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MODERN PHILOLOGY
THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
B0ent0
THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KTOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI
THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI
n
MODERN PHILOLOGY
EDITED BY
JOHN M. MANLY, Managing Editor
WILLIAM A. NITZE STARR W. CUTTING CHARLES R. BASKERVILL
KARL PIETSCH FRANCIS A. WOOD JEFFERSON B. FLETCHER
T. ATKINSON JENKINS ERNEST H. WILKINS
ADVISORY BOARD
JAMES W. BRIGHT FRANCIS B. GUMMERE
GEORGE HEMPL GEORGE L. KITTREDGE
CALVIN THOMAS FREDERICK M. WARREN
FREDERIC I. CARPENTER
VOLUME FIFTEEN
1917-1918
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
P6
i
M7
Published
May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, 1917
January, February, March, April, 1918
Composed and Printed By
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
CONTENTS
HARRY MORGAN AYRES. Theodulus in Scots ...... 539
GEORGE M. BAKER. The Healing of Orestes . . . . . . 349
FERNAND BALDENSPERGER. Une Prediction Inedite sur 1'avenir de la
langue des Etats-Unis (Roland de la Platiere, 1789) .... 475
ALBERT C. BAUGH. The Mak Story . 729
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD. Physigunkus 577
RAY P. BOWEN. The Peasant Language in Ferdinand Fabre's Le
Chewier 675
WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS. Source-Material for Jonson's Underwoods
and Miscellaneous Poems . . . 277
ALBERT J. CARNOY. The Reduplication of Consonants in Vulgar
Latin 159
ANNA ADELE CHENOT. Le Ge"ne"ral Hugo et 1'Arc de Triomphe de
1'Etoile a Paris ... 143
EUGENE F. CLARK. The Influence of Hans Folz on Hans Sachs . 339
HERMANN COLLITZ. Der Ablaut von Got. Speiwan ' . . . . 103
ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK. The First Two Readers of Petrarch's
Tale of Griselda 633
tf T. F. CRANE. The External History of the Kinder- und Hausmarchen
of the Brothers Grimm. II and III 65 and 355
HENRI DAVID. Les Poesies Chinoises de Bouilhet .... 663
E. BEATRICE DAW. Two Notes on The Trial of Treasure ... 53
S. 0. DICKERMAN. Du Bartas and St. Ambrose 419
ERNST FEISE. Lessings Emilia Galotti und Goethes Werther . .321
GRACE FRANK. Revisions in the English Mystery Plays . . . 565
HENRY DAVID GRAY. Antony's Amazing " I Will to Egypt " . . 43
JAMES HOLLY HANFORD. Dame Nature and Lady Life . . .313
HENRY BARRETT HINCKLEY. Corrigenda 56
JAMES HINTON. Walter Map and Ser Giovanni 203
HELEN SARD HUGHES. Translations of the Vie de Marianne and Their
Relation to Contemporary English Fiction 491
C. H. IBERSHOFF. Dryden's Tempest as a Source of Bodmer's Noah . 247
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON. The Rhythmic Form of the German Folk-
Songs. IV 79
THOMAS A. KNOTT. Observations on the Authorship of "Piers the
Plowman" — Concluded 23
H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER. The Ultimate Source of*Rotrou's
Venceslas and of Rojas Zorrilla's No hay ser padre siendo rey . . 435
ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS. Verses on the Nine Worthies . . . 211
JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES. The Franklin's Tale, the Teseide, and the
Filocolo 689
. The Second Nun's Prologue, Alanus, and Macrobius . . 193
vi CONTENTS
OLIN H. MOORE. Literary Relationships of Guy de Maupassant . 645
WILLIAM A. NITZE. Corneille's Conception of Character and the
Cortegiano. I and II 129 and 385
ELEANOR J. PELLET. "Certe Tavolette" 673
ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD. Auerbach and Nietzsche . . . 603
E. PROKOSCH. Die Indogermanische Media Aspirata. I . . .621
HYDER E. ROLLINS. New Facts about George Turbervile . . . 513
ROBERT KILBURN ROOT. Chaucer's Dares 1
MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN. Der Teufel bei Hebbel 109
COLBERT SEARLES. The Consultation Scene of L' Amour Medecin . 401
M. ELLWOOD SMITH. A Classification for Fables, Based on the Collec-
tion of Marie de France ;'•-,':• 477
ARCHER TAYLOR. Dane Hew, Munk of Leicestre 221
WILLIAM FLINT THRALL. Vergil's Aeneid and the Irish Imrama:
Zimmer's Theory .... 449
FREDERICK M. TISDEL. Rossetti's House of Life 257
ALBERT H. TOLMAN. The Relation of Spenser and Harvey to Puritan-
ism 549
EDWIN H. TUTTLE. Notes on Romanic e and i 181
ERNEST H. WILKINS. Lorenzo de' Medici and Boethius . . . 255
REVIEWS AND NOTICES:
Alden: The Sonnets of Shakespeare (Baskervill) .... 573
Benham: English Literature from Widsith to the Death of
Chaucer (Hulbert) 575
Carnahan, ed. : The Ad Deum vadit of Jean Gerson (Babcock) . 684
Dawkins: Modern Greek in Asia Minor (Taylor) .... 735
Ferguson: American Literature in Spain (Northup) . . . 687
Fowler: Cornell University Library. Catalogue of the Petrarch
Collection Bequeathed by Willard Fiske (Me Kenzie) . . 683
Girard : Du Transcendantalisme conside*re* essentiellement dans sa
definition et ses origines franchises (Sherburn) . . . 317
Good: Studies in the Milton Tradition (Stevens) .... 60
Hale, ed. : Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England
(Stevens) . 60
Hall : A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary (Knott) . . . . 64 1
Logeman: Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the
Norwegian Text of Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Its Language,
Literary Associations, and Folklore (Andrews) .... 629
Masson: La Religion de J. J. Rousseau (Babbitt) .... 441
Matthews and Thorndike, eds. : Shaksperian Studies (Baskervill) . 573
Meillet: Caract&res ge"neraux des langues germaniques (Prokosch) 123
Patterson: The Rhythm of Prose: An Experimental Investigation
of Individual Difference in the Sense of Rhythm (Green) . 57
Ram6n Mene*ndez Pidal and Maria Goyri de Mene*ndez Pidal, eds. :
Teatro Antiguo Espanol. Textos y Estudios I. Luis Velez de
Guevara, La Serrana de la Vera (Northup) .... 447
Pollard: A New Shakespeare Quarto. The Tragedy of King
Richard II (Baskervill) 573
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV May IQIJ NUMBER I
CHAUCER'S DARES
I. FKIGII DABETIS YLIAS
When in the House of Fame Chaucer turns his eyes from the
"feminyne creature" who capriciously awards to men their meed of
praise or blame, he sees on either side of her dais a series of metal
pillars on which stand the great writers of the past who, by their
writings, have helped to perpetuate fame. First among pagan
writers stands the "Tholosan that highte Stace,"
And by him stood, withouten lees,
Ful wonder hye on a pileer
Of yren, he, the gret Omeer;
And with him Dares and Tytus [i.e., Dictys]
Before, and eek he, Lollius,
And Guido eek de Columpnis,
And English Gaufride eek, ywis;
And ech of these, as have I joye,
Was besy for to here up Troye.
[Fame, 1464-72.]
Of these "bearers-up of Troy" it is the second in the list, Dares, who
concerns us at present. Dares, mentioned by Homer (Iliad v. 9) as
a priest of Hephaestus, is the reputed author of an "eyewitness"
history of the Trojan War written in Greek. An utterry uninspired
work which bears the title Daretis Phrygii de Excidio Troiae Historia
purports to be a Latin translation of this Greek work made by Cor-
nelius Nepos.1 To this twice-spurious history Chaucer is apparently
i The most available text is the Teubner edition, edited by F. Meister, Leipzig, 1873.
1] 1 [MODEBN PHILOLOGY, May, 1917
2 ROBERT KILBUBN ROOT
alluding in the lines just quoted; but nothing in the House of Fame
indicates that Chaucer's knowledge of the work was any more inti-
mate than was his knowledge of Homer.1
In the Book of the Duchess there is another mention of Dares:
And therfor was he [Achilles] slayn also
In a temple, for bothe two
Were slayn, he and Antilegius,
And so seyth Dares Frigius,
For love of Polixena.
[1067-71.]
The death of Achilles and Antilochus is, indeed, narrated in chap.
34 of Dares; but the episode is given at much greater length by
Benoit (21838-22334), 2 and by Guido (sig. I 3, verso, col. 2);3 hence
we can have no assurance that Chaucer actually read it in Dares.
Near the beginning of Troilus (1, 146), Dares is mentioned with
Homer and Dictys as a writer of "Troyane gestes," where the curious
may read "how this toun com to destruccioun"; but in this vague
reference Chaucer may merely be echoing the frequent citation of
these names by Benoit and Guido.4
Finally, at the very end of Troilus, we find the following stanza:
And if I hadde ytaken for to wryte
The armes of this ilke worthy man,
Than wolde I of his batailles endyte.
But for that I to wryte first bigan
Of his love, I have seyd as that I can.
His worthy dedes, whoso list hem here,
Reed Dares, he can telle hem alle yfere.
[V, 1765-71.]
Of this passage Professor Lounsbury says:
In the brief and meager narrative of that writer [Dares] the inquirer
would find little to reward his search. He would learn, indeed, that Troilus
was a great leader; that on several occasions he put the Greeks to flight,
i Ll. 1475-80 of the House of Fame are to be explained as an echo of Benoit, 45-70,
110-16, rather than of the preface of Dares, which says nothing of Homer's partiality
for the Greek side.
» For Benoit I have used the edition of L. Constans, Paris, 1904-9.
« For Guido I have used the Strasbourg edition of 1489.
* See Karl Young, Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus and Criseyde,
Chaucer Society, 1908, pp. 129, 130. To the third chapter of Professor Young's book I
am indebted for several of the references cited in this article.
CHAUCER'S DARES 3
drove back the myrmidons, wounded Diomede, Agamemnon, and even
Achilles, and was at last only slain when taken at great disadvantage. But
these details occupy hardly any more space in the history of Dares than they
do in the account just given. It was in Guido da Colonna's work that
Chaucer found the martial deeds of Troilus recounted in full While
he was speaking of Dares, he was thinking of the Trojan History ' of the
Sicilian physician which professes to have been itself derived from the work
of the Phrygian soldier.1
More recent opinion would substitute the name of Benoit for that
of Guido, but would otherwise agree with Professor Lounsbury.
Professor Karl Young states the generally accepted opinion when he
says: "There is no proof that Chaucer reverted for materials to the
De Excidio Trojae Historia of Dares Phrygius."2
But the brief and meager narrative of the De Excidio was not
the only work accessible to the mediaeval reader which went under
the name of Dares Phrygius. During the ninth decade of the twelfth
century an Englishman, known from his birthplace as Joseph of
Exeter, in Latin, Josephus Iscanus or Josephus Exoniensis, produced
a paraphrase, or better an elaboration, of the prose Dares in Latin
hexameters of no slight degree of merit, to which modern editors have
given the title De Bello Trojano. The poem, which is neither brief
nor meager, is in six books, and reaches the not inconsiderable total
of 3,645 lines.3
Of Joseph's poem three manuscripts are known to exist : (1) West-
minster Abbey, Chapter Library, No. 18; (2) Bodleian, Digby 157;
(3) Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, 15015.4 Of these manuscripts I
1 Studies in Chaucer, II, 315. Professor Lounsbury holds, however, that the refer-
ence in Legend of Good Women, 1457, to the " Argonauticon " Is due to chap, i of Dares.
This seems more than doubtful. On the whole matter of Chaucer and Dares see Bech,
Anglia, V, 325. 326.
* Op. cit., p. 106, n. 2.
3 The most available modern edition of the poem is in Valpy's reissue of the Delphin
Classics, Scriptores Latini in Usum Delphini, London, 1825, where it is included in one
volume with Dictys Cretensis and Dares Phrygius, or the original Delphin edition of 1702
(Amsterdam). The first book, edited from the Paris MS, is printed by J. J. Jusserand
In his thesis De Josepho Exoniensi vel Iscano, Paris, 1877. For a list of earlier editions
see Diet. Nat. Biog., s.v. "Joseph of Exeter." In the editio princeps of 1558 (Basle) it
bears the title "Daretis Phrygii . . . . de Bello Trojano .... libri sex a Cornelio
Nepote in Latinum conversi." It continued to pass under the name of Cornelius Nepos
until 1620, when Samuel Dresemius restored it to its rightful author. None of the edi-
tions, except Jusserand's, is at all satisfactory.
4 According to Jusserand, op. cit., p. 91, the Paris MS is defective: "Deficiunt
carminis sextus liber majorque pars quinti libri." In modern accounts of Joseph, includ-
ing that of Jusserand, there is said to be a fourth manuscript of the work hi the library
3
4 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
have personally examined the first two. They are beautifully
written in thirteenth-century hands. Neither has a title; but the
colophon of the Westminster MS reads "Frigii daretis yliados liber
sextws explicit," and that of the Bodleian MS, "Explicit liber Frigii
Daretis." I was prevented by the outbreak of the European war
from examining, as I had intended to do, the manuscript at Paris.
According to M. Jusserand, it also is in a thirteenth-century hand,1
and bears the title "Frigii daretis yliados liber primus incipit."2
It is to be particularly noted that in none of the three extant
known manuscripts, all of which antedate Chaucer's lifetime, is there
anything to denote the authorship of Joseph of Exeter. Had any
one of these three manuscripts fallen into Chaucer's hands, he would
have been fully justified in referring to it as "Dares Frigius." A
careful reading, to be sure, would have shown him that in the
opening lines of the poem the author addresses an archbishop of
Canterbury, third in succession from St. Thomas, who is no other
than Archbishop Baldwin, a fellow-townsman of Joseph, who was
archbishop from 1185 till his death in 1190.3 At the end of Book III
he might have read:
Sic Britonum ridenda fides, et credulus error
Arturum expectat, expectabitque perenne.
of Magdalen College, Oxford. This is an error. MS 50 of the Magdalen College Library,
specifically cited in DNB, contains a copy of the prose Dares. In regard to this non-
existent Magdalen MS, Mr. H. A. Wilson, librarian of Magdalen College, very kindly
wrote me, under date of October 17, 1914, as follows: "The evidence that we had such
a MS is, I think, entirely dependent on Leland, who says that he saw in our library
'libellum carmine scriptum, cum hoc titulo, Dares Phrygius de Bello Trojano.' He
describes the MS as ' imperfectum, et tantum non obliteratum.' It was therefore prob-
ably a fragment only, and in such condition as might well have led to its being thrown
aside when our MSS were being put in order at a later time. He goes on to say that he
afterwards found elsewhere some other MSS of the same work, and was able to identify
it as the poem, based on Dares Phrygius, of Joseph of Exeter. What he says about the
work is printed in extenso by Tanner, who seems to add nothing of his own.
"Bale's Index Britanniae Scriptorum, edited by Dr. R. L. Poole, contains the state-
ment that 'Josephus Deuonius' (i.e., Joseph of Exeter) 'carmina scripsit in Daretem
Phrygium de bello Trojano' (p. 277). Bale gives as the sources of his knowledge 'Ex
Collegio Magdalenae' and 'ex Offlcina Toye.' Dr. Poole, in his note, gives a reference
to our MS 50, and to Coxe's Catalogue. But the work contained in MS 50 (bound up
with Solinus) is not in verse; nor does its title contain the name of Dares Phrygius; it
is also in good condition; and it is quite clear that it cannot be the MS which Leland
saw. It is the Latin prose version or abridgement of Dares Phrygius I am afraid
that there is no doubt that the fragment seen by Leland has disappeared."
i Op. cit., p. 91. a Op. cit., p. 101. 3 See DNB, s.v. "Baldwin."
4
CHAUCER'S DARES 5
At the end of Book V is a passage, omitted in the printed editions,
which refers to "Tertius Henricus noster,"1 whom M. Jusserand
clearly identifies as the eldest son of Henry II, crowned in advance
at his father's wish in 1170, who died in 1183, while Henry II was still
alive. A careful reader, then, might have inferred that the bulk
of the poem was composed between 1170 and 1183, but that its
opening address to Archbishop Baldwin was written after 1185.2
But even this careful reader, which Chaucer very likely was not,
would, in default of any other title, refer to the work as "Dares
Frigius."
Joseph's poem is, indeed, a poetical elaboration of the prose
Dares, the general scheme of which it follows. Book I tells of Jason
and the Golden Fleece, and of the first destruction of Troy under
King Laomedon. Book II narrates Priam's attempt to recover the
captive Hesione, and, in great detail, the judgment of Paris. Book
III contains the rape of Helen. Book IV draws the portraits of
individual Trojans and Greeks, and recounts the hostile preparations
of the latter. Book V contains the battles before Troy up to the
death of Hector. Book VI contains the later battles, the deaths
of Troilus and Achilles, the destruction of the city, and the return
of the Greeks. As in the prose Dares, Troilus is, next to Hector,
the leading figure among the Trojan warriors; but there is no sug-
gestion of his love for Briseis. Of Briseis we are given a portrait
in seven lines (IV, 156-62); but she is not elsewhere mentioned.
What sources, other than the prose Dares, Joseph used, has not been
satisfactorily determined. There is no reason to think that he used
Benoit de Ste. Maure.3 His style, which, despite a much too ingeni-
ous rhetoric, is not without elements of true poetry, is modeled on
Statius and Claudian, with not infrequent echoes of Virgil and Ovid.
That Chaucer knew and used this "Frigii Daretis Ylias," a fact
not hitherto suspected, I shall show in the following pages. As
Professor Karl Young has said, there is no proof that Chaucer ever
drew upon the prose Dares. In view of these facts, it*seems a not
1 Quoted by M. Jusserand, p. 96.
2 On Joseph of Exeter and his works, and for the grounds on which the poem on the
Trojan War is attributed to him, see the work of Jusserand already cited, and A. Sar-
radin, De Josepho Iscano, Versailles, 1878, the latter of no great value.
3 According to Constans, op. cit., VI, 190, the Roman de Troie was composed between
the years 1155 and 1160.
6 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
unreasonable inference that, when Chaucer bids the reader turn to
" Dares " for an account of Troilus' "worthy dedes,"1 the book he
has in mind is the Iliad of Josephus Iscanus. There, indeed, "the
armes of this ilke worthy man" are told "alle yfere" with much
heroic rhetoric.2 There is at least implied in Chaucer's stanza the
idea that "Dares" confines himself to the battles of Troilus to the
neglect of his love. This is true of Joseph's poem; Benoit and
Guido give us both.
If Chaucer already knew Joseph of Exeter's poem at the time
when he wrote the Book of the Duchess, he could have found there, in
lines 402-61 of Book VI, an account of the death of Achilles and of
Antilochus. The reference in the House of Fame and that in Book I
of Troilus are too vague to yield any conclusions; but there is no
reason why here also he may not have had the Exonian "Dares" in
mind.
ii. CHAUCER'S TROJAN PORTRAITS
In the fifth book of Troilus Chaucer interrupts his account of
Diomede and his wooing of the false Criseyde to introduce, somewhat
irrelevantly, six stanzas which draw for us portraits of Diomede, of
Criseyde, and of Troilus.
In the earlier books, to be sure, we find descriptions, somewhat
less formal in character, of Troilus and of Criseyde. We are told
of Criseyde's angelic beauty (I, 102, 171-75), of her widow's dress
(I, 109, 170), of her "ful assured loking and manere" (I, 182), and
at greater length we read :
She nas not with the leste of hir stature,
But alle hir limes so wel answeringe
Weren to womanhode, that creature
Was never lasse mannish in seminge.
And eek the pure wyse of here meninge
Shewede wel, that men might in hir gesse
Honour, estat, and wommanly noblesse.
[I, 281-87.]3
» Troilus, V, 1770. As we shall see, Chaucer makes use of Joseph's poem in the
fifth book of Troilus.
' E.g., V, 415-22; VI, 185-340.
a This corresponds to Filostrato, I, 27:
Ell' era grande, ed alia sua grandezza
Rispondean bene i membri tutti quanti;
II viso aveva adorno di bellezza
Celestiale, e nelli suoi sembianti
Ivi mostrava una donnesca altezza.
6
CHAUCER'S DARES 7
She is fairer than Helen or Polyxena (I, 454, 455); Pandarus tells
of her gracious and generous heart (I, 883-89); the beauty of her
person is described (III, 1247-51); we hear of her "ounded heer,
that sonnish was of he we," and of her "fingres longe and smale"
(IV, 736, 737); her face was "lyk of Paradys the image" (IV, 864). l
Troilus also is described. His manner was so goodly "that ech
him lovede that loked on his face" (I, 1078); his virtues are enu-
merated (I, 1079-85) ; Pandarus describes him to Criseyde as —
The wyse worthy Ector the secounde,
In whom that every vertu list abounde,
As alle trouthe and alle gentillesse,
Wysdom, honour, fredom, and worthinesse.
[II, 158-61.]
We see him ride by on his return from battle (II, 624-51); and we
are told that his happy love so increased his knightly virtues that he
was "save Ector, most ydrad of any wight" (III, 1772-78).
Of a more formal character are the portraits in Book V. Of
these portraits, save that of Diomede, there is no trace in Filostrato;
and critics have hitherto been at a loss to account for them. Of the
portrait of Criseyde, Skeat says: "This description seems to be
mainly Chaucer's own."2 Hamilton3 and Young4 cite passages from
Benoit and Guido, which, however, leave the most salient features
unaccounted for. We must now consider these portraits in detail.
The first in order is that of Diomede :
This Diomede, as bokes us declare,
Was in his nedes prest and corageous;
With sterne voys and mighty limes square,
Hardy, testif , strong, and chevalrous,
Of dedes lyk his fader Tideus.
And som men seyn he was of tunge large,
And heir he was of Calidoine and Arge.
[V, 799-805.]
P
» Of. Filostrato, IV, 100: "la sua faccia, fatta in paradiso."
2 Oxford Chaucer, II, 498.
» G. L. Hamilton. The Indebtedness of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde to Guido delle
Colonne's Historia Trojana, New York, 1903, pp. 75, 76, 79, 81, 82, 115-18.
« Op. cit., pp. 108-13, 117, 118, 133.
7
8 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
When one turns first of all to the Filostrato, one finds Diomede
described thus:
Egli era grande e bel della persona,
Giovane fresco e piacevole assai,
E forte e fier siccome si ragiona,
E parlante quant' altro Greco mai
E ad amor la natura aveva prona.
[VI, 33.P
Boccaccio's "forte e fier" corresponds in a general way to Chaucer's
" Hardy, testif"; and "parlante quant' alto Greco mai" is clearly
the source of the phrase "of tunge large." For the last line of
Chaucer's stanza one must turn to another passage in Filostrato:
Se'l padre mio Tideo fosse vissuto,
Com' el fu morto a Tebe combattendo;
Di Calidonia e d'Argo saria suto
Re, siccom' io ancora essere intendo.
[VI, 24.]
It will be noticed that the two specific statements in Chaucer's
description which are directly due to Boccaccio are in the last two
lines, and are introduced by the phrase, "And som men seyn." The
"som men," therefore, reduce themselves to Boccaccio.
What, then, are the "bokes" on the strength of whose "declara-
tion" are based the remaining elements of the portrait? As the
fount and source of such a Trojan portrait one will consult first the
prose Dares, whose descriptions of the Greek and Trojan personages
were later elaborated by Benoit and Guido.2 The prose Dares says
of Diomede:
Diomedem fortem, quadratum, corpore honesto, vultu austero, in bello
acemmum, clamosum, cerebro calido, inpatientem, audacem. [Cap. 13.]
In Benoit this is expanded into the following lines:
Forz refu mout Diomed&s,
Gros e quarrez e granz ad£s;
La chiere aveit mout felenesse:
i The Paris edition of 1789 reads:
Era Diomede bello di persona,
Giovine, grande, piacevole assai,
E forte e flero (come Omer ragiona).
[VIII, 33.]
» For the remoter history of these portraits see J. Purst. " Die Personalbeschreibungen
im Diktysberichte," Philologus, LXI (1902), 374-440.
8
CHAUCER'S DARES 9
Cist fist mainte fausse pramesse.
Mout fu hardiz, mout fu noisos,
E mout fu d' armes engeignos;
Mout fu estouz e sorparlez,
E mout par fu sis cors dotez.
A grant peine poeit trover
Qui centre lui vousist ester:
Rien nel poeit en pais tenir,
Trop par esteit maus a servir;
Mais por amor traist mainte feiz
Maintes peines e mainz torneiz.
[5211-24.]
In Guido we find:
Diomedes fuit multa proceritate distensus, amplo pectore, robustis
scapulis, aspectu ferox, in promissis fallax, in armis strennuus, victorie
cupidus, timendus a multis, cum multum esset virtuosus, seruientium sibi
nimis impatiens cum molestus seruientibus nimis esset, libidinosus quidem
multum & qui permultas traxit angustias ob feruorem amoris. [Sig. e 2,
recto, col. 1.]
These portraits, as drawn by Dares, Benoit, and Guido, agree in
a general way with Chaucer's account of the square-set warrior,
"hardy, testif, strong, and chevalrous." None of them, however,
mentions his stern voice, nor compares his deeds with those of his
father Tydeus. For these details we must turn to Chaucer's
" Dares," Joseph of Exeter. Here we read:
DIOMEDES: Voce ferox, animo preceps, feruente cerebro,
Audentique ira, ualidos quadratur in artus
Titides, plenisque meretur tided factis;
Sic animo, sic ore fero, sic fulminat armis.
[IV, 124-27 J1
Here we have the unmistakable source of the "sterne voys" and of
the comparison with Tydeus; while Joseph's "ualidos quadratur in
artus" is much closer to Chaucer's "mighty limes square" than is the
"quadratum" of Dares or the "quarrez" of Benoit.2 Perhaps, also,
"animo preceps" furnished the suggestion for "in his »edes prest,"
1 1 quote from the Westminster MS. In 125 Digby reads Ardentique. The lines
may be translated thus: " Pierce of voice, headlong in spirit, in fiery brain, and in daring
wrath, stands squared in mighty limbs Tydides, and in full deeds is worthy of Tydeus;
like him in spirit, like him in fierce speech, like him he thunders hi arms."
» This trait is not reproduced by Guido.
9
10 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
and "feruente cerebro"1 for "testif." .For the word "chevalrous"
Joseph has no equivalent; the source is apparently to be found in
the last two lines of the portrait by Benoit, if any source be needed
for so obvious an epithet.
Chaucer's portrait of Diomede is, then, like so many other
passages in his poetry, a composite of several sources. He drew
first on the "bokes" of Joseph of Exeter and Benoit de Ste. Maure,
and supplemented their statements from Boccaccio, marking his
transition to the Italian source by the phrase, " And som men seyn."2
Quite similar are the conclusions to which we are led by an
examination of Criseyde's portrait. Chaucer says of his heroine:
Criseyde mene was of hir stature,
Therto of shap, of face, and eek of chere,
Ther mighte been no fairer creature.
And ofte tyme this was hir manere,
To gon ytressed with hir heres clere
Doun by hir coler at hir bak bihinde,
Which with a threde of gold she wolde binde.
And, save hir browes joyneden yfere,
Ther nas no lak, in ought I can espyen;
But for to speken of hir eyen clere,
Lo, trewely, they writen that hir syen,
That Paradys stood formed in hir yen.
And with hir.riche beautee evermore
Strof love in hir, ay which of hem was more.
She sobre was, eek simple, and wys withal,
The beste ynorisshed eek that mighte be,
And goodly of hir speche in general,
Charitable, estatliche, lusty, and free;
Ne nevermo ne lakkede hir pitee;
Tendre herted, slydinge of corage;
But trewely, I can not telle hir age.
[V, 806-26.]
We may notice first of all the contradiction in the first line, which
describes Criseyde as of medium stature, with the statement earlier
in the poem that "She nas not with the leste of hir stature" (I, 281),
» Cf. "cerebro calido, inpatientem" of Dares.
*Cf. Boccaccio's "siccome si ragiona," or, as the Paris edition has it, "come Omer
ragiona."
10
CHAUCER'S DARES 11
a statement based on Boccaccio's "E1P era grande" (Fil.j I, 27).
This trait of medium stature is due, as we shall see, to the series of
portraits which begins with the prose Dares.
Dares says of Briseida:
Briseidam formosam, non alta statura, candidam, capillo flavo et molli,
superciliis iunctis, oculis venustis, corpore aequali, blandam, affabilem,
verecundam, animo simplici, piam. [Cap. 13.]
In the French of Benoit we read :
Briseida fu avenant:
Ne fu petite ne trop grant.
Plus esteit bele e bloie e blanche
Que flor de lis ne neif sor branche;
Mais les sordlles li joigneient,
Que auques li mesaveneient.
Beaus ieuz aveit de grant maniere
E mout esteit bele parliere.
Mout f u de bon afaitement
E de sage contenement.
Mout fu amee e mout amot,
Mais si's corages li chanjot;
E si ert el mout vergondose,
Simple e aumosniere e pitose.
[5275-88]
In the Latin of Guido this becomes:
Briseida autem filia calcas multa fuit speciositate decora, nee longa nee
breuis nee nimium macilenta, lacteo perfusa candore, genis roseis, flauis
crinibus, sed superciliis iunctis, quorum iunctura dum multa pilositate tumes-
ceret modicam inconuenientiam presentabat, oculis venusta. Multa fulgebat
loquele facundia, multa fuit pietate tractabilis. Multos traxit propter ille-
cebras amatores multosque dilexit dum suis amatoribus animi constantiam
non seruasset. [Sig. e 2, recto, col. 2.]
These accounts all agree that Briseida was beautiful, that she
was of medium height, that her eyebrows joined, that she had lovely
eyes, that she was a good talker, and that she was full of pity; and
all these traits are included in Chaucer's extended portr%it. Dares
and Benoit add the qualities of simplicity and modesty. Benoit alone
says that she was of "sage contenement" (Chaucer's "wys withal"),
and tells us that "sis corages li chanjot," which seems to be the
source of Chaucer's "slydinge of corage," though Guido''s "animi
11
12 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
constantiam non seruasset" conveys the same idea. But these
accounts leave much of the Chaucerian portrait unexplained. Some
of the hitherto unexplained details are due to the description of
Briseis in Joseph of Exeter:
BRISEIS: In medium librata statum briseis heriles
Promit in aspectum uultus, nodatur in equos
Flauicies crinita sinus, umbreque minoris
Delicias oculus iunctos suspendit in arcus.
Diuiciis forme certant insignia morum:
Sobria simplicitas, comis pudor, arida numquam
Poscenti pietas, et fandi gratia lenis.
[IV, 156-62.]1
So ingenious is the Exonian in the rhetorical turns of his phrasing
that the reader may not be sorry to have the lines translated :
Balanced in medium stature, Briseis sets forth to view her lordly features.
Her hairy yellowness is knotted into equal folds, and her eye lifts into joined
arches the delights of lesser shadow [i.e., the lady's eyebrows].2 With the
riches of her form strive the marks of character: sober simplicity, a pleasing
modesty, a pity never arid for him who asks, and gentle grace of speech.
That Chaucer has drawn on this portrait by Joseph of Exeter
no one can doubt. The phrase "In medium librata statum" is
nearer than any of the equivalent statements in the other portraits
to Chaucer's "mene . . . . of hir stature." "Sobria simplicitas"
accounts for the words "She sobre was, eek simple." "Arida num-
quam poscenti pietas" is echoed by "Ne nevermo ne lakkede hir
pitee." Clearest of all is the dependence of Chaucer's "with hir
riche beautee .... Strof love in hir" on Joseph's "Diuiciis forme
certant insignia morum," a line which, as we shall see presently,
had in Chaucer's copy of the poem the corrupt reading, "insignia
amorum." Though the method in which Criseyde dresses her "heres
clere, Doun by hir coler at hir bak bihinde," is not that of the two
folds into which Briseis knots her "hairy yellowness," the suggestion
1 Quoted from the Westminster MS, which, however, reads in 157 affectum for
aspectum (the reading of Digby), as does also the Delphin edition. In 158 the Delphin
edition reads Planitiea for Flauicies, a clear case of misreading.
2 The phrase beginning "umbreque minoris" is peculiarly obscure. The translation
I have given was suggested by Dean Andrew P. West and concurred in by Professor David
Magie, both of the Princeton Department of Classics. "Umbra minor" is apparently
used of the eyebrow as opposed to the "umbra major" of the lady's hair. In support
of this interpretation may be adduced Claudian, Nupt. Honor, et Mar., 267: " Quam iuncto
levlter sese discrimine confert Umbra supercilii!"
12
CHAUCER'S DARES 13
for this detail also may well be due to Joseph. At least, no other of
the portraits deigns to concern itself with the lady's coiffure.1 Joseph
agrees with Dares, Benoit, and Guido in the trait of the joined brows;
though he does not, like Benoit and Guido, suggest that this was in
any way a "lak." Rather it is, as any Greek would have regarded
it, a mark of beauty.2 It is just possible that Chaucer, failing to
understand the obscure phrase of Joseph, took the words "umbreque
minoris delicias" to mean "and for a shadow of less delight." The
order of ideas and the context of the Chaucerian passage lend some
color to this conjecture; but, in view of Benoit's specific statement
that the joined brows "auques li mesaveneient," there is no need to
impugn Chaucer's Latinity.
Chaucer's portrait of Criseyde, then, like his description of
Diomede, is a composite of Joseph and Benoit; though his own fancy
has played freely over the whole. One striking phrase of Chaucer,
for which we should expect a definite source, is, however, not ac-
counted for — "That Paradys stood formed in hir yen." This is
not unlike Boccaccio's "II viso aveva adorno di bellezza Celestiale"
(FiL, I, 27), or "La sua faccia fatta in paradiso" (FiL, IV, 100);
but Chaucer specifically tells us that his statement is on the authority
of those "that hir syen." This appeal to an eyewitness suggests
at once that he is thinking of "Dares." But the prose Dares does
not say more than "oculis venustis"; and Joseph is silent.3 Benoit
says, "Beaus ieuz aveit de grant maniere," and Guido, "oculis ven-
usta."
Of Troilus, Chaucer writes:
And Troilus wel waxen was in highte,
And complet formed by proporcioun
So wel, that kinde it not amenden mighte;
Yong, fresshe, strong, and hardy as lyoun;
Trewe as steel in ech condicioun;
On of the beste enteched creature,
That is, or shal, whyl that the world may dure.
And certainly in storie it is yfounde,
That Troilus was never unto no wight,
1 See on this passage Young, op. cit., p. 117.
2 On the joined brows see Krapp, Modern Language Notes, XIX, 235, and Hamilton,
ibid., XX. 80.
3 Dictys Cretensis, the other "eyewitness," does not mention Briseis.
13
14 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
As in his tyme, in no degree secounde
In durring don that longeth to a knight.
Al mighte a geaunt passen him of might,
His herte ay with the firste and with the beste
Stod paregal, to durre don that him leste.
[V, 827-40.]
In the prose Dares the portrait is a brief one:
Troilum magnum, pulcherrimum, pro aetate valentem, fortem, cupidum
virtutis. [Cap. 12.]
In Benoit this is expanded into fifty-four lines, from which I shall
quote only those which in any way resemble Chaucer:
Troilus fu beaus a merveillej
Chiere ot riant, face vermeille,
Cler vis apert, le front plenier:
Mout covint bien a chevalier.
A merveille ert beaus chevaliers.
Jambes ot dreites, vous les piez,
Trestoz les membres bien tailliez.
Granz ert, mais bien li coveneit
0 la taille, que bone aveit.
Jo ne cuit or si vaillant home
Ait jusque la ou terre asome,
Ne qui tant ait riche corage,
Ne tant coveit pris ne barnage.
Ne fu sorfaiz ne outrajos,
Mais liez e gais e amoros.
Bachelers ert e jovenceaus
De ecus de Troie li plus beaus
E li plus proz, fors que sis frere
Hector, qui fu dreiz emperere
E dreiz sire d' armes portanz.
[5393-5440.]
Guide's description also I shall reproduce only in part :
Troilus vero licet multum fuerit corpore magnus, magis tamen fuit corde
magnanimus In viribus vero & strennuitate bellandi vel fuit alius
hector vel secundus ab ipso. In toto etiam regno troie iuuenis nullus fuit
tantis viribus nee tanta audacia gloriosus. [Sig. e 2, verso, col. 1-2.]
14
CHAUCER'S DARES 15
In Joseph of Exeter, Troilus is thus described :
TROILUS: Troilus in spacium surgentes explicat artus
Mente gigas, etate puer, nullique secundus
Audendo uirtutis opus: mixtoque uigore
Gratior illustres insignit gloria uultus.
[IV, 60-64.]1
On none of these accounts of Troilus has Chaucer drawn very
heavily. Some of the details seem due to Benoit. From Joseph's
"nullique secundus Audendo uirtutis opus" is clearly taken Chaucer's
"in no degree secounde In durring don that longeth to a knight."
It is to be noticed that Chaucer does not admit, with Benoit and
Guido, that Troilus was second to Hector.2 From Joseph's "mente
gigas" came, apparently, the suggestion for Chaucer's "Al mighte a
geaunt passen him of might."
No one, I think, who has examined the parallel passages cited
above, will doubt that Chaucer knew Joseph's poem and used it for
his Trojan portraits. If any further proof is needed, it is furnished
by the fact that in two of the manuscripts of Troilus lines from the
Latin poem are written beside the stanzas which we have been con-
sidering. The manuscripts are Cambridge University Library,
Gg. 4. 27 (Gg), and St. John's College, Cambridge, L. 1 (J); and in
each case the quotation is written by the original scribe.3
In Gg, between 11. 819 and 820 of the fifth book, we find:
Versus Sobria simplicitas sonus pudor arida rmmquam
Versus Poscente poetas gracia fandi lenis;
and between 11. 826 and 827:
Versus Troilus in spacium surgentes explicat artws
Versus Mente gigas etate puer mixtoque vigore
Versus Nulliq-ue secundus audendo virtutis opis.
These lines, which the scribe has so painstakingly labeled for us as
"Versus," are a sadly bungled version of 11. 161, 162, and 60-63 of
Joseph's fourth book, already quoted above.
» Again I quote from the Westminster MS. In 60, Digby reads frmos for artus.
The lines may be translated thus: "Troilus in bulk extends his rising limbs, in mind a
giant, in age a boy, and second to none in daring valor's deed; and with tempered vigor
a more pleasing glory marks his splendid features."
2 See, however, Troilus, II, 158: "The wyse worthy Ector the secounde."
'The quotations are given in the Chaucer Society's print of Gg; in the print of J
they are silently omitted.
15
16 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
In J the quotations are fuller, and distinctly less corrupt. In the
margin of stanza 115 (V, 799-805), which describes Diomede, the
scribe has written:
Voce ferox aniwo preceps
audentiqwe ira. Validos
quadratw in artws tetides
pleniwsque meretttr tidea facfts
sic anirao sic ore fero sic et cetera
Calidonius heres.
We have here a fairly accurate text of IV, 124-27, of Joseph's poem.
The words " Calidonius heres" are not, however, part of the quota-
tion, which is marked as finished by the "et cetera"; and I am at a
loss to explain their origin. Diomede is called "Calydonius heros"
in IV, 349; and possibly "heres" is a misreading of "heros." It is
to be noted that the words "Calidonius heres" stand in the margin
beside Chaucer's line, "And heir he was of Calidoyne and arge."
In the margin of stanza 116 (V, 806-12) is written:
In medium librata
statuw Criseis he
riles promit in affec
turn vultws nodatwr
in equos flauicies
crinata.
These are Joseph's lines, IV, 156, 157, and part of 158. It is to be
noted that the heroine's name is Criseis instead of Briseis. The
change of initial, however, is probably to be explained as a scribal
variation, which has taken place under the influence of the English
poem after the Latin lines were first copied into the margin of J's
ancestor. The reading affectum for aspectum, found also in the West-
minster MS, doubtless goes back to the manuscript from which
the quotation was originally copied. The word sinus, indispensable
to the sense, is omitted after crinata, itself a corruption of crinita.
In the margin of stanza 117 (V, 813-19) is written:
Vmbraque minoris
dilicias ocuhts iunc
tos suspend^ in
arcus
diuicijs forme cer
tant insignea amomra.
16
CHAUCER'S DARES 17
These are lines IV, 158-60, of Joseph's poem. The line-space
between arcus and diuicijs brings the last sentence directly beside
the last two lines of Chaucer's stanza, which are based on it. Note
the reading amorum for morum. The corrupt reading clearly stood
in Chaucer's copy of Joseph; for, had he had the correct reading
before him, he would hardly have failed to preserve the more effective
antithesis, which sets character over against beauty.
Beside stanza 118 (V, 820-26) is written:
Sobria simplicitas
comis pudor ari
da numqwam / poscenti
pietas gracfa fandi lenis.
This is IV, 161, 162, of Joseph's "Dares/' Note that J agrees with
Gg in omitting et before gratia, though it avoids the other errors into
which Gg has fallen.
In the margin of stanza 119 (V, 827-33) is written:
Troilus in spacium
surgentes expli
cat arcus
Mente gigas eta
te puer. mixtoqwe
vigore,
and in the margin of stanza 120 (V, 834-40) :
Nulliqwe secundws
virtutis opis.
These are lines IV, 60-63, in Joseph; but the word audendo, found
in Gg, is omitted before virtutis. This word, represented in Chaucer
by "durring don," must have been present in Chaucer's copy. It
may be only a coincidence that in one of the Bodleian manuscripts
of Troilus, Selden B 24, fol. 103a, "durrying don" is glossed
" audendo." As an error of Chaucer's copy of Joseph must be
regarded the transposition of the phrase mixtoque vigore, since this
corruption is found both in J and in Gg. 9
We must now ask how these quotations found their way into the
pages of these two manuscripts, and in particular whether their
presence may be due to Chaucer himself. In a recent volume
of the Chaucer Society's publications on the Textual Tradition of
17
18 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
Chaucer's Troilus, I have shown that in the later books J and Gg
are both derived from a copy of the poem which had not received
the revisions and alterations incorporated in the great majority of
the manuscripts, a copy, moreover, which was apparently in the
poet's own possession. They are not, however, related by descent
from any common ancestor nearer than this "archetype" manu-
script. Barring the ever-present possibility of contamination, the
presence of the quotations in J and Gg would, therefore, indicate
their presence in this archetype.1 Considerations of general prob-
ability, also, favor the assumption that the quotations are due to
Chaucer himself. If not due to him, they must come from some
mediaeval "source-hunter," who recognized Chaucer's not very
extensive debt to an obscure Latin poem, and took the trouble to
record his discovery in the margin of his own copy.2 Such a hypoth-
esis does not explain the presence of the quotations both in J and
in Gg. Finally, it may be noted that, as already shown above,
Chaucer's copy of Joseph of Exeter contained in IV, 160, the false
reading amorum for morum, and that this reading was also present
in the manuscript of Joseph from which the marginal quotations
were derived.
In such a question as this, fortunately not a vital one, certainty
of answer is impossible. It seems most probable, however, that the
quotations are due to Chaucer himself. Just why he should have
written them in, one cannot say.3
The only other instance I have discovered of Chaucer's use of
Joseph of Exeter is in the Parliament of Fowls, where, in his descrip-
tion of the garden, Chaucer devotes a stanza to an enumeration of
the various trees which shaded that "blisful place":
The bilder ook, and eek the hardy asshe;
The piler elm, the cofre unto careyne;
The boxtree piper; holm to whippes lasshe;
1 The quotations are not found in the Phillipps MS nor in Harleian 1239, both of
which normally give in Books IV and V the unrevised "alpha" text of the poem.
2 One of the Troilus manuscripts, Harleian 2392, contains a running commentary
in the margin, supplied by some mediaeval editor. The comments include now and then
references to Ovid, with book and line indicated (see The MSS of Chaucer's Troilus,
Chaucer Society, 1914, Plate XV); but the notes, though displaying some taste and
learning, are of a very obvious character.
» They are analogous to the Latin lines giving the argument of Statius' Thebai*
found between 11. 1498 and 1499 of Book V in all Troilus manuscripts save Rawlinson
Poet. 163 and Harleian 2392.
18
CHAUCER'S DARES 19
The sayling firr; the cipres, deth to pleyne;
The sheter ew, the asp for shaftes pleyne;
The olyve of pees, and eek the drunken vyne,
The victor palm, the laurer to devyne.
[176-82.]
Some of the epithets which Chaucer applies to the various trees seem
to have been suggested by a similar passage in the first book of
Joseph's Iliad, where the poet is describing the beauties of Mt. Ida :
Haut procul incumbens urbi mediantibus aruis
Ydeus consurgit apex, uerus incola montis
Silua uiret, uernat abies procera, cupressus
Flebilis, inierpres laurus, uaga pinus, oliua
Contilians, cornus uenatrix, fraxinus audax,
Stat comitis paciens ulmus, nunquamque senescens
Cantatrix buxus, paulo procliuius aruum
Ebria uitis habet, et dedinata latere
Cancicolam poscit phebum.
[I, 505-13.]1
In the Knight's Tale (A 2920-24) Chaucer has another catalogue
of trees, which includes an even greater number of species; but the
trees are not, as here, epithetized. Nor does the list of trees in the
Roman de la Rose (1338-68; Chaucerian translation 1355-86) bear
any similarity to that of the Parliament of Fowls beyond the fact
that some of the trees in the two lists inevitably coincide.2 The
essential feature of the two lists just quoted is that each tree is
briefly characterized by a word or phrase. For a list of trees so
characterized the ultimate source is a passage in Ovid3 (Met. x. 86-
108) ; but, as Skeat has pointed out,4 other similar lists are found in
Seneca (Oedipus 532-41), Lucan (Pharsalia iii. 440-45), Statius
(Thebais vi. 91-99), and Claudian (De raptu Proserpinae ii. 105-11).
Primarily based on Statius, though indebted also to Ovid, is the tree-
list in Boccaccio's Teseide (XI, 22-24). These passages are so readily
accessible that there is no need to quote them in full. It will better
serve the purposes of this discussion to take each of Chaucer's thir-
teen trees in order, and to see how far the epithets which he applies
agree with those in the several lists just cited. Whftn an epithet
in one of these possible sources is like Chaucer's, the quotation is
* 1 quote from Jusserand's print of the Paris MS (p. 133). In 506 the Delphin edi-
tion reads vetus for uerus. In 513 Cancicolam should probably be emended to Cancricolam.
The word is glossed in the Paris MS as equivalent to feruentem. The Delphin edition
reads Canicolam.
2 See D. S. Fansler, Chaucer and the Roman de la Rose, New York, 1914, pp. 113, 114.
s Of. also Virgil, Aeneid vi. 179-82. < Oxford Chaucer, I, 511, 512.
19
20 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
printed in italics. When no quotation from a given author is found, it
will be understood that the tree in question does not appear in his list.
1. "The bilder ook." Ovid: "frondibus aesculus altis";
Seneca: "curvosque tendit quercus et putres situ annosa ramos";
Lucan: "robore denso"; Statius: "situ non expugnabile robur";
Claudian: "quercus arnica lovi." Chaucer's epithet seems to be
original.
2. "The hardy asshe." Ovid: "fraxinus utilis hastis"; Lucan:
"procumbunt orni"; Statius: "infandos belli potura cruores frax-
inus"; Joseph: " fraxinus audax"', Boccaccio: "i frassini ch' e'
vani sangui ber soglion de' combattimenti."
3. "The piler elm, the cofre unto careyne." Ovid: "amictae
vitibus ulmi"; Statius: "nee inhospita vitibus ulmus"; Claudian:
"Pampinus induit ulmus"; Joseph: "comitis paciens ulmus";
Boccaccio: "!' olmo che di viti s' innamora." Chaucer's "piler
elm" may be intended to suggest its support of the vine, the idea
contained in all the other epithets; the rest of his phrase has no
parallel.
4. "The boxtree piper." Ovid: "perpetuoque virens buxum";
Claudian : " denso crispata cacumine buxus ' ' ; Joseph : " nunquamque
senescens cantatrix buxus."
5. "Holm to whippes lasshe." Ovid: "cirrataque glandibus
ilex"; Lucan: "nodosa inpellitur ilex"; Statius: "iliceaeque
trabes"; Claudian: "ilex plena favis"; Boccaccio: "e gl' ilici
soprani." Chaucer's phrase has no parallel.
6. "The sayling firr." Ovid: "enodisque abies"; Statius:
"audax abies"; Claudian: "apta fretis abies"; Joseph: "abies
procera"; Boccaccio: "1'audace abete." Claudian is the only one
to parallel Chaucer's epithet for the fir; but similar phrases are
used of the alder: Seneca: "per immensum mare motura remos
alnus"; Lucan: "fluctibus aptior alnus"; Statius: "alnus arnica
fretis." Joseph has the phrase "vaga pinus"; and the pine is near
cousin to the fir.
7. "The cipres, deth to pleyne." Ovid: "metas imitata cupres-
sus"; Seneca: "cupressus altis exerens silvis caput virente semper
alii gat trunco nemus"; Lucan: "non plebeios luctus testata cupres-
sus"', Statius: "brumaeque inlaesa cupressus"; Claudian: "tumulos
tectura cupressus"; Joseph: " cupressus flebilis " ; Boccaccio: "e '1
20
CHAUCER'S DARES 21
durante cipresso ad ogni bruma." Chaucer is slightly nearer to
Joseph than to either Lucan or Claudian.
8. "The sheter ew." Statius: "metuendaque suco taxus";
Boccaccio: "e '1 tasso, li cui sughi nocimenti soglion donare."
Chaucer is quite independent.
9. "The asp for shaftes pleyne." The aspen appears in no other
list; but compare Ovid's "fraxinus utilis hastis."
10. "The olyve of pees." Joseph: "oliua concilians" The
olive does not appear in the other lists.
11. "The drunken vyne." Ovid: "pampineae vites"; Joseph:
"ebria uitis" In the other lists the vine is mentioned only in con-
nection with the elm.
12. "The victor palm." Ovid: "lentae, victoris praemia,
palmae"; Boccaccio: "d'ogni vincitore premio la palma."
13. "The laurer to devyne." Ovid: "innuba laurus"; Seneca:
" amara bacas laurus " ; Claudian: " venturi praescia laurus" ; Joseph:
"interpres laurus."
When one looks over the evidence just tabulated, he is struck
first of all with the extraordinary lack of correspondence between
Chaucer's characterizations and those of most of the other lists.
To Seneca and to Statius Chaucer owes nothing at all. With Ovid
there is but one agreement (No. 12), and there Boccaccio furnishes
an alternative parallel — the only parallel, it is to be noted, between
Chaucer's list and the Italian. In one instance (No. 6) Chaucer
agrees with Claudian alone, unless Joseph's " vaga pinus" is admitted
as a parallel; in another (No. 13), with Claudian and Joseph; in
still another (No. 7), with Claudian, Lucan, and Joseph. For five
of Chaucer's thirteen characterizations (Nos. 1, 3, 5, 8, 9) there is
no parallel in any of the lists. In view of these facts it is the more
striking that in six of the thirteen (Nos. 2, 4, 7, 10, 11, 13) Chaucer's
descriptive phrase is in accord with Joseph's, and that in four of
these instances (Nos. 2, 4, 10, 11) Joseph furnishes the only
parallel.
We are, of course, dealing in many of these characterizations
with widely current commonplaces. The association of the olive with
peace, or of the palm with victory, needs no specific attribution of
source. Hardly less common is the connection of the cypress with
death or of the laurel with divination. But other things than pipes
21
22 ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
are made of box-wood; and the vine, one must hope, is not invariably
drunken.1 Statius, and Boccaccio following him, choose the fir
rather than the ash for the epithet "audax." Even though the
agreements are in trite characterizations, the number of the agree-
ments must give us pause. Ovid, for example, equally with Chaucer,
gives a series of rather obvious characterizations; and yet there is
but one place where the two coincide. Since Ovid names some
twenty-five trees to Joseph's ten, in accordance with the theory of
probability the agreements between Ovid and Chaucer should, if
due to mere chance coincidence in the obvious, be more than twice
as numerous as the agreements between Chaucer and Joseph.
Finally, we may notice that, of Chaucer's possible sources, Joseph
is the only one who uses a verbal noun of agent ("cantatrix buxus,"
"cornus venatrix") as characterizing epithet — a locution which
Chaucer uses four times.
Were there no other evidence that Chaucer knew and used
Joseph's poem, one might be skeptical as to the influence here; but
with the certainty that the Trojan portraits owe much to Joseph, it
seems at least probable that the agreements between the two tree-
lists are not fortuitous.
The identification of Chaucer's " Dares" adds one more to
the already long list of the poet's "bokes olde and newe." It does
more than this; it shows us something of his methods of work.
Not content with supplementing the Filostrato by details drawn from
Benoit and Guido, he went back to what he may well have regarded
as the primary source of all, the Iliad of "Dares Frigius." If the
influence of Joseph on the catalogue of trees be admitted, it adds
some slight confirmation to the opinion, now generally held, that the
composition of Troilus is to be assigned to the years 1381-82 or there-
abouts, the period already firmly established for the Parliament of
Fowls.
ROBERT KILBURN ROOT
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
1 Chaucer's opinion in the matter of prohibition may, perhaps, be gathered from the
following words of Criseyde:
For though a man forbede dronkenesse,
He nought forbet that every creature
Be drinkelees for alwey, as I gesse.
[Troilus, II, 716-18.]
OBSERVATIONS ON THE AUTHORSHIP OF " PIERS
THE PLOWMAN."— Conducted
V. IS THE A-TEXT "iNCOHEKENT" ELSEWHERE?
Mr. Chambers next undertakes to show that A is "incoherent"
elsewhere than in the Sloth-Restitution-Robert the Robber passage.
That is, he believes that A has included inappropriate material in
the accounts of other sins in passus 5. It is to be presumed that he
chose as examples of "incoherence" the most notable examples he
could find. His first example is furnished by A's account of Lechery :
Lecchour seide Alias, and on oure Lady criede
To make mercy for his mysdede betwyn God and his soule,
WiP Pat he shulde Pe Satirday seue ^er Per aftir
Drinke but wiP Pe doke, and dyne but ones. [5. 54-58.]
This is "incoherent," in Mr. Chambers' opinion, because as a
whole it is absolutely inappropriate to Lechery. He says :
It is easy to gloss the text by explaining that the eating of two or more
dinners per diem, which Lecchour abjures, tends towards Lust (though I
should rather have thought it tended towards indigestion) whilst abstinence
leads to continence. But I understand the claim for A to be that he is so
coherent that he needs no gloss, and therefore cannot be B, who often does.
Once admit A capable of incoherency, and there is no longer any necessity
to assume that the incoherency of his Sloth must of necessity be due to a
shifted or missing leaf [pp. 8-9].
Mr. Manly's citation of the Parson's Tale as evidence that
fourteenth-century theologians believed that lechery proceeded from
overeating and overdrinking was not intended to "gloss" the passage,
but to show that A was in entire harmony with mediaeval doctrine as
to lechery, its cause, and its cure. Mr. Chambers' par<ftithesis is a
witticism enjoyable in itself, but it is positively startling as coming
from a scholar who not only was familiar with mediaeval ideas before
entering this controversy, but had, in addition, made a special study
of the mediaeval treatises on the deadly sins for the express purpose
23] 23 [MODBEN PHILOLOGY, May, 1917
24 THOMAS A. KNOTT
of confuting Mr. Manly. The question at issue is not the opinion
of Mr. Chambers as a modern dietitian in regard to overeating and
overdrinking, but the prevalence of a mediaeval view that overeating
and overdrinking are causes of lechery. And not only Chaucer, but a
multitude of other writers believed in the fourteenth century that
overeating and overdrinking produced incontinence. The Ayenbite
of Inwyt says: " Lechery To that sin belong all the things
whereby the flesh arouses itself and desires such a deed; such are
the great drinkers and eaters, the soft bed, delicate clothes."1
In the discussion of Chastity it says: "But the great foods and
the strong wine kindle and nourish lechery, as oil or grease kindle
and increase fire."2
The Ancren Riwle says: "Lechery comes from gluttony and from
ease of the flesh. For, as Saint Gregory says, 'Too much food and
drink bear three children : light words, and light works, and lechery's
lusts.'"3
Other mediaeval authors and works which call overeating and
overdrinking a cause of lechery are : Handlyng Synne (11. 7259-66) ;
Ormulum (11. 11653ff.); Myrc's Instructions to Parish Priests
(11. 1361-62, 1381-82); Alexander and Dindimus (11. 679-88,
887-89); Horstmann, Samm. ae. Legenden (p. 4, 11. 46-49, p. 5, 11.
86-89); "Piers Plowman" B (14.76); Chaucer (C.T., C 480ff.);
Wyclif (Select Eng.Works, ed. Arnold III, 197) ; (Eng.Works, E.E.T.S.,
p. 8); Knight of Tour Landry (pp. 10, 58, 72); Jacob's Well (p. 159).
Furthermore, A himself elsewhere voices the same belief :
Loth in his lyf dayes for lykyng of drinke
Dede be his dou^teris Pat Pe deuil lykide,
Delyted him in drynke, as Pe deuel wolde,
And leccherie hym lau^te, and lay be hem boPe,
And al he wytide it wyn, Pat wykkide dede. [1. 27-31.]
Is there then any parallel between the present condition of A's
Sloth and that of his Lecchour ? No other author except B puts the
i Lecherie To fro zenne belonged alle fre fringes huer by fret uless him arist
and wylnefr zuiche dede; ase byefr fre mochele drinkeres and eteres, fre zofte bed, clofres
likerouses" (p. 47).
a "Ac fre greate metes and fret stronge wyn aligtefr and norissefr lecherie ase oyle
ofrer grese alijtefr and st[r]engfrefr fret uer" (p. 205).
3"Golnesse cumeO of jiuernesse and of flesches eise; vor ase Seint Gregorie sei8,
'Mete & drunch ouer rihte temeO frreo teames; lihte words & lihte werkes, & lecheries
lustes'" (pp. 286-88).
THE AUTHORSHIP OF " PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 25
withholding of wages and the non-payment of debts under Sloth, and
no other author mentions restitution of wicked winnings as a part of
the repentance of Sloth. On the other hand, nearly every writer on
the deadly sins says that lechery is a result of overeating and over-
drinking. Obviously, then, the confession of A's Lecchour is not to
be regarded as "incoherent" or inappropriate.
"A's other 'Sins,'" resumes Mr. Chambers, "are almost equally
incoherent. A's Pride shows signs of Envy." This is the argument
offered by Mr. Jusserand, on the basis of the lines spoken by Pernel
Proud-heart: "But now wile I meke me, and mercy beseke Of alle
pat I have had enuye in myn herte" (5. 52-53). The argument was
refuted by Mr. Manly when he pointed out that a common meaning
of the word "envy" in the fourteenth (and indeed throughout the
fifteenth and sixteenth) century was "ill-will, hatred, despite." Mr.
Chambers himself, on p. 18, urges that in the B-text "Under Pride
we rightly have, as one of its branches, Despite" That A knew the
word "envy" in that sense is shown elsewhere in the poem:
Ac be war Panne of Wrap, Pat wykkide shrewe,
For he hap enuye to hym Pat in Pin herte sittiP. [6. 98-99.]
"A's Envy shows as many traits of Wrath as of Envy," says Mr.
Chambers. This argument is another offered by Mr. Jusserand and
refuted by Mr. Manly. Neither Mr. Jusserand nor Mr. Chambers
meets Mr. Manly's refutation. Chambers, it is true, adds to the
boldness of the phrasing: "Envy shows as many [italics mine] traits
of Wrath as of Envy." Mr. Jusserand presented exactly two lines
from A's Envy as seeming to belong to Wrath.1 Mr. Chambers men-
tions no others. A's Envy extends through forty-seven lines.
"No one reading A's Gluttony could tell whether it was the con-
fession of Gluttony or of Accidie," says Mr. Chambers. It is difficult
to believe that he has read A's account of Gluttony. A's Gluttony,
as Mr. Chambers says, does start to church to confess his sins. He
has that impulse in common with other deadly sins whose hearts
are moved by the preaching of Repentance. He is diverted on the
way, but not by an idler. Beton the Brewster is the seducer. He
enters her tavern, not to idle, nor even to drink, but to eat hot spices,
i Mod. Philology, January, 1909, pp. 300-301. He also admits they are really appro-
priate to Envy.
25
26 THOMAS A. KNOTT
to allay his queasy stomach.1 In the tavern he ultimately yields to
his besetting sin and becomes overwhelmingly intoxicated, so that
he is ill for two days. The assertion that A's Gluttony cannot be
distinguished from Sloth can be accepted only by one who resolutely
refuses to read the A-text of " Piers the Plowman."
VI. THE ARGUMENTS FROM MR. JUSSERAND
Inasmuch as Mr. Chambers charges A with being guilty of many
other incoherencies, and contents himself with the declaration that
Mr. Jusserand has pointed them out "so ably .... that it is a waste
of time to urge the matter further," it becomes necessary to examine
some parts of Mr. Jusserand's discussion.2
The first incoherence which Mr. Jusserand believes he finds in the
A-text he words thus: "The Lady answers in substance: The tower
on this toft is the place of abode of Truth, or God the father; but
do not get drunk." This outline is certainly incoherent. Mr.
Jusserand has, however, secured the effect of incoherence by reducing
twelve lines of text, pregnant with material, to a semicolon. Any
author can be made to appear incoherent by such a surgical opera-
tion.3
The next incoherence which Mr. Jusserand thinks he detects
consists in the question about "pe money on pis molde pat men
so faste holdip," to which, according to him, "the Lady makes a
somewhat rambling answer, both question and answer being equally
unexpected and irrelevant." He holds that the incoherence consists
at least partly in the fact that the people portrayed in the field full of
folk did "all sorts of things, except hold fast 'moneye on pis molde.'"
1 This point seems to have been missed by all the writers on the subject but Mr.
Manly. Glutton is sincere when he starts for the church; he does not yield to the tempta-
tion of the ale offered by Beton; he enters the alehouse, or thinks he enters it, not to
drink, but to put his poor stomach in condition to resist the appeal of drink. Once within
the alehouse he joins his old companions, as Beton of course knew he would.
2 For Mr. Jusserand's statements see Mod, Philology, January, 1909, pp. 309-12.
Mr. Manly's reply to this part of Mr. Jusserand is contained in Mod. Philology, July,
1909, pp. 126-28. Mr. Jusserand's last reply is in Mod. Philology, January, 1910,
pp. 318-19.
• The course of the thought in this passage is shown to be perfectly coherent in Mr.
Manly's summary in the Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., II, 6 (Amer. ed., p. 7), which he quoted
in reply to Mr. Jusserand in Mod. Philology, July, 1909, p. 127. Moreover, the coherence
is not artificially introduced into the summary, as Mr. Jusserand insinuates, but is
actually present in the text, as any person can see who is willing to read this part of the
poem.
THE AUTHORSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 27
Now out of the ninety-two lines in the prologue devoted to the
field of folk, thirty-seven, or much more than one-third, describe
classes of persons who are specifically accused of being greedy for
money, and in every case "money," or "gold," or "silver" is explicitly
named. Minstrels get gold with their glee (33-34); "money" and
the merchandise of friars meet together since friars have become
peddlers (55-64) ; the pardoner by his preaching gets rings, brooches,
and gold, which he divides with the bishop and the parish priest
(65-79) ; parish priests go to London to sing for silver (80-83) ; ser-
geants plead the law only for pennies and pounds, and will not open
their mouths unless money is showed (84-89). And this does not
include other classes who are under suspicion of the same practice,
but in connection with whom there is no explicit reference to money.
Moreover, the question itself is not so unexpected and irrelevant
as Mr. Jusserand maintains. Lady Holy Church has just told the
dreamer that God created him, gave him five wits, and commanded
the earth to supply him with food, drink, and clothing. But the
prominence of money in the world, already emphasized in the pro-
logue, has impressed the dreamer so deeply that he demands to know
"to whom that treasure appends."
"What the Lady should have explained was not hard to make
clear," resumes Mr. Jusserand. To be brief, he believes that she
should give a full account of the field full of folk (even though the
dreamer has just finished doing this in the prologue), or she should
give a full description of the Tower of Truth (even though the author
has reserved this to use in its proper place in the sixth passus, where
Piers, after telling the searchers for Truth the way to the tower,
describes it so that they will know it when they come to it). In
putting his detailed description of the field of folk into the prologue,
and his description of the tower into the sixth passus, the poet of A
planned with great skill the disposition of his material. His plan
for the first passus does not include the repetition of what he has
already described or the anticipation of material whicn* he intends
to utilize later. His plan, on the other hand, is to have Lady Holy
Church explain to the dreamer (1) that the owner of the Tower is
Truth — that is, God — who created man and gave him intelligence and
means of subsistence; (2) the attitude of God toward money, a
27
28 THOMAS A. KNOTT
source of much of the evil in the field of folk; (3) that the dungeon is
the castle of Wrong; (4) that the speaker herself is Holy Church (who,
of course, is the most fitting person to convey information about God
and the salvation of souls) ; (5) that the means of that salvation is
Truth (the person in the tower, and the principle which that person
represents); (6) Truth, she goes on to explain, should govern the
whole world ; loving God includes love and charity for man. I cannot
understand how it is bad structure to make Holy Church the inter-
preter of God to man.
"None of the visions, episodes, or stories in these passus have
any ending," says Mr. Jusserand (p. 311), "nor are continued by
what comes next." [Italics mine.] But the facts controvert this
assertion :
1. The vision of the field in the prologue is pure description
(mainly satirical), which in a hundred lines pictures members of nearly
every class in the state, and that without becoming a mere catalogue.
2. The account of Truth by Holy Church in passus 1 is nearly
pure exposition, and, as I have shown, is complete.
3. The adventurous career of Meed ends with her utter disgrace
before the king as a result of Reason's denunciation.
4. The preaching of Conscience and Repentance results in the
conversion of the field of folk. Do "none of the visions, episodes or
stories .... have any ending"?
Let us also see whether any of them are "continued by what
comes next."
1. In the prologue two elements are left undeveloped and un-
explained— the tower and the dungeon. In passus 1 the tower is
explained, and the principles of Truth, who dwells therein, are
expounded by Holy Church. In passus 2 we meet Wrong, the lord
of the dungeon, his offspring, Falsehood, and the latter's associate,
Meed. The prologue, then, is evidently continued by what comes
next.
2. At the end of passus 2 the journey of Meed and her com-
panions to Westminster is interrupted, Meed's following is dispersed,
and Meed herself is arrested. The account of Meed is not abandoned
at this point, as we might expect to find it if Mr. Jusserand 's
28
THE AUTHORSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 29
contention were true. In the following passus (3-4) Meed is brought
before the king for trial, attempts to rescue Wrong by bribery, and
is exposed and put to shame by Reason.
3. Wrong, Meed, and Falsehood having been disposed of, the
account of the people in the field is resumed in passus 5 with the
preaching of Conscience to bring all sinners to repentance. And all
the sinners having repented, no time could be more appropriate
for them to determine to set out on the pilgrimage to the shrine of
Truth. I cannot understand how anyone can maintain that none
of these incidents show a continuation from the preceding.
Mr. Jusserand " outlines" further: " Conscience .... con-
sents at last to kiss Meed, provided Reason agrees he should. Reason
is brought forth, makes a speech on quite different topics, and we
never hear any more of the kiss or the marriage. 'f>ene Pees com to
parlement'; a new episode begins, the word 'pene' being all that
connects it with the previous one. And so on, till the end."
From Mr. Jusserand's "outline" the reader would infer, unless
he himself should read the passage under discussion, that Reason
"makes a speech on quite different topics," finishes, and disappears,
and that Meed also completely disappears, never to return, before
"Pees com to parlement." The fact is that the only speech made
by Reason before the entrance of "Pees" is made before Reason
starts to the court. This speech consists of directions to his boy to
saddle his horse. Furthermore, there is a much more vital connecting
link between Reason and the coming of "Pees" to parliament than
the single word "f>ene." Reason is summoned to court to decide
whether Conscience shall marry Meed; he rides to court, is received
by the king, is invited to sit on the bench, between the king and his
son, and remains there a great while in consultation over the case in
hand, "pene Pees com to parlement, and put vp a Bille" against
Wrong. Whereupon Wisdom and Wit, Wrong's lawyers, with the
aid of Meed, try to secure the release of Wrong through bribery, the
peculiar vice of Meed. Reason's consent to the acquittal? however,
is first necessary. He not only refuses to give consent, but seizes the
opportunity at the close of his speech to denounce outright the
inherent viciousness of Meed. He will have no pity, he says, while
Meed has any power to plead in the king's court. If he were king no
29
30 THOMAS A. KNOTT
one would ever get his grace through bribery. He would punish
every wrong in the world that he could discover, and for no meed
would he have mercy, but only if meekness governed the wrongdoer.
And after this scathing denunciation what becomes of Meed ? There
was no one in the moot-hall who did not hold Reason the master and
Meed a wretch; Love despised her, and laughed her to scorn, and
said: "Who so wilnep hire to wyue for welpe of hire godis, But he be
cokewald ycald, kitte of my nose." Is not this sufficient to dispose
of the proposition to marry Meed to Conscience? Is "f>ene" the
only connection between the episode of " Pees " and the previous one ?
On the contrary, it is evident that the author has displayed great
structural skill in contriving a situation wherein Meed is caught
red-handed in the exercise of her besetting sin, and is therefore
forever ruled out of court, and wherethrough the question of her
marriage to Conscience is disposed of completely and finally.
In the same paragraph Mr. Jusserand makes two other assertions
that do not accord with the facts. "A question of the dreamer how
to know 'the Fals,' of which Fals not a word had been said before, is
all there is of 'structural excellence' in the connecting of the two
episodes." [Italics mine.] First with regard to the previous men-
tion of Fals. The "question of the dreamer" occurs in passus 2,
line 4. In passus 1, line 62, Holy Church has said that Wrong, the
inhabitant of the Dungeon, was the "Fader of Falsness."
Now as to the structural excellence. The prologue mentions a
tower, a dungeon, and a field full of folk. The prologue proceeds to
describe in detail the folk in the field. Passus 1 is devoted to the
Tower of Truth. Passus 3-4 are devoted to the offspring of Wrong,
the owner of the dungeon, and to his followers, especially to Meed,
the most vicious of these followers, and to the problem of her marriage
to Fals or to Conscience. And the introduction of Meed is moti-
vated in the most obvious manner by the denunciation, in the pro-
logue, of classes of people who are intimate with Meed, as well as by
the question of the dreamer about the "money on this mold." It
is difficult, indeed, to understand how such a logical and inevitable
arrangement of material could escape the attention of any critic who
can recognize structural excellence, unless his mind has become
saturated with the conviction that A must be badly organized because
30
THE AUTHOBSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 31
B and C are badly organized; in which case, of course, his precon-
ceived opinion has totally blinded him to the facts.
All the reasoning of those who use the argument depending on
"overlapping" of the deadly sins in A is based on a failure to take
into account the essential nature of the situation. There is no
denying that, in the mediaeval conception, some of the sins over-
lapped some others, or led to some others. Certain kinds of Wrath,
for instance, grew out of some kinds of Envy. Covetousness might
have its root in Envy. Sloth and Gluttony are not without some
common manifestations. Lechery, as we have seen, is regarded as a
sequence of Gluttony. But, on the other hand, there are certain
of the sins which possess qualifications that are never attributed
to others. There would be something wrong if we found Wrath
vowing to eschew lechery, or if Covetousness swore never to be
gluttonous. In spite of Mr. Chambers' ingenious and superficially
plausible reasoning, there must be a fault in the text when we find
Sloth, generally conceived as spiritual negligence or flabbiness (and
so conceived by A), engaging in an abrupt and unparalleled vow to
restore all of his property to some one because he won it wickedly.1
VII. THE NAMES OF PIERS' WIFE AND CHILDREN
One of the imperfections in the A-text which was adopted into
the B-text is the four-line passage naming Piers' wife and children
(7. 71-74), which occurs without connection in the midst of Piers'
speech announcing his intention of undertaking the pilgrimage to the
shrine of Truth, and containing a statement of his preparations for
the journey. The whole passage is as follows:
'And I shal apperaille me, quaP Perkyn, in pilgrymis wyse,
And wende wip ^ow Pe wey til we fynde TreuPe.'
He caste on his cloPis ycloutid and hole,
Hise cokeris and his cuffis for cold of his nailes,
And heng his hoper at his hals in stede of a scrippe:
'A busshel of breed corn bryng me Pere inne, 0
For I wile sowe it my self and siPPe wile I wende. [59.]
And who so helpiP me to eren or any Ping to swynke
1 Spiritual flabbiness and "wicked winnings" present a non sequitur. Idleness (one
of the many branches or consequences of Sloth) and "wicked winnings" present a flat
contradiction. See Mod. Philology, XIV, 557.
31
32 THOMAS A. KNOTT
Shal haue, be oure Lord, Pe more hire in heruest,
And make hym mery wip Pe corn, who so it begrucchip.
And alle kyne crafty men Pat conne lyue in treuPe,
I shal fynde hem foode Pat feipfulliche libbeP,
Saue lakke Pe lugelour and lonete of Pe stewis,
And Robyn Pe ribaudour for hise rusty woordis.
TreuPe tolde me ones, and bad me telle it forper,
Deleantur de libro. I shulde not dele wip hem,
For Holy Chirche is holden of hem no tipe to asken.
Et cum iustis non scribantur.
Pei ben askapid good auntir. Now God hem amende. [70.]
Dame Werche-whanne-tyme-is Piers wyf hatte; [71.]
His doubter hattiP Do-ri^t-so-or-Pi-damme-shal-Pe-bete;
His sone hattiP Sufifre-Pi-souereynes-for-to-hauen-here-wille-
And-deme-hem-nou^t-for-^if-Pou-dost-pou-shalt-it-dere-abiggen. [74.]
Let God worpe wip al, for so his woord techip. [75.]
For now I am old and hor, and haue of myn owene,
To penaunce and to pilgrimage I wile passe with Pis opere.
For Pi I wile er I wende do wryte my bequest.
In Dei nomine, Amen, I make it my seluen.
He shal haue my soule Pat best haP deseruid,
And defende it fro Pe fend, for so I beleue,
Til I come to his acountes, as my crede me techip.
To haue reles and remissioun on Pat rental I leue.
Pe chirche shal haue my careyn, and kepe my bones,
For of my corn and my catel he crauide Pe tipe.
I payede hym prestly, for peril of my soule.
He is holden, I hope, to haue me in mynde,
And menge me in his memorie among alle cristene.
My wyf shal haue of Pat I wan wip treuPe and namore, [89.]
And dele among my frendis and my dere children. [90.]
For Pei^ I dei^e to day my dettis ben quytte.
I bar horn Pat I borewide er I to bedde ^ede.
And wip Pe residue and Pe remenaunt, be Pe Rode of Chestre,
I wile worsshipe Pere wip TreuPe in my lyue,
And ben his pilgrym at Pe plou^ for pore menis sake.
My plou^ pote shal be my pyk staf , and pyche at Pe rotis,
And helpe my cultir to kerue and close Pe forewis.'
Now is Peris and Pe pilgrimes to Pe plou^ faren, etc. [A 7 . 53-98.]
After Mr. Manly suggested that lines 71-74 or 71-75 seemed an
obvious interpolation into the wrong spot of a marginal note, origi-
nally scribbled lengthwise in the margin, opposite lines 89-90, which
THE AUTHORSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 33
mention Piers' wife and children in a logical connection, the sound-
ness of his observation seemed so obvious that it was accepted even
by Mr. Jusserand, who denied only the inference drawn from the
situation. Mr. Chambers, however, argues that the lines are not an
interpolation at all, that they "do not interrupt Piers' remarks about
preparations for his journey," because "Piers' last allusion to his
journey was in 1. 59, twelve lines before the mention of his wife
and children."
Nevertheless, if the reader will read the whole passage, he will
find that the names do interrupt Piers' remarks about preparations
for his journey. Piers' preparations consist of two parts: first, he
must plow and sow his half -acre, as he has said several times before;
the remarks about plowing and sowing occupy lines 58-75 (exclusive
of 71-74). Next, because he is "old and hor," he must have his
will drawn up before he starts (lines 76-92). In his remarks about
cultivating his half-acre he says that those who help him, and all
" crafty" men, shall share his crop, save Jack the Juggler, Janet of the
Stews, and Robin the Ribald, who are to be avoided (70), and with
whom God will deal, as his word teaches (line 75). Between the line
stating that these persons are to be avoided (70) and that con-
signing them to the mercy of God (75) occur the names of Piers'
wife, son, and daughter.
But Mr. Chambers argues that the "name" lines are not in-
appropriate in their position because the lines preceding them are
"an admonition to work," and because "this admonition is then
emphasised and summarised in the names."
On the contrary, the preceding lines do not constitute an admoni-
tion to work, and the name lines do not summarize and emphasize
any such admonition. The preceding lines contain, as I have said,
a plain statement by Piers that those who help him to prepare for
the journey by assisting him to plow and sow will share the crop,
while disreputable persons will not share it. It is only by the isola-
tion of part of the preceding lines and by a forced interpi%tation that
they can be construed as an admonition to work. Further, only one
of the four name lines is a command to work. The wife's name is
"Dame-Werche-whanne-tyme-is." But the daughter's name is a
command to be obedient to her mother: " Do-ri^t-so-or-pi-damme-
33
34 THOMAS A. KNOTT
shal-J>e-bete " (Do exactly thus, or thy mother shall beat thee). The
son's name is a command to permit his sovereigns to have their will,
and not to judge them: "His sone hattif> Suffre-f>i-souereynes-for-
to-hauen-here-wille-And-deme-hem-nou^t-for-^if-pou-dost-pou-
shalt-it-dere-abiggen." It is perfectly evident that these four lines
mean work, obey, submit.
Mr. Chambers believes further that these lines, ungainly as they
seem, belong here because he thinks that in another place the author
of the A-text has introduced "remarks about persons and things,
which seem quite irrelevant, until we scrutinize their names."
In the fourth passus, it will be remembered, Reason, at the end
of his denunciation of Meed, says :
I seije it for my self, and it so were
Pat I were king wip croune to kepe a reaume,
Shulde neuere wrong in Pis world Pat I wyte mi^te
Be vnpunisshit be my power, for peril of my soule,
Ne gete my grace Poru^ giftes, so me God helpe,
Ne for no mede haue mercy, but meknesse it made.
For nullum malum Pe man mette with impunitum, [126.]
And bad nullum bonum be irremuneratum. [127.]
Let Pi confessour, sire king, construe Pe Pis in Englissh,
And ^if Pou werche it in werk, I wedde myne eris,
Pat Lawe shal ben a labourer, and lede afeld donge,
And Loue shal lede Pi land as Pe lef likeP. [A 4. 120-31.]
Skeat in his note to lines 126-27 says: " 'For the man named nullum
malum met with one called inpunitum,' &c. This is merely a way
of introducing the words in italics." Mr. Chambers accepts Skeat's
interpretation, and upon it bases his argument. " What have Nullum
Malum, his meeting with Inpunitum and his remarks to Nullum
Bonum to do with Reason's sermon? Nothing; but putting to-
gether the names of these characters we have a sentence which has
every bearing upon Reason's foregoing words. Similarly, Piers' wife
has nothing to do with his preceding remarks, but the name of Piers'
wife has everything."
There is no doubt that the interpretation put upon the lines from
the fourth passus by Skeat makes them seem nonsense. If, however,
they possess a meaning which is clear, coherent, and sensible, we must
reject any interpretation which has made them appear to be pure
34
THE AUTHORSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 35
nonsense. That the lines do possess a clear and sensible meaning
can be seen immediately if they are compared with their Latin
original, cited by Skeat in his notes: "Ipse est iudex iustus ....
qui nullum malum praeterit impunitum, nullum bonum irremunera-
tum" (Pope Innocent, De Contemptu Mundi, lib. iii, cap. 15). J
In adapting these lines to his poem the author of A maintained
the Latin order and construction as nearly as his English syntax and
the demands of his meter and versification would permit him. He
put "nullum malum," the object, first; "the man" (corresponding
to "iudex"), subject, second; "met with" (corresponding to "prae-
terit"), verb, third; and "impunitum," adjective, last.
The lines obviously mean : " The man met with (i.e., encountered)
no evil unpunished, and ordered no good to be unrewarded." The
two lines contain no names, do not make nonsense, and fit perfectly
into their context. Therefore they do not support Mr. Chambers'
contention that it is a favorite trick of the author of the A-text to
insert names incoherently into his text.
We do not have in passus 7 a "favorite" ungainly trick of our
author's; the name lines are not an emphatic summary of an admoni-
tion to work; there is no admonition to work in the passage to con-
nect them with; and they do interrupt Piers' remarks about his
preparations for his journey. It is evident, then, that they are an
interpolation absurdly introduced into the text — an interpolation
which was not noticed and corrected by B when he revised the
text of A.
vin. "REARRANGING THE TEXT"
Mr. Chambers entitles his fourth section "The Rearranged
Text Compared with the Text Given in the MSS."
In this section Mr. Chambers discusses two perfectly distinct
problems in so confused a manner that it is almost impossible for the
reader to keep the problems apart. His argument, however, in
brief is: (1) that Dr. Bradley 's proposed shift of the lines about
Restitution and Robert the Robber to the end of Uovetousness
1 In the work attributed to Bede, Sententiae, sive axiomata philosophica, occurs a
"sentence," "Nullum malum impunitum, nullum bonum irremuneratum," ascribed to
"Boetius, Consol., lib. iv, Prov. (sic; 1. prosa) 1." (Venerabilis Bedae Opera, Migne,
Patrologiae Latinae, Tomus xc.) In Boetius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, lib. iv, prosa 1,
occurs a passage approximating this in sense only: ". . . . cognosces .... nee sine
poena unquam esse vitia nee sine praemio virtutes."
35
36 THOMAS A. KNOTT
(all in passus 5) is unnecessary; (2) that Mr. Manly 's proposal to
reject from the text the "name" lines in passus 7 (71-74) is untenable.
First, we may consider what Mr. Chambers says with regard to
the "rearrangement" of the Restitution-Robert the Robber lines
(p. 16) : " Three rearrangements are suggested : that of Prof. Manly,
followed by Mr. Knott; that of Dr. Bradley, followed by Dr. Fur-
nivall and M. Jusserand; and that arrived at independently by
Prof. Brown and Mr. Hall. And each critic finds serious difficulties
in the rearrangements suggested by the others."
As I have pointed out (Modern Philology, XIV, 549), Mr. Manly
and I have never proposed a rearrangement of the text in passus 5.
Mr. Chambers attempts to explain the unevenness in the treat-
ment of the deadly sins in passus 5, the absence of Wrath, and the
contiguity of Sloth and Restitution on the hypothesis that the poet's
object is not to present a systematic theological account of each one
of the sins, but that his object throughout the whole poem is merely
to denounce the corruption of the official classes and the laziness
of the poor.
Mr. Chambers has failed to observe that a distinction is to be
drawn between the "object" of the poet and the structure of the
poem. The object of the poet, however, was not to denounce greed
and idleness except incidentally. His main object was to show what
the people of the world must do to escape evil and to attain truth.
The structure of the poem is admirably designed to carry out the
object. The prologue, as I have already said, presents three things:
(1) the tower on the toft; (2) the dungeon in the dale; (3) the field
full of folk; that is, heaven, hell, and the world, or good, evil, and the
world. Passus 1 reveals the meaning of the tower. Passus 2-4
reveal the inmates of the dungeon and picture their invasion of the
world. Passus 5-7 return to the field of folk, showing what would
happen if Reason and Conscience ruled them, as proposed at the end
of passus 4. At the preaching of Conscience the folk abandon their
deadly sins, and, avowedly as a preparation for setting out on the
pilgrimage to the shrine of Truth, join Piers in honest occupation.
Mr. Chambers' assertion that the way to Truth is the way of
honest labor does not accord with the author's expressly stated belief.
Piers points out the way to Truth in passus 6, lines 50-117. It leads
36
THE AUTHORSHIP OF " PIERS THE PLOWMAN " 37
through meekness, conscience, love of God and man, and the per-
formance of the Ten Commandments to a tower surrounded by a
moat of mercy and guarded by a gate-ward named Grace, to which
entrance may be gained through the seven virtues — the antitheses
of the seven deadly sins. It is only when the pilgrims despair over the
difficulties of this journey that Piers agrees to guide them, and then
only if they will aid him in making his preparations. See the opening
of passus 7. The labor of Piers and the pilgrims does not constitute
the pilgrimage to Truth. It is only a preliminary to the pilgrimage.
The purpose of passus 5 is not to emphasize the worthiness of
honest labor. It is to show what the folk in the field must do to
be saved. They must repent of their sins. The absence of Wrath
is therefore not explicable. Nor is the obvious incompleteness of the
account of Envy explicable. On this point Mr. Chambers is silent.
In order to conform to the plan of the passus, as evidenced by the
treatment accorded to the other sins, Envy should repent. That
he does not do so would be sufficient reason to suppose a lacuna at this
point even if Wrath were not absent. There is therefore a cogent
reason to believe that the author of A included an account of Wrath,
and in his own original MS caused Envy to repent.
If, then, my understanding of the object of the poet and of the
structure of the poem is correct, the poet did not present Gluttony,
Sloth, Robert, and the Palmer because they were idlers and therefore
were foils to Piers, the honest laborer. He presented the deadly sins
in passus 5 to show how all sinful persons in the world ought to
repent. He presented the Palmer to show that the professional
pilgrim was ignorant of the path to the shrine of Truth. He pre-
sented Piers to show that path — through meekness, conscience, love,
the Ten Commandments, and the seven virtues.
In this section also Mr. Chambers tries to force Mr. Manly to
stand sponsor for a new "shift" theory, the sheer creation of Mr.
Chambers himself, regarding the disposition to be m^de of the
"name" passage (7. 71-74). Mr. Chambers says:
Remove [these lines] and we have a crude transition.1 And where are
we to place them? Professor Manly would dismiss them as an expansion
1 As regards the "crude transition," if we remove the four lines, the line following
(75) fits perfectly with the line preceding (70). The passage will then read:
37
38 THOMAS A. KNOTT
of a marginal gloss — a device which has served the turn of innumerable
critics. But the names cannot have been the marginal glosses of a scribe,
for they alliterate. [Italics his.] It is certain that whoever invented the
names of wife Work, daughter Do, and son Suffer meant them to take their
place in an alliterative text. Therefore the lines, if removed at all, must
be placed elsewhere. But to insert them after 11. 89, 90, in the will, is to
cause an interruption. A man does not name himself in the third person in
his will.
In Mr. Chambers' judgment, then, these lines must be authentic
because they alliterate, for " whoever invented the names .... meant
them to take their place in an alliterative text." It is, however, an
unsafe leap to the conclusion that the composer of the lines must have
been the author of the poem, and that the author must have intended
them to occur where they do. The various MSS of the A-text ex-
hibit scores of unauthentic lines, some of them in small subgroups of
MSS, many in only one MS (e. g., Harl. 875). Composing alliterative
interpolations was obviously a common diversion of scribe-editors.
To argue that such lines, or any lines, must be attributed to the
author of " Piers the Plowman " because they alliterate would be further,
I believe, than Mr. Chambers would care to go, especially since on
p. 9 he argues directly to the contrary.
Nor can Mr. Chambers maintain that the "name" lines, "if
removed at all, must be placed elsewhere." And the argument which
he urges against placing them in the will — " a man does not name him-
self in the third person in his will" — holds with even greater force
against retaining them in their present position. They occur in the
MSS in the midst of a speech by Piers. And a man does not name
himself in the third person in the middle of one of his own speeches.
Mr. Manly has not proposed to shift these lines. He is not
required to find any other position for them. It is enough to point
out that they do not belong where they are, and that quite as evi-
dently they do not belong in the text in any other connection, the
Treube tolde me ones, and bad me telle it former,
Deleantur de libro. I shulde not dele wit) hem,
For holy chirche is holden of hem no tibe to asken.
Et cum iustis non scribantur.
bei ben askapid good auntir. Now God hem amende. [70.]
Let God worbe wib al, for so his woord techib. [75.]
Mr. Manly remarks to me that he is still doubtful whether the interpolation consists of
four or of five lines. Line 75 might be part of the son's name. Even in that case,
however, the transition is not "crude." It is simply a transition from one paragraph of
Piers' speech to another closely related paragraph.
38
THE AUTHORSHIP OF "PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 39
latter point being urged by Mr. Chambers himself. That these
lines, an obviously accidental and unconnected interpolation, were
accepted by B and C carries its own inference.
Mr. Chambers further says:
Finally, it must be remembered that evidence which might be sufficient
to show a probability of interpolations, or of lost or shifted leaves, in a one
MS text, is insufficient in the case of a text preserved in thirteen MSS, which
seem to have remarkably few common errors, and the archetype of which, if
not actually the author's holograph, was probably not far removed therefrom.
When Prof. Manly suggests that 11. 71-74 of Passus VII are a scribe's
gloss, which has been absurdly introduced into the text in a wrong position,
it must be remembered that such a corruption postulates tune and a succes-
sion of copyists [p. 14].
And yet on pp. 26-27, in discussing "Problems of the Texts,"
Mr. Chambers points out that all extant MSS of B have the incor-
rect reading "of bread full" in prologue 41 instead of "bretful,
bredful," as in A and C. In other words, according to Mr. Chambers,
all the MSS of B certainly are descended from a corrupt archetype,
but all the MSS of A could not have descended from a corrupt
archetype. Surely, if it is demonstrable that all MSS of one version
are incorrect, it is legitimate for Mr. Manly to argue, on such
strong grounds, that all MSS of another version are incorrect.
"«:
IX. THE DIALECT OF A 1, A 2, AND B
Mr. Manly has pointed out demonstrable differences in dialect
between the A-text and the B-text. Mr. Chambers in reply has
emphasized the fact that only four MSS out of forty-seven are in
print, and that both printed and unprinted MSS exhibit the widest
dialect variations. He has made much of the fact that in one and
the same line some MSS of the A-text have are, while others have
ben, bep. The difficulty of classifying a large body of such com-
plicated material is of course obvious. In his discussion Mr.
Chambers implies that until this mass of material has been classified
we can in no case determine what was the original dialect form. On
p. 22, in footnote 2, however, Mr. Chambers recognizes the validity
of the method of determining original dialect forms, which was
pointed out by Mr. Manly in Modern Philology, July, 1909, p. 124:
"If we find, for example, that no instance of 'are' occurs in A 1 and
39
40 THOMAS A. KNOTT
that instances occur in A 2, which, because they are essential to the
alliteration, clearly proceed from the author and not from a scribe,
we are justified in concluding, even if the texts of A 2 contain also
instances of 'ben,' that, in all probability, A 2 used 'are' and A 1 did
not." In other words, Mr. Manly proposes to use the same criterion
used by Mr. Chambers, who says: "The alliteration seems to show
that in B XII. 195 (and perhaps also in B XIV. 222) 'ben' was the
original form."
A 1 is shown by the alliteration to have used only the present
plural form "ben, bef>":
Beggeris and bidderis ben not in Pe bulle. [A 8 . 68 (A 1) .]
A 2 is shown by the alliteration to have used also the form arn:
Angeles and alle Ping arn at his wille. [A 10.31 (A 2).]
There are in the A-text (A 1) several lines in which the feminine
pronoun "heo" is shown by the alliteration to have been the original
form. In no case is the situation such that "she" is required by the
alliteration in A 1 :
I au^te ben hi^ere Panne heo, I com of a betere. [A 2.21.]
The B-text, on the other hand, is shown by the alliteration to have
employed also the form "she" (as well, sometimes, as "heo"):
But sothenesse wolde nou^t so, for she is a bastarde. [B 2 . 24.]
Mr. Manly's assertion, therefore, that the dialect of the A-text
differs from that of the B-text (and that A 1 differs from A 2), rests
upon a type of evidence which Mr. Chambers himself accepts.
X. SUMMARY
Some minor parts of Mr. Chambers' paper I have not replied
to. I have for the most part paid no attention to those arguments,
repeated from Mr. Jusserand, which had been answered by Mr.
Manly in Modern Philology, VII, 83-144, six months before Mr.
Chambers' paper appeared.
I believe, however, that I have shown that Robert the Robber
is not an exemplification of Sloth, and that Sloth was not conceived
in the fourteenth century as a sin that resulted in the accumulation
of wicked winnings; Mr. Chambers' contention that robbery and
wicked winnings belong under Sloth, and that there is no break in the
40
THE AUTHORSHIP OF " PIERS THE PLOWMAN" 41
text at that point (5. 235-36), is therefore untenable. I have shown
that A, in the perfectly transmitted parts, is not "incoherent," but
that he exhibits remarkable structural skill; Mr. Chambers' a priori
argument that A is as "incoherent" elsewhere as in the Sloth-
Restitution-Robber combination is therefore untenable. I have
shown that the "name" lines in passus 7 (71-74) are an interpola-
tion; Mr. Chambers' assertion that B has not here accepted a serious
and extensive textual blunder is therefore untenable. I have
shown that the dialect of A 1 is different from that of A 2 and from B,
using for the determination of original dialect forms only criteria
that Mr. Chambers himself has explicitly approved; this evidence
corroborates the belief that A 1, A 2, and B were three different poets.
I have furthermore pointed out above1 that Mr. Chambers in his
final summary2 (p. 32), by implication — indeed, by direct affirmation
— has understated and misrepresented Mr. Manly's whole case.
That those few of Mr. Manly's arguments which I have restated
in this paper are not "assumptions" (Mr. Chambers' term) I feel
confident I have been able to prove. The full presentation of all
the arguments awaits only the establishment of the critical texts
of the B- and the C-versions.
THOMAS A. KNOTT
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
» Mod. Philology, XIV, p. 533. - Mod. Lang. Rev., V.
41
ANTONY'S AMAZING "I WILL TO EGYPT"
Among the characters for whom Shakespeare seems to have had
a certain fondness, and who in consequence appeal most deeply to
us, the hero of Antony and Cleopatra must surely be included. This
is the more surprising in view of the fact that few of Shakespeare's
men are faultier, and certainly not one of those with whom we sym-
pathize is placed in a more unsympathetic position. The need of
Hamlet to perform a deed which he cannot bring himself to accom-
plish, the helplessness of Othello to compete against lago's cunning,
the impotent rage of the mighty exiled Lear — these are all appealing
because of the essential nobility of the character and the magnitude
and hopelessness of the struggle. In Antony also there is an element
of grandeur, but in his struggle there is something ignoble.
It is not that Antony's love for Cleopatra is itself in violation of
morality; it is rather that we feel a certain paltriness in his effort
to free himself from her, and to take his rightful place in the world of
men. This feeling does not come to us as we see the enslaved giant
in Act I. It is the greatness of his love that we first realize, and not
the mere shame of it on which Demetrius and Philo are commenting
when the play begins. We know that the struggle is coming; and
when Antony himself says:
These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage
I must from this enchanting queen break off;
Ten thousand harms, more than the ills I know,
My idleness doth hatch,
we are ready to witness a mighty contest between the man's two
natures. Before the act closes Antony has gone to take his stand
with Caesar against the warring Pompey, though he goes as Cleo-
patra's " soldier" and with her spell still upon him.
Immediately upon his arrival in Rome, however, Antony makes
his peace with Caesar, and readily agrees to bind it by marrying
Caesar's sister, Octavia. At the close of this scene Enobarbus throws
out the hint that Antony will not leave Cleopatra utterly. So far
43] 43 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, May, 1917
44 HENRY DAVID GRAY
the issue is clearly defined. But we come now to the scene which
throws us completely out of our calculations, and shows us an
Antony who is neither loyal in his love to Cleopatra nor in the least
concerned to free himself from her. We are robbed at once both of
the truly tragic hero and of that conflict of will which Brunetiere
says is essential to all drama. The scene is so brief, and I must
refer to it so constantly, that I give it entire :
[Enter Antony, Caesar, Octavia between them, and Attendants.]
Ant. The world and my great office will sometimes
Divide me from your bosom.
Octa. All which time
Before the gods my knee shall bow my prayers
To them for you. Good night, sir.1
Ant. My Octavia,
Read not my blemishes in the world's report.
I have not kept my square; but that to come
Shall all be done by the rule. Good night, dear lady.
Good night, sir.
Caes. Good night. [Exeunt all but Antony.
[Enter Soothsayer]
Ant. Now, sirrah, you do wish yourself in Egypt ?
Sooth. Would I had never come from thence, nor you either.2
Ant. If you can, your reason ?
Sooth. I see it in
My motion, have it not in my tongue; but yet
Hie you to Egypt again.
Ant. Say to me
Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's or mine ?
Sooth. Caesar's.
Therefore, O Antony, stay not by his side.
Thy demon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is
Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable,
1 This is my own reading. The folios and all modern editors (so far as I know)
give the last three words to Antony, while many editors have followed the Second Folio
in giving the second "Good night, sir" to Octavia on the ground that Antony has already
said "good night" to Caesar. But, as Malone says, Caesar immediately answers this,
and for Antony to say "Good night, sir" twice to Caesar is, as Ritson remarks, absurd.
It is equally absurd for him to turn and say " Good night, sir" to Caesar before answering
Octavia, and for Shakespeare to leave her with no "good night" to Antony.
8 This is again my own emendation. The text reads, "Nor you thither." Mason
noted that the sense requires "hither" rather than "thither." I see no reason why
"either," or perhaps the double negative "neither," should not be substituted. The
line with "thither" or with "hither" implies some sort of contrast in the coming of
Antony and the Soothsayer, which, of course, is not the case.
44
ANTONY'S AMAZING "I WILL TO EGYPT" 45
Where Caesar's is not; but near him thy angel
Becomes a fear, as being o'erpowered: therefore
Make space enough between you.
Ant. Speak this no more.
Sooth. To none but thee; no more, but when to thee.
If thou dost play with him at any game
Thou art sure to lose; and, by that natural luck,
He beats thee 'gainst the odds; thy luster thickens
When he shines by. I say again, thy spirit
Is all afraid to govern thee near him,
But he away, 'tis noble.
Ant. Get thee gone;
Say to Ventidius I would speak with him. [Exit Soothsayer.
He shall to Parthia. Be it art or hap,
He hath spoken true; the very dice obey him,
And in our sports my better cunning faints
Under his chance: if we draw lots, he speeds;
His cocks do win the battle still of mine
When it is all to naught, and his quails ever
Beat mine, inhooped, at odds. I will to Egypt;
And though I make this marriage for my peace,
In the east my pleasure lies.
[Enter Ventidius.]
0, come, Ventidius,
You must to Parthia; your commission's ready;
Follow me and receive it. [Exeunt.
That Antony, immediately after what he has said to Octavia,
and before he is even married to her, should turn with his nonchalant
"I will to Egypt" to plan his second infidelity in advance comes to
me like a slap in the face. We cannot believe that he is insincere
in what he says to her; there is nothing of that tone in his gratui-
tous assurances. Knight says: "Shakespeare has most skilfully
introduced the Soothsayer at the moment when Antony's moral
weakness appears to have put on some show of strength." But in
this scene Antony is not only weak; he is contemptible. Macbeth
is weak; but there is something magnificent in his career of crime.
Yet the fact remains that Antony is one of Shakespeare's mightiest
men ; and when we blot from our minds this one impression of sudden
horror, he appeals to our deepest sympathies almost as truly as
Macbeth.
45
46 HENRY DAVID GRAY
It is not that Antony will return to Egypt — we have known that ;
we are prepared for that. It is the occasion, the moment at which
he says it, that gives us this sickening sense of aversion to him, and
the feeling that there is no genuine conflict, no real struggle in the
man's soul. Furthermore, the dramatic interest comes to a sudden
halt. It is not the time for this decision to be reached. This thought
led me to the conviction that something must be wrong with the
text, that the Soothsayer portion of this scene must somehow have
got out of place, that perhaps Shakespeare originally put it at the
end of this act.1
So radical a theory could never win credence with any sober-
minded critic unless there were abundant evidence to support it.
Is there anything more than a mere aesthetic and personal reaction
to warrant the idea that this scene has indeed been shifted, and that
Shakespeare himself placed it elsewhere? There is such evidence,
and whether or not that evidence is sufficient I now submit.
Antony's first line in Act II, spoken to Ventidius, "If we com-
pose well here, to Parthia," must refer to the impending war with
Pompey. It could not refer to any adjustment between Antony
and Caesar, as has been suggested, for that would not liberate
Antony's general for other conquests. Antony's purpose in coming,
his purpose in having Ventidius with him, is to meet Pompey.2 It
would be therefore wholly impossible for him to send Ventidius
away at this point in the action. I do not qualify this statement;
I repeat, it would be wholly impossible. It must be remembered
also that this war was imminent. As soon as the marriage with
Octavia is arranged, Lepidus says,
Time calls upon us;
Of us must Pompey presently be sought,
Or else he seeks out us.
And Antony answers,
Haste we for it;
Yet, e'er we put ourselves in arms, dispatch we
The business we have talked of.
» I am indebted for suggestions to various members of my 1914 Shakespeare seminar
at Stanford, in which this question first arose. I regret that I cannot give individual
and specific acknowledgment to some of the members of this class.
2 This is not presented as the sole cause of Antony's leaving, but it is the chief and
immediate cause, as Antony says both to Enobarbus and to Cleopatra.
46
ANTONY'S AMAZING "I WILL TO EGYPT" 47
Caesar agrees to bring him at once to Octavia. In the following
scene we have presumably the conclusion of this meeting; yet the
Soothsayer speaks of games and sports, of cock fights and contests
with quails, in which Caesar is habitually the winner. Shakespeare
does not thus indicate the passing of time when there is neither cause
nor excuse for it. Until Pompey was disposed of, there could have
been no time for cock and quail fights, and for that protracted
stay at Caesar's court which the lines unequivocally indicate.
It may be noted in passing that when Antony questions the sooth-
sayer he merely asks, "Whose fortunes shall rise higher, Caesar's
or mine?" Until the difficulty with Pompey was adjusted, this
question could not arise.
A still more convincing reason for believing that the Sooth-
sayer portion of this scene does not belong here is that there is an
inherent contradiction in the lines themselves. Both Antony and
Caesar regard the marriage as a means of binding them perma-
nently together; Antony could have no other motive for wel-
coming the idea so avidly; and both he and Caesar know that, if
this marriage is to unite them, it must not be profaned. To return
to Cleopatra after being wedded to Octavia would mean for
Antony not peace but war. Of that there could not be the faintest
trace of doubt in his mind. It was therefore wholly impossible
for him to say, " And though I make this marriage for my peace,"
and immediately add that he would return to Egypt for his pleasure.
If, however, the scene came at the end of Act II, after he had long
been married to Octavia, after he had wearied of such unsatisfying
pastimes as cock and quail fighting with the tedious and punctilious
Caesar, after he had tried and failed to free himself from Cleo-
patra's power, he could then make the essential contrast which the
lines denote in saying,
I will to Egypt;
And though I made this marriage for my peace,
In the east my pleasure lies. ^
This may show him weak and wicked if you will, but at least it
will not set him down as an absolute fool. The slight change of
tense was of course essential when the scene was shifted to its
present place.
47
48 HENRY DAVID GRAY
One further consideration may strengthen our conviction that
Shakespeare really placed the Soothsayer's entrance where the
exigencies of the drama demand it instead of where we find it in the
Folio. This is that Plutarch himself records the advice of the Sooth-
sayer and the sending of Ventidius to Parthia immediately after the
banquet and the settlement with Pompey, which is exactly the place
in which they ought to come. Though, of course, Shakespeare felt
perfectly free to rearrange his material, and though in this very play
there are several instances of such a readjustment, yet on the whole
Shakespeare followed Plutarch closely here, and, what is much more
to the point, his rearrangements are always to secure a definite
dramatic gain. But if in this instance he chose to make the change
which we find in the text, it could be only for the purpose of need-
lessly defaming his hero's character, and that at a very considerable
dramatic loss.1
The remaining scenes in the act accord with the arrangement
that I have suggested. In scene v Cleopatra learns of Antony's mar-
riage, but her fury lacks point if we have already heard him announce
his intention to return. Dramatically, this scene should aid the
suspense which Antony's departure and his marriage to Octavia has
1 After describing the feast on Pompey's galley, Plutarch continues: "Antonius,
after this agreement made, sent Ventidius before into Asia, to stay the Parthians, and to
keep them that they should come no farther; and he himself in the meantime, to gratify
Caesar, was contented to be chosen Julius Caesar's priest and sacriflcer, and so they
jointly together dispatched all great matters concerning the state of the Empire. But in
all manner of sports and exercises, wherein they passed the time away, the one with the
other, Antonius was ever inferior unto Caesar, and always lost, which grieved him much.
With Antonius there was a soothsayer or astronomer of Egypt, that could cast a figure
and judge of men's nativities, to tell them what should happen to them. He, either to
please Cleopatra, or else for that he found it so by his art, told Antonius plainly that his
fortune (which of itself was excellent good and very great) was altogether blemished and
obscured by Caesar's fortune; and therefore he counseled him utterly to leave his com-
pany, and to get him as far from him as he could. ' For thy demon,' said he ' (that is to
say the good angel and spirit that keepeth thee), is afraid of his; and being courageous
and high when he is alone, becometh fearful and timorous when he cometh near unto the
other.' Howsoever it was, the events ensuing proved the Egyptian's words true. For,
it is said, that as often as they two drew cuts for pastime, who should have anything, or
whether they played at dice, Antonius always lost. Oftentimes they were disposed to
see cockfight, or quails that were taught to fight one with another; Caesar's cocks or
quails did ever overcome. The which spited Antonius in his mind, although he made
no outward show of it; and therefore he believed the Egyptian the better. In fine, he
recommended the affairs of his house unto Caesar, and went out of Italy with Octavia
his wife, whom he carried into Greece, after he had a daughter by her. So Antonius
lying all winter at Athens, news came unto him of the victories of Ventidius, who had
overcome the Parthians in battle."
48
ANTONY'S AMAZING "I WILL TO EGYPT" 49
aroused. In scene vi Pompey makes his peace with the triumvirate.
They did indeed "compose well here," and Pompey says,
I crave our composition may be written,
And sealed between us.
Again, and this is of real significance, note how the hints of Eno-
barbus later in the scene, that "Octavia is of a holy, cold, and still
conversation," and that in consequence Antony "will to his Egyptian
dish again," renew our interest in the main situation. But what
value is there, dramatic or other, in this "prophecy" of Enobarbus
if we already know from Antony's own lips that he had resolved to
go back to Cleopatra, before ever he was married to Octavia ? The
shrewdness of the somewhat gross-minded realist gives him the
natural right to anticipate Antony's return before Antony himself
would realize it.1 His place in the economy of the drama is here
distinctly that of preparation for Antony's own resolve to return.
Here, then, are eight indications, of which at least three are
unescapable, that the scene in question is out of place, and that in
consequence Antony is a fit hero for a lofty tragedy. For though
this change is in itself so slight, I believe that the difference it makes
in our interpretation of the drama is far-reaching. If the scene does
indeed come where we are accustomed to read it, we must interpret
Antony as a man who is completely under the dominance of Cleo-
patra, who makes no slightest effort to free himself from her (as he
determines in Act I that he will do), yet who is as grossly false to his
vows of love as he. is to his vows of marriage. He is not warm-
blooded and impulsive, generous and noble, as he shows himself
throughout all the rest of the drama. He is no longer one of the
world's great lovers; he is simply coldly faithless for the sake of
policy. Nor is he even a clever politician, which at least he has shown
himself to be in Julius Caesar? For, as I have already said, no man
of even an ordinary amount of intelligence could enter into a marriage
1 Compare his "aside," III, xiii, 88. Here, as always, Enobarbus interprets and
anticipates the action.
2 1 do not in the least mean to say that we should look for consistency in Antony's
portrayal in the two plays. The difference which we feel so strongly is not that between
a young man and the same man in middle age. It is not even the difference of the
politician who has grown into a statesman. The character is entirely re-created, which
seems to have been Shakespeare's custom even in revising a play. Thus we may find two
different Capulets in Romeo and Juliet and two Birons in Love's Labour's Lost.
49
50 HENRY DAVID GRAY
for the sake of peace and confide to us in advance his intention of
returning to his mistress.
But with the change I have suggested we have an Antony who
makes a genuine effort to free himself from Cleopatra's bondage,
who marries Octavia in the resolve to live henceforth "by the rule,"
and who does indeed remain constant for a considerable period (as
Plutarch recorded). His resolve to return, if spoken at the end of
Act II, becomes not a cold-blooded predetermination to prove
unfaithful, but rather a momentary impulse which has not yet gained
full control of him. For I cannot feel that Antony's parting from
Caesar in Act III, where his attitude toward both Caesar and Octavia
rings true and loyal and affectionate, is merely the acting of an arch-
hypocrite. The lines do not read so. The thought of Cleopatra is
here, I take it, only subconsciously with him.1 Even in his parting
from Octavia in scene iv there is no warrant for believing that
Antony is merely making an excuse to be rid of her. It is a subtle
and insidious force that is drawing him back to Egypt. His return
is not calculated, it is inevitable. He has no soliloquies of doubt or
struggle, like Hamlet and Macbeth. We simply learn that the thing
has happened; and when we next see Cleopatra, her finally enslaved
Antony is with her.
There are two objections to our transferring the Soothsayer
scene to the end of Act II. One is the very obvious objection that
in our only authority, the Folio, it does not come there, and we may
well question how it got into its present position if Shakespeare really
placed it somewhere else. My answer to this difficulty is simply to
state the second reason that may be urged against transferring the
scene, namely, that Ventidius opens Act III with the announcement
that his expedition has been victorious and Parthia subdued. To
avoid bringing immediately together the starting upon an expedi-
tion and its success, it was natural enough to push this short scene
forward, and to join it to a scene where Antony is already present.2
1 If I may be permitted the comparison, the next scene has somewhat the value of
an "insert" in a motion-picture play. When a character is thinking of, or remembering,
some incident, the action is halted while that incident itself is thrown upon the screen.
It is thus that we see Cleopatra again, hoping for Antony's return, and feeling that
because of Octavia's insufficiency, "all may be well enough."
2 Superficially considered, too, Antony's resolve to return to Cleopatra would be
dramatically effective immediately after his new resolve to remarry and break from her
forever.
50
ANTONY'S AMAZING "I WILL TO EGYPT" 51
There was abundant opportunity for the making of this change after
Shakespeare's death, and before the altered manuscript served as
copy for the First Folio.1 If the scene fitted perfectly at the end of
the act, I should indeed wonder how it could ever have been mis-
placed, for such a shifting could scarcely have resulted from mere
accident.
But is not this objection sufficient to prevent our believing that
the scene ever came at the end of Act II ? It is not Shakespeare's
way to send his character on a mission and then to open his next
scene, even if that scene begins a new act, with an announcement
that the whole business is over. It would be as if the King in
Hamlet sent Cornelius and Voltimand to Norway at the very end
of Act I and welcomed their return in the opening lines of Act II.
It would be even a more serious breach of dramatic principles than
that, for Ventidius must subdue all Parthia in this imaginary inter-
val. And though Ventidius gains but a few hours of actual time by
his earlier leaving, the friendly audience will grant him unlimited
" stage time" during the feasting on Pompey's galley.
A possible means of avoiding this difficulty would be to place
the scene before, instead of after, the concluding scene of Act II; but
here it would directly contradict the action as described in scene vi.
There we read (lines 82-84) :
Pomp. Aboard my galley I invite you all;
Will you lead, lords ?
Caes.
Ant.
Show us the way, sir.
Ley.
Pomp. Come.
And together they all enter in scene vii. It is true that it would be
characteristic of Shakespeare to break up the two Pompey scenes
by a brief return to some other aspect of the story; and especially
is it unlike him to give so much time to the Pompey episode while
the main theme of the drama is held in abeyance. In ^ cene vi the
trouble with Pompey is completely adjusted, so that there is no
further call for Ventidius to remain; and, wonderful as it is in itself,
i The text of Antony and Cleopatra shows other symptoms of having been tampered
with. The use of the pronouns of address in this play is wholly at variance with Shake-
speare's custom.
51
52 HENRY DAVID GRAY
there is no dramatic purpose served by this final scene of the act
unless it supplies the essential "stage time" for Ventidius to subdue
Parthia.
But in spite of all these considerations, I still feel that the Sooth-
sayer scene was placed by Shakespeare at the end of Act II. That
Ventidius, as conqueror of Parthia, opens Act III is the only serious
objection; and the objection is here, not that there is any impossi-
bility about it, but simply that it is not Shakespeare's usual way.
I should let this consideration determine me against my thesis, were
it not that so much greater difficulties attend our leaving the scene
where it is, or placing it anywhere else. In Antony and Cleopatra
Shakespeare does not adhere in many other ways to his usual
methods; and he may have felt free to proceed with his story without
his customary device of giving a seeming sequence to events which
were widely separated in time.1
HENRY DAVID GRAY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CALIFORNIA
i It is possible that Act III opened with a Cleopatra scene which was afterward
cut out, and that this caused the shif ting of the Soothsayer scene.
52
TWO NOTES ON THE TRIAL OF TREASURE
Although the editorial comments on the play of New Custom, in
the Hazlitt-Dodsley edition, have in some cases elucidated the text1
by references to Foxe's Acts and Monuments of Martyrs, the same
service is not performed for The Trial of Treasure, published in the
same volume. In the latter play an allusion made by Just, in the
course of an invective against the Papists, is rendered intelligible
through an incident recorded by Foxe among instances of persecu-
tions under Mary. This circumstance enables us to date the play,
in its present form, somewhat more definitely than has heretofore
been possible.2
The characters Just, Trust, and Contentation are engaged in a
harmonious discussion of the virtues which they represent, and the
opposite vices. In the contribution of Just the emphasis falls on
ambition, which, in the words of the speaker,
.... Chiefly did reign
Among those that should be examples to other;
We saw how their brethren they did disdain,
And burned with fire the child with the mother.3
Foxe has recorded a single instance, among English martyrdoms,
of the burning of a child with its mother. The heading of the section
in the Acts and Monuments that is devoted to the occurrence runs
as follows: "A tragicall lamentable and pitiful History, full of most
cruel and tyrannical murther done by the pretended Catholicks
upon three Women and an Infant; to wit the Mother, her two
Daughters, and the Child, in the Isle of Gurnsey, for Christs true
Religion, the year of our Lord 1556 July 18. "4 The main features
1 Hazlitt-Dodsley, Old Plays, ed. 1874, III; see especially pp. 11, 35.
2 The first printed edition is that of 1567, and certain passages indicate that the
date of composition is early in Elizabeth's reign. The most significant of these are men-
tioned by Creizenach, Oeschichte des neueren Dramas (Halle, 1903), III, 525. See also
Halliwell, Percy Society, XXVIII, Preface to The Trial of Treasure, and Farmer's note
in Anonymous Plays (London, 1906), Ser. 3, pp. 299-300.
a Hazlitt-Dodsley, op. cit., p. 285.
4 Acts and Monuments, ed. 1684, III, 625. The account of the affair, together with
the record of a protracted theological wrangle which took rise from it, occupies pp. 625-32.
53] 53 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, May, 1917
54 E. BEATRICE DAW
of the story are these. The three women referred to in the heading
were arrested on suspicion of heresy and sentenced to be burned.
One of the women, by name Perotine, was pregnant at the time, and
at the first pain of the flames her body burst open and the child fell
into the fire. It was rescued by a bystander, but at the command of
the bailiff was again thrown into the flames. The brother of Pero-
tine brought supplication to Queen Elizabeth for the punishment of
the persecutors in 1562, and all those who had taken active part in
the affair were accused.1
Since this record supplies the only known historical instance which
illustrates the words of Just, it is doubtless the source of the allusion.
Moreover, the incident would hardly have become sufficiently
familiar matter to warrant such a reference until the suit had been
brought to court and been made the subject of London talk. One
would therefore hesitate to date the play in its present form earlier
than 1562.
A further suggestion as to the background of the play draws
upon very different material. It will be remembered that the comic
relief in The Trial of Treasure is supplied almost exclusively by a series
of incidents in which one of the characters assumes the role of a
fractious horse. Inclination, the Vice, after having been forcibly
bridled by Just, is mistaken for an actual horse by Greedy-gut, the
satellite Vice, who, however, soon recognizes him and is prevailed
upon to set him free. Later he is securely bridled again, and after
a vigorous resistance led from the stage.
The device, as is seen, is exploited to the utmost, and the crude
fun of the affair, largely a matter of kicking and neighing, fits awk-
wardly into the humorless disputations which constitute the greater
part of the play. One would hesitate to credit a dramatist otherwise
so consistently lifeless with the invention of this bit of noisy farce;
and the record of a much older morality proves beyond question
that The Trial of Treasure was not the first drama to divert an Eng-
lish audience with "horse play" in this literal sense. Mr. T. S.
Graves, in an article which appeared a few years ago,2 brings forward,
1 They submitted themselves to the Queen's pardon, and were later acquitted
(Foxe, loc. cit.).
2 "Some Allusions to Religious and Political Plays," Modern Philology, IX, 545-54.
54
Two NOTES ON "THE TRIAL OF TREASURE" 55
in another connection, a letter written by the Spanish ambassador
to England, which describes the performance of a morality at a
royal banquet in 1522. The central incident in this play was the
forcible bridling, by Friendship, Prudence, and Might, of an unruly
horse, who represented in this case the King of France. The alle-
gorical meaning of the incident must have been sufficiently clear
to the audience, as it is mentioned both in the ambassador's letter
and in Hall's Chronicle,1 which also gives a condensed account of the
performance.
The exact nature of the connection between two instances so
remote from each other in point of time can hardly be established
with certainty, but the similarity of the cases2 challenges explanation.
Perhaps we should be warranted in supposing that the convention of
bridling a human "horse" persisted on the stage from the days of
Henry to those of Elizabeth. More reasonably, however, we may
infer that the original version of The Trial of Treasure belongs near
enough to the earlier performance to render imitation of the bridling
incident probable. In that case the 1567 edition of The Trial of
Treasure would represent a revamping of an earlier morality for
immediate controversial purposes.3 For lack of data the question
must for the present be left open; my present purpose is simply to
call attention to the interesting parallel.
E. BEATRICE DAW
BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
1 The account of Hall (Chronicle, p. 641) is also mentioned by Mr. Graves, op. cit.,
p. 551.
2 There is nothing in either account of the 1522 performance to indicate whether a
horse or a man took the part of the recalcitrant King of Prance. In view, however, of
the difficulties of the r61e, which demanded a high degree of responsiveness, it hardly
seems worth while to consider the possibility that the King was played by a horse.
3 Such usage was, of course, not infrequent. See Mackenzie, The English Moralitie*
(Boston, 1914), p. 46, n. 1, who cites Pleay, History of the Stage, p. 64.
55
CORRIGENDA
As I received no proofs of my article entitled Chauceriana in
the issue of Modern Philology for September, 1916, I beg to state
that on page 125, in the Cornish quotation, for zos one should read
%oSj and on page 126 the Flemish quotation should read:
Hi sach, suut onder die sonne,
Lamfroit comen geronnen.
Also on page 126 for Soudon of Damas read soudan of Dammas. In
two of the above cases I believe the error did not originate with the
printers, but was in the copy. All these errors might have been
avoided if I had taken the pains to typewrite the copy.
HENRY BARRETT HINCKLEY
NEW HAVEN, CONN.
56] 56
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
The Rhythm of Prose: An Experimental Investigation of Individual
Difference in the Sense of Rhythm. BY WILLIAM MORRISON
PATTERSON, PH.D. New York: Columbia University Press,
1916. Pp. xxiii+193.
This book presents the results of a series of experiments performed upon
a group of twelve trained observers, with a view to determining the average
individual's reaction to rhythmic experience and performance. Its applica-
tion, however, transcends the immediate bounds of the scientific field and
appeals in addition to a wider circle of musicians and literary persons.
Whether mistaken or justified, many a thoughtful reader of the monograph
will gather the impression that Dr. Patterson's ulterior purpose has tended
toward the provision of a practical method of style-analysis and toward the
standardization of criticism from an angle fundamentally at variance with
some of the vacuous generalities of the day. Rightly or wrongly, one feels
that the author, too, has felt the surfeit of hearing a volume of modern free
verse characterized as "redolent with the pungent breath of the heath," or
a symphony, like the C minor of Brahms, sweepingly labeled a "colossally
somber work of rugged severity."
Many of the basic conceptions of prose rhythm have been laid down by
previous authorities. Wundt's all-embracing contention that no series of
impressions is possible which cannot in some way be comprehended as
rhythmic, not only commands the approbation, but also furnishes the major
premise of all investigators. Others, like Meumann and Sievers, have
recognized the two antagonistic tendencies present in rhythm: the centrip-
etal, which seeks to order, and the centrifugal, which lends freedom and
variety to the capricious groupings of prose. The modern scholar regards
the experience of prose rhythm no longer as perceptional or emotional, but
rather as pre-eminently kinaesthetic, a subjectively experienced movement of
periodic word-waves whose troughs and crests of attention are marked off
by subtle patterns of time and stress and melody. What differentiates
prose from poetry, in the last analysis, is the lack of uniform recurrence in
the unbound speech. Its rhythm enjoys unevenness, just as harmony
becomes more intense when associated with dissonance. Th% rhythm of
music is after all genetically identical with the rhythm of speech. What,
then, is the force which organizes the seeming irregularities of prose into a
subjectively pleasurable sensation ?
It is at this point that the author's contribution to the subject proves
of immediate importance. Dr. Patterson's formula is syncopation: the
57] 57
58 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
instinctive rhythmic sense in the Red Man's drumbeat tune; the double-
shuffle of the buck-and-wing dancer; finger-taps alternating with spoken
syllables; the negro plying his hoe to the accompaniment of an improvised
melody; technically, the possibility of preserving a certain series of time-
intervals while the motions that mark the beats undergo a varied change.
The conventional dignity of the modern man inhibits many a native impulse
and frowns even at the tapping of feet in correspondence with the time of
effective music. The American Indian can accelerate and retard his series
of time-beats and perhaps gauge it; he can certainly enjoy it. His civilized
brother must, however, be what the author terms an "aggressive timer"
in order to be able to discriminate and measure the swing of rhythm and, by
means of the sense of syncopation, bring its haphazard series into sub-
jective co-ordination. We may not be far from the mark if we compare this
"timer" of Dr. Patterson's with the musician who possesses a sense of the
absolute pitch. For the "timer" must similarly be highly developed in
order to organize his time-experiences into musical transcription. The
combination of numerically recurrent stressed and unstressed syllables; the
interplay of words with the nuance of thought; the word-painting and
phrase-balancing of the imagist — these are experiences that can be appre-
ciated even by a person who is only passively rhythmic. But these are also
the very elements that represent the static balance of the sentence and not
its progressive movement. The "stresser," as experiments have demon-
strated, reacts to the vigor of De Quincey's Confessions, but not to its
rhythmic tune, its subtle elasticity.
It follows, to revert to our introductory remarks, that the final fitness
of a musical and literary critic varies in direct ratio with his ability to respond
to rhythmic stimuli. One deficient in such aggressiveness will gain from
rhythm but a vague impression of elusiveness, is powerless to give a clear-
cut description of his own experience, and often deals perforce with a hodge-
podge of aesthetic superficialities. The suitableness, ease, and spontaneity
of a musical and literary rhythm to the theme of which it is a vehicle will be
obscured in inverse ratio to his sense of motor reaction.
Interesting is the timer's view as to the effect which the perception
of prose, verse, and vers libre — a timely discussion — made upon him.
Dr. Patterson's observers found that poetry, representing a coincidence of the
measuring pulses with the accented syllables of the text, gave the sensation
of marching or dancing on level ground. Prose, a resilient succession of
balances appealing to the timer's sense of syncopation, reminded one of the
irregular climbing of the Hopi Indian to his cliff dwelling. Free verse
proved, not merely a compound of felicitous phrasing and vivid imagery —
welcome emotional values — but primarily a superimposition of the regular
time-patterns of poetry upon the movable time-scheme of prose. It is not
surprising, therefore, that, deprived of visual arrangement, the verses of
Tennyson and Browning were declared to be prose by a group of observers
58
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 59
at Yale. To the timer in question, the author points out, free verse gives
a "disquieting experience of attempting to dance up the side of a mountain.
For those who find this task exhilarating vers libre, as a form, is without a
rival. With regard to subtle cadence, however, which has been claimed as
the chief distinction of the new poets, it is still a question as to how far they
have surpassed the refinement of balance that quickens the prose of Walter
Pater."
The book, as a whole, is stimulating as few of its class can be. Its
authoritativeness is vouched for by the cumulative evidence of scrupulously
interpreted experimental data. There may be those who will object to the
application of physical instruments to the investigation. Verrier, Old
Testament and Semitic Studies (Chicago, 1908), p. 177, remarks: "Facts
which require instruments for their discernment have no place in the study
of rhythm." More serious will appear the assignment of a very subordinate
position in the rhythmic tune to stress and pitch relations, especially when
experiments have shown that melody is based essentially upon a motor
activity in most respects identical with that underlying rhythm. Cf.
Bingham, "Studies in Melody," Monograph Supplement, Psychological
Review, XII, 83. So, too, in all likelihood, there will not be wanting trained
philologists, especially in the Germanic field, who will take exception to the
author's view of Sievers' practical application of sentence-melody as "the
hobby of a great scholar" and "poetic speculation." All readers, however,
will support Dr. Patterson in his warning against rhythmic atrophy. He
advises the sedate victim of dignity to shake off some of the inhibitions of
modern society, follow music with enthusiastic abandon, tap off the drum-
beat of standard prose, walk, nod the head, and sway the body in accom-
paniment to rhythmic syncopation, until the "tunes" have sung their way
into the automatic processes of the brain and become an unconscious fund
of rhythmic facility. As the reviewer envisages the question, the present
world may never revert to the age of the itinerant bard or of the serenading
troubadour, when music was a vibrant idiom and poetry a spoken art. But
it is unquestionably worth while, in order to heighten our powers and pleas-
ures of appreciation, to try to regain the primitive man's instinctive grasp
over the balance of rhythmic flow.
Now the prosaic task of bibliographical additions. (Of typographic
errors only a few were met with: p. 27, 1. 13, the division should be "Laut-
reihen"; p. 40, n. 147, the initials are C. A.; p. 183, s.n. Gayley, the date
should be 1899.) It is assumed that it was not the intention of the author
to furnish a bibliography of rhythm similar to those found in €ie American
Journal of Psychology, XXIV, 508-19, and XXVI, 457-59, and that the
books listed represent the works actually consulted. The following titles,
some of which will be found to supplement the above bibliographies — the
second is at present inaccessible to me — could have been drawn upon with
equal profit:
59
60 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
RHYTHM
D. S. MacColl. "Rhythm in English Verse, Prose and Speech," in Essays and
Studies by the English Association, V, 7-51. Oxford, 1914.
C. W. E. Miller. The Relation of the Rhythm of Poetry to That of the Spoken
Language. Baltimore, 1902.
Benoist-Hanappier. Die freien Rhythmen in der deutschen Lyrik. Halle, 1905.
Saran. Der Rhythmus des franzosischen Verses. Halle, .1904 (listed in Bib-
liography I).
VERSIFICATION
R. D. Miller. Secondary Accent in Modern English Verse, dissertation, Johns
Hopkins University. Baltimore, 1904.
E. B. Setzler. On Anglo-Saxon Versification, from the Standpoint of Modern
English Versification. Baltimore, 1904.
B. A. P. Van Dam. William Shakespeare, Prosody and Text. Leyden, 1900.
Treatise on heroic and blank verse.
T. B. Rudmose-Brown. fctude comparee de la versification frangaise et de la versifi-
cation anglaise. Grenoble, 1905.
M. Grammont. Le Vers frangais, 12th ed. Paris, 1913.
A. Heusler. Zur Geschichte der altdeutschen Verskunst. BreslaU, 1891.
. Uber germanischen Versbau. Berlin, 1894.
T. S. Omond. English Metrists in the 18th and 19th Centuries. London, 1907.
On the clausula, cf. American Journal of Philology, XXV, 453; XXXII, 344.
POETRY
F. N. Scott. "The Most Fundamental Differentia of Poetry and Prose,"
PMLA, XIX, 250-69.
Hudson Maxim's iconoclastic Science of Poetry. New York, 1900. Unscholarly,
but very suggestive.
A. Goldbeck-Loewe. Geschichte der freien Verse in der deutschen Dichtung. Kiel,
1891.
MELODY
O. Rutz. Musik, Wort und Korper. Leipzig, 1911.
. Sprache, Gesang und Korperhaltung. Leipzig, 1911.
Cf. also Idg. Forsch., XXVIII, 301. Further literature of interest is to be
found in Schammberger, Zum Gedichte Lob Salomos, dissertation. Leipzig, 1910,
pp. 5 S.
ALEXANDER GREEN
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in England. Edited by
W. T. HALE. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916.
Pp. lxxxix+224.
Studies in the Milton Tradition. By J. W. GOOD. (University of
Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. I, Nos. 3
and 4.) Urbana, 1915. Pp. 310.
These additions to our critical understanding of Milton are as unlike in
purpose and method as is humanly possible. One investigator has used his
60
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 61
surgical scalpel upon the minutiae of a single document; the other, to use
his own phrase regarding certain eighteenth-century critics, has labored
"with a sword in one hand and a commentary in the other" that he might
prove Milton a constant influence upon English life and thought. The
former shows how well Milton understood his own generation, while the
latter displays in proper categories the critical estimates of others, taken from
the documents of a hundred and fifty years.
Dr. Hale has edited Of Reformation Touching Church Discipline in Eng-
land in a scholarly manner. His introduction forms a proper approach to
the pamphlet, for it gives a clear survey of the religious background for
Milton's first philippic against Episcopacy. The facts are well known, but
they have never been presented with more simple clearness. A useful sum-
mary of the argument precedes the text, which is a faithful reproduction
of the 1641 edition and its variants. The remainder of the book is devoted
to well-documented notes, a glossary, and bibliography. This edition will
be especially useful to scholars demanding a critical text of the pamphlet,
and will also afford general readers easy access to its true meaning. The
following typographical faults need correction: on p. 81, 1. 25, read 1384
for 1284, and on p. 97 read 1627, 1635, and 1636 for 1827, 1835, and 1836,
respectively.
The mass of material forming Dr. Good's study of the Milton tradition
is too great for detailed analysis. Of chief interest are his methods of
research, the new conclusions of permanent value, and the more evident
errors in fact. An introductory chapter aptly displays the heavy stress of
present criticism upon the eighteenth-century vogue of the Minor Poems,
and ends with the assertion that Paradise Lost was of far greater consequence
for the romantic phases of literary history. This is the central thesis of the
book and one that affects deeply the conclusions of the author's various
inquiries. Dr. Good has brought into union much evidence regarding the
publication of Milton's works, some two hundred poetical tributes to his
genius, the leading biographical opinions before 1801, formal literary criti-
cisms for the same period, and the accidental contributions to his reputation
of religious, political, and literary controversy. These may best be exam-
ined in turn.
The mathematical evidence of publication from 1637 to 1801 is clearly
in favor of Paradise Lost and against all the other works of Milton. It
appears that before 1801 (pp. 25-27) there were one hundred and thirty
editions of the epic. This, or the total of one hundred and one given in the
comparative summary (p. 49), surpasses the totals shown for the Minor
Poems. These are listed variously. L' Allegro and II Penseroso were
printed (p. 40), in all forms, including musical adaptations, "seventy-nine
times up to the year 1801"; but the preceding table shows eighty entries,
and another record (p. 49) gives the total of seventy-four. Lycidas (p. 38)
had sixty-three issues during the same years, or (p. 49) sixty-eight. This
61
62 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
array of figures would be more emphatic if accompanied by facts regarding
the number of copies in any edition after that of 1688. The list for Paradise
Lost is not complete, nor is it accurate in its description of early editions;
the excuse offered is that "at a distance of two centuries one can only hope
for an approximate correctness, even in the most careful study of those early
'editions.'" Because of these facts the safe conclusion to draw from this
record is that Paradise Lost was constantly popular up to the year 1801.
Nothing further is evident.
The chapter of poetical tributes suffers similarly from incompleteness.
Gray is well represented, but not by the famous lines from The Progress of
Poesy. Dr. Dalton's Prologue to Comus (1738) is not printed, nor are other
obscure selections, easily accessible in Todd's Milton. Even though all those
given are reminiscent of Milton and his themes, they have little critical value
without an accompanying interpretation in the light of personal interest or
special occasion of writing. Imitation, a more sincere expression of esteem,
could not have had full consideration here, but it deserves at least equal
place with what at times is mere verbal recognition.
The succeeding chapters on biography and formal criticism contain more
satisfying results of investigation. They show a careful reading of the
critical reviews and give useful summaries of longer critical works dealing
exclusively with Milton. A typical passage presents the causes leading
to Dr. Johnson's ill-natured Life. The general drift of these chapters
and of that on controversies is to the effect that Milton's ideas were
constantly useful in religious and political disputes, and that out of such
limited recognition evolved a true literary appreciation. The essays of
Mr. Dowden and Professor Havens in the British Academy (1908) and in
Englische Studien (1909) marked out the lines for these conclusions, but
no one hitherto has carefully analyzed the record through to the close of the
century. These summaries of opinion are admirably built up within the
limits of an evolutionary conception to prove Milton an object of national
regard.
The account of Milton's share in the romantic revival depreciates the
Minor Poems in order to exalt Paradise Lost. This summary in behalf of
Dr. Good's central thesis lacks most of the admitted facts regarding the
influence of the earlier poems. In a previous chapter (p. 142) Dr. Good
denies value to his own citations in high praise of the Minor Poems; there,
in spite of prima facie evidence to the contrary, he sums up the popular
attitude toward them from 1691 to 1730 as "one of comparative indiffer-
ence." Here the topic is displaced by a study of the romantic elements of
Paradise Lost.
The epic is shown to have affected both popular ideas of religion and
formal theological doctrine. Its graphic descriptions made eternity a
reality of belief, while the concrete depiction of individualistic revolt in
Satan's character gave point to Milton's abstract prose discussions regarding
62
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 63
human liberty. It popularized narrative and descriptive poetry, and also
gave body to the arguments for blank verse as against rhyming. These are
positive additions to the Milton tradition.
Beyond this point, however, it is impossible to follow Dr. Good's exal-
tation of Paradise Lost. One suspects that men of that time drew moral
guidance quite as much from their ponderous theologians and that the Eng-
lish Bible was another known source of the creation story. It is extravagant
to say (p. 242) that "the romantic movement may almost be defined as a
returning of the nation to the vision of Milton, with the aspirations that are
consequent and correlated to his divine conceptions"; or that (p. 243) "upon
eighteenth-century life his views fell with the weight of divine sanction."
Such straining of a clear case makes the whole account seem uncritical.
Without these embarrassments the evidence proves unmistakably that
Paradise Lost had a continuous vogue, with specific relationship to the
changes in English art and thought. Nowhere else is the book so free from
the fault of being merely a compilation.
Space remains for only such errors of fact and of printing as may not
be immediately evident. As noted above, the lists of editions in chap, ii
are incomplete. "G. Hog" (p. 37 n.) is identical with "W. Hog" named
elsewhere, being taken from the Latin form of "William" used in the title
of Hog's edition. Other faulty Latin (p. 53, 1. 22), dncta for cuncta, gives
an amusing turn to Barrow's lines:
Qui legis Amissam Paradisum, grandia magni
Carmina Miltoni, quid nisi cuncta legis ?
Also, the Miltoni Epistola ad Pollionem appears (p. 45) as ad Pollio and
(p. 304) as ad Polio. A more important fact is that the poem was written,
not by Milton— as Dr. Good asserts— but by William King (1685-1763). It
is a satirical poem of two hundred and nine lines, not a prose letter, and was
first issued in 1738. The list of Milton's prose works (pp. 43-44) lacks the
De Doctrina Christiana, printed in 1825. Faulty quotation (pp. 53-54) of
Marvell's poem published with the 1674 edition of Paradise Lost requires a
change of "posts" for "post," 1. 9; of "plume" for "plumes," 1. 38; and
of " The " for "A," 1. 39. Spectator No. 10 asserted that the paper had 60,000
readers when a week old, not (p. 155, n. 60) that that many copies were issued.
Handel did not make L' Allegro and II Penseroso "a part of his Samson
Oratorio" (p. 169), but formed them into a separate work with a third part,
il moderato, by Jennens. It is not true that Gray "declared" (D. 183) "the
world — obliged by fashion to admire" Milton; he was quoting the words
of Warburton.
DAVID HARRISON STEVENS
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
64 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. By JOHN R. CLARK HALL.
Second edition, revised and enlarged. New York: Macmillan,
1916. Pp. xii+372.
The new edition of this well-known book is markedly superior to the first
edition, and a rapid examination indicates that it will prove exceedingly
useful to all sorts of readers of Old English. The typography and the
arrangement of material on the page are almost ideally clear. The volume
is light and easily handled — a real desideratum for any dictionary which is
to be used as an "elbow-companion." It has exhaustive cross-references,
going even so far as to enter, in the proper alphabetical order, inflectional
forms and principal parts of strong verbs, as well as of " irregular" weak
verbs, thus largely increasing the value of the book for elementary students.
The new edition contains the material made accessible by the contributions
to Old English lexicography published in the last twenty years or more, which
has hitherto not been included in any Old English dictionary. Another
valuable feature in a work of such small compass is the frequency of refer-
ences to passages in Old English texts. The strictly poetic words have been
given a distinctive mark. A novel and highly useful feature is the introduc-
tion of references to head-words in the New English Dictionary which contain
information regarding the etymology, meaning, and occurrence of Old
English words.
Space has been saved, though not altogether happily, by not listing
separately words beginning with the prefix ge-. Verbs occurring both with
and without this prefix are entered together. Since in these cases all the
definitions are run together without distinction as to the meaning of the
simple and of the compound forms, students are likely to get a false impres-
sion of the force of the prefix. The prefix itself is not satisfactorily discussed
in the entry: "original meaning together; but it has usually lost all collective
and intensive force." The prefix ge- in Germanic and Old English was not
only collective and intensive, but was also widely used with a perfective force.
It has been shown that Old English verbs with the prefix frequently mean
"to get, to acquire, to reach" through the action of the verb. Many verbs
with the prefix have also a number of secondary meanings developed from
these perfective meanings. Some of the definitions of other words in the
book are just a trifle misleading, dglceca is not primarily "wretch, monster,
demon," but "fierce fighter." This word is applied, not only to Grendel,
but also to Beowulf and to other warlike heroes. The order in which the
various definitions are arranged under a word does not always reveal the
most primitive meaning, deman means primarily "to judge, to decide,"
and not, as the student might surmise, "to consider, to think." Such faults
as these, however, should not be regarded as constituting a serious defect
in a book which, on the whole, possesses real excellence and serviceability.
THOMAS A. KNOTT
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
64
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV 'June IQIJ NUMBER 2
THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF THE KINDER- UND HAUS-
MARCHEN OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM. II
These views are reflected in the notes contained in the appendixes
of the volumes of the first edition, some of which may be cited here.
In Vol. I, No. 5, "The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids/' the editors
remark: "The Nereid, Psamathe, sent the wolf to the flocks of
Peleus and Telamon; the wolf devoured them one and all, and was
then turned to stone, just as, in our story, stones were sewn into
him,"; No. 47, "The Juniper Tree," "The collecting of the scattered
bones is found," the editors say, "in the myths of Osiris, Orpheus,
and the legends of Adalbert. In like manner Thor collects the bones
of the eaten goats and revives them by shaking"; No. 50, "Briar
Rose," according to the editors: "The maiden who lies sleeping in
a castle surrounded by a wall of thorns, until the prince sets her free,
is identical with the sleeping Brynhild, who is surrounded by a wall
of flames through which Sigurd forces his way"; in No. 67, "The
twelve Huntsmen" (named "The King with the Lion" in 1812),
after remarking that the first bride is forgotten in various other
stories, the editors add : " We will give only two remarkable examples :
Duschmanta forgets Sacontala and Sigurd, Brynhild"; Vol. II,
No. 1, "The Poor Man and the Rich Man," is, according to the
editors, "the ancient legend of Philemon and Baucis (Ovid Met. viii.
617)"; in No. 6, "The Golden Mountain," the editors say: "The
likeness with Siegfried first begins where the youth is driven forth
65] 1 [ MODERN PHILOLOGY, June, 1917
2 T. F. CRANE
upon the water. The princess whom he frees is, according to the
German legend, Chrimhild on the Drachenstein, elsewhere, according
to the Norse legend, Brunhild. The Gold Mountain, which the hero
wins, is the mountain with the treasures of gold, the Hoard, which
according to the Lied, Siegfried also won on the Drachenstein. Most
remarkable of all is the much more circumstantial account of the
partition of the treasure which corresponds almost exactly with the
ancient obscure account, and throws light on it." The editors con-
tinue in this way at some length. No. 25, "The Skilful Huntsman,"
according to the editors: "The cutting off and dividing the gar-
ments of the sleeping princess remind us of the cutting up of
Brynhild's armor (slita byrnin). Cutting out the tongue occurs very
often, the captain is the steward in Tristan." In No. 37, "The
Old Woman in the Wood," the old woman belongs to the Circe
legend. In No. 61, "The Old Man Made Young Again," the reju-
venation of old people as well as the unsuccessful attempts to imitate
it forcibly recalls the Greek fable of Medea, Aeson, and Peleas.
References to Norse mythology are found in many other Marchen, e.g.,
in No. 39, "The Devil and His Grandmother," "the whole Marchen
has something Norse in its substance, the Devil is represented as
a clumsy, over-reached Jote, the riddle is remarkably Norse, etc."
Norse elements are also found in No. 40, "Ferdinand the Faithful,
and Ferdinand the Unfaithful"; in No. 41, "The Iron Stove"; in
No. 54, "The Story of the Domestic Servants"; in No. 62, "The
Lord's Animals and the Devil's," where "the wolves as God's dogs
coincide strikingly with the dogs of Odin (Vidris, gray), which
are likewise wolves"; in No. 64, "The Old Beggarwoman," the
editors remark: "It is noteworthy that Odin under the name of
Grimner goes disguised in the garb of a beggar into the King's hall
and his clothes begin to bum at the fire. One of the young men
brings him a horn to drink; the other has left him in the flames.
The latter discovers too late the pilgrim's divinity and wants to
pull him out of the fire, but falls on his own sword."
It is unnecessary to cite further specific instances of the editors'
belief in the substantial similarity of the Marchen with Old German
and Norse mythology. In the second edition (1819) the notes of
the first were omitted, the editors promising a third volume (which
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 3
appeared in 1822) devoted entirely to notes. The preface of 1819,
quite different from the prefaces of 1812 and 1815, * which were not
reprinted in subsequent editions, deals entirely with the method of
collection, locality of the stories, etc. The questions of origin and
diffusion are treated at length by Wilhelm in the essay "Ueber das
Wesen der Marchen" which serves as an introduction to the first
volume of the second edition (1819), and may be found in Wilhelm
Grimm's Kleinere Schriften, I, 333-59. In this extensive essay (it
fills twenty-six pages in the Kleinere Schriften) the author discusses
the following topics: importance of the Marchen as tradition, traces
of pagan belief, survey of contents, and fixed characters. In the
discussion of the first topic appears for the first time, so far as I can
discover, the so-called Aryan theory of the diffusion of Marchen.
Wilhelm says: "If we ask about their origin, no one knows of a bard
and inventor; they appear everywhere as tradition and as such are
remarkable in more than one respect. In the first place, it is unde-
niable that they have in this way survived among us for centuries,
changing externally, it is true, but persisting in their peculiar con-
tents. The supposition that in the beginning they issued from some
one spot in Germany is opposed by the fact of their diffusion over
so many regions and provinces and their almost invariable peculiar
and independent form; they must in this case have been newly
recast in every locality. For this reason their diffusion through
literature, which scarcely is found among the people, is inconceivable.
We find them again not only in the most diversified regions where
German is spoken, but also among the kindred Scandinavians and
English; still further among the Romanic peoples and even among the
Slavic nations in different, closer, and more distant degrees of rela-
tionship. Especially striking is their resemblance to the Serbian
Marchen, for no one will fancy that the stories in a lonely Hessian
village could be transplanted to Serbia by Serbians, or the reverse.
Finally, in separate features and turns of expression, as well as in their
whole connection, they agree with Oriental, Persian, aftd Indian
Marchen. The relationship which is manifest in the languages of
all these peoples, and which Rask has lately ingeniously proved,
1 A few pages of the preface of the first volume of the first edition were taken into
the essay "Ueber das Wesen der Marchen."
67
4 T. F. CRANE
reveals itself precisely so in their traditional poetry, which is only
a higher and freer speech of mankind. Just as in the case of the
language this relation of the Mdrchen indicates a common time which
preceded the dispersion of the nations : if one seeks after their origin,
it recedes further and further into the distance and remains in the
dark like something inscrutable and mysterious."
In the section devoted to the traces of pagan belief Wilhelm adds
to the examples cited in the prefaces of the first edition and men-
tioned above. Much stress is again laid on the fact that inanimate
objects are endowed with life, and instances of animated trees and
springs are given, e.g., "The Juniper-tree, that is, the tree which
bestows life and youth, is evidently a good spirit, its fruit fufils the
longing of the mother for a child, the collected bones of the murdered
child are brought to life again under its branches and the soul rises
from the bright but not burning flames of the boughs in the shape of
a bird." With this belief of an all-animated nature is connected the
transformation" mto other forms. The later mythological theories
of Max Miiller and Sir George Cox are anticipated here. "The
conflict of the good and bad is often represented by black and white,
light and darkness. The good, helpful spirits are almost always
white birds, the evil ones announcing calamity are black ravens.
The pious maiden becomes white as the day, the wicked one as black
as sin (night). Thus the Edda knows the sons of day (Dags-synir,
megir) and the daughters of night, and the name Dagr in the Edda,
which appears augmented in our Dagobert, gleaming like day, may
rest upon a similar idea. In that castle all is black and the three
sleeping princesses, stiffened in death, through their hope of deliver-
ance, for magic is a black art, have only at first a little white (life)
in their countenances. The prince, who sleeps by day, awakens only
in the night, and whom, if he is not to be unhappy, no ray of light
must touch, is also a black Alfe. These, too, fled from the light and
were turned to stone when the sun struck them. Hence the sun is
called the lamentation, complaint of the Alfen." The M&rchen of
" The Goose Girl " and " The Black and White Bride" belong here also ;
it is really the old myth of the true and the false Bertha. This name
signifies the resplendent one. She combs her golden hair because, like
the princess who veils herself only in the mantle of her golden hair,
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 5
she is a gleaming sun, a shining light-elf, or, what is the same thing,
a white swan-maiden. Such also Snow-white seems to have been,
who even in death remains still white and beautiful and is honored
and guarded by the good (white) dwarfs. In this connection one
may recall the two worlds of the Norse mythology, the one of light and
blessedness (Muspelheim) and the other of night and darkness (Nifel-
heim).
It is not necessary to pursue this subject much further. The
author finds a decided pagan coloring in the way in which God,
Death, and the Devil appear in person; and pagan in its origin is
the idea of an earthly treasure which contains all happiness and may
be won by those favored by fate, for whoever penetrates to the source
of all earthly splendor, him paganism permits to be the lord and
master of the highest life. This is the idea of the "wishing-things,"
which appear in various shapes, as hat, cloth, table, etc., and satisfy
every thought, bestowing invisibility, respecting no space, in short,
surmounting all earthly limits. The conclusion of Wilhelm is : " If
we gather up these separate grains, the old belief seems to appear
in the animation of all nature, pantheism, a fate, the good and evil
principle, the Trimurti, great and higher gods, with their mountain
(Gotterberg) , and the worship of lesser individual deities. "
In the survey of the contents of the Mdrchen Wilhelm emphasizes
the conflict between good and evil, and the similarity with the German
heroic legends. The Christian character of some of the Mdrchen
(No. 3, "Our Lady's Child"; No. 31, "The Girl without Hands";
and No. 76, "The Pink") is noted, and attention called to the animal
stories, to some of which an allegorical meaning is ascribed.
Finally, certain fixed figures or characters are described. They
are: The Simpleton, Hop o' my Thumb, the Lalenburger, Brother
Lustig, and the Braggart.
For the second volume of the second edition (1819) Wilhelm
wrote as an introduction a delightful essay on the "JJjTature and
Customs of Children" (" Kinderwesen und Kindersitten"), in which
he culls from the early German poets many beautiful allusions to
children, and illustrates some of them by popular tales and legends.
Many of the customs cited are common to other lands, e.g., when
inquisitive children who ask the source of information are told,
6 T. F. CRANE
"My little finger told me" (in France, "Mon petit doigt me Pa dit").
So with games like "jackstones," "Blindman's buff," and refrains
such as
Lady-bird, lady-bird, fly and be gone!
Your house is a-fire and your children at home.
A very ancient game is skipping stones on the water, the one winning
whose stone makes the most skips. Another common custom is
fortune-telling by plucking the petals of the daisy. The ecclesiasti-
cal calendar furnishes a long list of festivals in which the children
share, and many of which have been lost to us since the Reformation.
The essay closes with a chapter on "Children's Beliefs" (Kinder-
glauberi). Here we find many widespread beliefs, e.g., that children
come out of the well, or that the stork fishes them out of the water;
that the "Sandman comes" when children grow drowsy and their
eyes begin to blink, etc.
The above-mentioned essays were not reprinted after 1819
(except in the Kleinere Schrifteri), and the only prefatory matter after
that date is the dedication to Frau Bettina von Arnim (1837, 1840,
1843, 1850, and 1857), written by Wilhelm and reprinted in the
Kleinere Schriften,1 and the prefaces to the second and subsequent
editions. I have already alluded to the general character of the
preface to the edition of 1819, and to the fact that the prefaces of
1812 and 1815 were not reprinted. This was partly due, I presume,
to the fuller treatment of the mythological element in the essay on
"Das Wesen der Marchen." The prefaces from 1837 on (reprinted
in the seventh edition, 1857) are brief and refer to the additions made
to the stories from time to time. I shall speak in a moment of the
separate volume of Notes published in 1822 and forming the third
volume of the second (1819) edition. In the preface to the third
edition (1837) the editors say: "The third part, whose contents
refer solely to the scientific use of the collection and hence could
find admission only to a very narrow circle of readers, is not now
reprinted with the present edition, because copies are still to be had
i This dedication consists of three letters, the last dated "Berlin im Friihjahr, 1843."
In the Kleinere Schriften the dates of the first two are given as "Gottingen am 15. Mai,
1837," and " Cassel am 17. September, 1840." The three were reprinted in the sixth and
seventh editions, 1850 and 1857. The dedication of the first and second editions. 1812
and 1815, was, as we have already seen, "An die Frau Elisabeth von Arnim fiir den
kleinen Johannes Freimund."
70
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 7
from Reimer's publishing house in Berlin. In the future this third
part will appear as an independent work, in which the introductions
to the last edition on ' Das Wesen der Marchen ' and ' Kindersitten '
will find a place."1
The promised third part did not appear until 1822. It was uni-
form in size with the other volumes and bore the title Kinder- und
Hausmarchen. Gesammelt durch die Briider Grimm. Dritter Band.
Zweite vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. Berlin, 1822, bei
G. Reimer. The preface (iii)-iv, "Cassel den 4ten Januar 1822," is
reprinted in the edition of 1856. The editors say: "The notes to
the separate Marchen mention first the locality where the stories
were collected from oral tradition, and state explicitly where any-
thing has been taken from another story or where two have been
combined. A real fusion has not taken place, and what has been
inserted can easily be separated. Then the variants themselves
are given as briefly as possible, in some cases as completely as is
necessary. Those who complain of too great detail or think this
mode of treatment too serious, may be right in some cases; this way
seemed the best to us, because a less serious treatment, which was
not without its temptation, would have afforded a slight advantage
only, but in no case the true freedom which the creative poet needs,
and with which the scientific aim of the collection would have been
entirely lost.
"The agreement with foreign traditions, often far separated by
time and place, is carefully indicated, since we are undoubtedly
correct in laying weight upon this circumstance just because it is not
easy to explain. Here and there one can suspect direct communi-
cation, perhaps make it probable; but in most cases it is impossible
to do this, and then the fact remains unexplained and not less striking.
The references and intimations concerning their contents and mytho-
logical signification must not be so understood by anyone as if in
every case a sure, undoubted truth was established; mucji is quoted
only because in the future the supposed connection may appear more
clearly. The introduction to the first volume shows how we wish
use to be made of it.
1 This promise was not fulfilled and the essays in question never appeared again
until they were reprinted in Wilhelm's Kleinere Schriften, as mentioned above.
71
8 T. F. CRANE
"The collected testimonies prove the existence of the Mdrchen
in different times and among different nations, or they contain
judgments upon their worth, which have the greater weight since
they have been pronounced without prejudice, impartially, and
accidentally by men who have retained a free and unbiased view.
"The section which reviews the literature should hope for
approval even from those who do not have leisure for a closer con-
sideration of the subject. If we could have made use of preliminary
studies, it would perhaps have been more complete, but we have
been obliged to look up and peruse everything ourselves. It has
the merit of making known more intimately and in its entire contents
the Pentamerone of Basile, which previously, at the best, was cited
by its title alone."
After the "Vorrede" come pp. v-vi, "Inhalt," omitted in 1856,
then: "Anmerkungen zu den einzelnen Marchen," pp. (3)-252;
"Anmerkungen zu den Kinderlegenden," pp. 253-54; "Bruch-
stiicke," pp. (255-56) 257-60; "Zeugnisse," pp. (261-62) 263-68;
"Literatur," pp. (269-70) 271-441; "Druckfehler," reverse of
p. 441. I shall mention very briefly the principal features of the
volume. A careful analysis of Straparola's Nights is given in
pp. 271-76, retained in 1856. Then follows in 1822, pp. 276-369, a
full analysis of the Pentamerone, with an "Uebersicht," pp. 370-71,
of the forty-eight Italian stories which correspond more or less closely
to the German ones. In the edition of 1856, p. 293, Grimm refers
to Liebrecht's translation (1846) of the Pentamerone and says it is
not necessary to repeat the analysis, while the "Uebersicht" is
retained.
In the first edition (1812) under the heading "Zeugnisse fur
Kindermarchen " a few quotations were given from Strabo, Luther,
Johannes Miiller, Walter Scott, and Eloi Johanneau testifying to the
antiquity and interest of popular tales. In the edition of 1822, the
"Zeugnisse" are twenty in number and were increased to thirty-
seven in 1856.
The section "Literatur" in 1822 was reprinted in 1856 with the
omission of the elaborate analysis of the Pentamerone, as has been
stated above, and with a very few unimportant changes. In the
sixth edition (1850) the literature of the subject was continued from
72
HISTOKY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 9
1822, and is substantially the same as in the definitive edition of the
Notes in 1856.1
There is no reference to the volume of Notes in the prefaces of the
fourth (1840) and fifth (1843) editions. In the sixth (1850), as we
have just seen, the survey of the literature of Mdrchen is continued
from the third volume of the second edition. Six years later appeared
the definitive edition of the third volume of Notes, which is, on the
title-page, assigned to the third edition (1837), although, as we have
seen, in the preface of that edition it is expressly stated that the third
volume is not printed with that edition because copies were still to
be had of the publisher. The form is the same as that of the earlier
volumes and the title is Kinder- und Hausmdrchen gesammelt durch
die Bruder Grimm. Dritter Band. Dritte Auflage. Gottingen:
Verlag der Dieterich'schen Buchhandlung. 1856. The "Vorrede"
contains the one prefixed to the edition of 1822, and a very brief
one for the new edition, which runs as follows: "Die lange Zeit
die zwischen dieser und der vorigen Ausgabe des dritten Bandes
liegt, hat Gelegenheit zu manchen Nachtragen gegeben, wozu auch
die Hinweisungen auf die seitdem bekannt gemachten Marchen-
sammlungen gehoren. Die im ersten Band der Ausgabe von 1850
mit getheilte weitere Abhandlung iiber die Literatur habe ich, erganzt
und fortgefuhrt, hier der frtiheren zugefugt." Dated "Berlin den
25ten Mai, 1856."
The edition of 1856 is uniform in size with that of 1822 and con-
tains 418 pages, 23 pages less than the edition of 1822. The omission
in 1856 of the 89 pages devoted to the analysis of the Pentamerone
leaves considerable space for the enlargement of the Notes to the indi-
vidual tales and the additions to the literature of the subject. It is
impossible to give here any adequate idea of the changes in the second
edition of the Notes. The work was so well done in the edition of
1822 that the additions in 1856 are not as numerous as might have
1 The position of this section in the edition of 1850 is as follows: Frontispiece, title
(i-ii), "An die Frau Bettina von Arnim" (iii-iv), "Liebe Bettina, etc.*' v-viii (as in
1857, pp. v-viii), "Vorrede" (ix)-xxi (as in 1857 [ix]-xix), "Uebersicht der Marchen-
literatur," xxii-lxiii. Wilhelm says, p. xxii: "Ich habe in dem dritten Band, der im
Jahr 1822 erschien, eine Uebersicht der Marchen-literatur gegeben, die ich hier weiter
ftihren will: einen Nachtrag kann ich es kaum nennen, da das was seitdem gesammelt
ist, an Gehalt und Umfang das Frtihere weit tiberwiegt." The numbering in 1850 is of
course different, having twenty-six numbered paragraphs to twenty-nine in 1856. There
are many additions to the remainder of the section in 1856.
73
10 T. F. CRANE
been expected. Still there is scarcely a story without an addition
to its notes, generally very brief.
More extensive additions are found in the "Literatur," especially
to the continuation published in 1850. For instance, in 1856 no
less than 18 pages are added (from bottom of p. 361 to bottom of
p. 379), dealing with Koelle's African Native Literature or Proverbs,
Tales, Fables and Historical Fragments in the Kanuri or Bornu Lan-
guage, etc., London, 1854.
The third volume of Notes did not appear again in the subsequent
editions of the Kinder- und Hausmdrchen. Wilhelm died in 1859
and Jacob had for many years left to his brother the care of the
various editions of the Household Tales. The literature of the sub-
ject had increased enormously and new theories of the origin and
diffusion of popular tales were being propounded by Benfey and
others. The task of preparing a new edition of the Notes grew more
difficult with each year and was not undertaken until Dr. Johannes
Bolte and Professor Georg Polivka issued in 1913 the first volume
of their Anmerkungen to the Household Tales.1 Those who desire
to consult the notes of Wilhelm must do so in the edition of 1856,
now, like all the volumes of the first seven editions, very scarce,
or in the reprint in Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek (Kinder- und
Hausmdrchen. Vollstandige Ausgabe. Dritter Band. Neudruck
der dritten Auflage). I may add that the notes are translated in the
English version of the Household Tales by Margaret Hunt (with
introduction by Andrew Lang) published in Bonn's Standard Library,
London, 1884, 2 vols., the notes being divided between the two
volumes.
S We shall see later what changes as to number and position of the
tales were made in the editions subsequent to the first one of 1812
and 1815, and what tales from time to time were omitted and replaced
by others. As will be seen from the Table and History of the Indi-
vidual Tales, the largest number of changes concerned the contents
of the first volume of 1812. By the time the second volume of 1815
was prepared the brothers had a clearer view of their purpose and
needed to make comparatively few changes, except in the way of
1 See my review of this great work in Modern Language Notes, January, 1916,
pp. 33-42.
74
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 11
additions to the subsequent editions. The hundred and fifty-six
numbers of the first edition became two hundred and one in the
definitive edition of 1857. * /
The shape of the first edition was oblong, about six by three and
a half inches. The subsequent six editions were quarto in form,
about six by four and a half inches. The first seven editions con-
sisted, as we have seen, of two volumes. The two editions of the
Notes, 1822 and 1856, bear on the title: "Dritte Band. Zweite ver-
mehrte und verbesserte Auflage, Berlin, 1822," and "Dritter Band.
Dritte Auflage, Gottingen, 1856." The stories until the ninth
edition, Berlin, 1870, always occupied two volumes.
The care of the publication of the collection devolved upon
Herman Grimm after his father's death in 1860. In the preface
(dated Berlin, June, 1864) to the eighth edition, two volumes,
Gottingen, Dieterich'sche Buchhandlung, 1864, Herman Grimm
says: "Die achte Auflage der Marchen, deren Correctur, an Stelle
meines verewigten Vaters, mir zugefallen ist, stimmt mit der sieben-
ten durchaus uberein."
The ninth edition, in one volume, appeared at Berlin, W. Hertz,
in 1870, and in the preface, dated Berlin, June 1870, Herman Grimm
says: "Die neunte Auflage unterscheidet sich nur von den friiheren,
dass ein grosseres Format gewahlt worden ist, wodurch es moglich
ward beide Theile in einem Bande zu vereinigen." Since this date
all subsequent editions of the complete work for which the Grimm
family is responsible have appeared in one volume, without notes,
and bear on the title-page the words "Grosse Ausgabe."
i No complete account has yet been given of the materials collected by the brothers
and not used by them in the various editions of the Kinder- und Hausm&rchen. An
interesting beginning of such an account has been made by Dr. Johannes Bolte in the
Zeitschrift des Vereins fur Volkskunde, 1915, pp. 31-51, 372-80, "Deutsche Marchen
aus dem Nachlass der Briider Grimm." This first instalment contains two stories from
the Munster territory, collected by the Haxthausen family before 1816. These stories
(two of six which Dr. Bolte intends to publish) are contained in a package of papers left
by the Grimms, entitled: "Marchen, aus den Quellen des Buches aufgehoben, weil noch
einiges darin stand, das nicht konnte benutzt werden, oder weil die Quellen noch einmal
nachzusehen sind," and " Zweifelhaf tes, Pragmente, Spuren, Einzelenes. The stories
of this package were not used and are of interest as being Marchen not represented in
the final collection of the Kinder- und Hausm&rchen. The two stories in question: " Des
Toten Dank," and " Der dankbare Tote und die aus der Sklaverei erloste Konigstochter,"
belong to the cycle of "The Thankful Dead," about which so extensive a literature has
clustered. The range of the Grimms' collection is very wide and it is interesting to learn
that tales and motifs which do not there appear existed in Germany at the time in forms
which the brothers did not feel that they could use.
75
12 T. F. CRANE
In 1825 the brothers published at Berlin, by G. Reimer, a " Kleine
Ausgabe," containing fifty Mdrchen. This first issue of the smaller
edition was exactly reproduced by the Insel-Verlag at Leipzig in
1911, and affords a means of comparison of many of the stories in
the first edition of 1812-15 with the revised forms adopted by the
brothers in subsequent editions. This smaller edition was printed
ten times during the life of Wilhelm, and two of the stories in the
edition of 1825 were later replaced by others; these were No. 39,
"Die treuen Thiere," and No. 44, "Die dreiBriider," for which "Die
klugen Leute" and " Schneeweisschen und Rosenroth" were sub-
stituted.
It is not my purpose to trace the history of the Kinder- und
Hausmdrchen further or to mention the publications called forth by
the centenary of the publication of the first volume of the first
edition in 1912. Some of these have already been alluded to. The
reproduction of the first edition by Panzer, and of the smaller
edition of 1825 by the Insel-Verlag are the only ones of importance
for the text. The Jubildums-Auflage (the thirty-third edition of
the "Grosse Ausgabe "), prepared by R. Steig, has already been men-
tioned as containing Herman Grimm's valuable introduction. I shall
mention only one other edition of the Kinder- und Hausmdrchen
called forth by the centenary. It is the Jubildums-Ausgabe heraus-
gegeben von Friedrich von der Leyen. Verlegt bei Eugen Diederichs,
Jena, 1912, two volumes. The distinguishing feature of this edition
is the attempt to arrange the stories in a chronological order. The
Grimms apparently printed the stories as they collected them, in no
particular order. The result is that all classes of Mdrchen from sources
of different dates are mingled together. Dr. von der Leyen believes
that although the matter of the Mdrchen reaches back to primitive
times and to the childhood of the race, the story is the work of an
individual artist. His creation, however, returns in time to the
people from whose beliefs it was constructed, and is molded by
them in the spirit of the age. Dr. von der Leyen thinks that it is
possible to assign the stories in the Grimm collection to specific
periods in the history of the German people and of their literature.
Hence his arrangement is a chronological one. He begins with
a few brief stories which show in a peculiarly vivid manner, he thinks,
76
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 13
the connection of the Mdrchen with primitive beliefs: "Das Marchen
von der Unke," "Rumpelstilzchen," "Das Todtenhemdchen,"
"Der singende Knochen," and the like. These short stories are
followed by an especially long and copious (reich) Mdrchen, "Die
zwei Briider," which is accompanied by a related but less remark-
able story of brothers, "Die Goldkinder." After this introductory
class the editor says: "The first great literary period of the Ger-
mans is the time of their first great heroic age, the time of the migra-
tion of nations. We conceive as echoes of that period the stories
which then appeared: 'Die Gansemagd/ 'Jungfrau Maleen/ 'Von
dem Machandelboom/ and 'Konig Drosselbart.'
" In the tenth century the German poetry (Dichtung) displayed
a pleasure in exuberant and grotesque jokes, extravagances, stories
of giants and dwarfs, and strong men, in lies and declamations and
edifying discourses, and conversations, of which the minstrels were
masters, those followers of the ancient mimes, who delighted the
people in the declining Roman empire. To the class of these minstrel
stories belong tales like those of 'Der gelernte Jager' and 'Die
goldene Gans/ 'Das Burle/ 'Dat Erdmanneken/ 'Der starke Hans/
'Das tapfere Schneiderlein/ 'Die Rube/ 'Der wunderliche Spiel-
mann/ 'Die drei Sprachen.' "
T. F. CRANE
ITHACA, N.Y.
[To be continued]
77
THE RHYTHMIC FORM OF THE GERMAN
FOLK-SONGS
IV
THE STROPHE
In proceeding from the rubric "Chain" to that of "Strophe" I
am passing over two intermediate music-rhythmic divisions, namely,
the Gebinde and the set. Just a word in explanation of these terms
and of why I do not consider them in special chapters.
When two chains of somewhat similar structure follow each other,
and the pause at the end of the second chain is deep, deeper usually
than that at the end of the first, the result is a rhythmic group
which Saran calls a Gesdtz1 and which I have called, for want of a
better word, a "set." This deep pause at the end of the set is usually
marked in the text by the end of a sentence, and in the melody by
a full melodic cadence. The Gebinde (I have shirked translating it) is
simply a subdivision of certain complex sets which are so rare among
the folk-songs as to justify our neglect of it for the present at least.
But in observing these ever-larger rhythmic groups it is easy to
see that we are already encroaching on that most definite and yet most
various of all groups, the strophe. With the chain we were already
dealing with a group which functioned now and then as a two-row
(rarely three-row) strophe. And with the set we have a group which,
in its normal form, functions often as a four-row or five-row strophe.
It is for this reason that I shall stop here, arbitrarily, my consider-
ation of these more or less fixed groups, as such, and proceed at once
to the consideration of their various combinations in that more elastic
group, the strophe. I am confident that the nature of the set will
become clear during the analysis of the longer strophes — the only
ones in which the set stands out as a distinct group. *
Probably the best way to class the strophes of the folk-songs is
according to the number of rows they contain. A subclassing should
be based on the rhythmic structure of the strophe, that is, on the
* See Verslehre, pp. 82, 152, 169, and 172.
79] . 15 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, June, 1917
16 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
arrangement or succession of its larger rhythmic groups — rows,
chains, and sets. And as such arrangement is usually indicated by
the rhyme order, we shall use the latter as the basis of our subclassing.
It should be borne in mind in this connection that the kind of move-
ment (trochaic, iambic, etc.) and the length of rows and chains are not
to any extent factors in giving form to the strophe. In examining
long series of songs having strophes built on one and the same general
plan, I have found them using many different movements and row and
chain lengths.
THE STROPHE OF TWO ROWS
The shortest folk-song strophe is of two rows. An example:
HortKo. 194 a.
J|J J
Es war ein Mad-chen von Far - be so bleich,
Jlj
es war ihr - er Mut - ter von Her - zen so leid.
These two rows form a chain which is coterminal with the strophe.
The melodic structure of the chain is a-b (that is, its two rows end
respectively in an interrupted and a full cadence) though the rhyme
order is a a.
It is a favorite strophe for long narrative songs where the subject-
matter is of greater import than the melody, and was so used in olden
and more modern times.1
If one looks through the printed collections of the folk-song
texts with no melodies, one will get the notion that these strophes
of two rows are much more numerous than they really are. For
when we compare such two-row strophes with their melodies we
find that the larger part of them are extended by means of repeats
or by the interposing or subjoining of various refrains or refrain-like
passages (often mere makeshifts to carry the wordless melody)
to a melodic form which is longer. See, for instance, Hort No. 1198,
which is extended to a strophe of three rows, No. 907 extended to
four rows, No. 88 la to five rows, and No. 982 to six rows.
tPurther examples: HortNos. 577, 1194, 1196, 1199, 1200, etc.
80
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS 17
There is another reason why the two-row folk-song strophe seems
to be more prevalent than it really is. The printers not infrequently
set a whole chain (when it is a short one) to the line, instead of a row
to the line, as is the usual way. The reason, or at least one reason for
this mistake, is that in just these shortest strophes the rows are as a
rule very long, so long indeed that they approach very close to, and
sometimes really attain, the length of a short chain.1 When this
boundary is overstepped, the strophe is naturally not one of two rows,
a a rhyme, but one of four rows, x a x a rhyme, no matter how the
compositor has misrepresented it to the eye.
THE STROPHE OF THREE ROWS
An example:
Hort No. 50 a (1st Mel.).
ffa t|/ ;• j-u
1 — ^ — ? — i h i h
~h 1 — 1
gp 4 J 1 ' " J EE
(c) Es war'n ein - mal zwei
Q#
Bau - ern-sohn', (a) die hat -ten Lust in
1 1 -, — . N-I , n
-4MT K K s
<?p j j j 7 r
^ — 3 — Hi
Krieg zu gehn, (b) wol ins Sol - da - ten - le - ben.
Also this strophe is, like the two-row type, much used in long
narrative songs. It consists almost invariably, as above, of one
chain of the a-a-b type and has the corresponding rhyme order a a b.2
This strophe is met with somewhat more frequently than the one
of two rows. But here also one must not estimate its frequency by
consulting printed texts without melodies, for they are very often
extended by means of repeats, etc., to longer melodic forms. For
instance, the strophes of Hort No. 1439 are thus extended to a melodic
form of four rows, No. 1193 to five rows, and No. 912a to six rows.
STROPHES OF FOUR ROWS
This is easily the most popular length of strophe in the German
folk-songs. The rhyme order is quite regular and of two types only,
(a) a abb and (b) x a x a (or, rarely, a b a b).
1 A rhythmic group in the folk-songs which has ten or at most eleven syllables is
usually still a row. One of more syllables than that usually functions as a chain (cf.
also Modern Philology, XIV, No. 2, pp. 71 ft*.). The number of syllables is not the only
criterion, but it is a good one.
* Further examples: Hort Nos. 58o, 60, 250, 1438, 1571, 1610, 1611, etc.
81
18 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
a) The a abb type. There are about 100 songs of this form in
Hort, or about a third as many as of the x a x a variety. An
example:
Hort No. 562 a.
Hoff-nung, Hoff-nung, komm nur bald, mei-nes Her-zens Auf-ent-halt!
Mein Ver-lan - gen steht al-lein zu dem Herz-al-ler - lieb-sten mein.
This strophe consists usually of one set — a pair of chains.
The a a b b rhyme order is not the one usually used in folk-songs.
It is in general not the most desirable one, as is shown by the great
predominance in the folk-songs of the sequence x a x a. But it
would be daring to assert that in the large number of songs of the
type under consideration we have an abnormal rhyme order, one
that does not suit their melodies. It is more likely that in this
strophe which, of all the different types, shows these rhyme pairs
most regularly, we have some unique condition which demands just
that sequence. And it is with this suspicion in mind that I have
examined the text and melody of a great many songs, searching for
that " unique condition." I believe I have found it in the melody.
I shall here endeavor to answer the question : Under what con-
ditions do we have a abb rhyme in the folk-songs ? And my answer
will bring us unavoidably into a consideration of melodic pro-
cedure.
These simple melodies have a way of beginning on the tonic, or
undamental tone, of the key in which they are sung, of proceeding
usually to notes of a higher pitch, but of returning sooner or later in a
cadential procedure to a sort of finishing-point on that same funda-
mental tone or a harmonically related one. The distance, however,
between the beginning and the finishing fundamental tone varies.
The "melodic curve" (curva melodica, bogenformige Tonhohenlinie ,
cf. Rietsch, Liedweise, p. 159) may have the length of (a) one phrase
(row) or, as is more usual, (b) one period (chain), as in the following
examples:
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
19
(a) Hort No. 56 2 a.
(b) HortNo. 190 a.
Sehr mdssig.
* The notes in larger type are the melodically important ones.
At the end of this curve there is always a decided pause.
Following this completed curve and its accompanying pause is
another division of the melody which, owing to the balancing or
pairing tendency in song, assumes a form which is similar to the
preceding division. This similarity is found in many degrees of com-
pleteness. It runs all the way from a more or less complete paral-
lelism in note length or pitch, to a complete note-for-note identity
of the two melodic divisions concerned. This parallelism will become
clear if I continue the melodies cited above :
(«)
I transposed a major third up.
•±
•L-+r
Hoff-nung, Hoff-nung, komm nur bald, mel-nes Her-zens Auf-ent-halt!
I
Kind, wo hist du derm ge - we - sen, Kind, sa - ge du's mir!
I J J JHH J
I J.
"Nach mei - ner Mut-ter Schwe-ster, wie we - he ist mir!"
Now these finishing points in the cadences of the two parallel
passages, in both (a) and (6), are peculiarly attractive to rhyme
syllables; and inasmuch as they are melodically similar points they
attract similar rhymes. The result is, as we see in both trfe foregoing
examples, an a a (b b, etc.) rhyme for such points. But in (6), the
two-row curve, the rhyme syllables close alternate rows, the second
and fourth, of the song. And inasmuch as the intervening rows do
not rhyme, our rhyme order in such instances is x ax a.
S3
20 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
As to the reason for these intervening rows not rhyming, I might
add that the above-mentioned conditions which demand rhyme do
not obtain at their termini. For these termini are at points in the
middle of the curve, points which are not provided with a melodic
cadence, and which are, in the two succeeding corresponding divisions,
not necessarily provided with notes which are identical either in
pitch or in length.1 (Example (6) above is an exception in this
respect. )
Thus we may, I believe, from the viewpoint of the melody, look
upon that two-row group which has a a as its rhyme sequence, espe-
cially when it occurs at the beginning of the strophe, as simply the
shrunken phase of a (more usual) four-row group of x a x a rhyme.2
I do not mean to assert that the melody and rhyme agreement
outlined above will be found in all the examples. For here we are
dealing with songs which were not made according to rule, but which
have assumed these forms as the result of a sort of intuitive feeling
for the fitness of things on the part of the folk-song makers. But I
do contend that the above examples are typical of those tendencies
in the melodies which foster on the one hand the a a, and on the
other the x ax a, rhyme order.3
Strophes of this type, whose melodic frame is extended by means
of repeats, etc., beyond the limits of four rows, are found in Horts No.
565 (extended to five rows), No. 775 (to six rows), and No. 517 (to
eight rows).
I hope that the preceding paragraphs may throw a side light on
the subject of the nature of the " rhyming couplet'7 which has been
regarded as "a form of verse .... which .... is the nearest
approaching to prose " and as a form which is " impossible" to sing.4
Such estimates must of course be restricted, as was done by Scherer,
i Of. Rietsch, Liedweise, pp. 75, 99, 156, 158 ff., etc.
*Here & question as to the genesis of these two rhyme orders is suggested: Did
alternating rhyme develop from the rhyme pair, or vice versa ? Or are their beginnings
independent ? Perhaps, if the melody form as such really does, as I suspect, determine
the strophic form, the study of the evolution of this melody form may give us answers
to these questions. I hope to be able to throw some light on this subject soon in a study
which will have genetic considerations of the rhythm of song poetry as its central purpose.
» Further examples of the a a b b strophes are: Hort Nos. 80 (1st Mel.), 109o, 180,
516, 528a, 529, 541, 557a, 565, 574o (2d Mel.), 585, 597o, 731o, 771o, 778, 783, 795, 873,
991, 1035, 1059, 1218, 1271, 1351, 1426, etc.
W. Scherer, A History of German Literature, trans, by Mrs. P. C. Conybeare (New
York: Scribner, 1908), I, 155 and 213.
84
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
21
to continuous, non-strophic rhyming couplets, and not be made to
include also such groups in the song strophe. For we have found it in
this latter environment both quite singable and far from prosaic.
6) The x a x a (a b a 6) type. An example:
Hort No. 56 a.
w
£-4-f-f-k
i
(Ach) Jo - seph, lie - ber Jo - soph, was hast du ge - dacht,
m
dasa du die scho - ne Nan - nerl ins Un - gliick ge - bracht!
This is by far the most widely used type of strophe found in the
folk-songs. It is composed of two chains of the type a-b. The
melody periods of the two chains are somewhat similar in trend, but
are very rarely identical. This gives to such short melodies a needed
variety. We shall see, however, that such four-row passages in the
melodies of the longer strophes, especially when they occur at the
beginning, appear usually as a two-row period which is repeated for
the words of the second (two-row) chain; that is, the two successive
periods are not simply similar, as here, but identical, note for note,
the melodic variety being supplied in the following parts.
It is very probably this characteristic difference between the
melodic procedure of this four-row type and of the longer types that
is responsible for the great preponderance in the former of x a x a
rhyme order and for the equally regular a b a b rhyme at the begin-
ning of the strophes of seven, eight, and nine rows (see below, pp. 92,
96, and 100). For rhyme tends to appear, as we saw on p. 83
above, at those points in the melody which correspond closely, not
only in rhythm, but also usually in pitch and harmonic aspect, with
some preceding point. Hence when two successive two-row melody
periods are identical (repeated) we have such corresponding points
at the end of each of the four rows. In singing they come,^)f course,
in alternation, a b a b. In the strophe under consideration, however,
the corresponding points appear usually only at the end of each of the
two chains, hence the x a x a rhyme.
Out of about 300 songs of this type I have found only 17 which
have regularly throughout all their strophes the a b a b order. And
85
22 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
it is interesting to note that all of them are modern, nineteenth-
century songs.1
I shall not go so far as to call any song which has an a b a b strophe
an "art song"; but I will say that I am decidedly suspicious of the
origin and nature of a song which has these odd rows, the first and
third, rhymed carefully and without exception.
It is, however, not at all unusual to run across songs in which
the a b a b order is a sporadic occurrence. An examination of almost
any of the x a x a songs will disclose this condition.2
While the type under consideration is uncommonly uniform,
song after song, that is, while it is unusually free from those variations
due to refrains, etc., which beset the less stable strophes (those of
2, 3, 5, and 7 rows, for instance), still there are a few songs where
the strophe is extended by such means to a form of greater length.
Examples: Hort No. 511 extended to five rows, No. 73 to six rows,
and No. 368 to eight rows.
We sometimes find a song which has a abb in some strophes and
x a x a in others, and even a mixture of the two orders in one and the
same strophe. Such hybrid forms are probably the unsuccessful
result of an attempt to fit an a a b b melody to an x a x a text, or
vice versa. Examples: Hort Nos. 70c, 614, 628, 657, and 773.
It is a noteworthy fact that the four-row strophe of abb a rhyme
order, one which we meet with so often in the spoken lyrics of the
"art poets," is entirely lacking (unless we take notice of the one
example, Hort No. 820) in the songs of Hort. It seems all the more
significant when we find, as I have, that this same rhyme sequence
never occurs at the beginning of longer strophes, as it does in many
of the songs of the old French trouv£res and of their imitators, the
minnesingers. I shall not try to explain this absence. I shall
simply suggest that the melodic form which such a rhyme sequence
presupposes is foreign to the German feeling for melodic form. If this
surmise is correct, and if this feeling determines (as I am coming more
and more to believe it does) the strophic form of the song-texts, then
» Here is the list: Hort Nos. 347, 3536, 354, 578, 608, 617, 628, 641a, 647, 649, 651,
699, 700, 712, 792o, 1168, and 1366.
* Of the long list of the songs using this type of strophe I shall give only the start:
Hort Nos. 52o, 62o, 63a, 646, 71a, 102/, HOo, 111, 112o, 1356, 137a, 1716, 174c, 175d,
190a, etc.
86
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
23
the reason for the absence of the embracing rhyme from the German
folk-songs may not be hard to find.
STROPHES OF FIVE ROWS
They occur in three types: (a) a a b x b, (b) x abb a (or
a b a a 6), subtype a abb a, (c) x ax a a (or ab abb).
a) The a a b x b type. An example:
Hort 1158.
jfefr|-X 1 N ^ • J •- p
T — r~
-J j— j
Wol auf, wol auf an
fi i
Bo - den-see,
sunst
findt man
nin - dert
ry i i
. J
ti
f> 1
JL\y } f? >» * *
213 J j
II
J ,
im/ J « * t
^ * i1
Eza i
\My * r
* 1
a c-»- i
«x~
Freu-den men, mit
Tan - zen und
mit
Sprin - gei
I ,
9
i. Und
V i i J /^
, , J ;
3
feb 4— =1 — r — r~ »
E x J -*
f2 — SE
CT — * — f — r 1 — L|
<*y
4. _rr_J
wel-cher gleich nit tan-zen will, der hor doch froh - lich sin - gen.
This strophe is composed of two chains, a-a-6 (sometimes
a-b-b) and a-b. Beyer1 calls it mistakenly the " Alte Titurelstrophe."
Saran2 is right in speaking of it as the "Morolf strophe." His inter-
pretation of its chain aspect, however, differs from mine in that he
gives the first chain two, and the second three, rows. I think a close
examination of the example he gives and those which I give here from
Hort will justify my interpretation.
The synthesis of melody and text is shown clearly in the melodic
correspondence of the two final (rhyming) rows of each chain, that is,
the third and fifth rows of the strophe. *
This form of strophe was quite popular in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The following list includes such widely used
» Deutsche Poetik (Stuttgart, 1882), I, 609 and 648.
* Deutsche Verslehre (Mtinchen, 1907), p. 294.
87
24
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
melodies as "Die Bohmerschlachtweise," "Der Stortebeckerton,"
"Der Lindenschmidston," and "Der Dorneckerton." Examples:
Hort Nos. 143, 233, 246 (2d Mel.), 248, 305, 4086, 747, 839, 961, 1158,
and 1307.
6) The x a b b a (or a b a a 6) type. An example:
Hort No. 98 a.
n Mdssig bewegt.
gS
^^ w
Ea war ei - ne scho - ne Ju - din, ein wun - der-scho - nes
Weib; Sie hatt' ei - ne scho - ne Toch - ter, ihr
4.1 i . ==
I
Haar war ein - ge - floch - ten, zum Tanz war sie be - reit.
This popular type is that of Uhland's "Der gute Kamerad." It
is composed of two chains of the forms a-b and a-a-b. It will be
noticed that in both the rhyme sequences in which this strophe
appears the second and fifth rows rhyme. This and the never-
failing similarity of the corresponding parts of the melody (the
second and fifth phrases) are the two distinguishing marks of this
strophe. Another melodic resemblance is found between the third
and fourth phrases, which correspond with the rows having b b (or
a a) rhyme.
Examples are Hort Nos. 89a, 408a, 560a, 563, 654, 655, 663, 692,
718, 719, 862, 1162, 1372, and 1376.
A subtype of (b) has the same chain structure — a-b, a-a-b — but
a variant rhyme order, namely, a abb a (or a a b b c). We have
here the same melodic characteristics as in the normal (6) type,
excepting that corresponding with the first chain (a a rhyme) we
have also in the melody two phrases which resemble each other
usually rather more closely. Beyer1 cites as an example of this
Deutsche Poetik. I, 651.
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
25
form the cradle song Hort No. 1806, "Schlaf, Kindlein, Schlaf."
It is also the form used in HaiuTs "Morgenrot." Further examples:
Hort Nos. 159, 814a, 975a, and 1014.
c) The x a x a a (or a b a b b) type. An example :
Hort No. 131 a.
_^. 1 = ^ C J ^^ ^ 1_^ ^
Es ging ein Knab spa - zie - ren, spa - zie - ren durch den
^-^ — * — ft=
-*==£=*=
>' j i JT
C ' C '
Wald.
Da be - geg - net ihm ein Mad-chen, war
acht - zehn Jah - re alt, gar schOn war sie ge - stalt.
Its two chains are of the form a-b and a-b-b. I have found but
three other mediocre examples (Hort Nos. 404, 647, and 1540) of this
strophe.
I think it must be evident, from an examination of the above
forms, that we have in the five-row strophe merely a widening out, by
one row, of a four-row strophe. This extra row appears, in both
melody and text, as a variation of an immediately preceding row
which is one of the original four rows of the shorter strophe. Thus, in
type (a) the extra row is added directly after, and is analogous to
what would otherwise be the first row of an x a x a (or a b a b)
strophe. In type (b) the addition comes after the third row of an
originally x a x a strophe. In the subtype of (b) the addition
seems to be to a strophe of the a a b b type, and it is inserted after
the third row. And finally, type (c) represents the augmentation
of an z a z a strophe, the extra row being addefl after the
fourth row.
In order to bring this, through the medium of the eye, more
clearly to the mind, I shall reproduce here a strophe of each of the
four types. The extra row appears in italic type.
26 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
(a) (6) subtype
Wol auf, wol auf an Bodensee, Ich wiinscht, es ware Nacht,
Sunst findt man nindert Freuden meh, mein Bettchen war gemacht,
mit Tanzen und mit Springen. Wollt ich zu mei'm Schatzchen gehn,
Und welcher gleich nit tanzen will, Wollte vor dem Fenster stehn,
der hor doch frohlich singen. bis sie mir aufmacht.
(b) (c)
Es war eine schone Jiidin, Es ging ein Knab spazieren,
ein wunderschones Weib; spazieren durch den Wald.
Sie hatt' eine schone Tochter, Da begegnet ihm ein Madchen,
Ihr Hoar war eingeflochten, war achtzehn Jahre alt,
zum Tanz war sie bereit. Gar schon war sie gestalt.
The origin, after this manner, of the five-row strophes becomes
much clearer when we go back and take note of some of the four-row
strophes themselves, those which have been extended, simply through
the repetition of some one of their rows, into a form which is virtu-
ally the same as the five-row strophe which we are now discussing.
Hort Nos. 511, 596, and 635, for instance, have four-row strophes
which have through repetition become equivalent to type (b) of five
rows. Hort Nos. 528a, 529, and 1193 have, by the same means,
become equivalent to the subtype of (b). And the last row of the
strophe in Hort Nos. 84a, 507, 717a, and 940 has been repeated as a
sort of refrain, making the strophic form equivalent to (c) of these
five-row strophes. Type (a) is the only one for which I have been
unable to find an augmented four-row cognate.
Also these five-row strophes sometimes grow into a still longer
form through repeats, etc. The strophes of Hort No. 507, for
instance, have thus grown into a six-row form, and those of Hort
No. 592 have grown to seven rows.
STROPHES OF SIX ROWS
They are of two general types: (a) those composed of three
chains of two rows each, and (b) those of two chains of three rows each.
a) The three-chain types. The three chains are usually in the
forms a-b, a-a, and a-b respectively. The first and third chains are
very often quite similar in structure. The middle chain, however, is
of a different type from the other two, this difference being indicated
90
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
27
by its a-a form as contrasted with the a-b form of the other chains.
'And that means that the two rows in question resemble each other
in their meter and rhyme more than do the two rows of either of the
other chains.
The melody reflects these similarities and dissimilarities in every
detail. So the general aspect of a strophe of this sort is as follows:
first we have a chain of two rows which comes melodically and textu-
ally to a firm chain pause. Then intervenes a new element in the
form of row a of the second chain. This new element is repeated
or restated as row a of that same chain. Then follows the third two-
row chain, which is in character a restatement of the idea of the first
chain — a sort of da capo chain with which the strophe closes. An
example:
Hort No. 557 a.
Das Lie - ben bringt gross Freud, es wis - sea al - le Leut;
9
i
Weiss mir ein scho - nes Schat-ze - lein, mit zwei schwarz-braunen
Au - ge-lein, Die mir, die mir, die mir mein Herz er - freut.*
* Further examples are Hort Nos. 1566 (2d Mel.), 167, 169a, 304, 336, 342, 363 520
544, 600o, 633, 703, 706o, 707, 764, 904, 1336, 1401, 1402, 1409, and 1463.
This same strophe, that is, one which has this same chain forma-
tion and melodic aspect, is found in quite a number of rhyme orders.
The order a a b b c c is the most usual. Others are:
aabbbb )
or > Examples: Hort Nos. 835 and 1338.
aabbxb }
aabbaa Examples: Hort Nos. 770 and 1219.
a b a a x b Examples: Hort Nos. 7a and 460o.
a b c c a b Examples: Hort Nos. 176 and 396a.
x abb a a Example: Hort No. 732.
91
28
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
b) The two-chain type. This type is not nearly as widely used
as is (a). Its two chains are of the type a-a-b, and the rhyme order
is very uniformly a a b c c b. An example:
Hort No. 743fl(2dMel.).
— r-M — -
-1
/v
— — 2— j — a
frTr 9 J J
{1 ,
o ^ *
v-y .s <5* 1 * *
: _
I
Inns - bruck, ic
h muss
1
dich las -
I . -j _. -2 ,. _
sen, ich
fm" «< — — ^ —
—& ^
S^ J_ .^_4
^ — J- -J-
fahr da - bin mein Stras - sen
in
frem - de Land da-
s
^3
§
hin.
Mein Freud ist mir ge • nom - men,
die
/Os
ich nit weiss be - kom - men, wo ich in E - lend bin.*
* Further examples: Hort Nos. 252, 279, 295, 324c, 358o, 401, 650, 768, 836, 1148,
and 1370.
Not infrequently does a six-row strophe expand, through the
repeating of some part, to an eight-row structure, less often to one
of seven rows. Examples of the former are: Hort Nos. 551, 595, and
1262.
STEOPHES OF SEVEN ROWS
They appear in three types having the rhyme order (a) ab ab c
x c (or x a x a b x b), (b) a b a b c c x (or x a x a b b x), and (c) ab a
bxcc(orx axaxbb). Each type consists of three chains, and in each
type the first two of these chains (with a possible exception of those
in some of the songs which I have grouped with those of the (a) type
(see p. 93 below) are of the a-b form. Where the three types differ
from one another is in their third chains.
Before speaking of this difference, however, I wish to call atten-
tion to the first part of all three types — this pair of two-row chains
both of which are sung to the same (repeated) melodic period (cf . the
examples below). This is the first time we have met with this
repeated period (chain) as a regular occurrence at the beginning of the
92
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS 29
song melody. But we shall now see that there is rarely a strophe of
seven rows and longer which does not show this feature. Its impor-
tance also as a factor in giving form to the text is not to be under-
rated; for it is only in connection with such .repeated chains that we
have quite regularly the a b a b rhyme as opposed to the x a x a
order, the equally regular occurrence where the two succeeding chains
are not identical but only of similar trend (cf. also pp. 84 and 85
above).
I said above that these three types of the seven-row strophe
differed structurally only in the last chain — the last three rows. I
shall now try to make this difference clear through the comparison
of an example of each type.
Type (a), an example:
Hort No
Aeolian n
742.
tode.
\ — - — s — 0 : <y — &—
t> : * , f =j=F=^=H
p p r • r .,-.L
_4_, — -' r "; • ^ HI
Ich stund an ei - nem Mor - gen heim- lich an ei-nem Ort,
Do hfitt ich mich ver-bor - gen, ich hort klag-li - che Wort
J J J :-'J ' <* J :^[
Von ei - nem Fraii - lein hubsch und fein, das stund bei
l
Bei - nem Buh - len, es musst ge - schie - den sein.*
• I reproduce this version of the melody without subscribing to or denying the cor-
rectness of its rather peculiar (tentative) note values and division into measures.
Examining the group represented by the last three rows of this
example, we find that its last two rows are practically identical in
melody with the first and fourth rows of the strophe respectively.
That is, together they form a da capo, and the rows which they
reiterate melodically are a and b of the first chain. This gives the
rows an a-b effect in their own chain.
But what about the first row of this group, " Von einem Fraulein
hiibsch und fein" ? Melodically it seems quite independent, a sort of
93
30 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
contrast passage. Its text seems only slightly more closely attached
(as a kind of coda) to what goes before than (as an introduction) to
what follows. Looking into the other six strophes of this same song
we find the same uncertainty. In two of them this fifth row is
attached, as in the first strophe, syntactically to the foregoing rows,
and in four to the following. On examining other songs having
this strophe I find the same conditions, an almost completely inde-
pendent melody passage and a text row which is either quite inde-
pendent or related in different strophes forward or backward. It is
somewhat more frequently related forward. I shall therefore
reckon this row as a part of the last three-row group, but I shall
represent its (melodic and sometimes text-rhythmic) independence
by the symbol x. This will give us x-a-b as the form of the final
chain ( ?) of this strophe.
Type (6), an example:
Hort No. 922.
A
2
^
t
"Va -ter,fst derm nicht er-schaf-fen fiir mich ei - ne Mann-lich-keit?
Dass ich ganz al-lein muss schlafen in dem Bett der Eln-sam - keit?
J C f r I
Und in mei - nen jun - gen Jan - ren, mei - ne Haa - re
C r ' /44— * ' EJj:
i
las - se Bchee-ren, die von Gold be - gian - zet sind?"
In the first row — "Und in meinen jungen Jahren" — of the last
chain of this strophe we have a melodic procedure which is, as in
type (a), different from that of the row which precedes it, but which
is, in contrast to type (a), almost identical melodically with the row
which follows it. This leaves the final row of the strophe as the only
one which can show a da capo effect. It resembles the second (or
fourth) row of the strophe. We have, then, a-a-b as the form of this
chain.
94
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
31
Type (c), an example:
Hort No. 2001.
^
Hf=rrT^
Was Qott tut, das ist wohl ge- tan, es bleibt gerecht sein Wil - le.
Wie er f ftngt mei-ne Sach-en an, so will ich hal • ten etil - le.
ynr r J Jir r J J|J J jj*
Er ist mein Gott, der in der Not mich wohl weiss zu er-
i
hal - ten, Drum lass ich ihn nur wal - ten.
The third chain here begins with a row — " Er ist mein Gott, der
in der Not" — which is melodically independent of what goes before,
and different from, though not independent of, what follows. The next
row — "mich wohl weiss zu erhalten" — leads perceptibly toward a
close, one which is realized in the next (very similar) row, the last
one in the strophe. This last row, it will be noted, is very similar,
melodically, also to the second (or fourth) row of the strophe — a
da capo effect which is participated in, though in a less degree, by that
very similar row which just precedes it. These features would deter-
mine the last chain as of the a-6-fr'type.
We might, then, summarize the different characteristics of the
final chain of each of the three seven-row strophic types as follows :
Strophic
Type
Rhyme
Chain
Form
Rows Having
da Capo
(a)
(6)
(c)
a x a
a a x
x a a
x-a-b
r
a-a-b
a-b-b
Second and third
Third
Second and third
Strophes of type (a) were much used in the songs of the sixteenth
century, but rarely in modern times excepting in church hymns.
Beyer (Op. cit., I, 669) calls this the "Neue Titurelstrophe."1
* Further examples: Hort Nos. 86, 235, 251a, 390, 415, 446, 746, 804, and 919. And
among the church hymns in Hort which use this strophe are Nos. 1920, 1952, 1987, and
2154.
95
32
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
Strophes of type (b) are, according to Beyer (op. cit., I, 668), used
widely in church hymns. He calls it, therefore, the " Kirchenlied-
strophe."1 The same author (op. tit., I, 672) calls type (c) the
" Pinzgauerstrophe."2
It is very easy to expand these seven-row forms to those of eight
rows. Hort Nos. 748 and 1761 are good illustrations of how this takes
place.
STROPHES OP EIGHT ROWS
This length of strophe is very widely used in the folk-songs. It
ranks, in point of popularity, second only to the four-row length.
Among the varieties of strophes of this length there are two which
predominate greatly, leaving all other forms as sporadic in their
occurrence. I shall consider primarily these two types:
Type (a). The rhyme order isababcdcd (orababxcxc
or x a x a x b x b). An example:
Hort
No. 387
____!
sr\
Weis
Ea
-*—£-
B mir ein
steht in
=F^==
Bliim-li blau - e, von him-mel-blau - em Schein,
gru-ner Au - e und heisst Ver-giss - nit - mein!
^ " \
y s)
J J - J *—* J * J »U
^ » >>y
Ich kunnt es nir-gend fin -den, was mir ver-schwun-den gar; Von
A^-T
— 1 1 — E
=1 — 1 —
1 — ^H
^Ml
Reif und kal - ten Win - den ist es mir wor-den fahl.*
* For the slight changes from Bohme's version in this melody I am responsible.
This strophe is composed regularly of four cftams, all of the
a-b type. The first two chains group normally in a set, the Aufgesang.
The last two are independent of each other.
Also the melodic form, that great help in determining the strop hie
build, deserves our attention. The first period— that part of the
melody which corresponds to the first chain — is, as was the case in
i Further examples: Hort Nos. 299, 313, 805, 930, 933, 978, 1120, 1146, 1546, 1595,
1617, 1707, and a church hymn 2045.
* Further examples: Hort Nos. 389, 456, 693 (2d Mel.), 1761, and 2008.
96
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS 33
the seven-row strophe, practically always repeated (instead of being
simply imitated) for the use of the second chain. Hence the coinci-
dent phenomenon — the great predominance, in the first half of this
strophe, of the pure a b a b rhyme sequence (cf. pp. 84 and 85, above).
Corresponding with the third chain we have a melodic period which
is somewhat independent of what precedes it. But with the fourth
(final) chain we have a reversion in the melody to the type of the
first period (or to the second period when first and second are not
absolutely identical) in which the tune finds a fitting finish.
This da capo feature seems to be inherent in this strophe. It is
present, in varying degrees of completeness, in the oldest as well as
in the most modern songs. In the folk-songs of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries the reversion was less complete than in more
modern times. The melodies of that period seldom show an exact
identity in more than the final bonds of the first and fourth chains.
In some few old songs, however, the final rows of those same chains,
or even the entire chains, were melodically identical. See, for
example, Hort Nos. 387 from the year 1580 (cited above) and 450a
from 1549. But in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries the exact melodic identity of the second and fourth chains —
a complete da capo — becomes the rule that has rare exceptions.
This variety of strophe is the one used in the " Nibelungenlied "
(cf. Beyer, op. cit., I, 601 ff.) and in the younger " Hildebrandslied "
(cf. Beyer, op. cit., I, p. 613 and Hort No. 22).
But when we say, as we may, that there are in Hort numerous
examples of the "Nibelungenstrophe," we mean, of course, that
such examples are, in their general rhythmic features, similar to
the strophes of the "Nibelungenlied." In one point, however — the
longer final row of the " Nibelungenstrophe " — the analogy of the
folk-song strophe fails; for in only one song in Hort, namely No. 429a,
do we have an eight-row strophe with this unique feature. I repro-
duce one strophe:
Die Briinnlein die da fliessen,
die soil man trinken,
Und wer ein steten Buhlen hat,
der soil ihm winken,
Ja winken mit den Augen
97
34
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
und treten auf ein Fuss;
Es 1st ein barter Orden,
r •>. r >.
der seinen Buhlen meiden muss.
Bohme (cf. Hort II, 248) considers this as the only example of a
strophe of this kind among the folk-songs. This is probably true,
and it is all the more remarkable since the lengthening of the final
row is not so rare in strophes of other lengths. See, for instance,
Hort Nos. 276 (nine rows) and 433a (four rows).1
Type (b). The rhyme order is a b a b c c x x (or in place of x x
we may have a 6, x b, bb, or d d) or x a x a b b x x (or in the place
of a; £ we may have x a, a a, or c c). An example:
Hort No. 791 a.
Nun so reis' ich weg von hier
O du al-ler-schon-ste Zier,
und muss Abschied neh-men.
Scheiden das bringt Gra-men!
u J
Scheiden macht mich so be-trtibt, well ich dich, die mich ge-liebt
sen.
• ber al - le Mas - sen, soil und muss ver - las
This strophe is, in its first and second chains with their a b a b
rhyme order, and in its fourth chain in spite of its manifold rhyme
aspect, in all essential points like type (a). Each of these chains
has, here as there, the form a-b. The da capo is in force here as
there, and it is of the same sort — a repetition in the last (fourth)
chain of the melody either of simply the fourth row of the strophe,
or of the whole second chain, or, again, of the first and fourth rows
of the strophe.
It is in the third chain with its c c (or b b) rhyme order where
the difference, though not a radical one, between types (a) and (b)
» Further examples of this ababcdcd type: Hort Nos. 27, 29, 32, 256, 258, 262 ,
263, 270, 292, 298, 334, 344, 379, 388, 393a, 400, 430, 478a, 521, 587, 648, 667, 681, 696,
744, 745, 883, 1099, 1135, 1156, etc.
Examples of the variant rhyme sequence ababxcxc are Hort Nos. 310, 311, 427,
471, 476, 752, 833, 923, 1174, etc.
Examples of the sequence xaxaxbxb are Hort Nos. 85, 334, 369, 429a, 488, 489,
643, 1151, etc.
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS 35
comes. This c c rhyme indicates the peculiarity that this third
chain is composed of two rows of similar rhythmic structure. And
this indication is strengthened when we examine the pertinent part
of the (typical) melody in the example above and rind that also the
notation of the two rows is identical. These facts warrant our regard-
ing this third chain as having the form a-cfin contrast to the a-b
form of the third chain in type (a).
That variant of the type (6) which shows the rather rare rhyme
order a b a b c c a b is, by reason of its final a b rhyme, and in spite
of its rarity,1 the ideal one for melodies like these in which the da capo
is complete. That is, such a rhyme order shows perfect synthesis, in
this respect at least, of text and melody.
It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Wilhelm Ganz-
horn used just this strophic form — which Beyer (op. cit., I, 695) calls
"Ganzhorns Volksstrophe " — in a beautiful song of which Beyer
quotes one strophe. But what is more interesting is that that song
has become a real folk-song, "sung in almost every village of the
Neckar valley." It may be that its strophic form was one of the
factors in its popularity.2
Rather remarkable is the almost complete absence, among the
folk-songs of Hort, of eight-row strophes beginning with an a a b b
rhyme sequence, one which has been used by "art poets" in the first
part of many different varieties of eight-row strophes (cf. Beyer,
op. cit., I, 690 ff.). The few (modern) songs which show a tendency
toward the sequence of which we are speaking are Hort Nos. 548
(" Ach, wie ists moglich dann "), 549, 637a, and 615. Cf . also No. 473
— a very commonplace song from the sixteenth century.
Examples of the eight-row strophes which have been expanded
by repeats, etc., into longer ones are:
Hort Nos. 335 and 646, expanded to a strophe of nine rows.
Hort Nos. 571a and 610, expanded to a strophe of ten rows.
Hort No. 1317, expanded to a strophe of twelve rows.
p
1 There seems to have been some difficulty in finding three a b rhyme combinations for
the same strophe. I have found but three examples of this strophe in Hort (Nos. 1018,
1039, and 1320), and even here the difficulty was evaded; for in their strophes the last
two rows are nothing but a repetition of the text of either the first and second or the third
and fourth rows of the strophe.
2 Further examples of type (6) are Hort Nos. 154 (2d Mel.), 337, 426, 462, 463, 504,
509, 576, 609, 838o, 9596, and 1312.
36
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
STROPHES OF NINE ROWS
The nine-row strophes are simply amplifications of those of
eight rows. And the amplification takes place without any altera-
tion of the general aspect of the strophe. The extra row appears
usually as the eighth (a restatement of the seventh) or the ninth (a
restatement of the eighth) row. Hence we have two types:
(a) rhyme order ab ab c d c cd (and variants) and (b) rhyme order
ab ab cd cd d (and variants).
Type (a), ababcdccd. An example:
Hort No. 502.
4
i*b^
^-r^
•_}__
*=*=>
m
b*±
Nach grii-ner Parb mein Herz verlangt, da ich in E - lend was.
Das 1st der Lieb ein A - ne - fang, recht so das grii - ne Gras.
^=^
m
* — 3 — 3~
1
f f 1 —
^^ i r .
Ent-spros - sen aus des Mai - en Schein mit man-chem Bliim - lein
&>-
2 £_
=*=
r r r r •
i — * —
_[_
^^^
klar, Das hat sich ei - ne Jung - frau fein ge-
m
m
i
bil - det in das Her - ze nein, zu die-sem neu - en Jahr.
Note in this example especially the two rows:
Das hat sich eine Jungfrau fein
gebildet in das Herze nein,
which are the first two rows of the fourth (a three-row) chain. The
fact that the second of these rows is virtually a restatement of the
first is attested by their identical meter and rhyme, and by their
similar melodic aspect. The last row of the strophe (the third row
of this chain) is easily recognizable as the melodical re-presentation
of the second (or fourth) row. These facts give us a-a-b as the
type of this last chain, and they make clear to us the source of the
augmentation of this nine-row strophe from the eight-row frame.
100
RHYTHMIC FORM OF GERMAN FOLK-SONGS
37
But for those who wish still further proof of the source of this
strophe in the one of eight rows, I might recommend the simple
test of leaving out, in singing it, either the seventh or eighth row, and
of noting how little such a procedure changes the aspect of the
melody.
Most of the examples of this strophe in Hort are from the sixteenth
century.1
Type (6) a b a b c d c d d. An example:
Hort No. 437.
2S3E
"H — i — T — p~~?
r r r —
\ . f
^:
_i_ j j L i r
_ -
* *
» *
fCY) ~*
t* • t t
til *
r
Ein
Be-
fi i
Maidlein zu dem Brunnen ging, und das war sau-ber
geg-net ihm ein Jtin - ge-ling, er grusst sie ztichtig
i 1 •
- li - chen;
- li - chen.
y -
,
i i
n
JL.r>
J ^3 '
i* 1
'4 ^
fm" *
J at •*
J * *
a 3
SEE
• *
i *
* *
a/
Sie
setzt ihr Krtig-lein
ne - ben sich und fragt ihn:
1 j J i . -?=
wer er
-d 4—-
wa
n
- re. Er kusst's
~ j)--- —0
auf ihr - en
-i * — • — fe
ro - ten Mund: "Ihr
1 L /TN
y i
2
j
;
JL U m
p * p J
• m
J I
J . i
^=f=
"^ « Hfe) ^— i
seid mir nit un - ma - re, tret he - re, tret he - re!"
By analyzing the last (three-row) chain of the example given
above, in the same manner as we analyzed that in type (a), we find
its form to be a-b-b. That is, we find the eighth row to be restated
in the ninth. Hence it is to this pair of rows that we trace the
augmentation of this otherwise eight-row strophe.
The few examples of it which I have found in Hort are all among
the "older" folk-songs.2
STILL LONGER STROPHES
Strophes longer than eight or nine rows are quite rare dhiong the
folk-songs. And even when we do find one, we see by analyzing it
that its structure adds nothing new to the subject of strophic form.
For the strophes of ten, eleven, twelve, etc., rows have their being
i Further examples: Hort Nos. 245, 257, 276, 297, 378, 399, 806, and 807.
They are Hort Nos. 268, 811, 1287, and 1294.
101
38 GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
simply through the constant repeating of those same melodic ele-
ments of which we have already spoken in detail. For these reasons
I shall simply append a list of the few examples of such strophes in
Hort as have come to my notice, and omit all discussion of them.
Strophes of ten rows: Hort Nos. 289, 346, 505, 844, 997, 1041, 1276, 1310,
1327, and 1445.
Strophes of eleven rows: Hort Nos. 1516 and 1147.
Strophes of twelve rows: Hort Nos. 352<z, 634, 1028, 1298, and 1462.
Strophes of thirteen rows: Hort No. 958.
Strophes of fifteen rows: Hort No. 786.
Strophes of sixteen rows: Hort No. 988.
Most of these are artificial concoctions. Many are texts to long
(instrumental ?) dance tunes.
With the discussion of the strophe finished, we have come to the
end of our consideration of rhythmic groups. There is no larger
group in the folk-songs. Each successive strophe in a song is, in the
form of its melody and text, simply a repetition, with only inconsider-
able variations, of the foregoing strophe. And as to the number of
strophes in the song, there is absolutely no rule.
I hope that the material of the foregoing pages may aid to a little
clearer understanding of the real nature of the folk-song — that subsoil
from which the overworked topsoil of modern lyric poetry and mod-
ern song draws, from time to time, new life for the bringing forth
of its most beautiful flowers.
GEORGE PULLEN JACKSON
UNIVERSITY OP NORTH DAKOTA
102
DER ABLAUT VON GOT. SPEIWAN
Got. speiwan "speien" gilt als regelrechtes Verb der ersten
Ablautsreihe. Vom Standpunkte des Gotischen und iiberhaupt des
Germanischen aus 1st gegen diese Auffassung kaum etwas einzu-
wenden. Es steht nichts im Wege, dem got. speiwan entsprechend
fur das Urgermanische ein Verbum spiwan, spaiw, spiwum, spiwans
anzunehmen, wie dies z.B. FT (d. h. Falk und Torp, Wortschatz der
german. Spracheinheit = 'Fick, Vergl. Wtb*, Band III), S. 513, tun.1
Schwierigkeiten ergeben sich erst, wenn man versucht, die For-
men des germanischen Verbums mit denjenigen der verwandten
Sprachen zu vermitteln. Z.B. wollen griech. TTTUOJ u. lat. spuo nicht
recht zu germ, spiwan stimmen. Wie also bildete dieses Verbum
seine Formen im Indogermanischen ? wie lautete vor allem der
Prasensstamm im Indogerm. ?
Die Frage ist verschieden beantwortet. Man vgl. die von
Walde, Lat. Et. Wtb.2 unter spuo verzeichnete Literatur; ausserdem
namentlich E. Berneker, IF. X, 163; Feist, Et. Wtb. d. Got. Spr. unt.
speiwan; W. Schulze, "Ai. $w>," KZ. XLV, 95.
Mit Schulze kann ich mich vollig einverstanden erklaren, wenn
er eine Wurzelform *speieud in das Gebiet der Ablautphantastik
verweist. Derartige nach blossen Schemen von Vokalreihen kon-
struierte Formen haben fur die Sprachgeschichte wenig Wert. Fur
letztere kommt es vielmehr darauf an, die idg. Worte und Flexions-
formen in derjenigen Gestalt wiederherzustellen, welche sie nach
Ausweis der altesten idg. Sprachen unmittelbar vor der Sprach-
trennung batten. Und zwar gilt es dabei der Individualitat des
einzelnen Falles moglichst Rechnung zu tragen. Von diesem Gesichts-
punkte aus ist mir fraglich, ob nicht auch Schulze dem heute herr-
schenden Schematismus noch zu sehr nachgegeben hat. "Die
Wz.," sagt er, "mag etwa sp(h)jaw gelautet haben, mit'den Tief-
stufen sp(h)lw und sp(h)ju." Fiir das hier angenommene " sp(k)jdw "
* Weshalb das Prasens bei FT als *spO')u und nicht als spiwa (westgerm. spiwu)
angesetzt wird, ist mir unklar. Ein j begegnet im Germanischen beim_Prasensstamme
nur in anord. spyja, ist aber hier anerkanntermassen sekundar, indem spyja nachtraglich
aus der 2. 3. sg. spyr=germ. 2. sg. splwis erwachsen ist. Vgl. Noreen, Altisl. Gramm.*,
§ 478 A. 3.
103] 39 [MODBBN PHILOLOGY, June, 1917
40 HERMANN COLLITZ
sehe ich keinen geniigenden Anhalt. Es mag ja auf den ersten Blick
scheinen, als werde eine solche Wurzelform durch lit. spiduju und asl.
pljuja gefordert. Aber bei naherer Erwagung erweist sich die
scheinbare Sttitze als unzuverlassig.
Lit. spiduju erscheint in einer Kategorie mit mindestens einem
Dutzend ahnlich gebildeter Verben, die man bei Kurschat, Lit. Gr.,
§ 1225, und vollstandiger bei Leskien, Der Ablaut der Wurzelsilben
im Lit., (Leipzig, 1884), S. 143, aufgezahlt findet. Es sind Verben,
die z.T. nur in den baltischen Sprachen nachweisbar sind, z.T. aber
auch im Slavischen begegnen.
Mit lit. spiduju, spioviau, spiduti = &sl. pljujq, pljuti erscheinen
hier in einer Reihe Verben wie —
lit. bliduju, blioviau, bliduti " briillen " = asl. bljujq, bljuvati
"vomere" (vgl. asl. blejq, blejati "b\6ken"=\Sit.fleo,flere "weinen").
lett. auju, awu (awu), aut "(Schuhe) anziehen " = asl. ob-ujq,
ob-uti "(Schuhe) anziehen," iz-ujq, iz-uti "ausziehen." Vgl. lat.
ind-uo, ex-uo.
lit. kduju, koviau, kduti "schmieden" = asl. kujq, (u. kovq), kovati
"hauen." Vgl. lat. cudere, ahd. houwan, anord. hoggva.
lit. krduju, krdviau, krduti " haufen " = asl. kryjq, kryti abe-
decken."
lit. mduju, moviau, mduti "streifen" = asl. myjq,, myti "waschen."
lit. plduju, ploviau, plduti " sptilen " = asl. plujq, (u. plovq), pluti
"fliessen."
lit. rduju, roviau, rduti " ausraufen " = asl. ryjq, ryti "graben."
Offenbar sind hier Verben verschiedener Herkumft nachtraglich
zu einer Verbalklasse verschmolzen. Den Grundstock bildeten
anscheinend Verben, die im Prasensstamme ein -eu- oder -ev-, im
allgemeinen Stamme ein -u- batten (vgl. bes. Leskien, Arch. f. slav.
Phil, V, 527 ff.; Vondrak, Vergl. slav. Gramm., I, 98, 104 ff., 172;
II, 209). Aber Prasensstamm und allgemeiner Stamm haben sich
dann vielfach gegenseitig beeinflusst, wahrend zugleich Mischung
und Austausch mit andren Verbalklassen stattfand.
Der Wechsel von -ev- im Prasensstamm mit -u- als Tiefstufe hat
im Altindischen ein Seitenstiick an Verben wie dva-ti "fordern,"
p.p. u-td- (vgl. das Subst. u-ti- m. "Hulfe"); bhdva-ti "werden/7
p.p. bhu-td-; pdva-ti "klaren," p.p. pu-td- u. ahnl. Nach dem
104
DER ABLAUT VON GOT. "SPEIWAN" 41
Vorbilde solcher Verba wurde anscheinend zu der Tiefstufe *spiu-
ein Prasensstamm *spiev(e)-=]it. -si. *spiov(e)- geschaffen, der sich
dann der j-Klasse anschloss.
Somit erhalten wir den tatsachlich vorliegenden Pras.-st. asl.
pljujq = \ii. spiduju. Der neue Prasensstamm wurde dann der
Flexion des gesamten Verbums zugrunde gelegt und verdrangte die
alte Tiefstufe, aber so, dass das j auf die dem Prasenssystem ange-
horigen Formen beschrankt blieb. Somit weist der zweite oder
allgemeine Stamm nunmehr die Form asl. plju- = lit. spiau- auf. In
der scheinbaren " Wz. spiev" des Litoslav. wird man also keine Alter-
tumlichkeit sehen diirfen, sondern das Ergebnis einer Kette von
Neubildungen.
So wenig wie auf das lit. Prasens spiduju lasst sich eine Wz.-form
sp(h)idv- auf das lit. Prateritum spioviau stiitzen. Es mag sein,
dass der lange Vokal bei einigen der Praterita auf -oviau aus der
Ursprache stammt. Aber die Kategorie als ganzes, so wie sie
vorliegt, der idg. Urzeit zuzuschreiben geht offenbar nicht an, und
spioviaumuss zu den Fallen gerechnetwerden, die jungenDatums sind.
Die Entwicklung mag sich etwa folgendermassen vollzogen haben.
Nachdem das -ev- der Verben, die wir als Grundstock dieser
Klasse ansahen, im Lit. zu -aw- gewandelt war, schienen diese
Verba im Prasens auf einer Stufe zu stehen mit der Klasse, wie sie
im Lateinischen in caveo, cam; faveo, fan; paveo, paw vorliegt. Da
lit. a auch fur idg. altes o eintritt, war ferner auch die Grenze
zwischen Verben dieser Art und solchen wie lat. foveo, fom; moveo,
mom; voveo, vovl beseitigt. Das heisst mit andren Worten : man kam
dahin, bei diesen Verben uberall diejenige Art der Prateritalbildung
durchzufuhren, wie sie sich im Germanischen in der 6. Ablautklasse
findet.
Gerade bei dem Verbum splwan aber liegt neben dem auf das
Litauische beschrankten und hinsichtlich seiner Urspriinglichkeit
von vornherein verdachtigen spioviau ein andres Prateritum, das
besser begriindeten Anspruch auf idg. Abkunft hat^ Im Qat.
Brahm. i. 2, 3, 1 (vgl. Bohtl.-Roth, Sanskr.-Wtb. unt. §thiv) ist die 3.
sg. Perf. (abhi)-ti§theva iiberliefert, die sich mit got. (ga)-spaiw
(Joh. 9: 6) deckt. Es liegt kein Grund vor, die Altertumlichkeit
dieser Formen zu bezweifeln. Die vermeintliche Wurzel sphiaw-
105
42 HERMANN COLLITZ
also, die sich mit ihnen schlecht vertragt, darf nunmehr wohl bei
Seite bleiben.
Wie im Perfekt, so stimmen Altindisch und Germanisch im
Prasensstamme genau uberein. Dem got. speiwan entspricht aind.
(3. sg.) -§thivati. Der Akzent ist im Altind. hier so wenig, wie bei
irgend einer andern Form der Wz. §thlv iiberliefert (vgl. Whitney,
Wurzeln der Sanskritsprache [Leipzig, 1885], S. 181. In akzen-
tuierten Texten kommen nur Formen vor, in welchen das Verb
enklitisch ist). Aber es kann trotzdem keinem Zweifel unterliegen,
dass der Ton auf dem I ruhte (in Einklang mit der von B.-R. im
Peter sb. Sanskr.-Wtb. angesetzten Betonung).
Eine Parallele hat dieser Prasensstamm an Formen wie aind.
jwarti "er lebt" (lat. vivit), div-ya-ti "er spielt," siv-ya-ti "er naht."
Man beachte dabei die tybereinstimmung in der Prasensbildung bei
aind. siv-ya-ti und got. siu-ja-n gegeniiber dem ohne ,; gebildeten
Prasensstamme von §thiva-ti und spiwa-n.
Dem betonten -iv- des Prasens entspricht bei aind. §thlv-, dw-, und
slv- tiefstufiges -yu-, z.B. im Ptz. pass, sthyu-ta-, dyu-td-, syu-td-. Im
Germanischen ist diese Wz.-form bei spiwan nicht mit Sicherheit
nachzuweisen. Ihre Herkunft aus der idg. Ursprache aber wird
verbiirgt durch griech. TTTUOJ und lat. spuo. Denn trotz des ab-
weichenden Akzentes ist klar, dass TTTUW und spuo auf Verallge-
meinerung der alten Tiefstufe spju- beruhen und nicht den alten
Prasensstamm enthalten. (Lat. spuo zunachst aus *spjuo, wie
her-i = griech. xO& aus *hjes-i und wohl auch homo neben griech.
X#wj> aus *hjomo).
Die Cbereinstimmung zwischen Altindisch und Germanisch tritt
dann aber gleich wieder hervor bei der tieftonigen (weil ursprunglich
auf der Endung betonten) Stufe des Perf ektstammes : aind. s.thiv-
(3. pi. Perf. ni-ti§thivuh, siehe B.-R.) = germ, spiw- (got. 2. pi. Prt.
and-spiwup Gal. 4:14; 3. pi. bi-spiwun Mark. 15:19). Wenn neben
diesem sthiv- auch s.thlv- als tieftonige Stufe begegnet (z.B. im
Absolutiv ni-sthwya), so darf man mit der Moglichkeit rechnen, dass
hier ehemaliges -iv- auf Grund des Prasensstammes durch -iv- ersetzt
ist. Die Cbertragung brauchte nicht notwendig dem Altindischen
zur Last zu fallen, sondern konnte schon in der idg. Ursprache vor
sich gegangen sein.
106
DER ABLAUT VON GOT. "SPEIWAN" 43
Als Ergebnis dieser Untersuchung glaube ich hinstellen zu
diirfen, dass den drei im Ablautsverhaltnisse stehenden germanischen
Stammen spiw-, spaiw-, spiw- im Altindischen mit gleichem Ablaut
und an gleicher Stelle des Formensystems die Stamme sthw-, sthev-
(aus *§thaiv-), sthiv- entsprechen. Es ertibrigt nur noch, aus dieser
Parallele die Folgerungen zu ziehen, die sich daraus fur den Ablaut
von germ, sjnwan ergeben.
Mag spiwan lediglich vom Standpunkte des Germanischen aus
als regelrechtes Verbum der ersten Ablautklasse erscheinen, so
lehrt das Altindische, dass der Schein hier triigt. Denn das I in
sjfiwan geht nicht, wie bei den regelrechten Verben der ersten Ab-
lautsreihe, auf idg. ei, sondern, wie aind. sthivati beweist, auf idg. I
zuriick. Somit reprasentiert sjnwan einen Nebentypus der ersten
Reihe mit germ. I = idg. i. Das Verhaltnis ist genau dasselbe, wie
bei der zweiten Reihe zwischen dem u von lukan "schliessen" und
dem iu aus idg. eu der regelrechten Verba der zweiten Reihe
(z.B. giutan "giessen"). Man hat die dem Typus lukan ange-
horigen Verba als " Aoristprasentia " bezeichnet. Aber der Name
ist irrefuhrend, und die ihm zugrunde liegende Anschauung, es
handle sich hier im Germanischen um junge, aus andren Tempora
abgeleitete Prasensstamme, trifft schwerlich das Richtige. Gerade
das Verbum sjfiwan macht es wahrscheinlich, dass das Germanische
in solchen Fallen uralte Typen der idg. Prasensbildung gewahrt
hat. Sie sind in den meisten idg. Sprachen entweder der Normal-
form des Ablautes zum Opfer gefallen, oder haben als vereinzelte
und scheinbar unwesentliche Abweichungen von der Norm bis
jetzt nicht hinlangliche Beachtung bei den Grammatikern gefunden.
HERMANN COLLITZ
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
107
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL
Eine wie wichtige Rolle der Teufel in Hebbels Dichtungen spielt
wird wohl schon anderen vor mir aufgefallen sein, wenn ich sonst
keine ungewohnliche Sptirnase fiir den Hollenfiirsten habe.1 Der
Teufel findet sich bei Hebbel wie in der Welt allenthalben. Wir
konnen keine seiner Schriften vornehmen ohne haufig auf Teufel und
Holle zu stossen. Im Drama, in der Lyrik, in den Erzahlungen
und Novellen wie in denReiseberichten,Tagebuchaufzeichnungen und
Briefen stellt sich der Teufel auf Schritt und Tritt bei ihm ein.
In Hebbels griechischem Drama Gyges und sein Ring kann ja vom
Teufel und seiner Holle nicht die Rede sein. Statt dessen horen
wir aber von Erebos, Kronos, Styx, Lethe, Orkus, und den Erynnen.2
In den judaischen Dramen sprechen die Charaktere zwar nicht vom
christlichen Teufel, wohl aber von Damonen und bosen Geistern.
Hebbel wollte den Teufel im Christus auf die Btihne bringen und in der
Genoveva grinst uns eine Teufelslarve im Spiegel an (Regieanweisung
nach V. 2798). Der Teufel kommt bei Hebbel auch im Titel von
zwei Gedichten vor: "Dem Teufel sein Recht im Drama" und
"Der Damon und der Genius." Unter diesen Gedichten finden sich
ausserdem zwei Romanzen vom Teufel: Die Teufelsbraut, die der
Orgelspieler in der Novelle Zitterlein, die dasselbe Motiv hat, ableiert
und Der Tanz. Das Gedicht "Der Ring" hat ein Teufelsbiindnis
zum Motiv und Byrons Lucifer wird von Hebbel auch nicht still-
schweigend iibergangen. Die Novelle Barbier Zitterlein mit ihrem
Motiv von der Teufelsbraut wollte Hebbel auch dramatisch etwa
mit folgendem Thema: Der Liebhaber, der sich fur den Teufel halt
(Tagebucher 1, 8, Nr. 28)3 gestalten. Das Thema der Novelle Schnook
1 Auf einige interessante Teufelsstellen bei Hebbel habe ich schon in meinem Buche,
Der Teufel in den deutschen geistlichen Spielen des Mittel alters und der Reformationszeit,
"Hesperia" Nr. 6, Johns Hopkins Press, 1915. S. 142, Anm. 3, hingewiesen. Herrn
Prof. Dr. Hermann Collitz bin ich fiir hilfreiche Bemerkungen und Anregungen herzlichen
Dank schuldig. 9
8 ttber die Teufelsidee bei den Griechen siehe J. A. Hild, Etude sur les demons dans la
litterature et la religion des Grecs, 1881.
8 Ich zitiere in diesem Aufsatz nach R. M. Werners historisch-kritischer Ausgabe
von Hebbels Werken, Berlin, 1904-7. Bw. ist die Abkurzung fur Friedrich Hebbels
Briefwechsel mit Freunden und beriihmten Zeitgenossen .... hrsg. von Felix Bamberg,
2 Bde., Berlin, 1890-92. Die Versangabe fur Die Nibelungen ist nach Zeiss' Ausgabe
(Bibliog. Institute).
109] 45 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, June, 1917
46 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
lasst sich in den paar Worten, die Hebbel dem Titelhelden in den
Mund legen wollte, ausdrticken: "Der Teufel ist's der die Ehen
schliesst" (Bw. I, 31) und in der fragmentarischen Novelle Die
beiden Vagabunden, mit ihren interessanten Situationen, spielt ja
der Teufel die Hauptrolle. Hebbel wollte den Teufel auch noch in
anderen Erzahlungen zur Hauptfigur machen, wie aus Entwiirfen
die uns erhalten sind zu ersehen ist (Werke VIII, 355-56; vgl. auch
Tagebiicher I, 2-3, Nr. 5, 9, 10; ibid., S. 42, Nr. 227). Unter diesen
"Planen und Stoffen" findet sich sogar ein "Tagebuch des Teufels"
(Werke VIII, 355; vgl. auch Tagebiicher I, 5, Nr. 10). Von der
Grossmutter des Teufels spricht Hebbel in einem seiner Briefe
(Brief e VII, 275, 14).
Es bedarf kaum der Erwahnung dass Hebbel in diesem Punkte
seine Zeitgenossen und Vorganger, sogar aus der romantischen
Schule, bei weitem uberflugelt. Es wird sich kaum ein deutscher
Schriftsteller des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts finden, der Hebbel in
seiner Vorliebe zum Teufel an die Seite gestellt werden konnte.1
Auch seine Vorbilder in der Erzahlungskunst, E. T. A. Hoffmann und
Jean Paul, von denen er sich mehrere Teufelsgeschichten in seinem
Tagebuche aufgezeichnet hat (Tagebucherl, 71, Nr. 381, 1, 76, Nr. 415 u.
I, 134-35, Nr. 623), hat Hebbel in dieser Beziehung weit hinter sich
gelassen.2 Da Hebbel fur uns hauptsachlich als Dramatiker gilt,
und die anderen Dichtungsarten uns nur in sofern von Bedeutung
sind, als sie uns zur Erkenntnis seines Wesens verhelfen, werde ich
hauptsachlich auf den Teufel in Hebbels Dramen eingehen, ohne
aber die anderen Dichtungsarten ganz ausser Betracht zu lassen.
Als Hebbel als siebzehnjahriger Bursche sich auf dem Gebiete des
Dramas versuchte, gestaltete er schon so ziemlich alle Charaktere
zu Teufeln. Mirandola zeigt schon wie tief Hebbel sich mit dem
1 Von den Dramen, wo der Teufel im Stoflfe selbst gegeben ist, wie Goethes Faust,
und die vielen anderen Faustdichtungen, Grabbes Don Juan und Faust, Arnims
Papstin Johanna, Immermanns Merlin, u. a. m., ist freilich abgesehen. Auch ist
es ganz natiirlich dass der Titelheld in Zacharias Werners Martin Luther seinem
Widersacher Satan nicht nur allerlei unschmeichelhaften Worte, sondern auch das
Tintenfass an den Kopf wirft. Sonst ist die Redeweise im Schicksalsdrama mit Hyper-
beln von Teufel und Holle nicht in dem Masse wie bei Hebbel tiberladen. Bei Kleist zeigt
sich nur der Dorfrichter Adam in seinem Lustspiel Der zerbrochene Krug mit dem Teufel
auf vertrautem Fusse zu stehen.
* Erzahlungen wie Die Elixiere des Teufels sind nattirlich aus dem Grunde, der in vor-
gehender Anmerkung in bezug auf Dramen angefuhrt ist, ausgenommen.
110
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 47
Damon im Menschen beschaftigen wird. Hier sind, wie eben
gesagt, fast alle Charaktere Teufel. Gomatzinas Befiirchtung, dass
er seinem Freunde Mirandola seine Geliebte raubt und Teufel wird
(1. Akt, 6. Sz.), verwirklicht sich allzusehr, und er wird auch Teufel
(2. Akt, 4. u. 5. Szz.). Der Burggraf Gonsula, der dies Unheil aus
Hass zur Familie des Madchens angestiftet hat, ist erst recht ein
Teufel (2. Akt, 5. Sz.; 3. Akt, 1. Sz.). Der betrogene Mirandola will,
als er von der Untreue seines Freundes erfahrt, aus freien Stiicken
ein Teufel werden, "und ein solcher, dass die Holle selbst soil beben,
wenn sie mich mit der Zeit empfangt" (Werke V, 29-30). Aber
auch das Herz der betrogenen Flamina wird zum Wohnsitz des
Teufels. "Das Wort ["0, nie sehe ich ihn wieder"] pragt sich mit
Hollenspitzen in meine Seele" (2. Akt, 1. Sz.). In seinem nachsten
Fragment Der Vatermord ist der treulose Geliebte ein Teufel und
Fernando ist vom Spielteufel besessen.
Aber auch in semen reiferen und vollendeten Dramen, mit Aus-
nahme des hellenischen Dramas Gyges, raumt Hebbel, wie schon
bemerkt, dem Teufel einen sehr wichtigen Platz ein. In seiner Be-
vorzugung des Anormalen vor dem Allgemein-Gultigen, in seiner
Neigung gerade das Niederdruckende in der menschlichen Natur wie
im menschlichen Schicksal darzustellen bot ihm, wie es scheint, das
damonische Element in der Weltordnung reichlichen Stoff. Alle
seine " problematischen Naturen" sind Damonen, alle wecken sie
den Damon in sich. Fur die Stillen, die sich bemiihen jeder Versuch-
ung aus dem Wege zu gehen, hat j a Hebbel gar kein Interesse. l Wenn
auch der Dramatiker Hebbel den von ihm selbst gestellten strengen
Anforderungen sonst nicht immer entspricht,2 so stimmt doch in
dieser Beziehung Theorie3 und Praxis bei ihm tiberein, wie aus
folgendem zu ersehen ist.
Judith. — Holof ernes mit seinem " zyklopischen Grossmanns-
dunkel," wie Bulthaupt sich ausdriickt,4 ist ein Teufel der Hoffart
und hat ein Hollenlacheln (5. Akt). In Samajas Augen ist der
Brudermorder Daniel vom Teufel besessen. Ein Qamon des
» Vgl. Hebbels Gedicht " Der Damon und der Genius."
2 Vgl. Friedrich Hebbels Tagebiicher, hrsg. von Hermann Krumm, I, 144 Anm.
> Vgl. sein Gedicht " Dem Teufel sein Kecht im Drama."
4 Dramaturgic des Schauspiels, III9, 132.
Ill
48 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
Abgrunds hat seinen Mund, den Mund eines Stummgeborenen,
entsiegelt, um die Menschen zu verlocken (3. Akt).
Genoveva. — Golo, ein "sexuell Verrtickter," wie Bulthaupt ihn
nennt,1 1st, wie Faust, teilweise das Spiel werk Satans.2 Mit seinem
aufflammenden, hastigen Charakter handelt er der Genoveva gegen-
iiber zwar aus menschlichen Griinden teuflisch (Tagebiicher I, 319, Nr.
1475, 30-31). Des Himmels reinster Blick (Genoveva) entziindet
in seiner Brust die Holle (ibid., S. 322, Z. 103). Aus seiner Brust,
bekennt Golo, bricht hervor ein Verbrechen, das die Holle selbst
aufs neue entzunden konnte, ware sie verloscht (V. 1449-50). Er
hetzt die Hollenhunde, mit denen man eine Unschuldige in Slinde und
Verbrechen hetzen kann, auf Genoveva (V. 1710-11). Fur Siegfried
ist Golo ein Gespenst, das die Holle ausschickt (V. 2359-60). Ein
boser Geist spricht aus ihm, gesteht Golo selbst ein (V. 360). Der
Teufel, sagt er, ist bei ihm (V. 1599). Er nennt sich selbst sogar
Teufel (V. 3401). Genovevas Schicksal muss erfiillt werden, damit
Golos Holle ganz werde (Tagebiicher I, 321, Nr. 1475, 88-89). Im
funften Akt treibt Golo jenen diabolischen Humor, der das Gottliche
in der eigenen Brust zu vernichten eine Verzweiflungslust empfindet
(ibid., II, 102, Nr. 2304). Seine Reue am Ende blast ins Hollenfeuer,
statt es feig mit Tranen auszuloschen, selbst hinein (V. 3375-76).
Das Tor der Holle, weiss er wohl, steht ihm off en (V. 418). Die
scheussliche Hexe Margaretha ist ein echtes Teufelsweib. Ihr Plan,
meint Golo, ist satanisch (V. 1686). Der Teufel selbst, denkt er,
ersinnt nichts besseres als sie (V. 1655). Der Teufel, sagt er von
seiner Verbundeten, sieht scharf (V. 2434). Der Teufel is seinerseits
Margarethens Verbtindeter (V. 2522). Sie weiss so viel wie er
(V. 2701). Sie wird wahrend der Teufelsbeschworung von der
damonischen Gewalt ergriffen (Regieanweisung vor V. 2797). Sie
will den Satan, der sich ihren Leib zum Haus gewahlt hat, aus sich
vertreiben (V. 2801).
Der Diamant. — Der Jude Benjamin, der in den Besitz des Diaman-
ten gekommen ist, steht im Solde des Teufels. Er ist beim Diebstahl
der Taschenuhr, wie er selbst eingesteht, vom Teufel unterstiizt
worden. Der Teufel habe ihm alle Ttiren angelweit geoffnet
1 Dramaturgic des Schauspiels, IIP, S. 143.
* R. M. Werner, Hebbel: Ein Lebensbild, S. 53.
112
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 49
(1. Akt, 4. Sz.), sagt er. Schluter, der Gefangniswarter, den Ben-
jamin bestochen hat, um seiner Haft zu entkommen, konnte dem
Teufel von einem Juden, bekennt er vor Gericht, nicht widerstehen
(5. Akt, 2. Sz.).
Maria Magdalena. — Leonhard ist ein Teufel. Er hat eine
damonische Macht iiber die schwache, mehr an das Gehorchen als
an selbststandiges Handeln gewohnte Klara ausgeiibt, und sie hat
ihm gegeben was man nur aus Liebe geben darf. Durch seine
Weigerung Klara zu heiraten zeigt Leonhard dass er wirklich ein
Teufel ist. Nur der Teufel tut das ausserst Bose, meint Klara mit
bezug auf ihn (2. Akt, 5. Sz.). In den Augen des Sekretars ist
Leonhard eine Schlange, die Beelzebub, dessen Wohlgefallen sie erregt
hat, in Menschenhaut gesteckt hat (ibid.). Klaras Vater, Anton,
dessen Starrsinn sie zum Opfer fallt, ist ein harter, rauher Mensch,
ein "borstiger Igel," wie ihn Leonhard nennt, der selbst vor dem
Teufel Frieden hat (1. Akt, 5. Sz.). Die Frau des Kaufmanns
Wolfram, die tiber ein Ungliick jauchzt und jubelt, wird fur einen
Teufel oder eine Verriickte gehalten (2. Akt, 3. Sz.).
Ein Trauerspiel in Sizilien. — Der bose Gregorius wird von
Anselmo Teufel gennant (V. 650).
Julia. — Die Rauber, seine friiheren Genossen, die die Schuld
fur sein Zuspatkommen tragen, und daher fur die ganze Tragodie
verantwortlich sind, sind im Munde des Antonio Teufel (2. Akt,
2. Sz.; 3. Akt, 5. Sz. [zweimal]). Antonio, der eine teuflische Rache
an dem vermeintlichen Feinde seines Vaters plant, ist auch in seinen
eigenen Augen des Teufels (2. Akt, 2. Sz.). Der Aufriihrer Grimaldi,
denkt Tobaldi, ist von den sieben Teufeln besessen gewesen (1. Akt,
3. Sz.).
Herodes und Mariamne. — Herodes, denkt Mariamne, ist von
einem Damon besessen (V. 1829, 3095). Herodes selbst furchtet
den Damon in sich (V. 1664). Mariamne ist in den Augen ihrer
Schwagerin Salome ein Damon aus der Holle (V. 2662). Der
Teufel versucht Mariamne und sie ziickt den Dolch geeen sich
(V. 2153). Ihr Eheleben, meint Mariamne, ist eine Holle (V. 3005).
In den Augen des Herodes ist Antonius, nach der Meinung der Mari-
amne, ein Damon, dem die unschuldigste Frau nicht widerstehen
kann (V. 1610-15).
113
50 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
Der Rubin. — Hier spielt der bose Geist, der die Prinzessin in einen
Rubin verbannt hat, die wichtigste Rolle. Wenn er sich auch im
Hintergrund der Handlung halt, griindet sich doch die Fabel auf ihn
(V. 561-64).
Michel Angela. — In diesem Drama sind die ungerechten Kritiker
eines Kiinstlers, "der Schwarm der Neider" (V. 697), Teufel. Sie
wollen das Bose, schaffen aber das Gute, meint der Papst. Die
ungerechten Kritiker machen eben den Kiinstler (V. 697-708).
Agnes Bernauer. — Preising, der der Bernauerin rat ihre Ehe
fur eine siindige zu erklaren, ist in den Augen dieses Engels von
Augsburg der Teufel. "Hebe dich von mir, Versucher," ruft sie
ihm entriistet zu (5. Akt, 3. Sz.). In den Augen des Volkes ist Agnes
eine Hexe und steht im Bunde mit dem Teufel (Stachus in 4. Akt,
2. Sz.). Albrecht verbindet sich mit dem Teufel, um sich an denen zu
rachen die seine Frau in den Tod getrieben haben (5. Akt, 8. Sz.).
Mit der Holle iiber seinem Kopfe zieht er das Schwert gegen seinen
eigenen Vater (5. Akt, 10. Sz.). Er befordert die Teufel, die un-
schuldiges Blut vergossen haben, zum Teufel in die Holle (5. Akt,
9. Sz.).
Die Nibelungen. — In diesem Drama verkorpert Frigga das
Damonische und Hagen ist im Munde Kriemhildens ein Teufel
des Neides, ein Damon des Hasses (II, V. 1996, III, 2527). Er hat,
nach der Meinung der Witwe Siegfrieds, ein Teufelslacheln (II,
V. 2008) und der Hollengischt kocht in seinen Adern (III, V. 2526).
Brunhild ist, nach Rumolt (II, V. 283) und Siegfried (II, V. 417), ein
Teufelsweib, und hat, gemass der Ansicht Kriemhildens, Teufels-
ktinste im Sinne (III, V. 1112-13). Aber auch Kriemhild ist in
den Augen Hagens (III, V. 2739) und Hildebrands (III, V. 2330,
2355) eine Teufelin und wird von Hildebrand zurtick zur Holle
geschickt (III, V. 2743-44).
Demetrius. — Wer den Mord des Prinzen begangen und diese
Tragodie heraufbeschworen hat ist, gemass der Meinung der un-
glucklichen Mutter Marva, ein Teufel (V. 984).
Der Steinwurf. — Der Rabbi ist ein Biindner des Teufels. Er
gelangte, meint Libussa, zur Allwissenheit durch des Teufels Gunst
und um den Preis der Seligkeit (V. 382-83). Der Teufel selbst,
glaubt das Volk, bewacht seine Schatze (V. 306-7) . Der Trunkenbold
114
DEK TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 51
Wolf ist vom Teufel besessen. Die bosen Geister, sagt seine
Schwester Anna, taten es ihm an, dass er das Spiel und den Wein
liebt (V. 49-50). Sie will ihren Bruder vom Teufel losketten,
dass er ihn nicht ganz umstrickt (V. 600-601). Sie ermahnt ihn
an die Holle zu denken (V. 593). Die Pforte der Holle, meint die
ungliickliche Schwester, stehe ihm schon off en (V. 53-54). Aber
auch die Libussa, in die der Rabbi von Prag verliebt ist, ist in
den Augen Joels, des Ratgebers des Rabbis, eine Teufelin. Oft,
so warnt er seinen Freund, wohnt der Teufel im schonsten Haus
(V. 700).
Die Schauspielerin. — Eduard, der wahre Don Juan, wie sein
Freund Edmund ihn nennt, hat nach dessen Meinung seinen Platz
in der Holle als Teufel doppelt und dreifach bezahlt (1. Sz.). Das
Andenken an seine Geliebte Eugenia hat ihn, gesteht Eduard selbst,
zum Teufel, zum Morder seiner Frau gemacht (9. Sz.).
Die Charaktere in Hebbels Dramen wie Erzahlungen scheinen
sich, ebensowenig wie ihr Schopfer, zu flirchten den Teufel an die
Wand zu malen (vgl. u.a. Briefe I, 31, 15; 162, 18; 187, 6.
II, 317, 7. Ill, 351, 2. V, 222, 8. VI, 72, 16. VII, 156, 25;
218, 23; 236, 32; 275, 14; 358, 11. VIII, 7, 4; 11, 22). Hebbel
verschmacht ja die "bliihende Diktion." Er will ja seine Menschen
in den befangenen Ausdriicken ihres Standes sprechen lassen. Uns
nimmt also nicht wunder wenn die Rauber in Sizilien, Golo, Anton,
und Hagen den Teufel im Munde fiihren. Aber, wie Hebbel selber
in den Tagenbuchern und Brief en,1 schworen und fluchen auch Sieg-
fried, Herzog Ernst, Demetrius, und Konig Christian sehr oft mit
Teufel und Holle, wie aus der folgenden Zusammenstellung leicht
zu ersehen ist.
"Teufel": Gen., V. 2030: Golo; M. Magd., Ill, 3: Leonhard;2
A. Bern., IV, 12: Pappenheim; V, 10: Faruenhoven; Vier Nat.:
Valentin. "Alle Teufel": Gen., V. 3017: Hans; Dem., V. 1777:
Petrowitsch. "Zum Teufel": Gen., V. 98, 3183: Golo; V. 918:
Balthasar; M. Magd., II, 1: Anton; Siz., V. 30,710: ^nbrosio;
M.Ang., V. 351: Onuphrio; A. Bern., II, 1: Torring; 111,6: Ernst;
1 Siehe, u.a. Tagebucher I, 93, Nr. 513; I, 366, Nr. 1631 ("Hoi' mich der Teufel");
II, 213, Nr. 2625; II, 360, Nr. 2982; Bw. I, 44.
2 "Teufel! Teufel!"
115
52 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
Nib., II, V. 1715: Siegfried; Schausp., Sz. 1: Eduard (zweimal);
Streuensee, V. 8: Konig Christian. "Holl' und Teufel": Gen., V.
3320: Hans; Nib., II, V. 1142: Siegfried; II, V. 1507: Hagen.
"Tod und Teufel": Dem., V. 1196; Demetrius. "HoP der Teufel":
Gen., V. 1064: Margaretha; Diam., I, 3: Jakob; I, 4: Benjamin;
II, 2: Pfeffer; III, 3: Kilian; M. Magd., I, 5; II, 1: Anton; Siz.,
V. 283: Ambrosio; Nib., II, V. 2: Hagen; Steinwurf, V. 680; Vier.
Nat.: Valentin. "Zur Holle": Gen., V. 52: Golo.
Wie erklart sich Hebbels Vorliebe fur den Teufel ? Gewiss lassen
sich seine starken, derben Ausdriicke zum Teil auf die nordische
Scharf e seiner Natur zuruckfiihren. Weshalb aber kommt der Teufel
nicht ebenso oft in den Schriften seiner Landsleute vor? Man
braucht ja nur auf seinen Zeitgenossen und Freund Klaus Groth
hinzuweisen, urn zu zeigen, dass es nicht etwa das meerumspulte
Dithmarschen ist, das Teufelsfreunde zieht. Seine Jugendbildung
mag vielleicht auch ihren Anteil an Hebbels Interesse am Teufel
gehabt haben. Von seinem Vater und den weiblichen Hausbe-
wohnern, die alle reich an Aberglauben waren, bekam er schon als
dreijahriger Knabe Hexen- und Spukgeschichten zu horen. In der
Schule, die er, wie er mit Ironie bemerkt, noch vor dem Einzug des
Rationalismus in Wesselburen (Werke VIII, 106-7), bezog, horte er
oft von Tod und Teufel, so dass er, wie er uns erzahlt, im sechsten
Jahre an die wirklichen Horner und Klauen des Teufels oder die
Hippe des Todes glaubte (ibid., S. 104, 20-21). Die Bibel, aus der er
fast seine ganze Jugendbildung zog, wie er oft zugibt (ibid., S. 400), und
die er halb auswendig wusste (Tagebucher IV, 177, Nr. 5847, 17-18),
und seine beiden Lehrer in der Erzahlungskunst, E. T. A. Hoffmann
und Jean Paul, waren auch nicht dazu angetan, den Teufel aus
Hebbels Gedachtnis verschwinden zu lassen. Immerhin genugt
diese Tatsache nicht den Unterschied zwischen Hebbel und anderen
Schriftstellern, die dieselbe oder wenigstens eine ahnliche Erziehung
genossen haben, zu erklaren. Allerdings kommt im Drama noch
seine Theorie von der Schauspielkunst hinzu. Der Anschauung
Hebbels nach mtissen namlich die Charaktere im Drama die sittliche
Idee verneinen. "Der wahre Dichter kann ebenso wenig das Bose
aus dem Rahmen seines Dramas verweisen, als Gott es aus der Welt
verweisen konnte," schreibt Hebbel an die Crelinger am 23. 1. 1844
116
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 53
(Tagebiicher II, 365, Nr. 3003, 29-30). l Der Kern der Hebbelschen
Weltauffassung, vor allem seines Dramas, 1st eben der Dualismus.
Diese seine Lebensphilosophie bringt Hebbel zum Ausdruck auch
im Moloch. Das Negative ist ebenso notig, wenngleich nicht ebenso
viel wert, wie das Positive.2 "Der Dualismus/' sagt Hebbel auch
anderswo, "geht durch alle uns're Anschauungen und Gedanken,
durch jedes einzelne Moment unseres Seins hindurch, und er selbst
ist uns're hochste, letzte Idee" (ibid. II, 79, Nr. 2197). Wiederum
sagt er in seinem Tagebuch, "Das Drama hat es vor allem mit der
Wiederbringung des Teufels zu tun" (ibid. IV, 117, Nr. 5607;
vgl. auch ibid., S. 56, Nr. 5449, u. Brief e VI, 72, 15-16). Alle
diese Tatsachen, die zweifellos fur Hebbels Neigung zum Teufel
mitbestimmend sind, geniigen immerhin noch nicht sein inneres
Verhaltnis zum Teufel, wenn ich mich so ausdrticken darf ohne
mich gegen den Geist des grossten deutschen Dramatikers des
neunzehnten Jahrhunderts zu verstindigen, zu erklaren. Man
braucht nur seine Tagebiicher aufzuschlagen, um sich zu verge-
wissern wie tief und anhaltend Hebbel sich mit dem Teufel
wahrend seines ganzen Lebens beschaftigt hat. Diese Tat-
sache lasst sich nur durch eine tiefe Geistesverwandschaft Hebbels
zum Teufel erklaren. Hebbel, dieser "Menschenfresser," dieses
"Gehirnraubtier," wie ihn Emil Kuh in seiner Biographie so charak-
teristisch nennt, stand sehr stark unter dem Einflusse der hollischen
Machte. Hebbel selbst gesteht dass er dem Teufel ebenso ver-
pflichtet ist wie Gott:
Viel hat's in mir geschafft:
Von Gott den reinen Willen,
Vom Teufel jede Kraft.
— "Bin Geburtstag auf der Reise," V. 62-64.
"An der Wiege eines Genius," sagt Hebbel in seinem Tagebuche,
"stehen Gott und Teufel und reichen sich die Hande" (IV, 44, Nr.
5341). In Stunden der Verzweiflung glaubt Hebbel sein Dichter-
talent sei ausschliesslich eine Gabe des Teufels, zu gross*um unter-
driickt zu werden, zu klein um eine Existenz darauf zu griinden
(Tagebuch I, 279, Nr. 1323; vgl. auch ibid., S. 266, Nr. 1276). 3
» Vgl. Hebbels Gedicht, "Dem Teufel sein Recht im Drama."
2 Vgl. Die Rede des Papstes im Michel Angela (V. 675 flf.).
3 Siehe auch Werner, Hebbel: Bin Lebensbild, S. 106.
117
54 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
Die innigste Verwandschaft zwischen seinem Drama und seinem
eigenen Leben hat Hebbel selbst betont. " Aber ich habe das Talent
auf Kosten des Menschen genahrt, und was in meinen Dramen als
aufflammende Leidenschaft Leben und Gestalt erzeugt, das ist in
meinem wirklichen Leben ein boses, unheilgebarendes Feuer, das
mich selbst und meine Liebsten und Teuersten verzehrt" (ibid.
II, 162, Nr. 2509). Er war namlich selbst von den Krankheiten
infiziert, die er in seinen Dramen schildert. Das Teuflische, das
Hebbel so gerne malt, war in seiner eigenen Brust. Wie seine
Helden, hatte auch er den Damon in sich, wie er sich selbst und
seinen Freunden gegentiber oft eingesteht (Tagebuch I, 72, Nr. 393;
II, 60, Nr. 2098; find., S. 61-62, Nr. 2099; ibid., S. 281-82, Nr. 2808,
18-21; IV, 169, Nr. 5825, 24-27). Oberhaupt ist nach Hebbels
Anschauung ein Genius nicht gliicklich zu preisen der den Damon
in sich nicht weckt.1 Unter dem Einflusse Christinens konnte zwar
Hebbel schliesslich die Damone seines Innern zum Teil beschworen,
aber nie ganz unterdriicken, wie sein Bruch mit Emil Kuh zur
Geniige beweist. Aber nicht nur mit dem Damon in sich hatte
Hebbel sein ganzes Leben lang zu kampfen, auch mit den ausseren
Damonen hat Hebbel von seiner friihesten Kindheit auf, und bis
zu seinem letzten Atemzug ringen imissen. Seine Kindheit nennt
er selbst eine Holle,2 und die Holle hat um ihn herum geschlagen bis
man ihn ins Grab getragen hat. Der Rheumatismus, ein Teufel
der ihn schon in Kopenhagen an der Kehle hielt, hat ihn bis an sein
Lebensende geplagt (Tagebiicher IV, 299, Nr. 6138, Briefe VII, 358,
11). In seinem Gedicht, "Ein Geburtstag auf der Reise," spricht
Hebbel von Munchen als seinem Schlachtfelde
Wo ich hier, stumm, doch bang,
Mit jedem der Damonen
Auf Tod und Leben rang [V. 54-56].
Die Mtinchener Teufel aber waren wie Engel im Vergleich mit den
Hollengeistern seiner Kindheit. In seiner autobiographischen Skizze,
Aufzeichnungen aus meinem Leben, erzahlt er uns selber: "Wie tief
i Vgl. Hebbels Gedicht, "Der Damon und der Genius." V. 1-2.
*Vgl. Werner, Hebbel: Ein Lebensbild, S. 12. In der Krummschen Ausgabe der
Tagebiicher ist die Lesung I, 98 "Giftholle." Werner (Tagebiicher I, 163, Nr. 747) liest
"GifthtUle."
118
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 55
sich die Ausgeburten derselben [jener ungeheuren Furcht vor Damo-
nen] mir eingepragt haben, geht daraus hervor dass sie mit voller
Gewalt in jeder ernsten Krankheit wieder kehren; so wie das fiebe-
risch siedende Blut mir fiber's Gehirn lauft und das Bewusstsein
ertrankt, stellen die altesten Teufel, alle spater geborenen vertrei-
bend und entwaffnend, sich wieder ein um mich zu martern, und das
beweis't ohne Zweifel am Besten, wie sie mich einst gemartert haben
miissen" (Werke VIII, 100, 18-26). Diese altesten Teufel haben
Hebbel in seiner friihesten Kindheit "des Abends vor'm Eindammern
von Boden und von den Wanden herab schon Geschichter ge-
schnitten" (ibid., S. 102, 23-25). Er gesteht selbst die dumme
Geschichte ein, wie er als Kind eines Tages einen alten Nussknacker,
den er noch nie zuvor gesehen hatte, fur den Teufel nahm, als dieser
den Rachen offnete und ihm seine grimmigen weissen Zahne zeigte
(ibid., S. 101, • 28ff.). Im ewigen Kampfe mit den inneren wie
ausseren Damonen befangen, wie sollte es da einen wundernehmen
wenn Hebbel sie so oft im Munde fiihrte und aufs Papier brachte ?
Damit ist aber nicht gesagt dass Hebbel an die Existenz des
Teufels geglaubt hat. Obgleich er den Glauben an einen person-
lichen Teufel seinen Charakteren beilegt, folgt daraus noch immer
nicht dass er ihn auch selbst geteilt hat. Warm er aber den Glauben
an den Teufel, der ihm in seiner Kindheit, wie schon erwahnt, beige-
bracht worden ist, abgelegt hat, lasst sich nicht mit Sicherheit fest-
stellen. Sein Gedicht "Der Tanz" (1832) schliesst allerdings mit
den Worten, "Verhohnet nimmer der Geister Macht," und am
14. Juli 1837 wirft er im Tagebuche die Frage auf : "Das Anscheinend-
Gute beziehen wir immer auf iiberirdische Zustande; warum nicht
immer auch das Anscheinend-Bose " (Tagebiicher I, 181, Nr. 806).
Dass er selbst aber nicht mehr an Iiberirdische Zustande, gute ebenso-
wohl wie bose, glaubte beweist seine Aufzeichnung vom 13. April
desselben Jahres: "Die Holle ist langst ausgeblasen, und ihre letzten
Flammen haben den Himmel ergriffen und verzehrt" (Tagebiicher I,
153, Nr. 689). * Aber schon am 30. Januar desselben Jahres
schreibt er an Elise Lensing wie folgt: "Schon das ist ein grosses
Ungliick, dass man nicht mehr an den Teufel, und noch weniger an
i Vgl. auch Tagebuch III, 312, Nr. 4441; ibid., S. 418, Nr. 5010, und das Gedicht
"Das Bild vom Mittelalter," V. 19-20.
119
56 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
seine Sippschafft glauben kan" (Brief e I, 162, 17-19). Hebbels
Weltanschauung hatte weder fur einen personlichen Gott noch fur
einen personlichen Teufel Raum. Er war ja nicht bloss kirchen-
feindlich, sondern positiv atheistisch gesinnt.1 Gott war ftir ihn
das schaffende und bindende, der Teufel das vernichtende und
losende, Prinzip in der Natur (vgl. Tagebucher II, 281-82, Nr. 2808,
19-20). Jedenfalls gilt von Hebbel, was er in bezug auf Schiller
sagt, dass viele seiner Ausdriicke auf "die alien eingeborene und
anerzogene christliche und jiidische Mythologie" zuruckzufiihren
sind (Tagebucher III, 234, Nr. 4154).
Wenn sich aber auch seine Auffassung des Teufels im Laufe der
Zeit geandert hat, bleibt sich diesselbe in seinen Schriften immer
gleich. Hier bringt er eben nicht seine Anschauungen zum Aus-
druck, sondern die der Charaktere die er malt. Individuelle, person-
liche Ztige besitzt Hebbels Teufel deshalb nicht. In Stoffen und
Charakteren wie in Ausdrucken ist es der Teufel der Volkssprache und
des Volksglaubens, den wir bei Hebbel vorfinden. Schon am 1. Juli
1836 (Tagebucher I, 42, Nr. 227) nimmt er sich vor, in einem Roman,
fur den er sich den Stoff aufzeichnet, "alle hollischen und himmlischen
Gewalten dem Volksglauben gemass" hineinzuverwickeln. Spater
vermerkt er sich im Tagebuche die folgende Regel: "Wir Menschen
sind des Grauens und der Ahnung nun einmal fahig; es ist dem
Dichter daher gewiss erlaubt sich auch solcher Motive zu bedienen,
die er nur diesen truben Regionen abgewinnen kann. Aber, Zweierlei
muss er beachten. Er darf hier, erstlich, weniger, wie jemals, in's
rein Willkurliche verfallen, dann wird er abgeschmackt. Dies
vermeidet er dadurch, dass er auf die Stimmen des Volkes und der
Sage horcht, und nur aus denjenigen Elementen bildet, welche sie,
die der Natur alles wirklich Schauerliche langst ablauschten, geheiligt
haben" (Tagebuch I, 229, Nr. 1055). Dazu genugen Hebbel die
Erinnerungen aus seiner Kindheit und etwa sonstige volksmassige
Uberlieferung in Verbindung mit der Bibel und der theologischen
Literatur, die er fleissig las (Tagebucher IV, 177, Nr. 5847, 18-20).
Dass Hebbel mehr vom Teufel wusste als andere Leute hat schon
Campes Frau zu ihrem Manne bemerkt, als sie das Manuskript der
Genoveva in die Hande bekam (Tagebucher II, 151-52, Nr. 2481).
i Siehe auch R. M. Meyer, Die deutsche Literatur d. 19. Jha., S. 411.
120
DER TEUFEL BEI HEBBEL 57
Ein Beispiel literarischer Beeinflussung und einer philosophischen
Durchgeistigung der Teufelsidee wird man nur im Michel Angela
(V. 675-92) finden. Der Teufel in diesem Drama sticht vom Teufel
in den anderen Dramen sehr ab. Nur einiges in seinen Tagebuchern
und vielleicht auch in seinen Gedichten1 klingt an ihn an. Nur hier
erhebt sich Hebbel iiber den Teufelsglauben des Volkes. Diese
Auffassung vom Teufel, "der stets das Bose will und stets das Gute
schafft" (Faust, V. 1336), 2 steht hoch iiber dem Volksglauben und
beriihrt sich sehr eng mit der des Mephistopheles3 in den spatesten
und reifsten Partien von Goethes Faust, Erster Teil, namentlich
aber im Prolog im Himmel:
Des Menschen Tatigkeit kann allzu leicht erschlaffen,
Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh',
Drum geb' ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu,
Der reizt und wirkt, und muss als Teufel schaffen [V. 340-43].
Zwar kennt auch der Volksglaube einen "dummen Teufel," aber nur
insofern als man seine Freude daran hat wenn der Teufel einmal
betrogen und um seine Beute gebracht wird. Der Teufel aber als
"Schalk" bei Goethe und als "Tor" (Michel Angela, V. 681) bei
Hebbel ist dagegen ein notwendiges Glied einer auf das Gute be-
rechnenden Weltordnung, in der der Teufel im Grunde genommen
ein Diener des Herrn ist, und das Bose eine untergeordnete Stellung
einimmt, wahrend der Volksglaube zwei verschiedene Reiche aner-
kennt, die sich gegenseitig bekampfen und vernichten wollen, und
im ganzen genommen nicht iiber diesen Dualismus hinauskommt.
Zwar ist der Dualismus der Kernpunkt der Weltanschauung Hebbels,
wie schon friiher bemerkt worden ist, aber sein Dualismus ist kein
absoluter, sondern ein relativer. Schon friih kam Hebbel zu dur
Uberzeugung, dass das Bose in der Natur sich zu irgend einer Zeit
ins Gute verwandeln muss, dass es nicht bleibt, was es ist (Tagebucher
1 Vgl. die Stelle im Gedicht " Jedennann ins Album":
"Bist Du ein Schlimmer, so straft arger die Holle dich nicht "XV. 4).
Ein ahnlicher Gedanke ist Gen., V. 2915-16, ausgedriickt.
2 Diese Idee hatte vielleicht auch Irad im Rubin, als er sagt:
" Der bose Geist hat, ohne es zu ahnen,
Fur seinen [Allans] Plan gewirkt" (V. 1300-1301).
»Dass Hebbel sich mit der Natur des Mephistopheles beschaftigte beweist die
Tatsache dass er ein Wort Franz von Baeders tiber das Bose mit Rucksicht auf Goethes
Mephistopheles besprach; sieho Werner, Hebbel: Ein Lebensbild. S. 7,6.
121
58 MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
I, 286, Nr. 1340; II, 205, Nr. 2616). Er glaubt fest an ein "Ge-
meinsames, Losendes, und Versohnendes hinter diesen (scheinbar)
gespaltenen Zweiheiten" (Tagebucher II, 79, Nr. 2197). Seinen
Dualismus erklart Hebbel an einer anderen Stelle in seinem Tagebuche
sehr treffend f olgendermassen : " Ideal und Gegensatz heben sich nich
gegenseitig auf, sondern bedingen sich gegenseitig; sie fallen nur in
den ersten Stadien soweit auseinander, verlieren sich aber spater
ineinander auf hochst beunruhigende Weise" (Tagebucher II, 339,
Nr. 2947). Das ist die einzige Versohnung die Hebbel im Drama
zulasst, die Versohnung der Idee, aber nicht die des Individuums
(vgl. u. a. Tagebucher II, 216-17, Nr. 2634).
MAXIMILIAN J. RUDWIN
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
122
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Caracteres generaux des langues germaniques. BY MEILLET. Paris:
Librairie Hachette et CIe, 1917. Pp. xvi+222.
When the distinguished author of a number of excellent works on the
grammar of the Old Slavic, Armenian, Greek, and Old Persian languages pre-
sents us with a comprehensive discussion of the main currents in the develop-
ment of the Germanic languages, philologists have good reason to look forward
to the study of his book with eager anticipation. I, for one, commenced to
read it with the most optimistic expectations and was inclined throughout
to give respectful consideration to any and all theories advanced by a
scholar of Meillet's splendid and well-deserved reputation. It is with a
keen disappointment that I have to admit that the book, while at times
brilliantly suggestive, is based upon an unsound hypothesis. On the other
hand, I am glad to state that it has considerable merit : it displays a splendid
store of well-organized knowledge and a masterful ability to organize the
material; the style is of truly French lucidity, condensed, but withal almost
conversational; and on the whole the book must be classed as one of the
pioneer works in the tracing of tendencies in the growth of languages ("les
tendances qui dirigent le deVeloppement, les principes actifs du changement").
Meillet adopts Feist's unproved and improbable hypothesis of the non-
Indo-European origin of the Germanic people1 and believes with him that
the ancestors of the Germanic group originally spoke some unknown lan-
guage, became Indo-Germanized by an invasion from the east, and accepted
the language of their conquerors, retaining, however, their original habits of
articulation: "Les mate'riaux avec lesquels est fait le germanique sont indo-
europe*ens; le plan de la langue est nouveau." It is the avowed purpose of
Meillet's book to characterize "les innovations qui ont donne" au group
germanique un aspect special."
Now Feist's arguments, to be sure, are far from convincing; but neither
have the representatives of the Baltic-home theory proved their case com-
pletely, though, in my opinion, they are much closer to it. There is no escape
from the fact that at present any decision concerning the origin of the Indo-
Europeans must be one of faith rather than of scientific proof. However,
this need not be any impediment to Meillet's accepting Feist's view tenta-
tively, as it were, as a working hypothesis, being temporarily satisfied with
it if it "works out" in a pragmatic sense of the phrase — that is, if it offers
xOf Feist's various works on the subject, lie mentions only Indogermanen und Oer-
manen (Halle, 1913); he disregards entirely the investigations of contrary-minded
scholars like Much, Hirt, Kossinna, Braungart.
123] 59
60 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
acceptable explanations of hitherto obscure phenomena, and if it does not
lead to insoluble contradictions. There can be no doubt of the justification
of such a method in a book like Meillet's. All that can be demanded is
this — that the facts be stated correctly and without any biased preference,
and that the verdict of these facts be unflinchingly accepted by the investi-
gator. How does Meillet meet these requirements?
The introduction, which keeps carefully aloof from all geographical
theories concerning the home of the "Aryans," attempts to show on theoret-
ical grounds that Germanic cannot be any direct continuation of Indo-
European speech because its radical changes betray a lack of that stability
which is characteristic of uniform races (p. 20). This theory as such might
be debatable; but its application to Meillet's contention is precluded by the
fact that the Germanic languages (notwithstanding the author's frequent
assertions to that effect) are by no means farther removed from the parent-
tongue than any contemporaneous Indo-European language; on the con-
trary, in their tendencies of development they are closer to it than any other,
as I have attempted to show in a number of articles (especially AJPh,
XXXIII, 195; MPh, XI, 71; IF, XXXIII, 377). It is interesting, by the
way, that even Meillet makes this statement concerning the further growth
of the Germanic languages after they had once deviated from the Indo-
European: "Les lignes de ce deVeloppement pre*sentent, on le verra, une
remarquable continuity dans 1'ensemble."
The concrete proof for the author's contention we must naturally expect
to find chiefly in the chapter on phonology. As a matter of fact, the dis-
cussion of the Germanic sound-shift is by far the most important foundation
of his hypothesis, and it is here that we begin to understand the affinity
between Meillet's and Feist's views. Our author returns to a phonetically
interesting explanation of the Armenian consonant shift (p>ph, b>p, etc.),
given by him as early as 1903, in his Esquisse d'une grammaire comparee de
I'armenien classique (pp. 6 f.): In a prehistoric Armenian pronunciation,
IE 6, d, g were imperfectly voiced; the vocal vibrations set in after the oral
articulation had started. This led to their change into Arm. p, t, k, which,
however, were not "pure tenues" as in Romance and Slavic languages, but
sourdes foibles — voiceless lenes, apparently, as in South German. In the
present book this theory is resuscitated on a broader scale. According to
Meillet, the French articulation of p, t, k, with glottal occlusion, is the normal
one in human speech. The Armenian articulation, with open glottis, is due
to an ethnic substructure of pre-Indo-European Georgians. In principle, the
same condition is claimed for the Germanic languages: In primitive Indo-
European, p, t, k were pronounced with glottal stop ("by implosion"),
while the vocal vibrations of b, d, g were exactly synchronized with the
corresponding oral occlusion. This is the case in French and (according to
Meillet) elsewhere in Romance and Slavic tongues. But the pre-Indo-
European population south of the Baltic had the thoroughly abnormal way
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 61
of pronouncing p, t, k with the glottis open, and b, d, g with imperfectly
synchronized vibrations, and they retained that habit when they adopted
the Indo-European language (p. 40): "On conclura de 1& que la mutation
consonantique est due au maintien de leurs habitudes d'articulation par les
populations qui ont regu et adopte* le dialecte indo-europe"en appele* a devenir
le germanique"). In the case of p, t, k this led to aspiration; aspirated
tenues are articulated with less tension of the oral organs than pure tenues
and therefore they became spirants in Germanic (p. 35: "Les occlusives
gourdes aspire"es sont en ge'ne'ral plus faiblement articule*es que les non
aspire"es correspondantes; elles perdent done ais&nent leur occlusion);
taking this as the starting-point, we may easily imagine the rest of Meillet's
description of the consonant shift; he considers the French type of stopped
consonants "le plus stable, le plus durable," while the Germanic type tends
to constant changes (p. 43 : " le type articulatoire une fois pose* en germanique
commun s'est constamment reproduit en haut allemand, et il s'agit d'un
deVeloppement continu").
Surely this is an attractive theory, but unfortunately it is flatly con-
tradicted by dry facts such as these:
1. Glottal-stop p, t, k (implosive stops) are by no means "normal."
Until recently it was even doubted whether they were very common in
French; cf., e.g., Jespersen, Lehrbuch, p. 107, and Grundfragen, p. 124;
Kirste, Die konstitutionellen Verschiedenheiten der Verschlusslaute im Idg.;
Evans, The Spelling Experimenter, II, 20; Sweet, Primer3, p. 59, etc.). If
the open glottis had anything to do with Lautverschiebung, this would be one
of the most common sound-changes in existence.
2. Aspirated tenues are, generally speaking, pronounced with rather
more than less muscle tension than pure tenues. Exceptions are granted,
but they are so rare that they do not affect the case.
3. It is generally stated by phoneticians (e.g., Sievers, Grundzuge, p. 141 ;
Sweet, loc. cit.) that the very languages that Meillet quotes as a parallel
to Germanic, namely, Armenian and Georgian, happen to be two of the very
few that articulate p, t, k with glottal stop. "Die Verbreitung dieser Laute
scheint gering zu sein. Bisher habe ich sie mit Sicherheit selbst nur im
Armenischen .... und Georgischen beobachten konnen" (Sievers, loc.
cit.). Meillet himself admits, Armenisches Ekmentarbuch (1913), p. 11:
"Man besitzt kein Mittel, die Aussprache von arm. p, t, k und 6, d, g naher
zu bestimmen"; and it matters little if he adds (without any argument):
"es waren aber gewiss keine Verschlusslaute der romanischen oder slavischen
Typen." This is characteristic of the weakness of the foundation upon which
Meillet builds his structure of a non-Indo-European, pre-Germanic language.
4. There is no shadow of an argument that the IE articulations were as
Meillet describes them. Even if they could be proved to have been thus,
his phonetic deductions would be assailable; but all he offers is a plain
assertion.
125
62 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
These objections pertain to the general principle of Meillet's conten-
tion. But in details, too, his deductions are contaminated by a number of
regrettable misstatements from which I will quote only a few of the most
typical:
On p. 45 he claims that intervocalic consonants possess the inherent
tendency of approaching the vowel type more or less; voiceless consonants
become voiced, occlusives become spirants. This is (partly) true for Ro-
mance, but untrue for Germanic; the two instances given by Meillet do not
prove his point: in Danish *giutan>gyde we have merely a change from
fortis to lenis, and the OHG change from -p-, -t- to ff, 35 is not an approach
to the vowel type, but a strengthening of articulation (cf. JEGPh, XVI, 1 ff.).
Closely connected with this misunderstanding is Meillet's statement that
IE bh, dh, gh (having "une action glottale spe*ciale du type sonore, dont la
nature n'est pas exactement connue") became in Germanic b, d, g, under-
going a secondary change to 5, (?, y in intervocalic position. This view, aside
from making the development of High German dialects entirely unintelligible
(cf. writer, JEGPh, XVI, 11 ff.), slightly thwarts Meillet's representation
of Verner's law, in which, by the way, I missed with regret any allusion to
Gauthiot's explanation of this sound change in Mem. soc. ling., XI, 193, the
best that has ever been given — a curious omission in a book which is inscribed :
"A la me"moire de mes anciens eleves germanistes — morts pour leur pays —
Achille Burgun, Robert Gauthiot." — On p. 45 Meillet establishes a third
consonant shift in South German on the ground of aspirated stops in Korn,
Tochter; but kh in Korn is a retention of the general West-Germanic aspirate
(in part, even a back-development from Upper German kx), and t in Tochter
is not an aspirate in South German pronunciation. Danish b, d, g, are not
only "moins completement sonores que les sonores romanes et slaves," but
are entirely voiceless. The North German stops have not, since Germanic
times, developed into any resemblance to the French stops; they have
virtually retained the Germanic type of the "intermediate period" (the
time between the two sound-shifts) and are as sharply distinct as ever from
the corresponding French sounds. From the agreement of Goth, atta with
Lat. and Gr. atta, Meillet concludes that geminates were not affected by the
first sound-shift, for "les occlusives sourdes ge*mine*es, fortes par nature, se
pronongaient sans doute (!) avec fermeture de la glotte des le moment de
1'implosion," while tt in composition (Goth. *wait-pu, *wait-tu>waist)
shows a different treatment — a far-fetched and altogether erroneous argu-
ment for his theory.
It is most distasteful to me to dwell on these details, but they are more
than mere oversights (such as the Gc. preterit forms *geba, *gebi, with e
instead of a, p. 46; Goth, daupus, p. 53, for the adjective daups; the asser-
tions that Gc. yw always changes to w, and that Gc. p- became pf- every-
where in OHG, etc.) ; the points that I had to criticize belong to the very
substance of Meillet's theory, which stands and falls with them.
126
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 63
There is little to be said concerning Meillet's treatment of the vowels.
From the point of view of linguistic tendencies it might not have been amiss
to point out the characteristic meaning of the fact that IE a was strengthened
to o>uo>u in German, while 6 was weakened to a, Slavic showing the
opposite development. It is in keeping with Meillet's views that he attrib-
utes to IE a purely melodic accent, which did not exert any influence
whatever on vowel quality and quantity. We have here a striking instance
of Meillet's prejudice. According to him, whatever is found in Germanic
cannot be Indo-European; now, in Germanic the accent influences the
vowels to a great extent; consequently Meillet believes that it cannot have
been thus in IE. Under these circumstances we cannot expect from him
any explanation of the problem of Ablaut; it would have been inconsistent
for him to admit that contrasts like 1:0:0, e:o:d could have been caused by
the accent. Throughout the chapter on phonology we are confronted again
and again with the author's (semiconscious or unconscious ?) effort to depict
the Germanic languages as a deterioration of IE speech. The reader feels
himself carried back to the times when Schleicher used to bewail the degrada-
tion of great and noble Gothic habaidedum to short and ugly English had.
The chapter on morphology shows the same tendency. Nevertheless
Meillet's discussion of the Germanic verb is instructive and in some ways
admirable; indeed, it is the best part of the book. Meillet aptly character-
izes the Germanic verbal system as an entirely new structure brought about
chiefly by two factors: the growing preponderance of Ablaut and the sub-
stitution of the element of tense for the element of aspect. The stress that
he lays on the preservation of aorist forms in the Gc. preterit is especially
interesting. He says on p. 145: "Etant donne* que 1'aoriste the'matique
s'est maintenu jusqu'en germanique commun, des aoristes athe*matiques
ont pu se conserver aussi. Une flexion got. bitum, bitup, bitun, peut se
rattacher aussi bien a 1'aoriste athe"matique ve"dique bhet (il a fendu', participe
bhiddn, qu'a un ancien parfait sans redoublement. Et un melange de
parfaits et d'aoristes athe*matiques au pluriel expliquerait le sens de pre'te'rit
pris en regie ge"ne*rale par le parfait en germanique." (I believe that Meillet
with perfect safety could have gone a step farther, asserting that the Ger-
manic strong preterit is essentially an aorist, combined with a few modified
perfect forms. I stated this view in 1913 in a paper read before the Modern
Language Association and briefly outlined it in my Sounds and History of
the German Language [1916], pp. 153 ff ; the publication of an article on this
problem, written nearly three years ago, has been delayed by the war.)
The rest of the book is rather indifferent. It contains a ve^y brief, non-
committal discussion of Germanic declension, word order, and vocabulary.
Strangely, no word is said about the development of gender, although this
plays such an important part in the consolidation of the Germanic (especially
German) declensional classes. In the chapter on vocabulary I was glad not
to find any reference to Feist's erroneous statement (PBB, XXXVII, 112 ff.)
127
64 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
that the Germanic language contained an extremely large number (about
one-third) of non-Indo-European words. If true, this would considerably
strengthen Meillet's theory; does his silence indicate a recognition of the
fallacy of Feist's claim ?
In conclusion, the author repeats his assertion that the Germanic
languages are fundamentally different from Indo-European. Especially
in English, he says, hardly any trace of the IE type has remained: "A
1'indo-europe'en, Tanglais est lie* par une continuity historique; mais il n'a
presque rien gard6 du fonds indo-europe*en." Meillet is right; the difference
is enormous; so is the difference between the acorn and the oak, the source
and the delta of a mighty river. But essentially they are the same. The
most important differences between Indo-European and Germanic are not
deviations, but natural developments. The nucleus of practically every
one of them can be found in the parent-tongue. It has not degenerated,
but grown as a tree grows, reflecting in its changes the character and history
of the most immediate descendants from the prehistoric Indo-European race.
Meillet has not carried his point. The failure of his arguments lends
indirect support to the opposite view.
E. PEOKOSCH
CHICAGO, ILL.
128
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV July IQIJ NUMBER 3
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER
AND THE CORTEGIANO
In the opening scene of Cyrano de Bergerac, Rostand makes a
Parisian bourgeois say to his son:
Et penser que c'est dans une salle pareille
Qu'on joua du Rotrou, mon fils.
And the son retorts:
Et du Corneille.
Think of it: le grand Corneille on the plebeian boards of the Hotel
de Bourgogne in 1640! The remark, intended of course for the
modern bourgeois, warns us once more against viewing the past
through the wrong perspective. For Corneille was played in just
such places and was immensely popular. Among countless others,
witness Boileau's testimony:
Tout Paris pour Chimene a les yeux de Rodrigue.
The fact is that during the thirties of the seventeenth century the
Parisian public, ever on the alert, had become enamored of the
courtly type. Without doubt, this was due in part to the influence
of Spain. The legend of the advice given by M. de Chalon to the
young Corneille is well known: "Vous trouverez dans fes Espa-
gnols des sujets qui, traites dans notre gout par des mains comme les
votres, produiront de grands effets"1 — as if such advice had been
needed. But still more was it due to the influence of Italy. I need
1 Beauchamps, Recherches sur les thedtres de France, II, 157.
129] 1 LMODEEN PHILOLOGY, July, 1917
2 WILLIAM A. NITZE
only to mention the Hotel de Rambouillet and the fact that in
Italy, the Cortegiano type, first formulated by Castiglione in 1528,
was of long and honored standing. Madame de Sevigne wrote1 to
her daughter: "Et Pitalien, 1'oubliez-vous ? J'en lis toujours un
peu pour entretenir noblesse."2
In treating Corneille 's conception of character, my object is to
show how close it is to the Italian Cortegiano type, and furthermore
to point out what were the possible points of contact. The most
effective way of bringing the matter forward is first to review what
the critics have had to say on Corneille's treatment of character.
This, then, will constitute the first division of this paper.
It is a commonplace to state that Corneille is the dramatist of
the will. All French critics agree on this essential fact. For
instance, Lanson, Histoire, 429 :3 "II a et il exprime une nature
plus rude et plus forte, qui a longtemps e"te" la nature frangaise, une
nature intellectuelle et volontaire, consciente et active. ... II a
peint des femmes toujours viriles, parceque toujours elles agissent
par volonte, par intelligence, plutot que par instinct ou par senti-
ment." And in his Corneille, 94,4 Lanson says: "Ce miserable
(Edipe, ou Corneille a surabondamment prouve* combien toute la
poe*sie tragique des Grecs echappait a son intelligence, n'est qu'une
protestation de la volonte contre la fatalite. . . . Sur cette ide"e se
fait la distinction des caracteres de la trage"die de Corneille." And
Lanson then proceeds to classify the characters as: "les genereux,
1 Letter of June 7, 1671.
2 Under the date of June 13, 1637, Chapelain writes to Balzac: "J'apprens aussy
avec plaisir que le Cid ait fait en vous 1'effet qu'en tout nostre monde. La matiere, les beaux
sentimens que 1'Espagnol luy avoit donnes, et les ornemens qu'a adjouste"[s] nostre poSte
francois, ont me'rite' 1'applaudissement du peuple et de la Cour qui n'estoient point encore
accoustumes a telles delicatesses. ... En Italie, il eust passe" pour barbare et il n'y a
point d'Acadtmie qui ne 1'eust banni des conflns de sa jurisdiction." It is clear that
Chapelain is here speaking " en docte " ; cf . the fipUre to La Suivante (privilege, January 21 ,
1637), where Corneille says: "puisque nous faisons des po&mes pour 6tre repr&sente's,
notre premier but doit e"tre de plaire a la cour et au public, et d'attirer un grand monde a
leurs representations. II faut, s'il se peut, y ajouter les regies, afln de ne dSplaire aux
tavants, et recevoir un applaudissement universel ; mais surtout gagnons la voix publique."
Cf. also Ogier, preface to Tyr et Sidon, 1628: "Les doctes, a la censure desquels nous
de'fe'rons," etc.
' Third ed.
« Grands ecrivaina francaia, 4th ed., 1913.
130
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 3
tes scele*rats, les faibles": Rodrigue, Polyeucte; Cle*opatre, Attila;
Felix, Cinna — the last of whom he aptly calls, "ame de chambellan
dans un emploi de Brutus." Or take Lemaitre (Julleville, IV, 273) :
"Get orgueil, cet he*roisme content de soi, ces petardes de la volonte*,
cette emphase, cette redondance, rempliront tout le theatre de Cor-
neille et, en ge*ne*ral, toute la trage*die franchise jusqu'en 1650. . . .
L'etonnant Alidor de la Place Royale est le frere aine* des Pulche*rie
ou des Camille (Othon)." Thus Lemaitre finds the same principle in
the "ironie et de*dain" of the early plays of our author; compare:
quand j'aime, je veux
Que de ma volontS dependent tous mes voeux. [la Place Royale, vs. 207.]
But no critic has emphasized the point more than Bruneti&re, who
in his Histoire de la litt.frang. classique, II, 190, says: "On a dit & ce
propos, et personne avec plus d'exageration que V. de Laprade, que
le principe du theatre cornelien serait le triomphe du devoir sur la
passion. Si cela n'est dej£i qu'a moitie* vrai du Cid, rien ne Test
moins d' Horace, — ou je ne pense pas que le 'devoir' d'Horace fut
d'egorger sa soeur Camille; — ni de Polyeucte, dont le 'devoir' serait de
triompher de sa passion de martyre; et rien n'est plus faux de
Cinna meme, de Theodore, de Rodogune, d'Heraclius, de Nicomede,
ou nous ne voyons plus en lutte les unes contre les autres que des
passions, des ambitions, des jalousies, des haines, des vengeances.
Ce qui est plus vrai, ce qui Pest meme absolument, et ce qu'il faut
dire, c'est que le theatre de Corneille est la glorification ou 1'apotheose
de la volonte."1
Without being casuistical — and discussions of the will readily
lend themselves to this fault — every attentive reader will admit that
to state the problem thus is to state a half-truth. For example,
Alidor in la Place Royale, who is strong-willed, is only that, whereas
Rodrigue in the Cid, and especially Polyeucte, are equally wilful,
but something more besides. And it is this additional factor that
counts in our author's greater works. A reference to this second
element is to be found in Lanson's "une nature intelldttuelle et
volontaire, consciente et active," or less clearly in Bruneti&re's
1 It might be added that Faguet, Dix-septi&me sikcle, lOflf., treats Corneille again
from the point of view of passion and duty: "le gout de I'aventureux et du hrillant
devient chez les he"ros de Corneille la passion du devoir." This is true if we mean by
"passion" that which is consciously willed.
131
4 WILLIAM A. NITZE
/
further statement that: "cela veut dire que dans 1'extraordinaire et
dans le romanesque Pinstinct de Corneille pref&re ce qui est noble a
ce qui est bas, ce qui exalte I'ame a ce qui la de*prime, et generale-
ment enfin ce qui fait les he*ros a ce qui fait les monstres," though
predominantly his view is that "la volonte* est le seul ressort de
Faction" (194). In fact, having granted Bruneti£re his point, and
it is obvious that both critics value the energetic side of Corneille
as a national asset,1 Lanson proceeds to say: "Les troubles de la
volonte* sont souvent des incertitudes de Fesprit qui ne voit pas le
vrai; ses e"garements sont des erreurs de 1'esprit, qui croit voir et
voit mal. La pire bassesse est de n'avoir ni fermete de volonte ni
clarte* de connaissance. La perfection heroiique est d 'avoir la
connaissance claire et la volonte* ferme: quand Tame voit le bien et
marche au bien san^ une de*faillance"2 (Corneille, 96).
Thus it will become clear that the two elements which govern
the dramatic system of Corneille are: (1) a clear or rational concept
of an ideal, often typified by his characters as their souverain bien;
(2) the enlistment of the will in the service of this ideal. The poet's
characters react, not to their attachment to an individual, but to
the more or less perfection of which they believe that individual
capable. Chim£ne loves Rodrigue, not for himself, but because of
his heroism, and to be worthy of his heroism she herself must be
heroic;3 the struggle in the Cid is not single, it is double: a struggle
on the one hand in the characters themselves between love and duty,
and on the other a struggle to make the two ideals agree. The play
closes with the significant words addressed to Rodrigue :
Pour vaincre un point d'honneur qui combat contre toi,
Laisse faire le temps, ta vaillance et ton roi.4
1 See especially the admirable last page of Lanson's Corneille.
2 Or this passage hi the Histoire (429) : " Rien de plus caracte"ristique que sa thSorie
de 1'amour. . . . L'amour est le desir du bien, done rggle" sur la connaissance du bien.
Une ide"e de la raison, done, va gouverner 1'amour. Ce que Ton aime, on 1'aime pour la
perfection qu'on y voit: d'ou, quand cette perfection est rSelle, la bonte" de 1' amour,
vertu et non faiblesse.
» Of. Tu n'as fait le devoir que d'un homme de bien;
Mais aussi, le faisant, tu m'as appris le mien. [Cid, vs. 911.]
Note the difference with Las Mocedades, II, vs. 290, on which the passage is based:
Yo confleso, aunque la sienta,
Que en dar venganza a tu afrenta
Como caballero hiciste.
« In the Spanish play the idea of honor is imposed from without; in the Cid it springs
from within, from the consciousness in the characters of their own dignity. "Certes,"
says Martinenche, La comedia espagnole, 208, "il arrive parfois dans le Cid qu'on regrette
1' eclat pittoresque de Guillen dans de trop abstraites traductions." " Traductions " is
hardly the right word!
132
CORNEILLE' s CONCEPTION OP CHARACTER 5
Or take Rodogune: two characters are bound by brotherly affection,
yet they love the same person, Rodogune, who, in turn, loves the
younger, but can marry only when their mother is slain. The
situation — romanesque in the extreme — is an impasse, which can be
solved only through the use of the improbable; yet this enables the
poet to multiply motives and again to point the lesson of the heroic.1
What is there 'left, in Nicomede, for Attale to do, when he once
realizes the lofty serenity of his unshakable brother, than to admire
from afar his
vertu dans son plus haut e*clat;
Pour la voir seule agir contre notre injustice,
Sans la pre"occuper par ce faible service ?
No wonder Corneille was forced to admit in the preface to Heradius:
"le s^ijet drune belle trage*die doit n'etre pas vraisemblable," and
that Chapelain — en bon critique — dwelt on the necessity of veri-
similitude in the Sentiments sur le Cid.2
Two questions at once suggest themselves. The first is: To
what extent is Corneille's ideal of character that of his own age?
And the second is : To what influences is he indebted for its formu-
lation ? A third (which, however, I shall have to leave unanswered)
might be : How did this ideal affect his attitude toward the doctrine
of the unities ?
The elementary facts as to the poet's environment are well
enough known. Corneille was a Norman, and Normandy — as far
as such observations hold — is the home of the rationalist.3 Calvin
and Malherbe were both from the north, and while Calvin resembles
Corneille in being a casuist (see Brunetiere, op. tit., p. 196), Malherbe
is even closer to him in substituting reason for sentiment in poetry.
Moreover, Corneille received his early training at the Jesuit Academy
at Rouen, from 1615 to 1622; indeed, he won two prizes there for
excellence in Latin verse, and, as Lanson (Histoire, 423) points out,
the Jesuits were later the defenders of the free will against the
1 See Faguet, Dix-septieme siecle, 1894, pp. 9 fl.: "Du sujet extraordinaire, qui 6tait
une loi dramatique de son temps (!), il a fait le sujet herotque,"
2 See Colbert Searles, University of Minnesota Studies, III, 27 ff.
8 Thus Gaston Paris, Poesie du moyen Age, II, 66: "Voila bien la po6sie du 'pays de
sapience.' II faut noter ce caractSre positif et quelque peu sec qui se m61e a toutes les
productions littSraires des Nonnands, comme la tendance pratique la plus nette se m§le
aux expeditions les plus hardies de ces 'coureurs heroiques d'aventures profltables
(Taine).'"
133
6 WILLIAM A. NITZE
Jansenists. Add to this the fact that the poet was trained for the
bar, and the logical, positivistic side of our author is explained.
But Lanson (Corneille, 166 ff.) goes a step farther, and after
rejecting Bruneti&re's reproach of unreality and inhumanity in the
dramas, he says: "Tout ce que le theatre cornelien perd du cote* de
la couleur historique, il le regagne en intense actualite. II nous
offre une fidele et saisissante peinture de cette France de Richelieu,
de cette classe aristocratique qui inaugurait la monarchic absolue et
la vie de socie"te*. . . . Jamais la politique et son alliee 1'intrigue n'ont
eu plus de jeu, n'ont plus occupe* les esprits." And further: "Tous
les grands hommes de l'e"poque, ou presque tous, sont des hommes
de volonteV' I would not underestimate the value of Lanson 's con-
tention, especially since he qualifies the above statement by adding
(p. 170): "Sa tragedie n'est jamais un reportage, c'est Evident.
Mais la vie contemporaine 1'enveloppe, 1'assiege, le pen£tre: elle
depose en lui mille impressions qui se retrouvent lorsqu'il aborde
un sujet, qui, a son insu, dirigent son choix. ... II pense le pass6 dans
les formes et conditions du present [What poet doesn't?]." Clearly
Nisard's statement: "Apres Corneille il restait a la tragedie a se
rapprocher de la vie," is too absolute.1 One has but to read his
plays to realize that the poet had in him the traits of the salon-
frequenter, the politician, the frondeur. The interesting thing is
the particular type of life he reflects, and how he reflects it. His
early plays reveal his sympathy with the precieux classes; why
should not his later ?
Examining his work from this point of view, we find that Eraste
in Melite — the first of his plays — says (vs. 13) :
Son ceil agit sur moi d'une vertu si forte:
Qu'il ranime soudain mon espe*rance morte,
Combat des de"plaisirs de mon coeur irrite*,
Et soutient mon amour contre sa cruaute.
Cf. Horace, vs. 577:
Que les pleurs d'une amante ont de puissants discours,
Et qu'un bel ceil est fort avec un tel secours!
or Polyeucte, vs. 87:
Sur mes pareils, Ne*arque, un bel ceil est bien fort:
Tel craint de le facher qui ne craint pas la mort.
» Quoted by Faguet in his Propos de thtdtre, I. 90.
134
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OP CHARACTER 7
The Infanta in the- Cid is assuredly a kind of Julie d'Angennes
toying with love:
L'amour est un tyran qui n'e*pargne personnel
Ce jeune cavalier,1 cet amant que je donne
Je 1'aime. [Cid, vs. 81.]
or
Mais si jusques au jour de 1'accommodement
Je fais mon prisonnier de ce parfait amant,
Et que j'empeche ainsi 1'effet de son courage,
Ton esprit amoureux n'aura-t-il point d'ombrage? [Cid,
vs. 495.]—
lines which reflect as much the tricks of the ruelle as the influence of
the Astree. It is unnecessary to multiply the instances.2
As for politics and raisons d'etat, they appear from the very
beginning; e.g., in the king's role in Clitandre. But compare more
especially the following:
Mais on doit ce respect au pouvoir absolu,
De n'examiner rien quand un roi 1'a voulu. [Cid, vs. 163.]
Horace, ne crois pas que le peuple stupide
Soit le maltre absolu d'un renom bien solide:
Sa voix tumultueuse assez souvent fait bruit;
Mais un moment relive, un moment le d^truit;
C'est aux rois, c'est aux grands, c'est aux esprits bien faits,
A voir la vertu pleine en ses moindres effets;
C'est d'eux seuls qu'on recoit la veritable gloire;
Eux seuls des vrais he'ros assurent la m&noire.
Vis toujours en Horace, et toujours auprSs d'eux
Ton nom demeurera grand, illustre, fameux.
[Horace, vs. 1711.]
The calculated flattery of these lines is, of course, obvious. Why
Corneille should wheedle the " court" in this particular play will be
seen later. At present let us note how close to Balzac's Le Romain
(edition of 1644, pp. 2ff.) his conception of the character is: "II [the
* The first edition of the Cid reads chevalier.
J See, however, Rodogune, vs. 151 :
Un grand coeur cSde un trdne et le cede avec gloire;
Cet effort de vertu couronne sa memoire; £
Mais lorqu'un digne objet a pu nous enflammer,
Qui le cSde est un lache, et ne sail pas aimer;
and Nicomede, vs. 432:
Pour garder votre coeur je n'ai pas ou le mettre;
vs. 735:
Comme elle a de 1'amour ello aura du caprice.
135
8 WILLIAM A. NITZE
Roman]," says Balzac, "estime plus vn jour employe a la Vertu,
qu'vne longue vie delicieuse; vn moment de Gloire qu'un siecle de
Volupte*: II mesure le temps par les succez, & non pas par la dure*e."
And again: "Rome estoit la boutique; ou les dons du Ciel estoient
mis en ceuure, & ou s'acheuoient les biens naturels. . . . Elle a
sceu mesler, comme il faut, Tart auecque Pauenture; la conduite
auecque la fureur; la qualite* diuine de ^intelligence, dans les actions
brutales de la partie irascible. . . . La principale piece de la vaillance
ne depend point des organes du corps, & n'est pas vne priuation de
raison, & vn simple regorgement de bile, ainsi que le Peuple se
figure."
Obviously, Madame de Rambouillet — to whom Balzac is writing —
Balzac himself, Corneille, La Calpren&de,1 the Scude*rys, e tutti quanti,
are of the same literary family. Mairet and Du Ryer in the drama,2
and Desmarets in the novel,3 had shown the possibilities of Roman
history, and Corneille followed suit. But it is especially in the later
plays that the political interest is strong and that the maxim "Phis-
toire est un cours de politique experimental " dominates the poet's
mind. Thus Nicomede treats the question of "alliances," Sertorius
that of civil war, Pompee the "raison d'e*tat," Othon and Pulcherie
the election of an emperor.4 In all these as in Cinna and Rodogune
feminine intrigue holds the boards, and we get such maxims as:
La fourbe n'est le jeu que de petites ames. [Nicom&de, vs. 1255.]
Un veritable roi n'est ni mari ni p£re;
II regards son trone, et rien de plus. Re*gnez. [Ibid., vs. 1320.]
or what BrunetiSre (209) calls "le naif e*talage de son machiave*lisme."
1 Cf. Boileau, Les Heros de Roman, ed. by Professor T. P. Crane (especially the
valuable introduction) (Boston, 1902) ; and Victor Cousin, La Societe fransaise au X VII
aiecle, d'aprea le Grand Cyrus de Mile de Scudery. Madame de SSvigne wrote (IX, 315):
"Pour moi . . . je trouvais qu'un jeune homme devenait genereux et brave en voyant
mes he'ros, et qu'une fllle devenait honnete et sage en lisant Cleopatre." Bourciez,
Julleville, Histoire, IV, 97: "Ces dissertations sur les Romains, dediees a la marquise de
Rambouillet, qui font les delices des notes serieux de la chambre bleue et ont contribue"
a cr6er 1'atmosphSre de grandeur morale ou s'est mue la pens6e de Corneille."
2 On Mairet see Dannheisser, Studien zu Jean de Mairet' 's Leben und Werken (Lud-
wigshafen, 1888) and Roman. Forschungen, V (1890). Du Ryer's first tragedy, Lucrece,
was published in 1638, though it was probably acted as early as 1636; see H. C. Lan-
caster, Pierre du Ryer Dramatist (Carnegie Institution, Washington, 1913).
3 Desmarets' Ariane appeared in 1632; see R. Gebhardt, Jean Desmaretz (Erlangen
diss., 1912), and Crane, op. cit., p. 87.
« Cf. Jules Levallois, Corneille inconnu, 1876, and the lines he quotes from Pompee
on p. 247.
136
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 9
Tous les crimes d'etat qu'on fait pour la couronne,
Le ciel nous en absout alors qu'il nous la donne.
[Cinna, vs. 1609.]
And lastly, as for the drama in particular, Rotrou's Laure
pers£cut6e, I, 10, contains the vigorous line:
Je veux ce que je veux, parce que je le veux.
This play was performed in 1638 — that is, after the Cid — but three
years earlier, in I'Innocente Infidelity Rotrou had written:
Jamais des grands dangers un grand coeur ne s'e*tonne,
Et qui n'ose commettre un crime qui couronne
Observe & ses de*pens une lache vertu;
— this in spite of Lanson's just observation (Histoire, 438) that
Rotrou learned from Corneille "a de*gager les Etudes d'ames et de
passions."1 Lancaster in his admirable study of Du Ryer2 has
pointed out that Du Ryer's Cleomedon (1633), the subject of which
is taken from the fourth part of the Astrfa, contains the lines so
Cornelian in character:
Qui conserue un Sceptre est digne de Pauoir,
and
Qui vante ses ayeux ne vante rien de soy,
which lead the hero to exclaim:
Que ne dompterois-ie anime* de la sorte!
the same kind of bluster used by Rodrigue (Cid, V, 1) under similar
circumstances :
Est-il quelque ennemi qu'a present je ne dompte ? ...
Pour combattre une main de la sorte anime*e.3
Again, however, the relationship is mutual, and Du Ryer's Scevole
(1644) — his best-known play — is in many ways a counterpart and
to some extent a copy of Cinna.
These are only the more obvious connections. A thorough
search by some doctoral candidate would probably reveal others.
But, in any case, it is clear that Corneille expresses in his plays the
tenets of his age, as far as we can judge them from extant literary
documents.
1 See now Georg Wendt, Pierre Corneille und Jean Rotrou (Leipzig, 1910).
2 Op. cit., 72. 3 Lancaster, p. 73.
137
10 WILLIAM A. NITZE
On the other hand, as against the view of Lanson, let us not forget
that the early plays — the comedies — are proportionately more real
than the tragedies;1 and, above all, that in ideas as well as dramatic
form Corneille is primarily a leader and not a follower. With
justifiable pride he says in his examen (first published in 1660) to
Melite: "La nouveaute de ce genre de comedie, dont il n'y a point
d'exemple en aucune langue, et le style naif qui faisait une peinture
de la conversation des honnetes gens, furent sans doute cause de ce
bonheur surprenant, qui fit tant de bruit." The Cid is another case in
point; so are Polyeucte, Andromede, not to mention Nicomede, Herac-
lius, and Horace. Corneille's leadership here is manifest. Thanks to
Lanson's study in his Hommes et livres (p. 132), his indebtedness to
Descartes is now practically eliminated: "Le philosophe et le
po&te tragique ont travaille sur le meme modele," says Lanson, for the
Traite des passions, which did not appear until 1649, could hardly
have influenced the poet.2 Even Balzac's essays on Le Romain and
La Gloire, which were known before their publication,3 are counter-
parts rather than sources of the poet's works. In the latter essay
Balzac says: "On a ayme 1'Honneur, lors qu'on aymoit les choses
honnestes. Ciceron avoit compose vn Traite" de la Gloire & Brutus
vn autre de la Vertu. . . . L'vne et 1'autre ne sont considerees
auiourd'huy que comme des Biens de Theatre, qui ne subsistent qu'en
apparence"', so that the stage was treating these (romantic) themes
when Balzac wrote. Thus, what characterizes Corneille especially,
and distinguishes him from his contemporaries, is not so much
grandeur as a specific and systematic working out of this idea,
beginning with Horace or even with the Cid. This gives his tragedies
their stamp and his characters their quality. And this is why the
quarrel of the Cid is so significant. In the preface to Silvanire,
Mairet had emphasized two points: (1) the subject of tragedy must
be known and consequently grounded in history, and (2) the law of
verisimilitude must be observed — and he adduced the example of
the Italians and the ancients. The first principle Corneille accepts,
at the second he hedges. And for this failure he is criticized by
1 See especially Lanson, Corneille, 51 flf.
« Of. Paguet, op. cit., p. 91.
» See Racan's "Ode a Monsieur de Balzac" in the Recueil des plus beaux vera,
published by Toussainct du Bray in 1630, p. 183.
138
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 11
Chapelain. As time went on, and Corneille felt surer of himself,
his opposition to what was to be the keynote one might say of all
later seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drama grew more and
more insistent. In Heraclius, as we saw, he defies those who follow
Aristotle narrowly. In Polyeucte — that idealist dear to Corneille's
heart — unable to justify the character according to the accepted
canons of pity and fear, he seeks to do so through Minturno1 with
reference to admiration, and perhaps also through Castelvetro's
favorite idea of the ingegno in trovare2 and the admiration which the
public, always on Corneille's side, accords the poet. As for Nicomede,
he frankly says: "La tendresse et les passions qui doivent etre Tame
des tragedies, n'ont aucune part en celle-ci; la grandeur y r£gne
seule, et regarde son malheur d'un reil si dedaigneux qu'il n'en
saurait arracher une plainte." And it may be doubted whether
this "grandeur d'ame" is equaled in any of the other plays of our
author or in those of his contemporaries.
Shall we, then, attribute Corneille's formulation of character
mainly to his genius? And say that his concept of the heroic,
except for a certain inevitable background in life, is largely his own
making. Or was there some definite model which he could have
followed but which has not been pointed out? The question is
easier to ask than to answer. But in view of the following facts I
can at least offer a suggestion.
Corneille's attachment to the court — as opposed to "les doctes"
— I noted above.3 In the Excuse a Ariste he expressly says: "mon
vers charma la cour." In the examen to M elite (see above), he
1 Corneille mentions Minturno in the examen to the play; cf. also Discours, I, 15.
» Indeed, what may be a guiding principle for Corneille's inventiveness in his later
dramas, beginning with Polyeucte (see the examen), is the statement of Castelvetro,
Poetica d' Aristotele Vulgar -izzata, 1570, p. 40 recto: "il poeta nelT historia certa &
conosciuta particolarmente n5 dura fatica niuna ne essercita lo' ngegno in trovare cosa
niuna essendpgli porto & posto dauati il tutto dal corso delle cose modane. II che no
auiene nell'historia incerta & sconosciuta couenendo al poeta aguzzare lo'ntelletto &
sottigliare in trouare o il tutto, o la maggior parte delle cose & quindi viene comendato
& ammirato Virgilio che habbia fatto cosi" (cf. 2d ed., p. 67). In the examen of Rodogune
Corneille says that the court always showed a preference for Cinna or the Cid, while he
himself prefered Rodogune, and he adds: "peut-3tre y entre-t-il un peu d'amour-propre,
en ce que cette tragedie me semble §tre un peu plus a moi que celles qui^'ont pr6c6dee,
a cause des incidents surprenants qui sont purement de mon invention, et n'avaient
jamais 6t6 vus au theatre." See, also, the preface to Othon, where he declares that he
has written no play in which he has been more faithful to the source and yet has shown
plus d' invention. On the whole question, see H. B. Charlton, Castelvetro's Theory of
Poetry (Manchester University Press, 1913), and the article of Searles cited below.
» Pp. 2 and 7.
139
12 WILLIAM A. NITZE
repeats that this play "me fit connaitre a la cour." In the Premier
Discours he explains his violation of verisimilitude by the authority
of history and the pleasure of the audience "de"ja tous persuades."
Moreover, Chapelain, for all his opposition, admits that the court
was charmed by certain delicatesses in the Cid.1 But the most
striking testimony of a contemporary to Corneille's achievement in
this respect are the words of Balzac in the Letter on Cinna: "Si
cettui [Cinna] a plus de vertu que n'a cru Se"neque, c'est pour etre
tomb6 entre vos mains . . . Fempereur le fit consul, et vous
Favez fait honnete homme." The last remark is, I think, significant.
More than once the poet has been reproached for his orgueil, which
appears, not only in himself, but in his characters. And Lanson
(Corneille, 196), voicing Brunetiere, likens his conception of vertu to
the Italian virtu. Certainly its essentially un-Christian character is
apparent; to the younger Horace's boast:
Le sort qui de Phonneur nous ouvre la barriere
Offre a notre Constance une illustre matiere. [Horace, vs. 431.]
Curiace replies:
Mais votre fermet6 tient un peu du barbare:
Peu, meme des grands coeurs, tireraient vanit6
D'aller par ce chemin a I'lmmortalite". [Vs. 456.]
It is, as Curiace adds, une vertu dpre, the full meaning of which we
appreciate when we compare Bossuet's statement, evidently aimed
at Corneille, in his Maximes et reflexions sur la comedie (ed. Calvet,
592) : " Les paiens, dont la vertu e"tait imparfaite, grossi£re, mondaine,
superficielle, pouvaient 1'insinuer par le theatre; mais il n'a ni
Fautorite", ni la dignite*, ni Fefficace qu'il faut pour inspirer des vertus
convenables a des Chretiens: Dieu renvoie les rois a sa loi pour y
apprendre leurs devoirs."
If then the ideal upheld by our poet is pagan and yet Italian in
form, its prototype is perhaps closer at hand than one would suspect.
At least, the foregoing remarks, especially Balzac's reference to
Cinna as an honnete homme,2 offer a clue. And this brings us to the
second and main part of our study: the Cortegiano as a source of
Corneille's ideas.
» See above, p. 2, note 2.
» See Petit de Julleville's comment on the letter of Balzac in his Thedtre choisi de
Corneille (Hachette, 1904), p. 371.
140
COBNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 13
II
When in 1640 Corneille read his Horace to a select company at
the house of Boisrobert, among those present was Nicolas Faret, an
intimate of Boisrobert's, who had obtained for him the post of secre-
tary to Henri de Lorraine. Faret was a frequenter of Conrart's circle
and a member of the newly formed Academy. His name has suffered
unjustly from the fact that it was made to rhyme with cabaret — a
slander against which Faret defended himself in vain since Boileau
repeats the rhyme in the well-known lines of the Art poetique:
Ainsi tel autrefois, qu'on vit avec Faret
Charbonner de ses vers les murs d'un cabaret.1
At any rate, Corneille knew le sieur Faret, and it is more than
probable that he also knew his treatise, first published in 1630, on
the Honeste Homme ou Vart de plaire a la cour. Others have dealt
with this work,2 and I do not wish to repeat here needlessly. At the
same time, several questions connected with it must be noted.
In the first place, Faret's work is in large part a much abbreviated
paraphrase of the famous treatise of Castiglione: II Cortegiano. Of
the latter work Chapelain at one time possessed four Italian editions
and one Spanish translation (cf. Searles, ed., Catalogue de tons les
livres de feu M. Chapelain* p. 30). To the first French translation
(1537) by Jacques Colin d'Auxerre, secretary of Francis I,4 there
had succeeded in 1580 a new translation by Gabriel Chappuis,
entitled: Le Parfait Courtisan en deux langues.5 And Toldo6 has
traced the influence of the Italian work on the treatises of Nicolas
Pasquier, De Refuge, the anonymous Courtisan frangois of 1612, the
1 Cf . also, Saint- Amant's poem "Les Cabarets," dedicated to Faret, in Livet's
edition of Les (Euvres de Saint- Amant (Paris, 1855), pp. 138 flf.; and for the rhyme
itself, see "La Vigne," p. 170.
2 On Faret, see Edouard Droz, Revue d'hist. litt., 1906, pp. 87 flP.; N. M. Bernardin,
Hommes et mceurs au dix-septieme siecle (Paris, 1900), and the works mentioned below.
Besides the Honeste Homme, on the sources and influence of which we still lack a thorough-
going study, Faret published in 1623 (chez Toussaint du Bray) a treatise Des vertue
necessaires d un prince pour bien gouverner ses sujets, and a collection of Lettres nouvelles
des meilleurs auteurs de ce temps, 1627. He also wrote an ode to Richelieu, whose life
he planned to write. According to Bernardin, the acheve d'imprimer of the Honeste
Homme is dated Thursday, November 14, 1630; on this see also the article of Droz,
cited above. Bernardin gives interesting details on the esteem which Faret enjoyed
at the court. 0
• Publications of Leland Stanford Junior University, 1912.
« A revision of this was made by Mellin de Saint Gelais hi 1538 (Lyon) ; 1549 (Paris).
8 Lyon, 1580; Paris, 1585. Another translation appeared in Paris in 1690, entitled
Le Parfait Courtisan et la Dame de Cour. Opdycke, Book of the Courtier (New York,
1903), lists nine editions of Colin and five of Chappuis, hi the sixteenth century.
8 Herrig's Archiv, CIV, CV (1900) : Le courtisan dans la litterature frangaise et ses
rapports avec I'ceuvre de Castiglione.
141
14 WILLIAM A. NITZE
Juvenal frangois of Jacques le Gorlier, and the Aristippe of Balzac1
— all of which antedate the paraphrase of Faret. With so timely a
subject — I repeat that the date was 1630 — it is not surprising that
Faret 's work was very popular: it was translated into Italian and
Spanish,2 and as early as 1632 into English (cf. Crane, La Societe
frangaise au 17e siecle, 2d ed., p. 328). Chapelain seems to have
had an edition of 1639, and a Lyon edition of 1661 is in the library
of Cornell University. It goes without saying that Corneille, like
so many of his contemporaries, may have had access to the Italian
original, although I can adduce no positive evidence to this effect.
In the second place, the unknown author of the Deffense du Cid
(1638) — one of the documents in the famous quarrel — says: "Nous
voyons mesme par les places publiques des affiches qui publient
1'honneste Homme ou la Morale de la Cour, celuy qui donne tiltre
a sa science de la Morale de la Cour s§ait bien que les vertus de la
morale ne changent pas de nature en la personne des Courtisans
. . . mais il cognoist la vanite commune qui pousse chacun a
vouloir estre Courtisan, il les attire par P amorce de ce ti[l]tre a venir
prendre ses instructions."3 On the basis of this passage it has been
argued that the author of the Deffense is no other than Faret himself.
This is open to doubt; but even so the defender of Corneille is
plainly a partisan of the court and defends his author with the neo-
Platonic argument that "the flame of Poetry springs from a certain
riches of the mind which surpasses all reflexion and which originating
in the soul shares in some way in the divine since it comes immediately
from the image which is within us."4
WILLIAM A. NITZE
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
[To be continued]
» Balzac's work was not published until 1658; according to Searles, Chapelain had a
French edition of 1657 ( ?) and an Italian translation, published in Paris in 1668. But
Balzac lays the scene of his Aristippe in 1618, and claims that it called forth the praise
of Richelieu, who himself was the author of Instructions et maximes que je me suis donneea
•pour me conduire a la cour, preserved in manuscript form; see Toldo, Archiv, CIV, 119.
2 Bernardin, p. 64, knows eleven editions of Faret's book: 1630, 1631 (in 12), 1634
(in 4), 1636 (in 4), 1639 (in 8), 1640, 1656, 1660, 1664, 1671, and 1681. The Spanish
translation was made by Ambrosio de Salazar, Spanish interpreter to the King; it
appeared in 1634 and was republished in 1656 and 1660; on this see the interesting essay
of Morel-Fatio, Ambrosio de Salazar et I' etude de I'Espagnol en France sous Louis XIII
(Paris, 1900), especially pp. 203-14.
1 Armand Gast6, La Querelle du Cid (Paris, 1898), p. 122.
4 Cf . Faret's own preface to the (Euvres de Saint- Amant (modern edition by Livet,
Paris, 1855), p. 8: "Elle [la po6sie] a je ne scay quels rayons de divinitg qui doivent
reluire partout, et, lorsque ce feu manque de 1' animer, elle n'a plus de force qui la puisse
rehausser au dessus des choses les plus vulgaires."
142
LE GfiNfiRAL HUGO ET I/ARC DE TRIOMPHE DE
L'fiTOILE A PARIS1
(A PROPOS DES VOIX INT&RIEURES)
En 1836, sous Louis-Philippe, 1'Arc de Triomphe de Ffitoile
a Paris fut enfin acheve*. II avait 6t& commence* sous Napoleon,
apres le 18 feVrier 1806, pour commemorer la bataille d'Austerlitz
et la gloire de la Grande Arme*e. La premiere pierre en fut pose*e le
15 aout 1806, jour anniversaire de la naissance de FEmpereur.2
1814 arriva. Qu'allaient faire les Bourbons des monuments
inacheve's de Napoleon? On enleva Fe*chafaudage de FArc de
Triomphe; rien de plus. En octobre 1823, Louis XVIII cependant
de'cre'ta que FArc de Triomphe serait acheve*, mais qu'il comme*more-
rait les souvenirs de la guerre d'Espagne qui venait de finir.3 Aus-
sitot apr£s son ave"nement au trone, Louis-Philippe de'cre'ta que
FArc de Triomphe serait rendu a sa destination premiere, c'est a
dire consacre* a la gloire des armees de la Republique et de FEmpire.
Blouet, succe*dant a Huyot en 1832, termina le monument pour les
fetes de juillet 1836.
Sur les murs des petites arcades se trouvent quatre bas-reliefs
alle"goriques qui repre*sentent les Victoires des Armees du Nord, de
FEst, du Sud, et de FOuest. Au dessous des bas-reliefs sont inscrits
les noms des grandes batailles de la Republique et de FEmpire.
Apr£s les noms de nos victoires devaient ne*cessairement figurer ceux de
nos ge*ne*raux en chef et mare'chaux, lieutenants ge*ne"raux, commandants
d'aile ou de corps d'arme*e; ge'ne'raux de division, etc., qui s'y sont distingu^s.
Dans le nombre se trouvent inscrits quelques ge*ne*raux de brigade et quelques
colonels. Le nombre de ces noms, qu'on se trouvait dans la ne'cessite' de
require en raison de Fespace disponible, s'e"l£ve a 652.4 Parmi les g^n6raux
1 Nous nous sommes send pour ce travail, en outre des e"tudes connues de Eire", Victor
Hugo avant 1830; Barbou, Victor Hugo et son Temps, et Dufay, Victor Hugo d, vingt ans,
sp6cialement de: Memoires du General Hugo, Paris, 1823, 3 vols.; Jules D. Thierry, Arc
de Triomphe de I'Etoile d Paris, Paris, 1845; Duchesne, Arc de Triomphe de l'£toile d Paris,
Paris, 1908; Boursin et Challamel, Dictionnaire de la Revolution frangaise, Paris, 1893;
Robinet, Dictionnaire historique et bibliographique de la Revolution et de I' Empire, 1 789— 1815 1
Paris, 2 vols. sans date.
2 Le ler architecte fut Chalgrin qui de"cida que les faces du monument seraient ornges
de trophges. II mourut en 1811 et Goust, son el&ve, continua son oeuvre.
s Goust fut encore charge des travaux jusqu'en 1830. AprSs cette date il fut remplac6
par Huyot.
4 Le Grand Dictionnaire Larousse dit que les noms inscrits sur 1'Arc de Triomphe
sont au nombre de 386. II se trompe.
143] 15 [MODBEN PHILOLOGY, July, 1917
16 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
on trouve quelques soldats Strangers qui ont combattu dans nos rangs et
qui se sont associe"s a nos gloires nationales [Thierry, p. 27].
M. Thierry ajoute que c'est "sous la direction etsur la proposition de
M. 1'architecte Blouet qu'ont ete* commences et terminus les travaux
de sculpture statuaire, et les inscriptions" (nous employons 1'italique).
Duchesne (p. 31), d'accord avec Thierry, donne pour le nombre
des ge"ne"raux 652. Tous les deux citent les noms de ces ge"ne"raux.
Parmi ces noms ne figure pas celui du ge'ne'ral Le"opold-Sigisbert Hugo.
Pourquoi ? C'est une question que le fils du ge'ne'ral ne manque
pas de se poser et meme de poser a haute voix et a plusieurs reprises.
En 1837 il de"die les Voix Interieures (le premier ouvrage public"
par Victor Hugo apres Tachevement de 1'Arc de Triomphe de 1'Etoile)
a son pere:
A Joseph-Le'opold-Sigisbert Comte Hugo, Lieutenant Ge'ne'ral des
Arme*es du Roi.
Ne* en 1774,1 Volontaire 1791, Colonel 1803, Ge'ne'ral de Brigade 1809,
Gouverneur de Provinces 1810, Lieutenant Ge'ne'ral 1825.
Mort 1828.
Non inscrit sur I' Arc de Triomphe de I'fitoile.
Son fils respectueux
V. H.
Dans la Preface il explique :
Quant & la de*dicace place*e en tete de ce volume Pauteur pense n'avoir
pas besoin de dire combien est calme et religieux le sentiment qui Pa dicte"e.
On le comprendra en presence de ces deux monuments, le trophe*e de T^toile,
le tombeau de son pere, Tun national, Pautre domestique, tous deux sacre*s.
... II signale une omission et, en attendant qu'elle soit re*pare*e ou elle
doit P£tre, il la re*pare ici autant qu'il est en lui. . . . Personne ne s'e*ton-
nera non plus de le voir faire ce qu'il a fait. ... La France a le droit
d'oublier, la famille a le droit de se souvenir.
On sent combien, sous ses paroles, il y a d'orgueil froiss4 qu'il essaye
de recouvrir de calme et de serenite.
Dans ce me"me volume des Voix Interieures, il e"crit un poeme
T"Arc de Triomphe" dat6 2 fevrier 1837, et qui se termine ainsi:
Je ne regrette rien devant ton mur sublime
Que Phidias absent et mon pere oublie*.
Ici encore Victor Hugo se montre bless6 dans son amour filial, mais
il ne reclame pas.
De fait, il e"tait alle" plus loin dans un fragment de poeme paru il
n'y a pas longtemps (1909) dans V Edition monumentale, "His-
torique des Voix Interieures," p. 483. Dans son "vers indigne"
1 Victor Hugo se trompe, comme il sera prouv6 plus bas.
144
LE GENERAL HUGO ET L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE 17
il reprochait a Louis-Philippe d'avoir oublie* le p£re sur 1'Arc de
Triomphe de 1'fitoile, alors qu'il e*tait Pami du fils:
Sur ce bloc triomphal cm revit tout Fempire,
Ou Fhistoire dictait ce qu'il fallait e"crire . . .
Vous avez oublie", sire, un nom militaire
Celui que je soutiens et que portait mon pere! . . .
Or celui dont le nom manque a vos architraves,
C'e*tait un vieux soldat, brave entre les plus braves. . . .
Dans la guerre e"trangere et la guerre civile,
En Vende*e, en Espagne, a Naple, a Thionville,
Le fifre et le tambour, la bombe et le canon
Ont laiss£ des e*chos que reVeille son nom.
Pourtant sur votre mur il est oublie*, sire!
Et vous avez eu tort et je dois vous le dire,
Car le poete pur, de la foule e"loigne",
Qui vous aborde ici de son vers indigne",
Sire! et qui vous souhaite un long regne prospSre,
N'est pas de ceux qu'on flatte en oubliant le pere.
29 mars 1837.
Certainement le roi se montrait tr£s aimable envers le chef de
Fe'cole romantique s'il en faut croire ce que dit Barbou (Victor Hugo
et son Temps, chapitre: "Louis-Philippe reconduisant V. Hugo,"
p. 224), et Victor Hugo lui-meme dans Choses Vues (chapitre, "Louis-
Philippe").
Pourquoi Victor Hugo n'a-t-il pas public ces vers dans les Voix
Interieures? II repond lui-meme a cette question par deux notes
publie*es en 1909, avec les vers cit^s ci-dessus, dans 1'Edition nationale.
La premiere est du 29 mars 1837, jour meme de la composition des
vers. La voici:
Tandisque Louis-Philippe sera pe"riodiquement attaque* par Passassinat,
je ne publierai pas ces vers.
La seconde note est de dix-sept ans apres, quand il publiait les
Chdtiments et qu'il ne craignait pas de montrer sa col£re immense
contre les gens au pouvoir. Mais Louis-Philippe etait mort et le
poete aurait cru manquer de generosit6 en faisant imprimer ses
reproches.
Apres 17 ans je relis ces vers a Jersey. Je ne les publierai pas. La
resolution est la meme, les motifs ont change". Louis-Philippe est dans la
tombe. Je suis dans 1'exil. Les proscrits n'ont rien a jeter aux morts.
Quand je serai hors de ce monde, ces vers e*tant vrais et justes, on en fera ce
qu'on voudra.
V. H.
MARINE TERRACE
24 mai, 1854.
145
18 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
S'il renonce a publier les vers, ce n'est pas, on le voit, qu'il ait cess6
de croire a la justice de sa revendication. II retourne £ ce sujet en
1863. Nous allons y revenir; mais auparavant plagons ici une
courte parenthese.
Dans C hoses Vues, chapitre intitule* " Fune*railles de Napoleon,
1840," il de*crit la translation du corps de Napoleon a Paris. Puis il
ajoute, quelques mois apres le retour de FEmpereur aux Invalides:
Aujourd'hui, 8 mai, je suis retourne" aux Invalides pour voir La Chapelle
de Saint-Jerome ou FEmpereur est provisoirement. Toute trace de la
ce*re"monie du 15 de'cembre a disparu de FEsplanade. . . . Tout autour de
la cour, au dessous de la corniche des toits sont encore colic's, derniers vestiges
des fune"railles, les longues bandes minces de toile noire sur lesquelles ont
e"te* peints en lettres d'or, trois par trois, les noms des ge"ne"raux de la ReVolu-
tion et de 1'Empire. Le vent commence pourtant a les arracher ca et la.
Sur Tune de ces bandes dont la pointe d^tach^e flottait a Fair, j'ai lu ces trois
noms — Sauret — Chambure — Hug. ... La fin du troisieme nom avait
e*te* de*chire*e et emporte'e par le vent. Etait-ce Hugo ou Huguet ?
Sauret et Chambure se trouvent inscrits sur FArc de Triomphe de
FEtoile. On n'y trouve pas le nom de Huguet. Victor Hugo
s'e*tait-il trompe* et avait-il lu le nom de Sahuguet ?
II faut rappeler d'abord que tous les noms des ge"neraux de la
Revolution ne se trouvent pas sur FArc de Triomphe. Comme le dit
Thierry dans une phrase de*ja cite"e, leur nombre e*tait "reduit en
raison de 1'espace disponible."
Qui done a fait le choix? Louis-Philippe etait-il responsable,
comme le pretend Victor Hugo ?
II serait aise peut-£tre de trouver dans les archives de la Ville de
Paris le nom de celui qui fut charge" de choisir les gene*raux dont
FArc de Triomphe devait perpe*tuer le souvenir; mais il nous a ete
impossible m&ne d'essayer de les consulter. Nous savons par Jules
Thierry que "M. Farchitecte Blouet a dirige tous les travaux de
sculpture statuaire, et les inscriptions "; mais cela ne peut signifier
qu'on lui ait abandonn6 le choix des noms a inscrire: sa science de
Farchitecture, si grande qu'elle put etre, ne garantissait pas suffisa-
ment sa connaissance des faits historiques et des illustrations mili-
taires de la Re*publique et de FEmpire. D'autre part, il est tout
aussi improbable que Louis-Philippe s'en soit occupe*: on ne se
figure guere un roi de France se livrant a semblable travail et un
Bourbon-Orle'ans scrutinant et comparant, pour en soupeser la
146
LE GENERAL HUGO ET I/ARC DE TRIOMPHE 19
gloire, les noms des gene"raux reVolutionnaires et bonapartistes. II
faut chercher ailleurs.
Au fond V. Hugo pense bien, comme nous, que Louis-Philippe
n'est pas personnellement responsable de la maniere dont les Bour-
bons ont agi envers son pere puisqu'il suggere lui-meme une autre
explication — qui d'ailleurs ne nous parait pas plausible.
En 1863, dans Victor Hugo Raconte par un Temoin de sa Vie (ed.
definitive, Vol. I, pp. 156-57), Victor Hugo essaye de montrer la
Restauration plutot que Louis-Philippe frappant son pere en le
mettant hors d'aetivite apres Thionville, et il en donne cette raison :
On en voulait au Ge'ne'ral Hugo d'avoir e"t£ si incommode aux allies et
d'avoir arret6 si longtemps les Hessois devant Thionville. Avoir refusS de
rendre a l'e*tranger une forteresse franchise, c'e"tait alors une trahison.
. . . En septembre 1815 la Restauration se crut assez forte pour punir ceux
qui avaient re"sist6 a Pinvasion des Allies pour chasser Napole"on de la France
et rendre ce pays aux Bourbons: le general Hugo fut destitu6 de son com-
mandment et mis hors d'activite".
Cette accusation, sauf le fait que le ge*ne*ral est mis hors d'activite",
est tout a fait fausse comme nous allons le voir dans T4tude de la
carriere militaire du general Hugo d'apres ses Memoires. Ainsi
que le dit Dufay (p. 17) :
Sauf au commandement actif il n'avait pas trop a en vouloir aux Bour-
bons, et son Bonapartisme est pour le moins douteux. Une lettre du ge"ne>al
Hugo, de Thionville, le 18 avril 1814, a M. le comte Roger de Damas, gouver-
neur pour le roi a Nancy, atteste la loyaut£ du ge"n6ral Hugo aux Bourbons:
"Nous avons e"t£ fideles et loyaux sous 1'Empereur; le serment qui nous
enchatne au roi Louis XVIII est la garantie que nous le serons e"galement
sous lui."
Ce n'est done pas la defense courageuse de Thionville qui est cause
de la mise en non-aetivite du general, et comme nous le verrons, ce
n'est pas non plus cette defense qui a fait omettre son nom sur FArc
de Triomphe.
Les noms des ge*ne"raux ont du etre choisis ou exclus selon certains
principes: d'apres le decret de Louis-Philippe on a choisi les chefs
de Farmed de la Republique et de TEmpire (voir plus haut). Nous
trouvons, en effet, les noms de gene>aux et meme de quelquls colonels
(deux parmi ceux examines par nous, p. 28) de la Republique et de
TEmpiire inscrits. Le pere de Victor Hugo e"tait-il Tun ou 1'autre ?
Donnons-nous la peine d 'examiner la chose de plus pres; et pour
cela livrons-nous a un rapide examen des Memoires.
147
20 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
Joseph-Le*opold-Sigisbert Hugo1 entra au service de la France en
octobre 1788. Au commencement de la Revolution il se trouvait
attache* a FEtat-Major general de Farmed en qualite" de fourrier-
marqueur. II quitta FEtat-Major ge'ne'ral en mai 1793, en qualite*
d'adjudant-major-capitaine, pour se rendre en Vendee avec son batail-
lon qui avait pour chef Muscar, un de ses amis. Celui-ci lui confia
souvent des commandements d'expedition, et enfin le promut au
grade d'adjudant general, chef de brigade. Tous les deux devaient
partir avec Fexpedition d'Irlande en 1797. Mais ils apprirent qu'elle
devait £tre commandee par un certain Humbert que Muscar detestait.
Alors ils donnerent leur demission qui fut acceptee. Hugo resta en
activity comme adjudant-major de deuxieme bataillon. Apres cela,
il fut deux ans en garnison a Paris comme rapporteur du ler Conseil
de guerre permanent de la 17e division militaire (devenue depuis, la
I6re). Puis, il reprit ses fonctions d'adjudant-major et fut pendant
un mois adjoint a FAdjudant Ge'ne'ral Mutile*, employe* dans la
4e division militaire.
En 1799, le general Lahorie, qu'il connaissait depuis longtemps,
lui demanda s'il n'aimerait pas faire la campagne du Rhin. II y
consentit et partit pour Bale ou il fit la connaissance du ge'ne'ral en
chef Moreau. En 1800, il se trouvait sur FIser ou Moreau le fit
chef de bataillon sur le champ de bataille. Hugo accompagna
Lahorie aux conferences qui se tinrent a Munich pour la suspension
des hostilite's. II y eut un armistice, pendant lequel eut lieu le
Congres de Lune'ville, 1800-1801, entre la France et FAutriche.
Hugo fut charge de s'y rendre. Joseph Bonaparte e*tait pleni-
potentiaire a Lune'ville et c'est la que Hugo fit sa connaissance.
Moreau passant par la demanda de voir Hugo et lui promit de le
recompenser a la fin de la campagne par une demi-brigade et une
gratification qui le mit a son aise. Joseph tint a le garder, et il lui
promit de lui faire lui-meme autant de bien qu'il aurait pu en attendre
du ge'ne'ral. L'armistice fut rompue; le 3 de*cembre 1800 Moreau se
couvrit de gloire a la bataille de Hohenlinden qui for§a les Allemands
a accepter les conditions de paix du Congres de Lune'ville, 1801.
i N6 15 novembre 1773 5, Nancy de Joseph Hugo, maitre menuisier, et de Marguerite
Michaud, gouvernante d'enfant (Archives de Nancy par Aug. Lepage, tome IV, pp. 17
et 18; dt6 par Bir6, V. H. avant 1830, p. 23). V. Hugo se trompe dans la dgdicace a
son pere des Voix Interieures. II y donne la date 1774.
148
LE GENERAL HUGO ET L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE 21
Comme Hugo attribue son manque d'avancement dans Farmee
frangaise a Fhostilite" qui existait entre le ler Consul et Moreau, nous
devons e*tudier le commencement de ces hostilites tel que le decrit
Hugo dans ses Memoir -es (Vol. I, p. 91).
On etait sur FIser. Toutes les divisions executaient leurs mouve-
ments, a Fexception de celle du general Leclerc, beau-frere de Bona-
parte. Le general Guyot rendit compte de cela a Moreau, Lahorie
e*tant present. Celui-ci declara a haute voix que Leclerc devait
marcher. Moreau approuva et Guyot se rendit pres de Leclerc,
lui raconta toute la conversation et lui transmit Fordre de Moreau.
Leclerc marcha mais avec humeur, et apres la bataille demanda un
conge" pour se rendre aux eaux. Moreau pene"tra ses motifs et lui
demanda de n'en rien faire. Leclerc fit solliciter par sa femme le
conge" qu'il de"sirait et qui lui parvint quelques jours apres. Allant
droit a Paris, il raconta tout a Bonaparte et peignit Lahorie comme
un ambitieux. Bonaparte n'oublia jamais Finsulte faite a Leclerc
ni la facheuse impression que celui-ci lui donna de Lahorie. Alors
Moreau ayant demande que Lahorie passat ge"ne"ral de division,
Bonaparte refusa. Moreau insista mais en vain. Tel est, selon
Hugo, le commencement de la brouille entre Moreau, Lahorie et le
Premier Consul.
Le deplaisir de Bonaparte atteignit meme les officiers qui avaient
eu la confiance particuliere de Moreau. Comme Hugo non seule-
ment jouissait de cette confiance mais que, de plus on le regardait
comme F adjoint de Lahorie, il se trouva doublement en de*faveur.
II quitta LuneVille avec le meme grade qu'a son arrive"e et entra dans
la 20e demi-brigade comme chef de bataillon.
On 1'envoya a Besangon en 1801, vers la fin de Pannee. La
encore Hugo se fait mal voir de Bonaparte. Voici 1'histoire telle
qu'il la raconte dans ses Memoir es (Vol. I, p. 96):
A Besangon, il se faisait un trafic scandaleux. Des conges
gratuitement accorde*s par ordre ministeriel etaient vendus de 300
francs jusqu'a 1200 frs. Hugo etait Fami du chef de brigade indelicat
et il lui conseilla d'arr^ter cette vente infame. Le chef oe brigade
n'en fit rien mais se refroidit a Fe"gard de Hugo. L'orage eclata;
le coupable fut traduit devant un conseil de guerre et condamne.
Dans sa colere centre Hugo, qu'il croyait Finstigateur de son proces,
149
22 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
il publia des Memoir es pleins d'injures centre son ci-devant ami.
I/ opinion publique etait pour Hugo qui publia une petite feuille
dans laquelle il prouvait par des faits que ces injures n'etaient fondles
ni sur la ve*rite" ni meme sur des apparences de ve*rite. Mais il en
souffrit quand meme. Le gouvernement se servit de ces calomnies
comme pretextes pour ecarter un homme qu'il jugeait £tre un des
partisans de Moreau.1 On ne priva point Hugo de son emploi mais
on ne le fit participer a aucune faveur.
Enfin une troisieme chose survint qui, selon les Memoires de
Hugo (Vol. I, p. 101), aigrit encore davantage Napoleon contre lui.
Lors de la conspiration (vraie ou fausse) contre le Premier Consul en
1802 on presenta des adresses contre Moreau ou celui-ci e*tait traite
d'une maniere outrageante. Et cela pour faire plaisir a Napoleon.
On voulut faire signer Hugo, mais il refusa: " Je ne me refusai point
a fe*liciter le ler Consul d'avoir e*chappe a une conspiration; mais
je refusai ma signature a un e*crit qui donnait a mon bienfaiteur plus
d'une epithete odieuse. Ce refus ne fut pas ignore du ler Consul"
(Vol. I, p. 101).
Hugo fut envoye a Marseille en 1804. II e*tait convaincu qu'il
n'avait aucun espoir d'avancement et il envoya sa femme supplier
Joseph Bonaparte de 1'arracher de la 20e demi-brigade. Pendant
1'absence de Mme Hugo, il s'embarqua pour la Corse et quelques
jours plus tard alia a Tile d'Elbe ou Mme Hugo le rejoignit. Elle
n'avait rien obtenu. De la, il alia a l'arme*e de 1'Italie, 8e corps de
la Grande Armee, sous les ordres du Marechal Massena (1806).
II se trouva a la bataille de Caldiero (18 Brumaire, 1806), au succes
de laquelle il contribua certainement. La, dans 1'obscurite*, un
ge*ne*ral qu'il ne pouvait distinguer le questionna. Satisfait de ses
responses, il lui dit, "Bien, mon ami, vous serez colonel et officier
de la Legion d'honneur." II fut trois fois cite au rapport. Mais il
ne fut pas nomme colonel. "Je savais que je n'aurais rien a pre*-
tendre tant que je ne me signalerais pas sous les ordres directs et sous les
yeux memes de Napole*on," dit-il dans les Memoires (Vol. I, p. 120).
II assista au passage du Tagliamento en 1806, lorsque 1'armee allait
1 Certainement Napoleon a montre" son me'contentement a ceux qui sont rested
fldeles a Moreau. La Grande Encyclopedic raconte ainsi le cas du g6ne"ral Dessolle:
"il tomba, pour avoir montre" son attachement a Moreau, son ancien chef, dans la dis-
grace de Bonaparte qui, devenu Empereur, l'61oigna systSmatiquement des grands com-
mandements. II servit obscur^ment en Espagne de 1808 a 1812."
150
LE GENERAL HUGO ET I/ARC DE TRIOMPHE 23
vers Naples afin de conque"rir ce royaume pour Joseph Bonaparte.
A Rome, Hugo vit celui-ci et en fut bien accueilli. II sollicita une
place dans la garde franc. aise de Joseph; celui-ci Fy avait lui-meme
encourage*. Pourtant le general Saligny vint lui dire: "Le roi a
pour vous beaucoup d'attachement et d'estime mais par des motifs
qui ne vous sont point personnels il n'a pu vous admettre dans sa
garde. Quand il en sera le maJtre il nevous oubliera point" (Memoires,
Vol. I, p. 122).
Hugo donna sa demission. II e*tait a ce moment major dans
Parme*e frangaise. Nous voyons done qu^7 n'est pas Colonel quand
il quitta I'armee de Napoleon — la Grande Armee.
Puis il regut de M. le comte Mathieu Dumas, ministre de la
guerre, une invitation pressante de passer au service de Joseph.
"Sa majeste," m'e*crivait le ministre, "a des vues particulieres sur
vous, et veut vous donner tres incessament des preuves de sa confi-
ance et de son estime" (Memoires, Vol. I, p. 123). Hugo entra au
service de Joseph en 1806, comme major. II organisa un regiment
pour aller contre Fradiavolo, le plus fameux "partisan" de FEurope,
qu'il reussit a prendre apres beaucoup de peine.
Puis on le retrouve prenant part en qualite de major de Royal-
Corse a une expedition dans la Pouille. En Janvier 1808, Hugo fut
charge* personellement d'une autre expedition, aux sources de FOfanto.
Six semaines apres il regut le brevet de Colonel de Royal-Corse et
devint commandant d'Avellino.
Nomine* marechal du palais de S. M. il devint Commandeur de
FOrdre Royal. A ce moment-la Joseph fut appele* par Napole*on
a regner sur FEspagne et sur les Indes. Un mois apres son depart
il e*crivit au colonel Hugo lui proposant d'aller le rejoindre. Hugo
quitta Avellino pour se porter vers PEspagne. II partit avec regret.
On pleurait en le voyant partir. " Sans le tendre sentiment de recon-
naissance qui m'attachait au roi Joseph, pour qui seul j'avais quitte
le service de ma patrie (nous employons Pitalique), je n'aurais point
quitte* mes chers compagnons d'armes" (Vol. I, p. 186).
Hugo arriva en Espagne a la fin de juillet 1808. II s€ trouvait
a Burgos le 6 aout 1808. Joseph n'ayant pu se maintenir a Madrid
vint a Burgos, puis eut son quartier general a Vittoria ou le colonel
Hugo avait des fonctions a la cour. II devait accompagner le roi.
151
24 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
En novembre de cette meme anne*e, Napoleon, avec la Grande
Armee,1 vint a Faide de Joseph, et Hugo le vit pour la premiere fois.
II dit dans ses Memoires: "Je voulus mieux voir Fhomme extraor-
dinaire qui, depuis si longtemps, fixait F attention du monde entier;
et pour cela, je me plagai dans le grand salon (il y avait soiree chez
Joseph en Fhonneur de FEmpereur) parmi les officiers generaux et
supe*rieurs de sa jeune garde; mais la maniere brusque dont il les
questionna, et Foeil severe qu'il porta sur mon uniforms etranger
(celui de Royal-Corse] me de'terminerent a me retirer sous peu, et
je ne disparus pas sans plaisir a ses yeux trop sou vent portes sur moi "
(Vol. II, p. 18). Ici Hugo veut montrer que Napoleon ne regardait
pas d'un ceil amical ceux qui quittaient son arme*e. Le 2 decembre
1808 Napoleon arriva devant Madrid, attaqua la ville le 3, et y
entra le 4. Le colonel Hugo fut plusieurs fois charge par le roi
Joseph de messages aupres de FEmpereur.
C'est a cette date, le 6 decembre 1808, que fut cre6 le regiment
appele" Royal-Etranger dont le commandement fut offert par Joseph
a Hugo.2 Avec ce regiment le colonel Hugo eut Fordre de marcher
sur la province d' Avila pour y ramener Fordre. Le 14 Janvier 1809
il arriva a Avila. En juin sa mission e"tait remplie, FEmpecinado, du
reste, ayant quitte" cette province pour les provinces voisines.
En juillet 1809 commenga la retraite de Farme*e frangaise du
Portugal ou elle avait et6 battue par les Allies (les Anglais surtout,
sous Wellington). Avila etant sur la ligne de defense se trouva
isol£ et fit une resistance vigoureuse. Par Avila les deux parties
de Farme"e frangaise pouvaient communiquer; d'ou Fimportance de
cette place qui tint bon quoique Hugo n'ait eu que des soldats
Strangers pour la defendre. Les Anglais se virent forces a la retraite.
Hugo en recompense regut de Joseph un million de reaux en
ce"dules hypothecates,3 et — voici ce qui nous interesse — le grade de
1 II faut se rappeler que Napoleon a toujours eu une partie de sa Grande Arme'e en
Espagne. Cette arme6 etait frangaise et sous les ordres de 1'Empereur. Joseph aussi,
sous ses ordres, avait une petite armee qui n'etait pas frangaise mais etrangere.
2 Le Royal-stranger Stait forme de prisonniers Strangers qui etaient devenus soldats
de Joseph.
3 Mtmoires, Vol. II, p. 156, note. II dit: "Ce million en cedules hypothecaires
n'ayant jamais pu etre place, resta et fut pris dans mon portefeuille a la bataille de Vit-
toria. Mes acquisitions en Espagne furent faites de mes propres deniers." Dufay dans
son V. Hugo d vingt ans cite plusieurs lettres ou le poete parle a son p&re des demarches
faites pour recouvrer une partie au moins de la valeur de ces cedules hypothecaires; mais
ces demarches resterent sans r^sultat. Dufay ajoute: "le general 6tait riche en c^dules
hypothecaires du roi Joseph, moins que des chateaux en Espagne" (p. 34).
152
LE G£N£RAL HUGO ET L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE 25
marechal de camp. Ce grade e"quivalait a celui de general de brigade.1
C'est done depuis ce jour-la qu'il eut droit a ce litre (dont son fils fait
si grand cas) de ge*ne"ral. C'etait le 20 aout 1809. II etait major-
dome du palais depuis le mois de Janvier. Un peu plus tard, il fut
nomine" inspecteur general de tous les corps forme's et a former, et
aussi Commandeur de FOrdre Royal d'Espagne, dignite" qui valait
30,000 reaux de rentes. II 6tait toujours a Avila et il y resta assie'ge',
lorsqu'en novembre 1809 eut lieu la grande bataille d'Ocana entre
les Frangais et les Allies.
Napoleon mit alors la province d' Avila sous les ordres du mare'chal
due d'Elchingen, et nomma le general Tilly gouverneur. Cela
revenait a de"placer le ge*ne*ral Hugo que Joseph envoya dans les
provinces de Se*govie et de Soria (avril et mai 1810) comme gouver-
neur. Dans Fete de 1810, le ge*ne"ral Hugo fut envoye", comme gouver-
neur encore, dans la province de Guadalaxara. La, il retrouvait son
ancien ennemi FEmpecinado. II guerroya contre lui jusqu'en 1811
sans resultat de*finitif. Le 27 septembre 1810, le roi Joseph Fayant
rencontre a Brihuega, lui avait offert au choix le titre de comte de
Cifuentes ou comte de Siguenza, en recompense de ces campagnes.
II choisit celui de Comte de Siguenza.
Quelques mois plus tard, a cause de blessures qui Finquietaient
beaucoup, il alia a Madrid ou il devint chef d'etat-major et puis com-
mandant de la capitale des Espagnes.
Cependant le prestige de Napoleon s'affaiblissait. En Espagne
le 12 aout 1812, le roi Joseph se vit force de quitter Madrid pour
quelque temps. II Fabandonna definitivement le 27 mai 1813,
emmenant a sa suite, sous les ordres de Hugo, un convoi de 300
voitures "ou s'entassaient les ministres du roi, les conseillers d'Etat,
les corps diplomatiques, les families distingue*es, etc." La fameuse
bataille de Vittoria, le 21 juin 1813, priva definitivement Joseph de
son royaume. II rentra en France avec toute sa suite, et on se separa
pour toujours.
Voila le "general Hugo" de retour en France. Qu'allait-il
faire? Apr£s le depart du roi Joseph chacun des generaux qui se
1Boursin et Challamel: Dictionnaire de la Revolution franyaise: "Sous 1'Ancien
Reime les rades militaires titaient: offlciers, — sous-lieutenant, lieutenant, colonel,
marechal de camp, lieutenant general, marechal de France. En 1793
on supprima les marechaux de camp et on remplaca le titre de colonel par celui de chef de
brigade. Les lieutenants generaux changerent leur titre pour celui de generaux et furent
distingues par le titre de generaux de brigade et generaux de division."
153
26 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
trouvaient dans la meme position que Hugo, c'est a dire qui n'ap-
partenaient pas a Farmee frangaise, regut du ministre espagnol
1 'authorisation soit de quitter la vie militaire soit de rentrer dans
Farme'e frangaise. Hugo sollicita du service dans Farme'e de France
ou il fut reintegre avec le grade de major, fin de 1813. l
Et, rentre dans rarme'e franchise, c'est comme major (ou com-
mandant) que Hugo regut le 9 Janvier 1814, Fordre de se rendre a
Thionville, ou il organisa la defense qui dura jusqu'au 14 avril 1814;
ce jour-la, le commandant Hugo apprit par des depeches F abdication
de Napoleon. L'Empereur avait dit a Hugo a Thionville en 1814,
qu'il le felicitait de sa conduite toute frangaise et qu'il lui donnerait
des preuves de sa satisfaction, mais les eve*nements ne lui permirent
pas de donner suite a sa promesse. Et le general Hugo ajoute dans
ses Memoires (Vol. Ill, pp. 181-82) qu' "il serait sorti general
espagnol (ou major frangais) de la lutte nationale si F extreme justice
de sa majeste le roi Louis XVIII n'eut, en partie, repare les torts de
la fortune envers lui." Hugo avait commande cette place, il Favait
de*fendue —
mais il n'avait qu'une commission de M. le Mare*chal, due de Valmy. II
n'avait point e'ti confirm^ dans son grade de ge"ne>al en France, quoique
officier ge"ne*ral depuis le 20 aout 1809; et Fon assure que quand, le 12 sep-
tembre 1815, on lui envoya un successeur, la division (militaire) de la guerre
qui fit le rapport ignorait qu'il y eut un ge"ne*ral & Thionville. . . . Au reste,
le roi Louis XVIII n'a pas voulu qu'une action aussi honorable que la defense
de cette place appartint a un ge*ne*ral Stranger a son service et il a confirme*
Hugo dans son grade de ge"ne"ral a dater du 11 septembre 1813, e*poque ou
il e*tait retourne* en France.2
Napol&m revint en France en 1815.
Le ge"ne"ral Hugo n'avait rien demande" & Napoleon; oublie* par ce prince
pendant la campagne de 1814, le ge"ne"ral, rappele* par lui au service de la
France, et qui ne devait son grade qu'a la demande du major-ge'ne'ral des
arme*es frangaises . . . se retrouvait sans brevet, sans lettre de service pour
la France, enfin dans la meme position qu'& Fe"poque de la bataille de Vittoria
(21 juin 1813), c'est & dire ge'niral espagnol, et aide-de-camp du prince Joseph
1 " Je venais d'etre nomm6 a ce grade en 1806 quand je passai au service de Naples;
mais je ne le sus que bien longtemps aprSs — c'est pourquoi j'acceptai alors le grade de
chef de bataillon que j'avais depuis longtemps en France" (Memoires, Vol. Ill, p. 180,
note).
2 Dufay, p. 15: " Tout en le mettant en demi-solde et loin de lui tenir rigueur, le roi
lui avait auparavant accorde" la croix de chevalier de 1'ordre royal et militaire de Saint-
Louis (ler nov. 1814) et le grade de marSchal de camp des armies francaises (21 nov. 1814)
pour prendre rang a la date de sa rentrge en Prance (11 sept. 1813). Quelques mois plus
tard, le ggneral §tait, ainsi qu'un de ses frferes le Colonel Louis J. Hugo, promu par la
m6me ordonnance au grade d'omcier de la L6gion d'Honneur."
154
LE GENERAL HUGO ET I/ARC DE TRIOMPHE 27
Bonaparte; encore, pour remplir ce dernier emploi, lui eut-il fallu du mi-
nistere francais des lettres de service qu'il ne regut jamais.1
Le 31 mars 1815, Hugo accepta de nouveau la defense de Thion-
ville, qu'il quitta de*finitivement le 13 novembre de la meme anne"e,
pour se retirer a Blois, ou il e*crivit ses Memoires qui parurent le
4 octobre 1823, imprimes chez Ladvocat, Paris.2
Le 29 mai 1825, Charles X confe*ra au general Hugo le titre de
lieutenant-general. Le 5 juin, le Moniteur annongait: "M. le
mare*chal de camp Hugo vient d'etre nomm6 Lieutenant-General."3
Une attaque d'apoplexie Tenleva dans la nuit du 29 au 30 Janvier
1828. II avait 6t6 general espagnol sous Joseph Bonaparte. II est
devenu general royaliste sous la Restauration. II n'a jamais e*te*
ge"ne"ral de T Empire.
Reste cependant une possibilite. Thierry dit (op. cit., p. 7),
"Parmi les generaux on trouve quelques soldats Strangers qui ont
combattu dans nos rangs et qui se sont associes a nos gloires
nationales." On pourrait done dire: meme si le general Hugo
n'e"tait pas general (ou colonel) de la Re*publique et de TEmpire,
mais general de Parme*e espagnole, il aurait pu avoir le droit de
figurer a cote de ces etrangers.
Nous avons examine ce point aussi. Avec les moyens a notre
disposition il ne nous a pas et6 possible de retracer la carriere mili-
taire de ces 652 ge*neraux. Nous en avons 452, plus de deux tiers.
Mais nos re*sultats meme ainsi limite's nous paraissent assez convain-
cants. Pour ces recherches nous nous sommes servi de Boursin et
Challamel, Robinet, Grande Encyclopedic, et Grand Dictionnaire Uni-
versel Larousse.
Parmi ces generaux, il y a en effet plusieurs etrangers, et il
semblerait a premiere vue qu'ils devraient avoir moins de droit de
figurer sur TArc de Triomphe que le general Hugo. Leur cas est
cependant different du sien car, si Hugo, Frangais, avait obtenu son
grade superieur hors de France, eux, au contraire, etrangers, ont tous
1"Blocus et Defense de Thlonville, Dierck et Rodermack en 1815."
du G6n6ral Hugo, Vol. Ill, p. 388. Note de cette m§me page: "Les nonjinations et les
confirmations faites en 1814 par le ge"n6ral Dupont, ministre de la guerre de S. M. Louis
XVIII, etaient en 1815 nullcs aux yeux du ministre de Napol6on."
2 Dufay cite une lettre de V. Hugo a 1'editeur des Memoires, le priant de lui com-
muniquer les feuilles "a mesure qu'elles sortent de presse." Sa femme d6sire les lire
avant tout le monde et "de'sir de femme est un feu qui dSvore."
• Ibid., p. 141.
155
28 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
obtenu leurs grades superieurs sous Napoleon, en combattant pour
la France sous le drapeau frangais. Prenons comme example le cas
du ge*ne*ral Dumonceaux (Jean-Baptiste), un Beige. A la tete d'un
bataillon de Beiges, il combattit avec les Frangais. En 1794 il fut
nomm6 ge*ne*ral de brigade et combattit sous Pichegru dans la f ameuse
campagne de Hollande qui se termina par la conquete de ce pays et
la fondation de la Republique Batave. Nomme lieutenant general
par cette Republique il devint commandant en chef des armies de
son pays en 1805. La Hollande ayant e*te* erigee en royaume pour
Louis Bonaparte, Dumonceau devint commandant en chef des armies
de ce prince. En 1807 il fut nomme* Marechal de Hollande.
Napole*on le fit comte de F Empire (impossible de trouver la date).
Dumonceau etait general de brigade sous Napoleon, et c'est dans La
Grande Arm^e qu'il a obtenu son grade de ge*ne"ral.
Voici maintenant qui nous rapproche plus du cas de Hugo et qui
prouve, en outre que les Franc.ais qui se plagaient sous les ordres
de Joseph savaient a n'en pas douter, qu'ils perdaient leur rang
d'officier frangais. Le general Lamarque (Jean-Maximin, comte
Lamarque) devint general de brigade dans Farmed du Rhin en 1805,
a Austerlitz, ou il fut remarque* par FEmpereur qui Fenvoya &
Tarmac charge*e de conque*rir le royaume de Naples. Lamarque y
alia sous les armes franchises et s'empara de Gaete; mais "il refusa
le poste d 'aide-de-camp de Joseph Bonaparte, roi de Naples, pour
conserver sa qualite de Fran^ais" (Robinet). II est a remarquer
d'ailleurs, que meme si Lamarque avait decide de se mettre sous
les ordres de Joseph a Naples, il avait e*te general de brigade sous
Napoleon.
Maintenant, sur ces 452 generaux nous en avons cependant trouve
sept qui ont eu la meme carriere militaire que Hugo sous Joseph Bona-
parte a Naples ou en Espagne, ou sous Louis Bonaparte en Hollande.
Ce sont: Lafon de Blaniac, Dedon-DuClos, Dumas, Compredon,
Guye, Cavaignac, Caulaincourt. Leur cas est-il tout a fait le meme
que celui de Hugo?
II re*sulte d'un examen minutieux de leur carriere1 que ces sept
omciers e*taient colonels ou ge"ne*raux avant de quitter Farmee de
i Le tableau de la carriere militaire de ces sept g6ne>aux n'est pas reproduit ici faute
de place. On trouverait cette compilation et d'autres documents concernant notre pub-
lication a la bibliotheque de Smith College, departement des manuscrits.
156
LE GENERAL HUGO ET L'ARC DE TRIOMPHE 29
Napoleon et tous sont rentre*s en France comme ge*ne*raux dans cette
m^me arme*e. Quant a Lafon de Blaniac, s'il a pris sa retraite des
son retour en France, il n'en avait pas moins e*te* general sous
Napoleon.
Nous avons trouve cependant un cas qui pourrait etre mis a cote*
de celui du general Hugo. C'est celui du ge*ne*ral Jamin (Jean-
Baptiste-Auguste-Marie). Voici sa carriere telle que la donne la
Grande Encyclopedic:
Jamin devint chef d'escadron en 1802 et servit en Italic comme aide-de-
camp de Masse*na en 1805 et 1806. Colonel au service du roi Joseph a
partir de cette derniSre anne"e, il fut e*leve* au grade de mare*chal de camp en
1810 et, en 1811, fut nomine* marquis de Bermuy. A la bataille de Vittoria
(21 juin 1813), il commanda avec honneur les de*bris de la garde royale
d'Espagne. Pendant la campagne de France, il devint major des grenadiers
a cheval de la garde impe*riale (16 mars 1814). C'est comme major qu'il
prit part a la bataille de Waterloo ou il mourut, 18 juin 1815. [Signe*
A. DSbidour.]
Robinet n'est pas d 'accord avec la Grande Encyclopedic. II dit
de Jamin :
C'est en qualite* de general de brigade qu'il fit les derni£res campagnes de
1'Empire. II prit une part glorieuse a la bataille de Waterloo-Mont-Saint-
Jean; il tomba he*roiquement le 8 juin 1815.
Le Grand Dictionnaire Universel Larousse (article non signe") est
plutot d 'accord avec la Grande Encyclopedic:
A la malheureuse bataille de Vittoria, Jamin se conduisit avec une
bravoure qui 1'a fait placer au rang de nos meilleurs ge*ne*raux de cavalerie.
De retour en France, il fit la campagne de 1814, fut nomine* major des grena-
diers a cheval de la garde impe*riale, continua a servir sous la Restauration,
rentra dans la garde imperiale apres le retour de Napole*on de 1'lle d'Elbe
et trouva la mort sur le champ de bataille de Waterloo.
Voila mes trois autorite*s: entre elles, et surtout entre Robinet
et la Grande Encyclopedie nous n'avons aucune raison peremptoire de
decider. II nous semble cependant que 1'on serait en droit d'admettre
que le titre de major des grenadiers de la garde imperiale est un rang
au moins e*quivalant au rang de ge*ne*ral ordinaire, puisque Jamin,
qui e"tait un si excellent soldat, de ge*ne"ral est devenu fnajor des
grenadiers de la garde impe'riale. Mais meme si Jamin n'avait eu
vraiment que le titre de major sous Napoleon, ce serait un cas excep-
tionnel et la reclamation de Victor Hugo ne devrait pas avoir pour
157
30 ANNA ADELE CHENOT
effet de faire aj outer le nom du general royaliste Hugo sur FArc de
Triomphe, mais de faire rayer celui du major imperial Jamin.
Recapitulons :
Leopold -Sigisbert-Hugo n'etait que major quand il quitta Farmee
de Napoleon. C'est comme major qu'il entra dans Farme*e de Joseph
Bonaparte, roi de Naples. II fut nomine alors colonel de Royal-
Corse;1 suivit le fr&re de Napoleon en Espagne, et la devint colonel
de Royal-Etranger,2 puis marechal de camp (c'est a dire ge"ne>al de
brigade) du meme regiment. II portait toujours Funiforme Stranger.
II devint gouverneur de trois provinces espagnoles (Avila, Se"govie,
Guadalaxara) toujours sous Joseph et a la tete de regiments non
frangais. Plus tard, il servit d'aide-de-camp du roi Joseph. Jamais
Napoleon ne Fa reconnu comme marechal de camp, autrement dit
general de brigade; lorsqu'il revint en France (1813), il fut envoye
a Thionville comme simple major. Apres sa premiere defense de
Thionville (1814), Louis XVIII lui donna le titre de general franc, ais
avec effet re"troactif, c'est a dire, a dater du 11 septembre 1813, epoque
oti, il etait rentre en France.
Or, FArc de Triomphe de FEtoile a Paris porte les noms des
generaux de la Revolution et de P Empire; nous n'avons trouve que
deux colonels dans les 452 que nous avons verifies. Des lors, puisque
Hugo ne reussit jamais a se faire reconnaitre un grade plus eleve
que celui de major dans Farmee de Napoleon, il n'avait pas droit a
etre inscrit sur PArc de Triomphe de FEtoile et la reclamation de
Victor Hugo n'est pas justifiee. Le fait qu'il ait fini par etre
reconnu general frangais sous Louis XVIII ne change rien a la
question puisqu'il etait alors general royaliste.
Et quant au cas du major imperial Jamin, il est plus que douteux
que ce soit un cas identique. Et meme s'il Tetait, cela prouverait
non pas qu'une injustice avait ete commise a Fe*gard du general
Hugo, mais qu'une faveur avait e*te faite a un autre.
ANNA ADELE CHENOT
SMITH COLLEGE
1 Ce regiment 6tait fonn6 de prisonnlers de toutes nationalites et portait un uniforme
6tranger.
z RSgiment analogue a celui de Royal-Corse a Naples.
158
THE REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS
IN VULGAR LATIN
It is a well-known fact that several Latin words sometimes appear
with a single consonant, sometimes with a double one. Among the
most typical instances are dpus and cippus, cupa and cuppa, pupa
and puppa, mucus and muccus. The reduplicated forms seem to
have been much more numerous in Vulgar Latin, judging from what
we find in Romance, where Fr. bette, etoupe, chapon, etc., point to
VL betta, stuppa, cappo for beta, stupa, capo.
In his Handbuch zur lateinischen Laut- und Formenlehre (pp.
290 ff.) Sommer devotes a few pages to the study of this very curious
phenomenon. He gives up the task of distributing the examples into
categories. He says that the conditions on which the phenomenon
depends are unknown, though he believes in some influence of the
accent. The cases of reduplication, he thinks, had been capriciously
multiplied. They would rest, in the final analysis, on a shifting in the
division of syllables.
The problem has thus never been seriously attacked, and the
explanations have been necessarily of a provisional character. The
purpose of this article is to try to make a classification of the cases of
reduplication, and by a closer consideration of them to throw some
light on the phenomenon.
Schulze (Lateinische Eigennamen, p. 520) has already pointed out
the great number of gentilicia and cognomina which appear with
double consonants, as: Allius, Arrius, Attius, Babbius, Lappus,
Cottus, Coitus, Ninno, Occus, etc. Sommer also mentions Varro,
Gracchus, Agrippa, Mummius, etc. Some of these names are
derived from children's words, as Attius, Babbius, Ninno, Mummius;
some are abbreviations or alterations as Varro (vdrus) Gracchus
( < gracilis ' 'slender") . The process seems to be Indo-European, j udg-
ing (1) from Greek names, as Sxparrts for SrpdrtTrTros, KXe6ju/us for
KXcojiie^r/s, Mej/j/e'as for Mej/eKparrjs, $t\Xcas for <l>iX6£ei/os, etc., and (2)
more still from Teutonic short-names such as Sicco (Siegfried), Itta,
159] 31 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, July, 1917
32 ALBERT J. CARNOY
(Itaberga), Okko, Ukko, Juppo, Sotto, Otto, Batto, etc. — names which
survive, for instance, in the Belgian village-names: Sichem, Itegem,
Okkerzeel, Uccle, Jupille, Sottegem, Ottignies, Bettegem, etc.
Along with these proper names in Latin should be mentioned a
great many epithets eminently susceptible of being applied to people,
often with some depreciation or irony. From vdrus "curved" is
derived Varro, well known as the cognomen of the celebrated gram-
marian. The glossaries mention vorri "edaces," while cuppes in
Plautus is a "lickery tongue," a " greedy man," both being familiar
formations from vow and cupio; lippus " blear-eyed" is for leipos
(cf. Gr. Xbros "fat"); mattus "humid," "intoxicated" is for matus;
suppus "lying on the back, indolent" is a variation of suplnus;
bruttus (It. brutto, Fr. brute) has replaced briitus "brute," "sense-
less"; glutto "glutton" (It. ghiottone, Fr. glouton) for gluto is akin
to glutus "abyss," gula "mouth"; cloppus "halt" is said to be a
corruption of xu^oirovs, while an usurer was humorously called succo
"a sucker," from sucus.
It will be observed that all these appellatives are familiar and
ironical. The process of abbreviation used with proper names very
naturally also applies here, since vorrus, cuppes, mattus, suppus very
clearly are shortened forms of vorax, cupidus, madidus, supinus. Of
an eminently appellative character also are the "Lallworter,"
or baby-words. They are nearly the same in all languages, and at
times are introduced from the nursery language into the regular
speech.
Among them may be mentioned in Latin:
ATTA "father" (hence the gentilice Attius).
PAPPUS "old man," and by metaphor "beard of thistle."
BABBUS "father" (Sard, babbu, It. babbo).
AMMA "mother" (hence Ammius), surviving in Sp., Port, ama and
in the diminutive amita "aunt" (O.Fr. ante)', amma in Latin was
also by irony an "owl."
MAMMA "mother" (It. mamma, Fr. maman, etc.), properly
"breast"; meaning preserved in the diminutive mammilla.
ANNA "old woman," beside anus (hence the gentilice Annaeus,
Annius), is found in the name of the goddess; Anna Perenna (Varro
Sat. Men. Frag. 506. Buech.).
160
REDUPLICATION OP CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 33
ACCA in Acca Larentia "mother of the Lares" is an old "Lall-
wort"; cf. Skr. akkd "mother," Gr. "A/cKo> (Demeter).
NANNA, NONNA "old woman" (It. nonna "grandmother," Fr.
nonne "nun," Sp. nana "housewife").
*NINNUS "child," apophonic variation of the preceding word
(Sp. nino "child," It. ninnolo "toy").
PUTTUS "boy," beside putus, is akin to Lat. pmr, Skr. putra.
It has undergone the same reduplication as the older familiar appella-
tives, hence O.It, putta "boy," putta "lass," Fr. pute, putain "prosti-
tute."
PUPPA "little girl," "doll" (Fr. poupee "doll," poupon "baby,"
O.It, poppina "pupil," "eye"), beside pupus, pupa "baby";
puppa also meant "teat" (It. poppa "breast"), and is an onomatopoea.
*(PITTUS) *PITTITUS, *PiTTiNUS, *PiTTicus "small" (Mil. pitin,
Sard. piticu, Fr. petit, etc.).
*PICCUS, *PICCINUS, *PICCOCCUS, *PICCULUS "small" (Calabr.
picca "little bit," Rum. piciu "child," It. piccolo "small," Sard.
piccinu, picciocu "small").
MICCUS "small" (Rum. mic "little," Calabr. miccu "small") is a
variation of piccus under the influence of mica and Gr. jut/epos.
The suffixes -ITTUS, -ATTUS, -OTTUS, and -iccus, -ACCUS, -occus
are found first in proper names of women: Julitta, Livitta, Galitta,
Suavitta, Caritta, Bonitta or Bonica, Carica (Meyer-Liibke, Einfuhr-
ung, pp. 184, 185). Irrespective of their origins, we may consider
them thus as endings for affectionate appellatives.
Besides these "Lallworter" a great many " Schallworter" (ono-
matopoeas) show the same reduplication. We find it, for instance, in
a long series of familiar words referring to parts or functions of the
body, such as:
BUCCA "swollen cheeks," "mouth" (It. bocca, Fr. bouche
"mouth," Pr. bocco "lip").
*BICCUS "beak" (Sard, biccu, It. becco), diminutive variation of
bucca under the influence of a Celtic word.
MUCCUS for MUCUS "mucus," muccare "to wipe one's nose" (Sard.
muccu, It. moccio, mocciolo, moccicone "snotty child," Fr. moucher,
etc.).
161
34 ALBERT J. CARNOY
*MURRUS "snout" (Sard, murru, Sp. morro " protruding lip").
GUTTUR "throat," doubtfully related to Eng. cud by Ehrlich
(Walde, p. 870), appears to be a mere onomatopoea : guttus "jar
with narrow opening" seems to be connected with guttur and suggests
the same impression of strangling or choking.
GLTJTTIRE "to swallow" is akin to gluto "glutton" (cf. supra), but
it has been felt as an onomatopoea.
MUTTIRE "to mutter," muttum "mutter, word" (Fr. mot) is also
suggestive of a dull noise.
*TITTA "teat," sometimes held to be Teutonic, is an imitative
word like puppa "teat" (cf. supra).
*CINNUM "wink," cinnare "to wink" (It. cenno, Sp. ceno) is
hardly the same word as Gr. dtavvos "lock of hair." It appears to be
an imitative word with the childlike ending -innus of pisinnus,
pitinnus "small," pipinna "parva mentula," etc.
*POTTA "thick lip" (Fr. dial, potte "lip," It. potta "cunnus").
*PATTA "paw" refers to a thick, flat foot (Fr. patte "paw,"
pataud "dog with large paws," patauger "to dabble," patouiller
"to muddle," etc.).
PUPPIS, "stem of a ship" is mentioned here because, according to
Walde (p. 623), it is a familiar derivation from pu- "back," "behind,"
cf. Skr. puta- "buttock," "rump."
A series of words of this kind referring to blowing, swelling, and
inconsistency, all have ff as the characteristic sound:
*LOFFA "wind," "fart" (It. loffia, Cat. llufa "fart," "whore,"
It. loffio "slack").
*BAFFA "paunch" (Piem. bafra "full belly," Fr. bafre "glut-
tony," Engad. baffa "flitch of bacon").
*BAFFIARE "to jeer" (properly "to swell the cheeks in mockery")
(Prov. bafa "mockery," Abbruz. abbafa "to mock").
*BEFFARE "to mock" (It. beffa "mockery," Sp. befo "lower lip of
a horse").
*BIFFARE "to make a quick movement" (Fr. biffer "to wipe off,"
se rebiffer "to bristle up").
*BUFFARE "to blow with full cheeks" (It. buffo "blast of wind,"
buffare "to play the buffoon," buffa "drollery").
162
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 35
*MUFFABE "to swell one's cheeks," "to mock" (Sp. mofa "mock-
ery, disdain," Engad. mofla "swollen cheeks," It. camuffare "to
muffle up").
*EX-BBUFFARE "to gulp," "to gush forth" refers like biff are to
quick movements (Fr. s'esbrouffer).
*CIOFFUS, CIAFFUS "stout," "swollen," "silly" (O.It, ciofo
"mean individual," Istr. ciubo "stout man").
More directly imitative are:
*RUSSARE "to snore" (It. russare).
*PISSIARE "to urinate" (It. pisciare, Fr. pisser, It. pisciarello
"light wine").
SCUPPIRE "to spit" (Sp. escupir).
*CRACCARE "to spit noisily" (Fr. cracker, It. scharacchiare) .
*CECCARE "to stammer" (Sic. kekku "stutterer," Bellun. kekinar
"to stammer").
*CIOCCARE "to suck" (It. cioccare).
*HUCCARE "to shout" (Prov. wear, Fr. hucher).
*HIPPARE "to sob" (Sp. hipar); cf. hippitare, CGIL, V, 601, 18.
*LAPPARE "to lick" (Fr. laper, lamper). Perhaps Teutonic.
PAPPARE "to eat" (It. pappare, Wall, "pap," "soup"), a chil-
dren's word comparable with Germ, pappen. Cf. puppa "teat."
*CIOCCIARE "to suck" (It. ciocciare, Fr. sucer, dial, clincher,
Sp. chuchar).
*CIARRARE "to chat" (Prov. charrar, Norm, charer, Prov.
charade, It. ciarlare, Sp. charlar, contaminated with parabolare).
BLATTIRE "to babble" (Pauli, KZ, XVIII, 3), rhyming with
muttire "to mutter."
*BATTABE and BATABE "to gape" (Walde, p. 81).
*CATILLABE "to tickle" (Fr. chatouiller, Prov. gatilhar, con-
taminated with cattus "cat").
*PBILLABE, PIBLABE "to be thrilling," "to whirl," etc. (It. prillare,
Friul. pirrarse "to be impatient," Port, pilrete "dwarf," O.It, brillare
dalla gioia "to be thrilling," "radiant with joy").
The movements of lips, which we have seen to be so expressive
of mockery in buffare, baffare, muff a, etc., are also suggestive of
thickness and rotundity and therefore are used for clods, lumps, etc.
Beside *potta "thick lip" and *patta "thick, flat foot," for instance,
163
36 ALBERT J. CARNOY
existed *motta and *matta for clods of earth, of milk, etc. Cf.
Franc-Comtois motte "clod of butter," Sp. mota "knot in a cloth,"
Lomb. motta "thick lip" ( = potto), Fr. motte "clod of earth" (Eng.
moat), while matta gives Fr. raafte "junket," maton "pancake," Sic.
matta "group," etc. *ciotta and *ciatta have the same meaning
(Rum. dot "knotty excrescency," It. ciottolo "pebble," Fr. sot "silly,"
Lomb. dat "toad," dot "child," etc.). *bottia "hump," "bump,"
perhaps akin to botulus, botellus, "bowel" is rhyming with motta, etc.
(Fr. bosse, It. bozza "bump," Rum. bot "clod"). One has finally:
*muttiis "blunted" (Engad. muot "hornless," Lyon. moto "to cut off
the branches of a tree."
The relation between *motta and a thick lip is emphasized, not
only by the fact that *motta "clod" means "thick lip" in Northern
Italy, but by the existence for *murrum "snout" of both the meaning
"protruding lip" (Sp. morro) and "pebble, rock" (Sp. morro, Piazz.
murra). Other words referring to humps also show the reduplication,
as gibbus and gubbus. According to Walde (p. 340), the word would be
akin to Lett, gibbis "hump-backed." The bb is thus perhaps old.
In bulla "bubble" II seems to be Latin. Though the word may be
old (cf. Lith. bulis "buttock," burbulas "bubble"), its onomatopoeic
value was certainly quite clear to the minds of the Romans. As to
offa "bit," "clod of meal," it is most likely for odbha (Cymr. oddf
"hump," M.Ir. odb "bone").
The disagreeable impression made on our senses by rough, knotty,
and thorny substances is rendered in all languages by syllables con-
taining gutturals with r. We may thus reasonably register as ono-
matopoeas a series of words of obscure origin referring to rocks or
points and exhibiting the reduplication so frequent in all Latin
spontaneous creations:
*CRAPPA "piece of rock" (Engad. crap, Lomb. crapa "rock,"
Judic. grapa "skull").
*GREPPUM "rock" (It. greppo "protruding rock," Obwald. grip
"cliff").
Both these are onomatopoeas comparable with Du. krabben "to
scratch."
*ROCCA "rock" (It., Sard, rocca, Fr. roche).
*FROCCUS "rough, uncultivated land" (O.Fr./roc, Span, lleco).
164
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 37
*BROCCUS "with protruding teeth," also of unknown origin
(Walde, p. 97); unless it is Celtic, it is certainly onomatopoeic (It.
brocco "pointed stick," Nap. vrocca "fork/' Prov. broc "thorn").
*BRUCCUS (Gloss. 628, 42; Meyer-Liibke, Wiener Studien, XXV,
93) is a contamination between broccus, froccus, and bruca "heath,"
a Celtic word (Ir. froech).
To these words of sensation may be added hitta or hetta "trifle"
that has undergone the influence of *pittus "small," -ittus, *pitittus,
etc., and *citto for cito "quick, soon" from cieo "to move," that seems
to have reduplicated its t by an assimilation of short time to short
space.
*FULAPPA, *FULUPPA "fibre," "straw," a mysterious word of great
extension in Vulgar Latin, most probably also is an imitative word
of the same order as Eng. flap, flip, flippant, referring to things
light and inconsistent. It is used of straw and rods; It. frappa
"arbor," frappare "to adorn, to tell lies," Fr. frapouille, fripouille
"bag of rags," Lomb. faloppa "silk-cocoon," It. viluppo "bundle,"
Fr. envelopper "to wrap," etc. It is perhaps thisfaluppa, inasmuch
as it refers to bundles and fetters, which has influenced :
*MARSUPPA (Gr. judpcrtTros) "bag" for marsupium (Sp. marsopa
"porpoise").
*STUPPA (Gr. arvirrj) "raw flax" for stupa (It. stoppa, Fr. etoupe).
*CRUPPA "thick rope" (CGIL, 118, 16) (It. groppo) (Teutonic?).
Though the term "onomatopoea" well applies to most of these
formations, it would be used with even more propriety of the following
words which directly imitate noises :
*PICCARE "to prick" (It. piccare, Fr. piquer, Sp. picar "to itch,"
Sp. pico "beak," It. picco "point, top," Cat. picot "woodpecker").
*TICCARE "to tap with a point," "to mark" (It. tecco "spot,"
Fr. enticher "to infect").
*TACCARE "to touch," "to mark" (Fr. tacher "to soil," It. tacca
"notch," attaccare "to fasten," Sp. taco "peg").
*TUCCARE "to knock," "to touch" (It. toccare, Fr. toucher).
*SCLOPPUS "noise made by striking the swollen cheeks? '
GUTTA "drop" has no satisfactory etymology. It seems to refer
to the noise of dripping water and is indeed in assonance with guttur,
gluttio, referring to similar sounds.
165 .
38 ALBERT J. CARNOY
*JUTTA "soup" (Farm, dzota, Engad. giuota, Friul. yote) seems to
be]a creation of the same order.
A great many imitative words refer to the sounds and noises
produced by animals :
PIPPARE, PIPPITARE "to peep," "to chirp" is an onomatopoea
found in practically all languages: Gr. TrtTTTrtfcu, Germ, piepen, etc.
(Fr. piper, It. pipa "pipe," Fr. pipeau "shepherd's pipe").
*BURRIRE "to hunt" (properly "to rouse hares and partridges by
shouting brrr") (It. dial, burrir "to hunt," Fr. bourrer "to chase
game," Prov. burra "to excite the dogs").
The stammering and muttering of the stutterer and idiot are
expressed by similar sounds: Lat. baburrus "stultus, ineptus," Lat.
burrae "drollery."
*MURRUM "snout" also rhymes with these words.
*GORRUM "hog" is, of course, of the same family (O.Fr. gorre,
gorron, Sp. gorrin "hog").
GLATTIRE "to bark," "to yelp" (It. ghiattire, Sp. latir).
GRACCITARE is said of geese, graccilare, of the chickens, garrio "to
chatter," "to babble," of frogs, birds, and men.
*CIUTTUS "lamb" (Engad. ciotin "lamb," Obwald. ciut "lamb")
(Meyer-Lubke, p. 195).
*MUCCA "cow" (It. mucca "cow," Romagnol. moca).
*GUCCIUS "dog" (O.It, cuccio, O.Fr. gous, Sp. gozque).
*cuccms "pig" (Rum. cucciu, Fr. cochon, Sp. cocho).
ACCEIA "snipe" (O.It, accegia, Sp. arcea).
CUCULLUS, *cuccus "cuckoo" instead of cuculus.
In this way, a great many animals had names with double con-
sonants because those names were imitative. Other names of
animals exhibited the same peculiarity for another reason. It was
because they were used as familiar appellatives.
VACCA "cow," compared with Skr. vdga "cow," vdgati "bellows,"
is clearly a Latin reduplication.
*MARRO "ram" (Gasc. marru, Sp. marrori) is a familiar derivative
from mas, maris "male."
CAPPO for capo "capon." The p-form only survives in Sard.
caboni "cock." The other Romance forms go back to cappo: It.
cappone, Fr. chapon.
166
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 39
PULLUS "young animal/' if it is akin to Greek TrcoXos "colt,"
Goth, fula "foal," is reduplicated for pulos, but it could be for putlos
(Walde, p. 623).
VAPPO "moth," though it cannot be an appellative, is, however, a
familiar formation, apparently akin to vapor (Walde, p. 807).
CATTUS "cat," first found in Martial (Walde, p. 141), is generally
held to be Celtic. One could also consider it as a " Rtickbildung "
from catulus, catellus. The it also exists in Celtic: kattos.
DRACCO for draco (Gr. dpaKuv) is mentioned in the Appendix
Prdbi.
Three new names of fish end in -otta and may have been influ-
enced by one another:
*PLOTTA "flatfish" (Lomb. piota, Engad. plotra) is a Greek word
(TO, TrXcora "migratory fish"), the meaning of which has been con-
taminated by plattus "flat."
*ROTTA "roach."
*LOTTA "lote" for lota. The name is special to Gaul.
Finally one could mention, though it is of a very doubtful ety-
mology:
*SAPPUS "toad" (Sp. sapo, Port, sapar "marsh," Lorr. sevet
"tree-frog"). The word is perhaps Celtic and akin to sappos "resin-
ous tree." The toad would be "the sappy." With the same mean-
ing, it could be Latin and be considered as an abbreviation of *sapidus
from sapa "juice of fruit" (cf. suppus from supinus, vorrus from
vorax, etc.).
Though plant-names can hardly be used as appellatives, they at
times appear with double consonant. One has always to do with
familiar, popular names and mostly with abbreviations of the type
of sappus if our explanation of that word be right.
VITTA "string" is properly a "wicker-twig." A comparison with
Gr. Irca "willow," ITVS "wicker," O.Pruss. witwan "willow" tends
to show that vitta is for vitva. The tt has thus here regularly arisen
from tv.
*BETTA "beat" for an older beta preserved in Sard. $da. betta
survives in Fr. bette, Milan, erbetta. The latter form, obviously con-
taminated by *herbitta, shows that the reduplication is likely to have
arisen through the influence of -itta.
167
40 ALBEBT J. CAENOY
*BLITTA (Fr. blette) "blite" is the form of blitum in Gaul under
the influence of the very kindred plant: betta "beet."
VACCINIUM "cranberry," " huckleberry" is in some relation to
Gr. v&KivOos, that has the same meaning. A contamination is thus
probable with vacca, vaccinum. It is "grape for cows" just in the
same way as an Alpine cranberry is "grape for bears" (uva ursi).
LAPPA "burdock" is compared by Walde (p. 412) with Gr. \aira6os
"sorrel." Both plants have similar broad, crisp leaves. The
relation is obscure; lappa is perhaps an abbreviation.
CBACCA "blue vetch" is still more likely to be an abbreviation.
It is compared by Pauli (KZ, XVIII, 3) with cracens "gracilis."
The etymology very well suits the aspect of the plant.
LACCA (Apul.), LACCAR (Plin.) (Walde, p. 403), name of some
plant, is possibly abbreviated from lacera "jagged." Cf. Gr. Xd/cos,
XaKis "rag." This lacca is apparently different from lacca "swelling
in the muscles of horses" which possibly is an abbreviation of
lacertus "muscle" (Walde, p. 483).
*SAPPINUM, *SAPPIUM "spruce" (O.It, zappino, Fr. sapin). The
word could be derived from sapa "sap, syrup." The spruce would
be the "sappy, resinous tree." sapa has produced in the same way:
sabina "savin" and sabucus (O.Fr. sen, Prov. savuc, Rum. soc)
"eldertree" ( = sambuccus). The contamination with a Celtic word
has, however, acted in the same manner as with cattus (cf. supra).
Celt, sapos "fir" is preserved in O.Fr. sapoie "forest of firs" and in
the name of the Savoie ( = Sapaudia; cf. Cymr. sybwydd "fir").
This Gaulish name is also etymologically related to resin (cf. Lett.
sweki "resin," Lith. sakai "id," O.S1. soka "sap").
*SUCCA "stem" (Fr. souche, Prov., Cat. soca) is very obscure in
its origins. Is it an abbreviation of succidus, sucidus "juicy," and is
this word a formation similar to *sappus, *sappinus, meaning:
"sappy, wellgrown, strong wood"?
*GURRA "willow" (It. gorra, Sic. agurra, Prov. goret) of unknown
origin; possibly a popular adulteration of gyrus "circle," in the
same way as in Greek, irea is a "willow" while LTVS is a "circle
made out of willow-wood, a felly" (Boisacq, Diet., p. 386).
*MARRO "chestnut" (It. marrone) is obscure; may be borrowed
from some language unknown.
168
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 41
*BETTULA, *BETTUS: BETULA "birch" is Celtic (Cymr. bedw
" birch ") . The W-forms are preserved in O.Fr. betole, Prov. bez (bettus) .
BACCA beside baca "berry" (Fr. bate "berry," Sp. baga "integu-
ment of flax-seed," baya "husk," Gallic bago "grape"). The word is
probably in origin identical, or at least kindred, with Bacchus "god of
wine" and has meant "grape" (Walde, p. 80). It also means
"grape" in Latin and has preserved that meaning in several deriva-
tives, so that, at any rate, a secondary association with Bacchus
is certain. Among the derivatives some have c: bacara (Sic. bacara
"pitcher"), *baciola (It. bagiola "huckleberry"), *bacula (It. bagola
"fruit of the lote-tree"); some have cc: *baccellum "husk" (It.
baccello), baccinum "basin" (It. bacino, Fr. bassin, Prov. bad),
baccik (It. bacile " basin "), etc. From baccinum, by " Riickbildung,"
have been formed in Gaul: *bacca "receptacle for water" (Fr. bache)
and *baccus "trough" (Fr. bac). This formation is parallel to that
of *cattia "mason's trowel," from catinus "dish."
*POTTUS, the ancestor of Fr. pot, possibly has a similar history.
One finds in Venantius Fortunatus (Meyer-Ltibke, 6705) potus with
that meaning, so that pottus may be a familiar metonymy, but more
probably is an abbreviation of potatorium (vas), potilis (nidus).
The application of this reduplication to names of plants and of
utensils of daily use, as baccinum, baccus, cattia, is accounted for by
the familiar, somewhat peasant-like character of this process. It is
observable in a few more words referring to objects and utensils con-
nected with farming. Some are Latin, as :
FLOCCES for FLOCES (Walde, p. 300), "dregs of wine," perhaps
akin to Lith. zhlauktai "husks" (W. Meyer, KZ, XXVIII, 174) but
certainly contaminated with flaccus, floccus (cf. supra).
VAPPA "moldy wine" is most probably an abbreviation of vapidus
"moldy."
CUPPA: cupa. The older form: cupa (Skr. kupa "cave," Gr.
KUTTT;) has been preserved with the original meaning (kieve, tub)
in Fr. cuve, Sp. cuba, It. cupo "deep," but a very interesting
process of differentiation has resulted in giving to the refluplicated
form cuppa the meaning of "cup" (It. coppa, Rum. cupa, Fr. coupe).
It should, moreover, be mentioned that double consonants are
found in a few names of cloths, instruments, etc., of foreign origin,
169
42 ALBERT J. CARNOY
though it is often difficult to tell whether the reduplication is Latin
or exotic. This is the case, e.g., with soccus "plowshare," a Celtic
word, which has been made to rhyme with broccus, occa, etc.
MATTEA (It. mazza, Fr. masse) and MATTEUCA "club" (Fr. massue)
are probably akin to mattaris, of Celtic origin.
MARRA "axe" is Semitic (Assyr. marru "axe").
*BARRA "bar," common to all Romance languages, is of unknown
origin, but I wonder whether it also could not be in some manner
traced back to Semitic (Hebr. barzel "iron," Assyr. parzilla, from
which Eng. brass and Lat. ferrum are supposed to have come) (Walde,
p. 285) ?
SACCUS "bag" (Hebr., Phen. sag "hairy cloth").
soccus "light shoe," "sock" (It. socco, Sp. zueco) is Phrygian
(cf. Avest. hakha "sole").
MAPPA "map" is Punic.
MATTA "mat," probably also Punic (Hebr. mitthdh "cover").
DRAPPUM "cloth" appears pretty late and is of unknown origin.
BIRRUS "hood," BURRA "hairy cloth" are perhaps Macedonian
(Walde, p. 91).
BUTTIS, *BUTTICULA "cask, bottle" (It. botte, Fr. bouteille, etc.)
have come through Greek, but are probably also of Eastern origin.
*BOCCALIS for BATTCALIS (Gr. /3avKa\ls) has no clear connection in
Greek (It. boccale "flask"). Here the cc is due to contaminations.
Sard, broccale has been influenced by broccus, while bucca, bacca are
other possible associations.
TUCCA "tfaraXujua fcojuou" is Celtic, and perhaps an abbreviation
of tuccetum, tucdnum "bacon" (Cat. tocin, Sp. tocino "lard").
The reduplication of consonants finally is observable in a few
words which are not susceptible of classification. Most of them have
a familiar character:
CAPPA "mantle" or "cap" (It. cappa, Fr. chappe, chaperon) is,
according to Thurneysen (Walde, p. 128), an abbreviation of capitu-
lare, capital, capitium, etc.
*PANNUS "rag," "cloth" (Sp. pano, It. panno, Fr. pan) is for
panus; cf. Goth, fana "sweating-cloth," OHG/ewo "cloth."
*CLOPPA for copula "pair" (Nap. kyoppa, Ven. ciopa) is a metath-
esis of the same kind as *clinga for cingula, *padule for palude,
170
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 43
*ligita for litiga, *cofaccia for focacea, *plupo for populus, *piclare for
plicare, *porcada for portulaca, *sudicius for sucidus, etc. The
double p may have been developed in the primitive form: copplia,
as is always the case in Italy before palatal I.
LITTERA: litera is a word of doubtful origin. The it is, in this
word, universal in Romance: It. lettera, Sard, littera, Fr. lettre, etc.
LITTUS: litus "shore." This word has no other representative in
Romance than It. lido from litus. It is thus doubtful whether the it
found in some manuscripts ever was a popular pronunciation. The
original form, of course, was litus for leitos; cf. Ir. Letha "shore-
land," Lat. Latium, Lith. Letuwa "Lithuania," etc.
MITTO "I send." The etymology is not quite sure. One com-
pares it with Avest. maeth "send," and Eng. smite. If so, it is for
meito. The it, however, must be very old in this word, which it is
true, had a somewhat popular character as shown by its great exten-
sion in Romance (at the expense of ponere, locare, etc.).
NARRO "I tell" is more decidedly familiar. It is, of course, for
gnaro. It means "to acquaint with," "to make known," and was
freely used as a familiar substitute for dicere, before fabulare and
parabolare in succession usurped that position (cf. Sard, narrere "to
tell, to say").
STRENNA (It. strennd) instead of strena (Sic. strina, Sard, istrina)
is assumed to be a Sabinian word akin to strenuus. The nn may be due
to the existence of a " Nebenform " in which -nua had evolved into-nna.
TOTTUS: totus. The #-form is recent. Spanish preserves totus
in Sp. todo. tottus mentioned by Consentius (V, 392, Keil) sur-
vives in Fr. tout, while It. tutto, O.Fr. tuit point to *tuctus, perhaps
by contamination with cunctus (Grandgent, Introd. to VL, § 204).
HOCC ERAT: hoc erat. According to Velleius Longus and Pom-
peius, both these pronunciations were in use. Sard, occanno (hoc
anno) seems to indicate that the former was the really popular one.
-ESSIS for -ensis ( = -esis) is condemned in the Appendix Probi
(capsesis non capsessis). It is found sporadically in inscriptions:
Decatessium, CIL, X, 1695, and in the Put. MS of Livy, ibdx. 6. 4;
xxx. 4. 6: Locresses, Carthaginesses. Apparently, we have here to
do with an occasional compromise between the current pronunciation
-esis and the pedantic one -ensis.
171
44 ALBERT J. CABNOY
*BASSUS "low," a decidedly popular formation for *basius from
Greek pacris "bottom," also presents a double ss (It. basso, Fr. bas).
It is due to the pre-existence of *bassius, *bassiare (Nap. vasciare,
Sp. bajar, Sard, basciu, Sic. vasciu) in which s has been reduplicated
under the influence of the i in hiatus.
POSSUIT, POSSIT, POSSIVIT ( = posuit), found in many inscriptions,
e.g., in CIL, II, 2661, 2712, 5736, 5738, is perhaps a dialectal form
of posuit in which the r of the prefix por- (*por-sivit) has produced a
ss, in the same way as sursum was pronounced *sussum.
In all the cases mentioned thus far, excepting *cloppa, *bassus,
and perhaps strenna, the reduplication appears to be independent of
the sounds adjoining the consonant concerned. In Italian, on the
contrary, as is well known, the reduplication in a great many cases
is due to the influence of a following y, w, r, I. This process should
be sharply distinguished from the phenomenon of which this article
is treating. Its origins, however, are remote and are to be found in
the tendencies that were active in the language of the people of Italy
in Roman times : acqua for aqua, for instance, is found already in the
Appendix Probi, and Heraeus (ALL, II, 318) mentions forms like
ecquitum, atque (for aquae) and nuncquam in MSS. Acqua instead
of aqua explains many Romance forms of that word, also outside of
Italy (cf. C. Huebschmann, Die Entstehung von aqua in Romanischeri) .
Quattuor also is common to all Romance languages. The reduplica-
tion in battuere "to beat" is also ancient. The word is familiar.
Johanson explains it as a contamination of batuere with *battere,
but the reduplication was to be expected there in any case.
Reduplications before y are also sometimes ancient and common
to various Romance languages, as, e.g., in bracchium (Fr. bras, brasse,
Sard, rattu, etc.), plattea (Fr. place). Moreover, soccius is found
in inscriptions (CIL, V, 4410; VI, 6874). Hesitations in the treat-
ment of sy in Italian also point to the existence of ssy beside sy in
VL. One has indeed basium "kiss" and caseus "cheese," giving
bascio and cascio, while cerasea, cinisia, piseat produced cilegia,
cinigia, pigia (Meyer-Liibke, Grammatik, I, § 511).
Another well-marked tendency of Italian is to subordinate the
reduplication to the presence of the accent on the preceding vowel.
This is notably apparent in proparoxytons, as commodo, cdttedra,
172
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 45
femmina, in which the equilibrium between the accented part of the
word and the two following syllables is secured by lengthening the
consonant, a tendency traceable to Vulgar Latin as shown by the
cammara of the Appendix Probi. When the vowel marked by the
secondary accent is short and followed immediately by Z, ra, n, or r, a
similar reduplication takes place: pellagrlno, tollerdre, cdmmindre
(Meyer-Lubke, Grammatik, I, § 548). This connection between
accent and reduplication is old and is confirmed by the simplification
of originally double consonants whenever through a suffix they are
placed before the accent (Stolz, Hist. Gramm., pp. 225 f.) : canna
(Gr. Kavvd):canalis; far, f arris :farrea (= farsio) : farina; mamma:
mamilla; off a ( = odhwa) : ofella, etc.
We may now sum up the results of this inquiry, which has been
mainly lexicological, and to draw from it some general conclusions.
Of all the Romance languages, Italian alone has preserved double
consonants, and, what is more important, has even increased their
number, both by assimilation and by reduplication (sappia, acqua,
femmina; cf. supra). This induces us to believe that we have to do
with an old and innate tendency of the Italians, probably prior to
their Latinization. The numerous cases of reduplication in popular
Latin considered in this light appear as manifestations of a general
latent tendency of the language, as is the case, for instance, with
assimilation, dissimilation, etc., rather than as the product of a
regular and universal phonetic law. This, no doubt, is the impres-
sion gathered from a consideration of the numerous cases of redupli-
cation mentioned in this study. The process works with many
variations and irregularities. Moreover, while it is so largely
represented in Vulgar Latin, there are even more cases in which the
consonants did not undergo the change. To discover the real causes
of the phenomenon, one has, of course, to consider closely the con-
ditions in which it takes place, from the point of view both of seman-
tics and of phonetics.
With regard to semantics, one cannot but be struck \fy the great
number of reduplications in appellatives. The fact that this phe-
nomenon is not limited to Latin makes it more certain that we have
not to do here with a mere coincidence. There are psychological
173
46 ALBERT J. CARNOY
reasons for this situation and they do not seem to be very mysterious.
It is a well-known and very common fact that the accent is pushed
back in vocatives. This is especially observable in Greek (SeWora,
Trarep, Ilepi/cXeis). Persons are seldom called without some emphasis,
some passion, some imperiousness, and, let us say also, without some
haste. This explains why there is a tendency to raise the voice at the
beginning of the appellatives and to give much stress or pitch to the
syllable marked with the strong ictus. The breath is halted by the
contraction of the muscles, and the accumulated air is violently
ejected in the act. The accented syllable, one of the first — generally
the first — receives the greater part of the stress. It is thus exagger-
ated at the expense of the others, and more so than is the case with
any other syllables marked with the stress accent. It really becomes
the only syllable that counts, the characteristic sound of the call.
Nothing could be more natural than the dropping of the other
syllables, so frequent in so-called "Kosenamen," and the reduplica-
tion of the last consonant pronounced, since the surplus of stress is
expended upon it. Appellatives are addressed to the persons in the
same way as names, and one may thus apply to varro, vorri, lippus
the same observations as to the proper names. One should remem-
ber also that in proper names, in many qualificatives, and even in
a great many other words found in my list the reduplicated form
is clearly an abbreviation of a longer one with single consonant:
cuppesicupidus, suppus : supinus, vorri ivorax, lacca:lacertus, cappa:
capitulare, *cattia:catinus, *bottia:botulus, etc. This replacing of a
suppressed syllable by a reduplication produces in the rhythmus of
speech an effect very much the same as the /cardA^is in the endings
of verses.
In the dialects of Northern France and of Belgian Hainault, a
case of enclisis has led to the same reduplication with syncope:
donnez-moi>don$mm; prenez-le>pernell; mets-toi>mett.
The reduplication in onomatopoeas and in children's words is also
easily explainable. Children's words are mostly calls. They are
centripetal or centrifugal. The rhythmus of speech with them is
mostly constituted by repeated short syllables or by lengthened
endings (pa, ma, papp, mamm). The emphatic character of the
reduplication in children's words has been shown by Idelberger
174
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 47
(Entwickelung der Kinder spr ache, p. 39). He observes that the
sensations of children are too intense to be expressed by recto-tono
words.
As to imitative words, which are also an important part of the
language of children and no negligible one with adults, they would lose
their whole value if they did not convey a vivid impression either of
the noise which they reproduce or of the sensation with which they
are associated by some physical connection. They are thus by their
nature emphatic, at least from the phonetic point of view. This
article contains a pretty long list of such words. They, however,
are only a small part of those mentioned in Meyer-Liibke's Ety-
mological Dictionary.
Though in a few cases one might have to do with Romance
creations, the great extension of most of these words makes it
probable that they already existed in Vulgar Latin, and we thus
have reasons to believe that Vulgar Latin was very creative and
very emotional, as is, after all, generally the case with popular
languages. There has been in recent times a tendency to minimize
the importance of the "Schallworter" in language. The situation
in Vulgar Latin and primitive Romance, on the contrary, shows that
the part played by such spontaneous creations is far from being
negligible. Moreover, one should remember that onomatopoeas are
not always absolute creations. Words that were not onomatopoeic
often come to be felt as such, generally through an association with
onomatopoeas of similar meaning or of similar sound, or because the
subjective shade of meaning of certain words has been secondarily
associated with the very sounds of that word. When, in that way,
words penetrate into categories of "Schallworter," they are assimi-
lated to onomatopoeas, both in form and in meaning. Among the
categories of this kind revealed by the present inquiry, are: *potta,
*motta, *ciotta:*patta, *matta) *ciatta — *guffus, buffo, *baffa, *beffa}
*loffa, *muffa — *tuccare, *ticcare, *taccare — *broccus, *froccus, *rocca,
occa, etc.
In onomatopoeas, the suggestive syllables are naturally empha-
sized and articulated with a special ictus. What has been said about
the appellatives, therefore, also applies to them in a great measure.
Now, most of the names of animals marked with the reduplication are
175
48 ALBERT J. CARNOY
onomatopoeic. If double consonants are found in others, it is either
because they were used as appellatives or because that phonetic
peculiarity had become a mark of familiarity. The latter motive
accounts for the same feature in names of plants, of instruments of
daily use, parts of the body, etc. All these categories also appear
with diminutive suffixes, because they are likely to be used with a
tinge of familiarity: cf. cultellus "knife," conucula "distaff/' martel-
lus "hammer," mateola "club," genuculum "knee," auricula "ear,"
nasellus "snout," corpusculum "body" (Gregory of Tours). Many
of these reduplicated words, moreover, have a decidedly ironical or
depreciative character: lippus, varro, vorri, succo, suppus — vappa,
pottus, cattia, bacca, sappus, succa, cappa, maccus, etc. After all,
the reduplication seems to have corresponded to a special rhythmus
or ictus that was decidedly popular and familiar. The curious fact
that about one-half of the words of unknown origin which suddenly
appear in large areas at the fall of the Roman Empire have double
consonants is, of course, due to the popular character of those words
on which the spelling could not exert any correcting influence. Most
of the Celtic borrowings invaded the familiar language before they
were admitted into the general vernacular. This accounts for the
great number of reduplications in these foreign words. In the case
of Greek, at least, we know that such a change had nothing to do with
an adaptation to the phonetics of the original language. Greek con-
sonants, indeed, were rather weaker and softer than the Latin ones,
as shown, for instance, by the great number of Greek voiceless
explosives transformed into Latin voiced, weak consonants : Kvpepvav >
Lat. gubernare "to govern," Kaju/iapos>Sp. gambero "lobster,"
Ka\ados>galatus App. Prob. "basket," KPVTTTTJ > It. grotta "cave,"
KpaTrjp > Prov. graal " cup, graal," 'A.Kpayas>Agrigentum, Ka\6irovs >
It. galoccia "galosh," Kop0os>Fr. gouffre "gulf," etc., 7ru£os>Lat.
buxus "box-tree — 7ru£i5a>Fr. boite "box," 7rupp6s>Lat. burrus
"scarlet," 0aXXcuj>a > Lat. balaena "whale," Trpdrret^ > It. barattare
"to churn," 7rapdXucris>Wall. balzin "cramp."
Our conclusion, therefore, is that the reduplication of consonants
in Latin is clearly a semantic and psychical process and follows no
regular phonetic law. While to a phonetician the phenomenon would
seem capricious, its apportionment in the vocabulary is quite natural
176
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 49
to a psychologist. In fact, reduplication, be it of syllables or of con-
sonants, generally has that character in languages. One finds it in
perfective tenses, in intensive or frequentative verbs, in the plural,
and in collectives. In most cases it is a reduplication of syllables,
but a lengthening of vowels is not rare and the reinforcement of con-
sonants is also found. In Chinook, for instance, the emotional words,
both diminutive and augmentative, are expressed by increasing the
stress of consonants. It is, of course, also well known that in Semitic
the intensive radical of verbs is regularly formed by a reduplication
of consonants. To a stem qatal, e.g., answers an intensive: Eth.
qattala, Hebr. qittel. Cf. Hebr. shibbar "to cut in small pieces/'
Hebr. hillech "to walk," Hebr. gibber "to bury many," etc. Cf.
Brockelmann, Vergl. Gramm., p. 244. Even in Indo-European the
reduplication in "Kosenamen" is not confined to Latin; in Greek,
for instance, a woman in childbirth is a Xe'/cxc*>, a womanish man is a
yvvus (Meillet, Mem. Soc. Ling., XV, 339).
But if the phenomenon is thus essentially psychical and based on
general tendencies of speaking man, why did it take in Latin this special
aspect and this remarkable extension ? Such questions are generally
idle and could be asked in connection with every psychical process in
language, for instance, assimilation and dissimilation. They are never
completely absent, but some peoples happen to give to them more
importance than others. In the present case, however, it is possible to
point to two circumstances which are likely to have brought about
the extension of the phenomenon : First, there were in Vulgar Latin an
unusually large number of onomatopoeas and spontaneous formations
with double consonant which invited the propagation of that feature
upon other words having the same famiHar or emphatic character.
The association of double consonant with emphasis may even have
been helped by the frequent use in Vulgar Latin of reinforced demon-
stratives : hicce, hocce and, especially of the emphatic particles : ecce,
eccum (It. ecco). They were of very frequent occurrence themselves,
and, moreover, they were frequently united with pronouns: eccille,
ecciste (Fr. celle, celui, cet, cette). This repeated use of double c with
this shade of feeling would have been sufficient to make it the pho-
netic symbol of emphasis. A further reason, however, of another
kind was the great force of the Latin accent. A strong ictus, as
177
50 ALBEKT J. CARNOY
is well known, marked the initial syllable in old Latin and later was
made to coincide with the former pitch accent of words. Now, all
the older cases of reduplication are in the initial syllable, and all the
later cases are at least in accented ones. The association of this
phenomenon with the stress of the word, at all periods of Latin, is
quite evident. But another circumstance, no less remarkable which
has been strangely overlooked, is that, but for a very small num-
ber of exceptions, the reduplicated consonants are strong voiceless
explosives, such as c, t, p. No explanation which neglects to account
for either of these circumstances can be accepted as satisfactory.
We must admit that in case an explosive of this type immediately
follows an accented vowel, the speaker has to produce at a short
interval two great efforts, one to give due stress to the accented
syllable and then another to articulate the strong consonant. In
both cases there is a violent expulsion of breath. It is, of course,
to be expected that the tendency will be toward combining those
two efforts into one, in the co-ordination of movements which
unceasingly takes place in our articulations. The feeling for rhythm
can also bring about that result. In this way one great effort is
followed by a relatively long silence, after which the organs relax
for the following weaker syllable. Sommer, in his Historical Gram-
mar (p. 300), thinks that a mere shifting in the division of syllables
would be sufficient to account for the production of the phenomenon:
the articulation of the consonant in the syllable following the accent
would have begun already in the preceding one. This explanation,
however, does not furnish any reason for this change in the division
of syllables, nor for the fact that the reduplicated consonants are
voiceless. It is a mere acknowledgment of the fact, nothing more.
When, on the other hand, Groeber (Comm. Woelfflin., p. 175) says that
the reduplication is due to the staccato-pronunciation of the Italians,
he seems to overlook the fact that, if the staccato-pronunciation
may help in preserving pre-existent double consonants, one does
not well conceive how it could create them. It is indeed, by defini-
tion, in opposition to such an encroachment of one syllable upon the
other. Besides, both scholars have nothing to say about the reparti-
tion of the phenomenon and they completely ignore the semantic
aspect of the process.
178
REDUPLICATION OF CONSONANTS IN VULGAR LATIN 51
As a complement to this study we should say a word about the
shortening of the vowel which normally takes place in case the fol-
lowing consonant is reduplicated (cf. cuppa : cupa). The phenom-
enon is easy to understand, and is a mere dynamic process. If one
added to the accented syllable a long silence, one would make it out
of proportion with the other syllables. It is a question of rhythmus.
The alternation between long vowel + single consonant and short
vowel -f double consonant is quite normal and is found, for instance,
in Hebrew, after the article and the copula :
(way y6 'mer "and He said."
wa-bhohu "and waste": ] ,A A, „ , Jx , ,, „
( wat-to-c.e' "and caused to go forth."
, (ham-mayim "the waters."
ha-ragiauc " the expanse ": 1, , * „ , , , „
(haggdh61im "the great."
Finally, we have to mention a very special case of reduplication
in Vulgar Latin: the reduplication of m in the ending of the first
person plural of the contracted perfect: amavi, audivi are conjugated
in Vulgar Latin : amai, amasti, amaut or amat or amait, amammus,
amastis, amarunt; audi, audisti, audit or audiut, audimmus, audistis,
audirunt. The reasons given for the lengthening of the m in amam-
mus, audimmus are either a need for compensation for the loss of a
syllable, or the desire to distinguish the perfect from the present
(Grandgent, Introd. to VL, p. 178).
Such considerations at best might account for the mainte-
nance of mm, but would not give any explanation for its production.
In fact, -avimus phonetically was expected to develop into either
*aimus or -aumus. Cf . on one side : failla forfavilla in the Appendix
Probi, Flainus for Flavinus in Insc. Hisp. Chist., 146; on the other:
gauta for gabata in Fr. joue, avica for auca in Fr. oie, etc. One can
also conceive that by analogy with the other persons of the tense, it
would have become -amus. -ammus, on the contrary, is an improb-
able transformation. It would not, it is true, be completely impos-
sible even phonetically, since occasionally a double consonant has
evolved from v-\- consonant, as in It. cilia, from civitatem, ft. motta,
smotta "landslip" from movita, and perhaps in Fr. jatte, if it is from
gauta and not from gabta. But mm for vm is phonetically surprising,
and I think that the real origin of -ammus, -immus is to be found in
179
52 ALBERT J. CARNOY
the existence of a few very frequent strong perfects in which mm
resulted from other consonants +m: as dlmmus from dlcmus for
dicimus, fimmus iromficmus forfecimiis, and more especially demmus,
from dedimus, which had been extended to many a verb ending in d:
descendemmus, respondemmus, re(ri)demmus, etc. The influence of
forms of so frequent occurrence must have been very great, and
their emphatic character made them extremely suitable for the
perfect. Here also the double consonant is a symbol of emphasis as
it has so often appeared to be in this article.
ALBERT J. CARNOY
UNIVERSITY OF LOUVAIN
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
180
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i
1. FACIE
Where a consonant stood between a stressed vowel and hiatus-i,
the stressed vowel is generally short and the following sound long
or double in Italian. This principle is plain with regard to labials:
sappia < sapiat, trebbio < *lri@(3iu < triuiu, vendemmia < uindemia.1
Likewise the short vowel offaccia, beside the long one of noce, allows
us to assume *fakkiat< facial. From the differences between pozzo
(pollso) <puleu, raggio<radiu and ragione<ralione, it would seem
that lengthening was earliest after a main-stressed vowel. Such
forms as sappiamo and vendemmiare may therefore be considered
later developments than sappia and vendemmia.
In cases like cascio (kass'o) <caseu, foglia (fo\\a) < folia, vigna
(vinna) <ulnea, the consonants were presumably lengthened before
they were palatalized. A different development is found in con-
nection with r: the stressed vowel of aja is long, according to the
transcriptions given in the MaUre phonetique, XXVIII, 2. This
shows that r was not palatalized in Italian as I and n were, but was
simply dropped. Cascio is a variant of cacio, pronounced kaSo
with a long a which indicates that in many varieties of Tuscan
speech the formation of £ from si was earlier than the development
of *sappiatt and that cascio therefore has §s'<ssi<si.2
Outside of Italy the doubling of p, before hiatus-i, is implied by
the voiceless sounds of Portuguese aipo<*appiu<apiu, Spanish
apio, Catalan api, Provencal api, French ache.3 Other occlusives
were doubled to form Portuguese f in fac,a< facial, pogo<puleu,
while razao corresponds to Italian ragione. Likewise French fasse
* 1 use ft for bilabial c; A = Portuguese Ih; /i- Spanish ft; >?= English final ng; 0=*th in
thin. In phonetic spellings a grave accent indicates stressed vowels that are open, an
acute those that are close.
2 Outside of Tuscany, words like noce and cacio are often pronounced with tS. This
treatment of noce may have a historic basis, but more probably it arose fr6m the mis-
reading of Tuscan spelling. The Tuscan word ci is tSi or Si, depending on the sound
that precedes; but such variation is unknown in many regions of Italy, and tf» has been
adopted as the standard form. The use of tS in cacio is certainly wrong: this spelling
owes its origin to the pronunciation of c as a simple fricative in words like noce, pace, vece.
'Portuguese 6 in saiba and Spanish e in eepa are analogic (Archiv, CXXXIII, 411).
181] 53 [MODBBN PHILOLOGY, July, 1917
54 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
represents *fakkiat < facial. In the west, hiatus-t caused the length-
ening of non-occlusives too, aside from r and s. A formation of
XX and nn is proved by the checked vowels found before X and n
in French. It is a mistake to say, as Nyrop does in his French
grammar (I, § 207), that fueille and mieus imply free vowels before
X: the development of diphthongs here was due to palatal-contact
in */0XXa and *meXXos. Early Provengal has fuelha, fuolha,1 and
miel(h)s,2 although it lacks diphthongs in the equivalents of French
cuer and pied. These Provencal breakings were due to palatal-
contact, and it is unreasonable to ascribe the parallel French forma-
tions to any other cause.
The stressed vowels of Spanish cuna ( = Portuguese cunha) and
tina ( = Portuguese tinha) show that intervocalic ne changed through
ni to nn, in Hispanic, before pira became pera? The formation of
camiar, beside cambiar, indicates that where stressless hiatus-^ was
not absorbed it was changed to e, and then to close i about the
time that nib became mm.4 From the stressed vowel of vendimia, it
is clear that before the e of *fedzi or *fedzi changed to i, *vendemea
became *vendemia with a close i which had the same effect as the
derivative of 1. The difference between mucha<*muXta<*mu\ta
<multa and troja<*tr6\\a<trullea shows that intervocalic XX was
not developed in Hispanic until after hiatus-z had changed through
e to close i.
The hiatus-development of stressless i>e>i was probably
general in France and Italy, though a chronology differing from that
of Hispanic must be assumed for these and other vowel-changes in
many dialects of France. In the north pira and gula underwent
alteration before nn was developed; and the i of *vendemia changed
to dz before the derivative of feel became *fidzi. In the south the
formation of nn was nearly contemporary with the development of
g6la.5 The existence of vendimio in modern Provencal, as a variant
of vendemio<uindemia, shows that the change of *vendemea to ven-
demia (with close i) was in some regions earlier, and in others later,
i Compare modern fidlha in southern Languedoc.
* Compare modern mit(u)8 in Provence.
» Modern Philology, XI, 350.
« Ibid., XII, 188.
» Ibid., XI, 351.
182
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i 55
than the activity of vowel-harmony. For the benefit of persons
who might feel inclined to doubt the probability of a general Romanic
development i>e>i, involving e>i>e>i in the derivatives of
rubeu and trullea, it may be well to mention the fact that stressless
u>o>u is normal in Portuguese and Rumanian, and i>e>i (before
a consonant) common in both of these languages.1
The following table shows the relative order of some of the
developments mentioned above:
tinea timetis facies sapiat trullea
*tlnia " " " "trullia
*tinnia *fakkies *sappiat "
tfnfia
*teme*tes *fakkes *sappeat trullea
Among the various sound-changes implied by the Romanic
tongues, one of the earliest was that of stressless hiatus-e to i.
Hiatus-i caused the lengthening of any consonant, other than r,
after a main-stressed vowel. The voiced consonants of western
Romanic indicate, however, widespread formations of £ from si, and
of ts or is from ti, earlier than the period represented by the third
line of the foregoing table. In southern continental Romanic,
*tinnia made tinna, with i due to palatal-contact (harmonic change
of stressed vowels being unknown in Tuscan and a much later
development in the west), and soon afterward close e replaced
hiatus-4. But in a large portion of France, *tinnia became *tinnea,
*tennea, *tennia, *tenna, parallel with the general treatment of U
in continental Romanic: palea> *palia> *pallia> *pallea> *pallia>
pa\\a. As French did not form \t from tt, there is no direct evi-
dence of northern *pallea, corresponding to Hispanic *tro\\a<
*tr6llia<*tr6llea. But the 6 of boil<*bd\\o<buttio and the e of
*tenna agree with the Hispanic evidence, and allow us to assume
*palka in French. In Sardic we find ndz as the derivative of
intervocalic ni: this non-assimilation of the second element corre-
sponds to Sardic regressive nn<rjn beside the progressive-regressive
nn<rjn of Italian and western Romanic. Aside from t&nna, the
developments shown in the table seem to have been shared by all
varieties of continental Romanic.
» Romanic Review, I, 431.
183
56 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
The alteration of timetis to *temetes was earlier than that of pira
to pera. A mathematic proof of this difference can hardly be given,
but the grounds for assuming it can be made plain to anyone familiar
with the general symmetry of sound-changes. The continental
formation of 6 from i was earlier than that of 6 from u: this is proved
by Rumanian lemn<Ugnu beside pumn<pugnu, with normal e and
u; and by Italian legno, Catalan llenya, Spanish leno, Portuguese
lenho, beside pugno, puny, puno, punho, with u due to palatal-contact,
the change of rjn to nn being earlier than that of u to 6, but later
than that of I to e. The contrary 6 of French *p6nno>poin does
not affect the general principle; it shows merely that in certain
regions the formation of nn was later than the change of u to 6.
French evidence in regard to i and u is found in correie beside fuie,
and this difference, which arose from the weakening of g to a fricative,
has parallels in southern Romanic. Likewise inscriptional evidence
implies that e<i was earlier than o<u.1
The change of stressless u to o was earlier than that of stressed
u to o. This is indicated by stressless u>o in Rumanian, the sound
o being sometimes preserved on account of stress-displacement:
acdlo<acolo<eccu Hide, popor <populu. In a few words Rumanian
o or oa seems to represent a Latin stressed u; but, as I have shown
in the Modern Language Review, IX, 496, such cases are not com-
parable with western gola<gula. In some of these words the vowel-
variation belongs to Latin, for example noru=nuru, *ploia=pluuia.
In other cases the real sources have been ignored: robeu and roseu,
not rubeu and russeu, correspond to the Rumanian forms with o.
In toamnd for *tumna<autumna, a Latin o-basis seems to be lacking;
but there are several ways of explaining this change of u to o, the
cause of the alteration being some o-word with a similar meaning,
perhaps Slavonic doba, "season." And in certain cases o is only
a Rumanian contraction: coKcubitu is parallel with nor=nuar<
nubilu.
We may therefore say that Rumanian represents a Romanic
speech-period which had developed e from I and stressless (but not
stressed) o from u. A trace of the same period is perhaps to be
seen in Spanish cochiello <cultellu and cotral<* culler ale. In early
i Meyer-Ltibke, EinfUhrung*, § 84; »6td.«, § 93.
184
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i 57
Hispanic, I was generally w-like at the end of a syllable, but it became
the i-like sound X after u (not close o: solitdriu> soltero) . Appar-
ently *culterale developed o before multa became *mu\ta, and thus
it escaped a formation of X ; later the first I was lost by dissimilation.
The u of cutral may be analogic, since a derivative of cultru would
have had & in Hispanic; or perhaps cutral <cotral was parallel with
lugar<logar, the o of each word being in contact with a velar sound.
The o of cochiello seems to show that cultellu became *koltello before X
was developed in *mu\ta, and that the later influence of *ku\tro
or *ku\tro changed *koltello to *ko\tello. The u of cuchillo agrees
with that of mujer<mogier, but could have also developed like u
in cutral.
Romanic stressed e<i was earlier than stressed o<u, and stress-
less o<u was earlier than stressed o<u. These facts justify the
assumption that stressless e<i was earlier than stressless o<u
and earlier than stressed e<i. The change of timer e to temere was
what caused timet to become *temet. The difference between the
stems of contemporary temere and timet was felt to be illogical
beside *de(3ere and *de(3et: from temere and numerous other such
words came the general tendency that produced a change of i to e
in continental Romanic. This development of e was evidently later
than the formation of close i in words like tinna and via; French veie
is an analogic variant of vie, due to the influence of normal veage and
enveer,1 modern vKuia being found in dialects that shared with
literary French the development foi<fide, toi<te.2 Parallel with
temere and *temet for discordant temere and timet, the change of
tussire to tossire caused *tusset to become *tosset at a later time, in
Italy and the west. Rumanian separated from Italian after tossire
was established, but before u became 6; it did not develop a general
6<u of its own, but changed stressless o back to u, thus leveling the
formerly different vowels derived from the u's of tussire and tussi.*
We may make a further distinction and say that posttonic
e<i was probably earlier than pretonic e<i. Evidence in regard
to the matter seems to be displayed in Sardic. Eogudorian
1 Modern Language Review, IX, 495; X, 247.
2 Revue des patois gallo-romans, II, 257; III, 287.
3 In modern Rumanian the equivalents of *tussisce and *tussiscit have replaced
the verb-form *tuse, but the noun tuse has kept normal stressed «.
185
58 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
distinguishes stressed e<e, i<1, o<o,u<u, and the stressless endings
-o<-o, -w<-#, -os<-6s, -us<-us; but apparently it shared, to some
extent, the continental leveling of posttonic i and e. Unfortunately
it is not easy to find many trustworthy examples of this development.
Persons who wish to deny its reality might say that turre comes
from turre, not from turri; that fdghere is responsible for the e of
faghes, faghet; that beniKuenit is normal, rather than an analogic
formation dependent on the i of uenis or uenire; and that the e of the
imperative plural has gotten into the indicative-endings -ades and
-ides, which are found in the present only, other tenses having
-dzis<*-dzi<*-dz<-tis. But such an argument can be turned
around: the ending of the noun sidis need not be called normal. It
is hard to understand why this nominative was kept, instead of the
accusative; but its stressless i may be explained in various ways.
Sardic is fond of assimilation and dissimilation : assimilated sidis
<*sides<sttis would be no more remarkable than a<aut, drbere<
arbore, fae—fa<foba1 Campidanian &mem = Logudorian tenaghe<
tenace, and tuo<tuu in a dialect that regularly distinguishes final o
and u.1 Or perhaps the i came from the I of sitire, and sititu, the
latter being represented by sididu, " thirsty." As Sardic shared
with all other Romanic tongues the change of stressless hiatus-e to i,
it is clear that siti would have kept or re-developed i before a vowel,
and the accusative may have affected the nominative. So too the
ablative sitl could have influenced the nominative: the declension
*sitls-sitl might have come from the associated word fames-fame.
With regard to the ablative, it is noteworthy that in southern Sardic,
which has bonu<bonu beside bonus <bonos, the d of ddmu points
to the ablative domo as plainly as the domo of central dialects that
distinguish final o and u.2 Of course the form domo arose from in
domo and other such phrases; but then sitl could likewise follow
a preposition.
Southern Sardic has changed posttonic e and o to i, u, as shown
in some of the words mentioned above. Otherwise its vowel-system
i Wagner, Lautlehre der sUdsardischen Mundarten, Halle, 1907, p. 17. In Sardio
spelling, as In Genoese, x means the sound 2 ( =French j). Many Sardic dialects have,
like Spanish, developed voiced fricatives from intervocalic v, t, k; I keep the ordinary
spellings with b, d, g(h), as the fricative quality does not seem to be distinctive.
'Wagner, op. tit., p. 17.
186
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i 59
is generally like that of Logudorian. A peculiar difference is seen,
however, in the verb suexiri = Logudorian suighere, meaning " knead."
These words do not come from subigere as Wagner assumes,1 for
digitu>didu has lost g in the south and north alike; they represent
subicere, with normal treatments of the sound k. Neither does
Wagner's theory of the southern e seem reasonable: he supposes
that it was borrowed from other verbs with radical e before 2, such as
slrexiri (<*ex-lraiceref), meaning "clean." But this ending, which
would usually require a Latin e (decere> dexiri) , is not found in a
great many other verbs.
The real reason for the e of suexiri is probably to be sought in
the word itself. Subicit made normal *suf3eket, and this produced
*su(3ekere with analogic e, just as in Spanish the n of lane has replaced
the ijg of tango and the ndz of forms with stressed e or i.2 We may
therefore say that Romanic stressless e<i was an earlier development
than stressed e<i: a trace of the difference is preserved in Campi-
danian suexiri. Logudorian suighere does not disprove a formation of
*su(3eket in the north; it only shows that there was no analogic
change of i to e in this verb.
In Sardic, as in the other Romanic tongues, intervocalic ki made
tS or ts. (with a lengthened t in many dialects) : from *lakiu come
southern lattsu, central ladzu and laBuf northern latin* and lallsu.
But before k underwent a change of quality, *fakkies became *fakkes.
Logudorian has fakke beside cabu <caput, ladus<lalus} logu<locu,
paghe<pace. Early Campidanian has a form spelled fachi and
faki, which would have developed tS in the modern language, beside
cabu, laduSj logu, and pagi corresponding to modern paxi. The
general voicing of occlusives indicates a basis *fakkie for faki as
well as for fakke (which is sometimes written with a single fc, con-
sonant-quantity being less distinct in Sardic than in Tuscan). From
the foregoing remarks about Sardic e and i, it will be seen that
fakke and faki can be explained in more than one way.
If Sardic shared with continental Romanic the change of *pallia
to *pallea, we might call fakke and faki normal. But if ^e assume
» Ibid., p. 13.
* Modern Philology, VIII, 596. Galician has analogic tanxo and tangue beside
normal tango and tanxe (x =$).
3 Compare Castilian ts>9. * Compare Swedish p>t.
187
60 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
that stressless open e and close e were distinguished, as the develop-
ment of mulier seems to show, it is possible that fakke < *fakkee was
analogic, due to normal *fakkes<*fakkees< fades. Or we may
suppose that even though stressless close e and open e were commonly
distinguished, they were assimilated at the end of a word: some-
thing of the same kind is to be seen in Italian grue beside di and
buono<bonu beside bue ( = Spanish buey)<*buoe<*boe<boue. It
is also possible that the change of *fakkee to fakke was parallel with
western mal and mar, the final vowel being dropped rather than
assimilated.
On the continent, facies> *fakkes was normal, in accord with
*pallia>*palleaj *sappiat> *sappeat; but the formation of * fakke
may have been analogic as in Sardic. The difference between
Spanish haz and Portuguese face corresponds to hoz=fouce<falce,
tos=tosse<tussi. Portuguese face, beside paz (pas<*padz)<pace,
shows that final e could be dropped after dz or dz, but not after t§ or
ts; contrary dialectal pouz (po§<*p6uts)<*paucel belongs to a
border-region that has other Spanish-like features, such as rezio for
rijo < *ricidu,2 si for sim? sim for semf barrer for varrer.*
In France and Italy the change of *fakkie to *fakke seems to
have produced a feeling that this shortening was incorrect. But
the longer form could not be restored while *sappeat was the equiv-
alent of older *sappiat. The earlier structure of the word could be
imitated only by adding a different vowel. On account of the
gender, the vowel was a: *fakke became *fakkea. In Italy this
noun developed like the verb *fakkeat>faccia. In France we find
evidence that the addition of a was rather late, at least in some of
the southern dialects. Early Provencal has fatz = Spanish haz,
and also facia beside fa$a corresponding to Italian facda. In the
modern language facia has become fad (o), parallel with vendemia>
vendemi(o).
2. FILIOLA
It is generally held that filiola became *filiola as the result of a
mechanical development: the stress was transferred from i to the
i Modern Philology, XII, 195.
* Retieta lusitana, X, 240; Modern Philology, XI, 350.
» Revista luBitana, X, 243. « Op. cit., VIII, 298.
188
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i 61
opener sound o. While the reality of the stress-change cannot be
questioned, the common idea of its cause is probably wrong. With a
purely mechanical treatment, filiola would have made *fiUla, and
later *filela outside of Sardinia. If the o was not lost, it was because
this vowel was felt to be an essential element of the word. It was
therefore kept in the only way that it could be for any great length
of time, after the change of altera to altra, by means of a stress-
displacement. As the same displacement occurred in faseolu,
there is no reason for ascribing it to the relative openness of the
vowels. It is possible that area>aria produced analogic stressed
i in *ariola, though this theory is needless and probably wrong;
but there was no such basic form that could have put analogic i
in the place of the e of faseolu. We must therefore admit that
in the derivatives of this word eo changed through eo to id.
3. HODIE
Latin grundio had a variant form grunnio; from the latter come
Portuguese grunho and Spanish gruno, with normal u>u due to
w-contact as in cunha=cuna. But it is unreasonable to say with
regard to the Romanic development of uerecundidj as Cornu does
in Grober's Grundriss (Die port. Sprache, § 111), that this noun had a
variant with nn. On the contrary, there is clear evidence showing
that the d was kept until after gula became gola: Italian has 6 in
vergogna (vergonna), beside u in giugnere, pugno, ugna. Likewise
in the other languages that changed u to u before early n, -undia
made *-undea>*-6ndea>*-6ndia>*-6nna. Thus Catalan vergonya,
Spanish verguena, and Portuguese vergonha correspond to cegonya =
cigiiena = cegonha.1
We may therefore assume that in general the Romanic palataliza-
tions of d were later than the change of u to 6, and consequently later
than the separation of Italian from Rumanian and Sardic. Yet
it is plain that the derivatives of hodie do not directly represent a
form *odde corresponding to *fakkes<*fakkies, which (as explained
above) lost i before trullea became *tr6llea. Sardic oe could have
come from *ode, if such a form ever existed, but the other languages
1 In Modern Philology, XI, 350, the Spanish development should read as follows:
*vergofifia> *vergoifia>verg1lefia.
189
62 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
require (and Sardic admits) a basis with a palatalized d. There
seems to be only one way out of this difficulty: hodie became *odde;
but afterward, when *sappeat had changed back to *sappiat, i was
restored from the noun die. A parallel for such influence is to be
seen in Portuguese alheio, Spanish ajeno, Campidanian allenu (with
normal II as in folia < folia), Logudprian andzenu (corresponding to
fodza< folia or bindza<mnea): these forms imply a stem alien- or
*allien- for normal *alen-< alien-, with i borrowed from the related
words *allios and *allius < * aliens < *allius < alius.1
4. MULIER
If continental *fakke was normal, and not due to the influence of
*fakkes < fades, it would seem that mulier should have made Italian
*molle<*mulle(r)<*mullier. In this case we could assume that
every stressless e became close after i changed to e, and that the XX
of moglie came from normal mogliere < *moliere < *moleere < *muleere
< *muliere. But if moglie is normal, representing *m6llie < *mollee(r)
<*mullee(r)<*mullier, we must assume that stressless open e and
close e were distinguished after the change of i to e. This would
agree with bene<bene, in which the restressed stressless e has remained
open, although it was not anciently stressed often enough to become
ie. Since moglie is the usual Italian form, it seems hardly probable
that its development was analogic. It is more likely that both
moglie and mogliere are normal. In any case we must call mogliere
normal with respect to *muliere, and assume that hiatus-e remained
close. If every stressless e had become open, the Italian forms
would be *molle and *mol(l)iere.
As an independent word, muliere would have made *mulire>
*molere in continental Romanic. But the influence of the nominative
hindered this development. Instead the e became stressed, thereby
keeping the nominative and the accusative fairly similar: *muliere
replaced muliere, and thus the half-stressed vowel of each form
corresponded to the main-stressed vowel of the other.
i As most Sardic dialects lack AA and fin, Meyer-LUbke is wrong in supposing that
*oAus changed *alenua to *a\enus (Einfiihrungi, § 101; ibid.*, § 110). If the derivative
of alius was kept long enough, it must have made *oAXos, not *a\us, on the continent;
but at an early time it was driven out by the noun derived from alliu. Because of this
leveling, which produced an intolerable ambiguity, "other" was expressed by derivatives
Of alteru and alid.
190
NOTES ON ROMANIC e AND i 63
5. PARIETE
Stress-analogy caused muliere to become *muliere, and may have
helped in producing *filidla beside filia. But such influence is not
easy to establish with regard to pariete and paries. In English the
conflict between written whom and spoken who (objective) has
lasted for centuries, and may go on indefinitely. So too the struggle
with non-personal nominatives like paries may have reached through
a long time. Meyer-Liibke says that the genetive *paretis may
have been analogic, due to normal *pares<paries.1 This statement
is correct but incomplete: it is also possible that paries produced
analogic *parietis. It should, however, be noted that the stem of
pede was not affected by the e of pes. It is therefore most probable
that pariete> parete was a normal development, and that paries
was lost (morphologically) before mulier caused muliere to become
*muliere.
If pariete had become *pariete, its derivative would have been
*parietez or *pajete in Italian, and *paried or *periede>*piried in
Spanish. Rumanian parete, Italian parete, and the western equiva-
lents, which have or imply a close e, are based on *parite, a normal
shortening of pariete parallel with domnus for dominus. This reduc-
tion of pariete was earlier than the formation of close i from the I of
uia. If the historic nominative was kept long enough, *pares was
contemporary with *parite. A declension *pares-*parite would have
been similar to the hospes-hospite of classic Latin, aside from a differ-
ence in stress like that of nepds-nepdte.
I have mentioned above Meyer-Liibke's correct statement about
*pares. In the new edition of his work, he gives up his former view :
we now read that the retention (Bewahrung) of paries is assured by
the development of *fakkie from facie.3 This theory is evidently
wrong. Morphologically paries has been lost. But if it had been
kept as homo and mulier were, it would have become *pares, parallel
with quietus >quetus; this general principle is stated correctly by
Meyer-Liibke a few pages farther on,4 and repeated in his Romanic
1 Meyer-Ltibke, EinfUhrung1, § 82.
2 The pariete given in Petrdcchi's dictionary is presumably bookish,
s Meyer-Ltibke, Einfilhrung*, § 91.
« Ibid., §110.
191
64 EDWIN H. TUTTLE
dictionary under the word aries. Hence the term Bewahrung has
no true application to paries, beyond this : there was such a word in
Latin. It is a mistake to think that the formation of *fakkie from
facie can tell us anything about paries.
We can lengthen most speech-sounds without making appreciable
changes of quality. But r, sounded as it was in Latin and is in
Tuscan, lacks a held position; it can be repeated (as in terra), but
not simply lengthened. This is why aria did not become *arria
when the other consonants were lengthened. The difference between
simple r and a prolonged trill was so great that it was found more
convenient to keep the simple sound. In this there was no real
violation of a sound-law; r was a special kind of sound, essentially
different from other consonants, and therefore it followed a special
law of its own. Likewise in early western Germanic the sound j
(or hiatus-z) caused a lengthening of any preceding consonant
except r.1
EDWIN H. TUTTLE
NORTH HAVEN, CONN.
CORRECTIONS
In my article on locus, printed in Modern Philology for last March, the
derivation-mark should be reversed in the first line of the first paragraph ;
in the second line of p. 164, and at the end of the paragraph near the middle
of p. 164.
E. H. T.
i Streitberg, Urgermanische Grammatik, Heidelberg, 1896, § 131.
192
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV August IQIJ NUMBER 4
THE SECOND NUN'S PROLOGUE, ALANUS, AND
MACROBIUS
The famous Invocation to the Virgin in the Prologue to the
Second Nun's Tale has been repeatedly discussed, and the investiga-
tions of Holthausen, Brown, and Tupper have thrown into strong
relief the blending of phrases from the Latin hymns with the lines of
St. Bernard's prayer to the Virgin at the beginning of Canto XXXIII
of the Paradiso.1 But the interfusing of related passages is even more
complex than has hitherto been recognized. For phraseology
borrowed from Alanus de Insulis and from another even more un-
suspected source is closely interwoven with the lines from Dante
and the hymns.
I
The passage from Alanus with which we are concerned is the
somewhat gorgeously rhetorical panegyric upon the Blessed Virgin
at the close of the fifth Distinctio of the Antidaudianus.2 It is the
climax of the long account of the journey through the air to which
Chaucer refers in the Hous of Fame? and the allusion to "many a
citezein" (HF., 930) recalls this very chapter (ix), as well as the next
> See, for the latest and f idlest discussion, Carleton Brown, Mod. Phil., IX, 1 ff.,
supplemented by Tupper, Mod. Lang. Notes, XXX, 9-10, and Brown, ibid., pp. 231-32.
2 Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century (Rolls Series), II, 362-64. 9
3 HF., 985-88: And than thoughte I on Marcian,
And eek on Anteclaudian,
That sooth was hir descripcioun
Of al the hevenes regioun.
193] 1 [MoDEEN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
2 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
but one before (vii).1 The lines from the Antidaudianus } accord-
ingly, come from an account which Chaucer states explicitly that
he knew. I shall include as little as possible of what has been
pointed out in earlier discussions, but a slight degree of repetition
will be necessary in order to bring out the extraordinary dovetailing
of passages involved.
Thou mayde and mooder, doghter of thy sone2
Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio3
Thou welle of mercy, sinful soules cure
[te fontem pietatis]* .... medidna m's6
In whom that God, for bountee, chees to wone
In cujus ventris thalamo sibi summa paravit
Hospitium deltas6
Thou humble, and heigh over every creature
Umile ed alta piti che creatura7
Thou nobledest so ferforth our nature,
That no desdeyn the maker hadde of kinde
Tu se' colei che 1'umana natura
Nobilitasti si, che il suo Fattore
Non disdegnd di farsi sua fattura8
iThe chapter with which we are dealing (ix) begins: "Hie super os cives proprio
praecellit honore Virgo," and at once Alanus enters upon his panegyric.
2 G 36. The remaining lines from Chaucer follow in order.
• 8 Par., XXXIII, 1. I am following the Oxford Dante.
* Antidaudianus, Dist. VI, cap. vi, 10. I have bracketed the phrase, because it does
not occur in the immediate context of the remaining passages. Too much stress,
however, should not be laid on the parallel quoted above, for the phrase was a
not uncommon one. It occurs in Gautier de Coincy (Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge,
ed. M. 1'Abbe" Poquet): "fons de misericorde" (col. 26). Compare also "Fontaine
de pitie", fluns de misericorde" (col. 759); "C'est la fontaine, c'est la doiz Done sourt
et viens mise'ricorde" (col. 5); "Dame, qui flours, fontaines et dois les de toute miseri-
corde" (col. 343). Chaucer may possibly have drawn the phrase from Gautier, or its
source may be found in the hymn literature, as pointed out by Brown (Mod. Phil., IX, 7,
n. 7). And it also occurs in Petrarch's canzone addressed to the Virgin, which closes the
Canzoniere: "Tu partoristi il fonte di pietate." (With Petrarch's next line — "E di
giustizia il Sol "—compare G 52: "Thou, that art the sonne of excellence.") See also
Toynbee's discussion of "Tons pietatis' in the De Monarchia" (and of its interesting
source) in Dante Studies and Researches, pp. 297-98.
6 Antidaudianus, Dist. V, cap. ix, 26. In the light of what follows, Alanus' phrase
(which occurs in a long list of the familiar designations of the Virgin) is seen to lie closer
at hand than the "medicina peccatoris" of the hymns (see Brown, p. 7).
« Dist. V, cap. ix, 13-14.
•> Par., XXXIII, 2.
• Par., XXXIII, 4-5.
194
SECOND NUN'S PROLOGUE, ALANUS, AND MACROBIUS 3
His sone in blode and flesh to clothe and winde.
[Hospitium deltas], tunicam sibi texuit ipse
Filius artificis summi, nostraeque salutis
Induit ipse togam, nostro vestitus amictu.1
It will be observed that the borrowings from the Anticlaudianus
account for all the interpolations which Chaucer has made in Dante's
lines so far as this stanza is concerned.
The phraseology of the first two lines of the next stanza is in part
suggested by the lines which immediately follow in Dante, the turn
of the thought, however, being different.
Withinne the cloistre blisful of thy sydes
Took marines shap the eternal love and pees
Nel venire tuo si raccese Pamore,
Per lo cui caldo nell'eterna pace
Cosl 6 germinato questo fiore.2
Chaucer's "cloistre blisful" Brown refers3 to the "claustrum Mariae"
of the Quern terra. But there is a link between the two which has been
overlooked. For in " cloistre blisful" Chaucer is recalling a phrase
from an earlier canto of the Paradiso, which likewise applies to
Christ and Mary:
Con le due stole nel beato chiostro
Son le due luci sole che saliro.4
One other suggestion seems to have come from Alanus, for "hir
lyves leche" (G 56) recalls Alanus' "Aegrotat medicus, ut sanet mor-
bidus aegrum."5 So much for the interweaving of Dante and Alanus.
1 Dist. V, cap. ix, 14-16. Compare "suo Fattore" and "artificis summi" as an
associative link.
2 Par., XXXIII, 7-9. Compare Dante's "Nel ventre tuo" and Alanus' "In cujus
ventris thalamo" as another link between the two passages.
» Mod. Phil., IX, 6.
« Par., XXV, 127-28. The reference here of course is to heaven (cf. Purg., XXVI,
128-29), but it is the phrase that clung to Chaucer's mind. Whether the line from the
hymn (which Chaucer certainly knew) called up the earlier passage from Dante or vice
versa, it is impossible to say. A similar use of chiostro appears in Petrarch's canzone to
the Virgin, referred to above (p. 194, n. 4) : " Ricorditi che fece il peccar nostro Prender
Dio, per scamparne, Umana came al tuo virginal chiostro."
The latter part of Chaucer's phrase ("of thy sydes") occurs at least a score of
times in Gautier de Coincy: "c'est la pucele En cui sainz flans chambre e cele Cil qui
pour nous mourut en croiz" (col. 5); "qui en ses flans le roy porta" (col. 6); "char
precieuse en tes flans prist" (col. 13); "Je chanterai de la sainte pucele Es cui sainz
flans le fluz dieu devint horn" (col. 15). See also cols. 16, 19, 24, 55, 74, 458, 690, 715,
729, 745, 747, 748, 751, 760.
5 Dist. V, cap. ix, 66. Compare 11. 52-53: "aeger Pactus, ut aegrotos sanaret."
Gautier de Coincy has: "Est la Virge fisiciane " (col. 101, 1. 1103).
195
4 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
In the remainder of the Invocation, up to its last stanza,
Chaucer passes back and forth between Dante, the Quern terra, the
Salve regina, and the Ave Maria,1 until in the final stanza (11. 71-77)
a new and exceedingly interesting strand enters the fabric.
II
Lines 71-74 of the Prologue are as follows:
And of thy light my soule in prison lighte,
That troubled is by the contagioun
Of my body, and also by the wighte
Of erthly luste and fals affeccioun.
Brown attempts to show that these lines "present unmistakable
evidence of the influence of the Paradiso,"2 and offers the following
parallels, still from Bernard's prayer:
PerchS tu ogni nube gli disleghi
Di sua mortalita coi preghi tuoi,
SI che il sommo piacer gli si dispieghi ....
.... che conservi sani,
Dopo tanto veder, gli affetti suoi.
Vinca tua guardia i movimenti umani*
But the source is elsewhere, and in part it is in another book which
we know Chaucer to have been reading, in conjunction with Dante and
Alanus,a,t the time he was engaged upon the Parlement of Foules and
the Hous of Fame.
In the summary of the Somnium Scipionis at the beginning of the
Parlement occur the lines:
And that our present worldes lyves space
Nis but a maner deth.4
The corresponding passage in the Somnium is as follows:
"immo vero" inquit "hi vivunt, qui e corporum vinclis tamquam e car cere
evolaverunt, vestra vero quae dicitur vita mors est."5
On this passage Macrobius comments at great length.6 The idea of
the "soule in prison" recurs again and again:
1 See the articles of Brown and Tupper referred to above.
2 Mod. Phil.. IX, 8-9.
8 Par., XXXIII, 31-33, 35-37. The italics in this passage are Brown's.
« V, 53-54.
6 Somnium Scipionis, III, 2.
• Comm. in Somn. Scip., I, x, 6-xii, 18.
196
SECOND NUN'S PROLOGUE, ALANUS, AND MACROBIUS 5
ipsa corpora, quibus inclusae animae carcerem foedum tenebris horridum
sordibus et cruore patiuntur (I, x, 9) ; per alteram vero, quae vulgo vita
existimatur, animam de inmortalitatis suae luce ad quasdam tenebras mortis
inpelli vocabuli testemur horrore. nam ut constet animal, necesse est,
ut in corpore anima mnciatur .... unde Cicero pariter utrumque sig-
nificans, corpus esse nnculum, corpus esse sepulcrum, quod career est sepul-
torumait (I, xi, 2-3).1
And in this same portion of the Comment we find, not only the rare
phrase "contagioun of the body,"2 but in conjunction with it other
verbal parallels that are conclusive:
Secundum hos ergo, quorum sectae amicior est ratio, animae beatae ab
omni cuiuscumque contagione corporis liberae caelum possident, quae vero
appetentiam corporis et huius, quam in terris vitam vocamus, ab ilia specula
altissima et perpetua luce despiciens desiderio latenti cogitaverit, pondere ipso
terrenae cogitationis paulatim in inferiora delabitur.3
That Chaucer had definitely in mind the phraseology of this comment
on a passage which he had himself translated there can be, I think,
no doubt.
But there is another notable comment which seems to stand in
somewhat baffling relation to Chaucer's words. The splendid lines
in the sixth book of the Aeneid (703-51) which deal with the relation
of the river of Lethe to the union of souls and bodies, underlie, of
course, the discussion in Macrobius, so that the remoter source of
Chaucer's lines is really Aeneid, VI, 730-34:
Igneus est ollis vigor et caelestis origo
Seminibus, quantum non noxia corpora tardant
Terrenique hebetant artus moribundaque membra.
Hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras,
Respiciunt clausae tenebris et carcere caeco.
i Compare also I, xiii, 10.
2 On the infrequent use of the word "contagioun" see Brown's comment, Mod.
Phil., IX, 10.
3 1, xi, 11. The phrase "contagio corporis" occurs again in I, viii, 8: "Secundae,
quas purgatorias vocant, hominis sunt, qui divini capax est, solumque animum eius
expediunt, qui decrevit se a corporis contagione purgare." And ten lines farther on
appears "terrenas cupiditates." That there may have been a subsidiary influence
of Boethius is possible. For in Book III, prose xii, 5-9 occurs the* folio whig, in
Chaucer's translation: "whan I loste my memorie by the contagious conjunccioun of the
body with the sowle; and eftsones afterward, whan I loste it, confounded by the charge
and by the burdene of my sorwe." The Latin text is: "Primum, quod memoriam cor-
porea contagione, dehinc cum moeroris mole pressus, amisi." But the other specific
correspondences are wanting.
197
6 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
On this famous passage in the Aeneid, however, there is a com-
ment which it is hard to believe that Chaucer did not know. Servius'
remarkable discussion of A en., VI, 724 is primarily concerned with
the "contagioun of the body": "ita ergo et animus quamdiu est in
corpore, patitur eius contagiones."1 And the precise phrase appears
in the comment on Aen.y VI, 719: "credendum est animas corporis
contagione pollutas ad caelum reverti?"2 A few lines before, in the
account of the descent of the soul through the several circles, occurs
a list of the "false affections" that trouble the soul: "quia cum
descendunt animae trahunt secum torporem Saturni, Martis ira-
cundiam, libidinem Veneris, Mercurii lucri cupiditatem, Jovis regni
desiderium : quae res faciunt perturbationem animabus, ne possint uti
vigore suo et viribus propriis."3 And the "soul in prison" also
appears: "non est verisimile, [animas] liber atas de corporis car cere ad
eius nexum reverti."4
But did Chaucer know the passage in Servius ? There is some
reason to believe that he did. In the comment on Aen.} VI, 724
from which I have already quoted, Servius is discussing the question :
"et qua ratione res melior est in potestate deterioris?" — the funda-
mental problem, of course, of the "contagioun of the body." For,
as he continues, "atqui divinus animus debuit corpus habere in
potestate, non mortale corpus naturam animi corrumpere. sed hoc
ideo fit, quia plus est quod continet, quam quod continetur."5 And
he gives two illustrations. First: "ut si leonem includas in caveam,
inpeditus vim suam non perdit, sed exercere non potest, ita animus
non transit in vitia corporis, sed eius coniunctione inpeditur nee
exercet vim suam."6 It is the second illustration that is for us
significant:
videmus enim tale aliquid, ut in lucerna, quae per se clara est et locum,
in quo est, sine dubio inluminat, sed si qua re iecta fuerit et inclusa, non perdit
splendorem proprium, qui in ea est — remoto namque inpedimento apparet —
1 Servii Grammatici qui feruntur in Vergilii Carmina Commentarii, ed. Thilo and
Hagen, II, 101. 11. 19-21.
2 Ed. Thilo and Hagen, II, 99, 11. 9-10. Compare: "animus .... laborat ex
corporis coniunctione" (II, 101, 1. 13), and especially the comment on Aen., VI, 733:
'"Hinc metuunt cupiuntque dolent gaudentque' ex corporis coniunctione et hebetudine"
(11,103,11.10-11).
» II, 98, 11. 21-24. 6 II, 101, 11. 3-6.
« II, 97, 11. 1-2. « LI. 6-9.
198
SECOND NUN'S PROLOGUE, ALANUS, AND MACROBIUS 7
nee tamen quia inpeditus est eius vigor, ideo etiam corruptus. ita ergo et
animus quamdiu est in corpore, patitur eius contagiones; simul atque
deposuerit corpus, recipit suum vigorem et natura utitur propria.1
But that is the Wife of Bath!
Tak fyr, and ber it in the derkeste hous
Bitwix this and the mount of Caucasus,
And lat men shette the dores and go thenne;
Yet wol the fyr as faire lye and brenne,
As twenty thousand men mighte it biholde;
His office naturel ay wol it holde,
Up peril of my lyf, til that it dye.2
Chaucer is here, as Skeat points out, also drawing on Boethius:3
Gertes, yif that honour of poeple were a naturel yift to dignitees, it ne
mighte never cesen nowher amonges no maner folk to don his office, right
as fyr in every contree ne stinteth nat to eschaufen and to ben hoot.
There is, too, a very similar passage in Macrobius: " ignis, cuius
essentiae calor inest, calere non desinit."4 But the figure of the
fire (or candle) as "tecta . . . et inclusa" ("in the derkeste hous,"
"lat men shette the dores"), and the employment of the idea of
" splendorem " ("as faire lye and brenne") for that of "calere" ("to
eschaufen and to ben hot")5 point strongly to the influence of Servius,
or of Servius' source. It is very possible that Chaucer's context in
the Wife of Bath's Tale* suggested to him the passage in Boethius, and
that this in turn recalled to him the more definite figure in Servius.
That, at least, is the sort of thing which Chaucer constantly does.
And both Servius and Boethius seem to be there.
If this be so (to return to the Second Nun's Prologue), Chaucer
may also have recalled the remarkable comment of Servius as he
composed his appeal to the Virgin. That, however, it is by no
means necessary to suppose. The passage is explicable without it.
And the details that are (most of them) included in a single sentence
i Ll. 15-21. 2 D, 1139-45.
'Book III, prose iv, 71 ff.: "Atqui si hoc naturale munus dignitatibus foret, ab
offlcio suo quoque gentium nullo modo cessarent: sicut ignis ubique terrarum, numquam
tamen calere desistit."
4 Comm. in Somn. Scip., II, xvi, 6.
8 There is also a hint of Servius' "natura utitur propria" in Chaucer's "His office
naturel ay wol it holde." But compare Boethius' "ab officio suo" ("to don his office").
• He is drawing heavily on Dante's Convivio, both in what precedes, and in what
follows. See Lowes, Mod. Phil., XIII, 19-33.
199
8 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
in Macrobius are scattered in Servius through several pages. Macro-
bius is pretty certainly the primary source. But both are comments
on lines with which Chaucer was familiar. And it is possible that
he had them both in mind when he wrote the Invocation. " Troubled
.... by the wighte," for instance, seems to represent the "pertur-
bationem" of Servius and the "pondere" of Macrobius. So that here
once more we are possibly justified in recognizing a convergence of
influences.
But we have not yet exhausted the complexities of the problem.
For the lines which I have quoted from Macrobius and Servius both
appear in Albericus — the third of the mythographers published by
Bode.1 There are, of course, minor variants in the phraseology, but
none of them affect the problem, so far as Chaucer is concerned.2
The sources of Albericus are discussed and exhaustively set
forth by Raschke.3 According to him, the fontes primarii are Fulgen-
tius, Servius, Macrobius, Martianus Capella, and Remigius of
Auxerre.4 But it is also possible, as Professor Rand points out to
me, that "Albericus drew not from Macrobius plus Servius, but
directly from Donatus, who is also the source of Servius and Macrobius
independently.5 Of course Albericus may have found Donatus
* The passage from Macrobius is in Mythogr. Ill, vi, 8 (Bode, Scriptores Rerum
Mythicarum, p. 178); that from Servius in Mythogr. Ill, vi, 11 (Bode, p. 180). Both
occur in the long chapter on Pluto.
2 Albericus' text of the passage from Macrobius varies so slightly from the text
as given above that it is unnecessary to quote it. See, for the chief variant, Raschke
(below), p. 45, n. Albericus' text for the lucerna passage from Servius is as follows:
"Videmus enim tale aliquid in lucerna, quae per se clara est, et locum, in quo est,
sine dubio illuminat. Quae si quando retracta [quae si retecta: cod. M. See Raschke
(below), p. 47, n.] fuerit et inclusa, locum quidam illuminare desinit, splendorem autem
proprium non amittit. Remote namque impedimento, apparet. Nee fulgor eius quam-
vis impeditus, ideo etiam est corruptus. Ita ergo animus, inquiunt, quamdiu est in
corpore, simul eius patitur contagionem. At cum corpus deposuerit, antiquum recipit
vigorem, et natura utitur propria" (Bode, p. 180).
In the next chapter (III, vi, 12) where Servius (II, 101, 11. 26-27) reads: "sic anima
ex eo quod datur corpori inquinata," etc., Albericus has: "sic et animam, adhuc corporis
contagione inquinatam," etc.
a"De Alberico MythologO," Breslauer Philologische Abhandlungen (1913), 45. Heft.
I am indebted for this reference to Professor E. K. Rand, to whom I appealed for aid
when I turned up the passages in Bode.
4 Raschke, pp. 2-7. For the secondary sources see pp. 7-10. For Albericus' date
(tenth or eleventh century) see p. 11. The two passages under discussion are found on
pp. 45 and 47. In cap. vi (Pluto) in which they occur, Macrobius is specifically men-
tioned twice (III, vi, 6, 9) , and Servius ten tunes (III, vi, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26,
30, 32).
6 See Rand, Classical Quarterly, X (July, 1916), 158-64: "Is Donatus's Commentary
on Virgil Lost?"
200
SECOND NUN'S PROLOGUE, ALANUS, AND MACROBIUS 9
already excerpted by Johannes Scottus1 or Remigius." The ques-
tion, accordingly, arises: Did Chaucer draw on Macrobius (and
perhaps Servius) directly, or did he find both passages brought
together in Albericus,2 or did he meet with them in Remigius, or
Johannes, or even in Donatus ? The question is perhaps impossible
to answer. At all events, the problem is too large and complex to
enter upon here.3
So far as the Second Nun's Prologue alone is concerned, however,
I do not believe that the matter is as complex as it seems. We know
that Chaucer knew Macrobius,4 so that for the Second Nun's lines
it is unnecessary to fall back upon either Albericus or the common
source of Albericus and Macrobius. For the passage from Macrobius,
as I have said, is in itself sufficient to account for Chaucer's lines.
And Chaucer may very well have known Servius too.5 As for the
fact that the source of the lines in the Second Nun's Prologue and the
partial source of the lines in the Wife of Bath's Tale occur together
in Albericus, that should not carry us off our feet. If Chaucer knew
both Macrobius (as he did) and Servius (as he may have done), the
facts are accounted for, and the occurrence together of the two pas-
sages in Albericus becomes, so far as Chaucer is concerned, an acci-
dent. And that is at least as possible as the other view.
1 On John the Scot, and Remigius as commentator, see Rand, "lohannes Scottus,"
Quellen und Untersuchungen zur lat. Philologie des Mittelalters (Munich, 1906).
2 Albericus is extant in four Vatican manuscripts, to which Bode (p. xix) adds three
more, at Gottingen, Gotha, and Paris. See Raschke, p. 12. Jacobs (Zeitschrift /.
Alterthumswissenschaft, 1834, pp. 1054 fl.) gives an account of one more, at Breslau.
Skeat has pointed out (Oxford Chaucer, V, 78, 82) indications of Chaucer's use, in his
descriptions of Venus and Mars, of Albericus' De deorum imaginibus libelli. But here
again it is entirely possible that Chaucer may be following Albericus' sources. And for
that part of his account of Mars which Chaucer uses, Albericus draws on Servius and
Martianus Capella (Raschke, p. 140) ; for his account of Venus, he uses Remigius, Pul-
gentius, and Servius (Raschke, p. 142). In both cases there remains the possibility that
Albericus is employing the common source of all of these — and this, again, may have
been known to Chaucer. I hope later to carry this investigation farther. Meantime,
it seems worth while to give the facts, so far as they appear.
3 It serves, however, to emphasize the importance of thorough consideration of
Chaucer's knowledge of the mediaeval commentators and mythographers. I have
already had something to say about this in Mod. Phil., XIV, 726-27.
4 See references in Hammond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual, pp. 98-99;
Skeat, Oxford Chaucer, VI, 387.
5 His knowledge of him is no more unlikely than Dante's, and Dante pretty certainly
knew him. See Moore, Studies in Dante, I, 189-91, and index; Rand, Thirty-third
Annual Report of the Dante Society (1916).
201
10 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
On the whole, then, waiving for the present the Wife of Bath's Tale,
the chances are in favor of Chaucer's direct recollection of Macrobius
as the source of the lines about "the contagioun of the body." If
that be so, it may be added that the inclusion of Macrobius and
Alanus in the cento places the Invocation — without entering into the
problem of the rest of the Prologue and the Lyf itself — in close rela-
tion to the Parlement and the Hous of Fame. In each we find the
same combination of Dante,1 Alanus, and Macrobius. Beyond
that obvious remark I do not care to go at present.
JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
i In Mod. Phil, XIV, 708-9, I have shown that Chaucer used the Paradiso in the
Parlement — a fact which has apparently been doubted before. See Hammond, Chaucer:
A Bibliographical Manual, p. 82.
202
WALTER MAP AND SER GIOVANNI
Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium contains only one story which
has been claimed as the source of a later piece of mediaeval fiction.
A peculiar interest naturally attaches to that story, De Rollone et
eius uxore, which is found in Distinctio III, cap. v, of Map's book.1
This interest is heightened as a consequence of proof, which I have
recently advanced,2 that the De Nugis was never really completed
and published by its author, but survives, in a unique manuscript,
only by a lucky chance. It is therefore fitting to scan the evidence
of Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's indebtedness to Walter Map. Map's
story runs as follows :
Rollo, a man of high reputation for knightly virtues, was blest in posses-
sion of a most fair wife and in perfect freedom from jealousy. A youth named
Resus, who in comeliness, birth, and all other respects surpassed the other
youths of the neighborhood, languished for love of Rollo's wife, but received
no encouragement from her. He tearfully admitted to himself his inferiority
to the peerless Rollo, but, sustained by his high spirit, he resolved to merit
his lady's favor. From Rollo himself he obtained the belt of knighthood,
and with unfailing gallantry he proceeded to win martial honors for his name.
He won favor from all except the lady whom he adored.
It happened one day that Resus met Rollo and his wife out riding. Rollo
greeted him courteously, and the young man, turning his horse, for a while
escorted his lord and lady. Then, saluting them with becoming words, he
departed. The lady maintained a cool indifference, but Rollo looked after
the departing youth for a long time, then turned his gaze ahead and rode
on in silence. His wife, fearing his suspicions, asked why he looked so
intently at one who was not regarding him; and Rollo replied: "I like to
look at him. Would that I might ever behold that most noble spectacle
of the world, a man graced in birth, manners, beauty, riches, honor, and the
favor of all."
The lady took this praise to heart. Though she dissembled her interest,
she pondered over Rollo's encomium, reflecting that he was an excellent judge
of men. What she had heard of Resus must be credited. She began to
1 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium (ed. M. R. James, Oxford, 1914), pp. 135-37.
In this book occurs also, of course, the Epistle of Valerius to Ruffinus, which was widely
known in the Middle Ages, but attained its circulation separately from the De Nugis.
2 "Walter Map's De Nugis Curialium: Its Plan and Composition," in PMLA,
XXXII (1917), 81.
11 [MODBEN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
12 JAMES HINTON
repent of her severity, and in due time she summoned Resus. He came with
alacrity, astonished but happy, and was received by his lady in a private
chamber. She said: "Perhaps you wonder, dearest, after so many cruel
refusals, what has so suddenly given me to you. Rollo is the cause, for I had
not heeded common report, but the assertion of him whom I know to be
trustworthy has convinced me." With these words she drew Resus to her;
but he, putting a curb on his passionate impulses, replied: "Never shall
Resus return Rollo an injury for a favor; discourteous it would be for me
to violate his bed, since he has conferred what all the world -could not."
And so he departed.
Liebrecht was the first to point out that this story is the same as
the first novella in Ser Giovanni Florentine's II Pecorone, which
Dunlop had praised as "one of the most beautiful triumphs of honor
which has ever been recorded."1 Liebrecht's opinion as to the rela-
tions of the two stories altered somewhat. Originally (1860) he
pronounced Rollo and Resus either "the direct or indirect source"
of the novella;2 but later, when he revised his article for his volume
Zur Volkskunde (1879), he declared unequivocally that Map presents
the "direct source."3 Before discussing Liebrecht's opinion we must
examine Ser Giovanni's novella*
There was in Siena a youth named Galgano, rich, of noted family, skilled
in every accomplishment, brave, magnanimous, beloved of all. He loved a
lady named Minoccia, the wife of Messere Stricca. Galgano endeavored
by jousting and by entertainments to gain this lady's favor, but in vain.
One day, while Stricca and his wife were at their country place, Galgano
went hawking near by. Stricca saw him and invited him in, but the youth
reluctantly declined. Soon afterward his falcon pursued a bird into the
garden of Messere Stricca, who happened to be looking out, his wife with him.
She asked to whom the falcon belonged, and he replied: "The falcon has a
master whom it may well emulate, for it belongs to the most noble and
esteemed youth of Siena," and, in response to further inquiry, he named
Galgano.
Minoccia was impressed, and soon afterward, when Stricca was sent on
an embassy to Perugia, she sent for Galgano. He came, was entertained,
and at last was taken to the lady's chamber. There, however, Minoccia
noticed an appearance of timidity in Galgano, and asked him if he were not
1 J. C. Dunlop, Geschichte der Prosadichtungen (trans. P. Liebrecht, Berlin, 1851),
p. 259; J. C. Dunlop, History of Prose Fiction (ed. Henry Wilson, London, 1896), II, 157.
2 P. Liebrecht, "Zu den Nugae Curialium," in Pfeifler's Germania, V.
3 P. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde (Heilbronn, 1879), pp. 43-45.
*Ser Giovanni Piorentino, II Pecorone (Milan, 1804), I, i; Dunlop- Wilson, History
of Prose Fiction, pp. 157-59. The collection was begun in 1378.
204
WALTER MAP AND SER GIOVANNI 13
well pleased. He swore that he was, but begged one request : that she would
tell him why her behavior had changed so suddenly. Minoccia recalled the
falcon incident and her husband's praises. Galgano implored her for another
reason, and, receiving none, he exclaimed: "Truly, it is not pleasing to God,
nor would I, since your husband has said such courtesy of me, that I should
use villainy toward him." So saying, he took his departure. Never again
did he pay any attention to the lady, and he always manifested a singular
love and esteem for Messere Stricca.
Certainly the stories of Map and of Ser Giovanni are strikingly
alike, not only in theme, but in detail. It is not surprising that
Liebrecht's theory of their relation met with no opposition. Egidio
Gorra, in his study of II Pecorone,1 quotes Liebrecht's original opinion
with approval, but adds that it is important to determine whether
the De Nugis Curialium affords Ser Giovanni's direct or indirect
source. The theme, he says, was widespread in the Middle Ages, and
he cites as similar the Lai de Graelent2 and the story of the troubadour,
Guillem de Saint-Didier.3
With regard to these two stories, of Graelent and of Guillem, I
must disagree with Gorra. The point of the Resus-Galgano story
is the magnanimous renunciation of a woman, passionately loved and,
after a long suit, won, by a hero who is actuated solely by a sense of
chivalrous indebtedness to her husband for unwittingly causing his
wife's submission. Graelent, on the other hand, had no long-
fostered passion to contend with, and it was not the husband's, but
the general, praise that won for him the lady's love ; Graelent refused
her, as Joseph refused Potiphar's wife, or as Map's Galo refused the
Queen of Asia,4 because his loyalty to his master was proof against
illicit love for his master's wife. Guillem is still farther removed
from the high sense of honor manifest in Resus and Galgano, since
he deliberately contrived a trap5 for the husband so that, willing or
unwilling, the wife must grant his suit. This motive is nearer akin
to that of Chaucer's Franklin's Tale and of the fifth novel of the
1 Egidio Gorra, Studi di critica letter aria, (Bologna, 1892), pp. 201-8.
2 Barbazan-Meon, Fabliaux et conies (Paris, 1808), IV, 57-80. A
»P. Diez, Leben und Werke der Troubadours (ed. K. Bartsch, Leipzig, 1882),
pp. 261-63.
« De Nugis Curialium, Dist. Ill, cap. ii, pp. 104^-22.
5 In this respect the story is like one in the Hitopade$a (I, vii) , which Gorra recognizes
as different from Ser Giovanni's.
205
14 JAMES HINTON
tenth day of the Decameron,1 in which the lover plots to fulfil a sup-
posedly impossible condition set by the lady purely in hope of
ridding herself of unwelcome attentions; the lady yields a debt of
honor. There may be held to exist a balance of merit; there is not
a single outstanding hero, such as Resus or Galgano. The compact
between the wife and the lover gives a different shape to motivation,
character, and incident.2
Gorra, however, passes lightly over this matter of analogues to a
genuine contribution on the relation of Map's and Ser Giovanni's
tales. A century after Ser Giovanni, Masuccio Salernitano retells
in his collection, 7Z NovellinOj the story of Map and of the Florentine.
According to custom, Masuccio declares that his story is true; he
had heard it a few days before concerning Bertramo d'Aquino, a
cavalier of the family of Madonna Antonella d'Aquino, Contessa
Camerlinga, to whom he addresses the story.3 II Novellino was
first published at Naples in 1476 and is thought to have been written
not long before that date.4 Bertramo d'Aquino, Masuccio says, was
a follower of Charles of Anjou, who triumphantly entered Naples
after the defeat of Manfred at Benevento, 1266 A.D. Not much
importance need be attached to Masuccio's assertion that he had
just learned of this story.5
Bertramo, who was prudent and valiant above all others in King
Charles' army, joined the other victors in the gayeties of Neapolitan society.
There he met the beautiful Madonna Fiola Torella, wife of Messer Corrado,
a fellow-soldier and dear friend of Bertramo. He endeavored by his jousting
and entertainments to win the lady's admiration and favor, but without
1 Jacob Ulrich (Ausgewahlte Novellen Sacchettis, Ser Giovannis, und Sercambis in
Italienische Bibliothek [Leipzig, 1891], p. xvi) refers to Decameron, X, v, as an analogue
Of II Pecorone, I, i.
2 The husband's resignation of the wife, wittingly and without obligation of honor,
is still a different motive. Koegel (Geschichte der deutschen Liter atur [Strassburg, 1894-
97], I, 258) errs in connecting Lantfrid and Cobbo with Map's story.
s Masuccio Salernitano, II Novellino (ed. L. Settembrini, Napoli, 1874), pp. 243-44,
536. On these protestations cf. Gaetano Amalfl, " Quellen und Paralellen zum Novellino
des Salernitaners Masuccio" in Zeitschrift des Vereins filr Volkskunde, X, 33 ft*.; the
study is concluded at pp. 136 fit.
< II Novellino, p. xxxiii.
6 II Novellino, Part III, nov. i (the twenty-first novel of the collection). Amalfl
(loc. cit.) says that this novella was retold in the seventeenth-century collection of the
Academici Incogniti, of whom Gian Francesco Loredano was chief (cf . Wiese and Percopo,
Gesch. d. ital. Lit., p. 451), and also by Adolfo Albertazzi (Liberalita di Messer Bertrando
d'Aquino) in his Parvenze e sembiame (Bologna, 1892), and by Saint-Denis in Comptes
du monde aventureux (nouv. xxxviii). Of these I have seen only the last; it is certainly
derived from Masuccio.
WALTER MAP AND SER GIOVANNI 15
avail; from honesty or from real love for her husband she crushed her
lover's hopes. One day Messer Corrado, Fiola, and other knights and ladies,
while hawking, beheld a wild falcon flush a covey of partridges and scatter
them. Messer Corrado .exclaimed that he fancied he was beholding his
captain, Messer Bertramo, dispersing their enemies in battle; unaware of
Bertramo's love for Fiola, he ran on and on with brave tales of the captain's
exploits until all were charmed with admiration, Fiola not less than the others.
Soon after, Bertramo, passing her house, was greeted with a salutation
so gracious that he sought out a friend to solve for him the riddle of woman's
ways. His friend cynically lectured him on the fickleness and frailty of
women and bade him write at once for a rendezvous. Bertramo obeyed
and was duly received in Fiola's garden; after a time he and Fiola were con-
ducted by a trusted maid into a camera terrena, where all was prepared for
their enjoyment. In the course of their conversation Bertramo curiously
inquired why Fiola had softened toward him. She related at length the
falcon incident, her husband's eulogy, and its influence. Bertramo responded
in a long antistrophe on the fine points of a gentle nature, leading up to the
avowal: "It is not pleasing to God that such villainy should appear in a
cavalier of Aquino." Thereupon he renounced Fiola in another lengthy
speech, cast jewels in her lap, bade her remember the lesson of his experience,
kissed her tenderly, and departed. Fiola was somewhat dazed at this fine
oration and not a little piqued at her lover's departure, but, actuated by
woman's instinctive avarice, she gathered the jewels and returned to her
house. The story, Masuccio says, leaked out, much to the credit of Bertramo
among his fellows.
To Masuccio this tale is an example of feminine weakness rather
than of masculine honor. It is the first novella of the third part,
"nella quale il defettivo muliebre sesso sara in parte crucciato," and
is connected with the next novella by a link in which the author diverts
attention from Bertramo to the woman. Masuccio adds the con-
fidant of the hero, a figure which does not appear in the De Nugis
nor in II Pecorone, and thus complicates the plot slightly, making
Bertramo write before Fiola summons him. I have no doubt that
Masuccio himself, not his source, is responsible for this alteration;
he doubtless wished merely to get a pretext for working in a cynical
harangue against women.
Gorra thinks that Masuccio is not dependent on Se/ Giovanni,
first, because of divergences in the handling of the plot, and secondly,
because II Pecorone had not been printed in Masuccio's time, and,
Gorra thinks, it is unlikely that Masuccio had seen a manuscript of
207
16 JAMES HINTON
it. There is, however, a significant point which the novelle have in
common, but which is wanting in Map's version : the falcon incident.
Because of this, Gorra holds that Map does not present the direct
source of the Italian versions, though he may present a more remote
source. Gorra could go no farther with safety unless a version with
the falcon incident should be discovered.
Such a version I have found. Giraldus Cambrensis, in his
Gemma Ecdesiastica } relates the following story:1
There was in France an excellent knight, Reginald de Pumpuna,2 who,
in a land where so many good knights were to be found, was incomparable
in valor. For a long time he loved the wife of a certain knight, but never
won any favor from her until one day her husband, on returning from a
tournament which had been held near-by, fell to conversing with his comrades
on the victors of the day. All agreed in praising Reginald above all others,
whereupon the lady asked her husband if such praise was truly deserved.
He replied: "Even so, for as doves flee before a falcon, so before Reginald
all knights flee." By this praise the lady was overcome. Very soon her
husband's absence gave her an opportunity, and she sent for her lover. He
came, but before surrendering himself to her embraces he asked how it came
to pass that she, who had been so long obdurate, now offered him that
unexpected pleasure. She told him of her husband's praises, and Reginald
exclaimed that he too would change his mind because of the same praises,
and would never again love her in injury to the one who had pronounced
them.
The Gemma Ecdesiastica was one of the proudest works of
Giraldus Cambrensis. He presented a copy of it to Pope Innocent
III, who, according to Giraldus, valued it so highly and was so jealous
of its safe-keeping that he would let no one else read it.3 We need
not imagine, however, that Innocent's successors were all equally
fond of the Welshman's work, and we may safely assume that, in the
course of time, the book was accessible to Italian clerks.
1 Gemma Ecdesiastica, II, xii, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, Rolls Series, II, 226-28.
2 It is interesting to identify this knight. A letter from Henry, Count of Champagne,
to Suger, Abbot of Saint-Denis, written in the year 1149, concerns a knight who had been
captured in a tournament by "Reginald de Pompona" (Bouquet, Recueil des Historiens
des Gaules et de la France, XV, 511). Among those who swear to a compact between the
king of Prance and the count of Mellent, " Reginald de Pompona" stands second on the
part of the count, just above William de Garlande (Bouquet, Recueil, XVI, 16).
3 See Brewer's preface to Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, II, ix-x. The Lambeth manu-
script contains the only known copy of the Gemma Ecdesiastica; it is surmised that this
may be the pope's copy, or that Gerald's gift may still repose in the Vatican.
208
WALTER MAP AND SER GIOVANNI 17
Thus we find a possible source, more or less direct, for the novelle
of Ser Giovanni and Masuccio — a source which contains the falcon
simile, and which, we know, was within reach of Italian story-tellers.
It may be noted that, in addition to the falcon simile, these three
versions agree against Map's in making the lover inquire why the
lady has softened toward him, and also in representing the lover as a
man of secure reputation at the time when he falls in love. The
effect of Map's story is intensified by the representation of Resus'
love as the one motive of his life. In humility he realized that a
nameless lad was not a worthy rival for the noble Hollo, and therefore
he devoted himself to becoming a peerless knight in all the excellences
of the chivalric ideal ; when he had attained his desire, he found that
chivalric honor prohibited him from accepting the prize for which
alone he had striven.
If the story of Reginald de Pumpuna were not more like the two
novelle than is the story of Resus, it would still be a more likely source
for them, for we can account for its presence in Italy. The only
positive ground for supposing that the De Nugis Curialium was so
widely circulated, or indeed was circulated at all, has been Liebrecht's
theory that it contains the source of Ser Giovanni's novella. It is
needless to accept that theory any longer.
JAMES HINTON
EMORY UNIVERSITY
VERSES ON THE NINE WORTHIES
Professor Gollancz' edition of the Parlement of the Thre Ages,
published in 1915, contains an appendix consisting of early texts
illustrative of the Nine Worthies theme. These texts, written in
Latin, French, German, and English, show the wide dispersion of
the theme in literature. My researches have brought to my atten-
tion a number of others, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, some of which afford interesting comparisons with those
published by Gollancz.
The first is written in a hand of about 1380 in a manuscript of
the Vulgate about a century older, prepared for, and doubtless used
in, Sweetheart Abbey in Kirkcudbright.1 The lines, which present
a variant of those numbered as XVII and XVIII in Gollancz* appen-
dix, and show the same Scotch tradition of Robert Bruce as the tenth
Worthy that we meet in the Ballet of the Nine Nobles, numbered X
by Gollancz, run as follows :
Ector, Alexander, Julius, Josue, David, Machabeus,
Arthurus, Carulus, et postremus Godofrydus —
Robertus rex Scotorum denus est in numero meliorum.
II
The next is a set of stanzas which accompanies mural paintings of
the Nine Worthies in the castle of La Manta in Piedmont.2 The
paintings were executed between 1411 and 1430. The verses are
interesting, first, as showing a clear dependence upon the very earliest
authoritative treatment of the Nine Worthies in literature, the
passage from the Vceux du Paon of Jacques de Longuyon, which is
given by Gollancz as VI; and, in the second place, as showing a
version in Italianized French of the stanzas on the woodblock of
» Bernard Quaritch, Catalogue No. 196, p. 299.
2 P. D'Ancona, "Gli affreschi del castello di Manta," L'Arte, 1905, p. 195.
211] 19 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
20
ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS
1454-57, given by Gollancz as XIV.1 The text is given by D'Ancona
as follows:2
Ector Je fui de Troie nee et fis du roy Priam,
E fuy qant Menelas e la gregoise gans
Vindrer asegier Troie a cumpagne grant;
La ocige XXX rois et des autres bien CCC :
Puis moy ocist Achiles ases vilainemant
Devant que Diu nasquit XI.CXXX ans.
Alisandre Jay coquis por ma force les illes d'outramer;
D'Orient jusques a Ocident fuge ja sire apeles.
Jay tue roy Daire, Poms, Nicole larmires;3
La grant Babiloina fige ver moy encliner;
E fuy sire du monde; puis fui enarbres:
Ce fut III.C ans devant que Diu fut nee.
Julius D Rome fuge jadis enperere et roy;
Cesar Jay conquis tote Spagne, France, e Navaroys;
Ponpe, Amunsorage, e Casahilion li roy;
La cite d'Alisandra amim somis voloyr:4
Mort fui devant que Diu nasquit des ans XL trois.
Josuee Des enfans dTrael fuge fort ames,
Qant Diu fist pour miracle li solegl arester,
Le flin Jordam partir a pasaie la roge mer;
Le Filistins ne purent contra moy endurer :
Je ocis XXXII roy: puis moy fenir,
XIIII.C ans devant que Diu fust nee.
Roy Davit Je trovay son de harpa e de sauterion;
Si ay tue Gulias, un grant gehant felon;
En meintes batagles moy tient-on a prodons :
Apres li roy Saul tien je la region;
Et fui vray propheta de lancarnacion:
Mort fui VIII.C ans devant que Diu devenist hons.
1 There are certain errors in Gollancz' printing of these stanzas, as may be seen by
comparing it with Pilinski's reproduction of the woodcuts in his Monuments de la Xylo-
graphie, Lea Neuf Preux. Gollancz' errors are as follows: The title Hector de Troye
should read Troie; and in the first line following, povoir should read pooir. The second
title should read Alixandre; and in the fourth line below, pris should read os. The fifth
title should read Le Roy David. In the sixth stanza, 1. 4, le should read se. In the
seventh, 1. 3, grant should read grand; and in 1. 5 g(uer)re should read gerre (cf, gerrier in
the next stanza). The eighth title should read Charle le Grand.
2 D'Ancona has emended the text, but gives the original reading in his notes.
»In the margin the painter of the legends supplied glosses describing Daire as li
Persian and Porus as li Endian.
4 D'Ancona suggests that this is a corruption of soumis a mon voloyr.
212
VERSES ON THE NINE WORTHIES
Judas Je viens en Jerusalem, en la grant regiom,
Makabeus E la loy Moises metre a defensiom;
Ceous qui adorent les idoles, mecreants e felons,
.... mige a destrucion;
Econtra heus men alay a pou de compagnons;
E mory VC ans devant licarnacion.
Roy Artus Je fui roy de Bertagne, d'Escosa e d'Anglatere;
Cinquanta roy conquis qui de moy tiegnen terre;
Jay tue VII grans Jehans rustons en mi lour terre;
Sus le munt Saint Michel un autre nalay conquere;
Vis le Seint Greal; puis moy fist Mordre goere;
Qui moy ocist V.C ans puis que Diu vint en tere.
Charlemaine Je fui roy, emperaire, e fuy nee de France;
Jay aquis tote Espagne e in us la creance;
Namont e Agolant ocige sans dotance;
Le Senes descunfis e PArmireau de Valence.
En Jerusalem remige la creance,
E mors fuy V.C. ans apres Diu sans dotance.
Godefroy Je fuy Dus de Loraine apres mes ancesours,
de Bouglon E si tien de Bouglon le palais e le tours;
Au plain de Romania jay conquis les Mersours:
Li roy Corbaran ocige a force e a stours;
Jerusalem conquige au retours,
E mori XIC ans apres Nostre Segnour.
21
III
Another version of these stanzas is found on the fragmentary
woodcuts of the Hotel de Ville at Metz.1 These according to
Pilinski date from before 1460, and they show some dialectal forms
of Lorraine.
(Joshua) Des enfans disrael fuge forment ameis
Quant dieus fit par miracle le solail aresteir
Le fleune iordan p(ar)tir & passay rouge meir 9
Les mescreans ne peurent centre moy dureir
De XXXII royalmes fige les roys tueir
XIIIC. ans deuant que die- fut- ne-
» Reproduced by Pilinski, Monuments de la Xylographie, Les Neuf Preux.
213
22 ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS
(David) le trouuay son de harpe & de psalteriu-
Et golias tuay le grant gayant fel-
En pluseurs grans batailes me tint on-
Et apres le roy saul ie tins la regio
Et si propheti . . . lanuntia-
(Godfrey) -e fus due de lorraine apres mes ancessours
-t si tins de boullon les palais & les tours
-n plain de comeine desconfis lamassour
-e roy cornemarent occis par fort atour
-herusalem conquis antijoche au retour
-s fus .XIC. apres nostre se-
IV
The next treatment of the Nine Worthies is a Latin description by
Antonio d'Asti of the statues of these heroes in the great hall of
Coucy, written in 1451. l Bertrand du Guesclin here makes a tenth
Worthy.
Adde novem yeterum fama praestante virorum,
Nomen apud Gallos clarae probitatis habentum,
Illic compositas ex petra albente figuras.
Ex quibus existunt Judea ab origine na,ti
Tres domini: Josue, Judas Machabaeus, et ipse
David; tres autem gentilis sanguinis: Hector
Tro janus, Caesar Romanus Jullius, atque
Magnus Alexander; tres vero Regis Olimpi,
Qui fuit ob nostram passus tormenta salutem,
Excoluere fidem, certe meliora secuti:
Arturus rex, et rex Magnus Karolus, atque
Is qui pro Christo postremus subdidit urbem
Jerusalem, aeterno Gothofredus nomine dignus.
Addidit his genitor nostri hujus principis, heros
Summae virtutis, Lodoycus, munera longe
Promeritus famae, qui non mediocriter auxit
Hoc castrum, decimam Gallorum ex gente figuram
Militis insignis Claschina, prole Britanna
Nati, Bertrandi, quo nullus major in armis
Tempestate sua fuit, aut praestantior omni
Virtute, et tota fama praeclarior orbe.
1 Le lloux de Lincy, Paris et ses Historiens, p. 558.
214
VERSES ON THE NINE WORTHIES
23
The fifth example occurs on a series of copper engravings, made
in 1464 by an anonymous artist known as the Meister mit den
Bandrollen, of which sets are to be found in the British Museum and
the library of Bamberg.1 The verses, which reflect rather unfavor-
ably on the composer's latinity, run as follows:
Hector
de
troya
Hector de troya priamis filius
fuit de ix paribus unus
apud troyam fuit occisus
ab archille ut legimus
xic annis Ixx uter pars minus
antequam xps fuit natus
Rex
alexander
Secondus fuit alexander vocatus
qui de macedonia fuit natus
in paradise tributum
sicut continet historia scriptum
tre centis annis obiit prius
in babilonia quam nasceretur xps
Julius
cesar
rex
Julius cesar tercius vocatur
per quam terra magna acquiratur
in babilona & italia
ipse possedit cum potencia
de satis fuit vexatus
xlii annis antequam xps fuit natus
nobilis
losue
(Inscription imperfect)
rex
dauid
Quintus dauid vocabatur
vere illustris rex coronabatur
golias fuit ab eo interfectus
a deo fuit dauid electus
obiit ut legimus mille annis
ante datum xpi incarnacionis
» Described by Dodgson, Catalogue of German and Flemish Prints in the British
Museum, II, 150 fl.
215
24
ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS
Judas
machabeus
Artur
rex
Karolus
rex
gotfridus
de bulion
Sextus fuit vero iudeus
et vocabatur iudas machabeus
muchonorum ipse necavit
de hoc seculo migravit
centum & quadraginta duo annis
ante datum xpi incarnacionis
Artur fuit in ordine primus
christianorum et rex nobilissimus
draconem ipse occidit
Et per xpo penas habuit
post mortem xpi vc et xlv annis
abiit artur rex illustris
Karolus rex et imperator
fuit sanctus et dominator
per ytaliam & almaneam
per friseam & hyspaniam
aquis gracie obiit nobilis
post mortem xpi viiic et xlv annis
gotfridus de bulion fuit tercius
et paganis multum durus
jhrem subiugauit et locum sanctum
coronam spineam portauit tantum
veneno ipse fuit toscicatus
post mortem xpi xic annis
VI
The sixth is found in MS Harley 2259, fol. 39v, at the British
Museum, and has been published by Furnivall in Notes and Queries.1
As this text is so easily accessible, I print here only the first of the
nine stanzas.
ixe worthy
Trogie.
Ector, miles paganus, & he b(ere) asure ij lyons rampant
ante incarnacionem. combataunt or, enarmyd goules.
Ector, that was off alle knyghtes flowre,
whych euer gate hym' with hys hond honour,
vnware, of achylles full of envye,
was slayn': alias, that euer shuld he deye!
Series VII, Vol. VIII, p. 22.
216
VEKSES ON THE NINE WORTHIES 25
VII
In the Coventry Leet Book an account is given of the entertain-
ment of Queen Margaret, in 1455, and on this occasion the Nine
Worthies figured among the spectacles, each of them delivering a
speech of welcome.1
Afturward betwix the seyde crosse & the cundit benej?e that were sette
ix pagentes well arayed & yn every pagent was shewed a speche of the ix
conqueroures yn the furst was shewed of Hector as foloweth
HECTOR Most pleasaunt princes recordid J>at may be
I hector of troy J>at am chefe conquerour
lowly wyll obey yowe & knele on my kne
and welcom yowe tendurly to your honoure
to this conabull citie the princes chaumber
whome ye bare yn youre bosom joy to ]>is lande
thro whome in prosperite \>is empyre shall stand
In the secunde pagent was shewed a speche of Alexander as foloweth
ALEX I alexander }>at for chyvalry berithe \>e balle
Most curious in conquest thro J>e world am y named
Welcum yowe princes as quene principall
but I hayls you right hendly I wer wurthy to be blamyd
The noblest prince ]?at is born whome fortune hath famyd
is your sovereyn lorde herry emperour & kyng
unto whom mekely I wyll be obeying
In the thridde pagent was shewed of Josue as foloweth
JOSUE I Josue J>at in hebrewe reyn principall
to whome J>at all egipte was fayne to inclyne
wyll abey to your plesur princes most riall
as to the heghest lady }?at I can ymagyne
to the plesure of your persone I wyll put me to pyne
As a knyght for his lady boldly to fight
Yf any man of curage wold bid you unright.
In the fourthe pagent was shewed of david as foloweth
DAVID I David J?at in deyntes have led all my dayes
That slowe J>e lyon & goly thorowe goddys myght
Will obey to you lady youre persone prayse
And welcum you curtesly as a kynd knyght ^
for the love of your lege lorde herry that hight
And your laudabull lyfe that vertuus ever hath be
lady most lufly ye be welcum to }>is cite
1 Thomas Sharp, Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries, p. 147.
217
26 ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS
In the fyth pagent was shewed a speche of Judas as foloweth
JUDAS I Judas J?at yn Jure am callid the belle
In knyghthode & conquest have I no pere
Wyll obey to you prynces elles did I not well
And tendurly welcum you yn my manere
Your own soverayn lorde & kynge is present here
Whome god for his godeness preserve in good helthe
and ende you with worship to this landys welthe.
In the sixt pagent was shewed a speche of Arthur as foloweth
ARTHUR I Arthur kynge crownyd & conquerour
That yn this land reyned right rially
With dedes of armes I slowe the Emperour
The tribute of this ryche reme I made downe to ly
Ihit unto [you] lady obey I mekely
as youre sure servande plesur to your highnesse
for the most plesaunt princes mortal J?at es.
In the vij pagent was shewed a speche of Charles as foloweth
CHARLES I charles chefe cheftan of }?e reme of fraunce
And emperour of grete rome made by eleccion
Which put mony paynyms to pyne & penaunce
The holy relikes of criste I had in possession
Jhit lady to your highnes to cause dieu refeccion
Worshipfully I welcum you after your magnificens
Yf my service mowe plese you I wyll put to my diligens
In the viij Pagent was shewed a speche of Julius as foloweth
JULIUS I Julius cesar soverayn of knyghthode
and emperour of mortall men most hegh & myghty
Welcum you prynces most benynge & gode
Of quenes J?at byn crowned so high non knowe I
the same blessyd blossom >at spronge of your body
Shall succede me in worship I wyll it be so
all the landis olyve shall obey hym un to.
In the ix Pagent was shewed a speche of Godfride as foloweth
GODFRIDE I Godfride of Bollayn kynge of Jerusalem
Weryng J>e thorny crowne yn worshyp of Jhesu
Which in battayle have no pere under the sone beme
Yhit lady right lowely I loute unto yowe
So excellent a princes stedefast & trewe
knowe I none christened as you in your estate
Jhesu for hys merci incresse & not abate.
218
VERSES ON THE NINE WORTHIES 27
VIII
A tapestry of the third quarter of the fifteenth century in the
Basel Historical Museum gives us German couplets for five of the
Worthies.1 The tapestry, bearing as it does the arms of a Basel
family, was doubtless of Swiss manufacture.
David .... kam schlug ich den grossen goliam
Judas Machebeus ich hab gehabt iudische lant und min opfer zuo gott
Kunig Artus min macht und min miltikeit das ich alle lant erstreit
Kaisser Karelus weltlich recht han ich gestifft und die bestettiet in
geschrift
Goppfrit herr von noch duress fiirsten adels sitten han ich das heilige grab
hollant erstritten
Of the texts on the subject of the Nine Worthies one of those given
by Gollancz (No. XIII), a mumming play of the time of Edward IV,
and one of those given above (No. VII), the Coventry pageant, were
intended for oral recitation, and of course each of the speeches is in
the first person. It seems to me, therefore, possible that the stanzas
of which versions are to be found on the BibliothSque Nationale and
Metz woodcuts and at La Manta were composed originally for that
purpose. The commonest method of explanation on wall paintings,
tapestries, and so forth is the third person. Perhaps, too, the
German prologue to the prose Alexander (Gollancz No. XV) and the
couplets for the Basel tapestry, both of which are written in the
first person, were also intended as the parts of actors in a pageant, and
came to be used naturally for other purposes. A set of sixteenth
century tapestries from the district of La Marche, originally dis-
covered at St. Maixent and now at the Castle of Langeais, also
bears inscriptions in the first person.2 Perhaps when further texts
of this character have been accumulated, we shall have actual proof
of the occasional adoption of pageant parts by tapicers and other
decorative artists for explanatory legends on their protects.
ROGER SHERMAN LOOMIS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
1 Julius Lessing, Wandteppiche und Decken des Deutschen Mittelalters, Plate XXVIII.
2 Bulletin de la Socittt Archtologique et Historique du Limousin, 1894, p. 209.
219
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE
The tales concerning the disposition of a corpse or corpses in an
effort to conceal crime are numerous and varied. The discussions
of these tales have been of very unequal value. Little remains to be
said about those tales which deal with more than one corpse; they
have been well studied by Fillet.1 The state of affairs is quite
different with the stories of the wanderings of a single body, for previ-
ous collections have been ill arranged and incomplete. Clouston's
descriptive account,2 which is occupied chiefly with summaries,
errs occasionally in matters of relationship. De Cock3 brought
together the largest number (twenty-six) of examples, with the
declared purpose of showing that the " Little Hunchback" of the
Arabian Nights could not be their source. His scheme of classifica-
tion obscures several clearly marked types. Steppuhn4 did not even
employ all the material accessible to him. He greatly overrates
the significance of the fabliau "Le prestre comporte," and, because of
insufficient evidence, draws erroneous conclusions about the affilia-
tions of Masuccio's novella. Sumtsov's discussion of tales about
fools touches incidentally upon these corpse-stories.5 Sumtsov cites
seventeen tales, which for the most part do not appear in the other
articles. He holds that these tales originated in India and were
spread in Western Europe by the fabliaux and novelle. He was
unfortunate in selecting an Indian example6 to serve as a starting-
point. The tale of his choice relates how the stupid brother in exe-
cuting the clever one's orders manages to do everything wrong.
Instead of bathing his mother he kills her in a flood of hot water.
» Das Fableau von den Trois Bossus Menestrels, Halle, 1901; compare an important
review by Gaston Paris, Romania, XXXI, 136-44.
2 Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 332-57.
8 "De Arabische Nachtvertellingen: De Geschiedenis van den kleinen Bultenaar,"
Volkskunde (Ghent), XIII, 216-30.
4 Das Fablel vom Prestre Comporte: Bin Beitrag zur Fablelforschung und zu+Volkskunde,
Dissertation, Konigsberg i. Pr., 1913.
6 N. Ph. Sumtsov, "Razyskaniya v oblasti anekdoticheskoy literatury. Anekdoty o
gluptsakh," in Sbornik Harkovskago istoriko-philologicheskago Obschchestva, XI (Harkov,
1899), 165-67 (pp. 48 ff. of the reprint).
6 Minaef, Indiiskia Skazki i Legendy, pp. 38-42.
221] 29 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
30 ARCHER TAYLOR
When he is sent to bring a girl to his brother's house, he cuts her
into pieces for convenience in carrying her. The mutilated body and
the murderer are burned. This is not a tale of the wanderings of a
corpse at all. It has no bearing on the question of the origin of the
genuine corpse-stories which Sumtsov cites, and of course it does not
prove their Indian origin. A discussion of corpse-stories did not
properly lie in the field of Sumtsov's paper; consequently his collec-
tions are incomplete and his remarks rather unsatisfactory.
The material available is far more abundant than appears from
any previous study; several hundred stories about the wanderings of
one corpse are mentioned below. The objects of this paper are to
distinguish the various types of tales based on the incident of the
compromising corpse and to examine in more detail the group,
interesting because of its singular literary popularity, which includes
" Dane Hew, Munk of Leicestre."
In the tales to be discussed the lifelessness of the dead body
lends itself to a grotesque or often revolting humor. The lack of
respect, the disrespect even, for the rites and conventions of burial,
and the coarsely comic situations into which the corpse falls, are
exploited to the full and with a gusto which we today may envy, but
would scarcely imitate. The subject is not one which allows of many
kinds of treatment. The majority of these tales are told in a matter-
of-fact tone — so matter-of-fact, indeed, that they could be, and in
some cases were, accepted as actual historical tradition. The con-
scious literary artist either follows the lead of the folk-tales or turns
it all into a mock-heroic burlesque.
The many tales which have as their main theme the disposal of a
corpse or corpses, fall into several clearly separable classes with a
residue of scattering and unclassifiable forms. The more important
of the clearly separable types may be designated for convenience as :
Les trois bossus menestrels, Tote Frau, The Blinded Husband and the
Corpse, Prestre Comporte, and Dane Hew. Only occasionally does
a member of one of these groups seem to be contaminated by, or
combined with, a tale of another type. Furthermore, the number
of tales which fall strictly under each head is sufficient, especially in
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 31
view of their geographical distribution and the nature of their
relationship, to justify the classification. A number of tales, however,
resist successfully all attempts to " pigeon-hole " them. This is to be
expected in the variants of a theme so widespread and so capable of
modification. It is by no means necessary, nor is it desirable, to
assume that all these scattering forms can be traced back to a com-
mon source. The fact that unclassifiable forms do exist, and in con-
siderable numbers, is itself a proof that no violence has been done to
the tales that have been classified.
Fillet has made an excellent study of Les trois bossus menestrelSj
which has been corrected in some points by Gaston Paris. Briefly
the story is:
The wife of a humpback makes assignations at successive hours with
three humpbacks. The first is hurried into a closet when the second appears,
the second follows in his turn, and then the third when the husband comes
home. There they stifle, and the wife must dispose of the bodies in order
to conceal the affair. She calls in a porter and offers him a sum of money
to carry off one body. On his return for his pay she declares that the corpse
has come back. The porter is surprised but takes the second body away
and ties a stone about its neck before throwing it into the river. He is induced
to carry off the third on the same pretext, [and this he is burning when the
humpbacked husband rides by. The porter thinks that the appearance of
the latter explains the mystery of the returning corpse and throws both
horse and rider into the fire].1
The great popularity of this tale is due in large measure to its
inclusion in certain texts of the Seven Sages, where it is known as
Gibbosi.2 The addition of variants to those recorded by Fillet will
probably not change the status of the investigation.3 It will suffice for
1 The episode in brackets is peculiar to the occidental variants.
2 On the use of Gibbosi as a means of classification of the texts of the Seven Sages,
see A. Hilka, Historia septem sapientum, I ( =Sammlung mittellateinischer Texte, 4), p. xi.
Hilka prints a new version of considerable importance.
s Hindu: Folk-Lore, VII, 94 (from * North Indian Notes and Queries, IV, 422).
Malay: W. Skeat, Fables and Folktales from an Eastern Forest, pp. 36-37, " Father ' Follow-
My-Nose' and the Four Priests. " Syriac: Oestrup, Contes de Domes, pp. 115-21. Greek:
Folk-Lore, VII, 94; ibid., XI, 333, No. 8. Rumanian: Grober's Grundriss, II, iii,
pp. 385, 393. Italian: KpvTrraSia, IV, 145, No. 5; Francesco Angeloni da Tlhii, Novella
XXIII (unpublished; see summary by G. Marchesi, Per la storia della novella italiana nel
secolo XVII, 111-12). French: Revue des trad, pop., II, 461; XI, 451-53; XXI, 459-61;
Wallonia, XIII, 199; *S6billot, Les joyeuses histoires de Bretagne, No. 77. Flemish: de Mont
and de Cock, Dit zijn Vlaamsche Vertelsels, No. 407. The Hungarian additions are
numerous: see Galos, Zt. f. vgl. Lit. gesch., XVIII (1902), 103-14; Ethnographia, XIX
223
32 ARCHER TAYLOR
the present purpose to emphasize the facts that the point of this tale
lies in the disposal of several corpses, and that a trick must therefore
be played on the porter who thinks he is carrying away but one.
The heart and fiber of this tale is the plurality of the bodies. It is
inconceivable that a story about the disposal of one corpse could
have developed out of it. The assignations of a lady with several
wooers and their subsequent discomfiture (but not death), as nar-
rated in the fabliau Constant du Hamel or in Lydgate's Prioress and
Her Three Wooers, are more suggestive as parallels to Les trois
bossus menestrels than are stories about one corpse.1 Indeed some
French fabliaux seem to be a combination of Les trois bossus menestrels
and Constant du Hamel. A curious joining of Les trois bossus menes-
trels with the episode of the bride won by the man who guesses the
true nature of an enormous flea's hide2 is found in an Italian tale,
"EReGobbetto."3
(1908), 125; B. Heller, ibid., XIX, 272; Revue des trad, pop., XXI, 369 fl. For Scandi-
navia, see Bondeson, Svenska Folksagor, No. 89 (cf. Nyare bidrag till kannedom om de
svenska landsmalen, II, cix, and WigstrOm, ibid., V, No. 1 [1884], p. 102); Rittershaus, Die
neuisldndischen Volksmarchen, No. Ill; *S. Bugge and R. Berge, Norske Eventyr og Sagn,
Ny Samling, 1913, No. 20, p. 78. Hackmann, FF Communications, VI, No. 1537*, cites
5 versions from Swedes in Finland. It is known in Slavic territory: see F. S. Krauss,
Marchen und Sagen der Sudslaven, I, No. 98; Dalmatia: Zt. des Vereins fur Volkskunde,
XIX, 324, No. 11; and the abundance of references collected by Polivka, Archiv f. slav.
PhiloL, XIX, 256, No. 99; XXIX, 452, No. 340; XXXI, 274 ,JSo. 82; Zt. f. dsterreichische
Volkskunde, VIII, 148, Nos. 25, 26; Ndrodopisn'Q Sborntk Ceskoslovanskfi, Svazek VII
(Prague, 1901), p. 213, No. 7. Numerous additional references of all sorts are to be
found in J. Prey, Gartengesellschaft (ed. Bolte), p. 281 (addenda to his notes on V. Schu-
mann, Nachtbuchlein,No. 19); Chauvin, Bibliographie des outrages arabes, VIII, 72; ibid.,
IX, 88 (addenda by Basset, Revue des trad, pop., XX, 331). Modern literary redactions
are cited by Andrae, Rom. Forsch., XVI, 349.
On the oriental origin of this tale see von der Leyen, Herrig's Archiv, CXVI, 294 fl.
On J6rg Graff (Fillet, p. 94) see also Gotze, Zt. f. d. d. Unterricht, XXVII, 99. I have
not seen H. Varnhagen, De glossis nonnullis anglicis, Universitatsschrift, Erlangen, 1902 ;
nor E. de Cerny, Saint Suliac et ses legendes, "Les trois mortes." The tale in Waetzold,
Flore (cf. Paul's Grundriss*, II, No. 1, p. 378), does not belong here.
I have not seen the works whose titles, in this and later notes, are preceded by
1 Fillet, pp. 51-75; Bolte and Polivka, Anmerkungen, II, 231, note; Prinz, A Tale of
a Prioress and Her Three Wooers ( = Literarhistorische Forschungen, XLVII).
On the relation of Constant du Hamel and Les trois bossus menestrels see further:
Chauvin, Bibliographie, VIII, 51; Jonas, Journal of Eng. and Germ. PhiloL, X, 111;
Bedier, Fabliaux*, p. 246; Cosquin, Romania, XL, 486; Zt. d. V. f. Vk., XIX, 213;
Vetter, Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift, V, 556 f . ; B. Heller, Ethnographia, XIX,
371; Hilka, Jahresbericht d. schles. Ges. f. vaterl. Kultur, XC, No. 4, p. 18.
2 On this see R. Kohler, Kleinere Schriften, I, 601: Flohfell erraten; Bolte, Zt. d. V.f.
Vk., XVI, 242, No. 23, and XVII, 229; Polivka, Archiv f. slav. PhiloL, XXVI, 464;
Desparmet, C antes pop., p. 407.
3 G. Zanazzo, Tradizioni popolari romane, I, Novelle, favole e leggende romanesche,
pp. 41 ff. = Archivio per lo studio delle trad, pop., XXII, 123 ff.
224
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 33
The main outlines of the story which, in accordance with Step-
puhn, I shall call Tote Frau, are tolerably clear, and wholly distinct
from those of any other form :
A poor brother (or sexton) steals a hog from his rich brother (or parson).
The latter suspects the right man, but wishes to make certain. So he con-
ceals his mother-in-law in a chest which he asks the poor brother to keep
for a short time. The spy betrays her presence, however, and is killed by the
pouring of boiling water into the chest, or by some similar method which
leaves no mark of violence. To give a plausible reason for her death the
poor brother puts a bit of cheese or dry bread in her mouth. The rich
brother is astonished when he opens the chest, but he can prove nothing, and
the corpse is buried with fitting respect. At night the scamp disinters the
body, robs it of its jewels, and places it at the rich brother's door. The
latter must part with some of his ill-gotten gains to provide a proper funeral,
for he is led to believe that the dead woman's reappearance is due to lack of
dignity in her previous burial. Successive repetitions or variations of the
trick make the wealth of the two brothers approximately equal, and then
the corpse is allowed to rest.
The occidental origin of this tale1 is, I think, as clear as the
oriental origin of Les trois bossus menestrels. The characteristic
features of this type are: that the corpse is a woman's, that its
1 The variants are abundant. Steppuhn (p. 49) cites only: J. P. Campbell, Popular
Tales of the West Highlands, No. 15; E. Meier, Deutsche Volksmarchen aus Schwaben,
No. 66; Cosquin, Contes pop. de la Lorraine, No. 80; Braga, Contos tradicionaes do povo
portuguez, p. 210, No. 109, "Os dos irmaos e a mulher morta" (this is a contaminated
version; see the remarks below on "Dane Hew"). It is well known on Celtic soil.
Hebrides: Folk- Lore, IX, 89, No. 10. Irish: M. Sheehan, Cn6 Coilleadh Craobhaighe,
Dublin, 1907, pp. 49 fit., "An t-seanchailleach sa Ch6fra" ("The Old Woman in the
Chest"); J. Lloyd, Sgealaidhe dirghiall, Dublin (Gaelic League), 1905, pp. 12-16 (with
trifling variations from Sheehan); J. Lloyd, Tonn Tdime, Dublin (Gaelic League), 1915,
pp. 24-28 (in both of Lloyd's collections it is entitled "An Dearbrathir Bocht agus an
Dearbrathir Saidhbhir" ["The Poor Brother and the Rich Brother"]. In Tonn Tdime
the servant who aids the poor brother is a Thankful Dead Man. For these references in
Irish I am indebted to Professor F. N. Robinson); Britten, Folk-Lore Journal, I, 185-86;
T. C. Croker, Killarney Legends, pp. 81-86. It is known in Flemish and North German
countries; see Pelz, Blatter/, pommersche Volkskunde, I, 43; Jahn, Schwanke und Schnurren
aus Pommern, p. Ill; Wisser, Plattdeutsche Volksmarchen, No. 29 (he has 30 imprinted
variants, see p. xxiii. For the concluding incident see Addy, Household Tales, No. 17) ;
Strackerjan, Aberglaube und Sagen aus dem Herzogtum Oldenburg*, II, 501-6 (the editor,
Willoh, has altered this tale [cf. Hessische Blatter f. Volkskunde, VIII, 204], and the first
edition [I, 354] should be used) ; Ons Volksleven, XII, 109 (defective) ; de Cock, Volks-
kunde, XIII, 229, No. 22. For Scandinavia, see E. T. Kristensen, Fra Mindebo, No. 3,
pp. 24-32; Rittershaus, Die neuisldndischen Volksmarchen, No. 114. FF Communica-
tions, V, No. 1536, cites 117 Finnish variants, of which five are from Finns out of Finland.
A great variety of Slavic and other references are to be found in R. Kohler, Kleinere
Schriften, I, 190; Polivka, Archiv f. slav. Philol., XVII, 581, Nos. 216, 217; XIX, 267,
No. 29; Zt. f. ost. Vk., VIII, 147, No. 21; 148, No. 24; 152, No. 79; Ndrodopisny Sbornik
CeskoslovanskQ (Prague, 1901), p. 213, No. 6.
For the robbery of jewels from a corpse see Burne, Shropshire Folklore, p. 105;
" Lageniensis," Irish Folklore, Glasgow, 1870, p. 24. For the fear of the return of a
225
34 ARCHER TAYLOR
returnings embarrass the same person (the rich brother or the parson),
and that the poor brother (or sexton) profits from its reappearances.
The absence of any signs of murder on the body, and the bit of food
which the murderer puts into the old woman's mouth to make it seem
that she has choked, are common to all the tales. In Ireland and
Scotland it is usually related of two brothers, elsewhere of a country
preacher and his sexton. On the whole, the Continental tales are less
imaginative than the Celtic. The disposal of the corpse in the Conti-
nental tales is a matter of rather vulgar bargaining by which the
sexton enriches himself; and there is none of that strange horror
of the corpse supposedly returning for a more gorgeous burial.
It is noteworthy that no other story of a compromising corpse has
been found in Ireland.
The Blinded Husband and the Corpse is composed of two wholly dis-
tinct stories, as is evident from an outline of the occidental variants i1
An adulterous wife, fearing that knowledge of her conduct may come to
the ears of her husband, prays that he may be blinded. The husband
hears her prayer and deceives her into thinking that it has been granted. He
seizes the opportunity, which her confidence in his dissembling gives, to kill
the priest.2 The story of the corpse is very summarily told. Usually the
corpse is leaned against an altar; sometimes a horse, bearing the body, runs
wild in a pot-market.
corpse see W. Gregor, Folklore of the Northeast of Scotland, p. 214 (something similar to
this tale is hinted at) ; Alemannia, VIII, 129 ff. For parallels to the incident of the old
woman bound to a foal which pursues its mother, see M. Bohm, Lettische Schwanke,
No. 24 and notes, p. 114.
The Continental tales are often introduced with the episode of the man who did
not wish to share with his neighbors the hog that he had slaughtered. He follows a
cheat's advice and exposes the hog which, by prearrangement, the cheat steals. The
cheat asserts that someone else stole it, and the selfish man dares not accuse him. For
this as an independent story see A. C. Lee, The Decameron: Its Sources and Analogues,
pp. 257-58.
1 Schneller, Marchen und Sagen aus W&lschtirol, 1867, No. 58; J. G. T. Grasse,
Sagenbuch des preussischen Staates, II, 1009-10, No. 1242; M. Bohm, Lettische Schwanke,
p. 65, No. 40 (and notes, p. 119; cf. addenda by Polivka, Archiv f. slav. PhiloL, XXXIII,
605). The Russian examples are abundant: see K.pvnrdSi.a, I, 240-43; Jaworskij, Zt. d. V.
f. Vk., VIII, 218 (too brief to be compared); Polivka, Archiv f. slav. PhiloL, XIX, 256,
No. 102; XXXI, 269, No. 50; Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der turkischen Stamme,
X, 150-52, Nos. 84, 84a. Sumtsov (see note 5 on p. 221) cites: *Sadovnikov, p. 162. Polish:
*Kolberg, Pokuice, IV, No. 67. For Finland see Aarne, FF Communications, III,
No. 1380; ibid., V, No. 1380 (72 variants); Hackmann, ibid., VI, No. 1380 (4 variants
from Swedes in Finland). Greek: R. M. Dawkins, Modern Oreek in Asia Minor (Cam-
bridge, 1916), pp. 475-79, "The Son who feigned blindness"; and compare Halliday's
notes, ibid., pp. 236-37.
2 He pours hot fat down the priest's throat; for this see also Erk-Bohme, Deutscher
Liederhort, I, 172, No. 50A, "Die Mordeltern."
226
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTBE 35
The incident of the husband who feigns blindness in order to
outwit his wife and her paramour has a family tree of its own extend-
ing as far back as the Pantschatantra.1 The dissembled blindness
in conjunction with a corpse-story is found both in Europe and in
India. It is probable that we are not dealing with a combination
which was made in the Orient and then transmitted westward.
Hans Sachs, who knows the story, very probably joined the parts
himself.2 On the other hand, we can show that a union of the parts
was also made in India. In a Ceylonese tale,3 after the husband has
feigned blindness and killed the lover, the body is put first in a
neighbor's field, and then before a salt-dealer's house; the latter
strikes the body, discovers that it is a corpse, and, knowing himself
to be innocent, makes the murder known to the government. The
guilty wife, who has been hired as a mourner, betrays herself and is
executed; the murderer goes scot-free. In connection with this tale
the corpse-stories collected from three North Indian tribes, the
Santal, the Oraon-Kol, and the Kohlan, offer some points of interest.
A corpse in a Santal tale4 has a set of adventures similar to those in
the Ceylonese story; in both the blinding episode is lacking. The
second tribe, which has other tales in common with the Santal, tells
essentially the same corpse-story5 with a curious addition:
A potter, who has been the contriver of the corpse's adventures, counter-
feits its voice at the funeral pyre in which it is being burned, and bids the
1 Montanus, Schwankbucher (ed. Bolte), p. 611 (Gartengesellschaft, chap. Ixxli) ;
Zt. d. V. f. Vk., XXI, 197; Swynnerton, f 'oik-Lore Journal, I, 147; H. Parker, Village
Folk-Tales of Ceylon, III, 215; Stiefel, Litter aturblatt f. germ, und rom. PhiloL, XXXVII,
col. 26; E. Cotarelo y Mori, Coleccidn de Entremeses (=Nueva Biblioteca de Autores
EspaHoles, XVII), I, p. cxxiii; *Grisanti, Usi, credenze . . . . di Isnello, II, 202; *Lade-
mann, Tierfabeln und andere Erzahlungen in Suaheli, No. 35; Anthropophyteia, I, 448,
No. 338; ibid., 449, No. 339; Bunker, Schwcinke, Sagen, und Marchen in heanzischer
Mundart, No. 19; *F. Lorentz, Slowinzische Texte, p. 142, No. 130; cf. Polivka, Zt. f. 6st.
Vk., VII, 195. Bolte (Zt. d. V. f. Vk., XXIV, 430) cites a discussion of this tale by
S. Debenedetti. See also the Skogar Kristsrimur, of Rognvaldr blindi (Paul's Grundriss*,
II, 1, p. 729).
2 Stiefel, Zt. d. V. f. Vk., X, 74 ff. The meistergesang is "Der baur, messner, mit
dem (toten) pfaffen" in Sachs, S&mtliche Fabeln und Schw&nke (ed. Goetze, Neudrucke,
Nos. 207-11), V, No. 742. *
s H. Parker, Village Folk-Tales of Ceylon, III, 212-15, No. 228.
4 Bompas, Folklore of the Santal Parganas, pp. 247-48, "The Corpse of the Raja's
Son."
5 F. Hahn, Blicke in die Geisteswelt der heidnischen Kols, Gtitersloh, 1906, pp. 16-19,
No. 9. In this collection Nos. 15 and 20 are from the Santal. See also the remark on No. 34.
227
36 ARCHER TAYLOR
people give half the kingdom and the hand of the ruler's (corpse's) daughter
to the potter.1
Now the Kohlan tale contains in the corpse-story this new motif, and
prefixes the dissembled blinding to it all.2 The fact that the corpse-
story in all these — the Ceylonese tale included — is practically one
and the same indicates that here is a specifically Indian type, and
that it is being combined with other motifs before our eyes. These
eastern tales exhibit no striking or significant resemblances to the
European forms.
The eastern tales are not the source of the other versions. The
joining of the episode of the dissembled blindness to a corpse-story
probably took place at least three different times. The only one
of these which we can date is the juncture made by Hans Sachs. The
combination in India is probably very recent, for it is apparently
restricted to a few intimately related tribes. The combination
as it appears in European folk-tales has had sufficient time to become
widely disseminated, and, if we may assume a single starting-point,
to develop considerable individual differences. The situation is
obscured by the facts that it is difficult to identify the source of the
corpse-story3 in the European Blinded Husband and the Corpse, and
that there has been some interchange of motifs between this and
other types.
Steppuhn errs in not developing Fillet's suggestion (p. 96) that the
fabliaux "Le prestre comporte" and "Du segretain ou du moine" are
representatives of different groups. The Prestre Comporte type is
a very old one, and it will not be possible to unravel its history here.
It may be outlined as follows :
A woman has been carrying on a liaison with a priest. The husband,
who has been informed of the affair by a servant,4 makes certain of the
» This is comparable to the story of Gianni Schicchi (Inferno, XXX) : cf. Altrocchi,
Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., XXIX, 200-225; see also Vossler, Studien zur vgl. Lit. gesch., II,
19. Professor Altrocchi found no examples in folk-tales; in addition to these, see
W. P. O'Connor, Folk Tales from Thibet, p. 128, and compare Mitteilungen d. Ver. /.
Gesch. d. Deutschen in Bohmen, XV, 166, No. 6.
2 Bompas, op. cit., pp. 480-83, No. 22. The Kohlan are related to the Santal.
» It is so brief that comparison with other forms is difficult. It has certain similarities
to some tales of the Prestre Comporte type, but the most characteristic incidents of one
type do not appear in the other.
'For parallels to this figure see Bolte, Zt. f. vgl. Lit. gesch., New Series, VII, 464;
Polivka, Archiv f. slav. PhiloL, XXII, 310, No. 700; Zt. /. 8st. Vk., VIII, 147, No. 11;
149. No. 36.
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 37
lover's visit one night by announcing his intended absence. He returns
unexpectedly and kills the priest (usually by pouring some hot liquid down
his throat). He feels no responsibility for the concealment of the murder,
for its disclosure will cause him little inconvenience. [He torments his
wife by forcing her to move the body from one place to another in order, as
she hopes, to hide it from him.]1 The corpse is then laid against a door, [is
mounted on a horse], and is exchanged for a hog in a sack. Apparently the
blame finally rests on an ecclesiastic whose position protects him from the
accusation of murder.
The variants2 differ widely among themselves, and a satisfactory
archetype cannot be easily constructed. One thing, however, is quite
clear: the fabliau "Le prestre comporte" is not, as Steppuhn would
have it, a good substitute for its folk-tale source (or the archetype) ;
it is too elaborate and sophisticated. Characteristic of this type
are: the guilty wife, the servant who either informs the husband of
the liaison or disposes of the body or does both, and murder by pour-
ing a hot liquid down the man's throat. The mounting of the corpse
on horseback, although it is not found in all the examples, has certain
distinctive characteristics: it is not the conclusion of the tale, the
corpse is not armed, and the horse and rider are attacked for trespass
(usually on a grainfield).
Prestre Comporte is first and foremost a type circulating among the
folk; its immediate literary derivatives are negligible. By a selection
and rearrangement of incidents a new form developed out of this
rather chaotic type. This new form I call the Dane Hew type and
shall discuss in detail below.
A number of tales remind us of one or another of the foregoing
types without presenting a conclusive similarity. These corrupt
1 Details in brackets are not common to all variants.
2"Le prestre comports," Montaiglon-Raynaud, Recueil general des fabliaux, IV,
No. 80 (trans. A. von Keller, AltframSsische Sagen, II, 167 flf.; retold with minor changes
by L. H. Nicolay, Vermischte Gedichte und prosaische Schriften, Berlin, 1792, I, 156-67,
"Der Kapuziner"). Its nearest associates are: Asbjernsen and Moe, Norske Folke-
eventyr, Ny Sanding, Christiania, 1871, pp. 141-51, No. 88, "Klokkeren i Bygden vor"
(trans. Dasent, Tales from the Fjeld, pp. 184 flf., " Our Parish Clerk") and de Cock, Volks-
kunde, XIII, 220-21, No. 4, "Pater Koekebak." Pitr§, Fiabe, novelle .... pop. sic.,
Palermo, 1874, No. 165, "Fra Ghiniparu" (ill-told and contaminated wigi Masuccio,
Novella 1) and Pinamore, Trad. pop. abruz., I, Novelle, Lanciano, 1882, pp. 40-42, No. 9
(very clever), form another group. Haas, Blatter f. pomm. Vk., IX, 24-26, contains inci-
dents from the Blinded Husband and the Corpse (compare the tale collected by Grasse
cited in note 1 on p. 226). See further: E. T. Kristensen, Fra Mindebo, pp. 145-51,
No. 28; B. Heller, Rev. des trad, pop., XXI, 373-74 (two tales); Sebillot, Archivio per lo
studio delle trad, pop., XIII, 280-81 (defective).
38 ARCHER TAYLOR
versions tell us nothing new about the types; they are of interest
only because they show how easily these tales were modified. The
whole might be given a new emphasis, the motivation of the murder
might be changed, and the narrator might forget incidents which
even he felt to be essential.
Some of these tales may contain remnants of the corpse-story in
the Blinded Husband and the Corpse. The narrator in these corrupt
forms strains his ingenuity to devise new ways of " killing" the
corpse. When his invention fails he concludes with one or another
incident which is especially familiar in this type. In the Icelandic
"Marchen vom Barbiere,"1 the barber extorts hush money from a
miller, a tailor, and a shoemaker at whose doors he has laid the
corpse. Since it offers him no further opportunities for profit he lays
it on the church steps, and it is buried in the odor of sanctity. A
Dutch tale2 has, like the Icelandic, three "slayings" of the corpse,
which is then mounted on a horse and runs wild in the pot-market;
"perhaps it's running yet," says the narrator. The characteristic
incidents in these two are respectively the body on the church steps
and in the pot-market, and these seem to be the property of the
Blinded Husband and the Corpse. A meistergesang, "Vom pfarrer
der zu ftinf main starb,"3 which has been ascribed to Hans Rosen-
pliit, may possibly belong under this head.
" D'un vieux cheval et d'une vieille femme "4 may contain reminis-
cences of the Prestre Comporte type, although there are considerable
differences. So, too, a curious Magyar tale5 has certain resemblances
in spite of its unique and grewsome introduction: a woman has a
passion for tearing out people's hair; her husband on his deathbed
* Rittershaus, Die neuislandischen Volksmdrchen, pp. 396 ff.. No. 112. Compare with
it: "Ta Hans'l unt ta' Pfaara" in Blinker, Schwanke, Sagen und Marchen in heamischer
Mundart, pp. 7-9, No. 3.
2"De Groentedief," de Cock, Volkskunde, XIII, 222, No. 7. Compare with it:
"Le Pere Bernard" (Rev. des trad, pop., XI, 302-3), from Haute Bretagne.
3 A. von Keller, Erzahlungen aus altdeutschen Handschriften (Stuttgart Lit. Ver.,
XXXV), pp. 111-19. Stiefel (Zt. d. V. f. Vk., X, 77) relates it loosely to Prestre Comporte.
On the ascription to Rosenpliit see V. Michels, Studien uber die altesten Fastnachtspiele
( =Quellen und Forschungen, LXXVII), p. 148, and J. Demme, Studien uber Hans Rosen-
plut, Milnster, 1906, p. 15.
« Sgbillot, Contes pop. de la Haute Bretagne (1880), I, 236-42, No. 36; see also Step-
puhn, pp. 66, 68.
8 G. von Gaal, Marchen der Magyaren, pp. 276-89.
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTKE 39
assures her that she will die a fivefold death if she does not let him
carry his hair to the grave; she violates his wish and pays the penalty.
What seems to be a fifth type of corpse-story is found in tales from
Finland, Transylvania, and Rumania. The Transylvanian "Der
siebenmal Getodtete"1 is the most easily accessible version of this
type. It is remarkable on account of the abundance of incidents. A
characteristic one, unknown in western Europe, is the floating of
the corpse in a boat until it disturbs a duck hunter and is "shot."2
A few interesting tales from a great variety of places do not accord
with any of the foregoing types. No two of them are alike. They
exhibit only insignificant, incidental resemblances to forms we have
met. The fabliau "Dou sagretaig"3 is the oldest of these wholly
anomalous tales:
A ram butts a priest and kills him. His corpse is placed at the door of a
neighbor whose wife the priest had once loved; it is thrown into the river.
Two fishers draw out the sack containing it, and one of them carries the sack
home. The other refuses to believe that the sack contained nothing but a
corpse, and publicly accuses his comrade of murder. While the first fisher
is undergoing the ordeal of the bier, the ram is accidentally led past, the
corpse bleeds, and the murder is out.
The similarities between this and other forms are negligible.4 The
discovery of the real murderer, the ram, by the ordeal of the bier
seems to be the point of this tale; this is a curious turn which is
paralleled nowhere else. The introductory love affair — lost because
the manuscript is torn — is of a sort unfamiliar in these tales because
there is nothing illicit about it. In a tale5 of the Mande, a Central
African tribe, we have a helpful servant who carries about the body
1 Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmarchen aus dem Sachsenlande in Siebenburgen, 1856.
No. 61. Rumanian: *Obert, Ausland, 1856, 716 (summarized by Steppuhn, pp. 69 ft*.).
Finnish: Aarne, FF Communications, III, No. 1537. Ibid., V, No. 1537, cites 42 Finnish
versions; ibid., VI, No. 1537, gives 8 from Swedes in Finland.
2 See also the tales in Radloflf (note 1 on p. 226).
3 Montaiglon-Raynaud, Receuil general, VI, 243 ff.
4 The two incidents of this tale which may be compared with other forms are the
leaning of the corpse against a door and the throwing of it into water. Both incidents are
so frequent as 'to be of no significance in questions of origin or affiliation. *For the first
see Rfouse], Folk-Lore, VII, 94; Paton, ibid., XI, 334, and note 1 onp. 234below; the second
occurs often in the Prestre Comporte and Dane Hew types. See also H. Parker, Village
Folk-Tales of Ceylon, III, 139-40, and for historical instances, Ltitolf , Ger mania, XVII, 215.
5 L. Frobenius, Der schwarze Dekameron, 342-50, No. 4, "Der Listige" (cf. p. 388).
The Mande have long been in contact with Mohammedans to the north.
231
40 ARCHER TAYLOR
of his mistress' paramour. The journey of the corpse (carried to a
robber's house, laid against a tree in which men were collecting honey,
set before the king's harem) does not exhibit any significant similari-
ties to anything else. It concludes with a well-known incident
which has no connection with the corpse-story cycle : when the guilty
man receives a mark which should distinguish him on the morrow,
he marks all about him in the same way, and thus prevents detection.1
"Die mehrere Male getotete Leiche"2 is a dull tale of a woman who
killed her mother-in-law for making trouble; the blame was shifted
to the husband, to his brother, and then to an outsider. The most
sordid of all these tales is one from Malta.3 It relates how money was
extorted from various merchants by the trick of leaving a child's
body in their shops and then accusing them of murder. Apparently
the same idea inspires a tale from the Swedish population of Finland.4
Of all the anomalous tales the " Little Hunchback" in the
Arabian Nights is the most important, for it has often been used
to bridge the gap in the transmission of these stories from their sup-
posed place of origin in India to Europe. It has already been recog-
nized that it fulfils this office very unsatisfactorily; de Cock's article
was written to prove that it is not such an intermediary, and Step-
puhn (pp. 60 f.) reaches the same conclusion independently. It
seems to be unrelated to any other tale. Chauvin5 states that the
story is probably older than the Cairene recension of the Nights
into which it was interpolated; but we have no descendants from
this hypothetical floating form. The purpose of the insertion is
apparent; it gives a frame for the stories of the murderers who came
forward to accuse themselves. Except for its use in Sumurun,
the dramatization of the " Little Hunchback," there is no evidence of
its popularity apart from the Nights.6
1 For parallels see Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 113-65; Schoepperle,
Tristan and Isolt, I, 214, note 2; von der Leyen, Herrig's Archiv, CXV, 11, note 2.
2 Rittershaus, Die neuisldndischen Volksmarchen, pp. 399 ff., No. 113.
»H. Stumme, Maltesische Marchen, pp. 61-64, No. 22, "Margherita" (original text
in his Maltesische Studien, pp. 44-45, which is apparently much shorter than the trans-
lation).
* FF Communications, VI, No. 1537**.
• In a letter quoted by de Cock, Volkskunde, XIII, 230.
8 See Chauvin, Bibliographic, V, 181. For a variant resembling Sumurun, see Magasin
pittoresque, V, 201-2. It is not mentioned in Conant, The Oriental Tale in England, or
in de Meester, Oriental Influences in the English Literature of the Early 19th Century.
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 41
Two folk-stories about corpses have been inaccessible to me.1
In written literature as contrasted with folk-literature, the theme
of the compromising corpse has not been widely used. It is too
somber, and the lifeless body, except in the way that it affects the
living, offers few possibilities to the literary artist. Noteworthy
examples are: Palacio Valdes, "El Crimen de la Calle de la Perse-
guida";2 the crassly realistic "Der tote Jude," of Hans Heinz Ewers;3
and Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Wrong Box," which Mr. Gran-
ville Barker has recently dramatized as "The Morris Dance." In a
clever story by James Morier4 a dead man's head is bandied about.
The interest in all these is rather in the emotions of the living than
in the disposition of the body. There are a few literary instances
in which the corpse is the "hero" of the tale, but these rest ulti-
mately on some one of the folk-tales discussed below. In an inci-
dental way the compromising corpse appears now and again on the
stage, e.g., in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, IV, iii, and, with still more
horrors, in Tourneur's Revenger's Tragedy, V, i.6
Certain facts about the relations of the various groups of tales
may now be pointed out. No matter how far back we may go with
the forms that have been described, Les trois bossus menestrels cannot
be the source of any one. Nor is there cogent reason for thinking
that the "Little Hunchback" is an intermediary between the East
and the West. For speculation on the possible oriental origin of these
tales, the Santal "Corpse of the Raja's Son" and the Kohlan and
other Indian tales of the Blinded Husband type offer a foundation
firmer than any hitherto proposed.
Obvious interrelations between the groups are few, but cross-
influences of all sorts must not be excluded. The corpse-story in the
*E. T. Kristensen, Bindestuens Saga, p. 116; Schullerus, "Rumanische Volks-
marchen," No. 59, in Archiv des Vereins fur siebenbilrgische Landeskunde, New Series,
XXXIII.
2 Aguas Fuertes = Obras Completas, Vol. X, Madrid, 1907.
» Das Growen", pp. 208-40, Munich, 1912.
4 Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan, chap. xiv.
5 On Marlowe and Titus Andronicus, II, iii, see A. Schroer, Ueber Titus Andronicus,
p. 118 (review by Brandl, Gott. gel. Am., 1891, p. 714); on Tourneur, see E. Koeppel,
Quellenstudien zu den Dramen B. Jonsons, Miinchner Beitrage, XI, 140.
For the painting of the corpse, as in an earlier scene of the Revenger's Tragedy, see
also The Second Maiden's Tragedy, V, ii (Dodsley's Old English Plays, X) and with a
different purpose, Reade, Cloister and the Hearth, chap, xxxiii.
233
42 ARCHER TAYLOR
Blinded Husband and the Corpse has, in spite of its paucity of incident,
something in common with Prestre Comporte. Some tale of the
Prestre Comporte type, as will presently appear, supplied the material
from which some clever narrator adapted incidents for Dane Hew.
The complex "Siebenmal Getodtete" and the tales like it exhibit
no significant similarities to any other group. The cleft between
Tote Frau and other cycles cannot be bridged.
Before taking up the Dane Hew group we may note in passing
certain tales in which the disposition of a compromising corpse
appears merely as an incidental episode. In some of these the
murderer simply props the body up — often at the scene of the mur-
der— and makes his escape.1 This device is best known in the
widespread Unibosmarchen,2 in which it is occasionally replaced by the
episode of the pretended resuscitation of the hero's wife, who has
been slain — so the onlookers think — by a blow. In one variant of
Unibos* the narrator has not unskilfully expanded the motif of the
corpse by inserting details from the longer corpse-stories. It is told
of two monks of Be*gard, and follows the Unibos type fairly well
except for this incident:
While the clever monk is carrying the corpse to town he sees a pear tree
in the moonlight. At its foot he lays the corpse. The proprietor of the
orchard shoots the body "dead," and pays for the monk's silence. Then
the corpse mounted on horseback rides wild in a pot-market. From a
merchant who thinks he has killed the corpse more money is extorted.
Naturally, the stupid monk fails in his attempt to make money from a corpse.
i Examples are collected by Miss M. R. Cox, Cinderella, p. 501, note 42. See further:
Rand, Legends of the Micmacs, No. 57; Grundtvig, Danmarks Folkeviser i Udvalg, p. 101
(Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads, I, 69); Folk-Lore, XXII, 466; "De Schawekeerl,"
Niedersachsen, May 1, 1901 (summarized by Andrae, Rom. Forsch., XVI, 348); R. C.
Temple, Indian Antiquary, IX, 206; Zt. d. V. f. Vk., XVII, 339; Squyr of Low Degre
(ed. Mead), p. 30, cf. pp. xxxii, 76.
1 am not inclined to believe that this motif has any relation to the Hja6ningavlg, the
myth of the recurrent battle, in spite of Liebrecht's comparisons (Otia Imperialia, p. 195).
2 See J. Frey, Gartengesellschaft (ed. Bolte), p. 278, note 6<*; Bolte and Polivka,
Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmarchen, II, 1-18 (No. 61, "Das Btirle"; the
motif is G2, cf. pp. 10 ff.); Jellinek, Literarisches Centralblatt, 1901, col. 899; Wiener,
Yiddish Literature, pp. 45-49. It appears independently in Leskien and Brugmann,
Litauische Volkslieder und M&rchen, No. 38, p. 483 (cf. notes, p. 574).
» Luzel, Contes pop. de la Basse Bretagne, III, 426-38 =Blumml, Schnurren und
Schwdnke des franzdsischen Bauernvolkes, No. 52.
234
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 43
In other tales the corpse is bound on a horse, which is then
released to wander where it will.1 This device also appears in the
Unibosmarchen. In a Santal tale, "The Greatest Cheat of Seven,"2
which is more or less of the Unibos type, we have this incident :
The corpse in a sack is laid on a bullock's back. When the animal tres-
passes on a wheatfield both beast and sack are beaten, and the cheat receives
hush money from the man who thinks himself guilty of killing the woman.
II
The Dane Hew type is, with a few modifications in detail, a
new arrangement in a fixed order of the incidents we have already
met in Prestre Comporte. The importance of literary transmission in
its history explains the clarity of the outlines of the story and the
ease with which the relations of the variants can be perceived. The
outline of the Dane Hew type is as follows :
A husband agrees to his wife's assignation with a libidinous monk
(priest); they have conspired to blackmail him or to punish him for his
presumption. He is killed by a blow on the head. The body is concealed in
an outhouse (pertruis) of the monastery, is returned to the murderer's door,
is exchanged for a hog in a sack,3 and then, more or less completely armed, is
mounted on a horse. In one subdivision of this group the horse runs wild, and
either dashes its rider's brains out against the lintel of a door or falls with its
rider into a river. In the other the horse pursues a mare bearing a man who
flees from the accusation of having committed the murder until horse and
corpse are engulfed in a ditch.
This sequence of incident, which is one of the most useful
means of identifying the type, is followed in all the examples.
Other essential characteristics are the new motivation of the
murder, and the fact that the mounted corpse is armed.4 The
1 See Zt. f. vgl. Lit. gesch., XIII (1900), 176-78; Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions,
II, 247; B6dier, Fabliaux2, p. 469 (*E. Hamonlc, Maine Amoureux; the corpse is armed) ;
Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 68, "Young Hunting," version G, str. 2
(the corpse is armed) ; R. Basset, Contes pop. berberes, p. 223 (the corpse is later resusci-
tated by magic water).
2 A. Campbell, Santal Folk Tales, pp. 98 flf.
3 The incident may have been suggested by the many tales about stolen hogs, e.g.,
Latham, Folk-Lore Record, I, 27; A C Mery Tales, Shakespeare's Jest Books fed. Hazlitt),
I, 31-36, No. 16. See also Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 130, 385; Birlinger>
Alemannia, XIV, 252; Bolte, ibid., XV, 63; J. E. Simpkins, County Folklore, VII (Fife),'
pp. 220 f .
4 An armed corpse on horseback appears occasionally elsewhere (see note 1 above),
as an incidental motif, but not, as far as I know, in a corpse-story.
235
44 ARCHER TAYLOR
incident of the corpse's ride must not be confused with the analogous
adventure of an unarmed body in Prestre Comporte. As the outline
indicates, the type shows two subdivisions, one in which the horse
runs wild,1 and one in which it pursues a mare.2 Of these the first
is older both in the history of the tale and with regard to the variants
preserved; the latter has enjoyed a singular literary popularity.
Unfortunately the lack of material prevents us from reproducing
completely the process of selection which created the Dane Hew type.
Certainly neither the fabliau "Le prestre comporte" nor any one of
its nearest associates was the starting-point; for that purpose a
defective Swedish tale,3 in the absence of anything in French, must
serve. The Swedish version stands about half-way between Prestre
Comporte and the earlier form of Dane Hew, i.e., the one in which
the horse runs wild. Here we have the characteristic incidents of
Prestre Comporte — the guilty wife and the unarmed corpse on horse-
back— but the order typical of Dane Hew. It will be abundantly
apparent that the development of this new type took place in France,
although the best example of an intermediate form is Swedish.4
To the earlier form of the tale belong the three French fabliaux:
"Du segretain ou du moine" (SoM); "Du segretain moine" (SM);
"Le dit dou soucretain" (DS). Steppuhn's thesis discusses these
thoroughly and, in the main, correctly. He has recognized that the
three are closely related; that SM and DS are derivatives from a
common source; that SoM is an improvement, chiefly in matters of
motivation, on the other two. However, it is not necessarily true
that SoM is therefore the source, or a faithful derivative of the source,
which was corrupted in the tale which lies behind SM and DS.
Steppuhn's argumentation (pp. 34-38) rests solely on the motivation
of SoM, which is shown to be the work of a clever craftsman. Only
1 Montaiglon-Raynaud, Receuil general, V, No. 123, "Du segretain ou du moine";
ibid., No. 136, "Du segretain moine"; ibid., VI, No. 150, "Le dit dou soucretain." An
oral form of this tale was current in Great Britain a century ago: see Brueyre, Revue des
trad, pop., V, 198.
8 Hazlitt, Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, 1866, III, 135-46 (super-
sedes C. H. Hartshorne, Ancient Metrical Romances, pp. 316-29); Settembrmi, II Novel-
lino di Masuccio Salernitano, Novella I, pp. 7-23; Braga, Contos tradicionaes do povo
portuguez, No. 109, p. 210 (combined with Tote Frau, see note 1 on p. 225). Only the
independent versions are cited here.
3 Bondeson, Svenska Folksagor, pp. 301-4, No. 86, "Prasten, som de odde tre ganger"
("The priest who was slain three times").
« Steppuhn's opinions (pp. 41, 64) are neither clear nor consistent.
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTEE 45
in one point, the discovery of the body, is a comparison with the
other tales possible: in SoM the body is discovered at the fumier
before the sack is carried to the inn; in all other variants (except
Masuccio's novella, which omits the incident) it is discovered at
the inn. Here it is clear that SoM is less original, since all the
remaining variants agree against it. This fact and the presumption
that the better story-teller would be more likely than a poorer one to
change the story justify the opinion that SoM as a whole represents
the source of the three fabliaux less faithfully than do SM and DS.
The tale as told in the fabliaux is preserved in various literary
and popular forms. The thirty-fifth novella of Francesco Angeloni
da Terni, which still lies in manuscript in the Marciana at Venice, is
closely related to SM-DS. It is accessible only in the following
summary by Marchesi:
Nicoletto, pescatore, sorpreso il medico Gilberto con sua moglie, lo
uccide. La moglie pone il morto entro una cassa; venuta la notte, Nicoletto
lo porta presso la bottega di un macellaio; questi, trovatolo, lo appoggia alia
porta di uno speziale, emette grida lamentose, suona il campanello e fugge;
lo speziale esce e, trovato il morto, lo pone a sedere sulla latrina di una casa
lontana; qui alcuni giovani lanciano al morto qualche sassata, poi, credendo
averlo ucciso loro, lo legano a cavallo di un asino e lo lasciano liberamente
vagare per la campagna ; finch£ 1'asino, inseguito, cade ed annega in un fiume,
e si crede poi che anche il medico sia morto annegato.1
This is not entirely clear, for it is not evident who pursues the ass
and its burden. The novella resembles the fabliaux SM-DS in the
fall of the ass and corpse into the river; this and the placing of the
corpse sulla latrina di una casa lontana are conclusive evidence that
the tale belongs to the Dane Hew type. The illicit love affair does
not agree with any tale in that group except "Der tote Trompeter":
in that, too, the husband is a fisherman. Both the German folk-tale
and the Italian novella reject blackmail as the motive of the murder-
ers, and substitute the liaison. Possibly the conspiracy of husband
and wife to defraud the monk lacked plausibility. The incident of
the exchange of the body for a hog in a sack is lacking, but the
novella shows no other similarity to Masuccio's novella. Angeloni's
tale is a descendant of the fabliaux SM-DS (or their source), which
has been modified somewhat by oral transmission, and is closely
related to the German tale next to be discussed.
* G. Marches!, Per la storia della novella italiana nel secolo XVII (Rome, 1897), 115.
237
46 ARCHER TAYLOR
"Der tote Trompeter,"1 one of the best of the folk-tales, has been
ingeniously adapted to its new home in Pomerania:
A trumpeter attached to a Swedish regiment quartered in Pomerania has
criminal relations with a fisher's wife. He is killed, and the body is carried
to a house (the monastery of the fabliaux) where the officers are banqueting.
On coming out they knock it over and down a flight of steps. They bear it
to the fisher's house because they recall the liaison. The fisher exchanges
it for a hog in a sack which has been dropped by two frightened thieves. He
takes the sack to its owner, the smith (instead of keeping it himself as in the
fabliaux). The latter finds the corpse in place of his hog, ties it on an ass,
and turns the ass loose. The beast runs between the ranks of the regiment —
which is preparing to march away — and falls into a pit of slaked lime.
This agrees very closely with DS. Indeed, in the following minor
details "Der tote Trompeter" agrees with DS against the fabliau's
closest parallel, SM: the trumpeter (monk) is killed in a sudden fit
of rage or jealousy; those who carry the corpse back to the fisher's
house know of the liaison; there are two thieves, and the bearer
of the corpse hears them talking.
These very same details prove also that the version in the His-
toire des Larrons2 is derived from DS. Here the tale is told of an
advocate, Carilde. There is a curious turn at the end : the narrator
says that the corpse alone fell into a pit which had been dug in the
road, while the colt galloped on.
From the Histoire des Larrons the story passed into Kirkman's
History of Prince Erastus.3 The English Erastus is a derivative
through the French of an Italian remaniement of the Seven Sages.
Kirkman found in his source the tale of Les trois bossus menestrels
and to this he added the story he found in the Histoire des Larrons.*
He says (p. 220) : " This story or example may be and hath been ap-
plyed to the same purpose as the former of the Lady of Modena [i.e.,
1 Pelz, Blatter f. pomm. Volkskunde, III (1894), 43.
2 Histoire generale des Larrons divisee en trois livres . . . par F. D. C. Lyonnois
(i.e., Francois de Calvi), 3 vols. in 1 (Rouen, 1639), I, chap, xxxvi, 239-51: "De 1'auan-
ture estrange ariuee en la ville de Rouen, en la personne d'vn Aduocat."
s Ed. cit., London, 1674, pp. 206-19, in particular pp. 213 ff. It is more conveniently
accessible in a summary by Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 352 flf.
* The combination is not found in French, e.g., Histoire pitoyable du Prince Erastus
. . . nouvellement traduite d'ltalien en Francois, Anvers, 1568, pp. 106-16; Histoire
pitoyable du Prince Erastus, Paris, 1584, pp. 251-75; Histoire du Prince Erastus, Paris,
1709, pp. 290-318; nor in Italian, e.g., Erasto doppo molti secoli ritornato al fine in luce
.... In Vineggia, Appresso di Agostino Bindoni, 1552, flf. 806-89o; I Compassionevoli
Avvenimenti di Erasto In Vinegia, 1554, pp. 221-45. In all of these, Les troia
bossus menestrels alone forms the eighteenth chapter.
238
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 47
Les trois bossus menestrels] : to shew the cruelty and little credit that
is to be given to women, and by this or the former they preserved the
life of Prince Erastus for one day longer." Kirkman has altered
somewhat the strange adventure of the advocate Carilde. The con-
clusion has suffered from the necessity of fitting the new story into
the Seven Sages as an example of the untrustworthiness of women.
In Kirkman's Erastus the woman betrays herself and her husband by
an inadvertent exclamation when she unexpectedly sees the body of
the advocate; a similar incident appears in the story as it is told in
Timoneda's Patranuelo (see p. 245).
Longfellow also based his "Martin Franc and the Monk of Saint
Anthony"1 on DS, as is apparent for the following reasons: the
increasing poverty of the merchant gives the monk, as in DS only, an
opportunity to press his suit; the keys are taken, as in DS only,
from the monk's belt. Longfellow either explains away or avoids
the psychological difficulties which Steppuhn met in analyzing DS.
This process reminds us of the changes which the author of SoM
introduced, changes which indeed occasionally agree with those of
Longfellow. Of course, it is not at all out of the question to hold
that Longfellow knew both SoM and DS. Andrae2 is surely wrong
in supposing that Longfellow heard this tale in the streets of Rouen.
The poet himself says: "He [the narrator] said he found it in an
ancient manuscript of the Middle Ages, in the archives of the public
library." What more is necessary ?
Two prose retellings of DS offer no points of interest.3
A Flemish tale, "De Hoenderdief,"4 is told of a thief's body
which is carried about by "slimme Jan." The incidents and their
order are familiar. The agreement of the tale with SoM in the
matter of the thieves' discovery of the exchange of the corpse for the
hog before they have carried it to the inn may indicate descent
from SoM, or, as is suggested by other details, may be due to the
1 Prose Works, Outremer, I, 32-47.
2 Beiblatt zur Anglia, X, 149.
3 Les Bibliotheques Francoises de [Francois Grude de] la Croix du Maine et de [Antoine]
du Verdier, sieur de Vauprivas; revue par M. Rigoley de Juvigny (Paris, 1772-73), IV,
376-80; [Jean Pierre Niceron et Francois Joachim du Tertre], Bibliotheque amusante et
instructive (Paris, 1755), II, 14-15 (very much condensed). See also von der Hagen,
Gesammtabenteuer, III, p. liii, note 1.
« De Cock, Volkskunde, XIII, 227, No. 18.
239
48 AKCHER TAYLOR
condensation and consequent speeding up of the narrative. The
introduction of "slimme Jan" has hastened the tempo; the corpse
need not be carried back each time to its real or supposed starting-
place. The conclusion (the horse and corpse run wild in a pot-
market) is clearly a later addition ; this incident is especially popular
in North German territory.
A few tales are either broken-down forms of this variety of the
Dane Hew type or contain reminiscences of it. They have lost its
most important characteristics, and are recognizable only by the
sequence of incidents. An Ammerland tale1 of the leaning of a
Catholic priest's body against a window ledge and the finding of a
hog which two frightened thieves have dropped is clearly defective;
but we cannot reconstruct it. One step in that direction is apparent.
The husband returns with the hog after he has thrown the corpse into
a swamp, and tells his wife that he exchanged the corpse for it.
Obviously the story has been diverted from its proper course, and
the exchange should have taken place. In several tales of the Dane
Hew type the intention of throwing the corpse into a milldam is
announced just before the incident of the hog; but in them it is not
executed.
"Sor Beppo"2 is a clever, well-told folk-tale from Italy:
Fra Michelaccio, who bothered everybody by begging and paid no
attention to warnings, visited a house which he had been forbidden to enter.
The owner said nothing, but killed him with a club. Sor Beppo, the local
grave-digger, agreed to dispose of the corpse for a consideration. He leaned
it against the door of an inn. Summoned again, he hung it in a butcher-
shop. The butcher gave him half a gelded hog for his help. Sor Beppo
buried the corpse under a heap of dead bodies, where it remains.
Features characteristic of the Dane Hew type are the killing with a
club, and the sequence of incidents, in which the inn corresponds to the
monastery, and the butcher-shop to the incident of the hog in a sack.
Other tales3 explain how the butcher-shop came to have a place in
the narrative. In the Middle Ages, when the fabliaux were told,
an inn-keeper or householder might readily enough be supposed to
1 Andrae, Rom. Forsch., XVI, 348.
2 Grisanti, Usi, credenze, proverbi e racconti di Isnello, I (1899), 213-16.
8 Compare Pitr6, Fiabe, novelle . . . pop. sic., No. 165 and Blatter f. pomm. Volks-
kunde, IX, 24-26; both are cited above in note 2 on p. 229.
240
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 49
have a side of pork in his larder. Today the only person likely to
have so much meat at one time is the butcher. For the sake of
plausibility the substitution was a ready one. In the tales cited the
situation is clearer than in "Sor Beppo," where the theft of the bacon
has been altered into the butcher's gift of it. This tale, like several
other Italian tales, omits the ride on horseback.
"Juvadi e lu cantalanotti,"1 a Calabrian tale with a curious
history, also lacks the ride on horseback. The order of the incidents
and, in large measure, the motivation are new :
Juvadi's mother kills a cock for a holiday. While they are eating it, he
hears a man going past, and runs out and kills him. He puts the corpse in a
sack and starts off to throw it into a ravine. On the way thither he exchanges
his sack for another containing a hog. He threatens to expose the unfor-
tunate dupe, but compromises for fifty ducats and the corpse. Then he leans
it against the door of a monastery, and there, for a promise of silence, receives
a similar sum, a monk's cowl, and the corpse. He now places it in an out-
house, where a guardian knocks it over. From this man he extorts a hundred
ducats, and together they bury the corpse.
The last incident shows striking similarities to the analogous one
in the French fabliaux and in Angeloni's novella. To these tales
"Juvadi e lu cantalanotti" must be intimately related. The monas-
tery, whose appearance here is fortuitous, is corroborative evidence, if
any were needed. This tale is particularly interesting because of
the antecedents of its hero. Wesselski traces him back to Turkish
and Arabic sources. However, there is no reason for believing that
this tale also came from the East; the resemblances to the French
fabliaux are conclusive on that point. In spite of the Turkish
pedigree of its hero this tale looks toward the West and not the
East; it cannot be used to bridge the gap between the two.
We now pass to the second subdivision of the Dane Hew type:
that in which the horse bearing the corpse pursues a mare on which
rides a man who thinks he may be accused of murder. Our knowl-
edge of this subdivision is based on three independent tales: "Dane
1 Mango, Archivio per lo studio delle trad, pop., X (1891), 51-52 = Wesselski, Der
Hodscha Nasreddin, 1911, II, 122, No. 438.
For the introduction of this tale, compare another tale about Juvadi (Giufa) in
Crane's Italian Popular Tales, pp. 294 fl. (cf. p. 380, note 16). See also Basset, Revue des
trad, pop., XVII, 92; Mouli6ras, Fourberies de Si Djeh'a, No. 21 (see also Basset, Tableau
Comparatif, p. 18, note 6, in the same book).
241
50 ARCHER TAYLOR
Hew," the first novella of Masuccio and its derivatives, and "Os dos
irmaos."
On the whole, the English "Dane Hew"1 agrees very closely
with the fabliaux SM-DS except for the decisive incident of the mare.
The story is as follows:
Dane Hew, a young and lusty monk of the abbey of Leicester, has long
cherished designs on a tailor's wife. At last he makes his wishes known to
her. She feigns to consent, and agrees to an assignation for the following
morning. That evening, however, she tells all to her husband, and dis-
claims any intention of giving him a "cuckold's hood." On the morrow the
tailor conceals himself in a chest. When the monk arrives and hands over
the 20 nobles he had promised, she opens the chest to put them in it; out
leaps the tailor, and kills the monk with a blow on the head. In the evening he
bears the body to the abbey and lays it against the wall. There the abbot's
man finds it. When Dane Hew refuses to answer the summons to come to
the abbot and explain his absence, the servitor informs the abbot of the
situation. The abbot calls for his staff, and finding Dane Hew still unre-
sponsive, "gaue him such a rap, That he fel down at that clap." For forty
shillings the abbot's man, who is aware of the monk's unfortunate attachment,
bears the body back to the tailor's. The tailor, restless with dreams of the
monk, rises in the night. He finds the corpse at his door, and "slays" it
again with a pole-ax. It is too near morning to dispose of the body. On the
following night the tailor bears it away with the intention of throwing it in a
milldam. He terrifies two thieves into dropping a stolen hog in a sack,
and leaves the corpse for the thieves. They discover the exchange in one of
their homes, and take the corpse back to the miller from whom they had
stolen the hog. The miller must wait until the next night. Then he
mounts Dane Hew on the abbot's horse, and puts a long pole in the monk's
hand. In the morning the horse pursues the abbot's mare when he rides
out to supervise his workmen. They beat the corpse with clubs and staves.
Then it is buried.
This story, told in rough couplets, is preserved on six leaves
printed in black letter by John Allde. The date of its publication
cannot be exactly determined. It is approximately given by the
fact that the first mention of Allde as a printer is in 1554.2 Clouston
1 Hazlitt, Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, III, 130-46.
It is summarized in J. Aubrey, Letters of Eminent Men (London, 1813), I, 119-27
(in a letter from Mr. Wanley to Dr. Charlett on the meaning of the title Don). The
first lines are quoted in Nichols, History of Leicestershire (1795), I, 287.
Hazlitt's reference to Boisrobert, Menagiana, "The Three Ravens," is incorrect. In
Menagiana ou lea bons mots et remarques critiques . . . de Monsieur Menage, recuellis par
sea amis (3d ed., Paris, 1715), III, 83-85, there is a tale of Boisrobert's about the three
Racans, which has no interest for us.
* Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 354.
242
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTBE 51
believes that the rudeness of the language justifies him in dating the
composition of the verse about a century earlier. In that case it
would be roughly contemporaneous with Masuccio's Novellino
(finished in 1476). "Dane Hew" has the same details in common
with DS as "Der tote Trompeter" and the story in the Histoire des
Larrons. There are certain concessions to good taste. The pertruis
incident is modified and the fumier has disappeared. The most
important changes are the introduction of the abbot's man and the
distributing of the corpse's adventures over several nights. Both of
these are certainly innovations. The discovery of the corpse takes
place in the home of one of the thieves, not at an inn. The details of
the concluding incident — the corpse beaten by the abbot's men — are
probably unoriginal. No doubt the story should have ended with
the corpse falling into a pit, as in Masuccio's novella and the fabliaux.
Although Masuccio's version of the story later became very popular
in England, it is curious to note that knowledge of "Dane Hew" is
based solely on this black-letter print of John Allde's. There are
no folk-tales derived from "Dane Hew," and the story has been
known only to antiquarians. "Dane Hew" is a very important
version because it throws new light on the relations of all the other
tales in its group.
In the history of literature by far the most important variant of
this subdivision is Masuccio's first novella;1 more than a dozen
tales in England, France, Italy, and Germany are derived directly
or indirectly from it. Because this novella contains the incident
of the pursuit of the mare it must be derived from the same source
as the English "Dane Hew."2 Two facts are characteristic of this
Italian form: the husband wishes the monk to come in order to
revenge himself (not as a blackmailing scheme); and the incident
of the exchange of the corpse for a hog in a sack is omitted.
The oldest derivative of Masuccio's novella, in the Comptes du
monde adventureux* does not deserve especial notice. The popularity
1 II Novellino di Masuccio Salernitano (ed. Settembrini) , I. 7-23. Th^ narrazione
occupies pp. 8-21. The Novellino first appeared in 1476.
2 Steppuhn's arguments (pp. 44, 48) have no weight. They are concerned with
similarities in motivation, and show only that two skilful narrators (Masuccio and the
author of SoM) hit upon the same devices to make their stories plausible.
» No. 23 (ed. F. Frank [Paris, 1878], I, 125). On the Comptes see Toldo, Contribute
allo studio della novella francese, p. 119, and the review by G. Paris, Journal des savants,
1895, pp. 350-55.
243
52 ARCHER TAYLOR
of the novella in England is particularly noteworthy. Here it was told
as a humorous anecdote, versified, dramatized, and even taken into a
county history. All of the English examples rest ultimately on
Thomas Hey wood's History of Women.1 Some are derived directly,2
and others through Blomefield's History of Norfolk? Both are
localized at Norwich, but only the latter is associated with Sir
Thomas Erpingham. None of the various versifications has any
singular merit; the least distinguished is the anonymous Hue-and-Cry
after the Priest. Jodrell says in his preface (p. vi) : "I have deviated
in no important point from the letter, but have only embellished the
narrative with poetical colours." The first two lines:
When guilt pursues the coward soul
Vain is our flight from pole to pole
show what his "poetical colours" were. The cleverest versions —
both burlesques — are those of Hardinge and Colman.
The two derivatives of Masuccio's novella which make the
greatest pretensions to literary art are curiously different and yet
intimately related. Batacchi's "II morto a cavallo"4 is a clever
mock-heroic poem. The description of the awakening of the passion
which leads to the monk's downfall will characterize the whole:
Non si veloce giu dal ciel turbato,
Pelettrica favilla al suol discende,
ne la quercia che cento anni sprezzato
avea '1 furor dell' aquilone incende,
come lo stral del crudo Dio d'amore
ratto piagd del padre Marco il cuore.
i London, 1624, pp. 253-56, "The Faire Lady of Norwich."
«T. Heywood, The Captives, I, ii; II, i; III, i, iii; IV, iii (in Bullen, Old Plays
London, 1885], IV, 105-217); Pasquil's Jests, London, n.d. (ca. 1634; an enlarged
edition), pp. 51-53, "A pretty tale of two friers"; Burton, Unparalleled Varieties, 4th ed.,
1699, chap, vi, 167; A Hue-and-Cry after the Priest; or the Convent, London, 1749.
8 P. Blomefleld, An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk
(London, 1807), VI, 415-18. The passage is reprinted from an earlier edition of Blome-
fleld in Gentleman's Magazine, L (1780), 310-12.
It has been versified by R. P. Jodrell as The Knight and Friars; an historick tale,
London, 1785, pp. 9-26 (pp. 27-31, a reprint of Blomefield); by George Colman the
Younger in Broad Grins, London, 1802, pp. 40-106, "The Knight and the Friar"; by
George Hardinge in Miscellaneous Works, London, 1818, II, 322-30, "The Knight and
the Two Friars."
Gough (British Topographer [London, 1780], II, 27) cites "The fair lady of Norwich;
or the pleasant history of two friars, John and Richard"; this may be still another
reworking of the tale.
« D. L. Batacchi, Novelle (ed. F. Tribolati), I, 289 ff., No. 12.
244
DANE HEW, MUNK OF LEICESTRE 53
"Der Todte zu Ross/'1 which is derived from Batacchi, takes as its
text "Wehe dem, den Amor zum Spielwerke seiner Launen wahlt."
Langbein seeks plausibility, not rhetorical effect, and writes in a
spirit of drab reality. A Spanish version of Masuccio's novella
is of some interest because it gives a new conclusion to the tale. This,
the third patrana of Timoneda,2 ends with an incident showing the
untrustworthiness of women which is comparable to the conclusion
of the tale in Kirkman's Erastus. In a quarrel between husband and
wife, the real murderers, she betrays their guilt and they are con-
demned to death.3
There still remains for consideration the Portuguese "Os dos
irmaos e a mulher morta."4 This is a combination of the types Tote
Frau and Dane Hew, and does some violence to both in the joining.
After beginning essentially as the Tote Frau type does (with the
exception that the body is kept over night in a church and starts
its wanderings from there rather than from the grave), the corpse is
exchanged for a hog in a sack, is carried to an inn, is leaned against
a door, and is then mounted on an ass which pursues the priest on a
mare until the priest dashes his brains out against the lintel of a door.
This tale does not preserve the characteristic order of the incidents,
and seems imperfect in other details. Why should the innocent
priest — he is called to excommunicate the "devil" in the old woman
— flee and brain himself ? This tale cannot be derived from Masuc-
cio's novella, because it contains the incident of the hog in the sack
which Masuccio omitted. It cannot be derived from the three
French fabliaux, because it contains the incident of the mare. It
stands nearest to the English "Dane Hew," but it can be related to
that only through a common source. Thus this sadly mutilated tale
proves to be a useful confirmation of the existence of a common
source of Masuccio's novella and "Dane Hew, Munk of Leicestre."
The results of this study of the variants of the Dane Hew group
may now be summed up. There are two subdivisions of this group :
1 A. F. E. Langbein, Sdmmtliche Schriften (Stuttgart, 1837), XXVII, 19^-214, No. 8.
2 Juan de Timoneda, El Patrafluelo ( =Biblioteca de Autores Espafloles, III), p. 134,
No. 3. It is a derivative of Masuccio's novella; cf. MenSndez y Pelayo, Origenes de la
Novela ( = Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Espafloles, VII), II, p. lii, note 3.
3 For parallels, see von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, III, p. xlv, note 1; Clouston,
Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 357 fl.
* See note 1 on p. 225.
54 AKCHER TAYLOR
one in which the corpse is mounted on a horse which runs wild, and
another in which the horse bearing the corpse pursues a mare. The
variants of the former and older subdivision are due to oral and not
literary transmission. The fabliau, "Du segretain ou du moine,"
stands aside from the line of direct descent; it is a remaniement by a
clever hand. The subdivision is better represented by the two fa-
bliaux, "Du segretain moine" and "Le dit dou soucretain." Closely
allied to these two are several clever folk-tales which exhibit minor
changes caused by oral transmission. The continued popularity of
this type of tale among the folk is proved by the existence of tales
which seem to be corrupt versions of this group. The state of affairs
is quite different with the second subdivision; it has been spread
broadcast by literary means. It is composed of three tales which
imply the existence of a French tale differing from the two last-
named fabliaux by the insertion of the pursuit of the mare. Step-
puhn held that this development took place in the Iberian peninsula,
for he knew it only in Masuccio's novella, which claims a Spanish
source,1 and in the Portuguese "Os dos irmaos." This opinion
is less tenable since the addition of the English "Dane Hew" to
the list of variants. These three can only be derived from a
common source, which, from geographical considerations, was
probably French. The English and Portuguese tales have given rise
to no new forms; they are important only in determining the history
of the story. The Italian novella has enjoyed a remarkable literary
success, such as fell to the lot of no other tale about the wanderings
of a corpse.
I am indebted to Professor George Lyman Kittredge for the sug-
gestion of this paper, and for helpful criticism. Dr. Paull F. Baum
has been very generous in tracing references for me.
ARCHER TAYLOR
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
1 Amalfl, "Quellen und Parallelen zum Novellino des Salernitaners Masuccio,"
Zt. d. V. f. Vk., IX, 38, does not question this claim.
DRYDEN'S TEMPEST AS A SOURCE OF BODMER'S NOAH
In Shakespeare's Tempest, Act I, scene ii, Prospero, in the course
of his conversation with Ariel, recalls the following incident :
Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee,
By help of her more potent ministers
And in her most immitigable rage
Into a cloven pine; within which rift
Imprison'd thou didst painfully remain
A dozen years ....
If thou more murmur'st, I will rend an oak
And peg thee in his knotty entrails till
Thou hast howl'd away twelve winters.1
Two passages very similar to this appear in Bodmer's Noah.
The first occurs in a characterization of the giant Gog:
Ihn vergniigte, wann er auf einen Sklaven erzurnt war,
Eine Fichte zu spalten, und Hand und Fuss in der Spalte
Eingekerkert drei Tag' ihn schmachten zu lassen.
[Canto V, 11. 487-S9.]2
Later, Bodmer's angel Raphael commands the two giants, Gog
and Perez, to prepare the lumber required for the ark. After
issuing the command he adds the direful threat:
Murret ihr unter der Biirde, so will ich den Eichbaum zerspalten,
Und euch beide will ich in sein knorrichtes Eingeweid' klemmen,
Bis ihr drei langsame Tage darin verheult habt.
[VI, 143-45.1
The striking resemblance between these German and English
passages was noted by Ellinger, and again by Koster. Ellinger
remarks cautiously: " Vielleicht hat Prosperos Erzahlung von Ariels
Gefangenschaft, der Sturm, I, ii, Bodmer die Anregung zu der
' •
» Globe edition, 11. 274-79. 294-96.
2 This and the following passage are quoted from the edition of 1765; they are not
contained in the shorter version of 1750. All the other citations, however, are made
from the edition of 1750: Noah, ein Helden-Gedicht, Frankfurt und Leipzig, published
anonymously.
247] 55 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
56 C. H. IBERSHOFF
Erfindung gegeben."1 Roster's inference is very positive: "Diese
Stelle ist ein Beweis dafiir, dass Bodmer, ebenso wie Haller, Shake-
speare sehr gut gekannt hat."2
The motif, to be sure, is Shakespearean; but Bodmer, I believe,
did not derive it from Shakespeare. In 1667 Dry den, in collabo-
ration with Sir William Davenant, prepared an adaptation of Shake-
speare's Tempest, and in it took over almost word for word the lines
from Shakespeare quoted above.3 Many other passages in Bodmer's
Noah are, as I shall proceed to show, clearly derived from Dryden's
play. It was therefore from Dryden's version rather than from
Shakespeare's that Bodmer derived his cloven pine and oak.
It may not be amiss to recall at this point that Bodmer was an
inveterate borrower of literary material. Nor did he attempt to con-
ceal the fact; on the contrary, he was surprisingly ready to confess
his borrowing proclivity, and on several occasions was even at some
pains to justify his practice.
In Dryden's adapted Tempest Prospero, the Duke of Milan, is,
by his usurping brother Antonio, borne out to sea together with his
two young daughters, Miranda and Dorinda, and put ashore on a
remote island. Novel situations subsequently arise from the fact
that Prospero's ward Hippolito, who is likewise brought to the same
island, has never beheld a woman,4 while Prospero's daughters have
never looked upon a man other than their father. Here on the
lonely, enchanted island the members of the little group pass their
days, the daughters being kept in one cave and — without their
knowledge — Hippolito in another. Fifteen years have elapsed
1 C. F. Nicolai, Brief e iiber den itzigen Zustand der schonen Wissenschaften in Deutsch-
land (ed. G. Ellinger) , p. xix. The Brief e were first published in 1755. Nicolai had read
the Noah in the edition of 1752, which contains the second of the two passages quoted
above. He classes that passage with the "Marchen, die alien Witz der Kunstrichter
erschopfen wtirden, wenn sie in einem alten Dichter standen, und die bei einem neueren
Dichter ganz und gar nicht zu entschuldigen sind" (1755 ed., p. 56). He does not sus-
pect the source of the passage.
*C. O. Frh. von Schonaich, Neologisches Wdrterbuch (ed. A. Koster), p. 499.
» The Tempest, in The Works of John Dryden (ed. Scott and Saintsbury), III, 124.
4 Cf. Act I, sc. ii. This idea, as Dryden himself states in the preface to the play,
was conceived by Davenant as the "counterpart to Shakespeare's plot." In the Shake-
spearean play Miranda is represented as having seen but two men prior to her meeting
with Ferdinand, who is, as she confesses [Act I, sc. ii], "the first That e'er I sighed for."
248
DRYDEN'S " TEMPEST " AS A SOURCE OF BODMER'S "NOAH" 57
since their arrival in their island abode. A ship founders upon the
shore. Miranda sees the disaster, and makes report:
.... Sister, I have .... news to tell you:
In this great creature [sc. the ship] there were other creatures;
And shortly we may chance to see that thing
Which you have heard my father call a man.
[Act I, sc. ii.]
Eventually Hippolito and the sisters meet; Miranda retires, and
Hippolito and Dorinda enter into conversation.
In the Noah, Japhet, who has never set eyes upon a woman,
chances upon Sipha's three daughters; two of them withdraw, and
Japhet enters into conversation with the third.1
The most notable of Bodmer's specific borrowings from Dryden's
play are listed below. The English passages have been arranged in
the order of their occurrence; opposite each will be found the German
parallel passage or passages.
The Tempest* Noah*
Act I, sc. ii
Mir I have heard .... die Liebe, den lezten, den
My father say, we women were made gottlichsten Abdruck,
for hun [sc. man]. Die hat der Schopfer dem Adam
[P. 128.] tief in sein Herz eingegraben:
Fur ihn ausgeschaffen bracht Gott
ihm die Mutter der Menschen.
[Ill, 103-5.]
Eben die Liebe hat Gott auch in
unser Herz eingegraben,
Fur uns ausgeschaffen bringt Gott
uns die Tochter des Sipha.
[Ill, 110-11.]
1 It appears highly probable that Wieland's Zemin und Gulindy is indebted to this
episode of Japhet and Sipha's daughter as contained in the Noah — a relation which was
overlooked by Budde in his Wieland und Bodmer (cf. p. 140). The moth* fh Wieland's
poem is the same; nor are verbal correspondences between the two poems lacking.
2 The quotations are from the edition mentioned in note 3 on p. 248.
8 The quotations are from the edition of 1750; see note 2 on p. 247. In this edition
the borrowed passages are at tunes closer to the text of the Tempest than they are hi
later editions.
249
58
C. H. IBERSHOFP
The Tempest
Act II, sc. ii
Hip. Sir, I have often heard you
say, no creature
Lived in this isle, but those which
man was lord of.
Why, then, should I fear ?
Prosp. But here are creatures which
I named not to thee,
Who share man's sovereignty by
nature's laws,
And oft depose him from it.
[P. 138.]
Prosp. Imagine something between
young men and angels;
Fatally beauteous, and have killing
eyes:
Their voices charm beyond the
nightingale's;
They are all enchantment: Those,
who once behold them
Are made their slaves for ever.
[P. 138.]
Noah
Wahrlich ein Madchen muss eine
besiegende Macht in sich haben,
Dass es den Ernst und den hohern
Verstand des Mannes bezwinget,
Welcher bey seiner Anmuth den
kiirzern zieht und verschwindet.
[Ill, 28-30.]
Nichtsdestoweniger geh ich mit
vollem Vertrauen hiniiber,
Diesem schonen Geschlecht zu be-
gegnen, und von ihm zu kommen,
Ohne dass unter dem Liebreiz die
Hoheit des Mannes erliege.
Erstlich zwar hoff ich des Sipha
Tochter seyn besser erzogen,
Als den Himmel der Schonheit zum
Fall der Weisheit zu brauchen,
Welche der Schopfer dem Mann zum
Merkmal der Herrschaft ertheilt
hat.
[Ill, 34-39.]
Sie sind ein Mittelding zwischen
dem Jiingling und Engel.
[Ill, 62.]
.... Madchen der unteren Erde,
von welchen mein Vater
Warnend sagte, sie todteten mit
den verletzenden Augen,
Und mit Worten hauchten sie Gift
in der Jiinglinge Herzen.
[I, 16&-71.J
.... In Wahrheit weiss ich nicht
Was das ist, mit den Augen umbrin-
gen, mit Worten vergiften.
[I, 174-75.]
Dieses Entziicken ....
Scheinet mir eine natiirliche Zau-
berey, die uns verstricket.
[Ill, 206, 212.]
250
DRYDEN'S "TEMPEST" AS A SOURCE OF BODMER'S "NOAH" 59
The Tempest
Hip. Are they so beautiful ?
Prosp. Calm sleep is not so soft;
nor winter suns,
Nor summer shades, so pleasant.
Hip. Can they be fairer than the
plumes of swans ?
Or more delightful than the peacock's
feathers ?
Or than the gloss upon the necks of
doves ?
Or have more various beauty than
the rainbow ? —
These I have seen, and, without
danger, wondered at.
[P. 139.]
Prosp. But all the danger lies in
a wild young man.
[P. 140.]
Noah
1st sie so gross als man sagt, ist die
Schonheit der Madchen so mach-
tig?
[HI, 44.]
Weder der sanfte Schlaf ist so sanft,
noch der Sommerlaube
Kiihlende Schatten so lieblich.
[Ill, 63-64.]
Konnen sie heller seyn, als die
weissen Federn der Schwane;
Oder anmuthiger als der Glanz an
dem Nacken der Tauben;
Oder sind ihre Farben verschiedner
und feiner vertheilet,
Als der vielfarbigte Bogen in einem
treufelnden Staube,
Welchen ein Wasserfall spriitzt,
den die Sonnen-Stralen gebrochen ?
Dieses sind Schonheiten, welche
man ohne Gefahrlichkeit siehet.
[Ill, 45-50.]
Was fur ein Loos steht euch von den
wildern Mannern zu furchten!
[Ill, 819.]
Act II, sc. iii
Dor. Though I die for it, I must
have the other peep.
[P. 143.]
Dor I'm told I am
A woman; do not hurt me, pray,
fair thing.
Hip. I'd sooner tear my eyes out,
than consent
To do you any harm.
[P. 143.]
Aber wie grosse Gefahr der Anblick
der Madchen begleitet,
Konnt ich der Neugier nicht wider-
stehn das Wunder zu sehen.
[Ill, 51-52.]
. . . . du kommst nicht uns zu
verletzen.
An statt dich verletzen zufwollen,
Bin ich bereit mein Leben mit
deinem Blut zu verweben.
[I, 147-49.]
251
60
C. H. IBERSHOFF
The Tempest
Dor. I've touched my father's and
my sister's hands,
And felt no pain; but now, alas!
there's something,
When I touch yours, which makes
me sigh.
[P. 144.]
Noah
Aber vornemlich durchlief mich
ein zartlich pochendes Fiihlen
Mit so lieblichen Schlagen, dass ich
von starker Empfmdung
Seufzete, da ich die Hand des einen
Madchens ergriffen.
[Ill, 71-73.]
Act III, sc. ii
Prosp you shall see
Another of this kind, the full-blown
flower,
Of which this youth was but the
opening bud.
[P. 153.]
Dor. That dangerous man runs
ever in my mind.
[P. 155.]
Dor it looked so lovely,
That when I would have fled away,
my feet
Seemed fastened to the ground.
[P. 156.]
Dor touching
His hand again, my heart did beat
so strong,
As I lacked breath to answer what
he asked.
[P. 156.]
Sonderbar eine von ihnen, die deren
Hand ich ergriffen,
Eine nicht vollig entwickelte Rosen
-Knospe : sie blickt erst
Mit halb verhulltem Antlitz aus
ihrem deckenden Flohre.
Lasset mir diese, und theilet euch in
die iibrigen beyden,
Zwo ausgebreitete Rosen in ihrer
vollkommenen Blute.
[Ill, 77-81.]
Und das Gefuhl ist mir seitdem
immer geblieben, abwesend
Schweben die lieblichen Bilder mir
vor dem Gesicht, sie besuchen
Mich nicht bloss in den Stunden
mitternachtlichen Schlafes.
-[111,74-76.]
Dieses Entziicken, das uns beym
Anblick der weiblichen Schonheit
Mit so starker Gewalt iiberfiel, das
unsere Fiisse
An den Boden befestigt'.
[Ill, 207-9.]
Dieses Pochen und Zittern in un-
serm schwerathmenden Busen,
Dieses Entzucken, das ....
.... uns der Sprache beraubte.
[Ill, 206-9.]
252
DRYDEN'S "TEMPEST" AS A SOURCE OF BODMER'S "NOAH" 61
The Tempest Noah
Act III, sc. v
Mir. There's nothing ill can dwell Mich bediinkt es nicht glaublich,
in such a temple: dass solch ein Himmel der Schon-
If the evil spirit hath so fair a house, heit
Good things will strive to dwell Schuldige Geister besitzet.
with it. [Ill, 66-67.]
[P. 171.]
Aber wo so viel Schonheit wohnt,
wohnt auch gewiss so viel Tugend.
Sollte das Bose solch eine schone
Behausung besitzen,
0 so wurde das Gute versucht,
Platz bey ihm zu nehmen.
[Ill, 222-24.]
Act III, sc. vi
Ferd. All beauties are not pleasing Jegliche Schonheit thut nicht den
alike to all. gleichen Eindruck auf alle.
[P. 177.] [Ill, 149.]
C. H. IBERSHOFF
STATE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA
253
LORENZO DE' MEDICI AND BOETHIUS
Among the Rime spirituali of Lorenzo de' Medici are five capitoli,
which begin respectively as follows:
I Magno Iddio, per la cui costante legge.
II Grazie a te, sommo, esuperante Nume.
III Santo Iddio, padre di ci6 che '1 mondo empie.
IV Oda quest' inno tutta la natura.
V Beato chi nel concilio non va.1
Some years ago Bonardi pointed out that the last four of these
poems are free translations of Latin Platonic or biblical originals.
Nos. II, III, and IV represent certain hymns of Hermes Trismegistus
as translated by Marsilio Ficino: No. II the final hymn of the
Asclepius, No. Ill the hymn at the end of the second chapter of
the Pimander, and No. IV the hymn in Pimander, XIII. No. V
is the First Psalm.2
Bonardi suggests that the one remaining capitolo (No. IV in his
numbering) is probably of similar origin :
10 credo che, cercando, si troverebbe ch' £ parafrasi di qualche altro
passo d' autore latino anche P Orazione IV:
Magno Dio, per la cui costante legge.
Lorenzo's poem is, in fact, a paraphrase of the ninth metrum of
the third book of Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae. I quote
in evidence the opening and closing portions of the two poems :
Magno Iddio, per la cui costante legge 0 qui perpetua mundum
e sotto il cui perpetuo governo ratione gubernas
questo universo si conserva e regge;
del tutto Creator, che dallo eterno Terrarum caelique sator
punto comandi corra il tempo labile, qui tempus ab aeuo
come rota f aria su fisso perno ; Ire iubes
quieto sempre, e giamai non mutabile, stabilisque manens
fai e muti ogni cosa, e tutto muove das cuncta moueri ....
da te, fermo motore infaticabile .... 9
1 1 follow the numbering and the text of the Simioni edition, Bari, II (1913), 119 ff.
8C. Bonardi, "Le orazioni di Lorenzo il Magniflco e 1* inno finale della Circe di
G. B. Gelli," Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, XXXIII (1899), 77-82.
255] 63 [ MODERN PHILOLOGY, August, 1917
64 ERNEST H. WILKINS
Concedi, o Padre, P alta e sacra sede Da pater augustam menti
monti la mente, e vegga il vivo fonte, conscendere sedem,
fonte ver, bene onde ogni ben precede. Da fontem lustrare boni,
Mostra la luce vera alia mia fronte, da luce reperta
e, poi ch' e conosciuto il tuo bel Sole, In te conspicuos animi
delP alma ferma in lui le luci pronte. defigere uisus.
Fuga le nebbie e la terrestre mole Dissice terrenae nebulas
leva da me, e splendi in la tua luce: et pondera molis
tu se' quel sommo Ben che ciascun vuole. Atque tuo splendore mica:
A te dolce riposo si conduce, tu namque serenum
e te, come suo fin, vede ogni pio, Tu requies tranquilla piis,
tu se' principio, portatore e duce, te cernere finis
la via e '1 termin tu, sol magno Iddio. Principium uector dux
semita terminus idem.1
This capitolo, like Nos. II, III, and IV, is Platonic in character,
for the poem of Boethius is itself a summary of the first half of the
Timaeus.
Scarano, failing to perceive the relation of Lorenzo's poem either
to Boethius or to the Timaeus, calls it an instance of pantheistic
syncretism :
In queste terzine apparisce ancora piu qual sincretismo filosofico, quasi
panteistico, fosse quello del Ficino e quindi de' suoi discepoli: non mancano
qui gli esemplari platonici, le forme d' Aristotele, P amore e la bonta di Dio.2
t ERNEST H. WILKINS
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
1 1 quote from the edition by Peiper, Leipzig, 1871.
2 N. Scarano, "II platonismo nelle poesie di Lorenzo de' Medici," Nuova antologia,
CXXX ( =Ser. Ill, Vol. XLVI), 1893 (August 15), 627.
256
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV September IQIJ NUMBER 5
ROSSETTFS HOUSE OF LIFE
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the most mysterious person-
alities of the nineteenth century. The public has never quite
understood his strange life. Genial and sympathetic by nature, he
formed ardent friendships which were later given up or lost without
apparently adequate cause. He was the acknowledged leader of a
school of art which gradually won its way into public favor; but he
came to live a life of melancholy and embittered seclusion apart
even from those who had been his most devoted followers. The
apparent reasons were that a few hostile critics led by Robert
Buchanan had maligned him as the sensual leader of the "Fleshly
School of Poetry," that his wife had died of an accidental overdose
of laudanum, and that the use of chloral and alcohol in latter days
had impaired the strength of his mind. No one, however, has been
quite satisfied with these explanations. The use of chloral seems
more a result than a cause. Buchanan's attack, though bitter and
unjust, was afterward recanted, and, from the first, public apprecia-
tion far outweighed the hostile criticism. Although the loss of his
wife was so great a shock that in a passion of grief and tenderness he
caused to be buried with her a manuscript volume of his poems,
either, as Hall Caine explains, "because they were written, to her and
for her and must go with her/'1 or, according to William Michael
Rossetti, out of remorse that "he had been working at them when
i T. Hall Caine, My Story (1909), p. 85.
257] 65 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, September, 1917
66 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
she was ill and suffering and he might have been attending her";1
yet, seven years later, for the sake of poetic fame, he allowed the
body to be exhumed in order that the manuscript might be recovered
and published, and thus destroyed much of the grace of his great
renunciation. Could these events have produced the bitterness,
melancholy, and despair which clouded the poet's life? Was he
really so "weak, wayward, and uncertain," or has the inner life of the
poet never been quite understood ?
Strangely enough, no one has hitherto attempted to throw light
on the mystery by a critical study of the sonnet sequence The House
of Life. This work long ago outlived the charge of immorality.
Even Buchanan, as I have said, went so far as to retract his criticism.2
Indeed the sequence as a whole has been adjudged by many the
best product of late nineteenth-century Romanticism. Still it has
very generally been considered obscure, and its profound human
interest as showing the development of the poet's emotional life has
not been widely recognized. Rossetti himself felt that his sonnets
were not understood; and he once told Charles Fairfax Murray
that he was inclined to write and publish some sort of exposition of
the series, though he never carried out his purpose.3 Also the poet's
brother, William Michael Rossetti, having been told repeatedly
that The House of Life was obscure, wrote a paraphrase in prose,
which he appended to his book called Dante Gabriel Rossetti as
Designer and Writer (1888); but this paraphrase attempts little
beyond clearing up obscurities in the text; it does not connect the
sonnets with the poet's intellectual and spiritual development. They
• are not arranged chronologically, and no one has taken the trouble
to establish the various dates of composition, in order to bring them
into close connection with the poet's life. Such a study ought both
to throw light on the mystery of the poet's life and also to help clear
up some of the obscurities of the sonnets.
The subject-matter has to do with profound emotional experi-
ences: the birth of human love, its growth, its satisfaction, the
conflicting power of a new love springing up by the side of the old,
1 W. M. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and Memoir, I, 225.
* Ibid., I, 301.
» W. M. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, p. 180.
258
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE" 67
the sorrow of parted love, the anguish of loss, regret over unused
opportunities and unrealized ambitions, doubt, remorse, despair.
And the experiences must be largely autobiographical. William
Michael Rossetti says :
The sonnets are mostly of the kind which we call "occasional"; some
incident happened, or some emotion was dominant, and the author wrote a
sonnet regarding it. When a good number had been written, they came to
form, if considered collectively, a sort of record of his feelings and experiences
.... he certainly never professed, nor do I consider that he ever wished
his readers to assume, that all the items had been primarily planned to
form one connected and indivisible whole.1
The poet himself once told W. B. Scott that he hardly ever produced
a sonnet "except on some basis of special momentary emotion,"2 and
in speaking to Hall Caine of the sonnet entitled "Without Her," he
said, " I cannot tell you at what terrible moment it was wrung from
me."3 Again in a letter to Hall Caine he said, "'Lost Days' might
be equally a favorite with me [as 'Known in Vain' and * Stillborn
Love'] if I did not remember at what but too opportune juncture it
was wrung out of me."4 Moreover, his method of composition is
explained in the sonnets themselves.
THE SONG-THROE
By thine own tears thy song must tears beget
0 Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
Anguish or ardor, else no amulet.
Cisterned in Pride, verse is a feathery jet
Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
The Song-god — He the Sun-god — is no slave
Of thine: thy hunter he, who for thy soul
Fledges his shaft; to no august control
Of thy skilled hand his quivering store he gave:
But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's hearj;.
i Ibid., pp. 181-82.
* W. B. Scott, Autobiographical Notes, II, 150.
» T. Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 221.
« Ibid., p. 237.
259
68 FBEDEKICK M. TISDEL
The exact chronology of the sonnets is not easily determined.
William Michael Rossetti in a note in his two-volume edition of
Rossetti's Poems has set down for us a provisional order, but he gives
no exact dates and admits that the order must be far from correct.
He says, " I am far from having a clear idea or definite information
as to the true date of the sonnets. But I think the reader is entitled
to some sort of guidance regarding them .... and therefore,
keeping in view the line of demarcation above referred to, I append
here a rough suggestion of what may have been their sequence in
point of date."1 I have been able to correct the order in many
particulars and to fix a considerable number of dates. A search
through published memoirs, letters, and recollections has established
definitely the dates of about half the number, and most of the others
may be approximately dated by inference from the various external
evidences and from the internal evidences found in the public
editions of 1870 and 1881, in the privately printed edition of 1869,
and in the sheets added to this private edition before the publication
of the edition of 1870. The most desirable piece of evidence, i.e., the
manuscript volume buried in 1862 and recovered from Mrs. Rossetti's
grave in 1869, seems to have been destroyed.2
The following dates have been definitely determined :
1847. Retro me, Sathana.3
1847-48. The Choice (three sonnets).3
! 1848-49. Old and New Art (three sonnets).4
1853. Known in Vain.5
1853. The Hill Summit.6
1854. Lost on Both Sides.7
i Rossetti's Works (1886), I, 517.
8 Arthur C. Benson, Rossetti, p. 55.
8 " The sonnet Retro Me Sathana must belong to 1847, being intended to pair with
his picture of the same name. The trio of sonnets named The Choice appertain to the
same year, or perhaps to an early date in 1848." — Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and
Memoir, ed. W. M. R., I, 107-8.
« " The second and third — bearing the titles Not as These and The Husbandman —
were written in 1848; the first, St. Luke the Painter, in 1849." — Ibid., I, 144.
5 "The sonnet Known in Vain was written in January, 1853." — Ibid., I, 167.
• Included in a letter from Rossetti to William Allingham in August, 1854, with the
remark, " Here's one I remember writing hi great glory on the top of a hill which I reached
one day, after sunset in Warwickshire last year." — Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to
William Allingham, p. 45.
7 Included in a letter of July 14, 1854, with the remark, " I'll add my last sonnet made
two days ago." — Ibid., p. 31.
260
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE" 69
1854. The Birth-bond.1
1855. A Dark Day.2
• fl865-68. Body's Beauty.3
1865-68. Soul's Beauty.3
1868. Willow- wood (four sonnets).4
1869. A Superscription.5
1869. Autumn Idleness.6
1869. Vain Virtues.7
1869. Farewell to the Glen.8
1871. The Dark Glass.9
1871. The Lovers' Walk.9
1871. Heart's Haven.9
1871. Through Death to Love.9
1879. Ardour and Memory.10
1880. Introductory Sonnet.11
1880. Pride of Youth.12
I Included in a letter of August, 1854, with the remark, "Here's a sonnet written
only two or three days ago." — Ibid., p. 46.
sCalled his last sonnet in a letter of January 23, 1855. — Ibid., p. 102.
3 "In the spring of 1868 Rossetti had already made an appearance in public print
as a poet; introducing, into a pamphlet review of pictures of that year, three sonnets
recently written for paintings of his own — Lady Lilith, Sibylla Palmifera, and Venus
Verticordia. The two former have since been entitled Body's Beauty and Soul's Beauty."
— Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and Memoir, I, 270—71. See also Rossetti as Designer
and Writer, p. 145. "Lilith" was begun in 1864. Miss Alexa Wilding, who sat for
the "Sibyl," began sitting for Rossetti in 1865. Both pictures were finished by 1868.
* William Michael Rossetti's diary under date of December 18, 1868, says, "Gabriel
has just written a series of four sonnets — Willow-wood." — Rossetti Papers, ed. by W.M. R.
(1903), p. 339.
6 "Gabriel has written another sonnet, A Superscription, has selected 16 sonnets,
and sent them to the Fortnightly for the March number. He thinks he must have by
him at least 50 sonnets which he would be willing to publish." — Diary of W. M. R. under
January 24, 1869, Rossetti Papers, p. 380.
« W. M. Rossetti, Rossetti Papers, p. 468.
7 "Gabriel has done two new sonnets, Pandora (for his picture now in progress) and
Vain Virtues." — Diary of W. M. R., March 18, 1869, Rossetti Papers, p. 386.
s "It was written on the 27th of Sept., 1869, at Penkill Castle and Rossetti left next
day, never again to revisit the place where in 1868 the rebirth of his poetic powers had
gradually taken place." — William Sharp, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1882), p. 429.
9 These sonnets were included in a letter from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to W. B. Scott,
August 13, 1871. Rossetti says, "I have now 30 new ones in MS. for the House of
Life since printing last year." — Autobiographical Notes of W. B. Scott, II, 143.
"Written "Xmas 1879," as appears from the signature of the facsimile copy in
Sharp's Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 426. 9
II Written in February, 1880. See T. Hall Caine, Recollections of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti, pp. 120-21.
12 W. M. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, p. 171; Caine, Recol-
lections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, pp. 254-55 (published in the Athenaeum, September 3,
1881).
261
70 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
' 1881. Michelangelo's Kiss.1
1881. True Woman (three sonnets).2
In the chronological table of the poet's writings appended to
Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, W. M. Rossetti sets
down the following additional dates with question marks. No reasons
for these dates are given, but the mere remembrance of the brother
has some value, for, except possibly in the case of the most intimate
love sonnets, he would naturally learn of them soon after their
composition.
1858. Lost Days.
1860. Inclusiveness.
1868. Nuptial Sleep.
1868. The Love-moon.
1869. Stillborn Love.
1869. Broken Music.
1869. The One Hope.
1869. Newborn Death.
1871. Love and Hope.
1871. Cloud and Wind.
1874. The Heart of the Night.
1874. Memorial Thresholds.
Further information comes from the various editions which
f appeared during the poet's lifetime. In the complete edition of
, 1881, The House of Life contained 102 sonnets; in the edition of 1870,
50 sonnets;3 in the privately printed edition of 1869, 32 sonnets.
The edition of 1869 is not accessible to me, but W. M. Rossetti
has kindly furnished me with the following information :
I enclose a list of the sonnets which appeared in the privately printed
sheets of 1869, before the recovery of the buried MS. and also of those
which were added in sheets of the Poems of 1870 before publication of that
volume.
1 Written and sent to Christina Rossetti in January, 1881. — W. M. Rossetti, Dante
Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, p. 171. See also Family Letters of Christina
Rossetti, ed. by W. M. R.f p. 92.
2 W. M. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, p. 171: "In writing
to our mother on 15th September [1881] he spoke of them as written 'quite lately.' "
See Letters and Memoir, II, 386.
L» Besides six sonnets afterward included: "St. Luke and the Painter," "Lilith,"
'Sibylla Palmifera," "Autumn Idleness," "Farewell to the Glen," "The Monochord."
262
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE"
71
IN THE PRIVATELY PRINTED POEMS 1869
Inclusiveness
Known in Vain
The Landmark
A Dark Day
Vain Virtues
Lost Days
Retro me, Sathana
Lost on Both Sides
The Sun's Shame
Run and Won
Newborn Death (2)
Bridal Birth
Flammifera
Love-sight
The Kiss
Nuptial Sleep
Love's Lovers
Nearest Kindred
Winged Hours
The Love-moon
The Morrow's Message
Sleepless Dreams
Secret Parting
Parted Love
Broken Music
Death in Love
Willow-wood (4)
A Superscription
ADDED IN SHEETS PRIOR TO THE PUBLICATION OF 1870
Life in Love
Stillborn Love
The Choice (3)
Hoarded Joy
Death Songsters
The One Hope
Supreme Surrender
The Birth-bond
[The Portrait
Passion and Worship
A Day of Love
Love's Baubles
These lists contain all the titles of the 1870 edition except "The
Love-letter," "Love's Redemption," "The Hill Summit," "Barren
Spring," "He and I," "Love-sweetness," and "The Vase of Life."
They contain three titles which do not appear at all in later edi-
tions, i.e., "Run and Won," "Flammifera," and "Nearest Kindred."
Of these "Run and Won" is the same sonnet as "The Vase of
Life."1 In an unpublished letter W. M. Rossetti says, " 'Flam,
mifera' (I am as good as sure) is the same as 'Love's Redemption/
and 'Nearest Kindred' as 'The Birth-bond.'"
Of these forty-five sonnets, twenty have already been dated.
Can anything be said of the rest except that they were written as
early as 1869 or 1870? No evidence is available excent internal
evidence which is more or less unsatisfactory. Yet certain proba-
bilities are worth noting. "The Landmark" probably refers to
i W. M. Rossetti, Bibliography of the Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1905), p. 15;
also Fortnightly Review for 1869.
72 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
Rossetti's resolution in 1853 to give up poetry and devote his entire
attention to painting. " Death-in-love " seems to express pre-
' monitions of Miss Siddal's death, fears of which first became manifest
about 1854. The fact that fourteen of these sonnets were added in
sheets to the edition of 1869 before publication of the 1870 volume
does not mean that they were written after the 1869 sheets were
printed. Indeed we know that "The Birth-bond" was written in
1854 and "The Choice" in 1847-48. The others may have been
written in 1869 or they may have been in the manuscript volume
recovered from Mrs. Rossetti's grave between the time of the edition
of 1869 and the edition of 1870. In the latter case they must have
been written before 1862, and this is probably true of some of them
at least. We know that the poet was in the habit of writing sonnets
between 1853 and 1862. In a letter to William Allingham in 1854, he
said, " Of short pieces I have seldom or never done anything tolerable,
except perhaps sonnets,"1 and, "But my sonnets are not generally
finished till I see them again after forgetting them."2 Again, in
another letter of the same year, he writes, "I've referred to my note
book for the above alteration and therein are various sonnets and
beginnings of sonnets written at crises of happy inspiration."3 Not
many of these sonnets, however, can go back beyond 1853, for the
poet himself made the following note in the edition of 1869 : " Most
of these poems [in the 1869 volume] were written between 1847 and
1853; and are here printed, if not without revision, yet generally
much in their original state. They are a few among many then
written, but of the others I have no complete copies. The Sonnets
and Songs are chiefly more recent work"*
Individual sonnets cannot, perhaps, be assigned to the early
period with certainty, but there are considerations which make the
earlier date probable in the case of certain ones. In the first place,
some of them are more strikingly sensuous than the others. They
treat of the immediate joy of triumphant love. They emphasize the
physical aspects of love. The emotion is not so reflective, not so
clearly spiritualized, as in the sonnets which we know to have been
» Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti to William Allingham, p. 30.
2 Ibid., p. 32. » Ibid., p. 45.
4 W. M. Rossetti, Bibliography to the Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, p. 16.
264
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE" 73
written after 1870. An illustration will make the point clear.
Compare for example the following sonnets :
LOVE-SWEETNESS
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
In gracious fostering union garlanded;
Her tremulous smiles; her gracious sweet recall
Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
Back to her mouth which answers there for all: —
What sweeter than these things, except the thing
In lacking which all these would lose their sweet: —
The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
The breath of kindred plumes against its feet ?
MID-RAPTURE
Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning eyes,
Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of: —
What word can answer to thy word — what gaze
To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
My worshiping face, till I am mirrored there
Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays ?
What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
O lovely and beloved, 0 my love ?
It is true that any sonnet-sequence on the subject of love would
naturally begin with the physical aspects and develop toward the
spiritual; and Rossetti, after conceiving the idea of putting his
sonnets into such a sequence, might very well have aaded sonnets
of physical passion to the early part of the series; yet it is significant
that none of the sonnets added to the early part after the edition of
1870 emphasizes this aspect.
265
74 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
r Another consideration lies in the fact that certain sonnets contain
inch of the conventional imagery of the god of Love after the Dante
manner, a fact most likely to apply in the years between 1853 and
1862, when Rossetti was particularly interested in the study of
Dante and was preparing his volume The Early Italian Poets (later
* called Dante and his Circle), published in 1861. To be sure, there
' are many suggestions of Dante in the poet's later work, but not so
many conventional references to Cupid and the machinery of his
worship, and scant use of conventional Dantesque poetic conceits
like "the spirits of the eyes." For example, " Love's Testament,"
"Love-sight," and "Bridal Birth" seem conventionally Dantesque.
LOVE'S TESTAMENT
0 thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
Unto my heart dost evermore present,
Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament1
Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
Who without speech hast owned him, and, intent
Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
And murmured, "I am thine, thou'rt one with me!"
0 what from thee the grace, to me the prize,
And what to Love the glory, — when the whole
Of the deep stair thou treadst to the dim shoal
And weary water of the place of sighs,
And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!
LOVE-SIGHT
When do I see thee most, beloved one ?
When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
The worship of that Love through thee made known ?
BRIDAL BIRTH
As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
The mother looks upon the newborn child,
Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
1 The italics indicate the most striking Dantesque imagery.
266
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE" 75
Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
Cried on him, and the bonds of birth were burst.
Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
Together, as his full-grown feet now range
The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare;
Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
Leaves for light the halo of his hair.
In the late sonnets Love is personified, but not so conventionally
visualized.
A still further mark of difference lies in the use of nature imagery.
To be sure, Rossetti was far from being a nature poet. He never
loved her with the intimate and philosophical sympathy of Words-
worth. He never saw the beauty of nature as he saw the beauty of
the human face. Indeed, before 1868, he lived but little outside the
city and did not come into close contact with nature. However,
the summers of 1868 and 1869 were spent at Penkill Castle in Ayer-
shire, and the summer of 1871 at Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire.
At this time he became so alive to the influences of nature that much
of the imagery of the later group of sonnets is nature imagery.^
Examples are "The Lovers' Walk," "Youth's Spring Tribute,"
"Silent Noon," "Gracious Moonlight," "Farewell to the Glen,"
"Last Fire," "Through Death to Love," and "Love and Hope."
Sonnets known to be early contain almost no genuine nature imagery.
It is true that tests like these we have been considering must be
used with great caution ; but I suggest a probability that the follow-
ing sonnets belong to the period prior to 1862. These sonnets are
either very sensuous or conventionally Dantesque or both, and they
contain almost no intimate nature imagery.
Bridal Birth Supreme Surrender
Love's Redemption The Portrait1 ~-
Love-sight The Love-letter ,
The Kiss A Day of Love
Nuptial Sleep Love-sweetness
Love's Lovers
» Rossetti made at least three pictures of Mrs. Rossetti during 1860-61. See Dante
Gabriel Rossetti as Designer and Writer, Chronological Index.
267
76
FREDERICK M. TISDEL
Between 1870 and 1881 The House of Life was increased from
fifty to one hundred and two sonnets. Of the new fifty-two, twenty-
one have already been dated. To the six set down for 1871, at least
twenty-four more must be added, for Rossetti, writing to W. B.
Scott under date of August 13 of this year, says, " I have thirty new
ones [sonnets] in manuscript for The House of Life since printing
last year."1 This leaves only six unaccounted for.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE2
Retro me, Sathana (90) 1847
The Choice (71-73) 1848
Old and New Art (74-76) 1848-49
Known in Vain (65) 1853
The Hill Summit (70) 1853
The Landmark (67) (1853-54)
Lost on Both Sides (91) 1854
The Birth-bond (15) 1854
A Dark Day (68) 1855
Death-in-love (48) (1854-55)
Lost Days (86) 1858?
Inclusiveness (63) 1860?
The Portrait (10) (1860-61)
Bridal Birth (2) (Between 1851 and
1862)
Love's Testament (3) (Between
1853 and 1862)
(Love's Redemption)
Love-sight (4) (Between 1853 and
1862)
The Kiss (6) (Between 1853 and
1862)
Nuptial Sleep (Between 1853 and
1862)
Love's Lovers (8) (Between 1853
and 1862)
Supreme Surrender (7) (Between
1853 and 1862)
The Love-letter (11) (Between 1853
and 1862)
A Day of Love (16) (Between 1853
and 1862)
Love-sweetness (21) (Between 1853
and 1862)
Body's Beauty (78) (186^68)
Soul's Beauty (77) (1864-68)
The Love-moon (37) 1868 ?
Willow-wood (49-52) 1868
Autumn Idleness (69) 1869
A Superscription (97) 1869
Vain Virtues (85) 1869
Farewell to the Glen (84) 1869
Newborn Death (99-100) 1869 ?
The One Hope (101) 1869 ?
Broken Music (47) 1869 ?
Sleepless Dreams (39) (1868-69)
The Morrow's Message (38) (1868-
69)
Secret Parting (45) (1868-69)
Parted Love (46) (1868-69)
Winged Hours (25) (1868-69)
The Vase of Life (95) (1868-69)
Passion and Worship (9) (1868-70)
Love's Baubles (23) (1868-70)
Stillborn Love (55) (1868-70)
Life-in-love (36) (1868-70)
Hoarded Joy (82) (1868-70)
Barren Spring (83) (1868-70)
The Monochord (79) (1868-70)
He and I (98) (1868-70)
1 W. B. Scott, Autobiographical Notes, II, 143.
2 The dates in parentheses are based upon probabilities only. The dates followed
by a question mark represent the uncertain remembrance of William Michael Rossetti.
268
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE"
77
Death's Songsters (87) (1868-70)
The Sun's Shame (92) (1868-70)
The Dark Glass (34) 1871
The Lovers' Walk (12) 1871
The Moonstar (29)1
Last Fire (30)
Her Gifts (31)
Equal Troth (32)
Venus Victrix (33)
The Lamp's Shine (35)
Gracious Moonlight (20)
Love Enthroned (1)
Heart's Hope (5)
Youth's Antiphony (13)
Youth's Spring-tribute (14)
Beauty's Pageant (17)
Genius in Beauty (18)
Silent Noon (19)
Mid-rapture (26)
The Heart of the Night (66) 1874?
Memorial Thresholds (81) 1874?
Ardour and Memory (64) 1879
Introductory Sonnet 1880
Heart's Haven (22) 1871
Through Death to Love (41) 1871
Love and Hope (43) 1871 ?
Cloud and Wind (44) 1871 ?
Heart's Compass (27)
Soul-light (28)
Hope Overtaken (42)
Without Her (53)
Love's Fatality (54)
From Dawn to Noon (80)
Transfigured Life (60)
Life the Beloved (96)
Severed Selves (40)
Hero's Lamp (88)
The Trees of the Garden (89)
The Sun's Shame 2 (93)
The Song-throe (61)
The Soul's Sphere (62)
Love's Last Gift (59)1
Pride of Youth (24) 1880
Michelangelo's Kiss (94) 1881
True Woman (56-58) 1881
If this suggested chronology is approximately correct, the known
facts of the poet's life ought to give some clue to the interpretation
of the sonnets written at a particular period, and the sonnets in turn
ought to throw light on the inner and more profound emotional
experiences of the poet. Let us consider this relationship a little in
detail.
"Old and New Art," three sonnets written in 1848-49, and "The
Choice," three sonnets written in 1848, belong to the beginning of
Rossetti's career, when he was the acknowledged leader of the
so-called Pre-Raphaelite Movement, a revolt against conventionalities
in painting, a renaissance in poetry of the mediaeval spirit of wonder.
Much has been written of the aims and ideas of this school, but 1
doubt if a better statement of the principles can be found within the
same compass than the sonnets on "Old and New Art." Art shall
» At least twenty-four of these undated sonnets belong to 1871.
78 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
again be the handmaid of religion. The true painter and the true
poet are not as those "for whom only rhyme wins fame as poets,
only paint as painters." Their eyes
see on and far
Into the lights of the great Past, new lit
Fair for the Future's track.
God sent the great artists of the past into his vineyard; they bore
the worst burden of the heat and the dry thirst; and none such as
these were have since been found to do their work like them. Yet
because of this
Stand not ye idle in the market place.
Which of you knoweth he is not that last
Who may be first by faith and will ? Yea his
The hand which after the appointed days
And hours shall give a Future to their Past.
The three sonnets entitled "The Choice" begin in turn:
"Eat thou and drink; tomorrow thou shalt die."
"Watch thou and fear; tomorrow thou shalt die."
"Think thou and act; tomorrow thou shalt die."
They explain remarkably well the three characteristics which dis-
tinguished Rossetti in this early period : a sensuous love of beauty, a
reverence for religious mysticism, and a belief that man has not yet
achieved his high destiny. Taken together with the sonnets on
"Old and New Art," they give a fairly adequate and intimate picture
of Rossetti at the beginning of his career.
The early fifties were years of struggle. His pictures were not
appreciated; it seemed impossible to live by his art. Even the
famous "Annunciation," now in the Tate Gallery of London,
remained long upon his hands unsold — "a blessed white daub," as
he himself called it. He began now to realize his technical limi-
tations. He had revolted against the routine of the drawing school ;
he had avoided the tedious training of the life school; he had painted
with protest and disgust the "pickle jars" which Ford Madox Brown
put before him; he had insisted on beginning with a real picture in
the studio of Holman Hunt. Technical difficulties now balked the
adequate expression of his genius. He was distracted, too, by the
double interest of painting and poetry. He found himself writing
270
ROSSETTI'S " HOUSE OF LIFE" 79
verse when he felt that he ought to be struggling with his painting,
and yet neither art was able to put money in his purse.
This state of mind is reflected in the sonnets of that period. In
"Known in Vain" (1853) he bewails the time
When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
Follow the desultory feet of death ?
"Lost on Both Sides" (1854) tells that "as when two men have
loved a woman well" and both have lost her,
So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
And Peace before their faces perished since;
So through that soul in restless brotherhood,
They roam together now, and wind among
Its by-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
But the most poignant expression is in "Lost Days" (1858 ?), which
must be quoted entire.
The lost days of my life until today,
What were they, could I see them on the street
Lie as they fell ? Would they be ears of wheat
Sown once for food, but trodden into clay ?
Or golden coins squandered and still to pay ?
Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet ?
Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
The undying throats of Hell, athirst alway ?
I do not see them here; but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see,
Each one a murdered self, with low last breath,
"I am thyself — what hast thou done to me?"
"And I— and I— thyself," (lo! each one saith.)
"And thou thyself to all eternity."
But there were still more important experiences during these
years. In 1850 Rossetti met Miss Siddal, and they wer€ engaged,
perhaps as early as 1851, to be married. The first years of their
association were joyful; for he was an ardent, devoted lover; they
were much together reading and painting; and her nature expanded
271
80 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
and blossomed under his influence. Their marriage, however, was
delayed until 1860 partly on account of straitened finances, partly
on account of Miss SiddaFs failing health, partly perhaps on
account of a new and disturbing element which entered into Rossetti's
experience about 1857 and which we shall presently consider. Their
married life was not altogether happy, and it ended, after a brief
two years, in Mrs. Rossetti's pathetic death. Love was for them a
mingled romance and tragedy.
-* The love sonnets reflect very clearly the peculiarities of Rossetti's
emotional life at this period. He was emphatically a painter with
the painter's habit of visualizing emotion. It was natural for him
to confuse spiritual and concrete beauty, to emphasize the physical
aspect of love, to think of the spiritual as an accident of the physical.
Buchanan's criticism is easily understood. It was unjust and was
afterward retracted, but it was not wholly without excuse. Rossetti's
mind was not sensual; but it was distinctly sensuous and that too
with an Italian sensuousness which might well seem indelicate to the
characteristic English reserve. * ' Nuptial Sleep ' ' was very j udiciously
omitted from the later editions. "Supreme Surrender," which was
retained, is perhaps over-voluptuous. Still there was from the
beginning a spirituality that lifted his work above mere animalism.
The octave of " Love-sweetness" is exceedingly sensuous, but the
fine image of the sestet lifts the sonnet above the merely sensual.
For six or seven years after the death of his wife, Rossetti devoted
himself assiduously to painting, writing scarcely a line of poetry
except a few sonnets for pictures; but, in 1868, when trouble with
his eyes forced him for a time to give up painting, he went into the
country, and through the persuasions of friends, he entered upon his
second period of poetic production. Between 1868 and 1871 nearly
half of the sonnets of The House of Life were written.
By this time his experience had been idealized by reflection. To
be sure, this was no Wordsworthian case of "emotion recollected in
tranquility," rather of passion recollected in anguish, love shackled
with vain longing and despair. Sorrow had deepened, remorse had
darkened, the poet's emotional life. Yet the passion had been
chastened by reflection, nay it had been transformed into a more
idealized, more spiritual love. Nothing could quite change the
272
ROSSETTI'S "HOUSE OF LIFE" 81
poet's sensuous nature, yet the emphasis had been shifted from the
physical to the spiritual, and the imaginative texture of the emotion
had become closer and more delicate. The sonnet " Mid-rapture/'
already quoted, exemplifies this. " Heart's Compass" (1871) is
another typical example:
Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
But as the meaning of all things that are;
A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
Being of its furthest fires oracular; —
The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
Even such is love; and is not thy name Love?
Yea, by tLy hand the Love-god rends apart
All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.
The later sonnets, however, are prevailingly melancholy. They
tell of regret, disappointment, doubt, despair, the anguish of a
broken, remorseful life, the cry of a spirit that has suffered deeply
and not found solace. Here is a sonnet of which Rossetti said to
Hall Caine, "I cannot tell you at what terrible moment it was
wrung from me " :
WITHOUT HER
What of her glass without her ? the blank gray
There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
Her dress without her ? The tossed empty space
Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
Her paths without her ? Day's appointed sway
Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
Without her ? Tears, ah me ! for love's good grace,
And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
What of the heart without her ? Nay, poor heart,
Of thee what word remains ere speech be still ? »
A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
Sheds double darkness up the laboring hill.
273
82 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
Even night brings no solace, only sleepless anguish :
0 lonely night art thou not known to me
A thicket hung with masks of mockery
And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears.
But this is not all. These sonnets tell of more than the common
sorrow of bereavement; they suggest a more complicated spiritual
tragedy. They tell of a new love by the side of the old and of the
inner conflict between the old love and the new. This conflict of
loves is the subject of "The Love-moon":
When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
Which once was all the life years held for thee,
Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,
How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
Make them of buried troth remembrancers ?
Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
Thou knowest that in these twain I have confessed
Two very voices of the summoning bell.
Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
In these the culminating changes which approve
The love-moon that must light my soul to love ?
"Stillborn Love" tells of the despair of this new unsatisfied love:
The hour which might have been yet might not be,
Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
Yet whereof We was barren, on what shore
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea ?
Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
His hours elect in choral consonancy.
But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
Together tread at last the immortal strand
With eyes where burning memory lights love home ?
Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
And leaped to them and in their faces yearned :
"I am thy child: 0 parents, ye have come!"
"Love's Fatality" and " Lif e-in-love " may, perhaps, point to the
same experience.
274
ROSSETTI'S " HOUSE OF LIFE" 83
It is true that of these sonnets having to do with a new love
"The Love-moon" and " Lif e-in-love " have some general similarities
to two sonnets in Dante's Vita Nuova.1 Dante tells how the new
feeling for the lady of compassion threatens to dim the loving memory
of his blessed lady Beatrice, and in two sonnets chides the eyes and
chides the heart for yielding to the new love. But the Rossetti
sonnets are like Dante's only in the general conception, not in
detailed workmanship. They may owe something to Dante, yet
there is reason to believe that they are not mere literary exercises,
but represent a real experience of the poet, the tragedy of conflicting
loves. Lady Burne-Jones, in speaking of her first meeting with the
Rossettis in 1860, said, " I then received an impression which never
wore away, of romance and tragedy between her and her husband."2
And Holman Hunt has referred to an experience of Rossetti with an-
other woman than Miss Siddal about 1857.3 But these are only vague
references. Hall Caine is more specific. In speaking of the change
which came into the poet's life in the late fifties, when he became
intimate with Burne-Jones, Swinburne, and the Morrises, he says :
What effect these new friendships, any or all of them, may have had
on the relation in which he still stood to Miss Siddal, it would perhaps be
hard to say, but I think that evidences are not wanting in the poems written
about this period of a new disturbing element, a painful and even tragic
awakening, a sense of great passion coming too late, and above all a struggle
between love and duty which augured less than well for the happiness of the
marriage that was to come.4
He tells further that in the long journey in 1881 when he was
bringing Rossetti home from Cumberland to London, as both
thought to die, the poet revealed to him the secret of his life. Mr.
Caine does not quote the poet's words, but says that if he were to
reconstruct his character from the conversation of that night —
it would be the figure of a man who, after engaging himself to one woman
in all honor and good faith, had fallen in love with another and then gone
on to marry the first out of a mistaken sense of loyalty and a fear of giving
pain instead of stopping, as he must have done if his will had been stronger
and his heart sterner, at the door of the church itself. It would J^e the figure
of a man who realized that the good woman he had married was reading his
secret in spite of his efforts to conceal it, and thereby losing all joy and
1 D. G. Eossetti, Collected Works, I, 88, 90.
2 Georgiana Burne-Jones, Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones, I, 208.
a W. M. Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rossetti: Letters and Memoir, p. 201.
« T. Hall Caine, My Story (1909), pp. 81-82.
275
84 FREDERICK M. TISDEL
interest in life. It would be the figure of a man who, coming home late at
night to find his wife dying, probably by her own hand, was overwhelmed by
remorse, not perhaps for any unkindness, any want of attention, still less
any act of infidelity on his part, but for the far deeper wrong of failure of
affection for the one being to whom affection was most due.1
These sonnets, then, rightly understood, take on a profound
human interest and make more clear and intelligible the poet's
melancholy and desolation and despair. We see him no longer as
simply weak, wayward, uncertain, performing a supreme act of
renunciation for love of his wife, dead by accident, then repenting
of his action and undoing it; and afterward isolating himself from
life and intimate friends and giving himself up to the influence of a
drug, because, forsooth, a rival poet had been jealous of his success.
We see him rather a pathetic, even a tragic, figure speaking to us
out of the depths of real suffering and remorse. The sonnets are a
genuine expression of romance and tragedy, of joy and sorrow and
futility, in an essentially noble life gifted above most, but with
common human frailty. Rossetti never quite reached spiritual
heights of serenity and peace. He saw no beatific vision. The
House of Life does not solve any great intellectual problem ; it does
not show the triumph of religious faith ; but its appeal to the human
heart is poignant and sincere, and it shows that the poet's life was
not utterly futile and morbid. He did gradually purify and idealize
his emotional life. There is even a note of resignation at the last
in sonnets like "The Heart of the Night/' written in 1874:
From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
From lethargy to fever of the heart;
From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban; —
Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
Till now. Alas, the soul! how soon must she
Accept her primal immortality,
The flesh resume its dust whence it began ?
O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late
Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath;
That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!
FREDERICK M. TISDEL
UNIVERSITY OP MISSOURI
» T. Hall Caine, My Story, pp. 196-97.
276
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S UNDERWOODS
AND MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Up to the present time it cannot be said that we know a great
deal about the sources of the Underwoods. Gifford and Whalley
marked a few classical passages that Jonson utilized; Amos, in
Martial and the Moderns, pointed out a good many borrowings from
that poet, while occasionally in Notes and Queries and elsewhere a
stray bit of indebtedness is indicated. An immense amount, how-
ever, remains to be done before we shall be able to understand just
what Jonson's poetry amounts to, just what he himself contributed,
just what he took from others. In the following pages something is
done, I hope, toward elucidating this point,1 but no discussion is
attempted of the bearing the facts brought forward have upon our
estimate of Jonson's verse. I am not at present inclined to think
that this estimate will be much lowered, though it doubtless will be
somewhat changed.
The pieces in Underwoods are referred to in accordance with
Cunningham's nine-volume reissue of Gifford, but the text is taken
directly from the Folio. I have made no intentional changes in the
passages quoted, but have given the original with all its misprints
and mispunctuations. The Latin texts quoted have been those
nearest at hand.
I. UNDERWOODS
Underwoods, "Charis," No. 2: The central situation is supplied
by Hieronymus Angerianus, Carm. Illustrium Poet. Ital., 1719, 1, 292:
De Caelia, & Cupidine.
Vidit Amor dominam, stupuit; cecidere sagittae.
Armavit sese Caelia, fugit Amor.
Underwoods, "Charis," No. 6: Tibullus iv. 2. Tff.^may have
supplied the theme, though Jonson has developed it after his own
fashion.
1 Something of a similar nature is attempted for the Epigrams and Forest in an article
published in Classical Philology, XI, pp. 169 ff.
277] 85 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, September, 1917
86 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Illam, quidquid agit, quoquo vestigia movit,
componit furtim subsequiturque Decor,
seu solvit crines, etc.
Cf. also Propertius ii. 1. 4-16, where a similar thought is worked out.
Und. iii: See below under Ivii.
Und. viii: I have pointed out the source of the last line in my
article in Modern Philology, X, 573 ff.
Und. x:
Tis true, he could not reprehend
His very Manners, taught t' amend,
They were so even, grave, and holy;
No stubbornnesse so stiffe, nor folly
To licence ever was so light,
As twice to trespasse in his sight,
His lookes would so correct it, when
It chid the vice, yet not the Men.
Much from him I professe I wonne,
And more, and more, I should have done,
But that I understood him scant.
Jonson seems to have remembered something of the description of
the philosopher Euphrates in Pliny Epist. i. 10:
est enim obvius et expositus plenusque humanitate, quam praecipit.
atque utinam sic ipse quam spem tune ille de me concepit impleverim, ut
ille multum virtutibus suis addidit! aut ego nunc illas magis miror, quia
magis intellego. quamquam ne nunc quidem satis intellego nullus
horror in cultu, nulla tristitia, multum severitatis : reverearis occursum, non
reformides. vitae sanctitas summa, comitas par: insectatur vitia, non
homines, nee castigat errantes, sed emendat.
Und. xii: The main critical doctrine enunciated by Jonson in
this piece is that nature and art must co-operate. He is of course
directly inspired by Horace De arte poetica 408:
Natura fieret laudabile carmen an arte,
quaesitum est: ego nee studium sine divite vena,
nee rude quid prosit video ingenium : alterius sic
altera poscit opem et coniurat amice.
So Jonson's simile of the anvil was suggested by the same author,
ibid. 440:
delere iubebat
et male tornatos incudi reddere versus.
278
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS " 87
But these wayes
Were not the paths I meant unto thy praise:
For seeliest Ignorance on these may light,
Which, when it sounds at best, but eccho's right;
Or blinde Affection, which doth ne're advance
The truth, but gropes, and urgeth all by chance;
Or crafty Malice, might pretend this praise,
And thinke to ruine, where it seem'd to raise.
Bacon, Essay LIII, "Of Praise":
There be so many false points of praise, that a man may justly hold it
a suspect. Some praises proceed merely of flattery Some men are
praised maliciously to their hurt, thereby to stir envy and jealousy toward
them; pessimum genus inimicorum laudantium; insomuch that it was a
proverb among the Grecians, that he that was praised to his hurt, should
have a push rise upon his nose; as we say, that a blister will rise upon one's
tongue that tells a lie. Certainly moderate praise, used with opportunity,
and not vulgar, is that which doth the good. Salomon saith, He that
praiseth his friend aloud, rising early, it shall be to him no better than a
curse.
This doctrine of moderate praise will explain why Jonson's language
has appeared to various readers as "sparing and invidious." Note
in this connection the passages cited below under Und. xxxi.
In reading Jonson's tribute to Shakespeare, I have been rather
puzzled as to just what he meant by the expression,
turne the same,
(And himself e with it), etc.
Why is the poet to turn himself ? How can he turn himself in any-
thing like the same way as that in which the verse is turned ? The
general idea is perhaps clear enough, but the language is remarkable,
and I have come to the conclusion that almost every strange expres-
sion in Jonson has its special explanation. In Latin torqueo means
to turn, and Horace uses the word in a passage (Epist. ii. 2. 124) in
which he is discussing precisely the same topic that Jonson is here
occupied with. The poet who wishes to write a legitimum poema'
(cf. "Who casts to write a living line"),
ludentis speciem dabit et torquebitur, ut qui
nunc Satyrum, nunc agrestem Cyclopa movetur.
He will turn and twist himself like a mime. As one commentator
puts it: " The idea is that grace and ease of style comes through slow
279
88 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
and diligent training, just as the apparently simple movements of
the dance. As ludere may mean to dance, and torqueri, to turn oneself,
the comparison of the next verse is readily suggested." It would
seem then that Jonson expects his readers to recognize the allusion
to the Horatian passage and to vary the meaning of the word "turn"
accordingly.
Und. xxx : I pointed out, before I knew of Castelain's discussion
in his edition of Discoveries, pp. 143 ff., most of the Senecan sources
of this piece in Modern Philology, X, 573 ff. My excuse for returning
to the subject here is that there are still one or two passages worth
quoting from Seneca, while Castelain, though he quotes Plutarch,
overlooks a number of places where Jonson was unquestionably
making use of that author. Thus Jonson's full indebtedness has
not yet been brought out.
enquire
Like Money-brokers; after Names.
Horace Serm. i. 2. 16:
nomina sectatur modo sumpta veste virili.
I have the lyst of mine owne faults to know,
Looke too and cure; Hee's not a man hath none, 115
But like to be, that every day mends one,
And feeles it; Else he tarries by the Beast,
Can I discerne how shadowes are decreast,
Or growne; by height or lownesse of the Sunne ?
And can I lesse of substance ? when I runne, 120
Ride, saile, am coach'd, know I how farre I have gone,
And my minds motion not ? or have I none:
No! he must feele and know, that I will advance
Men have beene great, but never good by chance,
Or on the sudden 125
Tis by degrees that men arrive at glad
Profit in ought each day some little adde,
In time 'twill be a heape; This is not true
Alone in money, but in manners too.
Yet we must more then move still, or goe on, 135
We must accomplish; 'Tis the last Key-stone
That makes the Arch, The rest that there were put
Are nothing till that comes to bind and shut.
Then stands it a triumphall marke! then Men
Observe the strength, the height, the why, and when, 140
280
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS " 89
It was erected; and still walking under
Meet some new matter to looke up and wonder!
Such Notes are vertuous men! they live as fast
As they are high; are rooted and will last.
They need no stilts, nor rise upon then* toes, 145
As if they would belie their stature, those
Are Dwarfes of Honour, and have neither weight
Nor fashion
114-25. De vita beata xvii. 3:
non sum sapiens .... nee ero .... hoc mihi satis est, cotidie
aliquid ex vitiis meis demere.
In more than one place Seneca points out that no human being can
attain the ideal state of wisdom and virtue, i.e., he's not a man (for
he is more than a man) that hath no faults.
124-25. I compared in my article Juvenal ii. 83. Better parallels
are these from Seneca Epist. xlii. 1 :
vir bonus tarn cito nee fieri potest nee intellegi;
and xxiii. 16:
Nemo est casu bonus, discenda virtus est.
118-25, 130-34. Plutarch, How a Man May Be Sensible of His
Progress in Virtue, trans, of 1870, ii. 449:
You know the art of navigation; when the seamen hoist sail for the
main ocean, they give judgment of their voyage by observing together the
space of time and the force of the wind that driveth them, and compute that,
in all probability, in so many months, with such a gale, they have gone
forward to such or such a place. Just so it is in the study of philosophy.
.... He that is always at his business, constantly upon the road, never
makes any stops or halts, nor meets with obstacles and lets in the way, but
under the conduct of right reason travels smoothly, securely, and quietly
along, may be assured that he has one true sign of the proficient. This of
the poet,
Add many lesser numbers in account,
Your total will to a vast sum amount,
not only holds true as to the increase of money, but also may serve as a rule
to the knowledge of the advance of everything else, especially 6^ proficiency
in virtue.
The quotation, according to the note given, is from Hesiod Works and
Days 361.
281
90 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
136-38. Plut., ibid., 474:
But the proficients in virtue, who have already laid the golden solid
foundation of a virtuous life, as of a sacred and royal building, take especial
care of the whole work, examine and model every part of it according to the
rule of reason, believing that it was well said by Polycletus that the hardest
work remained for them to do whose nails must touch the clay — that is, to
lay the top stone is the great business and masterpiece of the work. The
last stroke gives beauty and perfection to the whole piece.
145-46. Sen. Epist. cxi. 3:
talis est . . . . verus .... philosophus .... non exsurgit in plantas
nee summis ambulat digitis eorum more, qui mendacio staturam adiuvant
longioresque quam sunt videri volunt: contentus est magnitudine sua.
J Und. xxxi: When Jonson remarks that there is not a more
pernicious enemy to study than injudicious praise, he perhaps is
recalling some such passage as that in Seneca Ep. cii. 16:
et cum aeque antiquus poeta ait: laus alii artes, non laudationem dicit,
quae corrumpit artes. nihil enim aeque et eloquentiam et omne aliud
studium auribus deditum vitiavit quam popularis adsensio.
Not flie the Crime, but the Suspition too.
This and the lines following it, in which Jonson carefully explains
why what he does in this poem differs somewhat from his former
practice, should be compared with Bacon, Essay XI :
And avoid not only the fault, but the suspicion [of bribery]. Who-
soever is found variable, and changeth manifestly, without manifest cause,
giveth suspicion of corruption. Therefore always when thou changest thine
opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons
that move thee to change; and do not think to steal it.
With Jonson 's explanation of the reason why he praised some
men too much, compare Bacon, Essay LIU:
Some praises come of good wishes and respects, which is a form due in
civility to kings and great persons, laudando praecipere, when by telling
men what they are, they represent to them what they should be.
Since being deceiv'd, I turne a sharper eye
Upon my self e, and aske to whom ? and why ?
And what I write ? and vexe it many dayes
Before men get a verse: much lesse a Praise.
282
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 91
Horace Epist. i. 18. 68, 76:
quid de quoque viro et cui dicas, saepe videto. ....
Qualem commendes etiam atque etiam aspice.
I wonder'd at the richnesse, but am lost
To see the workmanship so exceed the cost!
Ovid: Met. ii. 5:
Materiam superabat opus.
With the latter part of the poem compare the following passage
from Bacon, Adv. of Learning, I:
Books (such as are worthy the name of books) ought to have no patrons
but truth and reason; and the ancient custom was to dedicate them only
to private and equal friends, or to intitle the books with their names; or if
to kings and great persons, it was to some such as the argument of the book
was fit and proper for.
With Jonson's commendation of the dedication to Heywood
and his explanation of why the dedication was suitable, compare
from Selden's own dedication (I quote from the edition of 1631, as
the first is not accessible) :
DEER SIR. You are one that can rightly esteeme a worke and iudge
both of it, and of the ability that begets it. And to such only are these
kind of gifts to be thus presented. Loue and Honor are best testified by
what fits the quality to which you giue them But the truly Generous
soule well knowes and freely vses its owne strength, not only in prudently
gaining and iudging of what it selfe selects and loues best within the vast
Circle of knowledge [which may have suggested Jonson's own use of the
phrase earlier in the poem], but in iustly valuing also what another chuses
there I oonfesse, Sir, your Nobler Contemplations, of Nature and
the Mathematiques, are farre remote from the Subiect I giue you. Yet
there is habitude euen betweene it and them also Thus some parts
of your own Studies, may perhaps be sometimes pleased with it.
Und. xxxii:
Bought Flatteries, the issue of his purse.
Juv. x. 46:
niveos ad frena Quirites,
defossa in loculos quos sportula fecit amicos.
Here of course the purse belongs to the flatterer, not to the flattered;
but a passage recalled vaguely would easily suffer such a change.
lay his fortune out to show
Till en vie wound, or maime it at a blow!
92 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Ibid. 56-58:
quosdam praecipitat subiecta potentia magnae
invidiae, mergit longa atque insignis honorum
pagina
See him, that's calFd, and thought the happiest man,
Honour'd at once, and envi'd (if it can
Be honour is so mixt) by such as would
For all their spight be like him if they could.
Sen. De ben. i. 9. 2: "colunt enim detestanturque felicem et, si
potuerint, eadem facturi, odere facientem."
Where Pittes, or Wright, or Modet would not venter.
So Lesbia, in Martial i. 34, is more immodest than a prostitute:
A Chione saltern vel ab lade disce pudorem.
Adulteries now, are not so hid, or strange,
They're growne Commoditie upon Exchange;
He that will follow but anothers wife,
Is lov'd, though he let out his owne for life:
The Husband now's call'd churlish, or a poore
Nature, that will not let his Wife be a whore;
Or use all arts, or haunt all Companies
That may corrupt her, even in his eyes.
The brother trades a sister; and the friend
Lives to the Lord, but to the Ladies end.
Lesse must not be thought on then Mistresse: or
If it be thought kild like her Embrions; for,
Whom no great Mistresse, hath as yet infam'd
A fellow of course Letcherie, is nam'd
The Servant of the Serving-woman in scorne,
Ne're came to taste the plenteous Mariage-horne.
Thus they doe talke. And are these objects fit
For man to spend his money on ? his wit ?
His time ? health ? soule ? will he for these goe throw
Those thousands on his back, shall after blow
His body to the Counters, or the Fleete ?
Is it for these that fine man meets the street
Coach'd, or on foot-cloth, thrice chang'd every day,
To teach each suit, he has the ready way
From Hide-Parke to the Stage, where at the last
His deare and borrow'd Bravery he must cast ?
When not his Combes, his Curling-irons, his Glasse,
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SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 93
Sweet bags, sweet Powders, nor sweet words will passe
For lesse Securitie ? O for these
Is it that man pulls on himself e Disease ?
Surfet ? and Quarrell ? drinkes the tother health ?
Or by Damnation voids it ? or by stealth ?
What f urie of late is crept into our Feasts ?
What honour given to the drunkennest Guests ?
What reputation to beare one Glasse more ?
When oft the Bearer, is borne out of dore ?
This hath our ill-us'd freedome, and soft peace
Brought on us, and will every houre increase
Our vices, doe not tarry in a place,
But being in Motion still (or rather in race)
Tilt one upon another, and now beare
This way, now that, as if their number were
More then themselves, or then our lives could take,
But both fell prest under the load they make.
This whole passage is chiefly based on De ben. i. 9. 3-4; 10. 2-3:
Coniugibus alienis ne clam quidem, sed aperte ludibrio aditis suas aliis
permisere. Rusticus, inhumanus ac mali moris et inter matronas abomi-
nanda condicio est, si quis coniugem suam in sella prostare vetuit et volgo
admissis inspectoribus vehi perspicuam undique. Si quis nulla se arnica
fecit insignem nee alienae uxori annuum praestat, hunc matronae humilem
et sordidae libidinis et ancillariolum vocant. Decentissimum sponsaliorum
genus est adulterium. et in consensu vidui caelibatus nemo uxorem duxit,
nisi qui abduxit .... nunc cultus corporum nimius et formae cura prae se
ferens animi deformitatem. nunc in petulantiam et audaciam crumpet
male dispensata libertas. nunc in crudelitatem privatam ac publicam ibitur
bellorumque civilium insaniam, qua omne sanctum ac sacrum profanetur.
habebitur aliquando ebrietati honor et plurimum meri cepisse virtus erit.
Non expectant uno loco vitia, sed mobilia et inter se dissidentia tumultuan-
tur, pellunt invicem fuganturque: ceterum idem semper de nobis pronun-
tiare debebimus, malos esse nos, malos fuisse, invitus adiciam et futures esse.
When he wrote about the evils of soft peace, Jonson had more or less
consciously in mind the "nunc patimur longae pacis mala, saevior
armis" of Juv. vi. 292, as well as the "male dispensata libertas" of
Seneca. 0
He that no more for Age, Cramps, Palsies, can
Now use the bones, we see doth hire a man
To take the box up for him; and pursues
The Dice with glassen eyes.
94 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Horace Serm. ii. 7. 15-18:
Scurra Volanerius, postquam illi iusta cheragra
contudit articulos, qui pro se tolleret atque
mitteret in phimum talos, mercede diurna
conductum pavit.
Erasmus uses this passage also in the Praise of Folly.
or have we got
In this, and like, an itch of Vanitie,
That scratching now's our best Felicitie ?
Sen. De tranq. animi. ii. 11-12:
grata omnis illi excitandi se abstrahendique materia est, gratior pessimis
quibusque ingeniis, quae occupationibus libenter deterunter, ut ulcera quae-
dam nocituras manus adpetant et tactu gaudent et f oedam corporum scabiem
delectat, quicquid exasperat: non aliter dixerim his mentibus, in quas
cupiditates velut mala ulcera eruperunt, voluptati esse laborem vexation-
emque.
Und. xxxv :
I can helpe that with boldnesse; And love sware,
And fortune once, t'assist the spirits that dare.
It may very well be that Jonson had in mind the two proverbs that
Gifford speaks of, but it is worth noting that the two proverbs had
already been joined by a writer with whom Jonson was very familiar;
Ovid has, Ars amatoria i. 607 ff., the following lines:
fuge rustica longe
Hinc Pudor! audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat.
The addition of the third idea (boldness =fuge Pudor) makes the
borrowing practically certain.
Und. xxxvi:
By those bright Eyes, at whose immortall fires
Love lights his torches to inflame desires.
Tibullusiv. 2. 5-6:
illius ex oculis, cum vult exurere divos,
accendit geminas lampadas acer Amor.
Und. xli:
Minds that are great and free,
Should not on fortune pause,
'Tis crowne enough to vertue still, her owne applause.
286
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 95
Sen. De vita beata. ix:
non enim hanc [voluptatem] praestat [virtus], sed et hanc, nee huic
laborat, sed labor eius, quamvis aliud petat, hoc quoque adsequetur
Itaque erras, cum interrogas, quid sit illud propter quod virtutem petam:
quaeris enim aliquid supra summum. interrogas, quid petam ex virtute ?
ipsam. nihil enim habet melius, ipse pretium est.
So De dementia i. 1: "quamvis enim recte factorum verus fructus
sit fecisse," and see Epist. Ixxxi. 19, and Claudian De cons. Manl.
Theod. Paneg. 1-3.
Und. xlii: Gifford rightly noted that this poem cannot well be
understood without a reference to the frontispiece which it describes,
but he did not feel that it was any part of his editorial duty to furnish
the reader with the requisite information. I give here a description
before pointing out the source of the poem. At the top is the eye of
Providence; just below is the world, on either side of which stand
Fama Mala and Fama Bona. The world rests in the upturned hands
of Magistra Vitae, i.e., History, who in turn has one foot upon a
skeleton, Mors, the other upon Oblivio. On one side of History
stands, in a niche between two pillars, Experientia, with her wand
and plummet; one of the pillars, inscribed Testis Temporum, is
adorned with figures of books; the other, entitled Nuncia Vetus-
tatis, bears various symbols, some of a mathematical, others appar-
ently of an astrological, character. In a corresponding niche on the
other side stands Veritas, naked of course, and with her upraised
right hand encircled with flames; her pillars are: Lux Veritatis,
adorned with flames; Vita Memoriae, bearing a flourishing vine.
Thus every line of the poem refers to a particular part of the frontis-
piece, which was engraved by Elstrack. The source of Jonson's
poem and of the design of the engraving is found in Cicero De or.
ii. 9:
Eadem facultate et fraus hominum ad perniciem, et integritas ad salutem,
vocatur. Quis cohortari ad virtutem ardentius, quis a vitiis acrius revocare,
quis vituperare improbos asperius, quis laudare bonos ornatius, jjuis cupiti-
tatem vehementius frangere accusando, potest? quis moerorem levare
mitius consolando? Historia vero testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita
memoriae, magistra vitae, nuncia vetustatis, qua voce alia, nisi oratoris,
immortalitati commendatur ?
287
96 WILLIAM DINSMORE BBIGGS
Und. xlv: Gifford notes the quotation from Horace, but the poem
as a whole was evidently suggested by Propertius ii. 34. 85 ff.:
haec quoque perfecto ludebat lasone Varro,
Varro Leucadiae maxima flamma suae.
haec quoque lascivi cantarunt scripta Catulli,
Lesbia quis ipsa notior est Helena,
haec etiam docti confessa est pagina Calvi,
cum caneret miserae funera Quintiliae.
et modo formosa quam multa Lycoride Gallus
mortuus inferna vuhiera lavit aqua!
Cynthia quin etiam versu laudata Properti,
hos inter si me ponere Fama volet.
Und. li: Gifford has noted the quotation from Lucan, but the
main sources of the piece he overlooked. Some lines are suggested
by a poem by Dousa. There is no edition accessible to me at the
moment, but Burton in the Anatomy quotes twice from him in
dealing with the topic of lawyers (see pp. 46, 205, of the ordinary
one-volume edition of the Anatomy). In the second reference
Burton cites "Ja. Dousa Epodon. lib. 2. car. 2.", and quotes as
follows :
Quibus loquacis affatim arrogantiae est,
Peritiae parum aut nihil,
Nee ulla mica literarii salis,
Crumenimulga natio:
Loquuteleia turba, litium strophae,
Maligna litigantium cohors, togati vultures,
Lavernae alumni, Agyrtes, &c.
Compare Jonson:
But when I read or heare the names so rife
Of hirelings, wranglers, stitchers-to of strife,
Hook-handed Harpies, gowned vultures, put
Upon the reverend Pleaders.
Such is what Jonson calls, a line or two farther on, "Dogs eloquence."
The phrase is from Quintilian xii. 9. 9. This fact leads me to point
out that Jonson praises his counselor in accordance with the quali-
fications Quintilian demands that he should possess. He must of
course be a good and learned man. He should be careful what
causes he undertakes, and must even on examination refuse to carry
SOURCE-MATEKIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 97
on a case already accepted if he think it unjust; 11. 16-22 of Jonson
are apparently based on xii. 7. 6 and 7 of Quintilian.
Another author borrowed from is Tacitus.
As if the general! store thou didst command
Of Argument, still drawing forth the best,
And not being borrowed by thee, but possest.
So comm'st thou like a Chiefe into the Court
Arm'd at all peeces ....
Then com'st thou off with Victorie and Palme,
Thy Hearers Nectar
Dial, de oral. 32:
primum enim aliter utimur propriis, aliter commodatis, longeque inter-
esse manifestum est, possideat quis quae profert an mutuetur .... idque
non doctus modo et prudens auditor, sed etiam populus intellegit ac statim
ita laude prosequitur, ut legitime studuisse, ut per omnes eloquentiae
numeros isse, ut denique oratorem esse fateatur; quern non posse aliter
existere nee extitisse umquam confirmo, nisi eum, qui tamquam in aciem
omnibus armis instructus, sic in forum omnibus artibus armatus exierit.
Und. Iv: "Mix spirits" is a Latinism; cf. Cicero De amic. xxi;
and for the doctrine of Jonson's poem, cf. ibid, xxiii-xxvi.
Und. Ivi: Who but Jonson would ever have thought of making
a love elegy out of a number of scraps from Seneca's De dementia f
All my quotations are from the first book.
15-18. xxi. 3:
Hoc est etiam ex victoria sua triumphare testarique nihil se quod dig-
num esset victore apud victos invenisse.
And the doctrine of the whole chapter is to the effect that one should
not wantonly revenge.
28-30. xxi. 2:
quisquis ex alto ad inimici pedes abiectus alienam de capite regnoque
sententiam expectavit, in servatoris sui gloriam vivit plusque nomini eius
confert incolumis, quam si ex oculis ablatus est.
40-50. xiv:
Quod ergo officium eius est? quod bonorum parentum, qui obiurgare
liberos nonnumquam blande, nonnumquam minaciter solent, aliquando
admonere etiam verberibus. Numquid aliquis sanus filium a prima
offensa exheredat? nisi magnae et multae iniuriae patientiam evicerint,
nisi plus est quod timet quam quod damnat, non accedit ad decretorium
98 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
stilum. multa ante temp tat, quibus dubiam indolem et peiore loco iam
positam revocet: simul deploratum est, ultima experitur. nemo ad supplicia
exigenda pervenit, nisi qui remedia consumpsit Tarde sibi pater
membra sua abscidat. etiam cum absciderit, reponere cupiat et in abscin-
dendo gemat cunctatus multum diuque.
51-52. xvii. 2:
Mali medici est desperare .... agat princeps curam non tantum
salutis, sed etiam honestae cicatricis.
67 ff. vii. 1-3:
Quoniam deorum feci mentionem, optime hoc exemplum principi con-
stituam, ad quod formetur, ut se talem esse civibus, quales sibi deos velit.
Expedit ergo habere inexorabilia peccatis atque erroribus numina ? expedit
usque ad ultimam infesta perniciem? et quis regum erit tutus, cuius non
membra haruspices colligant ? Quod si di placabiles et aequi delicta poten-
tium non statim fulminibus persequuntur, quanto aequius est hominem
hominibus praepositum miti animo exercere imperium et cogitare, utrum
mundi status gratior oculis pulchriorque sit sereno et puro die an quum
fragoribus crebris omnia quatiuntur et ignes hinc atque illinc micant ? atqui
non alia facies est quieti moratique imperii quam sereni coeli et nitentis.
Grudele regnum turbidum tenebrisque obscurum est, inter trementes et ad
repentinum sonitum expavescentes ne eo quidem qui omnia perturbat incon-
cusso. Facilius privatis ignoscitur pertinaciter se vindicantibus. possunt
enim laedi dolorque eorum ab iniuria venit. timent praeterea contemptum,
et non retulisse laedentibus gratiam infirmitas videtur, non dementia.
And viii. 5:
Ut fulmina paucorum perieulo cadunt, omnium metu, sic animadver-
siones magnarum potestatum terrent latius quam nocent.
99-104. Plut., How a Young Man Ought to Hear Poems, trans.
1870, ii. 76:
For which purpose Plato teacheth us that we ought to inure ouselves to
fear blame and disgrace more than labor and danger.
105-6. xxii. 3:
Constituit bonos mores civitati princeps et vitia eius facilius reprimit,
si patiens eorum est, non tamquam probet, sed tamquam invitus et cum
magno tormento ad castigandum veniat: verecundiam peccandi facit ipsa
dementia regentis.
Und. Ivii:
Are vowes so cheape with women ? or the matter
Whereof they are made, that they are writ in water ?
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 99
Catullus Ixx:
dicit: sed mulier cupido quod dicit amanti,
in vento et rapida scribere oportet aqua.
Who could have thought so many accents sweet .....
.... could now prove emptie blisses ?
Did you draw bonds to forfeit ?
Tibullus iii. 4. 83-84:
nee tibi crediderim votis contraria vota
nee tantum crimen pectore inesse tuo.
Sooner Tie thinke the Sunne would cease to cheare
The teeming Earth, and that forget to beare;
Sooner that Rivers would run back, or Thames
With ribs of Ice in June would bind his streames:
Or Nature, by whose strength the world indures,
Would change her course, before you alter yours.
This form of adjuration is common enough to all poetry, from classi-
cal times down, and I cannot point out a special passage from which
this one might have been taken. Two bits in Propertius are, how-
ever, apt:
i. 15. 29-30:
muta prius vasto labentur flumina ponto,
annus et inversas duxerit ante vices,
quam, etc.
iii. 19. 5ff.:
flamma per incensas citius sedetur aristas
fluminaque ad fontis sint reditura caput, etc.
like Painters that doe take
Delight, not in made workes, but whilst they make.
Seneca Epist. ix. 7 :
Attalus philosophus dicere solebat: "iucundius esse amicum Jfecere quam
habere. quomodo artifici iucundius pingere est quam pinxisse." Ilia in
opere suo occupata sollicitudo ingens oblectamentum habet in ipsa occupa-
tione. non aeque delectatur, qui ab opere perfecto removit manum. iam
fructu artis suae fruitur: ipsa fruebatur arte, cum pingeret.
291
100 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
This passage of Seneca was also utilized in Und. iv.
Love in your eyes, that gave my tongue the Law
To like what you lik'd, and at Masques, or Playes,
Commend the selfe-same Actors, the same wayes
Aske how you did ? and often with intent
Of being officious, grow impertinent.
Ovid Ars amatoria ii. 197 ff. :
Cede repugnanti: cedendo victor abibis;
Fac modo, quas partis ilia iubebit, agas!
Arguet: arguito; quidquid probat ilia, probato;
Quod dicet, dicas; quod negat ilia, neges!
Riserit: adride; si flebit, flere memento!
Cf. ibid. i. 145-46, 151-52:
Cuius equi veniant, facito studiose requiras,
Nee mora, quisquis erit, cui favet ilia, fave! ....
Et si nullus erit pulvis, tamen excute nullum:
Quaelibet officio causa sit apta tuo.
The curse in 11. 39 ff. of Jonson's poem reminds one of the curse
toward the end of Und. Ixi and of that in in, 5, of Epicoene. With
this play, iv. 1. 121-22, "like what she likes, praise whom she praises,"
compare the lines above. With the line "He first desire you false,
would wish you just," compare "Then I will study falsehood, to be
true," from the preceding piece (for I daresay that, after what I
have pointed out above as to the sources of that elegy, no one will
now embrace Fleay's opinion that it was by Donne). These are
some, but by no means all, of the reasons why I think that editors
of Donne should examine the matter far more carefully than they
appear to have done as yet before they consider the authorship of
this piece a settled question. For instance, the evidence of the
manuscripts has, it seems to me, nothing like the force attributed to
it by Grierson, and I believe the canon of the Folio text of Under-
woods is trustworthy, partly because it was edited by Digby, partly
because of internal evidence. I cannot, however, go into the point
at length here.
292
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 101
Und. Iviii:
But ever without Blazon, or least shade
Of vowes so sacred, and in silence made;
For though Love thrive, and may grow up with cheare,
And free societie, hee's borne else-where,
And must be bred, so to conceale his birth, etc.
Propertius ii. 25. 29-33:
tu tamen interea, quamvis te diligat ilia,
in tacito cohibe gaudia clausa sinu:
namque in amore suo semper sua maxima cuique
nescio quo pacto verba nocere solent, •
Tibullusiv. 13. 7-8:
nil opus invidia est, procul absit gloria vulgi:
qui sapit, in tacito gaudeat ille sinu.
Und. Ix:
Let me be what I am, as Virgil cold
As Horace fat; or as Anacreon old;
No poets verses yet did ever move,
Whose Readers did not thinke he was in love.
Jonson is here expressing one of the fundamental doctrines of classical
aesthetic theory; cf. Cicero De or. ii. 45:
Neque fieri potest, ut doleat is qui audit .... nisi omnes ii motus,
quos orator adhibere volet judici, in ipso oratore impressi atque inusti
videbuntur.
So Horace De arte poet. 102, and cf. Sidney, Apologie, ed. Arber, 67:
But truely many of such writings, as come vnder the banner of vnresist-
able loue, if I were a Mistress, would neuer perswade mee they were in
loue: so coldely they apply fiery speeches [etc.].
Other critical writings of the period dilate on the topic.
Und. Ixii: "A speach according to Horace." Castelain (Ben
Jonson, p. 793) has called attention to the fact that in this title
"speech" translates sermo, and we may take the occasion to point
out that Jonson seems in this poem to be imitating more or less the
restrained irony of Horace rather than, as usual, the vehemence of
Juvenal. For that reason this piece stands out as unique among
Jonson's satirical poems. In spite of that fact, however, Jonson has
293
102 WILLIAM DINSMOBE BRIGGS
Juvenal in mind, so far as part of the subject-matter is concerned,
as anyone will readily observe who chooses to compare the eighth
satire. That satire is devoted to the general theme that virtue is
the true nobility. Juvenal emphasizes, as Jonson does, the principle
that honorable descent is of value only if oneself maintain the
ancestral virtue. Juvenal's lines, 44 f . :
Vos humiles' inquis 'volgi pars ultima nostri,
quorum nemo queat patriam monstrare parentis,
ast ego Cecropides/
seem to have suggested to Jonson the lines that he puts into the
mouth of the worthless noble. Another passage, 134,
de quocumque voles proavum tibi sumito libro,
apparently suggested the words:
Wee,
Descended in a rope of Titles, be
From Guy, or Bevis, Arthur, or from whom
The Herald will.
For the vices of the Roman degenerates Jonson naturally substitutes
their equivalents in the life of contemporary London.
The last third of this speech may owe something in thought to
the speech of Marius to the Roman citizens, Sail. lug. Ixxxv. 37 ff. :
Quis nobilitas freta, ipsa dissimilis moribus, nos, illorum aemulos, con-
temnit; et omnes honores, non ex merito, sed quasi debitos, a vobis repetit.
Ceterum homines superbissimi procul errant. Majores eorum omnia, quae
licebat, illis reliquere, divitias, imagines, memoriam sui praeclaram: vir-
tutem non reliquere; neque poterant: ea sola neque datur dono, neque
accipitur. "Sordidum me et incultis moribus" aiunt, quia parum scite
convivium exorno, neque histrionem ullum, neques pluris pretii coquum
quam villicum habeo. Quae mihi libet confiteri, Quirites, nam ex parente
meo, et ex aliis sanctis viris ita accepi, munditias mulieribus, viris laborem
convenire; omnibusque bonis oportere plus gloriae quam divitiarum esse;
anna, non supellectilem decori esse. Quin ergo, quod juvat, quod carum
aestimant, id semper faciant; ament, potent: ubi adolescentiam habuere,
ibi senectutem agant, in conviviis, dediti ventri et turpissimae parti corporis:
sodorem, pulverem, et alia talia relinquant nobis, quibus ilia epulis jucundiora
sunt. Verum non est ita: nam ubi se flagitiis dedecoravere turpissimi viri,
bonorum praemia ereptum eunt. Ita injustissime luxuria et ignavia,
pessimae artes, illis, qui coluere eas, nihil officiunt, reipublicae innoxiae
cladi sunt.
294
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 103
It seems, however, more likely that Jonson is drawing from the
Dutch scholar Lipsius, for I find in Burton, pp. 208-9 of the ordi-
nary one-volume edition, a passage apparently quoted from Lipsius
and very closely parallel to the latter part of Jonson's poem. As I
have not access to an edition of Lipsius, I can do no more than refer
to the passage in the Anatomy.
Und. Ixiii:
I neither am, nor art thou one of those
That hearkens to a Jacks-pulse, when it goes.
Nor ever trusted to that friendship yet
Was issue of the Taverne, or the Spit.
Plut., Of the Folly of Seeking Many Friends, trans. 1870, i. 466-67:
The palaces of noble men and princes appear guarded with splendid retinues
of diligent obsequious servants, and every room is crowded with a throng of
visitors .... and it may be thought, I confess, at first sight, that such
are very fortunate in having so many cordial, real friends at their com-
mand Change the scene, and you may observe a far greater number
of flies as industriously busy in their kitchens; and as these would vanish,
were the dishes empty, and clean, so neither would that other sort of insect
pay any further respect, were nothing to be got by it.
And Martial ix. 14:
Hunc, quern mensa tibi, quern cena paravit amicum,
Esse putas fidae pectus amicitiae ?
Aprum amat, etc.
And as within your Office, you doe take
No piece of money, but you know, or make
Inquirie of the worth: So must we doe,
First weigh a friend, then touch, and trie him too.
Plut., ibid., 467:
Whoever without due trial put themselves upon us for friends we examine
as bad money; and the cheat being discovered, etc.
Plut., 468:
He that would secure a lasting friendship and acquaintance must first
deliberately judge and thoroughly try its worth, before he settles it.
So in How to Know a Flatterer from a Friend, ii. 102:
And therefore we should rather try our friend, as we do our money,
whether or not he be passable and current, before we need him.
'Tis vertue alone, or nothing that knits friends.
295
104 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Plut., 466:
That which procures love and friendship in the world is a sweet and
obliging temper of mind, a lively readiness in doing good offices, together
with a constant habit of virtue.
Men have Masques and nets,
But these with wearing will themselves unfold:
They cannot last. No lie grew ever old.
Sen. Epist. Ixxix. 18:
Nihil simulatio proficit. paucis imponit leviter extrinsecus inducta
facies: veritas in omnem sui partem eadem est. Quae decipiunt, nihil
habent solidi. tenue est mendacium: perlucet, si diligenter inspexeris.
See also De clem. i. 1. 6:
Nemo enim potest personam diu ferre.
In Disc. (No. 60, ed. Castelain; p. 20, ed. Schelling) Jonson attrib-
utes the saying "No lie grew ever old," to Euripides, but Castelain
says nothing about the attribution, and Schelling remarks that he
has not been able to verify it. In the same passage, Jonson says
"nothing is lasting that is fain'd," and this looks very much like a
reminiscence of the "quae decipiunt, nihil habent solidi, " above.
Compare, however, Cic. De off. ii. 12:
Nee simulatum potest quicquam esse diuturnum.
looke, if he be
Friend to himselfe, that would be friend to thee.
For that is first requir'd, A man be his owne.
Sen. Epist. vi. 7:
Interim quoniam diurnam tibi mercedulam debeo, quid me hodie apud
Hecatonem delectaverit dicam. "Quaeris, inquit, quid profecerim? amicus
esse mini." Multum profecit: numquam erit solus, scito hunc amicum
omnibus esse.
This is likewise Aristotelian doctrine. In discussing the problem
whether a man may be his own friend, he remarks that we "must
make it our ambition to be virtuous; for then we shall stand in a
friendly relation to ourselves, and shall become the friends of others."
And farther on: "But these conditions and all such others as are
characteristic of friendship are best realized in the relation of a man to
himself; for it has been said that all the characteristics of friendship
296
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 105
in the relation of a man to other men are derived from his relation
to himself " (Ethics, Welldon, pp. 293, 300).
Und. Ixix:
Whose even Thred the Fates spinne round, and full,
Out of their Choysest, and their whitest wooll.
Cf. Juvenal xii. 64-65:
postquam Parcae meliora benigna
pensa manu ducunt hilares et stamhiis albi
lanificae.
. /
For other parallels see Friedlaender, ad loc.
Und. Ixxxii:
How happy were the Subject! if he knew
Most pious King, but his owne good in you!
So in Loves Wei-come (at Bolsover) : "Which is, that first the Peoples
love would let that People know their owne happinesse." The
idea is of course from the "sua si bona norint," Georgics ii. 458.
Und. Ixxxiii:
To compare small with great.
Virgil Georgics iv. 176 :
si parva licet componere magnis.
Und. Ixxxvi:
But as the wretched Painter, who so ill
Painted a Dog, that now his subtler skill
Was, t' have a Boy stand with a Club, and fright
All live dogs from the lane, and his shops sight.
Till he had sold his Piece, drawne so unlike:
So doth the flattrer, with farre cunning strike
At a Friends freedome, proves all circling meanes
To keepe him off; and how-so-e're he glean es
Some of his formes, he lets him not come neere
Where he would fixe, for the distinctions feare.
Plut., How to Know a Flatterer, ii. 136:
There remains yet another way to discover him by his inclinations
towards your intimates and familiars Therefore this ligtft and empty
counterfeit, finding he wants weight when put into the balance against a
solid and substantial friend, endeavors to remove him as far as he can, like
him who, having painted a cock extremely ill, commanded his servant to
take the original out of sight.
297
106 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
When Jonson speaks of the flatterer as gleaning some of the forms of
the friend, he is simply summarizing Plutarch's whole essay, the
theme of which is the fact that a flatterer looks like and imitates a
friend, but can be distinguished on close inspection.
Und. Ixxxvii : Besides the source marked down by Whalley, note
that the middle part of this poem is based on Seneca, and the last
stanza but one on Aristotle. The whole of Seneca's ninety-third
epistle should be compared. I extract the more interesting parts:
Non ut diu vivamus curandum est, sed ut satis Longa est vita,
si plena est Quid ilium octoginta anni iuvant per inertiam exacti?
non vixit iste, sed in vita moratus est, nee sero mortuus est, sed diu. " Octo-
ginta annis vixit." Immo octoginta annis fuit, nisi forte sic vixisse eum
dicis, quomodo dicuntur arbores vivere "At ille obiit viridis." sed
officia boni civis, boni amici, boni filii exsecutus est: in nulla parte cessavit.
licet aetas eius imperfecta sit, vita perfecta est .... actu illam metiamur,
non tempore. Vis scire, quid inter hunc intersit, vegetum contemptoremque
fortunae, functum omnibus vitae humanae stipendiis atque in summum
bonum eius evectum, et ilium, cui multi anni transmissi sunt ? alter post mor-
tem quoque est, alter ante mortem periit. Laudemus itaque et in numero
felicium reponamus eum, cui quantulumcumque temporis contigit, bene con-
locatum est Quemadmodum in minore corporis habitu potest homo
esse perfectus, sic et in minore temporis modo potest vita esse perfecta ....
qualis quantusque esset ostendit: si quid adiecisset, fuisset simile praeterito.
.... "Non tarn multis vixit annis quam potuit." Et paucorum versuum
liber est et quidem laudandus et utilis.
The same sentiments are in Plutarch's Consolation to Apollonius,
i. 317-19, but it is Seneca that Jonson is using. Similar ideas occur
elsewhere in Seneca.
The doctrine of the origin of friendship out of virtue is Aristote-
lian; see Ethics, Welldon, 294-95, where Aristotle is discussing good
will as "the germ of friendship," and cf. Cicero De amic. vi. With
the next to the last stanza, cf. Aristotle ibid. 314:
But the friendship of the virtuous is virtuous; it grows as their inter-
course grows, and they seem to be morally elevated by the exercise of their
activity and by the correction of each other's faults; for each models him-
self upon the pleasing features of the other's character, whence the saying,
From good men learn good life.
The saying is attributed to Theognis.
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDER WOODS" 107
The expression "dead sea" of life is also from Seneca Epist.
Ixvii. 14:
Hoc loco mihi Demetrius noster occurrit, qui vitam securam et sine ullis
fortunae occursionibus "mare mortuum" vocat.
When at the beginning of the sixth stanza Jonson says, "Goe
now," etc., he is making use, of course, of a Latinism of which he was
rather fond, as it occurs several times in his various pieces. / nunc
is constantly employed by the Latin poets in this ironical fashion.
Who, ere the first downe bloomed on the chin,
Had sow'd these fruits, and got the harvest in.
An interesting parallel, though perhaps not a source, is found in
Claudian In Olyb. et Prob. cons. 67 ff. :
primordia vestra
Vix pauci meruere senes metasque tenetis,
Ante genas dulces quam flos invenilis inumbret
Oraque ridenti lanugine vestiat aetas.
Und. Ixxxviii:
the Law
Of daring, not to doe a wrong, is true
Valour! to sleight it, being done to you!
To know the heads of danger! where 'tis fit
To bend, to breake, provoke, or suffer it!
Sen. Deben. ii. 34. 3:
Fortitude est virtus pericula iusta contemnens aut scientia periculorum
repellandorum, excipiendorum, provocandorum.
For Jonson's doctrine of true valor, see the article in Modern Philology
already cited.
Und. xc: See below, under "Miscellaneous A."
Und. ci:
Had I a thousand Mouthes, as many Tongues,
And voyce to raise them from my brazen Lungs.
Virgil Georgics ii. 42-43 (repeated in Aeneid vi. 625) :
non, mihi si linguae centum sint oraque centum,
ferrea vox.
Compare Iliad ii. 489.
Her sweetnesse, Softnesse, her faire Courtesie,
Her wary guardes, her wise simplicitie,
108 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Were like a ring of Vertues
.... when they urg'd the Cure
Of her disease, how did her soule assure
Her suff rings, as the body had beene away!
And to the Torturers (her Doctors) say,
Stick on your Cupping-glasses, feare not, put
Your hottest Causticks to, burne, lance, or cut: ....
Then comforted her Lord! and blest her Sonne!
Chear'd her faire Sisters in her race to runne!
With gladnesse tempered her sad Parents teares!
Made her friends joyes, to get above their feares!
And, in her last act, taught the Standers-by,
With admiration, and applause to die!
One cannot be certain that Jonson here had Pliny in mind, but on
reading the latter's account of the death of the thirteen-year-old
daughter of his friend Fundanus, one cannot refrain from noticing
resemblances that have a real significance when one takes into con-
sideration how intimately Jonson knew Pliny and how much he took
from him. Epist. v. 16:
nondum annos quattuordecim impleverat, et iam illi anilis prudentia,
matronalis gravitas erat, et tamen suavitas puellaris cum virginali vere-
cundia. ut ilia patris cervicibus inhaerebat! .... qua ilia temperantia,
qua patientia, qua etiam constantia novissimam valetudinem tulit! medicis
obsequabatur, sororem, patrem adhortabatur ipsamque se destitutam cor-
poris viribus vigore animi sustinebat. duravit hie illi usque ad extremum
nee -aut spatio valedudinis aut metu mortis infractus est, quo plures gravior-
esque nobis causas relinqueret et desiderii et doloris.
Let Angels sing her glories, who did call
Her spirit home, to her originall!
Who saw the way was made it! and were sent 65
To carry, and conduct the Complement
'Twixt death and life! Where her mortalitie
Became her Birth-day to Eternitie!
And now, through circumfused light, she lookes
On Natures secrets, there, as her owne bookes: 70
Speakes Heavens Language! and discovereth free
To every Order, ev'ry Hierarchic!
Beholds her Maker! and, in him, doth see
What the beginnings of all beauties be;
And all beatitudes, that thence doe flow: 75
Which they that have the Crowne are sure to know!
300
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 109
Goe now, her happy Parents, and be sad
If you not understand, what Child you had.
If you dare grudge at Heaven, and repent
T have paid againe a blessing was but lent, 80
And trusted so, as it deposited lay
At pleasure, to be calTd for, every day!
If you can envie your owne Daughters blisse,
And wish her state lesse happie then it is!
If you can cast about your either eye, 85
And see all dead here, or about to dye!
The Starres, that are the Jewels of the Night,
And Day, deceasing! with the Prince of light,
The Sunne! great Kings! and mightiest Kingdomes fall!
Whole Nations! nay Mankind! the World, with all 90
That ever had beginning there, to 'ave end!
With what injustice should one soule pretend
T' escape this common knowne necessitie,
When we were all borne, we began to die;
And, but for that Contention, and brave strife 95
The Christian hath t' enjoy the future life,
Hee were the wretched'st of the race of men.
At first sight there is apparently little in this passage to suggest a
classical source; yet it seems to be in the main an expression, so to
speak, in Christianized language of ideas to be found in two con-
solatory addresses of Seneca. Compare the following extracts from
the Cons, ad Marciam and the Cons, ad Polybium.
Ad Marc, xxv-vi:
Proinde non est quod ad sepulcrum filii tui curras: pessima eius et ipsi
molestissima istic iacent, ossa cineresque, non magis illius partes quam vestes
aliaque tegument a corporum. Integer ille nihilque in terris relinquens sui
fugit et totus excessit paulumque supra nos commoratus, dum expurgatur et
inhaerentia vitia situmque omnem mortalis aevi excutit, deinde ad excelsa
sublatus inter felices currit animas excepit ilium coetus sacer, Scipiones
Catonesque, interque contemptatores vitae et mortis beneficio liberos.
Parens tuus, Marcia, illic nepotem suum, quamquam illic omnibus omne cog-
natum est, adplicat sibi nova luce gaudentem et vicinorum siderum meatus
docet, nee ex coniectura sed omnium ex vero peritus in arcana naturae libens
ducit. utque ignotarum urbium monstrator hospiti gratus est, ittif sciscitanti
coelestium causas domesticus interpres. iuvat enim ex alto relicta respicere
et in profunda terrarum permittere aciem In aeterna rerum per
libera et vasta spatia dimissos non illos interfusa maria discludunt nee
altitude montium aut inviae valles aut incertarum vada Syrtium: tramites
301
110 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
omnium plani et ex facili mobiles et expediti et invicem pervii sunt inter-
mixtique sideribus In parte ultima mundi et inter paucissimos gesta:
tot secula, tot aetatum contextum, seriem, quicquid annorum est, licet
visere. licet surrectura, licet ruitura regna prospicere et magnarum urbium
lapsus et maris novos cursus. Nam si tibi potest solatio esse desiderii
tui commune fatum, nihil quo stat loco stabit, omnia sternet abducetque
vetustas, nee hominibus solum, sed locis, sed regionibus, sed mundi partibus
ludet.
With 11. 80-82, cf. Ad. Pol. x. 4-5:
Rerum natura ilium tibi sicut ceteris fratribus suis non mancipio dedit,
sed commodavit: cum visum est deinde, repetiit nee tuam in eo satietatem
secuta est, sed suam legem Natura suo iure usa, a quo voluit,
debitum suum citius exegit.
(See under Epigram xlv in the article in Classical Philology, u.s.)
For line 89, cf. ibid. xi. 4: "tota cum regibus regna populique
cum regentibus tulere fatum suum : omnes, immo omnia in ultimum
diem spectant." With line 92, cf. Seneca Epist. xxx. 11: "Mors
necessitatem habet aequam et invictam: quis queri potest in ea
condicione se esse, in qua nemo non est?" With 94, Ad. Marc.
xxi. 6: "ex illo quo primum lucem vidit, iter mortis ingressus est
accessitque fato propior et illi ipsi qui adiciebantur adulescentiae
anni, vitae detrahebantur." (Cf. also Epist. i. 2; xxiv. 20.) With
95 ff., cf. I Cor., 15: 19: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ,
we are of all men most miserable."
With 85 ff., cf. also Statius Sylv. ii. 209:
omnia f uncta
aut moritura vides: obeunt noctesque diesque
astraque nee solidis prodest sua machina terris.
Incidentally it might be remarked that a comparison of this
elegy on Lady Winchester (together with the later one on Lady
Digby) with the formula given by C. H. Moore from Vollmer (on
"The Epicedia of Statius," Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and
Pupils of George Lyman Kittredge, 1913, p. 129) would show that
Jonson, mutatis mutandis, not improbably had Statius as his model.
Und.y "Eupheme," title: Absolute in all numbers (cf. absolute in
their numbers, in the "Address to the Readers," in the Shakespeare
Folio). This interesting expression apparently comes directly from
Pliny Epist. ix. 38: "legi enim librum omnibus numeris absolutum."
302
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 111
Note that in the Folio of 1623 the expression is applied to Shake-
speare's plays, i.e., as in Pliny, to a book, a fact which adds something
to the argument supporting the Jonsonian authorship of this piece,
since, as is shown in these pages and in the article just referred to,
Jonson used Pliny's letters freely. In "Eupheme" Jonson applies
the phrase to a man. It is worth noting that similar expressions are
used of men by Valerius Maximus ii. 10. 8, "omnibus numeris per-
fecta virtus"; iv. 1. Ext. 2, "cunctosque uirtutis numeros"; and
viii. 15. 2, "omnibus numeris uirtutis diuitem."
Und., "Eupheme," Nos. 3 and 4: I suspect these to be indebted,
as respects their general design, to Lucian's Portrait-Study. First,
with the help of painters and statuaries he depicts the body of the
wife of Abradatas; then, dismissing the artists, he depicts her mind.
There are, however, no particular agreements in detail.
Thou entertaining in thy brest,
But such a mind, mak'st God thy Guest.
Seneca Epist. xxxi. 11:
animus, sed hie rectus, bonus, magnus. quid aliud voces hunc quam
deum in corpore humano hospitantem ?
In Disc., ed. Schelling, p. 40, the saying is attributed to Euripides,
but Schelling was unable to identify it, as in the case of the quotation
from Euripides formerly noticed. Castelain says nothing. It will
be noticed that in the former instance the substance of the idea that
Jonson attributed to Euripides is likewise to be found in Seneca,
though not, as here, the exact language. See above, under Und.
Ixiii.
Und., "Eupheme," No. 8 (?):
Boast not these Titles of your Ancestors;
(Brave Youths) th' are their possessions, none of yours.
Ovid. Met. xiii. 140:
Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi,
Vix ea nostra voco.
II. MISCELLANEOUS
A. "A Panegyre on the Happie Entrance of lames," etc.: This
piece derives its inspiration chiefly from Pliny's Panegyricus on
Trajan and from several pieces of Claudian, while a hint or two was
303
112 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
taken from Martial and Seneca. I find that Castelain (Discoveries,
p. 154) has touched upon the use of Pliny by Jonson, but he seems
to have caught only one parallel and not to have perceived that more
than a single passage was involved. The other writers mentioned
above he does not notice. I have included the parallel he gives in
what follows.
LI. 3 n. : Againe, the glory of our Westerne world
Unfolds himself: & from his eyes are hoorl'd
(To day) a thousand radiant lights, etc.
Claudian De IV cons. Honor. 1 ff. :
Auspiciis iterum sese regalibus annus
Induit et nota fruitur iactantior aula,
Limina nee passi circum privata morari
Exsultant reduces Augusto consule fasces.
In 11. 30 ff., 56 ff., Jonson describes the joy of the crowds through
which James passed. Pliny xxii has many parallels.
Ac primum qui dies ille, quo exspectatus desideratusque urbem tuam
ingressus es! iam hoc ipsum, quod ingressus es, quam mirum laetumque!
nam priores invehi et importari solebant, non dico quadriiugo curru et
albentibus equis, sed umeris hominum, quod arrogantius erat. tu sola
corporis proceritate elatior aliis et excelsior non de patentia nostra quendam
triumphum, sed de superbia principum egisti. ergo non aetas quemquam,
non valetudo, non sexus retardavit quo minus oculos insolito spectaculo
impleret. te parvuli noscere, ostentare iuvenes, mirari senes, aegri quoque
neglecto medentium imperio ad conspectum tui quasi ad salutem sanita-
temque prorepere. inde alii se satis vixisse te viso, te recepto, alii nunc
magis esse vivendum praedicabant. feminas etiam tune fecunditatis suae
maxima voluptas subiit, cum cernerent cui principi cives, cui imperatori
milites peperissent. videres referta tecta ac laborantia ac ne eum quidem
vacantem locum, qui non nisi suspensum et instabile vestigium caperet,
oppletas undique vias angustumque tramitem relictum tibi, alacrem hinc
atque inde populum, ubique par gaudium paremque clamorem. tarn aequalis
ab omnibus ex adventu tuo laetitia percepta est, quam omnibus venisti; quae
tamen ipsa cum ingressu tuo crevit ac prope in singulos gradus adaucta est.
Old men were glad, their fates till now did last.
Martial x. 6:
Felices, quibus urna dedit spectare coruscum ....
ducem.
This was the peoples love, with which did strive
The Nobles zeale.
304
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 113
Claudian De cons. Stil. iii. 49-50:
laetatur eques plauditque senator
Votaque patricio certant plebeia favori.
the reverend Themis drawes aside
The Kings obeying will, from taking pride
In these vaine stirres, and to his mind suggests
How he may triumph in his subiects brests
With better pompe.
Ibid. 28-29:
Strepitus f astidit inanes
Inque animis hominum pompa meliore triumphat.
She tells him first, that Kings
Are here on earth the most conspicuous things:
That they, by Heauen, are plac'd upon his throne,
To rule like Heauen
.... That all they doe
Though hid at home, abroad is searched into:
And, being once found out, discouer'd lies
Unto as many enuies, there, as eyes.
That princes, since they know it is their fate,
Oft-times, to haue the secrets of their state
Betraid to fame, should take more care, and feare
In publique acts what face and forme they beare.
Claudian De IV cons. Honor. 269-75:
Hoc te praeterea crebro sermone monebo
Ut te totius medio telluris in ore
Vivere cognoscas, cunctis tua gentibus esse
Facta palam, nee posse dari regalibus umquam
Secretum vitiis; nam lux altissima fati
Occultum nihil esse sinit latebrasque per omnes
Intrat et abstrusos explorat fama recessus.
and haue no more, their owne,
As they are men, then men.
Pliny 2:
quod unum exnobis putat nee minus hominem se quam hominibus
praeesse meminit.
Claudian ibid. 303-^:
His tamen effectis neu fastidire minores,
Neu pete praescriptos homini transcendere fines.
305
114 WILLIAM DINSMOKE BRIGGS
In 11. 90 ff. Themis calls to the king's mind the good and evil
deeds of his predecessors. Claudian does the same, 11. 311 ff., 401 ff.
It is worth observing that Claudian puts the good advice that he
gives to Honorius into his own mouth, whereas Jonson makes Themis
the speaker; and further that the praise which Gifford bestows on
Jonson for his frankness and outspokenness should be likewise
bestowed on the Latin poet by whose example Jonson was inspired.
And that no wretch was more vnblest then he,
Whose necessary good t'was now to be
An euill king; And so must such be still,
Who once haue got the habit to doe ill.
One wickednesse another must defend;
For vice is safe, while she hath vice to friend.
Seneca De Clem. i. 13. 2:
eo perductus, ut non liceat illi mutare mores, hoc enim inter cetera vel
pessimum habet crudelitas: perseverandum est nee ad meliora patet regres-
sus. Scelera enim sceleribus tuenda sunt: quid autem eo infelicius, cui iam
esse malo necesse est ?
And cf . Claudian ibid. 278-80, 290-94.
For 11. 121-27, beginning, "He knew, that those, who would,
with loue, command, " see the quotation from Pliny given under
Epigram xxxv in the article in Classical Philology previously men-
tioned, and compare Claudian ibid. 297 ff. :
Tune observantior aequi
Fit populus nee ferre negat, cum viderit ipsum
Auctorem parere sibi: componitur orbis
Regis ad exemplum, nee sic inflectere sensus
Humanos edicta valent, quam vita regentis.
Mobile mutatur semper cum principe vulgus.
She told them, what a fate
was gently falne from Heauen vpon this state.
Pliny 8: Trajan was chosen by the gods to rule over Rome.
Plow deare a father they did now enioy
That came to saue, what discord would destroy.
Pliny 5 and 6: Trajan, by his accession to the throne, quelled tumults
and saved the state.
The temp'rance of a priuate man did bring.
306
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 115
Pliny everywhere celebrates the moderation and temperance of
Trajan, and the way in which, though prince, he comported himself
as a private man. See, for instance, 23 : " inde tu in palatium quidem,
sed eo vultu, ea moderatione, ut si privatam domum peteres."
And was not hot, or couetous to be crown'd
Before mens hearts had crown'd him.
Pliny 9 and 10: Trajan was not in a hurry to be emperor, and he was
the choice of the people before he was chosen by Nerva.
Who (vnlike
Those greater bodies of the sky, that strike
The lesser fiers dim) in his accesse
Brighter then all, hath yet made no one lesse;
Though many greater: and the most, the best.
Wherein, his choice was happie with the rest
'Of his great actions, first to see, and do
What all mens wishes did aspire vnto.
Pliny 19:
est haec natura sideribus, ut parva et exilia validiorum exortus obscuret:
similiter imperatoris adventu legatorum dignitas inumbratur. tu tamen
maior omnibus quidem eras, sed sine ullius deminutione maior: eandem
auctoritatem praesente te quisque retinebat; quin etiam plerisque ex eo
reverentia accesserat, quod tu quoque illos reverebare .... felices illos,
quorum fides et industria non per mternuntios et interpretes, sed ab ipso te,
nee auribus tuis, sed oculis probabantur!
And Claudian De cons. Stil. i. 89-90:
Felix arbitrii princeps, qui congrua mundo
ludicat, et primus censet quod cernimus omnes.
Neuer had land more reason to reioyce.
Nor to her blisse, could ought now added bee,
Saue, that shee might the same perpetuall see.
Which, when time, nature, and the fates deny'd
Pliny 94:
In fine orationis praesides custodesque imperil deos ego consul pro rebus
humanis ac te praecipue, Capitoline luppiter, precor ut beneficiis tuis faveas
tantisque muneribus addas perpetuitatem .... aut si ho£ fato nega-
tur
Yet, let blest Brittaine aske (without your wrong)
Still to haue such a king, and this king long [cf . Und. xc].
307
110 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
Martial xii. 6. 5-6:
Hoc populi gentesque tuae, pia Roma, precantur:
Dux tibi sit semper tails, et iste diu.
The Latin line that Jonson places at the end, " Solus rex," etc., is
from the proverbial
Consulesque fiunt quotannis & novi Proconsules:
Solus aut Rex aut Poeta non quotannis nascitur.
These lines are first given in Binetus' 1579 edition of Petronius, p. 20,
under the heading: Floridi de Qualitate Vitae. He explains the term
"floridi," p. 17: "qui loci sunt insignes ex variis auctoribus descripti,
qui & aurei dicebantur, sicut floridorum quatuor libri ex Apuleij
scriptis excerpti extant hodie." But in Burmann's Anthology, ed.
1835, and in Buecheler and Riese the lines, together with others given
by Binet under this heading, are attributed to a certain Florus.
For Jonson's fondness for this particular bit, see note on Epigram
Ixxix in Classical Philology, u.s.
B. "Lines to Somerset," Gifford, ed. Cunningham, ix, 338:
So, be your Concord, still, as deepe, as mute;
And eve'ry joy, in mariage, turne a fruite.
So, may those Mariage-Pledges, comforts prove:
And ev'ery birth encrease the heate of Love ....
And when your yeares rise more, then would be told,
Yet neyther of you seeme to th' other old.
Martial iv. 13:
Candida perpetuo reside, Concordia, lecto,
Tamque pari semper sit Venus aequa iugo.
Diligat ilia senem quondam, sed et ipsa marito
Turn quoque cum fuerit, non videatur anus.
And Ausonius Ad uxorem, Teubner ed. of Ausonius, p. 327:
Vxor, uiuamus, quod uiximus, et teneamus
Nomina, quae primo sumpsimus in thalamo:
Nee ferat ulla dies, ut commutemur in aeuo;
Quin tibi sim iuuenis tuque puella mihi.
Nestore sim quamuis prouectior aemulaque annis
Vincas Cumanam tu quoque Deiphoben;
Nos ignoremus, quid sit matura senectus.
Scire aeui meritum, non numerare decet.
308
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S " UNDERWOODS" 117
C. "Epigram upon Inigo Jones," Gifford, ed. Cunningham, viii,
113: Gifford in his note remarks, "This is undoubtedly Jonson's,"
as if the authorship of the piece had been questioned. Were there
any uncertainty, it would be removed by observing that the piece is
a close adaptation of Martial, xii. 61. I give Jonson's poem from my
transcript of Harl. 4955, 176 verso (there is another copy in Harl.
6057, 19, which differs slightly).
TO A FREIND AN EPIGRAM OF HIM.
ST; Inigo doth feare it, as I heare,
(And labours to seeme worthy of that feare)
That I should write upon him some sharpe verse,
Able to eate into his bones, and peirce
The marrow! wretch! I quit thee of thy paine.
Thou 'art too ambitious, and dost feare in vaine!
The lybian lion hunts no butter-flies!
Hee makes the Camell, & dull asse his prise!
If thou be so desirous, to be read;
Seeke out some hungrie painter, that for bread,
With rotten chalke, or cole, upon a Wall
Will well designe thee; to be veiw'd of all
That sitt upon the common draught; or Strand;
Thy forehead is too narrow, for my brand.
Versus et breve vividumque carmen
In te ne faciam, times, Ligurra,
Et dignus cupis hoc metu videri.
Sed frustra metuis cupisque frustra.
In tauros Libyci ruunt leones,
Non sunt papilionibus mplesti.
Quaeras, censeo, si legi laboras,
Nigri fornicis ebrium poetam,
Qui carbone rudi putrique creta
Scribit carmina, quae legunt cacantes.
Frons haec stigmate non meo notanda est.
And cf. Claudian De cons. Stil ii. 20-22.
D. In the Athenaeum for June 13, 1914, I printed a poem from
Harl. 4064, which I thought to be Jonson's. I am the* more con-
vinced of the truth of the attribution as I find that almost the whole
of the poem was inspired by the seventh satire of Juvenal and that
some lines are directly borrowed.
309
118 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
The main thought is the same. It is not now as it was with poets
in the old days when great men patronized them gladly. Then it
was worth while to write verse. Cf. Juvenal 90-97:
quod non dant proceres, dabit histrio. tu Camerinos
et baream, tu nobilium magna atria curas ?
praefectos Pelopea facit, Philomela tribunes,
haut tamen invideas vati quern pulpita pascunt.
quis tibi Maecenas, quis nunc erit aut Proculeius
aut Fabius ? quis Cotta iterum, quis Lentulus alter ?
tune par ingenio pretium, tune utile multis
pallere et vinum toto nescire decembri.
Stanza 3 of the poem runs:
Breake then thy quills, blot out
thie long watch'd verse
And rather to the ffyer, then to the rout
theire labor'd tunes reherse
whose ayre will sooner Hell, then their dull sences peirce
Thou that dost spend thie dayes
to get thee a leane face
and come forth worthy Ivy or the bayes
and in this age, canst hope no other grace.
Juvenal 24 ff.:
lignorum aliquid posce ocius et quae
componis, dona Veneris, Telesine, marito,
aut elude et positos tinea pertunde libellos.
frange miser calamum vigilataque proelia dele,
qui facis in parva sublimia carmina cella,
ut dignus venias hederis et imagine macra.
spes nulla ulterior.
Cf . the frange leves calamos of Martial ix. 73.
E. When in Conversations, sec. iv, Jonson adjudged Du Bartas
to be no poet because he wrote no fiction, he probably had in mind
such a principle as that in Plutarch, How a Young Man Ought to
Hear Poems, trans. 1870, ii. 46 :
Wherefore Socrates, being induced by some dreams to attempt something
in poetry, and finding himself unapt, by reason that he had all his lifetime
been the champion of severe truth, to hammer out of his own invention a
likely fiction, made choice of Aesop's fables to turn into verse; as judging
nothing to be true poetry that had in it nothing of falsehood. For though
we have known some sacrifices performed without pipes and dances, yet we
310
SOURCE-MATERIAL FOR JONSON'S "UNDERWOODS" 119
own no poetry which is utterly destitute of fable and fiction. Whence the
verses of Empedocles and Parmenides, the Theriaca of Nicander, and the
sentences of Theognis, are rather to be accounted speeches than poems,
which, that they might not walk contemptibly on foot, have borrowed from
poetry the chariot of verse, to convey them the more creditably through the
world.
If we are to classify poems on this principle, there is no question of
what would happen to Du Bartas.
F. "Masque of Queens," dedicated to Prince Henry (text from
Gifford):
For which singular bounty, if my fate .... shall reserve me to the age
of your actions, whether in the camp or the council-chamber, that I may
write, at nights, the deeds of your days; I will then labour to bring forth
some work as worthy of your fame, as my ambition therein is of your pardon.
Cf. Propertius ii. 10. 5-6, 19-20:
quod si deficiant vires, audacia certe
laus erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est
haec ego castra sequar. vates tua castra canendo
magnus ero. servent hunc mihi fata diem!
G. "Ode on New Inn," last stanza:
But, when they heare thee sing
The glories of thy King,
His zeale to God, and his just awe o're men;
They may, blood-shaken, then,
Feele such a flesh-quake to possess their powers:
As they shall cry, like ours
In sound of peace, or warres,
No Harpe ere hit the starres;
In tuning forth the acts of his sweet raigne:
And raysing Charles his Chariot, 'bove his Waine.
See various lines in the early part of the third Georgic:
temptanda via est, qua me quoque passim
tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora ....
Invidia inf elix furias amnemque severum
Cocyti metuet ....
mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas *
Caesaris
H. "Part of the King's Entertainment": Martial viii. 15, speaks
of the people, the knights, and the senators, as longing for and
311
120 WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
welcoming the return of the prince, and congratulates the prince that
he can trust in the sincerity of his people's love, ending with the line :
Principis est virtus maxima, nosse suos.
Jonson makes use of all these ideas, and translates the quoted line
as follows:
In a prince it is
No little virtue, to know who are his.
I. Epig. xiv:
Camden, most reuerend head, to whom I owe
All that I am in arts, all that I know.
(How nothing's that ?)
Cic. Pro Archia. 1 :
Si quid est in me ingenii, judices, quod sentio quam sit exiguum ....
aut si hujusce rei ratio aliqua, ab optimarum artium studiis ac disciplina
profecta .... earum rerum omnium vel in primis hie A. Licinius fructum
a me repetere suo jure debet. Nam .... hunc video mini principem, et
ad suscipiendam et ad ingrediendam rationem horum studiorum, exstitisse.
J. Epig. ex: Caesar "wrote, with the same spirit that he fought."
See Quintilian Inst. x. 1. 114:
Tanta in eo vis est, id acumen, ea concitatio, ut ilium eodem anime
dixisse, quo bellavit, appareat.
K. Mallory, p. 141 of his edition of Poetaster, is of the opinion
that Jonson may have been indebted to the play of Mucedorus for
the suggestion of the figure of Envy. Whoever compares these two
descriptions, however, and then turns to Ovid Met. ii. 760-82, will
see at once that Jonson derived his figure of Envy from Ovid's
Invidia. There is no resemblance between the Poetaster and the
Mucedorus passages. Cowley, in the passage spoken of by Mallory,
also had Ovid in mind.
L. Epig. Dedication:
But, if I be falne into those times, wherein, for the likenesse of vice,
and facts, euery one thinks anothers ill deeds obiected to him.
Tacitus Ann. iv. 33:
utque familiae ipsae iam extinctae sunt, reperies qui ob similitudinem
morum aliena malefacta sibi obiectari putent.
WILLIAM DINSMORE BRIGGS
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
312
DAME NATURE AND LADY LIFE
The relation between the stately and beautiful alliterative poem,
Death and Life, in the Percy Folio Manuscript, and Piers Plowman
has long been recognized. The central idea of a spiritual conflict
in which Death is vanquished by Eternal Life in Christ is embodied
in a passage in the vision of Dobet (B XVIII, 27-36; C XXI,
26-35), and there are detailed resemblances which warrant the inclu-
sion of Death and Liffe among the poems that continue the tradi-
tion of Piers Plowman through the succeeding century.1 But it is
only for the last part of the debate, where Life appears in her theo-
logical r61e as salvation, that Piers Plowman affords an adequate
explanation. The earlier and more winsome conception of Life as
a personification of the joy of living things and of the kindly power
that nourishes them is not to be found in Piers Plowman and is
entirely foreign to its somber religious atmosphere.
Skeat affirms that the prototype of Lady Liffe is Lady Anima in
the vision of Dowel (Piers Plowman A, Passus X, 1 ff., etc.), and the
latter figure does indeed appear to have furnished the author of
Death and Liffe with a suggestion. Anima is represented, according
to the conventional allegory, as a lady dwelling in the castle of the
body. She is the vital spirit or the soul of man. The senses are
inclosed in the castle "for love of that ladi that Lyf is i-nempnet,"
a detail suggestive of the affection which all creatures have toward
Lady Liffe. But Lady Liffe is, after all, obviously a different being
from Lady Anima, different also from the masculine figure Lyf, who,
elsewhere in Piers Plowman (B XX, 166 ff.; C XXII, 167 ff.), flies in
vain to Fisick for aid against Elde and Deth. She is a goddess, the
magna parens of living things. The true key to her origin is not to be
found in the allegorical psychology of Hugo of Saint Victor, or in
the literature of mortification, but on that new Olympus where the
medisevalized deities of the pagan mythology hold their atate. Her
1 See Skeat's preface to Death and Liffe in Bishop Percy's Folio Manuscript, edited
by Hales and Furnivall, III, 49 ff.; also Manly in the Cambridge History of English
Literature, II. 46.
313] 121 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, September, 1917
122 JAMES HOLLY HANFORD
own words, addressed to the destroyer Death, clearly show with
which one of these divinities she is to be associated.
& as a theefe in a rout ' thou throngeth them to death,
that neither nature, nor I • ffor none of thy deeds
may bring up our bearnes.
[Death and Liffe, 251-53.]
Dame Liffe is, indeed, but a hypostasis of Dame Nature, a being to
whom the Middle Ages, borrowing for her some of the traits and
functions of the classical Venus, had given vivid reality as the
embodiment of God's creative power. Closer examination of the
Anima passage in Piers Plowman will reveal the source from which the
author of Death and Liffe must have derived the first suggestion for
a transferal to Life of the attributes of Nature. The castle of Anima
was made by Kind. "What sort of thing is this Kind?" asks the
poet. Kind, replies Wit,
is creatour • of alle kunne beestes,
Fader and foormere • the furste of all thing;
That is the grete god • that bigynnyng hedde nevere,
The lord of lyf and of liht ' of lisse and of peyne.
Angeles and alle thing • arn at his wille,
Bote mon is him most lyk • of marke and of schap;
For with word that he warp • woxen forth beestes,
And alle thing at his wille ' was wrought with a speche.
[A-text, X, 27-34.]
Having once adopted, from the hint afforded in this passage, the
idea of associating the figures of Life and Nature, the Death and Liffe
poet did not rely on Piers Plowman for the details of his picture. He
turned rather to the richer image of Nature in the well-known De
Planctu Naturw of Alanus de Insulis,1 a work which had furnished
Jean de Meung, Chaucer, and many others with the materials of
their descriptions of the Goddess of Kind.2
1 Reprinted in Wright's Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets, Vol. I. My quotations are from
the English translation by Douglas M. Moffat, Yale Studies in English.
2 Miss Edith Scamman, whose interesting study of the alliterative Death and Liffe
(Radcliffe Studies in English and Comparative Literature) I did not see until this article
was in proof, has noted that certain details in the account of the honor paid to Lady
Liffe by living things are paralleled in Dunbar's description of Nature in The Golden
Targe (93 ff.) and The Thistle and the Rose (73 ff.). TJie explanation of these resem-
blances is not, as Miss Scamman infers, that the author of Death and Liffe knew
Dunbar, but that both poets were drawing independently from a common source in
De Planctu Naturae, the Death and Liffe poet much more extensively than the other.
The allusion in Death and Liffe to the mysterious mantle (discussed below) is alone
314
DAME NATURE AND LADY LIFE 123
Natura, with Alanus, is the parent of living things. Like Lady
Liffe, she appears to the poet in a vision, radiant and goddess-like,
crowned with a heavenly diadem. Her neck and breasts are de-
scribed in terms closely paralleled in the debate. Special emphasis
is laid throughout the work on her love function, a characteristic
which reappears in the picture of Lady Liffe. At the approach of
Natura the instinct of life and love springs up in all things. "The
earth, lately stripped of its adornments by the thieving winter,
through the generosity of spring donned a purple tunic of flowers."
So also as Liffe draws near
blossomes & burgens • breathed ffull sweete,
fflowers flourished in the frith * where shee fforth stepedd,
& the grasse that was gray • greened beliue.
[70-72.]
The similarity of detail at this point in the two descriptions
leaves no doubt that the author of Death and Liffe is following the
account in De Planctu. In both poems the fish express their joy;
in both the trees bend their branches in honor at the goddess'
approach.
These lowered their leaves and with a sort of bowed veneration, as if
they were bending their knees, offered her their prayers.
[De Planctu, Prose II.]
the boughes eche one
they lowted to that Ladye ' & layd forth their branches.
[Death and Liffe, 69-70.]
Even more conclusive is the following. The garment of Nature
is allegorically described by Alanus after the model of Boethius,
whose De Consolatione Philosophice he is following throughout. It
is ever changing, elusive to the eye, and of a supernatural substance.
Similarly the author of Death and Liffe, quite unintelligibly, except
on the hypothesis that he is echoing Alanus, invests his goddess in a
mysterious mantle.
In kirtle & Mantle
of goodlyest greene • that ever groome wore
ffor the kind of that cloth ' can noe clarke tell.
[83-85.]
sufficient to prove that the material came to the alliterative poet directly rather than
through the medium of Dunbar. The failure of the argument for Dunbar as a probable
influence in Death and Liffe disposes of Miss Scamman's further conclusion that the
poem must be dated after 1503.
315
124 JAMES HOLLY HANFOED
Indeed, the whole passage describing the approach of Liffe
(Death and Liffe, 57-141) is but an elaboration of suggestions in
De Planctu Naturce. In the subsequent narrative of the poet's
meeting with Lady Liffe there is also a general similarity with Alanus'
work. Not recognizing Liffe at first, he is enlightened by Sir Com-
fort, as the wondering author of the Complaint is enlightened by
Natura herself. Says Comfort:
shee hath ffostered and ffed thee ' sith thou wast first borne,
and yett beffore thou wast borne * shee bred in thy hart.
[127-28.]
Similarly Natura:
Why has recognition of my face strayed from thy memory? Thou in
whom my gifts bespeak me, who have blessed thee with such abundant favor
and kindness; who, from thy early age, as vice regent of God the creator,
have ordered by sure management thy life's proper course; who in times
past brought the fluctuating material of thy body out from the impure essence
of primordial matter into true being.
[Prose III.]
In view of the substantial identity of Lady Liffe and Alanus'
Natura it becomes unnecessary to resort, as Skeat does, to vaguer
parallels with the descriptions in Piers Plowman of Lady Meed
and Holichurche. Thus the crown and gorgeous clothing of
Lady Meed are less likely to have been the model of Liffe's jeweled
garments than the more elaborately described apparel of Natura,
with its wealth of allegorical gems. " And the crown on her head was
carven in heaven," says the author of Death and Liffe, obviously
thinking of the divine origin of Natura "in the inner palace of the
impassible heavens." Again, the poet's awe of Lady Liffe and Sir
Comfort's "she has fostered and fed thee"1 are probably derived from
the passage already referred to in De Planctu rather than from the
meeting with Holichurche in Piers Plowman.
JAMES HOLLY HANFOKD
UNIVERSITY OP NORTH CAROLINA
» The specific phrase in Death and Liffe is apparently an echo from Wynnere and
Wastoure, I, 206. The relations of Death and Liffe to this poem and to other alliterative
pieces will be dealt with in the introduction to an edition of Death and Liffe which
Dr. J. M. Stedman and I are preparing for publication in the University of North Caro-
lina Studies in Philology.
316
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Du Transcendantalisme consider^ essentiellement dans sa definition el
ses origines frangaises. Par WILLIAM GIRARD. University of
California Publications in Modern Philology, Vol. IV, No. 3
(October 18, 1916), pp. 351-498.
The subject of this monograph is so difficult of treatment that, if our
knowledge is even slightly increased thereby, we should be grateful. How
shall we derive from book sources an intuitional philosophy? And how
define a movement that called itself indefinable ? The subject is enormous
as well as difficult. Mr. Girard apologizes for attempting so much, and
probably most readers will feel that a survey of American thought down to
1840, together with argumentative summaries and comparisons of the
transcendental thinking of England, Germany, and France, could hardly
be given with much thoroughness in a hundred and fifty rather verbose
pages.
The main thesis of the study concerns the derivation of the movement.
Mr. Girard in his most conciliatory moments holds that the transcendental-
ists "ont retrouve" chez les grands ide"alistes allemands un e"tat d'ame qui
e"tait plus ou moins le leur, ce qui explique l'int£r£t qu'ils porterent a leur
philosophic, tandis qu'ils ont emprunte" aux spiritualistes franc.ais, en parti-
culier, des formes qui se trouverent exprimer de la facon la plus satisfaisante,
des ide"es et des conceptions qu'ils devaient beaucoup plus & ce qu'ils etaient
eux-memes qu'& ce qu'avaient e"te* les e*crivains qu'ils lurent, appre*cierent et
comprirent" (p. 357). In the heat of argument he seems at times to be
defending a thesis much like Brownson's hasty statement: "Germany
reaches us only through France" (p. 474). Consistently he aims to show
that the influence of Germany on the movement has been much overesti-
mated, while that of France has been neglected. His success is partial.
The method of the argument is open to severe criticism. Having given
a historical survey of earlier American thought, Mr. Girard, after reaching
1825, drops the historical method and considers his facts in a topical arrange-
ment that is not illuminating. No logical separation of the philosophical
and the religious thinking of the group can be made. Mr. Girard's methods
enable him, furthermore, to mistreat individuals easily. Nat knowing
what to make of Emerson, he obliterates him from the discussion.1 He
neglects Hedge's Germanism most unwarrantably.2 He stresses Ripley's
' See pp. 383, note, 395, and 482, note.
» Cf. p. 397 with G. W. Cooke, Introduction to the Dial, II, 72-73.
317] 125
126 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
choice of French material for the early volumes of his Specimens of Foreign
Literature, but neglects entirely Ripley's controversy with Andrews Norton
and the Letters on the Latest Form of Infidelity resulting from it. These
little known letters are highly important in the history of transcendentalism,
and they show an indisputable and strong German influence on Ripley's
thinking. Casual journalistic utterances Mr. Girard sometimes takes with
naive seriousness, and seeming proofs are not always carefully weighed. In
part proof of the proposition, "Que la philosophic des idealistes allemands
n'ait exerce*, directement, aucune influence notable sur la pense*e religeuse
liberale de la Nouvelle-Angleterre," the following statements are made
(p. 403) : "G. Ripley nous declare a son tour qu'il n'a rien lu de Kant et qu'il
doit ce qu'il sait des doctrines de ce philosophe a Fun de ses interpretes anglais
(Dial, II, 91). Margaret Fuller avoue ne rien comprendre a ce qu'elle lit
de Fichte, quoiqu'elle e*tudie ce dernier d'apres un traite* destine* a en simpli-
fier la doctrine, et se declare, en outre, incapable de comprendre, dans son
ensemble, le systeme de Jacobi." The Dial article here ascribed to Ripley
is assigned by Cooke to J. A. Saxton;1 on what ground does Mr. Girard
assign it to Ripley? Frequent favorable references to Kant scattered
through Ripley's work, together with the fact that he was an excellent
scholar in German theology and possessed a good German library containing
"much of Kant,"2 would certainly tend to establish an acquaintance on his
part with Kant. With regard to Miss Fuller the fact that she said she could
not understand Fichte is far from proving that she was uninfluenced by him.
A comic moment is reported3 when Mme de Stael upon meeting Fichte said:
"Now, Mons. Fichte, could you be so kind as to give me, in fifteen minutes
or so, a sort of idea or apergu of your system, so that I may know clearly
what you mean by your ich, your moi, for I am entirely in the dark about
it." Although Mr. Girard seems to think that such statements as Miss
Fuller's and Parker's (that Kant is most difficult reading; see p. 442) are
evidence for lack of German influence on transcendentalism, they demon-
strate, on the contrary, earnest American attempts to fathom German
thought. If Americans had professed a clear understanding of German
idealism, then indeed we should have reason to believe that they studied it
second hand.
Mr. Girard is at his best when collecting evidence of American fondness
for French philosophers. It is here that he gives us his most important
results. And yet the present reviewer would interpret this evidence in a
manner different from Mr. Girard's. The more aggressive transcendental-
ists — Hedge, Ripley, Parker, Follen, and perhaps Brownson — were, with
the probable exception of the last-named, first stimulated by German
thinking. They desired to popularize their highly unpopular transcendental-
ism, but could not do so by use of German sources because of the horror
i Introduction to the Dial, II. 115.
* Of. Girard, p. 402, with Frothingham, Ripley, p. 46.
» Life of George Ticknor (1876), I, 497-98.
318
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 127
most of the clergy felt for all German theology1 and, more especially, because
of obvious rhetorical difficulties. Hence they turned to the admirable
French simplifications of the Germans and commended them habitually
for those unskilled in German or in philosophy. The influence of Mme de
Stael in attracting Americans to a further study of German thought is
undoubted; but it is certain that before the Critique of Pure Reason was
translated in 1838 several New Englanders and some transcendentalists
had studied the work in the original. Mr. Girard is then justified in assum-
ing an immediate French origin for the thinking of some minor transcenden-
talists, but not in trying to emphasize such an origin for the thought of the
leaders of the movement, other than possibly W. E. Channing and Brown-
son. Since Brownson is praised so much — and very likely deservedly — by
Mr. Girard, it is worth while to quote Hedge's statement concerning the
members of the famous Transcendental Club: "Orestes Brownson met with
us once or twice, but became unbearable, and was not afterward invited."2
Channing had as early as 1816 sent inquiries to Ticknor concerning German
metaphysics,3 and later was further influenced by Follen to admire the
Germans, whom he could not read.
The reviewer's notion that the French writers with whom we are con-
cerned were valued usually as potential popularizers fits in perfectly with
passages of praise of them quoted by Mr. Girard.4 Especially is it clear
that the writer quoted on p. 454 regards Degerando as best suited to the
tired (New England!) business man in his family hours. Other passages
might have been quoted to show regard for French writing and its populariz-
ing power. S. Osgood, reviewing Ripley's Specimens in the Christian
Examiner (XXVIII, 138), says: "The French, indeed, are masters of the
intellectual mint; they understand how to give thought such shape that it
will pass current. Commend us to the Germans for skill, ardor, and patience
in digging out the precious metal from its depths, and to the English for
readiness and talent to use it in actual business; but it must first pass through
the French mint and take the form and beauty that fit it for practical
purposes." This seems to present the usual view and to explain perhaps
why Ripley's early Specimens were from French rather than German philos-
ophers.
Mr. Girard is usually least happy in his anti-German efforts. He does
succeed in showing that it is easy to overemphasize — and, for that matter,
to underemphasize — direct influence from Kant and the greater German
idealists. But it remains true that the movement is stamped "made in
Germany." Mr. Girard seems to come close to a really important emphasis
— and a rather new one — when he thinks the diffusion of German idealism
in America due to such men as Herder, Schleiermacher, and fDe Wette
1 See Rev. Daniel Dana in the American Quarterly Register, XI (August, 1838), 59;
also Howe, Life of Bancroft, I, 55, 65, etc.
2 Cooke, Introduction to the Dial, II, 73.
» Life of George Ticknor (1876), I, 96. * Pp. 443, 454, 474, 477.
319
128 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
(p. 400). Portions of the works of all three of these were translated by New
Englanders and were used in transcendental arguments. Ripley's account
of the last two in his Letters on the Latest Forms of Infidelity is notably enthu-
siastic, and he published articles on all three men in the Christian Examiner.
George Bancroft when in Berlin had been very intimate with Schleiermacher,
whose abilities he greatly admired, while Follen and De Wette had worked
in close association on the faculty of the University of Basle. But the
greater Germans must have had influence as well — if not so much direct
influence. Follen's outspoken praise of Kant in his "Inaugural" (1831),
Hedge's important commendation of him in the Christian Examiner (XIV
[March, 1833], 119-127), as well as Parker's opinion that Kant was "one
of the profoundest thinkers in the world, though one of the worst writers,
even of Germany"1 — all are conclusive as to the direct influence of Kant
on some transcendentalists. It may have been difficult, as Clarke is quoted
as saying (p. 398, note) , to buy German books in Boston. No one has ever
thought that German metaphysicians or theologians had a large public in
New England, but it is certain that Hedge, Francis, Ripley, Parker, and
a few others2 would have all the books that need be presupposed. The
predilection of Boston and Cambridge for things German was well enough
known by 1825 so that Lafayette could call the region "la portion des Etats
Unis ou la literature allemande est le plus en honneur."3
We must go back to the method of dealing carefully with the transcen-
dentalists one by one. Then we shall find that their ideas came from many
diverse places. W. E. Channing and Emerson derive perhaps from the
least usual sources. Bancroft, Follen, Francis, Hedge, and Ripley were so
steeped in German that it is useless to deny their Teutonic origins. Brown-
son is the loudest of the Gallophile group; while Margaret Fuller, though a
faithful student of German literature, may well stand as representative of a
class who were inspired and taught mainly by Americans. It is unnecessary
to assume, with Mr. Girard, that only thinkers who held religious views
entirely acceptable to transcendentalists influenced them; William Penn
and even Jonathan Edwards4 were among those whose thinking was found
to contain germs of intuitionalism.
Mr. Girard, while taking an unwarrantably extreme position as to
German influence on the transcendentalism of New England, has thrown
definite light on the interesting part French influence played in the mover
ment. For those who believe the movement essentially obscurantist it
will be possible to give the Germans their due weight of influence without
violating any present patriotic sensibilities.
GEORGE SHERBURN
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
1 Weiss, Life of Parker, II. 454.
2 See Appendix to Professor H. C. Goddard, Studies in New England Tranacenden~
talism.
* E. L. Follen, Life of Charles Follen, p. 92.
« See Howe, Life of George Bancroft, I, 223, and Weiss, Life of Parker, I, 112 ,141.
320
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV October IQIJ NUMBER 6
LESSINGS EMILIA GALOTTI UND GOETHES WERTHER
Im Berichte iiber den Tod Werthers finden wir im drittletzten
Absatz von Goethes Roman die Worte: " Emilia Galotti lag auf
dem Pulte aufgeschlagen." Wie kam Goethe dazu, Lessings Drama
an so bedeutender Stelle zu erwahnen ? Die gewohnliche Erklarung
ist die: "Es handelt sich .... um einen uneingeschmolzenen
Lebensrest: nach Kestners Bericht lag die Emilia auf dem Pult des
tot en Jerusalem, der ein grosser Lessingverehrer gewesen war."1
R. M. Meyer in seiner Goethebiographie geht sogar so weit, aus
diesem "Fehler" Goethes den innern Zwiespalt, ja die Unwahrheit
des Werkes abzuleiten.2 Das scheint mir hingegen eine gewagte
Hypothese, besonders wenn man bedenkt, mit welcher feinen Wahl
Goethe rein biographische Details, selbst wenn sie an sich poetisch
sind, sichtet und ausscheidet, sogar unter Ziigen, welche die Gedacht-
nisauslese passiert haben.3 Und nun erst an dieser Stelle, wo er den
Kestnerbericht mit genialster ktinstlerischer Okonomie behandelt.
Mit dem Leben Jerusalems steht die Emilia allerdings in klarer
Beziehung. Er ist ein Freund Lessings und durchaus Mensch der
Aufklarung mit nur sparlichen empfindsamen Ziigen.
Er las viele Romane und hat selbst gesagt, dass kaum ein Roman sein
wiirde, den er nicht gelesen hatte. Die fiirchterlichsten Trauerspiele waren
1 Max Herrmann in Goethes stimtliche Werke. Jubilaumsausgabe, 16, 395.
« Berlin, 18982, pp. Ill f.
3 Vgl. Peise, "Zu Entstehung, Problem und Technik von Goethes Werther," Journal
of Engl. and Germ. Phil., XIII, 1, pp. 4 und 29-36.
321] 65 [MoDESN PHILOLOGY, October, 1917
66 ERNST FEISE
ihm die liebsten. Er las ferner philosophische Schriftsteller mit grossem
Eifer und griibelte dariiber. Er hat auch verschiedene philosophische
Aufsaze gemacht, die Kielmannsegge gelesen und sehr von andern Mei-
nungen abweichend gefunden hat; unter andern auch einen besondern
Aufsatz, worin er den Selbstmord vertheidigte. Oft beklagte er sich gegen
Kielmannsegge iiber die engen Granzen, welche dem menschlichen Ver-
stande gesetzt waren, wenigstens dem Seinigen; er konnte ausserst betriibt
werden, wenn er davon sprach, was er wissen mochte, was er nicht ergriinden
konne, etc. [Hier die Beriihrung mit Werther!] .... Mendelssohns
Phadon war seine liebste Lecture; in der Materie vom Selbstmorde war er
aber immer mit ihm unzufrieden; wobey zu bemerken ist, dass er denselben
auch bey der Gewissheit von der Unsterblichkeit der Seele, die er glaubte,
erlaubt hielt. Leibnitzen's Werke las er >mit grossem Fleisse.1
Und am Schlusse des Kestnerberichtes :
Von dem Wein hatte er nur ein Glas getrunken. Hin und wieder lagen
Bucher und von seinen eignen schriftlichen Aufsatzen. Emilia Galotti lag
auf einem Pult am Fenster aufgeschlagen; daneben ein Manuscript ohnge-
fahr fingerdick in Quart, philosophischen Inhalts, der erste Theyl oder Brief
war iiberschrieben : Von der Freyheit, es war darin von der moral-
ischen Freyheit die Rede. Ich blatterte zwar darin, um zu sehen, ob der
Inhalt auf seine letzte Handlung einen Bezug habe, fand es aber nicht; ich
war aber so bewegt und consternirt, dass ich mich nichts daraus besinne,
noch die Scene, welche von der Emilia Galotti aufgeschlagen war, weiss,
ohngeachtet ich mit Fleiss darnach sah.2
Statt der hier erwahnten, systematischen Beschaftigung mit der
Philosophie haben wir bei Werther das gefiihlsmassig intuitive
Erschauen dessen, "was die Welt im Innersten zusammenhalt."
Den Unterschied beider erkennt Goethe ganz klar: Jerusalems
"verschiedene philosophische Aufsaze" und "das Manuscript
ohngefahr fingerdick" werden beim impulsiv-emotionellen Werther
zu "kleinen Aufsazzen, abgerissenen Gedanken," die er vor dem
letzten Briefe ("nach eilfe") versiegelt. Daraus ergibt sich, scheint
mir, dass die Erklarung, die Emiliastelle sei einfach auf Kestners
Bericht zuruckzufiihren, nicht genligt. Wir verlangen einen innern
Grund, der aus einem Verhaltnis Goethes zu Lessing oder Werthers
zu Emilia hervorgeht.
iKestner, Goethe und Werther (Stuttgart u. Berlin: Cottasche Handbibliothek)
(Zitiert als G.W.), p. 48.
*G.TF., pp. 54-55.
LESSINGS " EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 67
Unangebracht ware eine solche literarische Anspielung im
Werther an und fur sich nicht. Werther lebt in und mit seiner Zeit.
Er ist durchaus in seiner Umgebung als Moderner charakterisiert,
als Genie, allem Regelkram des Rationalismus entgegen, allem, was
"Kenntnisse" besitzt und zur Schau tragt, feind; so dem jungen V.,
dessen Wissensdurst so weit geht, dass er Sulzers Encyklopddie von
vorn bis hinten durchliest, so Albert, dem ein "bischen Verstand"
mehr oder weniger einen Art-unterschied der Menschen ausmacht.1
So fiihlt er wohl auch auf der andern Seite, dass die "verzerrten
Originate," deren Freundschaftsbezeigungen ihm unertraglich sind,
die neue Bewegung kompromittieren. Selbst der Fiirst, der zwar
ein Mann von Verstand ist, unterhalt ihn auf die Dauer nicht mehr,
als wenn er ein wohlgeschriebenes Buch liest (11. Junius). Zwar
fiihlt dieser in der Kunst, " und wlirde noch starker fiihlen, wenn er
nicht durch das garstige, wissenschaftliche Wesen, und durch die
gewohnliche Terminologie eingeschrankt ware."2 "Auch schatzt
er meinen Verstand und Talente mehr als dies Herz, das doch mein
einziger Stolz ist Ach was ich weis, kann jeder wissen. —
Mein Herz hab ich allein."3
So kann es uns also nicht iiberraschen, wenn wir liber Werther an
bestimmten Vertretern der widersprechenden Geistesrichtungen
orientiert werden. Batteux und Wood, de Piles und Winckelmann
werden von ihm erwahnt, auch Heyne, doch ohne Wort der Stellung-
nahme. Dagegen scheint ihm Sulzers Art, Kunstfragen alphabetisch
am Schniirchen aufzuziehn, wenig zu behagen. Namen deutscher
Romanschriftsteller werden unterdriickt, weil Lob oder Tadel sie
verletzen konnte (so sagt der Herausgeber) ; doch bewegt ihn
Lottes Bewunderung des Landpriesters von Wakefield dermassen,
dass er "ganz ausser sich kam und ihr alles sagte, was er musste"
(nicht "wusste," wie auch D.j.G. druckt; wie charakteristisch ist
gerade der Unterschied dieser beiden Worte!).4 Und so finden sich
denn edle Seelen im Werke und Namen Klopstock — ein Name, der
Werther "in dem Strome von Empfindungen " versinken lasst, "den
sie in dieser Loosung liber mich ausgoss."5 Nicht Werther selbst,
1 Ich zitiere nach Morris, Der junge Goethe. Leipzig: Inselverlag, 1909 ff. ( = D.j.G .) ;
hier IV, 263.
2 D.j.G., IV, 288. 3 D.j.G., IV, 287. « D.j.G., IV, 235. * D.j.G., IV, 240.
323
68 ERNST FEISE
sondern der Herausgeber erwahnt Lavaters Buch Jonas bei Gelegen-
heit des Wunsches des Pfarrers, "dass man gegen die tible Laune
vom Predigtstuhle " arbeiten solle.1 Dagegen charakterisiert es
fur ihn die Pfarrersfrau, "ein hageres, krankliches Thier," dass sie
"sich abgiebt gelehrt zu seyn, sich in die Untersuchung des Canons
meliert, gar viel an der neumodischen moralisch-kritischen Reforma-
tion des Christenthums arbeitet, und uber Lavaters Schwarmereyen
die Achseln zuckt," "Kennikot, Semler und Michaelis, gegen ein-
ander abwiegt."2 Wie ein guter und boser Genius aber schweben
iiber Werthers Haupte Homer, dessen einfache, patriarchalische,
kindliche Menschen ihn locken, es ihnen nachzutun, sich der Ein-
schrankung zu ergeben, der sein emportes Blut zur Ruhe lullt wie
Wiegengesang, — und Ossian, der Diistere, der Dimmer neue schmerz-
lich gliihende Freuden in der kraftlosen Gegenwart der Schatten
seiner Abgeschiedenen einsaugt, und nach der kalten Erde, dem
hohen wehenden Grase niedersieht, und ausruft: Der Wandrer
wird kommen, kommen, der mich kannte in meiner Schonheit, und
fragen, wo ist der Sanger, Fingals treflicher Sohn? Sein Fusstritt
geht iiber mein Grab bin, und er fragt vergebens nach mir auf der
Erde."3
Dazu kommen ungenannt und stets geahnt: Rousseau, dessen
Seele einen grossen Teil des Werkes erflillt, und Shakespeare mit
dem Geist des Hamlet, von der Scene des Irren an bis zum Ende,
mit wiederholten Anklangen an "Sein oder Nichtsein."4 Leibniz
spielt in der Gottesauffassung Werthers eine Rolle, wird jedoch auch
nicht genannt.
Und nun zur Stellung des jungen Goethe zu Lessing. In Morris
Ausgabe sind von den lebenden Grossen jener Zeit dem Register
nach Lessing (21mal), Herder (31mal), und Wieland (41mal) am
haufigsten in Goethes Briefen, Gesprachen und Werken erwahnt.
Qualitativ ist damit natlirlich noch nichts gesagt. Von Lessing
entf alien namlich, wahrend der Zeit vom Dezember 1765 bis zum
Februar 1769, dreizehn Stellen auf Auffiihrungen der Sara und
Minna und entsprechende Reminiszenzen. In einer Kritik der
Frankfurter gelehrten Anzeigen im Jahre 1772 erwahnt er dann
» D.J.G., IV. 246. * D.J.G., IV, 292.
5 D.j.O., IV, 291 f. 4 Vgl. Feise, op. cit., pp. 18 f.
324
LESSINGS " EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 69
Lessing neben Klopstock, Kleist, Wieland, Gessner, Gleim und
Gerstenberg, die der Autor des besprochenen Buches "weder im
Guten noch im Bosen nennen horen."1 Alle diese Stellen sind also
von wenig Bedeutung fiir Goethes Haltung Lessing gegeniiber.
Bleiben nunmehr sieben weitere, die naher zu betrachten sind.
Am 13. Februar 1769, an Friederike Oeser: Nach einem zweifel-
haf ten Lobe Gerstenbergs f ahrt Goethe fort :
Grazie und das hohe Pathos sind heterogen; und niemand wird sie
vereinigen dass sie ein wiirdig Sujet einer edlen Kunst werden, da nicht
einmal das hohe Pathos ein Sujet fur die Mahlerey dem Probierstein der
Grazie; und die Poesie hat gar nicht eben Ursache ihre Granzen so aus-
zudehnen, wie ihr Advocat meynt. Er ist ein erfahrener Sachwalter; lieber
ein wenig zu viel als zu wenig; ist seine Art zu dencken. Ich kann, ich
darf mich nicht weiter erklaren, Sie werden mich schon verstehen. Wenn
man anders als grosse Geister denckt, so ist es gemeiniglich das Zeichen
eines kleinen Geists. Ich mag nicht gerne, eins und das andre seyn. Ein
grosser Geist irrt sich so gut wie ein kleiner, jener weil er keine Schrancken
kennt, und dieser weil er seinen Hbrizont, fur die Welt nimmt. 0, meine
Freundinn, das Licht ist die Wahrheit, doch die Sonne ist nicht die Wahrheit,
von der doch das Licht quillt. Die Nacht ist Unwahrheit. Und was ist
Schonheit? Sie ist nicht Licht und nicht Nacht. Dammerung: eine
Gebuhrt von Wahrheit und Unwahrheit. Ein Mittelding. In ihrem Reiche
liegt ein Scheideweg so zweydeutig, so schielend, ein Herkules unter den
Philosophen konnte sich vergreiffen Meine gegenwartige Lebensart
ist der Philosophic gewiedmet. Eingesperrt, allein, Circkel, Papier, Feder
und Dinte, und zwey Biicher, mein ganzes Riistzeug. Und auf diesem
einfachen Wege, komme ich in der Erkenntniss der Wahrheit, oft so weit,
und weiter, als andre mit ihrer Bibliothekarwissenschafft.2
Hier vergleicht also der junge Goethe Lessing einem schlauen
Advokaten, der lieber zu viel als zu wenig fiir sich reklamiert. Aber,
entgegen der spatern Darstellung der Wirkung des Laokoon (Dichtung
und Wahrheit , II, 8), dass das Erscheinen des Laokoon eine Befreiung
der Jiinglinge bedeutet habe, indem es dem Dichter erlaubt habe,
"sich wohl mit dem Hasslichen noch abzufinden," da er fiir die
Einbildungskraft arbeite,3 steht hier der Schiiler Oesers und Winkel-
manns auf dem Standpunkte des Ut pictura poesis: "Die Mahlerey
ist der Probierstein der Grazie," und Grazie wird auch vo/n Dichter
i D.J.G., II, 282.
2D.j.G., 1,324.
3 Jubilaumsausgabe, 23, 123.
70 ERNST FEISE
gefordert. Und das "clamores horrendas at sidera tollit" (Laokoon,
IV) des Barden Rhingulph, von dem er zuvor gesprochen, erinnert
ihn wohl daran, "dass ein grosses Maul zum Schreien notig 1st, und
dass dieses grosse Maul hasslich lasst" (Laokoon, IV). Freilich
wanken ihm die asthetischen Grundsatze bereits bedenklich. 1st
er hier reaktionar, so nahert er sich mit den folgenden Satzen schon
den Anschauungen der Genieperiode. Eine genaue Interpretation
der Stelle ist wohl schwierig, wenn nicht unmoglich. Was ist mit
der Sonne gemeint, was mit der Nacht ? Aber Dammerung kennen
wir aus Goethes eignem Gebrauch des Wortes: nicht die Stunde
klarer logischer, zergliedernder Erkenntnis, sondern die intuitive
Gesammtauffassung der Dinge, die Stunde der Schonheit, der Dich-
tung. Und cavete philosophi! sie gehort dem Kiinstler. Und nun
beschreibt er seine eigne Art, der Wahrheit auf den Grund zu kom-
men, eben durch die Erfahrung, die Gesammtauffassung bedeutet.
Und ob da nicht "die andern mit ihrer Bibliothekarwissenschaf t "
ein Stich auf Lessing ist ?
Am folgenden Tage, den 14. Februar 1769, schreibt er an Oeser,
und diese Stelle lasst uns die vorhergehende in neuem Lichte er-
scheinen. Es ist eine Antwort auf Oesers folgendes Schreiben:
.... Lassen Sie uns diese Wohllust immer erweitern, und wir wollen
iiber die grossen Gelehrten recht von Herzen lachen, die da glauben, es sei
schon genug, wenn man nur viel Sprachen weiss, um durch Nachschlagen
und angefuhrte Stellen ohne praktische Kenntnisse entscheidende Urtheile
fallen zu konnen. Sollte unser gegriindetes Lachen auch wohl den grossen
Lessing treffen? Sehen Sie, liebster Freund, wie er sich mit des Plinius
Worten herumschmeisst, und mit allem angewandten Witze erklart er sie
(weil er das Praktische nicht weiss) ganz falsch. Gehen Sie zu dem nachsten
Wappensteinschneider, und sehen Sie ihn eine Stunde arbeiten, so werden
Ihnen die plinischen Worte " includunter " — "cum feliciter rumpere con-
tingit" ganz anders erscheinen, und ich wette, Sie geraten iiber Christen,
Klotzen und Lessing in ein so lautes Lachen, dass Sie vollkommen gesund
werden. Dass Ihnen aber diese Medizin gewiss gedeiht, so will ich ihnen
vorhero meine Gedanken auf rich tig sagen. Jeder wahre Kenner, der das
Praktische der Steinschneidekunst weiss, wird Ihnen den Unterschied der
geschnittenen Steine, welche mit Schmergel oder mit Diamant gearbeitet
sind, mit den Fingern zeigen, und wird finden, dass unter den alten Steinen
die meisten mit Schmergel geschnitten worden. (Das wahre Kennzeichen
ist die Politur; weil der Schmergel weniger schneidet und daher zugleich
326
LESSINGS "EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 71
poliert; daher kommt es, dass die alten Steine da, wo die neuern matt sind,
etwas mehr Glanz haben.) Und ferner schliesse ich aus dem "feliciter
rumpere," und vorhero "includuntur," das eingeschlossene gliickliche
Sprengen ist zu Plinius Zeiten noch ein Geheimniss bei denen meisten
Steinschneidern gewesen. Noch ist das Wort Naxium : kann nichts anders,
als cyprischer Schmergel sein, und crustas nehmen Sie fiir die aussere Rinde
des Diamants, welche bei dem Schneiden die beste Wirkung thut. Wenn
Sie also eine Zeit den Steinschneider arbeiten gesehen, so begehren Sie von
ihm, dass er Ihnen das Diamantportmachen weisen soil, und wenn Sie dieses
gesehen, so erfolgt gewiss das zur Gesundheit erwiinschte Lachen. Hatte
sonst der grosse Christ sich mehr urn das Praktische bekiimmert, so wiirde
er denen plinischen Stellen keine falsche Auslegung gegeben haben, und
er hatte vielen und auch einem Lessing keine falschen Begriffe beigebracht.
Nichts lacherlicher ist als das mit der Spitze zu schneiden, welches in der
alten und neuern Zeit gewiss keinem Kiinstler eingefallen, weil er weiter
nichts, als etwan ein Gekritze, wie man noch heute zu Tage an denen Fenstern
ein Verschen findet, herausgebracht haben wiirde.1
Goethe antwortet:
.... Ich danke ergebenst fiir die Nachricht vom Steinschneiden; sie
hat mir die Sache klaar gemacht. Lessing! Lessing! wenn er nicht Lessing
ware, ich mochte was sagen. Schreiben mag ich nicht wider ihn, er ist ein
Eroberer und wird in Herrn Herders Waldchen garstig Holz machen, wenn er
driiber kommt. Er ist ein Phanomen von Geist, und in Grunde sind diese
Erscheinungen in Teutschland selten. Wer ihm nicht alles glauben will, der
ist nicht gezwungen, nur widerlegt ihn nicht. Voltaire hat dem Shakespeare
keinen Tort thun konnen, kein kleinerer Geist wird einen grossern iiber-
winden. Emile bleibt Emile und wenn der Pastor zu Berlin narrisch wiirde,
und kein Abbe* wird den Origines verkleinern (14. Februar, 1869. )2
Meint er mit dem kleinern Geist Herder oder sich? Wohl das
Letztere. Trotz der Bewunderung fiir das "Phanomen von Geist"
hat er also doch eine Schwache an ihm entdeckt, freut sich halb und
halb dieser Schwache, nimmt aber doch seine Partei im Bewusstsein,
dass die Grossen(!) zusammenhalten miissen gegen die Pastoren zu
Berlin (d.h. die flachen Aufklarer) oder die Abbe's.
In den Ephemerides von 1772 finden wir ihn vermutlich "aus
einer noch zu ermittelnden Quelle" (Morris) folgende Stelle aus-
schreiben :
Lessings Laock., p. 16. "Wuth und Verzweiflung schandete keines von
ihren Wercken. Ich darf behaupten, dass sie nie eine Furie gebildet haben.
» D.j.G., VI, 58. * D.J.G., I, 328.
327
72 ERNST FEISE
In der Note zeigt er dass nicht Furien, sondern Madge mit Tadis bey der
Althaa stehen, und ich binn gerne seyner Meynung, wie auch fiber den
Kopf auf der Scheibe gegen die Mitte, und gleichsam als auf der Granze.
Aber dieser Kopf giebt mir Gelegenheit, den ersten Theil der angefiihrten
Stelle anzufechten. L. bekennt selbst, es sey hefftiger Schmerz und
wer es ansieht wird gern mit mir einig seyn dass es wiirckliche Verzerrung
ist. Sollte man wohl Wuth und Verzweifelung starcker ausdriicken konnen.
Zwar dass der Kiinstler nicht Meleagern so gebildet hat sondern Gleichsam
ein Beywesen, mit dem Hauptgedancken des S tucks verziert, weil er zu
schrocklich war, ist ein Beweiss fur L. aber nur in so weit ich seiner Meynung
bin. Die alten, wie ich anderswo zu beweisen gesucht habe, scheuten nicht
so sehr das hassliche als das falsche, und verstunden auch die schrocklichsten
Verzerrungen, in schonen Gesichtern, zur Schonheit zu machen. Denn ich
will gerne L. zu Liebe glauben dass der Kupferstecher | : ich habe es in Bar-
baults Werke gesehen: | einige Ziige verdorben hat, denn ich weiss ohne das,
dass ein Kupferstich ist wie eine tFbersetzung, man muss die beste wieder
in Gedancken iibersetzen, um den Geist des Originals zu fiihlen. Aber
noch etwas. Nach Lessings Grundsatzen bleibt hier der Kiinstler unter
dem Dichter, denn Ovid sagt : magnos superat virtute dolores, und der Kiinstler
hatte nichts von diesem Gefiihl. Ovid hat keinen t)bergang wie der Kiinst-
ler von der Wuth zur Mattigkeit und dem Todt. Es ist mir das wieder ein
Beweiss dass man die Fiirtrefflichkeit der Alten in etwas anders als der
Bildung der Schonheit zu suchen hat."1
Wir haben es, wie gesagt, hier vermutlich mit einem Auszuge
zu tun; aber sollte dieser dem jungen Goethe, dem die klassizistischen
Schuppen von den Augen gefallen sind, nicht zu seiner Idee einer
charakteristischen Kunst passen ? Geht damit also weit iiber die
Anschauungen hinaus, die er an Oeser 1769 ausserte, wo er nicht
einmal der Dichtung die Erweiterungen ihrer Grenzen zugestehen
wollte.
Es bleiben fiinf Stellen iibrig, von denen ich diejenige in der
Gassnerkritik2 als nichtssagend ganz iibergehen kann. Von den
Cbrigen bespreche ich die drei letzten zuerst. Ganz sibyllinisch
ist der fragmentarische Satz nach Lavaters Tagebuch: "Aus dem
Auf sat z: iiber das was man ist," wo es heisst: "Lessing ist nichts
und alles was er seyn will "3 Die beiden andern sprechen
1 D.j.G., II, 32 f.
2 D.j.G., II, 305 (nicht im Index!). Hier ware noch zu erwahnen Stiick 10 der Frf.
gel. Anz. iiber Brauns Versuch in prosaischen Fabeln und Erzdhlungen, wo gegen Lessings
Erklarung der Fabel polemisiert wird, das aber Goethe wohl nicht angehort.
z D.j.G., IV, 58.
328
LESSINGS "EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 73
von Lessing mit Respekt; am 6. Mai (April oder Marz?) 1774
schreibt Goethe an Langer, der damals in Braunschweig lebte:
"Wenn Ihr Lessingen seht so sagt ihm dass ich auf ihn gerechnet
hatte, und ich pflegte mich an meinen Leuten nicht zu betrtigen."1
Worauf geht das ?
Im Juni 1774 berichtet das Tantchen Johanna Fahlmer in der
Wiedergabe des prachtigen Gesprachs mit Goethe tiber Wielands
Gotzrezension den folgenden Satz: "An der Stelle, wo er wegen der
Vermischung der Sprachen in verschiedenen Jahrhunderten getadelt
wird, sagte er [Goethe]: auch recht, auch gut; aber wer Teufel
anders, als ein W., Lessing pp. kann mich hierinnen beurtheilen ? "2
Und nun endlich die wichtigste Ausserung, die liber Emilia Galotti,
im Brief e an Herder vom 19. Juli 1772: "Es [Gotz] ist alles nur
gedacht. das argert mich genug. Emilia Galotti ist auch nur gedacht,
und nicht einmal Zufall oder Kaprice spinnen irgend drein. Mit
halbweg Menschenverstand kann man das warum von ieder Scene,
von iedem Wort mogt ich sagen auffinden. Drum binn ich dem
Stuck nicht gut, so ein Meisterstiick es sonst ist, und meinem eben
so wenig."3 Wie bekannt, sind gerade diese Worte wieder und wieder
mit der Wertherstelle kontrastiert worden.
Die Ergebnisse unsrer Untersuchung bis hierher sind mager.
Von einer klaren Stellung des jungen Goethe zu Lessing kann nicht
die Rede sein. Respekt ist vorhanden, Warme nirgends, dagegen
hort man hier und da die beruhmten "scharrenden Hahnenfiisse"
(Herder).
Im Jahre 1774 ist Lessings Einfluss handgreiflich, und zwar,
wenn wir zunachst vom Werther absehen, im Clavigo. Die Ziige des
burger-lichen Dramas, die dieses Stuck mit denen Lessings gemein hat,
liegen auf der Hand. Marie ist eher auf Sara als auf Emilia zuriick-
zuftihren. Aber was die andern ahnlichen Charaktere betrifft, so
spricht vielleicht gerade mehr der Unterschied von dem Ver-
haltnisse Goethes zu Lessing. Beaumarchais tritt an Stelle Odo-
ardos, doch seine Sprache, seine sturmische Willensstarke ist die der
Genieperiode. Clavigo geht tiber die einseitige Darstelfung des
1 D.j.G., IV. 14.
2 D.j.G. , IV, 81 (nicht im Index!).
» D.j.G., II, 295.
74 ERNST FEISE
Helden als Liebhaber hinaus, indem hier nicht nur der Typus "Lieb-
haber," sondern das Verhaltnis von Liebesgefiihlen in ihm zu andern
Regungen seines Charakters gezeigt wird. Vor uns steht wieder
der Geniemensch, der zwischen der Wahl: " Einschrankung " oder
"Ausdehnung" des Ichs schwankt ("zwei Seelen wohnen, ach! in
meiner Brust") wie Weislingen, Werther, Fernando (Stella), Faust.
Und endlich konnen wir fiir den Fortschritt im Carlos tiber Marinelli
hinaus Goethes eignes Zeugnis anfiihren: "Der Bosewichter miide,
die aus Rache, Hass oder kleinlichen Absichten sich einer edlen Natur
entgegensetzen und sie zu Grunde richten, wollt' ich in Carlos den
reinen Weltverstand mit wahrer Freundschaft gegen Leidenschaft,
Neigung und aussere Bedrangnis wirken lassen, um auch einmal
auf diese Weise eine Tragodie zu motivieren."1
Clavigo zeigt am besten den Unterschied von Goethes und Les-
sings Schaffen. Hier geht auch Goethe vom Stoff aus. Aber er
erfiillt sich ihm sogleich mit erlebtem Gehalt: er selbst-Clavigo,
Freund Merck-Carlos, er selbst vielleicht Beaumarchais mit Hinblick
auf seine Sch wester. Aber gerade da liegt die Schwache: hatte er
Beaumarchais eliminieren konnen, das Stuck hatte wohl gewonnen,
aber dann ware ihm die Situation im zweiten Akte, um die es ihm
wohl hauptsachlich zu tun war, entgangen. So gilt gerade von
Clavigo, trotz manchem Erlebten, Goethes Kritik an der Emilia: Das
Stuck ist nur gedacht, und gerade deshalb muss er sich in manchen
Ziigen und besonders — und hierin liegt fiir uns die Hauptbedeutung —
im Technischen an Lessing anlehnen, in Reaktion gegen den Gotz.
Im Fortschritt liber die friihern Dramatiker sind es die gemischten
Empfindungen, die beiden gemein sind ; halten wir das ebenf alls f est.
Und nun zum Werther. Hat er mehr mit der Emilia gemein
als bloss die Tatsache des Selbstmordes ?
Betrachten wir zunachst die Motive in beiden Werken.1 Hier
wie dort die Frau zwischen zwei Mannern. Der eine, gesetzt,
gereift, rechtlich, von gefestigten Grundsatzen; Albert zwar niichter-
ner, Appiani Melancholiker; jeder aber, wenn auch nicht gerade
die Phantasie bestechend, eben wegen eines Mangels an "Fiihl-
barkeit," so doch ein Mann, auf den eine Frau sich verlassen kann.
Auf der andern Seite der anziehende, leidenschaftliche, jiingere
i Dichtung und Wahrheit, III, 15. Jubilaumsausgabe, 24, 260.
330
LESSINGS " EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 75
Mann, interessant freilich aus sehr verschiedenen Griinden, hier
durch hohe Stellung, bestrickende Liebenswiirdigkeit, aussere
blendende Erscheinung und Don Juanerie, dort durch Tiefe und
Ratselhaftigkeit. Bei Lessing fuhrt die Leidenschaft des Prinzen
zum Morde des Brautigams, bei Werther bleibt die Tat im Gedanken
sleeken: "Es ist nicht Verzweiflung, es ist Gewissheit, dass ich
ausgetragen habe, und dass ich mich opfere fur dich, ja Lotte, warum
sollt ich's verschweigen : ems von uns dreyen muss hinweg, und das
will ich seyn. O meine Beste, in diesem zerrissenen Herzen ist es
wiithend herumgeschlichen, oft — deinen Mann zu ermorden! —
dich! — mich! — So sey's denn! — 7>1 Und: "Sie liebt mich! Dieser
Arm hat sie umfasst, diese Lippen auf ihren Lippen gezittert, dieser
Mund am ihrigen gestammelt. Sieistmein! dubistmein! j a Lotte
auf ewig! Und was ist das ? dass Albert dein Mann ist! Mann ? —
das ware denn fur diese Welt — und fur diese Welt Siinde? Gut!
und ich strafe mich davor: Ich hab sie in ihrer ganzen Himmels-
wonne geschmeckt diese Siinde, habe Lebensbalsam und Kraft in
mein Herz gesaugt, du bist von dem Augenblicke mein! Mein,
o Lotte. Ich gehe voran! Geh zu meinem Vater "2
Hier wird also der Mord zum Selbstmord. Werther ubernimmt
die Rolle der Emilia. Aber davon spater. Die Idee des Mordes,
die der elementarere Mensch ausfuhren wtirde, wird dann in der
zweiten Fassung des Werther (1786) noch vertieft durch die Parallel-
geschichte des Bauernburschen, der den Nebenbuhler erschlagt, und
mit dem sich Werther identifiziert, wenn er sagt: "Du bist nicht
zu retten, Ungliicklicher! ich sehe wohl, dass wir nicht zu retten
sind."3 (Odoardos Mordgedanken liegen andre Motive zugrunde,
so kann er hier fuglich iibergangen werden.)
Bei der weiteren Vergleichung der beiden \\Jerke konnen wir
uns zunachst nicht der Einsicht verschliessen, dass, was das innere
Leben der Menschen betrifft, ein Unterschied klar zu Tage tritt,
das ist die ethische Minderwertigkeit der Lessingschen Charaktere.
Lessing kommt vom Rationalismus. Die Tragodie soil durch
Beispiele lehren. Das Bose muss verachtlich erscheinen. Da der
Wille frei ist, durch Einsicht gebessert werden kann, so ist a&s Bose —
wenigstens im Bosewicht Marinelli — iiberlegte Willenshandlung.
i D.j.G., IV, 310. 2 D.j.G., IV, 322. » Jubilaumsausgabe, 16, 112.
331
76 ERNST FEISE
Freilich, der Prinz ist bereits ein Obergangstypus. Bei ihm liegt
das Bose in der Schwache, und die Schuld wird der socialen Ordnung
zugeschoben. (Man vergleiche damit Mellefonts Oberlegtheit!)
Hier liegt das Negative, das Goethe in einer spatern Kritik iiber
Lessing hervorhebt, wenn er sagt: "Auch dass er immerfort pole-
misch wirkte und wirken musste, lag in der Schlechtigkeit seiner
Zeit. In der Emilia Galotti hatte er seine Pike auf die Fiirsten, im
Nathan auf die Pfaffen" (zu Eckermann, 7. Februar, 1827).
Schon mit Emilia indessen kommen wir in eine neue Welt mensch-
licher Psychologie, wie die guten Charaktere des Stiickes iiberhaupt
mehr oder weniger der neueren Zeit angehoren : Schwanken, weil der
Wille nicht frei ist; Angst vor den auf dem Grunde der Seele kauern-
den Gefiihlen, deren man nicht Herr ist, die jeden Augenblick
aufztingeln und das Opfer zu umstricken drohen. Lessings Drama
wendet zuerst die Theorie Leibnizens von den unterbewussten, den
unklaren Gefiihlen an. Und damit entziehen sich die Charaktere
der kalt rationalistischen Beurteilung und Verantwortlichkeit und
steigen sofort auf eine ethisch hohere Stufe. Zwar gilt vielleicht
gerade diesem kaum gelungenen ersten Versuche Lessings, aus der
Tiefe der Seele heraus zu motivieren, Goethes Vorwurf des Gedach-
ten. Wir wissen nicht, ob Emilia " ein Ganschen oder ein Luderchen
ist," aber wir sind doch hier auf dem Wege zu einer Welt, wo uns
der Menschheit ganzer Jammer anfasst, wir ftihlen mit Schaudern:
hier ist Fleisch von unserm Fleisch, denn wir sind allzumal Sunder.
Darum packt uns der Werther, weil er "in seinem angstlichen
Bestreben nach Wahrheit und moralischer Giite" (Kielmannsegge
liber Jerusalem) nicht aus noch ein weiss; darum lasst uns Emilia
kalt, die ihre Tat noch in der heftigsten Leidenschaft zu wagen weiss
und in eine Sentenz zusammenzuf assen. Aber hier ist doch die Briicke
geschlagen. Andre gemeinsame Ziige treten ganz dahinter zurlick, so
Geniemassiges im Prinzen, wenn seine Leidenschaft alle andern Ge-
danken verschlingt, wenn ihm das Regieren Linsen- oder Erbsenzahlen
ist (allerdings auf anderm ethischen Niveau wie bei Werther) ; so die
Idee des "cultiver son jardin" des Grafen Appiani, der sich vom
offentlichen Leben fern halt; so Odoardos Ansicht vom Hofleben.
Zwei Stellen verdienen vielleicht einen ausfiihrlichen Vergleich.
In der Emilia (I, 4) glaubt Conti, der Maler, noch an das "corriger
332
LESSINGS "EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 77
la nature," wenn er sagt: "Auch 1st es [das Portrat] nichts mehr
geschmeichelt, als die Kunst schmeicheln muss. Die Kunst muss
malen, wie sich die plastische Natur, — wenn es eine gibt — das Bild
dachte: ohne den Abfall, welchen der widerstehende Stoff unver-
meidlich macht, ohne den Verderb, mit welchem die Zeit dagegen
ankampfet." Und der Prinz: "Der denkende Kiinstler ist noch
eins so viel wert."
Dagegen Werthers Entdeckung, als er nach der Natur skizziert,
"ohne das mindeste von dem seinen hinzuzuthun " : "Das bestarkte
mich in meinem Vorsatze, mich kiinftig allein an die Natur zu halten.
Sie allein ist unendlich reich, und sie allein bildet den grossen Kiinst-
ler."1
Aber Conti — wie die Genies — will vom Urteil des "Kenners"
nichts wissen: "Und eines jeden Empfindung sollte erst auf den
Ausspruch eines Malers warten? — Ins Kloster mit dem, der es von
uns lernen will, was schon ist!" Die Tatsache, dass er mit seinem
eigenen Konnen unzufrieden ist und zufrieden mit seiner Unzu-
friedenheit, macht ihn zu einem Bruder Werthers.
Ha! dass wir nicht unmittelbar mit den Augen malen! [Werther wiirde
sagen: dass wir nicht unmittelbar durch den Tastsinn unsre Eindriicke
aufnehmen und direkt so wiedergeben konnen!] Auf dem langen Wege
aus dem Auge durch den Arm in den Pinsel, wie viel geht da verloren! —
Aber, wie ich sage, dass ich weiss, was hier verloren gegangen, und warum
es verloren gehen mtissen: darauf bin ich eben so stolz, und stolzer, als ich
auf alles das bin, was ich nicht verloren gehen lassen. Denn aus jenem
erkenne ich, mehr als aus diesem, dass ich wirklich ein grosser Maler bin;
dass es aber meine Hand nur nicht immer ist. — Oder meinen Sie, Prinz, dass
Raffael nicht das grosste malerische Genie gewesen ware, wenn er ungliick-
licherweise ohne Hande ware geboren worden ?
Und Werther:
Ich bin so glticklich, mein B ester, so ganz in dem Gefiihl von ruhigem
Daseyn versunken, dass meine Kunst darunter leidet. Ich konnte jetzt
nicht zeichnen, nicht einen Strich, und bin niemalen ein grosserer Mahler
gewesen als in diesen Augenblicken .... ach konntest du das wieder
ausdriicken, konntest dem Papier das einhauchen, was so voll, so warm in
dir lebt, dass es wiirde der Spiegel deiner Seele Aber ich g^he dariiber
zu Grunde, ich erliege unter der Gewalt der Herrlichkeit dieser Erschein-
ungen.2
» D.J.G., IV, 228. 2 D.J.G., IV. 222.
333
78 ERNST FEISE
Doch um zu den Hauptztigen zuruckzukommen : Lotte wie
Emilia stehen zwischen zwei Mannern, dem einen verlobt, vom
andern geliebt und begehrt und zu ihm wider Willen und unein-
gestanden hingezogen. Lotte ist der festere, einfachere Charakter.
Trotzdem fiihlt sie den Zwiespalt in sich :
Ihre Gedanken fielen auf Werthern. Sie schalt ihn, und konnte ihn
nicht hassen. Ein geheimer Zug hatte ihr ihn vom Anfange ihrer Bekannt-
schaft theuer gemacht, und nun, nach so viel Zeit, nach so manchen dureh
lebten Situationen, musste sein eindruck unausloschlich in ihrem Herzen
seyn. Ihr gepresstes Herz machte sich endlich in Thranen Luft und gieng
in eine stille Melancholie iiber, in der sie sich je langer je tiefer verlohr.
Aber wie schlug ihr Herz, als sie Werthern die Treppe heraufkommen und
aussen nach ihr fragen horte. Es war zu spat, sich verlaugnen zu lassen,
und sie konnte sich nur halb von ihrer Verwirrung ermannen, als er ins
Zimmer trat. Sie haben nicht Wort gehalten! rief sie ihm entgegen. Ich
habe nichts versprochen, war seine Antwort. So hatten Sie mir wenigstens
meine Bitte gewahren sollen, sagte sie, es war Bitte um unserer beyder Ruhe
willen.1
Um ihrer Ruhe willen also hat Lotte den in den letzten Tagen immer
erregteren Werther gebeten, bis zum Weichnachtsabend wegzu-
bleiben und nicht zu kommen wahrend Alberts Abwesenheit.
Emilia geht um ihrer Ruhe willen zur Kirche, denn als sie den
Prinzen bei den Grimaldis kennen gelernt hat, "erhob sich so mancher
Tumult in meiner Seele, den die strengsten Cbungen der Religion
kaum in Wochen besanftigen konnten!" (V, 1). In der Kirche
sucht sie der Prinz.
Emilia. Da ich mich umwandte, da ich ihn erblickte —
Claudia. Wen, meine Tochter ?
Emilia. Raten Sie, meine Mutter, raten Sie — Ich glaubte in die Erde
zu sinken — Ihn selbst.
Claudia. Wen, ihn selbst ? [II, 6 J
Sie halt es nicht einmal fur notig, der nichtsahnenden Mutter den
Namen zu nennen. Und verrat sie nicht durch das "ihn selbst,"
dass sie an ihn gedacht hat ? Als er nun hinter ihr von Liebe fliistert :
" Ich wollte tun, als ob ich es nicht horte. — Was konnt' ich sonst ?—
Meinen guten Engel bitten, mich mit Taubheit zu schlagen; und
wann auch, wenn auch auf immer! — Das bat ich; das war das
einzige, was ich beten konnte."
i D.j.G., IV, 312.
334
LESSINGS " EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 79
Lotte unterbricht Werthers Vorlesung durch einen Strom von
Tranen, und als Werthers Lippen und Augen an ihrem Arme gliihen,
iiberfallt sie ein Schauer. "Sie wollte sich entfernen und es lag all
der Schmerz, der Antheil betaubend wie Blei auf ihr." Endlich
bittet sie ihn, welter zu lesen; aber kurz darauf verlieren sie beide
dieFassung: "Ihre Sinnen verwirrten sich."1 Und wie Emilia nicht
fahig ist, dem Prinzen "in ein em Blicke alle die Verachtung zu
bezeigen, die er verdient" (Claudia), so verlasst Lotte "bebend
zwischen Liebe und Zorn" das Zimmer, aber "mit dem vollsten
Blick der Liebe auf den Elenden." Ihr Zustand am nachsten Tage
wird uns folgendermassen geschildert:
Die Hebe Frau hatte die lezte Nacht wenig geschlafen, ihr Blut war in
einer fieberhaften Emporung, und tausenderley Empfindungen zerrutteten
ihr Herz. Wider ihren Willen ftihlte sie tief in ihrer Brust das Feuer von
Werthers Umarmungen, und zugleich stellten sich ihr die Tage ihrer unbe-
fangenen Unschuld, des sorglosen Zutrauens auf sich selbst in doppelter
Schone dar, es angstigten sie schon zum voraus die Blicke ihres Manns, und
seine halb verdnisslich halb spottische Fragen, wenn er Werthers Besuch
erfahren wiirde; sie hatte sich nie verstellt, sie hatte nie gelogen, und nun
sah sie sich zum erstenmal in der unvermeidlichen Nothwendigkeit; der
Widerwillen, die Verlegenheit die sie dabey empfand, machte die Schuld in
ihren Augen grosser, und doch konnte sie den Urheber davon weder hassen,
noch sich versprechen, ihn nie wieder zu sehn.2
Albert kommt zuriick; sie bewillkommnet ihn mit einer "heftigen
Umarmung, die mehr Bestlirzung und Reue, als eine auffahrende
Freude ausdriickte, und eben dadurch machte sie die Aufmerksam-
keit Albertensrege." Die Stimmung wird gespannt; gerade dadurch
wird es ihr unmoglich, ihm zu sagen, was vorgefallen ist. Werthers
Diener kommt; sie muss ihm die Pistolen reichen. Das befreiende,
vielleicht rettende Wort wird nicht gesprochen, und so wird sie
indirekt schuld an seinem Tode.
Ahnlich Emilia. Sie, die ftihlt, dass "fremdes Laster uns, wider
unsern Willen, zum Mitschuldigen machen kann" (II, 6), wird von
ihrer Mutter bestimmt, dem Brautigam nichts von ihrem Erlebnisse
mit dem Prinzen zu sagen. Die Motivierung ist hier nicht so fein
wie im Werther, und die Handlung verliert dadurch. Wie gut
hatte Lessing die in der Tat vorhandene und von Emilia bemerkte
i D.j.G., IV, 319-20. - D.j.G., IV, 323.
335
80 ERNST FEISE
feierliche, ernsthafte Stimmung des Grafen Appiani benutzen, durch
seine Worte der Bewunderung fur Odoardos Tugend das Gestandnis
Emilias zuriickschreeken konnen. Tatsache ist, dass sie ihm die
Begegnung mit dem Prinzen verheimlicht und spaterhin ftihlt, dass
sie vielleicht dadurch an seinem Tode schuldig geworden ist. "Und
warum er tot ist! Warum!" sagt sie im letzten Aufzuge (V, 7).
Aus diesem Gefuhle der Schuld, die sie bereits auf sich geladen, und
aus Furcht vor dem Unterliegen, das ihr vielleicht droht von dem
dunklen und unbegreiflichen Zug ihrer Sinne, sucht sie den reinig-
enden Tod.
Hier ist ihr nicht Lotte, hier ist ihr Werther gleich. Schon mit dem
16. Juli beginnt das sinnliche Element in seiner Liebe sich zu zeigen;
am 24. November des nachsten Jahres verschwindet ihm bereits
"die liebliche Schonheit" und "das Leuchten des treflichen Geistes"
der Geliebten unter dem heissen Geftihl des Begehrens; doch schwort
er: "Nie will ich's wagen, einen Kuss euch einzudriicken, Lippen,
auf denen Geister des Himmels schweben — und doch — ich will — Ha
siehst du, das steht wie eine Scheidewand vor meiner Seelen — diese
Seligkeit — und da untergegangen, die Siinde abzubtissen — Siinde?"1
Am 17. Dezember gewahrt ihm der Traum, was ihm die Wirklichkeit
versagt. "Seine Sinnen verwirren sich."2 Nach der Verwirrung
b eider aber bleibt ihm nichts mehr ubrig als der Tod. "Siinde?
Gut! und ich strafe mich da vor."3 Aber nicht bevor die Harmonie
seiner Seele wiederhergestellt ist : die Sterne brechen aus den Wolken
des Himmels, und er sieht "die Deichselsterne des Wagens, des
liebsten unter alien Gestirnen."4 "Kann die Seele ohne Sinnen
empfinden. Sie wird die erhabne, heilige geistische Gefuhle von
Schonheit, Ordnung und also von Gott haben,"8 so schreibt Goethe
1772 in sein Notizbuch aus Mendelssohns Phddon, dem Buch, das
Jerusalem die liebste Lektiire war.6 Und in diesem Zustand finden
wir Werther vor der Tat, die seinem Leben ein Ende macht.
Ist es nach dieser Betrachtung klar, dass eine mehr als zufallige
Verbindung zwischen Werther und Emilia Galotti besteht? Das
braucht nicht zu heissen, dass Goethe von Lessing abhangig sei, oder
i D.j.G., IV, 298. « D.j.G., IV, 326.
'- D.j.G,, IV, 304. 5 D.j.G., II, 42.
» D.j.G., IV, 322. • G. W., 48.
LESSINGS "EMILIA GALOTTI" UND GOETHES "WERTHER" 81
dass wir so starke Einfliisse fiihlen wie z.B. die Klopstockischen,
selbst wo sie nicht von Klopstock selbst kommen, sondern aus dem
Sauerteige, der die Seelen jener Zeit durchsetzt. Daftir liegt, wie
wir gesehen haben, Lessings Art dem jungen Goethe und seiner
Umgebung zu fern. Und die eigentlichen Grundziige der Handlung
im Werther, die solchen in Lessings Emilia ahneln, ergeben sich aus
dem Stoffe und den zu Grunde liegenden Erlebnissen und ihrer
Synthese. Aber vielleicht ist es so: Goethe hat sich im Geiste,
unzweifelhaft, mit der Emilia im Zusammenhang mit dem Selbst-
morde Jerusalems beschaftigt. Wie sollte er nicht, als er das Problem
der Tat von alien Seiten zu durchdringen und verstehen suchte.
Und hier liegen doch zugleich die Anfange seines Werther. Die
Gedankengange, die zur Konception dieses Werkes fuhren, ermog-
lichen ihm wohl bewusst oder unbewusst ein tieferes Einfuhlen in
das Lessingische Drama, fuhren ihn zu Lessing und von Lessing
hinweg. Und lasst sich der ratselhafte Ausspruch, "Lessing ist
nichts und alles was er seyn will," dann so erklaren: aus dichte-
rischem Genius heraus, aus dem quellenden, sprudelnden Schopfer-
geist, der wie Moses Wasser aus Felsen schlagt, schafft Lessing nichts,
an diesem Massstabe gemessen ist er nichts; aber er ist alles, was er
sein will, d.h. was er sich vornimmt zu schaffen, das schafft er, denn
er ist "ein Phanomen von Geist."1
Und gerade d i e Seite Lessings, der Kunstverstand, ist dann das,
was auf Goethe gewirkt hat. Noch spater wird er nicht miide,
Lessings Meisterschaft in der Exposition, seine Technik zu ruhmen.
Und die Einwirkung dieser Technik ist auch in seiner Arbeit am
Werther zu spiiren. Vom Gotz kommend, gibt Goethe zwar nicht
den Geist, aber die Form dieses Geniewerkes preis. Was er an
Emilia tadelt: den ausserordentlichen Kunstverstand, mit der jede
Scene, jedes Wort dem Ganzen dient, das macht gerade den Werther
zu der genialen und unsterblichen Schopfung. Hier ist Struktur,
umkleidet mit Fleisch und Blut; ohne den soliden Knochenbau ware
der Werther eine Jeremiade geworden, wie so viele seiner Nach-
kommen. Jeder Brief bedeutet die Luftung eines Schle^rs von
diesem problematischen Charakter, einen Schwung weiter in der
Flugbahn dieses Meteors. Ich erinnere nur an Goethes Ratschlag
i D.J.G., I, 328.
337
82 ERNST FEISE
von 31. Januar, als er Frau von La Roche liber ihre Arbeit an der
Rosalie schreibt:
Der Altar muss erst gebaut, geziert und geweiht seyn eh die Reliquien
hineinverwahrt werden, und ich wunschte die ganze Stelle erst weiter hinten,
wenn der Charackter und der Sinn Rosaliens sich mehr entfaltet haben,
eingepflanzt zu sehn, wie ich denn auch mit der siisen Melankolie von
verirrter Empfindung, die den ersten Brief fiillt, das Ganze gewiirzt sehn
mochte, und Sie bitte wenn es nicht zu sehr ausser der Stimmung ihres Vor-
satzes liegt, die ersten Briefe mit ganz simplem Detail wo Gefuhl und Geist
nur durchscheint zu eroffnen.1
Diesen Ratschlag hat er selbst im Werther befolgt, von dessen
Niederschrift uns derselbe Brief berichtet. So ftihrt er Werther ein,
so spart er Lottens Auftreten bis fur den elften Brief auf, und so
gibt er uns selbst da erst den Eindruck, den sie auf Werthers Herz
gemacht hat. Und Lessing? Hatte er nicht die Emilia erst im
zweiten Akte erscheinen lassen, nachdem wir mit dem Prinzen
vollig bekannt geworden sind, und nachdem das Gefuhl ihrer Schon-
heit und des Prinzen Liebe fur sie bereits den ersten Akt erfiillt hat ?
So konnen wir verstehen, dass Goethe die bewusste Stelle im
Kestnerberichte beibehalt : er war sich wohl bewusst dieser Ahnlich-
keit seines Werkes mit der Emilia, sowohl in einigen ausseren Ziigen
als auch in einem wichtigen Teile seines innern Gehaltes (Gefuhls-
verwirrung und ethische Integritat der Helden), und wollte Lessing,
den er als Meister in der Kunst der Technik erkannte, seinen schul-
digen Dank abstatten, ganz abgesehen von der Wirksamkeit der
Erwahnung als Stuck realistischen Details. Ob diese Art des Dankes
nach Lessings Gusto war — das ist eine andre Frage.
ERNST FEISE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
» D.J.G., IV, 8.
THE INFLUENCE OF HANS FOLZ ON HANS SACHS
There is much in common between Sachs and Folz. Both were
residents of the city of Nurnberg, though Folz was a native of Worms.
Both were interested in the popular side of literature as represented
in the mastersong, and Sachs refers to Folz among the great Nurn-
berg masters as "Hans Foltze, balbirer."1 Folz is one of the very
few early writers of Fastnacht plays whose name is authoritatively
preserved for us. The exact years of his activity cannot be definitely
assigned, but his chief work was in the last half of the fifteenth cen-
tury, and he was probably dead before Sachs was born.
The influence of the older writer on the younger has been com-
mented on more than once.2 It is certain that Sachs knew Folz and
used him as a source frequently. Goetze3 lists twelve works by Sachs
for which Folz serves as a source. In one case, even, Sachs has
been guilty of actual plagiarism in his use of Folz, a fault from which
he is remarkably free, especially when the great extent of his com-
position is taken into consideration. This is in the case of Schwank
No. 109, Die drey frawen mil dem porten. Even here the actual
copying of verses does not exceed a dozen or fifteen, but this is quite
contrary to his usual custom. The following parallels show the
closeness with which Sachs copied in this case :
SACHS FOLZ
drey frawen frey von dreyen frawen stolcz und frey,
F linden ein porten alle drey. Die ein porten funden all drey,
Nun wolt ide den porten hon, nun wollt yde den porten ban,
Die erst sprach: "Welche iren man die ein sprach welche iren man
Am aller sersten mag pet6ren, am aller pasten kiin bed6rn,
Der selben sol der port geh6ren." Der selben sol der port geh6rn.
* Goedeke, Grundriss*. 2, 252.
1 Leonhard Lier (Studien zur Geschichte des Niirnberger Fastnachtspiels, Dissertation,
Leipzig, 1889) sees marked influence of Polz on Sachs. He credits the former with intro-
ducing a new comic theme into Fastnacht literature, the struggle for mastery hi the home,
and sees his influence on Sachs also in the typical character of the doctor; cf. Stiefel in
Niirnberger Festschrift (Ntirnberg, 1894), pp. 150, 104-6; E. Kreisler, Die Dlbmatischen
Werke des Peter Probst, Neudrucke deu. lit. Werke des 16. und 17. Jh., Nos. 219-21, p. xv.
3 Lit. Verein in Stutt., COL, 181 f. In the case of one of these, Schwank No. 186
(Goetze Neudrucke), Stiefel assigns the source to Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst.
83 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, October, 1917
84 EUGENE F. CLARK
SACHS FOLZ
Die each war schlecht. Die erst haim Die sach was slecht, die erst heim lief,
lieff, fant das ir man dort lag und slief,
Fand, das ir mon dort lag und schlieff, paid eylet sie und mischt zu samen
Rues und saffran sie im an straich saffran und rus in einen swamen,
Und macht in alien schwarcz und Die selbig farb sie im an streich
plaich.1 Und macht in alien swarcz und pleich.1
Sachs shows above all his debt to Folz in the word, phrase, and
situation borrowed even on occasions when the main source was not
Folz, and it is the purpose of this paper to indicate the extent to
which this was done. In his Fastnachtspiele aus dem funfzehnten
Jahrhundert* Keller has printed much of the material known to be
the work of Folz. Among the Fastnacht plays are eight so signed
that they may be certainly attributed to him.3 To these Michels4
would add about a dozen more. Only those, however, which can
without question be assigned to Folz have been made the basis of
this study.
Among Keller's plays, No. 7, entitled Ein spil, em hochzeit zu
machen, is by Folz. This has afforded phrases for Sachs on several
occasions. A father describing his daughter says:
Sie hat der siben schon wol dreizehen.5
Sachs copies the phrase in a Fastnacht play to describe the woman
of whom Dildapp was enamored: "Hatz der sie ben schon wol
dreyzehen."6 Folz continues in the description of the daughter by
her father:
die pein sind ir gleich unten als oben.7
Sachs conveys the same idea in these words:
Die hat so sch6ne rote schenckel,
Die waren unden umb den enckel
Eben so dick, als sie warn oben.8
iCf. Stiefel, Festschrift, pp. 104 flf.; Sachs, Schw. 109, 1-10.
2 Lit. Ver. in Stutt., XXVIII-XXX, XLVI.
» Nos. 1, 7, 38, 43, 44, 60, 112, 120.
«"Studien tiber die altesten deu. Fastnachtspiele," Quellen und Forschungen zur
Sprach- und Culturgeschichte der germ. Vdlker, Heft 77, Strassburg, 1896, p. 214.
• Keller, p. 76, 6. 7 Keller, p. 71, 13.
• Fsp. 62, 14. 8 Ftp. 62, 7-9.
340
THE INFLUENCE OF HANS FOLZ ON HANS SACHS 85
Throughout, the ironical description of the girl, as if portraying
beauty, is that employed by Sachs in treating his similar character.1
Finally, in Folz a neighbor says of the girl in question:
Sie was mein knechten gesoten und gepraten,2
and in a Schwank, where other traces of Folz are seen, Sachs writes :
Mag ewer weder gsottn noch praten.3
Keller, No. 38, does not bear the name of Folz, but an early print
has his name on the title-page.4 The play is Von denen, die sich die
wieber nerren lassen. The idea is a common one with Sachs,5 and he
copies here one of the situations closely, although his main source
is Boccaccio. A dull-witted lover mistakes a white cat in a window
for the face of his sweetheart. Folz writes:
Sasz in dem venster ain weisze katz,
Auch hort ich mangen kus und schmatz.6
Of the same scene Sachs writes:
In meim kamer fenstr sas ein kacz,
Gen der det er manch kus und schmacz.7
It should be noted, too, that Sachs chooses Bildapp as the name for
his simpleton. This is the name used by Folz in his similar scene,
while that of Boccaccio's hero is entirely different. In concluding
this same play Folz has the couplet :
Lieb ist laides anfang,
Laid ist liebes ausgang.8
The first of these lines Sachs has borrowed as an introductory verse
to Schwank No. 19.
In similar vein is Keller, No. 44, but from this Sachs borrowed
little. Folz uses the figure, common in the sixteenth century, of a
contest in marksmanship: "Ob wir pei euch ain feller schussen,"9
1 One unsavory phrase from this play Sachs has used on two occasions; cf. Folz in
Keller, 71, 20-21; also "Nachlese" (Lit. Ver. in Stutt., XLVI), p. 6, 22-23; Sachs, Fsp.
80, 165-66; Schw. 158, 79-80.
2 Keller, p. 69, 23. • Keller, p. 285,
« Schw. 133, 82. ? Fsp. 62, 185-86.
* Keller, p. 1493. • Keller, p. 287.
3 Cf. Fsp. 2; Schw. 17. • Keller, p. 337, 10.
341
86 EUGENE F. CLARK
which is also found in Sachs in different form: "Ir weiber schiest ain
ferrn."1 Folz writes further:
So pin ich so manch nacht umb knetten,
Und meint mein narrenschuoch han zuotretten.2
This Sachs varies as follows :
Derhalb jn jederman lest gehn,
In seinen Narrenschuhen stehn,
Der hat er wol dreiszg bar zerrissen.3
Although Folz4 and Sachs5 both treat the old folk-tale of Salomon
and Markolf, Sachs does not seem to have followed Folz, but is nearer
the version as found in the old folk-book, at least so far as the geneal-
ogy is concerned.
A favorite theme of the old Fastnacht plays was that of a lawsuit,
often on the terms of a proposed marriage. Sachs does not attempt
this subject in his Fastnacht plays, but in one of his contentious
scenes he uses a line found in Folz's play, Von einem Pawrngericht*
The phrase used, "Wir triigen wol wasser an einer stangen,"7 desig-
nates those of equal height who could easily carry water together,
and figuratively those of equal moral failings.
The theme found in Folz which perhaps attracted Sachs more
than any other was that of the play on words due to the misunder-
standing by the coarse peasant of the polite questions of a doctor.
Folz has treated the subject in his play, Von einem Artzt* and the
following comparisons will show Sachs's debt as well as the prevalent
conception of wit :
Folz: Sagt, get er seins gemaches icht ?
Secht, herr, er get wider gmach noch palt9
Sachs: Mag dein pauer seines gmachs gen ?
Ja freylich get er icz gemach.10
1 Fsp. 73, 270. • Keller, No. 112.
2 Keller, p. 339, 9-10. 7 Keller, p. 957, 5; Sachs, Fsp. 4, 241.
» Schw. 45, 21-23. 8 Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit.. No. 120.
« Keller. No. 60. • Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 6, 10, 13.
6 Fsp. 26. 10 Fsp. 80, 183, 185.
342
THE INFLUENCE OF HANS FOLZ ON HANS SACHS 87
Folz: Sag, hastu nit zue zeiten windt ?
Als unser hausz zu hadert stet,
Weysz ich, das windts genug drein get.1
Sachs: Ob dein pawer mag haben wind
O windes gnung mein pawer hat,
Weil unser haus zer hadert stat.2
Folz: Sag mir her schlecht, wo pistu kranck ?
Secht, mein herr, hie auff diser panck.3
Sachs: Sag mir, wo ist dein pawern we ?
Da haim im pet, als ich verste.4
This style of question and answer Sachs copies and inserts as
incidental enlivening material in two Fastnacht plays, though in
neither one is his main source Folz. In one of these plays,8 too,
Sachs has drawn from two other poems by Folz, so that we have
the interesting case of a Fastnacht play whose main source was
Eulenspiegel, but with isolated passages in closely succeeding lines
copied from three different poems by Folz.6
Folz loved to depict the marital quarrel and so did Sachs. In
the same play in which doctor and peasant misunderstand one
another, Folz introduces a combat in the home, from which Sachs
copies the spiciest features. Comparison shows obvious borrowing:
Folz: Und heil yeds das ander beym schopff,
Gib ich ir dan ein guts an kopff.7
Sachs: Wen paid ich ir ains gieb an kopff,
So erwischt sie mich pey dem schopff.8
Folz: Wir heyssens der siben frewd gespilt.
Wan trifft sie mich, so isz sie fro;
Triff ich, so ist mir auch also.9
» Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 5, 20, 23-24.
2 Fsp. 80, 170; 172-73.
'Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 7, 25, 27; cf. Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 530 ff., 39-40.
« Fsp. 80, 139-40; cf. Fsp. 58, 160-61; for further similarities, cf. Keller, "Nachlese,"
op. cit., p. 5, 26, 30-31; Fsp. 80, 170, 172-73; Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 6, 4, 7;
Fsp. 80, 177, 179.
• Fsp. 58. 0
« Keller, No. 120; Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 ff.; Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 530 ff.
» Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 12, 5-6.
• Schw. 189, 129-30.
• Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 12, 25-27.
343
88 EUGENE F. CLARK
Sachs: Drift sie mich den, so 1st sie fro;
DrifF ichs, so 1st mir auch also.
Das hais wir der siebn frewd gespilt.1
Another phrase used by Sachs in this context is so common in the
period that Sachs may easily have found it elsewhere:
Folz: So flucht sie, sich mochtz erdtrich biegen;2
Sachs: Unnd leug, sich m6chten palcken biegen.3
Aside from his use of Fastnacht plays Sachs also drew from Folz's
occasional poems. One common theme, that of supremacy in the
home, he found in a poem by Folz entitled "Der pos Rauch,"4 and
copied under the same caption in a Fastnacht play.5 Sachs expands
his brief model so that there are few verbal similarities,6 but he has
borrowed a couplet from this poem for another occasion. Expressing
complete surrender, the husband in Folz's poem says:
Des freu ich mich irsz ausz gangs ser
Wan die weil pin ich man ym hausz.7
In a similar mood Sachs writes :
Ja, wen mein fraw zu pad ist aus,
So pin ich die weil herr und man.8
Folz's shorter poems also give occasion for further borrowings
by Sachs in the theme of misunderstanding. Numerous evidences
of this are found in a poem by Folz, " Ein pulschafft von einer pawrn
meyt," in which the ardent protestations of the lover are taken liter-
ally by the girl. The swain in Folz's version comments:
mein hercz nach euch dut sennen,9
and then continues :
mein hort glaupt mir fiirwar
ich pin euch lenger dan ein iar
* Schw. 189, 135-37. Sachs likewise softens a coarse expression of Folz, though
plainly using it as a model; cf. Keller, "Nachlese," op. cit., p. 12, 36 — p. 13, 1, and Schw.
189, 118-19.
2 Keller, p. 12, 15.
Schw. 30, 142; cf. Schw. 9, 111.
Keller, pp. 1279 ff.
Ftp. 28.
Cf. Polz, p. 1280, 7, and Sachs, Fsp. 28, stage direction following line 114.
Keller, p. 1282, 20-21.
Fsp. 12, 128-29.
Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 ff., 24; cf. Sachs, Schw. 133, 13.
344
THE INFLUENCE OF HANS FOLZ ON HANS SACHS 89
von herczen gancz gewesen holt
wie wol es sich nie fiigen wolt
das ich euch das ercleret lawter
do sprach sie zu mir lieber trawter
ia west ich das dir recht ernst wer
ich precht dir zwar ein panczer her.1
This situation is reflected in the following opening scene of a Fast-
nacht play by Sachs:
Hertz liebe Elsz, ich het ein wort
Mit euch vor langer zeit zu reden.
1st doch so gut worden uns beden
Noch nie ins maisters hausz die zeit,
Zu sagen euch mein haymligkeyt,
Das ich euch ge6ffnet het mein hertz.
Die Magd redt jmmer zu spotlich:
Ich sorg, es sey nur ewer schertz.
Der Gsell: Es ist mein ernst furwar, wolan!
Die Magd: So geht und legt ein Bantzer an!2
The scornful suggestions of the maid that her lover take a purgative
and quench the flames of love in water are copied in one of Sachs's
earlier Schwdnke.3 The despairing conclusion of the lover is very
similar in both writers. Folz writes:
nu seyt ir herter fyl dan eysen
und lat euch gar mit nicht erweichen.4
Sachs concludes:
Ir seyd viel herter, denn ein Felsz,
Last euch mein freundlich bitt erweichen!5
After this it should be noted that the Fastnacht play of Sachs takes
a new and original direction, but phrases from the same poem by
Folz are found in widely varying works of Sachs, as the following
illustrations will show.
Folz: ir wirt uns lecht ein weyer ab pren.6
Sachs: Ach, ziind mir nur kein weyer an!7
» Haupt, Ztschr. 8, 509 ff., 15-22.
» Ftp. 4, 26-34; cf. Fsp. 58, 165.
s Folz, Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 ff., 26-29; Sachs, Schw. 133, 27-29; Folz, 11. 42-49;
Sachs, 36-49; cf. also Folz, 1. 51; Sachs, Fsp. 4, 41; Folz, 11. 90-91; Sachs, Fs^ 4, 70-71
* Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 ff., 80-81.
* Fsp. 4, 100-101.
« Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 ff., 84.
1 Fsp. 31, 246.
345
90 EUGENE F. CLARK
Folz: se narr hab dir die feygen1
Folz: sam sie nie wasser het betriipt2
One further similarity in the field o)f misunderstanding should be
noted. Folz tells a story of a wandering minstrel who purposely
mistakes the questions asked him and on one occasion replies :
herr wer den teuffel sol befechten
der muss sein gar pey guten mechten
so lig ich ycz in siilchen n6ten
ich kiint nit wol ein floch ged6ten.3
Sachs borrows this, with other matter, from Folz to adorn a
story from Eulenspiegel in which the rascal deceives a priest. The
latter says in reply to a question:
Der dewffel, den muest uber winden
Mit kampff und in fahen und pinden.
To this Eulenspiegel replies:
Mein herr, ich lieg in solchen ndten
Das ich icz kaum ein floch kunt d6tten.4
Besides these passages, which are obviously borrowed, the isolated
word and phrase common to both are constantly met. The following
quotations will illustrate this: "studt vol";5 "Glotzt sam ein
erstochener pock";6 "Das nicht der schaur peym herd erschlag";7
"und wie ir hertz nach ym schrey woffen";8 "dar noch er offt vor
engsten switzt";9 "so sie mit diebs negeln sich krawen";10 "sie
[weiber] hant kurczen mut und lange cleider";11
wo haut und hor ist gancz vernichte,
da wirt der pelcz entwichte.12
1 Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 509 fl., 162; cf. Sachs, Schw. 356, 30; 9, 38.
• Folz, 1. 204; cf. Sachs, Schw. 10, 15. This phrase is, however, common in the
sixteenth century.
» Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 530 ff., 97-100.
« Fsp. 58, 167-70. .
fi Keller, p. 1210, 18; Sachs, Schw. 142, 65; 283, 93.
• Keller, p. 1212, 20; Sachs, Schw. 142, 85.
» Keller, p. 1222, 30; Sachs, Schw. 16, 58.
s Keller, p. 1284, 17; Sachs, Schw. 133. 18.
• Keller, p. 1284, 7; Sachs, Fsp. 4, 82.
"> Keller, p. 1289, 1; Sachs, Schw. 178,70; Lit. Ver. in Stutt.,CXL,,l98,20; Grimm,
Wb., 2, 1097, refers to Sachs only as a source for this phrase.
" A. L. Mayer, Die Meisterlieder des Hans Folz. Deutsche Texte des Mittelaltera,
Bd. XII. No. 20, 67; Sachs, Schw. 70, 57-58.
"Mayer, No. 38, 173-74; Sachs, Schw. 7, 244-45.
346
THE INFLUENCE OF HANS FOLZ ON HANS SACHS 91
The model for Sachs's characteristic concluding couplet, in which
he names himself as the author, was very common in Folz's work.
Folz concludes his poem "Von Allem hausrot"1 with the couplet:
Die folgen meiner treuen ler
Und dancken hans foltz barbirer.
Another poem has this conclusion:
Doch schuff die weyshaitt das umker
Also spricht Hans foltz Barbierer.2
With these may be compared the following by Sachs :
Das sie in ordnung fein aufwachs,
Das wunscht aller gselschaft Hans Sachs.3
So wirt oft schimpf aus ernstling sachen,
Da man pesorget gros geuer.
So sprichet Hans Sachs, schuemacher.4
It may not be out of place, in conclusion, to hazard a conjecture
concerning the authorship of one of the Sterzinger Fastnacht plays.5
Two of these, Nos. 19 and 20, are simply plays by Folz with some
verbal and dialect changes, proving that the compiler, Vigil Raber,
whose collection dates from 1510 knew the work of Folz. No. 22
of the Sterzinger plays shows some interesting peculiarities. It is
entitled Ain Zendprecherey, and has remarkable similarities to Sachs's
Schwank No. 94, Der zanprecher handel, as the following comparisons
show:
Sterz: Woll her, wol her, Ir frauen und man!
Werner hat ain peser zan6
Sachs: Her, her, wer hat ein p6sen zan!7
Sterz: Ain peser zan, ain peser gast,
Der last den man weder rue noch rast.8
Sachs: Ein p6ser zan ein p6ser gast,
Lest dem man weder rw noch rast!9
» Keller, p. 1215 fl.
»Haupt, Ztschr., 8, 537 fl., 131-32.
* Schw. 104, 63-64.
4 Schw. 64, 60-62. 0
8 Sterzinger Spiele, hsg. von 0. Zingerle, Wien, 1886. Wiener Neudrucke, No. 9.
• No. 22, 45-46. s No. 22, 61-62.
7 Schw. 94, 60. » Schw. 94, 61-62.
347
92 EUGENE F. CLARK
The similarity here is so close that some connection is plainly
indicated. The date of writing would admit of the possibility that
Sachs used Raber, but, as there are no close similarities elsewhere, a
common source for the two would seem more likely.
Several indications point to Folz as the possible author of the
poem which Raber transcribed and Sachs followed in general theme.
The method of treatment is one common to Sachs elsewhere when he
was plainly influenced by Folz. The main thought is followed freely,
and phrases that struck the writer as forcible are copied closely.
One of the phrases quoted above is used twice in a short poem by
Folz.1 In Raber 's collection this play follows very closely on two
admittedly by Folz. In discussing the Sterzinger plays Michels
considers this one a genuine Tyrolean product, but he does see
resemblances to the Niirnberg variety. He writes in conclusion:
"Daneben hat es sonderbarer Weise den niirnbergischen Reim, ston:
thon (240 f. geschrieben ston: thain d.i. tuon). Mit dem Zank und
der Schlagerei, bei der der Zahnbrecher zur Thiir hinausfliegt, erinnert
es etwas an Folzische und Sachsische Dramen."2
These facts, taken together, lead to the conjecture that Raber
has here put an unsigned poem by Folz into the Tyrolean dialect, and
that Sachs has also used this same poem by Folz as the source of his
Schwank No. 94.
EUGENE F. CLARK
DARTMOUTH COLLEGE
» "Rue noch rast," Keller, p. 1283, 10, 13.
2 Studien, pp. 58 f .
348
THE HEALING OF ORESTES
Was 1st es ? Leidet der Gottergleiche ?
Weh mir! Es haben die Uebermachtigen
Der Heldenbrust grausame Qualen
Mit ehrnen Ketten fest aufgeschmiedet.
—GOETHE, Iphigenie, III, 2 (1306-9)
These four lines have been described as the most difficult passage
of the play.1 The everlasting punishment of Tantalus strikes a dis-
cordant note in Orestes' vision of peace and reconciliation as he
emerges from the state of unconsciousness brought on by his spiritual
and physical collapse. His imagination pictures the royal house of
Atreus a united and reconciled family. Thyestes and Atreus walk
side by side in familiar converse. Agamemnon leads Clytemnestra
fondly by the hand. Orestes is himself welcomed into their midst as
the long-lost son. But Tantalus, the progenitor of the race, is
missing, and Orestes ascribes his absence to the unrelenting vengeance
which the gods have wreaked upon his unfortunate ancestor.
Critics have attempted to explain this apparent incongruity on
moral and religious grounds with the help of the traditional account
of Tantalus' downfall and expulsion from Olympus.2 Kuno Fischer
holds that Tantalus was the only member of the race who had sinned
against the gods themselves, whereas the crimes of the descendants
were committed against men.3 This interpretation scarcely agrees
with the conception underlying the play that the gods are con-
ciliatory and ready to pardon the truly repentant sinner.
Frick4 suggests that Tantalus' rebellious spirit was still unbroken
and that the gods could not pardon him until he had submitted to
their higher will. Both these critics have overlooked the important
fact that throughout the play Goethe suits his own convenience in
his treatment of the ancient story and Greek mythology. He
would by no means feel obliged to reproduce for its own sake the
1 Of. Evers, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, p. 53.
2 Of. Kuno Fischer, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, pp. 29 ff. 0
* Cf. Winkler, Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris, p. 163.
4 Cf. Frickt Wegweiser durch die klassischen Schuldramen, V, 6, p. 381.
349] 93 [MoDBEN PHILOLOGY, October, 1917
94 GEORGE M. BAKER
mythological account of Tantalus' punishment. Iphigenia's concep-
tion of her duty toward the barbarous Taurians is not to be explained
by adducing Greek ethical ideals but by analyzing Iphigenia's char-
acter as it was conceived in Goethe's mind. Similarly the explana-
tion of Orestes' vision of the everlasting punishment of Tantalus
should be sought in the analysis of Orestes' character. From this
point of view the question becomes psychological, or rather psycho-
pathological, owing to Orestes' abnormal state of mind.
Orestes is subject to intermittent attacks of incipient insanity
in the form of hallucinations. Constant brooding over the matri-
cide and intense remorse for the irretrievable act have conjured up
before his mind the avenging Furies. They are described as the
companions of doubt and remorse, whereas they are really the
external projection of these mental states. In one of his lucid inter-
vals, Orestes is brought into the presence of Iphigenia, the priestess
of Diana. She approaches him sympathetically, loosens tenderly
his bonds, and promises him every assistance within her power. She
manifests deep interest in the fate of the house of Agamemnon and
urges him to relate the events subsequent to the fall of Troy. The
narration of these events culminates in the description of the murder
of Clytemnestra and the confession that he, Orestes, is the murderer.
The confession is logically motivated in the consoling influence of
Iphigenia's personality and the confidence she inspires in Orestes.
But the vivid narration of these events has a disastrous effect upon
Orestes' mind. Doubt and remorse gain the upper hand. Memory
projects the Furies into his present experience. He shows two
marked signs of approaching aberration — the conviction of his own
defiling influence and the desire for voluntary death. Iphigenia
realizes the seriousness of his condition and begins a heroic struggle
against the powers of darkness, ending with the eloquent appeal,
which is at the same time the theme of the play :
"0 wenn vergoss'nen Mutterblutes Stimme
Zur Holle hinab mit dumpfen Tonen ruft;
Soil nicht der reinen Schwester Segenswort
Hilfreiche Gotter von Olympus rufen?"
Orestes' personality is not yet so impaired that he is insensible
to this appeal. Iphigenia's words stir the innermost depths of his
350
THE HEALING OF ORESTES 95
being and effect a tremendous emotional upheaval. The long-
repressed emotional system of love — love for father, mother, and
sister, even the erotic complex rises to the threshold of consciousness
and seeks recognition. But Orestes' vision is so clouded that he has
no clear conception of what is taking place within him. So great
is his confusion that when Iphigenia declares herself to be his sister
and attempts to take him in her arms, he misinterprets her words
and actions as the blandishments of a wanton Bacchante. It
requires the utmost exertion of Iphigenia's superior spiritual force
together with a direct and concise presentation of fact to bring him
back to a sense of reality. She says:
"Sieisthier
Die langst verlorne Schwester. Vom Altar
Riss' mich die Gotter weg und retteten
Hierher mich in ihr eigenes Heiligtum.
Gefangen bist du, dargestellt zum Opfer,
Und findest in der Priesterin die Schwester."
Her victory over the powers of darkness is of short duration.
Orestes recognizes her as his sister but a pessimistic and incoherent
train of thought ascribes her presence at this moment to the vengeance
of the gods. The final scene in the tragedy of the house of Atreus
is to be the sacrificial murder of Orestes by his sister Iphigenia.
His summons to the Furies to witness the welcome spectacle is an
indication of approaching mental collapse. But suddenly he notices
that Iphigenia is weeping. A great wave of pity and love sweeps
over him and he cries:
"Weine nicht! Du hast nicht Schuld
Seit meinen ersten fahren habe ich nichts
Geliebt, wie ich dich lieben konnte, Schwester."
The repressed emotional system of love at last asserts itself, and for
the moment it would seem that the healing of Orestes has been
effected by this catharsis of emotion. But the mental and physical
strain is too great for him, and he falls unconscious with the words:
0
" Ja, schwinge deinen Stahl, verschone nicht,
Zerreisse diesen Busen, und eroffne
Den Stromen, die hier sieden, einen Weg."
351
96 GEORGE M. BAKER
The first words uttered by Orestes upon regaining consciousness
indicate a completely altered state of mind. He says:
"Noch einen! Reiche mir aus Lethes Fluten den letzten kiihlen Becher
der Erquickung."
This relief is twofold, physical and mental. We must assume that
he remained unconscious for some time, during Iphigenia's search
for Pylades. Deep sleep contributed to the restoration of the physi-
cal self and reacted upon the mind. Here Goethe draws from his
own experience, in which he had often felt the beneficent effect of
sleep upon his spiritual well-being. Orestes' mental relief finds
expression in the words:
"Bald ist der Kampf des Lebens aus dem Busen hinweggespiilt"
and arises from the illusion that he has left behind the world of
sorrow and anguish. The importance of this illusion in the healing
of Orestes cannot be overemphasized. Orestes falls unconscious
in the belief that he is paying the penalty for his unnatural crime.
The very fact that he goes through this experience even in delusion
must have a purifying and cleansing effect upon his soul. The
same device is used by Kleist in Prinz von Hamburg. The prince is
led out blindfolded as if for execution and falls in a swoon, believing
that his last hour has struck. The third and most important factor
in Orestes' altered state of mind is of course the catharsis of emotion
mentioned above. The repressed stream of emotion finds an outlet
in a great wave of pity for his sister. Thus much of Iphigenia's
"reine Menschlichkeit," pity and love, is poured into his soul and
strikes the keynote for the vision of peace and reconciliation which
he now experiences.
Throughout the vision Orestes is practically shut off from sensory
contact with the outside world. That he has slight auditory contact
with his immediate environment is indicated by the line,
"Welch ein Gelispel hore ich in den Zweigen,"
and this sensory impulse gives direction to his imaginings. The
rustling in the trees suggests the presence of the Shades of the lower
world who approach to welcome the new arrival. With this begin-
ning his vision assumes the form of a fulfilment of those desires which
352*
THE HEALING OF ORESTES 97
have been repressed in his waking moments. He sees the recon-
ciliation of Atreus and Thyestes, of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra,
and becomes himself a participant in the joyful family reunion. But
Orestes remarks that one member of the race, Tantalus, is missing
and when he requests the Shades to conduct him into the presence
of the revered ancestor, they hesitate and turn away. It does not
seem unnatural to ascribe the absence of Tantalus and the recession
of the Shades to Orestes' gradual visual awakening with the accom-
panying increased critical activity of mind. The words addressed
to the Shades:
"Ihr scheint zu schaudern und euch wegzuwenden"
surely indicate a blending of dream and reality. Coincident with the
visual awakening, the dream creatures — the projection of the mental
states of peace and reconciliation — vanish before the censorship of
mind. As the mind struggles to gain a sense of reality, memory
suggests from past experience the traditional account of Tantalus'
suffering as an explanation of his absence now, and he asks the
question :
"Leidet der Gottergleiche ? "
Of equally great importance in bridging over the gap between reality
and unreality is the fact that with the memory of the punishment of
Tantalus the pleasure complex (peace and reconciliation) departs
from him and the pain complex (suffering before his collapse) re-enters
consciousness. The way back to reality leads through the identi-
fication of the dream self with the suffering self. The fact that
Orestes follows the question " Leidet der Gottergleiche?" with the
exclamation "Weh mir" would indicate that he transfers the suffer-
ing of Tantalus to himself or at least confuses his own suffering with
that of his ancestor. The final words of the monologue:
"Es haben die Uebermachtigen
Der Heldenbrust grausame Qualen,
Mit ehrnen Ketten fest aufgeschmiedet,"
although referring primarily to Tantalus may be interpreted as
referring indirectly to Orestes. There is no reason to assume that
Orestes has a vivid mental picture of the tortures of Tantalus. The
words should be taken in a generally descriptive sense.
353
98 GEORGE M. BAKER
Of course the predominance of the suffering complex is of short
duration. At this critical moment, Orestes is again subjected to the
beneficent influence of Iphigenia, who comes on the scene with
Pylades. Orestes' visual awakening is not yet complete. He
recognizes Iphigenia as his sister and Pylades as his friend, but
still imagines that his environment is the lower world. The elegiac
tone in which he greets them marks a transitional stage from the
sorrowful mood at the close of the vision to the mood of exultant joy
when he finally regains consciousness. As he still wavers between
reality and unreality, he hears Iphigenia's pathetic prayer to both
Diana and Apollo to save all that is dear to her from the raving of
insanity. Pylades makes a direct appeal to his wakening senses by
calling his attention to the sacred grove and the sunlight, "which
does not shine for the dead/' and finally summons him, as a man of
action, to do his part in the work of rescue and return to Greece.
Iphigenia's prayer and Pylades' appeal are sufficient to effect that
complete restoration of personality for which the way has been paved
by the catharsis of emotion, refreshing sleep, and the imagined atone-
ment. The theme of the play has been described as the influence of
"soul upon soul." Applied to Iphigenia and Orestes, this influence
consists in the remodeling of Orestes' soul on the pattern of Iphi-
genia's. Her love and sympathy for him banish despair and remorse
which are replaced by love and sympathy for her. But Iphigenia's
crowning achievement is the restoration of Orestes' mind of that
rockbound faith in the benevolence of the gods, which is the corner-
stone of her character.
In thus following step by step the healing of Orestes, it has been
my object to show that it is quite unnecessary to assume a super-
natural influence and still less that Orestes' vision is a mere symbolic
poetic representation of Orestes' spiritual regeneration, but rather
that Goethe, with that intuitive knowledge of human nature, which
is the inalienable possession of creative genius, clearly indicated the
natural mental processes by which this seeming miracle was per-
formed.
GEORGE M. BAKER
UNIVERSITY OP THE SOUTH
354
THE EXTERNAL HISTORY OF THE KINDER- UND HAUS-
MARCHEN OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM. Ill
It is not necessary to follow Dr. von der Leyen through the other
divisions of the Mdrchen which he ingeniously establishes. It is
possible that he means no mpre than that the tone of certain Mdrchen
corresponds to the tone of a certain period in German literature and
that those stories may have been remodeled to suit the prevailing
literary fashion. It hardly seems possible that he means that the
Mdrchen were actually composed out of older material at the periods
he indicates. The merit of his classification consists, in his eyes, in
the fact that "no matter how incomplete it is and must remain, it
still makes clear how the development of the German literature is
reflected in the Mdrchen, and shows in all its vicissitudes the forces
which were ever active in that literature. What a wonderful thing
it is that the childhood of mankind and the progress of our entire
German poetry (Dichtung) is revealed to our children in the German
Mdrchen! "
II. HISTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL TALES1
VOLUME I, 1812
No. 4. "Gut Kegel- und Kartenspiel." Reprinted in Bolte and Polfvka,
1, 22. This Hessian story was replaced in 1819 and subsequent editions
by a Mecklenburg version entitled: "Von einem der auszog, das
Fiirchten zu lernen." In the Notes, 1822 and 1856, six other versions
are mentioned, two of which, the fifth from Zwehrn and the sixth from
Paderborn, are printed at length. They are also given in Bolte and
Pollvka, I, 25, 28. The version in the first edition contains only one,
and the final, test of courage.
No. 6. "Von der Nachtigall und der Blindschleiche." Reprinted in Ton-
nelat, p. 8, and in Bolte and Polivka, I, 57 (6a) . This story was replaced
in the second and subsequent editions by "Der treue Johannes." In
the "Anhang" to the first edition, Panzer I, 392, the editors say: "Aus
dem Franzosischen iibersetzt. Me"moires de l'acade*mie celtique, Tome
2, 204, 205. Vergl. T. 4, 102. Das Marchen und der Glauben findet
sich unter den Solognots. Die franzosischen Reime ahmen den Ton
der Nachtigall gliicklicher nach :
Je ferai mon nid si haut, si haut, si haut, si bas!
Que tu ne le trouveras pas.
i The tales not mentioned in this list are supposed to be continued through the
seven editions, or the editions following their first appearance, with the usual stylistic
changes only. Forty-seven tales in 1812, and fifty-three in 1815, have persisted in the
subsequent editions and have undergone stylistic changes only.
355] 99 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, October, 1917
100 T. F. CRANE
Si haut! si haut! ahmt den Nachtigallgesang nach wie zickiith! zickiith!
im Marchen von Joringel." An interesting account of the way in which
the Grimms treated their source may be found in H. Hamann, Die
literarischen Vorlagen der Kinder- und Hausmdrchen und ihre Bear-
beitung durch die Bruder Grimm. Berlin, 1906 (Palaestra, XLVII),
p. 19. This story was omitted in subsequent editions on account of its
foreign origin. In the preface to the second edition (1819) the editors
say: "Was wir nun bisher fur unsere Sammlung gewonnen hatten,
wollten wir bei dieser zweiten Auflage dem Buch einverbleiben (sic
1. einverleiben). Daher ist der erste Band fast ganz umgearbeitet, das
Unvollstandige erganzt, manches einfacher und reiner erzahlt, und nicht
viel Stiicke werden sich finden, die nicht in besserer Gestalt erscheinen.
Es ist noch einmal gepriift, was verdachtig schien, d.h. was etwa hatte
fremden Ursprungs oder durch Zusatze verfalscht sein konnen, und
dann alles ausgeschieden." In accordance with this plan of making
the collection exclusively German, a number of stories in the first edition
were eliminated, e.g., No. 8, "Die Hand mit dem Messer," No. 33,
"Der gestiefelte Kater," No. 62, "Blaubart," etc.
No. 7. "Von dem gestohlenen Heller." Replaced in 1819 and subsequent
editions by "Der gute Handel," and relegated, with slight stylistic
changes, to Vol. II, No. 154.
No. 8. "Die Hand mit dem Messer." Omitted in subsequent editions on
account of its foreign origin. The collectors say in the " Anhang" to the
first edition (ed. Panzer, 1, 392) : " Ein schottisches Marchen oder Volks-
lied, das Mrs. Grant, in ihren 'Essays on the Superstitions of the High-
landers of Scotland,' London, 1811, Vol. 1, 285, 286, erzahlt." Reprinted
in Tonnelat, p. 9, and Bolte and Polivka, I, 69 (8a). Hamann, op. cit.,
pp. 22-23, reprints the version of Mrs. Grant. Tonnelat calls attention
to the verbal criticism of Achim von Arnim (R. Steig, op. cit., p. 263) :
"Solche Schwierigkeiten sind oft in einzelnen Ausdriicken, z. B. 23,
ein stumpf es Gerath : wenn da Torf messer stande, so wiirde es mit dem
Messer des Riesen stimmen, sonst ware wohl Spaten fiir beide besser,
es klingt dann etwas natiirlicher, denn im Torfe finden sich haufig
Wurzelknollen, die einer Hand ahnlich sehen." Tonnelat says very
sensibly, "Si Tobservation dj Arnim leur avait paru decisive, il leur eut
e"te* aise* d'introduire dans le texte allemand le terme de Torfmesser ou
celui de Spaten. II fallait une raison bien plus ge*ne*rale et bien plus
forte pour les decider £ renoncer au conte tout entier." This reason he
finds in the fact that the story was of foreign origin.
No. 14. "Von dem bosen Flachsspinnen." Replaced in subsequent edi-
tions by "Die drei Spinnerinnen," a fuller version from the principality
of Corvei. From the former Hessian version the three maidens were
retained, each afflicted with her own blemish on account of spinning.
No. 16. "Herr Fix und Fertig." Replaced in subsequent editions by
"Die Schlangenblatter." A re"sum6 of the story replaced may be found
356
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN " 101
in Notes (III, 110), under No. 62, "Die Bienenkonigin," of which it is
a version, and probably omitted on that account. The complete story
is reprinted in Bolte and Polivka, II, 19, in the notes to No. 62, men-
tioned above.
No. 20. "Von einem tapfern Schneider," I, II. In the first edition the
story consisted of two separate versions, the first was taken from Martin
Montanus, " Wegkiirtzer" (Montanus, Schwankbucher hrsg. von J. Bolte,
p. 19, Notes, p. 560), the second from oral tradition. From 1819 on
replaced by a single version combined from Montanus and a Hessian
variant.
No. 22. "Wie Kinder Schlachtens mit einander gespielt haben," I, II.
Replaced from 1819 on by " Das Rathsel." The story, in two forms, of
the first edition, is reprinted in Tonnelat, pp. 11-12, and in Bolte and
Polivka, I, 202 (22a). It was in regard to this story that Achim von
Arnim (op. cit., p. 263) wrote to Jacob Grimm: "Schon habe ich eine
Mutter dariiber klagen horen, dass das Stuck, wo ein Kind das andere
schlachtet darin sei, sie konnt es ihren Kindern nicht in die Hand
geben." Jacob replied (op. cit., p. 270): "Jene Geschichten von
Schlachten und Erschiessen sind tragische Falle, die wie Tragodien
ins gemein keine Vorsicht und keine Verrechnung verhiiten kann, denn
das Bose sucht und findet sich Wege, an die nimmermehr keine Seele
gedacht hatte; das Gute gehet blind an denen vorbei, die andern ganz
offen vorliegen. Ich glaube, dass alle Kinder das ganze Marchenbuch
in Gottes Namen lesen und sich dabei iiberlassen werden konnen."
However, the story was omitted in all subsequent editions.
No. 25. "Die drei Raben." In subsequent editions the number three is
changed to seven, and another brief introduction from a Vienna story
is added.
No. 27. "Der Tod und der Gansehirt." Reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 13,
and in Bolte and PoKvka, I, 260. This story was taken from Hars-
dorfer, Der grosse Schauplatz jammerlicher Mordgeschichten. Hamburg,
1663, p. 651 . This story was omitted in subsequent editions, as Hamann,
op. cit., p. 28, thinks, on account of its poor contents ("wegen seines
diirftigen Inhalts"). Tonnelat, p. 13, says: "C'est sans doute a cause
de sa me*diocrite* que ce conte a disparu de la 2e Edition." The Grimms
had eliminated the moral and allegorical features of the original and
then, Tonnelat thinks, "le conte leur apparut trop insignificant pour
e'tre conserve*."
No. 32. "Der gescheite Hans." In 1812 two versions were given: (1) from
the Main country, (2) from Frey's Gartengesellschaft, No. 1. After
1819 (2) was omitted and relegated to Notes, 1822, 1856. Itts reprinted
in Bolte and Pollvka, I, 312.
No. 33. "Der gestiefelte Kater." Reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 13, and in
Bolte and Polivka, I, 325. According to the last-named authorities
the story was related by Jeannette Hassenpflug in Cassel in the autumn
357
102 T. F. CRANE
of 1812, and omitted in the second edition on account of its evident
dependence upon Perrault's "Chat Botte*," which was circulated in
printed German translations. In the Notes, 1822, 1856, a reference is
made to the story in "Bruchstucke," No. 4, and German versions from
Saxony and Austria are mentioned. Tonnelat is under the erroneous
impression that the Grimms' sources were Perrault and Basile, and
remarks that if they had collected this story from oral tradition, they
would not have failed to mention it.
No. 34. "Hansens Trine." This version, which Bolte and Polivka say
was told to the brothers by Dortchen Wild in the garden at Cassel,
September 29, 1811, was replaced in 1819 by a variant from Zwehrn
told by Frau Viehmannin. The first version is reprinted in Bolte and
Polivka, I, 335. Tonnelat, as in several other cases, regards this as
a mere change of name. In reality it is the substitution of another ver-
sion which seemed better to the brothers.
No. 35. "Der Sperling und seine vier Kinder." Replaced in 1819 and
subsequent editions by "Der Schneider im Himmel," and relegated to
No. 157. Change of position only.
No. 36. "Von dem Tischen deck dich, Goldesel und Kniippel aus dem
Sack." The story in 1812 consisted of two versions: (1) related by
Jeannette Hassenpflug in Cassel in the autumn of 1812, and (2) a second
Hessian version related by Dortchen Wild, October 1, 1811. This
second version was omitted from 1819 on, and reprinted in Notes, 1822,
1856, in a condensed form. The full version is reprinted in Bolte and
Polivka, I, 349. Tonnelat does not mention this change, but on p. 73
gives an elaborate account of the stylistic changes in this story in the
second edition.
No. 37. "Von der Serviette, dem Kanonenhiitlein und dem Horn." Re-
placed from 1819 on by "Daumesdick," and, in a fuller version, rele-
gated to No. 54. The original version of 1812 is reprinted in Bolte
and Polivka, I, 464.
No. 43. "Die wunderliche Gasterei." After 1819 this story was replaced
by another version of literary origin. The original form is reprinted
in Tonnelat, p. 48, and in Bolte and Polivka, I, 375. The Grimms say
in Notes, 1822, 1856: "Eine bessere und vollstandige Ueberlieferung
als in den friiheren Ausgaben, dabei ist benutzt ein Gedicht von Meier
Teddy in dem Frauentaschenbuch, 1823, S. 360."
No. 54. "HansDumm." Replaced from 18 19 on by "DerRanzen, dasHiit-
lein und Hornlein." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 17,
and in Bolte and Polivka, I, 485. See Tonnelat, p. 18, for a lengthy
discussion of the reasons which probably induced the Grimms to omit
this story. These reasons are briefly: a lack of logical arrangement in
the story, and references to matters generally avoided with children.
No. 58. "Vom treuen Gevatter Sperling." Replaced from 1819 on by
"Der Hund und der Sperling." In the Notes, 1822 and 1856, the editors
358
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 103
say: "Nach drei wenig abweichenden Erzahlungen, die vollstandigste
ist aus Zwehrn und liegt zu Grand, die zweite, gleichfalls aus Hessen,
hat einen andern Eingang." This second version given in the Notes in
a condensed form is the one printed in 1812, and reprinted in Bolte
and Polivka, I, 515. Tonnelat, p. 6, contents himself with saying:
"Le No. 58, 'Vom getreuen Gevatter Sperling,' est devenue 'Der Hund
und der Sperling.' "
No. 59. "Prinz Schwan." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der Frieder und
das CatherliescheV and relegated to Notes, 1822 and 1856, as a variant
of No. 127, "Der Eisenofen." It is there reprinted with stylistic
changes and the usual condensation.
No. 60. "Das Goldei." Replaced from 1819 on by "Die zwei Briider,"
a fuller version. In 1812 the story is called a fragment. It is reprinted
in Bolte and Polivka, I, 528. Not mentioned by Tonnelat.
No. 61. "Von dem Schneider der bald reich wurde." Replaced from 1819
on by "Das Biirle." The original version, narrated April 18, 1811, by
the Hassenpflugs in Cassel, is reprinted in Bolte and Polivka, II, 1,
and with the usual condensation in Notes, 1822 and 1856. Not men-
tioned by Tonnelat.
No. 62. "Blaubart." Replaced from 1819 on by "Die Bienenkonigin,"
No. 64, II, in 1812. Blaubart was omitted on account of its supposed
foreign origin, although the Grimms had it from the Hassenpflugs in
Cassel. The story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 19 and in Bolte and
Polivka, I, 404. The Grimms say of this story, Notes, 1822 and 1856,
to No. 46, "Pitchers Vogel": "Augenscheinlich enthalt unser Marchen
die Sage von Blaubart. Wir haben diese zwar auch deutsch gehort
und in der ersten Ausgabe Nr. 62 mitgetheilt, aber da sie von Perraults
'La barbe bleue' nur durch einiges Fehlende und einen besonderen
Umstand abwich, das Franzosische auch an dem Ort, wawir sie horten,
bekannt sein konnte, so haben wir sie im Zweifel nicht wieder auf-
genommen."
No. 63. "Goldkinder." Replaced from 1819 on by 1812, No. 64, III,
"Die drei Federn," a version from Hesse, reprinted in Bolte and Polivka,
II, 30. The story of "Goldkinder" from 1819 on is relegated to No.
85, "hier aber ausfiihrlicher erzahlt," Bolte and Polivka, I, p. 204.
No. 66. "Hurleburlebutz." Replaced from 1819 on by "Hasischenbraut."
The original story is relegated to Notes, 1822 and 1856, No. 127, "Der
Eisenofen," of which it is a variant.
No. 67. " Der Konig mit dem Lowen." Replaced from 1819 on by a slightly
changed version entitled "Die zwolf Jager."
No. 68. "Von dem Sommer- und Wintergarten." Replaced fflom 1819 on
by "De Gaudeif un sien Meester." The original story is reprinted in
Bolte and Polivka, II, 231, as a variant of No. 88, "Das singende sprin-
gende Loweneckerchen," and is given in the usual condensed form in
Notes, 1822 and 1856, to No. 88.
359
104 T. F. CRANE
No. 70. "Der Okerlo." Replaced from 1819 on by "Die drei Gliicks-
kinder." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 22, and in Bolte
and Polivka, II, 77 (70a). Tonnelat, op. cit., thinks the story was
omitted because it is practically a replica of No. 56, "Der liebste
Roland."
No. 71. "Prinzessin Mausehaut." Replaced from 1819 on by "Sechse
kommen durch die ganze Welt." The original story, a variant of
No. 65, "Allerleirauh," is reprinted by Tonnelat, p. 24, and Bolte and
Polivka, II, 47. The Grimms said in the note to "Allerlei-Rauh"
(1812): "Die Prinzessin Mausehaut, No. 71, ist dieselbe mythische
Person, aber die Sage bis auf einiges ganz verschieden."
No. 72. "Das Birnli will nit fallen." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der
Wolf und der Mensch." The original story is reprinted by Tonnelat,
p. 25, and Bolte and Polivka, II, 100 (72a). Tonnelat, op. cit., thinks
the story was omitted in subsequent editions on account of being in
verse, and remarks: "Mais en 1'admettant dans leur premiere Edition,
les freres Grimm prouvaient combien ils e*taient ported a conside"rer
leur oeuvre comme une suite du Wunderhorn."
No. 73. "Das Mordschloss." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der Wolf und
der Fuchs." In the notes to 1812, the editors say: "Eine Art Blaubart,
aber mit anderm, auch sonst schon bekanntem Ausgang Das
Ganze aus dem Hollandischen iibersetzt, das wir aus dem Munde einer
Fraulein aufgeschrieben haben. Hier moge das Original selbst stehen."
Then follows the Dutch original. When the story was omitted, accord-
ing to Tonnelat, on account of being a variant of No. 46, "Fitchers
Vogel," a somewhat condensed and stylistically improved version of the
original was given in the Notes, 1822 and 1856 to No. 56. The full
original is reprinted in Bolte and Polivka, I, 407 (notes to No. 46,
"Fitchers Vogel").
No. 74. "Von Johannes -Wassersprung und Caspar -Wassersprung."
Replaced from 1819 on by "Der Fuchs und die Frau Gevatterin." The
original is reprinted in Bolte and Polivka, I, 531, in notes to No. 60,
"Die zwei Briider," of which our story is only a variant and hence
omitted after the first edition. The beginning of the story is given in
the Notes, 1822 and 1856, to No. 60, "Die zwei Briider."
No. 75. "Vogel Phonix." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der Fuchs und die
Katze." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 28, and Bolte
and Polivka, I, 276, in notes to No. 29, "Der Teufel mit den drei
goldenen Haaren," of which our story is a variant and hence subse-
quently omitted.
No. 77. "Vom Schreiner und Drechsler." Replaced from 1819 on by
"Das kluge Gretel." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 29,
and Bolte and Polivka, II, 131 (77a). In the notes to 1812, the editors
say: "Nur unvollstandig erhalten; schon dass das Marchen von dem
Drechsler abspringt, dem auch wohl das folgende selbst begegnen
360
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 105
konnte, ist unrecht." Bolte and Polivka, I, 132, print a fuller version,
"Das holzerne Pferd," collected about 1820 and preserved among the
Grimm MSS.
No. 81. "Der Schmidt und der Teufel." Replaced from 1819 on by
"Bruder Lustig." The original story is reprinted by Bolte and Polivka,
II, 168, in notes to No. 82, "De Spielhansel," of which it is a variant.
It is also found in the usual condensed form in the Notes, 1822 and 1856,
to No. 82.
No. 82. "Die drei Schwestern." Replaced from 1819 on by "De Spiel-
hansel." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 30, and in
Bolte and Polivka, II, 190 (82a). In the notes to the first edition the
editors say: "Dieses Marchen wird oft gehort, aber allezeit stimmt es
der Sache nach mit der auch zum Volksbuch gewordenen Erzahlung
des Musaus, so dass man es auch hier so finden wird. Er scheint nur
die ihm eigenthumliche etwas breite Manier und die Episode von dem
Zauberer Zornebocke, ferner die Namen hinzugethan zu haben, Reinald
das Wunderkind ausgenommen Auch sonst ist aus Musaus bei-
behalten was noch volksmassig schien." In a letter to Achim von
Arnim, Steig, op. tit., p. 255, Jacob Grimm says: "Das schlechteste
Marchen der ganzen Sammlung halte ich No. 82, von den drei Schwes-
tern, das bios aus Musaus ausgezogen ist, und wiewohl unstreitig acht
und unerfunden fehlt ihm durchweg das Frische der mundlichen Erzah-
lung."
No. 83. "Das arme Madchen." Replaced from 1819 on, under this num-
ber, by "Hans im Gliick," and relegated to No. 153 in 1819 and subse-
quent editions, with the changed title of "Die Sternthaler," and a few
stylistic alterations. In 1819 the title is " Das Sternthaler," 1837, "Der
Sternthaler," and so on until 1857, when it is "Der Sternthaler" in the
index, but "Die Sternthaler" in the body of the work and so subse-
quently.
No. 84. "Die Schwiegermutter." Replaced from 1819 on by "Hans
heirathet," and relegated, with some differences, to "Bruchstiicke,"
No. 5, 1822 and 1856, with the title "Die bose Schwiegermutter." At
the end of the story in 1812, the editors say: "Fragment: beim dritten-
mal schlachtet der Koch eine Hirschktih. Nun hat aber die junge
Konigin ihre Noth, dass sie ihre Kinder vom Schreien abhalt, damit
die Alte nicht hort, sie seien noch am Leben, u. s. w."
No. 85. "Fragmente": (a) "Schneeblume " ; (6) "Prinzessin mit der
Laus " ; (c) "Vom Prinz Johannes " ; and (d) " Der gute Lappen." These
four "Fragments" were replaced from 1819 on by "Die Goldkinderr"
which was No. 63 in 1812, but less fully related. Thre^of the four
"Fragments" are reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 37, and in Bolte and
Polivka, II, 204, No. 85a, b, c. No. 856, "Prinzessin mit der Laus,"
was alone of the four considered worthy of preservation, and was rele-
gated to "Bruchstucke," 1822, 1856, No. 2, with the title "Die Laus,"
361
106 T. F. CKANE
and slight stylistic changes. No. 85d, in 1812 is entitled "Der gute
Lappen," and so in Tonnelat, p. 38, but in Bolte and Polivka, II, 205,
it is entitled "Das gute Pflaster," and the word "Pflaster" is everywhere
substituted for "Lappen," for what reason I do not understand.
VOLUME II, 1815
No. 9. "Der Geist im Glas." Replaced, as to number, from 1819 on by
"Der alte Hildebrand," and transferred to No. 99 in 1819 and subse-
quent editions.
No. 13. "Der Froschprinz." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der Geist im
Glas," and relegated to Notes, 1822, 1856, with the usual stylistic
changes. It is reprinted in full by Bolte and Polivka, I, 1, in notes to
No. 1, "Der Froschkonig oder der eiserne Heinrieh," of which it is a
variant and for that reason omitted in subsequent editions and relegated
to the volume of Notes.
No. 15. "Der Teufel Griinrock." Replaced in 1843 and subsequent edi-
tions by "Der Barenhauter." The original story is reprinted in Bolte
and Polivka, II, 437, with the remark: "Diese ['Der Barenhauter']
erst 1843 eingesetzte Fassung ist, obwohl die Anmerkungen von 1856
nichts dariiber berichten, umgearbeitet aus der paderbornischen Auf-
zeichnung die seit 1815, Nr. 15 (1819, Nr. 101) (als Der Teufel
Griinrock an dieser Stelle stand, mit Benutzung von Grimmelshausens
'Erstem Barenhauter" ' (1670).
No. 18. "Die treuen Thiere." Replaced in 1857 by "Die klugen Leute."
The original is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 49, and in Bolte and Polivka,
II, 415 (No. 104o). The reason for the omission of the original story is
given in the Notes, 1856, to No. 104: "In den bisherigen Ausgaben
findet sich hier das Marchen von den treuen Thieren, das aber, seiner
genauen "Dbereinstimmung wegen, die 'Relations of Ssidi Kur' muss
zur Quelle behabt haben, wiewohl die Gesta Romanorum und der Penta-
merone, 3, 5, und Meier, Nr. 14, ein verwandtes enthalten."
No. 21. "Die Krahen." Replaced in 1843 and subsequent editions by
"Die beiden Wanderer." The original story is reprinted in Bolte and
Polivka, II, 468. This is the story mentioned above, p. 10 (of general
history of the collection), which was contributed by August von Haxt-
hausen, to whom it was told one night at an outpost by a comrade in the
war of 1813, who was shot dead behind him the next day; see Brief-
wechsel aus der Jugendzeit, p. 223, and Steig, op. cit., p. 314. The
original story was a Mecklenburg version, the one that replaced it was
from Holstein. Bolte and Polivka say of the former: "Die mecklen-
burgische Fassung ist also besser iiberliefert, abgesehen von dem Eingang
welcher urspriinglich eine Wette enthielt."
No. 33. "Der Faule und der Fleissige." Replaced from 1819 on by "Die
sieben Schwaben." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 39,
and in Bolte and Polivka, II, 560 (119a). Tonnelat, p. 40, says of this
362
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 107
story: "Le conte n'est qu'une parabole; c'est vraisemblablement & cause
de ses tendances moralisatrices que les freres Grimm 1'ont retranche*."
No. 35. "Die himmlische Hochzeit." Replaced from 1819 on by "Der
Konigssohn der sich vor nichts furehtete." Of the original story the
editors said in the notes to the first edition (ed. Panzer, II, 344) : " Granzt
an die Legende und ist doch auch ganz kindermarchenhaft." When in
1819 the editors introduced a new category of stories, the Kinder-
legenden, they transferred to it "Die himmlische Hochzeit" as No. 9.
No. 36. "Die lange Nase." Replaced from 1819 on by another version of
the same story from German Bohemia, " Der Krautesel." The original
version from Zwehrn, was relegated to Notes, 1822, 1856, with the usual
stylistic changes and condensation.
No. 43. "Der Lowe und der Frosch." Replaced from 1819 on by "Die
vier kunstreichen Briider." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat,
p. 40. That author says: "Nous ne savons pour quoi ce conte a e"te*
retranche*. Peut-etre les freres Grimm le conside*raient-ils comme
Stranger."
No. 44. "Der Soldat und der Schreiner." Replaced from 1819 on by
"Einauglein, Zweiauglein und Dreiauglein." The original story is
reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 42. Tonnelat says: "Malgre" les nombreux
traits qui apparentent ce re*cit aux contes les plus aime's du public, les
freres Grimm voulurent le retrancher parce qu'il leur paraissait inutile"
et incomplet." In the note to the first edition the collectors say:
"Manches darin ist gut und recht marchenhaft, doch scheint das Ganze
gelitten zu haben, theils durch Liicken, theils durch Verwirrung."
No. 50. "De wilde Mann." Replaced in 1850 and 1856 by "Der Eisen-
hans." "Nach einer Erzahlung aus den Maingegenden und in Arnims
Marchen, Nr. 17; in den friiheren Ausgaben 'Der wilde Mann' nach
einer "Dberlieferung aus dem Munsterland" (Notes, 1856, p. 218).
No. 57. "Die Kinder in Hungersnoth." Replaced from 1819 on by "Up
Reisen gohn." The original story is reprinted in Tonnelat, p. 46. The
collectors say in note to first edition, ed. Panzer, II, 358: "Nr. 57-69
aus schriftlichen Quellen gesammelt. Pratorius (im Abentheuerlichen
Gluckstopf, 1669, S. 191, 192) gibt die Sage, wie er sie gehort hat, die
Mutter soil zu Grafelitz liber Eger in Bohmen gelebt haben." Tonnelat,
op. cit., p. 46, says: "Le recit qui precede est bien plutot un f ait-divers
qu'un conte populaire, et on congoit que les freres Grimm n'aient pas
voulu laisser subsister parmi des remits d'imagination pure Fhistoire,
d'ailleurs pauvrement conte"e, d'une misere trop veritable."
No. 66. " Die heilige Frau Kummerniss." Replaced from 1819 on by " Das
Hirtenbiiblein." The original story is reprinted in Tomftlat, p. 46.
In the note to the first edition, ed. Panzer, II, 365, the collectors say:
"Neigt sich wie Nr. I. 83, I. 3, II. 1, II. 35, aus der heil. Legende ins
Marchen." Tonnelat, op. cit., p. 47, says: "Ce re*cit releve de la
14gende sacre*e; ce n'est pas un conte & proprement parler. II est vrai
363
108 T. F. CRANE
qu'il n'y a pas opposition entre le conte et la le*gende sacre*e; il y a
meme entre les deux de frequents points de contact; les freres Grimm
n'ont pas he*site* a introduire dans leur recueil des contes oft Dieu le
P&re, Je*sus, Saint-Pierre et les apotres jouent un r61e actif. . . . Mais
les bienfaits ou les miracles accomplis par ces personnages sacr6s n'e*taient
pas le seul objet du re*cit. Ici au contraire le miracle est I'e've'nement
principal et, £ vrai dire, unique. Le re*cit tend ainsi a Pedification des
lecteurs: il prend done un caractere special et un peu tendancieux.
C'est sans doute pour cette raison que les frSres Grimm ont tenu a
1'exclure."
No. 67. "Das Marchen vom Schlauraffenland." Replaced from 1819 on,
as to number by "Die Sternthaler" (see 1812, First Volume, No. 83,
'Das arme Madchen'), and relegated to No. 158 from 1819 on.
No. 68. "Das Dietmarsische Liigen-Marchen." Replaced, as to position,
from 1819 on by "Der gestohlene Heller," and relegated to No. 159
from 1819 on.
No. 69. "Rathsel-Marchen." Replaced, as to position, from 1819 on,
by " Die Brautschau," and relegated to No. 160 from 1819 on.
No. 70. "Der goldene Schlussel." Replaced, as to position, by "Die
Schlickerling," from 1819 on, and relegated to No. 161 in 1819, No. 168
in 1837, No. 178 in 1840, No. 194 in 1843, and No. 200 in 1850 and
1857. For some sentimental reason perhaps it pleased the brothers to
make this story, the last in the second volume of the first edition, the
last in all the others.
VOLUME II, 1819
No. 157. " Der Sperling und seine vier Kinder," was No. 35 in 1812, volume
first.
No. 158. "Das Marchen vom Schlauraffenland," was No. 67 in 1815,
volume second.
No. 159. "Das Dietmarsische Lugenmarchen," was No. 68 in 1815, volume
second.
No. 160. " Rathsel-Marchen," was No. 69 in 1815, volume second.
No. 161. "Der goldene Schlussel," was No. 70 in 1815, volume second.
VOLUME II, 1837
No. 161. "Schneeweisschen und Rosenroth," takes the place of "Der
goldene Schlussel," No. 161 in 1819, which in its turn becomes No. 168
in 1837, in order, as has been said above, to become the final story in
all editions.
Nos. 162-67 remain the same in all subsequent editions. No. 168, as has
been said, was No. 70 in 1815, volume second and No. 161 in 1819.
VOLUME II, 1840
No. 168. "Die hagere Liese," takes the place of No. 168, "Der goldene
Schlussel" in 1837, for reason just stated.
364
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HATJSMARCHEN " 109
Nos. 168-74 remain the same in all subsequent editions.
No. 175. "Das Ungliick." Replaced in 1857 by "Der Mond." In the
Notes, 1856, the editors say (No. 175, "Das Ungliick"): "Aus Kirch-
hofs Wendunmut, S. 176, da es aber aus dem Bidpai (Ph. Wen's
t)bersetzung, 1, 5) abstammt, so wird dafiir in der nachsten Aus-
gabe das Marchen vom Mond (Bei Prohle, Mdrchen fur die Jugend,
Nr. 182) eingeriickt werden." The original story is reprinted in Ton-
nelat, p. 52.
Nos. 176-77, same as in subsequent editions. No. 178 is "Der goldene
Schliissel," which, as we have seen, was No. 70 in 1815, volume second,
No. 161 in 1819, and No. 168 in 1837.
VOLUME II, 1843
No. 178. "Meister Pfriem," takes the place of No. 178, "Der goldene
Schliissel" in 1840, for reason stated above.
Nos. 179-81, same as in subsequent editions.
No. 182. "Die Erbsenprobe." Replaced in subsequent editions by "Die
Geschenke des kleinen Volkes." In Notes, 1856, the editors say: "In
der vorigen Ausgabe stand 'Die Erbsenprobe,' ist aber herausge-
nommen, weil sie wahrscheinlich aus Andersen (S. 42) stammt; auch
bei Cavallius, S. 222 kommt sie vor." The story is reprinted in Ton-
nelat, p. 53.
Nos. 183-90 are the same in subsequent editions.
No. 191. "Der Rauber und seine Sohne." Same in 1850, but replaced in
1857 by " Das Meerhaschen." The original story is reprinted in Tonne-
lat, p. 54, who says, p. 59, "Nous ne savons pourquoi ce conte a e*te*
retranche* de la 7e Edition. Dira-t-on que c'est a cause de son origine
e"trangere ? Cette hypothese n'est pas valable, car en 1856, date de la
publication du tome Hie, les freres Grimm conside>aient encore 'Der
Rauber und seine Sohne' comme un conte authentiquement national.
'C'est, disaient-ils, la le*gende de Polypheme, deVelopp^e, qui en fait le
fond principal. II contient de cette le*gende extremement re"pandue une
version excellente, inde*pendente de VOdyssee aussi bien que des remits
faits par d'autres peuples.' Comme les freres Grimm n'ont plus public*
de commentaire des contes apres la 7e Edition, il faut, semble-t-il, nous
re"soudre & ignorer les raisons qui ont, dans le cas present, dicte* leur
decision."
VOLUME II, 1850
No. 194. " Die Kornahre." Takes the place as to number of " Der goldene
Schliissel" in 1843, for reason mentioned above.
Nos. 194-99 are the same in 1857. *
No. 200. "Der goldene Schliissel," having been, as we have already seen,
No. 70 in 1815, volume second; No. 161 in 1819; No. 168 in 1837;
No. 178 in 1840; No. 194 in 1843, in all cases the final story of the
second and last volume of the collection.
365
110 T. F. CRANE
VOLUME II, 1857
No. 151.* "Die zwolf faulen Knechte." There does not seem to be any
good reason for the addition of this story, a variant of the one already
given under No. 151. The second story is more detailed and might
have been substituted for the first; both are of literary origin.
KlNDERLEGENDEN
In the edition of 1819, the brothers introduced a new category of tales,
the Kinderlegenden.1 We have already seen that in the second volume of the
first edition, 1815, No. 35, "Die himmlische Hochzeit," the collectors
remarked of the story: "Granzt an die Legende und ist doch auch ganz
kindermarchenhaft," and in later editions relegated the story to the new
category. There were nine Kinderlegenden in 1819 to 1843 inclusive. In
1850 a new one, "Die Haselruthe," "aus den vorarlbergischen Sagen von
Vonbun, S. 7," was added. Since then no change has been made in this
category.
BRUCHSTUCKE
We have already seen that in 1812, First Volume, No. 85, "Fragmente"
consisted of four pieces : (a) " Schneeblume " ; (6) " Prinzessin mit der Laus ' ' ;
(c) "Vom Prinz Johannes"; (d) "Der gute Lappen." These stories, as we
have seen above, were replaced from 1819 on by "Die Goldkinder," which
was No. 63 in 1812, but less fully related. The second of the four fragments,
"Prinzessin mit der Laus," was alone deemed worthy of preservation and
was relegated, in the volume of Notes, 1822 and 1856, to the new category of
"Bruchstiicke," No. 2, "Die Laus." Two other stories, 1812, No. 33,
"Der gestiefelte Kater," and 1812, No. 84, "Die Schwiegermutter" (name
changed to "Die bose Schwiegermutter"), were for reasons stated above
relegated to the new category in 1822 and 1856. Two other fragmentary
tales were added in 1822 and 1856: No. 1, "Der Mann vom Galgen," and
No. 3, "Der starke Hans," an exploit of Hans not related in No. 166, in the
story of the same name. Finally, in 1856 was added No. 6, " Marchenhaf te
Bruchstiicke in Volksliedern," containing three allusions from Fischart's
Gargantua and Andr. Gryphius' Gedichte. Tonnelat, p. 38, says of the
"Fragments" in general: "C'est justement parce qu'elles ne contiennent
que des fragments que les pages pre*cedentes ont e*te* retranche*es de la seconde
Edition. . . . C'est seulement parce que les freres Grimm en 1812 esti-
maient ne*cessaire de piiblier toutes les ceuvres populaires, quel que f ut leur
e*tat, qui'ils avaient recueilli tous ces debris de contes. Mais nous savons
de*ja que dans les anne"es suivantes leur point de vue changea lentement;
Pouvrage d'e*rudition tendit a devenir un livre de lectures pour les enfants
et le grand public. Aussi la seconde Edition ne devait-elle plus contenir
que des contes complets."
» 1819. Einleitung, "ttber das Wesen der Marchen" (W. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften,
I, 352): "Einige marchenhaft ausgebildete Legenden sind am Ende zugefugt."
366
HISTORY OF " KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 111
f
KlNDERGLAUBEN
At the end of the "Anhang" in the first edition, 1812, ed. Panzer, I,
464-68, containing the notes to the stories in the first volume, was "Einiges
aus dem Kinderglauben." This was reprinted in the second volume of the
second edition, 1819, and may be found in W. Grimm's Kleinere Schriften,
I, 399-404. As has been said above, the valuable "Einleitungen" to the
first and second volumes of the second edition, 1819, were not afterward
reprinted and must now be read in the volume of the Kleinere Schriften just
cited. The Kinderglauben has undergone considerable changes, chiefly
expansion, in the second edition. In the first edition there were five para-
graphs or divisions of the subject. In the second edition there were nine.
This is another instance of the care bestowed on each succeeding edition.
THE FIRST SEVEN EDITIONS OF THE KINDER- UND HAUS-
MARCHEN OF THE BROTHERS GRIMM
1. Kinder- /und/Hausmdrchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Briider Grimm.
/Berlin, /in der Realschulbuchhandlung. /1812. Zweiter Band, 1815,
Sm. 8vo, 2 vols., pp. xxviii, 388, Ix, one unnumbered page of errata; xvi,
298, li, one unnumbered page of errata, "Nachtrag," Ixi-lxx. This first
edition is reprinted by F. Panzer: Die Kinder- und Hausmarchen der
Briider Grimm in ihrer Urgestalt herausgegeben wn Friedrich Panzer. C. H.
Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Oskar Beck, Munich, 1913, two vols.
The editor has made a few changes in the distribution of the material of
the first edition, see Vol. II, p. 369, but otherwise has reproduced exactly
the original. He has added the engraved frontispieces and title-pages
which first appeared in the second edition, 1819.
This first edition is excessively scarce. I have seen at the Royal
Library of Munich the copy which was used by Panzer for his reprint.
2. Kinder- /und/Hausmdrchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Briider Grimm.
/Erster Band./ Mit zwei Kupfern. /Zweite vermehrte und verbesserte
Auflage. /Berlin, 1819. /Gedruckt und verlegt/bei G. Reimer. Zweiter
Band, otherwise as first volume. Vol. I, following the title-page: "An
die Frau Elizabeth von Arnim fur den kleinen Johannes Freimund."
After 1812 and 1819 the dedication is "An die Frau Bettina von Arnim."
See W. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, I, 317. Pp. (v)-xx, "Vorrede."
Reprinted in prefatory matter of 1857. This "Vorrede" differs con-
siderably from that of 1812, which may be found in Panzer and in
W. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, I, 320-28. Pp. (xxi)-liv, Einleitung,
"Cber das Wesen der Marchen." This introduction, found only in the
second edition, was written by Wilhelm, and is reprinted in his Kleinere
Schriften, I, 333-58. Pp. (Iv)-lvi, "Inhalt." Then follow the stories,
pp. 1-439, reverse of p. 439, "Druckfehler im Ersten Theil."
The second volume has the engraved frontispiece and title f eproduced
in Panzer. Title as Vol. I, except of course "Zweiter Band." Pp.
(iii)-lix, Kinderwesen und Kindersitten; pp. Ix-lxviiii, Kinderglauben.
Both of the foregoing articles are reprinted in W. Grimm's Kleinere
Schriften, I, 359-98; 399-404. Then follows "Inhalt" (in one column
367
112 T. F. CRANE
only), pp. (Ixix)-lxxi, and on reverse of p. Ixxi, not numbered: "Druck-
fehler." Then follow the stories, pp. 1-286. Kinderkgenden, title
(287), pp. (289)-304.
Kinder-fund/ Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Briider Grimm.
/Dritter Band. /Zweite vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. /Berlin,
1822, bei G. Reimer. The "Vorrede" (iii)-iv, "Cassel den 4ten Januar,
1822," is reprinted in the second edition of the Notes, 1856. Then follows
pp. v-vi, "Inhalt" (omitted in 1856); "Anmerkungen zu den einzelnen
Marchen," pp. (3)-252; "Anmerkungen zu den Kinderlegenden," 253-
54; "Brachstftcke" (255-56), 257-60; "Zeugnisse" (261-62), 263-68;
"Literatur" (269-70), 271-441; reverse of 441, "Druckfehler." Con-
siderable space, pp. 279-369, is devoted to a detailed analysis of Basile's
Pentamerone, omitted in 1856 on account of the publication of Liebrecht's
translation in 1846.
3. Kinder- / und / Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch die Briider Grimm.
/Erster Band. /Grosse Ausgabe/mit zwei Kupf era. /Dritte vermehrte
und verbesserte Auflage. /Gottingen,/Druck und Verlag der Dieter-
ichischen Buchhandlung./1837. Frontispiece, the engraving by L. E.
Grimm of "Briiderchen und Schwesterchen." Then a title-page
inclosed in ornamental border: Kinder- /und /Hausmarchen. /The
real title-page follows as above. P. (iii) An die Frau/Elisabeth von
Arnim. Pp. (v)-vi, Dedication (" Liebe Bettine, etc."). Pp. (vii)-viii-
xxiv, " Vorrede." Pp. (xxv)-xxvi-xxviii, " Inhalt." Then begin the tales
on pp. (1), 2-513. Vol. II has as frontispiece the engraved portrait by
L. E. Grimm of the " Marchenfrau." There is on opposite page the
title-page in ornamental border identical with that of Vol. I. Then full
title-page identical with that of Vol. I, except "Zweiter Band" for
"Erster Band." Pp. (iii)-vi, "Inhalt." Then follow the tales (Nos. 87-
168) on pp. (l)-385. Kinderlegenden (1-9), pp. (367)-385.
The third volume of Notes, although bearing on the title-page
"Dritte Auflage," was not published until 1856 and will be described with
the seventh, the definitive, edition.
4. Kinder- und Hausmarchen. Grosse Ausgabe. Vierte vermehrte und
verbesserte Auflage. Gottingen, Dieterichische Buchhandlung, 1840,
2 vols., pp. xxxii-f513; vi-f-417. The first volume contains Nos. 1-86,
the second, Nos. 87-178, and Kinderkgenden, 1-9.
5. Kinder-fund/ Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Briider Grimm.
/Erster Band. /Grosse Ausgabe. /Mit zwei Kupfern. /Fiinfte, stark
vermehrte und verbesserte Auflage. /G6ttingen,/Dieterichische Buch-
handlung. /1843. Vol. I, p. (iii), "An die Frau Bettina von Arnim,"
pp. (v)-x, same dedicatory matter as in 1857, the last signed "Berlin im
Fruhjahr, 1843" is in the fifth edition, not dated, but signed "Wilhelm
Grimm." Pp. (xi)-xxx, the various "Vorreden" as in 1857, the last of
course being "Berlin, am 4. April, 1845"; "Inhalt," pp. (xxxi)-xxxiv,
Nos. 1-86, pp. 1-514. Vol. II, "Inhalt," pp. (iii)-viii, Nos. 87-194;
Kinderkgenden, 1-9, pp. 1-532.
6. Kinder-/ und/ Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Briider Grimm.
/Erster Band. /Grosse Ausgabe. /Sechste vermehrte und verbesserte
Auflage. /G6ttingen,/Dieterichische Buchhandlung./1850. Pp. (iii-iv)
363
HISTORY OF "KINDER- UND HAUSMARCHEN" 113
"An die Frau Bettina von Arnim," "Liebe Bettine, etc.," pp. v-viii,
as in 1857, "Vorrede," pp. (ix)-xxii, as in 1857. Pp. xxii-lxxii, ""Ober-
sicht der Marchenliteratur." This ""Obersicht" begins p. xxii, directly
after the preface reprinted in 1857, and ends p. Ixxii with "Erdmannsdorf
in Schlesien am SOsten September, 1850. Wilhelm Grimm." Vol. I
contains Nos. 1-86, pp. 1-501; Vol. II contains Nos. 87-200, Kinder-
legenden, 1-10, pp. 1-562. This edition is remarkable as containing in
the "Vorrede" an "tFbersicht" of the Marchen literature. This first
appeared in the third volume of 1822, and is repeated here with further
corrections and additions. It appeared for the last time, with additions,
hi the third volume, 1856. In the brief preface to the seventh edition,
the editors say: "Dort [i.e., in the 3d vol., 1856] hat auch die tFbersicht
der Literatur, die sonst hier [i.e., in 1850] folgte, einen angemesseren
Platz erhalten."
7. Kinder-fund/ Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch/die Brtider Grimm.
/ErsterBand. /Grosse Ausgabe. /Siebente Auflage. /G6ttingen,/Diete-
richische Buchhandlung./1857. P. (iii) "An die Frau Bettina von Arnim."
(v)-viii, "Liebe Bettine, etc.," with the continuation: "Mit diesen
Worten sendete ich Ihnen das Buch vor drei Jahren etc.," and "Diesmal
kann ich Ihnen, liebe Bettine, das Buch," etc., signed "Berlin im Friih-
jahr, 1843. Wilhelm Grimm." This dedicatory matter is as in 1845,
"Vorrede," pp. ix-xx. In this "Vorrede" are reprinted the "Vorreden"
to 1819, 1837, 1840, 1843, 1850, and the very brief one of the present
edition dated "Berlin am 23ten Mai, 1857," but not signed. Then
follows, pp. (xxi)-xxiv, "Inhalt." The first volume contains Nos. 1-86,
pp. 1-421. Vol. II contains Nos. 87-200, Kinderkgenden, 1-10,
pp. 1-483. In addition the "Inhalt" occupies pp. (iii)-iv. The first
volume contains as frontispiece the engraving "Briiderchen und Schwes-
terchen," and the second volume the engraved frontispiece "Marchen-
frau," the portrait of Frau Viehmannin.
Kinder-fund/ Hausmarchen. /Gesammelt/durch die/Briider \ Grimm.
/Dritter Band. /Dritte Auflage. /Gottingen, Dieterichische Buch-
handlung./1856. Pp. (iii)-iv, "Vorrede," in which is reprinted the
"Vorrede" to the edition of 1822, and the very brief "Vorrede" to the
present edition, dated "Berlin den 25ten Mai, 1856," but not signed.
Then follow "Inhalt," one page not numbered, and "Anmerkungen zu
den einzelnen Marchen," one page not numbered. The notes to the indi-
vidual tales occupy pp. 3-262; "Zu den Kinderlegenden," pp. 263-264;
"Bruchstiicke," pp. 267-70; "Zeugnisse," pp. 273-82; "Literatur,"
pp. 285-414, signed "Erdmannsdorf in Schlesien am 30sten September,
1850. Berlin am 16ten Januar, 1856. Wilhelm Grimm"; "Register
zur Literatur," pp. 415-18.
Although this third volume is by its title the third volume of the
third edition, it is generally associated with the two volumes of tlfe seventh,
and constitutes with them the definitive edition of the "Grosse Ausgabe"
in three volumes. As has been stated above, the volume of Notes was not
reprinted after 1856 and must be consulted in the Reclam edition or in the
English translation of Miss Margaret Hunt.
369
114
T. F. CRANE
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KINDERLEGENDEN
II, 1819
III, 1837
IV, 1840
V, 1843
VI, 1850
VII, 1857
1
Der beilige Joseph im Walde
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
2
Die zwolf Apostel
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
3
Die Rose «
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
4
Annuth und Demuth fuhren
zum Himrnol
.Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
5
Gottes Speise
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
6
Die drei grunen Zweige
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
7
Muttergottesglaschcn
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
8
Das alte Mutterchen
Same
Same
Same
Same
Same
9
10
Die himmliche Hochzeiti
Same
Same
Same
Same
Die Haselruthe
Same
Same
1 Was No. 35 in 1815.
ITHACA, N.Y.
T. F. CRANE
383
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV November IQIJ NUMBER 7
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER
AND THE CORTEGIANO— Concluded
One of the striking features of the Cortegiano is its application
of the Florentine neo-Platonism to the life of the courtier. Indeed,
it is safe to say that no single book gives a better exposition of the
uomo di virtu as the Renaissance ideal par excellence. It is univer-
sally admitted that the English " gentleman" and the French
"honnete homme"1 are both derived from the Italian model, for it
1 Roger Aschan, for instance, writes in his Scholemaster (Arber Reprints, 1870), p. 66:
"which booke [Cortegiano], aduisedlie read, and diligentilie folowed, but one yeare at
home in England, would do a yong ientleman more good, I wisse, than three yeares
trauell abrode spent in Italic. And I meruelle this booke, is no more read in the Court,
than it is, seying it is so well translated into English by a worthie Ientleman Syr Th.
Hobbie." On the general subject in England, see Mary A. Scott, PMLA, XVI (1901),
475, and Elisabethan Translations from the Italian (Boston, 1916). Cf. further J. W.
Holme, MLR, V (1910), 145, and Jessie Crosland, ibid., p. 502; also A. Wesselski, Der
Hofmann des Grafen B. Castiglione (2 vols. Leipzig, 1907), and G. Carel, Herrig's Archiv,
CXXIII (1909), 441.
The term "honngte homme" is defined by R. Estienne and Nicot (1539 and 1537),
according to Livet, Lexique de la langue de Moliere, s.v., as "bellus homo, urbanus et
civilis," and a citation from Sorel, Connoiss. des bans livres, 1671, p. 5, states: "L'Spithdte
d'honeste n'avoit force autrefois qu'en disant un honeste homme, pour signifier un homme
accomply en toutes sortes de perfections et de vertus . . . mais depuis qu'il y a un
iivre de ce nom [namely Paret], 11 a passe1 avec raison a des significations plus amples."
Interesting, too, is the citation from FuretiSre (1690) : " Honneste on le dit premiSrement
de 1'homme de bien [see the Cid, vs. 911], du gallant homme, qui a pris 1'air du monde,
qui scait vivre. Paret a fait un Iivre de I'honneste homme." For our purposes, the
citation from Moliere's Misanth., I, 2:
"Et n'allez point quitter, de quoi que Ton vous somme,
Le nom que dans la Cour vous avez d'honne'te homme,"
is perhaps most characteristic.
In addition to Livet's list compare the following: Montaigne, Essais, I, 75: "[La
mort] vous attrapefuyant et poltron aussi bien qu'honneste homme" ; La Rochefoucauld,
Max., 203: "Le vrai honnSte homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien"; La Bruy6re,
65 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, November, 1917
66 WILLIAM A. NITZE
requires no demonstration today to affirm that the Renaissance type
was "worldly" (mondairi) and that its moral justification was Socratic
and Senecan rather than Christian. Thus, we find that the Cor-
tegiano should be of noble birth, since that disposes him to nobility
of action (gloire) ; that he must be " complete/' that is, an embodiment
of many qualities, harmonized and directed by the reason, for he is a
world unto himself and his final appeal is to his own exalted nature;
that he must be illustrious, for a man lives by his deeds, and his
deeds render his name immortal; that his loves must be spiritual,
that is, based on merit and reacting to an ideal beauty of which the
beauty of this world is only an image. In the pursuit of this ideal
the guide is the intelligence and the agent, the will. I have neither
the time nor at present the competence to treat this important
question in all of its ramifications. For one thing, the reference to
a souverain bien was common enough in Corneille's time. Compare
the Cid, vs. 755:
Et j'en viens recevoir, comme un bien souverain,
Et 1'arret de sa bouche, et le coup de sa main;
and Horace, vs. 721.
Regardons leur honneur comme un souverain bien;
Caractercs, Edition variorum, 37: " Un bonne" te homme se paye par ses mains de 1'applica-
tion qu'il a a son devoir par le plaisir qu'il sent a le faire"; Marivaux, Paysan Parvenu,
part 5: " Son mari, a qui, tout malade et couche" qu'il 6tait, je trouvai 1'air d'un honn6te
homme, je veux dire d'un homme qui a de la naissance"; Littre", Diet., remarks: "Nous
sommes bonne" tes par 1' observation des biense"ances et des usages de la socle" to"."
The French term should be compared further with prud'homme, OF. prodvme.
Chanson de Roland, 26:
Produme i out pur sun seignur aidier;
Crestien de Troyes, Cliges, 201 :
Par li fet prodome largesce;
Guillaume de D6le, 5631:
Bien le devroient en memoire
Avoir et li roi et li conte,
Cel prodome dont on lor conte,
Por avoir de bien faire en vie,
Aussi com cil fist en sa vie.
"On trouve bien," says Livet, op. cit., Ill, 415, "dans Ootgrave (1611, 1650),
prud' homme, preudefemme, chaste, honn6te, modeste, vertueuse; mais sous la forme
prude, le mot ne paratt dans aucun dictionnaire avant le Diction, royal du P. Pomey
(1676), et encore avec un sens mal de"fini." Cotgrave, 1632, s.v. "preud 'homme":
"A valiant hardie, couragious; also a loyall, faithful, honest, vertuous (also, a discreet)
man." Br6al, Essai de Semantique, 3d ed., 1904, p. 101, says: "Nous avons en francais
1'adjectif prude, qui avait autrefois une belle et noble acception, puisqu'il est le f6minin
de preux. Mais 1'esprit des contours (peut-e"tre aussi quelque rancune centre des vertus
trop hautaines) a fait dSvier cet adjectif au sens Equivoque qu'il a aujourd'hui." Cf.
MoliSre, L'fitourdi, III, 2: "Elle fait la sucr6e et veut passer pour prude." On the
present usage see the Diet. Gen., p. 1831. The modern meaning of prud'homme is " patron,"
"ouvrier d616gu6": le conseil des prud'hommes; also indicative of an interesting socio-
logical fact.
386
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 67
with Voiture, Letters, 51: "A moins que de trailer de Pimmortalite*
de Tame ou du bien souverain." Moreover, excessive spiritualization
is alive in Marguerite d'Angouleme,1 in the Pleiade — especially Du
Bellay (cf. the Olive), and in the transition writers Charron and
Du Vair. Charron, La Sagesse, ed. 1595, p. 639, defines vertu
[vaillance] as "la plus difficile, la plus glorieuse, qui produit de plus
grands, esclatants & excellens effets, elle comprend magnanimite*,
patience, perseverance invincible, vertus heroiques, dont plusieurs
ont recherche les maux avec faim, pour en venir a ce noble exercice."2
And in his Philosophic morale des stoiques (818) Du Vair expresses
the thought, so Cartesian in principle, "que si nous voulons auoir
du bien, il faut que nous le donions nous-mesmes,"3 while in another
place4 he says: "La vertu aux ames he*roiques n'attend pas les
anne*es, elle fait son progres tout-a-coup," which has been taken as
a prototype for the Cid, vs. 405 :5
aux ames bien ne*es
La valeur n'attend point le nombre des anne"es.
1 See the well-known passage from the nineteenth tale of the Heptameron, ed. Leroux
de Lincy, p. Ill: "J'appelle parfaicts amans . . . ceulx qui cherchent, en ce qu'ils
ainient, quelque perfection, soit beaultS, bont6 ou bonne grace, toujours tendans a la
vertu, et qui ont le cueur si hault qu'ils ne veulent, pour mourir, mettre leur fin aux
choses basses que 1'honneur et la conscience reprouvent; car 1'ame, qui n'est cre6e que
pour retourner a son bien souverain, ne faict, tant qu'elle est dedans le corps, que dSsirer
d'y parvenir." It should be noted, however, that Marguerite (in the person of
Parlamente) also combats the stoical ideal: "A dire la veritS, dit Parlamente, il est
impossible que la victoire de nous mesmes se face par nous mesmes, sans ung merveilleux
orgueil, qui est le vice que chacun doibt le plus craindre; car il s'engendre de la mort et
ruyne de toutes les aultres vertuz" (Hept., XXXIV, 291).
1 Charron, however, describes the rational type under the heading of preud'hommie.
See Sagesse, p. 301: "Or la vraye preud'homme [sic] . . . est sage, est libre & franche,
masle & genereuse, riante & joyeuse, Sgale, vniforme, & constante, qui marche d'vn pas
ferme, fler, & hautain, allant toujours son train, sans regarder de cost§ ny derriere, sans
s'arrester & alterer son pas & ses alleures pour le vent, le temps, les occasions, qui se
changent, mais non pas elle, i'entends en jugemet & en volot€, c'est a dire en 1'ame, ou
reside & a son siege la preud'homie." The real preud'homme is the child of Nature:
" [le paysan et autres pauvres gens]. . . . Pour vivre content & heureux, il ne faut pas
estre scavant, courtisan ny tant habile; toute cette suffisance qui est au dela la commune
& naturelle."
* Traitiez Philosophiques (Rouen [chez David Gevffroy], 1622), p. 734 (this is
found in Vol. II of the (Euvres du Sieur Du Vair; hence the page numbering). Cf. also
p. 732: "Le bien doncques de 1'homme consistera en 1'vsage de la droicte raison, qui
est a dire en la vertu, laquelle n'est autre chose que la ferme disposition de notre volontS,
a suiure ce qui est honneste & conuenable"; and, especially, what he says on p. 747
against ambition: "Composons nos affections, de facon que la lueur des honneurs
n'esbloiiisse point nostre raison, & plantons de belles resolutions en nostre esprit, qui
luy seruent de barriere centre les assauts de 1'ambition. . . . Que la vertu ne cherche
point vn plus ample ni plus riche theatre pour se faire voir que sa propra conscience.
Plus le soleil est haut, & moins fait il d'ombre: plus la vertu est grande, moins
cherche-elle de gloire." The last remark is certainly not Cornelian.
* Prom the XIV Harangue of Du Vair.
* See E. Cougny, Guillaume Du Vair (Paris, 1857), p. 152; but compare what is
said below, p. 70, note 1.
387
68 WILLIAM A. NITZE
When, further, we consider that Corneille had not only read, but
taken material from Seneca, Amyot, and Montaigne, and that there
was in the heritage of the early seventeenth century a strong current
of stoical philosophy,1 it is clear that his conception of the heroic
may well have had, not one, but several sources. At the same time,
no single treatise sets forth the ideals of Renaissance society more
fully or more definitely than does the Cortegiano. The treatise was,
as we saw, popular with the generation of 1630, when, following the
first period of the Hotel de Rambouillet, the "courtly" types were
being fashioned and defined. Corneille shared in this movement.
It would be strange if he had not shared in the influence of the work
which was one of its chief sources of inspiration — the more so since
his early plays, of an essentially different cast from his tragedies,
had at least prepared the way.
Let us now see what are the specific resemblances between
Corneille's characters and the Cortegiano.
First, there is the question of birth or rank, in which the Ren-
aissance was so much interested.2 With this the Cortegiano proper
begins.3
Cort. 33. Voglio adunque che questo nostro Cortegiano sia nato nobile,
e di generosa famiglia; perche" molto men si disdice ad un ignobile mancar
di far operazioni virtuose, che ad uno nobile, il qual se desvia del cammino
dei sui antecessori, macula il nome della famiglia, e non solamente non
acquista, ma perde il gia acquistato; perche* la nobilita e quasi una chiara
lampa, che manifesta e fa veder Topere bone e le male, ed accende e sprona
alia virtu cosi col timor d'infamia, come ancor con la speranza di laude: e non
scoprendo questo splendor di nobilita Topere degPignobili, essi mancano dello
stimulo, e del timore di quella infamia, ne" par loro d'esser obligati passar
piu avanti di quello che fatto abbiano i sui antecessori; ed ai nobili par
biasimo non giunger almeno al termine da' sui primi mostratogli . . . [37]
ma ... avendo noi a formare un Cortegiano senza diffetto alcuno, e
i Corneille used Seneca and Montaigne in Cinna; the former he had already used
in Medee (1634 or 1635), and Amyot's Plutarque is one of the sources (together with
Livy and Mairet) of Horace.
On the philosophic movement of the early seventeenth century, see Brunetiere,
op. cit., II, chap. vii. Malherbe's translation of Seneca's treatise, On Giving and Receiving
Favors was first published in 1630, while the fipttres de Seneque traduites par M. de
Malherbe did not appear in print until 1639.
* For this question as it appears in the "court" treatises of the seventeenth century,
influenced by the Cortegiano, see the article of Toldo mentioned above.
•The citations I give are from the Cian edition of the Cortegiano (Florence, 1906).
388
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 69
cumulate d'ogni laude, mi par necessario farlo nobile, si per molte altre
cause, come ancor per la opmione universale, la qual subito accompagna
la nobilita. Che se saranmo dui omini di palazzo, i quali non abbiano per
prima dato impression alcuna di se* stessi con 1'opere o bone o male; subito
che s'intenda Tun essere nato gentilomo e 1'altro no, appresso ciascuno lo
ignobile sara molto meno estimato che '1 nobile, e bisognera che con molte
fatiche e con tempo nella mente degli omini imprima la bona opinion di se,
c!he 1'altro in un momento, e solamente con 1'esser gentilomo, avra acquistata.
An example is given in the Cardinal of Ferrara, who though
young shows remarkable qualities.
Cf. Faret, 5:1
le diray premierement qu'il me semble tres necessaire que celuy qui
veut entrer dans ete grand commerce du monde soit nay de Gentilhomme, &
d'une maison qui ait quelque bonne marque. . . .
Ceux de qui les Ancestres se sont rendus signalez par de memorables
exploits, se trouvent en quelque facon engagez a suivre le chemin qui leur
est ouvert: Et la Noblesse qui comme vne belle lumiere esclaire toutes leurs
actions, les excite a la vertu par ces exemples domestiques, ou les retire du vice par
la crainte de I'infamie. Et certes, comme ceux qui sont nez dans le peuple ne
pensent pas estre obligez de passer plus avant que ceux de qui ils sont sortis;
de mesme vne personne de bonne maison croyroit estre digne de blasme, si
du moins elle ne pouvoit parvenir a mesme degre" d'estime oil ses Prede-
cesseurs sont montez. I'adjouste a cela 1'opinion d'un excellent Maistre
en cette science [Castiglione], qui dit que c'est vn charme tres puissant
pour gagner d'abord la bonne opinion de ceux a qui nous voulons plaire,
que la bonne naissance. Et n'y a nulle doute que les deux hommes egale-
ment bien faits, qui se presenteront dans vne compagnie sans avoir encore
donne* aucune impression d'eux qui fist connoistre ce qu'ils pourroient valoir;
lors que 1'on viendroit a sgavoir que Fun est Gentilhomme, & que 1'autre ne
Test pas, il faudroit que ce dernier mist beaucoup de temps, devant que de
donner de soy la bonne opinion que le Gentil-homme auroit acquise en vn
moment, par la seule connoissance que Ton auroit cue de son extraction.2
1 All the passages cited from the Honeste Homme are from the Cornell copy ; see
above, p. 142.
2 The ultimate source of these passages is Plato's Symposium, 178d, except that
what is attributed to Love in Plato is here attributed to Birth. Shelley's translation
of the Symposium, though not literal, gives at least the import of the original: "For
neither birth, nor wealth, nor honours, can awaken in the minds of men the principles
which should guide those who from youth aspire to an honourable and excellent life, as
Love awakens them. I speak of the fear of shame which deters them from that which
is disgraceful; and the love of glory, which incites to honourable deeds." rf the original
this last sentence is: A«'YW fie Sri ri TOUTO; rrfv en-l n«v rots at<rxpois a.i<r\vvT)v, iit\ fie TOIS
•eaAot? <f>iAoTiMiav; cf. 179a for a similar contrast. Compare Marsilio Ficino's Com-
mentary on the Symposium; I quote from the Italian version (Florence, 1544), p. 19:
"Accidche adunche n6i ritorniamo qualche v61ta a la utilita di AmCre: il tim6re d611a
389
70 WILLIAM A. NITZE
This insistence on family or birth is strong in Corneille. Compare
the Cid, vs. 405:
Je suis jeune, il est vrai, mais aux antes bien nees
La valeur n'attend point le nombre des annSes;1
Polyeucte, vs. 420:
Polyeucte a du nom, et sort du sang des rois.
Even Horace justifies himself to his father by a reference to family;
Horace, vs. 1427:
Ma main n'a pu souffrir de crime en votre race;
Ne souffrez point de tache en la maison d'Horace.
And, accordingly, the pride of race speaks forth in Horace's words,
vs. 435:
Et comme il [le sort] voit en nous des ames peu communes,
Hors de Pordre commun il nous fait des fortunes.
Combattre un ennemi pour le salut de tous,
Et contre un inconnu s'exposer seul aux coups,
D'une simple vertu c'est 1'effet ordinaire. . . .
Mais vouloir au public immoler ce qu'on aime,
S'attacher au combat contre un autre soi-m&ne . . .
Une telle vertu n'appartenait qu'& nous.
Contrast with this the character of Curiace, who though no less
valiant does not claim to be a superman, vs. 468:
J'ai le coeur aussi bon, mais enfin je suis homme.
See also the words of the elder Horace, vs. 1661 :
J'aime trop 1'honneur, Sire, et ne suis point de rang
A souffrir ni d'affront ni de crime en mon sang.
Second, the unifying element of the Courtier's character is his
virtu. This is shown in numerous passages of the Italian work; in
none more clearly than in the following:2
infamia che da le c6se inoneste ci discosta, & il desid6rio della G16ria, che a le onoreVoli
imprese ci fa caldi, ageVolmente & presto da Amore procSdono."
As for France, the influence of the Cortegiano is seen in the well-known passage
from Rabelais: Gargantua, chap. Ivii [Lefranc ed.]: "parceque gens liberes, bien nez,
bien instruictz, conversans en compaignies honnestes, ont par nature un instinct et
a ig nil Ion qui tou jours les poulse a faictz vertueux et retire de vice, lequel ilz nommoient
honneur." Descartes, Traite, Art. 206, reads: "Or la gloire et la honte ont meme usage
en ce qu'elles nous incitent a la vertu, 1'une par I'espSrance, 1'autre par la crainte."
i Los Mocedades, I, 409, reads:
Qu§ imagino, pues que tengo mas valor que pocos aiios.
This is a more likely source for Corneille here than the passage from Du Vair cited above,
p. 67. In any case, it is Corneille who stresses the idea of birth.
* On the use of virtb by others, especially Machiavelli, see E. W. Mayer, Machiavellis
Geachichtsauffassung und sein Begriff virtH (Munich and Berlin, 1912).
390
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 71
Cort. 130. Perd e necessario, che'l nostro Cortegiano in ogni sua operazione
sia cauto, e ci6 che dice o fa sempre accompagni con prudenzia; e non
solamente ponga cura d'aver in se* parti e condizioni eccellenti, ma il tenor
della vita sua ordini con tal disposizione, che'l tutto corrisponda a queste
parti, e si vegga il medesimo esser sempre ed in ogni cosa tal che non dis-
cordi da s6 stesso, ma faccia un corpo sol di tutte queste bone condizioni;
di sorte che ogni suo atto risulti e sia composto di tutte le virtu, come dicono
i Stoici esser officio di chi e savio : benche" perd in ogni operazion sempre
una virtu e la principale; ma tutte sono talmente tra se~ concatenate, che
vanno ad un fine, e ad ogni effetto tutte possono concorrere e servire. Per6
bisogna che sappia valersene, e per lo paragone e quasi contrarietd dell'una
talor far che I'altra sia piu chiaramente conosciuta.
Cf. Faret 67:
II faut qu'il soit avise" & adroit en tout ce qu'il fera, & qu'il ne mette
pas seulement des soins a s'acque"rir toutes les bonnes conditions que ie luy
ai represented, mais que la suite & 1'ordre de sa vie soit regie* avec une
telle disposition, que le tout re"ponde a chaque partie. Qu'il soit e"gal en
toutes choses, & que sans se contrarier iamais / [68] soymesme, il forme vn
corps solide & parfait de toutes ces belles qualitez, de sorte que ses moindres
actions soient comme anime'es d'un esprit de sagesse & de vertu.
Unity of purpose, conceived abstractly, is one of the most
characteristic traits of Corneille's heroes and heroines. Lanson has
shown (Hommes et livres, 119) that, like Descartes, Corneille pro-
ceeds on the assumption that "few men are so weak and irresolute
that they desire only what their passions dictate. The majority
are fixed in their judgments, according to which they regulate a part
— [the major part] — of their actions." See the Traite des passions,
Art. 49.1
Perhaps the best illustration of set purpose or dominant vertu is
the patriotism of Horace. Having once reasoned out his course,
and for this the play gives him ample opportunity, Horace never
wavers. His patriotism having become a "judgment," it is in the
name of reason that he kills Camille. A single line sums up the
situation: Horace, vs. 1319:
C'est trop, ma patience & la raison fait place.
1 Cf . Charron, Sagesse, 144: "Ainsi en I'homme 1'entendement est te souverain,
qui a sous soy vne puissance estimative & imaginative comme vn Magistral, pour con-
noistre & juger par le rapport des sens . . . mais le malheur est, que cette puissance
qui est au dessous de 1'entendement . . . se laisse la pluspart du temps corrompre
ou tromper, dont elle iuge mal & temerairement."
391
72 WILLIAM A. NITZE
We know that Chapelain, who considered the ending of the play
brutale et froide, suggested to Corneille means of improving it.
Whether Corneille changed the text or not is uncertain, but in any
case the last act seeks to justify Horace on the basis of the Aristotelian
tragic flaw or " fatal error."1 Horace, vs. 1405:
Quand la gloire nous enfle, il [le jugement celeste]
sait bien comme il faut
Confondre notre orgueil qui s'eleve trop haut. . . .
II m61e a nos vertus des marques de faiblesse,
Et rarement accorde a notre ambition
L'entier et pur honneur d'une bonne action.
However, Horace is no exception to Corneille's practice of repre-
senting character as determined or settled in its action. Polyeucte,
Cle"opatre, Nicom£de are no less striking examples of what Lanson
has called Corneille's " rectilinear action."2 When there is a change,
a repentance, it is sudden or abrupt; the personage makes a volte-
face; for instance, Maxime in Cinna, vs. 1666:
Honorez moins, Seigneur, une ame criminelle.
Third, there is the constant appeal to the reason and the con-
scious will.
Cort. 274. Ma la vera magnanimita viene da una propria deliberazione
e determinata volunta di far cosi, e da estimare piii 1'onore e'l debito che
tutti i periculi del mondo; e, benche" si conosca la morte manifesta, esser
di core e d'animo tanto saldo, che i sentimenti non restino impediti n6 si
spaventino, ma faccian I'officio loro circa il discorrere e pensare [in speech
and thought], cosi come se fossero quietissimi. Di questa sorte avemo
veduto ed inteso esser grand'omini; medesimamente molte donne, le quali,
e negli antichi seculi e nei present!, hanno mostrato grandezza d'animo, e
fatto al mondo effetti degni d'infinita laude, non men che s'abbian fatto
gli omini.
[Virtue is natural in us but] [363] se si deve ridurre in atto, ed alPabito
suo perfetto, non si contenta, come s'& detto, della natura sola, ma ha
bisogno della artificiosa consuetudine e della ragione, la quale purifichi e
dilucidi quell'anima, levandole il tenebroso velo della ignoranzia, dalla qual
quasi tutti gli errori degli omini procedono : che" se il bene e'l male fossero
ben conosciuti ed intesi, ognuno sempre eleggeria il bene, e fuggiria il male.
Perd la virtu si p6 quasi dir une prudenzia ed un saper eieggere il bene, e'l
i See Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, pp. 280 flf.
1 Of. what Corneille has to say on Aristotle's precept of the average goodness of
tragic characters in his Premier Discours, Marty-Laveaux, I, 31; and see Searles's inter-
esting observations on the same in Modern Philology, XIII (1915), 175.
392
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 73
vizio una imprudenzia ed ignoranzia che induce a giudicar falsamente;
perche* non eleggono mai gli omini il male con opinion che sia male, ma
s'ingannano per una certa similitudine di bene.1
Cf . Faret, p. 25 and particularly p. 121 :
Leur iugement la [conduitte] fait touiours demeurer dans la raison &
scait retenir la rapidit6 de son mouuement auec plus de force quVne digue
bien ferme'e & appuye"e, ne peut arrester I'lmpetuosite" d'vne riuiere, ou les
rauuages d'vn torrent. [From the section on the Honestes Gens].
Descartes [Arts. 41 and 45] remarks: La volontt est tellement
libre de sa nature qu'elle ne peut jamais etre contrainte . . . [les
actions] sont absolument en son [de Tame] pouvoir et ne peuvent
qu'indirectement toe change*es par le corps." Also Art. 48: "Ce
que je nomme ses propres armes [de la volonte] sont des jugements
fermes et determines touchant la connaissance du bien et du mal,
suivant lesquels elle a re*solu de conduire les actions de sa vie."2
With all this Corneille agrees. Compare the following examples:
Cinna, vs. 1696:
Je suis maltre de moi comme de Punivers;
Je le suis, je veux T6tre. O siecles, 6 m&noire,
Conservez & jamais ma derniere victoire!
Polyeucte, vs. 477:
Et sur mes passions ma raison souveraine
Eut blame" mes soupirs et dissipS ma haine.
Nicomtde, vs. 189:
Seigneur, si j'ai raison, qu'*importe & qui je sois ?
Perd-elle de son prix pour emprunter ma voix ?
Agtsilas, vs. 1987:
Un roi n6 pour I'Sclat des grandes actions
Dompte jusqu'& ses passions,
Et ne se croit point roi, s'il ne fait sur lui-meme
Le plus illustre essai de son pouvoir supreme.
" Magnanimity" is reinforced in the Cortegiano on p. 368, where it
is said that this virtue comes last and strengthens all other virtues:
1 Cf. Du Vair, 733: "Or n'y a-il mil doute qu'en nous le principe & mouuemet de
nos actions ne soit I' ' entendement & la volonte, le bien donques que nous cherchons doit
estre leur perfection, leur repos & leur contentement." And 736: "Or <JB qui peut le
pi' pour nous mettre en ce chemin, & nous apprendre a auoir les mouuemes de 1'esprit
droits, & la volontS reiglge par la raison, c'est la prudence, qui est a mon advis & le comence-
met & la fin de toutes les vertus."
See Lanson, Hommes et livres, pp. 115, 118 flf.
393
74 WILLIAM A. NITZE
"ma essa sola star non po, per che chi non ha altra virtu, non po
esser magnanimo" See Descartes, Art. 161 :
si on s'occupe souvent & conside*rer ce que c'est que le libre arbitre
... on peut exciter en soi la passion et ensuite acquerir la vertu de generosite,
laquelle 6tant comme la clef de toutes les autres vertus, et un remede ge"ne"ral
contre tous les de*reglements des passions, il me semble que cette considera-
tion me"rite bien d'etre remarque'e.
The process whereby a character attains to this perfection is shown
precisely in Cinna; see Lanson, Hommes et livres, p. 125. A further
citation from Horace may be of interest; the words are those of the
king at the end of the play, vs. 1759 :
Vis done, Horace, vis, guerrier trop magnanime:
Ta vertu met ta gloire1 au-dessus de ton crime.
Cf. the Cid, vs. 493:
Chimene a Vdme haute, et quoiqu' interesse*e,
Elle ne peut souffrir une basse pense*e.
Fourth, the passions are nevertheless not to be wholly rejected;
a "good" passion, wisely chosen, gives strength to the soul and
insures the victory of the reason.
Cort. 367. Perd non & conveniente, per levar le perturbazioni, estipar
gli affetti in tutto; che" questo saria come se per fuggir la ebrieta, si facesse
un editto che niuno bevesse vino, o perche* talor correndo Pome cade, si
interdicesse ad ognuno il correre. . . . Gli affetti adunque, modificati dalla
temperanzia, sono favorevoli alia virtu, come Pira che aiuta la fortezza,
Podio contra i scelerati aiuta la giustizia, e medesimamente 1'altre virtu sono
aiutate dagli affetti; li quali se fossero in tutto levati, lassariano la ragione
debilissima e languida, di modo che poco operar potrebbe, come governator
di nave abbandonato da' venti in gran calma.
Ibid. 366. Ed a me pare che quella virtu la quale, essendo nell' animo
nostro discordia tra la ragione e P appetite, combatte e da la vittoria alia
ragione, si debba estimar piu perfetta che quella che vince non avendo
cupidit^, n6 affetto alcuno che le contrasti.
Here again the student of Corneille and Descartes recognizes the
principle of combatting one passion with another, as fimilie does in
Cinna, Pauline in Polyeucte, Chimene and Rodrigue in the Cid, etc.,
1 On the use of the word gloire in the seventeenth century, see Huguet, Glossairc des
classiques, p. 184. Descartes, Art. 204, says: "une espfcce de joie, fondee sur 1'amour
qu'on a pour soi-mSme, et qui vient de 1'opinion ou de I'esp6rance qu'on a d'etre loue"
par quelques autres. Ainsi elle est dift*6rente de la satisfaction mt6rieure, qui vient
de 1'opinion qu'on a d'avoir fait quelque bonne action."
394
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 75
the occasion of so many of Corneille's tirades, and the essence of the
following passages in the Traite:
Art. 45. Nos passions ne peuvent pas aussi directement £tre excite"es ni
6te"es par 1'action de notre volonte", mais elles peuvent 1'etre incUrectement
par la representation des choses qui ont coutume d'etre jointes avec les
passions que nous voulons avoir, et qui sont contraires & celles que nous
voulons rejeter.
Art. 48. Or c'est par le succes de ces combats que chacun peut connaitre
la force ou la faiblesse de son ame. Car ceux en qui naturellement la volonte"
peut le plus aise"ment vaincre les passions et arr£ter les mouvements du
corps qui les accompagnent, ont sans doute les ames plus fortes.1
In particular, cf. Horace, vs. 433:
II [le sort] e"puise sa force & former un malheur
Pour mieux se mesurer avec notre valeur;
and Polyeucte, vs. 165:
Une femme d'honneur peut avouer sans honte
Ces surprises des sens que la raison surmonte;
Ce n'est qu'en ces assauts qu'e"clate la vertu,
Et Ton doute d'un coeur qui n'a point combattu*
Finally, the supreme aim is tranquillity : the serene soul, le repos
d'dme.
Cort. 366. Cos! questa virtii non sforzando 1'animo, ma infondendogli
per vie placidisslme una veemente persuasione che lo inclina alia onesta,
10 rende quieto e pien di riposo, in tutto eguale e ben misurato, e da ogni
canto composto d'una certa concordia con s6 stesso, che lo adorna di cosi
serena tranquillita (Jhe mai non si turba, ed in tutto diviene obedientissimo
alia ragione, e pronto di volgere ad essa ogni suo movimento, e seguirla
ovunque condur lo voglia, senza repugnanzia alcuna. . . . Questa virtii e
perfettissima, e conviensi massimamente ai principi, perche* da lei ne nascono
molte altre.
Descartes, Art. 148. Car quiconque a ve~cu en telle sorte, que sa con-
science ne lui peut reprocher qu'il ait jamais manque" a faire toutes les choses
qu'il a juge"es etre les meilleures (qui est ce que je nomme ici suivre la vertu),
1 See Lanson, op. cit., p. 117.
2 On this whole question see also Coeffeteau, Tableau des passions humaines (Paris,
1620), pp. 60 flP.: "Et certes il semble que les Sto'iques n'ont remarqug en 1'homme autre
composition que celle du corps & de 1'ame, et qu'ils ont ignore la diuersitg d^s puissances
intellectuelles & sensitiues, de la raison & de la sensualite; veu qu'autrement il n'y a
nulle apparence qu'ils eussent voulu laisser 1'Appetit sensitif ocieux en 1'homme comme
11 faut, une fois deliurg de tous les mouuements des Passions. . . . Aussi 1'effort de la
vertu ne consiste pas a exterminer ou a arracher entieremet de 1'ame les Passions naturelles,
mais a les moderer & a les regir auec le frein de la raison."
395
76 WILLIAM A. NITZE
il en regoit une satisfaction, qui est si puissante pour le rendre heureux, que
les plus violents efforts des passions n'ont jamais assez de pouvoir pour
troubler la tranquillite de son ame.
Nicomede is perhaps the best single example of the possession of
this trait. But note also the following:
Polyeucte, vs. 723:
Douce tranquillite, que je n'ose espe*rer,
Que ton divin rayon tarde & les e'clairer!1
Ibid., vs. 1191:
J'ai de Pambition, mais plus noble et plus belle:
Cette grandeur pe*rit, j'en veux une immortelle,
Un bonheur assure", sans mesure et sans fin,
Au-dessus de Penvie, au-dessus du destin.
And the passage from Pompee, vs. 489, which Voltaire condemned for
its esprit faux:
La meme majeste* sur son visage empreinte
Entre ses assassins montre un esprit sans crainte;
Sa vertu tout enti£re a la mort le conduit.
Immobile a leurs coups, en Iui^m6me il rappelle
Ce qu'eut de beau sa vie, et ce qu'on dira d'elle;
Et tient la trahison que le roi leur present
Trop au-dessous de lui pour y prater Pesprit.
Sa vertu dans leur crime augmente ainsi son lustre;
Et son dernier soupir est un soupir illustre,
Qui de cette grande ame achevant les destins,
Etale tout Pompe'e aux yeux des assassins.2
By way of corollary it may be added that Corneille's concept of
the Prince is entirely in accord with the foregoing ideal. His
1 Cf. Mme de la Fayette, La Princesse de Cleves, l^re partie: "Elle lul faisolt voir
. . . quelle tranquillite sulvoit la vie d'une honnfite femme, et combien la vertu donnoit
d'ficlat et d'(516vation a une personne qui avoit de la beaute" et de la naissance."
* Corneille, according to the Au Lecteur, used Lucan as his source for the play.
Amyot, who relates the story after Plutarch, says in the simplest language: "et adonc
Pompeius tira sa robe a deux mains au devant de sa face, sans dire ne faire aucune chose
indigne de luy, et endura vertueusement les coups qu'ilz luy donnerent, en soupirant un
peu seulement, estant aag6 de cinquante neuf ans, et ayant achev6 sa vie le jour ensuy vant
celuy de sa nativitfi" (Dannesteter-Hatzfeld, Seizieme siecle, Part II, p. 151).
396
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 77
dramas, to be sure, are not lacking in contemporary political refer-
ences.1 But the "type" is nevertheless well defined. In Pdmpee,
vs. 1193, Cle*opatre says:
II vous plaint d'e*couter ces laches politiques
Qui n'inspirent aux rois que des mceurs tyranniques:
Ainsi que la naissanee> ils ont les esprits bas.
En vain on les e*leve £ re*gir des 6 tats:
Un coeur ne* pour servir sait mal comme on commande.
Thus according to Castiglione (353), being nobly born, graceful,
agreeable, and expert in so many exercises would be vain if
il Cortegiano non producesse altro frutto che Pesser tale per s4 stesso. . . .
II fin [354J adunque del perfetto Cortegiano . . . estimo io che sia il
guardagnarsi, per mezzo delle condizioni attribuitegli da questi signori,
talmente la benivolenzia e ranimo di quel principe a cui serve, che possa
dirgli e sempre gli dica la verit£ d'ogni cosa che ad esso convenga sapere,
senza timor o periculo di dispiacergli. . . . [and] far vedere al suo principe,
quanto onore ed utile nasca a lui ed alii suoi dalla giustizia, dalla liberalita,
dalla magnanimity [etc.].
And the ideal, thus led up to, Castiglione completes in the statement
that the sovereign is (373) "phi presto semideo che omo mortale."
For
cosi come nel cielo il sole e la luna e le altre stelle mostrano al mondo, quasi
come in speccjrio, una certa similitudine di Dio, cosf in terra molto piii
simile imagine di Dio son que' bon principi che 1'amano e reveriscono, e
mostrano ai popoli la splendida luce della sua giustizia, accompagnata da
una ombra di quella ragione ed intelletto divino.
Here we have the idea of the Roi-Soleil in one of its earliest forms —
an idea which, strange to say, Corneille places in the mouth of
Camille in Horace, when, speaking of the gods, she says, vs. 843 :
Ils descendent bien moins dans de si bas Stages
Que dans Tame des rois, leurs vivantes images,
De qui Pinde"pendante et sainte autorite*
Est un rayon secret de leur divinite".
One might also dwell further on Corneille's treatment of love as
essentially neo-Platonic. What binds Chimene to Rodrigue is the
love of perfection (the Cid, vs. 931) :
Tu t'es, en m'offensant, montre" digne de moi;
Je me dois, par ma mort, montrer digne de toi.
1 See Jules Levallois. Corneille inconnu, 231 flf.
397
78 WILLIAM A. NITZE
Pauline loves Severe because (Polyeucte, vs. 181) :
jamais notre Rome
N'a produit plus grand coeur, ni vu plus honnete homme.
In Othon, Plautine pleads (vs. 311):
II est un autre amour dont les voeux innocents
S'&event au-dessus du commerce des sens.
Plus la flamme en est pure et plus elle est durable;
II rend de son objet le coeur inseparable;
II a de vrais plaisirs dont ce cceur est charme*,
Et n'aspire qu'au bien d'aimer et d'etre aime*.
All of this agrees with the famous discourse from the lips of Cardinal
Bembo at the close of the Cortegiano (421) :
deve allor il Cortegiano, sentendosi preso, deliberarsi totalmente di
fuggir ogni bruttezza delPamor vulgare, e cosi entrar nella divina strada
amorosa con la guida della ragione, e prima considerar che'l corpo, ove
quella bellezza risplende, non £ il fonte ond'ella nasce, anzi che la bellezza,
per esser cosa incorporea, e, come avemo detto, un raggio divino, perde
molto della sua dignity trovandosi oongiunta con quel subietto vile e cor-
ruttibile; perch6 tanto piu £ perfetta quanto men di lui partecipa, e da
quello in tutto separata & perfettissima.
Where is there a clearer justification for the drama of ideas as
opposed to the realities of life? of the Platonism of Corneille as
opposed to the Aristotelianism of Chapelain? of the "fiction" of
Polyeucte as opposed to the " truth" of Racine's Berenice?
But enough has been said to show the relevancy of the comparison.
Corneille's conception of character — of human strength and weakness,
motive and purpose, etc. — and that of Castiglione practically agree.
Not that Corneille need, in any sense, have "copied" the Corte-
giano; the subject was in the air, and Castiglione's work was itself
modeled on the stoical ideals that had long been current. In general,
we can agree with Lanson that Richelieu, Retz, Turenne exemplified
the heroic type in real life. Some truth certainly there is in Lanson 7s
statement: "Le type intellectuel et actif nous e*chappe. Nous le
nions: nous accusons Corneille de 1'avoir invente*. Mais Descartes
nous avertit que Corneille n'a pas r6ve." Every philosophy worthy
of the name has a background in belief and therefore in reality.
Nevertheless, the fact remains (1) that beginning with the Cid
398
CORNEILLE'S CONCEPTION OF CHARACTER 79
voices were raised against the unreality of Corneille's plays, (2) that
his great tragedies are practically all of the heroic cast, and (3) that
he began to treat the type at a definite moment in his career
and in a detailed and consistent manner. "Si c'etait rencontre,"
says Brunetiere (187), "ou hasard dans le Cid, e'est de parti pris
maintenant qu'il va rompre avec 1'imitation de la vie commune; et
dans le dessin des caract&res, il ne se laissera plus de*sormais guider
que par la recherche de F'illustre' et de 1" extraordinaire/ Le cas
nitrite qu'on le signale a ceux qui re*petent qu'en tout art, en tout
temps, 1'imitation de la nature a ete Pobjet de 1'artiste ou du po&te."
Rather than explain the change, as Brunetiere does, by Corneille's
"imagination . . . forte et bardie, he*roique et hautaine, subtile
et chicani&re"; or, as Lanson explains it, by his "intense actualite,"1
I should, without denying an element of truth in both of these
opinions, explain it specifically by the poet's closer contact with the
court (after 1633), where the "ideal" of the courtier was certainly
discussed, if not always followed. I repeat : Castiglione's Cortegiano,
paraphrased by le sieur Faret in 1630, was the breviary of the honnetes
gens. That builder of phrases, Balzac, knew the Italian work, and
pilfered from it in his Aristippe. Why should not Corneille have
been influenced by it ?
In conclusion, let me say that despite his vanity (which at times
seems inordinate) Corneille was by nature timid and simple, at least
so La Bruy£re avers.2 His ineffectual struggle against the rules
shows that he did not have that daring, which M. Jusserand, for
example (Shakespeare in France, 92), would grant him. As Searles
has shown,3 the originality which Lanson sees in his independence
from Artistotle is itself in large measure an imitation of the
Italians: Minturno, Castelvetro, Vettori, etc. Thus his originality
consists, not in theory, but in "realization." All his life long he
curried the favor of the great: his examens and prefaces show that,
his discours wherein he defends himself, and passage after passage
in his plays. Clearly he was not adroit. But he was successful;
because his particular genius, rhetorical and enamored of the
* See above, p. 134. 9
2 Lea Caracteres, Sdition variorum, p. 296; cf. Levallois, op. cit., p. 50.
«" Corneille and the Italian Doctrinaires," Modern Philology, XIII (1915), 169 flf.;
see also Spingarn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 2d ed., p. 246.
80 WILLIAM A. NITZE
grandiose, found an outlet in the heroic type in which his particular age
pictured to itself its ideal. In expressing this ideal he is both varied
and resourceful, to an eminent degree.
The second quarter of the seventeenth century, with its "blue
chambers," its sighing marquises, its aristocratic impulses — above
all its preciosity and grandiloquence — was after all an attempt to
break with the realities of existence; to realize the individual, not
as he is, but as he should be. The parallelism with the early nine-
teenth century is apparent. Corneille's Me*dee cries out at the apex
of her misfortunes:
(Dans un si grand revers que vous reste-t-il ?) — Moi :
Moi, dis-je, et c'est assez. [Medee, vs. 320.]
And the reaction, completed in Racine, is inevitable. Pascal,
Pensees, §455, 1 reads: " Le moi est haissable . . . car chaque mot' . . .
voudrait 6tre le tyran de tous les autres." In short, like Hugo, Cor-
neille is a romanticist, not of the emotions but of the reason. " One
can understand," says Professor Strachey, "how verse created from
such material might be vigorous and impressive; it is difficult to
imagine how it could also be passionate — until one has read Corneille.
Then one realizes afresh the compelling power of genius. His
tragic personages, standing forth without mystery, without 'atmos-
phere/ without local color, but simply in the clear white light of
reason, rivet our attention, and seem at last to seize upon our very
souls."2
WILLIAM A. NITZE
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
iEd. Brunschvicg (Hachette, 1907).
" Landmarks in French Literature, p. 52.
[NOTE. — Mr. Van Roosbroeck, of Minneapolis, has called my attention
to the interesting fact that a reprint of Chappuis' translation of the Corte-
giano was printed by Georges POyselet in Rouen; it is the edition published
in Paris, by Cl. Micard, in 1585; cf. Brunet, Manuel, p. 1631.
Correction: "pe"tardes" on p. 3 of the first article should, of course,
read: " pStarades."]
400
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF V AMOUR MfiDECIN
U Amour M6decin, according to Moliere himself, is "un simple
crayon, un petit impromptu, dont le Roi a voulu se faire un divertisse-
ment." It was "propose", fait, appris et repre'sente' en cinq jours"
(September, 1665). The comic elements of the little sketch are
furnished chiefly by four doctors who, summoned by Sganarelle for a
consultation on the case of his sick daughter, spend their time in
irrelevant conversation (II, 3) ; in a dispute as to the nature of the
patient's malady and the proper remedies to be prescribed (II, 4, 5) ;
in a reconciliation (III, 1, 2) at the suggestion of a fifth doctor, who
urges his colleagues to cease their disputes in order to deceive their
clients more effectively. While this is going on, the patient is
supposed to be lying at the point of death.
The study devoted to this little play in the Grands Ecrivains
edition of Moli&re's works presents most of the contemporary
illustrative material which is available, and arrives at the conclusion
that U Amour Medecin is not based upon any special contemporary
event.1 It is the purpose of this paper to review the old and to
present some new evidence in an effort to establish, or at least render
more probable, the contrary point of view.
In the consultation scenes (II, 3-5) which form the kernel of the
piece, M. Tomes, after some turmoil, delivers his opinion first:
" Monsieur, nous avons raisonne sur la maladie de votre fille, et mon
avis, a moi, est que cela procede d'une grande chaleur du sang:
ainsi je conclus a la saigner le plus tot que vous pourrez." M. des
Fonandres then makes his pronouncement: "Et moi, je dis que sa
maladie est une pourriture d'humeurs, causee par une trop grande
re"ple*tion; ainsi je conclus a lui donner de 1'emetique." These two
worthies enter upon a violent discussion as to the proper remedy
and finally leave the room. In the following scene (II, 4)
M. Macroton and the subservient M. Bahys in perfect harmony give
their diagnosis and outline a method of treatment. They agree
that the patient's symptoms are : "indicatifs d'une vapeur fuligineuse
i (Euvres de Moliere (Paris, 1873), V, 275.
401] 81 [MODEBN PHILOLOGY, November, 1917
82 COLBERT SEARLES
et mordicante qui lui picote les membranes du cerveau"; that "cette
vapeur que nous nommons en grec atmos est causee par des humeurs
putrides et conglutineuses qui sont contenues dans le bas ventre."
After outlining a formidable program of cathartics, M. Macroton and
his satellite, M. Bahys, admit that the girl may die, but point out to
the distracted father that he will, at least, have the satisfaction of
knowing that she has died "dans les formes." According to a
note found among the manuscripts of Brossette, Boileau furnished
Moliere with the names, derived from Greek, of the four doctors who
figure in these scenes: Des Fonandres (mankiller) designated Beda
des Fougerais; Macroton (long or great tone) was Gue*naut; Tomes
(bloodletter) signified d'Aquin; and Bahys (barker or yelper,
"aboyeur") designated Esprit.
A scene, similar to the one portrayed by Moliere, was enacted in
1661 by four doctors who sat in consultation during a crisis in the last
sickness of the cardinal Mazarin. This is the description of it as
given by Gui Patin:
Ce matin le Mazarin a regu Textreme-onction et de la est tombe" dans une
grande faiblesse. . . . Hier a deux heures . . . quatre de ses me*decins,
savoir: Gue"naut, Valot, Brayer et Beda des Fougerais, alterquoient ensemble
et ne s'accordoient de Fespece de la maladie dont le malade mouroit; Brayer
dit que la rate est gate"e; Gue"naut dit que c'est le foie; Valot dit que c'est
le poumon et qu'il y a de 1'eau dans la poitrine; des Fougerais dit que c'est
un abces du mSsentere, et qu'il a vid6 du pus, qu'il en a vu dans les selles,
et en ce cas-la il a vu ce que pas un des autres n'a vu. Ne voil& pas d'habiles
gens. Ce sont les fourberies ordinaires des empiriques et des mSdecins de
cour, qu'on fait supplier a Pignorance.1
The situation is the same, and two of the doctors, Guenaut and des
Fougerais, are by common consent identical in both cases.
In his Les Medecins au Temps de Moliere* Maurice Raynaud
attempted to identify the other two also, Vallot and Brayer with
Tomes and Bahys. According to him, d'Aquin " e*tait grand donneur
d'antimoine, par consequent grand ennemi de la saignee. ... II
est plus probable qu'il s'agit de Vallot, alors premier me'decin du Roi,
et qui saignait en effet beaucoup, a commencer par son maitre."
In opposing the conclusion of Raynaud, the editors of Moliere present
» Lettres de Gui Patin (Paris, 1843), III, 338 f.
* Paris, 1862, pp. 135 I .
402
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L' AMOUR MEDECIN" 83
in the first place* a very doubtful argument: "II est vrai que lorsqu'il
[d'Aquin] eut succede a Vallot (1671), il se garda de pratiquer,
comme lui (Vallot) des saigne*es sur le Hoi, qu'il savait en etre eff raye* :
d'Aquin etait avant tout eourtisan."1 They also cite in support
of their argument Gui Patin, according to whom Vallot opposed
bleeding the king in 1658, but they neglect to add the fact cited by
them later (p. 327, n. 2), that Patin here is in contradiction with the
Journal de la Sante du Roi.2 They are greatly influenced, if not
absolutely determined, by the consideration that Moli&re would
naturally have hesitated to present in his comedy, "le premier
me'decm du Roi," because "Le Roi . . . pouvait trouver bon
qu'on le fit rire aux de*pens des premiers medecins de sa famille,
tr£s mauvais qu'on se moquat du sien, a qui une vie si auguste e"tait
particulierement confine " (ibid., p. 273). This consideration has
weight; it may well have caused the transference of the identification
of Tom£s from Vallot to d'Aquin by writers like Brossette and
Cizeron Rival,3 who, writing many years later, could hardly have
known all the circumstances.
Neither Raynaud nor the editors of Moliere make any effort
to establish just what was the standing of Vallot at court at the time
when U Amour Medecin was produced. In a letter of 1655, Gui
Patin writes: "La reine a refuse* a Valot la permission de faire venir
des medecins pour traiter avec lui le roi et pour consulter pour lui
a Fontainebleau. . . . On tient Valot en grand danger d'etre
chasse . . . au moins en est-il en danger si le cardinal ne le remet
aux bonnes graces du roi et de la reine avec lesquels il est fort mal."4
Later in the same letter he asserts: "J'ai appris qiie Valot est fort
mal en cour, que la reine 1'a rudement traite et presque chasse*; que
le roi Fa menace", et qu'il ne tient plus qu'a un filet'* (II, 211). A
week later he announces: "Aujourd'hui le Mazarin defend Valot et
1 Op. cit., V, 272.
2 They also allege the fact that a bloodletting administered by d'Aquin was said to
have hastened the death of Marie Th6r6se. But, as this event did not occur till 1683,
it could not have had any influence upon Moliere or Boileau; it may, however, have
influenced the identification of Brossette. 0
* Cizeron Rival enlarged upon the notes of Brossette in his Ricrtationa litteraires
(Paris, 1765), and is generally cited in this connection.
i Op. cit., II, 209.
403
84 COLBERT SEARLES
tache de le remettre aux bonnes graces du roi et de la reine, en disant
qu'il n'a rien fait que par son ordre ' J (II, 214) . A year later we read :
"Valot avoit encouru la disgrace generale de toute la cour, et meme
du roi et de la reine; mais le Mazarin Pa maintenu par raison d'Etat
et la sienne particuliere " (III, 65). A letter of the following year
notes with evident relish that Vallot is being called Gargantua:
"depuis qu'il tua Gargant, intendant des finances" (III, 77). He
is said to have come near losing even the favor of the cardinal (II,
360), but seems to have soon effected a reconciliation, for in a letter
of 1658 Gui Patin reiterates: "Le roi d'une part et la reine de 1'autre,
vouloient faire chasser Valot, et Feussent fait, mais Mazarin 1'a
maintenu" (III, 90). A letter of 1659 must reflect at least some-
thing of contemporary opinion : " Nous avons a la cour deux medecins
fort superbes. Valot est le premier, qui fait tout ce qu'il peut pour
attrapper de Fargent et se remplumer de la grosse somme qu'il a
donnee pour etre premier me'decin" (III, 153). 1 In 1660 we read:
"La reine-mere est fort de*pite*e centre Valot; on a parle de lui oter
sa charge, et de le require a une pension viagere, en donnant sa place
a un autre" (III, 247). A short time afterward: "Valot n'est pas
bien en cour. S'il perd une fois son patron il est mal en ses affaires,
et sera renvoye comme ignorant" (III, 257). A letter of November
of the same year contains in the way of gossip this item: "Le roi
s'est de'pite' contre Valot, et au lieu de prendre sa me"decine Pa jetee
par terre" (III, 289). In September of the following year it is said:
"Valot est malade de fievre, rhumatisme et erysipele. On dit aussi
que c'est de regret de ce que le roi lui a reproche qu'il e*toit espion et
pensionnaire du sieur Fouquet" (III, 390). Finally on August 18,
1665, less than a month before the representation of U Amour
Medecin, the king is said to have manifested his displeasure against
Valot for something the latter had said against the physician of the
queen-mother (III, 549). Granting that the statements of Gui Patin
must often be considerably discounted, it seems nevertheless evident
that the king could have felt no great displeasure in seeing this
physician held up to ridicule, even though he was occupying the
charge of "premier me'decin du roi."
i The italicized phrase may well have some relation to the continued retention of
Vallot at court.
404
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "I/ AMOUR MEDECTN" 85
The editors of Moliere come to this conclusion finally: "D'Aquin
et Vallot aimaient, 1'un comme Pautre, la saigne*e; des lors reste-t-il
une bonne raison de substituer au nom de celui-la le nom de celui-ci ?"
(V, 273). There is a good reason, and it consists in the record of
bloodlettings attributed to Vallot by Gui Patin, who has very little
to say in this regard concerning d'Aquin. To begin with, here is a
very significant item from a letter of 1657:
La Duchesse de Lorraine a pris deux fois d'une certaine drogue stibiale,
que le charlatan appelloit de Tor potable; et d'autant qu'elle empira fort,
le sieur Valot la fit rudement saigner, inter stibium et lethum: d'ou vient la
grosse querelle qui est aujourd'hui entre lui et le petit Vignon . . . qui a
dit tout haut que Valot 1'avoit tue* (sic) de F avoir tant fait saigner; sur quoi
j'apprends qu'il court un papier latin imprime* contre le dit Valot [I, 222].
The station of the unfortunate patient and the publicity given to
the event were in themselves enough to have fastened upon the phy-
sician the reputation of being a bloodletting zealot. During the illness
of Mazarin (1660) the statement is made that "Le cardinal Mazarin
a e*te" saigne* (ce dimanche ler aout) en tout sept fois" (III, 245). 1 A
little later in the course of the same illness it is announced that the
cardinal "a e*te de"ja saigne* cinq fois. Valot est bien empeche" (III,
257). Six months later he writes: "Le cardinal a fait de grands
reproches a Valot de ne 1'avoir pu gue*rir et d'etre cause de sa mort;
1'autre, pour paroitre fache de tels reproches, s'est mis au lit et s'est
fait saigner trois fois" (III, 337). Finally in announcing a sickness
of Vallot himself (1662) Gui Patin announces that, as a preliminary
treatment, "II (Vallot) a <§te" saigne* plusieurs fois" (III, 410). These
details of resemblance and of circumstance should have at least as
much weight as the identification made by Brossette more than
thirty years after the event.
The other identification which must be established if possible
is that of M. Bahys. In the manuscript notes of Brossette the name
of Esprit ("premier medecin de Monsieur") is bracketed after the
name Bahis, or Bahys. Cizeron Rival, editor of the correspondence
of Boileau and Brossette, enlarges upon this note (op. cit., pp. 25 f.)
and adds that Boileau "donna a M. Esprit, qui bredouiHait, celui
(le nom) de Bahis, qui signifie jappant, aboyant." It is apparent
1 Inasmuch as Vallot is represented in the closest attendance on the Cardinal at this
time, it must have been by his orders.
405
86 COLBERT SEARLES
that a Greek word meaning "to yelp" or "to bark" was not a very
apt designation for a man who "stammered." It was for this
reason that Raynaud connected the name of M. Bahys with Brayer,
the doctor who figures in the consultation on the case of Mazarin.
But the editors of Moliere reject this identification: "Supposer que
Bahys (aboyeur) pourrait bien etre Brayer (prononcer brailler) est
sans doute une conjecture se*duisante; mais puisqu'on nous dit
qu'Esprit bredouillait P allusion devient plus claire encore; tenons-
nous-en a Esprit" (p. 274). But a few pages farther on (p. 288) these
same editors admit that "La prononciation lente de M. Macroton et
le bredouillement de M. Bahys seraient des indications fort claires,
s'il e*tait prouve* que Gu^naut1 et Esprit parlassent ainsi; mais nous
ne sommes informe*s que par des commentateurs de la piece qu'on
pourrait soupc.onner d'avoir avance, pour accre*diter leurs explications,
ce qu'ils ne savaient pas bien." As a matter of fact, the tradition
thatu Esprit stammered seems to rest upon no more solid foundation
than the statement of Cizeron Rival, and his statement seems to
have as a basis only the stage direction to the first speech of Bahys:
"Celui-ci parle toujours en bredouillant." In other words it all
depends upon the correctness of the identification whether we credit
Brayer or Esprit with an impediment of speech.
The identification of M. Bahys with Esprit seems however to
have existed from the first. The earliest notice of it appears in a
letter of Gui Patin, written September 25, 1665, some ten days after
the first public representation of the play: "On joue pre*sentement
a 1'hotel de Bourgogne U Amour Malade (Medeciri): tout Paris y
va en foule pour voir repre"senter les me*decins de la cour, et prin-
cipalement Esprit et Gue*naut ... on y ajoute des Fougerais,
etc. Ainsi on se moque de ceux qui tuent le monde impune"ment"
(III, 556). Since Gui Patin has stated incorrectly the name of the
theater where the play was given and the name of the piece,2 it is
evident that Gui Patin did not attend the performance in question.
He merely cited current gossip. Gui Patin apparently never
attended the theater. In that respect he followed, according to
1 The fact that GuSnaut at this tune was a very old man, over seventy, lends color
to the epithet in his case.
2 He confuses it with a ballet of Benserade and Lully given in 1657.
406
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L' AMOUR MEDECIN" 87
Raynaud, the example of reputable physicians of his time: "Un
me'decin, comme un magistrat, se serait fait montrer au doigt et se
fut perdu dans Popinion s'il eut paru au theatre" (p. 409). This
statement is quite in harmony with the attitude toward worldly and
social amusements assumed by the doctors whom Moliere represents.
It is suggested also by the query of Pascal: "Qui pourrait avoir
confiance dans un medecin qui ne porte pas de rabat ?" And in the
seventh Epitre of Boileau, where the satirist passes in review the
different types who go to see themselves represented on the stage by
Moliere, the doctors are conspicuously absent from the list. The
editors of Moliere, while citing Gui Patin's testimony^ admit:
"II est incontestable que Gui Patin ne parlait que par oui-dire; il
n'est done pas etonnant que, dans les bruits qu'il avait recueillis, il
y en eut de faux" (p. 268). It was quite natural that the general
public, through which Gui Patin's information came, when it saw
Gue"naut, Vallot — both court doctors — and des Fougerais, who was
often called there for consultation, should have jumped at the
conclusion that they must have all been court doctors and so have
seen in M. Bahys, Esprit, " premier me'decin de Monsieur." And so
the report came to Gui Patin who, in turn, became the source of
Brossette's identification, for Brossette cites a parallel passage from
one of Gui Patin's letters in this very connection.1 There is then
no serious obstacle in the way of an identification of Bahys with
Brayer, whose name offers such a close analogy to that of the doctor
in the comedy.
Moliere insisted that the writer of comedy must make "ses
portraits ressemblants." And that leads us to a positive and quite
convincing argument in favor of the identification of Bahys with
Brayer. In the fifth scene of the second act, the diagnosis is taken
up and carried on by Macroton and Bahys in a manner which con-
trasts sharply with the violence of the preceding scene between des
Fonandres and Tomes. Each utterance of M. Bahys merely echoes
and stresses what Macroton has just said. For example, "Vous
aurez la consolation," says Macroton (Gue*naut), "qu'elle s^ra morte
dans les formes." Whereupon M. Bahys (Brayer) chimes in: "II
i Lettres choisies de feu M. Gui Patin (Cologne, 1691). This proves that Brossette
did not pen his notes till nearly thirty years after the production of the play. His identi-
fications therefore are not to be taken too literally.
407
88 COLBERT SEARLES
vaut mieux mourir selon les regies, que de re"chapper centre les
regies." Now the names of Esprit and Guenaut are occasionally
linked in the correspondence of Gui Patin, but never in a way to
suggest a subserviency on the part of Esprit, a point which would
lend color to the attitude of M. Bahys in this scene. In fact, a
letter of August 10, 1660, dealing with this very illness of Mazarin,
which we are presenting as Moliere's model, relates that Esprit
opposed a prescription of Vallot and Gue*naut (III, 245). Three
weeks later Gui Patin writes again: "II (Vallot) a eu de grandes
prises avec M. Esprit, en presence de la reine et de Guenaut " (III,
257). On the other hand, here is a passage from a letter of Gui
Patin to Falconnet, written in 1663, which presents in the most
vigorous terms Brayer in precisely this attitude of subserviency
maintained by Bahys. Gui Patin, after stating that: "M. de
Longueville est mort a Rouen, ex duplici quidem febre tertiana, et
duabus dosibus vini emetici," goes on to say:
Notre M. Brayer (Bahys) qui y avoit etc" envoye, lui en a fait prendre
malgre* le refus et les plaintes des trois me*deeins de Rouen, qui e*toient d'avis
contraire. Ce n'est pas qu'il ne sache fort bien que le vin e'me'tique est un
dangereux remede et un pernicieux poison; mais il en ordonne quelquefois
comme cela a cause de Guenaut (Macroton) qui est son ami, et duquel il espere
d'etre avance a la cour, bien que s'il vouloit etre homme de bien il passeroit
Gue*naut de bien loin; mais avoir Gue"naut (Macroton) pour ami par lachete",
dire quelques mots grecs, avoir 300,000 e*cus de beau bien, et 6tre le plus
avaricieux du monde, cela fait venir de la pratique a Paris [III, 437].
It will be noted in the passage just cited that Gui Patin touches upon
the pedantry of Guenaut and Brayer— " dire des mots grecs." Now
in his first speech of the diagnosis, Macroton (Gue*naut) concludes his
discourse upon the necessity of proceeding cautiously with a reference
to Hippocrates. Thereupon M. Bahys (Brayer) in the tone of an
obsequious disciple, glosses upon what his master has just said and,
as if anxious to show that he knows the reference is to the first
Aphorism of Hippocrates, cites in Latin the two words upon which
the Aphorism may be said to center: " experimentum periculosum."
Had Gui Patin been as familiar with the play as he was with the
frailties of his colleagues in the practice of medicine there would
probably be no need of these researches to prove that the four
doctors of Moliere, Tom&s, des Fonandr£s, Macroton, and Bahys,
408
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L'AMOUR MEDECIN" 89
represented respectively the four doctors of the Mazarin consultation,
Vallot, des Fougerais, Guenaut, and Brayer.
The fact that Boileau furnished the Greek names of these doctors
is attested by Brossette and has never been questioned.1 And this
suggests a certain amount of collaboration. That, in turn, calls to
mind those convivial gatherings held by Boileau, La Fontaine,
Chapelle, Moliere, and others among whom was probably numbered
the poet's physician friend, Mauvillain.2 At these gatherings, "On
trouvait au fond des pots les ide"es hardies ou plaisantes; d'insolentes
face*ties comme le Chapelain decoiffe et La Metamorphose de la
perruque de Chapelain en astre, naissaient comme d'elles-memes
apr£s boire."3 The consultation in question furnished all the
elements for one of these " bold " or, if one likes, " insolent " manifesta-
tions of the satiric verse of this group of seventeenth-century men of
letters. The names produced by Boileau furnish one bit of evidence;
another is offered by an allusion in scene iii of the play, which is
preparatory to the consultation scenes which follow. In this scene
the doctors, instead of discussing their patient's case, spend their
time in irrelevant conversaton. Tom£s (Vallot) and des FonandrSs
(des Fougerais) enter upon an argument as to the relative merits of the
former's mule and the latter's horse. Now it seems that about the
middle of the seventeenth century the mule was the conventional
mount for physicians, and the adoption of the horse as a means of
conveyance was looked upon as a notable innovation. In fact,
according to Raynaud (pp. 79, 80), the horse became a kind of symbol
distinguishing the progressives, in the practice of medicine, from the
conservatives. The former, moreover, were enthusiastic adepts of
antimony, while the conservatives upheld vigorously the decree of the
faculty of medicine which proclaimed this remedy a poison. It is
significant that in this very year of Mazarin's consultation, Boileau
1 For another example of such collaboration see Lanson, Boileau (Paris, 1892),
p. 20: " Un jour, avec Molifire, eiitre Ninon et Mme de la Sablifcre, il fabrique le latin
macaronique du Malade Imaginaire."
2 Mauvillain is generally credited with having furnished Moli&re with material for
his satires against the medical profession. He came from Moiitpellier and did not find
himself at ease in Paris. "II doit nourrir," says Raynaud, "centre Gi^naut et des
Fougerais un peu des mgflances que tout medecin Stranger a la cour a pour ceux de ses
confreres qui courent les places et les hommes" (op. cit., p. 436). See in confirmation of
this a letter of Gui Patin of 1662, III, 412.
3 Lanson, op. cit., p. 18.
409
90 COLBERT SEARLES
was writing the sixty-eighth verse of the sixth Satire (published in
1666): "Guenaut sur son cheval en passant m'e'clabousse." And
Guenaut was one of the most ardent prescribers of antimony accord-
ing to both Gui Patin (Lettres, passim) and Boileau (Satire IV). But
des Fougerais was a no less energetic exponent of this "drug," and
according to Gui Patin, who was a staunch conservative, "tue plus de
monde avec son antimoine que trois hommes de bien n'en sauvent
avec les remedes ordinaires" (II, 595). In 1661 then this matter
of the mule and horse was a subject for discussion and satire, but it
seems hardly probable that such a minor detail of fashion would have
continued so throughout the four years which elapsed before the
representation of U Amour Medecin. That Boileau, who certainly
had some part in the production of these scenes of Moliere, should
have touched upon this point at this very time is a decidedly striking
coincidence.
After two bits of satire directed against the formalities observed
in consultations, the father of the patient appears and insists that the
doctors render a verdict. In constructing the two scenes which
follow, the author, or authors, evidently had in mind the third scene
of the second act of Phormio. In the Latin play, Demipho, involved
in difficulty by his son, consults three men of law. Two of these,
Hegio and Cratinus, after insisting in turn that the other speak first,
deliver two opinions which are diametrically opposed. Cratinus:
"It is my opinion that what this son of yours has done in your
absence, in law and justice ought to be annulled." Hegio: "It
doesn't appear to me that what has been done by law can be revoked ;
and it is wrong to attempt it." Then the third man of law, Crito,
says: "I am of the opinion, that we must deliberate further; it is a
matter of importance." These few lines of Terence seem, almost
without question, to have been the scenario upon which Moliere, or
Moliere and his friends, constructed the two most effective scenes of
U Amour Medecin.1 M. Tomes and M. des Fonandres each begin
by insisting that the other speak first and then offer diagnoses and
remedies which are diametrically opposed. The comic element is
heightened by the greater rapidity of the dialogue and more violence
in the discussion, which, after nearly resulting in physical violence,
1 My attention was first called to this point by my colleague, Professor J. B. Pike.
410
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L' AMOUR MEDECIN" 91
ends by their abandoning the consultation.1 Tomes believes that
the patient's illness is due to "une grande chaleur de sang." That
may or may not have any relation to the diagnosis given by Vallot
in the Mazarin consultation, in which he said, according to Gui Patin,
"que c'est le poumon et qu'il y a de 1'eau dans la poitrine." The
bleeding which he prescribes was, as we have established above, quite
characteristic of his method. Des FonandrSs opines that the
patient's malady "est une pourriture d'humeurs, cause*e par une trop
grande repletion." And that is quite in harmony with the solicitude
shown by des Fougerais in his examinations of the stools of the
cardinal. The remedy that he prescribes, antimony ("vin e'me'tique") ,
is also in conformity with his usual practice.
The following scene (the fifth) is much more important from the
standpoint of this study. The line and a half of Terence is expanded
in this scene into three pages. The character of Cratinus becomes
Macroton and Bahys. This addition of a character to the three
contained in the scenario taken from the Latin play is significant.
There was no reason in the nature of the case why another character
should have been added and the fact that it is done is a strong
presumption in favor of the view that the Mazarin consultation did
exert a very direct influence upon the composition of U Amour
Medecin. And another argument may be found in the material
which is used for filling out this scene. Gui Patin, in a letter written
a few weeks before the consultation in question, but relating to the
same illness, gives the following account of an earlier conference held
by some of these same doctors. It will be noted that Gue*naut fills
the leading role as in the play:
Enfin le mal du cardinal Mazarin est augment^. . . . On a assemble"
plusieurs me*decins, quelques consultations ont e*te" faites; il a e*te* saigne" du
pied et purge* de deux verres de tisane laxative, nee quidquam melius habet.
On parle de le repurger, et peu apres ils aviseront de lui faire prendre du
lait d'anesse, ou des eaux mine"rales; n'est-ce pas afin qu'il ne meure point
sans avoir tons les sacrements de cette nouvelle medecine, quae semper aliquid
molitur, miscet, turbat, no vat, etc. Gue*naut (Macroton) qui est grand maitre
en ce metier, dit qu'il ne faut pas demeurer en chemin; quand on ne pent plus
sur un pied, qu'il faut danser sur I'autre, et que aegri sunt decipierMi varietate,
novitate et multiplicitate remediorum [II, 456].
1 The similarity between this ending of the scene and an incident which took place
during a certain illness of the king has been discussed (MoliSre, (Euvres, V, 327).
411
92 COLBERT SEARLES
The passage, which leads from what is contained in this letter to the
conclusion of the dialogue, or rather the two-part monologue, of
Macroton (Gue*naut) and Bahys (Brayer) : seems very short indeed.
Macroton: Si bien done que pour tirer, detacher, arracher, expulser,
evacuer les dites humeurs, il faudra une purgation vigoureuse. Mais au
pre*alable je trouve a propos, et il n'y a pas d'inconve"nient, d'user de petits
remedes anodins, c'est-a-dire de petits lavements, re*mollients et detersifs, de
julets et de sirops rafraichissants qu'on melera dans sa ptisanne.
Bahys: Apr&s, nous en viendrons a la purgation, et a la saigne"e, que nous
re"ite*rerons, s'il en est besoin.
Macroton: Ce n'est pas qu'avec tout cela votre fille ne puisse mourir,
mais, au moins vous aurez fait quelque chose, et vous aurez la consolation
qu'elle sera morte dans les formes.
Bahys: II vaut mieux mourir selon les regies, que de re"chapper contre
les regies.
The final illness of a man so powerful in the state as Mazarin
and at the same time so distrusted and so feared could not fail to
interest keenly the people of the time and place. It was, in fact, for
several months a topic of general conversation and speculation. No
subject, not even the pedantry of a Chapelain, offered such seductive
opportunities for the production of an insolente facetie to a convivial
group of seventeenth-century men of letters as the serio-comic
incidents connected with the passing of the eminentissime under
whose power the state and the court chafed. It is inconceivable that
Moli£re should have failed to grasp its possibilities and that he
should not have been tempted to appropriate this comic material
(his bien) which offered itself so conspicuously. That he, alone or
aided by his friends, in accordance with his practice in other plays,
should have done this while the impression was fresh is a natural
supposition. That this was done, and that the little sketch which
was thus put together was preserved, and four years later incorporated
in the divertissement which he was called upon to prepare in the
space of five days, is a conclusion which, in view of the structure of
the play, of the points of resemblance and the well-attested practice
of Moliere, seems wholly reasonable.
The close of the second act of L' Amour Medecin is hurried and
artificial. Sganarelle, unable to make anything out of the discussion
of the doctors, decides, in a monologue of four and a half lines, to
412
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L5 AMOUR MEDECIN" 93
go in search of a seller of orvietan. This personage then appears
and sings some verses in praise of his drug. He does not appear
again in the play, and the whole is evidently a rather lame device
to end the act with a little music and a pas de ballet.
In the third and last act, one would naturally expect to see the
lover appear at once as a beginning of the denouement. Instead of
that, there are two short scenes; the second is short and transitional,
while the first represents Macroton, Tomes, and Filerin in a dialogue
which has no essential connection with the rest of the play. Filerin
is here the chief character, and he delivers a long harangue composed
largely of material taken from Montaigne, in which he adjures his
colleagues not to risk their standing and their chances of making
large profits by quarreling among themselves. He closes with this
thoroughly Machiavellian exhortation: "N'allons pas de"truire
sottement les heureuses preventions d'une erreur qui donne du pain
a tant de personnes, et de Pargent de ceux que nous mettons en terre,
nous fait elever de tous cote's de beaux heritages."1
Filerin was identified by Brossette with Yvelin, "premier medecin
de Madame." This is his note: "Acte III, scene Ire M. Fillerin.
C'est M. Yvelin, un des me'decins de la cour, duquel il est parle* en
plusieurs lettres de Patin. Le nom. ..." The note ends there.
It is evident that he did not have before him the Greek of Boileau.
Cizeron Rival, who enlarges upon the derivation of the other four
names, has nothing to say concerning the origin of Filerin. Later
commentators of Moliere have derived it from Greek words meaning
" lover of disputes," which does not accord at all with the role played
by the personage. Others have suggested a combination of Greek
words meaning "lover of death" all of which indicate that this name
is not in the same category as the other four, which are perfectly
clear and appropriate. And that fact bears out our contention that
the scene does not belong to the play as it was originally conceived.
It also supports, indirectly at least, our conjecture that the scenes
of the consultation of the four doctors were not composed at the same
time as the rest of the play.
1 Raynaud objected: "Ici on voit un peu trop que c'est MoliSre qui parle, plut6t
que M. Filerin" (p. 86). However, if we may believe Gui Patin, one of the chief objects
of this satire of Moli6re was hi the habit of saying just such things: "Gu6naut (Macroton)
a dit quatre mille fois en sa vie qu'on ne sauroit attraper l'6cu blanc des malades, si on ne
les trompe" (III, 541). Dated June, 1665; L' Amour medecinis dated September, 1665.
413
94 COLBERT SEARLES
i
I have been unable to discover anything in the material at my
disposal which would qualify Yvelin for the doubtful honor of having
been the prototype of Filerin. He plays a very small role in the
correspondence of Gui Patin. Now if Yvelin actually corresponded
in any way to the medical crook represented by Moli£re, it is well
nigh inconceivable that he should have escaped the bitter invectives,
which Gui Patin directed with especial vigor against this very class
of alleged evil-doers in the medical profession. Raynaud makes a
half-hearted attempt to have Filerin stand for the medical faculty
of Paris. Soulie*1 having found in contemporary documents a
"maitre d'armes" named Andre Fillerin, put forth the hypothesis
that MoliSre designated one of his doctors by this name; it was the
profession of a "maitre d'armes de tuer un homme par raison
demonstrative." The editors of Moliere are evidently right in
rejecting this explanation as being too ingenious; but the fact of its
being made shows the difficulty of accepting the traditional identifica-
tion. It may be, however, that Filerin does not designate a doctor.
It is notable that he uses no medical terms. His harangue is intended
solely to induce the other doctors to come to an agreement in order
the better to deceive and defraud their clients. Finally, Filerin by
the role he plays, and the language he uses as he leaves the stage —
"une autre fois montrez plus de prudence" — seems to exercise a
certain amount of authority over the other doctors; and yet Tomes
(Vallot) was "le premier me*decin du Roi," while Yvelin was only
the "premier me*decin de Madame." The correctness of the tradi-
tional identification of Yvelin with Filerin becomes still more doubtful
in view of these considerations.
The scene in which Filerin appears is wholly unnecessary to the
action of the play and has, in fact, often been omitted in later repre-
sentations.2 Evidently it was not included in the original scheme of
the play, for there is no mention of Filerin in the first and principal
consultation. Moreover, Lizette, the servant, in the first sentence
of the second act, expressly says that only four doctors were called,
or at least were coming to the consultation, at the call of her master.
The scene is then an interpolation.
1 Recherche* sur Moliere (Paris, 1863), p. 276, n. 1.
* See editor's note, (Euvres. V, 340.
414
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OF "L' AMOUR MEDECIN" 95
Now U Amour Medecin was produced at the king's request, as
Moliere himself informs us, and was played before the royal family
at Versailles three times between September 13 and 17, 1665.1 The
poet's words suggest clearly a certain amount of interest, amounting
almost to a participation in the production of the play on the part
of the king. " Ce n'est ici qu'un simple crayon dont le Roi a voulu se
faire un divertissement. II est le plus pre*cipite de tous ceux que
Sa Majeste m'ait commandos; et lorsque je dirai qu'il a e*te propose",
fait, appris et repre*sente* en cinq jours, je ne dirai que ce qui est vrai."
These words attest the interest of the king in the little play. It is
in connection with it that he is reported to have remarked: "Les
me*decins font assez pleurer pour qu'ils f assent rire quelquefois."
Le Bret in his edition of Moliere ([1773], III, 328) goes farther:
"Seroit-ce abuser de la conjecture, d'imaginer que notre auteur
. . . avoit recu de ce maitre m^me le conseil de peindre ces
nouveaux caracteres, comme il en avoit regu jadis, chez M. Fouquet
celui de peindre le chasseur des Facheux?" The conjecture does
not indeed lack plausibility and the parallel is exact. Having seen
Les Fdcheux, which had also been commande for his diversion, the
king "dit a Moliere, en lui montrant M. de Soyecourt: 'Voila un
grand original que tu n'as pas encore copieY C'en fut assez de dit, et
cette sc£ne ou Moliere 1'introduit sous la figure d'un chasseur fut
faite et apprise par les come'diens en moins de vingt-quatre heures, et
le Roi eut le plaisir de la voir en sa place a la representation suivante
de cette pi£ce."'2 Moliere substantiates this statement in his letter
"Au Roi," which prefaces the first edition of Les Fdcheux: "II faut
avouer, Sire, que je n'ai jamais rien fait avec tant de facilite, que cet
endroit ou Votre Majeste* me commanda de travailler." We have
then in the case of L' Amour Medecin conditions exactly similar to
those which obtained in the case of Les Fdcheux: both, divertisse-
ments especially ordered for the entertainment of the king and in
both of them an interpolated character. In the one case the inter-
vention of the king is attested, in both cases it is known that he was
specially interested in the poet's work. The supposition that Filerin
0
1 Registre de La Grange.
2 Menagiana (1694), II, 13; cited in Moliere, CEuvres, III, 11.
415
96 COLBERT SEARLES
owes his place in Moliere's play to a suggestion of the king is some-
thing more than a mere conjecture.
Now the consultation of the second act should have recalled to
his majesty an experience of his own which took place in 1658, the
humor of which he was probably able to appreciate by 1665. This is
Gui Patin's account of the event:
Le Roi ayant & etre purge*, on lui pre"para trois doses d'apozemes purga-
tifs, qui e*toient chacun de cinq onces d'eau de casse, et 1'infusion de deux
dragmes de se*ne*. Le Cardinal demanda si Von n'y mettoit rien d'extra-
ordinaire. Esprit, me*decin de M. le due d'Anjou, dit que Ton y pouvoit
ajouter quelque once de vin e*me*tique. . . . Gue*naut dit qu'il n'y en falloit
done guere mettre: Yvelin proposa deux dragmes de citro, alle*guant qu'elles
n'avoient pas tant de chaleur que le vin e*me*tique. Gue"naut re"pondit que
la chaleur du vin e*metique n'e"toit point & craindre, vu que Ton en mettoit
peu; Id-dessus Mazarin dit qu'il falloit done prendre du vin emetique, dont on
mit une once dans les trois prises, le roi en prit une, sauf & lui donner les
autres quand il seroit temps, au bout de deux heures le remede passa, et
le roi fut ce jour-l& a la selle vingt-deux fois, dont il fut fort las.1
The italicized passages suggest the important part played by Mazarin
in this consultation. This appears still more clearly in Mazarin's
own account of the same event, which is contained in a letter,
addressed "aux Ple*nipotentiaires," and dated July 15, 1658:
Je vous diray done que j'avois grande apprehension que, comme autrefois,
turba medicorum perdidit imperatorem, il n'arrivast de mesme en cette ren-
contre, y en ayant six, dont il n'y avoit pas grande apparence que les sentiments
pussent estre fort conformes a cause du peu d'amitie qu'il y a entre quelques
(uns) d'eux; mais f employ ay si heureusement Vauthorite et I'adresse qu'allant
au-devant pour empescher lews contestations. Us n'ont jamais pris aucune
resolution sur le moindre remede que le Roy ayt pris, qu'ils n'ayent tousjours
este tous du mesme advis; et tous unanimement ont diet et escrit qu'ils
devoient beaucoup au courage que je leur avois donne", ne leur ayant jamais
protest^ autre chose que de traiter le Roy comme un simple gentilhomme,
sans hesiter & se servir de 1'antimoine, et des remedes plus forts, s'il y avoit
raison de le faire.2
1 Lettres, III, 88 f. Mazaria, in his account, speaks of "fourteen or fifteen" visits
to the stool and two vomitings. Lettres (Avenel ed.; Paris, 1894), VIII, 498.
2 Lettres, VIII, 513. It must have been a memorable experience for the king. Here
is a passage from another letter of Mazarin relating to the same event: Elle (Sa Majeste")
. . . aprez avoir tremble" jusqu'a bout (sic) pour ne prendre une m6decine qu'on luy
a presented, comme Elle est accoustum6e de faire en santS, luy ayant este" diet qu'il y
alloit de sa vie, (Elle) a pris sa resolution et 1'a avalee en trois ou quatre reprises et Elle
a commando aux medecins que, s'il falloit prendre d'autres, et qu'Elle refusast de le faire,
ils le laissent, s'il estoit necessaire, et la luy flssent prendre de force (ibid., pp. 503 f.).
416
THE CONSULTATION SCENE OP "I/ AMOUR MEDECIN" 97
It is evident from this letter and especially the italicized passage that
Mazarin on this occasion performed a part very similar to that
played in U Amour Medecin by Filerin, whose whole purpose, as far
as the action of the play was concerned, is summed up in his injunc-
tion to the recalcitrant doctors: "Allons done, Messieurs, mettez
has toute rancune, et faisons ici votre accommodement."
The two following examples are characteristic of the harangue
which Moliere puts in the mouth of Filerin: " Je n'en parle pas pour
mon inte*ret; car, Dieu merci, j'ai de"ja etabli mes petites affaires.
. . . Les flatteurs, par exemple, cherchent a profiter de 1'amour que
les hommes ont pour les louanges, en leur donnant tout le vain
encens qu'ils souhaitent; et c'est un art ou 1'on fait, comme on voit,
des fortunes considerables." Now although this Machiavellian
cynicism did not enter into Mazarin's conduct during the king's
illness, it reflects what the general public thought of him. The
Mazarinades are full of references to the Machiavellian policies of
the cardinal; one of them offers a long list of his creatures at the
court.1 Saint-Simon reiterates the same charges with characteristic
violence : " C'est a Mazarin que les dignity's et la noblesse du royaume
doit ... la r£gne des gens de rien. . . . Tel fut Fouvrage du
detestable Mazarin, dont la ruse et la perfidie fut la vertu, et la
frayeur la prudence."2 And Che*ruel,3 while justifying largely the
administration of the cardinal, admits: "L'astuce de Mazarin, son
gout d'espionage, ses habitudes mercantiles, son avarice provoquaient
la haine et la raillerie. L'avarice surtout fletrit ses dernieres anne"es."
Nor was this suspected and dreaded activity of Mazarin confined
merely to the political side of court life; it extended also to its more
personal and intimate side, for Gui Patin, in spite of his exaggerated
acerbity, must reflect something of contemporary opinion when he
writes to Falconnet : " La reine-mere a e*t6 saignee, le cardinal Mazarin
a ete purge et commence d'user des eaux de Saint-Myon; etc.
. . . voila comment traitent ici leurs malades ceux qui disent qu'il
faut attraper leur argent, varietate, novitate, multiplicitate remediorum.
1 Choix de Mazarinades (Paris, 1853), I, 113 fl. And: "Depuis que Sa Majeste
1'a appelle au MinistSre, a-t-on veu autre chose que . . . bouffons et que tpittres dans
la maison du Roy" (ibid., p. 156).
2 Mdmoires du Due de Saint-Simon (Paris, 1889), XIX, 37.
1 In his Histoire de France sous le minister e de Mazarin (Paris, 1882), III, 408.
417
98 COLBERT SEARLES
Mazarin a empli la cour de charlatans. . . . Les grands sont
malheureux en medecins ; ils n'ont que f ourbes de cour, des charlatans
et des flatteurs e*toffes d 'ignorance."1
It must be admitted, of course, that we have been a long time
in hitting upon this similarity between Filerin and Mazarin. If it
really existed how did it escape the notice of contemporaries? All
that can be said is that the play was a relatively unimportant one,
which attracted little attention; that the cardinal had been dead
four years, and the four years which were the beginning of a brilliant
and absorbing reign; that in any case the theater-going public could
hardly have known very much of Mazarin's relations with the court
doctors, and that these activities were quite negligible in comparison
with the more spectacular and public manifestations of his power.
The writer of this article will be very well satisfied if the part
of his work relating to Mazarin is accepted as at least an interesting
coincidence.
COLBERT SEARLES
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
1 Lettres, IIIt 284. Compare the Latin words cited by Gui Patin with those contained
in the letter of Mazarin cited above.
As for the name: Filerin might stand for Mazarin as well as for Yvelin. Since no
satisfactory explanation of the name has been offered, I would suggest that it is a combi-
nation of the final syllable of the name with filou ("cheat"). There is a somewhat
similar play on words in La Mazarinade, "the most celebrated of the pamphlets directed
against Mazarin." There one reads:
Va, va t'en, gredin de Calabre,
Pilocobron, ou Pilocabre.
[Choix de Mazarinades, II, 244.]
418
DU BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE
The reader of la Semaine is immediately impressed with the
author's intimate dependence upon the writers of antiquity. This
sixteenth-century Huguenot, who undertook to portray at length
the wonders of the universe, followed the impulse of his age in turn-
ing to Pliny and the natural historians of classic times for his details.
The fact was apparent, of course, to the men of his own day, and the
work evidently received an added charm from the authority of the
ancients. Four years after its first appearance, the learned Simon
Goulart brought out an edition with an elaborate commentary, in
which we may find each marvel of the life of fishes, birds, beasts,
and human kind referred back to its parallel in Pliny, Plutarch,
Aelian, Dioscorides, or some other of the classic writers. But it is
also evident that not pagan authors only have made their influence
felt upon the poet. The division of the natural world according to
the days of creation, the entire framework from the first chapter of
Genesis, links the work immediately with the writings of the Church
Fathers. La Semaine is, in fact, nothing more than a Hexaemeron,
like those of Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Ambrose, augmented by
the addition of a special discussion on the seventh day.1
This affinity did not entirely escape the poet's contemporaries.
It was the Hexaemeron of George the Pisidian which was generally
regarded as the model. M. Pellissier, in his study of the life and
works of Du Bartas,2 notes the expression of this opinion on the part
of three early critics, Colletet (f!659), who refers the statement to
Frederic Morel (fl630), the writer of an anonymous sonnet, and
Goujet (fl767). To quote from him directly:
... la conception de la Semaine n'appartient pourtant pas a du
Bartas. " Georges Pisidas, diacre et chartulaire de la grande e*glise de
Constantinople (vers 620), avait compost un grand et vaste poeme en vers
iiambiques, intitule* Hexahemeron, que du Bartas, qui n'ignorait pas les
poetes latins, ni les Grecs, imita en tout et partout, hormis en ats frontis-
pieces, en ses invocations et en ses episodes. Du moins c'estoit la pense*e de
* See P. E. Bobbins, The Hexaemeral Literature (1912), pp. 89 ff.
2 G. Pellissier, La Vie et lee asuvres de du Bartas (1883), pp. 68 ff.
419] 99 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, November, 1917
100 S. 0. DlCKERMAN
ce docte et fameux professeur du roi, Fre'de'ric Morel, mon maistre, qui
traduisit ce poeme grec en vers latins." Ainsi parle Colletet. Dans le
second volume de Petition publie"e en 1611, un sonnet, qui n'est pas signe",
attribue a Pisidas Fhonneur d'avoir "choisi des premiers" le sujet de la
Semaine. Goujet qui sans doute ne connaissait ni ces vers ni les lignes que
nous avons emprunte'es a Colletet, s'e* tonne qu' "aucun des critiques de du
Bartas n'ait observe* que notre po&te avait plus qu'imite' dans sa Semaine
ce poeme de Pisidas, traduit par Morel en i'ambes latins."
So the belief in the dependence of Du Bartas upon the Byzantine
poet has become imbedded in the history of letters. Closer exami-
nation, however, reveals serious difficulties with this traditional
view. In the first place, the earliest printed edition of the Hexae-
meron of the Pisidian was not issued until 1584, five years after the
publication of la Semaine.1 Du Bartas can, therefore, have known
the work only from the Greek manuscript, which is a most improb-
able assumption. And secondly, the points of resemblance are of a
quite general character, not such as to carry conviction to the critical
student of sources. M. Pellissier says: "Et cependant, du Bartas
ne doit a son devancier que quelques details fort peu importants."
But before examining the internal evidence in detail, it might be
well to consider the question of dependence upon the earlier writers
of Hexaemera, such as Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and their
fellows. The possibility of their influence has not been altogether
overlooked. Simon Goulart mentions them from time to time in
his commentary.2 M. Pellissier, in a passing reference, recognizes
the probability of some connection,3 and Mr. Robbins, in citing
authorities for the topics of the Hexaemera, frequently names Du
Bartas in their company. But the query whether one or several of
these great ecclesiastics influenced the Gascon poet and whether the
resemblance is to be explained as due merely to the recollection of
previous reading or to direct appropriation of particular passages,
seems never to have been discussed. A few hours of study in the
Patrology will be sufficient to persuade the reader that it was actually
St. Ambrose to whom the poet owed his main idea, and that the
1 See Krumbacher, Byzantinische Litteraturgeschichte (ed. 2), p. 711. note 1, and
Quercius in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, Vol. XCII, p. 1171.
*See the notes on II, 905; II, 1001; II, 1044; III, 699; V, 546; V, 746; VI, 623;
VI, 661. He quotes Ambrose directly in the note on V, 170.
» Op. cit., p. 114.
420
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 101
works of the Latin Father lay before him as he wrote ; that, in fact,
many a passage of la Semaine is little more than a paraphrase from
the sermons of the Bishop of Milan.
Let us examine first certain transitional passages, in which the
poet, in introducing or concluding a portion of his work, turns aside
for a moment from the main theme to indulge in an outburst of
playful fancy. It will be found that these correspond to the pulpit
flourishes with which the bishop enlivens the beginning or end of his
sermons. In the fifth book, for instance, Du Bartas closes his
account of the fishes and sea-monsters with the words (V, 524-27) :
Muse, mon soin plus doux, sortons auec lonas
Du flanc de la Balene, et pour ne floter pas
Tousiours au gr4 du vent, de Fonde, et de Forage,
Sus, sus, mon saint amour, sus, gaignons le riuage.1
Compare with this a sentence from the concluding paragraph of
Ambrose's sermon on the same subject (V, 35) :
Sed iam rogemus dominum, ut sermo noster quasi lonas eiciatur in
terram, ne diutius in salo fluctuet.
Not only the figure and its application, but also the position in
the discourse and the half-humorous tone are the same. The poet
then passes to his discussion of the birds (V, 528-37) :
Cependant qu'attentif ie chante les poissons,
Que ie fouille, courbe", les secrettes maisons
Des bourgeois de Thetis, voyez comme la gloire
Des oyseaux loin-volans vole de ma memoire:
Leur cours fuyart me fuit, et mes vers sans pitie"
Retranchent de ce iour la plus belle moitie*.
Mais, courage, Oiselets: vos ombres vagabondes,
Qui semblent voleter sur la face des ondes,
Par leurs tours et retours me contraignent de voir
Et quelle est vostre adresse, et quel est mon deuoir.
Note how he describes his oversight of this part of the creation with
the figure of one who has bent over the water to watch the fishes and
i
1 1 have followed in this article the text and orthography of the edition of Du Bartas,
published in 1593 by Jacques Chouet, which the Columbia University Library courteously
placed at my disposal. My thanks are also due to the Harvard University Library for
the use of the edition of 1583, published by Michel Gadouleau.
421
102 S. O. DlCKERMAN
is recalled from his absorption by the reflection of the birds over-
head. Then read the words with which Ambrose begins his dis-
course on the winged creatures (V, 36) :
Fugerat nos, fratres dilectissimi, necessaria de natura auium disputatio,
et sermo huiusmodi nobis cum ipsis auibus euolauerat .... itaque cum
caueo, ne mari demersa praetereant et aquis operta me lateant, effugit omne
uolatile, quia dum inclinatus imos aquarum gurgites scrutor, aerios non
respexi uolatus, nee umbra saltern pinnae me praepetis declinauit, quae in
aquis potuit relucere.
This recurrence of the same striking figures in both writers in
corresponding situations is evidently something more than a coin-
cidence. But conviction of the intimate acquaintance of Du Bartas
with these sermons becomes complete when we look at what follows.
The good bishop concludes his introductory paragraph with a gentle
warning against possible drowsiness (V, 37) :
Nee uereor ne fastidium nobis obrepat in uolatilibus requirendis, quod
non obrepsit in gurgitibus perscrutandis, aut aliqui ex nobis in disputatione
obdormiat, cum possit auium cantibus excitari. sed profecto qui inter mutos
pisces uigilauerit non dubito quod inter canoras aues somnum sentire non
possit, cum tali ad uigilandum gratia prouocetur.
This reappears in the words with which Du Bartas continues his
address to the birds (V, 538-45):
le vous pri' seulement (et ce pour recompense
Des trauaux que i'ai pris & vous conduire en France)
Qu'il vous plaise esueiller, par vos accens diuers,
Ceux qui s'endormiront oyant lire ces vers.
Mais n'ayant peu fermer les veillantes paupieres
Parmi le camp muet des bandes marinieres,
Pourront-ils bien dormir parmi cent mille oiseaux,
Qui font ia retentir Tair, la terre, et les eaux ?
A similar agreement may be noticed in the passage with which
Du Bartas turns from discussing the seas to the fresh waters (III,
215-18):
Mais voy comme la mer
Me iette en mille mers, ou ie crain d'abysmer.
Voy comme son desbord me desborde en parolles.
Sus done, gaignons le port. . . .
422
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 103
These punning lines are nothing more than the elaboration of a play
on words which Ambrose uses in the corresponding sermon (III, 17) :
Sed, ut uidetur, quoniam de mari loquebar, aliquantum exundauimus.
Again, in opening his account of the sixth day, the Gascon com-
pares himself to a guide showing strangers the sights of a town
(VI, 1-11):
Pelerins, qui passez par la cite* du monde,
Pour gaigner la cite", qui bien heureuse abonde
En plaisirs eternels, et pour anchrer au port,
D'oil n'approchent iamais les horreurs de la mort :
Si vous desirez voir les beaux amphitheatres,
Les arsenals, les arcs, les temples, les theatres,
Les colosses, les ports, les cirques, les rempars,
Qu'on void superbement dans nostre ville espars:
Venez auecque moy. Car ce grand edifice
N'a membre, ou tant soit peu luise quelque artifice,
Que ie ne le vous monstre.
This was evidently suggested by the paragraph with which Ambrose
introduces the same subject (VI, 2):
Etenim si is qui explorat nouorum aduentus hospitum, dum toto eos
circumducit urbis ambitu praestantiora quaeque opera demonstrans, non
mediocrem locat gratiam, quanto magis sine fastidio accipere debetis quod
uelut quadam sermonis manu per hanc communionem uos circumduco in
patria et singularum rerum species et genera demonstro ex omnibus colligere
cupiens, quanto uobis creator uniuersorum gratiam uberiorem quam uni-
uersis donauerit.
Once more, Du Bartas cuts off his rather slight discussion of the
internal organs of the human body thus (VI, 699-704) :
Mais non, ie ne veux pas faire vne ample reueue
Des membres que Fouurier desrobe a nostre veue.
Ie ne veux despecer tout ce palais humain:
Car ce braue proiet requiert la docte main
Des deux fils d'Aesculape, et le laboure" style
Du disert Galien, ou du haut Herophile.
This is the elaboration of the apology which Ambrose makes for his
brevity on the same subject (VI, 70) :
Haec ideo strictim percurrimus, ut tamquam indocti obuia perstringere,
non tamquam medici plenius scrutare uideamur et persequi quae naturae
latibulis abscondita sunt.
423
104 S. O. DlCKERMAN
Not only in these transitional passages, but scattered throughout
the main narrative there will be found many instances in which the
poet owes his material to the Milanese bishop. Among these, I
have selected for illustration the account of the parts of the human
body; and this, for a particular reason. These sermons of Ambrose
are not original. In great part they, also, depend on another source,
the Greek Hexaemeron of St. Basil. Ambrose has adapted and
expanded, but to a considerable extent the substance of the dis-
course is the same.1 Hence the query arises whether Du Bartas
might not have drawn his ideas directly from Basil. A comparison
of texts will demonstrate his closer relation to Ambrose. Thus, in
the passages already quoted, while the germ of the idea is in two
cases2 to be found in Basil, no one after looking at both authors would
doubt that it is Ambrose on whom Du Bartas depends. In the dis-
cussion of the bodily structure of man, however, no such compli-
cating question need be considered, as Basil did not take up the
subject in detail and the descriptions are quite independent of his
influence. First let us compare the eulogies of the head:
Mais tu logeas encor Phumain entendement
En 1'estage plus haut de ce beau bastiment:
Afin que tout ainsi que d'vne citadelle
II domptast la fureur du corps. . . .
[VI, 499-502.]
. . . . ita etiam caput supra reliquos artus nostri corporis cernimus
eminere praestantissimumque esse omnium .... tamquam arcem inter
reliqua urbis moenia [VI, 55].
Immediately following is the praise of the eyes :
Les yeux, guides du corps, sont mis en sentinelle
Au plus notable endroit de ceste citadelle,
Pour descouurir de loing, et garder qu'aucun mal
N'assaille au despourueu le diuin animal.
[509-12.]
1 With regard to the relation of Ambrose and Basil, see P. E. Bobbins, op. cit.,
pp. 58 ff.; Foerster, Ambrosius, Bischof von Mailand, pp. 117ff.; and particularly
Schenkl's edition of Ambrose, Vol. I, in which the parallel passages are noted.
2 Basil makes a rhetorical reference to Jonah, Hex. VII, 6 (Migne, Patrol. Gra.ec.,
XXIX, 164 A). The expression of Ambrose may have originally been suggested to his
mind by this, but there is no real similarity in the passages. The words of Ambrose on
the oversight of the birds (V, 36) were evidently drawn from Basil, Hex. VIII, 3, 168 C.
But the figure of the reflection in the water and the hint against drowsiness which follows
are not in the Greek writer.
424
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 105
Adhaerent uelut quibusdam montium superciliis oculi, ut et protegente
mentis cacumine tutiores sint et tamquam in summo locati de quadam
scaena superiore uniuersa prospectent. neque enim oportebat eos humiles
esse sicut aures uel os ipsosque narium interiores sinus, specula enim
semper ex alto est, ut aduenientium cateruarum hostilium explorari possit
aduentus, ne inprouiso occupent otiantem uel urbis populum uel impera-
toris exercitum. sic latronum quoque cauentur incursus, si exploratores
in muris aut turribus aut mentis excelsi supercilio sint locati, ut desuper
spectent plana regionum, in quibus insidiae latronum latere non possint.
.... nobis autem in summa corporis parte constitui oculos oportuit
tamquarn in arce et ab omni uel minima offensione defendi. . . . [VI, 59, 60].
Particular notice is given to the protected position of the eyes:
Ces miroirs de 1'esprit, ces doux luisans flambeaux
Ces doux carquois d'amour, ont si tendres les peaux,
Par qui (comme a trauers deux luisantes verrieres)
Us dardent par momens leurs plus viues lumieres,
Qu'ils s'esteindroyent bien tost, si Dieu de toutes pars,
Ne les auoit couuers de fermes bouleuars:
Logeant si dextrement tant et tant de merueilles
Entre le nez, le front, et les ioues vermeilles,
Ainsi qu'en deux vallons plaisamment embrassez
De tertres, qui ne sont ni peu ni trop haussez.
[523-32.]
Itaque ne uel usu muneris aliquid detraheretur uel aliquid ad propul-
sandam iniuriam <non> prospiceretur, eo loco oculos constituit, cui
supercilia desuper non minimum protectionis impertiant, subter malae
aliquantulum eleuatae haut exiguum munitionis adiungant, interiorem
partem saepiant nares, exteriorem quoque frontis malarumque gibbi extu-
berantes et licet ossuum compage conexa et aequata confinia circumuallare
uideantur [VI, 60].
The eye-lashes, also, are noticed :
Et puis comme le toict preserue de son aisle
Des iniures du Ciel la muraille nouuelle;
On void mille dangers loin de 1'oeil repoussez
Par le prompt mouuement des sourcils herissez.
[VI, 533-36.]
Haec ne qua incidentis iniuriae offensione laedantur, pilis hinc inde
consertis uelut quodam uallo per circuitum muniuntur [VI, 60].
The nose, we are told, has three uses. Of these the last two
may be traced back to Ambrose :
Le nez est vn conduit qui reprend et redonne
L'esprit dont nous viuons; le nez est vn tuyau,
425
106 S. 0. DlCKERMAN
Par qui Fos espongeux de 1'humide cerueau
Hume la douce odeur: le nez est la gouttiere,
Par qui les excremens de pesante matiere
S'euacuent en has. . . .
[VI, 542-47.]
De naribus autem quid loquar, quae biuio et procero foramine antrum
quoddam recipiendis odoribus praestant, ut non perfunctorie odor transeat,
sed diutius inhaereat naribus et earum ductu cerebrum sensusque depascat ?
.... per eas quoque purgamenta capitis defluunt et sine fraude atque
offensione aliqua corporis deriuantur [VI, 63].
In the treatment of the mouth and teeth, Du Bartas departs
from Ambrose (VI, 65-68), and though general resemblances may
be found, it is not worth while to quote the passages. But the lines
on the ears show a striking agreement :
Et d'autant que tout son semble tousiours monter,
Le Tout-puissant voulut les oreilles planter
Au haut du bastiment, ainsi qu'en deux garites,
Coquillant leur canaux, si que les voix conduites
Par les obliques plis de ses deux Unions,
Tousiours de plus en plus en allongent leurs sons:
Comme Fair de la trompe ou de la saquebutte
Dure plus que celui qui passe par la flute:
Ou tout ainsi qu'vn bruit s'estend par les destours
D'vn escart6 vallon, ou court auec le cours
D'vn fleuue serpentant, ou rompu, se redouble,
Passant entre les dents de quelque roche double.
Ce qu'il fit d'autre part, afin qu'vn rude bruit
Traversant a droit fil Fvn et Fautre conduit,
N'estourdist le cerueau, ains enuoyast plus molles
Par ce courbe" Dedale a Fesprit nos paroles.
[VI, 603-18.]
The use of the winding channels as a protection and particularly
the comparison to the reverberation of sound in a valley or along
a winding river or between crags come directly from Ambrose:
Ideo aures extantiores sunt .... ut in earum sinibus uox repercussa
sine offensione interioris ingrediatur anfractus. nam nisi ita esset, quis
non ad omnem fortioris sonum uocis adtonitus redderetur, cum inter ista
subsidia frequenter inprouiso ictus clamore nos obsurdiscere sentiamus
.... tenaces praeterea sermonis accepti ipsos esse anfractus aurium usus
ipse nos docet, siquidem uel in concauis montium uel in recessu rupium uel
in anfractu fluminum uox auditur dulcior et responsa suauia referens echo
resultat [VI, 62].
426
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 107
In the discussion of the internal organs, also, the Gascon shows
his familiarity with the old Hexaemeron. Thus his lines on the
brain (VI, 645^8),
Thresoriere des arts, source du sentiment,
Siege de la raison, fertil commencement
Des nerf s de nostre corps :
repeat the Latin:
Initium enim neruorum et omnium sensuum uoluntariae commotionis
cerebrum est atque inde omnis eorum quae diximus causa manat [VI, 61].
And the description of the pulse (VI, 665-68),
L& le subtil esprit sans cesse ba-batant,
Tesmoigne la sante" d'vn pouls tout-iour constant:
Ou changeant & tous coups de bransle et de mesure,
Monstre que Paccident peut plus que la nature,
is simply an amplification of:
Uenarum pulsus uel infirmitatis internuntius uel salutis est [VI, 73].
It is not necessary to quote further at length. I give the refer-
ences to the series of passages, which I have noted, in which Du
Bartas shows the influence of the Milanese bishop.1 Among them
are included several in which the details differ. Du Bartas fre-
quently supplements the version of the church father from Pliny
and other writers, or even substitutes a varying account. An
asterisk is prefixed to instances in which Ambrose is independent
of the Hexaemeron of Basil.
La Semaine I, 293 ff. The Spirit of God moves on the face of the
waters. Ambrose Hexaemeron, I, 29.
*I, 345 ff. Theories of the Greeks as to the eternal existence of the
heavens. Hex. I, 3.
*I, 423 ff. Why God did not complete the world in a moment. An
example of patience to human workmen. Hex. I, 27.
II, 209 ff. The polypus as an example of changefulness. The figure
may be influenced by Hex. V, 21, where the animal is described. It is,
however, a commonplace of ancient literature.
II, 285 ff. The several qualities and mutual relations of the four ele-
ments. Hex. Ill, 18.
II, 465 ff. The cupping-glass as an illustration of the phenomenon of
evaporation, Hex. II, 13.
1 A number of these have already been noted by Mr. Robbins, op. cit., without,
however, any direct connection between Du Bartas and Ambrose being suggested.
427
108 S. O. DlCKERMAN
II, 887 ff. The Aristotelian and Platonic views as to the constitution
of the heavens. Hex. I, 23, 24. With the reference to St. Paul (947)
cf. Hex. II, 6, 24 F.
II, 953 ff. The number of the heavens — one or more. Hex. II, 5, 6.
II, 1007 ff. Polemic against those who deny the existence of waters
above the heavens. Hex. II, 9-12. For the formation of pearls (vs. 1060),
cf. Hex. V, 33, 93 F.
III, 25 ff. God sets bounds to the sea. Hex. Ill, 10.
*III, 61 ff. Illustrations of God's power over the waters. For the Red
Sea and the Jordan, see Hex. Ill, 2, 33 CD. For the deluge and the smitten
rock, see Hex. Ill, 9, 36 DF.
Ill, 69 ff. The catalogue of gulfs and arms of the sea was probably
suggested by Hex. Ill, 12, 13.
Ill, 97 ff. Catalogue of rivers. The Nile, the Rhine, the Danube, the
Rhone, the Po, are mentioned in both accounts. Hex. II, 12.
Ill, 153 ff. The evaporation of water and its return in the streams.
Hex. II, 12, 13.
Ill, 179 ff. The moon as the cause of the tides. Hex. IV, 30.
Ill, 209 ff. The saltness'of the sea explained by the action of the
sun. Hex. II, 14, 29 DE.
*III, 215 ff. Transition. Like the seas, we have escaped our bounds.
Hex. Ill, 17.
Ill, 509 ff. The description of the vine corresponds to Hex. Ill, 49,
to which, however, it shows but little resemblance.
*III, 533 ff. The beauty of the flowers. Hex. Ill, 36.
*III, 543 ff. The divine providence displayed in medicinal herbs.
Hex. Ill, 37.
Ill, 657 f . Hemlock, a food for starlings, a poison for man. Hex. Ill,
39, 48 A.
III, 699 ff. Description of wheat and its growth. Hex. Ill, 34.
IV, 405 ff. The spirited defense of astrology was called forth by the
attack upon it. Hex. IV, 13-20. For the influence of the moon on the
marrow of animals, the meat of oysters, and the wood of trees (vs. 437 ff.),
see Hex. IV, 29, 76 AB.
*V, 35 ff . The plants and animals of earth have their counterparts in
the sea. Hex. V, 5, 6.
V, 93 ff. The monsters of the deep, like islands. Hex. V, 28, 32.
V, 119 ff. The migrations of the fishes with the seasons. Hex. V, 29.
V, 160 ff. Their sense for their lawful habitations and their knowledge
of times and places. Hex. V, 28, 29.
V, 386 ff. The remora. Du Bartas drew largely on Pliny xxxii. 1.
The figure of the firmly rooted oak, which is not in Pliny, seems to be aa
elaboration of the words quasi radicatam in the description of Ambrose
Hex. V, 31.
428
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 109
*V, 524 ff. Transition. Like Jonah, let us seek the shore. Hex. V, 35.
V, 528 ff. Introduction to the account of the birds. Hex. V, 36, 37.
*V, 546 ff. The phoenix. Hex. V, 79, 80. The tale follows the Phoenix
of Lactantius (cf. F. Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, pp. 220 f.). The
description of the bird's plumage seems to be drawn from Pliny x. 3. The
moral on the new birth (vs. 592) comes from Ambrose Hex. V, 80, 110 C.
V, 598 ff. The swallow. Hex. V, 56.
V, 616 ff. The nightingale. Hex. V, 85. Du Bartas substitutes an
account which depends closely on Pliny x. 81-83.
V, 714 ff. The halcyon. Hex. V, 40-42. The description of the nest
is probably drawn from Pliny x. 90, 91.
V, 746 ff. The filial stork. Hex. V, 55.
V, 774 ff. The instinctive affection of animals for their young. Hex.
VI, 21, 22.
V, 826 ff . The peacock, the cock. The two descriptions in close suc-
cession may be the elaboration of the words of Ambrose: gallus iactantior,
pautis speciosior, Hex. V, 49.
V, 860 ff. The republic of the bees. Hex. V, 67 ff.
V, 880 ff. The silk-worm. Hex. V, 77.
*VI, 1 ff. Introduction to the account of the beasts. Hex. VI, 2.
*VI, 49 ff. The fight between the elephant and the draco. Hex. Ill, 40.
VI, 129 ff. The sagacity of the hedgehog. Ambrose Hex. VI, 20 tells
two traits of the animal: (1) it protects itself with its quills; (2) it foresees
changes of the wind and shifts the opening of its den accordingly. Du Bar-
tas repeats the first of these here; the other he has just narrated of the
squirrel (vss. 117ff.). In this he follows Pliny, who in his account of
the hedgehog merely touches on the second trait, viii. 133, but tells it of the
squirrel, viii. 138. Somewhat similarly Du Bartas follows Pliny ix. 89, 90,
in ascribing to the ozaena (V, 212 ff.) a trait which Ambrose tells of the crab,
Hex. V, 22.
VI, 169 ff . Why did God create serpents and poisonous animals ?
Hex. VI, 38.
VI, 401 ff. The Delphic maxim, "Know thyself." Hex. VI, 39.
VI, 449 ff . A development of Ambrose's reasoning on the words :
Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram, Hex. VI, 40.
Apparently the abstract qualities (vss. 456 ff.) take the place of the angels
whom Ambrose rejects as possible interlocutors. Are the words II s'aida
d'w delay (vs. 475) a distortion of requieuit autem, postquam hominem ad
imaginem suam fecit, Hex. VI, 49, 132 B ?
VI, 493 ff. The upright human posture. Hex. VI, 54.
*VI, 499 ff . The passages on the particular parts of the ^body have
already been quoted. Hex. VI, 54-74.
VI, 1026 ff. The animals reproduce, each after its kind, Hex. VI, 9.
These lines are not found in the first edition but appear in the revised text
429
110 S. O. DlCKERMAN
of 1583. They offer interesting evidence that Du Bartas returned to the
sermons when revising his text. The verse on the pearl (II, 1060), which
likewise appears first in the revised text, would offer another instance, if we
could be sure that the passage is really due to Hex. V, 33.
VII, 501 ff. Sex in the palm-tree. Hex. Ill, 55.
VII, 555 ff. Bees and their monarch. Hex. V, 68.
VII, 569 ff. The eagle and its young. This resembles the tale which
Ambrose tells of the hawk, Hex. V, 59. He treats of the eagle immediately
afterward. Apparently Du Bartas, either inadvertently or on purpose,
ascribed to the second traits which in his source were narrated of the first.
VII, 581 ff. The faithful turtle-dove. Hex. V, 62.
VII, 595 ff. Fishes offer a refuge to their young in their own wombs.
Hex. V, 7.
VII, 647 ff. The ant. Hex. VI, 16.
We may notice in passing that the interest in the more or less
fictitious natural history of the classic writers, which is so marked a
feature of la Semaine, is already present in Judith, the earlier poem
of Du Bartas, published in 1573. Here among the comparisons we
find the honey-bee (I, 351), the ant (I, 391), the stork (IV, 145),
the turtle-dove (IV, 301), the bands of the elements (VI, 230).
Every one of these topics appeared later in la Semaine. But though
they are all treated by Ambrose, there is no reason to think that
at this period the Gascon was drawing from the Church Father.
In fact, a comparison of the details in the descriptions leads to the
contrary belief.
The question naturally arises whether a connection with
Ambrose can be traced in la Seconde Semaine, the continuation of
the poem, in which the main narrative of the Old Testament is
reproduced. Did Du Bartas in writing his accounts of the patriarchs
make use of the sermons on Paradise, Noah, and Abraham, in the
same way that he had made use of the Hexaemeron f Not by any
means to the same extent; but here also there occur from time to
time passages which can be referred with confidence to the influence
of the Church Father. There is, for instance, an interesting para-
graph in Eden (143-52) in which Du Bartas protests against the
allegorical method of scripture interpretation:
N'estime point encor que Moyse t'ait peint
Vn Paradis mystique, allegorique, et feint.
C'est vn iardin terrestre, heureux seiour des Graces,
430
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 111
Et corne d'abondance: & fin que tu ne faces
D'vn Adam Ideal fantasque 1'aliment,
La faute imaginaire, et feint le chastiment.
Car on nomme a bon droict le sens allegorique,
Recours de 1'ignorant, bouclier du fanatique:
Mesmes quand es discours, ou I'histoire on descrit,
On fait perdre le corps pour trop chercher 1'esprit.
The casual reader would assume that these spirited lines were
directed against some contemporary theologian of too liberal tend-
encies. In reality, the antagonist seems to be none other than the
Bishop of Milan, who in his sermon De paradiso (51) shows a dis-
position to view with favor a symbolical explanation, derived from
Philo of Alexandria.1
Unde plerique paradisum animam hominis esse uoluerunt, in qua uirtu-
tum quaedam germina pullulauerint, hominem autem et ad operandum et
ad custodiendum paradisum esse positum, hoc est mentem hominis, cuius
uirtus animam uidetur excolere, non solum excolere, sed etiam cum exco-
luerit custodire. bestiae autem agri et uolatilia caeli, quae adducuntur ad
Adam, nostri inrationabiles motus sunt, eo quod bestiae uel pecora quaedam
diuersae sint corporis passiones uel turbulentiores uel etiam languidiores.
uolatilia autem caeli quid aliud aestimamus nisi inanes cogitationes, quae
uelut uolatilium more nostram circumuolant animam et hue atque illuc
uario motu saepe transducunt ?
This method of dealing with Holy Writ called forth the protest
of the Huguenot in the same way that Ambrose's arguments against
astrology roused him to the polemic, mentioned above.
I add a series of examples from the earlier books of la Seconde
Semaine, which betray the influence of Ambrose.
Eden 633-38. The illustration of innate knowledge from the new-born
lamb and the wolf. Cf . De par. 29.
Ulmposture 49-54. The devil's envy of man. Cf. De par. 54.
L'Imposture 87-90. The devil's reflection that if he should deceive
man in the form of an angel of light, the Almighty might pardon the dis-
obedience of the latter, may have been due to De par. 73, 178 F.
L'Arche 235-44. The justification of the Almighty for the destruction
of innocent animal life in the deluge. Cf. De Noe 31-33.
L'Arche 349-56. The quaint query whether the olive leaf brought back
by the dove was an old growth that had remained fresh under the waters
or a new shoot, which had lately budded. Cf. De Noe 68.
1 For the influence of Philo upon Ambrose, see Foerster, Ambrosius Bischof v. Mailand
pp. 102 ft*., and Schenkl's edition, where the parallel passages are noted.
431
112 S. 0. DlCKERMAN
L'Arche 362-64. Noah will not leave the ark without a sign from God.
Cf . De Noe 75.
L'Arche 427-34. God's charge against homicide. Cf. De Noe 94-96.
Of the later portions of la Seconde Semaine, which were left
unfinished at the author's death and gradually published later,
I have been unable to see the French text. If, however, one may
base conclusions on the English translation of Joshua Sylvester,
here also may be found occasional instances of the influence of
Ambrose. The encomium of hospitality in the story of Lot and the
angels (Sylvester, The Vocation, p. 411, 1026-44) follows closely the
sermon De Abrahamo I, 34. And the line (1022) in which Abraham
recognizes the Almighty in one of his three visitors, "when, seeing
three, he did adore but one," seems to reflect a direct translation
of the words of Ambrose, tres uidit et unum dominum adpellauit
(De Abrahamo I, 36, 296 B). Again, in the account of the trial of
Abraham, the distinction made between the tempting of God and
that of the devil (The Fathers, p. 422, 27-73) is drawn from De
Abrahamo I, 66.
It remains to consider the relation of Du Bartas to George the
Pisidian. We have noticed that the Hexaemeron of the latter did
not appear in print until five years after the publication of la Semaine.
Are there internal indications which would justify the supposition
of an acquaintance on the part of Du Bartas with the manuscript
of the Byzantine author ? I have noted four topics, which are not
to be found in Ambrose, but which occur in both George the Pisidian
and Du Bartas. Here one might look for direct connection. But
closer examination indicates that the source of the French poet was
not the Byzantine Hexaemeron, but in three cases Pliny and in the
fourth Aelian. The topics are: the marvelous structure of insects
(Du Bartas V, 837 ff.; Georg. Pisid. 1253 ff. [Hercher's edition];
Pliny. N.H. xi, 2); the trochilus (Du Bartas VI, 255 ff.; Georg.
Pisid. 971 ff.; Pliny viii. 90); the spider (Du Bartas VII, 621 ff.;
Georg. Pisid. 1166ff.; Pliny xi. 80-84); the griffin (Du Bartas V,
664 ff.; Georg. Pisid. 921 ff.; Aelian H.A. iv. 27). There are,
further, sixteen topics which are handled by all three. Four of
these may be dismissed as inconclusive when taken by themselves.
These are: the peacock (Du Bartas V, 826 ff.; Ambrose V, 49; Georg.
432
Du BARTAS AND ST. AMBROSE 113
Pisid. 1231 ff.)j the cock (Du Bartas V, 829 ff.; Ambrose V, 49, 89;
Georg. Pisid. 1101 ff.); the Delphic maxim (Du Bartas VI, 401 ff.;
Ambrose VI, 39; Georg. Pisid 624 ff.); the digestive process (Du
Bartas VI, 677 ff.; Ambrose VI, 71; Georg. Pisid. 681 ff.). Of the
others, I quote in full one which deserves notice, as it has been cited
by M. Pellissier (p. 71) as an instance of definite connection between
the Pisidian and Du Bartas. The Byzantine poet has been treating
of the union of the four warring elements and, in that connection,
speaking of the gradual transition from one season to another. He
then says (286-89) :
KOL ravra Spcocriv c£ d/xoi/?atov
Koptus 6/xouus crvyxopevovcrais a/*a
Kal cnyx/JaAovauis TOVS cavraiv
OTTWS \opov irXt£<i><nv wpvOpov ftiov.
The lines of Du Bartas are (II, 305-13) :
Neree, comme arme* d'humeur et de froidure,
Embrasse d'vne main la terre froide dure,
De 1'autre embrasse Fair: Pair comme humide chaut,
Se joint par sa chaleur & Felement plus haut,
Par son humeur & Feau: comme les pastourelles,
Qui d'vn pied trepignant foulent les fleurs nouuelles,
Et maryant leurs bonds au son du chalumeau,
Gayes, ballent en rond sous le bras d'vn ormeau,
Se tiennent main a main, si bien que la premiere
Par celles du milieu se joint a la derniere.
The resemblance is apparent. But let us look at the corresponding
statement of Ambrose (III, 18) :
Ergo aqua tamquam brachiis quibusdam duobus frigoris et umoris
altero terrain altero aerem uidetur amplecti, frigido terram, aerem umido.
aer quoque medius inter duo conpugnantia per naturam, hoc est inter aquam
et ignem utrumque illud elementum conciliat sibi, quia et aquis umore et
igni calore coniungitur.
It will be seen that the first four lines quoted from the French
poem are a direct translation from this passage. And for the dance
of the elements we may look to the words that follow: 0
.... atque ita sibi per hunc circuitum et chorum quendam concordiae
societatisque conueniunt.
433
114 S. O. DlCKERMAN
We must conclude then that Du Bartas has not in this case
borrowed from George the Pisidian, but that the similarity of the
two passages is due to their common ancestry from Basil by col-
lateral lines.
As for the other passages, those on the eye (Du Bartas VI, 509 ff. ;
Ambrose VI, 59, 60; Georg. Pisid. 713 ff.), the nose (Du Bartas
VI, 537 ff.; Ambrose VI, 63; Georg. Pisid. 708), and the ear (Du
Bartas VI, 603 ff.; Ambrose VI, 62; Georg. Pisid. 697) have been
quoted above. The sources of the lines on the remora (Du Bartas
V, 386 ff.; Ambrose V, 31; Georg. Pisid. 997) and the phoenix
(Du Bartas V, 546 ff.; Ambrose V, 79, 80; Georg. Pisid. 905, 1105)
have also been considered. The remaining six passages— the
bounds of the sea (Du Bartas III, 51 ff.; Ambrose HI, 10, 11;
Georg. Pisid. 380), the vine (Du Bartas III, 509 ff.; Ambrose III,
49, 50; Georg. Pisid. 1610), the swallow (Du Bartas V, 598; Am-
brose V, 56, 57; Georg. Pisid. 1303), the silkworm (Du Bartas V,
880 ff.; Ambrose V, 77; Georg. Pisid. 1278), the bee (Du Bartas V,
860 ff.; VII, 555; Ambrose V, 67-69; Georg. Pisid. 1151), and the
ant (Du Bartas VII, 647 ff.; Ambrose VI, 16, 20; Georg. Pisid.
1200) — show details which link them with Ambrose rather than with
the Pisidian, though it would be rash to assert that the Church
Father was the sole and only source.
We find, therefore, no satisfactory evidence for the use of the
Byzantine poem by Du Bartas, and the early French critics were
over-hasty in pronouncing it to have been his model. Their instinct,
however, was correct in looking for an Hexaemeron as a determining
influence in the construction of la Semaine. In view of all the evi-
dence, it may be safely asserted that Ambrose of Milan guided Du
Bartas in the framework of his poem and contributed largely to its
subject-matter.
S. 0. DICKERMAN
WILLIAMS COLLEGE
434
THE ULTIMATE SOURCE OF ROTROU'S VENCESLAS AND
OF ROJAS ZORRILLA'S NO HAY SER PADRE
SIENDO REY
As early as 1722 it was known1 that Rotrou derived the plot and
the leading characters of Venceslas, his most celebrated work, from
No hay ser padre siendo rey, but the source of the latter play remained
undiscovered in spite of the various researches that it occasioned.
Voltaire considered Rotrou's plot entirely fabulous.2 Proper names,
usually the principal resource of investigators, have in this case led
them astray by suggesting that the history of a king called "Ven-
ceslas" was the source of the plays, although this name, found in
Rotrou's play, does not occur in the Spanish work, where the monarch
is referred to merely as Rey de Polonia. It has even been assumed
that the sovereign treated is the Venceslas who was king of Poland
and Bohemia at the end of the thirteenth century,3 even though the
life of that monarch is admitted to offer no resemblance to the
incidents of the French tragedy, and it is difficult to see how this
man, who was not yet thirty-rive at his death, could be the prototype
of the elderly king described by Rotrou and Rojas. Person4 searched
through various histories of Poland and Bohemia for sovereigns
named "Venceslas," who might guide him to some anecdote on which
the play could have been based. But it should have been evident
enough to him that Rotrou's proper names could furnish no guidance,
except in so far as they agreed with those of his Spanish source, for
it is highly improbable that Rotrou had the least idea of the material
» Mercure for February, 1722, cited by the Freres Parfaict, VII, 180, 181.
2 Second part of the Preface to Stmiramis.
» Biographic universelle, XLVIII. 111.
4 Histoire du Venceslas (Paris, 1882), pp. 30 f., cited by Crane, Jean Rotrou's Saint
Genest and Venceslas (Boston: Ginn, 1907), pp. 103, 104. It is also the influence of the
name Venceslas that makes M. G. Reynier suggest that the source of Rojas and Rotrou
was Belleforest's account of the murder of St. Venceslas by his brother. Of. Le roman
sentimental avant I'Astree, p. 162, note 7, and the reply made to this suggestion by
M. HaSkovec in the Revue d'histoire litteraire de la France, XVII, 156-57; While the
latter writer makes it clear that Rojas owed nothing to Belleforest, he also shows that
Dubravius was used as a source in western Europe long before the time of this Spanish
dramatist.
435] 115 [MoDEEN PHILOLOGY, November, 1917
116 H. CAKRINGTON LANCASTER
that lay back of Rojas. Knowing that the latter laid his scene in
Poland, Rotrou introduced the familiar Slavonic names Venceslas
and Ladislas simply for local coloring, the same motive that led him
to add to his Spanish model the geographical names Curlande,
Cunisberg, and Moscovie.1
Evidently the only names that can help us are those of the
Spanish play; but here the personal names, Rugero, Alejandro,
Federico, Casandra, tell us little. The only real clue is given by the
title Rey de Polonia, which suggests that the ultimate source deals
with the history of some Slavonic country, if not with that of Poland
itself. Following this suggestion, I decided to examine histories of
Slavonic countries for the incidents and characters rather than for
the proper names of the Spanish play. Before relating what I
discovered, I must recall briefly to the reader what were the main
objects of my search.
Rugero and Alejandro, the two sons of the King of Poland, are in
love with the Duchess Casandra. Alejandro is secretly married to
her. Rugero, a violent and passionate character, thinking that his
rival is Duke Federico, whom he hates and who is his father's adviser,
breaks into the nuptial chamber and kills the man at Casandra's
side, whom he later finds to be his brother. The king, obliged to
judge one son for the assassination of the other, at first condemns
him, then saves him by abdicating in his favor, so that Rugero, now
king, cannot be condemned, and his father, king no longer, can
pardon his son.
In the histories of Poland and Russia I find no anecdote from
which this plot may have been derived, but among the kings of the
sister Slav state, Bohemia, there was an illustrious monarch, Vladis-
las II, who in 1173 abdicated in favor of his son Frederick. This
same Vladislas had a faithful and efficient minister, Vogislas, and
a violent son, Svatopluk, who, jealous of the minister's power, slew
him before his father's eyes. I quote from Dubravius,2
Paulatim inde rex aetate ingrauescente, curis regni, & laboribus prae-
grauari, secumque meditari de onere tarn graui vel deponendo, vel alleuando,
idque cum fieri posse, nisi aliquo in sollicitudinis partem admisso, non
1 Cf. Dramatis personae and verse 75.
2 Historia Bohemica (Hanau, 1602), p. 103.
436
"VENCESLAS" AND "No HAY SER PADRE SIENDO REY" 117
videret, ad Vogislaum, quern praeter caeteros proceres beneuolentia prose-
quebatur, grauiorem negotiorum molem conuertit, additis cum quibus
consilia actionesque communicaret Caeterum breui tempore Vogis-
laus, magnam in se multorum, inter quos Suatopluci quoque regis filii,
inuidiam conflauit, propter benignum & largum erga se regis fauorem, ex re
bene administrata conceptum, adeo vt idem Suatoplucus obuium sibi eum
ante cubiculum regium habens, eiusmodi verbis inuaserit : Quousque tandem
regnum spoliare per regias largitiones abs te exortas non cessabisf Quoad,
inquit, tu rex designatus non fueris. Quo ille response irritatus, stringit
pugionem, & fugientem in cubiculum, rege coram, sauciat, nemine in ilium
iniicere manum auso^ quamquam rex comprehendi ilium iusserit. Sed
nunquam deinde in conspectu regis Suatoplucus venit, aliquandiu in Hun-
garia apud Stephanum regem, posthac vxore mortua in Bauaria apud Alber-
tum fratrem suum, vsque ad exitum vitae commoratus. At rex ocio, &
secessu Strahouiensi,1 vel primoribus tantum labiis degustato, abduci ab
illo ne hoc quidem incommodo accepto, potuit, sed regno potius toto cedere
Friderico filio maluit, non omnibus consilium illius comprobantibus; non
quod Fridericus successione parum dignus esset, sed quod vnum regnum,
duos reges alere vix bene posset, quodque duobus seruire dominis videretur
difficillimum.
It seems to me that we have here most of the elements of the
Spanish play and that the changes and additions made by Rojas
can be easily explained. In both works there are four important
male characters, a king, his two sons, and a noble who assists in the
government. The king is old, experienced, overburdened with the
cares of state. He objects to violence in his son. He abdicates in
favor of a son. He does not in the chronicle give up his throne to
save his son's life, but the murder is at least partly the cause of the
abdication. The noble is in both cases useful to the state, trusted
by the king, firm and dignified toward the prince who seeks his life.
Compare with the Latin account of Vogislas the king's speech to
Rugero :
Al Duque, que me sustenta
La carga de mis cuidados,
Con rigor y con soberbia
Le quereis quitar la vida
Porque yo le quiero.2
1 He had built himself a retreat in the wilds of Strahof , where he coAorted with
monks and to which he retired after his abdication.
2 Biblioteca de autores espafloles, Comedias de Rojas Zorrilla, 389. Of. also p. 390,
where Rugero declares "El Duque en tu Estado reina."
437
118 H. CAKRINGTON LANCASTER
In both works one son is sympathetically treated, represented as
worthy to reign, while the other is violent, lacking in respect for his
father's authority, hating the nobleman and desiring to kill him.
I El Duque en qiie" os ofendi6.
Que con la espada sangrienta'
Le buscais puertas al alma
Y d vuestras venganzas puertas 71
As in the Latin it is with a dagger that the murder is finally com-
mitted.
The differences between the Latin chronicle and the Spanish play
are not difficult to explain. In the original text the murder is
followed immediately by the abdication, a fact that would easily
suggest to Rojas the addition of a causal connection between the two
incidents. For the king to abdicate to save his son's life, rather than
on account of old age and the cares of state, would give unity and
dramatic interest to the tale. The addition of a love theme was to
be expected. Political jealousy, however, which is the prince's
motive in the Latin, is retained, though now overshadowed by the
more romantic passion. The substitution of the brother for the
nobleman as the victim is not, in its conception, a great change, for
the intent to kill the duke is still a prominent motive in the play.
It is probable that Rojas substituted the brother as the person
actually killed to heighten the dramatic effect and to make it certain
that Rugero deserved the death penalty. For a prince to murder
a mere nobleman might not be considered a capital offense by the
author of Del Rey abajo ninguno. Similarly the altered denouement
would necessitate the change of age between the two brothers. If
the guilty brother remained the younger, his crime might seem to be
inspired by a desire to clear the way for his own succession, which
would make of the protagonist a calculating, rather than a passionate,
criminal. It would also follow from the change of victim that the
scene of the murder could not be acted as Dubravius described it,
since there could have been no mistaking Alejandro for the duke,
if the deed had taken place in the presence of king and court. Why
Rojas preferred to lay his scene in Poland rather than in Bohemia is
1 Biblioteca de aulores espaftoles, Comedias de Rojas Zorrilla, 389.
438
"VENCESLAS" AND "No HAY SER PADRE SIENDO REY" 119
not entirely clear. It is probable that the distinction between these
two distant lands of allied speech meant little to either author or
audience. Poland had, at least, the advantage of being an inde-
pendent state, while Bohemia had become an Austrian dependency.
The changes in personal names are more easily understood, for the
three Slavic names, which are abandoned, probably grated on the
Spanish ear. The more familiar Fridericus, though no longer
assigned to the king's older son, is retained in its Spanish form and
given to the duke.
Nor is it difficult to explain how a Spanish dramatist happened
upon a subject from Bohemian history. Rojas was a favorite at the
court of Felipe IV, whose queen was sister to the king of Hungary
and Bohemia. The fact that the latter sovereign was made emperor
in 1637, an event celebrated with great pomp at the Spanish court,1
may have made fashionable the history of his domains.2 It is not
unlikely that some Austrian among the queen's attendants introduced
Rojas to Dubravius' book, a work that had already been published
at least three times3 before the birth of the Spanish dramatist. I
say Dubravius rather than Aeneas Sylvius, for the latter's history of
Bohemia makes no mention of Svatopluk's deed. Of course Rojas
may have used an intermediate source, but it has not been discovered.
The conclusion to be drawn from these facts is that the ultimate
source of the two plays is the historical event related by Dubravius.
A dramatic imagination would be naturally attracted by the his-
torian's account of the old Bohemian monarch, formerly a crusader,
a successful warrior, a reformer of church and law, now weary of his
rule, longing for his retreat in the wilds and for communion with his
monks. Rojas must have been especially struck by the character of
the prince, insolent, jealous, passionate, heedless of his father's
commands, murdering the able and admirable minister whom he
looked upon as an upstart intriguer. Finally, the monarch's abdica-
tion in favor of his other son must have started the train of thought
that led to the composition of the plot. Having combined these
1 Op. cit., vii. 0
* No hay ser padre siendo rey was published in 1640.
JProstau, Moravia, 1552; Bale, 1575; Hanau, 1602. An edition of Vienna, 1554,
is mentioned, on doubtful authority.
439
120 H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER
elements into a single theme, Rojas added other characters, romantic
and comic situations, the dramatic scenes that resulted from the
prince's mistaking his brother for the nobleman; but he kept in
their essential traits the four characters of the Latin chronicle.
Rotrou also, while making of the play a more sober, elevated, and
psychological tragedy, held to the Slavonic setting, the four male
characters, the murder and the abdication that Dubravius had
described.
H. CARRINGTON LANCASTER
AMHERST COLLEGE
440
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
La Religion de J. J. Rousseau. 3 vols. (I, La Formation religieuse de
Rousseau; II, La Profession de foi de Jean-Jacques; III, Rous-
seau et la restauration religieuse.) By PIERRE MAURICE MASSON.
Paris: Hachette, 1916. 10 fr. 50.
M. Masson, professor of French literature at Fribourg (Switzerland),
had already made important contributions to the study of Rousseau, notably
his critical edition of the Profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard (1914). The
present volumes were completed and partly in type before the outbreak of
the war. The proofs were corrected by M. Masson while serving as second
lieutenant in the French infantry. In April, 1916, he was instantly killed
in action in the Argonne.
This work deals, not merely with Rousseau, but in no small measure
with the whole religious development in France from the early eighteenth
century to Chateaubriand. It has the thoroughness and accuracy that one
has come to expect from the school of M. Lanson. There is also some sug-
gestion of the defect to which this type of scholarship is exposed: the broad
lines of the subject tend at times to be obscured by the accumulation of
erudite details. A system of numbers in the footnotes refers to the bibliog-
raphy at the end of the third volume, which runs to 643 titles. The extent
of M. Masson's reading is also suggested by his nineteen-page index of
proper names.
Extensive as is M. Masson's reading it needed in some respects to be
even more extensive. His subject is, for the most part, the great deistic
movement, and this movement is pre-eminently international. Deism
marks an important stage in the process that has been going on for centuries,
namely, the passage of man in his views about himself and his own destiny
from a pure supernaturalism to a pure naturalism. Now deism was either
rationalistic or sentimental. The chief rationalistic deist of the French
eighteenth century was Voltaire; the chief sentimental deist, Rousseau.
The origins of both types of deism are largely English. Some knowledge
of men like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is as helpful in understanding
Rousseau as a knowledge of men like Locke and Bolingbroke is for under-
standing Voltaire. M. Masson's references to the English background are
slight and superficial. On the other hand, he is very full anc^ interesting
on once-popular but now forgotten French authors of deistic tendency, like
Claville and Saint-Aubin, of whom Rousseau made a careful study in his
youth. M. Masson has also much to say of the deistic physicists (Pluche,
441] 121
122 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Nieuwentyt, etc.), who are even more anthropocentric than the earlier
supernaturalists, who saw everything in nature arranged by a benevolent
deity for man's especial benefit (hence the moral commotion caused by the
Lisbon earthquake). This harmonizing of man and God and nature by a
recourse to final causes, of which Rousseau himself is rather chary, reaches
its extravagant culmination in a book like Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's
fitudes de la nature (1784) . Anticipations of the point of view of the Savoyard
Vicar are also found by M. Masson in various Genevan writers (Marie
Huber, Muralt, etc.).
One is struck by the hostile attitude toward intellect and science that
already appears in a number of these writers. Up to a certain point the
rationalistic and the sentimental deists worked together; they were both
arrayed against supernatural religion, against revelation and miracles.
Rousseau himself appears as one of the keenest of rationalists1 in his attitude
toward miracles. Voltaire, as we know from his annotated copy of the
Profession,2 took satisfaction in all this portion of Rousseau's argument.
But having thus used reason as a weapon against the supernatural, Rousseau
would then have it abdicate before sentiment, and at this abdication of
reason Voltaire feels only disgust. Rousseau's great thirst is for immediacy.
The inner oracle to which he is ready to sacrifice everything that is not
immediate (including reason) he names variously sentiment, conscience,
soul, heart. Rousseau's motto vitam impendere vero implies that he was
willing to lay down his life for the truth, but as a matter of fact he had little
concern for the truth unless, indeed, one holds that the individual is justified
in identifying the truth with his own emotions. An error that consoled
Rousseau seemed to him preferable to a truth that afflicted him.3 Instead
of adjusting his temperament to religion, he adjusts religion to his tempera-
ment. One may thus set up as religious without having to renounce one's
ordinary self. M. Masson traces this development with psychological
subtlety. "II ne s'agit point de se perdre en Dieu, mais plutot d'absorber
Dieu en soi. . . . Dans le paradis de Jean-Jacques, Dieu lui-meme s'effacera
discretement pour laisser place a Jean- Jacques."4
Rousseau's attitude toward religious truth is in the broadest sense of
the word aesthetic. He not only tends, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, to
identify beauty and truth, but conceives beauty as the pursuit of pure
illusion. "There is nothing beautiful," he was fond of saying, "save that
which is not."8 Religion may be not only beautiful and consoling to the
individual, but it may also be justified by its utility, its social beneficence.
"II ne s'agit pas," says Rousseau, "de savoir ce qui est mais seulement ce
qui est utile."6 This is what we should call nowadays the pragmatic test.
M. Masson indicates skilfully the relationship between Rousseau and recent
1 See dialogue in the Profession de foi between "I'inspirg" and "le raisonneur."
2 See Annales Jean- Jacques Rousseau, I, 277—79.
3 1, 235; II, 89, etc. < II. 120. 5 II, 260. • II, 256.
442
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 123
anti-intellectualist philosophers like James and Bergson. He might also
have found in Rousseau an anticipation of Vaihinger and his theory of
useful fiction.1
This testing of religion and philosophy, not by their intrinsic truth, but
by their beauty and utility, was destined to have important developments,
not merely in the Protestant, but also in the Catholic, world. Rousseau
himself seems to have felt the superior aesthetic appeal of Catholicisim.
He was deeply moved, as we learn from Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, by the
singing of "les litanies de la Providence" in the chapel on Mont Valerien.2
M. Masson studies in detail the Catholic writers between Rousseau and
Chateaubriand who tended to subordinate the truth of their religion to its
aesthetic charm and social beneficence. No book was ever more thoroughly
prepared for than the Genie du Christianisme.
The passages of Rousseau that point most plainly to this type of Catholi-
cism are found in the Profession de foi; but another side of Rousseau's
religious thinking, that embodied in the closing chapter of the Contrat Social
(la Religion civik), is in the highest degree hostile to Catholicism, inasmuch as
even the aesthetic Catholic is unwilling to subordinate himself entirely to
the state. This chapter aims at nothing less than "to bring together the
two heads of the eagle," as Rousseau expresses it; that is, to abolish the
distinction between the spiritual and the temporal order which is at the
heart of Christianity. Rousseau's attitude toward historical Christianity
has, as M. Masson points out, much in common with that of Machiavelli.3
By its insistence on humility, Christianity has made the citizen effeminate
and undermined his patriotic pride. The remedy is to get rid of historical
Christianity, and not only to make the state supreme, but also to set up a
state religion — a religion that is not to be, properly speaking, religious, but
merely an "aid to sociability." An old English poet describes religion as
the "mother of form and fear." Rousseau would banish fear from religion
entirely, and everything that is form and discipline being, as he holds,
not of the essence of religion, he would turn over to the state. The essence
of religion he sees in a fluid emotionalism, and this a man may indulge in
without having two fatherlands, without dividing his allegiance between
the spiritual and the temporal order, as he must do if he remains a Christian
in the traditional sense.
One immediately relates Rousseau's hostility to Christianity as a form
and discipline quite apart from the state to the anticlericalism that has
prevailed in France from the Revolution to the present day; and the con-
nection of Rousseau's religious ideas with those of Robespierre, for example,
is close and indubitable. M. Masson makes clear, however, that we must
be careful not to exaggerate the role of Rousseau in the rise of antfclericalism.
* Die Philosophic des Als Ob (1911).
2 Vie de Rousseau (ed. Souriau), pp. 106 ff.
» II, 196.
443
124 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Many other influences — that of Raynal, for example — tended in the same
direction. M. Masson has brought out to some extent, following Aulard,
the conflict in the Revolution itself between the rationalists (whether deistic
or atheistical), who derive from Voltaire and the encyclopedists, and the
sentimental deists, who derive from Rousseau.
The final impression one gets from M. Masson's volumes is that the
main religious development from Rousseau is aesthetic and utilitarian
Catholicism a la Chateaubriand. But sentimentalism of the type that
appears in Rousseau has affected Catholicism only superficially, whereas it
has eaten into the very vitals of Protestantism. To make his study of
Rousseau's religious ideas complete, M. Masson would have needed to pay
more attention, not only to their background in England, but also to their
prolongation in Germany. " Rousseau's deeper influence is accomplished
on German soil," says Professor Paul Hensel, of the University of Erlangen;
"here he became .... the founder of a new culture"1 (Kultur). Now
Kultur when analyzed breaks up into two distinct things: on the one hand
scientific efficiency, and on the other what the Germans term "idealism."
Rousseau is undoubtedly a main source of this idealism, so that to get at
his more significant religious influence one would need to trace the trans-
formations of Rousseauism in the writings of Kant, Jacobi, Herder, Fichte,
Schleiermacher, Schelling, etc. In these German writers deism passes over
into pantheism; and just as deism is either rationalistic or sentimental, so
pantheism has tended to be either scientific or emotional. This transition
from deism to pantheism can be followed, not merely in the Germans, but
in a contemporary of Rousseau's like Diderot. Rousseau rejected panthe-
ism, especially of the scientific type, but there are plenty of examples in his
work of pantheistic revery, though he does not develop this pantheistic
revery, as does Schelling in his Naturphilosophie, into a system of symbolism.
M. Masson does not perhaps say enough about pantheistic revery in Rous-
seau and its relation to his religion, though in what he does say he shows his
usual psychological subtlety. For example, he remarks: "La nature que
Jean-Jacques adore n'est qu'un deMoublement de Jean- Jacques." "II s'est
senti a 1'aise [dans la nature] parcequ'il s'y est senti seul, parce qu'il a pu
s 'y dilater jusqu'a 1'envahir toute."2 In short, communion with nature was
a welcome substitute for traditional religion, because communion with
nature does not impose any check upon one's ordinary self. A man may
mix himself up with the landscape to any extent, and yet continue to suffer
from what the philosophers term the egocentric predicament.
It should be plain from what has already been said that M. Masson's
volumes are an important contribution to the history of ideas. They are
not, however, for a reason that remains to be stated, an important contri-
bution to thought. To make a contribution to thought M. Masson would
> Rousseau (1907), p. 117. 2 II, 229.
444
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 125
have needed to discriminate with the utmost sharpness between religion
and mere sentimentalism, and this he has failed to do. His inadequacy here,
combined with the psychological subtlety he so often exhibits, is positively
disconcerting. For example, M. Masson says of Rousseau's religion:
"C'est un christianisme sans redemption et sans repentir, d'ou le sentiment
du pe'che' a disparu et dont Jean-Jacques est a la fois le pretre et meme le
nouveau Christ."1 And then he proceeds to speak of Rousseau's "chris-
tianisme profond"!2 M. Masson has not made sufficiently clear to himself
or to others that the difference between the supernaturalist and the naturalist
(or the man who is tending toward naturalism) does not lie in the fact that
the supernaturalist insists on dogma and miracles and revelation, whereas
the naturalist rejects these things; the difference between the two is inner
and psychological. Rousseau opposes to supernatural religion a plea for
immediacy: ("Que d'hommes entre Dieu et moi," etc.3). But the super-
naturalist also craves immediacy, only he perceives two elements in human
nature that are immediate : on the one hand a stream of impulse and desire,
and on the other an element that moves in an opposite direction and is
known practically as a power of control over impulse and desire. Rousseau
and the sentimentalists would follow the stream of impulse and desire, live
temperamentally, in short, and at the same time set up as religious. Every-
thing that opposes "spontaneity," that is, the free expansion of impulse,
they would dismiss as factitious and conventional. I am indeed dealing only
with the total tendency of Rousseauism. As M. Masson points out,4 there
survive in Rousseau many traces of the older dualism, the sense of a struggle
between opposing elements, both immediate, in the breast of the individual,
passages that imply the "civil war in the cave" of which Diderot speaks
and which he deems purely artificial.
Language seems to break down in describing this dualism of the spirit.
For instance, Pascal and Rousseau both refer to the inner and intuitive side
of human nature as "le sentiment," "le coeur," etc.; they mean exactly
opposite things. Rousseau, indeed, can only be understood as the extreme
recoil from Pascal. For Pascal, religion was not only the "mother of form
and fear," but he and the whole side of Christianity for which he stands
pushed the form to a point where it became a strait-jacket for the human
spirit, the fear to a point where it amounted to a theological reign of terror.
M. Masson, misled by the prime emphasis that both Pascal and Rousseau
put on "le sentiment" and "le coeur," inclines at times to see in Rousseau,
not the extreme recoil from Pascal, but his continuer.5 Confusion, it would
seem, could go no farther. M. Masson has failed utterly to define the change
that took place in the eighteenth century in such words as sentiment, heart,
virtue, conscience, etc. Under the influence of Shaftesbury an<^ Rousseau
* II, 294. 2 III, 42. » Profession de foi. « II, 115, 273.
1 1, 90; II, 57; III, 35, 103, 347, 357.
445
126 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
and the sentimentalists these words cease to stand for a force that puts a
check on emotion, and become themselves expansive emotions. Virtue, for
example, according to Rousseau, is not merely an impulse, but a passion,
and even an intoxication.1
M. Masson shows the same inability to distinguish between religion and
mere religiosity in dealing with a writer like Joubert, who comes at the end
of his period. "Toute la dialectique sentimentale de Rousseau," he writes,
"a trouve" ses formules definitives dans Joubert."2 But Joubert is not, as
one might gather from M. Masson, a religious aesthete; on the contrary, he
is a profound and subtle moralist, a man of genuine religious insight. Now
Joubert says that whereas virtue before Rousseau had been looked on as a
bridle, Rousseau turned it into a spur.3 This one remark throws more
light on Rousseau's relation to religion and morality than anything that
will be found in M. Masson's three volumes.
M. Bergson shows that he suffers from a confusion similar to that of
M. Masson when he distinguishes two main types of French philosophy — a
rationalistic type that goes back to Descartes and an intuitive type that
goes back to Pascal.4 M. Bergson would have us believe that he himself
and Pascal are in the same tradition. Monstrous sophistries lurk beneath
this simple assertion, sophistries which if they go unchallenged are enough
to wreck civilization. M. Masson's error is so instructive indeed because
it is not purely personal; because it points to some radical confusion,
some grave spiritual bewilderment in this age. The men of the two chief
Protestant countries are now engaged in blowing one another to pieces
with high explosives and at the same time trying to starve one another's
women and children en masse. Some might argue that a religion that has
had such an outcome is bankrupt. One reason for this bankruptcy of
Protestantism may lie in its failure from the very dawn of the sentimental
movement to the present day to discriminate between genuine religious
experience and mere emotionalism.
IRVING BABBITT
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1 An influence on the eighteenth century which antedates the sentimental move-
ment, and which in some of its aspects encourages this expansive view of virtue, is that
of Jacob Boehme. This side of Boehme would seem ultimately to go back to neo-
platonism. Goethe's expansive definition of the good in Faust and his identification
of the restrictive principle with evil ("der Geist der stets verneint") plainly derives
directly or indirectly from Boehme. See Cambridge History of English Literature,
IX, chap, xii (especially pp. 352-53).
2 III, 303.
» Pensees, etc. (6d. Paul de Raynal, 1866), II, 121; cf. also p. 364; "Rousseau a
dte" la sagesse aux §,mes, en leur parlant de la vertu."
4 "On trouverait, en r6tablissant les anneaux interme'diaires de la chaine, qu'a
Pascal se rattachent les doctrines modernes qui font passer en premi§re ligne la connais-
sance immediate, 1' intuition, la vie interieure, comme a Descartes . . . se rattachent
plus particuliSrement les philosophies de la raison pure." Article in La Science franc.aise
(1915), I, 17.
446
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 127
Teatro Antiguo Espanol. Textos y Estudios I. Luis Velez de
Guevara, La Serrana de la Vera. Edited by RAMON MENENDEZ
PIDAL and MARfA GOYRI DE MENENDEZ PIDAL. Madrid:
Junta para Ampliaci6n de Estudios e Investigaciones Cientificas,
1916.
With this volume is inaugurated a series of critically edited Spanish
plays of the classic period — the first enterprise of its kind in Spain. In spite
of the rapid growth of scholarship in that country, plays continue to be almost
as carelessly edited as ever. (Witness the recent volumes of the Academy
edition of the works of Lope de Vega.) The present work is a protest against
slipshod methods and a model for future editors to follow. The Senores
Menendez Pidal have been happy in the play they have chosen. In the
first place, it is the unedited work of one of Spain's greatest dramatists and
of high intrinsic merit. Secondly, it affords the editors a splendid oppor-
tunity to make valuable contributions in the fields of dialectology, lexicog-
raphy, folklore, and balladry, in all of which subjects they are so proficient.
Thirdly, this is the first of a cycle of plays dealing with the same subject,
the study of which is important to the history of the Spanish drama. It offers
opportunity for a comparative study of works by Velez, Lope de Vega, Tirso
de Molina, and others of lesser fame who have dealt with this same folklore
theme. All these matters are treated in a magisterial manner. The most
captious critic can oppose only trifling suggestions; but, as this work is the
first of a series and a recognized model for those studies which are to follow, a
few may be pardoned.
The editors scrupulously retain the old spelling of the original, making
only the modern distinctions between u, v, and b. The i's and y's remain
unchanged. But, contrary to general practice, they combine with ancient
orthography the most ultra-modern accentuation and punctuation. It is
very difficult for editors to agree regarding the system of accentuation to be
employed in editing old texts. On the one hand, it is axiomatic that an
editor should not follow the custom of the authors of the period, who made
little or no use of diacritical signs; still less can he follow the anarchy of
seventeenth-century printers in this regard. On the other hand, the present
system, in conjunction with the old spelling, is anachronistic and shocking,
e.g., onrreys. It is all very well to accentuate ast, but what is to be done
when the word is spelled asy f He must either depart from his own system,
as the present editors do in like cases, or have cast a new character which
would offend by its novelty. The method employed by Morel-Fatio and
Foulche*-Delbosc seems better. Use accents sparingly — only when necessary
to distinguish homonyms. The objection to this system is that^t is purely
artificial— an editor's invention; but it is less shocking to the reader. Simi-
larly, the inverted interrogation and exclamation points give offense. Since
the editors adopted the system they did, quien should bear the accent in
447
128 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
I. 512; Esta in 1. 645; si in 1. 665; di in 1. 3066. The captain's speech,
II. 501-2, is plainly a question. The editors have followed the now almost
universal custom of indenting the initial verse of each strophe, but have
failed to indent the following lines: 37, 41, 269, 273, 463, 811, 823, 903,
2202, 2608, 2854. Lines 36 and 40 are erroneously indented. The proof-
reading might have been more carefully done. The editors fail to indicate
"asides," and such stage directions are helpful to the reader. The speeches
beginning with 11. 2978 and 3014, for example, are manifestly to be taken as
apartes.
La Serrana de la Vera was dated at Valladolid, 1603. This date is
rejected on the ground that the author could not possibly have been at the
time in the city named; 1613 is favored instead. Certain possible reminis-
cences of the Don Quijote may tend to confirm the impossibility of the earlier
date. Madalena escapes through a puerta falsa, just like Don Quijote and
Sancho (1. 1432). The composition of Giraldo's otta (1. 1808) is similar to
that mentioned in the first chapter of the novel. Compare also Gila's vow
(1. 2139). These resemblances may be wholly fortuitous, and are perhaps
too slight to deserve mention. In the discussion of the mujer hombruna
type, Tirso's Antona Garcia and La Gallega Mari-Herndndez might have
been profitably studied. The type is precisely the same as that of Ve*lez'
Gila, and some of the incidents are very similar.
The notes are so good that we wish they were even fuller. It would be
too much to say that every difficulty of the text has been explained. To
expect of an editor utter completeness of elucidation in connection with any
text whatsoever is, as the good knight would have said, pensar en lo excusado.
But in this case the gleanings left for future investigators are very few. The
Senores Men6ndez Pidal have once more given proof of their industry,
conscientious method, and vast erudition.
GEORGE T. NORTHUP
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
448
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV
December
NUMBER 8
VERGIL'S AENEID AND THE IRISH I M RAMA:
ZIMMER'S THEORY
The late Professor Zimmer's ingenious effort to show that the
imram literature, which arose in Ireland in the seventh or eighth
century, came into being as a result of direct imitation of the account
of the adventures of Aeneas (Aeneid iii-v)1 appears to have received
but passing notice. Some students who have taken cognizance of
the theory have apparently been somewhat skeptical as to its validity.2
The problem is of interest in connection with studies in the classical
origin of mediaeval types of literature, and has to do with a genre
which is important because of the inherent charm of the stories
»H. Zimmer, Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterthum (ZFDA), XXXIII (1889), 328 ft.
The argument is one feature of Zimmer's efforts to stress the extent and significance of
foreign influences upon early Irish literature. For a bibliography of Zimmer's works, as
well as for references to other documents connected with early Irish literature referred
to in this paper, see the excellent work of B. I. Best, Bibliography of Irish Philology and
of Printed Irish Literature, Dublin, 1913 (Bibliog.). For supplementary references to
Zimmer's work see Zeitschrift far celtische Philologie (C.Z.), VIII (1912), 593-94; IX
(1913), 87 ff.; and Revue Celtique (R.C.), XXXI (1910), 411.
* Alfred Nutt (Voyage of Bran [London, 1895], I, 166, n. 2), A. C. L. Brown (Harvard
Studies and Notes [HSN], VIII [1903], 57, n. 1), Alfred Schulze (Zeitschrift fur romanische
Philologie, XXX [1906], 257), and W. A. Nitze (Modern Philology, XI [1913-14], 465,
n. 1), are noncommittal in their references to Zimmer's theory. Nutt's and Brown's
theories of the composition of Maelduin, however, are clearly inimical to Zimmer's
position, and in a recent paper ("From Cauldron of Plenty to Grail," Mod. Phil., XIV
[1916-17], 388, n. 6), Brown says, "Zimmer . . ." . urged with little plausibility that this
(Maelduin) and later imrama grew up under the influence of Vergil's Aeneid." To the
skepticism toward Zimmer's theory indicated in class lectures by Professor T. P. Cross
is due the interest leading to the present discussion. To Professor Cross I am also
i ndebted for a number of valuable references and suggestions.
449]
65
[MODERN PHILOLOGY, December, 1917
66 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
included and because of the wide influence exerted by one of them,
the legend of Saint Brendan.1
The purpose of this paper is to attempt to show the uncon-
vincing nature of Zimmer's arguments in favor of Vergilian influence.
No effort is made to support, in any comprehensive way, the alter-
native hypothesis that the genre is an outgrowth, not only of Celtic
material, but of native narrative methods.
The imram is a sea-voyage tale in which a hero, accompanied
by a few companions, wanders about from island to island, meets
Otherworld wonders everywhere, and finally returns to his native
land. The stories commonly included in the imram canon are Imram
Brain maic Febail, "The Voyage of Bran, son of Febal"; Imram
Curaig Maelduin, "The Voyage of the Boat of Maelduin";
Imram Curaig hua Corra, "The Voyage of the Boat of the Hui
Corra"; Imram Brendain, "The Voyage of Brendan"; and Imram
Snedgusa ocus mac Riagla, "The Voyage of Snedgus and Mac Riagla."2
To this list should be added Echtra Clerech Choluim Cille, "The Ad-
ventures of the Clerics of Columb Cille," a variant of Snedgus and
Mac Riagla. The first in the list, Imram Brain, lacks the distinctive
imram trait of the stressing of the adventurous voyage, and is per-
haps best regarded as an earlier form of the Otherworld journey,
which is chiefly concerned with the hero's adventures in the land of
women. It is evident from Zimmer's arguments that he does not
regard Bran as a true imram, and Alfred Nutt3 and A. C. L. Brown4
have apparently taken a similar view. Bran is older than the true
imrama, as it dates, according to Zimmer5 and Kuno Meyer,6 from the
seventh century. The oldest complete imram is probably Maelduin,
which belongs to the seventh or eighth century.7 It should be noted,
1 The great influence of the Brendan legend upon continental mediaeval litera-
ture is reflected in the many studies of this imram (see Bibliog., p. 115). Interest-
ing speculations concerning the possible influence of the story upon early voyages of
discovery, notably those of Christopher Columbus, appear in a paper by T. J. Westropp,
Proceedings, Royal Irish Academy, XXX (1912-13), 223 flf. Cf. Gustav Schirmer, Zur
Brendanus-Legende, Leipzig, 1888.
» Bibliog., pp. 115-16; Westropp, op. cit., p. 226; Schirmer, op. cit., pp. 18 flf., etc.
» Voyage of Bran, I, "The Happy Otherworld."
« HSN, VIII, 57-58; cf. also ibid., p. 30, n. 2.
* ZFDA, XXXIII, 261. • Voyage of Bran, I, xvi.
7 Zimmer's conclusions, based largely on linguistic evidence, are supplemented by
Nutt' s convictions based on the folklore aspect of the question. These conclusions quite
450
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 67
however, that Zimmer, on linguistic evidence, regards Hui Corra as
preserving in its earlier sections the text of a much older version,
which probably antedated Maelduin.1 The later imrama, Snedgus
and Mac Riagla, Clerics of Columb Cille, Brendan, and Hui Corra (in
its present form) show increasing effects of the Christianizing process
apparent in Maelduin, and become associated with the " visions."2
A discussion of Zimmer's argument must be preceded by sum-
maries of three stories chiefly concerned.
IMRAM BRAIN MAIC FEBAILS
A mortal prince, Bran son of Febal, awakened by fairy music, learns,
from a beautiful young woman, of the "glorious island" where all is beauty
and joy and lasting life. The lady vanishes. Bran and twenty-seven com-
panions set sail to seek the delightful place. They reach theJsle of Laughter,
where one of Bran's men is irresistibly drawn into the circle of laughing folk.
His friends cannot coax him away. The supernatural Manannan, son of
Ler, directs them to the Island of Women. One hundred and fifty islands
are mentioned as part of this fairy realm, but only one is visited.
"They saw the leader of the women at the port. Said the chief of the
women: 'Come hither on land, O Bran son of Febal! Welcome is thy
advent!' Bran did not venture to go on shore. The woman throws a ball \
of thread to Bran straight over his face. Bran put his hand on the ball, which I
clave to his palm. The thread of the ball was in the woman's hand, and she-
pulled the coracle towards the port. Thereupon they went into a large
house, in which was a bed for every couple, even thrice nine beds. The food
that was put on every dish vanished not from them. It seemed a year to
them that they were there — it chanced to be many years. No savour was
wanting to them."
Bran's kindred plead with the hero to return to Ireland, but Bran's
mistress warns them against departure. Seeing them intent on going, she
cautions them against touching the soil of their native land and directs
them to recover the companion lost on the Isle of Laughter. They reach
Ireland and find that they are remembered only by virtue of an ancient tale
of their voyage. One of the crew leaps from the coracle to the shore and
immediately becomes a heap of ashes. Bran tells the assembly on the shore
of his wanderings, and returns to the sea. "And from that hour his wander-
ings are not known."
clearly dispose of the notion that Maelduin is later than Brendan, a view held by a number
of writers: Stokes, R.C., IX (1888), 450; F. Lot in D'Arbois de Jubainville's Court de
litterature celtique, V, 451-52. The opposing views are discussed by CSsar Baser, Romania,
XXII (1893), 578 ff.
» Op. cit., p. 201.
2 On this point see C. S. Boswell, An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908), p. 120.
» Summarized from the translation by Kuno Meyer in The Voyage of Bran.
451
68 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
IMRAM CURAIG
Ailill Ocar has been killed by coast plunderers. His posthumous son,
Maelduin, is reared at court with the three sons of the queen and is kept in
ignorance of his real parentage. Taunted one day about his unknown
father, the boy coaxes from the queen an explanation, is taken to his real
mother, and learns that his father had been chief of the tribe of Owenaght
of Ninus. With his three foster-brothers Maelduin goes to his father's
former kingdom, and is welcomed by the people.
While casting stones one day over the charred remains of the church
of Dooclone, Maelduin is taunted for not revenging his father's death.
Learning now of the murder, the young hero is fired with a desire for ven-
geance. The culprits are said to have a rendezvous a long way off over the
ocean. Maelduin goes to Corcomroe to the druid Nuca to seek advice
about building a currach for the trip and to ask a protective charm. He
receives full instructions: he is told the exact day on which to begin the con-
struction of his boat and the exact day on which to begin the voyage, and is
enjoined to have a crew of sixty men, neither more nor less. After the boat
has left the land the three foster-brothers, for some reason not included in
the party, ask permission to accompany Maelduin. Mindful of the druid's
words, the hero refuses the request, whereupon the importunate foster-
brothers, reckless of their lives, swim after the boat. Maelduin in mercy
takes them aboard.
Episode 1: Isle of the Murderers. Shortly after midnight two small
fortified islands are reached, from which proceed sounds of revelry. Mael-
•duin overhears one boast of his feat in killing Ailill and of the son's failure
to exact vengeance. A squall at sea prevents landing and the currach is
blown far away. The voyagers cease rowing and let the boat drift whither
it please God. The foster-brothers are blamed for the ill luck.
Episode 2: Isle of Enormous Ants. Three days later, while casting lots
to determine who shall explore an island, the men see a swarm of enormous
ants, the size of foals, on their way to the currach, and flee.
Episode 3: Isle of Great Birds. A high terraced island. Many great
birds in the trees. The crew eat their fill of the birds and take a supply on
board.
Episode 4: Horselike Monster. A huge, horselike beast tries to lure
them to land and pelts them with pebbles as they retire.
Episode 5: Demons' Horse Race. A great flat island, showing vast
hoofmarks. Enormous nuts on the ground. From the boat the crew
observe a noisy horse race, and think there is here a meeting of demons.
i Summarized from the translation of Whitley Stokes. R.C., IX (1888), 447-95, and
X (1889), 50-95. The story appears in whole or in part in four manuscripts: the Book
of the Dun Cow ([LU], before 1106); the Yellow Book of Lecan ([YBLJ, fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries); Harleian 5280 ([H], fifteenth century); and Egerton 1782 (four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries). YBL and H contain verse paraphrases which are not
printed or translated by Stokes in R. C., but which may be found in Anecdota from Irish
Manuscripts, I (Dublin, 1907), 50 fl.
452
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 69
Episode 6: Empty Banquet Hall. Hungry and thirsty after a week's
rowing, the voyagers discover a high island. On the shore is a large house.
A subaqueous door is closed by a valve of stone through an opening in
which the waves fling hosts of salmon. In the house the men notice beds,
food, and drink. They dine, thank God, and depart.
Episode 7: The Wondrous Fruit. Passing a wood-rimmed island,
Maelduin seizes a rod from a tree. Three days later the rod bears a cluster
of three apples, each apple sufficing the crew for food during forty days.
Episode 8: Feat-performing Beast. A huge beast races about a stone-
fenced island. Halting on a height, it performs various feats, such as turn-
ing about in its skin. It flings stones at the men as they flee.
Episode 9: Fighting Horses. On this island the ground is bloody.
Fierce horses are biting pieces from one another's sides.
Episode 10: Fiery Beasts and Golden Apples. Swinelike animals strike
trees with their hind legs to shake down golden apples. The beasts retire,
and birds come swimming about and partake of the fruit. The earth is hot,
owing to the presence of the magic animals in the caverns; nevertheless, the
men gather many apples, which forbid hunger and thirst.
Episode 11: The Guardian Cat. Again in hunger, the voyagers reach
a small island containing a fort surrounded with a high white rampart.
Outside the fort is a large house inhabited only by a small cat. In a gor-
geously furnished room the men find food prepared. After the feast the
"third" foster-brother attempts to carry away a necklace, but the cat leaps
through him like a fiery arrow, and the thief is turned to ashes. Maelduin
placates the cat, spreads the ashes on the sea, and departs "praising and
magnifying God."
Episode 12: Black and White Sheep. A brazen palisade bisects the
island. On one side are white sheep; on the other, black. Every sheep
flung across the palisade by the giant herdsman changes color to correspond
to its new environment. Rods which Maelduin casts ashore also change
color. He departs in fear.
Episode 13: Giant Herdsman. Here are magic swine, enormous calves,
and a burning river. Across a mountain a huge herdsman is seen guarding
great hornless oxen. He remonstrates with an intruder from the boat.
(This incident is apparently incomplete.)
Episode 14: Miller of Hell. A hideous miller grinds everything grudg-
ingly given, amounting to half the grain of Ireland.
Episode 15: Isle of Weeping. A second foster-brother is here drawn
into the charmed circle of weeping human beings, and is lost.
Episode 16: Isle of Four Fences. The four compartments of this isle
are occupied by kings, warriors, queens, and maidens. One of fhe maidens
welcomes the voyagers and gives them drink and food having any desired
savour. Intoxicated by the drink, the mortals sleep three days. When they
awake, in their boat at sea, the isle has disappeared.
453
70 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
Episode 17: The Chaste Maiden. A barrier consisting of a glass bridge
which falls backward as visitors try to ascend it protects a fortress. A
woman comes from the fortress and fills her pail from a magic fountain at
the foot of the bridge. Magic music lulls the mortals to sleep. When the
maiden reappears she is asked to become Maelduin's mistress. She replies,
"Marvelously valuable do I deem Maelduin." The third day she again
refuses the proffer of love, promising a definite answer the next day; but
when the morrow dawns the men again find themselves alone at sea.
Episode 18: Chanting Birds. The singing of birds here suggests the
chanting of psalms.
Episode 19: Lonely Pilgrim. A lonely shipwrecked Irish pilgrim
inhabits a wooded isle which has miraculously grown from a single sod. The
birds are the souls of the pilgrim's kindred who are awaiting doomsday.
The old man, clad only in his hair, is fed daily, by angels, with half a cake,
a slice of fish, and liquor from a magic well. There are three days of guest-
ing, after which the old man prophesies, "Ye shall all reach your country
save one man."
Episode 20: Magic Fountain. A white isle with a golden rampart is
inhabited by an old cleric clad only in his hair. He is fed from a magic
fount which yields whey or water on Fridays and Wednesdays, milk on Sun-
days and ordinary feast days, and ale on the feast days of the apostles, of
Mary, and of John the Baptist. The men eat a half-cake and a piece of
fish, drink from the magic fount, and fall into a heavy sleep. There are three
days of guesting before the cleric orders the visitors to go.
Episode 21: Savage Smiths. The voyagers hear the sound of anvils
and hear smiths on an isle talking of the strangers' approach. Turning the
stern of their boat toward sea to conceal retreat, the men flee. The chief
smith casts a molten mass at the boat, making the sea boil.
Episode 22: Sea of Glass. Maelduin passes over a beautiful magic
sea resembling green glass.
Episode 23: Cloudlike Sea and Buried Country. In this underground
realm appears a huge beast in a tree. Other animals are near by. The
beast frightens away an armed man and seizes an ox. The frightened Irish-
men hurry away.
Episode 24: Cliffs of Water and Terrified Islanders. At the approach
of the party the inhabitants exclaim, "It is they." A woman pelts them
with large nuts. The screams cease as the voyagers retire.
Episode 25: Water- Arch and Salmon. Salmon fall from an arch of
water spanning an isle. Maelduin is thus supplied with food.
Episode 26: Silver Column and Net. Rising from the water is a high
silver column. From the summit flies a silver net reaching to the sea.
Diuran, one of the crew, cuts a piece of net as a souvenir. A voice from the
summit speaks in an unknown tongue.
454
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 71
Episode 27: Island on Pedestal. A subaqueous door supplies the only
entrance to this strange isle. A plow is seen on top of the island.
Episode 28: The Amorous Queen. A large island with a fortress and
a great plain. Seventeen grown girls are seen preparing a bath. Maelduin and
his men sit on a hillock opposite the fortress. A gorgeously attired woman
approaches on horseback, dismounts, goes into the fortress, and enters the
bath. A girl welcomes Maelduin's party in the name of the queen. The
men enter, bathe, and go into the feast hall. After the feast the queen takes
Maelduin to her bed, the companions pairing off with the seventeen daughters.
Next morning the visitors are invited to remain, the queen promising them
immortality and perennial joys. She explains that when her husband, the
king, died she assumed the reign, and every day judges the people in the
plain. The visitors remain three months, which seem three years. Mael-
duin reluctantly yields to the request of his men to return to Ireland; but
when he attempts to leave, the queen throws after him a magic clew, which
adheres to the hero's hand. The queen thus draws the boat back to the
shore. After another long stay the incident is repeated. On the next occa-
sion, Maelduin, accused of insincerity by his companions, has another catch
the clew, cuts off the engaged hand, and throws it into the sea. The party
escapes, and the queen sets up a great cry.
Episode 29: Intoxicating Fruit. Maelduin makes wine from berries
growing on the next isle visited. The wine is so strong that it must be diluted
with water.
Episode 30: Mystic Lake and Great Bird. A small church, a fortress,
a forest, and a lake are features of this island, which is inhabited only by an
old cleric, clothed in his hair, who says he is the fifteenth man of the com-
munity of Brennan of Birr, who had gone on an ocean pilgrimage and settled
here. A great bird bearing a branch with grapelike berries alights on a hill
near the lake. At nones two great eagles come and pick lice from the big
bird's plumage, crush the berries, and make a red foam in the lake. The
huge bird bathes. The next day the attendant birds sleek up the plumage
of the great bird and depart. At the end of the third day the great bird
flies away with its youth renewed. Diuran the Rhymer boldly plunges into
the lake and sips the water. Thereafter his eyes were strong, he lost
neither tooth nor hair, and suffered no weakness.
Episode 31: Isle of Laughing. The third foster-brother is lost in a
group of laughing folk.
Episode 32: Isle of the Blest. A fiery rampart revolves about an island
whereon are beautiful human beings with golden vessels and garments.
Episode 33 : The Hermit of Sea Rock. A hermit clothed only in his hair
is prostrating himself on a rock in the midst of the sea. He proves to be
a dishonest church cook from Torach. He had been led to penitence by the
voice of a pious corpse, and had undertaken a penitential sea voyage. After
455
72 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
miraculously escaping demons, he was cast upon this rock, which gradually
grew in size. He had been miraculously supplied with food and drink, the
latter improving in quality after seven years. He feeds the visitors and
prophesies that they will reach home after finding the slayer of Maelduin's
father, whom Maelduin is warned to forgive.
Episode 34: Signs of Home. An island with cattle and sheep is visited.
An Irish falcon appears and the voyagers follow it.
Episode 35: Isle of the Murderers. Again the adventurers overhear
the murderers speaking of Maelduin. They report him dead, but would
welcome him should he appear. The hero makes himself known and he
and his men receive new garments. They tell of their wanderings and of the
marvels God has shown them, "according to the word of the sacred poet,
lhaec dim meminisse iuvabit.' ' After the return to Ireland, Diuran places
the piece of silver net on the altar at Armagh.
"Now Aed the Fair, chief sage of Ireland, arranged this story as it
standeth here, and he did so for delighting the mind and for the folk of
Ireland after him."
IMRAM CURAIG HUA CoRRA1
A prosperous Connaught man, named Conall the Red, and his wife,
Caerderg, daughter of a cleric, are childless. They "fast upon" the Devil
and devote themselves to him. Three sons are born in one night and are
given "heathen baptism." They are carefully nourished and are kept in
ignorance of their preordained diabolic connections. One day they over-
hear older persons speak of the consecration of the boys to the Devil, and
decide to be about theur master's business. For a year they burn churches
and kill clerics, finally visiting their grandfather. In the night one of the
three, Lechan, is shown a vision of heaven and hell. The boys repent and
are told to rebuild the destroyed churches. They perform this labor, and
are seized one day with a longing to explore the wonders of the sea and to
seek heaven across the waves.
As the adventurers are about to embark, a company of entertainers
arrives, one of whom, the buffoon, wishes to join the Hui Corra. He is refused
permission until he pleads "for God's sake," whereupon he is received,
naked. The men commit their cause to God and the winds, and drift
westward. They reach the Isle of Grieving Men, where one of the crew is
lost. By visiting the Isle of Fragrant Apples they are freed from appetite,
wound and disease, and pass on to the Isle of Gaiety, where a second com-
panion is lost. They see many wonders: isle of one foot, rainbow river,
silver pillar, isle of cleric Dega, isle of living and dead, flagstones of hell, isle
of brazen palisade, wonderful birds, sea-rivers, isle of the harper, isle of
Sabbath-desecrator, miller of hell, horse of fire, isle of dishonest smiths and
i Summarized from Stokes* translation, R.C.. XIV (1893), 22-63.
456
(->-
VERGII/S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 73
braziers, fiery giant, fiery sea of serpents and men's heads, isle of rest, com-
munity of St. Ailbe, psalm singer, solitary elder, and a deserter disciple of
Christ. The last-named is an Irish cleric who predicts the future fortunes
of the party. In the island of Britain is to be left a gillie from whom the
bishop of Rome is to learn the story of the voyage of the boat of the sons
of Corra. "And so it happened."
Imram Snedgusa ocus maic Riagla,1 Echtra Clerech Choluim Cille,2
and Imram Brendain3 do not require summary here. The several
imrama are similar in general structure, and are interrelated through
the inclusion of similar episodic matter and through the common use
of many stock motives of Celtic traditional literature. Maelduin
and Bran, for instance, have the isle of laughter and the Otherworld
mistress who draws her lover to her isle by a ball of thread. Mael-
duin and Hui Corra have the isle of laughter, the isle of weeping, the
miller of hell, the woman drawing water at the magic fount, the
wonderful apples, the isle of four compartments, the pedestal island,
the rainbow river, and the silver pillar. The hero Maelduin is
specifically referred to in Hui Corra.* Maelduin and Brendan have
the isle of singing birds, walled islands, and monsters. Hui Corra
and Brendan have the buffoon who implores "for God's sake." Bran
and Brendan have the four-footed island, the birds that sing the
hours, and the mention of "one hundred and fifty" isles.5
Zimmer admits that the material in these stories is drawn mainly
from Celtic sources.6 He holds that the imram as a narrative type,
however, is due to the influence of the Aeneid.
The suggestion of the great German scholar receives some sup-
port from the fact that the cultural background of the Irish story-
tellers of the sixth and following centuries was such that a borrowing
from the classics was entirely possible. The authors of the time not
i The YBL text is printed with a translation and notes by Stokes, R.C., IX (1888),
14-25. A German translation appears in R. Thurneysen, Sagen aus dem alien Irland
(Berlin, 1901), pp. 127-30.
» YBL text ed. and trans., Stokes, R.C.. XXVI (1905), 130-67.
» Text from the Book of Lismore printed and translated by Stokes, Lives of Saints
from {he Book of Lismore (Oxford, 1890), pp. 99-116 (text), and 247-61 (translation).
« R.C., XIV (1893), 45.
6 Similar comparisons have been made by Zimmer, Nutt, Brown, and Westropp,
In the works cited; and by Stokes, R.C., XIV. 24.
• ZFDA, XXXIII, 331. A partial enumeration of parallels between material in the
imrama and that in other Celtic literature may be found in the discussions of Nutt, Brown,
Westropp, and Zimmer.
457
74 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
only inherited a wealth of native narrative material and a well-
developed artistic tradition, but had also a background of Christian
and classical learning. It seems established that after the flight of
scholars from Continental Europe before the barbarian invaders of
the fifth century, Ireland became the repository of classical learning
for Western Europe and a center for the fostering and dissemination
of Christian culture. A little later came a period of great missionary
activity, and Ireland seems to have been largely responsible for the
re-Christianizing of Europe. For several centuries the fame of
Irish culture was great.1 That the Irish universities in which the
Christian writers studied gave considerable training in the classics
may be admitted.2 Professor Meyer has pointed out also that the
Irish scholars, having received classical learning at a time when it
was the natural study of every educated person, were not troubled
as to the fitness of classical pagan literature for Christian scholars by
any scruples such as disturbed their Continental brethren.3 On the
popularity of the Aeneid in Ireland Zimmer has assembled interest-
ing evidence.4 Imram Maelduin itself actually quotes Vergil;5
but the passage may of course be an insertion by a transcriber.
The existence of this Christian and classical culture, however,
was not inimical to the preservation of the pagan lore of pre-Christian
Ireland. The confusion of pagan and Christian conceptions in
1 On this general subject see Zimmer's illuminating treatise, "Ueber die Bedeutung
des irischen Elements fur die mittelalterliche Cultur," Preussische Jahrbilcher, LIX
(1887), 27-59. This study has been translated by Jane L. Edmands, The Irish Element
in Medieval Culture, New York, 1891. See also Professor Kuno Meyer's more recent
study, Learning in Ireland in the Fifth Century and the Transmission of Letters (Dublin,
1913), and Taylor, Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages (New York, 1901), esp. pp. 44 flf.
2 Zimmer, Irish Element, pp. 19 flf. ; Meyer, Learning in Ireland, pp. 11, and 26, n. 35.
For a negative view of the knowledge of Greek in Ireland, outweighed, however, by the
more authoritative utterances of Professor Meyer, see M. Esposito, " The Knowledge of
Greek in Ireland during the Middle Ages," Studies, I, No. 4, December, 1912.
3 Learning in Ireland, p. 12.
« ZFDA, XXXIII, 326-27. Zimmer regards the famous St. Gall manuscript con-
taining a fragment of Vergil's work as an Irish document carried to the Continent by
Irish scholars; he calls attention to the fame of Ruman mac Colman, " The Irish Vergil" ;
and he cites the frequency of the appearance of the name Fe(i)rgil in the Annals of the
Four Masters as a testimony of the popularity of the great Roman poet. Zimmer's later
attempt to identify the Irish name Ferchertne with the name Vergil in an effort to show
that the fifth-century Gaulish grammarian "Virgilius Maro" had visited Ireland (Sit-
zungsber. der kgl. preuss. Akad., X [1910], 1056 flf.) has been shown by Professor Meyer
(Learning in Ireland, p. 24, n. 19) to be based upon a wrong derivation of the Irish name.
6 R.C., X, 92.
458
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 75
much early Irish literature,1 and indeed the very survival of the enor-
mous mass of pagan material through the centuries of Christian tran-
scribing testify sufficiently to the kindliness with which the learned
Christian writers looked upon their inheritance of pagan Celtic
tradition. A resort to native narrative models in a story consisting
in the main of native materials would seem, therefore, at least equally
as natural on the part of an early imram writer as a resort to a foreign
model.2
The possible presence in the imrama of classical reminiscence in
the handling of episodic detail demands notice. The significance of
such classical material depends largely upon its extent and upon the
closeness with which it approaches its supposed classical sources.
To be of much use in supporting Zimmer's theory, parallels should be
numerous and close. Zimmer's argument assumes that the Vergilian
influence had had its full effect on the formation of the type by the
time Maelduin was completed. Classical reminiscence in the other
imrama, all of which are later than Maelduin, could therefore give
little support to Zimmer's contention. A few parallels between
Maelduin and the classics have been cited, some of which at least
are too remote to be significant.
Stokes3 compares Calypso's words, "I loved and cherished him
[Odysseus], and often said that I would make him an immortal,
young forever," with the speech of the amorous queen in Maelduin
(Episode 28), "Stay here, and age will not fall on you, but the age
that ye have attained. And lasting life ye shall have always; and
what came to you last night shall come to you every night without
any labor." The parallel is interesting in connection with specu-
lations concerning possible common origins for conceptions appearing
1 An example is the use of the term tir inna m-b6o in both the pagan sense (the land of
living ones) and in the Christian sense (terra repromissionis) : Zimmer, ZFDA, XXXIII,
287-88; Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae (Oxford, 1910), I, clxxxii, n. 11; Nutt,
op. cit., pp. 226-27.
2 A summary of an unpublished paper presented before the Modern Language Asso-
ciation in 1909 on "Classical Tradition in Medieval Irish Literature," by Dr. E. G. Cox,
reads thus: " Despite the wide acquaintance possesst by the medieval Irish with classical
literature and traditions, their narrative methods, subject-matter, and spirit remained
comparatively unaffected. Rather, the balance of influence inclines the other way.
The causes lie perhaps in the stability of the Irish style of narrative, in th$ recognized
position of the bardic profession, and in the lenient attitude adopted by the clerics towards
the myths and tales of their countrymen." (Publications, XVIII [1910], Appendix,
xxiii.)
» B.C., IX, 449.
459
76 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
in both Greek and Celtic tradition; but since the conferring of
immortality upon mortal lovers by their Otherworld mistresses is a
stock feature of stories dealing with the Otherworld,1 the suggestion
of direct indebtedness in this case could carry little weight. Stokes'
parallel between the incidents of the savage smiths in Maelduin
(Episode 21), and the Cyclops in the Odyssey is somewhat more
striking, yet cannot be regarded as proof of direct borrowing.2 The
existence of like situations in classical literature and in Irish stories
of a similar class may, on the other hand, suggest a possible primitive
store of legend from which both Greeks and Celts drew.
Other comparisons suggested by Stokes, obviously less plausible
as indications of borrowing, may be enumerated without comment.
Possible parallels in Lucian and Megasthenes are cited for such
details as the necessity of tempering the wine of the intoxicating
fruit (Episode 29), the enormous nuts (Episode 24), the huge ants
(Episode 2), the beasts which shake fruit trees with their tails
(Episode 10), and the ox-eating serpent (Episode 23). Zimmer calls
attention to the apparent influence of the Phoenix legend on Episode
30. C. S. Boswell in his book on the vision of St. Adamnan3 sug-
gests Aeneid vi. 642-43 as a possible inspiration for the horse-racing
incident in Episode 5. Zimmer, however, attributes this detail to
Scandinavian influences.4
Actual proof of the presence of classical reminiscence of this sort,
however, would not be definitive in its bearing upon our problem,
because nothing would be more natural than for a learned Irish
writer of the period to incorporate, in a story belonging to a type of
native origin and growth, certain situations which he had come upon
in classical stories, especially if he found them in pieces similar in
1 Examples in the older stories appear in Bran and in Echtra Condla Chaim, " The
Adventures of Connla." For a translation of Connla into German, see Thurneysen,
Sagen aus dem alien Irland, pp. 73-80; for one into French, see D'Arbois de Jubainville,
Cours, V, 385 flf. The trait in question of course appears in later stories, e.g., Laoidh
Oisin or Thir na n-dg, "The Lay of Oisin on the Land of Youths" (Transactions Ossianic
Society, IV [1856, printed 1859], 234 ff.).
» The account of the Cyclops in Merugud Uilix maicc Leirtia, " The Wandering of
Ulysses, son of Laertes" (ed. Kuno Meyer [London, 1886], pp. 18-20), is so different in
detail from the Odyssey account — though like it in general outlines — as to make it certain
that the Irish narrator did not work from a copy of the Odyssey. The piece occurs in
Stowe MS 992, written 1300 A.D.
* An Irish Precursor of Dante (London, 1908), p. 152.
« ZFDA, XXXIII. 324.
460
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 77
character to his own composition. That the presence of a non-
Celtic trait here and there in a Celtic tale does not affect the essen-
tially Celtic character of the story is a point that has already been
made.1
Zimmer finds his closest parallels to the Aeneid in Maelduin and
the early section of Hui Corra, which, it will be recalled, he regards as
the oldest bits of imram literature, the early section of Hui Corra ante-
dating Maelduin. The episodic material, he says, is drawn mainly
from Irish sagas of the pagan period, preserved in the recollections of
the people through the classical period, partly from classical reminis-
cence and partly from the accounts of the experiences of Irish fisher-
men and anchorites. The peculiar structural form of the stories is
due to the use of the Aeneid as a pattern by some "irischen Vergile."2
This last contention he supports by drawing the following parallels:
1. Aeneas consults an augury at the beginning of his journey
(Aeneid iii. 79). So Maelduin, before beginning his voyage, goes to
Corcomroe to consult the druid Nuca.
2. The account of the amorous queen (Maelduin, Episode 28), though
Irish material, shows Vergilian influence in mode of treatment. The "first
lady" of the island of women in such stories as Connla and Bran is trans-
formed into a widowed queen in Maelduin in imitation of Dido. The
mistresses of Bran and Connla are unmarried, ever young in their loves:
"was macht nun der verf . von Imram Maelduin daraus ? eine konigswittwe —
Didos verstorbener gemahl hiess Sychaeus — mit 17 tochtern; sie herscht
tiber ein grosses volk und ist taglich von ihren herscherpflichten in anspruch
genommen. dem Maelduin sagt sie: 'bleibt hier, und nicht soil alter iiber
euch kommen als das alter, in dem ihr seid, und ewiges leben immerdar wird
euch sein.' dies ist alte anschauung von tlr namban. dann erzahlt sie, dass
ihr mann, dem sie 17 tochter geboren, gestorben sei! naturlich, nur so konnte
eine wittwe wie Dido herauskommen; ware nicht eine nachahmung beab-
sichtigt, so ware der krasse widerspruch unerklarlich. nur die nachahmung
der machtigen konigin konnte dazu fuhren, auf inis namban ausser den
frauen noch ein grosses volk zu denken. ferner: Maelduin hatte ein jahr
lang die konigin, die mutter von 17 erwachsenen tochtern als bettgenossin,
wahrend seine gefahrten sich in die jungen madchen teilten. Bran erhalt
als fuhrer natiirlich auch die erste unter den frauen (taisech namban), aber
dies war keine mutter von 17 tochtern, sondern ein ewig junges weib wie die
anderen. die scenen, wie die konigin den Maelduin zuriickzuhalfen sucht,
1 T. P. Cross, R.C., XXXI (1910), 429. Cross refers also to Schofleld, PMLA. XVI,
(1901), 424.
2 Zimmer's phrase, ZFDA, XXXIII, 328.
461
78 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
sind aus irischem material; es 1st die schilderung verwertet, wie Bran landet.
gewaltsame versuche, den Bran zuriickzuhalten, werden nicht gemacht, offen-
bar weil der sage nur freiwilliges verweilen im lande der frauen entspricht.
auch diese umgestaltung muss einen zweck gehabt haben, welcher wie der
aller umgestaltungen der alten sage in der beabsichtigten nachahmung Vergils
zu suchen ist."1
3. Aeneas, before meeting Dido, meets a countryman, Helenus, who is
also a seer and utters a prophecy concerning the outcome of the journey.
Likewise Maelduin, before reaching the isle of the widowed queen (Episode
28), meets a countryman who prophesies as to the outcome of the voyage
(Episode 19). Similarly, after leaving Dido and before reaching Italy,
Aeneas meets a countryman, Acestes. Likewise Maelduin, after leaving
the isle of women and before reaching Ireland, meets another countryman
(Episode 30).
4. Between the visits to Helenus and Dido, Aeneas has the adventure
with Polyphemus and the Cyclops. So Maelduin, between the visit to the
first countryman (Episode 19) and to the widowed queen (Episode 28), has
the adventure with the smiths (Episode 21). Further, the questioning
smith in Maelduin is thought of as blind. Traits in Episode 13 (Giant
Herdsman) may also be classical reminiscences from the same sources.
5. Between the visit to Acestes and the reaching of the limit of the jour-
ney by Aeneas lies the death of Palinurus (Aeneid v. 827 ff .) . Likewise
Maelduin, between the visit to his countryman (Episode 30) and the
reaching of his goal (Episode 34), loses his third foster-brother (Episode 31).
The peculiar circumstance that in Maelduin three men later join the crew
and die upon the trip, while in Hui Corra one follows and dies, can be under-
stood if both narratives be regarded as written under the influence, or after
the pattern, of the Aeneid. The naked buffoon who implores the Hui Corra,
as they prepare for their trip, to take him along "for God's sake," corresponds
to the wretched follower of Ulysses who abjured the departing Aeneas per
sidera to take him. During the whole seven-year journey of Aeneas only
one of the hero's companions meets an unnatural death, namely, Palinurus,
who is the sacrifice demanded by Neptune. Now if one grants that an Irish
scholar introduced the notion that Palinurus must die to make up for the
additional member of the crew taken on [the Odyssean wretch], then the
Irish imitations of the journey of Aeneas are clear. The association of the
loss of Palinurus with the taking on of the follower of Ulysses serves as the
basis for the incident in Hui Corra, and makes clear to us how the author of
Maelduin came to have three additional journeyers figure in the story instead
of one. The addition is a variation by the author of Maelduin for which he
perhaps puzzled out a justification from Vergil: only one man, Palinurus,
dies an unnatural death during the journey, and that toward its close; about
i ZFDA, XXXIII, 328-29.
462
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 79
the middle of the trip Anchises dies, and at the beginning of the trip stands
the incident of the unfortunate Polydorus, dying, as it were, a second tune;
so one may speak of three deaths, during the journey, of persons closely
associated with the hero. Corresponding to this, under the hypothesis
created by Hui Corra as to the cause of the death of one companion, three
additional journeyers must be taken aboard in Maelduin.
Such is Zimmer's case. The argument for the influence of the
Aeneid resolves itself into two main contentions: that the incident
of the amorous queen in Maelduin was molded by the Dido-Aeneas
story (point 2); and that Maelduin and the old (lost) version of
Hui Corra derive their structural form from the Aeneid (points 1, 3,
4, 5). Neither contention seems convincing.
The suggestion that Maelduin's mistress is a Celtic fairy trans-
formed into a Dido is neither a necessary nor a plausible explanation
of her character. Although Zimmer refers to her as a fairy creature,
his argument ignores her essentially fairy character. That a Celtic
fairy mistress, the mother of seventeen grown daughters, is still
desirable is not at all strange, because by her nature she is immortally
young. In Tochmarc Etdine, " Wooing of Etain," a very old story,
Etain must have been more than a thousand years old while being
quarreled over by her lovers.1 In Acallamh na Senorach, " Colloquy
of Old Men" (11, 3893 ff.), which, though late material, doubtless
preserves a mass of early tradition, Caeilte explains to Patrick that
their young fairy visitor is "of the tuatha de danaan, who are
unfading and whose duration is perennial."2
The widowhood and queenship of Maelduin's mistress Zimmer
thinks due to the use of Dido as a model. But the first ladies in
the Irish Otherworld stories of the Bran and Connla type are all
queens, and Fand in Serglige Conculaind* "The Sickbed of Cuchul-
lin," is not only a queen, but a "grass widow" : she has been divorced
by Manannan before becoming Cuchullin's mistress. Maelduin's
companions must have mistresses. These mistresses must be sub-
ordinated to Maelduin's mistress. Making them daughters is a
i A. H. Leahy, Heroic Romances, I, 8.
» Stokes ed., Irische Texte, IV, 1. The quotation is from O'Grady's translation in
Siha Gadelica, II (1892), 203.
1 Leahy, Heroic Romances, I, 57 ft. This story also furnishes a parallel for the
presence of other persons than women hi the island elysium, a feature in Maelduin which
Zimmer attributes to the influence of the Aeneid. The shorter Fled Brier end supplies
another example.
463
80 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
simple device for the purpose. Since all were fairy women, the con-
ception carried no incongruity. Moreover, it is questionable whether
a conscious imitator would change a Celtic mistress into a widow to
make her like Dido, and almost in the same breath give her seventeen
daughters, a markedly un-Didoesque characteristic.
Although the reluctance of Maelduin's mistress to allow her lover
to leave her is somewhat more pronounced than the similar attitudes
of the mistresses in other Irish sagas, the difference seems purely one
of degree. Instead of contenting herself with a warning to the mortal
that he would rue an attempt to return to his former abode, as in
Bran, the lady takes active steps to prevent the return. For this
purpose she uses precisely the device Bran's mistress had used to
entice Bran to her isle. The inversion of the function of the clew
incident, or rather the change in its position in the story, may be due
to a confusion on the part of some writer, or to a desire for variety.
It is not impossible that the inversion accounts for the seeming
parallel to Dido's behavior — a process the very reverse of that sup-
posed by Zimmer. It is to be remembered, too, that there is no
sufficient evidence to show any direct relationship between Bran
and Maelduin.1 The fairy's effort to retain her lover needs no resort
to sophisticated literature for an explanation, inasmuch as the
inability of the mortal captured by the fairies to return to his former
sphere of existence is a recognized trait in fairy lore.2 The malefi-
cent powers of fairy creatures were, of course, understood. In
Echtra Condla Chaim King Conn tries to dispel, by resorting to druids,
the invisible fairy lady who is trying to entice away his son Connla.3
Zimmer rests his argument for structural imitation upon the
citation of supposedly parallel incidents appearing at corresponding
stages of the journeys of Aeneas and Maelduin. The author whose
organizing hand is responsible for the Maelduin narrative in sub-
stantially its present form is, therefore, the man who worked under
Vergilian influence. This consideration is important, because it
forces the rejection, by any advocate of Zimmer 's theory, of most
forms of the theory of composite origin. The delicate mechanism
i Of. Nutt, op. cit., I, 172.
» Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales (New York, 1891), pp. 43, 47, 196 flf.
• Thurneysen, op. cit., p. 75.
464
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 81
devised for the story by the author, who, under stress of Vergilian
influence, placed his incidents with such extreme care (note espe-
cially points 3, 4, and 5), could scarcely have survived if later
narrators or transcribers had done much in the way of addition or
alteration. Nor could a holder of Zimmer's view admit the suppo-
sition that a single author, working under Vergilian influence, gave
final form to a story already existing; for such a hypothesis would
assume the practically complete development of the type before the
operation of the supposed foreign influence. Features showing the
alleged influence of the Aeneid, such as the presence of the foster-
brothers, intimately connected as they are with the taboo motive,
seem too important organically to admit an assumption that they
were inserted by a compiler who was trying to inject a Vergilian
flavor into an already existing story.
Yet the theory of composite origin must be looked upon with
favor. The crude accumulation of wonders and adventures, obvious
to any reader, and the striking repetition of situations and motives,
surely seem to support it. Nutt1 and Brown2 find traces of several
damsel-land stories which have been put together by the compiler
of Maelduin. Some repetitions of detail may be noted: a cleric
clothed only in his hair, Episodes 19, 20, 30, and 33; almost the whole
of Episode 19 reappears in Episode 20; trees with birds, Episodes 3,
10, 18, and 19; subaqueous entrance, 6 and 27; miraculous supply
of salmon, 6 and 25; cheeselike food having any desired savour, 16
and 17; gradual miraculous enlargement of an island, 19 and 33;
vanishing of Otherworld as mortals sleep, 16 and 17; beds for "every
three," 6 and 17; island inhabitants overheard talking of visitors'
approach, 21, 24, and 34; missiles cast at voyagers, 4, 8, and 24.
The confusion in the number of the company and the slip in twice
recording the loss of a "third" foster-brother (Episodes 11 and 31)
also suggest the compilatory character of the account. The druid
had suggested sixty (the number found in Brendan) as the required
number of the crew; but it is evident that the sixty has been changed
iOp. ci«., I, 164 flf.
2 Op. cit., VIII (1903), 66-69. Brown prints a table dividing the stofy into five
groups, in each of which he finds the repetition of certain stock features of the Celtic
Otherworld journey. Group IV (Eps. 18-28) he regards as the original kernel of the
whole, or as the most complete of several variants put together to make a whole. Cf.
also Mod. Phil., XIV (1916), 388.
465
82 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
to sixteen, for in Episode 28, after the loss of two of the foster-
brothers, the hero has seventeen companions.
Although almost any theory of the compilatory nature of Mael-
duin would seem hostile to Zimmer's contentions, it is possible to
suggest a process of composite origin that would still admit of a
Vergil-inspired author-compiler. We may suppose that the author
had before him various stories of Otherworld adventures, perhaps of
the type of Bran or Conrila or Serglige Conculaindy in none of which
was there any pronounced stressing of the distinctive imram trait of
rowing about almost endlessly from island to island. Each story
contained a single Otherworld, the furniture of which, as Brown sug-
gests, the Maelduin author distributed among the various islands he
included in his descriptions. In the process of assembling these
materials he made use of the Aeneid pattern. Later transcribers
could not be assumed to have made any radical changes.1
Perhaps a query concerning the psychological processes involved
in Zimmer's theory of the composition of Maelduin and the old
Hui Corra is not out of place before an examination is made of Zim-
mer's structural argument in detail. Did the Irish Vergil expect his
audience to recognize his imitation of the Aeneas story? If not,
why the imitation? Could it be that a delicate sense for the
niceties of structural art impelled him to satisfy his own artistic con-
science by following, however vaguely so far as his reader was con-
cerned, certain structural features of his model ? It may be answered
that the failure of the alleged borrowings to redeem the story from the
blemish of a lack of fine literary form, the presence of tiresome and
awkward repetitions, and the failure to take from the supposed model
structural points of really significant character, argue against the
assumption of such a personality. It is also hard to believe that
the author was a superstitious fellow who thought the sly insertion of
unrecognizable Vergilian traits would somehow add to the attrac-
tiveness of his story.
If Vergil were as popular in Ireland as Zimmer argues,2 and the
author of Maelduin consciously imitated Vergil, he most certainly
i Yet Nutt thinks additions and interpolations may have been made as late as the
tenth century (op. cit., I, 163, n. 1), and Brown accepts this view ( Mod. Phil., XIV, 388).
* ZFDA, XXXIII, 326-27.
466
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 83
would have made such borrowings as he would expect to be recog-
nized. It seems indeed strange, therefore, that the borrowings should
have remained unnoticed, so far as is known, for more than a
thousand years. Zimmer appears to have been the first to detect
them. The succeeding imram writers seem not to have preserved the
"Vergilian" features. One would at least expect some Vergilian
traits to show in Hui Corra. Zimmer thinks that the early part of
this imram was written under Vergilian influence, and that the naked
buffoon is a counterpart of Achaemenides. The motive of the resort
to a druid, present in Maelduin because of Aeneas' consulting of the
oracle, does not appear in Hui Corra. Since it would necessarily come
earlier in the story than the buffoon incident, which the old section of
Hui Corra extends far enough to include, this trait could not have been
in the original version. There are no smiths in Hui Corra. There
is no single hero. There is no love affair. The single appearance of
the land of women (Episode 54) is like Episodes 16 and 17 of Mael-
duin rather than Episode 28. There is no approach to the Aeneas-
Dido situation. The deaths on the trip occur in the same part of
the story (Episodes 44-48). The Hui Corra do meet clerics, perhaps
their countrymen, at various stages of their journey, one just before
Episode 54, and many in the latter part of the story. They meet
two prophets — a woman in Episode 54, and an old cleric in
Episode 73. The structure of the other late imrama is quite as loose
as that of Hui Corra, and it is useless to apply the Vergilian tests.1
To determine whether or not there is in Maelduin the close imi-
tation of structure assumed by Zimmer it is necessary to compare
the whole trend of events in the two stories. The unlike parts are
1 C. Wahlund (Brendans Meerfahrt [Upsala, 1900], p. xxvii), apparently adopting
Zimmer's view concerning possible Vergilian inspiration for the imrama, regards the
visit to the priest Ende, the island of smiths, and the death of the third monk in
Navigatio Brendani as reminiscences of the Aeneid (cf. Zimmer's points 1, 4, and 5).
They can scarcely be more than reminiscences of Maelduin, however, and are so regarded
by some scholars (Zimmer, ZFDA, XXXIII, 321 ; Boser, Romania, XXII, 582-83). In
any event, these parallels seem inadequate for proving conscious imitation of the Aeneid
by the author of the Navigatio.
When some centuries later the author of the "Irish Aeneid" (ed. Calder, Irish
Texts Society, VI [1903, printed 1907]), wrote the version of Vergil's poem preserved in
the Book of Ballymote (ca. 1400), his reaction on the Aeneid material was totally differ-
ent from that assumed by Zimmer for the author of Maelduin. He took gfeat liberties
with the structure of the poem (Book iii is placed before Book i), and actually omitted
Dido's account of her previous history, the passage which Zimmer thinks so impressed
the author of Maelduin that under its influence he made a Dido out of a Celtic fairy
mistress. Cf. T. H. Williams, C.Z., II (1888-89), 419-72.
467
84 WILLIAM FLINT THKALL
scarcely less eloquent than the alleged like parts in the consideration
of structural similarities. The following summary of Vergil's
account of Aeneas, with Zimmer's " parallels" indicated, will per-
haps aid in estimating the significance of Zimmer's argument.
AENEID
BOOK III
After the destruction of Troy Aeneas and his companions, under the
guidance of the gods, determine to seek distant retreats, and hoist sails at
the command of Anchises. They are uncertain whither the Fates will them
to go. They are carried to Thrace.
Maeld. Ep. 11. — When Aeneas would build his city, blood flows from a
tree and the voice of Polydorus speaks, reciting his murder at the hands of
the Thracians and warning Aeneas to flee.
Maeld. Introd. — The hero next reaches Delos, governed by King Anius,
a priest of Apollo. In answer to prayer, Apollo bids Aeneas search out his
ancient mother-soil, where his descendants shall enjoy a universal kingdom.
Anchises thinks Crete is meant by the oracle;
Thither Aeneas sails, and builds a city. But a plague wastes his people.
In a vision Aeneas hears from his household gods that Italy, not Crete, was
meant by Apollo. Cassandra's prophecy is recalled. After enduring a
three-day storm, Aeneas is driven to the Strophades, where his men offer
violence to the attacking Harpies, and Celaeno predicts that the Trojans in
famine shall eat their own tables. Actium is visited, where Trojan games
are celebrated by the voyagers.
Maeld. Ep. 19. — At Buthrotum Aeneas meets Andromache and Helenus.
The latter, a prophet of Apollo, tells the hero he must seek the farther shore
of Italy, avoid Scylla and Charybdis, appease Juno, and visit the Cumaean
sibyl.
Maeld. Ep. 21. — The next morning the Trojans salute Italy, cruise past
Italian towns and Mt. Etna, and after a stormy night reach the coasts of the
Cyclops, where Achaemenides, the comrade of Ulyssses, in piteous plight
tells the tale of Ulysses and Polyphemus, and begs mercy of the Trojans.
Polyphemus is seen. In terror Aeneas rescues Achaemenides and sails
southward, escaping the throng of giants who gather on the shore.
Maeld. Ep. 15. — Skirting the Sicilian coast, Aeneas comes to Drepanum,
where Anchises dies. Aeneas ceases his narration.
BOOK IV
Maeld. Ep. 28 (compare Book iv entire). — Queen Dido conceives a deep
passion for Aeneas and, encouraged by her sister Anna, strives to get the
gods to approve the breaking of her vow. Juno, active in Dido's behalf,
with Venus' aid brings Aeneas and Dido together in a cave during a storm.
468
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 85
Dido proclaims her marriage. Fame spreads abroad the disgrace of the
queen. The jealous King larbas prays to Jove for revenge. Mercury
delivers to Aeneas Jove's command that the Trojans leave Carthage. Aeneas
secretly prepares to go, but Dido divines his purpose and, inflamed to mad-
ness, reproaches the hero and begs him to remain. Aeneas pleads the
command of Jove. Dido in scorn vows vengeance. Aeneas continues prepa-
rations for departure. Dido's mood changes, and she sends Anna to Aeneas
to beg him to remain, at least for a time. Dido longs for death, and, under
pretence of resorting to magic, prepares a funeral pile on the shore. Warned
by Mercury, Aeneas suddenly sets sail. Dido descries the retreating fleet
and wildly orders her people to prepare to pursue the Trojans. Realizing the
madness of the project, she falls into a rage, regretting that she had not
taken the life of Aeneas while he was in her power. She prays that Carthage
may be the scourge and foe of Italy, and seeks her bed to fall upon her sword.
Juno sends Iris to cut the thread that holds soul and body together.
BOOK v
Maeld. Ep. 30. — The Trojans see from their ships the flames of Dido's
funeral pyre. A storm compels Aeneas to turn aside to Sicily. Here he
is hospitably entertained by his countryman Acestes. Aeneas celebrates
funeral games on the anniversary of the death of Anchises. As they wor-
ship, a beautiful snake glides harmlessly over the altar. It is perhaps the
familiar spirit of Anchises. The games are then celebrated: boat race,
foot race, boxing match, archery, and the game of Troy. The Trojan
women, inspired by Juno with dissatisfaction, set fire to the ships. Jove
sends rain to save the fleet.
By the advice of Nautes the disheartened Aeneas resolves to leave the
old and faint-hearted in Sicily. The spirit of Anchises in a vision gives
similar advice and tells the hero to visit him in Elysium. Segesta is founded
and a temple to Venus erected. The women, penitent, sorrow on being left
behind. In response to Venus' prayer, Neptune promises safety to all
but one.
Maeld. Ep. 31. — On the voyage the god of sleep brings drowsiness upon
the pilot Palinurus, who falls into the sea. In the morning Aeneas himself
turns pilot.
Obviously the structural similarity of the two accounts as wholes
is not striking. A closer resemblance, involving a larger number of
parallels, would seem necessary to give color to Zimmer's hypothesis.
Moreover, the closeness of the parallels themselves (points 1, 3,
4, and 5) must be questioned.
1. Aeneas' consultation of the oracle and Maelduin's resort to
the druid present situations which are entirely dissimilar. Aeneas
86 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
does not consult the oracle before his trip; he has been on his journey
for some months, has attempted to establish his seat in Thrace, and
has taken the second lap of his sea journey before he reaches the
island where he consults the oracle. Moreover, Aeneas makes no
voluntary trip to get into touch with a supernatural agency. He is
driven by the winds upon an island, and finds there a shrine of Apollo.
Quite naturally he seeks light. Maelduin's visit to Nuca, on the con-
trary, is voluntary and is made before the beginning of the sea jour-
ney. The requests of the two heroes are totally different. Aeneas
prays for help in establishing a lasting home, and asks for guidance
in achieving his destiny. Maelduin, who plans a voyage of ven-
geance and desires to know where to find his father's murderer, fails
to make any inquiry concerning the large issues of his enterprise;
he merely secures from the druid a charm and information concern-
ing the building of a boat, the date for starting, and the number of
companions to take.
Furthermore, a more likely source of the incident is suggested by
the fact that resort to druids for aid and for prophetic information is
not infrequent in Irish traditional literature. In Tain Bo Cuailnge,1
"The Cattle Raid of Cooley," the druid Cathbad is consulted as to
the omens of the day. In the same story the "poets and druids"
cause the troop of Medb to wait a fortnight for a good omen before
starting out on their expedition.2 In Forbais Droma Damhghaire?
"The Siege of Drom Damhghaire," Cormac consults druids on the
probable success of an expedition into Munster. The druids tell
him the best methods of defeating the enemy. Druidic aid is also
sought in Tochmarc Etdinef in Tairired na nDessi,5 "Expulsion of
the Dessi," in Cath Maighe Mucraimhe* "The Battle of Magh
Mucrime," and in other old stories. There is also an example in
Coir Anmann,7 "The Fitness of Names." In the shorter Fled
Brier end* (Fled Brier end ocus Loinges mac n-Duil Dermait, "The
1 Trans. L. W. Faraday (London, 1904), p. 26.
2 Ibid., p. 2.
» O'Ourry, Manuscript Materials (Dublin, 1878), pp. 271-72.
« Leahy, Heroic Romances, I, 7 ft.
•• Kuno Meyer, Y Cymmrodor, XIV (1901), 101 ff.
• R.C., XIII (1893), 426 ff.
i Irische Texte, III. 303.
s Trans. Windisch, Irische Texte, II, 1, 196.
470
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 87
Feast of Bricriu and the Exile of the Sons of Doel Dermait")>
Cuchullin is offered a sea charm such as Maelduin seems to have
sought from the druid Nuca. Moreover, he is about to take
and does take a successful voyage to a land of wonders. Clearly
there is no necessity for supposing a foreign source for the notion of
Maelduin's resort to the druid.
3. That Aeneas and Maelduin meet countrymen at corresponding
stages of their journeys may be entirely accidental. No very peculiar
or similar situations are involved. In a story of wanderings at sea,
the meeting of someone from home is a simple, natural device which
any story-teller might use, its narrative function being to remind the
reader or hearer of the hero's connection with a real, non-romantic
world. The device is particularly fitting in Maelduin, as the hero is
finally to be brought back to Ireland. All the countrymen are
clerics who have undergone some outstanding religious experience.
That they enact the role of prophets needs no recourse to classical
paganism for an explanation. In the eighth century, the probable
period of Maelduin, stories of the experiences of sea anchorites, based
probably upon fact,1 had long been current.
If the encountering of countrymen, moreover, is included in
Maelduin in imitation of the Aeneid, and the instances carefully
placed at corresponding stages of the hero's progress, how are we to
explain Maelduin's meeting with the countryman in Episode 33, for
which Zimmer could find no suggestion of a parallel in the journey of
Aeneas? According to Zimmer's hypothesis, we are compelled to
regard two of the three meetings with countrymen as significant, and
one as not significant. It is difficult to look with favor on such an
arbitrary argumentative procedure as this.
4. As Zimmer recognizes, his argument on this point involves
the assumption that the author of Maelduin, though influenced
directly by the Aeneid in including the episode of the giant smiths and
in determining its place in the story, drew upon his knowledge of
Homer for the details of the incident. Two essential points in the
1 Schirmer (op. cit., p. 21, n. 4) and Zimmer touch on this matter and quote Dicuil,
De Mensura Terrarum (825 A.D.), "Sunt aliae insulae multae in septentriontli Britanniae
oceano; duorum dierum ac noctium recta navigatione, plenis velis, assiduo feliciter
vento, adiri queunt .... in quibus, in centum ferine annis, eremitae ex nostra Scotia
navigantes habitaverunt." See also Plummer, op. cit., I, cxxii.
471
88 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
parallel, the throwing of rocks and the conception of the Cyclops as
blind, must have come, not from Vergil, but from the Odyssey ix.
107 ff. and 539 ff.
Zimmer says that a careful reading of the Irish account reveals
the fact that the chief smith is conceived of as blind, a circumstance
which makes the parallel seem much closer. An analysis of the
incident makes this inference seem groundless :
The voyagers hear a smiting of anvils. They hear Smith Number 1
ask Smith Number 2, "Are they close at hand?" Number 2 answers,
"Yea." Smith Number 3 says, "Who are these ye say are coming here?"
Number 2 describes the strangers. Then the smith at the forge, who is
apparently the leader (probably Number 1, possibly Number 3), asks, "Are
they now near the harbour?" Number 2, this time referred to as the
"watchman," replies that they do not seem to be drawing nearer. Again
the questioner at the forge inquires, "What are they doing now?" "I
think," says the "lookout man," "that they are running away." The
smith at the forge now steps forth and casts a mass of molten metal after
the boat. The cast falls short, and the strangers continue successfully their
retreat, with the stern of their boat turned out to sea.
There is no necessity for supposing this chief smith to be blind.
Number 2 is quite plainly a regular sentinel, and the other smiths,
including the chief smith, are evidently so placed that they cannot
see the boat. The chief smith is at work at his forge, perhaps hidden
behind a rock or in a cave (he is said to "come forth" from the forge
before making the cast), and having been made aware of the approach
of the strangers he interrogates his lookout man, from time to time,
as to their movements. If the Irish author thought of this smith
as blind, it is strange that he did not so describe him and that he
made no use of the motive. Also it seems hardly likely — though it
is possible, as the giant is an Otherworld giant — that the author
would conceive of the smith as compelled by blindness to make
inquiries concerning the strangers' position, and yet be able to hurl
his missile with almost deadly aim. Fairy giants, of course, appear
elsewhere in Celtic literature.1
i In the older stories examples are: Fled Bricrend (ITS, II, 47 flf.) ; Tochmarc Emire,
"The Wooing of Emere" (Hull, Cuchullin Saga, 81 [Fomori]); and the shorter Fled
Bricrend (island-inhabiting giants). In Fenian literature giants are quite numerous: in
the Gilla Decair (trans. O'Grady, Silva Gadelica, II, 292 ft.) there is an oversea giant;
in Find and the Phantoms (R.C., VII [1886], 297) there is a hostile Otherworld giant.
See also Agallamh na Sendrach, Silva Gadelica, II, 103 flf.
472
VERGIL'S "AENEID" AND THE IRISH "!MRAMA" 89
5. Zimmer's effort to force a parallel between the deaths of Pali-
nurus and Maelduin's third foster-brother leads him into what is
perhaps the most fantastic of all his arguments. In order to appre-
ciate fully the gratuitous ingenuity of Zimmer's hypothesis, one must
remember that Zimmer regards the lost original version of Hui Corra
as older than Maelduin and composed, like Maelduin, under the
influence of the Aeneid. He does not regard the two stories as written
by the same author. The creator of Maelduin then is not the pioneer
in devising an Irish imitation of the Aeneid; he is merely attempting
to out- Vergil the earlier Irish Vergil. His predecessor had inter-
preted the death of Palinurus as due to the addition of Achaemenides
to the crew. The author of Maelduin, accepting this stupid inter-
pretation of Vergil,1 resolves to improve on the idea by introducing
three additional men, and finds justification in the commonly
admired Aeneid by resorting to the incidents of the death of Anchises
and the Polydorus-bleeding-tree affair! All this in spite of the fact
that Anchises was a member of the original crew, and that Poly-
dorus never belonged to the crew at all, but was in fact dead before
Aeneas began his journey. But the author of Maelduin is not to be
daunted by these incongruities. He puzzles out a justification by
thinking of Polydorus as dying, so to speak, a second time. Surely
it is unnecessary to resort to such a theory of composition to explain
so simple an amplification of the story as the addition of three mem-
bers of the crew, destined as they are to be lost because of the vio-
lation of the taboo, instead of the addition of a single member.2
The testimony of the poem itself on the point of authorship
would seem to be of little value at present in determining the origin
1 1 find- nothing in Vergil to warrant the supposition that the death of Palinurus was
a necessary consequence of the taking on of Achaemenides. Neptune takes the life as
an atonement, in order to preserve the lives of the rest:
"Unus erit tantum, amiss urn quern gurgite quaeres;
Unum pro multis dabitur caput." [Aeneid v. 814-15.)
Even admitting this forced interpretation, however, there is no true parallel to Hui Corra,
because in the latter, as in the corresponding incidents in Maelduin, the additional voyager
is himself the one to die.
2 The especial fondness of the Celts for triads is in itself a sufficient explanation, if
coupled with a desire to expand a good story. See the collection of Irish triads, ed. and
trans. Kuno Meyer, Royal Irish Academy, Todd Lecture Series, XIII (Dublin, 1906).
See also the collection of Welsh triads in J. Loth, Lea Mabinogion, II (Paris, 1913), 223 fl.
and ibid., I, Intr., 76-77. In Maelduin itself the visits to successive islandf are nearly
all separated by "three days and nights." There are beds for "every three" in Eps. 6
and 17. In Bran the crew is divided into three companies to each of which Bran
assigns a leader. One of these leaders is a foster-brother of the hero.
473
90 WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
of Maelduin. The closing sentence of the story, "Now Aed the
Fair, chief sage of Ireland, arranged this story as it standeth here,
etc.," occurs only in the youngest of the four manuscript sources,
Egerton 1782, which, according to Stokes, is not earlier than the
fifteenth century.1 Stokes2 and Zimmer3 find trace of but one
Aed Finn in the annals. This man was chief of the Dal Riata, died
in 771, and was "more probably given," says Stokes, "to making
raids and beheading his foes than to composing imaginative
literature."
It appears natural to regard the imram as an outgrowth of native
narrative materials and forms, wrought into its typical structural
form through natural processes by native story-tellers who embel-
lished their tales from time to time, drawing new material from any
sources that presented themselves. In a later paper I hope to
present evidence of a direct nature in support of this hypothesis.
WILLIAM FLINT THRALL
McKENDREE COLLEGE
i R.C., IX. 448. * Ibid., p. 447. « ZFDA, XXXIII, 290-92.
474
UNE PREDICTION INfiDITE SUR L'AVENIR DE LA
LANGUE DES ETATS-UNIS (ROLAND DE LA
PLATlfiRE, 1789)
Dans une e"tude sur Funiversalite" de la langue frangaise au
XVIII6 siecle1 j 'ai indique* en passant un memoire manuscrit, inte*res-
sant par sa date et par quelques-unes de ses provisions.2 Le futur
ministre Roland — le mari de Mme Roland — alors avocat a Lyon3 et
membre de l'Acade*mie de cette ville, aura sans doute etc" tente de
repondre a la question mise au concours, en 1781, par l'Acade*mie de
Berlin, sur 1'universalite* de la langue frangaise. Mais, amen6 a
des conclusions particulieres par son enthousiasme politique pour les
Ame'ricains affranchis, il se sera content^ de faire servir son me*moire,
en 1789, & une "communication" acade"mique.
Apres avoir pose en principe que "les causes qui semblent devoir
le plus concourir a rendre une langue universelle resident, sans doute,
dans Fe'tat de cette langue, et dans celui de la nation qui la parle,"
Roland examine dans quelle mesure les langues et les peuples de
TantiquitS et des temps modernes re"pondent a cette double condition.
Car "la perfection d'une langue et la preponderance du peuple qui
1'emploie, renferment les donne"es n4cessaires & son universality, ou
resolvent le probl&me de son extension. Ces deux causes sont
indispensables: 1'une sans Pautre est insuffisante."
Aucune des langues et des nations modernes, ni 1'Italie, ni
1'Espagne et le Portugal, ni FAllemagne, ni me'me la France, ne
semble a Roland r6unir les doubles qualites dont d^pendra 1'univer-
salite dans 1'avenir. L'anglais lui parait avoir les me"rites intrin-
seques du grec ancien, mais les de*fauts du peuple anglais, a son gre,
sont tels que 1'extension de la langue sera empe'chee par les insuffi-
sances de la nation. C'est alors qu'il arrive aux Etats-Unis, qui
parlent la meme langue — avec des quality's sociales et morales
autrement aimables et riches d'avenir:
Les habitants des Etats-Unis, aussi fiers et non moins braves que les
Anglais, aussi actif s et non moins industrieux, plus exerce*s par les malheurs,
1 Etudes d'histoire litteraire, le sSrie, Paris, 1907. 0
2 BibliothSque du Palais Saint-Pierre a Lyon, Ms. de I'AcadSmie de Lyon; n? 151 du
catal.|Molinier, fol. 175.
» En r6alit6 les Roland passaient la plus grande partie de TannSe au Clos de la
Plati6re. Cf. les Mtmoires de Mme Roland (6d. Perroud; Paris, 1905), t. II, p. 256.
475] 91 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, December, 1917
92 FERNAND BALDENSPERGEE
plus travaille"s par les besoins, sont plus humains, plus ge*ne*reux, plus
tolerants; toutes choses propres a faire gouter les opinions, adopter les usages
et parler la langue d'un tel peuple. Le sensible auteur des Lettres d'un
cultivateur ame'ricain1 nous le fait de"j& bien juger, lorsqu'il nous deVeloppe
les sages principes de la politique dans cette heureuse contre*e, lorsqu'il nous
de"peint la paix des families, 1' union des citoyens inde"pendants de toute
opinion, et 1'affluence des Strangers de tous les pays, venant chercher, sur
cette terre nouvelle, la liberte", la protection, les secours fraternels et 1'active
bienveillance qu'on est toujours certain d'y trouver. Places pour e"tendre leur
commerce avec autant d'avantages que de facilite* dans toutes les parties de
1'ancien monde, les Americains des Etats-Unis ne seront etrangers pour
aucun peuple, ils fraternisent avec 1'univers. Les lumieres et les connais-
sances de tous les siecles ne les portent point a condamner avec orgueil
quiconque ne partage pas leur savoir; ils envisagent tous les hommes sous
le rapport commun qui les lie: le n&gre grossier, 1'indien superstitieux,
trouvent en eux la meme indulgence qu'ils ont pour les sauvages ignorants,
leurs voisins; pour les jaloux europe*ens, leurs allies.
La douceur de leur gouvernement en fait des patriotes aussi ze"le*s que le
furent jamais les plus celebres republicains; celle de leur principes les rend,
dans leur bienveillance universelle, semblables aux plus parfaits cosmopolites,
et leur situation doit en faire les commeryants les plus puissants. Que de
moyens de s'elever, de s'£tendre, de multiplier ses relations et de propager
1'usage de sa langue! Le seul charme de leur philosophic, si propre a gagner
les cceurs, semble preparer le triomphe de leurs opinions et devoir ranger un
jour bien des peuples sous leur religion consolante.
.... II me semble que la langue d'une telle nation sera un jour la
langue universelle.
Roland annonce d'ailleurs que "ce rapide apergu n'est que
1'esquisse d'un ouvrage susceptible de beaucoup de recherches et
d'un grand developpement." Sans doute les evenements auxquels
il n'allait point tarder a etre mele" Font-ils empech^ de donner suite
a ce projet. Telles qu'elles ^taient exprimees dans le memoire de
Lyon, sous leur forme emphatique et avec leur optimisme facile, les
idees de Roland ont leur interet: elles permettent en tout cas de
mesurer quelle e"tait, au lendemain de Faffranchissement am^ricain
et a la veille de notre Revolution, la confiance placee dans la jeune
d&nocratie d'outre-mer par un des hommes qui devait jouer un role
dans notre lutte pour la liberte politique.
FERNAND BALDENSPERGER,
Professeur d la Sorbonne
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
1 II s'agit du livre de J. Cr&vecoeur, A Farmer's Letters in Pennsylvania, London, 1782,
qui avait 6t6 traduit en 1784. Cf. Julia P. Mitchell, St. Jean de Crevecceur, New York,
1916.
476
A CLASSIFICATION FOR FABLES, BASED ON THE COL-
LECTION OF MARIE DE FRANCE
Schemes of classification for the fable are less numerous than
definitions of the fable, but they are certainly not few. A review
of several of the more important will reveal a general failure to base
classification on any essential characteristic — division is made with
respect to something superficial or remote. The main function of
classification in the present case would seem to be the assistance it
would offer in Conceiving clearly the essential nature of the type
and in testing and elaborating principles laid down in the definition.
I venture to repeat a definition arrived at in an earlier article:1
a fable is a short tale, obviously false, devised to impress, by the
symbolic representation of human types, lessons of expediency and
morality.
Division between genre and genre is usually represented by a strip
of debatable land, and varieties within any particular type must, to
any but the most superficial classification, be even more blurred at
the boundaries. The different varieties are often to be considered
as stations on a line of variation between two extremes rather than as
isolated categories. It is solely with the intention of marking out for
the fable more clearly than I have marked out in my definition the
" curve" of this line, by indicating certain determining dots, that I
offer one more scheme for classification. I am very certain that
with respect to assignment among the subdivisions of the main classes,
two people, in the case of some fables, would hardly agree. On the
other hand, that these substations do exist between the main stations
on the line is apparent, and some fables are nearer one and some
nearer another.
The more important existing classifications can be quickly set
forth. Aphthonius (300 A.D.) made a division on the basis of the
kind of actors appearing in the fable, distinguishing fables employing
men, those in which unintelligent creatures appeared, and those in
which both were to be found. This scheme formed the basis for
» "The Fable and Kindred Forms," Jour, of Eng. and Germ. Phil., XIV, 519-29.
477] 93 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, December, 1917
94 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
Wolff and eventually Lessing.1 Herder divided into theoretische oder
Ver stand bildende, i.e., those designed to exercise the reason; sittliche,
those designed to impress rules for the will; and Schicksalsfabeln,
those designed to show the force of a chain of circumstances, fate, or
chance, a classification based exclusively on purpose, irrespective
of method.2 Beyer offers "serious" and "humorous," and Gotschall
epigrammatische and humoristische, a mere general distinction between
the fables of Aesop and those of La Fontaine.3 Lessing first offers
einfache and zuzammengesetzte, the latter consisting of fables followed
by a second narrative applying the law of the fable by means of
human actors.4 Later he presents as his proper classification that of
Aphthonius, modified by Wolff, and used with new meanings attached
to the terms employed.
According to this classification, fables are to be divided into the
verniinftige, the sittliche, and the vermischte. These terms Lessing
defines respectively as indicating (1) those fables which are possible
and unconditioned by any necessary assumption; (2) those to which
possibility can be accredited only after some preliminary assumption
has been made; and (3) those mingling elements of both the pre-
ceding classes. Under the second heading he has two subdivisions:
the mythische, which introduce unreal personages, and the hyper-
physische, in which the characters are real, but have heightened prop-
erties. Finally, under the vermischte, he has the vernunftig mythische,
or part unconditioned, part mythical; the vernunftig hyperphysische,
or part unconditioned, part heightened in characters; and the hyper-
physische mythische, or those mingling characters heightened and
mythical.
The first category, the unconditioned, presents the same difficulty
as Lessing's definition of the fable : it admits into the type illustrative
tales which are not fables. In general, however, this is the most
philosophical classification : it attempts to distinguish on the basis of
what Lessing considers the essential for effectiveness, the fable's real
1 Lessing, Fabeln, drei BUcher, nebst Abhandlungen mil dieser Dichtungsart verwandten
Inhalts, 1759, in S&mmt. Schrift., V, 438.
2 L. Hirsch, Die Fabel (Cothen, 1894), p. 12.
a Ibid.
* Lessing, loc. cit.
478
A CLASSIFICATION FOR FABLES
95
or apparent possibility. With this in view, Lessing classifies accord-
ing to the assumptions necessary, a process which comes in the end to
a division by kinds of actors, after all. The nature of the actor or
symbol used, is, however, a matter of the least significance in the
fable, provided that it be suitable to the object in view. What
Lessing attempted and, as it seems to me, failed to accomplish, owing
to a faulty definition and a misconception of allegory, must be done,
however, if we are to arrive at a satisfactory scheme. It is neces-
sary to classify according to the essential nature of the fable.1
The core of the fable, as I have previously attempted to show, is
that it aims to fix certain truths in the minds of its readers by alle-
gorical representation. However much the different varieties of the
fable blend, one thing is clear — three large groups can be discerned:
(1) fables in which the actors, some or all (with the setting), and the
action are both symbolic ; (2) those in which only the actors (with the
setting) are symbolic, while the action is that of typical human
beings; and (3) those in which only the action is symbolic, while the
actors consist of typical human beings.
Before refining on this scheme let me put it concretely. I shall
choose my illustrations as far as possible from the fables of Marie de
France,2 and later make application of the proposed scheme of classi-
fication to her collection. It is broad enough in its range, with one
exception to be noticed later, to serve this purpose very well.
Take, for example, the fifth fable, "De cane et umbra." This
tale, by reason of its closeness to nature, may be considered a mere
illustrative tale from nature, or it may be considered a fable, accord-
ing as the reader fails to identify the actor in it with a human type
and takes it literally, or as he actually interprets it in human terms.
In tales of this sort the fable makes its closest approach to literature
of non-allegorical nature analogy.3 When, however, it is considered
a fable, it is not merely the actor that must be interpreted. A dog
crosses a bridge with a cheese in his mouth. He sees the shadow of
the cheese reflected in the stream below. Plunge! Snap! and he is
1 It will not be necessary to pause on other equally unsatisfactory classifications, like
those of Addison (Spectator, 183) or Hawkesworth (Adventurer, 18).
* Die Fabeln der Marie de France (ed. E. Mall and K. Warnke [
Halle, 1898).
« Jour, of Eng. and Germ. Phil., XIV, 524.
479
Bib. norm., VI],
96 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
struggling empty-mouthed to shore, substance and shadow vanished
in the stream. Say that the dog is the greedy man, the cheese a
symbol of that which he already has, the shadow an unattainable
but coveted object, and so on; this still leaves the story incoherent.
We must also translate the acts of plunging, snapping, and dropping
into terms of human action. It is therefore apparent that in fables
of this sort both actors (with setting) and action are symbolic, and only
by a translation of both (subconscious, of course, and not mechanical,
as in the present analysis) do we arrive at the typical human story
underneath, which in reality presents the lesson.
In fables of the first main group the action is that natural to the
symbols and totally different in detail from that which it symbolizes.
In the second large division, however, the action is not to be derived
from any scene in natural life. While the actors preserve their dis-
tinctly symbolic form, the action is that of the typical human beings
they represent, more or less adapted, it is true, to the requirements of these
symbols, but still in motive and accomplishment clearly human.
Take, for example, to illustrate this group in the large, the
sixty-seventh fable of Marie, "De corvo pennas pavonis inveniente."
A crow, finding some peacock feathers and despising herself because
less beautiful than the other birds, pulls out her own plumage and
decks herself in that which she has found. Fine feathers do not
make fine birds, however, and her manners betray her. The real
peacocks beat her with their wings. Then she would like to be a
simple crow again, but now they all shun her, or chase and beat her.
This action finds no counterpart in nature, but is fashioned to repre-
sent, with more or less exactitude, the typical conduct of many a
vain, dishonest person, ranging all the way from the wearing of
apparel belonging to another, or not paid for, to the more metaphori-
cally suggested stealing of another's honors. In any case, it is human
action, to a large extent, which is set forth — adapted, however, to
the nature of the symbols. The crow must pull out her own feathers
(an act at least possible to the crow) before she puts on the peacock's
glory (an act impossible to the crow, but, translated, the proper thing
for the human actor to do). This main division is the largest.
To illustrate the third main division, it is necessary to go outside
the collection of Marie, which has not replaced the twenty-nine fables
480
A CLASSIFCIATION FOR FABLES 97
of Phaedrus introducing men (cast out by the Primitive Romulus,
to which she ultimately goes back) by any sufficiently clear fables of
this sort. Here the actors are typical human figures, but the action is
symbolic. There are certain tales of men whose conduct is too pre-
posterous to be accepted literally, which readily suggest a very
different type of action and give the lesson for it. Take for example
this fable of Aesop:
A Man and his Son were once going with their Donkey to market. As
they were walking along by its side a countryman passed them and said:
"You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon ?"
So the Man put the Boy on the Donkey and they went on their way.
But soon they passed a group of men, one of whom said: "See that lazy
youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides."
So the Man ordered his Boy to get off, and got on himself. But they
hadn't gone far when they passed two women, one of whom said to the
other: "Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along."
Well, the Man didn't know what to do, but at last he took his Boy up
before him on the Donkey. By this time they had come to the town, and
the passers-by began to jeer and point at them. The Man stopped and
asked what they were scoffing at. The men said: "Aren't you ashamed of
yourself for over-loading that poor Donkey of yours — you and your hulking
son?"
The Man and Boy got off and tried to think what to do. They thought
and they thought, till at last they cut down a pole, tied the Donkey's feet
to it, and raised the pole and the Donkey to their shoulders. They went
along amid the laughter of all who met them till they came to Market
Bridge, when the Donkey, getting one of his feet loose, kicked out and
caused the Boy to drop his end of the pole. In the struggle the Donkey
fell over the bridge, and his fore-feet being tied together, he was drowned.
"That will teach you," said an old man who had followed them:
"Please all, and you will please none."1
Here is a "noodle" story2 moralized. As the first group brought
the fable nearest to a mere analogy in nature, so this group brings it
nearest to the simple, illustrative human tale. This last group of
fables can be considered such only when the reader actually substi-
tutes for the preposterous or incredible action of the tale the plausible
and typical action it suggests, which may be represented in the
I
i J. Jacobs, The Fables of Aesop, Selected (London, 1894), p. 149.
* W. A. Clouston, The Book of Noodles (London, 1903).
481
98 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
present case by supposing this same "noodle" of a farmer to be a
political candidate publishing promises equally favorable to two
opposing factions.
There are two ways of looking at such a tale, just as there were
for those of the first group. It may be considered as merely the
narrative of a typical act exaggerated until it becomes a reductio ad
absurdwn of the principle involved, in which case the action is still
typical and the tale no fable; or it may be treated as not being in-
tended literally, in which case it becomes in a way allegorical and
consequently a fable. In different settings and with different people
it would be treated variously. As has been said, this class represents
the shading off of the fable into the non-fable on the one extreme, as
the first did on the other.
It will now be necessary to see how these three main divisions
subdivide and shade off into each other.
a) Among all the fables of Marie there are only two tales which,
because they tell a credible nature story, could be taken literally as
illustrative examples. Such tales in fable collections are far out-
numbered by clear-cut fables. The two fables in question are the
fifth, already cited, and the sixty-third, "De equo et agro," that
very short narrative of the horse which, seeing the grass in the field,
but not the hedge inclosing it, leaped, and was staked.
It seems fitting to include in this main division two more sub-
groups which show the form represented above shading off into
the second main group. These still have at bottom an incident in
nature which might be taken literally; but they already begin to
attribute human characteristics to irrational creatures, characteristics
tending to that identification necessary for allegory.
b) Incidents which could have their germ in true observation of
nature, but which are supplemented by the imputation to irrational
creatures of the power to say what a rational creature so placed might be
expected to think or say. This closely relates the speaker with a
definite human type. There are sixteen fables in this class, for
which brief illustrations will serve. First, the well-known fable
"De gallo et gemma" (Marie, I) : here the dunghill cock, looking for
482
A CLASSIFICATION FOB FABLES 99
food, finds a pearl and scorns it in round words. Another is "De
vipera et campo" (LXXXII): a serpent passes through the midst
of a field, and the field cries out: "Look you! Don't take any of me
away." Another is " De femina et gallina" (CII) : a woman watches
her hen scratching for food. For love, she offers it a full measure
every day, that it may cease from toil The hen responds that if she
gave it a half-bushel, it would not leave off seeking more according to
its nature and custom. "The Belly and the Members" (XXVII) is
another well-known example.1
c) The last subdivision of this group goes beyond the preceding
in its divergence from the simple nature story. Here are narratives
which have as their germ the observation of actual facts in nature, as
the peculiarity of some animal (some of the pourquoi stories belong
here, some have developed further) or the power of some natural
object, but which are elaborated and amplified by the imagination and
carried farther from nature, nearer to the type.
Such a fable is "De simia et vulpe" (XXVIII): an ape asks a
fox whom he meets to give him a bit of his tail. He has more than
he needs and the young apes have none. "Surely," said the fox, "I
shall not, by my tail, great as it is, exalt your children into another
kingdom or race, even if it were so great that I could not drag it."
Another fable of the same class is "De sole nubente" (VI): the sun
wishing to wed, all creatures appeal to Destiny, who, after hearing
one of them argue that if the sun be reinforced everything will be
scorched, forbids the bans. Still another is the pathetic tale of the
poor little dunghill beetle ("De scarabaeo," LXXIV), who saw with
envious eyes how the eagle flew. In his pride, he says to the other
beetles that the "sepande" has done them an injustice. The eagle's
voice is no higher than his, and the beetle's body is as shiny, though
the eagle is so large. He begins to wish never to enter his dunghill
again. He wants to live with "the other birds." He begins to sing
very badly. He takes a leap after the eagle. Before he has gone
very far he is dazed with fright. He can mount no higher, nor get
back to his dunghill. He is hungry. He complains. Little cares
he if the birds hear him, or if any of them mock him, any m<?re than
i Also Nos. XX, XXIV, XXVII, XXXVIII, XL, XLIX, LIX, LXXIX, LXXXIV,
XC, XCI, XCVII.
483
100 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
did the fox, when the beasts held him base; little he cares if one hold
him worm or bird, but only that he may enter once more the dung of
the horse, for he is hungry.1
II
These last two subdivisions have brought us a long way toward
Group II, that in which the action is that of typical human beings, more
or less adapted to the symbols employed. Here identification with the
type becomes more and more complete, until the figures are little
more than men in masquerade, as in the last subdivision of the group.
a) Here the action is not to be traced to any scene in nature, but
is clearly typical human action translated or adapted into terms of the
symbols. A good illustration of this division is the fable " De corvo et
vulpe" (XIII): a crow steals a cheese from an open window. A
fox, loving this delicacy, observes the bird and sighs to himself:
•" What a lovely bird ! Can she sing ? " The bird attempts the proof,
whereupon the fox's interest in music and crow vanishes, together
with the cheese. Here is a young Lothario indeed, flattering and
ogling, but after all angling for a cheese and adapting his flattery to
the particular failing of the symbol. The mere fact that a veritable
Lothario might flatter with the same query makes the identification
fortuitously the closer. Here, too, belongs the tale "De simia et
prole eius" (LI): a mother ape fondly shows her infant to various
•animals, who make fun of its ugliness. The bear, however, admires
It, asks to hold it, to kiss it, and — quickly devours it. Another
familiar illustration is that of the ass who would play the lap dog
(XV).2
b) The next subdivision differs only in the degree in which the
adaptation to the symbols is carried out. Here we have clearly
typical action, partly adapted to the requirements of the symbols, but
mingled with details appropriate only to human beings. Here, for
i Other clear cases: XVI, XXXI, LXXXV, XCVI, XCVIII. No. XXIII comes
in here, although the detail of the assembling of the beasts tends to take it into one of
the subdivisions of Group II.
* Also Nos. VIII, XVII, XVIII, XXII, XXVI, XXX, XXXIII, XXXV, XXXVII,
LXVI, LXXIII, LXXV, LXXX, XCII, XCVIII. "De vulpe et gallo" (LX), familiar
through "The Nonnes Preestes Tale," is peculiar in that it comprises a combination of
two actions and two morals. " De vulpe et umbra lunae" (LVIII) is a very good animal
J' noodle" story on the " cheese-raking " motive, but made into a passable fable.
484
A CLASSIFICATION FOR FABLES 101
instance, we find an established court, and court dignities, the animals
assembled in parliaments, and the use of details appropriate only to
the life of man — doors, bread, letters, etc.
Take, for example, the fable of the "Fox and the Dove" ("De
vulpe et columba," LXI) : a fox sees a dove sitting aloft and invites
it to come down into a more sheltered place — by him. The dove
need not fear, for the king has sent a letter to the assembled beasts
commanding universal peace. The dove agrees to descend, but
mentions casually that it sees two knights with dogs approaching.
The fox thinks it best to take to the woods: "The dogs may not
have heard the command."1 Or the "Wolf and the Crane" ("De
lupo et grue," VII) may be taken. A wolf gets a bone in his throat.
Of all the birds called together, only the crane can help. She performs
the operation, but receives instead of the promised recompense only
the injunction to be thankful she escaped with her life. Another is
"De formica et cicada" (XXXIX): the cricket, who sang in the
summer, seeks food in vain, when the winter comes, at the door of
the ant. Other familiar illustrations are the "City Mouse and the
Country Mouse" (IX) and the "Crow in Borrowed Plummage"
(LXVII), already cited.2
c) The last subdivision is the result of an extension of the human-
izing process to an extreme where almost no adaptation to the sym-
bolic form is attempted in the action. Here the figures are men
slightly veiled. The masks are on. Here is typical action with little
more translation than the bare use of symbolic forms for actors.
A lying dog ("De cane et ove," IV) falsely accuses a sheep of
having stolen some bread. He produces before the judge, for witnesses,
the hawk and the wolf. The sheep is compelled to sell his wool in
the winter, dies, and is devoured by the three. A grim and un-
flinching picture of justice in the Middle Ages. In "De milvo"
(LXXXVI) a kite, very sick, repents him of his past conduct toward
the family of a neighboring jay. He asks his mother to beg the jay to
1 Dr. H. S. Canby, The Novella and Related Varieties of the Short Narrative (Yale
Dissertation), p. 243, calls this a beast novella, and indeed the story side is developed; a
wise action, however, is held up to admiration in true fable manner.
* Others are Nos. II, III, X, XI. XII, XIV, XIX, XXIX, XXXVI, XLVI, LXII,
LXVI, LXX, LXXI, LXXXI, LXXXIII, LXXXIX, XCIII, CI. In No. LXXXIH
the lesson is less obvious, and it is called a novella by Dr. Canby. It gives an instructive
view of life, however, in fable manner.
485
102 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
pray for him. She responds that his past actions render this request
impossible. Perhaps "De agno et capra" (XXXII) is less clear. A
sheep had a lamb which shepherds took from it. A goat nourished
it until it grew large, then said, "Go to the sheep, thy mother, or
the wether, thy father; I have nourished thee long enough." He
answered wisely and said that he considered her his mother who had
fed him, rather than her who bore and left him — a fable which empha-
sizes the truth that blood is thinner than milk. This " translation "
of the Ruth and Naomi story would seem to belong in this group.1
Ill
We finish the survey of the real fables in Marie by returning
once more to the third main division, Group III, that in which the
actors are typical and the action symbolic. We have gone the full
swing from fables that approximate the simple nature analogy,
through the fables of clear allegorical import, to those approaching
the illustrative human narrative. This class needs no subdivision,
and has already been illustrated.
In every large collection of fables there are included many tales
which cannot be brought under any real definition of the fable, and
which have led some, Diestel for instance,2 to define not the fable,
but the pointed anecdote. These other stories, whether they be
Milesian tales of salty flavor, churchmen's exempla, sometimes
even more briny, or bits of popular superstition, have been inter-
mingled with the fables because they have happened to be of a similar
length and have a common origin in reflection upon human life. Dr.
Canby points out some twenty-five tales among the fables of Marie
which he classes generally as novelle, and more exactly as novelle,
beast novelle, and anecdotes, the last being an unexpanded form of
the preceding and exhibiting less generalization.3 These are char-
acterized by a lighter emphasis on the moral than the fable requires.
To me the final distinction between the fable and the illustrative tale
is to be found in the allegorical nature of the former, a distinction
» Others are Nos. XXXIV, L, LXV, LXXVII, LXXVIII, LXXXVII, LXXXVIII.
* G. Diestel, Bauateine zur Geschichte der deutschen Fabel (Dresden, 1871).
» Op. cit., p. 243.
A CLASSIFICATION FOR FABLES 103
which goes beyond the mere emphasis on the moral in the one and on
the story in the other, though no doubt resulting from the existence
of that emphasis, while the type was still in the short-story ferment
out of which all the various forms emerged. My list of tales in Marie
that are not fables differs, however, from Dr. Canby's in only one or
two particulars. As to classification, we can call them all novelle,
if we like, as in these the moral force they have is not assisted by
allegory. Five different kinds of stories, however, may be distin-
guished :
1. Animistic beast-tales, which, by the absence of a clearly per-
ceptible human purpose, fall short of clear allegory and of the fable
type. In this group various subgroups might be indicated, like
that which displays the shrewd beast who amuses by outwitting.
Here the actor comes close to a human type, but is not interpreted,
as no apparent moral lesson or human purpose establishes the
identification. After all, it is the beast's shrewdness that counts.
Of this sort is "De leone infirmo" (LXVIII), in which the fox plays
physician and outwits the malicious wolf.1 Not all of these animistic
tales, however, are to be included in clearly marked subcategories.
"De lupo et scarabaeo" (LXV) is of a fabliau sort — comparable in
part to No. XLIII, classed in the next division — and so slight, so
cluttered, and so smirched as to be of practically no moral or alle-
gorical significance.
2. There are also many perfectly clear little fabliaux, short
realistic tales of human life with a tang to them. "De uxore mala
et marito eius" (XCV) is an example. A farmer's wife opposes
her husband in everything. His laborers want beer and bread.
He thinks to avoid granting the request by sending them to her.
When she learns that he is against the proposal, she says they shall
have what they ask, but she will bring the refreshment herself and the
farmer shall have none. After she has brought the food and drink,
the farmer approaches her, and she, retreating, falls into the river.
The laborers begin to look for her down the stream, but the farmer
tells them to look above the place of the catastrophe, saying that
she was so much against everything, that she would not Imve gone
down stream with the current.
i Others are Nos. XXI and LXIX.
487
104 M. ELLWOOD SMITH
In this group are tales of the troublesome or disputatious wife
(XCIV), the deceived husband (XLIV, XLV), the inconstant widow
("Widow of Ephesus" story, XXV), the man got with child (XLII,
XLIII), and of justice won by a quip (XL VII) or injustice through a
bribe (LVI). Under the same head might be grouped such mere
anecdotes as "De homine et hirco" (LXIV), and "De honiine et
servis" (XLI) : a powerful man, coming upon two serfs, noticed that
they talked very secretly together, although no one was near. When
asked, they said that it was not from fear of being overheard, but
because they thought it looked wise to talk in that manner.
The three groups that remain to be noticed consist of tales
especially adapted for use as exempla, being more moral in tendency,
though the mediaeval preacher, of course, was not squeamish.
3. First, there are the moral, illustrative tales involving popular
superstition, like "De fure et sortilega" (LXVIII) : a witch proposes
a partnership with a thief, promising her protection. When he is
caught and supplicates her assistance, she "bears him in hand" until
the rope is about his neck, and then tells him to shift for himself, as
she can do no more. More markedly superstitious and more popular
is "De dracone et homine" (LII): a dragon has a peasant for com-
panion. He tells the peasant that all his power resides in an egg,
which he puts into the peasant's keeping. He then goes away. The
man, thinking to kill the dragon and have his treasure, breaks the
egg, only to have his treachery revealed to the returning dragon.
Such tales might be placed in the third main group of fables. Another
tale on the "Greedy Ingrate" theme is "The Man and the Serpent"
(LXXII). The motive of the "Three Wishes" appears in "De
rustico et nano" (LVII).
4. Again, there are simple, illustrative moral tales of a sort too
moral and too dignified to be grouped with the fabliaux, such as " De
sene et equite" (C) : a knight meets an old man who seems wise and
far-traveled, so he asks him in what land he may best dwell. The
old man instructs him to go (1) where the people shall all love
him; failing that, (2) where the people shall all fear him; if that
prove impossible, (3) where nobody shall fear him; or, as a last
resort, (4) where he shall see no one and no one shall know
where he is.
A CLASSIFICATION FOR FABLES 105
5. Finally, there are tales which have specific relation to ecclesias-
tical or religious matters, like "De rustico orante et equum petente"
(LIV): a peasant, tying his only horse outside the minster, goes
within and prays for another horse. Meanwhile a thief absconds
with the one which he had. When the peasant sees the misfortune
which has come upon him through his greed, as it is made to appear,
he returns and prays, not for a second horse, but to have his own
returned. (Similarly LIII, LV.) In this group is one little "mir-
acle," "De homine in nave" (XCIX): a rich man wishes to cross a
sea to transact business. He prays God to lead him there in safety.
He wishes to return, and prays God not to let him perish. Before
he is aware of danger, he is cast into the sea. Then he prays God
to bring him to land, this only and nothing more. When he sees
God regards not this prayer, he cries, "Let Him do His will," and
immediately after this, he arrives at his desired port.
This survey does not pretend to embrace all the varieties of tales
that have been included in fable collections. It intends merely to
show, in a general way, their nature and how they differ from the
fable.
M. ELLWOOD SMITH
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
489
TRANSLATIONS OF THE VIE DE MARIANNE AND THEIR
RELATION TO CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH FICTION
The eighteenth-century vogue of Marivaux in England has been
discussed by both French and English critics chiefly from the view-
point of his possible influence upon Richardson. That this problem
is one of continued vitality recent studies have made evident.1 As a
contribution to this question as well as to the wider problem of the
relation of contemporary translations of Marianne to English fiction
in general, I wish to make clear the following points:
1. Statements about the translations of Marianne have fre-
quently been inaccurate and incomplete.
2. Instead of the one translation usually assumed to be the
source of the vogue of Marivaux in English, there is evidence that
by 1746 three translations were in circulation.
3. Circumstances connected with the publication of the two
additional versions throw light upon the popularity of Marivaux;
the nature of the translations makes clear the ground of their appeal,
and the relation of Marivaux and Richardson to fictional develop-
ment before and during the period in which Pamela appeared.
The Vie de Marianne was first published in parts, as follows:
1731, Part 1; 1734, Part 2; 1735, Part 3; 1736, Parts 4, 5, 6; 1737,
Parts 7, 8; 1741, Parts 9, 10, 11. In 1742 the eleven parts were
published together in Paris. In 1745 an edition was published in
Amsterdam containing the original eleven parts and a spurious
* Though Mr. Cazamian in 1913 in his chapter on Richardson in the Camb. Hist,
of Eng. Lit. assumed that Austin Dobson in 1902 had definitely settled the question in
the negative (Samuel Richardson, "English Men of Letters" [London, 1902], pp. 48-50),
yet in the year before Mr. Cazamian 's chapter was published the controversy was reviewed
by Mr. E. C. Baldwin hi a study of "Marivaux's Place in Character Portrayal," Pub.
Mod. Lang. Assoc., XXVII (1912), 184-85; in 1913 it was again discussed by Mr. G. C.
Macaulay in an article on "Richardson and His Predecessors," in the Mod. Lang. Rev.>
VIII (1913), 463 flf.; and within the last year the question has been reopendd by Miss
Carola Schroers in her article, "1st Richardsons Pamela von Marivauxs Vie de Marianne
beeinflusst?" in Engliache Studien, XLIX (1916), 220-54.
491] 107 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, December, 1917
108 HELEN SARD HUGHES
conclusion in the form of a twelfth part. These twelve parts were-
published together in Paris in 1755.1
An English translation came out under a title literally derived
from the French:
The Life of Marianne, or the Adventures of the Countess of .... By
M. de Marivaux. Translated from the French Original.
According to contemporary notices in periodicals, quoted by Mr,
Esdaile, this translation appeared in parts in June, 1736, January,
1737, April, 1742.2 The London Magazine for April, 1742, in announ-
cing Vol. II refers to it as " Printed for C. Davis."3 I have been unable
to find a copy of this work, which Clara Reeve seems to have described
in 1785 as a "poor literal translation."4
To clear up the confusion that has existed, I wish to call atten-
tion at this point to the inaccuracy with which this and other trans-
lations have been cited, in discussions of Marivaux and of his relation
to Richardson. The appearance of the story in parts has at times
been ignored. Thus Miss Thomson in her usually accurate study
says, "An English translation of Marianne appeared in 1736."5
Mr. Macaulay fails to indicate that a second volume of this transla-
tion appearing in 1737 was also available to Richardson. He says:
It is clear that for his acquaintance with French romance he [Richard-
son] must have depended on translations. This, however, does not cause
any real difficulty. An English translation of La Vie de Marianne, so far
as it had then proceeded, was published in 1736, four years before the publi-
cation of Pamela.6
Professor Raleigh writes, with inaccuracy at more than one point:
It was not until .... years after Marivaux by his Vie de Marianne
(1731) had singularly anticipated Richardson in subject and treatment,
although, so far as can be ascertained, without influencing him, that the
English Pamela was born in 1740 It seems likely that Richardson
» Larroumet, Marivaux, sa vie et ses ceuvres (Paris, 1882), pp. 607-8. There is some
disagreement as to the date of the appearance of the eleventh part. Lanson, Man. Bibl
de la litt. /ran. mod. (Paris, 1911), III, 696, and Petit de Julleville, Hist, de la litt. et d
la lang. /ran. (Paris), VI, 465, give 1742 as the date.
• A List of English Tales and Prose Romances Printed before 1740 (London, 1912),
p. 369. The same data are given by A. Dobson, op. cit., p. 49.
» Lond. Mag., XX (1742), 208.
« Progress of Romance (London, 1785), p. 129.
• Samuel Richardson, A Biographical and Critical Study (London, 1900), p. 148.
• Op. cit., p. 467.
492
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE"
109
had read The Life of Marianne with the continuation of Mme Riccoboni,
which appeared in three volumes, 12mo, in 1736.1
Dunlop2 and Max Gassmeyer3 refer only to a translation of 1784,
which I shall consider later. Mr. Boas refers only to a translation
of 1743.4 Whether this is an inaccurate citation of the 1736-42
translation or a reference to another is a question; I suspect the
former is the case.
We may note here that of this literal translation Richardson,
before writing Pamela, probably could have read only the first six
parts, which appeared by January, 1737. This carried the story to
the scene at the minister's house, where Marianne is rescued from a
marriage, plotted by Valville's relatives, by the sudden appearance
of Valville and Mme Miran. This fact is not sufficiently recognized
in Miss Schroers' study. In her interesting array of parallel passages
in Pamela and Marianne, she finds most of her material in Parts I-
III of Marianne, the attempted seduction of Marianne by M. Climal
being comparable to the persecution of Pamela by Mr. B. Admitting
the similarities in these passages, and their possible significance,
one recognizes at the same time that many of the details are implicit
in the situation. It should be noted also that two of Miss Schroers'
parallels5 are drawn from the seventh part of Marianne, which
Richardson probably could not have read in translation before 1740.
II
The popularity of Marianne in the early years of Richardson's
literary activity is attested not by one but by three translated
versions: one of them the literal translation already discussed; the
1 English Novel (New York, 1911), p. 140. In regard to the date of Mme Ricco-
boni's translation see infra, p. 114.
2 Hist, of Fiction (London, 1911), II, 462.
» Richardsons "Pamela" und seine Quellen (Leipzig, 1890), pp. 19 ff.; quoted by
Miss Schroers.
«" Richardson's Novels and Their Influence," in Essays and Studies by Members
of the English Association (Oxford, 1911), II; quoted by Miss Schroers.
6 Op. cit. p. 251.* M. Larroumet describes the first edition (1737) of the seventh part
as follows: " 144 p., y compris le titre et 1'approbation de Saurin, du 27 Janvier 1737, au
bas de la page 144" (op. cit., p. 608). This probably, though not surely, did not appear
in the second volume of the translation advertised in the periodicals of January, 1737.
but did appear in the third volume in 1742. Note, too, that Miss Schroers seems to have
confused with Richardson's own continuation of Pamela the spurious continuation
brought out by Ward and Chandler, likewise in 1741, under the title Pamela in High
Life, probably written by John Kelly. See Dobson, op. cit., pp. 54 ff.
493
110 HELEN SARD HUGHES
others, two versions, slightly varied, of a translation furnished with
moralistic interpolations of a Richardsonian sort, and a moralistic
conclusion unnoticed, so far as I know, in discussions dealing with
the two well-known attempts to continue Marivaux's story in French.
The first reference I find to this second translation is on the title-
page of another novel translated from the French:
Memoirs of the Countess de Bressol .... Done from the French by
the Translator of the Virtuous Orphan : Or, the Life of Marianne. London,
Jacob Robinson, 1743. 2 vols. 12mo.
This translation of Marianne I have found in the 1784 edition (which
Dunlop probably had in mind) in Harrison's " Novelists' Magazine,"
with the following title-page:
The Virtuous Orphan; Or, the Life of Marianne, Countess of * * * .
Translated from the French of Marivaux. In four volumes [in onej.
London: Printed for Harrison and Co. No. 18, Paternoster Row.
MDCCLXXXIV.
The volume is octavo, with 313 pages, double column. This work,
which contains a long Translator's Preface, is not merely a transla-
tion with such liberties as eighteenth-century translators allowed
themselves frequently; it is a translation, literal in the main, but
modified to moralistic ends by means of omissions, interpolations,
and a conclusion.
In 1746 appeared an altered version of this translation, possibly
pirated, in one volume, small octavo, pages viii+453:
The Life and Adventures of Indiana, the Virtuous Orphan. Illustrated
with Copper-Plates. London: Printed for C. Whitefield, in White-Fryers,
Fleet-Street. MDCCXLVI.
For the most part, this work is identical with that reprinted by
Harrison in 1784. There is, however, no translator's preface, and
the title-page gives no indication that the work is a translation.
Other differences are in the names of the characters: Marianne
becomes Indiana, Valville becomes Valentine, M. Climal becomes
Mr. Chambers, and other characters, similarly, are given English
names beginning usually with the same initial letter as the French
ones. More significant is the fact that this version is considerably
shorter than the 1784 version; the nature of the differences will be
discussed later. It is possible that at its first appearance the version
494
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 111
of The Virtuous Orphan; Or, the Life of Marianne was comparable
in length to Indiana; while the 1784 octavo edition of four volumes
in one may represent later revision and elaboration of an original
version common to both. On the other hand, Indiana may represent
a piratical abridgment of an original identical with the 1784 edition.
In 1747 appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine the notice of a
second edition of The Virtuous Orphan. The title and the format
of this edition are complicating factors. The publisher is the same
as for the Memoirs of the Countess de Bressol, in which appeared
in 1743 the reference already quoted to the Virtuous Orphan; Or,
the Life of Marianne; the format is also the same as that of the
Memoirs. The notice reads:
The Virtuous Orphan. Edit. 2. Robinson, in two volumes, 12mo.
6s.1
This may well be a second edition of the translation referred to in
1743, and both may have been published by Robinson, who may have
brought out his second edition in 1747 to offset Whitefield's altered
version of 1746, published piratically or otherwise. Whether the
first edition appeared in 1743 or earlier, whether it could in any way,
in print or manuscript, have influenced the author of Pamela, I have
no way of knowing. It is conceivable, but less probable, I think,
that this is a second edition of Indiana.
To Indiana I find two other references. Mr. J. M. Clapp quotes
for me the following entry in Dobell's Catalogue 199 to an edition of
1755:
The Life and Misfortunes and Adventures of Indiana, the Virtuous
Orphan; written by herself . 12mo.
Clara Reeve, after referring to the "poor literal translation," writes:
Soon after another attempt was made by a still worse hand, this is called
Indiana or the Virtuous Orphan, in this piece of patch work, many of the
fine reflexions, the most valuable part of the work, are omitted, the story
left unfinished by the death of M. Marivaux, is finished by the same bungler,
and in the most absurd manner. It puts me in mind of what was said of a
certain translator of Virgil:
Read the commandments, friend, — translate no further,
For it is written, thou shalt do no murther.2 ^
i Gent. Mag., XVII (1747), 156; see also Scots Mag., IX (1747), 147.
* Progress of Romance, pp. 129-30.
495
112 HELEN SARD HUGHES
The Virtuous Orphan is referred to, also, in two reviews of a later
work, soon to be quoted. Both The Virtuous Orphan and Indiana
are listed in Bent's General Catalogues. In the edition of 1779
appear the following entries:
Marianne, or Virtuous Orphan, 2 Vols. 12mo 0 6 O.1
Virtuous Orphan, or Life of Indiana, 2 Vols. 12mo 0 6 O.2
This refers, of course, to an edition before that of 1784 in the "Novel-
ists' Magazine." In the edition of 1786 the following entries appear:
Marianne, or Virtuous Orphan, 3 Vols. 12mo 0 9 O.3
Virtuous Orphan, or Life of Indiana, 2 Vols. 12mo . . .0 6 O.4
The change here indicated in Marianne; Or, the Virtuous Orphan
between 1779 and 1786 from two duodecimo volumes at six shillings
to three duodecimo volumes at nine shillings may possibly result
from typographical errors, or may result from additions to the work
within those years; possibly these additions may appear in the 1784
edition before me (in 313 double-column pages octavo, four volumes
bound in one). This is of a length which it would seem difficult
to have compressed into either two or three duodecimo volumes,
though it might possibly have been included in three.5
Another interesting difference between the two translated ver-
sions is in the matter of Marivaux's intercalated story VHistoire de
la religieuse. This story does not appear at all in Indiana; instead,
the translator's conclusion follows immediately after the translation
of the eighth part of Marivaux's story, the point at which the French
author drops the story of Marianne. In the Virtuous Orphan;
1 A General Catalogue of Books in All Languages, Arts, and Sciences, Printed in Great
Britain, and Published in London, from the Year MDCC to the Present Time. Classed
under Several Heads of Literature, and Alphabetically Disposed under Each Head, with
Their Sizes and Prices (London, 1779), p. 69.
* Ibid., p. 74.
» A General Catalogue of Books .... from the Year MDCC to MDCCLXXXVI
. . . (London, 1786), p. 74.
« Ibid., p. 79.
8 A rough estimate shows that the Vie de Marianne, in twelve parts in French,
contains about 220,000 words; Indiana about 150,000 words; Marianne (in English)
about 263,000 words; the Memoirs of the Countess de Bressol, in two volumes duodecimo,
about 154,000 words. The difference in length between Indiana and Marianne appears
less in the conclusion than in the translated portions; the conclusion contains about
48,000 words in the former, and about 57,000 words in the latter. The inequality may be
partly explained by the fact that in Marianne the division into twelve books as in the
French original is retained, and by the practice of beginning and concluding each book
with a paragraph or more of informal comment addressed by the narrator to her friend.
These divisions and comments are omitted in Indiana.
496
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE " 113
Or, the Life of Marianne, on the other hand, the nun's story is intro-
duced, but not in its proper place at the end of the eighth book. In
this version the conclusion begins at the same point as in Indiana,
and runs through the ninth book and most of the tenth; then,
toward the end of the tenth book (p. 226), "The Life of Miss de
Terviere" (de Tervire, Marivaux spells it) is introduced, and continues
through the eleventh book; at the beginning of the twelfth book
(p. 275) the conclusion is resumed where it was dropped (on p. 226).
A hypothesis as to the date of the translation may be hazarded
from the misplacement of this story. Possibly the first eight parts
were translated, and the conclusion appended, before the last three
instalments of Marivaux's work (Parts 9, 10, 11, Paris, 1741) ap-
peared; then at some later date, when the whole work was well
known and in its final state, the intercalated story was translated
and introduced into the earlier translated version, at a point in the
conclusion where it could be made to fit. The nun and her story
are again referred to in this version at the very end. Should this
hypothesis be the true explanation, the original version of the trans-
lation may well have appeared before Pamela, since the first eight
parts were accessible to the translator by the end of the year 1737,
and since nothing more appeared until 1741, when I'Histoire de la
religieuse began in the ninth part. This explanation is by no means
the only one possible, however; the nun's story may have been
inserted as late as 1784, or, again, it may have been introduced in the
original version, which needs only to have appeared by 1743.
Other differences between Indiana and Marianne appear in
slight variations in phrasing, the changes in the latter suggesting a
later attempt to revise and polish an earlier draught. How late
these changes were made I have no way of determining.
The authorship of these translations I identify by means of the
two book notices already referred to. In 1767 there was translated
into English a continuation of the Vie de Marianne by Mme Ricco-
boni — la suite to which Fleury refers.1 The legend is that in response
to a challenge from Saint-Foix, author of Essais sur Paris, Mme
Riccoboni undertook to prove that Marivaux's style in Marianne
was susceptible of imitation. She made what was called at the time
1 Marivaux et le marivaudage (Paris, 1881), pp. 192 flf.
497
114 HELEN SARD HUGHES
une suite a ce roman. This appeared in part in a collection entitled
le Monde comme il est, by the author of the Nouveau Spectateur,
4 vols., 1760-61, edited by Bastid; the second part appeared in
Mme Riccoboni's works. The whole was composed ten years
before its first publication, or about 1751, according to Mme Ricco-
boni's own statement.1
M. Fleury pointed out in 1881 that critics down to Edouard
Fournier in his 1877 edition of Marianne have confused the anony-
mous twelfth part (lefiri) of the 1745 edition with this suite by Mme
Riccoboni. M. Fleury published them both in the appendix to his
volume and pointed out the radical difference in content and style
between the two. He attributed the fin of the twelfth part to some
writer of the sixth order who had been hired by a Dutch bookseller
to increase the price of the edition by giving an end to the story.
"Ces supercheries e*taient fre"quentes au dix-huiti&ne siecle," he
says. Such a supercherie the English conclusion also appears to be,
and the motive that inspired it may have been similarly commercial.
Announcing the translation of Mme Riccoboni's work, there
appeared in 1768 in the Monthly Review the following notice:
The continuation of the Life of Marianne. To which is added the
History of Ernestina; with letters and other Miscellaneous Pieces. Trans-
lated from the French of Mme Riccoboni, 12mo., 3s. Becket and de Hondt.
This is not the first attempt that has been made to carry on the un-
finished Life of Marianne, written by the celebrated Marivaux; but it is a
less successful one than that of an English writer; [Note: "Mr. Joseph
Collyer, author of Letters from Felicia to Charlotte; and translator of the
Death of Abel"] who, about twenty years ago, translated Marivaux's work,
and also brought the story to a conclusion; under the title of The Virtuous
Orphan. There was likewise another translation made about the same time;
entitled The Life of Marianne; or the Adventures of the Countess of . . . . ;
but in this version the story remains in the same unfinished state in which
the French Author left the original. — As to Mme Riccoboni's continuation,
it still leaves the tale incompleat, and is not the best of her performances.2
In 1767 in the Gentleman's Magazine had appeared the following
confused notice:
» Marivaux et le marivaudage (Paris, 1881), p. 195; see also Dunlop, op. cit.,
pp. 465-66.
» Monthly Rev.. XXXVIII (1768), 72.
498
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE " 115
The first part of the life of Marianne was published some years ago, under
the title of La Paissanne Parvenu1 and was translated into English under the
title of The Virtuous Orphan, by the author of Some Letters from Felicia to
Charlotte, who also concluded the story. The events related by the English
translator are very different from those in this continuation, in which the
story is not concluded.2
The author of Letters from Felicia to Charlotte and the trans-
lator of the Death of Abel was probably not Mr. Joseph Colly er, but
his wife Mary Collyer, who was also, I think, the translator of the
Memoirs of the Countess de Bressol,* a translation which I suspect of
having likewise been fitted with a conclusion foreign to the French
original.
Mrs. Collyer's variations upon Marivaux's theme are worthy
of note primarily for the light they throw upon the highly romantic
taste of her day and upon its readiness to make use of the novel as
a vehicle of didactic purpose. Her work here and elsewhere makes
Richardson seem less extraordinary than does the frequent juxta-
position of his work with that of his great rival, Fielding. Mrs.
Collyer's moralizing of the theme shows, too, how easily the heavy
didacticism of a Richardsoniari type could be engrafted upon the
Gallic psychology of Marivaux.4
Perhaps the most interesting interpolation in the translated part
of the story occurs in the description of the person and home of the
good clergyman and his sister who adopt Marianne. I will quote
the accounts as given in the French original, in the English Indiana,
and in the English Marianne, to illustrate in an extreme case the
method of the translator. Marivaux had written of his two minor
characters :
1 This title marks a confusion not uncommon, according to Clara Reeve (op. cit., 130) f
between Marivaux's other novel, le Paysan Parvenu, and a novel by the Chevalier de
Mouhy entitled la Paysanne Parvenue, translated by Mrs. Haywood under the title of
the Virtuous Villager (see Whicher, The Life and Works of Eliza Haywood [New York,
1915], p. 152).
* Gent. Mag. (1767), p. 80.
» Letters from Felicia to Charlotte and its author I have discussed in "An Early
Romantic Novel," in Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil., XV (1916), 564r-98. Further |*cts about
Mrs. Collyer and her work I hope to present soon hi my forthcoming dissertation.
4 Mr. Macaulay, though somewhat committed to the theory of Richardson's indebt-
edness to Marivaux, remarks, "It is needless to say, moreover, that the rather heavy
morality of Richardson has no counterpart in Marivaux's work," op. cit., p. 464.
116 HELEN SARD HUGHES
Le Cure", qui quoique Cure" de Village, avoit beaucoup d'esprit, et qui
e"toit un homme de tres-bonne famille . . . ; j'aurois 6t6 fort a plaindre,
sans la tendresse que le Cure" et sa sceur prirent pour moi.
Cette soeur m'eleva comme si j'avois 6te* son enfant. Je vous ai de*ja
dit que son frere et elle e"toient de tres-bonne famille; on disoit qu'ils avoient
perdu leur bien par un proces, et que lui il e"toit venu se re*fugier dans cette
Cure ou elle 1'avoit suivi, car ils s'aimoient beaucoup.
Ordinairement, qui dit niece ou sceur de Cure* de Village, dit quelque
chose de bien grossier, et d'approchant d'une paysanne. Mais cette fille-ci
n'e"toit pas de meme, c'e*toit une personne pleine de raison et de politesse,
qui joignoit a cela beaucoup de vertu. . . .
. . . Je passai tout le temps de mon Education dans mon bas age,
pendant lequel j'appris a faire je ne sais combien de petites nippes de femme;
Industrie qui m'a bien servie dans la suite.1
In Indiana appears the following passage amplifying this:
Mr. Robinson, for that was the name of my benefactor, was a gentleman
of a good family, and formerly enjoyed an estate which was exhausted by a
tedious law-suit: However his living brought him in a handsome sub-
sistance, and he knew how to be contented without enjoying many of the
superfluities of life, (a) His generosity and the agreeable gaiety of his
temper, in spite of his age, in which he was pretty far advanced, made him
beloved by all who knew him; and he knew how to keep up the two characters
of the accomplished gentleman and the judicious divine. Mrs. Robinson,
his sister, (6) was a lady of good sense, free from affectation, and though an
old maid, had such a sweet disposition, such true politeness, and undissembled
goodness, as abundantly recompensed the loss of those charms, which had
been destroyed by the smallpox, she being extremely scared (c) by it.
There are the persons to whom I owe my education, and that virtue
which has supported me under all my afflictions, and has raised me from the
lowest and most miserable condition to my present station. We lived in
the greatest harmony. Their affection for me knew no bounds, and I in
turn, honoured and loved them as my parents. The house that we lived
in was an ancient building, (d) and had for some ages past belonged to the
vicars of the place; the rooms were large, (e) but the ceilings low. We had
behind the house a pretty commodious garden (/) which seemed rather the
product of nature than of art; there was fruit in abundance of almost
(g) every kind, which grew promiscuously among the other trees that never
bore any, so that they altogether formed a thick and shady grove, (h) for
it was a maxim with Mr. Robinson, that nothing but what is natural can be
pleasing to the subjects of nature, nor can art any further delight than as
it resembles it. (i)
1 La Vie de Marianne, ou lea Avcntures de Madame la Comtesse de . . . , par
Monsieur de Marivaux (London, 1778), I, 1O-12.
500
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 117
Opposite the middle door of the house was a long shady walk which
extended itself to the bottom of a piece of pasture ground behind the garden,
and at the foot of several of the trees were raised seats of earth covered with
camomile. When fatigued with severe study, Mr. Robinson took delight
with working here, and acting the part of a laborious gardner; an employ-
ment he chose to preserve his health and recreate his mind. He committed
the management of his kitchen garden and vineyard to a poor laborer in the
neighborhood, whom he had released from prison, by paying a debt for him,
and who besides he rewarded for his labour.
This good man began every day with paying (f) his duty to God in prayer;
after breakfast the sister and I worked with our needles, played upon a
harpsicord, (k) or amused ourselves with reading; and in the afternoon we
walked in the garden to see Mr. Robinson work, and be entertained with his
conversation, and in the evening he (I) acted the part of an arbitrator of the
differences of his quarrelsome neighbors, which he was frequently so happy
as to adjust to the satisfaction of all parties concerned; and after supper
concluded the day with prayer as he began it.
This worthy gentleman began early to show his zeal for my happiness,
by establishing in my mind the nicest sentiments of virtue and honour.
He represented religion in a light that made it appear all amiable and lovely,
and as the highest happiness of a rational being: He painted the substantial
pleasures of conscious innocence, the exquisit happiness of the mind that can
survey itself with tranquillity and self-approbation, in such pleasing colours,
as perfectly charmed me. (m)
Mrs. Robinson was not behind hand with her brother in her care of my
education. She taught me everything necessary for a young woman to
learn A country vicar's niece or sister is commonly an awkward,
untoward, unbred, country-like woman; but Mrs. Robinson was perfectly the
reverse; she was polite and virtuous; her behaviour was free and easy; in
short, she had good sense, good breeding, and abundance of virtue.1
The thread of the narrative is then resumed in a literal translation.
The Virtuous Orphan differs from Indiana, at the points marked
in the foregoing quotations, as follows:
(a) Inserted: "Pride and ostentation he was utter stranger to."
(6) Omitted: "his sister."
(c) "Seamed" for "scared" (i.e., scarred).
(d) Altered: "one of the most antique buildings I ever saw."
(e) Altered: "the rooms were spacious and numerous."
(/) Inserted: "a beautiful sylvan scene."
(0) Inserted: "almost." *.
(h) A long insertion appears here: "The vine supported his feeble
branches by encircling the oak, and the flowers seemed scattered with a
1 Indiana, pp. 7-9.
501
118 HELEN SARD HUGHES
careless hand over the verdant turf; those whose tender stalks were liable
to be broke down by unfriendly feet, creeped in clusters round the trunks of
the trees; while the woodbine and jessamine were made to rise above, and
twine amongst the branches; there the trees were never pruned but in order
to make them fruitful, or to let in the prospect of the fine meadows, or the far
distant hills; which, seeming to mingle with the clouds, formed a delightful
horizon. We had no answering platforms, no cut-walks, nor anything like
that studied affectation of regularity which disgusts the eye by a repetition
of uniformity, and a constant sameness of design."1
(i) Another insertion of similar import: "The agreeable intermixture
of opening and shade was contrived with such exquisit art, as not only to
appear natural, but to let in or exclude the prospect of the adjacent country
to the advantage of the whole scene."2
(j) Altered: "paying a grateful homage to the supreme being."
(k) Altered: "spinet" for "harpsicord."
(/) Inserted: "this pattern of benevolence" for "he."
(m) Here is a continuation, over a column in length, of the clergyman's
religious exhortations, in the same vein as what precedes.
In this version the clergyman and his sister, unnamed by Marivaux,
named Mr. and Mrs. Robinson in Indiana, are called Mr. and Mrs.
De Rosard.
This passage illustrates, as I have said, in an extreme way, the
-alteration of Marivaux's original in the Collyer translation, and the
variations resulting either from elaboration or abridgment between
the two English versions. The details belonging to an essentially
English vicarage inserted into the French context are as amusingly
incongruous as much of the solid Anglo-Saxon moralizing and
the artless conclusion. The discussion of gardening, and the prefer-
ence for nature over art, are quite in keeping with other utterances
of Mrs. Collyer in Letters from Felicia to Charlotte (1744-49). Aside
from the interpolations, the translation follows with fair accuracy
the original, many more omissions occurring, of course, in Indiana
than in the longer version.
In speaking of the two French attempts to carry on Marivaux's
story, M. Fleury praises Mme Riccoboni's continuation because
she appears "fidele au proce'de' constant de Marivaux de placer le
drame dans le coeur humain et de ne faire intervenir les causes
exte*rieures que pour cre*er les situations et jamais pour les de*nouer."3
i The Virtuous Orphan (London, 1784), p. 10. » Ibid. « Op. cit., p. 199.
502
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 119
On the other hand, he condemns the French conclusion, which was
published in 1745 as the douzieme partie, because the anonymous
author "a recouru pour ramener Valville a Marianne a des causes
extrinseques que non seulement Marivaux n'aurait pas avoue*es,
mais qui 1'auraient profond&nent cheque"."1
Mrs. Collyer's conclusion is subject to much the same criticism
as is the douzieme partie of the French edition. External events, for
the most part, are responsible for the reconciliation and happy
denouement.
Through an accident the mother of the hero [Mme Miran in Marivaux's
original, Mrs. de Valville in the English Marianne, Mrs. Valentine in Indiana]
gets possession of a letter to her son explaining that the commission he was
seeking was lost through deliberate negligence on his part, negligence due
to his affair with Miss Varthon [Miss Wharton in Indiana]. The mother's
affection for the heroine is increased by this evidence of her son's unworthi-
ness. Her anxiety, however, seriously affects her health. The heroine
tells of the Officer's proposal, and together they decide that she cannot accept
it. The mother becomes dangerously ill, and the heroine goes with her to
her country place. Valville [Valentine] hearing of his mother's illness,
arrives unexpectedly. Marianne [Indiana] faints, and the prodigal hero's
love returns to her on the instant, just as it had left her previously on the
occasion of Miss Varthon's [Miss Wharton's] fainting. The heroine's
recovery from the resulting illness is hastened by a complete reconciliation.
The mother dies, and the heroine returns to a convent for a proper period of
mourning. Knowing that the girl has inherited a fortune from her friend,
a mercenary abbess plots to separate her from those interested in her and to
persuade her to take the veil. This plot frustrated, the heroine goes to stay
with Mrs. Dorsin [Mrs. Dawson] until her marriage to the hero. While
she is there the discovery of her parentage is made; the devoted officer
proves to be her uncle, and she the heiress to a title and a fortune. Behav-
ing with marked generosity to her new-found family, she accepts only a
portion of her estate, is presented at court, is married, and when last heard
of is devoting herself to the education of a growing family in the love of
virtue and noble sentiments.
Obviously the intercepted letter, the fatal illness of the mother,
the heroine's fainting, the final identification of her parentage, all
these items fall under condemnation as causes exterieures. The
material is of distinct interest to students of English ^iterature,
» Ibid., p. 200. M. Pleury summarizes the conclusion in the douzi&me partie, and
Mme Riccoboni's continuation, op. cit., pp. 196-98; the latter he also reprints in full in
an appendix, pp. 372-408.
503
120 HELEN SARD HUGHES
however, for the romantic quality of the feeling, philosophy, and
incident introduced.
Ill
As illustrative of a typically British attitude toward Marivaux's
novel, and of the sort of interpretation it received in translated
form, I wish to quote a few passages from the Translator's Preface
to the 1784 edition of The Virtuous Orphan; Or, the Life of Marianne,
an interesting critical document to be compared, as evidence of
general tendencies of the period, with the prefaces to Richardson's
works. I cannot tell whether this preface appeared in earlier edi-
tions of the translation or whether it is a late addition. In it the
translator of Marivaux appears to utter sentiments obviously similar
to those of "the author of Clarissa." It begins: '
The reading of that part of history that relates to human life and manners
has always been considered by allowed judges as one of the best means of
instructing and improving the mind. When we see the heart laid open,
and the secret springs and movements that actuate it exposed, and set in one
impartial light, with their different good and evil tendencies, we are enabled
to form a true estimate of human nature, and are taught what ought or
ought not to be our conduct in every similar instance.
Compare with this Richardson's statement in the preface of
Clarissa that it is a "History of life and manners .... proposed
to carry the force of an example," and his description of the novel
on the title-page as a history "comprehending the most important
concerns of private life; and particularly showing the distresses that
may attend the misconduct both of parents and children in relation
to marriage." Likewise compare with what follows in the quotation
from the Translator's Preface Richardson's statement in the Post-
script to Clarissa to the effect that if in a depraved age, devoid of
both private and 'public virtues, "if in an age given up to diversion
and entertainment, he could steal in, as may be said, and investigate
the great doctrines of Christianity under the fashionable guise of an
amusement," the author would be throwing in "his mite toward
introducing a reformation so much wanted."
The Translator's Preface continues:
But the instruction, I think, is not carried to it's proper extent: the
scene of action is generally laid in exalted and publick life; among deep
politicians and martial heroes
504
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 121
But when history is reduced to our own level, and applicable to our
real circumstances in life, much extensive and lasting benefit may accrue
from the perusal of it; for, in the right discharge of the common duties of
humanity, and in a proper conduct, either in affluent or in embarrassed or
difficult circumstances, every one has an immediate and important concern;
in the frailties too, and little foibles of our nature, we are all pretty equal
sharers. An example, therefore, given to these purposes, that describes
every different disposition of the mind, according to the variety of it's situa-
tions, and the actions naturally flowing from these dispositions; and all
guarded, too, with just encomiums on the side of virtue, and severe censures
and remonstrances against vice; cannot fail, I think of making a strong
impression on the mind of every person not wholly lost to all sense of moral
excellence, and producing some of the genuine fruits of it in his conduct.
Besides histories of this kind are generally made publick by way of
entertainment; and, under that notion, even a libertine may be induced to
read them with eagerness and delight; and, it is highly probable that if he
goes through them with attention, and is not past all reflection and serious
thought, some instance, or applicable circumstance may strike him, and
tend greatly to his reformation. And what an entertainment, indeed, will
they be to a sober and judicious reader, when he finds religion and virtue
painted in most lovely colours, and set in every attractive light.
This last sentence is so similar in diction and sentiment to the
religious discussions both in this translation1 and in Letters from
Felicia to Charlotte, as to suggest the probability that this Preface
was written either by Mrs. Collyer or by her husband, who outlived
her. Equally like Mrs. Collyer's utterances elsewhere is the para-
graph on educational ideals, which follows. These discussions in
the Preface make very clear the translator's personal interests and
her moral intention, which appear in the interpolations and in the
conclusions she supplies for Marivaux's more objective original:
The advantage, too, that these entertaining pictures of human nature may
be of to youth, is very considerable. Those who have been concerned in the
important business of education, must know that the love of pleasure is the
most easy inlet to young minds: everything that presents itself through this
channel is sure to gain a ready access; close and abstract reasoning are above
their capacity; grave and serious discourses may sometimes fail of the
intended effect; for (not to insist on the aversion common in young people
to everything gloomy and solemn, and that is imposed as a task) it requires
great exercise of thought and reflection to attend to the thread of a discourse,
and conceive immediately every idea the writer or speaker would express.
> See above, p. 171.
505
122 HELEN SARD HUGHES
But lively examples and plain matters of fact, are easily comprehended;
and, the moment their understandings are informed, the affections are
excited; which being free from all false biasses, are properly and exactly
suited to each particular incident as it occurs to them; and thus if due care
is taken to fix the application deeply in their minds, a love of virtue and an
abhorrence of vice, is insensibly instilled into them, and the impressions
may last for ever.
It must be acknowledged then, that a history in familiar and common
life is in point of real usefulness preferable to any other; since the benefits
arising from it are universal, and extend to all stations and circumstances;
for even the statemen and general (in which two peculiar views mankind are
commonly represented in history) cannot be said to form a complete char-
acter, without attending to the offices and duties of private life; and it is
this last branch of conduct (when this history is related) that can be of real
advantage to the generality, and point out anything to them capable of
their imitation.
The history before us deserves to be considered as a useful piece of instruc-
tion; a lesson of nature; a true and lively picture of the human heart
As to this translation, I have not much to offer. When I read the
original, I thought it would admit of an English dress, that might do justice
to the fine spirit that reigns throughout: with this view, and to give my
female readers especially a piece worthy of their attention, entire, and in
some measure perfect, I immediately set about it. How I have succeeded
in my attempt, the publick must determine; and the encouragement it
meets with will sufficiently declare their sentiments.
Reference in the last paragraph is apparently to the interpolations
and conclusion supplied, which may be conceived of as making for
the production of the piece "entire, and in some measure perfect."
A less candid justification of these additions appears in a footnote
early in the first part:
The Paris edition, and that of the Hague of 1735, have omitted this,
and several of the foregoing particulars, but for what reason we cannot
imagine.1
This note may not be the work of the translator herself; in the
Preface 7, not we, is used. The date 1735 is of course incorrect; the
edition was 1745. This dates the composition of the note as after
that year, but not necessarily the rest of the work. I suspect the
note of being an addition of much later date by a wary and sophisti-
cated publisher.
i The Virtuous Orphan (London, 1784), p. 14.
506
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 123
Certain artistic and moralistic attitudes common to this Preface
to the Collyer translation of Marianne and to some of Richardson's
critical statements enforce a point which, while not new, has not, I
think, been sufficiently stressed; namely, that to prove specific
indebtedness on Richardson's part to the reading of Marivaux's
Marianne is after all less significant and less possible, perhaps, than
to prove that Richardson and Marivaux held similar positions in
relation to literary predecessors of similar sort; that both illustrate
fictional tendencies growing out of literature of other genres imme-
diately preceding them, so that like results, not only in their novels,
but in the works of their contemporaries, may spring from like causes
of earlier date in England and in France, and not from the influence
of a particular Frenchman upon his English contemporary. As
indicative, then, of certain widespread influences and tendencies
at work in the fiction of the Richardsonian period, the following
points may be noted :
1. The Translator's Preface to the Collyer version seems to
suggest the relation of Marianne to that drama to which I feel Rich-
ardson's work is certainly related, that is, to Domestic Tragedy and
Sentimental Comedy,1 to what Mr. Bernbaum has termed the Drama
of Sensibility, which immediately preceded both Richardson and
Marivaux. This drama Richardson quotes and cites repeatedly in
Pamela and Clarissa2 and to this drama, in France, Marivaux con-
tributed.3 This common background, out of which may have
emerged similar effects with nothing more than a subconscious con-
nection, I think has not been sufficiently considered. For instance,
in the prologue to Rowe's Fair Penitent (1705), a domestic tragedy,
avowedly admired by Richardson, which perhaps in the character of
Lothario provided the prototype for Lovelace, appear the following
lines, similar in thought and feeling to the second and third para-
graphs just quoted from the Translator's Preface to Marianne, and
to statements by Richardson quoted later:
1 The choice of the name Indiana seems an echo of Steele's Conscious Lovers, in
which the heroine of that name is also a child of mystery, identified at the end, and
reunited to her family.
1 On Richardson's relation to Rowe, especially to his Fair Penitent, see ft. G. Ward,
"Richardson's Character of Lovelace," in Mod. Lang. Rev., VII (1912), 494-98.
* On Marivaux and the sentimental drama see E. Bernbaum, The Drama of Sensi-
bility (Boston and London, 1915), pp. 188 ff.
507
124 HELEN SARD HUGHES
Long has the fate of kings and empires been
The common business of the tragic scene,
As if misfortune made the throne her seat,
And none could be unhappy but the great.
Stories like these with wonder we may hear,
But far remote and in a higher sphere,
We ne'er can pity what we ne'er can share.
Therefore an humbler theme our author chose,
A melancholy tale of private woes :
Who writes shou'd still let nature be his care,
Mix shades with lights, and not paint all things fair,
But shew you men and women as they are.
Moreover, just as Richardson and Marivaux may both be shown
to be influenced by the Drama of Sensibility, just so a common indebt-
edness may be proved to the periodical essays, particularly to the
Spectator. Marivaux's debt to the Spectator has been clearly set
forth in Mr. Baldwin's study, "Marivaux's Place in Character
Portrayal."1 Richardson's familiarity with the Spectator, as well
as with the Taller and Guardian and with other works of Addison
and Steele, is indicated by the quotations from his correspondence
and from Pamela and Clarissa collected in Dr. Erich Peotzsche's
dissertation.2 This common influence Mr. Gosse suggests when he
says:
The direct link between Addison as a picturesque narrative essayist
and Richardson as the first great English novelist is to be found in Pierre de
Marivaux (1688-1763), who imitated the Spectator, and who is often assumed,
though somewhat too rashly, to have suggested the tone of Pamela*
2. The passages quoted from the Translator's Preface to Marianne
may be compared in their statement of the author's purpose with a
temporary preface to one of Richardson's works — the Preface
reprinted by Mr. Macaulay4 from the beginning of the fourth
volume of the first edition of Clarissa (1748), omitted from subse-
quent editions.
i Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., XXVII (1912), 168-87.
* Samuel Richardsons Belesenheit (Kiel, 1908), pp. 6, 46-47.
» A History of Eighteenth Century Literature (London, 1896), p. 243. (Quoted by
Baldwin, op. cit., p. 168, note.)
« Op. cit., pp. 465-66.
508
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE" 125
This Preface is admittedly not by Richardson, but by "a very
learned and eminent hand"; therefore I think it hardly deserves
the credence Mr. Macaulay accorded it as " a definite statement made
on Richardson's own authority that in the writing of Pamela he had
been following the lead of those French writers who had at length
hit upon the true secret" of making fiction improve as well as enter-
tain. I do not believe that in this preface Richardson himself
necessarily "acknowledges obligation to the way of writing in which
some of the late French writers had greatly excelled," or that he
ascribes not to himself but to the French "the discovery of the true
secret of fiction."1 Richardson, I believe, sincerely felt what he
expressed in the much quoted letter to Aaron Hill :
I thought the story if written in an easy and natural manner, suitable
to the simplicity of it, might possibly introduce a new species of writing,
that might possibly turn young people into a course of reading different from
the pomp and parade of romance-writing, and dismissing the improbable
and marvellous, with which novels generally abound, might tend to pro-
mote the cause of religion and virtue.2
But I believe that the more learned and cosmopolitan writer of his
temporary preface interpreted in the light of his own wider reading
the intention of the provincially minded author, while expressing
views not at all unusual to his time. That this Preface was later
omitted, that the comparison to French fiction was not incorporated
in Richardson's own Preface or Postscript, that his correspondence
(so far as it has been published) makes no reference, appreciative
or hostile, to this Preface or to the ideas expressed in it, seems to me
to indicate that Richardson did not necessarily value highly nor,
indeed, suggest or authorize the sentiments involved.
For its similarities at certain points to the Preface to the Collyer
translation of Marianne — both of them signs of one time, I repeat —
this temporary preface is of interest to my purpose. For in this
anonymous Preface to Clarissa, in Richardson's letter about Pamela
to Aaron Hill, and in the Translator's Preface to Marianne, appear the
same desire to purvey instruction in the guise of entertainment, the
same emphasis on the portrayal of life and manners by leducing
i Ibid., p. 467.
1 Dobson, op. cit., p. 26. Compare this with the quotation from the Translator's
Preface.
509
126 HELEN SARD HUGHES
history to the level of the readers. The temporary preface to*
Clarissa reads:
If it may be thought reasonable to criticize the Public Taste, in what
are generally supposed to be Works of mere Amusement; or modest to direct
its judgment, in what is offered for its Entertainment; I would beg leave to
introduce the following Sheets with a few cursory Remarks, that may lead
the common Reader into some tolerable conception of the nature of this
work, and the design of its Author.
It traces the corruption of public taste and moral standards through
the stories of enchantment, the stories of intrigue, and finally through
the heroical romances of the French. Then it goes on to say:
At length this great People .... hit upon the true secret, by which
alone a deviation from strict fact, in the commerce of Man, could be really
entertaining to an unproved mind, or useful to promote that Improvement.
And this was by a faithful and chaste copy of real Life and Manners: In
which some of their late Writers have greatly excelled.
It was on this sensible plan, that the Author of the following Sheets
attempted to please
.... He apprehends that, in the study of Human Nature, the knowl-
edge of those apprehensions leads us farther into the recesses of the Human
Mind, than the colder and more general reflections suited to a continued and
more contracted Narrative.
This is the nature and purport of his Attempt. Which, perhaps may
not be so well or generally understood. For if the Reader seeks here Strange
Tales, Love Stories, Heroical Adventures, or, in short, for anything but a
Faithful Picture of Nature in Private Life, he had better be told before hand
the likelihood of his being disappointed. But if he can find Use or Enter-
tainment; either Directions for his Conduct or Employment for his Piety,
in a HISTORY of LIFE and MANNERS, where, as in the world itself, we
find Vice, for a time, triumphant, and Virtue in distress, an idle hour or two,
we hope, may not be unprofitably lost."1
Compare with this final paragraph the concluding paragraphs of
the Translator's Preface to Marianne, and the prologue to Howe's
The Fair Penitent, just quoted.
The Translator's Preface to The Virtuous Orphan; Or, the Life
of Marianne appears to me, then, an interesting piece of literary
criticism of the Richardsonian period, indicating a current popular
view of Marivaux's novel, and revealing, as do Richardson's prefaces
(both those of his own writing and the temporary one just quoted)
» Macaulay, op. cit., pp. 465-66.
510
TRANSLATIONS OF THE "ViE DE MARIANNE " 127
a well-developed attitude toward fiction of that period, an attitude
of which Pamela and Clarissa were perhaps the full expressions and
not the initial inspiration. These documents indicate the deliberate
acceptance of the novel as a moral, democratic force, setting forth
the popular philosophy of the day — a strange compound of Locke,
Shaftesbury, and Hume, devoted to the doctrine of the rewards of
innate virtue and the harmony of a divinely created universe.1
For the student of English fiction, then, what are the conclusions
to be drawn from the known facts about the translations of Mari-
anne f
1. That before the publication of Clarissa at least three trans-
lated versions of Marianne were at hand. Of the first one (which
appeared in parts in 1736, 1737, 1742) the first two volumes, available
before the publication of Pamela, probably contained only the first
six parts of the story. That this translation continued on sale long
after the appearance of the second translation is evidenced by its adver-
tisement among "Books Sold by C. Davis. Octavo. Duodecimo.,"
in the back of Lockman's translation of Marivaux's Pharsamond in
1750. The second translation — which I believe to be the work of
Mary Collyer — probably appeared first at some time between 1737
and 1743 under the title The Virtuous Orphan; Or, the Life of Mari-
anne; and in 1746 under the title The Life and Adventures of Indiana,
the Virtuous Orphan. Both titles reappear in the later editions, as
attested by Bent: the former reappeared in a reprint in Harrison's
"Novelists' Magazine" in 1784; the latter was known to Clara
Reeve and was described by her in 1785. The Virtuous Orphan is
vaguely referred to in the periodicals of 1767 and 1768. Apparently,
therefore, quite apart from the wide reading it had in French among
the more cosmopolitan of the English reading-public, Marivaux's
1 Miss Schroers points out (op. cit., p. 252) that Marivaux was not without some
moralistic intention: "Richardson mit seinem strengen, puritanischen ansichten liess
deutlicher als Marivaux die moralische seite seines werkes hervortreten. Aber jene
kritiker haben unrecht, die beweisen wollen, das Marivaux in Marianne absolut nicht
an einen moralischen zweck dachte. Er drtickt sich in klaren worten uber seine absichten
aus: 'Si vous (les lecteurs) regardez La Vie de Marianne comme un Roman . 9. votre
critique est juste ; il y a trop de reflexions, et ce n'est pas la la forme ordinaire des Romans,
ou des Histoires faites simplement pour divertir. Mais Marianne n'a point songg a
faire un Roman non plus' [La Vie de Marianne par Marivaux. Avertissement, 2nde
partie, tome !<*]."
511
128 HELEN SARD HUGHES
novel must have had an extensive vogue in translated form, since
no canny publisher of any time would risk the duplication of current
translations unless the demand very obviously justified such an
augmentation of the supply.
2. It seems legitimate to argue, quite apart from the question
of Richardson's indebtedness to his reading of Marianne, that
though the germinal idea of Pamela originated at an early date in a
veritable situation, yet the method of treating it might have been
influenced, perhaps even unconsciously to the author, by the current
interest in bourgeois psychology which was stimulated by the wide
reading of Marianne.1 In similar fashion, Richardson's use of the
epistolary method was doubtless the result of the current interest in
letter-writing in various forms and the popularity of previous experi-
ments for purposes of fiction by Mrs. Behn, Mrs. Manley, Mrs.
Haywood, and others. That Richardson should have felt the back-
wash from literary currents which he himself had not directly per-
ceived is not incredible. Just as Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is not
the first but the greatest of a long line of allegories, French and
English, several of which resemble it in essential particulars, but to
none of which specific indebtedness has been proved, so Richardson's
"new species of writing" may well have been the spontaneous result
of antecedent conditions unaffected by conscious borrowing or
imitation.
HELEN SARD HUGHES
UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA
1 As indication of the effect upon even minor fiction of the tone and method of
Marianne I quote a paragraph from a review of The History of Cornelia, a novel attrib-
uted to Mrs. Sarah Scott:
"The author of Cornelia has distinguished his attempt to gratify the taste of man-
kind for works of imagination, from most authors, by the graver turn of his performance.
In this, as well as several of the incidents he affects an imitation of Marianne; but has
unfortunately carried his seriousness too far. For the history of Marianne, tho' grave,
is not stiff; and tho' serious, not formal, but an agreeable vein of freedom and good humor
runs through the whole, and sets it at an equal distance from what is loose and trifling
on the one hand and dull and pedantic on the other" (Mon. Rev., Ill [May, 1750], 59)
512
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV January igi8 NUMBER 9
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE
I
In the Arte of English Poesie (1589) Puttenham praises George
Turbervile thus:
In her Maiesties time that now is are sprong vp an other crew of Courtly
makers Noble men and Gentlemen of her Maiesties owne seruauntes, who
haue written excellently well . . . .of which number is first that noble
Gentleman Edward Earle of Oxford. Thomas Lord of Bukhurst, ....
Henry Lord Paget, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir Walter Rawleigh, Master Edward
Dyar, Maister Fulke Greuell, Gascon, Britton, Turberuille and a great many
other learned Gentlemen.1
In Book III, chap, xxii, Puttenham remarks:
The historiographer that should by such wordes report of these two
kings [Henry VIII and Philip] gestes in that behalfe, should greatly blemish
the honour of their doings and almost speake vntruly and iniuriously by way
of abbasement, as another of our bad rymers that very indecently said.
A misers mynde thou hast, thou hast a Princes pelfe.
A lewd terme to be giuen to a Princes treasure (pelfe) These and
such other base wordes do greatly disgrace the thing and the speaker or
writer.2
The phrase greatly provoked him, for in the following chapter he
takes occasion to say: "Another of our vulgar makers, spake as
illfaringly in this verse written to the dispraise of a rich^man and
couetous. Thou hast a misers minde (thou hast a princes pelfe) a
» Arber's reprint, p. 75 (Book I, chap. xxxi). » Ibid., p. 266.
513] 129 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, January, 1918
130 HYDEE E. ROLLINS
lewde terme to be spoken of a princes treasure, which in no respect
nor for any cause is to be called pelfe, though it were neuer so meane."1
Koeppel was the first, I think, to point out that Puttenham had
quoted Turbervile's2 lines, "Of a ritch Miser." They are:
A MISERS minde thou hast
thou hast a princes pelfe;
Which makes thee welthy to thine heire,
a beggar to thy selfe.
Koeppel3 naturally concluded that Puttenham had here nullified his
former praise of Turbervile, and Seccombe, in the Dictionary of
National Biography, follows him by remarking that after Puttenham
had praised Turbervile he then called him a "bad rhymer." This
would have been an extraordinary proceeding, and the truth is that
Puttenham had probably never read the lines in Turbervile's Epi-
taphes, but, by the phrases " another of our bad rymers " and " another
of our vulgar makers," intended to condemn Timothy Kendall, a
writer both bad and vulgar, who in his Flowers of Epigrammes, out of
sundrie the moste singular authours selected, as well auncient as late
writers (1577) prints these verses verbatim, without acknowledgment
to Turbervile, as being translated "out of Greek."
Kendall's plagiarisms are almost unbelievably impudent. Va-
rious writers have already pointed out the appearance of verses by
Turbervile in the Flowers of Epigrammes (Seccombe himself does
so), but I doubt whether the extent of Kendall's plagiarisms has been
realized. In the following list, which includes all the important
borrowings, Kendall's epigram is first named, its equivalent in Turber-
vile's Epitaphes is then given, and Kendall's method of treating the
stolen verses is briefly indicated:4
EPIGRAMS SAID BY KENDALL TO BE TRANSLATED FROM AUSONIUS
1. Kendall's "To one that painted Eccho" (p. 11 6)= Turbervile's "To
one that painted Eccho" (p. 177). Almost verbatim.
1 Arber's reprint, p. 281. Gregory Smith (Elizabethan Critical Essays, II, 421)
referring to the lines quoted by Puttenham remarks: "This may be Hey wood's: but I
have failed to find it."
2 In his Epitaphes, Epigrams, etc., J. P. Collier's reprint, p. 214.
» "George Turbervile's Verhaltnis zur italienischen Litteratur," Anglia, N.F., XIII,
70-71.
4 The page references are to the Spenser Society's reprint (1874) of the Flowers of
Epigrammes and to Collier's reprint (1870 ?) of the Epitaphes.
514
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 131
2. "Of a Hare taken by a Dog-fishe" (p. 117) = "0f a Hare complayning
of the hatred of Dogs" (p. 177). Verbatim.
3. "The same otherwise" (i.e., "Of Venus in armour," p. 120) = "Of
Venus in Armour" (p. 176). Verbatim. By a typographical error Turber-
vile's lines begin "In complete Pallas saw," instead of "In complete armour
Pallas saw," and Kendall did not correct the error!
4. "Of the picture of Rufus a vaine Rhethoritian, of whom there is an
Epigram before" (p. 120 [he refers to an epigram on p. 115, "Of the Picture
of Rufus, a vaine Rhethorician," which he also gives under Ausonius, but
which was no doubt suggested by Turbervile]) = " Of the picture of a vaine
Rhetorician" (p. 151). Verbatim. Kendall gives two further epigrams on
Rufus immediately after this, each of which is dreadfully stupid; both,
I feel sure, were suggested entirely by Turbervile's epigram.
5. "Of a Thracian lad" (p. 137) = "Of a Thracyan that was drownde by
playing on the Ise" (p. 195). Kendall has "that swam" and "bare" for
Turbervile's "it swam" and "bore"; otherwise he quotes verbatim.
6. " Fayned f rendship " (p. 139) = " Of an open Foe and a fayned Friend "
(p. 213). Kendall borrows the first four lines almost verbatim; Turbervile's
epigram has four other lines, for which Kendall substitutes eight, and these
eight paraphrase, not only the four omitted lines, but also another epigram
by Turbervile on the same subject ("Againe") that immediately follows on
p. 214.
7. "Against stepdames " (p. 140) = " Of the cruell hatred of Stepmothers "
(p. 189). A close paraphrase; cf. No. 16, below.
8. "A controuersie betwene Fortune and Venus" (p. 140) = "A Con-
troversie of a conquest in Love twixt Fortune and Venus" (p. 110). Ver-
batim. Kendall has another epigram on this subject immediately preceding
the foregoing (p. 140), suggested by, and a paraphrase of, Turbervile's
lines.
9. "To one, hauying a long nose" (p. 144) = "Of one that had a great
Nose" (p. 149). Turbervile's first two lines, "Stande with thy nose against/
the sunne with open chaps," Kendall renders as "Stand with thy snoute
against the sunne,/ and open wide thy chaps"; he quotes the other two lines
verbatim.
10. "Of a deaf ludge, a deaf plaintife, and a deaf defendant" (p. 144) =
"Of a deafe Plaintife, a deafe Defendant, and a deafe Judge" (p. 132).
Turbervile's first sixteen lines are borrowed almost verbatim; for his last
twelve Kendall substituted two of his own, which make the epigram (so-
called) pointless and the title senseless.
11. "Against one very deformed" (p. 145) = "0f a marvellous deformed
man" (p. 152). A close paraphrase.
515
132 HYDER E. ROLLINS
12. "Otherwise [of drunkennesse] " (p. 146) = "Of Dronkennesse"
(p. 151). Verbatim.
13. " Againe of the same [dronkennesse] " (p. 147) = " Againe of Dronken-
nesse" (p. 151). Verbatim.
14. "Of a rich miser" (p. 147) = "0f aritch Miser" (p. 214). Verbatim-
This is the bad rhyme condemned (and quite justly) by Puttenham.
15. "Of Asclepiades, a greedie carle" (p. 148) = "Of a covetous Niggard,
and a needie Mouse" (p. 128). Verbatim, but Kendall omits Turbervile's
last four lines.
EPIGRAM SAID BY KENDALL TO BE TRANSLATED FROM THEODORUS
BEZA VEZELIUS
16. "Against stepdames" (p. 164) = "Againe [of the cruell hatred of
Stepmothers]" (p. 189). Paraphrased; cf. No. 7, above.
Turbervile was the greatest sufferer at the hands of this " vulgar
maker," who also, however, plagiarized from Sir Thomas Elyot,
Grimald, and the Earl of Surrey.1
II
Turbervile's works have never been given in correct order, though
to do so requires little more than an attentive reading of his poems
and prefaces. And this order must be established before any
biographical sketch of the poet can hope to be accurate. Among the
poems prefixed to his Tragical Tales, the extant edition of which is
dated 1587, is one entitled "The Authour here declareth the cause
why hee wrote these Histories, and forewent the translation of the
learned Poet Lucan." In this we are told that Melpomene appeared
to the poet, rebuked him for his attempt to translate Lucan, and
advised him to follow her sister Clio only; for
Shee deales in case of liking loue,
her lute is set but lowe:
And thou wert wonte in such deuise,
thine humour to bestow.
1 As when thou toldest the Shepheards tale
that Mantuan erst had pend:
2 And turndst those letters into verse,
that louing Dames did send
Vnto then* lingring mates, that fought
at sacke and siege of Troy:
» Of. England's Parnassus, ed. C. Crawford, Oxford, 1913, p. 485.
516
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 133
3 And as thou didst in writing of
thy Songs of sugred ioy.
4 Mancynus vertues fitter are,
for thee to take in hande,
Than glitering gleaues, and wreakfull warres,
that all on slaughter stand.
According to this list, then, before the Tragical Tales appeared
Turbervile had already written four works, whose titles in extant
copies run:
1. The Eglogs of the Poet B. Mantuan Carmelitan, Turned into English
Verse, & set forth with the Argument to euery Egloge by George Turbervile
Gent. Anno. 1567 Imprinted at London in Pater noster Rowe, at the
signe of the Marmayde, by Henrie Bynneman.
2. The Heroycall Epistles of the Learned Poet Publius Ouidius Naso,
In Englishe Verse: set out and translated by George Turberuile Gent.
With Aulus Sabinus Aunsweres to certaine of the same. Anno Domini 1567.
Imprinted at London, by Henry Denham.
3. Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, with a Discourse of the
Friendly affections of Tymetes to Pyndara his Ladie. Newly corrected, with
additions, and set out by George Turberuile, Gentleman. Aiino Domini
1567. Imprinted at London, by Henry Denham.
4. The Plaine Path to Perfect Vertue: Deuised and found out by Mancinus
a Latin Poet, and translated into English by G. Turberville Gentleman.
.... Imprinted at London in Knight-rider streate, by Henry Bynneman,
for Leonard Maylard. Anno 1568. [Title from Hazlitt's Handbook, 1867,
p. 368.]1
It by no means follows, however, that these works were written and
published in this order.
Clearly enough, as Collier first pointed out, there was an earlier
edition of the Epitaphes than that of 1567.2 The title-page announces
that the work is "newly corrected, with additions," and this is
corroborated by the dedicatory epistle " To the Right Noble and his
singular good Lady, Lady Anne, Countesse Warwick," in which
Turbervile wrote: "As at what time (Madame) I first published this
fond and slender treatise of Sonets, I made bolde with you in dedica-
tion of so unworthy a booke to so worthie a Ladie," now I have
increased "my former follie, in adding moe Sonets to those I wrote
1 Leonard Maylarde registered "a boke intituled a playne path Waye to perfyete
vertu &c" late in 1567 or early in 1568 (Arber's Transcript, I, 357).
2 Bibliographical Account of the Rarest Books, II, 447. A fragment of what is supposed
to be a copy of this first edition is said still to be extant.
517
134 HYDER E. ROLLINS
before ' It is impossible to tell what poems were in the
original edition and what were later added; it is practically certain,
however, that the Epitaphes was published after Barnaby Googe's
Epitaphes and Sonnets appeared (March 15, 1563/64), for Googe's
work deeply influenced Turbervile, who refers to it several times in
his own Epitaphes.1 Turbervile's epitaphs on Arthur Broke, who
supposedly died in 1563, and on Sir John Tregonwell, who died in
January, 1564/65, probably were written for the first edition of the
Epitaphes, which, it seems safe to assume, was published in or after
1565.
The so-called first edition of the Heroycall Epistles was published,
as a separate colophon at the end of the book states, on March 19,
1567,2 that is, 1567/68; but in a dedicatory letter "To the Right
Honorable and his Singular good Lord, Lord Tho. Hovvarde Vicount
Byndon," Turbervile declares that these epistles "are the first
fruites of his trauaile," while "To the Reader" he writes: "May be
that if thou shewe thy selfe friendly in well accepting this prouision,
thou shalt be inuited to a better banquet in time at my hands,"
evidently a reference to a projected edition of his Epitaphes. Evi-
dence is at hand to prove the truth of Turbervile's statement that
the Epistles preceded the Epitaphes. In the 1567 edition of the latter
there is an address "To the Reader" which may have belonged to
the original edition, and which says: "Here have I (gentle Reader)
according to promise in my Translation [i.e., in the Heroycall Epistles],
given thee a fewe Sonets"; and at the beginning of the work appear
also lines addressed "To the rayling Route of Sycophants," in which
after objecting to the criticisms that have been leveled at his work,
Turbervile says:
For Ovid earst did I attempt the like,
And for my selfe now shall I stick to strike ?
» E.g., his verses called "Maister Googe his sonet of the paines of Loue" (p. 14),
"Mayster Googe his Sonet" (p. 19), "Maister Googes fansie" (p. 205), "To Maister
Googe his Sonet out of sight out of thought" (p. 222).
2 Collier, op. cit.t II, 71; Hazlitt's Handbook, 1867, s.c. "Ovid." The copy (formerly
owned by P. Locker-Lampson) in the Huntington Library, New York, also has this
colophon. The colophon in the Harvard College Library copy does not have the words
4 ' Mar. 19 ": both the title-page and the colophon of this copy have been mended, and the
address to the sycophants, signs. X 2-X 3, has been bound in after sign. A 8 6. But the
Harvard copy seems to belong to the same edition as do those dated " Mar. 19, 1567."
518
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 135
Though thou [sycophant] affirme with rash and railing jawes
That I invita have Minerva made
My other booke, I gave thee no such cause
By any deede of mine to drawe thy blade.
This "other booke" was certainly the Heroycall Epistles, and it
likewise has eleven six-line stanzas called "The Translator to the
captious sort of Sycophants," which were probably not included in
the first issue.
The Stationers' Registers, too, offer proof that the Epistles had
appeared before 1567/68^ for about July, 1566, Henry Denham
(the publisher of the extant 1567/68 edition) licensed for pub-
lication "a boke intituled the fyrste epestle of Ovide,1'1 a day or two
later licensed An epestle of Ovide beynge the iiifh epestle &c,2 and about
January, 1566/67, paid twelve pence "for his lycense for ye pryntinge
of the Reste of the Epestles of Ovide.113 If Denham had printed the
book immediately after securing this last license, it would have
appeared several months before the 1567 edition of the Epitaphes,
which was registered for publication about March, 1566/67 ;4 and
that he did actually print the Epistles, in part or in whole, at this
time is certain; for otherwise Turbervile's remark in the preface to
the 1567 edition of the Epitaphes — "Here have I .... according
to promise in my Translation, given thee a few Sonets" — would be
senseless. If his words are to be interpreted literally, the preface
to the Epistles shows that this book, containing all his translations,
preceded the first issue of the Epitaphes, and hence may have ap-
peared by 1565; but it is possible that the address to Lord Howard
was printed in the "boke intituled the fyrste epestle of Ovide," which
Denham licensed, and may have published separately, in July, 1566,
and that the first edition of the Epitaphes appeared shortly after this
date, but before the Epistles were published in collected form.5 The
extant edition of the Heroycall Epistles dated March, 1567/68, at
any rate cannot be the first edition.
' Arber's Transcript, I, 328.
2 Ibid., p. 329. » Ibid., p. 335. * Ibid., p. 338.
5 There would have been nothing unusual in so issuing one of Turbervile's books twice
in a year. They were all extremely popular. The Epitaphes, e.g., were printed in
1565?, 1567, 1570, 1579, 1584; the Heroycall Epistles, 1567/68, 1569, 15707, 1600, 1605;
the Eglogs, 1567, 1572, 1577, 1594, 1597.
519
136 HYDEB E. ROLLINS
Turbervile's Eglogs, too, may have been printed in two or more
instalments, for Henry Bynneman (the publisher of the first extant
edition) secured a "ly cense for pryntinge of the fyrste iiijor eggloges
of Mantuan &c" about January, 1566/67,1 and about March of the
same year a "ly cense for pryntinge of a boke intituled the Rest of the
eggleges of Mantuan."2 It is more probable, however, that to pro-
tect his title from pirate printers, Bynneman licensed this work as
the translation progressed and that immediately after he secured the
last license the entire work was first published. In an address to the
reader prefixed to the Eglogs, Turbervile remarks: " Having trans-
lated this Poet (gentle Reader) although basely and with barren pen,
[I] thought it not good nor friendly to wythhold it from thee : know-
ing of olde thy wonted curtesie in perusing Bookes, and discretion
in iudging them without affection/ ' a remark which substantiates
the statement that his first two works had appeared "of olde" — one
or two years earlier.3 Turbervile's Plaine Path to Perfect Vertue,
translated from Mancinus, appeared in 1568; the book is not acces-
sible to me, and I am unaware what light it may throw on these
vexing bibliographical matters.
In 1567 Turbervile, then the most important professional poet
in London, contributed complimentary verses to Geoffrey Fenton's
Certaine Tragicall Discourses written oute of Frenche and Latin, a work
which no doubt suggested the compilation of Tragical Tales, trans-
lated by Tvrbervile, In time of his troubles, out of sundrie Italians. The
only extant copies of this work were " imprinted at London by Abell
leffs, dwelling in the Forestreete without Crepelgate at the signe of
the Bel. Anno Dom. 15B7."4 The nature of Turbervile's troubles
will be discussed later; here it must be shown that the book appeared
» Arber's Transcript, I, 334. 2 Ibid., p. 340.
* The Eglogs, dated 1567, seems actually to have come from the press shortly after
the new year began (on March 25) ; so that it preceded by almost a year the March 19,
1567/68, edition of the Heroycall Epistles — another reason why that cannot be considered
the first edition.
* The "tragical tales" are ten in number, seven being translated from Boccaccio, two
from Bandello, and one from an unknown source. The book is considerably lengthened
by a number of miscellaneous poems, for which a separate title-page is provided:
"Epitaphes and Sonnettes annexed to the Tragical histories, By the Author. With
some other broken pamphlettes and Epistles, sent to certaine his frends in England,
at his being in Moscouia. Anno 1569. Omnia probate. Quod bonum est tenete."
The book was reprinted at Edinburgh, 1837 (fifty copies only) — a careful reprint,
according to Collier's BibL Account, II, 452; "very incorrectly" reprinted, according to
Hazlitt's Handbook (1867), p. 617 — and my references are to this reprint.
520
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 137
between 1574 and 1575. It may be remarked, first of all, that from
June, 1568, to September, 1569, Turbervile was in Russia; most of
the poems published in the Tales were, as will be shown, written after
his return to England.
Prefixed to the Tales are verses (already referred to) in which the
poet explains why he " forewent the translation of the learned Poet
Lucan":
I had begonne that hard attempt,
to turne that fertile soyle.
My bullocks were alreadie yokte,
and flatly fell to toyle.
Me thought they laboured meetlie well,
tyll on a certaine night • "
Melpomene appeared to him, advised him to continue to follow Clio,
and rebuked his presumption thus:
How durst thou deale in field affaires ?
leaue off, vnyoke thy steeres.
Let loftie Lucans verse alone.1
Now in Thomas Blener-Hasset's prefatory epistle, dated May 15,
1577, to the second part of the Mirror for Magistrates occurs this
passage: "But how hard a thing it is to compell Clio, with her
boysterous banners, to couch vnder the compasse of a few metered
lines, I referre you vnto the good Turberuile, who so soone as he
began to take the terrible treatise of Lucan in hand, he was inforst to
vnyoke his steeres, and to make holy day."2 From this Koeppel
rightly decided that the Tales had appeared before May, 1577, and
referred also to a note in Malone's copy of the Tales (1587 edition,
now in the Bodleian), which runs : " There was a former edition of the
Tales in 1576."3 There may actually have been an edition of 15764
1 This clumsy figure was probably suggested by an explanation in Googe's Zodiake
of Life (1560) of why he (Googe) gave up the translation of Lucan urged by Melpomene.
See Arber's reprint, 1871, of Googe's Eglogs, p. 7.
2 Mirror for Magistrates (ed. J. Haslewood, 1815), I, 348. Haslewood noted that
Blener-Hasset was quoting Turbervile's own words.
• Koeppel, op. cit., pp. 48-49. Seccombe, in the D.N.B., apparently considers the
1587 edition the first and only edition.
< The existence of this 1576 edition has generally been assumed, e.g., by Wood-Bliss,
Athen. Oxon., I, 627; by Hutchins, Dorset, 1861, I, 196; by Chalmers, Works of the
English Poets, I, 578; and by Lowndes, Bibliographer's Manual, 1834, II, 183% following
Censure Literaria, 2d ed., I, 318, where the existence of such an 'edition is merely taken
for granted. Collier (Bibl. Account, II, 450) claimed to have a fragmentary copy of an
edition apparently older than that of 1587, but strangely enough made no effort to
establish its date.
521
138 HYDER E. ROLLINS
(though Malone probably thought so because of Blener-Hasset's
remark), but the book was certainly written and published before
1575.
The ten tragical tales were, the title-page informs us, " translated
by Turbervile, In time of his troubles," and his troubles were (as he
thought!) over in 1575, for in the dedication of his Booke of Faul-
conrie,1 published in that year, he addressed the Earl of Warwick as
follows:
Had leysure answered my meaning, and sicknesse giuen but some reason-
able time of truce sithence my late troubles, I had ere this in Englishe verse
published, vnder the protection of your noble name the haughtie woorke
of learned Lucane But occasions breaking off my purposes, & disease
cutting my determinations therein, am now driuen to a newe matter ....
and forced to fall from haughtye warres, to hie fleeing Hawkes .... yet for
that it best fitteth a melancholike heade, surcharged with pensiue and sullen
humors, my earnest sute must be for good acceptance at your honors hands.
This passage, with its reference to "my late troubles" and to the
abandonment of the translation of Lucan, proves beyond all doubt
that the Booke of Faulconrie appeared after the Tragical Tales. Had
biographers actually read Turbervile's work, this fact would long
ago have been established.
The other limit of the appearance of the Tales can be fairly well
established by an examination of the "Epitaphes and Sonnettes
annexed to the Tragical histories." Three of the poems there
printed are said to be poetical epistles written by Turbervile from
Russia in 1569. Among the others there are three that can be used
in dating the book: one of these is an elegy on "The right noble
Lord, William, Earle Pembroke his death," and the other two lament
the death of Henry Sydenham and of Giles Bampfild. Pembroke
died on March 17, 1569/70; the other elegies inform us that Syden-
ham and Bampfild were drowned in "Irishe streame" while with the
army of the Earl of Essex, and this places their death in 1573. 2 The
1 The Booke of Faulconrie or Banking, for the Onely Delight and pleasure of all
Noblemen and Gentlemen: Collected out of the best aucthors, as well Italians as French-
men, and some English practises withall concernyng Faulconrie By George
Turberuile Gentleman Imprinted at London for Christopher Barker, at the signe
of the Grashopper in Paules Churchyarde. Anno. 1575."
2 According to the D.N.B. Essex sailed with his army from Liverpool on July 19,
1573, and Turbervile tells us that his friends were drowned in a storm before the army had
disembarked.
522
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 139
Tragical Tales, then, must have been published about 1574, not long
before the Booke of Faulconrie. Unfortunately the Stationers'
Registers for this period are lost.
There is still further proof for the priority of the Tales to the
Faulconrie. Not only is the Faulconrie omitted in Melpomene's list
of books published by Turbervile,1 but in complimentary verses
prefixed to the Tales, Robert Baynes prophesies :
The same who vewes, shall find his lines, with learned reason dight.
And as to elder age, his stayed braine shall grow:
So falling from, his riper penne, more graue conceites may flow,
verses which if written in 1587 would have been absolutely ridiculous.
Furthermore, in verses prefixed to the Faulconrie, Baynes refers
specifically to the ten tragical histories :
The Booke so done, as neede no whit, the wryters name empare.
Whose noted skill so knowne, whose penne so had in price, .
As credite yeeldes, eche worke of his, that falles from his deuice.
Among the which, though this doth differ from his lore:
From grauer stuffe a pause it is, to sharpe his wittes the more.
Some of the "Sonnettes" printed in the last part of the Tales seem
to have been composed in Russia, and one of them, "A farewell to
a mother Cosin, at his going towardes Moscouia," claims to have been
written in June, 1568. It was natural that Turbervile should have
collected these older poems and added them to his newer poems in
1574 to fill out the volume of translated tales.2
Turbervile's other work of this period was "The Noble Arte of
Venerie or Hvnting Translated and collected for the pleasure
of all Noblemen and Gentlemen, out of the best approued Authors."
The book has no imprint,3 but the dedication to Sir Henry Clinton is
signed by C[hristopher] B[arker], a distinguished printer. "The
Translator to the Reader/' also unsigned, is dated June 16, 1575.
1 This list, from the Tales, is quoted on pp. 516-17, above.
2 Censura Literaria, 2d ed., I, 318, informs us (and has the usual number of followers)
that "to the latter edition [i.e., of 1587, an earlier edition of 1576 being assumed] of the
Tales were annexed 'Epitaphs and Sonets.'" This is absurd: even Turbeijrile would
hardly have added epitaphs on men who had been dead for fifteen years.
8 This at least is the case with the facsimile reprint issued in the "Tudor and Stuart
Library," Oxford, 1908; but the copy formerly in the Hoe Library (Catalogue, IV, 295)
had the imprint, "Imprinted by Henry Bynneman, for Christopher Barker."
523
140 HYDER E. ROLLINS
The work, however, is everywhere attributed to Turbervile,1 and is
usually found bound with his Booke of Faulconrie. With this book
Turbervile's literary career may have come to an end; there is no
proof that he wrote anything more, although various later works
have been attributed to him. These attributions will not be dis-
cussed here.
Ill
The " troubles" to which Turbervile so often refers have aroused
some interest in his biographers, although no one has attempted to
show what his troubles were. The Tragical Tales, not content with
informing us on the title-page that it was written "in time of his
troubles," constantly reminds us of them. The dedication, "To
the Worshipfull his louing brother, Nicholas Turberuile, Esquire,"
declares that "these few Poeticall parers [sic], and pensiue Pamph-
lets" are "the ruful records of my former trauel, in the sorowful sea
of my late misaduentures : which hauing the more spedily by your
carefull and brotherly endeuour, ouerpassed and escaped, could not
but offer you this treatise in lieu of a more large liberalise." Then
in a long epistle "To his verie friend Ro. Baynes," Turbervile
remarks :
Wherein if ought vnworth the presse thou finde
Vnsauorie, or that seemes vnto thy taste,
Impute it to the troubles of my minde,
Whose late mishap made this be hatcht in haste,
By clowdes of care best beauties be defaste.
He also adds that
in my life I neuer felt such fittes,
As whilst I wrote this worke did daunt my wittes.
Even to Melpomene he announces that
late mishaps haue me bereft
my rimes of roisting ioye:
Syth churlish fortune clouded hath
my glee, with mantell blacke,
Of foule mischaunce, wherby my barke
was like to bide the wracke.
i H. G. Aldis (Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., IV, 389) says: "It was at the instance and
expense of Christopher Barker that Turbervile undertook the compilation of The noble
arte of venerie or hunting (1575), the publisher himself seeking out and procuring works of
foreign writers for the use of the compiler."
524
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 141
The troubles to which Turbervile referred were, as I have shown,
over by 1575. And what were they ? Not sickness, for the dedica-
tory epistle to the Earl of Warwick shows that sickness followed, but
was not a part of, his troubles. Nor had they begun as early as
1568. By that time Turbervile had attained great prominence as a
poet, and in 1568 he was chosen by Randolph as secretary for the
embassy to Russia, a post of some honor. If, however, Turbervile's
" Farewell to a mother Cosin," a poem in the Tales, was actually
written before he left for Russia, he was either deliberately feigning
melancholy or else his troubles had begun. To his mother he writes
that " cruel fortune will never smile on me," "my country coast would
never allow me one good luck," "I have spent all my years in study,
and yet have never got a better chance."
Sith I haue livde so long,
and neuer am the neere,
To bid my natiue soile farewel,
I purpose for a yeere.
And more perhaps if neede
and present cause require.
It seems more probable that this poem was composed after Turbervile
had returned to England, for there is certainly no trace of sorrow or
melancholy or trouble in the other poetical letters that he sent from
Russia to various English friends.1
After reading the woebegone love songs that are added to the
Tales, one might be tempted to believe that Turbervile's troubles
were only those of the heart. One, for example, begins:
Wounded with loue, and piercing deep desire
Of your f aire face, I left my natiue land.2
Others have such titles as "That though he may not possible come
or send, yet he Hues mindfull of his mistresse in Moscouia"3 and "To
one whom he had long loued, and at last was refused without cause,
1 According to Randolph's own account of the embassy (in Hakluyt's Voyages, 1589,
pp. 339 ff.), he had about forty in his company, "of which the one halfe were Gentlemen,
desirous to see the world." It was probably a spirit of adventure that led Turbervile to
accompany Randolph. He can hardly have been having any deep-rooted trqpble when
he could stop his metrical tale of woe to assure his mother:
"Put case the snow be thicke,/and winter frostes be great:
I doe not doubt but I shal flnde/a stoue to make me sweat!"
* Page 315. » Page 302.
525
142 HYDER E. ROLLINS
and one imbraced that least deserued it."1 In many of his poems
Turbervile is frankly, or better, naively, autobiographical; but at
the end of the Tragical Tales he takes occasion explicitly to warn his
readers against misinterpreting these love poems, adding "The
Authors excuse for writing these and other Fancies, with promise of
grauer matter hereafter." "My prime," he says, "prouokt my
hasty idle quil To write of loue, when I did meane no ill." Ovid,
whose every "leafe of loue the title eke did beare," encouraged him;
and besides, he lived in the Inns of Court among sundry gallants who
were victims of love,
And being there, although my minde were free,
Yet must I seeme loue wounded eke to be.
Many of these gallants, he continues, had persuaded him to write
poems for them to send to their own mistresses, until
So many were the matters, as at last
The whole vnto a hansome volume grewe:
Then to the presse they must in all the hast,
Maugre my beard, my mates would haue it so.
He concludes with the assurance that "I meane no more with loues
deuise to deale."2
Evidently, then, hopeless love was not Turbervile Js trouble —
but it would be interesting to know. what share his wife had in his
penning this public apology. For when the Tales was published
Turbervile was certainly married. In a jingle called "To his Friend
Nicholas Roscarock, to induce him to take a Wife," Turbervile
writes that since his own "raging prime is past" he is now sending an
epistle which
toucheth mariage vow,
An order which my selfe haue entred now.
If I had known this sacred yoke earlier, he says,
Good faith, I would not wasted so my prime
In wanton wise, and spent an idle time
as "my London mates" still do. Koeppel was pleased by this letter,
because it made him feel that happier days came to the poet after
1 Page 336.
2 In his preface "To the Reader" in the Epitaphes (1567) Turbervile had made a
similar disclaimer: "By meere fiction of these fantasies, I woulde warne (if I myghte)
all tender age to flee that fonde and fllthie affection of poysoned and unlawful love."
He admits, however, "my selfe am of their yeares and disposition."
526
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TUEBERVILE 143
his marriage : " Das klingt uns nach den vielen klagen TVs trostlich zu
ohren und lasst uns hoffen, dass auf seinen weiteren lebensweg, der
sich unseren blicken entzieht, manch freundliches licht gefallen sein
wird."1 But Turbervile had evidently found an old proverb true:
he was complaining of his troubles just after he had married! Un-
happily for KoeppePs theory, furthermore, instead of expressing only
delight with marriage, in verses that follow those quoted above,
Turbervile writes like a confirmed woman-hater and a cynic. You
may not wish to marry, he tells Roscarock, until you find a maiden
who is "both yoong and faire, with wealth and goods/ ' but that is
foolish :
Be rulde by me, let giddy fansie go,
Imbrace a wife, with wealth and coyne enough:
Force not the face, regard not feature so,
An aged grandame that maintains the plough,
And brings thee bags, is woorth a thousand peates
That pranck their pates, and Hue by Spanish meates.
It is to be hoped that, however hard looking Mrs. Turbervile
may have been, she at least brought heavy bags to her troubled
husband.2
But not all the blame for the poet's "fittes" can be thrown on his
wife. It is possible that he was suspected of complicity in the North-
ern Rebellion of 1569. One thinks, in this connection, of the epitaph
Turbervile wrote on William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a nobleman
whose alleged sympathy for the rebel earls led to his ruin. Further-
more, Turbervile may have been a Catholic, as the State Papers of
the period are full of references to Dorsetshire Turberviles who were
summoned before the Privy Council to answer charges of non-
conformity; and this alone would have brought him into suspicion.
Some probability is added to this conjecture by the obvious anxiety
Turbervile showed, in his dedication of the Book of Falconry, to stay
under the protection of the Earl of Warwick, who in September, 1573,
1 Op. cit., p. 55.
1 Nobody can doubt that this is one of Turbervile's autobiographical poems. He was
evidently intimately acquainted with Roscarock, who, according to the "Authors Epi-
logue" (Tales, pp. 401-2), was responsible for the publication of the book: ^ '~
"Roscarockes warrant shal sufflse,/who likte the writing so,
As did embolden me to let/the leaues at large to goe.
If il succeede, the blame was his/ who might haue kept it backer
And frendly tolde me that my booke/his due deuise did lacke."
527
144 HYDER E. ROLLINS
had been made a member of the Privy Council. However this be, I
can point out two happenings that might well have ''troubled" our
poet.
The first is sufficiently explained by this entry in the Acts of the
Privy Council1 for March 29, 1571 :
A letter to the Vicount Bindon and others, &c., Justices of Peax in the
countie of Dorset, where the Quenes Majestic by her owne letters signified
that her pleasure was they shuld cause certaine nombers of men to be in
redines to serve upon further warning to be gyven unto them, and also were
by letters amonges other thinges advertised from their Lordships that her
plesure was they shuld make choise of such fit persons to have the leading
of them as for their experience and other qualities agreable thereunto might
be thought hable to take such a charge upon them; forasmuch as they are
informed that contrary to her Majesties expectation and their order they
have made choise for the leading of one hundred soldiours as well of one
Hughe Bampfild, a man besides his old yeres farre unfitte to take such a
charge upon him, having not ben imploied in like service, as also of George
Turbervile, who hath ben alwaies from his youth, and still is, gyven to his
boke and studie and never exercised in matters of warre; lyke as they can
not but finde it strainge that emongest such a nomber of fitt men as they
know are to be found out in that countie they wold committe the same to
persons farre unfitte for that purpose, so they are required to make sume
better choise for the furniture of her Majesties service, or els to signifie why
they can not do so, to thintent they may upon knowledge thereof take such
furder order for the supply of their wantes as they shall find convenient.
Hugh Bampfild, here described as old and unfit for military service,
was Turbervile's uncle, and to him the poet, in terms of great respect
and affection, had dedicated the Eglogs. It is easy to see how the
order of the Privy Council would deeply have humiliated Turbervile,
and his abortive attempt at a soldier's life no doubt caused him to
abandon the translation of Lucan's warlike poem. The deaths
of Giles Bampfild — perhaps the son of Hugh and a cousin of the
poet2 — and Henry Sydenham soon followed.3 Turbervile was
1 Ed. Dasent, VIII, 21-22.
2 In the Tales, p. 356, Turbervile remarks:
"The second neere vnto my selfe allyde,
Gyles Bamfleld hight, (I weepe to wryte his name)."
It may be noted also that George's paternal grandmother was Jane, daughter of
Thomas Bampflld, of Somerset (Hutchins, History and Antiquities of Dorset, 3d ed., I,
139).
a Cf. p. 522, above.
528
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TUBBERVILE 145
evidently very fond of these men, for he included two mournful
elegies on them in the Tragical Tales. Even ignoring the dubious
Mrs. Turbervile, here is humiliation and grief enough to trouble
anyone.
IV
If the date of the Tragical Tales could be pushed forward to 1587,
there would be no difficulty in explaining the poet's troubles; for
after 1576 they came, not single spies, but in battalions. In August,
1577, he had a quarrel with Sir Henry Ashley, which was of sufficient
moment to attract the attention of the Privy Council.1 On August
20, three years later, the Commissioners for Musters in Dorsetshire
appointed a new captain for service in Ireland in place of Mr. George
Turbervile (he can hardly have been any other than the poet), who
was "a great spurner of their authority."2 But a far worse trouble
had previously befallen him.
On March 17, 1579/80, Richard Jones, a London printer, licensed
for publication A dittie of master Turbervyle Murthered: and John
Morgan that murdered him: with a letter of the said Morgan to his
mother and another to his Sister Turbervyle. The ballad itself is not
extant, but the bare entry, though not before utilized, has high value
for a biographer of George Turbervile. Thomas Park,3 to be sure,
noticed that in Herbert's Typographical Antiquities the ballad was
listed among Jones's publications, and half believed that the poet
himself had been murdered; but (like the editor of the Edinburgh
reprint of the Tragical Tales*) he was not wholly convinced, because
Anthony a Wood5 had specifically said that the poet was alive in
1594. Collier in 1849 commented under the entry of the ballad,
"This is supposed to have been George Turberville, the poet."6 But
a few years later, because meanwhile he had read Wood's statement
and because he believed that the Tragical Tales first appeared in
1587, Collier changed his mind.7 Other writers have paid no atten-
tion to the ballad-entry.
1 "A letter to Lord Marques of Winchester and the Justices of Assises in the countie
of Dorset for thexamining of a quarrell betwene Sir Henry Asheley and George Turbe-
vill, gentleman, according to a minute remaining in the Counsell Chest" (Acts of the
Privy Council, ed. Dasent, X, 14).
2 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1547-80, p. 673. '' W.
» Censura Literaria, 2d ed., I, 315. * Page viii. .« Athen. Oxon., ed. Bliss, I, 628.
« Extracts from the Stationers' Registers, II, 109. 7 Bibliographical Account, II, 453.
529
146 HYDER E. ROLLINS
As a matter of fact, the murdered Turbervile was not George but
Nicholas. For on February 18, 1579/80, the Privy Council
instructed the Sheriff of Somerset to select a jury "of good and
indifferent men for thenquiry and triall of the murther committed by
Jhon Morgan upon Nicholas Turbervile, esquire .... and to have
regard that the said Morgan may bee safely kept to bee forthcoming
to awnswer unto justice."1 Nine days later the Council ordered the
release of one William Staunton who had been committed to prison
"appon suspition that he shold have consented to that detestable
fact," the murder, because it had been "credibly enformed that he ys
not anywayes culpable therof," but directed that he be bound to
appear at the Assizes.2
Now there were at least three Nicholas Turberviles — the poet's
father, his brother (to whom the Tragical Tales is dedicated), and
his second cousin, Nicholas of Crediton. This cousin lived until
1616,3 and a Nicholas Turbervile of Winterbourne Whitchurch, who
was surely, I think, the poet's brother, died shortly before August 7,
1584, when his estate was administered.4 Only Nicholas, the poet's
father, remains to be considered. He was sheriff of Dorset in the
nineteenth year of Elizabeth's reign.5 As his term had expired only
a short time before the murder, this would account for the interest
shown in the case by the Privy Council. His wife was a daughter of
Morgan of South Mapperton;6 hence merely from the title of the
ballad it is clear that the murdered man was George Turbervile's
father, for it informs us that the murderer Morgan wrote a letter " to
his Sister Turbervyle." Nicholas Turbervile, then, was murdered
by John Morgan, his brother-in-law — a tragedy that instinctively
reminds one of the immortal descendant of this family, Tess of the
D'Urbervilles.
1 Acts, ed. Dasent, XI, 391.
2 Ibid., p. 401.
'Hutchins, History and Antiquities of Dorset, 3d ed., I, 139.
4 Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, II, 89.
« Hutchins, op. cit., I, xlii; Fuller's Worthies, ed. P. A. Nuttal, I, 472; Acts of the
P.C., X, 216.
•See the pedigrees in Hutchins, I, 139. There, by the way, the poet's brother
Nicholas is not mentioned. Troilus, the elder brother, is said by Seccombe to have died
in 1607; but Hutchins (I, 201) shows that his fourth and fifth sons were baptized at
Winterbourne Whitchurch in 1607 and 1609; he died about July 8, 1609, when his estate
was administered by his widow, Anne (Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, II, 297).
530
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 147
Fortunately, further proof of this relationship is available. In
Anthony Munday 's lugubrious View of sundry Examples , Reporting
many straunge murthers (1580)1 is included an
Example of John Morgan, who slew Maister Turbervile in
Somersetshire, 1580
Likewise in Somersetshire, one John Morgan, by common report a lewd
and wicked liver, and given to swearing, roysting, and all wickednes abound-
ing in him, slew his brother in law, Maister Turbervile, a gentleman of godly
life, very sober, wise, and discreet, whose wife lying in childebed [this is
probably an invention of Munday 's], yet arose and went to have law and
justice pronounced on that cruel malefactor. So, at Chard, before the Lord
Chief Justice, hee was condemned and suffered death for his offence. 1580.
No one who has read this book can doubt that Munday may have
manufactured incidents here, as he certainly did in his other
"examples," to increase the effect of his story.2 His account is
important, however, because it proves that John Morgan was
Nicholas Turbervile's brother-in-law; and the pedigrees of Morgan
and Turbervile given in Hutchins' Dorset show beyond all question that
Morgan's brother-in-law, Nicholas Turbervile, was the poet's father.
The fact that Nicholas was murdered in Somerset', not in Dorset,
is of no importance. Dorsetshire and Somersetshire adjoin each
other, and indeed until the eighth year of Elizabeth's reign had
formed one county.3 The indictment itself charged that John
Morgan, "gentleman, lately of Dorset, did in the aforesaid county
strike and kill the said Turbervile" — an ambiguous wording that
later proved fortunate for Morgan's heirs.4 Just when the murder
occurred I have been unable to determine. The first mention I
find of it is in the order of the Privy Council, February 18, 1579/80,
already quoted. But there is a record that on January 27, 1579/80,
the estate of Nicholas Turbervile of Winterbourne Whitchurch,
1 Ed. Collier, Old Shakespeare Society, 1851, pp. 85-86.
2 One of his examples (p. 90) is of " A Woman of lix yeers delivered of three Children,"
each of whom at once made some such appropriate remark as "The day appointed which
no man can shun."
1 1 have searched vainly through histories and records of Somerset for a Nicholas
Turbervile.
« See Sir George Croke's Reports, 1790, p. 101. Croke reports that the Queen's
Bench (30 Eliza.) reversed the attainder and restored Morgan's estates to his neir, because
the indictment was shown to be faulty: it charged Morgan with having killed Turbervile
in the "aforesaid county" (of Dorset), when Somersetshire was actually meant. Croke
mistakenly gives the murderer's name as Thomas Morgan.
531
148 HYDER E. ROLLINS
Dorset, was administered by his widow.1 It can hardly be doubted
that this Nicholas was the poet's father, and that he was murdered
shortly before January 27. As for John Morgan, he was attainted,
his estates were forfeited to the Crown, and he was hanged on March
14, 1579/80.2 Three days later ballad singers were singing a lamen-
table ditty about his crime and execution through the streets of
London.
In spite of their ancient and honorable ancestry — and long before
the days of Tess — all the Turberviles were having evil fortunes. It
seems probable that they were suspected of papistry and, as a corol-
lary, of disloyalty to the Queen. On August 4, 1581, for example,
Viscount Bindon, the nobleman to whom the Heroycall Epistles was
dedicated,3 was notified by the Privy Council "touchinge Turbervile
of Beere, who cometh not to the churche, and .... harbourethe
one Bosgrave" to arrest both men and "to searche the house for
bookes and other superstitious stuffe."4 Francis Turbervile, of
Dorset, was outlawed in 1587 for "divers robberies committed";5
Thomas was summoned before the Council in July, 1587, on the
charge of aiding and maintaining felons;6 Jenkin and his two sons,
who lived in Wales, were Catholics and were suspected of harboring
priests;7 in March, 1591, Mr. Morgan8 of Weymouth, Dorsetshire,
was reported to be keeping a priest in his house, as was also "the
sister-in-law of Turberville, who serves one of the Lord Chancellor
of Ireland's daughters, and is much trusted by the Jesuits."9 Many
other instances of this sort could be cited, and while none of them may
refer directly to the poet, they do refer to his kinsmen, and in some
of them he was probably concerned.
On June 22, 1587, Turbervile himself appeared before the Privy
Council "to answeare certaine matters objected against him," and
1 Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries, II, 54.
2 Hutchins, op. cit., II, 158. I have not traced the source whence the editors derived
this date. They remark that John Morgan killed his brother-in-law, Nicholas Turber-
vile, but do not attempt to indicate which Nicholas the murdered man was.
1 John Turbervile, of Bere and Woolbridge, married Lady Anne, Viscount Bindon's
daughter, in 1608 (Hutchins, op. cit., I, 154).
4 Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Dasent, XIII, 150.
» Ibid., XV, 96. « Ibid., XV, 164.
7 Ibid., XXVI, 310, 378 (November, December, 1596).
8 The name Morgan suggests that the poet's relatives may have been aimed at in
this report.
• Cal. State Papers, Dom.t 1591-94, III, 24.
532
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBERVILE 149
was ordered "not to depart without speciall licence from their Lord-
ships obtained in that behalfe."1 Nicholas Turbervile (George's
cousin?) received similar orders on April 25, 1588.2 What these
charges were, I have no means of determining; but the poet was
apparently exonerated, for on April 12, 1588, the Council sent a
letter to the Lord Treasurer, notifying him that
whereas George Turvyle, gentleman, was appointed by the Earle of War-
wycke to be the Muster Master in the countye of Warwycke under his
Lieutenancy, therefore his Lordship was praied, accordinge unto a Privy
Seale graunted unto his Lordship for those purposes, to paie or cause to be
paied unto the said gentleman, by waye of imprest, the somme of fyvteene
poundes after tenn shillinges the daye, to be allowed him for so many dayes
as he should be emploied in that service, allowing him for his repaier thether
and his retorne hether againe so many daies as should suffice for that jorney.3
That Turbervile was a protege of the Warwicks is certain; in addition
to the genuine gratitude he expressed to the Earl in the dedica-
tion of the Book of Falconry, he had previously dedicated "to
his singular good Lady," the Countess of Warwick, the first and
second editions of the Epitaphes and the Plain Path to Perfect Virtue
(1568). It seems almost certain, then, that "George Turvyle,
gentleman," was Turbervile the poet; and that in 1588, as in 1574-75,
the Earl had come to the help of his rhyming friend.
V
On October 7, 1578, Nicholas Turbervile, gentleman, was ordered
to appear before the Privy Council for contempt of "the Com-
missioners appointed to deale betwene the prisonners of her Majesties
Benche and their creditours," because he had repeatedly refused to
appear before the Commissioners so that they could deal "with him
in a cause betwene him and one Thomas Spencer, prisonner in the
said Benche."4 Presumably he appeared, but some time later the
Council ordered Sir William Courtney and others to settle "certaine
controversies touchinge matters in accompt betwene Nicholas
Turbervile and Thomas Spenser of Crediton in that countie of
Devon" or to advise the Council which of the two was at fault.5
1 Acts, XV, 135. Seccombe, in the D.N.B., has also noticed this record. Surely the
poet is meant by the phrase "George Turbervile of Wolbridge in the connive of Dorsett,
gentleman."
2 Ibid., XVI, 41. 4 Ibid., X, 338-39.
» Ibid., XVI, 31-32. 6 Ibid., XII, 76 (June 29, 1580).
533
150 HYDER E. ROLLINS
The Turbervile here mentioned was probably Nicholas of Crediton,
George's second cousin; but I have quoted these records only to
suggest that Thomas Spencer, or another of his family, was the person
addressed by George Turbervile in the three poetical letters printed
in the latter part of his Tragical Tales.1
Turbervile addresses his friend merely as "Spencer," but Anthony
a Wood2 supplied the name " Edmund/' believing that the letters were
written to the Faerie Queene poet. Park3 remarked that they were
addressed to "Edmund Spenser (not the poet)"; but the editor of
the Edinburgh reprint of the Tales in his preface declared that "one
of the epistles .... is inscribed to Edmund Spenser, with whom he
[Turbervile] was in habits of intimacy"! Collier, also, believed that
Turbervile was "a young friend of Spenser" and that he wrote the
poetical epistle from Russia "in the very year [1569] when the author
of the Faerie Queene was matriculated at Pembroke Hall, at the age
of seventeen."4 Turbervile, it should be remembered, had left
Oxford in 1561, when Spenser was nine years of age; and there is little
probability, certainly no evidence, that he knew Edmund Spenser.
Koeppel nevertheless adopted Collier's view, and went much
farther by distorting the lines in Colin Clout,
There is good Harpalus, now woxen aged
In faithful service of faire Cynthia,
into an allusion to Turbervile. He bases this interpretation on the
altogether untenable grounds "dass T. auf der fahrt nach Russland
der konigin gedient hatte, und dass wir daher aus dem umstande,
dass uns der dichter nach so vielen klagen plotzlich als glucklicher
ehemann entgegentritt, ohne kuhnheit schliessen diirfen, ein von der
konigin, Cynthia, gewahrter posten habe ihn der schlimmsten not
des lebens entrissen; dass T. sicherlich aged war,"5 and so on. None
of these remarks can be substantiated. I have already shown that
Turbervile was "ein glucklicher ehemann" in the years 1573-74, just
when he was complaining most bitterly of his troubles, and that his
attempts to serve "Cynthia" in the army brought him only humilia-
1 Pages 300, 308, 375. The last of these, with two other letters from Russia addressed
"To Parker" and "To Edward Dancie," is also reprinted in Hakluyt's Voyages, 1589,
pp. 408-13.
* Athen. Oxon., ed. Bliss, I, 627. « Censura Liter aria, I, 314.
« Bibl. Account, II, 70, 453. Cf. also his Spenser, I, xxiii.
8 Op. cit., pp. 59 flf. A third reason is "dass Harpalus sich in der silbenzahl mit dem
namen unseres freundes deckt"!
534
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TURBEEVILE 151
tion and dismissal. There is no evidence to show that Cynthia ever
aided him, nor is there any reason to believe him as "aged," say, as
Thomas Churchyard; indeed, he was very probably dead when Colin
Clout was published. There is also, I am well aware, no reason what-
ever for identifying the Thomas Spencer mentioned above with the
Spencer of the poetical epistles; but nevertheless, the supposition
that Turbervile wrote to a Dorsetshire friend named Spencer, just
as he wrote to other local friends named Parker and Dancie, is very
reasonable. KoeppePs view is fanciful in the extreme.
VI
Early bibliographers, after agreeing upon 1540 as the date of
Turbervile's birth,1 pointed out that Thomas Purfoot's 1611 edition
of the Book of Falconry announced on its title-page that it was " here-
tofore published by George Turbervile, Gentleman. And now newly
reviued, corrected, and augmented, with many new Additions proper
to these present times " ;2 and hence gave 1610 as the year of his death.
This date, given the weighty approval of the Dictionary of National
Biography, is now generally accepted; so well accepted that the
Cambridge History of English Literature puts a question mark after
1540, but omits it after 1610, although the former is the more accurate
date. Seccombe, apparently following Ritson,3 in his sketch in the
Dictionary of National Biography gives the misleading statement that
Turbervile prefixed complimentary verses to Rowlands' Lazarillo de
Tormes (1596), whereas Turbervile was probably dead in 1596, and
his verses appeared in the 1586 edition of Rowlands' translation.
Anthony a Wood wrote that Turbervile "lived and was in great
esteem among ingenious men, in fifteen hundred and ninety-four
(36 reg. Elizab.),"4 but he probably got this notion from an epitaph
1 Because Wood says that Turbervile was admitted scholar of Winchester College
in 1554 at the age of fourteen. In the Epitaphes (Collier's reprint, p. 81) there is a poem
entitled "The Lover to Cupid for mercie," which states that
" In greene and tender age
(my Lorde), till xviii years,
I spent my time as fitted youth
in schole among my feeares."
Wood, who on this point ought to be correct, tells us that the poet left Oxford in 1561 ;
so that if Turbervile's words be taken literally, he was born about 1543.
2 See Catalogue of the Hoe Library, IV, 297. £ .
1 Bibliographia Poetica, p. 370. Rowlands' Lazarillo was licensed for publication by
Colwell in 1568 and sold by him to Bynneman on June 19, 1573 (Arber's Transcript, I,
378), who got out an edition in 1576.
« Athen. Oxon., ed. Bliss, I, 628.
535
152 HYDER E. ROLLINS
(presently to be quoted) written on Turbervile by Sir John Harington,
and his very specificness makes his accuracy doubtful. In other
details of the poet's life Wood is notably inaccurate, and there is no
particular reason for trusting him here. There is no proof whatever
that in 1594 the poet was in great esteem among men, ingenious or
otherwise. On the contrary, although new editions of his works were
still appearing, by 1590 he was regarded as an antiquated writer of
an unlettered age. His literary work was completed in 1576 — at
least records of later works are untrustworthy — and Elizabethan
writers condescendingly referred to him and Gascoigne as authors of
bygone days. "Maister Gascoigne" Nashe wrote in 1589, "is not
to bee abridged of his deserued esteeme, who first beabe the path to
that perfection which our best Poets haue aspired to since his
departure Neither was M. Turberuile the worst of his
time, though in translating hee attributed too much to the necessitie
of rime."1 Gabriel Harvey's comment seems to be more important.
He writes of Nashe: "Had he begun to Aretinize when Elderton
began to ballat, Gascoine to sonnet, Turberuile to madrigal, Drant
to versify, or Tarleton to extemporise, some parte of his phantasticall
bibble-babbles and capricious panges might haue bene tollerated in a
greene and wild youth; but the winde is chaunged, & there is a
busier pageant vpon the stage."2 Elderton's first known ballad
appeared in March, 1559/60; he was certainly dead by 1592, and
probably a year or two earlier. Gascoigne came into prominence as
a poet in 1573 and was dead by 1577; Drant died about 1578 and
Tarlton in 1588. Does it not seem as if Harvey had chosen for
comparison with Nashe only dead authors whom he held in contempt ?
My own feeling is that Turbervile was dead by 1593; at any rate he
was far from being in great esteem. Robert Tofte would hardly
have written in 1615 the following passage if Turbervile had died
only five years before: "This nice Age wherein wee now Hue, hath
brought more neate and teirse Wits into the world ; yet must not old
George Gascoigne and Turberuill, with such others, be altogether
1 Preface to Greene's Menaphon, Nashe's Works, ed. McKerrow, III, 319.
2 Pierces Supererogation, 1593 (Works, ed. Grosart, II, 96). In Have With You to
Saffron Walden, 1596 ( Works, III, 123), Nashe wrote: " I would make his [Harvey's] eares
ring againe, and haue at him with two staues & a pike, which was a kinde of old verse in
request before he fell a rayling at Turberuile or Elderton." Comparison with Elderton
certainly is not a sign of high esteem.
536
NEW FACTS ABOUT GEORGE TUBBERVILE 153
reiected, since they first broke the Ice for our quainter Poets, that
now write, that they might the more safer swimme in the maine
Ocean of sweet Poesie."1
In the notes to the fifth book of his Orlando Furioso (1591) Sir
John Harington wrote: "Sure the tale [of Geneura] is a prettie
comicall matter, and hath beene written in English verse some few
yeares past (learnedly and with good grace) though in verse of another
kind, by M. George Turberuil"* This passage may well have been
written two or three years before 1591, but in any case throws no
light on the date of Turbervile's death.3 In Palladis Tamia (1598)
Meres praised Turbervile for his "learned translations" along with
•Googe and Phaer (who had long been dead), Golding, Chapman,
Harington, and others;4 and Allot included eight quotations from
Turbervile in his England's Parnassus (1600) .5
It is almost certain, however, that Turbervile was dead before
1598. In Sir John Harington's Epigrams* is printed
An Epitaph in commendation of George Turbervill a
learned Gentleman
When times were yet but rude, thy pen endevored
To pollish Barbarisme with purer stile:
When times were grown most old, thy heart persevered
Sincere and just, unstain'd with gifts or guile.
Now lives thy soule, though from thy corps dissevered,
There high iablisse, here cleare in fame the while;
To which I pay this debt of due thanksgiving,
My pen doth praise thee dead, thine grac'd me living.
Harington himself died in 1612, and the epigrams were not written
during the last three or four years of his life. They were, indeed,
written during an interval of five or six years, and, although the exact
date of this epitaph on Turbervile cannot be determined, the limits
of the epigrams as a whole can easily be fixed. Many of the epi-
grams (which were first published in their entirety in 1618) were
written after Harington's Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596); No. 85 in
1 The Blazon of Jealousie, 1615, p. 64.
2 1634 ed., p. 39.
s For a discussion of the Comic Tales supposed, because of Harington's note, to have
been written by Turbervile see Censura Literaria, I, 319, and Ritson's Bibl. net., p. 370.
* Arber's English Garner, II, 102.
» Ed. Charles Crawford, p. 383.
« Book I, No. 42, 1633 ed. (added to Orlando Furioso, 1634 ed.).
537
154 HYDER E. ROLLINS
Book II is entitled "Quids confession translated into English for
Generall Norreyes. 1593"; III, 26, is "In commendation of Master
Lewkners sixt description of Venice. Dedicated to Lady Warwick.
1595 "; II, 64 and 84 are on Thomas Bastard and apparently refer
to his Chrestoleros (1598); and IV, 11, is on Thomas Deloney's Gentle
Craft, which was licensed for publication at Stationers' Hall on
October 19, 1597. The latest epigram that I have noted is one (IV,
10) on the execution of Essex (1601). But the majority of the epi-
grams were written during 1 596-98. 1 It would be more reasonable,
then, to date Turbervile's death "1598?" (or even "1593?") than
"1610?"
A contemporary elegy on Turbervile, which has never been
reprinted or even referred to by his biographers, is preserved in
Sloane MS 1709, folio 270, verso. Judged as burlesque, the verses
are not altogether stupid. They run:
Wth tricklinge teares ye Muses nine, bewaile or present woe,
W* Dreerye Drops of doleful plaintes or sobbinge sorrowes shewe,
Put on yr morninge weedes alas, poure forth your plaintes amayne,
Ringe owte, Ringe out Ringe out y6 knell of Turbervile whom crewell
death hath slaine, whom cruell death hath slaine
Resurrexit a mortuis, there is holy S* Frauncis, qui olim fuit sepultus,
non ipse sed magi hie stultus, so toll the bell,
Ding Donge Ringe out his knell.
Dinge Donge, cease nowe the bell, he loued a pot of stronge ale well.2
Apparently the author of this doggerel had for Turbervile small
esteem.3
HYDER E. ROLLINS
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
1 McKerrow "guesses" that the epigrams which mention Nashe were written "co.
1593" (Nashe's Works, V, 146).
* Cf. E. J. L. Scott's Index to the Sloane MSS. in the British Museum, 1904, p. 358.
Scott dates the elegy "ca. 1605."
3 1 may add that in Harleian MS 49 there is a page (fol. 148v) blank save for the
signature of George Turbervile and a couplet in his autograph:
George Turbervyle
A Turbervyle a monster is that loveth not his frend
Or stoops to foes, or doth forget good turns and so I end.
My attention was called to this autograph by a note in Sir Frederick Madden's inter-
leaved and annotated copy of Ritson's Bibliographia Poetica (p. 370), now in the Harvard
College Library. Copies of the autograph couplet and of the elegy were furnished me
through the courtesy of the Keeper of MSS in the British Museum.
Prom the Sale Catalogue (p. 25) of J. P. Collier's library, it appears that in an inter-
leaved copy of his History of English Dramatic Poetry Collier had inserted a "stanza of
3 lines and signature of George Turbervile, upon the title from the folio edition of Sir
Thomas More's Works."
538
THEODULUS IN SCOTS
Not far from 1504-5 a lively and abusive correspondence,1 in verse,
sprang up between William Dunbar, the Scottish poet, courtier, and
free-spoken ecclesiastic, and his friend, Walter Kennedy, also
reckoned a poet in his day, who rather piqued himself on his piety
and his Celtic blood. They went to the business of " flyting," as they
called it, with some thoroughness. Dunbar confides to his friend, Sir
John the Ross, that Kennedy and Quintyne Schaw have been praising
each other in an extravagant manner; he would be sorry, indeed, to
get into a controversy with them — what he would write would be too
dreadful; but if the provocation continues he may be forced to
"ryme, and rais the feynd with flytting."
Kennedy quickly takes up the challenge on behalf of himself and
his " commissar," Quintyne, demanding an apology and silence.
Dunbar then begins the attack with a torrent of abuse against the
"lersche brybour baird" (vagabond Celtic bard). The battle is now
on, and Kennedy replies with abuse no less torrential. "Insenswat
sow," he calls Dunbar, in an obscure passage on which we shall be
able to shed some light before we are through:
Insenswat sow, ceiss, fals Ewstace air!
And knaw, kene skald, I hald of Alathia [11. 81-82].
He again demands penance from Dunbar and recognition of his own
superiority as a poet. He then takes up the cudgels on behalf of
" Erische " as the proper tongue of all true Scotsmen, and blames Dun-
bar for his and his ancestors' partiality to the English — a matter
which he later develops at length — bids him, meanwhile, be off to Eng-
land and perish. He then enters with some detail upon an imaginary
genealogy of his opponent. In reply, Dunbar, with a liberal sprink-
ling of epithet, reminds his antagonist of two presumably discredit-
able passages in his past life at Paisley and in Galloway, taunts him
with using
Sic eloquence as thay in Erschry vse [1. 243], . 0
1 J. Schipper, "The Poems of William Dunbar," Denkschriften der kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Cl. (Wien, 1892), Bd. 40, Abth. IV, pp. 50-99;
on the date see especially p. 52.
539] 155 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, January, 1918
156 HARRY MORGAN AYRES
and, after some description of Kennedy's personal appearance, con-
cludes with a masterly picture of Kennedy's entrance into Edinburgh.
Kennedy, as an offset, offers an exaggerated and unsavory account of
Dunbar's sea voyage, and discusses at length the unpatriotic record
of Dunbar's ancestors, contrasting it with that of his own forbears.
In conclusion he advises Dunbar to get himself hanged in France,
or, better still, to come home and be hanged at Ayr.
Who conceived the plan of collecting and publishing this corre-
spondence is not known. There is a print of 1508 by Chepman and
Myllar, a fragment of which is extant; there are, besides, three
manuscripts, Bannatyne, Maitland, and Reidpeth. In none of
these forms is the material ordered precisely as outlined above.
The arrangement here adopted is Dr. Schipper's, which pays due
regard to the internal evidence. With the help of such evidence the
Flyting takes on some appearance of literary form; it seems to be
reducible to some sort of order. Dunbar sounds the warning in
three stanzas; Kennedy responds in three stanzas of the same metrical
scheme. Dunbar opens the attack in three stanzas; Kennedy's reply
covers sixteen stanzas, closing with one containing internal rhyme.
Dunbar comes back with twenty-two stanzas in the same metrical
scheme, closing, like Kennedy, with internal rhyme. Kennedy's last
word is again of twenty-two stanzas. Following Kennedy's first
reply (1. 48) and his second (1. 200) (but not his last), there is an
appeal to
luge 5e now heir quha gat the war [worse].
If Schipper's arrangement is mainly right, there is certainly an
approach to metrical regularity, to the "matching" of stanzaic
arrangement. This, together with the appeal to the judge, and,
indeed, the notion of collecting the correspondence soon after its
composition and serving it up as a literary whole, has lent encourage-
ment to the search for the literary origins of the "flyting."
It may very well be that such a search is supererogatory.
Although of personal animosity between the "flyters" there may
have been none at all,1 there was difference of opinion in abundance.
Politically there would be little sympathy between the Ayrshire Celt,
i Dunbar, in his Lament for the Makaris (11. 89 ft*.), speaks without malice of "gud
Maister Walter Kennedy," now at the point of death.
540
"THEODULUS" IN SCOTS 157
Kennedy, at whose "Erische" Dunbar scoffs,1 and the Lothian
Saxon, sprung of a family traditionally favorable to the English, and
himself the preferred servant of the King's English queen. Between
the two men there was a temperamental difference no less striking:
Kennedy, to judge from his works, was inclined to a piety which
delighted in conformity to tradition; Dunbar, who had left the
Franciscans to seek preferment at court as a secular priest, spoke
lightly sometimes of religious matters, and told stories not wholly to
the credit of his old order. Kennedy evidently had a kind of personal
vanity (he styles himself "the rose of rhetoric," [1. 148]), which may
well have tested the endurance of Dunbar, who belongs to the genus,
at any rate, of Rabelais and Swift. Two such men needed no strong
literary promptings to fall into controversy, even though they did not
personally dislike each other, and went to it in great part for the
amusement of the bystanders and the exercise of their own wits.
After Dunbar and Kennedy had shown the way, the "fly ting"
had considerable vogue as a court amusement. Skelton engaged in
a "flyting" with Garnesche, and four of his "defenses" are extant,
written or published, so he says, "by the kynges most noble com-
maundment."2 He ran at tilt also with Robert Gaguin, a French
friar.3 Sir David Lyndesay was called upon thus to bandy words
with his sovereign, James V;4 Lyndesay 's answer, all that is extant,
is a rather tame mixture of compliment and good, if grossly phrased,
advice. Still later, Thomas Churchyard exchanged broadsides with
one Camel, which ran into "surrejoindre unto rejoindre."5 Between
Alexander Montgomerie and Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwart, there
was much "laidlie language loud and large," which greatly amused
the royal author of the Reulis and Cautelis* I cannot see in these
1 Lines 49, 105 flf., 243 ff., 273.
2 The Poetical Works of John Skelton: Principally According to the Edition of the
Rev. Alexander Dyce (Boston, 1864), I, 132-53.
8 Garlande of Laurell, ibid., II, 186, 222. For what is possibly a fragment of the
Recule ageinst Gaguyne, see P. Brie, "Skelton-Studien," Englische Studien, XXXVII
(1907), 31 f.
4 Early English Text Society, XLVII, 563-65.
tThe Contention betwyxte Churchyeard and Camell, upon David Dycers Dreme, 2d. ed.,
1565. See Robert Lemon, Catalogue of . . . . Printed Broadsides in . . . . Society of
Antiquaries (London, 1866), pp. 7-10. Cited by Dictionary of National Biography. The
broadsides belong to the year 1552.
6 James Cranstoun's Poems of Alexander Montgomerie (Scottish Text Society, 1887
[pp. 59-86]) has been superseded by the supplementary volume edited for the society by
George Stevenson in 1910. The latter dates the "flyting" ca. 1582 (p. xxv).
541
158 HARRY MORGAN AYRES
works the direct imitation of Dunbar and Kennedy that some
scholars profess to find,1 though it is quite probable that the later
"flyters" were aware of the classical example of the exercise in which
they were engaging. Doubtless they derived some sort of literary
sanction from it, but, of course, where the object is to stifle one's
adversary in a cloud of unwholesome epithet, to deal above every-
thing else in personalities, a great deal of literal copying from one's
predecessors is not likely to be observable. In this sense, did Dun-
bar and Kennedy, in the first instance, have any literary models
in mind when they set to work ?
Analogues there are, of course, in abundance, from Ovid's Ibis
and the Lokasenna to the sonnet war of Pulci and Matteo Franco.
Our Germanic ancestors had a way of twitting each other, and quite
possibly both Dunbar and Kennedy were familiar with similar
practices among the Celts.2 Brotanek finds the immediate impulse
to the correspondence between Dunbar and Kennedy in the invec-
tives of Poggio against his fellow humanists, Filelfo and Valla.3
Poggio had visited England in 1419, and Gavin Douglas, at any rate,
had some acquaintance with these very invectives.4 It cannot be
said that Brotanek's parallels really prove direct literary indebted-
ness on the part of the Scotsmen to the Florentine's quarrels, though
it is quite within the range of possibility that his letters may have
been known to either Dunbar or Kennedy or both, and even have
supplied them with some abusive epithets — Poggio has plenty in
good mouth-filling Latin — of which apparently they stood very little
in need.
Models which Dunbar and Kennedy more nearly approach in
form are provided by the many poetical controversies in Provensal
and French. Schipper attributes the " kiinstlerische Idee" of the
"flyting" to the influence of the jeu-parti and the serventois.5 The
1 As Brotanek and Brie.
2 See The Poems of William Dunbar (Scottish Text Society, 1893), Vol. I, Introduc-
tion, by 2E. J. G. Mackay, pp. cix ff. Warton (p. 37) mentions some sort of poetical
quarrel at the Court of Henry III (1272) between Henry de Avranches and a Cornish
poet.
8 Untersuchungen uber das Leben und die Dichtungen Alexander Montgomerie (Wiener
Beitrage [Wien und Leipzig, 1896]), pp. 100 ff.
« "And Poggius stude with mony girne and grone,
On Laurence Valla spittand and cry and fy."
["Palis of Honour," in Poems of Gavin Douglas (ed. Small, 1874), I, 47, 11. 13 f.]
» William Dunbar, sein Leben und seine Gedichte (Berlin, 1882), p. 64.
542
"THEODULUS" IN SCOTS • 159
former seems to have been much the more common type in Northern
France.1 The challenger propounds his question; his opponent,
keeping to the rhymes set him, chooses the side he will defend ; then
the argument passes back and forth through four stanzas (coblas),
ending with an appeal by each party to a disinterested judge.
Brotanek,2 who accepts and develops Schipper's suggestion, cites
three jeux-partis, one of which, by the way, is not French, but a
Provengal joc-partit? which contain a trace, but hardly more than a
trace, of personal invective. Much more of this is found in the
Provensal tenso and sirventes, which discuss, not a question carefully
framed for debate, but things in general and personalities in par-
ticular. The tenso presents obviously analogous traits. Without
necessarily implying personal hostility,4 it deals freely in personalities :
Albert de Malespine twits Raimbaut de Vaqueiras with having been
wretched and hungry in Lombardy;5 Sordel hopes that Blacatz may
be hanged;6 Uc de Saint-Circ and the Count of Rhodes accuse each
other of avarice.7 Even political discussions are not entirely absent
from the tenso? but for these the usual place is the freer form of the
sirventes. Bertrand de Born's outgivings in this form on politics
and the strenuous life are as engagingly personal as those of any
modern candidate for office.9 The sirventes did not presuppose an
answer, but it sometimes drew one: the Dauphin of Auvergne
defended himself against the taunts of Richard I of England.10
Richard was himself the inheritor of a splendid troubadour tradition.
But it seems highly improbable that either Dunbar or Kennedy could
1 About two hundred examples survive; Voretzsch, Altfranzd'sische Literatur (Halle,
1913), p. 353. For detailed description of these literary types see Heinrich Knobloch,
Die Streitgedichte im Provenzalischen und Altframosischen (Breslau, 1886); Ludwig
Selbach, Das Streitgedicht in der altprovemalischen Lyrik (Marburg, 1886); and A.
Jeanroy, "La Tenson provencale," Annales du Midi, II (1890), 281 ff., 441 ff.
2 Untersuchungen, pp. 96 ff.
8 Paul Meyer gives it in a French translation in his review of Levy's Guilhem Figueira,
Romania, X (1881), 261 ff.
4 Jeanroy, p. 452.
6 Raynouard, Choix des patsies originates des troubadours (Paris, 1819), II, 193; cf. the
Flyting, 11. 269 ff.
8 Knobloch, p. 16; cf. the Flyting, 11. 545 ff.
7 Bartsch, Chrestomathie Provenyale (Elberfeld, 1880), p. 159. £ ^
s Knobloch, p. 19.
•Barbara Smythe, Trobador Poets (London, 1911), pp. 72 ff.
"•Ida Farnell, The Lives of the Troubadours (London, 1896), pp. 56 ff.
543
160 HARRY MORGAN AYRES
have encountered any real tradition of this sort as late as the close
of the fifteenth century. The tendon and serventois seem to have
been little cultivated in Northern France,1 where Dunbar might have
met with them on his travels; the Proven£al forms are a matter of
the thirteenth century at the latest.
As we have already seen, the human impulse to quarrel, in fun or
fact, which has found frequent literary expression in the past, was
perhaps aggravated in the case of Dunbar and Kennedy by political
and temperamental differences between the two men. For further
prompting they may have known the letters of Poggio, which, how-
ever, offered little or nothing in the way of literary form; this they
might have had from certain Romance forms, with which, however,
it is difficult to believe they could have had much acquaintance.
Any literary form which would suggest the notion of a poetical con-
test, involving a certain metrical symmetry, with a more or less
explicit appeal for a decision between the contestants, would provide
all the literary stimulus and sanction that the "flyters" would need.
That they had definitely in mind a well-known work which possessed
these characteristics, however great or little its actual influence
upon them may have been, I shall now undertake to demonstrate.
We return to Kennedy's dark utterance, to which passing refer-
ence has already been made:
Insenswat sow, ceiss, fals Ewstace air!
And knaw, kene skald, I hald of Alathia.2
The lines have hitherto proved a puzzle, the cause of much fruitless
speculation among the editors.3 The difficulty lies with the proper
names. Why is Dunbar called " false Eustace's heir," and who or
what is " Alathia"?
JSneas J. G. Mackay, who writes the Introduction in the Scot-
tish Text Society edition, includes the name "Eustase" among the
"Historical Notices of Persons Alluded to in Dunbar's Poems," "but
1 Gaston Paris, Litterature fran$aise au moyen Age (Paris, 1905), p. 202; Knobloch,
p. 52; Voretzsch, p. 353.
2 Schipper, Denkschriften, etc., XL, 65, 11. 81-82; The Poems of William Dunbar
(ed. John Small) (Scottish Text Society, 1893), II, 21, 11. 321-22; The Poems of William
Dunbar (ed. H. Bellyse Baildon) (Cambridge, 1907), p. 74, 11. 81-2.
» Schipper, quoted above, is printing from the Bannatyne MS. The variants give no
help: "Eustase air" (Chepman and Myllar), "Eustace fair" (Reidpeth); "Alathya"
(Maitland).
544
"THEODULUS" IN SCOTS 161
who false Eustase was has not been discovered."1 Concerning
Alathia, Dr. Walter Gregor, in his notes to the same edition,2 exhibits
considerable classical learning not greatly to the point :
Alathya, Alethia= probably aX-jOeta, Truth, in contrast with "fals Eustase
air." Probably a figure in some masque was so called. Or is Alathya =
Ilithyia, EiA.ei10uia, the goddess of the Greeks who aided women in childbirth,
Lat, Juno Lucina, and the poet means to say that he knows everything about
the genealogy and birth of his opponent, as if he had the information from
the goddess who assisted at his birth ?
Schipper (loc. tit.) quotes Mackay as to Ewstace and for the explana-
tion of Alathia resorts, not to mythology, but to logic :
Murray, A New Engl. Diet., explains alethiology as the doctrine of
truth, that part of logic which treats of the truth, and he quotes a passage
from Sir W. Hamilton's (1837-1838) Logic, where the word occurs in this
sense. Possibly the word alethia was in former times used as a logical
term in a similar sense.
H. Bellyse Baildon, so far as I know the latest to comment on
the passage, refrains from conjecture: "Fals Ewstace air (heir). It
is not known to whom1 this refers .... Alathia, Gk. dX^cta,
' truth.'"3
All this is obviously desperate to the last degree. It -is cited
merely to show that the true meaning of this passage, if it could be
hit upon, would be welcome. When it appears, it is not in the least
recondite from the early sixteenth-century point of view.4 Kennedy's
1 1, ccxx. 2 in, 54-55. 3 p. 255.
4 Dr. Gregor's " Ilithyia" is much too recondite. Sixteenth-century poets much later
than Dunbar and Kennedy share with those of the Middle Ages the desire to have their
allusions understood. Of Daphne, Chaucer is at pains to tell us
"I mene nat the goddesse Diane,
But Peneus doughter, which that highte Dane" [Cant. Tales, A 2063 f.].
The hint puts us straight. No one is going to miss Sackville's allusion to sleep, in the
"Induction" to the Mirror for Magistrates, as
" .... esteming equally
Kyng Cresus pompe, and Irus pouertie" [Skeat, Specimens, p. 293],
simply because he doesn't remember who Croesus and Irus were, much less that Ovid had
already contrasted them (Tristia III. 7. 42). Where no hint is given the resemblance
may safely be taken as intended to be of the most general sort, as when Skelton compares
Mistress Margaret Tylney to Canace and Phaedra (Garlande of Laurell, 11. 906 ff.); the
common term is merely the "goodness" of the mediaeval "good woman." Too much
learning is sometimes a dangerous thing. Douglas, in the Police of Honour, says that
among these lovers and their ladies — ' f
" There was Arcyte and Palemon aswa
Accompanyit with fair Aemilia" [p. 22, 11. 25 f.];
whereupon Small solemnly assures us that Aemilia was a vestal virgin who miraculously
rekindled the sacred fire!
545
162 HARRY MORGAN AYRES
allusion means little or nothing, unless it is recognized. He is not
merely calling names;1 he is making a point; and for such a purpose
he is hardly the man to risk a dark hint at pagan mythology or
dubious school-logic. His own reading, we may guess, was largely
of a devotional sort, for all he says he has "perambulit of Pernaso
the montane" (1. 97). Of the readers of his own time he complains:
But now, allace! men ar mair studyus
To reid the Seige of Pe toun of Tire,
The Life of Tursalem, or Hector, or Troylus,
The vanite of Alexanderis empire.2
This, we may guess, is a fair sample of Kennedy's own reading in his
more secular moods; it is not of a sort to encourage the kind of
allusion his commentators would have him indulge in.
There is, however, one sort of book to which allusion could safely
be made — a widely used schoolbook. A reference to Cato would not
have gone astray. Such another book is the Ecloga Theoduli, a
Carolingian Latin poem of the ninth century.3 Furnished with a
commentary, it was frequently recommended as a textbook during
the later Middle Ages.4 Of this famous work Osternacher lists no
less than one hundred and twenty-one MSS, twenty-five printed
editions before 1515, and as many more of the fifteenth and early
sixteenth centuries bound up with other works, chiefly in the volume
known as Auctores Octo. Subsequent research has made some addi-
tions to this list.5 "Qua re dilucide probatur hunc auctorem ilia aetate
1 When he does that, his allusions are not always perfectly obvious; later, among the
ancestors of "Deulbeir," he mentions "Vespasius thy erne" (1. 180):
"Herod thy vthir erne, and grit Egeass,
Martiane, Mahomeit, and Maxentius ....
Throip thy neir neice and awsterne Olibrius,
Pettedew, Baall, and eke Ejobuluss [11. 185-89].
The name Fermilus, in Passion of Christ (1. 25), remains unexplained, though it is pre-
sumably biblical. See "Poems of Walter Kennedy" (ed. J. Schipper), Denkschriften der
kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-Hist. Cl. (Wien, 1902), Bd. 48, p. 26, and
P. Holthausen, "Kennedy Studien," Archiv fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen,
CXII, 298.
2 Passion of Christ, 11. 36-39.
8 Theoduli Eclogam recensuit .... Johannes Osternacher, Ripariae prope Lentiam,
MDCCCCII.
4 On the vogue of Theodulus see two interesting papers by Professor G. L. Hamilton,
" Theodulus, a Mediaeval Textbook," Modern Philology, VII (1909), 169flf.,and "Theodulus
in Prance," ibid., VIII (1911), 611 fl.
& Hamilton, Modern Philology, VII (1909), 180.
546
"THEODULUS" IN SCOTS 163
discipulis vulgo legendum praebitum esse."1 Kennedy could hardly
have missed it, nor could his contemporary reader.
It is not necessary to describe the Theodulus in detail. It is an
amoebaean pastoral, in which the shepherd Pseustis tells in hexameter
quatrains (with single internal, not strictly leonine, rhyme) a story of
classical mythology, as of Deucalion's flood, Hippolytus, Hercules,
and the like, four lines to each. Each story is immediately capped
by the shepherdess Alithia with an analogue, also told in four lines,
from the Bible: Noah, Joseph, or Samson. Toward the close
Pseustis begins to weaken, and finally the judge, Fronesis, intercedes
on behalf of the defeated pagan. A later hand has added Alithia's
closing hymn of triumph and praise.2
The reader has now doubtless availed himself of the opportunity
to guess that the names of the contestants in the Theodulus solve the
puzzle of Kennedy's unexplained reference. "Alathia" is Alithia and
"Ewstace" was originally "false Pseustis," or as Kennedy is more
likely to have written it, "fals Sewstis" (so Kennedy's contemporary,
Barclay, spells the name) .3 Then " fals Sewstis " has become by wrong
division "falss ewstis," or by a natural haplography "fals ewstis";
later this has undergone brilliant restoration to outward sense (at the
hand of the transcriber ?) in the form " fals Ewstace."4 With this hint
Kennedy's allusion appears as pat as can be. His adversary, whom
he accuses of heresy and irreligion,5 is the heir of Pseustis, or false-
hood, the pagan opponent of orthodoxy or truth, which, in turn,
is represented by Alithia, from whom Kennedy derives his inherit-
ance, or, merely, on whose side he is to be found.6 Here then, if
1 Osternacher, p. 23.
2 Dante runs a similar parallel between the Hebraic and the Hellenic up the seven
terraces of Purgatory, but his examples, chosen to illustrate particular vices and virtues,
differ from those of the Theodulus, where the ingenuity goes to the matching of analogous
stories, except in the doubtless fortuitous instance of the coupling of Cain and Cecrops
in the latter (11. 53-60) and of Cain and Aglauros, daughter of Cecrops, in Dante (Purg.,
XIV, 130-39).
« See below.
4 Such distortion of the name is not surprising. Henri d'Andeli's Bataille des sept
arts has Sextis and Malicia in both MSS; see L. J. Paetow, Memoirs of the University of
California, IV (1914), 1, Plates V and IX. The printer betrays even Professor Hamilton,
at the moment of referring to this point, into seeming to write Peustis himself, Modern
Philology, VII (1909), 182.
6 "Lollard lawreat" (1. 172), "lamp Lollardorum" (1. 196), "primas Paganorum"
(1. 197), he calls him.
6 See New English Dictionary, s.v. "hold," 19, 21. Kennedy's insistence on his own
orthodoxy rules out the possibility that he might have come upon the names Pseustis
547
164 HARRY MORGAN AYRES
nothing else, is a bit of text cleared up and another literary allusion
to a famous book restored to a place between Chaucer's "dan
Pseustis"1 and Barclay's
.... father auncient,
Which in briefe language both playne and eloquent,
Betwene Alathea, Sewstis stoute and bolde
Hath made rehearsall of all thy storyes olde,
By true historyes vs teaching to obiect
Against vayne fables of olde Gentiles sect.2
I have no wish to force a parallel between the form of the
Theodulus and the Flyting; they are not in result at all the same
thing. But it is fair to note that the Theodulus offers, with its
poetical contest, its "matched" stanzas, and its appeal to the judge,
everything in the way of literary suggestion that the "flyters"
could have required for a start. Such suggestion might have come,
as we have already seen, from a variety of sources; it might have
come from the vernacular debat, upon which, as Professor Hanford
has recently shown,3 the Theodulus was an important influence. But
over all the possible sources which have been put forward for the
work of Dunbar and Kennedy the Theodulus itself now has the
immense advantage of being certainly known to them. It provides
a thread, if a slender one, which leads us back through the
Carolingian conflictus, to the amoebaean song of Vergil and Theoc-
ritus. It is not without significance that the road back to the
classics lies through the Middle Ages.
HARRY MORGAN AYRES
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
and Alithia in Wicklif's well-known Trialogus (ed. Gotthardus Lechler, Oxon., 1869),
where the three disputants bear the names of the characters of the Ecloga. Wicklif's
Alithia approvingly elicits from Phronesis, who is a lecturer rather than a judge, state-
ments concerning the sacraments and the clergy, particularly in Book IV, which Kennedy
would certainly repudiate.
1 Houa of Fame (1. 1228). Atiteris in the preceding line is certainly not Alithia.
Holthausen's suggestion (Anglia, XVI, 264 ff.) of Tityrus is most apt. Perhaps the initial
A is really due to some confusion with Alithia, of whom the scribe or author would be
likely to think in this connection.
2 Certayne Egloges of Alexander Barclay, Priest, reprinted from the edition of 1570
for the Spenser Society (1885), No. 39, p. 1. Eclogue IV mentions the death of Sir
Edward Howard, in 1513, so that Barclay's allusion is presumably later than Kennedy's.
'"Classical Eclogue and Mediaeval Debate," Romanic Review, II (1911), 16-31-
129-43.
548
THE RELATION OF SPENSER AND HARVEY TO
PURITANISM
The relation of Spenser to Puritanism has been discussed by
various investigators during recent years. Some of the writers do
not recognize the fact that, even if we can make sure that Spenser
was a "Puritan," our inquiry is then only begun, not ended. For
the words "Puritan" and "Puritanism" covered a very wide range
of meaning. A recent paper by Professor F. M. Padelford brings this
out with great clearness. He points out that the employment of
these terms in sixteenth-century England resembles the undiscrimi-
nating use of the words "socialist" and "socialism" at the present
time. He says:
Such diverse personalities as Archbishop Grindal, Bishop Cox, the Earl
of Leicester, Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Cartwright are all denominated
Puritans, or credited with Puritan sympathies. Yet Grindal regarded
Cartwright as a dangerous fellow who was poisoning the minds of the young
men of Cambridge; Bishop Cox did not hesitate to class the Puritans with
the Papists as very anti-Christ; and, to borrow a suggestion from Matthew
Arnold, fancy the distress of Sidney or of Leicester if he had found himself
confined for a three months to the "Mayflower," with only the Pilgrim
Fathers for a solace! Like "socialism" today, "Puritanism" in the six-
teenth century was a relative matter.1
A favorite opinion in recent years has been that Spenser was an
extreme Puritan, presumably a Presbyterian at heart. He must
have had some contact with the great Presbyterian leader of that
day, Thomas Cartwright, who returned to Cambridge as Margaret
professor of divinity in 1569, the very year when Spenser entered the
University, matriculating at Pembroke Hall. The view that
Spenser was an extreme Puritan is advocated by James Russell
Lowell,2 Lilian Winstanley,3 and James Jackson Higginson.4
» "Spenser and the Puritan Propaganda," Mod. Phil., XI, 85-106.
2 "Spenser," Prose Works, Vol. IV, Riverside ed., Boston.
* "Spenser and Puritanism," Mod. Lang. Quar., Ill, 6-16, 103-10.
4 Spenser's Shepherd's Calender (Columbia University Press, 1912), pp. 38-162.
549] 165 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, January, 1918
166 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
That Spenser was Calvinistic in his theology is entirely probable.
Miss Winstanley presents evidence in support of the following asser-
tions :
The Church in its earlier days was Calvinistic in its theology, and
Puritanism was only an attempt to reduce it to the Calvinistic model in other
respects We may say generally that Spenser accepted the Calvinism
which was, as has been pointed out, the common creed of the day.1
The more recent study of Professor Padelford2 confirms these state-
ments.
But I cannot believe that Miss Winstanley is correct when she
\/ concludes that Spenser was also opposed to episcopacy: "On the
question, then, that was after all the main point at issue in Eliza-
beth's reign — the question of church discipline — Spenser sided as
strongly as possible with the Puritans."3
Dean R. W. Church4 and Professor T. W. Hunt5 oppose this view.
They hold that Spenser was not hostile to episcopacy, but that he
V favored a purified Anglicanism. This is the opinion of Professor
Padelford in an article already cited.6
An important piece of evidence was unknown to those writers
already mentioned who believed that Spenser was an "out-and-out
Puritan,"7 that he "threw himself heart and soul into the cause of
Cart wright."8 In a paper read before the British Academy on
November 29, 1907, Dr. Israel Gollancz told of a collection of books
of travel bound together which formerly belonged to Gabriel Harvey.
One of these books, The Traveller of lerome Turler (1575), has upon
its title-page the following inscription in Harvey's handwriting:
Ex dono Edmundij Spenserij, Episcopi Roffensis [ = of Rochester]
Secretary, 1578.9 The reviewer of Higginson's book in the Nation for
November 21, 1912 (p. 486), comments as follows:
Before this simple fact the whole elaborate structure of Mr. Higginson's
interpretation of the tale of the Shepherd Roffy or Roffynn, his dog Lowder,
> Pp. 8-9.
"Spenser and the Theology of Calvin," Mod. Phil., XII, 1-18.
P. 16.
Spenser, "English Men of Letters" series (Macmillan, 1879), passim.
"Edmund Spenser and the English Reformation," Bibliotheca Sacra, LXVII, 39-53.
"Spenser and the Puritan Propaganda." See above.
Higginson, p. 152. a Winstanley, p. 13.
9 See The Athenaeum, December 7, 1907, p. 732.
550
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 167
and the Wolf, in the September eclogue, virtually crumbles to pieces. The
discovery makes it plain that Grosart was right in identifying the shepherd
with Young, Bishop of Rochester, who had previously been Master of
Pembroke Hall (Spenser's own college) at Cambridge Still further,
Spenser's relations to Young have a direct bearing on Mr. Higginson's
theory in regard to the poet's supposed bitter hostility towards Anglicanism.
The fact that Spenser was a Puritan in his views — at least in his early life —
is not open to serious question; but would a thoroughgoing Anglican like
Young have appointed the poet to so confidential a position as that of
private secretary if the views of the latter had been so extreme as our
author [Higginson] assumes ? It is to be remembered that Young had been
master of Spenser's college through the whole seven years of the poet's
residence there, so that he could not possibly have been ignorant of Spenser's
opinions in matters of religious doctrine and church government.
Since the present article was first written, Dr. Percy W. Long
has published an important paper upon "Spenser and the Bishop of
Rochester."1 Dr. Long holds that Spenser's "rise from the rank of
poor scholar, his moral and ecclesiastical ideas, and much of his
early poetry were immediately conditioned by his close affiliation
with the Bishop of Rochester."2 The facts set forth in the article,
many of them newly discovered, make this conclusion entirely
probable. Spenser's connection with Bishop Young shows that he V
cannot have been an extreme Puritan, an enemy of the episcopal
system.
I wish to advocate the view that Spenser was always a Low-
Churchman. Even in The Shepheardes Calender and Mother Hub-
berds Tale, presumably composed at about the same time, there is
evidence to confirm this opinion. The three eclogues of the Calender
which are plainly and primarily concerned with church affairs are /
those for May, July, and September. In the first two of these
Archbishop Grindal is praised under the name of "Algrind" or
"Algrin"; in the September eclogue, as we have seen, Bishop
Young is praised as "Roffynn," "Roffy." Line 176,
Colin Clout, I wene, be his selfe boye,
seems to mean that Spenser was in Young's employ when this eclogue
was written. A well-known line in the April eclogue also (1. 21)
applies to Bishop Young and Spenser: 0
Colin thou kenst, the Southerne shepheardes boye.
* Publications of Mod. Lang. Assoc., December, 1916, pp. 713-35. * P. 735.
551
168 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
We note that Spenser shows very special admiration for Arch-
bishop Grindal in The Shepheardes Calender. On June 24, 1569, one
month after Spenser matriculated at Cambridge, "Cecil received a
letter from Grindal, recently installed as Archbishop of York, who
strongly denounced the 'love of contention and liking of novelties'
with which he heard that Cartwright had disturbed the University,
and advocated his expulsion unless he conformed."1 Is it likely
that Spenser, the admirer of Grindal, favored the views of this
same Cartwright, the arch-Presbyterian ? Later in this paper we
shall find Gabriel Harvey, Spenser's close friend, opposing Cart-
wright by name.
In a gloss to line 121 of the May eclogue E. K. seems to accept
episcopacy as a satisfactory system. There is no good reason to
suppose that he is insincere in these words, or that he misrepresents
Spenser's meaning. He says:
Some gan, meant of the Pope, and his Anti-christian prelates, which
usurpe a tyrannical dominion in the Churche, and with Peters counterfet
keyes open a wide gate to al wickednesse and insolent government. Nought
here spoken, as of purpose to deny fatherly rule and godly governaunce
(as some malitiously of late have done, to the great unreste and hinderaunce
of the Churche) but to displaye the pride and disorder of such as, in steede of
feeding their sheepe, indeede feede of theyr sheepe.
I feel confident that "fatherly rule" in this passage applies especially
to the rule of the bishops, the spiritual fathers. Professor Padelford
so interprets it.2 Higginson believes, strangely enough, that those
who "malitiously of late" have denied "fatherly rule and gover-
naunce" are "the Anabaptists, with whom the Puritans disclaimed
;any connection."3
The following lines in Mother Hubberds Tale are evidently meant
to satirize zealous, solemn-visaged Puritans:
First therefore, when ye have in handsome wise
Yourself attyred, as you can devise,
Then to some Noble man your selfe applye,
Or other great one in the worldes eye,
That hath a zealous disposition
To God, and so to his religion:
There must thou fashion eke a godly zeale,
* Higginson, pp. 21-22. 2 Mod. Phil., XI, 103. « P. 81.
552
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 169
Such as no carpers may contrayre reveale:
For each thing fained, ought more warie bee.
There thou must walke in sober gravitee,
And seeme as Saintlike as Saint Radegund:
Fast much, pray oft, looke lowly on the ground,
And unto everie one doo curtesie meeke :
These lookes (nought saying) doo a benefice seeke,
And be thou sure one not to lacke or long.
[LI. 487-501.]
Book II of The Faerie Queene may well have been written, at least
in an early form, before Spenser went to Ireland. Canto II of that
book tells us of the sour, discontented Elissa and her like-minded
lover, Sir Huddibras, of the "comely courteous dame," Medina, who
.symbolizes the golden mean, and of the wanton Perissa with her
bold lover, Sansloy. Elissa and Sir Huddibras are a plain satire y
upon the ultra-Puritans. Samuel Butler took from this canto the
name of Elissa's lover, Huddibras, for the title of his great satire
upon Puritanism, Hudibras, and for the name of the central figure.1
Butler interpreted Spenser's allegory at this point as directed against
the extreme Puritans.
Even those who believe that Spenser was an out-and-out Puritan
at one time are forced to assume that he changed his views some- \/
what in later years. Let us look at the passages which compel them
to admit this.
Near the end of Book VI of The Faerie Queene, published
in 1596, one portion of the career of the Blatant Beast is thus
described :
From thence into the sacred Church he broke,
And robd the Chancell, and the deskes downe threw,
And Altars fouled, and blasphemy spoke,
And th' Images for all their goodly hew,
Did cast to ground, whilest none was them to rew;
So all confounded and disordered there.
[VI, xii, 25.]
Ben Jonson told Drummond that "by the Blating Beast the Puritans v/
were understood."2 It is quite certain that it is they who are satirized
in these lines.
1 Cambridge History of English Literature, VIII, 73.
2 The Works of Ben Jonson (Gifford-Cunningham ed.). Ill, 478.
553
170 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
The writings of Spenser that appeared after his death contain
two distinct expressions of antipathy to the Puritan extremists.
One of these concerns their manners; the other, their teachings.
In the fragments of The Faerie Queene which were published in 1609,
and which are usually assigned to Book VII, a crab is described as
going backward,
as Bargemen wont to fare
Bending their force contrary to their face,
Like that ungracious crew which faines demurest grace.
[Canto vii, stanza 35.]
In his prose View of the Present State of Ireland, first printed in 1633,
Spenser says concerning the church edifices of that country :
Next care in religion is to builde up and repayre all the ruinous churches
.... for the outward shewe (assure your selfe) doth greatlye drawe the
rude people to the reverencing and frequenting thereof, what ever some of
our late to nice fooles saye — " there is nothing in the seemelye forme and
comely ordere of the churche."1
Lowell, Miss Winstanley, and Mr. Higginson recognize that
these passages last quoted show Spenser to have been out of sym-
pathy with ultra-Puritanism during his later years. They all assume
that a change has come over him, and suggest reasons for the supposed
transformation. But a simpler and more probable view is that
there never was any fundamental alteration in Spenser's attitude
toward Puritanism, that he always was a Church Puritan, an earnest,
zealous Low-Churchman.
The considerations that have so far been presented are not new,
but it seemed best to indicate them briefly for the sake of complete-
ness. The main purpose of this paper is to call attention to a source
of evidence concerning Spenser's attitude toward Puritanism which
has been neglected. The friendship between Edmund Spenser and
Gabriel Harvey was so intimate and unclouded that I feel confident
of a substantial agreement in their religious views. Harvey has
given somewhat full expression to his religious convictions. Can we
fairly cite his utterances as representing the opinions of Spenser
also?
About the close and life-long sympathy between the two friends
there can be no mistake. I have already noted that Spenser made a
* The Globe Spenser, p. 680; Todd's Spenser, VIII, 503-4.
554
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 171
present of Turler's Traveller to Harvey in 1578. The Bodleian
Library possesses a copy of Howleglas which, together with other
books, Spenser gave to Harvey conditionally on December 20, 1578.
A note by Harvey in the volume records a list of all the books con-
cerned and a boyish wager made between the two men.1
The Shepheardes Calender, 1579, closes with the lines addressed
to Harvey:
Adieu good Hobbinol, that was so true,
Tell Rosalind, her Colin bids her adieu.
The published letters that passed between the friends in 1579 and
1580 manifest the good understanding between them. A sonnet of
Spenser, dated at Dublin, July 18, 1586, expresses warm admiration
for " Harvey, the happy above happiest men." When the first three
books of The Faerie Queene appeared in 1590, they were accompanied
by a charming poem of commendation from "Hobynoll," who
rejoices that " Colly n" has turned
From rustick tunes, to chaunt heroique deeds.
In the prefatory matter prefixed to Harvey's Pierces Supereroga-
tion, 1593, Barnabe Barnes mentions "divinest morall Spencer" as
the honored friend of Harvey.2
In Colin Clouts Come Home Againe, 1595, Hobbinol still figures
as Colin's closest friend:
At last when as he piped had his fill,
He rested him : and sitting then around,
One of those groomes (a iolly groome was he,
As ever piped on an oaten reed,
And lov'd this shepherd dearest in degree,
Hight Hobbinol) gan thus to him areed.
[LI. 10-15.]
It is practically certain that this close, harmonious intimacy
between the two men, apparently extending over the last thirty
years of Spenser's life, could not have existed without substantial
agreement on religious questions. Mr. Higginson shows us that the
University of Cambridge was "at all times during Elizabeth's reign
a hotbed of Puritanism" (p. 20), and that, during Spenser's sta&r there,
1 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed. by G. O. Moore Smith (Stratford-upon-Avon,
1913), p. 23.
2 Grosart's Harvey, II, 24.
555
172 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
it was, next to London, "the chief centre of Puritan agitation" (p. 30).
Spenser had been at Cambridge two and one-third years when, in
September, 1571, " Whitgift as Master of Trinity expelled Cartwright
from his fellowship in that college on the ground that he had not
taken priest's orders."1 It is probable that the popularity of his
opponent was one reason for Whitgift's action. Cartwright was so
popular as a speaker that, when his turn came to preach, the windows
at St. Mary's had to be taken down, so that the crowd upon the
outside might listen.2 We have direct evidence that the poet was
interested in the agitation that was carried on by Cartwright. In
a published letter to Spenser, Harvey, writing from Cambridge,
recalls the vestment controversy of former days, in which Cartwright
was prominent: "No more adoe aboute Cappes and Surplesses:
Maister Cartwright nighe forgotten."3
With religious controversy so clamorous and omnipresent at
Cambridge, it is entirely improbable that Spenser and Harvey could
have maintained complete friendship and sympathy unless their
religious views were harmonious and upon all fundamental questions
substantially identical.
But we are not confined to this reasoning from general probability.
There is some corroborative evidence. We know from the letters to
Dr. John Young, Master of Pembroke Hall, preserved in Harvey's
Letter-Book,4 that the younger scholar relied upon the elder as his
faithful friend. Presumably Dr. Young never failed him. In 1573
some of the Fellows of Pembroke Hall put a technical obstacle in
the way of Harvey's obtaining his M.A. degree. Dr. Young was
absent at the time; but, says Professor G. C. Moore Smith, he " came
down to Cambridge in person, and in a few days crushed all opposi-
tion."5 This statement is a matter of inference, but is practically
certain.
Early in 1578 this same Dr. Young became Bishop of Rochester.
As already noted, the new bishop made Spenser his secretary. There
is no longer any doubt that the poet praises Young in the September
1 Higginson, p. 22.
2 Ibid., p. 30.
* The Oxford Spenser, p. 621; Grosart's Harvey, I, 71.
« Printed for the Camden Society, 1884.
5 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, Introduction, p. 12.
556
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 173
eclogue of The Shepheardes Calender as"Roffynn," "Roffy." Hobbinol
says in line 176:
Colin Clout, I wene, be his [Roffynn's] selfe boye.
I have used this evidence before to show that Spenser was probably
a loyal churchman, though a Low-Churchman. I wish to point out
here that the friendship of Bishop Young for both Harvey and
Spenser furnishes distinct corroboration of the presumption that
the two men were agreed in their views about religion. I have yet to
show affirmatively what were Harvey's religious opinions.
The evidence to be submitted will prove that Gabriel Harvey
was a broad-minded Low-Churchman. I like to call him a Church
Puritan. I consider that Professor Padelford is correct in calling
Spenser "a consistent advocate of the golden mean in matters ecclesi-
astical " j1 but it can be plainly demonstrated that the phrase describes
Harvey. In 1573, when some of the Fellows of Pembroke Hall,
as already noted, sought to prevent Harvey from obtaining the M.A.
degree, one of the charges brought against him was that he "had
greatly commendid thos whitch men call praecisions and puritanes."
This looks like accusing Harvey of being liberal-minded; and the
nature of his spirited reply makes it quite probable that there was
some ground for the charge. He says;
As for puritanes I wuld fain know what those same puritanes ar and
what quallities thai have, that I have so hihly and usually commendid.
Let M. Phisician name the persons and then shew that I have praised them,
in that respect thai ar puritanes or that ever I have maintainid ani od point
of puritanism, or praecisionism mi self, and I shal be contentid to be bard of
mi mastership and iointid of my fellowship too, yea and to take ani other
sharp meddecine that his lerning shal iudg meetist for sutch a maladi.2
Much later Harvey was even suspected of being himself the mys-
terious Martin Marprelate.3 .Thomas Nash ridicules the suggestion
that his enemy had "so much wit."4
As the Harvey family seem to have been very much of one mind,
it is significant that Richard, Gabriel's clerical brother, in his Lamb
of God, 1590, "seemed disposed to take a middle line between the
» Mod. Phil., XI. 106. 0
« Letter-Book of Gabriel Harvey, pp. 29, 30.
8 In Pierces Supererogation, Grosart's Harvey, II, 131.
* In Have With You to Saffron-Walden, McKerrow's Nash, III, 138.
557
174 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
bishops and their opponents."1 Both the Dictionary of National
Biography and the Cambridge History of English Literature consider
Richard Harvey to be the probable author of the anonymous pam-
phlet Plaine Percevall.2 In this work he is said to be somewhat
Puritan in his sympathies.
John Lyly sought to defend the English church from the attacks
of Martin Marprelate by retorting in kind to that writer's slangy,
lampooning attacks. Lyly's Pappe with a Hatchet, appearing
anonymously late in 1589, contained a rap at Gabriel Harvey.
Harvey wrote a reply entitled An Advertisement for Papp-hatchett,
and Martin Marprelate. This bears the date of November 5, 1589.
It was not published for four years. In 1593 Harvey brought out
Pierces Supererogation as a part of his verbal war with Thomas Nash.
Nearly one-third of this work consists of the foregoing Advertisement*
then first printed. Here in a hundred pages we get a full presentation
of the views of Harvey concerning church polity.
I quote a summary and eulogy of this Advertisement from Pro-
fessor G. C. Moore Smith:
[Harvey's reply to Lyly] contains a most serious treatment of the Mar-
prelate controversy, in which Harvey's statesmanship, his independence of
ecclesiastical prejudices, and his powers as a writer are seen to the highest
advantage. He shows that a perfect system of Church Government is not
to be had in a day, that the Primitive Church adapted itself to temporal
circumstances, and that the creation of a theocracy represented by minis-
terial rule in every parish would be intolerable. The better scholar, he
says, the colder schismatic. We must have mutual charity or Church and
State will be overthrown. Perhaps nothing wiser or more far-sighted was
ever written in the whole of the 16th century.4
Harvey's discussion certainly deserves hearty commendation, but
when we recall that the completed portions of Richard Hooker's
great work, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, appeared in 1594
and 1597, and that they were an outcome of this same general con-
troversy, Professor Smith's praise of Harvey's Advertisement seems
somewhat excessive.
1 The Dictionary of National Biography.
2 Cambridge History of English Literature, III, 613.
a Grosart's Harvey, II, 124-221.
4 Introduction to Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, pp. 58, 59.
558
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 175
It will be best now to let Harvey speak for himself. Since only
fifty sets of Grosart's edition of Harvey's works were printed, the
passages quoted are not generally accessible.1
In cases indifferent, or arbitrary, what so equall in generall, as Indiffer-
ency: or so requisite in speciall, as conformity to the positive Lawe, to the
custome of the Countrey, or to the present occasion? To be perverse, or
obstinate without necessary cause, is a peevish folly: when by such a duety-
full and iustifiable order of proceeding, as by a sacred League, so infinite
Variances, and contentions may be compounded. To the cleane, all thinges
are cleane. S. Paule, that layed his foundation like a wise architect, and was
a singular frame of divinity, (omnisufficiently furnished to be a Doctour
of the Nations, & a Convertour of People) became all unto all, and as it were
a Christian Mercury, to winne some. Oh, that his Knowledge, or Zeale
were as rife, as his Name: and I would to God, some could learne to behave
themselves toward Princes, and Magistrates, as Paul demeaned himselfe,
not onely before the King Agrippa, but also before the twoo Romane Procura-
tours of that Province, Felix, and Festus: whome he entreated in honourable
termes, albeit ethnicke governours. Were none more scrupulous, then
S. Paul, how easily, and gratiously might divers Confutations bee reconciled,
that now rage, like Civill Warres ? The chiefest matter in question, is no
article of belief e, but a point of pollicy, or governement: wherin a ludiciall
Equity being duely observed, what letteth but the particular Lawes, Ordi-
nances, Iniunctions, and whole manner of lurisdiction, may rest in the dis-
position of Soveraine Autoritie? [pp. 140-42].
May it therefore please the busiest of those, that debarre Ecclesiasticall
persons of all Civill iurisdiction, or temporall function, to consider; how
every pettie Parish, in England, to the number of about 5200. more, or
lesse, may be made a lerusalem, or Metropolitan Sea, like the noblest Cittie
of the Orient, (for so Pliny calleth lerusalem) : how every Minister of the
sayd Parishes, may be promoted to be an high Priest, and to have a Pontifi-
call Consistorie: how every Assistant of that Consistorie, may emproove
himselfe an honorable, or worshipfull Senior, according to his reverend
calling: .... how a Princely and Capitall Court, and even the high Councell
of Parlament, or supreme Tribunall of a Royall Cittie, .... how such a
Princely, and stately Court, should be the patterne of a Presbitery in a poore
Parish: how the Principalitie or Pontificalitie of a Minister according to the
degenerate Sanedrim, should be sett-upp, when the Lordship of a Bishop, or
Archbishop, according to their position, is to be pulled-downe : finally how
the supremacie over Kings, and Emperours should be taken from the highest
Priest, or Pope, to be bestowed upon an ordinarie Minister, or Curate: ....
1 The following extracts from the Advertisement are found in Grosart's edition of
Harvey, Vol. II in the Huth Library, 3 vols., 1884-85; but here the modern s is used
throughout, and the modern distinction between v and u is observed.
559
176 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
When these points are considered; if withall it be determined by evident
demonstration, as cleere as the Sunne, and as invincible as Gods-word, that
whatsoever the Apostles did for their time, is immutably perpetuall, and
necessarie for all times: and that nothing by way of speciall respect, or
present occasion, is left to the ordinaunce, disposition, or provision of the
Church, but the strict and precise practise of their Primitive Discipline,
according to some Precepts in S. Paules Epistles, and a few Examples in the
Actes of the Apostles: So be it, must be the suffrage of us, that have no
Voyce in the Sanedrim. All is concluded in a fewe pregnant propositions:
we shall not neede to trouble, or entangle our wittes with many Articles,
Iniunctions, Statutes, or other ordinances: the Generall, Provinciall, and
Episcopall Councels, lost much good labour in their Canons, Decrees, and
whatsoever Ecclesiastical Constitutions: the workes of the fathers, and
Doctours, howsoever auncient, learned, or Orthodoxall, are little, or nothing
worth: infinite studdies, writings, commentaries, treatises, conferences,
consultations, disputations, distinctions, conclusions of the most notable
Schollers in Christendome, altogither superfluous. Well-worth a fewe
resolute Aphorismes; that dispatch more in a word, then could be boulted-
out in fifteen hundred yeares; and roundly determine all with an Upsy-downe.
.... Now if it seeme as cleere a case in Pollicie, as in Divinitie; that one,
and the same Discipline may serve divers, and contrarie formes of regiment,
and be as fitt for the head of England, as for the foote of Geneva: The
worst is, Aristotles Politiques must be burned for heretiques. But how
happie is the age, that in stead of a thousand Positive Lawes, and Lesbian
Canons, hath founde one standing Canon of Polycletus, an immutable Law
of sacred governement ? And what a blissef ull destinie had the Common-
wealth, that must be the Modell of all other Commonwealthes, and the very
Center of the Christian world? [pp. 143-47].
M. Calvin, the founder of the plott, (whome Beza stileth the great
Calvin) had reason to establish his ministery against Inconstancy, and to
fortify himself e against Faction (as he could best devise, and compasse with
the assistance of his French party, and other favorites) by encroaching
upon a mechanicall, and mutinous people, from whose variable and fickle
mutability he could no otherwise assecure himselfe. As he sensibly found
not onely by dayly experiences of their giddy and factious nature, but also
by his owne expulsion, and banishment : whome after a little triall, (as it were
for a dainety novelty, or sly experiment) they could be content to use as
kindly, and loyally, as they had used the old Bishopp, their lawful Prince.
Could M. Cartwright, or M. Traverse seaze upon such a Citty, or any like
popular towne, Helvetian or other, where Democraty ruleth the rost: they
should have some-bodies good leave to provide for their owne security; and
to take their best advantage uppon tickle Cantons. Some one peradventure
in time would canton them well-enough; and give a shrewd pull at a Metro-
politan Sea, as soveraine, as the old Bishoprike of Geneva. It were not the
560
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 177
first time, that a Democraty by degrees hath prooved an Aristocraty; an
Aristocraty degenerated into an Oligarchy; an Oligarchy amounted to a
Tyranny, or Principality I am no pleader for the regiment of the
feete over the head, or the governement of the stomacke over the hart: surely
nothing can be more pernitious in practise, or more miserable in conclusion,
then a commaunding autority in them, that are borne to obey, ordained to
live in private condition, made to follow their occupations, and bound to
homage. You that be schollars, moderate your invention with iudgement:
and you that be reasonable gentlemen, pacify your selves with reason. If it
be an iniury, to enclose Commons; what iustice is it, to lay open enclosures ?
and if Monarchies must suffer popular states to enioy their free liberties, and
amplest fraunchises, without the least infringment, or abridgment : is there
no congruence of reason, that popular states should give Monarchies leave, to
use their Positive lawes, established orders, and Royall Prerogatives, without
disturbance or confutation? [pp. 152-54].
Possession was ever a strong defendant : and a iust title maketh a puissant
adversarie. Bishops will gooverne with reputation, when Marr-Prelats
must obey with reverence, or resist with contumacie. Errours in doctrine;
corruptions in manners; and abuses in offices, would be reformed: but
degrees of superioritie, and orders of obedience are needefull in all estates:
and especially in the Clergie as necessarie, as the Sunne in the day, or the
Moone in the night : or Cock-on-hoope, with a hundred thousand Curates in
the world, would proove a mad Discipline. Let Order be the golden rule of
proportion; & I am as forward an Admonitioner, as any Precisian in Ingland.
If disorder must be the Discipline, and confusion the Reformation, (as without
difference^ degrees, it must needes) I crave pardon. Anarchie, was never
yet a good States-man: and Atoxic, will ever be a badd Church-man
Equality, in things equall, is a iust Law: but a respective valuation of
persons, is the rule of Equity: & they little know, into what incongruities, &
absurdities they runne headlong, that are weary of Geometricall proportion,
or distributive Iustice, in the collation of publique functions, offices, or
promotions, civile, or spirituall. God bestoweth his blessings with difference;
and teacheth his Lieutenant the Prince, to estimate, and preferre his subiectes
accordingly. When better Autors are alledged for equalitie in persons
Unequall; I will live, and dye in defence of that equalitie; and honour
Arithmeticall Proportion, as the onely ballance of Iustice, and sole standard
of governement. Meane-while, they that will-be wiser, then God, and their
Prince, may continue a peevish scrupulositie in subscribing to their ordi-
nances; and nurrish a rebellious Contumacie, in refusing their orders. I
wish unto my frendes, as unto miselfe: and recommende Learning to
discretion, conceit to iudgment, zeale to knowledge, dutie to obedience,
confusion to order, Uncertaintie to assurance, and Unlawfull ifoveltie to
lawfull Unif ormitie : the sweetest repose, that the Common-wealth, or Church
can enioy [pp. 158-60].
561
178 ALBERT H. TOLMAN
Every Miller is ready to convey the water to his owne mill: and neither
the high Priestes of Jerusalem, nor the Popes of Roome, nor the Patriarckes
of Constantinople, nor the Pastors of Geneva, were ever hastie to binde
their owne handes. They that research Antiquities, and inquier into
the privities of Practises, shall finde an Act of Praemunire is a necessarie
Bridle in some cases. The first Bishops of Roome, were undoubtedly
vertuous men, and godly Pastors: from Bishops they grew to be Popes:
what more reverend, then some of those Bishops; or what more Tyrannical,
then some of those Popes? Aaron, and the high-Priestes of Jerusalem,
and of other ceremoniall nations, were their glorious Mirrours; and they
deemed nothing too-magnificall, or pompous, to breede an Universall rever-
ence of their sacred autoritie, and Hierarchie. We are so farre alienated
from imitating, or allowing them, that we cannot abide our owne Bishops;
yet withall would have every Minister a Bishop, and would also be fetching
a new patterne from old Jerusalem, the moother-sea of the high-Priesthood.
So the world (as the manner is) will needes runne-about in a Circle: pull-
do wne Bishops; set up the Minister; make him Bishop of his Parish, and
head of the Consistorie, (call him, how you list, that must be his place):
what will become of him within a few generations, but a high Priest in a low
Jerusalem, or a great Pope in a small Roome? And then, where is the
difference betweene him, and a Bishop, or rather betweene him, and a Pope ?
[pp. 181-82].
How probable is it, they are now at their very best, and even in the
neatest and purest plight of their incorruption, whiles their mindes are
abstracted from worldly thoughts, to a high meditation of their supposed-
heavenly Reformation: and whiles it necessarily behooveth them, to stand
charily and nicely upon the credit of their integritie, sinceritie, precisenesse,
godlinesse, Zeale, and other vertues? When such respects are over, and
their purpose compassed according to their harts desier; who can tell how
they, or their successours may use the Keyes; or how they will besturr them
with the Sworde? If Flesh proove not a Pope loane; and Bloud a Pope
Hildebrand, good enough. Accidents, that have happened, may happen
agayne; and all thinges under the Sunne, are subiect to casualtie, mutabilitie,
and corruption. At all adventures, it is a brave Position, to maintaine a
Soverain, and supreme autoritie in every Consistorie; and to exempt the
Minister from superiour Censure; like the high Priest, or greatest Pontiff e.
.... He had neede be a wise, and Conscionable man, that should be a
Parlament, or a Chauncerie unto himselfe: and what a furniture of divine
perfections were requisite in the Church, where so many Ministers, so many
spirituall high Justices of Oier, and Terminer: and every one a supreme
Tribunall, a Synode, a Generall Councell, a Canon Law, a heavenly Law, and
Gospel unto himselfe? If no Serpent can come within his Paradise, safe
enough. Or were it possible, that the Pastor, (although a man, yet a
divine man) should as it were by inheritance, or succession, continue a
562
SPENSER AND HARVEY AND PURITANISM 179
Sainct from generation to generation: is it also necessary, that the whole
company of the redoubted Seniors, should wage everlasting warre with the
flesh, the world, and the Divell; and eternally remaine an incorruptible
Areopage, without wound, or scarre ? Never such a Colledge, or fraternitie
upon Earth, if that be their inviolable order. But God helpe Conceit, that
buildeth Churches in the Ayer, and platformeth Disciplines without stayne,
or spott.
They complaine of corruptions; and worthily, where Corruptions
encroche, (I am no Patron of corruptions) : but what a surging sea of cor-
ruption would overflow within few yeares, in case the sword of so great and
ample autoritie, as that at Jerusalem most capitall, or this at Geneva most
redoubted, were putt into the hand of so little capacitie in governement, so
little discretion in Discipline, so little iudgement in causes, so little modera-
tion in living, so little constancie in saying, or dooing, so little gravitie in
behaviour, or so little whatsoever should procure reverence in a Magistrate,
or establish good order in a Commonwealth. Travaile thorough ten thousand
Parishes in England; and when you have taken a favourable vew of their
substantiallest, and sufficientest Aldermen, tell me in good sooth, what a
comely showe they would make in a Consistorie; or with how solemne a
presence they would furnish a Councell Table. . "... I deny not, but the
short apron may be as honest a man, or as good a Christian, as the long
gowne: but methinkes he should scantly be so good a ludge, or Assistant in
doubtfull causes: and I suppose, Ne sutor ultra crepidam is as fitt a Proverbe
now, as ever it was, since that excellent Painter rebuked that sawcie Cobler
[pp. 184-87].
If Bishops-gate be -infected, is it unpossible for Alders-gate to be
attainted ? and if neither can be long cleere in an Universall plague of Cor-
ruption, what reason hath Zeale to fly from Gods blessing into a warme
Sunne: What a wisedome were it, to chaunge for the worse? or what a
notorious follie were it, to innovate, without infallible assurance of the
better? What Politique state, or considerate people, ever laboured any
Alteration, Civill, or Ecclesiasticall, without Pregnant evidence of some
singular, or notable Good, as certaine in consequence, as important in
estimation? To be short, .... had Martin his lust, or Penry his wish,
or Udal his mynde, or Browne his will, or Ket his phansie, or Barrow his
pleasure, or Greenwood his harts-desire, or the freshest Practitioners their
longing, (even to be Judges of the Consistorie, or Fathers Conscript of
Senate, or Domine fac totum, or themselves wott not what) ; there might
fall-out five hundred practicable cases, and a thousand disputable questions
in a yeare, (the world must be reframed anew, or such points decided)
wherewith they never disquieted their braynes, and wherein the learnedest
of them could not say A. to the Arches, or B. to a Battledore. It the graver
motioners of Discipline (who no doubt are learneder men, and might be
wiser: but M. Travers, M. Cartwright, Doctour Chapman, and all the
563
180 ALBEKT H. TOLMAN
grayer heads begin to be stale with these Noovellists) have bethought them-
selves upon all cases, and cautels in Practise, of whatsoever nature, and have
thorowly provided against all possible mischieffs, inconveniences, and irregu-
larities, as well future, as present; I am glad they come so well prepared:
surely some of the earnestest and egrest sollicitours, are not yet so furnished
[pp. 207-8].
Hans Berli, at the close of his full and able discussion of the work
of Gabriel Harvey, tells us: "Er war Humanist und Puritaner."1
But simply to call him a Puritan leaves many questions unanswered.
He was a broad-minded Low-Churchman, accepting and defending
the episcopal system, but with no illusions about it, and no extreme
views. At times he shows a liberality of mind and a grasp of funda-
mental questions that remind us of Bishop Hooker himself.
There can be little doubt that Spenser's position was substantially
identical with that of Harvey. The poet appears to have been more
aggressively hostile than his friend to abuses in the church. I believe
that the intensity of Spenser's reforming zeal has helped to mislead
some careful students as to his fundamental position.
ALBERT H. TOLMAN
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
* Gabriel Harvey, der Dichter-freund und Kritiker, Dissertation (Ztirich, 1913), p. 146.
564
REVISIONS IN THE ENGLISH MYSTERY PLAYS
In discussions concerning the interrelations of the English mys-
tery plays some misapprehension seems to proceed from the initial
assumption that the text of an entire cycle may periodically have
been subjected to revision. Thus, for example, Professor F. W.
Cady,1 in trying to establish his theory that the direct borrowings
from the York cycle are the latest additions to the Towneley plays2 —
later even than the Wakefield group of plays — assumes that two
editors, the first writing in couplets and the second in quatrains,
successively revised the text of the whole cycle.
With this theory I am unable to agree for several reasons. In the
first place, the characteristic nine-line stanzas of the Wakefield play-
wright, concerning which there is no diversity of opinion, are found
in the T Judicium* where they are obviously additions or insertions
in an older play derived from Y. I say "obviously," because it is
difficult to understand why the work of the author of the Secunda
Pastorum* should be displaced by a less developed play from York,
and also because the insertions, broadly comic in character, seem
definitely intended to refurbish an older, more serious play. The
Wakefield stanza, moreover, occurs in three other T plays much
resembling Y: (1) in T 20, where the Wakefield playwright's lines
(1-53) putting "snap" into Pilate's speech are immediately followed
by stanzas in the meter of the so-called Y parent cycle? (2) in T 16,
which may be a rewriting of a York play (cf . Y 19) ; and (3) in T 22,
the second half of which suggests Y 34, where the Wakefield drama-
tist contributes twenty-three stanzas, one of them, 11. 233-41, con-
taining reminiscences of Y 34, 11. 26-35. When, therefore, the nature
» "The Couplets and Quatrains in the Towneley Mystery Plays," Jour. Eng. and
Germ. Phil., X, 572 ft. For another view see Pollard, The Towneley Plays, E.E.T.S.,
extra series, LXXI, Introduction, and Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers, pp. 161 ff.
2 Hereafter the Towneley plays will be designated by T and the York plays by Y.
» T 30, stanzas 16-48 and 68-76. Cf. Pollard, op. cit., pp. xx ff.
4 His work is undisturbed in T 3, 12, 13, 16, and 21, and is apparently used for the
purpose of embellishment in T 20, 22, 24, and 30.
6 Whether or not one accepts Davidson's conclusions concerning the presence in Y
of a parent cycle, there can be no question but that the septenar stanza is identified with
early plays in Y. Cf . Davidson, English Mystery Plays, pp. 137 ff.
565] 181 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, January, 1918
182 GRACE FRANK
of the Wakefield playwright's contributions is considered — his spe-
cialties seem to have been demons, torturers, Herods, and Pilates—
one can hardly, I think, regard them as remnants of older work,
afterward replaced by heavy lines from Y, in one instance by lines
from a Y play of the earliest type.
The so-called editorial couplets, moreover, are found in only a
small number of plays, a fact which might indicate that the hypo-
thetical editor labored upon only a part of the cycle or that, as
Pollard and Gayley plausibly assume, these couplets are survivals
of an earlier stage in the history of the T plays.
Finally, that the couplets and quatrains are "editorial" in the
sense assumed, i.e., that they are the work of a late reviser who had
all or most of the plays in hand and rewrote or edited parts of them,
appears to me questionable.
An investigation of the problem of revisions in the plays may
perhaps shed some light upon the subject of the interrelations of
the cycles. As suggested above, it has been widely assumed that at
various times additions were made to the cycles in toto. This might
indeed have been the case had all the plays remained in the custody
of one man or of one group of men. It would seem, however, that
whoever may have been responsible for the cycles originally,1 the
plays themselves reposed in the hands of the guilds,2 and that in
towns where the crafts were charged with the task of producing the
pageants they also supervised the revisions of the text.
1 The city accounts of Coventry for 1584 record a payment to Mr. Smythe of Oxford
"for hys paynes for writing of the tragedye xiij u vj8 viijd," which shows that at this late
date, in any case, a wholly new play for all the guilds was provided by the city. Cf.
Sharp, A Dissertation on the Pageants or Dramatic Mysteries Anciently Performed at
Coventry, 1825, p. 40. At Coventry the pageants for special occasions also seem to have
been provided by the city (cf. extracts from the Cov. Leet Book published in E.E.T.S.,
extra series, LXXXVII, 114); but who supplied the "new playes" mentioned in the
Annals for 1519-20, I have been unable to discover. Cf. Chambers, Mediaeval Stage,
II, 358, and Craig, Two Coventry Corpus Christi Plays, E.E.T.S., extra series,
LXXXVII, xxi.
8 In places like Shrewsbury, New Romney, Lydd, Ipswich, and Norwich before 1527,
where the corporation or a particular guild assumed full charge of all the plays, differ-
ent conditions would of course obtain (cf. Chambers, The Mediaeval Stage, II, 118).
No cycles seem to survive from such towns, unless the Ludus Coventriae be identi-
fied with Lincoln (cf. H. Craig in The Athenaeum, August 16, 1913). Madeleine
Hope Dodds, however, has recently suggested that interpolations from some five differ-
ent sources have been added to an old N-town cycle, and that this eclectic cycle emanates
from the pen of a clerk of Bury St. Edmunds (Mod. Lang. Rev., 1914, pp. 79 ft*.)- Cf.
also Hemingway, English Nativity Plays, pp. xxviii ff. and F. A. Poster, A Study of the
Middle-English Poem Known as The Northern Passion, Bryn Mawr Dissertation, 1914,
pp. 97 ff.
566
REVISIONS IN THE ENGLISH MYSTERY PLAYS 183
Thus at Coventry, several guilds independently employed
Robert Croo to amend their plays for them;1 the accounts of the
Smiths record that in 1506 they "resevyd amonge bredren and other
good ffelowys toward the Orygynall ij s. ix d." ;2 the accounts of the
Cappers and Drapers detail various payments for songs;3 those of
the Cappers mention disbursements "for writyng a parte for herre (?)
person," "for £>e matter of f>e castell of emaus,"4 etc.; and in the
Smiths' Company's accounts an agreement is recorded whereby it is
seen that one, Thorn's Colclow, who is to have pe Rewle of pe
pajaunt, is "to bring in to £>e mastr on sonday next aftr corp8 xpi
day f>e originall,"5 — the master of course being a guild officer.
At Norwich, where after 1527 the guilds became responsible
for the plays, they seem to have taken charge of the texts also. In
the books of the Norwich Grocers' Company were found two entirely
different versions of their play dating from 1533 and 1565 respectively.
In 1534 the Grocers paid to " Sr Stephen Pro wet for makyng of a newe
ballet, 12d," and in 1563 their play was "preparyd ageynst ye daye of
Mr Davy his takyng of his charge of ye Mayralltye " with a " devyce "
to be prepared by the surveyors at a cost of 6 s. 8 d.6
At Beverly in 1452 the Porters and Creelers were held responsible
for a new pageant,7 and the "worthier sort" in 1411 "should thence-
forth .... cause a fit and proper pageant to be made, and a fit play
played in the same."8 Apparently the city itself, however, paid for
the composition of the banns — which naturally could devolve on
1 The Drapers in 1557 paid " Robart Crowe for makyng of the boke for the paggen
xx •." (Sharp, op. cit., p. 67). In 1563 the Smiths gave him " viij <*." "for ij leves of ore
pley boke" (ibid., p. 36). Our copies of the Shearmen and Taylors' and the Weavers'
pageants show that in 1534 he "corrected" and "translated" for both these crafts.
The words, "makyng of the boke," and the like, which occur in the guild accounts
from Coventry refer sometimes to copying, sometimes to writing. The sums expended,
however, and the items accompanying the entry usually reveal which is intended. Com-
pare the Drapers' accounts for 1572 (ibid., p. 74) where x s. is paid "for wryttyng the
booke" with the entry in a Chamberlain's Book of the City of York (cited in Smith, York
Plays, p. 18): "Item, payd to John Clerke for entryng in the Regyster the Regynall
of the pagyant pertenynge to Craft of Pullars, which was never before regestred, 12 d."
The largest amount spent for copying at Coventry seems to be 5 s., paid by each of three
crafts in 1584 for the book of the Destruction of Jerusalem (Sharp, pp. 37, 65, 78).
2 Ibid., p. 15. < Ibid., p. 48.
a Ibid., pp. 48, 64, 67. * Ibid., p. 15.
« Chambers, op. cit., II, 118, 387, 388, 425.
7 Historical MSS Commission Reports, Beverley Corporation, p. 136; K. P. Leach,
"Some English Plays and Players" in An English Miscellany, p. 210.
8 Hist. MSS Comm., Bev., p. 67; Leach, op. cit., p. 211.
567
184 GRACE FRANK
no one guild — for in 14231 a friar preacher received 6s. 8 d. for
writing them.2
Our late accounts from Chester reveal the fact that there, too,
although the city authorities might choose to exhibit their taste in
the selection of the plays submitted to them, the initiative in the
matter rested with the crafts. Thus in 1575 the plays were to be
"sett furth" "with suche correction and amendemente as shall be
thaught conveniente by the saide maior, & all charges of the saide
plays to be supported & borne by thinhabitaunts of the saide citie as
have been heretofore used,"3 a statement significantly interpreted
by the accounts of the Smiths for the same year, which show that the
guild submitted two alternative plays for the choice of the aldermen.4
Our manuscripts of the Chester plays are of course very late and
all, with the exception of the Hengwrt MS of the Antichrist (play
xxiv), date from a time many years after the cycle had ceased to be
performed. That the plays had been subjected to some revision
at the hands of guilds, however, is to be inferred from the composite
nature of the plays themselves and, to a lesser extent, from a com-
parison of the list of plays in Harl. MS 2150, f. 856,5 of the pre-
Eeformation Banns,6 of the post-Reformation Banns,7 and of our
versions of the plays.
That at York also the plays were not in the keeping of the city
but in the charge of the crafts our manuscript of the official register
bears witness. Thus three plays, which, according to Miss Smith,8
were probably copied a few years later than the body of the manu-
script, occupy an inserted quire at the beginning. In two places,
blank pages have been left for the insertion of plays which we know
» Hist. MSS Comm., Bev., p. 160; Leach, op. cit., p. 215.
2 At Sleaford, Lincolnshire (Chambers, II, 395), the accounts of the guild of the Holy
Trinity for 1480 include "It. payd for the Ryginall of ye play for ye Ascencon & the
wrytyng of spechys and payntyng of a garmet for God iij8. viijd.", but it is uncertain
whether a cycle existed at Sleaford.
« Hist. MSS Comm., 81, p. 363, and Morris, Chester during the Plantagenet and Tudor
Reigns, p. 321.
• Morris, op. cit., p. 305, note: "1575. Spent at Tyer to heare 2 playes before the
Aldermen to take the best, xviiid." Cf. Chambers, II, 355, and Spencer, op. cit., p. 53.
5 Cf . Chambers, II, 408, and Purnivall, Digby Plays, p. xxi.
• Morris, op. cit., pp. 307-9.
' Detailing, Chester Plays, pp. 2-9, and Furnivall, op. cit., p. xx.
• York Plays, p. xiv. Cf. also p. xvii.
568
REVISIONS IN THE ENGLISH MYSTERY PLAYS 185
from Burton's lists existed but which, for some reason, were never
entered.1 Three pieces, also on subjects known to Burton, were not
added to the register until 1558,2 and one of them, The Fullers' Play,
as appears from the Chamberlain's Book of the City of York, never
before was registered.3 The late notes in the margins of the manu-
script tell the same tale: evidently even in 1568, when the entire
cycle was submitted to the reforming Dr. Matthew Hutton in the
"happie time of the gospell," he had to be told that parts of the plays
in it had been superseded. Note, for example, p. 93, " Doctor, this
matter is newly mayde, wherof we haue no coppy,"4 the " coppy " pre-
sumably being in the hands of the Spicers, who were responsible for
the play.5
If the corporation had been responsible for the texts of the plays,
such omissions would scarcely be intelligible. Nor can one under-
stand the silence of the corporation documents on the subject of pay-
ments for " making the books." Not until 1568, so far as we know,
did the corporation interfere and order an emendation of the whole,
and it is evident6 that this order and the orders of 1575 and 1579
were brought about by the sweeping changes of the Reformation.7
1 Burton's list of 1415, Nos. 22 and 25, printed in York Plays, pp. xix ff. The second
list is in Davies, York Records of the Fifteenth Century, pp. 233 ff.
2 Plays 4 and 41, and part of 7. Compare Burton's list of 1415, Nos. 4, 17 and 7.
« Spencer seems to be mistaken (Corpus Christ* Pageants, p. 38) in stating that the
crafts went to the town register to copy their individual scenes. How could the crafts
whose plays were not entered do so? He also fails, I think (p. 54), to interpret the
marginal notes correctly.
4 Hemingway, English Nativity Plays, p. 264, seems to think that our present text at
this point is the "matter" referred to, and that it dates from the sixteenth century. But
Miss Smith, p. xxviii, definitely assumes that the Prologue of Y 12 is in the same hand
as the body of the manuscript, which she dates 143Q-40. The note, therefore, must
refer to lines not registered.
6 For examples of the nota indicating alterations and corrections — there are some
fifty of them — cf. York Plays, pp. xv, xvi, and the text itself. In some cases they may
refer to changes made after 1568 (Miss Smith does not seem to me quite clear on this
point) , but in others they are obviously addressed to Dr. Hutton and point to revisions
before this date. That some changes in the plays were registered and some not is appar-
ent. Thus the Innkeepers registered both their plays, one probably not until 1483
(Intro., p. xlii), and in Y 7 two leaves were removed from the register and the new lines,
written to fill the lacuna, were added upon a blank page at the end of the play. On the
other hand, various plays were never registered, or registered very late, and the numerous
cases of "Hie caret," hi one case of "Hie caret flnem. This matter is newly mayd &
devysed, wherof we haue no coppy regystred" (p. 177), show that the rules were not
stringent. Cf. also note 4, above.
« Cf. York Plays, p. xvi.
7 The order of 1575 states that the play bookes were to be "reformed" "by thelawes
of this realme."
569
186 GEACE FRANK
By comparing Burton's two lists (that of 1415 must be denuded of
its late interlinings and corrections) with the body of plays written
about 1430-40, l and then by comparing these plays with the additions
to the cycle written in later hands, we may form some small idea of
the changes taking place in the plays after 1415.2 What occurred
during the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth
centuries, a much more important period in the development of the
cycle, can only be conjectured. It is safe to assume, however, that
then as later — and to a still greater extent — plays were rearranged,
revised, and rewritten.
Our records, of course, are by no means complete. That the
text was far from being the most important element in the pageants,
the paucity of references to it, the small sums expended upon it,
and, on the other hand, the heavy disbursements for stage properties,
the fines for inadequate acting, etc., all eloquently testify.3 The
records that we possess, however, seem to me to point to the crafts and
not to the town authorities as those held responsible for the texts.
To be sure, as the town authorities became more and more power-
ful they tended to interfere more and more in the affairs of the
guilds. The corporation at York in 1568, 1575, and 1579 ordered
the plays " corrected," i.e., "reformed," but whether the guilds,
like those of Chester in similar circumstances,4 were to undertake
any of these corrections themselves is uncertain. How early such
municipal authority may have been exerted elsewhere I do not
know. At Beverley in 1519-20 the twelve governors seem to
have spent 7s., "being with Sir William Pyers, poet, at Edmund
1 The date assigned to the greater portion of our MS by its editor.
2 It must always be remembered that only changes affecting a few essentials can
be detected from Burton's slight summaries. Thus he knows nothing of the Prologue
of Y 12 in 1415; he includes an obstetrix in Y 14, who disappeared from the play before it
was registered; Y 16 and 17 were one play when he first wrote both lists, and this play
apparently excluded two characters which now appear; the 1415 play on the Purifica-
tion— ours dates from 1558 — had duo filij Symeonis; play 19 had four soldiers and four
women instead of the two each in our present play; and so on. The list is too long to
cite, but it will be noted that P. W. Cady in his article on "The Liturgical Basis of the
Towneley Mysteries," Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc., XXIV, 419 ft*., takes no account of them.
»It is therefore pleasant to discover that at York in 1476, the "moste connyng
discrete and able players" of the city were to "serche" and "examen" not only all the
platers and pagentes belonging to the Corpus Xti plaie but also the plaies as well; cf. York
Plays, p. xxxvii. (I assume that the guilds were ordered to revise those found unsuitable;
cf. the Smiths' accounts of Chester, above.)
' Cf. p. 568.
570
REVISIONS IN THE ENGLISH MYSTERY PLAYS 187
Metcalff s house to make an agreement with him for trans-
posing (?) [' transposicione '] the Corpus Christi Play/' and
3s. 4 d. were "given to the said William Pyers for his expenses
and labour in coming from Wresill to Beverley for the alteration
of the same."1 These items certainly suggest that in 1519-20
the twelve were concerned in the transposicione of the Beverley
cycle. That they paid for any work done upon it is not so evident.
The first item may record a payment merely for the convivialities
of the occasion,2 the second a payment for the poet's expenses
only, but in any case the instance is unique, so far as I know, and
of late date, and the sums seem too small to indicate extensive
revision. Except for these records, however — that of York definitely
related to the unusual circumstances of the Reformation and that
of Beverley uncertain — I find nothing to suggest that the cycles
were subjected to revision in toto. On the other hand, as I have
indicated, there seem to be many reasons for assuming that in the
great towns where the guilds controlled the other details of their
pageants they also supervised the texts of the plays.
The application of these results to the Towneley plays is obvious.
No records from the guilds of Wakefield have been found, but
Chambers conjectures3 that our manuscript of the plays is, like that
of the Y plays, a registrum, and all critics apparently agree that the
cycle, as we have it, is highly composite in nature. Davidson4 is
of the opinion that a single compiler garnered his material from here
and there, linking it together by verse of his own. Pollard5 refers
to "the period when the York plays were being incorporated into
the cycle." Cady finds evidence that the entire cycle was revised
by two successive editors. In view of the situation elsewhere, I
am inclined to believe that we have in T as in Y a collection of plays
each subjected, at least during its formative period, to the vicissitudes
1 Hist. MSS Comm., Bev., p. 171.
2 Note the entry almost immediately afterward: "5 s. 8 d. expenses of Mr. Receiver
and the 12 Governors at Antony Goldsmyth's house dining on two bucks there. 3 s. 4d.
to the Lord Cardinal's foresters for bringing them."
» Op. cit., II, 143.
4 English Mystery Plays, p. 129.
6 Towneley Plays, p. xxvi.
571
188 GRACE FRANK
of life within its particular craft.1 Some of the crafts were fortunate
in being able to command the services of a remarkable Wakefield
playwright.2 Others were content to borrow from Y, perhaps revis-
ing or rewriting later. Still others continued to use old plays pieced
out by borrowings from elsewhere or enlivened by a scene or two
from the hands of the Wakefield dramatist. The possibilities are
almost inexhaustible, and nearly every play when thus considered
presents a separate problem.
Accordingly, we cannot assume, I think, that at some period a
couplet or a quatrain editor made his way through the whole cycle —
especially since couplets and quatrains would offer the easiest forms
for emendations at any time. Nor is it possible to posit a "York
period" in the T cycle, although Y plays may have been more
fashionable among Wakefield playwrights at some times than at
others. Indeed, to make confusion worse confounded, the Y plays
were themselves undergoing the various processes of change all the
while.3 In my opinion, we can assume, however, that old plays were
being rewritten and that borrowed plays were being rewritten. And
this fact seems to me to account for the origin of certain resemblances
between the cycles, both of structure and of phrase, that are other-
wise not readily explained.4
GRACE FRANK
BRYN MAWB, PA.
» Compare the two versions of the Shepherds' Play with the two plays on the Fall
belonging to the Norwich grocers, and the two plays on the Coronation of the Virgin
belonging to the York innkeepers.
2 Compare the paradoxically similar situation at Coventry where several guilds
requisitioned the pen of Robart Croo — and were less fortunate.
3 As Gayley has pointed out, we actually find the influence of various different strata
of Y in T. Cf. Plays of Our Forefathers, pp. 161 ft*.
* I shall hope at some future time to illustrate the application of this theory
of revisions as well as to examine certain other hypotheses connected with the relations
between the cycles.
572
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
The Sonnets of Shakespeare. From the Quarto of 1609 with Variorum
Readings and Commentary. Edited by RAYMOND MACDONALD
ALDEN. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916. Pp. xix+542.
A New Shakespeare Quarto. The Tragedy of King Richard II.
Printed for the third time by Valentine Simmes in 1598. Repro-
duced in facsimile from the unique copy in the library of William
Augustus White. With an Introduction by ALFRED W. POL-
LARD. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1916. Pp. 104+Sig. A-I.
Shaksperian Studies. By Members of the Department of English
and Comparative Literature in Columbia University. Edited
by BRANDER MATTHEWS and ASHLEY HORACE THORNDIKE.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1916. Pp. vii+452.
These volumes, representing in three different fields notable products
of the Shakespeare Tercentenary, show a degree of excellence that makes the
reviewer's task comparatively simple.
Professor Alden's edition of the Sonnets, following the plan and method
of Furness' New Variorum editions of Shakespeare's plays, and uniform with
those volumes in presswork, size, and binding, is worthy of its place in the
series. As far as I can judge, the immense task of reprinting the original
text of 1609 and recording variant readings of later editions, of selecting and
abridging all important annotation, and of digesting the vast literature on
the Sonnets, has been performed with excellent judgment and remarkable
accuracy. The introductory pages and the appendix give the history of the
text and of the schools of interpreters, select passages of criticism, the impor-
tant sources, and summaries of the varied arguments on the arrangement
of the Sonnets and on the biographical interpretations centering around
"the onlie begetter," the Friend, the Rival Poet, and the Dark Lady. Per-
sonally I regret that in this edition special attention has not been given to
the influence exerted on Shakespeare's Sonnets by Petrarchan, Platonic, and
Court-of-Love conventions. If, however, one were inclined to regret the
absence of a full record of the vagaries of biographical and other interpreta-
tions, a glance at Mr. Alden's enormous bibliography for the Sonnets will
give him pause. Yet either a short summary of other theories in regard to the
Dark Lady should have been included with the survey of the influence of
573] 189
190 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Willobie's Aviso, on the surmises in regard to her, or cross references should
have been given to parts of the appendix and notes where other theories are
stated, for Dark Lady, Friend, and Rival Poet do not appear in the index to
aid one in following the history of the interpretation of the Sonnets.
For students of Shakespeare interested especially in bibliography and
text, the most important contribution of the tercentenary year of Shake-
speare's death is the discovery and publication in facsimile of a new Quarto
of Richard II. The volume is a beautiful specimen of book-making, and the
reproductions are remarkably clear and uniform. It is gratifying that this
Quarto is edited by A. W. Pollard, whose recent bibliographical works have
contributed so much to the understanding of Shakespeare and his fellows.
His long introductory essay on the text of Richard II gives a systematic
catalogue, analysis, and classification of all the errors and the notable
variations of the texts in the order of their publication, from the Quarto
of 1597 through the Folio. Some critic may rise to challenge details of his
conclusion, but the method must remain a model. In this investigation
the new Quarto, the second belonging to the year 1598, based on the first of
that year, aids materially. It derives further importance from the possi-
bility, considered by Mr. Pollard but rejected, that it was used for the Folio
text. Mr. Pollard's conclusion is that the Quarto of 1597 furnishes the text
nearest to Shakespeare's original form, and that the Folio was set from the
fifth Quarto, that of 1615, with some revisions from a copy of the first Quarto
used by Shakespeare's company, in which certain corrections of the text,
variations in the stage directions, and omissions of passages were found. To
my mind, the chief difficulty in accepting this conclusion as final lies in the
doubt as to whether fifty lines found in the Quarto of 1615 would have been
omitted in the Folio. An interesting deduction of the editor is that Shake-
speare's original manuscript was probably used for setting up the first Quarto,
and that the punctuation of this Quarto, scant in the main, was intended to
guide the actor in the rendering of the lines.
The Columbia Shaksperian Studies, with no brilliant essays giving
individualistic interpretations or striking discoveries, is very valuable for
its inquiries into the methods and purposes of Shakespearian study and for
its application of modern logical methods, in various ways, to Shakespearian
problems. One essay surveys the points of view and the methods of those
who have sought to interpret Shakespeare's personality. Others deal with
his use of his sources, with the principles of pronunciation in his day, with
stage tradition as contributing to interpretation, with the points of view of
American editors, with the interpretation of Midsummer Night's Dream in its
presentations on the New York stage at various periods, with the structure
and characterization of Julius Caesar in the light of Shakespeare's sources
and his variations on them, with the meaning of Troilus and Cressida, with
the artistic power of Romeo and Juliet, with Parolles not as a weak reflection
of Falstaff but as a reflection of Elizabethan manners, with a comparison of
574
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 191
the modern point of view in regard to Henry V with the Renaissance idealiza-
tion of him as a man of action, with a rational analysis of Hamlet ("Reality
and Inconsistency in Shakspere's Characters"), with "Shakspere on His
Art," with "Shakspere and the Medieval Lyric." On the whole, the volume
furnishes an excellent example of modern historical and common-sense
criticism.
C. R. BASKERVILL
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
English Literature from Widsith to the Death of Chaucer. A Source
Book. By ALLEN ROGERS BENHAM. New Haven: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1916. Pp. xxviii+634.
The title of this book is misleading since the work itself contains little
material dealing directly with literature. A survey of the table of contents
reveals this fact and at the same time the real character of the book. The
two chapters into which the work is divided, the first treating of England
to the Norman Conquest (pp. 1-139), the second, of the period to the death of
Chaucer (pp. 140-613), are arranged under the following headings: The
political background, social and industrial background, cultural background,
linguistic background, literary characteristics, representative authors.
Obviously the aim of the book is not to present the literature of the period
but to give such a historical and cultural background as will make an under-
standing of the literature possible: it is in fact a source book for mediaeval
English history. This purpose it fulfils very well. It gives extracts (in
translation) from chronicles, sermons, poems (chiefly illustrative of aspects
of mediaeval life) ; in footnotes it offers extensive bibliographical information.
In nearly all cases the passages selected are well chosen, and the total effect
of the book is to give perhaps the best general impression of mediaeval
English life to be found between the covers of a single volume.
Individuals will naturally differ in their opinions as to what such a book
should contain. To one reader at least the treatment of literature seems
inadequate. Only three literary types — romance, drama, history — are
exhibited in the Middle English period. Of the translations from Old English
poetry none is in the old metrical form. There are, moreover, errors in some
of the translations : on page 35, for example, since is rendered "treasured life "
and cefter maddum-welan, "thereafter." The literal meanings fit perfectly.
More important, however, is the mistranslation of the refrain in "Deor's
Lament" (see Lawrence, Mod. Phil, IX, 23 ff.). In a note on page 72
Beadohild and MaBthilde are said to be the same despite the wide divergence
of opinions among scholars. The translation of bryne as "shield" cm p. 371
(Gawain and the Green Knight) makes nonsense out of the passage. The
sentence on p. 91, "Old English literature is characterized by its simple
575
192 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
literary form and style, its unsophisticated versification and rhetoric, and by
its restricted range of types," even with its qualifying note, must give an
entirely wrong impression to the uninformed reader. It is to be noted also
that the author does not let the reader know which of his documents are in
English and which in Latin (he even mixes the two in the note on p. 91).
The linguistic texts show many misprints. P. 75, 1. 6 read lausei uns;
p. 76, 1. 3 of Csedmon's hymn, uuldurfadur; p. 77, last line, aldormon;
p. 78, 1. 7, noldan; 1. 18, weordunga; p. 79, 1. 8, almcehtiges; 1. 11, aselle;
Csedmon's hymn, 1. 1, herigean; 1. 2, Meotodes meahte ond his modgepanc;
1. 5, sceop; 1. 8, Drihten. The texts use ae or ae without regard for the spelling
in the originals. In the Middle English texts 5 is avoided, and in its place
various alterations are made without consistency, e.g., re%hellboc to foll$henn
becomes regellboc to follyhenn (p. 489). Wouldn't an uninformed person be
likely to pronounce the last word as a trisyllable? On page 492 hall$he
is represented both by hallghe and by hallyhe; on p. 497 drayeth and to-dragen
(in both of which the original has 5) appear. There are misprints in the
Middle English texts also. P. 487, 1. 8 (of the Bruce) read lay; 1. 9, thow-
sandis; p. 487, 1. 6, That; following this a line has dropped out, Till that
Rychard off Normandy, and the lines of translation at that point are mis-
placed; 1. 13 read discumfyt. P. 489, 1. 1 of the Ormulum, read flaeshess;
p. 490, 1. 9, insert itt after ice; 1. 13 read te after tatt; p. 492, 1. 3, wilenn;
. 8, writenn; p. 493, 1. 4, Ormin; 1. 6, Thiss, teyy; p. 494, 1. 1, alle kinerichen;
. 4, tha; p. 495, 1. 5, thceinen; 1. 7 read dugethe and insert ther after duntes;
. 8, insert tha after while; 1. 12, yifle should be gisle! 1. 14 read Arthure;
p. 496, 1. 7floh should be sloh! 1. 14 read Tha; p. 498, 1. 9, seten; 1. 11, gleomen;
12, dugethe; p. 499, 1. 11, abuten, uten; 1. 12, to-gceines; p. 500, 1. 2, beord;
10, Aevereaelches; 1. 12, yelpen; p. 501, last line, transpose on and him;
p. 502, 1. 1 read Arthure; 1. 1 (of the Ayenbite), ywyte; 1. 6, Thet, inwyttte;
1. 8, Thet, yeve; p. 503, 1. 2, onderuonge; 1. 4, sanynt; 1. 2 (of the Proclamation),
Yrloande; p. 504, 1. 3 insert to before werien; p. 505, 1. 4, read Northfolke,
Marescal on.
In note 1, page 1, reference should be made to H. M. Chadwick, Origin
of the English Nation, Cambridge, 1907. Page 368, note 18, should refer to the
best translation of Gawain by K. G. T. Webster and to Professor Kittredge's
book. The statement that the Parkment of Foules celebrates the marriage of
Richard II should be modified in view of Professor Manly's article in Mors-
bach's Studien, L, 279 ff.
J. R. HULBERT
UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO
576
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV
February igi8
NUMBER 10
PHYSIGUNKUS
1. The German word which forms the subject of this paper
occurs first in a Reformation pamphlet reprinted by Schade in the
second volume of his Satiren und Pasquille aus der Reformationszeit.
The pamphlet, which dates from 1520 and according to Schade
represents Rhenish Franconian, according to Fischer (Schwab.
Wb., II, 1525) possibly Swabian speech, is in dialogue form. One of
the interlocutors says of the Pope (p. 133) : ' . . . . wie man im die
fuesz musz kiissen und in haiszen den aller hailigisten. und etlich
visegunklen sagen, er mug nichts unrechts thon, er mug nit siinden.'
Here visegunkeln means 'charlatans of learning, men whose heads
are full of false erudition which they use to mislead the people' — ' die
Gelehrten, die Verkehrten.'
Another sixteenth-century source, the so-called Zimmersche
Chronik, Swabian in origin, twice uses our word, though in a slightly
different form, visigunk. The meaning also is here not quite the
same: it seems to be that of ' eccentric idiot.' In one passage (III,
61, of Barack's ed. in the Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in
Stuttgart) we read: 'Ain bruder hat er gehapt, grave Ludwig, der
ist doch gar ain visigungk gewesen, von dessen abenteurigen und
kindtlichen sachen ain ganze legende mogte geschriben* werden.'
Later on in the chronicle (IV, 3) one Bechtoldt von Rott is described
as ain rechter visigunk and a piece of his queerness and stupidity is
577] 129 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, February, 1918
130 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
related: egged on by some practical jokers, who tell him he may thus
gain knighthood, he goes into the tent of the Emperor Charles the
Fifth and stands there, silently staring about, until his liege lord,
the Cardinal of Augsburg, is asked about him and explains the situa-
tion, whereupon the Emperor laughs and with a perfumed glove dubs
him knight. The chronicler, however, comments: 'Ich het dem
gauch ain gute spiszgerten iiber die lenden geben zu aim glicklichen
anfang seiner ritterschafV
The next occurrence is in Fischart's Geschichtklitterung or German
Gargantua. In the ' Drunken Litany ' a preceptor, and to all
appearance a medical preceptor, is asked (Alsleben's edition, p. 145) :
'Domine Phisiguncke ist nicht ein gemeyne Regel, treimal ober
Tisch getrunken sey das gesundest, mehr hab ich nit gelesen/ to
which the doctor answers: 'Neyn Neyn, Marce fili, du hast den
Cratippum nicht recht gehort, das Buch, so gelesen hast, ist falsch
verkehrt. Im abschreiben ists yersehen worden, drey fur dreitzehen.'
Fischart's use of the word is in several respects interesting. It
is used frankly as a mock Latinism in address to a learned man.
It is spelled as though it were Greco-Latin and receives the Latin
vocative ending.
Our tradition does not keep us waiting long for the corresponding
nominative. Moscherosch's Philander, toward the end of the
vision Hollen-Kinder (I, 377, of the second Strassburg edition of
1642) meets a philosophizing poet who revels in scholastic hair-
splitting of the most nonsensical kind. When this poet fires at
Philander a string of syllogisms, part German, part Latin, the hero
answers: 'Ihr rmiszt warlich auff Erden ein nothlicher Kund, vnnd
Lacherlicher Fisigunckus gewest sein, weil jhr die Schnacken vnd
Grillen auch bisz hieher behaltenP Later, near the beginning of
Hansz hienuber Gansz heruber (II, 205, 206, of the second edition),
a young student quarrels with a pedantic Ertz-Schoristen und Aca-
demico, of whom he speaks, to his face, as 'einem so hirn-schelligen
Esel und Physikunckusz .... bey dem man es doch in einem huy
verderbet hatte, so bald ma auch in dem geringsten wortlein oder
Commate fehlete.' On the next page our word recurs, this time in
the spelling Fisigunckhusz, which appears also when Moscherosch
speaks, near the fortieth page of Wider das Podagram (Part 4, p. 45,
578
PHYSIGUNKUS 131
of the Leyden edition by Wyngarten, 16461) of the 'Astronomi
vnd Kalenderschreiber, welche solche fantastereyen vnd wunder-
fisigunckische bossen in jhren Kalendern mit ein-mahle vn schreiben.'
Thus the faculties of theology, medicine, law, humanities, and natural
science are all represented in the ranks of the Physigunci.
Schmeller (Bayer. Wb.2, I, 768) quotes for Bavarian a seventeenth-
century song: 'Ey du gueter Fiisigunges.'
Another seventeenth-century occurrence is known to me only
from the Grimm Dictionary (s.v. Fisigunkes, Kunkelfuseri) : the
Austrian Abele, in his Gerichtshdndel (1668, I, 262 [or 226?]), is
there said to have the sentence: 'haben nicht etliche physicunkes
vermeint, dasz Epiphania Christi saugamm gewest sei ? '
Here, as in Schmeller's song, the Latin nominative ending -us
appears in the Germanized form -es, which is found also in many
words in the modern dialects, as Hildebrand, D.Wb., V, 1495, points
out. The feeling for its origin is probably everywhere lost. Ex-
amples are Alsatian Schlappes 'fauler Mensch/ Beches 'Schuh-
macher'; the source is to be seen in such Latinisms as Wackes
'loafer' from L. vagus; see Martin-Lienhart's Dictionary as well as
the list, there referred to, by Pfaff in PBB, XV, 189.
Our word has kept this ending to the present time in Alsace,
where Fisikunkes, according to Martin-Lienhart, is used mostly in the
set expression Du roter F.} as ' Schimpf name ' for red-headed people —
obviously a much-narrowed word-meaning indicative of obsoles-
cence.
Except for this limited use in Alsace, the word seems to survive
only in Switzerland. In the canton of Appenzell, according to
Staub-Tobler, the word Fisigunggi (with Swiss diminutive ending) is
used, though but rarely, in such expressions as en golige Fisigunggi
'ein seltsamer Querkopf.' Modified forms of the word, however,
are widespread in Switzerland, but before we discuss them it will be
well to inquire into the origin of Physigunkus.
2. As the Swiss Idiotikon and the rhythm of the songs attest,
our word is stressed upon the third syllable. This places it in a class
* ' $ '
1 The incomplete copy of the second edition accessible to me (University of Illinois
Library) lacks the last four of the fourteen authentic chapters, including the one here
quoted; according to Martin-Lienhart, Els. Wb., II, 937, the passage is to be found in
II, 474, of the first Strassburg edition.
579
132 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
of words imperfectly understood: it will be the chief object of this
paper to define the fundamental principle by which they are to be
explained.
The general law of German word-accent is of course that of stress
on the first syllable. Excepted are only the genuine verb-compounds,
such as gestehen, verstehen, uberstehen, and, secondarily, the verbal
nouns corresponding to such compounds: erteilen has Erteilung
beside older Urteil, erlauben Erlaubnis, beside Urlaub, and so on.
All these forms, however, have always occupied a very distinct
place in German speech-feeling; although they have multiplied, the
analogy has not overstepped the above-mentioned bounds, and there-
fore, be it said at once, such forms as Fisigunkes cannot be explained
as lying within the analogy of these words.
Apart from the verbal compounds, however, the German lan-
guage has, in historical times, absorbed a great number of loan-words,
chiefly from Latin and French, with accent on syllables other than the
first, such as Soldat, Student, studieren, spazieren.
Now, as no phonetic law can be supposed to have produced the
peculiar accentuation of words such as Fisigunkes, they must be
analogic formations, and, as the compounds of the type erlauben
Erlaubnis, uberstehen are remote, there remains only one explana-
tion: such words as Fisigunkes must be analogic formations for
which foreign words with un-German accent have served as models.
This conclusion is confirmed by the meaning of our word: it
is a joking word, a mock loan-word, a pseudo-Latinism. The early
users were conscious of this and expressed it by the spellings with
visi- and physi-.
J. Grimm, in the Dictionary (III, 1690) says of Fisigunkus:
1 Wol entstellung eines romanischen worts, dessen erster theil physio-
enthalt, wie Abele zeigt; vielleicht nichts als der ace. von physicus,
doch findet sich auch filigunkes.' Hildebrand (D. Wb., V, 2661)
says of Fischart's use: 'Offenbar ein Schulwitz,' and of Abele's:
'Deutlich physici in spottischer Form.' Fischer's Swabian Dic-
tionary says: {Physikus liegt nahe, aber -gunkes ist auch sonst ahn-
lich gebraucht.' Martin-Lienhart adopt Grimm's explanation,
saying: 'Aus Physicus weitergebildet.' Staub-Tobler explain the
word as a purely German compound, but refer also to the word
580
PHYSIGUNKUS
133
visierlich 'delicate, over-fine/ and mention Grimm's suggestion with
the words : l Wir mussen diese Deutung offen lassen, um so mehr, da
auch bei uns Fisikus, in ahnlichem Sinn vorkommt' adding that the
end of the distortion is probably based on some German word.
None of these authors explicitly undertakes to discuss the accentu-
ation of the word; had they done so, they would not have questioned
the foreign influence. Of the suggested explanations none satisfies
the accentual conditions: Physicus, with its accusative, is accented
on the first syllable, visierlich on the second; the type with physio-
comes nearest. The genitive plural of physicus, physicorum, would
come still nearer. A student's jesting nonce-word *physicunculus
is conceivable and may have been the immediate precursor of
Physigunkel.
3. Latin words with unaccented initial^'- are not uncommon in
German usage. Unfortunately, the German dictionaries do not
as a rule give loan-words — a gross violation of the principle that the
description (as opposed to the history) of a language must follow
the Sprachgefuhl of its speakers and not the learned historical criteria
of the investigator. One of the most pressing needs of German
linguistics is a historical dictionary of loan-words, not to speak of an
analysis of German Latinity, i.e., of Latin (and French) words and
phrases which, though not actually adopted by the language, have
as yet various times become current in German speech and writing
as technical terms, citations, and ornaments. Nevertheless, one can
with some certainty trace the existence in German of a number of
Latin words with initial fisi-. They fall into two main groups.
a) We may look first at those from the stem of the participle
visus. Their initial v was formerly in German usage pronounced /
(by sound-substitution: G. w had then the semivowel value), as is
shown by old spellings with /, by the absence of spellings with w, by
such words as Vers, where standard German perserves an old pro-
nunciation, and by the dialects, which frequently still have / for such
Latin v.
In MHG. visament(e) means, in the words of Beneke's dictionary:
'visierung, modellierung; die eintheilung eines wappen% und die
beschreibung desselben' — der wdpen visament, der wdfen visamente.
Lexer adds a passage from Laszberg's Liedersaal (I, 579), where
581
134 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
the word is spelled fisiment and is used in a mocking sense of letters
of the alphabet embroidered on clothing, a fad, it seems, at one
period of the decline of courtly life. The passage is worth quoting
in full:
So wolt ich genie fragen
Das ir mich bewisten me
Maneger trait dez a b c
An jm ainen buchstaben
Was die betiitnust miigent haben
Die sy tragent wundert mich.
Sie sprachent war vmb mugs tu dich
Vmb die selben fisiment
Ez ist sicher ain getent
Vnt ain betriignust offenlich.
Here fisiment seems to have the connotation of ' silly frills/ We shall
see later to what influence such a connotation may be due.
For MHG. visitieren Lexer gives only the Latin equivalent
'visitare'; but the noun of agent he tells us occurs in the fourteenth
century for the inspector of a nunnery. In modern Swiss visitiere,
visidiere means, according to Staub-Tobler, ' untersuchen/ Visidatz,
masculine, is 'amtlicher Besuch (eines Mitgliedes) der kirchlichen
Oberbehorde beim Pfarrer, zur Untersuchung seiner Amts- und
(friiher auch) Buchfuhrung.' In Alsatian Martin-Lienhart give
for visitiere 'arztlich untersuchen, durchsuchen, jemandes Taschen
und Kleider auf etwas Verdachtiges hin aussuchen': 'Herr Dokter,
visitiere mi; Eim d Sack visitiere; D Schandarme ban s ganz Hus
durchgvisitiert; Si han alles tisgvisitiert, awer si ban nix gfunde.'
The Swabian dictionary of Fischer spells the word phonetically with
initial /, giving fisidiere 'friiher "besuchen," modern: von ein-
maliger oder periodischer Untersuchung (Visitazion) des Zustands
einer offentlichen Anstalt, Schule udgl. mit und ohne Objekt. Von
da ins Privatleben ubertragen, mehr oder weniger mit scherzhaft
drohendem Ton. Einem faulen naschhaften Buben o. a. visitiert
man seinen Schulranzen, seine Taschen, usw.' So older Fyssydatz
(Fisitatz), spelled later with v (Vissedatz), today replaced by Visi-
tazion 'wie nhd., besonders die periodische Visitazion der Schulen
durch einen Visitator.'
PHYSIGUNKUS 135
It is small wonder that the Fisigunkes is a busybody (cf. sec. 6,
p. 137) : he is a near relative of the Visitator or Visitierer who per-
forms his Visitaz.
Of less importance is the use of Visitur for 'Angesicht' in the
Zimmer Chronicle.
6) The influence of Latin visi- is, however, secondary in our
word : its real source lies, as Grimm saw, in the Greco-Latin physi-.
Words containing this element were not uncommon in the learned
language of the Middle Ages; some, no doubt, were known to the
common people. Wolfram uses fisike 'Naturkunde' (Parz. 481,
15 Lachm.2), as well as a word which fulfils our condition of accent
on the third syllable, fision 'Kenner der Natur' (Parz. 453, 25
Lachm.2) :
der selbe fision
was geboren von Salmon.
The L. genitive plural physicorum has been mentioned; one
thinks also of the adjective physicalis. In the age of learned hocus-
pocus, that is, in the early NHG. period, when Physigunkus and
other facetious mock-Latinisms first occur in our texts, such words
must have been heard frequently enough, perhaps more frequently
than today.1 Thus in Swabia Fisikat 'Amt oder Wohnung eines
Fisikus, amtlich angestellten Arztes' and even Oberamtsfisikat are
today obsolete. One says Oberamtsarzt; what his office is called is
not clear.
Of less importance for us is MHG. visami ' Physiognomic/
Our survey of loan-words beginning with unaccented fisi- would
no doubt be much extended were it not for the exclusion from most
German lexicography of foreign material. Even our brief survey
has given us, however, enough material to show how a mock-Latinism
of the form Fisigunkes could arise. We have, primarily, Latin
physicorum and physicalis and the less relevant physiologia} phy-
siologus (accented on penultima in old-fashioned pronunciation),
physion, physikat, and possibly *physicunculus, and secondarily
visiment 'silly ornamentation/ visitieren, Visitaz, Visitierer, Visitator;
less relevant are Visitur and Visami for 'face.' The second group
1 As is well known, the puristic tendency has since then worked deeply, as the now
quaint Latinisms and Gallicisms of bygone centuries show; one may recall the charming
use of them for poetic effect in Storm's phantasy Von Heut und Ehedem.
583
136 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
has affected the meaning of our word, but it is to the first that it
owes its origin. As the old spellings and the Latin nominative and
vocative endings show, the earlier users of the word were still con-
scious of its pseudo-Latin character.
Our task is now to see how, on the basis of such loan-words, the
precise form of Fisigunkel, Fisigunk, Fisigunkus, Fisigunki, was
arrived at.
4. Whence came the second member -gunkusf Or, this being
a Latinization, whence the -gunkel of the earliest occurrence ?
The word-group of Gothic gaggan, German ging, gegangen,
English gang, has produced in German a number of words with
vowel-variation and with that intensive consonant-doubling which
had its origin in a pre-Germanic assimilation of nasal suffixes. To
follow this development would take us far afield; we may limit
ourselves to the type gunk-. Swiss gunkle is 'baumeln, straucheln,
wackeln .... liederlich umherschlendern ' ; in Alsatian it is
' umherlauf en ' ; Swiss, Gungg 'trages, unhaushalterisches Weib';
Alsatian, Gunkel, 'Lump, Schnapssaufer, Sauferin/ Gunkli 'lang-
samer, schlaffer Mensch'; Swabian, Gunkes (with Latin ending)
' alter Mann, lendenlahmer Spielmann'; in Nassau (Kehrein), 'ein
dummer, der pfiffig sein will'; in Hessian (von Pfister), 'Bezeich-
nung eines verschmitzten, in Wahrheit aber doch dummen Tropfes.'1
It is this Gunk and Gunkel originally 'tramp, loafer/ then 'schem-
ing but stupid knave/ which furnished the German ending for the
mock-Latinism Physigunkus. The substratum, however, and imme-
diate occasion for its creation, and the only explanation of its accent,
are to be sought in the foreign words beginning with unaccented fisi-.
5. Gunk, though the oldest, is not, however, the only ending of
German mock loan-words with fisi-. One finds here that multiplicity
of forms which at first discourages the student and then rewards
him with the realization of the endless variety, delicacy, and mobility
of human speech.
While Fisigunki is rare in Switzerland, the form Fisigugg,
Fisiguggi, Fisigugges, Fisigux, or, with umlaut, Fisigugg, Fisigguger,
1 Our vulgar gink 'ridiculous person,' northern British (EDD) ginkie 'giddy, frolic-
some, tricky; a lighthearted girl' may represent the M-form, but the history of these
words seems to be unknown.
584
PHYSIGUNKUS 137
is common and widespread in the meaning ' super kluger subtiler
Kopf, Mensch, der alles erkltigeln will, alles bis aufs kleinste durch-
stobert, seltsame und verwirrte Vorstellungen hat, Halbgelehrter ;
eingebildeter sonderbarer Mensch, kleinlicher Pfiffikus.' Staub-
Tobler cite an occurrence of this form from 1799. There is also the
derived verb fisigtiggle 'den Pfiffikus spielen.' From an early
nineteenth-century Alsatian source Martin-Lienhart give Fisigugges
1 Halbgelehrter, Mensch mit verworrenen Begriffen ; Naseweiser, auch
einer, der sich mit Kleinigkeiten abgibt, anscheinend geschaftig ist,
sich bei Leuten durch geringfugige Dinge einschmeichelt.' This
new formation of Fisigunk into Fisiguk is explained by the word
Gugger 'Kukuk' — for the cuckoo, 'der gouch,' is a favorite name for a
fool; Swiss, en arme Gugger is 'em armer Schlucker' and en fusiga
Gugger (the phrase perhaps suggested by our word) ' ein ausgemachter
Pfiffikus.' Gucklus ein gouch, stultus eyn dor, says Brant (Narren-
schiff, p. 5, Zarncke). Hence Fisigiigger.
The origin of our entire word-group and its earlier position in the
speech-feeling stand out clearly in a jest word quoted by Staub-
Tobler from the Second Helvetian Confession of 1644, where mention
is made of the doctrines of the Monotheliter oder Monophysiguger;
by the latter term is meant the sect of the Monophysiter.
Gduggel ' Geek, Narr' is another word of the cuckoo family;
to it belongs, as Staub-Tobler recognize, the sporadic by-form Fisi-
gdugger.
6. The relationship of the Fisigunkes and the Visitator, the
busybody inspector, appears in a form with the ending assimilated to
gucken, in Swiss (guggen) 'neugierig oder heimlich blicken/ Hafeli-
Gugger, Gugges 'Paul Pry,' Guggi 'dummer Mensdch'; for Swiss
has also Fisigugg, Fisiguggi, Fisigugger, Fisigux 'dummer, unge-
schickter, zugleich zudringlicher Mensch; Ausspaher, Spion, Schlau-
kopf; der sich um Kleinigkeiten viel Miihe macht; engherziger
Mensch, SpassvogeP; also the verb fisiguggere, fisiguggle 'gucken,
hervorschauen ; schlau verstohlen nach etwas blicken, ausspahen.'
In passing we may mention a word with normal German accent
which owes its existence to our group: Fisigugg, Fisigugger, with
accent on the first syllable is in Swiss a less common word for 'vor-
witziger und neugieriger Mensch, der sich in alles mischt; Ausspaher,
585
138 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
Spion, Schlaukopf.' Staub-Tobler rightly explain this word as a
re-formation of Fisigugger into a compound with the first member,
Vlsi, as used in the phrases oppis im V. ha 'etwas im Auge, heim-
liche Absicht darauf haben/ im V. bhalte (Swabian in Visis behalten)
'im Auge behalten/ for L. in visu.
7. Another distortion of Fisigurik is Swiss Fisibutz, given by
Stalder as 'Benennung eines Halbgelehrten, eines Menschen von
seltenen und verwirrten Vorstellungen.' The last part is here Swiss
Butz 'vermummte Person; Narr; unordentlich gekleidete Person/
MHG. butze 'Kobold, Schreckgestalt, Klumpen.'
8. The idea of alchemy and magic that was connected with some
of the learned words containing the element physi- may have
prompted the creation of two verbs which occur in Alsace. Fisi-
mikre is there 'etwas kiinstlich herstellen wollen, ohne es zu konnen.'
The second part is denominative from the group Micke, Mickele
'kosende Bezeichnung fur ein Fullen; Kaninchen; junges Rind;
junge Ziege; junges Madchen/ Mickele 'auch fur kleine Kinder/
Micker, Mickerle, ' Zartlichkeitsausdruck fur kleine Lebewesen, als
Kaninchen, Hund, Katze, Kalbchen, Fullen, aber vorzugsweise
fur Kinder, Schatzchen, Liebchen; kleines Bierglas'; so in Swiss
mlggerig, rarely with short vowel, 'gering, elend, armselig, krank-
lich aussehend/ Miggerli 'kleines geringfiigiges Ding, kleine Person.'
9. The second verb is Alsatian fisenickere 'liigen, aufschneiden,
schwindeln.' In Swiss us-niggele is 'iibertrieben auszieren, aus-
schnorkeln/ and in Alsace nicke is 'bei einem Handel zah sein,
feilschen, markten/ nickle 'an etwas herumzerren; norgeln, kleinlich
etwas auszusetzen haben; argern, verdrieszen ' ; Nicki is 'a bargainer
who tries to buy everything below price ' and Nickli ' a stingy person.'1
10. Woeste in his Wb. d. westfdl. Ma., 187. 301, gives a word
fissenulle, visenulle 'weibliche Scham.' The second part of this word
is a regular feminine derivative of MHG. nol m. 'mons veneris/ cf.
in modern dialects nollen, nullen 'futuere/ nulle 'penis.' The
region from which this word is given makes it probable, however,
1 H. SchrOder in his Streckformen explains these two verbs, with many other forms,
as due to the use of unaccented infixes, e.g., fisimicken, fisinicken from fislken (accent
probably wrong), by infixes -im- and -in-. Instead of studying all German words with
abnormal accentuation, Schroder first eliminated those which he knew were loan-words;
when this wholly extraneous criterion had been applied, the mock loan-words were left
high and dry, and only a mechanical explanation was possible.
PHYSIGUNKUS 139
that its prefixal fisi- is due to a different group of mock loan-words,
which shall find mention below.
11. There remains a consideration which will bring us closer
to the speech-feeling of those who produced and of those who adopted
and spread the witticism of mocking learned pifflers with the title
Physigunkus: namely, the fact that fisi- seemed in earlier times and
seems still in various parts of Germany a funny sound-group.
One has not to seek far for the reason. Fiseln is in German dia-
lects one of the chief words for piddling, foolish activity, somewhat
as to fiddle is in English. It is the denominative of Fisel, whose
chief meanings are 'a slender branch, withy; penis (Wolfram,
Parz. 112, 25); a fibre or fringe.' In Swiss, Alsatian, and Swabian
Fisel has, variously, besides these meanings, the following : 'a carter's
whip, a fiddlestick; any small and weak creature, human or animal;
a boy, a fellow, a naughty child; an old woman'; Pechfisel is in
Fischart and in modern Swabian 'the shoemaker,' who works with
pitch, the Beches of modern Alsatian; Fischart's Hundsfisel is 'a
coward or weakling,' own brother, no doubt, of the better-known
Hundsfott. As far away as East Prussia Fisel, neuter, is (Frisch-
bier) ' Kleinigkeit, Unbedeutendes,' masculine and feminine 'leicht
beweglich hin und her fahrende, alberne Person.' The verb fisele
is in Swiss : ' mit einem diinnen langlichen Korper, zum Beispiel mit
einer Gerte, schnell hin und her fahren, mit einer Rute leicht beriih-
ren; zu sehr mit kleinlichen Sachen umgehen, z.B. mit einer Nadel
zu feine Zieraten machen; fein und unordentlich schreiben, kritzeln;
fein, leicht regnen,' fisle, a parallel form, is 'mit einem beweglichen,
dtinnen, langlichen (auch spitzigen) Korper, besonders mit einer
Rute oder Peitsche (Fisle) hin und her fahren, spielend oder schlagend
(an eim ume fisle, of a doctor using a needle on his patient) ; sich
(selbst) schnell hin und her bewegen, unstat und untatig, z.B. urns
Haus herum — bei Weibspersonen sich einschmeichelnd; andernx
Personen durch lastige Nahe hinderlich sein ; schnell, eif rig arbeiten —
aber auch ohne Erfolg; unter dem Schein von Geschaftigkeit nichts
tun; kurze, schnelle Schritte machen; mit zu groszer Genauigkeit
an etwas arbeiten, zu viel Zierereien machen; zu fein, imdeutlich
schreiben, kritzeln; auf einem Saiteninstrument stiimperhaft
spielen; Fasern zupfen; mit der Rute ziichtigen, schlagen und
587
140 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
jagen; fein (staubig) regnen; fliistern; Nusse enthiilsen und auf-
knacken; brunzen (von Hiihnern); futuere'; the agent is Fiseler,
the adjective fiselig. In Alsatian only one of the specialized meanings
survives: fisle is Ho play at cards in a piddling, overcalculating
manner, afraid of the slightest loss.' In Swabian fisele is 'fein und
unleserlich schreiben ; genau durchsehen ; fein regnen ; sich begatten ;
Liebkosungen machen; mit dem Fisel schlagen,' and the agent,
Fiseler, is also 'wer gerne im Hause nach Leckereien sucht, wer den
Weibern nachlauft,' der Fisele is explained as 'allzu piinktlicher
Mensch.' For Bavarian Schmeller analyzes the meanings as follows:
Ho make small movements (1) with one's fingers, (2) with mouth or
teeth, (3) in general,' and quotes various examples.
Swiss has also Fisi m. 'naseweiser Herr, der sich in die geringsten
Weibergeschafte mengt; wunderlicher Mensch,' f. 'Larm, Aufsehen,
Wesen, Treiben/ Fisifdusi 'Geek, verzartelter Knabe,' an iterative
whose second member is Fdusi 'Schonherrchen, petit-maitre,
Schwanzler, Jungfernjager.' Staub-Tobler advance the view that
Fisi is merely abstracted from Fisifdusi; this seems probable, and
Fisiggug, etc., also may have figured in the abstraction. In any
case, Fisi is younger and far less widespread than the forms with
Z-suffix.1
It is the Fisel and the Fisler and the verb fiseln which have given
a ridiculous connotation to the group fisi- in older and southwestern
German. The earliest example of this connotation is perhaps the
use of visament as 'silly frippery' (instead of 'heraldic blazonry')
which has been quoted (sec. 3) ; the spelling is there with / instead of
the Latin-French v.
Visasche and Visier are in Swabian used for 'face,' but in mockery
and contemptuously.
In the same way Fisel and fiselen may have distorted the value
of the verb visieren (from L. visare, Fr. viser), which was once a tech-
nical term for testing wine with a rod, 'Wein abeichen.' For it is
possibly to the meaning of the like-sounding German words that we
owe the use of visieren in the following passage of the Fastnachtspiel
1 It is a mistake, therefore, of Staub-Tobler when, in another passage (1, 1079).
they suggest that our old and widespsead Fisigunki is merely a German compound whose
first member is this Fisi- quite aside from the impossibility of thus accounting for the
accentuation.
588
PHYSIGUNKUS
141
Des Baurn Flaischgaden Vasnacht (Bibl. d. Lit. Ver. in Stuttgart,
XXIX, 712):
Der eim seim weib geet nach hofiern
Und meint, er wol sie pas visieren,
Den er sie selber hat geeicht,
Das sie mit freuntschaft von im weicht,
Den schol man beschemen vor alien frauen
Und schol im sein visierruten ab hauen.
Similarly, the adjective visierlich, current since the sixteenth
century in the sense of 'delicate, neat, elegant/ has in modern Swiss
also the meaning 'drollig, von Menschen, welche sonderbare Ideen
im Kopfe haben.'
Among the loan-words of the group physi-, Physiker has suffered
plainly from the suggestion of Fiseler: in the more original sense of
'Stadtarzt' it is obsolete in Switzerland, but it still means 'einge-
bildeter Schlaukopf, Pfiffikus, der besondere Ideen im Kopfe hat; der
andere durch List iibervorteilen zu konnen meint, wahrend er selbst
von ihnen verspottet wird.' Staub-Tobler suggest that this meaning
represents a different word from the old Physiker, namely, the word
Fisi with -iker from family names (which in turn are derived from
place names in -ikon) . They modify this statement, however, by the
second and better thought: 'Immerhin miissen Fremdworter wie
Hektiker, Physiker in weiteren Kreisen irgendwie bekannt, wenn auch
nur halb verstanden gewesen sein, um jene Umdeutungen zu veran-
lassen.'
Physikus is in Swiss l naturf orscher, Grtibler,' in Alsatian 'pfiffiger
Mensch.'
In Alsatian Fisik is not only 'Zauberei, Schwarzkunst ' — it was
through magic and fortune-telling that many a Latin word became
familiar to the people — but also 'Grimassen, Dummheiten, Unsinn,
Spasze; Turnen': 'Loss a loife, r macht nix as Fisik; Mach mr ke
Fisik.' Der Fisik was the nickname of a Strassburg wit around 1850;
fisike is t eilf ertig und nachlassig arbeiten, eigentlich hexen' : Dis hes
du awer gfisikt!
So it comes that in Switzerland people named Isidor mutt stand
being called also Fisidor. The Fidibus with which one lights one's
pipe is in Zurich also a Fisibus. The Fiselier or Fuselier (fusileer)
589
142 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
' soldier of the line,7 a term now obsolescent, was in mockery called
also Fusler.
12. There is even more direct evidence that the Fisigunkes was
not only a Physikus but also a Fiseler: he is sometimes called Fisel-
gunkes. Grimm (Wb.) quotes a seventeenth-century song, where
some nonsensical proposals conclude with the refrain-like line:
Sein wir nit fiselgunges ?
and Schmeller (Bayer. TF6.2, 1, 768. 1679) quotes a Bavarian song—
apparently the last refuge in this dialect of our word:
Fisigunkes, fislgunkes, wird d Hochzet bal wern ?
This form brings us to a number of instances in which the
initial syllables of Physigunkus are distorted or replaced.
13. As a variant of the foregoing song Schmeller quotes (I, 924) :
Filigunkes, filigunkes, wird Houzet bal werdn ?
It is usually fruitless to delve too far into the sources of such sporadic
and occasional formations, which may be due to any one or more of
an almost endless series of possible analogies; in this instance, how-
ever, the Swiss usage, for which Filigux is defined as 'kleiner Knirps,
z.B. von einem Taufling' makes it almost certain that thefiili- which
here takes the place of fisi- is a reminiscence of Latin filius and its
case-forms and derivatives (e.g. filiolus), familiar enough to the
common people, especially in Catholic districts. It is to be noted that
the accent of the Latin words need not here conform to that of the
German product, for Filigunkes may rest in this respect entirely on
its prototype Fisigunkes.
14. Swiss has also Fidigugger 'dummer, ungeschickter, zugleich
zudringlicher Mensch,' fidiguxe 'ausspahen.' Whether we have
here a form of L. fides, or the influence of MHG. and Swiss fideren
Ho exaggerate, fib, lie/ or of MHG. videlen, G. fiedeln (in Swiss pro-
nunciation the vowel is not lengthened) 'to play on the fiddle' and
Ho fiddle around,' or if, perhaps, more than one of these influences
has come into play, would be hard to determine.
It was surely the fiddle and the analogy of Latin words which
underlay the creation of such nonsense refrains as the following from
Swabia (Fischer):
Fideritz und fideratz
Und kei Fink ist kei Spatz,
590
PHYSIGUNKUS
143
or : Und der Kesslerpeter
Heb de Buckelheter,
Fidiridum fidiridum do fidiro,
Und der Sattler App
Springt de Hasetrapp,
Fidiridum fidiro.
Similar nonsense refrains from Switzerland (Staub-Tobler, I, 681) are
Fidirix und Fidirax and Fiderunggungganseli. Fidigunkunk is given
by Fischer as 'liedereinleitung; Clarinette'; Stieler (Sprachschatz,
490) has, da gings Fidelumpump 'ibi sonabant pandurae,' and Grimm
(Wb. Ill, 1626) finds the word so used in a 'fliegendes Blatt' of 1620.
15. We come now to two formations which are descendants of
Fisigunkes, though perhaps a few generations removed. In Bavarian
Britschigunkal n. equals Britschen f.; G. Britze 'feminaF; there is
also a verb britschigdgaln 'beschlafen.'
16. In Swabian Spirigunkes, Spirigukes is given by v. Schmid
as 'naseweiser, spitzfindiger Mensch'; spirig is 'unruhig, eigen-
sinnig, mutwillig' (v. Schmid, Schmeller).
Similarly in Bavarian Spirifankel (accent ?) is 'mutwilliger Junge'
and also, like the simple Fankel, a jesting name for 'the DeviP;
a formation which was no doubt suggested by the normal German
compound Spadifankel, Sparifankel 'jack of spades; bad boy/
17. We have completed our examination of Physigunkus and its
followers, and may say a few words about another set of German
words, at home in the north of Germany, which also begin with
unaccented fisi-.
The dictionaries quote from a number of sixteenth-century
sources, mostly northern and central, a word Visepatent, Visepatenten.
Waldis, Aesopus (227 b 27 = 4, 3, 76 Kurz) has:
Der Luther sagt und sein Scribenten,
Die Geistlichkeit sey Visipatenten,
Sey gar unniitz und nichtes werd
Vergebens Gott damit wirdt geehrt.
The word here seems to mean 'nonsense, flimflam/
Kirchhof, Wendunmut (48a Osterley), speaking of common
soldiers who spend all their money on fine clothes, says : ^
Auch hochmut on gewisse rennt
1st ein lauter fisipotent
Und nimpt, ehs mancher meint, ein end.
591
144 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
In the shrovetide play Glaus Bur the word is said to occur twice
in a similar use: 'So is min pastorie visepetent, unde mach pipen
sniden gan' and 'ere tiichnisse sint nene visepetent' (quoted by J.
Grimm, GGA, 1850, 763).
Schiller-Liibben give two passages from the Soest Daniel of 1534 :
ich komme to ju, herr Simon van Gent,
wente ghy synt der predicanten vispetent.
In the second passage the word is used in the same way, but is
spelled vysepetent.
J. Grimm (GGA, 1850, 764) saw in Visepetent a popular contrac-
tion of Vicesuperintendent, an explanation which his successors have
not adopted; nor does even Grimm's advocacy suffice to make it
probable. Schiller-Ltibben confine themselves to the suggestion
that a misunderstood, or, as is often the case, a corrupted foreign
word probably underlies the term. The word appears repeatedly
in the sixteenth century and then suddenly disappears, apparently
within a hundred years, in favor of a more modern form, Fisimatenten.
This suggests that we have to do with a passing colloquialism, perhaps
the individual creation of some witty fellow, evanescent because
not sufficiently adapted to the analogies of the language, and in-
consistently used because not fully understood.
Visepetenten is probably nothing more or less than a take-off on
the Latin phrase visae patentes 'official papers duly inspected.' As
DuCange, and, for that matter, the modern English patent and
German Patent show, the term litterae patentes was in official language
often abbreviated to patentes or to barbarous forms such as patentae;
visus was the technical term for 'inspected, passed' — as the general
European habit is still to speak of a passport being vise-ed (visiert).1
Visepetenten, therefore, originally represented in the mind of the
common man the quirks and quiddities of official jargon and the
inspector of patents, the bureaucrat, and then came to be used in
such senses as 'piffle, frippery, nonsense.'
> Quite by chance I find in a recent article by my colleague, Dr. Nordmeyer, on the
Saxon press censorship in the early nineteenth century (JEGP, XV, 243) the following
sentence: 'Es geschah dies per patentum, ein Schriftstiick, dem noch immer sammtliche
Leipziger Kommissionare . . . . ihr Visum zu geben batten.' Dr. Nordmeyer informs
me that these were the regular technical terms.
592
PHYSIGUNKUS
145
18. The widespread modern form of the word is Fisematenten.
Woeste, Wb., 300, quotes from a chronicle (dated 1499, according
to the same author in Korrespbl.f. ndd. Sprf., I, 46): 'it is ein vise-
runge und ein visimetent,' and this oldest occurrence suggests the cause
of the substitution of m for p (Fisimatent for Fisipatent) : namely,
the word visament, fisiment 'ornament7 — an influence which Hilde-
brand recognized, when he explained Fisimatenten in the preface
to Albrecht's Die Leipziger Mundart as 'a jesting and mocking dis-
tortion of the Latin form ' of the heraldic term fisiment. The added
syllable, however, and the shifted accent can be understood only under
our supposition that Fisipatent served as model for the distortion.
To be sure, the form with m once, in Woeste's chronicle, occurs
earlier than the form with p; it was, however (as the later history
shows), so natural a modification that we may well expect the two
forms to appear in our documents almost simultaneously, or, as
seems to be the case, with the younger iorm a few years ahead of the
more original. For a century the p-form keeps its supremacy, then
the w-form overcomes it.1
As to the use of Fisimatenten or Fisimatentchen, it has in all parts
of Germany the meaning of 'Unsimij Flausen, Ktinsteleien, Aus-
fliichte'; 'Mach mir keine Fisimatenten (vor).' Fischer quotes
from H. Kurz the spelling Physimathenten and the definition; 'Dies
ist eine landlich-sittliche Redensart, die man anwendet, wenn sich
jemand ziert, etwas zu genieszen, was ihm nun doch einmal vorgesetzt
ist/
19. Of couse there are a number of by-forms. Swabian has
Fisimatenke; -rik- for -nt- is, however, a regular phonetic development
in some districts in Swabia.
20. The Swabian Genke (for which Fischer gives Gunke as
transcription into standard German), meaning 'faule Weibsperson,
liederliche Weibsperson, faule Dime/ has produced Fisimagenke
in the same sense as Fisimatente.
21. Swiss has Fisifatente 'Flitter, Firlefanz an weiblichen Klei-
dern,' where Staub-Tobler explain the second /as reduplicative; that
1 Woeste, Korrespbl., I, 46, and with him Kleiupaul, Das Fremdwort 6n Deutschen,
p. 47, think that also the obsolete Italian fisima 'capriccio, ghiribizzo' has helped to pro-
duce Fisimatenten; they give no instances of the use of the Italian word in German and
do not account for the accent.
593
146 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
is, our form is an approach to the iterative type Fise-fase, which
occurs variously in German, though not given for modern Swiss.
22. The first part of Fisimatenten has been distorted through the
influence of fiseln in the Swabian Fislematantes, with meaning
unchanged.
23. Similarly Fizematenterle in Swabian owes its initial form
to the word fitze l mit der Spitze einer Peitsche einen leichten Schlag
geben; " Seitenhiebe " austeilen; reizen; betriigen; stolzieren,
hoffartig tun, Staat machen'; Fitzer 'vain person, dude.'
If the form Fittematentchen, which Albrecht gives as Low German,
is genuine, it contains an otherwise unknown LG. (or more probably
hyper-LG.) form of this word.
24. Swiss Fisperementli is correctly explained by Staub-Tobler as
due to the influence of fispere l to wriggle, to move about hastily and
aimlessly/
25. It is not surprising when, after all this, we find German words
with an almost meaningless, vaguely depreciatory fise- prefixed.
This is probably the character of the Westfalian fiseniille already
mentioned (sec. 10). It appears also in a few of the many Swiss
popular-etymologic forms of the name of the violet, which are due,
as Staub-Tobler suggest, to a conception of the word Viole, Vidle as a
kind of compound; so, Visenondli and Viserenondli 'Viola odorata'
and Visenonli 'Viola canina.'
26. Our explanation, then, of Fisigunkes and Fisimatenten and
their followers is that they are distortions — that is, adaptations —
of foreign words which preserve a foreign accentuation. Some, like
Fisipatentf are scarcely more than loan-words facetiously misused,
others, such as Fisigunk, have been half Germanized, and still others,
finally, like Britschigunkel, have been completely metamorphosed and
retain no trace of foreign origin except the un-German accent. A
very probable, though, as it happens, undocumented *Fiselgunk (for
Fiselgunkes, sec. 12) differs from a normal German compound, such
as FaselhanSj only in accent.
It is plain that this opens the way for analogic spread in German
compounds of foreign accentuation conveying a mocking, pseudo-
learned tone — or even of foreign accentuation merely suggested by
the form of a no longer clearly understood native formation. So
594
PHYSIGUNKUS
147
Swiss Gal-lori, Galori 'silly fool' is spoken also with accent on the
second syllable. Here belongs also, I think, Schlaraffe, with accent
on the second syllable, for older slur-affe; the land of Cockaigne,
Schlaraffenland, is a distant country and foreign.
Not only in compounds, but quite generally, the parallel occur-
rence of loan-words with foreign and with assimilative German
accentuation may lead to the creation of variants with foreign
accentuation from purely native words. Such doublets as Kaffee:
Kaffee, MusikiMusik, Doktor (so accented, e.g., by Murner Narren-
beschworung, III, 75 Spanier): Doktor, Laterne: Latter e, *Bado (Fr.
badaud):Badi, Badde cause pronunciations like Abort (for Ab-ort).
Such accentuation is favored if the word has an unusual or foreign-
sounding structure : Holunder, Wacholder, Forelle, Hermelin, Hornisse;
these are discussed by Wilmanns, D. Gr., I2, 395, and H. Schroder,
PBB, XXXII, 120 ff., the latter author giving tentative lists of foreign
models (e.g., Kapelle, Sardelle, etc., for Forelle) which may have
brought about the irregular accentuation — but these models could
be identified with certainty only if we had knowledge of the progress of
such loan-words in German.1
The types, then, of German words with foreign accentuation
exhibit great diversity; even if we had a complete treatment of the
foreign element in German, their full discussion would demand a
large volume. A very few examples will, however, illustrate the
different tendencies.
27. One group has been fully recognized: German words with
accented foreign suffixes. Paul, Prinzipien*, 399 f., mentions Backe-
rei, Gerberei, Druckerei, etc., with the suffix of Abtei; hofieren,
buchstabieren, etc., with that of korrigieren. In these the emotional
tone is indifferent; most of the following retain the flavor of incon-
gruity : Takelage, Kledage, Bommelage, with the suffix of Bagage (Paul,
loc. tit.)-, Lappalien (Wilmanns, loc. tit.), Schmieralien (Wood, MP,
IX, 177), with that of Materialien; Faselant, with that of Musi-
kant. German words with accented -use are imitations of Romance
words with L. -osa (Fr. -euse), such as in MHG. (Kassewitz, Die fr.
Worter im Mhd. [Strassburg, 1890], 28) Orgeluse (Wolfram) and
1 In the case of lebendig such forms as verst&ndig (Schroder, loc. cit.) may for once
have exerted influence beyond their usually circumscribed domain.
595
148 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
vintuse (also modern Swiss, from Fr. ventouse, dialectal in origin).
Such imitations are: MLG. in de rabuse geven 'to throw something
to be scrambled for/ NHG. Rapuse (Luther), from G. d. rappen
'hastig nach etwas greifen, raffen, zwacken, rauben' (cf. Norw. d.
rabba). The words Ruse 'Gerausch, Zank/ Rusebuse, Rusemuse
'grosze Verwirrung' (Schroder, Streckformen, 70) may have favored
the formation, but its accent is due to the foreign suffix. So Swiss
FlangguseiFlangg ' slatternly woman/ Flangguse : Flangge 'Ohr-
feige/ Flantuse : Fldnte 'id.' Latin -one(m) (e.g., MHG. barun,
garzun, Kassewitz, 27) appears in Swiss Flagune ' unstate Frau/ from
the group of flackern, and in Joggeluner 'Spott- und Scheltname,
im Allg. gleichbedeutend mit Joggel ["awkward, silly, foolish person"].
Scherzname fiir Jmd., der im Irrtum befangen ist; gemeiner, roher,
auffahrender, zorniger, launenhafter, leichtfertiger Mensch; Spitz-
name auf Sektierer, dann auf Kopfhanger, politische Reaktionare
iiberhaupt.' To this definition Staub-Tobler add the note: 'Viel-
leicht als Analogiebildung nach Draguner; viell. aber mochte die
rom. vergrobernde End. -one unsern Soldnern in italienischen
Diensten so gelaufig werden, dass sie sie auch an einheimische
Wurzeln anhangten und dabei nach den Nom. ag. auf -er erweiterten.'
As occasional jests such formations are frequent. Brandt's
Narrenschiff is bound Gen Narragonien (Zarncke, 1); Murner,
Narrenbeschworung, VI, 166 (Spanier), gives the formula:
So mach dir selber ein latinum:
Mistelinum gebelinum!
So, with 'Polish suffixes, East Prussian (Frischbier) Dwatschkowski
'Dummkopf: dwatschen 'schwatzen, quatschen/ Kodderinski 'zer-
lumpter Mensch'; Kodder 'Lumpen, zerrissenes Kleid/ Schissma-
gratzki (contains also Pol. mokry 'wet'). Heine has two Poles
Krapulinski (Fr. crapule) and Waaschlappski.1
As linguistic students have always been familiar with the use of
suffixes, these formations have never caused much difficulty.
28. In other cases a foreign word appears with some slight dis-
tortion which leaves it recognizable as a blend, the foreign accent
being retained. Of the large collection of Iteratives, Blends, and
1 Here belong, of course, with normalized accent, such E. formations as eatable, drink-
able, and the facetious bumptious, scrumptious.
596
PHYSIGUNKUS
149
' Streckjormen' made by Professor Wood (MP, IX, 157 ff.) the
following have in this way come to show foreign accent : E. canoodle
(canoe), cussnation (damnation), discombobbelate, discomfuffle, dis-
comfuddle (discompse) , drummure (demure), dumbfound (confound),
needcessity (necessity), plumpendicular (perpendicular), pupmatic
(dogmatic), rambust (robust), roaratorio (oratorio), screwmatics (rheu-
matics), yellocution (elocution), coronotions (coronation), refereaders
(referee), G. Karfunkel (Karbunkel).
A wit in the Munich Jugend (No. 7, 1912) has a plebeian talk
about Bazidrizier (instead of Badrizier, Patrizier) : Bazi is dialectal
for 'fool.'
So Laterne is distorted into Latuchte (Liichte), Latdusche (Ldusche),
Latattere (Lattere), as explained by Hoffmann-Krayer, AfdA, XXXII,
2; Wood, op. cit., 183.
29. In other cases the foreign element is not so obvious, but
can often be found even with our incomplete data.1
Swiss Badautle ' dumme Person/ Als. Badaudel 'Halbnarr' (Wood,
179) are sporadic words correctly referred by Staub-Tobler to Fr.
badaud 'Maulaffe' (It. Rhaeto-Rom. baderla 'einfaltiges Ding,
Schwatzerin ' ; Rhaeto-Rom. baderlunza ' plaudertasche ' ; It. bada-
lona 'plumpes, einfaltiges Weib'). The currency of badaud in
Alemannic territory is attested by the Germanized forms Swiss
Badi, Als. Badel, Badli, Swab. Badde. It is clearly to badaud that
the German forms owe their accentuation. The adaptation of
Bado to Badaudel is intelligible when we find that the German
dialects in question have in similar meaning such words as Daudel,
Baudel, Gaudel, Laudel: Swiss Baudi 'Tolpel'; Braudli 'Schwatzer,
Plauderer'; Als. Daudel, Daudel 'geistig beschrankter Mensch';
Swiss Flaute, Flduti l putzsiichtiges Weib/ Flaudere 'herum-
schweif endes, leichtfertiges Weib ' ; Flduderi ' leichtf ertiges Madchen' ;
Gaudeli, Als. Gaudel ' Spaszmacher, kindisch lustiger Mensch';
Swiss Gduteri from gdutere 'sich miiszig herumtreiben ' ; Als. Gaut,
Gauti 'dumme Weibsperson, einfaltiges Madschen'; Swiss Handle
'sturmisch einherfahrende, nachlassig gekleidete Weibsperson ';
, ' •;.
1 Professor Wood (op. cit., 178) explains the accent of these as a native one peculiar
to certain iteratives and resultant blends; Schroder, Sir eck for men, as due to the inser-
tion of unaccented infixes; some have spoken of unaccented prefixes (e.g., Woeste, s.c.
Kabacke), and others of accented suffixes (e.g., Hoffmann-Krayer, AfdA, XXXII, 2).
597
150 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
Laudele ' Schwatzerin ' ; Maude l gleichgiiltiges, unordentliches Weib ' ;
Maudeli 'kurzes, dickes unordentliches Madchen'; Mauder, Maudi
'fette, dicke Person'; Als. Schaute, Schautel, Schautele ' Verriickter,
Narr, Possenreiszer ' ; Schwduderi ' lustiger Schwatzer ' ; Swiss Tschaudi
'Einfaltspinsel'; Tschdudeli, Tschaute 'gute, einfaltige Weibs-
person' (Stalder); Als. Tschdudel 'Tolpel, dummer, unbeholfener
Mensch.'
On Bado rests also Als. (Strassburg) Badutscherle, Kuchebadutsch-
erle ' einfaltige Person.' It is due to the following Als. words:
Dutscherle 'einfaltiges Frauenzimmer'; Butscher ' Drauf schlager,
Schimpfname fiir einen ungeschickten ' ; Brutsch ( dickes Kind';
Putsch ' unordentliches Madchen, Weib'; Hutscherle 'weibliche,
schlecht entwickelte, im Wachstum zuriickgebliebene Person';
klutschig ' unbeholfen ' ; Knutscher i Backer ' from knutsche ( driicken ' ;
lutsche 'faul herumgehen ' ; Mutschele ' unbeholf enes, unordentliches
Frauenzimmer'; Pfutscher 'Spottname fiir Fischer' from pfutsche
'spritzen, im Wasser hantieren'; Rutschebutschel 'Kosewort fiir ein
junges Madchen'; Trutschele 'dummes, unbeholf enes Frauen-
zimmer'; Wutschel cein alteres Madchen, das auffallend klein ge-
blieben ist; altere Person.' Similarly Als. Anebaddtscherle as a
scoffing name for Anabaptists.
To the same group belongs Swiss Baduntle 'plumpe fette Weibs-
person/ due to: Guntle 'Adelgunde'; Chlunt, Chlunte, Chluntli
1 liederliches Madchen'; Buntle, Puntle 'kleine dicke Weibsperson ' ;
Tuntle 'id.' (Staub-Tobler, 4, 1400), Duntel, Duntle, Dunti 'alberne
ungeschickte Weibsperson; ein wegen Fette schwerfalliges Weibs-
bild' (Stalder).
Another adaptation of Bado is Swiss Badolich 'dummer Kerl,'
modeled after: Boli, Boli 'Mensch, der alles rauh ergreift, polternd
macht, unsanft herabsetzt; Polterer, glotzender, dummer Kerl';
bolig 'dumm'; Goli 'larmender Narr'; Loli 'stiller Narr'; Noli
'kurzer, dicker, dummer Mensch'; Butze-noli 'Schreckgespenst.'
Further, Als. Badederle 'Person, die nichts ausrichtet'; Mederle
'Koseform des mannl. Vornamens Medardus'; Peterle auf alien
Suppen 'ein Mensch, der sich iiberall einmischt.'
The distortion of foreign words by means of endings that are
themselves foreign is not uncommon. It appears in Swiss Badute
PHYSIGUNKUS 151
'plumpe, fette Weibsperson' (the Als. Badute, pi., 'Frauen, die alle
acht Tage zur Beichte gehen' may be a different word) : this is Bado,
amplified by means of a suffix which is itself foreign, if I am not mis-
taken in identifying it with the -ude used in deriving the feminine of
family names in some Swiss-French dialects, e.g., Metsu 'Michaud,'
f. Metsude (Fankhauser, Das Patois von Val D'llliez [Halle,
1911], 104).
Leaving the Bado-group, we may look at the similar one of Fr.
bagage, which in Swiss (Bagaschi) means not only ' luggage, pack,'
but also 'rabble' (cf. E. baggage as scornful epithet for girls and
women). It is distorted to Bagauschi ' stupid worthless person'
on the model of Bauschi 'worthless girl or woman'; gauschele Ho
juggle, to dally.' Similarly Bagauggel 'cut-up' is adapted to Gduggel
'cut-up, silly person.' Bagabauschi is probably due to the inter-
ference of Bagatelle.
Given the pairs Badaudel : Daudel, Badutscherle : Dutscherle,
Baduntle:Duntle, Bagauggel : Gduggel, it is not surprising that the
sound-group of initial unaccented ba- has acquired some slight
morphologic vitality, conveying a jestingly depreciatory meaning.
Thus have arisen forms like Swiss Balali, Balari, Baldutschi, Baloli,
Palori 'Tolpel, Dummkopf,' from Lali, Lari, Ldutschi, Loli, Lori in
the same meaning.1
30. Not very different is the history of unaccented fa- in Swiss.
The Latin word vagieren 'wander about, stroll, loaf (cf. also Vaga-
bund) is generally used in German. As Staub-Tobler suggest, Swiss
vagole in the same sense is an adaptation due to Swiss gole ' cut up,
wander about, stand gaping' (cf. also Idle 'play the fool').
Another source of unaccented fa- may possibly be older Swiss
Fakiner 'Lasttrager,' from It. facchino.
Plainly mock loan-words are: Fagduggel ' Possenreiszer, ein-
faltiger Mensch,' beside Gduggel and Bagauggel above; Fagdugge,
Fagugge, Fagose, Fagune, pi. 'komische Gaberden, Possen'; the first
of these goes with Gduggel, the second with Guggi 'Schreihals,' the
other two exhibit Romance suffixes; Fagungger ' erbarmlicher
i As the shorter words all begin with I, one may suspect that the impetus for the 60-
forms was given by some foreign word beginning with bal-, unaccented, but I have not
succeeded in finding such a loan-word.
599
152 LEONAKD BLOOMFIELD
Mensch,' beside Gungger, Gunggel in the same sense (as pointed out
by Staub-Tobler).
Beside fortune mache 'sein Gliick versuchen (z.B. bei einem Wahr-
sager),' there exists also the same expression in the sense of 'Grimas-
sen machen' ; Staub-Tobler explain this meaning as derived from the
other, the middle term being the antics of the fortune-teller; perhaps,
however, the second meaning is due rather to the influence of Fa-
gdugge, etc. : for beside fortune mache we find also fatune and fadune
mache 'Grimassen schneiden.'
31. A large and very interesting group of the same kind is that
with initial unaccented ka-, kar-, ker-, kam-, kom-, etc. (cf. Wood,
189ff.). It is assuredly the offspring of Romance loan-words:
co>, car-, con-, com-, cor-, etc., are favorite Romance word-initials.
As to loan-words in German, only a historical study (and a similar
investigation into the mock loan-words based upon them) would
give satisfactory information. A suggestion of the state of affairs
may be gained from the present standard speech, in which such
words, for instance, as the following with kar- are numerous and of
commonest employment: Karaffe, Charakter, Karat, Karbol, Kar-
bonade, Karbunkel, Kardinal, karessieren, karieren, Kariole, Karmin,
Karneval (also with accent on first syllable), Karosse, Karaite, Kartell,
Karton, Karussell, not to mention Kartoffel, whose accent at least is
still foreign.
As an illustration of the history of these words we may take the
subgroup of Kabine.
Whatever the ultimate origin of this word, it is in German plainly
a loan from French : it occurs in the forms Kabine and Kabane since
the seventeenth century, while in English cabin, caban goes back to
Langland and in Romance territory capanna occurs in the sense of
'little hut' among Isidor of Seville's etymologies.
The rather similar Kajiite is less clear. It appears in Low Ger-
man as early as 1407, with the meaning ' ship's cabin.' In French
it occurs as chahute 'little hut' in a MS of the thirteenth or four-
teenth century, in 1391 as quahute (Godefroy). These dates, the
meanings (general in French, specialized and maritime in German),
and the accentuation, all favor the view taken by Meyer-Ltibke
and by Falk and Torp, that the word is French in origin; the latter
600
PHYSIGUNKUS
153
authors suggest, I think rightly, that the French form is a blend of
cabane and the loan-word (from Germanic) hutte 'hut.' Theodor
Braune, Zs. f. r. Phil, XVIII, 521, thinks that the word is Germanic, a
compound of kaje ' quay ' and hiitte: this does not explain the accent,
though it might be that a Germanic *kdj-hutte went into French and
was then borrowed back as kajiite.
Kabuse appears since the fourteenth century as 'hut, sty, ship's
cabin, sleeping-cubby.' In the first occurrence (see Schiller-Liibben)
it is read kabhusen: it is possible, indeed, that we have here an adap-
tation due to hus 'house' (so Fowler, Concise Oxford Dictionary,
s.v. 'caboose'). It seems more probable, however, that the -use is
the Romance suffix: the change of suffix may have been made by
Romance speakers, or in polyglot intercourse on shipboard, or even
in purely Germanic territory.
Kabacke 'tumble-down shanty, bad inn' occurs in Northern
Germany since the seventeenth century. Hirt-Weigand see in it a
loan from Russian kabdk, attested in 1710, but Berneker more cor-
rectly sees in the (morphologically isolated) Russian word a loan from
the German. Hildebrand in Grimm's Dictionary rightly connects
it with Kabane, Kabuse and compares Fr. cabaret for the meaning,
but he does not explain the form. It is due to Baracke (since 1665,
from French). Both Baracke and Kabacke are mementos of the
Thirty Years' War.
Kabutte, Kabuttge, LG. ' Rumpelkammer, Gefangnis' is due pri-
marily to Butte 'barrel, vat, box, basket for carrying,' secondarily,
perhaps, to some form of Kiittchen 'Gefangnis,' kutten 'Arrest haben'
(from which latter group H. Schroder derives our word by infixation).
Kabuffe 'kammer, schlechtes Zimmer, elendes Haus' is wide-
spread in Low German and Dutch. It is a distortion of Kabine
under the influence of Kuffe 'kleines, schlechtes Haus'; Schiller-
Lubben quote for MLG. brandeweins kuffen, hurenkuffen: in the
latter meaning Puff (perhaps, however, only an abstraction from
Kabuff) is current in Leipzig (Albrecht). Secondary meanings are
Kabuff(e) 'old, worn-out horse' and Kabuff 'old hat'; cf. MLG.
kuff(e), kuff(e) also 'old hat.' *
Kamuff, in North German for 'elende Wohnung, elende Hutte' is
probably a further distortion of the preceding word, due to Muff
601
154 LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
'modriger, dumpfiger, nicht ausgesprochen fauliger Geruch; Moder,
Schimmel/ adj. muffig. The more usual and widespread meaning of
Kamuff, Kamuffel is 'dummer Kerl,' and is due to Kamel and Muff
'verdrossener, mtirrischer Mensch' (Wood, 181).
A smaller group very close to that of Kabine is that of the Latin
cavaedium, which gave German Cavate Kaffata, Kaffete (since the
thirteenth century) 'stone archway round the choir of a cathedral'
(so in Mayence and Erfurt); Kaffete, Cavete (1723) 'cell or cabinet
off a larger room/ Kaffeta (Thuringia) ( arbor or loggia covered with
foliage' (D. Wb., V, 21, 372). LG. Kafitke is a diminutive of this;
Kaficke 'schlechte Hiitte, elendes Zimmer' is an attempt at inter-
pretation, for Ficke means 'pocket.' Kaweiche 'Stubchen,
Hauschen'; Keiche 'schlechtes, finsteres Gemach, Loch' (Schroder,
Streckf., 41, as example of infixation).
LEONARD BLOOMFIELD
URBANA, ILL.
AUERBACH AND NIETZSCHE
It would seem at first that the life and works of Berthold Auer-
bach would offer nothing but contrasts and dissimilarities to those
of Friedrich Nietzsche. The former, as nearly devoid of pride and
envy as it is possible for a human being to be, in love with mankind
and always surrounded by friends,1 constantly associating with
people of substantial renown, decorated with various orders which
he held in light esteem,2 influenced in his early days by Spinoza, Jean
Paul, and Walter Scott, is known today primarily as the portrayer
of loquacious German villagers. The latter, a stoic3 after the fashion
of Heraclitus, arrogantly proclaiming himself the greatest of modern
writers and envious of anyone who also gained distinction, avoided
by the spiritual grandees of his day, including Wagner after a while,
the recipient of no coveted badges of honor, influenced in his early
days by the Greeks, Schopenhauer, and Wagner, is known today as
the author of many letters, a few poems, some essays and lectures,
and several thousand aphorisms that refute current opinion, set men
to thinking, and arouse about as much antagonism as admiration.
Auerbach was always pedagogical, had unlimited faith in America,
lived remote from the Romance peoples, greatly admired Germany
and the Germans, was patient with Prussia, though he disliked Bis-
marck, took an interest in many things, and always wanted to learn.
Nietzsche loathed pedagogy and the books written on it, despised
1 Some of Auerbach's best-known friends were Du Bois-Beymond, George Bancroft,
Theodor Mommsen, Spielhagen, D. Fr. Strauss, Uhland, Rtickert, Otto Ludwig, Ernst
Rietschel, Jakob Grimm, and Morike. To judge indeed from his letters, he was at least
personally acquainted with all of the prominent men of his day. Nietzsche's best friends
were Erwin Rohde, Peter Gast, Heinrich Stein, and Carl Puchs; and only these. And
who were these men ? We are obliged to turn to an encyclopedia to answer the question.
Overbeck's friendship for Nietzsche has often been questioned.
2 Cf. Georg Brandes, Berthold Auerbach (Miinchen, 1902), p. 108; and in Auerbach's
Briefe an Jakob Auerbach, January 7, 1862, Auerbach tells how the order lie had just
received from the Duke of Coburg-Gotha embarrassed him.
3 For one of Nietzsche's significant remarks concerning stoicism, see Morgenrdthe,
IV, 143, of the Naumann edition (Leipzig). This edition is always referred to in this
paper.
155 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, February, 1918
156 ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
America as few Europeans have, felt himself at one with the Romance
peoples, spoke even more harshly of German than did his prototype
Holderlin, could not endure Prussia, though he reservedly admired
Bismarck as the type of a strong German, confined his interests after
all within a narrow circle, and abounded in self-sufficiency of opinion.
Auerbach was gentle and restful, sympathetic and trustful;
Nietzsche distrusted nearly everything, especially modern education
and German civilization, and preached the doctrine of force and
pitilessness. The one made journeys to the Black Forest so that he
might return to his work refreshed, the other to the Engadine so
as to be out of the sight of men. True, they both admired Goethe
and hated Gutzkow, suffered from a common lack of humor, studied
first theology and then philosophy, longed for disciples, defended the
Jews, and found an ardent advocate in Georg Brandes. But these
are minor matters.
As a writer, Auerbach, despite his localized Dorfgeschichten,
moved by choice in accustomed grooves; Nietzsche aspired to be
the transvaluator of all values. This is one reason why the former
has been studied too little, the latter too much. And now, after
extensive reading in both, it seems to the writer that there are at
least five phases of Auerbach 's works the exhaustive treatment of
which would be productive of lasting results: (1) his style with espe-
cial reference to his vocabulary; (2) his conception of America as
colored by his interest in emigrating Germans; (3) his pedagogical
ideas as a student of Rousseau; (4) his indebtedness to Spinoza;
(5) his influence on Nietzsche. Let us consider this last topic in its
more general aspects and with especial reference to Auf der Hohe
and Also sprach Zarathustra.
Auerbach was born in 1812, and died twenty days before reach-
ing his seventieth birthday in 1882, the year of the completion
of Nietzsche's Frohliche Wissenschaft, and only seven years before
his mental collapse. Nietzsche was then but little known in Europe.
It was, indeed, not until 1886 that Georg Brandes delivered his
series of lectures on him at the University of Copenhagen, an act
of appreciation for which Nietzsche was devoutly grateful. It was
the first attempt to make propaganda for him outside of the Romance
countries, and very little had then been made even there. Auerbach
604
AUERBACH AND NlETZSCHE 157
seems never to have read him. There is not a single reference to
Nietzsche in any accessible material on or by Auerbach.1 This
means nothing, however, for Nietzsche was hardly known at all in
Germany in 1882. Richard M. Meyer claims2 to have been one of
the first to lecture on him — in 1902.
And Nietzsche referred to Auerbach but three times. The first
of these was in a letter3 to his mother, written in February, 1862,
while he was a student at Pforta. Nietzsche was then seventeen
years old. It is a delightful note concerning his sister Elisabeth,
who was then in a pension in Dresden, and his own affairs at Pforta,
with an occasional sententious observation prophetic of the future
Nietzsche. And then, after finishing the letter, he appended the
following: "Zum Lesen, wofur Du nun viel Zeit haben wirst, schlage
ich Dir Auerbach's Barfiissele vor, was mich hoch entziickt hat."
That Nietzsche liked this story is at once surprising and natural.
In it we are told of the barefooted Amrei and her somewhat stupid
brother Dami. They are orphans. The brother comes to America
and then returns to Germany. Unpromising at first, he makes good
partly through the assistance of his sister. Amrei marries Johannes
and all ends well. It is a charming story for an imaginative boy.
We can easily see how the romantic descriptions of nature, the inter-
polated fairy tales, and the riddles might have pleased the juvenile
Nietzsche, whom his schoolmates had not even then ceased calling
"der kleine Pastor," though it sounds but little like the ferocious
Nietzsche of about 1880.
But Auerbach struck three notes in this story which accord
beautifully with what might be called Nietzsche's three major tones:
the stupidity of the herd, the virtue of being alone, and the vice of
conventionality. These are, to be sure, worn themes, but there is a
directness about Auerbach's commitments that sounds Nietzschean.
Of the herd Auerbach says (IX, 50): "Die Tiere, die in Her den
leben, sind alle Jedes fiir sich allein dumm." He very frequently
1 Cf. Berthold Auerbach. Briefe an seinen Freund Jakob Auerbach, edited by Pr.
Spielhagen, Frankfurt a.M., 1884. There are two large volumes covering ^ie period
from 1830 to Auerbach's death.
2 Cf. Richard M. Meyer, Nietzsche. Sein Leben und seine Werke (Mtinchen, 1913), p. 4.
3 Cf. Friedrich Nietzaches gesammelte Briefe, edited by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche
(Leipzig, 1909), V, 21.
605
158 ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
compared men with animals and occasionally to the advantage of the
animals. Nietzsche did the same. As to being alone, also an
exceedingly common topic with Auerbach, he says (IX, 76) : " Allein,
o wie gut ist Allein. Jeder kann sich Alles selber machen ....
aber nur unter einem Beding: er muss allein bleiben. Allein.
Allein. Sonst hilft's nichts." There is no one theme upon which
Auerbach wrote more than on this one, and Nietzsche likewise.
The most striking parallel to Nietzsche, however, is found in
Auerbach's remarks concerning convention and morality. The pas-
sage reads as follows (IX, 264): "Nicht die Sittlichkeit regiert die
Welt, sondern eine verhartete Form derselben: die Sitte. Wie die
Welt nun einmal geworden ist, verzeiht sie eher eine Verletzung
der Sittlichkeit als eine Verletzung der Sitte. Wohl den Zeiten
und den Volkern, in denen Sitte und Sittlichkeit noch Eins ist. Aller
Kampf , der sich im Grossen wie im Kleinen, im Allgemeinen wie im
Einzelnen abspielt, dreht sich darum, den Widerspruch dieser Beiden
wieder aufzuheben, und die erstarrte Form der Sitte wieder fur die
innere Sittlichkeit fliissig zu machen, das Gepragte nach seinem
innern Wertgehalte neu zu bestimmen." In other words, Auerbach
says that morality (Sittlichkeit) is much more important than custom
(Sitte), that the world, however, will pardon a breach of morality
more quickly than it will pardon a breach of custom, and that it is
necessary to give a new meaning to that which has become fixed by
usage — to transvaluate old values.1
It is not necessary to list all of the passages in which Nietzsche
discussed Sitte and Sittlichkeit. The most striking ones are found
in Morgenrothe (V, 15-28), Menschliches, Allzumenschliches (II,
97-99), Zur Genealogie der Moral (VII, 345, 422). His idea was
precisely the same as Auerbach's: to be conventional is to be sitt-
lich; to be original is to be unsittlich. He said (IV, 18) that to the
valiant old Roman, Christ was bose because he looked after his own
salvation. In the same connection Nietzsche said: " Unter der
Herrschaft der Sittlichkeit der Sitte hat die Originalitat jeder Art
i The entire situation here is truly Nietzschean. Johannes' conduct was con-
sidered by the Pfarrer to be moral, but "aus der Ordnung; es hatte seinen besonderen
Weg von der Landstrasse ab." Auerbach is gentler than Nietzsche but like him when he
says: " Wenn heutigen Tages ein Prophet aufstiinde, mtisste er vorher sein Staatsexamen
machen, ob's auch in der alten Ordnung ist, was er will." See p. 265. (All of the refer-
ences are to the Gotta edition of Auerbach's works.)
606
AUERBACH AND NlETZSCHE 159
t
ein boses Gewissen bekommen." And "Die Sittlichkeit wirkt der
Entstehung neuer und besserer Sitten entgegen: sie verdummt."
What worried both Auerbach and Nietzsche, though neither ever
said so in so many words, was the fact that, etymologically speaking,
moral comes from an oblique case of Latin mos. And when Nietzsche
proclaimed himself the firm immoralist he meant only that his con-
science would not allow him to pay homage to petrified conven-
tionality. The idea was first expressed, however, in a book by
Auerbach which Nietzsche read and enjoyed. And Auerbach too,
returned to the same idea many times. Like Nietzsche, he was a
great repeater.
The next reference to Auerbach was made ten years later, in 1872,
in the second lecture " Uber die Zukunft unserer Bildungs-Anstalten "
(IX, 262). It is here that Nietzsche raised the question "ob Auer-
bach und Gutzkow wirklich Dichter sind: man kann sie einfach
vor Ekel nicht mehr lesen, damit ist die Frage entschieden." The
German Gymnasium has rarely received a more trenchant criticism
than Nietzsche gave it in this lecture. A plea is made for a more
rational study of German, for a better style. Auerbach was at the
height of his fame at the time of its delivery. Auf der Hohe had
appeared in 1865, Das Landhaus am Rhein in 1868, Wieder Unser
in 1871, Zur guten Stunde in 1872.
The third and last reference to Auerbach was made in 1873, in
that part of the Unzeitgemdsse Betrachtungen (I, 253) which deals
with D. Fr. Strauss. It is again a .question of Auerbach's style.
Nietzsche says: "Ich erinnere mich, einen Aufruf von Berthold
Auerbach 'an das deutsche Volk' gelesen zu haben, in dem jede
Wendung undeutsch verschroben und erlogen war, und der als
Ganzes einem seelenlosen Wortermosaik mit internationaler Syntax
glich." The work in question was unobtainable.
II
It is not the purpose of this paper to defend Auerbach's style in
the face of Nietzsche's attacks, though great critics have defended
the former's method of writing. Eugen Zabel praised Auejrbach's
style and emphasized its "gesunde, plastische Kraft."1 Rudolf von
» Cf. Berthold Auerbach. Ein Gedenkblatt (Berlin, 1882), p. 91.
607
160 ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
Gottschall, though he condemned the style of Waldfried (1874),
said of Auerbach's works in general: "Sein Stil ist frei von jeder
Uberschwenglichkeit, gemessen und gediegen .... von plastischer
Rundung und gesunder Tuchtigkeit, klar und rmihelos."1 It is our
purpose at this point to compare- the style of Auerbach with that of
Nietzsche from the point of view of unusual words and alliterative
and assonantal couplets.
Auerbach used a great number of uncommon expressions. He
liked to coin words. Richard M. Meyer says (Ges. d. deut. Lit.
im 19. Jahr.j p. 250) that he would coin a happy term and then
say "to his friends: "Ich schenke es Ihnen." Some of his more
striking expressions are: "Die Sohnerin" (Schwiegertochter) , "zuder-
handig," " verkindelt," " gesprachsam," " Weltbegliickereien,"
"Die Niederbediensteten," "lacherig," "Lordsgott," "Mitfreude"
(which Auerbach used in his translation of Spinoza and which
Nietzsche used so frequently), "Erbweisheit," "Nebenauskind,"
"Die Weisung," "Katzenhimmelmauselesangst," "Helfsucht"
(which Auerbach hated as much as Nietzsche hated altru-
ism), "bedenksam," "Baderwitwe" (in the sense of a "college
widow ")> "Schlafmorder," "Preussenspeichler," "vorgeboren,"
"wunderig," "Hochpunkt," "Gedankenaar," "glanzig," "leid-
miithig," "Die Meisterlichsten" (for Die Besteri), "Goethereif"
(coined by Auerbach), " Tabled 'hotenkopf, "anfechtig," "Klein-
residenzlinge," "besitzstolz," and so on. Compounds of iiber2
occur in great numbers: "iibergenug," "uberirdisch," "iiberwelt-
Uch," "Uberwelt," "tibersinn," "iiberzwerch," "uberhirnt," and
"tibernachtig" (a common term with Nietzsche). And then such
expressions as "feuergefahrliche Gedanken," " krankenwarterisches
Nachgehen," "blickloser Blick," "einem in die Duznahe rucken"
(cf. Nietzsche's "Pathos der Distanz"), "jenseits der Menschheit/;
"Spiehnarken-Phrasen," "Sprach-Rabatt," "Sprachgarderobe."
As to Ubermensch, Auerbach seems never to have used the term,
though he was fond of its converse, untermenschlich. In Rudolph
1 Cf. Deutsche Liter atur des 19. Jahrhunderts, p. 250.
* Cf. B. M. Meyer (p. 453) : "Insofern denn ist der ' tfbermensch' nur eine Fortsetz-
ung anderer, bei Nietzsche (und teilweise schon vor ihm) nachzuweisender 'tTberbil-
dungen': 'Uberhistorisch,' 'uberpersonlich,' 'das Ubertier,' 'iiberhell,' 'das ttbernationale,'
'tiberdeutsch,' 'tlberklimatisch.'" Meyer does not, of course, mean that these are all of
the compounds found in Nietzsche; our point is that Auerbach's list is very long.
AUEBBACH AND NlETZSCHE 161
und Elisabetha (XIX, 67-68) he wrote: "Dieses Bettinisiren, wie
ich es nennen mochte, 1st nicht, wie Sie es bezeichnen, ubermensch-
lich, sondern — wenn man so sagen kann — untermenschlich." He
was, in short, interested in words. Of naturwuchsig he said (III,
147): "Em schones Wort; warum sagst du nicht naturwuchsig
oder naturwachsig." In his essay on the Goethe-Schiller monu-
ment in Weimar he comments on the beauty and fitness of selbander.
In his criticism of Emilia Galotti he refers to the fact that the vocali-
zation of Marinelli and Machiavelli are the same. In Auf der Hohe
he blesses the German language because it contains the word Mutter-
seelenallein. In Waldfried he emphasizes the importance of the fact
that "Bismarck" is pronounced alike in all languages. And in the
same work he wrote: "Annette begriff jetzt, wie man in solcher
Einsamkeit sich getreu und fest im geistigen Leben erhalten und
weiter bilden konnte und war gliicklich, wenn sie fur eine neue
Anschauung ein Wort gefunden hatte. Sie sagte mir: 'Wie es
Einsiedler der Religion giebt, so kann es auch Einsiedler der Bildung
geben, die sich zum Hochsten bringen.' " We are reminded at once,
in an indirect way, of Nietzsche's Bildungsphilister.
But one of the most striking similarities between the two is seen
in their use of the word Kinderland in contradistinction to Vater-
land. In Schatzkdstlein des Gevattersmanns (p. 57) Auerbach wrote:
"Deutschland unser Vaterland, Amerika unser Kinderland. Die
da aufgewachsen sind in Deutschland finden selten ihr wahres und
voiles Gedeihen in der neuen Welt; es sind Wurzeln der Erinnerung
ausgerissen und abgehackt, an denen man alle Zeit krankt, die
Kinder aber gedeihen in der neuen Heimat, sie finden eine solche in
ihr. Fahr wohl, o Vaterland, nimm uns auf, o Kinderland!" The
meaning of the passage is clear and though seemingly different it
yet bears a close resemblance to Nietzsche's use of the term in
Zarathustra. Nietzsche wrote (VI, 177, 297, 311): "So liebe ich
allein noch meiner Kinder Land, das unentdeckte, im fernsten
Meere." And: "Eurer Kinder Land sollt ihr lieben: diese Liebe
sei euer neuer Adel." Nietzsche's meaning is likewise clear. He
uses the genitive, not the nominative, case of the possessive pronoun.
He had in mind the Germany of the future, the Germany of the chil-
dren of the present generation, the Germany that might some time
162 ALLEN WILSON PORTEEFIELD
come to pass if the aristocracy of the present were alert, if there were
a sufficient number of men striving to be supermen. Auerbach and
Nietzsche both liked to coin words. Richard M. Meyer said (p. 692) :
"Ein Worterbuch zu Nietzsche hoffe ich in nicht zu langer Zeit zu
veroffentlichen."
But Auerbach and Nietzsche were most alike in their use of asso-
nantal and alliterative couplets. Auerbach's writings teem with
such pairs as: Heerkuh-Herzkuh, zaudern-zogern, glitzert-glimmert,
ziehen-zerren, Ergriinder-Verkunder, Gehalt-Gestalt, Weltschmerz-
Weltscherz, alt-kalt, schwimmen-schweben, Reu-Treu, grau-
grauenhaft, vorderhand-nachderhand, einsam-arbeitsam, Einsamkeit-
Gemeinsamkeit, aufiosen-erlosen, Unabhangigkeit-Unanhanglichkeit.
In Zarathustra we find such couplets as Einsiedler-Zweisiedler,
umlernen-umlehren, achten-verachten, Schwarze-Schwere, Hohe-
Helle, Wohltat-Wehtat, glimmt-gluht, Nachstenliebe-Fernstenliebe,
verwinden-iiberwinden, losen-erlosen, Neidbolde-Leidholde. There
is, to be sure, a fundamental difference between the two. Nietz-
sche's1 are bolder, more paradoxical, more original. But it is only a
short step from the one type to the other.
Ill
The main purpose of this paper, however, is to point out some
similarities between Auerbach's Auf der Hohe (1865) and Nietzsche's
Also sprach Zarathustra (1885) by way of attempting to prove that
the latter contains echoes of the former. Let us list first a number
of expressions common to both, taking those from Auerbach in the
order in which they occur, and placing those from Nietzsche imme-
diately after. The passages from Auerbach are all found in Irma's
diary, Book VII, except the first one.
Auerbach: Ein Gedanke, ein Blitz, ein sinnverwirrender, zuckte durch
ihre Seele: Das ist der Kuss der Ewigkeit! Flammende Lohe und Eises-
starren drangen sich zusammen. Das ist der Kuss der Ewigkeit!2
Nietzsche: Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit.
1 Richard M. Meyer contends (p. 417) that Nietzsche did not coin as many words
in Zarathustra as in some of his other works, though he gives Nietzsche credit for gleich-
wiichsig and totschweigsam. We have already commented on Auerbach's remark on the
affix wiichs, and words ending in sam are of frequent occurrence in his works. He uses,
for example, mitteilsam in many places.
2 Of. Book V, chap. viii. "Das ist der Kuss der Ewigkeit" is the psychological
turning-point of Auerbach's novel. It would not be so striking were it not written in
the same meter, and were it not repeated so often, just as in Nietzsche's Zarathustra in the
last two chapters of the third book.
610
AUERBACH AND NlETZSCHE 163
Auerbach: Am Ufer geschleudert — was soil ich nun? Bios leben, well
icb nicht tot bin ? Tagelang, Nachtelang hielt inich diese Ratselfrage wie
in der Schwebe zwischen Himmel und Erde, wie in jener grauenhaften
Minute, da ich vom Felsen niederglitt.1
Nietzsche: Das aber glauben alle Dichter: dass wer im Grase oder an
einsamen Gehangen liegend die Ohren spitze, etwas von den Dingen erfahre,
die zwischen Himmel und Erde sind.
Auerbach: Ich habe keinen Spiegel in meinem Zimmer, ich habe mir
vorgesetzt, mich selbst nicht mehr zu sehen.2
Nietzsche: Aber als ich in den Spiegel schaute, da schrie ich auf , und mein
Herz war erschiittert, denn nicht mich sahe ich darin, sondern eines Teufels
Fratze und Hohnlachen.
Auerbach: Ich muss noch taglich die Morgenschwere iiberwinden. Am
Abend bin ich ruhig — ich bin mtide.
Nietzsche: Zehn Mai musst du des Tages dich selber iiberwinden: das
macht eine gute Mudigkeit und ist Mohn der Seele.
Auerbach: Einsam und arbeitsam, das .ist mein Alles.
Nietzsche: Trachte ich denn nach Gliicke? Ich trachte nach meinem
Werke.
Auerbach: Die Wolkenbildungen und ihre Farben, die ich sonst nur hoch
am Himmel sah, sehe ich jetzt auf der Erde und unter mir.
Nietzsche: Ich empfinde nicht mehr mit euch: diese Wolke, die ich unter
mir sehe, diese Schwarze und Schwere, iiber die ich lache — gerade das ist
cure Gewitterwolke. Ihr seht nach oben, wenn ihr nach Erhebung ver-
langt. Und ich sehe hinab, weil ich erhoben bin.
Auerbach: Ich habe zum erstenmal in meinem Leben ein Adlerpaar in
den Luften gesehen. Welch ein Leben, solch ein Adlerpaar! Sie schwebten
im Kreise, hoch oben. Um was schwebten sie ? Dann schwangen sie sich
hoher und verschwanden tief in den Luften Der Adler hat niemand
iiber sich, keinen Feind, der ihm beikommen kann.
Nietzsche: Und siehe! Ein Adler zog im weiten Kreise durch die Luft,
und an ihm hing eine Schlange, nicht einer Beute gleich, sondern einer
Freundin: denn sie hielt sich um seinen Hals geringelt.
Auerbach: Nichts Boses mehr tun — das ist noch nicht Gutes tun. Ich
mochte eine grosse Tat vollziehen. Wo ist sie ? In mir allein.
Nietzsche: Das Boseste ist notig zu des Ubermenschen Bestem.
1 These passages are quoted because of the frequent occurrence in both \^>rks of the
expression "zwischen Himmel und Erde."
2 The frequent references by both Auerbach and Nietzsche to the mirror give these
parallels their significance.
611
164 ALLEN WILSON PORTEKFIELD
Auerbach: Der Ring 1st geschlossen. Es kommt von aussen nichts
Neues mehr, ich kenne alles, was da ist und kommen kann.
Nietzsche: Alles scheidet, Alles grusst sich wieder; ewig bleibt sich treu
der Ring des Seins.
Auerbach: Nimm du mich und trage mich, ich kann nicht weiter!
ruft meine Seele. Aber dann raffe ich mich wieder auf, fasse Biindel und
Wanderstab und wandere, wandere einsam und allein mit mir, und im Wan-
dern gewinne ich wieder Kraft.
Nietzsche: Ich bin ein Wanderer und ein Bergsteiger, sagte er zu seinem
Herzen, ich liebe die Ebenen nicht und es scheint, ich kann nicht lange still
sitzen.
Auerbach: Der schone Mensch ist der, der miissig geht, sich hegt und
pflegt, sich entwickelt — so leben die Getter, und der Mensch ist der Gott
der Schopfung. Da ist meine Ketzerei. Ich habe sie gebeichtet.
Nietzsche: Aber dass ich euch ganz mein Herz offenbare, ihr Freunde:
wenn es Gotter gabe, wie hielte ich's aus, kein Gott zu sein! Also gibt es
keine Gotter. Wohl zog ich den Schluss; nun aber zieht er mich.
Auerbach: Warum sagt man nur: Geh zum Kuckuck? Ich hab's
gefunden: der Kuckuck hat kein eigen Nest, keine Heimat, er muss, nach
der Volkssage, jede Nacht auf einem andern Baum schlafen. Geh zum
Kuckuck! heisst also: Geh unstat und fllichtig, sei nirgends daheim.
Nietzsche: Aber Heimat f and ich nirgends : unstat bin ich in alien Stadten
und ein Aufbruch an alien Toren.
Auerbach: Es gibt Tage, wo ich den Wald nicht ertrage. Ich will
keinen Schatten. Ich will Sonne haben, nichts als Sonne, Licht.
Nietzsche: "Wer bist du? fragte Zarathustra heftig, was treibst du
hier? Und weshalb heissest du dich meinen Schatten? Du gefallst mir
nicht."
Auerbach: Nun wird die Menschheit in Wahrheit zum Dichter, sie
verdichtet unfassbare Krafte, spricht zum Dampf, zum Licht, zum elek-
trischen Funken: komm, diene mir!
Nietzsche: Es ist mir nicht genug, dass der Blitz nicht mehr schadet.
Nicht ableiten will ich ihn: er soil lernen fur mich arbeiten.
Auerbach: Das Alleinsein macht oft dumpf, halbschlafend.
Nietzsche: Aber einst wird dich die Einsamkeit miide machen, einst
wird dein Stolz sich kriimmen und dein Muth knirschen. Schreien wirst
du einst "ich bin allein."
612
AUERBACH AND NlETZSCHE 165
Auerbach: Von alien Blumen finde ich auf der Rose den reichsten
Morgentau. Macht das der reichste Duft? 1st der Duft taubildend?
Kein grimes Blatt hat so viel Tau auf sich, als ein Blumenblatt.
Nietzsche: Was haben wir gemein mit der Rosenknospe, welche zittert,
well ihr ein Tropf en Tau auf dem Leibe leigt ?
Auerbach: Ich meine, durch den Willen miisste sich der Tod besiegen
lassen.
Nietzsche: Ja, noch bist du mir aller Graber Zertrummerer: Heil dir,
mein Wille.
Auerbach: Fliegen — wir sehen eine ganz andere Lebenssphare vor uns
und konnen sie nicht fassen. Und wir glauben, wir verstehen die Welt?
Was fest ist, fassen wir, und nur was fest davon ist — weiter hinein beginnt
der grosse Gedankenstrich.
Nietzsche: Wer die Menscheri einst fliegen lehrt, der hat alle Grenzsteine
verriickt; alle Grenzsteine selber werden ihm in die Luft fliegen, die Erde
wird er neu taufen — als "die Leichte."
Auerbach: Die Religion macht alle Menschen gleich, die Bildung ungleich.
Es muss aber eine Bildung geben, die die Menschen gleich macht.
Nietzsche: Mit diesen Predigern der Gleichheit will ich nicht vermischt
und verwechselt werden. Denn so redet mir die Gerechtigkeit:. "Die
Menschen sind nicht gleich."
Auerbach: Ich bin nun im dritten Jahre hier. Ich habe einen schweren
Entschluss gefasst. Ich ziehe noch einmal in die Welt hinaus.
Nietzsche: Hier genoss er seines Geistes und seiner Einsamkeit und
wurde dessen zehn Jahre nicht mlide. Endlich aber verwandelte sich sein
Herz Dazu muss ich in die Tiefe steigen.
Auerbach: Je hoher der Wipfel steigt, umsomehr stirbt das Gezweige
unten ab, es erstickt.
Nietzsche: Je mehr er hinauf in die Hofe und Helle will, urn so starker
streben seine Wurzeln erdwarts, abwarts, ins Dunkle, Tiefe — ins Bose.
It will be noticed at once that some of these "parallels" are
similar in thought, others similar in words though dissimilar in
thought — the last one, for example. This difference, however, would
not of itself disprove Auerbach's influence. A number of Nietzsche's
best-known sayings and words grew out of his skeptical reading.
We have but to think of the common word Ndchstenliebe and Nietz-
sche's uncommon Fernstenliebe. That it is possible to stimulate
613
166 ALLEN WILSON POKTERFIELD
by friction is known to everyone. Nietzsche called Schiller "Der
Moral-Trompeter von Sackingen." Auerbach said1 of Schiller:
"Wenn es eine Chemie des deutschen Geistes geben konnte, man
wiirde bei einer exakten Analyse einen grossen Bestandteil finden, der
Schiller heisst." In view of Nietzsche's opinion of " deutscher Geist,"
these two judgments may be antipodal, and then they may not.
And it is not simply in Irma's diary that we find ideas parallel
to those in Zarathustra, but all through the novel. Irma says (Book
II, 112): "Ich habe nur den Mut, immer zu sagen, was ich denke,
und das kommt dann originell heraus." Aside from Nietzsche's
genius, that is the explanation of his popularity; he said what he
thought, and he was a great thinker. The Konig refers (II, 128), to
the Leibarzt as "der ewig starre, seine Wtirde Wahrende." Irma
cries out (II, 151): "Einsam und stark und ich selbst in mir."
Auerbach himself says (II, 157) : "Du grosser Weltbiittel, der du uns
einspundest, dein Name ist Gewohnheit." The Konig says (III,
19): "Allen und Jedem misstrauen — das war die grosse Lehre."
And it was Nietzsche's.
We have also the ecstatic style, the punctuation, the illustrations,
based on the eagle, the cow, the mirror, the deep well, the rainbow,
the child, the exhortation (VI, 150) to be "hart gegen sich und
andere," the development of individuality, and the longing for the
top of the mountain (VIII, 131) "die kein Menschenfuss betreten,
nur die Wolken kommen dorthin und nur das Auge des Adlers ruht
darauf."
IV
Parallels of this sort are, however, not sufficient to prove that
Auerbach influenced Nietzsche. And Nietzsche never referred to
Auf der Hohe in his writing. Is there any other sort of evidence in
this connection ?
Nietzsche began work on Zarathustra2 in the winter of 1882, the
year of Auerbach's death. With all of Nietzsche's detestation of
newspapers, he could not have escaped notice of the event, for Auer-
bach was given a funeral second in pomp only to that accorded Klop-
1 Of. Anton Bettelheim, Tell-Studien von Berthold Auerbach (Berlin, 1905), p. 125.
2 The genesis of Zarathustra is set forth by Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche in Nietzsche's
Werke, VI, 479-85.
614
AUEKBACH AND NlETZSCHE 167
stock. The region most intimately associated with the composition
of Zarathustra is the Engadine. On the summit of one of the bellevues
of this region there is a bench with the inscription: "Auerbachs
Hohe."1 Not far then from the spot where Zarathustra first iiberfiel
Nietzsche, we have a constant reminder of the author of Auf der
Hohe. Auerbach was a frequent visitor in this region. It is entirely
possible that he met Nietzsche there in person; but we have no record
of such a meeting.
And now as to the motivation. Why did Irma write her diary ?
The plot up to the beginning of its composition is briefly as follows:
The King is the type of eine heroische Natur. He is an archindi-
vidualist. He stands on the heights, above his people, and for this
very reason comes in conflict with his people. They want a con-
stitution, but the King will not grant it; that would interfere with
his individuality. He feels himself entirely beyond both the political
and the moral law. He admires the Queen though he does not love
her. She is taken from Jean Paul's novels. He falls in love with
Irma, lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Irma and the King take one
false step. It becomes noised abroad, public opinion scorns her, her
father dies from grief, and life at the court becomes impossible for
her. She leaves the court and goes to the mountains where she leads
a life of loneliness, and where she writes her diary. She is penitent,
but only so far as she feels responsible for the death of her father and
the sadness of the Queen over the abuse of her trust and friendship;
otherwise she is beyond the stupid, because, she says, conventional,
laws of the world. She remains in the mountains until her death.
The Pechmannlein who aids her in her wood-carving is the one indi-
vidual whom she sees with anything like frequency. Peek also
plays a role in Zarathustra, though this point could easily be pushed
too far.
Why did Auerbach, surrounded as he was by friends, write this
work ? He never committed any great wrong that would force him
to flee from men. It is indubitably an indirect tribute to Baruch
Spinoza (Auerbach's real name was Moyses Baruch). Auerbach
was a profound student of Spinoza. His novel Spinoza appeared
i Of. Franz Dingelstedt, Literarisches Bilderbuch (Berlin, 1878), pp. 213-57, which
deal with Auerbach under the rubric "Auerbachs Hohe."
615
168 "ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
in 1837, his translation of Spinoza's works in 1841. And just as the
excommunicated Spinoza retired unto himself and wrote his Ethics
(1665), so does the ostracized Irma retire unto herself and write her
ethical diary (1865). Irma's diary sounds in places almost like a
translation of Spinoza's Ethics. The last words of Auerbach's
novel on Spinoza are as follows (XI, 232) : " Spinoza zog hin nach
Rhynsburg und von da nach Voorburg und dem Haag und schrieb
den theologisch-politischen Traktat und die Ethik. Einsam und
abgeschieden verbrachte er fortan sein Dasein Es erstand
kein Dichter wieder wie Spinoza, der so im Ewigen gelebt." Those
words motivated Auerbach's novel.
Possibly, then, Nietzsche borrowed from Spinoza and not from
Auerbach at all, for, though he does not mention Spinoza in his
letters, and though there are no references to Spinoza in Nietzsche's
life by his sister, there are forty-odd references1 to Spinoza in Nietz-
sche's works. That some of these are unfavorable is of no conse-
quence. As to the favorable ones, Nietzsche looked upon Spinoza as
the wisest of sages, the great idealist, the great individualist who
destroyed his emotions, the despiser of pity, the impossible husband,
and as one of the four predecessors of Zarathustra, Empedocles,
Heraclitus, and Goethe being the other three. In short, Nietzsche
mentioned Spinoza more frequently than he did Auerbach. But
there are a number of things that militate against the idea that
Spinoza influenced2 to any marked degree the composition of Zara-
thustra.
In the first place, we have to consider the motivation of Zara-
thustra. The idea had been in Nietzsche's mind for some time, but
in 1882 it had to be written. Nietzsche, forsaken by the world at
large, disappointed by his immediate friends, and out of harmony
with things in general, concluded that new values must be set up,
1 Cf. G. A. Dernoschek, Das Problem des egoistischen Perfektionismus in der Ethik
Spinozas und Nietzsches (Annaberg, 1905), p. 11. Dernoschek cites the places in Nietz-
sche's works where reference is made to Spinoza. The index of the English edition
(Macmillan) is unreliable here.
2 It must be conceded that Spinoza's Ethics does sound much like Zarathustra.
Spinoza defines gut and schlecht, for example, as follows: "Unter 'gut' verstehe ich das,
von dem wir gewiss wissen, dass es uns ntitzlich ist. Unter 'schlecht' aber verstehe ich
das, von dem wir gewiss wissen, dass es uns hindert, ein Gutes zu erlangen." That
sounds remarkably like the code of both Irma and Zarathustra. See Die Ethik von B.
Spinoza, translated by J. Stern (Leipzig, 1887), p. 253.
616
AUERBACH AND NlETZSCHE 169
new doctrines preached, a new type of man proclaimed. His work
was inspired largely by his own life, while Auerbach's novel came more
nearly from a study of Spinoza. The inspiration of the former was
direct, that of the latter indirect. It is somewhat as it was with
Wilhelm Meister and the imitative works that followed: Goethe
wrote his novel out of his own life, while Tieck, Eichendorff, and
others wrote their Reise- und Bildungsromane partly in imitation of
Goethe.
And then we have to view the matter also from the point of view
of convenience and expediency. There is now a voluminous Spinoza
literature in German, but the great bulk of it postdates the original
conception, indeed the final composition, of Zaraihustra. Auerbach's
translation of Spinoza's works, and his novel on, and other commit-
ments concerning, Spinoza would have been Nietzsche's most acces-
sible sources in 1882 and earlier. Dernoschek suggests (p. 12) that
Nietzsche possibly knew Kuno Fischer's treatise on Spinoza when he
wrote his Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887). Be this true or not, let
us remember what Nietzsche said in 1872: "Ich kann Auerbach
nicht mehr lesen." While this proves that he was reading him at the
time, it does not prove that he did not read him later.
In his Nietzsche, Richard M. Meyer makes, for this paper, two
significant remarks (346) : " ' Noch einen Tropfen aus dem Gedanken-
meer!' rief wohl in seiner naiven Freude an gedanklicken Funden und
Fiindlein Berthold Auerbach. Mit grosserem Rechte mochte man
das ausrufen, wenn aus dem Meere der Gedanken Nietzsches das
Wesentliche herausgeholt werden soil." But Meyer never said in
so many words that Auerbach may have influenced Nietzsche, nor
has anyone else. And again (p. 562): "Man wird erstaunen, wie
oft die originellsten Gedanken der grossen Einsamen schon in der
Luft lagen." The truth of this statement cannot be too highly-
valued. As soon as thinking men begin to discuss the relation of
men to the world, their ideas must cross, their thoughts must be
at times the same. All men of the type of either Au«-bach or
Nietzsche have their spiritual ancestors. Meyer lists (pp. 79-97)
the following as constituting the most important predecessors of
617
170 ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
Nietzsche — as his "verwandte Naturen": Carlyle, G. F. Daumer,
Eugen Diihring, Emerson, Gustave Flaubert, Goethe, Heinse, Karl
Hillebrand, Holderlin, Ibsen, Wilhelm Jordan, Paul de Lagarde,
Siegfried Lipiner, Ernest Renan, Ruskin, George Sand, and Max
Stirner. That is a formidable galaxy and in view of Meyer's enor-
mous Belesenheit it would be hazardous to gainsay it. But if we may
depend upon the complete index to Nietzsche's works, as compiled
in the eighteenth volume of the Macmillan edition, Nietzsche
never mentioned the following : Heinse, Ruskin, G. F. Daumer, Max
Stirner, Wilhelm Jordan, Paul de Lagarde, and Lipiner.1 And the
same principle applies to Zarathustra. Many works2 have been cited
on which Nietzsche is supposed to have drawn for its composition,
despite the fact that his sister says (VI, 479) that it is his "person-
lichstes Werk .... die Geschichte seiner innersten Erlebnisse."
But Auerbach has never been mentioned in this connection, though
there is much in his works that sounds Nietzschean.
If, for example, Nietzsche never read Auerbach's Tausend Ge-
dariken* we have to do here with a most unusual case of parallelism.
Auerbach's comment (p. 52) on "Vorhemdchens-Bildung, die eben
nur so viel hat, als zum Gesehenwerden notig ist," is Nietzschean on
general principles, and closely akin to Nietzsche's frequent references
to Vordergrund and its attending evils. His explanation of the Jews'
ability to endure suffering is precisely the same as that given by
Nietzsche in his Morgenrothe. His notes (pp. 172 and 226) on the
origins of the concepts gut and bose could not be more Nietzschean.
But space forbids detailed quotation.
1 Daumer, Lagarde, and Lipiner are, however, mentioned in Nietzsche's letters, and
the index to the English edition of Nietzsche's works is incomplete.
2 According to the introduction to the English edition, by Alexander Tille, and Hans
Weichelt in Also sprach Zarathustra, erkldrt und gewurdigt (Leipzig, 1910), the following
are some of the more important works that may have influenced Nietzsche in the compo-
sition of Zarathustra: The Avesta, the writings of Plato and Heraclitus, the Bible, St.
Augustine's Confessions and City, Erasmus* Lob der Torheit, Holderlin's Hyperion,
Jordan's Nibelungen, Carl Spitteler's Prometheus und Epimetheus, Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress, Piers the Ploughman, Ruchert's Weisheit des Brahmanen, Goethe's Divan,
Dahn's Odhins Trost, P. T. Vischer's Auch Einer, and a number of works by Gutzkow,
whom Nietzsche especially disliked.
8 The complete title of the book is Tausend Gedanken des Collaborators* The "col-
laborator" is Auerbach himself. The book contains about 1,000 aphorisms. It was
published at Berlin in 1875. The copy in the New York Public Library was presented
by Auerbach to George Bancroft, and contains a personal note by the author.
618
AUEEBACH AND NlETZSCHE 171
Both Auerbach and Nietzsche were much given to repetition;
there are certain themes and conceits to which they were constantly
returning. Of these the four most important are: die Einsamkeit,
die Sittlichkeit, die Ewigkeit, and der Wille. If the two had never
used the same concrete figures, their common use of these abstract
ones alone would be sufficient to make one suspect that the one
influenced the other; but then there come, aside from those already
mentioned, a number of tangible similarities such as their common
references to die scheckige Kuh, die Glocke, der Verbrecher, Prometheus,
and so on, and suspicion is turned into belief.
Nietzsche was not an omnivorous reader, but a very rapid one.
We come across the remark every now and then in his letters that on
a certain day he read a certain book, sometimes a very large one,
Malvida von Meysenbug's Memoiren, for example. Auerbach,
Freytag, and a few others were the favorite writers of the scholarly
reading public in Germany from about 1870 to 1880. Nietzsche
knew the works of these men, for it was the Germany of those years
in which he was particularly interested and with which he was
particularly dissatisfied. The fact that he disliked the literature
that was then being written is of negligible importance. The point
is this: Nietzsche stands out in gigantic relief between his predeces-
sors and his successors. A great deal of effective work has been
done by way of attempting to show his influence on those who came
after him. It was Nietzsche's peculiar type of greatness that inspired
this method of approach. A reversal of the procedure by way of
attempting to show what he owed to those who went before him might
also be productive of illuminating results.1
ALLEN WILSON PORTERFIELD
MILITARY CENSOR
FORT McPnERsoN, GA.
* Of. Arthur Drews, Nietzsche's Philosophic (Heidelberg, 1904), p. 112. Drews
comments on Auerbach's popularity among the Gebildete of Nietzsche's time without
intimating that the former may have influenced the latter.
619
DIE INDOGERMANISCHE MEDIA ASPIRATA
VORBEMERKUNG. — Durch Collitz' Entdeckung des indischen
Palatalgesetzes (1878-79) hat die Sprachwissenschaft in der Erkennt-
nis des indogermanischen Lautstandes einen gewaltigen Schritt
vorwarts getan. Nicht der arische Einheitsvokal a, sondern die euro-
paische Vokaldreiheit e, o, a gilt uns seitdem als das Urspriingliche.
Der indogermanische Konsonantenstand dagegen sieht nach dem
heutigen Stande der Erschliessung noch recht " uneuropaisch " aus.
Am weitaus meisten nahert er sich dem altindischen. Wie dieses
kennt er fiinf Artikulationsstellen, wenn auch in etwas andrer Ver-
teilung, und wir schreiben ihm auch die vier Artikulationsarten der
indischen Verschlusslaute zu, z.B. t, th, d, dh; in gewissem Sinne mag
man auch den fast ganzlichen Mangel an Spiranten auffallig finden.
Was die Vielheit der Artikulationsstellen betrifft, so werden wir
vielleicht einmal dazu kommen, Bezzenbergers drei Gutturalreihen
als verschiedene Erscheinungsformen des velaren Verschlusslautes
aufzufassen (in demselben Sinne, wie die ich- und ac/i-Laute des
Deutschen lediglich verschiedene Erscheinungsformen des velaren
Spiranten sind). Einen Ansatz dazu finden wir bei Hirt, BB,
XXIV, 218. Der Mangel an Spiranten braucht uns weiter nicht zu
storen, herrschte ja beispielsweise im Griechischen viele Jahrhunderte
lang derselbe Zustand. Dagegen ist die Annahme der altindischen
vier Artikulationsarten fur das Indogermanische schon mehrfach auf
Zweifel gestossen, indem einerseits die stimmlosen Aspiraten als
einzelsprachliche Neuerung betrachtet werden, andrerseits gegen die
stimmhaften Aspiraten phonetische Bedenken auftauchen. Wenn
ich indessen im Folgenden die Frage der stimmhaften Aspiraten
eingehend bespreche, so mochte ich im Vorhinein bemerken, dass ich
zu diesem Versuche nicht durch einen Zweifel an der lautlichen
Wahrscheinlichkeit unsrer indogermanischen Konsonantentabellen,
sondern durch unvermeidliche Folgerungen aus meinen jnehrfach
ausgesprochenen Anschauungen iiber die Entwicklung des germani-
schen Konsonantenstandes bestimmt wurde.
621] 173 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, February, 1918
174 E. PROKOSCH
I. DIE GESCHICHTE DER THEORIE
1. CURTIUS. — Die Ansicht, dass wir in den indischen stimmhaften
Aspiraten eine indogermanische Ausspracheweise zu erblicken haben,
reicht in die Mitte des vorigen Jahrhunderts zuriick. Bopps Ver-
gleichende Grammatik stellt ihrer ganzen Anlage gemass keine Theorie
dartiber auf, sondern fiihrt nur die einzelsprachlichen Tatsachen an.
Schleichers Formenlehre der kirchenslavischen Sprache (1852) enthalt
diese Ausserung (S. 93) :
Wie zum Beispiel bei der gutturalen Tenuis das Latein der einzige treue
Bewahrer des Urspriinglichen ist, so ware es dann das Slavische bei den
Aspiraten. Wie freilich solche gleichmassige Lautanderungen in den ver-
schiedenen Sprachen an demselben Worte haftend (also nicht rein physiolo-
gischer Natur) zu erklaren seien, das ist eine andre Frage. Wir finden
demnach in dem System der slavischen Stummlaute etwas Ursprungliches,
da es die Aspiraten nicht kennt.
Gleichzeitig erklarte sich Forstemann (KZ, I, 169) fur die
grossere Urspriinglichkeit der lateinischen Konsonanten, doch mit
so unzureichenden Griinden, dass er keinen Anklang fand.
Schon im folgenden Jahre legte Curtius (KZ, II, 321) den Grund
zu der noch heute geltenden Ansicht; er kennzeichnet die damalige
Auffassung wie folgt:
Die vergleichende Grammatik lehrt, dass im allgemeinen der sans-
kritischen media aspirata oder dem weichen Hauchlaut die Aspiraten der
verwandten Sprachen entsprechen, ohne dass sie bisher ausdriicklich den
Schluss gezogen hatte, jene weichen Hauchlaute bh, dh, gh seien die altesten
und ursprtinglich einzigen Hauchlaute, und was in den verwandten Sprachen
ihnen entsprache, sei aus ihnen hervorgegangen. Die Frage der Prioritat
wurde hier wie in vielen andern Fallen — und das war f iir den Anfang natiir-
lich — unentschieden gelassen.
Nach Widerlegung von Schleichers Annahme eines ursprachlichen
6, d, g, dem die Spaltung im Griechisehen, Germanischen und Latei-
nischen widerspreche, schreibt er den wichtigen Satz:
Geben wir nun jene Hypo these von dem spateren Ursprung der Aspiraten
auf und nehmen einfach an, dass vor der Sprachentrennung mediae aspiratae
vorhanden waren, so scheint plotzlich alles licht und einfach zu werden:
vier Sprachfamilien wiirden dann von dem Doppellaute gh, dh, bh den einen
minder bezeichnenden aufgeben, das Griechische wiirde die media aspirata
zur tenuis erhoben haben, die italischen Sprachen stiinden gleichsam zwischen
beiden in der Mitte.
Diese vorlaufig ohne Begriindung aufgestellte Hypothese wendet
er dann auf die einzelnen Sprachgruppen an, wobei er nach damaligem
622
DIE INDOGERMANISCHE " MEDIA ASPIRATA" 175
Brauch in dem Zusammenfall von Lauten einen entschiedenen
Mangel der betreffenden Sprache erblickt ("so 1st der Zustand dieser
Sprachen in Bezug auf die Aspiraten der unvollkommenste " ; die
Verwandlung von gh, dh, bh, zu g, d, b "ist und bleibt eine Schwa-
chung, indem ja der eine Teil des Lautes weggef alien ist"). In der
griechischen Entwicklung dagegen sieht er selbstverstandlich eine
Starkung, die er mit der germanischen Lautverschiebung auf eine
Stufe stellt; ganz im Sinne Grimms erklart er iiber diese: "Es ist
die Art tatkraftiger Volksstamme, ihre Kraft auch an der Sprache zu
versuchen, und solche jugendliche Riistigkeit, solch keckerer Unter-
scheidungstrieb tritt nach unserer Auffassung der Sache in der
Lautverschiebung aufs deutlichste zutage." Seine Erklarung derlatei-
nischen Verhaltnisse lasst am meisten zu wtinschen iibrig; wir lesen:
"Die bis zu einem nachweisbaren Zeitpunkte [?] anhaltende Existenz
der mediae aspiratae in den italischen Sprachen muss tibrigens als
eine grosse Altertiimlichkeit gelten, und es stimmt dies mit dem allge-
meinen Charakter der italischen Sprachen uberein, welche auch andre
Laute mit besondrer Treue bis in die historische Zeit hinein bewahrt
haben. Cbrigens hat diese lange Erhaltung der mediae aspiratae
sich mannigfaltig geracht."
2. GRASSMANN. — Natiirlich konnen Curtius' Ausfuhrungen nicht
als Nachweis indogermanischer stimmhafter Aspiraten gelten. Doch
ist ihm das Verdienst zuzuschreiben, dass er in ihrem Zusammenfalle
mit reinen Medien in Sprachen wie Slavisch und Keltisch einen
sichern Beleg gegen die Urspriinglichkeit der Einheitslaute b, d, g
erkannt hat. Seine Ansicht fand sofort fast allgemeine Zustimmung.
Bopp ubernahm sie ohne Bemerkung in die zweite und dritte Auflage
seiner Grammatik (3 S. 125: "Die lettischen und slavischen Sprachen
stimmen mit den germanischen in Bezug auf die Konsonantenver-
schiebung nur darin uberein, dass sie die sanskritischen aspirierten
Medien in reine mediae umgewandelt haben")- Schleicher stellte sie
1861 im Compendium als etwas Selbstverstandliches hin, zog sich
aber damit Kuhns Tadel zu, der (KZ, XI, 300) in einer Besprechung
des Compendiums nicht bh, dh, gh, sondern (wie auch Grimm und
Raumer) ph, th, kh als die urspriinglichen Laute betrachtqjb; seine
Begriindung fallt heute nicht mehr ins Gewicht, doch scheint seine
Auffassung zu jener Zeit ziemliche Verbreitung gefunden zu haben.
623
176 E. PKOKOSCH
So beschaftigt sich denn Grassmann, KZ, XII, 81 (1864 — in dem
beriihmten Aufsatz, der sein Gesetz von der indischen und griechi-
schen Hauchdissimilation aufstellt), eingehend mit der Streitfrage,
"ob die harten oder die weichen Aspiraten die urspriinglichen seien":
Ich beschranke mich hier auf den Zustand der indogermanischen
Ursprache, wie er unmittelbar der ersten Trennung der uns bekannten
Glieder derselben vorausging, und stelle daher die Frage bestimmter so:
Gab es unmittelbar vor der ersten Spaltung der indogermanischen Ursprache
nur harte Aspiraten oder nur weiche, oder gar keine von beiden, oder beide ?
Da nur im Sanskrit beide Gattungen deutlich gesondert nebeneinander
stehen, so werden wir von ihm auszugehen und zu untersuchen haben, wie
beide in den tibrigen Sprachen vertreten werden.
Er schreibt dem Griechischen die Tendenz zu, die Zahl der Laute zu
verringern, und schliesst daraus:
Es fiihrte die vier Reihen der starren Laute jedes Organs auf drei Reihen,
die Aspirata, Media und Tenuis, zurtick. Indem es so die zwei Reihen der
Aspiraten in eine zu schmelzen suchte, blieb nur der Weg iibrig, sie entweder
alle weich oder alle hart werden zu lassen; nach dem a mussten sie wegen
des harten Charakters, den dasselbe, wenigstens wenn es nicht zwischen zwei
Vokalen oder zwischen einem Vokal und einem andern weichen Laute steht,
behauptet, notwendig hart bleiben; und wir werden in der zweiten Abhand-
lung zeigen, dass in Analogic damit die weichen Aspiraten zunachst im
Anlaut verharteten, in Inlaut jedoch noch lange weich blieben, bis sie endlich
auch hier der Verhartung anheim fielen.
Sein Ergebnis ist dies:
Es hat sich uns in der vorhergehenden Untersuchung das unzweifelhafte
Resultat ergeben, dass die weichen Aspiraten des Sanskrit auch schon in der
Zeit vor der ersten Sprachentrennung als weiche Aspiraten vorhanden waren,
und dass neben ihnen mindestens schon vor der Ausscheidung des griechischen
Sprachzweiges aus dem gemeinschaftlichen Stamme auch die Reihe der
harten Aspiraten bestand.
Eine lautphysiologische Begriindung seiner Ansicht, die doch
gerade bei dem Zweck seiner Abhandlung, die Hauchdissimilation zu
erklaren, so nahe lag, vermisst man fast ganz; aber man darf nicht
vergessen, dass im Jahre 1864 lautphysiologische Erorterungen
unmoglich den heutigen Anforderungen entsprechen konnten. Vom
methodischen Standpunkt haben Grassmann und Curtius der
Sprachwissenschaft den wicbtigen Dienst geleistet, dass sie zeigten,
dass wenigstens der Zahl der Artikulationsarten nach die indische
Vierheit der Verschlusslaute ursprtinglich sein miisse. Hatte Curtius
gegen Schleicher die Spaltung von b in b und bh widerlegt, so erreichte
624
DIE INDOGEKMANISCHE " MEDIA ASPIRATA" 177
Grassmann dasselbe gegen Kuhns Annahme der Prioritat der
griechischen Einheitslaute <f>, 6, x—bh-ph, dh-th, gh-kh.
ANM. — Welchen Fortschritt Grassmanns Artikel damals bedeutet, sieht
man am allerbesten aus der gewaltigen MT)I/IS, mit der einer der tiichtigsten
Vertreter des Alten, Pott (KZ, XIX, 16), gegen inn zu Felde zieht; er
spricht von dem "geheimen Schauder, welcher meine Adern durchrieselt
beim Anblick so gespenstischer Gestalten (aus der 'Ursprache,' beteuert
man uns) wie bandh aus *bhandh, gr. rrevd fur *<f>tvO ..... Dunstgebilde
solcher Art, wenn schon gleichwie mit Ordenssternen behangen, notigen
darum vielleicht den Seelen andrer, sicherlich aber nicht der meinigen
Respekt ab, trotz deren, in sprachwissenschaftlichen Werken neueren
Datums ihren spukhaften Umgang haltenden Briiderschar." " Verkehrteste
und allerabgeschmackteste Ausgeburten der Phantasie," "wiiste Abenteuer-
lichkeiten," "wie Falstaffs weltberuhmte liiderliche Garde: Schimmelig,
Bullenkalb, Schwachlich und Schatte" sind ihm die neuerschlossenen
Formen. Er verwahrt sich gegen die "grelle Widerwartigkeit der Zumu-
tung," sich mit " urweltlichem, spaterhin umgekommenem Geschmeiss wie
*bhandh bis *<£v0" zu befassen, konnte aber darum doch den Fortschritt der
Wissenschaft nicht aufhalten. Das geht am klarsten aus Ascolis Worten
(KZ, XVII, 241) hervor: "Die von Curtius, Grassmann usw., insbesondere
aus esoterisch sprachvergleichenden Griinden, behauptete Indogermanen-
schaft von skr. gh, dh, bh kommt mir vielmehr so evident vor, dass ich jeden
Einwurf dagegen (so entschieden wie er es III, 321, tat,1 lasst gewiss Kuhn
selbst nicht mehr media aspirata als tenuis aspirata gelten) als einen
wirklich verzweifelten Versuch ansehen muss" (1868).
3. ASCOLI. — Mit den lateinischen Entsprechungen fur die stimm-
haften Aspiraten war nun freilich nicht viel anzufangen. Diesem
Mangel half Ascoli ab. In dem eben erwahnten Artikel und noch
entschiedener KZ, XVIII, 417 (in Verteidigung gegen Corssen,
Vokalismus und Betonung der lateinischen Sprache, S. 802 f.), stellt
er die heute allgemein anerkannte Ansicht auf, dass idg. bh, dh, gh
urgriechisch und uritalisch zu ph, th, kh wurden und diese sich im
Italischen weiter zu stimmlosen Spiranten entwickelten. Corssen
tritt ihm zwar KZ, XIX, 190, noch einmal mit Griinden der Epi-
graphik entgegen, die Urspriinglichkeit der lateinischen Spiranten
vom Standpunkte italischer Schreibungen vertretend, aber die
Methode der modernen vergleichenden Sprachwissenschaft, zu deren
friihesten Vertretern man Ascoli rechnen muss, hatte den Sieg davon
getragen; seine eingehendere Darstellung in der Vergleichenden
Lautlehre (S. 126 f.) stellt die Grundlage des Beweises fur*idg. bh,
» Und noch KZ, XI, 130 flf.
625
178 E. PROKOSCH
dh, gh in so klarer und vollstandiger Weise dar, dass es unerlasslich
1st, das Wesentlichste daraus hier anzufiihren:
Hat die aspirierte media, wie sie heute und wie sie in Indien seit langer
Zeit herrscht, in friiheren Zeiten ein einfacher tonender Dauerlaut (Spirans)
oder eine aspirierte tennis sein konnen? Die Antwort darauf wird stets
verneinend ausf alien mtissen. Denn erstens ist zu bedenken, dass beide
Hypothesen die Tatsache des indo-iranischen z gegen sich haben, welches
als tonender Dauerlaut und indem es neben gh vorkommt, von dem es gewohn-
lich herstammt, bezeugt, dass gh ein Konsonant ist, der sich vom Dauerlaut
unterscheidet und zugleich im indo-iranischen Zeitalter tonend war. Ebenso
wenig lassen die ferneren Vergleichungen an eine der beiden Voraussetzungen
glauben. Nehmen wir zum Beispiel sanskritisch bh, so wird es urgriechischem
<£ und uritalischem /, iranischem b, keltischem b, litu-slavischem b, germa-
nischem b begegnen. Nun wird ein vorindischer tonender Dauerlaut durch
keinen von diesen Reflexen bestatigt, und ihrerseits stosst die Voraussetzung
der vorindischen aspirierten tenuis auf das sehr schwere Hindernis der
iransichen, litu-slavischen und keltischen media, wogegen sich die italo-
griechische Abweichung, die wir an der betreffenden Stelle sehen, auf
durchaus naturliche Weise erklart. Die ganz willkurliche Annahme, dass
die indische apirierte media von einer friiheren Spirans herkomme, wiirde
besonders auf die Schwierigkeit stossen, dass, wenn einerseits der lautliche
Prozess, durch welchen ein Dauerlaut sich in aspirierte media verwandeln
soil (v beispielshalber in bh), etwas ganz Ungeheuerliches und Unerhortes ist,
andrerseits fur Indien hinzukommt, dass die einheimischen Sprachen, welche
gegen die liber sie lagernde arische Schicht reagierten, weit entfernt, in
ihrer besonderen Eigentumlichkeit irgendwelche Legitimation dieses sonder-
baren Prozesses zu bieten, vielmehr den aspiratae sich ganz abhold zeigen,
da derartige Laute ihrem urspriinglichen Grundstock ganz fremd sind.
Endlich wird die Hypothese, es sei die indische aspirierte media ursprung-
lich eine tenuis gewesen, noch durch andere besondere und sehr gewichtige
Einwendungen aus dem Felde geschlagen. Die Umwandlung von kh in gh
usw. miisste namlich mindestens auf das indo-iranische Zeitalter zuriick-
gehen, da in demselben, wie die zendo-sanskritischen Concordanzen zeigen,
die Reihe der aspirierten tenues (kh, th, ph), welche sich immer gleich
geblieben sind, sich scheidet von der Reihe derjenigen Laute, welche sich
durch die sanskritischen mediae aspiratae und die zendischen mediae
fortsetzt Somit wirkt alles zusammen, um uns zu zeigen, dass die
Laute, welche sich durch die aspirierten mediae des Sanskrit fortsetzen und
schon von den Urspriingen an von den reinen mediae verschieden waren,
wie es unter anderm der gotische Reflex beweist, bereits in der einheitlichen
Periode tonende Explosivae gewesen seien, auf welche eine mehr oder minder
dicke Aspiration folgte, und dass also das sanskritische Lautsystem dem
ursprunglichen in dieser Beziehung nicht minder treu sei als in der Fort-
setzung der reinen tenuis und der reinen media.
4. BRUECKE, SIEVERS. — Die von Ascoli bekampfte Vermutung,
dass es sich nicht um Aspiraten, sondern um Spiranten handle, war
aus dem -Lager einer Schwesterwissenschaft, der Lautphysiologie,
DIE INDOGERMANISCHE "MEDIA ASPIRATA" 179
hervorgegangen. Vier Jahre nach Curtius' Ansatz von ursprach-
lichen bh, dh, gh hatte Bruecke die physiologische Moglichkeit solcher
Laute in Zweifel gezogen (Grundzuge der Lautphysiologie=ZfoG,
1856,8.595):
Aus dem bisher Gesagten wird es wohl jedem Leser klar sein, dass sich
die media nicht in dem Sinne wie die tenuis aspirieren, d.h. unmittelbar
mit einem h verbinden lasst. Da bei der media die Stimmritze bei der
Explosion zum Tonen verengt ist, so muss ihr immer erst ein Vokal ange-
hangt werden, ehe das h folgen kann, bei dem die Stimmritze weit offen ist.
Wenn eine Silbe mit einer media schliesst und die nachf olgende mit h anf angt,
so beriihren sich hier zwar beide Laute einander unmittelbar, aber dies ist
keine Aspiration zu nennen, denn es wird nur durch Silbentrennung moglich.
Ich muss, nachdem ich den Verschluss der media gebildet habe, den Explosiv-
laut vermeiden und das Anhalten des Atems bei der Silbentrennung dazu
benutzen, zugleich die Stimmritze und den Verschluss im Mundkanal
gerauschlos zu offnen und dann das h hervorzustossen
Undauf S. 616:
Sollte nun die Devanagari, die zwei auf einander folgende Konsonanten,
selbst wenn sie einander unmittelbar beriihren, nie durch ein einfaches
Zeichen, sondern immer durch ein zusammengesetztes ausdriickt, sollte die
Devanagari fiinf Buchstaben haben, deren Lautwert eine media mit nach-
folgendem Vokal und nachf olgendem h war ? Das Unwahrscheinliche dieser
Vorstellung von der Natur der media aspirata tritt noch starker ins Licht,
wenn man sieht, wie sie sich mit tonenden Konsonanten, die Resonanten
nicht ausgenommen, verbindet.
So kommt er zu dem Schluss, dass die "mediae aspiratae" stimm-
hafte Spiranten waren, gibt aber eigentlich nur den negativen Grund
seines Zweifels an der Sprechbarkeit stimmhafter Aspiraten dafur an.
Zwei Jahr spater nimmt er (ebenso wie Scherer, ZGdS, 1868) stimm-
hafte Affrikaten an (Zf&G, 1858, S. 698), und Ebel meint (KZ, XIII
[1862], 268) wohl etwas Ahnliches, wenn er von einer Art Zwischen-
stufe spricht, einem bh zum Beispiel, "welches eine dem v sehr nahe
kommende muta war," und immer noch bezweifelt, "dass derartige
Verbindungen wie ghn ohne eine Art schwa gesprochen werden
konnen."
In der zweiten Auflage seiner Grundzuge (1872) kann Bruecke,
angesichts der unbestreitbaren Tatsache, dass solche Laute in vielen
indischen Dialekten nun einmal existieren, allerdings seinen Wider-
spruch nicht im vollen Umfange aufrecht erhalten; vielmehr Hemtiht
er sich auf Seite 115, drei physiologische Moglichkeiten der Aus-
>rache stimmhafter Aspiraten aufzustellen. Doch bleiben ihm
immer noch starke subjektive Bedenken. Xhnlich wie Ebel kann er
627
180 E. PROKOSCH
sich eine Lautverbindung wie ghna nur dreisilbig vorstellen: gehena
(S. 84).1
Naturlich ist die Schwierigkeit der Aussprache von bh, dh, gh nur
eine vermeintliche; wer halbwegs phonetische Muskelempfindung
besitzt, dem mussen diese Laute leicht sein. Ubrigens ist es von
Interesse, dass ihre angebliche Schwierigkeit von Paul (PBB, I, 154),
scharfsinnig als Argument fur ihre ursprachliche Existenz beniitzt
wird, das bei richtiger Pramisse ziemlich iiberzeugend wirken konnte :
Es ist bekannt, wie sich unser bedeutendster Lautphysiolog, Bruecke,
gegen die Anerkennung der Sprechbarkeit der Medialaspiraten gestraubt hat.
Wenn nun auch durch die Bemerkungen von Arend in den Beitragen zur
vergleichenden Sprachforschung [Kuhns und Schleichers Beitrage sind
gemeint — der Artikel hat nur auf das Indische Bezug], II, 283 f ., die Existenz
derselben ausser Zweifel gesetzt ist, so sind sie doch immer sehr schwierige
Lautverbindungen, deren sich deshalb die meisten Sprachen entledigt haben,
und es ist gar nicht denkbar, dass sie aus der gar keine Schwierigkeiten
bietenden Verbindung tenuis+/i sollten entstanden sein. Die Verwandlung
von tenuis affricata zu media affricata ist mindestens unwahrscheinlich.
Nirgends findet sich ein Analogon dazu, wie denn iiberhaupt die Medien-
Affrikaten nirgends in einer Sprache nachgewiesen, sondern nur erschlossen
sind Ubrigens wiirde die Erweichung derselben [der tenuis aspirata]
eine Erweichung der tenuis in sich schliessen, die sonst auf germanischem
Boden, vom Neunordischen abgesehen, unerhort ist.
Das Ergebnis der damaligen Forschung fasst Paul (a. a. O., S. 195)
in folgenden Worten zusammen:
Hieriiber sind nun drei verschiedene Ansichten aufgestellt. Die eine
behauptet wirkliche Aspiraten, die zweite Affrikaten, die dritte einfache
Spiranten. Die letztere ist jetzt wohl allgemein aufgegeben. Der Streit
dreht sich noch um die erste, iiberwiegend anerkannte, und die zweite, von
R. von Raumer und Scherer vertretene. Ich halte dafiir, dass der Beweis
fur die Urspriinglichkeit der Aspiraten im Sanskrit und Griechischen
geliefert ist durch Curtius, Grundziige,1 S. 383 ff. [dem oben angefuhrten
Artikel im Wesentlichen gleich] und- Ascoli, Vergkichende Lautkhre 149 ff .,
wenn ich auch einige der von ihnen vorgebrachten Argumente nicht gelten
lassen kann.
E. PROKOSCH
UNIVERSITY OP TEXAS
[To be continued]
» Das von mir beniitzte Exemplar seines Buches, jetzt Eigentum der Universitat
Chicago, hatte P. Techmer geh6rt und enthalt eine Menge interessanter, zum Teil
wertvoller Bemerkungen von Techmers Hand ; zu Brueckes Besprechung der Aspiraten
bemerkt Techmer, S. 117: " Verfasser hat seine Ansicht iiber die sanskr. Asp. nicht klar
genug, noch weniger tiberzeugend dargestellt."
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
I
Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Norwegian Text of
Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Its Language, Literary Associations,
and Folklore. BY H. LOGEMAN. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1917. 9Gld.
Dr. Logeman was professor of English philology at the Belgian Uni-
versity of Ghent, and is now undergoing temporary exile, as the place of
publication of the work above indicates. For several years he has been
devoting especial attention to the study of Ibsen's masterpiece, a study that
has already borne fruit in several articles in philological periodicals.
In the present work the fundamental part, which illogically follows the
other,1 is the textual criticism (pp. 365-464), an accomplishment of scholar-
ship which the reviewer, despite the odium of comparisons and a conscious-
ness of the American proneness to superlatives, would not hesitate to call
the best in the history of Ibsen study. Some of its most striking results had
already been published separately in 1914 in the Norwegian periodical Edda
(II, 136 ff.) with effects, particularly upon the Gyldendal publishing house,
on which the author is now able to comment. For the work he has had at
his disposal all the material, consisting of two manuscripts in the possession
of the Royal Library in Copenhagen : U, the original Udkast,2 some readings
from which had been printed in the Efterladte Skrifter* and R, the Renskrift
prepared by Ibsen for the printer, but, as Logeman shows, never printed with
scrupulous exactness; further the sixteen separate editions of Peer Gynt
published from 1867 to 1915, and the Peer Gynt volume of the three editions of
Isben's collected works: the Folkeudgave (III, 1898), Mindeudgave (II,
19064), and Jubilceumsudgave (III, 19135) . To these is added as manuscript I,
1 The author strangely calls it a supplement of the commentary (p. 372).
2 Logeman calls it in the new Norwegian orthography Utkast in spite of the usage
of Ibsen and the Efterladte Skrifter.
s Published by Koht and Elias in three volumes, 1909.
« Wrongly dated by Logeman 1908. His copy represents a second variety showing
some corrected mistakes, and it is not inconceivable that the date given may stand in
relation to this revision, though no record of it is found in the book-trade. The facts
about this edition should have been further cleared up. --W--
« Dated by Logeman 1914. It is of course the centennial year 1914 that the edition
was intended to celebrate, but according to the Dansk Bogfortegnelse for Aarene, 1909-
14, p. 152 (published hi 1916) the first three volumes of the Jubilceumsudgave actually
came out in 1913.
629] 181
182 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
the copy of edition 2 (1867) corrected by Ibsen for the printing of the third
edition (1874), which manuscript is now in the possession of the Christiania
University Library. From the various editions Logeman is able, without
making his list exhaustive, to show 391 readings of R that have been altered,
the number as a rule naturally increasing from edition to edition. One of
the most surprising results is the demonstration that Professor Johan Storm
of Christiania, who was entrusted with the revision of the text for the Min-
deudgave and who is a philologist of unquestioned distinction, proceeded in
this matter less as a philologist than as an Academy of Letters, and while
recognizing many errors, failed through philologically faulty method to detect
a number of others, and even introduced arbitrary changes. Of course
many of the alterations occurring in the different editions are minor ones of
spelling or punctuation which do not affect the sense; there are however a
surprisingly large number in which the original meaning of Ibsen is in greater
or less degree modified.
The commentary forms the major part of the book, pages 1-363 with
addenda, pages 465-68. The passages chosen for comment are numbered
in accordance with the lines of an edition once planned by the author, but
with references at the bottom of each page to the pagination of various edi-
tions. The passage is usually given in the Norwegian reading of the first
edition, followed by the English of the Archer translation.1 The commen-
tator finds the Archer translation fairly accurate, but criticizes it justly at
points. He also comments upon other translations in various languages,
showing on his own part a fine appreciation of the Norwegian original, with-
out which no one other than a Norwegian could be justified in attempting a
commentary. It should be added that he has drawn freely upon Norwegian
scholars for opinions upon uncertain points. The English of the commen-
tary, though fluent, would have profited by a revision, and the proofreading
was not all that could be desired, a fact covered by an apology of the author.
As to the matter of the commentary itself, the choice of passages for
comment and the direction that the comment takes is of course to some degree
governed by subjective considerations, and the two commentaries now
being prepared by Norwegians will, as the author suggests, probably not be
rendered entirely superfluous by his work. Nevertheless the comments
contain a wealth of valuable material with very little dross. The few follow-
ing points were noted which seem to contain errors or justify questions:
Pp. 16 f ., 1. 227. saltstrfid. The commentator shows here a tendency not
infrequently observable nowadays of overworking the folklore explanation.
However as he gives in a footnote the natural explanation offered by a corre-
spondent and leaves the reader liberty of choice, no serious offence can be
taken.
i Sometimes, as for example in the case of lines 436O-61 (p. 331), the translation is
omitted.
630
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 183
P. 17, in footnote; the Norwegian tiur is wrongly translated by "wood-
cock"; it should be "capercailzie" or "cock of the wood," a very different
bird.
P. 25, Capetown is a slip for Charlestown (i.e., Charleston).
P. 32, 1. 437, Signe Reisen. Why the commentator would make signe
an infinitive is not clear. It is surely a subjunctive, and the complete expres-
sion would be: Gud signe Re j sen! "(May) God bless your journey!" "A
happy journey to you!" Compare the common use of velsigne.
Pp. 47 f . Woerner's incorrect etymology of Solvejg is noted, but there is
no Old Norse vejg meaning "woman."1 The matter had already been dis-
cussed by the reviewer.2
Pp. 59 f ., 1. 702, Kommer drivende. With all recognition of the interesting
remarks on piskende Dtfd (1. 535) one finds it difficult to see their application
to the present case and is not entirely persuaded that drivende should not be
called a present participle.
P. 61, 1. 715, spytter i Hcertderne. That spitting on the hands is a folk-
loristic survival is perhaps not impossible, but such possibility certainly has
no bearing upon its occurrence in the poem itself.
P. 84, 1. 962, Aldrig skaljeg dig i Haaret trcekke. The translation should
have been corrected, as the expression does not mean "to drag one about
by the hair," but simply "to pull one's hair." In the same way in line 1527
(p. 86) Jeg skal slaa dig i Skallen does not mean "I'll split your skull open,"
but only "I'll hit you on the head." Compare line 3028.
P. 89, 1. 974. Peer's reference in his mother's ability to ride through
the rapidest river is of course to his carrying her across the river in the first act.
Pp. 212 f., 1. 2452, ab esse ad posse. The comment upon Peer's faultless
Latin is doubtless correct enough, so far as words and grammar are concerned,
but the commentator has failed to note that Peer has twisted his quotation,
as in other cases. Not only is a posse ad esse the familiar form, but it alone
gives the sense required, if the other indeed gives any sense at all. The
reviewer notes the use of this Latin expression in a philosophical article of
Heiberg,3 and is reminded that Logeman in his commentary has failed to
indicate sufficiently Ibsen's reaction to the philosophy of his day. Even
Begriffenfeldt he does not connect with Hegelianism specifically or German
philosophy more generally, in which he may be right, but the German in
general has already been personified in von Eberkopf .
P. 213, 1. 2461. In alluding to the influence of Oehlenschlager's Aladdin
the commentator omits reference to the literature upon the subject.4
1 Cf. P. J6nsson in revised edition of Egilsson's Lexicon Poeticum, 602, 1916.^
2 Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil., XVI, 67, 1917.
3 Prosaiske Skrifter, II, 56: a posse ad esse valet consequentia (published 1857).
< Cf. Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil., XV, 51 flf., 1916 and the literature there cited.
631
184 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
P. 217, 1. 2567, Saa kanst dufaa. The translation "Then of course you
must get one" should be corrected to "Then you can get one," i.e., "I am
ready to furnish you one," as is clear from the following lines.
P. 218, 1. 2579, Profeten er god. The statement that the nominative
is here used as a vocative is perhaps not the best way of putting it. It is
used entirely as a nominative, in that the expression is in the third person,
not the second.
P. 250, 1. 3034. "This play, otherwise too much imbused with stiff
Dano-Norwegian " is a point upon which there may be two opinions. Prob-
ably the statement is stronger than the commentator intended. One is
irresistibly reminded of von Eberkopfs comment on the French language:
Ej wass! Det Sprog er og saa stivt."
P. 345, 1. 4496, De flestes Seen ins Blaue slutter i Stfibeskeen. It is not
fully clear why comment is denied this passage.
Finally, casual test of the Index (pp. 477-84) shows that it is not as com-
plete as desirable and that references to lines here and in other parts of the
book have not been checked up to absolute correspondence.
A. LEROY ANDREWS
CORNELL UNIVERSITY
632
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV March IQl8 NUMBER 1 1
THE FIRST TWO READERS OF PETRARCH'S
TALE OF GRISELDA
The letter which Petrarch wrote to Boccaccio on June 8,1 1374,2
only a few weeks before his own death, describes the effect produced
by the reading of the tale of Griselda upon two friends- of Petrarch's,
one a Paduan and the other a Veronese. As translated by Professor
Robinson,3 this part of the letter (Opera, 1581, p. 546) runs:
In the first place, I gave it to one of our mutual friends in Padua to read,
a man of excellent parts and wide attainments. When scarcely halfway
through the composition, he was suddenly arrested by a burst of tears.
When again, after a short pause, he made a manful attempt to continue, he
was again interrupted by a sob. He then realized that he could go no farther
himself, and handed the story to one of his companions, a man of education,
to finish. How others may view the occurrence I cannot, of course, say;
for myself, I put a most favorable construction upon it, believing that I
recognize the indications of a most compassionate disposition; a more kindly
nature, indeed, I never remember to have met. As I saw him weep as he
read, the words of the Satirist came back to me:
Nature, who gave us tears, by that alone
Proclaims she made the feeling heart our own;
And 't is our noblest sense.
— Juvenal xv. 131 (Gifford's translation)
1 VI Idus Junius. Mather renders as June 10.
* Of. Mather, in Mod. Lang. Notes, XII (1897), Iff. For confirmation of this date,
see De Sade, Memoires, III, 797; Blanc, in Ersch und Gruber, Allg. Encyc., Ill, 19, 242;
Baldelli, Del Petrarca (1797), p. 320; Bromly, in Athenceum, Nov. 19, 1898; Pracassetti,
in Lettere .... delle Cose Familiari, III, 21. Robinson and Rolfe inadvertently assign
the whole letter to 1373.
3 Robinson and Rolfe, Petrarch, pp. 195-96.
129 [MoDEBN PHILOLOGY, March, 1918
130 ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
Some time after, another friend of ours, from Verona (for all is common
between us, even our friends), having heard of the effect produced by the
story in the first instance, wished to read it for himself. I readily complied,
as he was not only a good friend, but a man of ability. He read the narrative
from beginning to end, without stopping once. Neither his face nor his
voice betrayed the least emotion, not a tear or a sob escaped him. "I too,"
he said at the end, "would have wept, for the subject certainly excites pity,
and the style is well adapted to call forth tears, and I am not hard-hearted;
but I believed, and still believe, that this is all an invention."
Who were these two men, upon whom the tale produced such
very different effects? This question, so far as I am aware, has
never been mooted.
The Paduan was, it appears: (1) an intimate of Petrarch's;
(2) a friend also of Boccaccio's; (3) a man of sensibility; (4) of rank
such as to be attended by a suite.1
With what Paduan of high rank, brilliant parts, extensive knowl-
edge, and compassionate disposition, a friend, too, of Boccaccio's, was
Petrarch intimately enough acquainted to furnish the occasion for
this incident ?
Only one man, I believe, fulfils all these conditions, and that is
Francesco da Carrara, Lord of Padua, known in later times as
Francesco il Vecchio, because his son, also named Francesco (No-
vello, or Junior), was Lord of Padua from June to November, 1388,
upon his father's abdication.
1. That Francesco da Carrara was an intimate of Petrarch's is
shown by the following facts:
a) His father, Giacomo da Carrara (Lord of Padua 1345-50)
was much attached to Petrarch,2 who repaid him with the utmost
gratitude and esteem, and composed his epitaph3 after his assassina-
tion on December 21, 1350.
6) Francesco frequently visited Petrarch at Arqua.4
1 This I infer from the Latin : "Earn uni suorum comitum, docto satis viro, legendam
tradidit." Here the word comes, especially as used in the plural, suggests, in contrast
with, say, sodalia, a member of a retinue. Then, whatever the precise sense that one
attributes to satis, it is evident that Petrarch, in his "docto satis viro," intimates a degree
of inferiority to the "vir altissimi ingenii, multiplicisque notitiae" (cf. "vir ingentis
sapientiae," below, p. 131, note 5).
2 Cf. Fam. xi. 2, 3; Letter to Posterity (cf. Robinson and Rolfe, pp. 74-75); Sen. x. 2,
for which see Pracassetti, op. cit., II, 86.
» See Fracassetti, III, 33.
* For. 31; Pracassetti, V, 320; cf. Ill, 26; Verci, Storia della Marca Trivigiana, XIV,
148; Cittadella, Storia della Dominazione Carrarese, I, 284-85.
634
PETRARCH'S TALE OF GRISELDA 131
c) On Petrarch's return from Pavia in July, 1368, Francesco came
to the gate of the city to meet him, sent his servants to Petrarch's
home with gifts, and went himself in the evening with his suite to
visit him, stayed to supper, and afterward conversed with Petrarch
till bedtime (Sen. xi. 2: Opera, 1581, p. 883).1
d) Petrarch's last public act was to accompany Francesco Novello
to Venice, and there speak (October 3, 1373) before the senate, when
the heir to the dominion of Padua proffered his father's apologies at
the conclusion of the war between the two states. This was at the
particular request of Francesco, the father.2
e) In his will, dated April 4, 1370, Petrarch bequeathed to
Francesco a picture of the Virgin by Giotto, saying he possessed
nothing worthy of him.
/) Petrarch addressed to Francesco his treatise, De republica
optime administranda,3 which begins with praises of the prince.
g) Petrarch dedicated to Francesco his De viris illustribus.*
h) Francesco, according to Petrarch, loved him as a son,6 just
as Francesco's father had loved him as a brother.6
1 "Cum paucls ad me veniens, ac coenanti adsidens, et post coenam illic inter libros
in noctem usque concubiam comitatus confabulationibus colloquiisque gratissimis."
2 Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, XIX, 751; Verci, XIV, 231-32; Cittadella, I, 337;
Pulin, in Petrarca e Venezia (Venice, 1874), pp. 310-27; Korting, Petrarca's Leben und
Werke, p. 444; Pracassetti, Lettere .... delle Cose Familiarii, I, 180; III, 26.
« Opera, 1581, pp. 372-86.
4 Edited by Razzolini (Bologna, 1874-79). For the dedication, see Korting, op. cit.,
p. 594, and compare Nolhac, Petrarque et I'Humanisme, 2d ed., p. 4: "Les bienfaits
qu'il recut de Frangois de Carrare, vers la fln de sa vie, le de"cid6rent. Le seigneur de
Padoue 6tait digne de cet honneur par I'inte'ret sincere qu'il portait aux lettres et &
1' AntiquitS, ce qui recommande sa mSmoire comme celle d 'un des premiers princes de la
Renaissance."
5 Sen. xv. 5 (Opera, 1581, p. 938), written in 1373: "Locorum dominus, vir ingentis
sapientiae, non me ut dominus, sed ut fllius diligit atque honorat, et per seipsum sic
affectus, et magnanimi patris memor, qui me dilexit ut fratrem."
• The relative ages of Petrarch and the two Carraras can only be approximately
ascertained. According to Litta (Famiglie Celebri Italiane, II, Milan, 1825), Giacomo,
the father, was married twice, in 1318 and 1341, and Francesco in 1345, Francesco
Novello being born May 19, 1359 (Brown, Studies in the History of Venice, I, 128, says
1352) . Since Petrarch was born in 1304, Giacomo must have been somewhat older, for,
although marriages were then often contracted at an early age (Novello was married at
twenty to a bride of fourteen, see p. 137) , yet we can hardly suppose Giacomo to have been
married at fourteen (he was accounted old before his death in 1393; see R.I.S., XVII, 814).
Francesco cannot have been born before 1319, and was of an age to marry ffi 1345. If
we suppose him to have been born in 1325, he would have been old enough to marry in
1345, and young enough for Petrarch to regard him as a son, since there would have been
twenty-one years between their ages.
635
132
ALBEBT STANBURROUGH COOK
i) Francesco was something of a poet himself, and may have
been indebted to Petrarch in the composition or polishing of his
verses,1 though his capitoli on the loss and recovery of Padua, the
only specimens of his poetry preserved to us, were written in Novem-
ber, 1389, more than fifteen years after Petrarch's death.2
j) Francesco attended the funeral of Petrarch3 at Arqua (a
dozen miles from Padua), where every honor was shown to the dead
poet.4
* Of. Pracassetti, III, 26; Lami, Deliciae Eruditorum, XIV, xii; Cittadella, I, 469-70.
2 The following account of a journey by Francesco Novello from Piedmont over the
Mont Cenis to the abbey of St. Antoine, seven and one-half miles northwest of St.
Marcellin, near the IsSre, between Grenoble and Valence, affords a fair specimen of his
father's poetic merits. The description of the journey and of Savoy may be compared
with The Last Months of Chaucer's Earliest Patron (Trans. Conn. Acad. of Arts and
Sciences, XXI, 42). It will be noticed that line 15 contains an allusion (I' ultima sera)
to Dante, Purg., Bk. 1, 58. The extract is from Lami, Delicice Eruditorum, XVI, xvii-
xix of this part:
Prese comiato, uscl fuor della porta,
Per uscir fuor del Piamonte paese,
Ver Mon Caler prese la via piil corta.
Camminando arrivS nel Savogiese,
E qui ne Iicenzi6 la scorta fida,
E'n verso suso montd in Mon Senese.
O beat! color, che in Dio si flda,
E che gli son divoti e riverenti,
E cheT disidran per lor scorta e guida.
Salendo il monte sentiva gran venti,
Ma tanto and6, che giunse alia Ferrera,
Ove per freddo gli batteva i denti.
E io, el ver dir6, cosi m'avera.
Che io v' ebbi si gran freddo d'Agosto,
Ch' iq mi pensai sentir 1'ultima sera.
E quella ritornando al suo proposto
Disse, Qui si conviene aver brigata
Per poter trapassar 1'Alpe piil tosto.
Che gli era tanto il ghiaccio e la gelata,
Che non si cognoscea vie nS sentiere,
Siccome tu vedesti altra flata.
Passando Mon Senese, poi mestiere
Fu di pigliar la via verso quel Santo,
Ch' 6 presso a tre giornate [a quel quartiere?]
Ma qui mi piacque riposare alquanto,
E lassar gir zoso [giuso] volse 1'Acquabella,
Che'l terreno e sicuro in ogni canto.
Del Savoin paese si novella,
Aver la gente sua tanto piacevole,
Che pochi luoghi trovo par di quella.
E la contrada 6 tanto diletteyole,
E ubertosa di campi e di broli,
E d'uliyi e di vigne ben fruttevole.
Quivi 6 ogni diletto, che tu vuoli,
Come di pesci, uccelli, o di cacciare,
E orsi, e cervi, e daini, e cavriuoli.
Per que', che iq mi possa ricordare,
Tanta iustizia trovai in quel paese,
Ch' ognun sicuramente vi pud andare.
a R.I.S., XVII, 213-14; Cittadella, 1,351; cf. my article in Romanic Review,
VIII, 222-24.
4 A large part of Petrarch's books passed, after his death, into the possession of
Francesco (Nolhac, 1, 99, who says this was due to his love of antiquity and his respect for
the poet). On the friendship of Petrarch and Francesco, see, in general, Cittadella, I,
284-86; Korting, pp. 433-34; Calthrop, Petrarch, p. 292. Lami, Delicice Eruditorum,
XIV, prints a poem by Zenone da Pistoia on the death of Petrarch, written the same year,
1374; this contains various references to the friendship between Petrarch and Francesco
da Carrara, for which see pp. x-xii.
PETRARCH'S TALE OF GRISELDA 133
2. It cannot be proved that Boccaccio was a friend of Francesco
da Carrara, but that he had had the opportunity to meet him is
rendered very probable by the fact that he was in Padua with
Petrarch on two different occasions, in 1351 and 1368 — the first time
when Francesco, with his uncle Giacomino (Jacopino), had but
recently (December 22, 1350) succeeded to his father; the second, less
than six years before Petrarch wrote to him in 1374. The first of
these visits was to bring the letter from the Florentine government
inviting Petrarch to return as professor to that city. Boccaccio
appears to have arrived early in April, 1351, and to have spent several
days with Petrarch,1 in occupations which Boccaccio described in a
letter of July 18, 1353. 2 Concerning the visit of 1368, we learn from
a letter of Petrarch's (Sen. x. 5), written on October 3, that Boccaccio
had left Padua, and, from another to the same friend shortly before
(Sen. x. 4), that Boccaccio was then with him. As Petrarch had not
returned to Padua from Pavia till July 19,3 it is evident that Boccaccio
must have arrived after this date. We thus know that Francesco
was in Padua on July 19, and that he was there on October 28,4 and
we have no reason to think he was absent between those dates;
hence on this occasion, too, Boccaccio may well have met him.
3. Francesco's sensibility is authenticated by Petrarch in his
treatise, On the Best Method of Administering a State, addressed, as
we have seen, to that ruler. Discoursing on the means by which a
prince may gain the affection of his subjects, after laying down certain
general principles, he adds:5 "But there are other means of winning
love, slighter, indeed, but effectual; I grant that they are hard for
arrogant rulers, but they are easy and pleasant for a soul inclined to
humanity. They are these — to pity, to console, to visit, to encour-
age. In these arts no one is your superior. Employ them whenever
* Fracassetti, III, 40, 43.
'Corazzini, Lettere (Florence, 1877), pp. 391-94; Korting, Boccaccio's Leben und
Werke, p. 192.
» See my paper, The Last Months of Chaucer's Earliest Patron (Trans. Conn. Acad. of
Arts and Sciences, XXI, p. 84).
* Verci, XIV, Documents, pp. 30-31.
5 Opera, 1581, pp. 379-80: " Sunt et alia leviora ad captandum amorenj. tamen effi-
cacia; superbis fateor dura principibus, sed, ubi se ad humanitatem animus inclinavit, et
facilia et jucunda. Ea vero sunt huiusmodi — compati, consolari, visitare, alloqui
Et harum quoque artium nullus abundantior est quam tu. Illis utere; naturamque tuam
sequere; sic optato provenient uni versa."
637
134 ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
possible. By thus following your own nature, you will find every-
thing give way to your desires."
It is true that Francesco imprisoned his uncle Giacomino in
1355, and kept him in captivity till his death in 1372; but it was after
he had compassed Francesco's death by poison, as was clearly proved
by the confession of his accomplice and agent, and the discovery of
the poison.1
It is true that, on August 28, 1373, a certain Zaccaria da Modena
was judicially condemned to be drawn by his feet at the tail of an ass
round the public square of Padua, and thence to the cemetery, where
he was to be beheaded; and this was so done.2 On January 23, 1374,
by order of the court, Alvise and Filippo Forzate, Francesco's uncles,
were publicly beheaded.3 But Zaccaria was proved to be an agent
of Francesco's brother, Marsilio, who was taking measures, with the
aid of the Venetian government, to dispossess Francesco of his
sovereignty; and the two latter were conspirators for the assassina-
tion of Francesco.4 Cittadella (p. 343) blames him for his clemency
on this latter occasion, since he only sentenced to imprisonment for
life, instead of to death, his own brother, Niccold, and his illegitimate
half-brother, Bonifacio, Abbot of Praglia, "non volendo il Signore
bruttarsi le mani nel sangue suo."5
As to the affection and confidence displayed toward Francesco
in the height of his war with Venice (1372), we are told (Cittadella, I,
317): "Neither did the asperities of the war turn the hearts of the
1 R.I.S., XVII, 41-44. Cittadella's reflections are (I, 234-35, cf. I, 467) : "More to
be wondered at is the moderation of Francesco, who, naturally ambitious, accustomed to
the sudden violence of war, and threatened in his rule and in his life, was able to conquer
his own natural propensities and content himself with a judicial punishment,
without resorting to private vengeance. He is the more commendable because he was
surrounded with examples of bloody reprisals — a warrior truly magnanimous, who was
willing to stain the field of battle with the blood of his enemies, but not the scaffold with
that of a citizen and a relative." A modern writer on Italy has said (Hey wood, Palio and
Ponte, London [1904], p. 153): "The vendetta was as much a duty as in the days when
Dante was ashamed to look upon the face of Geri del Bello, feeling himself a sharer in his
shame. Even at their mothers' knees, children were taught the sacred obligations of
revenge."
2 R.I.S., XVII, 189.
a R.I.S., XVII, 207.
* See Cittadella, I, 331-33. 340-34.
* R.I.S., XVII, 206. His own brother, Marsilio, was to receive 15,000 golden
ducats a year from Venice if the conspiracy had succeeded (see the written promise by
the Doge Andrea Contarini in Cittadella, 1, 472-73) . For Petrarch's reflections upon the
conspiracy, see Sen. xiv. 1 (Opera, 1581, pp. 931-92).
638
PETRARCH'S TALE OF GBISELDA 135
citizens against Carrara; rather was he so loved that all classes
spontaneously offered their money to provide for his needs, and the
physicians, with the same hand which they stretched out for the relief
of the sick, lavished their gold to restore the strength of the harassed
city Blessings on the prince whose rule represents, in the
eyes of his subjects, the public weal."
Concerning the Veronese we may reasonably infer: (1) that he
was of station not inferior to Petrarch, and probably of similar rank
to the Paduan; (2) that he sometimes visited Padua; (3) that
Boccaccio was not personally acquainted with him; (4) that he was
harder-hearted, or perhaps harder-headed, than the Paduan.
1. Petrarch, except rarely and for special reasons, mentions in his
letters only persons of his own condition — poets, scholars, clericals —
or men of distinctly higher rank — princes, cardinals, and the like.
Since he speaks of the Veronese as a friend, he presumably belonged
to one of these classes. The Veronese friends whose names occur
in Petrarch's pages are Guglielmo di Pastrengo, Rinaldo da Villa-
franca, of the first class, and Mastino II della Scala and Azzo di
Correggio, of the second. Of all these, we know that Azzo had died
in 1362, Mastino in 1351, Pastrengo before 1370 (probably), while the
date of Rinaldo da Villafranca's death is uncertain, though not
earlier, it is believed, than 1358. l We have no need, then, I shall
assume, to reckon with any of these; and Petrarch is scarcely likely
to have acquired new friends of his own station in more recent years.
It is therefore natural to consider whom he might have known of
higher rank. The man who at that time ruled Verona was Can
Signorio della Scala (ruled 1359-75). Our reasons for considering
it likely that he is the Veronese in question are these :
a) Petrarch had known his father, Mastino, to whom he had
addressed a Latin poetical epistle,2 and who had perhaps urged him
to make a considerable visit in Verona in May, 135 13 — apparently
the last time he was in that city.
6) In 1352 a canonry was bestowed upon Petrarch's son, Gio-
vanni, probably by Can Signorio's brother, Can (Jrande II
1 Of. Fracassetti, II, 443; III, 8, 47, 204; V, 344.
2 Opera, 1581, III, 86. » Fracassetti, III, 8, 47.
136 ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
(d. December 13, 1359) . This having been forfeited in 1354, at which
time Petrarch himself seems to have fallen into disgrace with Can
Grande,1 was restored by Can Signorio in 1361, and Petrarch was
taken back to favor.2 Petrarch could therefore from this time on
consider Can Signorio as a friend.
c) The interest felt by Can Signorio in the arts is shown by his
erection of the Clock Tower on the Piazza del Mercato (now Piazza
delle Erbe ?) ; of a tower in the Adige near the stone Ponte delle
Navi, destroyed by a freshet in 1757; of the wall formerly sur-
rounding the precinct of the Palazzo del Capitano; of the Gardello
tower (according to Verci, in the Piazza dei Signori; perhaps con-
founded by Baedeker with the Clock Tower), but especially by his
tomb,3 the most conspicuous4 among those of the Scaligers, con-
structed by Bonino da Campione during Can Signorio's lifetime. His
interest in literature can only be conjectured.
2. Whether Can Signorio was likely to have visited Padua in
1373 or 1374 would depend largely upon his relations with Francesco
da Carrara, since the distance between Verona and Padua by the
indirect railway route is not fifty miles, and from Vicenza, another of
Can Signorio's possessions, to Padua, is less than twenty miles. From
1365 to 1369 Can Signorio had been more or less actively in league
with Francesco's enemies.5 Even in March, 1372, he received a
i Fracassetti, II, 258, 441.
« Pracassetti, V, 344; II, 442; cf. Opera, 1581, p. 1023.
» Cf. Verci, VII, 112. Elsewhere (XIV, 143-44) Verci tells of the great bell that he
caused to be placed on the Clock Tower; of the retaining wall built along the Adigetto
from the Portoni della Bra, in the heart of the city, to the Adige, with the cellars along it,
to serve at need as granaries; and of how, by his own efforts and their influence upon
others, he transformed and beautified his city of Vicenza.
4 See Ruskin, Stones of Venice, III, chap, ii: "The stateliest and most sumptuous of
the three; it first arrests the eye of the stranger, and long detains it — a many-pinnacled
pile surrounded by niches with statues of the warrior saints. It is beautiful, for it still
belongs to the noble time, the latter part of the fourteenth century ; but .... its pride
may well prepare us to learn that it was built for himself, in his own lifetime, by the man
whose statue crowns it, Can Signorio della Scala. .... Can Signorio was twice a fratri-
cide, the last time when he lay upon his death-bed; his tomb bears upon its gables the
images of six virtues — Faith, Hope, Charity, Prudence, and (I believe) Justice and
Fortitude."
6 Verci, XIV, 76, 81, 84, 86, 95, 98, 99, 104, 111, 113, 118, 127; Cittadella, I, 277, 281,
283. Much earlier, in December, 1359, he had taken refuge in Padua (Verci, VII, 110)
after his assassination of Can Grande II (see below, p. 138). He was own nephew to
Francesco da Carrara, since his father had married Francesco's sister, Taddea, in 1328
(Verci VII, 91).
640
PETRARCH'S TALE OF GRISELDA 137
large sum from Venice, then preparing war against Padua, on con-
dition that the Republic might raise troops in his territories.1 But
by May, 1372, Can Signorio had seen a new light. To an embassy
from Francesco, inquiring as to his intentions, he declared that he
would not take sides, but nevertheless would be friendly to Fran-
cesco.2 This was at the end of May, and about the same time he
sent ambassadors to Louis, King of Hungary, Francesco's ally, to
put all his means and power at the disposal of the king.3 Early in
June the Veronese applied to Venice for salt, but were refused, where-
upon Francesco offered to let them have all they wanted for five
years;4 this evidently conciliated Can Signorio, for in July he replied
to a Hungarian embassy that he would always be obedient to Louis,
and serviceable to Francesco.5 It is significant that the dukes of
Bavaria and Austria, having made impossible demands of Can Sig-
norio as a pretext for attacking him, were met with an unqualified
refusal from Francesco in October, 1372, when they sought permission
from him to conduct their invading troops through the pass of Valsu-
gana, since, as he declared, there was good and firm friendship
between Can Signorio and himself.6 Can Signorio, it is true, took no
active part in the war7 — he loved building rather than fighting8 —
and we are told that Zaccaria da Modena9 endeavored to have him
transmit a letter of his to the Venetian government;10 but there is no
proof that the Lord of Verona was privy to its contents.
The relations between Can Signorio and Francesco must have
grown increasingly intimate during these latter years, for on August
20, 1375,11 a contract of marriage was drawn up in the former's
palace at Verona between Francesco Novello and Taddea, daughter
of Niccol6 II, Marquis of Este, Ferrara, and Modena (1361-88).
R.I.S., XVII, 70, 72; Verci, XIV, 159; Cittadella, I, 310.
R.I. 8., XVII, 73-74.
R,I.S., XVII, 87-88; Verci, XIV, 172; Cittadella, I, 309.
R.I.S., XVII, 89-90; Verci, XIV, 172; Cittadella, I, 309.
R.I.S., XVII, 93. 96.
R.I.S., XVII, 108.
Verci, XIV, 208.
s Cf. p. 136, and note 3. 0
• See p. 134.
"> R.I.S., XVII, 188; Verci, XIV, 223.
" The marriage itself did not take place till May 31, 1379.
641
138 ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
Niccolo had married Can Signorio's sister Verde on May 19, 1362, *
and Taddea (b. 1365) was the fruit of this union. In relation to the
contract, Can Signorio not only acted as the maternal uncle of the
bride, but also as the representative of her father.2 There can be no
question, then, that the projected marriage was entirely agreeable to
the former, and this argues great friendliness at this time between
himself and Francesco da Carrara.
That Can Signorio, his junior by perhaps fifteen years, might have
visited Francesco at some time between the spring of 1373 and that
of 1374, will, then, surprise no one.
3. Seeing that Boccaccio did not meet Petrarch till October, 1350,
that he visited the latter at Padua in the spring of 1351, and that
Petrarch was probably not in Verona after June, 135 1,3 he could not
have visited Petrarch there; nor have we reason to suppose that he
had any opportunity of meeting Can Signorio through any other
agency than that of Petrarch.
We are now in a position to understand better Petrarch's polite
phraseology, when he refers to Can Signorio as a " friend of ours"
(amicus noster), and then immediately adds, "for all is common
between us, even our friends" (sunt enim nobis, ut reliqua, sic amid
etiam communes). The explanation sufficiently shows that Can
Signorio was not the " common friend" that we have reason to
suppose Francesco da Carrara to have been.
4. That Can Signorio was harder-hearted than Francesco da
Carrara may be inferred from his slaying of his elder brother, Can
1 Verci, XIV, 25; VII, 106.
2 See Miscellanea di Storia Veneta (ed. R. Dep. Veneta di Storia Patria), II, 9 (1903),
158-61. It is worth noting that Francesco, Niccold, and Can Signorio had been leagued
together as early as 1362 (Verci, XIV, 27; Cittadella, I, 260). On February 9, 1371,
Francesco orders the Podesta of Belluno to collect as many live kids as possible, and
send them to Padua for a gift to NiccolS, who, on his journey back with Francesco and
Petrarch from the funeral of Urban V in Bologna on January 3 (if we may trust Verci,
XIV, 150; Documenti, pp. 70-71), had expressed a wish for them.
There was cordial friendship between Niccold and Petrarch. In April, 1370, Petrarch
set out from Padua for Rome, but, on arriving at Ferrara, fell into a swoon, and was
actually regarded as dead, but finally recovered. On this occasion he experienced great
kindness from Niccold (Sen. xiii. 17; Opera, 1581, p. 896). We have two letters from
the poet to him, one dissuading him from taking part in tournaments (Sen. xi. 13), and
another of consolation (Sen. xiii. 1).
» Fracassetti, I, 179; V, 539. Boccaccio may possibly have passed through Verona
in December, 1351, on his way to the Tyrol, or in February, 1352, on his return journey
(Korting, Boccaccio's Leben und Werke, pp. 193-95, 275) ; but Petrarch had left there in
June, 1351, never to return (Fam. xi. 6, 7; Fracassetti, III, 8).
642
PETRARCH'S TALE OF GRISELDA 139
Grande II, in 1359, * from his imprisonment of another brother, Paolo
Alboino, joint ruler with himself, in 1365, and his murdering of the
latter in 1375.2 The chronicler, Andrea Gataro, tells us that, feeling
himself sick unto death, Can Signorio wrote to Francesco da Carrara,
asking him whether he would advise that the lordship of Verona be
left to the legitimate heir, Paolo Alboino, or to his own bastard sons,
Bartolomeo and Antonio. Francesco replied that by leaving Verona
to his brother, he would acquire great honor in this world, and glory
in the next, and that, by way of compensation, he could leave
Vicenza, and others of his possessions, to his sons. Thereupon Can
Signorio instantly summoned four trusty henchmen, and thus com-
manded them: "Go at once to Peschiera, where you will find my
brother, Paolo Alboino, and slay him; do this, and I will make you
all rich, seeing that my object is to leave my sons lords." On their
return, the murderers reported that they had obeyed his orders.
"Then," said he, "I shall die content," proceeded to make his will,
and three days later, to die, October 19, 1375, at the age of thirty-five.3
If the foregoing identifications are accepted, they will serve at
once to throw a little additional light upon two famous Italian rulers
of the later fourteenth century, and at the same time to illustrate how
their respective reactions, upon the reading of the story, corresponded
to their historical characters — Francesco yielding to the sweetness of
Griselda's nature, and Can Signorio refusing to believe that such a
nature was possible.
ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK
YALE UNIVERSITY
* Verci, VII, 108. 2 Verci, VII, 113.
s R.I.S., XVII, 216. Verci (VII, 110, 111) calls him malevolent, treacherous,
abominable (cattivo, traditore, scellerato). Suspecting a conspiracy against himself in
1365, he had many people of consequence slain, and shortly after imposed new and oppres-
sive taxes, and seized for his own use the revenues of various ecclesiastical benefices in
Verona and Vicenza (Verci, VII, 111). He had caused his sons to be proclaimed as his
successors on October 15, 1375 (Verci, VII, 114), the day before he sent assassins to Paolo
Alboino. They came to no good ends: Bartolomeo (b. 1360) was assassinated by his
brother's orders on July 12, 1381, and Antonio (b. 1362) was expelled from his dominions
by Gian Galeazzo Visconti on October 18, 1387, dying in exile September 3, 1388, perhaps
of poison (Verci, VII, 114-16). With him ended the rule of the Scaligers, his son, Can
Francesco, being poisoned at Ravenna a few years later by order of Gian Galeazzo
(Verci, VII, 116). 0.
643
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Balzac remarks disparagingly of his native city, Tours, where
the best French is spoken, that it was one of the least literary cities
in France.1 In like manner Guy de Maupassant, acclaimed as the
master of a perfect French prose style, was to an astonishing degree
unversed in literature. "No mind was less bookish," observes M.
Faguet. "When he published at the beginning of Pierre et Jean,
perhaps in order to enlarge the volume, a brief critical study, he
proved nothing except that he had read nothing."2 Amid the
Sunday afternoon discussions at the house of Flaubert, and at the
famous "jeudis" of Zola, Maupassant was taciturn, and made the
impression of a brawny athlete with little interest in writing. More
than one person who met this "taureau triste"3 — as Taine called him
familiarly — before his reputation was established, was astonished
to learn later of his ability as a writer. "II n'aimait point a parler
litte*rature," was his excuse.4
In this way that vision directe, unobscured by the medium of
books, which the Goncourt brothers had heralded, Guy de Mau-
passant actually possessed.5 Such a perfect realist did he thus
become that, to quote M. Faguet again, "le lecteur ne sait pas, et
c'est ce qu'il faut, quand il lit Maupassant, si c'est de Tart de Mau-
passant, ou seulement de la verite*, qu'il a le gout."6
We may confidently expect, therefore, that any important liter-
ary influence upon Maupassant will be exerted by means of oral
1 Le Cure de Tours, in (Euvres de Balzac (Calmann Levy ed. [1892]), p. 193. In his
correspondence Balzac usually speaks of Touraine in terms of deepest affection.
2 timilfl Paguet, in Revue Bleue, LII (July 15, 1893).
a Victor Giraud, Essai sur Taine (5« ed.; Paris, 1912), p. 106, n. 3.
4 Letter of iMouard Rod to Monsieur le baron A. Lumbroso, October 6, 1904 (A. Lum-
broso, Souvenirs sur Maupassant [1905], p. 374). Ren6 Doumic, in Revue des Deux Mondes,
CXX (1893), 194, says: "Tout ce qui est d'ordre intellectuel, ceuvre ou conquSte de
1'esprit, lui echappe. Et comme il arrive, ce qu'il ne comprend pas, il le nie. . . . Et
quand Rodolphe de Salins continue exposant ses theories sur la destinee humaine, a
savoir que la pensee est dans la creation un accident a jamais regrettable, et que la terre a
6t6 faite pour les animaux non pour les homines, d6cid6ment par sa bouche c'est Mau-
passant qui parle." ^ •..
BE. Maynial, "La Composition dans les romans de Maupassant," in Revue Bleue
LXXII (October 31, 1903), 563. See Edmond et Jules de Goncourt, Prefaces et manifestes
litteraires (Paris, 1880), p. 13.
• E. Paguet, loc. tit.
645] 141 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, March, 1918
142 OLIN H. MOORE
transmission, so familiar in the history of the primitive ballad and
folk-tale. To Alfred de Musset he is indebted hardly more than for
the inspiration of juvenile madrigals and sonnets composed at the
lycee of Rouen.1 Possibly also traces of that quality, which Professor
Irving Babbitt calls "the Romantic art of impassioned recollection,"
which was so prominent a characteristic of Musset, may be discovered
in the works of both Flaubert and his pupil, Maupassant. At the
conclusion of the Education sentimentale, Fre*de"ric remarks: "C'est
la ce que nous avons eu de meilleur!" Deslaurier replies, in similar
reminiscent vein, "Oui, peut-etre bien? C'est la ce que nous
avons eu de meilleur!" In L'fipave, Maupassant concludes with a
sob as the memory of the former beauty of the heroine comes back
to him: "Ah! celle d'autrefois . . . celle de 1'epave . . . quelle
creature . . . divine!"2 In Regret, Monsieur Saval weeps as he
thinks of the happiness which was once in his reach and which he had
failed to grasp.3
Despite these resemblances, it is safe to assert that Maupassant's
indebtedness to Musset was not excessive. His imitation of Edgar
Allan Poe was slighter still and has been overestimated by a few
writers. Notwithstanding the protestations of Mme de Maupassant,
most critics are disposed to accept as conclusive the argument that
stories like Le Horla, so far from having any foreign origin, are merely
the faithful journal of an author whose reason was tottering.4 Where
Maupassant's imitation of Poe seems perfectly clear is in an unedited
story called Le Tic. Instead of describing the father and daughter,
about whom the narrative revolves, Maupassant says simply:
" Us me firent Peffet, tout de suite, de personnages d' Edgar Poe. . . ."
Then follows a tale of the daughter's rescue from the grave, quite in
the manner of the Premature Burial and the Fall of the House of Usher*
' *E. Maynlal, La Vie et I'ceuvre de Guy de Maupassant (Paris, 1907), p. 82.
2 L'fipave, in La Petite Rogue, p. 92. The Louis Conard edition (1908-1910) has
been used for references to Maupassant's works.
8 Regret, hi Miss Harriet, pp. 259 flf.
4 E. Maynial, op. cit., pp. 248-251. See Henry James in Fortnightly Review, XLIX
(1888), 376: ". . . . These last things range from Le Horla (which is not a specimen of
the author's best vein — the only occasion on which he has the weakness of imitation is
when he strikes us as emulating Edgar Poe) " To parody the language of the
late Mr. James, this very inaccurate statement is certainly not a specimen of the critic's
best vein.
« Le Tic, (Euvres Posthumes, I, 227-234.
646
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 143
This story affords apparently the one instance where Maupassant
mentions Poe. A more significant influence upon Maupassant,
exerted of course through the medium of books, is that of Balzac.
As Maupassant remarks, speaking for his realistic brethren, it is
"Balzac que nous citons tous, quelles que soient nos tendances,
parce que son esprit est aussi varie* qu'e*tendu. . . ,'n
Despite the usual opinion of critics that the direct influence of
Balzac upon Maupassant was slight, the two authors clearly had
much in common. If we have M. Faguet's authority that Maupas-
sant read nothing at all, we also have his authority that Balzac read
no other author than Walter Scott. It is not surprising, then, that
Maupassant had Balzac^ passion for observing life at first hand, for
recording his impressions in carefully taken notes, for a realism
Which was the farthest possible remove from the classical copying of
Virgil and other "perfect" models. On the other hand, if Balzac
was classical in his exclusive study of man, and all that pertains to
mankind, Maupassant flaunted the classical motto of Terence:
" Je tache que rien de ce qui touche les hommes ne me soit etranger."2
Furthermore, if Taine finds the Comedie humaine a vast study of
humanity from the zoological point of view, the works of Maupassant
lay no less emphasis upon the animalism of man. There is even in
the Contes and in the Nouvelles far more of the lingering Romanticism
of Balzac than is commonly supposed.
Occasionally it is not difficult to discover resemblances of detail
between the writers. Bel-Ami has been recognized as a modernized
Lucien de Rubempre. It seems to me also that Balzac's story entitled
Adieu3 may well have furnished Maupassant with a suggestion for
his conte entitled Berthed Adieu concerns a girl named Stephanie,
reduced to insanity, who finds as a companion Genevi&ve, an idiotic
peasant girl. Genevieve had been loved by a mason named Ballot,
who married her for her dowry. For a time she was extremely
happy, for love had awakened in her heart a great response. Then
Dallot deserted her for another girl who possessed two quarters of
1 Reponse d M. Albert Wolff, in Mile Fifi, p. 284.
2 Reponse d M. Wolff, op. cit., p. 283. 0 '.
8 (Euvres Completes (Calmann L6vy ed. [1892]), in volume entitled Louis Lambert,
p. 234.
« In volume entitled Yvette, pp. 251-269.
647
144 OLIN H. MOORE
land more than she, and Genevi&ve lost what little intelligence love
had developed in her. Maupassant's Berthe concerns an idiot girl
with a fair dowry who is greatly benefited by marriage and declines
immediately after she is deserted by her husband.
Often the influence of Balzac upon Maupassant is exerted through
the intermediary of Flaubert, as in the case of the famous doctrine
of "impersonality," formulated by Flaubert, adopted by Maupassant,
but probably inspired by a reading of Balzac's novels. A curious
illustration of this second-hand transmission is found in the imitation
of an incident of Balzac's Honorine.1 In the midst of his garden
Count Octave has a magnificent basin, swarming with goldfish.
When he is in a pensive mood, he goes there to brood over Honorine,
who has deserted him. It had been as he stood over the basin with
Honorine, then a girl of seventeen, and had thrown bread to the
fishes, that he had spoken his first words of love to her. This episode,
utilized by Flaubert, reappears in Bel-Ami when Georges Du Roy
accompanies Suzanne Walter to the basin in the conservatory to
throw bread to the fishes and to plan an elopement.2
It is not my intention, however, to enter thoroughly into the
subject of Balzac's influence here. Even briefer mention will be
allowed Maupassant's story entitled UEndormeuse, which appeared
in September, 1889,3 and concerns a suicide club which may have
been modeled on that described by Robert Louis Stevenson in the
New Arabian Nights (1882).
If Maupassant was acquainted with few authors through their
books, his obligations to two life-long friends of his mother Laure
and his uncle Alfred le Poittevin are well known. Mme de Mau-
passant declares that one of these friends, Louis Bouilhet, was
prevented only by an early death from making her son a poet.4 The
other, Gustave Flaubert, instructed him in the art of the novelist.
In his essay on Le Roman, which appeared as a preface to Pierre
et Jean, Maupassant has described the lessons in the art of compo-
sition which he received from his masters. First, Bouilhet taught
i Honorine, in Le Colonel Chabert, pp. 119, 128.
« Bel- Ami, pp. 510, 511.
» In La Main Gauche, pp. 241 flf.
« E. Maynial, op. cit., p. 44 (citation from A. Albalat, on Mme de Maupassant, in
Le Journal des Debats, December 12, 1903).
648
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 145
him an appreciation of perfect form in verse, impressing upon him the
fact that one short but flawless poem may confer immortality upon
its author. After some two years, Bouilhet's mantle fell upon
Flaubert, who insisted upon faultless, classic prose, correcting
tirelessly Maupassant's compositions.
The influence of Flaubert upon his pupil is a subject treated most
thoroughly in the forthcoming University of Chicago thesis of Miss
Agnes R. Riddell, so that only one or two observations will be
attempted here. The emphasis laid by Flaubert upon details is
evident in the following often-quoted passage from Maupassant's
essay on Le Roman:
Quand vous passez, me disait-il, devant un Spicier assis sur sa porte,
devant un concierge qui fume sa pipe, devant une station de fiacres, montrez-
moi cet Spicier et ce concierge, leur pose, toute leur apparence physique con-
tenant aussi, indique'e par Fadresse de Pimage, toute leur nature morale, de
faQon a ce que je ne les confonde avec aucun autre Spicier ou avec aucun
autre concierge, et faites-moi voir, par un seul mot, en quoi un cheval de
fiacre ne ressemble pas aux cinquante autres qui le suivent et le precedent.1
The extent to which such "legons d'e*cole" influenced the style
of Maupassant has already been indicated to a certain degree by a
number of critics, notably Bruneti£re. It remained for Miss Riddell
to demonstrate that Maupassant, not satisfied with learning the
literary methods of Flaubert, was inclined to adopt also some of his
characters and episodes. One illustration of this practice is men-
tioned here, in anticipation of Miss Riddell.
The rendezvous of Bel-Ami with Mme Walter in the Church of
the Trinity suggests strongly that of Le*on Dupuis with Emma
Bovary in a cathedral. Both Du Roy and Le*on arrive ahead of
time — Le*on discovering that it was nine o'clock by looking at the
cuckoo clock of the hairdresser; Du Roy, that it was three o'clock by
consulting his watch. To while away the time, Leon walks three city
blocks, and decides to return. Du Roy, also, walks slowly along the
dock, until he concludes that it would be better to return. Both
wait impatiently for the arrival of their lady-loves, Le*on being
startled by a rustling of silk over the flag-stone; Du Roy,*by the
noise of a dress. "C'e*tait elle!" announces Flaubert. "C'e*tait
elle!" echoes Maupassant. "Le*on se leva et courut a sa rencontre."
1 Le Roman, in Pierre et Jean, p. xxiv.
649
146 OLIN H. MOORE
As for Du Roy, "II se leva, s'avance vivement." Emma and Mme
Walter seek refuge from temptation in prayer. "Emma prayed,
or rather attempted to pray," we are told, "hoping that some sudden
resolution would descend to her from heaven." As for Mme Walter,
"Then she tried to pray. With a superhuman invocation she
attempted to call upon God, and, her body vibrating, her soul dis-
traught, she cried ' Pity ! ' to the sky." Emma filled her eyes with the
splendors of the tabernacle and breathed its incense, in order to f ortify
herself; but her efforts only increased the tumult of her heart. Mme
Walter shut her eyes in order not to see Du Roy, endeavored to drive
his image from her mind, but instead of the celestial apparition for
which she hoped, she perceived always the curly moustache of the
young man.1
I shall further venture the statement, upon my own responsibility,
that Flaubert's influence manifested itself even upon those feelings
which we are accustomed to regard as absolutely instinctive with
Maupassant, such as his repugnance for death, for old age, for the
gray hair which is the token of the approaching end. Writing more
than a decade before Maupassant's Fini, UEpave, and Fort comme
la mort, Flaubert in his Education sentimentale makes Fre"de"ric
Moreau observe with consternation the gray hair of Mme Arnoux
in the strong light of a lamp. " It was like a blow full in his chest,"
Flaubert comments.2 Equally instinctive with Maupassant seems
that feeling of fear, of unreasoning fear, "la peur de la peur," which
finally mastered his reason. Nevertheless, we may discover evidences
of even this characteristic in the narrative of the duel in the Education
sentimentale. Fre*de*ric Moreau is terribly afraid that he will be
afraid. "Une angoisse abominable le saisit a Pide*e d'avoir peur sur
le terrain," says Flaubert.3 Maupassant, imitating this passage
in Un Ldche, makes the Viscount Gontran-Joseph de Signoles find
this fear overwhelming: "Et ce doute 1'envahit, cette inquietude,
cette e*pouvante; si une force plus puissante que sa volonte", domina-
» Madame Bovary (L. Conard ed.), pp. 326-329; Bel- Ami, pp. 397-405.
z Education sentimentale, p. 604.
» Education sentimentale, p. 323. Miss Riddell notes the resemblance between the
duels hi Education sentimentale and in Bel- Ami, pp. 237 flf. The similarity between Un
Ldche and the pages cited from Bel-Ami was observed by E. Maynial, " La Composition
dans les romans de Maupassant," hi Revue Bleue, LXXII (November 7, 1903), 607.
650
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 147
trice, irresistible, le domptait, qu'arriverait-il ? Oui, que pouvait-il
arriver?"1
Furthermore, emphasis should be laid upon the fact that the
influence of Flaubert upon Maupassant, very noticeable in Maupas-
sant's earlier novels, such as Une Vie and Bel-Ami, afterward
diminished considerably. When Lemaitre, adopting the opinion of
Maupassant's perspicacious publisher, Havard, notes that Mont-
Oriol (1887) is a transitional novel, because of the emotional and
dramatic elements it contains, he is actually noting a decline in the
influence of Flaubert.2 When he remarks that in Pierre el Jean
(1888) the transformation of the author's manner is complete, for the
whole interest centers in the dramatic struggle between the guilty
mother and the inquisitorial son, he really signalizes the passing
of the influences of Flaubert.3
On the whole, Maupassant does not appear to have been influ-
enced greatly by authors of the naturalistic school, aside from
Flaubert. For Zola, whose lack of practical sense he ridiculed,4
whom he called "absolument fou" because of his colossal conceit,5
and to whose followers he was an object of suspicion for a time
because of his supposed lack of devotion to the naturalistic cause,6
his feelings were perhaps as friendly as for any of the other realists.
It was at Zola's suggestion that Maupassant contributed to the
Soirees de Medan, conforming readily to the Decameron-like frame-
work which was proposed and preserving the volume from obscurity
by his Boule de Suif.7
Suspicious for a time of Alphonse Daudet,8 Maupassant never
appears to have become intimate with him. Nevertheless, early in
1 Un Ldche, in Contes du Jour et de la Nuit, p. 113. Of. Bel-Ami, p. 238.
2 Revue Bleue, XLIII, June 29, 1889 (3d series, No. 26).
« Ibid. Brunetiere, adopting a different point of view, concludes that Maupassant,
once he has passed the early stage of excessive imitation of his master, surpasses all his
contemporaries of the naturalistic school, being more realistic than Flaubert himself
(Revue des Deux Mondes, LXXXIX [1888, 3d series], 694, 696). Havard's opinion of
Mont-Oriol is quoted by Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 417: " Vous donnez la, avec une puissance
inouie, une nouvelle note que j'avais devinSe en vous depuis longtemps. J'avais pres-
senti ces accents de tendresse et demotion supreme dans Au Printemps, Miss Harriet,
Yvette, et ailleurs."
* Letter to Flaubert, in Boule de Suif, p. cvii (July 5, 1878). 0 -
s Ibid., p. cxx (April 24, 1879).
«I6td., p. cxix (February 26, 1879).
7 E. Maynial, op. cit., pp. 105, 106. 8 Of. n. 3.
651
148 OLIN H. MOORE
his career, Maupassant aligned himself with Daudet and the other
realists who depicted the lower strata of life. He thus became for a
time one of the most ardent apologists for "bas-fondmanie," which
he claimed was only a natural reaction against excessive idealism.1
Despite the ardor of the young convert, there were at first two
opposite tendencies in Maupassant. We find him, on the one hand,
insisting that the novelist must "faire le monde tel qu'il le voit, lever
les voiles de grace et d'honnetete,"2 and attacking even more violently
"la sentimentality ronflante des romantiques."3 On the other hand
in Mile Fifi, as well as in Boule de Suif, he really adopts the favorite
Romantic theme of the courtesan, ennobled by love and other lofty
sentiments — the theme of Marion Delorme, revived in La Dame aux
camelias. "Des filles e*pouse*es deviennent en peu de temps de
remarquables femmes du monde,"4 pleads Maupassant.
It was Daudet who brought him thoroughly to the true realistic
point of view. After reading Daudet's Les Femmes d'artistes, which
he calls "ce petit livre, si cruel et si beau,"5 we find Maupassant
speaking with a certain disgust of the "fre*quentation constante de
cette race de dindes qu'on nomine les modeles."6 In imitation of
Daudet, he published, in December, 1883, his story entitled Le
Modele, dealing with the frequent marriages between painters and
their models. Henceforth we shall find him, like the other natural-
ists, tending to depict the horrible side of life for its own sake, without
veneer or idealization.7
Had Jules de Goncourt lived, it is impossible to predict what his
relations with Guy de Maupassant would have been. Certainly
they had much in common, from their aristocratic birth to the
bromides and douches to which both were obliged to submit in their
respective sanitariums. The surviving brother of Jules de Goncourt,
1 E. Maynial, op. cit. p. 282.
2 Rtponse A M. Francisque Sarcey, in Mile Fifi, p. 277.
8 Les Soirees de Medan — Comment ce livre a ete fait, in Boule de Suif, p. 82.
4 Reponse a Sarcey, op. cit., p. 279.
» Le Module, in Le Rosier de Madame Hus&on, p. 75.
• Ibid.
1 1bid., p. 76: "Elle a risqug le tout pour le tout. IStait-elle sincere? Aimait-elle
Jean? Sait-on jamais cela? Qui done pourra determiner d'une facon precise ce qu'il
y a d'apretS, et ce qu'il y a de reel dans les actes des femmes ? . . . Elles sont emportees,
criminelles, dSvouees, admirables, et ignobles, pour ob6ir a d'insaisissables Emotions. . . ."
652
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 149
Edmond, delighted in making carping criticisms of Maupassant, and
spent much of his time wondering why he was considered a simple
gentleman and amateur writer, while Maupassant was taken
seriously.1
It must be granted that the direct influence of the philosopher
Taine upon Maupassant, as far as it existed, was exerted principally
through his books. In the latter part of his life, Taine became one
of Maupassant's warm admirers and is said to have exclaimed, on
finishing Le Champ d'Oliviers, "Cela, c'est de PEschyle."2 However,
sufficient attention has not yet been paid by critics to the fact that
the real intimacy between the two writers began only in 1888, after
an introduction at Aix-les-Bains in Savoy, through the intermediary
of Dr. Cazalis.3 Previously to that time it seems that Maupassant
had observed Taine only from a distance, as when he described him
attending the afternoon receptions of Flaubert, "le regard cache"
derriere ses lunettes, Failure timide," but with "son ceil pergant de
philosophe."4
The fact that this acquaintance was slight during the period of
Maupassant's greatest activity points strongly to the conclusion that
Taine's influence may have been slighter than M. Giraud would
estimate.5 To answer his oft-cited statement, it may suffice to call
attention to a few well-established facts. There is evidence that it
was Flaubert, rather than Taine, who persuaded Maupassant to
abandon verse-writing and become a novelist. It is true that when
Maupassant speaks of " ces petits faits insignifiants . . . qui forment
le fond me'me, le trame de P existence,"6 he approaches closely the
language of the Preface to the Intelligence. However, on the whole,
Brunetiere is correct in tracing Maupassant's attention to what has
been called "Phumble verite" to Flaubert rather than to Taine.7
1 E. Maynial, op. cit., pp. 207 flf.
2 A. Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 280.
* Ibid. 4 V. Giraud, loc. cit.
5 V. Giraud, op. cit., p. 189: "A tous ces gcrivains, dont quelques-uns ont de"but6
par des vers et qui, peut-Stre, auraient pu continuer dans cette voie, il a persuade que la
forme du roman leur fournissait le meilleur et le plus moderne emploi de leur talent; . . .
il leur a appris a regarder autour d'eux et m§me au-dessous d'eux, a ne rien dSdaigner de ce
que 1'un d'eux a appele Thumble verite.' . . ."
« Mile Perle, in La Petite Roque, p. 135. '^
* Revue des Deux Mondes, LXX (1885, 3d series), 215. Of. Mademoiselle Cocotte, in
Clair de Lune, pp. 128-129: "Les choses les plus simples, les plus humbles, sont parfois
celles qui nous mordent le plus au coeur."
653
150 OLIN H. MOOKE
When Maupassant notes that the door of the Folies-Bergeres is " une
porte matelassee a battants garnis de cuir," or that at the theater one
sees of the persons seated in the loges only "leur tete et leur poi trine/ '
he is, declares Brunetiere, following the regular procedure of Madame
Bovary, Education sentimentale and Bouvard et Pecuchet. Further-
more, so far as the question of studying the lower strata of humanity
was concerned, we find Maupassant and Taine absolutely at variance.
In his Reponse a M. Francisque Sarcey, Maupassant quotes the fol-
lowing passage from a letter from Taine, "dont je ne partage point
Fopinion":
. . . Vous peignez des paysans, des petits bourgeois, des ouvriers, des
e"tudiants et des filles. Vous peindrez sans doute un jour la classe cultive"e,
la haute bourgeoisie, mg&iieurs, me*decins, professeurs, grands industriels et
commergants.
A mon sens, la civilisation est une puissance. Un homme n4 dans
1'aisance, he'ritier de trois ou quatre generations honnStes, laborieuses et
rangers, a plus de chances d'etre probe, delicat et instruit. L'honneur et
Tesprit sont toujours plus ou moins des plantes de serre.
Cette doctrine est bien aristocratique, mais elle est expe"rimentale. . . .*
Moreover, the affinity between the determinism of Taine and the
fatalism2 of Maupassant may well have been due to indirect influ-
ences, if not to a certain similarity of temperament which manifested
itself toward the close of the lives of each.3
The relationship between Maupassant and Paul Bourget, who was
his friend and occasionally his travelling companion, seems important.
There is an incontestable connection between the plots of Maupas-
sant's Fort comme la Mort and Bourget's Le Fantdme, due to oral
transmission if we are to accept the story published by Lumbroso.4
Mme Lecomte du Nouy, it appears, when she deserted Bourget to
» Mile Fifi, p. 276.
2 "Les gens calmes lie's sans instincts violents, vivent honne'tes, par ne'cessite'. Le
devoir est facile a ceux que ne torturent jamais les desirs enrages. Je vois des petites
bourgeoises au sang froid, aux moeurs rigides, d'un esprit moyen et d'un creur mode're',
pousser des cris d1 indignation quand elles apprennent les fautes des femmes tombSes. . . .
" Mais chez ceux-la que le hasard a fait passionn6s, madame, les sens sont invincibles.
Pouvez-vous arrgter le vent, pouvez-vous arr6ter la mer de'monte'e ? " From L' Enfant,
in the collection entitled Clair de Lune, p. 233.
8 " Peut-Stre aussi pourrait-on noter que vers la fin Guy de Maupassant — tout comme
Hippolyte Taine — s'attendrissait singuliSrement; mais dans ce dernier fait, on pourrait
voir plut6t 1'action des me"mes causes extSrieures (le malaise social, 1'expe'rience gran-
dissante de la vie) qu'une influence re"ciproque." A. Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 282.
* A. Lumbroso, op. cit., pp. 332, 333.
654
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 151
become intimate with Maupassant, communicated to him the plot
of Le Fantdme, which Bourget had outlined to her, but did not utilize
until 1900-1901. Bourget's Un Cceur de Femme and Maupassant's
Notre Cceur have also related themes, possibly for the reason sug-
gested in Lumbroso's valuable volume, that both authors have
taken for their heroine Mme Lecomte du Nouy.1 An attempt will
now be made to determine, more clearly than has been done hereto-
fore, the obligations of Maupassant to Bourget. In drawing our
conclusions it should be borne in mind that while Maupassant bor-
rowed heavily from other writers, mainly Flaubert, Bourget, who
possessed the advantage of a wider range of reading, was no less
an offender. Hence, while seeking to discover traces of Bourget's
influence upon Maupassant, we should be mentally prepared to
find the source current flowing from Maupassant to Bourget.
Let us consider first the most important resemblances between
Le Fantdme and Fort comme la Mori. Maupassant's novel relates
the love of the painter Olivier Bertin for the Countess de Guilleroy.
When Annette, the daughter of the Countess, reaches maturity, she
reveals a startling likeness to what her mother had been when Bertin
first met her. The painter falls in love with Annette, guilty though
he feels in so doing.
This theme finds practically a twofold version in Bourget's Le
Fantdme. M. d'Andiguier, who had blamelessly loved Antoinette
Duvernay for nearly fifteen years,2 nine years after her death became
enamored of the daughter Eveline, who made the deceased lady seem
very present to him, "so great was the resemblance in silhouette, in
gestures, in physiognomy."3 It develops later that Malclerc, who
marries Eveline, had previously been the paramour of Antoinette.4
It is the remarkable likeness of daughter to mother which attracts
him irresistibly to Eveline.5
There is a serious objection to accepting the story published by
Lumbroso of Maupassant's indebtedness to Bourget for this theme.
As early as January, 1883, a full year before Bourget wrote his first
published story in England, L' Irreparable, there appeared in Gil-Bias
1 Ibid., p. 334. Cf. E. Maynial, op. cit., p. 203, and n. 3.
2 Paul Bourget, Le Fantdme, in (Euvres Completes, VI (Plon ed. [1906]), 153.
» See also »6td.f p. 177. « Ibid., p. 210. 6 Ibid., p. 229.
655
152 OLIN H. MOORE
Maupassant's M. Jocaste, which apparently had no connection with
the Jocaste of Anatole France (1879). It was the story of Pierre
Martel, who had loved a young married woman. Years afterward
he met the daughter, and fell in love with her at once because of her
resemblance to the dead mother. "It was she! the other! the one
who was dead!"1 Her age was exactly the same as her mother's
had been; hers were the same eyes, hair, figure, and voice as her
mother had had. Pierre Martel's passion became uncontrollable.
The only important dissimilarity in the two stories is that Bour-
get's Eveline is not the daughter of Malclerc, whereas in M. Jocaste
the case is probably different. The title chosen by Maupassant, M.
Jocaste, is guaranty that the more repulsive — and " realistic" —
version of the story goes back to earliest antiquity.
Even more suggestive of the subject of Bourget's Le Fantdme is
Maupassant's Fini, which appeared in Le Gaulois, July, 1885. The
Count de Lormerin had been in love with Lise. Twenty-five years
later he met the daughter, who looked exactly like her mother
at the same age, only younger, fresher, more childlike.2 Similarly,
Malclerc finds Eveline younger, with rounder cheeks, and animated
by more childlike gaiety than Antoinette.3 Lormerin is seized with
1 M. Jocaste, in the collection entitled Mile Fifi, p. 263.
There are also cases in Maupassant's earlier works where the man is ultimate with
the mother, and marries the daughter later, without regard to any resemblance between
the two. In Bel- Ami, Mme Walter is the mistress of Du Roy, who afterward elopes with
her daughter Suzanne. In one of Maupassant's later stories, Hautot Pere et Fits (La
Main Gauche, p. 73), the roles are reversed. "Mam'zelle" Donet, who has been the
mistress of Hautot pere, is about to have the same relation with Hautot fils, a situation
comparable to that in Zola's La Curie.
Incest is a frequent theme with Maupassant. See L'Ermite, in La Petite Roque,
p. 106: "J'avais fait, sans le vouloir, pis que ces §tres ignobles. J'etais entre dans la
couche de ma fille." In Le Port (La Main Gauche, p. 216): "II la sentait sur lui, enlac6e
a lui, chaude et terriflee, sa soeur!"
The preoccupation of Maupassant for the fate of outcasts from society is one of his
noteworthy characteristics. Of. also Un Fils (C antes de la Becasse, pp. 195-213).
2 Fini, in (Euvres Posthumes, I, 241.
a Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 229. Six years or more before the publication of Le
Fantdme, there appeared also an expurgated American version of the story, entitled The
Honorable Peter Stirling, by Paul Leicester Ford (Copyright, Henry Holt & Co., 1894).
When a young man, Peter had asked the hand of Miss Pierce after a very brief acquaint-
ance (p. 29), having been especially attracted by her slate-colored eyes (p. 20). Years
later he met the daughter Leonore, whom he rescued from a runaway accident. Amid
the excitement of the occasion, his most vivid impression was that "the girl had slate-
colored eyes!!" (p. 202). As a matter of fact, she resembled her father Watts D'Alloi
more than she did her mother. " But to Peter," the author observes, " it was merely the
renewal of his dream" (p. 204).
The subject is treated also by Maurice Donnay, in U Autre Danger (Paris, 1906).
Cf. A. Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 333, n. 2. In Act III, scene 11, we learn that Preydieres, who
656
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 153
an irresistible desire to embrace the girl and whisper into her ear,
"Bonjour, Lison."
It is true that in Cruelle finigme (1885)1 Bourget speaks of the
kind of melancholy inspired by the spectacle of a mother of fifty, to
whom her daughter of twenty-five bears such a striking resemblance
that "Tune se trouve ainsi presenter le spectre anticipe* de la vieillesse
de Tautre." Yet the palm for the fully developed story of the man
who loves the daughter because of her extraordinary resemblance to
the mother, seems clearly to belong more to Maupassant than to
Bourget.
The main subject of Le Fantdme is not the only thing which
Bourget borrows from Maupassant in order to make double use of it.
He apparently does as much with Maupassant's favorite episode, the
unhappy discovery of old letters and souvenirs. M. d'Andiguier,
after the death of Antoinette Duvernay, finds an envelope of white
leather, tied with ribbons, on which Mme Duvernay has written:
"For my dear M. d'Andiguier, who will destroy the envelope just as
it is "2 After a moral struggle, he complies with the wishes
of the deceased. All is not well, however, for in a short time Eveline
Malclerc discovers her husband, after perusing in distracted fashion a
bundle of old letters, loading his revolver to commit suicide.3 She
rushes to D'Andiguier for counsel, and matters are patched up for a
time, Malclerc delivering his old correspondence with Antoinette
into the hands of D'Andiguier. One day, unfortunately, Eveline
succeeds in prying into the drawer where D'Andiguier had locked up
the letters.4 In the catastrophe that follows both Malclerc and
Eveline would prefer to die, were it not for the premature birth of a
son, which gives them something to live for.
Bourget also made use of this episode in an earlier novel, Andre
Cornelis (1887), in which the influence of a variety of writers, notably
the authors of David Copperfield and of Hamlet^ is apparent. The
central problem is intended as a modern parallel to Hamlet,5 with a
later weds Madeleine Jadain, has been the lover of her mother. A strong physical
resemblance of Madeleine to her mother is hinted at in Act II, scene 3, but thisfeature of
the plot is not emphasized.
1 (Euvres Completes, I, 5. » Ibid., p. 195.
2 Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 182. « Ibid., pp. 352-54.
s Andr& Corntlis (CEuvres Completes, I, 312).
657
154 OLIN H. MOORE
soliloquy of the hero on the question "to be or not to be," his hand on
the trigger of a pistol,1 with a nineteenth-century substitute for the
players, who performed before the guilty stepfather,2 with Andre* as
the avenger of his father's foul and most unnatural murder,3 his
faltering resolution being occasionally awakened by some startling
event.4 Borrowing an idea from Maupassant, Bourget makes of the
letters of Andrews father, or rather of the room in which Andr6 read
them, the ghost which summoned the hero to action. "C'e"tait
comme si le fantome de l'assassin£ fut sorti de son tombeau pour
me supplier de tenir la promesse de vengeance juree tant de fois a
sa mejnoire."5 Unlike D'Andiguier, he has not obeyed the entreaty
of the dying woman who would have him burn the letters, in order
to spare him the suspicions which they have engendered in her.6
The evidence which is thus produced results in Andrews own unhappi-
ness, if also in the punishment of his father's assassin.
A variation of the episode is found in Le Disciple,7 when Charlotte
de Jussat, forcing the lock, goes through the papers of Greslou. She
declares: " J'ai 6t6 trop punie, puisque j'ai lu dans ces pages ce que
j'y ai lu."
Bourget is probably under obligations for this theme to Maupas-
sant, for whom the subject of old letters and souvenirs apparently
had a horrible fascination, and who in turn doubtless derived his
suggestion from two episodes in Madame Bovary. "Oh! ne touchez
jamais a ce meuble, a ce cimetiere, des correspondances d'autrefois,
si vous tenez a la vie!"8 he exclaims in Suicides. In Une Vie,9 the
baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds warns his daughter to
burn her own letters, her mother's, his own, all. Nothing is more
i Andre Cornelia ((Euvrea computes, I, 412).
» Ibid., p. 400.
« Ibid., p. 348.
« Ibid., pp. 341, 350 flf.
» Ibid., p. 365. For further examples of the influence of Shakespeare upon Bourget,
see the Shakespeare library described in Le Disciple (OSuvres completes, III, 78 flf.). In
Un Crime d* Amour (CEuvres, I, 276), there is a quotation from a speech oi Lady Macbeth.
On the following page there is a reference to the " Hamletisme" of Armand.
« Andre Cornelia, pp. 361 ff.
i Le Disciple (1889), p. 205.
8 Suicides, in Les Sceurs Rondoli, p. 235.
• For old love letters discovered by Jeanne, see E. Maynial in Revue Bleue, LXXII
(October 31, 1903), 606.
658
LITERARY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 155
terrible, he asserts, than to nose into the history of one's youth.1
Despite this admonition, Jeanne is doomed to discover the love
letters of her dead mother and undergo the bitterest dissillusionment.2
One other feature of Le Fantdme, the physical aversion which
Malclerc feels for Eveline during her pregnancy, is suggestive of
Maupassant. Paul Bretigny, in Mont-Oriol, is also of the race of
lovers, and not of fathers.3
In the case of the connection between Un Coeur de Femme and
Notre Coeur, apparently Maupassant was under obligations to
Bourget. The problem involved in the two novels is essentially the
same, and concerns the dual nature of humanity. As Lord Herbert
Bohun sums up the situation at the close of Bourget's Cceur de Femme,
Juliette de Tilli£res«is a woman who has a sensual love for Casal,
without ceasing to entertain a certain sentimental feeling for Poy-
anne.4
While conceding the credit for this theme to Bourget, rather than
to Maupassant, let us admit at the outset that Bourget himself was
in turn doubtless influenced by Laclos, not forgetting that also in
Un Crime d' Amour, Bourget refers more than once to the Valmont
of the Liaisons.5 As Doumic remarks: "L'attrait qui porte Casal
» Une Vie, p. 228.
2 Ibid., pp. 240-243. This motif is combined with that of utter weariness over the
monotony of life in Suicides (Les Saeurs Rondoli, pp. 237-239), where M. X — commits
suicide after perusing his old correspondence. He had been led to drag his skeleton out
of the closet by reflections on his humdrum existence (p. 232): "Tous les jours, a la
m§me heure depuis trente ans, je me ISve; et, dans le me"me restaurant, depuis trente ans,
je mange aux mtaies heures les m6mes plats apportSs par des garcons differents."
Monotony of existence is the theme of several other stories by Maupassant. In
Promenade (Yvette, p. 202) appears the case of M. Leras who passes through the same
daily routine for forty years. After brooding over the hopelessness of his situation, he
hangs himself by the suspenders in the Bois (ibid., p. 211). A similarly sad outlook is
depicted in Gordon, un Bock (Miss Harriet, p. 235): "Je me leve a midi. Je viens ici, je
dejeune, je bois des bocks, j' attends la nuit, je dine, je bois des bocks. . . . Depuis dix
ans, j'ai bien passe six ann6es sur cette banquette, dans mon coin; et le reste dans.mon
lit, jamais ailleurs." Miss Agnes R. Riddell, in her unpublished thesis on Flaubert and
Maupassant: A Literary Relationship, compares this incident with M . Parent, pp. 49-52,
62, 72-73. She thinks that the hero of Gar$on, un Bock is modeled on Regimbart, in
Flaubert's Education sentimentale, pp. 55, 246, 319-320, 564-565. In her opinion, Mau-
passant's references to old love letters and souvenirs hark back to Madame B ovary, where
Rodolphe is described as cynically looking over the relics of his love affair with Emma,
and remarking: "Quel tas de blagues!" (pp. 278-280). After Emma's death, Charles
finds her love letters to Leon and to Rodolphe, with the result that life loses all interest
for him. The people surmise that he "s'enfermait pour boire" (ibid., pp. 478-^79).
• Paul Bourget, op. cit., p. 303. Of. Mont-Oriol, p. 256.
< Un Cceur de Femme ((Euvres Completes, III, 499, 500).
5 Un Crime d" Amour ((Euvres, I, 159, 164).
156 OLIN H. MOORE
vers Mme de Tillieres, dans Coeur de Femme, est le meme qui faisait
souhaiter au roue* des Liaisons 1'amour d'une devote."1 However,
after due allowance is made for the influence of the famous picture
of eighteenth century morals, the fact remains that in Coeur de Femme
Bourget is at least on familiar ground. The main problem of the
woman cherishing sentimental reveries on the one hand, but yielding
to ungovernable appetite for sensations on the other, is also that of
The*r£se, in Cruelle Snigme (1885).2 There are numerous other
references in Bourget's works to the dual conflict which is the heritage
of man, the matter being of paramount importance in the character
of Robert Greslou, Le Disciple.
The conclusion toward which this discussion points is that the
literary obligations existing between Bourget ajjd Maupassant were
more important than Maynial, for example, seems prepared to con-
cede. Despite his reserve, however, Maynial admits readily that the
authors must without doubt have communicated to each other, in
the course of their conversations, the ideas, if not the actual plots,
of certain of their works.3 From the evidence at hand, the general
direction of this literary influence appears most often to have been
from Maupassant to Bourget.
Before leaving the matter of Maupassant's influence, mention
should be made of at least two of his stories which may have furnished
suggestions to Rudyard Kipling. Misti* a tale which appeared in
Gil-Bias in January, 1884, concerns a pet cat — called "Mouton"-
with almost human attributes, intelligent as a child, and so idolatrous
of his mistress that he made more than a fetish of her. Kipling's
Bimi, the all too affectionate pet orang-outang of Bertran, French
"king of beasts — tamer men/'5 possessed similar human endowment:
"Den I felt at der back of my neck der fingers of Bimi," declares
Hans Breitmann. " Mein Gott ! I tell you dot he talked through dose
fingers. It was der deaf-and-dumb alphabet all gomplete "
Mouton, more subtly, slept on his mistress' pillow, where she could
hear his heart beat.
1 Portraits d'ficrivains, II (1909), 14.
2 Cruelle finigme ((Euvres, I, 82). Cf. p. 113 ff.
8E. Maynial, op. cit., p. 203.
* Collection entitled Yvette, pp. 273-283.
* Bertran and Bimi, in Life's Handicap (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1913), X, 336-342.
660
LITERAKY RELATIONSHIPS OF DE MAUPASSANT 157
One day, when a young man made love to Mouton's mistress,
and embraced her, as one embraces when one loves, suddenly Mouton
uttered a never-to-be-forgetten cry, and tore out the eyes of his rival.
Bimi was slower to act. For a time after the marriage of Bertran he
merely sulked, till one day, in the absence of his master, he killed the
woman of whom he was madly jealous.
The conclusion of Bertran and Bimi has certain features in
common with Maupassant's Un Loup,1 which appeared in Le
Gaulois in 1882. The mysterious wolf, which seemed to think like a
man, was the cause of the death of Jean d'Arville. Jean's younger
brother, Frangois, drove the monster to bay, charging him, cutlass in
hand. Then, seizing the beast by the neck, without even making
use of his weapon, Frangois strangled him slowly, listening to his
dying breath and to the weakening pulsations of his heart. Furious
as was Frangois for the death of his brother, he was no more so than
Bertran for the loss of his wife. "Now you know der formula of der
strength of der orang-outang — it is more as seven to one in relation to
man," is the calculation of Hans Breitmann. "But Bertran, he haf
killed Bimi mit sooch dings as Gott gif him. Dat was der miracle."
Perhaps the most conspicuous cases of imitation of Maupassant
are to be found in the work of Gabriele D'Annunzio.2 In the Novelle
della Pescara, for instance, borrowings are made from Maupassant
which Lumbroso does not hesitate to brand as plagiarisms. Maynial
employs a milder term, although he does not contest the fact of the
resemblances in question. And certainly the close imitation of
Flaubert by Maupassant — even in such a passage as the rendezvous
of Bel- Ami at the church of the Trinity, modeled on the cathedral
scene in Madame Bovary — is slight compared with the imitation of
Maupassant by D'Annunzio, in his more reminiscent moods.
However, we should not insist too much upon the influence of
Maupassant, despite the enormous sale of his books. As M. Giraud
justly observes, his influence was far below that of Taine, for example,
1 Clair de Lune, pp. 39 flf. Incidents of the Misti and Bertran and Bimi type are
occasionally found in real life. A friend vouches for the following occurrence, which
happened while he was a student at a German university. A young student, accom-
panied by his pet collie, went for a walk with his mistress. The details of tie difficulty
that followed are not perfectly clear, but at any rate the dog — whether through jealousy
or not — attacked the woman, and was with difficulty prevented from killing her.
2 A. Lumbroso, op. cit., pp. 519-545.
661
158 OLIN H. MOORE
although Taine apparently had not one-tenth as many readers as
Maupassant.1
Furthermore, if Maupassant's influence upon his contemporaries
is easily exaggerated, so was his own indebtedness to other writers
not excessive, after all. The limit which he deliberately set upon his
field of production was at once a source of strength, as well as of
weakness.2 In fact, after due allowance has been made for all
literary influences, including that of Flaubert, it must be owned that
his principal source was his own observations. For him, as for the
other realists, the most important part of the preparation for his
stories was the taking of notes, despite the contention of Paul Bourget
to the contrary.3 It is this matter which will be discussed in an
article to be published shortly.
OLIN H. MOORE
UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS
» Victor Giraud, op. cit., p. 174.
2 (Euvres posthumes, II, 100 (Essai sur Flaubert}.
8 A. Lumbroso, op. cit., p. 612 (Souvenirs intimes de M. Ch. Lapierre).
[CORRECTION.— Modern Philology, XIV, 163: for "Villemessant" read:
"A prote*g6 of Villemessant."]
LES POfiSIES CHINOISES DE BOUILHET
Des romantiques, Th. Gautier ne fut pas le seul qui emprunta a
la litte*rature chinoise. Un autre poete, Louis Bouilhet, y discerna
une veine nouvelle que son souple talent pourrait exploiter. Dans la
preface aux oeuvres posthumes de son ami et compatriote, Dernieres
Chansons, Gustave Flaubert declare que ce fut apres le coup d'Etat
que Bouilhet se tourna vers la Chine. Non content, comme Gautier,
des traductions, il se mit "a Fapprentissage du chinois qu'il e"tudia
pendant dix ans de suite, uniquement pour se pe"ne"trer du ge"nie de la
race, voulant faire un grand poeme sur le Celeste Empire dont le
scenario est completement e"crit." N'ayant pas ce scenario sous les
yeux, nous n'examinerons que les poesies chinoises des deux recueils:
Festons et Astragales et Dernieres Chansons (Edition Lemerre). Nous
apprendront-elles comment cet esprit si latin interpre'ta PExtre"me
Orient ?
Ces pieces sont peu nombreuses. Festons et Astragales (1859) en
ont trois: Tou-Tsong, le Barbier de Pekin, le Dieu de la Porcelaine.
Les Dernieres Chansons (1872) sont moins avares; sur leurs cinquante-
cinq pieces, huit se rattachent a la Chine. Ce sont : Imite du Chinois,
la Chanson des Rames, la Paix des Neiges, le Tung-whang-fung, Vers
Pal-lui-chi, VHeritier de Yang-ti, le Vieillard libre, la Pluie venue du
mont Ki-chan.
II n'est pas ne"cessaire de faire un examen minutieux de ces mor-
ceaux pour de*cquvrir que sept sur les onze ne s'inspirent pas de pieces
chinoises, ils n'ont que I'air chinoiSj et nul besoin d'etre au courant
des choses de la Chine pour les composer. C'est la Chine convention-
nelle, banale des magasins de curiosite*s, celle des cabinets de laque,
des paravents et des bibelots, f aite d'une douzaine de traits, pre"tendus
caracteristiques, faux parce qu'ils sont outre"s, isol^s et limit^s. Bref,
ce n'est que du toe.
Dans un article de ce journal (nov. 1915 et mars 1916, Th.
Gautier: le Pavilion sur l'eau)t nous avons signale" un certain nombre
de ces lieux communs chinois que 1'auteur s'dtait cru tenu d'intro-
duire, cangue, petits pieds des Chinoises, grande muraille, opium, etc.
Bouilhet fait de meme: c'est le fleuve Jaune, le soulier a pointe
663] 159 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, March, 1918
160 HENRI DAVID
retroussee, le mandarin a bonnet pointu et son parasol, les pavilions
a jour orne*s de clochettes, les buffets sculptes remplis de porcelaine,
les cloisons transparentes, la jonque, les bonzes, la queue et la tete
rasee, les pagodes, magots-ou poussahs, le the*, le riz et les nids
d'hirondelles, etc. . . . Done, chez les deux romantiques, meme illu-
sion dans la touche de couleur locale. Tous deux affectent de croire
par exemple, que Popium se fume comme le tabac dans la pipe. Le
mandarin Tou-Tsong "fume Popium, au coucher du soleil, | Sur sa
porte en treillis, dans sa pipe a fleurs bleues."
Certes, Gautier a bien soin d'indiquer en detail la fagon dont se
prend ce narcotique, mais, chose Strange, lui aussi perd de vue les
circonstances exte*rieures de lieu et de conditions. N'ecrit-il pas des
deux amis Tou et Kouan, dans son Pavilion sur I'eau? "C'e"tait un
plaisir pour eux de s'envoyer du haut du balcon des salutations
famili£res et de fumer la goutte d'opium enflamme'e sur le champignon
de porcelaine en e*changeant des bouffe*es bienveillantes." Or, le
spectacle que pre"sente un e*theromane ou morphinomane se livrant a
sa passion se rapproche bien plus i'e celui du miserable inhalant sa
funeste fume*e que ce dernier ne rappelle le fumeur de pipe le plus
endurci.
Au sujet de la troisieme pi£ce, nous ferons seulement remarquer
qu'il n'y a pas de dieu de la porcelain e dans POlympe chinois, bien que
celle-ci doive son invention et quelques-uns de ses plus beaux produits
a la Chine. Mais la porcelaine etant chose assez merveilleuse pour
avoir son dieu, Bouilhet le lui crea a Paide d'une note de RSmusat
sur un certain temple de Kouanym (Deux Cousines, II, 49). "Kou-
anym est le nom d'un Phousa ou Pune des plus grandes divinity's de la
religion indienne importe*e a la Chine. Quelques mythologues peu
instruits en ont fait la deesse de la porcelaine. Mais c'est en realite un
dieu, qui n'a rien de commun avec la porcelaine. C'est a lui que se
rapportent la plupart de ces figures appele*es Magots de la Chine qui
6taient autrefois en possession de toutes les chemine'es." Done,
bien que ce poussah ne soit pas le dieu de la porcelaine, il pourra
Pe"tre et c'est lui qui est de*crit dans la premiere strophe: "II est, en
Chine, un petit dieu bizarre, | Dieu sans pagode, et qu'on appelle
Pu; | J'ai pris son nom dans un livre assez rare, | Qui le dit frais,
souriant et trapu."
664
LES POESIES CHINOISES DE BOUILHET 161
Quatre des huit pieces des Dernieres Chansons sont d'une saveur
bien diffe"rente. Versions en vers de poesies chinoises, elles sont
exemptes de toute couleur locale, vraie ou fausse, a un mot pr£s,
bonze, dans la derniere. A chacune la probite de 1'auteur a laisse* une
Etiquette qui en indique la provenance.
La premiere, Imite du chinois, porte en sous-titre lu-kiao-li, nom
en transcription frangaise du roman des Deux Cousines auquel
Gautier a emprunte tant de details. Get ouvrage du XVeme siScle
est regarde comme un des chefs-d'oeuvre de la litte*rature populaire
chinoise et fut traduit pour la premiere fois par Abel-R&nusat en
1826. Ce sont huit vers place's en tete du chap. VI du tome II qui
ont se*duit le po£te, et on comprend pourquoi, si Ton sait combien il
e"tait fier de son art. Et c'est bien cette traduction qui est la source
de la poe"sie de Bouilhet.
II suffira pour s'en convaincre de comparer les deux textes. Si
Ton objecte que Pecrivain frangais e*tudiant le chinois a pu s'inspirer
directement de 1'original, nous re*pondrons que la ressemblance ver-
bale evidente des deux morceauxjts'oppose absolument a cette sup-
position. Une telle coincidence peut s'expliquer a la rigueur dans
des traductions independantes en une meme langue d'ceuvres appar-
tenant a d'autres langues indo-eurppe*ennes ou les mots correspondent
plus ou moins. La chose est impossible dans une traduction du
chinois en frangais. Nous nous en rapportons a ce que dit sur ce
sujet le marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys (e*tude sur I'Art poetique et
la Prosodie chez les Chinois, en t6te de sa traduction des Poesies de
I'Epoque des Thang, Paris, 1862) : " La traduction litte*rale est le plus
souvent impossible en chinois. Certains caracteres exigent absolu-
ment une phrase tout enti&re pour etre interpret^ valablement. II
faut lire un vers chinois, se pene*trer de I'image ou de la pensee qu'il
renferme, s'efforcer d'en saisir le trait principal et de lui conserver sa
force et sa couleur" (p. ciii). Abel-Re*musat ne de*clare-t-il pas aussi
qu'il est loin d'affirmer aque le sens de ces morceaux poetiques soit
toujours rendu et a 1'exception de quelques phrases qui ne paraissent
pas susceptibles de deux interpretations qu'il se pourrait bien que la
traduction qu'il en donne n'eut rien de commun avec Pofiginal"
(Deux Cousines, preface, p. 67, et t. II, p. 137). Dans la preface de
la seconde traduction frangaise de ce meme roman par Stanislas
665
162
HENRI DAVID
Julien, pour mettre hors de doute la grande difficult^ d'interpre'tation
d'une poe*sie chinoise, le traducteur place en regard les traductions
d'une chanson faites par son devancier et par lui-meme. Si Bouilhet
avait done traduit directement et independamment de Re"musat, sa
poesie n'aurait pas presente une telle ressemblance de mots avec celle
du savant sinologue. II faudrait aussi admettre, si 1'on veut soutenir
la proposition de la traduction directe, que le poete fut devenu assez
fort en chinois pour se mesurer avec un tel maitre. Or, aucun de ses
autres emprunts n'en fournit la preuve et tous de*montrent le con-
traire. Si Bouilhet a appris le chinois "pour se pe*ne"trer du ge"nie de
la race," il ne nous a laisse" aucune poe"sie qui soit la version directe
en vers franc,ais de ce ge"nie.
Sous des de"guisements divers,
Pldtre ou fard, selon ton envie,
Masque tes mosurs, cache ta vie;
Sois honnete homme, en fait de vers!
Un seul beau vers est une source
Qui, dans les siecles, coulera.
Dix am peut-etre on pleurera
Quelques mots trop prompts & la
course.
La strophe aux gracieux dessins,
Ou 1'ceil en vain cherche une faute,
N'est pas d'une valeur moins haute
Que la r clique de nos saints.
Mais aussi point de flatteries
Pour Tinepte ou le maladroit!
Le pur lettre* seul a le droit
D'en arranger les broderies.
Qu'on platre sa reputation, qu'on
farde sa conduite, qu'on seme 1'or,
Mais qu'en litte*rature, au moins, on
ne se permette pas de larcins!
Une seule expression poe"tique est une
source qui coulera pendant des
siecles;
Dix ann6es de chagrin peuvent 6tre
la suite de quelques lignes.
De beaux vers
sont aussi pre*cieux
que les reliques d'un saint.
Tout poeme perd ses appas
Dans les bassesses du parlage.
Si nous traversons un village,
Causons-y, — mais n'y chantons pas!
L'homme de ge*nie confiera-t-il a
d'autres la broderie de la poe*sie ?
Si vous vous livrez au plaisir d'une
conversation de village,
Gardez de vous laisser aller & la ten-
tation d'y chanter pour passer le
temps.
La Chanson des rames a sa source dans la traduction francaise du
marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys (Poesies de I'epoque des Thang,
p. Ixix). Le poete a indique* Tauteur, Fempereur Vou-ti. Ce nom
fut port6 par plusieurs empereurs de la Chine. Celui-ci est Hiao-vou-
ti, de la dynastie des Han; il regna de 140 a 86 av. J.-C. et fut comme
beaucoup d'autres empereurs chinois Tun des poetes les plus fe"conds
de sa cour. "Un jour, ajoute le traducteur, qu'il traversait le fleuve
666
LES POESIES CHINOISES DE BOUILHET 163
Hoen, entoure* de ses officiers et de ses ministres, il sentit naitre en
lui la verve, et composa la chanson connue sous le nom de la Chanson
des rames."
Le vent d'automne s'eleve, ha! de blancs nuages volent;
L'herbe jaunit et les feuilles tombent, ha! Les oies sauvages vers le midi
s'en retournent.
De"ja fleurit la plante Lan, ha! de"ja se re"pand le parfum des chrysan themes.
Moi, je pense & la belle jeune fille, ha! que je ne saurais oublier.
Mon bateau flotte doucement, ha! traversant le fleuve de Hoen;
Au milieu de ses rapides eaux, ha! qui jaillissent en vagues e"cumantes,
Au bruit des flots et des tambours, ha! j 'improvise la Chanson des rames.
Plus vif a e*te* le plaisir, ha! plus profonde est la tristesse qui lui succ&de.
La force et la jeunesse, combien durent-elles, ha! et centre la vieillesse que
faire!
II est souvent aussi oiseux que pre*somptueux de rechercher les
motifs qui de*terminent les po£tes dans le. choix de leurs sujets et de
leurs rythmes. II ne sera pas toutefois te*me*raire d'avancer que, si
c'est le fond qui attira le poete vers le poeme insert dans lu-kiao-li,
c'est certainement la forme qui seduisit ici Fe"crivain romantique.
En effet, il voulut faire passer le petit poeme chinois dans le frangais
tel quel, il en fit pour ainsi dire un caique. Afin de faire voir jusqu'ou
il poussa limitation nous mettrons Poriginal et la copie en regard sans
nous astreindre pourtant a reproduire tous les mots de la transcrip-
tion; des tirets remplaceront les mots (monosyllabiques, comme on
sait), exception faite pour les rimes.
Tsieou fong ki, hy! pe yun fe'i; Bois chenus! ah! vent d'automne!
- - hy! - - koue'i. L'oiseau fuit! ah! I'herbe estjaune!
- - hy! - - fang. Le soleil, ah! s'est pali!
- - hy! - - ouang. J'ai le cceur, ah! bien rempli!
- - hy! - - ho; Sous ma nef, ah! 1'eau moutonne,
- - hy! - - po, Et re"pond, ah! monotone,
- - hy! - - ko. A mon chant, ah! si joli.
- - hy! - - to. Quels regrets, ah! Pamour donne!
- - hy! - - ho! L'age arrive, ah! puis Poubli!
M&ne vers, Pheptasyllabe, divisS en deux hemistiches de trois
syllabes par Pexclamation; meme division en trois strophes de quatre,
trois et deux vers; m£me ordre des rimes, excepte" que le ter^t et les
deux vers de la derniere strophe, au lieu de porter la meme rime
roulent sur deux. A remarquer aussi que la poe"sie frangaise n'a que
ces deux rimes au lieu de trois, ce qui donne aabb-aab-ab.
667
164 HENRI DAVID
Cette rigueur de forme a astreint Bouilhet a simplifier extreme-
ment 1'original. Son imitation concerne done la forme plus que le
fond, elle est plus apparente que reelle. En effet, si Pheptasyllabe
est en franyais un vers court, en chinois il est loin d'en etre de meme.
Un lettre* du XVIIeme siecle, Han-yu-ling, s'exprime ainsi sur les
vers de din^e* rentes mesures: "Les vers de quatre mots sont les plus
simples, mais ils sont trop serres; ceux de sept mots sont trop laches
et trop de"laye*s; la confusion y est facile et le pleonasme a redouter.
Les vers de cinq mots sont les meilleurs; aussi depuis les Han jusqu'&
nos jours ont-ils toujours e*te* pre*fe"re*s." L'heptasyllabe chinois cor-
respond done a notre alexandrin. Si le poete franc, ais s'e*tait servi du
vers de onze ou de treize syllabes, il s'y serait senti aussi a Faise que
Pempereur-poete dans son vers de sept et limitation en aurait e"te
plus reelle.
II s'en rendit compte, car il choisit le meme arrangement stro-
phique, mais cette fois d'alexandrins sans exclamation pour la piece
VHeritier de Yang-ti. II employa cette forme, sorte de sonnet
e*courte", avec assez de bonheur.
La piece suivante le Vieillard libre a aussi sa source parmi les
poemes cite*s dans la meme e"tude (p. Ixiii). "L'empereur Yao, dit
le Sse-ki (recueil de chansons), se promenant un jour dans la cam-
pagne, aper$ut des vieillards qui langaient le jang (sorte de jeu de
palet) et qui chant aient joyeusement ce qui suit":
Pr£t, des 1'aube, a deloger, Quand le soleil se leve, je me mets au
travail;
Je rentre avec la nuit noire; Quand le soleil se couche, je me livre
au repos.
J'ai dans mon puits de quoi boire, En creusant un puits, je me suis pro-
cure* de quoi boire;
Dans mon champ de quoi manger . . . En labourant mon champ, je me pro-
cure de quoi manger.
A I' Empereur suis-']e pas Stranger! ... Pourquoi 1'empereur se pre*occupe-
rait-il de moi ?
L'original est un quatrain de vers de quatre syllabes suivi d'un
de sept: En choisissant le vers de sept et de dix, pour en rendre
Teffet, Bouilhet a done encore imite", mais moins servilement. Cette
chanson tres ancienne a un ordre de rimes que n'a pas conserve* le
poete francais. Sur les quatre vers, seulement le second et le qua-
trieme riment, et Ton n'est pas sur que le cinquieme qui est detache*
rime avec le dernier du quatrain. Ce quatrain avec son vers court
LES POESIES CHINOISES DE BOUILHET 165
de quatre syllabes et n'ayant de rime qu'aux deuxieme et quatri&me
a une ressemblance aussi inte*ressante que frappante avec le quatrain
du vers a quatre pieds des anciennes ballades d'Angleterre et d'Ecosse.
La versification chinoise, en ce qui concerne la strophe et Fordre
des rimes, n'a done pas etc* sans inte*ret pour Bouilhet. II composa
m£me un poeme de dix-huit strophes appele" du nom des vers qu'il a
imites. Ce sont les Vers Pdi-lu-chi. Voici ce que dit de ces vers le
marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys (p. Ixxvii): "Bientot vinrent les pai-
lu-chij douze vers devise's en trois strophes (la strophe re*guliere est
de*sormais de quatre vers) ; . . . Les vers de quatre pieds sont a peu
pres abandonne*s; on ne compose plus guere que sur le rythme de cinq
ou de sept mots, et Ton s'accorde ge*neralement a ne vouloir qu'une
seule rime pour chacun de ces petits poemes, mais, a Fegard de la
rime, on voit re*gner la plus grande liberte*. Tout poete en renom
croit devoir imaginer quelque combinaison plus ou moins ingenieuse,
dont les subtiles exigences sont souvent difficiles a saisir." Et ici
s'impose une nouvelle comparaison avec la poesie de Foccident. Ces
inventions concernant la rime et le rythme ne rappellent-elles pas
les savantes compositions de nos troubadours et des minnesingers et
maltres chanteurs allemands? Le poSte rouennais composa son
poeme de six sections de trois quatrains chacune, en vers de sept
syllabes. Quant a Fordre des rimes, il choisit celui qui est donne* a la
page Ixxxi dans lequel le premier vers rime avec le second et le quat-
rieme. La premiere section suffit comme exemple, puisque les monies
caractSres se repetent dans les autres.
L'Scho douze fois frappe" A tout poete tremp6
Par le vers sept fois coupe", D'une fagon peu compaune;
C'est la cadence opportune
D'un couplet bien e'chappe'. Et sur ce rythme escarpe*
L'oiseau d'ombre enveloppe*,
Ce galop sans halte aucune Recite au clair de la lune
Semble une bonne fortune Les vers de Li-tai-pe*.
Et c'est la traduction du modele offrant Pordre des runes qui a
sugge*re* le clair de lune; mais d'oiseau, il n'y a nulle trace dans
Foriginal, qui est une des perles de Li-tai-p4.
Le bouddhisme n'a pas laisse indifferent le poete franga^ admira-
teur du paganisme.1 Parlant de Fintroduction en Chine de la religion
venue de FInde, le marquis d'Hervey-Saint-Denys cite comme
i L'HMtier de Yang-ti repose sur la croyance a la m^tempsy chose, doctrine
bouddhique.
166 HENRI DAVID
exemple des ide*es bouddhiques refle*te*es dans la literature deux
strophes d'une poesie de Song-tchi-ouen (p. xxxvii), La pluie venue
du mont Ki-chan (p. 185). Bouilhet a conserve" le titre et indique
Fauteur entre parentheses.
Le vent avait chasse* La pluie, venue du mont Ki-chan,
la pluie aux larges gouttes, Avait pass6 rapidement avec le vent
Le soleil s'e*talait, impe*tueux.
radieux, dans les airs, Le soleil se montrait pur et radieux,
Et les bois, secouant au-dessus du pic occidental,
la fraicheur de leurs voutes
Semblaient, par les vallons, Les arbres de la valle*e du Midi sem-
plus touffus et plus verts. blaient plus verdoyants et plus
touffus.
Je montai jusqu'au temple , Je me dirigeai vers la demeure sainte,
accroche* sur Pablme;
Un bonze m'accueillit, Ou j 'eus le bonheur qu'un bonze ve*ne"-
un bonze aux yeux baisse*s. rable me fit un accueil bienveil-
La, dans les profondeurs lant. Je suis entre* profonde*ment
de la raison sublime, dans les principes de la raison su-
J'ai rompu le lien blime. Et j'ai brise" le lien des pre"-
de mes de*sirs passes. occupations terrestres.
Le religieux et moi nous nous sommes
Nos deux voix se taisaient, unis dans une me'me pense*e;
& tout rendre inhabiles; Nous avions e*puise* ce que la parole
J'ecoutais les oiseaux peut rendre, et nous demeurions
fuir dans Fimmensite', silencieux. Je regardais les fleurs
Je regardais les fleurs immobiles comme nous;
comme nous immobiles, JJe*coutais les oiseaux suspendus dans
Et mon coeur comprenait Fespace, et je comprenais la grande
la grande verite! ve*rite".
Reste les deux pieces la Paix des Neiges et le Tung-whang-fung.
Nous ne savons rien de la seconde. Elle rappelle la poesie de Victor
Hugo (1835, n° XXVII des Chants du Crepuscule). Amours de fleur
et d'oiseau, de fleur et de papillon!
Quant a la premiere, en outre que maint vers chinois chante la
neige, elle peut avoir ete sugg^r^e par la fameuse chanson de la neige
blanche (Pe-sioue-ko) a propos de laquelle S. Julien (Deux Cousines, II,
189), rapporte ce qui suit: "Quand Seekouang, celebre musicien de
Fantiquite", jouait Pair de la neige blanche, les dieux descendaient pour
Fentendre." La poe"sie de Bouilhet peint le calme de Phiver a la
campagne. Elle contient quelques passages dont Pinspiration se
retrouve dans Pouvrage ou Papprenti sinologue a tant puise", Poesies
de I'epoque des Thang. Les onomatope*es de la premiere strophe:
670
LES POESIES CHINOISES DE BOUILHET 167
"Pi-po, pi-po! le feu flamboie; L'horloge dit: Ko-tang, ko-tang!"
semblent £tre de Pinvention du po£te qui a lu aux pp. xlii et 88:
"Ling-ling, les chars orient, siao-siao, les chevaux soufflent." Trois
oiseaux figurent dans ce morceau, des corbeaux, un loriot, de blanches
hirondelles; on n'a qu'a lire les poesies choisies par le marquis
d'Hervey-Saint-Denys et celles qui se trouvent intercale*es dans la
prose des romans des Deux Cousines (traduction Re*musat) ou des
Deux jeunes files lettrees (traduction S. Julien, 1845) pour constater
que les noms de ces oiseaux viennent fre*quemment sous le pinceau
des poetes chinois. De m&ne que le premier, Bouilhet a aussi tres
probablement connu le second de ces romans, mis en frangais en vue
d'aider spe*cialement a Pe"tude de la langue chinoise, car, en plus de
Pinte're't que cette O3uvre pre*sente a qui veut s'initier aux mceurs et
coutumes de la Chine, sa valeur comme instrument d'e"tude ne
pouvait la laisser ignorer de Paspirant sinologue.
La Paix des neiges, en outre de ce qui pre*c&de, ne renferme que
trois allusions de"notant une connaissance un peu intime des choses
de la Chine. Deux d'entre elles ont leur source dans ces memes,
Poesies de I'epoque des Thang. 1° "J'ai dans ma maison deux
Spouses, | L'une assise, Pautre debout"; rappelle la polygamie; ce
sont les Spouses du premier et du second rang. 2° "Tres fort en
litte*rature, | J'ai gagne* . . . | Quatre rubis a ma ceinture," Dans
la poe"sie intituled le Pavilion du roi de Teng, on lit: "A la ceinture
du roi dansaient de belles pieces de jade." Et en note: "C'est ce
qu'on nomme hoan pel. Les princes et les hauts mandarins les sus-
pendent a leur ceinture; la couleur et la forme en varient selon le
rang de celui qui les porte. Relives entre elles par de petites chaines,
elles sont souvent enrichies de pierres pr£cieuses." 3° "Pour voir ce
pays des sages | Je suis, sur le courant des ages, | La feuille rose des
pechers." II s'agit ici de Pexpression chercher la source des peckers,
c'est-a-dire chercher ce qui est introuvable (p. xciii).
Les vers pai-lu-chi1 pre*sentent aussi deux passages qui s'e*clairent
par certains rapprochements. 1° La IVeme section de*bute par une
inter j ection : ' ' Youg-hao ! plus de tr istesse ! " A la page 70 des Poesies
se trouve la Chanson du chagrin et cette note: "Les strophes de cette
piece sont entrecoupe"es, dans le texte original, par les mots repute's,
Pel lal ho! (le chagrin arrive!) qui en forment comme le refrain, et qui
sont aussi le titre de la chanson. En chinois, Pintention de ces trois
671
168 HENKI DAVID
mots reunis est de produire une imitation des sanglots. La chanson
du chagrin est pre'cede'e de la chanson du rire, oil le rire est imite
d'une maniere analogue, par le refrain siao hy hou, compose du mot
rire, suivi de deux onomatope'es sans autre valeur que leur son.
2° Le second passage est la derniere strophe: "O lecteur de race
elue! | 0 sapience absolue! | 0 char a quatre chevaux | Le tout petit
te salue!" Or, a la page 36, on lit: "Appele" a de hautes fonctions,
Siang-ju a quitte sa province, | Monte" sur un char rouge, que trainent
quatre chevaux brillants." Et en note : " Le char rouge et les quatre
chevaux sont les attributs des hautes fonctions auxquelles Fempereur
Pavait appele. Pour atteler quatre chevaux a son char il faut etre
d'un rang e"leve\"
Ces diverses touches ne sont ni claires ni tres exactes, mais elles
font leur effet sur le lecteur toujours dispose a se laisser eblouir par
le miroir aux alouettes de Pexotisme.
Si les poe*sies de fantaisie qui sont en majorite* donnent, dans leur
faussete, une nouvelle preuve de la souplesse et de Finge'niosite du
poete, celles ou il a unite" ne donnent qu'une bien faible ide*e du ge*nie
poe"tique des Chinois. Pour s'en convaincre, on n'a qu'a parcourir
les Poesies de I'epoque des Thang. D'une part, Fimitation de la
forme, bornee a trois rythmes, ne s'est exerce"e que sur des sujets sans
caractere ni couleur. Si Pon en excepte I'Heritier de Yang-ti, qui
repose sur un fait historique et parait original, ces essais sont restes
ste"riles puisqu'ils sont uniques dans Poeuvre du poete. D'autre part,
Pimitation du fond s'est arrete"e a deux pieces: Imite du chinois (lu-
kiao-li)1 et la Pluie venue du mont Ki-chan.
On ne saurait trop regretter que la virtuosity et les dons poetiques
dont Pami de Gautier et de Flaubert a laisse des exemples convain-
cants, hautement admires de ceux-ci, ne se soient pas applique's a
traduire dans des formes nouvelles des themes et des images, qui pour
sembler parfois bizarres a des esprits d'occident, n'en sont ni moins
frappants ni moins se"duisants. Le Normand aventureux qui som-
meillait dans le robuste Louis Bouilhet s'est contente* de faire en
amateur quelques incursions sur les confins du royaume du Milieu;
il n'a pas ouvert une large breche dans la grande muraille de la Chine.
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HENRI DAVID
1 Dans I'Sdition Lemerre, il y a vers Pal-lui-chi et In-kiao-li, fautes de r6impres-
sion (?).
672
"CERTE TAVOLETTE"
Chapter XXXIV of the Vita nuova begins thus: "In quello
giorno nel quale si compiea Panno che questa donna era fatta de li
cittadini di vita eterna, io mi sedea in parte ne la quale, ricordandomi
di lei, disegnava uno angelo sopra certe tavolette."1
What were the tavolette ? The question is not answered, so far
as the writer has been able to ascertain, in any edition of the Vita
nuova? nor in any Dante monograph.
The question is answered in Cennini's Libro dell' arte, the con-
temporary and principal authority upon all matters relating to the
art technique of the Trecento.
The opening chapters of Cennini's work are addressed to beginners
in the practice of drawing. Chapters V and VI are as follows:
CAPITOLO V
A che modo cominci a disegnare in tavoletta, e Vordine suo.
SI come detto &, dal disegno t'incominci. Ti conviene avere Pordine di
poter incominciare a disegnare il phi veritevile. Prima, abbi una tavoletta di
bosso, di grandezza, per ogni faccia, un sommesso; ben pulita e netta, cio6
lavata con acqua chiara; fregata e pulita di seppia, di quella che gli orefici
adoperano per improntare. E quando la detta tavoletta e asciutta bene,
togli tanto osso ben tritato per due ore, che stia bene; e quanto piu sottile,
tanto meglio. Poi raccoglilo, tiello, e conservalo involto in una carta
asciutta: e quando tu n'hai bisogno per ingessare la detta tavoletta, togli
meno di mezza fava di questo osso, o meno; e colla sciliva rimena questo
osso, e va' distendendo con le dita per tutta questa tavoletta; e innanzi che
asciughi, tieni la detta tavoletta dalla man manca, e col polpastrello della
man ritta batti sopra la, detta tavoletta tanto, quanto vedi ch' ella sia bene
asciutta. E viene inossata igualmente cosl in un loco come in un altro.
CAPITOLO VI
Come in piu maniere di tavole si disegna.
A quel medesimo e buona la tavoletta del figaro ben vecchio: ancora
certe tavolette le quali s' usano per mercatanti; che sono di carta pecorina
i Ed. Barbi, Milan, 1907.
21 have examined the editions of: Casini, Florence, 1890; D'Ancona^Pisa, 1884;
Flamini, Leghorn, 1910; Fraticelli, Florence, 1873; Giuliani, Florence, *883; Kiel,
Chemnitz, 1820; Melodia, Milan, 1911; Scherillo, Milan, 1911; Witte, Leipzig, 1876;
and the annotated translations of Norton, Boston, 1902; Rossetti, London, 1906; Cochin,
Paris, 1914 ; DelScluze, Paris, 1872 ; Forster, Leipzig, 1841 . On the use of waxed writing-
tablets in the Middle Ages see W. Wattenbach, Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, Leipzig,
1896, pp. 51-89.
673] 169 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, March, 1918
170 ELEANOR J. PELLET
ingessata, e messe di biacca a olio; seguitando lo inossare con quello ordine
che detto ho.1
Chapters VII and VIII describe the preparation of materials
involved in processes of finishing the tavolette.
The tavolette, then, upon which Dante drew his angels, were
presumably small panels of a sort used by beginners in drawing,
some six inches square. The material was probably boxwood or old
fig, possibly parchment, with a surface smoothed, cleaned, and care-
fully primed with bonedust, in the manner described by Cennini.
ELEANOR J. PELLET
CHICAGO
i II libra dell' arte, o trattato della pittura di Cennino Cennini, ed. Milanesi, Florence,
1859.
674
THE PEASANT LANGUAGE IN FERDINAND FABRE'S
LE CHEVRIER
In America Ferdinand Fabre is little known except, perhaps, as
the author of UAbbe Tigrane, a book unique among the more impor-
tant realistic novels of the nineteenth century, in that it contains no
women characters that are intimately concerned with the plot. Les
Courbezon, Fabre's first book, was crowned by the Academy, and the
others, twenty in all, were received with enthusiastic praise by his
contemporaries. He always made choice of novel incident, and his
plots, as if propelled by a mysterious fatalism, move steadily to an
exceptionally dramatic climax. Though his readers were many, and
though his books always brought the highest prices from publishers,
he never attracted any considerable attention from the general public.
Unfortunately, he restricted his studies of human nature to the priest
and to the peasant, two types whose lives do not make a universal
appeal. The priest has been described by many writers, but none
except Fabre has found in him the inspiration for nearly all his best
novels. The character of the peasant Fabre understood as no one
else, not even Balzac or Zola, and he has portrayed it in all its phases.
The most typical of his romans champetres is Le Chevrier. This book,
besides offering the most exhaustive of all the author's studies of
country life, has the added interest of being told entirely in the speech
of a peasant.
Both Fabre and George Sand, in their treatment of peasant life,
gave themselves a task which Balzac avoided. They chose to tell
their stories in a vernacular that would at least suggest that of the
region of which they wrote. George Sand, in order that she might
write in a language that would resemble the native speech of her
beloved Berry, and yet be understood by all her readers, imagined
that she was recounting the story of Francois le Champi to a peasant
on the one hand and to a resident of Paris on the other. Fabre, in
Le Chevrier, made use of the device of a goatherd of the Cevennes,
who tells his love story to a friend from Paris. As Fabre wrote to
Sainte-Beuve (October 5, 1867), this plan had at least the advantage
675] 171 [MODEEN PHILOLOGY, March, 1918
172 RAY P. BOWEN
of novelty. It also heightened the realistic impression that the
author wished to convey, and justified to a large extent the rather
detailed descriptions of the sordidness of farm life among the
peasantry.
We are told1 that Fabre, in picturing to himself the scenes and
characters of his rustic stories, more easily and clearly formulated
his ideas in the patois of his native mountains. Since this patois,
however, was not readily understood outside the region, the author
of Le Chevrier conceived the idea of putting into the mouths of his
characters the speech of the renaissance, that of Rabelais, Montaigne,
and Amyot, which, for its quaintness of phraseology, resembled his
native patois more than did modern French. While George Sand,
then, endeavored to reproduce a peasant language, Fabre sought
to create a speech that would give the effect of a peasant patois.
Thus the story loses none of its charm, even for those who are
entirely ignorant of the French dialects. On the other hand, to gain
anything like a full understanding of the language of Francois le
Champi, the average reader has need of an annotated edition.
Though George Sand, and to a less extent Paul-Louis Courier,
may have been Fabre's inspiration, they in no sense served as models.
The peculiarities of the language of Frangois le Champi lie rather in
vocabulary than in syntax and sentence structure. The author
has made relatively little attempt to heighten the atmosphere of the
story by reproducing a syntax adapted to the mind of a peasant.
Fabre as a realist, on the contrary, has kept constantly in mind a
medium of expression that would conform to the method of thought
usual with a simple peasant lad. To gain this result he carefully
carries out the plan to imitate the style of the sixteenth century.
His vocabulary may be divided into three classes : modern French,
which constitutes the vast majority of his words; those borrowed
from the sixteenth century, although the spelling conforms to present-
day rules; and lastly, words that are apparently taken from modern
Provengal. Very few words belong to the patois of the region, and
the meanings of these few are explained in the text. Patte-courte is
"un lievre plus mesquin que le lievre ordinaire"; cabrade, "un
troupeau de chevres " ; coquillade, " une alouette " ; bastides, "maison-
nettes." Moreover, in preference to the local dialectal forms,
i P. Pascal, "Ferdinand Fabre," Revue Bleue, XIX, 658.
676
THE PEASANT LANGUAGE IN "L.E CHEVRIER" 173
Fabre has deliberately chosen a word common to Rabelais or Mon-
taigne. He uses, for instance, bouter, which, as shown by the Atlas
linguistique, is not generally found in the department of the He*rault,
where the usual word is metre. It does exist, however, in the patois
of Gascony and Auvergne. The same is true of un brin, usual in
Gascony, Gers, and Berry. In the CeVennes, only oem pan occurs.
Bailler for "donner," although common in other parts of the Midi,
seems to be rare in the He"rault.
Apparently, then, Fabre did not desire words that would give local
coloring, so much as words which, by their quaintness, would set
forth the personality of his characters. George Sand constantly
employed rare words restricted to the language of familiar and
inelegant conversation or to the dialects of the provinces. Among
these we find: s'accoiser, detempcer, egrole, cheret, eclocher, tabdtre,
alochons, bessons, all of which would cause the reader difficulty. In
contrast to these we find the goatherd of the Cevennes using besogner,
gente, sapiente, seoir, ouir, souvente fois, melancolieux, devers, and
liesse. They are quaint or obsolete now, but none the less readily
understood. Modern words Fabre often employs according to their
sixteenth-century meanings, as larguer, in the sense of "to chase" or
"drive," parlance as equivalent to depart, and devis for propos.
He has so altered the spelling of the words derived from the
Provencal that they appear to be French, although retaining their
original meaning. Some of these are: couder from the Provengal
couida, which is equivalent to "faire le coude"; devers, which is the
same as the sixteenth-century French word; esprite, from esprita,
meaning "avoir de 1'esprit"; etelles, from estello, in French "eclisse";
fougasse, fougassa, the modern "fouace"; precon, from precoun,
"un crieur public"; quilles, from quiho, "jambe mince, "which occurs
in modern slang; repiquer, from repica, in the sense of "refrapper."
Fabre shows a great fondness for certain suffixes, especially -ance,
as in souvenance, ejouissance, d la coutumance, demeurance. He
seems even to outdo Montaigne in his liking for long adverbs formed
from adjectives. On one page (103) alone occur, vitement,fermement,
aigrement, semblablement, and humblement. Of frequent occurrence
are, pareillement, aucunement, petitement, grandement, peniblement,
memement, doucettement, and douillettement. The peasant who here
recounts his love story falls into the use of the diminutives when
677
174 RAY P. BOWEN
speaking of his mistress, as Felicette, or Frangonnette, or Fantinette
and even when mentioning whatever has to do with her, as fillette,
chambrette, chainette, amourettes.
In regard to syntax Fabre does not adhere constantly to the
usage of the sixteenth century, but he does so to a sufficient extent to
afford an interesting comparative study. Those characteristics which
he has adopted, in most cases, he repeats often and to great advan-
tage. Like Montaigne and Rabelais he displays great freedom in his
use of the article. For the most part, like them, he omits the definite
article before abstract nouns and nouns used in a general sense;
especially is this true of the partitive in the plural. Before concrete
nouns the article is seldom omitted except in a definition or when
stating an habitual fact.1 He regularly omits the indefinite article
before a qualified noun,2 which accords with the usage of Amyot and
Montaigne.
Of Fabre's treatment of adjectives there is little to observe,
except that he betrays the same carelessness as to position as did
Rabelais.3 Adjectives such as bon, vieux, jeune, beau, are as likely
to follow as to precede their nouns. He avoids the older forms of the
demonstrative and possessive adjectives, and never substitutes tonic
for atonic forms.
His use of the personal pronoun accords with modern rules, with
the exception of the suppression of the subject with impersonal verbs
in both negative and affirmative clauses.4 In the case of the neuter
demonstrative ce he reverts to earlier usage in employing it as object
of a preposition or of a present participle, although never of a finite
verb. We frequently find ce nonobstant, ce neanmoins, ce pendant,
sur ce, ce disant. Like Rabelais he prefers the relative lequel to qui,
especially in the feminine (pp. 23, 30, 31; Huguet, op. cit., p. 119).
With the exception of the* long adverbs already referred to,
Fabre seems to use very few of the older adverbs constantly employed
by the sixteenth-century authors, such as adoncques, prou, moult,
1 Cf . p. 17: " Ch&vres tombSrent en nos etables comme torhbent noix de 1'arbre."
So pp. 13, 27, 29, 37, 42. Cf. J. Le Maire de Beiges, Illustrations de Gaule, p. 21: "La
maniSre de seiner bU entre arbres et planter vigne en lieux convenables."
2 Cf. p. 24: "mil s'attendait a pareille question"; p. 46: "tout ceci fut chose
plaisante"; also pp. 27, 28, 37, 192.
3 Cf. Huguet, Etude sur la syntaxe de Rabelais (Paris, 1894), p. 414: "Les astres ne y
feront influence bonne" (II, 28).
4 Cf. p. 82: "m'est avis"; p. 95: "point n'avait 6te" de femme meilleure"; p. 31:
"par maniSre de parler s'entend."
678
THE PEASANT LANGUAGE IN "L.E CHEVHIER" 175
piega, oncques. He has, however, adopted the pleonastic tant in
the adverbs tant seulement, and tant plus, and par in par ainsi. For
the second member of the negative Fabre limits himself to pas, point,
mie. These, however, he generally omits, except when both are
placed before the verb. Because of his fondness for participial
phrases he restricts the subordinating conjunctions to a very few,
and of these que is by far the most frequent. Encore que regularly
introduces clauses of concession (pp. 373, 390, 400).
In regard to the preposition we note that dans rarely occurs in
Le Chevrier, en replacing it in nearly all instances. Occasionally
en replaces avec, as, "je le fisse en joie" (p. 49). The author fre-
quently uses d where modern usage would require pour. We find
the same construction in Rabelais.1 Besides the old form devers for
vers, Fabre also employs the preposition auparavant que de for avant
de (pp. 351 , 356) . These few complete his list of the older prepositions.
In the syntax of the verb Fabre differs most widely from modern
usage. He adopts the preterite as the conversational past tense.
In his manner of employing the subjunctive modern rules obtain,
except in conditional sentences where the subjunctive appears in
both protasis and apodosis, as in Rabelais and Montaigne.2 Some-
times a participial phrase serves as the protasis with the apodosis in
the subjunctive. Again the past conditional occurs in the protasis
and the pluperfect subjunctive in the apodosis. The following
paragraph illustrates both constructions: "Ayant assassin^ pere
et mere, soeur et frere, je n'eusse pas a ce point et6 saisi. De vrai,
me semblait-il, je venais de commettre un crime, et certainement un
gendarme m'aurait agrippS au collet, que je me fusse laissS mener en
prison sans lui demander le pourquoi de la chose" (p. 40). Fabre
makes comparatively little use of the infinitive as a noun, and never
when preceded by the definite article. Neither does he make any
extended use of it with pronoun subject accusative instead of a sub-
ordinate clause when there is no change of subject, although such
a construction was common during the sixteenth century.3 On the
1 P. 43: "prise de compassion a ma douleur." Cf. Rabelais, II, 46: "n6 a domina-
tion paciflque sus toutes bestes."
2 See Voizard, Etude sur la Langue de Montaigne (Paris, 1885), p. 111.
8 We find one good example, however, p. 159: "Je considSrais s'en aller ma vie."
For a list of the verbs that took such a construction in the sixteenth century, see Huguet,
op. cit., p. 44. Cf. Rabelais, I, 264: "Le clerc, pensant sa fern me estre morte et la cure
de sa ville vacquer, conclud en soy-mesmes que il happera ce beniflce."
679
176 RAY P. BOWEN
other hand, he does make very effective use of the historical infinitive
in vivid narrative: "Mais nous de le [le bouc] saisir tout en colere,
de couper des sarments ou pendaient des fruits verts, de Fenguirlander,
et de lui permettre de manger la rame*e, que nous ayant a cheval
promene 1'un ou Fautre au long du bief des Fontinettes ou des haies
vives de Sainte-Plaine " (p. 102).
One of the most striking features of the style of this book is the
author's use of both participles in absolute construction in place of
subordinate clauses (pp. 16, 19). In this respect he particularly
resembles Amyot. The present participle, whether adjective or
gerund, with or without en, is always invariable. Its complement
need not be the subject of the sentence. Often, as in Rabelais,1
it is indeterminate: "Le lendemain de mon arrived, re* clamant un pic
a cette fin de creuser une rigole a des eaux de pluie formant mare
puante en la cour, on ne put me montrer qu'un tas de ferrailles
rouilles" (p. 191; cf. 16, 21). Frequently the present participle
takes a disjunctive pronoun subject, as, "moi ne gagnant plus de
gages" (p. 118; cf. 181, 380),2 and occasionally as the logical subject
of etre, " c'est ne sachant qu'en faire" (p. 13). The past participle in
its agreement follows strictly the rules of modern grammar. In
absolute construction it frequently precedes its noun, as, "eu e*gard
au danger qu'il y a pour nous a sa naissance " (p. 23) . When modify-
ing two nouns of different gender, the past participle takes the mascu-
line plural.
Like all the writers of the sixteenth century, Fabre displays
the utmost freedom as to word order. He adopts all possible arrange-
ments of subject, verb, and attribute. In illustration of the order
of verb, attribute, subject, we find: "Dans cet espace, ou montagnes
et valle*es, ou torrents coulent en hiver entrainant troncs d'arbres
et rochers en leurs eaux neigeuses, se trouvent eparpillees fermes et
metairies des riches, bordes et huttes des pauvres gens" (p. 22). For
the order of verb, adverbial clause, subject, we have: "Quand
brilla, non loin de la mare, comme si du ciel une e*toile fut tombee
dans la campagne, une lumiere eclatante" (p. 50) . Frequently phrases
modifying the verb open the sentence followed by verb and subject,
1 Cf. Rabelais, I, 245: " La portant ainsi et la faisant sonner par les rues, tout le bon
vin d'Orteans poulsa et se gasta." See Huguet, op. cit., p. 219.
* Cf. Rabelais, III, chap. 3: " moy faisant a Tun usage plus ouvert et ch§re meilleure
qu'es autres."
680
THE PEASANT LANGUAGE IN "LE CHEVRIER" 177
as, "En les yeux petits et rouges de la vieille parut abondance de
larmes" (p. 197). Sometimes the verb is first: "arriva chez nous
un soldat" (p. 401). Fabre is very fond of opening his sentences with
long participial phrases followed by subject and then verb, or verb
then subject. One sentence may contain both arrangements, as:
tf Done, abandonnant aux vieux et a Baduel les travaux des champs
et le soin de la cabrade, pendant plusieurs jours, avec FHospitali£re,
nous eumes occupation a 1'affaire de notre mariage, moi disposant
tout en la ferme, elle cousant une robe de percaline, que, preVenues
de la circonstance, lui avaient envoye*e les soeurs du Caylar " (p. 380).
Another characteristic arrangement consists in placing both parts of
the negative before the verb: " point ne s'offrait une occasion de m'y
arreter que je ne le fisse" (p. 49), or, " Point je ne me faisais faute de
penser a la pauvre delaissee " (p. 95) . He also frequently intercalates
an adverbial phrase between the auxiliary and the past participle,
and also between a verb and its dependent infinitive, as, for example,
"La gaule du pere Agathon ne m'eut, par un coup sec, coupe le mot"
(p. 30), and, " j'eusse du, autour de mon poignet, rouler solidement la
ficelle de mon baton " (p. 241). This construction having dropped
from good usage during the fifteenth century, gained greatly in
favor during the sixteenth, but quite disappeared during the next.1
His impression of quaintness and simplicity Fabre secures less
through word order, however, than through the general looseness of
sentence structure and lack of coherence. In the following para-
graph all syntactical connectives are lacking: " Finalement, vous le
comprenez, Monsieur Alquier m'ayant aide" a m'e'tendre sur la pail-
lasse de 1'Eremberte et aussi glisse quelques bonnes paroles en
Poreille, telles que seul il savait en dire pour le re"confort de P&me,
possible ne lui etait, oubliant toute la paroisse, de prendre racine
aupres de mon lit."2 This somewhat careless style is not at all
displeasing, for the sense is never obscure, and it has the advantage
of suggesting the actual manner in which a peasant boy would give
1 See Voizard, op. cit., p. 159.
2 P. 102. Of. Amyot, La Mire de Coriolan: "Mais a la fin, vaincu de 1'affection
naturelle, estant tout esmue de les voir, il ne peut avoir le coaur si dur que deles attendre
en son sigge; ains en descendant plus viste que le pas, leur alia au devant, et baissa sa
mgre la premiere, et la teint assez longuement embrasSe, puis sa femme et ses petits
enfants, ne se pouvant plus tenir que les chauldes larmes ne lui vinssent aux yeux, ny
se garder de leur f aire caresses, ains se laissant aller a 1'aflfection du sang, ne plus ne moins
qu'a la force d'un impgtueux torrent."
681
178 RAY P. BOWEN
expression to his thoughts.1 Nothing is lost thereby in the earnest-
ness of the lad's appeal.
In a letter to Fabre, Sainte-Beuve2 acknowledged that Le
Chevrier was eminently a work of art, and expressed his apprecia-
tion of the author's scholarly methods in creating its peculiar style.
He felt, nevertheless, the reader would receive greater pleasure from
the story had the author only now and then lapsed into the peasant
vernacular. What Sainte-Beuve criticized, however, the poet
Mistral praised.3 He declared that Fabre was fortunate in his
choice of style, and that it was delightful and racy of the locality
of which he wrote. More than this, it lends a certain tone to the
story which relieved parts that otherwise would have been sordid.
Without this appropriate language much of the boy's confession
would have sunk to the level of pure animalism, but through its
medium it becomes artistic and often poetic. It is essential to a
sympathetic understanding of the love story and to a full realization
of the peasant's character. This, as it seems to me, was the result
the author sought to accomplish.
RAY P. BOWEN
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
1 Fabre may well have taken his idea of a style adapted to the mind and education
of the speaker from Rabelais, who constantly alters his diction and phraseology according
to whether Panurge, Frdre Jean, Gargantua, or Pantagruel is speaking. See Huguet,
op. cit., p. 425.
2 June 26, 1868. "Cher Monsieur, Depuis que j'ai regu Le Chevrier, j'ai bien des
fois pens6 a vous, et, si mon remerciment n'est pas alle plus t6t vous trouver, c'est que ma
sant§ me dispose souvent a remettre ce que j'aimerais le mieux faire. II faudrait toute
une dissertation pour traiter avec vous les questions que souleve ce roman d'art et de
style. II y a des etudes doublement savantes dans votre tableau; celle du pays et celle
du langage. Sur ce dernier point, vous avez pris, en quelque sorte, le taureau ou du
moins le bouc par les cornes: en soutenant la gageure pendant un aussi longtemps, vous
avez fait un tour de force. Mais selon moi, ce n'est qu'un tour de force. J'aurais mieux
aime que cet essai de language rustique composite, a la manigre de George Sand et de
Paul Courier, ne r6gnat point durant toute I'Stendue du livre. Si vous aviez pris la
parole vous-m§me, si de temps en temps seulement vous aviez introduit vos personnages
avec le langage observ6 et studieusement naif que vous leur prgtez, vous auriez sauvfi
quelques invraisemblances, et donng, ce me semble, plus de satisfaction au lecteur. II y
a un peu de contention a vous suivre, tout en goutant de charmant passages. Je ne
vous donne point ces impressions rapides pour jugement. II faudrait Scouter vos
raisons, car vous en avez eu; et dans tous les cas, vous avez fait dans cette ceuvre acte
d'artiste" (Pascal, op. cit., p. 658).
'July 4, 1868. He says in part: " Le Chevrier est un livre consciencieux et Scrit
goutte a goutte d'observation locale. On voit que vous avez beaucoup hantS les caussea
des CeVennes, que vous avez v6cu de la vie des ralou, que vous avez r§v6 Tidy lie sous les
plantureux chataigniers. On sent que vous aimez votre pays natal, que vous aimez la
gent rustique; et vrai flls de la terre, vous comprenez le sens du pay sage, et ce que dit le
vent, et ce dont parle 1'arbre et ce que pense 1'homme. Us sont parfaits, vos paysans, et
vos personnages sont vrais, vivants et sympathiques. Vous n'inventez pas la nature.
Vous exprimez avec bonheur ce qu'elle a mis autour de vous, et vous 1'exprimez d'une
maniere savoureuse et channante" (ibid., p. 659).
682
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Cornell University Library. Catalogue of the Petrarch Collection
Bequeathed by Willard Fiske. Compiled by MARY FOWLER.
Oxford University Press, 1916. Pp. xxiv+547.
This catalogue, a magnificent volume printed at Oxford, will be recog-
nized as the most important Petrarch bibliography in existence, and worthy
to stand beside the Dante catalogue issued by the Cornell Library nearly
twenty years ago. It is a striking tribute to the richness of these collections
that a list of the books actually included in them is an indispensable work of
reference even for scholars who may never be able to visit the library where
they are housed. The Dante catalogue fills two closely printed volumes,
while that of the Petrarch collection, although it includes the publications of
the last twenty years, and is printed in larger type, is contained in one.
Dante has been the occasion of far more discussion than any other Italian
poet; yet the influence of Petrarch has also been both far-reaching and pro-
found. His incomparable mastery of the Italian language, together with
the human and appealing psychology of his poems, has led poets to study and
imitate him with particular care, and the literary and historical references of
his Latin and Italian writings alike offer abundant opportunity for scholarly
investigation. The extent of the literature which has been published may
be seen by consulting Part II of the catalogue (pp. 193-496), " Works on
Petrarch." Many of the titles are of general works which treat only in part
or incidentally of Petrarch ; others are of unimportant imitations, sometimes
single poems inspired by his lyrics. These, however, as well as the more
significant titles, show the vogue and influence of the poet. References are
added to reviews of the books mentioned. There is a large amount of
valuable information concerning the editions of Petrarch and also many of
the works about him, in critical and descriptive notes, which frequently
indicate quite fully the contents of a volume. The subject index gives the
title and date of the writings referred to, not merely the author's names
as in the. Dante catalogue. There is an appendix on iconography, and one
(written by Mr. Fiske) on certain literary controversies. In short, the
catalogue is a mine of information and a guide and inspiration for further
study.
The collection includes over four thousand volumes, and in addition the
catalogue contains the titles of articles in periodicals and sets belonging to
the library, even when not in the Petrarch collection itself. Of the known
editions of the Rime from 1470 to 1900 — something over four hundred — all
but sixteen are in the collection. Most of them of course have little or no
683] 179
180 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
critical value; but such an approach to completeness lends importance to
items otherwise insignificant. Of the editions before 1500, the collection
includes twenty-three, lacking only that of Naples, 1477, of which a single
copy is known, and another edition whose existence is doubtful. The rare
commentaries of the sixteenth century are fully represented, as may be
seen by comparing Suttina's catalogue (1908) of the rich Biblioteca Rosset-
tiana of Trieste. There are several fifteenth-century manuscripts of the
Rime, a beautiful illuminated page from one of them being reproduced
(opposite page 69). The editions of the original text and of translations
occupy one hundred and ninety-two pages in the catalogue.
The story of the collection is told in an interesting introduction by Mr.
G. W. Harris, who succeeded Mr. Fiske as librarian at Cornell. It was begun
by Mr. Fiske in 1881, and occupied much of his time until his death in 1904.
He corresponded not only with booksellers all over Europe but with numer-
ous authors, from whom he obtained many rare publications. It is note-
worthy that the Dante collection, begun in 1893, was practically completed
in three years. Mr. Fiske also gave to Cornell his unique library of Icelandic
and Rhaeto-Romance books, and made provision for the maintenance and
increase of all these collections. Scholars have reason to be profoundly
grateful to expert book-collectors who, like Mr. Fiske, have the taste and
knowledge as well as the leisure and the means necessary for gathering com-
prehensive collections of books on special subjects which so frequently reach
the public libraries.
Until the Petrarch books came to America in 1905, they were kept in Mr.
Fiske's library in Florence, a picture of which forms the frontispiece to the
catalogue. The writer of these lines remembers vividly a visit to this library
in July, 1904, a few weeks before Mr. Fiske's death, and immediately after
the memorable celebration at Arezzo of Petrarch's six hundredth anniver-
sary, where Mr. Fiske was the leader of a group of American Petrarchians.
It was a most interesting experience to see him in the midst of his books, and
to hear him talk about them. He was a bibliographer rather than a scholar
or a critic; but his wealth of accurate knowledge and his untiring enthusiasm
made him an ideal collector.
K. McKENZIE
UNIVERSITY OP ILLINOIS
The Ad Deum vadit of Jean Gerson. Published from the manu-
script, Bibliotheque Nationale Fonds fr. 24841, by DAVID
HOBART CARNAHAN. University of Illinois Studies in Language
and Literature, Vol. Ill, No. 1, February, 1917.
In this scholarly edition of the Ad Deum vadit, a sermon preached by
Gerson before the French court in 1402, Professor Carnahan has made a
valuable contribution in a field which will undoubtedly prove increasingly
684
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 181
attractive to American investigators. French scholars have repeatedly
given encouragement to workers in the Middle French period, but the latter
have busied themselves largely with the publication of the verse of an epoch
which was essentially not poetic, and have devoted relatively little attention
to its vast and interesting prose literature. Yet the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries form the linguistic link between Old and Modern French, and offer
a mine of information to the philologist as well as to the historian.
The Introduction occupies about twenty-eight pages and is devoted to a
discussion of the following topics: (1) the life of Gerson, (2) the influence
of Gerson's life on his works, (3) the influence of the three preceding centuries
on the Ad Deum vadit, (4) style and composition, (5) mechanical form,
(6) manuscripts and editions. After a brief account of Gerson's life, Professor
Carnahan takes up the works of the famous Chancellor of the University of
Paris. Their central thoughts (as had already been pointed out by Lanson)
are justice to the poor and much-abused people, and peace in the Church and
in the kingdom, and it was for these ideals of peace and justice that this
noble and gentle figure scorned a life of ease and affluence. While the editor
does not perhaps fully recognize the energy of the indefatigable Gerson,
handicapped as he was by poor health and implacable enemies, he thoroughly
appreciates the Chancellor's courage and unselfishness. We may note in
passing (p. 17) an ingenious explanation of our author's well-known interest
in St. Joseph, as due, in part at least, to an "idea of mystic relationship
between himself and Christ, who was also a man of the people." Gerson
alone, whose family name was Le Charlier, refers to Joseph as a charlier
(wheelwright) .
A complete study of the sources of the Ad Deum vadit is reserved for a
later time. Gerson's natural inclinations were rather toward St. Bernard
and St. Bonaventura than toward St. Thomas Aquinas. On the whole
the language of the sermon is dignified, serious, and sincere, and if the style
is often uneven it is the result of the conventions of the day rather than a
consequence of a lack of clearness of thought. In fact Gerson was constantly
struggling to free himself from the scholastic platitudes and allegorical
absurdities in which his age delighted, and in this respect he differs strikingly
from his celebrated contemporary, Christine de Pisan. It is only when the
latter is off her guard, when she is carried away by intense personal interest
in her subject, that she throws aside the trammels of pedantry and erudition,
and produces passages of real eloquence. So if we feel while reading this
sermon that Gerson neglects to take advantage of several good places to stop,
and are inclined to marvel at the patience of hearers who could listen to so
long a sermon in one day, we must remember that its mechanical form is
simple when compared to that of earlier preachers. The structure of the
Ad Deum vadit is as follows: the Latin text at the beginning is followed by
the Exordium, and then come the first part of the sermon, delivered in the
morning, and the second part, preached in the late afternoon. Each of these
"»» 685
182 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Parts is divided into twelve sections, and each section consists of a scriptural
passage (texte), the Exposition and the Oroison. The first part, the sermon
proper, contains 2,045 lines; the second, the Collation, 1,132 lines.
The editor is fortunate in being able to base his text upon a manuscript
which was probably written during the lifetime of Gerson, and which is
"superior to the other manuscripts both from the point of view of mechanical
form and of contents." This manuscript he calls A, and he uses three others,
B, C, and D, which are also in the Bibliotheque Nationale, for collation. He
has thus been able to obtain a clear and accurate text which leaves but few
real difficulties. In accordance with the practice now frequently adopted the
editor has retained the readings of his best manuscript, including their
orthographic peculiarities, with the following modifications :
He makes a new division of words.
He makes the modern distinction between u and v, i and j.
He punctuates and capitalizes.
He uses the apostrophe, the dieresis, and the acute accent where there
would otherwise be ambiguity (the grave accent seems to be confined to the
word apres).
He corrects obvious mistakes.
The editing of such a text is a matter of extreme difficulty, and it is with
a full appreciation of this fact that the reviewer makes the following sugges-
tions. The comma is sometimes used too freely, par, ce que — lines 370 and
2501 (cf. par ce qu'ilz—265$), part, —371, fait, —818, confidence, —980, etc.
On the other hand, it should sometimes be supplied, as after encerchera — 971.
The dieresis should be used over the y in oyl, in oyr, and the forms of that verb
in 1414, 1748, 2264, 2605; also over the y in tray in 587, trays in 520, etc.
A tout should be printed atout throughout the text, as in 514 (and entered in
the glossary in that form), and ce cy should be cecy (113, 646, 765, 943, 1566,
1821). Advenir should be divided (ad venir) in 139, 254, 376, 412, 601, 707;
a venir — 1434(2) as in 1887. Too much reluctance is shown to correct
manuscript A, and in every case where other readings are chosen the reviewer
heartily approves. In addition he would read ce for se in 1304, 1413, 1501,
1857; tons for tout — 1316; desrons for descouz — 407; gaucher for gancher —
869; furent f or fuirent — 942; nuement for neument, 371 (cf. glossary), pour
tant as in 2444 for pourtant— 2349, 3028.
The glossary has been prepared with much care. It may be doubted
whether in a work of this nature such words as bailler, contenance, clore, etc.,
should be included, especially when such words as the following are omitted:
passible — 218, truans — 546, degarpi — 731, trebuchez — 1054, vertus — 1294,
cause— 1578, oste— 1733, mourir— 2126, mors— 2898, complye— 3065. It is
misleading to translate entredemander — 916, to ask each other, and entregarder
— 2265, to look at each other; depuis que — 2391, 3066, does not mean after
that; bouter, refl. only means to enter after en, and a tant (see tant) only means
until when it is used after jusque; de should be omitted before ligier in the
686
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 183
reference to 2461 ; finir should of course be finer (p. 140) ; cogneu should be
congneu. No attempt has been made to define quer except when it means
for. On page 137 confusion should follow confrouesser, and on page 144
prouvable should precede puis.
E. B. BABCOCK
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY
American Literature in Spain. By JOHN DE LANCET FERGUSON.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1916.
The present work forms one of the admirable series of "Columbia
Studies in Comparative Literature," which includes such sterling works as
Spingarn's History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance and Chandler's
Romances of Roguery. Unlike others in the series, Mr. Ferguson's study is
unhappily conceived. One had always suspected that the influence of
American upon Spanish literature was next to nothing. That suspicion is
converted into a certainty by the reading of this book. Seldom has a dis-
sertation reached so negative a result. It is a pity that the industry and
sound method displayed by Mr. Ferguson has not been applied to some more
grateful theme. If, for example, the horse had been put before the cart,
and the influence of Spain upon Prescott, Irving, Longfellow, John Hay, and
others had been studied, the result would have better repaid the effort.
Something has already been done along this line, it is true; but much remains
to be done. The greater part of the thesis is taken up with copious extracts
from Spanish critics who have sought, unsuccessfully, to interpret our authors
to their countrymen. Much of this makes sprightly, entertaining reading,
and it is fair to note that the humor of it does not escape Mr. Ferguson.
It is interesting to see how completely Spain has misunderstood us; but,
frankly, not all of this material is worth reprinting. Walt Whitman appears
to be the only American author who has been honored with intelligent criti-
cism at the hands of Spanish critics. No American author, not even Poe,
appears to have exerted any material influence upon Spanish literature.
The case is different with Spanish- American authors; the influence of Whit-
man upon Rube*n Dario, for instance, is marked.
Chapters are devoted to Irving, Cooper, Poe, Hawthorne, Longfellow,
Prescott, Emerson, and Whitman. These authors have been frequently
translated into Spanish, but for the most part indirectly through the French.
There is only incidental mention of Ticknor, in spite of the fact that his
History of Spanish Literature is the American book best known in Spain.
Mr. Ferguson may have excluded this as being a work of erudition. But in
that case why devote a chapter to Prescott? Irving has met ^th little
honor in Spain, even though a Granada hotel has been named in his honor.
Mention of Espronceda's graceful tribute to Irving before the Spanish
Cortes would have been interesting. We are grateful to Mr. Ferguson for
687
184 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
his new information concerning George Washington Montgomery, the
American whose adaptation of Rip van Winkle as reprinted by Longfellow
was the first Spanish textbook to be used in America. There are other
curious bits of information, as, for example, that the best rendering of Cooper
into Spanish is that of The Two Admirals, made by Montojo, later Dewey's
antagonist at Manila; and that Longfellow has been presented to Spanish
readers as a poet of orthodox Catholicism.
The bibliography of American translations into the Spanish affords
evidence that Spanish publishers are more catholic in taste than discriminat-
ing. We find such works as Las mujercitas by Louisa M. Alcott, El arte de
hacer millones by P. T. Barnum, El Descubrimiento del Polo Norte by Dr. F. A.
Cook, La cosecha humana by David Starr Jordan, cheek by jowl with serious
works by Emerson, John Fiske, Andrew D. White, Woodrow Wilson, and
William James. (Henry James is still awaiting a Spanish translator.) This
bibliography is interesting and valuable. Its miscellaneous character is
inevitable. Of greatest value, however, is the bibliography of periodical
literature. The nature of his subject led Mr. Ferguson to delve deeply into
Spanish literary periodicals. One pursuing such an investigation must
travel widely. Mr. Ferguson has used all the material he could find in the
British Museum, the Ticknor collection, the Hispanic Society, the public
libraries of Boston and New York, and the university libraries of Harvard
and Columbia. Clearly, he would have gained new material if he had visited
Paris and Madrid, and especially if he had used the periodicals in the library
of the late Mene"ndez y Pelayo in Santander. Without going so far afield
he might have consulted the library of Professor M. A. Buchanan of Toronto,
containing one of the richest collections of Spanish periodicals on this side
of the water. Nevertheless, the author has used no less than 164 different
periodicals, which he lists, telling where they are to be found. This bibli-
ography will be valued by Spanish scholars. It is a pendant to the similar
lists of LeGentil and Churchman. Mr. Ferguson deserves only the highest
praise for his scholarship: he has made the best of a bad subject.
GEORGE T. NORTHUP
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Modern Philology
VOLUME XV April IQl8 NUMBER 12
THE FRANKLIN'S TALE, THE TESEIDE, AND THE
FILOCOLO
There is in the Franklin's Tale a remarkable borrowing from the
Teseide, which has hitherto been entirely overlooked. For in that
part of Chaucer's narrative which deals with Aurelius' unrevealed
love for Dorigen, Chaucer is drawing upon Boccaccio's account, in
the fourth book of the Teseide, of Arcita's unspoken passion for
Emilia. The indebtedness is not only of decided interest on its
own account, but it has also significant bearing upon the vexed
question of the source of the Franklin's Tale as a whole. I shall
deal with it first independently, and then in its relation to the larger
problem.
I
A brief summary of the parallel situations will serve to make
what" follows clear. In the Teseide Arcita, after his release from
prison, determines to return from Aegina to Athens. On his arrival
(IV, 40-41) he goes to the temple of Apollo, and invokes the god
(IV, 42-48) . He enters Theseus' service, relying on his changed
appearance and on his assumption of the name Penteo to conceal
his identity (IV, 48-50). Theseus gives una mirabil festa, at which,
among other ladies, Emilia is present (IV, 51). Arcita thanks Jove
for his fortune, but contents himself with looking on Emflia's face
(IV, 52-54). Emilia, however, although she alone recognizes
Arcita, has as yet but little knowledge of what love is (IV, 56-58).
129 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, April, 1918
130 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
Arcita so serves Theseus that he is beloved of all (IV, 59), takes part
in the gay life of the court (IV, 62), and resolutely conceals his
passion (IV, 60-61), although it grieves him that Emilia is unaware
of it (IV, 62). Unable to endure the necessity of silence, he often
retires to a grove, where he gives voice to his laments (IV,
63-88).
In the Franklin's Tale, Aurelius, like Arcita, is a "wel biloved"
squire, and like Arcita he enters into all the gaieties of the life about
him (F 925-34). He loves Dorigen without her knowledge (935-40),
and does not tell his love (941, 943, 949, 954). Like Arcita he too
can give vent to his pent-up feelings only through his songs (944-48),
and by looking on his lady's face (954-58). And in his distress he,
like Arcita, invokes Apollo's aid (1031 ff.). The parallel, thus
briefly sketched, is striking, but without verbal coincidences it could
scarcely be regarded as conclusive. There is, however, not only
similarity but even identity of phrasing, which we may now proceed
to consider.
In the Teseide, Arcita, after he has returned to Athens, asks a
boon of Apollo. In the Franklin's Tale, Aurelius, after Dorigen has
set her impossible task, also prays to Apollo for aid. And in the
opening lines of Aurelius' "orisoun" Chaucer has taken over, in part,
the beginning of Arcita's prayer.
O luminoso Iddio che tutto vedi,
E'l cielo e '1 mondo e 1'acque parimente,
E con luce continova procedi,
Tal che tene"bra non t'e resistente,
E si tra noi>col tuo girar provvedi,
Ched e'ci nasce e vive ogni semente,
Volgi ver me il tuo occhio pietoso,
E a questa volta mi sia grazioso.1
He seyde, 'Appollo, god and governour
Of every plaunte, herbe, tree and flour,
That yevest, after thy dedinacioun,
To ech of hem his tyme and his sesoun,
As thyn herberwe chaungeth lowe or hye,
Lord Phebus, cast thy merciable ye
On wrecche Aurelie, which that am but lorn '2
» Tea., IV, 43. 2 P 1031-37.
690
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 131
Chaucer has expanded Boccaccio's fifth and sixth lines into four of
his own (1032-35), l and has taken over the seventh line verbatim.
The rest of the prayer deals with the specific task Aurelius has before
him, and need not detain us here,2 except in two details. At its close,
Aurelius declares: "Thy temple in Delphos wol I barefoot seeke"
(F 1077). Arcita goes "agli eccelsi templi .... del grande
Apollo" (IV, 42). Aurelius prays: "Lord Phebus, see the teres on my
cheke" (F 1078). Arcita says: "Di lagrime, di affanni e di sospiri
.... Son io fornito" (IV, 45), and after his prayer "dipartissi il suo
dolore amaro II qual Pavea col lagrimar consunto" (IV, 50).
With this unmistakable borrowing before us, we may now turn
back to F 925 ff., where Aurelius is introduced.
Up-on this daunce, amonges othere men,
Daunced a squyer biforen Dorigen,
That fressher was and jolyer of array,
As to my doom, than is the monthe of May.
He singeth, daunceth, passinge any man
That is, or was, sith that the world bigan.
Ther-with he was, if men sholde him discryve,
Oon of the beste faringe man on-lyve.
We are dealing, it should be remembered, with that part of the
fourth book of the Teseide which Chaucer omitted in the Knight's
Tale. Arcita's behavior is thus described:
Esso cantava e faceva gran festa,
Faceva prove e vestia riccamente,
E di ghirlande la sua bionda testa
Ornava e facea bella assai sovente,
E in fatti d'arme facea manifesta
La sua virtu, che assai era possente.3
In the next two lines Chaucer has summarized, in his description
of Aurelius, every detail of his characterization of Arcite in the
Knight's Tale:
Yong, strong, right vertuous, and riche and wys,
And wel biloved, and holden in gret prys*
For he [Arcite] was wys ....
1 See below, p. 696, for the influence on these lines of another stanza of the Teseide.
2 But see below, p. 721.
* Tea., IV, 62, 1-6. Compare T. and C., Ill, 1716-22, where Chaucer elaborates
somewhat upon Filost., Ill, 72.
« F 933-34.
691
132 . JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
For he was yong and mighty for the nones,
And ther-to he was strong ....
But half so wel biloved a man as he
Ne was ther never in court, of his degree;
He was so gentil of condicioun,
That thurghout al the court was his renoun ....
There as he mighte his vertu exercyse.
And thus, withinne a whyle, his name is spronge ....
That Theseus hath taken him so neer
That of his chambre he made him a squyer,
And yaf him gold to mayntene his degree;
And eek men broghte him out of his contree
From yeer to yeer, ful prively, his rente.1
Since this characterization is not in the Teseide (except for the
"wel biloved"— Tes., IV, 59), it is probable that Chaucer is at
this point recalling the Knight's Tale, rather than Boccaccio. But
in what immediately follows he returns to the stanzas of the Teseide
which he has passed over in the Knight's Tale.
And shortly, if the sothe I tellen shal,
Unwiting of this Dorigen at al,
This lusty squyer, servant to Venus,
Which that y-cleped was Aurelius,
Had loved hir best of any creature
Two yeer and more, as was his aventure,
But never dorste he telle hir his grevaunce;
With-outen coppe he drank al his penaunce.
He was despeyred* no-thing dorste he seye*
E posto che ferventemente amasse,
Sempre teneva sua voglia celata . . . .4
Ed e' non gliele ardiva a discoprire,
Ed isperava5 e non sapea in che cosa,
1 A 1420-43. Without laying too much stress on autobiographical reminiscences,
it is at least interesting that Chaucer makes Arcite first a " page of the chambre" (1427)
of a court lady, and then "of [the duke's] chambre .... a squyer" (1440). These
details are not in the Teseide.
2 Compare Tes., IV, 68, 3 (68, 2 is quoted below): "Ond'io non spero mai d'aver
conforto." This is from Arcita's lament.
« P 935-43.
« Tes., IV, 60, 5-6.
* Professor Wilkins queries whether Chaucer may not have read: E disperava. Cf.
"He was despeyred" above.
692
" FRANKLIN'S TALE/' "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 133
Donde sentiva sovente martire:
Ma per celar la sua voglia amorosa,
E per lasciar li sospir fuori uscire,
Che f ocean troppo I'anima angosciosa,
A vie in usanza talvolta soletto
D'andarsene a dormire in un boschetto.1
For the "two yeer and more" (F 940), however, Chaucer's memory
has gone elsewhere :
And three yeer in this wyse his lyf he ladde.2
It is the Knight's Tale and not the Teseide, then, which he is recalling
in this detail.
Here in the grove (described in the next two stanzas), before he
falls asleep sotto un bel pino to the sound of murmuring waters (IV,
66, 1-6), he makes his lament:
.... ma del suo disire
Focoso, prima che s'addormentasse,
Con Amor convenia si lamentasse.*
So in Chaucer's next two lines :
Save in his songes somwhat wolde he wreye
His wo, as in a general compleyning;*
And the burden of Aurelius' complaint is word for word the burden
of Arcita's :
He seyde he lovede, and was biloved no-thing.5
Perocch'io amo, e non son punto amato*
Of swich matere made he manye layes,
Songes, compleintes, roundels, virelayes,
How that he dorste nat his sorwe telle,7
1 Tes., IV, 63. This is the beginning of the scene which Chaucer totally modifies
in A 1491 flf.
2 A 1446. The reference is to Arcite, and immediately follows the lines quoted
above.
» Tes., IV, 66, 6-8.
4 p 944-45. • Tes., IV, 68, 2.
» p 946. T F 947-49.
134 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
E queste e altre piu parole ancora
Metteva in nota lo giovine amante.1
But languissheth, as a furie dooth in helle;2
And dye he moste, he seyde, as dide Ekko
For Narcisus, that dorste nat telle hir wo.3
Deh quanta mi saria stata piu cara
La morte 4
In oother manere than ye heere me seye
Ne dorste he nat to hir his wo biwreye;
Save that, paraventure, som-tyme at daunces,
Ther yonge folk kepen hir observaunces,
It may wel be he loked on hir face
In swich a wyse, as man that asketh grace;5
.... e si dicendo, fiso
Sempre mirava I'angelico viso.6
But no-thing wiste she of his entente. 7
Ma duol sentiva, in quanto esso credea
Emilia non sentir per cui 'I facea*
The account of Aurelius' secret love, accordingly, is largely '
indebted to the rehearsal of Arcita's hidden passion in the Teseide.
And by far the greater number of the parallels to F 925-59 are found
within the compass of ten stanzas of the Teseide (IV, 60-69).
The lines that now follow in Chaucer deal with Aurelius' dis-
closure of his love, and have to do with the underlying situation
1 Tes., IV, 78, 1-2. See especially the long "compleint" in IV, 80-88.
2 On this line, as a reminiscence of Dante, see Mod. Phil., XIV, 721. Compare
also, for "languisshing," the closing words of IV, 39, 4.
8 P 950-52. Chaucer is here amplifying a general statement of Boccaccio by a
specific reference, just as he does a score of times in the Troilus: see for instance (com-
paring in each case the Filostrato), T. and C., Ill, 1600; IV, 473, 1188, 1538-40; V,
207-8, 212, 643, 664-65, 892, etc. For the reference in the text he is probably recalling
Met., Ill, 375 ff.
• Tes., IV, 69, 1-2. This is from Arcita's lament. Compare also IV, 39, 2-4.
6 P 953-58.
• Tes., IV, 53, 7-8.
i P 959.
• Tea., IV, 62, 7-8. Compare also IV, 86, 1-2; 87, 7-8.
694
" FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 135
of the Franklin's Tale. They therefore diverge of necessity from
the account in the Teseide. But at one most interesting point Chaucer
seems to have returned to Boccaccio. Aurelius has taken advantage
of a lull in the revelry to speak to Dorigen. But they are interrupted :
Tho come hir othere freendes many oon,
And in the aleyes romeden up and doun,
And no-thing wiste of this conclusioun,
But sodeinly bigonne revel newe
Til that the brighte sonne loste his hewe;
For th'orisonte hath reft the sonne his light;
This is as muche to seye as it was night.1
Chaucer apparently took his cue for these famous lines from the
Teseide. They carry us back to the May-morning scene (III, 5-12),
on which Chaucer so charmingly set his own stamp in the KnigMs
Tale (A 1033 ff.). There Emily is in the garden "at the sonne up-
riste" (A 1051), and the day is bright, so that Palamon can see her
plainly :
Bright was the sonne, and cleer that morweninge.2
In this detail, however, Chaucer has sharply diverged from Boccaccio.
Arcita has to strain his eyes to see what Emilia is doing, for
Egli era ancora alquanto il dl scuretto,
Che Vorizzonte in parte il sol tenea*
In the Franklin's Tale Chaucer seems to have come back to the lines.
"Era . . . . il dl scuretto" becomes more concrete: "the brighte
sonne loste his hewe,"4 and the second line ("hath reft the sonne his
light") is modified under the influence of another occurrence of
what is, in point of fact, one of Boccaccio's favorite phrases : " mentre
il mondo chiuso Tenne Apollo di luce."5 "Reft the sonne his light"
is not a translation of (ltenne Apollo di luce"; but the vividness of
the paraphrase is characteristic. As for the transfer of the reference
» F 1012-18.
* A 1062.
« Tea., Ill, 12, 1-2.
4 Of. "bright was the sonne" in the corresponding passage in the K.T.
6 Tes., VII, 68, 1-2. This passage Chaucer also knew peculiarly well, for Tea., VII,
51-66 =PF, 183-294 (see Oxford Chaucer, I, 68-73). And the immediacy following
stanzas (Tes., VII, 70 ff.) Chaucer employs in A 2271 ff. With "reft," cf. Tes.,
Ill, 43, 1-2: "Ma poichS al mondo tolse la bellezza Libra" (Tes., 111,47 ff. =A 1189 ff.).
In general compare "E mentre il ciel co' suoi eterni giri L'aere tien di vera luce spenta"
(Tea., IV, 72, 5-6); " in 1'eterna prigione, Doveogniluce Dite tiene spenta" (X, 14,5-6).
136 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
from the dawning of day to the fall of night, Chaucer is merely
reverting (perhaps quite unconsciously) to Boccaccio's original.
For Boccaccio in his turn is recalling Dante. And in Dante the
line refers to night. Sordello is telling the two pilgrims that only
la notturna tenebra prevents their ascent of the Mount of Purgatory
by night; for them to descend, on the other hand, is possible,
E passeggiar la costa intorno errando,
Mentre die I'orizzonte il di tien chimo.1
But there are other indications that Chaucer had the May-
morning stanzas in the Teseide in his mind. Let us return to Aure-
lius' invocation. I have already pointed out that Chaucer expanded
Boccaccio's ogni semente into "every plaunte, herbe, tree and flour."
And the source of the expansion seems reasonably clear. The open-
ing stanza of the garden scene gives the position of Phoebus, Venus,
and Jupiter at the beginning of May:
Febo salendo con li suoi cavalli,
Del ciel teneva 1'umile animale
Che Europa portd senza intervalli
La dove il nome suo dimora avale;
E con lui insieme graziosi stalli
Venus facea de' passi con che sale:
PerchS rideva il cielo tut to quanto,
D'Amon che 'n pesce dimorava intanto.
Da questa lieta vista delle stelle
Prendea la terra graziosi effetti,
E rivestiva le sue parti belle
Di nuove erbette e di vaghi fioretti;
E le sue braccia le piante novelle
Avean di fronde rivestite, e stretti
Eran dal tempo gli alberi a fiorire
Ed a far frutto, e Jl mondo rimbellire.2
1 Purg., VII, 59-60. This is from the canto in which occur the lines about "prow-
esse of man" which Chaucer quotes in the Wife of Bath's Tale (D 1125-30 =Purg., VII,
121-23), and it is not impossible that he recognized Boccaccio's source. He certainly
knew Dante at least as well as the present writer, to whom the line in Boccaccio instantly
recalled the line in the Purgatorio, through the association with orizzonte — to a foreigner,
a striking word. I do not, however, wish to lay undue stress on the " orison te" lines as
evidence.
2 Tea., Ill, 5-6. For the bearing of these same stanzas on Troilus, II, 50-56, see
Kittredge, "Chaucer's Lollius," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXVIII, 113-14.
"FRANKLIN'S TALE/' "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 137
There is the definite dependence of the "tyme and sesoun" on
Apollo's declination. And "erbette .... fioretti .... piante
. . . . alberi" correspond exactly to Chaucer's "plaunte, herbe,
tree and flour." Moreover, the scene in Chaucer's garden is laid
on the sixth of May.1
But Chaucer (as has also not been observed) used this same pas-
sage elsewhere. I shall repeat the opening of stanza 5, and add
to it stanza 7.
Febo salendo con li suoi cavalli,
Del ciel teneva I'umile animate
Che Europa porto ....
E gli uccelletti ancora i loro amori
Incominciato avien tutti a cantare,
Giulivi e gai nelle fronde e fiori;
E gli animali nol potean celare
Anzi '1 mostravan con sembianti fuori;
E giovinetti lieti, che ad amare
Eran disposti, sentivan net core
Fervente piii che mai crescere amore.
Let us turn to the B-version of the Prologue to the Legend:
My besy gost, that thrusteth alwey newe
To seen this flour so yong, so fresh of hewe,
Constreyned me with so gledy desyr,
That in my herte I fele yit the fyr,
That made me to ryse er hit wer day — 2
And this was now the firste morwe of May —
With dredful herte and glad devocioun,
For to ben at the resureccioun
Of this flour, whan that it shuld unclose
Agayn the sonne, that roos as rede as rose,
That in the brest was of the beste that day,
That Agenores doghter ladde away.3
The lines which follow in the B-Prologue (115 ff.) deal with the new
garments of Spring and the loves of the birds; so do the two stanzas
i P 906. See also below, p. 702.
8 Compare Emilia's rising (Tes., Ill, 12) while "era ancora alquanto il di scuretto."
3 Leg., B-version, 11. 103-14. "Agenores doghter" may be a remftiiscence of
" Agenore nata" in Met., II, 858. But there is a very striking parallel in the Filocolo:
"In questa vita stette inflno a tanto che Febo in quell' animate che la figliuola d' Agenore
trasportb de' suoi regni . . . ." (ed. Moutier, II, 149). See below, p. ?l2.
697
138 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
(III, 6-7) just quoted from the Teseide. But in Chaucer there is an
interweaving with Machaut, Guillaume de Lorris, and Baudouin de
Conde* which is too complex to enter upon here.1
With these lines in the B-Prologue in mind, we may now return
to the Franklin's Tale:
So on a day, right in the morwe-tyde,
Un-to a gardin that was there bisyde ....
They goon and pleye hem al the longe day.2
And this was on the sixte morwe of May*
Which May had peynted with his softe shoures
This gardin ful of leves and of floures.4
The garden into which Dorigen is led to play, as well as "the floury
mede" into which Chaucer goes "to loke upon the dayeseye," is
accordingly Emilia's garden in the Teseide. And precisely as in the
B-Prologue to the Legend Chaucer interweaves with Boccaccio's
account reminiscences of garden scenes from Machaut and the other
French vision-poets whom he knew, so here he modulates at once
from Boccaccio into Machaut. For the immediately following lines,
as Schofield long ago pointed out, are taken over almost bodily from
the Dit du Vergier.5
Lines 901-1037 of the Franklin's Tale, then — barring the con-
versation in lines 960-1010, which has to do with the situation
peculiar to this particular story — are a free working over of definite
suggestions drawn from third and fourth books of the Teseide.
We have not, however, quite exhausted the borrowings. The
superb description of winter (F 1245-55), that begins: "Phebus
wex old, and hewed lyk latoun," owes at least two of its lines to the
Teseide. After the first May morning, Emilia comes daily into the
garden (III, 29-31 and 40). But at last the season changes:
II tempo aveva cambiato sembiante,
E Vaere piangea tutto guazzoso,
Si ch'eran I'erbe spogliate e le planted
1 See, in part, Kittredge Anniversary Papers, p. 103. I shall give the full evidence
at another time.
* Compare B-Prologue, 1. 180: " The longe day I shoop me for to abyde."
» Compare B-Prologue, 1. 108: " And this was now the flrste morwe of May."
* P 901-2, 905-8. Compare Tes., Ill, 7: " nelle /ronde e fiori."
6 See the passage in full in PMLA, XVI, 446.
* Tes., Ill, 44, 1-3.
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 139
That, to be sure, is October,1 but Chaucer takes the detail over into
his description of December:
The bittre frostes, with the sleet and reyn,
Destroyed hath the grene in every yerd.2
The opening lines of Dorigen's prayer (F 865-67) are perhaps
reminiscent of the opening lines of Theseus' speech after Arcita's
disaster in the amphitheatre (IX, 52-53, 1-4). And it is possible
that another phrase of Dorigen's — " That unwar wrapped hast me in
thy cheyne" (F 1356) — is suggested by "si strigneano le catene"
of the Teseide (III, 32, 5). But I should lay no great stress on these
two similarities.
Finally, the well-known phrase about love and "maistrie"
probably appears in the Franklin's Tale (F 764-66), as it certainly
does in the Knight's Tale (A 1624-26), because it occurs in the
Teseide: "Signoria Ne amore sta bene in compagnia" (V, 13, 7-8).
In the Franklin's Tale Chaucer has gone back to Jean de Meun,3 as
Jean de Meun went back to Ovid.4 But it is not improbable that the
passage in the Teseide was his starting-point.
There are, however, what seem to be two other borrowings in
the Franklin's Tale which have gone unobserved. Toward the close
of Machaut's Dit dou Lyon, which Chaucer almost certainly trans-
lated or took over in some form,5 Machaut asks the lady of the garden
(the name of which is "FEsprueve de fines amours") why it is not
1 See Tes., Ill, 43, 1-2.
2 F 1250-51.
s See Skeat's note, and Pansier, Chaucer and the Roman de la Rose, pp. 194, 220.
To Fanaler, p. 220, add RR, 9528-33 (ed. Michel, I, 291-92).
« Met., II, 846-47. The form which this takes in the Ovide moralise is not without
interest, in connection with the Franklin's remarks:
Ja n'avront bone compaignie
Loiaus amours et seignorie,
Quar trop sont divers et contraire:
Amours est franche et debonaire,
Et seignorie est dangereuse,
Despiterresse et orgueilleuse,
Si veult que Ten la serve et craime,
Et amours veult que cil qui 1'aime
Soit frans et douz et amiables,
Debonair es et serviables,
Si veult avoir per, et non mestre (II, 4977-87).
The first three books of the Ovide moralise are now published, edited by^C. de Boer,
in the Verhandelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenshappen te Amsterdam,
Afdeeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Rekes, Deel XV (1915). I shall discuss their bearing
upon Chaucer in an article soon to appear.
s See the " Retracciouns " (I, § 104).
140 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
inclosed.1 The lady replies that it was so ordained by the maker of
the garden:
Mais par souffrir I'estuet conquerre
D'aucun bon cuer qui soit si frans
Qu'ades soit humbles et souffrans;
Car autrement estre conquise
Ne puet, tant soit bien entreprise . . .
Et s'il les vuet de dueil crever,
II doit son corps dou tout offrir
A elles humblement souffrir,
Car cils qui mi et souffrir puet
Fait partie de ce qu'il vuet;
Et se dit on: "Qui sueffre, il veint";
Et s'est vertueus qui bien feint.
Einsi toutes les veinquera
Par souffrir, n'il ne trouvera
Donjon, closture ne muraille,
N'autre voie, qui mieus y vaille.2
Immediately after the "love and maistrie" lines in the Franklin's
Tale, Chaucer passes to the idea of constraint in love:
Love is a thing as any spirit free;
Wommen of kinde desiren libertee,
And nat to ben constryned as a thral;
And so don men, if I soth seyen shal.3
This general notion of constraint seems to have recalled the passage
in the Dit dou Lyon. At all events, Chaucer proceeds at once to
emphasize Machaut's very doctrine of "suffrance" as the van-
quisher in love:
Loke who that is most pacient in love,
He is at his avantage al above.
Pacience is an heigh vertu certeyn;
For it venquissheth, as thise clerkes seyn,
T hinges that rigour sholde never atteyne.
For every word men may nat chyde or pleyne.
Lerneth to suffre, or elles, so moot I goon,
Ye shul it lerne, wher-so ye wole or noon.4
» Ll. 1996 ft. ((Euvres de Machaut, Soc. des anc. textes fr., II, 229).
2 Ll. 2040-44, 2066-76.
» P 767-70.
« P 771-78. Compare "suffrance hir behight" (1. 788).
700
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 141
Skeat refers these lines in Chaucer to one of Cato's distichs:
Quern superare potes, interdum vince ferendo,
Maxima enim morum semper patientia virtus.1
And directly or indirectly either this or some of its proverbial ana-
logues may very well underlie both Machaut and Chaucer. But
the application in both poems to love, and the common emphasis on
suffering, together with the practical certainty of Chaucer's close
familiarity with the Dit dou Lyon,2 point strongly to the latter
poem as the immediate source of the Franklin's lines. Not once
but twice, then, it would seem that Machaut appears in the Frank-
lin's Tale.
The other borrowing is slight, but not without significance.
The following lines occur in Aurelius' prayer, and are addressed
to Phoebus with reference to his "blisful suster," the moon:
Ye knowen wel, lord, that right as hir desyr
Is to be quiked and lightned of your fyr 3
In the Anticlaudianus Alanus thus speaks of the moon:
Quomodo mendicat alienum luna decorem,
Cur a luce sua Phoebe demissa parumper
Detrimenta suae deplorat lucis, at infra
Plenius exhausta totius luminis amplam
Jacturam quseritur, sed rursus fratris in igne
Ardescens nutrit attriti damna decoris.*
The reminiscence — once more from a book which (this time cer-
tainly) Chaucer knew — seems to be clear. If so, Boccaccio, Machaut,
and Alanus de Insulis were all in Chaucer's mind when the Franklin's
Tale was written.
II
What bearing has all this on the problem of the source of the
Tale as a whole ? Does it further Schofield's view that this source
is, as Chaucer states, a Breton lay ? Or does it corroborate Rajna's
1 Oxford Chaucer, V, 388. Skeat's other references have to do merely with the
general idea of the proverb: " vincit qui patitur."
« See PMLA, XXX, 4, 7. 0
» P 1049-50.
4 Distinctio Secunda, cap. Ill (Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century, Rolls Series,
II, 296-97).
701
142 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
contention that the Tale is based on the fourth questione d'amore
in the Filocolof Three points demand consideration. First, the
fact of Chaucer's use of the Teseide cuts both ways, so far as Scho-
field's and Rajna's evidence is concerned. Second, the employment
of the Teseide demonstrates that in the Franklin's Tale we have,
in any case, a combination of sources to deal with. And third, it
adds to our information the important fact that when Chaucer wrote
the Tale he went for at least part of his materials to Boccaccio. Let
us consider briefly these three points in order.
First, then, a certain number both of Rajna's parallels between
the Franklin's Tale and the Filocolo, and of Schofield's rapproche-
ments between the Franklin's Tale and the Breton lay (or other
French poems) are now seen to be directly explicable by the Teseide.
1. According to Rajna the garden in the Franklin's Tale repre-
sents the magic garden in the fourth questione, and even more closely
the Neapolitan garden in which the questioni are held:
Alle origini di quel giardino, che 'May had peinted with his softe shoures,'
non & forse estraneo il giardino incantato; ma poiche una brigata ci va a
trascorrere in canti, balli ed altri piaceri tutto un giorno, inclino a vederci
ancor piu il riflesso del giardino napoletano in cui si propongono e discutono
le nostre Questioni d'amore.1
But we have seen that the garden in the Franklin's Tale is directly
suggested by the garden of the Teseide, combined with details from
the Dit du Vergier. Particularly, the fact that Chaucer's garden
is described as in early May is definitely and specifically due to the
Teseide. There the sun is in the Bull,2 and Chaucer's date, the sixth
of May, is in accord with this. The festa in the Neapolitan garden
takes place late in May, for the sun has already entered Gemini.3
Chaucer's garden (except for the " softe shoures," which are not in
the Filocolo either) may be fully accounted for from the Teseide
and the Dit du Vergier.* On the other hand, the garden in the
1 Romania, XXXI, 42, n. 2 (end); cf. XXXII, 236. For Dr. Cummings' dis-
cussion of this parallel, see p. 714 below. For the magic garden, see Filocolo, II, 50,
56-57; for the garden of the setting, see II, 32, 119.
2 See Tes., Ill, 5, quoted above, p. 697.
s Filocolo, II, 22.
« Of the five passages which Dr. H. W. L. Dana suggests as containing possible
traces of the garden of the Filocolo (Tatlock, The Scene of the Franklin's Tale Visited,
Chaucer Soc., 1914, p. 77), the first, third, and fifth seem to be due rather to the Teseide.
702
'„' FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 143
Teseide is not the scene of revels; that in the setting of the questioni
in the Filocolo (as Rajna points out) is. And if there should be inde-
pendent supplementary evidence of Chaucer's use of the Filocolo in
the Tale, the assumption might not be unwarranted that Chaucer's
garden includes reminiscences of both the Teseide and the Filocolo.
2. Chaucer's "But sodeinly bigonne revel newe" (F 1015) troubles
Rajna, and, even more, Tatlock. "Perche," asks Rajna, '" revel
newe ' ? Non vedo che il f esteggiare sia mai stato interrotto, se non
forse dal passeggiare di taluni su e giu per i viali, del quale d'altronde
non ci si da punto un per che."1 Tatlock regards this argument
of Rajna's as " especially to the point," and refers to "the unaccount-
able ' revel newe.'"2. In the first place, the difficulty, in reality, does
not exist. There is a lull in the dancing, and Aurelius seizes the
opportunity to speak with Dorigen. After they have talked a
while, their friends come up, are unaware of the tense situation upon
which they have unwittingly intruded, and so pay no heed, but at
once begin to dance again.3 One need scarcely be given pause upon
reading that after a breathing space dancing is resumed! And the
fresh beginning of the revels is no more unaccountable here than
in the Squire's Tale: "Heer is the revel and the jolitee"; then a
lull; then, "Thus glad and blythe, this noble doughty king Repeireth
to his revel as biforn" (F 278, 338-39). There is no need to go
beyond the situation in the Franklin 's Tale itself to account for
"revel newe." Assuming, however, in the second place, . that
Chaucer had a definite source in mind, is this the Filocolo ? Rajna,
of course, followed by Tatlock, refers "revel newe" to the fresh
beginning of the festivities, when the heat of the day has passed, in
Fiammetta's garden ("e i nostri compagni avere ricominciata la
festa" etc.).4 I grant at once that this is a possibility. But the
weight of the parallel with the Filocolo is somewhat lessened by the
fact that in the Franklin 's Tale the lines that describe the coming of
night are (possibly) from the Teseide, and that (certainly) Aurelius
begins at once his appeal to Apollo in the words of Arcita in the
1 Romania, XXXII, 237.
2 The Scene of the Franklin Tale Visited, p. 57, note. Italics mine.
3 "Bigonne" is of course plural.
« Romania, XXXII, 237; Tatlock (as above), p. 57, n.
703
144 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
Teseide. In view of its immediate context, "revel newe" can
scarcely be taken, in and for itself, as evidence for Chaucer's use
of the Filocolo. On the other hand, it is again possible that Chaucer
remembered both the Teseide and the Filocolo.
3. The parallel between Aurelius and Equitan which Schofield
draws1 may be transferred, word for word, to Aurelius and Arcita,
except that Emilia is unmarried. But the heroine of the Franklin's
Tale is ex hypothesi a wife, whatever the source of the story, and
Aurelius owes unmistakably his characterization to Arcita. This
particular parallel of Schofield's, therefore, loses its force.
4. The same statement applies to Schofield's ascription of
Aurelius' complaints to "the influence of contemporary French
works."2 The immediate influence turns out to be that of the
Teseide.9
It is obvious, then, that both Rajna's and Schofield's evidence
is in certain details either weakened or rendered nugatory by the
recognition of Chaucer's use of the Teseide.
The second consequence of this recognition is the definite assur-
ance which it gives us that Chaucer, in the Franklin's Tale, was
following his familiar method of combining various sources. We
have no more warrant, therefore, for assuming that we should find
all of the details of the story (even the major ones) accounted for in
any single source — whether that source be Breton or Italian in its
origin — than we should have for a similar assumption in the case
of the Troilus, or the Book of the Duchess, or the Parlement, or the
Merchant's Tale.4 What Chaucer demonstrably did with Aurelius —
whether his original was Tarolfo in Menadon's story, or a lover in a
lost Breton lay, or some third unknown — he was perfectly capable of
doing with any other character or incident in the story or stories that
he had before him. It is probable almost to the point of certainty
that we should postulate, not a single source, but two or more
sources for the Tale. The Teseide, at least, is neither a Breton lay
1 PMLA, XVI, 428.
2 PMLA, XVI, 445.
9 See above, p. 693. Chaucer was of course familiar with innumerable complaints
in French. But it was Arcita' s complaints that were definitely in his mind.
4 Chaucer's use of the Teseidein the Franklin's Tale, for instance, is closely analogous
to his use of the Miroir de Mariage in the Merchant's Tale.
704
" FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 145
nor the Filocolo. Its presence in the Franklin's Tale as an integral
element of the story is therefore of the first significance. For it
raises the complexity of Chaucer's procedure to a certainty.1
In the third place, the presence of the Teseide makes it clear
that Chaucer was, so far, under the influence of Boccaccio, when
he wrote the Tale. That does not constitute proof that the other
elements of the story reached him also through Boccaccio. He
interweaves his reminiscences of Boccaccio with the wide range
of his reading in French and Latin in Anelida, and Ariadne, and the
Parlement, and the Troilus, and the Prologue to the Legend. And,
a priori, he may perfectly well in the Franklin's Tale have dove-
tailed one section of the Teseide into a Breton lay, as he certainly
dovetailed, for instance, another section into a complex of Macrobius,
and Dante, and Claudian, and Alanus in the Parlement. But the
demonstration of his use of the Teseide carries with it the certainty
that, at the moment, the influence of Boccaccio was at work.
And to that degree at least it enhances the possibility of his employ-
ment of the Filocolo.
These three conclusions, I think, change somewhat the bearings
of the entire problem, and render a certain degree of reconsideration
necessary. And first, in the light of what has been presented, let
us return to the Filocolo.
Ill
In view of the notable differences between Chaucer's and Boc-
caccio's versions of the story, the presence or absence outside the
Franklin's Tale of evidence that Chaucer knew the Filocolo is a
matter of the first importance. If there are independent grounds for
believing that Chaucer read the Filocolo, such evidence establishes a
strong presumption in favor of his use of it in the Franklin's Tale.
If there are no such grounds, the presumption looks the other way.
Professor Karl Young has contended for Chaucer's employment of
the Filocolo in the Troilus.2 That contention has just been sharply
called in question by Dr. H. M. Cummings.3 Without for the
1 See also below, pp. 724-25.
2 The Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus and Criseyde, Chaucer Soc., 1908,
pp. 139-181.
" The Indebtedness of Chaucer's Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio (University
of Cincinnati Studies, Vol. X, Part 2, 1916), pp. 1-12.
705
146 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
moment entering into this particular divergence of opinion, I wish
to bring forward additional and independent evidence of Chaucer's
knowledge of the Filocolo.
The Filocolo is not a work from which it is very likely that
Chaucer (or anyone else) would often quote verbally. It is diffuse
to the last degree, and, except in a few passages, unmarked by dis-
tinction of style. Nevertheless, there is some apparent justice
in the remark with which Dr. Cummings closes his argument:
"If Chaucer had known the Filocolo it is inconceivable that he, who
so thoroughly culled out from Boccaccio's Teseide so many beauties
and incorporated them into his several works, should have neg-
lected to avail himself of any of all the rich store of them in that
most tapestried of Italian prose romances." I wish, however, to
call attention at once to the fact that it is precisely " tapestry"
that, as a rule, Chaucer does not borrow. Nothing, indeed, is more
striking about his use of the romans courtois, for example, than what
he omits. And what he passes over there is, mutatis mutandis, exactly
the sort of thing that he passes over (assuming that he knew it)
in the Filocolo.1 The more widely one follows Chaucer in his read-
ing, the more is one impressed by his abstentions, which are often
far more significant than his borrowings. It is hazardous business
to assume that Chaucer would have borrowed this or that, had he
known it.
Moreover, Dr. Cummings' analogy with the Teseide is scarcely a
happy one. The Teseide is a work of art; the Filocolo falls short
of that enviable distinction. And the books from which Chaucer
quotes verbally (I do not, of course, refer to translations of a work
in toto) are those which either interested him more or less deeply
for their subject-matter — especially as that touched in some way
upon life — or bore the stamp of form. The Filocolo, in the main,
possesses neither merit. The real analogy, in the case of the Filocolo,
is not with the Teseide, but rather with (let us say) the Roman de
Troie. And it is as pertinent to ask why Chaucer seldom, if ever,
quotes Benoit verbally, as it is to insist that a knowledge of the
Filocolo must show itself in verbal borrowings. It would not be
1 This statement about the romances is based on investigations which were begun
before Dr. Cummings' dissertation was published, but which I may not elaborate here.
706
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FiLOCOLo" 147
surprising, in either case, to find a few such borrowings. It would
be cause for surprise to find more than a few.
And we find, I think, precisely what we should expect to find.
For there are a number of passages in which Chaucer seems definitely
to have recalled the phraseology of the Filocolo.
1. The first passage is perhaps the most familiar one in Chaucer.
Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
.Of which vertu engendred is the flour;1
Se quella terra che noi incalchiamo lungamente alle tue radici presti
grazioso umore, per lo quale esse diligentemente nutrite le tue fronde nutrichino.2
When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes*
Come quando Zeffiro soavemente spira si sogliono le tenere sommitd degli
alberi muoi)ere per li campi.4
The two passages are only fourteen lines apart, and the last is as
nearly a literal translation as the differences between verse and
prose allow. To estimate at its full value the closeness of the
parallel, it is only necessary to compare with it the lines from Guide's
Historia Troiana* and from Boccaccio's Ameto,6 which are conveni-
ently brought together by Tatlock.7 It is of course possible that
Guido may also have been in Chaucer's mind. The one passage
would be very apt to recall the other. But the verbal correspond-
ences with the Filocolo are too close to be readily accounted for as
mere coincidence.
2. The second parallel is brief, but significant. After Arcite
has offered his prayer to Mars in the temple,
The statue of Mars bigan his hauberk ringe.
And with that soun he herde a murmuringe
Ful lowe and dim, that sayde thus, 'Victorie.'8
» A 1-4. 5 Book IV (opening). 9
2 Filocolo, II, 238. 8 Ed. Moutier, pp. 23-24.
3 A 5-7. ' A nglia, XXXVII, 86-88.
« Filocolo, II, 239. 8 A 2431-33.
707
148 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
The Teseide has:
Di Marte, le cui armi risonaro
Tutte in se mosse con dolce romore.1
The " murmuringe Ful lowe and dim" is felt at once to be a
rather striking paraphrase of Boccaccio's " dolce romore." As a
matter of fact it seems to be a reminiscence of another passage. It
so happens that in the Filocolo Florio and Ascalione, like Arcita, visit
the temple of Mars, from which they pass at once to the temple of
Venus (Filocolo, I, 207-8). There, after Florio's sacrifice, "per
tutto il tempio si senti un tacito mormorio." Arcita's visit to the
temple of Mars in the Teseide has apparently recalled to Chaucer
Florio's visit to the temple of Mars in the Filocolo, and for the
"dolce romore" of the one he has substituted the noteworthy
"tacito mormorio" of the other.
3. The confusion between Titan and Tithonus in Troilus, III,
1464-702 has been duly noticed, but its source has never been
pointed out.3 The same confusion, however, occurs again and
again in the Filocolo, and once in a context that strikingly suggests
Chaucer's.
The address to day in the Troilus (III, 1450 ff.), of which the
lines just referred to form a part, is preceded by a corresponding
address to night:
0 night, alias! why niltow over us hove,
As longe as whanne Almena lay by Jove ?
0 blake night ....
.... ther god, makere of kinde,
Thee, for thyn hast and thyn unkinde vyce,
So fast ay to our hemi-spere binde,
That never-more under the ground thou winde!*
» Tes., VII, 40, 5-6.
«For the gloss in Harl. 2392, see Oxford Chaucer, II, Ixxiii. Cf. Skeat's note,
II, 482.
3 Since this article was written, Professor Kittredge has discussed the passage
briefly in Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXVIII, 116, referring to Boccaccio's
form Titon for Tithonus in Tes., IV, 72, as a possible source of Chaucer's confusion, and
comparing Ovid, Amores i. 13.
« Troilus, III, 1427-29, 1437-40.
708
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 149
In the Filocolo, the king, in his eagerness that day may come (thus
re versing. Criseyde's desire), also invokes the night:
0 notte, come sono le tue dimoranze piu lunghe die essere non sogliono !
II sole e contro al suo corso ritornato, poiche egli si ce!6 in Capricorno, allora
che tu la maggior parte del tempo del nostro emisperio possiedi ....
perocche quando tu ti partirai dal nostro emisperio la faro ardere nelle cocenti
fiamme.1
And here, as in the Troilus, the address to night is followed imme-
diately by an invocation to the sun, which in like manner usurps the
place of Tithonus:
E tu, o dolcissimo Apollo, il quale desideroso suoli si prestamente tornare
nelle braccia della rosseggiante aurora, che fai ? Perche dimori tanto ?
The prayers are again reversed, since it is an aubade that Chaucer is
writing, but the remarkable similarity of the two passages needs no
comment. And the specific confusion involved becomes explicit in
Book IV:
Le notturne tenebre dopo i loro spazii trapassano, e Titano venuto nelV
aurora arreca nuovo giorno.2
Moreover, in the fourth questions itself we find: "avanti che il sole
s'apparecchiasse d'entrare nell' aurora."3 The confusion of Titan and
Tithonus, it is true, antedates Boccaccio. Servius comments on
Georg., Ill, 48 as follows: "et modo Tithonum pro Sole posuit, id est
pro Titane: nam Tithonus f rater Laomedontis fuit, quern proeliantem
Aurora dilexit et rapuit."4 It is, however, the occurrence of the
same confusion in a similar context in the Filocolo and the Troilus that
gives such significance as it possesses to the parallel.
4. The fourth parallel clears up an otherwise unsolved puzzle.
Chaucer's authority for the statement in the Legend of Ariadne
that Androgeus was slain at Athens "lerning philosophye ....
> Filocolo, I, 173.
*Ibid., II, 222.
« Ibid., II, 50. Compare: "Salito il sole nell'aurora" (II, 254).
« Ed. Thilo and Hagen, III, 279.
709
150 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
nat but for envye" has never, I believe, been traced.1 The full pas-
sage is as follows :
Minos, that was the mighty king of Crete,
That hadde an hundred citees stronge and grete,
To scole hath sent his sone Androgeus,
To Athenes; of the whiche hit happed thus,
That he was slayn, lerning philosophye,
Right in that citee, nat but for envye*
In his elucidation of Aen. vi. 14, Servius has the following:
Sed Androgeus cum esset athleta fortissimus et superaret in agonibus cunctos
apud Athenas, Atheniensibus et vicinis Megarensibus coniuratis occisus est.3
That hints at envy, but gives no indication of Androgeus' philosophic
bent. The statement that Androgeus was slain "for envye," result-
ing in this case also from his superiority in the games, is explicitly
made by Boccaccio:
Inter quos Androgeus praeclarse indolis fuit. hie ab Atheniensibus et
Megarensibus invidia occisus est: eo quo caeteros in palestra superaret.4
Boccaccio (in the Genealogia Deorum) and Servius, accordingly,
agree upon Androgeus' athletic prowess, and the motive for his
death as stated by Boccaccio is implied in Servius. But neither
says a word about " lerning philosophye." The Filocolo, however,
In Book II the King, who is sending Florio away in order to
separate him from Biancofiore, endeavors to convince him that no
particular hardship attaches to his banishment. And he enforces his
contention by examples:
Gia sappiamo noi che Androgeo giovane quasi della tua eta, solo figliuolo
maschio di Minos re della copiosa isola.di Creti, ando agli studi d'Atene,
1 See Bech, Anglia, V, 339-40; Macaulay, Works of John Gower, III, 503; Skeat,
Oxford Chaucer, III, 334. Neither Ovid (Met., VII, 458; Her., X, 99) nor Virgil (Aen.
vi. 20) gives any clue. Hyginus (Fab., XLI) says: "Androgeus in pugna est occisus."
See Con/. Amantis, V, 5231-45 for Gower's account of his death.
2 Leg., 1894-99.
» Ed. Thilo and Hagen, II, 6. The same account appears in Lactantius' comment
on Achilleis, 192 (ed. Jahnke, p. 495), and in Bode, Scriptores Rerum Mythicarum, I, 16
(Mythogr. I, cap. 43), 116 (Mythogr. II, cap. 122). Cf. Servius ii. 9; lil». 79; iii*.
123, 267.
< Gen. Deor., XI, 26. Both Servius and Boccaccio seem to have been overlooked in
this connection.
710
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 151
lasciando il padre pieno d'eta forse piu che io non sono, perche in Creti non
era studio sufficiente al suo valoroso intendimento. E Giasone, piu di-
sposto all'^rm che a'filosofici studi, con nuova nave prima tento i pericoli del
mare. .
Androgeus, therefore, went to Athens to "learn philosophy."2
Chaucer and the Filocolo, accordingly, are in agreement, apparently,
against all the other authorities.3
5. In the Legend, Chaucer is describing Dido:
So yong, so lusty, witn her eyen glade,
That, if that god, that heven and erthe made,
Wolde han a love, for beaute and goodnesse,
And womanhod, and trouthe, and seemlinesse,
Whom sholde he loven but this lady swete ?
There nis no womman to him half so mete.*
In the Filocolo, Florio is addressing Biancofiore:
Niuna virtu pare difetto, ne belli costumi fecero mai piu gentilesca
creatura nell'aspetto che i tuoi, senza fallo buoni fanno te. La chiarita
del tuo viso passa la luce d'Apollo, ne la bellezza di Venere si puo agguagliare
alia tua. E la dolcezza della tua lingua farebbe maggiori cose che non fece
la cetera del tratio poeta o del tebano Anfione. Per le quali cose Peccelso
imperador di Roma, gastigatore del mondo, ti terrebbe cara compagna, e
1 Filocolo, I, 94.
2 The context emphasizes the point. Compare Plorio's reply: "caro padre, n§
Androgeo ne Giasone non seguirono I'uno lo studio e 1'altro 1'arme, se non," etc. (I, 94).
The King had previously made definite reference to study at Athens: " . . . . i solleciti
studi d'Atene" (I, 90). And he returns to the idea of "lerning philosophy e" a little
later: " . . . . lo studiare alle filosofiche scienze reca altrui" (I, 96). Compare the last
phrase of the sentence that immediately precedes the account (see above, p. 703) of
how the festa began anew in the Neapolitan garden : ". . . . 1'altre rimanghino a'filoso-
fantiin Atene" (II, 119).
3 Chaucer's statement (Leg., 1895, above) that Minos "hadde an hundred citees
stronge and grete" also comes into relation with the Filocolo. The hundred cities of
Crete are mentioned, of course, in the Aeneid, and Chaucer may, without doubt, have
had Virgil's lines in mind:
Creta lovis magni medio iacet insula ponto;
Mons Idaeus ubi, et gentis cunabula nostrae.
Centum urbes habitant magnas, uberrima regna (Aen. iii. 104-6).
But in the Filocolo, as in the Legend, the hundred cities are brought into immediate
connection with Minos: "la quale [Pasife] il vittorioso marito, re di cento citta, non
sostenne d'aspettare" (Filocolo, I, 297). Over against the implications of%s context,
however, must be set Chaucer's possible recollection of the Aeneid, and this last parallel,
though significant, is not conclusive.
« Leg., 1038-43.
711
152 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
ancora piu, ch'egli e mia opinione, che se possibile fosse che Giunone morisse,
niuna piu degna compagna di te si troverebbe al sommo Giove.1
The parallel is both general and specific.
There seems, then, to be significant evidence2 that Chaucer knew
and used the Filocolo, and this evidence is altogether independent
of Professor Young's argument for his employment of the Filocolo
in connection with the first night of Troilus and Criseyde. That
argument, I am compelled to say in passing, has been dealt with in
Dr. Cummings' recent dissertation3 in a fashion that leaves much
to be desired. Cummings has,4 I think, broken the force of one of
the "several minor circumstances of Chaucer's account that have
definite parallels in Filocolo."5 But it is significant of the inadequacy
of Cummings' destructive criticism that he says not a word of the
highly important supplementary evidence presented by Young on
pp. 161-78 of his monograph. And these pages constitute practically
one half of the chapter under review. No one reading Cummings'
dissertation would have the slightest inkling of the fact that Young's
argument was not confined to the "several minor circumstances"
which are examined. Yet the parallels that are passed over in
silence are even more conclusive than those which are discussed,
and they offer, moreover, precisely the sort of evidence which Cum-
mings, in the sentence quoted above,6 demands. No destructive
argument can carry great weight that leaves untouched one half of
the evidence under scrutiny. And the oversight becomes a very
grave one when Cummings sums up his argument in the words:
"Professor Young has based too much on two or three fortuitous
parallels."7
The evidence, then, that Chaucer used the Filocolo elsewhere
in his works establishes a presumption in favor of its employment in
1 Filocolo, 1, 108. The same idea appears in Arcita's words to Emilia, as he addresses
her from the lists, in the Teseide: " O bella donna, piu degna di Giove Che d' uom terren,
se moglie ei non avesse" (VII, 123, 1-2). But the parallel with Chaucer's lines is in no
respect so close.
8 See also p. 697, n. 3 above.
» Pp. 1-12.
« Op. cit., p. 5.
« Young, op. cit., p. 143.
« P. 706.
7 P. 11. Incidentally, Cummings seems to be unaware (since he gives no reference)
that the parallel between the Eve of St. Agnes and the Filocolo which he draws on p. 11
was fully worked out by MacCracken in Mod. Phil., V, 145-52.
712
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 153
the Franklin's Tale. That presumption is strengthened when we
examine the evidence in the Tale itself.
IV
It is not my purpose to rehearse at length arguments already
elaborated elsewhere. But the new evidence presented makes neces-
sary a brief restatement of the case, so far as the parallels between
the Franklin's Tale and Menadon's story are concerned.
And first, there is a fundamental point which has been over-
looked by more than one investigator of the problem. The central
feature of the Franklin's Tale — namely, "the lady's imposition of a
seemingly impossible task as the price of her love in order to get rid of
her unwelcome suitor" — "this, or the like of it, is found in no early
version but Chaucer's and Boccaccio's."1 It is possible that this,
or the like of it, may have been found in a lost Breton lay, and
Schofield2 points out that "this theme, of establishing an appar-
ently impossible condition as a barrier to a lover's success in winning
a lady, .... is paralleled in at least two extant Breton lays."
That, however, really proves no more than that Breton lays were
not inherently averse to the use of a well-known motive from the
stock-in-trade of mediaeval narrative, and although the particular
hypothetical Breton lay in question might have included it, it might
equally well have agreed with all the other extant versions of the
story except Boccaccio's in omitting it. In other words, even grant-
ing in general the influence of a Breton lay, it still remains pure
assumption that the impossible task was due to this influence. On
the other hand, in view of the evidence for Chaucer's knowledge
of the Filocolo, the agreement in this fundamental element of the
story between Chaucer's and Boccaccio's versions as against the
rest is weighty evidence.
In the second place, we have to reckon with the definite parallels
in detail, as pointed out by Rajna,3 between the Franklin's Tale
1 Tatlock, The Scene of the Franklin's Tale Visited, p. 57; cf. especially ibid.,
pp. 75-77, and Rajna, Romania, XXXII, 220-23. Schofleld, as Tatlock points out
(pp. 57, 65), slipped up in this matter. Cummings mentions it once, quitf incidentally ,
in his comment (p. 192) on Rajna's "first parallel" (see below, p. 717).
2 PMLA, XVI, 416-17.
s Romania, XXXII, 234-44, especially 240-44.
713
154 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
and the fourth questione in the Filocolo. And since these have just
been subjected to examination by Curnmings in the dissertation
already referred to, it will be necessary to consider them in the light
of that.
The differences on which Cummings lays stress1 I shall consider
later,2 in another connection. There are, however, two points
which demand comment here. The first has to do with the garden.
"Momentarily," says Cummings,
Momentarily Professor Rajna's case seems to be weak. And at a fatal
moment he makes a desperate shift. It will be remembered that in the F.T.
the final confession of Aurelius of his love to Dorigen takes place in a garden,
whither her friends have enticed her to divert her attention from her grief
and longing. To strengthen his case Professor Rajna feels that he must
have a garden, and forthwith he applies a telescope to the text of the Filocolo,
where he finds two passages which mention gardens, the first about thirty
pages earlier and the second about fifty pages later than the passage in which
the story we are studying occurs, and neither of them in any way connected
with it. The purpose of those who seek refreshment in these two gardens3 and
their conduct in them are, he feels, similar to the purpose and conduct
of Dorigen and her companions in the F.T. But that similarity does not
obviate the fact that the gardens which he cites do not appear within the
limits of the Filocolo version of the story.4
This rests on an utter misunderstanding both of Rajna's argument
and of the Filocolo itself. The "two gardens" to which Cummings
refers are not two at all, but one and the same5 — namely, the garden
which serves as the setting for the whole series of questioni. It is
mentioned before the series (II, 27-32), and it is mentioned after it
(II, 119),6 but the only gemination it has undergone meantime is in
Cummings' misapprehension of it. And the real second garden,
which Cummings fails to mention at all,7 is in the story. As for the
objection that the Neapolitan garden belongs to the setting of the
1 Pp. 188-91. I refer especially to the divergence in the tasks, in the wooing of
the two lovers, and in the character of the two magicians.
2 See below, pp. 723-24.
3 Italics mine.
4 Op. cit., p. 190.
6 Cummings gives no references, either to Rajna's article or to the Filocolo. But
he is obviously referring to Filocolo, II, 27-32 and 119, as discussed by Rajna on p. 237.
« The fountain part is also mentioned in the middle (II, 79-82).
7 It is definitely included by Rajna. See references above, p. 702. I have there
discussed Rajna's argument from the garden in the Filocolo.
714
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 155
questioni and therefore plays no direct part in the story of Tarolfo
and Tebano itself, that is of little weight, in view of Chaucer's
familiar methods of combining his materials. If he drew from the
Filocolo Sit all, he would be apt to recall more than one part of it.
In the second place, Cummings remarks:
One last weak point of comparison is cited by the Italian scholar, before
he adduces his most valuable evidence. He observes that the Thessalian
Tebano and Tarolfo appear in the vicinity of the lady's home "assai vicini
del mese" (VIII, 53), i.e., rather close to the month January, while Aurelius
and the magician return to Brittany in the "colde frosty seson of Decembre"
(F 1244). *
Let us see how "weak" this is. I shall carry the comparison some-
what farther than even Rajna, who understates its importance, has
done.
'But loketh now, for no necligence or slouthe,
Ye tarie us heer no lenger than to-morwe.' ....
Upon the morwe, whan that it was day,
To Britaigne toke they the righte way,
Aurelius, and this magiden bisyde,
And been descended ther they wolde abyde;
And this was, as the bokes me remembre,
The colde frosty seson of Decembre.2
'Amico, a me si fa tardi che quel che m'imprometti sifornisca, per 6 senza
indugio partiamo, e andianne la ove questo si dee fornire.' Tebano gittate
via 1'erbe, e presi suoi libri e altre cose al suo mestiero necessarie,3 con Tarolfo
si mise in cammino, e in breve tempo pervennono alia desiderata cittd, assai
vicini del mese del quale era stato dimandato il giardino*
The significance of the parallel extends beyond the verbal similarity.
The magicians in the two tales are different; the tasks are different.
Yet the stories agree in the striking circumstance that in each the
magician is met with away from the lover's home, to which he must
therefore repair — a circumstance, it is important to observe, which
does not occur even in the version of the story in the Decameron.
And the lines from the Franklin's Tale just quoted, with their
1 Op. cit., p. 191. Rajna's discussion is on p. 239.
2 P 1232-33, 1239-44.
s Of. P 1273 ff.
« Filocolo, II, 53. Rajna's comparison includes only P 1232-33 and 1244. He
omits the journey.
715
156 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
remarkable correspondences with the Filocolo, bear every mark of
being a retention on Chaucer's part of a detail from a source which
has in other respects undergone deliberate change. And Chaucer's
"as the bokes me remembre," in its context, is significant. Instead
of being "weak," the parallel, expanded as I have expanded it, is
one of the most significant of all.
It is, however, when we come to Cummings' treatment1 of
what he calls Rajna's "most valuable parallels" that it is necessary
to take issue once more with his methods. For he has followed, in
his examination of Rajna's evidence, exactly the procedure which he
adopted in discussing the argument of Young. He has given the
impression that he is weighing all the evidence, when in fact he is
omitting more than half of it. And in this instance the impression
of completeness is conveyed in a peculiarly definite fashion. For
Cummings considers Rajna's group of specific parallels2 in numerical
order, from the first to the ninth.3 But the numbers are utterly
misleading. Between the parallels which Cummings designates
as the third and fourth are two in Rajna which he omits; between
the so-called fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh, one of Rajna's
in each case is omitted; between the "seventh" and "eighth,"
three are omitted; between the "eighth" and "ninth," five* Out
of a total of twenty-one parallels in Rajna, that is (fifteen of which
are with the Filocolo)? Cummings has passed over twelve, of which
seven are with the Filocolo. What he refers to as " Professor Rajna['s]
.... ninth parallel"6 is really his twenty-first. The omitted paral-
lels may be insignificant from Cummings' point of view. In reality
some of them are of the very first importance. But whatever
their value or lack of it, the use of the numerals misrepresents the
evidence, unless the series is complete. Finally, Cummings omits
altogether the list of "certe convenienze minute" (some of them
very significant) which Rajna gives on p. 237, n. 4.
» Pp. 191-94.
2 Romania, XXXII, 240-44.
3 Cummings, op. cit., pp. 191-94.
« These last five are from the Decameron, but so is the "ninth," which Cummings
gives.
' Rajna's seventh (the second on p. 241) is really with the Filocolo, although Rajna
erroneously refers to Dianora, instead of to Tarolfo's unnamed lady. See below, p. 721 .
« P. 194.
716
" FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 157
Cummings' attempt is to show that Rajna's parallels are viti-
ated as evidence by the fact these same parallels occur between
the Franklin's Tale and the Oriental analogues. And in principle
his contention is sound. Four of Rajna's correspondences — the
second, fourth, seventh, and eighth, as Cummings gives them1 —
are weakened as evidence by the fact that they also appear in the
Oriental versions. With reference to the others, however, Cum-
mings fails to make his case.
1. In the first,2 Aurelius goes to seek Dorigen in "the temple,"
Tarolfo, to find his lady at una grandissima solennitd. Cummings
grants that no analogue for this appears in any one of the Oriental
versions he is using, "but," he continues, "that this should be the
fact is only natural, since in none of them is a miracle performed,
and accordingly there can be no attendant surprise."3 But this
argument against the validity of the parallel is the strongest possible
argument for it! And Chaucer's otherwise entirely unmotivated
reference to "the temple" is at once explained by Boccaccio's
solennitd. The resemblance by no means "simmers down to the
similarity between the words commanded and comandaste, astonied
and maraviglio."
2. Rajna's third parallel4 Cummings regards as "too brief."
Brevity, of course, has nothing to do with the case; "the poynt of
remembraunce " is enough, in four words, to betray the influence of
Dante. It is the significance of the parallel alone that counts. And
on this point Cummings is clearly wrong. "The delay of Dorigen,"
he asserts, "in the fulfilment of her promise, necessitated by the
absence of Arveragus, is virtually paralleled in every instance in the
other analogues by the lady's refusal to keep her vow before she
has informed her husband or her lover of it." "Vow" here can
only refer to the lady's promise to her first suitor. The pertinent
passages are in Originals and Analogues, pp. 293, 299-300, 311, 316,
318-19, 320-21, 323, and 327. In none of these does the lady
» They are really Rajna's second, sixth, eleventh, and fifteenth. To a less degree
Cummings' contention holds of the "fifth" set (Rajna's eighth).
2 Cummings, pp. 191-92; Rajna, pp. 239-40. *
» P. 192. Italics mine.
< Cummings, p. 192; Rajna, p. 240. Itis: "For out of towne was goon Arveragus";
"che '1 signore mio vada a caccia, o in altra parte fuori della cittd."
717
158 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
refuse "to keep her vow before she has informed her husband or her
lover of it." What she does refuse is to consummate the marriage
until she has fulfilled (or offered to fulfil) her vow. The delay
arises because the very terms of the vow do not require its fulfilment
until the lady's marriage night. Dorigen's delay in the fulfilment
of her promise, therefore, is "virtually paralleled" by none of the
analogues. And Cummings' statement that "the postponement,
not the [husband's] absence is the real parallel, and that postpone-
ment is the common attitude," is wide of the mark. Even were his
reading of the facts correct, it would still remain true that in the
particular ground for the postponement (the husband's absence,
"out of towne/'/won della cittd) the Franklin's Tale and the Filocolo
are in agreement against all the other versions.1
3. In the fifth parallel (Rajna's eighth)2 Cummings quotes
less than half of the passage which Rajna adduces. If he had
carried the portion which he omits a few words farther, he might
have seen that the parallel is much more significant than even Rajna
indicates.
Aurelius gan wondren on this cas,
And in his herte had greet compassioun
Of hir and of hir lamentacioun,
And of Arveragus, the worthy knight,
That bad hir holden al that she had hight.3
.... la qual cosa udendo Tarolfo, piu che in prima si comincid a
maravigliare e a pensar forte, e a conoscere comincid la gran liberalitd del marito
di lei che mandata I'avea a lui*
Moreover, Cummings' statement that "the wonder of Aurelius,
when Dorigen comes to him with her husband's message, is repeated a
number of times" in the analogues is not correct. The single parallel
which he gives ("brief" to the extent of one word!) is the only one
which occurs.
4. In the sixth set (Rajna's ninth)5 Cummings pays no attention
to the fact that the lines immediately follow, in each version, those
1 See Hart's interesting remarks on this particular line (1351) of the F. T. in Haver-
ford Essays, p. 206, n. 33.
2 Cummings, p. 193; Rajna, p. 241 ("Aurelius gan wondren on this cas," etc.).
« F 1514-18.
< Filocolo, II, 59.
* Cummings, p. 193; Rajna, p. 241.
718
" FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 159
just quoted, so that they really constitute, with them, one consecu-
tive passage. And here, as there, the agreement is in part verbal.
Than doon so heigh a cherlish wrecchednesse
Agayns franchyse and alle gentillesse.1
. . . . e fra se comincid a dire, che degno di grandissima riprensione
sarebbe chi a cosi liberate uomo pensasse villania.2
5. The ninth parallel which Cummings quotes3 is between the
Franklin's Tale and the Decameron. The version in the Filocolo
is much closer to the Franklin's Tale than the version in the Decamer-
on, which diverges in one or two important points from both; there
is no valid evidence that Chaucer knew the Decameron at all; and
the discussion of one parallel without the other five is meaningless.
What of the parallels that Cummings passes over ? It so happens
that three of them are among the most significant of all. For they
belong to that part of the story which does not appear in any of the
analogues. They are the first three on page 242 of Rajna's article.
Of these three the first and third have to do with the bargain on the
one hand between Aurelius and the Clerk of Orleans, on the other,
between Tarolfo and Tebano. No such bargain exists in the ana-
logues, because the enchanter (or clerk) enters into no version of the
story except Chaucer's and Boccaccio's. The second of the three is
also concerned with the wonder-worker, and so falls under the same
category. And the two passages this time compared agree in setting
the clerk (or enchanter) over against the knight, and in their emphasis
on gentilesse:
Everich of yow dide gentilly til other.
Thou art a squyer, and he is a knight;
But god forbede, for his blisful might,
But-if a clerk coude doon a gentil dede
As wel as any of yow, it is no drede!4
Unque agViddii non piaccia, che la dove il cavaliere ti fu della sua donna
liberale, e tu a lui nonfosti villano, io sia meno che cortese*
i P 1523-24. 2 Filocolo, II, 59.
» Cummings, p. 194; Rajna, p. 244.
« F 1608-12. 6 Filocolo, II, 60.
719
160 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
And this emphasis on gentilesse (which also appears in the parallel
quoted under 4 above) is peculiar to these two versions of the story.1
To none of these passages, accordingly, can Dr. Cummings' con-
tention possibly apply — and he has omitted them every one.
Rajna's parallels, then, remain, with three or four exceptions,
valid. If they stood alone, they might not, perhaps, be in and for
themselves conclusive. They suffer, even as Rajna gives them, in
being torn from their context. It is when one reads consecutively
the closing portions of the two narratives, in conjunction with each
other, and with the analogues in mind, that one is most strongly
impressed by the fundamental likeness of the two, and by their
radical divergence from the others. And taken together with the
rest of the evidence they offer testimony of the first importance.
There are, moreover, a few parallels which Rajna has not included,
and which add to the cumulative value of the evidence.
i) In the Franklin's Tale, Arveragus returns, finds Dorigen
weeping,
And asked hir, why that she weep so sore ?2
In the analogues, with one exception, it is the lady who broaches
the subject (of course under totally different conditions) to her
husband.3 In the Filocolo, however, the lady returns to her chamber,
piena di noiosa malinconia; e pensando in qual maniera tornar potesse
addietro cio che promesso avea, e non trovando lecita scusa, piu in dolor
cresceva: la qual cosa vedendo il marito si comincio molto a maravigliare, e a
domandarla che cosa ella avesse.*
ii) In the Franklin's Tale Dorigen exclaims:
For which, t'escape, woot I no socour
Save only deeth or elles dishonour.5
1 It does not even appear in the Decameron, where it is liberalita alone which is
mentioned.
2 P 1461.
» See Originals and Analogues, pp. 311, 316, 320, 323. There is no indication given
regarding this point on pp. 313, 318. On p. 300 the husband asks a question, but it is
after the wife has begged leave to carry out a promise. In the Indian version (p. 293)
the lady weeps, but here her husband guesses the cause. In the Gaelic version (p. 327)
the bridegroom comes, finds the bride weeping, and does ask her, "What ails thee ? "
< Filocolo, II, 58. » P 1357-58.
720
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 161
And she spends the time of her husband's absence "pleyning," and
"purposinge ever that she wolde deye."1 The ladies of the Oriental
analogues, being for the most part of a markedly facile and accom-
modating disposition, have no thought of self-destruction.2 In
Menadon's tale, however, the lady, weeping, replies to her husband's
injunction that she keep her vow:
in niuna maniera io fard questo: avanti m'ucciderei che io facessi cosa
che disonore e dispiacere vi fosse.3
iii) Finally, there is a striking parallel between the Filocolo and
an earlier passage in the Franklin's Tale, which has hitherto escaped
notice. Aurelius' prayer to Apollo begins, as we have seen, in the
words of the Teseide. But it passes at once into a request that
Apollo pray his sister Lucina for aid:
Your blisful suster, Lucina the shene ....
Wherefore, lord Phebus, this is my requeste ....
As preyeth hir so great a flood to bringe ....
Lord Phebus, dooth this miracle for me;
Preye hir she go no faster cours than ye;
I seye, preyeth your suster that she go
No faster cours than ye thise yeres two ....
Prey hir to sinken every rok adoun, etc.4
That aid, of course, looks toward the removal of the rocks, and so has
no immediate parallel in the Filocolo. The point I wish to empha-
size is not so much Chaucer's insistence on the relationship between
Phoebus and Lucina,5 as it is the prayer to the one that he in turn invoke
the aid of the other for the suppliant. It need not be pointed out that
this is no mere commonplace.
Now there also occurs in the Filocolo, as in the Franklin's Tale,
a prayer to the one to pray to the other for aid to the suppliant.
i P 1457-58.
2 The only exception is in the Persian version (0. and A. , p. 308) , and there the lady's
scruples are outweighed by other considerations.
3 Filocolo, II, 59. Rajna (p. 241), by a curious slip, ascribes these words to Dianora.
But they do not occur in the Decameron at all. There "la donna, udendo il marito,
piagneva, e negava se cotal gratia voler da lui" (X, 5).
< P 1045, 1055, 1059, 1065-68, 1073. *
* That relationship, however, appears again and again in the Filocolo with the same
explicitness as in the Franklin's Tale. See I, 150-51, 314; II, 263. Cf. Troilus, IV,
1591: "Phebus suster, Lucina the shene." This is not in the Filostrato.
721
162 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
Florio is invoking lafiglia di Latona for assistance in his efforts to win
his lady:
Pregoti per le oscure potenze de' tuoi regni,1 ne' quali mezzi tempi
dimori, che tu domani dopo la mia vittoria preghi il tuo fratello, che col suo
luminoso e fervente raggio mi renda alle abbandonate case, onde ora col tuo
freddo mi togli.2
It is the sister, this time, who is invoked to request her brother's aid
in Florio's behalf. In the essential point, the parallel holds. And
the conception is no less striking than it is unusual. Aurelius'
prayer, accordingly, seems to owe this particular turn of thought to
the Filocolo, as it undoubtedly borrows its beginning from the
Teseide.
There should be added to the list the important parallel pointed
out independently by Hinckley3 and Young:4
By proces, as ye knowen everichoon,
Men may so longe graven in a stoon,
Til some figure ther-inne emprented be.6
Ma gia per tutto questo Tarolfo non si rimaneva, seguendo d'Ovidio gli
ammaestramenti, il quale dice: P uomo non lasciare per durezza della donna
di non perseverare, perocch£ per continuanza la molle acqua fora la dura
pietra.6
The cumulative effect, then, of the parallels between the Frank-
lin's Tale and the Filocolo is greater than has hitherto been recog-
nized— thanks, in part, to Dr. Cummings' attempt to break its
force. Taken in conjunction with the independent evidence of
Chaucer's knowledge of the Filocolo, it would be conclusive, were
it not for two opposing considerations. These are the marked
divergences between the two versions, and Chaucer's own explicit
statement of his source. What is their bearing on the problem?
1 Ct., in Aurelius' prayer: "Prey hir to sinken every rok adoun In-to hir owene
derke regioun" (P 1073-74).
2 Filocolo, I, 166.
» Notes on Chaucer, p. 243, note on P 831.
* The Origin and Development of the Story of Troilus and Criseyde, p. 181, n. 1.
6 P 829-31.
« Filocolo, II, 49.
722
"FRANKLIN'S TALE/' "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 163
V
I hold no brief for the view that Chaucer's source is Menadon's
tale alone, and what I have now to say is not an argument de parti
pris. But it must, I think, be recognized that the differences between
the Franklin's Tale and the Filocolo, salient as they are, have been
given undue weight, in view of Chaucer's known freedom elsewhere
in dealing with his materials. It is not my purpose to discuss the
divergences in detail. I wish merely to point out their general
relation to what we know Chaucer to have done in other instances.
The chief divergences (which carry with them minor differences
as a consequence) are: the emphasis on the motive of "love and
maistrie"; the radical change in the setting, and in the names of the
characters; the new conception of both Aurelius and Dorigen; the fun-
damental dissimilarity in the nature of the tasks and in the character
of the magicians who perform them; and Dorigen's complaint. That
constitutes, at first sight, a formidable list. But, assuming it for the
moment to represent a conscious reworking of the story in the Filocolo,
is it in any respect so remarkable as the array of changes which we
know Chaucer to have made, when it was the Filostrato that he had
before him ? The metamorphosis of Tarolfo and his lady is no more
radical, and incomparably less subtle, than the transformation of
Griseida and Pandaro. And both Aurelius and Dorigen exemplify,
on a smaller scale and with infinitely less complexity, the same lifting
of the characterization to a higher plane that finds embodiment, as
a masterpiece of consummate art, in the persons of Troilus and
Criseyde. Moreover, the substitution of the one task for the other,
so that Dorigen's inachievable condition is given its ironical motiva-
vation in her very solicitude for Aurelius' safe return— this (still
assuming that it is a substitution) is far less striking than the long
series of changed and added incidents which leads up to and abso-
lutely transforms Boccaccio's motivation of Griseida's ultimate
surrender. And the further substitution of the Clerk of Orleans for
the highly Ovidian Tebano is in keeping with innumerable changes
in the interest of greater realism in the Troilus. Nor need we con-
fine ourselves to the Troilus. The Knight's Tale afforJs almost
equally significant evidence of the magnificently free hand with which
Chaucer dealt with his Italian materials. And I can do no better
723
164 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
than refer to Dr. Cummings' own summary of the differences
between the Knight's Tale and the Teseide1 for a statement of the
case. The resetting of the story is paralleled again and again.2 The
change of names does not stand by itself.3 In a word, if Chaucer
did read the story in the Filocolo, the last thing on earth which we
should expect to find would be a bodily transference of it to his
pages. Boccaccio's "priceless service" was always that "of stirring
him to emulation."4 What we should expect is that he would deal
with the tale in the Filocolo as he dealt with the Filostrato and the
Teseide. And that in turn implies that he would remould it nearer
to a conception of his own.
For we are apt to forget, in our preoccupation with the materials
that Chaucer used, that he was, especially at the period when he
was treating his Italian sources, a very great creative artist in his
imaginative handling of these same materials. And in general,
except when he is actually translating (as, for example, in the Second
Nun's Tale, Melibeus, and, to a less degree, in the Man of Law's
Tale and the Clerk's Tale), Chaucer deals both independently and
enrichingly with the stuff that came to his hand. He adds, omits,
substitutes one motivation for another, modifies or completely trans-
forms a character, and interweaves new strands from other fabrics.
He follows, in a word, the procedure of all the great imaginative
writers. Allowing for the differences between the drama and pure
narrative, he does precisely what Shakspere does in such plays as King
Lear or As You Like It. He reconceives his story, and shapes it in
accordance with his new and individual conception. In the case of
the Troilus, the Knight's Tale, the Merchant's Tale, the Pardoner's
Tale, and even the Book of the Duchess, the evidence for this creative
process is unmistakable. And with no less certainty it holds true of
the Franklin's Tale, whether his source be a Breton lay or the Filocolo.
For Aurelius is modeled upon neither; he is Arcita. And the chief
value, once more, of the recognition of the borrowing from the Teseide
is the fact that it shows beyond peradventure that Chaucer is dealing
i Op. cit., pp. 134-46.
« See Tatlock, The Scene of the Franklin Tale Visited, p. 70, n. 1; Kittredge, "Chau-
cer's Lollius," p. 57.
» Compare " Philostrate " for "Penteo" in the Knight's Tale.
* Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry, p. 26.
724
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 165
freely with whatever version of the story he has before him. The
discrepancies between the Franklin's Tale and the Filocolo count
for nothing as evidence against Chaucer's use of Menadon's tale.
Whatever the source of the story, the outstanding fact is that
Chaucer's imagination was caught by its possibilities and proceeded
to develop them in its own way.1
This does not, in itself, prove that Chaucer's source was the
Filocolo. It does, I think, break down any argument against that
source which rests upon the divergences between the Franklin's and
Menadon's narratives.
VI
Let us look, now, squarely at the problem of the Breton lay.
Chaucer's statement is explicit:
Thise olde gentil Britons in hir dayes
Of diverse aventures maden layes,
Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge;
Which layes with hir instruments they songe,
Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce;
And oon of hem have I in remembraunce,
Which I shal seyn with good wil as I can.2
That demands at least respectful consideration! And such consider-
ation has been accorded it. Professor Schofield, in a brilliant and
often quoted article,3 has done all that mortal man can do to buttress
Chaucer's statement with corroboratory evidence. And he has
established certain points of fundamental importance to any com-
plete solution of the problem. The view that the names (espe-
cially Aurelius and Arveragus) are drawn from Geoffrey, or from
Geoffrey's source,4 must stand until these same names are found in
1 All this was recognized, in essence, by Professor Kittredge thirty years ago. See
Amer. Jour, of Phil., VII, 179-80: "It is not impossible that Chaucer simply took the
story from Boccaccio, changed the setting, and referred the adventure to ' Armorik, that
called is Britayne.' For Chaucer handled his material with conscious literary art "
The italics are mine. Professor Kittredge also recognized the possibility that 'the
story .... may have reached Chaucer through a lay of Brittany.'"'
2 P 709-15.
» PMLA, XVI, 405-49. •[-&.. ,'
4 PMLA, XVI, 409-16. Scho field's discussion of the name Dorigen should be
supplemented by Tatlock's fourth chapter in his Scene of the F.T. Visited, pp. 37-41.
The story, however, which Schofleld reconstructs about these names, on the basis of
certain hints in Geoffrey, must remain, in spite of its rare plausibility, hypothetical.
725
166 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
actual connection with some other verison of the tale. That the
suggestion for the particular change in the case of the task came also
from Geoffrey,1 we may hold as a working hypothesis of undoubted
value. And Schofield has also shown, by a wealth of examples,
that none of the major elements in the story is repugnant to the
essential character of the Breton lay. Beyond that, without the lay
itself, it is impossible to go. But Schofield does not discuss the
Filocolo at all,2 and all the evidence, new and old, brought forward
in the present article has been published since his consideration of
the problem. That consideration must, accordingly, be supple-
mented and corrected by the new evidence.
There are, in the light of that evidence, four alternatives open
in the premises. The first is Schofield's: namely, that a Breton lay
and a Breton lay alone is the source of the tale. That, I believe,
the later evidence has rendered extremely doubtful. The second
is Rajna's, which throws the Breton lay wholly out of court; assumes
Boccaccio (either through the Filocolo, or the Decameron, or both)
as the only source; and explains the reference to the Breton lay
(since Chaucer never names Boccaccio) as a literary subterfuge.3
That is a possible, though perhaps, on the whole, too drastic a solu-
tion. The third alternative is that recognized by Young: " while
I believe that Chaucer used an independent lay, I think he may also
have been influenced by the similar tale in Filocolo — an influence
for which Professor Schofield makes no explicit allowance."4 And
at least there is nothing in Chaucer's usage elsewhere that need raise
the slightest question, a priori, of such a possibility. The fourth is
Tatlock's: "Why should he [Chaucer] not have been thoroughly
charmed with the lay-type .... and with his very evident desire
to vary the Canterbury Tales as much as possible, have fashioned one
in its likeness?"5 And Tatlock argues with great acumen for his
tempting hypothesis, which includes the utilization of material from
the Filocolo. In other words, we are at liberty to assume (1) that
» Schofleld, p. 418; Tatlock, p. 67.
* His only reference to it is in a footnote on p. 435, and he considers the version in
the Decameron only in its possible relation to the Breton lay.
3 Romania, XXXII, 261-67; cf. Tatlock, p. 60.
4 Op. cit., p. 181, n. 1.
• Op. cit., p. 62; cf. pp. 74-75.
726
"FRANKLIN'S TALE," "TESEIDE," AND "FILOCOLO" 167
Chaucer means precisely what he says, no more, no less; (2) that he
is employing a literary artifice in order to conceal his real original,
which is Boccaccio alone; (3) that he is combining an actual Breton
lay with the Filocolo; or (4) that he is imitating the type of the
Breton lay, while drawing the story itself from Menadon's tale.
The fundamental difficulty about the Breton lay is, of course, the
fact that we have only Chaucer's word for it. And at least where
Boccaccio is concerned Chaucer's word is always to be taken cum
grano.1 Rajna's view may be correct. It is, however, entirely
unnecessary to go to such extremes. Either Young's or Tatlock's
theory reconciles the sharply opposing views of Rajna and Schofield,
without doing violence to anything we know of Chaucer's methods
of procedure. Here, on the one hand, is Chaucer's statement; there,
on the other, are the weighty facts which point to the Filocolo. And
the two are not mutually exclusive. If that fundamental fact is
once recognized, the atmosphere is appreciably cleared.
For my own part, I do not believe that it is necessary to postulate
an actual Breton lay containing just this story, although I grant
that as a possibility. But if the missing Breton lay should ever be
found, I suspect that it would turn out to be little, if any, nearer
than the Filocolo to the Franklin's Tale. As the matter stands,
there is positive evidence that when Chaucer wrote the story, he had
at least the Teseide definitely in mind. There is very strong evidence
that he also knew the Filocolo. And the Filocolo contains the story
in a form which, in spite of marked but wholly explicable differences,
is closer to Chaucer's narrative at certain fundamental points and in
certain minutiae of detail than any other version that is known.
Were it not for Chaucer's own statement and the differences referred
to, no one, I think, would hesitate to accept the fourth questione
d'amore as a source. The divergences, however, are in entire accord
with the practice of Chaucer's matured art. The initial statement
is open to interpretation as referring simply to a Breton setting (and,
if one will, a Breton tone) imposed upon an Italian story, or it may
suggest the actual interweaving of a Breton with an Itali^i source,2
1 See especially Rajna, pp. 261-66; Tatlock, p. 60.
2 In any case, the presence of the borrowings from the Teseide proves that combining
of some sort was going on.
727
168 JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
or it may be literary artifice pure and simple.1 We may accept the
influence of the Filocolo, accordingly, without in the slightest degree
impugning Chaucer's veracity. That particular question simply
does not enter in. And we may await without solicitude new light
upon the Breton lay.2
JOHN LIVINGSTON LOWES
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
» Since this paper was written, Professor Kittredge has been kind enough to send
me the proofs of his article on "Chaucer's Lollius," now printed in Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, XXVIII, 47-133. Mr. Kittredge's discussion as a whole — espe-
cially the racy and illuminating remarks on pp. 55-58 — makes it unnecessary to argue
further here the point of a possible literary artifice in the case of the Franklin's Tale.
2 It is possible that the facts which I have presented may ultimately throw some
light on the date of the Franklin's Tale. But the evidence is open to a decided difference
of interpretation, and I do not care to confuse the major issue by a discussion of it here.
728
THE MAK STORY
In a recent issue of Modern Philology1 Professor Cook calls atten-
tion to a second analogue to the story of Mak the sheep stealer in
the Towneley Plays. Parallels to this well-known incident are
strangely infrequent. Until the publication of Professor Cook's
article the story was known in only one other connection: as an
episode in the career of the notorious Jacobean jester, Archie Arm-
strong. In 1897 Kolbing2 pointed out for the first time that Archie
Armstrang's Aith, a ballad first published in the third edition of
Scott's Minstrelsy, 1806, was a variant of the Mak story. Professor
Cook notes that another version of this incident occurs in the preface
to Archie Armstrong's Banquet of Jests* The new analogue, however,
which it is the purpose of his article to record, is found in William
Hutchinson's History of the County of Cumberland, 1794, and purports
to be an authentic anecdote of one Thomas Armstrong who supposedly
lived in the eighteenth century. Up to the present time these are
the only analogues that have been published; and, unfortunately for
the Mak episode, both are late (end of the eighteenth century) and of
such a nature as to obscure somewhat the popular character of the
story. It is the purpose of the present paper (1) to record certain
earlier occurrences of the motive and (2) to show that the incident
is unmistakably of popular origin.
The central point in the Mak story is the device which the rogue
employs to escape detection by the searching-party. This consists
essentially of two parts. First, he puts the sheep to bed (in a cradle)
and passes it off as a human being; and secondly, in order to rid
himself of the searchers, he tells them his wife is ill. With differences
that are of detail only, not of motive, these essential features of the
story are present in a collection of Italian stories contemporary with
1 Vol. XIV, p. 11. P
2 Zeitsckrift fiir vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N.P., XI, 137. The article is
reprinted in English in the Early English Text Society's edition of the Towneley Plays,
Extra Series, LXXI, pp. xxxi-xxxiv.
» Cambridge, 1872.
729] 169 [MODERN PHILOLOGY, April, 1918
170 ALBERT C. BAUGH
the Towneley Plays, Le Porretane of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti.1
Le Porretane was first published in 1483, and the analogue which the
forty-second novella offers to the Mak story is thus the earliest that
has as yet been found. The story briefly is as follows :
In the neighborhood of the Studio of Siena dwells a certain physician
who in his own conceit is wiser than Avicenna or Galen. One day when
the Studio is closed on account of the death of a student from the plague,
four merry associates decide to have a good time at the doctor's expense.
Since it is the salting season, Maestro Nicolao, the physician, has just bought
a pig and has hung it up on a beam in his house preparatory to the salting
process. During the night the students obtain entrance to the doctor's
house and carry the pig off. The next morning the physician upon dis-
covering his loss suspects the students because of other pranks which they
have played, and goes straightway to the magistrate to make complaint.
The magistrate orders the students " about three times" (circa tre volte) to
return the pig, but they deny having any knowledge of it. Thereupon he
orders their house searched.
Alarmed at this turn which the affair has taken, the students are in a
quandary until one of their number, "misser Antonio da Cita de Castella,
clerico canonista," called "the priest" by his companions, "come uomo
facetissimo, ingenioso e molto active ad ogni impresa," comes to the rescue
with a suggestion. A room which communicates with the hall is to be fixed
up as a sick-room with bottles and suitable accessories, and the pig is to be
put in bed there in place of the sick man.2 If anyone comes to search the
apartment, the students in the hall are to affect violent grief and say that
one of their fellow-students is dying of the plague in the next room.3
When things are prepared an officer appears and the students act their,
parts well. When thf> off^T looVa i" t-1™ door flf t.he sick-room /nsjlggg,
Antonio dressed as a monk jvitlijjj.ighj^^
sign of^ the cross over the pig! Hemshes in terror from the infected house
and, returning to the magistrate, acquaints him with what he has seen. The
magistrate, in turn becoming excited, drives the officer from his presence
and forbids him to come near, as he values his life.
At this stage Antonio feels that the joke has been carried far enough;
so he goes to the magistrate and gives a full account of the matter. The
1 Sabadino degli Arienti, Le Porretane, a cura di Giovanni Gambarini (Bari, 1914
[Scrittori d'ltalia, No. 66]). For a bibliographical note, etc., see pp. 441-43. On
Sabadino, cf. Siegfried von Arx, "Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti und seine Porrettane,"
Romanische Forschungen, XXVI (1909), 671-824; and Erhard Lommatzsch, Ein italie-
nisches Novellenbuch des Quattrocento: Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti' s Porrettane (Halle,
Niemeyer, 1913).
2 E nui poneremo in camera nel lecto el porco in luoco de 1' infermo
« In the jests of Arlotto the Priest (No. CXLII) pretended illness of the plague is
used as the motive for escape by a smuggler. Cf. A. Wesselski, Die Schw&nke und
Schnurren des Pfarrers Arlotto (Berlin, 1910, 2 vols.), II, 136-37.
730
THE MAK STORY 171
magistrate is so amused that he insists upon Antonio's repeating the story
to the Signori. These gentlemen are equally diverted by it. When they
order the students to return the pig, Antonio pleads with them not to force
the restitution and gains his point; whereupon the students feast on the
pig at the doctor's expense.
The similarity of this story to the Mak episode is so apparent as
to need little comment. The pig is concealed in a bed, and the
setting for the incident is appropriate. The violent grief which the
students affect is to be compared with the groans of Mak's wife. In
other details like similarities could be noted.1
An analogue such as this can have no literary connection with
the Mak story in the Towneley cycle; and there is just as little reason
for believing that a connection exists between the Second Shepherds'
Play and the analogues noted by Kolbing and Cook. The latter are
separated from the Towneley Plays by an interval of several centuries.
The ballad of Archie Armstrang's Aith was written by the Rev. John
Marriott, who was not born till 1780, and, as Kolbing says, it was
" scarcely composed long before 1802, in which year the ' Minstrelsy '
made its first appearance in the literary world."2 The versiori in
Hutchinson's History of the County of Cumberland was first published
in 1794. Between the latter and the Second Shepherds1 Play no con-
nection has been suggested. In the case of the former, although
Kolbing adduced four passages in which there is a certain similarity
either of incident or of treatment between the Towneley version and
Marriott's poem, he did not maintain any borrowing on the part of
Marriott. Nor would such an assumption be justified. The simi-
larities are such as might very naturally occur independently in two
versions of the story. In fact they are just such similarities as are
everywhere in the popular ballads and in folk literature in general.
Moreover, the differences between the two versions ought not to be
1 The motive of palming off a stolen object as a human being in order to escape
detection or to disarm suspicion is also found in another novella of the same collection,
the forty-fourth. Here, although the similarity to the Mak story is somewhat hidden
by external differences, the analogous character of the motive is still perceptible. Occa-
sion may also be taken here to note an Irish folk-tale in which a cradle is used for a
somewhat similar purpose to that in 'the Second Shepherds' Play. The story is of Pin
M'Cool, whose wife conceals him from Cuchullin by putting him in a cr^lle and passing
him offas Pin's infant son. Cf. Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry, ed. W. B.
Yeats (London, n.d. [Camelot Series]), p. 266.
2 Op. cit., p. xxxiii.
731
172 ALBERT C. BAUGH
lost sight of. As Hemingway1 points out, the fact that Marriott's
ballad omits the "best part of the story, the return of the shepherds
after we think the suspense is over," should tend to show that the
later narrator was not plagiarizing the earlier. On the whole it does
not seem possible to attach any importance to Pollard's note "that
the Secunda Pastorum was printed in the Collection of English Miracle
Plays published at Basel in 1838 by a Dr. William Marriott, who
may possibly have been a relation of the Rev. John Marriott of
Professor Kolbing's Ballad."2 The circumstance which Professor
Child mentions,3 that this edition of the Second Shepherds' Play was
not published for thirty-six years after the ballad was probably
written (thirty-two years after it was actually in print), deprives the
suggestion of most of its significance. Opinion today is practically
unanimous against the notion that Marriott was in any way plagiar-
izing the Towneley story and consequently against the assumption
that there is any literary connection between the two versions.
Moreover, at the end of his paper Professor Kolbing says:
" Whether the happy or unhappy end of the story is to be considered
as the original one, is a question which, in the want of other materials,
we shall perhaps never be able to solve with any certainty." It is
worth noting that in the Italian parallels, as in Marriott's ballad, the
theft is successful. This would seem to be the original form. The
change made in the Second Shepherds' Play is no doubt to be explained
by the circumstance that a religious play could not well hold up an
ideal of wickedness, however clever, that should escape successful and
unpunished. If this be true, the fact that Marriott's poem represents
a version of the story more original than that in the Towneley Plays
is additional evidence that Marriott was not plagiarizing from these
plays.
The point is of some consequence only because the version of the
story printed by Professor Cook makes a pretense to being authentic
history, and for this reason he thinks the "problem presented by
Marriott's ballad becomes rather more than less perplexing in the
1 "English Nativity Plays," Yale Studies in English, XXXVIII (New York, 1909),
p. 286.
2 Op. cit., p. xxxiii.
s The Second Shepherds' Play .... and Other Early Plays (Boston, 1910 [ Riverside
Literature Series, No. 191]), p. 28.
732
THE MAK STORY 173
light of this account." If the incident were authentic, it is true that
we should have a rather odd coincidence to account for; but if it is
not authentic — is but a popular tale that has become attached to a
person of local notoriety — it aids in explaining, rather than compli-
cates, the problem of Marriott's poem. Since the story is found
independently in several other places in popular literature, we should
well hesitate to attach too much significance to the circumstance
that Boucher apparently credited the anecdotes he was recording.
This he may have done in entire good faith. But the version of the
story which he records is not alone in laying claim to historical
foundation. The story of Archie Armstrong also purports to repro-
duce an actual incident;1 and the analogue from Sabadino degli
Arienti which is given above is attached in the same way to particular
persons and treated as an actual fact.2 Since all versions of the
story except that in the Towneley Plays lay similar claim to historical
validity, we must credit all or none, for they are all of equal authority.
Certainly it is easier to believe that in the claim to authenticity we
have but a conventional characteristic of the popular tale than that
an incident of this sort should have occurred independently in a
number of different places as widely separated as mediaeval England
and Italy.
If then, as we believe, the incident can lay claim to no historical
foundation, we are forced to conclude that it belongs to the province
of folklore. And ever since Marriott, in the note appended to his
version, asserted that "the exploit detailed in this ballad has been
preserved, with many others of the same kind, by tradition, and is
at this time current in Eskdale," opinion has been gradually crys-
tallizing toward the acceptance of a folklore origin for the story.
Kolbing believed that "this funny tale was preserved by oral tradi-
tions, possibly in a metrical form."3 Hemingway was of the opinion
that "this is an old legend which was used by the author of the
Towneley Plays in the 14th century, which survived in folklore, and
1 Of. especially the preface to Archie Armstrong's Banquet of Jests (Cambridge, 1872),
pp. vii-viii, quoted by Cook in a footnote to p. 12.
2 Even von Arx, in his study of Sabadino mentioned above, thinks the story is
authentic, listing it with those he considers "mehr oder weniger wahrscheinlich his-
torisch." Cf. p. 772, n. 2.
3 Op. cit., pp. xxxiii-xxxiv.
733
174 ALBERT C. BAUGH
was later fathered upon the notorious court jester of the 17th cen-
tury, Archie Armstrong, and finally was used by Marriott as matter
for his poem in the 19th century."1 Child says: "The source of the
story of Mak was probably a folk-tale."2 Cook alone is unwilling
to come to a decision, but among the possible explanations which he
suggests for consideration he asks: Does the incident "merglv^ repre-
sent an early folk-tale, which from time to time embodies itself in
literature, or attaches itself to some notorious individual ?" In the
light of the fifteenth-century Italian parallels here recorded, this
question can now, it would seem, be answered in the affirmative.3
ALBERT C. BAUGH
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
1 "English Nativity Plays," p. 286.
2 The Second Shepherds' Play, p. 28.
8 In the Mak story the student of folklore will find a wider connection with popular
beliefs in the changeling superstition which Mak's wife pleads in explanation of the
sheep's presence in the cradle, and in the relation of the main motive to other folk-tales,
such as the Red Riding Hood story, in which an animal is made to assume the disguise
of a human being in bed.
734
REVIEWS AND NOTICES
Modern Greek in Asia Minor. A Study of the Dialects of Silli,
Cappadocia, and Pharasa, with Grammar, Texts, Translations,
and Glossary. By R. M. DAWKINS. With a Chapter on the
Subject-Matter of the Folk-Tales, by W. R. HALLIDAY.
Cambridge: University Press; New York: Putnam, 1916.
This book is a notable contribution to the study of the philology and
folklore of the Greeks of Central Asia Minor. The first two chapters
(pp. 1-214) are devoted to a careful grammatical presentation of the dialects.
The value of these chapters for classical students has been pointed out in a
review by R. McKenzie in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, XXXVI (1916),
406-8. The larger relations of this grammatical research are very interesting
and are not sufficiently emphasized by McKenzie. It is a significant contri-
bution to the study of language-mixture.1 Behind all the Turkish excres-
cences it is possible to discern a Greek language, common to all the villages,
and possessing peculiarities which link it up with Pontic Greek, the KOLVTJ
SioAcKTos of Asia Minor before the Turkish invasion. The varying sus-
ceptibilities of the different parts of speech to foreign influence are clearly
displayed, and every stage in the decay of a conquered language is exposed
to our view.
The remainder of the book (pp. 215-579) is devoted to 95 folk-tales
printed in the original Greek with a translation facing the text. These tales
were collected in the village of Silli (7 tales), in the Cappadocian villages of
Ulaghatsh (12), Ax6 (7), Phloita (8), Pharasa (32), and elsewhere in Cappa-
docia in less numbers. As an introduction to this part of the work W. R.
Halliday contributes a chapter on the subject-matter of the tales, in which
he reviews the whole collection and cites all the Greek analogues accessible
to him, as well as certain typical tales from other lands. Halliday's list of
collections of Greek Marchen is not complete. One notices the absence of
the following works (which are of very unequal value): M. P. Bretos,
Contes et poemes de la Grece moderne2 (Leipzig, 1858); E. Capialbi and L.
Bruzzano, Racconti greci di Roccaforte (Montaleone, 1885-86); Carnoy and
Nicolaides, Contes licencieux de VAsie Mineure; Georgeakis and Pineau,
le Folklore de Lesbos (Paris, 1894); K. N. Kannellakes (comp.), Xta*a
dvoAeKTa, r/roi avXXoyr) iyflaiv, e0ijna>v, Trapoi/uwv (Athens, 1890); ^Eisotakis,
Ausgewdhlte griechische Volksmarchen* (Berlin, 1889); Pineau, Revue des
1 See an important article by Windisch, "Zur Theorie der Mischsprachen und Lehn-
worter," Berichte iiber die Verhandlungen der k. sdchs. Ges. der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig,
XLIX (1897), 101-26.
735] 175
176 REVIEWS AND NOTICES
traditions populaires, XII, etc. Reinhold Kohler (Kleinere Schriften, I,
365-77) gives an annotated bibliography of all the modern Greek folk-tales
published down to 1871. Halliday's labor in collecting parallels to the
tales might have been greatly reduced by the use of Kohler; Bolte and
Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmarchen; and Chauvin,
Bibliographic des ouwageB arabes. The second volume of the Anmerkungen,
which appeared in 1915 and continues the annotation of Grimm's collection
through the one hundred and twentieth tale, may of course have been
inaccessible to Halliday.
The different narrators display a greater or less incapability to tell a
good story, and the versions are consequently fragmentary and often unintel-
ligibly corrupt. These faults are increased by the terseness of the style, so
that comparison with related forms is necessary to throw light on what is
really meant. Dawkins' praiseworthy accuracy in reproducing what he
really heard conceals none of these difficulties. In subject the tales have
much in common with those current among the Turks, Southern Slavs, and
other near Eastern peoples. Halliday denies wholly — due exception being
made for the fables — the possibility of their descent from ancient Greek
literature. Only one tale, which is more or less of the Polyphemos type, can
even be compared to anything in ancient Greek literature, and there is no
good reason for insisting on its descent from Homer: see Halliday's remarks,
page 217, and add Chauvin, IX, 93 to his references. In this connection one
might expect to find mention of J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and
Ancient Greek Religion, which is a study of classical religion and literature
in the light of present-day tradition.
Halliday's remarks on the several tales call for occasional comment.
The " Bargain with the Hairless [i.e., Beardless] Man" (p. 234) consists in the
agreement between master and servant that the first one to lose his temper
shall pay a forfeit.1 Halliday quotes approvingly von Hahn's statement that
the "Lying Match" (Dawkins, p. 234) is a " different species of the same
genus"; but the " Lying Match" is a contest for a loaf in which the one who
tells the biggest lie wins. Halliday's statement can be true only if the
"genus" is conceived in the broadest terms, and even then the grouping is
not suggestive or helpful. The amusing incident of the boggart which could
not be shaken off appears in a broken-down version of the "Bargain"; it is
much more frequent in Western Europe than Halliday's one (Irish) parallel
would suggest.2 The "Son Who Feigned Blindness" (p. 236) is really a
1 See Bolte and Polivka, II, 293, for abundant parallels to this, the "Zornwette."
» Bolte and Polivka, II, 422, n. 1; Liebrecht, Zt. f. rom. PhiloL, VIII, 469; Folk-Lore,
IV, 400; Axon, Echoes of Old Lancashire, p. 210; Sikes, British Goblins, p. Ill; Blake-
borough, Wit . ... of the North Riding, p. 205; Hartland, English Fairy- and Folk-
Tales, p. 146; Roby, Traditions of Lancashire, II (1830), 289-301; J. G. Campbell,
Superstitions of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, p. 183; Blake, Jour, of Am. Folk-
lore, XXVII, 238; Kuhn, Mdrkische Sagen, Nos. 43, 103; Miillenhof, Sagen, Marchen
und Lieder der Herzogtiimer Schleswig-Holstein, p. 335; cf. Mitt. d. schles. Ges. f. Volks-
kunde, Heft 12, p. 77.
736
REVIEWS AND NOTICES 177
combination of two tales; the episode of the feigned blindness by which the
husband learns of his wife's unfaithfulness appears both independently and
as a prelude to the wanderings of the corpse of a lover who trusted too
implicitly in the husband's pretense. This combination has a very curious
history; it seems to have been made in India (in recent times), in Germany
by Hans Sachs, and again in Europe by the folk; see Taylor, Modern Phil-
ology (August, 1917), pp. 226-27. The inclusion of "Ali Baba and the
Forty Thieves" (p. 241; add Chauvin, V, 79-84 to the references) under the
heading "Didactic Stories" is somewhat surprising. The class entitled
"Animal Stories" is even more heterogeneous; fables and Mdrchen are
thrown together. The laborious task of collecting the variants of the
"Two Daughters" (p. 255), which Halliday refuses to undertake, has been
completed by Bolte and Polfvka (I, 207-27, No. 24); and for the "Snake
and the Magic Wallet, Staff and Ring" (p. 265) one can refer to the same
work (I, 464-89, No. 54). The "Underworld Adventure" (p. 274) has been
excellently studied by Panzer, in his Studien zur germanischen Sagenge-
schichte, I, Beowulf; Halliday's statement (p. 219) that it is "unfamiliar in
Western Europe" is inaccurate. Panzer claims that its theme is that of
Beowulf, and notes forty variants from Germany alone. In Panzer's
volume one can also find a discussion of the "Strong Man" tales (Halliday,
pp. 277 ff.).
As a suggestion of the importance of the collection to the student of
comparative folklore, one may note the following selection of familiar tales
and motifs: "Get Up and Bar the Door" (p. 231; add Chauvin, VIII, 132);
the chastity-testing garment and the Cymbeline motif (p. 237); the "Three
Words of Advice" (p. 238; add Chauvin, VIII, 138); Bluebeard (p. 248);
"Zauberlehrling" (p. 265); " Schneewittchen " (p. 269); the "Goldener-
marchen" (p. 280; add Panzer, H ilde-Gudruri) . Three tales belonging to
the cycle of the Seven Sages appear: "The Goldsmith's Wife" (Inclusa);
"How the Companions Rescued the Princess" (Quattuor Liberatores) ;
"Born to Be King" (Ahmed, which is better known as Schiller's Gang nach
dem Eisenhammer) ; for additional references to these tales see, of course,
Chauvin, VIII. As Halliday points out, there are very few types of Greek
Mdrchen that are not represented in this collection. It is a work of the first
importance for the knowledge of Greek Mdrchen, and of great value, therefore,
in comparative folklore.
ARCHER TAYLOR
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
737
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