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ANNIVERSARY PAPERS

BY COLLEAGUES AND PUPILS OF

GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE

PRESENTED ON THE COMPLETION OF HIS

TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR OF TEACHING

IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

JUNE, MCMXIII

GINN AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
BOSTON AND LONDON, MCM^^II

's.

THE ATHENiCUM PRESS • GINN AND COMPANY • PROPRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A.

PREFACE

(v^ At the end of the present academic year Professor George Lyman Klittredge

^ will have completed twenty-five years of teaching in Harvard University. A

^ number of his colleagues in the Division of Modem Languages, desiring to

C\ celebrate this date in a term of service which has been of unusual significance

for the advancement of American learning, planned the publication of the pres-
ent congratulatory volume. The limits of time and space made it impossible
to invite contributions from any large number of Professor Kittredge's pupils,
or even from all those doctors of philosophy who had pursued their studies
under his special direction. But some fifty of his colleagues and older pupils
were asked to write for the volume, and forty-five of them were able to pre-
pare papers in the short time allowed for publication. To their contribu-
tions has been added a Bibliography of Professor Kittredge's own writings,
compiled by Professors Neilson and Hanford and Dr. Long, assisted by
Mr. Albert Matthews and Dr. H. de W. Fuller. It is hoped that no important
work has been omitted from this list, though many small or unsigned articles
must have escaped the notice of the committee, who were precluded from con-
sulting Professor Kittredge by their desire to keep the whole project from
his knowledge. The general editorship of the volume has been in the hands
of Professors Robinson, Sheldon, and Neilson.

To provide for the expenses of publication a subscription was raised among
nearly three hundred of Professor Kittredge's friends, with the understanding
that any surplus should be set apart as a book fund for the University Library,
the income to be expended under his direction. But the publishing house of
Messrs. Ginn and Company, wishing to have a share in the tribute, generously
offered to bear the entire cost of publication ; so that the whole sum sub-
scribed, after the payment of a few incidental expenses, will become available
for the Library. A special bookplate to be used for works purchased from the
fund has been designed by Mr. Pierre La Rose.

It is now the privilege of the authors and editors of these papers to offer
them to Professor Kittredge in the name of the many men who delight to
honor him.

Cambridge, Massachusetts
June 9, 1913

CONTENTS

PAGB

HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS i

Charles Rockwell Lanman, Ph.D., LL.D., Wales Professor of Sanskrit,
Harvard University

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW 15

Francis Barton Gummere, Ph.D., Litt.D., Professor of English, Haverford
College

CICLATOUN SCARLET 25

George Foot Moore, D.D., LL.D., Frothingham Professor of the History of
Religion, Harvard University

SOME REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION. . . 37

EdWard Stevens Sheldon, A.B., Professor of Romance Philology, Harvard
University

THE SCULPTURES OF THE GOLDEN GAT? AT FREIBERG 47

Kuno Francke, Ph.D., LL.D., Litt.D., Professor of the History of German
Culture, Harvard University

A FANTASY CONCERNING THE EPITAPH OF SHAKSPERE 51

Barrett Wendell, A.B., Professor of English, Harvard University

JOHNSON AND HIS FRIENDSHIPS 55

Charles TowNSEND Copeland, A.B., Assistant Professor of English, Harvard
University

THE DATE OF HEGETOR • • • j 63

. Albert Andrew Howard, Ph/d., Pope Professor of Latin, Harvard University

4 CHANTICLEER 67 <

Charles Hall Grandgent, A.B^ Professor of. Romance Languages, Harvard
University

WHAT IS CHAUCER'S J/OC/S OF FAME? 73

John Matthews Manly, Ph.D., Professor of English, University of Chicago

THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE 83

Jefferson Butler Fletcher, A.M., Professor of Comparative Literature,
Columbia University

THE TWO PROLOGUES TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN: A NEW TEST 95
John Livingston Lowes,*'Ph.D., Professor of English, Washington University

CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET 105

Carleton Brown, Ph.D., Professor of English, Brjm Mawr College

MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS 119 /

GusTAVus Howard Maynadier, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Harvard University

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS 127

Clifford Herschel Moore, Ph.D., Professor of Latin, Harvard University

THE SEA-BATTLE IN CHAUCER'S LEGEND OF CLEOPATRA 139

William Henry Schofield, Ph.D., Professor of Comparative Literature, Harvard
University

THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS 153

Charles Burton Gulick, Ph.D., Professor of Greek, Harvard University

BURNS IN ENGLISH 165

William Allan Neilson, Ph.D., Professor of English, Harvard University

ALISCANS, 3702: DES TORS D'ARCAISE 171

Raymond Weeks, Ph.D., Professor of Romance Languages, Columbia University

THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE OF ANTONIO PUCCI 175

Kenneth McKenzie, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Italian, Yale University

HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS 185

Fred Norris Robinson, Ph.D., Professor of English, Harvard University

THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM 199

William Tenney Brewster, A.M., Professor of English, Columbia University

THE NARRATIVE ART OF THE OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX 209

Walter Morris Hart, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, University of
California

GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE 217

John Albrecht Walz, Ph.D., Professor of German, Harvard University

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY 227

Kenneth Grant Tremayne Webster, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Harvard
University

NOTES ON CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY AND THE LAND-BENEATH-
THE-WAVES 235

Arthur Charles Lewis Brown, Ph.D., Professor of English, Northwestern
University

THE DYING INDIAN 251

Frank Edgar Farley, Ph.D., Professor of English, Simmons College

HAMLET AND lAGO 261

Elmer Edgar Stoll, Ph.D.

FROM OUTDOORS TO INDOORS ON THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE ... 273

Ashley Horace Thorndike, Ph.D., L.H.D., Professor of English, Columbia
University

THE QUARTO ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS 279

Raymond Macdonald Alden, Ph.D., Professor of English, University of
Illinois

CONTENTS vu

PAGE

POSSIBLE FOREIGN SOURCES OF THE SPANISH NOVEL OF ROGUERY 289

Jeremiah Denis Matthias Ford, Ph.D., Smith Professor of the French and v

Spanish Languages, Harvard University

THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM .... 295

George Rapall Noyes, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Slavic Languages, Univer-
sity of California

MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT 305

Edward Kennard Rand, Ph.D., Professor of Latin, Harvard University

AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL 317

Murray Anthony Potter, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Romance Languages,
Harvard University

SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS AN EXAMPLE OF ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY _^ . 327
Edwin Almiron Greenlaw, Ph.D^ Professor of English, Adelphi College

ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN CHAUCER'S FRANKLIN'S TALE 339

John Strong Perry Tatlock, Ph.D., Professor of English, University of
Michigan

NICHOLAS BRETON, CHARACTER-WRITER AND QUADRUMANIAC . . . 351

Chester Noyes Greenough, Ph.D., Assist^t Professor of English, Harvard
University

V THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF 359

William Witherle Lawrence, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English, Columbia
University

FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUE^ 367

Percy Waldron Long, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Harvard University

THE CELTIC F£E IN LAUNFAL 377

Tom Peete Cross, Ph.D., Professor of English, University of North Carolina

VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH 389

Henry Noble MacCracken, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, Yale
University

THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES 405

Karl Young, Pij.D., Professor of English, University of Wisconsin

MRS. BEHN'S OROONOKO 419

Ernest Bernbaum, Ph.D., Instructor in English, Harvard University

THE POETIC DICTION OF THE ENGLISH CLASSICISTS 435

Raymond Dexter Havens, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, University
of Rochester

THE DEBATE ELEMENT IN THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA 445

James Holly Hanford, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of English, Simmons College

BIBUOGRAPHY OF THE PUBLICATIONS OF PROFESSOR KITTREDGE
FROM 1885 TO 1913 457

ANNIVERSARY PAPERS

HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

Charles R. Lanman

Three kinds of children of Praja-pati, Lord of Children, lived as Brahman-
students with Praja-pati their father : the gods, human beings, the demons. —
Living with him as Brahman-students, the gods spake, " Teach us. Exalted
One." — Unto them he spake this one syllable Da. ** Have ye understood ? "
— " We have understood," thus they spake, ** it was damyata, control your-
selves, that thou saidest unto us." — *' Yes," spake he, ** ye have understood."

Then spake to him human beings, ** Teach us. Exalted One." — Unto
them he spake that selfsame syllable Da. " Have ye understood ? " — ** We
have understood," thus they spake, ** it was dattd, give, that thou saidest unto
us." — ** Yes," spake he, '*ye have understood."

Then spake to him the demons, ** Teach us. Exalted One." — Unto them
he spake that selfsame syllable Da. '* Have ye understood ? " — ** We have
understood," thus they spake, " it was ddyadhvam, be compassionate, that thou
saidest unto us." — ** Yes," spake he, ** ye have understood."

This it is which that voice of god repeats, the thunder, when it rolls " Da
Da Da," that is dimyata dattd ddyadhvam. Therefore these three must be
learned, self-control, giving, compassion.

Such is the story, a bit of the oldest Indo-European narrative prose, by
which the Great-Forest-Upanishad gives to some of the cardinal virtues the
sanction of supernatural revelation. The sanction is as needless as it is quaint ;
but the Brahmans are never weary of inculcating the duty of free-handedness,
and deem it more blessed (at least for others) to give than to receive. The
Upanishad is one of the ancient classics of the Hindu theosophy, the doctrine
of the divine immanence ; but even the much older hymns of the Rig- Veda
abound in laudation of giving, and do ut des is the key-note of many a pious
chanson. A case there is indeed in which the worshiper, with cheerfully
brazen suggestiveness, tells what would happen if he and the deity were to
change places :

Were I, O Indra, e'en as thou,
The lord of wealth, and lord alone, ,
My servant should be rich in kine. — Rig- Veda, viii, 14, i

2 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

Old as it all is, there is in it an amusing touch of modernity, and the thunder
is still rolling.

A gift or donation is defined as the voluntary transfer of property without
consideration. In order that the gift may be valid, there must be capacity
(i) in the donor to give, and (2) in the donee to receive ; (3) the gift must
be the free act of the donor, that is, an act not prompted by fear or force or
fraud or any undue influence ; (4) there must be actual delivery by him with
intent to transfer title ; and (5) there must be acceptance on the part of the
donee. These conditions of validity are manifestly essential ones, and as such
they may be presumed to be general the world over. The violation of any one
of them accordingly is and has been, always and everywhere, fertile of quar-
rel or litigation. The extent and many-sidedness of the subject of donation
is surprising to any one not versed in legal studies. In a recent American
cyclopedia,^ the article on Gifts, itself the merest outline, but with a multitude
of cited cases, extends over sixty pages ; and of Hemadri's great Sanskrit
work on law, the Quadripartite Thought-jewel^ one bulky volume of over a
thousand pages is devoted to gifts.®

The Sanskrit word for law in an untechnical sense * is dharma-s^ * that
which holds or is firm (LsXxn firmu-s) or established,* * the established behavior
(of the good),' that is, * righteous action,' and so, as towards the gods, 'religion,'
and, as towards your fellow-men, *law.' Thus the beginnings of law, like
those of medicine,^ are intimately blended with religion. The oldest sources
of Hindu law are called Dharma-sutras,^ or Dharma-Rules, and they are in
prose with occasional quotation of an old versus memorialis. Such are the
Dharma-sutras of Apastamba, of about 250 B.C. The Dharma-^astras, or
Dharma-Treatises, are later metrical recasts of the older traditional material,
and of these may be mentioned the Manavan Treatise, best known as the
Laws of Manu. The Rules and the early Treatises are preponderatingly in-
junctions and restrictions, largely of a quasi-religious kind, relating to the de-
tails of daily life. Law as a body of technical teaching is vyavahdra. This
is not a conspicuous element of the earlier books, and only the later Treatises,

1 Cyclopedia of Law and Procedure, edited by William Mack, Vol. XX, New York, 1906.

* 754^ Chatur-varga Chintd-mani. Hemadri (' Heir Goldberg *) was archivist of two
powerful kings of the Yadava dynasty at Daulatabad, 1 260-1309. See Th. Aufrecht, Catalogus
Catalogorunty p. 768 b.

* As a bibliographical entering wedge, the student may use A. A. MacdonelFs account of
the Hindu law-books in his History 0/ Sanskrit Literature (London, 1900), p. 428. Most compre-
hensive is J. Jolly's Recht und Sitte (Strassburg, 1896). For donation, see § 31.

* Compare E. W. Hopkins, vr. Journal of the American Oriented Society, XI, 247.

* Compare William H. Welch, in Hie Yale Bicentennial Celebration, p. 203; also the
Atharva-Veda, passim.

8 Translated by G. Buhler, in Max Miiller's Sacred Books of the East (SBE.), Vols. H
(Apastamba and Gautama) and XIV (Vasishtha and Baudhayana).

\
1

LANMAN 3

such as that of Narada^ (about 500 a.d.) or Brihaspati,^ may properly be
termed juristic. The Maha-Bharata, although nominally an epic, must have
had the character of a law-book in part, as early as the foiuth century of
our era.

The conditions of validity are treated by Narada ^ under the surprising title
Resumption of Gift ; that is, he discusses the conditions which justify retrac-
tion. The positive conditions, instead of being stated abstractly and directly,
are left to be inferred from examples, concrete and in part negative. Upon
the capacity of the donee to receive, little stress is here laid. Actual delivery
and acceptance * are elsewhere duly emphasized. Narada makes four classes
of things : (i) the non-donable ; (2) the donable ; (3) gifts, that is, valid gifts ;
(4) non-gifts, that is, invalid gifts. His eight cases of the * non-donable *
(such as wife, pledge, deposit) may all be subsumed under one, the lack of
unqualified ownership, that is, non-capacity in the donor to give. His *-dona-
ble * is what is left over after all the outgo for the family has been met.
The Hindu paterfamilias accordingly holds his property subject to the rights
of his dependents. The etymological import of the Sanskrit word for husband
(bhartar, Varro's f ertor) is * maintainer * ; and for wife (bharya, ferenda) it is
' the one to be maintained.' That is to say, the conception of the paterfamil-
ias as the supporter is as old as the language itself, and the denial of his
unqualified ownership of his lawful getdngs, as implied by Narada, is as
ancient as it is inexorable. As to giving that on which the family has a prior
claim, Brihaspati,* in Apocalyptic phrase, observes that the religious merit of
the man who does it, although (like the little book out of the angel's hand)
sweet as honey in the mouth, will change to poison in the end.

Narada's class of * valid gifts ' (such as price of merchandise, a prostitute's
fee, gifts made out of affection) ignores the absence or presence of considera-
tion and thus confuses gift and purchase. This may be due in part to the
habit of the Sanskrit language, which speaks of a thing sold as a thing * given
for a price.' To pay a debt is to * give ' it (back). Of his sixteen * invalid
gifts,' those made by a child or an idiot or by a man possessed or drunken or
not his own master plainly violate the first condition, capacity in the donor
to give. For others, his Une between legality on the one hand, and rashness
or folly or carelessness on the other, is vaguely drawn. Others, again, violate
the condition that the act must be clear of force or fraud. Of these, a couple
of the Scholiast's examples may be cited, if only to show their form. Thus
for intimidation : A ruffian hails an honest man in the forest : You give me

1 Translated by J. Jolly, SBE., Vol. XXXIII.

« In The InsiituUs of Ndrada, edited by J. Jolly (Calcutta, 1885), p. 137, SBE., XXXIII, 128.

' The acceptance should be made openly, especially in the case of immovable property. So
Yajfiavalkya, ii, 176. For a gift, the act of the acceptor is absolutely essential, danasya prati-
grahitrvyaparasipeksataiva, Mitrami9ra's Vtramitrodayay edited by G. Sarkar (Calcutta, 1879),
p. 1 5, L II. * SBE., XXXIII, 342.

4 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

a hundred drachmas, then you live, else you die. And for fraud : A man is
desperately enamored of a public woman named Chuta-mafijarT (Mango-bud).
She is sent thirty leagues away to the Thakkur. To the lover, hot with the
fire of separation, comes somebody and says, " If I show you Chuta-maftjari,
will you give me a ring ? " ** Certainly I will, and here *s your surety." At
that, the other, trotting out a bud that he had taken from a mango tree and
concealed about him, shows it to him and demands the ring.

Before quitting this topic, one point may be noted. The practical recogni-
tion of a legal distinction or principle for the abstract statement of which we
might search Hindu law-books in vain is often clearly implied by the inci-
dents of a story or the details of a rule. Thus as to the doctrine of nominal
consideration. In the charmingly amusing story ^ of Yayati's fall from heaven
to earth (it must have lasted longer than the day-long tumble of Hephaistos
towards Lemnos), he is hailed by Ashtaka, Pratardana, Vasumant, and others
in turn. These most obligingly offer him their ** worlds " in which to enjoy
the privilege of an unlimited stop-over on his trip. ** No king may with dig-
nity accept a gift," he answers, and declines. ** Then," says Vasuipant, " if
thou likest not to take them as a gift, buy them for a straw." Or again, as to
the establishment of a good right of ownership. A fisherman^ has caught
seven redfish, strung them on a vine, buried them in the sand, and dropped
down the Ganges to try his luck for more. An otter smells the fishy odor,
scrapes away the sand, and finds the string of fish. As if to forestall an action
of trover, he solemnly calls aloud three times, " Does any one own these ? "
and, finding all the world in default, he draws the fish to his lair. Or again,
a certain Buddhist practice ^ requires that a monk shall wear robes made only
out of refuse rags. He that keeps it in severest fashion may not accept cloth
given by a pious layman to the Order, nor cloth that is actually put into his
hand. If it is laid on the ground at his feet, that act constitutes an abandon-
ment of ownership. The cloth becomes constructively a " refuse rag " and he
may pick it up and use it.

Vasishtha introduces his chapter on gifts* with an ancient and oft-recurring
rule, ** By giving, a man attains all desires." Comprehensive, but not specific !
For us modems, the things of daily use are so multitudinous that it is hard
to conceive a life in which they should be few, — so few indeed that it was
easy to single out some things as highly commendable gifts. The specification
of umbrellas and sandals is not surprising, if we consider the intensity of the
Indian sun, the violence of the rain, and the burning heat of the ground.

* Mah&Bhdrata^ Book i, chapters 88-93, ^nd especially i, 92, 17-18, and 93, 3.
^ Jdtaka^ text, III, 52 ; translation, H. C. Warren's Buddhism, p. 275.

' Vtsuddhi-Magga, Book ii, Rangoon edition of 1901, p. 49, end.

* Chapter 29. See SBE., XIV, 136.

LANMAN 5

And so with the gift of thirst-quenching water and of wells. The gift of food,
as that on which the whole cycle of life depends, is praised,^ like much else,
with superlatives so reckless as not to be forcible. But when Vasishtha quotes
the old versus memorialis,

Three gifts, they say, all else transcend,
Land, cattle, and the Sacred Word,

we feel that here is no exaggeration. To the Hindu, the teaching of the
Vedas, the Brahman's noblest duty, is a " giving of the Sacred Word." Here
let us pass it by and consider the gifts of cattle and of land.

And first, the gift of cattle. " Movable property, in Anglo-Saxon law,
seems for all practical purposes to be synonymous with cattle." ^ The con-
nection of pecunia and pecus proves the fact for much more ancient times in
Europe ; while for yet remoter periods it is attested in the history of India by
the Veda itself. For one who is to make a gift of a cow the Maha-Bharata*
prescribes, by the mouth of Bhishma, what it calls a ** primeval ritual." The
donor is lo appoint a day for the gift, to spend the preceding night out of
doors with the cattle, to address the cow with two adulatory epithets, O per-
fect one (samange), O abounding one (bahule), and to utter certain archaic
formulas which play upon two Sanskrit words, each with the double meaning
of cow and of earth, spoken of as nourishing mother and as foundation or
giver of good. At sunrise he makes the actual gift, confirming his act by
reciting the fii^t two verses of a certain stanza (xiii, 76, 1 3) ; and by way of
formal acceptance the donee then recites the last two verses of the same
stanza, the two halves of which thus serve as a kind of verbal stock and
counterfoil.

The Hindu itch for putting everything into schematic form is well illus-
trated by a previous chapter of the Maha-Bharata (xiii, 64), which concerns
the rewards of gifts as depending upon the asterisms of the lunar zodiac.
" They who give a milch cow with her calf under the asterism of the Stag's
Head [in Orion], proceed from the world of men to the supremest heaven."
The promises, as rehearsed by a celestial sage, run through all the twenty-
eight asterisms in order, beginning with the Pleiades or Krittikas. But the
possibilities of reward are so exhausted at the outset, that the sage is able to

^ Makd'Bhdratay Book xiii, chapter 63.

• Sir Frederick Pollock, English Historical Review^ April, 1893, P- ^^'

* Mahd'Bhdrataj Book xiii, chapter 76. Bhisfama, mortally wounded and lying on a
bed of arrow-points, discourses to King Yudhishthira on the duties of kings, and on other
topics of almost encyclopedic range. Considering the painful situation and that the very hour
of his death lay wholly within his own choice (he chooses in fact the coming winter solstice),
one would suppose that the old hero would cut it short ; but in fact he runs on for some twenty
thousand double verses, often with amazing dullness and repetitiousness. This is the discourse
of which the chapters on gifts (xiii, 57-81) form a part

6 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

offer few further inducements to liberality under the subsequent asterisms,
except perhaps cattle or children in this world or an occasional heavenly
nymph in the next.

The gift of land. Since everything comes out of the earth, argues Bhlshma,^
the gift of a piece of the earth is potentially all-inclusive and so really the
best. Thus all the superlatives applied by the epic to the other gifts must
be roundly discounted. Let us consider Hindu usage in the giving of realty.
This brings us at once to the inscriptions. Of these, the best general account
is John FaithfuU Fleet's Indian Epigraphy? Fleet observes that the vast
majority of the epigraphic records of India are " title-deeds of real property
and certificates of the right to duties, taxes, fees, perquisites, and other privi-
leges." They are mostly royal charters, ** donations and endowments made
to gods, to priests on behalf of temples and charitable institutions, and to
religious communities."* Brihaspati, of about 600 a.d., has a chapter on
documents.* Within six months, he begins, doubts will arise as to a transac-
tion, if it be unrecorded. It was with this in mind, he continues, that the
Creator invented the letters of the alphabet. After defining the various kinds
of documents, he prescribes in detail the features of a royal grant as follows :

Having given a tract of land or the like, the king should cause a formal grant to be
executed on a plate of copper or on cloth. It should give the place, the names of the king^s
ancestors, and other particulars, and the names of the king^s father and mother and of him-
self, and the declaration.

This grant has to-day been made by me to so-and-so, who is son of so-and-«o
and belongs to the Vedic school of so-and-«o, to last as long as the sun and moon
endure, and to descend by inheritance to the son and grandson and remoter issue,
as a gift which is never to be taken away and is exempt from diminution and assures
heaven for sixty thousand years to the giver and defender, and hell for just as long
to the one who takes it away.
The Minister of Alliances and War should sign the grant, with the remark ** I know this.''
It should be provided with the king^s own seal, and give a precise statement of the year and
month and so on, the value of the donation, and the magistrate's name.

That these rules represent actually prevailing legal custom and usage, even
for the early centuries of our era, is absolutely certain. The copper-plate grants
are drawn up in remarkably close conformity with these law-book precepts.^

1 MaAd'Bhdrata, xiii, 62, 2 ff.

* This forms chapter i of Vol. II of The Indian Empire (Oxford, 1908), a part of The
Imperial Gazetteer of India, Fleet's masterly treatise, within the brief compass of 88 pages,
furnishes the most admirable introduction to the study of the inscriptions. It sets forth the
various classes of them, the materials on which they are recorded, their topics, and their value
as historical sources. * Indian Epigraphy^ pp. 60 and 57.

* SBE., XXXIII, 304. Hindu documents are described by Jolly, ZeitscArift der deutschen
morgenldndischen Gesellschafty XLIV, 350-360 ; briefly also in his Recht und Sitte^ § 35.

^ It may fairly be questioned whether the rules simply formulated existing custom, or
whether the usage grew out of the rules. I suspect that, as in the case of linguistic usage and

LANMAN 7

Instead of showing this conformity by reference to single items of several
different inscriptions, it has seemed advisable to present, virtually m its en-
tirety, a single characteristic example. As such may be taken a royal land-
grant ^ of Dadda Pra^anta-raga IV, coming from Gujarat, and dated in the
year 392, that is, probably, 392 of the Chedi era, or 641-642 a.d.

[i. The invocation.] Om, Weal !

[2. The proem.] Fwm [the city of] Nfln^pura, [the Illustrious Dadda,]

Who covereth the vault of heaven with the offshoots of his glory, [a glory]
white as the lotus that is awakened by the rays of the moon as she issueth
forth from a veil of dense watery clouds.

Whose bright pitiless [sword's] splendor is at hour of dawn loudly sung as
it were by the wailings of the noble ladies of the hostile vassals who marched
out to meet him in many a deadly fray and were slain.

Whose head is irradiated by a diadem glittering with the brilliant flashings
of ten million diamonds polished by his obeisances at the lotus-feet of gods
and Brahmans and [others] worthy of reverence, . . .

Who hath thrust the mass of dense darkness of the Iron Age into the
cage made of the beams of his own spotless virtues, . . .

The Illastrioas Dadda, being hale and sound, unto all and singular kings,
vassals, landed provincial chiefs, headmen of the villages of Our kingdom,
officials, and so forth, sending greeting, maketh proclamation.

[3. The grant.] Be it unto you known : By Us

A field, in the district of Sangama-khetaka, at the eastern boundary of
Suvarnarapalli village, of a size that requireth of rice wherewith to seed it
down one basket (according to the standard of the province), of which [field]
the bounds are : on the east, the march of the village of Kshira-sara [Milk-
lake] ; on the north, the march of the village of Kukkuta-vallika [Cock's-
creeper] ; on the west, a field granted to a Brahman, and a banian tree and a
pool ; on the south, the road to the village of Suvarnarapalli, and the Atavi-
pataka village line, — a field thus clearly bounded and butted, . . .

For so long a time as moon and sun and sea and land shall endure, to be
enjoyed by sons and grandsons and [remoter] issue,

the rules of Hindu grammarians, the influence worked both ways. Usage determined what
Plnini*s rules should be, and P&nini's rules had a mighty normative influence on the Sanskrit
language. To specify donor and donation and donee was an indispensable essential and so
became a custom. This was formulated into rule, the nucleus of others, which in turn became
a norm of legal usage.

1 It has been edited and translated by the trusty hand of Biihler, SitzungsberichU der Wiener
Akademiey Phil.-hist. CI., 1896, Vol. CXXXV, no. 8. His German version does not make the
general structure of the document quite so clear as might be wished, and I have ventured to
translate the Sanskrit text anew and into English, but with excision of several clauses, tedious
or technical, and of two of the five stanzas. The version of the other three, although metrical,
is very close.

8 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

Unto the Brahman Sorya, from Da^apura emigrant, in Kshira-sara village
resident, a member of the Bharadvaja clan and belonging to the Madhyandina
school of the White Yajur Veda,

For the purpose of meeting the costs of the five great sacrifices, . . . and
other religious rites, for the increase of the glory and the religious merit of
Our mother and father and of Ourself,

To-day on the fifteenth of the bright [fortnight] of Vai^akha, with an over-
pouring of water hath been [over-poured, that is] granted.

[4. The sanction.] Wherefore, hy all coming landed chiefs, whether of Our or
of other lineage, — seeing that life is unstable as the billows of the storm-
lashed ocean, that riches are transitory and pithless, and that virtue is for a
long time steadfastly abiding, — who wish to attain the reward that all may
share from the granting of land, and who wish to accumulate enduring fame
brilliant as the rays of the moon, this Our grant is to be confirmed and defended.

Whoso, his mind covered with the veil of the darkness of ignorance, shall
either take it away or suffer it to be taken, — he shall be [as if] guilty of the
five deadly sins.

And thus it hath been declared by the Exalted Vyasa, the author (vyasa)
of the Vedas :

For sixty thousand years in heaven
Abideth he who land hath given ;
And just as many must, in hell,
Who takes or suffers taking, dwell.

On Vindhya's arid mountain-side
In parched holes shall he abide.
Shall be reborn as cobra black,
Who lands once given taketh back. . . .

Lands given by others or by thee,
Yudhishthira, guard zealously.
Best lord of lands 'mong all that live,
'T is better to defend than give.

[5. The date.] In the year three-hundred-two-and-ninety, on the fifteenth
[lunar day] of the bright [fortnight] of Vaigakha, by [the king's] own oral
command, this was written by the Minister of Alliances and War, Reva,
ye[ar] 300 90 2, Vai^akha br[ight] 10 5.

[6. The teste.] Of him who delighteth in worshiping the feet of the God-
of-day, the Illustrious Vltaraga's son, the sijgn-manual is here —

Illustrious Pra^antaraga^s.

This document suggests a number of interesting considerations and paral-
lels. First, as a whole. It is at once clear that the charter consists of six

LANMAN 9

distinct parts: (i) the invocation, (2) the proem or preamble, (3) the grant
proper or the operative clause, (4) the sanction, (s) the date, and (6) the teste.
These are precisely the constituent elements of an Anglo-Saxon land-boc^ such
as was in use in the wilds of distant unknown Britain at the very time that this
charter was issued in India or not much later. This is a striking instance of
the fact that (given similar needs) the natural working of the human mind
may produce results which are astonishingly similar and which are neverthe-
less each wholly independent of the other. It is also a sharp warning to the
theorists who in such cases rashly assume a borrowing in one direction or
the other.

Then, as to the parts. !• The invocation. In many cases this is long and
highly elaborate ; but in this charter it is brief — just the syllable Om and
the word Well-being or su-asti. The mystic syllable, a true multum-in-parvo,
typifies the Hindu Trinity, and is quite as replete with solemn significance as
are the opening words of many an ancient will. In the name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.

2. The proem. This begins with the name of the grantor's city in the
ablative case, and the essential parts of the sentence (as indicated by the
Clarendon type) are : From Nandipura the Illustrious Dadda, sending greet-
ing, maketh proclamation. In the Sanskrit original, the no English words
beginning with WAo covereth and ending with reverence form only three words,
each a compound of great length. They are notable rather as amusing examples
of complexity than as serious occasions of perplexity, and they make the
wildest ** hyperpolysyllabic sesquipedalianism " of which we are capable seem
like the diction of a book of nursery tales. The grant proper is in the first
person (By Us) ; but as the proem is in the third, we may, for the sake of the
king, assume that the responsibility for the flamboyant adulation of the proem
is to be put upon the shoulders of Reva, his minister, who drew the charter,
and who composed or copied this part of it. The irrelevance of most of the
proem is fairly comparable with the irrelevance of the delightful verbiage at the
beginning of many an old will.^

3. The grant proper. The opening clause, Be it unto you known, sug-
gests the Vobis illud no turn sit, the Know ye that, and the Sciatis quod that

are so familiar. To understand its Sanskrit original, astu vo viditam, a
smattering of Latin almost suffices, for astu is esto, and the enclitic vo serves
for vobis as well as vos, and viditam is made from vid,' to wit, ' as is habitum
from hab-ere. The second paragraph contains the premises (in the literal
sense of premises) or describes the premises (in the transferred sense). To
indicate the size of the field by the measure of seed-rice that it takes is round-
about. The text of this paragraph ends with the rehearsal of valuable privileges

* See, for example, Henry Cabot Lodge, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, p. 102.
3 Cf. N. H. Nicolas, Testamenta vetusiay passim.

lo HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

and exemptions too technical for this occasion.^ Of the counter-clockwise
order of the bounds we must not fail to speak. The Vedic literature lays
great stress on the sunwise order (north, east, south, west) as the auspicious
order of making any circuit, a bit of folk-lore that goes back to Indo-European
times.^ The Atharva-Veda observes it even in magic charms^ for defense
against dangers from the different quarters ; and it is observed in many
grants.* Now that airships are calling into existence a " law of the air,*' we
may note that a Nepalese charter^ of 725 a.d., on ceding a village, is at pains
to include as thereto appurtenant ** the land and the sky above and the nether
regions below.** The third paragraph means no more than ** [to him and] his
heirs forever.** The moon and the sun appear, not only as parts of a conven-
tional standing phrase, but also as emblems depicted upon the seal of the donor,
with his totem, as an easily understood symbol of perpetuity.^ Of the fourth
paragraph the essential part is the nomination of the donee. This is made
explicit by particularizing his former and present abode. Bharadvaja, of
whose line he claims to be bom, is one of the few great names of the Rig-
Veda. Data as to schools of Vedic study, if, as here, the time and place are
not doubtful, are of obvious value for literary history. The fifth paragraph
recites the moving cause of the instrument. The purpose of the grant is
religious. I have noted inscriptions whose provenience ranges from Nepal to
the Gulf of Cambay and Central Java,' entreating future kings to defend the
grant as being a bridge to heaven (dharma-setu) built by a former king for his
own and others* welfare. For this they have good scripture-warrant in the
Maha-Bharata, which assures us that a man who gives land purges from sin
or rescues from hell ten generations on both sides. Dadda, thus offered an
ell, takes only an inch, and that for his father and mother and himself. In
just this sense the land-boc says pro redemptione criminum meonim and pro
remedio animae meae? In the sixth paragraph, the word to-day is important
Yet more so is the word over-pouring. To this we will later revert.

4. The sanction, consisting of three parts. These, as our friend behind
the arras might have called them, are the moralizingly-mandatory, the mina-
tory, and the metrically-promissory-minatory-hortatory. The stanzas, especially
the first and the last, are quoted very often in the grants, as Brihaspati

1 Wood, grass, water, pasturage, and the right to impose fines are sometimes specified ;
cf. Indian Antiquary^ VI, 193.

* Cf. W. Caland, Een Indogermaansch Lustratie-gebruiky Koninklijke Ak. van Weten-
schappen, Amsterdam, 1898. Had the land-hemisphere (and so the course of human history)
lain mostly south of the equator, the sunwise or lucky order of circuit would surely have been
from right to left. ' For example, III, 26; IV, 40; V, 10.

* For many examples, see Ind. Ant.^ VI, 194-213. * Ind. AnU^ IX, 175.

* A. C. Bumell gives admirable pictures of such seals in his South-Indian Palaography
(London, 1878), plate facing p. 106. As totems appear elephant, tiger, boar, and fish.

' Ind, Ant.y IX, 176; Journal of Bombay Branch of Royal Asiatic Society ^ Vol. XVIII, no. 49,
p. 269 ; Vol. XVII, no. 47, p. 3. • H. C. Lodge, ibid. p. 103.

LANMAN I I

prescribes, and with more or less variation, and are credited, now to Vyasa
and now to Manu.^ Although they have not been traced in our texts of Manu
or the Maha-Bharata, they read precisely like stanzas of that great poem.
They are really old verses of Hindu oral tradition, commonplaces of which the
royal donors sought to increase the authority by ascribing them to such great
names as Vyasa or Manu.

5. The date. That the day should be the day of full moon is doubtless no
accident ; we may suppose it was chosen advisedly by the king.^ Moreover,
for certain gifts Vasishtha ^ commends especially the full moon of the lunar
month Vai^akha or April-May. The numbers are first written out in words
and then repeated in figures, again a touch of modernity such as surprises us
when, for instance, we read the rule ^ that partial payments of a debt should
be written on the back of the bill of debt, that is, indorsed on the note.

6. The teste. It should be noted that the royal signature is in the
genitive case.^

The pouring of water as the accompaniment of a gift. The oldest formal
prescription of this rite that I have noted is in Apastamba's Dharma-sutras : ^
All gifts [are to be] preceded by [the pouring out of] water, sarvany udaka-
purvani danani ; and, as Mr. S. K. Belvalkar, a friend and pupil from India,
informs me, the custom persists even to the present day in his native land.
The usage is prescribed in many law-books."^ Concrete examples of its observ-
ance in connection with gifts of land are common in the inscriptions, and
are to be found often elsewhere in connection with all manner of other gifts,
from an alms to a daughter. For the paltry gift of food, Para^ara directs ^
that the giver put water on the recipient's hand, then the food, and then again
water. The Jataka® tells how the Future Buddha gives a superb elephant to
the Brahmans. He puts the noble creature's trunk in their hands, and then,
pouring scented water from a golden ewer, he makes over the gift. To
Manu's definition® of an adopted son as one ** given by mother or father,
with water," the scholiast Raghavananda ^^ adds that they may have no choice
as to the water. The story of Buddha's previous existence as Vessantara (his
last but one) is famous and tells how, as an act of supreme abnegation, he

^ Cf. E. W. Hopkins, \n Journal of the Am. Oriental Soc,^ XI, 243-245.

a Cf. The Institutes of Vishnu, xc, 3-16, SBE., VII, 266-268.

« See Vasishtha, xxviii, 18-^19; SBE., XIV, 135; cf. VII, 267. * Yajfiavalkya, ii, 93.

^ For many such signatures, see, for example, Ind. Ant,, VI, 192 ff.

> Buhler's 2d ed., ii, 4, 9^ ; translated by him, SBE., II, 121. He assigns them to the third
century b.c, ibid, p. xliii.

' For example: Gautama, v, 18-19, SBE., II, 201; BSudhayana, ii, 17, 29-30, SBE., XIV,
277 ; Vishnu, lix, 15, SBE., VII, 192 ; Para9ara, i, 53, in Bibliotheca Indica.

* Pali text, II, 371 ; translation, II, 253-254.

• Manu, ix, 168.

"^^ In V. N. Mandlik*s ed. of Manu with the six scholiasts, Bombay, 1886.

12 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

gave away to an ugly Brahman his little son and daughter.^ Even this heart-
breaking act is not without formal confirmation. He takes water in his gourd,
and calling, ** Come hither. Brahman," he pours it out and thus makes over
the gift to himself so precious.

The manumission of a slave may be viewed as a gift, to wit, of freedom.
Narada^ describes the ceremonial. The slave comes up, bearing on his
shoulder a jar of water. This the master smashes in token that he has done
with looking for that service ; and then, sprinkling the slave on the head with
water in which (most significantly) flowers and unground grain have been put,
he cries aloud, *' No slave [is he], no slave, no slave," and, facing him to
the east, lets him go. Of this usage the essentials are the sprinkling and the
thrice-uttered auspicious words. The ceremonial for restraining a runaway
slave ^ seems to me to consist of essentially the same rites, but reversed (for
the threefold declaration of freedom, a threefold declaration of bondage ; for
water with flowers and grain, urine sprinkled from a horn), and with the
addition of a most inauspicious accessory, the anti-sunwise circumambulation.
The master, watching his chance, makes three circuits from right to left around
the slave while he is asleep, sprinkling each time and uttering charms that
end as follows :

Servole, drcumminctus es,
quo drcumminctus fugies ?

The oft-noted parallel from Petronius,^ si circumminxero ilium, nesciet qua
fugiat, is fairly startling — and may be purely accidental.

Giving is one of the commonest everyday acts, a deed whose normal course
is to brighten life and pass into oblivion. But in the long history of ** unhis-
torical " India, a few gifts have stood for centuries, celebrated in song and
story, and known to untold millions of admiring souls devout. Thus the
giving of Sita to be the wife of Rama, — of Sita, to threescore generations
the exemplar, almost or even quite divine, of every womanly virtue. King
Janaka says* to Rama, ** Here is my daughter Sita. Take her, with my bless-
ing. Her hand grasp thou with thy hand." With these words he pours upon
Rama's hand water consecrated with holy spells and thus he **giveth this
woman to be married to this man."

And again, the first great religious endowment in the annals of Buddhism,
the famous gift of Bamboo-Grove, made in solemn phrase by King Bimbisara
to Buddha and the Order. It is narrated® in the Pitaka : " Then the king of

'^Jdtakay text, VI, 547 ; translation, VI, 283.

2 Narada, text, v, 42-43 ; translation, SBE., XXXIII, 138.

* Paraskara's Grihya-suirasy iii, 7 ; SBE., XXIX, 350; cf. XXX, 176, 296.

* In Trimalchi6*5 Dinner^ Ivii. See Pischel, in Philol, Abh,^ Martin Hertz dargebrachty p. 69.

* Rdmdyanay I, 73, 26, Nirnaya Sagara ed., Bombay, 1888.

* Vinaya-Pitakay Oldenberg's ed.. Vol. I, p. 39; SBE., XIII, 143.

LANMAN 13

Magadha, Seniya Bimbisara, took a golden vessel of water and poured it over
the hand of the Exalted One, with the declaration, 'This park, Bamboo-Grove,
I, reverend Sir, unto the brotherhood of the monks with the Buddha at their
head do give.* The Exalted One accepted the pleasance." The introduction
to the Jataka^ adds with pious gravity : ** Upon the acceptance of this pleasance
the mighty earth did quake, as if to say, ' Now the Buddha's religion hath struck
root/ For in all the Land of the Rose-apple, there is no monastery whose
acceptance made the earth to quake, save only Bamboo-Grove. And in Ceylon
there is none such, save only Greatminster."

This last is in allusion to the first religious endowment of Ceylon, the
gift of Cloud-Grove, famous under its later name * of Maha-vihara or Great-
minster, and made by King Tissa to Mahinda, the Apostle to Ceylon. The
charming story is told in the Great Chronicle or Mahavansa : ' " King Tissa
took a vessel, a splendid one, and with the words * Great-Cloud-Grove pleas-
ance here, give I unto the brotherhood,' upon the hand of Mahinda the Elder
the gift-water he did sprinkle. When the water fell on the earth, then quaked
the mighty earth. * Why quakes the ground ? ' the monarch asked him.
' Because the religion has got a foothold on the island,' Mahinda replied."

But for India the climax of all pious gifts is reached in the story of
Anatha-pindika, the Treasurer of Savatthi. It is given in the Vinaya,* and,
more fully and with many pleasing embellishments, in the introduction to
the Jataka. He had gone on business to Rajagaha,^ had met the Buddha,
and, won over by the strength and beauty of his character and teaching, had
become his disciple. Returning home, he buys of prince Jeta, for *' a layer of
ten million gold pieces," that is, for coins enough to cover the ground, the
famous Jeta-Grove or Jetavana. In it he builds a beautiful monastery and
eagerly awaits a visit from the Buddha. And when at last the Exalted One
arrives, the treasurer asks him, '* Reverend Sir, how shall I proceed in the
matter of this monastery?" ''Well, householder, this monastery unto the
brotherhood of the monks, present and to come, give thou." " Be it so,
reverend Sir," said the treasurer, and taking a golden vessel, he poured water
over the hand of the Buddha, and, with the words, " This Jetavana monastery
unto the brotherhood, present and to come, of all the four quarters, with the
Buddha at their head, give I," he gave it. The Teacher accepted it.

The story of Jetavana recurs in many books, and the formula of donation
to the brotherhood of all the four quarters became, as the inscriptions show,
a standing one, and the fame of the gift has spread from India to Ceylon

^Jdtaka, text, Vol. I, p. 85; translation, Rhys Davids, Buddhist Birth Stories, p. 118. The
Land of the Rose-apple is India.

* Compare Mahdvansa^ xv, 214, with the rest of the chapter, or W. Geiger's translation.

* Mahdvansa, xv, 1-26. It is told also in the Island Chronicle or Dipavansa, xiii, 18-34.

* Vinaya, Vol. II, pp. 154-159; SB£., XX, 179-189. Jdtaka, Vol. I, p. 92; Rhys Davids,
ibid. pp. 130-132. ^ Raja-gaha, or Kings-bury, was the capital of Magadha.

14 HINDU LAW AND CUSTOM AS TO GIFTS

and Burma and China. A thousand years later, the touchingly beautiful
records of the courage and devotion of the Chinese pilgrims who crossed the
'* Sand-ocean " to visit the Holy Land of Magadha fail not to tell the story
of Jetavana and in particular the curious circumstances of its purchase.^ Nor
is this all. Thanks to Hindu piety and Hindu art, the story has been made
the subject of one of the most interesting sculptures of a noted Buddhist
monument of 250 B.C., the Stupa of Bharhut.^ A medallion, of which a
reproduction is given here, shows us the unyoked bullocks, the cart in which
the coins were brought, a man unloading them, another carrying them, and
yet two others at work covering the ground with a layer of them. The coins
are quadrangular and rudely swaged, just such as we know from the texts.®
In the center stands the great treasurer with his golden vessel ready to pour.
And, that nothing may be lacking, there is underneath the medallion the
legend, Anathapindika giveth Jetavana, [having become its] purchaser for a
layer of ten million.

Jetavana Anadhapediko deti koti-santhatena keta
Jetavana Anathapindika giveth, by a-crore-layer a-buyer.

So perfectly does the venerable monument confirm the books.

That the donor should have the right or capacity to give, that he should
actually deliver, that the donee should actually accept, — such conditions of
validity are so obviously necessary as to be universal, and herein they differ
from the condition that the act of gift should be confirmed by a pouring of
water. This seems to me to be primarily a symbolic act.* Its implication is :
As this water which is now let go by me cannot be gathered up and taken
back, — so shall it be with this gift which I now let go to thee, the donee.
It was doubtless an immemorial Hindu usage, that grew (as we have seen)
to be established custom at an early time, and thus came to be embodied in
the law-books. The limits of this paper have allowed the discussion of a few
details and no more, but enough, let me hope, to suggest that a systematic
comparative study of the legal aspects of donation would make an interesting
chapter in the history of Indo-European legal antiquities.

1 Samuel Beal, Si-yu-ki^ Vol. II, p. 4. Cf. James Legge's Fd-hien^ p. 59.

* See Alex. Cunningham, The Stupa of Bharhut,

* Vtsuddhi Magga^ Book xiv, Rangoon ed. of 1901, p. 374, 1. 25.

* The German word schenke means primarily ' pour ' and secondarily * give,' but the latter
meaning does not appear until the post-classical period of Middle High German. As to the
semantic connection, see Jacob Grimm^s essay, ** Ueber Schenken und Geben," in KUinere
Schriften^ Vol. II (Berlin, 1865), pp. 173-210, and especially p. 204. He mentions the Indian
water-pouring in his Deutsche RechUaltertUmery 2d ed., p. 190.

THE GIVING OF THE LAND FOR JETA-VANA MONASTERY
From a Buddhist monument of about 250 u.c.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

Francis B. Gummere

In two lectures,^ fortified by ample notes and references, Professor Schrader
has traced back the tradition of the wicked mother-in-law. He argues partly
from old literature, partly from survivals. A sinister figure, yet the most
conspicuous member of the actual household, the husband's mother keeps her
'* wicked ** name in Russian ballads and in the popular literature of South-
eastern Europe. Conditions of family life in those lands which lie apart from
the highways of civilization have changed but little in the course of centuries ;
and the mother-in-law seems to hold there still the place and power which she
once held throughout the Aryan world. *' Wicked," of course, is not her own
word ; it expresses the young wife's point of view, and has long been current.
Old literature, Germanic and Celtic, older Greek and Latin, yet older Indian,
testify to the envy and hatred of the wife towards her husband's mother. An
older and better state of affairs in the family, however, can be faintly but
definitely discerned, and a far better reputation of the mother-in-law, which
survives by implication in English "goodmother." ^ Ranging far and wide
for evidence. Professor Schrader finds not only that the relation between the
husband's mother and his wife is one of the oldest concepts recorded in Aryan
speech, and therefore one of the primitive facts of our household organization,
but also that this mother-in-law was a leader in the struggle for domestic order
and a decent family life.^ Vivid is the contrast of that ancient dignity with
the mother-in-law's present state, powerless, the butt of cheap wit or cheaper
pathos. Excluding this third stage, however, one may ask whether the second
and first stages in the career of the mother-in-law, particularly the first, are
illuminated at all by a study of the English and Scottish traditional ballads.

^ Die Schwiegermutter und der Hagestoht eine Studie aus der Geschichie unserer Familie^
Braunschweig, 1904. — The author assumes patriarchal conditions for the Aryans as far back as
their history can be followed or inferred. The matriarchate, by his reckoning, has always be-
longed to quite alien peoples.

* The ballads use "mother deere '* both in description ( Childe Waters^ A, 33) and in address
(by the husband, /Arj/'m ; by the new wife, Gil Brenton^ C, 55). So the Danish usage, even where
the mother is a bad witch: **han8 kiere moder*' {Husiru og Mandsmoder^ F, 2). A similar for-
mula, perhaps, was the a/do/17 {Iliads xxii, 451) which Schrader notes as given by the **good''
daughter-in-law, Andromache, to Hecuba. Later views of the case would thus be responsible
for the change of Hecuba's attribute in Plautus {Menaechmi^ 714 if.), and make Schrader's
"doch" (note 15, work quoted) unnecessary.

• Work quoted, pp. 26, 79. — The husband's mother is now to a large extent superseded
for jocose purposes by the wife's mother, a relation practically unnoticed in oldest times.

i6 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

The question was put by Professor Schrader, when he was gathering his
material, to the present writer ; and the answer, too hastily given, was mainly
negative. A subsequent review of the ballads has led to some positive results.
What sort of evidence can the ballads, which rest upon tradition of five or
six centuries at the utmost, give for a state of affairs which belongs by the
hypothesis to a far older date ? Only the survival in sentiment, in the setting
of an ancient story which has been cast anew in the ballad mold, in fossil
phrases, wreckage of old habits of speech that once expressed a definite cus-
tom or a forgotten attitude of mind. The ballads are not a bank upon which
one draws at will ; but they are a very likely place for finding lost money.
Theirs is the romance of tradition, a kind of obsolete reality, as different from
literary romance of the past as it is from modem realism. They have not
much of the fantastic element so plentiful in popular tales, and speak more
willingly of old custom than of old myth. The ballad is more stubborn, its
form is far from the flexible prose of the tale, its choral and dramatic origins
keep it " near the ground," and it gives fancy too narrow range. Rare are
the wafts from the fantastic world of the tales, such as the stanza about that
hypothetical wolf mjoknie Cock, an impressive passage, which seems to have
strayed from some story of ** the grateful beast " ; and commonplace, if common,
are the recurring lines about birds who tell tales, bring first aid to the injured
husband, and carry messages, — an affable and serviceable band. It is easy, per-
haps too easy, for the tales to point back from witch to matriarch ; witches are
fantastic and cannot be explained by the modem instance. On the other hand,
the tradition of ballads about old custom, and their sentiment of a vanished
way of life, are always in danger of this modem parallel and its easy explana-
tion. Scott pointed out the reference to sworn brotherhood in Bewick and
Graham, It is a survival in sentiment —

In every town that I ride through,
They'll say, " There rides a brotherless man" —

to be compared with the fine realism used by Chaucer's pardoner,^ and with
the unreal character of relationship generally in the popular tales. Here, in-
deed, is the great difficulty in taking the evidence of the ballads. The brother-
less man, one may say, needs no stay in tradition ; he can be found in any
modem kailyard story. It may be. But that phrase and that sentiment cannot
be found in the modem transcript from life. The stay in tradition is demanded
because of the incongruity of the old sentiment with the modem facts, with the
actual narrative setting ; and this demand holds good of the sentiment about
actual as well as artificial kindred. A preference, inexplicable in the life of
the balladists, for the inferior bond of kin, as modem eyes see it, over the
superior, must pass as traditional sentiment spmng from earlier custom.

1 ** Herkneth, felawes," etc., C. T.y C, 696 ff.

GUMMERE 17

Absurdities, too, are often helpful. For material things, one knows how faith-
fully tradition has clung to such absurdities as the bower on the strand,^ and
the bigly bower far from the brother's or the father's hall. For more abstract
nonsense. Prince Robert says to his own mother in her own house, ** It is the
fashion in our countrie, mither, — / dinna ken what it is here, — to like your
wife better than your mither." Textual absurdity, too, bewrays an effete but
sincere sentiment in Lady Maisry ;^ the nice conjunction of pronouns, the
dislocation of facts, the formal phrase, show that to the old washerwoman
who sang the ballad this silliness about a sister's son came down so, and must
somehow be right. A different triumph of old sentiment over new fact is when
Ebbe Gait, in the Danish ballad, is brought before the king, charged with
horrid crime. Proper tragedy would make him the king's son. But the cry of
horror is — '* Ebbe Gait, soster-son min ! " Similar surplus of sanctity hangs
over the relation of sister and brother. Not the husband here wagers on his
wife's constancy ; it is the brother. Wise William, confident in his sister, and
he wins. Even when a competent father is at hand, the bold brethren, prefer-
ably seven, are nearest and dearest to the sister, the one sister ; ^ they swarm
in tragic tales ; and outside of tragedy it is the sport to see them hoist by their
own officiousness. Chief mourners at their sister's funeral, as in Saunders
and Lord Thomas^ — the old way, — they are chief dupes at her resurrection,
as in the Gay Goshawk, — surely a fine new ballad for the new woman.

What, now, and at last, of the husband's mother in traditional English and
Scottish ballads ? These alone shall be studied ; comparison with the Euro-
pean ballads would lead too far. In one case, however, the related foreign
ballads must be examined, simply to show that such comparisons would often
restore a lost mother-in-law to her empty place in the English version. In
Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, neither the elf nor Sir John — he that lures
away the maid, would kill her, and meets his own death or defeat — is provided
with a mother ; but the mother appears in sundry important versions of the
same ballad in Western Europe. ** Far better preserved than the English, and
marked with very ancient and impressive traits," says Professor Child, is the
Dutch ballad of Halewijn, Impressive, certainly, and surely ancient is the
story here of the stolen maid's safe return, not, as in the stupid conclusion of
some English ballads, to meet her own family and fool them with a fable
about her absence overnight, but to meet a solitary and perhaps tragic figure,
the mother of her tricked captor. It is true that even here the ballad as genre
asserts itself in some versions, indulges its own function of incremental

^ See Professor Child's quip, Ballads^ IV, 391.

« G, 5, 1 (her) ; 7, i (his).

• This " ae sister " with many brothers may dimly recall the times when exposure of female
infants (the Gunnlaugssaga was contemporary with the last of the practice) made the propor-
tion. The stories of naval foundlings began in that stage of culture; and of course the example
of a husband preferred to brothers was set by the new and prevalent version of the Nibelungenlied,

i8 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

repetition, and revels in the relative-climax. The maid meets in succession the
man's father, brother, sister, mother, who ask after him ; and, in the right
climax, only the last inquirer gets true answer, taunt, and perhaps a sight of
the severed head. The old sooth of the story, however, reminding one not
only of Judith, Bugge's instance, but also of the mother of Sisera, occurs in
sundry Dutch and Westphalian versions.^ Here the girFs triumph is over the
man's mother alone, whom she meets, now on the road, —

Frau Qara de kam de Straten entlang, —

now, Sisera's mother to the life at home, —

Frau Jutte de kek torn fenster herut:
" Helena, wo ist mein Sohnelein ? "

Had the killing of Sisera been recorded in the song of his own people,
one would hear, instead of the taunt to his mother, her own ktna over
her son's death. If the ballad had taken that older tradition of the ** good "
man's-mother, it would have given her lament as conclusion to a story of
the dangerous or fatal bride. In Young Hunting, B, 19, appears this mother
only in a casual way, a "dowie woman" moaning for her son whom the
wily true-love, so it turns out, has slain. In C the mother finds her son's
drowned body. But in related Scandinavian ballads this mother has warned
her son against the leman's treachery. In Lord Randal, too, the man's mother,
wise and good, right guardian of her son and his house, is too late to save
him from the false true-love ; who, indeed, belongs to the ** dangerous bride "
category, not necessarily to the modern setting of intrigue. In H, traditional
in Ireland, the mother's ** own pretty boy " has been poisoned by a wife ; and
Professor Schrader, noting that the daughters-in-law of Russian ballads — and
real life — are " oft keine Heiligen," shows that in these cases ** wicked " is a
late and unfitting word for the mother-in-law. Here the old type of helpful,
authoritative mother-in-law comes into view. If the '* situation " can be saved,
she saves it. In Leesome Brand, corrupted as it is and astray from the path
of the right story, one nevertheless sees the man's mother in the part of one
who ** knows how," and has the word of command. Advice from the man's
mother in matrimonial or other amorous quest is indeed inevitable, and should
be taken. Even the devils obey her, and tremble. The elf, demon, hill-man,
in old. and widespread Scandinavian ballads, runs to his mother for counsel, a
fact significant for the elf-knight of Lady Isabel. ** Min kiere moder, y kiender
mig rad," says the dwarf -king,* " huor ieg skall kongens datter foe " ; and
German Wassermann seeks the same help. The minage of Grendel and his
more formidable mother is suggestive, though the poet knew of no other

1 Uhland» I, 153 ; Reifferscheid, p. 162. The simplest form is Uhland's D, 33-35.
* Grundtvig, II, 40, A, 14 f.

GUMMERE 19

members ; and it is needless, almost, to point to popular tales of the devil him-
self and his mother, where the lady — now and then grandmother — is always
more powerful and wise than her son. It is well known, too, that the devil's
sire is never or rarely named. Superior knowledge always belongs to the
husband's mother ; Estmere's resourceful brother owns that he got his skill in
white magic from that source. Women, of course, taught magic to their
daughters; and Mary Douglas had her skill from her mother, *'a witch
woman." ^ Professor Karl Pearson makes the malignant witch direct de-
scendant of the mother in the matriarchate ; but a nearer source can be indi-
cated. It is a short step from Sir John, or elf -knight, or Halewijn, wicked
all three, to a wickedly advising mother, who, from the maid's point of view,
is the wicked mother-in-law of tradition. But tradition has more and better to
say of her : *' ealodrincende 6«er saedan." There was an older story, different
in all its details as well as in its chief persons ; and the basis of it is historical
rather than mythical. Halewijn and the elf may indeed go back to the '* half-
human, half-demonic being " assumed by Mr. Child ; but the human half is
the original. The man from a far country is the primitive bride-stealer. He
stole or lured away his bride, — the great promises of gold in Swedish versions
would fit this as well as the demonic case, — and took her home. In that
home waited the man's mother, who ruled the household, and tamed young
shrews to its ways. If, as often happened, no son came back with a bride to
greet the waiting mother, that solitary figure was tragic. Sympathy with her
responsible and arduous life, as Schrader notes, lingered long among the
Romans, a practical and order-loving folk. But with new times, new marriage
customs, new women, came new songs. The bride's point of view prevailed.
The bride-stealing turned in retrospect to violence and willful or motiveless
murder ; the bride-stealer to a demon, or a humanized demon like Hind Etin ;
the man's mother to a black witch. For that happy ending to which the Lady
Isabel ballads, notably the Ulinger group, have mainly come, a brother is pro-
vided — not, as in later fiction, a lover — to prevent the foul deed. Demon
and witch are disenchanted ; man, and often mother, are killed. But the inti-
macy and economic alliance of that older pair were not altogether lost in the
change of conditions and with the shifted point of view.

One makes no case of the mere household of widow and son, frequent
enough in times of war and feud. ** Gin a widow would borrow me," says
Young Bekie, C, 4, " I wad swear to be her son." Naturally. Henry V will
draft no widow's son into his army, for fear of a widow's curse. Sybill and
Jock o' the Side do not count ; although Jock's " good night " to his mother
and to Lord Mangerton, his mother's brother, is attractive. Little stress can
be laid upon the homely appeal in Lady Alice^ B, where '* Giles Collins he
said to his auld mother," that he was dying for love. But in ballads of the

1 Child, III, 412, No. 176, 8t 26.

20 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

type of Gil Brenton one comes to the man's mother in somediing like her
ancient offices. Here is no necessary assumption of widowhood for her ; often
a father as well as a mother is named, but he plays no part. Gil Brenton 's
mother is authoritative, stem, but just ; " stark and steer," she dings doors off
their hinges as she strides to the inquisition ; the shadow of memorial awe is
upon her. Blankets, sheets, pillows, or the Billie Blin, tell Brenton the wife
he has fetched home is no leal maid, — tfie substitution device can hardly be
original in the story, — but their detective function is Umited to present facts.
It is the mother who, at her son's request, takes charge of the case and sets
it aright. She is detective, judge, jury, executive. In the older and better ver-
sions, Scandinavian and Grerman, of Fair Annie} — another happy ending,
— the man's mother plays the same part. In Childe Waters she is beneficent
only by second intentions ; but the force of her query and command is not
quite obscured. This is romance of the old style if not of the old tradition.
Under new conditions of the household, the ravished maid bears her Tristram
in the forest, but marries anon, while the son bides an outlaw or hunter in the
wood. The recognition could now be happy or tragic ; but in either case the
husband's mother is forgotten. Not so in the days of stolen or far-fetched
wives. If the bride-stealing went awry, the mother was her son's refuge or
hope; and romantic features in a Douglas Tragedy, less obvious in Earl
Brandy do not altogether hide the old function. What, indeed, to look more
closely at a single ballad, what has this Earl Brand to show of that lost money,
that evidence of long-vanished custom ? First, and plain to see, is the ballad
form, the specific functions which make this poem a ballad and not a *dra-
matic lyric ' or other product of the artistic poet. There are the chanting,
the pervasive refrain, the choral effect as of definite situation and shifting
parts, the incremental repetition, the dialogue two thirds and the narrative one
third of the whole. Next is the story, the plot, easily classified, comparable
in a vast range of literature both popular and artistic. Third, — and is there
any third element 1 Yes, the apparition of the mother, her cry for her mortally
wounded son, her bitter word for the dear-bought bride, and the appeal of
the son to her authority and her wisdom to save the fortunes of the house.
The mother disposes. All this, taken by itself, can be explained in terms of
modem romance ; but the cumulative proof of many cases of the sort, where
the Sratiment often mns counter to all modem ideas, bids one see in this
figure^e traditional *' goodmother " of the household of very distant times.
For/^gic completeness, indeed, the mother herself must also fall, the last
prop of the house ; so it is in Ribald og Guldborg? when, with dawn, —

der vaar tre lige i Her Ribolts huss.
Det ene Her Ribolt, det andet hans moe :
det tredie hans moder, afif sorg bleff dod.

1 Child, II, 65. 2 Grundtvig, II, 355 ; D, 52 f.

GUMMERE 2 1

These are the principals in the old domestic drama : man, stolen bride, man's
mother. For modem notions, lover and bride alone are tragic victims ; and
the mother in Earl Brand remains to rule the house. This ancient office
survives in many an episode. The child bom of secret and tragic love is
brought to her; there is no need to name all the ballads — Fair Janet is
typical — where Willie, the widow's son, or another, gives his newbom
child, soon to be orphaned, into his mother's care.^ The ballad's lust of
repetition, to be sure, often calls up all the members of the family ; but the
mother is not only head of the group, but is easily detached as a solitary and
commanding figure.* Substitutions are not hard to detect. In the tragic
Bonny Hind, Jock Randal goes from the death-scene ** his father dear to
see," and to hear words of comfort ; and Lizie Wan sits, absurdly enough,
at her father's bower-door. But in the second case the mother is clearly the
original figure, as is shown by the contaminated verse ; while for the former,
Mr. Child's apt comparison of Kullervo and his mother in the Kalevala is
decisive. To be noted in this Finnish tradition is the shadowy, inactive father
as against the real and active mother. Whether or not Clerk Colvill, C, gets
its grouping from Willie and May Margaret, ** Clark Colven and his gay
ladie " of A seem less fitting for the scene of the '* forbidding " formula than
'* Clerk Colin and his mother dear." For these warnings were once absolute
property and right of the man's mother. The Faroe versions of Elveskud,
which, as Mr. Child notes, are nearest the English, make Olaf 's mother, not
his wife, warn him to keep away from his elfin love. So in French, Italian,
Spanish versions, and naturally in the Slavic, a mother plays this main part.
By new reckonings, to be sure, the mother could counsel ill. In Lord Thomas
and Fair Annet, A, where the whole family convenes and advises, Thomas
says, ** Na, I will tak my mither's counsel." In C, E, only the mother is
asked. In H she is main adviser, and will lay a curse upon her son if he
shall spurn her own choice of the nut-brown bride. But this mother's curse,
an important matter, belongs with the second stage of the tradition.

In the well-known group of stolen brides, sung in certain late but mainly
traditional Scottish ballads, the authoritative mother-in-law appears in fairly
close relation with actual life. In Lisie Lindsay a Highland lord asks his
mother for permission to fetch home a bride from Edinburgh city. Court her
'* in grit povertie," counsels the mother. So he woos and wins Lizie in the
guise of a lowly shepherd, takes her to the Highlands, points out a poor
shieling as his home, and bids the old woman there treat them as son and
daughter-in-law. The supposed mother welcomes Lizie, but sets her to hard

^ Sisters, too, are at hand to help ; but the ballad-form loves a large family, and is bound,
like Buchan's wight, to indulge in what may be called the relative-climax at every turn. Per-
versions and substitutions of relationship in this case of the man's mother, the entrance of step-
mothers and bride's mothers, cannot be treated here as they deserve.

22 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

work just as would be the case in a Russian ballad. In Richie Story this com-
mand to work under the mother-in-law's oversight is in earnest. The good-
mother bids Richie's highborn wife to kilt her coats —

And muck the byre with Ritchie Storie.

Finally, a late ballad, marked indeed by " barrenness and folly," as Mr. Child
phrases it, puts forth the man's mother not simply as a wise woman, like King
Estmere's mother, but as a sort of white witch. She gives her son Cow-me-doo
his dove's form, takes his children in charge, and, in time of stress, with aid
from another woman who knows how, turns him into a goshawk and his sons
into swans. But this matter is far better handled in popular tales.

It is only what one would expect from the ballads when one finds there the
mother-in-law as witch, nearly always of the black variety, companion figure to
the wicked mother-in-law of tamer domestic ways. The trail now becomes
plain enough. In Willie's Lady the wife is to be justified as right head of
the household and first claimant upon her husband's love. Willie's mother,
'*a vile rank witch of vilest kind," is malignant to a degree, jealous of the
son's wife and thwarting her hope of offspring. Cruelty outright is here;
and cruelty is the mark of the mother-in-law in Russian ballads.^ Professor
Child very properly put Willie's Lady next aiter Gil Brenton in his collection ;
tradition of the old order precedes vindication of the new, and each is a pend-
ant to the other. Happy also is the juxtaposition of Lord Randal and Edward,
Both are retrospective ballads, dialogues in climax which bring out the story
but do not tell it all or tell it clearly. A good mother's rede has been spumed,
it would seem, in one ballad ; a bad mother's rede has been taken in the
other ; and, in both cases, to a tragic end. In Z^n/ Randal, with very old
versions current in Southern Europe, the case is fairly plain. As for Edward,
one would fain know precisely what were the '' counsels " that his mother gave
him. He has killed his father dear; as, in A, Son Davie has killed his
brother John, probably a later phase of the story. Was his prototype perhaps
some Hind Etin's or even Jellon Grame's son, avenging the mother, but here
condemned by the new fashion of thought } In any case Son Davie will leave
the " mother dear " a fire of coals to bum her, and Edward, more vaguely,
the curse of hell. ** Hell and fire," on the other hand, are for the true-love of
Lord Randal ; and she is surely representative of the ** dangerous bride," —
her real function in H. This curse of the son is retum and echo of the
mother's older curse for choice of bad wives. The jealousy of the wicked
mother, her malignancy towards the young wife, — who is often romanticized
into a sweetheart, — are set forth in a few of our ballads; and while the

1 Schrader, p. 99, quotes a case from modern Greek life, often reflected in ballads, where a
mother-in-law refuses to help her son's wife, who is mortally ill. The son begs his mother to go
for the physician. Reluctantly she starts, but lingers outside the house until she is sure that the
doctor's help will not avail.

GUMMERE 23

older relation is often blurred, and hints of the older conditions are less clear
than in related ballads of Europe, enough is also told to back the very modest
claims that have been made for the tradition of the goodmother. One can
imagine a vast range of stories, now lost, of the good and just mother-in-law
who bars her son's door to the unworthy or suspect or positively devilish can-
didate for wifehood. The witch's stocking may have been on the other leg.^
It may be by pathetic fallacy that modem readers sigh over Annie of Roch
Royal when the false impersonating mother, so named and slandered by
changed tradition, repels her from the son's door. '* Awa," she cries, '* ill

woman, . . .

" You 'ne but a witch or vile warlock

Or mermaid o the flude," —

imdesirable inmates all three, and the last with a particularly bad ballad repu-
tation. By the Clerk Colvill argument, Annie might have been just what she
is called, and Gregory's dame a true goodmother. Again, two can play at
the poisoning game. The dangerous bride once poisoned her husband, — as
happens in Russia ; and by the new reckoning mothers-in-law must be shown
in this congenial part. Prince Robert is a ballad not far from the Russian
tjrpe, with no supernatural soliciting, but full of plain jealousy, hatred, and
murder. The only son makes a poor marriage and refuses to be sorry for it,
but dares not bring the wife home. He asks his mother's blessing, and gets
a curse. He tells her, in a disordered stanza, that it is the fashion to like
one's wife better than one's mother. She beguiles him to drink poison. In
anticlimax she merely insults the wife, who has been summoned to the house
only to find Prince Robert dead. " A slender tale," is Professor Child's com-
ment ; the full-bodied story perhaps showed the mother intending to poison
the bride, but, by a blunder, killing the son.

The curse of the man's mother upon the wooing which she vainly forbids
would naturally be most tenacious among the traditions of her ancient power.
The formula of asking leave to woo, or seeking advice in a dilemma, has been
noted as fairly frequent in the ballads. Defiance, failure to act upon the advice,
have tragic results. In Burd Isabel and Earl Patrick the quite modem and
silly story hinges upon an evasion of the mother's command.

** Burd Isabel has bom to me a son,

WhatsaUIdoherwi?" —
" Gie her what ye like, Patrick,

Mak na her yoiu- ladie.''

Patrick compromises, to his ultimate sorrow. In the better ballads, however,
the hero comes to a tragic end by reason of his mother's curse. Yarrow,

i**Lord Gregory . . . calls his dame * witch mother,'*' remarks Mr. Child, II, 214, **but
there appears to be no call for magic or witchcraft in the case." No call, certainly ; but the
tradition of witchcraft is not at all foreign to these ballads of the man's mother.

24 THE MOTHER-IN-LAW

among its other victims, counts such a cursed man. The fine ballad of The
Braes of Yarrow^ to be sure, does not furnish the actual instance ; but it be-
longs to the stories of a marriage unwelcome to one or the other house, in
their oldest form to the man's family, but under more romantic conditions
to the family of the stolen bride. From this point of view it is by no means
" of no importance to the story "^ that in group A to I **the hero and heroine
are man and wife," while in J to P they are. unmarried lovers. The older
group has the sooth of it. Still, it is not here, but in the two succeeding
ballads. Rare Willie Drowned in Yarrow and The Mother s Malison^ that
ancient sentiment best survives. Willie, in D, promises to marry his love ;
but it is she, not he, who asks the man's mother, and is rejected. He rides
back for a blessing and gets it in mockery; when he fords the water of
Gamrie, at the third step of his horse Willie's saddle is empty. The bride
drowns herself. In two other versions, the mother consistently curses her
son, and tells him Gamrie water is wide. In a traditional version, Willie him-
self asks leave, but rides xmblest to his fate. A plainer tale is told in The
Mother s Malison^ traditional, but sung of modem times and placed by the
Clyde. Dialogue, with incremental repetition, leads straight to the event.
Willie will ride to his true-love's gates, and asks his mother's aid. Stay at
home, she says, and have the best bed in the house. He cares not for best
beds. Stay, and eat "the best hen in a' my roost." — No. — Well, then "gin
Clyde's water be deep and fu' o flood, my malison drown ye ! " Here, by the
hypothesis, enters alien matter, — a rival and a false sweetheart, found after
safe crossing of the flood. But the son's cry, " My mother's malison will drown
me," returns to the right way. He goes back to his fate.

What of it all ? Is this " evidence " ? By itself, almost any of the cases
has little or no value. The tragedy of a clash between the son's duty and the
husband's or the lover's devotion needs no stay in tradition of any place or
time. Mr. Thomas Hardy found that tragic matter to his hand on Egdon
Heath, among his own people ; in his Return of the Native^ mother, son,
and son's wife enact the old drama and meet the old fate. The very mention
of the man's mother would seem to be enough to forbid all searching of
trails, all attempts to straighten the crooked ways. In French fiction and
life this is the sacrosanct relation. Comedy and ribaldry, too, have laid
hold of it. But this very universality makes for the need of a wider outlook.
In the case of the mother-in-law, as in the case of the mother's brother, of
the sister's son, there is direct historical evidence of ancient power and
dignity now unknown ; and faint as the traces are in the ballads of this old
supremacy of the man's mother, and of the reaction against her pride of place,
by cumulative proof they help one to visualize her as a beneficent and authori-
tative member of the primitive household.

1 ChUd, IV, i6i.

CICLATOUN SCARLET

George Foot Moore

Ciclatoun, which is found in all the Romance languages as well as in Eng-
lish, is the name of a costly stuff. Chaucer describes Sir Thopas in all his
magnificence :

His beer, his herd was lyk saffroun,
That to his girdel raughte adoun ;

His shoon of Cor^pwane.
Of Brugges were his hosen brouiu
His robe was of dclatoun,

That coste many a jane.

Middle High German has cicldt in the same meaning. Thus in Tristan

11106 :

£r truoc deludes kldder an^

Diu wdren iizer m^e rfch.^

Ciclatoun was employed also for ecclesiastical vestments. A charter of
Alfonso (VI 1 1) of Castile, dated in 1 1 9 1 , is quoted by Du Cange : * "In omatum
Ecclesiae trium marcarum pretio, tres frontales, duos de ciclaton, infulas tres,
unam de ciclaton, aliam de palio, duas dalmaticas palias, unam capam de cicla-
ton, duo vestimenta linea cum stolis et manipulis,** etc.

A robe or mantle of this stuff is called by the same name. At the creation
of Knights of the Bath, the knights wore " un couverton d*or appelle sigle-
ton." A knight rides into battle, " armez de haubregon, couvert d'un singla-
ton.** Another

Si a vestu un hermin pelicon,

Et par deseure un vermdl dglaton,

Mantd a riche, qui n'est mie trop Ion.'

In Latin contexts cyclas occurs in similar senses and uses. At the wedding
of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, the citizens of London set out toward
Westminster to meet the royal pair, mounted on fine horses, " sericis vesti-
mentis ornati, cicladibus auro textis circumdati, excogitatis mutatoriis amicti,"
etc.* The apparel of the Countess Judith, daughter of Vratislav, king of
Bohemia, is described : ** cycladem auro textam, instar Dalmaticae, et precio-
sissimi operis, quam sub mantello ferebat, etiam auro texto induta " (1096 a.d.).

1 See Muller u. Zamcke, M. H, D. Worterbuchy HI (1861), 881, for other examples.

* From Antonio de Yepes, Chronicon Ordmis S. Benedicti, VII. Yepes wrote in Spanish :
CorSnica general de la orden de San Benito^ 7 tom. fol., 1 609-1 621. The Latin text which
Du Cange quotes is a translation by T. Weiss, Cologne, 1648 (?).

• These examples also are from Du Cange. * Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, anno 1236.

26 CICLATOUN SCARLET

Further : " Portabant autem diversi generis species pretiosas, aurum et argen-
tum, pallia oloserica, purpuram, siclades, ostrum, et multiformium vestium
omamenta.'* " Vestibus cultioribus, aureis et argenteis, velvetis, syndonicis [?]
sicladibus, aliisque pretiosis.**

Du Cange, who quotes these and other examples, Junferred^ as was quite
natural in his time, that the Romance ciclatoUy sigtmon^ etct, ^re derived from
the Latin cyclas^ cycladem^ and consequently that the primary meaning of the
word was a robe or mantle of circular cut,^ worn by both men and women ;
whence it came to be employed also for the material of which such garments
were usually made. Both inferences were erroneous, as will be shown below.

The word ciclaton was in use in Arabic also, and a vocabulary ^ made in
Spain in the latter part of the thirteenth century, conjectured by some to
be the work of the celebrated Raymond Martini (died 1286 a.d.), gives as
the equivalent of Arabic siqldfun Latin ciclaSy perhaps taking siqla^un as
ciclatum? Dozy, in a note in his edition of Ibn 'Adharl's Baydn al-Mughrib
(II [185 1], 24), explains siqldfun: **6toflfe de sole broch^e d*or," and adds
that both this word and siqldf (whence the German cicldt) are derived from
Lat. cyclasy **Voyez Du Cange." This note is substantially repeated, with
some additional references to Arabic authors, in Dozy*s SuppUment aux die-
tionnaires arabeSy s.v. siqldi (I [1871], 663). Diez, in his Worterbuch
(1st ed., 1853), derives Span, ciclaton^ O. Fr. siglatoUy singlatotiy etc, from
cyclasy cycladis. In later editions it is added : " Nach anderen arabischer
Herkunft, von Engelmann* nicht aufgenommen."

With Du Cange, Dozy, and Diez for authorities, it is not strange that the
derivation of ciclatoun from cyclas should have been widely accepted. It is
repeated, e.g., in the Century Dictionary (s.w. Ciclatoun and Scarlet^ 1889),
though the etymologist is aware of some of the difficulties that beset it, and is
inclined to suspect contamination with an Oriental (Persian) word, saqlatun [sic].

So long as siqldfun was known to the etymologists only in the mediaeval
Arabic of Spain, it was possible to suppose that it was merely Spanish ciclaton^
and that the latter was Latin cyclatuniy or with some stretch of imagination,
cycladem. But in fact the Arabic siqldfun and kindred words had been fully
discussed by the philologists of Basra and Kufa in the third century of the
Hijra, and an example is quoted from a native Arabian poet who was a younger
contemporary of Mohammed. In this time and place the initial s excludes a con-
nection with cyclas /cvKXa^;, any derivative of which, by whatever channel it came
into the language, would have begun with /c (q), as in Caesar, Kalaap, qaisar.

* See Du Cange, s.v. cyclas.

' Vocabulista in Arabico. Edited by C. Schiaparelli, Florence, 187 1, pp. 118, 291.

* Du Cange quotes from the Necrohgium EccUs. Paris, : ^ Dedit nobis unum cyclatum pretio
12. libr."

^ I.e. Glossaire des mots espagnols et portugais dirivis de Varabey 1866 ; 2d ed. with additions
by Dozy, 1869.

GEORGE FOOT MOORE 27

The theory of Du Cange, Dozy, Diez, and many followers in their foot-
steps, is thus refuted. The unquestionable connection between cyclas and
ciclaton is to be explained in another way than Du Cange supposed.
When authors writing in Latin had to find an equivalent for ciclaton^ cyclas
offered itself through a double association of sound and sense. A contamina-
tion of significance would be a natural result, and it is possible that ciglatotiy
sigletofty etc., in the meaning *robe or mantle,' is sometimes a vernacular
equivalent for cyclas.

In recent times a different view has been advanced, which is thus set forth
in the New English Dictionary, s.v. Ciclatoun: **The source of the names
found in most of the European langs. in the Middle Ages appears to have
been Arabic (orig. Pers.) siqildtun, also siqildf, siqaldf, saqaldt^ (ace. to
Mr. J. Platts) from siqilldf, siqalldt, for saqirldty saqarldfy Arabicized form
of Pers. sakarldt, the same word which has given Scarlet. The primary
meaning was * scarlet cloth,' later * fine painted or figured cloth,' * cloth
of gold.' "

Under Scarlet the same Dictionary gives a somewhat different account of
the matter : " The prevailing view is that O. F. escarlate is an alteration of
Pers. saqaldty siqaldty suqldtj a kind of rich cloth, a derivative of which
appears as Ciclatoun. (The form saqirldty givon in some Arabic dictionaries,
is modem and probably adopted from some European language.) "

The New International Dictionary (19 10) is closer to the mark : " Scar-
let .. . fr. Ar. siqldt? sort of silk stuff (cf . Ar. siqldtun in the same sense,
whence E. ciclatoun, through F.), or Per. saqalldt, saqaldt, saqalldt, saqaldt,
a sort of woolen cloth, broadcloth, prob. orig. a figured cloth and ultimately
fr. L. sigillatus adorned with little figures, fr. sigilla little figures, as on seal
rings, pi. of sigillum.*'

In a review of Crooke's edition (1903) of Bumell and Yule's '* Hobson-
Jobson," published in the New York Nation for October 29, 1903, the origin
of the word was rightly asserted to be the Latin sigillatum, but without any
attempt to establish the connection ; and from the confusion the author is in
about the history of the Arabic and Persian forms it is evident that the opinion
had not been arrived at from that side. The reviewer wrote : ** The Anglo-
Indian . . . suklat . . . (Telugu sakaldti, Canarese sakaldtu) represents
the Per. suqldt, siqaldt, saqaldt, Ar. siqilldt, * particolored linen,' and this is
merely the Middle Latin sigillatum or sigillata, ' figured cloth.' We read in
late Latin of tentoria sigillata, * particolored tents,' and serica sigillata, ' fig-
ured silks.' . . . The Ar. word appeared also with Ar. suffix as siqldtun,
Per. siqldtun, saqldtun, whence Old French siclaton, ciclaton, siglaton. Middle
English siclatoun, ciclatoun, etc. Further, the Ar. word, as of foreign origin,

^ Not one of these forms is found in Arabic.

* No such word is known to the Arabic lexicographers.

28 CICLATOUN SCARLET

took a popular twist, perhaps under Mediterranean influence, and as saquarldt,
Per. saqirldty Turkish iskerldt, gave rise to Ital. scarlatto^ English scarlet^'' etc.

This derivation, which, as we shall see, is that of the Arab philologists,
might well have been suggested to any etymologist in the last eighty years by
two or three brief entries in Freytag's Lexicon Arabico-Latinum (1833) : II,
330. '' Siqilldf. Id. quod Sijilld(y — II, 286. '' Sijilldt. . . . Stragulum
laneum, quod mulieres pilentis iniicere solent; vel Panni linei, in quibus
annulorum figurae pictae sunt. Kam." — Ibid. ^^Sijilldtus (vox Graeca).
Stragulum Graecum. Kam."

In 1 90 1 I prepared a short note on the etymology of Ciclatoun and Scarlet
for the meeting of the American Philological Association held that year in
Cambridge; but other more exciting matters being up for discussion, the
paper was not read. If I present here the substance of that paper somewhat
amplified, it is not because the subject is either important or obscure, but in
order to show in a fairly typical instance the necessity for a revision of the
etymologies of words derived from the Arabic in European dictionaries, and
to illustrate the method of such an investigation.

The etymologies passed on from one dictionary to another have for the
most part, as in the present instance, come down from a time when the works
of the native Arabic philologists were unknown to European scholars, who
were chiefly dependent, directly or indirectly, upon a late and extremely con-
densed dictionary — hardly more than an enormous vocabulary — the Qdmus
of al-Feiruzabadi (died 141 3 a.d.). Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon (Vol. I,
1863 ; left unfinished at his death in 1876 and never completed) first made
the Arabic lexicographic tradition accessible. But Lane excluded words noted
by the native authorities as foreign or vulgar, reserving them for a separate
work which he did not live to undertake ; consequently many comparatively
common, and often old, words will be sought in vain in his pages.

After Lane's death, the native lexicons from which in manuscript he had
drawn most of his material were printed : the Lisdn al-Arab, by Ibn Mukarram
(d. 131 1 A.D.), between 1882 and 1889, in twenty volumes; and the Taj
al' Arils (in form a commentary on the Qdmus, completed in 1768 a.d.), by
the Seyyid Murtada, from 1888 on, in ten volumes quarto ; not to mention less
extensive general lexicons and many special lexicons and glossaries, e.g., of
foreign words. The comprehensive dictionaries named above are based on
older works, and derive ultimately, in large part, from the great lexicographers
and grammarians of the third century of the Moslem era.

It is much to our advantage in using these works that the Arabic philo-
logical tradition is a tradition of authority for the form, meaning, and use of
words, and that, consequently, later compilers constantly quote their predeces-
sors for authority ; the numerous examples from classic poets and the litera-
ture of tradition are also introduced, not as illustrations of usage, but as

GEORGE FOOT MOORE 29

authority, and often in the name both of the poet and of the lexicographer
who first adduced his testimony. In these ways it is frequently possible to
prove that a word of rare occurrence in literature is both old and good Arabic,
or that a loan word was borrowed at an early time.

There are a great many foreign words in Arabic, derived from various
sources — Aramaic, Ethiopic, Greek, and Persian. Many of these were
current, either generally or in particular regions and dialects, before Mo-
hammed ; a vastly larger number were adopted in the first century, when the
Moslem conquests carried Arab armies into remote lands and extended Arab
rule over peoples of diverse speech. Further conquests in the East and the
West, and the peaceful intercourse of trade continually added others. Part of
these borrowings were made directly, part at second or third hand. Many
Greek words, for example, came through Syriac, in which there were not only
many Greek words in common use but a large body of translations in theology,
philosophy, and science, carrying over multitudes of Greek technical terms.
Latin words came chiefly through the late Greek, which contained a consider-
able Latin element ; some of these' also came into Arabic by way of Syriac.

The natural tendency was to Arabicize foreign words by squeezing them into
some one of the Arabic morphological paradigms. In the case of words de-
rived from other Semitic languages this was generally easy, and such words
can often be recognized as alien only by phonetic criteria. Greek and Persian
words were not so pliable ; nevertheless, by the aid of analogy and popular
etymology many of them were made to sound like something Arabic. The
philologists, some of whom were Arabs of the Arabs while others were of
alien — chiefly Persian — lineage, gave much attention to loan words, and en-
deavored to determine the source from which they were borrowed. Special
glossaries of " Arabicized " words were made, and in the larger dictionaries
the derivation of such words is noted.

The main reliance of the Western student engaged in an etymological
investigation is on the works of the native lexicographers ; he may not always
agree with their conclusions, but he cannot dispense with their testimony.
Collections of examples from Arabic authors may serve to supplement the
native lexicons ; but so long as we have no thesaurus of a European type, in
which a large body of illustrative passages is brought together and classified,
what we can add in this way will necessarily be incomplete and often accidental.

To come now from this excursion to the matter which has given occasion
to it, I will set down, to start with, the forms which are authenticated by
the native lexicographers, leaving the discussion of them till after the mean-
ings of the words have been considered. These forms are sijilldt} siqilldf^

^ Etymologically sigilldi. The original sound of g (English g in got^ get) is preserved in
Arabic as spoken in Egypt ; elsewhere it is generally pronounced like English g in gem (in
some dialects, like French^ in /m^/), and the letter is conventionally transliterated by/

30 CICLATOUN SCARLET

siqldfun. The variants which make such a formidable array in the New Eng-
lish Dictionary and elsewhere are unknown either in classical Arabic or — so
far as any record shows — in modem dialects. Siqilldf is expressly said to be
identical in form and meaning with sijilldf ; the dictionaries treat the word
in full under sijilldf.

The definitions come from the scholars whose names make the third cen-
tury of the Moslem era the golden age of Arabic philology. The materials
had been largely collected in the previous centuries, and the foundations of a
scientific treatment in lexicography and grammar had been soundly laid by
Abu *Amr al-*Ala, Halil, al-Laith, al-Kisa1, and Sibawaih ; on these foxmda-
tions their pupils built.

Al-Farra (d. a.h. 207^ = 822-823 a.d.) defines sijilldf, "a woolen thing
that a woman throws over her camel saddle.** Somewhat more precisely, Ibn
Doreid (d. 321 = 933), ** a colored cloth (nama() with which a woman's camel
saddle is covered.*'

In explanation it is to be said that the camel saddle (haudaj) has an arched
framework of wood ; a covering thrown 6ver this protects and conceals the
rider. The word nantaf employed by al-Asma'i in his definition is said (like
zauj\ which is sometimes given as a synonym) to mean, in the speech of the
Bedouins, a kind of dyed stuff, red or green or yellow, neither namaf nor
zatij being used of the material when it is left white. So al-Azharl (d. 270 =
883-884). The nantaf was also used as an outer cover laid over a bed to sleep
on, or for a carpet spread on the ground to sit or lie upon.

Other uses of the word sijilldf are early attested. Abu *Amr (d. 205 =
820-821) says : ** A dark blue {kuhlt)^ robe or mantle is called sijilldf t^'*\
and Ibn al-'ArabI (d. 231 = 845-846) : '* Hazz [a fabric of silk and wool] is
called sijilldfl when it is of dark blue color." In a tradition of Mohammed
it is said : *' There was given him a Persian mantle of hazz sijilldfl'' Another
authority tells us that the adjective is used also of material which is dyed a
pistachio green ; and one lexicographer suggests that the name is derived
from the color (yellow) of the jasmin, which is also called in Arabic sijilldf.
This connection is false, as will be shown below,* but it may be inferred
that the author thought that a material of yellow color would come under
the name.

A third definition of peculiar interest in its bearing on the origin of the
word is the following : " Sijilldf is a figured stuff, the figures of which

^ I have taken these dates from Lane ; where different years are given, I have taken the
earliest The differences are commonly only of a year or two, and for my present purpose
nothing depends upon them.

* 'Dark blue * is the usual, but not the only, meaning of kuhti; * purple * also may be so trans-
lated, and we read in one author of a carbuncle kuhti.

* The so-called " relative " adjective, formed by affixing /to the noun, meaning * of * or * like.'

* See p. 35.

GEORGE FOOT MOORE 31

resemble a seal (Ad tarn). Scholars hold that it is Greek (Romaic)." A verse
is quoted by al-Azhari (d. 883 a.d.) from the poet Humaid ibn Thaur :

" They (fern.) preferred either ornate piirple
Or else figured ^ sijilldt of Irak."

This verse is of importance, in the first place for its age. Humaid ibn
Thaur was a contemporary of the Caliph Omar, and is said, indeed, to have
composed verses in the pagan days before Mohammed.^ We have in it, there-
fore, an example of the use of the word from the first generation of Islamic
poets. In the second place, it attests in this oldest record the figured sijilldt,
** with seals on it."

That the name is Greek is the prevailing opinion. Al-Asma'l is quoted as
saying : *' I asked an old Greek woman in our neighborhood about a namaf
[see above, p. 30], What do you call that? She replied, Sijillatusy Abu
Hatim (al-SijistanI, d. 248 = 862-863), a pupil of al-Asma'i, reports the
same inquiry and answer in his own name ; in another account, if the text is
in order, Ibn Doreid (d. 321 =933) is the questioner.^ Jawallqi (d. 539 =
1 144-1 145), in his glossary of Arabicized words {Miiarrab)^ writes : ''Sijilldt.
. . . Scholars are of the opinion that it is the Greek sijilldins^ Arabicized and
pronounced sijilldtr In one place {Tdj\ V, 150), indeed, I find the opinion
that the word is Persian ascribed to al-Asma'l on the authority of Ibn Doreid ;
but this contradicts the statement quoted above from the same work on the
same authority (IV, 165), and is presumably due to a confusion of some kind
or other.

If we turn now to stqld(un, we find it also defined as a kind of stuff. Ibn
JinnI (d. 392= 1 001 -1002) infers from its behavior in inflection that the final
un is not the Arabic plural ending, for which it might easily be mistaken, but
that the n is radical, and the Greek origin of the word is supported by Abu
Hatim's testimony about sijilldUis already adduced. Similarly the author of
the Tdj puts it down as a Greek word, with radical n ; the oldest lexicons
entered it under sqltn.

A different theory is found, so far as I see, only in the Qdtnus (fourteenth
century a.d.) : ''Siqldtfm is a country in Rum [properly the Byzantine empire ;
often vaguely for western lands], from which the material is called siqld^unl
or siqldtuny The commentator on the Qdtnus, the Seyyid Murtada, fortifies
this assertion by citing the name of a man, 'Ali al-Hasan ibn Ahmad, al-
Siqldtunl, called Ibn Bir, who died in a.h. 5 14 (= i i 20-1 1 2 1 a.d.). No such
country is known to the geographers, and the man*s name is capable of other
explanations. Whatever al-FeiruzabadI may have been thinking about, his
opinion can hardly count against the authority of the older lexicographers.

1 Lit. * sealed,* i.e. with figures like a seal, mu^attam. * Aghani, IV, 98.

• Hence siplldtus in the native lexicons, with the definition, namat rumi (Greek colored
cloth).

32 CICLATOUN SCARLET

To the testimony of the dictionaries may be added some examples from
Arabic authors, which prove that the word was in common use in later times.

Freytag refers to the Thousand and One Nights, IV, 360 (Habicht's
edition), where, in the preparation for a sumptuous banquet, slaves spread,
to set the dishes on, a cloth (stifreh) of zauj al-siqilldf. Zauj\ as has been
noted above, is a colored cloth ; whether it is here called siqilldt from its
color or because it was figured does not appear.

According to Ibn 'Adharl (end of thirteenth century a.d.) in the Baydn al-
Mughrib, II, 319, the famous Mansur (ibn Abu *Amir), at the close of the
campaign in which he sacked St. James of Compostella (a.d. 997), distributed
among his allies 1285 pieces of different kinds of embroidered silk (hazz al-
firdzt), 21 robes of ** sea-wool," 2 'Anbar robes, 1 1 of siqldtun, 1 1 outer gar-
ments with feather-like figures (murayyai\ 7 rugs (anmdf), and 2 garments
of Greek brocade, etc. This list is found also in al-Maqqari (d. 1631 a.d.),
I, 217, being copied from the Baydn.

Edrisi, whose geographical work, written at the instance and under the
patronage of Roger II of Sicily, was completed in 11 54 a.d., in his account
of Almeria in Spain, which was noted for the product of its looms,^ says that
there were in the city in his time 800 silk weavers, and that there was made
in it common silk and brocade and siqldtun, and Ispahan cloth, etc. Al-
Maqqarl (I, 102) multiplies the weavers of Almeria : there were 800 looms
employed on common silk, icxx) on brocades, 1000 on ^isqaldfun, etc.

The examples cited from Ibn 'Adharl and EdrisI are of particular impor-
tance to us because they cany us to Spain ; and the latter is close in time to
the charter of Alfonso (1191) quoted above (p. 25).

We have seen that the oldest recorded use of the Arabic sijilldt is for a
luxurious stuff adorned with seal-like figures, and that the native lexicographers
derive it from the ** Romaic " sijilldt us. For this use of the Latin sigillatus
it will suffice to quote a couple of examples. Trebellius Pollio, who wrote in
the reign of Constantius Chlorus (d. 305 a.d.), in his lives of the ** Thirty
Tyrants " (rebels and pretenders in the times of Valerian and Gallienus), de-
scribes Herod, son of Odenathus of Palmyra,^ as '* homo omnium delicatis-
simus et prorsus orientalis et Graecae luxuriae, cui erant tentoria sigillata et
aureati papiliones et omnia Persica.'* ^

An edict of the emperors Theodosius, Arcadius, and Honorius, of the
year 393 a.d., prescribes : " Nulla mima gemmis, nulla sigillatis sericis, aut
textis utatur auratis. His quoque vestibus noverint abstinendum, quas Graeco
nomine a Latino crustas * vocant, in quibus alio admixtus colori puri rubor mu-
ricis inardescit. Uti sane iisdem scutulatis et variis coloribus sericis, auro sine
gemmis coUo, brachiis, cingulo non vetamus*' {Cod.Theodos. XV, vii, 11).

^ See Vaqut» IV, 517. 8 Scriptores Historiae Augustae,

* Murdered with his father in 266-267 a.d. * Text probably corrupt.

GEORGE FOOT MOORE 33

Latin-Greek glosses give as the equivalent of sigillatuSy fa)8A<»Trf9=f(a)a)T(fe,
on which Pollux : *0 hi KarcumicTO^ j^ltwp iariv 6 eyjoov fwa rj apOt) ivvif>a<T'
liiva * Koi (|(0t>a>ro9 ii ^itwp iKokelro Kal ^atSiwro^.

The forms which the word assumes in Arabic are easily explained. The
neuter sigillatum (Greek *sigilldton) would be reproduced in Arabic as sijil-
Idtun^ in which, as soon as the consciousness of its foreign origin was lost,
the un would inevitably be taken for the Arabic plural ending and dropped,
leaving an apparent singular of a possible Arabic noun-type. Even where
sigilldfus, sigilldtofiy were recognized as Romaic, the foreign inflectional end-
ings would be dropped in " Arabicizing *' the word.^ Precisely the same thing
happened in the case of sigillum <tl'^1\\ov (diploma, letters patent, and the
like, authenticated by a seal), which appears in the Koran (xxi, 104)' as sijill^
and is in common use for the written decision of a judge or a judicial record.

The spelling siqilldf is an independent attempt to represent the Greek or
Latin g^ presumably in a dialect in which Arabic q was pronounced, as it was
early in parts of Arabia, and still is throughout North Africa, as a hard g.
This phonetic peculiarity is shared by siqldtun^ which is a reduction of ^siqiU
ld(un, through the effect of the heavy final stress, or under the influence of
analogy.

From Arabic sijilldf passed into Ethiopic in the form segldf (or segell^\
which occurs in the Ethiopic translation of Isaiah iii, 19-23, an inventory of the
wardrobe and jewelry of a lady of fashion in Jerusalem. It is here the name
of a costly fabric of which fine clothes were made. The Ethiopic translation
of Isaiah was based on the Greek, and segld^ here corresponds to K6KKiva?
The word is found also in unpublished liturgical texts referred to by Dillmann
in his Lexicon. The age of the Ethiopic version is not certainly known.

We should expect to find the word in Syriac, but the native lexicons do
not record it, and only one occurrence is noted by Payne-Smith. This is in
a letter of certain Nestorian bishops in India to the Patriarch (dated 1 504
A.D.), in which they report the arrival of the Portuguese on the Malabar coast.
The Christian commander of the expedition, they say, bestowed on a native
prince "garments of gold and variegated (or brocaded) stuff, that is, s^q^laf'*^
Probably the name is here taken from an Indian vernacular, into which it
had come as a trade term through Persian (see below, p. 35) ; the stuff was
presumably European.

From Arabic siqilldf the " scarlet *' forms arose by resolution of // into rl.
These forms get no recognition from the Arabic lexicographers, who from
the beginning have felt it their mission to stand guard over the purity of the

1 See Ibn Jinn!, and JawallqT, above, p. 31.

* I owe this identification — the solution of a problem which others had given up — to
Professor C. C. Torrey. « Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis, II, i, 597.

34 CICLATOUN SCARLET

language. The author of the Taj (eighteenth century) does, however, note
under siqilldf : "This is what is vulgarly called sakarldf'' (the first two
vowels are uncertain), and quotes a verse from a ** post-classical " poet :

With more of a strut than she in her scarlet gown {sakarldt).

Unfortunately, the age of this attestation is uncertain. The " post-classical "
{muwallad) poets include the contemporaries of Harun al-RashId and his
successors ; al-Mutanabbi (d. 965 a.d.) is sometimes reckoned the last famous
representative of the class, but poets of more recent times are included in it.
Further than this, it can only be said that the substitution of k for g sug-
gests a Persian mouth. In a Persian-Hebrew glossary, from the early decades
of the fourteenth century,^ siqlatun is explained by saqirla(d (here also the
first two vowels are uncertain).

From sakarldf (or saqarld()^ by reduction of the first vowel and subsequent
prothesis,* comes the Spanish escarlata, and, through Spanish, French escar-
latCy English scarlet^ and the rest. In Spanish escarlata is now the name of a
woolen stuff of a red color. The definition of the Academy is : ** Pafio y texido
de lana, tefiido de col6r fino carmesf, no tan subido como el de la purpura 6
grana." The word originally designated the fabric, not the color ; a roll of
Henry III of England (1230 a.d.) speaks of sanguine, brown, red, and even
white scarlet. The restriction to a particular shade of red is more recent, and
the use of the word for the color without regard to the material later still.

A reflux carried the Spanish escarlata back into Arabic in the form, elkarldt.
Dozy (Noms des vitementSy ill) quotes from a manuscript history of the Almo-
ravides, in a list of presents distributed by the Berber prince, Yusuf ibn
Tashfin (d. 1106 a.d.): ** Fifty robes {jubbeh) of eikarldf, that is, of fine
cloth.'* Al-Maqqari speaks of sleeved robes {qabd') of eskarldf.

The i for Spanish s corresponds to Arabic iant, e.g. in iant Ydqub,
St. James of Compostella, and often, and may perhaps be ascribed to local
pronunciation of Spanish.

The Persian saqirldt (so explicitly, " with a and /,*' in the native lexicons)
is thus defined : '* A woolen stuff which is woven in the country of the
Franks." ^ Edmund Castell, in the Lexicon Heptaglotton to Walton's Poly-
glot (1669), quotes from another native lexicon: '' Saqaldt^ etc. . . . telae
genus quod in Romania [Rum] p2uatur." ^ Steingass, Persian-English Dic-
tionary, s.v. : '*A[rabic] saqirldt. Warm woolen cloth, purpet, broadcloth."
It is superfluous to quote more dictionaries ; that the Persian word is borrowed
from Arabic, not the Arabic from Persian, needs no further demonstration.

^ Edited by W. Bacher, 1900. Professor Theodor Noldeke kindly called my attention to
this glossary.

' An instance of the same process in Arabic is 'isqaldtun in the passage quoted above
from al-Maqqari. • Shems al-Loghaiy s.v.

♦ See above, p. 31, n. 3, Arab, sigilldtus^ defined as namat ruml.

GEORGE FOOT MOORE 35

From Persian the word passed as a trade term into various modem
languages of India : it is found in Urdu and Hindustani,^ in Telegu, and
doubtless in other vernaculars, whither it is not incumbent on us to pursue it.
The dictionaries made by Europeans define it as ** scarlet cloth."

The evolution of the various senses of sijilldf, stgld{un, etc., may be con-
ceived as follows : I . A figured stuff, perhaps originally embroidered in
raised designs like embossed metal work (cf. scyphi sigillati), 2. Various
costly fabrics in rich colors. — Ciclaton^ Cicldt.

The differentiated form sakarldf^ saqirldf^ appearing to be another word,
was appropriated to a particular kind of stuff, commonly of some shade of red.
Also the usual color of this stuff. — Escarlata^ Scarlet,

Sijilldf is also, according to one of the earliest lexicographers, Al-Laith (d.
ca. 175 = 791-792), a name for the jasmin (Pers.-Arab.j/^Jx»ff«). Al-Dinawari
(d. 282 = 895-896), the author of a special dictionary of plant names, more
guardedly says that some of the reciters of poetry are of the opinion that
sijilldf is the jasmin. SinjillcH is defined as an aromatic plant,^ as in
the verse :

I love the singing girls and the basil,
And a drink of old wine with sinjilldt}

The word is obviously not Arabic, and as often happens in such cases, the
lexicographer at a loss puts it down as the name of a place, thinking possibly
of Sinjdl^ a town in Persia.

In Syriac we have segeltdy a fragrant plant, defined in the native diction-
aries and writers on materia medica by Arabic siiady a cyperus. In Ara-
maic, also, sigld is a sweet-smelling plant. Thus the Babylonian Talmud,
Sabb. 50 b, describes a cosmetic mixture for cleansing the face, compounded
of one third jasmin, one third aloes (agallochum), and one third sigli} The
word is defined in the Talmudic lexicon of R. Nathan, the Aruch (completed
in I loi A.D.), s.v. 'aphar^ by the Arabic suad. This interpretation is inde-
pendent of the Syriac lexicons, and therefore of the greater weight. The
Sjrriac and Aramaic words correspond to Assyrian sagilatUy which is shown
by the determinative to be the name of a plant (Delitzsch, Handworterbuch^

p. 490).

This old Semitic word, taken over from Syriac into Arabic, was con-
formed to sijilldf (sigillatus) with which it has et5miologically nothing to
do. From Arabic, as the final f proves, it passed into Ethiopic in the form
segldf, the name of a fragrant plant (see Dillmann, Lexicon^ s.v.).

^ See Platts, UrdUf Classical Hindis and English Dictionary ^ 1884 ; Shakespear, Hindustani
Dictionary ; Bumell and Yule, Hobson-Jobson^ s.v. Sucldt,

* The QdmOs^ probably by a misreading or misunderstanding of its authority, makes it
^ sweet basil.* * Aromatic plants in wine, like Waldmeister in a Bowie,

^ See also Berak. 43 b, Sanhedr. 99 b. Low, Aram, Pfiamennamen^ No. 208.

36 CICLATOUN SCARLET

In the foregoing pages I have confined myself as closely as possible to the
Arabic side of the etymological problem. The history of the words and their
meanings in the European languages, and the history of the stuffs they desig-
nate, are fields of investigation in which I should not presume to disport my-
self, even if the limits of this article permitted. My European examples of
the use of ciclaton are all taken from Du Cange, because I was concerned,
not with the word, but with the genesis of the erroneous etymology which
connects it with cyclas — an error to which so eminent an Arabic scholar as
Dozy gave the weight of his authority. I had therefore no reason to draw
upon the ampler collections illustrative of European use which have been
made in more recent times. The same thing is true about "scarlet": the
migrations of the word and the kinds of cloth to which the name was
applied lay outside of my plan, and the inquiry into these questions would
require wide excursions into the history of industry and trade. A complete
solution of such problems, which often hold the key to interesting chapters
in the history of civilization, cannot be reached by the study of words alone ;
the knowledge of the things they stand for is indispensable. But the philol-
ogist may make his contribution to the subject in history of words as words,
leaving the larger task to the historian of art or industry.

The case of Ciclatoun-Scarlet in the dictionaries is, I regret to say, not
singular. A large proportion of the words of Arabic derivation in the New
English Dictionary and the Century Dictionary are as badly treated. A be-
wildering variety of forms are alleged, many of which do not exist in Arabic
at all, and are not made Arabic by printing them in Arabic characters ; mean-
ings which, when not erroneous, are taken at haphazard without regard to history
or semasiology ; assumed relations which are historically highly improbable or
phonetically impossible. It is particularly to be regretted that in the New
English Dictionary^ which will undoubtedly for a long time be the first author-
ity in its field, the compilations of its etymologists were not subjected to a
revision by competent philologists.

SOME REMARKS ON THE ORIGIN OF
ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

Edward S. Sheldon

In the following pages it is intended to set forth a general theory for the
origin in Vulgar Latin of the most popular of the early forms of Romance
verse. To do this in the space available it will be necessary to refrain from
going into all the details that would require examination for a final solution
of the question. Nor do I mean to present the theory as one of whose correct-
ness I am myself absolutely certain. But it does seem to me both simpler and
more plausible than any other with which I am acquainted, and I think
that if rightly applied it will account for all the phenomena more satisfactorily
than other attempts at explanation of the problem.

The Romance verses to be explained are the old narrative verses which we
find well exemplified in Old French, the verses of six, eight, ten, and twelve
syllables (these being the minimiun numbers), and in general I shall have only
these in mind, though I might add the Spanish verse of the Poema del Cid^
explained as Comu has explained it, and possibly the seven-syllable French
verse seen in Aucassin et Nicolette, I shall not discuss whether the Italian
endecasillabo was derived from France or not. Lyric verse is left out of con-
sideration, this allowing even in early times too much play for the art of the
individual poet. If, now, the narrative verse-forms in question were developed
from two — or I might even say one — Vulgar Latin types of accentual verse,
what were those types and how did the Romance verses spring from them ?
These are the questions which call for answer.

Obviously, if such Vulgar Latin verse types existed, the natural sources to
which we first look, besides such popular verses as the soldier songs belong-
ing to the times of Julius Caesar and Aurelian, together with, for instance, the
hymn of Augustine, are those early Latin hymns of whose popular character
we have assurance. I shall give no attention to the old Satumian verse. Of
the hymns in question the most important are the four unquestionably genuine
hymns of Ambrose. But before taking up these hymns I wish to lay down
certain general principles or statements without adducing evidence in support
of them. These are as follows :

I. As in the study of the Romance languages and of Vulgar Latin we dis-
tinguish learned words and popular words, so for the subject of verse we
must distinguish popular or Vulgar Latin verse and learned verse, the latter

38 THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

constructed on the classical or quantitative (metrical) plan. In the time of
Ambrose the composition of verses of the second kind required a certain
degree of learning, and the ordinary speaker of Vulgar Latin, even in Italy,
could not compose such verse with correctness. It is not, to be sure, incon-
ceivable that an accentual verse, arising in some way or other from a learned
quantitative verse, might in course of time become popular either during the
Vulgar Latin period or in the earliest Old French, for instance ; but if such
originally learned verse was to become popular, it must evidently be of pretty
simple and nearly or quite invariable character ; nothing complicated or dis-
tinctly artificial could *'take" with the common people. Hence, the hex-
ameter and the metres seen in Horace's odes are almost certainly to be
excluded from consideration. The sapphic verse, to be sure, may need a few
words (see below, p. 46).

II. In accentual verse of simple type a rigid adherence to the basic scheme
of accents (e.g., one on every alternate syllable) is not necessary. If there
are enough accents in the proper places to make the rhythm obvious to the
ear, that is sufficient ; one here and there, especially near the beginning of a
line, may be out of place without seriously altering the effect. And we may
perhaps go so far as to say that, once the general simple scheme is fully recog-
nized, especially if only one such scheme is in common use, and there can be
no doubt in the reader's or hearer's mind as to the rhythm intended, even a
rather considerable departure from the rigid scheme is permissible. Obviously
different versifiers would vary greatly; the earliest forms of an accentual line
might, especially if sung by marching soldiers, adhere very closely to the rule
of accents on alternate syllables, while men of a later time or under different
circumstances might vary the accents, either from lack of skill or with the
purpose of avoiding a monotonous singsong or attaining some artistic effect.
It should also be remembered that, though accent is a very important feature
in the history of Vulgar Latin and of the Romance languages, it is not neces-
sary to assume that it ever had as much force as in English, nor that those
unaccented syllables which were not lost in Vulgar Latin (or were not lost
until a very late period of Vulgar Latin or only locally) were so slurred as is
often the case with English unaccented syllables.

III. It is necessary to bear in mind for popular verse some of the note-
worthy features of Vulgar Latin pronunciation, particularly those which may
have been among the early features of Vulgar Latin. I might mention differ-
ences from classic Latin in the place of the accent and differences in the num-
ber of syllables, whether due to (vulgarly or in classic Latin) unaccented / (or e)
and u taking on consonantal value or to non-pronunciation of certain unac-
cented vowels existing in classic word-forms.^ Examples, not illustrating
all the possibilities, are fades ^ habeat^ batuity voluit in two syllables, and

^ Cf. Grandgent, Introduction to Vulgar Latin^ Boston, 1907, §§ 1360., iSS^t 224, 232 ff^ 450.

SHELDON 39

voluerunt, voluera{n)t in three with the accent on the first. But it is not
necessary to assume XhaX fades ^ for instance, in three syllables would have
been unrecognizable to the common people, nor that all vulgar pronimciations
were equally old.^

Having now somewhat cleared the way by what precedes, which, whether
fully accepted or not, certainly has a bearing on the problem, I proceed to
the examination of the hymns of Ambrose. Of these only four are imi-
versally admitted to be genuine; the four, namely, which Ebert mentions
in his Allgemeine Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abend-
lande^ I (= Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Literatur von ihren
Anfdngen bis zutn Zeitalter Karls des Grossen), 2. Aufl., 1889, p. 180.
Other hymns have been ascribed to Ambrose, and notably August Steier
has printed fourteen hymns as by Ambrose, in his '* Untersuchungen iiber
die Ex:htheit der Hymnen des Ambrosius " in Jahrbiicher filr classische
Philologie, 28. Supplementband^ 1903, pp. 549-662. In these investiga-
tions, after examining the linguistic side of the problem, he raises the ques-
tion whether any of the hymns he has added to the list of those written by
Ambrose must be rejected on account of its metrical structure, and says
(pp. 644-645) :

" Ehe ich der Sache selbst naher trete, ist es notwendig, die Frage zu
erortem : Hat Ambrosius rhythmisch oder metrisch gedichtet ? Diese Frage
darf man gestiitzt auf die Urteile von Forschem, die sich mit der Metrik
lateinischer Hymnen befasst haben, dahin beantworten, dass Ambrosius seine
Hymnen metrisch, also nach dem Prinzip der Quantitdt der Silben, nicht
rhythmisch, also nicht in Rucksicht auf betonte und unbetonte Silben ge-
dichtet hat. . . . Das Richtige hat dariiber m. E. Spiegel . . . gesagt, wenn
er schreibt : * Des Ambrosius Hymnen weisen denn auch das Kennzeichen
der Kunstdichtung auf, die metrische Form. Freilich ist seine Art, die Silben
zu messen, in etwas verschieden von der antiken Metrik, und seine Lieder
stehen der accentuierenden Poesie weit naher als die Dichterwerke des klassi-
schen Altertums, allein das ist nur eine Folge der veranderten Zeitumstande.'
Hier ist zu bemerken, dass in den Hymnen des Ambrosius Wort- und Versac-
cent zwar ofters zusammenfallt, als dies durchschnittiich bei klassischen Dich-
tem der Fall ist, dass jedoch der Widerstreit zwischen Wort- und Versaccent
noch viel haufiger ist als in spateren Hymnen, in denen ' der Zwiespalt zwi-
schen Hochton und Vershebung allmahlich seltener wird, bis im Laufe der
Zeit die Vershebung ganz und unbedingt an den Hochton gebunden und die
Tondauer der Silben dem Hochton erlegen ist * [these lines Steier quotes

1 The importancei not to say the necessity, of keeping in mind these three principles (and
perhaps others too) seems to me not open to question. It is not necessary to formulate them
as I have done above, but if they are plainly formulated, there is less danger of ignoring them in
one's work.

THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

from Huemer]. In den Hymnen meines Kanons ergeben sich fiir den Wider-
streit zwischen Wortaccent und Versictus nach der von Schlicher ^ . . . ange-
stellten Berechnung folgende 2^ahlen :

Hymn. I, II, III, IV, V, XIV .

Hymn. VI

Hymn. VII

Hymn. VIII

Hymn. IX

Hymn. X

Hymn. XI

Hymn. XII

Hymn. XIII

74
8

II
10

9
12

17
4
4
5.

2
2

35
II

7
8

14
8

50
12

** [Steier adds two footnotes, one saying that Schlicher does not count the
last strophe of hymn III, regarding it as a doxology, and the other making a
similar statement for the fifth strophe and the first line of the sixth strophe
in hymn XIII. These nine lines, then, we must suppose are not counted in
the table. The six hymns (I, II, III, IV, V, XIV) for which the total num-
ber only of conflicts is given for each of the four feet in the line are the six
which Schlicher, following Kayser, admits as by Ambrose. For the first lines
of these six, see below, p. 41, n. i. — Steier concludes:] Auf Grund dieser
Statistik darf behauptet werden, dass alle Hymnen des Ambrosius nach dem
Quantitatsprinzip gebaut sind."

Now the figures at first sight look large enough to justify the conclusion
that these hymns are not accentual, though it is easy to see that the numbers
are pretty small for some of the feet and that the figures for the eight hymns
Steier has added are on the whole larger than would be expected from those
given for the first six.^

But suppose we look at the statistics from a different point of view, notic-
ing the total possible number of opportunities for conflict between metrical
ictus and prose accent, and also how often there is agreement instead of con-
flict. Each of the four feet in each line occurs thirty-two times in each of the

1 John J. Schlicher, T^e Origin of Rhythmical Verse in Late Latin, Chicago, 1900. The
value of this work is seriously diminished by the failure of its author to give due attention
to any of the principles stated above. I should say something similar of Kawczynski's Essai
comparaiif sur Vorigine et Vhistoire des rythmes (Paris, 1889) ; cf. also the objections to the latter
work made by Ramorino (pp. 1 58-1 59) in his " La pronunzia popolare dei versi quantitativi
latini nei bassi tempi ed origine della verseggiatura ritmica " in Memorie della reale accadetnia
delle scienze di Torino, serie seconda^ tomo XLIII, scienze tnorali, storiche e filologiche, pp. 155-222.

* The average numbers for the four feet are for the first six hymns 12 J, 2^, 5 J, 8J; for the
other eight they are iij, 4, 9^, loj. To be sure, one should not attach too much importance
to these averages.

SHELDON

fourteen hymns, except for four lines in hymn IIP and five in hymn XIII,
or in all each foot occurs 448 — 9 = 439 times, and in the group of six hymns
each one occurs 192 — 4 = 188 times. If the figures given in the table are
correct, including all the cases of conflict, there must be agreement in all other
places than those counted in the table. Put in tabular form the agreements
are as follows :

Hymn number

Firstfoot

Second foot

Third foot

Fourth foot

I-IV, V, XIV

188-

74 =

114

188- 17= 171

188-

35= 153

188-

50 = 138

32-

8 =

32- 4= 28

32-

II = 21

32-

12 = 20

VII

32-

15 =

32 — 4 = 28

32-

7= 25

32-

9= 23

VIII

32-

II =

32- 5= 27

32-

8= 24

32-

9= 23

32-

10 =

32- 5= 27

32-

6= 26

32-

9= 23

32-

15 =

32 — 2 = 30

32-

9= 23

32-

13= 19

32-

9 =

32- 8= 24

32-

13= 19

32-

14= 18

XII

32-

12 =

32 — 2 = 30

32-

14= 18

32-

14= 18

XIII

27-

10 =

27 — 2 = 25

27-

8= 19

27-

7 = 20

Totals . .

439-

164 =

275

439 - 49 = 390

439-

III = 328

439-

137 = 302

If we add these totals we find 1295 agreements out of 1756 places where
agreement (or conflict) is possible, and of the conflicts 164 are in the first
foot, a larger number than in any other ; that is, at the beginning of the line,
where in accentual verse this irregularity need raise no difficulty.^ But this is
not all. It will be observed that in Steier's table some of the instances of
greatest frequency of conflict (of divergence from a strictly accentual scheme,
one might say, if one were to make a comparison from that point of view)
occur in the hymns which as the result of his investigations, perhaps not
entirely convincing, he has added to the six previously accepted by Schlicher.
We cannot from his table tell the figures for the four hymns which are cer-
tainly the work of Ambrose, nor do I care to make a separate table of my own

1 1 follow Steier*s numbering. For the six hymns (the others I need not mention individu-
ally) the first lines are: I. Aetemererum conditor; II. lam surgit hora Urtia ; III. Deus^ creator
omnium; IV. Intende^ qui regis Israel (the second strophe begins, Veni^ redemptor gentium) ;
V. Splendor patemae gloriae ; XIV. Aetema Christi munera. The first four of these are the
admittedly genuine hymns by Ambrose.

* Steier notices that O. Brugman had observed that ** im jambischen Trimeter der alteren
Dichter jener Widerstreit vor allem im ersten und letzten Fuss begiinstigt ist," and that the
figures g^ven by Schlicher show a similar state of things for Ambro^^'s use of the iambic dime-
ter (in six hymns). This is also true, as the table shows, for the whole fourteen hymns recog-
nized by Steier. I do not deny that Ambrose's hymns are quantitative, but I emphasize the
importance of accent in them. They are not in Vulgar Latin ; they are learned quantitative
verse, but are strongly influenced by Vulgar Latin verse. No late Latin rhythmical verses can
with any certainty be brought forward as specimens of Vulgar Latin versification unless their
vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciations are clearly not learned ; but learned or semi-learned
verses may be influenced by the vulgar versification.

42 THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

on the same plan for them.^ It is enough to say that for the six hymns grouped
together the number of agreements between verse ictus and prose accent is
576 out of 752 possible agreements, or rather more than three fourths, and
this takes no account of the fact that 74 out of the 1 76 conflicts occur at the
beginning of the line. This is a remarkably high proportion, and it at once
suggests the question whether Ambrose did not write these hymns, deliber-
ately or unconsciously, in such a way that they are at once quantitative or
metrical and accentual or rhythmical, though neither system is followed with
an absolutely unfailing observance of rigid rules. I doubt if it is possible to
read aloud the four hymns in question as prose, but with a slight pause at the
end of every line, without feeling that they are really accentual verses ; and,
once that is felt, one almost instinctively makes the necessary accommodations
of accent to fit such a scheme. The ear, not the eye, should be the judge,
and the verses should not be considered individually, but read in succession,
the rhythm, wherever there might be room for doubt, being fixed for the ear
by the verses which precede. The verses which may seem most difficult to
read accentually are : (i) where two short syllables take the place of one long,
as in IV, i, 17, 19 ; here the two short syllables can be so rapidly gone over
as not to interfere with the general rhythm; geminae (IV, 19) may indeed
have been commonly pronounced ^^w*;/a^, and possibly a taVmo for thalatno
was in existence ; (2) the lines ending in a dissyllable, of which, if I have
counted correctly, there are forty-two, no one of them, it is true, beginning a
hymn; (3) the line IV, 8 {Talis decet partus Detim), in which all the four
prose accents are in conflict with the usual accentual rhythm. But the preced-
ing verses may guide to the right rhythm, which can be brought out by divid-
ing force between the even and the odd syllables so that neither the usual
rhythm nor the prose accents are lost.^

Moreover we have direct testimony to the popular character of Ambrose's
hymns, including necessarily the structure of the verse (his verse must have
been like popular verse, or at least so similar to it as to find ready acceptance),

1 I have, however, for the four admittedly genuine hymns, counted the lines which as ac-
centual lines are correct according to strict rules {Veritas^ for instance, is of course counted as
having two accents, one, a secondary accent, on the syllable next but one to the main accent) ;
and I have also made a count which includes these verses and those in which there is only one
easily admissible irregularity of accent, namely, at the beginning of the line. For I these num-
bers are, if my count is correct, fifteen and twenty-two out of the thirty-two; for II they are
eleven and seventeen; for III, ten and twenty-one (I include all the thirty-two lines) ; for IV,
ten and sixteen. For all four the totals are forty-six and seventy-six. In other words, considerably
more than half the 128 lines are practically perfect as accentual verses, and for almost all the
others a slight accommodation with some forcing of the accents is easy, the general (accentual)
iambic rhythm being pretty plain.

^ It is not absolutely necessary to assume that all the hjrmns of Ambrose were so accentual
as some of them appear to be ; it may be that in one or the other, even among the unquestion-
ably genuine hymns, he resisted somewhat, consciously or not, the accentual influence, the
reality of which it seems impossible to deny.

SHELDON 43

in that his own words (see Ebert, Allgem. Gesch.^ I, 177 ff., and Ebert's com-
ments on the passages he quotes; also ibid., 250-251) inform us that his
hymns were actually sung by the whole body of the worshippers in the church
service. This makes it clearer why his verses show so strong an approxima^
tion to the accentual form, if indeed they are not really accentual in plan as
well as quantitative ; and we could infer with great probability, if we had only
these hymns with the words of Ambrose quoted by Ebert, that such accentual
verses, with accents prevailingly on the even syllables, were in common use,
and that knowledge of them was not confined to the lowest classes, in which
they may have had their origin. And when we consider the well-known soldier
verses, where the accent is with great regularity on the uneven syllables, the
hymn of Augustine, and such other iambic or trochaic verses as seem to be
of a popular character,^ it does not seem at all improbable that accentual verses
with the accent pretty regularly on alternate syllables, sometimes the even,
sometimes the odd syllables, and of varying length were or came to be in
common popular use during the Vulgar Latin period. Some of the forms may
well have been more popular than others, and some indeed may not have come
into anything like general use till the eighth century or even later. And,
further, I add that I do not think there is any satisfactory evidence that any
other kind of verse than this alternating type was really popular during the
Vulgar Latin period.

With the qualification as to dates which I have added, the derivation of the
popular Old French verse-forms from these Vulgar Latin verse-forms, the
number of syllables remaining essentially unchanged, and the distribution of
accents likewise remaining unchanged for a time, seems to me probable. As

the octosyllable comes from original l L l l (in the strictest form),

so, for example, the six-syllable verse points to an original L ^2. ^j.^

and the decasyllabic to an original l l l l l (with perhaps

a caesura in either of two places). Grober (Grdr. d. rotn. PhiL^ II, i, 443)
derives the French octosyllable, as seen in the St, Leger poem and later, from
the Latin hymns, not mentioning the possibility of a Vulgar Latin verse as its
origin or of influence of such Vulgar Latin verse on the hymns ; and this
might be true of the St, Leger poem without necessarily holding good for the
French octosyllable in general. Cf. also Stengel in Grober's Grdr,^ II, i, 22.
It will be seen that this resembles the idea expressed by Gaston Paris
when he said {Romania^ XIII, 625^ of French verses : " Les vers de quatre,
six, huit, dix, douze syllabes ne sont que des variations d*un mfime type, qui
i Torigine avait peut-^tre un accent sur chaque syllabe paire." But I put the
origin of some or all of these forms back into a distinctly Vulgar Latin period,

^ Cf. Ramorino, ** Pronunzia popolare," pp. 21 1-2 15, and a number of the iambic and tro-
chaic verses in Buecheler, Carmina Laiina Epigraphica,
« Cf. also Rom., XV, 137-138 ; XXII, 575-576.

44 THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

and propose a similar origin for Old French (and Spanish) popular verse with
the accent on uneven syllables, not assuming a change for French from
** trochaic " to " iambic " accentual rhythm. It becomes necessary to meet the
difficulty he speaks of. This change (from rhythmical ** trochaic " to rhythmical
** iambic"), he says, "a dd s'op^rer en m^me temps que la langue perdait
toutes les ultifemes, sauf V a . . . c'est-i-dire vers le VIII® siMe. Tous les
vers frangais, i mon avis, remontent i cette p^riode, et ceux qui existaient
auparavant devaient etre assez diff^rents." Also we need to account for the
restriction of the fixed accents in these French verses to one (or two when
there is a caesura), and for the allowed syllable containing a feminine e at the
end of the verse and just before the caesura, this syllable not being counted
as altering the character of the verse.

Of these three questions I take the last first. In the alternating type of
accentual verse the general rhythm is the same whether the accents are on
even or on uneven syllables. Unless you know how the verse begins you can-
not tell which you have before you, and it could make no essential difference,
either for Vulgar Latin or Old French, whether the last syllable is accented
or not. The same explanation applies to femihine e before the caesura in
mediaeval French verse, the pause giving the first part of the verse more or
less the effect of a complete verse by itself. (I avoid the words " anacrusis,"
'' catalectic," "acatalectic," ** iambus," "trochee," "dimeter," "trimeter,"
etc., as properly to be used only of quantitative verse, as interfering with a
clear perception of the facts in accentual verse, and as possibly confusing.)

Next, a reduction in the number of accents is easily explained by the fact
that even in a long verse not many are needed to fix the accentual rhythm
(see above, pp. 38 ff.), and with the cultivation of the art of versification a
reduction so great as is seen in the octosyllables of Chretien de Troyes, for
instance, which have only one fixed accent, is intelligible, and it justifies itself
by the effect on the ear when the verses are read aloud. Perhaps it is then
necessary (as was. previously usual) to have exactly eight syllables with the
accent on the eighth ; otherwise the rhythm might be spoiled. But that
originally there was not this one accent only is clear from the tenth-century
verses in the St. Leger^ where Gaston Paris {Romania^ I, 294) found that out
of 240 verses 222 show an accent on the fourth syllable. It is, therefore, by
no means improbable that the original strict scheme called for an accent on
all four even syllables.

As to the first question, the difficulty which Paris found, it may be said
that the Italian endecasillabo is sufficiently different from the French deca-
syllable, though the two verses are essentially identical, to make it uncertain
whether the Italian form is derived from France. If it is not, then there
seems to be at least one French form of verse for which it is scarcely possible
to assume a change from rhythmical "trochaic" to rhythmical "iambic"

SHELDON 45

movement due tx) loss of certain vowels in Latin final syllables, which were
not regularly lost in Italian. That Old French accentuation favors ** iambic "
rhythm is true, but iambic verses were common in Latin too, and seem to
have been easily composed in both metrical and rhythmical forms, quite as
easily as trochaic verses. But, leaving aside the doubtful case of the rela-
tion of the French decasyllabic to the Italian verse, I do not think the diffi-
culty felt by Paris is really a serious one. A Vulgar Latin accentual verse

•

with accents in general on the even syllables is so simple and easy a type for
popular use that it could easily be retained, the old verses being changed, as
changes became necessary, in various ways, for example, by addition of one
or more syllables here and there, during the period while the Latin vowels
were gradually ceasing to exist. The definite article may have been a very
useful word, and perhaps masculine and feminine verse-endings were for a
time not kept distinct so carefully as was the case later. The language change
cannot have been a sudden one, and traces of the older pronunciation doubt-
less lingered in the verse for some time after ordinary speech had completely
lost the sounds in question. There must have been a time during which old
and new pronunciations could be heard side by side, while the verse type
remained unchanged. Perhaps neither ordinary speakers nor minstrels ever
felt any embarrassment during this period of remarkable linguistic change or
were even conscious of it.

With the tendency to make old verse ictus and prose accent coincide ap-
parent in the older popular alternating verse of Vulgar Latin, the question
how classic Latin quantitative verses were read in the earlier Middle Ages,
whether according to the prose accents ^ or not, loses almost all its importance
for the view here presented of the origin of vernacular Romance verse.
Metrical iambic and trochaic verses would naturally fall into the alternating

^ Cf. RamorinOi " Pronunzia popolare dei versi quantitativi," and reviews of it, notably
those in Romania, XXII, 574 ff. ; Litbl.f, germ, u, roman. Phil.y XV, 1894, coll. 153-154 ; Revue
Critique, JV^S., XXXVIII, 500-501 (noteworthy is the citation from Virgilius Maro) j Rassegna
bibliogr. della lett. ital., I, 220-221. From this last I quote a few lines :

^ Alcune forme del dimetro giambico convengono con 1* endecasillabo sdrucciolo [the
sdrucciolo ending I am inclined to look upon as an easy Italian development] :

Phastlus ille quern videtis hospites.

. . . Ma non in tutte le combinazioni d' accenti quel versi convengono coi nostri. Venendo poi
ai versi italiani con accenti fissi, come il decasillabo, Pottonario e in parte il senario, la teoria
del Ramorino non trova applicazione se non dove V accento abbia preso il posto dell' arsi
quantitativa. Cosi, per esempio, il paremiaco puro conviene col decasillabo nella forma

Deus ignee fans animarum

ma non nelle altre. Da ci6 s' intende che tra le forme dei versi classic!, nelle varie combina-
zioni dei loro accenti, il senso ritmico popolare f ece una scelta : il cercare le rag^oni di questa
sarebbe un utile complemento alia bella memoria del Ramorino, che spiega in parte, ina non in
tutto, le orig^ni della nostra "metrica."

46 THE ORIGIN OF ROMANCE VERSIFICATION

accentual form, and other verses could scarcely become popular but remained
learned, even though they might be attempted by men of very little learning.
One might say that there was no " pronunzia popolare dei versi quantitativi
latini " (except perhaps of iambics and trochaics) ; such learned or semi-
learned verses were over the heads of the common people. At most one
could speak of such pronunciation as that of more or less ignorant clerics.

It is, to be sure, quite conceivable that some such semi-learned reading of
metrical verses could, if of a sufficiently simple and unvarying character,
become the basis for a popular form of verse (see above, p. 38). The sapphic
verse, read with accents as in prose, has been proposed as the source of the
Old French decasyllabic and the Italian tndecasillabo^ and a strong (though
to me not convincing) and ingenious argument has been made for this opin-
ion.^ I have no intention of arguing against it here, but I call attention to
the fact that the author does not deny influence of iambic verse (cf. pp. 265,
276 of his book), and add that the sapphic verse read accentually becomes
in most cases practically identical with the alternating type of verse assumed
above as the source of the most popular forms of mediaeval verse in the
Romance languages. Thus, Integer vitae scelerisque purus read in that man-
ner is-£. L — L1.J, — L_, where only the first accent is not strictly in

place, and this variation is quite admissible. Some sapphics indeed would
give at once the strict alternating form ; as, Non eget Mauris jaculis neque
arcu. If quantitative sapphic verses were later read simply with accents
as in prose, I suspect the real cause was the influence of Vulgar Latin
alternating verse.

1 See Francesco d' Ovidio, ** Sull* origine dei versi italiani " (reprinted with additions from
the GiomaU storico della letUratura italiana^ 18918) in his Versificazione italiana e arte poetica
medievaU^ Milan, 1910.

THE SCULPTURES OF THE GOLDEN GATE

AT FREIBERG

KuNo Francke

The two most comprehensive attempts to give a consistent interpretation
of the sculptures adorning the portal of the Church of Our Lady at Freiberg
in Saxony have been made by Anton Springer^ on the one hand, and by
O. Fischer^ and R. von Mansberg' on the other.

Springer sees the fundamental idea of the whole in the mystic marriage
between Christ and the Church, and all the scenes and figures of the portal
he interprets as having a symbolic relation to this mystic marriage. ** They
are rooted," he says,* **in the conception that Christ, accompanied by numer-
ous witnesses, weds himself to the Church ; they glorify Mary, as the visible
incarnation of the Church and consequently as a symbolic substitute for the
sponsa Chfisti ; and they exalt the heavenly Bridegroom of Judgment Day.'*
The witnesses of the wedding Springer finds in the eight individual figures
at the two sides of the door, whom he designates as Daniel, the Queen of
Sheba, Solomon, John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, David, Bathsheba,
and Aaron ; and he shows in detail how every one of these figures by ecclesi-
astical writers and poets of the Middle Ages has been brought into more or
less direct connection with the union between Christ and the Church. The
wedding itself he finds indicated in the relief of the tympanum, representing
the Adoration of the Magi, and in the Coronation of Mary of the first archir
volt. The heavenly Bridegroom of Judgment Day he finds suggested in the
Paradise and Resurrection scenes of the three upper archivolts.

One needs only to summarize this interpretation in order to see its defects.
For if the artist really had made the mystic marriage between Christ and the
Church the central thought of his composition, he certainly would not have
placed the Adoration of the Magi, a scene which is clearly not an adequate
symbol of this marriage, in the very center of the whole portal ; and he would
not have relegated the Coronation of Mary by Christ, a fit symbol of Christ's
union with the Church, to a secondary and inconspicuous position in the archi-
volts. As for the supposed glorification of the heavenly Bridegroom in the

• " Ueber die Quellen der Kunstdarstellungen im Mittelalter," in Berichte der sdchsischen
Geselhckaft der Wissensckaften (1879), XXXI, i if.

• " Die goldene Pforte zu Freiberg/' in Repertorium fur Kunstwissenschaft (1886), IX, 293 ff.

• Daz hohe liet von der maget. Symbolik der Skulpturen dergoldenen Pforte (1888). * P. 40.

48 SCULPTURES OF THE GOLDEN GATE AT FREIBERG

Resurrection and Paradise scenes, this conjecture equals the conception of a
play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out ; for there is not even a suggestion of
the figure of Christ in these scenes. Springer's interpretation, then, in spite
of its illuminating quality in the identification of individual figures, is too
forced to be plausible as a whole.

Fischer's and Mansberg*s analysis is simpler and more natural. Both
writers proceed from the Adoration of the Magi, the relief of the tympanum,
as the center of all the various figures and scenes ; and they find in its sub-
ject, the glorification of Mary, the keynote of the whole composition. To
paraphrase some of Fischer's words,^ the Golden Gate is a plastic hymn in
praise of the Virgin, the ianua coeli. She appears as the center of all creation :
below her, at the two sides of the door, patriarchs and prophets as represent-
atives of the life on earth ; above her, in the inner archivolts, the heavenly
hierarchy; in the outermost archivolt, redeemed and transfigured mankind
reechoing the chorus of universal jubilation.

Both the interpretations mentioned are largely based upon the testimony
of mediaeval hymnology and homiletic literature ; neither of them adduces the
testimony of the religious drama. And yet, it seems to me, the analogy of the
Freiberg sculptures with a particular class of dramatic productions of the Middle
Ages, the Christmas plays, is both obvious and fruitful.^

As Marius Sepet* has shown, there is a close connection between the
Christmas plays from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries and the so-called
Prophet plays, dramatic scenes derived from a pseudo-Augustinian sermon,
in which prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament are called upon by
St Augustine to quote, one after another, their testimony about the coming of
Christ and thereby to confound the opposition of the Jews against the expected
Messiah. The names of these witnesses to Christ's coming and the manner
in which they are introduced vary in the different plays. In the troparium
of Limoges* — to mention a few of the more important of these plays —
St. Augustine is replaced by the precentor, and the witnesses called by him
are Israel, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Habakkuk, David, Simeon, Eliza-
beth, John the Baptist, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar, and the Sibyl. In Xhtfestum
asinorum of Rouen,* Israel is omitted, but there are added fifteen other wit-
nesses, among them Aaron, Balaam and his ass, and Zacharias. In the Bene-
diktbeuren Christmas play,® St. Augustine, supported by Isaiah, Daniel, the
Sibyl, and Balaam, engages in an eager dispute with the archisynagogus and
the Jews about the Messianic prophecies ; and finally, when neither his own

* Rtpertorium fur Kunstw.y IX, 294-296.

* I have briefly suggested this analogy m my Handbook of the Germanic Museum of Harvard
University (1906), p- 17- * Les Prophites du Christ, pp. 147 ff.

^ Ed. Coussemaker, Drames liturgiques du moyen dge^ pp. 1 1 ff .

* Ed. Ducange, III, 460 f., SM.festum asinorum,

* Ed. Froning, Das Drama des Mittelalters, III, 877 ff.

FRANCKE 49

arguments nor the words of the prophets are sufficient to convince his oppo-
nents, he resorts to a demonstratio adoculos : the performance of the Nativity
itself, beginning with the Annunciation and ending with the death of Herod.^
The St. Gall Christmas play ^ differs from all the preceding plays in this, that
here the controversial character of the pseudo-Augustinian tradition is entirely
effaced. The prophets — they are Moses, Balaam, David, Solomon, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Daniel, Micah — testify, not at somebody's bidding, but of their
own accord ; they step forth one after another and each of them tells of a
particular phase of the work of salvation to be carried out by Christ. One of
the characters, Daniel, includes even an account of the Resurrection of the
Flesh in his prophecy. After these eight speeches there follows the Nativity
play proper, from Mary's betrothal to Joseph to the Slaughter of the Innocents
and the Flight into Egypt.^

There is no need of a formal argument to prove that in this combination
of Prophet and Nativity plays we have a striking parallel to the most con-
spicuous part of the sculptures of the Freiberg portal : the eight prophet
figures at the right and left of the door and the relief of the Adoration of
the Magi, one of the most important scenes of the Nativity cycle, in the
tympanum. Instead of calling the Golden Gate either, with Springer, a plastic
representation of the mystic marriage between Christ and the Church, or,
with Fischer and Mansberg, a plastic hymn to the Virgin, we may call at least
this part of it a Christmas play in stone.

But even the remaining part of this composition, the plastic ornament of
the archivolts, receives, it seems to me, a better explanation by connecting it
with the joyous, idyllic character of the dramatic representations of the Christ-
mas cycle than by any other literary parallel. The subject of the innermost
archivolt, the Coronation of Mary, although apparently it has never formed an
actual part of the Christmas cycle, may be designated as potentially a joyful
finale of all those charming scenes which lead from the Annunciation to the
Flight into Egypt. As for the other three archivolts, the treatment of their
central theme, the Resurrection of the Flesh and the reception of the blessed
in Paradise, is marked by the same serenity and hopefulness of expression
which characterizes the Christmas idyl ; the terror of Doomsday is entirely
absent from it.

At the same time, it is just the conception of Judgment Day which con-
nects these scenes no less than the Adoration scene of the tympanum with
the figures of the prophets at the sides of the door. For the Last Judgment

1 A Tirolese Christmas play of the fifteenth century (Pichler, Das Drama des Mittelalters
in Tifvly pp. 5 ff.) shows Isaiah and Ezekiel disputing with the Jews. In an Erlau Christmas
play (Kummer, Erlauer Spiele, p. 5) only the protest of the Jews is left of the scene.

* Ed. Joseph Klapper, in Germanistische Abhandlungen, XXI, 77-87. The introduction,
PP- 53 ^-y ^3 ^ good analysis of the Prophet scene.

» Vv. 245 ff.

50 SCULPTURES OF THE GOLDEN GATE AT FREIBERG

is, beside the Nativity, the great subject of Christian prophecy ; and it is sig-
nificant that the oldest German Judgment play is introduced, like the Christmas
plays, by a Prophet scene.^

Two figures in the group of prophets at the Golden Gate seem to me to
have a particular reference to the Resurrection and Paradise scenes of the
archivolts : the two women next to Solomon and David. Anton Springer calls
them the Queen of Sheba and Bathsheba, and he finds in their relation to Sol-
omon and David symbols of the mystic marriage between Christ and the Church.
I prefer to call both of them Sibyls, although the figure next to Solomon might
retain the designation proposed by Springer in a somewhat modified sense,
since the Queen of Sheba in mediaeval tradition is often identified with a
Sibyl. It is she who prophesies to Solomon the birth of Christ, the redemp-
tion of mankind by his death, the subsequent decay of church and empire, the
advent of Antichrist, and the Last Judgment.^ The name of Bathsheba for
the woman next to David, it seems to me, should not be retained ; * nothing
prevents us from seeing in her an illustration of the line " teste David cum
Sibilla." She is clearly a counterpart of the woman companion of Solomon,
and both correspond to the stage directions of the ordinarium of Rouen :
** Sibylla coronata et muliebri habitu omata." *

1 Rudolf Klee, Das mitUlhockdeutsche Spiel vom jungsten Tage, pp. 69 ff. The prophetic
personages appearing here are Joel, Zephaniah, St Gregory, Job, and St Jerome. Cf. Karl
Reuschel, ** Die deutschen Weltgerichtsspiele," in Teutonia^ IV, 1 10 ff.

* Cf. " Sibillen Boich," ed. Schade, in Geistliche Gedichte des 14, und /f. Jahrhundtris vom
Niederrhein, pp. 303 flf. ; F. Vogt, " Sibyllen Weissagung," in PBB., IV, 86 ff.

* Mansberg*s designation of this fig^e as Ecclesia would demand as its counterpart on the
other side of the door an impersonation of the Synagog^ — which is absent

* Ducange, s.v. festum asinorum. — Through Lactantius, Inst. Div.^ I, 6, the conception of
the ten Sibyls had become common property of mediaeval tradition. The appearance of a Sibyl
in the troparium of Limoges and the Benediktbeuren Christmas play has been noted above.
Two Sibyls together with eight Prophets are found on Syrlin's Bishop's Chair of Ulm Cathedral.

A FANTASY CONCERNING THE EPITAPH

OF SHAKSPERE

Barrett Wendell

" Good friend, for Jesus* sake forbear
To dig the dust enclosed here,"

and SO on. Just where these Hnes may have come from I know not ; nor
whether they are frequent on old gravestones. They are on Shakspere's;
and Shakspere's has stayed inviolate in Stratford Church for almost three
hundred years.

Unless my memory is all at fault, the doggerel character of this quatrain
has been presented as an argument against the authenticity of Shakspere's
plays and poems. Whoever wrote these, the whole world would grant, was the
greatest poet of our literature. Whoever wrote Shakspere's epitaph wrote
sad stuff. Tradition attributes the verses to him. Grant the tradition true,
and you have proved him beneath the level of the poetry set forth in his
name, if not of all poetry whatsoever.

To pretend, in view of this most reasonable argument, that his epitaph
has in it true Shaksperean quality may seem preposterous. The poems of
Shakspere were addressed to the cultivated and fashionable taste of his time ;
and accordingly are highly studied. The plays of Shakspere were addressed
to the popular audiences of his time ; and accordingly, though often so care-
less as to warrant the stricture that he wanted art, are constantly and freely
ingenious. The epitaph of Shakspere is assumed to have been addressed to
posterity ; it is poor stuff, even in view of the posterity which curdles about
us nowadays ; unstudied, devoid of ingenuity, it reveals him, lying there, in
all the nudity of the vulgar commonplace actually his when he lived and
moved and had his being under Queen Elizabeth and King James. How any
sane man nowadays can call it Shaksperean passes belief.

Something of this would have troubled me until a few years ago. One
autumn day I chanced to be in Stratford Church, looking at the grave old
stone, and marvelling a little that it had stayed undisturbed. England is an
older country than our America ; more used, by centuries, to the dusty accu-
mulation of death. Instead of filling barren fields with new and ever new and
swelling generations of the departed, the English can always find room for
those who seek sepulture in the ancient and inextensive acres of the Lord.
The incumbent of an English parish, they say, generally has a fee for every

52 EPITAPH OF SHAKSPERE

burial in his church or his churchyard. Wherefore, since before the Conquest,
there has been no want of room in either. Yet Shakspere still rests beneath
the stone they put above him when the flowers on his grave were fresh. Match
this security in all England, if you can. Even royal dust has blown about in
the winds of three centuries ; this repose of Shakspere's is almost unique,
when you reflect that, at the utmost, he was finally a small, self-made country
gentleman, with neither heir male nor considerable estate.

Ruminating thus, I happened to observe, in the church wall at my left, —
close beside the newly colored bust of the poet, on whose hazel eyes the after-
noon sun cast a revivifying gleam, — the outline of a walled-up doorway. You
can see it in any photograph of the chancel wall ; it is within an easy stone-
toss of the grave where Shakspere lies in his wondrously prolonged peace.
A verger — or whatever they call the black-gowned being who watches you,
and takes your fees, in such places — chanced to be at my elbow. I carelessly
asked him where that door had led to. He didn't rightly know, he said ; but
the story was that it used to lead to the chamel house. If so, it had been
walled up when that grim sanctuary for the communion of the dust had been
done away with.

Now whether this tradition has in it a particle of truth I do not pretend to
know ; nor yet have I any purpose of inquiring. At least it has been a local
tradition at Stratford, in all likelihood neither more nor less worthy of credence
than that which attributes to Shakspere himself the invention, or the selection,
of the doggerel quatrain still above whatever may be left of his mouldering
human frame. The one truth above peradventure here is that the two distinct
traditions completely harmonize, each defining the other. In this harmony,
and only in this, the lines at last sound Shaksperean.

For look at what little sure record remains of the life of him. A man who
had his way to make made the same, in a material way, respectably. When
his savings from his earnings got to be palpable, he began to buy land ;
at about the same time, his evidently ruined father managed to have arms
granted him — a luxury which demanded at least fees. The inference of com-
mon sense is that Shakspere, as a sound and sensible Englishman, desired
to pass his later years, and to face eternity, in the character of an English
gentleman, who could put forward some formal claim to having inherited
his quality. The choice of his burial spot, in the mid-chancel of his parish
church, crowns the story. The man might have sunk to obscurity among the
vulgar ; he chose to rise above them — or else recorded facts imply nothing
whatever concerning his earthly aspirations.

Yet he did not really found a family ; neither did he leave such a fortune
as should be apt to preserve the memory of him, as a man, very long after
decent friends had laid him in a decent grave. Nowadays, of course, he is
immortal. In his own time, he was a successful playwright and manager, —

WENDELL 53

a man, apart from his recent arms and his petty estate, of about such con-
sideration as a prosperous reporter might be among ourselves, or one who
draws good pictures for a popular magazine. Personally, in the country, he
was respectable enough ; professionally, in London, he had been at best
Bohemian. The tavern scenes in Henry IV portray such surroundings as
those in which the corpse of Robert Greene was traditionally laurel-crowned
by a hostess who might have gossipped with her of the Boar's Head in East-
cheap ; such surroundings as those m which tradition has it that Christopher
Marlowe met his end amid company such as Doll Tearsheet ornamented ; such
surroundings as bred the deathless poetry of .the Elizabethan drama. To the
chamel house they went, most of them, almost before their dust was dry —
Greene and Marlowe, Falstaff and Nym and Pistol, Hostess and Doll. The
chamel house awaited the skull of Yorick, when Hamlet had done with com-
menting on the empty vanity thereof. Imperial Caesar himself, when left
unbumed, might well stop holes. Not a sepulchre of sovereign antiquity but
has oped, his ponderous and marble jaws. What was to become of that
where some small country gentry, hardly yet acknowledged as such, should
deposit the kindly Bohemian, whose shrewd savings had made them a bit
better in this world than he or than his forbears, who were theirs ?

In the year of grace 1616, the answer to this obvious question obviously
lay mostly in the discretion of a fairly obvious line of small functionaries —
namely, the successive sextons of Stratford Church. When the parson thereof,
in time to come, should happen to want space, for a new fee, he would prob-
ably address himself to the sexton for advice as to where such space might
best be found. Any normal sexton would be disposed to choose it as near
the chamel house as might be ; it is easier to toss bones a stone's throw than
to manage their reburial, or to carry them, or to wheel them, across a hubbly
churchyard. Stratford chancel was a fine place for a small gentleman to lie
in, but perilously near that practicable doorway in its northern wall. An hour's
work on the part of the gravedigger, and bones laid there in King James's
time might well mingle with those of previous generations long before the
seventeenth century had mn its course ; which would have been comfortable
enough for the gravedigger, but deeply unwelcome to one of the departed
who in life had loved personal consideration.

In such circumstance, the most prudent course for a man of sense would
evidently have been to address himself, as cogently as might be, to the grave-
diggers. How well Shakspere understood this kind of creature is implied in
Hamlet. Just there, he had no need of touching on one phase of such char-
acter pretty certain to influence action — its superstition. To your gravedigger,
your dead man is a dead man, until something occurs to suggest that he may
somehow or somewhere be alive ; then your gravedigger may perhaps display
a degree of respect for your dead man's prejudices remarkably different from

54 EPITAPH OF SHAKSPERE

his stolid disregard of the dead in general. No sane gravedigger has senti-
mental scruples about corpses ; few gravediggers of the seventeenth century
can have had eager liking for the visitations of ghosts.

Suppose, then, that the lines above the dust of Shakspere were addressed
not to posterity but to the sextons who might at will have cast what was left
of him through the open door of Stratford chamel house. Suppose that for
a century the lines gave hesitation to sextons who loved their stoups of liquor
and their night's sleep. Remember that for the two ensuing centuries that
grave has been a shrine of pilgrimage, almost as curious as it has been reverent.
Remember that the stone still stays undisturbed. Then, for sheer power of
human appeal, match the epitaph, if you can. If you cannot, ask yourself
whether after all, invented or selected, no matter which, it is not supremely
Shaksperean.

But do not forget, the while, that this is no piece of laborious scholarship ;
I have offered you only a fantasy, sprung from the stray word of a Stratford
verger, one autumn afternoon, years ago.

JOHNSON AND HIS FRIENDSHIPS

Charles Townsend Copeland

Boswell's Life ofjohnsotiy without contest the best biography in the world,
probably has at least a hundred readers for one that ever looks into the Diary
and Letters of Madame D'Arblay — Madame D'Arblay, who began life as
Fanny Bumey. And if one book is to be read and the other neglected, it
were well that a thousand persons should study Boswell for one that looks at
Bumey. But 'tis pity that every reader of Boswell and lover of Johnson
should not also know the Diary.

For Boswell, with all his variety, gives an idea of Johnson that is as in-
complete as it is vividly dramatic. I know that Johnson appears in those
magical pages, those realized scenes, not only as Johnson loquens^ Johnson
the King of his Company, but also as the sage, the moralist, the genial and
humorous companion, the friend to his friends, the pitying helper of the poor.
Yet who rises from each fresh perusal of Boswell without a strong, renewed
impression of Dr. Johnson as the arch talker, holding the field against all
comers? He congratulated Boswell one morning — late one morning — on
the fact that they had had " good talk " the night before. To which Boswell
answered that his revered friend had indeed " tossed and gored " a number
of persons. And if Johnson's rejoinders were often taurine, the picador that
maddened him was a Scotchman. Now Boswell knew what he was about, in
his tactics, his records, and his book. The unity of the book is plain. Toss-
ing and goring must predominate. Johnson must talk for victory. The opposer
must be vanquished, though he be Reynolds, or Garrick, or Goldsmith. Even
Burke must usually be no better than a good second. The magnificent man
himself said that he was content to ring the bell for Johnson.

Yet, as I have said, the arch biographer was not content to show John-
son ever rampant. He varied his unity by exhibiting " the big man " (as
Goldsmith, in pure Irish, once called him) in many another light. And
one important aspect, revealed long after in Miss Bumey's diary, Boswell
knew, lacked, and gready desired. If Miss Bumey had given him the
help he wanted, her name might have appeared more often and more illus-
triously in the Life. She would neither lend him her letters from Johnson, nor
put him in the way of any knowledge on the subject. It was not for lack of
urging, and one of the most entertaining pages in the Diary is the account
of how Boswell pressed his ardent suit. Lovers might pattern after him. It

56 JOHNSON AND HIS FRIENDSHIPS

was in 1790, Miss Burney being then at Windsor attending upon Queen
Charlotte, that the biographer lay in wait for her at the choir gates. He peti-
tioned for some of " her choice little notes of the Doctor. . . . Grave Sam,"
he explained, " and great Sam, and solemn Sam, and learned Sam, all these
he has appeared over and over. ... I want to show him as gay Sam, agree-
able Sam, pleasant Sam ; so you must help me with some of his beautiful
billets to yourself." The lady evasive, the suitor importunate, he followed her
up to the castle gate, where he actually read her a letter from defenseless Sam
to himself. People now began to gather, to see the king and queen, who were
approaching from the Terrace. Miss Burney was freed at last, and ran away
to her own rooms. Thus did the Beefeater break the dramatic deadlock in
Sheridan's glorious farce. '* In the Queen's name I charge you all to drop
your swords and daggers."

What wouldn't Boswell have given for Fanny's account, written to her
** Daddy " Crisp, of her first meeting with Johnson ? This took place at her
father's house, St. Martin's Street, in the year 1777, the famous man being
sixty-eight, the young woman — soon to be famous herself — about twenty-
five. Dr. Johnson ** kept his friendships in repair " by associating constantly
with younger people.

Much music was in progress at Dr. Bumey's, — a professionally musical
house ; and in the midst of it, ** before the second movement was come to a
close, Dr. Johnson was announced." When the music was well over, there
was much talk ; and Fanny, like most women when Dr. Johnson was in form,
found herself bewitched. Nor was the spell relaxed to the end of Johnson's
life. On this first occasion Dr. Burney began to " draw " him with the men-
tion of an impending concert by Bach, then established in England and very
well known. **The Doctor, comprehending his drift, good-naturedly put away
his book, and see-sawing, with a very humorous smile, drolly repeated : * Bach,
Sir ? — Bach's concert } And pray. Sir, who is Bach ? Is he a piper ? ' "

Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Thrale were in merry pin. From lively sally the
two passed to comparing complimentary notes from Mrs. Montagu. Honors
being easy, Dr. Burney suggested that the two ladies must get Johnson be-
tween them that day and see which could flatter him most — Mrs. Montagu
or Mrs. Thrale. " I had rather," said the Doctor, very composedly, **go to
Bach's concert." Not much of solemn Sam here. This gay little scene, like
many another in Bumey's drama, is far enough from the disputations at the
Turk's Head, and, except for the lurking humor in Rasselas, immeasurably
far from that melancholy fable.

Miss Burney soon became a frequent visitor at Streatham, the Thrales'
ample villa, where Johnson had the prophet's chamber and for sixteen years
passed more than half his time. And although Miss Burney (and still more
Mrs. Thrale in her Anecdotes) tell of Johnson's rugged manners and of some

COPELAND 57

terrible outbursts on his part, the total impression remains of brilliant talk,
happy days, and midnight conversation very different from that in Hogarth's
picture. At Streatham, too, as in all other places, Johnson's onslaughts were
often witty and sometimes humorous. We that, like David, are delivered out
of the paw of the bear, cannot much deplore the blow that fell on the young
man who, one day at Streatham, said suddenly to Johnson : — ** * Mr. Johnson,
would you advise me to marry ? * * I would advise no man to marry. Sir,' re-
turns for answer in a very angry tone Dr. Johnson, *who is not likely to
propagate understanding,' and so left the room." But now observe what fol-
lowed. Mrs. Thrale, then of course Mrs. Piozzi, tells the anecdote ; and adds
that Johnson came back directly, drew his chair among them, and **with
altered looks and a softened voice . . . insensibly led the conversation to the
subject of marriage." He then spoke so wisely and so kindly that, in
Mrs. Thrale's concluding words, '* no one ever recollected the offence except
to rejoice in its consequences." Perhaps the young man did not quite forget.
Perhaps, when he married, he chose a wife without any conspicuous gift for
repartee.

No doubt Johnson often turned on Mrs. Thrale and Hannah More ; he
once displeased Mrs. Montagu mightily ; and once he had a fierce dispute —
fierce on his side — with Mrs. Knowles, the Quaker lady, who was not with-
out the pertinacity sometimes attributed to her sect. Her offense was the
more heinous in that Dr. Johnson was clearly worsted. In general, however,
he was gay and agreeable in the company of clever and charming women, with
whom he spent much time in the twenty years of his life that are the only
well-known period of it. As poor Miss Reynolds said, he was never intention-
ally " asperous."

It is no blame to Boswell that delightful little parties, even had he been
present at many of them, — where Johnson differed from other people chiefly
in being more interesting than they, — should have evaded a method that needed
strong effects for its complete success. Boswell was perhaps aware of this
difficulty, for often — whether women were present or not — he would record
a spirited encounter, with Johnson on his highest horse ; and then dismiss the
rest of the conversation by sajring that for the remainder of the evening the
great man was "in good humor." Nothing consolidates friendship more firmly
than meetings where every one is in good humor, but even a Boswell can't
make his best copy out of them. Of one such meeting he says, "The general
effect of this day dwells upon my mind in fond remembrance ; but I do not
find much conversation recorded." We read Johnson's best retorts with keen
delight, agreeing with Garrick's brother that he was "a tremendous com-
panion " : Johnson was a fond remembrance in the minds of many wise and
clever people, and for the most part the memory died with them. Boswell
tried to supply part of this deficiency when he begged Miss Bumey for her

58 JOHNSON AND HIS FRIENDSHIPS

'* beautiful little billets." Moreover, when a friend writes that, to have Dr. John-
son at his best, one must have him to oneself, the statement sets us thinking
how many quiet, lost talks must have taken place in that past century of time.
Fanny Bumey relates one of these. She must have thought of many others
on the last morning of all, when she sat weeping on the stairs, waiting to be
summoned to the dying man's room. Burke's final visit connotes long years
of companionship, grave and gay, of which the high disputations formed only
a part, though no doubt a great part. What passed between Johnspn and
Dr. Taylor in Taylor's long grief and perplexity ? We shall never know, for
the surviving letters are an imperfect record. Whatever it was, it made the
two men more significant to each other. Johnson's "frisk" with Langton
and Beauclerk, the two collegians who roused him at three o'clock one
morning, makes all who read of it regret that oblivion has swallowed most
episodes in Johnson's long intercourse with two men who were thirty years
younger than he. The frisk is immortal, and deserves to be. Where are the
genial dealings, t^te-a-t6te, between Johnson and Beauclerk ? One or two of
that sad dog's speeches show how genial they must have been. In Beauclerk's
last illness Johnson exclaimed, '* with a voice faultering with emotion, * Sir,
I would walk to the extent of the diameter of the earth to save Beauclerk.' "
Thanks partly to Boswell, partly to Goldsmith's desire to " get in and shine,"
he and Johnson often had encounters in which '* Doctor Minor " was usually
worsted. But Johnson sold The Vicar of Wakefield for him, and sent him
a guinea (once, we know ; often, we suspect). What the deep relations were
between the two, is clear from a well-worn anecdote. Johnson is never known
to have made a direct apology more than a very few times, or to more than
a very few persons. On an evening in 1773, however, — Boswell relates —
Goldsmith " sat silently brooding " at the Club ** over Johnson's reprimand
to him after dinner. Johnson perceived this, and said aside to some of us :
' I '11 make Goldsmith forgive me ' ; and then called to him in a loud voice :
* Dr. Goldsmith, — something passed to-day where you and I dined ; I ask your
pardon.' Goldsmith answered placidly, ' It must be much from you. Sir, that
I take ill.' " The credit here, in my opinion, is all with Goldsmith ; but the
silent resentment and the angelic forgiveness throw a flood of light on the
friendship between Johnson and Goldsmith. It depended little on club suppers
and the fortunes of debate. Let us be thankful for what we have.

In another matter not unconnected with the friendly Johnson, as partly
distinguished from Johnson the talker for victory, Jowett, so long Master of
Balliol College, has a word to say. It is in a letter published by Dr. Birkbeck
Hill, JohnsonianissimuSy that Jowett surmises Boswell to have represented
Johnson too uniformly as " sage and philosopher." In my opinion, Jowett's
surmise is correct. Boswell knew that his book would contain too little of
the Doctor of Laws who was capable, to use Miss Hannah More's word, of

COPELAND 59

gallanting young ladies from supper to conversazione. But he appears not to
have realized that, in order to round the Doctor out, the Club should figure
much more often in his account At the Club the great men were very club-
able and merry. They drank the Dean of Derry's daret, and eat stewed veal
and pullets, and listened to Goldsmith's songs. Those Monday evenings in
Gerard Street were not occasions for Boswell to follow his favorite employ-
ment of stimulating Johnson to consecutive utterance on all sorts of subjects.
No doubt he talked. He could n't help it ; though, like a ghost, he never
spoke first. But at the Club he talked more like a gigantic good fellow, less
like a dictator ; and laughed much, '* blowing out his breath like a whale," and
sometimes calling out, "Who 's for punch?" According to Garrick, that was
one of the words Johnson always spoke in the Lichfield accent, — poonsk.
Garrick says too, by the way, — now that we speak of mirthfulness, — ** he
gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you whether you will
or no." Sir John Hawkins, Johnson's first biographer, remarked of him :
"He was the most humorous man I ever knew." "Dr. Johnson," said
Fanny Bumey (who, remember, knew him only after he had passed the
grand climacteric) — " Dr. Johnson has more fun, and comical humor, and
love of nonsense than almost anybody I ever knew." " I never knew a man
to laugh more heartily," is Boswell's own report. Happily he lets us hear that
laugh from time to time. Would that he had told more of the Club I But,
as we have agreed, it is hard to be any man's Boswell when the man is
merely happy.

Boswell was too great an artist, however, not to sound the whole gamut,
and strike the note of that awful melancholy which, Johnson said, had made
his life " radically wretched," and kept him always near the verge of madness.
The cold passion of art, like the hotter ones, drives out pity. Boswell knew,
from more than one source, Johnson's fear of death, with which his melan-
choly was closely linked. " I mentioned to him that I had seen the execution
of several convicts at Tyburn, two days before, and that none of them seemed
to be under any concern. Johnson. 'Most of them. Sir, have neyer
thought at all.' Boswell. ' But is not the fear of death natural to man?'
Johnson. * So much so. Sir, that the whole of life is but keeping away the
thoughts of it.' " Johnson has been blamed for this morbid terror, but even
our enlightened republic has not established the entente cordiale with the
King of Terrors.

Too much an artist to leave Johnson's melancholy unnoted, Boswell was
far too good an artist to let it appear often or unrelieved. It was when John-
son was alone that the enemy conquered him. In his published Prayers and
Meditations the enemy is never far away. Yet, as with Lincoln, this dark
undertow of the stream of life helped dignify the man to his friends. And
the knowledge of it makes his humor strangely attractive.

6o JOHNSON AND HIS FRIENDSHIPS

Many of Johnson's friends were of low degree. It is well known that he
literally loved the poor, and that he gave in charity at least two thirds of his
pension of three hundred pounds a year. The " dear old friend '' of the fol-
lowing passage from Prayers and Meditations was a faithful servant in his

mother's family. *

Oct. 1 8, 1767, Sunday.

Yesterday, Oct. 1 7 at about ten in the morning I took my leave for ever of my dear
old friend Catherine Chambers, who came to live with my mother about 1 724, and has been
but little parted from us since. She buried my father, my brother, and my mother. She is
now fifty-eight years old.

I desired all to withdraw, then told her that we were to part for ever, that as Christians
we should part with prayer, and that I would if she was willing, say a short prayer beside
her. She expressed great desire to hear me, and held up her poor hands, as she lay in bed,
with great fervour, while I prayed, kneeling by her, nearly in the following words :

" Almighty and most merciful Father, whose loving kindness is over all thy works, be-
hold, visit, and relieve this thy servant who is grieved with sickness. Grant that the sense
of her weakness may add strength to her faith, and seriousness to her repentance. And
grant that by the help of thy Holy Spirit after the pains and labours of this short life, we
may all obtain everlasting happiness through Jesus Christ our Lord, for whose sake hear
our prayers. Amen. Our Father."

I then kissed her. She told me that to part was the greatest pain that she had ever
felt, and that she hoped we should meet again in a better place. I expressed with swelled
eyes and great emotion of tenderness the same hopes. We kissed and parted. I humbly
hope, to meet again, and to part no more.

The world has forgotten many grander religious documents. It will not
forget these deep tones of trembling hope, spoken with utter simplicity in a
simpler age than ours.

I have said that Dr. Johnson loved the poor, because his charity began
(and continued) where the charity of most of us misanthropic philanthropists
comes to an end, — at home. For did he not fill his house with defeated be-
ings who had no other friend } We know them all, and how they hated one
another, poor things. Like everything and everybody connected with Johnson
in his great days — his bitter earlier life he could scarce bear to speak of —
they are all a part of literature. Blind Miss Williams ; the unsuccessful old
medical man, Levett ; Mrs. Desmoulins and *' Poll " ; Frank, the black servant,
and Hodge, the cat, — they are all in the saga. *' I recollect him one day,''
says Boswell, ** scrambling up Dr. Johnson's breast apparently with much satis-
faction, while my friend, smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back,
and pulled him by the tail ; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying,
* Why yes. Sir, but I have had cats whom I have liked better than this ' ; and
then, as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, * but he is a
very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.' " Johnson himself used to go out and
buy oysters for Hodge, rather than run the risk of making any one else dislike
him. Immortal Hodge!

COPELAND 6 1

Oddly enough, one member of Johnson's forlorn family group inspired
him to his best short poem. These "sacred verses/* as Thackeray called
them, were written after the death of Levett. Not great, only noble and
tender, the sometimes heavy lines are lifted by impassioned sincerity into the
realm of poetry.

Not all of him we celebrate, then, is to be found in Boswell. And, though
no trait of Johnson is neglected, taking the Life and Hebrides together, dra-
matic grouping and triumphant talk leave the main impression. Wit never
yet made a friend. It has indeed made many enemies. It lost an Irishman
a bishopric and an American the Presidency. But wit such as Johnson's, in
such a record as Boswell's, keeps ever renewing its delighted audiences. Tren-
chant wit, sound sense, the glint of paradox, a readiness of retort that sur-
prises even those who, like Jowett, have read the book fifty times over, —
these are among the qualities that make Boswell's Johnson incomparable.
Boswell is incomparable, because there is no one to compare him with ; in-
imitable, too, I judge, as no man has dared to imitate him.

How far was the biographer a friend ? As far as who goes farthest, Carlyle
would have us believe. Certainly, whatever his shortcomings may have been,
Boswell has atoned by bringing Johnson ten thousand friends for every one
he would have had without that great artist. Whenever Boswell's readers be-
come also readers of Burney, and Thrale, and Johnson's own letters, they
increase and diversify their friendship for a great man.

THE DATE OF HEGETOR

Albert A. Howard

Vitruvius, the Roman architect, in the fifteenth chapter of his tenth book,
has given a detailed account of a huge battering-ram and the shed from which
it was operated, the invention of Hegetor of Byzantium. The same invention
is described in practically identical terms by the Greek mechanician Athe-
naeus, in his work Uepl Mrj^avrffjuiTcov, and also by a later anonymous
writer of Byzantium who obviously drew his information almost exclusively
from Athenaeus ; but none of these writers has contributed any information
by which either the date of Hegetor or facts regarding his life can be estab-
lished, and the name of this engineer, not elsewhere mentioned in either
Greek or Roman literature, does not appear in any of the classical dictiona-
ries in German, French, or English. Possibly the man is too insignificant to
deserve any extended notice, but as he has appeared to me no less worthy
than many who have been accorded a place in the Pauly-Wissowa Encyclch
pddiey I have thought it worth while to attempt to rescue from oblivion this
ancient engineer, and, by indicating the time at which he probably lived, to
secure for him, if possible, a place in future classical dictionaries.

Pretty certainly the elaborate engine designed by Hegetor, and clearly re-
garded by the ancients as the limit of audacity in the construction of siege
machinery, belongs in the period after the battering-ram was perfected, and
this period is shown by the evidence of ancient writers to have been the
middle of the fourth century B.C., immediately following the campaigns of
Alexander, and his death.

The history of the invention and development of the battering-ram is
given by Vitruvius (x, 13) and by Athenaeus, the mechanician, who states
that his account is derived from Agesistratus, a writer on military engines,
and is in substance as follows. While the Carthaginians were besieging
Gades, some of the soldiers, taking in their hands a long beam, ran with it
against the wall and, by repeated blows, burst for themselves a passage. A
Tyrian shipwright, Pephrasmenus by name, improved this primitive ram by
setting up a mast from the summit of which he suspended by a cable the
beam, like the arm of a steelyard. The beam was then swung in such man-
ner as to knock down the successive courses of masonry. Geras, a Chalce-
donian, next set this ram on a framed base mounted on wheels, and built
over it a shed to protect the soldiers who operated it. Later, when Philip,

64 THE DATE OF HEGETOR

son of Amyntas, was besieging Byzantium (340 B.C.), his architect, Polyeidus,
improved the invention, which his pupils Charias and Diades, who served
under Alexander in his campaigns, perfected.

Having thus determined with some probability the time after which
Hegetor constructed his ram, there remains to fix, if possible, the time be-
fore which it must have been built. The solution of this problem depends
somewhat on our ability to determine the date of the mechanician Athenaeus,
who in the treatise already mentioned describes the ram of Hegetor, and in
the introduction to his work implies that he was himself a pupil of Agesistra-
tus, and states definitely that Agesistratus was the pupil of the ApoUonius
who, in the harbor of Rhodes, loaded into ships and unloaded from them on
the dock stones of such enormous weight that those witnessing the sight were
amazed that such operations were at all possible. This ApoUonius, called by
Hultsch in Pauly's Encyclopddie (No. 113) an Athenian, is mentioned in
only one other place in literature and that, obviously, derived from this
passage of Athenaeus, so that, in fact, no evidence whatever as to his nation-
ality exists. Assuming, however, as is not improbable, that these enormous
stones mentioned by Athenaeus were used in the construction of the walls
and fortifications of Rhodes, we may draw from the story an inference
as to the date of ApoUonius. For the fortifications of Rhodes were cer-
tainly in an advanced state of completion before the famous siege of that
city by Demetrius Poliorcetes (308 b.c), as appears from the evidence of
Diodorus Siculus (xx, 95), who, in his account of the siege, speaks of towers
built of stones four feet square, which are perhaps the very stones re-
ferred to above. If then we are right in assigning this date to ApoUonius,
the date of his pupil's pupil, Athenaeus, should faU somewhere in the third
century b.c, and in confirmation of this date there is other corroborative
evidence.

The treatise of Athenaeus is dedicated to a Roman named Marcellus, who
is addressed as (T€fiv6TaT€ Map^ccXXe, and it contains mention of Ctesibius,
a mechanician, both of which facts should give some positive clue as to the
time of the composition of the treatise. For it seems natural to identify the
Marcellus of the treatise with the celebrated conqueror of Syracuse (ob. 208 b.c),
who alone of the Marcelli is sufficiently distinguished in mUitary affairs to
merit this dedication, and to identify Ctesibius with the mechanician of that
name mentioned in the Deipnosophistce of Athenaeus of Naucratis (p. 497 d-e)
as having designed and made for a statue of Arsinoe, the wife of Ptolemy
Philadelphus (285-247 b.c), a famous rhyton, about which several epigrams
are preserved, one at least by a contemporary poet, Hedylus, which mentions
the name of Ctesibius, all of which evidence would accord perfectly with a
date for Athenaeus, the mechanician, in the last half of the third century b.c,
the date assumed above.

HOWARD 65

It is not necessary to go into the long discussion ^ as to whether one or
more other Ctesibii, barbers or sons of barbers, who lived at some later time,
were mechanicians and writers about the water-organ or inventors of it. The
unquestionable fact remains that a Ctesibius, said to have been a mechanician,
flourished in the middle of the third century b.c, made a much-famed rhyton
for the statue of Arsinoe, and was commemorated in contemporary poetry
which has come down to our time under the name of the poet Hedylus, and
that this mechanician satisfies the requirements of the present investigation.
Athenaeus, the mechanician, who mentions a mechanician Ctesibius, may
well refer to this one, and, if so, naturally falls into the second half of the
third century b.c.

It seems, then, reasonably safe to assume that Hegetor lived at some time
between the middle of the fourth and the middle of the third centuries b.c,
and there is further indirect evidence to connect his feats of military engi-
neering with the famous siege of Rhodes under Demetrius Poliorcetes. The
dimensions of the great ram are given in detail by Athenaeus, Vitruvius, and
the anonymous Byzantine writer ; and in the account of the siege of Rhodes
in Diodorus Siculus (xx, 95) there is a description of the battery used by
Demetrius, which consisted of a gigantic helepolis (also described in both
Athenaeus and Vitruvius in immediate connection with the description of the
ram of Hegetor) which was flanked on either side by four excavating sheds,
and at the extremities of the battery were huge battering-rams, mounted on
wheels and covered by sheds. The length of the ram itself is given in Dio-
dorus as one hundred and twenty cubits (one hundred and eighty feet), which
corresponds exactly with the length given in Athenaeus and Vitruvius, as does
also the statement that the head of the ram was constructed of hard iron
shaped like the beak of a man-of-war.

In view of these coincidences, it does not seem unfair to conjecture that
Hegetor lived at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third centu-
ries, that he was engaged in the siege of Rhodes in 308 b.c, and that he
served under Demetrius Poliorcetes.

1 Those who are interested in the discussion as to the date of Ctesibius will find the bibliog-
raphy of the subject given at length in Susemihl, GeschichU der griechischen LitUraiur in der
Alexandrintneit^ I, 734 ff.

CHANTICLEER

C, H, Grandgent

** Sans doute il est trop tard pour parler encor d'elle/*

wrote Alfred de Musset of Malibran, a fortnight after the death of the famous
singer. Plays, except the best and luckiest, are even more quickly forgotten
than their actors ; and to speak of Chantecler three years after its first pro-
duction seems almost like disturbing a grave. Yet something of this Yorick
among comedies still subsists. Now that the merely ephemeral glitter — the
whimseys and puns, the verbal caprices, the satirical trifling, the novel stage
pictures — is fading from the memory, there stands out with greater distinct-
ness the one vital theme that gave the piece body and life while it lived, and
is worthy to survive the sparkling froth. That theme is the need of faith in
the importance of one's own task ; or, to put it a bit cynically, the necessity
of self-deception regarding the futility of human endeavor. The thesis is
embodied in the part of the Cock, whose moral strength wholly depends on
the belief that his crowing makes the sun rise day by day. The speeches in
which this leading idea is developt I have ventured to detach from the more
or less irrelevant matter in which they are involved, and I have attempted to
turn them into English verse as similar as possible, in style and in general
metrical effect, to the original.

First comes the glorious h)mMi to the sun, spoken by the Cock from the
barnyard wall, in Act I, scene ii ;

CHANTICLEER

Thou that driest the tears of the tiniest things,
That tumest the withered blossom to butterfly-wings,
When, like a flickering life, the almond-tree flings

Its petals to the breeze

Cold from the Pyrenees, —

I adore thee, O Sun, whose beneficent light,

To ripen the honey, to make the sad visage bright,

Piercing each flower and the cottage of each poor wight.

Divided, remains whole,

Even as a mother's soul.

I am thy priest, I am thy herald true.

Thou who comest to color the soap-suds blue,

And often choosest, to signal thy last adieu,

A humble window-pane.

When thou dost set again.

68 CHANTICLEER

Thou makest the sun-flowers^ heads turn to and fro,
Thou makest my golden friend on the steeple glow,
And, fluttering thro^ the lindens, dost stealthily throw

Round light-flakes on the lawn,

Too fair to tread upon.

The vamisht pitcher thou dost enamel and mold ;
Thou makest the drying clout like a banner unfold ;
And, thanks to thee, the mill wears a hat of gold.

The hive, his little mate,

A bonnet aureate.

" Glory to thee ! " the fields and the vineyards cry.

Glory to thee on the gate, in the grasses high.

On the wing of the swan, in the lizard^s glittering eye !

Thy broad art never fails

To show the least details.

Designing a lowly twin-sister dark as night.

Which lies outstretcht at the foot of everything bright,

Thou doublest in number the objects of our delight.

Adding a silhouette

To each, that's prettier yet.

O Sun, I adore thee ! Thou fillest with roses the breeze,
With gods the woodland, with flames the brook as it flees ;
Thou deifiest, O Sun, the humble trees.

The world, without thy beam.

Would only be, not seem.

The theme is continued in a dialogue between the Cock and the Hen
Pheasant in Act I, scene vi :

PHEASANT
All things remain the same . . .

CHANTICLEER

Nothing 's the same !
Nowhere beneath the sun ! The sun forbids !
She changes everything.

PHEASANT

She! Who?

CHANTICLEER

The light !
The farmer's wife's geranium over there
Never shows twice the selfsame red. That shoe.
That old, straw-spitting wooden shoe — how fair !
That wooden comb that hangs among the coats
With meadow-hairs still clinging to its teeth !

GRANDGENT 69

The aged pitchfork in its comer there,

Still dreaming, in its penance, dreams of hay !

The tight-laced ten-pins, pretty girls who pout

When Towser comes and spoils their fine quadrilles.

The huge worm-eaten wooden bowling ball.

On which an ant, forever journeying,

With all an old globe-trotter's self-esteem

In eighty seconds travels round its world.

None of these things remains two winks unchanged.

And as for me, Madame, for many years

A leaning rake, a flower in a vase,

Have driven me to chronic ecstasy.

And I have caught from looking at a weed

This wide-eyed wonder that will not come off.

PHEASANT

I see you have a soul ! How can a soul
Grow up so far from life and live events,
Behind a farm-wall where a house-dog sleeps ?

CHANTICLEER

When we can see and suffer, we know all.

An insect's death reveals the whole world's pain.

One sky-lit crevice shows us all the stars.

In the great monologue of the Cock, in Act II, scene iii, the Hen Pheasant
serves as a chorus :

CHANTICLEER

I never sing until my eight good claws.
Tearing away the grass and stones, have found
A spot where I can reach the soft, black loam.
Then, close in contact with our mother earth,
I crow ! And that itself is half the mystery,

pheasant, half the secret of my song —
No song for which the singer racks his brain :
It mountSjJikg. sap, up from the native soil !
The moment when this sap rises in me.
The hour when I am certain of my gift,

Is when da^rn dalles on the daik sky's rim.
Then, quivering with the thrill of leaves and stalks,
Which fills my being to my pinions' tips,

1 feel my mission, and I magnify

My trumpet posture and my clarion curve ;
Then Earth resounds in me as in a horn.
Ceasing to be a common fowl, I then
Become the official mouth-piece, so to say.
Thro' which Earth's voice emerges to the sky.

70 CHANTICLEER

PHEASANT

Chantideer!

CHANTICLEER

This cry that mounts from Earth,
This call, is such a cry of love for light,
A frantic and sonorous peal of love
For something golden which we call the Day,
Which nature craves, — the pine, to gfld its bark ;
The path uplifted by the writhing roots.
To light its moss ; the com, to deck its dps ;
The tiny pebbles, for their tiny gleam, —
It is the cry of all the things that miss
Their tint, reflection, flame, their tuft, their peari, —
The entreating cry with which the dewy field
Demands a rainbow on each point of grass ;
The forest, at the end of every lane.
Begs for a ruddy glow to pierce the dark, —
This cry, which thro* my throat climbs to the blue,
Is such a call from everything that feeb
Neglected in a dim and murky void.
Deprived of sunlight for some unknown crime,
A cry of cold, of fear, of weariness
From everything made helpless by the Night —
The rose that shivers in the dark, alone ;
The grain, longing to dry its wetness for the mill ;
The tools foigotten by the husbandmen
And rusting in the grass ; white<x>lor'd things.
So tired of hiding all their dazzling sheen —
.'T is such a cry from innocent dumb beasts
Which never need conceal the things they do ;
From brooklets, eager to disclose their beds ;
And even (thine own work disowns thee. Night !)
From puddles, hankering to reflect a ray.
From mud that wants to dry itself to earth —
'T is such a grand appeal from all the land.
Aching to feel its wheat or barley grow ;
From flowering trees desirous of more flowers ;
From grapes that long to tinge their green with brown ;
From trembling bridge that wants a passenger
And wants the shadows of the birds and twigs
Softly to dance once more upon its planks ;
From all that fain would sing, quit mourning, live.
Do service, be a threshold, be a bank,
A good warm bench, a stone r^oiced to heat
A leaning hand or little prowling ant —
In short, a universal call for day
From all that's healthy, all that's beautiful.
From all that 's fond of work in joy and light.
That wants to see its work and make it seen.

GRANDGENT 71

And when this mighty call surges in me,

My very soul expands and swells and grows

The more sonorous with its own increase, —

To make the great cry loud and louder still, —

So reverently, that ere I send it forth,

I hold the cry one instant in my soul ;

Then, when, contracting, I let loose my note,

So certain am I that a deed is done,

I have such faith that this good crow of mine

Will make Night crumble like the walls of Jencho —

PHEASANT
Chanticleer !

CHANTICLEER

Preluding victory,
My song bursts forth, so clear, so proud, so stem,
That the horizon, with a rosy thrill,
Obeys me !

Chanticleer !

PHEASANT

CHANTICLEER

I crow ! And Night
With twilight vainly seeks to compromise.
I crow ! And all at once —

PHEASANT

O Chanticleer!

CHANTICLEER

I Start, surprised to see myself quite red.
For I, the cock, have made the sun to rise !

PHEASANT

Then all the secret of thy song ?

CHANTICLEER

Is this:
I dare to fear that if I do not call.
The east will never waken from its sleep.
My " cockadoodledoo ! " is not designed
To make a waiting echo from afar
Repeat a feebler " cockadoodledoo ! "
My thoughts are bent on light and not on fame.
Crowing, for me, is battie and belief.
And so my note is proudest of them all :
I sing so dear to make the heavens clear !

72 CHANTICLEER

PHEASANT
(His words are madness ! ) — Thou dost make the dawB ?

CHANTICLEER

Which opens flowers and eyes, windows and souls !
That is the truth. My voice evokes the day.
A murky sunrise means my song was bad.

The severest test of Chanticleer's constancy is reserved for the end of the
play. The Hen Pheasant, jealous of her lover's devotion to the sun, tries to
rid him of his illusion. Hiding the east from him at dawn, she distracts his
attention until daybreak ; then, showing him the light, she tauntingly cries :

"Thou seest the sun can rise without thy help! "

But in the face of evidence the Cock, after a moment of despair, renews his
faith. Even tho' his individual ministry be not indispensable as he had
thought, he is still a collaborator in some vast, mysterious mission destined
to produce, in the vague future, greater good than he had ever before
conceived.

CHANTICLEER

The herald I of a remoter sun !
My cries, piercing Night's veil, inflict on her
Those stabs of daylight which we take for stars !
/ ne'er shall see on spire and belfry gleam
That final heaven, of clustered orbs compact.
But if I crow, precise and loud, and if,
Long after me, in years to come, a Cock
Shall crow, loud and precise, in every farm,
Night will exist no more !

PHEASANT
But when ?

CHANTICLEER

J Some day !

WHAT IS CHAUCER'S HOUS OF FAME?

John M. Manly

One of the strangest facts in literary criticism is that, after more than forty
years of intense and occasionally even feverish activity on the part of students
of Chaucer, the question heading this article is still a legitimate question. If
the poem were a brief and much-mutilated fragment containing part of a
single episode, the present state of criticism would be intelligible and excusable.
But of this poem we have nearly all that was written or planned by the author.
Though incomplete, the extant copy contains 2158 lines, and it obviously can
never have been intended to contain much more, for at the beginning of the
third book the author distinctly speaks of that book as the last.^ A dispropor-
tionate treatment of certain features doubtless prolonged this book beyond the
author's original plan (it now contains 1068 lines) ; but the incidents and epi-
sodes of his plan were obviously such in character and number that at the
beginning of this third book, he thought of them as forming a single division
of his poem.^ We have, therefore, in the extant version nearly all that he
intended to write.

Moreover, we have, as an indication of the meaning of the poem, the title
given by the author himself. And we have, in the words of the eagle to the
author, a positive and definite statement not only of the main features of the
narrative as far as it is preserved to us, but also of the principal incident of
the unwritten portion.

Why, then, are not the purpose and meaning of the poem clear and well
recognized } Several reasons may be suggested.

In the first place, much of the study devoted to this poem has been con-
cerned, not with the interpretation of the author's meaning, but with the dis-
covery of the sources of his materials. What suggested the temple ? and the
figures on the walls? and the treeless desert? Did the eagle come from
Ovid, or from Dante, or from folklore ? Whence came the ice-capped moun-
tain and the revolving house ? Correct answers to these questions would be
interesting ; if rightly used, they might be important ; but they could hardly,
in any event, contribute largely to the interpretation of the poem, for an
author's meaning depends, not upon where he got his materials, but upon
what use he makes of them.

^ This litel laste book (iii, 3).

^ We may be quite sure that there was to be no long account of the journey back to earth,
as some suppose. This would certainly, in Chaucer's plan, have called for another book.

74 WHAT IS CHAUCER'S HOUS OF FAME?

Another obscuring cause was furnished centuries ago by an inarticulate and
unintelligible line of John Lydgate's. The line is the second in the following
stanza of The Falls of Princes:

He wrote also full many a day agone

Dant in English, him-selfe doth so expresse,

The pitous story of Ceix and Aldon :

And the death also of Blaiinche the duches :

And notably [he] did his businesse

By great auise his wittes to dispose,

To translate the Romaynt of the Rose.^

We have no evidence that Lydgate had any information about Chaucer except
what he derived from his writings, and we know that he was not an Italian
scholar, but Skeat thought that he must have meant the Hous of Fame ^ and
Rambeau attempted to show that that poem was in fact \yritten as a counterpart
to the Divina Commedia, Despite slight superficial resemblances of form and
numerous insignificant reminiscences of Dante's great and serious poem in
this light-hearted yV/^ d' esprit y Rambeau's theory is now generally discredited,
though traces of its influence are discernible in some of the latest discussions
of the poem.

Less specific than Rambeau's theory, but no less obstructive to the proper
understanding of the poem, has been the general tendency to interpret it
allegorically and to assign to it an important autobiographical significance.
The details of this, as displayed by Sandras, ten Brink, Rambeau, Willert,
Garrett, Snell, Brandl, and Koch, are too well known to need recital, and the
latest expressions of this view, that by Brandl ^ and that by Koch,^ have been
discussed and refuted by Imelmann.* But Imelmann himself is unable to get
entirely away from the allegorical interpretation.

That students of Chaucer should persist in interpreting him allegorically is
strange. As a matter of fact, his work is singularly free from allegory in the
strict sense of the term. The mere presence of nonhuman actors, whether
animal, or mythological, or even personified abstractions, does not create alle-
gory ; for this there must be symbolism of action or of character. To be sure,
the term " allegory " is used loosely to describe compositions in which there is
no symbolism ; but confusion of critical thinking is likely to arise from this abuse
of the term. The Roman de la Rose^ Everyman^ Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure,
Spenser's Faerie Queene, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, are properly called
allegories, because in them the author presents the action symbolically, that
is, by means of an entirely different sort of action. But a debate between two
girls concerning their lovers is not allegory, even if birds take sides and

1 Quoted from Skeat, Works of G. Chaucer^ I, 23.

' Sitzungsber, d. kgi,preuss, Akad.y philos.-hist. Classe, 1908, XXXV, 732 f.

• Englische StudieUy XLI, 113-121. * Englische Studien, XLV, 397-431.

MANLY 75

debate and fight, and the decision be left to the god of love or his representa-
tive.^ In like manner unsymbolic and unallegorical is the action in Li Fablel
dou Dieu (TAmorSy in Machaut's Dit du Vergier; and only slightly alle-
gorical are Froissart's Paradys d^ Amours and Lay Amoureux. In Chaucer
there is scarcely any allegory. None of the Canterbury Tales is allegorical ; the
nearest approaches to allegory are the Nonne Prestes Tale, which is a beast
fable, and the Squicrs (unfinished) Tale^ which, in spite of Brandl's attempt
to interpret it allegorically,* seems to be a mere tale of magic. No one, I
suppose, has ever attempted to regard Troilus and Criseyde as an allegory.
The Compleynt of Mars seems to be only a fanciful representation of the
astronomical relations of certain planets in terms of human action, suggested
by the general practice of astrologers.* Neither the Boke of the Dtuhesse nor
the Legend of Goode Women has the slightest claim to be regarded as allegor-
ical ; and the Parlement of Foules^ as I have recently shown,^ is a Valentine
poem, presenting a demande d' amours in the setting of a bird parliament.
Indeed the only clear example of allegory in the whole of Chaucer's writings
is the Compleynte to Pite^ one of the earliest and most conventional of his
poems. In view of these facts, the burden of proof that any one of his poems
is to be interpreted allegorically certainly rests upon the scholar who pro-
poses such an interpretation, and should meet with acceptance only when
nonallegorical interpretations have entirely failed.

Imelmann's recent attempt to interpret the Hous of Fame has many excel-
lent features. Where he has gone astray he has always, or nearly always, been
misled by the effort to read allegory into it. Much the same may be said of the
view set forth by Garrett in 1896, particularly as concerns his first section on
the conclusion of the poem.^ Like Imelmann, Garrett saw clearly that the
fundamental intention of the poem was to lead up to some good story or
stories, but both writers were under the influence of the allegorical idea and
felt obliged to interpret some, if not all, of the objects and incidents of the
poem as symbolical. This tendency is so strong as to produce definite mis-
quotation or misinterpretation of the language of the author. Although Imel-
mann (p. 414) rightly rejects Koch's insistence upon any symbolism in the
desert,* he himself feels obliged to interpret the temple allegorically, and
says (p. 414), '* Weil er etwas wissen mochte von dem sinn des darin erlebten
imd draussen aufklarung zu finden hofft (i, 474-479)." But Chaucer nowhere

^ Cf . the whole series of poems connected with the debate of Phyllis and Flora.
« Brandl, Engl. Shid., XII, 161-186; Kittredge, ibid., XIII, 1-25.

• Cf. Manly, Harvard Studies^ V, 107 ff. * Festschrift for Morsbach (1913).

• Studies on Chaucer's ^'^ Hous of Fame ^^ {Harvard Studies^ V), 150-157.

• Koch, Englisehe Studien^ XLI, 1 18, does not seem to recognize that if the temple had been
surrounded by a flowery plain, or any other sort of landscape, instead of the desert mentioned
by Chaucer, the problem of allegorical interpretation would have been just as insistent. In
other words, if allegory is to be read into a poet's work, no choice of details can defeat the intent

76 WHAT IS CHAUCER'S HOUS OF FAME?

expresses any interest in the meaning of the temple or what he has seen in
it. In the passage cited by Imelmann he says, ** I do not know who made
the images nor where I am, and I will go out and see if I can find any one
who will tell me where I am/' That the temple or the images or his own
experiences have any occult meaning is nowhere hinted.

Let us see if the poem is not capable of a simple, unallegorical interpreta-
tion that is entirely adequate to explain all its features. That it is a love poem
has been shown by Sypherd and by Imelmann, and is abundantly evident
from the repeated statements to this effect in the poem itself. Sypherd erred
in supposing that Chaucer's motive in writing the poem could be adequately
expressed in the mere desire to produce a love poem. Imelmann rightly calls
attention to the inadequacy of Sypherd's view and points out that Chaucer
himself tells us that the poem exists for the sake of the story (or stories)
promised as the conclusion of the poem.^ It is unnecessary to repeat his citation
of passages proving this, the most important of which are ii, 133-143 and
J64-191.

Beginning with the general intent of the poet as thus expressed, we may
reconstruct the composition of the poem in some such way as the following :
Wishing to introduce certain stories (or a certain story) to his readers by a
pleasing device, the poet conceives of the house of Fame (or Report) as a
place where such stories may be obtained, since all the sounds of the world
tend naturally to that place. In order to reach this house, located, as it is,
between heaven and earth and sea,^ he has need of a winged carrier powerful
enough to transport him. Such a supernatural creature can be provided only
by some god or goddess, and the poet's service of the goddess of love motives
the plan of her rewarding him by having him transported to the house where
all good stories gather. Venus, of course, has no messenger capable of such
a feat, but in the ^neid, i, 254 ff. (a passage remembered by Chaucer, H F,
i, 212-220), Jupiter shows himself somewhat affectionately ready to aid his
dear daughter ; and so here Chaucer represents him as lending her his own
messenger, the eagle, who had already shown his powers by the long flight
with Ganymede. This is the framework of the story ; the rest is decorative or
subsidiary. The temple with its storied walls, the treeless plain, the splendor
of the eagle and his power of human speech, his conversation about the
heavenly bodies and his explanation of the manner in which sounds reach the
house of Fame, — all are determined by the fundamental idea.

That the poem is badly proportioned is true. The story of Dido is told at
too great length, and the other love stories briefly indicated in Bk. i ought
to have been omitted entirely. But the worst offense in proportion is, of

1 It is not the fact that the poet is to be rewarded that is important, but the nature of the
reward, as is sufficiently emphasized in the remarks of the eagle.

• Ovid, Met.^ xii, 39 ff., is the adequate source for this and much more.

MANLY 77

course, the long description in Bk. iii of the outer walls and the great hall
of the casde. It is not at all clear that the conception of Fame as the
goddess of renown as well as of report came to Chaucer only when he was
writing or planning the third book. In the earlier parts of the poem there
was no occasion to mention renown. The third book is marred, not so much
by the presentation of Fame in two aspects, as by the entirely disproportion-
ate space (and consequent emphasis) given to the ice-cap, the castle walls, the
hall, the goddess, and the throngs of suppliants. But Chaucer was somewhat
prone to digression, and, especially in his earlier poems, did not restrain
within proper limits the ideas brought up by association (note the famous
passage on predestination in the Troilus),

If the reader will make due allowance for these errors in proportion, the
poem will be seen to be clear and simple in structure, so far as it is preserved
to us, and to require very littie for its completion. What the missing portion
was to contain is, in a sense, almost equally clear. We have been told in
Bk. ii that the poet is to hear new stories ; and, since his interest in learning
new stories is to tell them, we may be certain that some provision was to be
made for his telling them, — perhaps some such provision as is made in the
end of the Prologue to the Legend of Goode Women (B, 548-551). Even if
he was to learn and tell only one, we can hardly suppose that it could have
been told in full in "this litel laste book." It is possible, therefore, that the
poet was merely to announce here his new treasure of stories which were to
be told later ; that is, that this poem was to serve as a sort of introduction to a
group of stories. This may conceivably have been Chaucer- s first effort — the
Legend and the Canterbury Tales are the others — to organize into a group
tales of similar or of various themes. We may further infer that this group
was to be a group of love tales of varied character (cf. ii, 136-138, 164-190).

Garrett, as I have already said, thought that a single story, that of Alcestis,
^' was to form the chief part of the continuation.'* ^ His suggestion has met
with littie favor, probably for three reasons : (i) it is not in harmony with the
specifications in Bk. ii, 136-190; (2) Chaucer would hardly have planned
to make so long and elaborate a story a part of the third book ; (3) while
the poem as planned might fitly introduce a group of stories, it could hardly
serve as an introduction to a single one.

Imelmann's view also calls for a single story as the completion of the
poem. He finds special emphasis in the words of the eagle :

And noght only fro fer contree

That ther no tyding comth to thee,

But of thy verray neyghebores,

That dwellen ahnost at thy dores,

Thou herest neither that ne this (ii, 139-143).

1 Harvard Studies^ V, 155.

78 WHAT IS CHAUCER'S HOUS OF FAME?

This means, he thinks : there is a love story of present interest to a 'distant
land and also to England of which you have heard (or written) nothing ; the
story is that of the marriage of Anne of Bohemia and Richard. This view he
supports by arguing : (i) that the Parlenunt of Foules requires and promises
a sequel, which is given in the Hous of Fame ; (2) that the tercel royal of
PF is clearly the eagle sent by Jove to the poet in H F; (3) that H F was
intended as a gratulatory poem to be presented to Anne on her arrival in
England, and therefore that December 10 (mentioned twice in ^/^ as the
night of his dream) is December 10, 1381, and fixes the date at which the
poet began to write ; (4) that the unfinished condition of the poem is due
to the poet's inability to complete it before Anne's arrival ; (5) that Bk. iii,
1044-1050, affords a strict proof of the nature and the source of the new story :

And eek a tyding for to here,
That I had herd of som contree
That shal not now be told for me ; —
For hit no nede is, redely ;
Folk can singe hit bet than I ;
For al mot out, other late or rathe,
Alle the sheves in the lathe ;

(6) that the coming of Anne from a distant land to marry Richard could
hardly be better presented by Chaucer with the allegorical methods at his
command than by means of the story of the man, who, driven by Fate,
arrived, under the guidance of Venus, after manifold delays, at the Titian
shore and found a wife ; (7) and, finally, that the name Anna was a connect-
ing psychological link between the journey of the Bohemian princess and the
fateful wanderings of iEneas.

As will be seen, Imelmann's theory has some very attractive features.
That Chaucer should wish to celebrate the arrival of the queen would be
natural ; that the love story of Richard and Anne should be presented as one
of special interest would be equally natural. If the question were to be decided
on a priori grounds, one could hardly refuse ^assent to Imelmann's view ; but
unfortunately both the view and the arguments adduced in support of it seem
to be contradicted by the poem and by other evidence.

One of the weakest and methodically unsoundest of the arguments is that
identifying the eagle of this poem with the tercel royal in PF. Their func-
tions are different ; nothing suggests any identification of them. What, more-
over, could be absurder than to make Richard, as the eagle, call Chaucer's
attention to his own love story — a story which, according to Imelmann's
later interpretation (p. 427), comes "kolportiert von schiffem und sonstigen
weit herumstreifenden leuten " ?

But Imelmann's principal use for the eagle is to establish a connection
in subject matter between this poem and P F. If such a connection exists,

MANLY 79

something is indeed needed to show it. I have shown, in the Festschift for
Morsbach, that P F needs no sequel. But even on Imelmann's theory that it
needs one, who would expect to find that sequel in a poem different in meter,
in professed theme, and in dramatis personae f If the courtiers expected a
sequel Xo PF^ they doubtless expected some real continuation of the story con-
tained in it ; and when they learned in HF, ii> 136 ff., that this poem was to
introduce a story previously unknown to Chaucer, they would hardly expect to
hear a sequel to P F,

December 10 may at first sight seem to harmonize with the date of Anne's
arrival — Froissart says she left Calais on a Wednesday, which would be
December 18. But does it really fit Imelmann's theory? It had been ex-
pected that Anne would arrive in the preceding summer ; was Chaucer ignorant
of that ? After she started, she came by slow stages, and halted a month for
fear of the pirates who infested the channel; did Chaucer know nothing
of her approach? On December i, Richard issued an order for her recep-
tion ; was this also unknown to the poet who, according to the current view,
had celebrated the wooing in February, and who, according to Imelmann, was
under special obligations to celebrate the wedding? Why did he not hear
of it — or receive a commission to write of it — until December 10?

That the poem was left unfinished seems unlikely. It is preserved to us in
three manuscripts and two old prints, all of which are so closely related that
they may have had a common ancestor not much earlier than 1450. More-
over, it seems unlikely that Chaucer would represent the Queen of Love in
L G W2& citing in his defense an unfinished poem, especially one begun in
praise of Queen Anne and left unfinished. The excuse that he had begun it
too late would perhaps have been as uncomplimentary to Anne and Richard
as entire silence would have been.

Imelmann insists upon the fragmentary character of the poem, says that
Chaucer " langst fiihlte, dass dieses werk nie zu ende kommen wiirde," and
gives this as a reason why he " babbles freely " and refers as he does in Bk. iii,
104 1 ff., to the story that should be reserved to the end. The reference is
undoubtedly mysterious to readers of to-day. It may have been, as Imelmann
suggests, perfectly intelligible to the courtiers of Chaucer's day. It may even
be an allusion to the wooing and marriage of Richard and Anne. But, unless
Chaucer v/as incredibly confused in thought and expression, it can hardly
refer to the story or stories which he is to hear and retell.

Imelmann is also, like Koch, obliged to emend iii, 817-820; and, since
he declares that Chaucer gets his news of Anne's approach to England from
the shipmen, pilgrims (" with scrippes bretful of lesinges " I), pardoneres,
currours, and messangeres (" with boistes crammed ful of lyes " !) of iii,
1031-1040, he must credit Chaucer with a confused intention in this
passage also.

So WHAT IS CHAUCER'S HOUS OF FAME?

That the story chosen by Chaucer to present to Anne as a greeting at the
completion of her long journey to her betrothed husband should be the story
of -^neas would, in any case, be odd enough ; that, in telling it, he should
dismiss in a single line (i, 458) the sole feature which constitutes the point of
telling the -^neas story on this occasion, namely, the winning of a mate,
would be a serious indictment of his intelligence ; that he should devote nearly
the whole story to the unfaithfulness of JEnesiS to Dido, emphasize this by
a recital of other stories of man's perfidy and woman's weakness, and finally
warn Anne, who had come so far to wed a king she had never seen, that
she was acting foolishly, —

Lo, how a woman doth amys

To love him that unknowen is (i, 269), —

would convict Chaucer of a lack of taste and courtesy incredible in a courtier
and poet. Imelmann, to be sure, thinks this was all a jest for the benefit of
the initiated. Anne, of course, might not have understood these English
lines, and so might not have been troubled by the implied comparison of
herself to Dido or by the warning against " laying to her eye an herb of un-
known properties" (i, 291 f .) ; but Richard would have understood at once
and Anne would surely have understood later. We have no evidence
that Chaucer enjoyed the privileges of a licensed jester, — nowhere in his
poems is there any hint of the fool's cap and bells and flapstick, unless we
admit that his compliments were such as some of his interpreters believe
them to be.

That, in L G Wy Chaucer was to present to the queen legends involving
the fickleness and unfaithfulness of man cannot be cited in favor of the sup-
position that he welcomed her to England with stories of man's perfidy, for
in H F the emphasis is entirely on man's perfidy while in Z G^ fT it is on
woman's faithfulness.

If I/Fv/as written to celebrate the arrival of Anne, and Dido's sister Anna
was in any sense a connecting link between the iEneas-Dido story and the
Richard-Anne story, it is certainly remarkable that Chaucer gives the name
Anna no more prominence than he does in H F, where she receives, in Bk. i,
366-371, the bare mention required by the story. If Chaucer was given to
making these sly, scarcely noticeable allusions, why does he never use the
names Richard and John in such a way as to suggest the king or John of
Gaunt, his supposed patrons ?

The theory that Chaucer was to hear (and tell) the story of Anne and
Richard is, then, so out of harmony with the details of the poem as to be
untenable. Whether ii, 136-143, necessarily imply, as they certainly suggest,
that what Chaucer was to hear was news of his own day, we may be unable to
determine ; it is certainly the strongest point of Imelmann's theory.

MANLY 8 1

But interpreted with no greater strictness than Imelmann applies to this
passage, the later lines, ii, 164-190, imply that the poet is to hear (and tell)
many love stories of the most varied character :

For tniste wel, that thou shalt here,

When we be comen ther I seye,

Mo wonder thinges, dar I leye,

Of Loves folke mo tydinges,

Bothe soth-sawes and lesinges ;

And mo loves newe begonne,

And longe y-served loves wonne, 170

And mo loves casuelly

That been betid, no man wot why,

But as a blind man stert an hare ;

And more lolytee and fare,

Whyl that they finde love of stele,

As thinketh hem, and over-al wele ;

Mo discords and mo lelousyes.

Mo murmurs and mo novelryes.

And mo dissimulaciouns,

And feyned reparaciouns ; 180

And mo berdes in two houres

Withoute rasour or sisoures

Y-maad, then greynes be of sondes ;

And eke mo holdinge in hondes,

And also mo renovelaunces

Of olde forleten aqueyntaunces ;

Mo love-dayes and acordes

Then on instruments ben cordes ;

And eke of loves mo eschaunges

Than ever comes were in graunges. 190

And this impression is borne out by what is said in iii, 103 1 ff., of the stories
and the bearers of them in the house of Rumor (or Fame).

I am therefore disposed to believe that this poem was intended to herald or
announce a group of love stories and to serve as a sort of prologue to them.
As the attachment between the poem and the stories announced was. loose, —
looser perhaps than that between the legends of good women and the prologue
to them, — the poem might well have been cited in Z C W^as a complete poem
although it lacked the stories it was to introduce. Until a better theory is sug-
gested, I shall therefore regard the Hous of Fame as the first of the series of
experiments in grouping stories of which the Legend of Goode Women was the
second member and the Canterbury Tales the final and satisfactory outcome.

THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

Jefferson B. Fletcher

Puffed up with the pride of the New Learning, a certain Italian humanist
of the fifteenth century once exclaimed, " What we humanists write we write
not for ourselves, we write for humanity." Perhaps that was the trouble with
him, one reason at least why he is forgotten — except by other scholars.
Humanity as a whole has few interests and a short memory. To write for
nobody in particular is usually to be read by nobody in particular. To speak
at one time for all time is to speak to no time.

There is truth in these quibbling phrases, — truth which modem historical
criticism is, if anything, inclined to exaggerate. Historical critics to-day grow
impatient when it is declared that Shakspere "wrote for all time." They
emphasize rather his dependence on contemporary stage conditions, his appeal
to an Elizabethan, nay, a London audience. He kept, they contend, his
eye on the pit and never turned it on posterity. M. Jusserand would reduce
Edmund Spenser to a piu-veyor of perishable intellectual dainties to an ephem-
eral courtly taste at Greenwich and Hampton in the year of our Lord 1 590.
Milton's business, we'are told, is to represent a precise moment in the history
of English Puritan theology and of the pseudo-classic epic.

No doubt this scrupulous adherence to historical perspective has been salu-
tary as a corrective against loose talk. We have put ourselves back, so to say,
among the author's immediate audience, and can better understand him as he
meant to be understood. Wanting this just perspective, critics in the Middle
Ages totally misread antique literature, forcibly wresting pagan meanings into
impossible compliance with Christian and feudal conditions. And perhaps
the romantic critics in the early nineteenth century who used to talk about
a philosophic Shakspere writing " for all time " were as fantastic.

But there is another side to the story. A literary masterpiece is not merely
the mouthpiece of its maker. Once bom, it has a voice of its own ; and to
them who lovingly hold communion with it, it speaks a various language. The
ideas it contains live, and are fertilized by contact with ideas, distantly akin, of
later generations. If, by rigidly sticking to what an author actually had in mind
when writing, we may in some measure put ourselves back among his original
audience ; so, by considering what he may mean for us of another time, we
in so far bring him himself back to life, and set him talking to us, as he might
have talked, of our affairs. This is no doubt what in a sense mediaeval critics

84 THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

did with the classics, — and we condemn them for it ; but I think there is a
distinction to be drawn. It is one thing to try the ideas of a past writer by
ours, another thing to dye his ideas with ours. Resemblances shown by the
first method are illuminating, by the second only confusing.

So, while realizing the critical risk, I mean to try certain ideas of Dante's
by certain of ours, to ask what Dante has to say, if anything, anent certain
larger issues of to-day. I can only hope that in so ** interviewing " the great
Florentine I may not — to invert one of Byron's titles — merely present Dante
as * the transformed deformed.'

Dante is still — for most people — the grim poet of the Inferno^ the black
dreamer he appeared to those women of Verona, with visage seamed and hair
crisped from the fires of hell. Not long ago in New York City I heard a
moving-picture showman explaining a film of the Inferno, On one grotesque-
grisly representation of certain sinners stuck heads down in pits, their protrud-
ing wiggling legs aflame, he remarked deprecatingly : ** It is presumed — Dant'
was a paraesthetic. No sane man *d *a' dreamed such queer an* awful visions.**
Maybe the worthy barker meant * paranoiac' It is a good word, is * paraes-
thetic * — for some aesthetes, say for * Cubists * and * Futurists ' in art ; but it
is plainly a libel on Dante.

My Broadway commentator, however, was really expressing, after all, only
the very common opinion of the poet of hell as of course a great genius (for
the books say so), but decidedly queer and nightmarish to the plain citizen.
Yet I must in justice add that my showman found at least one kind of mod-
emness in the Inferno, As to these upside-down sinners — " It is presumed,*'
he said, '' these were unfair business men." And he found a subtle fitness in
the mode of their punishment. " It is presumed — only their limbs were let
free because the only honest part of *em were their limbs.**

The majority have * their Dante of the dread Inferno,' But besides this
majority of the small minority who have any Dante at all, there is another
more refined and knowing set of readers who ignore or deprecate the things
Dante most cared about, to extol if not his * paraesthetic,' at any rate his
pure aesthetic power. The poet Carducci once sonnetized this view. I
translate — as best I can :

Dante, whence comes it that I, reverent, bear

My votive homage to thy shrine sublime?

That me the sun leaves bending o'er the rime

That made thee gaunt, and dawn still finds me there?

For me St. Lucy prays not, nor the fair

Madlda laves away my spirit's grime,

And Beatrice and her chaste lover climb

Godward in vain along the starry stair.

I hjite thy Holy Empire ; and my sword

Gladly from thy good Frederick's head had cleft

FLETCHER 85

The crown, when he in Val d*01ona warred.

Empire and Church are ruins life-bereft

Where broods thy song, and makes with heaven accord :

Jove passes, — but the poet's hymn is left.

The idea — by him — is strikingly put, but is it true ? Is the ' hymn,* the
' poetry,' all that is left of Dante — even for those for whom Church and
Empire, as Dante conceived them, are a melancholy ruin ? Must we hold to
Dante simply as the idle singer of a day that is dead, and of prophets who lied ?
If so, is there not left to us even less of him than Carducci seems to allow }

For what makes Dante admittedly one of the two or three supreme poets
of the world ? He himself indeed once gave thanks for

The fair style that hath done me honor.

But man-of-letters shall not live by style alone. Nor, again, does Dante's
greatness, his unique greatness, lie in reproducing life, holding the mirror up
to nature, creating many-sided men and women. His thumbnail character-
sketches are indeed marvelously suggestive ; but his men and women as such
cannot endure comparison with those of Shakspere, perhaps not even with
those of his humble admirer Boccaccio. Neither of the protagonists — besides
himself — in the Divine Comedy ^ neither Virgil nor Beatrice is, I think, a
full and lifelike character. They are spiritual symbols ; they are more than
mere personified abstractions surely, and yet they are abstract, or at least
they are. not solid. They are above and apart from complex human beings ;
they are mouthpieces for human and divine wisdom or justice or mercy. They
move in one dimension of character. And in varying degrees the same thing
is true of the vivid but unilateral folk who people the three regions of the
other world, — articulate moods of wrath and pathos in hell, of resignation
and hope in purgatory, of tenderness and peace in paradise.

One character indeed emerges from the Divine Comedy foursquare, yet
not so much created as vicariously revealed. I mean of course Dante him-
self. He is the measure of his ideal world ; it is the many-faceted mirror of
him. He is the ever present Issue. Behind the mask of the stormy St. Peter
it is the Ghibelline exile who fulminates against the abuses of the Church ;
behind the stately pathos of Francesca da Rimini it is the fate-driven outcast
who remembers in wretchedness the happy time; behind the relentless
Ugolino, softened a little by the thought that

my words
Shall seed-like bear the fruit of infamy
Upon the traitor whom I gnaw,

it is the patriot betrayed by false Florence to the * salt bread * of others who
chafes for vengeance. Dante is no curious analyst of other men for their own
sakes ; he is strangely self-absorbed ; but, it must straightway be added, he has

86 THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

made his self-interest coterminous with the universe. He has interpreted all
truth in the light of his own spiritual needs. So far he is a pragmatist. The
unifying principle of the world as he sees it is the projection of his own
master passion. The true primunt mobile of his universe lies not beyond the
stars, but in his own breast. And just because he was intensely human, that
moral universe of his remains essentially true and real.

I say that moral universe. A vision of the world, a reordering of man's
world, unified by an ideal intensely and permanently human — that is Dante's
\ distinctive accomplishment, I think. Not artistry alone, nor pure dramatic
I power, but constructive criticism of life is what makes him one of the two or
\ three supreme poets. No doubt he himself believed in the world he ideally
reconstructed as an external and physical fact. Earth was for him still center
of nine concentric revolving solid heavens somehow mystically enwrapped in
their turn by an immaterial tenth heaven, the Empyrean, residence of God
and his angels and saints. Grod was for Dante a demonstrable fact ; so were
the nine orders of angels, and the Devil and his fiends ; so was that divine
and foreordained right of the Holy Roman Empire, hateful to Signor Car-
ducci. Dante also very probably came to regard even his subterranean ringed
and pocketed cone of hell, made in the inverse image of the heavens, as a
literal fact. For him, too, a real Mount of Purgatory thrust out from the pre-
cise antipodes to that dome at Jerusalem which covers the sepulcher of Christ.
Was it not written by Virgil himself how the restless Ulysses had sailed past
the forbidden mount, and perished for his presumption ?

I need not multiply illustrations. None of us to-day believes in all the
things that were to Dante facts, or conclusive inferences from fact. Some
still believe in a personal Devil ; many more in a personal and revealed God.
I will not say that Dante has not something to give to such co-believers which
the skeptic or agnostic cannot get, and would hardly value if he could. I do
say that the most radical skeptic or agnostic need not find himself an alien in
Dante's world, if he will but recognize that this world, false or not in literal
fact, is also an interpretation, a projected mirage of Dante's own mind and
character, — a symbolic or ' picture ' language in which the poet has phrased
his supreme human desire. Ptolemy, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and how
many others are responsible for the picture language. Dante thought this
picture language the hierogl)rphics of God. We may not think that. What
matter, if through the * dead ' language we may read the live message }

Manifestly, I can here hope only to hint at a line or two from that mes-
sage, to expose maybe just a comer of the heart of it, — a heart alive and
beating still, as I believe.

It has often been remarked that the triumph of the Copemican system of
astronomy involved the greatest defeat ever suffered by human pride. Hitherto
the universe had revolved about man ; now man went spinning somewhere in

FLETCHER 87

the bleak outemess. In a picturesque phrase of Professor Royce's, the earth
was forthwith reduced to a " mere local item in the news of the universe."
True — from the point of view of the reading public of heaven ; but hardly
true for the citizens of earth. However humbler his habitation, there is
still nothing more interesting or important for mankind than man. Indeed,
like all suburbanites, we residents of this now out-of-the-way planet are only
the more thrown back upon ourselves, upon our own resources. Cut off —
during our lives here anyway — from cosmopolitan activities and the courts
of heaven, we must needs nfiake the best of our local, our earthly selves.
Amidst all the modem varieties of belief and unbelief, there is the one
practical agreement that our present task as men is the betterment of human
conditions. We are at least bound to make ours the * suburb beautiful.* For
us, far more emphatically than for the old philosopher recorded by Pliny,
" Grod is the helping of man by man."

And this is just what Dante is forever sa)dng, — although his God is also
something more besides.

Before ever I opened his essay on monarchy, the De Monarchia, I sup-
posed, I was led to believe, it an archaic curiosity, a museum specimen of
* high priorism.' So I was startled, when I actually began the book, to find
this thesis laid down as a starting point : " The work proper to the human
race, taken as a whole, is to keep the whole capacity of the potential intellect
constantly actualized, primarily for speculation, and secondarily (by extension
and for the sake of the other) for action." The vocabulary is a bit archaic ;
but the doctrine sounded essentially modem. Translated into modem terms,
it suggested an idea as modem as Matthew Arnold's sa)dng that conduct is
three fifths of life, and culture the rest. For " speculation " as the outcome of
keeping " the whole capacity of the potential intellect constantly actualized "
I take to be, so far as human experience is concerned, not really different
from what Amold means by culture, — " culture being," to quote his familiar
words, " a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all
the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said
in the world." Amold would give three fifths of life to conduct ; Dante
would apparently give three fifths to * speculation.' We need not quarrel
about that odd one fifth. The important thing is that the Florentine no less
than the Victorian is asserting that the goal of humanity is more humanity,
not any mediaeval ascetic stifling of the life that is in us, but rational enlarge-
ment of that life, * new life * on earth in * sweetness and light.' It is the
modemist's suntmum bonunt.

And to this end, this ' greatest good,* continues the author of the De
Manarchiay the primary condition is peace. " In the quiet or tranquillity of
peace," he declares, ** the human race is most freely and favorably disposed
towards the work proper to it." And furthermore, to be efficient to its end

88 THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

this peaceful work must itself be organized, must have unity of direction, must
have the unified direction of a single mind. So Dante argues for a universal
monarchy, an international tribunal making for concordant cooperation to-
wards the goal of human effort — realization of fullest humanity. Modem
idealism recognizes the same goal, premises the same requirements ; only,
grown politically democratic, postulates instead of an international emperor
at Rome an international parliament at The Hague.

Peaceful cooperation towards the realization of fullest humanity — such is
the social ideal of the Ghibelline pamphleteer. The De Monarchia might
fitly bear the imprint and the motto of our international peace-society — Pro
patria per orbis concordiam. Peace — outward and inward, here and here-
after — is the gospel which Dante preaches ever and everywhere. When the
brother of the monastery at which he once applied for refuge, asked what he
sought, the wayfarer only replied, ** Peace." Not selfish withdrawal from life
indeed, but fullest harmony of life with self and man and God — such rich
peace is ever the object of Dante's seeking. True, in the Divine Comedy he
seems to set his goal, his millennium, in an otherworld beyond the grave ;
but as I have stated, while this paradisiacal otherworld of his was for him a
reality hereafter, it is also the symbol of a possible earthly state here and now.
His paradise is not that " inverted world," that " verkehrte Welt '* of Hegel's,
where everything just isn't what it here is, but a model world for men to
pattern their world upon. Earthly life is made in the image of heavenly life
just as, and in proportion as, man is made in, and may grow in, the image of
God. Dante's Paradise is fairly construable precisely as More's Utopia is
construable, — as a criticism of our civilization as it is, and as a theory of
improvement.

But, it may be said, just in that matter of democratic ideal rises the barrier
between Dante and us. His world is a world of caste, a social hierarchy as
stiffly ringed and graded as his immutable hell. That is what makes him so
mediaeval. He is no democrat. He has no sympathy with man as man.
Whether in hell or heaven, he will converse only with people of importance,
and takes almost an exclusive interest in 'good society.' The great revolutionary
watchwords of modem democracy — liberty^ equality^ fraternity — are not
heard in a state so rigidly policed by prince and priest. It is such indictments
as these, I suppose, that made Signor Carducci reject everything in Dante
except his ' poetry.'

Well, as to equality, Dante does not believe that, in any romantically literal
sense, men are bom equal. I doubt if any one does, or ever did — really.
Nature opposes too obvious a veto. I know, for instance, so beyond all perad-
venture, that I was not bom William Shakspere's equal. But apart frorn
Nature's favoritism, inequality is essential to human progress itself. For human
progress demands social organization ; social organization involves diversity of

FLETCHER 89

individual function, — which is to say, speaking plainly, humble jobs as well
as exalted jobs, privates as well as captains, stokers as well as stewards, col-
lege professors as well as college presidents, — or in a word, inequality.

Dante therefore is not speaking mediaeval feudalism but common sense,
when he asserts and justifies such inevitable social inequality, a graded world.
(What else do we mean by organism ? ) For instance, the princely young
Charles Martel meets his former friend, Dante, in the heaven of Venus, and
in the course of a discussion as to how degenerate sons can spring from
worthy parents, he asks Dante, ** Would it be worse for man on earth were
he no citizen," — were he, that is, not a member of organized society } Dante
admits that of course it would. And Charles retorts, ** And may that be,
except men live below diversely and with diverse offices ?" The argument is
implied that I have just now outlined : social organization implies diversity
of function, and hence inequality. But, according to Charles, inequality is
quite independent of heredity, though men in their blindness persist in
acting as if it were not. They think mistakenly that a son ought to be given
his father's place, however unfitted by nature he may show himself. Hence
people are constantly trying to fit square pegs into round holes. ** Ye wrench,"
he exclaims, '* to a religious order him bom to gird the sword, and make a
king of him who should be for discourse ; wherefore your track runneth
abroad the road."

The further implications of Charles's argument are obvious. A man is
indeed bom, if you will, to his * office,' his place in society, but — not because
he is his father's son. Personal fitness, inborn merit, alone shall qualify him
for his birthright ; nothing else.

The rank is but the guinea^s stamp,
The man 's the gowd for a' that

In the true sense of the word Dante does not seem to be undemocratic,
after all. Faith in social democracy is quite compatible with faith in a
political monarchy, as present-day England proves. And indeed Dante made
democratic a social doctrine as aristocratically exclusive as ever was. I mean
the social doctrine implied in the love poetry of the troubadours, his literary
masters. According to the Provengal code of courtly love, gentleness of
feeling was confined to gentility of birth. Love was the flower of good
breeding ; it could not be grown in * common or garden ' soil.

The troubadours intended indeed no social theorizing. For the most part
they were simply writing amorous compliments to and for high-bred dames ;
and they naturally voice the exclusive prejudices of a rigid feudal caste. Dante
borrows their phrases, but by a single amendment alters their whole meaning.
Gentleness of feeling is confined to gentility — yes, but, qualifies Dante,

E gentilezza dovunque h virtute.

90 THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

' Gentility is wherever virtue is.' Love is the flower of good breeding — yes,
but good breeding is just high-mindedness. Only the gentleman really loves —
yes, but the gentleman is literally 6 koKo^ KayaOo^;, the beautiful and good
character. Though an emperor has said that gentility rests on birth and out-
ward manners, he is, comments the independent Florentine, but one of ** those
who err." To the old jibing question —

When Adam delved and Eve span.
Where was then the gentleman ?

Dante must in consistency have replied, '* Nowhere " ; but — merely for the
reason that a gentleman would n't have thrown the blame on a woman !

Dante's gentleman — or, as he prefers to say, ' gentle heart ' — is thus far
enough removed from the * nobleman ' of feudal caste. His gentleman is
virtuous, high-minded, a beautiful and good character, and might — in consist-
ency — be a shoemaker or a peasant, — though I admit Dante might have
been also surprised to find him one. Even the greatest are sometimes practi-
cally inconsistent in their prejudices, /am — about simplified spelling and
some other things. Dante's gentleman alone can love — in Dante's sense of
loving. Indeed, whatever his gentleman does is a work of love.

This last sentence sounds sentimental or evangeUcal. In fact, it is neither.
Dante means much more by ' love ' than his troubadour masters meant. They
meant only amorous passion, however much sophisticated or quintessentialized.
I cannot pretend to say how much amorous passion, simple or sophisticated,
the young Dante Alighieri felt for the Florentine girl. Bice Portinari. It may
well be that as a boy of nine he was really infatuated with her, and as a
youth of eighteen actually besonneted her ; but, however all that may be, the
man of thirty composed his book called the New Life to record no mere
personal affair of the heart. Philosopher that he had become he had come to
recognize the impulse to self-forgetful service which springs from all deep
personal affection as one with

The Love that moves the sun and other stars.

The highest and the humblest love meet in this, that each bums with ** a flame
of charity." Whenever he saw Beatrice, **a flame of charity possessed me,"
he says, " which made me pardon whomsoever had offended me." In that
moment at least, his will was the good will which should bring peace among
men, was that * helping of man by man ' which was to bring God, the
' greatest good,' to earth. The fulfillment of his vision of God, as he records
it in the Paradise^ is ethically only the clearer realization of that early
mood of love. His will and desire, as he tells us, have at last become intelli-
gently one with the love that moves all things to its ends. His purpose is
now God's purpose ; to its fulfillment lie is spontaneously and wholly self-
dedicated. And God's purpose for man is the "pursuit by man of his

FLETCHER * 91

total perfection," as Arnold called it, or the keeping " the whole capacity of
the potential intellect constantly actualized," as Dante called it.

Here then is the evolution of this idea of love from the troubadours
through Dante. For them in theory love was the self-devoted service of
one's lady. In practice, their * service * was largely a gallant make-believe, a
matter of forms and ceremonies. For the young Dante of the New Life^ love
is also self-devoted service of his lady, even though to no more practical
ends than the celebration of her excellence living, and the perpetuation of her
memory dead. (The New Life has broader philosophic intentions, I believe,
but they are enigmatically presented, and therefore say relatively feebly what
is later said with power.) But for the mature Dante of the Divine Comedy
and the De Monarchia^ though love is still self-devoted service, yet it is
service not of his lady merely, however bright and fair she be, but also of his
fellow men. It is in the highest sense the spirit and ideal of fraternity.

We begin to see the rich implication of Dante's line —

Amore e cor gendl SQno una cosa.

* Love and the gentle heart are one same thing.' If love is thus measure of
gentility, of rank and office, and if love is self-devoted service of one's fellow
men, then Dante's practical solution of social inequality becomes plain. It is
for the general good that the right man should be in the right place, and the
right kind of man, the gentlemacdy will joyfully acquiesce in his place, be it
high or low. All that he, as one moved wholly by love, asks for is the greatest
possible serviceableness. To be doing what one is qualified for doing, to be
where one serviceably belongs — that is the basis for content, the necessary
condition for inward peace. And inward peace is as essential for the general
good as outward peace. So the meek Piccarda expresses to Dante her con-
tentment with her place in the lowly heaven of the Moon. ** Brother," she
smiles, "the quality of love stilleth our will, and maketh us long only for
what we have, and giveth us no other thirst. Did we desire to be more aloft,
our longings were discordant from his will who here assorteth us — and his
will is our peace."

A recent and brilliant writer on Dante, Professor Santayana, has, I believe,
curiously misunderstood Piccarda. According to him, " For Piccarda to say
that she accepts the will of God means not that she shares it, but that she
submits to it. She would fain go higher, for her moral nature demands it, . . .
but she dare not mention it, for she knows that Grod, whose thoughts are not
her thoughts, has forbidden it. The inconstant sphere of the moon does not
afford her a perfect happiness ; but chastened as she is, she says it brings her
happiness enough ; all that a broken and a contrite heart has the courage to
hope for." If that is indeed what Piccarda means, it is strange that Dante,
leaving her, could say : '* Clear was it then how everywhere in heaven is

92 THE MODERNNESS OF DANTE

paradise, e'en though the grace of the chief Good doth not rain there after
one only fashion.*' Piccarda fairly sings her joy ; Dr. Santayana would have
her but sighing her resignation.

But Dr. Santayana — I speak under correction — quite misses Piccarda's
point. To say that she " would fain go higher, for her moral nature demands
it," is to confuse two very unlike aspirations — the aspiration for higher
office, and the aspiration for highest service. Piccarda's aspiration to serve is
indeed infinite, insatiable ; for such is the quality of love. But it is this very
** quality of love " that, as she says, ** stilleth our will, and maketh us long
only for what we have " ; because, incompetent to a higher place, she would
there be of less service. Now in her right place, all her powers have full
play. From no one can more be asked; to no one can more be given.
Perfect service is perfect freedom.

For human conduct the moral of Piccarda's words is obvious. They do not
spell * quietism * or * standpattism,* or exalt the maxim * Whatever is, is best.'
Personal ambition, the desire to better one's self in the world, is justifiable so
long as one's power for good measures up to the coveted place. For the
individual as well as for the race it is right that ** the whole capacity of the
potential intellect" should be kept "constantly actualized." Else there is
waste. So any one who sincerely feels that he has not found or been allotted
his right place, his place of greatest usefulness, has a right, nay, a duty to
protest. Not only he but, through him, society is the loser by the dislocation.
' Noble discontent ' is awakened when one is needlessly kept from doing
one's best. But individual discontent or social unrest, when stirred by desire
of self-aggrandizement and not of disinterested service, is like the ambition
of the bullfrog in the fable to swell himself to the bigness of the bull. His
was not * noble discontent ' ; it merely — as the event proved — spoiled a
* perfectly good ' frog. We may heroically resolve to hitch our wagon to a
star ; but we should remember that such a team calls for a specially gifted
driver.

Have I been saying undisputed things in a solemn way ? Well, so be it.
I held out no promise of showing novelties in Dante, but rather the opposite
— ideas and ideals so staled by frequence in our time that they have grown
commonplace, and seem still more so in my commonplace handling. But if
they are in Dante, if I am right in thinking they are ia him, assuredly they
will not sound commonplace from him. Really, is n't everything common-
place and also not commonplace — as it is spoken ?

Social inequality, then, regulated by social justice ; social justice bent on
giving each individual his fullest scope, and so his greatest opportunity of
service ; individual and collective service wholly dedicated to the realization
of the whole potential capacity of mankind for * speculation * and * action,'
culture and conduct, — liberty, equality , fraternity interpreted and upheld as

FLETCHER 93

the best thought of the twentieth century is interpreting and upholding them,
— such is Dante's social program. Is it mere empty paradox to speak of his
modemness ?

In conclusion, I may submit as it were an amendment on Carducci*s son-
net, with which I began this paper. Mine may be no more than a travesty of
a sonnet, but I believe it a juster appreciation.

Dante, not supine in ecstatic swoon
Held'st thou communion with the Love which moves
The sun and other stars ; not so behooves
Man to abjure his manhood. Late and soon
Thy gentle heart besought as for a boon
Service ; believed he serves God best who loves
* Life, — who, still holding fast the good, yet proves
All things, — and else were recreant and poltroon.
Unto this end sweet Lucy made her prayer ;
Gentle Matilda washed thy spirit dean ;
Pure Beatrice led up the mystic stair —
That thou might*st know where lies man^s true demesne ;
Which is not yet where angels have no care,
But in such loving toil as left thee lean.

THE TWO PROLOGUES TO THE LEGEND
OF GOOD IVOMEN: A NEW TEST

John Livingston Lowes

There is excellent authority for the persuasion that one's private glee in

harping ** ay o werbul ** on however jolly a harp is not always shared by one's

courteous auditors. And to touch again the Prologue to the Legend of Good

Women is to court at best gently tolerant rather than eagerly expectant ears.

So be it!

And therefore, whoso list it nat y-here,

Tume over the leef , and chese another tale.

What I wish briefly to do is to look at the problem of the two versions of the
Prologue from what I hope is a fresh angle, and to supplement by internal evi-
dence certain considerations earlier adduced ^ as looking towards the priority
of B.

One of the curious features of the problem has been the seeming absence
of decisive aid and comfort accorded by the two versions themselves to the
literary detective. Where a revision has been so sweeping as that which is
embodied in the first four hundred lines of the poem, it would seem inevitable
that some trace of the actual process of change should be left in the workman-
ship to betray unmistakably which is original and which alteration. Yet none
of the evidence of this sort so far brought forward has been felt to stand
wholly free from ambiguity. Strangely enough, however, one obvious test has
not been hitherto thoroughly applied. And it is the application of this test
which constitutes the purpose of the present paper .^

There are in the Prologue three passages of some length which in the re-
vision have been transposed. That is, they have been taken out from between
the lines of their original context, and inserted between other lines. In doing
this, certain changes both in the new context and in the transposed lines have
been rendered necessary. And if one take the trouble to go through the
process of assuming first one version, then the other, as the original, and of

1 Publications of the Modem Language Association of America.^ XIX, 593-683; XX, 749-864;
Journal of English and Germanic Philology^ VIII, 513-569.

'In presenting the considerations which follow, I shall have to deal with matters of rather
minute detail, which in the nature of the case exact, in order to their just appraisement, close
and constant reference to the documents themselves. I have tried, however, to organize and
coordinate these details as far as possible, in order to reduce to the minimum the burden of
weighing the evidence adduced.

96 THE TWO PROLOGUES

thereupon actually making the necessary transpositions as Chaucer in either
case must have made them, some interesting and pertinent facts are at once
disclosed.

Let us examine first the implications of A 71-80 and B 188-196, so far as
matters of ratr^ joinery are involved,^ and let us assume for the moment that
Chaucer has lifted the passage from its place in B, and carried it back a hun-
dred and odd lines to its present position in A. Precisely what, on this as-
sumption, must have happened? The question can be answered explicitly.
The last two lines of the passage, thus shifted, will read as they still read in
B, and will now be brought into immediate juxtaposition with B gy-gS,^ so
that the four lines which Chaucer has brought together will stand as follows :

B 195 For this thing is al of another tonne,

196 Of olde story ^ er swich thing was begonne.

B 97 But wherfor that I spak, to give credence

98 To olde stories^ and doon hem reverence, etc.

We have simply done over again, that is to say, what Chaucer must have
done, if B is the original^ and these four lines are what he must have had
before him.

Certain things are obvious at a glance. I have already^ pointed out the

1 I am deliberately steering clear, in the present discussion, of arguments drawn from purely
aesthetic considerations — always more or less dependent on disturbing personal equations —
and confining myself to the less alluring but more demonstrable evidence of technique. Ques-
tions of the comparative elegance of two passages may admit of, or even invite, disputation
without end; questions of the mere mechanics of style are susceptible of what approaches
demonstration. And it is the minutiae of literary craftsmanship that concern us here.

2 For it must be remembered that we are now engaged with Chaucer in the process of mak-
ing A (on our assumption of the moment), and that it is B alone that we have before us.

* Publications of the Modem Language Association^ XIX, 665. Dr. French argues {The Prob-
lem of the Two Prologues to Chaucer's Legend of Good Women j Johns Hopkins Dissertation, 1905,
p. 78, n. i) that ^ thing is in Chaucer's usage not always the very general term that it is
in modem English, but is here evidently used in a sense akin to that in which it is employed in

F [B] 364,

But for he useth thinges for to make.

The contrast is between this poem and thcU genre of poetry^ and thing is used in a seAse almost
technical." But that is to force the second thing from the plain sense of its context. On
Dr. French's own view that stryf has been changed to thing to avoid "a heaping up of sibilants"
(p. 78), see Publications of the Modem Language Association^ XX, 751, n. I. Professor Goddard's
explanation {foumal of English and Germanic Philology^ VIII, 105), to the effect that no better
word than "the delightfully indefinite * thing' could be hit on to describe the nature of this
gloriously unique production, the Legend of Good IVomen" and that "by the repetition of 'thing*
in the following line . . . the poet achieves one of his roguish ambig^ties," perhaps demands
no comment Professor Koch, in his review {Englische Studien^ XXXVI, 144) of my first article,
is forced to the conclusion that the scribe has slipped up : " Umgekehrt kann das in B aus
z. 195 in z. 196 wiederholte thing auf unaufmerksamkeit des schreibers beruhen, wahrend A an
letzterer stelle das gewiss passendere stryf bietet." The " umgekehrt " is not without signifi-
cance, as it refers back to Dr. Koch's suggestion that it is also the scribe, this time of At who
has changed elsewhere an original " florouns " to ** floures."

LOWES 97

awkward repetition of thing in two successive lines — a repetition to which
Chaucer's attention would inevitably be directed as he now scrutinized crit-
ically lines thrown off in the glow of composition. To hold that once seen the
repetition would not be recognized as a blemish is to deny to Chaucer a sense
of the rudiments of his craft.^ But by following through his actual processes
in revision, there is brought to light a fact which has so far escaped observa-
tion. It is possible (in a word) to see how the change in revision came about.
For as Chaucer inserted the couplet in its new position in his manuscript, his
eye could not fail to catch the couplet (B 95-96) which had originally preceded
B 97-98, but which he had now cancelled :

As to myn erthly god, to yow I calle,
Bothe in this werke and in my sorwes alle.*

The mere glance at his manuscript as he wrote would have been enough to
suggest the apt substitution of **this werke'' for "this thing'' And the further
substitution of **stryf " for the second "thing" is merely carrying out the
differentiation.

Might not the change, however, have been the other way about ? If we
assume A as the original, that is, may it not have been " this werk " of A 79
which suggested " this werke " in B 96, when the passage in A was carried
forward ? One has still to answer, on such an assumption, the question : Once
granted the careful discrimination involved in werk and stryf, what conceivable
motive could there be for substituting, not for one only but for both (thus
bringing about the awkward repetition), the undiscriminating thing ? But this
question may be waived. " In this werke " of B 96 could not have had its sug-
gestion in '* this werk " of A 79, for the phrase in B has its own independent
origin in the *' Nell' opera la quale a scriver vegno ** of the Filostrato^ In
other words, the change from " this thing" of B to " this werk *' of A is ex-
plicable at once through the wording of the cancelled passage in B. This
wording of B, on tiie other hand, has its independent origin in sometiiing
wholly outside of A. So far as this couplet is concerned, then, an examination

1 Chaucer's procedure may be readily paralleled, of course, from the work of other poets.

In 181 5, for example, Wordsworth found in the 1807 text of " I wandered lonely as a cloud,"

the following lines :

A host of dancing daffodils ;

Along the lake, beneath the trees,

Ten thousand dancing in the breeze.

By the substitution of ** golden " for the first ** dancing " the repetition was obviated.

^ In all probability the new passage was inserted in the margin^ so that B 195-196 would be
brought opposite B 95-96 :

B 95 As to Ttiyn erthly god, to yow I calle, B 195 For tfus thing is al of another tonne,

96 Bothe in this werke and in my sorwes alle. 196 Of olde story, er swich thing was begonne.

But wherfor that I spak, etc. But wherfor that 1 spak, etc.

• See Publications of the Modem Language Association of America^ XIX, 619.

98 THE TWO PROLOGUES

of the craftsmanship involved seems to afford definite evidence of the order
of revision.^

Moreover, as if to make assurance double sure, the very next couplet offers
even more striking evidence. For A 81-82 and B 97-98 are as follows :

But wherfor that I spak, to yeve credence But wherfor that I spak, to give credence
To bokes olde and doon hem reverence. To olde stories^ and doon hem reverence.

If A is the earlier version, it is difficult to see any reason why for ** bokes
olde " there should be substituted " olde stories." On the face of it, such a
change seems to be purely arbitrary. But, postulating B as the earlier version,
and actually making the shift of the Flower and Leaf passage thus required,
what we get is the group of lines already brought together on page 96. It is
at once clear that the change from ** olde stories " to '* bokes olde '* is due to
the necessity of obviating the repetition involved in *' olde story " and " olde
stories " within three lines — a repetition brought about by the shift of para-
graphs. Absolutely no such reason is operative in the other case. For what
is inserted in place of A 71-80 (namely, B 83-96), if A is the original, con-
tains nothing which requires the change from ''bokes olde" to ''olde stories,"
as a glance will show. That is to say, on the assumption of the priority of B
there is again an obvious and cogent reason for the change ; on the contrary
assumption, the explanation is to seek. And once more the order of revision
has left its traces in the workmanship — traces which have not hitherto been
observed simply because nobody has repeated the actual processes involved.^

^ It should be observed that still another change is perhaps accounted for by this same new
juxtaposition of the lines. For if we add the next couplet, we shall have (as Chaucer had) the

^ * For this thing is al of another tonne,

Of olde story ^ er swich thing was begonne.
But wherfor that I spak, to give credence
To olde stories^ and doon hem reverence,
And that men mosten more thing beleve, etc.

Thing is thus repeated three times within five lines. The use of autoritees in A 83 may readily
enough have been also due to what a glance at the rearranged lines disclosed. For Chaucer
had probably at least as much sense for such details as the average corrector of Freshman
themes. Nor is the repetition of thing the only such blemish he would observe.

^ Instances could be multiplied from other sources of changes in revision which carry still
other changes with them. In Wordsworth's ** I wandered lonely as a cloud,'' to which reference
has already been made, the present second stanza, which was inserted in 181 5, contained the line

Ten thousand saw I at a glance.
The original first stanza ended in the line

Ten thousand dancing in the breeze —
which was thereupon altered to

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
The inserted stanza contains the line

Along ^<t margin of a bi^.
The penultimate line of the original first stanza was

Along the lake, beneath the trees —

LOWES 99

This evidence falls in, it is obvious, with other considerations, based on
the larger structural changes in the poem, which have been presented else-
where.^ In this paper, however, I am confining myself to the implications of
the diCXMaX joiner s work involved in the transposed passages, and the evidence
just adduced seems to be conclusive, even independently of other indications
looking the same way. For there is nothing whatever involved in the changes
just pointed out beyond the ordinary, mechanical processes of revision. Their
very unimportance enhances their evidential value.

But the results of the application of our test are not yet exhausted. Let us
assume this time that A is the original, and that, accordingly, the paragraph
A 71-80 is to be set forward a hundred lines or more. In the first place, lines
71-72 of A constitute as they stand a complete couplet, rhyming in undertake-
make. It would be a perfectly simple and obvious procedure, accordingly,
to transfer this couplet intact to its new position, and that is certainly what we
should expect to find — above all in the case of Chaucer * — if the assumption
of a splitting of the paragraph in A be sound. But we do not so find it. On
the other hand, at the point of its assumed insertion in B (11. 187-188) the
passage begins with the second line of the couplet, the make now rhyming
with sake of the preceding line, which ends an entirely independent sentence.
And this sentence happens to be a reminiscence of Froissart, and it grows
directly out of the preceding lines, which are also suggested by the Ditti^?
In other words, with a complete and adequate couplet ready at his hand,

which became

Beside the lake, beneath the trees.

An uncommonly interesting example of changes which involve still other changes is found
in the first and second quartos of Hamlet, The reading of Q^ for I, ii, 150-152 is as follows :

The Cocke, that is the trumpet to the mortang^
Doth with his earely and shrill crowing throate,
Awake the god of day, and at his smmd^ etc.
Q, has become

The Cock that is the trumpet to the mortUy
Doth with his lof^ and shrill sounding throat
Awake the God of day, and at his warning^ etc

The change from ** shrill avwing" to ^ shrill sounding*'' makes it necessary to substitute another
word for sound in the next line. But the word actually substituted (warning) introduces at once
a rhyme with morning two lines before. The further change from morning to mome accord-
ingly becomes necessary.

1 Publications of the Modem Language Association^ XIX, 663 ; Tatlock, Development and
Chronology of Chaucer's JVorks (Chaucer Society, 1907)* pp. 92-93 ; etc.

< See especially below, pp. loo-ioi.

* Lines 175-185 of B are clearly traceable, for their suggestion, to lines 142-17 1 of Froissart's
Dittii de la Flour de la Margherite {Poisies^ ed. Scheler, II, 213-214). The limits of the present
article do not permit citation of the two passages, but the comparison may be readily made. The
next two lines of B (186-187), which end with the sake referred to above, retain, with a some-
what different turn, the substance of the lines which immediately follow in the Dittii:

I pray to God that faire mot she falle, Et pour I'amour dHme seule . . .

And alle that loven floures, for her sake. Toutes les voeil honourer et servir (U. 172, 175).

•

• •

• • A • * • •*

lOO THE TWO PROLOGUES

Chaucer actually ends the new passage which leads up to it ^ tvith a word in
the same rhyme, and thus forces himself to a quite gratuitous remodelling of
his old couplet. That is of course within the bounds of possibility, but it is
(especially, as we shall see, in Chaucer's case) in the highest degree improbable.

Let us see, on the other hand, what happens if we assume the priority of
B. The reminiscence of Froissart (B 175-187), now of a piece with all the
other '*glenings," ends in a prayer for **alle that loven floures, for hir sake,"
and this leads, with perfect naturalness, to a disclaimer of any intention to
" preyse the flour agayn the leef." The sake-make rhyme, in other words,
grows out of an unforced association of ideas, which bears every mark of spon-
taneity. But now suppose the disclaimer (B 188-196) to be brought, for the
sake of greater unity, into connection with the earlier Flower and Leaf para-
graph. The omission of B 83-96 leaves this paragraph ending in a complete
couplet, B 81-82 ; the paragraph to be transposed begins with the second line
(B 188) of a couplet. It is necessary, accordingly, either to begin again
de novo, or to expand the second line of the broken couplet to form a new
couplet. In point of fact (on our present assumption) the first line and a half
(188-189) of the passage in B have been dexterously expanded into two lines
and a half (71-73) in A by repeating in reverse order (of which more later) the
** flour ageyn the leef " phrase, thus giving the complete couplet needed.^ In
other words, on the assumption of the priority of A, Chaucer finds a simple
mode of juncture ready at his hand, and proceeds to introduce instead a very
complicated one ; on the assumption of the priority of B, he finds the com-
plication already there, and resolves it skillfully. Either alternative, again, is
possible. There can be no question, even apart from what has been already
pointed out, which is probable.

But all this brings out another interesting fact. One of the most striking
phenomena connected with the revision of the Prologue, on either hypothesis,
is the scrupulous care which Chaucer takes to save himself the trouble of alter-
ing rhymes, and this invincible disinclination to touch his rhyme-words is of
the utmost interest even independently of its present bearing.* But it has
peculiar pertinence at just this point, and a concise statement of the essential

^ And which, it may be added, makes necessary the further assumption^that Chaucer returned
for fresh suggestion to his French originals.

^ It is of course possible to say, on general principles, that the one and a half lines of B
represent a condensation of the two and a half lines of A, in order to avoid this very repetition.
But it is a little complicated to suppose (as in this case one must) that Chaucer consciously kept
one eye on Froissart's lines, which he was charmingly paraphrasing, and the other on the pas-
sage to whose insertion he was leading up, and triumphantly ended his reminiscence of Froissart
with a rhyme-word which was designed to dovetail into the opening couplet of the shifted
paragraph !

* I am summarizing briefly in this parag^ph, for its specific pertinence to the present case,
what I have discussed elsewhere at greater length and in another connection. See Pubiications
of the Modem Langtiage Association^ XX, 797-800.

LOWES lOi

facts will aid in making their particular application clear. What has happened
is briefly this : In only eleven instances in the entire Prologue has Chaucer
changed the rh3ane of a couplet, and then, it would seem, usually under vir-
tual compulsion.^ On the other hand, in twenty-one instances he has changed
an entire line except the last word? Moreover, in nine lines the last two
words alone remain unchanged ;^ while in two lines the last three only,^ and in
three lines the last /^//r only ^ are left untouched. That is to say, in thirty-five
instances more than half the line has been altered, and the rhyme carefully
preserved. To these thirty-five cases, furthermore, there should be added the
nine lines ® in which a single new rhyme-ee/^n/ is substituted for an old with-
out, however, changing the rhyme itself. It is clear, then, that the vis inertiae
to be overcome before Chaucer could bring himself to sacrifice a rhyme already
at his hand was by no means inconsiderable. And this notable reluctance finds
significant illustration in the paragraph we are examining.

For if A is the original version, a moment's consideration shows that

For trusteth wel, I ne have nat undertake
As of the leef ageyn the flour ^ to make —

is curiously illogical. To write in praise of the leaf^ as against the flower, is
neither what Chaucer has done, nor what he intends to do, and to put the
leaf first is a clear hysteron proteron. It is scarcely conceivable that Chaucer,
if he were writing spontaneously — as he would be doing if A were the
original — should have fallen into so manifest (and so gratuitous) an inconse-
quence. It is a disclaimer of any intention to put the flower before the leaf
that we should expect to find emphasized — as^ indeed^ we actually find it
in B l8g? But if A is the revision^ the discrepancy is readily accounted
for.® For Chaucer, in making the transfer, obviously desires to keep the leef-
sA^e/ rhyme of B 189-190, precisely as we have seen him retaining, instead

1 The couplets are the following: A 13-14 = B 13-14; A 49-50 = B 49-50; A 53-54 =
B 63-64 ; A 91-92 = B 181-182 ; A 224-225 = B 270-271 ; A 264-265 = B 332-333 ; A 266-267
= B 334-335 ; A 312-313 = B 338-339 ; A 330-331 = B 354-355 ; A 332-333 = B 356-357 ;
A 526-527 = B 538-539. All but three of these changes in the rhyme of couplets belong to the
more thoroughgoing portions of the revision, where measures which for Chaucer were rather
heroic were rendered necessary.

« A 28 = B 28 ; 51 = 61 ; 58 = 56 ; 59 = 67 ; 60 = 68 ; 69 = 81 ; 70 = 82 ; 72 = 188 ; 78 =
194; 83 =99; 84 = 100; 107= 120; 127 = 139; 146 = 214; 160 = 228; 165 = 233; 179 = 276;
227 = 300 ; 348 = 368 ; 402 = 414 ; 532 = 543. Cf. 106 = 202 ; 108 = 119.

8 A33 r= B33; 36=36; 52 = 62; 68 = 80; 89= 108; 117 = 129; 136= 150; 144= 212;
242 = 316; 341 =363. * A 73 = B 189; 98 = 204. 6 A 94 = B 198; 166= 234; 533 = 542.

«A39=B39; 138=152; 143 = 211; 164 = 231; 234 = 308; 247=321; 317 = 341;

364 = 380 ; 544 = 578.

'' It should be noticed that the precedence of the Uaf\n B 71-72, on the other hand, is en-
tirely logical. '* Even if you hold with the leaf there is still reason why you should further me
in my labor. /J7r" — and so on.

* It is really a case where, as Tatlock puts it with reference to another passage, " the
superiority of B actually suggests that A is the later^* {^Development and Chronology^ p. 97).

* • ••• • • • •

I02 THE TWO PROLOGUES

of recasting, his other rh)anes. But to keep leef^ when the line becomes A 73,
makes it necessary, in this line, to throw flour first, with the inevitable con-
sequence that leef must come first in A 72, which in turn (as we have seen)
forms part of the expansion of B 188 into a couplet.^ The discrepancy in
A, that is, which is extremely difficult to understand if in that version Chau-
cer was writing with a free hand, becomes explicable enough when we bring
it into relation with Chaucer's sharply marked conservation, in his revision, of
existing rhymes, and consider it as a result of his remodelling of B.

Our examination of the implications of the shifted passage A 71-80 = 6
188-196 has shown, it may be hoped, that point after point which is obscure
or inconsistent on the assumption that the paragraph has been transferred from
an original position in A to its present place in B becomes clear and consist-
ent on the alternative hypothesis. There are, however, two other paragraphs
(A 93-106 = B 197-21 1 ; A 179-202 = B 276-299) which have been simi-
larly transposed. A briefer analysis must suffice for these.

The shift represented by A 93-106 = B 197-21 1 involves, like the first,
a structural change in the poem as a whole, the significance of which I am
not here concerned with.^ It is again the mechanical changes involved in the
actual transfer to which I desire to call attention here. I shall not append the
two versions of the paragraph, as they are readily accessible.

Assume for the moment that A is the earlier version. In that case, what
has Chaucer done? In the first place, he has retained (now as B 211) the
second line (A 106) of the closing couplet (after striking out the reference
to the lark in A 139-143), and has changed its last half in order to introduce
the rhyme needed to effect a junction with its new context — i.e. the " mede '*
of A 144. That is easy enough to understand. But he has not stopped with
that. For he has also taken this same closing couplet (A 105-106) entire^
modifying its wording, and inserted it {now as B 201-202) between lines
g6 and 97, where there is no need of it whatever. And in doing this he has
brought about a mass of repetitions. Not only has he unnecessarily repeated
himself so far as the idea is concerned, but he has also introduced a verbal
repetition of **To seen this flour'* (B 202, 211), and (through the further
modification of A94 = B 198) has three times repeated "this flour'* itself
(B 198, 202, 211). Nor is that all. For the "goon to reste" of the new
B 201 now repeats the "goon to reste" of B 198. And finally, the change
resulting in B 198 ( = A 94) has also introduced a repetition of both " that "
and " gan " of the preceding line.

1 In like manner the retention of the honour-flour rhyme of B 81-82 throws Uef first in
A 70, although in this instance, as in the case of B 72, there is no real violation of logic.

* See Tatlock, Development and Chronology^ p. 93. My own earlier discussion of the same
point is obscured by overemphasis laid on the relations between the supposed two parts of the
Prologue to the Lay de Franchise and the Paradys d^amours respectively {Publications of the
Modem Language Association, XIX, 679-6S0).

:V: •: ; : : :

LOWES 103

Assume, now, the contrary change. The last line (B 21 1) in this case must
give place to a complete couplet so as to connect with that represented by
B 1 19-120 (B 1 09-1 18 having been cancelled), and at the same time the
reference to seeing the flower must be kept. Both the couplet and the refer-
ence are already at hand in B 201-202 y which, moreover, are not needed
where they stand. This couplet is, accordingly, transferred, with necessary
modification of the wording, to the end of the paragraph. Thus the threefold
reiteration of " this flour,'* and the repetition of the phrases " to seen this
flour" and "to goon to reste" are obviated at one stroke. Moreover, the
simple change of B 198 to A 94 does away with the awkward repetition of
"that" and "gan." If, then, A is the prior version, Chaucer has (while
revising) introduced in a passage of fifteen lines the repetition of no less
than five words or phrases ; if B is the earlier form (in which case the repeti-
tions are the result ^f rapid composition), in effecting the transposition he has
at the same time obviated all five. The latter phenomenon is manifestly the
one more characteristic of revision. And the only alternative open, I think,
is the assumption that Chaucer, while actually exercising his critical judg-
ment in revision^ was either oblivious to or careless of the most obvious blem-
ishes of style. In other words, the changes that are made, if A represents a
revision of B, are such as may be illustrated from actual records of revision in
the case of many other writers. For the phenomena that appear, if B is the
revised text, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a parallel.

But another point is perhaps equally significant. Lines 1 19-124 of B are
unmistakably inspired by Machaut's Dit de la Marguerite^ as a comparison
will render clear at once :

That was -mikifloures swote enbrouded al, Or resgardons k ceste douce flour :

Of swich swetnesse and swich odour over-al, Toutes passe, ce m'est vis, en coulour ;

That, for to speke of gomme, or herbe, or Et toutes ha surmont^ de dou^our,

tree, Ne comparer

Comparisoun may noon y-maked be; Ne se porroit [nulle] k li de coulour.

Eor hit surmounteth pleynly alle odoures, Par excellence est garnie d^odour^

And eek of riche beautee alle floures. Et richement par^ de verdour.^

B 1 19 -120, therefore, are directly reminiscent of Machaut's Dity and they
follow with perfect spontaneity the lines about ** the smale softe swote gras."
If, now, B is the earlier version, Chaucer has skillfully changed this couplet
to A 107-108, in order to effect his juncture :

Fair was this medew, as thoughte me overal,
With floures swote enbrowded was it al.

1 Dity 11- 17-23 (ed. Tarb^, p. 123). Lines 18-21 of the Dit were cited by Professor Skeat
{Oxford Chaucer^ III, xxxi) as parallel with B 53-55, which they resemble, however, very slightly.
I called attention in my earlier discussion {Publications of the Modem Language Association,
XIX, 628, n. 2) to the fact that they were closer to B 123-124, but I failed even then to see
the full extent of the parallel.

I04 THE TWO PROLOGUES

The " fair was this medew " carries over " the medew '* of B 210 (= A 104) ;
"me thoughte" takes up "me mette" of the same line. In other words,
Chaucer is dealing freely with his own lines, quite independently of their
suggestion in Machaut. But if the change is the other way about, in making
his connection with what are now the newly inserted lines B 1 1 5-1 18, he has
at the same time increased the closenesss of his paraphrase of the Dit} That,
to be sure, is possible, but it is not probable. In a word, an actual test of
what is involved in the two alternatives presented by the transposition of
A 93-106 = B 197-21 1 again throws light on the order of revision.

Nor is the case of A 179-202 = B 276-299 without suggestion. In B the
lines rehearsing Alceste's comfort as against "the drede of Loves wordes
and his chere " (B 278-281) are separated by forty lines, including the ballad,
from the actual account (B 239-240) of the God of Love's "stem loking,"
to which they refer ; in A the two passages are together. As in the parallel
case of the Flower and Leaf passages, it is difficult to see a reason why, origi-
nally united, the two paragraphs should be separated ; there is excellent rea-
son why, originally separated, but later seen to belong together, they should
be joined. But it is the further consequences of this junction to which I wish
to direct attention. For suppose that Chaucer, having observed the connec-
tion between the two separated paragraphs, actually begins the transfer.
B 276 (with a change which does not concern us here) will now follow B 246.
When Chaucer comes, in his copying of B 276-299, to the last two couplets,
these four lines (B 296-299) are brought into immediate juxtaposition with
B 247-248 — a situation which would instantly afford the suggestion for the
transfer of the ballad itself from Chaucer to the attendant ladies. The shift
of the paragraph from its place in B to its place in A, that is, not only puts
together lines which logically belong together, but it also contains an almost
inevitable suggestion for the extremely important change in the treatment of
the ballad. The transfer in the opposite direction not only effects none of
this, but actually breaks the logical unity and weakens the dramatic situation.

It would be easy to carry farther this minute analysis of details, but it is
perhaps neither necessary nor advisable. Sat patriae Priamoque datum.
Even within the rigid limitations to which we have confined ourselves, ex-
cluding all but the one sort of evidence, the case seems to be clear.

^ Compare the parallel situation in the case of B 187-188. See above, p. 100. Since Words-
worth's " I wandered lonely as a cloud " has already been twice referred to, it may not be out of
place to observe that it also illustrates the familiar tendency in revision to move away from
whatever source may have suggested the details of the original. The fourth line of the present
third stanza originally read "In such a laughing company," where the ^^ laughing*^ is clearly
suggested by Dorothy Wordsworth's /<?i/ma/ (ed. Knight, I, 106). In 181 5 the Ime became
" In such a jocund company." The point is noted, because sufficient attention has not been
paid to the similarity between Chaucer's procedure in revision, and that of other poets. For
Chaucer's procedure as illustrated in the Troilus^ see Tatlock, Development and Chronohgy,
PP- 3-5-

CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

Carleton Brown

The piece of Middle- English verse which forms the subject of the present
paper occurs in Sloane MS. 2478, a vellum manuscript of the early fourteenth
century, fol. 43* to fol. 44*. The volume in question is a miscellany con-
sisting of religious tales, extracts from the Fathers, sermons, lists of Church
Festivals, and similar material. A complete Hst of the contents is given by
Mr. J. A. Herbert in Vol. Ill of the Catalogue of Romances in the Dept. of
MSS. in the Btitish Museum^ p. 512. With the exception of the Caiphas
poem the contents of the -MS. are entirely in Latin. Though wholly distinct^
from their environment in the MS., the English verses were written by the
same hand, and formed a part of the original contents of the volume. End-
ing the life of St. Alexius at the middle of fol. 42*, the scribe left the lower
half of the page blank, in order, it would appear, that he might begin ** Cay-
phas *' at the top of a new page ; and having completed the English poem he
drew a line across the foot of the page and proceeded, at the top of fol. 45",
with a miracle from the life of St. Patrick.

The Caiphas poem was printed by Thomas Wright in 1843 in Reliquice
Antigua, II, 241-245, though with the omission of a few lines at the end
where the MS. was illegible. For the recovery of these lines I am under
obligations to Mr. Gilson, Keeper of Manuscripts in the British Museum,
who permitted the use of reagents on the lower portion of fol. 44*, with the
result that the lines were brought out distinctly. The text as printed below is
based throughout upon an independent collation of the MS.

CAYPHAS

AUe hayle and wel y-met*
Alle jee schullef beo }>e bet

Nou icham y-come
4 Blysful and blyj>e jee mowe boe
Such a prelat her ;^-soe

I-tolled to fis trome

^ The / oiy-met is followed by a loop or flourish which appears repeatedly afterwords end-
ing in/, g, ^, or /. In a few cases these loops may have been intended by the scribe to repre-
sent final Cj but for the most part they are without significance. In II. 160 and i6x these loops
have been expanded as -es^ but elsewhere they have been disregarded. Since it is not practicable
to reproduce them in printing, I give here a list of the words where they occur : folk^ 1. 59 ;
uolk^X. 24; jf-met, 1. I ; ji/", 1. 14 ; yyf, 11. 89, 124, 131 ; iy/j 1. 90; iongy 1. 17 ; menamonk, L 161 ;
nojtyngy 1. 17 ; of^ 11. 27, 30, 41, 70, 79, 91, 1 14, 144; olyfy 1. 115 ; song^ IL 16, iio, 1 17 ; J»onky 1. 160.

105

io6 CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

^e boef wel werjr aboute y-go
3 So icham m^ sulf al so
Ich bysschop Ca^ace

Ich moste her sone sjnge

J>e prophecye of heuene kpige
12 J>at wh;^le ich se;^de bjr grace

J>y stondef a stounde and blowef bref
And jif icham as jee soef

Ichulle here me bolde
i6 And synge jou sone a lytel song
Ha schal boe schort and no]>yng long

fat raf^ ichadd y-told^

Ich was bysschop of \>e lawe

20 J>* jer f* crist for jou was slawe

^e mowe boe glade f^ore

Hit com to so)>e f^ ich ))o seyde

Betere hit were )>* o man deyde

24 fan al uolk were y-lore^

C expedit et c[etera].

Ichot je mowe nou3t longe dwelle
pf t are je go ichow wol telle

of crist ane litel tale
28 And of jour palm je beref an honde
Ich schal habbe leue ichonder stonde

of grete men & smale

A welsoof sawe so)>lich ys seyd
32 Ech god game ys god Jr-pleyd
Louelych & Ijrjt ys leue

J>e Denes leue and alle manne

To rede and synge ar ich go hanne
36 Ich bjdde f* jou ne greue

O i Decane reuerende

In adiutorium mtum intend[e]

Ad informandu^ hie astantes

Michi scids fauorante

Si placet bone domine

lube benedicere

Kanssimii hodie cantatwr quidam cantus, Occur[r]u«t turbe aim floribus et
palmis redemptori obuiam et c*. Et nos si^wlit^* debemus ei occurrere aim floribus
virtutu»i et palmis victoriar«»i. palma eniw victoriam significat, vndg scribit«r:
lustus vt palma florebit, et s^undum gregoriu»i * : JSx gualitate palmarnrti dcsigna-
tMi pToficuns vita iustomm, ad no-* ({uod om«em a crucifixo habemus, vnde ipxe

1 fol. 43*. « Moralium Lib. XIX, Migne, Patrol. Lot,, LXXVI, col. 130.

* At this point the scribe evidently skipped several lines.

CARLETON BROWN 107

dicit: Si mundi^ hoc faciunt in arido quid fid. In suwma ergo du»i pr(CK:essionem
facimus, christum ad nos venientem suscipimus c\xm pueris obuiam imus. si inno
cenciam s^ruamus oliuas gerimus; si pads et muericordiQ oper^us indulgemus,
palmas portamus ; si de vidis et diabolo victoriam opdnemus, virentes (lores et f ron-
des gestamus ; si virtutibus exomamur, vestimenta stemimus camem mortificanteSy
ramos carpimus, sam:A>rum vestigia imitantes. De istis aliqua pn? laids intendo p^-
tractare, et sic in breui expediam vos.

Welcome boe jee i fat stondef aboute
J>at habbef y-siwed fis grete route

Sone ychuUe jou s;^nge
40 ^ou alle today i*= mot J^-mete
Ichabbe leue of fe grete

W;^sdom for to wr^nge

A b^sschop ich was in cristes tjrme
44 1^0 g^wjrs vawe wolde do by me
What \^ ham euere radde
[Iu]das to ous Ihesus solde
\>o annas an^ ich panes tolde
48 Our byjete was badde

C^ pontifex anni WHius qui consilium dederat iudeis.

Whar fore ich & annas
To fonge Ihesus of ludas

Vor frjrtty panes to paye
52 We were wel faste to helle y-wronge
Vor hym f* for jou was y-stonge

In rode a gode fridaje

C tamen expedit vnum hominem mori &c.

J>at latyn fat i** lascht out nour^jt
56 To joure lYiesus hit was y-djrjt
& is f us moche to telle

Hit is betere fat o man deye

fan al folk euere boe in eye
60 In fe pyne of helle

J>e prqjhede f* ich seyde far
Ich hit seyde fo as a star *

Ich nuste what ich mende
[foL 44] 64 Ich wende falslyche jangli fo
Of me fat wjrt naddych no

bote as Ihesu sende

Man i at f ullojt as chabbe y-rad
68 J>Jr saule * ys godes hous Jr-mad
& tar ^ ys wassche al clene

* ^^A/viridi; cf. Luke^ xxiii, 31. * Starling (Ang.-Sax. j/<w). • MS. corrected from soule.

* = & |>ar; (/". And tou, St. Eustas, v. 147 (Horstmann, AltengL Leg, N.F.^ p. 214).

io8 CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

Ac after fullou5t )>oru5 fulfe of s^nne
Sone is mad wel hory wyf inne
72 Al day hit is y-sene

Man i ))ou hast )iroe wel grete fon
fat fondef euere hou mo don

To foule godes hous
76 J7at is )>i flechs wy)> lecherye
J>e world wy)) coueytise & enuye

J?erto hi buf wel vous ^

J?e fr jrdde fo is ))e deuel of helle
80 J7at f ondef in fi saule * dwelle
And holde cr^st far oute

Wv^f prude and wrethe he wole com Jrn

]>i i of hym and hys engyn
84 ^ee scholde habbe doute

Laste your soule boe fuld ajee
Wjf )>oes ' froe foon syker je boe

<5ee mote boe wel clybbe
88 To floe ham t and ))e sunnes seuene
Wylnef schr^t ^^f je wol heuene

Good lyf je mote lybb[e]

Wyf sorwl>e of herte i & schr^t of moufe
92 Dof deedbote |>is tjrme nouf
^yf 5e wolle god awyn[ne]

& lokef hys hous boe wel clene

fat non hore faryn boe sene
96 5y W ^^ ^^^^ come far ynne

& hwanne je habbef ou^nx)me f anne * voend
fanne y-metef cryst jour froend
Wyf palm & bowes grene
100 J>at ys a tokne i fat alle & some
Habbef f e deueles al ouercome
Ham to sorwe and toene

To ierusalem as to dajr

104 Ihesus rood hys rjrjte way
Vpane slowe asse
Vale far were f ^ on hym lyfde
f* louede hym & faste hym sywede

108 More men & lasse

1 Ready {Ang.-Sax./Us). * MS. corrected from soule.

• Above the o an i has been written in different ink. * MS. corrected from )>onne.

CARLETON BROWN 109

Ch;^ldren of hebreys h^m y-mette
Meklyche wjrf song hjr hym grette

& knooled to har kynge
[foL 44*] 112 Wjrf hare dopes hy spradd ;^s wa^
In gret worschepe of hym to dajr

& blessede hym syngjrnge

Hy here bowes of olyf troe
116 & floures )>e vayriste hy myjte y-soe
W;^ mury song & game
Anon as hjr myjte h^ ;^-soe
Hjr se^de blessed mot ha boe
120 pat come)> in godes name

C benedictiij qui venit in nomine domtni etc'.

Crjrst com as moeklych as a lom
To habbe for jou defes dom

To de|)e a wolde hjrm pulte
124 ^jrf he ne dej^de ne blod ne bledde
Euere jrn helle 5e hadde ba wedde

ffor Adames gulte

Nou jee y beref toda;^ jour palm
128 Wei aujte je queme such a qualm
To cnst jour herte al 5yue

As dude ft children of )K)lde lawe

^yf je h;^m louede je scholde wel vawe
132 boe bj^ tjrme schrj^e

^ Lewede f^ beref palm an honde
pat nute|> what palm jrs tonderstonde
Anon ichuUe jou teUe
136 Hit is a tokne ]>^ alle & some

p^ buf y-schryue habbef ou^nx)me
Alle }>e deueles of helle

^yf enjr habbe)> braunches ^-brojt
140 & buf vnschrj^e har host njrs nojt
Ajee fe fend to fyjte

^ With this explanation of the significance of the palm may be compared w. x-30 of the
metrical version of the Assumption in the Auchinleck MS. (ed. Max Schwarz, £h^/. Stud,,
VIII, 448), and also the following passage in Mirk's homily for Palm Sunday : ** Wherfor ych
cristyn man and woman schall \ys day here palmes yn pfvcessyon, schewyng >at he ha|>e foghten
"vryXA |>e fend, an ha|>e |>e vyctory of hym by clene schryft of mow|>e and repentans of hert, and
mekely don his penance, and i« Jns wyse ou/frome his enmy " {Mirk's Festialy EETS., p. 116).
The Palm Sunday symbolism is also interpreted by theological writers in very similar terms :
cf. Bp. Hildebert of Le Mans (Migne, PatroLy CLXXI, col. 503) and Hugh of St Victor (Migne,
Patrol, CLXXVI, col. 473).

no CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

Hy make^ ham hol^ as jr-were ^
Vort * hy boe schr^ue hf schulle|» boe skere
144 Of loem of heuene l)^5te

Ich moste spige & ba go

Schewe me pe bok f^ i« haddydo

pe song schal wel an he^j

148 Idi may no5t spigc h^m al bi rote

Vorto tele eche note

H;^ boef y-nome wel ne5r5
C Cantat expedit

Ich wamy alle schrewen vnschrjiie
152 To s^mon Cumpapigaoun i* habbe 5^-$yue
power of disdplyne

He wol boe red)^ ase je

ich rede ]>ar come non to me
156 Anaunter last ha whyne

Nou gawe hom hit is forda5rs^.
Lengere ne tjd jou here no pays*

pe belle wol sone rjnge
160 Do)> so y ich cunne 30U ^nkis

Wyf bordoun hauteyn menamonk^;r •

lat me hure 50U synge.

The date to which Mr. Herbert assigns the MS. on palaeographical
grounds agrees fairly well with the linguistic evidence presented by the text
before us ; though so far as its language is concerned the poem may easily
have been composed as early as the year 1300.^ The occurrence of the in-
strumental /y (w. 13, 26, and 83), for example, is extremely rare after the
beginning of the fourteenth century, except in the combination /<?^. More-
over, the inflectional forms when compared with those in the thirteenth-
century Owl and Nightingale show but few modifications.

A more difficult problem is that «f fixing the place of composition. In
dealing with this question it will be convenient to consider, first, the dialectical

1 Everywhere (Ang.-Saz. ge-kwikr).

* Until; c£. Leg, of Holy Roody EETS., p. 26, line loi ; p. 28, line 114.

* I.e. late in the day; cL/trdayes^ Knight of LaT. Landry ^ EETS., p. 45, and A Gest of
Robyn Hode^ stanza 16; ^o far day ^ ^ Examination of William of Thorpe,** ed. A. W. Pollard,
FifUenth Cent, Prose and Verse^ p. 160, line 26.

^ O.Yx.pas ; here used of time as in ** Lystyn a Ijrtyl pas ** (/^/. Rel. and Love Poems ^ EETS.,
p. 272, line 45).

* Monks would have no place in such a procession. Possibly the word is a half-playful
designation of the choir-boys: ** minnow-monks ** ; cf. the etymology of ''minnow** in the
New Eng. Diet, Altar-boys were often referred to as " monachuli.**

* The date of composition cannot, of course, be fixed by the date of the MS. In the case
of Caipkas evidence that the scribe was not the author but merely a copyist is seen in the blun-
dering omission of a portion of the Latin text (see above, p. 106, note 3).

CARLETON BROWN in

characteristics which appear in the text itself and, second, such evidence as
may be afforded by liturgical usage.

A casual inspection of the text is sufficient to establish the fact that the
dialect is consistently Southern. Moreover, the complete absence of Kentish ^,
and of the breaking ea^ as well as of the initial z makes it clear that the poem
does not belong to the Southeast. In attempting to narrow the field still
further it will be necessary to scrutinize the forms in our text with special
reference to the linguistic distinctions between the Middle-Southern district
and the Southwest.

The most important of these, as Morsbach defines them, consists in the
treatment of Anglo-Saxon a (including shortened Anglo-Saxon &). Whereas
documents of the Middle-South normally represent Anglo-Saxon (b by e}
those of the Southwest as regularly show the vowel a? Applying this test,
now, to our text, We see that it ranges itself decisively on the side of the
Southwest.

I . Anglo-Saxon (E>a\

after 70.

at 67.

badde 48.

faste 52, 107.

glade 21.

habbe 29, 41, 84, 122; chabbe 67, 152.

hadde 125, 146; ichadd 18; naddych 65.

smale 30.

star 62.

|>at 18 et passim,

was 19, 43, 48, 53, 56.

what 45, 63, 134.
' 2. Anglo-Saxon & shortened > a\ .

lasse 108.

laste (Ang.-Sax. hy l&s he) 85, 1 56.
' radde 45 ; y-rad 67.

spradd 112.

lat 162.

wharfore 49.

>ar 61, 106, 155 ; tar 69; >ar-oute 81 ; )>ar-ynne 95, 96.

are (Ang.-Sax. <^) 26 ; ar 35.
3. Exceptions:

wrethe 82.

fiechs 76.

eny 139

l>erfore 21 ; >er-to 78.

^ In later documents, such as St, Editha (ed. C. Horstmann, Heilbronn, 1883 ; composed
about 1420), this distinction is lost, for the Middle-Southern t has yielded to a, but the distinction
was certainly preserved as late as 1300.

* Morsbach, MitUlengl. Gratn.y %% 95, 97.

112 CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

Another distinction between Southwestern and Middle-Southern documents
is found in the treatment of Anglo-Saxon a before nasals. In the Southwest
this vowel before nasals regularly remains a^ while Middle-Southern documents
waver between a and o} It should be noted, however, that where the original
short vowel has been lengthened by following consonant combinations,^ this
distinction has been lost, for in these cases Middle-Southern and Southwestern
texts alike show o. The following instances of Anglo-Saxon a before nasals
occur in Caiphas :

1 . Followed by lengthening consonant combinations Ang.-Sax. a becomes o :

fondeJ> 74, 80.

honde 28, 133.

lom 121.

long 1 7, 25.

song 16, no, 117, 147.

stondep 13, 37; (onder)stonde 29.

>onkes 160.

2. Otherwise Ang.-Sax. a remains :

an (prep.) 28, 133, 147.

and I, etc.

game 32, 117.

nian 23, 58, 67 ; manne 34.

name L2o.

)>an (conj.) 24.

l^anne (adv.) 98.

J>anne (dem.) 97.

hwanne 97.

Somewhat noteworthy is the frequent (though by no means regular)
appearance in our text of voiced / in initial position. Thus :

vale (Ang.-Sax. y2f/tf) 106.

vawe (Ang.-Sax. yfe^tf«) 44, 131.

vayriste 116.

voend 97.

volk 24.

vor(prep.)5i, 53, 149.

vort 143.

vous (Ang.-Sax. /i^j) ^%.

In older Southern texts, such as Ancren Riwle and Owl and Nightingale,
the voicing of initial / is carried much further than in Caiphas, as it is also
in Robert of Gloucester. In St, Katharine, on the other hand, initial / is
preserved,^ as it is in almost every case in the poems of MSS. Laud 108,
Harl. 2277, and Harl. 2253. In the homilies in MS. Lamb. 487, /occurs
more commonly than v in initial position.* It will be seen, therefore, that

1 Morsbach, §§ 88, 93. * Cf. Morsbach, §§ 55, 93. « Einenkel, EETS., 13, p. xliL

* Cf. O. Cohn, Die Sprachein der mitteUngL Predigtsammlungder Hs. Lamb. 487, 1880, p. 22.

CARLETON BROWN

113

the initial vs in our poem, though they do not afford any definite indication
as to the place of its composition, are quite consistent with the neighborhood
of Gloucestershire.

The evidence thus far points distinctly toward the Southwest as the home
of Caiphas. Some of the pronominal forms, on the other hand, look toward
the Middle-South.

1. The masculine third personal pronoun nominative singular shows not
only the regular form he (w. 82, 96, 124, 154) but also the unaccented ha
(w. 17, 119, 156). The latter form is one which occurs most frequently in
Kentish documents.* At the same time, it is to be noted that in Robert of
Gloucester (v. 3826) the form a (= he) occurs.

2. The dative and accusative plural of the third personal pronoun is
regularly ham (w. 45, 88, 102, 142), which is the characteristic form in
documents of the Middle-South.^ Robert of Gloucester, on the other hand,
invariably writes horn ; in the Homilies of Lamb. MS. 487 the usual form is
heam^ though ham occurs occasionally.^ The only Southwestern text in which
ham (or yinC) appears regularly is Lasamon B.^

3. The possessive pronoun third person plural is har (w. 1 1 1, 140), hare
(v. 112), as in the Middle-Southern documents (cf. Diehn, p. 21). Robert of
Gloucester, on the other hand, writes hor or her; in the Life of Thomas a
Beket one finds in every case here ; in Owl and Nightingale and Lamb. MS.
487 the forms are hore or heore^ although in the latter hare sometimes occurs.^

One of the most striking peculiarities in the Caiphas text is the use of oe
for Anglo-Saxon /<?, though it is never employed for the short eo. Thus :

boe (14 times); beo 2; ba 125, 145.

boeJ> 7, 150; buj> 78, 137, 140.

floe 88.

voend 97; fend 141.

froend 98.

loem 144.

moeklych 121 ; meklych no.

8oel> 14; y-soe 5, 116, 118.

|>oes (plu.) 86 (cf. Diehn, Die Pron. im FruhmitteUngL^ p. 34, B.y).

h-oe 73, 86.

toene 102.

troe 115.

The regularity with which oe appears for Anglo-Saxon ^0 is surprising —
the single exception,® knooled (v. iii), being probably a mere scribal slip.

* Cf. O. Diehn, Die Pronomina im Fruhmittelenglischen^ 1901, p. 29. * Cf. Diehn, p. 21.

* Old English Homilies^ EETS., I, p. 31, line 19; p. 43, lines 15, 19; p. 45, line 16.

^ On the dialect of this MS. cf. A. Luhmann, Die Uberlieferung von Layamons Brutt 1906,
p. 10, note. * Old Eng. Hom.^ I, p. 43, line 10.

* Deuel (79, etc.) and ly-t^ (v. 33) are not really exceptions for the reason that in these words
the original long vowel had been shortened. Cf. Morsbach, p. 79.

114 CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

Unfortunately, however, this occurrence of oe offers but little assistance
toward fixing the home of our poem. Morsbach notes the frequent occur-
rence of ue^ u, and oe for Anglo-Saxon ^o in Southern and West-Midland
documents.^ The spelling ue appears to be specially characteristic of Here-
fordshire ; at least in Harl. MS. 2253, which was written probably at Leomin-
ster in that county, one finds ue almost regularly .^ The spelling oe, on the
other hand, appears with great frequency in the well-known Digby MS. Z6,
a Southern text whose exact home has not been determined. The form boe
occurs once in the Owl and Nightingale (Cott. Text, v. 1 303), written in
Dorsetshire, and is to be found as far east as Chichester.'

The results gained from this examination of dialectical forms, although
not definite enough to fix the home of the poem with precision, suggest that
it belongs to the Southwestern district, but not to the extreme west of this
territory. Or, to put the matter in geographical terms, one would say that the
text before us could hardly have been written east of Wiltshire or west of
Eastern Somersetshire.

Turning now from linguistic evidence to liturgical usage, we may note at
the outset an important clue afforded in the poem itself by the reference to
the " Dene " (v. 34). This mention of the Dean appears unquestionably to
connect the Caiphas verses with a cathedral church.^ Furthermore, the office
of Dean is never found in the organization of the monastic cathedrals, but
was peculiar to the secular cathedrals. The authority of the Dean was second
only to that of the Bishop, and in the government of affairs within the cathe-
dral church he took a more direct and active part than the Bishop himself ;
for he presided over all the canons and vicars " cum animarum regimine et
morum correctione," ^ and, unlike the Bishop, he was required to be in resi-
dence at the cathedral.® Again, one observes that the lines of invocation
spoken by Caiphas (** O Decane reuerende," etc.) imply that the Dean was
actually present. In this connection it is interesting to note the explicit direc-
tion in the Consuetudinary at Salisbury (and doubtless at other cathedrals
also) that on Palm Sunday, if the Bishop be absent, the Dean is to -officiate
in person."^

We shall not be mistaken, then, I think, in assuming that the verses of
Caiphas were spoken in some one of the secular cathedrals, and the only

1 Mittelengl. Grutn,^ p. 1 6, note i. Cf. also K. D. Biilbring, Uber Erhaltung des altengi,
kurzen und langen a-Lautes im MitUUngl.^ Bonner Beitrage, XV, 114-115.

^ Cf. Boddeker, Altengi Dicht.^ p. 10, and Jos. Hall, King Hom^ p. xxiv.

^ Cf. the description of Emmanuel Coll. Camb. MS. 27, foL 162, in James's Catalogue.

^ There were, to be sure, also ** decani rurales " who presided over chapters of the parish
clergy, at which all manner of offenses and misdemeanors of the laity as well as of clerks were
considered and corrected (cf. W. W. Capes, Hist, of the Engl. Church in the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Centuries^ p. 241 ). But I think it wholly improbable that Caiphas referred to one of these.

• Consuetudinary of St. Osmund^ in the Register of St. Osmund^ Rolls Ser., I, 2.

•Ibid., I. 18. Mbid., I, 4.

CARLETON BROWN 1 15

secular cathedrals within the entire area of the Southern dialect were
Chichester, Salisbury, Wells, Exeter, and Hereford. Of these Salisbury and
Wells alone fall within the probable limits fixed for the poem on linguistic
grounds. Manifestly, therefore, we are called upon to make particular inquiry
in regard to the Palm Sunday customs in these two cathedrals.

At Salisbury the ritual of Palm Sunday is carefully prescribed in the
Consuetudinary of St. Osmund^ a document composed in the second half of
the twelfth century and edited from a MS. of the early thirteenth century by
Canon W. H. R. Jones in the Rolls Series. Expanded versions of the Palm
Sunday ritual occur also in early printed editions of the Sarunt Missale (first
printed in 1487), of which a modem edition, with painstaking collations from
the numerous early prints, has been prepared by F. H. Dickinson,^ and also
in the Sarunt Processianale (first printed in 1508), edited with collation of
other sixteenth-century prints by W. G. Henderson, Leeds, 1882.

As to the route of the procession and the location of the three ** stations "
the Missale and Processionale agree with the earlier Consuetudinary ^ though
in the later texts the ritual has been elaborated by the introduction of several
additional antiphons.

After the palms had been blessed and distributed to clergy and laity, the
procession began its march, issuing from the church through the west door,
then turning to the left and entering the cloister by the Porta Canonicorum.
Proceeding round the cloister to the east side, the procession continued its
easterly course through the Cimiterium Canonicorum, and thence entered the
Cimiterium Laicorum, through which it passed to the extreme eastern limit of
the ** close " on the north side of the church. This was the place appointed
for the first *' station." Here the procession was met by other clerks who issued
from the north door of the church bearing the sacred relics and the Host sus-
pended in a " pyx." From the first station the whole procession returned by
the same route to the second station, on the south side of the church, where
seven choir boys " in eminenti loco " sang the antiphon : " Gloria, laus et
honor." From the second station the procession re-entered the cloister and
so made its way again to the west door of the church, where it halted for the
third time. As it was here that the prophecy of Caiphas was sung, I quote
the text of the Processionale so far as it relates to this third station :

Hie fiat tertia statio ante prcedictum ostium ecclesice occidentale^ ubi tres
clerici de superiori gradu, in ipso habitu non mutato^ ad populutn^ sitnul
incipiant et cantent hunc sequentem versum hoc tnodo quo sequitur:

Versus, Unus autem ex ipsis, Caiphas nomine, cum esset pontifex anni
illius, prophetavit dicens : Expedit vobis, ut unus moriatur homo pro populo,
et non tota gens pereat. Ab illo ergo die cogitaverunt interficere eum dicentes :
Ne [forte veniant Romani et tollant nostrum locum et gentem].

1 Missale ad usum insignis et praclane ecclesia Sarunt^ Burntisland, 1861-1883.

Ii6 CAIPHAS AS A PALM-SUNDAY PROPHET

His finitis intrent ecclesiatn per idem ostium sub fere tro et capsula reliqui-
arum ex transverse ostii elevatis cantantes, cantore incipiente, responsorium.

Ingrediente Domino in sanctam civitatem, etc.*

It is clear, then, that the recognized liturgy at Salisbury offered but little
opportunity for the introduction of the r61e of Caiphas as it appears in the
English verses. Caiphas is not individualized ; his prophecy was sung by
three clerks (or ** sacerdotes *' according to the Consuetudinary) in unison.
Accordingly, if Caiphas belongs to Salisbury, it supplies a somewhat surpris-
ing instance of the power of the *' Denes leue.**

Information in regard to the ritual at Wells is less accessible, owing to the
fact that the mediaeval *' Ordinale '* and Statutes of this cathedral are still
unprinted.2 The usage at Wells was modeled for the most part upon that of
Salisbury. Indeed, Mr. Chambers goes so far as to declare, after giving an
abridged account of the Palm-Sunday procession at Salisbury : " This Pro-
cession was precisely the same at Sarum, Wells, Exeter, Canterbury (Lanf ranc's
Works), and, as it would seem, at Rouen (De Moleon, 338 ; Migne^ CXLVII,
48, 1 18) in the eleventh and twelfth centuries." ^ Nevertheless, there is reason
to suspect that, so far as the prophecy of Caiphas is concerned. Wells varied
in some important particulars from Salisbury. In the ** Kalendarium de Colo-
ribus Vestimentorum Utendis et Variandis pro ut Festa et Tempora Totius
Anni Requirunt in Ecck^ia Well^a«" one finds the following significant
direction as to the copes to be worn on Palm Sunday :

Dominica in Ramis palmaruw omnia in rubeis excepto una capa de nigris
ad opus cayphe.^

At Wells, therefore, the prophecy of Caiphas was sung by one person,^ con-
spicuously distinguished from the other clergy by the color of his cope. Here
was an opportunity for just such a piece of impersonation as we find in the
Sloane MS. Ordinarily, no doubt, the part of Caiphas consisted merely in

* ProcessionaUy p. 53. The directions in the Consuetudinary {Register of St. Osmund^ Rolls
Ser., 1, 122) are for the most part verbally identical, including even the cautionary ** habitu non
mutato."

* The Ordinale et Statuta of Wells "appear to have been compiled about 1240. . . . There
is a transcript (a.d. 1634) at Lambeth (MS. 729). An earlier though mutilated copy (cir. 1500),
which came to be known afterwards as the * Creyghton MS.' . . . was restored to the Dean and
Chapter of Wells by Admiral Ryder about fifteen years ago " (C. Wordsworth and H. Little-
hales, Old Service- Books of the English Churchy 1904, p. 186, note). I regret that I have not been
able to examine either of these volumes.

' J. D. Chambers, Divine Worship in England in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries^
London, 1877, p. 191.

* Wells Cathed,^ its Foundationy Constit. Hist, and Statutes^ ed. H. E. Reynolds, 1881, pp. 95,
96. I am under obligations to Professor F. N. Robinson for kindly identifying this reference.

* In all probability Wells found precedent for this usage in Continental liturgies. Cf. the
twelfth century Ordo in die Patmarum quoted by M. Sepet {Les Prophites du Christ, 1878, p. 11),
according to which the Cantores sang the introductory Unus autem^ etc., while the words of
Caiphas, Expedite etc., were assigned to ** Unus de choro.**

CARLETON BROWN 117

the singing of the Expedit ; but it would be an easy matter to extend his r61e
(with the gracious consent of the Dean) to include a short sermon to the laity,
explaining the significance of the procession in which they had just taken part.

Finally, it is interesting to note that at Salisbury also a " prophet " figured
in the Palm-Sunday procession. The prophet's part is clearly an addition to
the earlier ritual, though the date of its introduction is not known ; it is found
only in the 1508 and 1517 editions of the Processionale, In these texts the
following passage occurs directly after the Gospel at the first '* station.'*

Finito evangeliOy umis puer ad tnodum prophetce induttis, stans in aliquo
eminenti locOy cantet lectionem propheticam modo quo sequitur:

Hierusalem, respice ad orientem, et vide : leva, Hierusalem, oculos et vide
potentiam regis.^

Although the prophet's name is not expressly stated, his appearance imme-
diately before the singing of ** En rex venit mansuetus," etc. (Zech, ix, 9),
appears to identify him as Zechariah the son of Barechiah, who, it will be re-
membered, is also one of the figures in the Rouen Prophet play.^ Again, it
is to be observed that the Salisbury prophet was introduced at the first ** station,"
whereas Caiphas belonged to the third station, just before the procession
reentered the church.

The appearance of Zechariah in the Palm-Sunday procession at Salisbury
makes it still more unlikely that the Caiphas verses were connected with this
cathedral. It also warns us against too hastily identifying Caiphas with the
Palm-Sunday Prophet frequently mentioned in Church-wardens' Accounts of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.^ In matters of liturgical usage no other
church in England compared in influence with Salisbury, so that it might fairly
be supposed that the presentation of a ** prophet " in these parish churches
was direcdy connected with the custom recorded in the Salisbury Processionale,
In the absence of any direct evidence identifying the '* prophets " of the
Church-wardens' Accounts with Caiphas, we are left wholly without a parallel
for the r6le given to Caiphas in the Sloane MS., and it is very possible that
the usage on which these verses were based was peculiar to Wells.

In conclusion,^ I must content myself, for lack of space, with merely calling
attention to the distinctly dramatic character of the Caiphas poem and the
relationship in which it stands to the liturgical ** Prophetae." As an example
of lively impersonation introduced into a liturgical Office it marks an interest-
ing stage in the development of the early drama, although, so far as I am
aware, it has escaped the notice of students in this field.

* Processionalt^ ed. Henderson, p. 50.

2 Cf. M. Sepet, Les ProphHesy p. 44, and E. K. Chambers, Med. Stage^ 11, 55.

' A number of these entries have been collected by H. J. Feasey, Ancient English Holy
Week Ceremonial^ 1897, pp. 75, 76. Cf. also the reference to "the Prophete upon Palme Sonday "
in a list of garments for players dated in the seventh year of Henry VIII (Collier, Annals of
the Stage^ ed. 1879, ^* ^2)-

MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS

GusTAVus Howard Maynadier

Though Merlin was one of the romances of the Round Table cycle most
liked by our mediaeval ancestors, nowadays we are inclined to think of it as
less important than three or four other legends of that cycle, as those of
Arthur himself, and of Lancelot, Percival, and Tristram and Iseult. One
reason is that, in its very early and close association with the great central
Arthur-legend, it has lost its individuality more than these others, with the
possible exception of Lancelot. Merlin's achievements are frequently of more
consequence to his royal masters, Uther and Arthur, than to himself. Another
reason is that the manifold adventures of the romance, loosely strung together,
are of a nature to appeal more than those of the other chief Round Table
stories to a simple, not to say childlike, audience. Take, for instance, Arthur's
fight with the Great Cat by the ** Lak de Losane." It is interesting in its
ingenuous account of the origin of the cat, which, drawn up by an avaricious
fisherman in his net from the bottom of the Lake, only a '*litill kyton as
blakke as eny cool," grew so great and horrible that it was "merveile hym to
se '' ; and so the beast strangled the fisherman for his sins, and his wife and
children, and fled to a mountain near the Lake, where he destroyed all that
came near him. What with gnashing his teeth, howling, growling, scratching,
biting, and finally attempting to jump at the king, even after the loss of all
four legs, the cat put up such a strong fight that Arthur casually remarked,
after it was all over, that he had ** never so grete doute ** of himself in any
fight, save only in the one with the giant that he slew the " other day on the
mountain." * But stirring contest as this is, it has not the human interest of
Lancelot's struggle between love and duty, of the religious mysteries of the
Grail, and of the devoted love of Tristram and Iseult. The idea of sage
Merlin's inexhaustible knowledge, however, has made more impression on
nineteenth-century imagination. Tennyson tried to emphasize this allegori-
cally, but never very distinctly, in the Idylls and later in Merlin and the Gleam;
and Edgar Quinet in France and Immermann in Germany tried, but without
conspicuous success, to give Merlin some of the aspirations of Faust.

And yet one incident in the history of the great seer has so much human
nature in it and has so strongly impressed the imagination of poets in the
last hundred years that it is as much alive to-day as it was when mediaeval

1 Prose Merlin^ Early English Text Society, London, 1899, pp. 665 flf.

119

I20 MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS

romancers first told it, with exquisite poetry — his enchantment by the Lady
of the Lake, Vivien, in that forest of wonders, Broceliande. When the wily
fay had persuaded the amorous old man to reveal the secrets of his magic,
having got out of him at last all the information she desired, she lulled him
to sleep under a flowering hawthorn-tree, with his head in her lap. Then
she softly rose, and nine times paced in a circle round him, and nine times
repeated the spells that he had taught her. So Merlin was locked fast within
that magic circle forever.

" But she herself whither she will can rove —
For she was passing weary of his love." ^

As the weeks passed and Merlin came no more to Caerleon and Camelot,
Arthur and his courtiers lamented his loss sorely. Gawain and thirty other
knights set out in search of him, and once Gawain got speech with him in
the forest of Broceliande, but none of them ever looked on the sage more.

Yet, though apparently thus shut up forever by enchantment. Merlin may be
found in almost every city of the United States to-day. He no longer passes
for a seer, but he is a wealthy, highly respected business or professional man,
an old gentleman generally reputed wise till he meets Vivien. She often
insinuates herself into his good graces by coming to work in his office, and
she is apt to have chemically blonde hair. Marriage is the magic captivity in
which he is '* lost to life and use and name and fame." Instead of Arthur
and his courtiers to lament him, there are his old friends and relatives —
most of all, the children of the first wife, who ultimately make public their
lamentations in the probate court.

Mediaeval students are generally agreed that this Merlin, who in his tragi-
cally ignoble end at least is a character of fiction of all time, is a combination of
an actual Welsh bard of the sixth century, Myrddin, and a boy with super-
natural powers, one Ambrosius, who is mentioned in Nennius's Historia
Britonum of the early ninth century. Now this boy Ambrosius is probably
no other than an actual leader of the Britons against the Saxons in the wars
of the fifth century. If this is so, we have in Merlin as good an example
as that of his king, Arthur, of an historical character's undergoing a complete
change as his fame was perpetuated in romance.

In the confusion of British history of the fifth and sixth centuries no char-
acters stand out clearly, and only a few even dimly. Most important of these
are Vortigem, a British king or prince who was friendly to the first German
settlers, the leaders of these same Germans, and two British warriors who

^ Matthew Arnold, Tristram and Iseult. Arnold, in telling his story, followed the mediaeval
version of the enchantment of Merlin, which is found in that continuation of the original Mer-
lin^ known as the Merlin Ordinaire. Another account, which is in the continuation commonly
called Suite de Merlin^ has the sage enchanted in a subterranean chamber or cave in the same
forest of Broceliande. Cf. Malory, Book iv, chap. i.

MAYNADIER I2i

fought bravely against them, Ambrosius in the fifth century and Arthur in
the sixth. It often happens that more recent historical events obscure the
importance of those more remote. Partly for this reason and partly because
the wars of Arthur seem actually to have been more important than those
of Ambrosius, Arthur, magnified and glorified by legend and romance, lives
as the most splendid king of mediaeval fiction, while Ambrosius (at least by
his own name) is known to few except those who try to throw light on the
darkest years in the history of England.

All the information about Ambrosius that can possibly be deemed authen-
tic is found in the works of those two early British chroniclers, Gildas and
Nennius. Gildas, who wrote in the middle of the sixth century the work
called De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae, prefaces the main part of it — a
denunciation of his countrymen for their vices and an exhortation to reform
— with a brief historical sketch of Britain. After the Saxon invaders began
their attacks on the island they were generally successful till Ambrosius
Aurelianus, rallying his countrymen, led them several times to victory. This
was the greatest success of British arms until greater successes, some years
after the death of Ambrosius, culminated in Arthur's victory at Mt. Badon.
Ambrosius Aurelianus, as his name implies, was a Roman, the only one in
Britain " then in the confusion of this troubled period by chance left alive."
From this account of Gildas, there seems no reason to doubt that there was
a general named Ambrosius, of Roman blood, who was the first after the
Germanic invasion to win victories for the Britons over the strangers.

Next after Gildas to give information about these early times is Nennius,
whose Historia Britoniint is between two hundred and fifty and three hundred
years later than the Dc Excidio, It is pretty well established, however, that
the Historia^ in its account of the Saxon wars, is a transcript of a much
earlier history. Therefore Nennius's mention of Ambrosius, as well as that
of the more famous Arthur, may be only little more than a century later than
Gildas's work. However that may be, Nennius's mention of Ambrosius is
much less clear than Gildas's.

According to the later chronicler, Vortigem, the British prince, was at first
glad to see the Saxons coming to Britain, because of aid which he might get
from them not only against the harrying Picts and Scots but also against the
Romans and the Briton Ambrosius, of whom he stood in fear. After Vorti-
gem 's death, one of his sons became ruler of two principalities with the con-
sent of Ambrosius, who was the chief king of the Britons. A few years later,
Ambrosius was at feud with one Guitolinus, or Vitolin, evidently from his
name a Briton and presumably a person of some consequence. This strife
between Ambrosius and Guitolinus is mentioned also in the Annales Catnbriae
of the tenth century. Nennius makes no mention of Ambrosius as the leader of
the British against the Saxons. Instead, he has Vortimer, a son of Vortigem,

122 MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS

lead them in their only successful campaigns before the more glorious ones
of Arthur. These three are the sole references to Ambrosius by Nennius that
point to anything like accurate history. Probably the second one at least,
mentioning Ambrosius as chief king of Britain, is not so accurate as it seems.

For the disagreement between Nennius and Gildas in their account of Am-
brosius is one of the signs that they represent the traditions of two different
parties among the Britons during the first Saxon wars. One, pro-Roman, was
made up of the descendants of Roman colonists and of Celtic Britons with
Roman sympathies. They regretted sorely the withdrawal of the legions. The
other, a ** home-rule " party, rejoiced at this withdrawal. Now Gildas makes
clear everywhere that his s)anpathies are with the Romans. Nennius, on the
other hand, suggests that he is expressing, three hundred years later, tradi-
tions that have come down from the patriot, or anti-Roman, party. Otherwise,
why should he suppress all mention of Ambrosius as a successful general in
the campaigns against the Saxons, and replace him with one with the British
name of Vortimer ? But Ambrosius was too big an historical figure to suppress
entirely. And so Nennius shows him to us first inspiring fear in Vortigem,
and later on not only fighting with Vitolin but also, as a sort of overlord,
permitting Vortigem's son to reign in two principalities.

All this points clearly to an Ambrosius who was a fighter of great fame
and probable ability among the Britons in the Saxon wars. But was he ever,
as Nennius makes him out, — at least after Vortigem's death, — chief among
the petty kings who then ruled in Britain ? Probably not ; if he had enjoyed
this honor, Gildas, the admirer of Ambrosius, would have been likely to
mention it. Rather the mention of it by Nennius points to popular story
adding to the fame of Ambrosius, as it has done to that of nearly every
national hero. And this brings us to a fourth mention of him in the Ifts-
toria Britonum — one which presents the worthy in such a different light from
other references to him in Gildas and Nennius, that some commentators have
thought him quite a different man. But more have judged him rightly to be
still the doughty fighter against the Saxons, only now strangely disguised.

This fourth reference of Nennius to Ambrosius is found in the part of his
Historia which deals with that well-known tower that Vortigern tried to build ;
but without success, because the materials for it unaccountably disappeared night
after night. Vortigem, questioning his wise men, was informed that the only
way to stop this disappearance was to sprinkle the foundations of the tower
with. the blood of a child who had had no father. Then Vortigem sent out
men to find such a child ; and they did find one in the region Gleguissing,
which commentators agree is in the southemmost part of Wales. For there
was a boy there, Ambrosius, whose mother declared under oath that she did
not know how he was conceived, since she had never had intercourse with
any man. Brought before Vortigem, this boy confuted the king's advisers

MAYNADIER 123

by showing their ignorance of a pond which was under the ground on which
the tower was to be built ; and their further ignorance of what he knew very
well, that in the pond were two vases ; in them, a folded tent ; and in that,
two serpents, one white, one red. From the immediate fight of these serpents,
Ambrosius was able to prophesy concerning the wars between Britons and
Saxons.

Then Vortigem asked the youth — the term is adolescens now, though it
has generally httn ptier before — who he was ; and he replied, * 'Ambrosius."
" Id est," Nennius explains, " Embreis Guletic ipse videbatur." That is, " he
seemed to be Ambrosius, the high king, himself." And Vortigem asked him
of what race he came. " My father was a consul of the Roman race," he
replied. Then Vortigem gave Ambrosius the tower, and the lands of western
Britain for a kingdom, and went himself into another part of the island, where
he built a town called after him Caer Vortigem.

At first sight this mysterious youth, by common report conceived without
a father, seems a very different person from the Ambrosius of whom Nennius
says that Vortigem was afraid, and also from the Ambrosius Aurelianus of
Gildas, "a worthy man ... of the Roman nation" fortunately left alive to
teach the Britons how to fight the Saxons. And yet have we here anything
more than the exaggeration usual among simple, credulous people of the
mighty deeds of a national hero ? Just as the fame of Arthur grew by the
attachment to him of various popular stories, some of mythological origin, so
the fame grew of the earlier and lesser British hero. In Gildas's so-called
chronicle, written perhaps only half a century after the death of Ambrosius,
he appears much as he really was — a Briton of Roman descent and sym-
pathies, but loyal to the land of his birth, a leader of men, and a good fighter
against the Saxons. Already in the years between Gildas's work and the orig-
inal of Nennius's Historia — not more than a century and a half — the fame
of Ambrosius had grown. From a general he had been raised to the rank of
chief king of Britain, who, after the death of Vortigem, allotted certain lands
for Vortigem*s son to rule. And just as wonders were connected at this time
with Arthur,^ so they were with Ambrosius. Thus he was able to appear
before Vortigem in a form not his own, apparently a boy without a father,
found by Vortigem's men in South Wales. But when it suited his pleasure,
** Embreis Guletic ipse videbatur." Have we not here that well-known attribute
of change of shape, which is seen in Geoffrey's Merlin and still more in the
Merlin of the later romances ? Naturally Vortigem, hardly believing his own
eyes, questioned the man before him further as to who he was. The answer
that his father was a Roman consul leaves no doubt that he is the historical
Ambrosius of Gildas.

^ Cf. Nennius's Mirabilia Britannia for the marvellous cairn to Arthur's himting-dog, Cabal,
and the tomb of Arthur's son, Anir.

124 MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS

Still, the transformed — and also self-transforming — Ambrosius of Nen-
nius is far from being the Merlin of Geoffrey of Monmouth. We may see
without much difficulty how he became so.

There is little doubt that there lived in Wales, in the sixth century, a
famous bard named Myrddin. Of several Welsh poems ascribed to him few,
if any, are authentic. In fact, Ferdinand Lot believes that only one, the
Dialogue of Myrddin and Taliesin} is as old as the works of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, or possibly older. Still, mediaeval testimony seems to prove that
a Myrddin lived and that he was famous. Beyond this, we can only conjecture.
He may have been so famous as to have had supernatural properties bestowed
on him in popular story, to have passed from a bard to a seer, even to an
enchanter, but we do not know. At any rate, his fame, whatever it may have
been, was confined, so far as we can see to-day, to popular tradition, till the
twelfth century fixed it in literature.

In the thirties of that century, Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his Historia
Regum Britanniae, and there Myrddin appeared, with his name altered to
Merlin, in substantially the character in which the world has known him since.
Just why Geoffrey changed Myrddin, pronounced Mertkin, into Merlinus, it
is impossible to say. Gaston Paris conjectured that it was because the natural
Latin equivalent of Myrddin , — or Merdin, — Merdinus, was objectionable.^
The soft Welsh sound dd is not remote from l^ and might have been repre-
sented by /in Latin. Anyway, that Geoffrey's Merlimis came from the Welsh
Myrddin is established beyond doubt, for he says that Merlin was found at
the city which afterwards, evidently from this fact, was called Caermarthen.
Giraldus Cambrensis, in his Itinerariutn Cambriae,^ confirms this explanation
of the name of the town. Of course the explanation is meaningless, unless
we take the name of the sage to have been Merdin or Myrddin, Needless
to say, Geoffrey's etymology is false. Caermarthen comes from the name by
which the Romans knew it, Maridunum. But Geoffrey is fond of such ety-
mologies ; throughout his ** History," may be found instances of his explain-
ing names of places by their association with supposedly distinguished men.
And in the chance resemblance in sound of Caermarthen and Myrddin is per-
haps to be found the reason for Geoffrey's association of Merlin, or Myrddin,
and Ambrosius. For he first introduces Merlin as playing the part of Am-
brosius in the tale of Myrddin's tower. The two are identical in being dis-
covered by Vortigem's messengers seeking for a boy who had had no father,
in confuting the king's wise men, and in prophesying the future of Britain
after the fight of the two snakes or dragons that are found at the bottom of
the pond. That Geoffrey was the first to make the identification, seems to be
proved by his calling the sage twice, in the early part of the story, Ambrosius

1 "fitudes sur Merlin/' Annales de Bretagne^ XV (1899-1900), pp. 325, 505.

* Romania, XII, p. 375. • So Professor Robinson tells me. * I, 10 ; II. 8.

MAYNADIER 125

Merlimis} and by his explanation that Merlin *' was also called Ambrosius** :*
" Merlinus, qui et Ambrosius dicebatur." Later on, Geoffrey drops the
Ambrosius and uses the name Merlin only.

Several reasons may be imagined why Geoffrey made this identification.
It is possible that the fame of the bard Myrddin may have grown in the
same way as that of Ambrosius ; that he, too, may have taken on the attributes
of a seer and necromancer. In fact such a reputation in the case of a great
bard would be almost likely, for the Welsh were inclined to look on their
bards as supematurally gifted. A more cogent reason is the name Myrddin.
We. have seen that Geoffrey liked to explain place-names by the names of
people. Therefore, as he was constructing his Historia, the resemblance
between Caermarthen and Myrddin would at once strike him. Now Caer-
marthen was as important as any town in South Wales west of Caerleon.
There is no doubt that Geoffrey was familiar with Nennius's Historia Brito-
num^ so far as is known to-day, the principal literary source of Geoffrey's
chronicle. Nennius has Ambrosius (that is, Geoffrey's Merlin) found in the
region Gleguissing. As to the extent of this, there is difference of opinion.
Some scholars take it to have covered virtually all southern Wales ; others
take it to have been limited to country between the rivers Usk and Towy.
But whatever the extent of the region, whether it included the vale of the
Towy or not, it was in the neighborhood of that stream, on whose banks, near
the head of tidewater, Caermarthen was pleasantly situated. So there we have
a plausible explanation of Merlin. Ambrosius, of legendary fame, fixed by
Nennius in a region near the Towy. Myrddin, perhaps also of considerable
legendary fame, connected by Geoffrey's imagination with Caermarthen on
the banks of the Towy. Nothing would be more natural than for Geoffrey to
combine the two men.

Geoffrey was not content that his newly created character should figure only
in the story of Vortigem's tower. He makes Merlin highly important in the
reigns of the kings who followed Vortigem — Aurelius Ambrosius, who seems
to have been taken mostly from the historical Ambrosius Aurelianus, and
Uther Pendragon, Ambrosius's brother and Arthur's father, who seems to be
chiefly a character of Welsh tradition. For the former. Merlin brought Stone-
henge, or the Giants* Dance, from Ireland to England ; for the latter, he
employed his magic so successfully that Uther assumed the shape of Gorlois,
Duke of Cornwall, and accompanied by Merlin, who assumed the shape of a
follower of Gorlois, had access to Gorlois's wife, Igema, in her castle, and so
begot Arthur. After this service to Uther, Merlin virtually disappears from
Geoffrey's story. But a few years later, Geoffrey made him the central
character of Vita Merlini^ that deals largely with various attacks of insanity,

* Book vi, chap. 19 ; vii, chap. 3.

* Book vi, chap. 19. Cf. also R. H. Fletcher, " Arthurian Material in Chronicles," Harvard
Studies and Notes in Philology and LitercUurey X, p. 92.

126 MERLIN AND AMBROSIUS

during which Meriin lived a wild man in the woods, only from time to time
showing enough reason to utter prophecies. Here he is made king of South
Wales, perhaps a reminiscence both of the promotion of Ambrosius to king-
ship in Nennius and of his being found as a boy in the region Gleguissing.

In time Merlin became too prominent for the romancers to be content to
lose sight of him at Arthur's birth. A metrical romance of Merlin of about
the year 1200, ascribed to Robert de Boron, and a prose romance, based
apparentiy on Boron's verse, added to the history of Merlin many incidents
taken from Celtic folklore and other popular sources. Merlin here became such
a devoted guardian of Arthur that ever since his fame has been particularly
associated with that of the Great King. And so story-tellers soon felt dissatis-
fied that Robert de Boron had not traced Merlin's career beyond his seeing
Arthur recognized as Uther's son, '* rightwise king bom of all England," and
as such securely crowned. Weaving together other stories taken from the
great mass of poetic legend then accessible, they prolonged Merlin's adven-
tures beyond Arthur's incestuous love for his half-sister, — whence the birth
of Mordred, who was to prove Arthur's ruin, — beyond Arthur's marriage
with Guinevere and his acquisition of the Round Table, to his triumphant
campaign against the Emperor of Rome, on which Merlin accompanied him,
ever ready to help Arthur with his great wisdom. Then, when Arthur had
returned to Britain, came at last the seer's own enchantment by false Vivien.

Much of which study is not new. Geoffrey made the identity of Merlin and
Ambrosius quite plain. But so far as I am aware, no one has tried before me
to trace the steps which led Geoffrey to his identification. Nor are quite dif-
ferent explanations of the identification by any means impossible. Professor
Rhys accounts for it entirely on mythological grounds, seeing in Ambrosius
and Merlin both, attributes of a Celtic Zeus.^ It seems unnecessary, how-
ever, to make this the explanation. It is simpler to conjecture that the actual
Ambrosius, something of a national hero, was transformed into a character of
romance by the workings of popular story, just as the greater national hero,
Arthur, was transformed ; and there is no innate improbability in such a con-
jecture. In the process of transformation, Ambrosius may have, either before
or after his association with Myrddin, been endowed with some mythological
attributes. But it seems likely that the first origin of the Merlin of romance
is the historical Ambrosius, rather than a god of the Celtic Pantheon.

Strange distortion of history, which Ambrosius, even had he possessed all
the powers of prophecy ever attributed to him, could hardly have foreseen I
That warlike Roman-British worthy, with both name and character changed,
is known best to-day as a pitiable old man whose great gifts, after years of
useful service, came to naught because he allowed himself to be tricked by a
designing young woman.

^ Celtic Heathendom (Hibbert Lectures, 1886), pp. 144 £F.

^
V

THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

Clifford Herschel Moore

The epicedia of Statius represent to us the final and complete develop-
ment of a literary type which was first recognized as a distinct form in the
Hellenistic age. Originally i7nKi]B€io<; ^817 signified only a song of mourn-
ing for the dead.^ The Trojan Women of Euripides call on the Muse in
Ilium's day of sorrow,^

Movcra, KOii^v vfuyutv
3,€uroy kv Sajcpvois

As such a song it is simply defined by Hesychius — hnKrjheiov • hndavdriov,
and by Suidas likewise — iwiT(ul>iov, iwidavdriop, although Proclus attempted
a more elaborate definition to distinguish it from other literary forms
(p. 352 g), to iirtKijSeiov irap avro to /cqSo^ en rov adfiaro^ irpoK€iii4vov?
The close relation of the epicedion with the 0prjvo<; and other songs of
mourning is indicated by the remark of Dionysius, Ars Rhetorica^ 6, i, koX
rh iron^fAara fiea-rh tovtoov, ol iTri/cqSeioi (sc. Xo70t) ovrto^ ovofia^Sfievoi
dprjvoC T€, and by the words which Suidas adds to his definition quoted above,
KoX hriKijSeco^ Oprjvo^ ofj^ita^. The iiriKijSetov which Euripides wrote over
the Athenians who fell at Syracuse, of which Plutarch, Nic. 17, quotes two
verses, was probably an i'mTd<f>io<;, as Bergk ^ would have it,

OiSe 'SivpoLKOO'uns 6ktw vucas iKpamrjanv
^v$pcs, OT* ^ TO, Btiav i( laov dfi^or^MiS.

Yet the name iin/cijBeLOP is appropriate to it, as it is to the other iinKijBetov to
which Plutarch refers, Pelop. i, Aa/ceSai/iJpioi Si teal ^rjv fihdw^ koX 0pi]a/c€iv
afjuf>6r€pa aper^ irap^l'xpv^ eJ? hrfKol to iiriKi^Beiov * otSe yap ifnja'tv iOavop,

OV TO i^V 0€fAtVOl KoXoV OvSk TO BvrjirKWi

(iAAa TO ravra koAois dfi^orcp' ^icreXcovu.^

^ Plato uses the term apparently in a general sense, Laws, 800 e, kcU 9^ koX aroXfi y4 wov
rfluf hrunfitUtt (}9dit od vri^woi wpiroitp Ap odd* hrlxpv^oi icd^'/MU, Tar 9k ro^warrlop*

* Troades, 11 511 if.

* This definition is repeated by Servius, Eel. 5, 14, nam epicedion est quod dicitur cadavere
non sepulto. * Fbetae Lyrici Graeciy II*, 265.

* This is apparently from a sepulchral inscription. Cf. p. 128, n. 5.

127

128 THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

But, as was said above, the development of the epicedion as a Uterary type
belongs to the Hellenistic age. Aratus of Soli and Euphorion of Chalcis
composed ifnfcijSeia, now unhappily lost to us. It was Parthenius of Nicea,
brought to Rome as a captive in the war with Mithradates to become later
the teacher of Virgil and the friend of Cornelius Gallus, who introduced this
form of composition to the capital. There his epicedia on Bias, Archelais,
Auxithemis, and his wife Arete, enjoyed a high reputation and must have
influenced the Latin writers. The fact that he had his poem about his wife
cut on her tomb^ is significant for the relationship between the sepulchral
epigram and one form, at least, of the epicedion at this time. Of a similar
epigrammatical character is the pathetic address which Catullus makes to his
brother, buried in the Troad (loi),

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias, etc.

Yet we cannot determine the exact character of Parthenius' epicedia, nor can
we trace with certainty the full history of this form of composition in Latin.
Propertius' elegies on Marcellus (3, 18) and Cornelia (4, 11), Ovid's on
TibuUus (Am, 3, 9), as well as the two anonymous elegies on Maecenas^
approach the epicedion and the philosophic consolatio, as we find them de-
veloped during the first century of the Empire. But the roiroi are not yet
established, although Ovid's work shows greater obedience to rhetorical rules
than any of the other elegies which I have named. It is, however, in the
anonymous Consolatio ad Liviam that we find the epicedion in its new and
final form : ^ the verse is the prevailing hexameter in place of the elegiac
distich, and practically all the tAttoi which presently appear almost fixed are
here employed.

Now it is natural that any song of mourning, any //.eXo? iiri/eijSeiop, should
aim not only to express the sorrow of the living but also to rehearse the vir-
tues of the dead and to console those left behind ; we should expect the
epicedion therefore to have much in common with the \6yoi eVtra^tot, irapor
fjLvdrjTiKoi, the /jLov^Siat of the rhetoricians, the Latin laudationes funebres,*
and, since epitaphs are frequently either laudatory or consolatory, or both,
with sepulchral epigrams.*^ A superficial reading of the Consolatio ad Liviam

^ Kaibel, Epig. Gr, 1089. It is worth remembering in this connection that Ausonius tells us

that he had his Epicedion in Patrem (ed. Peiper, pp. 21 ff.) placed beneath his father's portrait

• Riese, Anth. Lat., 779, 780; PLM.^ I, pp. 125 ff.

• According to the common view this consolatio was composed not long after Drusus* death
in 9 B.C.

* Cf. Fr. Vollmer, Laudationum Funebrium Romanorum Historia et Reliquiarum Editio^
Jahrbb. fur class, Philologie, Supplb. XVIII, 447-527, especially 475-477.

* Cf. Bruno Lier, Topica Carminum Scpulcralium Latinorum^ Philologus^ LXII (1903),
445-477* 563-603; LXIII (1904), 54-65. I here make general acknowledgment of my in-
debtedness to this excellent work.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE 129

is sufficient to show the unknown writer's dependence on the rhetoricians.
The same thing is true of the epicedia of Statius (Silvae 2, 1.6 ; 3, 3 ; 5, i . 3. 5),^
some features, of which I now propose to set forth so far as I can within the
allotted space.^ The main divisions are well stated by Vollmer in his edition
of the Silvae \^ (i) introduction, (2) laudatio of the dead, (3) last sickness
and death, (4) funeral, (5) reception of the dead in Hades, (6) consolations of-
fered the living. Statius employs all these in an order which is almost fixed,
as we might expect of one who wrote as rapidly as he,^ yet within the divi-
sions he often shows great skill and variety of expression, although certain
motifs constantly reappear.

Statius varies his introductions according to the subject or the person
addressed, employing many themes.^ These are such as require little inven-
tion on the poet's part, and it must be confessed that they are at times
handled in a conventional way. On the other hand, they touch emotions
which are genuinely human, and if we will accept, as we must, the standards
of the poet's day, they often have the merit of sincerity.

One epicedion only, that on the loss of the poet's young favorite (5, 5),
opens with a moan.

Me miserum — neque enim uerbis sollemnibus uUa
indpiam nee Castaliae uocaUbus undis,
inuisus Phoeboque grauis !

But when Statius celebrates his own father's death (5, 3), he begins with a
prayer for strength and inspiration for his sad song,

Ipse malas uires et lamentabile carmen
Elysio de fonte mihi pulsumque sinistrae
da, genitor praedocte, lyrae !

1 1 speak of all these poems as epicedia^ but it should be observed that this specific name
was not attached to all by their author or by the manuscript tradition. In his prefatory epistle
Statius speaks of 2, i — recens uulnus epicedio prosecutus sum ; but in the same place he refers
to 2, 6, identical with the first in theme, as consolation with which the traditional title agrees. Of
3, 3 he says in his letter to Pollius Felix — merebatur et Claudi Etrusci mei pietas aliquod ex
studiis nostris solacium. The manuscript tradition calls St i. 3 and 5 " epicedia," a name which
may well come from the author. (Cf. Ausonius* borrowing, pp. 21 ff. P., from Statius 5, 3 :
Epicedion in Patrem, and the poet's certain use of the word noted above.) It appears therefore
that four of the six poems are designated ** epicedia," the other two are called by the poet
** consolatio " and " solacium." Perhaps we should speak of the " epicedia and consolationes "
of Statius. Yet, apparenUy, Statius uses the names without any intention of making a sharp
distinction. I intentionally omit 2, 4 from consideration.

* I was unable to examine Lohrisch, De Papinii Statii Silvarum Poetae Studiis Rhetoricis,
Diss., Halle, 1895, ^^^^ after this paper was in the printer's hands.

' Teubner, Leipzig, 1898, pp. 316 f. I take this opportunity to acknowledge my debt to
Vollmer*s elaborate commentary.

* Praefatio, 1. 1, hos libellos, qui mihi subito calore et quadam festinandi uoluptate fluxenint,
— nullum enim ex illis biduo long^us tractum, quaedam et in singulis diebus effusa.

* A method recognized and recommended by the rhetoricians. Cf. Nicolaus Sophistes, Sp.
Ill, 479, 28 f.

I30 THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

He goes on to declare that he owes all his former poetic skill to his father,
but he fears that now his sorrow has quenched his song, that Apollo and the
Muses have withdrawn their favor and left him dumb, unless his father's
spirit from the heavens or from Lethe's grassy plain give him voice and
power to express his pain. The consolatio ad Claudium Etruscum (3, 3)
opens appropriately with a prayer to Pietas to come back to earth and gaze
upon the son's grief for his aged sire. To Abascantus (5, i) Statins declares
that if he were painter or sculptor, he would have tried to reproduce the
features of the beloved Priscilla, for she deserved the art of an Apelles or a
Phidias ; but as it is, he will strive to give her a memorial of enduring song,

longa nee obscurum finem latura perenni
temptamus dare iusta lyra.^

The first lines of the consolation addressed to Flavins Ursus (2, 6) declare
the cruelty of one who would check tears and grief ; and of Atedius Melior
he asks (2, i, i ff.) what solace his imseasonable song can bring. Yet
Statins knows that his verses can give comfort, for he has consoled others
before ; and, besides, he too has suffered (2, i, 30 ff.),

me fulmine in ipso
audiuere patres, ego iuxta busta profusis
matribus atque piis cedni solatia nads
et mihi, cum proprios gemerem defectus ad ignes
(quern, Natural) patrem.*

Again he reminds his friend that he shares his grief and has taken part with

him in the last rites (2, 6, 14),

heu mihi ! subdo
ipse faces.'

One of the most natural themes is the sorrow of the bereaved. The
intensity of Melior's mourning for his beloved Glaucias was such that he
would not listen to the poet's song (2, 1,6 flf.),

tu planctus lamentaque fortia mauis
odistique chelyn surdaque auerteris aure.

nee si tergeminum Sicula de uirgine carmen
affluat aut siluis chelys intellecta ferisque,
mulceat insanos gemitus.

It is true that here the poet is offering his consolation too early, while the
wound is still too new.^ To Abascantus, however, he dared offer his consolation

1 Cf. 3, 3, 37-39. This concept is as old as Pindar's fifth Nemean ode, and was repeated
too many times by the classic poets to enumerate here; but hackneyed though it be, it is
especially appropriate in Statins* poem. • Cf. 3, 3, 31 ff. • Cf. 2, i, 19 ff.

* Such precipitate consolation was expressly forbidden by the expert : Cicero, Tusc. 4, 63,
vetat Chrysippus ad recentis quasi tumores animi remedium adhibere ; Seneca, ad Helv, 1,2;
ad Marc. 4, i ; Pliny, Epist. 5, 16, 11 ; 8, 5, 3.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE 131

only when the second year after Priscilla's death had come ; before that time
any comfort would have been premature, so . great was his friend's grief
(5, I, 16 flf.). Indeed, the poet declares that not even Orpheus or the Muses,
that no priest of Apollo or of Bacchus, could have quieted the groans of the
mourning husband or soothed his sorrow before ; nay, even now at these strains
his wound opens and tears flood his heavy eyes. Not so wept Niobe, Aurora,
or Thetis for their loved ones. In the case of Statius' grief for his own father
three months passed before he could resume his lyre, and then only to offer
his moans and tears (5, 3, 29-46). Even the loss of his little favorite over-
whelmed the poet for thrice ten days (5, 5, 24 ff.).

Again, the sorrow is said to be so great that the bereaved one doubts the
justice of the gods and complains against fate, as did Abascantus (5, i, 22),

Fataque et iniustos rabidis pulsare querelis
cadicolas solaxnen erat^

Statius also, in his grief for his father, attacked the gods above and below alike
(S> 3> 69 f.) ; and in anguish cried out against them at the loss of his favorite
(S» 5> 77 ff-)« Such accusation is a habit of mankind. So Priam excused
Helen (//. 3, 164),

In sepulchral inscriptions expressions such as crudelis Pluton, Sa/cpv^v^ IlXotJ-
rayv, crudeles Parcae, crudeles divi, etc. are common ; ^ and Catullus* execra-
tion will occur to all (3, 13 f .),

at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Ord, quae omnia bella devorads.

Of the topics which make up the body of the poems, the laudatio of the
dead is the most important and receives the most elaborate attention. It cor-
responds to the hraivof; of the \6^o<; i'mT(uf>i09, which is practically identical
with the iy/cdfjLiov; its T^Troi are trarpk^ 761/09, ^wt9, aya)yi], hrtrrjBevfiaTa,

Statius employs all these, but naturally adapts his treatment to his subject.
Three of those whom he celebrates were young favorites, slaves by birth ; an-
other was the aged father of Claudius Etruscus, who rose from the slavery into
which he was bom to the position of imperial secretary and to knighthood,

^ At Dnisus* death Livia was moved to exclaim {Cons, ad L. 130),

lam dubito magnos an rear esse deos.
* Cf. e.g. Buecheler, Carm, Epig. 971, 1156, 1204, 121 2, 1549; Kaibel, Epig. Gr, 566,

575-578» etc.

' Dionysius, Ars Rhet. 6, 2, intv^bm yJkv o9p 6 trird^iot iwaivin dan tQp xaroixofiipup * el 8i
TWTOf 9ij\6p Tov cSs Kal d,ir6 tQp ainQv rbinav XrfirTdoPt atp* tap irep xal rd iyxthfua • warpldotf yipovs^
^i^ewff dyioyijs, Tpd^ewi. Menander, Sp. Ill, 413, 9 ff., XP^ ^^ elddpcu tfrt ffVpUrrarai ij fioptpdla 4k
rwr iyKtanuiffrucQp yipovty tf^etas, dparpoifnjtf wmdelaSt hrirtjdwfidTtaPt Tpd^tup] cf. also Sp. Ill,
420, 10 ff.

132 THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

serving every Emperor from Tiberius to Domitian ; a fifth was the poet's own
father, well bom and endowed with poetic gifts, but forced by poverty to adopt
the profession of teaching, in which he won distinction ; and the last was
Priscilla, the faithful and lovely wife of Abascantus.

In his laudations of the three favorite boys we find various devices em-
ployed to conceal or minimize the awkward fact of servile birth. In the case
of Glaucias, the favorite of Atedius Melior, Statius masks his origin by dwell-
ing through some thirty-five verses on the child's charms and his loving rela-
tion to Melior. True to the teaching of rhetoric,^ the poet declares that he is
at a loss how to begin his praises (2, i, 36ff. ; cf. 2, 6, 50). Glaucias' youth
— anni stantes in limine vitae, his beauty of person and of character,^ his
pretty ways, his devotion to his master, Melior's hopes for the boy's future —
now alas ! gone to ashes, all claim expression. At this point the 7eVo9 is intro-
duced. We are told that the child was not bought in the slave market, but
was bom in his master's home (2, i, 72 ff.). The same thing is said of the
poet's own favorite (5, 5, 66 ff.),

non ego mercatus Pharia de puppe loquaces

delicias doctumque sui conuicia Nili

infantem, lingua nimium salibusque proteruum.

And the favorite of Flavius Ursus is represented as of unknown parentage,
yet showing a spirit and a character too noble for servile stock. By compari-
sons with Theseus, Paris, Achilles, and Troilus the possibility is suggested
that the boy, too, is a king's son (2, 6, 21-33).^ In the two latter cases, how-
ever, Statius touches on the 7^09 first and quickly passes on to other themes ;
he recites at length the charms of person and of mind which Ursus' favorite
possessed, his precocity, his devotion and fidelity, which recalled these same
qualities in Patroclus, Theseus, and Eumaeus, even as his beauty reminded the
beholder of Parthenopaeus or some Spartan youth ready to test his prowess
for the first time in the Olympic games (2, 6, 34-57 ; cf. 2, i, 106 ff.). The
humble origin of his own foster child Statius blots out with the cry — dilexi,
meus ille, meus, and declares that from the moment of the child's birth he
cared for him \vith all a parent's love ; he set the babe free and adopted him
while he was still at the nurse's breast. All the poet's desire for children was
satisfied so long as this child lived ; he taught the babe to walk, lulled him
to sleep, and with joy heard the child's first word — his own name (5, 5, 66 ff.).
In the epicedion on Glaucias we find similar motifs employed after the brief
mention of the 7^09. Melior's affection is said to have begun with the child's
birth (2, I, 78 ff.). Statius holds that such a relationship may be closer than

1 Cf. Doxopater, in Walz, Rhetores Grcuci^ II, 449, 26 ff.

2 Cf. Menander, Sp. Ill, 420, I2f., re/tecf H rijp <f>6atp Slxa-i €lff re t6 tov (Ttiftaros KdXXoi, Hircp
TpuTOP ipeit, efj re rijp riji ^vx^f e^ff^vtav.

' Perhaps such suggestion was a commonplace. Cf. Horace's banter, C. 2, 4, 13 ff.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE 133

the natural bond, adding the commonplace — natos genuisse necesse est,
elegisse iuvat.^ This he supports in the learned fashion with mythological
lore : Chiron was closer to Achilles than was Peleus, and it was Phoenix who
went with the young hero to Troy ; Acoetes looked on Pallas's battles while
Evander waited at home for his son*s return ; and Dictys was the one who
cared for Perseus. Ino and Bacchus, Acca and Romulus, close the learned list
(2, I, 88-100). From the 76^09 Statius turns to the aycoyij, hrirrfSevfiaTa,
and irpd^ei^i, which naturally run into each other in the case of the yoimg.
Notwithstanding all Glaucias' promise in palaestra and in school, Lachesis, alas !
had already doomed him (2, i, i2off.),

scilicet infausta Lachesis cunabula dextra
attigit et gremio puerum complexa fouebat
inuidia ; ilia genas et adultum comere crinem,
et monstrare artes et uerba infigere, quae nunc
plangimus.

When Statius celebrates those who came to maturity, he can tell at length
of accomplishment and tried character, and is not forced to dwell on hope
and piromise only. Claudius Etruscus, he acknowledges, was bom a slave, but
Fortune supplied his lack of birth ; his masters were not of common stock,
but lords of the whole world. " There can be no shame in serving a Caesar
when all the world serves him as well ; even the stars and the moon are sub-
ject to higher powers, and Hercules and Apollo once served masters." Fur-
thermore, he was bom in no mean city, but in Smyrna, rich and famous. Of
Etruscus' ayayyi] there was nothing to say, but the history of his rise, his ac-
complishments, and his character gave the poet abundant material. Under
Tiberius Etruscus received his liberty; his practical wisdom carried him through
the reign of Caligula — immitis quamquam et Furiis agitatus; he was ad-
vanced under Claudius, and by Nero he was raised to the most responsible
post in the imperial administration, that of financial secretary, a rationibus.
The importance of this position Statius emphasizes by enumerating the im-
perial income and expenses under Etruscus' control in a passage of consider-
able length, where he handles his prosaic material with no slight skill (3, 3,
85-105). Etruscus* absorption in his duties, his frugal life, the honor shown
him by Vespasian at the time of the triumph over the Jews, his elevation to
the order of the equites — all the eighty years which he had spent without
a cloud, generous and kind, are duly recorded. But then the blow fell and
Etruscus was banished. As a courtier Statius glosses over Domitian's act and
represents the banishment as a pleasant retirement — hospes, non exul erat —

1 Cf. Galba*s address to Piso, in Tacitus, Hist, i, 16, nam generari et nasci a principibus for-
tuitum, nee ultra aestimatur ; adoptandi iudicium integrum, et si velis eligere, consensu mon-
stratur; Pliny, Epist, 4, 15, 10; Paneg. 7, 89, 94; Dio Cassius LXIX, 20, 2. The expression
seems a commonplace.

134 THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

not long continued. Etruscus' restoration is attributed to the clemency of the
kindest of rulers — ductor placidissime — Domitian !

This praise of the father contains also a laudatio of the mother, Etrusca,
introduced at the proper place (3, 3, 108-137). She possessed great beauty
and high birth, and thus she supplied the home with what the father lacked.
She bore Etruscus two children and then suddenly drooped and died. For all
their exuberance of expression Statius' verses here deserve to be quoted in
fulP(3, 3, I26ff.),

sed media ceadere abrupta iuuenta
gaudia florentesque manu sddit Atropos annos,
qualia paUentes declinant lilia ciilmos
pubentesque rosae primos moriuntur ad austros,
130 aut ubi uema nouis expirat purpura pratis.
ilia sagittiferi drcumuolitastis Amores
funera matemoque rogos unxistis amomo,
nee modus aut pennis laceris aut crinibus ignem
spargere coUectaeque pyram struxere pharetrae.

Statius gives the greater part of his laudatio of his own father also to the
i'n-iTTjBevfiaTa and irpd^ei^ (5, 3, 1 16-252). He was of good birth but poor ;
the Muses smiled on the child and Apollo touched his lips with water from
his sacred fountain. Velia and Naples contended for the right to call him
citizen, even as of old many cities claimed the son of Maeonia. He early en-
tered poetic contests, far beyond his years, but he was laudum festinus et
audax ingenii. Not satisfied with victories at home he contended successfully
in the great festivals in Greece. Then he opened a school in Naples. Here
he not only expounded the great Greek poets from Homer and Hesiod to
Callimachus and Lycophron, but showed himself a master in the art of para-
phrasis (5, 3, iS9ff.)»

tu par adsuetus Homero
ferre iugum senosque pedes aequare soluds
uersibus et numquam passu breuiore relinqui.

To profit by such a teacher youth came from all southern Italy and even from
Rome, so that the son could proudly say (185 ff.),

et nunc ex illo forsan grege gentibus alter
iura dat Eois, alter compescit Hiberos,
alter Achaemenium secludit Zeugmate Persen,
hi dites Asiae populos, hi Pontica frenant,
hi fora padfids emendant fasdbus, illi
castra pia statione tenent, — tu laudis origo.

Neither Nestor nor Phoenix nor Chiron could have rivalled this teacher.

As a poet the father won praise from Caesar and Jove himself by a poem
on the burning of the Capitol in the year 69 a.d. ; another on the outbreak

^ Verses 128-130 are repeated in an epitaph in Africa. Buecheler, Carm. Epig. 1787.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE 135

of Vesuvius was never completed, but is duly named. Then Statius dwells on
his debt of piety, for all his poetic power he owed to his father (211 ff.),

nee enim mihi sidera tantum
aequoraque et terras, quae mos debere parenti,
sed decus hoc quodcumque lyrae primusque dedisti
non uulgare loqui et famam sperare sepulcro.

The father attended the son*s public appearances filled with an anxious joy ;

and to the Thebais he gave much.

The same loyalty and love marked the relation of the elder Statius to his

wife, whose answering affection was such that she had thought only for her

dead husband (240 ff.),

una tibi cpgnita taeda

conubia, unus amor, certe sdungere matrem

iam gelidis nequeo bustis ; te sendt habetque,

te uidet et tumulos ortuque obituque salutat

Serious, loyal, upright, with mind untouched, the gods granted the aged

teacher reputation and happiness. Death came too soon, but gently like

sleep (260 f .),

sed te torpor iners et mors imitata quietem

explicuit falsoque tulit sub Tartara somno.

In the laudatio of Priscilla (5, i, 43-134) Statius dwells throughout upon
her great devotion to Abascantus. He speaks of her high birth, her loveliness,
and absolute fidelity such that no Paris, nor Dulichian suitors, nor a Thyestes
would have tried to harm. She preferred honorable marriage to all the wealth
of the Orient. She was not stem by nature, but frank, cheerful, and modest ;
brave enough to face any danger for her husband's sake. His advancement
was due to her influence. With change of station she showed no change of
spirit, but still helped and cared for her husband with all the simple fidelity
of an Apulian or sunburned Sabine wife ; with him she would have gone to
the very ends of the world and boldly taken part in battle.

This praise of the faithful Priscilla, however, is marred by some lines of
intolerable flattery of the Emperor. To us the brutal Domitian is far removed
from the wise ruler whom Statius describes (5, i, 81 ff.). But we must re-
member that the alternative to flattery was that silence which men like
Tacitus maintained.

In these ways Statius varies his laudationes according to the age and posi-
tion of his subject. I have allowed myself to go into greater detail here be-
cause of the importance of this division. The remaining topics can be
handled more summarily.

The suddenness with which a premature fate struck down the young, the
gentle coming of death to the old, the rapidity of the fatal disease, the anxiety
and appeals of those who feared the loss of their loved ones, are all themes

136 THE EPICEDIA OF STATIUS

which Statius uses in his description of the last sickness and death.^ The
only comfort that the poet knows how to offer here, apart from the thought
that Glaucias entered Hades with his youthful beauty still unwasted (2, i,
154 ff.), is the memory that the dying recognized his loved one and breathed
out to him his last breath.^ So Priscilla's last look was fixed on her husband's
face, and with her last words she endeavored to console him (5, i, 172 ff.).

The funeral is treated in more conventional fashion. The wealth of silk
and purple hangings, the masses of Oriental incense and perfume burned on
the pyre, the sorrow of the bereaved as the flames mounted, driving him to
try to throw himself into the fire and to perish with his love, are almost con-
stant elements.^ The efforts of Abascantus to keep the form of his loved
one by recourse to the Egyptian art of mummification, to counterfeit her ap-
pearance in bronze and marble as Ceres, Gnosis, Maia, and Venus (5, i,
225 ff.), are matched by Etruscus' promise in his address to his father's
ashes (3, 3, 200 ff.),

te lucida saxa,
te similem doctae referet mihi linea cerae,
nunc ebur et fuluum uultus imitabitur aurum.

In all the topics thus far considered Statius has been employing chiefly
the arts of narration and description, for which his training had well fitted
him; and although in singing the praises of the dead, in reviewing their
characters and deeds, and in dwelling on all the evidences of love and grief
which the bereaved could show, he had many opportunities to offer comfort,
the consolatio proper must come at the end.

The thought of the shade entering Hades and there encountering all the
dangers and terrors which tradition and the poets knew, might well sadden
the mourner. But Statius assures his friends that rude Charon will give ready
and quick passage, that Cerberus will not threaten, no Fury wave her torch,
no Hydra, Centaurs, or Scyllas terrify.^ Furthermore, the poet can offer a
positive consolation in the promise that the loved ones will recognize in the
happy fields, among the shades of the great and famous, friendly spirits who
will welcome them.^ Glaucias will love and be loved by the shade of Melior's
friend Blaesus (2, i, 189 ff.); Flavins' favorite may find his parents (2, 6, 98 flf.) ;

^ 2, I, 137-157 ; 2, 6, 58-80; 5, I, 135-208; and 5, 3, 252-261. For the rhetoricians* direc-
tions, see Hermogenes, Sp. II, 12 ; and Menander, III, 435, 18 fT., fiSWop ydp 6 \6yoi KirnrtxtS}-
repot €tfi dwb tQp hr 6^tp xal tQp pGp ffvp^dpnap^ oIktI^p re €i rijp ijXuclap ^ t6p rp&rop rov Bapdrov
\iyoi Tit, e/ fuucpi p6ffip TepixewruK^t efiy, e^ d^i^t 6 ddparot rrX.

2 This too was apparently a favorite commonplace. Cf. Consolatio ad Liviam^ 90 ff.

» 2, I, 157 ff. (cf. 23-25) ; 2, 6, 82 ff. ; 3, 3, 31-37, 176 ff. ; 5, i, 210 ff. ; 5, 3, 4i-44» 262 ff.

* 2, I, 183 ff. ; 5, I, 249 ff. ; 3, 3, 22 ff. In this last case the rhicot is placed in the introduc-
tion in the form of a prayer, and is supplemented by 205-207.

* This was the prospect which cheered Socrates (Plato, Apol. 32), and it became a common-
place. Cf. Menander, Sp. Ill, 414, 16 ff., elro Sti xelBofuu t6p /ucrcMrdrra tA i^Xi^triop weSlop oUeip,
5tov 'Fa8dfMP$vtt Srov Mei^Accut, &n-ov ireut 6 HTj\4(i)t xal Gfrtdot, fhrov yL4/ip<ap; 421, 16 f., iroXi-
reJJerot ydp yuerd tup $e(ap ^ rb "^X^aiop ^x** iredlop.

CLIFFORD HERSCHEL MOORE 137

Etruscus will relate to Etrusca all their son's fidelity (3, 3, 205 ff .) ; and for his
father's shade Statius craves honor from the bards of Greece (5, 3, 284 ff.),

ite, pii manes Graiumque examina uatum,
illustremque animam Letheis spargite sertis
et monstrate nemus, quo nulla inrupit Erinys,
in quo falsa dies caeloque simillimus aer.

Other consolatory tottoi are the universality of death (2, i, 209 ff.), the
thought that death is a happy escape from ills which make the living the
proper objects of pity (2, i, 220 ff . ; 5, i, 220 ff.),^ and the appearance of
the dead in a dream, which is a warrant that the spirit still lives. Etruscus
closes his address to his father's ashes with the words (3, 3, 204), monitura
somnia poscam ; Glaucias is besought to return and bring comfort (2, i,
227 ff.) ; and Statius prays his father's shade (5, 3, 288 ff.),

inde tamen venias, melior qua porta malignum
cornea uindt ebur, somnique in imagine monstra
quae solitus.

This running review of the main features of Statius' epicedia is sufficient, .
I trust, to show their character, although I have been forced to omit much
that is not insignificant. By observing the attention which the poet gives to
rhetorical rules and by noting his frequently repeated phrases and verbal com-
binations it is easy to do him injustice, for in spite of all, he shows much skill
in treating his themes and in handling his verse. In the epicedia, as in other
poems of his Silvae, he borrowed much of his material from earlier poets but
gave it a new and stricter form ; and he endeavored throughout his work to
enhance the value of his borrowings by expansion and exaggeration. Most of
the Silvae he wrote for his friends or the Emperor, only occasionally choosing
a theme for himself. His flattery of the dominus et deus Domitian offends
us, as does his willingness to treat so trivial a theme as the Capilli Flavi
Earini (3, 4), but for both he could quote good precedents, and more than
one poet of a later age has done as ill. He is always the doctus poeta : his
large use of mythology, personification, and learned reference, his conscious
devotion to the schools often burden his verses, and his very skill sometimes
betrays his lack of high poetic imagination. If he had left us a few more
poems like his appeal to Sleep (5, 4), we could almost call him the poet of a
new era ; as it is, we must regard him as one of the two chief representatives
of an artificial and timorous age, when art endeavored to conceal the want of
greater things. His epicedia are valuable as representing the final develop-
ment of a poetic form. With all. their evident conventions, they at times
show Statius in his most sincere moods, and they contain certain passages
which deserve the renewed existence given them by Poggio's happy discovery.

* Cf. Dionys., Ars Rhet. 6, 5; Menander, Sp. Ill, p. 413, 23 ff. These themes are frequent
on tombstones. Lier, Philologus, LXII, 563 ff.

THE SEA-BATTLE IN CHAUCER'S '^ LEGEND

OF CLEOPATRA"

William Henry Schofield

** At Cleopatre I wol that thou beginne," said the god of love to Chaucer,
when he bade the poet write

a glorious Legende
Of Gode Wommen, maidenes and wyves,
That weren trewe in lovinge al hir lyves.

And Chaucer straightway took his books and started on the task. His com-
mand was merely to rehearse **the grete" in the stories of certain faithful
lovers of the past, ** after thise olde auctours listen to trete " ; but he did not
hesitate to embellish their narratives with new details calculated to heighten
interest in his work. By far the most striking part of Chaucer's first legend,
the graphic description of Antony's sea-battle at Actium, is unparalleled in
any " old author " from Plutarch to Boccaccio. My present object is to show
that its peculiarly stimulating effect is due to the fact that the poet here
pictured an ancient scene with the color of recent events.

It may be well to remark at the outset that Chaucer does not refrain
from ** mediaeval touches " in other parts of the Legend of Good Women.
Thisbe, for example, wears a '* wimple," and she and Pyramus speak **with
a soun as. softe as any shrifte *' ; Dido ** seketh halwes " ; Philomela knew
how to *' weven in her stole the radevore " {ras de Vaur, serge of La Vaur, in
Languedoc); Lucrece is canonized a " saint " ; Hypermnestra's fate, decreed
by the ** Wirdes,** is stated in terms of astrology ; when the poet writes of
Demophon, he is reminded of '* the fox Renard " ; when about to relate the
misfortunes of Medea, he exclaims (with a figure taken from the chase) :
" Have at thee, Jasoun ! now thyn horn is blowe ! '* And of his long account
of Dido's feast, Skeat justly wrote : ** This passage is practically original.
Chaucer here tells the story in his own language, and gives it a wholly
mediaeval cast." Moreover, in the particular legend before us, Antony is
pictured as a *' knight," who had sought "honour" in Egypt, and become
famous for his ** chivalry " and ** gentilesse." Though ** a ful worthy gentil
werreyour," Antony was also a ** lover " of a courtly type.

Him thoughte, nas to him no thing so due
As Qeopataras for to love and serve ;
Him roghte nat in armes for to sterve
In the defence of hir and of hir right.

And Cleopatra took towards him the attitude of a gentle lady, faithful and
true, like Dorigen.

139

I40 THE SEA-BATTLE

If, as scholars now seem agreed, Chaucer produced his Legend of Good
Women some time between 1385 and 1387, he wrote when all his country-
men were engrossed with naval proceedings. One has only to read such an
account of the events of those years as is easily accessible in Nicolas's History
of the Royal Navy ^ to realize that there has seldom been a time when
Englishmen were more excited over maritime affairs. In many sea-conflicts,
great and small, prominent knights and humble shipmen were engaged, while
the whole nation anxiously feared a French invasion, which had been pre-
pared on a vast scale. Froissart, who described this extraordinary armament
with particular zest, went so far as to declare that no one had ever seen a
fleet like that gathered at Sluys to destroy England " since God created the
world." When, for various reasons, the invasion was abandoned, in the
autumn of 1386, the relief of the English was intense. Early in 1387, they
made great efforts to fit out a strong fleet, which set sail about the middle of
March and soon after won a signal victory over a large number of foreign ves-
sels under the command of the Flemish admiral Sir John de Bucq, who had
previously done them much mischief at sea. According to Walsingham, the
prizes were sent to Orwell ; and Lord Arundel, the English admiral, refused
to sell the great quantity of wine on board, even to the friendly merchants of
Middelburgh, who offered to purchase what they had lost. It belonged, he
said, to the commons of England, who had equipped the expedition.

No one will doubt that Chaucer took a keen interest in all these happen-
ings. He had had business relations with many a man like his Merchant, who

wolde the see were kept ^ for any thing
Bitwixe Middelburgh and Orewelle.

He had seen many a " good fellow " of the west like his Shipman,^ who

knew wel alle the havenes, as they were,
From Gootland to the cape of Finistere,
And every cryke in Britayne and in Spayne.

1 London^ 1847, II» 296 ff.

^ Gold nobles were then in circulation which showed Edward III in a large ship, asserting
his right to sovereignty of the sea. See Nicolas, II, 222 ff. The author of Mare Clausum^
in the time of Henry VI, remarked :

For foure things our noble sheweth to me,

King, ship, and sword, and power of the sea. . . .

But King Edward made a siege royall.

And wanne the town ; and in spedall

The see was kepty and thereof he was lord.

Thus made he nobles coined of record (Bk. ii, ch. xxv).

• " For aught I woot, he was of Dertemouthe," said Chaucer of his Shipman. One wonders
if he had in mind the exploit of the sailors of Dartmouth and Portsmouth in 1385, of which
Walsingham tells. " ' Hired by none, bought by none, but spurred on by their own valour and
innate courage,* these gallant mariners proceeded to the Seine with a small force, where they
captured four, and sank the same number of French vessels. Among the prizes was the
barge of the Sire de Clisson, which was worth 20,000 florins, and had no equal in size or beauty
either in England or France ** (Nicolas, II, 298).

SCHOFIELD 141

He was intimately acquainted with actual combatants in recent struggles ^ (far
more, probably, than documents can ever be made to show), as well as with
participants in similar struggles of an earlier date ; ^ and it would have been
miraculous if he had not heard first-hand accounts of sea-fights from some of
his numerous acquaintances in London, where such engagements were matter
of common talk.

Furthermore, his thoughts, like theirs, must have run back to the great
naval conflicts of the past fifty years, which had filled English hearts with
pride. In 1386 he was chosen a knight of the shire for Kent, and sat in the
parliament that was held in Westminster from October i to November i,
when much discussion took place of the defense of the realm and the pro-
tection of merchandise at sea. Discontented members then complained, as
had been done in Parliament before, of the contrast between the past and
present. " What is now become,*' they demanded, ''of our grand enterprises
and our valiant captains ? Would that our gallant King Edward and his son,
the Prince of Wales, were now alive ! We used to invade France and rebuff
our enemies so that they were afraid to shew themselves or venture to en-
gage us, and, when they did so, they were defeated. . . . We have seen the
time when, if such a fleet had been known to have collected at Sluys, the
good King and his sons would have hastened to take it." ^

^ John PhUipot, collector of customs from 1378 to 1384, fitted out a fleet at his own ex-
pense in 1379, and won a signal victory over the French led by the notorious Mercer; to judge
from Walsingham's account, he participated in the fight himself. Sir Lewis Clifford was one of
those who, at Carlisle, opposed Sir John de Vienne, admiral of the French fleet which was
sent to assist the Scots in 1385. In the same year, Sir William de Beauchamp, then Captain
of Calais, captured many French vessels in a spirited engagement. Sir Thomas de Percy was
then, as at previous times, an admiral of the English fleet Henry Scogan was in the employ
of Simon de Burley, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Governor of Dover Castle, and Justice of
the Peace for Kent, this last a position which Chaucer also occupied in 1385. (For the poet's
relations with the above-mentioned persons, see T. R. Hulbert, Chaucer's Official Life, Univ.
of Chicago, 191 2 ; and on their public activities, see Nicolas, 11, passim,) Chaucer, of course,
had many other possible sources of direct and indirect information on the naval affairs of
his time.

' BUlward III was probably not reticent about his exploits. Regarding the battle of Sluys,
Froissart says : ** There were in this fleet a great many ladies from England, countesses, bar-
onesses, and knights* and gentlemen's wives, who were going to attend on the Queen at
Ghent.** Here was another means of making the combat well known in the circle in which
Chaucer was to move. His father had recently been connected with the court. Froissart says
that four hundred knights accompanied the King at Espagnols-sur-Mer. *^The Prince of
Wales and John Earl of Richmond [John of Gaunt] were likewise on board the fleet The
last was too young to bear arms, but he had him on board because he much loved him."
Froissart dwells on the return of the King and his companions to Queen Philippa, who was
waiting anxiously for them on the shore. They " passed the night in revelry with the ladies,
conversing of arms and amours.'* At La Rochelle the English fleet was under the command of
the Earl of Pembroke (whose lands Chaucer was later to have in custody), and one of the
4idmiral*s most valiant supporters was Sir Otho de Graunson, ^ flour of hem that make in
France.*'

•Froissart, translated by Thomas Johnes, 3d ed., 1808, VIII, 227 ; cf. Nicolas, II, 264 f.

142 THE SEA-BATTLE

** The name of Edward the Third is more identified with the naval glory
of England than that of any other of her sovereigns ; for, though the saga-
cious Alfred and the chivalrous Richard commanded fleets and defeated the
enemy at sea, Edward gained in his own person two signal victories, fighting
on one occasion until his ship actually sunk under him, and was rewarded
by his subjects with the proudest title ever conferred upon a British mon-
arch,' King of the Sea.' . . . Like the Nile, Camperdown, and Trafalgar,
the battles of Sluys and Les Espagnols-sur-Mer led the English to imagine
that they were always to command the sea/'^

Froissart's vivid descriptions of the great victories of Sluys (1340) and
Espagnols-sur-Mer (1350) provide us with authentic pictures of sea-
conflicts in the fourteenth century. When we add to these his account of
the unfortunate encounter of the English fleet with the Spaniards off La
Rochelle (1372), we find ourselves in possession of sufficient parallels to the
sort of description that Chaucer undertook to write, and quickly recognize
that he depicts the battle of Actium (31 b.c.) as if it had happened in
his own age.^

His account is as follows :

Octovian, that wood was of this dede,

Shoop him an ost on Antony to lede

Al-outerly for his destruccioun,

With stoute Romains, crud as leoun ;

To ship they wente, and thus I let him saile.

Antonius was war, and wol nat faile

To meten with thise Romains, if he may ;

Took eek his reed, and bothe, upon a day,

His wyf and he, and al his ost, forth wente

To shippe anoon, no longer they ne stente ;

And in the see hit happed hem to mete —

Up goth the trompe — and for to shoute and shete,

And peynen hem to sette on with the sonne.

With grisly soun out goth the grete gonne,

And heterly they hurtlen al at ones.

And fro the top down cometh the grete stones.

In goth the grapenel so ful of crokes

Among the ropes, and the shering-hokes.

In with the polax presseth he and he ;

Behind the mast beginneth he to flee,

^ Nicolas, II, I. Laurence Mjnot commemorated these sea-battles in vigorous poems; see
Joseph Hall's edition, with notes, Oxford, 1887.

^ This article was written before I observed that Professor Ker, in his admirable essay on
Froissart (Essays on Medieval Literature^ 1905, p. 231), had incidentally noted a likeness be-
tween Chaucer's description and Froissart's account of the battle off La Rochelle ; but he did
not pursue the matter, and apparently did not consider the more striking resemblances with
Froissart's accounts of Sluys and Espagnols-sur-Mer, or the circumstances which may have
stimulated Chaucer's particular interest in sea-fights when the Legend was composed.

SCHOFIELD 143

And out agayn, and dryveth him overbord ;

He stingeth him upon his speres ord ;

He rent the sail with hokes lyke a sythe ;

He bringeth the cuppe, and biddeth hem be bl3rthe ;

He poureth pesen upon the hacches slider ;

With pottes f ul of lym they goon togider ;

And thus the longe day in fight they spende

Til, at the laste, as everything hath ende,

Antony is shent, and put him to the flighte,

And al his folk to-go, that best go mighte.

Here we have a general situation not unlike that when Edward III set out
to meet the stout Spaniards in the fight of Espagnols-sur-Mer.

** About this period," says Froissart, " there was much ill will between the
King of England and the Spaniards, on account of some infractions and
pillages committed at sea by the latter. It happened at this season that the
Spaniards, who had been in Flanders with their merchandise, were informed
they would not be able to return home without meeting the English fleet.
The Spaniards did not pay much attention to this intelligence. However,
after they had disposed of their goods, they amply provided their ships from
Sluys with arms and artillery, and all such archers, cross-bowmen and soldiers
as were willing to receive pay.

" The King of England hated these Spaniards greatly, and said publicly :
* We have for a long time spared these people ; for which they have done us
much harm, without amending their conduct: on the contrary, they grow
more arrogant ; for which reason they must be chastised as they repass our
coasts.' His lords readily assented to this proposal^ and were eager to engage
the Spaniards. The King therefore issued a special summons to all gentlemen
who at that time might be in England and left London.

"He went to the coast of Sussex, between Southampton and Dover, which
lies opposite to Ponthieu and Dieppe, and kept his court in a monastery,
whither the Queen also came. , . , On finding that he was not too late to
meet the Spaniards on their return^ the Kingy with his nobles and knights^
embarked on board his fleet ; and he was never attended by so numerous a
company in any of his former expeditions at sea. . . . The King kept the
sea with his vessels ready prepared for action, and to wait for the enemy, who
was not long before he appeared. He kept cruising for three days between
Dover and Calais.

** When the Spaniards had completed their cargoes . . . they embarked on
board their fleet at Sluys. They knew they should meet the English, but were
indifferent about it. . . . If the English had a great desire to meet them,
it seemed as if the Spaniards were still more eager for it. . . . Intending to
engage the English fleet, they advanced with a favourable wind until they
came opposite to Calais. The King of England, being at sea, had very

144 THE SEA-BATTLE

distinctly explained to all his knights the order of battle he would have them
follow. . . . The King posted himself in the forepart of his own ship : he
was dressed in a black velvet jacket, and wore on his head a small hat of
beaver,! which became him much. He was that day, as I was told by those
who were present, as joyous as he ever was in his life, and ordered his min-
strels to play before him a German dance ^ which Sir John Chandos had lately
introduced. For his amusement, he made the same knight sing with his min-
strels, which delighted him greatly. From time to time, he looked up to the
castie on his mast, where he had placed a watch to inform him when the
Spaniards were in sight. Whilst the King was thus amusing himself with his
knights, who were happy in seeing him so gay, the watch, who had observed
a fleet, cried out, * Ho, I spy a ship, and it appears to me to be a Spaniard.'
The minstrels were silenced ; and he was asked if there were more than one.
Soon after he replied, * Yes : I see two, three, four, and so many that, God
Tielp me, I cannot count them.' The King and his knights then knew that
they must be the Spaniards. The tmmpets were ordered to sound, and the
ships to form a line of battle for the combat."

We may now take up Chaucer's account line by line and indicate such
parallels as are afforded by Froissart's chronicle, and certain other mediaeval
works.^

I . up goth the trompe — and for to shout e and shete.

Sluys : " The battle then began very fiercely ; archers and cross-bowmen
shot with all their might at each other. . . . There were then great shouts
and cries. . . . There were great noises with trumpets and all kinds of other
instruments " (I, 209).

^ Chaucer's Merchant wore " a Flaundrish bever hat."

* We read in the " House of Fame," 1233 ff.:

Ther saugh I famous, olde and yonge,
Pypers of the Duche tonge.

Among the minstrels at the court of Edward III was one Rynald le P3rper. Others were Nicolas
de Prague and Jean de Metz. See Kervyn de Lettenhove, (Euvres de Ftvissart, I, ch. vi. The
■author of Morte Arthure (1. 2030) represents " dauncesynge of Duche-mene, and dynnynge of
pypez " at a feast of the " Roman " opponents of Arthur.

• It may be noted here that the author of the alliterative Morte Arthun (ed. Brock, E. E. T. S.,
187 1) did exactly the same thing as Chaucer, namely, revivified a scene of ancient story by the
introduction of modem incident and equipment The sea-battle which he represents Arthur as
waging against the Danes when the King set out from Flanders to punish Modred (11. 3588-
37 1 1 ) is extremely interesting from our present point of view, showing various features in com-
mon with Chaucer's narrative. Indeed, as Mr. George Neilson has made clear {Huchown of
the Awle Ryale, Glasgow, 1902, pp. 60 ff.), the author had the fight of EspagnoIs-sur-Mer
■definitely in mind. He even mentions ^ Spanyolis " as the King's enemies.

When ledys of owt-hndys leppyne in waters,

Alle oure lordes one lowde laughene at ones I

Be thane speris wbare spronngene, spaldydd chippys,

Spanyolis spedily sprentyde ouer burdez ;

Alle the kene men of kampe, knyghtes and other,

Killyd are colde dede, and castyne ouer burdez 1 (3697 ff.)

SCHOFIELD 145

La Rochelle : ** When the English and the Poitevins saw the Spaniards
thus posted . . . they made preparations for an immediate combat, posting
their archers on the bows of the ships. They advanced with shoutings and
with great noise. ... At this commencement great were the shouts and cries
on both sides " (IV, 156). " When it was day, and the tide had flowed full,
the Spaniards weighed their anchors, and, with a great noise of trumpets and
drums, formed a line of battle " (IV, 160 ; cf. 163).

2. And peynen hem to sette on with the sonne.

Sluys : '* When the King of England and his marshals had properly divided
the fleet, they hoisted their sails to have the wind on their quarter, as the sun
shone full in their faces y which they considered might be of disadvantage to
them. The Normans, who saw them tack, could not help wondering why they
did so, and said they took good care to turn about, for they were afraid of
meddling with them " (I, 209).

This feature of the battle, mentioned by Walsingham and other chroniclers,
was long remembered, as will be seen by Holinshed's account {Anno 1340) :
'* The King of England stayed till the sun^ which at first was in his face ^
came somewhat westward^ and so had it upon his backy that it should not
hinder the sight of his people y and so therewith did set upon his enemies with
great manhood, who likewise very stoutly encountered him, by reason whereof
ensued a sore and deadly fight betwixt them."

3. With grisly soun out got h the grete gonne.

Espagnols : The Spaniards " had marvellously provided' themselves with
all sorts of warlike ammunition ; such as bolts for cross-bows, cannons y and bars
of forged iron to throw on the enemy " (II, 254).

La Rochelle : " The Spaniards were well-equipped with men at arms and
foot soldiers, who had cross-bows and cannons ... to make their attack
with" (IV, 156).

Of the conflict with Sir John de Bucq in 1387, we read : ** The gunners
made ready their bows and cannons, . . . Their cannons shot balls of such
weight that great mischief was done" (VIII, 158-159).

Nicolas, after discussing the evidence regarding the use of cannons and
gunpowder in the fourteenth century, concludes : ^ ** It is manifest from these
records that cannon formed part of the armament of many ships as early, and
probably a few years before, 1 338 ; that, about 1 372, guns and gunpowder were
commonly used ; that some guns were made of iron, some of brass, and others
of copper ; that there was a kind of hand-gun as well as large cannon ; and
that gunpowder was formed of the same elements, and made in nearly the
same manner, as at present."

1 II, 185 ; cf. II, 296, note b.

146 THE SEA-BATTLE

Skeat, in a note on Chaucer's line,^ takes Bell severely to task for thinking
the poet's mention of the guns "a ludicrous anachronism." He maintains
that " gonne " is here used merely for " missile " hurled from one of the
** engines of battery '* which Plutarch says Antony used. That view would
certainly be tenable if Chaucer were not so obviously modernizing his narra-
tive ; but under the circumstances there can be little doubt that he had regular
cannons in mind. These were being used in all important sea-fights of his day,
and, as Skeat himself remembered, the poet elsewhere used ** gonne " for
cannon, evincing great interest in the new instruments of war. The sound of
the trumpet of Slander went, he says.

As swift as pelet out of gonne,
Whan fyr is in the poudre ronne.
And swiche a smoke gan out wende
Out of his foule trumpes ende,
Blak, bio, grenish, swartish reed,
As doth wher that men melte leed,
Lo, al on high fro the tuel ! . . .
And hit stank as the pit of helle.^

4. And heterly they hurtlen al at ones — (And fiercely they dash together all at once).

Espagnols : ** When the King of England saw from his ship their order
of battle, he ordered the person who managed his vessel, saying, * Lay me
alongside the Spaniard who is bearing down on us ; for I will have a tilt with
him.' The master dared not disobey the King's order, but laid his ship ready
for the Spaniard, who was coming full sail. The King's ship was large and
stiff ; otherwise she would have been sunk, for that of the enemy was a great
one, and the shock of their meeting was more like the crash of a torrent or
tempest. The rebound caused the castle in the King's ship to encounter that
of the Spaniard ; so that the mast of the latter was broken, and all in the castle
fell with it into the sea, when they were drowned. . . . The fight now
began in earnest. . . . The battle was not in one place, but in ten or twelve
at a time. Whenever either party found themselves equal to the enemy, or

1 Works of Chaucer^ III, 312. Shakspere, we may note, pictures Angiers as threatened
with cannons in the time of King John.

The cannons have their bowels full of wrath

And ready mounted are they, to spit forth

Their iron indignation 'gainst your walls (II, i, etc.).

* House of Fame^ 11. 1643-1654. In a recipe for gunpowder given in the MSS. of Dr. John
Ardeme of Newark, who beg^an to practise as a surgeon before 1350, we read : ** Cest poudre
vault 4 gettere pelottes de fer, ou de plom, ou d'areyne, oue vn instrument que Pem appelle
gonney See H. W. L. Hime, Gunpowder and Ammunition, 1904, p. 177. '*The accounts of
John de Sleaford, clerk of the King's Privy Wardrobe, prove that in 1372-1374 workmen were
employed in the Tower in making leaden * pelottes * for g^ns " {ibid., p. 203). In Piers Plowman,
C Text, xxi, 293, we find :

Setteth bowes of brake and brasene gonnes,

And sheteth out shot enowh hus shultrom to blende.

SCHOFIELD 147

superior, they instantly grappled, when grand deeds of arms were performed "
(II, 256 fif.).

5. And fro the top doun cometh the grete stones.

Espagnols : The Spaniards were " in hopes, with the assistance of great
stones^' to sink the English boats. ** Near the top of their masts were small
castles [topcastles], full of flints and stones'' (II, 254). **The English had
not any advantage ; and the Spanish ships were much larger and higher than
their opponents, which gave them a great superiority in shooting and casting
stones and iron bars on board their enemy, which annoyed them exceedingly "

(11, 257).

La Rochelle : " The Spaniards, who were in large vessels, had great bars
of iron and huge stones^ which they launched and flung from their ships in
order to sink those of the English." " The showers of stones . . . annoyed
them exceedingly." " The Spaniards had too much the advantage, as their
vessels were larger and higher above the water than those of the English,
from which they flung down stones ^ bars of iron and lead, that much annoyed
their adversaries " (IV, 156, 158, 160).

6. In goth the grapenel so ful ofcrokes
Among the ropes, and the shering-hokes.

Sluys : " In order to be more successful, they had large grapnels, andiron
hooks with chains, which they flung from ship to ship, to moor them to each
other" (I, 209).

Espagnols : " Another large ship bore down, and grappled with chains
and hooks to that of the King" (II, 257 ; cf. 258, 259).

La Rochelle : " When they came to close quarters, the Spaniards flung
out grappling hooks with chains of iron, lashed the English to their vessels,
so that they could not separate, and thus, as it were, held them close " (IV,
160; cf. 161).

Nicolas notes that one of the King's ships was provided in 1338 with a
grape-iron with a chain, an iron "myke-hoke," and a **sherehoke" (II, 171,

475).

7. In with the poiax presseth he and he;
Behind the mast beginneth he to flee.

And out agayn, and dryveth him overbord, . . .
He rent the sail with hokes lyke a sythe.

In the account of Espagnols-sur-Mer, we read of a noteworthy exploit by
an individual : '* The Spaniards would have carried away with ease this prize
[the King's ship] if it had not been for a gallant act of one Hanequin, a serv-
ant to the Lord Robert [de Namur], who, with his drawn sword on his wrist,
leaped on board the enemy, ran to the mast, and cut the large cable which
held the mainsail, by which it became unmanageable ; and with great agility,
he cut other four principal ropes, so that the sails fell on the deck, and the

148 THE SEA-BATTLE

course of the ship was stopped. Lord Robert, seeing this, advanced with his
men, and, boarding the Spaniard, sword in hand, attacked the crew so vigor-
ously that all were slain or thrown overboard^ and the vessel won " (II, 260).
" The knights on board the King's ship were in danger of sinking, for the
leak still admitted water. This made them more eager to conquer the vessel
they were grappled to ; and at last they gained the ship, ind flung all they
found in it overboard'' ^ (II, 258).

In a great battle between the English and French iu 121 7, certain Eng-
lish sailors were instructed to take axes and when they could board the enemy's
ships, to climb up the masts and cut down the banners. " The English then
rushed on board ; and cutting away the rigging and haulyards with axes^ the
sails fell over the French, to use the expression of the chronicler [Matthew
Paris] Mike a net upon ensnared small birds.* Thus hampered, the enemy
could make but a feeble resistance ; and, after an immense slaughter, were
completely defeated. . . . Though the French fought with great bravery, very
few among them were accustomed to naval tactics ; and they fell rapidly under
the lances, axes^ and swords of their assailants " (Nicolas, I, 1 77-1 81).

8. He stingeih him upon his spcres orde.

In the account of a sea-engagement off Guernsey, between Lord Robert
d'Artois and Lord Lewis of Spain, we find : ** When the barons^ knights and
squires were able to come to close combat^ and could reach each other with
their lances^ then the battle raged, and they made good trial of each other's
courage. The Countess of Montfort was equal to a man, for she had the heatt
of a lion ; and, with a rusty sharp sword in her hand, she combated bravely.
The Genoese and Spaniards, who were in those large vessels, threw down
upon their enemies great bars of iron, and annoyed them much with very long
lances " (II, 22 ff.).

La Rochelle : The English and Poitevins ** handled their spears^ which
were well steeled, so briskly and gave such terrible strokes, that none dared
to come near unless he were well armed and shielded " (IV, 157-158).

9. He bringeth the cuppe, and biddeth hem be blythe.

Espagnols: "The King ordered wine to be brought, which he and his
knights drank" (II, 256).

1 Cf. Morte Artkure^ 11. 3665 ff. (above, p. 144), and Minot*s accounts of Sluys and Espag^ols-
sur-Mer (cd. Hall, pp. 16, 33-34). For example:

Fone left )>ai olive bot did |>am to lepe.

To wade war )>o wretches casten in )>e brim ;

pe kaitefs come out of France at lere )>am to swim.

Chaucer says of his Shipman :

Of nyce conscience took he no keep,

If that he f aught, and hadde the hyer bond,

By water he sente hem hoom to every lond.

SCHOFIELD 149

It is said in the romance of Richard Cceur de Lion ^ that after a naval
exploit in the harbor of Acre (i 194) :

For joye off this dede,
The cuppes fast abouten yede,
With good wyn, pyement, and clarr^.

10. He poureth pesen upon the hacches slider.

Regarding this line, Skeat wrote as follows : ** By pouring hard peas upon
the hatches, they became so slippery that the boarders could not stand." But
there is no likelihood in this explanation. We have no evidence that peas
were ever used thus in naval warfare, and the device would surely have been
of very doubtful advantage, since it would work harm to both sides. The
'* pesen" were evidently poured upon the enemy s hatches, and Chaucer does
not say that this was to make the hatches '* slider," but only that these were
'* slider." Perhaps we have here a confused reference to what was a striking
feature of sea-battles in the time of Richard Cceur de Lion, the use of " Greek
(or wild) fire." A passage near the close of Jean de Meun*s translation of
Vegetius' De Re Militari^ seems to throw light on the situation. Speaking
of naval tactics, he says : " Envolepent saietes d'estoupes et de pois et de
oyle ardant que on apele fu grijois,^ et les getent ardans par ars et par
arbalestes et les fichent es n6s de lor anemis et ardent soudainement les
tables des nh ointes de cire et depois resine et d'autres norrissemens as feus."
Apparently, " pois " here means * pitch," which was poured on the decks of
the enemy's ships (ointes de cire — therefore '* slider ") to nourish and spread
** wild fire." But since *' pois " also means * peas,* confusion might easily
have arisen in the mind of one who merely read of the practice described.
As Chaucer seems to have known Jean de Meun*s translations of Boethius
and Albertano of Brescia, as well as the Roman de la Rose^ it would not be
strange if he also consulted Jean's Art de Chevalerie,

^ Dating in its English form from the last quarter of the thirteenth century. Ed. Weber,

Metrical Romances^ 1810, II, 11. 2623 ff. The whole of this description should be compared^

since it contains many features like Chaucer's — trumpets (2631), stones from the topcastle

(2539), axes (2555), spears (2547), leaping overboard (2567), hooked arrows (2577), etc. Of the

mariners it is said :

They rowede hard, and sungge ther too :

" With hcvclow and nimbeloo " (2521-2522).

It is interesting to observe that this refrain was in use quite recently by boatmen on the Mis-
sissippi ; see Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Story of a Bad Boy, ch. iii. Cf. Schofield, Eng. Lit. from
the Norman Conquest to Chaucer^ p. 364, and Marlowe's Edward 11, Act II, Sc. ii.

^ VArt de Chevalerie, ed. Ulysse Robert, S.A.T.F., 1897, pp. 173-174 ; cf. pp. xxxi, 142, 148.
The translation was made in 1 284, and the verse rendering of it by Priorat between 1 286 and 1 290.

• There is, of course, no mention of Greek fire in Vegetius. The Latin runs : " oleo in-
cendiario, stuppa, sulphure et bitumine obvolutae et ardentes sagittae "...** in hosdcarum
navium alveos." On page 142 of Jean de Meun, we read : ** On doit apparaillier ciment [bitu-
men], souffre, pays clere, oyle ardant que on appelle feu gprijois [oleum, quod incendiarium
vocant], pour ardoir les engiens as anemis."

I50 THE SEA-BATTLE

In an interesting account of a sea-fight with the Saracens in 1 190,^ Geof-
frey de Vinsauf wrote : '* Soon the battle became general ; the oars were
entangled ; they fought hand to hand ; they grappled the ships with alternate
casts, and set the decks [taiulata] on fire with the burning oil commonly
called the Greek fire. This fire, with a deadly stench and livid flames, con-
sumes flint and iron ; and, unquenchable by water, can only be extinguished
by sand or vinegar/' In the romance of Richard Coeur de Lion, we read :

Kyng Richard, oute of his galye,
Caste wylde-fyr into the skeye,
And fyr Gregeys into the see,
And al on fyr wer thfi (11. 2627 fif.).

The line we are discussing should be considered in its connection with
that which immediately follows. In writing these two lines Chaucer seems to
have recalled famous tactics that were used in English sea-battles of a some-
what earlier period than his own.

1 1 . With pottesful of lym they goon to-gider,

Skeat notes : ^ ** Some carried pots full of quicklime, which they threw into
the eyes of their enemies. See Notes and Queries, 5 S., X, 188. The English
did this very thing, when attacking a French fleet, in the time of Henry III.
Strutt {Manners and Customs, 1774, II, 11) quotes from Matthew Paris to
this effect : * Calcem quoque vivam et in pulverem subtilem reductam, in altum
projicientes, vento illam ferente, Francorum oculos excaecaverunt.* Cf. Aen.
viii, 694."

The battle above mentioned was that in which Eustace the Monk was
captured. In the romance concerning him, we read :

Dont commenchi^ent k nier
Caus bien molue en grans pos
Kil dep^choient a lor bors.
La pourri^re molt grans leva :
Che fu chou que plus les greva
Dont ne se porent plus desfendre ;
Car lor oel furent plain de cendre.
Cil estoient desor le vent
Ki lor faisoient le torment*

^ ^ Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi et aliorum in Terram Hierosolymonim," in Gale,
Hist. Britann., Sax.^ Anglo-Dan, Scriptoresy II, 274. In 1 194, or 1 195, the King of England paid
for carrying " Greek fire ** (" targiis et quarellis et pilettis et igne Graeco ") from London to
Nottingham for the use of an engineer named Urric. (See Nicolas, I, 80 ff.) The ** pellets"
here spoken of, and Vinsauf s description of the fire (with its ** deadly stench and livid flames *'),
remind one of Chaucer's words in the House of Fame, Vinsauf was an author whom Chaucer knew.

• Works of Chancery III, 312 f. See also Nicolas, I, 179.

« Ed. Michel, p. 82.

SCHOFIELD 151

Hime writes : ^ ** Cameniata tells us that at the storming of Salonika in
904 the Moslems threw * pitch and torches and quicklime ' over the walls.
By * quicklime * he probably meant the earthenware hand grenades, filled with
wet quicklime, described by the Emperor Leo, who then sat on the throne
(886-911). *The vapour of the quicklime,* he says, *when the pots are
broken, stifles and chokes the enemy and disturbs the soldiers/ '* Chaucer's
" pots full of lime " seem to have been more definite instruments of war than
has usually been supposed.

12. And thus the longe day in fight they spende
Tit^ tU the laste^ as everything hath ende,
Antony is shenty and put him to theflighte^
And al his folk togo, that best go mighte,

Edward III wrote in a letter to his son, the Black Prince, after Espagnols-
sur-Mer, that the enemy made a noble defense ** all that day and the night
after" (Nicolas, II, 502).

Froissart says : "I cannot speak of every particular circumstance of this
engagement. // lasted a considerable time ; and the Spaniards gave the King
of England and his fleet enough to do. However, at last, victory declared for
the English. The Spaniards lost fourteen ships ; the others saved themselves
by flight'' {11,269).

From the foregoing study it should appear that Chaucer's sea-battle is of
an almost wholly mediaeval sort. The methods of naval warfare that he de-
picts correspond in the main to those actually used by mariners of his own
land when he wrote his poem ; and some of the tactics that he mentions had
been employed to advantage by English kings on celebrated occasions. It is
likely that the poet was influenced by what he had read of sea-battles, and
perhaps had Jean de Meun's Art de Chevalerie before him, but he probably
gained most of his information from oral accounts of recent conflicts ^ and dis-
cussions with navy men. He did not undertake to describe any particular
event, but simply to paint a vivid struggle between two fleets, which he knew
would appeal to his readers the more if it seemed to them lifelike, and
answered to their preconception of what such a picture should present. This
procedure was fully in accord with Chaucer's practice. I have dwelt elsewhere
upon the realism of the description of the tournament in the Knight's Tale.*

1 Gunpowder and Ammunition^ p. 40. For the use of " wild fire " down to the siege of
Paris in 1870, see pp. 50 ff. It was employed by the Flemish engfineer Crab in the defense of
Berwick when besieged by Edward II in 1319. Barbour says in the Bruce (Bk. xvii) :

And pyk {pitch) and ter {iar) als haiff they tane,

And lynt ijlax) and herdes {refuse of /lax) and brymstane,

And diy treyis {trees or wood) that wele wald brin {bum).

* Cf. Froissart's "as I was told by those who were present" (above, p. 144).

• Chivalry in English Literature (Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, VoL II).
Cambridge, 191 2, pp. 38!!.

152 THE SEA-BATTLE

The sea-battle in the ** Legend of Cleopatra " is another witness to the con-
temporaneousness of his work. Indeed, one may even go so far as to suggest
that the widespread interest in naval affairs in England while Chaucer was
fashioning the Legend of Good Women may have led him to include Cleopatra
among the ** Saints of Cupid/* though she had not previously been famed as
** trewe in lovinge al hir lyve " : it gave him an opportunity to describe one
of the decisive sea-battles of the world in a way that must have stirred all his
associates. The author of the Morte Arthure wrote his poem which reflects
historical conditions of the reign of Edward III, in a similar spirit.

THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

Charles Burton Gulick

Since the time when Wolf expounded his theory of the composition of
the Homeric poems, scholars have accepted with unusual unanimity his opin-
ion concerning the origin and the purpose of the hymns to various deities
which ancient citations and the manuscripts agree in calling ** Homeric,"
or '* Homer's," or the '* poet's." This opinion^ is to the effect that all the
shorter hymns were composed by rhapsodes for various local celebrations and
chanted as preludes to longer passages selected from the epos. Such preludes,
it is said, were called irpooifua and were rendered at contests between rhap-
sodes, a custom which Hesiod mentions when he tells how he and Homer
sang at Delos, and how at another time he went to Chalcis and won the tripod
for a hymn.2 He, however, calls his work a v/ti/09, not a irpooCfiiov, Wolf's
definition has proved useful, to say the least of the most fruitful book ever
produced in the field of literary criticism ; but the practical application of it
has led to such diversity of conception, not to say misconception, among
scholars who have dealt with the details of the hymns, that it may be worth
while to reconsider the evidence, in order to determine more precisely the
nature of this genre in Greek poetry, and whether its purpose can be regarded
as uniform throughout.

An invocation to a divinity was an essential preliminary to every act the
Greek undertook, from a public festival to a private drinking bout, and the
duty applied with peculiar force to an act so abundantly reflecting popular
religious aspirations and theological conceptions as the recital of an epic.
Accordingly, we find such an invocation as early as Odyssey 0, 499,^ where
Demodocus, urged by Odysseus to sing of the wooden horse at Troy, ' began
with the god, and voiced his lay.' And since the lays of the bard have been
called olfiat just before,* it seemed to Wolf and others clear that irpooltiiov

1 F. A. Wolf, ProUgomenay pp. cvi-cvii. Baumeister, Hymni Homericiy larger edition,
pp. 102 ff. Reisch, De Music is Graecorum Certaminibusy p. 3 : constat enim inter homines doctos
hymnos illos ad deorum sollemnia celebranda compositos esse ita ut maiores in certaminibus
musicis recitarentur, minores carminibus epicis prooemiorum loco praemitterentur.

* Hesiod, frag. 244 Rzach ; Works and Days, 650.

* wf 0<i<?*, h S* 6piiirf0€U 6€o0 Apxrro, <f>aiv€ S' ioidi/ip. This eighth book of the Odyssey is, as
Croiset {Histoire de la littiraiure grecque?^ I, 89) has pointed out, the locus classicus on the
origin and method of the epic.

* Verse 481; cf. x» 347. and ol/uot dotJ^f in Hymn to Hermes^ 451. The first lines of the Iliad
and Odyssey^ sometimes cited in illustration, stand for something different, namely, a convention
due to literary instinct and not to religious practice. The invocation to the Muse (Calliope in 31, i)
occurs in nine of the hymns.

153

154 THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

is the natural designation of such an invocation. The earliest occurrence of
the word lends support to this view, for Pindar ^ expressly connects a
irpoolfiiov to Zeus with a Homeric lay : odevirep Kal *0/Mr)p{Bcu (HnrrSiv iirecav
Th TrrfXX' aothol apxovrcu Ato9 iK irpooLfilov. But the word, like so many
other terms in music and literature in all languages, lost its strict etymological
application soon after Pindar, as is shown by the tragedians and all the prose
writers of the fifth century who employ it. With them it means * prelude,'
without any implication of something to follow. Even Thucydides is not to be
excepted. In the well-known passage ^ in which he quotes the hymn to Apollo,
he speaks of it, to be sure, as a Trpooifiiov, but in the face of contemporary
usage there is no need to infer that he regarded the hymn as an introduction
to an epic recital. Alcaeus and Empedocles, neither of whom was a rhapsodist,
wrote a irpool^uov ek *A7rrfXXfi)i/a ; ^ and the case of Socrates, occupying his
hours in prison with an address to the same god,* likewise called a irpooifiiov,
illustrates the same free use of the word. The scholiast on the Thucydidean
passage understood it in this broader way. On iK irpooifiiov he remarks :
i^ vfivov • T0U9 y^p v/ivov^ irpooifiui iKciXovv. In fact, in the fifth and fourth
centuries the term was equated with vfivo^ generally, whether the rhapsodic,
that is hexameter, hymn is meant, or the lyric. Plato,^ accordingly, speaks of
Trda-f)^ fiova-f)^ irpooifua, * proems (or introductions) to every kind of lyric
poetry,' in connection with the lyre, and the proper commentary on this is a
remark of a late rhetorician ® : irpooifua iXeyop oi iraXaLol rh r&v KiOaptpBcjp.
The 7rpoo(/uov, properly so called, was sung with a harp accompaniment,
and its singers {aoihol) are coupled with harpists {KLdapiaral) in the hymn
to the Muses and Apollo.*^ One might be tempted to think, with Welcker^
and Gruppe,® that irpooificov was the peculiar designation of an ApoUinic
hymn, were it not for Pindar's Ato? ck irpooifiiov just cited.

There are other facts which lead to the conclusion that irpooifuov was not
the inevitable or stereotyped name for a hymn to Apollo or any other god.
The oldest hymn-writer of all, according to Pausanias,^^ was the Lycian Olen,
who wrote for the divinities worshipped in Delos, and bore in fact the title of
*' prophet of Apollo." Yet Herodotus ^^ calls his song a vfivo<;. It was un-
doubtedly in hexameters, which he is said to have invented.^ More important
is the disappearance of the word 7rpoo{fjuov as a description of Homeric

• Nemean Odes, 2, i. * Thucydides, 3, 104.

• Pausanias, 10, 8, 10. Diogenes Laertius, 8, 57. * Plato, Phatdoy 60 D. * Laws^ 722.

• RheUfres anon.^ Spengel, I, 427, 6, cited by Christ, Geschichte d. griech, LiUratur,^ p. 74.

^ Hymn 25, 3. The "lyrical" hymn — the English word shows how unsafe a g^ide is ety-
mology pressed too far — was frequently performed to a flute accompaniment, in which case
the term irpocdiXiov (Plato, Cratylusy 417 e) might be applied to it — Cf. also on the hymn Proclus,
Chrestom.^ 244:6 Kvpl<in tfipos wp6s KiBdpav fdrro iffninuvt i.e., the performers did not dance,
but stood still. * Dtr epische Cyclusy I, 328.

• Griechische CulU und Mythetiy p. 523. " 9, 27, 2. 11 4, 35. i' Pausanias, 10, 5, 8.

GULICK 155

hymns in all the quotations of them after the age of Thucydides, with the
single exception of the rhetor Aristides,^ who is evidentiy quoting Thucydides.
There are not many of these,^ but they are sufficientiy numerous and authori-
tative to show that v/ipo^ was the normal term, as in all the manuscripts. They
often reflect good Alexandrian opinion, as in the learned note on the 'OfirjpiSaL
and the pa^^tphol in the scholia to Pindar.^ Further the word v^ivo^ has the
advantage of being general in its scope, since the extant hymns vary so greatiy
in length, and sometimes in matter, as to betray a difference of purpose, and
we are not committed to the belief that all were intended to precede an epic
recitation. Pindar, then, is the sole authority for irpoolfuov meaning such a
prelude. He uses the word again ^ in addressing his golden lyre : ireidovrcu
S' aoiSol a-dfiaa-iv, ayr)a'i)(6p(DV 6nr6rav irpooifiUov afifioXit^ revj^rj^ ikeXi^ofi^a,
' the bards are ready to obey the cue whenever thy quivering note makes pre-
lude for the choruses.' Here a/i/8oX^9 irpooLfiUov, *the striking up of the
preludes/ is a periphrasis for irpooifua meaning the opening strains and
words of a hymn, and used just as one might employ the term for the
beginning of a Terpandrian nome <^ — obviously a different tiling from what
concerns us here.

It is necessary to insist on the virtual uniqueness of Pindar's testimony in
the passage first quoted, in order that we may approach the question of how
the hymns were rendered without prejudice derived from the word irpooi/uoif,
at least in its etymological sense. On the other hand, to seek to avoid the
difficulty by following Gruppe's suggestion ® that Thucydides has reference to
some other hymn to Apollo than that handed down to us would be fantastic.
For although Thucydides's quotations — there are really two of them — depart
in several grave particulars from the text of the manuscripts, they are, in fact,
close enough to that text to establish identity. The discrepancies prove merely
that the poems had not yet been canonized in form by the written authority
of a vulgate, as had fortunately happened to the Iliad and the Odyssey a cen-
tury before imder Pisistratus. They were still the oral property of the rhapso-
dists, not of a large public, and consequentiy were in a more or less fluid state.
This point we may now consider more fully.

1 Orat,, L, Dindorf, II, 558.

^ The list is convenientiy given in Allen and Sikes's edition (1904), pp. xlv-liii. To it
should be added the important citations from the long hymn to Demeter in the papyrus from
Abusir el malaq, published in 1907 in Berliner KlassikerUxte^ I, 7-18. Cf. below, p. 156.

» Schol. Find. Nem,y 2, i. * P^th.^ i, 4.

^ Such seems to be the intention of the passage in Plutarch, De Musiea^ 6 : rd 7d^ irpdt
roi>t 9wb% (Jf fioH^Korrai d^poffua^dfuvoi C discharging their duty *) i^ifiatvow €6$dt hrl re r^w 'Oftf^pov
Kol tQw SXKuw ToifiaiP. d^Xoy ^ rovr iorl did tQp Ttpwdvdpov wpooifiUaw. This was cited by Wolf
to illustrate the practice of the rhapsodes, but Allen and Sikes (p. Ixii) rightly object that
Plutarch is talking about nomes, not rhapsodes. The seven parts of the Terpandrian nome
were headed by an dpx^j apparently identified by Plutarch with wpoolfjuow.

• Griech, Culte u. Mythetty p. 538.

156 THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

The question, When were the hymns reduced to writing? cannot, of course,
be answered with precision. The complete silence of the Homeric scholia,
which never cite the hymns, is interpreted by Gruppe to mean that they did
not exist in written form in Alexandrian times. The more probable explana-
tion is that the Alexandrian critics, especially Aristarchus, did not regard them
as Homeric.^ According to Aristarchus Homer was an Athenian, whereas the
hymns betray divers local origins and could not have been cited into court in
illustration of the Iliad ox Odyssey, Moreover the scholiast to Pindar,^ whose
note almost certainly goes back ultimately to an Alexandrian source, accepts
a tradition which he had discovered to the effect that the hymn to Apollo was
composed by a rhapsodist, Cynaethus of Chios, the first to recite Homer in
Syracuse.^ This tradition of special authorship could hardly be based on any-
thing else than a written book containing the hymn, which does not mean, of
course, that many copies of the book existed. We have, besides, fairly early
testimony that the hymn to Apollo was inscribed on an album Qs.evKfoiia) and
kept in the temple of Artemis at Delos.^ Desultory and transitory as the
materials for preservation undoubtedly were, they nevertheless existed. The
papyrus mentioned above (p. 155, n. 2), which dates from the second or first
century B.C., proves the existence of a written book. It is a popular, not a
scholarly work, even ascribing to Orpheus the hymn to Demeter; but the
correspondence of its tradition with that of Pausanias at one point ^ indicates
with some clearness the use of a written text.^ While, therefore, the oral
transmission of the hymns remained in vogue much later than that of the
epos, we may confidently assume that copies of them existed by 300 b.c.

Nevertheless, the poor state of the text is notorious, and is a proof, as was
asserted above (p. IS5), that the hymns were committed to writing late and
hastily. The one existing papyrus which cites the few lines from the hymn
to Demeter stands out in singular contrast to the great number of papyri of
the Iliady and the fairly large number of the Odyssey, The hymns were little
read for seven hundred years at least ; but they may have been heard occa-
sionally down to the time when the last notes of the rhapsodic aoLhrj ceased.
This happened presumably at the end of the fourth century of our era, when

1 So Wolf, Prolegomena^ p. cclxvi. * On Nem,., 2, i.

^ The last statement, to which is added a wrong date, is given on the authority of Hippos-
tratus, who flourished before Hadrian, and whose source must have been Didymus. Cf. Christ,
Geschichte d. griech, Literatur^y p. 707. An interesting explanation of the way in which such
authorship became obscured is given by T. W. Allen in The Classical Quarterly^ VII, p. 42
(January 1913).

* Ceriamen Homeri ei Hesiodiy 310, a work which is apparently based on a book by the
rhetor Alcidamas, a pupil of Gorgias.

* In the citation of the Hymn to Demeter^ vss. 418-423, where it agrees with Pausanias in
omitting vs. 419.

* In the generation following Aristarchus we have his pupil ApoUodorus apparently citing
from a hymn the word ^picfiios (Geneva Scholia on 4» 319, quoted in Allen and Sikes, p. 1).

GULICK 157

the edict of Theodosius put a stop to the great pagan gatherings in centres
like Olympia, Eleusis, and Athens. In Byzantine times interest in them re-
vived, extending over wide areas of the Eastern Empire, if we may judge from
the respectable number of manuscripts and the double, if not triple, tradition
which they represent. It is in this age, perhaps as late as the ninth century,
that the editing of them was prosecuted with results now to be noted.

The text has been handed down in two ways. Either it is contained in a
Homeric corpus, bound up with the Iliad and the Odyssey and the minor
" Homeric'* poems, or, in the great majority of cases, it forms part of a small
collection of hymns, including those of ** Orpheus," Proculus, Callimachus,
and a few others. Either method of transmission implies a relatively late date
for the compilation. The collection into a book of hymns may possibly be the
older way, since it accords better with the Alexandrian view of non-Homeric
authorship, supposing that that view might have had influence still ; and it is
in accord with the old practice of listing and editing works according to classi-
fications based on subject matter. But it is in precisely such a work that most
** editing " is required, with attention paid to titles, to transitional lines, and
in a less degree to the text, which in this case did not enjoy the benefit of
any scholiastic material i^x its correction or elucidation. The glosses are few
in number and banal in quality.^

Editorial activity, at times eager, at times again lapsing in interest, may be
discerned in the titles. The Leyden codex (M), with a half-hearted industry,
prefixes tov avrov, *by the same author,' to the titles of eight hymns, dropping
it from the remaining ten.^ The other manuscripts, much more closely re-
lated to one another than to M, exhibit the same diversity and arbitrariness,
sometimes prefixing o/i'qpov v/jlvoc, more often neglecting it ; sometimes using
the article before the name of the divinity, or again discarding it. In one case
a supplement is certainly due to a Byzantine editor. It occurs in the title to
Hymn 15, ek 'HpaxX^a, to which the Leyden and Ambrosian manuscripts
(M and D) and the editio princeps, based on a codex now lost, add AeovrdOvfiov.
This is a Byzantine word, a substitute for the classical OvfioX^ovra,

As to the text, it is impossible here to consider all the passages which have
been revised or altered in later times. Two instances will suffice. Of the harp
improvised by Hermes we read,^

CTrra Sc avfx<f><av<Jvs oiiuv iravwranro \opSdi,

1 1 hesitate to take issue with such an expert palaeographer as Mr. T. W. Allen, who (in his
note to the Hymn to Apollo^ 162) says that fiafifiaXiaar^v can hardly be a graphical error for
Kp€fjifia\taffT^y. But in the latter word in K (Laur. 31, 32) I found the /3 written in the u form,
and opposite the word stands /3 in the margin, obviously due to a scribe who knew that /3, and
not If, was to be read. Might not the u form of k explain the error ? John of Scutari unin-
telligently copies it into Riccardianus 52 (R*).

^ It concludes abruptly at Hymn 18, 4, its archetype having been truncated at that point.

• Hymn to Hermes ^ 51.

158 THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS
But the rhapsodes were in the habit of chanting the verse,

because, as Antigonus of Carystus ^ explains, the guts of ewes were deemed
better than those of rams for making harpstrings. Long after the rhapsodes,
the more intelligible word avfufxovot^ was substituted .*

Again, in the hymn to Heracles,^ which is of excellent workmanship, and
not at all Byzantine, as has been thought on account of its Byzantine title, we
have three lines in two incompatible versions. The Leidensis gives them thus :

OS /Sa 17/i^ Kara yoSotv d^ccr^rov 178^ BaXaa'auv
iroAAa fikv avros tpfi^y drourAiAa, ^^X"" ^VT^

The Other manuscripts have :

OS vplv fikv icarcL yoSotv 6Bi(r<l)aTov 178^ $aXaj(r<rav
irAo^d/ACvos wofxtr^iv vv ^vpvaO^o^ aKueros
fToXAA /jutv avros tptl^tv drao^oAa, iroAAcL 8* dvcrXi;.

We can explain the difficulty here by assuming that some sciolist wished to
point an antithesis between iroWh fih Ipe^ev and an imagined ttoXXA S*
av^Xrf, and since corruption lurked in the preceding verse, he recast that
entirely. In view of the shortness of the poem, which elsewhere observes
digamma, we cannot lay stress on the fact that f is disregarded in Evpvaffijo^
ava/cTo<;, which is taken from Iliad O 639. But that we here have a late
alteration designed to make the text easier nobody can doubt.

With the presumption thus established of late, and probably Byzantine,
alterations in titles and text, we may be permitted a certain degree of skepti-
cism regarding the last lines of the hymns and the propriety of citing them in
all cases to prove what followed them. The diversity of phrasing in the last
lines is sometimes accounted for by the individual purpose of the hymn, to be
considered presently ; but in several cases we have to note the same indolence
or ignorance or pernicious activity that characterizes the treatment of the titles.

I. Omissions. — Hymn 14, to the Mother of the Gods, closes with the line:

But fJL€v has no antithesis, and the proper supplement must be sought in
Hymn 9, to Artemis :

avrhp iyia <r€ irpwu mu Ik atOev ap)(Ofi daiety,
o-cv 8* iy^ dp(d/jL€yoi furaPi^aofuu &XXw h vfivw*

Similarly Hymn 16, to Asklepios, ends with

KKu <rv fuy o^Tu> "XPH^ ^'^ * ^'''Ofuu 8c <r* doc8^.

^ *l0Top(idr Tapadi^<av ffvwayioyi/ft 7. He was bom about 295 B.C.

3 Allen and Sikes (p. xlv) point out that this is the earliest occurrence of the word irvfi^iivovs,

' 1 5» 4-6.

GULICK 159

The proper balance, however, is not between av ^liv and XirofiaL hi. On the
contrary, 8^ is parenthetical, a kind of weak 7a/D. This is the only short
, hymn quoted by any authority which may be regarded as remotely Alex-

andrian,^ and the importance of Asklepios after the fifth century b.c. — we
recall that Ion the rhapsodist made Asklepios his theme ^ — establishes a
strong probability that we have here only a fragment, the original hymn
having been much longer.^ It is, therefore, impossible to restore the ending
with certainty ; but the true antithesis to <rv iiiv appears in the finale to the
hymn to Pan :

KXLL av lukv ovro) X'''^ ovai, tXofmi 8c o*' doi3^ *
avTop iyio kku <rtio Koi SiXXrji ftvqo'Ofi doiSQs*

This is borne out by Hymn 28, to Athena ; also by the hymns to Aphrodite,
to Hestia, and to G^ (nos. 10, 29, and 30), where fiiv does not occur in the
first member. In Hymn 10 we have the parenthetic Si despite the absence of
flip. The same unintelligent curtailment is found in Hymn 21, to Apollo. In
this, as also in the hymn to Pan, the word tXafuii, not Xirofuii, is the proper
ritual term,* and by aocSy is meant the prayer just uttered, not an epic
lay to follow. Hymn and prayer, of course, are often synonymous.^ Another
example of omission occurs in the first hymn to the Dioscuri (no. 17). The
full form of the close is seen in the second hymn to them (no. 33).

2. Unwarranted additions. — If the editors have been guilty of omissions,
they are also answerable for certain lines which are out of place. We catch
them, as Socrates would say, iir avro<f>wp(p, in the short hymn to Hermes
(no. 18, 10-12) :

Kol uv /jutv ovro) XP'2p€y At09 kojL Mouo&x vU*
cat 8* cyo) Apidfi€itoi fitraPi^Ofjuu SIXKov is vfivov,
)(aip* "Ep/joj ;(apc8ci>ra, Scoicropc, Sa»ro/o iofov.

The first two of these verses belong in the last place ; nowhere else do they
occupy the position in which we find them here. We have, in fact, two end-
ings, the first suggested, like so many other verses in this cento, by the longer
hymn to the same god.

There is good groimd for Gruppe's suspicion that the transitional formulae
in all the long hymns are later additions. Complete certainty in such ques-
tions is, of course, unattainable in the present state of the evidence, and Gruppe

1 Schol. Pind. iJ'M., 3, 14.

* Plato, /<?«, 530 A. The single cantor was often replaced by choruses, and so we find a col-
lege of TaiawtffTol singing at festivals of the Munichian Asklepios about 210 A.D.; see Ditten-
berger, 5]K//<^?Jf^ 738.

' This was Groddeck's view, De Hymnorum Homericorum Rtliquiisy 1786, p. 49, and it has
not been disproved since. * Cf. A. Roemer in Bayr. Gym^ XLVII, 161.

* H3rmn 21 is a direct apostrophe to the god. Other instances occur in Hymns i, 3, 8, 10,
21, 24, 29, 30. What Gemoll (p. 334) means by saying that apostrophe is confined to x, 24, 29,
and 30 I know not.

i6o THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

adduces merely general considerations. But the procedure of the editor
at the close of the long hymn to Demeter comes pretty near to a specific
justification of the suspicion. Here we read, in a final address to Demeter
and Persephone :

irp6if>pav€i dvT <^^s Pioroy Ovfxi^pe* otto^c,

Nowhere else do we find this last formula without a xa^/oe or x<^^P^t^ imme-
diately preceding; but what is more important, the singular oira^ey here a
solecism, has been copied from the much later hymn to G^, where it is
entirely proper :

;(dip€ dewv fii/Tiyp, oXo\ ovpavoO doTcpoevroSy
''rrp6<l>p(ov 8* dvT* t^B^s /Jtorov Ovfvqpe* OTra^c*
avTop cyo) icat (reib kou aXkrp fJLvy<rofi Aoi&rjq,

In view, then, of the difficulties which arise if, with Wolf and the others,
we regard the long hymns to Demeter, Apollo, and Hermes as preludes to a
Homeric rhapsody, any one of which would normally be shorter than any one
of the hymns in question, it seems right to assume that the formulae of transi-
tion have been added by some one who, in putting together in a book of
hymns these along with the minor hymns, thought it proper to add the for-
mula as a connecting link from one poem to another. In other words, it is a
bookish device, and not truly rhapsodic, though copied from the rhapsodes'
practice as disclosed in the minor hymns ; and even for these we may in
some cases dismiss the notion of a irpooifiiov} Only for the hymn to Aphro-
dite, the shortest of the longer hymns, we may perhaps claim an exception.
In this we have an old formula, detected in the verb fiera/Sija-ofiai :

;(aijpe Oca Kw/ooto €VKri/i€inf: fuSiovau^

crcv S* cyo) dpidfuyo^ fjuera/SijiTOfjuii aWov h vfivov.

Odysseus ^ with the same verb invites Demodocus to change his theme :

dAA* dye Srf fxerdfiriOi Kot iTnrov Kotr/xov omxtov.

In the earlier period, when rhapsodic performances constituted the sole feature
of a Travijyvpc^, a rhapsodist had more time for a long introduction to his
selections from Homer and the other epic poets. When, however, other con-
tests, musical and athletic, were introduced, the time allowed for rhapsodic
competition was necessarily cut down, though its place remained at the begin-
ning of the festival.^ This explains the genesis of a shorter hymn, such as
no. 6, from the longer, no. 5, both to Aphrodite. And it is this shorter hymn
which contains explicit reference to the festival or the contest. Similarly the

1 Allen and Sikes, p. Ixii. * Odyssey, B, 492.

• This is proved by inscriptions: from Oropos, *E0. *Apxm III» ^28, 5; from Orchomenos,
IG., VII, 3195 ff.; from Delphi, 270 B.C., Dittenberger^ 691.

GULICK i6i

short hymn to Demeter, no. 13, has supplanted the longer, no. 2. It is the
prelude to an entire festival, and as such closes with the appropriate words :

yalpt Ota Kfu n/vSc adav ttoXif, ^X^ ^ dm8^^.

The view of Jevons,^ that the lesser hymns were intended to invoke the
god in whose honor the rhapsode was going to select a passage from Homer
where that deity was mentioned, has been sufficiently refuted by others ^ on
a priori grounds. It is further contradicted by the fact that several of the
hymns close with a mention of deities other than the one who appears in the
title. A good example may be seen in Hymn 14, to the Mother of the Gods,
quoted above (p. 158), in which all the goddesses are included in the call
at the close. This is in accord with the SeiaiSai/Movia of the Athenians
noticed by Paul on his visit to their city,^ and with the following votive in-
scription found on the west slope of the Areopagus : *

E^crtas Aio3<i>pov

CK Aa/ATTT/DCCDV

tear* hrvrayiqv. irdvra
$€ov <r€fxvvvofiey»

Compare with this Plato, Symposium , 1 80 e : eTraivelv fiev oiv Bel irdvra^i deois.
In the same spirit we find the hymn to Dionysus (no. 7) ending thus :

auo y€ XrfOofJLfvov yXvKCp^v KoafirjauL doi3i/v>

We see how little we can trust the finale for a perfect indication of the nature
of the proceedings that are to follow it. Certainly we can deduce no inference
concerning the subject of the epic narrative which may have ensued, and as
for the gods who appear in the //iad and Odyssey in their extant form, it
would be hard to find a rhapsody in honor of Dionysus, although we have
three hymns addressed to him, and impossible to find any about Pan, who is
unknown to Homer but is the subject of one hymn. On the other hand.
Ares, who was somewhat of a favorite as a subject for the humor of the bards,
— witness the exploits of Diomed and the lay of Ares and Aphrodite by
Demodocus, — appears, to be sure, in one hymn (no. 8), but in a hymn which
is unlike all the rest in its Orphic coloring, and which entirely lacks a transi-
tional formula. We can, in fact, account for its intrusion in Homeric com-
pany only by supposing that an overzealous editor has made a hymn book at
all costs. The only other hymns beside those considered above which con-
tain a direct reference to rhapsodic contests are nos. 31 and 32, to Helios

"^ Journal of Hellenic Studies^ VII, 291. • Acis^ xvii, 22.

* Allen and Sikes, p. Ixiii, note 2. * Dittenberger ^ 786.

1 62 THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

and to Selene, which seem to show Alexandrian workmanship, corresponding
with the relative lateness of their cults on Greek soil.^

Another class remains, embracing hymns which were invocations to a
festival or a religious ceremony wherein the rhapsodic ar^Jav plays no part.
These are more distinctly prayers to be chanted by the singer — or the
herald ^ — and may be recognized by such a formula as x^*/^^ ^^^> ^^ ^* ^/^M*
Tvxnv evSaifjLovirjv re in the hymn to Athena (no. 1 1). This might have been
written for any one of the multifarious occasions on which the people of
Athens approached their tutelar divinity. Compare also the hymns to Hephaes-
tus (no. 20), to Hera (no. 12), and to Heracles (no. 15).^ To Hestia there is
a hymn of particular interest (no. 24), written for the dedication of a house or
temple. In it occurs the mention of Apollo and Zeus, who, as Apollo Agyieus
and Zeus Herkeios, were guardians of the entrance and the enclosure. The
occasion of the poem may well have been the ^eo^dvca at Delphi.*

The shortness of the hymn to Zeus, which besides lacks any indication of
its specific purpose, may be explained by the perfunctoriness with which he
figured in invocations, to judge from Pindar*s dictum above quoted (p. 154).
Even at his own festivals Zeus sometimes took second place ; for the divine
honors paid to Philopoemen*^ in the course of the festival of Zeus were lavish,
impressing deeply the writers who mention them, and they show that the mortal,
not the god, was nearer the hearts of the people. The short hymn to Dionysus
(no. 26) is a vintage song and prayer, repeated as the season for gathering
grapes came round ;^ and that to Poseidon (no. 22) is precisely such as Arion
might have sung when he prepared to go overboard :

)(€up€ UoaaSaov yai7fO)(€ KvavoxfUTCLy

KoX fJuoKop cvficvis ^op l\u3v irXdioixriv oiprfY€»

1 They conclude thus :

31, 17-19 x^P* A>^f Tp64>piap Bk plow dvfi'^p€ &ira^f

iK <r4o 9* df^fiepos Kkiffta lup&inav yivot dySpQw
ilfu$4uw (Sv Kpya 6«ol Bnrrot&Lw Kdei^v.

32, 17-20 XAip^ Anur<ra 0€d, "h^UKiiXere 8ta. ZeXi^n;,

Tp6<f>poy ivT\6Kafios ' <r4o 9* dpx^ft*i^s kkia ^iorQw
g.(rofuu iifuBiiav iSy kKelova ipyiAar doidoZ
Movo'dwr dtpdvoyres dwb o'ro/idrwr ipo4rr<aw.

* Thucydides, 6, 32.

' The verb ipp^aro in ii, 4, said of Athena, may have reference to a special event Cf. also
Dittenberger ^, 721, 11: rbw diifutp rhv * KBjiwaUav vfAyrtctw. Heracles was worshipped in many
places, but in illustration of the motive of his hymn may be cited the festival of Heracles at
Chios, Dittenberger ^j 524, in which there were contests of rhapsodes, musicians, and athletes.

^ See the interesting inscription which mentions this festival, Dittenberger ^ 662.

* Diodorus, 29, 18, Dittenberger*, 289.
^ It ends with the excellent lines :

Kol (T^ ixkv ovr<a xaXp^y ToXv<rr<i0vX' w Ai^nnre*
iK 5* a9tf' iopdufp tis roifs xoXXoi)s iytavroOs.

GULICK 163

Plutarch, describing Arion's adventure,^ says that he dressed himself in his
best clothes and, telling the sailors who threatened him that he wanted to sing
the Pythian nome for the safety of himself, the ship, and the sailors, stood at
the rail by the stem and, after calling upon one of the sea gods, sang the hymn.
That the hymns have been so badly transmitted is due perhaps to another
cause. They were soon supplanted by the lyric hymns, composed for special
occasions in a great variety of meters and in intricate language, and with
this came the substitution of the choir for the rhapsodist. These circum-
stances, again, contributed to the undoing of the lyric hymns in turn, so that
we have less of them than of the epic type, because the elaborate music joined
to words of an ephemeral character was seldom recorded for wide distribution.*
The lyric hymn is mentioned as early as the epic hymn to Apollo. It was
sung by Delian girls in honor of Apollo, Leto, and Artemis, and introduced
another hymn about the men and women of old, exactly after the manner of
the rhapsodists. In it the performers imitated the * speech of all mankind ' : *

fMfida'6^ uraxrw * ifKurj Bt iccv avroi Ixooros
il>$eyy€<rfff ovrta cr^tv KoXrf awdprfpfv AoiSirj.

The accompaniment of the castanets suggests a likeness to the later
hyporcheme, a lively dance in Apollo*s honor, which Sophocles introduces
with striking effect before the climax of the CEdipus and the Antigone, But
most interesting here is the mention of the mimicry of the singers, by which
they reproduced the various dialects of the visitors at the shrine.* Parallels to
this have been suggested, such as the gift of tongues, and the international
confessionals at St. Peter's. A closer analogy on Greek soil may be found in
Athens to-day, where at Easter it is the practice for a priest of the Metropoli-
tan Church, understanding not a word of what he is reading, to ** preach the
gospel to every creature " by reciting it in French, English, German, Italian,
and other tongues, from a text transcribed in Greek letters.

From the seventh century B.C. the melic hymn grew in importance. The
dithyramb to Dionysus, the paean and hyporcheme to Apollo, and the host
of other types do not concern us here. Choirs of girls sing to Artemis in
Magnesia;^ the mystae Bacchic who called themselves ^ovk6\ol, rendered
hymns to Dionysus at Pergamum ; and we have vfiv<pSo{ generally in Asia
Minor and Thrace. And yet, though we hear less and less of the rhapsodist,

^ Septem Sapientum Conviviunty 161 D.

* Cf. the hymn to the Delphian Apollo, first published in Bulletin de correspondance hellhtiquey
XVII, 569 ff. ; also the chorus of women singing at the Apollonia, ibid., XIV, 501 f.

* Hymn 3, 162 ff.

^ That this was not always looked upon by the visitors as satisfactory is shown from the case
of the Messenians, who sent their own singers along with their delegates ; see Pausanias, 4, 4, i .

* Dittenberger *, 552, second century B.C. Ziebarth, Das griech. Vereinswesen, pp. 90 ff. Cf.
also the Peiraeus Taiavvarai^ above, p. 1 59, n. 2.

1 64 THE RENDERING OF THE HOMERIC HYMNS

or reciter of hexameters, the single cantor, v/jlvtjtij^, occasionally appears
instead of a chorus.^

We may, then, state the results of this review of the material in the follow-
ing terms. Disregarding the hymn to Ares, which shows Orphic influence,
three types of hymn are clearly recognizable in the collection. First, hymns
which are themselves an epic recital, but which have gods, not heroes, for
their theme — precisely the gods, moreover, who appealed the most to popu-
lar imagination and lent themselves most readily to epic treatment. Apollo
belongs to the class of youthful heroes and dragon slayers whose name is
legion. Demeter's hymn is the story of a hero — or heroine — of civilization,
the * Comer,' iirlaaaa, who brings culture from distant lands ; but, like such
the world over, notably Prometheus, her story touches on the mystery of
human sorrow. Hermes is the imp and sprite whose cleverness made him
the patron saint of all who follow the inventive arts. The humor, depend-
ing as it does on the ingenuity of the hero and his skill in overreaching, is
characteristically Greek, and akin to the spirit of Book lo of the Iliad. Aphro-
dite is the fairy who marries a mortal. None of the other Olympians afford
such popular motives. From all these hymns, excepting perhaps the last
mentioned, the formula of transition is to be discarded as an unmeaning
Byzantine device.

The second type consists of those minor hymns — seventeen in all —
which are designed as preludes to an epic recital. For these alone the desig-
nation Trpoolfica may be admitted. The third class includes seven which were
composed for temple worship. In three others, as for example the fragmentary
hymn to Dionysus, the last lines are lost, and their purpose remains indeter-
minate. Many of them are of excellent technique, and faithful to their epic
heritage in verse and diction, so that the name ** Homeric " given to them
is easy to understand and to accept. But most lack any high imaginative
qualities, and are sorrowful witnesses to the decay of the rhapsode's art and
of the gradual decline from the high level of the 'Ofir^plhcu to the bathos
of the *0/jL7)pcaTaL,

^ Dittenberger 2, 739, an inscription dated 200-211 a.d., found in the Peiraeus. He sings a
hymn to Euporia Belela, a foreign goddess whose origin and worship are obscure. In her train
were Oraia (or *Ope<a, the Magna Mater; of. Hymn 14, which may be as old as Hesiod), Aphro-
dite, and the Dea Syria.

BURNS IN ENGLISH

William Allan Neilson

" By his English poetry Bums in general belongs to the eighteenth cen-
tury, and has little importance for us. . . . He tells us himself: * These
English songs gravel me to death. I have not the command of the language
that I have of my native tongue. In fact, I think that my ideas are more
barren in English than in Scotch. I have been at Duncan Gray to dress it
in English, but all I can do is desperately stupid.' We English turn naturally,
in Bums, to the poems in our own language, because we can read them easily;
but in those poems we have not the real Bums. The real Bums is of course
in his Scotch poems."

Thus Matthew Amold, whose feeling for ** the real Bums " left something
to be desired. But in the opinion expressed in the foregoing sentences he
does not stand alone. ** There can be no question," says Henley, ** that when
Bums wrote English he wrote what, on his own confession, was practically a
foreign tongue — a tongue in which he, no more than Fergusson or Ramsay,
could express himself to any sufficing purpose. ... To compare these two
\Com Rigs and Green grow the Rashes] and any two of Bums*s songs in
English, or pseudo-English, is to realise that the poet of these two should
never have ventured outside the pale of his supremacy." And Bums's
countryman. Dr. Service, speaks of " that English tongue of which he never
attained any mastery in verse."

It is hardly worth while to cite further evidence of a critical opinion which
has achieved almost the dignity of a dogma. The purpose of the present note
is to show, first, that the case against Bums's poetical capacity in English has
been greatly overstated ; and, secondly, that the explanation of what truth
there is in the belief that his English poems are inferior is to be found in
a cause quite distinct from that usually assigned. In the face of Bums's own
plea of guilty this might seem a hopeless attempt ; but Bums is the last poet
who should be allowed to give evidence against himself.

First, then. Burns showed, not once, but again and again, that he was
capable of more than adequate poetical expression in English ; and this can
be proved by the judgment of critics, of other poets, and of the general public.
The Jolly Beggars, "that splendid and puissant production," in Amold's
own phrase, consists of eight hilarious songs set in a broad dialect "recitativo."
More than half of the songs are in English, almost, if not quite, pure ; and

i6s

1 66 BURNS IN ENGLISH

these contribute as much as the others to the poetic vitality of the piece.
McPhersons Farewell^ the favorite of Carlyle, has not three words of dialect,
outside of the borrowed chorus. The lines so highly praised by Byron, and
considered by Arnold to " have in them a depth of poetic quality such as
resides in no verse of Byron's own,"

Had we never lov'd sae kindly,
Had we never lov'd sae blindly,
Never met — or never parted —
We had ne'er been broken-hearted,

can hardly be regarded as owing their quality to the sole use of sae for so ;
and even this proportion of Scots is scarcely maintained through the poem.
The lines from A Bard's Epitaph which Wordsworth called **a confession at
once devout, poetical, and human," are entirely English. Scots wha hae owes
much of its popularity outside of Scotland to the fact that it is all English
except the first two lines (and in them the dialect is false). The poem To
Mary in Heaven has no dialect, and the equally familiar Highland Mary
only the merest shading of it. The same is true of the delicate and musical
Sweet Afton^ of A Red^ Red Rose^ a highly characteristic love song, of My
Heart's in the Highlands y of The Gloomy Night is gathering fast, with its
passionate melancholy. Even poems which we are apt to think of as .pure
Scots, Of a' the AirtSy for example, and The Silver Tassie, will be found on
examination to contain very little dialect, and to depend on it for their effect
not at all. I do not deny that the great majority of Bums's successful poems
are in his native tongue. I merely insist that he did write some of his best
poetry in that southern speech which he is supposed to have been unable to
master. The works I have cited seem to be sufficient proof of this, as they
are at the same time sufficient to dispose of the remark that " by his English
poetry Bums in general belongs to the eighteenth century," unless a dis-
proportionate amount of saving grace be granted to " in general." Nothing
could be farther from these pieces than the note of neoclassicism.

If, however, notwithstanding the evidence just given, it be granted that
Bums was more frequently successful in Scots than in English, the under-
lying conditions will be found not simply in an imperfect mastery of a foreign
tongue, but in facts much more significant for a true criticism. The root of
the matter lies less in the peculiar equipment of Bums than in the nature and
social history of the Scottish speech.

For two centuries or more before the Scottish Reformation, the language
of the country north of the Tweed had been developing on a line that diverged
from English, so that the speech of Dunbar, Douglas, and Lindsay was more
remote from that of Skelton than the speech of Barbour was from that of
Chaucer. Not only was Scots increasingly different from English, but it was
growing independently in range and power, and it served for purposes of the

NEILSON 167

law, of the court, of the Church, of literature and learning, as well as for fa-
miliar intercourse. This growth was suddenly checked by the religious changes
of the sixteenth century, and the Union of the Crowns practically stopped it
altogether. The affiliation of the Scottish reformers with Protestant England
rather than with Catholic France led to an interchange of preachers with the
south, and so to an Anglicizing of the speech of the pulpit, which was carried
farther by the fact that no translation of the Bible into the northern vernacular
issued from the press, and the English of the Greneva version early became
familiar to Scottish ears. Henceforth the dialect in Scottish religious expres-
sion is less and less pronounced, and as early as 1 566 we may note that the
language of John Knox's History of the Reformation in Scotland is northern
in spelling rather than in vocabulary.

As a common Protestantism tended to subdue the differences between the
religious speech of the two peoples, a common sovereign, and one who held
his court in London, tended to produce the same effect on the speech of polite
intercourse and public affairs. And as the bonds joining the two countries
drew tighter, the influence spread to legislation, to learning, and to formal
literature; until, by the eighteenth century, English — or something as near
English as could be managed — had become the normal means of expression
in Scotland for all cultured and ambitious people, while the native speech had
withdrawn into the homes of the humbler classes and the dwellers in the
country. This narrowing of use was inevitably accompanied by a shrinkage
in vocabulary and a growing unfitness for the treatment of themes that are
not habitually discussed by the fireside. It retained, however, its colloquial
suppleness and an extraordinary capacity for the expression of intimate per-
sonal feeling, of tenderness, of conviviality, of natural description, of charac-
terization, of humor satirical and droll. There had survived, too, a vernacular
literature of song, of satire, of lament, and of description, moulded in a
variety of characteristic forms, which offered Bums's generation a collection
of models, limited in range, but still with very considerable possibilities.

The explanation of the nature and degree of Bums's success in his native
speech will now begin to appear. It will be seen that it was neither by acci-
dent nor by premeditation that in The Cotter's Saturday Night the opening
dedication is in pure English, since there was no Scottish tradition of this
kind of writing, and it was always in English that a Scottish peasant strove
to address a social superior; that the description of the landscape, of the
family supper, of the rustic wooing, are all in broad dialect, since it was in
such matters that the native idiom had persisted ; that in the account of the
family worship and in the closing pious and patriotic apostrophes English is
again employed, since for two hundred years Scottish Protestantism had found
the southern speech more reverent. To address the Almighty in broad Scots
would have savored of blasphemous familiarity.

1 68 BURNS IN ENGLISH

The discrimination illustrated by the different parts of this poem can be
discerned equally in the separate poems. The love poems to Jean Armour in
Mauchline are prevailingly Scots, those to Highland Mary in heaven or
Clarinda in Edinburgh are English. Addresses to various country gentlemen,
prayers, repentances, moralizings, odes, and other forms not found in the
vernacular tradition, songs like The Lass of Ballochmyle^ where the sense of
social inferiority to the lady is patent — all show little or nothing of the
peasant speech ; while it is used in all its richness and force in the love songs
to girls of his own class, in the satire of his contemporaries, in descriptions of
local scenery and manners, in humorous narratives like Tarn o' Shanter (but
not in its literary similes), and in drinking songs.

If Bums had written all his poems in English or all in Scots, their rating
according to their relative poetical merit would probably be much nearer the
present one than the critics imply. It would not have been identical, for he
has done things well in Scots that could not have been done by any one with
precisely the same quality in English, as he has done in English things that
Scots even in his hands would have spoiled. His fortunate choice of a medium
is often an important factor in his success ; but the more fundamental truth
that I have sought to establish is that Bums's success is most frequent in his
own dialect not because he was at home in that dialect only, but because the
subjects which he instinctively treated in that dialect were those most suited
to his poetic genius.

In the application of this view to the criticism of Bums's poems, one further
consideration should be borne in mind. His native speech, like the dialect of
the Scottish peasant to-day, was not a definite and fixed thing. In spite of the
clear-cut contrast to be observed in poems such as The Cotter s Saturday Nighty
Bums did not habitually speak or write now Scots, now English. It would
be nearer the tmth to say that he always used more or less Scots, more or
less English. That very shrinkage of the Scottish vocabulary of which I have
spoken rendered what had once been a separate language more and more
dependent on English as a source to borrow from whenever the vemacular
proved inadequate, until it became little more than a dialect of English, as it
had been in the days of Wallace and Bruce. Yet a native speaker of Scots
retains a subtle sense of different values according as the northern accent falls
more or less heavily, and this sense Bums uses with admirable skill. It was
not merely that he used English, as Stevenson says, ** when the rhyme jibbed " ;
in his finest productions there is a delicate change in modulation, in the way
in which a thing is thought or felt, indicated by the shift to a more or less
marked degree of dialect. In Duncan Gray we hear the full-throated utterance
of the Ayrshire peasant, and it was surely an ill-judged attempt and one des-
tined to failure when he tried to turn that song into English. Its situation,
its atmosphere, obviously would not go in any other medium. It was not that

NEILSON 169

his ideas in general were " more barren in English than in Scotch," but that
these particular ideas would not " voluntary move harmonious numbers," to
use Milton*s pregnant phrase, in any language but their own. In O, wert
Thau in the Cauld Blast or in My Nanie *s awa it is a matter of a subtle
flavoring of dialect deepening the tenderness yet not destroying a certain
elevation of tone which would have been hopelessly lost in the broader accent
of Willie brewd a Peck o Maut, No foreigner can fully discern all these
shadings, though many more of them could be made perceptible to the ear
than to the eye, if the songs were well read or sung. The countrymen of
Bums, by their idolatry and indiscriminate eulogy, have perhaps forfeited the
right to be heard among cosmopolitan critics on the question of their poet's
final rank ; but those of them who have been bom and bred to the northern
speech have a heritage which may still be used for a criticism of his work
more subtle and penetrating than has yet been made.

A LI SCANS, 5702 : DBS TORS DARCAISE

Raymond Weeks

The name Arcaise in line 5702 ^ of Aliscans has never been explained. It
has probably been dismissed by readers as one of the numerous Saracen proper
names which were invented by the fancy of the trouveres. The usual expla-
nations of such names, however, do not apply : it is not in the rime, and does
not occur in the rime anywhere in the poem, nor does the (doubtless) variant
form Arcage^ of line 8035. Again, it cannot owe its existence to the habit
of the ancient poets of assigning to pagan chieftains names which were either
grotesque or sinister.

Perhaps the context of the line in question may throw some light on our
investigation. A Saracen hero, Margot, appears in battle :

5700 Es vous un roi, Margot de Boddent.

N'ot si felon desd k'en orient.

Des tors d' Arcaise tenoit le casement,

Desor Tabisme ou desoivrent li vent.

Illuec dist on ke Lucifer descent.
5705 Outre eel regne n'a nus abitement.

Fors Sajetaires et Noituns ensement.

Onques xC\ ot un seul grain de forment.

D'espices vivent et d'odour de pieument.

Par de cha est li grans arbres ki fent
5710 Deus fois en Tan por rajonisement.

Some of the features in this description are found in other poems. For
example, we read of those who inhabit Bocident in the Conquite dej^nisalem^:

Chil mainent .x. jomees de la Tarbre qui fent.
8135 Une fois ens en Tan, por renovelement,

Se vait chascuns baigner el flove de jovent.'
Onques chil ne mengerent de nul grain de froment.
Ainc parler n'en oirent ne n'en sevent noient.
Trestot vivent d^especes, n'ont nul habitement,
£t sont lait et hisdeus ; de conbattre ont talent.

1 The edition cited is that of Wienbeck, Ilartnacke and Rasch, Halle, 1903.

2 Edited by C. Hippeau, Paris, 1868. In lines 2561 ss. of the same poem, there is mention
of Bocident and Monuble, the latter being a country where froment does not exist, where the
inhabitants (who are said to be blacker than soot) live on ** espices, de chucre et de piment."
This passage also includes mention of the ** arbre qui fent.**

• The fountain of youth is mentioned often in Esclarmonde (edited by Max Schweigel, Mar-
burg, 1S89, in Ausgabtn und Abhandlungen) and is near Bocident.

171

172 ALISCANS, 5702: DES TORS D'ARCAISE

Again, Brehier des Tors de Bocident is said to be ** Hideus et noirs plus
q'arremens froi^s." ^ Another case : Margot is said in one passage of the
Chevalerie Vivien'^ to be from Marsaine, while another hero, Mathamar (or
Martamar), is said to be from the same place. We have in this chanson no
description of the country of Margot, but that of Martamar is thus described
(w. 1651-1654):

Par mi Testor est Martamars venus,
Rois de Garise qui siet outre lou flun ;
Solaz n'i luist ne n'i prent son escons,
II xC'\ croist bleis, ne tramois ne nus fniis.

While it is not possible to identify Bocident, Garise (which may of course
be the same as Arcaise), and Arcaise, certain things in the passages here cited
indicate that the poets had in mind the extreme limits of the Orient as they
imagined them. The literature concerning mediaeval opinions of the Orient
is too vast to be cited here. Mention may be made, however, of the fact that
mediaeval scholars and poets say that the extreme limits towards the Orient
(as indeed towards the Occident) were reached by Hercules, who set up pillars
to mark the place.^ With such a legend as a starting point, it is easy to see
with what strange creatures the mediaeval poets would people the region near
the pillars of Hercules, and what a reversal of usual climatic and astronomical
phenomena they would assign to it. May it not be that the tors (T Arcaise of
line 5702 of Aliscans means the towers of Hercules, or, rather, of the region
named after Hercules ? The change of here- to arc- is perfectly regular in
French, and the alteration in the remainder of the word is not in the least
remarkable in a rare proper name which figured in the songs of popular poets.
It is likely that a manuscript of Aliscans once existed in which the Arcaise of
line 5702 bore more resemblance to Hercule, The unknown fifteenth-century
translator of this chanson thus renders the passage in question : ** II [Margos]
estoit si puissant qu*il possedoit la terre des tours d^Arcalde jusques an habisme
ou les vens dessendent. Et dist Ten que la est la gueuUe d'enffer ou les deables
habitent les plus souvent. Et outre cellui lieu n*a royaulme, terre ne seignourie
habitable si nom a bestes et oyseaux sauvages, et n*y croist pain, vin ne ble si

* La Chevalerie OguTy Paris, 1842, v. 10,019. The word arrtment occurs often in descrip-
tions of Bocident; cf. ConquHe de Jirusalem^ 7510-751 2 :

La premiere eschiele est de ceus de Bocidant.
Plus sont noir c'arremens (a malf ^s les commant I)
£t n'ont de blanc sor aus mais que Toil et la dant

In Huon de Bordeaux^ Agrapart offers to Huon *Me marche par devers Bocident" and his sister,
who is "noire com arement" : w. 6519-6521.

* Edition of A. Terracher, Paris, 1909, v. 173 ; for the other passage, vid. v. 314 (from the
text of Boulogne).

* Professor Kittredge has treated the pillars of Hercules in a masterly article in the Putnam
Anniversary Volume^ New York, G. E. Stechert, 1909, pp. 545-566. I desire to thank Professor
J. Douglas Bruce for drawing my attention to this article, and for furnishing me other data.

WEEKS 173

nom d'aulcunes espices, dont on aporte aucuneffois par dega." ^ Evidently
the translator did not see in Arcalde (if that be the form of his original) a
reference to the towers of Hercules. To be sure, he may not have been ac-
quainted with the legend. In any event, he misunderstood the text, and trans-
lated it to mean that Margot possessed the country from the towers of Arcalde
clear to the abyss.

In conclusion, it may not be amiss to offer a few facts showing how, in
other forms, the name Hercules was used in Old French without, doubtless,
any one's understanding that it referred to the great hero.

One of the most frequent ways of saying : ** at the ends of the world,"
was : ** as homes (or bonnes) Artu (or Arcu).** ^ Scholars long since dis-
covered that the form Art^i^ by much the more frequent, is an alteration of
Arcu^ which is derived from Hercule. The triumph of the form Artu of course
attests the popularity of King Arthur.^

Although the lines S700-S7 ^o of Aliscans do not contain the words " homes
Artu ** [or **Arcu '*], they contain an equivalent, for, passing over the somewhat
vague ** desci k*en orient," we have, in ** arbres ki fent,** an expression which
means '* at the ends of the oriental world," as, for example : " Et le mer et
le terre jusqu'a Tarbre qui fent," Bastart de Buillon^ edited by A. Scheler,
V. 587, cf. V. 2874 ; ** N'i laissent a semondre dusc'a Tarbre qui fent," Con-
quite de Jerusalem, v. 2570; ** N*a plus fier chevalier jusqu'a Tarbre qui
fent," Bauduin de Sebourc, II, p. 284. A well-known equivalent expression
in the old poems is : ** jusqu'au sec arbre," as : ** Desc'au sec arbre, ne tant
c'on puet aler," Huon de Bordeaux^ p. 105.

It is probable that a careful search would disclose stranger descendants of
Hercule than Artu or Arcaise. We read in line 1 1 1 of the second redaction
of the Montage Guillaume: " Car fust il ore as puis de Montagu ! " but one
manuscript bears : " ore droit as bones Artu." ^ This causes us to suspect a

1 Vid. Fritz Reuter, Die BatailU cT Arleschanty Halle, 191 1, p. 123. For an attempt to explain
Arcalde as Anadie^ see Leo Jordan, Litblt.f. Germ, und Rom. Phil.y XXXI V, 117.

* Vid. the following passages : ** Querre t*ai fait jusq* as bones Artu," Aliscansy p. 358, v. 2$ ;
** Car il n*a en ce monde jusqu*a bonnez Artus,** Hugues CapeU p. 211 ; " Que n*a si bele fame
dusc*a8 bones Artus," Roman (TAlixandre^ H. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846, p. 380, v. 33 ; " Toie
ert la terre dusc'as obes Artu," Montage Renoarty MS. of Boulogne, fol. 143 v*'. Sometimes
another word than homes is used : " .C. liewes loing outre les pors Artu," MS. of Boulogne,
fol. 148 r<>. Occasionally the form Artu occurs: **.I. des bons c'on trovast dusqu'as bones
Arcu," Roman (T Alixandrty p. 168, v. 36.

* Vid. P. Paris, Manuscrits Franfois, Paris, 1840, III, pp. 92, 93, 104, 105 ; P. Meyer,
** Etude sur les mss. du Roman d' Alexandre," Romania, XI, pp. 216, 323, and the same author
in his Alexandre le Grand dans la liUirature franfaise du moyen dge, Paris, 1886, Vol. II, p. 171
and note 2 ; J. Runeberg, Etudes sur la geste Rainouarty Helsingfors, 1905, p. 97, note I ; the
article by Professor Kittredge mentioned above.

* W. Cloetta, in the publications of the Soci^t^ des Anciens Textes, Paris, 1906. The author
gives the reading of the variant as boues, which is probably an error. In line 5182 of the same
poem, we find : ** N'a trois vilains dechi a Montagu," with Montargu and Morangu as variants.

174 ALISCANS, 5702: DES TORS D'ARCAISE

similar alteration in many passages, such as : ** Mius vous venist tous estre a
Montagu," AliscanSy v. 7433**. Similarly, Mont-Uu has doubtless dispossest
occasionally Artu or Arcu. In line 846 of the Chevalerie Ogier we find :
" Nostre iert la terre dessi a Mont-L^u," but a variant reads : ** dusc'as bones
Artu," an expression used again by the poet in line 12,243.

It is barely possible that a trisyllabic form of Hercule in bones or homes
Hercule found a substitute in the Montoscure of a passage in Foucon de
Candie^ v. 4054 of the edition of O. Schultz-Gora, Dresden, 1909: "El mont
d'Oscure, ou la lande ert pleisside ** (MS. 774 of the Biblioth^ue Nationale
has est plesie and montoscure fol. 106 r<>; and MS. 25,518 of the same library
has mont d'oscurcy fol. 68 v°. The significant part of this Une, permitting
us perhaps to identify Montoscure, is the last word, which means apparently
* folded.' If so, the same statement is made of the earth in the Roman
d' Alixandrey in the very passage which relates the arrival of Alexander at
the homes Arcu: "La mer(s) qui tiere clot a les mons si plains " (that is,
ploi^s), p. 316, V. 31. Another similar descendant of hones Hercule may per-
haps be seen in one of the names of Brehier des Tors de Bocident, whom
we have already mentioned. He is also called Brehier des Tors de Mont
Argiie, in the Chevalerie Ogier ^ v. 10,311.

THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE OF

ANTONIO PUCCI

Kenneth McKenzie

Investigators of Florentine literature, history, and life of the fourteenth
century would find their work immensely facilitated by a scholarly edition of
the complete writings of Antonio Pucci,,the town crier, bell-ringer, and
popular poet ; by a thorough study of his life and works ; or by an exhaustive
bibliography of manuscripts and publications. At present no one of these three
much-needed works is available ; and the texts of Pucci's poems, and studies
of various matters connected with him, are scattered through an infinite
number of books, periodicals, and pamphlets. After a few of his poems had
been printed separately, the first collective edition appeared at Florence in
1 772-1 77 5 ;i it contains the lengthy CentiloquiOy followed in the fourth vol-
ume by a number of shorter compositions, including the Noie. No subsequent
editor has had the courage to reprint the Centiloquio. In 1909 Ferruccio Ferri,
in a book with the inappropriate title La Poesia Popolare in Antonio Pucci^
republished most of the shorter poems which had already appeared, and for
the first time made accessible a large number of others. For this service he
deserves gratitude, but his book proved most disappointing ; the biographical
portion contains nothing new, the bibliography, while impressively long, is
inaccurate and incomplete, and the texts, as we shall see presently, have been
edited in a distressingly unscholarly fashion. There is ground for expecting
that within a reasonable time a satisfactory work on Pucci will be brought out
by a competent Italian scholar. In the meantime, we have to be content with
incomplete studies and uncritical texts ; the material is abundant, and minor
contributions will have their importance. The present writer has recently
published in the volume Stiidii dedicati a Francesco Torraca (Napoli, Perrella,
191 2, pp. 179-190) the text of the Noie as it is found in the so-called Kirkup
manuscript, recently in the Plimpton Collection at Wellesley College, but now
in Florence. The object of this paper is to present the text of the same poem
as preserved in modified form in a manuscript of the Bodleian Library at
Oxford.

1 DelU Poesie di Antonio Pucci . . . pubbliccUe da Fr. Ildefonso di San Luigi, 4 volumes, —
being Vols. III-VI of the series Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani.

2 Bologna, Libreria Beltrami. See the review by Ghino Lazzeri in Rassegna Bibliografica
della Lttteratura Italiana, XVII, 81-106, and cf. D'Ancona e Bacci, ManuaU della Leiteratura
Italian a ^ VI, 481.

175

176 THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE

The poem entitled Le Noie^ consisting of over three hundred verses in
tersa rima^ enumerates things which annoy. This type of composition was
recognized as a regular form in the Middle Ages, and in Proven5al was called
£nueg} The two essential features are the enumeration in epigrammatic style
of a series of vexatious things, and the repetition at frequent intervals of a
phrase to indicate their annoying character. In Pucci's poem the annoyances
are arranged in groups : lack of reverence at church, offenses against ordinary
politeness, violations of table manners, want of consideration for one's com-
panions, etc. ; the human element and the humor of these verses make them
most entertaining, and many of the poet's satiric thrusts have as much force
to-day as they had in the fourteenth century. That the poem enjoyed consid-
erable vogue is shown by the fact that it now exists in at least fifteen manu-
scripts,^ some of which, including the one here published, contain dialect forms
from beyond the borders of Tuscany. The text was first printed from a Riccar-
dian manuscript in 1 775 (edition cited. Vol. IV, pp. 275-285) ; while the printed
text follows the manuscript in general, the editor has standardized the orthog-
raphy and modified certain expressions which shocked his sense of propriety,
disregarding the warning given in the closing verses :

A noia m'^ chi queste cose muta,
Ower le cresce sanza Antonio Pucci :
Al vostro onor questa parte h compiuta,
Non lo mutar, se non vuoi me ne crucd.

This text has loi teraine, or 304 verses. The Kirkup text, except for
verbal differences and the insertion of four additional terzine, corresponds line
for line with the printed text ; it has also a final couplet, — 318 verses in all.
The Oxford text corresponds line for line with the other two, but breaks off
after 177 verses. Other manuscripts have the tersine arranged in different
order, the rhyme-scheme, however, being kept intact ; * and this fact indicates
that in some instances the transmission was oral. The best single text is
probably that of the Kirkup MS.,* but a critical text based on a comparison
of all the manuscripts would doubtless differ from it widely. The first editor,

^ For a general treatment of the subject, with bibliography, see R. T. Hill, " The Enueg,"
in Publications of the Modem Language Association of America^ XX VII (191 2), 265-296; Pucci
is discussed on pp. 287 ff.

^ Ferri, Ibes. Pop., p. 242, names fourteen, not including the Kirkup MS. (see below). All of
these were already enumerated in Propugnatorcy N. S., V, ii, 287.

* This is the case with the text in cod. Univ. Bologna 147, of 81 terzine^ with dialect forms
similar to those of the Oxford text The heading : ** Quive si chomen^a le noglie del patechia,'*
is interesting as showing how the name of Girardo Patecchio or Pateg, a thirteenth-century
writer of noie^ had become associated with the genre ; see F. Pellegrini, " Di due poesie del
secolo xiv," in Giomale Storico delta Letteratura Italiana^ XVI, 341-352 ; F. Zambrini, " Des-
crizione di codici," in Propugnatore^ I, 507-^509 ; E. Monaci, Cresiomazia italiana del primi
secoliy p. 529 ; Hill, " The Enueg," p. 277. The variations of text in the Florentine manuscripts
were mentioned in the preface to the 1775 edition, p. ix.

* See Margaret H. Jackson, "Antonio Pucci's Poems in the Codice Kirkupiano of Wellesley
■College," in Romanics, XXXIX, 315-323; S. Morpurgo et J. Luchaire, Za Grande Inondation

McKENZIE 177

while he naturally had little conception of modem scholarly methods in edit-
ing, did at least indicate where he had tampered with the text ; but the two
reprints of his edition reproduce his text without the notes : in the Raccolta
di Rime antiche toscane (Palermo, 1817; III, 311-320) the only material
change is in restoring one word for which the first editor had substituted a
less offensive one; while in 1909 Ferri, apparently ignoring the 18 17 edi-
tion, uses his opportunity to consult the manuscripts of the Noie only so
far as to supply from some source, which he does not name, a single line
which was lacking in the manuscript used in the 1775 edition. Pending the
publication of a definitive text, the readings of the several manuscripts, if
accurately reproduced, are valuable. The Oxford manuscript (O) is not de-
rived either from the Kirkup (K) or from that used by Ildefonso di San
Luigi (R), for it agrees now with one, now with the other ; it is of compara-
tively slight importance for establishing the original readings, although even
in this respect it cannot be neglected ; but it is of considerable interest on
account of its dialect forms, and also because everything which can throw light
on Antonio Pucci is worthy of attention.

What I have called " the Oxford manuscript " is cod. Canon. 263 in the
Bodleian Library. It belongs to the fifteenth century, and contains miscella-
neous Italian compositions in prose and verse ; ^ the Noie begins without title
or heading of any kind on f. I3I^ and ends with the word ** Finis" at the
bottom of f . 133''; the name of the author is not mentioned. Apparently
the copyist grew tired of his work, for there is no reason for stopping where
he did, and the last part of the text gives evidence of absent-mindedness.
The poem is preceded by a sirventese and followed (f. 133*) by a prose
Lapidario. The other texts in the manuscript, so far as I have examined
them, show dialect forms similar to those in the NoiCy which are enumerated
at the end of this paper. In printing the text I have followed the manuscript
scrupulously, merely solving abbreviations, separating words, and punctuating.
A few obvious blunders, chiefly in the rhyme-words, have been corrected, with
the manuscript reading in the footnotes. Variants which involve the sense
are given from K and from the published text (R) ; also from the fragment
published by D. M. Manni.^ In this form, and with this much apparatus, the
text is offered as a contribution toward the definitive edition of Pucci.

de PAmo en MCCCXXXIII^ anciens poimes populaires italiens^ Paris-Florence, 191 1, p. 65;
[S. Morpurgo], ** L'Apografo delle rime di Antonio Pucci donato dal Collegio di Wellesley alia
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze," in BolUtiino delle Pubblkcuioni Italiane^ Firenze,
presso la Biblioteca Naz. Cent, no. 133, gennaio, 191 2 ; and several publications of A. D'Ancona
-cited in these works.

* For contents see A. Mortara, Caialogo dei manoscritti italiani Canoniciani^ Oxford, 1864.
The date of the MS. is fixed by a list of the Doges of Venice to the year 1478 (f. 201).

* Manni in Pdesie di Antonio Pucci,, I, p. xvii; also in Manni's Veglie piacevoli^ Firenze, 181 5,
Vol. V, p. 131 (and in other editions). I have also quoted two MSS. of the University Library
at Bologna, — cod. 1 58 as described by F. Zambrini, // Libro della Cucina^ Bologna, 1863, p. xx ;

•<:od. 147 as described in Propugnatore^ I, 507-509.

178 THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE

\o priego la drvina maetrfadc,

fttpema aheza e suma sapienzia,

lame infenito, etema veritade,
4 Clie innda mia ingnoranzia e intdigienzia

inspiri alquanto del beato lame

cbe faza reluminar la dionosanzia.
7 Riprender vogio algun bnito chosthume,

bencbe la mazor parte me ne tocfai

de quelo chlo scrivo in questo mio vcrfume.
10 None schaxando me dibaso i ochi,

scrivando zio cbe tal uxanza nuogia

in qudi ch^a seguitar sono schiochi.
13 Cbonselgio hogn^omo tegna per sua zolgia

questa sgritura, inprendendo da essa,

lasando i vizi che mi sono a nogia.
16 A nogia mi quando se dixe mesa

chi ponpezando e non con umil core

oltra mexura al prevede s'apresa.
19 A nogia mi quando se lieva el signore

non si zenochia e non se lieva il chapuzo

faziando riverenzia al nostro salvatore.
23 A nogia m*^ ch'io me ne chorozo

che stando in giexia a merchantare

che ronper si voria di 'n oso in oso.
25 A nogia mi chi in giexia al predichare

va per audir la parola di dio

e posa dorme quando die* vegilare.
28 A nogia m*^ chi per mondan dexio

nei sagri luogi le done vageza

ponemo ch' ogni parte h ato rio.
31 A nogia mi chi chol frate moteza

quando h in ato di choniisione ;

non par che pensi che dio se n'aveza.
34 A nogia mi quando io sto in orazione

chi mormorando dinanzi e di lato

mutar mi fa la bona intenzione.
37 A nogia m'^ quando elo h domondato

del ben per dio a quei che son axiati

che '1 puovero sia da piu pover chazato.

* O, K, R supema alUza^ Manni etema altezza, cod. Bel. 147 eterncU lume e certa sapienza,

• Cod. Bol. 147 e perfecta bontate. * K, R, Manni, cod. Bol. 158 ignorante. * Manni assai
del sua santo lume, * Manni che facciay K, R che fa, • K che fiano. ** K, R, Manni a
cih che . . . muoia ; Manni questo vizio, '^ K, R seguitarla sono sciochi. ^' Manni io prego
ognun che, *^ MS. umilitade. ^ K, R, Manni al prete si rapresa. ^' si lieva (so MS. R,
but s^alza in all editions) ; K, Manni chi vegiendo. ^ K, R, Manni non si tra V. ^^ nostro
lacking in K, R, Manni. ^ K, R m'i tanto chU. ^8 k, R chi sta con donna in chiesa a
mercatare, Manni con donne in santo, ^ K, R di bucio in bucioy Manni a buccio a buccio,
^ R chi in chiesa^ K qualunqucy Manni chi in santo. ** R, Manni che ifi ogni luogo. ^'^ frate :
KfrattCf MS. K frate (but printtd prete in all editions), Manni prete. •* K quandalttre in,

* mi : K //; intenzione : K, R op{p)enione. ^ Cod. Bol. 158 limosina per dio a piu persone,
"* R dal pii^ ricco scacciato^ O, K, Y^q\. piu pover.

McKENZIE 179

40 A nogia mi che nei luochi sagrati

si conpri chandele piu per risa

ch*a riverenzia di sand bead.
43 A nogia molto m'^ per ogni guixa

chi trata in giexia chosa tenporale

dovendo a dio senpre tegnir la mente afisa.
46 A nogia m^^ achi h tanto bestiale

che va zigando achonpagnando el morto,

chomo se non sentise esser mortale.
49 A nogia m'^ chi di raxon o torto

zercha chostion ch^a lui non s'apartegna

chome di mold za mi son achorto.
52 A nogia m^^ Tuxanza che ozi regna

che ardxan o zendlomo hover pien di vertude

che mal vestito va, ogni omo lo sdegna.
55 A nogia m'^ chi si rende salute

al merzenagio perche sia ben vesdto

che finalmente tute son perdute.
58 A nogia m'^ veder un schostumato

riprender altrui del falo ch' eli

h piu che quel chotale invelupato.
61 A nogia m'^ veder quando noveli

algun per dar ai chonpagnoni dileto,

che algun da chanto mormori e faveli.
64 A nogia m'^ zaschun che ronpe el dito

d'algun, e sia chi vol, quando raxona ;

per6 al mio parer h gran difeto.
67 A nogia m^^ ziaschaduna persona

che inver Tamicho per pichola ofexa

ingrosa si che Tamistk abandona.
70 A nogia m*^ ziunche fa chontexa

d^alguna chosa che sia da niente

che za se n*^ dimolta briga azexa.
73 A nogia m'^ zaschun simelmente

che fuor d'ogna mexura parla tanto

che fa inmalanchonir chi 1'^ prexente.
76 A nogia m'^ zaschun che si da vanto

d*aver fato eli quel ch'un altro k fato,

che sarebe ben che li tomase in pianto.
79 A nogia m'^ chi h tanto mato

che per esser tenuto piu gagiardo

chontra el signor sparla ad ogni trato.

*« R sapr'ogni. ** senpre lacking in K, R. *«-*i Manni (lines 34-39 of the fragment)
has these two terzine in modified form, with different rhymes. *^ K, 'Rgkignando, *• MS. a
tarti. w Mgrcha : K bechih R becca^ lAzxmxpiglia. *• artixan o lacking in K, R. »* R ognun,
K ciaschuno. •• vestito : R addobbato ; K a mercienaio che sia ben adobatto, •^ R che peggio
elle mi paian che perdute. *• MS. chelelui. •*"•* K quancT un noveli akhun per dare, R
^and* un novelli Per voler dare. •» k, R ch'altri. " MS. quel che ad unnaltro. '^ K
chiunque e ttanto ; MS. R = O, but all edidons have chi i tanto folle o matto. 8I k inchonttro
a dio sparla tratto tratto, R Incontro a Dio.

i8o THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE

82 A nogia molto m^^ chi h. buxardo,

pogniamo che n^^ vendeta quando zura,

che chi 1 chognose li '1 grede piu tardo.
85 A nogia m'^ chie contra mexura

vesdto va piu che non k el potere,

vezando il padre nudo e non k chura.
88 A nogia m^^ chi sta a vedere

o ascholtare chi vol parlar sagreto,

vog^ando udire chontra Taltrui volere.
91 A nogia m*^ chi in abito sagreto

parole ascholta e posa le redize

quando sono porte per amor sagreto.
94 A nogia m^^ chie in stato felize

disdegna tal che di virtu Tavanza

chi ne zerchase ben ogna radize.
97 A nogia m^^ chi k tanta burbanza

che quando h salutato non risponde,

unde si turba chi move la danza.
100 A nogia m'^ chi non avendo donde

va pizorando perch* altrui li rechie

e tale a tal che piu di lui confonde.
103 A nogia m'^ chi h di techomechi,

ch^a te di me, a te di te mal porze

unde mi par che Tun e Taltro aziechi.
106 A nogia m'^ chi una dona schorze

e va la motizando per la via

che fa mal pensar chi se n'achorze.
109 A nogia m'^ chi ode vilania

dir d^alguna persona e poi riporta

chotanto piu, seminando rexia.
112 A nogia mi chi d^una chosa torta

per ben piazer a queli che Tk fata, pregia,

e nel seguir tal opera conforta.
115 A nogia mi chi dinanzi mi pregia

di tal vertu che niente mi tocha

e con altrui drieto mi dispriezia.
118 A nogia m*^ parlar di meza bocha

che una mostra ne le suo parole

e una altra ad opera innel chor achocha.
121 A nogia tanto m'^ che me ne dole

che invitato a manzare o a here

se piu con siego poi menar ne vole.

•• K chiunque olttra misura^ R ciascun fuor di misura (but all editions have ciascun ck^oltra
misura). •' R ^ vede. *• cki : K chiunque^ R qualunque. ^ sagreto : K di quetto^ R di cheto ;
O has sagreto in rhyme, 89 : 91 : 93. ^ •* sagreto : K, R discrete. •* R discaccia tal. ^^^ MS.
dove. ^1 K, Kpigolando ; R s'arrechi. l^ K <r ttogli attal ; MS. R e torce (but all editions

have e tolio). ^^ K cha me di tte e aite di mtj KcA'a te di me^ a me di te. *^ R Onde convien,
iw MS.pregi, K a chilafatto pregia^ MS. 'K pregia (but all editions \izy^ fregia). "♦ MS. confurta.
1*^ K, R tf</ operar. ^** K, R chi i invitato alia tavema a bere. 1^ MS. menar no vele.

McKENZIE i8i

124 A nogia m'^ chi adireto vol tenere

ad un che vada a ber o a manzare

senza invito, sol di suo volere.
127 A nogia m*^ chie a zena o a disnare

senza chiarir le man sin vada a mensa

o di fuor manzi anchor senza lavare.
130 A nogia m'^ per persona milensa

che non si f orbe la bocha e la mano

volendo here, ma solo a manzar pensa.
133 A nogia m'^ per chostumo vilano

che '1 morsegato bochone chole dita

nela schudela tomi a mano a mano.
136 A nogia m*^ persona di bandita

che zunzendo a la mensa non saluta ;

e s'el il fa, chi non risponde e non invita.
139 A nogia m*^ chi a taola insputa

di quel che manza e dize che li spiaza,

se la persona h udita e veduta.
142 A nogia m*^ chi manduchando schiazia

noziuol altro a taola choi denti,

per6 ch'^ rizichio, fa bnita la faza.
145 A nogia m'^, benche a molti contenti,

chi suza Toso e poi piu volte lo repiega

in sul tagieri dove piu v^k prexenti.
148 A nogia m'^ chi le gambe ingroza

istando a mensa, tanto le distende *

che li suo piedi sopra i altri mentiga.
151 A nogia m^^ quando il bochon si prende

e chi 1 charga e chi con la bocha va in su la schudela

e chi '1 charga si che '1 mezo disende.
1 54 A nogia m'^ chi manzando favela

e chi richonta chosse che ringrescha

sopra manzare, chi h bruta novela.
157 A nogia m^^ quando per piu si pescha

in schudela o in altro d'atomo

che chon chiaro vi si manzi o trescha.
160 A nogia tanto m^^ chMo me ne schomo

chi nanzi a forestieri la sua famelgia

o di note o di zomo lasismilgia.

^** MS. adireto a chose terene ; K A noia anchora ni*} diettro tenere. 1*^ K, R desinare,
1^ R lavar le mani vada. '^'^ R alcun sanza lavare^ K senzalchun lavare. ^^ K £ se 7^7
eht risponde non lo invita. '^^ MS. piaze, K, R spiacia. ^*' MS. schiazio. **• K nuciole
cd alttrot R nocciuole o noci. *** R rischio e fa turbar la fascia. !*• J **8= i*> do not rhyme;
K ripichia : inchrocichia : moncickia, R ripiglia (but all editions have ripicchia) : incrocicckia :
ammonticchia. **• K, R <> tanto. wa-iM e chil charga belongs only in the second of these two
lines, but was not cancelled in MS. *•• R sopra il mangiar^ cioiy K agli udittor cioe. **• R
Che con cucchiaio vi si mangi in tresca, K chon li chuchiai vi si manucha in trescha.
^"^ By inverting the order and putting lasismilgia (meaning ?) at end, the scribe has made this
line rhyme with 161 : 163 : 165 instead of 158 : 160 ; K, R datte o minacia di notte e di giomo.

i82 THE OXFORD TEXT OF THE NOIE

163 A nogia m*^ chi chol servo bisbilgia

stando a mensa, ch^ se ben conprendo

provede male chi de sezo consilgia.
166 A nogia m*^ chi favela servendo

se non lo induze lizita chaxione,

e se al chiamar non risponde chorendo.
169 A nogia m*^ chi soda innel balchone

avendo tenpo a poterlo fredare,

per6 che mi par ato di giotone.
172 A nogia m*^ chi non chura pasare

dal lato di ^1 chonpagno in sul tagiero

quando vede bochon che bon li pare.
175 A nogia m'^ chie senza mestieri

s^apogia a mensa e chon un brazo strinze,

chon Taltro manzi zia chome poltronieri.

Finis

The Venetian coloring of the text as here presented is due entirely to a
copyist ; for there can be no doubt as to the authorship and consequently the
originally pure Tuscan form of the poem. Without making any attempt to
discuss exhaustively the dialect, the non-Tuscan forms may be enumerated. As
is readily seen, they are not consistently used. In fact, the Oxford text, corre-
sponding, as it does, line for line with K and R, seems closer to the original
version than some of the manuscripts in which the language is still Tuscan
while the order of the terzine varies considerably. Presumably the sound did
not vary as much as the spelling in O seems to indicate ; for instance, the
recurring word nogia^ like the form noglie in cod. Bol. 147, doubtless sounded
very much like the corresponding Tuscan noia. In verses 11 -15 it rhymes
with nuogia (jntioid) and zolgia {gioia) ; ^ cf. vogio 7, merzenagio 56 (K mer-
cienaio)^ gagiardo 80 (K. ghagliardo)^ bisbilgia 163, tagiero 173 (K tagliere)^
chonselgio 13; and with vogiando 90 (K volendo), cf. scrivando 11 ^ fazi-
ando 21, vezando 87, but zunzendo 137.^ The recurring phrase which dis-
tinguishes this poetical genre varies between A nogia me and A nogia mi ; but
without change of meaning, for nogia (noid) is in both cases surely the noun

1®* MS. conprende. *^ All editions have Ese risponde quand" to lo riprendo^ having de-
parted from reading of MS. R ; K = O. ^^ balchone: K bochone^ R boccone. ^^^ Kposendo
ad agio lasarlo, "R Avendo Pagio di poteri (18 17 ed./^/^. *'' K, R mangia come palioniere.

1 A similar phenomenon in the following Bolognese lines is cited by Monaci, Crestomazia
iialianay p. 293 and p. 560, § 4, as an instance of rintegrazioni errate :

Le pene che durai
conteleme in g^ran ^oglia,
po che partita h noglia
da mi, ch'era in pesan^

Boerio, Dizionario del dialeito venezianoy gives nogia, vogia, zogia, as regular forms for noia^
vogiiay gioia, etc.

* In North Italy " fiir das Gerundium aller Verba dient -ando**; Gr6ber*s Grundriss, 2d ed.,

I. 705.

McKENZIE 183

(cf. mi sono a nogia 15).^ On the other hand, giotone 171 {ghiottone)^ luogi
29 (cf. 40), vageza 29 {vagheggia). Like many other manuscripts, ours alter-
nates between /x« and pui; as it is often impossible to distinguish, //« is here
printed throughout. Ca- and cha-^ co- and cho-^ as in Tuscan manuscripts, are
used indiscriminately. Taola 139, 143 (tavold) is characteristic.^ Single con-
sonants instead of double are constantly used, — mesa 16, apresa 18, ato 30,
^^^ S7if^lo 59 ; dileto 62 and dito 64 {detto) rhyming with difetto 66 ; note
162, etc.; there is one instance of a double consonant for single, chosse 155.*
Tuscan gi is represented by Zy more rarely by x : mazor 8, zolgia 1 3, ponpe-
zando 17, zenochia 20, vageza 29, moteza 31, aveza 33, ^a 51, 72, ^^* 52,
zentilomo 53, 5«nz 83, vezando 87 (K vegiendo), porze 104, schorze 106,
achorze 108, moHzando 107, dispriezia 117, manzare 122, zunzendo 137,
manza 140, £r^/7i^? 162, strinze 176; axiaii 38, raxan 49, raxona 65, ^;r-
arafc 82, chaxione 167. Tuscan a is also represented once by ;r : ^/wr^ 16 ; fre-
quently by £r : yi^^ 6 {faccia ; K /a), 2W ^:A^ 1 1 (K ^z ^rrV? ^:A^), capuzo 20
(K ckapucio), chorozo 22, [dinoso in oso 24 is supposed to rhyme with the pre-
ceding; K dibucio in bucio\ faziando 21, chazato 39, merzenagio 56, zaschun
64, 73, ziaschaduna 67, azexa 72 (K aciesa), redize ()2yfelize 94, radize 96,
zerchase 96, aziechi 105, piazer 113, ^^«a 127, ^6>^ ^A^ lipiaze 140 (K ^//a>
^A^ lispiacia)y schiazio 1/^2^ faza 144 [these three rhyming], noziuol 143, jw-sr^
146, induze lizita 167, ^n?;?^ 176. In ziunche 70 (K chiunque) the Tuscan
rA/- had doubtless passed through the dialect form ^/- (cf . GrundrisSy I, 706).
Tuscan intervocalic j is frequently written ;r : schuxando 10, mexura 18, 74,
85, giexia 23, 25, 44 (K chiesa; cf. Monaci, p. 411, line 192), ^^;r/(t? 28,
guixa 43, uxanza 52, ^<?;r^ 68, chontexa 70, azexa 72, prexente 75, 147,
r<?;r/a III. Tuscan j*^/ given as j*: /^j*^ 27, 92, chognose 84, disende 153 ;
Tuscan ^ sometimes as ^ : ^^// 7, 62, sgritura 14, ^<^^fe 84, sagreto 89-93,
alguna no, j/V^^ 123 (K secho), morsegato 134 (K morsichiattd)^ repiega
146 (K ripichia), mentiga 150 (K moncichiay R ammonticchia), charga 153
(K charicka)^ ringrescha 155. For ^^^tmt 74, 96, cf. Monaci, p. 668 ; Wiese,
Altitalienisches Elementarbtuhy § 198.

^ Cf. also Dante, ^/a Nuova^ zii (Ballaia) : Lo perdonare se le fosse a noia ; Inferno^
xzx, 100 : si rec6 a noia Forse d'esser nomato. ^ Grundriss, I, 706.

' Cf. Goldstaub und Wendriner, Ein Tosco- Venezianischer Bestiarius, 1892, § 24 a (in the
** Dialektolog^sche Anmerkungen/* pp. 442-494). The Bestiary text, like our text of Pucci, is
a copy made in Venetia from a Tuscan original ; it also has s and x for ci (§ 18), z iox gi (§ 19),
g for ^ (§ 17) ; but not gia for ia or giia.

HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE

IRISH CELTS

F. N. Robinson

There exists a somewhat strange difference of opinion concerning the
practice of human sacrifice among the ancient Irish Celts. While the majority
of writers on Celtic religion and folklore assume the custom to have prevailed,
and refer, more or less as a matter of course, to ancient instances or to modem
survivals, a number of scholars of recognized authority in various departments
of Celtic learning insist that there is little or no evidence of the existence of
any such rite. 0*Curry*s sweeping statement that "in no tale or legend of the
Irish Druids which has come down to our time, is there any mention . . .
of their ever having offered, or recommended to be offered, human sacrifices,
either to appease or to propitiate the divine powers which they acknowledged,** ^
might be dismissed as coming from an older generation when Irish historical
material was more difficult of access ; especially since W. K. Sullivan, the
editor of O' Curry's volumes, expresses a different opinion in his Introduction,
and cites three apparent references to the practice.^ But a denial of human
sacrifice nearly as sweeping as O' Curry's, and defended by argument, is made
by Dr. P. W. Joyce in his admirable Social History of Ancient Ireland, pub-
lished in 1903, a work which is likely for some time to come to take the place
of O'Curry's older compilation. Dr. Joyce, for example, designates as a con-
spicuous difference between the Druids of Gaul and those of Ireland, that the
former practised the cult in question while the latter did not.^ Dr. Douglas
Hyde, in his widely influential Literary History of Ireland, published in 1899,
while citing more evidence for the practice than Dr. Joyce, still disparages
the value of some of the testimony by attributing it to ** a Christian chronicler
familiar with the accounts of Moloch and Ashtaroth." He concludes that the
existence of human sacrifice in Ireland is by no means certain, and that the
custom, if ever resorted to at all, had fallen into abeyance before the landing
of the Christian missionaries.^* To these opinions of native Irish scholars
may be added that of at least one distinguished recent Continental writer on

* E. O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish^ London, 1873, ^^» 222.

' Ibid., I, cccxx ff., cccxxxv ff., dcxl ff. The stories referred to — the Death of Fiachra,
the Echtra Airt, and the Dinnsenchas of Tailtiu — will be discussed later.

* Joyce, Social History^ I, 239 ; see also the arguments at pp. 281 ff.

* Hyde, A Literary History of Ireland ^ New York, 1899, pp. 92-93.

185

i86 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

Celtic antiquities, M. Alexandre Bertrand. In his Religion des Gaulois^ where
he argues that the Druids of Gaul should not be held especially responsible
as an order for the practice of human sacrifice in that land, he observes : *' On
devrait riflichir, avant d'accuser les druides, qu'en Irlande, le pays druidique
par excellence, les sacrifices humains liturgiques dtaient inconnus.*' ^ In the
face of such statements as the foregoing, — and more to the same purport
might easily be added,^ — it seems worth while to inquire briefly what the
nature is of the evidence for the custom in question. If the scholars cited
are right in their assertions, then the current opinion of most students of
Celtic antiquities is mistaken and should be corrected. If, on the other hand,
there is good evidence for the usual view, such general denials as have been
quoted above ought not to be constandy reasserted. It is doubtiess difficult,
if not impossible, to arrive at decisive proof in settiement of so obscuie a
problem. But it ought to be easy, by a short examination of the material, to
determine whether the evidence for human sacrifice in Ireland is conspicu-
ously different from that which is held to prove the existence of the practice
elsewhere. No part of the testimony to be presented, it should be added, is
new in the sense that it has not been somewhere mentioned in previous dis-
cussions of the subject, though the various items have not all been treated
elsewhere together, so far as the writer is aware. And of course no claim is
made that the material here discussed is in any sense complete. Ancient
Irish literature, whether in the vernacular or in Hibemo-Latin, is still far
from wholly accessible, and that portion of it which has been published has
not yet been thoroughly canvassed for the light it throws on history and
institutions.

It may be observed at the outset that there is, to say the least, no ante-
cedent improbability that the Irish Celts were accustomed to sacrifice human
victims. Disregarding the wide diffusion of such a practice among the
civilizations of antiquity and among savage tribes of modem times, one
can find particularly good evidence of its existence among the Celtic peoples,
who were most closely related to the ancient Irish. It was so familiar and
well-recognized a feature of the religion of the Gauls that the testimony on

* Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois ; les Druides et le Druidisme (in the series entitled
Nbs Origines)^ Paris, 1897, p. 68, n. It is fair to add that the statement quoted is based upon
the authority of M. d*Arbois de Jubainville, Introduction d la Litthature Celtique^ I, 51 ff.,
and that this scholar seems afterwards to have modified his opinion. In his later work, Les
Druides et les Dieux Celtiques h Forme (TAnimaux (Paris, 1906), pp. 100-102, M. d'Arbois admits
that the Irish Druids probably presided at the immolation of first-bom infants before the idol
of Cromm Cniaich. See below, pp. 189 ff.

^ It is not necessary to accumulate references to similar expressions of opinion. But one
additional instance may be cited from a recent contribution to a learned journal. The reviewer
of Rolleston*s Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race^ in ^t, Journal of the Jvemian Society^ IV,
189 (191 2), declares that **the evidence of human sacrifice in Ireland consists of one single
statement in one tract"

ROBINSON 187

the subject need not be cited here.^ Roman and early Christian historians
repeatedly expressed their horror at what M. Camille JuUian has aptly called
" le plus c^l^bre de tous les rites gaulois, et en rdalit^ le plus banal de tous.*'*
The evidence indicates, furthermore, that the human sacrifices of the Gauls
were performed for a variety of purposes. Sometimes they were undertaken
as offerings to the dead ; * sometimes as a protection against disease ; * fre-
quently, it seems, as offerings to the god of war ; ^ at other times, again, as a
mode of divination,® or as a means of procuring the fertility of the soilJ In
many cases, apparently, the offering took the form of self-devotion, or sacri-
ficial suicide.® Even if such costly sacrifices were resorted to only in times of
great public or personal need, or were restricted, as M. JuUian suggests,® to
the greater gods alone, they cannot have been confined to a single cult or a
narrow territory. Among the Celts of Britain, too, although the evidence is
less extensive than for the Continent, the existence of the custom is well
attested.^^ If, then, the Irish did not practise it, they differed from the peoples
nearest of kin to them in a way that historians may well be puzzled to explain.
One other consideration may be presented here for its bearing on the
general question of antecedent probability. Certain customs of the modem
Gaelic peoples, both of Ireland and of Scotland, look very much like modified
survivals of human sacrifice. The ceremonies associated with the Beltane, or
May-Day, fire are perhaps most clearly of this character, as the festival is of
most assured antiquity on Celtic soil. The oldest account of Beltane, to be
sure, — that found in Connac's Glossary}^ — contains no reference to sacrifice.
It simply mentions two fires which Druids used to make with great incanta-
tions, and between which they used to drive the cattle as a safeguard against
disease. But according to the testimony of Martin's Description of the West-
ern Islands of Scotland'^ there existed aS late as the eighteenth century the

^ The necessary limits of the present article forbid extended discussion or illustration of the
Continental practices in question. Convenient summaries of the recorded facts, with references
to the classical authorities, will be found in Ch. Renel, Les Religions de la Gaule avant le Chris-
tianisme^ Paris, 1906, pp. 355 ff. ; Camille Jullian, Recherches sur la Religion Gauloisey Bordeaux,
1903, pp. 51 ff. (dealing with the earliest periods) ; and the same author, Histoire de la Gaule^
II, 157 ff. • Jullian, Recherches^ p. 51.

' Cf., for example, Caesar, De Bello Gallico^ vi, 14, 19. Historical testimony on this point
is supported by archaeological investigations. See Naue, translated by Reinach, Revue Archl-
ologiqucy 1895, ^^f 4^ ^- > ^*^ V Anthropologic^ VI, 586, and references cited by MacCuUoch,
Religion of the Ancient Celts^ p. 337, n. * Caesar, DBG., vi, 16.

' See, for example, Justin, xxvi, 2; Livy, xxxviii, 47; Diodorus Siculus, v, 32; xxxi, 13;
Athenaeus, iv, 51 ; Scholia in Lucani Bellum Civile,, ed. Usener, p. 32.

• Cf. Strabo, iv, 4, 5 ; Tacitus, Annates^ xiv, 30; Diodorus Siculus, v, 31. ' Cf. Strabo, iv, 4, 4.

• On suicide for sacrificial purposes cf. Jullian, Histoire de la Gaule ^ I, 359 ff.

• Recherches i P- S^*

^° Cf. Pliny, Hist, Nat.^ xxx, 4, 13 ; Dio Cassius, Ixii, 7 ; and, for archaeological evidence,
some of the references cited by MacCulloch, p. 337, n.

11 See Whitley Stokes's edition of O'Donovan's translation, Calcutta, 1868, pp. 19, 23.
** Published at London, 17 16 (reprinted at Glasgow, 1884), p. 105.

l88 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

tradition that malefactors were burned in the Beltane fire. And if the authority
for this statement be questioned, certain Perthshire customs described by
Sir John Sinclair,^ and often cited in books on Celtic religion, may still be
urged as pointing back to human sacrifice. Sinclair relates how lots were cast
among the people by the division of a loaf of cake, the person who received
a certain blackened piece being taken as the '* devoted" victim and subjected
to various penalties. Sometimes the victim was compelled to leap through
the fire, or a pretense was made of throwing him into it ; and throughout the
ceremony he was spoken of as ** dead." The whole performance may well be
a pla)^ul substitute for what was once serious business, just as the horse's
bones thrown into the fire in modem Beltane ceremonies at Dublin may be a
substitute for the body of a human victim.^ It is commonly held that the man
or woman sacrificed in such cases was originally a representative of the spirit
of vegetation, and that the purpose of the cult was primarily to secure the
fertility of the soil.^ Indeed, Professor Bury has discerned a possible reminis-
cence of such immolation in the ordeal which St. Patrick's pupil Benignus
and the Druid Lucetmael are said to have gone through at Easter on the hill
of Slane.* In the final test which Patrick proposed, Benignus and the Druid
were placed in a hut built half of green and half of dry wood. Benignus,
clothed in the magician's garment, was put in the dry part, and Lucetmael,
wearing the garment of Patrick, in the green part. Then the hut was set on
fire, and as a result of Patrick's prayer the magician was consumed, leaving
Patrick's robe unbumt, while Benignus escaped unhurt, though the Druid's
robe was destroyed. If Bury's interpretation of the episode be accepted, then
the story, which occurs in Maccumactheni's life of Patrick, constitutes very
early testimony as to human sacrifice in pagan Ireland. But the element of
conjecture in the theory is not to be ignored, and the whole question of the
significance of the popular ceremonies under consideration may be freely
admitted to be of uncertain answer. All that is here contended is that the

1 See especially his Statistical Account of Scotland ^ XI, 620. The passage is printed also by
T. Stephens, 751^ Gododin^ London, 1888, p. 125, n. For further references on Beltane, with
comparison of similar ceremonies, see Elton, Origins of English History y p. 261 ; Sir John Rhys,
Hibbert Lectures^ p. 520 ; L, Gomme, in the Report of the Liverpool Meeting of the British Associa-
tion^ 1896, pp. 626 ff. ; and J. A. MacCulloch, Religion of the Ancient Celts ^ pp. 265-266. MacCul-
loch, at p. 261, compares a similar Welsh custom of jumping through the ** November fire.'*

2 Cited by MacCulloch, p. 265, from Hone, Everyday Book, II, 595. For testimony con-
cerning the burning of live animals, in some cases on May-Day, on the Isle of Man, see Rhys,
Celtic Folklore, Oxford, 1901, pp. 305 flf.

• See MacCulloch, p. 163; and cf. Frazer, 77te Golden Bough, III, 319 ff. For a somewhat
different view (comparing the Athenian Thargelia) see Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, pp. 519(7., and
Celtic Folklore, pp. 309 ff. ; and for an attempt to show a phallic element in the May-Day rites
cf. W. G. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, London, 1902, pp. 262 ff.

* Cf. J. B. Bury, Life of Si. Patrick, London, 1905, pp. 108 ff., 302 ff. He compares the trans-
formation of the burning of Sandan into the story of the funeral pyre of Croesus, discussed by
Frazer, III, 168 ff.

ROBINSON 189

Gads possessed, and have maintained until recent times, customs which are
commonly explained, wherever they are found, as transformed survivals of
human sacrifice. It will probably not be objected that the traditions of the
Gaels of Scotland should not be used for the evidence they yield concerning
the common inheritance of the Gaelic people.^

In spite of the expectations aroused by the general considerations just pre-
sented, the explicit references to human sacrifice in Irish literature appear to
be few. But they are not quite so rare as was implied by the writers quoted
at the beginning of this paper, and at least seven passages, or groups of pas-
sages, deserve consideration here. These all make direct mention of sacrifice,
and no such theoretic interpretations are involved as in the case just mentioned
of Benignus and the Druid. Even if no one of them records an historical
occurrence, they bear testimony at all events to the popular knowledge of
human sacrifice, and to that extent are evidences of its existence. The fact
that none of the passages in question is of very early date does not matter
essentially to the present discussion, since the Irish vernacular texts in any
case date from a period considerably after the conversion to Christianity. This
fact, indeed, may go far to account for the scarcity of literary references to a
custom which must have been vigorously opposed, if not early eradicated, by
the Church.

The purposes of the sacrifices mentioned in Irish writings correspond very
well in general to those recognized in Gaulish sacrifice or surmised in the
transformed rites of the Beltane festivals. The first instance to be considered
apparendy belongs to an ancient vegetation cult, the famous worship of
Cromm Cruaich,^ which St. Patrick is said to have overthrown. In the early
lives of Patrick, although the destruction of the idol is lauded as a great
achievement, nothing is said of human sacrifice in relation to it. But popular
tradition on the subject seems to be preserved in the account of Mag Slecht
(" The Plain of Prostrations **), in the so-called Dinnsenchas. This collection
of topographical legends is found in the Book of Leinster and later manu-
scripts and was probably compiled in the eleventh or twelfth century. But
the component parts, especially the metrical portions, may be in some cases
of much older date, and the material often seems to rest upon very early

^ Instances of the sacrifice of human beings to avert pestilence among cattle are reported
to have taken place in recent times in Gaelic Scotland, and may be noted here. See G. Hen-
derson, Survivals in Belief among the Celts ^ Glasgow, 191 1, pp. 275ff. The cases cited are not
brought into relation with any festival, and may be too exceptional to have any significance
with regard to ancient tradition. But they seem to involve, on the part of the people concerned,
the same old belief attributed by Caesar to the Gauls (DBG., vi, 16), that life must be offered in
the purchase of life. For a tale of a modem Scottish foundation sacrifice see below, p. 196, n. 3.

^ The explanation of this name is uncertain. Rh^s*s interpretation, " The Bent One of the
Mound " (or Cenn Cruaich^ " The Head of the Mound *'), is perhaps the best See his Hibbert
Leciuresy p. 201. D'Arbois de Jubainville, CycU mythologique^ p. 106, proposed rather to connect
Cruaich with cru^ " blood."

I90 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

tradition.^ Acxording to the prose Dinnsenchas of Mag Slecht, Cromm Cruaich
was the king-idol of Erin, the god of every folk that colonized Ireland. *' To
him they used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every
clan." To him King Tigemmas and the men and women of Ireland repaired
on Hallowtide, in order to adore him. '' And they all prostrated themselves
before him, so that the tops of their foreheads and the gristle of their noses,
and the caps of their knees, and the ends of their elbows broke, and three-
fourths of the men of Erin perished at these prostrations." ^ The metrical
Dinnsenchas adds the statement that the purpose of the sacrifice of firstlings
was to obtain com and milk.

To him, without glory,

They would kill their wretched offspring

With much wailing and peril,

To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.

Milk and com

They would ask from him speedily.

In return for one-third of their healthy issue ;

Great was the horror and the scare of him.

To him

Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves ;

From the worship of him, with many manslaughters.

The plain is called Mag Slecht

Then the verse goes on to describe more fully the prostrations, and to recount
how St. Patrick applied a sledge-hammer to the idol.^ Now whatever exagger-
ation there may be in these passages, — and both the extent of the slaughter
and the importance of the cult are very likely overstated,* — they clearly
describe an agricultural sacrifice with human victims.^ Whether the reader

1 On the date and character of the material in the Dinnsenchas cf. Stokes, Revue Celtique^
XV, 272; Meyer and Nutt, Voyage 0/ Bran ^ London, 1895, II» 'Soff.; Viestropp^ /ouma/o/fAe
Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland^ IX, 21 if. For the texts themselves, see Stokes's edi-
tions of the prose portions in Folk LorCy Vols. Ill and IV, and Rezme Celtique^ Vols. XV and XVI,
and £. Gwynn's editions of the metrical Dinnsenchas (not yet completed), in the Todd Lecture
Series of the Ro)ral Irish Academy, Vols. VII, VIII, and XI.

' The text and translation from the Rennes MS., published by Whitiey Stokes, Revue Cel-
tiquct XVI, 35-36, are here followed, with slight condensation. Cf. further the account of
Cromm Cruaich in the Tripartite Life of St. Patrick^ ed. Stokes, Rolls Series, 1887, pp. 90 if. A
different (Christianized ?) account, which ascribes the death of Tigemmas and his people to an
attack of plague in punishment of their idolatry, is found in the Lebor GabcUa ; see the Book
of Leinster, 16*, 127*; also Lizeray and 0*Dwyer, Livre des Invasions^ Paris, 1884, pp. loi flf.

• For the text of the metrical Dinnsenchas of Mag Slecht, edited from four manuscripts
and translated by Kuno Meyer, see Meyer and Nutt, The Voyage of Bran ^ London, 1895, II» 3®' ^'

* On the probability that the cult was of only local importance cf. Bury, Life of St, Patrick^
pp. 123 ff.

^ For further arguments to establish this agricultural character associating Cromm Cruaich
with Crom Dubh and the Dagda, cf. MacCuUoch in Hastings's Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics y III, 284, and the same author in his Religion of the Ancient Celts^ pp. 78-80.

ROBINSON 191

will accept the account as representing genuine popular tradition, or will reject
it as the invention of Christian chroniclers, will doubtless depend partly on
his estimate of the other evidence presented in this paper. But it may be
observed in passing that the Dinnsenchas collection as a whole does not show
any considerable influence of foreign literature or of Christian learning.^

The second Irish reference to human sacrifice to be noted here seems also
to point back to an agricultural cult, though the text is of very different char-
acter from those just described and does not at all purport to be an account
of pagan religion. The episode in question is found in the Middle Irish saga
entitled Echtra Airt? The only known version of the story is preserved in
the Book of Fermoy, a manuscript of the fifteenth century, and the language
of the text seems to be not much older. But since the title Echtra Airt
appears in the list of ** prime tales" in MSS. Rawlinson B 512, Harleian
5280, and Betham 23 N 10 (R.I. A.), the saga itself probably goes back at
least to early Middle Irish.^ The passage which concerns the present inquiry
may be briefly summarized as follows : Conn Cetchathach, the king of Ireland,
after the death of Eithne his consort, formed a union with Bicuma, a woman
of the Tuatha D^ Danann, who had been banished from the Land of Promise
because of her infidelity to her husband Luathlam-ar-Claideb. She and Conn
dwelt together in Tara for a year, and there was neither com nor milk in
Ireland during that time. The Druids declared that the cause of the evil was
the depravity and unbelief of the wife of Conn,* and that the only way of
deliverance would be to find the son of a sinless couple, and slay him before
Tara, and mingle his blood with the soil of Tara. So Conn gave over the
kingdom to Art, his son, and set out in search of such a boy, whom he finally

* Compare the remarks of Kuno Meyer, in Die Keltischen Literaturen {Kultur der Gegen-
warty Teil I, Abteilung xi), p. 83, contrasting such learned compilations as the Lebor Gabala with
the ^ unverfalschteres Bild von den heidnischen Vorstellungen und Brauchen der alten Iren '*
furnished by the Dinnsenchas,

^ Attention was called to this instance of human sacrifice by Sullivan in his introduction to
0*Curry*s Manners and Customs (see p. 185, above), and again by Professor Kuno Meyer, in
£riuy II, 86. The saga was edited and translated by R. I. Best in £riuy III, 149 fif.

' On this list (usually cited as ** List B,'* to distinguish it from that preserved in the Book
of Leinster and MS. H. 3. 17. T.C.D.), cf. d'Arbois de Jubainville, Essai d*un Catalogue
(Paris, 1883), pp. 259 if.

* This conception that failure of crops, or scarcity of fish or game or cattle, is due to the
evil conduct of rulers, or sometimes of lesser people, is familiar. Cf ., for example, Deuteronomy,
xxviii, 17 ff. ; Herodotus, vi, 139; and other instances cited in the London Academy^ L (1896),
pp. 182, 264, 310. For illustrations of the idea from Irish literature see the Annals of the Kingdom
of Irelandy by the Four Masters, I, i, 96 {anno Christiy 14 and 15) ; Annals of Ulster^ ed. B.
MacCarthy (Rolls Series), III, 596; Tripartite Life of St, Patrick^ ed. W. Stokes, pp. clx, 507 ;
Publications of the Ossianic Society y I, 102, n.; O'Grady, Silva Gadelicay London, 1892, I, 255,
317 ; O'Grady, Catalogue of Irish MSS, in the British Museum, p. 330, n. ; Pezme Celtiquey XVI,
35, and XXII, 28 ; Martyrology of O* Gorman y ed. Stokes (Bradshaw Society), p. xi ; Proceedings of
the Royal Irish Academy y July, 191 1, pp. 157, 173 ; Keating, Forus Feasa ar Eirinny Irish Texts
Society, III, 34. Cf. also Douglas Hyde, Literary History of Ireland y pp. 27 ff.

192 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

found in the Land of Promise. He brought him back to Tara, and the Druids
counselled that the child should be slain. But as the sacrifice was about to be
performed, the lowing of a cow was heard, and a woman wailing behind it.
The woman declared that the cow had come to save the life of the youth, and
she directed the Druids to slaughter it and to mingle its blood with the soil.
She also bade them open two bags on the cow's sides, in which she said they
would find two birds, a bird with one leg and a bird with twelve legs. And
when the birds were taken out they fought with each other, and the one-legged
bird prevailed over the other; which the woman interpreted as a symbol of the
way the little boy prevailed over all the rest.^ So the youth was not put to
death. The rest of the story concerns the adventures of Art, the son of Conn,
and has no further bearing upon the sacrifice, the aim and character of which
seem reasonably clear. Though no one will probably hold the narrative to be
historical, it nevertheless bears witness to the popular tradition of a human
sacrifice conducted by the Druids for the purpose of securing fertility in crops
and herds.2 It is interesting to observe, too, that the Irish story offers, in
the substitution of the cow for the human victim, a parallel to the familiar
narratives of Isaac and of Iphigenia. Yet the detailed circumstances in the
Irish tale are so different from those in either of the ancient stories that a
theory of imitation or borrowing does not appear probable.^

There is a close relation between the conceptions of sacrifice to ensure fer-
tility of crops and herds and sacrifice to avert a pestilence from human beings.
Human victims were offered for the latter purpose, as we have seen,* by the
Continental Celts, and there is some evidence, at least of an indirect character,
that a similar practice was known in Ireland. Certain passages from the met-
rical Dinnsenchas of Tailtiu, sometimes cited as testimony to such a sacri-
fice, are so doubtful, as regards both text and interpretation, that they may

1 Sullivan, in his Introduction to 0'Curry*s Manners and Customs (I, cccxxxiii ff.)» compared
the story of Conn, and particularly the episode of the fighting birds, with Nennius's tale about
Vortigem, which contains the fight of the two symbolic dragons. For further mention of this
story see the discussion of foundation sacrifice, p. 195, below.

^ Further traces of the existence of agricultural sacrifice with human victims are found
by MacCulloch in the tribute paid to the Fomorians by the Nemedians, in the strife between
Carman and the Tuatha D^ Danann, and in Ihe story of the rescue of Devorgilla. See his
Religion of the Ancient CelU^ pp. 57, 133, 168, and 237. His interpretation of the episodes in
question is very likely right, but since the passages do not contain direct and explicit reference
to human sacrifice they have been omitted from the present discussion.

• Another literary reference in Irish to the employment of human sacrifice to avert a
great calamity, this time to put an end to drought, may be mentioned here in passing. It is in
the story of " How Samson slew the Gestedha," and since the practice is ascribed to this uniden-
tified oriental people, the passage has no bearing upon Irish conditions beyond bringing one
more piece of testimony to the knowledge of such sacrifices. The text, which is perhaps of the
twelfth century, was described by Meyer in the Zeitschrift fur Celtiscke Philologies IV, 467, and
edited and translated by Marstrander, £riu, V, 145 ff. The source of the story appears to
be unknown. * See p. 187, above.

ROBINSON 193

best be left out of the reckoning for the present.^ But two accounts of self-
devotion by Christian saints to save the land from plague seem to involve
something different from the regular Christian conception of sacrifice, and
suggest the existence in the Irish mind of the idea, attributed by Caesar to
the ancient Gauls, that the life of a diseased man may be purchased from the
gods by the substitution of another human victim.^ In the Middle Irish life
of St. Finnian of Clonard it is related of him that ** as Paul died in Rome for
the sake of the Christian people, lest they should all perish in the pains and
punishments of hell, even so Finnian died in Clonard for the sake of the peo-
ple of the Gael, that they might not all perish of the Yellow Plague." ^ But
the parallel suggested is not quite natural, and it is hardly fanciful to see in
the sacrifice of Finnian, or in the explanation of it, an element of paganism
not apparent in that of Paul. Still more strikingly true is this of the story of
Eimine Bin, who is said to have devoted himself to death along with forty-
nine of his monks in order to save King Bran of Leinster and forty-nine of
his princes from pestilence.* The strictly numerical application here of the
principle of vicariousness is noteworthy.

^ The poem was cited, and the passages in question printed and translated, by Sullivan in
0'Curry*s Manners and Customs^ I, dcxl. Sullivan apparently followed the text in the Book of
Lecan, which he interpreted as meaning : (i) that Patrick preached in Tailtiu against three for-
bidden bloods, — yoke oxen, slaying milch cows, and burning the first-bom [children] ; (2) that
hostages were drowned and the son of Aed SUn immolated to avert three plagues from Ire-
land. MacCulloch follows him in citing the second passage as an instance of the sacrifice of
hostages, including the son of a captive prince. See his Religion of the Ancient Celts, p. 238.
But Sullivan's translation is questionable at several points, and a comparison of his. text with
the versions of the poem in the published facsimiles of the Book of Leinster (p. 200 /9) and the
Book of Ballymote (p. 403 a) throws additional doubt on the meaning of both passages. The
Book of Leinster, for example, \i2& fogla, * spoils,' in place oi fola, translated ** bloods'' by
Sullivan ; and in the next line it reads gait dam ar cuing, ^ the stealing of yoke-cattle," with no
apparent reference to sacrifice. Again, at the end of the stanza, the word primicht, or prim-
shlicht, may mean first-fruits of crops or cattle as well as first-bom children. In the second
passage the line rendered ** immolating the son of Aed Sldn " reads in both the Book of Leinster
and the Book of Ballymote mortlaidmac n- Aeda Sldin (with mac n- in the genitive plural), which
would more naturally refer to the death by pestilence of the sons of Aed Slin, — a well-known
occurrence. Professor Edward Gwynn, who is editing the Metrical Dinnsenchas for the " Todd
Lecture Series," has not yet reached this particular poem or completed his general classifica-
tion of MSS. The materials for determining a critical text are therefore not yet available, and
while there is so much uncertainty as to readings it seems best not to use the passage as evi-
dence of human sacrifice. In the prose Dinnsenchas of Tailtiu, as printed by Stokes {Revue
Celtique, XVI, 5oflf.), there is no reference to such a custom. * Caesar, DBG., vi, 16.

• See Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore^ ed. W. Stokes, Oxford, 1890, pp. 82, 229.
This episode and that of Eimine Bin were both cited as containing suggestions of human sac-
rifice by Henderson, Survivals in Belief among the Celts, p. 285. A third instance, possibly of
similar significance at bottom, is that of the crosan who is sacrificed to the sea-cats in the ** Life
of Brendan." See the Lives of Saints from the Book of Lismore, ed. Stokes, pp. iii, 353. On
voluntary self-devotion, or sacrificial suicide, among the Continental Celts see above, p. 187.

* The text of this story was printed by J. G. O'Keefe in the Anecdota from Irish MSS., I,
4oflf. ; for a translation see Rev. Charles Plummer, £riu, IV, 39 ff. Attention is called in

194 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

Among the ancient Celts both on the Continent and in Britain, as has
been already pointed out,^ a frequent occasion of human sacrifice seems to have
been found in offerings to the dead, and various signs point to the existence
of similar sacrifices among the Gaels. That animal victims were commonly
put to death as a part of funeral rites may be inferred from a formula in the
story of the Wooing of Etain, where the heroine is bidden, in case of the
death of Ailill, to provide that his grave shall be dug, and his dirge sung, and
his quadrupeds slain.^ It is less safe to infer, as MacCuUoch has done,^ from
the lamentations of widows who express a desire to be buried along with their
husbands, that relatives were sometimes thus immolated; for the passages
cited may imply no more than the natural shrinking of the bereaved from
surviving their loved ones. But at least one episode in Irish saga is reasonably
susceptible of interpretation as a case of human sacrifice offered to the dead.
In the story of the Death of Crimthann^ it is related that Fiachra and his
brothers (sons of the celebrated King Eochaid Muigmedoin, of the fourth cen-
tury) gained a battle over the Munstermen, in which Fiachra himself was
severely wounded. The victorious party set out to return to Tara with the
wounded Fiachra and with fifty hostages of the Munstermen. When they
reached Forrach, in Meath, Fiachra died of his wound ; and then, the saga
goes on to relate, in a formula closely resembling that mentioned above, "his
grave was dug, and his tomb was laid, and his funeral game was started, and
his name was written in ogham, and the hostages who had been brought from
the south were buried alive around Fiachra's tomb." ^ The purpose of this
cruelty, according to one version of the Irish text, was ** that it might always

Plummer*s introduction both to the story of St Finnian and also to that of a Druid of the Dessi,
who exposed himself to be slain in order to secure victory for his people in a battle. The latter
instance is also mentioned by Henderson {Survivals in Beliefs p. 285) and definitely explained
as an example of vicarious sacrifice. But an examination of the tale shows the act of the Druid
to have been of a different character. The Dessi, on the eve of a battle with the army of Os-
sory, learn from a Druid of the enemy that whichever of the two armies shall first kill or wound
one of the other, shall be the loser of the fight Both sides therefore determine to refrain from
slaughter, and the Druids of the Dessi undertake to cheat the men of Ossory by transforming
a man into the shape of a cow and sending it among them to be slain. According to one ver-
sion of the saga (the older version, apparently), a serf is thus transformed, and is killed. Ac-
cording to another text, a Druid of the Dessi undergoes the transformation himself and is slain
for his people. In either case the slaughter is hardly a normal example of human sacrifice, the
object being not to offer up a life but to trick an enemy into committing an act of evil omen.
Both versions of the saga have been edited by K. Meyer, the earlier in Y Cymmrodor^ XIV,
loi if., and the later in Anecdota from Irish MSS.y I, I5ff.
1 See p. 187, above.

* See Windisch, Irische TexU^ I, 122. This formula, with slight variations, and generally
without the mention of sacrifice, occurs frequently in Irish sagas.

* Religion of the Ancient Celts ^ p. 338 (with references).

* Edited by Whitley Stokes (from the Yellow Book of Lecan and the Book of Ballymote)
in the Revue Celtique, XXIV, 172 flf. Cf. also a brief version of the episode in the Book of Lein-
ster, p. 190, col. 3, printed by 0*Grady, Silva Gadelica^ II, 494, and translated, ibid., p. 543.

* See Revue Celtique, XXIV, 184.

ROBINSON 195

be a shame for Munster and be as a triumph over them." ^ But the concep-
tion of sacrifice may have been originally involved, and have been unfamiliar
to the mediaeval narrator. His interpretation would be a natural explanation
of what he may have regarded as an isolated act of barbarity. Yet the very
formula, evidently traditional, in which he describes it, coupling it with the
other rites of Fiachra's funeral, might be held to bear unconscious witness to
the original meaning of the story. It is only fair to add that burial alive was
apparently a form of punishment for malefactors in ancient Ireland, so that
still a third possibility exists for the explanation of the Fiachra episode.* But
there seems to be no strong reason for adopting this in preference to the theory
of sacrifice.

There remains to be considered one more type of sacrifice, in which the
Irish seem to have offered human victims. This is the so-called "foundation
sacrifice," an institution familiar in all ages and in many parts of the world.
The gold coin, which is now often buried in the comer stone of a new building,
is generally recognized to be a substitute for the more precious offerings of
animal or human life once deemed necessary to ensure the permanence of a
structure.' No record seems to have been preserved of the existence of such
sacrifices among the Gauls, but there is good evidence of the custom among
the insular Celts in mediaeval and modem times. The most familiar Celtic
instance is doubtless that which Nennius relates of the sacrifice ordered by
the British Dmids at the building of Vortigem's castle.* Among the Gaels
themselves a similar legend is attached to the founding of the monastery of
St. Columba at lona. Columba, according to the story, said that it would be
well for some one of his followers to go under the clay of the island to con-
secrate it, and Oran straightway made a voluntary offering of his life.* While
there are various reasons for not regarding the occurrence as historical, the

^ Joyce, who discusses the episode in his SocitU History^ II, 545, takes in general the point
of view of the Irish narrator. He cites, though without urging its authenticity, a variant form
of the story according to which the hostages find Fiachra unprotected and bury him alive.

* On burial alive as a punishment see O'Curry, Manners and Customs^ I, cccxxi ; also
K. Meyer, Cdin Adamndin {Anecdota Oxoniensia, Mediaeval and Modem Series, Part XII,
Oxford, 1905), pp. 6, 35.

* For an extended general account of the forms of foundation sacrifice and of its geograph-
ical and historical extension see P. Sartori, ** Ueber das Bauopfer," Zt, fur Ethnologies XXX,
1-54. Foundation sacrifice among the Germanic peoples is treated very fully in an unpublished
Harvard dissertation by Professor J. A. Walz (deposited in the Harvard University Library).

^ See Nennius, Historia Britonum^ cap. xl. The work was of course also known to the Irish
in a vernacular version ; see, for the episode in question, Todd's edition for the Irish Archaeo-
logical Society, Dublin, 1848, pp. 90 ff. Certain points of resemblance between this story and
that of Conn Cetchathach have been noted above (p. 192, n.).

* Cf. Adamnan's Vita Sancti Columbaey ed. Reeves, pp. 203 ff., 417 ; Lives 0/ Saints from the
Booh of Lismore^ ed. Stokes, pp. 30, 309; Revue Celtique^ II, 200 (a version from the Lebor
Brecc) ; and, for a form more closely resembling the Vortigem story. Pennant's Second Tour
in Scotland^ in Pinkerton's Voyages, III, 298. A modem Scottish Gaelic variant, not involving
sacrifice, is recorded by A. Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica, II, 317.

196 HUMAN SACRIFICE AMONG THE IRISH CELTS

narrative itself is again an indication that the form of sacrifice involved was
known to the Gaelic people. The supposition is borne out by another passage,
in an old poem in the Book of Lecan, which describes the building of a stone
fort over groaning hostages ;^ and by a curious etymology (worthless, of course,
as such) in Cormacs Glossary^ which derives the name * Emain ' from ' ema,
id est sanguine ' \aXyid\, and * uin, i.e. unus,' *' quia sanguis unius hominis
[effusus est] in tempore conditionis ejus.**^ The evidence afforded by these
references in the older Irish literature is supported by various stories of
foundation sacrifices among the Gaelic populations in modem times,^ so that
the existence of the foundation rite is better attested, on the whole, than that
of any of the other forms of sacrifice previously discussed. In fact it is ad-
mitted by Joyce in his Social History ^^ though he would assign it to a very
remote period, "long before the time of St. Patrick," and though he appar-
ently does not recognize that the existence of human sacrifice for this pur-
pose increases the probability that similar offerings were made for the other
purposes previously mentioned.

These references to foundation sacrifice complete the list of direct state-
ments concerning human sacrifice in Irish literature, so far as they have been
noted by the present writer. Several passages which are ordinarily interpreted
as such have been rejected above as uncertain,^ and others have been inten-
tionally left out of account which, though not explicitly mentioning sacrifice,
may be plausibly explained as disguised reflections of the custom.® Without
doubt some pieces of testimony have been overlooked, and still others may be
brought to light as new texts are published. But in any case the obtainable
evidence appears to be meagre, and notably so in comparison with that found
by recent investigators of similar practices among the Germanic peoples.^ There
remain, nevertheless, some seven episodes or references of clear import, and
these documentary evidences in early Irish are substantiated by what is known
of ancient Gaulish and British sacrifices and of modem Gaelic popular -cus-
toms. One may disparage, of course, in general the value of all such testimony,
and may question whether, in any part of the world, human sacrifice has been

4^ee O'Curry, Manners and Customs^ III, 9.

2 Cf. O'Donovan's translation of Cormac's Glossary y ed. Whitley Stokes, Calcutta, 1868,
p. 63 ; for the Irish text see Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries^ London, 1862, p. xli.

• See Cannichael, Cannina Gadelica, II, 317; MacCulloch, Helicon of the Ancient Celts^
p. 239; Revue Celtique, IV, 120; Revue des Traditions Populaires, VI, 134, 173.

• See pp. 284 ff.

' Compare, for example, the discussion of the Dinnsenchas of Tailtiu and of the Druids of
the Deisi (pp. 192 ff., above).

• Such instances are the story of Lucetmael, with Bury's interpretation (p. 188, above), and
the episodes interpreted by MacCulloch as agricultural rites {Religion of the Ancient Celtsy
pp. 78 ff.).

' Cf. Professor Walz's dissertation on foundation sacrifices among the Germanic peoples
(already cited) ; also E. Mogk, " Die Menschenopfer bei den Germanen ," I^ipzig Abhandlungen,
XXVII (1909), 603 ff. Mogk says that more than fifty pieces of testimony are known to him.

ROBINSON 197

as prevalent, or survived as long, as is commonly asserted by students of reli-
gious history. This skeptical attitude, for instance, seems to be maintained by
M. Salomon Reinach in his Orphetis^ and the general issue which he thus
raises, it is beyond the province of the present article to discuss.^ But, at all
events, in the face of the considerations here presented, it is hardly possible
to claim for the ancient Irish a condition altogether exceptional or unique
among the races that dwelt near them. That the practice of the terrible rite
in question was probably checked early in Ireland may well be granted. The
Druids themselves, as Bertrand has argued,^ were very likely opposed to its
continuance both in Ireland and in Gaul. The early conversion of the Irish
to Christianity (as compared, for example, with the Scandinavian Teutons)
would help further to account for its suppression, and might also explain the
disappearance of most references to the subject from Irish literature. But
that the custom did not in some measure survive the establishment of the
new religion seems unlikely both from general considerations and from the
particular evidence of native tradition.

1 S. Reinach, Orpheus , Histoire Ghtirale des Religions y Paris, 1909. See the " Index Alpha-
b^tique," under " Sacrifice humain," and especially pp. 61, 177 fiF.

2 La Religion des Gaulois^ p. 68, n.

THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

William Tenney Brewster

The common classification of literary criticism into such types as construc-
tive and destructive, appreciative, impressionistic, judicial, and the many other
catchwords with which readers are familiar, though often warmly opposed as
academic rather than human and often depending on verbal quibbles, has con-
siderable convenience for students of the subject. So far as such terms have
any meaning, it can best be understood by reference to logical classifications
and logical processes, a point of view not sufficiently urged in writings on the
subject of literary criticism. The purpose of this paper is briefly to indicate
the logical bases on which literary criticism actually rests.

Taking the term " literary criticism " in the broadest possible way, we find
it more than merely ** a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best
that is known and thought in the world " (Arnold), or the result of '' a certain
kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of
beautiful objects *' (Pater), or ** the getting behind spontaneous judgment, the
ascertaining of how and why we differ in our judgments " (J. M. Robertson),
or more than any of the many other definitions of purpose, quality, or method
with which eminent critics have variously tickled our minds. Literary criticism, »
in the first instance, is simply any opinion about any writing, or, perhaps a littie )
more definitely, opinion about books and the writers of them, or about parts
and aspects of books or particular books, or about groups of books and writings, •
or about all books and writings. That is to say, criticism, regarded as an extant
record, not as a theory, is any and all opinion on particular or general matters (
connected with literature. Fact it is not, except in so far as it is a datum or
fact of an " existential " sort.

But any critical utterance that is not merely irresponsible or deliberately
false tries evidently to be a true opinion ; that would seem to be normal to
human nature. Though it may merely express any opinion whatever about
literature, literary criticism, like many other pleasurable pursuits, tends to be-
come elaborated into a form of procedure and to take on scientific dignity and .
method. To produce just opinions, such as accord with some fact of whatever 1
sort, to transfer opinions into the realm of fact, is obviously the purpose of ^
any critical method. Criticism, as a live process, is constantiy finding new opin-
ions and modifying old opinions, and in both cases it is trying to verify and

substantiate opinions, to transfer these things more and more into the realm of

199

200 THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

fact. On the question of how much verification is possible, hinge, for example,
the disputes between the impressionists and those other critics who maintain
that there is some objective substantiation for opinion ; and the question
whether there is any other sanction than personality for critical opinion is a
fundamental one in all critical theory.

If we turn to the common rhetorical classifications of writing, we shall find
some indications of an answer to this question. It will be observed that the
findings of any criticism are never the same as the thing criticized ; they are
always about the writing. The opinions of criticism are derived from something
else. Psychologically, the opinions may be stimulated in a variety of ways ; but
in no instance are they the same thing as the source of stimulation. Thus
descriptions, summaries, abstracts, digests, epitomes, and so forth of books, we
do not ordinarily call criticism, since they merely reproduce, usually in more
compact and convenient form, the ideas of the original. These things are
often very useful in any critical act ; but criticism itself does not try to produce
ideas ; it derives new ideas from existing data.

Criticism is, in short, a form of argumentation, in which, as in argumen-
tation, the powers of persuasion and personality may have much play. It is
important to note that a true line of cleavage among the so-called forms of
discourse is between narration, description, and exposition, on the one hand,
and argumentation, on the other. The former deal mainly with what is, with
happenings, observations, records, sensations, etc., presenting them mainly
as objects or as explanations ; all these forms are interested in facts of what-
ever kind. But argumentation, on the other hand, is interested in these facts
merely as evidence for a set of derived facts ; it is always concerned with a new
set of facts, technically called conclusions, which are never the same as the
premises and are never the first-hand facts of observation, or record, or sen-
sation, or memory. Argumentation may obviously enter into any act of narration,
or description, or exposition, when any doubt arises or when any choice has
to be made ; in which case it merely tries to derive a new fact that shall be
useful in the writing of another class.

Argumentation is not, like narration, description, and exposition, a vary-
ing method of representing things ; it is a method of comparison, whereby
something else, different from the objects compared, is the result. Derived
facts, or conclusions, are jts bone and marrow ; and it always arrives at these
new facts by a series of comparisons. You compare one fact or one body of
facts with another fact or body of facts to the end that you may reach ^ome
new fact. The antecedent facts are usually called evidence, and this evidence,
to be good for anything, may itself have to be substantiated. Besides conclu-
sions and evidence, there has to be the correct application of fact to fact, and
of fact to conclusion, if we are to be sure that the conclusion is itself a fact.
The application of fact to fact is a matter of logic ; and as material fallacies

(

BREWSTER 20 1

arise when the facts are not right, so logical fallacies, of many picturesque
descriptions, are nothing more than the failure of facts properly to apply to
each other. It is manifest that in the actual world many things besides objec-
tive fact stand for us as evidence ; and we argue from all sorts of positions,
using prejudices, desires, opinions, say-so, hearsay, authority, and many other
things much more freely than we do really sound evidence. And argumenta-
tion, as we know it in our hourly lives, is full also of many different kinds of
wrong application of fact to fact, and hence of unsound conclusions. But it
is, however misdirected, always a system of comparison, the end of which is
facts of a derived character. And the science of argumentation is the science
of arriving at these facts by the truest processes that can be devised.

This elementary account of argumentation is necessary to make clear how
literary criticism is true to the more general argumentative type to which it
belongs. Like most argument and discussion, literary criticism, when not
merely description, is mainly a matter of say-so, wherein one's vanity or
desires or prejudices or training become the premises, or the evidence, from
which the critic leaps to a favorable or unfavorable finding. Between ante-
\ cedents of this kind and a body of writing in question, some sort of compari-

son is made, and a new thing results. And as in argumentation, new facts
are engendered by the comparison between premises, principles, standards,
and data of various kinds, on the one hand, and the particular things in
debate, on the other, and as conclusions also arise from the merging of specific
data in a generalization ; so, in criticism, the movement toward the desired
findings may be of a deductive or of an inductive character.

The matter will be clearer if treated in some detail. Much literary criticism,
as actually carried on, is nothing more than a series of loosely used deductions,
barely amounting to more than a series of somewhat bobtailed syllogisms. For
example, it is very common to compare any work that one happens to be read-
ing with what one already knows of that or of other subjects, — economic,
political, scientific, historical, or what not, — or to compare it with work of
the same class or by the same writer, and thence to arrive at a new opinion,
— as that the data are wrong, or the point of view unusual and interesting,
or the treatment broad, novel, and humane, and many other things. Thus
Macaulay's rapid-fire attack on the poems of Montgomery is a series of points
of comparison : Montgomery stole ideas and mutilated them in the steal-
ing, his figures of speech are indiscriminate, he is guilty of false syntax, of
stupidity, lack of harmony, bad taste, blasphemy, silly anatomy, physics,
metaphysics, theology, and many other sins. Thus Johnson defines the
** metaphysical poets" by comparing them with what he believed to be true of
wit, of *' numbers," of sublimity, of ** nature," and several other standards of
respectable canonization. Thus nature lovers have been known to object to
Shelley's descriptions, as in the Oc/e to the West Wind, on the ground that

)

202 THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

they don't square with nature. Thus a poem may be measured against Rus-
kin's theory of the pathetic fallacy, and found to be poetry of the first rank,
or of the second rank, or not poetry at all. Thus, as there were in more
antique criticism canons of judgment and some reliance on such categories
as fancy and imagination, so there are in more modem work such premises
of a stylistic or moral or practical kind as are represented by the words ease,
limpid grace, lucidity, reserve, affectation, harmonionsness, artifice, word-
painting, and the thousand others which stand for some idea or image of
what is desirable.

Much, probably most, criticism as actually practised is of this loosely de-
( ductive type. It is certainly the easiest to produce. Nothing can be an act
of less intellectual labor than to measure up your reading with your predilec-
tions, or with knowledge and standards that you have somewhere acquired, and
thence proclaim a resounding sentence, — provided you have sufficient literary
skill to attach interest to your words. Our commonplace types of criticism
are but various kinds of literary deduction. An exponent of the so-called
" judicial " criticism, for example, is almost wholly engaged in deducing con-
clusions from premises which are satisfactory to himself. If these be set,
treated as irrevocable, if he appeals to the authority of canons and preceding
critics, especially if he suppresses his reasoning by the way, his criticism is
called ** dogmatic." If he uses his syllogisms to undermine a vogue and fame,
as did Macaulay and Jeffrey, he is termed " destructive," but the deductive
type applies equally well to findings of a favorable character. For these terms
do but name the result of a process of which the characteristic is the testing
of data in the light of other material, true or alleged to be true. Even " im-
pressionistic " criticism of the simplest sort conforms to this type ; for the
impressionistic critic, in describing his own reactions, is comparing the data
with which he is dealing with tastes and likings that have, as critical enginery,
become personally standardized and generalized.

The aspect of criticism that has just been described is much less variously
interesting than what may be called inductive criticism. This is certainly so
of the history of criticism ; for whereas deductive criticism would take account
of a multitude of critical findings and the logic of the comparisons by which
they came about, inductive criticism has to do with the establishment of the
premises, principles, and standards by which particular works are judged, and
with the sense and justness which go into the making of these. The way in
which these standards originate is roughly this : A critic is struck by some
detail or phenomenon or is impressed by some special passage. Thenceforth
that phenomenon or passage begins to erect and establish itself in his mind
either as the type and image of some sort of goodness or as a result, the
causes of which are to be analyzed as a criterion for further judgment. Thus
we read a passage that is not clear, and we come to have a type of obscurity

BREWSTER 203

and may make some generalization about clearness. Thus Lessing may be
thought to have achieved his memorable distinction between poetry and paint-
ing, and Burke to have analyzed the elements of the sublime and to have
recognized a kind of literary procedure in which '* we yield to sympathy what
we refuse to description." Thus we have Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Mr.
Chesterton. Thus we have ** laws *' of the short story and the drama. Thus
Lamb, probably much moved by many passages in Shakspere, came to the
conclusion, which furnished him with the central principle of a famous essay,
that the plays were ** in themselves essentially so different from all others "
that they could not be acted. It is evident that the number of such inspi-
rations is limited only by the ingenuity of the human mind, and it is also '
true that most of them are stillborn. When they live, it is probably because
they have been tested and have been found to be both true and useful, be-
cause they appeal to the common sense, or because they are enforced by a
persuasive literary skill.

By this is not meant an exact description of the critical process. What
happens in actual practice is rather that a critic takes these standards on
authority, or because they are conventional and handy, or because they appeal
to him as sensible, and all this without much thinking about these major
premises. As a matter of fact, too, a critic is not unlikely to make up or to
marshal his standards as he goes along. Lamb supplies a good example of
this practice. Possessed of the idea that Shakspere is essentially different from
all other dramatists, he proceeded to devise premises from which he could
deduce the conclusion that the plays could not be acted. Macaulay, observing
some instances of asininity in Montgomery, picks up a standard — of gram-
mar, of reverence, of sound anatomy, of clearness, of simplicity — wherewith
to '* ascertain " the failing. Another writer, dealing with the same subject,
might have picked up a different set of criteria, getting some of them from
his knowledge of other things, from his likes and dislikes, and endowing them
all with apparent reasons. Walter Bagehot, stimulating critic, in order better
to describe Charles Dickens, draws up the classes of the ** regular " and the
** irregular" genius; in another instance it becomes convenient to classify
novels into the "ubiquitous" and the "sentimental"; or again, Wordsworth,
Tennyson, and Browning being interesting persons, it is handy to make them
types of " pure, ornate, and grotesque " art, and then to describe them in the
light of these classes. Pater, disdaining the older distinctions between fancy
and imagination, finds a sounder distinction to make between the more intense
and the less intense ; this is convenient in the criticism of Wordsworth, but
when it comes to accoimting for Charles Lamb, an old distinction between wit
and humor has the floor. And generally speaking, we do not to-day cite Aristotle
and Lord Kames, but rather make up new ideas with that fertility of invention
which is presumed to be one of the great glories of the present century.

204 THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

The foregoing is merely a description of the critical process, not any con-
demning of it. The description may be carried further by showing how some
of the familiar types of criticism fall under the head of inductive form. When
one accepts authority as a standard of judgment or relies on principles and
canons that have been in vogue, he is simply doing what he would be doing
if he accepted authority anywhere else, — in religion, in law, in science, in the
auction room, or in the caucus. That is, he accepts the induction that somebody
else has made, and is in consequence deducing results from previous accept-
ances. When, however, he indulges in a bit of interpretation, and tries to tell
what a thing means other than what it says on the face of it, there is a con-
structive act. A similar act of construction is performed when a critic, or any-
body else, attempts to make up a generalization from any particular body of
data. Most of the so-called ** constructive " criticism, and almost all interpre-
tation, is inductive in type.

We are now in a position to consider the logic of the matter, though this
again can be treated only with great brevity. With the so-called "impressionistic"
type of criticism we need have little to do ; since impressionism is somewhat of a
law unto itself, and so long as its findings are delivered in an entertaining way
there is little to be said. But many attempts have been made to treat criticism
in a more scientific way, that is, to get at facts, to resolve new facts from writings.
This is a very large matter. Only one small part of it can here be indicated,
— the application of logic to the types of criticism that have been described.

This logic is, as usual, and like such things as correctness in writing and
composition, best seen in the negative, that is, in the fallacies. No full anal-
ysis of the critical fallacies has, so far as I am aware, ever been made, nor
is it possible to do an}rthing like that in the present limits. A few illustrative
instances, however, may serve. Perhaps most common of all critical fallacies
is that of the false example or illustration. A particular passage that for some
. reason has struck the' critic is not infrequently chosen as generally represent-
jative, whereas the truth of the matter is, that unless bolstered by other evi-
dence, such a passage is representative only of itself. But, on the strength of
a few such passages, a work is often totally condemned. This fallacy is of
such frequent occurrence in book reviewing that for convenience it might be
called the reviewer's fallacy, just as certain well-known maladies are known
by the names of the discoverers or first exponents thereof. It amounts, of
course, to a bad induction or generalization, in that the critic jumps from a
particular to a general without due regard to the laws by which leaps may logi-
cally be made. Much reviewing, from this point of view, is as absurd as it
would be to charge a railroad with habitual lateness simply because your train
happened to be behind time one morning.

But bad inductions are not confined to reviewing and such comparatively
hasty work. It is possible, for example, — it actually has been done, — to

BREWSTER 205

select a group of novels which will delightfully substantiate a theory of the
** evolution "or the ** development " of the novel, which would be quite dif-
ferent from the theory which another set of novels would reveal. It is an
easy and common act to draw a circle around some part of human activity and
label the result with the more general names of ** life/' **art," " evolution,"
or some other pleasing term of criticism. Much of the discussion of the
modem short story is nothing more than an isolating and describing of some
characteristics which the form probably possesses, — as that it has unity, point,
etc., — and thence jumping to the generalization that the form has these things,
not in common with many other forms, but exclusively. Attempts to define
poetry are likely to illustrate this fallacy. Thus, when Poe would have poems
limited to about one hundred lines, on the ground that the inspiration cannot
be sustained over a longer space, and when he considers Death to be the most
beautiful and appropriate of poetical subjects, the first thought that occurs to
a reader is that the theory may possibly not square with the facts.

Here are some other instances of bad generalization of different sorts.
When Dryden, in a moment of enthusiasm, says of Chaucer that " not a single
character escaped him," the saying can be reconciled with the demands of
common sense and logic only by supposing Dryden to have meant that of all
the characters that Chaucer treated not a single one escaped him. It is very
difficult to be certain that Chaucer ** has taken into the compass of his Canter-
bury Tales the various manners and humours (as we now call them) of the
whole English nation, in his age." The chances are against it, even if we did
not know of other characters in other writers. Or again, when Dryden, in the
same famous Preface to the Fables^ said that " it were an easy matter to pro-
duce some thousands of his [Chaucer's] verses which are lame for want of
half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make
otherwise," he evidently generalized from that lack of knowledge which an
alleged happier age has since made good. When Mr. Frederic Harrison calls
attention to the ** consonance " of Ruskin, that is, to the recurrence of similar
vowel and consonantal sounds as an element of excellence in prose, he does
a very interesting thing, but the observation should be cautiously pressed with-
out more proof than is given ; for, since the language has only about forty
sounds and twenty-six signs to represent them, some repetition of sounds is
unavoidable in any such voluminous writer as Ruskin. When Lamb most
persuasively argues that Shakspere cannot be acted, he loses sight of the
historical fact that the plays were written to be acted, he forgets that there is
such a thing as good acting as well as bad acting, and he neglects the other
important fact that the tragical and spiritual happenings of which he so much
approves, and which he thinks mutilated by stage representation, can be repre-
sented only by words and pantomime, either on the stage or in the imaginings
that reading may conjure up.

2o6 THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

It would doubtless be possible to find instances in literary criticism of nearly
all the types of logical fallacy that are classified in books of formal logic. A
few may be indicated. Begging the question is a very common practice. A re-
cent writer is inclined to take exception to George Meredith on the ground
that he did not have " temperament,'* the term being vaguely defined by some-
thing possessed by Thackeray and George Eliot, among other novelists, and
hence assumed to be a desirable thing. The real point is, however, to show
that the absence of this temperament is a drawback to Meredith, and this can-
not be assumed by any summary handling of the word. Arnold often supplies
examples of this kind of fallacy ; here is one : ** The accent of such verse as

In la sua volontade h nostra pace . . .

is altogether beyond Chaucer's reach ; we praise him, but we feel that this
accent is out of question for him. It may be said that it was necessarily out
of the reach of any poet in the England of that stage of growth. Possibly ;
but we are to adopt a real, not a historic, estimate of poetry," etc. (TAe Study j

of Poetry). Well, nobody says that Chaucer did the same thing that Dante
did, and it is conventional and possibly reasonable to give the latter the palm
of greatness ; but what is the " real " thing in poetry ? Arnold uses the term
in other writings also ; in this essay it is set in opposition to the *' historical
estimate " and the '* personal estimate " and has some advantage in being
illustrated by the well-known ** touchstones." But it does not appear that the
touchstones of high excellence are chosen on other ground than Arnold's own
personal predilections ; certainly there is no hint of any more objective defi-
nition than is supplied by the " personal estimate " of many generations of
readers. What Arnold is doing, then, is, as in most of his criticism, to point
out, with great impressiveness, a distinction in result which is fairly evident,
and then to assume the very thing to be demonstrated, that one result is better
than another.

He also gives a good illustration of the fallacy of false cause or false sign,
a kind of post hoc (in hoc would be more accurate), ergo propter hoc fallacy,
in his essay on Gray, a thing alleged, in comparison with Johnson's Life of
Gray, to be very broad and catholic. The reason, according to Arnold, that
" Gray never spoke out " is that '* he fell on an age of prose." But logically,
before coming to such a fine conclusion, it would be worth while to ascer-
tain whether or not Gray " fell on an age " of dyspepsia, or comfort, or lazi-
ness, or many of the other conditions that have deterred people from producing
work which it is fancied they might have been capable of. Gray did not pro-
duce a great amount ; that is probably true ; but it is unwarranted to ** leap
to a so-called cause " and be satisfied. The fact, however, in the instance
in question, is probably more important than the reason, the finding of which
is a form of amusement.

•,

BREWSTER 207

Here is a good example of irrelevant conclusion. *' The love-dialogues of

Romeo and Juliet," says Lamb in his essay on the tragedies of Shakspere,

** those silver-sweet sounds of lovers' tongues by night ; the more intimate and

sacred sweetness of nuptial colloquy between an Othello or a Posthumus with

their married wives, all those delicacies which are so delightful in the reading,

as when we read of those youthful dalliances in Paradise —

As beseemM
Fair couple linkM in happy nuptial league,
Alone :

by the inherent fault of stage representation, how are these things sullied and
turned from their very nature by being exposed to a large assembly ; when
such speeches as Imogen addresses to her lord, come drawling out of the
mouth of a hired actress, whose courtship, though nominally addressed to the
personated Posthumus, is manifestly aimed at the spectators, who are to judge
of her endearments and her returns of love." If the criticism is at all just,
a matter not at present in point, then the audience and the actors are not, as
Lamb seems to imply, the guilty ones, but the great bard himself who wrote
these scenes with the intention of having people see them and actors repre-
sent them. Lamb's own conclusion is a nan sequitur.

Mr. Robertson {Poe) writes thus : *' It is Mr. Henry James who, in a pas-
sage already quoted from, makes the remark : * With all due respect to the
very original genius of the author of the Tales of Mystery ^ it seems to me
that to take him with more than a certain degree of seriousness is to lack
seriousness oneself. An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primi-
tive stage of reflection.' One cannot guess with any confidence as to the
precise ' degree of seriousness ' which Mr. James would concede ; or how much
seriousness he brings to bear on his own attachments ; or what the stage of
reflection was at which he cultivated an enthusiasm for, say, Th^ophile Gautier.
One therefore hesitates to put one's self in competition with Mr. James in the
matter of seriousness of character." The remark that Mr. James's ** degree
of seriousness " is a vague phrase is a legitimate criticism ; but not so the rest
of the passage. It is irrelevant, an argumentutn ad hominetn^ good enough
for a lawyer scoring points, but really apart from the issue and an obscuring
of it. Mr. James's criticism of Poe is probably not particularly sound, but the
remarks on his liking for Gautier or his seriousness of character have nothing
to do with their soundness. Mr. Robertson is inclined to write criticism as if
he were composing a lawyer's brief, and may occasionally follow the lawyer's
advice to ** take it out of the other fellow."

The foregoing examples illustrate from one point of view the meaning of
the term logic as applied to literary criticism, but of this important side of the
subject no full account has yet been given. Looked at in another way, many
of the improvements that have been made in critical method are really the

208 THE LOGIC OF LITERARY CRITICISM

application of more exact and reasonable logical processes to this interesting
pursuit of establishing opinions. A glance at the history of literary criticism
shows many improvements. To-day, for example, we are inclined to define,
and hence to isolate, from the body of matter which enters into any elaborate
and conscientious critical act, certain processes which lie on the borderland of
the comparative methods that have been described above ; and consequently
we find such types as descriptive criticism, on the one hand, which merely
recounts data and phenomena, and, on the other, collective criticism, which
states as data opinions about literature. Large parts of Pater's criticism approx-
imate the former type ; any statement of common opinion or the growth of a
vogue, as, for example. Sir Sidney Lee*s chapter on " Shakespeare's Posthu-
mous Reputation " (A Life of William Shakespeare) ^ stands for the latter. A
great gain is made, also, when we recognize that certain opinions, of the so-
called impressionistic sort, attempt to be no more than a law unto themselves ;
for thereby we are enabled to recognize the possibility of a divergent type to
which more scientific methods may be applicable.

Or again, the modem study of forms and genres may be regarded as a
clearing of the decks for the action of logic. Comparisons will not be made
between things that are not properly comparable. We compare things with
things of the same class or with the purpose for which they were written, and
can thereby bring the logical processes into exacter limits and to more definite
issues. Our modem calling for totality as opposed to the isolated finding —
what is that but a drift from what has been called the reviewer's fallacy toward
a fairer examination of the phenomena ? The decadence of polemic, too, in
the history of criticism, is simply a gain in the relevancy of judgment. The
attempts to account for literature in terms of contemporary life, and to base
the value of it on human values and interests rather than on a priori and aca-
demic criteria, are discoveries of the highest importance, and are fundamental
to the logic of literary criticism, as to any reasonable logic.

At best, literary criticism remains, and will always remain, a provoking and
inexact science, however entertaining as a pursuit. It is a creative art and has
few bounds but those of personality. About all that a science of criticism can
do is to check up judgment in the making or in the revision, just as the knowl-
edge of rhetoric can do little more than tinker with the common, everyday
act of writing. It is too obvious to need saying that good criticism, like any
other good thing, depends first of all on mental vigor. The theory of the sub-
ject can merely tame and prune the untutored result. That more attention,
however, than has heretofore been given may be properly bestowed on the
broad application of logic to literary criticism, it has been the aim of this
article briefly to indicate.

2IO ART OF THE OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX

to outwit a jealous husband ; for a husband' disguised as a priest to hear his
wife's confession; for poor students to be avenged upon a thieving miller
or an unwilling hostess. Such brevity of time did not permit much shifting
of scenes, nor did a simple plot require it. A house with its immediate sur-
roundings, or a house alone, or even a single room, sufficed for the main
action of the typical fabliau. This concentration of attention upon a cir-
cumscribed space revealed a surprising wealth of detail, which came to be
inserted in the story sometimes because the action required it, sometimes,
doubtless, because of a consciousness of the ease with which an audience
grasps the familiar, or of the pleasure that it takes in it for its own sake. It
is possible to reconstruct an astonishingly complete picture of the thirteenth-
century house and its furnishings, of the customs connected with them, and
of the primitive conditions resulting from the use of a single room for all
domestic purposes. If such pictures are interesting to us, they were ten times
more so to an audience in daily and hourly contact with the reality.

No less was their pleasure in the recognition, in the persons of the
fabliaux, of beings like themselves. A laugh at the expense of a stupid hus-
band gulled by a clever wife is all the louder if the laugher can imagine as
prototypes of the pair his own next-door neighbors ; a sense of superiority to
an acquaintance, if it is unvexed by sympathy, is far more exhilaratingly comic
than the sense of superiority to a mere fictitious person. This sense of supe-
riority was sometimes moral, sometimes intellectual, sometimes both ; for the
persons of the fabliaux were all, judged by absolute standards, evil, and many
of them stupid as well. Sometimes they were of the upper class ; but for the
most part they were mere citizens or peasants. Commonly they were three in
number, — though perhaps with others in the background, — the time-honored
group of wife, lover, and husband. That there were, in the fourteenth cen-
tury, a thousand good wives to one bad one we have the word of Chaucer's
Miller. For the fabliaux the figures must be reversed. There was, indeed, the
heroine of The Pursefull of Sense y who could remain true to a ruined hus-
band. And there was Isabeau, the young and pretty wife of Constant du
Hamel, who rejected priest, provost, and forester, and refused their gifts.
But the prevailing characteristics of the fabliau heroines were faithlessness
and cunning. Three wives found a ring and agreed that it should be hers
who best gulled her husband. One persuaded her lord to drink too deeply,
and dressed him as a monk ; he conceived that God intended him for the
religious life and entered a monastery. The second, sent to fry some eels,
went off with her lover and returned at the proper moment a week later with
the eels just fried. No one would believe the husband's story, and he was
confined as a madman. The third disguised herself as the niece of a friend,
and persuaded her husband to give her away in marriage to her lover. Which
won the ring ? There were many other candidates for that honor. A wife,

HART 211

on her husband's unexpected return, concealed her lover beneath a tub bor-
rowed from a neighbor. When the neighbor demanded its immediate return
and the husband acceded, the wife saved the situation by bribing a passer-by
to shout ** Fire I " A wife, surprised by her husband, concealed her lover
behind the door. ** What would you do," she asked her husband, **if you
found a man in the house ? " " Kill him,*' he answered, drawing his sword.
'* O no you would n't, for I 'd fling a cloak over your head, like this, and he 'd
escape." The lover took the hint.

In the t}T)ical fabliau a priest plays the part of lover. Usually he plays at
the same time the part of victim of the comic intrigue, owing his downfall
more frequently to the wife than to the husband. And if he escapes he has
to thank her cleverness rather than his own. Clearly the jongleurs rated his
intelligence no higher than his morality. The young clerks, on the other
hand, were uniformly clever, uniformly successful in their intrigues. This
was doubtless because they were themselves, as B^dier suggests, often the
authors of the fabliaux. Readers of Chaucer need not be reminded of their
doings in The Reeve s Tale and its Old French prototypes. Jongleurs them-
selves, too, sometimes played the r61e of hero, as in the pleasant story of the
poor minstrel who died and went to hell, played at dice with St. Peter for
the souls of the damned, temporarily entrusted to his keeping, lost them every
one, and was thereupon expelled from hell and welcomed into heaven. If,
then, we are to laugh at priests and women, with clerks and jongleurs, we are
to laugh at the stupidity of husbands. They were the bom dupes of their
wives ; they could be readily persuaded not to believe the evidence of their
senses ; their every indulgence in the luxury of jealousy or suspicion was, by
a kind of poetic justice, severely punished. Ludicrously incredible, with the
exaggeration characteristic of modem American humor, is the story of the
peasant, who, persuaded that he was dead, saw his wife with the priest, and
cried out : ** You rascally priest ! You may well thank God that I am dead ; for,
were I not, I 'd slay you with my club."

It is, then, of type, rather than of individual, that the jongleur makes use
to produce his immediate comic effects. For his purposes these types are re-
vealed clearly enough by actions. He may add, for emphasis, a conventional
epithet or two ; beyond this he seldom goes. He . \as, indeed, an eye for
characteristic attitude ; he adds a charm to his stories by such instantaneous
pictures as thd: of Richeut on her way to mass, with shining red face, in all
the bourgeois dignity of her Sunday best, her new gown, parti-colored cloak,
her train dragging in the dust. But for the most part descriptions are beside
the mark, and the jongleur indulged in them but seldom.

The fabliaux were not psychological studies ; yet, dealing, as they neces-
sarily did, with comic disappointments, comic contrasts between expectation
and fulfilment, between illusion and reality, they had inevitably to emphasize,

212 ART OF THE OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX

though not to study deeply, the elemental passions of love, greed, jealousy,
hatred. It will be already evident that love, love of the baser sort, was the
mainspring of most of the action of the fabliaux. Beside it, in these natural-
istic tales, and of almost equal importance as a moving force, stands an
insatiable hunger, a very replica, doubtless, of the wretched authors* longing
for food, sharpened by their envy of well-fed priests and monks. The jongleurs
very naturally delighted in such wiles as those which won for a poor clerk
roast and cakes and wine, doubly relished because destined for the priest.
They liked, too, to satirize the ecclesiastical greed of gold, and told con atnore
stories like that of the man who escaped punishment for burying his dead
ass in consecrated ground when he made it apparent that the animal had
bequeathed a round sum to the church.

Intrigues, thus set in motion by base love, or by greed of food or of gold,
were sometimes, perhaps in a spirit of parody of romance or pious tale, carried
out by means of supernatural agencies, real or pretended. A magic mantle
revealed the hidden infidelity of the wives of King Arthur's knights. A
peasant after death was miraculously conscious of those about him. A jealous
husband was persuaded that he saw only the apparition of a lover with his
wife, presaging his own death ; a faithless wife that her *' snow-bom " child
had melted in the sun ; a hungry priest that a holy image had deigned to eat
his roast goose.

So far, then, as motives and emotions were important for his purposes the
jongleur traced out and emphasized them. He delighted to contrast passion-
ate jealousy with stupid confidence. He delighted no less to emphasize the
wrath of the disappointed, to dwell upon its outward signs, its dramatic ex-
pression. No more nor less than typical is the psychologizing in The Knight
who confessed his Wife, It was his great love for his lady that led the
knight himself to go for the prior whom she desired to hear her confession.
His thought of her, as he rode, easily became a curiosity to know how perfect
she really was ; and of this curiosity came naturally the plan to act in the
place of the prior as her confessor. When he heard her confession he
** wrinkled his nose in wrath," and wished that sudden death might overtake
her ; he trembled with anger and with hatred of her whom he had loved so
much and prized so highly ; the thought of vengeance alone comforted him ;
when he heard her giving orders as usual he looked at her> shook his head
wrathfully, and threatened to kill her. The variety in methods^is noteworthy,
— epithet, speech, "pantomime,** "physiological psychology.*"^ Nice obser-
vation must have supplied the nose wrinkling and the head shaking in wrath.
And the greater the emphasis of these symptoms, obviously the greater the
comic effect.

No less obvious should now be the fact that it is not primarily the comic
effect of character or of the emotions that interested the jongleurs. Plot,

HART 2 I 3

action, intrigue, these were what they cared for ; the fabliau was always first
of all a story. Normally somewhere near the length of a Maupassant conte,
this story varied from mere anecdote to highly elaborated episode. But with-
out exception it was a single episode, a single adventure. And usually the
three parts, beginning, middle, and end, were clearly articulated. The middle,
the episode itself, consisted sometimes of a single intrigue, the single action
of intriguer versus victim, sometimes of two intrigues, action and reaction,
intriguer versus intriguer, cause and effect. In the story of Gombert the
miller's wife is betrayed by a misplaced cradle ; and in this form it is retold
by Chaucer and by La Fontaine. In the story of The Miller and the Two
Clerks the miller first steals the poor clerks* corn and horse, and thereupon
the cradle is misplaced in the interests of poetic justice. It was this form of
the story that Chaucer's Reeve retold. Involving the conflict of cunning
versus cunning it has manifest advantages over the intriguer-and-victim type.
It arouses more curiosity as to the outcome, seems a fairer fight, and comes
nearer satisfying the human instinct for poetic justice. It is not unlikely that
we have in the story of The Miller and the Two Clerks simply a later form
of the Gombert story, produced by prefixing to the earlier form the intrigue
of the thieving miller. And this may well be a type of fabliau development.
It is thus because the second intrigue once stood alone that it does in general
retain its supremacy, is always conceived as the more important, and is always
the longer and more elaborate of the two. As a result the fabliaux are invari-
ably well-proportioned ; the jongleur never exhausts his powers upon the first
event to treat the second hastily and summarily.^

This greater length of the second event is always due to the presence of
more dialogue and more details of action. It is almost wholly by these means
that the fabliau scenes are elaborated. Only the briefest of the fabliaux are
entirely without conversation ; most of them are one half or more in this
dramatic form. The speeches are short and carry forward the action, con-
veying, at the same time, information in regard to the preliminary situation.
In general they are vigorous, lively, and realistic in effect. They are inter-
spersed with lively and realistic incidents, so that a typically elaborated fabliau
reads like a scene in a farce, with copious stage directions. Here, for example,
is a page from St. Peter and the Minstrel: (They had been throwing dice
for the souls of the damned ; the jongleur had just accused the saint of cheat-
ing and had seized the money from the board) ** St. Peter, without delay,
caught him around the waist and forced him to drop the coins. He, though
terrified at heart, seized and pulled the other's beard. St. Peter tore his clothes
from his back. He never felt greater sorrow than when he saw his own flesh
appear down to his belt. Thus they pulled and tore and beat and pounded
one another. Then the jongleur saw that all his strength was of no avail,
that he was neither so large nor so powerful as his adversary, and that if he

214 ART OF THE OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX

continued the struggle his clothing would be so torn that he could never
wear it more.

" * Sire,* said he, * let us make peace ; we have measured our strength
one against the other ; let us now go on playing in all amity, if you are so
inclined/

** Said St. Peter : * I am much offended at your accusing me of cheating
and at your calling me a rogue.'

" * Sire,' said he, * I spoke a folly which I now repent ; doubt it not. And
you have served me ill as well ; you have torn my clothes, already ragged
enough. Let us cry quits.'

"And St. Peter said, * I agree to it.'

**And they exchanged the kiss of peace."

As for the intrigues themselves, the nature of the comic disappointments
and catastrophes which they effect will already have been sufficiently illus-
trated. For the modern reader their cruelty, their reliance upon pain to
provoke the laugh, is perhaps most striking. Beatings, wounds, physical de-
formity, even blindness, and even death itself may be made sources of
comic effect. Thus three humpbacked minstrels who had mocked a jealous
husband, an ugly cripple like themselves, were concealed in three chests to
save them from his wrath. There, unfortunately, they died of suffocation,
and the wife had now to dispose of the three corpses. She bribed a poor
peasant to fling one into the river, and when he returned for his reward con-
fronted him with the second, pretending that he had not performed his task.
Thus also she disposed of the third. But when the irate peasant, on his third
return from the river, met the husband at his door, he supposed him to be
the same corpse on his way for the third time back to his chest. Whereupon
he carried him, despite cries and struggles, to the middle of the bridge, and,
to make sure of him this time, tied a great stone to his neck and flung him
over. He was a peculiarly jealous and cruel husband and doubtless deserved
his fate. But even in other cases it is possible for the modem reader to ad-
just himself to the fabliau point of view. The best of us at times laugh at
pain, deformity, stupidity, drunkenness, poverty in rags, and even at death.
Taste in the comic varies from age to age, but it depends still more upon
momentary point of view, upon the mood induced by the author's treatment
of his subject, and it is easy to exaggerate the difference between ourselves
and audiences of the thirteenth century.

It is no less easy to exaggerate the contrast of morals and manners of the
society which they seem to reflect with the morals and manners of our own
contemporaries. Certainly the realism of the fabliaux is one of their most
striking characteristics. They give us astonishingly vivid glimpses of bour-
geois or peasant dwellings, of the dress and habits and customs of those who
lived in them. But their purpose was, first, laughter, and truth and vividness

HART 215

only in so far as they might beget laughter. Virtue and intelligence are not
amusing; hence vice and stupidity are the inevitable choice. Comic effect
depends upon the contrast of these with the norm of morality, the norm of
intelligence. Comic tales themselves imply the existence of such norms, imply
that, at least ideally, priests and women were not so vicious and husbands
not so stupid as they were painted. While, then, the realism of the fabliaux
is undoubted, it must be remembered that it was never an end in itself, but
was always in ttie service of comic effect, a limited and irresponsible realism,
never complete or thoroughgoing, with no rights of its own, but only to be
employed or cast aside at will.

The fabliau did not pretend to be a transcript of life ; it made, in fact, no
pretensions whatever ; it was an end in itself, or had, at least, no other end
than to amuse. Composed, in some instances, by clerks, it showed a certain
partiality for them, perhaps ; otherwise it had no friends and no enemies ; it
was neither sympathetic nor satirical. It cannot be conceived as an attack upon
any one rank or class. Those relatively low in rank were, manifestly, the
most convenient victims of intrigues ; and if the vicious person were a priest,
vice could be the more sharply contrasted with standards of virtue ; erotic
adventures still provoke a laugh, irrespective of other sources of comic effect,
— hence, one may conjecture, a good part of the fabliau ** scorn of women."
But priest and peasants, knights and citizens, might often exchange r61es
without affecting the nature of the plot. And tlie fabliau urged no reforms,
defended no causes, attacked no general vices.

To so general a statement there must, of course, be exceptions. The
observation of the jongleurs was too keen, the organic elaboration of the
fabliau required a scrutiny too careful of causes and relations, for them to
remain wholly blind to the moral implications of their plots. And to be
wholly silent in regard to these implications was not the mediaeval way. Of
the people, living among them, and writing for them, the jongleurs delighted
to repeat their proverbs and sententious philosophy. Their tales are strewn,
too, with their own shrewd observations, and sometimes even begin with a
brief moral essay which the action is to illustrate. A kind of poetic justice,
moreover, is the rule : it is always a jealous husband, one who beats his wife,
suspects her continually, or locks her in a tower, who is made the victim of
the intrigue ; it is a listener who suffers through what he hears ; a thieving
miller who is punished in the persons of his wife and daughters, — as the
former tells him. But the fabliau may go even further ; on debatable ground,
and perilously near exemplum or moral tale, it may seem consciously to aim
at satire of general vices. La Bourse pleine de sens exhibits to a ruined man
the contrast of faithless mistress and faithful wife. Another tale illustrates
Covetousness and Envy. St. Martin will grant any wish made by either, the
other to have twice as much. Covetousness insists that Envy begin, whereupon

2i6 ART OF THE OLD FRENCH FABLIAUX

Envy wishes that he himself may lose one eye. La Housse partie exemplifies
filial ingratitude. It concerns three generations, grandfather, father, and son.
The father is about to turn out of the house the grandfather, to whom he
owes all that he has. At first he refuses even necessary clothing and at last
consents to let the old man have only a worn-out horse blanket, for which he
sends the little son. The boy returns with but half the blanket. When his
father scolds him he replies : ** I see that you desire the immediate death of
my grandfather ; I am only trying to help you. As for the other half of the
blanket, it shall not be wasted. I shall save it carefully to give you when you
grow old."

Because, then, of the demands of public presentation upon comic purpose,
the fabliau was forced to nice calculation of effects : to grasp the story as a
whole, seeing the end from the beginning and the relation of part to part ; to
place this story in real and vivid settings ; to begin the study of character and
of mental states and motives, and to make these immediately interesting by
portraying them in terms of concrete narrative ; and to interpret the whole
with a bit of shrewd or whimsically comic moralizing. All the elements of
narration are thus elaborated, and elaborated concretely. Widen and deepen
this elaboration, extend it to deal with serious subject matter, write prose in
place of verse, and the result is the modern short story.

GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH

GOD'S ACRE

J. A. Walz

The English language possesses in a remarkable degree the capacity to
incorporate and naturalize words taken from foreign languages. This phe-
nomenon attracted the attention of foreign scholars long before the rise of
the scientific study of language. Leibnitz, intensely interested in matters
linguistic as in every other sphere of human endeavor, has a characteristic
remark on this point in his Unvorgreifliche Gedanken (ed. by Schmarsow,
Strassburg, 1877, p. 68). In this essay, which was written to point out the
best methods towards the improvement of the German language, he recom-
mends the judicious borrowing of expressive words from other languages,
especially from those closely related to German. For the naturalization of
foreign words, according to Leibnitz, is as useful to a language as the natura-
lization of foreign citizens to a state. *' The English language,*' he continues,
** has adopted everything, and if every language were to demand back its
own, English would fare as ^sop's crow." The Swiss critic Bodmer points
to this quality of the English language as one of special value to the poet.
" English has of old had a strong liking for adopting and retaining the ex-
pressive and significant words of foreign languages " (Critische Schriftefty
J. Stuck, Zurich, 1742, p. 78). Bodmer is here discussing Milton's style
and vocabulary in Paradise Lost ; he is thinking chiefly of the Latinisms in
phrase and construction that give to the language of that poem much of its
singular energy and splendor.

Much study has been given to the different elements of English speech in
the older periods, but the development of the English vocabulary since 1 500
has received comparatively little attention. Modem English possesses a
poetic vocabulary of astonishing variety and richness, a vocabulary which in
many ways differs greatly from prose usage. Neither German nor French
has a similar body of words set aside by the genius of the language for the
exclusive use of the poet. Yet little is known about the origins of this vocab-
ulary. To attempt to trace the ordinary word to its first source would be
a hopeless task, for most words were used long before they appear in litera-
ture. Poetic words, however, were first used by the poets, no matter where
they may have got them, and as by far the greater part of English poetry

since 1500 was written down and has survived to this day, it should be

217

2i8 GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE

possible to trace at least a good part of this vocabulary. A most disappointing
chapter in Mr. Bradley's Making of English is the last one on " Some Makers
of English." We all know that Shakspere is the greatest of English poets ;
most of us would assign to Milton the second place ; both must have had great
influence upon the English language, but more than that we do not learn about
these two ** makers of English.*' Mr. Bradley, indeed, mentions many phrases
and lines found in their writings that have passed into common use or have
become popular quotations, but what words they have actually added to the
stock of English or to the poetic vocabulary does not appear. Only two words
are given as being undoubtedly of Miltonic origin : pandcemonijim and anarch.
It is not Mr. Bradley's fault that the chapter is disappointing. To Milton and
Shakspere applies equally the remark which Mr. Bradley makes about some
of the lesser lights of English literature : " We cannot attempt to give here
any account of their respective contributions [to the English vocabulary], be-
cause the preliminary investigations on which such an account must be based
have not yet been made." Yet there is no better tool for making such ** pre-
liminary investigations" in any modem language than the New English
Dictionary^ whose superiority to Grimm's Deutsches Worterbuch lies chiefly
in the wealth of quotations covering all the periods of English and in the sys-
tematic effort at giving the earliest possible quotation for every word or usage.
Here is indeed a wide field for English scholarship with much virgin soil.

We are not only quite ignorant about the makers of modem English, we
are also very imperfectiy acquainted with the influence of foreign languages
upon modem English. There can be no doubt that German has contributed
fewer words to the modem English vocabulary than any of the other great
literary tongues of Europe. Mr. Bradley mentions "amongst the very few
words that English owes to High German " the names of eight minerals as a
reminder "that it was in Germany that mineralogy first attained the rank of
a science." The list is in no sense intended to be complete. It could easily
be enlarged ; in fact, by the inclusion of technical terms in arts and sciences,
it could be greatly enlarged without impairing the general statement that
English owes comparatively little to High German. There are, however, Ger-
manisms in English speech that do not appear as such at first sight, and that
can be recognized only by a careful comparison of the linguistic usage in the
two languages and by a close study of the literary and cultural relations of
the countries. In the same sense, of course, " Gallicisms " may be pointed out
in current English speech. When a modem writer speaks of the rise of roman-
ticism in the eighteenth century, or the romantic ideas in English literature,
he uses the words in a sense which they first acquired in German, chiefly
through A. W. Schlegel. This is now well-established English usage and
nobody would think of calling it a Germanism, but such it was originally.
Similarly, the Germans in calling a landscape romantisch use the word in a

WALZ 219

sense which they originally got from the English. When Matthew Arnold
speaks of the Philistine middle class of England, or Bernard Shaw of ** the
great Philistine world/' they use Philistine ^ as is well known, in the sense
which the word acquired in Germany during the second half of the eighteenth
century. The title of Shaw's cleverest play, Man and Superman^ owes its
second noun to the German Ubermensch, as Shaw himself explains in First
Aid to Critics. Nietzsche's Ubermensch and Shaw's superman are responsible
for formations like super-farmers ^ super-nation, etc., occasionally met with in
contemporary works of English-speaking reformers and enthusiasts. Shaw
himself is guilty of the jocular forms super-apple and super-horse {The Rev-
olutionist's Handbook), There is apparently nothing German about the word
superman ; it is formed after good English analogy, but the.meaning attached
to it is taken from the German and has no analogy in older English forma-
tions of this kind. Superman is a Germanism even if we admit Shaw's con-
tention that the general conception of Nietzsche's Ubermensch is found in
English before Nietzsche.

Too little attention has been paid by English scholars to this aspect of the
English vocabulary. Investigations of this kind are of great value and interest ;
incidentally they show the folly of drawing a sharp line of demarcation between
linguistic and literary studies. Language appears here both as the handmaid
and as the mistress of thought and literature. We have valuable monographs
on the influence of Christianity upon the vocabulary of the older Germanic
dialects, but the same process of word-translation and adaptation may be found
in modem times as the result of an international exchange of ideas. In the
following discussion the attempt will be made to trace the history of one of
these Germanisms in English speech.

Every one is familiar with Lx)ngfellow's poem bearing the title God's Acre
and beginning with the lines :

I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial ground God's Acre !

It is a common impression that * God's Acre ' is an old English word, the
beauty of which inspired Lx)ngfellow to write the poem. This popular impres-
sion is embodied in a number of handbooks dealing with words, phrases, and
literary curiosities. H. Percy Smith's Glossary of Terms and Phrases (New
York, 1883) gives as etymology of the word the Anglo-Saxon cecer, Latin ager,
implying thereby the great age of the whole phrase. In C. C. Bombaugh's
Gleanings for the Curious (Philadelphia, 1890) we find (p. 633) the quotation
from Lx)ngfellow with the remark : *' This * Saxon phrase ' is not obsolete. It
may be seen, for instance, inscribed over the entrance to a modem cemetery
at Basle — * Gottes Acker' " The remark is taken from Notes and Queries^
as will be seen later. The compiler has no doubt as to the age of the phrase ;

220 GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE

he seems to think that it has become obsolete in English while still living in Ger-
man. W. H. G. Phyfe, in Five Thousand Facts and Fancies (Putnam, 1901),
explains * God's Acre ' as an ancient Saxon phrase, meaning a churchyard or
cemetery. For this original bit of definition the editor is indebted to Long-
fellow. But even so serious a student of the English vocabulary as Archbishop
Trench is of the same opinion. He says (On the Study of Words, London,
1882, p. 69; 1st ed., 1851): "*Godsacre,' or *Godsfield,' is the German
name for a burial-ground, and once was our own, though we unfortunately
have nearly, if not quite, let it go. . . . Many will not need to be reminded
how fine a poem in Longfellow's hands unfolds itself out of this word."

Persons familiar with the local history of the city of Cambridge will recall
that the old burial place at the comer of Massachusetts Avenue (formerly North
Avenue) and Garden Street was sometimes referred to as God's Acre. There
is still a lingering tradition to that effect ; it appears crystallized in guidebooks
and descriptions of Cambridge. E. M. Bacon's Walks and Rides in the
Country round about Boston (Boston, 1898) refers to the oldest burial ground
in Cambridge as **this ancient * God^s Acre, as it once was called, south of
the Common " (p. 248). The Historical Guide to Cambridge, published by
the Daughters of the American Revolution (Cambridge, 1907), says (p. 134) :
" Right in the heart of old Cambridge, opposite the common, is the small but
historically interesting God's Acre." At the celebration of the fiftieth anniver-
sary of Cambridge as a city, in 1896, John Fiske delivered an oration in which
he sketched the history of Cambridge. Says he : '* The common began, as
now, hard by Grod's Acre, the venerable burying-ground " (Cambridge Fifty
Years a City l8^6-l8g6, ed. by W. G. Dixon, p. 34) ; a little later occurs the
passage : "by this route [i.e., Boylston Street] the distance [to Boston] was
eight miles, as we still read upon the ancient mile-stone in God's Acre." ' God's
Acre ' is to the learned historian of New England a current, though ancient,
name of the old Cambridge burial ground. In the same anniversary year
A. Gilman edited a collection of essays by various authors, with the title The
Cambridge of l8g6. On page 5 we read : ** The space between the sites of
Church and Garden Streets was inclosed as a grave-yard or God's Acre in
1636 " ; p. 134 : ** This ' God's Acre," as it is often called, contains the dust
of many of the most eminent persons in Massachusetts." T. C. Amory, in his
Old Cambridge and New (Boston, 1871), uses the same name: *' Not far
away [i.e., from the Washington Elm] is Christ Church. ... By its side
stretches God's Acre, where rest from their labors the dead generation " (p. 22).
See also The Soldiers' Monument in Cambridge, Cambridge, 1870, p. 82.
Palfrey, in his History of New England (Boston, i860), has a footnote (Vol. II,
p. 534) on the burial place of Henry Dunster, the first president of Harvard
College : *' His grave, in the old ' God's Acre,' near the halls of Harvard Col-
lege, was opened July ist, 1846." There is, to my knowledge, no other burial

WALZ 221

place in New England that was known as ' God's Acre,' but the phrase is occa-
sionally ipentioned in town histories as having been used in olden times. So
in the History of Haverhill 1640-1860, by G. W. Chase (Haverhill, 1861) :
'* At the November meeting (1660), it was ordered that the land * behind the
meeting house should be reserved for a burial ground.* This is the first men-
tion we find in relation to a burial ground, but as the old English custom was
to appropriate a spot near the church for that purpose, which they called * God's
Acre,' we presume that from the first settlement, the dead had been buried near
the meeting house " (p. 91). See F. Howland, History of the Town of Aciish-
net, Bristol Co.y Mass. (New Bedford, Mass., 1907), p. 238.

* Grod's Acre ' is not an ancient Saxon phrase. It is not found in any Anglo-
Saxon dictionary, glossary, or text. It is a very recent adaptation from the
German, as the New English Dictionary (Vol. I, 1888, s.v. * acre ') first
pointed out definitely. Its first occurrence known to me is in Camden's Re-
mains Concerning Britain ^ London, 1605, Epitaphs^ P- 29 : *' I could here
also call to your remembrance how the place of buriall was called by S. Paul
Seminatio in the respect of the assured hope of resurrection, of the Greekes
Caemiterion as a sleeping place until the resurrection, and of the Hebrews
The House of the Living in the same respect, as the Germaines call Church-
yardes untill this day Gods aker or God's fields (See Notes and Queries,
6th series, Vol. II, p. 173, 1880.) The next quotation in point of time, the
first given in the New English Dictionary (s.v. * God's acre '), is from the Itin-
erary of Fynes Moryson, 16 17. Moryson spent considerable time in Germany
between 1591 and 1597. His observations on German life and manners are
of great interest, though they seem to have received little attention from German
scholars. He makes the following entry about the cemetery at Leipzig: *'Out
of this Cit}' they have (as many cities in Germany have) a beautiful place to
bury their dead, called Gods-aker, vulgarly Gotts-aker, where the chief citizens
buy places of buriall, proper to their families round about the Cloisters, and
the common sort are buried in the midst, not covered with any building"
(Part I, p. 7). Moryson does not hesitate to repeat an interesting observation.
In Part III, Book 2, p. 68, he again refers to this German custom : " I have
seen in Germany some fields without the Cities, compassed with faire square
walls of stone, wherein Citizens were buried. Of these the fairest is at Leipzig,
the walles whereof are built with arched Cloysters, under which the chiefe
Cittizens are buried by families, the common sort only lying in the open part
of the field. . . . This place is called Gotts aker, that is, that Aker or field
of God." ^ The second example quoted in the New English Dictionary is
from Trapp's Commentary on John, xi, 11 (1646) : "The Greeks call their
Church-yards dormitoryes, sleeping-places. The Germans call them God's

* A third reference to the word may be found in that part of Moryson*s Itinerary which was
published by Charles Hughes (London, 1893) under the title Shakespeare s Europe, p. 333.

222 GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE

acre." Then follows the quotation from Lx)ngfellow's poem, which was pub-
lished in 1841.^ Other passages, however, may be found. Edward Browne,
the son of the celebrated author of Religio Medici^ gives the German phrase
without a translation in his Account of Several Travels through a Great Part
of Germany (London, 1677). In speaking of Leipzig he says (p. JJ) : "The
Church of St. Nicholas is well adorned, and hath the name to be the fairest
within side of any Lutheran Church in Germany ; they have also a remarkable
burial-place or Godts aker^ walled about, and cloystered near the Wall, wherein
the better sort are buried, as the rest in the middle and open part.'* We
find the phrase again in a work entitled 'NexpoKijOeia or the Art of Embalm-
ing (London, 1705), by Thomas Greenhill, an English surgeon. Greenhill is
considering the purpose of burial (p. 17) : '* But the fifth Cause and ultimate
End of Burial is in order to a future Resurrection, and as B. Gerhard asserts,
agreeable to that Comparison of Christ and St. Paul, his Apostle, John xii,
24, I Corinthians xv, 37, 38. That Bodies are piously to be laid up in the
Earth like to Com sowed, to confirm the assured Hope of the Resurrection,
and therefore the place of Burial was called by St. Paul Seminatio, as others
term it Templi HortuSy the Churches Orchard or Garden. By the Greeks it
was called Koifirjri^pioPy Dormitorium, a Sleeping Place. By the Hebrews,
Beth-Chajim, i.e. Domus Viventium, the House of the Living in the same
respect as the Germans call Church-yards, Gotsacker, i.e. Dei Ager, aut
Fundus, God's Field, in which the Bodies of the Pious are sowed like to
Grain or Com, in expectation of a future Harvest." The last illustration of
the use of God's acre in English before the publication of Longfellow's poem
I take from the first edition of John Murray's Handbook for Travellers (A
Hand-Book for Travellers on the Continent ^ being a Guide through Holland^
Belgium^ Prussia and Northern Germany, London 1836). Before mapping
out the itineraries Murray gives several pages of general information about
Germany. There is a special section on '* German Burial-grounds " in which
we read (p. 192): "One of the peculiarities which distinguish Germany from
England is the different light in which the abodes of the dead are regarded
by the living. Before a traveller completes his survey of a German town, it
will be not unprofitable or uninteresting to visit the public burial-ground —
the * court of peace,' the * place of rest,' or * God's Acre,' to give the German
names literally translated." The statement is repeated, with the omission
of "place of rest," in all the later editions of the HandBook^ including the
nineteenth, of 1877.

All these passages, written as they are by different men and extending
over a period of more than two hundred years, agree in one point : * God's
Acre ' is not an English phrase, but a translation or adaptation of the Grerman

1 The metaphorical use of ' God's Acre * quoted from R. Steele, Husbandman* s Callings 1672,
does not belong here.

WALZ 223

Gottesacker, Now in 1841 Lx)ngfellow calls it **an ancient Saxon phrase."
Where did he get the phrase ? The Century Dictionary quotes a passage
from Hyperioft (Book II, chap, ix), which gives a clear and definite answer :
"A flight of stone steps leads from the street to the green terrace or platform
on which the church stands, and which in ancient times was the churchyard,
or, as the Germans more devoutly say, God's-acre."

Longfellow had heard the phrase on his travels in Germany, he had read
it in German books ; its beauty and suggestiveness appealed to him as it had
appealed to English writers and travelers before him. He remains under the
spell of that phrase until he has written his poem. But he evidendy believed
that the word went back to the time when the Germanic ancestors of the
English people were still on the Continent, hence he called it an ancient
Saxon phrase. The assumption that Longfellow used Saxon in the sense of
German has no basis in English usage.

Goethe attributes to the poet the power to compel his readers to believe what
is most unbelievable, while under the spell of his genius. Longfellow's poem
has made people believe that there was such a phrase as * God's Acre ' in early
English ; it has made the people of Cambridge, including learned historians,
believe that their oldest burial-ground was at one time actually called * God's
Acre.' The latter process, a sort of modem myth formation, is not hard to
understand. Given, on the one hand, the poet's ** ancient Saxon phrase" for
the burial-ground, on the other hand, the historical old burial-ground with its
sacred memories ; the connection between the two was readily established in
the minds of people fond of poetry, especially sentimental poetry, and imbued
with a profound reverence for the past, though not professional philologists.
I do not know who first called the old burial-ground in Cambridge * God's
Acre,' my earliest reference is Palfrey's History of New England, i860, but
the name cannot have been applied to it before 1841. There is not a scrap
of evidence in the early records or town histories that the old Cambridge
burying ground or any other burying ground in New England was ever called
' God's Acre ' before the publication of Longfellow's poem, or that the phrase
was at all known.

There is a very instructive discussion of the word in the London Notes and
Queries, that unique meeting place of British ignorance and scholarship. The
first inquirer, accepting the word as old, asks : *' Was not God's Acre applied
to Christian cemeteries before sepulture was admitted in churches or church-
yards.^" (ist series. Vol. II, p. 56, 1851.) Another, after quoting Longfellow's
lines, very pertinently asks : " What is the Saxon phrase alluded to ? " (Vol. Ill,
p. 284.) The query is answered on page 380 of the same volume : '* By a
* Saxon phrase ' Longfellow undoubtedly meant German. In Germany Gottes-
Acker is a name for churchyard." Another contributor, proceeding on the
assumption that the phrase is old English, explains it by references to

224 GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE

I Corinthians xv, 38 ; Matthew xiii, 39 ; Rev. xiv, 15. In Vol. IX, p. 492,
W. S. Simpson informs us that the phrase is not obsolete, at least not in German,
for he has seen the name Gottesacker over the entrance to a modem cemetery
in Basel. In the tenth volume of the second series (i860) the phrase turns
up again (p. 387) : " Can you, or one of your correspondents, inform me by
whom the term * God's Acre ' as applied to a churchyard was first used in
English literature 1 It appears in the writings of Longfellow who seems to
have adopted it from the German ; but I have some doubts whether it had
not been previously used by one of our early writers — George Herbert, for
instance ? '* No reply was received. In 1 875 a new discussion began (Sth series.
Vol. IV, p. 406). J. Dixon writes : " Of late years this term has with senti-
mental writers become a favorite substitute for churchyard or burial-ground,
and they fancy it is a translation of the German Gottes-Acker, It is nothing
of the kind ; acker means not an acre, but any portion of land under tillage.
I fancy Longfellow is responsible for popularizing this mistake. . . . Instead of
being poetical, * God's Acre ' seems to me prosaic and commonplace. The
German term * God's field ' is poetical. It suggests the harvest at the end of
the world, and the reapers, the angels ; all this has been well set forth by
Longfellow ; but God's acre reminds one of a land-surveyor and his chain."
No less than five correspondents call Mr. Dixon to account on page 495 of
the same volume. They find fault, partly with his German, partly with his
reasoning. It is pointed out by one that Longfellow's * God's Acre ' is not a
mistranslation of the German word ; by another that * God's Acre ' is not at all
a translation of Gottes-Acker^ but the identical phrase in its English form ; a
third points out the difference between the meaning of A. S. ^^^rand modem
English acre and maintains that ' God's Acre ' has exactly the meaning of the
German Gottes-Acker^ ** with which it is cognate, though most probably not
derived from it." The kernel of the discussion is brought out by F. Chance
in Vol. V, p. 33 (1876) : **The great point to be settled is . . . whether * God's
acre ' is really a translation of Gottes-Acker ox merely an old English expression
revived. Can any one tell us whether or where it is to be found before the
time of Longfellow } If it is an old English expression revived, nothing can
be said against it further than that the revival is not likely to meet with general
acceptance. But if it is a translation of Gottes-Acker^ then I think Mr. Dixon
is perfectly right, and that it is a mistranslation ; and I cannot conceive any
one who is at all familiar with German defending it. An expression cannot
be said to be adequately translated when the idea conveyed by the translation
is entirely different from that conveyed by the original. To the ordinary Ger-
man mind the word Acker conveys no, or but a very slight, idea of measure-
ment, to the ordinary English mind the word acre conveys no other idea than
that of measurement. ... It is clear, therefore, that Gottes-Acker is, to use
a mild expression, altogether inadequately rendered by * God's acre.' * Acre '

WALZ 225

may once have had the meaning that Acker has now, but it has lost that
meaning, and it is useless to expect that it will ever regain it/* On the same
page Mr. Dixon writes again : " What I meant, and still mean, is this, that at
the present day the word -^^^^r suggests to a German a special sort of land —
plough land, and the word acre suggests to an Englishman a definite quantity
of any sort of land, and therefore, that the two words are not the equivalents
of each other/* The discussion in Notes and Queries is brought to a close in
the second volume of the sixth series (1880) on page 173, where a correspond-
ent cites the passage, quoted above, from Camden's Remains Concerning
Britain as the earliest example of the use of the phrase in English.

Whenever the philologist pits himself against the poet he is bound to lose,
though he have analogy, etymology, and usage on his side. It is true that
*' acre ** in nineteenth-century English is used exclusively as a measure ; genera-
tions ago it ceased to have the meaning of field, as a look at the New English
Dictionary tells us ; yet Longfellow's adaptation of the German word became a
permanent part of the modem English vocabulary, especially the poetic vo-
cabulary. Without knowing it, yes, without intending it, Longfellow added a
beautiful word to the stock of English. Its adoption into the language was
doubtless greatly favored by the general misunderstanding which saw in it a
revival of an old English phrase.

The newness of the word in English is also borne out by the fact that ' God's
Acre * is not recorded in any English dictionary u^til very recent times. Neither
is it found in the English Dialect Dictionary, It would be vain to look for it
in the dictionaries of Bailey, Johnson, or in any dictionary published before
the second half of the nineteenth century. It is not found in German-English
or English-German dictionaries before that time, though they usually give
Gottesacker as a translation of churchyard. This we find as early as ^1617 in
John Minsheu's Guide into Tongues. So far as I am aware, * God*s Acre * i6
first recorded as an English expression in The Encyclopaedic Dictionary y 1 884,
and in Stormonth's Dictionary of the English Language^ New York, 1885.

* God's Acre ' seems to have passed into general use, in prose and poetry,
not many years after the publication of Longfellow's poem. In 1858 Elizabeth
Stone published a book on the funeral rites and ceremonies among different
nations, to which she gave the title * God's Acre.' The usual reference to the
great age and beauty of the term we find on page 87. God^s Acre Beautiful or
the Cemeteries of the Future is the title of a pamphlet published in 1880
(London) by W. Robinson. Quotations from works of the last fifty years are
found in the Century Dictionary y the New English Dictionary ^ and J. W.
Dixon's Dictionary of Idiomatic English Phrases (London and New York,
1891). In Eugene Field's poem **The Singing in God's Acre" {Second Book
of Verse y 1893) the phrase appears not as a Germanism nor as an ancient
Saxon phrase, but simply as beautiful English.

226 GERMANISMS IN ENGLISH SPEECH: GOD'S ACRE

It is interesting to note that the German Gottesacker is of comparatively
recent origin. It is first recorded in Maaler's Die Teiltsch Spraachy 1561.
It was quite generally used in the sixteenth century (cf . Kluge, Etymologisches
Worterbuch, 7th ed.), but it has not yet been found in any work before the
sixteenth century. Weigand's Deutsches Wdrterbuchy 5th ed., quotes from
Luther's Commentary ^ 1544: **wir Deudschen von alters solche Begrebnis
nennen Gottesacker." Luther evidendy looked upon the word as old.

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY

K. G. T. Webster

If one can only read the metrical romances of the twelfth century unro-
mantically, and consider these magnificent productions of an exuberant period
from a strictly common-sense point of view, one may gain a tolerably definite
notion of a genuine old-fashioned tournament in the days when chivalry
was in its youthful prime. To be sure, since the writings of Niedner, ^
Schultz,^ and Jusserand ^ upon this topic, and particularly since Meyer's edi-
tion of Guillaume le Mar^chal,^ the popular conception of an early mediaeval
tournament has been wholesomely modified ; yet it may not be uninteresting
to see what of unpoetic truth can, in corroboration of the remarks of these
scholars, be extracted from one or two of the purely poetic accounts.^ Our
Philistine eye may stop upon a material detail or two as yet unnoticed.

On the real reasons for which tourneys were held we do not get much light
from our poets — nor do we need it. We are not obliged to believe that they
were usually called in order to select a mate for the lone princess,^ or for
the ladies en massed or to toll back a lost and regretted hero.® The Lanzelet^

1 Dcu deutsche Toumiery Berlin, 1881. * Das hdfische Leben^ Leipzig, 1889, Vol. II, ch. ii.

• Les Sports etjeux cTExercice dans Pancienne France ^ Paris, 1901.

^ Paris, 1891. Valuable Introduction in Vol. III. The poem was written about 1225, but is
authentic twelfth-century matter.

• The romances principally utilized are these: Chretien's works (1160-1180), ed. Foerster,
especially Erecy 2128 ff., the tourney of Tenebroc; Cligis^ the Four Days' Tourney, 4629 ff. ;
and CAarretUy 5379 ff., the Tourney of Pomelegloi ; Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's LanteUt (about 1 193,
but really an accurate reflection of a French version of about 1 1 50), ed. K. A. Hahn, Frankfort,
1845 > ^^ great jousts at Djofl£, 2595 ff. ; Hue de Roteland's Ipomedon (French version written in
England about 1185), ed. Kolbing, Breslau, 1889, the Three Days' Tourney, 3129 ff. ; and Parthe-
nopeus (before 1188), ed. Crapelet, Paris, 1834, 6547 ff. Miss Jessie L. Weston in her booklet,
TThe TTiree Days' Toumameniy London, 1902, has pointed out that several of these tournaments
are to some extent dependent on a common source. That is, however, not a matter which in-
validates the evidence of the poems as we employ them. For instance, we make no use of the
most striking detail which any of them have in common — the different colors in which the
hero appears on three successive days. That is not a matter of » >» poetic truth. On the relation
of the Ipomedon and Parthenopeus tourneys — a matter which would bear investigation — Miss
Weston says nothing.

^ Parthenopeusy Ipomedony Cligisy and others. Why so many married men and apparently
ineligible persons could take part in these contests for the princess is fortunately explained
in Parthenopeus ; the former would hand the princess over to some friend (7175) ; a pagan, if
he won, would consent to receive baptism (7165). ^ Charrette, 5379 ff.

• Charrette, Cf. W. H. Schofield, Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literaturey
IV, 112, n. I.

227

228 THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY

indeed, makes the occasion sufficiendy attractive for the manly man without any
of this. ** At these jousts," declares the messenger, " are to be won fame and
honor ; there one can thrust and slash at will ; all the celebrities will partici-
pate ; and there one can meet distinguished knights and ladies. To stay away
were a disgrace. All that can delight the knightly soul is there to be had :
fighting, horse-racing, jumping, running, fencing, wrestling, play at tables
and at bowls, the music of the rote, the fiddle, and the harp ; and besides these
an opportunity of buying things from all over the world." But a thirst for glory
and for entertainment was not all that led these heroes to a tourney. Even
in the refined Parthenopeus we observe that knights come sometimes for gain.^
Indeed, it appears that the handsome and poor — yet withal so well attended
— Gaudins had to make his living, as did William Marshall,^ by following
tourneys.^ And an acquisitive champion might not find the beautiful lady too
great an encumbrance upon the broad lands that were invariably to be won
with her.

The tourney, once decided upon, was proclaimed by messengers sent
far and wide.* One of these described in the Lanzelet^ was a handsome
youth in white clothes, with a scarlet mantle, white gloves, and a new hat.
A good while had to be allowed for the news to get about and for the par-
ticipants to gather ; this period may vary from a few weeks to something
like a year.®

Although the preparations for such an event must have been extensive and
difficult, our poets are quite properly not often concerned with the housing
and feeding of the thousands of lusty warriors, with their still more numerous
retinue and horses. In Parthenopeus^ we find the clearest account of how
this was done. Here an old expert has charge ; the wise Emols ^ is just the
sort of man who to-day is indispensable for managing a ball or a charity fair ;
and his arrangements are in all likelihood those made in most cases — but
not related. " You must order all the merchants in your lands to come with
whatever they have to sell, and hold zfoire in this meadow for the space of
fifteen days. Guarantee them safe passage, and relieve them of customs dues.
They will bring horses and new arms, fine shields and trappings — in fact,
whatever a knight can want. Let them make a fine large town with their tents,
booths, and pavilions. Then have the tourney begin on the Monday® after
the fair ; and have some of the visitors lodge in our city of Chief d*Oire, the
rest in the merchants* booths." Of course Emols contemplates nothing less
than one of those great mediaeval fairs, such as for a few weeks made at

1 Contrast 11. 6614 and 8206. Cf. 8668. ^ See Meyer's remarks, Vol. Ill, p. xli.

' Contrast 11. 7770 and 7829. * Cf. Niedner, p. 72. * L. 2595.

® Cliges^ 4598; Lanzelet^ 2667 ; Ipomedon^ 2566; Parthenopeus^ 6547. "^ LI. 647 5 fF.

^ In Tpotnedon King Meleager is a similar, but less active director.
• Monday is the usual day to begin on — at least in the German accounts ; see Niedner,

P-73-

WEBSTER 229

Winchester another Winchester, and first gave Smithfield fame.^ So it is
done ; and thus a contestant can reserve accommodations beforehand, in a
quite modem fashion, and on arriving find comfortable quarters and good
service. The prudent Gaudins — who is almost a " professional ** — has se-
cured a maison, which he invites the less experienced Parthenopeus to share
with him.2 That some such provision for sustaining the multitude was made
at the Djofld tournament in the Lanselet we can gather from the allusion given
above to the opportunity for shopping which was to be found there. In Iponte-
don^ is only the briefest statement " that the counts and barons spread their
tents and pavilions and made shelters and lodges to attract meat and pro-
visions.*' ^ Yet it is remarkable on what slender rations these men perform
their feats. Their superhuman exertions last from sunrise to sunset; and
the only breakfast and luncheon noticed were enjoyed in one day by
Lanzelet. Chretien makes no mention of such vulgar affairs. He deigns,
however, to speak of lodgings. Cligfes during the Four Days' Tourney, held
between Oxford and Wallingf ord, — on which occasion the two towns sheltered
all the company,^ — sojourned in Wallingford. Lancelot at the Pomelegloi
jousts, where the great part of the participants had to remain without the two
castles in temporary shelters, took for good reasons an obscure booth, where he
fared not so well as Gaudins, for the bed was wretched.® Here Chretien speaks
of the custom which the knights had of putting their shield or cognizance at the
door, which custom in this instance gives rise to the most realistic episode in
his works, — and one of the most charming, — that of the inquisitive little
gamester-herald who disturbed the hero's rest.*^ In Erec one side appears to
be within, the other without the town of Tenebroc.® Lanzelet, in the Middle
High German poem, sends a page ahead, who picks a good lodging within
the town ; ® but King Lot and King Arthur and myriads more lay without, in
rich pavilions ^^ — and doubtless such booths as have been mentioned. In the
Ipomedon one side occupied the city of Candres, the other the eaves of the
wood which stretched for two leagues along the tourney meadow — ten thou-
sand tents there must have been.^^ King Meleager pitched his glorious pavilion
under the towers of Candres, and dug fosses about it — doubtless for defense
and not for drainage ; and in the Conte del Graal we find one of the parties
to a tourney occupying a strong earthwork without the other's castle.^

* See T; Hudson Turner's Domestic Architecture in the Middle Ages^ I, 116.

2 LI. 7837 ff. «L.33i9-

^ LI. 3099 and 3146. Hearing mass is more important than breaking one's fast {Parthe-
nopeus^ 7865 and 8288). However, in Cligh we are expressly told that there was no service
(1-4763). Supper — or dinner — is presumably taken always after the day's work {fpomedony
4291, 5313 ; Parthenopeus^ 8262). * L. 4579. • L. 5546.

^ So Clig^s exposed his various coats. L. 4721, etc. ^ Cf. 11. 213 1, 2137, 2233 f.

^ ' L. 2845. ^^ ^^is occasion Lanzelet is accompanied by a lady — one of the numerous loves
^of this merry, unsophisticated pre- Chretien Lancelot.
\ w U. 2818 flF. " L. 3388. Cf. 3291, 3149 f. " L. 13659.

230 THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY

The site of a tournament is always a great meadow or similar level
place ; ^ and the ** field of play " is somewhat indefinite. There is yet little
conception of lists or precise boundaries.^ From the exhibition joust which
usually opened the tourney * to the sunset horn * which closed it, immunity
from attack was only to be found in numbers or in distance ; one sought the
serried ranks of one's supporters, or rode far off to a quiet spot.^ Only in
the Lanzelet do we find mention of something which may be an arranged
safe retreat — the lezze into which Lanzelet disappeared when King Arthur
and his band spurred to Erec's rescue.^ Spectators are as yet not a conspicu-
ous feature at a tourney : they are not mentioned in Erec^ Cligks^ or the
Lanzelet ; in Ipomedon and Parthenopeus they are a mere handful of persons
in a tower."^ But in the Charrette we find a sort of grand-stand, a long struc-
ture — with windows — to which one ascended by steps.® Here sat the queen
and her ladies, together with the prisoners,^ the Crusaders — who were not
supposed to tilt — and an occasional non-combatant, such as Gawain happened
then to be, closely observing all that passed, and chattering about the con-
testants and their coats.^^ Even here lists are not mentioned, but the field
seems relatively restricted.^^

There would have been little sport in these great tourneys if the sides were
too uneven. In the Parthenopeus an equitable division is made, and the
emperor of Germany is chosen to lead one side, the king of France the other.
But to put all the Christians in one party and all the^ps^gans in- the other —
the natural procedure — would be war and not toume)dng, observed the sage
Emols ; ^ and so the infidel monarchs of Spain, Africa, and Asia, who had

flocked to win the lovely Melior, are apportioned.^ In Erec, the knights of the

•

^ That is, reasonably level. Twice Ipomedon is said to come up from a val or vcUUe (U. 4954
and 5837).

* In William Marshall this is most evident. There the tourney ranges over plains, vine-
yards, swamps, and woods, and through inhabited towns. Knights take shelter in farms or in
deserted towers, where they stand, as it were, little sieges. See 11. 4834, 2822, 3996, 3933 ; Meyer's
ed., Ill, p. xxxviii; and Jusserand*s JUs Sports ^ p. 60. In IVilliam Marshall lists are
mentioned three or four times (e.g., 11. 1309, 5529), and they appear to mark a sort of fenced
neutral ground at each end of the field proper. Cf . Meyer and Jusserand, above. Moreover, see
Meyer, III, 21, n. 2, for a sort of retreat, called the recet, Cf. note 7 below. • See below.

* Parthenopeus^ 8237. Cf. 8983. In the Lanzelet (3433) the third day's tourney ends before
night. * Lanzelet y 2^2y ; Parthenopeus^ 8174.

* Lanzelet^ 301 1. Cf. Parzivaly I, § 40, 1. 25, and the note in £. Martin's ed., Halle, 1900,
II, 52. Cf. Niedner, p. 73, and note 2, above.

^ However, the author of Parthenopeus (8008) lets us know that ladies haunted tourneys
to show ofif their fine clothes. Of course outside of our romances there is plenty of evidence
for spectator^. * U. 5601, 5926, 5936. • Tourney prisoners, or others ? ^° LI. 5790 ff., 5973.

1^ Lancelot is always under observation ; the queen's messenger can always get to him —
yet she takes a horse to do so. LI. 5666, 5856, 5905. ^* L. 7179.

*• As Melior enumerates the great chiefs, any one of whom may — alas — become her hus-
band, she often characterizes them and their people. Of the English king she remarks : ** H<
cannot live without fighting. His land is so greedy that he cannot hold it without contention.

WEBSTER 231

Round Table, tourneying against each other, are divided — we must suppose,
evenly.^ Such care is not found in any other of this little set of romances ; a
knight took sides according to his fancy. In Ipomedon a late comer, hearing
that one side is being worsted, throws in his lot with them.^ Lanzelet, wishing
to prove himself against King Arthur's famous knights, sides against them ;
as does Clig^s. The disguised Ipomedon, in order the more to distinguish
himself, takes first one side and then the other .^ Nothing seems to dictate
Lancelot's choice in the Charrette, Each side has a titular leader, as we have
seen was the case in Parthenopeus, In Erec Gawain leads one side, Melis
and Meliadoc the other ; in the Lanzelet it is ** King Lot vs. King Gumemanz " ;
in the Charrette ** the Lady of Noauz vs. the Lady of Pomelegloi " ; in Cligh
we presumably have the Round Table divided as in Erec, but since nothing is
said about this, the tourney here may have been styled ** Oxford vs. Walling-
ford ** or " The Round Table vs. All Comers." In Ipomedon the leaders are
not emphasized. Indeed, after a tourney begins, we hear as a rule little of
captains ; the party which lodges within the town is spoken of simply as the
*' Ins," and that which tents outside as the " Outs." ^

The general course of one of these tournaments was this. The knights,
singly or in troops, came riding forth upon the plain soon after sunrise ^ —
for there were yet no clocks to keep people abed. And a fine sight they must
have made on the green expanse, these plumps of slender,^ upright ^ spears,
gaily painted^ and tipped with bright steel and fluttering banners and
pennons,® or with some lady's sleeve or wimple.^^ The undersized and agile
horses ^ had no heavy plate-armour to carry; but their riders wore the relatively

He will bring good knights, strong, agile, quick, hardy, courageous, prudent ; in battle formi-
dable and foolhardy. But they drink overmuch" — and they still do. L. 7269. Later on we
learn that the Germans cannot bear being made fun of — and they still cannot. L. 8754.
1 L. 2134. 2 L. 5606.

• First the Outer side (11. 3571 if.) ; next the Inner (11. 4537, 4713) ; on the third day the Inner
(U. 5606 flF.).

• Ipomedotty 4006, 4013, 4098, 4713 ; Parthenopeus^ 7875, 7226, 8139; Erec^ 2237.

• Ipomedon^ 3572, 4541 ; Lanzelet, 3080 ff.

^ On the lance used see Jusserand, Les Sports, p. 54. When a lance is spoken of as being
short and thick and strong, as in Cligis, 4845, and Parthenopeus, 8066, that does not mean that
the butt or truncheon was enlarged, as in the lances of the fifteenth century ; the expressions
are relative.

7 They did not lower their points till it was necessary to do so. Parthenopeus, 7900, 8047,
8058, 8210, 8798 ; Ipomedon, 3641, 3944. * Erec, 2143.

• Erec, 2138 ; Parthenopeus, 6874, 8337 ; Ipomedon, 3580, 5002 ; Lanzelet, 2869. See Hewitt's
Ancient Armour, I, 95, 165 f. ^^ Ipomedon, 3172. Ladies made banners also (1. 341 1).

" There is no necessity to assume that in those days the war-horse was of the unwieldy
Flemish stock that may later have been bred to carry the overweighted warriors. It is much
more natural to suppose that he was a stocky native — like one of our Western " ponies " — or
a wiry and fleet Arab. Cf. Cligh, 4915 ; Ipomedon, 3897. On the ground of analogy a twelfth-
century horse should have been such. The horses themselves wore no armour ; see Hewitt's
Ancient Armour and Weapons in Europe, I, 169.

232 THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY

light and handy ^ chain hauberk, that is — or should be — associated with all the
heroes of the early and fresh romances, of the chansons de geste, of the first
three and greatest Crusades. These hauberks had been carefully rolled and
rocked in barrels of sand the night before to clean them from the insidious
rust.* On their heads were their mail hoods,^ covered by the Norman helm,
conical or round, with its invaluable nasal.'* Hung by the guige about their
necks and by the enarmes about their forearms was the long kite-shaped or
the shorter triangular shield,^ conspicuously retinctured for the occasion.^
The opposing sides range themselves some distance apart, and the two dis-
tinguished knights who are to have the honor of the first joust complete their
bout before all these spectators,^ and then the m^l^e begins. This is a free
fight between individuals or between small troops, the chiefs of which first
meet just as the champions have done, and which then rush together pell-
mell. The frequency with which an individual thus gives a dare between
lines of active spectators, the rush of acceptance, the quick contest, and the
subsequent capture of one or the other of the fighters, who may yet be so
fortunate as to be recaptured by his comrades, all make our boys* game
of prisoners* base an amazingly close counterpart of mediaeval tourneys, —
and of mediaeval war,® — of which, indeed, it may be a descendant. The ex-
tended field and the numbers engaged in these early tourneys must have
allowed romantic situations, such as could not occur in the later lists. Thus
Parthenopeus and the Sultan meet amain ; the Sultan is overthrown, and a
thousand spur to his rescue. Parthenopeus, seeing that he cannot return,
presses forward through them all, felling one, and rides far beyond to the tower
which marks the enemy*s headquarters, and in a window of which sits the lovely
Melior, his lost love. In the presence of almost certain death Parthenopeus
impulsively reaches up to her his lance with its gonfalon, and she involuntarily
takes them. The enemy close in ; Parthenopeus is struck by three lances, but
manages to get rid of these assailants with his sword, and hastens again into
the hostile ranks. With Gaudins's help he cuts his way back to safety.®

In these present days of the overregulation of sport it is a relief to find a
pastime as free from rules as is the twelfth-century tournament. There was
no such thing as obligatory fair play; that would have been too great a restric-
tion on the right of the individual. There are, to be sure, magnanimous —

1 Even so, the author of Ipomedon observes that it is hard for an armed man to rise after a
fall (1. 5711). Of course they do rise constanUy, to fight effectively.

2 Parthenopeus y 8290 f. ; Ipomedon ^ 3166.

' Parthenopeus^ 6821. Cf. Parzival, § 44, 1. 4, and Herz*s ed. (Stuttgart, 1898), p. 473, n. 18;
p. 480, n. 35. Parzival is sufficiently near the twelfth century to be quoted here.

^ Capaneus's jewelled nasal just saves his nose in Ipomedon^ 3973. In Ipomedon^ 3888, the
helms are " pointed" {aguz). * See Hewitt's Ancient Armour^ I, 143. * Ipomedon^ 3173.

^ Cligis^ 4640 ff. ; Ipomedon^ ^f^ii, 4617, 561 1 ; Lamelet^ 2896.

^ Cf. Jusserand*s remarks on the similarity between battle and tourney, Lei Sports^ p. 57.

• Parthenopeus^ 8300 f .

WEBSTER 233

What we should call chivalrous — acts, but these are exceptional, and gener-
ally performed by the hero whose virtues the story is written to exalt. Thus
Ipomedon throws away his lance in order to meet the formidable Capaneus
upon equal terms ;^ Parthenopeus once helps a fallen enemy to mount
again ; ^ Erec does not care to capture either men or horses.^ But in general
we find no sentiment, and therefore no regulations, that would prevent three
men with lances from attacking Parthenopeus who has only his sword ; * or a
whole troop of Germans from setting upon the king of France ; ^ or a band
of Saracens from laying hands on the stunned Gaudins ; ^ or Ipomedon from
repeatedly overriding a stubborn foe who tries to regain his feet ; ^ or the
Count of Flanders from striking Ipomedon in the back.^ No effort is made
to mitigate the effect of the sharp weapons ; a spear pins shield to arm and
arm to side,^ ears and arms are lopped off,^^ heads split," and bodies transfixed
so that the lance, pennon and all, stands out six feet beyond.^ A dour spec-
tacle this of a m616e in the Ipomedon : ** Now begins a right hard battle ; many
fall and many die ; they pierce and rend the shields, and split the pointed
helms ; swords ring, and rive the rich hauberks ; shivered is many an ashen ^
lance. There are to be seen trailing bowels and spattered brains. Many a war-
horse runs masterless through the roads ; many a noble Castilian steed courses
the field with empty saddle. The living mourn the dead ; great grief is there
and pain. Many a good horse and man have been captured ; gone is many
a crupper and many a knee-piece ; much good armor is destroyed, many a
saddle-cloth ^^ rent, and many a saddle overthrown." ^ But why object to this
sort of thing ? Each participant in a tourney knew what he had to expect,
and he could generally avoid the worst by running away or surrendering.

In a typical encounter the two knights lower their lances, slacken their
reins,^^ and gallop at each other. The lances glance, or pierce, or break, — or
almost any combination of these three occurs. We will say that they break
without dismounting a rider : then new spears may be brought by the watch-
ful varlets ^^ — who stand like grooms about a polo field — and broken, some-
times to the number of ten ; ^® or else the knights draw their swords and slash
— apparently never thrust — at each other. If the girths have given way, or

^ Ipomedon^ ^j^y K. ^ ParthenopaiSy ^^20. * Erec y 221$,

* Parthenopeus i 7937- * Parthenopeus ^ 8675. • Parthenopeus^ 8812.
^ Ipomedon^ 57 18, 6260. There is an excellent case of this ** unnecessary roughness " in

Parzivaly § 38, 1. I ; cf. Herz's note, p. 473, of his ed. Cf. Knighfs Tale, 1756.

* Ipomedon^ 41 1 2. • CharretU, 5962 ; Cligh^ 4689. ^^ Ipomedon ^ 3990t 4079, 5071, 5880.
" Parthenopeus^ 8834 ; Ipomedon^ 5878. " Ipomedon^ 3950» 6025. Cf. 6224.
^' Ash is the usual material: Pafthenopeus^ 6875, S099; Ipomedon ^ 4675.

** For such ornamented saddle-cloths, see Hewitt's Ancient Armour^ I, fig. 44.

^* Ipomedon^ 3885-3908.

^* Ipomedon^ 3944- Whether this indicates merely speed and abandon, or that the bridle hand
was now needed for the shield might be a question. Cf. Niedner, Dcu deutsche TUmur^ p. 56.
In Erecy 2194, the rein is held by the ** knot."

" Lanzelety 2972 ; Ipomedon j 3714, 3879. *® Lanzelet^ 3003.

234 THE TWELFTH-CENTURY TOURNEY

the riders been hurled from their saddles, or the horses felled by the lance-
shock, this sword-play takes place on foot. If their swords break, then it is
quite likely that the two will wrestle desperately until one yields, or is dragged
resisting into the hostile ranks. Once the foolhardy Parthenopeus rushed into .
a hostile squadron, and seizing their leader about the waist, tried to throw him
over his horse's neck and carry him off ; but Parthenopeus was lucky to escape
himself.^ The object of the fighting is not simply to unhorse an opponent,
or to prove one's superiority to him, but to batter him into surrender. The
person, arms, and horse of a beaten foe were the victor's until ransomed.
Public opinion, no doubt, kept a knight's ransom at a reasonable sum ; the
horse was held at his market value.^ To make sure of his conquests the victor
compels them on the spot either to swear obedience {i.e,, to give fiances),^ or
to leave an actual gage,^ Then he frees the captives on parole, and turns the
horses over to his page .^ An amorous knight will often send his captives to
be at the disposal pf his lady-love ; ® a generous one will eventually free them
without ransom, and he will make liberal presents of mounts to his lady,^ his
varlets,^ and others.®

In the evening, after this terrible play, the hero of the day exchanges con-
fidences with his brother in arms over good meat and drink,^^ or indulges in
a cozy supper with his amie ; ^^ the judges quarrel over their decision ; ^^ and the
captives bustle about in order to make an arrangement by which they may be
free to fight on the morrow.^

Such then, to one who peers overcuriously beneath the surface of the
twelfth-century poetic accounts, are seen to have been the tourneys of this
lusty time — a time that was the full flood of romance and chivalry, the great
pitiless river of it, bearing along many foreign bodies mayhap, but running
with a swiftness and volume unattained by any subsequent tide. The merry
barbarity of the sport is still sufficiently obvious in the well-regulated tourna-
ment of Chaucer's Knighfs Tale^ where twenty may fall upon one, where a new
assailant may bury his sword in the flesh of a man already fighting, and where
a fully-armed horseman may ride down an unfortunate on foot who has only
his broken lance-butt for a weapon. Not until the fifteenth century did this
knightly pastime take on the form which has crystallized in the popular mind.

1 Parthenopeus y 8841. ^ See William Marshall^ 4197 ff.

* Ipomedon^ 3744 ; Cligisy 4692. A beaten suitor might prefer death to appearing before the
princess as his rival's gift ; but he would keep his oath. " There was greater loyalty in those
days," says Hue de Roteland — Ipomedorty 3747.

* Parthenopeus^ 7870 ; Ipomedony 4002. When Ismeun left his ear and arm in the field, he
left too much gage^ says the jesting poet in the latter passage.

* Lanxelet, 2930, 2964; Charrette, 6002. * Ipomedon, 3730; Lanzelet^ 3057f 3486.
■^ Ipomedon, 3729. * Lanzelet^ JOS^* * Ipomedon^ 3833.

W Parthenopeus y 8260. ^* As in Lanzelet. ^^ Parthenopeus y 8251, etc.

1' Clighy 4769 ff. Compare the busy and sociable evenings in William Marshall, and the
remarks of Meyer and Jusserand thereon.

NOTES ON CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY
AND THE LAND-BENEATH-THE-WAVES

Arthur C. L. Brown

The following pages study the connection between Celtic cauldrons of
plenty and the Land-beneath-the-Waves. The subject has interesting possi-
bilities, because the oldest* Grail romances seem to contain traces of an original
location of the Grail castle, with its talisman of plenty, upon or beneath the sea.

Some twenty-five years ago Nutt ^ sought to connect the Fish of Wisdom
in Irish story with the Fisher King, and with the marvellous fish which Brons,
according to Boron, caught at the bidding of Joseph of Arimathea. Although
Nutt made the valuable suggestion that the talismans of the Grail castle are
ultimately derived from the four ** jewels " of the Tuatha D6 Danaan, he re-
lied upon stories of the Irish Finn Cycle, which are difficult to prove ancient,
and upon recently collected Irish folk-tales. He dwelt upon particular traits
of the Salmon of Wisdom which are hard to find in the fish of the Grail
stories. It would seem, therefore, that further progress does not lie along the
exact lines that he laid down.

Rhys, somewhat later,^ suggested as a parallel to the Grail the mwys or
basket of Gwyddno Garanhir. The basket of Gwyddno is described in the
Welsh tale of Kulhwch and Olwen^ which is generally admitted to date back
to a period before the rise of French and English Arthurian romance.^ This
clue, together with Nutt's important suggestion of the four ** jewels" of the
Tuatha D6 Danaan, seems to mark the path for probable future discovery.

On the other hand, advocates of the theory of a purely Christian origin for
the Grail have sometimes argued as if Christian legend could adequately ex-
plain the Fisher King, and as if the epithet ** rich fisher " were a stumbling
block for the Celtic hypothesis.* They rely upon the fact that Boron and

1 Studies on the Legend of the Holy Grail, pp. 184 f. (1888).

* The Arthurian Legend, pp. 31 1 f. (1891). For other references see Professor Nitze's useful
articles, PMLA,, XXIV, 365 f.; Studies in Honor of Marshall Elliott, I, 19-51.

* Loth, Rev. Celt., XXXII, 433 (1911).

* Heinzel, Ueber die franz. Gralromane, pp. 13, 192 ; Hertz, Panival, p. 427 ; and especially
Wechssler, Die Sage vom heiligen Gral, p. 130 : " Die Bezeichnung ' reicher Fischer,* hat christ-

lich-symbolische Bedeutung, = Menschenfischer : Matt, iv, 19; Mark i, 17 ; Luke v, 10 Dieser

Name des Gralhiiters stammt also aus der christlichen Symbolik, und nicht, wie sammtliche
Graldichter erzahlen, daher, dass der alte Gralkonig dem Gralsucher auf einem Flusse fischend
erschien."

235

236 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

many later Grail writers obviously tried to connect the Fisher King with the
Biblical phrase ** fishers of men," and with the fish (Ix^is) used as a symbol
by early Christians. Reflection, however, reveals difficulties which have pre-
vented the general acceptance of any theory of this kind, and which seem to
indicate that the true origin of the Fisher King is not to be found in this
direction.^ To discuss the whole question of the origin of the Grail would lead
us too far. Since, however, the hypothesis of a Celtic source (whether Welsh
or Breton) is more probable than any other,^ an endeavor is made in the fol-
lowing pages to test it in what has been regarded by some as a vulnerable
point, by examining as searchingly as possible how far it can explain the title
** Fisher King," and the other traces of the watery realm which, as has been
remarked, appear in the Grail romances.

The oldest and best-known vessels of plenty in Irish and Welsh respec-
tively are the coire of the Dagda, and the mivys of Gwyddno Garanhir. For
the sake of completeness other vessels of plenty which figure in Irish and
Welsh tradition are briefly considered.

The cauldron of the Dagda is one of four famous talismans^ of the Tuatha
D6 Danaari which are best described in the CatA Maige Turedh : ^

1 If the phrase " rich fisher " meant in origin one who converted many, Peter ought to be
the original Fisher King, certainly not Joseph of Arimathea or any other figure like Brons. Yet
none of the oldest Grail romances give any hint that Peter was the original Fisher King. He
is not even mentioned except in Boron, and here he is a subordinate character rather obviously
inserted because of Boron^s idea that a connection existed between his Fisher King and the
Biblical phrase " fishers of men." Compare the admission of Heinzel, op. cH.y p. 98 : " Das ist
Nutt zuzugeben, dass das 26. Capitel des Matthausevangeliums und das 15. des Evangeliums
Nicodemi nicht, wie Birch-Hirschfeld, Die Sage vom Graly 222, meint, ausreichen, um alle
Vorstellungen, welche das Mittelalter vom Gral hatte, zu erklaren." In short, the connection
between the Fisher King and Christian legend looks like a post factum invention made to
account for the epithet " fisher " already in the story. The oldest Grail romancers, Chretien,
Wauchier, do not give the purely Christian theory any support. Space does not permit the men-
tion of other difHculties, such as the heterodox tinge present in all the Grail romances, which
can hardly be accounted for except by supposing that a Christian interpretation has been
superimposed upon a heathen basis.

* The so-called " Tischlein-deck-dich " motive occurs in the popular tales of every age and
every clime. But it would seem that only from the Celts could the Grail stories have appeared
precisely in the way in which they did appear in the Middle Ages, and tradition has always con-
nected these stories with a Celtic origin.

* Called "jewels" (seoid) and "gifts" {aisgeadha)^ Keating, Irish Texts Soc.^ IV, 205-210.

* Kev. Celt.y XII, 56-58. This text is in a MS. of the fifteenth century, but must from evidence
of grammatical forms be older. The antiquity of the tradition concerning the four jewels seems
indisputable. The Lia F4il is referred to in LL. 9 a, 14 (Book of Leinster, a MS. of 1150). See
Nutt, Voyage of Bran ^ II, 171. The Dagda's cauldron is mentioned in LL., and under the name
caire ainsicj "the undry cauldron," in Cormac*s Glossary^ which is generally thought to be a
work of the ninth or tenth century. See Stokes, Three Irish Glossaries ^ London, 1862, p. xviii,
and the translation, p. 45, London, 1868.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 237

Out of Falias was brought the stone of Fdl, which was in Tara. It used to roar under
every king that would take (rule over) Ireland.

Out of Gorias was brought the spear that Lugh had. No battle was ever won against
it or him who held it in his hand.

Out of Findias was brought the sword of Nuada. When it was drawn from its deadly
sheath no one ever escaped from it and it was irresistible.

Out of Murias was brought the Dagda^s cauldron. No company ever went from it
unthankful.^ ^

The name Murias evidently refers to the sea, muiry and probably to the Land-^ ' oC
beneath-the- Waves. According to Keating's History ^ the Tuatha D^ Danaan ^ ^<^
were seven years at Dobar and lardobar^ *' Water " and " Behind Water." ^ ^^
The Dagda is obviously associated in old documents with the \\^ter-world. He \

had a son, Angus, by Boand, the nymph of the river Boyne.* He is in numer-
ous passages connected with Mananndn mac Lir, the well-known sea god of
the Irish {Ler^ '* the sea "). In one of the oldest of Irish stories, Imram Brain^
Mananndn drives in a chariot over the waves, and occasionally plucks a salmon
fish from the water. The Dagda is called brother to Niiadha Airgetlam,®
who, as will be pointed out later,' is pretty certainly a sea god.

In the great collection of Irish place-legends called the Dinnshenchas the
Dagda's " cauldron '* (coire) is apparently referred to under the name ** tub "
(drochtcL). The entry, like many others in the Dinnshenchas ^ seems to be a
mnemonic sketch of a story well known at the time.^ For us it is obscure and

1 The text of this paragraph is : ** A Murias tucad coiri an Dagdai. Ni tegedh dam dimdach
uadh." 2 j^^h ff^is soc, IV, 205.

• Rhjs, Hibbert Lectures y p. 257. Dobavy " water," is explained in Cormac's Glossary ^ tr. p. 40.
^ Rhys, op. cit.y pp. 123, 144. In LL. 191 a, is an account of Boand's adventure at Nechtan's

well, which she profaned, and in consequence it overwhelmed her and issued as the river
Boyne (translated in 0*Grady, Silv. Gad.y II, 474, 519). This passage calls Boand "Nechtan's
wife," but adds that she was the mother of Angus, son of the Dagda.

* Meyer, Voyage of Bran, I, i6f. • Rev, Cell.y XII, 80, etc. ^ See below, p. 243.
^ The text in LL. 1 59 a, 50, says : *' Gabhal Glas, son of Ethad6n, son of Niiadha Arg^tlaim,

took away a bundle of twigs, which Ainge, the Dagda's daughter, had gathered to make a tub

thereof. For the tub {drochta) which the Dagda used to make {dognidy impf.) would not cease

from dripping while the sea was in flood, though not a drop came out of it during the ebb."

Silv. Gad.y II, 476, 523. The same account is in the Bodleian Dinnshenchas y No. 6, and in the

Rennes Dinnshenchas, Rev. Celt.y XV, 302. In the metrical Dinnshenchas in LL. the account is

somewhat different : _^ ^ • u • l. r- u 1

Dear to me is bnght Gabul . . .

A tub {drochta) was made for his daughter

Above the breastwork of the high river mouth.

It would not leak unless the tide were full.

She loved the lot of virginity.

He it was who stole it (burden of a tale),

Even Gaible, the pale, son of Ethedeoin.

Gwynn, RIA.y Todd Lecture Seriesy IX, 58 (1906). The word drochta is of somewhat doubtful
meaning. Stokes, ZFCP.y III, 468, would connect it etymolog^cally with "trough," and points
out that in Cormac's Glossary y tr., p. 14, it is glossed by seinlestary "an old vessel." Gwynn,
0p. cit.y thinks it may mean a kind of boat. He also suggests that the connection between it and
the tide may have been one of sympathy only. But something more than this seems implied
by the words " above the breastwork of the high river mouth."

238 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

the translation is in part uncertain. It appears probable, however, that the
passage connects the Dagda's vessel of plenty with the sea, and regards it as
a kind of woven basket (of twigs).

The Brugh of the Dagda, Brugh na Boinne^ was a favorite form of the
Irish otherworld. It contained his cauldron, which satisfied all comers ; his
unfailing swine, one always living, and the other ready for cooking ; a vessel
of ale, and three trees always laden with fruit. No one died there.^ By a
trick the palace of the Dagda passed into the possession of Angus, and it is
sometimes said to belong to Bodhb Dearg, son of the Dagda. In the Book
of Fermoy, a fifteenth-century MS., occurs what is evidently another descrip-
tion of Brugh na Boinne. Mananndn, we are told, " settled the Tuatha D6
Danaan in the most beautiful valleys, drawing round them an invisible wall,
which was impenetrable to the eyes of men, and impassable." He also sup-
plied them with " the ale of G6ibmu the smith," which preserved them from
old age, disease, and death.*

In the oldest records are a number of statements connecting the Dagda
with smithcraft In the Triads of Ireland^ which are dated by the editor be-
fore 900,^ we read that one of " the three things that constitute a blacksmith "
is inneSin in Dagda^ " the anvil of the Dagda." According to Cormac's Glos-
sary y^ Brigit or Ana was daughter of the Dagda, and was called Brigit bi
goibnechtay " Brigit the female smith."

The Dagda's abode, Brugh na Boinne^ resembled the Grail castle in having
connected with it a lacustrine smith. The Dinnshenchas associates Bodhb*s
sid (the Dagda's palace) with a subaqueous smith who dwelt beneath Lake
Killamey : ** Whence loch L^in (Killamey) ? Lein Hnfiaclach mac Ban, etc.,
was the craftsman of Bodhb's sid. He it was that dwelt in the lake (Is^boi isin
loch), and wrought the bright vessels of Fand, daughter of Flidais." ^

The reader will be reminded of the sword of the Grail castle, which accord-
ing to Chretien could be remade only by the smith Trebuchet, who dwelt " au
lac qui est sor Cotovatre." ^ Trebuchet probably dwelt beneath the lake. In
Gerbert's continuation of Perceval a visit of the hero to Trebuchet is described.^
The entrance to his abode was guarded by two dragons, and was perhaps
located beneath the lake. Wolfram's Parzival also describes the Grail sword.
It would break at the first blow, and must be plunged in the water of the
spring Lac by Kamant to be restored.^

1 D'Arbois, Cours^ II, 270 f., from LL. 246 a. » Todd, RIA,^ Irish MS. Series, I, i, 46.

• Meyer, RIA., Todd Lecture Series , XIII, 16, No. 120.

^ Tr., pp. 4, 23, 145. According to the Catk Maige Tliredh {Rev. Celt.^ XII, 81), the Dagda was
brother to G6ibniu the smith.

• Silv. Gad., II, 477, 523, from the Book of Ballymote. The same account is in the Rennes
Dinnshenchas, Rev. Celt., XV, 451, and in the metrical Dinnshenchas, in LL. 154 b, 35.

• Perceval, ed. Baist, 3637. Miss Weston {Sir Perceval, I, 135) reads from MS. 12576
"soz Cothoathre.'* ' Miss J. E. Weston, Sir Perceval, I, 141 f.

® Parzival, ed. Martin, 253, 24 f. ; 433, 25 f.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 239

The Grail romancers seldom mention the proper name of the Grail King.
Chretien and Wauchier, the two oldest, leave him anonymous, calling him "le
riche roi pescheor," or ** le peschiere." Boron names him Brons, and Wolf-
ram, Anfortas. A parallel to this may be traced in the treatment of " the
Dagda " by the Irish records. ** The Dagda " is an epithet of uncertain ety-
mology,^ and the god's proper name, which is not often mentioned, is variously
given. The reticence of the Irish about the Dagda probably arose from a de-
sire to avoid offending the deity by mentioning his real name, just as the
modem Irish avoid mentioning the fairies, but speak of them as ** the good
people.*'

Another resemblance between the Grail King and the Dagda, is that both
are magicians and shape-shifters.^

Ill

Other well-known vessels of plenty in Irish story are the cauldron of
Gerg, that of Curoi, and that of Cormac. The cauldron, dabach, or airidig^
of Gerg is described in the Tochmarc Ferbe : ^

Conchobar mac Nessa brought out of the fortress of Gerg Faeburdel the brazen vat that
stood in the house, which when full of beer was wont to be sufficient for the whole land of
Ulster, and this is that vat which by the men of Ulster was called the 01 Guala^ or Coal-
Vat, since a fire of coals was wont to be in that house in Emain in which that vat was drunk.
And from it hath been named Loch Guala Umai in the Island of Daim, which is in the
realm of Ulster ; for imdemeath the lake imto this day is that vat hidden in a secret place.*

The cauldron of Curoi was in the first place carried off by Cuchulinn and
Curoi from the stronghold of Mider in the island of Falga.*^ Mider is one of
the Tuatha D6 Danaan, and Falga, although strictly speaking a name for the
Isle of Man, doubtless here, as often, denotes the otherworld. According
to one form of the story Cuchulinn attacked a revolving castle in which Curoi
dwelt, and after killing him carried off his cows and his cauldron.^ Another

* '' The good god " or " the good hand " is the meaning assigned by Irish scribes, and by
Stokes, Rev. CelU^ XII, 83, 125. But in Rev. Celt., VI, 369 and Cormac*s Glossary, tr., p. 23, Stokes
translated Dagda ^ the cunning one," and connected it with a root D AGH {doctus) ; see below,
p. 243, n. 8. Among names for the Dagda are " Eocho the All-Father," Eocho Oil Athir, LL. 9 b, 17 ;
Dagan, LL. 245 b, 41 ; Craian Cain, LL. 1 14 a, 40 ; Cera, H. 3, 18, 633 d, Cormac's Glossary, tr., 47 ;
** Lord of Great Knowledge " or ^ Red Man of Great Knowledge," Riiad Rofhessa, Cormac, tr.,
144-145; and ** Son of all the Sciences," Mac-na-n-ule-dana, LL. 149 a. He is commonly called
Dagda Mor " the Great"

^ On the shape-shifting of the Fisher King see the " Elucidation," Perceval, cd. Potvin, 222.
« Ed. Windisch, Irische Texte, III, 516, from LL.

* The text of the last phrase is : ** Ar is f6i at4 indiu i n-diamraib." The same story is in
CSir Anmain, Windisch, Irische Texte, III, 358. In neither place is Gerg's cauldron explicitly
said to be a cauldron of plenty, but since it contained enough liquor for the whole of Ulster,
this is a reasonable hypothesis.

* Rhys, Hibbert Lectures, p. 475; Keating, Irish Texts Soc, VIII, 223.

* LL. 169 b, 42 f, printed by O'Grady, Silv. Gad., II, 482, 530.

240 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

variant tells how Cuchulinn voyaged to the land of Scathy " shadow," and after
escaping terrible dangers carried off three marvellous cows and a cauldron
of plenty.^

Whatever be the origin of the cauldron, Curoi is himself undoubtedly a
sea divinity. Henderson calls him **a great magician, really an otherworld
power, at any rate a water demon like Grendel.*'^ Curoi's combat with
Cuchulinn is referred to in an ancient Welsh poem, which calls the ocean
Curoi's ** broad fountain,** and in another phrase connects him with the south-
ern sea.^ In Fled Bricrendirom LU., it is expressly said that the giant Terror,
who is merely Ciiroi in disguise,^ lived in a lake : " To Terror at his Loch
they went. . . . [Terror] departed into the Loch."^

Cormac's cup of truth and his cauldron of plenty are described in the
Echtra Cormaic^ The Coire Aisic, or cauldron of plenty, ** used to return
and give to every company their suitable food. . . . No meat was found
therein save what would supply the company, and the food proper for each
would be taken thereout.** The Echtra Cormaic does not tell the origin of
the cauldron of plenty, but it does say that the cup of truth, which evidently
belonged with the cauldron, and was perhaps identical with it, came from
Mananndn mac Lir, the well-known Irish sea god. This cauldron, therefore,
like the others, probably belonged to Under- Wave-Land.*^

The best-known vessel of plenty in ancient Welsh tradition is the mwys
or basket of Gwyddno Garanhir, which has been repeatedly compared to the
Grail.® The description of it in Kulhwch and Olwen^ a tale which, as has

^ Siaburcharpat Conculaind (in LU. 113, i, a MS. of 1 100), ed. Crowe, Proc. Roy, Hist. Soc, of
Ireland^ 4th. ser., I, 385 f., 1870-187 1. Cf. £riu^ II, 20 f.

• Henderson, Irish Texts Soc.y II, 197.

• Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales ^ I, 254-255 ; text, II, 198; Rhys, Proc. of Royal Soc.
of Ant. of Ireland y XXI, 642 (1891).

• " Iwain," {Harvard) Studies and Notes, VIII, 53, 76. * Irish Texts Soc, II, 96-99.

• Irische Texte, III, 205-206. The MS. is of the fourteenth century, but a story by this
name is mentioned in a list of ancient stories in Rawlinson, B. 512. This list has been attributed
to the tenth century ; see d*Arbois, I, 355.

' Commonly written T^rfd Thuinn. Compare the golden cup of Finn, which was one of
a collection of treasures. The whole collection, according to the eighth poem of the Duanaire
Finn, came originally from Manannin {Irish Texts Soc, VII, 1 18-120 ; text, pp. 20-21). (These
poems of the Duanaire, although late in form, may record ancient tradition.) Compare also
the green cup which Teigue had, and which would turn water into wine. It was brought to him
out of the sea by a whale {Silv. Gad., II, 395). For other cauldrons of plenty, in less ancient
stories, see O'Donovan, Battle of Mag Rath, Irish Arch. Soc, pp. 51 f. (1842).

^ Rhys, Arthurian Legend, p. 312.

• Nutt's edition of Lady Guest's translation of the Mabinogion, p. 123 (1910) ; Loth, Les
Mob., I, 244. In references to the so-called Mabinogion, the page of this English translation
will always be given first, and then the volume and page of Loth's French version.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 241

been remarked, dates back to a period before the rise of French romance, is
as follows :

The basket of Gwyddneu Garanhir, if the whole world should come together, thrice nine
men at a time, the meat that each of them desired would be found within it.^

Gwyddno's epithet Garanhir^ if it means, as Rhys thinks,^ ' .lo^g crane,*'
doubtless implied that Gwyddno was a fisherman. His fisherman char-
acter is all but proved by references in four ancient Welsh poems which
have been printed and translated by Skene.^ The first two of these poems
are in a MS. of the third quarter of the twelfth century,* which is generally
admitted to be uninfluenced by French romance. The third may fairly be
dated as early as the first, and the fourth, the Gododin poem, is probably
older still.

In the first poem Gwyddno Garanhir is represented in connection with
Gwynn ab Nudd, who, as will be seen, is probably an ancient sea god. In the
second poem Gwyddno tells how the sea overflowed his land, which from other
documents we learn was Cantref y Gwaelod, a region in Cardigan Bay. The
author of the poem is obviously endeavoring to represent Gwyddno as a his-
torical character, but the story is most naturally explained as a rationalization
of a myth concerning a sea god whose dominions lay beneath the waves. The
fourth poem connects Gwyddno's son with the flowing sea.

The connection indicated between Gwyddno and the sea is close, and such
an epithet as " Fisher King," although we do not find it actually applied to
him, would be perfectly appropriate. That the mwys was the object of a
quest by Arthur,^ just as in the French romances the Grail is the object of
quests by Arthur and his knights, is probably significant.

1 '* Mwys Gwydneu Garanhir. Kyt delei y byt y gyt bop trinaw wyr. Y bwyt a vynno pawb
wrth y uryt a geiff yndi." Rhys and Evans, Text of the Red Book of Hergesty p. 122, line 4.

* Rhjs, Arthurian Legend^ p. 316. It is proper to note, however, that Ivor John [Mab.y
p. 376) would identify the first part of Garanhir with cam^ " haft," and would translate, " long
weapon." He compares Peredur paladyrhir, " Peredur long-spear."

8 Four Ancient Books of Wales, I, 293 (text, II, 54). The poem is a dialogue between
Ouitnev Garanhir and Gwynn ab Nudd. It mentions a terrible battle before Caer Vandwy.
Caer Vandwy, according to Preiddeu Annivn, was one of the names for the place where the
cauldron of Pryderi was kept : ** Except seven none returned from Caer Vandwy " ; see below,
p. 245. From The Black Book of Cctermarthen.

I, 302 (text, II, 59). "Guitnev" tells in this poem how the sea overflowed his country.
From The Black Book of Caermarthen.

I, 363 (text, II, 162). This poem relates that Urien " made an expedition " to the country
of " Gwydno," an expression which suggests an imram or otherworld voyage. From The Book
of Taliesin.

I, 384 (text, II, 71). This poem mentions **Issac, son of Gwydneu," and adds, "his conduct
resembled the flowing sea." Gwynn is mentioned in the verses following. The Gododin poem,
from The Book of Aneurin.

* The Black Book of Caermarthen, autotype by J. G. Evans, 1888, p. xiii f.

* " Kulhwch and Olwen," Mab., p. 123; I, 244.

242 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

Concerning Gwyddno*s mzvys Rhys^ has made three additional points:

First, it was not a vessel for cooking, but for holding food, like the Grail.
It could be opened like a chest : ** The budget, basket (or weel), of Gwyddno
Garanhir : if provision for a single person were put into it to keep, a suffi-
ciency of victuals for a hundred persons would be found in it when opened." ^

Second, Gwyddno was the owner of a marvellous fishweir : "At that time
the weir [cored^ of Gwyddno was on the strand between Dyvi and Aberyst-
wyth, near to his own castie, and the value of an hundred pounds was taken
from that weir every May eve." ®

Third, like the Grail, which at the last "remained not in Britain," the
mwys of Gwyddno ultimately disappeared beyond the sea : " Thirteen Rari-
ties of Kingly Regalia of the Isle of Britain [of which the mwys was one]
were formerly kept at Caerleon on the river Usk in Monmouthshire. These
curiosities went with Myrddin, son of Movran, into the house of glass in
Enlli or Bardsey Island."*

For these three points Rhys is dependent upon the prose tale of Taliesin^
which exists in no MS. older than the sixteenth century (although Gwyddno's
weir is mentioned in verses included in the tale, which are probably much
older than the prose),^ and upon Bardic tradition recorded in the eighteenth
century. It must in fairness, however, be admitted that no cogent reason can
be alleged for doubting the value either of Taliesin or of the Bardic tra-
dition. What they say about Gwyddno has plainly not been fabricated in the
interests of any theory, nor does it show any trace of the influence of French
romance. It is not antagonistic to the brief records of Gwyddno Garanhir in
the ancient poems which have been examined, but it appears to be something
more than a development from these records.

It may be wise in the present state of knowledge to put aside the evidence
of these late documents. Without them, records the antiquity of which is
undoubted suffice to indicate that Gwyddno was in origin a kind of sea god,
or sea fairy, who might naturally have been called a Fisher King. The

1 Arthurian Legend^ pp. 31 2-326.

* Quoted from Edward Jones, Welsh Bards, II, 48, London, 1802. The text is : '* Mwys
(neu bwlan) Gwyddno Garanhir; bwyd i ungwr a roid ynddi, a bwyd i gannwr a gaid ynddi
pan cgorid."

* Quoted from Taliesin in Nutt's edition of Lady Guest's Mabinogion, p. 297.

* Quoted from Jones, II, 47. The text is : " Llymma tri-thlws-ar-ddeg o Frenhin Dlyseu
ynis Prydain : y rhai a gedwid yn Nghaer-Lleon ar Wysg ac a aethant gyda Myrddin ab Morf ran
i*r Ty Gwydr, yn Enlli."

fi Mab.y p. 298. The text is : " Ni chaed yn ngored Wyddno," and the translation : " Never
in Gwyddno*s weir was there such good luck as this night" One may conjecture that the cored
of this passage in " Taliesin " was in origin identical with the mwys of '* Kulhwch and Olwen "
and of Bardic tradition. A cored was made of wattles. Pughe's Dictionary defines mwys as **a
pannier or hamper," and mwys bara as ** basket for bread." The passage just quoted from Jones
gives as a synonym for mwys the word bwlan, which the dictionaries explain as ** a straw vessel
to hold com," " a basket."

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 243

explanation of Gwyddno as originally a divinity of the water is supported by
the connection indicated in the ancient poems of The Black Book of Caermar-
then between him and Gwynn ab Nudd, concerning whom a few observations
may be of interest.

In Kulhwch and Olwen this personage is called ** Gwynn Gotyvron,*' and
in the Black Book^ we meet with a "Gwynn Godybrion." The epithet seems
to mean ** under the water.*' Davydd ab Gwilym calls the mist ** the desert
border land of Gwynn and his family," and refers to **the high projecting
towers of the family of Gwynn/' doubtless seen beneath the waves. He also
calls the morass ** Gwynn's fishpond " and says it is the dwelling of Gwynn's
family.^ A Welsh Triad mentions "Uys Gwynn ab Nudd," *' Gwynn's castle,"
as " one of the invisible things of the Island of Britain." ^

Stem has identified * Gwynn ab Nudd with the Irish Finn mac Niiadha
Necht.^ Nudd, Irish Niiadha, was probably an ancient Irish sea god, or
Celtic Neptune. Of the numerous identifications proposed by Rhys none
is better substantiated than that of Nudd with the sea divinity {Nudons,
Nodonti) anciently worshiped at Lydney Park on the west bank of the
Severn.^ Rhys quotes from Bathurst*^ an account of the remains of a temple
to this god found at Lydney Park in Gloucestershire. A bronze ornament
pictures the god surrounded by tritons. Another fragment of the ornament ^^
represents a triton with an anchor in one of his hands, and opposite him /
a fisherman in the act of hooking a fine salmon. Oars and shell trumpets ^ -
are also pictured, and in the mosaic of the temple floor marine animals are '-V '-C
represented. ^^^^ ^'

Gwynn, the son of this Niiadha (Nudd), is, in modem Welsh popular %

belief, a king of the fairies who dwell in the fenland and the sea. It is fair
to hold that the association between Gwynn and Gwyddno marks them both
as belonging to the Land-beneath-the- Waves. Indeed, one character seems to
be little more than a doublet of the other.^

• Mab,^ p. Ill ; I» 216; Skene, I, 262.

« Stem, ZFCP^ III, 608-609 (1901) ; Loth, Les Mob,, I, 252.

• Stem, ZFCP., VII, 233 (1909). * Stem, ZFCP., IV, 579 (1903).
^ On Finn mac Ni!iadha see Keating, Irish Texts Soc.y VIII, 331.

• Rhjs, CMc Folk-Lore, II, 446.

^ Roman Antiquities at Lydney Parky London (1879).

• Gwyddno probably means *' the knowing one," from gwyddy " knowledge." Cf . Pwyll, lord
of Annwn, whom Rh^s {Arthurian Legend, p. 283) has sought to identify with Pellesand Pellam.
Pwyll seems to mean " intelligence " (Holder, Alt- Celtischer Sprachschatz, s.v. " Pellus "). These
parallels add to the likelihood of Stokes's explanation of the Dagda as ** the cunning one "
(see above, p. 239 and cf. also the epithets of the Dagda, " lord of great knowledge," etc.). Gwynn
seems to be the same as Gwynhan in Kulhwch and Olwen {Mab., p. no; I, 211), "his [son's]
dominions were swallowed up by the sea." That both Gwynn's son and Gwyddno lost their
dominions by the sea favors the notion that Gwynn and Gwyddno are doublets. Rh^s believes
{op. cit,y 315-316) that Gwynn is identical with the personage whom Chretien calls Gonemans,
and Manessier, Goon Desert

244 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

Other well-known magic cauldrons in early Welsh literature are the
cauldron of Bran, that of Caridwen, and that of Pryderi.^

Bran's cauldron of regeneration which restored the dead to life was origi-
nally brought by a yellow giant and giantess out of a lake in Ireland called
Llynn y Peir, *' the Lake of the Cauldron." ^ xhe story is in '* Branwen the
Daughter of Llyr," one of the four genuine branches of the Mabinogi?

The cauldron of Caridwen is described only in the late prose tale of
Taliesin : **She boiled a cauldron of inspiration and science for her son . . .
which from the beginning of its boiling might not cease to boil for a year
and a day, until three blessed drops were obtained of the grace of inspiration.*'^
This cauldron belonged to Caridwen and her husband Tegid Voel, " and his
dwelling was in the midst of the lake Tegid." ^ Like other Celtic magic
vessels, therefore, this cauldron probably belonged to Under- Wave- Land. An-
other evidence of this is the connection indicated with Gwyddno Garanhir,
who, as we have seen, belongs to the water-world : '* The horses of Gwyddno
Garanhir were poisoned by the water of the stream into which the liquor of
the cauldron of Caridwen ran."^

^ The following objects may be left out of account since other details concerning them or
their owners cannot be ascertained : "the bottles of Gwiddolwyn Gorr" which alone will keep
heat in the blood drawn from the slain sorceress Gorddu (Mab,j p. 125; I, 247); the dish of
Llwyr son of Llwyryon, which contained ^penllcui (twenty-four bushels of oats), Mab,y p. 123;
I, 244 ; the cauldron of " Diwmach the Irishman," Diwmach IVyddd, in which meat was boiled,
and which Arthur carried away full of money {Mob., pp. 124, 140; I, 246, 273).
^^ C f The " table-cloth or dish,** //tain neu dysgl^ of Riganed is mentioned in Jones*s Welsh Bards^

f ^Cs Q II, 47-48, among the thirteen " rarities *' of the Island of Britain. Whatever victuals or drink

'^ / '^^^?g^ were wished for, this table-cloth instantly supplied. Another of these " rarities ** is the cauldron

Ai *^ O'f ^f Dyrnog the giant (cf. Diwrnach above), which "would not boil the food of a coward.'*
''^ ^^j-a ^ ^^ ^^^ been objected that a cauldron of regeneration, like Bran's, is not a cauldron of plenty,

cf. Heinzel, Uifder diefranz. 'Grairomaney p. 97 : " Der Kessel Brans hat so gut wie keine Aehn-
lichkeit mit der Gralschiissel.** Those who desire may reject Bran's cauldron from this discussion.
But even proceeding cautiously, as I wish to do, it seems difficult not to connect the regenerating
Celtic cauldron with the cauldron of plenty. The Grail preserved from death and old age those
who were in its presence. {Parzival, ed. Martin, 469, 14 f.) On the powers of the Grail cf.
T. P. Cross, Mod. Phil,, X, 293, n. Nutt's association of Bran with Brons should be remembered
{Studies on the Legend 0/ the Holy Graily p. 218.) According to the Mabinogi Bran's head miracu-
lously supplied with food seven men at Gwales in Penvro overlooking the ocean {Mab.^ p. 41 ;
I, 93-94). Bran, like his brother Manannin, was evidently a water god. He waded through
the sea in the story of Branwen {Mab.y p. 35 ; I, 83. Cf. Nitze, PMLA.y XXIV, 405). He was
wounded in the foot much as the Fisher King was wounded {Mab.j p. 39 ; I, 89). Brian, "god
of the Tuatha Dd Danaan*' and son of Brigit, grandson of the Dagda (Cormac, tr. 145), is
perhaps the same person.

' Mab.y p. 31 ; I, 76. * Mab.y p. 295. Cf. Skene, I, 297.

* Rh^s, Celtic Folk-Lore^ Welsh and Manx, I, 376, shows that the notion that I^ake Tegid
(Bala) covers a submerged town is current in the neighborhood to-day. The same idea is in
Marie Trevelyan, Folk-Lore and Folk-Stories of Wales , p. 13.

® Mab.y p. 296. Some will feel that a cauldron of inspiration is not a cauldron of plenty.
But the fact that the owners of this cauldron dwelt in a lake seems worthy of attention.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 245

•

The cauldron of Pryderi is described in an obscure poem called " Preiddeu
Annwn " in the Book of Taliesin,^ a fourteenth-century MS., but the poem is
apparently uninfluenced by French romance. Arthur is represented as sailing
in his ship " Prytwen " through a stormy sea in quest of this cauldron. It
was at Caer Sidi or Annwn, the Celtic otherworld, and belonged to Pen (" the
head of") Annwn, According to the Mabinogi? Pryderi was called Pen
Annwn, and this vessel was in Welsh tradition known as the cauldron of
Pryderi. It would not boil the food of a coward or of one forsworn. It was
rimmed with peari and warmed by the breath of nine maidens. That it was
a cauldron of plenty is not expressly said, but is probable. It was beneath the
sea \n Annwn ^ which is also called Caer Pedryvan, *'the four-cornered castle" ;
Caer Wydyr, '* the castle of glass '* ; Caer Golud, " the castle of riches " ; and
Caer Vandwy, *' except seven none returned from Caer Vandwy'* The inhabit-
ants of Annwn were in pitch darkness except for "a torch burning before
the gate." They were people exempt from old age and death, and spent
their time " quaffing the rich wine."

It appears from Irish story that the cauldron of the Dagda came from
Murias, which seems to mean the sea ; that the cauldron of Gerg is at the
bottom of a lake ; that Ciiroi, the owner of another magic cauldron, was a
sea god ; and that Cormac*s cauldron was the gift of Mananndn mac Lir, the
best-known of all Celtic sea gods.

In Welsh story it has been seen that the magic cauldron of Branwen was
brought by a red-haired giant out of a lake ; that the cauldron of Caridwen
belonged to Caridwen and her husband Tegid Voel, whose dwelling was in
Lake Tegid ; that the cauldron of Pryderi was the object of an obscure quest
beyond the sea, and was apparently beneath the sea in a tower of glass {Caer
Wydyr). And finally, that Gwyddno, who owned the famous mwys, was lord
of a country submerged by the sea, and was connected in many other ways
with the watery realm. This mwys was carried away by Merlin (Myrddin)
into the tower of glass {Ty Gwydt), thought of as beyond or under the sea.

It is interesting further to observe that recently collected Irish popular
tales commonly connect vessels of plenty with subaqueous folk. A good
instance is in Giolla an Fhiugha,^ where a cauldron of plenty is carried away
and remains beneath a lake. In Waifs and Strays, Finn's cup of victory is

1 Skene, I, 264-266 (text, II, 181-182). * Mab.y p. 9; I, 38.

• Cf. Skene, I, 274-276 (text, II, 153), from the Book of Taliesin : " Complete is my chair
in Caer Sidi. No one will be afflicted with disease or old age that may be in it. It is known to
Manawyd and Pryderi. Three utterances around the fire will he sing before it, and around its
borders are the streams of the ocean. And the fruitful fountain is above it.** (See Rhys,
Arthurian I^gend^ p. 301.) Cf. also Skene, I, 285 : ^ There is a ccuroi defense under the ocean's
wave," etc. * Irish Texts Soc, I, 48.

246 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

carried off by the " Muilearteach," who is the eastern sea personified as an
old hag.

No similar tale collected in modem Wales is at hand, but names like
Cawellyn, **lake of the basket, or cauldron,"^ together with the fact that
Cawellyn and other similar lakes are believed to be inhabited by subaqueous
folk, suggest that similar stories must have been current in Wales till recently.
The evidence is cumulative that magic vessels, most of which are cauldrons
of plenty, whether in Irish or Welsh, have been associated from the earliest
times with the water-world, and especially with the Land-beneath-the- Waves.

VII

Except the epithet "Fisher King," no evidence has, I think, hitherto been
pointed out to connect the Grail and the sea, but a careful examination of the
oldest Grail romances seems to reveal traces of such a connection. Novel as
at first thought it may seem to believe that the Grail originally belonged to
Under- Wave-Land, the idea is really not out of line with general tradition.
Every one knows the story of King Arthur's sword Excalibur, which came
from the Lady of the Lake, and finally went back to her into the lake.
Excalibur is the same as the Irish sword Caladbolg? and that in turn is
identical with the sword of Niiadha, one of the four " jewels " of the Tuatha
D6 Danaan. Niiadha, as we have seen, was a sea god. The evidence of
these pages tends to show that the Grail, which, though not so closely identi-
fied with Arthur as Excalibur, is always mentioned in connection with him,^
may go back to the cauldron of the Dagda, another one of the four " jewels,"
and, like the sword, originally belong to the Land-beneath-the-Waves.^

In Wauchier's account of Gawain*s visit to the Grail castle,^ which
Miss Weston has given reasons for thinking is the most archaic of all,® the
palace of the Fisher King is far out on the sea, and is reached by a long

* Rhys, Celtic Folk-Lorty I, 32, suggests that Cawellyn is the same as cawdUlyn^ " creel
or basket lake/' and tells a number of stories collected in the neighborhood which deal with
fairies that dwell in this lake. Of another lake in the neighborhood, Corwrion, Rh^s gives
similar stories (I, 68), and tells of a supposed submerged village there and of a family in the
neighborhood reputed to be of fairy origin, who are said " to have arrived in the parish at the
bottom of a cazvell" " a creel or basket carried on the back." Evidently they were thought to
have been brought out of the lake in a basket. Not to attach undue importance to details, a
connection between the sublacustrine folk and a basket or cauldron seems clearly indicated.

« See my " The Bleeding Lance," PMLA., XXV, 33 f.

* Brugger, ZFS., XXXVI, Referaie und Rezensionen^ 189-190, has pooh-poohed the idea that,
because all Grail stories are connected with Arthur, the connection must be old. But he g^ves
no reasons, and it still seems to me a highly probable hypothesis that the Sword, Round Table,
Grail, etc., belong together, and were associated very early with Merlin and with Arthur.

* For a rather different view see Windisch in the Leipzig Abhandlungen^ XXIX, 197 f. (1912),
a publication that came to me since this paper was in type.

* Ed. Potvin, 19639-20333. Wauchier's date is about 1190.

* Legend of Sir Perceval^ I, 229 f., 286 f.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 247

wave-beaten causeway. Gawain's horse took the bit in his teeth and entered,
against the will of his rider, the forbidding opening ^ to this passage. Some x
idea of the length of the causeway is gained by noticing that Gawain rode -^-^
over it from nightfall till midnight before he drew near to the Grail palace. ^ y
If we take the description literally, the Grail castle must have been a crannog,
or lake dwelling, far out in a large lake or bay. The description is most natu-
rally explained as a euhemerization of a castle beneath the waves. Gawain
was carried thither on the back of a particular horse which knew the way.
Next morning when he awoke from sleep he found himself ** on a lofty cliff
beside the sea." No house, castle, or trace of man was visible. Some veil of
illusion had evidently covered both them and the causeway over which Gawain
had ridden the previous night. In an earlier form of the story it is probable
that this mysterious veil was the surface of the sea. The thoughtful reader of
the romances will be reminded of the description, in the prose Lancelot^ of
the surface of a lake as a veil of illusion for a fairy abode.^

Chretien's version, although older in time of composition ^ than Wauchier's,
is apparently more modified by the constructive skill of the author than is the
latter. In Chretien's version are several points which may indicate that the
castle of the Grail was, in a more original form of the story, an under-wave-
abode. Perceval found the Grail king fishing from a boat which was upon a
broad, deep water. When Perceval inquired about a lodging place for the
night, the fisherman told hun to follow a cleft made in the rock, adding that
when he arrived at the top he would see before him in a valley a house with
streams and woods. Perceval went to the top of the hill, but at first could see
nothing but sky and land. For several moments he blamed the fisherman for
misdirecting him. Then he saw before him in the valley the top of a tower
with beautiful turrets.^

1 " Moult i fet hideus entrer" (MS. Montpellier). On the perilous entrance to the other-
world, see my "^Imxn," {Harvard) Studits and NoUs, VIII, 75 f., and cf. the "cleft made in the
rock" in Chretien's account below. * See below, p. 249, n. i. • About 1175.

^ The text in Baist*s edition is as follows :

Montez vos an par cele frete {nays the fisherman)
299a Qui est en cele roche fete

£ quant vos la amont vanroiz

Devant vos an un val verroiz

Une meison ou ge estois

Pres de rivieres e de bois.

Maintenant dl s'an va amont

£ quant il vint an son le mont

Si garda avant devant lui
3000 £ quant il vint an son le puy

Si ne vit mes que del e terre

£ dit : que sui ge venuz querre

La musardie e la bricoigne 1

Dex li doint hui male vergoigne

Celui qui ca m'a anvoi6

Si m'a il or bien avoi^

y'^

248 CELTIC CAULDRONS OF PLENTY

This sudden appearance of the castle with its towers and turrets below the
knight may most naturally be explained as a rationalization of an earlier form
of the story in which the tower of the Grail castle lay beneath a lake. The
peculiar " opening made in the rock " ^ would then be a rationalization of a
perilous entrance to a subaqueous domain. Chretien, however, wished to
represent the story as entirely natural, and mentions no further difficulty in
the way of Perceval's attaining the castle. But the next morning, when Per-
ceval awoke, the castle was empty, and no search of his could reveal the
whereabouts of its inhabitants.

Doubtless one should be cautious about attaching excessive importance to
these apparent traces of an original location of the Grail castle in the sea.
Yet they demand some explanation, and it is a striking fact that it is precisely
in the oldest known Grail writers (Chretien, Wauchier) that they appear. If
Chretien had a Celtic source which represented the Grail palace as beneath
the sea, he would be sure, according to his usual procedure,^ to rationalize
this into a location on the edge of the sea, and would give us something like
what we have in his lines, and in those of Wauchier.

4 {Continued) Qu'il me dist que ge verroie

Meison quant ca amont seroie ;
Chevaliers {Pesciires Mons MS.) qui ce me deis
3010 Trop grant desleaut^ feis
Se tu le me deis por mal.
Lors vit devant lui an un val
Le chief d'une tor qui parut
L'an ne trovast jusqu'a Barut
Si bele ne si bien asise
Quarree fu de pierre bise
3017 Si avoit [deus] tomeles antor
La sale fu devant la tor
£ les loiges devant la sale.

With verses 3012-3019 above may be compared the account of the Irish Book of Fennoy:
** Mananndn settled the Tuatha D^ Danaan in the most beautiful valleys, drawing round
them an invisible wall, which was impenetrable to the eyes of men " (p. 238 above) ; and of
the Welsh poet Dafydd ab Gwilym : " The high projecting towers of the family of Gwynn "
(p. 243 above).

Wjth the great fire in the Grail palace, insisted on in Wauchier and in Chretien :

ed. Baist, 3055 Si ot devant lui un feu grant
De sesche busche bien ardant,

3143 Antor le feu qui cler ardoit ;

and in Parzival^ " So great a fire was never seen at Wildenberc " (ed. Martin, 230, 10) ; cf.
the fire by the cauldron of Gerg (p. 239 above), and the burning torch in Pryderi's castle
(p. 245 above).

1 The words ^^frete . . . fete " (11. 2991 f.) can hardly mean a natural cleft in a rock.

^ Compare Yvain^ in which Chretien has euhemerized an original fie into the haughty .
ch&telaine of a mediaeval castle ; and the " Joie de la Cort " episode in Erec^ where something
thoroughly supernatural has plainly been tofied down. Of course Chretien's sources, assuming
them to have been essentially Celtic, may have been already somewhat rationalized.

ARTHUR C. L. BROWN 249

That every ancient Welsh and Irish magic vessel turns out to be connected
with the sea is a remarkable coincidence, if nothing more.^ Other points,
such as the association of the Dagda, not only with a cauldron of plenty, but
with a lacustrine smith, just as the Fisher King is associated with the Grail
and with a smith who dwelt by or under a lake, seem to make the hypothesis
of a mere coincidence unlikely. Niiadha, who, as we have seen, was brother
and associate to the Dagda, was, according to ancient Irish tradition, a wounded
king ^ who lost his kingdom on that account, like the Grail king. The mwys
of Gwyddno, considering how little we are told of it, is a remarkable parallel
to the Grail. All of these Celtic stories have been shown to antedate Chretien.

What may be perhaps thought new in this paper is the indication of a
persistent association between Celtic magic cauldrons and the Land-beneath-
the- Waves, and the pointing out of traces of an original location of the Grail
castle upon or beneath the sea. It has been seen that the Celtic hypothesis
can readily explain the epithet " Fisher King '' and other features which con-
nect the Grail castle with the watery reahn. This, it is thought, must tend to
increase the probability that the Grail story, whatever be the ultimate origin of
the elements from which it is composed, took shape in the fancy of the Celts.

1 No one can deny the possibility that a Celtic description of a Land-beneath-the-Waves

may have formed the basis of Chretien*s account. In his Lancelot he mentions two felons

passages to Gorre, a land which has a number of points in common with the otherworld. The

passage chosen by Gawain was called :

Li Ponz EvageS)

Por ce que soz eve est li ponz (ed. Foerster, 66i).

The prose Lancelot relates that a water fairy (cf. merfeine merminney Lanzelet, 194 f.) carried the
infant Lancelot away to her residence beneath a lake :

" La damoisele qui lanselot emporta el lac estoit une fee " (p. 19). . . . " En chel lieu ou il
sambloit que li lais fust plus grans et plus parfons avoit la dame moult beles maisons et moult
riches. ... La samblanche del lac le covroit si que veus ne pooit estre" (p. 22). Vulgate Version^
ed. Sommer, vol. III. Compare the pucUles despuis of the " Elucidation " (Percevaly 29-62),
who used to rise out of the water of springs bearing golden cups and food for the wayfarer.
For numerous references to the Under- Water- Realm in the romances see Miss Paton, Studies in
the Fairy Mythology y pp. 167 f. ^ J\ev. Celt^ XII, 61.

THE DYING INDIAN

Frank Edgar Farley

The American Indian was, as every reader knows, an object of lively
curiosity to Europeans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In the
literature of the time every effort was made to satisfy that curiosity. Any
book treating of the history, topography, manners, morals, or arts of America
or its inhabitants, from Captain Smith's True Relation down through the
period of the Revolution and beyond, was almost sure to make some mention
of the Indians, and not a few such books were chiefly devoted to their affairs.
This eager interest may be accounted for in two ways. Of course, whatever
could be learned of the red man's origin, language, religion, ethics, mode of
government, habits, and manners had scientific value.^ But further than
that, the Indian was to a. greater or less degree on the white man's con-
science. The white man had cheated him out of his lands, debauched him
with rum, and dealt treacherously with him in various ways, and yet the
Indian was a brother man, and at bottom he retained many of the virtues of
the unspoiled child of nature. He was on the whole, in spite of his fiendish
cruelty, a pathetic figure, — not without nobility, and indubitably possessed of
an immortal soul for whose welfare the less hardened of the whites felt some
measure of embarrassed responsibility.^ As the eighteenth century wore on,
with its ever increasing talk of ** sensibility " and " the return to nature," the
white, although he continued to ply the Indian with fire water and to de-
fraud him of his hunting grounds,^ interested himself more and more deeply
in the sentimental aspects of the Indian's character and fate.

No trait of the red man was oftener dwelt upon than his stoical endur-
ance of hardship, especially when subjected by his enemies to torture. Hun-
dreds of anecdotes of such fortitude may be found in the literature of the

^ For a recently published example of such scientific inquiry (a physician's), see " Letters
of Samuel Lee and Samuel' Sewall relating to New England and the Indians," edited by
G. L. Kittredge, Publications of the Colonial Society of Mcusachusetts, Vol. XIV, 191 2.

2 Much was written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries on the subject of Indian
missions. Samson Occom, the celebrated Indian preacher, who visited England in 1766-1768
on behalf of Wheelock's Indian Charity School, collected there over £12,000 as a result of some
four hundred sermons and other addresses. Occom was presented to George III and met many
other distinguished people. See Love's Samson Occom and the Christian Indians of New
England^ Boston, 1900, chap. viii.

• See Tlie Indian Dispossessed^ by S. K. Humphrey, Boston, 1905.

251

252 THE DYING INDIAN

eighteenth century alone.^ It was natural that these recitals, always shocking
but often thrilling, should fire the imagination of some of the poets, for the
victim was usually represented as chanting a death song in which he derided
his enemies.^ We have in consequence a number of poems in which the
central figure is an Indian singing his death song at the stake. The notes
comprising the present article had their origin in the curiosity aroused in the
writer's mind by some songs of this character which were composed in the
eighteenth century. Investigation revealed several other poems belonging to
the same epoch which exhibit the Indian in various sentimental situations. A
few of these songs and other poems are here briefly described and annotated.
They cannot be held to portray the Indian accurately. None of them has
high poetic merit. That degree of praise can. hardly be bestowed upon even
the best of Freneau*s compositions. But they afford one more illustration of
the interest in the emotions and the virtues of barbaric races which the Eng-
lish literature of the second half of the eighteenth century frequently reveals,
and which may be regarded as one of the manifestations of that vague
impulse commonly known as the Romantic movement.

It remains to be said that the poems reviewed in these notes are confined
to the eighteenth century and to the English language, and that the writer
has not by any means exhausted all available sources of information.

I. Of the songs supposed to be sung by Indians who are dying under
torture, the following is on the whole about the best that has survived :

THE DEATH SONG OF A CHEROKEE INDIAN'

The sun sets in night, and the stars shun the day,
But glory remains, when their lights fade away.
Begin, ye tormenters : your threats are in vain :
For the son of Alknomock can never complain.

Remember the woods, where in ambush he lay,
And the scalps which he bore from your nation away.
Why do ye delay ? . . . 'till I shrink from my pain ?
Know, the son of Alknomock can never complain.

1 For typical examples see the London Magazine^ XXXII, 459(1763), and the American Mu-
seumt II, 594 (1787). The periodicals of the time abound in Such instances. So do the many
narratives of individual captivity, and such books (their number is legion) as Major Robert
Rogers's A Concise Account of North America^ London, 1765; James Adair's The History of the
American Indians ^ London. 1775; Jonathan Carver's Travels through the Interior Parts of
North America^ London, 1778; and John Long's interesting Voyages and Travels of an Indian
Interpreter and TVader, London, 179 1. See also the fesuit /delations.

' The songs of the dying Indian were often compared with the numerous translations and
imitations of the Dying Ode of Regnar Lo&broky a poem of Norse origin which Percy made
popular in 1763. See the Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature^ IX, 66, n.2,
Boston, 1903. The dying negro slave was also the subject of much sentimental verse in the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

' As printed in The American Museum, second edition (1787).

FARLEY 253

Remember the arrows he shot from his bow :
Remember your chiefs by his hatchet laid low.
The flame rises high. You exult in my pain :
But the son of Alknomock will never complain.

I go to the land where my father is gone :

His ghost shall exult in the fame of his son.

Death comes like a friend. He relieves me from pain :

And thy son, O Alknomock, has scorned to complain.

This composition has been ascribed to three different authors. Its earliest
appearance in print seems to have been in the first number of Mathew Carey's
American Museum^ January, 1787 (I, T7), I have not seen a copy of the first
edition. In the second (1787) no author is given ; but in the third (the preface
of which is dated July 20, 1790) the poem is attributed to " P. Freneau."
Royall Tyler introduced the song into the opening 4Ct of The Contrast ^ which
was performed for the first time in New York, April 16, 1787, and printed
in Philadelphia in 1790. A character called Maria, who is disclosed at the
beginning of the second scene " sitting disconsolate at a Table, with Books,
&c.," sings the Cherokee song and then observes, somewhat stiffly, ** There is
something in this song which ever calls forth my affections. The manly virtue
of courage, that fortitude which steels the heart against keenest misfortunes,
which interweaves the laurel of glory amidst the instruments of torture and
death, displays something so noble, so exalted, that in despite of the prej-
udices of education I cannot but admire it, even in a savage." Thomas J.
McKee, who edited the play for the Dunlap Society in 1887, prints (facing
p. 1 1) a reduced facsimile of a contemporary broadside containing the words
and music and bearing the title Alknomook, the Death Song of the Cherokee
Indians. He remarks in his Introduction (p. x), ** This song had long the
popularity of a national air and was familiar in every drawing-room in the early
part of the century."

Oddly enough, the song was printed among the Poems of Mrs. Anne Hunter,
London, 1806, as her own composition, with the title The Death Song,
written for and adapted to an original Indian air, Maria Edgeworth quotes
the poem in her Rosamond (Philadelphia, 182 1, II, p. 52 of The Print
Gallery) , where she calls it The Son of Alknomook. She adds a note by
Mrs. Hunter (to whom she ascribes the authorship), explaining that " the idea
of the ballad was suggested several years ago, by hearing a gentleman, who had
resided many years in America, among the tribe called the Cherokees, sing
a wild air, which he assured me it was customary for these people to chaunt
with a barbarous jargon, impl)dng contempt for their enemies in the moments
of torture and death." The version in Mrs. Hunter's Poems, which I have
not seen, evidently differs somewhat from that printed in Carey's Museum
(and reproduced above), but it is said by McKee to be " an exact copy " of

254 THE DYING INDIAN

that in Tyler's play. The version printed by Miss Edgeworth, however, not
only omits one of Tyler's stanzas (" Remember the woods "), but varies a
little in other respects. Compare Mrs. Hunter's version as printed in
Duyckinck's Cyclopcedia^ I, 341. The broadside varies slightly from Tyler's
version and considerably from Freneau's.

Professor Pattee, the editor of The Poems of Philip Freneau (Princeton,
1 902- 1 907), agrees with most authorities in accepting the song as Freneau's
in spite of the fact that Freneau never included it among his own works,
although he ** hoarded his poetic product, especially in his earlier period, with
miserly care." McKee, on the contrary, is convinced "after considerable
research . . . that Alknomook is the offspring of Tyler's genius." The evi-
dence does not seem conclusive in the case of any one of the three candidates.^

2. In the American Museum for September, 1789 (VI, 193), appeared
an anonymous prose tale bearing the title Azakia: A Canadian Story. An
officer in the French army, St. Castins, becomes enamored of a young Indian
woman, Azakia, whom he has saved from death. Although Azakia returns
his aif ection, she remains faithful to her husband, the chief Ouabi, with whom
St. Castins takes refuge. Presently Ouabi is made prisoner by hostile Indians
and bound to a stake, where he is to be tortured to death. He has already
begun his death song when St. Castins, at the head of the chief's followers,
disperses the enemy and releases the captive. In gratitude Ouabi surrenders
Azakia to the Frenchman and takes a new wife.

This tale was versified, with some changes in names and incidents, by
Mrs. Sarah Wentworth Morton, the Delia Cruscan, and published in Boston
in 1790 with the title Oudbi^ or the Virtues of Nature. An Indian Tale. In

1 For discussions of the authorship of this song see Pattee, Poems of Freneau^ II, 313 n.;
McKee*s edition, p. x. ; Duyckinck, Cyclopadia of American Literature^ New York, 1856, I,
341 n.; Onderdonk, History of American Ferse, Chicago, 1901, pp. 8off. ; Marble, Heralds of
American Literature^ Chicago, 1907 (to which I owe the reference to The Contrast)^ pp. 95 ff.

McKee notes that the song was introduced into another play, JVinv Spain, or Love in Mex-
icoy Dublin, 1740. The date is an error. The opera called New Spain, sometimes attributed to
John Scawen, was published in London in 1790, and according to the title-page received its
first performance July 16 of that year, at the Theatre Royal. One of the characters is Alkmo-
noak, a Chickasaw chief, who is captured by the Spaniards and who sings the death song in
the third act. One stanza (^* Remember the arrows ") is omitted. The three remaining stanzas
vary somewhat from all the other versions, but most resemble the version of Tyler.

In the American Museum for October, 1789 (VI, 338), is printed A Favorite Song. Tune,
The Son of Alknomack. This has nothing to do with Indians. The Philadelphia Minerva for
December 23, 1797, reprints from the Weekly Museum a poem of sixty lines, in rhymed couplets,
with the heading Alknomack, the great Indian chief, when preparing for the war in which he was
made prisoner and tormented, is said to have made the following bloody reflections and observations
to the virgins and attendants of his wigwam, in the night preceding the first battle. The beginning
indicates that Gray's The Fatal Sisters served as a model :

Now the storm begins to come 1
Every yell foretokens doom.
Hear the warrior's whoop from far.
Tells us to prepare for war.

FARLEY 255

Four Cantos, By Pkilenia, a Lady of Bostoft} The book was reviewed with
much enthusiasm in the Massachusetts Magazine for December, 1790
(II, 759), by a writer who hails her as "the Seward of America."^
One of the best things in the poem is the death song, beginning,

RearM midst the war-empurpled plain,
What Illinois submits to pain !
How can the glory-darting fire
The coward chill of death inspire !

This song was printed in the Scots Magazine for October, 1793 (LV, 503),
with due credit.

A notice of Oudbi which appeared in the London Monthly Review^
September, 1793, inspired one James Bacon to construct a three-act play in
prose, which he called The American Indian ; or, Virtues of Nature , and
which he published in London in 1 795 with a dedication to Anne, Marchioness
Townshend. The author explains in an introductory note that he began to
write from the description in the review. " I had nearly compleated the second
act," he says, ** when the politeness of the editor of the Monthly Review, to
whom I had applied for information where I might meet with the poem, fur-
nished me with a sight of the only copy which, it is believed, ever made it's
way into England." Bacon departs only slightly from Mrs. Morton's version
of the action, and pays her the compliment of reprinting her " justly admired
death song " intact.

3. The collection of American Poems published by Collier and Buel at
Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1793, contains (p. 287) a lively composition by the
versatile William Dunlap, entitled Cololoo — An Indian Tale, thrown into
English Verse, Cololoo, a Cayuga brave, has fallen into the hands of a hostile
tribe, who are about to torture him at the stake in revenge for Colwall, one
of their own warriors. The poem begins with a spirited account of the prep-
arations for the sacrifice and the captive's indifference to his fate. The singer
taunts his captors with the number of scalps they have lost to his nation and
presently begins to boast of the fame of the great Cayuga chief, Logan.

Then whilst from every limb the red streams gush,

And round him glows the fire ;
Whilst thorns and nails transfix the quivering fiesh,

The death song rises higher.

1 Mrs. Morton annotated her poem with great care. She acknowledges her indebtedness
to ** the obliging communications of General Lincoln," and quotes from the letters of William
Penn and from Jefferson's Notes on Virginia,

^ The same number of the magazine contains Lines on Female Genius. To Pkilenia ; occa-
sioned by reading her PoEM^ entitled ^ Oudbi^ or The Virtues of Nature,*^ " Mean is the man,"

writes Philenia's admirer,

who never can bestow

A leaf of laurel to a female brow ;

When sterling sense and tuneful diction join'd

Are the twin offspring of a female mind.

256 THE DYING INDIAN

The captive sings not only of Logan's valor but of his magnanimity. He
reminds his hearers that Logan once stayed his hand when about to take ven-
geance for the murder of his children, because the white man who had fallen
into his power showed no fear of death. Then he jeers again at his tormentors :

Why bring ye not the heated stone,

To sear and seam my manly breast?
Why sure the torture is not done !

Such pain Cololoo bears in jest.

The prisoner's courage and his rehearsal of Logan's generosity have so
wrought upon his enemies, however, that

Reldor then with sullen stride,

His knife was in his hand,
Advanced, and thus aloud he cried, —

And cut the twisted band.

Reldor takes thee for his son,
Colwall in battle slain. ^

The poem was reprinted in TAe Columbian Mtise, Philadelphia, 1794
(p. 187).

Cololoo is of special interest because of its mention of Logan. The wrongs
of Logan,^ " the white man's friend," whose family is reported to have been
barbarously murdered by Captain Michael Cresap in the spring of the year
1774, aroused much sympathy in the eighteenth century. The alleged murder
led to ** Cresap's War." At a peace conference held near the end of the war,
Logan is said to have made a speech which Thomas Jefferson praised^ as
equal to an)rthing in Cicero or Demosthenes. This speech, which was famous
two generations ago "in every hemisphere," as Drake quaintly observes,
begins, " I appeal to any white to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin

1 S. G. Drake, in The Book of the Indians^ eighth edition, Boston, 1841, relates that Logan,
** who took no delight in tortures," cut the bonds of a white captive named Robinson and had
him adopted into an Indian family. (Bk. v, p. 42.)

^ The Cayuga Logan, son of Shikellimus, is to be distinguished from the Shawnee Log^n
who was killed in the service of the Americans during the Revolution. See Drake, Bk. v, 132 f.

' Notes on the State of Virginia, London, 1787, p. 104. Jefferson's statements with regard
to Cresap's part in Logan's misfortune were challenged by Cresap's friends and led to a con-
troversy. The genuineness of the speech has also been questioned. See Drake, Bk. v, 41-48 ;
W. L. Stone, Life of foseph Brant, Albany, 1865, I, 39 ff. ; B. Mayer, Tah-gah-jute, or Logan
and Captain Michael Cresap, Baltimore, 1851 ; Joseph Doddridge, Logan, the last of the race of
Shikellemus, Chief of the Cayuga nation. A dramatic piece. . . . Reprinted from the Virginia edi-
tion of 182^, with an appendix [by J. R. Dodge] relating to the murder of Logan^s family, Cin-
cinnati, 1868. Doddridge's play, which is in prose, closes with Logan's speech. In the appendix
are two poems by J. D. Canning, The Shade of Logan, and Epitaph for the Logan Monument,
both reprinted from Williams* American Pioneer. See also a passage in Richard Alsop's travesty
of Jefferson's Inaugural (1805), printed in Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia^ I, 500. Alsop alludes to

That story sad, by fiction's hand adom'd,
Where hapless Logan for his offspring moum'd.

FARLEY 257

hungry, and he gave him not meat ; if ever he came cold and naked, and he
clothed him not." One sentence, " There runs not a drop of my blood in the
veins of any living creature," suggested a passage in Campbell's Gertrude of
Wyoming (published in 1809).^

Logan's speech was printed and his story was told in the Universal Maga-
zine^ LXXXIII, 181 (1788), under the title Fine Specimen of Indian Elo-
quence? He is the hero of a poem called The Indian Victory , a Fragment
Decorated by the Pencil of Fancy y signed " Lavinia," and contributed to the
Massachusetts Magazine in 1791 (III, 763).

4. Passing over Joseph Lyndon Arnold's The Warrior's Death Song,
1797^ (a poem inspired perhaps by the Son of Alknomock), and Thomas
Gisbome's The Dying Indian, 1798,* a ** Pindaric " ode in which the Indian's
last moments are oddly contrasted with those of the saint and martyr Stephen,
we may dismiss the Indian under torture,^ and consider briefly a group of
poems in which the Indian dies in some other way. In Joseph Warton's
The Dying Indian (Dodsley's Collection of Poems, London, 1782, IV, 220;
American Museum, II, 414) he is slain by a poisoned arrow. William

^ See Campbell's own note to Part iii, stanza xvii. Campbell quotes at length from Jefferson.

Washington Irving used a variant of " I appeal to any white," etc., as a motto for his essay
on " Traits of Indian Character " in The Sketch-Book.

^ One of the characteristics of the American Indian which the eighteenth century most
admired was his native eloquence. The periodicals of that era, as well as the various Travels
and Histories are full of alleged Indian addresses or ** talks " of one sort and another. Exam-
ples may be found in the Gentleman's Magasine^ IV, 449 (1734); XVIII, 60 (1748); XXV,
252 (1755); London Magazine^ XVII, 8i, 419 (1748); XXVII, 631 (1758); Scots Magazine^
XXV, 463 (1763); XXIII, 12, 602 (1761); Monthly Review Enlarged^ IX, 465 (1792);
Critical Reviewy IV, 13 (1757); American Museum^ III, 256, 449 (1788); Massachusetts Maga-
Mine, III, 355 (1791) ; Weekly Magazine (Philadelphia), II, 410 (1798). Others are in the
Memoirs of Lieutenant Henry Timberlake, London, 1765, TTie History of the Five Indian
Nations of Canada by the Honorable Cadwallader Colden, London, 1747, and the works of Carver,
Long, etc. Drake prints a great many. William Smith's Some Account of the North American
Indians, London, 1754, contains a Speech of a Creek Indian against the Immoderate Use of
Spirituous Liquors, which has an interesting history recounted in The Works of William Smith,
/ D.D., Late Provost of the College and Academy of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, 1803, II, 214.

Speeches in verse may be found in the Gentleman^ s Magazine, XXXV, 526 (1765), and in the
American Museum, IV, 481 (1788). Compare G. L, Kittredge, The Old Farmer and his
Almanack, Boston, 1904, pp. 333-378.

• See Kettell's Specimens of American Poetry, Boston, 1829, II, 80 f.

• Reprinted in Gisbome's Walks in a Forest, eighth edition, London, 181 3, p. 215.

• A variant of the tortured- Indian motive was introduced by William Richardson, Professor
of Humanity at Glasgow University, in The Indians, a five-act tragedy in blank verse printed
in London in 1790. At the opening of the third act a young Englishman is disclosed in fetters
and surrounded by hostile savages. The captive defies his tormentors in true Indian fashion :

Begin your rites : I scorn them ; and defy
AU that your bloody vengeance can inflict.

He is released in the nick of time by a friendly chief.

The Massachusetts Magazine for August, 1789 (I, 521), contains a poem called Rosetta, in
which a white prisoner dies at the stake.

258 THE DYING INDIAN

Preston's ample Poetical Works (London, 179 5) contain a poem which was
quoted entire in the Monthly Review for February, 1795 (XVI, 168), and
again the next month in the Scots Magazine (LVII, 173). The title is Speech
of an old savage to his son^ whOy in a war with a neighboring tribe ^ was
preparing to bear his feeble father on his back. The savage begs to be left
behind. " But first," he cries.

But first strike here ; leave not thine aged father,
To feel their rage, whose kindred he has mangled ;
Nor let his torturM members feast the sight
Of those that hate him and his tribe ! — Farewell,
Be kind and quick. — Thy lance be sharp as now,
Thine arm as strong, my son, in all thy warfare ! ^

This is virtually suicide.^ In some poems an Indian expresses his despair
at the loss of home and kindred and then destroys himself. In Freneau's
Prophecy of King Tammany^ first published in the Freeman's Journal^
December 11, 1782, the famous chief immolates himself upon a funeral
pyre. In the Indian Warrior's Lamentation^ printed anonymously in the
Massachusetts Magazine , IV, 120 (1792), the aged Wimar hurls himself
down the rocks of Niagara in the manner of Gray's Bard. Carandoc, the
center of interest in The American Warrior ^ an anonymous poem printed in
the Columbian Muse (1794), kills himself, we infer, in order to join his
murdered sweetheart.^

5. Freneau's The Dying Indian, or Last Words of Shalum, which
first appeared in the Freeman s Journal, March 17, 1784, deserves a more

^ It was the custom in some Indian families to put to death, as an act of mercy, the aged
and infirm members. John Long prints in the Indian lang^ge the ^ grand medicine song "
which the Chippeways use on such an occasion. His translation is as follows : ** The Master
of Life gives courage. It is true, all Indians know that he loves us, and we now give our
father to him, that he may find himself young in another country and be able to hunt." After
the ritual, ^ the eldest son gives his father the death-stroke with a tomahawk : they then take
the body, which they paint in the best manner, and bury it with the war weapons.** Voyages and
Travels ^ London, 1791, p. 74.

A peculiarly revolting incident of this kind is described by Peter Williamson in French and
Indian Cruelty^ third edition, Glasgow, 1758, pp. 22 f. Compare a passage near the end of
Joseph Warton*s The Dying Indian^ Chalmers* edition of the Poets, XVIII, 170.

* On suicide among the Indians, see G. L. Kittredge, Letters of Samuel Lee y etc., pp. 150, 181.

* See William Prichard's lines on the Character of St, Tamany^ in the American Museum^
V, 104 (1789), reprinted in the Columbian Muse, p. 223. Compare Drake, Bk. v, p. 17. See also
O. Wegelin, Early American Plays, New York, 1905, p. 43, for information about an opera
performed in 1794) called Tammany, or the Indian Chief

* Compare the lament of Cascarilla for her dead lover in Cascarilla, an American Ballad^
printed in the American Museum, IV, 384 (1788), and again in the Massachusetts Magazine, IV,
327 (1792) ; also the reflections of a jilted lover in Joseph Smith*s An Indian Eclogue, published
in the Columbian Muse, p. 160.

In Freneau*s The American Village (1772) it will be remembered that Colma drowns herself
in order that her husband and her child may be rescued in a boat which cannot hold all three.
{Poems, ed. Pattee, III, 388 ff.)

FARLEY 259

extended comment. This poem belongs to a different type from any we have
yet considered, for Shalum evidently dies a natural death. He is represented
as reflecting, as he takes leave of his family, on the sweetness of his mortal
life and the probable dullness of the life hereafter. He does not look forward
to a Happy Hunting Ground.

No deer along those gloomy forests stray,
No huntsmen there take pleasure in the chace,
But all are empty unsubstantial shades,
That ramble through those visionary glades.

In the edition of his poems published in June, 1795, Freneau changed the
title to The Dying Indian Tomo-Chequiy perhaps because he had in the mean-
time given the name Shalum to his Indian Student (1788), and because, fur-
ther, he was at that time engaged on "a series of papers entitled 'Tomo
Cheeki, the Creek Indian in Philadelphia,' in which the manners and absurd-
ities of the Americans are described from the standpoint of an observant
savage." These papers were published in successive numbers of the Jersey
Chronicle^ beginning with the issue for May 23, 1795. Two years later
Freneau republished them in the Time Piece and Literary Companion^ with
a note explaining that they were "said to be translated from one of the Indian
languages of this country." ^

Tomodiichi (the name is variously spelled) is an historical personage, a
famous chief of the Creek Indians, who, together with his wife, his adopted
son Toonahowi, and a considerable retinue, visited England under the care
of General Oglethorpe in June, 1734. The Indians were received with marked
respect, and an ode has survived which was composed in the chief's honor.^

The somewhat hackneyed device by which Freneau pretends to reproduce
the naXve comments of a savage upon the customs of a civilized community
will remind every reader of the Spectator oi an interesting episode in the reign
of Queen Anne. In April, 17 10, four (some reports say five) sachems of the
Iroquois nation visited England, ostensibly to request the Queen to drive the
French out of Canada. They were received at court, their portraits were
painted by a famous artist and engraved in mezzotint, and they attracted gen-
eral attention, of which we find echoes in the literature of the day. A catch-
penny pamphlet called The Four Kings of Canada (London, 17 10, reprinted
in 1 891) gave a meagre account of them, which included their speech to the

1 Pattee, Forms of Freneau y I, bcvi, Ixxiv.

* Georgia^ a Foem^ Tomo-cka-chiy an Ode, — A Copy of Verses on Mr. Oglethorpe^ s second
voyage to Georgia^ London, 1736. See Charles C. Jones's Historical Sketch of Tomo^hi-chi,
Mico of the Yamacrawsy Albany, 1868, pp. $8 ff.

Accounts of this visit are in the Gentleman's Magazine^ IV, 449, 450, 571 (1734). Con-
cerning Toonahowi, who was killed (1743) in the service of the English and buried with mili-
tary honors, see the Gentleman's Magazine, XII, 496 (1742), and the London Magazine^ XV,
622 (1746). See also Drake, Bk. iv, p. 29.

26o THE DYING INDIAN

Queen .^ One of them became the hero of a delightful ballad, The Four Indian
Kings (telling '* How a beautiful Lady conquered one of the Indian Kings "),
of which the Harvard University Library has three copies in "broadside** and
one in "garland" style. And further, they were made the subject of a Toiler
paper by Steele (No. 171, May 13, 1710) and of a Spectator paper by Addi-
son (No. 50, April 27, 171 1). The bulk of Addison's paper is a pretended
translation from a bundle of papers left behind by " King Sa Ga Yean Qua
Rash Tow " when he quitted his lodgings. This manuscript records a savage's
impressions of English customs and institutions, with mildly satirical intent.
Swift, in the Journal to Stella (April 28, 171 1), takes credit for having sug-
gested this device to Steele, and repents that he did not make use of the
subject himself.

In the Scots Magazine for February, 1742 (IV, 73), is a four-page con-
tinuation of the observations in the Spectator, " translated from the original
manuscript, and communicated by a correspondent to the Universal Spectator.'*
This again has a satirical object.

It is interesting to note that the chief's name had been used for satirical
purposes before Freneau's time. In 1758 Tombo-Chiqui : or the American
Savage, a Dramatic Entertainment in three acts was published in London.
This play (said to have been "taken from a French piece, entitled Harle-
quin Sauvage'') is described in the Monthly Review for June of that year
(XVIII, 648) as "a satire on the foibles of those European nations, Avho
deem themselves superior to the rest of the world, on account of \ki<t\x polite
accomplishments : which, in the opinion of the honest American Savage, are
only vicious deviations /jx«n the original simplicity and integrity of nature."

" The original simplicity and integrity of nature " is the characteristic note
in Freneau's The Dying Indian Tomo-Chequi, as it is in most Indian pieces
of the eighteenth century, with the exception of those which are purely of the
Son of Alknomock type. In the latter, as we have seen, bravado and manly
endurance are the motives. One who is familiar with the sentimental literary
tastes of the second half of the century finds no difficulty in understanding
why both types of the Dying Indian should frequently appear* in the British
and American poetry of that era.

^ The speech alleged to have been made to the Queen was reprinted in the Gentleman's
Magazine.^ XVI 1 1, 60 (1748), and again in the London Magaziney XVII, 81 (also in 1748). For
further information and references, see Drake, Bk. v, pp. 13 ff.

HAMLET AND lAGO

Elmer Edgar Stoll

" He is the counterpart of Hamlet, who tries to find reasons for his delay
in pursuing a design which excites his aversion. And most of lago's reasons
for action are no more the real ones than Hamlet's reasons for delay are
the real ones. Each is moved by forces which he does not understand."
Embedded in this observation of Professor Bradley's lies a truth of funda-
mental importance, I think, when viewed in the light of historical criticism.
' Hamlet and lago are not actuated by the motives which they allege. But,
as I see it, their designs excite in them no aversion, and the forces which
move them are not obscure.

As has been suggested elsewhere,^ the Elizabethan soliloquy is the truth
itself, and though in real life a liar may lie to everybody, even to himself in a
way, lagb cannot be lying when he expresses his ambitious jealousy of Cassio,
his sexual jealousy of Othello, and his lust for Desdemona, any more than
Autolycus can be lying when he tells the audience that his traffic is sheets
and for the life to come he sleeps out the thought of it. The soliloquy or
aside, and the confidence of friend to friend, are for information, like prologue
ah^chorus, arid in treating them psychologically Shakespearean criticism has
ignored dramatic convention, whether it be in England or on the Continent,
in ancient or in modem times. By it, in Shakespeare, any curious bit of human
nature is labelled, any devious path in the intrigue is placarded. Cordelia is
not permitted to say to her father, " Nothing, my lord,'' without two previous
asides to the effect of " love and be silent " ; and Desdemona, when merry
with lago as she awaits her lord's belated arrival at the quay, must hasten
to apprise the audience that she is beguiling the thing she is by seeming
otherwise. How, then, when the placard is misleading, is an audience, before so
tenderly guided, to know it, and find its way to the truth behind these con-
fidences of lago or behind Hamlet's theological reason for sparing the king at
prayer ? If either character really deceives himself, it is he himself — as Hamlet
when he falls a-cursing like a very drab, or lago when for the moment he dallies
with the notion that he is not a villain — that detects it.

Hence we may say that the technique of Shakespeare and his times was
incapable of coping with the unconscious or subconscious. Thexhargcter him-
gf If ^^trrt g the self- dpp'^r^ion — and Jhen it is no longer self-deception. Nor

1 In fny article " Anachronism in Shakespeare Criticism," Modem Phihhgy^ April, 1910.

/ 261

262 HAMLET AND lAGO

of a subtler technique had the poet any need. Even the philosophy of his
time, of which he had as little as of Greek, knew not the unconscious. The
doctrines of Neoplatonism, of Bruno, Boehme, and Paracelsus, the scientific
interest in magic, alchemy, and animistic medicine turned the world and every
atom of it, as did popular superstition, for that matter, into beings full of
passion and knowledge. There were spirits of the heart and brain as well as
of earth and water ; and by Shakespeare and the other poets Fate, conscience
(even in the bosom of a man incapable of one), all the vague stirrings and
impulses of the soul, and the sympathetic throes of dumb nature itself are
given a voice. " Genug, das Geheimniss muss heraus," as Goethe well says,
" und soUten es die Steine verkiinden." Motives, when not merely neglected,
come boldly to the light of day, instead of betraying themselves casually
and unawares as in present-day drama and in real life. So far, indeed, are
poet and people from a notion of the relative and unconscious that the
motives appear, not in the subdued colors in which they are seen by the
soul itself, but in the glaring black or white of vice or virtue, as if a cherub
saw them. The poet who made Brutus and Othello so conscious of their own
virtue, and lago and Lady Macbeth so cheerfully aware of others* virtue and
the wickedness of their own doings and intents, had not looked much into the
dimmer chambers of the soul.

Yet Hamlet and lago do not act or recoil from action for the reasons they
allege. Most of his motives lago touches on but once, and he demeans him-
self, as Professor Bradley says, not at all like one stung with resentment, fired
by ambition, or consumed with hatred, the poisonous mineral of sexual jeal-
ousy, or lust. He takes no particular pleasure in Cassio's place once he has
got it, and his glee^at the success of his intrigue is not that of an injured
husband or a Ubertine, getting even, wife for wife. Having motives, th<
^ts^as if he had them not. Shall we, therefore, discard them, and, like the
critics, get him new ones of our own } In so doing we discard Shakespeare,
and, unawares, cease from criticism. Rather let lago run his course regardless
of motive, like Aaron, Richard HI, or Marlowe's Barabas, the badge of whose
lineage he bears, being a Machiavel, or stage villain, who is utterlj^giyen.^oyer
to eyj^^^d shrinks at none.^ As such he has a charter to do evil, liberal as the
wind. And roundly he goes to work intriguing and destroying, fired by no
particular passion, but flaring up again and again with the central flame of hell :

Work on,
My medicine, work ! Thus credulous fools are caught,
And many worthy and chaste dames even thus
All guiltiess meet reproach.*

1 See my article on " Criminab in Shakespeare and Science," Modem Philology ^ July, 191 2,
pp. 5-6, 17-20.

* Cf. II, iii, 366-369, where he delights in turning Desdemona's virtue into pitch, although
he has no gp^dge against her. " Hell and night," etc.

STOLL 263

That lago loves evil for its own sake Professor Bradley denies, finding in
him, on the contrary, traces of the obscure working of conscience, and sub-
conscious motives of so neutral a character as a sense of superiority and a
delight in the pain of his victim as a proof of his power. Even a safety valve
he provides for him, as for that other self-deceived one, Hamlet, to relieve
him from the discomfort of hypocrisy. Space forbids me to enter upon the
question further than to say that here very evidently Mr. Bradley's coimsel is
darkened by the notions not only of modem psychology but of modem meta-
physics. The Kantian *' resistance *' of the moral law in every man's bosom
(therefore in lago's), and so monistic a motive as the ** sense of power,"
are ill in keeping with the dualistic Machiiavel, who scoffs at conscience, and
revels in his villainy and the help he has from **all the tribe of hell." Far
from being a discomfort, hypocrisy is part of lago's program and profession,
sweeter to him than honey and the honeycomb. The conscience darkly work-
ing within him is no more than that familiarity with the true moral values
of which we have already taken notice. He puts himself in the wrong by vir-
tue of his own self-consciousness — by virtue of his maker's natvet6. And
the motive-hunting in his earlier soliloquies is no sign of "imeasiness '* or
'* aversion." Coolly and clearly he sees that he has no cause, and therefore acts.
The very accumulation of his motives and the uncertainty and flimsiness of
his suspicions but show the hellishness of his purpose. Instead of denying the
devil a conscience or moral sense, as we should do, for good and all, it is accord-
ing to Shakespeare's lights to give him one, but perverted, turned upside down.

Nor does this mean that we too discard Shakespeare and discredit lago
in his confidences to gallery and pit. Apart from the impression that lago is
bent upon villainy, Shakespeare saw no necessity whatarer of carrying over
the motives lago professes into his part in the play. Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth, as for the crown they commit murder after murder, think not of
the crown, but of the horrors of murder and the spirits that tend on mortal
thoughts. Hamlet, who says that he loved Ophelia more than could forty
thousand brothers, kills her father without remorse, and before or after, in
his soliloquies or serious moments, never gives her a word or a thought.
Timon, in his misanthropic meditations after his friends forsake him, shows
no trace of wounded affection, and Lear, Hamlet, and he dwell on the delin-
quencies of officers of the law, women who lisp and paint, prostitutes, and the
incontinent, with all of which they have little or nothing to do. To-day we
demand in a work of art concentration and point, not unity only but identity,
complete integration and interpenetration of part and part, form and thought,
plot and character. If Ibsen's Krogstad and Mortensgard have certain grudges
and cravings to satisfy, they are suffered to talk and act only as such men
would, and not like scoundrels let loose upon the town. In lago, on the
other hand, Shakespeare keeps to the Machiavel type, and finely as in the

264 HAMLET AND lAGO

jurnpfhis speech he individualizes him, never tjiinkSii^Lp aaking any ^B ^jticular
motive or motives shine through thought or^eej.

ScTit is, I think, with Hamlet. Except, as we have seen, when he himself
detects it, he is not deceiving himself, and he honestly believes that the ghost
may have been a devil, has the play performed really to catch the conscience
of the king, and fails to kill him afterward only because he fears that in so
doing he should waft his soul to heaven. No weak-kneed dreamer, when he
takes Polonius for the king he kills him on the spot, slips his own neck out
of the noose and the two jnno cent gentlemen's into it with all his heart and
soul, grapples with the pirate and boards him, and kills the king at the end
of the fifth act as soon as ever the dramatist himself has got ready. And yet

whether it be
Bestial oblivion or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event —
A thought which, quartered, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward — I do not know
Why yet I live to say " This thing 's to do,"
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do it.

Though he brings these vague and conflicting charges of cowardice against
himself twice over,^ he again quite as truly protests that he is no coward. ^
Contradiction upon contradiction, for the play is but a story. In the plot there
is the customary Shakespearean explicitness ; in the character — witness the
four thousand treatises I — an unwonted obscurity and confusion. On the one
hand, the heroic quality must be preserved; on the other, some show of
reason must be furnished for Hamlet's not killing the king (if the bull may
be pardoned me) before the play is over. So he accuses himself, and the
contradictory charges and excuses cancel one another. Such motivation as
this is an epical device rather than a dramatic. The ^character is .sacrificed
to-ploj^nd isjescued^like the darling of the^gods in old fable^as it were,
by Jjeingjenyeloped in a cloud ^r mist. " I do not know why yet I live to say
* This thing 's to do, ' " whereas he avows what can be known by no man —
that he hoodwinks himself ; and all the other characters in Shakespeare,
even those who, like Lear, would in real life have known themselves '*but
slenderly,'* know their weaknesses very well. Sooner or later their friends
know them too, as the Fool and Kent know Lear's, Lady Macbeth her
husband's, Enobarbus Antony's ; but Horatio, Ophelia, Gertrude, Laertes,
Fortinbras, who at the end avers that as a king he would have proved right
royally, even Claudius himself, find in Hamlet none at all. And "bestial
oblivion," mere forgetfulness or neglect, which is the main explanation of his
delay, — what a reason or dramatic motive have we there ! " Remember me,"

^ See II, ii, final speech, as well as the passage quoted above. ^ II« ii« 597-^4-

STOLL 265

the ghost cries at parting, and Hamlet whips out his tables. **Do not for-
get,** he adjures his son when he appears to him in the queen's bedchamber,
though so much else there was to say, and the motive has no more psycho-
logical import than the " antic disposition " (which, as we shall see, serves not
as a safety valve, but, however awkwardly, as a mask for his intrigue), and
is almost as naifve and purely outward a touch as the hardening of Pharaoh's
heart in the story of the Exodus, the potion of Siegfried, or the lapse of
memory in the Edipus of Voltaire. Psychologically taken, how could Hamlet /
forget — while memory holds a seat in this distracted globe ! — and remember
anything else ? Such an explanation of remissness is familiar to us only as
the disobedient child's last shift when it is taken to task, and for you or me
can hardly have a deeper meaning. And as with the cowardice and forgetful-
ness, so with Hamlet's intimation that he thinks **too precisely of the event." >
It serves the purpose of explaining his inaction, but nowhere does he exhibit
the trait. As we have seen and are to see, he is bold and resolute, and the
only instance of his stopping to "consider the event," or outcome — when
the king is at prayer — is to be taken in another way.

In short, the story is not the embodiment of the character. The dramatist
takes it as he gets it from Belleforest and Kyd, instead of inventing it, or
much modifying the details of it, to suit the conception of the character
formed in his brain. " Story came first with him," says Sir Walter Raleigh,
** and to argue from the character to the plot is to invert the true order of
things in the artist's mind." "Wh y HiH rnrHpli^ n £jt humour hpr fatbgr^
little?." he says again. "I t is easy to answer tV)jg question by enlarging on
the^c haracter of Cordelia^ and on that touch of obstinacy which is often foun^
j|v.vAiy pyrg ^nH npgplfi<^h naturcs. But this is xeally beside the mark. . . .
If Cordeliar-had-been~perfectly tender and tactful there would have been no
glay*^" And^ g^injjiere. would havebeen none if Hamlet had struck home
at the first chance^^ven. Not all of Shakespeare's heroes in tragedy betray
a tragic fault, and Hamlet seems to have no more of a fault than " star-
crossed " Romeo. Be that as it may, the details of the drama have not, as
in our drama to-day, a secondary, retroactive intention. Olivia's vow for seven
years not to show her face and to water once a day her chamber round with
eye-offending brine has no bearing on her character further than in the first
sullen word she utters: — "Take the fool away!" We, as we sit in the
playhouse or con the text, are wont to look before and after, attending not so
much to words and things as to their relation and meaning, their echoes or
shadows ; and so it is that we find in the doubt of the ghost and the sparing
of the king at prayer an excuse for delay, and in the killing of Polonius, the
hoisting of Rosencrantz and Guildenstem with their own petard, and the
boarding of the pirate, instances of the futile activity of one whose will is
fluttering but broken. But such meaning there is none, and we have rather to

266 HAMLET AND lAGO

attend to the words and things. Not before the end of the eighteenth century
did men begin to speculate upon Hamlet's character ; and the Elizabethans
were interested not in the changes of his thought and mood as they appear
in deed and demeanor, but in those delectable changes for their own sake,
the sentiment and wit, the poetry, the check and countercheck of the plot,
the ways in which Hamlet escapes from the toils of Claudius only to en-
tangle himself and Claudius too in them, the sensations, mystery, and "ocular
picturesqueness ** of the whole. To them these vague and conflicting self-
accusations — most of the time Hamlet does but chide and scold himself —
may have meant no more (except, as I said, to explain the story) than a
friend's self-accusations in real life, which no one takes to heart. Indeed, it is
quite probable that one really actuated by craven scruples and reflective coward-
ice would. in those rough-and-ready times have found small favor on the stage.
The heroes, the gentiemen in the Shakespearean and Elizabethan drama not
branded with infamy or disgrace, are, however under Senecan and Renaissance
influence they may bewail themselves, all quick and gallant spirits. Romeo,
both before and after he lies on the ground with his own tears made drunk,
shows the pluck of a paladin. And rightiy Goethe's view of Hamlet, as sinking
under a burden too great for him, is held by Mr. Bradley to be sentimental.

Instead of framing the character at first hand, and, as Carlyle says he
does, from within outward, the poet again conforms it to a type. This is the
Malcontent,^ the type of another revenger, Marston's Malevole, and, in some
degree, of Jaques in As You Like It, With Hamlet and Malevole it is a feigned
part, though continually confused with reality, and is practically the incar-
nation of the Elizabethan ** humor " of melancholy. In Hamlet's case it
comprehends the ** antic disposition," which is unlike any other madness in
Shakespeare, and it embraces practically all of the r61e (that is not a revenger's)
after he sees the ghost. It is the part of critic and cynic, who holds forth in
set, professional meditation, inspired by no experience of his own, addressed
to no one in particular, and oblivious of the issues in hand, on the theme that
all is at last vanity, rottenness, and ruin ; and holds forth in equally profes-
sional and impersonal satire of the cunning lawyer at last put to confusion, of
the painted lady unmasked and laid bare in her ugliness, of lisping, ambling,
and incontinence. Traits of a type, they have been taken by the critics for
traits of a soul fleeing from its purpose.

At the conclusion that he shows sjrmptoms of ancient and Elizabethan
melancholy Mr. Bradley and I, commonly of so different a mind, arrived
independently,' though he before me. But here we part company. I find in

1 For a fuller account see my article ** Shakespeare, Marston, and the Malcontent Type,"
Modem Philology^ January, 1906.

* I mention the fact, not only because it gives me gfreater faith in our conclusion, but
because I wish to explain that it was owing to ignorance of it that in my article, in 1906, I
gave Mr. Bradley no credit.

STOLL 267

Hamlet, as I said, a type, a stage figure, whose sombre meditations and satire
are mainly impersonal, having to do, like Malevole's, with the base uses to
which the dust of the. mighty is put, and with the lisping and painting of
'* my lady " (not Ophelia or Gertrude but women in general),^ and, together
with the mimicry, freakishness, and gibberish of the part, are not definitely
related to his own particular grief, but serve, in the plot, mainly as a blind or
stalking-horse, and, out of the plot, to tickle the taste of an audience which
delighted in rare and extravagant humors. Save for the delicacy of his phrase
and the tenderness of his spirit Hamlet might be Malevole as he meditates in
the churchyard, or when in "To be or not to be" he speaks of the oppressor's
wrong, the proud man's contumely, the pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's
delay, the insolence of office, from which he himself cannot have suffered,
and the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns, though
one had just returned to him. He has after all forgotten — not only the ghost
but himself I

What I venture to make a matter of dramatic technique Mr. Bradley makes
a matter of psychology. For him Hamlet's disease is not feigned. Disposing
easily of the previous theories (for in Shakespearean criticism is little of that
truth of which Plato avers that it can never be confuted), he shows that by
nature Hamlet is neither weak and irresolute nor too much addicted to spec-
ulation, but, plimged in melancholy as he is by the loss of his father and by
his mother's inconstancy, he is shocked beyond capability of action by the
ghost's disclosures. His mind is infected, and he henceforth probes and
lacerates the wound in his soul, struggling in vain to perform his vow.

Of all psychological theories of Hamlet this best fits the text, but even as
a psychological theory it fails to appease the mind. If by nature Hamlet
is not diseased or abnormal, but strong in thought and deed (as many of the
saner critics nowadays think him), why should a grief and a plain and simple
command like this render him incapable of action, and lead him into feigned
madness in the presence of his enemies and pointless eccentricity and aimless
meditation in the presence of his friends ? I should think he would have taken
the ghost's bidding with a cry of relief. How can his " forgetfulness " or
" dulness," again, be explained as the ** lethargy of melancholy," seeing that
he is of all the characters in the play the most active, the keenest, and the
wittiest ? And what is this melancholy ? Mr. Bradley begins with the word

1 Commonly, and even by Professors Bradley and Brandl, the bitterness against women is
thought due to disillusionment in respect to Gertrude and Ophelia. The language of III, i,
147-157 and V, i, 212 does not permit of this interpretation. It is no more likely that Ophelia
paints or lisps than that she is wanton. By some critics the last charge is actually entertained ;
but no heroine of Shakespeare's is unchaste, Cressida being no exception. And there is no
reason that I can see for thinking as most critics do that Hamlet suspects Ophelia's treachery
in the nunnery scene. All of these interpretations are the result of taking Shakespeare's
dramatic structure to be as close and compact as Ibsen's.

268 HAMLET AND lAGO

in the ancient physiological sense, but later uses it as if it were the equivalent
of melancholia^ or even " melancholy *' as we use the word to-day. Melan-
cholia is out of the question. The melancholy to which Hamlet has succumbecl
before the ghost appears to him is no more than the despondency of grief ; and
neither that nor the true Elizabethan variety (which, in this case, we must
remember, is feigned, and an)rway is a mythical disease which nowadays
means little or nothing) is enough, even under a shock like his, to paralyze
the powers of one not already enfeebled. Psychological interpretation such
as this does not do even what it most plumes itself upon doing — bridge over
the centuries and bring the character home to our souls and bosoms.

Still less does it interpret. It does violence to Shakespeare's technique
and contradicts the spirit of his time. At every turn of the simple old story
Mr. Bradley has recourse, like. his predecessors, to the subconscious, the safety
valve, the pretext. Thus a mere pretext is the " more horrid hent," not, as
many have thought, because for an honest reason it is too horrible, but
because deep in his heart Hamlet hates to kill a defenseless man. In The
Maid's Tragedy Evadne is bent upon killing her king body and soul ; and
in the Elizabethan novel Jack Wilton^ Cutwolf makes a bella vendetta of
it, model of Alexander's in the anonymous Alphonsus Emperor of Germany ^
by beguiling his victim into a blasphemous renunciation of God and assign-
ment of his soul to the devil, and then shooting him through the open
mouth that he might not recall his words.^ How is the audience to under-
stand that Hamlet is not, though he says that he is, of a like mind with
these ? Shakespeare never palters with us in a double sense. If Hamlet in-
deed disdained to strike a defenseless man, he might have cried, like many
another Elizabethan hero, *'Draw*and defend thyself,'* and cursed him
white he drew. The playwright chose rather to stain Hamlet's character with
such a sentiment as this, — a stain even then, — having a matter of two acts
still before him.

As I have remarked elsewhere, if here the man were really meant to
blench, he would be made to do so once more. In all times, and particularly
in early times, in order to make a point dramatists have found it necessary to
drive it home. If Polonius, at first sensible enough, is to turn ass, he must
play the fool not in his own house only, but with Hamlet and also with the
king and queen. If Brutus is an impractical idealist, he must thwart Cassius's
worldly prudence not only in the matter of the oath but also in the matter of
letting Antony speak to the People and in the strategy at Philippi. But blench-
ing, if you will, when the king is delivered into his hands at prayer, at his
next opportunity to kill a man who, as it seems, is the king, Hamlet kills him,
and there is only one thing for an audience, Elizabethan or modem, to think

* McKeiTow, Works of Thomas i\ash^ II, 325. Creizenach cites this instance and the pre-
ceding, IV, 223-224.

STOLL 269

of that. In the very next scene he has caught the king, he thinks, " about an
act that has no relish of salvation in it,'* and is as good as his word.

Likewise the antic disposition is taken for a safety valve, the play within
the play for a subterfuge and evasion, and the doubt of the ghost for no
genuine doubt. In drama and story, particularly Hamlet^ which in various
versions all Elizabethans knew, feigned madness had been long established as
an artifice of craft and intrigue, to protect the hero, as in Belleforest, and
** cunningly to find an opportunity," as in the German Hamlet, and was
received as the appropriate and natural employment and " business " of the
revenger biding his time. Men bore in mind the old story of the crafty mad-
ness of the elder Brutus,^ also a revenger ; and quite beside the mark is the
prevailing notion that the antic disposition must have a psychological signifi-
cance because to our minds it is an artifice lacking in prudence or practical
point. And if a safety valve Hamlet must have, he need not, surely, be fitted
with it forthwith, the ghost's words still ringing in his ears, before he has had
a chance to act or to shrink from action ; and in nature this is not to be ex-
plained away by Mr. Bradley and others as a " forefeeliilg " of his need. Men,
particularly strong men such as Hamlet has been showri to be, believe in them-
selves longer, if anything, than they have reason : — and he a moment before
so eager, with wings as swift as meditation or the thoughts of love, to sweep
to his revenge! Here is backsliding before sin or temptation, and, unless
Hamlet is meant to be a whimpering hypocritical dastard, the remark about
the antic disposition, and the last line of the scene —

O cursed spite
That ever I was born to set it right —

have to do mainly with the mechanism and movement of the plot.

That the ghost should be a devil sent to tempt him is, according to the
folklore and theology of the age, the most natural thought in the world. As
Spalding has shown, the Reformers and such theologians as Hooper and
James I had denied ghosts the power to walk in these latter days, and had
characteristically attributed the phenomenon to the devil instead of refusing
it credence. To Hamlet, moreover, the pretext, if such it be, occurs again
before he ne^ds it, or carf have a forefeeling of it, the ghost having not yet
so much as unsealed his lips :

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned.

Nor is that a sign that his wit is diseased if we remember Brutus's question
as he faces Caesar's ghost :

Art thou some god, some angel, or some devil ? *

1 Cited in Saxo Grammaticus in this connection, and frequently alluded to in Elizabethan
literature. * Quoted to this effect by Spalding.

''**4

270 HAMLET AND I AGO

Even by freethinking Milton a like theory is propounded of oracles ; and for
that matter no other scruple than this is that of the elder Hamlet, Orestes,
himself surely not weak of heart or of hand, when in Euripides he confesses
to Apollo that " there came a dreadful thought into my heart that it was some
fiend I had Hstened to, when I seemed to hear thy voice." ^

Such are the artistic and religious traditions which Shakespeare knew,
accepted, and here instinctively turned to account, and for these we have no
more right to substitute our own by way of criticism than in a more primitive
age the Tates and Gibbers had to substitute theirs, as they wrote the plays
anew. To be a Shakespearean doubter, Hamlet must needs doubt his uncle's
guilt after the proof — the mousetrap play — as Leontes continued to doubt
Hermione*s innocence after the oracle, a thing which he never does.

The mistaking of epical or constructive devices for dramatic or psycho-
logical, the misconception of the open-hearted purport of soliloquy and com-
ment in the dramatic economy, and the substitution of modem moral notions
for Shakespeare's own, — all these shortcomings are to be found in the ablest
interpretation of Hamlet as in the feeblest. Likewise out of the irrelevances and
the impersonality in the r61e of Hamlet psychological capital is made — out
of the philosophical soliloquies, the discussion of the actor's art, the satire and
mimicry. ** To be or not to be " follows his words resolving upon the play
as ** the thing," and precedes the performance of it. There, they say, is the
dreamer all adrift ! Lost, rather, even to himself. What, even in memory,
has become of the Murder of Gonzago^ or a revenger's duty, or the harrowing
look and accents of a father's ghost ? Why, that 's his character^ whisper the
critics, like Puff at the play ; but it is not his character, not the same man !
Hamlet has not ** forgotten," but has been forgotten ; and a queer criticism
I cannot but think it that lends psychological import to discursiveness, im-
personality, laxity of structure. If Hamlet speaks not to the question as to-day
he would be required to do, but is, in parliamentary phrase, out of order, so
are Lear and Timon, as we have seen, and many another character, as well,
in Elizabethan, Greek, and Spanish drama.

By one thing Mr. Bradley is puzzled, the hero's reticence concerning
Ophelia. Rightly repudiating the view that Hamlet deliberately put from him
all thought of her to hear the higher call, he comes to the conclusion that
Hamlet's love for her, though not lost, was mingled with suspicion and re-
sentment ; but his silence, especially after the death of her father, he knows
not whether to attribute to the deadening influence of melancholy upon his
love or to Shakespeare's finding that he had enough to do in showing the
state of mind which caused Hamlet to delay his vengeance, without intro-
ducing matter ** which would not only add to the complexity of the subject but
might, from its sentimental interest, distract attention from the main point.'*

* Orestes^ 1 668-1 669 ; and EUctra^ 979.

STOLL 271

There is the core of the whole present discussion ; and I for one cannot
come to such a conclusion in the one question or suspend judgment in the
other. ^From the silence of Shakespeare we can infer nothing ; his words, of
all men's, are neither faint nor few. In this instance he was not inclined to
complicate matters, to be sure, by exhibiting Hamlet's love for Ophelia, just
as in the character of Desdemona he does not exhibit filial love as well
as conjugal, or in that of Cordelia he does not exhibit conjugal love as well as
filial. Always it is a simple passion that he portrays. But the root of the
matter is that, in the spirit of a less compact and integrated structure than
ours, he takes Hamlet at his word when he says that he loves her, and yet thinks
nothing of letting him, in his feigned part of Malcontent, or madman, jeer
at her, insult her, and, without a thought of her, kill her father. So incon-
sequently, in the spirit of the same art, now extinct, he lets Hamlet, like
lago, charge himself with various faults and *' offenses," — cowardice, forget-
fulness, and thinking too precisely on the event, — and in the general tenor
of his thinking and doing show scarcely a sign of them.

Granted for the moment that Hamlet is a study in psychology, how strange

a study it is ! "So shall you hear," cries Horatio to the wondering Danes at

the end,

" Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgments, casual slaughters,

Of deaths put on by cunning and forcM cause,

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fallen on the inventors' heads."

A tragedy of intrigue, fate, and blood ! Others before me have remarked
upon the melodramatic quality of the great play, the abundance of sound and
fury in it, of all that takes the eye, fills the ear, and shocks both ; and ilo one
so shrewdly as Mr. Bradley himself has noted the quantity of noise required
by the old stage directions and implied in the text. Cannon roar whenever
the king takes a rouse, the kettledrum and trumpet bray out the triumph of
his pledge, and Danish marches, hautboys, and flourishes celebrate his move-
ments. According to the unabridged text of the last scene, the cannon,
sturdier equivalent of our melodramatic pistol, as Mr. Bradley says, should be
kept booming continually, — when Hamlet scores a hit and the king drinks
to him, when Fortinbras draws near on his march from Poland, and when
the body of the irresolute dreamer is borne with a warrior's honors to the
grave. " Go, bid the soldiers shoot," cries Fortinbras — but never when you
or I have been at the play !

There is no irony intended,* none, as this cutting shows, that we to-day
will put up with, at any rate. It is thought to be a triumph of Shakespeare's
art that out of this sensational material — well-nigh every stimulant of popular

* See my article " S\iy\oc]s,** Journal 0/ English and Germanic Philology^ 191 1, pp. 268-269. >

2 72 HAMLET AND lAGO

excitement he could collect — he made the most mysterious and inward of his
dramas. To my thinking and, if facts prove anything, that of Irving and all
our other modern managers as well, the triumph would have been greater
were the form better suited to the sense. The world does not move if the
earth does, and harmony, not incongruity, is the secret of art in the time of
Shakespeare as in the time of Synge. ** A strange harmony of discords,"
says Mr. Bradley, but there is plenty of that sort of thing in Elizabethan art
without adding to it this incomprehensible variety. In the sixteenth century,
as in the twentieth, no great poet would have chosen to tell, or succeeded in
telling, such a tale of the soul as criticism has thought to hear, athwart all this
booming and trumpeting, and this mass of violent and bloody action in
which man is pitted against man, Hamlet against Claudius, Laertes, pirates,
Rosencrantz, and Guildenstem, instead of an enemy seated in the depths of
his bosom. In the thick of that story there is no place for undermeanings,
and no spectator could discover them if there were.

FROM OUTDOORS TO INDOORS ON
THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

Ashley Horace Thorndike

Much active research in regard to the Elizabethan theaters and their
methods of staging has provoked during the past ten years an abundance of
discussion which now seems leading toward conclusions that will gain general
acceptance. Even on the much-debated problems of the curtains arid of that
portion of the stage which they concealed, we seem to be near a solution. Is
not the evidence convincing that curtains were frequently used from the early
days of the Lx)ndon theaters, and also that, usually at least, the inner stage
which they shut off from the. front was not a projecting enclosure, but rather
an alcove or some portion at the rear ? Has there not been much progress
toward agreement in regard to the various purposes for which this inner stage
was employed and the extent and importance of its use ?

There can, indeed, be little question about the employment of the inner
stage for certain specific purposes. First, it was used frequently for scenes
requiring a small interior — cave, arbor, study, bedroom. Many cases of such
use have been noted from the time of the building of the Theater down to
1642. The inner stage represented a specific locality, and the closed curtains
concealed the preparation of the necessary properties. When the curtains
were opened, the action could take place on either the inner or the outer stage,
as was convenient.

Second, a further use very early suggested itself in scenes requiring dis-
covery or disclosure. Since the main stage extended into the auditorium, with ^
its only entrance from the rear, actors had something of a journey on and off
between the door and the front. No disclosures and no tableaux were possible.
This lack was supplied in part by the use of the curtain. So, to take only three
early plays, in David and Bethsabcy "The Prologue speaker, before going
out, draws a curtain and discovers Bethsabe with her maid, bathing over a
spring : she sings, and David sits above viewing her " ; in Friar Bacon and
Friar Bungay, *' Friar Bacon is discovered in his cell, lying on a bed, with
a white stick in one hand, a book in the other, and a lamp lighted beside him ;
and the Brazen Head and Miles with weapons by him " ; in the Old Wives
TaUy '* The Ghost of Jack draws a ciirtain and discovers Delia sitting asleep."
Numerous other instances might be given ; in general, it is clear that where-

ever there is a discovery the curtains were used.

273

274 THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

Third, in various scenes where heavy properties were required, the inner
Stage provided a background, as in forest or other elaborate outdoor scenes,
and in temple, church, or other elaborate interiors. In two of the cases just
mentioned, heavy properties were concealed behind the curtains ; and the use
of the inner stage was early extended to provide for all scenes requiring heavy
properties. Whenever a propertied scene was required, the properties were
placed on the inner stage while the action was going on before the closed
curtains. When the curtains were opened, the inner stage, now an integral part
of the whole, supplied the needed localization for the action. This would make
it necessary or advisable that the preceding scene should be played only on
the outer stage.

Fourth, a further extension in the use of the inner stage led to its employ-
ment for the representation of scenes where the specification of locality by
properties was desirable rather than essential. Almost any scene might thus
be prepared with a background, and the change of place would come to be reg-
ularly indicated by the closmg or opening of the curtains. To this extensive use
of the curtain we may apply for convenience the name, the Principle ofAltema-
Hotly although we must understand that several outer scenes might follow with-
out any use of the curtain, and that the same setting might be employed for
different places, as a forest setting for different parts of the forest, or a palace
setting for different rooms in the palace. This principle of alternation can
best be illustrated by its use to-day, in the employment of drop scenes.

For the first three uses the evidence may be described as clear and direct,
but for this fourth use of the inner stage the evidence must be admitted to be
indirect and inferential. It is in regard to the extent of this practice that con-
siderable difference of opinion still exists. Yet important as are the first three
uses, the fourth is still more important in connection both with the practice
of the stage and with dramatic construction. I wish to deal with only one
phase of this alternation principle, but with a phase that was, I think, the
first to appear and that became the most securely established — the use of
the inner stage in sudden alternations, when the actors pass immediately
from outside of a house to the inside, or the reverse. The difficulty arises
when actors are outside of a house, seeking admission, and in the next scene
appear within the house ; or, when in one scene they are within a room and
start to go outdoors, and in the next scene appear on the street.

There are many such sudden transitions in Elizabethan plays, and it seems
probable that when the curtains were used in the three ways already indicated,
their use would be further extended to avoid these clashes. On the Restora-
tion stage, flats were very frequently employed to make this change from an
interior to an exterior, and Dr. Albright ^ has noted a striking case in a Resto-
ration play, An Evening's Love^ where the scene is changed with one character

* Tlte Shakespearian Stage^ New York, 1909.

THORNDIKE 275

remaining on the stage. We may also accept his inferential evidence that the
Restoration methods were derived from the practice of the Elizabethan theaters,
directly from that of private theaters. Still, the direct evidence for this use of
the curtains on the Elizabethan stage is not quite conclusive. I wish to notice
the evidence offered by A Yorkshire Tragedy, which has not, I think, been
cited before. It seems to me conclusive evidence of the use of the curtains to
make this transition from indoors to outdoors, and it also presents an instance
of such a change of scene made with one actor remaining on the stage.

Before examining this evidence, however, I may state my opinion that such
alternations of exterior and interior scenes did not always involve the use of
the curtains. What we may call the fundamental principle of Elizabethan
staging is that theTnain stage was conceived as unlocalized territory. It is
'only^a'^second^ principle that provides for the localization of scenes by the
use of the curtains and the inner stage. We must be cautious in imagining
settings for scenes vaguely localized and entirely free from any dependence
on setting or properties. Take Twelfth Night, for example. It is possible to
arrange this in front and rear scenes, and it may have been so played in the
private theaters ; but the distinction between exterior and interior scenes is
very slight and there is no evidence of the use of curtains and no real need
of them for actors and an audience who were accustomed to a bare stage. In-
deed, in this case there is presumptive evidence that one interior scene was
not designed for an inner stage. Act I, scene v, may be considered within
the house, but there are no properties and it could be acted on the outer stage.
At the close Olivia sends Malvolio in pursuit of Viola. If this scene had been
played on the inner stage, the scene in which Malvolio overtakes Viola would
have followed immediately, as in so many similar cases where it seems prob-
able that curtains were used to mark the change. But this scene of their
meeting (II, ii) does not occur until after an act interval and one other front
scene. Presumably Shakespeare wished to avoid the incongruity of making
the stage appear in successive scenes as the inside and the outside of the house,
and yet did not use the curtains to avoid this incongruity. This case may
serve as a sort of complementary comment on that of A Yorkshire Tragedy.

A Yorkshire Tragedy was acted by Shakespeare's company about 1605. It
is a short play, " one of the foure plaies in one," and is divided by modem edi-
tors into ten scenes. The first four scenes are apparently all within the house,
but there are no indications of any use of the inner stage. In Scene iv the Hus-
band enters with the Master of the college, who has come seeking money for
the Husband's brother. After some conversation and wine, the Husband says :

Now, Sir, if you so please
To spend but a few minuts in a walke
About my grounds below, my man heere shall
Attend you, etc.

2 76 THE ELIZABETHAN STAGE

The Master goes out to wait there for the Husband. The scene continues and
the Husband murders his little boy and Exit with his Sonne.

Immediately following this, comes the stage direction, Enter a maide with
a child in her armeSy the mother by her a sleepe. (Scene v.) Manifestly this
is a discovery scene requiring curtains, which are opened disclosing the inner
stage. In a moment, Enter husband with the boie bleeding. He struggles
with the nurse and throws her down ; the mother wakes and seizes the young-
est child ; the Husband stabs her and the child and, after a struggle with a
" lusty servant *' who comes to the rescue, makes his escape.

My horse stands reddy saddled. Away, away ;
Now to my brat at nursse, my sucking begger.
Fates, He not leave you one to trample on.

Immediately following this speech, we have the stage direction The Master
meets him. Apparently the struggle and murders have taken place on the
inner stage (often employed for scenes of violent horror that could hardly be
enacted in the full light of the front stage), and the Husband has rushed down
front. There is no direction for his exit, and the curtains must have closed
behind him while he was on the front stage. There enters the Master, who
has been awaiting him outdoors.

The action (Scene vi) is riow clearly conceived as outside the house, for the
Husband at once says, '* Please you walke in. Sir," and excuses himself for a
moment. Both Exeunt. The curtains must have been opened again at this
point, (Scene vii) disclosing the inner stage just as when the Husband had left
it, the servant, wife, and others wounded and groaning. Then Enter Master^
and two sen^ants, but they immediately go out to pursue the murderer. The
persons remaining soon Exeunt to seek surgeois. The curtains must have
been closed, and the scene is outdoors again, for (Si^ene viii) Enter Husband
as being thrown off his horse, And falls.

In this rapid action the curtains have been used (i) to discover an interior
room, (2) to change from indoors to outdoors with one of the actors remaining
on the stage, (3) to change from outdoors back to the same interior, and (4) to
change again from interior to outside. Scene ix, it may be added, is an interior
again, the house of the magistrate, before whom the Husband is brought for
trial, and Scene x is outdoors before the house. The Husbcmd is on his way
to execution and the wife is brought in a chaire from the house, now probably
represented by one of the doors, or possibly by the curtains. .

There is one possible exception, so far as I can see, that nuay be taken to
this analysis. Could not the interior scenes have been represented on the
balcony ? In many interior scenes acted on the rear stage ar i separated from
the front by a curtain, it is often difficult to prove with certainty whether they
were set on the upper or lower inner stage. So here, if these scenes are taken

THORNDIKE 277

in isolation, it is impossible to prove absolutely that they were not acted on the
upper stage. However, they should not be taken in isolation, but in connection
with other similar interior scenes. Because of their length, their action, the
probable use of the lower inner stage in Scene ix, and because of their simi-
larity to many other interior scenes, it seems to me highly probable that they
were acted on the level of the main stage. Even if they were acted on the
upper rather than the lower inner stage, their evidence still holds in regard
to the use of the curtains in alternating scenes.

The importance of these scenes from A Yorkshire Tragedy in comparison
with many other interior scenes in Elizabethan plays is that, in their stage
directions, they offer direct and, as it seems to me, conclusive evidence (i) that
the curtains were used, and (2) were used to mark immediate alternation of
outdoor and indoor scenes.

THE QUARTO ARRANGEMENT OF
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

Raymond Macdonald Alden

The purpose of this paper is to inquire whether we have reason to believe
that the Sonnets of Shakespeare were arranged, either by the author or by
any other competent person, in the order appearing in the quarto of 1609,
which is followed in nearly all modem editions, and whether this order is
therefore significant for their interpretation. This question is by no means
identical with the question whether the sonnets are autobiographical or imagi-
native, much less with the various problems connected with the identification
of the persons addressed. Yet it is true that critics who seek to interpret these
poems in connection with Shakespeare's personal life are naturally disposed
to read them as connectedly as possible, while those who reject the biograph-
ical interpretation are perhaps tempted to magnify their diversity and disorder.
Since I shall undertake to test somewhat skeptically the prevailing assumption
that the quarto arrangement is authentic, it may be as well to grant at the
outset (for the purposes of the argument) that the sonnets are, in general,
personal and ** sincere," that " Mr. W. H." was the person addressed in a
large number of them, and that he may be identified as the Earl of Quidlibet ;
also that Shakespeare was involved in at least one amour of a lawless and
disturbing character. Admitting all this tentatively, have we a fairly con-
nected history of the relations of the three persons concerned, in the form
of a collection of poems significantly arranged in two parts or series ?

If we should approach the sonnets without knowledge of their content, as
if discovering them for the first time, our first inquiry would naturally be
whether the collection appears on the face of it to be one of the ** sequences'*
so familiar in the Elizabethan age. Of this type of collection the leading traits
are well understood. A series of sonnets is addressed to a lady of great beauty,
to whom a fanciful name is given (Stella, Diana, Idea, or the like), which
commonly forms the title of the whole. ^This lady is usually cold of heart,
and the sequence of poems represents the successive efforts of the writer, her
lover, to win her to yield to his passion. Turning to the Shakespeare quarto,
we find that (he title-page bears no conventional title ; no lady's name gives
it a name ; no lady's name is mentioned (if we may anticipate further explora-
tion) within it. The book is called simply ** Shakespeare's Sonnets : never

before imprinted." It is not, we may say tentatively, a conventional sequence.

279

28o ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

A second approach will naturally be the inquiry whether the volume ap-
pears to have been published by the author's authority or under his super-
vision. The discussion of this would be an important matter of detail, were
the facts not all but universally admitted. ^The quarto is dedicated not by the
author but by the publisher, a well-known pirate in his trade ; it contains
numerous unintelligent misprints ; whereas the two poems which Shakespeare
is known to have published contain dedications from his hand and seem to
have been carefully proof-read. These are the chief considerations which have "
led critics to agree on the surreptitious character of the quarto of 1609.^

In 1640 appeared the second edition of the Sonnets, now printed in an
entirely different order, and grouped by the editor with subtitles as the text
suggested. In this edition, of course, there is nothing authoritative ; the only
significance to be found in its character is negative — to the effect that there /
was no tradition implying a continuous or two-part text as of 1609.^

It is clear, then, so far as this preliminary evidence goes, that the burden
of proof is on any attempt to call these sonnets a sequence in the usual mean-
ing of the term. If the character of the contents, examined in detail, indicates
a consecutive and significant order, then just to that extent we may regard the
arrangement of the quarto as important ; but we have no warrant for begin-
ning to read the collection with the assumption that it is to be interpreted as
one interprets a series of poems, much less chapters of a story, set forth by
the author in predetermined form. On the contrary, in the absence of further
and conflicting evidence, we should expect to find that we have before us a
collection of all the sonnets written by Shakespeare, so far as the publisher
was able to get hold of them.^

But while the sonnets do not appear to be a sequence of the usual sort,
they may perhaps give evidence of being a sequence in an unconventional
sense ; that is, they may form a series, either from having been written in the
present order or from having been carefully arranged. This, if true, is not to
be assumed, but to be proved. Our next task should be, therefore, to read the
collection through with a view to asking, not how far it would be possible to
conceive the sonnets to be significantly consecutive if we knew that they had
been put in this order by the writer, but how far they imply such consecutive-
ness when we know nothing of the circumstances of their arrangement. Here,
of course, there is room for great diversity of judgment. Nor do the limits of

^ There is one dissident voice worthy of respect, — that of Mr. George Wyndham (Intro-
duction to 751^ Poems of Shakespeare y 1898) ; but his arguments have been sufficiently answered,
— for example, by Dean Beeching {^Tlie Sonnets of Shakespeare^ 1904), who is nevertheless a
believer in the authoritative order of the quarto text.

2 On this point see Lee's Life of Shakespeare ^ p. 100.

' This expectation will perhaps be strengthened when we remember that two of the sonnets
included, numbered 138 and 144, had been published together ten years earlier (1599) in another
pirated collection, called Hie Passionate Pilgrim.

ALDEN 281

the present paper admit of a detailed explanation of my own answer to the
question. All that can be done is to give the results of such a reading as has
just been described, in the attitude of one who does not set any limit to the
probability of the existence of a large amount of continuity, but who requires
to see evidence of it in the text.^

These results involve the grouping of apparently connected contiguous
sonnets as follows :

I -1 7 A man friend is urged to marry.

18-19 A pair of sonnets on the power of poetry to " eternize " a friend.

26-28 Sonnets in absence.^

33-35 Estrangement, due to a fault of the friend addressed.

40-42 The theme of estrangement renewed, and the fault revealed as the theft of a

lady's affections.'

43-45 Sonnets in absence (the poet having journeyed).

46-47 A pair of sonnets on the conceit of Eye and Heart.

50-52 Sonnets in absence.*

54-55 A pair on the " eternizing " theme.

56-58 Sonnets in absence (the friend having journeyed).*

63-65 A pair on the " eternizing " theme.

66-68 The friend's beauty contrasted with degenerate times.

69-70 A pair dealing obscurely with scandal or slander.'

71-74 The poet's death anticipated.

78-80 A rival poet compared with the writer.''

82-86 The theme of the rival poet continued.

8 7-93 A threatened estrangement between poet and friend.^

94-96 A fault on the friend's part.

97-99 Sonnets in absence (summer and spring).

•

^ For a somewhat fuller outline of the collection, including the sonnets omitted in the
following table, the reader may be referred to my Introduction to the Sonnets in The Tudor
Shakespeare, 19 13.

^ The two following sonnets, 29-30, on love as consolation, may be regarded as a pair. -
They may have been brought together, on the other hand, merely from similarity of theme.

' These sonnets, apparently connected with 33-35, are separated from the latter by four
sonnets which have nothing to do with the theme of the two trios, and one of which (36) has to
do, on the other hand, with a fault on the poet's part.

* Since 47 also implies absence, one may read 43-48, or even 43-52, continuously ; but there
is no link between 45 and 46, 49 is apparently unconnected with absence (anticipating a theme
developed later in 88-93), ^^^ 5^^5' seem properly, if they refer to the same absence as 43-48,
to precede the latter in order of composition.

* To this group 61 would seem to belong, but the intervening sonnets are more general and
without links. * The immediate connection of these two is by no means certain.

^ This and the following group are not only on a new theme, but the friend addressed
is now viewed from the standpoint of prot^g^ and patron, rather than from that of intimate
friendship, hitherto implied.

^ With this group we return to the tone of personal friendship as distinguished from the
relation of patronage. It is odd that Sir Sidney Lee, who emphasizes so strongly the theme of
patronage and at the same time disbelieves in the continuity of the collection, should not have
remarked on this difference of tone. (It is not certain that 91-93 should be viewed as continuous
with 87-90.)

282 ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

100-103 Apology for a period of silence.^

109-125 An estrangement, involving absence and bitter experiences on the poet's part,

reviewed in terms of penitence and devotion.*

131-132 A pair of love-sonnets to a dark lady.'

'33-^34 A pair on a mistress stolen by a friend (cf. 40-42).

135-136 A pair addressed to a mistress beloved by " Will." *

137-13^ A pair addressed to a false and guilty mistress.

139-140 A pair addressed to a mistress conventionally unkind and proud.'

141-142 A pair similar to 137-138.

143-144 A pair on the theme of 133-134.^

147-152 A stormy and guilty passion analyzed.^

1 53-1 54 A pair of epigrams on Cupid.

It must be understood that this table includes only those sonnets whose
text appears to imply some immediate connection with their immediate neigh-
bors in the collection ; the omitted sonnets being those which, in the absence
of any theory of sequence, may naturally be read as independent compositions,
together with those which are naturally associated with others not standing in
contiguity with them. No two readers would be likely to reach identical re-
sults in pursuing such an attempt as this, but it is hoped that the method may
appear valid for general inferences. What has been the result? Two con-
siderable series of sonnets have appeared, — one with some clearness, consist-
ing of seventeen ; the other of less certain extent, possibly reaching the same
number. Three short series appear to number respectively five, six, and seven
sonnets; there is one group of four; there are eleven sonnet trios, and twelve

1 The following sonnets, 104-108, are seemingly disconnected, but some of them, it should
be noted, are addressed to a beautiful youth in terms suggestive of the earlier sonnets of the
collection rather than of those standing nearest them.

2 It is stretching a point to view these seventeen sonnets as continuous. The obvious
groups are 109-112, 11 7-1 20, and 123-125; but it is possible and suggestive to read the inter-
vening sonnets in the same connection. Nos. 121, on slanderous misjudgment, and 122, an
occasional poem with reference to a g^ft which the poet has received and in turn g^ven away,
seem at first reading definitely to interrupt the sequence ; but they can be viewed in connection
with the incidents involved in the preceding sonnets, and one may read in the opening words
of 123 an allusion to the ^ lasting memory*' of 122.

' The dark lady has been introduced in 127 and 130, but no continuity is implied between
130 and 131.

* This pair may be read as a continuation of the preceding; the interpretation of the "Will"
theme is a classic crux which cannot be discussed here.

^ Many readers connect this pair with the preceding and the following, and Dowden com-
ments to the effect that the poet ** goes on to speak of his lady's untruthfulness." There is a
possibility of reading unfaithfulness into the portrait; but surely the whole tone of the two
sonnets is distinct from that of their neighbors. When we find "the wrong" done by the lady's
" unkindness " developed by means of the conventional conceit — ** Wound me not with thine
eye," etc., we are naturally disposed to understand by that unkindness the usual hauteur of the
besonneted lady of the period. In 140, too, is "disdain" the word for the lying mistress of 138
or the adulteress of 152 ?

® Both these sonnets may be individual, the connection of 143 with earUer groups being
much less clear than in the case of 144.

^ The continuity of all six sonnets is by no means certain.

ALDEN 283

pairs. A few sonnets unconnected with their immediate neighbors seem from
their subject-matter to belong in one or another of these groups ; while the re-
mainder (at least thirty sonnets) seem to have the character of complete single
poems, unarranged. To the unbiased reader the impression produced by this
analysis is in accord with the hypothesis already suggested by the more ex-
ternal evidence, namely, that the publisher of this collection gathered all of
Shakespeare's sonnets that he could obtain, in the form of various manu-
scripts, — some arranged, some unarranged, — and made a rough attempt to
set them in order. He placed at the beginning of the book the longest obvi-
ous series.^ In other cases his manuscript furnished him with pairs and trios
which he preserved intact ; in still other cases he may have made a pair or a
trio of sonnets similar in theme or tone. Finally, observing that the sonnets
plainly addressed to women were in the minority, he reserved them for the
end of the collection, together with certain other poems on topics obviously
different from those dominating the collection.^

It may be objected that the want of a clearly continuous thread of thought
throughout the collection does not prove it to be inconsecutive ; can one trace
such continuity in any of the Elizabethan sequences ? Probably not. But the
point in the present case is that the burden of proof has been shown to be on
those seeking to view Shakespeare's sonnets as a sequence ; moreover, our
survey of the contents has indicated not merely a want of clear continuity but
no little evidence of discontinuity. Professor Dowden, one of the critics most
sure of tlieir foothold in reading the collection consecutively, describes an
Elizabethan sequence as ** a chain or series of poems, in a designed qr natural
sequence, viewing in various aspects a single theme, or carrying on a love-story
to its issue, prosperous or the reverse.*'^ Would any one examining these
sonnets of Shakespeare's without a predetermined theory be led to find them
within the scope of this definition ?

Another objection may be stated as follows : admitting that the series is
not a sequence in the usual sense, especially the concluding portion, this does
not prevent us from regarding the sonnets as standing, on the whole, in the
order of Shakespeare's manuscript. Does this mean the order of Shakespeare's
original manuscript, — that is, the order of composition, — or that of some
final manuscript in which he arranged his sonnets } The first alternative no

^ Or, possibly, the series which he knew had been addressed to the person to whom he
dedicated the volume.

^ In this last suggestion there is of course no novelty ; it is accepted by some who believe
in the existence of a true sequence in sonnets 1-126. Thus Professor Dowden: ** I do not here
attempt to trace a continuous sequence in the sonnets addressed to the dark-haired woman,
1 27-1 54 [though even here he begs the question of their constituting a " second series **] ; I
doubt whether such continuous sequence is to be found in them." (Sonnets (1881), Introduction,
p. 34.) And Beeching, still more reasonably : " It looks as if all the sonnets not addressed to the
friend had been thrown together without arrangement at the end of the series.*' ( TTie Sonnets
0/ Shakespeare^ Introduction, p. Ixvi.) * Introduction, p. 26.

284 ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

one supposes to b^ applicable to the whole collection, for about the only cer-
tain inference to be drawn from the text of the poems is that some of those
in the " second series *' were written at the same time as some in the " first
series." The most that is claimed, then, is that sonnets 1-125 are in the
original order, — preserved, perhaps, among the papers of the person to whom
they are supposed to have been addressed. This view has not been shown to
be impossible ; but it remains " not proven." And, if accepted, it raises a
number of difficult questions, such as why the i8th sonnet, if it followed im-
mediately on the 17th, took a different, not to say contradictor)', standpoint ; ^
why the person addressed was in No. 70 said to be of **pure unstained prime,"
after having been charged somewhat earlier with no trifling misdemeanors ;
and how it happened that two or three groups of sonnets apparently concerned
with the same situation were interrupted by single sonnets of independent and
conventional character. Some of these things, of course, may be due to trifling
misplacements. Dean Beeching observes of No. 75, " This sonnet is perhaps
misplaced; it would come better after 52," and of No. 81, *'This sonnet is
plainly misplaced; its theme is conventional." But if such misplacements
have occurred, how are we to set a limit ? If a wanton breeze or a careless
maidservant once disarranged the manuscripts of Ae Earl of Quidlibet, what
may not have happened ? The only answer is, again, that we must fall back
on the intrinsic character of the text as it stands.\ As to the second alternative,
that the existing order represents Shakespeare's wishes at the time the sonnets
were collected, we have already seen what the probabilities are that Shakespeare
made any copy for the purpose of publication, and it is a bold assumption that
he brought all his sonnets into one manuscript for any purpose whatever. But
if he did this, it has already appeared that either he did it very carelessly, or
at certain points his manuscript was disarranged. And again we must ask, if
at certain points, at how many i

It is time now to inquire more particularly why the view that the quarto
arrangement of the sonnets is authentic has taken such strong hold. The
chief reason, no doubt, is the mere natural desire to find a connected story,
and the fascination that comes from discovering that it is possible to do so.
Professor Dowden has connected the sonnets (up to 126) into an alluring
narrative, by a process sometimes akin to that followed by a certain insane
theologian who used to draw startling conclusions by bringing together two
apparently remote texts of Holy Scripture. When asked for his authority, he
would reply : " I apprehend that, when I draw a line from this verse to that,
I connect them." A more important source of the dominant theory is to be
found in the circumstance that all the sonnets up to 125, and including the

1 That is, in 1-17 the poet claims that future ages can have no idea of his friend's charms
unless they are perpetuated through descendants ; whereas in No. 18 he claims that his own
verse will be solely sufficient to that end.

ALDEN 285

pseudo-sonnet numbered 126, may be read as addressed to a boy or man,
whereas of those following 1 26 but few can be so read, and on the other hand
several of the latter have to do with a woman (or women). ^ But why should
a distinctive character in the last portion of the collection imply that it was
separated from the rest by the author? If its character is clear to us, was it
not equally clear to the publisher ? Is it not, then, the simple explanation of
the present arrangement, whoever made the arrangement? It may be said
that the bipartite character of the collection suggests that the first part was
kept together, in the hands of the person addressed in the *' first series." But
this begs the question whether the whole " first series " was addressed to one^
person ; and even if we decide that it was, we have already seen that this does
not guarantee that the sonnets in that group remain in any significant order .^
We have still to consider the so-called "envoy," numbered 126. Says
Dowden : "That the sonnets are not printed in the quarto, 1609, at hap-
hazard, is evident from the fact that the Envoy, 1 26, is rightly placed ; that
poems addressed to a mistress follow those addressed to a friend ; and that
the two Cupid and Dian sonnets stand together at the close." ^ The second
of these reasons — and the third by implication — has already been considered.
But as to the " envoy " — what is it to be rightly placed? Why, to be placed
at the end of the '* first series." And how do we know it is an envoy ? Be-
cause it is placed at the end of a series. And how do we know that this is
the end of a series ? Because here stands the envoy 1 Now this " envoy " is
a poem in twelve lines, six couplets, beginning ** O thou, my lovely boy." It ^
has no apparent connection with the sonnets immediately preceding, but one
may easily conjecture why it was set here. The editor or publisher thought it
was an imperfect sonnet, as he indicated by adding two pairs of brackets mark-
ing the lines which he supposed had been lost. But it was addressed to a boy,
and so did not belong in the " appendix " with sonnets on women and miscel-
laneous topics. Nothing more natural, then, than to put it just here ; and in
this sense it may be called a coda or envoy to its predecessors. But if we look
more closely, and ask whether there is the slightest ground for supposing that /
it was meant by the poet as a conclusion to a preceding series, we find none.
On the contrary, there is ground for believing just the opposite. If the "lovely

1 There are in the " first series," to be sure, a good many sonnets which may have been ad-
dressed to women, and would be thus interpreted were it not for their connection with those in
which a person of the other sex is referred to. Examples are 21-24, 29-30, 46-47, 99, 1 15-116.

• Dean Beeching offers a kind of variant of the argument, as follows : ** The fact . . . that
some of the sonnets in the appendix throw light on those addressed to the friend, confirms the
theory that the sonnets do form a sequence and are not a mere bookseller's haphazard collec-
tion." (P. Ixiv.) One wonders why. It may confirm the theory that the sonnets in question are
based on some actual occurrence ; but how the fact that certain sonnets near the end of the
collection were written at the same time and on the same subject as some which appear earlier,
shows that the order either of these sonnets or of the whole collection is consecutive, it is
difiicult to see. > Introduction, p. 24.

286 ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

boy " here addressed is the beautiful youth to whom Sonnets 1-17 and many
of the others were written,^ the poem is very naturaUy connected with the
opening group of the collection, and with other sonnets standing at some
distance from 126, in which the youth is warned of the flight of time and the
approach of age. Here he is told again that, though for the present his beauty
triumphs over Time, Nature will in the end insist on her sovereignty and
render him up. The poem may be conjectured, with litde hesitation, to have
been written at the same time with the series 1-17. Now, is there anything
of the same character in the sonnets standing near the end of the ** first series *' ?
On the contrary, their theme and tone are entirely different. If we assume
the continuity of 109-125, there has been separation, estrangement, suffering,
penitence, and this (possible) series is devoted chiefly to the hope that friend-
ship will outiive these vicissitudes and put to shame the ** fools of time.*' Now,
suppose Shakespeare to be arranging the sonnets in some final form, and to
be setting an epilogue or envoy to the series (a somewhat daring supposition),^
what will the envoy be.^ It may be on love, on friendship, on tiie steadfastness
of a "true soul " (end of 1 2 5), on the struggle of personality and friendship with
evil days and ** policy " the heretic, it may be a return to the ever recurring
theme of the power of poetry to eternize a friend, it may be almost anything,
one might venture to say, rather than a return to the relatively trivial theme of
the danger of the decay of the friend's youthful beauty. The assumption, then,
that this littie poem is an epilogue written by the poet for the whole preceding
collection comes near being entitied to rank as a curiosity of criticism.

Certain other arguments have been advanced in support of the consecutive-
ness of the quarto text. Professor Dowden suggested, some time ago, that
the use of thou and you in different parts of the collection implies a develoi>
ment such as a true sequence might show.^ But he has not been followed in
this belief, and has been sufficiently answered by Beeching.^ Dean Beeching,
however, willing to replace one conjecture with another, advances a similar
theory based on *'the fact that a printer's error of their iox thy occurs fourteen
times in the series of sonnets from 26 to 70 inclusive, and only once besides,
viz. in 128." ^ His " fourteen " should read thirteen^ by his own computation
as given on another page, and these thirteen instances are found in nine
sonnets, distributed as follows : 26, 27, 35, 37, 43, 45, 46, 69, 70. Admitting
the utmost which these facts can imply, namely, that the misreadings of their
for thy indicate that the manuscript of the sonnets in question was in a different

^ Sir Sidney Lee, to be sure« seems to think that the lines are an address to Cupid. {Life of
Shakespeare^ p. 97 n.)

* One would suppose, from the readiness with which the "envoy" theory has been accepted,
that it was customary to conclude Elizabethan sequences with something of the kind, in distinct
metrical form. This is, of course, by no means the fact. The only thing of the kind that I recall
is the three " conclusions " (lyrics considerably longer than sonnets) which Robert Tofte appended
to the three parts of Laura. ' Introduction, p. 25. * Sonnets^ p. bdv (note). * P. Ixv.

ALDEN 287

handwriting from later ones, we can apply the argument only to the twenty- >
one sonnets from 26 to 46 ; and the recurrence of the error in 69 and 70,
after an interval without it, suggests that we may have come back to the same
manuscript, and that consecutiveness has been lost !

In this connection it is instructive to notice how a skilled editor like Dean
Beeching, bound by the theory of an authentic order, meets the difficulties
which arise. Sonnets 36-39, as we have seen, intercept two apparently con-
nected groups. Dowden finds, however, the necessary links of thought, as
usual ; but Beeching points out that his view is untenable, and that we must
admit that **the sonnets from 36 to 39 refer to a different topic." ^ How,
then, explain the recurrence in No. 40 of the subject of the friend as thief of
the poet's mistress ? Beeching is here less charitable to the unknown friend
than any other critic ; he thinks the offense has probably ** been repeated ^
during the poet's absence referred to in 39 " ! In other cases, as we have
seen, he admits misplacement ; in others, observes simply, as on 105, ** This
sonnet has no connection with the subject of the previous five sonnets."

These two editors, Dowden and Beeching, are the best who have handled
the sonnets with thoroughness in recent years, and they meet our mooted
question more fairly and frankly than most of the other editors who hold the
same view. Tyler remarks simply that it is ** assumed that the order given in
the First Quarto is the right order ; and this must certainly be maintained
until the contrary has been proved." ^ Mr. Wyndham, in his valuable edition,
disposes of our question by saying that all critics " not quixotically compelled ^
to reject a reasonable view are agreed that the order in the First Series can
scarce be bettered."^ Professor Herford rests the case on the vague asser-
tion : '' Displacement may be here and there suspected ; but on the whole they
form a connected sequence, passing by delicate gradations through a rich com-
pass of emotion." ^ So they do ; and so they would if shuffled in any one
of a dozen ways. But the possibility of such a manner of reading, in itself
intelligible, is not proof of its authenticity.^

1 p. 91.

^ Praetorius Facsimile, p. xxvi. The remark shows the necessity that has been pointed out
of considering the matter of the burden of proof. ' P. cix. * Eversley Shakespeare^ X, 374.

* Sir Sidney Lee has truly observed that " if the critical ingenuity which has detected a
continuous thread of narration in the order that Thorpe printed Shakespeare*s Sonnets were
applied to the booksellers' miscellany of sonnets called Diana^ that volume . . . could be made
to reveal the sequence of an individual lover's moods . . . quite as convincingly as Thorpe's
collection." (Z^, p. 96 n.) To which Herford (p. 374 n.) rejoins, " He may be invited to
try." For myself, I should dislike to make the experiment with the monotonous pages of
the Diana ; but if only Wordsworth's minor poems, including his sonnets, had come down to
us without date, author's title, or note, in an order perhaps determined by the convenience of
the publisher, I should cheerfully undertake to put them in a plausible sequence, and even to
show that that sequence went far toward solving the one mystery of the poet's life — the per-
sonality of ^ Lucy." I should follow her among the lakes, along the River Duddon, and the
vicinity of Tintem Abbey, show why she was instrumental in preventing the poet from visiting

288 ARRANGEMENT OF SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

One recent editor, Professor W. A. Neilson, has shown the courage of
agnosticism, and, in his brief introduction to the Sonnets, taken safe and
reasonable ground.^ Still another, Mr. C. M. Walsh, in his edition of 1908,
has not only dared to say that ** Thorpe's arrangement of the sonnets is of no
more help in our understanding of their development than is the Folio-editors'
arrangement of the plays," but has printed them in a new order, not — as
had been done already — according to one more unprovable hypothesis, but
with reference to general indications of theme and style. These are perhaps
happy omens of a time when the prevalent but unwarranted faith in the
arrangement of 1609 will no longer dominate criticism ; the way will then be
open for dating or interpreting any sonnet or group of sonnets on the merits
of the evidence.

Yarrow, indicate the influence on him of her views on the Visitation of the Sick, Old Abbeys,
and the Emigrant French Clergy, and probably demonstrate that she was a daughter of the
Leech-gatherer and a niece of Simon Lee.
1 fVorks of Shakespeare, 1906, p. 11 70.

POSSIBLE FOREIGN SOURCES OF THE
SPANISH NOVEL OF ROGUERY

J. D. M. Ford

The novel of roguery, otherwise termed the picaroon (picaresque) romance
or novel, has been regarded as essentially a Spanish creation. Scholars — and
scholars in this country ^ have not been amongst the least industrious in deal-
ing with the subject — have generally agreed in attributing to Spain the genesis
of the perfected novel of the type, although they have been careful enough
to recognize, for matters of detail, the indebtedness of Spanish writers to ante-
cedent literature of various categories and of both foreign and native origin.
So it is that Professor F. W. Chandler,^ summing up his own researches and
those of other scholars, says, " Although the picaresque tale was indigenous
to Spain, its elements had existed earlier and elsewhere in literature.*' He
proceeds, even while he claims priority of perfection of the form for Spain,
as he has a right to do, to enumerate various foreign factors that enter into
its make-up. Among these are the late Greek novels — and here he doubtless
has in mind such works as the Theagenes and Chariclea and the Leucippe and
Clitophon — with their adventures of pirates and robbers, to say nothing of
the chief characters, who were certainly ** chevaliers d'industrie " and ladies
of easy habits, not unlike those found in the Guzmdn de Alfarache^ the Mar-
cos de Obregdn, and other fully developed Spanish novels of roguery ; the
comedies of Plautus with their intriguing slaves and parasites, who used their
wits for gain's sake in a way resembling the methods of the Spanish picaros ;
the Latin novel, represented by the Satyricon of Petronius, with its disgusting
pictures of low life and debauchery, and, more particularly for our purpose,
by the A sinus Aureus of Apuleius, in which a satirical description of masters
and their ways is given by one in servitude ; mediaeval documents such as the
Dit sur les itats du nionde and the Dance of Deaths in both of which the dif-
ferent ranks and callings in life are made the subject of review ; the Facetiae,
the Italian Novelle, and the Beggar Books, with their accounts of cheating and
practical jokes, some of which were anticipated by the Roman de Renart, with
its knavish beasts playing the part of anti-heroes.

* Cf. F. De Haan, An Outline of the History of the Novela picaresca in Spain, The Hague
and New York, 1903 ; id., " Picaros y g^napanes/' in Homenaje d Afenhtdet y Pelayo, Madrid,
1899, II, 149 ff. ; F. W. Chandler, Romances of Roguery, New York, 1899 ; id.. The Literature of
Roguery, Boston and New York, 1907 ; F. M. Warren, A History of the Novel, New York, 1908,
pp. 284 ff. * Romances of Roguery, p. 3.

289

290 SOURCES OF THE SPANISH NOVEL OF ROGUERY

To the foreign literary contributors to the Spanish novel of roguery we may
add others of native origin, and of these the Libro de buen amor of Juan Ruiz
and the Celestina are especially to be stressed. Into the element of fact under-
lying the novels of roguery it is not the present purpose to enter. Undoubtedly
they offer in no slight degree pictures of real rogues and transcripts of real
knavish happenings in the Spain of their day, and they have much satirical
comment upon the life of the time. It is meet to point out, however, that too
much stress should not be laid upon ^tpkaro stories as documents valuable
to scholars who would write the history of Spain in her glorious period of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Back of the knavery and sordidness
which inform these stories there is all too much of a literary paternity, and,
with a slender basis of living fact, the resourceful Spanish novelists of the
period could parade them as contemporary records. However this may be, it
is obvious to all who read that the writers of the Spanish novels of roguery
placed themselves in deliberate opposition to the purveyors of novels of
chivalry, which had been and were still captivating the many in Spain. As
Professor Warren ^ says : ** The picaresco novel was not only a study of a
rascal, but it was, besides, a protest against the predominance in literature of
the aristocratic type. In carrying its hostility to the romances of chivalry so
far as an entire f orgctf ulness of their spirit, the insurgent went to the other ex-
treme and busied itself with portraying the exact opposite of the manners and
ideals of a true and perfect knight. And undoubtedly this feeling of revenge
and irony made the heroes of realism from the very start the embodiment
of all that is mean and crafty.**

The correctness of Professor Warren's statement can hardly be questioned.
The novel of roguery stands in conscious antithesis to the aristocratic type of
romance, but the present writer believes that this antithesis had already become
an actuality in literature outside of Spain before the Spanish novel of roguery
had become a fact, and on that account he is prompted to suggest as additional
literary material utilized by the Spanish authors certain noted Italian works.
These are the Morgante^ of Luigi Pulci and the Baldus^ of Teofilo Folengo.

The work of Pulci, completed by 1483, is essentially a romance of chivalry,
but it is marked by tendencies frankly bourgeois, verging at times upon some-
thing like satire of the deeds of derring-do, without becoming absolutely this.
As Byron * has said,

Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme,

and, in general, he succeeded in remaining at least half -serious and in avoid-
ing a really satirical attitude with regard to chivalry, its ideals and achieve-
ments. Yet, in one famous passage of his Morgante, he seems to put forward,

1 A History of the Novell p. 289. * Cf. ed. by G. Volpi, 3 vols., Florence, 1900-1904.
' Cf. ed. by A. Luzio, Merlin Cocaiy Le Maccheronee (in Scrittori iT Italia), 2 vols., Bari, 191 1.
* Don Juan, iv, 6.

FORD 291

with decidedly comical and satirical effect, a personage who has the very
opposite of the chivalrous characteristics and is even the very embodiment of
roguery. This is the demi-giant Margutte. Margutte tells his story himself
(and here it should be borne in mind that several of the leading Spanish novels
of roguery are autobiographical), making therein a confession which extends
through nearly thirty-three octaves and convicts him of offenses against all the
laws of God and man. He has done all the things that a chivalric person
should not do and he exults in the fact. As the Morgante ^ had been translated
into Spanish and published at Valencia by 1533 (it was reprinted at Seville,
1552, in this translation), it was accessible early enough to the makers of the
Spanish novels of the type of the Guzmdn de Alfarache, Moreover, so many
Spanish men of letters had been in Italy as soldiers or in other capacities that
a knowledge of Italian was common with them.

Let us quote some of the lines of Margutte's confession, showing that he
is reaUy giving us a roguish autobiography. Morgante, the giant, has encoun-
tered in a wood the demi-giant Margutte, and now asks the latter to account
for himself ; this he proceeds to do.

xvui 114

Disse Morgante : " Tu sia il ben venuto ;

Dimmi piu oltre, io non t^ho domandato,
Se se' Cristiano, o se se* Saracino,
O se tu credi in Cristo o in ApoUino."

Rispose allot Mai^gutte : " A dirtel tosto,
Io non credo piii al nero ch^alPazzurro,
Ma nel cappone, o lesso o vuogli arrosto ;
£ credo alcuna volta anco nel burro,
Nella cervogia e, quando io n'ho, nel mosto,
E molto piii ndPaspro che il mangurro ;
Ma sopra tutto nel buon vino ho fede,
E credo che sia salvo chi gli crede.

118

La fede h f atta, come fa il solletico :
Per discrezion mi credo che tu intenda :
Or tu potresti dir ch'io f ussi eretico :

Questa fede h come Tuom se Tarreca :
Vuoi tu veder che fede sia la mia ?
Che nato son d^una monaca greca,
E d'un papasso in Bursia Ik in Turchia ;
E nel prindpio sonar la ribeca
Mi dilettai, perch'avea fantasia
Cantar di Troia e d'Ettorre e d'Achille.

iCf. Brunet, Manuel du libraire, s.v. Pulci ; M. Men^ndez y Pelayo, Origenes de la novela
(in Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espaholes)^ Vol. I, p. cxlii, Madrid, 1905.

292 SOURCES OF THE SPANISH NOVEL OF ROGUERY

119

Poi che m^ncrebbe il sonar la chitarra,

lo comindai a portar Tarco e *1 turcasso :

Un d) ch^io fe' nella moschea pd sciarra,

£ ch^io ucdsi il mio vecchio papasso,

Mi posi allato questa sdmitarra,

£ cominciai pel mondo a 'ndar a spasso ;

£ per compagni ne menai con meco

Tutti i peccad o di Turco o di Greco,
120

Anzi quanti ne son giu neirinfemo.

lo n^ho settanta e sette de* mortali,

Che non mi lasdan mai la state o 1 vemo ;

Pensa quanti io n'ho poi de' veniali !

Non credo, se durassi il mondo etemo,

Si potessi commetter tanti mali

Quanti ho commessi io solo alia mia vita :

£d ho per alfabeto ogni partita."

In a number of verses following he acknowledges his gambling propensities,
his gluttony, and his lechery. Sacrilegious theft he glories in :

134

" S' tu mi vedessi in una chiesa solo,

Io son pill vago di spogliar gli altari,

Che *1 messo di contado del paiuolo :

Poi corro alia cassetta de' danari ;

Ma sempre in sagrestia fo il primo volo,

E se v'^ croce o calici, io gli ho cari,

E' crocifissi scuopro tutti quanti,

Poi vo spogliando le Nunziate e* santi."

And so he continues, accusing himself of robbing henroosts and clotheslines,
of being a highwayman, forger, and perjurer, and concludes with the statement
that he has omitted mention of a number of his vices.

With Folengo's heroi-comic Baldtis ^ in macaronic verse we need not deal
in detail. First published in Italian in 15 19 and later amplified greatly, it
appeared in a Spanish translation at Seville, 1542, and was probably known
in Spain in its original form before that date. It is a medley of many things,
but is chiefly a transformation of the chivalrous romance. Baldus, the pro-
tagonist, although descended from Rinaldo, is brought up in base surroundings.
He becomes a vagabond, and, accompanied by the giant Fracasso, who is a
scion of Pulci's Morgante, and by other rascals, notable among whom is
Cingar, the son of Margutte, he wanders about everywhere, performing deeds
of violence and knavery. Baldus is the degenerate knight developing into the

1 Cf. the excellent account of it by F. Flamini, // Cinquecento (in Storia UtUraria cTItalia^
etc.)» pp isoff.

FORD 293

rogue. Cingar is entirely the rogue and is so described by Folengo, who
declares him to be

Accortus, ladro, semper truffare paratus.

It is hardly necessary to stress further the fact that the Baldus^ like the Mar-
gutte episode of the Morgantey could easily furnish inspiration and material
to the Spanish authors of novels of roguery. Rabelais ^ knew well the writ-
ings of Folengo ; the chances are that Spanish writers of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries knew them too.

1 Cf. Flamini, // Cinquecento^ P* 1 54 ; B. Zumbini, 11 Folengo precursore del Cervantes in Studt
di letieratura italiana^ Florence, 1894, pp. 163 ff.

THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S

ETHICAL SYSTEM

George R. Noyes

In My Confession Tolstoy has given the world a stirring spiritual auto-
biography. Bom and educated in the Orthodox Church of Russia, he lost
while still a mere boy all faith in the dogmas of that church ; and grew up,
like the vast majority of educated Russians, without definitely formulated re-
ligious belief. But questions of personal conduct never ceased to occupy him ;
the moral law was ever present with him as a potent, if not always a con-
trolling, factor in his personal life. At last, in his mature years, doubts and
questionings on religious and moral problems began to present themselves
to him with ever increasing vividness. What is the aim of life t What profits
it a man to toil upon earth not knowing the purpose of his labors ? These
questions Tolstoy could neither solve nor forget. The riddle of fate would not
let him rest, and at forty-six, rich and famous, surrounded by a family whom
he loved and who loved him, he found himself on the verge of suicide. He
must solve the riddle or perish. He sought an answer in science, but could
find none ; science would answer questions of the chemical constitution of
matter, or of the laws of light, but of man's destiny it knew nothing. Rather
it confirmed his belief that life is void and meaningless ; reason taught him
that life is contrary to reason. Distrusting his own powers, Tolstoy turned
for help to the sages of different times and nations, to Solomon, Socrates,
Buddha, and Schopenhauer, and found that they shared his belief that life is
evil and death better than life. Secure in the truth of his despair, Tolstoy
divided the society in which he lived into four classes. First came those —
** mostly women or very young or. very stupid people " — who fail to recognize
that life is evil and senseless ; from them he could learn nothing. Next were
the men of the world, the Epicureans, who see the futility of existence, but pro-
vide themselves relief from it in transitory pleasures. The third class was com-
posed of logical and brave people, who, seeing the futility of existence, commit
suicide. The fourth class included the weaklings, among them Tolstoy himself,
who, recognizing the worthlessness of life, nevertheless fail to kill themselves.

This division seemed inclusive. But suddenly Tolstoy saw that it applied

only to men of his own class in society ; that the millions of toiling peasants

belonged to no one of his four divisions. They recognize the problem of life

with surprising clearness ; they are certainly not Epicureans, and they regard

295

296 ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM

suicide as a fearful crime. Their solution of the riddle is the faith of the
church, with its doctrines of ** God as one and three, the creation in six
days, devils and angels, and all that which I cannot accept so long as I am .
possessed of reason." Yet this illogical faith justifies life for them, and gives
to their existence a dignity utterly wanting in that of men of higher station.
Tolstoy's course was clear ; he set aside his reasoning powers and became a
faithful member of the Orthodox Church, cheating himself into believing, or
professing that he believed, doctrines that were repugnant to his intellect. /

Other features of the church, however, revolted not only Tolstoy's intel- ^
lect, but his moral sense as well. His Orthodox Church, forgetting thei
precepts of Christian love, cursed and reviled Catholics and Protestants,!
though it had no more foundation for its pride than had the Sumski Hussars]
for their confidence that they were the leading regiment in the Russian armyj
Furthermore, in the war between Russia and Turkey, the church pronounced
its blessing on the Russian armies. Now Tolstoy, ignorant though he might
be, knew with his whole soul that any church that blessed murder was an
immoral church. He forthwith left the church — the doctrines of which he
examined in his Critique of Dogmatic Theology ^ and pronounced to be *' the
blasphemy against the Holy Ghost," the absolute contradiction of the teaching
of Christ — and proceeded to build up a religious system of his own. Study-
ing attentively the Gospels, he strove to separate their central truths from the
rubbish wherewith they were overlaid. The details of his study he gave to
the world in his Harmony and Translation of the Four Gospels; the general
results of it in his treatise My Religion. .

Of Tolstoy's theological opinions the most striking is his entire denial ofy
temporal immortality ; no warrant for a belief in a life beyond the grave can
be found in the discourses of Jesus.^ To questions of doctrine, however,
Tolstoy pays scant attention ; the nature of God is unknowable, so that spec-
ulation upon it is worse than fruitless. For Tolstoy the tentral truth of the
Christian faith is that one should not resist evil by force? To this are added
four other precepts : (i) Be not angry, live at peace with all men ; (2) Be pu re^
never regard as good the feeling of love for woman ; (3) Take no oaths, sub-
mit your will only to the will of God ; (4) Love all men, making no distinction
between your own nation and others. These commandments, it will be noted,
by implication destroy all existing society ; a man who will neither submit his
will to that of another nor impose it on another by force can take no part in
the labor of government. .

Thus from Tolstoy's personal ethics there results immediately his attitude J
to modem civilization, as expounded in his book What Shall We Do Then ?

^In time Tolstoy changed his opinion. His Course of Reading (Moscow, 1910) is full of
expressions of faith in immortality, such as, ** Only those disbelieve in immortality who have
never seriously thought of death " (I, 117).

NOYES 297

This volume opens with an indictment of the existing social system, which is
based on violence, on the enslavement of man by man. At present the chief
means of enslavement is private property, expressed in money, the chief object
of which is the subjection of the poor to the rich. The first duty of a right-
eous man is to appreciate his share in the unrighteousness of society. He \
will then feel bound to divest himself of property, to labor with his hands I
instead of being supported by the labor of others, and to live a simple life in '
the country instead of a luxurious life in the city.^ Manual labor for man, and\
childbearing and the care of children for women, are the proper tasks for
regenerate humanity. All luxury, including most modem art and science,
will disappear. The world will be transformed, not by an external changecv
such as that advocated by the socialists, but by the change of character in/
individual men and women.

Obviously Tolstoy's spiritual development and his ethical system, despite*/
the logical scheme into which he so often casts them, contain national and
personal elements. The contrast between an idle, irreligious upper class and
a toiling, religious peasantry, which gave the impulse to Tolstoy's conversion,
is certainly not true in our own country, and perhaps even in Russia the lines
of cleavage are not so clear as Tolstoy represents them. Further, it is not
self-evident that non-resistance to evil is the leading thought of the gospel
teaching; an equally honest inquirer might find the essence of primitive
Christianity in the belief in an all-wise and all-loving personal deity ; he
might even find an otherworldly tint in the discourses of Jesus, with an
emphasis on the life beyond the grave. So a critic of modern society might
see its chief evil not in the presence of violence, but in the absence of jus-
tice, and might regard the use of force in the resistance of evil as quite con-
sistent with the spirit of the Christian teaching. In order to appreciate the
true character of Tolstoy's theory of morals we must look for its sources else-
where than in the Gospels, from which he believed it to be derived, and
we must define its central characteristics in a somewhat different fashion
from that adopted by Tolstoy himself. Studying the whole development of ^
his thought, we may find that these essential elements of his ethical system L
are (i) individualism, (2) a dislike of artificial, civilized society, (3) pessimism, /
and (4) asceticism. /

In all his novels, the greatest of which precede his ethical works, Tolstoy \
is primarily interested in the personal life of his heroes; their participation I
in government or in any sort of social work he regards as useless or even as)
harmful. In Anna Kar/nin the hero is L^vin, a solitary farmer, who refuses
to bother with governmental activity. In contrast to him Kar^nin, the high-
placed official, lives in a world of paper and ink rather than one of flesh and
blood ; his weakness is seen when he comes face to face with a real problem
in his relations with his wife. In War and Peace Prince Andrei, the most

,.y

298 ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM

energetic and practical of Tolstoy's men, wins success in governmental work,
only to turn from it in disgust The real hero of that novel, Pierre Bezukhi,
ludicrous as a masonic functionary, attains peace and calm only in his family
life and in his own spiritual progress. ^Yet in War and Peace Tolstoy deals
continually with the mass movements of humanity, with the marching of
armies, with the glow of patriotic enthusiam that seizes the Russian nation
when Napoleon invades the country. Notice, however, that individuals have
no influence on these mass movements. Napoleon did not cause the invasion
of Russia, but only fancied that he did so. Kutiizov, Tolstoy's favorite among
the Russian generals, sleeps during a council of war and lets events take their
course. The history of mankind is directed by a blind fate, over which indi- .
viduals have no power. Each man must care for his own moral life and cease ^
to hope that he may influence society.

Tolstoy's individualistic heroes represent his personal traits. He was tem-
peramentally opposed to any cooperative movement. From his boyhood he
refused to affiliate with any political or social party ; he might be affected by
the ideas of liberals or Slavophiles, scientists or socialists, but he would never
account himself a member of an organized body. His position was that of his
hero L6vin, who, when called a ** reactionist," proudly replies : ** Really, I
never thought who I am ; I am Constantine L6vin and nothing else " {Anna
Kar^nin, part ii, ch. 17). Once or twice, to be sure, Tolstoy did engage in
social work. As an arbiter of the peace after the emancipation of the serfs in
1 86 1 he showed courage, but soon abandoned a position for which he was
ill adapted and in which he must submit to irksome compromises. In 1891
he became a chief worker for the relief of the Russian famine, forcing him-
self to use means, such as money, that were in flat contradiction to his own
principles. A saving grace of inconsistency only emphasizes his fundamental
individualism.

This individualism resulted from Tolstoy's temperament rather than from V ^
any logical reasoning. A strong element of contradiction pervaded his whole
character. In conversation he was prone to take the opposite side in any
discussion that might arise. In his early life his hot temper led him into
continual quarrels, so that he retained few constant friends. His passion for
sincerity and his analytic bent led him to detect insincerity in all about him,
and sometimes, particularly in the case of men of intellect, to refuse forgive-
ness to human weaknesses.

Tolstoy's individualism was fostered by his environment. A wealthy ari^^
tocrat, he never had to work for his living. His views might develop unX^
checked by the conflicts of business or professional life. Their progress was
aided even by the government. A despotism is the best soil for the growth
of extreme social theories. Men whose efforts at practical reform are ham-
pered are prone to indulge all the more freely in abstract social dreams.

NOYES 299

Extremes of character result ; many men perish in sloth or vice, while a very
few become saints or speculative geniuses.

Intimately connected with Tolstoy's individualism, as a revolt from con-J
ventional standards, is his admiration for the life of primitive, half-savage)
men, and for that of uncultivated, illiterate peasants. His early novel The
Cossacks pictures the Russian inhabitants of the base of the Caucasus moun-
tains, who live in constant warfare with the Circassians and have come to
resemble them in manners and morals. These men Tolstoy describes with
enthusiasm, not hiding their cruelty, lustfulness, and drunkenness, but find-
ing in them a natural vigor that is absent in the Russians of his own class.
A similarly negative attitude towards his own comrades may be seen in his
Sevastopol Sketches. The officers in the Russian army are actuated only by
vanity and ambition ; each is ready to sacrifice thousands of lives in order to
gain a decoration for himself. The common soldiers, on the other hand, are
modest, brave, self-sacrificing ; forgetful of themselves, they obey orders and
aid their wounded comrades. In the story Childhood the one representative
of the religious life is a half-witted peasant mendicant ; in the existence of
the upper classes there is little nourishment for the religious emotions.

Tolstoy's scorn of civilized society greatly resembles Rousseau's condem-\
nation of the arts and sciences as degrading influences in the history oy
mankind. One is not surprised to learn that at an early age Tolstoy almost
worshipped Rousseau, reading all his works and wearing a medallion of him
about his neck. The likeness between the two men is, however, purely on
the negative side. Tolstoy found in Rousseau a systematic exposition of his r\
own instinctive dislike of a civilization, an art, and a science that rest on the
servitude of millions to a select few\When he later built his own system he
went far beyond his master. Rousseau regrets the rise of the arts and\
sciences, but now that they are here he cannot dispense with them; he willp)
strive to mitigate their evil effects. Since primitive liberty has perished for- )
ever, he will strive to organize society on principles of justice. Patriotism is
the controlling motive of his Social Contract, Since the pure Christianity of
the Gospels is inconsistent with patriotism, he will replace it by a civil re-
ligion, designed to uphold the laws. Tolstoy sees with equal clearness the I
inconsistency between the Gospels and patriotism, and forthwith denounces >
patriotism as one of the greatest of sins. The state organization must disap-
pear because it is incompatible with true religion, the religion of the heart.
With it there must perish all science and all art not directly devoted to the
service of religion. Tolstoy accepts Rousseau's fundamental principles, buti
carries them out with greater logical rigor, and with greater courage.

Though Tolstoy found inspiration in Rousseau's criticism of human^
society, he could not always accept his view of human nature. According to
Rousseau human society is bad, but human nature is good ; to Tolstoy, in thetj^

3CX> ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM

years immediately preceding his religious conversion, human nature itself
seemed bad. Schopenhauer, not Rousseau, was the writer who then had
most influence over his thought ; Tolstoy became a pessimist, believing that
life is empty and meaningless and that death is better than life. ^

Though this statement has the authority of Tolstoy himself in his Con/es-p^
sion, it must be received with important reservations. Tolstoy's pessimism, asv
applied to human life in general, rather than to existing human institutions, 1
or to the class in society of which he was a member, was a passing intellec--'
tual opinion rather than a deep-seated temperamental conviction. Pessimism
is a belief that the non-existence of the universe would be preferable to its
existence. Such a belief steals into our minds as we read the novels of Hardy
or the tales of Guy de Maupassant. ■* The offense lies not in the portrayal
of sin and shame, but in the denial of any possibility of improvement or in
the negation of all standards of right and wrong. Tolstoy's novels are of
different stuff. They are books wherein ** all noble lords ahd ladies " " shall
find many joyous and pleasant histories and noble and renowned acts of
humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. For herein may be seen noble chivalry,
courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, mur-
der, hate, virtue, sin. Do after the good, and leave the evil, and it shall bring
you to good fame and renomm^e." And, unlike Malory, Tolstoy is so con-
vincing in his picture of this checkerboard world that " all noble lords and
ladies " find themselves constrained *' to give faith and believe that all is true
that is contained herein." Tolstoy's pessimism remained external ; the vitaTv
force that saved him from suicide kept his picture of the world from evei/
becoming black and despairing.

Such novels might seem quite as much at variance with aacgtidsm, thex*^
denial to oneself of simple and natural pleasures, as they are with a perma-y
nendy pessimistic philosophy. But such is not the case. Asceticism was a*—
fundamental element in Tolstoy's temperament. Its influence, already visible
in his earliest works, constantly increased, until it became all-pervading in the
writings of his latest years. It was the central element in his religious sys- —
tem, and in time it became almost the sole element, so that the last phase of
Tolstoy's religion approximates to mediaeval monasticism.

Tolstoy's early life was, to be sure, anything but ascetic ; it was that of a
young man swayed by strong animal passions. This wild-oats period is re-
flected strongly in his novels, with their descriptions of scenes of debauchery
and violence. Tolstoy could hardly have rebuked the sins of the world with
so fervent an eloquence had he not himself shared in them.

Moreover, asceticism implies a contempt of wholesome physical pleasures,\
a Puritanic disregard of all that is beautiful and graceful, such as no one is at ]
first sight likely to impute to the author of War and Peace and Anna KarMin.
A fervent joy of life fills the description of the hunt in War and Peace, when

NOYES 301

Nikolai Rostov gallops over the open field or prays the Lord that the wolf
may come his way. So Tolstoy feels to the full the delight of Natasha at the
great court ball when he writes, " She was at that highest pitch of happiness
when one becomes wholly good and kind and does not believe in the possi-
bility of evil, unhappiness, and grief*' {War and Peace ^ part vi, ch. 17).

The truth is that in Tolstoy there were two different spirits, one that of
the healthy animal, enjoying his own strength and the fineness of his per-
ceptions ; the other that of the moralist, analyzing the experiences through
which he passes and tending more and more to reject all joys of the flesh,
and even all delight in beauty, as distinct from morality. In his earlier writ-
ings, up to his religious conversion, the instinctive elements predominate ; in
the later they gradually disappear under the influence of an ascetic ideal. To
sins of the flesh, resulting from a thoughtless animal nature, Tolstoy was
merciful. In Anna Karhiin the thoughtless, good-humored Stiva, while he
violates all the commands of the Decalogue, amuses rather than enrages the
sternly Puritanic novelist. Again, in Tolstoy's view, animal debauchery does
not wholly defile a man so long as he recognizes it as something bad and
degrading ;\ it becomes fatal only when it is regarded as something fine and
elevating, as it is by so many poets and artists. To be more explicit, even in
his youthful years Tolstoy was never a conscious hedonist ; as an ideal he
never recognized pleasure even of the highest sort, not to speak of animal
enjoyment. Beauty and strength he admired, and his keen appreciation of
them gives to his great novels their glorious vitality ; but they never entered
into his moral ideal. From his own ideal of art he finally banished beauty
and pleasure ; and even in his earliest writings, so soon as he begins to reflect,
he becomes an ascetic, preaching self-sacrifice and self-abnegation, however
much, as a spectator of this world's motley show, he may understand the appeal
of types of character to whom self-sacrifice is unknown. His most extreme
religious tracts only expand a point of view that is already implicit in his
novels, though it is there so overshadowed by other elements, that, had Tolstoy
died at the age of fifty, it might have passed unnoticed.

Tolstoy's individualism accounts for th^ anarchic character of his social
criticism. Concentrating his attention on the single man, he is impatient of
any social restraints that hamper the growth of universal love, expressed in
self-abnegation. Patriotism, the preference of one's own countrymen over
foreigners, forthwith becomes a cardinal sin ; since some of its fruits are evil,
none can be good. Since all cooperation involves compromise, Tolstoy comes
perilously near condemning all cooperative effort. Herein he is sharply dis-
tinguished from the socialists, whose condemnation of modem society is much
the same as his own. No change in economic arrangements, no laws of the
state, administered by imperfect men, can regenerate the corrupt modem
society ; and perfect men, by their very perfection, are forbidden to make or

}

302 ELEMENTS IN TOLSTOY'S ETHICAL SYSTEM

administer laws that lay compulsion on their fellows. Hence as a leader of)
constructive reform Tolstoy has been without influence. The greatest apostle
of peace in modem times, he opposed the movement for inten^donal a;l^tra-
tion, since, resting as it does on the recognition of government and armaments,
it must remain a hollow mockery.

Yet Tolstoy believed himself a constructive reformer./' The Christian
Church, he exclaims in My Religion^ offers men either a monastery, entire
retirement from the world, or base compromise with it. He himself will
remain in the world as a servant of humanity. But the ascetic element in
his ideal is often more prominent than that of service ; ^ and finally, as he
advances in life, his ideal becomes monastic in all but name, differing from
monasticism only in its anarchic exaltation of disobedience rather than obedi-
ence, and in being put forward as an ideal for all men instead of being enjoined
as a formal rule for a few elect spirits. A sketch of his changing point of view
on one concrete problem, that of sex relations, will make this plain.

Of all the passions that fettered the young Tolstoy that of lust was the
most fierce and untamable. He recognized the sinfulness of his life, but
could not change it. The men in his novels are reflections of their creator,
preserving their ideal aspirations in the midst of external debauchery. But
they do not shroud their lusts with any poetic charm, as do the Roman ele-
gists, to say nothing of their modem successors. Sexual inclinations in
Tolstoy's novels are sordid, base, animal. Prostitution and light and graceful
society adultery are mentioned with whole-souled contempt, mingled with
charity it is tme, but with no sympathy. Tme poetry surrounds only the rela\
tions of a man with the woman whom he will marry, who will be the mothen
of his children, and to whom he will be devotedly faithful all his life. In
thinking of her he anticipates a lifelong spiritual companionship, made holy
by love of her and of their children. ^

A happy family life saved Tolstoy from lust and from despair. Accord-
ingly the family ideal dominated War and Peace ; the charming maiden
Natasha ends as a portly and somewhat untidy housewife, caring for her
chubby children. Infraction of this ideal brings about the tragedy of Anna
Karhtin. Perhaps the most eloquent positive page^vthat^otstby evfer wrote
are those in praise of motherhood, at the close of What Shall We Do Then ?

Then came a change. Tolstoy's latest writings are occupied not with
praises of family life, which in the last analysis depends on sexual attrac-
tion, however regulated, and however atoned for by self-sacrificing love of
children, but with the tremendous power for evil of this same sexual attrac-
/ tion. The Kreutzer Sonata shows this changed point of view. The hero is a

/
/

1 " Jesus Christ nowhere bids us give to the poor in order that the poor may be well fed and
content; he says that a man must give all to the poor in order that he himself may be happy,"
Harmony of the Gospelsy Geneva, 1892-1894, II, 126.

^ '

NOYES 303

man who has lived loosely, and whose sins lead him first to the murder of his
wife and then — to asceticism, to the condemnation of all sexual impulses,
as productive only of evil. The destiny of the human race, as it advances
spiritually, is to die physically, to cease to reproduce itself. The result is
tolerable to Tolstoy because of his pessimistic view of the world as it is now
organized ; the means to reform is consonant with his whole moral system.
Asceticism and pessimism make him an unsafe guide in personal ethics as
in social reconstruction.

These conclusions concerning Tolstoy's ethical system have been negative,
even as was Tolstoy himself in his conclusions upon the world. Tolstoy was asj
broad, impartial, all-embracing, and sympathetic as Shakespeare or Chaucer in'
his picture of society ; in his theories of it he developed a system founded on'
the duty of self-sacrifice, which, as it grew more logically consistent, grew
more narrow, partial, and intolerant. Yet, as the years go by, Tolstoy's reli-
gious writings may prove to be of equal import with his novels. As a maker

an ethical system Tolstoy was weak, faulty, even absurd ; as a religious
leader he has had few superiors. A theorist upon ethics may broaden our
concepts of right and wrong, but his abstract distinctions, his cold, impersonal
attitude can hardly arouse moral enthusiasm. A religious leader enunciates a
few dogmas, a few rules of conduct, and makes them splendid by the force
of his enthusiasm and his readiness to act on them. He gathers followers
and transforms their lives, founds an organized church, and after his death
his enthusiasm stiffens into a lifeless creed. Tolstoy was such a leader, a man
of the type of St. Francis. But from the very extremity of his position, and
from the peculiar character of his personality, his doctrine is not likely to
become the creed of a lifeless church. He himself repelled the idea of organ-
izing his followers, and was only distantly interested in their abortive attempts
to organize for themselves. The few men who accepted his system as a whole
were not as a rule inspiring personalities. On the other hand, no one writer
of our own time has so quickened the consciences of men without subjecting
them to his own. He was like Emerson in his fearless independence ot\
tradition and convention and in his spiritual purity ; but he differed from him \
in attacking concrete problems rather than abstract concepts ; he was a realist, j
close to the earth ; his novelist's genius for observation never failed. Tolstoy
himself might finally reach a monastic ideal ; the effect of his writings is to
show the weakness of such an ideal. A prophet of anarchy, he leads his ^
readers to work for a better social order. In an age that emphasized material
and financial standards he was the most potent spokesman of spiritual and
moral worth. In his personal life, groping as it was, and often even grotesque, \
he was the greatest idealist of his time, the man who dared most fully to act
in obedience to his own conscience against the judgment of the world.

MEDIEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

Edward Kennard Rand

The imaginary career of Judas Iscariot proved a fascinating subject in the
Middle Ages, and received something like canonization in the Legenda Aurea
of Jacopo da Voragine, which presents the earliest Latin form of the legend
hitherto discovered. But the familiar story there told presupposes, as Gaston
Paris declared,^ an earlier and simpler account. The versions treated in the
present paper, while still leaving many questions unanswered, may bring the
investigation of this subject somewhat nearer to the goal.

An immediate precursor of the account in the Golden Legend may be
found in a Vatican manuscript, Palatinus 619 (= F), dated s. XII/XIII in the
catalogue of Stevenson-De Rossi. The manuscript contains sermons, legends,
and other ecclesiastical matter. On fol. 18 there begins an Hystoria de luda
Proditore thus : ** Mathias apostolus in locum lude substitutus est. Sed primo
ortum ^ et originem ipsius lude proditoris breviter videamus. Legitur enim in
quadam historia quod fuit quidam vir in Jerusalem nomine Ruben, qui alio
nomine dictus est Symon de tribu luda, qui habuit uxorem quae Ciborea
nuncupata est." These are almost the words of Jacopo,* except that the
latter cautiously adds licet apocrypha after historia^ and makes Ruben of
the tribe of Dan.* The text of the Vatican manuscript agrees thereafter
with that of Jacopo word for word, saving a few scribal vagaries, until the
strictly Biblical part begins. Just there Jacopo adds : ** Hucusque in praedicta
historia apocrypha legitur, quae utrum recitanda sit lectoris arbitrio relinquatur,
licet sit potius relinquenda quam asserenda." These words are not in Vy
which has, however, all of the remainder, including the moralizations at the
end. Since the script of Fis clearly before the date of Jacopo (i 230-1 298),
we have here the source which he incorporated, almost without change, in his
Golden Legend. It is precisely the text the existence of which Gaston Paris
had prophetically surmised and the date of which he had assigned to the
twelfth century.^

1 Revue Critique., IV (1869), ^» 4^2 ff., in a review of D'Ancona, La Leggenda di Vergogna e
la Leggenda di Giuda, Another important review is that by R. Kdhler m Jakrb. fiir romaniscke
u. englische Lit.., XI (1870), 313 ff* In these articles and in L. Constans, La Ugende d'CEdipe^
1 88 1, references to earlier treatments of the subject will be found. There has been no recent
examination, so far as I am aware, of the sources of the Latin story of Judas.

* ortu V, In the different texts here published I have cited only the most important errors
or variants.

' Legenda Aurea^ ed. Graesse, sec. ed., p. 184. I will refer to the version given in Jacopo as L.

* See below, p. 312. L adds vel secundum Hieronymum de tribu Ysachar,

* Revue Critique^ IV, 413.

305

3o6 MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

Another important document is represented by two copies, one in a Munich
manuscript, Latinus 21259 (=-^> written in a beautifully clear script of the
very end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century,^ the other
in Paris, Arsenal 387 (= A), s. XIII, formerly of St. Victor. The text of A,
though in general less perfect than that of M, is an independent and there-
fore indispensable source. In MA (= fi), after the story of Pilate, there follows
(fol. 231") De Ortu lude Scariothis? which begins : " Fuit in diebus Herodis
regis Pylato preside vir in ludea Ruben nomine ^ ex tribu luda,* qui noctis in
tempestate legalibus uxoris sue Cyboree alligabatur amplexibus.** The subse-
quent account is virtually identical in its details and in many of its phrases
with Vy though there are numerous variations and amplifications. Thus V
says of the birth of Judas: **Procedente igitur tempore cum filium peperisset,
parentes plurimum timuerunt et quid de eo vellent^ facere cogitare ceperunt.
Cumque filium abhorrerent occidere nee vellent destructorem sui generis enu-
trire, ipsum in fiscella positum mari exponunt, quem marini fluctus ad insulam
quae Scharioth dicitur propulerunt." /a works out this idea with a touch of
an Ovidian suasoriay in which, naturally, the feelings of only one of the par-
ents are described : ** Ruben vero multis modis et inexplicabilibus involvitur
curis. Nefarium enim filium ducit occidi, scelerosum totius gentis destructo-
rem enutriri. Tandem seponitur pietas, preponderat * impietas. Cistella vimine
contexitur, in qua maris fluctibus iniectus ad insulam Scarioth propellitur."

The casket is found, according to V^ by the Queen of Scarioth : ** Regina
autem loci illius carens liberis ad litus maris causa spaciandi processit et fiscel-
1am a marinis fluctibus iactari videns, ipsam aperiri precepit. Inveniensque
ibi ^ puerum elegantis forme suspirans ait : * O si solatiis ® tante sublevarer ^
sobolis, ne regni mei successore privarer ! ' ^^ Puerum igitur secreto nutriri
fecit et se gravidam simulavit. Tandem se filium peperisse mentitur et per
totum regnum fama haec Celebris divulgatur."

The word precepit implies that the queen was not alone when she made
the discovery. This suggestion is developed by /a, in which the queen's attend-
ants are given an important part in the action : '* Tunc regina huius com-
itata pedissequis fortuitu ad litus maris processit spatiari, viditque infantulum
procellosis maris fluctibus fluctuari. Pedisseque dum accurrunt et vultum pueri
diligentius intuentes regieque pulchritudini conparantes domine disserunt ^^ et

1 The Munich catalogue of Schmeller-Halm, etc., gives "s. XIII et XIV (mixtus) " as the
date, but s. XIV surely does not apply to the part containing Godfrey of Viterbo and the life
of Judas. Waitz, in his edition of Godfrey {M. G. H. XXII» 14), calls the manuscript s. XIII.

* So Mio\. 231*'. A begins without title, fol, 70".

' Ruben nomine om. A, * rubem A. * nollent V,

* seponitur pietas preponderat A ; se p(re)ponit(ur) p(re)pond(er)at (pietas om.) M. The
complicated error of M shows that the text of that manuscript has already had something of
a history. ' id* K ^ solacie K * sublevaret V.

"^^ These words suggest Dido*s appeal in Aen, IV, 327 ff.

11 desenint M. Perhaps de eo should be supplied before the verb.

RAND 307

de longinqiiis partibus in illas profluxisse asserunt.^ Regina itaque liniamenta
corporis pueri pre€X)nsiderans et diligenti oculorum intuitu prenotans ait : * O si
solatiis tante subolis sublevarer, ne regni mei successione^ privarer! * Pedisseque
infantulum nutriri suggerunt ut vidua sterili permanente habeantur heredes.
Regina obsequitur hancque regiam peperisse prolem terram promulgatur
in omnem."

In certain details, it will be noticed, /i is a bit briefer than V. This feature
is especially prominent at the end of the narrative, where, without the lengthy
comment on the thirty denarii or the moralizing on the manner of Judas's
death, /i has simply : '* Hie autem a Domino diligebatur pre ceteris donee
consilium iniit cum ludeis et XXX Dominum vendidit argenteis. Videns
autem quia innocentem condempnaverat, proiecto in templo sanguinis precio
laqueo se suspendit et medius crepuit. Explicit iste liber.''

Without denying that /i may be directly based on the version of F, with
now an expansion and now a contraction of the original, I incline to the
opinion that both fjL and V follow a source (I will call it 7) which, though
simpler than either, presented the same essential features of the narrative.
These I define as the names of Judas's parents, Ruben and Ciborea; the
dream of Ciborea; the exposure of the child in the casket; his discovery by
the queen of Scarioth; his quarrel with the real prince, bom shortly after
Judas's arrival ; his detection of his real origin and his flight after slaying the
prince ; his kindly reception by Pilate ; his murder of his own father, a deed
wrought by Judas while stealing fruit from the latter's orchard for Pilate;
his espousal of his own mother, a favor granted by Pilate in recompense for
the stealing of the fruit; the lamentation of the woman over the unhappy
fates that had overtaken her child, her husband, and now herself ; Judas*s
immediate recognition of his two-fold sacrilege ; his repentance ; his entry into
the service of Jesus ; his betrayal of his Master ; his death. A terminus post
quern is fixed for the script of J/, though not necessarily for the composition
of the narrative, by the fact that it is immediately preceded, in the same hand,
by the Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo, a work finished certainly before 1 191,
the year of the author's death. A termintis ante quern is offered by the script
of J/, which, if not still in the twelfth century, should be dated, I am con-
vinced, very early in the thirteenth. To this same period Fshould likewise be
assigned. Whatever the exact genealogy of our versions may be, it is safe to
assume that a life of Judas comprising the elements given above was known
and amplified at least as early as the end of the twelfth century.

This evidence does not solve the fundamental query raised by investiga-
tors of our subject ; it pushes farther back the date of the version adopted by
Jacopo da Voragine, but does not account for the growth of the material of

^ pedisseque aute(m) accessera(n)t (dum accumint . . . profluxisse om,) A,
* successione A<, m, i M; successore m. 2 M,

3o8 MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

which the story is itself composed. We may next examine a curious modifi-
cation of the legend, to be found in a manuscript at Reims, 1275 (= R), s. XIII.
As often, a Vita Pylati immediately precedes. I give the Vita lude Scarioht
in full (fol. 2 ff.) :

Pater lude Scarioht de tribu Dan duxit uxorem generis sui secundum legis
preceptum.i Qui ingressus ad eam impregnavit eam. Ipsa autem nocte vidit
mulier presagium malorum in sompno, videlicet presagium malorum suorum.
Videbat ignem de utero suo egredientem qui paulatim crescens primo maritum
suum corripuit eumque penitus consumens donee in favillam deficeret post
paululum domum eius in qua iacebat conflagrabat. Qua consumpta prodigio-
sum monstrum in eosdem ortus^ hoc est in utero suo mater agnovit. Ignis
veno non totum terrendum dabat sed^ interiecto longi temporis spacio inde
iterum quasi moderacius se subducebat et subito in altum excrescens primo
ludeam et Galileam deinde omnem circa regionem afflabat et penitus con-
cremabat ; ad ultimum urbem regiam David Iherusalem et arcem Syon una
cum sancto et venerabili templo corripiebat et omnia in cinerem et favillam
redigens concremabat. Ita mulier in medio visu subito exterrita evigilavit et
ingenti clamore et gemitu horrorem visionis sue testata maritum excitavit;
querenti quid esset, quod haberet, quid clamaret, quid fleret, visa sua exposuit.
Ille prodigioso sompno attonitus diluculo surrexit et cum uxore in Iherusalem
abiit (erat enim in vico Scarioht qui est ante Iherusalem ad aquilonarem urbis
plagam unus de sacerdotibus Domini, magni vir ^ meriti) venitque ad eum cum
uxore sua seorsumque abducens prodigialem illius visionem ei indicavit. Qua
ille audita visione permotus ingemuit diuque stupens et quasi mutus tandem
in banc prophecie vocem ora resolvit.

'* Ha ! mulier misera, filius^ quem concepisti magni doloris causa erit tibi,
patri autem prius, deinde omni ludeorum genti et regioni et sancte urbi et
templo sempitemus interitus. Sed placate Deum precibus penitencia votis et
muneribus ut avertat Dominus iram sue indignationis a vobis.'*

Hec dixit et tristes ac metu magno consternatos eos dimisit. Evoluto autem
tempore quo conceperat mulier peperit puerum satis quidem scituni^ sed in suam
et multorum pemiciem natum. Vnde anxii propter*^ visionem et sui vatis
divinationem decreverunt eum statim necare et parricidas* se sui sanguinis
esse. Sed non est possibilitatis humane convertere consiliimi ordinationis

^ p(re)ceptum R, Ae is nowhere found in the present text I omit reference to other com-
pendia, save in cases of especial importance. As ci for // occurs in certain words, I have fol-
lowed this spelling in resolving several abbreviations as in that for Eciam,

^ The sense seems to require something like regredi,

• Sed is generally written^ in this text, and perhaps should be spelled seU

• viri R, 6 filium R.

• The phrase suggests Terence, And. 486 : Per ecastor scitus puer est natus Pamphilo.
' p(ro) i^. 8 p(er)ricidas i^.

RAND 309

divine. Ille de quo postea passivus pro salute mundi dixit Filius Dei, ** Melius
illi erat si natus non fuisset homo ille,'* cum natus statim debuit occidi, reser-
vatus est in perdicionem sui, in traditionem Domini lesu ^ Christi, in ^ nutri-
mentum ignis etemi, in m^moriam patrum suorum, et in recordacionem precati
misere matris sue. Pugnaverunt diu affectus pietatis et amor ^ patrie. Noluit
diu pater pius esse, noluit ipse prius nocens esse interficiendo eum quem non-
dum noverat, aliquid quod morte puniri deberet commisisse. Porro autem pie
soUicitabatur pro salute patrie mallens unum innocentem adhuc et filium suum
suis maioribus interire quam per ilium succedenti tempore pocius patrie ruinam
videre. Vicit tandem amor patrie utrosque paventes clausimique in cistella
lignea puerum superata pietate proiecerunt in mare. Inhorruisse ferunt pelagus
mox ut sensit prodigiale bonus, totis fluctibus frementes torsisse vertices et
futurum sui conditoris venditorem tortis impulisse fluctibus ut et^ futurum
latronem dissecaret et collideret suis molibus et occultaret profundis gurgitibus
priusquam venditor audax horrendum seclis omnibus perpetraret facinus.
Miser luda et infelicissime, quo tuo vel tuorum parentum crimine contigit
tibi tot tantisque malis natum esse ? Cur ^ misera ilia mater tua cum te con-
cepit^ non statim abortivit? Cur autem natus? Cur^ exceptus genibus? Cur^
lactatus uberibus ? Esset certe modo tibi melius parricidari ; tantum ^ crimen
fuisset tuis miseris parentibus tuo crimine venalius. Cur ^ autem vel in mare
proiectus non statim es mersus et a tanto abysso suff ocatus ? Esset tibi vel
mare vel aliquis beluinus venter sepulchrum nee postea celo terreque perosus
tam infelici morte perisses inter utrumque. Sed cum mori poteras adhuc sine
crimine, pepercit tibi inter fluctus nescio quis deus, quamvis ether, venti et
pelagus ut perires totis pugnabant viribus. Incertum est, inquam, quis deus
hoc discrimine te eripuit ; et elementa dum te laborant obruere, visa sunt po-
cius obsequium prestitisse. Actus enim tot fluctibus fertur unius diei et noctis
spacio, ab loppe civitate Galilee transvectus per tot maria usque ad horam
lUirici maris usque Bitradum et ad introitum pervenit, ad banc® famosam
alitricem lude traditoris. Vbi mare piscator quidam ingressus sagenam suam
in mare misit, quam vacuam quidem piscibus sed honeratam cistella ® lude ad
littus adduxit. Quam acceptam mox ad uxorem suam attulit dicensque ^^ mag-
num tessaurum invenisse qui eos inopia sublevaret gratulabundus ostendit.
Sed effracta cistella et detecta spes expectati tesauri nulla fuit. Nihil enim in
cistella aliud invenerunt nisi puerum vagientem et membranam parvulam hec
continentem : Hie infantubis est Itulas natus de vico Scarioht qui est ante
Ikerusalem,

Mulier, mota visceribus humanitatis, ** Maiorem," inquit ad maritum, " ex-
pectato nostro dii " nobis dederunt tesaurum, hunc elegantis formae puerum,

1 ih(es)u i^. « in om. R, • timor (?) R. * et ut R, » cui (?) R. • cepit R.

' parricidari ; tantum] parricida | rit aut(em) (?) R. • ad banc] adhuc R,

» cistellam R. i® dicens q(ui ?) R. ^^ di(i)s ? R.

3IO MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

quern quia non habemus proprium hunc adotivum habebimus proprium." Hec
dixit, maritx) facile in id ipsum consenciente, puerum de cistella exposuit, et
nesciens quam magnum malum aleret in perdicionem sui et multorum eum
nutrivit. Qui postquam adolevit Grecorum disciplinis et studiis se exercitando
cito perfecit. Erat acer corpore et ingenio animi. Factum est autem ut consue-
tudinaria institutione decreto principum Bithordii quinquennalis agon in honore
lovis Olipiadis^ celebraretur, et ubique^ de urbibus, vicis, castellis, oppidis agris-
que studium ostendendae* virtutis et cupido laudis et spes palme multos alliceret.
ludasque affuit inter alios et super ceteros agonistas clarissimus victor emicuit.
Quod aliqui invidentes et indigne f erentes cum ^ captivus et advena indigenis
et nobilibus civibus se comparare auderet, cum gravi opprobrio conviciantur ^
ei eumque de agonali ludo non sine iniuria expellunt. lUe gravi ira permotus
ad matrem, quam adhuc credebat suam, f uribundus venit, exsertoque ^ in eam
nimis ferociter gladio, quis ipse aut unde aut cuius filius esset aut quomodo
illuc venisset aut cur ® tanto tempore matrem eius se mentita ^ f uisset, eam
fateri coegit. Ilia unde aut quando illuc venisset aut quomodo a marito suo
piscatore inventus, quomodo ab ilia nutritus qui adoptivus filius esset ei indi-
cavit. Ceterum quis aut cuius filius esset, quomodo etiam illuc venisset se
nescire respondit, simul et cartulam cum illo in cistella inventam ei protulit.
** Et si tantus amor est,** ait, " tibi te ipsum cognoscendi, scis patriam nomen-
que tuum.^^ Inquire gentem et genus tuum et quomodo veneris hue." lUe
hiis auditis attonitus iram tunc quidem compressit, tempus vero opportunum
nactus Bitrodum quasi Andropolim iturus reliquit. Inde navim conscendens
in " Syriam proficiscentem paucis post diebus in loppen portu expositus ad
urbem Iherusalem pervenit. Erat eo tempore in Iherusalem Poncius Pylatus
procurator rerum publicarum a Romanis in ludea missus. Ei ludas officio-
sissime deserviendo adhesit, nichil de gente et cognatione sua fortunisque suis
cuiquam locutus pro officio suo brevi tam presidi quam clientibus eius f uit cams.
Accidit autem quadam die ut Pylatus deambularet per solarium domus in qua
manebat. Aspiciens vicum Scarioht vidit in orto unius pauperis dactilos in
palma pendere et desideravit ex eis comedere. Vocansque unum ex astantibus
misit et de fructu sibi afferre iussit. lUe servus abiit, sed prohibente domino
pomerii capere suos fructus, inanis ad presidem rediit. Ille ita commotus, '* Et
quis," ait, '* adhuc ibit pro nobis ? ** '* Ego," ludas et abiit. Erat autem ortus
ille Symonis qui erat pater lude. Irruens ludas cum furore palmam excussit,
deinde quod excusserat fructus coUegit. Et conversus contumax turbatis oculis
in patrem suum (nesciebat autem quia^ pater suus esset), **Cur^^ non,** inquit,
** o decrepite senex et me repellis ? Cur non et mihi contradicis .? '* " Et

^ bithor A*. * oUpiadi A*. ■ et ubique] ubi 9 ^. * ostend(er)e J^. * cur {or cui ?) Id.

• eiciu(n)t i?. ^ exc(ri ?)toque ^. » cui (?) A'. • mentitam i?.

^ Cf. Virgil, Aen. ii, 10, " Sed si tantus amor casus cog^oscere nostros," etc., and note also
the dactylic rhythm at the end of the sentence.

^ eu(m) i?. w q(ui) A*. u cui (?) ^.

RAND 311

rogasse quam rapuisse equius fuerat," senex respondit, "et depone quod meum
est. Depone, inquam, quod meum est,*' ingeminavit et quod coUegerat de palla
illi excussit. ludas ut leo frendens nil id tale promeritum senem patrem suum
fuste percussit diminutoque eius cerebro morientem et suam ulcionem deo
clamantem dimisit et recoUectos f ructus patemo sanguine ^ respersus presidi
attulit. Audita morte innocentis fit de tota urbe concursus, oritur gravis sedicio
et furentis populi confusa vociferacio illis clamantibus, *' Homicida exibeatur,*'
aliis autem succinentibus eciarti, " Et preses cum sua domo ignibus subiciatur."
Preses cogitans esse optimum ad evitandam tali tempore seditionem, viros
sapientes et discretos mittit ad populum, quam sedicionem temere ^ inceptam
illis mediantibus facile compescuit.^ Accitaque muliere cuius erat msuritus
occisus consilio seniorum et amicorum suorum factum est ut ludas eam in
uxorem duceret rediretque per hoc in eius gratiam cuius maritum nullis pre-
missis inimiciciis sed ira precipitante occiderat. Ne quid * ergo nephas intac-
tum, ne quid ^ scelus illi esset inausum, fit ipsius parricida matris maritus et
ut omnino Veritas attestaretur sompnio, in suos ortus monstrum^ revolvitur.
Sed nichil tam occultum quod non reveletur neque absconditum quod non
sciatur. Parum temporis fluxerat quam una nocte mulier ilia misera inter
amplexus mariti sed filii recordata eius quam aliquando viderat visionis sus-
pirare graviter cepit et modo ad memoriam revocando filium parvulum in mare
mersum modo autem maritum ab eo quem modo habebat interf ectum ^ cepit
abhorrere tales nupcias. Cepit detestari sua tempora in que nimirum infeliciter
vivendo pervenerat. ludas tacito auscultans uxorem et eandem suam matrem
cepit diligenter ab ea scrutari et querere textum huius tragedie. At vero post-
quam omnia audivit seque et ex visione matris et ex litteris secum in cistella
inventis recognovit detestatus patris parricidium, obscenum matris adulterium,
** Et que crudelis fortuna me miserum persequitur ? *' dixit, ** Et quis erit modus
miseri sceleris? Si parricida patris, si adulter futurus eram matris, nonne
melius f uerat adhuc latuisse sub undis ? Nonne melius f uerat opprobria nobilis
Grecie pertulisse quam tam infami crimine me ipsum perdidisse ? " Sic ait et
amens exiliit stratis exertoque gladio, '* Hie certe," dixit, " iugulus piabit et
adulterium matris et mortem patris et crimen non iam filii sed parricide,"
et verso in suis visceribiis mucrone incumbere voluit. Sed misera mater eadem
obscena uxor librantis dextre ictum sustinuit. Correcta itaque temeraria ira
filii mariti et amencia ut tandem ille in hominem rediit, consulit et persuadet
ut ambo communiter eant ad sacerdotem ilium cui ipsa aliquando visionem
suam retulerat, quique ex magna parte quod iam evenerat divinaverat. Eunt
igitur ambo et fusis genibus omnia quae sibi evenerant seriatim indicant. Quid
faciant quomodo hec crimina expient orant cum lacrimis ut sibi consulat. Ille
attonitus rerum novitate et sui vaticinii veritate nullum super habere consilium

1 sanguitie (?) R, « demere R. • Qpestuit R. * q(ui) R,

* quam R. • monstro R. ' interfectorem R.

312 MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

in se esse dixit. Tamen consulit ut lesum magni iam nominis et meriti viram
adeant et ut ei suarum miseriarum tragedias narrent, eius super tantis malis et
peccatis consilium et auxilium postulent, pietati et misericordie se commendent.
Erat enim iam illo tempore Dominus lesus miraculorum potentia clarus tarn
quam doctrina et predicatione divina quam signorum mirabilium attestatione ;
credebatur a fidelibus plus quam homo inter homines esse. Ilium ludas cum
matre uxoreque adiit effususque pedibus eius criminis sui omnem historiam ei
detexit, veri etiam penitentis habitum, luctum et lacrimas pretendit. Dominus
autem lesus intuitus hominem et quod noverat ab inicio qui essent credentes,
sciens quam longe esset a regno Dei, tamen ne desperatione cogeretur amplius
periclitari, *'Potes/* inquit, **adhuc salvus^ fieri si digne penitueris, sed et hec
et cetera peccata deinceps vitaveris nee ^ eciam ad maiora te inclinaveris, et ut
omnis occasio peccandi ulterius tibi tollatur, reiectis omnibus impedimentis et
secularibus negociis sequere me meque imitando in veritate vitam etemam
habere poteris."

The main difference between the Reims version and 7 is obvious ; while
preserving the general outlines of the story, R omits most of the specifically
Biblical parts and shows instead a large infusion of classical, not to say pagan,
material. In 7 the mother of Judas is called Ciborea, a name appropriately
suggested by Sephora,^ the wife of Moses, who was similarly set adrift by
his mother ; in R the woman is unnamed. In 7 the father is called Ruben,
perhaps with the idea of prophesying grimly the action of his son, since
the Biblical Ruben defiled his father's couch ; ^ R has Symon as the name,^
but, though here using the Scriptures, has not indulged in an invention, for
Simon was indeed, according to St. John,^ the father of Judas. Symon ap-
pears as a variant name in VL but not in M, M on the other hand agrees
with V in declaring his tribe to be Juda, with which one might naturally
associate Judas, while R and L call it Dan, in memory perhaps of Isidore's
identification of Dan with Antichrist.*^ This is the only point in which the
nomenclature of R is more subtle than that of Fand M, Very important for
determining the relation between the two accounts is the incident of the casket,
which in 7 is obviously reminiscent of the discovery of the child Moses by
Pharaoh's daughter ; ® the drifting Judas of the *Reims version is accompanied
by tokens in the ancient style, protected by ncscio quis deus^ and found by a
fisher who suggests a familiar character in the Rudens of Plautus. The

1 saluum R. 2 n^ R.

^ Exod. ii, 21. Since one of the two Hebrew obsUirices mentioned in Kxod. i, 1 5, was also called
Sephora, the name is connected with Moses' birth as well as his marriage and thus suggests, as
nearly as anything Biblical can, the mother-wife.

* Gen. xlix, 4 (cf. xxxv, 22). * See above, p. 310, 1. 35. • vi, 72 : ludam Simonis Iscariotem.

"^ AlUgoriae quaedam scriptunu sacraty 42 (Mig^e, P. Z., LXXXIII, 107).

® VL agree further with the Vulgate {Exod. ii, 3) in calling the cdiSVtt fiscella ; in /u as in ^
it is cisicUa.

RAND 313

fisher and his wife live at Buthrotum ^ in Epirus, where Judas takes part in
agonistic sports such as Aeneas had celebrated there before him.^ There are
touches of Livy in the descriptions,^ while the lament of Judas is Ovidian in
flavor and has in one of its sentences a dactylic cadence.^ The late date of
the manuscript and the mention of Dan as the tribe of Judas's father make
it not impossible that this version, despite its extraordinary divergences, de-
pended on L, As will shortly appear, however, it is more probable that the
starting-point is a version still more simple than 7.

I now give in full a form of the story clearly earlier than any thus far con-
sidered. It is found in a Paris manuscript, 14489 (= P), s. XII, formerly of
St. Victor. The codex contains various theological works, among them the
Opuscula Sacra of Boethius. The latter, written in a hand of the late twelfth
century, end at the top of fol. 109". The rest of the page and i iC were origi-
nally left blank. The life of Judas, which immediately follows the Boethius on
fol. 109*', is thus a later addition, though the script, I believe, is still of the
twelfth century.

Nihil occultum quod non reveletur et opertum quod non sciatur. Qui a
malo progreditur et in malo perseverat, non corona sed meriti pena donatur.
De luda proditore nobis vita innectitur, qui malus in ortu, peior in vita, pes-
simus extitit in fine. Pater eius itaque quantum apud homines cluebat, divi-
ciis affluens et honorabilis omnibus vicinis suis habebatur. Hie nocte quadam
visionem vidit se filium habere qui mortem ei intentaret ; iam enim uxor eius
pregnans erat. De quo praestigium hoc futurum erat. Nato autem infante
pater in eo omen tale consideravit et expavit, tibias illius transfixit atque inter
frutecta longius ab urbe Iherusalem collocavit. Cuius vagitum et voces plo-
ratus quidam pastorum intelligentes a loco dimoverunt eum et in Scarioth
deferentes a quadam muliere alere fecerunt. Qui nutritus et in robur virile
deductus regi iunctus est Herodi atque inter servos eius mixtus cum omni
probitate regi ceterisque militibus serviebat. Et tamen, ut moris est servorum,
que habere poterat prodige distribuebat et quam plurima sibi furtive vendicabat.
Accidit autem quodam tempore ut Herodes sollempne convivium cum pri-
moribus apud lerosolimam haberet et inter multa ferculorum genera nascentia
pomorum rex quereret. Cuius voluiltatem ludas festinavit implere et ad vir-
gultum sui patris descendens, quem tamen suum patrem ignorabat, vi evelle-
bat et eradicabat arborum fructus. Vir vero cuius haec erant animo motus et
amaritudine plenus erexit se adversus hominem perversum, sed ludas invale-
scens^ ilium percussit et occidit. Commovetur adversus eum tota civitas et

1 Or Buthrotus. 2 Virgil, Aen. iii, 278-293.

8 Cf. especially p. 311, 1. 5, " patemo sanguine respersus," and Livy i, 48, 7 (of Tullia),
" fertur partem sanguinis ac caedis patemae . . . respersa . . . tulisse."
* P. 31 1, 1. 29, "adhuc latuisse sub undis." * i(n)nalescens P.

314 MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

insurgentes in eum morti tradere disposuerunt. ludas autem ad presidium
Herodis fugiens mortis periculum evasit. Herodes et ipse turbatus egit quem-
admodum ille ab amicis interfecti pacem obtineret, ne re unius mali^ in
aliud maius periculum declinaret. Accepto igitur consilio Herodes uxorem
interfecti lude copulavit, ipso et omnibus ignorantibus quod mater eiusdem
esset. Die vero quadam accidit ut ludas coram matre et uxore nudus appare-
ret et videns ilia stigmata plagarum in tibiis, suspicata est filium suum esse,
quem olim inter frutecta proiectum dimiserat. Unde querit ab eo, quis pater
eius extiterat, vel que mater eius, qui parentes, et unde vel ex qua provintia
ortus vel a quibus fuerit nutritus. Ille se nescire profitetur sed hoc tantum a
sua nutrice audisse quia inter frutecta illo in loco iactus fuisset et a pastoribus
reppertus in Scarioth delatus ibique nutritus sit. Et cum ad robur virile perve-
nisset Herodis se inter ^ servientes se miscuisse et suo servicio multis placuisse.
His auditis ilia corruit et proclamans se miseram dicebat, '* Infelix mei visio
mariti que a filio completa est et insuper in me malignitatis et peccati redundat
insania. Dies meae pereat nativitatis et caligo tenebrarum irruat in eum."
Judas autem tantam a se factam intelligens nequiciam doluit et pro tanto sce-
lere penitens a matre recessit. At tunc temporis lesus illis habitabat in locis,
qui predicando et subveniendo multis corpora sanabat et mentes a diversis
peccatis revocabat ; gravatos peccatis ad se venientes suscipiebat et more
pastoris oves ore lupino raptas ab eorum incursu abstraebat. Cuius virtutem
atque pietatem ludas agnoscens ad eum se contulit et ut sui misereretur
rogavit. Assensit lesus voluntati ipsius, secum quoque ac inter suos discipu-
los eum esse passus est. Cui etiam que habebat committebat ^ ut sibi ceteris-
que provideret necessaria. Ille vero sacculos habebat et que poterat furabatur.
Et cuius intentionis ipse ludas esset, in fine apparuit, quia magistrum precio
vendidit et ludeis tradidit. Qui tandem se ipsum suspendit et miserabili
morte vitam finivit. Tu autem Domine miserere nostri. Qui perseveraverit
usque in finem in bonum, hie salvus erit.

This is certainly the finest of all the versions, with a pathos direct and
touching, not far removed from tragedy. The Judas of the mysteries is a
comic character, and in the later forms of the vita he is well on the road to
that end, a subject for as many flaunts and fisticuffs as the reader can bestow.
But the Judas in this little story awakens our compassion and the recognition
of our common human frailty. ** He that endureth to the end, the same shall
be saved."

The version is also the simplest and hence presumably the earliest. No
Biblical names are appropriated for the parents of Judas, and, a point of especial
significance, the part of Pilate is here taken by Herod. The appearance of

^ da(m)pni ss. m. i P.

* inter om. P. Could the original have had the Insular abbreviation ()() for inUr? This
could easily be mistaken for a deleted /'. ' c(on)mitebat P.

RAND 315

Pilate in the story of Judas occurred at some time after the legend of Pilate
had been well developed and it became appropriate to associate those two
** wicked birds " ^ as closely as possible. The manner of the exposure of the
infant Judas, who is not set adrift but abandoned in the thickets, brings this
version nearer than the others are to the story of CEdipus. In two particulars
it is connected with R, first by the quotation of JVt/ttl occultum quod non reve-
IcUir and, second, by the motive attributed to the ruler for marrying to Judas
the wife of the man he had killed. In 7 the act is a reward of merit for
Judas, a hideous device appropriate enough for Pilate. In P and R the ruler,
fearing the mob of irate citizens, follows the advice of his council and makes
amends, considerately if somewhat natvely, by providing the widow with a new
husband in the person of the murderer of her late one. These important coin-
cidences between P and R make it probable that the latter version is based on
early material rather than on Z.

Though we must proceed cautiously on this uncertain ground, I venture to
suggest a tentative clue for the further investigation of both the Latin and the
vernacular 2 lives of Judas in the Middle Ages. From the versions above pre-
sented, we may infer the existence as early as the twelfth century, if not be-
fore, of a simple Vita ludae based in the main on the story of CEdipus or
on one of the similar tales of an unfortunate who kills his father and marries
his mother. Judas is here associated with Herod as his partner in vice. This
version (a), represented by /*, was then changed by the addition of certain
Biblical names, the substitution of Pilate for Herod, and the new account of
the exposure of the infant. To this revised form of the legend (yS) some lover
of the old authors gave an extraordinarily pagan coloring, as we see in R. As
the Reims manuscript contains, besides exempla moralia^ JEsopic tales and
Sibylline prophecies, a very extensive collection of the poems of Hildebert,
Marbod, and Bernard Sylvester, we may possibly look for the source of this
paganized story in the circle of these humanists of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. The author seems to regard Buthrotum with a special animosity,^
which, if a Frenchman, he may have acquired as a result of the Crusades. As
Robert Guiscard took possession of Buthrotum (Butrinto) in 1084,* his troops
may have published an unpleasant report of the city upon their return. From
y8 descended a version (7) which differed from a and y8 in inventing a new
motive for the marriage of Judas to his mother, in making more prominent

^ A phrase of Fumivall's in his Early English Poems and Lives of Saints, with those of the
Wicked Birds Pilate and Judas, 1882.

2 Very important seems the Proven9al version mentioned by Constans, La Ligende d* CEdipe,
p. 100. ■ See above, p. 309, 1. 29.

* On Buthrotum see Oberhummer in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyklopddie der Altertumswissen-
schaft. III, i, 1084, and Spniner-Menke, Hand- Atlas fur die Geschichte des Mittelalters und der
neueren Zeit, Tafel No. 84 (for the years 1096-1204). Andropolis lies not far to the north of
Buthrotum.

3i6 MEDIAEVAL LIVES OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

the likeness of the exposure of the child to that of Moses, and in adding still
more Biblical names. There is no need to assume with Gaston Paris * that
those Oriental details are the work of a converted Jew ; Christians also were
familiar with the Old Testament in those days. From 7 descended, with their
various enlargements, fi and the ancestor of VL (= 1/), still in the twelfth cen-
tury, and V was only slightly modified by Jacopo da Voragine for his Golden
Legend? Various amplifications of L were made,^ and finally the story was
told in verse ; * one rendering starts pompously with a promise of things un-
attempted yet in prose or rh)mie,^ and though never rising to the epic height
which its author sought, at least achieves the respectable length of seven
hundred and twenty verses.

1 Revue Critique^ IV, 414.

^ The above relations may be illustrated by the following diagram :

' Cf., e.g., the Latin versions in Munich, Lat. 12262, s. XV, fol. 206 ff.; British Museum
8 E XVII, s. XV, fol. 125 ff. ; ibid. 9 A XIV, s. XV, fol. 255 ff.

* See G. Schepss, "Judas Ischarioth in lateinischen Versen," Anzeiger fur Kunde der
detitschen Vorzeit, XXVII (1880), 114.

^ Munich, Lat. 237, an. 1460, fol. 67*' begins : Dicta vetusta patrum iam deseruere teatrum |
£t nova succedunt que prisca poemata ledunt. | Ergo novis quedam placet ut nova versibus
edam | Que discant multi novitatis stemate cultL

AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

Murray Anthony Potter

The Baloches, as well as other Asiatic peoples, possess a considerable
amount of epic literature, a part of which was published in 1907, with trans-
lations and an introduction by Mr. M. Longworth Dames, under the title of
Papular Poetry of the Baloches} One of its important characteristics has been
indicated by its editor in the introduction to the volume : " There is a much
stronger personal element than is usual in ballad poetry." ^ Certain " poems
are full of satire and invective ; they are believed to be the actual utterances
of the celebrated leaders whose names they bear, and I can assign no good
reason for refusing credence to this belief.^ . . . These poems form an im-
portant part of what may be called the heroic or epic poetry, equally with* the
purely narrative ballads, and the long speeches and invectives put into the
mouths of the heroes of the Iliad and other primitive epics must have been
derived from originals of this description. In considering poetry intended for
recitation to an audience already familiar with the events of the story, it must
be remembered that the verses containing the actual words addressed by a hero
warrior to his adversaries are quite as important as the purely narrative poems." ^

The Baloches, then, like other lovers of narrative, are not fretted when its
march is halted by the speeches of the chief actors. Rather do these speeches
afford a welcome pause, or goad a flagging attention. The historians of antiq-
uity did not hesitate to place in the mouths of famous men whose deeds they
were recording, words or harangues never uttered, but which they themselves
invented. And their example has been followed down to fairly recent times
by those who have loved eloquence as well as facts.

If a Livy or a Sallust permits himself such a liberty, why not the epic poet,
who is frequently regarded as an historian, and who knows, no one better, the
effect produced on an audience by the spoken word } He will introduce, then,
in his poems, speeches ; and in the case of the Kara-Kirghiz epic the speeches
at times almost crowd out the narrative.^ Eloquence here is art for art's sake
and its only justification.

* The following " bibliographical note " is printed on the page preceding the title-page :
** Of this work 1000 copies are printed, 700 of which are issued with the title-page of the Folk-
Lore Society, and 300 with the title-page of the Royal Asiatic Society. "

* Dames, Popular Poetry of the Baloches^ p. xviii. ' Ibid., p. xix. * Ibid., p. xx.
^ W. Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratiir der ndrdlichen tiirkischen Stdtnmty V. Theil : Der

Dialect der Kara- Kirgisen^ St Petersburg, 1885.

317

3i8 AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

But in the songs referred to by Mr. Dames there is something more than
a mere display of rhetoric. " Certain poems are full of satire and invective."
It is their polemic character which makes them so truly epic and therefore so
important. It would be incorrect to assume that only combats with weapons,
or parts of the body used as weapons, have been regarded as worthy of epic
treatment. The definition of weapon must be enlarged sufficiently to include
any means employed to inflict an injury, not merely upon the body, but upon
the nervous system as well ; magic,^ grimaces, words printed, written, or spoken,
and even silence.

Than silence there is nothing more terrible. The unfortunate victim is in
a sorrier plight than if he had been wounded or slain. The laws of nature have
been circumvented, for the hero who has been deliberately passed over in
silence by poet or chronicler ceases to exist, joins the ranks of brave men
who lived before Agamemnon and lacked a Homer.

But frightful, too, is the immortality of shame meted out to the victims of
the male ckanpin. It is difficult to conceive of anything more tragic than the
dismal procession in the French epic and the Italian romances of chivalry
which is headed by Ganelon followed by his kinsmen infected with the same
taint. Epic poet and epic hero have always fully realized the potency of the
spoken word. In the Balochi epic the poet is apparently often the hero, enters
into the fight, and defends as well as attacks. The result is a word-combat.

The word-combat appears in more than one form. Sometimes it is inci-
dental in a narrative, sometimes it is independent of any context except that
which the reciter assumes the audience to have in mind. Of the examples
in the epic,^ none is more apposite than the scene between Achilles and
Agamemnon in the Iliad^ which would have ended with blows, had not Pallas
Athene intervened. ** Cease from strife, and let not thine hand draw the
sword ; yet with words indeed revile him, even as it shall come to pass. ..."
'* Then Peleus* son spake again with bitter words to Atreus' son, and in no
wise ceased from anger : * Thou heavy with wine, thou with the face of dog
and heart of deer, never didst thou take courage to arm for batde among thy
folk or to lay ambush with the princes of the Achaians ; that to thee were
even as death.* *' *

1 One form of magic closely connected with the present subject is discussed in ** Satirists
and Enchanters in Early Irish Literature " by Fred Norris Robinson, in Studies in the History
of Religions presented to Crawford Howell Toy, pp. 95-130, published by The Macmillan Com-
pany, New York, 1912.

* There are many. As Hermann Jantzen says in his Geschichte des deutschen Streitgedichtes
im Mittelalter (Breslau, 1896), p. 27, we must take into account an old custom : ** dass sich kamp-
fende Helden vor dem ersten Waffengange erst griindlich mit kraftigen Worten reizen, wie
es uns das Hildebrandslied, die Dichtungen von Walther von Aquitanien, das Nibelungenlied
hinlanglich zeigen.'* Cf. also Beowulf^ 11. 499 if., Aliscans (edition of Wienbeck, Hartnacke and
Rasch, Halle, 1903), 11. 1050-1065, etc.

' Iliad i, 11. 210-21 1 and 223-228 ; translated by Leaf, Lang, and Myers.

POTTER • 319

Returning to the Balochi songs, Dames says that the long speeches put
into the mouths of the heroes of the Iliad znA other primitive epics must have
been derived from originals of this description.^ The originals which he pre-
sents are the following. First, the correspondence of Chakur and Gwaharam,^
chiefs of the Rinds and Lasharis and the two principal heroes of the Balochi
Iliad, The songs are six in number, and are supposed to have been composed
after a great battle. In the first,^ Gwaharam sings of the day on which the
Rind Mir-Han was slain. He is defiant and exultant, for he has won. " Let
the Rinds and the Dombkis come together; let the Bhanjars and Jatois
repeat their gibes ! " They did and have been defeated. Chakur has fled
hence by night, and is now a herdsman. In the second part of the first,*
Gwaharam again speaks. Narrative, rhapsody, and taunts alternate in more
striking fashion, but narrative prevails. " Let me sleep," he cries, ** in the
good lands of the Baloches ; green are the streams at the mouth of the Mullah.
. . . What ailed you, thick beards 1 You possessed wealthy Bingopur, and
the wharfs and markets of lofty Chetarvo. ... I make a petition to the
Creator ; may the Lord of mercy be exalted ; he gives a hundred and the
hope of a thousand 1 " A long narrative passage follows, and the poem ends
with a prophetic gab. ** Rehan and Hasan will chum butter, Khohu will carry
buttermilk for the Mir, and the Elephant *Ali, that mighty man, will no longer
delight the watches in the assembly with his long hair, the delight of women." ^

Chakur replies to Gwaharam ; " For once," he acknowledges, "you were
lucky in your game " ; but he accuses him of failing to mention a flight ** like
a stampede of wild asses." As for the present, ** You hide under Omar's pro-
tection, I will fall on you as a man slain by his brethren. We are the Rinds
of the swift mares ; now we will be below you and now above ; we will come
from both sides with our attacks, and demand a share of all you have." ^

Threat answers threat. Gwaharam declares : " Let the King but give me
an opportunity one day, and I will bring together the Sammas and the Bhattis
and will pour the armies of Thatha on his head. I will place coals of fire on
the palms of my hands and blow upon them like the south wind, and will kindle
a mighty fire in the houses of the covetous men." ^ Again there is jeering
narrative, which now casts discredit on Mir Chakur, who is pictured in striking
language as a notable example of the reverses of fortune.® Mir Chakur in the
last two poems replies defiantly, declares emphatically his intention to fight,
and scoffs at the degeneracy of the times. " The youths wearing two turbans
{i,e. of high birth) do not rise up to sport among the tents of the venerable
fathers, but they feed on the flesh of fat-tailed sheep, and boil strong liquor in
their stills. There is none of them who bears the sign of a ruler." ^

1 Dames, p. xx. * Ibid., pp. 20-25. ■ Ibid., pp. 20-21.

* Or it might be called the second. Dames numbers this i (b). * Dames, pp. 21-22.

• Ibid., pp. 22-23. ' Ibid., p. 23. * Ibid., p. 24. • Ibid., p. 25.

320 AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

In addition to the correspondence of Mir Chakur and Gwaharam, there is
the impressive controversy of Mir Chakur and Jaro,^ the poems which relate
to the war of the Rinds and the Dodais,^ and the altercation between Blvaragh
and Balach, which consists, as usual, of narrative, taunt, and gab.^

In the Dames collection these poems are assigned to the " heroic or epic
ballads dealing with the early wars and settlements of the Baloches." ^ Other
examples are given in the ** more recent ballads, mainly dealing with tribes
now existing, and other tribal ballads*';^ and these are as interesting as
those first mentioned. It would appear, then, that the Balochi warriors have
always regarded words as effective weapons, to which, on one occasion at least,
they have been explicitly compared. ** Come, O Relan, bard of rejoicings,
King and warrior of song, to the assembly of good men. Take the songs I
have uttered and carry them to our warlike foes. Shut and open these ten
words of mine, replies given head by head, arrows of which a seer is as heavy
as a maundy ^

The Baloches, of course, are not the only warriors who have seen fit to
combat with words. John White, in 714^ Ancient History of the Maori, his
Mythology and Traditions^ gives a ** battle of song." ** The battles (quarrels)
between the Nga-ti-maru, Nga-ti-tama-te-ra and Nga-ti-paoa in which man was
killed have been given, but now we will give the account of the battles of song
which were waged between these tribes." ^ Five of the songs are translated.
In the last, Toko-ahu, among other things, says :

" But hearken to the thoughts within,
Which sound like booming noisy surf.
Thus comes the sound of slander from afar
Across the little peaks, beyond the sea." '

and later,

" I still am thy old foe, and still my weapon
Clashes against thine own in war, as in the days of old.
And thou canst own I saw thee three times
In the trench around thy fort at Weta-hara." ^°

** Toka-tapu," says the narrator, " composed a song in answer to this, but the
old men who related this history to me could not remember it. . . . So ends
the battle of song fought by those old chief-poets." ^^

Better known than the song-combats of the Maoris are the song-duels of
the Eskimo, called a pacific people, not alone in acts but in speech. Rink,
in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo , makes the statement that *' from
their living together in small habitations, a friendly way of conversing was
necessary ; and all high words or quarrelling are considered as unlawful. The

^ Dames, pp. 27-28. ^ Ibid., pp. 34-40. • Ibid., pp. 44-46. * Ibid., p. 21.

* Ibid., p. 21. • Ibid., p. 97.

^ Wellington, 1888. The "battles of song" are given in volume V, pp. 105-115.

* White, p. 105. • Ibid., p. 114. ^^ Ibid., p. 115. " Ibid., p. 115.

POTTER 321

Greenlandish language is therefore devoid of any real words for scolding.
The general mode of expressing annoyance at an offence is by silence " ; but
he goes on to say that ** the slightest harshness in speaking ... is considered
as an offence in so far that it may give rise to violent quarrels and ruptures.** ^

The Eskimo, then, are keenly aware of the fact that words are dangerous
weapons. At the same time, just because they attached so great an importance
to them, they had recourse to satirical songs " for settling all kinds of quarrels,
and punishing any sort of crime or breach of public order or custom, with the
exception of those which could only be expiated by death, in the shape of the
blood revenge.'* ^ The Eskimo have made of word-combats an institution. As
much pomp and circumstance accompanies these duels as any combat on the
battle field, or in a tournament " The songs are always composed by the
singer himself." ^ Quoting Rink again : ** He invited his opponent to meet him,
announcing the time and the place where he would sing against him. Generally,
and always in cases of importance, both sides had their assistants, who, hav-
ing prepared themselves for this task, could act their parts if their principals
happened to be exhausted.*' ^ Rink gives examples of these songs. There is a
" Nith-Song of Kukook, who was a bad hunter,** which is unaccompanied by
an answer.^

Sometimes it was no easy matter to reply. In his work on Danish Greenland,
Rink mentions a certain Ajakutak who was reproached for neglecting kayak-
hunting : " ' O I behold this Ajakutak, he will not do like me, . . .* At that
time this Ajakutak could make no answer, but, anxious to revenge himself he
made enquiry about the life and behaviour of his adversary, and ... at the
next meeting he gave a song upbraiding him with all his bad habits, and
ending : * To be sure Ajakutak will not be like thee.* " ^

In the Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo Rink quotes a ** Mutual Nith-
Song between Savdladt and Pulangitsissok.**^ He says that the composition
of these songs was sometimes exhausting. Perhaps, after all, these song-
duels are seriously epic In an article which appeared in the Boston Herald

* Henry Rink, Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo^ Edinburgh, 1875, P* 32- * Rink, p. 34.

* Boas, " The Central Eskimo," Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology^ p. 602.

* Rink, p. 34. * Ibid., pp. 66-67. • Rink, Danish Greenland^ p. 276.
^ Rink, Tales and Traditions^ pp. 67-68. It will be noticed that these song^ are called nith-

songs, and the writer to the Boston Herald quotes James Mooneyes article on the Eskimo in The
Catholic Encyclopedia : " A peculiar institution among the central and eastern tribes is that of the
60-called 'nith-song* (Norse, nith, contention), or duel of satire." E. W. Nelson, in his paper on
"The Eskimo about Bering Strait" {Eighteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Eth-
nologyy Part I, 1896-1897, p. 347), says that ** songs are composed ... for ridiculing one another,
— these latter are similar to the nith songs of Greenland and are said to have been commonly
used before white men came to Alaska." One of the sources for information about the Norse
nith-song is Eugen Mogk's article on Norwegisch-isldndische Literatur in PauPs Grundriss der
germanischen PhilologiCy II, 660,673, ^^» 703» 720, and 750. On the last-mentioned page, speaking
of the Bjamarsaga Hitdalakappay he says : " The quarrels of the rivals are enlivened by nith
songs for which this saga is the most important source."

322 AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

April 21, 191 2, with the headline " Eskimo dies in Talking Duel," the state-
ment is made that ** an explorer recently returned from Greenland," on draw-
ing near an ice hut, ** heard a most peculiar rabble of voices. ... In the
centre of a small cleared space stood two of the Elskimos dancing wildly about,
and gesticulating in a frantic manner. . . . The disputants were not prepar-
ing for fight, but were engaged in a duel of satire and mutual abuse that
would have relegated the most mealy-mouthed legislator in Washington to the
deepest recesses of mortification. . . . The argument waxed sterner — one of
the disputants, frothing at the mouth, suddenly reeled towards his opponent,
threw up his hands, and fell face downward on the snow. When the others
reached him, he was dead. He had died from his efforts and his opponent
was proclaimed victor."

For a parallel the writer has called upon ** the legislator in Washington."
This may seem a far cry, but readers may remember a scene not dissimilar
in Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi^ the word-combat of ** Sudden Death
and General Desolation," and the ** Pet Child of Calamity." The former
** jumped up in the air three times, and cracked his heels together every time
. . . and flung his hat down, which was all over ribbons, and says, *You
lay thar tell his sufferings is over.' Then ... he shouted out * Whoo-oop I
I 'm the original . . . corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw ! . . . I
split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when
I speak ! . . . Stand back and give me room according to my strength ! . . .
Blood *s my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear I
Cast your eye on me, gentlemen ! and lay low and hold your breath, for I 'm
'bout to turn myself loose ! ' " The ** Pet Child of Calamity," not to be out-
done, shouts : " Whoo-oop ! bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of
sorrow 's a-coming ! Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers
a-working ! I 'm a child of sin, dont let me get a start I Smoked glass, here,
for all ! Don't attempt to look at me with the naked eye, gentlemen ! "

Here is a genuine combat of words, for the only one who deals blows is " a
little black-whiskered chap," who, tried beyond endurance by their altercation,
*' skipped up . . . jerked them this way and that, booted them around,
knocked them sprawling faster than they could get up. Why, it wam't two
minutes till they begged like dogs — and how the other lot did yell, and
laugh and clap their hands all the way through and shout, * Sail in, Corpse-
Maker!' *Hi! at him again. Child of Calamity!' * Bully for you, litde
Davy!'" Ultimately the disputants "shook hands with each other, very
solemn, and said they had always respected each other and was willing to let
bygones be bygones." ^

Is this extraordinary scene pure invention on the part of Mark Twain, and
so of no importance whatever in this connection ? Long before Life an the

^ Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi^ the authorized uniform edition, 1906, pp. 32-34.

POTTER 323

Mississippi ^3& written, — that is, in 18 10, — Christian Schultz, Jr., Esq., pub-
lished his Travels on an Inland Voyage through the States of New- Yorky
Pennsylvania^ Virginia^ Ohio, Kentucky ^ and Tennessee ; and through the
Territories of Indiana^ Louisiana^ Mississippi^ and New-Orleans. One eve-
ning he walked down to the levee at Natchez to give some directions to his
boatmen. ** In passing two boats next to mine, I heard some very warm words ;
which, my men informed me, proceeded from some drunken sailors who had
had a dispute respecting a Choctaw Lady, Although I might fill half a dozen
pages with the curious slang made use of on this occasion, yet I prefer select-
ing a few of the most brilliant expressions by way of sample. One said, * I
am a man ; I am a horse ; I am a team ; I can whip any man in all Ken-
tucky ^ by G-d.* The other replied, * I am an alligator; half man, half horse ; ^
can whip any on the Mississippi ^ by G-d.' The first one again : * I am a man,
have the best horse, best dog, best gun, and handsomest wife in all Kentucky ^
by G-d.' The other, ' I am a Mississippi snapping turtle ; have bear's claws,
alligator's teeth, and the devil's tail ; can whip any man^ by G-d.' This was
too much for the first, and at it they went like two bulls, and continued for
half an hour, when the alligator was fairly vanquished by the horse." ^

These word-combats, Balochi, Greek, Maori, or Elskimo, are only a few
examples of a vast, multiform genre, whose existence must, of necessity, be
conterminous with that of man. Not merely are they at home in the epic ;
they disturb the peace of the Arcadia of the pastoral. They are loved by
the militant churchman as well as by a Demosthenes, a Cicero, or any states-
man or politician of to-day. The scholar, too, is not always a man of peace,
and the din raised by the Humanists of the Renaissance has not utterly died
away. In whatever direction you start, parallels swarm about you. Particularly
important in this connection are some which come from Provence and Italy.

It is impossible to be much interested in a controversy or a combat unless
you know something about those who take part in it. In the Balochi litera-
ture, poet and combatant are apparently one and the same person. What is
more, there is a sharp distinction between the poet and the minstrel. The
latter is simply a medium of publication. It is impossible not to be reminded
of the literary activity in Provence at the close of the Middle Ages. In
Provence we have the troubadour and the jongleur, but there is no insur-
mountable barrier separating the two classes.

Provencal literature is famous for its love l)aic. At the same time, by force
of circumstance, as well as by inclination, the Provencal was a fighter, and this
aspect of his character finds striking expression in his verse.

Among the different genres cultivated by the poets, is one called the tenso.
According to the definition in a Provencal poetics, it is a ** contrastz o debatz,

* Cf. Dames, p. 45, where Balach, in a tenzone, says of himself, " BalSch is a tiger, a hail-
storm." a Schultz, II, 145-146.

324 AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

en lo qual cascus mante e razona alcun dig o alcun fag.'* ^ A third party passes
judgment.^ This definition is disappointing. More pertinent is the last sen-
tence of the description of another genre, the sirventes: **Deu tractar de
reprehensio, o de maldig general per castiar los fols e los malvatz, o pot tractar,
qui's vol, del fag d'alquna guerra."^

At the same time, as Stimming has pointed out, this definition lacks com-
pleteness, and he has called attention to the relationship between the tenso
and the sirventes and cobla,^

The tenso, then, is sometimes more than a dispassionate argument. Some-
times, starting with the best intentions in the world, the debaters forget them-
selves, and indulge in personalities which frequently wound and give rise to
a heated controversy, or to what sounds uncommonly like one. At other
times the tone is bitter and insulting from the beginning. A good example
of the hostile tenso is the one between Albert, marques de Malaspina, and
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, in the course of which Raimbaut says :

" Albert marques, enoi e vilania
sabetz ben dir e mieils la sabetz far,
e tot engan e tota fellonia
e malvastat pot horn en vos trobar, . . ."*

This is an excellent example of a tenso which is a song duel.^ But with the
tenso we link the sirventes^ and no one thinks of the sir-oentes without recalling
a Provencal poet who Wjas a past master in this kind of warfare, Bertran
de Born.

The tenso, or verse-duel, flourished even more vigorously in Italy, whose
literature shows so markedly Provencal influence. Throughout the Renais-
sance, poets belabored each other with verse invective, generally in sonnet
form. Two only need be mentioned here, Dante and Petrarch. Dante was
not the first to contribute to the tenso, Tenzoni, as they are called in Italy,
had already been composed, which resembled the more temperate Provencal

^ Las Leys d^amors. See Appel, Provenzaliscke Chrestomaihie^ p. 199.
2 Among the Eskimo the audience present at the song-duel acts as judge. Rink, Tales and
Traditionsy p. 34. « Appel, p. 198.

* Stimming, " Provenzalische Litteratur," in Grober^s Grundriss der romanischen Pkilologie,
II, ii, 24-25. For the polemic tenso see remarks made by Diez, Die Poesie der Troubadours^
2d edition, 1883, p. 164 ; Zenker, Die provenzalische Tenzone, 1888, p. 10 ; Fiset, " Das altfranzo-
sische Jeu-Parti," Romaniscke Forschungen^ XIX, 1905-1906, p. 408 ; etc.

^ Appel, p. 1 28. The tenso begins with the words,

"Ara'm digatz, Rambaut, si vos agrada, . . ."

• Some of the parodies of these song-duels are droll. Cf. the one given by Suchier in his
Denkmdler provenzalischer Literatur und Sprache (Halle, 1883), p. 336, "Tenzone zwischen
Rostang und dem Herrgott," beginning, " Bel segner deus, s'ieu vos soi enojos." A milder one
with an occasional strong expression, Suchier, pp. 326-328. Cf., too, a jocose one by Per-
civalle Doria and Filippo de Valenza in Romania, XL, 191 1, pp. 454 fif. " Nuovi versi provenzali
di Percivalle Doria."

POTTER 325

ones. Among the contributors were Pier della Vigna, Giacomo da Lentino,
and Fra Guittone. When we come to Dante, we find him attacked bitterly
on more than one occasion by Cecco Angiolieri, but in the matter of tenzoniy
he is especially associated with Forese Donati. A reader may regard the
correspondence between these two men only as examples of the rough, but
good-natured, verbal sparring in which friends often indulge. Its resemblance,
however, to that of Mir Chakur and Gwaharam is striking.

Striking, too, is the parallel in the case of Petrarch. No man in the four-
teenth century seems to have had more friends than he, friends who were
almost worshippers. But Petrarch was too human to pose forever on a pedestal
before the eyes of his admirers, especially when those eyes, though loyal, were
as keen to detect weakness as to appreciate strength. Great, then, was the
consternation and wrath of a number of Florentines when their idol stepped
down rather heavily from his pedestal and accepted the hospitality of the
Visconti. The indignation found expression in loud expostulations, to which
Boccaccio contributed. Even now the need is felt of defending Petrarch's
action. Among his most recent apologists is Novati, who, speaking of the
anger of the poet's contemporaries, says : '* Not less sharp, at least in inten-
tion, than the * satira ' of the good Giovanni, must have been the philippics
of Zanobi da Strada, Giovanni d'Arezzo, Forese Donati, and Lapo da
Castiglionchio. Gano da Colle wrote instead a sonnet to dissuade Petrarch
from his sinister decision, and had the poem sung to him in Milan by a
jongleur named Malizia." ^

This act of Gano da Colle seems an anachronism. It belongs to Provence
of the twelfth century rather than to Italy of the fourteenth, when the rela-
tions between the poets and their audiences resembled rather those between
the same two classes at the present day. As a matter of fact, in the fourteenth
century in Italy, publication was largely oral, and we still have the jongleur-
publisher and the poet-troubadour. The best evidence comes from Petrarch
himself. In a letter to Boccaccio, he speaks of men who live by words of
others, and who have increased greatly in numbers. Sterile themselves, they
pester unsuccessful authors, whose poems they recite before kings and nobles,
and thus fill their purses.^ To this class of men belonged Malizia, whom Gano
called upon to recite his sonnet in the presence of Petrarch.

Petrarch did not reply in a sonnet. In its stead, he wrote a Latin letter
which Fracassetti has published.^ " Malicia salutabis Ganum. Eius vulgare
carmen responso non egere idem ipse qui scripsit fateretur, si videre omnia

^ F. Novati, '^II Petrarca ed i Visconti," in F. Peirarca e la Lombardia^ 1904, p. 26. The
article was printed also in the Rivista (P Italia^ July, 1904. The same passage, with a slight
change in the wording, is on pp. 144-145.

* EpistolM de rebus senilibusy Book V, letter 3. In the Basle edition of the complete works,
1554, the passage is printed on p. 877.

^ Epistolae de rebus familiaribus et variac. III, 515.

326 AN EPIC TENZONE AND A PARALLEL

penitus posset,*' etc. He asks Malizia to repeat these words to Gano : ** Super
his secundum tuam illam praerapidam eloquentiam disputabis ut tibi videtur
viva voce, sed non aspera ut solitus es : suaviter, oro te, sine clamore . . .
et sine accentibus horrificis, denique non barbarice, quaeso, sed italice.*' Here,
then, is rather an original /^«^^«^-correspondence.^ Gano da CoUe reproves
Petrarch in the orthodox sonnet form ; but, instead of sending the poem by
ordinary channels, he has it memorized and repeated before Petrarch's face.
It is one thing to receive an insulting written communication and read it in
the privacy of your room, composing your countenance before you issue forth ;
it is quite another to look absolutely indifferent while stinging words of cen-
sure are repeated by a skilled dramatic reciter .^ And the smarting sense of
injury is increased by the thought that this same messenger will publish broad-
cast, as well as render to his master an accoimt, probably exaggerated, of your
confusion during chastisement.

Petrarch apparently was irritated. His answer to Gano is rather contemp-
tuous, but it is Malizia who has to bear the brunt of his anger. Gano is far
away — Malizia is present, and has delivered an offensive poem in an offensive
manner. He must be punished, and is.

Petrarch is not the only man who has resented being sung at in this
fashion. A remarkable parallel is to be found in the exchange of invectives
between Mir Chakur and Gwaharam. To the latter's abuse, Mir Chakur
replies : " You injure yourself with that enmity. . . . You took flight from
the fort of Dab, and drew breath at the mouth of the Mullah, yet I never
made such a mock of you, nor sent a bard to taimt you, reciting a song with
twangmg of strings in front of your noble face." »

^ It will be noticed that this letter is little more than a Latin translation or adaptation of a
vernacular tenzone.

^ Coluccio Salutati, censuring a friend for his lack of patriotism, says, ** Vellem me coram
videres ut adderetur mordaci epistole etiam vultus asperitas et indignantis signa pudibundus
aspiceres." The letter from which this passage is taken is the tenth in Novati's edition of the
Epistolario di Coluccio Salutatiy I, 26, and it is addressed to.Ser Andrea di ser Conte. Gano
evidently more nearly attained this wish than Coluccio. * Dames, pp. 22-23.

SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS AN EXAMPLE OF

ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

Edwin A. Greenlaw

By Sidney and his contemporaries, Arcadia was regarded as an heroic
poem. Fraunce lists it with the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the iEneid ; ^ Haring-
ton cites it in his defense of the structure of Orlando Furioso ; ^ Harvey says
that if Homer be not at hand, Arcadia will do as well to supply examples of
the perfect hero : ** You may read his furious Iliads and cunning Odysses in
the brave adventures of Pyrocles and Musidorus, where Pyrocles playeth the
doughty fighter like Hector or Achilles, Musidorus the valiant Captaine, like
Pandarus or Diomedes ; both the famous errant knightes, like Aeneas or
Ulysses/' ^ And Meres, after a reference to the Cyropaedia as being an abso-
lute heroical poem, this reference, by the way, being lifted bodily from Sidney's
Defense^ says that Sidney " writ his immortal poem. The Countess of Pembrokes
Arcadia, in Prose, and yet our rarest Poet." * As to Sidney's own conception
of heroic poetry, it is sufficient to note his reference to Orlando, Cyrus, and
iEneas as types of excellence presented by poets ; his theory that it is not
riming or versing that maketh a poet ; his conception of the Cyropaedia as
giving the " portraiture of a just empire " ; his test of a poet by his power of
** feigning notable images of virtues, vices, or what else, with that delightful
teaching " ; and the eloquent praise of heroic poetry as the highest of
** kinds," even as the poet surpasses, in his power to teach, both historian and
philosopher.^

This conception of Arcadia as being an heroic poem, together with the
theories set down by Sidney in his Defense^ makes it reasonable to infer that
the book was thought to conform to the ideas of the time as to the province

^ of this ** kind." The Puritan attack on poetry intensified the view, inherited
by the Renaissance from the mediaeval period, that the great epics should be

s, regarded as allegories. But there is a difference between the interpretation
of Virgil given, for example, by Alberti in 1468, and the conception held in
the time of Tasso and Spenser. The earlier view was still mediaeval : the
iEneid was an allegory of Platonism and Christianity, which were held to be

^ identical.^ Of the sixteenth-century interpretations, that of Douglas, as

^ Arcadian Rketorikey 1 588.

^ Preface^ 1591.

• Piene$ Supererogation^ *593'

• Palladis Tamia, 1598.

• Defense^ cd. Cook, pp. 8, 11, 17, 30, 31.

• Villari, Machiavelli, I, 128.

327

328 SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

might be expected from the author of the Palice of Honour^ is still mediaeval.
Stanyhurst regards Virgil as a profound philosopher, but says nothing of any
theological motive.^ But Sidney sees in -^neas the portrait of the '* excellent
man '* ; *' a virtuous man in all fortunes " ; ** no philosophers precepts can
sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil . . . there are
many mysteries contained in poetry which were of purpose written darkly."^
Nash inveighs against **the fantasticall dreames of those exiled Abbie-
lubbers ** as contained in the metrical romances, but counts poetry "a more
hidden and divine kinde of Philosophy, enwrapped in blinde Fables and
darke stories, wherin the principles of more excellent Arts and morrall pre-
cepts of manners, illustrated with divers examples of other Kingdomes and
Countries are contained." ^ This theory of allegory is more fully explained
by Harington : ** The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their
writings divers and sundry meanings ; . . . for the litterall sence (as it were
the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of aft historic the acts
and notable exploits ; . . . then in the same fiction, as a second rine and
somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the
Morall sence profitable for the active life of man ; . . . manie times also
under the selfesame words they comprehend some true understanding of
naturall Philosophic, or sometimes of politike govemement, and now and
then of divinity : and these same sences that comprehend so excellent knowl-
edge we call the Allegoric, which Plutarch defineth to be when one thing is
told, and by that another is understood." ^ In the passages just cited we have
a view of allegory quite different from that illustrated by the Romance of the

^ Rose or by Piers Plowman. The whole theory is excellently summed up by
Spenser in his letter to Sir Walter Raleigh ; in which he says that he has
followed " all the antique Poets historicall ; first Homere, who in the Persons
of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good govemour and a vertuous
man, the one in his I lias, the other in his Odysseis ; then Virgil, whose like
intention was to doe in the person of ^Eneas ; after him Ariosto comprised
them both in Orlando ; and lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and formed
both parts in two persons, namely that part which they in Philosophy call
Ethice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other
named Politice in his Godfredo." Finally, we have, in a single sentence in
the Defense, evidence of Sidney's acceptance of the view that an heroic poem

^ may be written in prose, and that it should have allegorical significance :
" For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem

^ Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays, II, 137.

2 Sidney, Defense^ ed. Cook, pp. 8, 17, 57. Webbe in 1586 expressed exactly the same view
{English Poetriiy ed. Arber, p. 28).

' Anatomic of Absurdities in Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays^ I, 323, 328 ; Works^ ed.
McKerrow, I, 25iT.

* Preface^ in Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays^ II, 201-202.

K.XB

GREENLAW 329

justi imperii . . . under the name of Cyrus, . . . made therein an absolute
heroical poem." ^

We now need evidence that Sidney regarded his Arcadia seriously. Ac-
cording to the views usually expressed in recent criticism, the book was
carelessly written, during a period of enforced retirement from court, for the
delectation of the writer's sister; it was a mere toy of which its author
was ashamed and which he wished never to be published ; it has no serious
significance.^ There are three objections to these views. In the first place,
it was a point of honor among gentlemen writers in that age to affect contempt
for their literary works ; ^ moreover, there may have been reasons why Sidney
should have hesitated to print a book capable, in those suspicious times, of
direct application.^ In the second place, the testimony of Fulke Greville is
that of an intimate friend ; it is too earnest to be disregarded ; and it exactly
fits the character of Sidney as revealed in his conversations and his corre-
spondence. Grevftle says that it was Sidney's aim '* to turn the barren Phi-
losophy precepts into pregnant Images of life.'* The story, he says, had a
twofold character ; on the one hand, it was to represent ** the growth, state,
and declination of Princes " ; on the other, ** to limn out such exact pictures "
that a courtier might know in all ways how to conduct himself toward his
Prince as well as in '* all other moodes of private fortunes or misfortunes." We
are to see, " in the scope of these dead images . . . that when Soveraign Princes,
to play with their own visions, will put off publique action, which is the
splendour of Majestic, and unactively charge the managing of their greatest
affaires upon the second-hand faith, and diligence of Deputies, . . . even then
they bury themselves, and their Estates in a cloud of contempt, and under
it both encourage, and shaddow the conspiracies of ambitious subaltemes to
their false endes, I mean the ruin of States and Princes." He speaks of

^ Defense^ ed. Cook, p. ii.

* W. Stigant, in Cambridge Essays^ 1858, pp. iiofif., sees contemporary references in the
romance, and accepts Fulke Greville's views; but recent opinion is fairly represented by
M. Jusserand {English Novell p. 245), who thinks Greville was exaggerating and that Sidney's
main object was not politics, but love. Sir Sidney Lee {Great Englishmen, pp. 99, 100) is more
than usually inaccurate, a specimen being his name " Synesia " for G3mecia, and his statement
that she is a " lascivious old queen *' !

8 Of many illustrations of this point, the passage in Puttenham*s (?) Arte of English Poesie
will serve : " I know very many notable Gentlemen in the Court that have written commendably,
and suppressed it agayne, or els suffred it to be publisht without their owne names to it : as if
it were a discredit for a Gentleman to seeme learned and to shew himself e amorous of any
good Art " (Smith, II, 22). Compare Spenser*s dedications for self-depreciation exactly similar
to that contained in Sidney's letter to his sister ; and note that Sidney speaks of his Defense as
an ** ink-wasting toy."

* It will be remembered that the reason for Sidney's retirement was his bold letter to the
Queen about the French marriage. That this brought him into great danger is indicated by
Languet's letter, October, 1580, from which it is clear that Sidney realized the risk he ran,
but wrote the letter because he was ordered to do so, presumably by Leicester (Pears, Corre-
spondencey p. 187).

330 SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

** this extraordinary frame of his own Common-wealth," and, at the end of
his biography, insists once more that Sidney's aim "was not vanishing
pleasure alone, but morall Images, and Examples ... to guide every man
through the confused Labyrinth of his own desires, and Life." ^ Finally, the
discovery of an earlier Arcadia^ in manuscript form, by Mr. Dobell in 1907,
showing as it does that Sidney was making a thorough and radical revision of
his book, pre^nts convincing proof that he regarded it seriously. Probably
he was at work upon this revision even up to the time when he engaged in
the expedition in which he met his death ; at any rate, we have the evidence
of Greville's letter to Walsingham to show that Sidney left in trust with his
dearest friend his revision of his work, and " notwithstanding even that to be
amended by a direction sett downe under his own hand how and why." ^ As
to the fact recorded by Greville that, when dying, Sidney wanted his manu-
script burned, it should be remembered that he had got only half through
with his revision and no doubt felt the uselessness of preserving a mere frag-
ment, while the solemnity of the hour of death made him feel the vanity of
it all. In a similar mood, Chaucer wished all of his work that we value most
highly to be destroyed.

My purpose thus far has been to establish, by a priori evidence, the
grounds for assuming that Arcadia was regarded as an heroic poem ; to
show what characteristics this " kind " was supposed to have in the view of
Sidney and his contemporaries ; and to give reasons for thinking that the
author regarded his work as a serious attempt to illustrate these theories.
We now turn to the work itself for further evidence.

In the first place, the revision changed the earlier version from a pastoral
romance, with the simplicity of a direct tale, into a complicated heroic ** poem."
The manuscript copies begin with an account of the oracle that sent Basilius
into retirement, this fundamental circumstance being fully disclosed at the
outset instead of being held in suspense.^ Philanax attempts to dissuade the
" Duke " in direct conversation and with possession of all the facts, instead
of through a letter bksed on imperfect knowledge. Again, the long story of
the Captivity, which in the revised form is structural, not an episode, is wholly
wanting in the manuscripts. And most significant of all, the epic story of Pyrocles
and Musidorus, vitally important as it is to the structure of the revised form,
originally appeared in eclogues.^ The effect of this radical change is to make the
Pyrocles-Musidorus story the main plot, not the Basflius-pastoral motive, while
the whole is now thrown into the form of an heroic ** poem," which follows the

* Life of Sidney y chaps, i, xviii. * Arber, English Garner^ I, 488.

'For a similar withholding of the fundamental situation, compare the revised Arcadia
with the Faerie Queene^ in which we should not know of the plan of the entire poem at all
were it not for Spenser's explanation in his letter to Raleigh.

* For this account of the manuscripts I am indebted to Mr. DobelFs article in the Quarterly
Review^ CCXI, 76-90.

GREENLAW

331

rules of Aristotle, as Sidney understood them, with considerable accuracy.^
In its revised form, the first book contains the story of how the two princes
arrive in the kingdom of Basilius, and how they meet and fall in love with
Philoclea and Pamela, being compelled to conduct their wooing in disguise
because of the strange whim that has seized the king. The epic history of
Pyrocles and Musidorus is reserved for the second book, which it dominates.
It is in this epic history that Sidney presents the chief exposition of his
" Ethice, or vertues of a private man." The method is most artful : Musidorus
tells the first group of adventures ; Philoclea and Pamela follow with ex-
planations of the stories of Erona and Plangus, and Pyrocles finishes the
account. But the narration is by no means continuous, being interrupted
several times by incidents that either afford comic relief or remind us of the
central plot, these interruptions having the effect of interludes.

The ten adventures that make up this epic history are by no means of the
haphazard type of the conventional chivalric romance. They fall into two
well-defined groups, in the first of which, it seems to me, the influence of the
Cyropaedia is plain, while the second group finds its unity in the fact that
the adventures deal with various sins against love and have a well-defined
allegory. The adventures of the first group open with an account of the boy-
hood and education of the two heroes that parallels with some closeness the
account of the education of Cyrus given by Xenophon. In each case there is
stress on ethical training ; on the study in their sports of the elements of war,
and the inuring of their bodies to hardship ; this training occupying their
time until, in all three cases, they are about sixteen years of age.^ Then
Pyrocles and Musidorus go to aid Evarchus against his enemies, this Evarchus
being the uncle of Musidorus, just as Cyrus goes to the aid of his uncle
Cyaxares.^ Though Sidney's heroes are prevented by the shipwreck from
reaching Evarchus, the parallelism with Xenophon still holds.^ The strategy

1 Sidney was in Italy at the time when Aristotle was just coming to be regarded as a literary
dictator. His letters to Languet speak of his anxiety to be able to read the works of the phi-
losopher in the original (Pears, Correspondence^ p. 28). In the Defense he shows acquaintance
with Aristotelian theory, having gained his knowledge either directly or through the works of
Scaliger. A convenient statement of Elizabethan understanding of these rules as applied to heroic
poetry is in Harington: The fable should be grounded on history; the action should be limited in
time to not more than a year ; there should be nothing incredible ; the " peripeteia " should be
" the agnition of some unlooked-for fortune either good or bad" (Smith, II, 217). It is worthy of
note that in this very connection Harington appeals to Arcadia as an authority, and that Sidney
does indeed observe these rules in his pseudo-historical setting of Greek kingdoms, dynasties,
and civil wars ; in the limitation of the main action to a few months, while antecedent action is
told indirectly ; and in the elimination of the supernatural elements so common in the romances.

* Cyropaedia^ I, ii; Arcadia^ II, vii. • Cyropaedia^ I, v; II, i; Arcadia^ II, vii.

* Sidney's use of pirates, shipwrecks, etc., to diversify his narrative illustrates, as is well known,
his indebtedness to the Greek romances (cf. Stigant, Cambridge Essays, 1858, p. no). Stigant
and others have held that he also adopted from Heliodorus the device of beginning in the midst
of the action. But he might equally well have got it from the theory of epic poetry held in his
time. Tasso thought Virgil and Heliodorus used the same method (Dunlop, ed. Bohn, I, 30).

332 SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

of Cyrus depends on his power to win various minor kings as allies, on his
establishment of better conditions of government by casting out tyranny and
righting wrongs, and on his habit of leaving his allies in independent control
of their territories while uniting them into a federation. Illustrations are
found in his treatment of the Armenians, the Hyrcanians, the wronged
Gobryas, etc.^ Just these meQiods are used by Pyrocles and Musidorus in the
Phrygian episode, in which the wicked prince is overthrown, a new govern-
ment established, the crown offered to Musidorus, who refuses it; in the
Pontus episode, next following, in which precisely the same course is followed
with the addition that an alliance between Phrygia and Pontus is arranged ;
and in the Leonatus-Plexirtus episode.^ There are other evidences of the
influence of Xenophon, such as the correspondence between the ethical and
political thought in the two works ; the deliberate balancing of Cyrus as a type
of the good prince against Cyaxares, the type of effeminacy, envy, and tyranny,
which finds a counterpart in the balance between Pyrocles and Musidorus and
the various evil princes with whom they have to do ; and studies of various
admirable types of character. One of the most interesting of these last, from
the point of view of our inquiry, is the parallel between Parthenia and Panthea ;
the two stories are not the same in details, but are closely similar in their
beauty and pathos, while Xenophon, like Sidney, distributes his romantic
story through a considerable portion of his work.^ It is to be noted, finally,
that Cyrus is praised for the same qualities of justice, personal bravery, and
winning personality so well illustrated by the heroes of Arcadia.^

The second group of adventures in the epic history seems at first sight
more difficult to follow, especially as Sidney finds it necessary to give the
histories of such characters as Plangus, Erona, etc., as additions to the main
story. This involved method is similar to that used by Spenser, and the ad-
ventures themselves are like Spenser's in type and allegorical character.
After establishing the various kingdoms on firm foundations, the two heroes
become knights-errant. The change is marked by a sentence that is signifi-
cant of the difference between ancient and Renaissance epic : '* And therefore
having well established those kingdomes . . . they determined in unknowne
order ... to seeke exercises of their vertue ; tKinking it not so worthy to
be brought to heroycall effects by fortune, or necessitie, like Ulysses and
-^neas, as by ones owne choice and working." ^ The adventures are those of
Erona and Antiphilus, of Pamphilus, of Anaxius, of Chremes, and of Andro-
mena. Unity is gained through the fact that the misfortunes which the
heroes now seek to correct proceed not from tyrannical or unjust government

^ Cyropaedia^ II, iv ; IV, ii, vi.
2 Arcadia^ II, viii-x.

• The references in Xenophon are IV, vi ; V, i ; VI, i, iv ; VII, i, iii.
♦Compare the "triumph" of Cyrus {Cyropatdia^ III, iii) and that of Sidney's heroes
{Arcadia, II, xxiii). * Arcadia^ II, ix.

« » ■ -

• ' * I » • *

GREENLAW 333

but from sins against love. Erona has blasphemed against Cupid, and is
punished by her passion for Antiphilus ; this man, as his name indicates,
being guilty of sin against love in his unworthiness, in his cruelty toward Erona,
and in his selfish desire to save his own life at the cost of hers.* The story
of Pamphilus, the inconstant lover, is even more in the manner of Spenser .^1
The tone of this portion of the narrative is admirably kept in the interlude
which interrupts Philoclea's story of Erona, in which Miso and her ill-favored
daughter tell stories that are travesties on love.^ As to the other adventures,
Anaxius represents Pride ; the Plangus story introduces unlawful love, which
finds a climax in the story of Andromena, while Chremes is the Malbecco- / ^
Barabas-Shylock who would sacrifice wife or daughter for his property.^ This /
allegorical treatment of sins against love is supplemented by the increasing
stress on the guilty passion of Basilius and Gynecia for Zelmane-Pyrocles.^
On the other hand, types of love showing tenderness and beauty are sup-
plied by Palladius and Zelmane, the woman page ; ^ while the entire story of
•N Pyrocles and Musidorus is an example of the exaltation of friendship between
men so constantly found in Renaissance literature/

It is now possible to summarize this exposition of the virtues of the private
man. Sidney has treated his education and his wisdom in dealing with public
and private wrongs. He is actuated by the desire for glory, this glory being
not personal but subordinated to the duty to right wrong and rescue the
oppressed.® Love is the guide of all his actions, this love being manifested
in his devotion to his friend and in his efforts to stamp out all unworthy and
lustful love. The relation of this to the main situation is also clear : Pyrocles
and Musidorus, great as is their valor and achievement, are made subject to
love, even submitting to fantastic disguises (Zelmane, Dorus) in their obedience
to its high behests. This course of development may seem to us somewhat
anti-climactic, but to the spirit of the Renaissance it rings absolutely true.

1 Arcadia, II, xii, xiii.

2 His character is given II, xviii; see especially his "jollie scoffing braverie," Cambridge
cd., p. 268. • Ibid., II, xiv. * Ibid., II, xvii ff. * Ibid., II, xvi, xvii. • Ibid., II, xx-xxiii.

^ This motive is due in part to the admiration for Cicero. Of the many illustrations, the
stories of Damon and Pythias and of Titus and Gysippus, as told by Elyot {Bcke of the Govemour,
xi, xii) and others, may be cited. The climax of such stories is that a friend will seek to die for
his friend if need be, and this motive is several times used by Sidney. There are also resem-' .
blances between Sidney's presentation of the various types of love and Spenser's, especially in -
Faerie Queene, IV. »

8 This conception of honor is, of course, a subject constantly treated in Renaissance litera-
ture. Sidney begins with the idea that constitutes the theme of the CyropaeJia : " For to have
been once brave is not sufficient for continuing to be so, unless a man constantly keep that
■ object in view" {Cyropaedia, VII, v) ; on which compare Sidney: "High honor is not only
gotten and borne by paine and danger, but must be nursed by the like, or els vanisheth as
soone as it appeares to the world" {Arcadia, II, ix). But Cyrus has in view the definite
purpose of building an empire ; the knightly progress of Pyrocles and Musidorus is to seek
through individual exploits not only to serve others but to exercise their virtues without regard
to personal ambition. It is a theory of education, and is preparatory to the work of the Prince.

334 SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

We come now to Sidney's conception of the Prince. This subject is
treated from different points of view. The epic of Pyrocles and Musidorus
presents the ideal of his education and the character of his youth. This por-
tion of the book also contains examples of what he should not be : not a
follower of lust and pleasure, like the king of Iberia ; not melancholy, sus-
picious, observing a ** tode-like retyrednesse," like the king of Phrygia ; not
a creature of whim and caprice, rewarding without desert and punishing with-
out reason, like the king of Pontus.^ This last type is more fully delineated
in Antiphilus, the base man suddenly exalted, who "made his kingdom a
Tenniscourt, where his subjects should be the balles." ^ More direct methods
are observable in the exposition of Ae Machiavellian theory of statecraft.
There are three important studies of this subject, presenting Machiavellism
under as many aspects. Plexirtus stands for the Machiavellian tyrant : he
secured the crown by unjust means ; kept it by the aid of foreign mercenaries
who were established in citadels, the nests of tyrants and murderers of liberty ;
he disarmed his countrymen to prevent their return to the cause of his father;
he blinded his father and sought the death of his brother Leonatus, following
the precept that all who have any claim to the throne must be destroyed ; he
was crafty enough to hide his faults, thus not only deceiving his subjects but
securing for his service good men like Tydeus and Telenor. Even after he
was thrust from the throne, he was still able through hypocritical humility to
win the confidence of Leonatus, only to seek to poison his brother and secure
tiie throne again. When, finally, he was given a neighboring kingdom as a
field in which he might practice his art witii less inconvenience, he contrived
the death of his faithful Tydeus and Telenor, fearing that their popularity
would create faction against him.^ The second example is found in the story
of Clinias, who is the lago of this Machiavellism as Plexirtus is its Richard III.
Sophist, tragedian, hypocrite, he stimulates rebellion against Basilius while
pretending to be innocent of wrong and indeed to have been anxious to restrain
the mischief-makers. It is a picture of unmitigated baseness and cowardice.^
The third portrait shows how a man of noble instincts, but more regardful of
honor as Hotspur understood the term than possessing any solid qualities,
swollen by a windy ambition, outwardly courteous and humane, may be a
follower of Machiavelli. Amphialus follows the rules very closely : he accepts
the results of his mother*s plotting by holding the rightful claimants to the

^ Arcadia, II, xix, viii, ix. * Ibid., II, xxix.

' There are even verbal resemblances that prove the source of this exposition ; these I
have no space to give, but any one who will take the trouble to read the passage in Sidney will
at once recognize how close is the parallel. Every one of the characteristics of Plexirtus is a
concrete illustration of principles taken from Machiavelli or from the hostile summary of the
theory by Gentillet. That Sidney was acquainted with Machiavelli appears in his correspond-
ence with Lang^et. In one case (Pears, p. 53) he shows hostility to the central doctrines of
this political philosophy. * Arcadia, II, xxvii ff.

GREENLAW 335

throne in captivity ; he foments rebellion by appeals to the malcontents ; he
pretends to have at heart only the safely and best interests of the kingdom.
In his strategy he follows the rules also : he pays attention to his citadel, his
supplies, his selection of the men who are to be nearest him, making use
even of their vices. In the jousts, characterized as they are by an outward
courtesy, he is the seeker for renown in order to make an impression on
others, as laid down in the twenty-first chapter of // Principe.

Sidney shares the feeling of his time that a wise monarchy is the true form
of government. His attack on oligarchy as being the cause of the worst of
tyrannies prefaces the story of the wise Evarchus : ** For they having the
power of kings, but not the nature of kings, used the authority as men do
their farms." ^ Democracy is no less impossible. The story of the giants of
Pontus suggests Spenser's allegorical method.^ The two chief instances,
however, of Sidney's distrust of the commons are found in the account of the
rebellion against Basilius and in the depicting, near the end of the story, of
the anarchy resulting from the supposed death of the king.* In the first of
these Zelmane (Pjrrocles) asks the rebels what they want, and the confused
replies indicate Sidney's conviction that popular rule would bring anarchy.^

All these illustrations, however, are merely supplements to that which is
the central theme in Sidney's treatment of the Prince : the contrast between
Evarchus, the wise prince, and Basilius, king in name only. One of the most
eloquent passages in the book is that in which the author paints, in Evarchus,
his ideal monarch.* Coming to the throne when his kingdom was prostrated
by tyranny, he was compelled at first to command respect by severity. After
he was firmly established, ** then shined forth indeede all love among them,
when an awful feare, ingendred by justice, did make that love most lovely."
He lived the life he wished his people to live, and lived it among them, not
apart from them ; he did not regard their persons and their property as instru-
ments for his own pleasure, for " while by force he took nothing, by their love

* Arcadia^ II, vi. On this compare Elyot, I, ii, and The Courtier^ Book IV.

^ Arcadia^ II, ix. The giants represent a mistreated populace, useful to a wise prince, but
a source of danger made greater through their ignorance.

' Arcadia, II, xxv, xxvi. It should be stated that I have confined my investigation to that
part of Arcadia which is indubitably Sidney's. The second passage (ed. Baker, pp. 564 ff.),
though it comes in the portion revised by the Countess of Pembroke, bears the marks of
having been written by Sir Philip.

^ The passage is too long to quote, but the suggestions for tariff reform, change of adminis-
tration, public improvements, reduction of the high cost of living, the desire of each class for
a reduction in all products other than its own, all remind one of the political campaign of 191 2 ;
while the blind confidence in a large number of statutes as necessary to the welfare of the state
is preeminently American. Less pleasant because of its betrayal of Sidney's aristocratic con-
tempt for the mob, though it is good fun, is his ridicule of the butchers, tailors, and millers,
together with the account of the artist, ancestor of the modem war correspondent, who was to
paint the battle of the Centaurs and rushed to the fray in search of local color. He got it

• Arcadia, II, vi.

336 SIDNEY'S ARCADIA AS ELIZABETHAN ALLEGORY

he had all/' ^ '* In summe ... I might as easily sette downe the whole
Arte of government, as to lay before your eyes the picture of his proceedings."
Contrasted with this ideal is the course of life pursued by Basilius. The sig-
nificance of this central idea of the book is not that Sidney wished to portray
an ideal life away from the conventionality of the court, but the disasters that
come upon a nation when its sovereign, fearful of fate, retires to solitude in
an effort to avoid it. Kalander's account of Arcadia : the solid qualities of
its people, their love for Basilius, the respect in which the nation was held by
neighboring peoples, the peace that encouraged happiness and invited the
Muses, all this is sharply contrasted with the evils that follow. The letter
of Philanax warns the king against superstition and points out the conse-
quences of his retu-ement.^ The rest of the main plot shows how these proph-
ecies came true. The king is the prey to flatterers like Clinias and base
upstarts like Dametas ; the rebellion of the commons is due to the practices
of those who seek to profit by the king's seeming cowardice ; lust rules his
own life ; the people are torn by factions so that Cecropia and Amphialus
bring about civil war ; utter chaos results, and the larger duties of Basilius to
aid Evarchus in repelling hostile nations are neglected. Philanax sums up
the indictment when he tells Basilius that his whole duty, as a Prince and the
father of a people, is " with the eye of wisdome, the hand of fortitude, and the
hart of justice to set downe all private conceits in comparison of what for
the publike is profitable." ^ Over against this is set, in the closing pages of
the story, the nobility of Evarchus, strengthening his people against expected
attack ; seeking to form alliances among other nations against a common
enemy ; going to Arcadia to try to withdraw its prince from burying himself
alive ; and with calm justice dooming his own son to death in his effort to
bring to an end the anarchy he found there.

Thus Fulke Greville spoke with full knowledge in saying that Sidney in-
tended more than idle amusement in his story. Corroborative evidence is
found in his account of the conversations between the two friends, and in
Sidney's correspondence with Languet. Sidney, we are told, complained of
the " neglect " of the Queen in her failure to use the Huguenots as a means
of checking the increasing Spanish aggression ; it was " an omission in that
excellent Ladies Government" that Austria ** gained the fame of action,
trained up his owne Instruments martially, and got credit with his fellow-
bordering Princes," a condition that came through a ** remiss looking on " ;
a yet greater oversight was characteristic of England and France, because
"while their Princes stood at gaze, as upon things far off, they still gave way
for the Popish and Spanish invisible arts and counsels to undermine the
greatness and freedom both of Secular and Elcclesiastical Princes." " In this

^ Compare the object lesson, on the subject of riches, taught by Cyrus to Croesus, Cyropae-
dia^ VIII, ii. * Arcadia^ II, iv. ' Ibid., Ill, xix. This is just what Sidney told the Queen in 1 580.

GREENLAW 337

survey of forrain Nations," we are told, '* he observed a fatal passivenesse
generally currant, by reason of strange inequalities between little humors and
great fortunes in the present Princes reigning." ^ In this " fatal passive-
ness," due as it was to *' little humors " of those who should be alert, we
have the keynote to the interpretation of the story of Basilius. The testi-
mony of the correspondence with Languet is not less explicit : Sidney ex-
presses impatience with the delays and intrigues of Elizabeth and Burghley ;
**our princes," he says, "are enjoying too deep a slumber; nevertheless,
while they indulge in this repose, I would have them beware that they fall not
into that malady in which death itself goes hand in hand with its counter-
part." 2 At the very time when he was working on his book, Sidney was, in
disgrace because he had addressed a letter to the Queen protesting against
the proposed French marriage. It is this sloth, this foolish fear of fate, this
wasting of time in amorous toying while factions were multiplying and plots
against the throne grew ripe, that the Basilius story shows forth. Sidney does
not hold up the pastoral life of Basilius as a model ; he does not find in it an
admirable withdrawal from the cares of life ; it is no idyllic existence in the
forest of Arden, but a criminal evading of responsibility that will bring ruin
to any state.^ Sidney's book, concrete application of the theories of the prov-
ince of poetry laid down in his Defense^ springing out of his interest in the
problems of government, the object of his care during the ripest and most
thoughtful years of his life, is less truly to be described as a pastoral romance
than as an ** historicall fiction," a prose counterpart of the Faerie Qtieene^
having for its object " to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and
gentle discipline," and to portray "a good govemour and a vertuous man."
That this intention was not vaguely moral, but was intended by Sidney to
apply to political conditions in his own time and to the crisis that he saw was
coming upon England, I shall seek to show more fully in another place.

* Life^ Caradoc Press Reprint, 1907, pp. 18 ff. * Pears, pp. 58-59.

* Even the oracle which led Basilius to leave his duties in order, as he thought, to avoid the
loss of his kingdom, finds a counterpart in Elizabeth's superstitious regard for nativities and
portents. (Cf. Aikin, Memoirs^ II, 27.) As to the unpleasantness of that part of Arcadia which
deals with the lust of Basilius and Gynecia, about which much has been written, we have merely
a representation of what the author believes will happen when princes lead slothful lives, with
perhaps a reference to immoral and unnatural conditions at Elizabeth's court Compare Spen-
ser's stinging castigation of these conditions in Colin Clouty lines 664 ff., in which he shows the
pettiness and selfish hollowness of the court, and makes a similar distinction between pure love as
understood by the '* shepherds'* and the licentious talk of the courtiers on '* love, and love, and love
my dear." This gallantry, filled with " lewd speeches and licentious deeds," profanes the mighty
mysteries of Love. Compare also Languet's letter to Sidney, written soon after a visit to Lon-
don : " To speak plainly, the habits of your court seemed to me somewhat less manly than I
could have wished, and most of your noblemen appeared to me to seek for a reputation more by
a kind of affected courtesy than by those virtues which are wholesome to the state" (Pears,
p. 167). I have g^ven other evidence of these conditions in my discussion of the relations be-
tween Spenser and Leicester {Publications of the Modem Language Association ^ September, 1910).

{

( ■

NICHOLAS BRETON, CHARACTER-WRITER

AND QUADRUMANIAC

C. N. Greenough

The years 1615 and 16 16, in which Nicholas Breton published two little-
known but not unimportant prose works, Characters upon Essaies Morall
and Divine (161 5) and The Good and the Badde (1616), mark an interesting
point in the development of the ** character." In 1608 Joseph Hall had put
forth what seems to be the first book in English to consist wholly of undoubted
characters. These Characters of Virtues and Vices were wholly delineations
of persons, their aim was professedly moral, and their style — though not
without an occasional flicker of sober wit — was grave and clerical. Sbc years
later, in 161 4, appeared the famous collection of characters by Sir Thomas
Overbury and his friends, at whose hands the character undergoes some
change. " It is," writes a contributor to the Overbury collection, in attempting
**to square out a character by our English levell," "a picture (reall or per-
sonall) quaintly drawn, in various colours, all of them heightened by one
shadowing. It is a quick and soft touch of many strings, all shutting up in
one musicall close ; it is wits descant on any plaine song. " ^ That is, the
character may be impersonal and it should be quaintly and wittily phrased.
Accordingly we are not surprised to find in the Overbury collection a character
of a prison and one of the character itself, nor are we surprised that a most
serious and admirable portrait, ** A Worthy Commander in the Wars," should
conclude with a flourish in which the " silver head " of the good soldier is
made to " lean near the golden sceptre." Such was the technique of the
character in 1614.

From that time until the outbreak of the Civil War, the character was
often in danger of becoming an excessively flimsy and overstylistic affair. In
161 8, for example, Geffray Mynshul, in Essay es and Characters of a Prison
and Prisoners y affords an important instance of a man who wrote, in the same
volume and on the same subjects, both essays and characters, and whose
method perceptibly changes when he turns from one to the other. His essays
display a greater depth and variety of thought ; his characters, a sharper and
more elaborate wit. His essays show variety in point of view, fair sequence
of thought, and an occasional mention of the writer and of the person ad-
dressed. All these should occur naturally enough in any kind of writing. Yet

^ Overbury s Miscellaneous Wbrks^ ed. E. F. Rimbault, London, 1856, pp. 168-169.

351

352 NICHOLAS BRETON, CHARACTER-WRITER

they almost never do in Mynshul's characters, where the sentences are nearly
all cast in one mould, as can be seen from the following skeleton of ** The
Character of a Prison." ^ '' A prison is . . . . It is . . . , it is . . . , it is
.... It is .... It is ...; it is .... It is .... It is .... It is
.... It is .... It is .... It is .... It is .... To conclude, what
is it not ? In a word, it is . . . .*' The blanks one should imagine filled in
with such conceitful, paradoxical, metaphorical strokes as that the prison is
*' a little commonwealth, although little wealth be common there," or that the
prisoner is "an impatient patient lingering under the rough hands of a cruell
phisitian." In Mynshul's hands, the character is clearly by way of becoming
something little better than a verbal puzzle. As compared with the essay it
apparently was, in his estimation, less subjective, meditative, and pregnant,
and more inclined to coincide with the instructions of one Ralph Johnson,
who in 1665 2 directs his pupils in writing characters to make **a witty and
facetious description.**

This conceitful tendency of the character, and the whole matter of the re-
lation of character and essay, could hardly be more clearly shown than in two
of Nicholas Breton's prose works. In 161 5 Breton published Characters \
Upon Essaies \ Morally And \ Divine^ \ Written \ For those good Spirits, | that
will take them | in good party \And\ Make use of them to | good purpose?

The book, as its title implies, is an application of the manner of the char-
acter to the matter of the essay. Thsft such *' charactering ** of the essay was
fairly well known in 161 5 appears both from some of the commendatory verses
prefixed to the work and from Breton's dedication of it to Bacon. A certain
I. R. was kind enough to say of his friend's work :

Who reads this Booke with a iudicious eye,
Will in true Judgement, true discretion try,
Where words and matter close and sweetly coucht,
Doe shew how truth, wit, art and nature toucht.
What need more words these characters to praise,
They are the true charactering of Essaies.'*

Breton himself furnishes similar evidence in his dedication of the book to

Bacon :

To the Honorable, and my much worthy honored,

truly learned, and Iudicious Knight, Sr Francis Bacon,

his Ma^** Attoumey Generall,

Increase of honor, health, and etemall happinesse.

1 Geffray Mynshul, Essayes and Characters of a Prison and Prisoners^ Edinburgh, 1821,
pp. 14-17- * In The Scholars Guide from the Accidence to the University y p. 15.

» Original editions of Breton's works are extremely rare. Most of them are reprinted in
A- B. Grosarf s Works in Verse and Prose of Nicholas Breton, 2 vols., Edinburgh, privately
printed, 1879 (" Chertsey Worthies* Library'*). My references are to this edition.

* Grosart, II, q, 4.

GREENOUGH 353

Worthy Knight, I haue read of many Essaies, and a kinde of Charactering of them, by
such, as when I lookt vnto the forme, or nature of their writing, I haue beene of the con-
ceit, that they were but Imitators of your breaking the ice to their inuentions ; which, how
short they fall of your worth, I had rather thinke then speake, though Truth need not blush
at her blame : Now, for my selfe vnworthy to touch neere the Rocke of those Diamonds, or
to speake in their praise, who so farre exceede the power of my capacitie, vouchsafe me
leaue yet, I beseech you, among those Apes that would counterfet the actions of men, to
play the like part with learning, and as a Monkey, that would make a face like a Man, and
cannot, so to write like a Scholler, and am not : and thus not daring to aduenture the Print,
vnder your Patronage, without your fauorable allowance, in the deuoted sendee of my
bounden duty, I leaue these poore Trauells of my Spirit, to the perusing of your pleasing
leasure, with the further fruits of my humble affection, to the happie employment of your
honorable pleasure. At your seruice

in all humblenesse

NICH: BRETON

Although the extravagant tone of this address perhaps injures the value of
the first sentence as evidence of a fact in literary history, it need not prevent
us from believing that some writers showed, and others perceived, that the
" character of an essay " was a fairly well-defined variation of the usual char-
acter. Nor need we wholly disregard Breton's suggestion that the form was
influenced by the essays of Bacon, then in their second and enlarged edition.

Breton's subjects, in his Characters upon Essaies, are Wisdom, Learning,
Knowledge, Practice, Patience, Love, Peace, War, Valor, Resolution, Honor,
Truth, Time, Death, Faith, and Fear. He thus helps to form the convention
that, as Ralph Johnson wrote in 1665,^ "an Essay is a short discourse about
any vertue, vice, or other commonplace."

The " charactering** of such material consists in giving it a stylistic treat-
ment in which mannerisms are rather tiresomely prominent.

1. The subjects are generally personified. Wisdom, Learning, Knowledge,
Practice, Patience, War, Valor, Resolution, Truth, and Faith are feminine ;
Time and Death are masculine ; and only Love, Peace, and Honor are neuter.^

2. As in Mynshul, the subject of the character is also the subject of
almost every clause. The character of Peace, for instance, may be represented
by the following skeleton : " Peace is .... It is .... It is .... It
holds .... It is .... It is like .... It needs .... It is .... It
is .... It fills .... It is .... It hath .... It was . . . ." This is
typical : rarely is the subject varied, and very rarely does a sentence begin
with anything but its subject.

3. The language is notably high-sounding and conceitful. Learning is
" the nurse of nature, with that milk of reason that would make a child of
grace never lie from the dug.*' Love is "a healthful sickness in the soul.*'

* T^e Scholars Guide^ p. 17.

' Of these Love only is consistently neuter : Peace and Honor are several times made
feminine.

354 NICHOLAS BRETON, CHARACTER-WRITER

Practice is *' the patient's patience." Time '* is known to be, but his being
unknown, but only in his being in a being above knowledge.** In this dizzy
region inconsistencies necessarily abound. Indeed, Breton seems to make no
effort to avoid them ; his ideas are set down curiously rather than significantly
and coherently. It is therefore of no particular consequence that Resolution,
although **she is a rock irremovable,*' also "wades through the sea, and
walks through the world."

4. Alliteration, both plain and crossed, is frequent, and hardly less frequent
is the repetition of a prefix or sufBx. The character of Truth is thus ended
" in the wonder of her worth *' : ** she is the nature of perfection in the per-
fection of nature, where God in Christ shows the glory of humanity.** Of
Practice Breton is ** fearful to follow her too far in observation, lest being
never able to come near the height of her commendation, I be enforced as I
am to leave her wholly to admiration.*' In the case of Patience he makes
a similar concluding flourish : " in sum, not to wade too far in her worthi-
ness, lest I be drowned in the depth of wonder, I will thus end in her endless
honour.**

5. Breton*s other mannerisms, however, become inconspicuous m com-
parison with his strange passion for arranging his ideas in sets of four. Ordi-
narily he does this in a perfectly parallel construction ; sometimes he varies
his method and achieves a sentence^ in which, without grammatical paral-
lelism, there are, in effect, four cadences or waves. In most of the characters
in Breton's Characters upon Essaies every clause consists of four parts ; in
all, the preference for four over any other number is overwhelming. The
effect of reading Breton, when once this jingle has got into one's head, is
almost inevitably to concentrate attention upon the pattern rather than upon
the ideas. To illustrate I have ventured to heighten the effect of Breton's
quadruplications by numbering them in his character of Truth.

TRUTH

Truth is (I) the Gloiy of time, and (2) the daughter of Eternity : (3) a Title of the highest
Grace, and (4) a Note of a Diuine Nature : she is (i) the life of Religion, (2) the light of Loue,

(3) the Grace of Wit, and (4) the crowne of Wisedome : she is (i) the Beauty of Valor, (2) the
brightnesse of honor, (3) the blessing of Reason and (4) the ioy of faith: (i) her truth is
pure gold, (2) her Time is right pretious, (3) her word is most gradous and (4) her will is
most glorious: (i) Her Essence is in God and (2) her dwelling with His seruants, (3) her
will in His wisedome and (4) her worke to His Glory: she is (i) honored in loue, and
(2) graced in constancie, (3) in patience admired and (4) in charity beloued: she is (i) the
Angels worshippe, (2) the Virgins fame, (3) the Saints blisse and (4) the Martirs crowne :
she is (i) the Kings greatnesse and (2) his Councels goodnesse, (3) his subiects peace and

(4) his Kingdomes Praise : she is (i) the life of learning and (2) the light of the Law, (3) the
honor of Trade and (4) the grace of labor : she hath (i) a pure Eye, (2) a plaine hand, (3) a
piercing wit and (4) a perfect heart : she is (i) wisedomes walke in (2) the way of holinesse,

^ Like the final one in the extract below.

GREENOUGH 355

and (3) takes vp her rest but in (4) the resolution of goodness : ( i ) Her tongue neuer trippes,
(2) her heart neuer faintes, (3) her hand neuer failes and (4) her faith neuer feares : (i) her
Church is without schisme, (2) her Qty without fraude, (3) her Court without Vanity, and
(4) her Kingdome without Villany : In sunune, so infinite is her Excellence, in the construc-
tion of all sence, that I will thus only conclude in the wonder of her worth : she is (i) the
nature of perfection, in (2) the perfection of Nature, where (3) God in Christ, shewes (4) the
glory of Christianity.^

Of Breton's The Good\ And\ The Badde^ \ Or^ \ Descriptions of the Worthies^
and Unworthies\of this Age (1616), little need be said except that, in a slightly
less pronounced degree, it reveals all the mannerisms of Characters upon Essaies,
It is, however, more like such collections of characters as Hall's, Overbury's,
Stephens's, Mynshul's, and Earle's, in that its subjects are persons instead of
personified things. These subjects, most of them arranged in contrasted pairs,
are A Worthy King, An Unworthy King, A Worthy Queen, A Worthy
Prince, An Unworthy Prince, A Worthy Privy Councillor, An Unworthy
Councillor, A Nobleman, An Unnoble Man, A Worthy Bishop, An Un-
worthy Bishop, A Worthy Judge, An Unworthy Judge, A Worthy Knight,
An Unworthy Knight, A Worthy Gentleman, An Unworthy Gentleman, A
Worthy Lawyer, An Unworthy Lawyer, A Worthy Soldier, An Untrained
Soldier, A Worthy Physician, An Unworthy Physician, A Worthy Merchant,
An Unworthy Merchant, A Good Man, An Atheist or Most Bad Man, A
Wise Man, A Fool, An Honest Man, A Knave, An Usurer, A Beggar, A
Virgin, A Wanton Woman, A Quiet Woman, An Unquiet Woman, A Good
Wife, An Eflfemmate Fool, A Parasite, A Drunkard, A Coward, An Honest
Poor Man, A Just Man, A Repentant Sinner, A Reprobate, An Old Man, A
Young Man, A Holy Man. It will be seen that the classification is less by
ethical types, as in Hall, than by callings or ranks, as was later to be the case
in Fuller's Holy and Profane State. Although Breton's wit is rather sharper
in his adverse characters, most of the distinctive traits of his euphuistic style
appear in his first character.

A VSrORTHY KING

A Worthy King is a figure of God, in the nature of government : he is the chiefe of
men, and the Churches champion, Natures honour, and Earths maiesty : is the director of
Law, and the strength of the same, the sword of Justice, and the scepter of Mercy, the glasse
of Grace, and the eye of Honour, the terror of Treason, and the life of Loyalty. His com-
maund is general, and his power absolute, his frowne a death, and his fauour a life, his
charge is his subiects, his care their safety, his pleasure their peace, and his ioy their loue :
he is not to be paraleld, because he is without equalitie, and the prerogatiue of his crowne
must not be contradicted : hee is the Lords anointed, and therfore must not be touched,
and the head of a publique body, and therfore must bee presented : he is a scourge of sinne
and a blessing of grace, Gods vicegerent ouer his people, and vnder Him supreme gouemour:
his safety must bee his Councels care, his health, his subiects prayer, his pleasiu^, his peeres

* Grosart, II, y, 9.

356 NICHOLAS BRETON, CHARACTER-WRITER

comfort ; and his content, his kingdomes gladnesse : His presence must be reuerenced, his
person attended, his court adorned, and his state maintained ; his bosome must not be searched,
his will not disobeyed, his wants not vnsupplied, nor his place vnr^^ded. In summe, he is
more then a man, though not a God, and next vnder God to be honoured aboue man.^

It is a curious fact that quadrumania, which runs through this character
and through all of The Good and the Badde, appears in some of Breton's
other works.2 It appears regularly in the ** Necessary Notes for a Courtier "
appended to The Court and Country y i6i8. These notes consist of fifty-three
questions and answers, and of the answers no fewer than forty-two are phrased
in fours. The last two questions, with their answers, will probably be more
than sufficient.

2- What is the life of a Courtier ?

A, The labour of pleasure, the aspiring to greatness, the ease of nature, and the com-
mand of reason.

Q. What is the fame of a Courtier ?

A. A cleare conscience, and a free spirit, an innocent heart, and a bountifull hand.'

More curious still, perhaps, is The Figure of Foure, of which only the
second part (1636) ^ seems to have survived. This odd little work consists of
one hundred and four ^ separate observations, every one of which makes four
points about something. They may be fairly enough represented by the first
and the last.

I . There are f oure things greatly to be taken heed of : a Flye in the eye, a bone in the
throat, a dog at the heele, and a theefe in the house.^

104. Foure sums are very good for a Bookseller: some wares, some customers, some
money, some drink.''

One's first impulse is to regard such a style as suitable only for trivial
matters. Many of Breton's points, to be sure, are merely quips; but very
many of them are not, and when he is most serious Breton is as likely as
ever to be euphuistic. One must remember that the ** metaphysical " or
fantastic tendency profoundly affected seventeenth-century prose as well as

1 Grosart, II, r, 5.

2 It is proper to note, however, that Breton wrote some characters which are free from
quadrumania. This is the case in A Discourse of a Scholler and a Souldier^ IS99» ^i^d in Fantas-
ticks y 1626. The latter work, by the way, throws some very interesting light on Jacobean daily
life, especially on the question of the time at which various things were done. For example, at
five o'clock in the morning " the Schollers are up and going to schoole." (Grosart, II, /, 13.)

• Grosart, II, «, 16.

* Grosart, 11,/. A work called TTie Figure of Foure ^ licensed in 1597 (Arber*s Transcript^
III, 96), is presumed to be by Breton. No earlier edition than 163 1-1636 is known, however,
and of that only the second part (1636). That contains an address " To the Reader" which is
signed N. B.

^ Perhaps quadrumania has seized me, but I cannot forbear suggesting that here Breton
may have intentionally varied the familiar ** century " by adding another four.
« Grosart, 11,/, 5. ' Grosart, 11,/, 8.

GREENOUGH 357

verse, and that, in consequence, what was considered most precious, in prose
as in verse, was likely to be most ingeniously ornate. Yet undeniably the
character, and English prose generally, was somewhat dangerously refined by
the attentions of such men as Breton. From that danger it was rescued, in
part, by the compelling nature of the subjects that began to demand treatment
at the approach of the Civil War. The resulting characters of bishops and
roundheads, in which the fourth and fifth decades of the century became so
prolific, were not, whatever their other defects, seriously belittled by their
euphuism.

)

THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF

William Witherle Lawrence

** Felicitously introduced, and finely told," as Henry Bradley puts it, is the
narrative of Beowulf's youthful adventure in swimming the wintry sea with
Breca of the Brondings, and in slaying fearful and menacing monsters of the
deep. With superb ease and skill the stranger guest from the land of the Geats
silences the envious Unferth, who has accused him, at the ceremonial banquet
at Hrothgar's court, of having proved himself the weaker in this struggle on
the waters, and consequently no fit champion to do battle with Grendel. Not
only is the charge of inferiority to Breca denied, and the hero's preeminence
proudly asserted, but a disgraceful occurrence in Unferth's past life is recalled,
— he had proved faithless to his kinsmen.^ It needed only this stinging re-
proach, of which the adroit and well-informed Beowulf makes such telling use,
to add a final touch of pungency to a masterly speech, and to complete the
discomfiture of Unferth.

The chief purpose of Beowulf's long narrative of his exploits in swimming,
then, is to correct misconceptions in the minds of the revellers at Heorot,
who have been listening to the false report of Unferth. Since we are* else-
where told that the hero was esteemed sluggish in his early years, it is par-
ticularly interesting to have this version of his adventure from his own lips.
Yet, singularly enough, the actual facts of the case, as Beowulf himself states
them, appear to have been strangely misunderstood. Unferth's tale has been
allowed to color Beowulf's narrative in such a way as to distort it completely.
Truly, malicious slander is never quite without its effect ! The hero's account
seems clear enough, when once the whole story is reviewed with care, yet
practically every critic of the episode appears to have misconceived the situa-
tion. The possibility of such an error seems, curiously enough, hardly to have
been suspected. Very few scholars have questioned at all the lucidity of the
narrative. Recently, however, R. W. Chambers, in his admirable study of
Widsithy has voiced his doubts as follows :**... Unferth taunts Beowulf
with his unsuccessful swimming match with Breca, the son of Beanstan.
Beowulf asserts that he was the better swimmer, and he silences his opponent
by personal abuse ; but his explanation, that he could have swum faster than

1 Probably not so much the " murderer " of his kinsmen, 2i&f>eah f>u f>inum bro&rum id banan
wurde (587) suggests, as one who forsook them in the hour of danger, left them to their fate. I
think Professor Kittredge made this suggestion, either in a lecture or in conversation, some years
since. Cf. 1167 and the interesting discussion by Olrik, Danmarks HelUdigtning^ I, pp. 25 ff.

359

36o THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF

his rival, but did not choose to do so, seems insufficient. And Beowulf no-
where says that Breca was defeated or humiliated. The poet has not made
the swimming match very clear. " ^

These comments reveal the fundamental misconception to which reference
has just been made. The exploit was not, I believe, really a ** swimming
match" at all, in the sense in which the term is generally understood. Beowulf
was not trying to overcome Breca,^ nor Breca Beowulf. Unferth has indeed
given that impression, but his evidence must of course be disregarded, and
Beowulf's explanation received as the truth. In order to understand the situa-
tion completely, however, we must review Unferth's accusations with some
care. Familiar as the lines are, they must be quoted once more.

506 Art thou that Beowulf, who didst struggle against Breca,

on the broad sea didst conten4 in swimming,

when ye two in your pride made trial of the waves,

and for a foolish boast on the deep water
510 risked your lives ? No living man,

be he who he might, could dissuade you

from the ill-starred venture ; then ye two swam the waters,

stretched your arms out over the ocean-current,

measured the sea-streets, plied your hands,
515 glided over the ocean; the sea was turbulent with waves,

with the breakers of winter. In the might of the water

ye toiled seven nights ; he overcame thee in swimming,

he had more strength. Him in the morning

amongst the Heatho-Reames did the sea cast up.
520 Thence he sought his own country,

— dear was he to his people, — the land of the Brondings,

the fair and peaceful city, where his folk were,

his fortress and his treasures. All his boast against thee

did the son of Beanstan in very truth perform.
525 And so I expect for thee a worser fortune,

doughty though thou mayst ever have been in battle-onslaughts,

in grim combat, if thou darest abide

through the watches of a night the coming of Grendel ! '

Specifically, then, Unferth's charges are that Beowulf and Breca in pride
and foolish boasting (508-509) risked their lives on the water; that they were
contending against each other (506-509), and that Breca surpassed Beowulf,
proving the stronger swimmer (51 7-5 1 8), thus fulfilling his boast that he would

* Widsith, a Study in Old English Heroic Legend^ Cambridge, 191 2, p. 110.

2 Compare, for example, Stopford Brooke's paraphrase {^History of Early English Litera^
turty New York, 1892, p. 59) : " Beowulf answered, full of wrath, that H unferth was a liar, and
that the victory was his, not Breca's."

• The Heyne-Socin-Schiicking text, Paderborn, 1910, has been made the basis of the pres-
ent translations and citations. In translating I have kept in general the divisions of lines and
half-lines, and made the rendering rather literal, allowing myself occasional liberties for tae
sake of modern idiom.

\
>

, /

LAWRENCE 361

overcome Beowulf (524). Consequently, since Beowulf is thus proved inferior^
he is no person to engage with Grendel.
' Beowulf replies with care to each of these accusations. His speech, in sa

far as it illustrates his defense, is as follows :

530 Lo ! many things indeed, my friend Unferth,

overcome with drink, hast thou told about Breca,

reported of his exploit ! I repeat the truth,

that I had greater sea-strength,
I power to resist hardships ^ on the waters, than any other man.^

' 535 We asserted in boyhood

and boasted (we were both of us still

in the time of our youth) that we two out on the ocean

would venture our lives ; and we performed it, too.

We had naked swords, as we swam the waters,
540 hard ones in our hands, with which against the whales

we thought to defend us. Not a bit away from me,

far on the flood-waves, could he swim,

faster on the ocean ; I did not wish to swim away from him.

So we together were in the waters
\ 545 five nights' time, until the floods parted us,

the raging waters ; the coldest of weathers,

darkling night, and the wind from the north

turned against us, grim as for battle. Angry were the billows,

the wrath of the sea-flsh was roused.

(Here follows a description of the hero's combats with nickers.)

Yet was it granted me to slay with my sword
J? '*jy 575 nine of the nickers. Never have I heard of

' a harder night-combat beneath the arch of heaven,

nor of a man in more desperate straits on the waves.
Yet from the grasp of my foes I escaped with my life,
weary of the struggle. Then the sea bore me up,
580 the current in the waves, the surging billows,
on the land of the Finns.

Naught of your accomplishing
exploits such as these have I heard men tell,
of terrors of combat ; Breca never yet
at the battle-play, nor indeed either of you,
585 so bravely performed any deed
M with swords opposing (I don't boast overmuch' of it) —

f even if thou wert the death of thy brethren,

thy near kinsmen.

►

1 Literally " hardships."

* Moller*s idea that this means "than Breca" {AlUng^lisches Volkseposy p. 131) has no sup-
port that I can discover. Beowulf puts the case strongly in the beginning, and then disposes
of the particular incident in which Breca was concerned.

' Reading /tAj (Grein, Grundtvig), not geflitts, Kluge's completion of the defective half-line
is, I think, impossible, since I do not believe Beowulf and Breca were contending at all.

mmrnL.:.

362 THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF |

Beowulf meets the general charge of inferiority first of all by asserting
that he is inferior in strength on the water to no man alive (532 ff.). He then
takes up the specific charge that he was *' beaten " by Breca. They did risk
their lives, he says, using the same phrase that Unferth did, aldrum ne'ddon^
but it was in the mutual fulfillment of a formal boast. While he and Breca
were still only boys,^ they vowed they would do a dangerous thing, — venture
in swimming out on the wintry sea, swept with storms and beset with mon-
sters. According to Unferth's story, many men tried to dissuade them, but
unsuccessfully (5 10 ff.). To undertake a swim on the ocean under such condi-
tions was in itself a heroic exploit. The two youths performed the feat, they
fulfilled their boast (538). Beowulf is careful to explain that Breca could not
swim faster than he, and that he himself had no desire to outstrip his cohi-
panion (541 ff.). There was, then, no "race" about it; they kept together for
five days, until they were separated by a storm. Returning to the charge that
he was weak in water-prowess, Beowulf tells of his fight with the nickers, —
a more doughty exploit than Breca or Unferth ever accomplished. Unferth,
a man with a shady past, who dares not attack Grendel himself, has no right
to lift up his voice, and question the courage of others. Finally, Beowulf
promises to meet the monster himself in the night to come.

Unferth's falsehood, then, consists in making a contest out of what was
only the mutual fulfillment of a boast, — one of those **brags," or **gabs," so
dear to the hearts of our Germanic ancestors. Often these oaths were made
at banquets, when the warriors, excited by strong drink, were willing to promise
undertakings which their soberer sense would have rejected. Such vaunts
were indeed frequently uttered over the ceremonial wine-horn, ** the beaker
of Bragi." How embarrassing they sometimes proved we know from the
Inage de Charlemagne as well as from Scandinavian stories. But heroic
and perilous exploits were often preceded by formal vows of accomplishment
not conceived in excitement or intoxication. The present poem furnishes testi-
mony enough of this. Before undertaking the contest with Grendel, Beowulf
makes formal vows of vaunting character {gylp-worda sum, 675) ; indeed, in
the very episode we are now considering, the hero, as Gummere puts it, " pro-
ceeds to promise or * boast * what he himself will do ; and with his cheerful
' gab ' the speech closes amid general applause." ^ Similarly, before encounter-
ing the dragon he speaks in vaunting words {beot-wordum, 2510). The general
custom of vowing, in good set terms, to do a mighty deed, which could not in
honor be abandoned, is too well known to require extended comment.

1 The repetition of the statement that they were boys, cnikt^wesende . . . begen />d gti on
geogo%-feore, may be BeowulTs justification of a foolhardy act which had not the same excuse as
the slaying of monsters to benefit mankind. Repetition does not, of course, always imply em-
phasis in Anglo-Saxon poetry, nor was recklessness necessarily esteemed unheroic. Vet this
reiteration of the point that they were only boys seems an answer to Unferth's sneering phrase
dol'gilpe (509). * F. B. Gummere, The Oldest English Epicy p. 48.

350 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

It is against nefarious magic art, and astrology as a helper to it, that the
Franklin utters the scornful, yet not wholly skeptical, condemnation which
has often been noticed. They are

swich f olye
As in our dayes is nat worth a flye ;
For holy chirches fdth in our bileve
Ne suffreth noon illusion us to greve (i 131-1 134).

The Orleans clerk's observances through which the rocks vanish are

his japes and his wrecchednesse
Of swich a superstidous ^ cursednesse (i 271-1272);

swidie illusiouns and swiche meschaunces
As hethen folk used in thilke dayes (1292- 1293).

This censure of the arts on which the tale hinges is by no means an artistic
error in the Franklin's mouth, still less in Chaucer's, and could not have been
so understood by any mediaeval reader. It is true that Chaucer would hardly
have cared to portray his professor of forbidden arts with such evident and
penetrating esteem had he not very carefully set the tale in pagan antiquity.
But in the same breath in which such practices are flouted as worthless and
impious in the days of Holy Church, they are represented as efficacious and
are not even wholly blamed for earlier times. The attitude toward astrology
and magic which they point to in the speaker is precisely that which we find
in many other mediaeval writers than Chaucer, both literary and theological.

^ In the Middle Ages this word had not the implication of unreality which it has now. Cf.
St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Tkeologiat^ II, ii, 92, i.

TATLOCK 349

obtineat " {De Occ. Pkilos.j II, 30). There is a " lib. ymaginum " on the
mansions of the moon in a Christ Church and in a Harleian MS., which
professes to be magical, a work printed at Venice in 1 509 treats of the same
subject,^ and I have already referred to the Brahmin in the Vedabbha
Jdtaka who would repeat a spell *' when the moon was in conjunction with a
certain lunar mansion."

It is clear then that the Orleans clerk was well grounded in astronomy and
in astrological magic. Though his astrological observances are what is most
fully described, their sole purpose is to secure a time when the influences al-
ways streaming from the heavens shall reenforce his other rites,^ for he

knew also his othere observaunces (1291).

These are so effective that

thurgh his magik, for a wyke or tweye,
It semed that alle the rokkes were aweye (i 295-1 296).

Just what the observances would be, for this and for the lesser feats done at
Orleans, the Franklin does not tell us, either because of imperfect knowledge
or of distaste for the subject. Yet we can form some idea. For the earlier
ones he must have used at least images or charms, such as were used in
** natural magic *' and were necessary for directing the more hidden powers of
nature to his purposes, yet for even these illusions it looks as if he may have
used the aid of spirits, since they vanish when he claps his hands (i 202-1 204).
For his similar but far greater exploit, the vanishing of the rocks all the way
from the Seine to the Gironde, if he kept his bargain (i 221-1222), it may be
suspected that he had to use blood, sacrifices, suffumigations, incantations, and
invocations of demons,^ which, according to the authorities,* would make him
a necromancer.

1 Steinschneider in Zt.f, Math. u.Phys.y XVI, 371, 383.

3 Night and day he spedde him that he can
To wayte a tyme of his conclusioun (i 262-1 263).

This point is well illustrated in the Squire's Tale^ 1 29-131, by the oriental knight's account of
the making of the magic horse.

• Cf. House of Fame^ 1 259-1270.

* Isidor of Seville ( Migne's Pairologia Latinay Vol. LXXXII), Eiymologiae, VIII, ix, 1 1 ; John
of Salisbury, Policraticus (ed. Webb), I, 51 ; Albertus Magnus, in CataL Cod. Astrol. Graec., V, i, 98-
103 ; cf. Bacon, op. cit.^ 241, 395-396. It is Aurelius* brother, who has only glanced into a book or
two on magic, and is vague and ignorant about it (1117-1164), that expects such a result merely
from natural magic. The feat of the wizard in the Filocolo and in the Decameron is due to necro-
mancy, though the word is used only in the latter. Such performances as his in the Filocolo are
strongly condemned by Isidor (Etymol., VIII, ix; cf. Differentiae, I, 291). Of course the word
" necromancy " became nigromancy, and was used in a wider sense than the original. Possibly,
however, Chaucer meant all his clerk's work to be due to natural magic. Cf. Agrippa, Vanity
of Arts y p. III. Or he may have been vague about the matter; we cannot be sure, here and
elsewhere, how full and exact his knowledge really was.

348 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

to account for the clerk*s especial satisfaction with it.^ The explanation
probably is that reputable astrological writers ignored the bearings of their
lore on magic. For Chaucer plainly intimates that the twenty-eight mansions
of the moon were connected in some especial way with magic, particularly
with the production of magic illusions. It was a book of ** magik naturel/'
into which Aurelius* brother had peered at Orleans, that

spak muchel of the operaciouns
Touchinge the eighte and twenty mansiouns
That longen to the mone ( 1 1 29- 1 1 3 1 ).

It seems to be illusions produced by their help that Holy Church's faith in
our Credo does not suffer to grieve us (i 1 33-1 1 34). After recalling what he
has heard of ** diverse apparences" of '* subtile tregetoures," he hopes for a
similar ** apparence ** through some one's help

" That hadde this mones mansiouns in minde
Or other magik naturel above " (i 154-1 1 55).

This implication is confirmed by Albertus Magnus' Speculum Astronomicum ;
denouncing the most blameworthy kind of necromantic astrological images
and the exorcisms and suffumigations with which they were used, he says this
kind of necromancy tries to make itself more respectable by observing such
things as the twenty-eight mansions of the moon and their names.^ This connec-
tion between the mansions and magic is amply established by other authorities.
Cornelius Agrippa, speaking of times when the planets are favorable for
magic, says : ** Lunam ver6 habebimus potententem \sic\ si in domicilio suo :
vel exaltatione, vel triplicitate, vel facie, & in gradu sibi ad opus optatum con-
venienti, atque si mansionem ex viginti illis & octo sibi & operi competentem

1 Except that Cornelius Agrippa says it favors love and friendship, "et societatem itineran-
tium" (ch. 33). According to Joannes Hispalensis, it is temperate and fortunate; (here he quotes
Dorothius Sidonius) bad for marrying and employing servants, prosperous for sea voyages,
etc. No other mansion looks any more promising. Among the Arabs, the mansions seemingly
were observed chiefly for their connection with the weather (Ideler, 121, 148, 167, 172;
Albtriin!, 336; Zi. d. d. morg. Ges., XVIII, 1 59-1 61, 179, etc.); Bacon says the same of them

(P- 384)-

^ ** Haec est idololatria pessima, quae ut reddat se aliquatenus fide dignam, observat viginti

octo mansiones lunae et horas diei et noctis cum quibusdam nominibus dierum, horarum et mansio-
num ipsarum " (cap. xi : Catal. Cod. Astral. Grcuc, V, i, 99. The author gives a valuable bibli-
ography of contemporary authorities on astrology and magic, on which see Zt./. Math. u. Phys.,
xvi, 357-396). Cf. also what he says (p. 98) of certain images exorcized by fifty-four names of
angels, ^ qui subservire dicuntur imag^nibus lunae in circulo eius " ; the number 54 would ap-
parently allow two angels* names to each mansion on the Hindu system of 27 mansions {Zi. d.
d. mcrg. Ges.y XVIII, 121-122, 157 ff.). The number varied to 29 and 30 (late, for sjrmmetry) ;
hence a thirteenth-century MS. ZeXi/wdp^/uov in Milan and a fifteenth-century 'Erfo'/ce^tf r^
'Zekfimit in Naples g^ve the moon*s influence in 30 stages {Catal. Cod. Astrol. Gra^c.^ Ill,
32-39 ; IV, 142-145).

TATLOCK 347

been carried, by the precession of the equinoxes,^ westward from the vernal
equinox, or first point of the sign Aries, which was conceived to be in the
sphere next above that of the fixed stars. He does this because the lunar
mansions, unlike the signs, were determined by the fixed stars,^ and therefore
their right ascension, being of course measured from the receding vernal
equinox, gradually increased. It was necessary to know their right ascension
because, though the stars which named them fixed them roughly, the pre-
cise limits of each, and in this case the time of the moon's entrance and
departure and the mansion which included this precise part of Cancer, could
not be found without calculation. The clerk's finding first the right ascen-
sion of Alnath, rather than directly that of the mansion he was seeking,
probably indicates that he had no tables giving the exact limits of all the
mansions either in right ascension or in the constellations. Having found
the first, and knowing the angular size of the mansions, he easily found
that which the moon had then reached,^ and knew it to be favorable to
his design.^

If my conclusion as to the moon's position is correct, this mansion would
apparently be the eighth,^ but none of the accessible authorities reveals anything

Math, u, Phys.y XVI, 369, 371-372, 383; Alblriini's Chronology of Ancient Nations (tr. Sachau,
London, 1879), PP'335~3^5» Journal Asiatique, IX Scrie, VIII, 156-162; Mhncires of the
Acad^mie des Inscriptions, XVIII, ii, 354-362 ; Bibliothique de V£.coU <Us hautts £,tudesy
fasc. 121, pp. 1 07-11 1 ; Notices et Extraits des Manuscrits de la Bibliothique du Roi^ XII, i,
244-252 ; XIV, ii, 35-36; Franz Boll, Sphaera (Leipzig, 1903) ; Roger Bacon, op. cit., 384-385;
Contemporary Review^ XXXV, 418-419. This lore came from the Far East, and was known in
India, China, and perhaps Babylon (Boll and Ginzel). Joannes Hispalensis quotes the Indians
as authorities on it The mansions are still observed in the Orient

^ This may be the exact meaning of 1. 1 280, above, the second ** his " meaning its, and the
'* wirking " of the eighth sphere being the agency of the '* shoving ** of the mansions fixed in it
Skeat takes the line with " knew," but the clerk could hardly have told the amount of preces-
sion by the sphere of the fixed stars, but only by tables.

2 Cf. Joannes Ilisp., sig. T4~; Albiriin!, 354; and Ideler, p. 149; also Cornelius Agrippa
{De Occ. Philos.y II, 33; cf. Zt. d. d. morg. Ces., XVIII, 152), — "octo et viginti mansiones
Lunae . . . quae in octava sphera fixae a diversis earundem sideribus & stellis, quae in eis con-
tinentur." Speaking of Alnath he says, " Initium eius est in capite arietis octavae sphaerae "
{ibid.). Ibn Esra, a Jewish astrological writer, g^ves directions for finding the mansions {Zi. d.
d. morg. Ces.t XVIII, 161); so does Albir<inl, 357 ff.

' Whan he had founde his firste mansioun,

He knew the remenant by proporcioun (i 285-1 286).
* And knew ful weel the mones mansioun
Acordaunt to his operacioun (i 289-1 290).
Doubtless he had done earlier as much of all this as he could ; but with imperfect tables and
instruments, and with the moon's rapid motion, he had to be alert at the time.

* Called " Nebula " or ** Nebulosa cum nube " (after the star-cluster Praesepe), and extend-
ing from 16** i' to 28° 51' of the sign Cancer in the time of Joannes Hispalensis (sig. S 4^, T 4«>) ;
called El-nethra by the Arabs (Ideler, 159-160, 287). Steinschneider gives numerous tables of
the mansions {Zt. d. d. morg. Gfs., XVIII, 164, 176, 198, 200). Cf. also Albirdnl, 343 ff.;
Journal Asiatique^ IX S^rie, VI II, 1 58-1 61 ; and Agrippa, ch. 33, who seems to give their
limits in the constellations, and not in contemporary right ascension.

346 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

have studied the matter out as much as his clerk did, and have known as well
as he in what term and face the moon was.^

But as to their attention to another lunar matter we are not at all left to
inference. Four or five times we are told that Aurelius' brother and the
Orleans clerk heeded especially

the eighte and twenty mansiouns
That longen to the mone.*

The mansions ^ of the moon are divisions of its monthly path each nearly 1 3°
in length.^ When the clerk sets about his work, his first task relates to them.

By his eighte spere in his wirking
He knew ful wel how fer Alnath was shove
Fro the heed of thilke fixe Aries above,
That in the ninthe speere considered is ;
Ful subtilly he calculed al this (1280-1284).

Alnath is the name of the first lunar mansion.^ He calculates how far it has

^ Two other cases of unobtrusive accuracy confirm this belief. First, Aurelius prays the
sun and moon to help him,

^ now next at this opposicioun
Which in the signe shal be of the Leoun " (105 7-1058).

This, as Skeat shows, is not because at the opposition next after May 6 (1. 906) either planet
is in Leo, but because Leo is the house of the sun. Secondly, the' Franklin evidently had good
reason for assuring those who might be acquainted with ^ Tables Toletanes " that the clerk's
were " ful wel corrected " (1274). Roger Bacon complains (I, 298-300) that the " tabulae Tole-
tanae ** make mistakes as to longitude. Though the term " Toletan tables " is sometimes given
especially to those ** published under the direction of Arzachel in 1080 " (Arthur Berry, Short
History of Astronomy , New York, 1910, p. 80; cf. Bacon, Ix.y editor's note), Chaucer doubtless
and Bacon very probably refer to the better ones published in 1252 by order of Alfonso el Sabio
of Castile (Berry, p. 85). In the fifteenth century an eclipse of the moon was observed to be
an hour later than it should have been, and Mars 2^ from where it should have been, according
to them ; in 1563 Tycho Brahe observed a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn a month from the
time calculated from them (Berry, pp. 87, 130). One trouble with them is said to be that they
recognized ^ trepidation," an imaginary inequality in the precession of the equinoxes (Bacon,
Ix.; Zf. d. deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft^ XVIII, 178). Possibly, however, "cor-
rected" has the modem meaning of adaptation to a different standard, here to a different
latitude and longitude. * LI. H30-1131 ; cf. 11 54-1 155, 1280-1286, 1 289-1 290.

* This word, in which there is no ambiguity in this tale, is of course used in two astrologi-
cal senses — as above, and as a synonym for ** house in the first of the following senses."
** House " is used for the sigpi in which a planet is most powerful, and for a twelfth part of the
fixed vault of heaven starting down from about the eastern horizon. Cf. Bacon, pp. 258-260.

* Joannes Hisp., sig. T 4'°; Zt. d, deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschafi^ XVIII, 175-176.
^ " Alnath dicitur prima mansio lune " (gloss in MS. Ellesmere). It is also the name of the

third magnitude star a Arietis. £l-ndtih or £l-nath or Al-nath is one name of the star and man-
sion in the Arabic system of mansions, whence the European was derived ; cf. Ludewig Ideler,
Untersuchungen Uberden Ursprung und die Bedeutungder Stemnamen (Berlin, 1809), p. 135, and
F. K. Ginzel, MathemcUische und technische Chronologie (Leipzig, 1906), p. 72. According to
Joannes Hispalensis, op. cit.<, sig. H i^°, S3^^ T4">, the first mansion is called comua Arietis.
Other references on these mansions in the skies are Cornelius Agrippa, Ix.^ ch. 33, 46 ; Stein-
schneider in Zt. d. deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft^ XVIII, 118-201, and in Zt. f.

■*••■-

TATLOCK 345

(degrees 27 or 28 to 30), which, according to Coley,^ would produce an
'* accidental debility " of one. One thing more ; that he

knew the arysing of his mone weel

is doubtless because a planet rising is in the ascendent, the daily position
of greatest power .^ This would give the moon five fortitudines or virtutes
for being in its house, three for the triplicity, one for being in term of
Jupiter or Venus, one for being in its own face, and five (or twelve) for
the ascendent.^

The moon in the fourth term and third face of Cancer is in its strongest
6° or 7° of the whole 360° ; ^ put it, the planet of necromancy, in the ascendent
to boot, and what time could be so favorable for the clerk's design ? When
we find analogy indicating a full moon, and the careful and subtle Chaucer's
implications harmonizing with a certain date, and when we find that the full
moon on that date would have this extraordinary potency for his purpose,
how can we believe this accidental ? Chaucer, who knew astrology well, must

^ p. 88. Cf. Cornelius Agprippa {De Occ. Philos.y II, 30), — the moon for magical purposes
" non sit impedita 4 Marte vel Satumo."

^ The *^ house of the ascendent," that one of the twelve daily locations of a planet in which
it is most potent, extends from 5° above the eastern horizon to 25*^ below it {Astrolabe^ II, 4,
11. 17-30 ; cf. 1-4) ; or from the eastern horizon to 30*^ below (Joannes Hisp., sig. D 3"). When
astrological images are made (according to Albertus Magnus, in Catal, Cod. Astrol. Grcuc.y
V, i, 103), " sit luna in ascendente facie et signo " ; in our case it is stronger yet. For the above
purpose, Agrippa would have it in the ascendent in \he first face of Cancer {De Occ. Philos.y
II, 44). In the Filocolo (p. 53) the time is well on in the night : " I vaghi gradi della notte pas-
savano, gli uccelli le fiere e gli uomini riposavano senza alcuno mormorio " ; and midnight in

' * Fertque vagos mediae per muta silentia noctis

Incomitata gradus. Homines volucresque ferasque
Solverat alta quies : nuUo cum murmure saepes,
Inmotaeque silent frondes.

In both the Filocolo and Ovid, accordingly, the full moon would be far past the ascendent.

• Coley, p. 88 ; Joannes Hisp., sig. F 2'*^. Cf. also sig. F 3'°, — twelve virtutes from opposi-
tion to 12° thereafter, and eleven from 12° before to opposition. Doubtless an astrologer with
such a problem would have considered many other points. As to these there is little to say,
for want of details. From what we are told we are extracting pretty much the uttermost
farthing, and in any case the points mentioned are the main ones. That Chaucer had not for-
gotten others may be indicated by 11. 1 273-1 279, partly explained by Skeat. From his "rotes"
and other data, by means of " his centres and his arguments," " his collect " and " his expans
yeres," "and his proporcionels convenients," he made his "equacions"; that is, probably,
located the signs of the zodiac in the " houses " in the second sense mentioned in note 3, p. 346,
and perhaps ascertained the positions of the other planets both in the zodiac and in the houses,
and hence their " aspects " to the moon, and the nature and amount of their influence. Cf. Astro-
labe^ ii, 36-37, 40, 44-45, ^'^^ Joannes Hisp., sig. O 4™ f.

* The second-best sign would be Taurus; the moon is exalted in the third degree of it, is
lord of the triplicity by night, and has the second face (degrees 11-20). See Joannes Hisp.,
sig. B 2'o, C 2^0 f. ; and Coley, p. 85. The moon could not have more than three essential
dignities at once, for terms are not assigned to the sun and moon, and the house and exalta-
tion are never in the same sign, except for Mercury in Virgo (Joannes Hisp., B 3*0, C 2'<> ;
Coley, p. 85 ; Bacon, p. 261).

344 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

the second or third,^ are the ** face " of the moon.^ Moreover, at exactly the
same time (or within a couple of hours) the moon would enter the fourth term
of Cancer, which includes degrees 20-26 and belongs to Jupiter, according to
Joannes Hispalensis,* or 21-27 and belongs to Venus, according to Henry
Coley, a seventeenth-century authority.^ These two planets are respectively
the greater and lesser fortunes, whose influence is favorable, and both are
called friendly to the moon ; ^ and if we can believe Coley,^ a planet in the
term of Jupiter or Venus has an ** accidental fortitude *' of one. All this no
doubt is why the Franklin says the clerk

knew the arysing of his mone weel,
And in whos face and terme^ and every deel (i 287-1 288).

At the time in question the moon was in term of Jupiter (or Venus) and in its
own face ; but it behooved him to act promptiy, for not much over half a day
after entering this favorable term the moon would enter the term of Saturn

^ Cf. Astrolabe^ ii, i and 12, and Bacon, 272-273. The sun, reaching the tropic of Capricorn
on the I2**» December in 1361 and for about 125 years thereafter, would enter the last 10® of the
sign on 2"** or 3"* January, and the full moon would of course- be at the same time at the point
directly opposite. The date agrees remarkably with that in the Filocolo (Rajna merely notes
that in both tales the travellers return in December: Romania^ XXXII, 239). Tarolfo and the
wizard Tebano arrive ** assai vicini del mese del quale era stato dimandato il giardino ** (the
garden being required in January). After privily waiting, " entrato gik il mese," they have a full
moon that night (p. 53), Tebano beg^s his spells, and after gathering certain matters from all
over the world, returns in his dragon-car before the end of the third day (p. 55), immediately
finishes the garden, notifies Tarolfo, and he the lady (p. 57). This puts the accomplishment of
the task on the y^ or 4* January (in the Decameron version it is the night before the 1"). Since
there is nothing about the time of year in Ovid, it may be that Boccaccio, too, was aware of
the astrological fitness of the early days of January ; yet it is an independent fact that the time
apparently most favorable for astrological magic is the time most unfavorable for gardens. As
to Chaucer, I should be quite ready to admit that at this point he may have remembered
Boccaccio's tale ; but considering that the latter ignores astrology and the Franklin* s Tale is
full of its minutiae, we can hardly doubt that Chaucer clearly saw reason for the date he indi-
cates. It is curious, but hardly significant, that the tables from which the position of a planet
for any date was calculated gave it for noon of the last day of December {Astrolabe^ ii, 44-45).
This season can hardly have been selected because the rocks would seem more formidable
then ; they are hardly mentioned here, and from the point of view of the story the selection of
winter is a mere chance.

2 Joannes Hisp., sig. B 3"*, C 3^** ; Coley, p. 85 ; Skeat, III, Ixxvii. Cf. Astrolabe^ ii, 4,
U. 62-65 {Students Chaucer). As early as the fourth century Ammianus Marcellinus ridicules
atheists who will not do the most trivial thing without learning in what part of Cancer the
moon is {Res Gestcuy XXVIII, iv, 24).

• Sig. B 3'°, C 2*°. He assigns degrees 1-7 to Mars, 8-12 to Venus, 13-19 to Mercury, and
27-30 to Saturn.

^ Coley assigns the five terms to the planets in not quite the same order as Joannes does
(op. cit.y p. 85). That there are not more cases than there are of imperfect agreement among
the astrological authorities cited in this article, ranging in date from the second century to the
seventeenth, shows how firmly the pseudo-science rested on tradition. Joannes' Epitome (250
years before Chaucer) and Coley's Key (300 after) agree closely. Cornelius Agrippa mocks at a
few disagpreements among astrologers as to detail, in that pessimistic work. The Vanity of Arts
and Sciences (London, 1676), p. 94. * Coley, p. 90. • P. 88.

TATLOCK 343

produces a rain of riches when the full moon is in a certain lunar mansion ;
here, too, the magic depends on the lunar mansions. The full seems also to
be the phase of greatest power ; according to Joannes Hispalensis,^ a high
twelfth-century authority, the most powerful stage is from opposition to 12**
thereafter, the next most powerful being from 12*^ before to opposition. If
the moon is full, this fits in remarkably with other matters. The sun is in
the sign Capricomus,^ and the full moon therefore in Cancer. This sign
is the ** house " of the moon,^ that sign in which it is most potent.^ Further,
in Cancer the moon is ** lord of the triplicity in common." * Now we must note
that Chaucer tells us a litde more of the date ; while it is close to the end of
December when the travellers arrive from Orleans,® with his utmost haste,
watching night and day (i 262-1 263), it is only *' atte laste " that the clerk
finds a favorable time (i 270), which would naturally bring us into January. This
may be significant, for degrees 21-30 of Cancer, which in the fourteenth cen-
tury the moon (if full) would pass through in about three fourths of a day "^ about

^ op. ctt,y sig. F y°, Roger Bacon puts the matter a little differently : ^ Nam in istis quad-
raturis fordssima operatio Lunae est" {op. cit.., p. 385) ; *^quando Luna edt in augibus suorum
circulorum, ut in novilunio et plenilunio, tunc sunt fortiores operationes ejus, ut patet in flux-
ibus maris et in piscibus *' (p. 388). He is speaking especially of the influence of the moon on
weather, the tides, and living beings. Aristotle mentions the especial influence of the full moon
on gpiibs and children {De AnimcUibus Historicu., Paris, 1854 ; V, xxiii ; VII, xii ; and cf. Pars.
T., 424).

' But now in Capricorn adoun he lighte (1248).

' Joannes Hisp., sig. B 3'o, C z"^ ; Bacon, I, 258 ; Coley, p. 34 j John of Salisbury, Policra^
ticus (ed. Webb, Oxford, 1909), I, no; Gower, Conf. Am., VII, 1062-1063. In Trot/, and
Cr.y III, 624-628, the moon (near the new), Saturn, and Jupiter conjoined in Cancer produce a
great rain ; Cancer is aquosae naturae (Joannes Hisp., sig. B 3^) and is the exaltation of Jupiter,
the conjunction of Saturn and the moon indicates rain (sig. G 2^°), and the conjunctio maxima
of Saturn and Jupiter indicates floods (Bacon, p. 263). The moon itself was thought to have
especial influence over rain (Joannes Hisp., sig. G 2'*>, etc.) ; therefore Nicholas in the Miller's
Tale (3513-3521) pretends to have learned from it of an imminent flood.

* The five ** essential dignities '' of a planet are house, exaltation, triplicity, term, and face.
In the first it has five ** fortitudes " (or units of power), in the second four, and so on down to
one in a face. See Coley, p. 88 ; Joannes Hisp., sig. C 2*° f., F 2"> ; Bacon, pp. 257-261 ; Skeat,
III, Ixxviii and 359; Oxf. Diet., s.w. house, mansion. (Is there not some error in the last two
authorities as to the exaltation ?) Note that while each of the other planets has two signs as
houses, the sun and moon have only one each.

* I.e., by both day and night (Joannes Hisp., sig. B 3% C 2*° ; Skeat, III, Ixxvii f.), Venus
and Mars being lords by day and night respectively. According to Vettius Valens' Anthologiae
(ed. Kroll, Berlin, 1908 ; Bk. II, ch. i, p. 56), a Greek work on astrology of the second century a.d.,
often quoted by later writers, these three are lords of the triplicity in Cancer, but the moon
takes third place both day and night Reginald Scot's Discouerie of Witchcraft (London, 1584),
p. 398, gives the lords as the moon, Venus, and Jupiter.

• And this was, as the bokes me remembre.
The colde frosty seson of Decembre (1243- 1244).
Janus sit by the fyr, with double herd (1252).
And ' Nower cryeth every lusty man (1255).

^ The moon advances an average of 13^** daily, the tropical month (or time it takes the
moon to return to a given right ascension) being about 27} days.

342 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

nigromantiam et mendacium, et ideo lex Lunae erit nigromantica et magica
et mendosa," ^ and therefore should be particularly favorable to magic illusions.
As to the phase of the moon we are not told, but if it was considered, the
probabilities are that it would be the full.^ The wizard in the Filocolo story
(significant as a parallel, whether or not as a source) begins his spells at full
moon.^ Medea in Ovid's Metamorphoses expressly waits for it when she is
about to rejuvenate iEson.^ In the Vedabbha Jdtaka ^ a Brahmin by a spell

^ Roger Bacon, Opus Majus (ed. Bridges, London, 1900), I, 262. Cf. also n. 4, below, and
pp. 347 ff. Cornelius Agrippa, speaking especially of the celestial matters to be observed by
magicians, says the moon transmits the influences of the other planets, and has more manifest
powers than they, her movements must be regarded more than theirs, and by her means we
attract the power of higher bodies {De Occulta Philosophia^ Lugduni, 1531 ? ; Bk. II, ch. 32, and
cf. 59). The general connection of the moon with witchcraft is well known. Cf. Lea, Inquisi-
tion of the Middle Ages y III, 437 ; also Apuleius' Apologia (London, 1825), III, 1398, and Ovid's
Metamorphoses y vii, 174-178. On the peculiar power of the moon, according to the Babylonian
paganism, cf. Cumont, Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (New York),
pp. 59, 124, 126; "a multitude of mysterious influences" were attributed to the moon (and
some are still, even in America). Further, in all ** elections of times " the moon was to be
considered, " semper in electione aspice locum Lunae " (Joannes Hispalensis, Epitome totius
Astrologiae^ Nuremberg, 1548; sig. R 3") ; cf. Man of Law's Tale^ 306-308.

3 If this were history, of course we could not assume a full moon at a given time in a given
celestial position. But this is fiction, and analogy and the data point to this phase.

• " Vide i comi della luna tomati in compiuta ritonditli" (p. 53).

^ Bk. vii, 179-182, 268. This is the source of Boccaccio's account of the magic (Zingarelli in
Rom.<t XIV, 433-441)* and must have been known to Chaucer. It is highly characteristic of the
two men that the former's account is ancient and literary in source, and Chaucer's is contem-
porary and ** scientific," being based on astrology, as the others are not. From Ovid is also
the story of Medea's spells in Gower's Confessio Amantis, who seems muddled as to time
(v, 3957-3958, 3961, 4019, 41 1 5), but puts the end of the process at new moon. He may have
had reason for this, but it would seem a very unsuitable time for the magic of the Orleans clerk,
for the new moon would be in Capricomus, which is its " fall " or ** detriment," the position of
least potency (Joannes Hisp., sig. B i, 3; Henry Coley's Key to Astrology, London, 1676,
p. 85 ; Gower's Conf Am., vii, 1175 ; Oxf Diet.; Skeat, III, Ixxviii). Except perhaps at the pre-
cise moment of conjunction, the new moon anywhere would be unfavorable, according to the
sixteenth-century Cornelius Agprippa {De Occ. Philos., Bk. II, ch. 30) : " nisi forte sit in unitate
cum sole," for magical purposes the moon should not be " combust " (and so deprived of power),
as it or any other planet within 8° 30' of the sun (or 6° according to Joannes) is said to be (cf . Oxf.
Diet.; Coley, p. 95; Joannes Hisp., sig. D 4'°, E i"* f., F 3"*). Joannes also says (sig. T 3^)
that the conjunction of the sun and moon is unlucky. Agrippa does not seem to favor the
precise moment, at least, of full moon either, — ^^ nee sit opposita soli." Roger Bacon (in his
commentary on the Secreta Secretorum, quoted by Bridges, I, 403-404) says of the day of the
moon's opposition to the sun, ** Dies cavenda est in omnibus operibus quia nullum bonum est in
ea," and of the day of conjunction with the sun, ^ In hac die erit luna sub radiis [a technical
term]. Nullum bonum nisi in his quae necesse sunt occultari et contegi." But none of this is said
with reference to magic. The choice of a waning moon for the riot of witchcraft in the Wal-
purg^snacht scene of Goethe's Faust may be due to a sense of picturesque fitness, though pic-
tures in early works show a moon near the new (Witkowski, Walputgisnacht, 28, 33). Altogether,
my supposition as to this baffling subject seems justifiable.

* This is the supposed ultimate original of the Pardoner's Tale ; cf. OrigincUs and Analogues
(Chaucer Soc), pp. 418 ff. An oriental parallel is the more likely to be significant because
ideas about the lunar mansions were of oriental origin. The translation edited by E. B. Cowell
{The fdtaha, Cambridge, 1895 ; I, 1 21-124) mentions the full moon but not the lunar mansion.

TATLOCK 341

among his imposing books (1207,1214) he shows them magic visions of hunt-
ing, hawking, and jousting, and finally a cruelly tantalizing vision, enough to
break down the last stronghold of their caution, of Aurelius going on the
dance with Dorigen.^ Allowing his hints to work while his guests eat, he
takes advantage of their postprandial optimism to state his terms,^ and after
all this he ran small risk of rejection when he '* made it straunge " and would
have them believe a thousand pounds a low price,^ and it is no wonder
Aurelius "with blisful herte" answers impatiently,

" Fy on a thousand pound ! "

to pay which he later realizes would ruin him (1559 ff.). Whenever the clerk
speaks, the manner of his words is apt and forceful. He is imperious and
shows deference toward his guests in addressing his attendant (1209-12 14).
But to them he shows a more familiar manner and gentle traits ; toward the
woebegone lover he is now humorously sympathetic, with his genial chaff,^ now
kindly and effectively zealous, with his usual energy and promptness (1261-
1262). Business is business with him, and at the end his cross-examination of
his recalcitrant client is a model of terse pointedness (i 585-1591); but, in the
same style, he announces his magnanimous release of him, when he learns
that this is no time for merely business methods (1607- 16 19). The keen
and ambitious clerk responds instantly to the noble example set by the self-
controlled knight and the gentle squire. That every one of these interpreta-
tions represents what was in Chaucer's mind, who could prove (or disprove) i
But when we notice how every touch makes fuller and firmer the outline of
a business-like man of science who is a gentleman as well, how can we doubt
that this is what Chaucer meant ? Chaucer's appearance of simplicity is some-
times due merely to the modern reader's inattentiveness.

But our chief concern is with the clerk's technical skill. In the account of
his observances more is meant than meets the ear of the twentieth century,
but much of it was doubtless instantly clear to a well-informed reader in the
fourteenth. The only planet which he is mentioned as considering is the
moon,^ and there is reason for this : '* Luna enim, ut dicunt, significat super

* Ll. 1 189-1201. Magic inusions such as these were just what Aurelius' brother expected his
friend could produce (1142-1151), are discussed by the rabble in .S^. 71, 217-219, and are
ascribed to "CoUe tregetour" in //. y^, 1 277-1 281. Professor Schofield gives various other
examples of illusion from mediaeval romance {Publ. Mod. Lang. Assoc. <, XVI, 419) ; cf. also
Comparetti, Virgilio nel medio Evo, Pt. II, ch. x (Engl, transl., p. 360).

2 At-after soper fille they in tretee (12 19).

^ L. 1225; an enormous sum, of course, for such a service, equivalent to ten or fifteen
thousand pounds to-day. * " This amorous folk som-tyme mote han reste " (1218).

* And knew the arysing of his mone weel (1287).
And knew ful weel the mones mansioun
Acordaunt to his operacioun (1289- 1290).

Cf. 1129-1131.

340 ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN FRANKLIN'S TALE

he chose a means which brought the poem closer to real life, the astrological
magic which the Middle Ages almost universally credited.^ A long episode
precisely in the middle of the poem is formed by the project to bring the
Orleans clerk to Penmark, his reception and entertainment of the travellers,
their return to Brittany, his watching for a time celestially fit for his rites,
and the disappearance of the rocks.

The magician * is the most subtly interesting person in the tale, the only
character who is always master of the situation ; a somewhat complex person,
fit to refute the boast of Simkin in the Reeve s Tale that

" The gretteste clerkes been noght the wysest men,

for he is no more notable for his skill in his art than for his practical sagacity
and tact, his proficiency in the business side of it. He is still young (1173),
but through the reminiscences of Aurelius' brother (1123 ff.) we are allowed
a glimpse of him when he was yet younger, as a bachelor of law at Orleans,
active, inquisitive, and daring, who neglected his legal pursuits in order to
study magic on the sly (1119-1128).^ Meanwhile he has so progressed in
it that when the brothers meet him he can tell them all that is in their
minds. Since he is walking about alone with a disengaged look ^ in the out-
skirts of Orleans on the road which leads from Brittany, we may perhaps
infer that he is resolved not to let a rich client slip through his fingers for
want of meeting him halfway. When they reach his well-appointed house,
which impresses even the wealthy Aurelius (1187-IX8S), by the prodigality
of his supper ^ he prepares his visitors for a high price, and give? tacit assur-
ance that he is worthy of it by presenting shrewdly-selected examples of his
skill, taking care however not to weary them (i 202-1 204). Knowing that his
client is the squire Aurelius and not the clerk-brother, as they sit in his study

^ Magic is also the means in the only ante-Chaucerian analogues which involve a quasi-
impossible task, Boccaccio's two versions of the story which are in the Filocolo (Moutier edition,
II, 48-60) and the Decameron (tenth day, novel 5), and the former of which many believe to be
Chaucer's source. See Rajna in Romania^ XXXI, 40-47, and XXXII, 204-267, and Lot in Le
Moytn Agey 1902, pp. 108-1 12 ; but, contra^ Schofield in Publ. Mod, Lang. Assoc,, XVI, 405-449.

^ So called in 11. 1184, 1241, 1295; also called a **maister" (1202, 1209, 1220, 1257) and a
" philosophre " (1561, 1585, 1607), general words often used in a specific sense. Cf. the Oxford
Dictionary y Godefroy, Ehicange (s.v. magisterium) ; according to Martinus Del Rio's Disquisi-
tiones Magicae (Mainz, 1606), II, 500, the second part of astrology contains magisterium and
nativitatus ; cf. also Albertus Magnus's use oi magisterium (Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum
Graecorum, Brussels, 1898-1906, V, i, loi, 105), and Zeitsch. fur Mathematik u. Physiky XVI, 373.

* It is not quite certain that he is the particular " felawe " whom Aurelius' brother first
thought of, for they seem to have belonged to a set in which the clandestine study of magic
flourished (11 52-1 156), but most of the above would apply to any of them. The University of
Orleans in Chaucer's day was only a law school.

* Whan they were come almost to that citee,
But-if it were a two furlong or three,

A yong clerk rominge by him-self they mette (1171-1173).

* Hem lakked no vitaille that mighte hem plese .(1186).

"■ w

ASTROLOGY AND MAGIC IN CHAUCER'S

FRANKLIN'S TALE

John Strong Perry Tatlock

Dorigen, pining by the Breton shore for her husband Arveragus, absent in
England, has fallen into a melancholy, a ** derke fantasye," which is only in-
creased by the means she takes to relieve it ; she cannot look out on the sea
over which he must return to her without seeing the grisly fiendly black
rocks lying out along the coast, and without thinking of the perils of ship-
wreck and striving to see through a thicker cloud than the Breton haze, the
mystery of evil. Even though her friends try to divert her in a charming
inland garden, the menacing rocks seem to be still before her eyes. When
the squire Aurelius has revealed his love to her, and she pla)^ully casts about
for a gentler way of rejecting him than her first flat refusal, she promises to
be his when he shall have removed every stone from the coast of Brittany.
He, like many another lover in mediaeval romance, attempts neither to forget
nor to content her, but takes to his bed ; till his more practical brother at last,
after the husband's return, bethinks hinf how by the aid of magic Aurelius
may keep the word of promise to her eye and break it to her hope. He
fetches an old college mate from Orleans, through whose skill in magic the
rocks vanish for a week or two. Thus by a brilliant stroke of dramatic irony
the very means Dorigen has taken to rid herself forever of her unwelcome
suitor is what puts her helpless in his power, and the very task which her
anxious fidelity to her husband has led her to choose threatens to become the
cause of her unwilling infidelity. It is only through the rare generosity of
her lover, stimulated by that of her husband, that she saves her honor as a
wife without prejudice to the honor of her word.

In this tale astrology and magic are more essential than in any other of
Chaucer's works except the Squire's Tale and the Complaint of Mars ^ and are
used with more evident familiarity ^ than anywhere else except in the latter and
in the treatise on the astrolabe. Everything hinges on the achievement of a
feat of which the lover himself can only say despairingly, when it is proposed,

H " This were an inpossible."

Since Chaucer has set the poem in pagan times, he might have ascribed the
marvel to the power of a divinity, but characteristically of his later manner

^ It is curious to notice how astrology and its terms were in Chaucer's mind all through the
poem: cf. 11. 781, 1033, 1057-1058 (and Skeat's note), 1067-1068, 1246.

339

LAWRENCE 363

These ** brags " frequendy involved emulation with another hero, and it is
just here that Unferth*s slanders gain color in the minds of his hearers. Breca
accomplished his 6eot — the technical term for a formal boast of any sort —
by surpassing Beowulf ; such is Unferth's charge. In his answer, Beowulf
uses the same term, Wit pcet gecwcedon . . . ond gebeotedon. But he brings
out the true state of the case, not only by his denial that either outstripped
the other, but by his statement ond pcet gecefndon swdy *' and WE performed
it, too.'* It is important to observe that two or more men might "boast"
that they would accomplish a difficult task, without endeavoring to excel each
other. The heroes in Hrothgar's hall who made formal vows to slay Grendel
{gebeotedon^ 480) were not concerned to surpass each other ; the object was
to rid their people of a deadly scourge. Indeed, the gaining of great glory by
the fulfillment of a perilous feat sometimes involved companionship. Warriors
might boast that they would risk their lives together, and succeed or fail as
comrades. Consider, for example, an episode in the Jdmsvikingasaga, The
heroes, with Sigwald at their head, visit King Swein in Denmark, and a place
is assigned them at the winter-feast in the hall.

On the first evening of the banqueting the Jomsvikings drank, as the story goes, im-
moderately, and the drink had a powerful effect ; only the strongest liquor was brought in
for them. And when King Swdn saw that they would get almost dead drunk and were
already very voluble, he addressed the company and said : " Here is a great assembly of

), ' men, and many heroes! I propose that you all undertake something to please and divert

us ! " Then Sigwald replied : " That is well said. Lord, as is your custom ! But we think that

you ought to begin yourself, for it is right for us to give place to your Majesty in all matters.'*

So King Swdn said : ** I know that men have often made brags among themsdves for glory

<*». - and pleasure, and I am ready to try that now, for I believe that such renowned men as you

Jomsvikings are — more renowned in every way than other folk throughout the whole
North — will show yourselves ready to undertake something really masterful in such an
exchange of words, as one may well expect from your bearing, in which you far surpass all

. other men. And it is to be expected that men will hold all this in memory, and count it to

your honor. But I will myself not refuse to begin this diversion." And he continued : " I
make, then, the formal vow that before three winters are over I shall have fared westwards
to England with my forces, and returned home, and that King Ethelred shall either have
fallen or fled the country and I shall have his sovereignty. Now it is your turn to speak, O
Sigwald! " ^* So let it be. Lord," answered Sigwald, and as a great drinking-horn was brought
to him, he stood up, took the horn, and said : " I vow to sail to Norway and attack Jarl

^ Hakon before the third winter from this, and not to return until I have killed the Jarl or

driven him out of the country, and if I have not it will be because I have lost my life." After
these words Sigwald emptied the horn. " That goes wdl," cried King Swdn, " and that is
a noble boast" Then he led Sigwald to the high seat and gave him the tide of Jarl; he
said that he expected that Sigwald would accomplish it successfully, as he had vowed to do,
and said that he must reward such mighty enmity to the Norwegians. Then the king called
out: " Now it is your turn, O Thorkell Hafi, to speak ! What will you vow to undertake?

^ You must be bold and courageous ! " "I vow," answered Thorkell, " to follow my brother

Sigwald, and not to flee sooner than he, as long as I see the prow of his ship and the oars
ready for acdon, in case he fights on the water with Jarl Hakon ; but if he engages with

•> ■ • r
1

364 THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF

him on shore, I will not retreat until I can see Sigwald no more in the thick of the fight,
and his banner is behind me." " That was well spoken," said the king, " and you will no
doubt accomplish it, for you are a doughty hero ! Now it is your turn to speak, Bui Digri !
AVe know that you will have something worthy of a man to promise, for you are rightly
called the mightiest of heroes." Bui said, "This vow do I make, that I will fare northwards
with Jarl Sigwald and follow him in this expedition as long as my endurance permits, and

not flee from Jarl Hakon until fewer of our men remain than have fallen, and I will hold

out as long as Sigwald will have me." ^

Space does not permit of quoting this scene at greater length ; but this
^11 suffice to illustrate how Beowulf and Breca might, without personal
rivalry, have striven as comrades to accomplish their boast that they would
swim the wintry sea.

Koegel appears to think that Beowulf beat Breca because he landed in
Finna land (580), whereas Breca came to shore among the Heado-Reamas
(519).^ But this does not prove that Beowulf had swum further than Breca.
In the first place, scholars are not agreed as to whence they started.^ This is
surely an important consideration ! In the second place, we cannot be sure of
the location either of the HeatkhReamas or of the Finna land. The generally
accepted identification of the former with the Raumaricii of Jordanes rests on
emendation of the manuscript.* Finna land has been explained as the realm of
King Finn in Friesland, as the island of Fiinen, as Finheden in Sweden, and
as a locality in Bohuslan.^ It seems most probable to the present writer that
it is to be taken simply as "the land of the Finns,** thought of vaguely as
being a long distance away across the water, a good remote locality for a man
to reach by swimming.^ Those hearing or reading the Anglo-Saxon epic
would have been much more likely to take it in this way, whatever was the
case in the Scandinavian form of the tale. I believe that modem critics fre-
<juently err in supposing that the man who put Beowulf into its present shape
had a clear idea of the geographical relationships of the Northland. Such
relationships are, as everyone knows, frequently hazy in mediaeval story. But
«ven granting that the Finna land was farthest from the starting-point, this

1 From the German translation by F. Khull of MS. A.M. 510 Copenhagen {Jakresbericht des
-jnveiUn Stoats - Gymnasiums) ^ Graz, 1891, pp. 25 ff. I have not been able to consult the original.

^ ** £r ist also weiter nach Norden vorgedrungen als Breca, den er auch durch seine Hel-

denthaten wahrend der Schwimmfahrt ubertrofifen zu haben glaubt" The heroic deeds are not

the issue, of course ; Unferth's specific charge is that they had a swimming contest, and that

Beowulf was worsted (507, 517). For Koegel's discussion, see his Geschuhte der deutscheti Lit'

ieratury Vol. I, pp. 1 10 ff.

* Contrast, for instance, the view of Bugge, Btitragey Vol. XII, p. 55, with that of R. W.
Chambers, Widsith^ p. no. * -rctmes to -reamas.

* Bugge, pp. 53 f. ; Sarrazin, Beowulf-Studien^ 1888, p. 32.

* On the location of the Finns, a scattered and migratory people, see Zeuss, Die Deutschen
und ihre Nachbarstdmme^ Munich, 1837, pp. 272 ff., 683 ff. If those here mentioned are the same
people as in Widsithy p. 20, Cdsere weold Creacum and Ccelic Finnum^ they are to be placed,
according to Chambers, p. 213, note, to the east and northeast of the Baltic

LAWRENCE 365

does not seem an answer to Unferth's taunt. Beowulf says that he and Breca
were parted against their will by stormy weather, and driven asunder. This
is hardly beating Breca, nor does the poet appear to consider it so. If there
had really been a *' swimming match " and a victory, it seems safe to say that
Beowulf would have been quick to claim it, in his usual self-confident fashion.
Instead, he goes out of his way to say that Breca was unable to outstrip him,
and that he had no desire to swim faster than Breca, placing the emphasis on
his slaying of the nickers. If there really had been a '* swimming match," we
can hardly believe the poet would have left the result so indecisive, no matter
how many nickers had been killed.

The parallel to this episode pointed out by Bugge in the Egilssaga ok
Asmundar^ appears, in the light of the foregoing discussion, less convincing
than ever. Brandl has called the resemblances "vague and insignificant,**^
but since the passage is frequently cited, it may be well to examine it briefly
here. Egill, with thirty others, engaged in a contest as to which could swim
farthest (hverr lengst mundi geta lagizt i vatnit) in an inland lake. ** Egill
was fleetest in swimming, and no one could keep up with him {ok gat engi
fylgt konufn)y and when they had gone far from the land, there arose so dark
a mist that no one could see another, and a cold wind sprang up. They now
lost their way in the strait, and Egill did not know what had become of his
men ; he floated around in the water two days, then he came to land, and was
so exhausted that he had to creep ashore, and gather mosses and lie on them
the night.** The only resemblance which this narrative affords to Beowulf
appears to be the fact that Egill was only a boy, tSlf vetr gamally and that he
was separated from his companions by bad weather.

Brandl's own views as to the interpretation of the Breca episode appear,
however, no more convincing. He believes it is to be explained as originat-
ing in a ** nature myth,** but he is unwilling to hazard a definite analysis.
A restatement of his views in answer to criticisms has made his hypothesis
no more intelligible to his critic.^ His general idea is, of course, an in-
heritance from Miillenhoff and his followers. Mullenhoff explained the

^ Cf. Bagge, pp. 51 ff. ; Brandl, Paul's Grundriss^ second ed., Vol. II, p. 992.

' ** Das Motiv beniht auf der menschenartigen Ausmalung eines Naturvorganges ; aufge-
brochen und ofFen gehalten wird das sudskandinavische Meer im Winter durch den Wind, im
westlichen Norwegen aber sorgt der Golfstrom fiir freies Fahrwasser. £s ist offenbar eine
Lokalbeobachtung aus der Nahe der alten Angelnheimat, die von den Eroberem mit nach
England gebracht wurde. Sie ist mythisch ausgebildet (** Breca" = Brecher), und dann fabulis-
tisch mit einem blossen Menschen (Beowulf) in Verbindung gebracht" (p. 992). "Wenn ich
sagte, dass das Brecamotiv auf der menschenartigen Ausmalung eines Naturvorganges beruhte,
30 behauptete ich damit noch lange nicht dass die Brecaperson des Epos den Wind bedeutete
und sein starkerer Schwimmrivale Beowulf den Golfstrom. . . . Moglicherweise kniipfte man
die Erzahlung erst nachtraglich an den alten, im Widsith bezeugten Namen Bre(o)ca, etc."
Brandl's discussion should be read entire (see Archiv, 1909, p. 473) ; for criticism of the Gulf-
Stream and polar-current idea, see Panzer, Beowulf ^ Munich, 1910, p. 270.

366 THE BRECA EPISODE IN BEOWULF

**schwimmwettkampf " with considerable definiteness. The Finna land he
understood to mean the country of the Lapps, according to modem usage of
the name. **So," he argued, "[Beowulf] swam against the polar current, and
may therefore be regarded as a mythical person, a divine being friendly to
mankind, who in his youth, i.e. in the spring, subdues the violence and wild-
ness of the wintry sea, overcoming its stormy character. This [characteristic]
is represented by his rival or fellow-swimmer Breca." ^ Obviously, if the in-
terpretation of the episode advanced in the present article is correct, Mullen-
hoff 's mythology must be revised. As for the other mythological explanations
of the incident, it seems hardly necessary to review them here, since the
general principles underlying them have been criticized by various scholars
in recent years,* and since the present writer has himself commented upon
them at length elsewhere.

Whether the episode has a foundation in actual fact, as many scholars
have believed, it seems impossible to say. Before we can agree with Henry
Bradley, that "perhaps [Beowulf's] contest with Breca may have been an
exaggeration of a real incident in his career," we must make up our minds
how much reality we can, in any event, assume for the figure of the hero.
Exaggerations of the epic variety, such as the seven nights in the water and
the slaying of the sea monsters, are undoubtedly present; whether, when these
are removed, we have an actual incident or merely the attribution to an imagi-
nary hero of a feat common in early Germanic life will still remain a question.
The name and people of Breca are, as Miillenhoff suggested, reminiscent of
the sea ; Beanstan he connected etymologically with bauni^ " whale," not a
satisfactory suggestion, and it is not clear how the second syllable is explained.
In any case, we are not much nearer a decision as to the reality of these per-
sonages. What philological ingenuity may do with Beanstan is illustrated by
Panzer's connecting him with a " steinbrecher " of the fairy-tales, a view,
apart from its inherent improbability, irreconcilable with the interpretation of
the Breca episode here presented.

To throw light upon disputed questions of scholarship is not the main
object of our discussion. If this discussion has rendered a service, it will
have been chiefly in interpreting one of the finest passages in the epic more
accurately than has hitherto been done, so that we may read it with the added
pleasure which comes of sounder understanding. " Taketh the fruyt, and lat
the chaf be stille I "

1 Beovulfy Untersuckungen^ etc., Berlin, 1889, P* 2.

* Boer, Chambers (p. iii), Heinzel, Panzer, Sarrazin, Gummere. For bibliography, see the
article by the present writer in Publications of the Modem Language Association of America^
Vol. XXIV (1909), pp. 247 ff.

FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUES

Percy Waldron Long

Unique, I think, in accounts of the Elizabethan novel is R. Warwick Bond's
statement^ that " The Aduentures passed by Master F. I. (Ferdinando
leronimo), in its subject-matter, its love-making, its letters, the coquetry of its
heroine Elinor, and its general aspect as a picture of polite society, forms the
only anticipation of Euphues in English literature." Others, as Emil Koeppel ^
and J. D. Wilson,* ignore the work. Feuillerat* merely names it in a footnote
based on Einstein. Nor does Bond say more. For him, as for others, Euphues
** is, in effect, nothing less than the first English novel, the first holding up to
English men and women of the mirror of their own life and loves." So
Wilson (p. 343) and J. W. H. Atkins^ style Euphues "the first English
novel."

Yet Gascoigne's pamphlet, no less than Euphues^ will answer most defini-
tions of a novel. It chronicles a love affair ; it is told realistically, about ordi-
nary people, in ordinary surroundings ; it introduces a rival, a confidante, even
a minor love affair ; its plot has well-marked stages ; its characters are influenced
by events. True, it contains verses ; no less did most imitations of Euphues,
True again, its letters and poems almost outbulk the narrative ; but in Euphues
the ragionamenti, and soliloquies, and discourses consume fifty pages of sev-
enty, apart from the ninety pages of appended letters and treatises. Euphues^
ostensibly, does not portray English life ; Gascoigne, in the first edition, does.

Euphues^ then, is not our first novel. Can it be connected with Gascoigne ?
The latter attests that " the first Copie of these my Posies hath been verie much
inquired for by the yonger sort." ® A second edition, of 1575, was being sold
at the northwest door of St Paul's when Lyly with his degree of M. A. left
Oxford and came to London.' His eminence then appears, for example, in
Harvey's Xat/>€, 1 578,® where Erato says, " More sile : Surreie sile : Gascoigne
sileto." Since Harvey and Gascoigne used the same printer, Bynneman, since
Harvey planned to study law * and Gascoigne was a member of Gray's Inn,
and since Latin verses by " G. H." are prefixed to Gascoigne's volume, they

1 Works of John Lyly, I» 1 59- ' Ibid., I, 474 ; Fcuillcrat, p. 40.

• QuelUn und Forschungmy LXX. • Ed. Grosart, I, Introd.

• The Library y October, 1909. See Camden Society Publications, 1884, pp. 112, 178.
^John Lyly, p. 74.

• Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 345.

• Works of George Gascoigne, ed. J. W. Cunliffe, 1907, I, 12.

367

368 FROM TROTLUS TO EUPHUES

may well have been acxjuainted. Harvey says he knew Lyly at their lodgings
in the Savoy .^ There, too, lived Oxford, the Italianate earl, whose secretary
Lyly became, whose father-in-law, Lord Burleigh, was Lyly's patron, and who
both at Queen's College and later patronized Harvey.^ Across the street lived
Burleigh, to whom George Whetstone, the intimate friend of Gascoigne, dedi-
cated in 1 576 the fourth part of The Rocke of Regard, In view of Lyly's tastes,
Gascoigne's tale in the three years preceding the writing of Euphues can hardly
have escaped his attention.

Oddly enough one finds in style no traceable similarity, in content none
barring the presence of a faithless heroine, a disillusioned lover, a virtuous
lady as foil, and the ragionamenti d'amore^ then a commonplace of social life.

So, too, close antecedents for Gascoigne are wanting. In Boccaccio's Anteto
the narrative preponderates, is pastoral and apart from ordinary social life ;
the poems are of but one metrical type. His other tales give no precedent for
Gascoigne's structure. The Vita Nuova is mystical, and deals critically with
its poems in a fashion not echoed by Gascoigne. Their difference of tone for-
bids thought of direct imitation. San Pedro's Carcel de Amor (Englished by
Bemers) is partly allegorical, partly chivalric, containing no verse. Among
native sources one turns in vain to Tottel, Googe, and Turberville. They have
occasionally successive poems addressed to the same persons, poems with titles
explaining the occasion of the verse, but never poems connected by explana-
tory prose links. One can only surmise the story of their loves. Turberville
does, in Tymetes and Pyndara^ preface a succession of poems by a verse ar-
gument ; and this may have suggested the idea of having some nexus for occa-
sional poetry, such as was commonly inspired by the convention of courtly love.

Early in Gascoigne's volume^ appears Dan Bartholmew of Bath, a love
story told in triumphs and dolorous discourses. These are linked by narrative
verse presented by " The Reporter," as San Pedro's links are headed " El
auctor.'' Gascoigne declares that the lover in both his stories is the same
(I, 136, St. 2; 405, 11. 13, 18). This allusion occurs in Dan Bartholmew,
but does not establish the priority of The Adventures of F.J. , appearing, as it
does, only in the second edition ; on the contrary, Dan Bartholmew is at first
broken off as a tale unfinished, and after the supposed editor's ** Finis " stands
** Imprinted at London for Richard Smith, "^ as if the publication were there
to rest complete. The verse links, therefore, have priority.

For this earlier work the source of inspiration is Chaucer's Troilus, The
Reporter's ninety-five stanzas in rime royal at once suggest him whom Gas-
coigne termed (I, 465) ** my master Chaucer." Allusions to Chaucer's lovers,

1 Bond's Lyly^ I, 17. * Grosart's Harvey^ Index.

• EpitaphfSy Epigrams, etc., 1567 ; reprint by Collier, pp. 4-14, 36-51.
^ Still earlier (ed. Cunliffe, 1, 46-49) Gascoigne connects a few poems by prose links explain-
ing the occasions. But they do not constitute a story. * Cunliffe's Gascoigne^ I, 482.

LONG 369

though frequent (pp. 98, 109, 126, 133), may not convince, since, as Whet-
stone says,* ** The inconstancie of Cressid is so readie in every mans mouth,
as it is a needelesse labour to blase at full her abuse towardes yong Troilus."
But Gascoigne appeals (I, loi) to the authority of *' Lollius and Chaucer
both." Equally the prefatory letter to The Adventures of F. J, dwells on
** Sir Geffrey Chaucer " (p. 491) as an author to be imitated.

There the genesis of the English novel is made clear. '* G. T.*' describes
the book as containing " a number of Sonets, layes, letters, Ballades, Rondlets,
verlayes and verses, the workes of your friend and myne Master F. J. and
divers others.'* G. T.'s r61e is important, more so than E. K.*s in his rela-
tion to Spenser. Of these varied poems G. T. says: "The which when I
had with long travayle confusedly gathered together, I thought it then Opere
preciiim to reduce them into some good order. The which I have done.'*
Accordingly, his initials appear repeatedly ^ in lieu of "The Reporter.*' If
G. T. stands for George Turberville, the relation of Tymetes and Pyndara
may be significant. But all this apparatus disappears in 1575, when the tale
appears as one by a single Italian author. It becomes a story with illustrative
verse — a love story, setting its precedent for the English novel.

The alleged autobiographical character of The Adventures of F, J. brings
into strict parallel another supposedly biographical story, Harvey's account of
A Nobleman s Suit to a Country Maid^ Herein an archetypal Pamela resists
the adulterous proposals of Milord Phil, and his man P. Letters and verses
diversify the narrative, from one of which it appears that Harvey's sister
Marcie is the maid. Himself terminates the affair as deus ex machina.
These pages, being in Harvey's elegant — not his illegible — hand (p. vi),
may have circulated. Indeed, Nash apparently alludes to the episode.^ Dates
place this story in the winter of 1 574-1 575, between the editions of Gascoigne,
whom (let me repeat) Harvey admired, and whose printer was also Harvey*s.
That Harvey should have shown this work to Lyly, esteeming him " a dapper
and deft companion*' (Bond, I, 17, n. i), is not beyond belief; but that
Euphues owes to it anything of consequence could not be maintained.

A year or more later, it would seem, George Whetstone dated his dedi-
cations of The Rocke of Regard October 15, 1576. The first part contains^
The Discourse of Rinaldo and Gilettay which is, as Brydges says,^ " an inter-
mixture of prose and verse, composed much on the plan of Gascoigne's love-
tale, entitled the Fable of Ferdinando Jeronimi.** Its relation to the Romeo
and Juliet story has been pointed out by Koeppel.^ Like Gascoigne, however,
his friend Whetstone declares (p. 42) that " this discourse was first written

* Rocke of Regard^ reprint by Collier, 1870, p. 35. • Collier, pp. 41-91.

* Cunliffe*8 Gascoigne^ I, 491-499, /ojj/m. • Censura Literaria^ 181 5, VI, 12.

* Camden Society Publications^ 1884, pp. 45-49. "^ Quellen und Forschungen^ LXX, 32.

* McKerrow's Nash^ III, 129.

370 FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUES

in Italian by an unknown author." As in Gascoigne, the lovers meet at a
house party, exchange letters and verses, and arrive at an understanding
(though here without immorality). To continue the parallel, both lovers then
become ill, while a rival appears to take their place ; both mistresses with
company visit the heroes and make smooth their beds. Mistrust comes to
both. Both find their rivals in their mistresses' rooms at night. At this point

^ Whetstone, whose tale is simpler and less strikingly specific in detail, diverges
to a complicated plot and chivalric ending, with knightly combat and a wed-

^ ding of the lovers.

Again Whetstone offers a parallel to Gascoigne in the fourth part, where
verses by ** The Reporter " link " Inventions of P. Plasmos touching his hap
and hard fortune." These complaints, not merely as to love but regarding
many cozeners, constitute, however, less a story than a succession of reflec-
tions. With them, as an approach to Gascoigne, may be mentioned a set of
poems by his son-in-law Nicholas Breton, which appeared in 1577 in The
Toyes of an Idle Head} Nine poems here have headings of a few lines each
which connect the occasions chronologically and afford some setting. The
love affair occurs " in his* friends and betters house." He writes verses, once
extempore, to please the company. But, his "adversary still creeping in
countenance," he chooses another mistress and sends the former by way of
New Year's gift a farewell poem. Not yet have we a link between Gascoigne
and Lyly.

Sources for Euphues have repeatedly proved mirages, as the absurd cita-
tion of Guevara now sufficiently exposed.^ Twice while a student I read North
and Guevara, in awe of professors who detected a resemblance. Bond (I, 155)
assures himself "that Lyly was really imitating the DialV from Lyly's
mention of " the university of Athens " and " the Emperours court," of which
the first is due to the Scholemaster^ and the second is natural since a Nea-
politan might well attend the Spanish court. Nor is Bond right in stating
(I, 1 38) that " in Pettie ... we have an exact model of the style of Euphues^'
for he admits unequivocally (I, 140) that allusions to mythology do not abound,
and that historical anecdotes and similes from pseudo-natural history do not
occur. On the other hand, Lyly's indebtedness to Ascham has been under-
stated. Feuillerat, who alone recognizes (pp. 57-59) that the personality as
well as the name of Euphues comes thence, neglects to state that the course
of the story is therein foreshadowed. Thus Ascham says (p. 38) that " com-
monlie, the fairest bodies are bestowed on the foulest purposes." So in Lyly
(I, 184): "None more wittie then Euphues, yet at the first none more
wicked." Ascham declaims later against the fashions of courtly love. These
Euphues practices. Again, Ascham stresses "excellencye in learning, and

1 Grosart's Breton, I, 27-33. '^ Bond's Lyly, I, 137-138, 155-156.

• Ed. Arbcr, pp. 58-60.

The golden it/phndicU:

t difcourfe.

Grange Gentlc'
man. Student in the Common
Lavve of EngJande.

\Where^ntobeannexeJI>y the fame ilAu-
thour afwcll cercayne Metres- vpon fundry
pwnftf^««irifatmt»ni)gitiqain«iBiin»ft.Miichlienitii I

ta4*1U^rr,iflitBf)tiiciMt9(A<nfaftljtfliiuixt.

Habet isfmufcaljilencm,
Etformicxfna Utit ineSl.

r LONDON

ANN a If 77-

LONG 371

namely Diuinitie.'* It is to divinity that Euphues, disillusioned, turns (p. 1 57),
and therefore writes a dialogue against atheism.*

This debt to Ascham, with the existing stories of Gascoigne and Whetstone
ostensibly portraying Italian life, cuts the ground from under J. D. Wilson's
suggestion 2 that ** Euphues itself, the first English novel, and the most
famous romance that the age produced, was a direct adaptation of the
Prodigal Son story as developed by the Dutch dramatists." It becomes
unnecessary to connect (p. 357) " Euphues, the refined wit, and Acolastus,
the sensual simpleton " ; for at best Wilson could but suggest some lost play.

Some points yet demand solution. Why is Euphues an Athenian ? Where
did Lyly find his remarkable similes ? Is it not difficult to conceive his making
concrete the abstraction of Ascham without some model ? In any case, the
model exists, — a book apparently unknown to historians of literature, though
not to bibliographers, — John Grange's story entided TAe Golden Aphroditis.
It constitutes a direct link between Gascoigne and Lyly.

Of this volume the only copies recorded are one in the British Museum,^
two in the Bodleian (Douce and Malone collections), and one still in the
Huth Library, formerly in that of Corser, who says {Coll. Ang. Poet,, VII, 44)
that " no copy of it occurred for sale in the present [19th] century." It bears
the date 1577, but was registered^ under July i, 1578: "H. Bynneman.
Receuyed of him for his lycence to print the golden Aphroditis yjd and
a copie." Probably, therefore, the book was held back, as was Greene's
Orpharion^ for the more lucrative fall trade. And this seems the more
probable since Grange's patron, Lord Stourton, was that year restored in
blood, taking his seat on February 11, 1577.® This discrepancy may also
explain Watt's unsupported statement^ that the book attained a second
edition ** without date, 4to."

Though the author's title-page declares him " Gentleman, Student in the
Common Lawe of Englande," his name is not registered in the Inns of Court.
We may, however, because of his use of law terms — videlicet^ quare^
consentaneutn^ and *' please thee (Lady) to yeelde up the whole interest and
title of thine harte" — accept his statement. Since he writes "what best
might agree with your Honours youthfull yeeres &c. nor mislike my youth-
full aucthoritie," and since his patron. Lord Stourton, matriculated at Oxford
under date of December 3, 1575, we may identify him with the student at
Oxford : ** Grange, John, of London, pleb. Queen's Coll., matric. entry
under date 10 Jan. 1 574-1 575, aged 18."® Webbe's allusion to him in a

1 Cf. Scholemastery ed. Arber, p. 82. * The Library^ October, 1909, p. 343.

• I am working with hologp^phs of this prepared by Duncan Macbeth. "*'

• Arber's Transcript, II, 148.

• P. Sheavyn, 7^e Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age^ p. 74.

• Dugdale's Baronage^ 1676, III, 229. '^ Bibliotheca Poetica^ Edinburgh, 1824, I, 432 h.

• Alumni Oxonienses^ ed. Joseph Foster, 1891, II (Early Series), 593.

372 FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUES

list — '* lohn Graunge, Knyght, Wylmott," etc.^ — led the editor to style him
(p. 6) Sir J. Grange ; but erroneously, for Webbe elsewhere (p. 66) speaks
of him with no addition.

If not acquainted with Lyly, Grange at least rubbed shoulders with him.
For six months they were together in Oxford on High Street, one at
Magdalen, the other at Queen's. In London several inns of chancery neigh«
bored the Savoy. Grange's printer was also Gascoigne's and Harvey's. Thus
on October 3, 1 577, Bynneman licensed Harvey's Rhetor; on August 20, 1 578,
his Xai/o€. Harvey was then a confirmed student of law. Other Oxford men
who knew Lyly, as Thomas Watson, must have made Grange and Lyly at
least one aware of the other.^ Contact with Gascoigne seems less likely, but
less significant.

The Golden Aphroditis covers some eighty pages, the narrative framing
thirteen pieces of verse, five moral discourses, three letters, and a few other
episodic variations. To it are appended in Grange's Garden some forty
pages of occasional verses and letters. Grange styles his tale a " paganicall
pamphlet," since Diana's daughter by Endymion figures as heroine, and the
Olympians not only intervene but attend the concluding marriage and there
perform appropriate " stunts." Paganism, however, does not disguise in most
places the portrayal of contemporary London life. The lover attends the hero-
ine home from the court of the gods. Invited to spend the night, he talks
with her in a gallery, dances with her after supper, and parts after breakfast,
only to return from time to time on similar visits till they marry — about the
next Easter. Meantime they exchange letters and verses. For plot, an erst-
while lover is cast off, informs the hero that his mistress is faithless, is beaten
in a duel with staves, tempts the heroine to wantonness, is repulsed, proffers
jewels in vain, and finally contents himself with friendship.

Grange represents a moral reaction from the adulterous skit of Gascoigne.
The latter's occasional obscenity has here no place. He had in his second
edition informed '* the Reverend Divines " (I, 7) that they might read it now
it is *' so purged from the humor of inhumanitie." More emphatically Grange
avers that *' such Tragedies as intend to inhumanitie, are not worthie of read-
ing, neyther to be put in print." Equally does this appear in his motto.
Gascoigne had flaunted Tarn Marti quant Mercurio ; Grange replies with
Tarn Minen^ce quant Veneri, Yet the literary interest is largely identical.
Grange echoes verbatim G. T.'s letter (see p. 369 above) by saying: "Yet
thinke I it good and Opere preciunt^ here to reduce their pretie Poems and
Poeticall Pamphlets conveyed from the one to the other, for that he that

1 Webbe's Discourse^ 1 586, ed. Arber, p. 35.

2 Thus Thomas Bowsfield, the year before Spenser at the Merchant Taylors* School and at
Pembroke Hall, A.M. 1575, became lecturer in logic at Queen's (Oxford), where Bartholomew
Bousfield, rector in London since 1 566, was provost during Grange's residence.

LONG 373

readeth the grounde and pithe thereof, shall fynd aliquid salts." In part this
echoes G. T. some lines below : " For that I found none of them, so barreyne,
but that (in my judgment) had in it Aliquid salis.*' On the same page G. T.
alludes to Gascoigne's work ** The clyming of an Eagles nest." So Grange
a few sentences later makes his hero declare, *' I fynd it not over easy to
clyme the Egles nest."

Numerous correspondences remove the connection of the works from con-
troversy. Thus the chief characters are — ^abnormally — named only by ini-
tials : F. J. and N. O. Each mistress has a secretary, who writes her first letter
to the lover. In each story the lovers sign their letters he and she. N. O. terms
Alpha Omega his ** Trust " ; so F. J. is Frances' *' Trust " (I, 403). Gas-
coigne says (I, 388) of F. J., '* Proferring to take an humble congi by Beso las
maiwSy she graciously gave him the zuccado dez labros'' So in Grange N. O.
'* gave his ladie the zucado dez labros^ Again : ** an humble kinde of gratu-
lation, which Venus vouchsafed to call the gentle conge, and Mars hir darling
the Bezo las manosJ' Apart from these rare phrases, a nosebleed figures in
each story. In each the hero solves several doubts in points of love (ed. Cun-
liffe, I, 428, 441 ; Grange, pp. 28, 38, 62, 86). F. J.'s inventions are published
at second hand ; so Grange chooses (p. 3) to ** ground my Paganicall Pamphlet
upon the song of Apollo, most melodiously song unto me (as me thought) in
a vision." Gascoigne incessantly couples Mars and Venus ; whereas Grange
designs (p. 3) *' shewing paganically, as well the lawful copulacion between
Vulcan and Venus y as the unlawful combat between hir and Mars," meaning
that his book by contrast treats of chaste love.

Grange is well versed in Italianate books. He alludes to Romeus and
Juliet (p. 26), to Cressida (p. 73), to the Pallace of Pleasure (p. 59), the
Arbor of Amitie (p. 83), the Castle of Comfort (pp. 58, 65, 73), "ye Courtier''
(p. 19). The book presents slight but distinctive parallels with Whetstone,
since in both the maidservants are used as letter bearers, the rivals resort to
improper methods, and the narratives conclude with a sumptuous marriage
feast. There is also a parallel with Breton, since both lovers overhear verses .
pronounced in a bed which backs to theirs against the wall (p. 65). Since
Breton's prefatory letter was signed February 20, and the book was licensed
April 2, 1577, Grange had ample opportunity to adopt the hint, which he
develops into a series of echoic verses sung alternately by lover and mistress.

With EuphueSy such parallels do not occur. There an Athenian visits
Naples, prefers to the friendship of a sage that of a youth, Philautus, who
introduces him to a lady. He cuts out his friend ; they quarrel ; the lady
throws over him also ; they become friends again. Then Euphues returns to
Athens. As heretofore, rivals woo one lady, who is either light or suspected
of lightness. A virtuous lady, as in Gascoigne, serves as foil ; in Gascoigne *s
Glasse of Government (p. 356), too, occurs the name Philautus. But Grange

374 FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUES

and Lyly, though not Gascoigne, are misogynistic. Both obtrude numerous
proverbs concerning ladies* inquisitiveness, loquacity, selfishness, and fondness
for things dear bought. Euphues apologizes in a letter (I, 257) *' To the grave
Matrones and honest Maydens of Italy." So Grange, though he says (p. 3),
" Your Honour shall finde writte (as it were with letters of pure Gold) a chief e
poynte of womens vanities," notwithstanding avers that this *' proceedeth not
of any spite, malice, hatred, melancholy, or evil will that I beare unto the
chaste Matrones." Both books are in effect addressed to ladies ; but Grange
feigns himself addressing a company of them and introduces repeatedly the
vocatives '* deare Dames," ** my glittryng starres." Correspondences of detail,
however, rarely occur. In the dedications both authors disclaim learning, and
allude to Apelles and the shoemaker, the Persians and Cyrus, Vulcan and
Venus. Grange ends with Sine Cerere & Baccho friget Venus y which appears
in Love 5 Metamorphosis (V, i, 46). The book was still new on the stalls
(licensed July i, 1578) while Lyly was writing (licensed December 2, 1578).
That he wrote a moral love story, misogynist in tone, with conversazioni
{famore, and appended letters, — when the first such English work had just
appeared, — was resemblance enough.

But The Golden AphroditiSy far more closely than any book hitherto ad-
duced, anticipates Lyly's euphuism. It exhibits the purity of vocabulary ; the
elaborate balance, rhetorical questions, and alliteration ; the profusion of prov-
erbs, of allusions to mythology, and historical narratives. Limits of space
forbid full illustration. Also it introduces the similes drawn from strange
- birds and beasts and plants and stones. These do not occur in Bemers,
North, or Fenton ; they are absent from all the books hitherto cited.^

To illustrate briefly. Grange causes N. O. to declare (p. 43) : '* The pure
loue which I beare unto thee (most lyke to the stone Albeston^ can not be
quenched agayne : neyther my mynde beyng once frosen with feare, can by
any meanes but thorowe thy gracious goodnesse be thawed againe, lyke to the
operation of Gelacia a very white gem, whose coldnesse is suche, that no fire
can heate the same." He proceeds to inquiries " why the hyll Aetna which
bumeth day and nighte is not mouldred to ashes : or why Eniadros beyng
but a little stone alwayes sweatyng and droppyng, is not turned to nought ? "
He cites **the hearbe Dictomus, or Tragion, planted in my bosome, the
growth whereof should touch my lippes, yet woulde I not taste thereof . . .
a kynde of stone called PirriteSy which touchyng it lightly is toUerable, but
holdyng it harde in your hande it bumeth your fingers ... a gem called

1 C. G. Child {John Lyly and Euphuism^ p. 5i)» though not Bond {Lyly^ I, 140), says Pettie
has them, but he produces none. Of Pettie*s twelve stories I have seen only 77ie Tale of Tereus
and Progne (ed. J. O. Halliwell, 1866). Its thirty-six pages offer only the " camelion** changing
its color and panthers without pity — neither of Lyly's distinctive type.

^ Italics are similarly used by Lyly.

LONG 375

LippariUy . . . the propertie whereof is to delight and enamour all kynde
of beastes. ..." It is the argumentative use of such similes which evoked
Sidney's ire,^ — ** the force of a similitude, not being to prooue anything to a
contrary Disputer." But A. O. told N. O. (p. 39) "incontinently what she
had hearde : who answering sayde, the higher the Sun, the lesser our shad-
owes are, and Asterites keeping his light within, sheweth it foorth by little
and little, yet who so beholdeth it thorowly shal find it in propertie most like
to the starre. Wherewith and such like he clearely acquitted him selfe from
all hir former suspitions." For sources Grange repeatedly cites Dioscorides,
and once Isidore. In all other distinctive features. Grange's style, though by
no means identical with Lyly's, clearly anticipates euphuism.^

This style, moreover, is Euphues, the realization, the *' anatomic," of
Ascham's abstract Ei<^v^. The figure which inspired a dozen imitations,
the Sherlock Holmes of Elizabethan fiction, reveals itself first in Grange.
Sprightly from first to last, he renders his narrative piquantly eloquent as
Euphues was eloquent The latter is an Athenian; Grange, counterfeiting
a Greek, begs (p. 99) that his patron "will consider, that at the making
hereof, I was neyther at Athens^ nor yet in the hearyng of Cratippus'' Like
Euphues, he is ostensibly a misogynist and moralist. Again, like Euphues,
he is at heart Italianate.

Direct influence, however, need not be assumed ; for it does not follow
from his priority that Grange introduced this novelty. Harvey in 1589
alludes* to quondam " Euphuing of similes alia Savoica " in a manner that
befits a social group ^ — the group centering in Oxford of the perfumed
gloves, the appropriate theme for Harvey's satirical Speculum Tuscanismi,

To this Lyly added the philosophical touch suggested by Ascham and
congenial to his preference for prose. Whether he owed this to a hint from
his patron Burleigh, to whom the Sckolefnastervf2& dedicated, — or to Harvey,
who constantly praises it,* — some such suggestion is at least as plausible

1 Apology for Poetry^ ed. Arbcr, p. 69.

^ Transverse alliteration (p. 21) : "Though my rude stile be not penned with the golden
Lidius streames, neyther curiously polished with Hermus glitteryng sandes" . . .

Rhetorical questions and allusions to history (p. 74) : ^ Why, Lady^ if you goe to that (quoth
hee) what shoulde wee thynke of Lollia Paulina the wife of Caligula f Agrippina wife unto
Claudius Casar? Poppea wyfe unto Nero f Cleopatra Queene of Egypte f "

Balance and classical mythology (p. 5) : " As we haue Apollo and Mercuric for Goddes, so
Pallas and Minerua for Goddesses of wisdome : as Mars so Bellona for war : as Cupide so
Venus for loue : as Pan so Ceres for invention of husbandrie : yea, as Morpheus so Murcaa
for sleepe." • Grosart's Harvey^ II, 1 26.

* Whetstone at one point all but anticipates Grange (p. 84) : ** This currant tale not a little
pleased Rosina: she thought all was gold that glittered; she never remembered hbwe the
poysoned hooke lay wrapt in pleasant bayte, howe the crocodile obtaines her pray with pitifull
teares, how . . ." Gascoigne also had attained this vein in his epistle dated January 2, 1575
(ed. Cunliflfe, I, 12). So, too, had Fenton in 1567 (to Bandello, Tudor Trs., 1, 108) : '* Why have
I not considered that the horse . . . ? " • Grosart's Harvey ^ I, xviii, 75.

376 FROM TROILUS TO EUPHUES

as originality. Harvey sourly styles Lyly ^ " a pert-conceited youth, that had
gathered togither a f ewe prettie sentences, and could handsomely helpe young
Euphues to an old simile/' A rancorous allusion — much as Greene might
speak of an ** upstart crow." The speculation carries no conviction ; yet one
would like a gloss upon Harvey's allusion (H, 124) to " thy olde acquaintance
in the Savoy, when young Euphues hatched the egges, that his elder f reendes
laide."

^ Grosart's Harvey ^ II, 128.

THE CELTIC FEE IN LA UNFA L^

T. P. Cross

Thomas Chestre's Launfal'^ is a free rendering of an earlier English trans-
lation of the Lai de Lanval^ by Marie de France. The main thread of the
story is as follows :

Launfal goes forth into the forest, and, while lying down to rest, is ap-
proached by two damsels clad in green. One carries a basin, the other a towel.
They summon him to their mistress, who is close at hand. Following them,
Launfal finds in a pavilion near by the beautiful golden-haired princess Tri-
amour reclining half -dressed on a couch. The lady, addressing him by name,
declares that she loves him alone. She grants him her favors, but forbids him
to mention her existence.

Launfal returns home and for a time is happy, but finally in an unguarded
moment he boasts of his amie^ and as a result loses her and gets into trouble.
The f^e returns just in time to extricate him from his difficulty, and together
the two go off to a ** jolyf ile " (1023) — Marie's Avalun (659).

A story of the same type is told in the Lai de Disir^,^ The hero, while
wandering in a forest, meets at a fountain under a great tree a damsel carry-
ing two golden basins. She conducts him to her mistress, whom he finds
lying on a couch dedens une foilUe, On seeing the lady, he rushes forward
at once to get her into his power. She at first flees from him, but when he
asks her love, she

Parfundement li enclina
£ dit que pas ne Trefusout
Ne sun ofifre n'ele jetout.
Ottri[^] est la druerie. (P. 14.)

The iMi de Graelent^ though neither the source nor the pendant of
Marie's Lanval^ tells a strikingly similar story, and was used by Chestre

^ This paper fprms the second of a series of studies dealing with the Celtic elements in
the Breton Lays, For the first, see Reime Celtique {/^.C), XXXI, 413 ff.

* I follow the text of Launfal^ etc., ed. Joseph Ritson (Goldsmid), Edinburgh, 1891, 2 ff.
Cf. Amer. Joum. of Phil. ^ X, 2 f. Launfal " is an amalgamation of the Lai de Lanval with the
anonjrmous Lai de Graelent, and contains in addition two long episodes drawn from the author's
imagination or rather from the common stock of mediaeval romancers " (Kittredge, Amer.foum.
of Phil., X, 5). ' Ed. Karl Wamke, Die Lais der Marie de France, Halle, 1900, pp. 86 ff.

* Ed. Fr. Michel, Lais inidits, des XII' et XIII' Siicles, Paris, 1836, 10 ff.

• Ed. Roquefort, Poisies de Marie de France, Paris, 1820, 1, 486 ff. Graelent is now known not
to be the work of Marie. Cf. Kohler in Wamke's Die Lais, p. ex.

• Schofield, Publ. Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer., XV, 129.

377

378 THE CELTIC F^E IN LAUNFAL

in his version of the story. Graelent, while pursuing a white hind, comes to
a beautiful fountain in which a maiden with her two damsels is bathing. He
steals up quietly and takes her clothes, which are lying on the bank. The
lady, on perceiving the theft, begs the knight to return her property, even
going so far as to offer him money. When, however, Graelent asks her love,
she treats him scornfully. He now threatens to leave her naked in the forest
unless she comes out of the water, whereupon, after exacting a promise k'il
ne It face nul anui (257), she complies. When she is dressed, Graelent takes
her into the dark wood, and makes her his mistress. She now suddenly
changes her manner, tells him that she has come to the fountain expressly
to meet him, and assures him that she has known of ceste aventure all along.
From the beginning of the scene the knight has been greatly impressed with
her beauty, and when at last he has won her love, he tells her that

Loialement e bien Tamera,
James de li ne partira. (289 f.)

The remainder of the story is in general similar to the corresponding part of
LaunfaU

In the Lai de Guingamor^ a knight, while hunting a white boar, loses his
way and wanders into the other-world. Here he finds a magnificent palace
without inhabitants. Leaving the building, he again follows the boar and
arrives in a lande^ where he sees a lovely fountain in which a damsel is
bathing a beautiful woman.

Des que Guingamors Tot veue,
Conmeuz est de sa biaute. (434 f.)

He, like Graelent, takes the lady's clothes ; but she, far from showing any
fear, addresses him angrily and calling him by name rebukes him for his
discourtesy. She nevertheless tells him,

" Venez avant, n'aiez csfroi ;
Herbergiez vos hui mes o moi." (453 f.)

She knows the purpose of his hunt, and offers to bestow on him the boar if
he will lodge with her for three days. Guingamor thereupon gives back her
garments. He becomes her lover, and returns with her to the palace, which
he now finds occupied by many knights, each with his amie.

At the expiration of what seem three days Guingamor returns to his own
country, only to find that he has been absent three hundred years. He meets
with disaster by breaking a command laid upon him by his mistress, but is
rescued by two fairy women, carried back to the other-world, and reunited
with his lady.

1 Ed. Gaston Paris, Rom., VIII, 51 ff.

CROSS 379

THE CELTIC HYPOTHESIS

The stories outlined above belong to that group of mediaeval poems known as
Breton Lays ; that is, they claim descent from Celtic tradition. That this
claim is justified cannot, however, be assumed, for it is well known that not
every poem calling itself a Breton Lay is based on Celtic material. Never-
theless, though the label Breton Lay does not guarantee Celtic manufacture,
we are bound, in the absence of direct evidence pointing elsewhere, at least
to give the Celtic hypothesis a chance to establish its claim, both because of
the claim itself and because Celtic tradition offered to the mediaeval poets of
England and France one of the most easily accessible popular sources from
which to draw the potential material of sophisticated literature.^ Only in case
our search through early Celtic literature prove fruitless, are we at liberty to
turn elsewhere.

As a further preliminary to a study like the present, it should be em-
phasized that, although most of the parallels used are of necessity drawn from
Irish literature, the same sort of stories must have been popular among the
Celts of Britain and Armorica long before the twelfth century, for modem re-
search tends to establish the essential unity in manners and traditions of the
Celtic peoples of Ireland, Britain, and the Continent.^

THE FOLK-TALE OF THE OFFENDED FJ^E

The theme which forms the core of Launfal, Disiriy and Graelent, and
which represents an important part of Guingatnory may be stated in its lowest
terms as follows :

A mortal becomes the lover of a fie, but loses his mistress by breaking
her command ; he is finally extricated by her from the difficulties in which his
imprudence has involved him, and the two are happily reunited.

This formula, with multitudinous additions and variations, is widespread
in popular literature both among primitive and civilized peoples, qtwd semper^
quod ubique, quod ab omnibus? That its appearance in Lanval and Graelent
is due to Celtic rather than any other possible influence, has already been
maintained.-*

1 Cf. R,C., XXXI, 420.

3 Ibid., p. 421 ff. For the purposes of the present investigation it is immaterial whether
the features common to the Irish and Welsh romantic literatures are regarded as ^ gemein-
keltisch *' or as borrowed the one from the other. See Windisch, Abhandl, der konig, sacks,
Ges, der Wiss,, Phil.-Hist Kl, XXIX (1912), 131 ff.

' Examples occur in the mediaeval literatures of England, France, Germany, and Italy, as
well as in numerous folk-tales, of which Kohler (in Wamke's Die Laisy pp. cxvi ff.) and Friedrich
Panzer {Bibl. des Hit. Ver, in Stuttgart^ CCXXVII, pp. Ixxiii f.) cite many instances.

* By Schofield, Publ, Mod. Lang. Assn. of Amer.^ XV, 168 ff. Schofield's arguments apply
also in general to Disiri and Guingamor. Cf. [Harvard] Studies and Notes in Phil, and Lit.^
V, 221 ff.

38o THE CELTIC F^E IN LAUNFAL

Early Irish abounds in stories of supernatural women who visit the world
of mortals in search of their chosen lovers. Two of these, — the Noinden
Ulad^ and the Aidead Muirchertaig? — as well as an episode in the Welsh
Mabinogi of Pwyll Prince of Dyved^ are so strikingly similar to the central
theme of the lais under discussion that we must conclude that like Celtic
stories contributed toward their development.

Though it by no means follows that the episodes in which the f^es appear
to their lovers near a fountain or stream are also of Celtic origin, it is
our duty to look for similar situations in Celtic tradition before we search
elsewhere.

THE FOUNTAIN-SCENE

Marie's description of the meeting with the//^ contains one feature that
has dropped out of the later account. The knight lies down sur iine ewe
curant (45), and, while looking a val lez la riviere (54), sees approaching
two richly dressed damsels wearing green mantles. One carries a basin of
gold, the other a towel. They conduct him to their mistress, who is near at
hand. Is the stream of water here a more or less accidental feature, intro-
duced to give a rural touch to the landscape, or is it a reminiscence of what
was originally a significant part of the story ?

The important place held by female water-divinities and feminine river-
names among the ancient Celts has been strongly emphasized. ** Before the
Roman conquest the cult of water-goddesses, friends of mankind, must have
formed a large part of the religion of Gaul and their names may be counted
by hundreds. . . . Thus every spring, every woodland brook, every river in
glen or valley, the roaring cataract and the lake were haunted by divine beings,
mainly thought of as beautiful females." ^

One of the earliest appearances of the Celtic fairy-mistress in written liter-
ature occurs in the Tochmarc Etdiney the oldest manuscript of which is the
Lebhar na h-Uidri {LU.y written c. 1 100). Though the passage in question is
omitted in LU.y it is certainly older than the earliest preserved Breton Lay?
The summary below follows the fifteenth-century manuscript, Egerton I J 82 : ®

1 Ed. Windisch, Ber. Uber die Verhandlungen der kdnig.-sdchs. Ges. der IViss,^ Phil.-Hist. KL,
XXXVI, 340 ff. Cf. R,C.^ XVI, 45 f. ; Reeves, Arte. Churches of Armagh^ Lusk, i860, pp. 41 ff. ;
Sir Samuel Fergfuson, Lays of the Red Branchy London, 1897, pp. 2 ff. Note that the heroine is
granddaughter of a water-god {Studies and Notes ^ VIII, 32).

2y?.C, XXIII, 396 ff.

' See below, p. 386.
. * J. A. MacCulloch, Relig. of the Anc. Celts^ Edinburgh, 191 1, p. 184. See also Windisch,
Abhandl, der kdnig.-sachs. Ges. der \Viss., Phil.-Hist. KL, XXIX (191 2), 97, 102. Cf. Nitze, Mod.
/%//., VII, 151 f.

^ See Kittredge, Studies and Notes ^ VIII, 192, n. 3 ; Cross, R.C.^ XXXI, 441, n. i.

« Ed. Windisch, Irische Texte {I.T.), Leipzig, 1880, I, 117 ff. Cf. R.C., III, 350 ff . ; Zt.f.
celt. Phil. {C.Z.), V, 522 ff. ; R.C., XXII, 9 ff.

CROSS 381

Eochaid Airem,^ king of Ireland, finds on the brink of a fountain {for
ur in tophuir) a beautiful golden-haired maiden,* '' bathing in a vessel of
silver." She wears " a shining tunic of green » silk," and is " loosening her
hair to wash it.^ ... A longing for her immediately seized the king " {gabais
imorro saint an ri itnpifocHoit), To his first question, " Whence art thou. . .
O maiden ? " she replies, ** I am Etain, daughter of the king of the horsemen
from the elf -mounds " (Etain ingin righ eochraidhe a sidib atamcomnaicc). She
also tells him that, though she has been often wooed, she has refused all suitors.
She has come because of him ; for, she explains, ** I have loved thee and
placed love and affection upon thee " {ro charas tusai ocus tucus seircc octis
inmaine duit) ..." and I have never seen thee before this, and I recognized
thee immediately from thy description " (atot-athghi foc^toir ar do thuarusca-
bail). On hearing this, the king bids her welcome and assures her, ** Every
other woman shall be forsaken for thee " (lecfitir cech ben orut). He now
takes her home as his wife.

She is finally abducted by an other-world king named Midir.^

A somewhat similar story, combined with other features which may for
our purposes be disregarded, turns up in the Echtra Mac n-Echach Muigme-
doin^ the earliest version of which occurs in the Book of Leinster (written
c. 1 1 50). The hero of the tale finds at a fountain (tiprait) a. loathly lady, who,
in exchange for water,"^ requires a kiss of him. As soon as he kisses her, she
becomes a beautiful woman ® and tells him that she is the Sovranty of Erin.
The remainder of the story makes it evident that the old woman is really a
supernatural being who has assumed a loathly disguise for the purpose of
testing her mortal favorite.

The relation between the fairy-folk of Ireland and the fountains at which
they appear is clearly implied in an episode in the Sc^l na FirFlatha? which
gives *' the fullest account extant of the twelve ordeals of the ancient Irish."
According to this document, a queen once saw at a fountain {tibraid) two

^ On the similarity between the Tochmarc £tdine and certain Breton Lays^ see Kittredge,
Studies and Notes <t VIII, 191 f. ; Amer./oum. of Phil. , VII, 191 ff.

* Golden-haired /Jf« are extremely common in both early Celtic literature and mediaeval
romance. See an unpublished portion of my dissertation, Mediaval Romance as illustrated by
Early Irish Literature (Harvard University), 1909, p. 50, n. 2.

* An exceedingly popular color in fairy lore. See my dissertation, p. 55, n. i. Cf. Ulster
Joum. of Arch,, ist ser., VI, 360; VII, 136.

* Cf. Guingamory 11. 428 f. ; Perceval^ ed. Potvin, 11. 31, 612 ff.

* Though generally represented as lord of the fairy-mound of Bri L^ith, he is apparently
associated with the water in a passage quoted by Windisch, Irische Texte, I, 131.

* For the account in verse (from LL.)y see £riu, IV, 92 ff. ; for those in prose, see R,C,y
XXIV, 190 ff. ; Silva Gadelica [5.^7.], London, 1892, II, 368 ff.

^ In the prose account she is guarding the fountain (facais seantuindi og comet in topuir)^
R.C., XXIV, 196.

* Cf. Maynadier, Tlie Wife of Bathes Tale, London, 1901, pp. 25 ff., and Ap. A.
•/.t:, III, 183 ff.

382 THE CELTIC F^E IN LAUNFAL

fairy women (da mnai as na sidhaib), '* When they beheld the woman coming
toward them, they went under the well." The queen follows and finds at the
bottom a fairy palace.^

But springs were not the only homes of Celtic //i?j. Beneath the lochs
and rivers of Ireland were magnificent other-world duns, from which strangely
beautiful women sometimes emerged and appeared on the banks or at the fords
where the ancient highways crossed the streams.

The shorter Fled Bricrend? one of the oldest Irish romances,^ tells how
Cuchulainn and his companions encounter at a ford a beautiful maiden whose
father, as appears later, is an uncanny being. The girl, on being asked whom
she seeks, replies, ** Cuchulainn mac Soaltam ... for I have loved him be-
cause of the tales about him " (Cuchulainn mac Soaltam . , , ro charus ar
a airscelaib). Cuchulainn ** makes a hero-leap oblique across ... to her,"
whereupon ** she rises toward him, and throws both hands about his neck and
gives him a kiss." He then takes her home with him, and, after going through
some thrilling adventures as tests of his valor, gains her for his mistress.

Another example occurs in the somewhat confused Tochmarc Becfola,
This story, though found in no very early manuscript, has been recognized
as embodying ancient tradition.^ A version from the fifteenth-century manu-
script, Egerton Ij8l (B.M.),^ furnishes the basis of the following summary :

King Diarmait meets at a ford a solitary, gorgeously appareled fairy woman
(pentside)^ ** more beautiful than any woman in the world " (dilliu ind gach
ben do mndibh an betha). When asked whence she comes, the maiden
replies, ** Not from far " (ni a cAn). From the rest of the conversation we
gather that a meeting with the king is the object of her visit. Diarmait is
evidently impressed by her beauty, for he takes her home and makes her his
mistress. He discreetly refrains from mentioning her name, but at length
she, like other fairy wives, apparently wearies of her earthly life and elopes
with a supernatural lover.

Meetings between //^fi* and their mortal favorites are also described in the
Acallamh na Sendrach^ which, though compiled about the end of the thir-
teenth or the first half of the fourteenth century,® contains, fitted into the
framework of a dialogue between St. Patrick and the last survivors of the
Fenian band, many scraps of popular tradition which date from a much earlier
period. One episode ® in this thesaurus of Irish folk-lore tells how Finn and

^ For other examples of subaqueous supernatural beings, see Arthur C. L. Brown, Studies
and Notes y VIII, 40, n. 2 ; 53, n. i ; Trans. Kilkenny Arch. Soc., II (1852-1853), 33, 313.
a /.r., II, I, 173 ff. » Philol. Soc. Thins., 1891-1894, pp. 498, 555.

* See B. O'Looney {Royal Jr. 4cad.y Irish MSS. Ser., I, 172), and O'Curry {Lecturer on the
MS. Materials of Anc. Jr. Hist., Dublin, 1873, P- 283).

* S.G.y I, 85 ff. ; II, 91 ff. « O'Looney, p. 181, n. 37.

' Ed. Stokes, Irische Texte, IV, i, Leipzig, 1900. Cf. S.G., II, loi ff.

8 Stem, C.Z.y III, 614. Cf. O'Cuny, Lectures, p. 312. ® I.T., IV, i, 135 ; cf. S.G.y II, 220.

CROSS 383

his companions, while sitting by a river, see a lone maiden wrapped in a green
mantle on a stone above a ford. On being asked whom she seeks, she replies,
** Finn." " Who art thou, maiden ? ** says Finn, '* and what dost thou desire ? "
She tells him that she is a fairy princess, and adds, **To sleep with thee in
exchange for bride-price and gifts have I come '' {d'feis letsu thanac tare end
tindsera 7 tiroehraiei). The conditions she lays down are, however, so
unreasonable that Finn declines to marry her.

These stories sufficiently illustrate the popularity in early Celtic romance
of a type of story in which 2, fie appears to her chosen mortal lover near a
spring or other body of water,^ of which at an earlier stage of development
she was perhaps the tutelary divinity. This evidence,^ combined with the
appearance oifies at fountains in Graelenty Guingamory and other mediaeval
romances,^ arouses the suspicion that in the opening episodes of Lanval and
DMri the stream and fountain do not occupy their original relation to the
fies. In 1896 Axel Ahlstrom, supposing Lanval to be derived from Graelent^
suggested that ** dans Lanval . . . il ne reste de toute la seine [i la fontaine]
que la rencontre du heros avec deux belles suivantes, qui portent de Teau pour
le bain de leur maitresse." ^ Though Ahlstrom's conclusion is largely vitiated
by faulty hypotheses,^ he was perhaps not far wrong in regarding the opening
scene of Lanval as a transformed fountain-episode. He also attempts to ex-
plain how the situation came about : '* Klimatet i Kardoilstrakten tillat ogama
nagra sa fantastiska utsvafningar som skona f6er badande i kallor i det fria,
hvarfor ocksa Lanvals och Desirr^s alskade fa noja sig med att taga sina bad

^ The belief in such tales was doubtless fostered by an actual practice among the early
inhabitants of Europe and the British Isles. See Tacitus, Germania^ cap. xvi, and Caesar, B.C^
VI, cap. xxi. In the Tdin B6 Regamain {LT.^ II, 2, 234) three princes find their sweethearts at
a fountain. For other examples, see R.C., VI, 179 (cf. £riu^ III, 22 f.) ; XIV, 243; XVI, 310, n. ;
XXIV, 133 ; XXV, 19 f. (cf. Keating, " Hist, of Ireland," Ir. Texts Soc, II, 305); Royal Ir. Acad,,
Todd Lect. Ser., VII, 28 f. (cf. R.C., XV, 425 ; XVI, 146) ; 5.(7., II, 178 f. Cf. Joum. Galway
Arch, and Hist. Soc, II, 117 ; Joum. Cork Hist, and Arch. Soc, 2d ser., II, 330; Geulic Joum.y
V, 186.

^ In the Tdin B6 Ciialnge the Morrigu (an ancient Irish battle-goddess ; cf. Windisch,
Abhandl.der konig.'sachs. Ges. der Wiss.^ Phil.-Hist. Kl., XXIX, 191 2, 77), who is identified
{R.C., XII, 127 ; cf. Windisch, 7.71, Extrabd., 380 n. i) with Macha, the heroine of the Noinden
Ulad {Studies and Notes j VIII, 32), appears at a ford and offers her love to Cuchulainn (Miss
Hull, Cuchullin Saga^ 164 f.; cf. Miss Paton, Fairy Mythol., etc., Boston, 1903, 22). On other
appearances of the Morrigu at fords, see Joum. of the Ivemian Soc, I, 1 59 f. ; Folk-Lore,
XXI, 180.

• See, for example, Studies and Notes, V, 242, n. 2; VIII, 141 ff. In Chretien's Ivain a
fountain is guarded, not by the//f(r, but by her champion, whom Ivain must overcome before
he can win her hand. The combat motive does not belong to our type of story. Nitze regards
the fountain-scene as an essential part of the tale (Mod. Phil., Ill, 279) and the heroine as a
water//(ir (ibid., VII, 148). Cf. Baist, 2U. f. rom. Phil., XXI, 402; Brown, Studies and Notes,
VIII, 22. Professor Nitze's theory regarding the ultimate origin of the story leads him out on
pretty thin ice, whither the Celtic scholar cannot follow him ; Brown, Mod. Phil., IX, 127.

* Melanges de phil. romancy Mdcon, 1896, p. 296 (quoted, Publ. M.LA., XV, 145).
» See Schofield, Publ. M.L.A., XV, 145.

384 THE CELTIC FEE IN LAUNFAL

inomhus." ^ With regard tx) this suggestion Schofield remarks, ** Ahlstrom
surely imagines Kardoil (Carlisle in Cumberland) much nearer the North Pole
than it really is. The maidens were of course not preparing to * tub * their
mistress ; they were simply getting water ... for use in bathing the hands
before meat, as was the regular custom in the romances.*' ^ The point is well
taken, though here again Ahlstrom appears to see through a glass darkly.
The meeting in Lanvalis not, it is true, a revised version of the fountain-scene
in Graelent adapted to climatic conditions in the vicinity of Carlisle ; moreover,
when dealing with popular material, one may easily attempt to explain too
much : nevertheless, the situation in Marie's lai is manifestly pretty far from
its original form. Though it is of course impossible to reconstruct the scene
in exactly the form it had before the vicissitudes of literary, not to mention
popular, tradition had begun their work, and though, even if we knew the exact
original, it would be also impossible to explain every change in the story as it
passed into different milieux y we may rest assured that such preprandial nice-
ties as are described in Lanval were not observed in the society in which the
original had its beginning. These facts, taken together with Marie's state-
ment regarding the origin of her poem, the evidence of our Irish stories, and
the presence of the fountain-scene in Graelent (in other respects so strikingly
similar to Lanval) ^ render it highly probable that the two maidens carrying
basin and towel, the gorgeous tent, the beautiful golden-haired woman in
shocking dishabille lying on a magnificent couch, and the lover's part in the
scene, are but the result of an effort to transform into a twelfth-century picnic
party a meeting between a mortal and a Celtic //<? beside a body of water from
which the latter had perhaps emerged. That the fountain-scenes in Graelent
and Guingamor are derived from a similar source is an almost inevitable con-
clusion. A transitional stage seems to be represented by D^sir^.^ Regarded
in this light, our stories present an interesting series of snapshots of a Celtic
folk-tale in various stages of change as the significance of its elements became
gradually obscured and the elements themselves finally lost. The foun-
tain, loch, or stream beside which the irresponsible Celtic f^e appeared and
offered her love to a mortal, has in Thomas Chestre's Launfal disappeared
entirely, the only possible suggestion of its original presence being the basin
of gold and the towel carried by the attendants.

THE CHARACTER OF THE FAIRY MISTRESS

Turning now to the behavior of the//<?j during the meetings with their
lovers, we find a somewhat different situation. The attitude of Graelent's
mistress especially needs explanation. As Schofield pointed out several years

1 Studier i den fomfranska Lais-LitUraturen^ Upsala, 1892, p. 55.

2 Pnbl. M.L.A., XV, 145.

• Cf. Ahlstrom, Studiery p. 5^4.

CROSS 385

ago,^ " the maiden who one moment pleads with Graelent for mercy and who
allows herself to be ravished by force alone, who declares : ' Graelent, vus
m*av6s surprise* (300)," nevertheless tells her lover :

" Graelent, vos estes loiaus
Prox h courtois b aas6s biax :
Pur vus ving-jou k la fontaine,
Pur vus souferai-jou grant paine ;
Bien savoie ceste aventure." (3 1 5 ff .)

This inconsistency Schofield thinks is due to the influence of Germanic
swan-maiden stories — a type of mediaeval narrative in which a supernatural
woman appears in bird form at a lake or fountain, and may easily be captured
when deprived of her feather garment, which she lays aside before entering
the water and without which she is absolutely powerless. The characters of the
/(^es in Z^/itV/and Guingamor dlso show in varying degrees the same influence,
although in the latter the effects appear more in the theft of the lady's gar-
ments than in any change in her own attitude toward her would-be lover. In
three of our lays, then, the conception of a weak other-world creature who is
helpless without her feather garment (or clothing) has been grafted on a dig-
nified, independent and all-powerful being, who is never surprised, and who
is never coerced into becoming the mistress of anyone, — the typical Celtic
f/e. The influence of swan-maiden stories, though doubtless assisted by the
general process of deterioration which the character of the Celtic bensidhe
underwent during the Middle Ages, must be here admitted ; but it should be
emphasized that the recognition of non-Celtic influence on original Celtic
material in no way invalidates the conclusions reached above. In fact, it is
inconceivable that two types of stories so much alike in general outline could
exist side by side in popular lore, and not have sometimes influenced each other.

The situation in Launfal^xA its French original is markedly different from
that in our other poems. The lady, on seeing the knight, recognizes him at
once and addresses him as follows :

" Launfal my lemman swete,
Al my joye for the y lete,

There nys no man yn Cristent^,
That y love so moche as the." (301 ff.)

In Marie's lai she tells him :

" pur vus vine jeo fors de ma terre ;
de luinz vus sui venue querre." (i 1 1 f.)

In the English poem the knight is required, in the French he promises vol-
untarily, to forsake all other women for her.

1 PubL MXJi,, XV, 132.

386 THE CELTIC F£.E IN LAUNFAL

The similarity between the dialogues outlined above and those in the Celtic
tales summarized in the preceding section cannot be overlooked. Equally
striking parallels turn up in the Aidead Muirchertaig and in another story
from the Acallamh na Senorach} both of which represent yi^i?^ as visiting the
land of mortals in search of their lovers. That the same general formula ex-
isted in Brythonic fairy tales is proved by an excessively interesting episode
in the Mabinogi of Pwyll Prince of Dyved? already mentioned in connection
with the motif of ** The Offended /%."

Pwyll is visited by an unknown lady on a white horse. " He thought the
face of all the maidens or women he had ever seen possessed no charm com-
pared with hers " (medylyaw a wnaeth bot yn diuwyn ganthaw pryt a welsei
eiryoet o vorwyn a gwreic y wrth y phryt hi), " ' Princess/ he said, *wilt
thou tell me aught of thy errand ? * *Yes . . . / answered she, * my chief busi-
ness was to see thee * " (Pennaf neges uuynti keisaw dy welet ti). Being asked
her name, she replies that she is Rhiannon, and that, though she has been
urged to take a husband, she will marry no one but Pwyll. The prince replies
that she is his choice above all other women {pet caffwn dewis ar holl wraged
a morynyon y byt [j/] mae ti a dewisswtC). The lady then departs after making
an agreement in accordance with which he visits her father's court at the end
of a year, frees her from an unwelcome suitor, and marries her. Meanwhile
he refuses to discuss their relations. Rhiannon is certainly a f^e?

Though the lais and the Celtic stories do not all preserve the same features
(and we should be astonished if they did), it is in every case implied or ex-
pressly stated that the effect of Xh&f^es beauty is instantaneous, and that
she recognizes the mortal at once, has come to seek him alone, and already
loves him.^ Guingamor, as indicated in the summary, preserves traces of
the original situation, which in D^sir^ has been almost completely obliterated.
Graelent has been more fortunate. The dialogue in the Launfal story shows
no indications of having been materially altered.

CONCLUSION

The results of our investigation may be stated as follows :
The meeting between the lady and her lover in the lais of Launfal^
Dhir^y Graelent^ and Guingamor probably originated in a Celtic tale in which

1 /.7!, IV, I, 176 f., 245 f.; cf S.G.y II, 243. See also /.TI, IV, i, 219, 269 f.; £riu^ III, 151 ;
Trans. Ossianic Soc.^ IV, 235 fif.

* TTie Text of the Mabinogion, etc., ed. Rhys and Evans, Oxford, 1887, p. 1 1 ; 77te White Book
Mab.y ed. J. G. Evans, Pwllheli, 1906, p. 9 ; cf. Loth, Les Mab., Paris, 1889, I, 42 fif.

* Kittredge, Studies and Notes j VIII, 206. It should be added that after Pwyll's death she
marries Manawyddan ab Llyr, the Brythonic equivalent of the Irish sea-god Manannan mac
Lir (Les Mab.^ I, 98 ; cf. above, p. 380, n. i). Cf. R.Cy XXXI, 432, n. 4. Launfal*s mistress is
daughter of the " kyng ... of occient " ; cf. Pubi. MX.A.^ XV, 171, n. i.

* Of "love in absence" (Ir.gmd ecmaisi) there are many examples, both in early Celtic
literature and the mediaeval romances. See my dissertation, p. 64, n. i.

CROSS 387

2i//e (or euhemerized goddess) appears to a mortal at a body of water (from
which she has perhaps emerged),^ enthralls him by the sole power of super-
natural beauty, recognizes him at once, and announces that her visit is prompted
by her love for him. The lover joyfully accepts her proffered affection.

Combined with this is the main theme of the poems : the story of a mortal
who becomes the lover of a//<f, loses her by breaking her command, and
finally recovers her favor. The two types probably often contained the same
sort of dialogue, and the siniilarity suggested the union. How early the com-
bination took place, it is of course impossible to say.

From the Celtic tales outlined above, it appears that the meeting took place
in the land of mortals. The point cannot, however, be absolutely settled from
the data at hand, for Lanval, D/sir/, and Graelent show traces of the conven-
tional other-world journey or landscape,^ and in Guingamor the fountain ^ is
placed in fairyland, and the whole scene takes place in connection with a well-
preserved version of the other-world journey.

^ The fact that in Lanval Uti^f^e says that she has come de luint to see her lover and that
in DSsiri^ GrculenU and the Launfal story she finally carries off her mortal favorite to her country
(Marie's Ava/un), in no way militates against this theory regarding the origin of the episode.
Confusion of ideas as to the location of fairyland is quite common in early Irish, and doubUess
existed already in the accounts on which our iais are based. Cf. Studies and Notes^ VIII,
40, n. 2 ; Amer. Joum, of Phil, y VII, 195 f.

« See Studies and NoUs, VIII, 140 ff.

• There are many examples of fountains in the Celtic other-world, but none, that I know of,
at which/fej appear. Studies and Notes ^ VIII, 84 ff. ; my dissertation, 321 f. ; Eriuy III, 157.

VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

NOTES ON THE EARLY TRANSLATIONS

Henry Noble MacCracken

Bewar, Oldcastel, and for Crystes sake

Clymbe no more in Holy Writ so hie !
Rede the stone of Lancelot de Lake,

Or Vegece of the Aart of Qiiualrie,

The Seege of Troye or Thebes thee applie.
To thyng )>at may to thordre of knyghthood longe ! — Hoccleve.*

. I

Sir John Oldcastle had had good opportunity, years before Hoccleve wrote,
of reading the work of Vegetius in the English language. His superior in
the marches of Wales, Thomas lord Berkeley, had felt the need of a knowl-
edge of military science in his warfare with the wild Glendower.^ In 1408,
in the vigil of Allhallows, the translator writing at lord Berkeley's bidding
completed the first "turning'* of Vegetius, for the pleasure of old knights and
the instruction of the younger warriors.^ As a friend of the Prince, then com-
manding in the West, Oldcastle could have seen the book ; and must have
compared with interest the conduct of the English campaigns in Wales, the
beleaguering and defense of Aberystwyth, and the war in Bristol Channel, with

1 Minor Poems ^ ed. Fumivall, E.E.T.S., E.S., 6i, p. 14. (Punctuated, capitals normalized*
hnyght altered to knyghthood.)

* Oldcastle should have known Berkeley. On July 15, 1405, the latter was placed in charge
of the troops in Gloucester, Bristol, and Somerset, for defense against the Welsh. On Novem-
ber 30 of the same year, Oldcastle sat on the commission to examine treasonable aid to Welsh
rebels in Gloucester. Cal. Pat. Rolls^ 1405-1408, pp. 61, 149.

• '* Here endeth )>e book >at clerkes clepun in latyne ' Vigesius de re militari,' J>e book of
Vigesii of dedus of kny^thod, )>e whiche book was translated and turned fro latyn into english
at >e ordinaunce and byddynge of )>e worthi and worshepful lord, sire Thomas of Berkeley, to
gret disport and dalyaunce of lordes and alle worthy werryours >at ben apassed by wey of age
al labour and travaillyng, and to grete informacion and lemyng of ^nge lordes and knyjtles
>at ben lusty and loue)> to here and see and to vse dedus of armes and chiualrye. |3e tumynge
of Hs book into english was wreton and endud in vig^e of al halowes, J>e ^eer of oure lord a
>ousand foure hundred and eijte, )>e x« ^er of kyng Henry )>e ferj>e. To him and to vs alle God
graunt grace of oure offendyng, space to oure amendynge, and his face to seen at oure endyng.
Amen, pis is his name >at turned Hs book fro latyn into Englische.

" Worschepf ul qtoun."
[From MS. Bodl. Digby 233, folio 227.]

389

390 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

the ancient and yet all-authoritative maxims of Vegetius, master of warcraft
since the days of Theodosius the Great.^

The authority exercised by this fourth-century writer over the principal
occupation of mediaeval Christendom is among the wonders of literary history.
More than 140 copies of the Epitome are enumerated by Teubner's editor.^
This list is of course incomplete, and, moreover, this can scarcely represent a
tithe of the works which culled the rules and science of Vegetius.^ It is re-
markable, indeed, that the earliest known English translation should date
from so late as 1408. The popularity of earlier French translations, still found
in English libraries, may partly account for this delay .^

Nine manuscripts of the fifteenth century, at any rate, bear witness to the
popularity of the Vegetius translated for lord Berkeley.^ None of these seems

•

^ Flavius Vegetius Renatus is supposed to have written the treatise Epitome Rei Militarise sive
institutorum rei militaris libri quattuor., at the command of Theodosius the Great. The chief
topics, treated somewhat confusedly, are: the reform of military education and discipline
(I) ; the disposition of the parts of an army (II) ; tactics, the battlefield, and military maxims
(III) ; the assault and defense of walled cities, and naval strategy (IV). In some MSS. and
editions a fifth book appears, really only that part of IV dealing with the sea. See K. Lang,
2d ed., Leipzig, 1885. A modem English translation is that by Lieut. J. Clark; London, 1767.

* K. Lang, op, cit,, pp. xvi ff.

* MS. Trin. Coll. Camb. O. 3. 29, for example, is not recorded by Lang. The last part of
the third book of De Regimine Principunty the immensely popular treatise of Bishop Egidio
Colonna of Bourges, is almost wholly an abstract of Vegetius.

* MSS. B.M. Adds. 12028, Royal 20 6 I, XV, and 17 E V contain the translation ascribed
to Jean de Meun (ed. U. Robert, S.A.T.F., 1897, together with Priorat's version). MSS. Caius
424 and Camb. Ee. 2. 17 have another prose version by Jean de Vignay, 1328. In the latter
MS. appears ** Cest liure est a moy Homfrey due de Gloucestre du don Moss. Robert Roos
cheualier mon cousin." {CcU. MSS., Univ. of Camb., II, 33-34.) A French poem by Geoffroi
de Chami, s. xiv, probably written by him when in prison in England, deals with battles. See
Hist, MSS. Com. 9^* Ript,y p. 371 b, Holkham MS. 705 (Earl of Leicester). MS. 707, in the
same collection {ibid.)^ contains the work Nicholai Uptonide officio mi/itan\wntten for Humphrey.
Cf. also MS. Royal 20 6 XI, Les JStad/issementM de Chevalerie^ early fourteenth century.

* These are : {a) Bodley Digby 233, fols. 183-227. Follows translation by same author of
De Regimine Principum. Tall folio, mid-fifteenth century. MS. belonged to Mary Hastynges
Hungerford, who married Sir Edw. Hastings, 1480. She was granddaughter of Moleyns lord
Hungerford, captain at Agincourt, whose second wife was Eleanor, countess of Arundel, daughter
of Sir John Berkeley, cousin of Lord Thomas. See Fosbrooke, Berkeley MSS.y p. 135, and
D.N.B.y sub Hungerford. MS. lacks I 6, II 21, and perhaps other parts. Colophon quoted
above.

{b) Bodley Douce 291, fols. 4-120. Belonged to Chalons family of Devon, probably to Sir
Robt C, who died 23 Hen. VI, 1444-5, according to MS. note in volume. The MS. contains
his pedigree, with arms elaborately tricked. Chalons' mother was a Beauchamp, not closely
connected, apparently, with Richard de Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, who married Lord
Berkeley's only daughter. Owned by ** Brudenell." The colophon appears here as ^ton.
Vellum, sm. folio, mid-fifteenth century.

{c) Bodl. Laud Misc. 416, fols. 182-226. ** Scriptum Rhodo p^r YoYnaviem Neuton I459*''
(Colophon.) Omits cryptogam, but contains colophon on date and patron. Much altered by
modernization. For other contents see Catalogue of Laud MSS.

{d) Magd. Coll. Oxf. 30. No marks of ownership. Contains full colophon, Hton. Vellum,
sm. folio, fols. 115, early fifteenth century.

MacCRACKEN 391

directly connected with the patron, though several have an interesting pro-
venance. The alterations in later copies point to the frequency with which the
work must have passed from hand to hand.^ Its style may be illustrated by a
single chapter, with which the original Latin should be compared.^

OwT OF What Contrees Newe FijTERis Schul Ben Ychosen

pe ordre of oure writinge [by houi>] hit in )>e firste party of oure book we schewe out
of [whiche] pnminces, nsdouns, and contrees newe kni^ schulle ben chosen. For y do
jow to wytinge, hit in alle places i>erd ben bom bo)>e hardy men and cowardes. But for
also moche as on peple passih ano>^r in werres, and \>e foure parties of heuene beh myche
cause of strengl>e of me/rnes lymes, and also of hardynesse of herte, >^rf ore whiche places
ben moost pr<7fitable to suche chesyng aftir wyse me/ris schewynge, y wil no^t leue to
schewe. Alle nadow/s and folke, hi nygh ben to )>e sonne, as Hike, >at dwellen in \>e south,
l>ey ben wyse and wytty of cou//sail, for W ben drye of hete of J>e sonne ; but, for l>ey haue
but litel blood, )>ey ben ne^t stedfast, ne bold, ne hardy to fi^, for )>ei dredin wounds,
harmes, and hurtes. For )>ei knowe wel >ey haue but litel blood. But Hike hit dwellen in
>e North, fer fro J>e hete of \>e sonne, bey ben no^t so wyse of cow/seil as h? ben Hit dwellen
in \>e sou> ; but )>ei ben more habundau/rt ful of blood ; and \>erioTe bey ben more hardy
and bold to fi^te, and to werre, and boldloker dore abide wou/rdes and strokes, p^/fore newe
kni^tis schul ben chosen of a mene party, )>e whiche hauib plente of blood to suffre boldliche
wow/des, and nede be ; and also bat hauib wisdom to reule hemself and o]>er bobe, when
bey ben in hir wardes and strengbes.

Those familiar with fifteenth-century prose will notice that the text might
well be of an earlier generation than the first quarter-century after Chaucer's

(e) B. M. Royal 18 A XII. Fols. 123, vellum, sm. folio, 1483-1485. Arms of Rich. Ill as king,
foL I ; of Anne Neville, his wife, fol. 49 ; probably Richard's personal copy. Good text, but
obviously modernized. Author's name omitted.

(/) 6. M. Lansdowne 285, fols. 82-136. Paper. Sir John Paston's Great Booke of Arms,
mentioned in Paston Letters (about 1470). Colophon on date and patron, but not on author,
as in Royal. Ends " quod W. Evesham," scribe's name. Caley's Cat. of Lansdowne AfSS, gives
Douce's note on Clifton (see above). Much modernized.

(g) B. N. Adds. 14408, fols. 49-66. Omits preface, and ends I 28 with heading of chapter.
Very late fifteenth century. Folio 73, Cest liure appartient Nycolas de Saint Lo Cheualier.

{A) B. M. Sloane 2027, fols. 1-36 verso. Fragment, leaves torn at beginning. Ends III, 24,
** but the tethe be much longer & stronger aythyr blude." Late XV century.

(/) Petworth 6 (Duke of Northumberland). Omits colophon entire. No XV-century marks
of ownership, /fist. AfSS. Com,^ ^* Rept.^ 289 a.

* See note 5, p. 390, on MSS. r, e^f,

3 ** Rerum ordo deposcit, ut, ex quibus prouinciis uel nationibus tirones legendi sint, prima
parte tractetur. Constat quidem in omnibus locis et ignauos et strenuos nasci. Sed tamen et
gens gentem praecedit in bello et plaga caeli ad robur non tantum corporum sed etiam animorum
plurimum ualet ; quo loco ea, quae a doctissimis hominibus comprobata sunt, non omittamus.
Omnes nationes, quae uicinae sunt soli, nimio calore siccatas, amplius quidem sapere, sed
minus habere sanguinis dicunt ac propterea constantiam ac fiduciam comminus non habere
pug^andi, quia metuunt uulnera qui exiguum sang^nem se habere nouerunt. Contra septen-
trionales populi, emoti a solis ardoribus, inconsultiores quidem, sed tamen largo sanguine red-
undantes, sunt ad bella promptissimi. Tirones igitur de temperatioribus legendi sunt plagis,
quibus et copia sanguinis suppetat ad uulnerum mortisque contemptum et non possit deesse
prudentia, quae et modestiam seruat in castris et non parum prodest in dimicatione consiliis."

392 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

death.^ It seems the product of a practised writer whose speech was formed
in Wycliffe's days.* The style is clear, and less discursive than most prose
work of the date, freer also from half-changed Latin.^ The curious doubling
of terms appears the most notable mannerism. All this prepares for the
question (rf authorship.

As the count of manuscripts shows,^ three texts, and these the earliest,
ascribe the work to some one the last syllable of whose name is -touriy and
the first syllable or syllables are represented by what at first sight appears a
rude device for a flag or ensign. This device varies in detail in the three
manuscripts. The other texts are anonymous, though additional evidence is
given by them as to lord Berkeley's patronage.**

Tanner, from this latter fact alone, apparendy, ascribed the work to
John Trevisa.® Francis Douce, who owned one of the cryptograms, hazarded
Clif- or Cleftoun."^ Caley and Coxe followed him.® Mr.*Madan, Bodley's libra-
rian, suggests Bannerton.^ Mr. J. H. Wylie adds Walton.^^ Flagton, Standard-
ton, Ensignton, Pennanton, Axton, and numerous other guesses could be made.
So far as the symbol itself is concerned, Mr. Madan's suggestion of Ban-
nerton seems the best yet put forward ; and the name belongs to the west
country.^ In heraldry a banner is drawn exactly as depicted here.^ Some
little search, however, has failed to disclose a Bannerton connected with the
Berkeleys.

^ Comparison of the forms with Chaucer's Melibee will show this clearly, especially as re-
gards phraseology. On the other hand, Hoccleve*s prose, he, cit.^ 240-242, seems much more
modem, and this in spite of the fact that the earliest Vegetius MS. can hardly be earlier than
1440.

« Cf. tract no. XXV, in a fourteenth-century MS. of The English Works of Wyclif, ed. F. D.
Matthew, E.E.T.S., 74. There is no form here, save the adverbial -/i, openli^ p. 357, which
cannot be found in Vegetius.

^ A good example of over-use of Latin forms may be found in the second version of the
Polichronicotiy Rolls Series, which was written in the first half of the fifteenth century. Trevisa's
text, printed just above, shows the contrast clearly.

* See note 5, p. 390. * See note 5, p. 390, MSS. f, e^f.

* Bibl. Brii.'Hibemica, p. 721. ^ In Caley*s Catalogue of Lansdowne MSS.

8 Catalogus cod. MSS. qui in Coll. Aulisque Oxon. hodie adservantur^ H. O. Coxe, 1852.
(Magd. Coll. 30.) Followed by Macray, Cat. Cod. MSS. Digby^ 1883, p. 243.

* Summary Catalogue of Western MSS.^ IV, 582.

^ History of England in the time of Henry the Fourthy II, 273 n., London, 1894. Implied by
reference in index under Walton. Old Royal Catalogue and Adds. Catalogue (14408) give the
same author. The new RoycU MSS. Catalogue is not yet published, and I am not at liberty to
disclose its views, though proof-sheets have been shown me.

" October 3, 1397, John, son of John Powell, was pardoned for having broken into the house of
Wm. Banerton at Heylshawe, with intent to kill Banerton's son Thomas. Calendar Patent Rolls,
1397, p. 201. Clifton, too, is a west-country name. See Calendar Pai. Rolls, I397» PP« 256, 332, 317,
references to three apparently different John Cliftons. John Walton*s translation of Boethius
for an Elizabeth Berkeley hardly makes him a good candidate.

^2 The Chalons MS. {b) has arms tricked in banners drawn like the one at the end of the
volume, only larger, of course. This MS. contains the most elaborate symbol in the colophon.

MacCRACKEN 393

Against this claim is the weight of internal evidence. So closely does the
Vegetius conform in style, dialect, and vocabulary to the acknowledged work
of John Trevisa, that it is hard to believe any other had a hand in it.^ What
then becomes of "^ton" ? It would be a satisfying labor, if successful, to
show that as Tre- in Cornish means "town,"^ so visa, bisa, or misa should
mean "flag," "cUff," "clef," "banner," "ensign," "axe," "wall," or what-
ever the symbol may be interpreted to signify. Unfortunately Trev-isa^
" lowest town," is a name attached to a manor of St. Enoder,^ and Trev-isav
is equally good Welsh for the same. " Lowest " does not appear a probable
interpretation of the symbol, certainly, though the variations of the rebus in
the manuscripts make almost any conjecture possible.

To suggest that some one ignorant of the real meaning of Trevisa appended
this fanciful etymology, or that Trevisa himself was ignorant of his own name*s
meaning,^ seems a far-fetched attempt to hang a bushel of deduction on a pin
of evidence. The excellent provenance of the earlier texts, in which the rebus
appears, makes it difficult to believe in some intermediate scribe, Banerton or
the like, who affixed his own name. The mystery, under present knowledge,
seems insoluble, and may be no clearer when a full comparison of the Vege-
tius with Trevisa's known work is made, for the writer believes it will only
confirm the claim of identity here advanced.^

^ Complete proof of this can hardly be expected until an edition of the Vegetius is forth-
coming. I may, however, note some significant forms common to Trevisa and the author of
Vegetius.

1. Adverbial suffixes -liche, comp. -loker. boldliche, b&ldloker, Veg. above; besiliche^ slyloker,
Pol, I, 91.

2. Use of 5 for y or gh, and of sch for sh.

3. Over-use of y- in past participle, in words of Romance origin, as i-crdeyned^ PoL III, 375 ;
Veg. IV, rubric of cap. i, etc.

4. Rare words occurring in both, e.g. Forespekinge^ ** introduction," Pol. II, 143 ; Veg. IV,
Prol. The only reference to this word before 1540 in N.E.D. is to Trevisa. RecUute^ Veg. I, i ;
20 times in Pol. The N.E.D. gives only references to Trevisa, before 1500. Chastere^ n., "tamer,"
Veg. II, 2 ; forms of the verb chaste appear a score of times in Pol. Not in N.E.D. Destourble^
Veg. I, 4; Pol, II, 413, etc. "Songlinges (juvenes), Veg. I, 4; Pol. II, 413.

5. U for y in certain words, as dude^ smulle^ pupUy i-bulded^prude^/ury, i-fured. Common in
both works ^Veg. I, 20; Pol. Ill, 21).

6. Verbal analogies. Veg. IV, 16, BaJeynesy grete Jisches as it were of whales kynde. Pol. II,
13* hi greet baleyne orwhaal (added to original).

7. Gerund. To menynge^ Pol. I, 69, 103, etc. ; to wytingey Veg. (above) I, 2.

8. Doubling of terms in the original, with synon3rms. A constant and deliberate practice.

9. The minutiae of the colophon, with exact date, little rime, and patron named.

10. Doubling of single consonant in comparative. Wydder (wider), Veg. IV, i ; Pol. VI, 15.

* " Tre," a ** house " or " town," or perhaps more exactly what is now called in Cornwall a
town-place, />., a farm with its out-buildings. Trans. Philol. Soc, 1873, P* '^3-

* Lexicon Comu-Britannicum^ ed. R. Williams, London, 1865, sub ^ isa."

* He was certainly no great Latin scholar. See the introduction (Vol. I) to the Polychronicon
of Higden, in the Rolls Series.

* An E.E.T.S. announcement, of Miss Wharton's edition of " Trevisa's " Vegetius^ reappears
annually. The edition is still in nubibus.

394 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

Exactly half a century later, in 1458, an anonymous translator prepared
for John, Viscount Beaumont, the second English Vegetius under the title
Knighthode and Bataile. As if in unconscious irony he selected for the day
of presentation of his treatise on the art of war that ill-starred ** love-day,"
March 25 (Lady Day), when Henry VI, Warwick, York, Salisbury, and
Queen Margaret went arm in arm to St. Paul's and swore a peace, which
scarcely lasted out the year.^ The work being in rime, the author had the
good sense to omit much of what was then obsolete in his Roman original.
Three MSS. survive, the earliest alone retaining the original form of dedica-
tion to Henry VI ; the other two, in spite of the author's vehement protest
that to win all England he would not join Henry's enemies,^ substitute
everywhere the name of Edward IV.

1 MSS. Pembroke Coll. Camb. 243, B.M. Cotton Titus AXXIII, and Bodl. Ashmole
45. The first is complete. The others lack the Prologue. Ashmole also lacks many leaves,
including all 6k. II. In preparation, however, all three are closely alike, so far as concerns
index, titles, glosses, etc. An edition has been now seven years in contemplation by R. Dyboski
for the E.E.T.S. For extracts and information derived from the Pembroke MS. I am deeply
indebted to the college librarian, Mr. Ellis H. Minns, M.A.

* It is possible from the derisive reference above to the "silver bear'* (Warwick), the "lilial
lion" (Plantagenet), and the "golden eagle" (perhaps Montagu, since the Montacute arms
had held an eagle since the fourteenth century, according to Burke), to observe the poet's
sympathies.

The following stanzas tell of the king's patronage, and assist in the dating :

And tMery wcrryour will I beseche

Impropurly wher of myn ignoraunce
Of werre I write, as putte in pr<;pre speche,

And mende me, praing herof plesaunce

To God be furst, by Henry King of Fraunce
And £ng[e]lande, and thenne ereith[er] londe
PeasibuUy M God putte in his honde. ^p^^ ^^ Prologue.)

In Engelond til now was ther no werre

This be yerc, saving at Scynt Albane,
And oon Batayle after the Blasyng sterre,*

And longe on hem that whirleth as the fane ;
Is not their own[e] crymc her own[c] banc ? ^p^^^ ^itus MS., fol. 29 b.)

Of tholde worlde ^ brightis hameysinge,

Best ordinance and myghtiest made werre,
O Chyualers, to you this is to bringe

The best ye chese, and yit a point go nerr<,

O lady myn, Maria, lode-sterr<.
Licence me toward the londe, beholde
See-seek am I, fulfayn o londe I wolde.

Hayle, poort salu^, w/tA thy plesaunt accesse,

Al hail, Caleys, ther wold I fayne o londe, —
That may not — Joo, whiso ? — for they distresse

All, or to deye, or w/tA her werke to stonde ;

That dar [I not, to]wynne all Engelonde.
What myght availe a lite in errour dwelle,
And world wrtA-outen ende abide in helle ?

• Halley's comet, June, 1456.

MacCRACKEN 395

The desperate efforts of the translator to reach poetic quality, while at the
same time giving the gist of Vegetius, reach their climax in the description
of battle by land and sea. At times elsewhere stray stanzas of genuine merit
are found. Thus, on the channel winds,^

Sum variaunce of tyme wil refreyne

Her cruelous and fers rebellioun ;
Another helpeth hem to shake her cheyne

As al the firmament shuld falle adoun,

And ocdan lepe ouer Caleis toun : —
And afdr, in a while, it is tranquille,
And playn, and calme, as whos seith, " Husht, be stille ! "

Rarely outside of Chaucer has the rhetorical value of the rime royal been
better grasped than in this stanza.

But it is in his description of the fight at sea that the real power of the
writer appears. Historically valuable as are the accounts of warfare from this
mid-scene of the fury and clash of the Roses, they are still more noteworthy
from the literary point of view. Here is some one, in that barren age, who
knows what he is about.^

2 {Continued) O, litil case, O pou^ne hous, my poort

Salu3 )><ni be, vntil this ayer amende.
That is to sey, ontil another soort

Gou^me ther^, that by )>e king be sende.

Goo, litil book, and humbilly besech^

The werriours, and hem that wil the rede,
That wher afault is, or imp/vpur specb^.

They vouchesaf tamende my mysdede ;

Thy writer eek pray hym to taken hede
Of thy cadence, and kepe ortographie,
That neither he take of ner multiplie. (^he last stanzas, from Titus.)

To these I append the two stanzas corresponding to the prose extract given above, from

the earlier translation :

Thelectioun of werreours is good

Yn eu^ry lond ; and southward ay )>e more,
}pt more wit they haue, and lesse blood ;

Forthy to blede her drede is ; and therfore

Resyne theym to labour and to lore ;
And northewarde hath more blood, and lesse
Wyt, and to fight and blede han hardynesse.

But werreours to worthe wise and bolde

Ys good to take in mene atwin hem tweyne,
Where is not ou^r-hot nor ou^fKrolde,

And to travaile and swete in snowe and reyne

Yn colde and hete. In wode and feeldis playne
WrtA rude fode and short, they ^aX bith vsid
To chese it is the dtesens seclused.

^ From Bk. IV, quoted from MS. Titus, as is the longer extract gfiven above.

^ Vegetius* account is technical and without any suggestion of this spirited work which
compares favorably with a similar account in Chaucer's Legend of Cleopatra, Good stanzas on
the pel-quintain are quoted by Strutt, Sports and Pastimes^ ed. 1845, PP* 114-115 (Bk. Ill,
chap, i), from the Titus MS.

396 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

The beemys up they goth oute of the truwpe,

And eu^ry brayn astonyetR their resoun ;
The firmament, lo ! clariounys crumpe

To crye vppon, — and lo ! hit comth adoun

W/tA angelis, ye, many a legioun,
To counter p^riurie, and myscreaunce,
And surquydrie, and disobeysaunce.

In eu^ry man they setteth fortitude.

And hygh magnyficence, and confidence,
P^rseu^raunt for trouthe to conclude

W/tA adiuuance of myghti pacience ;

And on the parte adu^rse an Impotence,
W/tA cowardise, and diffident dispaire,
Wil ferdfully w/t^ trembeling repaire.

The canonys, the Bumbard, and the gunne
They bio w/t^oute the vois, and stonys grete

Thorugh mast and side and other be they ru^ne —
In gofli the serpentyne aftyr his mete —
The Colu^ryne is besy for to gete

An hole into the top, and the Crappaude

Wil in — the fouler eek wil haue his laude.

The covey fieeSi, as foulis, through to saile,

The pavice ar encombred witR coventis,^
Yet on they come ! and vs they wil assaile,

The bowe vnnum^rabil redy bent is,

i. ab aure

The shaft fro theere anende it goth appf^ntis ;

Thonagir is, and the Carribaliste,
The fundubal and the manubaliste,

The Catafracte, plumbate, and Scorpioun,
The dart and arpagoun in dayes olde

Were had, and are amonge vs leyde adoun ;
Crosbowe yet and Crankelous or bolde
W/tA wilde fier to brenne alle in the foolde.

The malliol goth out w/tA the fallary.

The wilde fier to here our Adu^rsary.

Yet on they come ! awayte vppon the toppe.
Good archery ! The storm of shot as hail

So rayketh on, they dar not schewe her croppe,
Ner in the mastis top, ner vnder sayle ; —
Yet hayle hem in a myghty voys, " hail ! hail !

Come vnder your kyng [Harry] ! fy o pride ! "

They wil not throf ; attonys on hem ride,

^ That is, I suppose, the escorted transports and merchant ships flee, while the warships
give battle.

MacCRACKEN 397

Bende up ! breke euerych^ oore in the mytside
That haSi a rasF, help^ hem ! lo ! they goth vndir I

To this mysaventure hemsdf th[e]y gyde.
Lo ! how they cracke on eu^ry syde asondyr !
What tempest is on hem, what leit and thondir!

On, grapesinge, anoon ! lete se their fleete,

What hertis ar in hem w/tA vs to mete !

Armnre and axe and spere of ou/rwight
Is ou^rlight, as sparkelis in reede,

So sparkil they on helm and hemeys bright ;
The Rammys and twibil the side out-shrede,
Of ship and mast doun gotE the sail, indede,

Vp goth our hook, nowe it is on their gabil,

Lo ! ther it lietE ! this batail is notabil !

Su/«me into see go, fisshis for to feede,
Su/«me vnder haccli ar falde adoun for fere.

And sunu^e above, her hert[e]-bloode to bleede.
And summt seek hemself , they wote n^r wher,
And summc crye, " alas that we come there !

Myschief vppon mysgou/maunce betide,

Lo ! pryde haSi vs betrapped, fy o pride ! "

" Com on w/tA vs 1 ye shal go se the kynge.

The gradous ; have of anoon this gere !
Ye most have on another hameysinge,

A Jingelyng of Jessis shal ye were.

Ye shal no lenger stonden in this fere !
O silu^r here, O lilial lioun,
O goldon Eagle, [w]her is your renoun ! " *

Thus may be doon, if that it be forseyne

Of our m^;yte in Sou/rayn providence;
Forthy for[th]wit& do eu^ry wight his peyne

Sleight out to holde, and haue in diligence.

Sette vp the werk, and spare noon expense,
Of Goddis honde as though ye have victory,
Yit in the knotte is al thonour and glory.'

Knyt vp the knotte, and sey, " hayl haliday !

The werre intraneous of al this londe
Is at an ende ; here nys no more affray.

Justice is here, peasibily to stonde.

And al the world shal tel of £ng[e]lond*
And of [the] kyngys hygh magnyfisence,
And been adred tattempte it w/tA offence.**

1 Warwick, Clarence, Montagu. See p. 394, n. 2.

* An early treatment of the maxim that God is on the tide of the biggest battalions.
Warwick's victories at sea fulfilled these predictions.

* See the last stanzas of the work, quoted above, p. 394, n. 2.

398 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

There is a chance that the poet who composed this stirring bit of verse has
been rescued from the common oblivion of the fifteenth century. Internal
evidence points strongly to the conclusion that he was also the author of Agri-
culture, a version of Palladius' De Re Rustica, written about 1439 for Duke
Humphrey. Accepting this identification, the grounds for which are given
below,^ we have several pivotal facts to go upon. In 1439 the poet of the

^ Agriculture^ as its author called it, has been twice printed, under the name Palladius^
for the Eiarly Eng. Text Society by B. Lodge (nos. 52, 72), and by Mark Liddell from the
Fitzwilliam MS., Berlin, 1896. The Bodleian owns a facsimile of this MS., probably the presen-
tation copy to Humphrey. The date is known from the line ** it cherith His wit to here and
Orliaunce ennoye " (Prol. 59-60), which must, I think, refer to a date before the release of that
prince in 1440 ; and from the mention of Humphrey's gift of 129 books to Oxford, in 1439. See
on this Monumenta Acadetnka^ Rolls Series, p. 326. Many other details confirm this date. The
points common to the two works, and rare elsewhere, can only be summarized here most briefly.
The Palladius references are to E.E.T.S. 52, 72, ed. Herrtage ; Vegttiusy to folios of Titus A. xxiii.

1. They are careful and yet free versifications of Latin didactic treatises.

2. Rigid standards of metre, and rig^d observance of the final -e as understood by the poet,
appear throughout

3. The rime-indexes are identical, with allowance made for difference of vocabulary due to
the subjects. The distinguishing characteristics here are :

a. Use of penultimate rimes.

centenaiyis : necessary is V 15
noon is : stonys : bonys V 8 b
signys : condigne is : insigne is V 9 b

Cf. anyghtes: dight is P 117/381
celles : elles : hell is P 196/271.
flesys : chese is P 167/87

b. Penultimate rimes in -cry and -ary.

exploratory : story : victory V 47
victory : memory V 2, V 5.
necessary : tary : myscary V 9 b
Cf. memorie : territory P 120/468

c. Penultimate rimes in -eson.

geson : seson V 42
seson : eson V 6 b.
Cf. peson : geson : season P 106/65 etc,

d. Rime of -aft, -eft.

craftis : forlefte is V 4 b.

Cf. shafte : crafte : lefte P 75/401

e. Confusion of -igne, -inc.

signe : enclyne V 36.

medicyne: resigne: declyne V 19 a.

Cf. assigne: medicyne: reclyne P 203/450 etc.

f Frequent rime of are, always with final -c.
repare : are V 16 b. etc.
Cf. are : repare P 107/85 etc.

4. The curious run-on lines, of which examples are g^ven in the lines quoted above. For

Palladius see

A sadder vyne a bigger stake olofte

Mot holde ; a lighter vyne is with a lesse

Stakyng upholde. And whi ? For hevynesse

Of shade, etc. P 40/1080

MacCRACKEN 399

Agriculture, though for ten years oppressed, and still deprived of his church
by his ** double mortal foe/* is now assured of better days through Humphrey's
intercession, and a reward is promised him for literary service. In 1458, in
the prologue to Knight hode and Bataile the poet calls himself " Parson of
Calais," and after some consideration selects John, Viscount Beaumont, as his
patron to present his work to Henry VI. Beaumont addresses him " Pr<fste
vnto me," but the author adds cautiously next these words in the margin
" After my master," thus indicating that he is a king's clerk, owing service
next to lord Beaumont, steward to the Prince of Wales and the king, and a
prominent member of the Privy Council.^ The prologue ends with a predic-
tion that the king will soon provide, from point to point, for the war as he is
taught in Vegetius. Finally, the careful substitution of Edward IV's name
for Henry's in the later MS. is very likely the author's own work.

With good luck, then, one in quest of the poet's name might hope to find
some priest rewarded with a benefice in 1439, mentioned as a king's clerk, and
parson of Calais then or later, rewarded or recognized in some way about 1458

5. The lines just quoted show also the abrupt breaks and the attempt to give animation
by conversational interruptions.

6. Use of o in olofte, P 40/1080. Cf. o in olonde in the stanzas quoted above (p. 394) from V.

7. Verbal analogues. One instance must suffice.

But this I leve vnto \e, sapience

Of Chyualers and to my werk retome
Theiyn to do my feithfull diligence

For there plesaunce, out oftfmprosis stome

The resonaunce ofmetris wold I borne ^
As myghty herte in ryngyng hameysinge
So gentil wyt wil in good metris springe. V ii b

Cf, Af now my lord biholdith on his book,

For-sothe al nought, he gynneth crossis make,
WrtA a phumnet, and, y noot whow, his look,

His cheer is straunge eschaunge, almeest y quake

For ferd y shrynke away, no leue y take.
Farwel, my lord, do ford), for y am heer,

Apu/ metur muse out of this prosis bloke ^
And heer y wul sette on at Feu^ryeer. P 480 ff .

(For this stanza I have used the photo-facs. of Earl Fitzwilliam*s MS., in the Bodleian »
Arch. F. d. i.)

8. The preparation of the MSS. Alone among fifteenth-century English translations,
Vegetius and Palladius are provided with carefully prepared indexes, marginal and interlinear
glosses, accurate running titles, and numbering of the stanzas on every folio {a — d recto^
e — h verso) for ready reference. The glosses are of two types in both works. They offer the
Latin equivalent of the English rimes and words liable to misconstruction (/), or alternative
English readings for the lines (/).

9. The prologue, with run-on rime* prayer to Christ or Mary at beginning of each book,
a reference to patronage, and hope of betterment of condition through the work, are common
and peculiar to both.

* Calendar of Patent Rolls ^ Jan. 20, 1457. See also Nicolas* Proceedings and Ordinances of
the Privy Council^ VI, 207 if., for Beaumont^ place in the history of the time. Beaumont was
killed at the battle of Northampton in 1460 {Paston Letters ^ I, 443).

400 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

for his war treatise, and perhaps taken in service under Edward IV. He would
scarcely hope to find reference to his mortal foe, since the poverty of the com-
plainant might prevent a suit, and Humphrey's patronage be sufficient reward.
It can hardly be laid to coincidence, therefore, that one Robert Parker,
chaplain, should succeed a clerk of the king's closet as parson of Stanford
Ryvers, in the very year 1439 ; ^^a^ ^^ ^45^ Robert Parker, chaplain, the
king's clerk, should be made parson of St. Nicholas, Calais ; that in 1460
Robert Parker should be named, among others, on a commission with the
master of the king's ordnance to oversee the manufacture of '* cannons, bom-
bards, culverin, serpentyns, crossbows," and other instruments of war de-
scribed in detail in Knighthode and BataiUy and finally, that in 1464, an early
pardon of Edward IV should be issued to Robert Parker, clerk.^ Until further
search is made in the scanty records of this period, the facts of Parker's life
must be admitted as fairly meeting the conditions given by internal evidence
for a claim to authorship of Agriculture and Knighthode and Bataile.

Ill

Caxton's translation of The Faites and Armes of Chivalrie^ from Chris-
tine de Pisan, contains so much of Vegetius that it may fairly be called a
translation.* The work, printed in 1489 for Henry VII, is an abridgment of

1 Calendar of Patent Rolls y Feb. 25, 1439, "Presentation of Robt Parker, chaplain, to the
church of Stanford Ryvers, co. Essex, in the diocese of London, void by the resignation of
Edward Atherton, clerk of the king's closet" Ibid,^ Aug. 16, 1450, " Presentation of the King's
clerk, Robert Parker, chaplain, to the church of St. Nicholas, Calais, in the diocese of T^rouanne.**
Ibid.y Oct. 2, 1452, exchange of Atherton for Stanford Ryvers. Ibid.^ Mar. 2, 1460, commission
to master of king's ordnance and others, Robt. Parker among them, to oversee the manufacture
of the works named above, and many other munitions of war. Ibid., Aug. 10, 1464, " General
pardon to Robt Parker, clerk." The writer has found no mention of a parson of St. Nicholas,
Calais, as succeeding Robert Parker.

^ " And bycause that dyuerce auctours leme me to speke whiche haue wreton, I shall pro-
duce in-to wytnes theyr sayengis, and pryncypally Vegece, whyche [sig. B ij] in the tyme of
Valentyne themperour notably made a propre boke of the dysciplyne & arte whidhe the right
conquerours helden, whiche brought to ende by wysedom and vertue of armes thynges whiche
now in this present tyme shold seme as Impossible. ..." [Sig. B i^'^] Lib. I, cap. viii.

Caxton's description of the work, since there is no modem edition, may be g^ven also.

^ Here begynneth the table of the rubryshys of the boke of the fayt of armes and of
Chyualrye whiche sayd boke b departyd in-to foure partyes.

The fyrst partye deuyseth the manere that kynges and prynces oughten to holde in the
fayttes of theyr werres and bataylles after thordre of bokes, dictes, and examples of the most
preu & noble conquerours of the world. And how & what maner fayttes ought best to be chosen
& the maners that they ought to kepe and holde in theyr offices of armes.

Item the second party speketh after Frontyn of cawteles & subtyltees of armes which he
calleth stratagems of thordre & manere to fyghte & deffende castellis & cytees after Vegece
and other auctours. And to make werre & gyue bataylle in ryuers and in the See.

Item the thyrde parte speketh of the droytes & ryghtes of armes after the lawes & drojrt
wreton.

Item the iiij partye speketh of the droytes of armes in the faytes of saufconduytes, of
tryews, of marke, & after of champ de bataylle, that is, of fyghtyng within lystes."

MacCRACKEN 401

various treatises. The first two books follow Vegetius, in the main. As no
modem edition exists, an illustrative extract is given here.

The matere of takyng of auauntayge at a felde. Capitulo xxij [sig. £ ij*^].

** Vegece saith that the hedcapytayne oughte to see that day that he wol gyue bataylle
what wylle hys men haue therto. For he may knowe yf they haue eny drede or fere in
theym by thtyre faces, by theyre wordes, and by the moeujmg of theyre bodyes. But, he
sayth, thys is not to be vndrestande of thoos that haue not lemed h3rt ; For menieylle it
were but yf suche shold drede hit. But yf he knoweth that they that be enured with
thexcersyce of armes maken doubte of hyt, he ought to delaye the bataylle vnto another
day jrf he may . . . [sig. E iij]. Now cometh to the poynt, how that a bataylle after the
teching of Vegece shalbe renged in arraye. Soo shall thenne see the wyse captayne as it is
sayd, that he take fyrst the advauntage of the felde. Where as thre pryncypalle thynges are
to be consydered and seen vnto: That one to take the hyghest part of the place; the
seconde, that the enemyes haue the sonne shynynge streyght vpon theyre faces as longe as
the batayll shall laste; And that other that the wynde be also ayenst hem. ..."

The volume becomes much more interesting, it should be said, when
Vegetius is abandoned. Thus, for example, Christine's argument as to the
rights of English scholars in Paris during war times is not without historical
and literary value. Since her work, as well as Caxton's, exists in no modem
editions, the insertion of this amusing page may be pardoned :

[" Lib. Ill, cap. xix," by a curious misnumbering. Really cap. xxiij, as appears from the
table of chapters, sig. L ij*^ fiF.]

Sig. O i^ :

" But syth that we ben entred in matere of prysoners of werre, I wyl that thou luge ^
thy-self after thyn aduyse of suche a debat whyche by an exsample I shal propose vnto
the. Now knowest thou al 3moughe how the kynge of Fraunce and the kynge of England
haue comonly werre one ayenst an other. I putte the caas that a scoler licencyat atte Cam-
bryge in Englande is com to the vnyuersyte of parys for to be there graduate or enhaunced
in the degree of doctour of dyu3myte, or in other faculte ; wher it happeth that a man of
armes of Fraunce knoweth by other that thys scoler is an englisheman borne, and taketh
hym as hys prysoner, to the whyche pryse the sayde scoler sayth ayenst & therto opposeth
hym-self ; so ferforth is the thynge brought that byfore the lustyce cometh the questyon, to
the whyche debat the Englysheman, that in ryght fownded hys reason, sayth, that he hathe
a caas expert of the lawe that doeth for hym-self ; for cause of the grete preuyleges that the
scolers haue there, and h3rt deffendeth that noo gryef nor dyspleasyre be doon to them, but
honour and reuerens. And here is the reason, he saythe, that the lawe assygneth ; Who
shulde be, he sayth, the lawe that shulde not haue scolers for recomaunded, whiche for to
knowe and acquyre co;rnyng haue lefte and layde asyde ry[c]hesses, delicates, & al eases of
body, theyre camall frendes and theyre countrey, and haue taken the astate of pourete, and
as banyshed from al other goodes haue forsaken the worlde and al othir pleasirs for loue
of scyence. So shulde he be wel full of all vnkyndnes that shulde doo eny euyll to them.

" To thees reasons the man of armes replycqueth thus, sayng: Brother, I telle the that
emonge vs we f renshmen make noo force of the emperoures lawes ; to whom we be not
subgect, so owe not we to obeye them.

^ Beginning with Book III, Christine's work consists of questions debated with Study, a
stately man appearing in a dream, as per Prologue, and herself.

402 VEGETIUS IN ENGLISH

"The scoler ansuereth: Lawes ben noon other thynges but veray reasons that were
ordeyned after wysedome, and yf therof ye do make noo force, it is not sayde therfore, that
the kynge & lordes of France shal not vse of reason & of thynges that ben reasonable, and
of that that they hem-self haue ordeyned. For Charlemayne remeued the general! scole of
rome by the popis wylle to parys ; they gaffe grete & notable preuyleges to the same scole.
And therfore sent the kynge to fetch maisters out of all partyes and scolers of all manere
of langages and all them he comprysed in the sayde preuylege. And wherfore thenne shal
not they mowe come from all partyes whan they haue licence of the kynge, where as al
thynges at theyre fyrst comynge doo swere that they shall kepe the saide preuyl^es.

"In the name of god, sayde the man of armes, supposed that that ye sale, ye ought to
wite that sethen that a generall werre was cryed & proclamed betwyn oure kynge and yours,
noon englyshemen ought to come within the roialme of Fraiice, for suche a cause nor for
noon other whatsomeuer it be, without a good saufconduyte, & the reason is goode. For
why, ye myght vndre coloure of the scole vmte & doo vndrestande in youre contrey how it
is here, and the astate of this lande, and other dyuers secret euylles ye myght doo here yf
ye wolde; wherfore it is not reason that noo manere of preuylege shulde toume unto
preiudyce of the kynge nor of hys royalme.

" Thes reasons harde, saye thou my loue now, what thou therupon thinkest.

" Wythout faylle, mayster, syth that it pleaseth the that my lytel and sobre aduyse shall
seme in thys bihalfe, I telle the that yf it be so and w)jthout frawde that he of whom thou
spekest be a true scoler, that is to saye, that he were not come vndre fyction to leme
conninge, for to aspye or to doo som other euyll, I holde his cause for good, and that he
ought not to be take prysonner, prouyded al wayes, but yf the kynge had made to be cryed
by hys maundement especyall that noon englisheman what someuere he were shulde not
come to studye in hys royalme.

" Thou has ryghtwelt (sic) luged and wysely dystynged. ..."

Not long after Caxton's time, possibly about 1500, a Scottish herald, or
some Scotsman interested in the herald*s office, made a series of translations
from the parts of Vegetius touching his subject. His purpose was, apparently,
to exhibit the duties and qualities of knighthood ; and the document has a
place in the history of the extraordinary outburst of chivalric display in Scot-
land at the turn of the fifteenth century. The first of the extracts maybe quoted.^

Heir begy^nis ye translatione out of latyn in to inglis De bello campestra (st'c) in V^eus
(stc) De rei (sic) militari.

First it is to knaw to a prince or a chiftane of weir, >at smyM«, writhtis, masonis, ar
pwfitabill to battell werk/j ; becauSS of yair daly laubour, yair armes ar ganand and vsit in
strikin, and sa ar bouchour/j-, for yai abhor no^^t ye schedding of blude, sen yai ar vsit to
slauth^r of beist/>, and to lat yair blude. huntaris als of wild harts, for yai ar no^^t Invadit
w/biout grete hardime;/t, and y^;fore sic mew ar curageous and strenthty to fight; and sa
ar huntait's of grete deir, for yai ar vsit w/tA rycMt grete travell. haihourts, sootar/>,
writar/> and tailjeor/V, and yair avin craft be weill considerit, yai ar na worth for battell ;

1 From MS. Queen's College Oxf. 161, fols. 97-101. The volume belonged to, and was
perhaps composed by, R. Anderson. The selections from Vegetius concern the choice of
soldiers, the situation of the camp, banners in war, foining vs. striking, and the seven positions
for battle.

MacCRACKEN 403

for he may neuer wdll stryke w/tA ax or swerd yat suld haue a Ik^t hand to hald nsour,
nedill, or pen ; for quhat pr^^portione is of a nedill till a speir, or rasour or pen till ane ax ?
Sa ar potingar/f, foular/j, fischar/f, and siclikis no^^t to be chosin to battell craft, for yair
craft is no^^t like to battell craft

This survey of Vegetius in early English may conclude with John Sadler's
translation, made for Sir Edmund Brudenell, and published at his expense,
in 1572, with a letter of dedication to the Earl of Bedford, Lord Russell. As
one who had seen active service in France, Scotland, and Wales, and who was
one of the Queen's chief captains during her early reign, Bedford deserved
the dedication.^ The translation compares favorably with others in that age
of translation, in style and accuracy. An interesting part of Sadler's work
was the curious and valuable series of six plates exhibited at the end of the
volume, showing engines of siege and assault. As illustrating the change in
manner of translation between 1408 and 1572, the second chapter of Book I
from Sadler is given here for contrast with Trevisa's rendering.

Out of what countreis a younge souldiour should be chosen. Chapiter ij.

The order of thinges for our purpose doth require, that in the first parte we intreate,
out of what prouinces or countries younge souldiours should be chosen. For it is moste sure
and euident, that in all places bothe cowardes and hardie men be bredde. But yet, because
one nation doth excelle an other in warre, and the clymate of the heaue;/ doth very much
auayle not onely to strengthen the body, but also the minde, for in this place what is of the
best learned men moste approued & allowed, I meane not to pretermit. They say that all
nations whiche be nigh to the Sunne, parched & dried with ouer muche heate, haue more
witte in deede, but yet lesse blood within them. And for that cause, they dare not manfully
& boldly stande to it when they fight, wel knowinge how litie blood they haue, & feare
much therf ore wounding. Contrariwyse, the people of the North, whom the Sunne bimieth
not so nere, being more rashe and vnaduised, yet a great deale better blouded, are moste
ready of all, & desirous of warre [.] Out of the more temperate costes then should souldiours
be chosen, whiche both may haue bloud enough, and so not force neither for hurting nor
killing: & haue wisedome also sufficie;/t, wherby wisely to kepe a moderate meane &
aduisedly by circumspect councel, to preuaile in their fighting.

1 John Sadler, commenced Corpus Christi, Cambridge, M. A., 1540. He lived at Oundle,
from which his dedication is addressed. See Cooper, Athentu Cantab.^ and the account in the
Diet. Nat. Biog. Sir Edmund Brudenell was son of Judge Robert, of whose life an account is
given in the same work. He was perhaps the Brudenell who owned the MS. [b) of Trevisa's
version. The titie reads : " The Foure bookes of Flavius Vegetius Renatus, briefelye contayn-
inge a plaine forme, and perfect knowledge of martiall policye, feates of Chiualrye, and whatso-
cuer pertayneth to warre. Translated out of lattine into Englishe." The colophon : ** Imprinted
at London in Flete streete neare vnto Saint Dunstones Church, by Thomas Marshe."

THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

Karl Young

Of all the collections of '* framed stories " current in Europe during the
Middle Ages the only one that has been seriously and persistently adduced as
an immediate model for the frame of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is Boccac-
cio's Decameron. The confident opinion of T)awhitt, however, that "the
Canterbury Tales are a work of the same nature with the Decameron, and
were, in all probability, composed in imitation of it," ^ would seem to have
been finally discredited, after a century or so, by Mr. Pollard's downright
assertion that ** there is no shred of evidence to prove that he copied it from
the very inferior scheme of Boccaccio's Decamerone" * Nevertheless two
recent writers* have advanced ** shreds of evidence " which indicate that for
some scholars, at least, Chaucer's independence of the Decameron has not
yet been definitively established. Since, then, an old literary controversy is
being revived, I venture to introduce considerations which have been either
overlooked or ignored by the disputants, and which seem to deserve a meas-
ure of the attention which Chaucerians are bestowing upon the Decameron.

However many detailed resemblances may be apparent between the De-
cameron and the Canterbury Tales, one must frankly admit that in the fun-
damental fiction of their frameworks the two collections are irreconcilably
different. Boccaccio's stories are recounted by ten gentlefolk idling in a
garden ; Chaucer's tales are recounted by a motley company of pilgrims
riding on horseback along the highway. It is precisely the fiction of the
pilgrimage that differentiates Chaucer's plan from that of Boccaccio, and it
is particularly in this fiction that the originality of Chaucer's plan has always
been discerned. Only, then, in a collection of stories ostensibly recounted in
the course of a pilgrimage can we expect to find a true parallel for the central
motif of the Canterbury Tales. Such a parallel has been disclosed in the
Novelle of another of Chaucer's Italian contemporaries, Giovanni Sercambi
of Lucca (1347-1424).^

1 T. Tyrwhitt, The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Vol. I, Oxford, 1798, t). 72.

* A. \V. Pollard, in The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Globe Edition, London, 1898, p. xxviii.

• See L. Morsbach, Chaucers Plan der Canterbury Tales und Boccacctos Decamerone, in
Englische Studien, Vol. XLII (1910), pp. 43-52; R. K. Root, Chaucer and the Decameron, in
Englische Studien, Vol. XLIV (1912), pp. 1-7.

^ Sercambi's name was incorporated into Chaucerian criticism first, so far as I know, by
H. B. Hinckley, N^otes on Chaucer, Northampton, 1907, pp. 2-3. This service of Mr. Hinckley's
has scarcely received the recognition that it deserves. The first extended account of Sercambi's

405

4o6 THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

From the Proetnio of Sercambi's Novelle^ and from the intermezzi, or
" links," which bind the stories together, the framework of the Italian col-
lection may be outlined as follows :

During the ravages of a plague in Lucca in the year 1374 a number of
men and women from various walks of life, together with certain of the
clergy, decide to leave town until the pestilence shall have subsided, and in
the interim to travel about through Italy. One Sunday in February, there-
fore, the company gather in the Church of Santa Maria del Corso to receive
communion and perform other pious acts. On this occasion a certain promi-
nent citizen, named Aluisi, rises to address the company, suggesting that it
were best for them to appoint some one person to whom they all should pay
reverence and obedience, who should control them for the legitimate pleasure
of all, who should arrange the itinerary, and who should conduct the company
safely home. As such a leader (proposto) they promptly elect Aluisi himself.

j^t the request of Aluisi the pilgrims immediately raise a purse of three
thousand florins for common expenses, and promise more when this sum
shall have been spent. The leader appoints a treasurer to take charge of
the money, and stewards to supervise expenditures, and arranges for the daily
observance of the offices of the Church. For the amusement of the pilgrims
Aluisi makes ample provision as follows :

Ordinb coloro che dblli omini alia cena e al desnare dovranno con diletto et canti di
giostre et di moralitk cantare et ragionare, con alcuni stromenti, et talotta colle spade da
schermire, per dare piacere a tutti. £t alcuni tra loro vi disputassero in nelle liberali
sdenzie et questi eletti sono per la brigata delli omini et prelati ^ . . . Altri ordin6 che di
leuti et stromenti dilettevoli, con vod plane e basse et con voci piacevoli, canzonette

Novelle was given by R. Renier, Novelle Inedite di Giovanni Senambi^ Turin, 1889, from whom,
I infer, Mr. Hinckley derived his notes. As Renier explains (pp. xl-xli), the separate novelU
have now all been published, in one place or another. Unfortunately, however, the intermezzi^
or " links," embodying the framework, have never been printed, and although Renier gives an
indication of their content (pp. liii-lv), any searching study of the framework has been hitherto
impossible.

The unique manuscript of Sercambi's Novelle is No. 193 in the BibUoteca Trivulziana in
Milan. In preparing his edition of twenty of the 155 novelle^ in 18 16, Bartolomeo Gamba had
a transcription made from Ms. 193, the transcription being deposited in the same library in two
volumes, Nos. 194, 195. With unexcelled kindness. Professor Rajna of Florence secured for
me a copyist who transcribed the intermezzi from Nos. 194, 195. I have no adequate words with
which to thank Professor Rajna, and His Excellency Prince Trivulzio, who permitted the tran-
scribing, and Professor J. D. M. Ford, who has given me invaluable guidance. It appears that
the unique Ms. 193 is written in an atrocious hand ('* la scrittura veramente orribile," Renier,
pp. xlii-xliii) and is full of imperfections (Renier, p. xlvii). For these reasons my copyist, like
the editors of some of the novelle themselves, transcribed from Gamba*s copy, of about 18 16.
In the present article, then, I vouch for the content, but not for the letter, of the intermezzi
as I quote from them. I hope to hear that some scholar is preparing a complete edition of
Ms. 193, including the intermezzi.

^ The small lacuna in the manuscript at this point is, of course, most unfortunate.

YOUNG 407

d^amore et d^onestk dicesseno alle donne. Et perch^ ve n'avea d'etk alcune, accasate et
vidue, ordin6 alcuni pargoletti saccend col saltero sonare un salmo et una gloria, et quando
s'udiva la messa, al levare del nostro Signore, uno sanctus sanctus dirsi, et per questo modo
volea che la mattina, quando si dicesse la messa, fusse sonato, et al desnare et alia cena
diversamente, secondo le condizion\ delli omini, fusse lo suono, et cos) delle donne.
Appresso ordin6 che tali stromenti et sonanti dopo il desnare e la cena contentassero la
brigata di suoni et diletto senza vanagloria, et tutto ordinatamente misse in effetto.^

Having arranged, then, for these edifying songs, conversations, and dis-
courses, the leader appoints Sercambi official story-teller, in the following
veiled announcement:

Dipoi, rivoltosi lo preposto alia brigata, parlando per figura disse : Colui il quale senza
cagione ha di molte ingiurie sostenute et a lui senza colpa sono state fatte, comando che in
questo nostro viaggio debbia essere autore et fattore di questo libro et di quello che ogni di
gli comander6. £t acci6 che non si possa scusare che a lui per me non si sia stato per tutte
le volte comandato et anco per levarlo, se alcuno pensiero di vendetta avesse, canter6 uno
sonetto, in nel quale lo suo proprio nome col soprannome ritroverk. £t pertanto io comando
senz* altro dire che ogni volta io dir6 : Autore, di* la tal cosa ; lui senz* altro segua la mia
intenzione.*

Recognizing his name in the acrostic sonnet that Aluisi now recites,
Sercambi promptly begins Novella I (De Sapientid)^ during the recital of
which, one infers, the pilgrims speedily set forth from Lucca, for by the end
of this tale of some three thousand words they have already left Pisa
behind them.^

In the course of their pilgrimage the company visit the following towns :
Pisa, Volterra, San Miniato, Pistoia, Prato, Florence, Siena, Arezzo, Cortona,
Citti di Castello, Borgo San Sepolcro, Massa di Maremma, Grosseto,
Civitavecchia, Popolonia, Bolsena, Orvieto, Assisi, Perugia, Todi, Nami,
Temi, Montefiascone, Viterbo, Rome, Spoleto, Jesi, Aversa, Aquila, Naples,
Benevento, Salerno, Reggio (di Calabria), Dierta, Squillace, Forati, Brindisi,
Sant' Angelo, Scariotto, Ascoli, Fermo, Recanati, Ancona, Sinigaglia, Fano,
Pesaro, Fossombrone, Gubbio, Urbino, Cagli, Cesena, Cervia, Bertinoro,
Ravenna, Forll, Faenza, Imola, Meldola, Bologna, Ferrara, Chioggia, Venice,
Murano, Treviso, Feltre, Cividale, Vicenza, Padua, Verona, Brescia, Cremona,
Mantua, Bergamo, Bassano, Monza, Milan, Como, Novara, Pavia, Vercelli,
Alessandria, Tortona, Piacenza, Lodi, Parma, Reggio (Emilia), Modena, Asti,
Savona, Genoa, and Luni.

It appears, then, that the pilgrims pass southward from Lucca down the
west coast of Italy, cross the peninsula at the southern end, pass northward
along the east coast, and, after a somewhat tortuous tour in the north, end the

1 Renier, p. 7. * Ibid., pp. 7-S. • Printed by Renier, pp. 9-16.

* See Intermezzo 1-2. I indicate the position of an intermezzo by a dash between the numbers
of the novelle confinii\g it. In referring to the novelle I follow the numbering of Cod. Trivul-
ziano 193, as used consistently by Renier in his table, pp. 429-433»

4o8 THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

journey — so far as the defective manuscript carries us — at Luni, near
Lucca. Sercambi's complete plan provided, no doubt, for the return of the
pilgrims to Lucca itself. In general the company spend only one night in a
town ; in a few of the larger and more interesting cities, however, they linger
for a longer time, — ten days, for example, in Rome,^ and five days in Naples.^
The journey is accomplished, for the most part, on foot. Among several of
the towns in the vicinity of Venice the pilgrims travel, naturally, by boat.^
On the road from Ferrara to Francolino they seem to have used wagons.^
There is no indication of their traveling on horseback.

The tales are told sometimes on the road between towns, and sometimes
in inn-yards or gardens in the towns themselves. In a considerable number
of cases there is an intentional relation between the subject of the story and
the region which the company are, for the moment, traversing.^ During the
ten days' sojourn in Rome, for example, stories are drawn from Roman his-
tory.6 During their travels in the region about Venice the pilgrims listen to
stories on Venetian subjects.*^ On the road to Verona is told a story of
Veronese life.^

Now that we have before us an outline of the framework of Sercambi's
NovelUy we may enter upon a comparison of the Italian collection and the
English in certain details.

I . The Group of Pilgrims.

Like the happily miscellaneous company that gathered in the Tabard Inn
in Southwark, the pilgrims of Sercambi who forgathered in the Church of
Santa Maria seem to have represented a great variety of conditions in life.
Although we are not told how many Lucchese pilgrims there were, we have
clear indications that the brigata was large. At the outset Aluisi, the leader,
addresses the company as follows :

Cari fratelli e a me maggiori, e voi care et venerabili donne, che ctogni condizione sete
qui raunati.*

In the course of the journey, in singling out this or that group as his particu-
lar audience for a particular story, the author addresses bankers, ^^ merchants,^
young men,^ nuns,^ public officials," ecclesiastics,^ servants,^® judges, ^"^ rulers, ^^
and others in less definite categories. The company includes also singers,

^ See Int. 38-39. ^ ggg j^f 57-58.

8 See Int, 120-121, 121-122, 122-123, 123-124, 124-125, 125-126, 126-127.

* See Int. 121-122. * See Renier, pp. Iv-lvi. « See Novelle XL-XLIX.

7 See Novelle CXXIV-CXXIX. » See Nai'ella CXXXII.

® Renier, p. 5. The italics are mine. ^^ See Int, 21-22.

^^ See Int. 21-22, 91-92. 1* See Int. 94-95. ^' See Int. 98-99.

" See Int. 103-104, 106-107, 137-138, 143-144. ^^ See Int. 109-110, 124-125.

'* See ////. 118-119. ^^ See Int. iio-iii. ^^ See Int. 134-135, 138-139.

YOUNG 409

dancers, and musicians, who appear frequently to provide entertainment in
the intervals between stories.^

2. The Leader.

In the manner of his appointment, as well as in many of his activities, the
leader, or governor, in the Novelle resembles the similar character in the
Canterbtiry Tales. Just as Harry Bailey, after offering himself to the Canter- |
bury pilgrims as guide and purveyor of amusement, is promptly elected leader,^ \
so Aluisi, after suggesting that some one be chosen as guide and governor, ,
is promptly elected to this office.^

In calling forth tales, the English guide several times mentions the town
that the band are passing, or that they expect soon to reach :

Sey forth thy tale, and tarie nat the tyme,
Lo, Depeford ! and it is half-way pryme.
Lo, Grenewich, ther many a shrewe is inne ;
It were al tyme thy tale to biginne.*

For ye shul telle a tale trewely ;

Lo ! Rouchestre stant heer f aste by ! *

In a similar manner Aluisi often calls forth his stories :

Lo proposto al^ altore disse : noi siamo ancora piu che al mezzo del camino di Montifia-
schoni giunti colla bella novella. Ditta k molto la brigata ralegrata e acci6 chel camino che
ci resta sia d'una novelletta gonsolata.'

£ per tanto il proposto comandato al ^altore che una bella novella dica fine che a
Viterbo seranno andati.'

Like Harry Bailey, Aluisi allows himself occasional observations upon the
tales recounted. At the conclusion of Novella CXXIV {De Mala Fiducia
dlnimici)^ for example, we read,

Lo proposto come savio avendo udito la morte di Landlotto disse : Per certo a lui e all
altri che di simil pechato involti fusseno diverre quando di tali si fidassero e pertanto se male
nelli colse, non n'^ da meraviglarsi e pertanto il belista Vh aparechiato e se savio non fu n'k
portato la pena e con quella si rimangna.*

After Novella CXLIV (De Massitna Ingratitiidinef^ the text proceeds,

Lo proposto e li altri avendo udito si bella novella non meravigliandosi dissero: Per
certo la morte di tali signori h certa, e a ciascuno justamente divere, e parlando il proposto
a tutti disse : A noi non h debito di dire per tale anime neuno Pater Nostro, ma intendere a
darci piacere. E per6 dico a voi Religiosi che colla ditta novella siamo giunti a Vercelli e
ancora non h Tora della cena a contentamento di noi voi Religiosi dite qualche moralitk in
canto soave.^^

^ See, for example, Int. 127-128, 128-129, 130-131, 134-135.

* See Canterbury Tales, A 769-804. • See Proemio, Renier, p. 5. * C. T., A 3905-3908.
fi C. 7*., B 31 15-31 16. « Int. 35-36. ' Int. 36-37. * Printed by Renier, pp. 3 10-31 1.

• Int. 124-125. 10 Printed by Renier, pp. 383-386. " Int. 144-145.

4IO THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

Although such cx)mments as Aluisi's seem inert in comparison with the breezy
outbursts of Harry Bailey, they show a similar intention of narrative plan.

One of the few really human touches in the intermezzi appears in the
following passage :

Essendo stato il proposto a dormire mentre che Taltore dicea la ditta novella, sveglandosi
sentendo le donne et li homini rider, dimand6 qual era la ragone. Fulli per alquante govanette
baldanzose ditta la novella del marenfacdo et quella intesa come loro incomindb a ridere
dicendo a Taltore che ne dica una la quale sensa dormire ascolterk volentieri fine che alia
dptk di Pistoja perverano, Taltore rispose che sark fatto et disse.^

This amusing lapse of Aluisi into sleep during the telling of a tale brings to
mind Harry Bailey's weariness at the end of Chaucer's Sir Thopas^ —

* No more of this, for goddes dignitee,'
Quod oure hoste, ' for thou makest me
So wery of thy verray lewednesse,' * —

and the Host's exhortation to the Clerk, —

Ne that thy tale make us nat to slepe.'

3. The Activities of the Pilgrims on the Journey,

One's regret over the unfinished state of the Canterbury Tales lies not so
much in the absence of promised stories as in the loss of the lively action, of
the homely details of pilgrim life, and of the descriptions of persons and places
that must have been included in a further development of Chaucer's plan. In
that development Chaucer might have been expected to describe the evening
amusements of the inn at Dartford, or Rochester, or Ospringe, and he must
surely have removed the obvious improbability that his pilgrims never heard
Matins or Laiids or Mass or Vespers.

Now, conventional and monotonous as the intermezzi of Sercambi truly
are, they do give us a fair idea of the behavior of the Italian pilgrims during
the moments when they were not listening to stories, they give us assurance
that the travelers were ** esed atte beste " overnight, and they bring to mind
Harry Bailey's frequent appeals for discourses of ** hy sentence." One inter
mezzo will serve to illustrate the evening diversions of the Lucchese pilgrims :

La dilettevole novella di frate Tomasino k molto la brigata condutta sensa disagio al Fran-
colino prima che fusse Tora della cena perch^ agiati assai erano e come giunti furono il pro-
posto missosi a sedere in una camera d'uno albergo dove tutta la brigata dintomo si puose,
il qual proposto comand6 a dansatori che una dansa facesseno e fatta, li cantatori una can-
sonetta cantassero e ditto la brigata a cenare andassero. E fatto il comandamento, le danse
prese, li stromenti sonando tanto che le danse restarono e restate i cantarelli e cantarelle con
voci piacevoli cantarono in questo modo una cansona :

lo v6 ben a chi vuol bene a me
E non amo chi ama per pretio se

1 Int. 3-4. '^ C.T.,li 2109-21 1 1. 8 C. T., E 14.

YOUNG 411

Non son colui per pigliare la luna
Consuma il tenpo suo e nulla n*a
Ma se m'avien com^or incontra d^una
Che me si tolga i dico e tu trista
£ se mi fk lima in le da da
Cosl mi vivo in questa pura f^
Com'altri in me cosl mi st6 in altnii
Di quel ch'io posso a chi mi dona do
Nessun pu6 dir di me : vedi colui
Che con do lingue dide sio no
Ma fermo a chi sta fermo senpre sto
Sio lo comal bisongno me ase.

Compiuta la novella, la morale cansone, le taule poste, le vivande aparechiate, dato Taqua
alle mani e post! a mensa cenarono di buona voglia e cenato per poter alquanto smaltire il
cibo comincionno i dansatori sensa comandamento a dansare, li stromenti a sonare, facendo
dolci melodie, parendo essere come in villa, piu volte mutando danse e suoni e per non dare
molta faticha a dansatori essendo assai buonora fatto restare li suoni, con honesto parlare lo
proposto disse a suoi religiosi li quail ora che saremo f uora della dttade : Consolate la brigata
di qualche bello exenplo morale, intantoche li religiosi per ubidire disseno :

Errare non pu6 colui che si rimette

Nel placer di chi guida

Di sopra in elli e tutta la natura

Michessa stato signoria e sette

Chi se tener ne fida

Non i>ensa al corpo loro che pogo dura

£ quel discreto sia sensa paura

Perdere non teme n^ manchare suo aviso

Che tiene alto il suo viso

Onde al judido justamente cade

£ lassa alii altri sasiare e languire

Veggendosi mentire

Tutte le cose nella nostra etade

A lui niente falla al suo disio

Chel passar il pogo el piu f uge per dio.

Udito il proposto il savio dire piacendoli, fatto fare collatione al modo usato, comand6
che tutti a posare n'andassero acd6 che a messanotte in sul lengno montare possano per
caminare alia dttk di Chioggia dove comand6 che quive sia aparechiato la cena e a te altore
che levati et entrati in barcha una bella novella fine alle bebe e dapoi i cantatori una can-
sonetta cantino e perch^ molto m'^ piaduto il dire de Rdigiosi dico che doppo le cansone
qualche cosa dicano e cosl con piacer giungeremo alia dttk di Chioggia. Ognuno inteso che
al proposto a dormire si puono e la notte chiamati da padroni in barcha se ne vanno e dato
di remi in aqua e fatto silensio, Taltore parl6 dicendo: A voi conti e singnori che vi dis-
pressate per adenpire il vostro disio, dir6 ad exemplo una novella la quale in questo modo
si conta.^

Such an intermezzo provides, obviously, only a polite and lifeless parallel for
the clash of personalities and the smart verbal encounters found in Chaucer's

^ Int. 122-123.

412 THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

immortal *' links." Intermezzi such as this one do, however, suggest the situa-
tions into which the English poet injected his vital and inevitable humor.

4. The Application of the Tales to the Pilgrims.

Certainly one of the liveliest and most human aspects of the plan and pro-
cedure of the Canterbury Tales is to be found in the personal applications of
the stories recounted. The salacious mutual lampooning of the Miller and the
Reeve, and the scabrous exchange of the Friar and the Somnour, are only
ribald examples of the vivacious comment and individual application that per-
vade the links, distributed, all too sparingly, among the tales. To these per-
sonal applications of the English work we find suggestive parallels in the
intermezzi of Sercambi.

The Host's outbreak at the end of the Physician s Tale, against " a fals
justyse ** and against " thise juges and hir advocats," seems to have the same
intention as have the following words of the author prefixed to Novella CXI
{De Justo Juditio) : ^

A voi judici che avete a dare sententie quando justamente judicate sete molto comendati
e faccendo il contrario siete biasmati, ad exenplo dir6 una novella in questo modo.^

In introducing Novella XCII (De Restauro Fatto per Fortuna)^ the nar-
rator speaks as follows :

A voi merchadanti non intendend li quali disiderando di guadagnare tosto alquanti picoli
venite e a voi che la fortuna v'a ristorati che di ci6 dovete esser grati, dir6 ad exenplo una
novella fine che gungeremo a Sant Angelo in questa forma cio6.*

This passage calls to mind the following lines in the address of the Man of
Law prefixed to his tale :

O riche marchaunts, ful of wele ben ye,

O noble, o prudent folk, as in this cas !

Your bagges been nat filled with ambes as,

But with sis cinky that renneth for your chaunce ;

At Cristemasse merie may ye daunce ! ^

The words of the Host ^ and of the Merchant " as to the shrewishness and
deceptions of wives are amply paralleled in the remarks of the antore as he
introduces various of his tales :

A voi donne malitiose che con uno bello modo vituperando voi e i vostri mariti date a
credere loro la luna essere il sole non pensando che mai tali mariti del fallo accorgere si
possano c per6 ad exenplo dir6 una bella novella incominciando in questo modo cio^.^

A voi homini si da pogo che dalle vostre donne siete beffati e a voi donne che pensate
ongni volta desfare i vostri mariti se male alcuna volta aviene Tavete meritato, ad exenplo
dir6 una novella in questo modo.'

* Printed by D'Ancona, in Scelta di Curiosiih Leiierarie, Vol. 119, Bologna, 1871, pp. 23-37.
2 Int. iio-iii. ' Printed by D'Ancona, pp. 1 19-126. * Int. 91-92. * C. T.y B 122-126.
« C. T., B 3079fr.; E 2\\^^. ' C. T., E I2i3ff. 8 /„^. 136-137. » Int. 148-149.

YOUNG 413

A voi homini che alle lusinche delle malvagie femine sete presi^ ad exenplo dico una
novella.^

The Wife of Bath's strictures ^ upon jealous husbands resemble the follow-
ing sentiment of the autore :

O voi homini geiosi li quali pensando stando gelosi guardare la donna e loro come mal-
vagi ne fanno di peggio posto che poi del fallo i>endte siano, ad exenplo dir6 una novella in
questo modo do^.'

In his repeated requests to the clergy for moral utterances, — qualche bello
exenplo morale ^^ qualche moralitd^ qualche cosa morale ^^ — Aluisi recalls the
cry of the " gentils *' to the Pardoner, —

Tel us som moral thing, that we may lere
Som wit, and thanne wol we gladly here,^ —

and the apologia of the Parson, —

if that yow list to here
Moralitee and vertuous matere,
And thanne that ye wol yeve me audience,
I wol ful fayn, at Cristes reverence.
Do yow plesaunce leefful, as I can,* —

or Chaucer's declaration concerning his own AlelibeuSy —

It is a moral tale vertuous.'

5. The Narrator.

At the conclusion of this brief comparison of the Italian collection and the
English, it seems fair to emphasize the fact that, whereas according to Ser-
cambi's fiction the novelle all come from the lips of the author, — a formally
appointed story-teller, — Chaucer's tales are told by the pilgrims themselves,
and are, in many cases, finely adjusted to the character of the narrator. It
should be observed, however, that although the proposto elicits all the naiyelle
from the author, he calls also for other sorts of recitation from other members
of the company. From the religiosi^ as we have seen, he asks for qualche
bello exenplo morale}^ alcuna cosa . . . che sia piace^wle}^ qualche bella cosa^
qualche moralitd,^ or qualche cosa morale}^ and in at least two cases the reci-
tation of the religiosi is called — perhaps in error — novella.^ Moreover the
burden of entertainment placed upon the religiosi is often shared by the can-
tarelli and cantarelle, whose canzoni are frequently demanded.^^ In spite of

* Int. 97-98. * C. 7:, D 3i6ff. » Int. 141-142. * Int. 122-123.
* /«/. 140-141. Cf. 141-142, 144-145, 150-151, 151-152.

• Int. 136-137. Cf. 137-138, 140-141. ' C. T,y C 325-326. * C. T.y I 37-41.
» C. T.y B 2130. ^^ Int. 122-123. U jnt, 124-125.

'^^ Int. 126-127. Cf. 127-128, 128-129, 129-130, 131-132, 132-133.
"^^ Int. 140-141. Cf. 141-142, 144-145, 150-151, 151-152.
"/«/. 136-137. Cf. I37-I3S» 140-141- "/«/. 136-137* 142-143-

" Stfilnt. 122-123, 123-124, 126-127, 127-128, 130-131, 133-134* 134-13S' 138-139* 139-
140, 142-143* 143-144* 144-145* 147-148-

414 THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

the fact, then, that in Sercambi's plan the novelle are all assigned to the au-
thor himself, the share of other pilgrims in the general entertaining suggests,
remotely at least, the distribution of tales so successfully adopted by Chaucer.

In the light of the general and the particular resemblances between the
Novelle and the Canterbury Tales^ we are bound to inquire as to the likeli-
hood of Chaucer's having encountered either the person or the work of Ser-
cambi during the period before the writing of the Canterbury Tales.

It is clear enough that Sercambi was a prominent man in Lucca, and that
he had a considerable acquaintance throughout Northern Italy. Although bom
to his father's humble occupation of apothecary, he early took a part in the
municipal struggles of his city, and by 1 369 had gained distinction as a sol-
dier. In 1382 he served successfully as an ambassador from Lucca to the
belligerent adventurer Alberigo da Barbiano, who was stationed threateningly
at Arezzo. During his more mature years Sercambi allied himself to the
powerful Guinigi family of Lucca, and from 1392 to 1400 held various public
offices. In 1 399 he was an ambassador from Lucca to Florence. During the
period between 1400 and 1424 Sercambi had a prominent share in numerous
public activities, — as ambassador to the Visconti family of Milan, as a leader
in the military undertakings of the Lucchese, and as a counsellor under the
Lucchese governor, Paolo Guinigi. At the time of his death in 1424 Ser-
cambi was distinguished both as a public servant and as a wealthy citizen.^
One may be allowed to surmise, then, that a foreign visitor to Tuscany and
Lombardy, even so early as the decade 1 370-1 380, might have heard of
Giovanni Sercambi.

The precise moment in this busy career at which Sercambi composed his
Novelle cannot be determined with absolute accuracy. From the assertion of
the Proemioy that the pilgrimage was undertaken during the ravages of a plague
in Lucca in February, 1374,^ Renier infers that the Novelle appeared soon
after that date.^ With this inference the earlier investigators of the Novelle
are in entire agreement.^

When we turn to a consideration of Chaucer's actual experiences in Italy,
we find that the English poet had definite opportunities for an acquaintance
either with Sercambi himself or with his work. On his first journey to Italy
Chaucer was absent from London 174 days, from December i, 1372, to

^ Concerning the life of Sercambi see Renier, pp. x-xix ; G. Volpi, // TVecenio, Milan, n.d.,
pp. 237-238; A. Gaspary, Storia delta Leiteratura Italiana^ trans, by V. Rossi, Turin, 1891,
Vol. II, pp. 62-63 ; C. Minutoli, Alcune Novelle di Giovanni Sercambi^ Lucca, 1855, PP* v-xliv;
S. Bongi, Le Croniche di Giovanni Sercambi^ Vol. I, Rome, 1892, pp. vii-xvi.

^ See Renier, p. 4. * Ibid, p. Iviii.

* Minutoli, p. xl ; [B. Gamba], Novelle di Giovanni Sercambi Lucchese^ Venice, 181 6, p. viL

YOUNG 415

May 23, 1373.^ His first destination in Italy was Genoa. If sixty days be
a fair allowance of time^ for the journey each way between London and
Genoa, fifty-four days remain for the accomplishment of Chaucer's actual offi-
cial errand. Of these eight weeks he could have spent only a small share in
Genoa, for the documents seem clearly to indicate that Chaucer's role in the
negotiations at Grenoa, concerning an English port for Genoese merchants,
was unimportant, and that his chief preoccupation was in secretis negociis
Regis y in the course of which he ranged between Genoa and Florence {versus
partes Jannue et Florencie)^ We should pause for a moment, then, to inquire
more closely concerning Chaucer's activities in the neighborhood of Florence,
and to answer the pertinent question. What were the secreta negocia ? ^

The answer to this question, and the background of the embassy as a whole,
are to be found, it appears, in the financial history of England during the reign
of Edward III, or, more precisely, in the financial obligations of Edward III
to Italian merchants.^ During the period from the middle of the thirteenth
century until the later years of Edward III, the merchants of Genoa, Lucca,
and Florence carried on an extensive banking business in England, and lent
money regularly to the kings of England. Edward III, encumbered with wars
and with debts, was particularly subject to these loans. In the nineteenth year
of his reign, for example, he was obliged to grant interest — a gross indignity
— for a sum of 140,000 florins borrowed from a Lucchese merchant, and to
engage not to cross the sea into England until the sum should have been paid.®
Similar loans from Lucchese merchants, as well as from those of Florence,

* See Life /Records of Chaucer^ Part IV, edited by R. E. G. Kirk, Chaucer Society, London,
1900, No. 72, pp. 183-184. The most important documents bearing upon Chaucer's first Italian
journey have been carefully studied by F. J. Mather, in Modem Language Notesy Vol. XI, 1896,
col. 419-425; Vol. XII, 1897, col. lo-ii, 18-21. My own reexamination of the documents has so
generally confirmed Mr. Mather's conclusions, that I shall refer to these conclusions as belong-
ing to him alone.

* See Modem Language Notes^ XI, /^ly-^z^ ; XII, 18-20. For the journey as a whole this
estimate from Mr. Mather seems reasonable. It does not, of course, represent the maximum
speed at this period. See F. Ludwig, Untersuchungen Uber die Reise- und Marschgeschwindigkeit
im XI L und XIII. Jahrhunderty Berlin, 1897, pp. 190-193.

* See Modem Language Noiesy XI, 424, note 8; Life Records ^ Part IV, Nos. 68, 70, 72, 75,
and 78.

^ Mr. Mather put this question long ago (Modem Language Nbies, XI, 1896, col. 424) in
these words : ** Can some student of history tell us what this Florentine business it likely to have
been ? *' So far as | know, no answer has been attempted hitherto.

* A basis for this particular inquiry is provided by E. A. Bond, Extracts fivm the Liberate
Rollsy relative to Loans supplied by Italian Merchants to the Kings of England^ in the ijth and
14th Centuriesj in Archaeologia, Vol. XXVIII, 1840, pp. 207-326. This illuminating article seems
to have been omitted from the body of Chaucerian commentary. Professor G. C. Sellery has
generously extended my information on this subject through the following references: R. J.
Whitwell, Italian Bankers and the English Crown ( T\xinsactions of the Royal Historical Society^
New Series, Vol XVII, 1903, pp. 175-233); W. E. Rhodes, The Italian Bankers in England
and their Loans to Edward I and Edward II {Historical Essays by Members of Owens College^
Manchester^ London, 1902, pp. 137-168). • Bond, pp. 229-230.

4i6 THE PLAN OF THE CANTERBURY TALES

were negotiated throughout the reign of Edward ni,^ several such being
recorded for the forty-fourth year of his reign, — some two years before
Chaucer's first Italian journey.^

Of the various forms of remuneration adopted by the impecunious king,
two especially concern us here. In the first place, Edward was somewhat free
in dispensing commercial liberties, without which, indeed, the extensive busi-
ness operations of the Italians in England would have been impossible.^ With
this form of remuneration the embassy, in 1 372-1 373, of James Prouan, John
de Mari, and Geoffrey Chaucer seems to have been particularly concerned.
In the second place, the English king sometimes appointed his creditors to
offices under the crown and employed them on diplomatic errands abroad.^
This practice seems to account well enough for the part of John de Mari,
citizen of Genoa, in the embassy already mentioned.

From the general facts before us, then, it seems probable that Chaucer's
secret business versus partes Florencie during February or March, 1373, con-
cerned the indebtedness of Edward III to Italian merchants. His indebted-
ness to Florentine merchants naturally led his secret agent to Florence ; and
in view of the fact tl^t Lucca lies on the direct route between Genoa and
Plorence, and in viewlof the king's financial obligations to citizens of Lucca,
one is forced to the conclusion that Chaucer probably visited also the town
which had already accepted the public services of Giovanni Sercambi.

As to a meeting between the two young men of letters we have, of course,
no information. Although neither had as yet achieved literary fame sufficient
to make a sentimental meeting inevitable, it is not preposterous to conjecture
an encounter between the English envoy and the patriotic Lucchese. In any
case, Chaucer may well have heard something of Sercambi, and possibly some-
thing also concerning the composition of the Novelle that were to appear a
year or two after Chaucer's visit versus partes Florencie, Moreover, whatever
Chaucer's experiences may have been when he passed through Lucca in
February or March, 1373, he had another fair chance of hearing about the
Lucchese story-teller in 1 378, when the English embassy visited Milan, to treat
with the lord of Milan and Sir John Hawkwood.^ The relations of Milan and
Lucca were lively,® and affairs in the vicinity of Lucca were well known to
Sir John Hawkwood.'^

Lest we entangle ourselves, however, in the alluring intricacies of conjec-
ture, let us return to the facts, now sufficiently obvious, (i) that the framework
of Sercambi's Novelle is remarkably similar to that of the Canterbury Tales^
(2) that the No^felle were probably written some ten years or more before the date

1 Bond, pp. 261-^26 passim. ' Bond, p. 326. ' Bond, pp. 231-233.

* Bond, pp. 233-234. * See Life Records^ Nos. 118, 121, and 122.

• S. Bongi, Paolo Giiinigi e U sue Ricchezze^ Lucca, i^ji, passim.

■^ G. Temple-Leader and G. Marcotti, Giovanni Acuto^ Florence, 1889, pp. 109 ff.

YOUNG 417

at which the Canterbury Tales are commonly thought to have been begun, ^ and
(3) that during his joumeyings in Italy Chaucer had a fair opportunity for
hearing about Sercambi and his work. From these facts, then, we may fairly
conclude that, however much of Chaucer's plan may have been derived from
the poet's own actual observation or actual experience, — on the road between
London and Canterbury,^ or on the road elsewhere, — the most likely of all
literary sources is to be found in the NaiMe of Giovanni Sercambi.^

* See J. S. P. Tatlock, The Development and Chronology 0/ Chaucer* s Works, Chaucer Society,
London, 1907, pp. 141-142.

2 See Tatlock, pp. 1 32-1 41 ; Pollard, in The Globe Chaucer, p. xxviii.

' In the course of this brief paper I have had no opportunity for discussing the possible
relations between particular tales of Chaucer and particular novelle of Sercambi. The Shipman's
Tale has a parallel in A^ovella XXXI {De Avaritia e Lussuria), and the Clerk's Tale a parallel in
Novella CLII {De Muliere Costante). I find no indication that Chaucer used either of these
Italian parallels.

MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

Ernest Bernbaum

Historians of the novel assign to Mrs. Behn's Oroonoko a place of distinct
importance in the development of realism. They concede that those parts of
the narrative which recount the adventures of Oroonoko in Coramantien are
full of romance, but maintain that his subsequent slavery in Surinam, his re-
union with his bride Imoinda, his insurrection, and his violent death, are on
the whole delineated with fidelity to fact * ** Imagination,** says Professor
Canby, " colored the heroic life of the slave as well as the romantic intrigue
of the negro prince,'* but only, it seems, in a few negligible respects ; the rest
is considered '* truthful, touching, and vivid.'* ^ If we ask why Mrs. Behn
writes romantically about Coramantien, and realistically about Surinam, we
are reminded that she had visited the latter country but not the former. ** The
localities considered in the second part of the story," explains Professor
Siegel in his monograph on Mrs. Behn, "she knows from her own observa-
tion ; in the events she has to some extent participated ; her description is
consequently far more credible and probable than in the first part." ^ And
Mr. E. A. Baker, editor of Mrs. Behn's stories, concludes : ** It was the truth
and power with which she recounted what she herself had witnessed in Surinam
that has singled out for permanence the best of her novels." *

If, remembering these opinions, we read Oroonoko itself, we come now and
then upon incidents that surprise us. Mrs. Behn tells us of a monstrous tiger
which had long infested Surinam, and had been repeatedly shot quite through
the body, but without effect until the mighty hunter Oroonoko slew it ; and
** when the heart of this courageous animal was taken out, there were seven
bullets of lead in it, the wound seamed up with great scars, and she lived with
the bullets a great while, for it was long since they were shot.** ^ Elsewhere
she writes : " Sometimes we [four women and t\^o men] would go surprising,
and in search of young tigers in their dens, watching when the old ones went
forth to forage for prey ; and oftentimes we have been in great danger, and
have fled apace for our lives, when surprised by the dams."^ Those who
know anything of the dreaded jaguar of South America can hardly bdieve
that such visits of a pleasant afternoon were ever regarded by the colonists as
suitable diversions for ladies and gentlemen.

^ H. S. Canby, The Short Story in Enj^lish, New York, 1909, pp. 164, 167.

* P. Siegel, Aphra Behns Gedichte und Prosawerke ; Anglia, XXV, 352.

* The Novels of Mrs. Aphra Behn, ed. E. A. Baker, London, 1905, p. xxiii.

* Oroonoko^ ed. E. A. Baker, p. 55. * Oroonoko, p. 52.

419

•r^-

420 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

Mrs. Behn's sensational description of her hero's attempted suicide like-
wise gives us pause. We are told that Oroonoko, after remaining beside the
dead body of Imoinda, in agony of spirit and without food, for eight days,
roused himself on the approach of his pursuers, defiantly ** cut a piece of
flesh from his own throat and threw it at them," " ripped up his own belly,
and took his bowels and pulled them out," and still had strength enough to
drive his knife into the heart of an onrushing opponent. Yet Oroonoko did
not die. His captors carried him a long distance to the plantation, ** laid him
on a couch, and had the chirurgeon immediately to him, who dressed his
wounds, and sewed up his belly, and used means to bring him to life, which
they effected." " In six or seven days he recovered his senses ; for you must
know that wounds are almost ta a miracle cured in the Indies, unless wounds
in the legs, which they rarely ever cure." ^ In such instances we may surely
suspect that Mrs. Behn is more desirous of magnifying the strength and
bravery of her hero than of narrating experiences veraciously. The exaggera-
tion or improbability we see in them is, however, insufficient to destroy, though
it may impair, her reputation as a realist. In fact, incredible as seems the
recovery of Oroonoko from such frightful wounds, we cannot disprove its
possibility. Though similar cases are rare, medical literature records a suffi-
cient number to compel reluctant belief .^ At any rate, the dubious episodes
which I have pointed out do not seem to have disconcerted the admirers of
Mrs. Behn, and were presumably dismissed from their minds as inconsider-
able deviations from the truth. They remark upon the significance of her
calling Oroonoko, not a novel or tale, but a ** history," and of her opening it
with these words :

1 do not pretend, in giving you the history of this royal slave, to entertain my reader
with the adventures of a feigned hero, whose life and fortunes fancy may manage at the
poet's pleasure ; nor, in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents, but such
as arrived in earnest to him : and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its
own proper merits and natural intrigues ; there being enough of reality to support it, and
to render it diverting, without the addition of invention. I was myself an eye-witness to a
great part of what you will find here set down ; and what I could not be witness of, I re-
ceived from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself.'

This statement of her intention is generally accepted as sincere. Oroonoko's
history, says Professor Canby, " I can only believe after many readings, she
wished to set forth with a reasonable degree of truth." The resulting vivid-
ness of her story he graphically describes as follows :

The recital of Oroonoko's slavery is too circumstantial to be suspected, before Defoe, of
being fictitious. His fortitude, his high spirit, the revolt which he inspired, the brutal tor-
tures he suffered, his fidelity to Imoinda, whom he finds a fellow slave, all bear the print of

* Oroonoko, pp. 78-79.

2 I am indebted for this comment on Oroonoko's cure to Roger Irving Lee, M. D., of Boston.
8 Oroonoko^ p. i.

BERNBAUM 42 1

truth as well as the increase of a romantic fancy. His death is told not only with Flauber-
tian realism but with the passion of one seeking to expose unjust officials who had been
cruel to a friend. Furthermore, it is a real South America, with gorgeous vegetation, Indian
villages most anthropologically described, armadilloes, and even electric eels, with a " quality
so cold " that the catcher^s arm is benumbed./ I have seen many early " voyages " to the
" other world," as Aphra always calls it, whose descriptions are less specific than the setting
of this story.^

The historical bearing of the realistic purpose and character of Oroonoko ,vo<--
has not been overlooked. Our attention is called to the fact that when the^-^-c, '
work appeared, in 1688, romance was the predominant form of fiction. ** Of . '
the highest importance for the substance of narrative literature," says Pro- ' '
fessor Siegel, '*is the appearance of Mrs. Behn; for the first time after a ^ -
long interval, actuality is again emphasized." ^ /* For making use of incidents ^y -
of real life in the service of fiction at a time when the heroic romance was at ' ' '
the height of its vogue," says Professor Raleigh, *'she deserves all credit."^
These remarks indicate that if there is an error in the commonly accepted

doctrine, it affects not merely our understanding of Oroonoko, but complicates . ^ Jl _.

one of the most puzzling and important problems of modem English scholar- j /* ■ 1
ship — namely, the true origin of the realistic novel. ^ -^

The nature of the foundation on which the prevailing doctrine rests may
be revealed by asking some pertinent questions. Were the political and social
conditions of Surinam, at the time when these events are supposed to have
occurred, such as to render them possible } Can Mrs. Behn's descriptions of
the countryside, the climate, the colonists, the slaves, and the natives, be
shown to correspond to reality .? Surely, until we have satisfactory answers on
such points, we do not know the real character of the story. Yet, astonishing
as it may seem, these questions, so far from having been answered, have
hardly been raised. Mrs. Behn's assurance that she is faithfully recording
fact is, as to the principal part of her story, passively accepted even though
she is known to be romancing in other parts. Because the narrative is vivid,
it is believed true. The fact that an imaginary experience may be as vividly
told as an actual one, is ignored. In other words, what in this case passes as
literary history rests on the author's assertion and on impressions produced
by her artistic power.

Possibly the reason why no real effort has been made to discover whether
Oroonoko is based upon actual observation may lie in the fact that there are
unusual obstacles to such an inquiry. To determine what the appearance and
condition of a small tropical colony really were two hundred and fifty years
ago, is in no case easy ; and respecting Surinam the ordinary difficulties are
magnified. In 1667 it was surrendered by the English to the Dutch; and
consequently the English historians neglect the colony because it did not

^ Canby, pp. 164, 165. 2 Siegel, p. 379.

* Walter Raleigh, The English Navely 5th ed., New York, 1906, p. 107.

422 MRS, BERN'S OROONOKO

remain British, while the Dutch say little or nothing concerning its history
before the time of their possession. Nevertheless, obUvion has not wholly
obscured the character of the environment in which Oroonoko dwelt.

Though Mrs. Behn does not mention the date of Oroonoko *s sojourn in
Surinam, she chances to provide us with information that enables us to cal-
culate it. ** I mmediately after his tim e." she says, the D utch took the colony ^
— an event which occurred in Mar rh, 1667. Furthermore, she tells us that
Oroonoko, because of the outrageous injustice of his eji slayement, was prom-
ised his liberty as soon as'the Lord Grovemor of Surinam7^^^wH5"was every
day expected," should revisit tfie colony.^ The Eord Governor referred to
must have been Francis Lord Willoughby of Parham, a distinguished admin-
istrator of several British dependencies in the West Indies, whose head-
quarters were in Barbadoes. He came to Surinam rarely, his last visit
extending from about November, 1664, to May, 1665.* In July, 1666, he
was lost at sea. These data serve to place the action of Oroonoko in the
latter part of 1665 and the earlier part of 1666. It may be added that several
allusions, in the course of the story, to the lapse of time make it evident
that between the arrival of Oroonoko and his death a period of not much less
than seven months, and hardly more than nine, must have passed.^ Since all
these chronological particulars agree with one another, the problem whether
Mrs. Behn*s narrative is true reduces itself to the question. Does her account
of Surinam v.u i ii"nnpi i rh '\vith its^^rr tnal statr j rM^^S^njjj^^^ ?

Mrs. Behn*s allusions to historical personages and political conditions prove
in some respects quite correct. She calls the Deputy Grovemor, Byam ; and
William Byam was, as a matter of fact, ** Lieutenant General of Guiana and
Governor of Willoughby Land " from about 1662 to 1667.^ The only other
official whom she names is one Banister, according to her account a mem-
ber of the Governor's Council.^ The colonial state papers do not contain a
list of the councilors, but it is not unlikely that Banister was one of them ; for
after Byam's departure in 1667 " Sergeant Major James Banister, the only
remaining eminent person," became lieutenant governor.'^ It is noteworthy
that the wars with the Dutch made each of these men known in England. It
was Byam who headed the forces that vainly defended Surinam against the
Dutch admiral Crynsens in 1667 ; and it was Banister who, in 1668, made
the final surrender of the colony. The latter again became prominent when,
in arranging the transportation of the English settlers from Surinam, he quar-
reled with the Dutch and was imprisoned by them ; and in the British decla-
ration of war in 1672 his imprisonment was stated as a casus belli. That

^ Oroonoko^ p. 42. ^ Ibid., pp. 47, 50.

8 Calendar of State Papers^ Colonial Series^ America and West Indies^ 1661-1668 ; London,
1880, pp. 249, 297-298. * Oroonoko^ pp. 40, 42-44, 47, 57, 62, 67, 74, 76, 78-79.

* State Papers^ pp. 104, 108, 449. • Oroonoko ^ p. 80. "^ State Papers^ p. 599.

BERNBAUM 423

Mrs. Behn correctly names these officials is therefore but slender evidence

of intimate famuianty wrth'^^e4Q cal affairs of Surinam .

Mrs. Behn*s statement that when Oroonoko, seeking freedom, put himself
at the head of three hundred negroes, many of the leading colonists pitied
him so much that they would not pursue him, is questionable. It seems
strange that in a slave-owning community they should have failed to realize
that mere self-preservation demanded the crushing of so formidable an insur-
rection. Another dubious passage is that describing the militia which, under
Byam's leadership, set out after Oroonoko :

Never did one see so comical an army march forth to war. . . . Most of their arms
were of those sort of cruel whips they call cat with nine tails ; some had rusty useless guns
for show ; others old basket-hilts, whose blades had never seen the light in this age ; and
others had long staffs and dubs.^

Shall we believe that Byam, who at this very time had sufficient military forces
to carry the war against the Dutch and the French into the enemy's territories,
and to capture posts from each of them,* commanded so ill-armed a rabble ?

Likewise difficult to bring into accord with the historical situation is Mrs.
Behn*s scornful characterization of the Council :

. . . who (not to disgrace them or burlesque the government there) consisted of such
notorious villains as Newgate never transported ; and, possibly, originally were such who
understood neither the laws of God or man, and had no sort of principles to make them
worthy the name of men ; but at the very council table would contradict and fight with one
another, and swear so bloodily, that it was terrible to hear and see them.'

If such was the real character of the government, we should expect to find
that the British colonial office, whose correspondence of this period contains
many complaints of maladministration in other dependencies, would have been
frequently appealed to by the settlers in Surinam ; but the only evidence of
that kind appears in a letter of 1662, which charges Byam with an act of
oppression — a charge which was apparently dismissed.^ A year later one
Renatus Enys writes from Surinam to the Secretary : ** The colony is in good
order, being nobly upheld by the power and prudence of those at the helm.** *
It seems unlikely that men as vicious and unrestrained as those described
by Mrs. Behn could have guided Surinam, through all the difficulties of a new
settlement in an unwholesome region, to that strength and prosperity which it
had attained by 1666.

Our suspicions are increased by Mrs. Behn's parting shot at the Council :
'* Some of them were afterwards hanged, when the Dutch took possession of
the place; others sent off in chains.*** Whereas the other accusations are

^ Oroonoko y pp. 66-67

^ Oroonoko y pp. 66-67.

* James Rodway, Guiana: British^ DuUhy and French ; London, 191 2, p. 63.

• Oroonokoy pp. 72-73. * State Papers^ pp. 104, 108. • Ibid., pp. 166-167.

• Oroonoko y p. 73

424 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

merely difficult to reconcile with our conception of the general state of affairs ;
the last one directly conflicts with known historical facts. Under the treaty of
surrender, it was explicitiy stipulated that the lives and property of every set-
tler should be spared by the Dutch, and that the British should freely depart
from Surinam with their possessions. When Major Banister, because of petty
interferences with these rights, protested and was imprisoned, Great Britain
raised protests which led to a renewal of the war. Had the Dutch treated
members of the Council in the violent way alleged by Mrs. Behn, it would
certainly have transpired in the diplomatic correspondence which the actual
situation developed. In short, we find in the historical background of
Oroonoko several improbabilities and one misstatement.

Of the climate of Surinam the characteristics that strike the European
visitor are intense heat and great moisture. One effect of the latter is noted
by Mrs. Behn in her derisive description of the rusty arms of the militia ; but
otherwise she seems, for a supposed realist, peculiarly insensible to the true
nature of the climate. Though, according to her story, she must have been in
the land not less than seven months, she never mentions the rainy seasons.
She casually remarks that ** the rays [of the sun] are very fierce here '* ; but the
costumes which she and her friends wore on an eight-day river journey, and
which excited the amazement of the Indians, may cause us wonder too. ** We
were dressed,'* she declares, ** so as is most commode for the hot countries,
very glittering and rich, so that we appeared extremely fine ; my own hair
was cut short, and I had a taffety cap with black feathers on my head ; my
brother was in a stuff suit, with silver loops and buttons, and an abundance of
green ribbon." ^ The atmosphere in which her story is immersed is best ex-
pressed in her ardent words : ** ^j^ th**re ^eter nal spring, always the very
months of April, May, and June." ^ We are reminded thereby of " the sweet
ayre " praised by Raleigh and his immediate followers in those rose-colored
passages describing their explorations upon the Orinoco, wherein they mingle
enthusiasm and inaccuracy.^

Some of the geographical allusions in Oroonoko are startling. Surinam,
we are told, " reaches from east to west, one way as far as China, and another
to Peru,"^ — which suggests the geography of the sixteenth century rather
than that of the seventeenth. Again, we are informed that the Governor
commanded a guard to be set at the mouth of the Amazon to prohibit peo-
ple ascending it — a wild scheme which is conceivable only if we accept
Mrs. Behn's statement that the Amazon is ** almost as broad as the river
of Thames." ^ Yet, as the Amazon is over four hundred miles from Surinam,

^ Oroonoko^ pp. 57-58. * Ibid., p. 51.

' For example, Newes of Sr, Walter RauUigh (1618), in Peter Force's Tracisy Washington,
III (1844), 23, and especially pp. 27-28. Cf. Harcourt's description of the lovely land Cooshe-
bery, in Purchas His Pilgrimes^ Glasgow, XVI (1906), 369.

* Oroonoko y p. 50. 6 Ibid., p. 62.

BERNBAUM 425

and as the interior regions of Guiana were still unexplored, we may perhaps
consider such slips possible even in a visitor to the colony.

The immediate topography of the colony itself, however, we should expect
to find fairly distinct and true. Mrs. Behn narrates several journeys on the
Surinam, but seems to think the riverside occupied only by plantations. In
silence she passes by outstanding features of its shores — the fort, the settle-
ment of Jews, and the town of Tararica, with its hundred houses and a chapel.^
She tells us that the colonists went aboard the slave ship bearing Oroonoko,
at the mouth of the river .^ This is possible ; but it seems to have been
customary for ships to proceed some fifty miles up the river to the good
anchorage before Tararica, naturally the local center of the slave traffic. She
implies that one of the plantations was near the mouth of the river ; ^ but we
know that the lowest was some thirty-five miles upstream. Indeed, it was
because the fort (about fifteen miles from the mouth of the Surinam) was so
distant from the settled region that Byam was handicapped in trying to hold
it against the Dutch.^ Ignoring apparently the site of the fort, Mrs. Behn
says that Oroonoko proposed to lead his fellow slaves towards the sea, a plan
that seems hardly in accord with his oft-praised intelligence. When negroes
ran away in Surinam, they made for the interior, where their descendants,
the " bush negroes," live to this day.

A striking landmark in the country, as she depicts it, is the site of

Mrs. Behn's residence :

As soon as I came into the country, the best house in it was presented me, called St.
John's Hill. It stood on a vast rock of white marble, at the foot of which the river ran a .- ' ^
vast depth down, and not to be descended on that side ; the little waves, still dashing and
washing the foot of this rock, made the softest murmurs and purlings in the world.^

As any one may observe who compares the geological chart of the Surinam
basin in Karl Martin's Niederldndisch West Indien with the map thereof in
Hartsinck's Beschryving van Guiana^ ** vast rocks of white marble " have no
place in this flat alluvial plain. The nearest approach to such an eminence is
the '* Parnassus of blauwe Berg," a hundred meters high. But this is composed
of dark-colored diabase ; and it is ten miles above Marshall's Creek, then the
limit of the plantations. When Raleigh penetrated into the interior of what
is now British Guiana, he sa^y afar off " a mountain of chrystal [really of
sandstone] like a white church tower of an exceeding height," and other ex-
plorers in those parts reported many hills ; ^ but none resembling Mrs. Behn's

^ Jan Jacob Hartsinck, BeschryiHng van Guiana^ I770» H, 567-574; James Rodway,
Guiana^ 191 2, pp. 51-53, 61-62. Some discrepancies between these two descriptions do not
affect my argument. ^ Oroonoko^ p. 38.

8 Cf. the three-day trip mentioned in Oroonoko^ p. 40, with the corresponding distance
noted on p. 80. * Rodway, p. 64. * Oroonoko^ pp. 51-52.

* Raleigh, Sir Walter, The Discovery of Guianay cd. Schomburgk, 1848, p. 10 1 and note ;
Purchas His Pilgrimes^ XVI, 367, 370, 408.

426 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

description rose in the inhabited district of Surinam. On the other hand, we
miss an interesting natural feature of the region which, it seems, should have
impressed Mrs. Behn on her journey to a distant Indian village. Travel on the
Surinam, soon after passing Sara Creek, about forty miles above Marshall's,
becomes very difficult, if not impossible, owing to the falls, of which there are
at least twenty-eight.^ Yet though Mrs. Behn traveled by boat eight days to
reach the village, she never mentions a waterfall.

It is noteworthy that some of the true characteristics of the country might
have been serviceably employed by Mrs. Behn. Since Oroonoko was the leader
in the expedition to the Indian village, the obstacles that falls would place in
his way should have presented his admirer good opportunities for the further
display of his intelligence and strength. She might likewise have intensified
our sympathy for some of his hardships by making us realize the humid heat
in which they were endured. And the hopelessness of Oroonoko's insurrection
would have appeared more poignantly if she had shown him rising, not in a
sparsely settled district, but against a well-established community and a re-
spectable military force. Why should an author who had dwelt face to face
with these circumstances, ignore and even contradict them ?

But had the author of Oroonoko really been in Surinam .? The Life and
Memoirs of Mrs, Behn, her earliest biography of any length, says that she
had been there ; and no one has hitherto questioned the statement. How
any one can read the Life and Memoirs , including its fantastic account of her
meeting a marble platform floating on the English Channel, and place con-
fidence in it, is to me incomprehensible ; but this is not the place to expose
its general worthlessness. What concerns us particularly is that it draws its
account of Mrs. Behn's life from passages in her stories ; and that its asser-
tion of her visit to Surinam is not independent testimony but a repetition of
the autobiographical statements in Oroonoko itself.^ Of those statements,
one — that her father was to have been " Lieutenant General of six-and-thirty
islands, besides the continent of Surinam" — has been shown unreliable,
Mr. Gosse having discovered that her father was a barber.^ I may add that
no hint of any appointment to replace Byam appears in the colonial papers of
the period. Though this falsehood has been generally recognized, its full
bearing on Oroonoko has apparently been overlooked ; for it has not shaken
belief in Mrs. Behn's journey. Yet if Mrs. Behn's father was not sent to
Surinam, the only reason she gives for being there disappears. Furthermore,
if she was not the daughter of the future governor, why was she assigned
"the best house in the country" ? (We recall that it stood on that remarkable
** vast rock of white marble.") Those excursions which she and her friends

^ Hartsinck, II, 574.

* 77ie Lift and Memoirs 0/ Mrs. Behtiy in her WoHzs^ London, 187 1, V, 2; Oroonoko^ p. 50.

' Dictionary 0/ National Biography ^ art. "Aphra Behn."

BERNBAUM 427

enj^oyed in the royal slave's company, and which constitute so large a portion
of ytie narrative, depended largely upon the confidence placed in her promises
by. Oroonoko, whom, she says, she ** had assured of liberty as soon as the
governor arrived " ; ^ and that confidence, in turn, depended upon her being
related to the great. It seems as if, when the fundamental allegation is re-
vealed false, the very structure of her ** history " crumbles ; and as if such a
downright statement as Professor Canby's ** the royal slave she unquestionably
Tcnew, and knew well " ^ were made without scrutinizing the evidence.

If we nevertheless find it difficult to believe that Mrs. Behn was not in
Surinam, let us tentatively surmise that she was in some way connected with
a colonist ; and that in Oroonoko she pretended to a more distinguished rela-
tionship in order, perhaps, to place herself more plausibly in the center of
the events narrated. But that is, of course, an assumption. What we know
is that at least one important statement of hers is a falsehood. Her unsup-
ported word that she was in Surinam is therefore untrustworthy unless in our
further examination of Oroonoko it shall appear that she reports veraciously
facts which only an eye-witness could have observed.

Mrs. Behn speaks of a considerable number of the animals of Surinam.
The buffalo and deer she merely mentions ; but she gives correct though brief
descriptions of the armadillo, the ** cusharee," the marmoset, and some strange
flies.^ Of the *' tigers," that is, jaguars, which Oroonoko delights to hunt, her
accounts are exaggerated ; one of them *• was about the height of a heifer " ^
— hardly a realistic description. Oroonoko's adventure with a " numb eel " is
sensational. He is angling on the shore, when the eel takes his hook and
sends its electric current through the line and rod to his hand. He bravely
grasps the rod harder, faints from the shock, falls into the water, and is carried
a league down the river. As he floats past, some Indians seize his body, and
from it receive a strong shock. " By that they knew the rod was in his hand;
which with a paddle they struck away, and snatched it into the boat, eel and
all.'* ^ She adds that the eel was '* a quarter of an ell about," — some eleven
inches. The size of the eel, the duration of its electric charge, and above all
the circumstance that it does not shock by direct contact but sends its current
through the fish line, are more than questionable. Yet the truth remains that
with the exception of the cayman, the most interesting animals of Surinam
are in a manner known to the author. We should revive our faith in her
credibility, were personal observation the only means by which she could have
learned the fauna of Surinam.

In 1667, George Warren, who had lived three years in that colony, pub-
lished a little pamphlet, now rare, entitled An Impartial Description of Surinam.
Herein its fauna is likewise described, and here too the cayman is the only

^ Oroonokoy pp. 46-47. ^ Canby, p. 163. • Oroonoko, pp. 2, 5.

.* Ibid., p. 53. « Ibid., pp. 55-56.

428 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

important animal omitted. With the single exception of the marmoset,^ evieiy
animal that Mrs. Behn describes is described by Warren. For example, J the
latter says of the armadilloes :

They are short legged, have three claws upon their feet, are headed like a hog, hav^ no
teeth and but very little mouths ; they are defended all over, save the head and belly, with
an armor as it were plated, scarce penetrable by a lance, unless it happen in a joint. Thiey
burrow in the ground, and had they not quite so strong a smell of musk, would be no
contemptible meat^

Compare Mrs. Behn :

The very meat we eat, when set on the table, if it be native, I mean of the country,
perfumes the whole room ; especially a little beast called an armadillo, a thing which I can
liken to nothing so well as a rhinoceros. It is all in white armor, so jointed that it moves
as well in it as if it had nothing on.'

The only animals in connection with which Mrs. Behn relates any incidents
are the '* tiger" and the electric eel; the same is true of Warren. The latter's
story about the eel is worth comparing with the above adventure of Oroonoko :

The torpedo or numb eel, which, being alive, and touching any other living creature,
strikes such a deadness into all the parts as for a while renders them wholly useless and in-
sensible, which, is believed, has occasioned the drowning of several persons who have been
unhappily so taken as they were swimming in the river. It produces the like effect if but
touched with the end of a long pole, or one man immediately laying hold of another so be-
numbed. The truth of this was experienced, one of them being taken and thrown upon the
bank, where a dog spying it stir, catches it in his mouth, and presendy falls down, which
the master observing, and going to pull him off, becomes motionless himself ; another stand-
ing by, and endeavoring to remove him, follows the same fortune; the eel getting loose,
they return quickly to themselves.*

Much of the vividness of the background of Oroonoko arises from the
specific descriptions of the exotic and indigenous flora. In this respect, too,
the particulars that are true are to be found in Warren.^ When differences
appear, they show Mrs. Behn not independently observing but inaccurately
amplifying, as in the passage which for its anschaulichkeit is quoted entire
by Professor Siegel, and which describes a lovely grove of orange and lemon
trees crowning the ** rock of white marble." ^ '* Vast trees " they are indeed,
^* as big as English oaks " I The orchids of the forest, and the great palms
that border the river banks, though conspicuous, are omitted by Warren —
and by Mrs. Behn. Her landscape is uniformly flowery ; we read of " the
trees appearing all like nosegays," and that " the opposite bank was adorned
with such vast quantities of different flowers eternally blowing, and every day

^ These appear to have been taken to Europe as pets. See Purckas His Pilgrimes^ XVI,

3^3. 348» 379» 395-

^ Warren, George, An Impartial Description of Surinam ^ London, 1667, p. 11.

* Oroonoko^ P- 5'- * Warren, p. 2. * Cf. Oroonoko^ p. 51, with Warren, pp. 5, 15-16.

• Siegel, pp. 88-89 ; Oroonoko^ p. 52.

BERNBAUM 429

and hour new." ^ In this riot of color we see what has been called ** the old
tropical fallacy,'* which was exploded by A. R. Wallace in his Tropical Nature,
The early European travelers reported especially the striking, gorgeous plants ;
and, though these are usually scattered amid great masses of green, gave the
impression that everywhere the flowers grew in solid banks of bright color.
*' There is never there," says E. F. Im Thum, " a growing carpet of flowers
such as is made in England by primroses and anemones." ^ Here again
Mrs. Behn's eye does not seem to have been upon the object.

It may be urged that accuracy in describing nature is hardly to be expected,
even from a ** realist," in Mrs. Behn's time, when the proper study of man-
kind was man. Do we find her powers of observation more reliable when
directed on Oroonoko and his fellow slaves t That some important charac-
teristics of the hero and the heroine are idealized, every one grants ; but the
description of slave life i s in ge neral assumed to be copied from grim reality.
In Oroonoko's savage delight in slaughter, says Professor Siegel, Mrs. Behn
followed truth ; '* the brutal murder of Imoinda, and the stoical endurance of
torture," adds Miss Morgan, " is the conduct of a savage ; and in those
passages Mrs. Behn was depending upon her observations."^ But turn to
Warren's short chapter on the negroes, who, he notes,

are most brought out of Guiny in Africa to those parts, where they are sold like dogs, and
no better esteemed but for their work sake, which they perform all the week with the severest
usages for the slightest fault, till Saturday afternoon, when they are allowed to dress their
own gardens. . . . Their lodging is a hard board, and their black skins their covering.
These wretched miseries not seldom drive them to desperate attempts for the recovery of
their liberty, endeavoring to escape, and if like to be retaken sometimes lay violent hands
upon themselves. Or, if the hope of pardon bring them again alive into their masters' power,
they *11 manifest their fortitude, or rather obstinacy, in suffering the most exquisite tortures
can be inflicted upon them, for a terror and example to others without shrinking. . . .
Many of them over fondly woo their deaths, not otherwise hoping to be freed from that
indeed unequalled slavery.*

Is it not significant that this little outline emphasizes the very traits that con-
stitute the realistic elements on the larger canvas of Mrs. Behn ?

Needless to say, she amplifies and adds ; but, as we have already seen in
the case of Oroonoko's horrible wounds, the elaborations do not of themselves
inspire confidence. What a singularly lax plantation it is that permits the
tasks of Imoinda to be daily done for her by '* some sighing lover " ! ^ ** Caesar,"
we are told, was the plantation name of the negro prince ; his native name was
Oroonoko.^ Of course "Oroonoko" is not African; but '* Orinoco" is Indian
for ** coiled serpent," and was suitably applied to the winding river whose name

• Oroonoko^ pp. 51-52. * Im Thum, E. F., Among the Indians of Guiana^ 1883, pp. 87-91.

• Siegel, p. 346; Morgan, Charlotte E., The Rise of the Novel of Manners , New York, 191 1,
p. 81. * Warren, pp. 19-20. * Oroonoko^ p. 44.

• Ibid., p. 41. — Warren, p. 23, spells Orinoco " Oronoque."

* 4

' ,. " •■ '

I ••'

430 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

Raleigh made famous. That such an obvious slip has not aroused remark
seems singular, until we find the general inattention to such matters mani-
fested in an even more fantastic confusion, namely in the suggestion that
Oroonoko's home, Coramantien, may be the Coramandel Coast ^ (in East
India!). Coramantien was a district of Guinea. It was well known to the
English, who, about 1662, had a ** castle" there, which was an important
supply station for the African Company that monopolized the slave traffic of
the British West Indies.^ Though Mrs. Behn is therefore correct enough in
assigning her royal slave to that country, she seems to ignore some particulars
concerning it. The English ship which bore Oroonoko from Coramantien
must, according to Mrs. Behn's narrative, have arrived in Surinam in May,
1665, at the very earliest.^ But early in 1665 Coramantien was captured
by the Dutch, under the famous De Ruyter, who thence sailed to attack
Barbadoes.* It appears improbable that English slavers ventured from
Coramantien to Surinam from the close of 1664 until the end of the Dutch
war in 1667.
d.r.-^i *' We may also question the description which Mrs. Behn gives of the
Coramantien negro. Oroonoko, she says, was *' carved with a little flower or
bird at the sides of the temples," and Imoinda was ** carved '* ** aH over her
body," *' resembling our ancient Picts that are figured in the chronicles " (!).
As a matter of fact, many tribes of negroes were thus ** carved " ; but those
from Coramantien happened to be exceptional in this respect, and were noted
for their "fine, smooth, black skin." ^ In short, the more one learns about
Coramantien, the less true seem those strokes in her picture of negro life that
are peculiarly her own.

About the Indians of Surinam, Mrs. Behn writes in tones of admiration,
and with a vividness that has been especially commended.® The natives of
that region were the Caribs, between whom and the English no serious
trouble, such as is assumed in a part of Oroonoko^ appears actually to have
taken place in Surinam during the time in question.^ They were more numer-
ous than Mrs. Behn intimates, and their habitations were less remote.^ They
were not so handsome as she describes them, nor did they woo in so languish-
ing a manner.® She recounts that her companions aroused their wonder by
playing the flute, but the natives were quite familiar with that instrument.^
They were so honorable, she declares, that they could not conceive of a *' liar " ;

* Canby, p. 163.

* StiUe Papers y pp. II3» 135, 146, 174, 194; C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British
Colonies^ Oxford, 1905, II, 44, 64. • See above, p. 422. * Siate Papers^ pp. 294-295.

* Hartsinck, 11,921-922; H. G. Dalton, History of British Guiana^ London, 1855, ^» ^^3*

* Siegel, p. 357 n. I. "^ State Papers ^ p. 598 ; Warren, p. 26.

* Warren, p. 23 ; Rodway, Guianay p. 44.

* Oroonokoy p. 3; Im Thum, pp. 188, 221; John Davies, History of the Caribby Islands ^
London, 1666, pp. 270, 334. 10 Oroonoko^ p. 59; Im Thum, p. 309; Davies, p. 307.

BERNBAUM 431

but the Jesuit missionary Pellepart, who in 1655 compiled a little dictionary
of their language, gives no less than five Carib synonyms for ** menteur." ^

What Mrs. Behn tells us about Indian dress, adornments, weapons, and
customs is often correct ; but in no instance does she present a true fact
that is not to be found in Warren's chapter on the Indians. Her omissions
agree with his. Both authors, in discussing the *'peaiman,*' omit the long
fasts and solitary wanderings that were so interesting a part of the medicine
man's training.^ Both, in describing the appearance of the Caribs, omit the
leg band which, tied above the ankle and below the knee of female infants and
never thence removed, caused a gross distortion of the calf, which was most
conspicuous.^

As we have seen to be the case in other parts of the story, circumstances
accurately stated by Warren are by Mrs. Behn so elaborated as to become
improbable or false. Warren deplores that the Indian girls are unacquainted
with **that innocent and warm delight of kissing; but conversing so fre-
quently with Christians, and being naturally docile and ingenious, we have
reason to believe they will in time be taught it."^ Instead of this speculative
pleasantry, we have in Mrs. Behn an episode showing that it was her party
that taught the Indians how to kiss. In her lively account of the occasion, we
miss, however, an explanation of how the practice could have been so enjoy-
able to the Caribs, whose lips are pierced with holes, in which are inserted
thorns or pins.^ In describing the hospitality of the Indians, Mrs. Behn
again provides some information like that in Warren ; but with regard to the
food and drink, the service, the *' napery," etc., makes so many errors of
omission and commission that they cannot be enumerated here.^

Her regular method may be illustrated by her transmutation of the follow-
ing true Statement by Warren concerning Indian captains,

whose courage they first prove, by sharply whipping them with rods, which if they endure
bravely without crying, or any considerable motion, they are acknowledged gallant fellows
and honored by the less hardy.'

* Oroonoko^ p. 4; Pierre Pellepart, Introduction hla langue des Galibis^ Paris, 1655, p; 25.

I have compared the Indian words given by Mrs. Behn (Oroonoko^ p. 58) with old word-
lists and with modem, both Carib and Arowak, and believe them not authentic ; but in the con-
fusion of Indian tongues, I feel it unsafe to declare them certainly fraudulent. Cf. The Voyage
of Robert Dudley to the West Indies^ ed. G. F. Warner, London, 1899, pp. 65, 78-79 ; Davies*s
Caribbean vocabulary in his History of the Caribby Islands, 1666, pp. 353 ff.; D. G. Brinton,
The Arawack Language of Guiana, 1870 ; J. Crevaux, P. Sagot, L. Adam, Grammaires et Vo-
cabulaires roucouyenne, arrouague, piapoco et d*autres langues, Paris, 1882.

' Oroonoko, p. 59 ; Warren, pp. 26-27 ; Im Thum, p. 334.

* Im Thum, p. 192.

* Warren, pp. 23-24.

* Oroonoko, p. 60; Im Thum, p. 193.

* Oroonoko, pp. 58-59 ; Davies, chap, xviii (" Of the Entertainment which the Caribbians
make those who come to visit them") ; Im Thum, chaps, xiii and xv (** Food " and ** Feasts").

' Warren, pp. 24-25; Davies, pp. 314, 315.

■r.

i .>■

432 MRS. BERN'S OROONOKO

Mrs. Behn, on the other hand, tells us that Oroonoko marvelled at the fright-
ful scars of the chiefs, who explained that competitors for a captaincy muti-
lated themselves in the following manner :

Being brought before the old judges, now past labor, they are asked what they dare do to
show they are worthy to lead an army. When he who is first asked, making no reply, cuts
off his nose, and throws it contemptibly on the ground ; and the other does something to
himself that he thinks surpasses him, and perhaps deprives himself of lips and an eye. So
they slash on till one gives out, and many have died in this debate, — ... a sort of courage
too brutal to be applauded by our black hero.^

Yet despite such monstrous perversions, Mrs. Behn, according to some,
presents Indian life *' most anthropolq^cally " !

It was not a vivid imagination alone that furnished Mrs. Behn with her
enlargements upon Warren. In her idealization of the moral character of the
savages (the ** impartial " Warren found them ** cowardly and treacherous " ),
she shows the influence of a sentimental tradition in the European literature
of tne sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which likewise manifests itself in
the noble Indians of the heroic drama.^ Some details in the appearance of
Mrs. Behn's Indians are also traditional. She clothes them in " short habits "
and ** glorious wreaths " of feathers. ** I had a set of these presented to me,"
she says, "and I gave them to the King's Theatre ; it was the dress of the
Indian Queen, infinitely admired by persons of quality, and was inimitable." ^
To think of Nell Gwynn in the true costume of a Carib belle is indeed ludi-
crous. Besides the apron, the principal Carib adornments were strings of
beads or shells ; the men might, on great occasions, wear some feathers on
their heads and shoulders. In Surinam anything like the elaborate feather
costume of Mrs. Behn's fancy was unknown."* But the first aborigines
whom the Europeans learned about were the incomparably superior natives
of Mexico, whose gorgeous featherwork garments were among the noble pres-
ents sent by Montezuma to Cortez, and by Cortez to the king of Spain.
" No one of the American fabrics excited such admiration," says Prescott,
who cites many passages of admiring description of them.^ For literary pur-
poses they thenceforth became the conventional garments of all Indians.
Probably the quivers mentioned by Mrs. Behn are derived from the same
tradition ; the Carib arrows were very long, and their quivers were small cases
to hold only the poisoned points.®

From an English point of view perhaps the most interesting tradition that
may be recognized in Oroonoko appears in the episode of the gold-bearing
savages. In his preface, Warren cautiously remarks : "The Indians will tell

* Oroonoko i pp. 60-61.

* Charlotte E. Morgan, The Novel of Manners^ pp. 81-82 ; Gilbert Chinard, VExotisme
amiricain, 191 1. • Oroonoko^ p. 2. * Im Thum, p. 199.

* W. H. Prescott, Conquest of Mexico^ Philadelphia, 1873, 1» '47» 2991 356, 430 ; II, 68, 129.

* Oroonokoy p. 60 ; Im Thum, p. 243 ; Purchas His Filgrimes^ XVI, 415.

BERNBAUM 433

you of mighty princes upwards, and golden cities, how true I know not." The
colonists of 1665 were not seeking gold : they were raising sugar. But
Oroonoko and Mrs. Behn meet '* Indians of strange aspects," who come
from the mountains, speak an unknown tongue, and cany bags of gold-dust,
" which, as well as they could give us to understand, came streaming in little
small channels down the high mountains, when the rains fell." These are, I
think, the echoes of the hopeful words that the brave Elizabethans sent home
across the seas, when they were seeking El Dorado, which lay ever ** on the
other side of those great hills," where ran " streams of gold about the breadth
of a goosequill." ^

If these observations are approved, we must at last abandon the interest-
ing assumption that it was personal acquaintance with an unfortunate slave,
and actual observation of Surinam, that furnished Mrs. Behn with the mate-
rials for Oroonoko. The Dutch wars, which drew attention to that colony,
provided her with the few correct touches in the historical background of the
picture. For the rest, whatever was real in the local color was given her by
Warren's descripti on of the natural environment, the slaves, and the Indians.
In thus employing a true account, she was using the method of Defoe and
his predecessors, w hose fiction is rooted in the literature of fact. Those
writers, however, when rearranging and elaborating journalistic reports, man-
aged to carry their Captain Singletons from Mozambique to Guinea with-
out seriously blundering into the unreal ; for they made it their controlling
aim not to deviate from the probable. No such bounds confined the romantic,
sensational, and hero-worshipping Mrs. Behn. Whatever in Warren's account
might serve to make the scene of Oroonoko's actions interesting, or might
be utilized in an episode displaying his noble qualities, was thus employed ;
but whatever did not please her fancy, she at will suppressed or modified,
.gx alted the loveliness of the climate and landscape of Surinam, the mar-
vels of its flora and fauna, and the innocence of its inhabitants. She enhanced
its charm with touches taken from the picturesque traditions of Cortez and
of Raleigh. What she says of Miranda in The Fair Jilt seems applicable
to herself : ** She had a great deal of wit, read much, and retained all that
served her purpose." If she ever sincerely intended to write an)^ing like
a true story, she abandoned that intention as soon as she had stated it, and
gave her fancy free rein. The second-hand materials that form the realistic
foundation of Oroonoko are so inconspicuous in comparison with the romantic
superstructure that to emphasize their presence is to obscure the purpose and
character of her art.

^ Oroonoko^ p. 6i ; Purchas His Pilgrimesy XVI, 306, 340, 346, 386, 387, 396, 407, 409. Traces
of the tradition in Hall, Donne, and Milton are mentioned in Voyages of the Elizabethan Sea-
men to America^ ed. £. J. Payne, Second Series, 2d ed., Oxford, 1900, p. xlvii.

t i

THE POETIC DICTION OF THE ENGLISH

CLASSICISTS

Raymond Dexter Havens

Although the English classicists were proud of having made their poetry
'* fitter for discourse and nearer prose " than that of their predecessors, they were
in a way much more concerned than their predecessors had been that their
verse should be poetical. The Elizabethans had been poetical enough without
giving thought to the matter, but, as the vigorous exuberance of their imagina-
tion and the swellings of their style were tamed by later versifiers and subject
matter, and style and language became prosaic, writers began to feel about,
more or less unconsciously, for means of making their poetry more poetic, for
distinguishing it from prose. As time passed, various methods developed,
some prosodical, having to do with the development of the heroic couplet,
some stylistic, and some relating to diction. It is with the last of these that
this paper is concerned.

The characteristic of poetry which was to the Augustans the most essential
was smoothness. For no other quality did they labor so incessantly, for none
did they so relentlessly sacrifice the deeper qualities of their art. Variety,
melody, verbal magic, vigor, — these were nothing as compared with freedom
from an)^ing rough. Their conception of smoothness, furthermore, was pecu-
liar. They held that it began with Waller; "The tongue came into his hands,
like a rough diamond ; he polish 'd it first," said Atterbury ^ in 1690. John-
son, who wrote of Lycidas^ '' the diction is harsh . . . and the numbers un-
pleasing,"^ noted that since Dryden*s time ** English poetry has had no
tendency to relapse to its former savageness." ^ Johnson also uses a figure
which may help us to understand what the Augustans meant by smoothness ;
** Pope's [page],** he writes, *' is a velvet lawn, shaven by the scythe, and
levelled by the roller." ^ The tool of the pseudo-classicist is, indeed, not the
file, but the heavy roller, which crushes every little elevation into a neighboring
hollow and makes each poetic field a trim, level city lawn hardly to be dis-
tinguished from the lawns about it.

1 Preface to Tkt Second Pdrt 0/ Mr. fValUr's Poems.

* Lives of the Pioets^ ed. Birkbeck Hill, I, 163.

* Ibid., I, 421.

* Ibid., III. 222.

435

436 POETIC DICTION OF ENGLISH CLASSICISTS

The results of the rolling process are sadly evident if one compares Donne's
third satire with Pameirs " versified " form of it. Donne wrote :

Darest thou aid mutinous Dutch ; and darest thou lay

Thee in ships, wooden sepulchres, a prey

To leaders' rage, to storms, to shot, to dearth ?

Darest thou dive seas, and dungeons of the earth ?

Hast thou courageous fire to thaw the ice

Of frozen North discoveries. . . .

This became :

Dar'st thou provoke, when rebel souls aspire.
Thy Maker's vengeance, and thy monarch's ire ;
Or live entomb'd in ships, thy leader's prey.
Spoil of the war, the famine, or the sea ;
In search of pearl, in depth of ocean breathe,
Or live, exil'd the sun, in mines beneath.
Or, where in tempests icy mountains roll.
Attempt a passage by the northern pole ?

The crabbed vigor of the Jacobean has been diluted into the tame propriety
which pleased the fashionable in Anne*s day. As most of Donne's harshness
lay not in his diction but in his metre and style, the changes in diction are
not marked. Yet it is significant that '* mutinous Dutch," "wooden sepul-
chres," and " dive " disappear in vague periphrases, while '* storms . . . shot
. . . dearth " become " Spoil of the war, the famine, or the sea." In other
parts of the poem, Donne's colloquial " eat thy poisonous words " is dropt ;
'* pity chokes " becomes " Compassion checks " ; " damn'd," '* Art ever ban-
ish'd from the blest abode " ; "foul devil," " th' apostate angel " ; and " is In
her decrepit wane," "fades." It is noteworthy that, though Pamell thus avoids
words that may have seemed to him harsh, he does not substitute for them
or introduce trite, conventional terms which would not be used in prose ; he
does not, for example, speak of a spring as a "crystal font." That is, he does
not use "poetic diction." This is characteristic of most of the early Augustan
writers ; their style is smooth and flowing, and there is little in their diction
to object to except the lack of those comers which give to poetry sincerity,
directness, and vigor.

But this was only a first stage. As time passed and English numbers grew,
as was complacently imagined, more elegant and refined, the principle of
avoiding the rough was extended to include avoiding the unusual. Many words
which occur in Spenser and Milton, beautiful both in sound and in sense, were
constantly criticized in the eighteenth century because they were obsolete or
strange. Writers realized that any phrase to which one is accustomed passes
naturally, easily, and quickly through the mind and accordingly gives the effect
of smoothness ; whereas, any unusual word or combination of words, or any

;

HAVENS 437

word employed in an unusual sense, stands out from the rest and is more
slowly grasped, if not even resisted, by the mind. Thus in Keats's

So the two brothers and their murder'd man,

and Browning^s

Stung with the splendor of a sudden thought,

the words ** murder'd" and "stung" startle us and would certainly interfere
with any limpid flow of the lines. We can accordingly understand why the
pseudo-classic school, with its exaggerated emphasis on smoothness, came to
like conventional words and phrases, and why it was so tolerant of tameness
in verse. It seems, even, as if it preferred words that by constant use had
been worn so smooth as to be in effect almost meaningless.

Yet it was not only the rough and unusual words that were to be avoided
to make poetry more poetic, there were also the common and vulgar words.
Pope and his contemporaries seem to have felt about their words as a gentle-
man does about his clothes — that they should be neither striking nor notice-
able (that were bad taste), yet clearly different from the factory-made garments
of the man in the street. In other words, they should be elegant. And ele-
gant the pseudo-classic diction certainly is, with the elegance of a gentleman
in silk stockings, lace ruffles, and powdered wig. To these gentlemen, many
words which men of other times have found entirely unobjectionable, appeared
vulgar and quite out of place in poetry. " If I should translate it sweet mar-
joratHf as the word signifies," Dryden wrote of the Latin mollis amaracuSy
** the reader would think I had mistaken Virgil : for those village words, as I
may call them, give us a mean idea of the thing." ^ Dr. Johnson wrote of
Lady Macbeth *s address to night: **The efficacy of this invocation is destroyed
by the insertion of an epithet \dun\ now seldom heard but in the stable," and
the ** sentiment is weakened by the name of an instrument used by butchers
and cooks in the meanest employments ; we do not immediately conceive that
any crime of importance is to be committed with a knife r 2 Even Diyden
was not elegant enough for his successors, as both Pope and Johnson criti-
cized his use of such nautical terms as ** oakum," **seam," and ** mallet."^
'* It is a general rule in poetry," announced the great dictator, ** that all ap-
propriated terms of art should be sunk in general expressions, because poetry
is to speak an universal language. " ^ From the same authority we have a
definite statement of the principles which settled whether a word was or was
not suitable for verse. ** There was therefore before the time of Dryden no
poetical diction : no system of words at once refined from the grossness of
domestick use and free from the harshness of terms appropriated to particular

^ Dryden, Dedication of the Aeneis^ Cambridge Poets ^ p. 518.

2 Johnson, The Ramblery no. 168.

« Pope's Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, VI, 107 ; Johnson's Lives, I, 433-434-

* Johnson, Lives, I, 433.

438 POETIC DICTION OF ENGLISH CLASSICISTS

arts. Words too familiar or too remote defeat the purpose of a poet. From
those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily
receive strong impressions or delightful images; and words to which we are
nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves
which they should transmit to things. Those happy combinations of words
which distinguish poetry from prose, had been rarely attempted "^ before
Dryden*s time. With these principles Addison was thoroughly in accord.
** The Italian poets, besides the celebrated smoothness of their tongue, have
a particular advantage, above the writers of other nations, in the difference of
their poetical and prose language . . . there are not only sentences, but a
multitude of particular words that never enter into common discourse."^
Even as late as 1785, the romantically inclined John Scott wrote of some of
Thomson's expressions, ** * To tempt the trout,* is prosaick," *' ' stealing from
the bam a straw,* ... is a wretched prosaism. * Clean and complete * also
is . . . the diction of a house-maid or a char-woman." ^ What Scott thought
Thomson should have written is clear from his words *' the birds moistening
their plumage with an oleaginous matter, or in our author's words, * streaking
their wings with oil.' " ^

The result of this avoidance of what seemed- to the Augustans prosaic,
harsh, and vulgar words was that vicious " poetic diction " which blighted
English poetry for a century, worming its way into the work even of the best
and most natural poets of the time, and giving to many excellent productions
an affected and artificial tone. Addison, for example, turns " He maketh me
to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters," into :

When in the sultry Glebe I faint,
Or on the thirsty Mountain pant :
To fertile Vales and dewy Meads
My weary wandering Steps he leads ;
Where peaceful Rivers, soft and slow,
Amid the verdant Landskip flow.^

We read in Garth's Dispensary :

Eternal Spring with smiling Verdure here
Warms the mild Air, and crowns the youthful year.
From Crystal Rocks, transparent Riv'lets flow.
The tub'rose ever breathes, and Violets blow . . .
Cool Grotto's, Silver Brooks, and flow'ry Vales.'

Pope's Pastorals are adorned with lines like,

As in the crystal spring I view my face,
Fresh rising blushes paint the watery glassJ

1 Johnson, Lives^ I, 420. * Addison, Remarks on Italy, in his JVorfcsy N. Y., 1854, II, 188.

• Scott, Critical Essays, pp. 309, 316. * Ibid., 301. * Addison, The Spectator, no. 441.

• Garth, Dispensary, seventh ed., iv, 300-303, 319. ^ Pope, Summer, i, 27-28.

HAVENS 439

A picture of Mars and Venus is thus mentioned by Tickell :

So in the painter's animated frame,

Where Mars embraces the soft Paphian dame.^

To Johnson has been attributed the honor of composing these lines :

Not the soft sighs of vernal gales,
The fragrance of the flowery vales,
The murmurs of the crystal rill.
The vocal grove, the verdant hill.*

It will be noticed that all but one of the extracts given above deal with
nature. This was not intentional on my part, but was due simply to the diffi-
culty of finding effective illustrations of "poetic diction** in verse dealing with
other subjects. It does occur, and frequently, in love songs and serious pieces
such as elegies, addresses to persons, and other occasional poems, but in these
it is usually limited to a word or two. In certain classes of poetry, satires,
fables, humorous or conversational pieces — it is practically unknown. The
reason for this is obvious ; as poems of this kind are in subject matter, style,
and treatment much nearer prose than is an account of spring or an address
to one's ladylove, the language in which they are written need not be so far
removed from that of prose. In other words, we find that in proportion as the
subjects of poems draw nearer to those of ordinary conversation, the language
and style grow conversational, and that ** poetic diction " is employed only in
passages which it is desirable to have as different as possible from prose.*

In this connection it should be noted that many of the descriptions of
nature in eighteenth-century poetry are not there because the author wished
to express his love for the out-of-doors, but were added much as the ornaments
used to be to cheap furniture. The simple article was first manufactured and
then true-love knots of wood were fastened to the comers, and a number of
feet of machine-made garlands were glued on the bare spots. The nature
passages were the wooden garlands and bows of ribbon which were added to
relieve the bareness and monotony of the verses. " Poetic diction ** was in
these cases the gilt with which the roses and oranges were touched up —
simply for further ornament. Of course these touches were not true ; neither
roses nor oranges shine like gold, but they were thought pretty and that was
enough.^ To be sure, there were men such as Thomson, Collins, and Gray,

1 TickncU, On the Prospect of Peaces Worksy British Poets^ Boston, 1854, p. 30.

2 Johnson, To Stella, 11. 1-4.

^ It was also felt that pastorals and love poems should be smoother than other kinds of poetry.

* Many descriptive passages in Augustan poetry are scarcely more deserving of criticism
for unreality than are Japanese prints or conventional floral designs. They do not attempt to
reproduce nature, but are decorative bits, the motives of which are drawn from nature. Pope
must have been shrewd enough to see that the pictures in his Pastorals gave no feeling of reality.
They were no more intended to do so than were the sketches of Aubrey Beardsley. Pope did
not want to describe the woods and fields any more than Beardsley wanted to draw them.

440 POETIC DICTION OF ENGLISH CLASSICISTS

who loved nature and tried to describe it. Most of these had, like Gray, but
indifferent success ; ** poetic diction ** had become a habit fixed in the lan-
guage and men did not realize how much they used it or how false it was.
This was to be expected, for there are few things so conventional as language ;
most men give the matter no thought, but express themselves as the rest of
the world does.

There were, to be sure, other causes which led to the development of
" poetic diction." The classical emphasis on universality, the preference for
the abstract, the general, and the typical, — seed which bore much bad fruit
in pseudo-classic soil, — undoubtedly helped to make the language of poetry
vague, trite, and conventional. "The business of a poet," Johnson tells us,
"... is to examine, not the individual, but the species ; to remark general proper-
ties and large appearances. He does not number the streaks of the tulip, or
describe the different shades in the verdure of the forest." ^ If the descrip-
tive poetry of the time had not been devoted so exclusively to " general
properties and large appearances," we should have fewer lines like

Here blushing Flora paints th' enamePd ground.*

The meaningless conventionality of such lines as this is also due to a lack of
imagination, to a lack of close observation of nature, and somewhat to the
repressive nature of the couplet. Yet "poetic diction " is not limited to descrip-
tions of nature, nor to other subjects which require imagination, nor to the
couplet ; and we have seen from the general character of the poetry of the
period and from the statements of Johnson, Addison, and others how strong
was the dislike of harsh, common, or strange words in verse. That the desire
to make poetry more poetical and elegant was the principal cause of the vicious
eighteenth-century diction also appears from the development of a different form
of it in poetry which was slightly, if at all, affected by the other considerations
which have been mentioned.

We have thus far considered only rimed poems. This is not because
" poetic diction " is limited to rime, but because the siren strains to which we
have been listening never sounded particularly sweet in the ears of those who
sailed the argosies of blank verse. The allurements of elegance, it is true,
often enticed them upon the shoals, but those of smoothness they in the main
sailed bravely past. Blank verse was at the time generally regarded as rough
verse, so that only those employed it who preferred the free vigor and the
sonorous sweep of its roughness to the tame propriety of the couplet. And
as such writers set no great store by smoothness, they naturally neglected the
means by which it was obtained. What they did do has been excellently set
forth by a forgotten essayist, John Aikin. " The writers of blank verse have
been so sensible of their near approach to prose in the versification, that they

1 Johnson, Rasselas^ chap. x. 2 Pope, Windsor Forest^ 1. 38.

HAVENS 441

have been solicitous to give their language a character as different as possible
from that of common speech. This purpose, while it has favored loftiness
and splendour oi diction, has also too much promoted a turgid and artificial
style, stiffened by quaint phrases, obsolete words, and perversions of the natural
order of sentences. When the subject is something appertaining to common
life, this affected stateliness is apt to produce a ludicrous effect." ^ The blank-
verse writers, in other words, had to face exactly the same problem as that
which troubled Pope and his school — how to make their poetry more poetic.
The problem was, indeed, more serious in proportion as blank verse is nearer
to prose. But while the Augustans were carried in one direction by their
desire for smoothness and their dislike for the unusual, the opponents of rime
were borne in the opposite direction by an entirely dissimilar force — their
worship of Milton. Now in Paradise Lost, grandeur, sublimity, and remote-
ness from everyday things were indispensable, and definite description impos-
sible. Milton, accordingly, preferred unusual to common words, used sonorous
Latin terms and compound epithets, and conveyed his ideas through figures
of speech and the ** noble diapason " of his lines. His admirers tried to do
the same, but as they employed his devices mechanically, without taste or good
sense, and in the treatment of subjects entirely unsuited to them, the effect
was, as Aikin said, often ** ludicrous.** John Philips, for example, in a poem
on cider thus described a drought :

Aquarius had not shed
His wonted showers, and Sirius parch'd with heat
Solstitial the green lierb : hence 'gan relax
The ground's contexture, hence Tartarian dr^s,
Sulphur, and nitrous spume, enkindling fierce,
Bellowed within their darksome caves, by far
More dismal than the loud disploded roar
Of brazen enginry.*

Yet Milton*s admirers did not follow him blindly. In a considerable degree
their turgid diction was due not simply to their admiration for Milton but, as
Aikin suggests, to their desire to make their poetry more dignified and sonorous,
and to distinguish it more sharply from prose. The force of these latter mo-
tives is shown in the development, in part by men who did not imitate Milton,
of a phase of *' poetic diction ** of which there is only a hint in Paradise Lost?
This is the use of unnatural and inflated circumlocutions for simple and per-
haps homely words. Men, for example, do not take cold baths but ** frequent
The gelid cistern,'* * a woman draws off not a stocking but ** the inverted silk,** ^

^ Aikin, Letters to a Young Lady on a Course of English Poetryy 2d cd., 1807, p. 1 18.

* Philips, Cyder^ in Anderson's British Poets^ VI, 548.

* Really two phases, for the compound epithets, which became almost a mannerism in
eighteenth-century blank verse, occur comparatively rarely in Milton.

* Armstrong, The Art of Preserving Healthy in Anderson, X, 976.

* Thomson, Summer^ 1. 1309.

442 POETIC DICTION OF ENGLISH CLASSICISTS

and a volcano in the words of Thomson — who has at least twelve different
periphrases for ** birds''^ — is **The infuriate hill that shoots the pillared
flame." ^ These terms are never effective, generally objectionable, and fre-
quently absurd, yet they were used more or less by the English poets for a
hundred years. To be sure, there is nothing inherently bad in periphrases ;
we praise them under the name of kennings in Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon
verse, and we use then\ to-day when we speak of ** the father of his country **
instead of Washington, or *' the Puritan bard " instead of Milton. The differ-
ence is that the eighteenth-century periphrases are vague, unnatural, and
mechanical, that they add nothing, but are simply attempts to be elegant and
poetical in an artificial way.

Such periphrases are less confined to any one kind of poetry than are the
other varieties of ** poetic diction." They help to make Pope's Pastorals and
Messiah unreadable, they injure his House of Fame and Homer (but, as was
to be expected, are absent from the satires), they abound in Gay's Rural
Sports, and appear occasionally in the couplets of Tickell, Addison, Garth,
and even Wordsworth. They are much more frequent, however, in blank
verse, rioting in the work of John Philips and Thomson, and being painfully
evident in that of Dyer, Grainger, Mason, Cowper, and the rest. To attempt
to trace the beginning of these circumlocutions in English poetry would be
folly ; in their less objectionable forms they have always been used occasion-
ally and probably will never entirely disappear. A hasty examination of seven-
teenth-century verse shows a few cases in Waller, several in Paradise Lost,
2l number in Addison, and at least one in Dryden, who is singularly free from
any objectionable diction.^ There is a marked increase in the number of these
in the beginning of the eighteenth century, and they seem to have reached
their height in rimed verse in Gay's Rural Sports (17 13). This increase is
in all probability due to the higher value placed by the poets of the time upon
elegance, and upon circumlocution as a means of obtaining it. The history
of conventional terms peculiar to poetry, such as ** enamel 'd meads," is much
the same, save that these occurred more frequently in Elizabethan verse and
had a proportionately wider and longer sway in the eighteenth century.^

1 " Plumy people," " gay troops," " tuneful nations," " glossy kind," " soft tribes," " feathered
youth," " plumy burden," " aerial tribes," " weak tribes," " wanderers of heaven," " plumy race,"
'* tenants of the sky" {Springs 11. 165, 584, 594, 617, 711, 729, 747; Summery 1. 1121 ; Autumn,
1. 986; mmer, 11. 80, 137, 138).

2 Summer, 1. 1096.

• This is seen very clearly if one compares Dryden's translation of VirgiFs Fourth Georgic
with the earlier one made by Addison.

* The rapid spread of " poetic diction " at the beginning of the century is shown in the history
of Garth's Dispensary. In the first five editions of the poem (i 699-1 703) there is practically no
" poetic diction " even in the descriptions of nature; in the sixth edition (1706) "several
descriptions and episodes " were added in which vicious diction riots. (See p. 438 above, and
compare VI, 223-239, in the sixth edition with the same passage in the first)

HAVENS 443

In blank verse the case is somewhat different. Walter Raleigh has sug-
gested that the circumlocutions used in Paradise Lost may well have given
rise to those which occur in the poems which copy the style, diction, and ver-
sification of Milton's poem.^ This is certainly plausible, yet Milton employed
so few of these periphrases that by themselves they could hardly have made
much of an impression. It seems probable that a much stronger force was
exerted by the grandeur and magnificence of Milton's poem, its remoteness
from common things, which have previously been mentioned. The influence
of Paradise Lost was unquestionably away from simple directness and towards
high-sounding, elaborate terms. And this influence was very great. There
can be no question but that John Philip)s, the first writer of blank verse after
Milton to employ these circumlocutions to any extent, took them from the
stately epic which he so much admired and so closely imitated. Thomson
was led to adopt them by his enthusiasm for both Milton and Philips, and in
employing them in The Seasons he fixed them securely in eighteenth-century
blank verse.

We have seen that ** poetic diction " first began to be objectionable towards
the close of the seventeenth century, and that it reached its highest develop-
ment between 1 7 1 3 and 1 730, after which it slowly and with irregular advances
and retreats sank into disuse. The extent and the length of its sway we can
scarcely realize. Although much verse had been written in simple and natural
language before the close of the century, Coleridge was swept off his feet in
1789 by the sonnets of Bowles, chiefly, as he tells us, because ** of the then
living poets " Bowles was the first he had encountered *' who combined natural
thoughts with natural diction." * And as late as 1800, in the famous preface
to the Lyrical Ballads^ Wordsworth wrote, *' There will also be found in these
pieces little of what is usually called poetic diction ; as much pains has been
taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it." ^ The disease was,
indeed, slow in curing, for it was not a local disturbance, but a manifestation
of poisons which were in the blood and came from the very heart of poetry.
The diction of the pseudo-classic versifiers, and therein lies its interest and
importance, was in a large part the outcome of their conception of poetry and
was bound to live until that conception of poetry passed away.*

^ Raleigh, Milton, pp. 245-255.

2 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, in his Works, 7 vols., New York, 1853, III, 1 60-161.

• Wordsworth, Prose Works, I, 53.

* Miss M. S. Leather, in an article on Pope as a Student of Milton {Eng. Studien, XXV, 406),
attributes the origin of this false ** poetic diction " to Pope's Homer, and quotes Southey and
Coleridge in support of her opinion. Walter Raleigh {Milton, p. 251) apparently has the same
idea. Yet it cannot be right. In the first place, plenty of " poetic diction " of the most vicious
kind can be found in English poetry before 17 15, when the /r<>m^r appeared, — in Waller (c. 1665),
in Addison's translation of Virgil's Fourth Georgic (1694), in Pope's Pastorals and Windsor-
Forest (1709-1713), in Garth's Dispensary (7th ed., 1714)* and in Philips's Splendid Shilling, Blen-
heim, Cerealia, Cyder {i^oi-i^c^). Again, what Southey and Coleridge objected to in the Homer

444 POETIC DICTION OF ENGLISH CLASSICISTS

was, if I am not mistaken, not so much the diction as the style. When, for example, Pope

translates " But to the other . . . laughter-looking Venus is ever present, and averts fate from

him " by

Not thus fair Vitmis helps her favour'd knight,

The Queen of Pleasures shares the toils of fight (iv, 11. 13-14),

and " nor refusing fight " by

His beating bosom claim'd the rising fight (iv, 1. 259),

it is not the words to which one objects, but the relation of the words to each other in a pom-
pous, diffuse, artificial expression of a simple idea. When, however, he writes,

As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood (iv, 1. 177),

employing the purely conventional epithet " snowy," giving " distill'd " a meaning it would not
have in prose, and saying " the streaming flood " instead of ** blood," it is his diction that is at
fault. Pope also calls a bow " the shining spoil," turns Homer*s " pours the wine " into " crowns
the goblets," and has a preference for " fiery coursers," " refulgent," etc. Yet it is to the style
rather than to the diction of the translation that objection is to be taken. Miss Leather her-
self seems to mean by " poetic diction " simply ** such words as refulgent regal, adamantine,"
which do occur in the Horner^ but are much more common in the blank verse of the day.

THE DEBATE ELEMENT IN THE
ELIZABETHAN DRAMA

James Holly Hanford

In Elizabethan England, as elsewhere throughout Europe during the six-
teenth century, the literary debate, that characteristic mediaeval genre in which
abstract or typical figures engage in a more or less formal word contest, flour-
ished in practically full vigor. The degree to which the debate idea was
familiar to Elizabethan writers has thus far had but little recognition. It is a
phase of that curiously mediaeval aspect of the period, which we are apt to
lose sight of until it is brought forcibly to our attention by such facts as that
of the long-continued popularity of the religious drama or the persistence in
the universities of the antiquated style of scholastic disputation.^

The popularity of the literary debate in England began to decline rapidly
toward the end of the sixteenth century. Meanwhile, however, the form had
left its mark on the stage, where it continued to be an interesting, if minor,
factor until late in the reign of James. Before examining the nature of this influ-
ence upon the drama we may glance at the background of non-dramatic debates.

These disputes vary widely in origin and character. Their material, how-
ever, is largely mediaeval. Thus the very old debate between the Body and
the Soul, which had received one of its most powerful embodiments in Middle
English, appears in a l)n*ic version in Davison's Poetical Rhapsody^ and
again, as late as 1616, in a translation of the Latin Visio Philiberti, done by
William Crashaw.^ The well-known and charming Altercatio Phillidis et
Florae was translated into English by George Chapman in 1595.^ Another

1 Some of the questions of debate are given in Nichols's Progresses, During the Royal visit
to Cambridge in 1 564, Queen Elizabeth was entertained by learned discussions on such proposi-
tions as simplex cibus praeferendus multiplici and coenandum liberalius quam prandendum^ which
unfortunately her Majesty made not much of, ** because their voices were small and not audible/'

« Edited by J. P. Collier, p. 167.

• Tlie Complaint or Dialogue betwixt the Soule and the Bodie of a Damned Man, each Laying
the Fault upon the Other. Supposed to be written by S. Bernard from a nightly vision of his^ and
no7v published out of an ancient manuscript copy by William Crashaw. London, i6i6. Both the
Latin and English texts are given.

* The poem, entitled The Amorous Contention of Phillis and Flora^ followed by the Latin
text, appeared in the first edition of Ovid*s Banquet of Sence; reprinted in The Works of Geo,
Chapman^ Poems and Minor Translations, 1875, P* 43- See also Thomas Wright, Lcitin Poems
cUtributed to Walter Mapes, 1841, Appendix H. The "Ballade intituled A Disputation of two
faythefull Lovers in prayse of Taylors and comendation of Glovers^ entered in the Stationers*
Register, May i, 1584, must surely have been an adaption of the same theme.

445

446 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

love motive, the quarrel between Heart and Eye as to their relative respon-
sibility for the pains of the lover, survived as a conceit in the Elizabethan
l)aic and furnished the model for several amorous-physiological dialogues in
the miscellanies.^

More widely popular, however, than any of these debate subjects were the
closely related contentions between Life and Death, or Youth and Old Age,
didactic themes, designed to enforce the transitoriness of life and youth, the
terrors of death, and the need of a speedy turning from sin. Poems of this
class exist in Middle English * and are very common on the continent. The
numerous Elizabethan treatments of the subject are generally in ballad form.*
The contrasting points of view of the young man and the old are represented
by Cuddie and Thenot in Spenser's February Eclogue, and the same debate,
with inverted moral, finds a distant echo in the Shakespearian lyric. Crabbed
Age and Youth. Another thoroughly mediaeval debate topic which achieved
popularity in England was the controversy of the sexes, with the related ques-
tion of the good versus the bad qualities in women.^ There was a whole
literature on this subject in France,^ and it is from there that the Elizabethan
tradition was undoubtedly derived.

A large number of the serious and didactic mediaeval disputations are con-
flicts of good and evil principles and as such may be referred to the general
conception of the battle of virtues and vices, which recurs throughout the
mediaeval period in so many forms. The echoes of this mighty contest for
the soul of man had not yet died away in the sixteenth century ^^ and, besides
the moral plays to which I shall refer later, Elizabethan literature showed
not a few examples of formal disputes between abstract virtues and their
opposites. To this class belong the elaborate Debate between Pride and

1 See my article, " The Debate of Heart and Eye," in Modem Language Noies^ XXVI, i6i-
165 (June, 191 1).

* Robert Henryson, Tlie Ressoning betwixt Aige and Youth and 7%e Reasoning betwixt Detk
and Man^ Poems^ edited by Gregory Smith (Scottish Text Society, 1908), III, 113 and 134. The
alliterative Life and Death in the Percy Folio MS., and The Parlement of the Three Ages, edited
by I. Gollancz (Roxburghe Club, 1897) may also be referred to.

* Titles of Life and Death dialogues appear in the Stationers* Register {or 1 560-1 561, 1566,
1 577, and 1 593. A Ballette betwene Death and Youghe, and A Disputation betwene Olde Age and
Youghte are entered in 1563-1564. For reprints see J. P. Collier, Extracts from the Registers of
the Stationers* Company (Shakespeare Society, 1848-1849), I, 83 ; and II, 43. Cf. also A Brief
Dialogue between Sicknesse and J^orldly Desire in A Gallery of Gallant Inventions, 1 578, where the
theme is the same as that of the above-named pieces.

^ For satires and defenses of women, mostly not in debate form, see Warton-Hazlitt, ffis-
tory of English Poetry, 1871, IV, 236; cf. also Turberville*s Epitaphes, etc., 1567, reprinted by
J. P. Collier, p. 130. The Praise and Dispraise of Women, a translation from the French, by
John AUday, was published in 1579 (entered June 17, 1577). An Interlocucyon with an Argu-
ment betwixt Man and Woman the whiche could prove to be more Excellent was printed by
Wynkin de Worde, and A Dyscription betwene Man and Woman is centered for 1567-1568.

* See A. Piaget, Martin Le Franc, 1888, chap, ii, §§ 3 and 5 ; also Steinschneider, Rangstreit-
Literatur, Wiener Sitzungsberichte, PhiL-Hist. Classe, CLV, 37.

HANFORD 447

Lowliness} the verse original of Greene's frequently reprinted prose dialogue,
A Quip for an Upstart Courtier y or a Quaint Dispute between Velvet Breeches
and Cloth Breeches? and Richard Bamfidd's allegory, The Combat between
Conscience and Covetousness in the Mind of Man? not to mention numerous
hmnbler pieces.

In connection with the debates of this type it is necessary to take account
of an influence other than mediaeval which deeply affected the character of
the debate in the Elizabethan period, that, namely, of the revival of learning.
Classical mythology and allegory, as interpreted by the Renaissance, afforded
a considerable amount of new debate material and modified the treatment of
some of the mediaeval themes. Thus it is not always possible to say, in the
case of such disputes as those just mentioned, whether we have a version of
the mediaeval contention of virtues and vices or of the very similar classical
allegory invented by Prodicus, repeated again and again in ancient literature
and even borrowed by the fathers of the church, with whom it became indis-
tinguishable from Christian allegory derived from other sources.* The dialogues
of Lucian, with their constant opposing of personified qualities or of Olympian
divinities attenuated to mere abstractions, doubtless had a considerable share
in giving classical coloring to the Elizabethan debate. Indirectly through
France and Italy their influence was certainly felt, as in Robert Greene's*^
translation of Louise Labi's Dibat de Folic et cTAmory ISSS, a piece which
is clearly in Lucian*s manner. Notwithstanding the permeating influence of
classical imagery, however, the substance of Elizabethan debate literature re-
mained mediaeval. The numerous miscellaneous disputes, mostly of the trifling
and humorous order, while they are often original in flieme, conform in spirit
and manner to the debate tradition.^

In view of the dramatic tendencies inherent in the debate type and the
continued production of this class of literature in England, it is natural that
the form should have left traces in the Elizabethan drama. It did so in two
ways. In some cases debates were put on the stage as mere dialogues, with
very little attempt at dramatic complication ; in others, debate material was

^ Edited by J. P. Collier (Shakespeare Society, 184 1). Collier's ascription of the poem to
Francis Thynne is denied on excellent grounds by Fumivall, Animadversions^ etc. (Chaucer
Society, 1875), P* cxxvii.

^ Entered July 20, 1 592, and published in the same year. A. B. Grosart's edition of Greene's
Works, XI, 205 ff.

• Printed in 1598. Arber, English Scholars* Library, No. 14, 107 ff. ; and A. H. Bullen, Some
Longer Elizabethan Poems, 1903, pp. 254 ff.

* See G. A. Cubaeus, Xenophontis Hercules Prodici et Silii Jtalici Scipio etc., Lipsiae, 1797;
also Otto Hense, Die Synkrisis in der antiken Litteratur, Prorectoratsrede, Freiburg i. Br., 1893.

* Grosart's edition of Greene's Works, IV, 195.

• For example, A Defense of a Bald Head (entered September 22, 1579), in which Baldness
and Hair discuss their respective conveniences. The piece is reprinted by Collier, Extracts^
II, 97.

448 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

adapted tx) more strictly dramatic uses and the element of formal disputation
was partly replaced by that of action. For both these modes of using debate
motives on the stage there was abundant precedent : in the Italian contrasH} in
certain of the German Fastnachtspiele^ and Yrtnch farces y^ and above all in
the earlier English drama.

The morality and the moral interlude are in the majority of cases, as has
frequently been pointed out, essentially conflicts of virtues and vices, and this
conflict, while often implicit, not infrequently crystallizes as a formal contention
between the forces of good and evil or between particular virtues and particular
vices. Such material is fairly common in plays written during the Elizabethan
period, as well in the survivals of the old-style moral interlude* as in the
masques and occasionally in the regular drama.^ The Tudor farce, in so far
as it was mere debate,^ appears to have left a slighter trace on the later drama.
One or two pieces somewhat similar to John Heywood's debate farces exist,^
but there was no continuous tradition of this kind of writing, as there was of
the moral contests. Of course the Tudor pieces helped to keep the debate
alive in England.

It remains to examine the specific Elizabethan plays and entertainments
which were, in one way or another, affected by the debate idea. The follow-
ing list must be taken as representative rather than complete.

A common use of debate material in the Elizabethan drama is in induc-
tions. We have an early and important example of this in the romantic

1 See D'Ancona, Originidel Teatro Italiano^ iSqi, I, 547 ff. Most of the contrasti mentioned
by D'Ancona have the narrative setting; some, however, were designed for representation
in character.

2 Many of Hans Sachs's plays are debates ; for example, his Comedia^ darin die Giittin
Pallas die Tugend und die Gotten Venus die Wollust Verfickt, IVerke, III, 3.

* For example, Tout^ Rien^ et Chacun^ Viollet-le-Duc, Ancien TliiAtre Franfois^ III, 199;
Dialogue du Fou et du Sage,, Petit de JuUeville, Ripertoire du TliiAtre Comique^ 1886, p. 139; Le
Bien e le Mai des Dames ^ ibid., p. 261.

* Thus the extant fragment of Albion Knight^ registered 1 565-1 566, contains a contention
between Injury and Justice ; in The Conflict of Conscience by Nathaniel! Woodes, printed 1581,
Conscience and Suggestion alternately warn and tempt Philologus. The Contention between
Liberality and Prodigality i printed 1602, contains several more or less formal disputations be-
tween Prodigality and Tenacity, and a contrast, though not verbal, between Fortune and Virtue.
Cf. also Thomas Nabbes*s masque, Microcosmusy and Pathomachiay described below. A moral
play apparently based upon Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier was acted by the Lord
Chamberlain's Men {Stationers' Register, May 27, 1600).

* The Bonus and Malus Angelus, which appear in Marlowe's Dr. Faustus and elsewhere, are
probably an inheritance from the morality.

® Three of Heywood's interludes are debates : The Dialogue of Wit and Folly, The Play of
Love, and The Play of the Weather. See K. Young, Modem Philology, II, 97 ff. ; and Lee, French
Renaissance in England, p. 372. Hall's Chronicle, anno 1527, mentions a similar debate enter-
tainment given before the king, in which ** two persones played a dialog theffect whereof was
whether riches were better than love." Cf. A Disputation betwene Love and Monye, Stationers*
Register, 1564.

^ I refer to the Cambridge dialogues discussed below, pp. 453 ff-

HANFORD 449

comedy, The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune} printed in 1589 and
probably identical with A Historie of Love and Fortune performed before the
Queen at Windsor in 1582.^ The scene is the court of Jove. Tisiphone, a
fury sent by Pluto, stirs strife among the gods by complaining that Venus
has usurped the entire sovereignty of the world to the injury of Lady For-
tune's rights. The two goddesses debate their claims. In order to prove
their relative mights by test Jupiter bids them try their powers on a pair of
earthly lovers, Fortune endeavoring to make them wretched, Venus to in-
crease their joy. The debate thus becomes the prologue to the play itself,
which is the story of the lovers. At the close of each act there is a noisy
triumph of the goddess who appears to have been the more successful. In
Act V Jove declares that the mights of both have been abundantly confirmed
and decrees that Love and Fortune hereafter act in harmony. They then
release the lovers from their difficulties and the play ends happily.

In its mythological setting this debate obviously reflects the influence of
the Renaissance, suggesting particularly Louise Labi's dialogue mentioned
above. The core of the dispute, however, is mediaeval. The opposition of Love
to various forms of worldly prosperity is a very old debate theme ; ^ and the
contrast of Love and Riches had already been put on the stage in England.*
Again, contests between Fortune and Virtue or Wisdom over their respective
influence in the world's affairs were familiar in the court entertainments of
Italy .^ The closest parallel, however, to the present debate is a poem of
Turberville's ^ in which Fortune and Venus dispute the question of their
relative shares in the conquest of a rich maiden by a poor fisherman.

The induction machinery of The Rare Triumphs is used again in the
Senecan tragedy of Soliman and Perseda} entered in 1592, commonly
ascribed to Thomas Kyd, where to the figures of Love and Fortune is added

1 Hazlitt's edition of Dodsley's Old English Plays, 1874, Vol. VI.

* A " Play of Fortune " was performed as early as 1 573 [^Extracts from the Accounts of
the Revels (Shakespeare Society, 1842), edited by Cunningham, p. 36].

* The relative worth of love and friendship, fame at arms, honor, etc. are discussed in the
old ¥rexic\i jeux partis. See Fr. Fizet, Das altfranzosische feu-Parti, Romanische Forschungen,
XIX, 437 and 438. Nummus and Amor debate in a Latin Court of Love allegory of the twelfth
century or earlier. Sittungsberichte der Akcuiemie der Wissenschaften zu Miinchen, Phil.-Hist.
Classe, III, 685 and 704.

* Above, p. 448, note 6.

* See D*Ancona, Origini del Teatro, II, 74, 128 note, and 129. Cf. the enormous and
popular Estrif de Fortune et de Vertu of Martin Le Franc, A. Piaget, Martin Le Franc. In this
poem the question proposed by the author in the second prologue' is this : " Is Fortune or
Virtue mistress of all things ? " Fortune does not wait for the decision of Reason, but goes forth
to show her power in church and state. In Lydgate's Mumming of Fortune (reprinted, Brotanek,
Englische Maskenspiele, 309 ff.) Fortune is contrasted with Prudence, Righteousness, and
Fortitude, but there is no explicit debate.

^ A Controversie of a Conquest in Love twixt Fortune and Venus, Epitaphes, etc., 1567,
edited by J. P. Collier, p. no.

^ The Works of Thomas Kyd, edited by F. S. Boas, 1 901.

450 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

that of Death. Here, as in Turberville*s poem, the dispute is regarded as
having taken place after the events to which it refers.^ Consequently the
contending divinities stand apart from the action and play a merely interpre-
tative part. Each of the Powers claims to have been mainly responsible for
what happened and therefore to be entitled to act as chorus. At the close of
each act the contention is renewed ; finally Death triumphs over alL

By wasting all I conquer all the world.
And now, to end our difference at last,
In this last act note but the deedes of Death.

I, now will Death, in his most haughtie pride,
Fetch his imperial Carre from deepest hell,
And ride in triumph through the wicked world.

This mythological contention must certainly have been suggested by that
in The Rare Triumphs? The introduction of Death may be due to the
influence of the typical prologue of the Senecan tragedy, or it may have been
suggested by the lines in the source of Soliman and Perseda :

By Fortune, Envie, and by Death,
This couple caught their bane.'

The goddess Fortune appears again in a somewhat similar capacity in
Dekker's Old Fortunatus,^ published 1600, the whole story being an instance
of her power. The original tale and the earlier version of the drama con-
tained no debate. In revising the play for a court performance,^ however,
Dekker added, rather irrelevantly, the figures of Virtue and Vice, who plant
rival trees, and, when Andelocia eats first of the fruit of one and then of that
of the other, triumph in a manner suggestive of the preceding plays.

Virtue, Vice, who shall now be crowned with victory ?
Vice. She that triumphs last, and that am I.

At the close of the play Fortune and Vice are allied against Virtue, and a
formal dispute takes place. Virtue turns to the Queen for judgment, and the
other two submit of their own accord.

^ This is the situation also in a subordinate incident in the prologue to TTie Rare THumphs^
where Mercury summons up the shades of Hero and Leander, and the divinities quarrel over
their relative influence in the history of the lovers.

2 For another example of the Fortune machinery, clearly to be associated with these pro-
logues, see DT2iytori's Legend of Robert Duke 0/ Normandy, yth^Tt Fortune and Fame alternately
exhibit their relative powers as illustrated in Robert's life. Fame is proved victor and Fortune
goes away in rage.

* Sarrazin, TTiomas Kyd und sein Kreis, 1892, p. 41.

* Dramatic Works, London, 1873, V^^* !•

* See C. H. Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany in the Six^
teenth Century , 1886, pp. 203 ff.

HANFORD 45 1

Less explicitly debates are the inductions to Mucedorus} printed in 1 598,
and A Warning for Fatre Women? 1599- In the former the allegorical figure
of Comedy announces his intention to make the audience laugh, while Envy,
who really stands for Tragedy, threatens to turn mirth to dole. Comedy bids
him do his worst, and at the close of the play Comedy exults in his victory.
The dispute of History, Comedy, and Tragedy, which opens A Warning,
was possibly suggested by the induction to Mucedorus, After a quarrel with
the others over their respective rights and merits, Tragedy drives her oppo-
nents off the stage and reappears throughout the play as chorus. Both of
these inductions clearly belong to the same type as The Rare Triumphs and
Solimany in which the contention determines the character of the ensuing
play.* The change from goddesses to figures representing the forms of drama
was a natural one. It was already suggested in Soliman, where Death says :

Packe, Love and Fortune, play in Commedies ;
For powerfull Death best fitteth Tragedies.

A final instance of the contention prologue is to be found in Thomas
He)nvood's masque, Love's Mistress, printed in 1636.* In this case the per-
sons bear individual names, but we are expressly told that they stand for the
abstract and opposite qualities of taste and ignorance. The play — the story
of Cupid and Psyche — is presented by Apuleius as a proof of the power of
poetry. Cupid finally arbitrates the strife, deciding that Midas shall wear the
asses* ears and Apuleius the laurel.

Those dramatic performances in which debate elements constitute the
main theme belong in general rather to the masque and pageant type than
to the regular drama. Public pageants, like the Lord Mayor's shows, in
spite of their prevailingly moral and allegorical character, rarely contain de-
bates.^ In the allegorical entertainments presented to the Queen at private
houses, where the dialogue could be heard and appreciated, formal disputa-
tions appear to have been more frequent. Such a one is the purely verbal
contention between a wife, a widow, and a maid, presented before the Queen
at the house of Sir Robert Cecil in the Strand, December 6, 1602, and later
printed with the initials I. D. {i,e. Sir John Davies) in the 1608 edition
of Davison's Poetical Rhapsody,^ The piece is a courtly adaptation of a

1 Reprinted, The Tudor Facsimile Texts, edited by J. S. Farmer, 1910.

2 Reprinted, Richard Simpson, The School 0/ Shakspere, 1878, Vol. II.

> Somewhat similar material is found in the inductions to various Latin university dramas.
See the accounts of Roxana and Fatum Vortigemi by Churchill and Keller, Shakespeare Jahr-
buchy XXXIV, 253 and 260, and of ^wrvwovofiAx^ by Louise Morgan, ibid., XLVII, 75.

* Dramatic Works^ London, 1874, Vol. V.

* In MiddIeton*s Triumph of Truths a Lord Mayor's pageant presented in 161 3, Truth,
with her champion Zeal, are opposed by Error and Envy. The two groups contend in word
and act ; finally Error*s chariot is consumed with fire shot forth by Zeal.

^ For authorship see A. B. Grosart, The Complete Poems of Sir John Davies, I, 272 ff. The
poem was ascribed to Davies by John Chamberlain, writing in 1602.

452 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

theme met with elsewhere in Elizabethan literature.^ The wife and the widow,
on their way to Astraea*s Holy Day, fall in with a maid, bound to the same
festival, and the three quarrel over the question of precedence. Then comes
the usual formal offer to contend :

But, wife and widow, if your wits can make
Your state and persons of more worth than mine,
Advantage to this place I will not take ;
I will both place and privilege resign.

The argument which follows is lyrical and figurative, with much of the wire-
drawn cleverness so characteristic of the mediaeval disputation. The maid has
the last word on most of the points at issue and the others finally acknowledge
her superiority, with obvious reference to the Queen. A similar prose dialogue
between Constancy and Inconstancy was given before her majesty at Sir
Henry Leigh's house, and later printed in the Phcenix' Nest? The piece is
somewhat unintelligible apart from the connection in which it must originally
have stood. Constancy thanks the Queen for releasing " us lately distressed
ladies," and prays that they may all be punished with more than inconstancy
if they fail to love constantly. Her rival also expresses gratitude, but '' rather
for my libertie . . . than for any mind I have to be more constant than I
was." At this she is duly challenged and the debate proceeds. When the
disputants find that neither can convince the other, they both come forward
to the Queen bearing gifts. Then Inconstancy suddenly feels a power within
her greater than reason which draweth her from the circle of her fancy to the
center of constant love. The dialogue is composed in the elaborately artificial
style of Sidney's Arcadia,

The question between the married and the single life is again at issue in
Ben Jonson's masque, The Barriers^ performed at the marriage of Robert
Devereux, third Earl of Essex, in 1606. Truth and her double. Opinion, in
order to determine which is genuine, debate in a manner suggestive of
CatuUus's hymenaeal ode (62), on the proposition.

That the most honored state of man and wife
Doth far exceed the insodate virgin life.

At length they have recourse to arms, and two companies of knights appear
as champions. While the latter are fighting, an angel invests Truth with her
full glory ; the counterfeit Opinion is banished ; and the piece ends with an
emphatic pronouncement in favor of marriage.

^ Cf. Rowland's ' Tis Merry when Gossips meete^ a dialogue but not a contention between
a wife, a widow, and a maid, printed in 1602, Complete Works of Samuel Rowlands (Hunterian
Club), Vol. I; also "a compendious abstracte, contayninge a moste delectable conference
betwene the wedded lyf and the syngle," by Harry Hake, Stationers* Register^ ^556» and the
ballads entered September 4, 1564. 2 Edited by J. P. Collier, p. 27.

* Masques and Entertainments by Ben Jonson^ edited by Henry Morley, 1890, pp. 80 ff.

HANFORD 453

A much more elaborate debate allegory than any thus far mejitioned is
Nashe*s masque-like comedy, Summers Last Will and Testament, privately
acted at Croydon as early as the summer of 1592.^ Formally this piece, as
its title indicates, is not a debate but a literary testament. The subject matter,
however, is that of a very ancient class of debates, and the play contains clear
traces of the debate idea. Like the German folk drama of winter and sum-
mer, and the Italian contrasti between Lent and Camival,^ the play is sym-
bolic of the changing year. Summer, sick unto death, makes disposition of
his worldly goods to Autumn, Winter, and Spring. These three bicker jeal-
ously, and at length Winter and Autumn contend in the manner of the liter-
ary debate as to which is best fitted to inherit the goods of Spring. A further
contrast comes when Backwinter, a miserly churl, is introduced in opposition
to old Christmas, with his spirit of liberality.

The question of origins in the case of Nashe's play is an interesting and
perplexing one, which I cannot consider here.* The contest of the seasons is
widely diffused in both literary and popular sources.^ Dramatic treatments
of the material were familiar in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere. In England
we have the numerous" holly and ivy debates, as evidence of the existence of
a popular symbolic rite somehow connected with the German folk-drama, and,
what is of particular interest in connection with Nashe*s play, the appearance
of Ver and Hiems at the close of Love's Labour s Lost, A non-dramatic
version of the debate had been translated into English from French in the
early years of the sixteenth century.^

The influence of Nashe's play may probably be traced in several later
masques, in which figures representing the seasons, festivals, etc., appear.
This is almost certainly the case with Thomas Middleton's Inner Temple
Masque^ (performed New Year's Day, 16 18-16 19), where the central theme
is the death of the old year and the disposition of the times and seasons of
the new, and in which a " last will and testament " of Christmas is read. There
is no trace of debate here except a quarrel between Plum Porridge and Fast-
ing Day, slightly suggestive of the opposition of Christmas and Backwinter.

The practice of using debate materials and motives in the drama appears
to have taken deepest root in the universities. The predominating intellectual

1 R. B. McKerrow, Works of Thomas Nashe, III, 227 ff.

2 D*Ancona, Origini, I, 538 ff.

« The classic treatment of the subject is Uhland's admirable Sommer und Winter, Schriften
tur GeschichU der Dichtung und Sa^e, 1866, III, 17 ff. L. Biadene has published a most im-
pressive bibliography of the contrasts of seasons and months in all languages : " Carmina de
Mensibus di Bonvesin da la Riva, Appendice Bibliografica, Le Rappresentazioni e i Contrasti
delle Stagioni e dei Mesi nella Letteratura Europea," Studi di Filologia Romanzay IX, 81 ff.

* The Debate and Stryfe between Somer and Wynter^ with the Estate Present of Man, printed
by Lawrence Andrew ; reprinted, Edmund Ashbee, Occasional Facsimile Reprints^ 1868-1872.
The French poem may be found in Pohies des xv* et xvi' siicles^ Paris, 1830.

» Works, edited by A. H. BuUen, 1886, VII, 195 ff.

454 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

and scholastic character of the form and the facility with which it could be
made the vehicle of college lore must have appealed strongly to the academic
wits. So the " Grammar War," an allegorical contention between Noun and
Verb, with the parts of speech as retainers on either side, adapted from
Andrea Guarna's amazing application of the rules and problems of grammar,
was long popular on the academic stage. A lost dramatic version had been
written by Ralph Radcliffe, schoolmaster at Hitchin from 1546 to 1559, and
a Latin play was performed in Oxford before 1591, revised for the visit of
Elizabeth in 1592, and printed in 1635.^ In a similar spirit the " Marriage
of the Arts," a sort of inverted debate, familiar from the mediaeval times,
was treated in English in Barten Holiday's Technogamiay acted by the stu-
dents of Christ Church on February 13, 1682.^

A debate play of considerably greater interest is Lingua^ or the Combat of
the Tongue and the Five Senses for Superiority, published in 1607 and many
times reprinted.* The subject matter, involving, as it does, a detailed knowl-
edge of the psychology of the time, no less than the numerous academic refer-
ences contained in it, proves the play beyond question to have been designed
for a university audience. The scene is ** microcosmus," the kingdom of
man's mind and body. Lingua, who represents the faculty of speech and is
the unruly member of this community, plots with her servant, Mendacio, to
stir up a dissension among the five senses, through which she may prosecute
her own claim to be enrolled among their number. To this end she allows
them to find a robe and a crown inscribed like Paris's apple of discord. The
senses at once fall to quarrelling and prepare to do battle, Visus and Auditus
on the one side, Tactus and Gustus on the other, with Olfactus (like Parti-
cipium in the Bellum Grammaticale) standing ready to join the victor. Com-
munis Sensus, however, interferes, and acts as arbiter of their dispute. Each
sense appears before him with a pageant illustrating the joys which it can give.
The judge decides in favor of Visus but consoles the others by awarding
them various privileges. Lingua is adjudged to be ** no sense simply," but

^ Other versions were composed during the eighteenth century. See Johannes Bolte,
Andrea Guamas Bellum Grammaticale und seine Nachahmungen^ Monumenta Germaniae Paeda-
gogica^ XLIII (1908), where the Elizabethan play is reprinted.

^ Second edition, London, 1830.

• I{azlitt*s Dodsley^ 1874, Vol. IX. The author of this play is unknown, and Fleay*s identi-
fication of him with John Tomkins of Cambridge, author of Aldumazar^ although it has been
tentatively accepted by A. W. Ward, rests on insufficient evidence. I am imable to find
the basis for Fleay's statement that Dr. Fumivall in April, 1890, found definite evidence
of Tomkins's authorship. See Fleay, Chronicle of the English Drama^ 1891, II, 261 ; and
Shakespeariana^ March, 1885. The date of the play is equally uncertain. The assumption
that Elizabeth is alluded to in the expression " our gracious sovereign Psyche " ignores the
obvious fact that this phrase is quite appropriate in the literal application of the words to
the soul, the queen of the little world of man. Moreover Fleay's remark that a play the very
upshot of which was a satire on woman would have been distasteful to Elizabeth seems to me
absolutely sound.

HANFORD 455

exception is made in the case of women, who shall hereafter be said to enjoy
a sixth sense, that of speech.

Mr. Fleay, in his discussion of this clever and well-written production,
remarks that it was ** clearly founded on an Italian model," but fails to give
any definite indication of such an original. A very probable ulterior source,
which seems to have escaped the notice of those who have discussed the
English play, is to be found in Giorgio Alione's Cotnedia de LOmo e de' sot
Cinque Sentimenti, written in the dialect of Asti and first printed in 1521.^
The plot, which is extremely coarse, is much less elaborate, but the central
idea is the same. There is even a kind of dispute of the senses among
themselves, which corresponds to the combat for superiority in Lingua?
Alione's play is modelled on a French farce,^ still simpler in structure,^ which
is itself a variant of the old fable of the belly and the members.

A similar but more thoroughgoing account of the psychological and moral
make-up of man is given in the prose drama, Pathomachia^ or the Battle
of the Affections shadowed by a feigned Siege of the City of Pathopolis,
printed in 1630.^ The plot is in part made up of the old contest of virtues
and vices, the Psychotnachiay which appears to have suggested its title ; in
part, of a civil war of the affections closely paralleling that of the senses in
Lingua. There are also allusions to the earlier play.^

The last three debate plays which I have to discuss are little more than
prose dialogues with a semblance of action. Two of them, published sepa-
rately in 161 5, A Merrie Dialogue betwene Bandy Cuffe^ and Rtiffe^ and
Workefor Cutlers ^ or a Merry Dialogue betweene Sword ^ Rapier y and Dagger^
are evidently companion pieces. Both are stated on dieir title pages to have
been *' acted in a shew at the famous University of Cambridge." In the first,
Band and Ruffe quarrel and are on the point of fighting when Cuflfe arbi-
trates their contention, apportioning to each its fitting honors ; in the other,
Sword and Rapier are the contestants and Dagger the moderator. The two

1 Commedia e Fane Camovalesche^ etc. da Giorgio Alione, Biblioteca Raroy Milano, 1865. A new
edition of Alione's works was published in 1601.

' In Alione's play the part of Lingua is taken by // Cul^ whose aspirations to rise to the
position of a sixth sense are here crowned with complete success. VOmo corresponds to Mi-
crocosmus in the English play and Judex to Communis Sensus. The senses are the Eyes, the
Nose, the Hands, the Mouth, and the Feet 1 The numerous other characters in Lingua are absent

• Les Cinq Sens de VHommey Viollet-le-Duc, Ancien Tlii&tre Francois, III, 303 flf.

^ Th^ Judex does not appear in the French version. This fact makes it clear that the Italian
play is the more probable source for Lingua.

^ Reprinted, Edinburgh, 1887, {Collectanea Adamantaea, XXII). The piece is clearly a uni-
versity drama. ** This is as fresh a question indeed, as if one should aske how many Colleges,
or Halles there be in the University."

• " Methinkes it were fit now to renew the claime to our old title of Affections which we have
lost, as sometimes Lingua did to the title of a Sence, for it is good fishing in troubled waters."
Cf. also Act III, scene v.

^ Reprinted, Charles Hindley, The Old Book Collector's Miscellany, 1871-1873, Vol. II.

456 THE ELIZABETHAN DEBATE

pieces are identical in style and plan, the parallelism extending even to
minutiae. The dialogue of Band, Cuffe, and Ruffe was perhaps an adapta-
tion of material already treated in non-dramatic form, for we have an entry in
the Stationers Register for 1 560- 1 561 of ** a ballett called of Ruffe, Sleeves
and Hose." ^

The third piece, entitled in the edition of 1630 Wine^ Beere, Ale^ and
Tobacco^ contending for Superiority? is somewhat more elaborate ; the
dramatis personae includes not only the characters in the title but also Sugar,
Nutmeg, and Tost, servants of the three liquors, and Water, a Parson !
There is the usual squabble over honors among the alcoholic beverages and
their servants until they are reconciled by Water. Then the peace is again
disturbed by the entrance of Tobacco. This new and alien stimulant disgusts
them all by his odor, his swaggering manners, and the tedious affectation of
his speech. They try to ridicule him but are at length convinced that they had
best admit him to their fellowship, lest in his great popularity, which is begin-
ning to spread even to the ladies, he induce all men to forsake them. An
antic dance, " in which Wine falling downe, one takith Sugar by the heeles
and seemith to shake him upon Wine," etc., concludes this ludicrous
performance.

The dispute between various drinks, which is the theme of this dialogue, is
an almost universal debate motive. Generally the contestants are Wine and
Water, but Wine and Beer, Wine and Chocolate, and Wine and Milk dis-
putes are also to be found.^ Such dialogues may have existed in England,
but, so far as I know, no such piece has survived.^

In spirit and style the present dialogue is markedly similar to the two
Cambridge debates discussed above. All three are in prose ; all abound in
contemporary allusion ; and the dialogue in each is a continuous crackle of
word play. The many scraps of Latin quotation in Wine, Beer, etc., and
other bits of humorous pedantry, like the derivation of Ale from alo, are in-
dicative of academic origin. Presumably the three dialogues are the work of
the same excellent Cambridge wit. At any rate they give us a most interest-
ing glimpse of the less formal type of university entertainment, with which the
dons and their charges sometimes relieved the gravity of their scholarly pursuits.

1 A second entry of "a Ballad of Ruffes and Long Sleeves," in 1 563-1 564, probably refers
to the same debate.

* Reprinted, J. O. Halliwell, The Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,
185 1 ; the title of the first edition reads as follows : Wine^ Beere, and Ale, together by the eares,
a dialogue written first in Dutch by Gallobelgicus, and faithfully translated out of the original
Copie, by Mercurius Brittanicus.for the benefite of his Nation, 1629. In this original form of the
dialogue the character of Tobacco does not appear. The Dutch original is surely a college joke.

« I have dealt with this subject in a forthcoming article on The DebaU of Wine and Water.

* A suggestion for the debate may have come from Lingua, where Bacchus and Small Beer
appear in the pageant of Gustus (Act IV, scene v), and Tobacco, as Olfactus's prize wit-
ness, extols his own merits in a jargon supposed to be Indian (Act IV, scene iv).

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Full text of "Anniversary papers by colleagues and pupils of George Lyman Kittredge presented on the completion of his twenty-fifth year of teaching in Harvard university, June 1913"

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