metrical form, as seen, for example, in the German Meistersingers and the French lyric poets, is a symptom not altogether favourable, since the practice tends to reverse the natural order of things. Content should find its own form, and not vice versa. There is something predestined in the metre of the great masterpieces. Closely allied with the end of French monopoly in the lighter sorts of literature is the fall of Latin as the sole, or nearly the sole, gate and garner of the fruits of research and serious thought. The fourteenth century was indeed, for all the important as well as some unimportant vernaculars, an era of complete enfranchisement; or if anything yet lacked of complete enfranchisement, it was the fault less of external opportunity than of inward unreadiness. A folktongue cannot pass in a moment into an apt and artful vehicle of philosophic subtleties or social refinements. Necessarily this is the work of time, and the fourteenth century, notwithstanding laudable efforts, never mastered the manifold possibilities of prose. A flexible prose-style comes not with observation, and to some languages, swaddled with syntactical formulæ, comes not at all. Prose, however, though still unripe artistically, was constantly growing in volume and encroaching on the domain of verse, with, at least, this result, that a basis was formed for experiment. In so far as it was not a copy, a blurred reproduction of the past, there is the character of the fourteenth century. It was emphatically an age of experiments. The period was marked by no strong general tendency except in the direction of symbolism, which, in spite of Dante, can hardly be accounted a merit. Were I in love with paradox, I should say of the fourteenth century that it was not, as regards literature, a great age, but that it was an age of great men. In order to be great, an epoch must be solid, homogeneous; and the fourteenth century is a bundle of contradictions. But the greatness of individual writers Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Froissart, Chaucer is beyond the reach of cavil and controversy, being indeed all the more appreciable by reason of the mediocrity, or less, that serves them for a background. INDEX. 99. Acerba, the, 234. Amis and Amiloun, 46. Andrea da Barberino, 31. Arnaut Daniel, 99, 107. Augustijnken van Dordt, 83. Castell of Perseverance, 385. Cento Novelle Antiche, 26. Chiaro Davanzati, 114, 120, 121. Complaynt of Mars and Venus, 300. Corbaccio, 271. Cursor Mundi, 386. Dan Michel, 391. D'Ancona, Signor, 203. 235, 291, 292, 299, 304. Dante da Majano, 105. Eckhart, Meister, 400. (Petrarch), 253. Entrée de Spagne, 8. Fabrizio dei Lambertazzi, 123. Fazio degli Uberti, 156, 234. Fioretti, the, of St Francis, 393. Francesco da Barberino, 110, 366. Frederick II., 2, 108, 200. Friedrich von Schwaben, 33. Dante Alighieri, 107, 127-131, 172- Freidank, 2. Danza de la Muerte, 375. De Contemptu Mundi (or Secretum), De Monarchia, 201-205. De Ocio Religiosorum, 257. Del Reggimento e Costumi di Donne, Deschamps, Eustache, 165-167. Dino Compagni, 184, 325-330. Dorfspoesie, 77. Durante, Ser, 365. |