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best reasons for making an epoch in literary history here, at the close of the eleventh century, is the difference between French epic of the former age and the French romances that succeeded and displaced them. The epic of Roland may be taken, in a way, as closing the Dark Ages.

There is no need to repeat at any great length the well-known story. It is very simple in construction; the grievance of Ganelon against Roland, who had laughed at him in Council, is followed by Ganelon's dangerous embassy to the paynim king Marsile at Saragossa. Ganelon, though a traitor and bent on treason, behaves with great courage, and shows that he does not value his own safety; there is no unjust depreciation of the wicked man, as there often is in conventional romance. Then the treason is planned, whereby Roland and the peers, with the rearguard of Charlemagne, returning to France are led into an ambush at the pass of Roncesvalles. The chief thing in the drama is Roland's refusal to blow his horn and call back Charlemagne and the vanguard to help. Only when half the peers have fallen and it is too late, he sounds his olifaunt and Charlemagne returns. The latter part of the poem is concerned with the vengeance taken by the Emperor, first upon the Moors, then upon the traitor Ganelon. Thus the story proceeds in an even way, with beginning, middle, and end: there is no uncertainty as to the right points of interest, no useless digression or unnecessary sequel. Its poetical quality is at first hard to appreciate; both characters and language appear too rude, too little

elaborate. The simplicity of the characters is partly explained and justified by the predominance of the impersonal motives already spoken of: the poet has other things in his mind besides the pure dramatic business. Though in any case it must be acknowledged that neither in Roland nor elsewhere does French epic come near the strength of character presented in the Northern poems (for example) of Sigurd, Brynhild, and Gudrun. The language, too, is under utterly different laws from those of Anglo-Saxon or Icelandic verse. There is no poetic diction, but “a selection of language really used by men." The rhetoric is not of the favourite Anglo-Saxon sort, calling things by their poetical names; but is shown, less obtrusively, in the effective placing of ordinary terms, in syntax rather than vocabulary. This idiomatic simplicity is common to all old French literature, and indeed to all the medieval tongues in their prose: the great beauty of the Chansons de geste is that they produce stronger effects with weaker verbal materials than any other poetical form. They have the unaffected speech which is characteristic of old French verse and prose; sometimes they raise this to sublimity, it is hard to tell how. There are few traces of the grammar-school in Roland: one specimen of a "turn upon words" may be quoted as exceptional :—

"Par bele amur malvais salut i firent."-1. 2710.

But there is art of a better kind than this all through the poem, in simple phrases. The strongest rhetorical effect is made by the use of a single emphatic line at

the close of a period: a device as well understood in the Chanson de Roland as in the Légende des Siècles.

The battle is described in the Homeric way, not unlike the method of Waltharius and Byrhtnoth. It is easy to make this kind of story monotonous and conventional. Roland avoids the danger with more success than many combats in the Iliad: the separate adventures are held together by the mountains of the pass

"Halt sunt li pui e tenebrus e grant”

and the surges of battle come with increasing force up to the breaking-point, when the pride of Roland gives way and the horn is blown.

In the next age, the old Teutonic languages and their arts of poetry have fallen back, and the chief glory is with the Romance tongues, French and Provençal; or with the German tongues on account of their submission to French and Provençal masters, and their profitable imitation of new models. But before this literary revolution the French epic poets had done great things in an older fashion, and in a spirit which in many ways resembles that of the Northern heroic age. Heroic poetry is the chief imaginative work in this early period, and the French, along with the poets of England and Iceland, had their share in it.

INDEX.

Abbo, 35, 159.
Abelard, 210.

Acircius-i.e., King Aldfrith of
Northumberland, 140.
Adamnan, 146-150; vision of, 72.
Elfric, 36, 311.

Agobard of Lyons, 161.

Alboin, King of the Lombards,
164.

Alcuin, 86, 151-153, 172.
Aldfrith, King of Northumberland,
140, 143.

Aldhelm, 34, 91, 139-141.

Alexander, Romance of, 68, 309;
his Epistle to Aristotle, 68; old
English version of, 310.
Alexis, St, 348.

Alfred, King, 116, 308-310.
Allegory, 27 sqq.

Alvissmal, 276.

Ambrose, St, 205 sqq.

Andreas. See Cynewulf.

Aneurin, 334.

Angantyr, 226, 296.

Angilbert, 154.

Anglo-Saxon poetry, 247-267; prose,
307-312.

Anthology, the Greek, 346.

Apollonius of Tyre, 68, 310.

Arthur, King, 63, 336.
Asser, 177, 309.

Augustine, St, 41, 207 sqq., 310.
Ausonius, 122, 124.

Bacchylides, 282.
Balder, 55, 281.
Barbour, quoted, 75.
Barlaam and Josaphat, 73.
Barmby, Beatrice Helen, 307.
Bartsch, Karl, 218.
Baudelaire, Charles, 210.

Bede, 33, 40, 141-146, 200, 204,
310.
Biarkamál, 297.

Bible, as source of romance, 65.
Benedict, St, 119, 137.
Beowulf, 82, 250-254.

Berengar, King of Italy, 183.
Bernard de Ventadour, 8, 329.

Bernlef, the Frisian harper (in Alt-

frid's Vita Liudgeri, c. 840), 79.
Blake, his Marriage of Heaven and
Hell, 103.

Blickling Homilies, 311.
Blome, Richard, 33.
Boccaccio, 37, 42, 135.

Boethius, 40, 101, 103-117, 309, 317,
348.

Boniface, St, 150.

Brandan, St, 62.

Apuleius, 34, 41.

Arabic literature, 14.

Ari the Wise, 315.

Brigit, St, 341.

Aristotle, 304.

Browne, Sir Thomas, quoted, 87.

logy, 59.

Arnold, Matthew, on Celtic mytho- Browning, Robert, 214.

Brunehild, 122, 127.

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Cædmon, 255.

Campbell, J. F., 91, 340.
Carelmanning, a tune, 221.
Carlyle, on the Edda, 48.
Carolan the Bard, 79.
Cassiodorus, 101, 117-119.
Celtic literature, 15, 58, 319-342.
Cerball, Song of the Sword of, 331.
Cervantes, on prose epic, 79.
Chapelain, on the Dark Ages, 3;
his allegory, 31.

Chapman, George, quoted, 109.
Charles the Bald, Emperor, 174.
Charles the Fat, Emperor, 175.
Charles the Great, Emperor (Char-
lemagne), 150 sqq., 219, 350, 354.
Chaucer, 63, 69, 109, 116.
Chilperic, 127, 129.

Chronicle, The English, 308 sq.
Cicero, Somnium Scipionis, 27, 70.
Claudian, 43.

Clothair II., ballad of, 75.
Clovis, 117, 126.

Columba, St, 146 sqq., 210, 329.
Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Em-
184, 344.

peror,

Cormac MacLethan, 149.

Dino Compagni, 95.

Dream of the Rood, 262, 265.
Drihthelm, vision of, 71, 145.

Ecbasis Captivi, 226.
Eckenlied, 227.

Edda of Snorri Sturluson, 46 sqq.
Edda, the Elder, a misnomer, but
convenient, 267.

Edwin, King of Northumberland,
145.

Egil Skallagrimsson of Borg, 217,
298 sq.

Einhard, 171-174.
Eiriksmál, 300.

Ekkehard, Dean of St Gall, author
of Waltharius, q.v., 196.
Ekkehard of St Gall, historian,
176, 244, 317, 318.
Elene. See Cynewulf.
Ennius, 202, 205, 212.
Erigena, 161-163.
Ermanaric, 130, 294.
Ermoldus Nigellus, 155-158.
Eulalia, St, 220 sqq.,
348.
Euphues, 94.

Eustace, St. See Placidas.
Exodus (Anglo-Saxon), 259.
Eyvind Skaldaspillir, poet, 300.

Faro, St, life of, 75, 349.

Ferb, Wooing of, an Irish heroic
tale, 327.

Finnesburh, 250.

Flodoard of Rheims, 180.

Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 77, 164, Floovent, 349.

305, passim.

Craigie, Mr W. A., 229.

Cuchulinn, 60, 81, 322.

Cunincpert, King of the Lombards,

166.

Cynewulf, 261-265.

Fortunatus, Venantius, 101, 119-
124.

Fredegarius, 139.

Fredegund, 123, 127.

French literature, 348-356.
Frey. See Skirnismál.

Froissart, quoted, 129.

Fulgentius, 25, 110.

Daniel, Samuel, his Defence of Furseus, vision of, 71, 145.

Daniel (Anglo-Saxon), 261.

D'Ancona, Alessandro, 106.

Ryme, quoted, 19.

Dante, 40, 105, 113, 161.

Dart, Song of the (Gray's
Sisters), 298.

Fatal

Deirdre, 326.

Deor's Lament, 233, 254 sq.

Dialogue in medieval literature, 86.
Digenis Akritas, 344 sq.

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