ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN LANGUAGES. 3 and some progress seems soon after to have been made in the art of composing poetry in the common language. Yet these branches of literature were generally held in contempt in those days; and even for purposes of ordinary intercourse, the Anglo-Saxon became in time unfashionable. About the tenth century, the English gentry used to send their children to be educated in France, in order that they might acquire what was thought a more polite kind of speech. In the year 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, (a part of France,) invaded and conquered Saxon England; and as the country was immediately parcelled out amongst the officers of the victorious army, Norman-French thenceforward became the language of the upper ranks, while Saxon remained only as the speech of the peasantry. In the course of time, these two languages melted into each other, and became the basis of the present English language, though it may be remarked that the Saxon is still chiefly employed to express our homelier and more familiar ideas. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while this process was going on, several writers used the popular language in the composition of rhyming chronicles, which, however, did not possess the least merit, either as poems or as histories. About the end of that period, when the French had become nearly identified with the Saxon, there arose a series of poets, who composed long romantic tales, in a manner which had been first practised by the bards of Provence, (the south of France,) who are otherwise known by the appellation of Troubadours; and the singing of these stories, to the melody of the harp, in the presence of persons of rank, became at the same time the employment of a famous set of men called MINSTRELS, some of whom were also poets. But the best part of the intellect of the country, was still employed in learned compositions in Latin.* * In order to convey at least, to the eye of the reader, a notion of the language employed by the people of England The minstrel-poems, though in many respects absurd, were improvements upon the dull chronicles of the preceding age. While they gave a picture of past events scarcely less true, they were more graceful in composition, and possessed something like the spirit of modern poetry. They were generally founded upon the adventures of some real hero, such as Charlemagne or Roland, whose example was held up to imitation as the perfection of human conduct. Nor were the great men of antiquity neglected soon after the Norman conquest, the following extract from a poem of that age may be given, with a translation into modern English: : Tha the masse wes isungen, Of chirccken heo thrungen. Tha quene, an other halve, That is 'When the mass was sung, out of the church they thronged. The king, amid his folk, to his meat fared, and many of his nobility: Joy was in the household. The queen on the other side, sought her harbour, (or apartment ;) she had wonderfully many women.' The language which prevailed at the time when the Saxon and French were becoming one, may be exemplified by a verse from a poem on the death of Edward I.; an event which took place in the year 1307: Jerusalem, thou hast ilore * The flour of all chivalerie, He wolde ha rered up ful heyge + Our baners that bueth broht to grounde; Wel longe we mowe clefe and crie, Er we such a kyng hav yfounde! * Lost. Edward had intended to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. ↑ High. Call. THE MINSTRELS-CHAUCER. 5 by these bards. Alexander of Macedonia was a great favourite with them; and they would even resort to Grecian mythology for the subject of their lays. Theirs was a style of poetry highly suitable to the age in which they flourished an age in which the spirit of military enterprise, fomented by religious enthusiasm, and a fantastic devotion to the fair sex, produced the system called Chivalry, and led to those gallant but unfortunate expeditions, the Crusades, which had for their object the rescue of the Holy Land from the dominion of the Saracens. A considerable number of the productions of the minstrels have been handed down in manuscript to modern times; and their manner of writing has been in some measure revived by Sir Walter Scott, and several other authors of the pre sent age. The Provençal poetry produced a greater or less effect in almost all civilized countries. In Italy, during the early part of the fourteenth century, it awakened the genius of Dante and Petrarch, who were the first to produce the sentimental and systematic poetry which has ever since been so considerable a department of European literature. Dante wrote chiefly in an allegorical style; that is to say, he described all kinds of abstract ideas under the semblance of things real and tangible. Petrarch, on the other hand, wrote amatory poetry with wonderful delicacy. There was another Italian writer, Boccaccio, who flourished a little later, and composed a series of entertaining stories in prose, which bears the general title of the Decameron. It is necessary to observe these things carefully, for English poetry was, in its origin, greatly affected by them. Contemporary with Petrarch, and not long after the time of Dante, arose GEOFFRY CHAUCER, who is allowed to be the father of genuine English poetry. He flourished at the courts of Edward III. and Richard II., between the years 1360 and 1400, and not only possessed an original genius of the first order, but had improved himself by travel, and by all the learning of the times. Despising alike the dull old rhyming chro niclers, and the more lively minstrels, he aimed at writing after the regular manner of the three illustrious Italians just mentioned, taking allegory from Dante, tenderness from Petrarch, and humorous anecdote from Boccaccio. He was himself a shrewd observer of character and manners, and seems to have been well acquainted with the world, such as it was in his own time. His chief work is that called the Canterbury Tales, which consists of a series of sportive and pathetic narratives, related by a miscellaneous company in the course of a religious pilgrimage to Canterbury. The work opens with a description of the company setting out from the Tabard Inn in Southwark, and a minute account of the persons and the characters of the various pilgrims, who are nearly thirty in number. These characteristic sketches are in themselves allowed to display uncommon talent, so distinct is every one from the other, and so vividly are all presented to the mind of the reader. The Knight, the Ÿeoman, the Prioress, the Monk, the Merchant, the Lawyer, the Miller-all are exact and recognisable portraits.* As a specimen of the verse of Chaucer, in its original ap. pearance, his description of the Miller may be here presented : The Miller was a stout carl for the nones, And thereto brode as though it were a spade; The tales told by the Canterbury pilgrims, are partly humorous stories of humble life, partly romantic tales of chivalry, and only a few of them are supposed to have been altogether the invention of the poet. The general idea of the work was undoubtedly taken from the Decameron of Boccaccio, which consists of a hundred tales, narrated like those of Chaucer, by a company assembled by accident. Chaucer wrote many other poems, some of which were narrative and descriptive, while others were allegorical. He is held, notwithstanding the obscurity which time has brought over his works, to rank with A baggepipe wel coulde he blow and soune, It is unfortunate for the fame of Chaucer, and still more so for his countrymen, that his obsolete words, and old mode of spelling, render his poems very difficult to be understood. Several attempts have been made, with greater or less success, to modernize them in such a manner as to renew their popularity; the latest was by Mr Charles Cowden Clarke, in a work entitled the Riches of Chaucer, (2 vols. London, 1835,) which presents all that is truly excellent of this old poet, in the spelling of the present day, excepting where the original orthography is necessary to help out the measure. As a specimen of the pathos of Chaucer, in Mr Clarke's edition, may be given the dying words of Arcite, in which the very structure of the verse may be said to aid in the effect; its breaks and changes seeming to represent, as a critic has remarked, the sighs and sobbings of a broken and ebbing spirit: Alas the woe! alas the painés strong, That I for you have suffered, and so long! Alas departing of our company Alas mine hearté's queen! alas my wife! Mine hearté's lady, ender of my life! What is this world ?-what asken men to have? Now with his love, now in his coldé grave Alone, withouten any company. Farewell my sweet,-Farewell mine Emily! For love of God, and hearkeneth what I say. |