleschlich froure • Amices 7 parures • worldliche leafdis mahen inoh wurchen • ant gef je ham makieS, ne makie ^e )?rof na mustreisun • veine gloire attreS alle gode f>eawes • 7 alle gode werkes • Criblin ne schal nan of ow for luue ne for hure • Taueles ne forbeode ich nawt • jef sum riueS surpliz oSer measse kemese, oj?re rinunges ne riue ha nawt5 nomeliche ouer egede, bute for muche neode • HelpeS etc.
(15) After ' wulleS,' p. 424, 1. 2 ; added in C by later hand from ' VnderstondeS ' :
1 V begins here ' were Wympel • Nay. '
2 ne hef C, the rest being cut off.
3 teseines ]>&• J?e isist men C.
4 V omits ' Hwi J?enne — o^erh wiles. '
5 Perhaps it should be rather ' o>re riuimges ne rine ha nawt.'
C. MACAULAY
473
£115. 7 ower o]?re jnnges • Nes neauer fulSe godd leof • J>ah pouerte 7 unorneschipe beon him licwurSe • VnderstondeS eauer of alle |?eose Binges • -p nan nis heast ne forbod -p beoS of )?e uttre riwle • ]?et is lute strengSe of • for hwon -p te inre beo wel iwist as ich seide i )>e frumSe • )?eos rnei beon ichanget hwer se eani neod oSer eani skile hit easkeS • efber ^ ha to best mei j?e leafdi riwle seruin as hire eadmode jmften • ah sikerliche wiS uten hire j?e leafdi feareS to wundre.
Ancre J?e naueS etc.
(16) After p. 430, 1. 10 :
f. 117. Hwen ower sustres meidnes cumeS to ow to froure, cumeS to ham to J?e ]?url, earunder 7 ouerunder • eanes oSer twien • 7 gaS ajein sone, to ower note gastelich • ne biuore Complie ne sitte je nawt for ham ouer riht time • swa "p hare cume beo na lure of ower religiun, ah gastelich bijete • gef ]?er is eani word iseid "p mahte hurten heo^te, ne beo hit nawt iboren ut, ne ibroht to o]?er ancre, "p is eS hurte • To him hit schal beon iseid, fe lokeS ham alle • Twa niht is inoh -p ei beo edhalden • ant •p beo ful seldene • ne for heoin ne breoke silence ed te mete, ne for blodletunge • bute jef sum muche god oSer neod hit makie • pe ancre ne hire meiden ne plohien nane l worldliche gomenes ed te (?urle • ne ne ticki togederes • for ase seiS seint Beornard • vnwurSe is to euch gastelich mon • 7 nomeliche to ancre, euch swuch fleschlich froure • 7 hit binimeS gastelich 'p is wiS ute met utnume murhSe • 7 "p is uuel change as is iseid pruppe.
Of |?is boc redeS etc.
A few words may be added on the subject referred to on pp. 77, 78, namely the supposed connexion of the Ancren Riwle with Tarente. It has already been pointed out that the reference to Tarente occurs only in the Latin version and is combined with the ascription of authorship to Simon of Ghent, who cannot possibly have been the author of the English text. I wish here to note in addition that the religious house at Tarente cannot possibly be identified with the small community of three anchoresses for whom the Ancren Riwle was composed. The convent in question was of the Cistercian order and presided over by an Abbess. There is extant a Latin letter written in the thirteenth century by John Godard, formerly Abbot of Newenham, ' ad sororem suam Margaretam abbatissam de Tarente2,' and the warnings against the temptations of gluttony which this letter contains indicate an entirely different style of living from that which was followed by our anchoresses, who have chiefly to be warned against overmuch severity
1 ' nane ' added later.
2 MS. Camb. Univ. Mm. vi, 4, ff. 237—256. My attention was called to this letter by Mr G. G. Coulton. Godard ceased to be Abbot in the year 1248 (Dugdale, Monasticon,
1846, vol. v, p. 690). M. L. R. IX.
31
474 The 'Ancren Riwle'
and a too strict abstinence. It may be observed also that the entry with reference to the French Ancren Riwle (MS. Cotton, Vitell. F vn) in Smith's catalogue of the Cotton MSS. (1698) cannot be taken as independent evidence of the connexion of this with Simon of Ghent, for the ascription there is plainly taken from the yet earlier Cotton catalogue in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 36,682 B. f. 179, where a reference is definitely made to the Magdalen College manuscript :
Regula inclusarum Gallice. Liber iste in Bibl : Collegii Magdai'. Oxoniae. Nomen prefert Simonis de Gandavo Episcopi Sarum de vita solitaria sororibus suis Anachoritis apud Tarente1.
It seems probable, moreover, that in the heading of the Latin version which is here referred to, the word ' Anachoritis ' was used in a loose sense, and that Simon of Ghent's sisters were in fact nuns in the convent of Tarente, for whom their brother conceived that a modified version of the Ancren Riwle might be an edifying manual.'
I desire to conclude this series of articles with an expression of obligation both to Mr C. W. Moule, the late Librarian of Corpus Christi College, and to Mr G. G. Butler, the present Librarian, who have very kindly given me special facilities for using the manuscript of the Ancren Riwle with which I have been chiefly concerned.
G. C. MACAULAY.
CAMBRIDGE.
1 I am indebted for this information to Mr J. P. Grilson, Keeper of the Manuscripts.
GATIEN DE COURTILZ, SIEUB DU VERGER1, A PRECURSOR OF LESAGE.
I.
EVERYBODY has read Les Trois Mousquetaires, and knows that Dumas acknowledges his obligation to an old volume in the Bibliotheque Royale. In fact d'Artagnan2 and his three friends appear in an anonymous work first published in 1700. This book, though purporting to be a simple rearrangement of the authentic Memoires of Captain d'Artagnan, was soon recognized as the work of a prolific scribe, known as Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras (1644 ? — 1712). Contemporary notices of Courtilz are due to the desire of precise historians to refute the popular idea that his supposed Memoires were authentic history3. Even in our own day some writers accept too credulously the anecdotes of this clever mystifier. A hungry hack, his sole aim was to please. Among the genres which were already in vogue, he chose those best suited to his temperament, and stamped them with the seal of his personality. He invariably pretended to disclose hidden historical fact, and reveal the cryptic motives which actuated prominent personages. His real object was to lure the public with scandal, and in this he succeeded amazingly. He ignored the critics who exposed his impudent mendacity ; never signing his work with his own name, he thus avoided condemnation at sight ; he ascribed his writings, now to a veteran who had witnessed the incidents described, now to a courtier long familiar with the manners
1 The author wishes to express his gratitude to his colleagues, Professors Casis and Villa vaso, and to Professors Trent and Woodbridge, who have kindly criticised his manuscript. He is under special obligation to Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly for invaluable editorial criticism. A complete treatment of the writings of Courtilz with his biography is to appear shortly.
2 Strictly speaking he should be called M. d'Artagnan or Artagnan, but it seems best to preserve the name under which he is famous.
3 See Bayle, Diet., esp. art. Louis XIII; Nouv.de laRep.desLettres, passim; Corresp., passim; Rep. a un Prov., Chap, xxvii; Sallengre, Mem. de la Lit. ; Lelong, Diet. Hist.; Nice"ron, Mem.; Lengiet, Bibl. des Romans; De Brequigny, Jour, des Savants, Oct. 1760. Jal, Diet. Grit., and Kavaisson, Arch, de la Bastille, cite interesting documents. See also Ch. Samaran, D'Artagnan, Paris, 1912.
31—2
476 Gatien de Gourtilz
of the palace. Finally, his genuine gift of narrative and vigorous style enabled him to hold his readers.
Courtilz took such precautions to conceal his personality that bio- graphical details are scarce. Uncertain as to his real name, contem- poraries knew next to nothing of his life. Yet, despite insufficient data, some idea of the man's character may be formed. Jack-of-all-trades, he put his hand to every kind of work, however dubious ; he had shrewdly observed all manner of adventurers ; as a soldier he had amassed a treasure of military anecdotes, and had doubtless discussed at length with his comrades the conduct of his chiefs and the vicissitudes of politics A Paris pamphleteer, he knew all such gossip about prominent contemporaries as was current in antechambers and guardrooms. Finally, while imprisoned at the Bastille, he must have spent hours comparing notes with his fellows. In studying his work, there will be occasion to remark his powers of observation and his retentive memory. To these natural gifts he owed many of his faults, and most of his merits, as a writer. Of him, as of the moralists, we may say that he gave back to society the good and the evil he had observed in it. But it must be added that his eyes turned by preference to one side of the medal.
Courtilz began his literary career as a pamphleteer, a hawker of political and social scandal. He wrote by turns for and against his country's policy ; he exposed with no little gusto the unedifying private life of courtiers and great ladies. It cannot be said that everything in these writings is false ; there is only too much reason to believe that Courtilz gives a fairly truthful picture of profligate Paris in his time. It is certain, however, that he did not seek truth for its own sake. Ribald gossip proved good copy, and was remunerative.
The rapid rise of France aroused violent protests. Louis XIV was accused of aiming at universal empire, and of using any means, fair or foul, to attain his end. His partisans answered with abuse of his assailants, and with exaggerated flattery of the king. Courtilz had a foot in both camps. In 1683 there appeared two pamphlets entitled: La Conduite de la France. . . and Rdponse au livre intitule : La Conduite, etc. There is good reason to believe that Courtilz wrote both, hoping thus to reap a double harvest. In the first he heaps unmeasured abuse on the policy of France, and in the second (purporting, of course, to be from another hand) he refutes a part of his previous allegations, and contradicts the rest. Setting a thief to catch a thief, we may quote one phrase which applies to all the author's work. The Reponse remarks of
BENJAMIN M. WOODBEIDGE
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the writer of the Conduite : ' Je dirais qu'il les aurait pulse's [ses raison- nements] entierement dans les Gazettes, n'etait qu'il y ajoute beaucoup du sien, afin, comme je crois, de deguiser le vol qu'il y a fait.'
A third pamphlet, the pretentious title of which may be abridged to tenements remarquables, was published the same year. It is interesting because it displays clearly certain traits which characterize all Courtilz' work. The ostensible purpose is to glorify the existing government by contrasting it with the disorder which marked the last years of Louis XIII and continued during the Fronde. But the greater part of the book is packed with anecdotes of this troubled period in which Courtilz so often set his scenes. The announcement of his purpose in the preface recurs in all his works ; he has access to some secret source of information and promises ' des particularites inconnues.' And so h« indulges his passion for attributing pettiness to the great, and affects to illuminate important events with scurrilous anecdotes. Another series of pamphlets in which the desire to exploit scandal is still more apparent is re- presented by Les Conqudtes Amoureuses du Grand Alcandre dans les Pays-Bas. This libel, like others with similar titles published by Courtilz shortly afterwards, is allied to Bussy-Rabutin's Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules. Although carelessly written, it and its fellows show a certain talent for fleet narration and burlesque scenes.
Courtilz returns to politics with the Nouveaux Inter ets des Princes de V Europe, published in 1685. Here he formulates a Machiavellian doctrine accepted by all his heroes. Further, some attention is due to the method of the book, which is suggested by the Due de Rohan's work, De V Interest des Princes et E stats de la Chrestiente, printed in 1639 5 this contains a summary discussion of the policy which princes should follow for the aggrandizement of their states. There is nothing original in the maxims, which are practically identical with Machiavelli's cynical theories. While the duke lays down general laws, Courtilz studies the changing phases of politics. He had his eye on the men and problems of the moment, and tried to express them to the life. The same method, characteristic of all his work, explains his success in passing off his novels as genuine -history. Though some of the so-called Memoires begin under Richelieu, and though the author lingers long over the scenes of the Fronde, he closes near the time of composition. To deceive his contemporaries he was bound not to depart too far from verisimilitude. This is the secret of his realism.
Owing to its journalistic quality the Nouveaux Inter ets was soon out of date. The need for constant revision seems to have suggested the
478 Gatien de Courtilz
idea of a political monthly gazette, the Mercure Historique et Politique1. This review, edited by Courtilz from November 1686 to March 1689, resembles the former treatise in content. The author disavowed all moral responsibility, and would say with Machiavelli, that he had only put at the service of sovereigns what their policy had taught him ; on all sides he had watched the practical working of the maxim : ' qui ne sait pas dissimuler, n'est pas digne de remplir le tr6ne.'
Yet the writer's heroes are not impossible fantastic villains : they sow their wild oats like the rest, for, as d'Artagnan says : ' la jeunesse ne demande que d'avoir un pied toujours en 1'air'; but fundamentally they are such average honest men as one might find without Diogenes' lantern. Their hands are smirched with intrigue, but the trickery is practised in the interest of the great ; they serve their employers faithfully, while their fingers itch to unmask their paymasters. Although occupied with practical politics and plots, Courtilz knew how to render character. In Richelieu and Mazarin and many others we see the real men ; their confidential servants, the heroes of the Memoires, make it their business to reveal to us the inner workings of the minds of these masters of statecraft. This method of portraiture by anecdotic illustration — the method of Plutarch2 — appears fully developed in Courtilz' biographies of Turenne and Gaspard de Coligny. These are perhaps the only great men at whom he never scoffs. As an old soldier, he could appreciate military qualities, and he presents this pair of pala- dins as most accomplished leaders and as gentlemen without reproach.
Here then is the cult of the hero, a hero whose character is conveyed in a vehicle of anecdote. This method has, of course, alternative possibilities : other incidents may be chosen or those chosen may be given a different turn, so that demigods are reduced to plain men and women. This is the plan followed by literary picaros, and Gil Bias at the Spanish court had predecessors among his creator's fellow-country- men. Not for nothing had Courtilz lived under the Fronde, and sat round camp-fires with veterans of the civil wars. At heart a frondeur, he looked on respect for traditional authority as an inviting bubble. It called for pricking : he pricked it with indifferent cynicism.
In the works already considered — they are among the first known writings of Courtilz — the man's temper and method are foreshadowed.
1 See Hermann Kunge, Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras und die Anfdnge des Mercure, Halle, 1886-7.
2 For a phrase which might be found in any of Courtilz' prefaces, cf. the life of Nicias, end of Chap, n (Amyot's translation).
Several interesting parallels, especially with the life of Alexander, might be noted.
BENJAMIN M. WOODBRIDGE 479
But, had he written nothing else, he would have no claim even to the meagre interest which posterity takes in him. His real significance lies in his novels, or pseudo-memoirs. Here, as in his early pamphlets, he adopted a genre which had already met with favour, and, before examining the typical form of his novelistic work, it may be worth while to glance rapidly at a book which certainly gave him many hints.
In 1676 appeared the Memoires du Sieur de Pontis, in which an old soldier tells the story of his life. The preface states that the memoirs were written from the account given by the captain after his retreat to Port-Royal. The anonymous author declares that Pontis was most unwilling to continue his story when he learned that there were thoughts of publishing it1. ^
The hero, orphaned at the age of fourteen, goes to Paris to seek his fortune. Friends give him a letter to M. de Cre"qui, who obtains for him a post in the guards of Henry IV. His fortune varies, but at last he finds his place in the regular army of the king. He relates the story of his campaigns in the religious wars, but speaks only of the battles and sieges in which magna pars fuit. The Memoires become the chronicle of his personal exploits, and lose much of their vivacity. He lingers long over the capture of a demilune where he was the first to cross the trench, but he never speaks of the cause of the war, and hardly mentions the enemy. The reader is constantly invited to admire his dare-devil deeds, as his chiefs tell him off for the most perilous enterprises. He takes a naive pleasure in describing his private interviews with the king, and in insisting on the special favours accorded him. Here is a typical example which has more than one counterpart in Courtilz' novels : ' Le roi, qui voulait expres me te'moigner beaucoup de froideur, pour mieux cacher 1'intelligence secrete qui etait entre lui et moi, m'ecoutait avec une con- tenance fiere, la main sur le cdte, e"tant au milieu des deux cardinaux,' Weary at last of strife, Pontis retires to the abbey of Port-Royal.
The story met with a considerable success, and no less a personage than the Abbe Arnauld declares that it inspired the writing of his own Memoires. Though Courtilz is less ingenuous, many parallels might be cited to prove his indebtedness to Pontis. But he has enriched his matter, at the same time giving relief and probability to the exploits of his heroes, by the introduction of events in which they had no part.
1 For Pontis, see Ste-Beuve, Port-Royal, n, pp. 570 ff. ; P. Tamizey de Larroque, Revue d'Aquitaine, Aug., 1863, pp. 61 fif., and bibliography there cited.
The Memoires were actually written by Pierre Thomas, sieur du Fosse" (Lelong, Diet. Hist., No. 23738 (ed. of Fevretj).
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At one moment he exaggerates their rdle, at another he presents them as simple spectators discussing the actions of their contemporaries.
There is also to be noted a marked difference in the spirit of the two men. Pontis is of a simple-minded sincerity : he takes life, as he takes himself, with quaint seriousness. For him the king rules by divine right ; he accepts the whole social hierarchy as established. At times he perceives the selfish motives of courtiers, especially of Richelieu? but as a rule, if he permits himself anecdotes derogatory to prominent personages, this is done with a view to helping readers to understand these great men better. Courtilz mockingly analyses the power as well as the lives of potentates ; he finds their estate maintained by means to which no private gentleman would stoop, and themselves moved by the same base passions as the lowliest of their subjects. He loves to emphasize the contrast between the majesty of these superior beings and their real character (so like his own). Pontis has glimpses of this resemblance, but reverences princes all the more : he would fain believe himself formed in the image of his gods. For Courtilz these gods are anthropomorphic, and their presumptuous vanity is proportionately ludicrous. He has given his own picaresque interpretation to Machiavelli's saying that a private citizen is in the best position to judge magnates. Not that the humble escape Courtilz' satire entirely ; but he found a keener relish in flouting the pretensions of those in high places.
The only two works of our author which have escaped oblivion are the Memoires de M.L.C.D.R. (1687), and the Memoires de M. d'Artagnan (1700). The first, usually known as the Memoirs of the Count of Rochefort, was Courtilz' first essay in this genre. The preface states that the author had charged his friends to destroy the manuscript, probably for fear of offending contemporaries by the unflattering anecdotes related at their cost. Similar prefaces precede all the novels, and seem meant as a bait to readers hungering for scandal.
The Memoirs of Rochefort begin with the birth of the hero, brought prematurely into the world owing to a carriage accident. His mother died two days later, and his father, entrusting him to the care of a nurse, went up to Paris where he had many amatory adventures in which the provincial distrust of Parisians is amusingly depicted. He finally married a lady of his own province, who cruelly maltreated her step-son. Rochefort relates how, when a child, he joined a troop of gipsies, and a vivid page describing his life with them, includes a little novel of picaresque adventure in epitome. Quitting these vagabonds, he
BENJAMIN M. WOODBRIDGE
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was attached to a military outpost and distinguished himself by surprising a Spanish officer at an amorous rendezvous. His account of this incident, which smacks of bivouac gasconades, is typical : ' Pendant qu'ils s'amu- saient a faire 1'amour, j'entrai, deux pjstolets de ceinture a mes deux mains, et 1'ayant desarme comme un mouton, je lui dis que s'il ne marchait devant moi, et sans rien dire, je lui allais mettre la bourre dans le ventre.5
The vigilant Richelieu hears of this feat, and summons our hero to court. On the way Rochefort halts at his native village, where the cure tells him of an accident which had thrown his family into despair. This story is of interest because it may well have suggested a similar adventure of Gil Bias. The cure relates how the elder Rochefort has just been robbed of a considerable sum of money by an ingenious triqk. A relative was in trouble as the result of a love affair, and had gone into hiding. A band of rogues disguised themselves as constables, ransacked the house under pretext of searching for the fugitive, bound the owner and carried off all they could lay hands on1. Our wanderer arrives at this juncture and, being supposed to be himself in want, is so unwelcome that he is refused fodder for his horses. He smiles ironically, and his valet informs the household that his master has been called to court by Richelieu. As a prospective favourite of the minister, Rochefort now meets with a very different reception ; relatives are summoned to do him honour, and all the village is agog.
At court, Rochefort quickly gains the confidence of the cardinal, who entrusts him with various important secret missions. He cannot, how- ever, refrain from remarking : ' Je crois qu'il y avait plus de mystere a tout cela que de necessite, et que ce ii'etait que pour voir si on lui serait fidele, ou pour rendre son ministere plus estime par le secret.' Such skilful anticipations of the reader's criticism account in some measure for the wide acceptance which Courtilz' writings found. The * mystery ' in which Richelieu loved to shroud his acts has been a favourite theme with romancers.
Rochefort 's efforts are soon rewarded by the gift of a little abbey, which he presents to his friend, the village cure. His family, who had mocked at his offers of service, now overwhelms him with reproaches. A host of hitherto unknown relatives in his province besiege him for favours. Yet he is only a page at court. As a last test of fide- lity, Richelieu orders him to arrest his cousin and benefactor, the Marechal de Marillac. He obeys unwillingly, and is nearly disgraced for
1 For the parallel in Gil Bias, see Book vi, Chap. i.
482 G'atien de Courtitz
intervening on behalf of the prisoner, whose only crime was to have aroused the cardinal's jealousy. Rochefort is soon reinstated, however, and Richelieu suggests to him an advantageous marriage. Like all Courtilz' heroes, he is suspicious on this point, and, as he says, ' marche bride en main.' Having visited the young lady, and having readily understood why her parents wish to find her a husband, he breaks with them abruptly. They complain to Richelieu, who imprisons our hero, and, without deigning to listen to his defence, swears that he shall die. Hearing of this threat, Rochefort calmly reflects that ' les plus grands hommes se trompent comme les autres.' Pardoned as hastily as he was condemned, he is sent to Brussels to watch the intriguing Mme de Chevreuse. He goes disguised as a Capuchin, and, to throw spies off their guard, stays for some days before his departure at a monastery in Paris. He gaily relates his journey and his distaste for the monastic habit : ' Pour comble de malheur, il me fallut, apres cela, assister &, 1'eglise ; tellement que je crus que le cardinal m'avait envoy e la pour faire mon purgatoire.' He discovers a plot against the court, and the Comte de Ghalais, who was implicated, is shortly after beheaded.
Returning to Paris, Rochefort fights a duel with an Englishman who had spoken disparagingly of his master. Three of the combatants are killed, and our hero is obliged to flee. He gives himself up soon after by the command of the cardinal, who secretly protects him during his trial. After his acquittal, Richelieu informs him that the prosecution was a matter of form to avoid scandal, and reminds him of the sentence of the Corntes de Bouteville and des Chapelles. The incident recalls the pardon granted to Pontis by Henry IV, but a new note is audible. In the midst of his gratitude, Rochefort cannot resist the malicious in- sinuation that a personal spite against the house of Conde had occasioned the execution of the famous duellists. There is also a characteristic trait of Courtilz' method : an adventure of his hero is introduced to exhibit the temper of potentates. Jealous of the power of the nobility, the cardinal had done his utmost to enforce the law against duelling when a Montmorency1 was guilty, but he intervenes to save a private gentleman who enjoys his favour. Again, the too convincing description of the role played by Rochefort in the seizure of the original of Cinq Mars' treaty with Spain, is made the occasion for a vivid account of the tension between the king and the cardinal. It will be seen that Courtilz
1 For Bouteville, see Jal, Diet. Grit. ; E. Colombey, Hist. Anec. du Duel, Chap, vni ; E. and J. Halphen, Journal Inedit d'Arnauld d'Andilly. For the last duel see the Journal for the year 1627, pp. 15-20 and 26-35.
BENJAMIN M. WOODBRIDGE
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is grossly inaccurate in detail: Richelieu never had anything but a copy of the famous treaty, and how he obtained even this is still a mystery. Yet the spirit of the moment is so vividly reproduced, that at least one historian1 cites Rochefort's account, though without guaranteeing its truth.
After the death of his master, Rochefort attaches himself to the party of the Due de Beaufort. Like all Courtilz' heroes, he hated Mazarin, whose sordid avarice, complaisance and perfidy he never tires of exposing. He passes rapidly over the Fronde2, having spent much time in prison during that period. Like many of his contemporaries, he learned the general moral of all the Memoir es : ' Ce fut alors que je recorinus le peu de fonds qu'il y a a faire sur la parole des grands, lesquels nous promettent tout quand ils croient avoir affaire de nous, et nous oublient des que nous ne leur sommes plus necessaires.' The last half of the book is an incoherent medley of anecdotes. Some recount the personal experiences of the hero, others merely repeat stories he had heard. All are tinged with characteristic satire, and offer an interesting picture of certain features of contemporary life and manners.
One of the best satirical portraits in the Memoires is that of the Marquis de Pransac— a parvenu who planned to introduce himself into the aristocracy by means of blasoned equipages. He concocted a genealogy proving his royal descent ; he displayed the arms of France, and assumed the title of Altesse. When the king took the affair in hand, the luckless marquis saw his carriages destroyed, and himself in peril. Rochefort, who had humorously encouraged the parvenu's whimsies, testified in his favour, and secured his acquittal as a maniac.
One of the many law-suits in which Courtilz pays his respects to men of the robe may be cited. Rochefort is forced into litigation with his step-mother over the estate left by his father. His adversary, by falsifying documents, is on the point of winning, when a legal potentate who wishes to remain anonymous, offers him his daughter's hand. If he accepts, his suit is won. Our hero, forgetting his usual caution, is about to marry the unknown bride, but, on learning the name of his future father-in-law, he breaks into a diatribe against him. A fortnight later he loses his case, and is condemned to pay costs. Congratulating himself on his escape from the proposed alliance, he recounts sardoni- cally the lot of the wretch who later accepted a similar offer : ' La
1 E. de Bury, Histoire de la Vie de Louis XIII, Vol. iv, pp. 213-215.
2 Contrary to the custom of the Memoires. Doubtless Courtilz had said his say for the moment in La Vie de Turenne, 1st edit., 1685; enlarged edit., 1688.
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femme porte le haut de chausse vigoureusement, et tout ce que son mari peut faire aujourd'hui qui sente encore le maitre, c'est que quand il lui plait, il va s'enivrer a Chartres, n'y ayant point de vin pour lui dans sa maison.' As a result of this disastrous suit, our hero passes three years in prison, and, though he declares himself resigned to the will of Heaven, he never ceases to denounce laws and ministers.
Released at last by the intervention of the archbishop of Lyons, he relates various anecdotes at the expense of his benefactor whose portrait is thus etched : ' En effet, c'est un archeveque entoure de gardes, au lieu de pretres : suivant un cerf a la tete de cent chiens, au lieu de suivre la croix ; faisant bonne chere, au lieu de faire abstinence ; ne parlant que des grandeurs de la cour, au lieu de parler de 1'humilite : et enfin, si fort a charge a la ville de Lyon, qu'il en est plutdt le tyran que 1'archeveque.'
A well-told incident is one in which Rochefort relates his experience with doctors — constant butts of the picaros, though more gently treated by Courtilz than might be expected. Our hero avers that a long illness had led him to reflect seriously and that he had begun to frequent the churches, where he heard much of a wonder-working friar. Wishing to see this man of miracles, he went to Flanders and thence to Germany. If he saw no miraculous cures, he experienced something very like one. A platform, on which he had climbed with a great crowd to see the marvels, broke down, and his arm was badly fractured. He had it set by the best doctor to be found, but after three weeks of horrible suffering, decided to consult the public executioner, who had some reputation as a surgeon. He is received gruffly enough by this irregular member of the profession, who bids his men, still red-handed from break- ing a wretch on the wheel, hold the patient ; the executioner breaks the arm again, and resets it so well that in a few days Rochefort is as sprightly as ever1.
Did space permit, it would be interesting to follow Rochefort further. Satirical flashes abound, and they testify to the author's observation of social conditions. Among other incidents, might be cited the description of a number of swindlers at a gambling den kept by the Due de Crequi in his own mansion, in spite of the protests of honest folk. The reader
1 Another satirical touch may be cited from the Memoires du marquis de D * *. The marquis was surprised one day to meet in Italy his old valet dressed in gorgeous attire. The wag relates that he had been in the service of a famous physician, whose secrets were not much more complicated than those of Dr Sangrado. He observed his master's methods and soon beat him at his own trade. A suit followed, but he had prepared a rigmarole bristling with Greek and Latin which he recited so glibly that he was granted his degree with honour.
BENJAMIN M. WOODBRIDGE
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is introduced to the tricks of the sharpers and to some of their victims ; after which he learns that the duke maintained the establishment to give employment to two old soldiers, in lieu of a pension1.
But, when summarized, the adventures lose much of their conspicuous vigour, which consists largely in picturesque detail, and graphic style. Enough has been cited to give an idea of the whole. Suffice it to add that, even in advancing age, Rochefort is constantly ' brouille avec la justice/ or with his neighbours, or with both together, and at last, finding only bad faith and egoism on all sides, he decides to retire to a monastery, and %nds his days as his prototype, Pontis, had done.
II.
The Memoires de M. d'Artagnan were published in 1700. They are preceded by one of Courtilz' customary prefaces. The writer declares that he has merely pieced together papers left by the captain of musketeers. He says in part : ' Je m'en suis servi pour composer ces Memoires, en leur donnant quelque liaison. Us n'en avaient point d'eux-memes, et c'est la tout 1'honneur que je pretends me donner de cette ouvrage. Voila aussi tout ce que j'ai mis du mien2.' All of which simply indicates that the author himself felt the utter lack of coherence in his work, and wished to apologise for it. As someone has observed, if we take him at his word, he deserves no credit whatever. The want of quelque liaison is the worst fault of the book. It would be a thankless task to give anything like a connected analysis of it, and I will merely cite a few ^incidents of special interest.
In general this work is of the same order as the Memoires de M.L.C.D.R. The hero, a young provincial, comes to court, enters the King's service, enjoys the confidence of many important personages, and portrays their character by recounting his relations with them, or by
1 I am far from guaranteeing the existence of such a den. D'Artagnan describes another in the Louvre. He found there, 'plus de presse qu'il n:y en pouvait avoir au sermon du plus habile predicateur de Paris.' He adds : 'M. le due de St. Simon tenait le d£, et regardait cette somme comme indigne de sa colere.' However, D'Artagnan, with the proverbial luck of a novice, won a considerable sum which he carried in triumph to his mistress. This recalls the famous scene in Balzac, where the young Eastignac renders a similar service to Mme de Nucingen.
'2 Owing perhaps to the fact that the hero is a well-known historical figure, this part of the preface has been taken too seriously by many readers in our own day, as well as by the contemporaries of the author. Bayle's repeated assertions that d'Artagnan had not written one word of the work will suffice to prove the credulity of readers of his time. The proper attitude is that of M. Samaran (D'Artagnan, Paris, 1912), who accepts nothing, without grave reserves, on the testimony of the Memoires alone. A more detailed study will show that this work is of the same texture as the other Memoires.
486 Gatien de, Courtih
glossing their acts from supposed secret information. He also attempts, as Rochefort fortunately did not, to write an historical chronicle of the epoch, and thus ruins the unity of the whole. The hero disappears entirely at times, buried under the interminable description of wars and diplomatic relations. In all this the reader is constantly invited to remark the Machiavellian politics of kings and ministers. The spirit is that of the Mercure.
The most interesting portions of the book are the portrait of Mazarin and the personal adventures of the hero, who thus gives, as Dumas has it, ' tableaux de 1'epoque.' The opening scenes — the arrival of the hero at Paris, his meeting with Porthos, Athos and Aramis, his first duels — all these have been made famous by Dumas. It may be said here that it is doubtful whether the expanded imitations have always equalled the original. Courtilz had surely known compatriots, at least, of d' Artagnan, and has rendered his portrait convincingly1. The liaison of the hero with his hostess (called by Dumas, Mme de Bonacieux) is vividly told in the Memoires. On one occasion, surprised by the jealous husband, he is obliged to jump from the window in scant attire. Friends furnish clothing, and he goes to complain to a magistrate to whom he tells a true Gascon's story. This precaution he deems necessary to justify: ' S'il est vrai qu'il n'y ait point de ville au monde ou il se fasse tant de cocus impunement qu'a Paris... cet abus se punit dans de certains cas.' To assure himself of the magistrate's support, he leaves him a well- lined purse, and soon lands his man in the Chatelet. Here the wretch was grievously illtreated by his guards, and 'commenca a connaitre qu'il eut mieux fait de souffrir d'etre cocu sans rien dire, que d'etre expose a tant de peines et d'affronts pour s'en etre voulu plaindre.' D' Artagnan further takes measures to inform two varlets, imprisoned with their master, that their necks are in danger if they do not abscond. One of them was entirely innocent of the proposed assassination, but knowing ' qu'il se faisait bien des injustices a Paris, et que Ton n'y condamnait pas moms d'innocents que Ton y sauvait de coupables,' both take advantage of the opportunity arranged for their escape. Their flight is then used to blacken the case of their master. However, the latter writes a touching letter to the brother-in-law of M. de Treville — an honest man, though a magistrate — and obtains his release. D'Artagnan receives from his chief a sharp rebuke which lays bare a social ulcer : ' II ne disconvenait pas, dit-il, a la verite que les bonnes graces d'une
1 For Dumas' borrowings see J. Bernieres, Le Prototype de d1 Artagnan in La Revue Pol. et Lilt., 10 mars 1888; L' Inter mediaire, T. xxxiv, p. 162.
BENJAMIN M. WOODBRIDGE 487
dame ne servissent a faire briller le merite d'un jeune homme ; mais pour que cela fut, il fallait que la dame fut d'un autre rang que celle que je voyais ; que 1'intrigue que Ton avait avec une femme de qualite passait pour galanterie, au lieu que celle que Ton avait avec celles qui ressemblaient a ma maitresse, ne passait que pour debauche et pour crapule.' D'Artagnan feels the injustice of this rebuke, and in his com- mentary may be heard the accent of a revolt destined to grow stronger. Another picaro, named Figaro, was to say the same thing in more ringing tones nearly a century later. In general, these heroes relate their stories without adding their own reflexions — the facts speak for themselves. But this time d'Artagnan cannot refrain : ' Apres tout, le vice est toujours vice, et il n'est pas plus permis a une femme de qualite de faire I'amour qu'a celle de la lie du peuple : mais comme 1'usage autorisait ses reproches, je m'en trouvai si etourdi que je n'eus pas la force de lui repondre une seule parole.'
An incident which shows the author's familiarity with street riots is the dramatic account of the day of the barricades, following the arrest of the parliamentary counsellor, Broussel. D'Artagnan had the curiosity to visit the scene, and, on answering ' Vive le roi et vive Broussel ! ' to the sentry's challenge, was promptly received. He was struck with the great quantity of wine, of which the rioters were making free use. He was obliged to drink with them in sign of good fellowship. While, as he says, ' je faisais pair et compagnon avec cette canaille,' a drunken ruffian asked his assistance in an attempt on the life of Mazarin. Our hero put off the would-be assassin, hoping that the night would bring sobriety and better counsel. When, on the following day he arrived at the rendezvous more excited than ever, d'Artagnan led him into an ambush of guards. To the great alarm of the cardinal the mob released him the same day. The episode is effective as a vivid picture of the spirit of the moment — of the power of the people and their hatred of Mazarin.
D'Artagnan is never tired of insisting on the dishonesty and cowardice of the cardiual in personal and official relations, and on the venality he introduced into all the affairs of government. Hence he was universally hated, and all the prudence of the Prince of Conde was needed to prevent an outburst of popular fury. Courtilz is always too much inclined to represent the Fronde as the direct result of the vices of the prime minister. The great Conde was less favourably disposed to Mazarin who did his best to conciliate him. D'Artagnan even pretends to have over- heard and to reproduce the broken French of his servile flattery. I may add that during all the intrigues of the Fronde, the cardinal is represented
488 Gatien de Courtilz
as one who ' en matiere des ruses et de fourberie eut ete bien fache de le ce'der a aucun.' His insolent distrust of his generals is dramatically brought out in an incident told of the siege of Gravelines. On the eve of a battle, the artillery w,m found to be lacking powder, and this was refused by the officer •\\s£fose duty it was to supply it. Complaint was made to the Marechal de la Meillerie who swore to have the delinquent hanged in a trice. The latter calmly produced an order from Mazarin directing him to await the third or fourth demand for powder before supplying it, 'pour que les officiers superieurs ne volent pas le roi.' The marshal, thus insulted, appealed to the Due d'Orle'ans, who only laughed, asking ' s'il ne savait pas que des qu'on etait d'une humeur, on se laissait aller aisement a croire des autres tout ce que Ton ressentait en soi.' The duke then related a string of similar orders by Son Excellence. All of which did not save the unhappy officer (though, to avoid scandal, the rumour was spread that he had committed suicide). D'Artagnan adds : ' Mais, si cela est, on avait bien voulu lui preter une corde et un clou pour se pendre au plancher d'une mechante maison.' It is specially from personal relations with Mazarin that our hero draws his portrait. He observes that all favours were reserved for the creatures of the minister, who maintained a gambling den where it was essential to lose in order to win promotion. Those who failed in this respect were unable even to obtain the payment of their salaries.
However, D'Artagnan and his compatriot Besmaus1 were at last taken into the personal service of the cardinal, who promised to look after their interests. They at first believed themselves at the top of fortune's wheel, but soon had to change their key, for ' si nous avions des bas nous n'avions pas de souliers,' remarks our hero. After he had fulfilled various delicate missions in which his life was constantly in danger, the cardinal offered him a company in the guards, but asked twenty thousand francs in return. In order to forestall objections, Mazarin caused this sum to be offered by four financiers. At the same time a young woman, more beautiful and wealthy than virtuous, pro- poses a large dowry with her hand. Our Gascon hoped to have the crowns pour ses beaux yeux, but he met his match. Whereupon, as he did not wish to be, as he says, ' de la grande confrerie,' he was escorted to the door ' sans tambour et sans trompette.' D'Artagnan, like Courtilz' other heroes, is as ill-starred in serious courtship as he is successful in gallantry. Mazarin pressed the new lieutenant for
1 For Besmaus, see the Gazette de France, 23 Oct. 1646; for d'Artagnan, Chron. Hist. Mil. of Pinart, Vol. vi, p. 418; for both compare Mem. de M.L.C.D.R., p. 165. Pinart cites no other authority than the Memoires.
WOODBRIDGE
489
payment, and obliged him to have recourse to the financiers. Unhappily, he related to them, as a jest, the proposed marriage. Instead of money he received only the most cynical counsel. At last he obtained a loan from a man who shared his prejudices. The latter begged him not to specify the source of the money. D'Artagnan took the purse to his Eminence who sniffed at it, and invited him to do the same, asking if he detected any disagreeable smell. On his giving a negative answer, Mazarin assured him that all which came from the same source would be equally untainted. No need to be a Gascon to infer that the cardinal, as soon as he heard of the marriage proposal, had, with the best inten- tions, forbidden the financiers to lend the money. To him, observes d'Artagnan, the bitterest pill is poverty.
On another occasion the cardinal communicates to his lieutenant his private views on politics. He was hoping to place one of his nieces on the throne of England, and sent d'Artagnan to get exact information concerning the true state of affairs. He was uncertain whether to negociate a marriage with the son of the protector or with Charles II. Finding his ambassador's sympathy all against Cromwell, he sets forth a doctrine in which the divine right of kings is treated with scant respect : 'II me dit...qu'il fallait que je susse que ce qui paraissait tirannique au commencement devenait juste dans la suite; que le temps rectifiait toutes choses, tellement. qu'avec un peu de patience un usurpateur et ineme un tiran devenait roi legitime ; qu'il voulait done que j'aimasse Cromwell si les Anglais 1'aimaient, et que je le haisse s'ils le haissaient : que c'etait la la pierre de touche dont il voulut que je me servisse pour connaitre s'il regnait sur eux legitimement, puisqu'aussi bien il ne dependait que de la de savoir si sa race lui succederait on non, comme nos rois avaient succede a leurs peres.' D'Artagnan finds ' cette decision merveilleuse et bien digne de lui,' but promises to do his best. Re- turning to France after a series of gallant adventures which seem to have very little relation to the object of his journey, he receives a large recompense for services rendered to the state.
These few incidents, chosen among a thousand which throw the same light on Mazarin's character, must suffice. Needless to say that in the disgrace of Fouquet the attitude of the hero is always the same. It will be remembered that d'Artagnan was charged with the arrest of the minister of finance, and the Memoires give a dramatic account of the whole affair. Speaking of the papers left by the cardinal to implicate Fouquet, our hero remarks : ' On ne laissa pas de trouver cette accusa- tion etrange, non qu'elle ne fut veritable, mais parce qu'elle venait de M. L. R. ix. 32
490 Gatien de Courtilz
lui. On n'etait pas accoutume de voir un voleur en accuser un autre, a moins que d'etre entre les mains de la justice,. . .et, parmi tous les voleurs, il n'y en avait point qui le fut en comparaison de lui (Mazarin).'
Though most of the abuse in the Memoires is dedicated to the cardinal, no occasion is lost for a satiric portrait. Witness the following where the Count de Nogent1 is introduced only to be thus branded : ' Ce comte etait un comte de nouvelle impression, et qui, de fort peu de chose qu'il etait naturellement, etait devenu extremement riche. II avait passe quelque temps a la cour pour un bouffon....!! aimait le jeu au dela de tout ce que Ton saurait dire, et meme il y avait perdu de Fargent....!! jurait et reniait pour ainsi dire, chreme et bapteme, ce qui etonna tellement un jour un des freres du due de Luynes qui jouait tres gros jeu contre lui, que pour ne le pas entendre blasphemer davantage, il lui remit plus de cinquante mille ecus qu'il lui gagnait. II lui dit...
qu'il ne pouvait se mettre en colere si fort sans alterer sa sante
Cependant, ce grand blasphemateur devint homme de bien sur la fin de ses jours, dont les capucins ne se trouvererit pas mal quelque fois. Comme il etait voisin d'un de leurs couvents, quand il voyait un bon plat sur sa table, il le faisait oter par mortification, sans y vouloir toucher : il le leur envoyait en meme temps, et leur faisait dire de le manger a son intention. Sa femme et ses enfants qui en eussent bien mange eux- memes, et qui n'etaient pas si devots que lui, en enrageaient bien souvent, mais il leur fallait prendre patience, parce qu'il se faisait obeir en depit qu'ils en eussent.' With such an eye this loyal servant of the king studied the ambitious nobles and upstarts of his time.
Perhaps an undisputed canon of the writings of Courtilz can never be established. Lelong says he left manuscripts for forty unpublished volumes, and there is a natural tendency to ascribe to him this or that anonymous work of the same general type as those believed to be his. The only sound method seems to be to sift the evidence of contemporaries, and check it by the results of modern research. It is dangerous to draw any conclusions from style. Courtilz wrote rapidly, probably very much as he spoke, too often sacrificing clearness and even correctness to the hack's appetite for copy. One might almost say that any work which shows careful composition is to be put on the doubtful list. The author's one merit in style is in the racy and picturesque phrases with which he sprinkled his works. These form part of the adventurer's vocabulary, and fit admirably into the texture of the whole. They add realism to the scenes in which he deals with bluff soldiers or free-spoken mountebanks, 1 For him and his family, see Saint-Simon, Memoires, xn, p. 564 (Grands Ecriv. ed.).
BENJAMIN M. WOODBBIDGE
491
and barb his satire of the great. He shows us princes and ministers off their guard, and then their speech corresponds to their actions; he describes their deeds in terms which give the colour of probability to the motives he imputes to them.
The Memoires of Rochefort and of d'Artagnan are undoubtedly of greater interest than the other works of Courtilz as predecessors of the picaresque novel in France, although the satiric observation of the author is nowhere wanting, and all his writings show a conscious effort at rather sordid realism. It is interesting to remark that there is no trace of the influence of contemporary fiction in Courtilz' early work. Beginning with the romantic story of the Marquise de Fresne (1701), I find such influence here and there. This lady's adventures seem to owe something to the pirate novel popular at the time1^ many of the adventures of the marquis D * * * might find a place in the Voyage en Espagne of the Countess d'Aulnoy, and finally, in the Memoires de B * *, the author has interpolated, according to the custom of romancers of those days, a fantastic novelette, which has no relation to the main plot, but relates the misadventures of a fair young Greek. But in general, we may accept for all the author's work the bluff remark of d'Artagnan that he was no reader of novels. I have tried to show that the source of his inspiration was quite different. Like the modern realists, Courtilz observed for himself. He retells stories heard in camp, and keeps much of the original flavour; he devoured satirical pamphlets, gazettes, memoirs and history, and gleaned something from them all. A more complete analysis than is possible here confirms this theory.
Contemporaries of Courtilz who, like Bayle and Lenglet, judged his works severely, called them novels, meaning to express their profound contempt for this would-be historian. But the very frequency of these criticisms shows the necessity of putting readers on their guard — so convincing was his manner. Our author professed to share their scorn of romance, and often feigns to apologize for the rollicking adventures which his heroes recount in the midst of serious historical chronicling. His reason for publishing these manuscripts, he would have us believe, is the light they throw on certain obscure details of contemporary or recent events. History there is in his writings, and often too much of it, but so distorted and so intermingled with cleverly devised incident of the author's invention, that it is well nigh impossible to say what is fact and what romance. However it may be, to call these works novels, in the same sense as the greater part of the fiction of the time,
1 See my article in Mod. Lang. PubL, xxvn, 3.
32—2
492 Gatien de Courtilz
would be an entire misunderstanding of their bearing. Bayle himself drew from them, witness the article on Louis XIII in the Dictionary, and to-day serious historians of the age of Louis XIV declare that not everything in his writings is apocryphal. The difficulty is still to say precisely, what is and what is not. I have tried to indicate a few of the tableaux d'epoque which may well claim some interest in the study of manners.
None need now fear reproach in the term novelist. It is significant that those who would plead for Courtilz to-day call him a romancer. He is in some measure, say they, the father of historical fiction. In the foregoing study, I have tried to adumbrate his claim to another title, perhaps still more honourable. He is important in the history of the politico-picaresque novel, represented by the life of Gil Bias at the Spanish court, as also in that of the realistic novel. He professes to write contemporary history, though giving it a somewhat suspicious form. Hence to deceive his readers — and he did deceive them — he must keep close to reality. He states boldly that the effort to arouse interest in reality, as such, is an entirely legitimate one. In the preface to the Memoires de M. de la Fontaine (1698), he writes : ' Cette diversite d'incidents naturels, et tels qu'il en arrive tous les jours a la plupart des hommes, la brievete des recits...les lumieres qu'il [the supposed writer of the Memoires} donne sur la maniere dont les choses se passent a la Bastille : tout cela plaira sans doute beaucoup.'
It will be objected that I am leaving out of account the earlier realistic writers in France, but the realism of Sorel, Scarron and Furetiere1 is vitiated by a conscious effort to ridicule the so-called idyllic novel of the time. The result is often a caricature of reality as well as of the sighing heroes of d'Urfe. There is no reason to suppose that Courtilz knew the works of any of his predecessors in realistic fiction, and the slight influence of the idyllic novel that can be discerned in him is entirely superficial. Writing as he did of men and events more or less familiar to his readers, he kept perforce within the limits of the probable, and the more accurate his observation, the greater his chance of success. He was then led through history to realism, and the spirit of the Fronde, imprinted on his childhood, has given a satiric tinge to his work that brings him into the line of picaresque fiction.
BENJAMIN M. WOODBKIDGE.
AUSTIN, TEXAS, U.S.A.
1 On their claims to realism, see an interesting essay by Eug. Maron, Le Roman de Mceurs au dix-septieme siecle, in the Revue Independante for Feb. 1848.
NOTES ON ROMANIC SPEECH-HISTORY.
COHOKTE.
IT has been supposed that cohorte became *corte, but this theory leaves Rumanian curte and Sardic curte unexplained. The development was through *cuorte and * curte. When coagulu changed to *cuaglu, cohorte became *cuorte. Early Latin quoi made later cui (which produced analogic huic beside normal hue < hoic) : in the same way *cuorte made *curte. From *curte are derived Italian corte and its western equivalents, as well as the Rumanian and Sardic forms with u. The change of *cuorte to *curte was earlier than the formation of *doro mentioned below.
Latin seems to have u for uo in cur = quor, but it is a mistake to assume that a long vowel underwent such a change in cuius < quoins. The Latin word was cvuvs, with u<uo as in *curte. The close u of Port, cujo and Span, cuyo corresponds to u in fujo — huyo<fugio, junge = une < iungit, punho = puno < pugnu. In such cases palatal- influence made close u from open u before curro became corro. The word cvuvs was often (though not always) spelled cvivs, but this abbreviated form did not represent a different pronunciation. Similar shortenings are seen in our eighth, with th for tth, and in Northampton, with th for thh : they prove nothing about speech.
Close 6 did not undergo in late Latin or early Romanic a change like that of short o in *cuorte > * curte : Mirandese cumo and Rumanian cum < quomodo are re-stressed stressless forms, with normal stressless developments of u from o. Neither did it develop like open u before early palatals : ciconia makes Port, cegonha, Span. *cegonna>*cegoina> ciguena. Early X made u close in Span, mucho = Port, muito < multu, while later X had no effect on o in Span, troja = Port. trolha<trulleal.
1 Special symbols: 0:=English th in thin, 5 = English th in then, X = Portuguese Ih, n = Spanish n, y = English final ng.
494 Notes on Romanic Speech- History
Duo.
In spoken Latin analogic *dui replaced duo. Duoru and duobus became *doro, *dobos, with a change of stressless u to o earlier than the formation of gold from gula. Under the influence of these con- tracted forms, open u was partially replaced by close o in *dui-*doi, duos-*doos, duae-*doe, duas-*doas, dua-*doa. Derivatives of the M-forms have u in Italian, Catalan, Spanish and Portuguese, parallel with %<% in the derivatives of uia\ and in Sardic, where u<u is normal. In France a corresponding vowel has undergone the usual change to a sound like German close u.
In Hispanic the influence of duoru > *doro and duobus > *dobos produced *doos without affecting duas, in which the stress differed from that of *doaro and *doabos. We can explain Span, dues as an altera- tion of *duos < duas. The assimilative change of ua to uo agrees with mie = Italian mia ; the further change to ue could have accom- panied ue < uo < o. I do not know how dues was stressed, but the a of cuatro and ordinary uo > ue would require ua > uo. Menendez Pidal assumes that o>uo became ue1, but such a vowel-development cannot reasonably be admitted in a conservative language like Spanish, which lacks parallels for French mer < mare, soir < seru, VO3U < uotu. The early Spanish development was presumably o>6o2>uo: in some regions uo changed to uo, in others to ue and ue. The formation of ue from uo was essentially the same as e . . o < o . . o in hermoso < formosu.
Early French and Provencial have dui < *dui parallel with cui < cui. From i < e in fis and u < o in conui = conucs, it might be thought that *doi (with close o) could have made dui also. But this is improbable, for in France the derivatives of auguriu and dormitoriu do not rime. Early contact with a palatal made open u close, but did not modify close o : if we find ponh beside punk < pugnu in the south, it is because the chronologic relation of o < u and nn < yn was not the same in all regions. In tuit < *tuiti < *totti (an emphatic variant of toti like English look kout ! for look out), the alteration of o was earlier than the displace- ment of i. Thus doi < *doi can be considered normal.
Early French doues does not represent Latin duas, in spite of the apparent agreement Avith veie : doues corresponds to Prov. doas < *doas, and veie is an analogic formation. Envie < inmat and dialectal vie < ma
1 Menendez Pidal, Gram. hist, espanola, Madrid, 1905, § 13.
2 With the first o a little closer than the second.
3 Erdmannsdorfifer, Eeimworterbuch der Trobadors, Berlin, 1897, p. 34.
EDWIN H. TUTTLE 495
are normal, agreeing with the general Romanic treatment of uia. The influence of envie changed enveer to env'ier. The form enveier, which produced the modern envoy er, was a compromise between enveer and env'ier. The development of enveier changed envie to enveie, veage to veiage, and these changes produced veie for historic vie. This last development was perhaps helped by the change of vide to vie, which in the written language was nearly contemporary with the beginning of the literary period, and in popular speech may have been much earlier.
In Meyer-Ltibke's Morphologie romane, § 68, Rumanian doi is given as a derivative of *dui. This seems misleading, for Latin stressed it- does not generally correspond to o in Rumanian as it does in western Romanic, and furthermore *dui developed close u in the west. Rumanian has lost uia, but it has zi = Italian dl, notwithstanding the ordinary change of £ to e before a consonant (negru < nigru). Thus there are two or three reasons why *dui should have made *dui ; doi comes from Latin *doi. Rumanian keeps ui in cui, fui, lui, and cuib < *cubiu : the idea that ui became oi or o, as a regular development1, is untenable, the supposed evidence being highly untrustworthy. A form *autumnia would have made *tumie, parallel with vie < uinea and miel < *amnelo < agnellu. Coif is not derived from *cufea, nor from *cuffia, which would do for some of the Gallo- Roman forms ; a basis * coffin, with the plural *coffia, would explain coif, Sardic iscoffia, Span, cofia and Port, coif a. Pleoapd comes from palpebra through *palbrepa and *pleveapa2, not from imaginary *pluppea. Perhaps fost represents *fuistu, but the vowel-development was certainly not ui > oi > o, for open i became e before a consonant in Rumanian. From *fuistu would have come *foesto, with normal stressless o < us. The e of *foesto would have made a, parallel with noud < none, nuar < nubilu, par < piru ; and the a of *foasto could have become o, in accordance with June < iuuencu (beside vint < uentu), luom = luam*, nuor — niiar, giving modern fost(u).
Tiktin mentions the following words with u apparently corresponding to Rumanian o or oa : excutio, russeus, muria, pluuia, *pluuat, rubeus, autumna, cubitu5. He also says that roseus, rather than russeus, may be the origin of the word for ' red ' : this is undoubtedly the correct explanation. He and other writers seem to have overlooked Latin robeus, which is the source of roib. Latin quatere replaced -cuter e in
1 Zeitschriftfilr ronianische Philologie, xxvm, 688.
2 Romanic Review, i, 432.
3 Id., i, 431.
4 Tiktin, Rumanisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg, 1905, § 34.
5 Tiktin, I.e., § 30.
496 Notes on Romanic Speech- History
compounds, and by assimilation stressless ua became uo > o (compare quattuor > quattor), with a different development from that of half- stressed ua in quadragesima, quadraginta, quattuordeci. In forms corresponding to excutiebat, excutiendo, the change of ua to open o (or at least to uo} was earlier than the separation of Rumanian from Italian, so that scoate (< *scote) and scos, with analogic extension of weak o to strong forms, have a radical vowel corresponding to Latin o. It may be well to add that final ua, as in aqua, did not undergo in late Latin or early Romanic a change to o (although it has done so in modern Catalan and Portuguese dialects), for the reason that the a belonged to a definite category, with final a in hundreds of words where there was no possi- bility of such a change.
The u of muria became o in Latin, perhaps under the influence of mordere: moare is the normal derivative of *moria. The stem plu- had a Latin variant plou-, and from this the vowel o was transferred to the noun ' rain,' the form proia being found in one of the most conser- vative Sardic dialects. The Rumanian verb does not imply a Latin *pluuare as Tiktin assumes ; ploud has normal a < e < i in accord with noua < none, and its a produced the corresponding infinitive plod. The o that made oa in toamna, where u would be expected, was due to some external influence. It seems very probable that the displacement of stress in popbr, for *pbpur < *poporo < populu, was caused by the synonym norbd. In the same way *tumnd may have been influenced by some foreign word. ' Autumn ' is podzim (' fore-winter ') in Bohemian, and similar compounds containing o are found in southern Slavonic, but it seems more likely that *tomnd owed its o to Slavonic doba ' time.' In Serbian, doba is a general word for ' time ' or ' season.' It is remark- able that Albanian has mot1 meaning ' time ' and ' year ' : could this have had any influence on the Rumanian word ? Still another possi- bility is that the o of *tomna came from the o of * rain.' In Walloon, ' winter ' and ' snow ' are expressed by ivier < hibernu2, and similarly an earlier form of ploaie might have changed *tumna to *tomna in a region where autumn was the rainy season. Bulgaria has a rainy autumn.
Rumanian has ib and nor as variants of iuo = iud < ibi ubis, ni^or = nuar < nubilu : ue > ud and ud > uo were simple progressive assimi- lations, while ud>o indicates a double change, progressive and regressive,
1 Pekmezi, Grammatik der albanesischen Sprache, Wien, 1908, p. 261.
2 Thomas, Nouveaux essais de philologiefran$aise, Paris, 1904, p. 285.
3 Not merely ubi, as assumed by Tiktin, I.e., §§ 30, 157.
EDWIN H. TUTTLE 497
like the formation of open o from oa in Prov. cb<coa<coda, dbs<doas< *doas, pro <proa <prora. We may assume o<ud for cot < cubitu, and also for dialectal dzone = June < iuuene. In a few words, such as acblo (beside acolb) < *accu illoc, fiorl < *fieori < *fieuri < f fibres, popbr < populu, stressed o corresponds to earlier u because of a stress-change before the development of stressless u from o. But there seems to be no evidence that any Rumanian stressed o can properly be said to represent a Latin stressed u. We must consider doi a derivative of Latin *doi — unless we prefer the basis *doos, in accord with voi < uos. Doud < *dod < doad may represent both *doe and *doa : compare noud < noad < none and noud < noad < noua. The curious double inflec- tion of the genitive aminduror, with -duror for *-dor < *doro, has parallels in early Catalan dosos = dos < *doos, English children beside dialectal childer < cildru, German gegessen for older gessen.
FORU.
Catalan is sometimes called a Hispanic language, although it is not such fundamentally. It has been modified by Spanish, but linguistically it belongs with the Gallo-Roman dialects. In Catalan, as in many forms of Provencial, open e and open o underwent breaking before palatals. The diphthongs ie and uo were probably stressed w, tio, for they have become the simple vowels i and u. This contraction has parallels in southern France : Cat. mitja = Gascon mijd1 < media, Cat. ull = Gascon ulh2 < oculu. From developments like corretja < corrigia, genoll< *genudu, it is plain that the vowels of mitj and ull must have been indirect formations. A trace of uo is to be seen in fur, a variant of for < foru. Early Spanish has fuoro < foru, and fur is the Catalan derivative of fuoro, with u < tio as in ull < *uo\\o.
NUCE.
French noiz > nois (now commonly mis-spelled with a?), Italian noce, Rumanian nuc (tree) and nucd show normal treatments of Latin u. But open o, found in Prov. noze, Cat. nou, Port, noz, and implied by Span. nuez, cannot have come directly from u. The u of Cat. nou, representing v < 8 < dz, is however normal, agreeing with deu < dece, pau < pace. In
1 Millardet, Etudes de dialectologie landaise, Toulouse, 1910, p. 201. I write 8 for a sound like French e in dedans, corresponding to the stressless o of ordinary Provencial.
2 Millardet, I.e., p. 207.
498 Notes on Romanic Speech- History
Spanish, ts has become 0, and likewise Catalan changed dz to 8. The further development of 8 to v has parallels in caure < cadere, grau < gradu, seu< sede, veu< uidet.
The word *nodze, with open o, was imported from Sardinia. In most portions of the island the vowel-system is extremely primitive, with stressed i < I and u < u. But on the north coast there is an equally remarkable lack of conservatism : in the dialect of Sassari, close o corresponds to the open o (or uo) of Tuscan, and open o to the stressed close o of Tuscan1. This peculiar interchange shows that open o became uo ; afterwards uo contracted to a simple vowel. When the first portion of uo became gradually more open, there was danger of confusion with close o : this was avoided by changing close o to open o. In accordance with the development of o, Sassarese commu < qnomodo has close o, Latin uo being treated like uo < o, just as in the equivalent Span, cuemo beside stressless como. The differing treatments of the sounds written u, in the words quomodo and duoru, arose from the fact that the hiatus-it of the latter was open and syllabic, while the u of the group qu was very close and not syllabic.
Insular *nodze, which has become nodzi in the modern dialect of Sassari2, was taken to the mainland early enough for the open o to become uo in Spanish. Provencial noze might be explained as a re-made form based on a plural ending in es, like nize beside nis < nidu. But it seems more likely that *nodze was introduced after *dedze < dece had lost its final e. Evidence of *nodze in France is preserved mainly in the southeast, but noze is also found on the eastern edge of the Gascon region (near Toulouse), and there is a corresponding nots on the Gascon coast. In Catalan the o of nou has been extended to noga : this form and Rumanian nuca seem to imply an occasional change of the final vowel in Latin, on the analogy of models like piru and pira.
QUATTUOKDECI.
A development of nti to u, in accord with *cuorte > * curie, is implied by the stressed vowels of Ital. quattordici, Span, catorce, Port, catorze. A different basis *quattordeci, with open o, is needed for French quatorze, Prov. catordze, Sardic battbrdighi. This basis was perhaps formed under the influence of quattor < quattuor. Sardic has bdttor beside curie < *cuorte, Ipgu < locu, otto < octo ; apparently stressless uo became o even
1 Archivio glottologico italiano, xiv, 133.
2 Id., xiv, 137.
EDWIN H. TUTTLE 499
where it did not normally become o otherwise. A nearly parallel assimilation is seen in the ending of battbrdighi : here the last vowel was kept and the preceding e was changed to i. It is also possible that the second u of quattuor became close o, remained distinct from the following open o and afterward changed to close u (which may be considered w\ and that the formation of quattor and the shortening of ' 14 ' were due to a dissimilative change of kw — tw to kw — t.
EDWIN H. TUTTLE.
NEW HAVEN, CONN.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD.
NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that during the last quarter of a century, we have devoted considerable attention to the literatures of the North, the thinker and man of letters whose name stands at the head of the present article is but little known to the English-speaking world. The Norwegians, Ibsen and Bjornson, have exerted a very real power on our intellectual life, and for Bjornson we have cherished even a kind of affection. But Kierkegaard, the writer who holds the indispensable key to the intellectual life of Scandinavia, to whom Denmark in particular looks up as her most original man of genius in the nineteenth century, we have wholly overlooked. There is little excuse for ignoring him on the part of those who are versed in the northern tongues ; for he at present looms very large on the literary and philosophical . horizon in Scandinavia; and there are several excellent books on his life and work, both in Danish and Swedish1. Within recent years, moreover, the Danes have produced a monumental edition of Kierkegaard's complete works2, which is at present being followed up by the publication of manuscript materials3 supplemental to the Efterladte Papirer, edited by H. P. Barfod and H. Gottsched in seven, or rather eight, volumes between 1869 and 1881. But to become acquainted with Kierkegaard one no longer needs to read Danish; his works are now virtually all to be had in German and in an edition which is a delight to the eye4; and the literature on Kierkegaard both in German and
1 The two best Danish books on Kierkegaard, Georg Brandes' Soren Kierkegaard: en kritisk Fremstilling i Grundrids, Copenhagen, 1877 (also Samlede Skrifter, ii, 1899, pp. 249 if.), and H. Holding's Soren Kierkegaard som Philosoph, Copenhagen, 1892, are both to be obtained in German translation, Leipzig, 1879, and Stuttgart, 1896, respectively. Cp. further C. Koch, Soren Kierkegaard : tre Foredrag, Copenhagen, 1898 ; P. A. Eosenberg, Soren Kierkegaard : Hans liv, ham personlighed og hans forf after skab, Copenhagen, 1898, and C. Jensen, S. Kierkegaards religiose Udvikling, Aa,rhus, 1898; in Swedish, W. Eudin, Soren Kierkegaards person och f'orfattarskap, i, Stockholm, 1880.
2 Soren Kierkegaards Samlede Vcsrker. Udgivne af A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg og H. O. Lange. 14 vols. Copenhagen, 1901-6.
3 Soren Kierkegaards Papirer. Udgivne af P.' A. Heiberg og V. Kuhr. Vols. i — v, Copenhagen, 1909-13.
4 Soren Kierkegaards Gesammelte Werke. Unverkiirzt herausgegeben von H. Gottsched und Christoph Schrempf. 12 vols. Jena, 1909 ff. (Two volumes have still to appear.) There is also an introductory volume to this edition by 0. P. Monrad, Soren Kierkegaard, sein Leben und seine Werke, Jena, 1909.
J. G. ROBERTSON 501
French is growing rapidly. But all this literature, with the exception of Dr Brandes' brilliant monograph, deals mainly with Kierkegaard as a philosopher and a theologian ; in the present paper I propose to restrict myself to his claims as a man of letters.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen on May 5, 1813. He came of Jutish peasant stock, his father, Michael Pedersen Kierke- gaard, having, as a boy, herded sheep on the Jutland moors ; and these solitudes left an indelible stamp of melancholy on him, which he transmitted to his son. At the age of twelve, however, Michael Kierke- gaard made his way to Copenhagen, and by shrewd common-sense and business ability, worked his way up to affluence. He became a hosier, and gradually extended his shop until it became a kind of general warehouse; before Soren was born he was able to retire from business altogether. Of Kierkegaard's mother there is less, and indeed, nothing to say. She was his father's second wife, and had been previously his servant. She lived until Soren was twenty-one, but seems to have meant nothing for his development ; at least, he never mentions her.
Soren Kierkegaard was the seventh and youngest child of his parents, who, at his birth, were fifty-seven and forty-five ; he was born old and never knew what it was to be young. Unfortunately the conditions under which he was brought up did nothing to counteract the disadvantages of his birth. Michael Kierkegaard was something of a tyrant, and ruled his household with a rod of iron. In spite of increasing wealth he permitted no relaxation of the austere sim- plicity of earlier days; and he himself continued to dress in an old- fashioned style which brought down on him the ridicule of the outside world. There was, no doubt, a strong blend of eccentricity in this respectable tradesman, and his children suffered under it. Worst of all for the growing boy was the depressing religious atmosphere of the household, for the father's gloomy Lutheranism led to a complete abnegation of the brighter side of life. And yet, beneath his repellent exterior there lay a rich fund of poetic imagination. This imagination, cut off from every natural outlet, turned, as it were, upon itself, and created an unhealthy, hot-house atmosphere, which could not but be injurious to a child like Soren who had inherited so much of his father's unbalanced temperament. Soren tells us, for instance, how, instead of taking him for a real excursion into the country, his father would invite him to an imaginary walk. He would then pace up and down the room, the boy at his side, describing in minute detail the people they pretended to see, the sights and sounds they would have, met by the way ; and in
502 Soren Kierkegaard
the end, the imaginary excursion was more entertaining than any real one could have been1!
Soren's extraordinarily vivid imagination was thus a heritage from his father ; so, too, was his propensity for dialectic fencing. That love of argument for argument's sake, which is responsible for much in his published writings, was strongly marked in the elder Kierkegaard and made him an extremely difficult man to get on with. Soren had also in common with his father a tendency to brood morbidly over religious questions; a tendency which threw a- shadow over his boyhood and became a sinister power in his life as he grew older. In his book Stadier paa Livets Vej he says: 'A son is, as it were, a mirror in which a father sees himself reflected; and a father is for a son a kind of mirror in which he sees how he himself will once be. But the father and son of whom we speak seldom regarded each other in this way; for their daily life only displayed the cheerfulness of a lively intercourse. It would, however, happen at times that the father, with a troubled look in his face would stand in front of his son and say: "Poor child, thou livest in silent despair2!'"
Bad as Kierkegaard's home was as the preparation of a boy of his character and disposition for the world, school was no better. He was sickly and could not play games like other boys; and they jeered mercilessly at the coarse peasant's clothes in which he was sent to school. Mentally he was as unable to cope with his surroundings as he was physically; and his school experiences were in this respect but a fore- shadowing of what was to befall him in later life. He was one of those shy, shrinking children who make enemies without knowing it; he found himself at war with his surroundings without desiring it. And in self- defence he had often to have recourse to deceit and lying; if he retaliated openly, his sharp irony, which was his only weapon, made things worse than before. Even a conscious self-deception was part of the armour with which he protected his own weakness and embarrassment. Here lay, perhaps, the origin of that extraordinary hide-and-seek which he plays with his own personality all through his writings. Worst of all. the harsh discipline of home and school engendered in Kierkegaard a cringing, cowardly attitude towards his fellows, a flunkeyism which warped his whole life. But it also fostered a kind of inner life within his life of a very different kind. Although to the world he appeared as the
1 Af Soren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, 1844-45, Copenhagen, 1872, pp. 81 f. Cp. Brandes, op. cit., p. 256.
2 Stadier paa Livets Vej: Skyldig?—ikke-Skyldig? (Jan. 5) (Samlede Vcerker, vi), p. 189; German translation, iv, p. 177.
J. G. ROBERTSON 503
most crushed of crushed worms, Kierkegaard was in his own heart and imagination the freest and most daringly original of mortals ; beneath his humble bearing slumbered an almost overweening confidence in his own powers and genius. ' Far back in my memory/ he says, ' there is the thought that in every generation there are two or three who are sacrificed for others, who are employed to discover amidst terrible suffer- ing truths whereby the others benefit; and heavy of heart, I found the understanding of myself in the fact that I had been chosen for this purpose1/ Perhaps Kierkegaard was right in his proud conviction; but, whether or no, the terrible brand of anomaly and exception lay on him from the beginning ; and an uncomfortable, unhappy exception of genius he remained to the last.
In spite of his parsimony, Kierkegaard's father was anxious to give his youngest son the best education he could ; accordingly, at the age of seventeen Soren became a student of the University of Copenhagen. It was unfortunate, considering the fateful shadow the harsh pietism of his home had thrown on his life, that Soren should have turned to philosophy and theology at the University; but it could hardly have been otherwise. These studies had, at least, the advantage that they plunged him at once into the all-absorbing interest of his subsequent life, his conflict with Hegel. Theology in Denmark — as in Germany itself — in the thirties of last century was dominated by Hegelian specu- lation ; and Kierkegaard's originality as a thinker first showed itself in his antagonism to the Hegelian standpoint in the religious controversies of the time.
Meanwhile a terrible catastrophe took place in Kierkegaard's life when he reached his twenty-fifth year. What the catastrophe was he never explicitly tells us. 'Then it was/ he says, 'that the great earthquake took place, the terrible revolution, which suddenly compelled me to seek a new, unimpeachable interpretation of all phenomena. I had a presentiment that my father's high age was not a divine blessing, but rather a curse ... A guilt must rest on the whole family, a divine punish- ment be impending2.' The terrible revelation seems to have consisted only in the following. As a boy of twelve, his father, Half-famished and parched on his lonely moors, had solemnly ascended a hill and cursed God. This happened in 1768, and the awful sin he had committed still lay with crushing weight on Michael Kierkegaard, when he was an old
1 Synspunktet for min Forfattervirksomhed (Samlede Vcerker, xiii, p. 566, quoted by H. Hoffding, Soren Kierkegaard som Philosoph, Copenhagen, 1892, p. 40).
2 Af Soren Kierkegaards Efterladte Papirer, 1833-43, Copenhagen, 1869, p. 4.
504 Soren Kierkegaard
man of eighty-two1. Incredible as this may seem, it was still more in- credible that this old story should have made so deep an impression on young Kierkegaard, fancy-ridden and prone to melancholy and despair as he was. One cannot help thinking that he regarded it rather as a symbol of the causes which lay behind other evils, physical as well as mental, which he had inherited ; it was a kind of religious embodiment of the curse of heredity under which he suffered. The catastrophe that broke over him was, in reality, the conviction that he was the victim of a curse, from the consequences of which it was vain to try to flee. Shortly after he had made this fateful discovery his father died, and he was free to face life on his own responsibility ; or rather, he was less free than ever, for his father exerted a greater power over him dead than alive. A relentless, fatalistic melancholy settled down on him and stifled all healthy spiritual growth.
Left to himself, Kierkegaard seems to have drifted naturally into the career of a writer. It was not to his advantage that he had means enough to make a ' bread-and-butter ' occupation unnecessary ; for it brought with it a certain lack of concentration, an inability to apply himself steadily to such work as he undertook. He himself says that he took to writing books in order to make good the sins of his youth. Possibly amongst these sins he counted doubts of the validity of Christianity, which had begun to assail him, and which, like his father's -sin against the Holy Ghost,' had assumed exaggerated proportions ; but there is little doubt that 'the thorn in the flesh' ('Pcelen i Kjodet') which formed his martyrdom, and of which we hear so much from his diaries, had a physical as well as a spiritual origin2. However that may be, a writer of books he became, and so industrious was he that in the fifteen years of his literary life, he turned out something like thirty volumes, besides leaving behind him an enormous mass of manuscript material.
In 1838 he published Afen endnu Levendes Papirer (From the Papers of One still Living*), which in the fantastic humour of its title reminds one of Jean Paul. It is nominally a criticism of Hans Christian Ander- sen's novel, Kun en Spillemand (1837), and, at the best, rather indifferent criticism, being strongly coloured by Hegelian subtleties of thought and phraseology. But it touches on one question which had a subjective interest for Kierkegaard, namely, whether it is better, as Andersen held,
1 H. Hoffding, op. cit., pp. 28 ff.
2 Cp. P. A. Kosenberg, Soren Kierkegaard, Copenhagen, 1898, pp. 13 ff.
3 Samlede Varker, xiii, pp. 41 ff.
J. G. ROBERTSON 505
for the man of genius to be nurtured and pampered, or, as Kierkegaard preferred to think, to be schooled by adversity, a fate which he felt had been his own. Much more important was his thesis for the degree of master, Om Begrebet Ironi (On the Idea of Irony 1), which he published in 1841. It is worth while looking into this treatise, for it adumbrates the chief idea of Kierkegaard's master-work, Enten — Eller, and helps to elucidate his relations to the German Romantic movement. Just as his first essay turned round a book of Andersen's, so the present treatise resolves itself, in its ultimate elements, into a discussion of a Romantic work which had already engrossed the attention of Germany's great Romantic theologian, Schleiermacher, namely, Friedrich Schlegel's famous, or rather, notorious novel, Lucinde. With Schlegel's demand before him for an unfettered freedom in the relation o^ the sexes, a demand into which the aestheticism of the Romanticists had degene- rated, Kierkegaard set up what he called a 'religious-ethical' ideal ; and in contrasting the two life-ideals, he foreshadows the problem he was to treat later in Enten — Eller and Stadier paa Livets Vej. He ironically combats the Romantic aestheticism by stigmatising it, not as immoral, but as unbeautiful ; and he commends the religious ideal, not as morally superior to the aesthetic one, but as something essentially poetic and beautiful.
, On September 10, 1840, Kierkegaard became formally engaged to Regine Olsen, a young girl of a good Copenhagen family. As she was- still very young, the marriage was not to take place for a year ; and in that year Kierkegaard lived through an extraordinary mental tragedy, which ended in the engagement being broken off. The whole affair has much resemblance to the fantastic love-stories of some of the German Romanticists; one thinks, for instance, of Novalis's infatuation for Sophie Jung, also a passion which bears the impression of having been more imagined than real. It was almost a matter of course that it should be so in a man of such overweening imaginative powers as Kierkegaard was. As with so much else in his life, the shadow was infinitely more to him than the substance. The real Regine proved a continual disappointment to her lover ; he felt happier communing with her in imagination than when she was at his side ; and he seems, at a comparatively early stage, to have been convinced that the engagement had to be broken off at all costs. And he set about it in the most in- genious and calculating way. He insidiously endeavoured to make Regine believe that he no longer cared for her and thus to turn her against
1 Samlede Vcerker, iv, pp. 273 £f. ; German translation, vol. v. M. L. R. IX. 33
506 Soren Kierkegaard
him. This not succeeding, he was ultimately compelled himself to take the decisive step. The consequence was something not unlike a public scandal in Copenhagen society ; and from gossiping tongues Kierkegaard fled — fled to Berlin, where he threw himself into philosophical studies. Too much should not be made of the inconsiderate cruelty of his faith- lessness. Regine, no doubt, suffered a little in her amour propre ; but it is hardly conceivable that she was very much in love — she confessed as much in later years1 — with the eccentric philosopher. When Kierkegaard had become famous, she was hardly likely to forget her relations with him; but the fact remains that not long after the breaking-off of the engagement, she married another, in whom she had been interested before Kierkegaard came on the scene at all.
To Kierkegaard, however, the emotional crises of these years meant everything. There is hardly a parallel case in the annals of literary lives when so much sprang from so slight a cause. His engagement was more or less immediately the theme of all the books he wrote in the early forties. In these he analysed his feelings and the motives that lay behind them to the last shred ; he experimented with them, magni- fied them, and developed them in one direction or the other, until the original basis of fact was left far behind ; and every fresh experiment or hypothesis meant, if not a new book, at least the pinning down to words of some new discovery of subtle psychological or emotional experience.
The two chief works of this first period of Kierkegaard's career, Enten — Eller (Either — Or) and Stadier paa Livets Vej (Stages on Life's Way) are thus the immediate products of his unhappy experiences as the lover and betrothed of Regine Olsen ; and they are the works on which Kierkegaard's fame as a man of letters most securely rests. The former of these, which appeared in 1843, without the author's name, as Enten — Eller, et Livs-Fragment udgivet af Victor Eremita (Either — Or, A Fragment of a Life, edited by Victor Eremita )2 and with the motto from Young : ' Are passions then the pagans of the soul ? Reason alone baptised?' is frequently described as the greatest work of modern Danish literature, a claim which is justified by the enormous and far-reaching influence it has exercised; it penetrated in a superficial age to the fundamental realities of things, and stirred up men's minds in Denmark as nothing had done before.
Like so many of Kierkegaard's books, Enten — Eller is introduced by
1 Cp. Kierkegaardske Papirer, Forlovelsen. Udgivne for Fru Eegine Schlegel af B. Meyer, Copenhagen, 1904.
2 Samlede Vcerker, vols. i and ii; German translation, vols. i and ii.
J. G. ROBERTSON 507
an elaborate and enticing preface. With a graphic, narrative power rare among even the purely imaginative writers of Denmark, the editor tells how he came into possession of the papers he here publishes. He describes with convincing circumstantiality how he had been tempted to purchase an old secretaire in a dealer's shop, and how an accident had disclosed a hidden drawer containing the manuscripts here laid before the reader. This kind of motive was, of course, familiar in Romantic fiction, and Kierkegaard employs it again even more effectually, if more fantastically, in the introduction to the third section of Stadier paa Livets Vej. The papers, the editor informs us, fall into two clearly marked groups which imply two different authors; these he designates as A and B. Under this fiction Kierkegaard offers the reader two opposed philosophies of life, the ' aesthetic ' set forth by A, and the ' ethic ' set forth by B. A is guided exclusively by 'aesthetic' considerations, that is to say, con- siderations of feeling ; he is a man whose end in life is enjoyment. B, on the other hand, is the representative of the moral life. Kierkegaard places these two antagonistic philosophies side by side and leaves his readers to choose between them : ' Either — Or.' The arranging of A's papers gives him most trouble. First he collects together scraps of paper with aphorisms written on them, and these he publishes under the title ^t,d^a\fj,ara — the term applied in the Greek translation of the Bible to the music which divides the Psalms. Then comes a long, and for modern readers, wearisomely detailed discussion of Mozart's Don Juan, followed by disquisitions on types of betrayed heroines — Marie in Goethe's Glavigo, Gretchen in Faust, and Elvira in Mozart's Don Juan — and a criticism of a long-forgotten comedy of Scribe's. The last of A's contributions is by far the most important. This is Forforerens Dagbog (The Seducer's Diary), a masterpiece alike of psychological analysis and of Danish prose. Nothing so penetrating and original had appeared before in the language, and nothing comparable with it was to appear again until Jacobsen's Niels Lyhne forty years later. In the earlier papers attributed to A, Mozart's famous hero had been taken as an illustration of life built up on immediate enjoyment. Johannes, in Forforerens Dagbog, is a quite different type of aesthete; he is the ' reflective ' enjoy er ; that is to say, he does not enjoy life immediately at all, but enjoys his own reflection and retrospect on enjoyment. Johannes, in other words, is the impersonation of the strange, anomalous, emotional life which Kierkegaard himself had been compelled to live by his peculiar temperament. Johannes is a lover whose imagination is stronger than his perceptions, who is at the mercy of his mental activity,
33—2
508 Soren Kierkegaard
a passive channel for ideas rather than a living being. He embodies the reflective sentimentalism which had run riot in the German Romantic literature ; and his aestheticism contrasts with Mozart's as the modern 'sentimental' poetry of Schiller's classification contrasts with the ' naive ' poetry of the Greeks.
The second part of Enten — Ellen- is an exposition of the ethic attitude of mind. It consists of two lengthy letters by B to A, the author of the first part, and criticises the life-philosophy enunciated there. B sets up a philosophy of duties and moral ideals, which is directly antagonistic to the views which A holds. His first letter deals with the aesthetic justification of marriage, which he claims to be a higher aesthetic phenomenon than the Romantic love of the pure aesthete, the latter being devoid of all sense of self-denying duty. The second letter, the more important of the two, approaches the theme from a constructive point of view and discusses the balance between the aesthetic and the ethic in the moulding of personality. One must be careful in all this not to confuse Kierkegaard's own convictions with those of his two fictitious antagonists ; he is neither A nor B, or rather he is both ; and what he here describes is virtually his own passage from what Carlyle called the ' Everlasting No' to the 'Everlasting Yea.' But what that 'Everlasting Yea' for Kierkegaard was, is only dimly suggested by the comments of the editor, ' Victor Eremita,' at the close of Enten— Eller. To' find Kierkegaard's personal attitude to the two philo- sophies here enunciated, and for a definite statement of his own philosophy of life, we have to turn to another work. In Stadier paa Livets Vej1, which appeared in 1845, he recognises three- great stages. The purely natural condition of man is that in which he is at the mercy of his instincts; this is the 'aesthetic' stage, which can only end in pessimism and despair. But it is possible for the aesthete to rise higher to a second or ethical stage, to substitute for the motto 'in vino veritas/ that of ' cum pietate felicitas'; and the method whereby he rises is by self-detachment or irony; for irony is virtually the ethical creed in disguise. But if a man is to find rest and satisfaction at this ethic stage on life's journey, he must be happy in it ; if a life dominated by ideals of duty leaves him as miserable as before, it is obviously no solution to his life-problem. Schiller had already insisted on this before the end of the eighteenth century. There is, says Kierkegaard, still a higher stage, and that is the religious stage ; and that third or religious stage is described in the last section of the Stadier, which is entitled
1 Samlede Vaerker, vi ; German translation, iv.
J. G. ROBERTSON 509
Skyldig?—ikke-Skyldig? (Guilty?— Not Guilty?). In the box which contained the manuscript otSkyldig? — ikke-Skyldig? Kierkegaard tells us that he found a playbill, a rose in a silver capsule, and a page torn from the New Testament ; these are the symbols of the three stages. The transition from the ethic to the religious stage, which is not dwelt on in the Stadier, is elucidated in two other works, Frygt og Bceven (Fear and Trembling) and Gjentagelsen (The Recurrence), which were both partly written in Berlin in 1843. I have described the final stage of Kierke- gaard's spiritual pilgrimage as ' religious,' but the reader who turns to Skyldig? — ikke-Skyldig? expecting to find a religious discussion will be disappointed; for here the old love-trouble is merely dished up anew, under a fresh pseudonym ; the word religion is hardly mentioned at all. But religion for Kierkegaard has nothing to do with dogmas or beliefs ; it is the intimately personal relation of the soul to God. To find God man must be alone with his misery ; God alone can help him to answer the riddle of his life — ' guilty, or not guilty ? ' And he who has risen through sorrow to the religious stage of life's journey, is an outcast from his kind, an isolated exception; he stands alone. The significance of this ascetic and intensely personal interpretation of religion, which, however, lost something of its negative aspect in Kierkegaard's later writings, will be apparent immediately.
These two works are thus essentially subjective ; they are Kierke- gaard's own personal confession, his own dialectic broodings on his relations to Regine Olsen. He even sent Enten — Eller to her with the hint that its purpose was- to enlighten her with regard to the motives of the crime he had committed against her. But no one was probably more astonished than she at being asked to read her own by no means extravagant relations to the philosopher out of the complicated meta- physical disquisition on passion which the book contains.
Enten — Eller was well received ; even The Corsair (Corsaren), Goldschmidt's satiric journal, welcomed it. Kierkegaard, in fact, did not experience any kind of critical antagonism until after the appear- ance of the third part of the Stadier, when P. L. Moller, an influential critic of the day, attacked him. This was not in The Corsair] but Kierkegaard, who evidently believed his position in Danish letters to be unassailable, unwisely replied, and in his reply described Holler's criticism as one of those disgusting attacks which were wont to appear in The Corsair ; he even went further and complained that he alone among the distinguished writers of Denmark, had not been distinguished by the attacks of Goldschmidt's paper. The Corsair took up the challenge,
510 Soren Kierkegaard
and before very long Kierkegaard bitterly repented his words; that journal pursued him to the end with the most merciless ridicule and caricature, and no doubt helped to darken and embitter his closing days. How deeply he was wounded is to be read out of the two hundred pages of his Diary which are filled with this controversy.
This is not the place to deal in detail with Kierkegaard's purely theological activity, although its significance, especially for Denmark, was quite as great as his writings on aesthetic and ethic questions. Has not Dr Brandes claimed for him that he is the greatest religious thinker of the entire nineteenth century ? The militant character of Kierkegaard's individualism first assumed its full proportions in his interpretation of religious doctrines. Some three months after Enten — Eller appeared To opbyggelige Taler (Two Edifying Addresses)1, in which he faced the difficult problem of reconciling the essentially social Christian faith with his own uncompromising individualism. The idea of altruistic Christian love put peculiar difficulties in his way, which he ultimately solved by defining that love, not as an immediate relation of one human being to another, but as an indirect relation through God. Individualism is throughout the touchstone of Kierkegaard's Christian- ity; dogmas fall away as disputable and immaterial; he seeks neither consolation nor sympathy ; his faith is a personal matter and a personal matter only. His next step was, under the pseudonym of 'Johannes Climacus,' to define the psychological basis of belief, and to destroy that philosophical optimism which had invaded Danish theology in the train of Hegelianism ; this is the theme of Philosophiske Smuler eller en Smule Philosophi (Philosophical Bits or a Bit of Philosophy, 1844)2, and — his chief philosophical work — Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift til de philosophiske Smuler (Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philo- sophical Bits)3. His next step was — and again under a pseudonym, ' Anticlimacus' — to declare war on the Danish Church ; this is the main burden of the two works Sygdommen til Doden (Sickness unto Death, 1849)4 and Inddvelse i Christendom (Practice in Christianity, 1850)5. Here, too, he set forth his own faith in its more positive aspects. Of Christian charity; of the poetry and sentiment which the Church had woven round the figure of its Founder, he will hear nothing. To be a Christian is to be a fighter, whose hand is against every man's in the
1 Samlede Vcerker, iv, pp. 69 ff.
2 Ibid., iv, pp. 171 ff. ; German translation, vi.
3 Ibid., vii; German translation, vi, pp. 101 ff. and vii,
4 Ibid., xi, pp. lllff. ; German translation, viii.
5 Ibid., xii; German translation, ix.
J. G. ROBERTSON 511
holy cause of God against the world. All Kierkegaard's life was one long tussle with the powers of orthodoxy, and possibly he might himself have ended altogether outside the pale, had he not been bound by strange, mystic bonds to his dead father. In the end it was the Galilean that conquered; but the Christianity in which Kierkegaard died was darkened by renunciatory pessimism. Christianity had become to him a sinister power exerted by a merciless Deity, a Moloch to be appeased at all costs.
Kierkegaard's life, like that of the great German, Lessing, who had the warmest place in his heart1, ended amidst the storms of theological conflict. His last publications were an attack on Bishop Martensen — and with him the whole official hierarchy of the Danish State Church — for daring to stand up before the world as a witness to, the truth ; he passionately denied the right of Martensen to be regarded as a true representative of apostolic Christianity. His last book, a periodical, Ojeblikket (The Moment)2, was in course of publication when he fell ill, and on October 2, 1855, he became a patient of the Frederiks Hospital. He was well aware that the terrible spinal disease from which he suffered would be fatal, and that death was inevitable ; and he faced the end with that bravery, or it may be only the stoical indifference, which is one of the consolations that a brooding temperament like Kierke- gaard's brings with it. He himself felt that his mission in the world was completed ; his intellectual powers were slipping from him, and his worldly means were all but exhausted. His death took place on November 11, 1855; he refused the ministrations of the Church, and would see no priest, not even his brother who was a bishop. His grave is adorned with no monument; the wish he once expressed was not fulfilled : ' If I were to wish for an inscription on my grave, I should desire nothing but the words "Hin Enkelte" (The Unique). If its meaning is not yet comprehensible, it will be some day.'
The image of Denmark's greatest thinker which has stamped itself on the mind of his own people, is essentially a grotesque one. The Corsair was, no doubt, in part responsible for this; but, as we have seen, he had inherited much of his father's eccentricity ; and this eccentricity became more marked as he grew older. Kierkegaard's ludicrous figure, in his old-fashioned coat, his trousers bagging round his spindle legs, and his umbrella sticking through his arm, was familiar to every one; for he took his regular walk every day at the same hour
1 Cp. especially Afsluttende uvidenskabelig Efterskrift (SamL Vcerker, vii), pp. 47 ff.
2 Samlede Vcerker, xiv, pp. 103 ff. ; German translation, xii.
512 Soren Kierkegaard
through the same busy streets. A more dignified memory of him was associated with his long pedestrian or carriage tours, always alone, in the country around Copenhagen ; and a sense of awesome mystery was awakened by his suite of brilliantly lighted rooms, each of which was provided with a desk and writing materials ; for here the lonely thinker paced up and down, night after night, thinking his lonely thoughts, and writing his mysterious books1.
It is doubtful whether Danish critics have even yet fully recognised how closely Kierkegaard's thought and activity were bound up with those of the Romantic Movement in Germany and Scandinavia2. I do not refer merely to outward indebtedness in matters of form and style — that Jean Paul-like grotesqueness of humorous phrase — but rather to the essentially Romantic character of his philosophy. The Danes are themselves disposed to look upon him rather as an antagonist of German Romanticism ; but he was, in reality, only an antagonist of the later, decadent aspect of the movement, which manifested itself in the passive resignation of Romanticism to Catholicism and absolutism, its confusion of thought and feeling, and its enthraldom by Hegelianism. So far from regarding Kierkegaard as an antagonist of Romanticism I would rather claim him as one of the very few representatives then left in Europe of the fundamental doctrines of the early Romantic School. In the thirties and forties, I can think, at least, of only two European books, which, amidst an almost universal abnegation of individualism, stood firm by the old Romantic faith in the supreme value of personality. These are Enten — Eller and Sartor Resartus.
Soren Kierkegaard thus stands out as a pioneer and apostle of modern Romantic individualism ; the significance of Enten — Eller is that it is an outstanding plea for individualism, as opposed to the levelling collectivism of the Hegelian philosophy ; and in the hands of the Danish Hegelians, Heiberg, Martensen and Rasmus Nielsen, just this side of the Hegelian philosophy had been accentuated. To a philosophy that saw in individuals merely the units of the great entity, humanity, or, at best, the bearers of an ' idea,' Kierkegaard opposed a claim for the supreme importance of the individual. Personality is to him the one thing that matters. Each human being must face the life- problem in his own way; and he must have complete freedom to do so.
1 Cp. Brandes, op. cit., pp. 251 f.
2 Brandes' in his Den romantiske Skole i Tyskland has much to say on matters of detail concerning Kierkegaard's relations to the German Komantic School (cp. especially Brandes, Saml. Skrifter, iv, pp. 220 f., 250 ff., 331 ff.). See also G. Niedermeyer, Soren Kierkegaard und die Romantik (Ab handling en zur Philosophic und ihrer Geschichte, xi), Leipzig, 1910.
J. G. ROBERTSON 513
He must cultivate that inwardness of soul which takes no count of the world outside him; he must live the 'personal,' isolated life. As the representative of this essentially modern creed, Kierkegaard struck the keynote to the Scandinavian literature of the later nineteenth century ; his was virtually the message on which that literature has risen to greatness and influence in Europe. The passionate plea for the rights of personality which runs all through Ibsen's later work, from the banging of the door in Et Dukkehjem to the transcendental individualism of Naar vi dode vaagner, was also Kierkegaard's, and the sinister, gloomy faith of Ibsen's Brand is an embodiment, carried to its logical extreme, of the third great stage in Kierkegaard's life journey, the religious stage.
J. G. KbBERTSON.
LONDON.
MISCELLANEOUS NOTES.
A VISIT TO PARIS IN 1749.
THE following unpublished letter1 deserves to be known for two reasons : first, it throws some light on the social relations between England and France in the middle of the eighteenth century, and, in the second place, the vivid way in which it illustrates the cosmopolitan spirit of the age, testifies once more to the existence in both countries of parallel forces which led to the evolution of one and the same intel- lectual type : ' 1'abbe Birch ' and 1'abbe Sallier.
Philip Yorke2 to Daniel Wrayz.
pt PARIS Septr the — ^ 1749.
DEAR WRAY,
Your Letters have the merit of choice Closet Peices, wch being rarely to be met with, & highly finished, are greatly valued by the Curious. You entertain me with an Account of your Summer Amusements, but drop one wch I think the most remarkable, & wch I shd scarce credit, if I had it not upon the best Authority, that instead of Delia Valle your old Friend, or those of later date the Alcoran & Mynheer Kemfer, you were actually found wth a volume of Sir L. Jenkin's Negotia- tions before you, & were afterwards content to take up wth the humbler ocurrences of Master Garrard. You say nothing of your Literary Repasts in Kew Lane wch makes me doubt whether you have exercised that Hospitality to the Learned wch you engaged to do : but you will alledge perhaps in excuse for the omission that the
T*J_ /> T 1 1*1 ,1 rf» T-\ • 1 j 1 • /.I A • O I
does in his appartments at the Bibliotheque Royale : and this leads me to tell you that I have twice visited that Collection, wch is indeed a noble one, & does honor to the Generosity of the Royal Founders, & the Taste of Those who have had the conduct of it. There are not fewer than 140,000 volumes of all sorts printed & manuscript in the Library ; the Former are ranged with great method in 3 long Gallerys & one large Ante Room : there is a 4th Gallery finishing for the reception of the rest, wch are not yet in such exact order. The MSS are very numerous, & put up in smaller appartments. Those relating to the French History are out of
1 B.M.S1., 4325, fol. 10-12.
2 Philip Yorke, F.R.S., eldest son of Lord Chancellor Hardwicke.
3 Daniel Wray, F.R.S., wrote the Athenian Letters in collaboration with Philip and Charles Yorke, T. Birch and some others.
4 T. Birch, D.D., the secretary and the historian of the Royal Society.
5 Keeper of the King's Library and best remembered as one of the earliest contributors to the Encyclopedic. Cf. Discours preliminaire, edit. Picavet, p. 142.
Miscellaneous Notes 515
the Cabinet of Card: Mazarin, Mons1' Colbert etc. there is also a Species of Literature wch is not to be met with anywhere else, I mean several parcels of Chinese Tar- tarran, & Indian Books, wth short Accounts of the Contents from the Missionaries who sent them over. The Cabinet of Medals, I have not yet had an opportunity of seeing, as Monsr Boze1 who is the keeper of it has been out of Town ; but I have turned over some volumes of the Collection of Prints, wch seems a very perfect and compleat one, & the Abbe who has ye care of it was very desirous I shd renew my visit.— The Library is now lodged at the Hotel de Nevers Rue Richelieu where the Bank was kept in the time of Lawe, & the 10th volume of the Catalogue is now in the Press, but I despair of getting the Memoire Historique wch you spoke to me about by itself, tho' I told Abbe Sallier It would be a great satisfaction to many of our Savans, whose Finances wd be too far reduced by the purchase of so many thick Folios. — I have had an opportunity of presenting the President's2 Letter to Monsr Reaumur, & seeing his Collection tho' in a more cursory way than I could have wished, but that was owing to the numerous Company who saw it with me. The old Gentleman was extreamly civil to me, & if he comes back to Paris before I leave it, I shall certainly visit him, en Philosophe & alone. — Mons1' Buffons [sic] has been unluckily in the Country ever since my arrival, and is not like to return in any reasonable time ; I have made however one attempt, (& meditate1 another) to see the Jardin du Roi & le Cabinet thro' ye Canal of Monsr Daubenton his Deputy, but he was also out of Town, tho' like your worship's his Residences en campagne are but short. I sent the Presidents Letter to Monsr Fontenelle, & visited him upon the strength of it a day or two after. He behaved to me with great Politeness, Spoke very honorably of the English & their Productions, & was very glad to hear of ye King's Bounty to the R. Observatory at Greenwich ; He told me He had been upward of 40 years Secy to the Academy, & had written 70 or if I mistake not 80 eloges. I replied It was happy for ye memory of his Brethren of the Academy, that he had outlived so many of them, since witht a Compliment no one had filled that difficult Province so ably as himself. He mentioned something but I did not well understand what, wch Mr. Foulkes had omitted answering, out of a former Letter of his. perhaps if you give the President a hint of it when you see him, He may know what it is wch Mons1' F. meant. I desire you wd make him my particular Compliments at the same time, wth many thanks for the advantages of his Reco- mendations. — By the Civility of Abbe Guasco an Italian, & an honorary member of the Academy of Belles Lettres I was admitted to one of their meetings. I heard 2 Papers read one upon the Miroirs of the Ancients, & the other upon the Chronology of ye Lydian Kings, but I thought the first very trifling, & ye other very dry, & I question whether either of them will be preserved in their printed Memoirs, that Academy is now employed by the orders of Mons1' D'Argenson about a Medallic History of the present Reign, & I suppose with a particular view to the Sucesses of the last War.
I hear the Design for a new Square is dropt, but that the old Front of Versailles to the Court wch is you remember a very ugly one, will be taken down this winter & rebuilt in a more elegant Taste.
There is little stirring at present en fait de Literature here, — even Novels and Plays are during this dead season kept up in the Authors Garrets till after the St Martin when the Town is fuller. I am told that Voltaire is writing a Catiline 3 wch will put Monsr Crebillon's4 out of Countenance, but that you will say is no hard matter. The waspish Generation of Criticks has so far disgusted him, that he has neither printed his Semiramis^ nor his Nannire6; the last is taken from our Pamela, but had no great run. I have you may believe, frequented their Spectacles a good
1 Claude Gros de Boze (1680-1753), perpetual secretary of the Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres.
2 i.e. Martin Folkes who was elected President of the Boyal Society in 1741.
3 Voltaire's Catilina was first performed on Feb. 24, 1752.
4 Dec. 20, 1748, published 1749.
6 A mistake; Semiramis (Aug. 29, 1748) was published in April, 1749. 6 i.e. Nanine (June 16, 1749), published in Nov. of that year.
516 Miscellaneous Notes
deal ; I am a great admirer of Miles Dumenil & Gaussin1, the first is excellent for the higher parts in Tragedy2 as Rodogune arid Merope in wch I have seen her, & the last in the tender & soft. I am not much struck with any of their men, & Grand val their best Actor, is to me a disagreable one. He is very stiff, has no variety of manner, & cannot hit the passionate & affecting strokes as Garrick does. I have scribbled you a long letter, & tis Time to leave off, only Let me desire you to send
Ld D s medals, & Birch's Historical Account to Mons1' Faget as soon as you can.
Direct them to Mr. Walters the King's Agent at Rotterdam, with a note to recomend them to his Conveyance. I am much obliged to Mr. Edwards for the Trouble he was pleased to take about the Root house [?]. Your compliment to him is a very just one, & I prefer his good Doctrine greatly to Mr. Hitcroft's. I hope we shall pass some days together quietly & sociably before the Parliament -meets, for if I know myself at all, I am not made for a Citizen 'of Paris. — We abound at present with
English, & amongst the rest my good Lord Lond y your old Disciple at Cambridge
whom I saw the other night very gallantly carrying off 3 Ladys in his Chariot, lui- meme le quatrieme from the Opera. I may trust this anecdote to your Prudence, tho' the Fact was not committed in a corner. If you was not so necessary as a
careful! Sheperd to the little Flock at [?] W r I should wish for you here, to visit
the Palais Royal & the Churches. I arn also in great want of Pond3 witht whose Judicious Eye I may bring home a very bad Cargo from Mariette's4. Pray tell him that his Burgomaster Sixte is a better Rembrandt than one saw at the King's Library. I hope he & his pencil flourishes. Is your Portrait yet taken for a further Improvem*.
Yours &c. P. Y.
J. J. CHAMPENOIS. LONDON.
'LA JOURN^E DBS DUPES.'
La Journe'e des Dupes: piece tragi-politi-comique. This political satire, published in the year 1790 by one of the deputies of the National assembly, and containing trenchant criticisms of the policy of Mirabeau and the character of Lafayette, together with an eye-witness's account of the events of October 5 and 6, 1789, seems to have escaped the recognition it deserves. This may be due partly to the form of the satire, which was described as a ' piece represented sur le Theatre National ' by ' les grands comediens de la Patrie.' It has therefore been classified at the British Museum with ' pieces d'actualite" ' performed on the stage. In examining the lesser plays of the period I came upon the satire, bound up with three plays of the ' vaudeville ' type5.
Both external and internal evidence point to Nicolas Bergasse (1750- 1832) as the author of this piece : a copy in the British Museum contains
1 Of. Bengesco, Les comediennes de Voltaire.
2 Garrick had the same opinion, cf. Bengesco, op, cit., p. 103.
:{ Arthur Pond, the painter and engraver, Wray's and Yorke's intimate friend. The famous dealer in prints and engravings.
5 La Journee des Dupes has also been sometimes confused with a play of Nepomucene Lemercier's, written in 1821 under the same title. Lemercier's play refers to the original 'Journee des Dupes' in the Fronde, and has no connection with the satire of 1790.
Miscellaneous Notes 517
a MS. note attributing the work to him, and the satire reflects very accurately the views of Bergasse as they can be gathered from his political pamphlets. Together with Lally-Tollendal and Mounier he stood for reform within the existing state, for the survival of the monarchical principle, and for a conception of political liberty to be gained through the severe discipline of citizenship. In the latter view he anticipated De Tocqueville. He was an eye-witness of the events of October 5 and 6, 1789.
Bergasse's talent was rhetorical rather than literary. In La Journee des Dupes, using the oratorical method, he attempted to make the people rationally conscious of their action at a time of grave national crisis. The satire recapitulates the events of 1789 and gives a judg- ment on their probable results. In some cases the ' personnages ' of the drama are symbolic : ' La Maitresse du Club ' stands for the French nation as a whole ; the Revolutionary party is a ' Troupe de Brigands ' ; * Monsieur Garde-Rue ' is a type of the class of ' Sergents '; 'La Peyrouse ' is an aristocrat, and '0 Paria' the Indian who judges the political condition of France from the point of view of the noble savage. In other cases the characters are the political personages of the time, the names transparently travestied. Mirabeau becomes ' Bimeaura,' Le Chapelier ' Pecheillar,' Bailly ' Laibil, on ne sait pas bien ce que c'est encore/ and Lafayette ' Yetafet.' Necker is referred to as ' Reken/ Mounier appears under his own name as a ' citoyen vertueux/ and represents the political views of the author.
It is intended to reproduce the satire shortly with a historical introduction.
ELEANOR F. JOURDAIN.
OXFORD.
SAINTE-BEUVE, BALZAC, AND THACKERAY.
In 1834 Sainte-Beuve made his sole appearance as a writer of romantic psychological fiction. Volupte, nowadays probably little read or known, presents characters significant of its own time, and yet unmistakably connected with the spirit of La Nouvelle Helo'ise and its abundant progeny, the complete filiation and interdependence of which we can now view from our coign of historical perspective.
There can be little doubt that Sainte-Beuve's subtly elaborate study of the anguish which visits a soul in the struggle between earthly passion and the longing for mystic perfection was deeply
518 Miscellaneous Notes
affected by his interest in Madame de Kriidener's Valerie (1803), care- fully analysed and judged by him in Portraits de Femmes. Indeed, his reference to that lady's novel in his own (p. 276) as 'un ouvrage nouveau qui m'avait a fond remue par le rapport frappant des situa- tions et des souffrances avec les ndtres ' may well be deemed conclusive, together with the added confirmation of repeated mention of Saint- Martin, the strange mystic (Le Philospphe Inconnu), and his cryptic doctrines. The situation of Gustave (a reader of Ossian, by the by) resembles that of Saint-Preux, of Werther, and Sainte-Beuve's Amaury, — the impressionable youth becoming the friend of a middle-aged husband, while inwardly pining for the young wife and being devoured by an unuttered passion ; and, like Amaury, he ultimately finds the solution in taking holy orders. Of substantial relation there can be no question. Sainte-Beuve presents a large canvass, on which are sketched several important historical personages, not wholly disguised, moving amidst all the complicated events of the last years of the Empire, and thus serving to introduce a strong political colour conveyed in the nuances of most of the leading characters' opinions. So far as descrip- tions of scenery and background are concerned, or enter into his work, Sainte-Beuve enjoyed the undeniable advantage of writing after Chateaubriand and under the influence of the romantic cult of Nature. What chiefly distinguishes this work is, however, the atmosphere of intense Catholic faith, inspiring many flights of fervent rapture, and, coming from the hero, it thus offers a revelation more familiar through real Confessions than in the pages of prose fiction even of a strongly lyrical cast. And, in the present case, this is owing to the coexistence in the same human being of a capacity for imaginative religious enthusiasm and ardent desire (pp. 300, etc.), a combination all the more remarkable that it emanated from the mind of a consistent and avowed materialist. This element and the sustained' dithyrambic style, which endeavours to attain the level of pulsating lyricism familiar in the high- pitched prose of that day, would seem to bear witness to a phase of Sainte-Beuve's emotional life as yet unexplained. This note it would be vain to seek in his critical essays, the sober intellectuality of which pervades and tempers the most eloquent of their passages. The nearest approach to a conclusive analysis and interpretation may be found in Ch. XII of M. Joachim Merlant's Le Roman Personnel de Rousseau a, Fromentin (1905).
The connexion between Sainte-Beuve's singular study and Balzac's Le Lys dans La Vallee (1835-6) is too well known to call for more than
Miscellaneous Notes 519
mere mention. The latter's riposte, in truth, followed hard upon Sainte- Beuve's disparaging remarks on La Recherche de I'Absolu in 1834. Jules Sandeau reported that Balzac's angry exclamation was : ' II me le payera ; je lui passerai ma plume au travers du corps. Je referai Volupte.' What he made of it needs no recounting ; his achievement in dealing with an all but identical situation consists in placing before his readers the agony of compulsory renunciation on the heroine's part when the youth abandons the regions of a strictly ethereal love for the arms of an enthralling siren. Balzac's robust temperament leads him to emphasize the materially positive side in human relations, often distastefully enough ; yet it is precisely this power which lends his characters, portraits, and effective situations their permanent vitality. Given his assumptions concerning the mentality of women, there is no disputing the quality that results from his applications^ in comparison with which Sainte-Beuve's attempts appear so verbose that, were it not for Balzac's admission, one might deem the resemblances to be developed independently out of the original situation.
The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., came out in 1852, two years after the death of Balzac. To many devotees of Thackeray's genius (I count myself one) it may seem almost wayward to note points of similarity, general or detailed, between the English novelist and his nearest French forerunner, so far asunder are they in their views of life and conduct as well as in their respective conceptions of a writer's art and the responsibilities which it entails on him. But who can resist the seductive suggestion that the linking together of stories in series, the carrying over of a character from novel to novel, derives directly from La Comedie Humaine ?
On examining Esmond with some minuteness, we note several im- portant items in situation, development, sentiment, and even incident which unfailingly recall Balzac's study of unsatisfied passion, though two more completely irreconcilable interpretations of human character can scarcely be imagined. As representatives of political opinion, both family groups are faithful adherents of a doomed or dying cause — Legi- timist or Jacobite ; and in both cases the young hero (grave and sedate beyond his years) is entrusted with the carrying out of a perilous mission at an important or decisive juncture in the story. Each of the heroes has had to endure an unhappy, solitary childhood, lack of sympathy and repression; each awakens to the possibilities of an ampler life through his meeting with the heroine, only a few years his senior, mother of two children, with a much older husband. The
520 Miscellaneous Notes
difference of age is all but identical. Esmond is twelve at the opening of his narrative ; Lady Castlewood, * scarce twenty years old.' Madame de Mortsauf is not far from the horrid promontory of thirty ; Vande- nesse is twenty. In each novel the leading feminine role falls to one who unites with other qualities a strong practical sense which carries her and her family through serious complications in their affairs and makes her the tutelary spirit of the situation ; each, too, loving with womanly and quasi-maternal fidelity the rather priggish and excessively self-conscious youth (the contrast of whose abilities with the attributes of her own husband she instinctively discerns), undergoes the bitterness of seeing an unworthy rival capture the long-coveted prize.
To pursue the parallels further might lead one into vain subtleties. Moreover, the principal contrasts are sharp and striking. The living woman, Beatrix, is not near of kin to the stagey fantoche, who goes by the name of Lady Dudley — ' faite de chic ' as M. George Pellissier says ; nor are Felix de Vandenesse and Henry Esmond to be forced into one category.
Thackeray, for all his reading in the lighter French literature of his time, mentions Balzac sparingly, if at all. We may, therefore, in this case, hesitate before assenting to conclusions less obvious than such as might be reached, for instance, through pursuing details of treatment in Bleak House and Alice-f or- Short. Were it possible to establish such connexion, the most singular element in the discovery would consist in the indirect and sinuous filament attaching to Rousseau and Madame de Kriidener one whose ineradicable John-Bullism would have contemned the spirit of their teaching. What he thought of Werther is preserved in the inimitable boutade, which most probably conveys his real feeling:
Charlotte having seen his body,
Borne before her on a shutter, Like a well-conducted person,
Went on cutting bread and butter.
Goethe had said : ' Man furchtete fur Lottens Leben/
PAUL T. LAFLEUR. McGiLL UNIVERSITY, MONTREAL.
HORACE WALPOLE AND MARIETTE.
When Walpole went to Paris in 1765 for the first time, he made the acquaintance of Pierre Jean Mariette1, a friend of Madame du Deffand's, a celebrated collector, author of numerous works on painting
1 1694-1774.
Miscellaneous Notes 521
and engraving, and a recognised authority. Walpole consulted him repeatedly, admired his collection, arid coveted a miniature of Madame d'Olonne by Petitot in his possession. But, as he remarked of ' Old Mariette ' to a friend, ' You know, I suppose, that he would as soon part with an eye as with anything in his own collection1.'
Mariette, on the other hand, seems to have been interested in Walpole ; even before Walpole had come to Paris, he had translated the Anecdotes of Painting, learning, it is said, English in his old age for this purpose. The translation has never been published; neither Walpole nor Madame du Deffand ever mention it, though, presumably, they were aware of its existence, and, as a matter of fact, while admitting to his friend Bottari that the author, ' il sig. Orazio Walpol ' was ' un uomo di molto spirito...che ha messo in questo suo lib^o tutto quello spirito, di cui il libro era capace2,' Mariette had come gradually to the conclusion that it was hardly important enough to give to a French public.
The manuscript, consisting of three quarto volumes, is in the possession of the Bibliotheque Nationale3. It bears no date, but as we know from the letter to Bottari already referred to, Mariette set to work almost immediately after the appearance of the Anecdotes and had practically completed his translation in 1764, though as late as 1770 he was still revising it4. The text used by him is that of the first edition (1762-3), but he compared it afterwards carefully with that of the second (1765). Walpole's notes are expanded, inexactitudes
1 Walpole, Letters, edited by Mrs Paget Toynbee, vi, 332. Some years later, when Mariette's health began to fail very seriously, Walpole at once bethought himself of the miniature, and even before the death of Mariette, Madame du Deffand, acting on Walpole's instructions, tried to secure the promise of the miniature from his heirs presumptive, but unsuccessfully. From that time onward until the general sale of Mariette's property there is hardly a letter of Madame du Deffand's that does not mention the miniature. Walpole was in Paris a short time before the sale and would fain have stayed on for it. ' The tempter took me up into a mountain,' he writes to the Countess of Ossory on the 3rd of October, 1775, ' and showed me all Mariette's collection of prints and drawings which are to be sold in November and offered me the choice of them if I would stay. I resisted and prefer myself infinitely to Scipio : he might have had fifty other women ; but where is there another room full of Raphaels, Corregios, Parmegianos and Michael Angelos?' (Letters, ix, 259). He returned to England, but described himself as 'mightily busy about Mariette's sale' where, as he admitted, he had been 'so lucky as to ruin himself.' Amongst other treasures the coveted Madame d'Olonne passed into his possession, at a price which caused Madame du Deffand to remark that he had paid dearer for her than any of her lovers did in her lifetime. (Walpole, Letters, ix, 303.)
2 Botturi, Raccolta di Lettere sulla Pittura, etc. Borne 1764, Vol. iv, p. 390, a letter dated Aug. 3rd, 1764.
a Anecdotes conccrnant I'Etat de la Peinture en Angleterre...pa,v Mr Horace Walpole, traduites en Frangois et augmentees de quelques notes critiques par M1' P. S. Mariette. (Title pa«e of Vol. n.) Bibliotheque nationale, manuscrits francais 14650-52.
4 Muriette was in the habit of writing notes on odd pieces of paper, on the backs of letters for instance, and one such letter dated 1770 is fastened into the first volume.
-M L. R. IX. 34
522 Miscellaneous Notes
are carefully pointed out, nor does Mariette spare remarks such as 'M. Walpole raisonne ici fort mal1' or ' Que de paroles pour ne rien prouver2.' A very curious note is to be found at the end of the first volume. 'Monsieur Walpole termine son premier volume.. .par quel- ques notices d'architectes et d'ouvrages qui ont ete fait pour lors dans des Colleges a Cambridge. II s'^tend principalement sur quelques parties d'edifices qu'un architecte nomine Theodore Havens... a vait construit entre les annees 1566 et 1573 dans le College de Caius et Gonville. II en fait une description tres detaillee et qui ne donne nullement envie de connoitre de plus pres des morceaux d'architecture
ou regne un gout barbare et miserable Je n'ai pu me resoudre a
traduire cet endroit de son livre3/
Into the first volume Mariette fastened — and it is this that will interest the English reader most — a short autograph note from Walpole, not included in the late Mrs Paget Toynbee's edition of Walpole's Letters.
Monsr Walpole est tres mortifik de quitter Paris sans avoir eu la satisfaction de voir son bon Ami Monsieur Mariette. M. Walpole le prie de vouloir bien accepter ces estampes ajoutees a la nouvelle Edition de ses Anecdotes, etc., et surtout, le conjure de lui conserver son Amitie4.
It is impossible to date this note exactly ; as it was written shortly before one of Walpole's departures from Paris, we have the choice of the following dates: April, 1766, October, 1767, October, 1769 and September, 1771. The last time he left Paris, in October, 1775, Mariette was no longer alive. One of the earlier dates would seem most likely.
The Bibliotheque Nationale also possesses a manuscript translation of Walpole's Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third6, not by Mariette, of course, but perhaps a short mention may be made of it here at the same time. It is anonymous. The ' Epitre Dedicatoire ' is not without interest.
A Madame * * *
Cette traduction fut eritreprise par vos ordres, 1'hommage vous en est du. Honteuse, disiez vous, qu'aucun frangois n'eut songd k faire connoitre a notre nation ce chef d'oeuvre d'un des plus beaux esprits de 1'angleterre, cet ouvrage
1 MS. fr. 14650, p. 89.
2 Ibid., p. 27.
3 Of. the indignation with which Mariette tells Bottari that Walpole prefers West- minster Abbey to St Peter's. (Bottari, iv, 390.)
4 MS. fr. 14650. At the foot of the page Mariette has written ' Billet autographe. J.P.M.'
6 MS. fr. 14647. Doutes historiques sur la vie et le regne de Richard III.
Miscellaneous Notes 523
unique en son espece, qui bien qu'empreint en plusieurs endroits du sceau du paradoxe, decele k chaque instant la vivacite du ge*nie et la profondeur de 1'erudition de son illustre Auteur, vous m'ordonnates de la faire passer dans notre langue. J'ai obei, Madame, et j'ose vous presenter cette copie bien foible aupres de son .original, mais qui, je 1'espSre au moins, ne vous semblera pas infidele. II m'eut e"t^ bien flatteur de pouvoir mettre votre nom a la te"te ; votre genie, votre sagacite", cette vaste etendue de connoissances que votre modestie cherche en vain a deVober, eussent impose silence & la critique. Vous n'avez pas daigne m'accorder tant de gloire, je n'ose pretendre k cette approbation que vous ne de'cernez qu'au vrai talent, heureux du moins si j'obtiens votre indulgence.
Madame * * * is beyond doubt Madame du Deffand. As soon as Madame du Deffand had got hold of Walpole's Historic Doubts, she cast about for a person capable of translating ' Richard.' ' M. Mallet, Genevois ' or a certain Madame de Meinieres seemed to her most suit- able ; a M. de Montigny was anxious to undertake the work, but Madame du Deffand had her doubts as to his qualifications ; at one time she thought of Wiart, her own secretary; some one proposed 'un nomme M. Suard1,' but we do not know who was finally charged with the task. It is characteristic of Madame du Deffand that she refused to have her name appear in the Epitre dedicatoire. When Walpole wished to name her in the Epitre de'dicatoire of his edition of the Memoires de Grammont, she replied, ' II suffit qu'on me devine, en voila assez pour ma gloire2.'
RUTH CLARK. WATFORD, HERTS.
'SOLIMAN AND PERSEDA.'
The anonymous Tragedie of Soliman and Perseda, wherein is laide open Love's Constancy, Fortune's Inconstancy, and Death's Triumphs printed, without date, in 1599, but probably performed before November 20, 1592, when a play of similar title was entered at Stationers' Hall, has aroused much speculation ever since the days when Hawkins con- jectured it was the work of Thomas Kyd. Prof. Boas endorses that view and includes the play in his recension of Kyd's works. My purpose in writing this note is to point out certain features in the construction of the piece which clearly indicate, not only that it was designed for private performance, but could not have been presented in any Elizabethan theatre. In Act I, 3 a scene of deftly ' stage-managed ' tilting takes place, with interspersed dialogue. Probably hobby-horses were employed. This scene evidently took place on the floor of a hall, not on the stage of a theatre. While on the one hand we have no
1 Mme du Deffand, Lettres, London 1912, i, pp. 358, 359, 379, 390, 391, 393, etc.
2 Ibid., n, p. 380.
34—2
524 Miscellaneous Notes
record of the yard or pit of a playhouse being utilised for intercalated spectacles of this order, on the other we know that at Courfc tilting at barriers was a favourite device and that in the masques the characters frequently descended from the stage to dance on the floor of the hall. Even in court plays this latter practice was occasionally followed, e.g. the going up to the State in The Arraignment of Paris.
It is also significant that no doors of entrance are mentioned throughout the play. Moreover, certain indications point to the fact that scenery of the Court or multiple order was utilised, and that it was probably set on stages at either end of a hall, much as Daniel's The Vision of the Twelve Goddesses was staged at Hampton Court in 1604. In Act II, i, after 'sound vp the Drum to Lucinaes Doore,' Lucina at once speaks without entering, a sure indication that she was sitting in view in a room forming part of a multiple scene. Many parallel situations are to be noted in Lyly. In the last act a built-up tower was necessary. The Marshal ascended this and flung down two dummy bodies. This effect, of course, could have been procured in an ordinary public theatre, but it is curious that we have two references to ' the tower ' in the last scene of Old Fortunatus, which, in its published form, is distinctively a Court play.
Even if all other evidence were lacking I should unhesitatingly pronounce Soliman and Perseda a private play on the strength of two directions in Act I, 4 :
Enter Basilisco riding of a mule.
Piston getteth up on his asse, and rideth with him to the doore, and meeteth the cryer.
These are not ordinary stage directions. The use of animals in this way in the theatre was sedulously avoided. Space, too, is indicated, such as could only be provided by the floor of a large hall. It is note- worthy, however, that beyond the constructive method and the corre- lative method of staging, there is nothing in Soliman and Perseda to indicate that it was a Court play. Where then would a private performance be given where Court methods would be followed ? Un- doubtedly at one of the Inns of Court.
In the History and Antiquities of the Four Inns of Court published anonymously at Dublin by Henry Watts in 1780, extracts are given at p. 24 from the accounts of the Temple relative to the routine to be followed . in the Grand Christmasses. Of ' The Banquetting Night,' seemingly New Year's night, we read:
It is proper to the Butler's office to give warning to every House of Court of this banquet ; to the end that they, and the Irmes of Chancery, be invited thereto to see
Miscellaneous Notes 525
a play and mask. The hall is to be furnished with scaffolds to sit on, for ladyes to behold the sports on each side : which ended the ladyes are brought into the library, unto the banquet there. — When the banquet is ended, then cometh into the hall the constable marshall, fairly mounted on his mule, and deviseth some sport for passing away the rest of the night1.
The italics are mine. They seem to indicate the origin of Basilico's mule, an auxiliary which would have been ready to hand at an Inns of Court play.
It is noteworthy that professional players were employed for long in these festival performances. Under ' Annual Wages ' (ibid., p. 64) we read:
To the Stage- players on the two grand days, for each play, 10 1 20 1.
But of late these are doubled and receive 40 1. a play (?).
' Of late ' here means circa 1630. ^
W. J. LAWKENCE. DUBLIN.
A TRAGEDY OF DIDO AND AENEAS ACTED IN 1607.
Although printed as early as 1750, the record of the tragedy acted in 1607 under rather unusual circumstances does not seem to have been noted by the writers who have discussed the various English dramas dealing with the Dido- Aeneas story. Writing on June 8, 1607, M. de la Boderie, the French ambassador resident at London, thus describes certain entertainments attended by the Prince de Joinville, Charles de Lorraine, during his visit to England :
'La Reine, un de ces soirs, le vint prendre au pied de son logis, qui repondoit sur la riviere, et le mena sur icelle avec trois bateaux charges de musique, ou ils demeurerent quatre ou cinq heures. Le lendemain se fit le tournoi prepare pour 1'amour de lui : il s'y porta fort bien, mais non tant toutefois, qu'il ne se reconnut de la faculte de son cheval, qu'on croit lui avoir ete donne tel par les Anglois pour diminuer de sa gloire. Le soir le Comte d'Arundel donna un grand festin ou il se trouva avec le Roi, la Reine et force Dames ; et a la fin d'ici-lui se presenta une Tragedie d'Enee et de Didon, qui les tint jusques a deux heures apres minuit.' (Ambassades, II, 263-4.)
It is perhaps impossible to say whether the tragedy mentioned above was written especially for the elaborate entertainment given by Henry Howard, Earl of Arundel, or whether it was an old play revived — Halliwell's Latin Dido, acted at Cambridge in 1564, Gager's Dido,
1 Since writing this note I have discovered that these instructions date from 1562. See. Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, ed. 1788, i, p. 23.
526 Miscellaneous Notes
acted at Oxford before the Prince Palatine of Poland in 1583, the tragedy by Marlowe and Nash, or the ' dido & eneus ' mentioned in Henslowe's diary, provided the two plays mentioned last are different productions. The tragedy referred to by Boderie could hardly have been Right wise's Latin drama, presented before Wolsey in 1532, or the interlude on Dido and Aeneas recorded at Chester (Hazlitt, Manual, p. 64).
T. S. GRAVES. DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA, U.S.A.
REVIEWS.
The Baconian Heresy : a Confutation. By J. M. ROBERTSON. London : Herbert Jenkins. 1913. 8vo. xx + 612 pp.
All Elizabethan scholars will welcome and should read this book. We have long passed the time when the Baconian theory can be safely treated with Olympian neglect or contempt. It is like the camomile which the more it is trodden on the faster it grows ; haughty abuse and the superior smile only add to its luxuriance, for they give it the air of martyrdom ; and it is now becoming clear to sane minds that the weed can be destroyed by nothing less than a deliberate and laborious attack upon the roots. Mr Crawford was, I believe, the first scholar to see this and state it explicitly, when he wrote in 1907, 'It seems to me that scholars are making a big mistake in allowing this question to assume such serious proportions. The lie ought to have been caught up years ago, and nailed to the counter.' But though he followed his own precept by penning an ingenious and learned proof that Bacon was far more likely to have written the works of Ben Jonson than those of- Shakespeare, his attack was not sufficiently direct, and owing to the circumstances of its publication could hardly have obtained a large circulation. Thus, if we except Canon Beeching's essay in reply to Mr Greenwood's ' anti-Stratfordian ' thesis, no scholar of any reputation before Mr Robertson has attempted to meet the Baconian arguments and (what is even more important) to examine and destroy the Baconian assumptions. The truth is that mixed up with much that is absurd in the Baconian case, such as ciphers and the like, there are many points which are extremely telling; that the orthodox are admittedly at loggerheads as to the personality and attainments of the Stratford actor to whom they attribute the plays ; and that where the doctors are disagreeing among themselves, it is only natural that the man in the street should fall a victim to the intelligible, if dogmatic, assertions of the quacks. Moreover, it is a great mistake to suppose that the heterodox in this matter hold a monopoly of stupidity. There are fatuous Shakespeareans (let us assume that they live in Germany S), and there are exceedingly able Baconian treatises. The Shakespeare Problem re-stated, for example, by Mr G. G. Greenwood, is a racy, plausible and, within certain definite limits, learned volume, which has been read by numberless intelligent, but inexpert, people who, finding no consistent and lucid exposition of the other side to counteract it, have
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either become Baconians forthwith or have been left in a state of extreme perplexity of mind. In these days of ultra-specialisation it is impossible for any but the few to be Elizabethan students. When, therefore, the general public is obviously in great uncertainty as to what it ought to believe upon so important a subject as the authorship of the supreme literary productions of our language, when a man like Mark Twain dies a convert to the Baconian faith, it is surely time for Shakespearean scholars to give up talking idly about ' mental aberration,' ' morbid psychology/ and ' madhouse chatter/ to step down from their pedestals, and to explain their case. It is a duty they owe to the com- munity and to the memory of Shakespeare. All honour to Mr Robertson for showing us the way !
Stripped of its trimmings, the Baconian thesis rests upon the fol- lowing simple syllogism : The author of the works of ' Shakespeare ' was demonstrably a man of great learning and wide culture ; the actor from Stratford came to London an illiterate, or at best a half-educated rustic; it is therefore incredible that the actor should have produced the works. The trouble is, as Mr Robertson shows, that the Baconians find their case ready made for them in the writings of the orthodox. They have only to draw the conclusion, the premises have been granted in advance by their opponents. Mr Greenwood for example takes the phrase ' Stratford rustic ' out of the mouths of Messrs Garnett and Gosse, is able to quote both Halliwell-Phillipps and Sir Sidney Lee to the effect that Shakespeare left school ' unusually early/ probably at the age of 13, and can then turn to Churton Collins in support of his contention that the dramatist was an accomplished classical scholar. The picture of the scholar-dramatist, reading with facility Latin, French, Italian, and (Churton Collins would add) Greek, deeply versed in the law, steeped in all the culture of the Renaissance, a traveller on the continent, a poet whose earliest productions display a .' perfect polish and urbanity' which can only have been acquired by moving freely in the very highest circles of society, is impossible to reconcile with the other picture of the Strat- ford butcher's apprentice, with an education less complete than that of millions of modern elementary school children, running away (either from Sir Thomas Lucy or from Anne Hathaway, you may take your choice which) to London at the age of 21, except by falling back upon the transcendentalist formula of Coleridge : ' self- sustained, deriving his genius immediately from heaven., independent of all earthly or national influence.' It is no wonder that even the transcendentalist Emerson ' could not marry this man's life to his verse ' ; it is no wonder that the Baconians should exclaim in the name of common sense, though with comical Latinity, aut ' Baco ' aut diaboius. ' It is very doubtful/ says Mr Robertson, 'whether the Baconian theory would ever have been framed had not the idolatrous Shakespeareans set up a visionary figure of the Master.'
Before the Baconian case can be met, therefore, we of the orthodox camp must set our own house in order. The practice of writing monu- mental 'lives' of Shakespeare, resting like inverted pyramids upon a
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tiny collection of verified facts and insecurely held together by a quantity of the mortar of hypothesis, must be discontinued ; what we do know about the life can be set out in two or three pages and even then the interpretation of these facts depends -upon their relation with a million other facts which have been lost. Next we must make up our minds on this question of the learning of Shakespeare, and here Mr Robertson, both in the volume before us and in his Montaigne and Shakespeare has made a most excellent beginning. One hundred and fifty pages of the later work are devoted to the problem of Shakespeare's knowledge of the law, wherein it is shown by the aid of a wealth of illustrative passages from other Elizabethan playwrights and writers that Shakespeare's ' legal phraseology ' is mere literary commonplace which can be paralleled in the case of nearly all his prominent con- temporaries. Exactly the same line of argument is adopted in regard to Shakespeare's alleged ' classical scholarship,' and Mr Robertson spends some two hundred pages in setting side by side the Shakespearean passages which Baconians and others declare to be direct borrowings from the classics and similar passages from previous English writers, thereby demonstrating once more that Shakespeare was simply drawing upon the common Elizabethan stock. Following the same comparative method Mr Robertson then makes short work of the ' coincidences of phrase ' which Baconians find in the writings of Shakespeare and Bacon, and proceeds to push his victory into the enemy's camp by an investi- gation of the vocabularies of the two writers, which leads to results quite overwhelming to the Baconian case. Finally the book is rounded off with a chapter on '.external and circumstantial evidence,' which deals with such problems as the dramatist's apparent indifference to the fate of his plays, Jonson's testimony, the second-best bedstead, the poet's handwriting, and the illiteracy of his daughters. The volume as a whole is a fine combination of learning and common sense, and should do much not merely to check the spread of the Baconian heresy but also to enable Shakespearean students to clear their minds of cant and to envisage their own problem in its true proportions. Mr Robertson's cry throughout is, 'Back to Farmer,' and in his preface he pleads with scholars for the production of what Farmer promised but never accom- plished, viz. a scholarly annotation of Shakespeare's text. This would involve, of course, a thorough investigation of the whole question of the Shakespeare canon. Mr Robertson has made a beginning here too, in his book on Titus Andronicus, and there are welcome indications in the present volume that he intends to go on with the task. Certain it is that until we know what Shakespeare wrote, it is impossible to generalise upon his personality and attainments with security ; and so long as the entire body of work now labelled ' Shakespeare ' is accepted uncritically as his, so long will there be a foothold for Baconian and other weeds.
J. DOVER WILSON. LEEDS.
530 Reviews
Robert Herrick, Contribution a I'jStude de la Poesie lyrique en Angleterre au dix-septieme siecle. Par FLORIS DELATTRE. Paris: Felix Alcan. 1912. 8vo. xv + 570 pp.
At the close of a review of Prof. Moorman's Robert Herrick in vol. VII, no. iii, I mentioned the publication of the above volume. By one of the coincidences that occur from time to time in literary investigation the English and the French scholar were engaged at the same time, and unknown to each other, in a detailed study of Herrick's life and poetry1. Their volumes are planned on similar -lines, each beginning with a bio- graphical section, followed by a critical appreciation. But Dr Delattre's is on a much more comprehensive scale, extending to five hundred closely printed pages of text, followed by some fifty pages of appendix.
Such a massive commentary may well cause searchings of heart to even the most devout lover of Herrick. It seems inevitable that his lyrical genius should be buried beneath the immensa moles of this critical superstructure, and it is a tribute to Dr Delattre's literary art and insight that this does not happen. Nevertheless the work would have gained from compression. Its author while writing primarily for the professional student of letters has apparently aimed also at the capture of ' the general reader.' Doubtless there is a more widespread interest in France than in England in questions of literary style and interpretation, but it is difficult to believe that even across the Channel there will be many readers of so minute and learned a study of Herrick who are not already familiar with the general outlines of English literary history and with the conditions of life in England under the Stuarts. Dr Delattre would therefore have been better advised to omit such passages as the descriptions of life in Cheapside and in Cambridge, of the revels at the Mermaid tavern, or the mischances on the Isle of Rhe expedition. In the chapter, running to sixty pages, on Les Femmes et V Amour it was unnecessary to give an account of the treat- ment of the subject by all the seventeenth century lyrists from Donne and Drummond to Dorset and Rochester. Such instances might be multiplied. We are too often in danger of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
Another unfortunate result of the double appeal of the work is that, as a rule, the extracts from contemporary books or documents, and even from Herrick's own poems are given in a French translation2. Where is the Frenchman bold enough to attack this formidable volume who is yet unable to read one of Herrick's letters from Cambridge in their original language ? And how will he learn the secret of Herrick's fascination when ' When as in silks my Julia goes ' is disguised thus ?
Quand Julie s'avance en robe de sole, comme j'aime k voir couler, si exquise, la fluidit^ de son vehement ;
1 Prof. Moorman's work, however, was published in time for Dr Delattre to make a number of references to it in the notes to his volume.
2 Some of the documents, however, are reproduced in English in Appendix A.
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et puis, tandis que mon regard se pose sur la robe qui fremit et s'elance, 6 1'enchantement de cette lumiere !
This is an example of the ' methode un peu speciale ' by which Dr Delattre turns the lyrics into a ' moyen terme ' between prose and verse. ' Nous avons traduit en prose 1'ceuvre de Herrick, afin de conserver la souplesse precise qu'on est en droit d'attendu d'une version litterale, mais nous avons essay e de sauvegarder un peu du rythme de 1'original, nous confiant a la mysterieuse vertu du metre.' All this is worse than wasted labour. It presents Herrick to the foreigner through a distorting medium, and it is a stumbling-block to the English reader. If the book reaches a second edition (as it well deserves), I strongly advise the author to throw his translations overboard and to substitute the original text. He need not seek a wider public than those who can read the poems as they were written.
For his volume, in spite of the drawbacks mentioned, is a work of genuine scholarship and charm. The author has left nothing undone to equip himself for his task. He has searched for biographical material in the archives of London, Cambridge, and Exeter. He spent some time at the Rectory of Dean Prior, and extracts from the Parish Register are given in an Appendix. Though his industry has not been rewarded by any 'find' of great importance, he has succeeded in adding something to the documentary evidences. Thus he quotes (pp. 15-16 and 511) from Dasent's Acts of the Privy Council (New Series, xxin, 290-1) a letter from the Council to the Lord Mayor relative to the death of Nicholas Herrick which has hitherto been unnoticed by biographers. He reproduces in its correct form (proving that the Crown was the patron on the occasion) the docquet in the Record Office concerning the poet's presentation to the living of Dean Prior (pp. 83 and 514). Grosart and Prof. Moorman both give an inaccurate version of the document. And further he prints (pp. 111-12 and 515-16) a petition by Herrick in 1660, that he has discovered among the House of Lords MSS., praying that the ' Ty thes, Glebes and all other profitts ' of Dean Prior Rectory may be ' secured & sequestred ' till he can ' prove his Tytle by Lawe.'
In another discovery (as he hoped it would prove) Dr Delattre was anticipated by Prof. Moorman. This is the document in which ' Mr Dell's man ' insinuates that Herrick was the father of Thomasin Parson's illegitimate child. But Dr Delattre gives us the reference for it which Prof. Moorman (as I pointed out) unaccountably omitted. It is no. 77 in vol. 474 of ' Domestic State Papers, Charles I.' Indeed one of the greatest merits of Dr Delattre's volume throughout is the fullness and precision of its references. The same exact scholarship and painstaking research are displayed in the Appendixes which deal with the musical settings of the lyrics, with Herrick's metres, and with his bibliography. There seems to be nothing ever written about Herrick, however fugitive or inaccessible, that has not been read and noted by his French critic.
Nor has Dr Delattre been less indefatigable in his quest of the
532 Reviews
sources of the poems. Here, as he acknowledges, he has profited by the labours of Grosart, Mr A. W. Pollard, and other editors. But in his chapter on 'Limitation chez Herrick,' he has systematised the results of previous research and has added fresh material. Thus he shows that several of the lyrics, e.g. The Cruell Maid and The Cheat of Cupid, though they are adaptations from the Greek, are based not upon the originals but on Latin versions by J. A. de Baif and Henri Estienne. The influence of the two Renaissance erotic poets, Jean Second and Jean de Bonnefon, is traced in some detail. On the other hand in a long and interesting footnote to pp. 407-10 Dr Delattre contends that the debt of Herrick to Ovid and to Catullus has been much exaggerated. Prof. Moorman did not accept without reserve Lowell's description of Herrick as ' the most Catullian of poets since Catullus ' ; the French critic repudiates it as essentially misleading. This is true so far as their love lyrics are concerned, but Prof. Moorman's estimate of the general relations between their art seems to me the more discriminating. Nevertheless, even if one dissents from some of Dr Delattre's judgments, the great merit of his chapter on Herrick's imitations is that he does not merely hunt out sources with unwearied zest, but shows that the Cavalier poet transforms what he borrows, and is essentially an original singer.
Thoughout his volume, indeed, Dr Delattre makes research the handmaid of a singularly delicate and penetrating critical method. He does not realise fully that element of ' the grand style ' in Herrick's poetry on which Prof. Moorman has some illuminating sentences. He even at the very close of his work startles us by denying that the subject of his elaborate study was a 'genius.' But his interpretative analysis, unfolding itself in delightfully supple and flexible prose, seems to wind into the very heart of the Hesperides. He does not flinch, as so many critics have done, before the ' re'alisme cruel ' of the Epigrams. He frankly recognises that at the core of Herrick's work, with all its grace and charm there is an element of ' brutalite ' of animalism. 'Ainsi le poete exquis...qtii est capable d'exprimer les mille variations de sa fantaisie delicate, n'eprouve aucune honte, aucun scrupule meme, a nous decouvrir les tendances les plus rudes de son temperament.'
These 'tendances rudes' are not confined to the Epigrams; they overflow into the love-poetry where, however, they are for the most part transfigured by quite other elements of Herrick's complex tem- perament.
Ayant fait a son animalite instinctive la part qui lui revenait il eprouve le besom d'embellir, de Fenjoliver, de 1'afnner surtout. II tient & corriger par 1'iri- geniosite de son imagination et de son esprit la simplicite vehemerite de son desir. De sorte qu'apres s'£tre montre cyniquement sensuel, ce poete apparait en outre comme un sentimental romanesque, et comrne Tun des mattres meme de la coquet- terie amoureuse.
This is admirably said, and throughout his volume Dr Delattre is peculiarly sensitive to the paradoxical union of opposites in Herrick's art which gives it a place all its own. He illustrates this not only from
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the love poems but from the poems of country life, the ' noble numbers ' and the general characteristics of his style. Even the closest students of Herrick will find something fresh in his sparkling pages on these topics, and his work, taken as a whole, must rank as one of the most remarkable contributions by contemporary French criticism to the study of English literature.
F. S. BOAS. LONDON.
Poems by Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester. With an Introduction by CARLETON BROWN (Bryn Mawr College Monographs, vol. xiv). Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, 1913. 8vo. lxxiv + 86 pp.
Shakespeare's enigmatic poem The Phoenix and the Turtle first appeared in 1601 in a sort of appendix to the poem** Loves Martyr, written by one Robert Chester and dedicated to one Sir John Salusbury. This appendix, entitled Poeticall Essaies, consists of poems by five other hands, Ben Jonson, Marston, Chapman, ' Ignoto,' and Shakespeare, and contains stanzas addressed by the ' Vatum Chorus 'to Sir John Salusbury. The ' Phoenix and Turtle ' ' motive ' had been set by Chester in his own poem, and it reappears in the poems contributed by his greater friends. The present editor, acting on a hint from Professor Gollancz, has set himself to discover the meaning of Chester's Loves Martyr by investigating the family history of Sir John Salusbury and Robert Chester, and in the light of the meaning thus got to interpret the poems of Jonson, Shakespeare and the rest.
Grosart, who edited Loves Martyr thirty-five years ago, successfully identified Sir John Salusbury as a knight of Lleweni, Denbighshire. He also pointed out that to Salusbury ' Robert Parry Gent.' dedicated in 1597 a little volume of verse, Sinetes Passions. In two points, according to our editor, he went wrong : first in supposing that Robert Chester was a Robert Chester of Royston, Cambridgeshire : secondly, in seeing in Chester's allegory of the Phoenix and Turtle a reference to the relations of Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex.
Professor Carleton Brown argues that Robert Chester was almost certainly connected with Denbighshire rather than Royston. His main thesis is, however, that the allegory of the Phoenix and Turtle in Chester's poem turns on the marriage of Sir John Salusbury to Ursula Stanley, natural daughter of Henry Stanley, , fourth Earl of Derby, and Jane Halsall of Knowsley. To prove this, he has collected new facts in regard to Salusbury 's family-history, and he has studied in connexion with Loves Martyr a group of poems appended to Parry's Sinetes Passions called ' The Patrone his pathetical Posies etc.' as well as the Christ Church MS. 184, which contains a number of poems by Salusbury and Chester. Both the latter groups of poems are reprinted in this work. One regrets that Loves Martyr and its appendix were not also included, or the book at least more fully described. Grosart's edition
534 Reviews
is not generally accessible, and yet to understand the argument of this dissertation, its presence is essential.
Professor Brown appears to be right in connecting Robert Chester with Denbighshire. His theory as to the interpretation of the allegory appears also to be much more probable than Grosart's, though it involves some difficulties. Sir John Salusbury and his wife had several sons living in 1601, and several more had died. Accordingly, as Chester's poem implies that the Phoenix and the Turtle had only a single off- spring (a daughter) it becomes necessary to put back the date of composition to 1587-8, and to assume that the allegory had lost much of its point by the time when it was published.
Marston in 1601 sings the praises of ' a most exact wondrous creature/ arising out of the ' Phoenix and Turtle Doues ashes.' In this creature, who, he says, ' now is growne vnto maturitie/ we are again to see Jane Salusbury, and to understand that the exigencies of the Phoenix and Turtle allegory led Marston to single out the daughter to the exclusion of her brothers. Shakespeare's poem is left unexplained: here the Phoenix and the Turtle are not merely consumed in a figurative sense in the fire of wedlock, they have actually perished:
Leaving no posteritie,
Twas not their infirmitie,
It was married chastitie.
The author wisely makes no attempt to reconcile this presentation with the fact that Sir John Salusbury and his wife and a numerous family were still living. There are difficulties then about Professor Brown's explanation : none the less it is a serious and scholarly attempt at the solution of a difficult little problem, and the poems he prints are in themselves curious, if only for their wealth of acrostics and for the warmth of love which Sir John Salusbury manifests in them towards his sisters- in-law.
Now for a few points of detail.
p. xv. ' about 2 of the Clocke in the astor Dinnr.' For ' astor,' we should probably read ' after.'
p. xxxiii. ' Faith woemens love is but an appetite.' Is this a reminiscence of Twelfth Night, n, 4, 100 ?
p. xlii. The attempted identification of ' Frances Willoughby ' has little to support it.
p. li. Of the three signatures given in facsimile, I think it is clear that that of the poet is in a different hand from the other two, and this agrees with Dr Brown's argument. I believe, however, that Robert Chester of Royston on this evidence was the Robert Chester who translated De Senatore, and that we have not to do with three men of the same name.
p. Ixviii. The editor ingeniously turns ' Honos Liberalis ' into 'lohon Sallsberi.' Perhaps, if there is an anagram, the name should be 'lohn Sallsborie.'
Professor Brown, as has been said, prints the English poems of Salusbury and Chester given in Christ Church MS. 184. In my
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remarks on this part of his work I have the advantage of having been permitted to inspect the Christ Church MS. and of therefore being able to suggest a few ^corrections of his text. p. 7, 1. 6. ' 6 thou.' Read ' 6 then.'
pp. 7, 8. Poem iv, as Professor Brown has mentioned, has appended to it two initials, possibly ' J. S.' much flourished over. If the poem is by Salusbury, it seems with its recurring phrases ' And still my mistress slept,' ' and still my mistress sawe/ ' and still my mistress hard/ etc., to have been suggested by Marston's famous passage in What you Will with its recurrent 'and still my spaniel slept.'
p. 10, Poem VII, 1. 1. ' selly.' Read 'silly' (I think), corrected from ' hony.'
p. 12 middle. ' Once did I soe.J This appears to be the reading of the MS. But should not ' soe ' be ' see ' ?
1. 2 from bot. 'A verteous time.' I think 'time' should be 'fume' (corrected from 'sinne'). x
p. 13, 1. 7. ' Ingenium,' etc. This is written in the MS. as an elegiac couplet, the first line ending with 'Amicos,'.
p. 14, 1. 6 from bot. 'is his armes.' Read ' in his arrnes.' p. 16 middle. ' The Honysuckle hony es.' Read, I think, ' honyes. The sense is obscure either way.
p. 17, 1. 4. 'in this kind arte.' Read 'in this kind acte.' p. 22, Poem XV, 1. 1. ' that my chaunce doth light.' Read, ' by chaunce.'
p. 23, 1. 7. ' Edoaurdus <T Otthen.' Read ' Edoauardus,' and perhaps ' d' Otthez.'
1. 7 from bot. ' Martius.' So the MS. But should it be ' Msevius ' ?
p. 24, 1. 9. * To parte his hart.' Read ' to perce his hart.' 1. 17. ' hoples pine.' Perhaps : haples pine/ 1. 21. ' The black cloked Syppres.' So much of the line has been cut off on the MS. that the reading is extremely conjectural, p. 25, 1. 9. ' Our longing thought.' Read ' thoughts.'
1. 18. 'ramped walls.' Read (I think) 'ramperd.' p. 26, Poem xvm, 1. 11. 'My thried is cate/ Read (I think) 'My thried is care.'
p. 27, Poem xix, 1. 1. ' where faith doth neede/ So the MS. The rime seems to require, however, 'jest' for 'neede/ The latter word seems to have been suggested by 'needs' earlier in the line, p. 29, 1. 11 from bot. ' scared of his foes/ Read, ' feared/ etc. p. 30, 1. 10. ' to enioy.' So the MS. The sense seems to require ' to envy/
1. 15. Professor Brown's line (identical with 1. 17) is a copyist's or printer's mistake. The MS. has 'Blest be the tyme his father had such looke/
last line. ' sweete.' Read (I think) ' stowte.'
p. 31, 1. 8. 'to drolle ame I/ A letter after 'd' has been deleted, I think : and we should read ' to dolle ame I.'
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Does this stanza contain an allusion to Nicholas Breton's Coridon and Phillida ?
p. 32, Poem xxu, last line. It is not clear who is the ' Ane Stanley ' whom ' Danielle ' addresses.
hot. ' whose.' So the MS. But ' who ' seems required.
p. 35, Poem xxv, 1. 1. ' I[n]fausto Herculeo counctos qui robere prsestas.' Read ' I fauste Herculeo counctos qui robore ' etc.
p. 36, Poem xxv, 1. 2. ' strange.' So the MS. But the rime seems to require ' shines.'
1. 4. ' Craddna.' Read (I think) ' Evaddna.' 1. 14. 'impolisd [sic].' The word is clearly as here printed, and presents no difficulty ('unpolished').
p. 39, 1. 6. ' illius at quarto mors dolet atra vivo.' For ' vivo,' read ' viro.'
p. 40, 1. 11. ' Owennwft.' Read ' Owenum.' 1. 2 from hot. ' lector.' Read ' lector,'.
p. 42, 1. 2 from hot. ' As sacred sisters twayne, mans lyue doyth twist.' For ' lyue,' read ' lyne,' though, apart from the sense, one might be uncertain.
[I have neglected very small points of spelling and punctuation.]
We come now to the Parry volume preserved in a unique copy at Britwell. Here also the text (presumably that of the original book) seems to need emendation.
p. 47, stanza 2. ' inclines ' seems to stand for ' incline.'
p. 48, Poesie I, last stanza. ' though hony's taste to (query, ' do ') please.'
p. 56, Poesie ix, 1. 6. 'For hue [sic] I well.' Perhaps, 'For Hue I will.'
p. 58, Poesie xi, 1. 4. ' With spuemish (query, ' squemish ') scorn's.'
p. 61, Sonetto 3, 1. 3. ' with valens ring.' Some explanation seems to be required.
p. 67, Sonetto 14. ' Should feare pale feare me forgoe my minde '- query, ' Should feare pale feare [force] me ' etc.
p. 76, Maddrigall, 1. 2 from end. 'trie me,' query, 'tire me.'
G. C. MOORE SMITH. SHEFFIELD.
Primitiae : Essays in English Literature. By STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL. Liverpool: The University Press (London : Constable). 1912. 8vo. 287 pp.
This is a volume of essays on various writers of the Romantic period by ' graduate students and others, who of late years have worked, in several cases as teachers, in the Department of English Literature ' in the University of Liverpool.
The first contribution, by Mr Wallis, is entitled ' Blake's Symbolism and some of its Recent Interpreters.' The interpreters referred to are
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Mr de Selincourt, Mr Arthur Symons, and M. Paul Berger, whose books on Blake, at least in so far as they are concerned with his mystical doctrines, form the basis of this study which is largely in the nature of a review. Mr Wallis will suffer no half measures with his author: either Blake's doctrines must justify themselves as a philosophic system at the bar of reason and experience, or they are unworthy of serious con- sideration. To see to what extent the general body of symbols can be arranged and explained so as to effect this justification, is, we take it, one of the author's aims, and it seems no disparagement of his work to say that, even with his evidently full and intimate knowledge of the subject, he has been able to accomplish little more in this direction than has been done by the more even-minded of his predecessors in the quest. The difficulties are so enormous, the ground on which an interpreter must work is so shifting and uncertain, that any attempt to construct a coherent system out of the unstable materials Blake supplies must almost inevitably prove futile. Between 1797 and 1804 his views changed fundamentally. His attitude towards the merely phenomenal, for example, underwent considerable modification ; and his position in relation to his ethic alters from what is neither more nor less than anarchy to the exaltation of transcendent love and brotherhood ; while from the apparent denial of a Primum Mobile he passes to the acceptance of a beneficent Providence and at times even approaches Christian orthodoxy. Between the ' Lambeth ' books and the later ' Prophecies ' there is, therefore, a wide gulf, and the bridges over this are very few and slender. When Blake himself tries to cross them and to carry his early symbolism over to his later ideas, as, for instance, in the Four Zoas MS., the only result is confusion. The utmost, it seems to us, that any interpreter can hope to do is to formulate one imperfect system out of the earlier books and another, as imperfect, out of those in the later group. Even this cannot be done with precision, for Blake, as the author tells us, often uses the same symbolic episode for many purposes without regard to their mutual consistency. Mr Wallis does a real service to students of Blake by clearly restating the problem, by tracing out certain lines of develop- ment, and by making many valuable criticisms and suggestions.
It is with a sense of relief that we turn from the extreme abstractions of Blake to the concrete realities of Crabbe as displayed by Professor Holme in his essay on the treatment of Nature in the works of that poet. It is a subject about which there is not a great deal to say. When attention has been drawn to Crabbe's meticulously accurate transcriptions of Nature's minutiae, the absence of any conception of spiritual life behind her outward forms, the mechanical parallels to human conduct which he draws from her, the narrow limits within which his observation is confined, and his preference for grim and dreary pictures, little remains to be said. With all these matters Professor Holme deals in full, and numerous extracts, chosen from the poet's works with taste and care, give an added interest to a pleasant and useful essay.
M. L. R. IX.
35
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Miss Birkhead has put a great deal of careful work into her essay on ' Imagery and Style in Shelley.' Besides showing to what a large extent Shelley draws on Nature for his imagery, she tabulates and illustrates those natural features like sky and sea, streams and islands, caverns and forests, bright light and iridescent colour, in the depiction of which this poet specially excels ; and these she relates to his general preference for what is fleeting and evanescent, changing and impalpable. It was a wise thought to treat of Shelley's imagery and style together, for perhaps in no other poet does the one depend quite so much upon the other. In Keats and in Coleridge the interdependence is almost as close, but their descriptive styles are pictorial, while Shelley's, expressing as it very often does the unsubstantial and aerial, is largely suggestive. His is the more difficult task. Miss Birkhead collects at intervals in her essay words which are noticeably recurrent in the various types of Shelley's descriptions. We suggest that she might have gone a step further, and shown how much he relies for his effects on the experiential associations of these words.
Miss Bradshaw modestly describes her contribution to the volume as ' Material for a Memoir of Hartley Coleridge/ but it is much more than that. Besides a full and useful bibliography we have, in effect, a memoir itself, some sixty pages in length. It seems unfortunate that the unpublished material in the possession of the Coleridge family has not been placed at the disposal of the authoress, the more so when we remember that with the exceptions of the late Mrs Towle's volume (1912) and of the article in the Dictionary of National Biography, no considerable memoir of Hartley Coleridge has appeared since that by his brother, Derwent, was published as an introduction to the Poems in 1851. Had this material been forthcoming it might possibly have supplemented the rather scanty information we have concerning the movements of ' li'le Hartley ' between 1826 and 1832. One or two slight errors have escaped the vigilance of the authoress. ' Foxham ' (p. 146) should be 'Fox How,' 'Coleridge's' (p. 100) should read ' Coleridges/ and ' Wordsworth's ' (p. 109) should be ' Words worths'.' Miss Bradshaw is to be complimented on a thoroughly good piece of work.
Morris's Jason was originally intended for inclusion in The Earthly Paradise and Miss May Morris in the preface to the collected edition of her father's works explicitly states that as his authorities for The Earthly Paradise stories he used only 'nursery tales' and works of reference like Lempriere, with occasional hints from Ovid and Apollodorus. In face of these facts it may seem rather daring of Miss Kermode to write on ' The Classical Sources of The Life and Death of Jason! But, as she points out, it was not unnatural that Morris in his enthusiasm for medievalism should seek to minimise his knowledge and appreciation of the classics, and this may account for his daughter's impression. Miss Kermode accumulates a good deal of strong evidence in favour of Morris's considerable indebtedness to Apollonius Rhodius, Pindar, Hyginus, Ovid, and Apollodorus, in the original texts, and adduces some very cogent arguments in support of her thesis.
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Mr Dixon Scott's contribution, entitled 'The First Morris/ is a brilliant and illuminating study of Morris's early poems. In a style brimful of telling metaphor and felicitous phrase the author lays before us a conception of Morris which arrests our attention at once by its novelty and its bold disregard of the conventional view. He would have us believe that the burning directness, the aching intensity, and the magic spell of the poems in The Defence of Guinevere are there in spite of Morris ; that what the poet actually wrote was not what he wished to write, but the unconscious distillation of all the clear-cut forms, the rich colour, and the intense brilliancy, which he had met with in earlier art; a kind of incrustation of pictorial materials un- knowingly pillaged, which he had torn out naked from their settings, and crushed together into his design. We have got into a habit of complacently regarding Morris as a born medievalist, and Mr Scott's view, which would make of him 'a man of undetermined energy' surging towards symmetry and order, gives us something** in the nature of a. shock. When, further, we read that Morris ' suffered all his life from an utter inability to tell a tale,' we jerk ourselves up and rub our eyes. Mr Scott is an eloquent pleader, and whether or not he carries us entirely with him, we must give his work the unstinted praise it undoubtedly deserves.
The volume concludes with an able essay, by Mr W. T. Young, entitled ' Humour in the Poets and Parodists of the Romantic Period.' Humour is a quality so seldom associated with the Romantic poets that it is convenient to have the extent of its occurrence carefully defined. This, Mr Young does admirably, and his inquiry is preceded by an excellent analysis of the reasons for the comparative absence of humour in the older generation of Romantic poets more especially : Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley were too much in earnest to observe life with that detachment and tolerance so indispensable to the humorist. We have only two suggestions. The first is that among the parodists mentioned in Section vi Theodore Hook might have been included, on account of his famous parodies of Moore ; and the second is that Mr Young in his illustrations does not always distinguish between humour and wit, some of the examples chosen being witty without being humorous. The two qualities are closely allied, and are very often found together, but there is a clear and generally recognised distinction between them. We suggest, therefore, that the title might be with advantage changed to 'Wit and Humour in the Poets and Parodists of the Romantic Period.'
NORMAN HEPPLE.
GATESHEAD.
35—2
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American Poems. Selected and edited by W. C. BRONSON. Chicago : University of Chicago Press (Cambridge : University Press). 1912. 8vo. vii + 669 pp.
American literature possesses a peculiar interest for the English. The early colonists had behind them the same tradition that inspired our own poets, and there is a fascination in endeavouring to trace the influence of environment on what in its earlier stages at least is our own race, and noting the gradual emergence of those special character- istics which we are wont to term American. Much of the earlier verse is, as might naturally be expected, religious or didactic in tone — the work of men exiled for their faith. There is an almost pathetic sim- plicity and ruggedness about it. We miss the fire and mysticism of Vaughan or Crashaw, and the sweetness and delicacy of Herbert or Herrick, but the stumbling sincerity of those unspeakable paraphrases and homilies is affecting in its honesty. We entirely believe that ' the reverend and excellent Mr Urian Oakes,' who died in 1682,
1 — an Uncomfortable Preacher was, I must confess. Hee made us cry Alass \ In sad Despair. Of what ? Of ever seeing A better Preacher while we have a beeing. Hee, oh Hee was in Doctrine, Life, and all Angelical and Evangelical
but while we sympathise with the grief of his flock on his death, we cannot call its expression poetical. Anne Bradstreet ventures on a lighter vein, but is evidently nervous as to the reception she is likely to meet with :
I am obnoxious to each carping tongue Who says my hand a needle better fits ; A Poets pen all scorn I should thus wrong, For such despite they cast on Female wits: If what I do prove well it won't advance ; They'l say it's stolen, or else it was by chance.
There is a curious absence of that quaintness and charm which mark contemporary English verse, quaintness which at its worst led to far- fetched ' metaphysical ' conceits, but at its best is delightfully childlike and attractive. Rare indeed are such passages as that taken from Nicholas Noyes' ' Prefatory Poem to the little Book entituled Christianus per ignem ' :
The thoughts are like a swarm of Sees,
That fly both when and where they please;
Those little folks both work and play
About a thousand flowers a day.
It is natural that the more artificial English poems of the later seventeenth and earlier eighteenth centuries should find no parallel among the pioneers who were making their way amidst a thousand dangers and difficulties. Life across the water was too stern and real a warfare for men to write poems to Fair Amorets and Sacharissas. Nor
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are the few later attempts at tragic drama very successful. The blank verse is so extraordinarily blank, and the hatred of England — natural enough in eighteenth century American drama — occasionally leads to scenes as ludicrous as those in which D'Avenant depicts seventeenth century Spaniards. The Battle of Bunkers-Hill, written in 1776, con- tains a delightful interview between the English generals: 'Boston. The British Army being Repulsd, Sherwin is dispatch' d to General Gage for Assistance! General Gage's answer is brief and to the point :
Do as you please, Burgoyne, in this affair. I'll hide myself in some deep vault beneath.
Our thoughts travel to another stage direction : ' Two Spaniards are likewise discovered sitting in their clokes, and appearing more solemn in ruffs — the one turning a spit while the other is basting an Indian prince who is roasted at an artificial fire' (D'Avenant :^Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru, 1658). Both show a patriotic detestation of the national enemy, rather than tragic dignity and reticence.
The feeling for Nature shown in the earlier poems is akin to that which inspires the 'local poets' mentioned by Dr Johnson. There is nothing as fine as the best of Thomson's work or as vivid and vigorous as the great passages in Cowper, but the pleasant easy observation of the various bards has the same mild attractiveness that we find in Dyer or Shenstone :
Beside yon church that beams a modest ray, With tidy neatness reputably gay, When, mild and fair as Eden's seventh-day light, In silver silence shines the Sabbath bright, In neat attire the village households come And learn the pathway to the eternal home.
(Greenfield Rill, by Timothy D wight, 1794.)
It is noteworthy that while the French Revolution inspired some of the most impassioned verse of the English Lake Poets, the American Revolution apparently produced nothing worth calling poetry :
Squash into the deep descended
Cursed weed of China's coast: Thus at once our fears were ended —
British rights shall ne'er be lost.
may be a truthful account of the Boston incident, but the poem would be more effective if its author had a less deeply rooted objection to using the word tea. This tendency to seek fine or unexpected phrases also mars some of the later work. The little poems of Emily Dickenson, for instance, not infrequently contain a pretty idea spoiled by an affected eccentricity of diction :
The rose did caper on her cheek, Her bodice rose and fell; Her pretty speech like drunken men Did stagger pitiful.
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A capering rose is a very unattractive flower, and prettiness is not usually the most striking quality of drunken men. The next poem in the volume which ends with the picture of a robin 'unrolling' his feathers and rowing himself
...softer home
Than oars divide the ocean Too silver for a seam, Or butterflies off bank of noon Leap plashless as they swim,
leaves the English student of Nature hopelessly bewildered. Do American butterflies swim ? And what is a bank of noon ?
The greater part of the anthology is very wisely devoted to the extracts from the chief American poets of the nineteenth century- Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Holmes, Whittier, Lowell, and last, and greatest of all, Whitman. These are on an altogether different level from the mass of minor poets whose work we have been considering. Not one of them is worthy to be ranked with that little band of immortals whose work rises above all limits of time and nationality, but if their speech sometimes falters at least a coal from the altar of poetry has touched their lips. It is easy to laugh at the cheap morality and sentimentality of Longfellow and to attribute his popularity to the same early Victorianism which placed a volume of Tupper upon every drawing- room table, but the fact remains that having found his own modest circle he lives there to-day, whereas Tupper is as dead as Anna Matilda and the Delia Cruscans. Emerson and Whitman are living forces in literature, and with all their inequality, their lapses into the commonplace or the grotesque, no one can deny that they have some- thing to contribute to poetry which is not to be found elsewhere. They are essentially American poets, and in them we are conscious both of the gulf which has gradually widened between English and American thought and expression, and of the vast poetic possibilities of the New World.
Professor Bronson has provided full and interesting notes including (1) 'the poet's theory of poetry when this can be given in his own words; (2) statements by the poet or his friends which throw light on the meaning of a poem, or give circumstances connected with the composition of it; (3) explanations of words, allusions, etc., which the student may find obscure; (4) variant readings of a few poems...; (5) quotations from sources and parallel passages to show the poet's literary relationship...; (6) specimens of contemporary criticism.' A Bibliography and Indices are also appended. Altogether the book is of extreme interest and value to the student of American poetry, and can be cordially recommended as a careful and scholarly piece of work.
G. E. HADOW.
ClRENCESTER.
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Grands Bcriyains Franpais de la Renaissance. Par ABEL LEFRANC.
Paris : E. Champion. 1914. ii -f 414 pp.
Students of the sixteenth century, and indeed all lovers of French literature, will welcome this collected edition of the notable studies on the great writers of the French Renaissance which M. Abel Lefranc has published from time to time during the last eighteen years. They are especially welcome in this country, because with the exception of the last they all relate to the early Renaissance, and thus they will help to dispel an illusion which is too common among us that modern French literature begins with the Pleiad. Ronsard, it cannot be said too often, owed much to his predecessor, Cle'ment Marot, and the first of M. Lefranc's studies distinctly raises our estimate of that poet's character. For it shews that he was capable of a deep and prolonged attachment, and that in spite of adverse circumstances. M. Lefranc has made it abundantly clear that the object of this attachment, the^Anne to whom so many of Marot's poems are addressed, was the daughter of Charles d'Alencon, a brother (born out of wedlock) of Margaret of Navarre's first husband. It was in May 1526 that the poet fell in love with her; a year later they were separated (Epigram xxn). Then after an interval Anne returned to the Court (Epigrams cxxxiv, cxxxv), but, as the years went on, she neither married, nor decided ' to crown the poet's flame.' Indeed her birth made this latter course impossible. But Marot, who is generally represented as a fickle lover, was as true to his Anne as Petrarch to his Laura. This is especially apparent in the well- known poem, Adieu aux dames de la Cour, of which M. Lefranc cites the greater part1. At last in February 1541 Anne married Nicolas de Bernay; Marot's romance had lasted nearly fifteen years and it only ended three and a half years before his death. In the discussion of this episode M. Lefranc throws a good deal of light on Marot's poetry. He points out that in the contemporary editions the second book of Epigrams is dedicated to Anne, beginning with the epigram addressed to her and now numbered LXXX, and that in several of these editions it terminates with Epigram CLI, addressed to Anne by way of envoi.
Pardonne done & mes vers le tourment
Qu'ilz font dotme : et (ainsi que je pense)
Ilz te feront vivre eternellement :
Demandes-tu plus belle recompense ?
Anne's name is not mentioned in the Elegies but some of them are certainly addressed to her, especially the beautiful fifteenth Elegy, and to this M. Lefranc would add at least eight others (n, v, x, xm, XVI, xvii, xxiv, xxvi). She also inspired several rondeaux, above all the famous Dedans Paris, ville jolie. Then there is the well-known Epistle, one of Marot's masterpieces, which Genin discovered and printed at the head of his edition of Margaret's letters, beginning : Bien doy louer la divine puissance....
1 M. Lefranc accepts the traditional date of this poem, which is October, 1537. But is not the real date October, 1534, just after the affair of the Placards, when Marot fled incontinently from Blois?
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Genin believed that it was addressed to the Queen of Navarre, and this view was generally accepted, till Guiffrey pointed out its inadmissibility. But he could not discover the true object of the poet's adoration, and it was left to M. Lefranc to restore this exquisite portrait to its rightful owner.
It is to Marot's credit that the story of his love for Anne d'Alengon should form an appropriate introduction to the two important studies on Platonism which between them fill nearly half the volume. The first of these, Le Platonisme et la litterature en France a I'epoque de la Renaissance (1500—1550), was originally published in 1896 in the Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France. The second, Marguerite de Navarre et le Platonisme de la Renaissance, which is considerably longer, first appeared in the Bibliotheque de VEcole des Chartes in 1897 and 1898. Both have been revised and brought up to date. As regards the introduction of Plato to France by means of original texts and translations, there is little to record before 1550, and M. Lefranc has said pretty well all that there is to say on the subject (pp. 107-137). I will only note that the Christian -name of the Bishop of Seez, of whose very rare translation of the Crito M. Lefranc has the good fortune to possess a copy, is certainly Pierre (Du Val) and not Philibert. The latter name is a mistake of Du Verdier's1.
During the first half of the sixteenth century Platonism in France, as in Italy, chiefly meant that amalgam of Platonism, Neo-Platonism and Christianity which had been compounded by Marsilio Ficino and the Florentine Academy. Among its developments were spiritual love and mysticism. The doctrine of spiritual love was based on the Symposium, but it was largely impregnated with Neo-Platonism, and Ficino's Latin commentary on Plato's famous dialogue was the starting- point for numerous discussions on the subject. The doctrine became very popular in certain circles in France and gave rise to a celebrated poetical controversy. The mystical current also had its main source in Neo-Platonism. Its earliest exponent in France was Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples ; it was he who inspired Bishop Brigonnet, and it was Brigonnet who inspired Margaret of Navarre, in whom both currents meet. But while the doctrine of spiritual love is most prominent in the Heptameron, it is to her poems that we must chiefly look for her mystical aspirations.
In dealing with Lefevre's mysticism, M. Lefranc rightly lays stress on the influence exercised on him by Nicholas of Cues, the great German forerunner of the Renaissance and the Reformation. He might have strengthened his argument by pointing out that Lefevre's intro- ductory dialogues on the Metaphysics, which, though not printed till 1494 (N.S.), were written in 1490, are in part a paraphrase of Cusanus2. From this time Lefevre's studies in mysticism were continuous and extensive. In 1491 he read the Contemplationes in Deum of Ramdn Lull, editing them in 1505. In 1494 he edited the Pimander of Hermes Trismegistus in Ficino's Latin translation, adding the Asclepius
1 La Croix du Maine gives only Pierre, and so does Gallia Christiana.
2 P. Duhem, Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci, n (1909), 103.
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in 1505. In 1499 he edited the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and some more of Lull's treatises, including the Clericus and the Phantasticon. A year or two earlier he had come under the influence of John Mauburn of Brussels, an Augustinian Canon who had come to Paris to reform certain abbeys, including that of Saint- Victor. In 1510 he edited the Opus tkeologicum of Richard of Saint- Victor, the learned Scot, who with his master Hugo helped to make that abbey famous as a school of mysticism. The year before this he had gone to Germany, chiefly to hunt for manuscripts, and as the result of his researches published the De ornatu spiritualium nuptiarum (1512) of John of Ruysbroeck, and the writings of the three great German female mystics, St Elizabeth of Schonau, St Hildegard, and St Mechthild1 (1513). Then came his great edition in three volumes of Cusanus (1514), which he had under- taken at the instigation of Bishop Briconnet.
As M. Lefranc points out it was natural that mysticism ^should have affected Margaret of Navarre differently from Lefevre d'Etaples. He was a University professor, devoted to study and research ; she was a woman, curious, sympathetic, and deeply religious. For her, mysticism was an intensely personal matter ; it satisfied her aspirations towards the divine. In some excellent pages M. Lefranc sets forth the nature of her mysticism. Then he turns to the Heptameron, especially to the charming conversations which serve as interludes to the stories, for illustrations of her views on la parfaicte et honneste amitie, as spiritual or Platonic love was then called. He next examines Margaret's poetry and more particularly the volume which he himself edited in 1896 under the title of Dernieres poesies. It is especially in some of these poems that we see how Margaret under the influence of Plato and Plotinus re- garded spiritual love for the creature as a stepping-stone to love for the Creator2. M. Lefranc notes the link which existed between, Neo- Platonism and the Reformation, especially as shewn in Lefevre d'Etaples and Margaret. He might have added that just because they were mystics, these two, of whom one was for a time the leader of the Evangelical party in France and the other sympathised - strongly with their doctrines, never left the Catholic Church. Religious forms and ceremonies meant little to them, for the aim of their religion was con- templation of the Divine perfection, absorption in the Divine love.
It was doubtless from the same cause that Charles de Sainte-Marthe, who had at one time strong Protestant leanings, and indeed suffered persecution for them, remained a Catholic. ' He deliberately attempted/ says his most recent biographer, ' to harmonize Christian doctrine and classical philosophy,' and it is in his Funeral Oration on his royal mistress, Margaret of Navarre, that this attempt is most apparent3. M. Lefranc indeed goes so far as to call it ' an authentic summary of the Platonism of the French Renaissance.' Certainly nowhere else in
1 In a volume entitled Trium virorum et trium spiritualium virginum.
2 See Plato, Symposium 210 A-212 c (part of Diotima's speech) ; Plotinus, Enneades, i, vi and n, ix, 767 D-769 A.
3 Caroline Kuutz-Eees, Charles de Sainte-Marthe, New York, 1910.
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the French literature of this period do we find so complete an expression of that generous, if chimerical, attempt to reconcile Christianity and paganism which started from the Florentine Academy, and which Raffaelle, at the bidding of Julius II, illustrated in the School of Athens and the other pictures of the Camera delta Segnatura1. This development of Renaissance philosophy had a far-reaching influence, and to it is largely due that mixture of Christian symbolism and pagan mythology which is so marked a feature in French art and literature during the second half of the sixteenth century, and which has led some critics to miss the essentially Christian tone of such poems as Ronsard's Hymne de la Mori.
The dangers of this attempt to reconcile paganism with Christianity were, as M. Lefranc points out in his exhaustive study of the French text of the Institution Chretienne, foreseen by Calvin. In his Excuse aux Nicodemites, the date of which is 1544, not 1549, he makes a special class of ' those who half convert their Christianity into philosophy/ and he adds that some of these ' fill their imaginations with Platonic ideas concerning the way to serve God, and so excuse most of the foolish superstitions of the Papacy as things which cannot be given up2.' This, is clearly aimed at Margaret of Navarre and her Platonist followers.
At first sight it seems a far cry from mysticism and spiritual love to the author of Pantagruel. But between M. Lefranc's studies on Platonism and that which immediately follows them there is a real connexion, and the link is furnished by the controversy on spiritual love to which reference has been made above. For this controversy was part of a chain of events in the literary world which induced Rabelais to lay aside for a time his proposed framework of a voyage round the world in favour of a theme connected with the great Querelle des Femmes. I am surprised that M. Lefranc still adheres to the view that the starting- point of the controversy was Heroet's La Parfaicte Amye, for it is practically certain that his poem was printed after La Borderie's L'Amie de Court3. I was indeed formerly disposed to regard it as wholly inde- pendent of the controversy, but M. Gohin in his scholarly edition of Heroet has pointed out allusions in the later poem to the earlier one which it is difficult to gainsay. He also makes it clear that La Parfaicte Amye is largely inspired not only by Plato's Symposium but also by II Cortegiano, a French translation of which by Jacques Colin had appeared in 1537.
In other respects M. Lefranc's admirable account of La Querelle des Femmes during the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth
1 See F. X. Kraus in the Cambridge Modern History, n, 4 — 7.
2 Opera vi, col. 6()0.
3 M. Lefranc's bibliographical details want revision. The first edition of La Parfaicte Amye is evidently Dolet's (1542); the Troyes edition, of which M. Lefranc has a copy, is a pirated reprint of this, while the other Lyons edition, that of Pierre de Tours, is in turn copied from the Troyes edition (Gohin, pp. Iv — lix). L'Amie de Court was first printed by Corrozet at Paris in 1542 (privilege of March 9, 1542, N.S.), secondly by Dolet (the epistle to the reader is dated May 15, 1542). The date of Fontaine's La Conte Amye de Court is 1542 (N.S.).
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leaves nothing to desire1, and his main point that the preparation and appearance of Rabelais's Third Book coincide with the hottest period of the feminist battle is firmly established. The martial and patriotic tone of the prologue makes it fairly certain that this was written during the seven or eight months before the peace of Crepy (September, 1544), when Frenchmen were expecting a combined attack on Paris by the Imperial and English forces. The main portion of the book, that is to say from the sixth chapter onwards2, must have been added during the years 1544 and 1545 ; in the autumn of the latter year Rabelais applied for and obtained a privilege. M. Heuhlard, who connects the prologue with the military preparations of 1546 — these however were not important — believes that the publication of the book was delayed till the autumn of that year. But this is a quite unnecessary supposition. It is far simpler to connect Rabelais's hurried flight from France in January 1546 with the appearance of his book. ^
With M. Lefranc's view that Rabelais shews himself in this book a pronounced opponent of women I cannot agree. He supports it by a long quotation from Frangois Billon's Le Fort inexpugnable de I'honneur du sexe feminin (written in 1550, but not published till 1555) in which the author, an ardent feminist, attacks Rabelais as the leader of the opposite camp. But apparently his only reason for this view of Rabelais is that he identifies him with Rondibilis. G'est la un fait precieux a noter is M. Lefranc's comment. But what are the grounds for this identification ? Is not Billon arguing, or rather thinking, in a circle ? Because Rondibilis expresses antifeminist sentiments, he identifies him with Rabelais, and then having identified him with Rabelais he proceeds to attack him as an antifeminist. Finally what are M. Lefranc's reasons for questioning the traditional view that Rondibilis stands for Rondelet ? With much better reason M. Lefranc rejects the old identification of the poet Raminagrobis with Guillaume Cretin in favour of his own tempting supposition that he represents Jean Lemaire de Beiges. But it is surely going a little beyond the evidence to regard this as proved. The identification of the theologian Hippothadee with Lefevre d'Etaples is also very tempting, but I have not seen M. Lefranc's exposition of it in Foi et Vie3. As for Rabelais, I am still of opinion that his attitude towards women had widened since the publi- cation of Gargantua, and that in his Third Book he tries to treat the question with judicial fairness.
It will be seen that M. Lefranc is quite justified in the contention of his preface that there is a definite connexion between the various studies of this volume. It is its great merit that it attempts to trace the development of ideas during an important period of French thought, and it is to be hoped that the author will one day fulfil his promise
1 I will only note that there is an edition of Nevizano's Sylva nuptialis of 1546 (Lyons) and that the date of Bouchard's feminist treatise is 1523 (N.S.).
2 I quite agree with M. Lefranc that cc. i — v were written some time before the rest of the book.
3 1912, p. 728.
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of treating these questions in a larger work. The influence of Platonism on philosophical speculation, the revival of pagan ideas and their menace to Christianity, the growth of a higher conception of the relations of men and women, all these would naturally find their place in a com- prehensive volume on the influence of the Renaissance on French thought.
ARTHUR TILLEY. CAMBRIDGE.
Les Comedies-Ballets de Moliere. Par MAURICE PELLISSON. Paris: Hachette et Cie. 1914. 8vo. x + 234pp.
M. Pellisson complains in his preface that Moliere's comedies-ballets are unduly neglected by both managers and readers. Not only are they seldom, in some cases never, produced on the stage, but they are either ignored by readers altogether, or read without any thought of the music and dances which accompany the dialogue. I am afraid that as regards the majority of Moliere's plays of this class M. Pellisson will preach to deaf ears. The reason is that in most cases the ballet is not an integral part of the play. It serves either as a framework or as an incidental accompaniment to the comedy, which is so good as effectually to over- shadow the rest. How can anyone take an interest in the ballet of so perfect a piece of work as Le mariage force' ? There is no real con- nexion between Georges Dandin and the grand divertissement royal in which it is set, nor is there between that admirable little social drama, La Comtesse d' Escarbagnac, and the ballet to which it serves as an introduction. In Lamour medecin the music and dancing are more intimately blended with the play, and there is something to be said for its revival with these accompaniments. Even out of the four plays which by a little stretching of the term may be called pastoral, La Princesse d'filide, the unfinished Melicerte, Le Sicilien, and Les Amants magnifiques, the first and the last, especially the last, are social comedies of considerable merit. The objection to their revival lies in the fact that they are comedies galantes, and that the gallantry of a bygone age, if not supported by any real psychological interest — this applies much more to La Princesse d Elide than to Les Amants magnifiques — is always insipid. On the other hand Le Sicilien is admirably adapted for representation, music and all. It is in fact a sort of opera comiqne written in prose, and its charm is considerable. Le Barbier de Seville owes much to it, but even nearer to it in spirit than Beaumarchais's play is Rossini's opera.
M. de Pourceaugnac is very different in character to Le Sicilien, but in this boisterous and delightful extravaganza Moliere has equally succeeded in blending comedy and ballet into one harmonious whole. The. ballet-scenes at the end of each act take their places naturally as part of the glorious mystification which is practised on the unfortunate provincial. In Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, which is the only one of Moliere's plays that is called a comedie-ballet in the original edition,
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each act is followed by an intermede. The first three of these are merely dances, but the fourth is the famous ceremonie turque, without which no representation of the play is complete. I had the good fortune to see a gala performance at the Theatre Fran9ais in 1880, in which the whole company took part, and it was a most delightful entertainment. I have also a clear recollection of a performance at Eton in the late sixties, when Frank Tarver played the part of M. Jourdain with admirable verve and humour. As for the ballet in six entrees with which the play concludes, I doubt whether a manager would be well advised in giving it, at any rate in anything like entirety. Certainly the reader, in spite of M. Pellisson, may be excused for ignoring it. There remains Le Malade imaginaire, which like the foregoing play has' one great ballet, the reception ceremony of a doctor, which should not be disregarded either by readers or managers.
It is of the three last -mentioned plays that Sainte-Beuve in a well- known passage, quoted by M. Pellisson, says that ' they represent the highest stage of that exuberant and spontaneous comedy which in its way rivals in creative fancy A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest.' And the great critic points out that Moliere having been driven to write comedies-ballets by the exigencies of the Court came to take a real delight in them and found in them a new source of inspiration. It is satisfactory to find that M. Pellisson shares this view, and that he gives no support to the theory that Moliere's genius was towards tragedy rather than comedy. No. Moliere was the lord of laughter, and his comedies-ballets help to shew the extent of his domain.
ARTHUR TILLEY.
CAMBRIDGE.
Le Vers Francais, ses Moyens d' expression, son Harmonie. Par MAURICE GRAMMONT. Deuxierne edition refondue et augmentee. Paris: tidouard Champion. 1913. pp. 510.
This new edition of Professor Grammont's important work 'contient. . . deux chapitres entierement nouveaux : Tun sur les differentes especes de rejets et leur valeur artistique, 1'autre sur la variete du mouvement rythmique ' (the author in Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift, April 1914). Professor Grammont claims (ibid.) that 'dans ce dernier... 1'on voit apparaitre pour la premiere fois les resultats de la phonetique ex- perimentale appliquee a 1'etude du vers; 1'auteur a reussi a calculer 1'intensite qui marque le rythme ; il a reconnu aussi que dans certains cas le rythme est marque par des consonnes prolongees.' This is unfair to M. Landry, whose La Thdorie du Rythme et le Rythme du Francais declame (1911) is almost entirely concerned with ' la phonetique experi- mentale appliqu^e a 1'etude du vers,' and to M. Verrier, whose L'lsochronisme dans le Vers francais (1912) combats M. Landry 's con- clusions from a point of view very similar to that of Professor Grammont.
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The work of M. Landry and of M. Verrier is very far from being ' sans valeur,' and Professor Grammont is at least no nearer knowing ' ce que c'est qu'un vers fran9ais ' than they are. In fact the paragraph (p. 86) in which he contemptuously dismisses his predecessors is unworthy of him.
Professor Grammont assumes that the metrical constitution of French verse and of the alexandrine in particular, coincides with its phonetic constitution — i.e. that the ictus is beaten by and practically only by group-accents and word-accents. His whole argument, as far as it concerns the metrical constitution of French verse, falls to the ground, unless this assumption is justified. He has nowhere attempted to justify it. It in no wise follows, because' every hemistich of the alexan- drine e.g. usually consists (if read as prose) phonetically of two accentual groups, or at least, if it consists of only one, has a marked and obvious word-accent somewhere within its six syllables, that it consists of two metrical measures or feet. It is true that Professor Grammont supports his assumption by the further and equally unjustified assumption that, in the case of the alexandrine, 'le rythme est produit par le retour a intervalles egaux des quatre temps marques ' (p. 13), which is merely a special case of the more general assumption (p. 85) that ' le rythme, on le sait, est constitue par le retour des temps marques a intervalles theoriquement egaux.' He overlooks the more probable or at least equally possible hypothesis that rhythm, while it may be rein- forced or perhaps even constituted in this way, is normally constituted by a particular arrangement, which may be simple or complex, of accented and unaccented syllables — whether by accent is meant stress, quantity, pitch, or that combination of some or all of these with or without other factors which we call 'weight' — without necessary regard, within limits, to the temporal element.
Professor Grammont analyses (pp. 88-9) six lines of V. Hugo's Napoleon II. The line
Courbe's comme un cheval qui sent venir son maltre,
e.g. shows (with his own reading and according to his own analysis) the possibility of a ' binary ' or alternating scansion. His own figures for the 'duree' and 'intensite' (by which he means stress) of each syllable are :
duree: 27,36, 16,20, 26,51, 18,24, 10,26, 26,56. intensite : 13, 18, 11,11, 11,19, 3, 8, 9,16, 12,36.
[The duree is calculated in centiseconds — the intensite is merely relative.] Now the phonetic constitution of this line is evidently
Courbes — comme un cheval — qui sent venir — son maitre.
Professor Grammont declares that its metrical constitution coincides with the phonetic constitution. No one will deny that the 2nd, 6th, 10th and 12th syllables are the most intense and the longest. But it does not follow that they are the only ictus-beating syllables. All that the alternating-iambic scansion of this line requires is that each even syllable shall not be Lighter than the preceding odd syllable. Weight
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does not consist entirely (and sometimes not at all) of stress and length. But even if we identify it with length or stress or both combined — a view favourable to M. Grammont and unfavourable to us — this line satisfies the test. In the six lines he has analysed there are only five feet which — on duree alone — since length is usually the most important factor, in French, of weight — do not fit the alternating-iambic scansion. (By foot I mean the metrical group consisting of relief or unaccented syllable plus ictus or accented syllable.) The refractory feet, five out of 36, are : the fourth of line 3 (an he- where intensite more than makes up for the deficiency of duree of h4-t the figures being for duree 24, 16 for intensit^ 2, 6), the first, second and fifth of line 4 (quest-ce, duree 97, 22, intensite 36, 2 ; que le, duree 18, 15, intensite 2£, 3, which counterbalances the inversion of duree ; -ner a, duree 35, 18, intensite 18, 5) and the fifth of line 5 (meme, duree 46, 18, intensite 13, 4). And yet Professor Grammont says : ' L'accentuation binaire n'est qu'un reve germanique, que certains fran9ais ont eu le tort de prendre pour une realite ' (p. 90). And he bases this condemnation of, let us say, Pro- fessor Saran and be done with it, on the fact that nowhere within the accentual group in these lines (and thus nowhere within Professor Gram- mont's supposed metrical measure) is there a ' diminution d'intensite.' Of course there is not. But that proves nothing. For by definition the intensity does not diminish within any given accentual group. That is the constituting feature of the accentual group. The truth is that Pro- fessor Grammont disingenuously begs the question. No advocate of binary scansion of the alexandrine has ever claimed that it depends on binary stress. Professor Saran expressly declares that it does not, but that it depends on weight, which may include stress, length, a rise or fall of pitch, and other elements such as the ' prolongement d'une implosion consonantique,' of which Professor Grammont gives examples (pp. 94 sqq.), and of purely psychological factors or any combination of some or all of these. It does not follow, as Professor Grammont in- sinuates, that because we scan an alexandrine binarily that we stress alternate syllables.
Some of the cases in which the alternating iambic scansion does not seem to fit the alexandrine may possibly be explained by ' inversion ' of the foot, bat it is no doubt more frequently the case that the verse has been badly read. M. Verrier has pointed out one obvious example — Professor Grammont reads (p. 93) a line of La Fontaine,
Que vous §tes joli ! que vous me semblez beau !
with the second syllable of semblez accented. As M. Verrier says (op. cit. p. 5) : ' Dans " que vous me semblez beau ! " 1'accent de " blez " est reporte sur " sem." ' Professor Grammont asserts that the basis of French versification, as exemplified in the alexandrine, has changed since the sixteenth century. Now, it is quite possible to hold, as Professor Saran holds, without impertinence, that the primitive type has survived (with modifications), and that what has changed is the way of reading French verse. No one will deny that a competent Frenchman must be
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the best reader of French, but, if the habit has become established of reading French verse not as a complex art-form but as almost pedestrian prose (with one or two merely conventional variations) — a 'reform' which M.*Verrier associates with Moliere — he will in his reading dwell on group-accents and word-accents to the neglect of the oratorical and rhythmical accents and other niceties of a highly artistic delivery. He will, in a word, neglect the ethos for the logos. Now, verse read in this way will exhibit the characteristics of prose, not even of highly oratorical but of almost pedestrian prose. And Professor Grammont's analysis of verse is a prose .analysis : all that he shows .to be true of the phonetic structure of verse is equally true of prose hampered by rime and syllable counting. As M. Verrier, who is more open-minded than Professor Grammont, has said (op. cit., p. 22) prose is ' dans bien des cas aussi rythmee que les vers.' In analysing a sentence of Bossuet's arid one of Chateaubriand's M. Verrier shows, after M. Landry, that ' la prose rythmee presente les memes caracteres que la poesie ' (op. cit., pp. 33-5). He also shows that oratorical delivery interferes with isochronism— a fact which is fatal to his own and Professor Grammont's views. The line
Tout un monde fatal, ^crasant et glac^
falls, according to him (taking M. Landry's measurements), into tolerably isochronous phonetic groups unless read with a ' pathetique ' delivery, when the proportions change markedly.
The fatal objection to the theories of Becq de Fouquieres, M. Verrier and Professor Grammont is that they afford no distinction between verse and prose.
Professor Grammont finds that in many hemistichs the separation of the two ' mesures ' of his scansion is made not in the normal way by an accent but by an 'augmentation de duree et d'intensite" of a con- sonant, usually by ' le prolongement d'une implosion consonantique ' (pp. 94-5). Professor Grammont rightly dwells upon the importance in versification of this feature. It is undoubtedly a frequent factor in constituting c weight,' and the fact that Professor Grammont recognizes it as a constitutive element in verse is equivalent to a partial abandon- ment of the exclusive use of ' intensite ' to beat the ictus, and should carry with it an abandonment of the purely phonetic four-beat scansion of the alexandrine.
Moreover in the examples given (pp. 95 sqq.), out of 36 cases of prolongation of consonantal implosion 20 occur in even syllables, and it may be doubted whether some of the others really exist at all. For example nine of the examples in odd syllables are in words which also have prolongation of consoiiantic implosion in even places of the verse. And it is difficult to believe that this method of beating the ictus would be used twice in one hemistich. Of course on the alter- nating-iambic system, such prolongation may occur in an odd place and yet in nowise interfere with the iambic nature of the verse, provided that each ictus-syllable is not lighter (to whatever cause its weight is
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due) than the preceding relief-syllable. Professor Grammont's examples are thus, if anything, favourable to the ' scansion binaire,' although he declares, against the evidence (p. 97), that ' Ici encore pas de systeme binaire ' ! And he proceeds to quote in the very next paragraph :
Et les eGorgements et les eVentrements... Le Kajeunissement de la Decrepitude... On ne salt quel sinistre aNeantissement... Je suis le miserable h, Perpetuite...
in which out of six examples only one is in an odd place !
Professor Grammont's experimental analysis of the lines he gives and his study of consonantal implosion are extremely valuable as data : we cannot accept his conclusions. But no student of French metrics can afford to neglect the new edition of Professor Grammont's book. It is to be regretted that he has not criticized his predecessors in some detail instead of merely damning them.
T. B. RuDMdSE-BROWN.
DUBLIN.
Historia da Litteratura Portugueza. II. Renascenca. Por THEOPHILO BRAGA. Porto : Lello & Irmao. 1914. 8vo. 696pp.
Dr Theophilo Braga's first book was published over fifty years ago. He does not claim finality for his works of literary criticism, and in the preface to his new volume, which contains the corrected results of eight previous volumes, he speaks of his ' slow and successive approach ' to the problems of Portuguese literature ' by means of plausible and pro- visional hypotheses.' It may be questioned whether a frank confession of ignorance or doubt as to some of these problems would not be more satisfactory ; but that is Dr Braga's confessed method, and the con- clusions of this volume are as provisional as those of which it is a summary. In each instance Dr Braga takes up a position as confidently as though no problem existed. Gil Vicente, the goldsmith, 'is the cousin of the poet' (p. 12). But that is precisely the question at issue. There is a slight balance of probability in favour of the opinion that goldsmith and poet were one and the same person. A passage quoted from Garcia de Resende disparaging the Portuguese goldsmiths seems to add to the probability, since the slight may have been aimed especially at Vicente. The poet, we know, ridiculed Resende, introducing him in one of his plays as a tunny-fish, in allusion to his corpulence. Dr Braga explains away the mention of Gil Vicente trobador, mestre da balan^a, by the supposition that the goldsmith wrote verses. It is as simple to assume that the poet wrought in gold. Again, 'the date of Gil Vicente's birth can be fixed with certainty in 1470 ' (p. 41). The only evidence adduced is a phrase ' I am already sixty-six,' spoken by an old man in a play written by Vicente in 1536. The dates of the birth of Sa de Miranda and Diogo Bernardes are given, respectively, as 1485 and 1532 on evidence no less vague and fragile. There is^ nothing to show that Sa de Miranda was the eldest of four children legitimized in 1490, and
M. L. II. IX.
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the passages in support of 1532 prove at most that Bernardes was born about the year 1530. But this very affectation of certainty has its value ; for it excites opposition and leads to discussion of all these moot questions and to new researches with a view to their solution. No one interested in Portuguese literature rjcan afford to neglect Dr Braga's volume. His attempt (pp. 267-287) to deny that in the matter of romances Portugal followed in the wake of Spain is scarcely successful. The romances which he quotes are, with exceedingly few exceptions, Spanish or of Spanish origin, and his patriotism carries him rather far when he asserts that the Portuguese imitated the Spanish romances not from admiration or lack of originality but from a wish ' to give comic relief to their verses ' ! If the poets of Portugal failed to admire the Spanish romances all the originality in the world would serve them but little.
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JOAO DO ESTORIL.
That Imaginative Gentleman Don Quijote de la Mancha. By MIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA. Translated into English by ROBINSON SMITH. Second Edition, with a new Life of Cervantes, Notes and Appendices. London: Routledge. 1914. 8vo. Ixviii + 752 pp.
A Spanish critic recently remarked that 'Don Quixote has been written by posterity.' It remained for Mr Robinson Smith to show that it was written by Cervantes' predecessors. ' I have gathered/ he modestly says, ' everything of importance previously discovered in this matter of appropriation, and have been able to add a considerable number of new allusions and borrowings.' ' No book gains so much by illustrative comment.' But the process can be carried too far. At the end of this volume we have a list which * includes only those books that have lent phrase, idea or incident to the Don Quijote! They number some 150, but, on closer inspection, are found to include, for instance, the Chronicle and the Poem (first printed in 1779 !) of the Cid merely because the Cid is mentioned in Don Quixote. So, when Don Quixote speaks twice to no purpose we are given a quotation from Virgil ; when Don Quixote is thin from penance we are referred to the leanness of Amadis ; when Sancho curses the hour we are referred to Amadis ; when Don Quixote inquires 'What news?' we are again referred to Amadis, who uses these words. Mr Smith might have turned his reading to better account.
It is worth noting these strained references because in the sketch of Cervantes' life which precedes his translation Mr Smith builds up theories and arguments on foundations equally vain. To take two instances : the ' new evidence ' to show that the spurious Second Part of Don Quixote was written by Luis Aliaga (Philip IFs confessor!), and the 'proofs' that the First Part of Don Quixote was written in 1603. The ' new evidence ' consists in noting that the incident of the children following Don Quixote into Barcelona is based on a similar incident in
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Avellaneda's Second Part, and that Sancho's wife is described as 'brown/ avellanada. Let him who can extract from this an argument in favour of Aliaga's authorship, already fully exploded by Professor Fitzmaurice- Kelly in his introduction to Shelton's translation of Don Quixote, pp. xxi, xxii, and elsewhere. The considerations as to the date of Don Quixote are even more amazing. Mr Smith will not accept the fact that the First Part was written in 1604 and published in January 1605. It was printed before May 20, 1604, he says (p. xxxiii), before May 26, 1604 (p. xxxii), and was written in 1603 at Valladolid, in a house in the Calle del Rastro. (Its privilegio is dated September 26, 1604.) In order to prove his case Mr Smith assumes that (1) if a book published in 1603 is referred to in the First Part of Don Quixote Cervantes must have been writing in 1603. 'It is interesting/ he says, 'to see how very soon after their publication Cervantes read the books of his day/ (2) If a book published in 1604 is referred to in the First Part of Don Quixote the book must have been printed in or before 1603. The Second Part of Aleman's Guzman de Alfarache was published in 1604. It did not receive its privilegio until September 1604. But Mr Smith finds references to this work in the First Part of Don Quixote, and he infers not that the First Part of Don Quixote was written in 1604 but that Guzman de Alfarache was printed in 1603. Mr Smith discovers an allusion in the First Part of Don Quixote to a passage in Lope de Vega's play El Casamiento en la Muerte. Unfortunately the date of this play is 1604. Mr Smith is not deterred. He invents an earlier edition for the play and dates it 1603. Another proof is the date of Lope de Vega's Arte Nuevo. Mr Smith gives this as 1602 and then justifies this date in a note on the ground that the treatise is referred to in the First Part of Don Quixote and must therefore have been written before 1603. It will be seen that Mr Smith wields a two-edged sword. It is also a little unfortunate for his theory that the house in the Calle del Rastro in which he shows us Cervantes at work on the First Part of Don Quixote in 1603 was still building in August 1604. (See Professor Fitzmaurice-Kelly's Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, A Memoir, Oxford, 1913, p. 117.) The whole argument is a good example of the extra- ordinary lengths to which a critic may be led in support of some darling theory of his own.
But indeed this sketch of Cervantes' life bristles with strange theories; that, for instance, which makes St Ignatius the model of Don Quixote. Some of these theories have been withdrawn by their inventors, a fact of which Mr Smith was probably unaware, since in his notes he refers continually not to original documents but to Rius' bibliography and does not even mention a recent authoritative English work on Cervantes. The language in which Mr Smith expounds his theories is often as grotesque as the theories themselves. Thus he informs the listening world that he is 'fed up on Isabel/ that 'the reception of Don Quixote was immediate/ that Cervantes was 'bearded like the pard ' and ' looks the vicissitudes that his life has been/ It is therefore with some misgiving that we turn to the translation. This is marred by an
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alternation of slang and stilted phrases, and the omission, of the stories in the First Part will strike many as a singular piece of audacity. Mr Smith would have shown discretion had he also omitted the lines in the Second Part in which Cervantes refers to those who pass by these episodes 'regardless alike of their grace and construction.'
AUBREY F. G. BELL.
S. JOAO DO ESTORIL.
The Life and Dramatic Works of Doctor Juan Perez de Montalvdn (1602-1638}. By GEORGE WILLIAM BACON. (Revue Hispanique. Vol. xxvi, pp. 1-474.)
In 1903 Dr Bacon published at Philadelphia a short essay upon the life and dramatic works of Montalvan. He now offers us a revised and much enlarged version. A considerable part of the new edition is devoted to long analyses of Montalvan's dramatic works, but there is also much new and valuable material, more especially in the way of notes to the plays, to show that Dr Bacon has studied his author with fruitful diligence.
The first section deals with the dramatist's life and works. Here something ought to have been said about the sources and foreign versions of works like the Sucesos y Prodigios de Amor, and at least a reference might have been made to Matias de los Reyes's ParaAlgunos apropos of Para Todos, of which latter, by the way, there is an edition published at Seville in 1645. In discussing Montalvan's relations to Lope de Vega — our author's chief title to fame — Dr Bacon misses Lope's explanation of the matter. In a preface to La Francesilla (1620), Lope states that he became interested in his protege because of obligations to his father, a well-known publisher, and because of ability shown by Montalvan in an address read before the Real Monas- terio de las Descalzas.
When we come to the sections devoted to the plays, we find a complicated system of classifications, and, to make matters worse, Dr Bacon has separated his analyses, notes, and bibliographical re- ferences. Much might be said about details of the notes, but I will confine myself here to a few remarks of general interest. Dr Bacon finds fault with Paz y^Melia for classifying Escanderbech as an auto sacramental. It is so called by Montalvan in Para Todos, and more- over the closing scene clearly shows that the work was intended for a Corpus Christi celebration. A good example of a somewhat similar type of auto is Calderdn's La Devocion de la Misa. In indicating where copies of plays are now to be found, Dr Bacon is not definite enough, nor does he make any distinction between contemporary sueltas and those of the eighteenth century.
Among plays not accessible to Dr Bacon occurs a curious title, Por el mal vecino el Men. It is so quoted by La Barrera, but the title ought to read, Por el mal me vino el bien. In this rarest of plays, Blanca loves Rugero, but she is loved by the king, who banishes his
Reviews
557
rival. While hunting, the king is rescued from peril by Rugero, to whom Blanca is then given as a reward — hence the title. The play was written about 1633, to judge from reminiscences of Calderon's La vida es sueiio. Under San Juan Capistrano, Dr Bacon, following La Barrera, says that as a suelta it is attributed to Montalvan, and gives the sub-title La sentencia contra si y el htingaro mas valiente. In my contemporary copy it bears the second title and is attributed to Montalvan. The title of Como padre y como rey is more correctly Gomo d padre y como d rey. It is so called in the play itself and in an edition published in 1781. For La Gitanilla reference is made to historians of the Spanish drama who have not seen the play ascribed to Montalvan (La Gitanilla), but only the one by Soils (La Gitanilla de Madrid), published in the Biblioteca de autores espanoles (Vol. xxni). One is an adaptation of the other. The play by Soils was published in 1671. The suelta attributed to Montalvan is certainly older. The two plays are often the same word for word, but there are many changes that indicate a recasting. This is not the place to go into details, and so I limit myself to quoting part of the first scene from the Montalvan version.
Salen don luan y lulio criado, de camino.
Seas, lulio, bien venido.
Dame, senor, mil abra9os,
de mi amor preciosos Ia9os,
pues hallarte he merecido.
Quando llegaste? lul. Oy lleguk
tan cansado, y tan mohino
de vna mula que en mi vino,
y que mi desdicha fue,
que a no hallarte, y despicado
mi enojo con tu presencia,
rematado de paciencia,
me huuiera desesperado.
Notable encarecimiento.
Es por demas aduertirlo,
que vna cosa es el sentirlo,
y otra passar el tormento.
A quien no boluiera loco
ver su prissa pere9osa....
Both plays refer to a comedia (by Cervantes) entitled La Gitanilla. We know that Cervantes wrote a novel with this title. Is it possible that he also dramatised the subject ?
For Pedro de Urdemalas the references given avail us nothing. Professor Rennert states that Menendez y Pelayo attributed the play to Lope de Vega and printed it in the Academy edition of Lope's works, Vol. XI. I cannot find it there, and presume that Professor Rennert was thinking of Pedro Carbonero. The facts seem to. be as follows : (a) A play with this title is ascribed to Cervantes, and has been pub- lished, for example, in the Obras de Cervantes, Madrid, 1864, Vol. x. (6) An entirely different play, but with the same title, occurs in an old suelta attributed to Montalvan. (c) About the plays, or editions, ascribed to un ingenio, to Lope de Vega and to Canizares, I know
d. I
lul.
d. Iu.
558 Reviews
nothing, (d) A manuscript play attributed to Diamante is at the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. To Paz y Melia's query whether this is Montalvan's, one must answer, to judge from the lines quoted by him, No. (e) Paz y Melia refers in addition to a ' refundicion anterior a 1682.' The Montalvan play begins and ends as follows:
PEDRO DE VRDEMALAS. COMEDIA FAMOSA.
DE IVAN PEREZ DE MONTALVAN. PERSONAS DESTA COMEDIA.
Adrian. Duque de Guisa.
Lisarda dama. Duque Sorbon.
El Rey JFrancisco de Francia. El Almirante de Francia.
Laura, y Turino villanos. Fabricio.
Fulgencio. El Conde Arnaldo,
Gerardo. Clara dama.
IORNADA PRIMERA.
Salen Adrian, y Lisarda.
Adri. Sin la licencia no fuera,
aunque me da priesa el Rey. Lis. Cumples Adrian la ley
de amor ; pero el Rey te espera ,
no te detengas aqui. Adri. Son tus ojos la prision
de los mios: y es razon,
que puedan mas que yo en mi :
y pues en llegando a vellos
nadie estk con libertad,
disculpe mi voluntad,
quien sabe que son tan bellos :
que si es Rey, y se detiene,
quando los vea, contemplallos
mal la tendran los vassallos,
si vn Rey defensa no tiene
Ram. Y con mas razon
al Sen ado : aqui acaba la comedia, que su autor llama Pedro de Vrdemalas.
FIN.
MILTON A. BUCHANAN.
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO.
Arthurian Legends or the Hebrew-German Rhymed version of the Legend of King Arthur. Edited by L. LANDAU. (Teutonia, xxi. Heft.). Leipzig: E. Avenarius. 1912. 8vo. lxxxv + 246pp.
The fact that these texts are written in the German language but in the Hebrew script will account for the lack of attention with which they have met hitherto at the hands of the average ' Germanist.' They
Revieivs
559
are but two examples of a Hebrew-German literature of which the first poetic monuments can be traced back to the fifteenth century. There is evidence, however, that the Jews took an active part in German literature even before that time. In a general way, the Jews had a larger share in the dissemination of literature in the Middle Ages than is commonly supposed. From the point of view of comparative litera- ture, the subject presents some interesting problems and possibilities. The Jews, scattered as they were over the face of the earth, with their bi-lingual characteristics and strong religious and literary tradition, were particularly well-adapted to serve as intermediaries between the East and the West. It was largely owing to their mediation that the Talmudic stories found their way into Christian legend ; it was mainly through them that Arabic tales and fables were absorbed into Western literature to re-appear in a new garb as the Gesta Romanorum, the Fabliaux or the Cento novelle antiche.
Fascinating as is the subject in its wider aspects, it is no less interesting in its present narrower limits. The text which Mr Landau publishes for the first time with a full critical apparatus is a German- Hebrew romance of the cycle of King Arthur. It has been known hitherto from printed editions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both in rhyme and in prose. A critical text of two MSS, both in Hebrew-German cursive writing of the sixteenth century and preserved in the Hamburg Stadtbibliothek, is here published for the first time ; parallel to it on the opposite page is the text of the edition of 1699 by Wagenseil, thus affording a rapid comparison between the two versions. Dr Landau shows that the source of his text was the thirteenth century Middle High German Wigalois of Wirnt von Grafenberg, and not the prose Wigalois, as has been assumed until now. Its author was a gleeman of the fifteenth century who had his home in the Mainz- Frankfort-Worms district, in which there had always been a large Jewish population. Thus we see how German literature had penetrated into the Ghettos of the flourishing cities of the Rhine district, a literature not confined to Volksbiicher, but comprising actual metrical versions of older romances. The story itself is, as its title the Artus-Hof implies, a typical romance of chivalry of the later Middle Ages, with its usual accompaniments of magic properties, of giants and distressed maidens, of enchanted knights and castles. But it makes up for these literary deficiencies by its style. It furnishes a curious combination of the manner of the court poet and the gleeman, with a considerable admixture of Yiddish elements. A further interest — apart from its linguistic peculiarities, apart from the preservation of motives from older sources — is that it shows a medieval romance in the last stages of disintegration, in its transition from the rhymed romance of the sixteenth century to the chap-book of the next. Dr Landau is to be sincerely congratulated on having opened up a new field to German philology, and such an enterprise is in itself something of an achievement.
L. A. WlLLOUGHBY.
OXFORD.
MINOK NOTICES.
The members of Trinity College, Cambridge, are happy in the opportunities which their great Library affords them for becoming familiar with the use of manuscripts, and the publication of Facsimiles of Twelve Early English Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge (Oxford : University Press, 1913), edited by Dr Greg at the close of ^ his tenure of the post of Librarian, is intended as a help to younger members of the College, who may wish to begin the study of the original texts of early English literature. The Library contains about a hundred English manuscripts dating from before the sixteenth century, which form, as the editor says, ' a very representative as well as important collection, in which every period, from the eleventh century onwards, is fairly illustrated.' From these he has selected twelve, and a specimen of each is reproduced in admirably executed facsimile, with a transcript in ordinary type on the opposite page, and notes by the editor on the characteristics of the handwriting and on the contractions and abbreviations which are used. At the end is given a chronological list of the early English manuscripts in the Library, by means of which students will easily be able to find further examples of the handwriting of any particular date. The editorial work is thoroughly well done, and in respect of paper and printing the publication is worthy of the College by which it is issued.
Several notable additions have recently been made to the series of Deutsche Literaturdenkmale (Berlin : Behrs Verlag). In Vol. 146 Rudolf Unger publishes the letters written by Dorothea and Friedrich Schlegel to the Paulus family and preserved in the University Library at Heidelberg. The majority of these letters are from Dorothea to Frau Karoline Paulus, the ' artige Freundin/ who was not always above petty gossip. From the literary point of view the correspondence does not carry much weight ; its importance on the personal side is, however,- all the greater. Above all, it shows clearly the part played by Dorothea in her husband's mental life and in his conversion at Cologne. Her interests- at the outset were entirely protestant, but she was gradually brought nearer to Catholicism by her love for the past. The next volume of the series, No. 147, contains A. W. Schlegel's Bonn lecture-notes on Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Poesie, edited by J. Korner. These records from the beginnings of German philology — their date is 1818-19 — can hardly claim to be of value to-day, but they fill us with respect for Schlegel's vast erudition and clear judgment. In No. 148
Minor Notices 561
A. Fauconnet reprints an early autobiographical drama, Liebe und Hass, by the Swabian poet, Wilhelm Waiblinger. More important than any of these volumes, however, is No. 149, J. G. Forster's Reisetagebucher, reprinted by Paul Zincke in collaboration with A. Leitzmann, and supplied with valuable notes. The most interesting of these journals is that containing the account of Forster's journey from Cassel to Poland, where he was believed to have assisted the government, not only in educational matters, but also in mining, agriculture, etc. Forster had a keen eye for the things that interested him, and his notes contain many valuable descriptions of land and people, and of the notable acquaintances he made on the way. Finally, in No. 150 Dr Joseph Fritz, whose edition of the Ander theil D. Johann Fausti Historien, von seinem Famulo Christoff Wagner, 1593, appeared in 1910, devotes his attention to the Wagner- Volksbuch of the eighteenth century. He gives us an extremely careful investigation into the prints of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discusses the question of the ' Puppenspiel,' and republishes the preface and several sections from eighteenth century prints. This is a welcome addition to the literature dealing with Faust
R. P.
From the University of California we have received an interesting study in comparative literature on the theme of Venice Preserved {Das gerettete Venedig, eine vergleichende Studie. Von Fritz Winther. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1914). Dr Winther's objective is not quite the usual one in dissertations of this kind ; he does not deal with sources, or literary history, or even literary borrowings in the first instance ; but with three works each of which he regards as a creation by itself: the English play by Otway (1682), the French version of it by La Fosse (Manlius Capitolinus, 1698), and the quite modern German version (1905) by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. His purpose is to illustrate by means of these plays the variations in national tastes, ideals, etc. He regards the works as ' Symptome der Geistesstromungen, aus denen sie hervorgingen/ and deals with the conditions under which they were produced rather than with the personality of their authors. The results he arrives at are correspondingly suggestive and novel, although perhaps a little wanting in ballast and stability. While appreciating Dr Winther's aims, we are inclined to think that he exaggerates the value of a study of this kind for elucidating questions of national psycho- logy and literary temperament. Disproportionate space is devoted to Hofmannsthal's work; and we miss a discussion of the reception of Otway's play on the continent.
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