some such note there is in them, and it may be that the immense stretch of time during which they were worse than unknown-misknown-has brought it about. Their charm. Yet their interest is not the less; it is perhaps even the more. It is nearly twenty years since I began to read them, and during that period I have also been reading masses of other literature from other times, nations, and languages; yet I cannot at this moment take up one without being carried away by the stately language, as precise and well proportioned as modern French, yet with much of the grandeur which modern French lacks, the statelier metre, the noble phrase, the noble incident and passion. Take, for instance, one of the crowning moments, for there are several, of the death-scene of Roland, that where the hero discovers the dead archbishop, with his hands-"the white, the beautiful ”crossed on his breast: "Li quenz Rollanz revient de pasmeisuns, Sur l'erbe verte, ultre ses cumpaignuns, C'est l'arcevesque que deus mist en sun num, Si priet deu que pareis li duinst. Morz est Turpin le guerrier Charlun. Deus li otreit seinte beneïçun. Aoi !" 1 Roland, 11. 2233-2246. Then turn to, perhaps, the very last poem which can be called a chanson de geste proper in style, Le Bastart de Bouillon, and open on these lines :— "Pardevant la chité qui Miekes 1 fut clamée Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demorée, Sus le senestre espaulle fu la chars atamée, Mort l'abat du cheval; son ame soit sauvée ! " 3 This is in no way a specially fine passage, it is the very "padding" of the average chanson, but what padding it is! Compare the mere sound, the clash and clang of the verse, with the ordinary English romance in Sir Thopas metre, or even with the Italian poets. How alert, how succinct, how finished it is beside the slip-shodness of the first, in too many instances; how manly, how intense, beside the mere sweetness of the second! The very ring of the lines brings mail-shirt and flat-topped helmet before us. 4 But in order to the proper comprehension of this 1 I.e., Mecca. 2 Corée is not merely = cœur, but heart, liver, and all the upper "inwards." 3 Li Bastars de Bouillon (ed. Scheler, Brussels, 1877). 4 Not always; for the English romance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has on the whole been too harshly dealt with. But its average is far below that of the chansons. Peculiarity of a section of literature, it is necessary that something more should be said as well of the matter the geste system. at large as of the construction and contents of separate poems; and, most of all, of the singular process of adjustment of these separate poems by which the geste proper (that is to say, the subdivision of the whole which deals more or less distinctly with a single subject) is constituted. Here again we find difference" of the poems in the strict logical sense. The total mass of the Arthurian story may be, though more probably it is not, as large as that of the Charlemagne romances, and it may well seem to some of superior literary interest. But from its very nature, perhaps from the very nature of its excellence, it lacks this special feature of the chansons de geste. Arthur may or may not be a greater figure in himself than Charlemagne; but when the genius of Map (or of some one else) had hit upon the real knotting and unknotting of the story-the connection of the frailty of Guinevere with the Quest for the Grail-complete developments of the fates of minor heroes, elaborate closings of minor incidents, became futile. Endless stories could be keyed or geared on to different parts of the main legend: there might be a Tristan-saga, a Palomides-saga, a Gawain-saga, episodes of Balin or of Beaumains, incidents of the fate of the damsel of Astolat or the resipiscence of Geraint. But the central interest was too artistically complete to allow any of these to occupy very much independent space. In our present subject, on the other hand, even Charlemagne's life is less the object of the story than the history of France; and enormous as the falsification of that history may seem to modern critiInstances. cism, the writers always in a certain sense remembered that they were historians. When an interesting and important personality presented itself, it was their duty to follow it out to the end, to fill up the gaps of forerunners, to round it off and shade it in.1 Thus it happens that the geste or saga of Guillaume d'Orange—which is itself not the whole of the great geste of Garin de Montglane occupies eighteen separate poems, some of them of great length; that the crusading series, beginning no doubt in a simple historical poem, which was extended and "cycled," has seven, the Lorraine group five; while in the extraordinary monument of industry and enthusiasm which for some eight hundred pages M. Léon Gautier has devoted to the king's geste, twenty-seven different chansons are more or less abstracted. Several others might have been added here if M. Gautier had laid down less strict rules of exclusion against mere romans d'aventures subsequently tied on, like the above-mentioned outlying romances of the Arthurian group, to the main subject. It seems necessary, therefore, or at least desirable, especially as these poems are still far too Summary of the geste of William little known to English readers, to give in the first place a more or less detailed account of one of the groups; in the second, a still of Orange. 1 This will explain the frequent recurrence of the title "Enfances "in the list given above. A hero had become interesting in some exploit of his manhood: so they harked back to his childhood. more detailed account of a particular chanson, which to be fully illustrative should probably be a member of this group; and lastly, some remarks on the more noteworthy and accessible (for it is ill speaking at second-hand from accounts of manuscripts) of the For the first purpose nothing can remaining poems. be better than Guillaume d'Orange, many, though not all, of the constituents of which are in print, and which has had the great advantage of being systematically treated by more than one or two of the most competent scholars of the century on the subject-Dr Jonckbloët, MM. Guessard and A. de Montaiglon, and Of this group the short, very M. Gautier himself. old, and very characteristic Couronnement Loys will supply a good subject for more particular treatment, a subject all the more desirable that Roland may be said to be comparatively familiar, and is accessible in English translations. And first of the we have it begins with a double The poem as exordium, from which the jongleur might perhaps choose as from alternative collects in a liturgy. Couronnement Each is ten lines long, and while the first Loys. rhymes throughout, the second has only a very imperfect assonance. Each bespeaks attention and promises satisfaction in the usual manner, though in different terms "Oez seignor que Dex vos soit aidant;" Seignor baron, pleroit vos d'un exemple !” A much less commonplace note is struck immediately 1 Ed. Jonckbloët, op. cit., i. 1-71. |