{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_31304/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_31304","id":"gutenberg_31304","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31304","summary":null,"tags":["Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 1440 or 1441-1494","Category: Art","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Civilization, Medieval","English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 -- History and criticism","Epic poetry, Italian -- History and criticism","Love","Renaissance -- Italy"],"text":"Produced by Marc D'Hooghe\n\n\n\n\nEUPHORION: BEING STUDIES OF THE ANTIQUE AND THE MEDIEVAL IN THE RENAISSANCE\n\nBY\n\nVERNON LEE\n\n_Author of \"Studies of the 18th Century in Italy,\" \"Belcaro,\" etc._\n\n_VOL. II._\n\n\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS.\n\n\nTHE PORTRAIT ART\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO\n\nMEDIAEVAL LOVE\n\nEPILOGUE\n\nAPPENDIX\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTHE PORTRAIT ART\n\n\nI.\n\nReal and Ideal--these are the handy terms, admiring or disapproving,\nwhich criticism claps with random facility on to every imaginable\nschool. This artist or group of artists goes in for the real--the\nupright, noble, trumpery, filthy real; that other artist or group of\nartists seeks after the ideal--the ideal which may mean sublimity or\nplatitude. We summon every living artist to state whether he is a\nrealist or an idealist; we classify all dead artists as realists or\nidealists; we treat the matter as if it were one of almost moral\nimportance. Now the fact of the case is that the question of realism and\nidealism, which we calmly assume as already settled or easy to settle by\nour own sense of right and wrong, is one of the tangled questions of\nart-philosophy; and one, moreover, which no amount of theory, but only\nhistoric fact, can ever set right. For, to begin with, we find realism\nand idealism coming before us in different ways and with different\nmeaning and importance. All art which is not addressing (as decrepit art\nis forced to do) faculties to which it does not spontaneously and\nproperly appeal--all art is decorative, ornamental, idealistic\ntherefore, since it consciously or unconsciously aims, not merely at\nreproducing the already existing, but at producing something which shall\nrepay the looking at it, something which shall ornament, if not a place,\nat least our lives; and such making of the ornamental, of the worth\nlooking at, necessarily implies selection and arrangement--that is to\nsay idealism. At the same time, while art aims definitely at being in\nthis sense decorative, art may very possibly aim more immediately at\nmerely reproducing, without, selection or arrangement, the actually\nexisting things of the world; and this in order to obtain the mere power\nof representation. In short, art which is idealistic as a master will\nyet be realistic as a scholar: it decorates when it achieves, it copies\nwhen it studies. But this is only half the question. Certain whole\nschools may be described as idealistic, others as realistic, in\ntendency; and this, not in their study, but in their achievement. One\nschool will obviously be contented with forms the most unselected and\nvulgar; others will go but little out of their way in search of\nform-superiority; while yet others, and these we must emphatically call\nidealistic, are squeamish to the last degree in the choice and\nadaptation of form, anxious, to get the very best, and make the very\nbest of it. Yet, on thinking over it, we shall find that realistic and\nidealistic schools are all, in their achievements, equally striving\nafter something which is not the mere reproduction of the already\nexisting as such--striving, in short, after decoration. The pupil of\nPerugino will, indeed, wait patiently to begin his work until he can\nfind a model fit for a god or goddess; while the fellow-craftsman of\nRembrandt will be satisfied with the first dirty old Jew or besotten\nbarmaid that comes to hand. But the realistic Dutchman is not,\ntherefore, any the less smitten with beauty, any the less eager to be\nornamental, than the idealistic Italian: his man and woman he takes\nindeed with off-hand indifference, but he places them in that of which\nthe Italian shall perhaps never have dreamed, in that on which he has\nexpended all his science, his skill, his fancy, in that which he gives\nas his addition to the beautiful things of art--in atmosphere, in light,\nwhich are to the everyday atmosphere and light what the patiently sought\nfor, carefully perfected god or goddess model of Raphael is to the\neveryday Jew, to the everyday barmaid, of Rembrandt.\n\nThe ideal, for the man who is quite coarsely realistic in his figures,\nexists in the air, light, colour; and in saying this I have, so to\nspeak, turned over the page too quickly, forestalled the expression of\nwhat I can prove only later: the disconnection of such comparative\nrealism and idealism as this (the only kind of realism, let us remember,\nwhich can exist in great art) with any personal bias of the artist, its\nintimate dependence upon the constitution and tendency of art, upon its\npreoccupations about form, or colour, or light, in a given country and\nat a given moment. And now I should wish to resume the more orderly\ntreatment of the subject, which will lead us in time to the second half\nof the question respecting realism and idealism. These considerations\nhave come to me in connection with the portrait art of the Renaissance;\nand this very simply. For portrait is a curious bastard of art, sprung\non the one side from a desire which is not artistic, nay, if anything,\nopposed to the whole nature and function of art: the desire for the mere\nlikeness of an individual. The union with this interloping tendency, so\nforeign to the whole aristocratic temper of art, has produced portrait;\nand by the position of this hybrid, or at least far from regularly bred\ncreature; by the amount of the real artistic quality of beauty which it\nis permitted to retain by the various schools of art, we can, even as by\nthe treatment of similar social interlopers we can estimate the\nnecessities and tendencies of various states of society, judge what are\nthe conditions in which the various schools of art struggle for the\nobject of their lives, which is the beautiful.\n\nI have said that art is realistic in its periods or moments of study;\nand this is essentially the case even with the school which in many\nrespects was the most unmistakably decorative and idealistic in\nintention: the school of Giotto. The Giottesques are more than\ndecorative artists, they are decorators in the most literal sense.\nPainting with them is merely one of the several arts and crafts enslaved\nby mediaeval architecture and subservient to architectural effects. Their\nart is the only one which is really and successfully architecturally\ndecorative; and to appreciate this we must contrast their fresco-work\nwith that of the fifteenth century and all subsequent times. Masaccio,\nGhirlandajo, Signorelli, turn the wall into a mere badly made frame; a\ngigantic piece of cardboard would do as well, and better; the colours\nmelt into one another, the figures detach themselves at various degrees\nof relief; those upon the ceiling and pendentives are frequently upside\ndown; yet these figures, which are so difficult to see, are worth seeing\nonly in themselves, and not in relation to their position. The masonry\nis no longer covered, but carved, rendered uneven with the cavities and\nprotrusions of perspective. In Mantegna's frescoes the wall becomes a\nslanting theatre scene, cunningly perspectived like Palladio's Teatro\nOlimpico; with Correggio, wall, masonry, everything, is dissolved, the\nside or cupola of a church becomes a rent in the clouds, streaming with\nlight.\n\nNot so with the Giottesque frescoes: the wall, the vault, the triumphant\nmasonry is always present and felt, beneath the straight, flat bands of\nuniform colour; the symmetrical compartments, the pentacles, triangles,\nand segments, and borders of histories, whose figures never project,\nwhose colours are separate as those in a mosaic. The Giottesque\nfrescoes, with their tiers and compartments of dark blue, their vague\nfigures dressed in simple ultramarines, greens, dull reds, and purples;\ntheir geometrical borders and pearlings and dog-tooths; cover the walls,\nthe ribbed and arched ceilings, the pointed raftering almost like some\nbeautiful brown, blue, and tarnished gold leather-hangings; the figures,\noutlined in dark paint, have almost the appearance of being stencilled,\nor even stamped on the wall. Such is Giottesque painting: an art which\nis not merely essentially decorative, but which is, moreover, what\npainting and sculpture remained throughout the Gothic period,\nsubservient to the decorative effect of another art; an art in which all\nis subordinated to architectural effect, in which form, colour, figures,\nhouses, the most dramatic scenes of the most awful of all dramas,\neverything is turned into a kind of colossal and sublime wall-paper; and\nsuch an art as this would lead us to expect but little realism, little\ndeliberate and slavish imitation of the existing. Yet wherever there is\nlife in this Gothic art (which has a horrible tendency, piously\nunobserved by critics, to stagnate into blundering repetition of the\nsame thing), wherever there is progress, there is, in the details of\nthat grandiose, idealistic decoration, realism of the crudest kind.\nThose Giottesque workers, who were not content with a kind of Gothic\nByzantinism; those who really handed over something vital to their\nsuccessors of the fifteenth century, while repeating the old\nidealistical decorations; were studying with extraordinary crudeness of\nrealism. Everything that was not conventional ornament or type was\nportrait; and portrait in which the scanty technical means of the\nartist, every meagre line and thin dab of colour, every timid stroke of\nbrush or of pencil, went towards the merciless delineation not merely of\na body but of a soul. And the greater the artist, the more cruel the\nportrait: cruellest in representation of utter spiritual baseness in the\ntwo greatest of these idealistic decorators; Giotto, and his latest\ndisciple, Fra Angelico. Of this I should like to give a couple of\nexamples.\n\nIn Giotto's frescoes at Santa Croce--one of the most lovely pieces of\nmere architectural decoration conceivable--there are around the dying\nand the dead St. Francis two groups of monks, which are astoundingly\nrealistic. The solemn ending of the ideally beautiful life of sanctity\nwhich was so fresh in the memory of Giotto's contemporaries, is nothing\nbeyond a set of portraits of the most absolutely mediocre creatures,\nmoral and intellectual, of creatures the most utterly incapable of\nreligious enthusiasm that ever made religion a livelihood. They gather\nround the dying and the dead St. Francis, a noble figure, not at all\necstatic or seraphic, but pure, strong, worn out with wise and righteous\nlabour, a man of thought and action, upon whose hands and feet the\nstigmata of supernatural rapture are a mere absurdity. The monks are\npresumably his immediate disciples, those fervent and delicate poetic\nnatures of whom we read in the \"Fioretti di San Francesco.\" To represent\nthem Giotto has painted the likeness of the first half-dozen friars he\nmay have met in the streets near Santa Croce: not caricatures, nor\nideals, but portraits Giotto has attempted neither to exalt nor to\ndegrade them into any sort of bodily or spiritual interestingness. They\nare not low nor bestial nor extremely stupid. They are in various\ndegrees dull, sly, routinist, prosaic, pedantic; their most noteworthy\ncharacteristic is that they are certainly the men who are not called by\nGod. They are no scandal to the Church, but no honour; they are sloth,\nstupidity, sensualism, and cunning not yet risen to the dignity of a\nvice. They look upon the dying and the dead saint with indifference,\nwant of understanding, at most a gape or a bright look of stupid\nmiscomprehension at the stigmata: they do not even perceive that a saint\nis a different being from themselves. With these frescoes of Giotto I\nshould wish to compare Fra Angelico's great ceremonial crucifixion in\nthe cloister chapel of San Marco of Florence; for it displays to an\nextraordinary degree that juxtaposition of the most conventionally\nidealistic, pious decorativeness with the realism straightforward,\nunreflecting, and heartless to the point of becoming perfectly\ngrotesque. The fresco is divided into two scenes: on the one side the\ncrucifixion, the mystic actors of the drama, on the other the holy men\nadmitted to its contemplation. A sense that holy things ought to be\nold-fashioned, a respect for Byzantine inanity which invariable haunted\nthe Giottesques in their capacity of idealistic decorators, of men who\nreplaced with frescoes the solemn lifeless splendours of mosaic; this\nkind of artistico-religious prudery has made Angelico, who was able to\nforeshorten powerfully the brawny crucified thieves, represent the\nSaviour dangling from the cross bleached, boneless, and shapeless, a\nthing that is not dead because it has never been alive. The holy persons\naround stand rigid, vacant, against their blue nowhere of background,\nwith vague expanses of pink face looking neither one way nor the other;\nmere modernized copies of the strange, goggle-eyed, vapid beings on the\nold Italian mosaics. This is not a representation of the actual reality\nof the crucifixion, like Tintoret's superb picture at S. Rocco, or\nDuerer's print, or so many others, which show the hill, the people, the\nhangman, the ladders and ropes and hammers and tweezers: it is a sort of\nmystic repetition of it; subjective, if I may say so; existing only in\nthe contemplation of the saints on the opposite side, who are spectators\nonly in the sense that a contemplative Christian may be said to be the\nmystic spectator of the Passion. The thing for the painter to represent\nis fervent contemplation, ecstatic realization of the past by the force\nof ardent love and belief; the condition of mind of St. Francis, St.\nCatherine of Siena, Madame Guyon: it is the revelation of the great\ntragedy of heaven to the soul of the mystic. Now, how does Fra Angelico\nrepresent this? A row of saints, founders of orders, kneel one behind\nthe other, and by their side stand apostles and doctors of the Church;\nadmitting them to the sight of the super-human, with the gesture, the\nbland, indifferent vacuity of the Cameriere Segreto or Monsignore who\nintroduces a troop of pilgrims to the Pope; they are privileged persons,\nthey respect, they keep up decorum, they raise their eyes and compress\ntheir lips with ceremonious reverence; but, Lord! they have gone through\nit all so often, they are so familiar with it, they don't look at it any\nlonger; they gaze about listlessly, they would yawn if they were not too\nwell bred for that. The others, meanwhile, the sainted pilgrims, the men\nwhose journey over the sharp stones and among the pricking brambles of\nlife's wilderness finds its final reward in this admission into the\npresence of the Holiest, kneel one by one, with various expressions: one\nwith the stupid delight of a religious sightseer; his vanity is\nsatisfied, he will next draw a rosary from his pocket and get it blessed\nby Christ Himself; he will recount it all to his friends at home.\nAnother is dull and gaping, a clown who has walked barefoot from\nValencia to Rome, and got imbecile by the way; yet another, prim and\ndapper; the rest indifferent looking restlessly about them, at each\nother, at their feet and hands, perhaps exchanging mute remarks about\nthe length of time they are kept waiting; those at the end of the\nkneeling procession, St. Peter Martyr and St. Giovanni Gualberto\nespecially, have the bored, listless, devout look of the priestlets in\nthe train of a bishop. All these figures, the standing ones who\nintroduce and the kneeling ones who are being introduced, are the most\nperfect types of various states of dull, commonplace, mediocre routinist\nsuperstition; so many Camerlenghi on the one hand, so many Passionist or\nPropagandists on the other: the first aristocratic, bland and bored; the\nsecond, dull, listless, mumbling, chewing Latin Prayers which never\nmeant much to their minds, and now mean nothing; both perfectly\nreverential and proper in behaviour, with no more possibility of\nindividual fervour of belief than of individual levity of disbelief: the\nChurch, as it exists in well-regulated decrepitude. And thus does the\nlast of the Giottesques, the painter of glorified Madonnas and dancing\nangels, the saint, represent the saints admitted to behold the supreme\ntragedy of the Redemption.\n\nThus much for the Giottesques. The Tuscans of the early Renaissance\ndeveloped up to the utmost, assisted by the goldsmiths and sculptors,\nwho taught them modelling and anatomy, that realistic element of\nGiottesque painting. Its ideal decorative part had become impossible.\nPainting could no longer be a decoration of architecture, and it had not\nyet the means of being ornamental in itself; it was an art which did\nnot achieve, but merely studied. Among its exercises in anatomy,\nmodelling, perspective, and so forth, always laborious and frequently\nabortive, its only spontaneous, satisfactory, mature production was its\nportrait work, Portraits of burghers in black robes and hoods; of\nsquare-jawed youths with red caps stuck on to their fuzzy heads, of bald\nand wrinkled scholars and magnificoes; of thinly bearded artizans;\npeople who stand round the preaching Baptist or crucified Saviour, look\non at miracle or martyrdom, stolid, self-complacent, heedless, against\ntheir background of towered, walled, and cypressed city--of buttressed\nsquare and street; ugly but real, interesting, powerful among the\ngrotesque agglomerations of bag-of-bones nudities, bunched and taped-up\ndraperies and out-of-joint architecture of the early Renaissance\nfrescoes; at best among its picture-book and Noah's-ark prettinesses of\ntoy-box cypresses, vine trellises, inlaid house fronts, rabbits in the\ngrass, and peacocks on the roofs; for the early Renaissance, with the\none exception of Masaccio, is in reality a childish time of art, giving\nus the horrors of school-hour blunders and abortions varied with the\ndelights of nursery wonderland: maturity, the power of achieving, the\nperception of something worthy of perception, comes only with the later\ngeneration, the one immediately preceding the age of Raphael and Michael\nAngelo; with Ghirlandajo, Signorelli, Filippino, Botticelli, Perugino,\nand their contemporaries.\n\nBut this period is not childish, is not immature in everything. Or,\nrather, the various arts which exist together at this period are not all\nin the same stage of development. While painting is in this immature\nugliness, and ideal sculpture, in works like Verrocchio's and\nDonatello's David, only a cleverer, more experienced, but less\nlegitimate kind of painting, painting more successful in the present,\nbut with no possible future; the almost separate art of\nportrait-sculpture arises again where it was left by Graeco-Roman\nmasters, and, developing to yet greater perfection, gives in marble the\nequivalent of what painting will be able to produce only much later:\nrealistic art which is decorative; beautiful works made out of ugly\nmaterials.\n\nThe vicissitudes of Renaissance sculpture are strange: its life, its\npower, depend upon death; it is an art developed in the burying vault\nand cloister cemetery. During the Middle Ages sculpture had had its\nreason, its vital possibility, its something to influence, nay, to keep\nit alive, in architecture; but with the disappearance of Gothic building\ndisappears also the possibility of the sculpture which covers the\nportals of Chartres and the belfry of Florence. The pseudo-classic\ncolonnades, entablatures, all the thin bastard Ionic and Corinthian of\nAberti and Bramante, did not require sculpture, or had their own little\nsupply of unfleshed ox-skulls, greengrocer's garlands, scallopings and\nwave-linings, which, with a stray siren and one or two bloated emperors'\nheads, amply sufficed. On the other hand, mediaeval civilization and\nChristian dogma did not encourage the production of naked of draped\nideal statues like those which Antiquity stuck on countless temple\nfronts, and erected at every corner of square, street, or garden. The\npeople of the Middle Ages were too grievously ill grown, distorted,\nhideous, to be otherwise than indecent in nudity; they may have had an\ninstinct of the kind, and, ugly as they knew themselves to be, they must\nyet have found in forms like those of Verrocchio's David insufficient\nbeauty to give much pleasure. Besides, if the Middle Ages had left no\nmoral room for ideal sculpture once freed from the service of\narchitecture; they had still less provided it with a physical place.\nSuch things could not be set up in churches, and only a very moderate\nnumber of statues could be wanted as open-air monuments in the narrow\nspace of a still Gothic city; and, in fact, ideal heroic statues of the\nearly Renaissance are fortunately not only ugly, but comparatively few\nin number. There remained, therefore, for sculpture, unless contented to\ndwindle down into brass and gold miniature work, no regular employment\nsave that connected with sepulchral monuments. During the real Middle\nAges, and in the still Gothic north, the ornamentation of a tomb\nbelonged to architecture: from the superb miniature minsters, pillared\nand pinnacled and sculptured, cathedrals within the cathedral, to the\nhumbler foliated arched canopy, protecting a simple sarcophagus at the\ncorner of many a street in Lombardy. The sculptor's work was but the\nlow relief on the church flags, the timidly carved, outlined,\ncross-legged knight or praying priest, flattened down on his pillow as\nif ashamed even of that amount of prominence, and in a hurry to be\ntrodden down and obliterated into a few ghostly outlines. But to this\nhumiliated prostrate image, to this flat thing doomed to obliteration,\ncame the sculptor of the Renaissance, and bade the wafer-like simulacrum\nfill up, expand, raise itself, lift itself on its elbow, arise and take\npossession of the bed of state, the catafalque raised high above the\ncrowd, draped with brocade, carved with rich devices of leaves and\nbeasts of heraldry, roofed over with a dais, which is almost a triumphal\narch, garlanded with fruits and flowers, upon which the illustrious dead\nwere shown to the people; but made eternal, and of eternal magnificence,\nby the stone-cutter, and guarded, not for an hour by the liveried pages\nor chaunting monks, but by winged genii for all eternity. Some people, I\nknow, call this a degradation, and say that it was the result of corrupt\npride, this refusal to have the dear or illustrious dead scraped out any\nlonger by the shoe-nails of every ruffian, rubbed out by the knees of\nevery kitchen wench; but to me it seems that it was due merely to the\nfact that sculpture had lost its former employment, and that a great art\ncannot (thank Heaven!) be pietistically self-humiliating. Be this as it\nmay, the sculpture of the Renaissance had found a new and singularly\nnoble line of work, the one in which it was great, unique, unsurpassed,\nbecause untutored. It worked here without models, to suit modern\nrequirements, with modern spirit; it was emphatically-modern sculpture;\nthe only modern sculpture which can be talked of as something original,\ngenuine, valuable, by the side of antique sculpture. Greek Antiquity had\nevaded death, and neglected the dead; a garland of maenads and fauns\namong ivy leaves, a battle of amazons or centaurs; in the late\nsemi-Christian, platonic days, some Orphic emblem, or genius; at most,\nas in the exquisite tombs of the Keramikos of Athens, a figure, a youth\non a prancing steed, like the Phidian monument of Dexileus; a maiden,\ndraped and bearing an urn; but neither the youth nor the maiden is the\ninmate of the tomb: they are types, living types, no portraits. Nay,\neven where Antiquity shows us Death or Hermes, gently leading away the\nbeloved; the spirit, the ghost, the dead one, is unindividual.\n\"Sarkophagen und Urnen bekraenzte der Heide mit Leben,\" said Goethe; but\nit was the life which was everlasting because it was typical: the life\nnot which had been relinquished by the one buried there, but the life\nwhich the world danced on, forgetful, round his ashes. The Romans, on\nthe contrary, graver and more retentive folk than the Greeks, as well as\nmore domestic, less coffee-house living, appear to have inherited from\nthe Etruscans a desire to preserve the effigy of the dead, a desire\nunknown to the Greeks. But the Etrusco-Roman monuments, where husband\nand wife stare forth togaed and stolaed, half reduced to a conventional\ncrop-headedness, grim and stiff as if sitting unwillingly for their\nportrait; or reclining on the sarcophagus-lid, neither dead, nor asleep,\nnor yet alive and awake, but with a hieratic mummy stare, have little of\naesthetic or sympathetic value. The early Renaissance, then, first\nbethought it of representing the real individual in the real death\nslumber. And I question whether anything more fitting could be placed on\na tomb than the effigy of the dead as we saw them just before the\ncoffin-lid closed down; as we would give our all to see them but one\nlittle moment longer; as they continue to exist for our fancy within the\ngrave; for to any but morbid feelings the beloved can never suffer\ndecay. Whereas a portrait of the man in life, as the throning popes in\nSt. Peter's, seems heartless and derisive; such monuments striking us as\nconceived and ordered by their inmates while alive, like Michael\nAngelo's Pope Julius, and Browning's Bishop, who was so preoccupied\nabout his tomb in St. Praxed's Church. The Renaissance, the late Middle\nAges, felt better than this: on the extreme pinnacle, high on the roof,\nthey might indeed place against the russet brick or the blue sky, amid\nthe hum of life and the movement of the air, the living man, like the\nScaligers, the mailed knight on his charger, lance in rest: but in the\nchurch below, under the funereal pall, they could place only the body\nsuch as it may have lain on the bier.\n\nAnd that figure on the bier was the great work of Renaissance sculpture.\nInanimate and vulgar when in heroic figures they tried to emulate the\nancients, the sculptors of the fifteenth century have found their own\nline. The modesty, the simplicity, the awful and beautiful repose of the\ndead; the individual character cleared of all its conflicting meannesses\nby death, simplified, idealized as it is in the memory of the\nsurvivors--all these are things which belong to the Renaissance. As the\nGreeks gave the strong, smooth life-current circulating through their\nheroes; so did these men of the fifteenth century give the gentle and\nharmonious ebbing after-life of death in their sepulchral monuments.\nThings difficult to describe, and which must be seen and remembered.\nThere is the monument, now in the museum at Ravenna, by a sculptor whose\nname, were it known, would surely be among the greatest, of the\ncondottiere, Braccioforte: the body prone in its heavy case of armour,\nnot yet laid out in state, but such as he may have been found in the\nevening, when the battle was over, under a tree where they had carried\nhim to die while they themselves went back to fight; the head has fallen\nback, side-ways, weighed down by the helmet, which has not even been\nunbuckled, only the face, the clear-cut, austere features, visible\nbeneath the withdrawn vizor; the eyes have not been closed; and there\nare few things more exquisite and solemn at once in all sculpture, than\nthe indication of those no longer seeing eyes, of that broken glance,\nbeneath the half-closed lids. There is Rossellino's Cardinal of Portugal\nat S. Miniato a Monte: the slight body, draped in episcopal robes, lying\nwith delicate folded hands, in gracious decorum of youthful sanctity;\nthe strong delicate head, of clear feature and gentle furrow of\nsuffering and thought, a face of infinite purity of strength, strength\nstill ungnarled by action: a young priest, who in his virginal dignity\nis almost a noble woman. And there is the Ilaria Guinigi of Jacopo della\nQuercia (the man who had most natural affinity with the antique of all\nthese sculptors, as one may see from the shattered remains of the Fonte\nGaia of Siena), the lady stretched out on the rose-garlanded bed of\nstate in a corner of Lucca Cathedral, her feet upon her sleeping dog,\nher sweet, girlish head, with wavy plaits of hair encircled by a\nrose-wreathed, turban-like diadem, lying low on round cushions; the bed\ngently giving way beneath the beautiful, ample-bosomed body, round which\nthe soft robe is chastely gathered, and across which the long-sleeved\narms are demurely folded; the most beautiful lady (whose majestic tread\nthrough the palace rooms we can well imagine) that the art of the\nfifteenth century has recorded. There is, above all, the Carlo\nMarsuppini of Desiderio da Settignano, the humanist Secretary of the\nCommonwealth, lying on the sarcophagus, superb with shell fretwork and\ncurling acanthus, in Santa Croce of Florence. For the youthful beauty\nof the Cardinal of Portugal and of the Lady Ilaria are commonplace\ncompared with the refinement of this worn old face, with scant wavy hair\nand thin, gently furrowed, but by no means ploughed-up features. The\nslight figure looks as if in life it must have seemed almost\ntransparent; and the hands are very pathetic: noble, firm hands, subtle\nof vein and wrist, crossed simply, neither in prayer nor in agony, but\nin gentle weariness, over the book on his breast. That book is certainly\nno prayer-book; rather a volume of Plato or Cicero: in his last moments\nthe noble old man has longed for a glance over the familiar pages; they\nhave placed the book on his breast, but it has been too late; the\ndrowsiness of death has overtaken him, and with his last sigh he has\ngently folded his hands over the volume, with the faint, last clinging\nto the things beloved in this world.\n\nSuch is that portrait sculpture of the early Renaissance, its only\nsculpture, if we except the exquisite work in babies and angels just out\nof the nursery of the Robbias, which is a real achievement. But how\nachieved? This art is great just by the things which Antiquity did not.\nAnd what are those things? Shall we say that it is sentiment? But all\nfine art has tact, antique art most certainly; and as to pathos, why,\nany quiet figure of a dead man or woman, however rudely carved, has\npathos; nay, there is pathos in the poor puling hysterical art which\nmakes angels draw the curtains of fine ladies' bedchambers, and fine\nladies, in hoop or limp Grecian dress, faint (the smelling bottle,\nBetty!) over their lord's coffin; there is pathos, to a decently\nconstituted human being, wherever (despite all absurdities) we can\nimagine that there lies some one whom it was bitter to see departing, to\nwhom it was bitter to depart. Pathos, therefore, is not the question;\nand, if you choose to call it sentiment, it is in reality a sentiment\nfor line and curve, for stone and light. The great question is, How did\nthese men of the Renaissance make their dead people look beautiful? For\nthey were not all beautiful in life, and ugly folk do not grow beautiful\nmerely because they are dead. The Cardinal of Portugal, the beautiful\nIlaria herself, were you to sketch their profile and place it by the\nside of no matter what ordinary antique, would greatly fall short of\nwhat we call sculpturesque beauty; and many of the others, old humanists\nand priests and lawyers, are emphatically ugly: snub or absurdly hooked\nnoses, retreating or deformedly overhanging foreheads, fleshy noses, and\nflabby cheeks, blear eyes and sunk-in mouths; and a perfect network of\nwrinkles and creases, which, hard as it is to say, have been scooped out\nnot merely by age, but by low mind, fretting and triumphant animalism.\nNow, by what means did the sculptor--the sculptor, too unacquainted with\nsculptural beauty (witness his ugly ideal statues), to be able, like the\nman who turned the successors of Alexander into a race of leonine though\ncrazy demi-gods--to insidiously idealize these ugly and insignificant\nfeatures; by what means did he turn these dead men into things beautiful\nto see? I have said that he took up art where Graeco-Roman Antiquity had\nleft it. Remark that I say Graeco-Roman, and I ought to add much more\nRoman than Greek. For Greek sculpture, nurtured in the habit of perfect\nform, art to whom beauty was a cheap necessity, invariably idealized\nportrait, idealized it into beauty or inanity. But when Greek art had\nrun its course; when beauty of form had well-nigh been exhausted or\nbegun to pall; certain artists, presumably Greeks, but working for\nRomans, began to produce portrait work of quite a new and wonderful\nsort: the beautiful portraits of ugly old men, of snub little boys, work\nwhich was clearly before its right time, and was swamped by idealized\nportraits, insipid, nay, inane, from the elegant revivalist busts of\nHadrian and Marcus Aurelius down to the bonnet blocks of the lower\nempire. Of this Roman portrait art, of certain heads of half-idiotic\nlittle Caesar brats, of sly and wrinkled old men, things which ought to\nbe so ugly and yet are so beautiful, we say, at least, perhaps\nunformulated, we think, \"How Renaissance!\" And the secret of the beauty\nof these few Graeco-Roman busts, which is also that of Renaissance\nportrait sculpture, is that the beauty is quite different in kind from\nthe beauty of Greek ideal sculpture, and obtained by quite different\nmeans.\n\nIt is, essentially, that kind of beauty which I began by saying\nbelonged to realistic art, to the art which is not squeamish about the\nobject which it represents, but is squeamish about the manner and medium\nin which that indifferent object is represented; it is a kind of beauty,\ntherefore, more akin to that of Rembrandt and Velasquez than to that of\nMichael Angelo or Raphael. It is the beauty, not of large lines and\nharmonies, beauty residing in the real model's forms, beauty real,\nwholesale, which would be the same if the man were not marble but flesh,\nnot in a given position but moving; but it is a beauty of combinations\nof light and surface, a beauty of texture opposed to texture, which\nwould probably be unperceived in the presence of the more regal beauty\nof line and colour harmonies, and which those who could obtain this\nlatter would employ only as much as they were conducive to such larger\nbeauties. And this beauty of texture opposed to texture and light\ncombined with surface is a very real thing; it is the great reality of\nRenaissance sculpture: this beauty, resulting from the combination, for\ninstance, in a commonplace face, of the roughness and coarser pore of\nthe close shaven lips and chin with the smoothness of the waxy hanging\ncheeks; the one catching the light, the other breaking it into a ribbed\nand forked penumbra. The very perfection of this kind of work is\nBenedetto da Maiano's bust of Pietro Mellini in the Bargello at\nFlorence. The elderly head is of strongly marked osseous structure, yet\nfleshed with abundant and flaccid flesh, hanging in folds or creases\nround the mouth and chin, yet not flobbery and floppy, but solid, though\nyielding, creased, wrinkled, crevassed rather as a sandy hillside is\ncrevassed by the trickling waters; semi-solid, promising slight\nresistance, waxy, yielding to the touch. But all the flesh has, as it\nwere, gravitated to the lower part of the face, conglomerated, or rather\ndraped itself, about the mouth, firmer for sunken teeth and shaving; and\nthe skin has remained alone across the head, wrinkled, yet drawn in\ntight folds across the dome-shaped skull, as if, while the flesh\ndisappeared, the bone also had enlarged. And on the temples the flesh\nhas once been thick, the bone (seemingly) slight; and now the skin is\nbeing drawn, recently, and we feel more and more every day, into a\nradiation of minute creases, as if the bone and flesh were having a last\nstruggle. Now in this head there is little beauty of line (the man has\nnever been good-looking), and there is not much character in the sense\nof strongly marked mental or moral personality. I do not know, nor care,\nwhat manner of man this may have been. The individuality is one, not of\nthe mind but of the flesh. What interests, attaches, is not the\ncharacter or temperament, but the bone and skin, the creases and folds\nof flesh. And herein also lies the beauty of the work. I do not mean its\ninterest or mere technical skill, I mean distinctly visible and artistic\nbeauty.\n\nThus does the sculptor of the Renaissance get beauty, visible beauty,\nnot psychologic interest, out of a plain human being; but the beauty\n(and this is the distinguishing point of what I must call realistic\ndecorative art) does not exist necessarily in the plain human being: he\nmerely affords the beginning of a pattern which the artist may be able\nto carry out. A person may have in him the making of a really beautiful\nbust and yet be ugly; just as the same person may afford a subject for a\nsplendid painting and for an execrable piece of sculpture. The wrinkles\nand creases in a face like that of Benedetto da Maiano's Mellini would\nprobably be ugly and perhaps disgusting in the real reddish, flaccid,\ndiscoloured flesh; while they are admirable in the solid and\nsupple-looking marble, in its warm and delicate bistre and yellow.\nMaterial has an extraordinary effect upon form; colour, though not a\npositive element in sculpture, has immense negative power in\naccentuating or obliterating the mere line. All form becomes vague and\nsoft in the dairy flaccidness of modern ivory; and clear and powerful in\nthe dark terra cotta, which can ennoble even the fattest and flattest\nfaces with its wonderful faculty for making mere surface markings, mere\ncrowsfeet, interesting. Thus also with bronze: the polished, worked\nbronze, of fine chocolate burnish and reddish reflections, mars all\nbeauty of line; how different the unchased, merely rough cast, greenish,\nwith infinite delicate greys and browns, making, for instance, the head\nof an old woman like an exquisite withered, shrivelled, veined autumnal\nleaf. It is moreover, as I have said, a question of combination of\nsurface and light, this art which makes beautiful busts of ugly men. The\nideal statue of the Greeks intended for the open air; fit to be looked\nat under any light, high or low, brilliant or veiled, had indeed to be\nprepared to look well under any light; but to look well under any light\nmeans not to use any one particular relation of light as an ally; the\nsurface was kept modestly subordinated to the features, the features\nwhich must needs look well at all moments and from all points of view.\nBut the Renaissance sculptor knew where his work would be placed; he\ncould calculate the effect of the light falling invariably through this\nor that window; he could make a fellow-workman of that light, present\nfor it to draw or to obliterate what features he liked, bid it sweep\naway such or such surfaces with a broad stream, cut them with a deep\nshadow, caress their smooth chiselling or their rough grainings, mark as\nwith a nail the few large strokes of the point which gave the firmness\nto the strained muscle or stretched skin. Out of this model of his, this\nplain old burgess, he and his docile friend the light, could make quite\na new thing; a new pattern of bosses and cavities, of smooth sweeps and\ntracked lines, of creases and folds of flesh, of pliable linen and rough\nbrocade of dress: something new, something which, without a single\nfeature being straightened or shortened, yet changed completely the\nvalue of the whole assemblage of features; something undreamed of by\nnature in moulding that ugly old merchant or humanist. With this art\nwhich produced works like Desiderio da Settignano's Carlo Marsuppini and\nBenedetto da Maiano's Pietro Mellini, is intimately connected the art of\nthe great medallists of the Renaissance--Pasti, Guacialotti, Niccolo\nFiorentino, and, greatest of all, Pisanello. Its excellence depends\nprecisely upon its independence of the ideal work of Antiquity; nay,\neven upon the fact that, while the ancients, striking their coins in\nchased metal dies, obtained an astonishing minuteness and clearness of\nevery separate little stroke and dint, and were therefore forced into an\nalmost more than sculptural perfection of mere line, of mere profile and\nthroat and elaborately composed hair, a sort of sublime abstraction of\nthe possible beauty of a human face, as in the coins of Syracuse and\nalso of Alexander; the men of the fifteenth century employed the process\nof casting the bronze in a concave mould obtained by the melting away of\na medallion in wax; in wax, which taking the living impress of the\nartist's finger, and recalling in its firm and yet soft texture the real\nsubstance of the human face, insensibly led the medallist to seek, not\nsharp and abstract lines, but simple, strongly moulded bosses; not ideal\nbeauty, but the real appearance of life. It is, moreover, a significant\nfact that while the men who, half a century or so later, made fine,\ncharacterless die-stamped medals in imitation of the antique, Caradossi\nand Benvenuto for instance, were goldsmiths and sculptors, workers with\nthe chisel, artists seeking essentially for abstract elegance of line;\nthe two greatest medallists of the early Renaissance, Vittore Pisano and\nMatteo di Pasti, were both of them painters; and painters of the\nNorthern Italian school, to whom colour and texture were all important,\nand linear form a matter of indifference. And indeed, if we look at the\nbest work of what I may call the wax mould medallists of the fifteenth\ncentury, even at the magnificent marble medallions of the\nlaurel-wreathed head of Sigismund Malatesta on the pillars of his church\nat Rimini, modelled by Pasti, we shall see that these men were\npreoccupied almost exclusively with the almost pictorial effect of the\nflesh in its various degrees of boss and of reaction of the light; and\nthat the character, the beauty even, which they attained, is essentially\ndue to a skilful manipulation of texture, and surface, and light--one\nmight almost say of colour. We all know Pisanello's famous heads of the\nMalatesti of Rimini: the saturnine Sigismund, the delicate dapper\nNovello, the powerful yet beautiful Isotta; but there are other\nRenaissance medals which illustrate my meaning even better, and connect\nmy feelings on the subject of this branch of art more clearly with my\nfeelings towards such work as Benedetto's Pietro Mellini. Foremost among\nthese is the perhaps somewhat imperfect and decidedly grotesque, but\nastonishingly powerful, naif and characteristic Lorenzo dei Medici by\nNiccolo real grandeur of whose conception of this coarse yet imaginative\nhead may be profitably contrasted with the classicizing efforts after\nthe demi-god or successor of Alexander in Pollaiolo's famous medal of\nthe Pazzi conspiracy. Next to this I would place a medal by Guacialotti\nof Bishop Niccolo Palmieri, with the motto, \"Nudus egressus sic\nredibo\"--singularly appropriate to the shameless fleshliness of the\npersonage, with his naked fat chest and shoulders, his fat, pig-like\ncheeks and greasy-looking bald head; a hideous beast, yet magnificent in\nhis bestiality like some huge fattened porker. These medals give us, as\ndoes the bust of Pietro Mellini, beauty of the portrait despite ugliness\nof the original. But there are two other medals, this time by Pisanello,\nand, as it seems to me, perhaps his masterpieces, which show the quite\npeculiar way in which this homely charm of portraiture amalgamates, so\nas to form a homogeneous and most seemingly simple whole, with the\nhomely charm of certain kinds of pure and simple youthful types. One of\nthese (the reverse of which fantastically represents the four elements,\nthe wooded earth, the starry sky, the rippled sea, the sun, all in one\nsphere) is the portrait of Don Inigo d'Avalos; the other that of Cecilia\nGonzaga. This slender beardless boy in the Spanish shovel hat and wisp\nof scarf twisted round the throat; and this tall, long-necked girl, with\nsloping shoulders and still half-developed bosom; are, so to speak,\nbrother and sister in art, in Pisanello's wonderful genius. The relief\nof the two medals is extremely low, so that in certain lights the\neffigies vanish almost completely, sink into the pale green surface of\nthe bronze; the portraits are a mere film, a sort of haze which has\narisen on the bronze and gathered into human likeness; but in this film,\nthis scarce perceptible relief, we are made to perceive the slender\nosseous structure, the smooth, sleek, childish blond flesh and hair, the\ndelicate, undecided pallor of extreme youth and purity, even as we might\nin some elaborate portrait by Velasquez, but with a spring-like\nhealthiness which Velasquez, painting his lymphatic Hapsburgs, rarely\nhas.\n\nSuch is this Renaissance art of medals, this side branch of the great\nrealistic portraiture in stone of the Benedettos, Desiderios, and\nRossellinos; a perfect thing in itself; and one which, if we muse over\nit in connection with the more important works of fifteenth century\nsculpture, will perhaps lead us to think that, as the sculpture of\nAntiquity, in its superb idealism, its devotion to the perfect line and\ncurve of beauty, achieved the highest that mere colourless art can\nachieve--thanks to the very purity, sternness, and narrowness of its\nsculpturesque feeling--so also, perhaps, modern sculpture, should it\never re-arise, must be a continuation of the tendencies of the\nRenaissance, must be the humbler sister of painting, must seek for the\nrealistic portrait and begin, perhaps, with the realistic medal.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nThis kind of realism, where only the model is ugly, while the portrait\nis beautiful; which seeks decorative value by other means than the\nintrinsic excellence of form in the object represented, this kind of\nrealism is quite different in sort from the realisms of immature art,\nwhich, aiming at nothing beyond a faithful copy, is content with\nproducing an ugly picture of an ugly thing. Now this latter kind of\nrealism endured in painting some time after decorative realism such as I\nhave described had reached perfection in sculpture. Nor was it till\nlater, and when the crude scholastic realism had completely come to an\nend, that there became even partially possible in painting decorative\nrealism analogous to what we have noticed in sculpture; while it was not\ntill after the close of the Italian Renaissance period that the painters\narose in Spain and the Netherlands who were able to treat their subjects\nwith the uncompromising decorative realism of Desiderio or Rosellino or\nBenedetto da Maiano. For the purely imitative realism of the painters of\nthe early Renaissance was succeeded in Italy by idealism, which matured\nin the great art of intrinsically beautiful linear form of Michael\nAngelo and Raphael, and the great art of intrinsically beautiful colour\nform of Giorgione and Titian. These two schools were bound to be, each\nin its degree, idealistic. Complete power of mere representation in\ntint and colour having been obtained through the realistic drudgery of\nthe early Renaissance, selection in the objects thus to be represented\nhad naturally arisen; and the study of the antique had further hastened\nand directed this movement of art no longer to study but to achieve, to\nbe decorative once more, decorative no longer in subservience to\narchitecture, but as the separate and self-sufficing art of painting.\nSelection, therefore, which is the only practical kind of idealism, had\nbegun as soon as painting was possessed of the power of representing\nobjects in their relations of line and colour, with that amount of light\nand shadow requisite to the just appreciation of the relations of form\nand the just relations of colour. Now art which stops short at this\npoint of representation must inevitably be, if decorative at all,\nidealistically decorative; it must be squeamish respecting the objects\nrepresented, respecting their real structure, colour, position, and\ngrouping. For, of the visible impressions received from an object, some\nare far more intrinsic than others. Suppose we see a woman, beautiful in\nthe structure of her body, and beautiful in the colour of her person and\nher draperies, standing under a light which is such as we should call\nbeautiful and interesting: of these three qualities one will be\nintrinsic in the woman, the second very considerably so, the third not\nat all. For, let us call that woman away and replace her immediately by\nanother woman chosen at random. We shall immediately perceive that we\nhave lost one pleasurable impression, that of beautiful bodily\nstructure: the woman has taken away her well-shapen body. Next we shall\nperceive a notable diminution in the second pleasurable impression: the\nwoman has taken with her, not indeed her well-tinted garments, which we\nmay have bestowed on her successor, but her beautifully coloured skin\nand hair, so that of the pleasing colour-impression will remain only as\nmuch as was due to, and may have been retained with, the original\nwoman's clothes. But if we look for our third pleasurable impression,\nour beautiful light, we shall find that unchanged, whether it fall upon\na magnificently arrayed goddess or upon a sordid slut And, conversely,\nthe beautiful woman, when withdrawn from that light and placed in any\nother, will be equally lovely in form, even if we cast her in plaster,\nand lose the colour of her skin and hair; or if we leave her not only\nthe beautiful tints of her flesh and hair, but her own splendidly\ncoloured garments, we shall still have, in whatsoever light, a\nmagnificent piece of colour. But if we recall the poor ugly creature who\nhas succeeded her from out of that fine effect of light, we shall have\nnothing but a hideous form invested in hideous colour.\n\nThis rough diagram will be sufficient to explain my thought respecting\nthe relative degree to which the art dealing with linear form, that\ndealing with colour and that dealing with light, with the medium in\nwhich form and colour are perceived; is each respectively bound to be\nidealistically or realistically decorative. Now painting was\naesthetically mature, possessed the means to achieve great beauty, at a\ntime when of the three modes of representation there had as yet\ndeveloped only those of linear form and colour; and the very possibility\nand necessity of immediately achieving all that could be achieved by\nthese means delayed for a long time the development of the third mode of\nrepresentation: the representation of objects as they appear with\nreference to the light through which they are seen. A beginning had\nindeed been made. Certain of Correggio's effects of light, even more an\noccasional manner of treating the flesh and hair, reducing both form and\ncolour to a kind of vague boss and vague sheen, such as they really\npresent in given effects of light, a something which we define roughly\nas eminently modern in the painting of his clustered cherubs; all this\nis certainly a beginning of the school of Velasquez. Still more so is it\nthe case with Andrea del Sarto, the man of genius whom critics love to\ndespatch as a mediocrity, because his art, which is art altogether for\nthe eyes, and in which he innovated more than any of his contemporaries,\ndoes not afford any excuse for the irrelevancies of ornamental\ncriticism; with him the appearance of form and colour, acted upon by\nlight, the relative values of which flesh and draperies consist with\nreference to the surrounding medium, all this becomes so evident a\npreoccupation and a basis for decorative effects, as to give certain of\nhis works an almost startling air of being modern. But this tendency\ncomes to nothing: the men of the sixteenth century appear scarcely to\nhave perceived wherein lay the true excellence of this \"Andrea senza\nerrori,\" deeming him essentially the artist of linear perfection; while\nthe innovations of Correggio in the way of showing the relations of\nflesh tones and light ended in the mere coarse gala illuminations in\nwhich his successors made their seraphs plunge and sprawl. There was too\nmuch to be done, good and bad, in the way of mere linear form and mere\ncolour; and as art of mere linear form and colour, indifferent of all\nelse, did the art of the Italian Renaissance run to seed.\n\nI said at the beginning of this paper that the degree to which any art\nis strictly idealistic, can be measured by the terms which it will make\nwith portrait. For as portrait is due to the desire to represent a\nperson quite apart from that person affording material for decoration,\nit is evident that only the art which can call in the assistance of\ndecorative materials, independent of the represented individual, can\npossibly make a beautiful picture out of an ugly man; while the art\nwhich deals only with such visible peculiarities as are inherent in the\nindividual, has no kind of outlet, is cornered, and can make of a\nrepulsive original only a repulsive picture. The analogy to this we have\nalready noticed in sculpture: antique sculpture, considering only the\nlinear bosses which existed equally in the living man and in the statue,\ncould not afford to represent plain people; while Renaissance sculpture,\nextracting a large amount of beauty out of combinations of surface and\nlight, was able, as long as it could arrange such an artificial\ncombination, to dispense with great perfection in the model. Nay, if we\nexcept Renaissance statuary as a kind of separate art, we may say that\nthis independence of the object portrayed is a kind of analytic test,\nenabling us to judge at a glance, and by the degree of independence from\nthe model, the degree to which any art is removed from the mere line and\nboss of antique sculpture. In the statue standing free in any light that\nmay chance to come, every form must be beautiful from every point; but\nin proportion as the new elements of painting enter, in proportion as\nthe actual linear form and boss is marked and helped out by grouping,\ncolour, and light and shade, does the actual perfection of the model\nbecome less important; until, under the reign of light as the chief\nfactor, it becomes altogether indifferent. In this fact lies the only\nrational foundation for the notion, made popular by Hegel, that painting\nis an art in which beauty is of much less account than in sculpture;\nfailing to understand that the sum total of beauty remained the same,\nwhether dependent upon the concentration of a single element or obtained\nby the co-operation of several consequently less singly important\nelements.\n\nBut to return to the question of portrait art. From what we have seen,\nit is clear that art which requires perfection of form will be reduced\nto ugliness if cramped in the obtaining of such perfection, whereas art\nwhich can obtain beauty by other means will still have a chance when\nreduced to imitate ugly object? Hence it is that while the realistically\ndecorative art of the seventeenth century can make actually beautiful\nthings of the portraits of ugly people, the idealistically decorative\nart of the Renaissance produces portraits which are cruelly ugly in\nproportion as the art is purely idealistic. Yet even in idealism there\nare degrees: the more the art is confined to mere linear form, to the\nexclusion of colour, the uglier will be the portraits. With Michael\nAngelo the difficulty was simplified to impossibility: he could not\npaint portrait at all; and in his sculptured portraits of the two\nMedicean dukes at S. Lorenzo he evaded all attempt at likeness, making\nthose two men into scarcely more than two architectural monsters,\nhalf-human cousins of the fantastic creatures who keep watch on the\nbelfries and gurgoyles of a Gothic cathedral. It is almost impossible to\nthink of Michael Angelo attempting portrait: the man's genius cannot be\nconstrained to it, and what ought to be mere ugliness would come out\nidealized into grandiose monstrosity. Men like Titian and Tintoret are\nat the other end of the scale of ideal decoration: they are bordering\nupon the domain of realism. Hence they can raise into interest, by the\nmere power of colour, many an insignificant type; yet even they are\nincapable of dealing with absolute ugliness, with absence of fine\ncolour, or, if they do deal with it, there is an immediate improvement\nupon the model, and the appearance of truthfulness goes. Between the\nabsolute incapacity for dealing with ugliness of Michael Angelo, and the\npower of compromising with it of Titian and Tintoret, Raphael stands\nhalf-way: he can call in the assistance of colour just sufficiently to\ncreate a setting of carefully harmonized draperies and accessories,\nbeautiful enough to allow of his filling it up with the most cruelly\nugly likeness which any painter ever painted. Far too much has been\nwritten about Raphael in general, but not half enough about Raphael as a\nportrait-painter; for by the side of the eclectic idealist, who combined\nand balanced beauty almost into insipidity, is the most terribly,\ninflexibly veracious portrait-painter that ever was. Compared with those\nsternly straightforward portraits of his Florentine and Roman time,\nwhere ugliness and baseness are never attenuated by one tittle, and\nalloyed nobility or amiability, as with his finer models, like the two\nDonis, husband and wife, and Bibbiena, is never purified of its\ntroubling element; compared with them the Venetian portraits are mere\ninsincere, enormously idealized pieces of colour-harmony; nay, the\nportraits of Velasquez are mere hints--given rapidly by a sickened\npainter striving to make those scrofulous Hapsburgs no longer mere men,\nbut keynotes of harmonies of light--of what the people really are. For\nVelasquez seems to show us the temperament, the potentiality of his\npeople, and to leave us, with a kind of dignified and melancholy silence\nas to all further, to find out what life, what feelings and actions,\nsuch a temperament implies. But Raphael shows us all: the temperament\nand the character, the real active creature, with all the marks of his\npresent temper and habits, with all the indications of his immediate\nactions upon him: completely without humour or bitterness, without the\nsmallest tendency to twist the reality into caricature or monstrosity,\nnay, perhaps without much psychologic analysis to tell him the exact\nmeaning of what he is painting, going straight to the point, and utterly\nruthless from sheer absence of all alternative of doing otherwise than\nhe does. There is nothing more cruelly realistic in the world, cruel not\nonly to the base originals but to the feelings of the spectator, than\nthe harmony of villainies, of various combinations of black and hog-like\nbestiality, and fox and wolf-like cunning and ferocity with wicked human\nthought and self-command, which Raphael has enshrined in that splendid\nharmony of scarlet silk and crimson satin, and purple velvet and dull\nwhite brocade, as the portraits of Leo X. and his cardinals Rossi and\nDei Medici.\n\nThe idealistic painter, accustomed to rely upon the intrinsic beauty\nwhich he has hitherto been able to select or create; accustomed also to\nthink of form as something quite independent of the medium through which\nit is seen, scarcely conscious of the existence of light and air in his\nhabit of concentrating all attention upon a figure placed, as it were,\nin a sort of vacuum of indifference;--this idealistic artist is left\nwithout any resources when bid to paint an ugly man or woman. With the\nrealistic artist, to whom the man or woman is utterly indifferent, to\nwhom the medium in which they are seen is everything, the case Is just\nreversed: let him arrange his light, his atmospheric effect, and he will\nwork into their pattern no matter what plain or repulsive wretch. To\nVelasquez the flaccid yellowish fair flesh, with its grey downy shadows,\nthe limp pale drab hair, which is grey in the light and scarcely\nperceptibly blond in the shade, all this unhealthy, bloodless, feebly\nliving, effete mass of humanity called Philip IV. of Spain, shivering in\nmoral anaemia like some dog thorough bred into nothingness, becomes\nmerely the foundation for a splendid harmony of pale tints. Again, the\npoor little baby princess, with scarce visible features, seemingly\nkneaded (but not sufficiently pinched and modelled) out of the wet ashes\nof an _auto da fe_, in her black-and-white frock (how different from the\ndresses painted by Raphael and Titian!), dingy and gloomy enough for an\nabbess or a cameriera major, this childish personification of courtly\ndreariness, certainly born on an Ash Wednesday, becomes the principal\nstrands for a marvellous tissue of silvery and ashy light, tinged\nyellowish in the hair, bluish in the eyes and downy cheeks, pale red in\nthe lips and the rose in the hair; something to match which in beauty\nyou must think of some rarely seen veined and jaspered rainy twilight,\nor opal-tinted hazy winter morning. Ugliness, nay, repulsiveness,\nvanish, subdued into beauty, even as noxious gases may be subdued into\nhealth-giving substances by some cunning chemist. The difference between\nsuch portraits as these and the portraits by Raphael does not however\nconsist merely in the beauty: there is also the fact that if you take\none of Velasquez's portraits out of their frame, reconstitute the living\nindividual, and bid him walk forth in whatsoever light may fall upon\nhim, you will have something infinitely different from the portrait, and\nof which your only distinct feeling will be that a fine portrait might\nbe made of the creature; whereas it is a matter of complete indifference\nwhether you see Raphael's Leo X. in the flesh or in his gilded frame.\n\nWhatever may fairly be said respecting the relative value of idealistic\nand realistic decorative art is really also connected with this latter\npoint. Considering that realistic art is merely obtaining beauty by\nattention to other factors than those which preoccupy idealistic art,\nthat the one fulfils what the other neglects--taking the matter from\nthis point of view, it would seem as if the two kinds of arts were, so\nto speak, morally equal; and that any vague sense of mysterious\nsuperior dignity clinging to idealistic art was a mere shred of long\ndiscarded pedantry. But it is not so. For realistic art does more than\nmerely bring into play powers unknown to idealistic art: it becomes, by\nthe possession of these powers, utterly indifferent to the intrinsic\nvalue of the forms represented: it is so certain of making everything\nlovely by its harmonies of light and atmosphere that it almost prefers\nto choose inferior things for this purpose. I am thinking at present of\na picture by I forget what Dutchman in our National Gallery,\nrepresenting in separate compartments five besotten-looking creatures,\nsymbolical of the five senses: they are ugly, brutish, with I know not\nwhat suggestion of detestable temperament in their bloodshot flesh and\nvermilion lips, as if the whole man were saturated with his appetite.\nYet the Dutchman has found the means of making these degraded types into\nsomething which we care to look at, and to look at on account of its\nbeauty; even as, in lesser degree, Rubens has always managed to make us\nfeel towards his flaccid, veal-complexioned, fish-eyed women, something\nof what we feel towards the goddesses of the Parthenon; towards the\nwhite-robed, long-gloved ladies, with meditative face beneath their\ncrimped auburn hair, of Titian.\n\nViewed in one way, there is a kind of nobility in the very fact that\nsuch realistic art can make us pardon, can redeem, nay almost sanctify,\nso much. But is it right thus to pardon, redeem, and sanctify; thus to\nbring the inferior on to the level of the superior? Nay, is it not\nrather wrong to teach us to endure so much meanness and ugliness in\ncreatures, on account of the nobility with which they are represented?\nIs this not vitiating our feelings, blunting our desire for the better,\nour repugnance for the worse?\n\nA great and charitable art, this realistic art of the seventeenth\ncentury, and to be respected for its very tenderness towards the scorned\nand castaway things of reality; but accustoming us, perhaps too much,\nlike all charitable and reclaiming impulses, to certain unworthy\ncontacts: in strange contrast herein with that narrow but ascetic and\naristocratic art of idealism, which, isolated and impoverished though it\nmay be, has always the dignity of its immaculate purity, of its\nunswerving judgment, of its obstinate determination to deal only with\nthe best. A hard task to judge between them. But be this as it may, it\nis one of the singular richnesses of the Italian Renaissance that it\nknew of both tendencies; that while in painting it gave the equivalent\nof that rigid idealism of the Greeks which can make no compromise with\nugliness; in sculpture it possessed the equivalent of the realism of\nVelasquez, which can make beauty out of ugly things, even as the chemist\ncan make sugar out of vitriol.\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF BOIARDO.\n\n\"Le donne, i cavalieri, l' armi, gli amori.\"\n\n\n\nI.\n\nThroughout the tales of Charlemagne and his warriors, overtopping by far\nthe crowd of paladins and knights, move two colossal mailed and vizored\nfigures--Roland, whom the Italians call Orlando and the Spaniards\nRoldan, the son of Milon d'Angers and of Charlemagne's sister; and\nRenaud or Rinaldo, the lord of Montauban, and eldest of the famous four\nsons of Aymon. These are the two representative heroes, equal but\nopposed, the Achilles and Odysseus, the Siegfried and Dietrich, of the\nCarolingian epic; and in each is personified, by the unconscious genius\nof the early Middle Ages, one of the great political movements, of the\nheroic struggles, of feudalism. For there existed in feudalism two\nforces, a centripetal and a centrifugal--a force which made for the\nsupremacy of the kingly overlordship, and a force which made for the\nindependence of the great vassals. Hence, in the poetry which is the\npoetry of feudalism, two distinct currents of feeling, two distinct\nepics---the epic of the devoted loyalty of all the heroes of France to\ntheir wise and mighty emperor Charlemagne, triumphant even in\nmisfortune; and the epic of the hopeless resistance against a craven and\ncapricious despot Charles of the most righteous and whole-hearted among\nhis feudatories: the epic of Roland, and the epic of Renaud. Of the\nfirst there remains to us, in its inflexible and iron solemnity, an\noriginal rhymed narrative, \"The Chanson de Roland,\" which we may read\nperhaps almost in the self-same words in which it was sung by the\nNormans of William in their night watch before the great battle. The\ncentripetal force of feudalism gained the upper hand, and the song of\nthe great empire, of the great deeds of loyal prowess, was consecrated\nin the feudal monarchy. The case was different with the tale of\nresistance and rebellion. The story of Renaud soon became a dangerous\nlesson for the great barons; it fell from the hands of the nobles to\nthose of humbler folk; and it is preserved to us no longer in mediaeval\nverse, but in a prose version, doubtless of the fifteenth century, under\nthe name, familiar on the stalls of village fairs, of \"The Quatre Fils\nAymon.\" But, as Renaud is the equal of Roland, so is this humble prose\ntale nevertheless the equal of the great song of Roncevaux; and even\nnow, it would be a difficult task to decide which were the grander, the\ntale of loyalty or the tale of resistance.\n\nIn each of these tales,\"The Chanson de Roland\" and \"The Quatre Fils\nAymon,\" there is contained a picture of its respective hero, which sums\nup, as it were, the whole noble character of the book; and which, the\npicture of the dying Roland and the picture of the dying Renaud, I would\nfain bring before you before speaking of the other Roland and the other\nRenaud, the Orlando of Ariosto and the Rinaldo of Boiardo. The traitor\nGanelon has enabled King Marsile to overtake with all his heathenness\nthe rear-guard of Charlemagne between the granite walls of Roncevaux;\nthe Franks have been massacred, but the Saracens have been routed;\nRoland has at last ceded to the prayers of Oliver and of Archbishop\nTurpin; three times has he put to his mouth his oliphant and blown a\nblast to call back Charlemagne to vengeance, till the blood has foamed\nround his lips and his temple has burst. Oliver is dead, the archbishop\nis dying, Roland himself is slowly bleeding to death. He goes down into\nthe defile, heaped with corpses, and seeks for the bodies of the\nprincipal paladins, Ivon and Ivaire, the Gascon Engelier, Gerier and\nGerin, Berenger and Otho, Anseis and Salamon, and the old Gerard of\nRousillon; and one by one drags them to where the archbishop lies dying.\nAnd then, when to these knights Roland has at last added his own beloved\ncomrade Oliver, he bids the archbishop bless all the dead, before he die\nhimself. Then, when he has reverently crossed Turpin's beautiful\npriestly hands over his breast, he goes forth to shatter his sword\nDurendal against the rocks; but the good sword has cut the rock without\nshivering; and the coldness of death steals, over Roland. He stretches\nhimself upon a hillock looking towards Spain, and prays for the\nforgiveness of his sins; then, with Durendal and his ivory horn by his\nside, he stretches out the glove of his right hand to God. \"He has\nstretched forth to God the glove of his right hand; St. Gabriel has\nreceived it... Then his head has sunk on his arm; he has gone, with\nclasped hands, to his end. God sends him one of his cherubim and St.\nMichael of Peril. St. Gabriel has come with them. They carry the soul of\nthe Count: up to paradise.\"\n\nMore solitary, and solemn and sad even, is the end of the other hero, of\nthe great rebel Renaud of Montauban. At length, after a lifetime wasted\nin fruitless, attempts to resist the iniquity of the emperor, to baffle\nhis power, to shame him by magnanimity into, justice, the four sons of\nAymon, who have given up their youth, their manhood, the dearest things\nto their heart, respect to their father and loyalty to their sovereign,\nrather than countenance the injustice of Charlemagne to their kinsman,\nhave at last obtained to be pardoned; to be pardoned, they, heroes, by\nthis, dastardly tyrant, and to quietly sink, broken-hearted into\nnothingness. The eldest, Renaud, returning from his exile and the Holy\nLand, finds that his wife Clarisse has pined for him and died; and\nthen, putting away his armour from him, and dressing in a pilgrim's\nfrock made of the purple serge of the dead lady's robe, he goes forth to\nwander through the world; not very old in years, but broken-spirited; at\npeace, but in solitude of heart. And one evening he arrives at Cologne.\nWe can imagine the old knight, only half aware of the sunshine of the\nevening, the noise of the streets, the looks of the crowd, the great\nminster rising half-finished in the midst of the town by the Rhine, the\ncries and noise and chipping of the masons; unconscious of all this,\nhalf away: with his brothers hiding in the Ardennes, living on roots and\nberries, at bay before Charlemagne; or wandering ragged and famishing\nthrough France; with King Yon brilliant at Toulouse, seeing perhaps for\nthe first time his bride Clarisse, or the towers of Montauban rising\nunder the workmen's hands; thinking perhaps of the frightful siege, when\nall, all had been eaten in the fortress, and his children Aymonnet and\nYonnet, all thin and white, knelt down and begged him to slaughter his\nhorse Bayard that they might eat; perhaps of that journey, when he and\nhis brothers, all in red-furred robes with roses in their hands, rode\nprisoners of King Charles across the plain of Vaucouleurs; perhaps of\nwhen he galloped up to the gallows at Montfaucon, and cut loose his\nbrother Richard; or of that daring ride to Paris, where he and his horse\nwon the race, snatched the prize from before Charlemagne and sped off\ncrying out that the winner was Renaud of Montauban; or, perhaps, seeing\nonce more the sad, sweet face of the Lady Clarisse, when she had burned\nall her precious stuffs and tires in the castle-yard, and lay dead\nwithout him to kiss her cold mouth; of seeing once more his good horse\nBayard, when he kissed him in his stall before giving him to be killed\nby Charlemagne. Thinking of all that past, seeing it all within his\nmind, and seeing but little of the present; as, in the low yellow light,\nhe helped, for his bread, the workmen to heave the great beams, to carry\nthe great stones of the cathedral, to split the huge marble masses while\nthey stared in astonished envy; as he sat, unconscious of their\nmutterings, eating his dry bread and porridge in the building docks by\nthe river. And then, when wearied, he had sunk to sleep in the hay-loft,\ndreaming perchance that all this evil life was but a dream and the\nawakening therefrom to happiness and strength; the jealous workmen came\nand killed him with their base tools, and cast him into the Rhine. They\nsay that the huge body floated on the water, surrounded by a great halo;\nand that when the men of the banks, seeing this, reverently fished it\nout, they found that the noble corpse was untouched by decay, and still\nsurrounded by a light of glory. And thus, it seems to me, this Renaud,\nthis rebel baron of whose reality we know nothing, has floated\nsurrounded by a halo of poetry down the black flood of the Middle Ages\n(in which so much has sunk); and when we look upon his face, and see\nits beauty and strength and solemness, we feel, like the people of the\nRhine bank, inclined to weep, and to say of this mysterious corpse,\n\"Surely this is some great saint.\"\n\nOf each of these heroes thus shown us by the Middle Ages, the Italian\nRenaissance also, by the hand of two of her greatest poets, has given us\na picture. And first, of Roland. Of him, of Count Orlando, we are told\nby Messer Lodovico Ariosto, that in consequence of his having\ndiscovered, in a certain pleasant grotto among the ferns and maidenhair,\nwords graven on the rock (interrupted, doubtless, by the lover's kisses)\nwhich revealed that the Princess Angelica of Cathay had disdained him\nfor Medoro, the fair-haired page of the King of the Moors; Count Orlando\nwent straightway out of his mind, and hanging up his armour and\nstripping off his clothes, galloped about on his bare-backed horse,\nslaughtering cows and sheep instead of Saracens; until it pleased God,\nmoved by the danger of Christendom and the prayers of Charlemagne, to\npermit Astolfo to ride on the hippogriffs back up to the moon, and bring\nback thence the wits of the great paladin contained in a small phial. We\nall know that merry tale. What the Renaissance has to say of Renaud of\nMontauban is even stranger and more fantastic. One day, says Matteo\nBoiardo, in the fifteenth canto of the second part of his \"Orlando\nInnamorato,\" as Rinaldo of Montalbano, the contemner of love, was riding\nin the Ardennes, he came to a clearing in the forest, where, close to\nthe fountain of Merlin, a wonderful sight met his eyes. On a flowery\nmeadow were dancing three naked damsels, and singing with them danced\nalso a naked youth, dark of eyes and fair of hair, the first down on his\nlips, so that some might have said it was and others that it was not\nthere. On Rinaldo's approach they broke through their singing and\ndancing, and rushed upon him, pelting him with roses and hyacinths and\nviolets from their baskets, and beating him with great sheaves of\nlilies, which burnt like flames through the plates of his armour to the\nvery marrow of his bones. Then when they had dragged him, tied with\ngarlands, by the feet round and round the meadow; wings, eyed not with\nthe eyes of a peacock but with the eyes of lovely damsels, suddenly\nsprouted out of their shoulders, and they flew off, leaving the poor\nbaron, bruised on the grass, to meditate upon the vanity of all future\nresistance to love.\n\nSuch are the things which the Middle Ages and the Renaissance found to\ntell us of the two great heroes of Carolingian poetry. And the\nexplanation of how it came to pass, that for the Roland of the song of\nRoncevaux was substituted the Orlando of Ariosto, and for the Renaud of\n\"The Quatre Fils Aymon\" the Rinaldo of Matteo Boiardo--means simply that\nwhich I desire here to study: the metamorphoses of mediaeval romance\nstuffs, and, more especially, the vicissitudes of the cycle of\nCharlemagne.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\nWe are apt to think of the Middle Ages as if they were the\ncompanion-piece to Antiquity; but no such ideal correspondence exists\nbetween the two periods. Antiquity is all of a piece, and the Middle\nAges, on the contrary, are heterogeneous and chaotic. For Antiquity is\nthe steady and uniform development of civilization in one direction and\nwith one meaning; there are great differences between its various\nepochs, but they are as the differences between the budding, the\nblossoming, and the fading stages of one plant: life varies, but is one.\nThe Middle Ages, on the other hand, are a series of false starts, of\ninterruptions and of new departures; a perpetual confusion. For, if we\nthink over them, we shall see that these centuries called mediaeval are\noccupied by the effort of one people, or one generation, to put to\nrights and settle down among as much as it can save of the civilization\nof Antiquity. And the sudden overwhelming of this people or this\ngeneration by another, which puts all the elaborate arrangements into\ndisarray, adds to the ruins of Antiquity the ruins of more recent times;\nand then this destroying generation tries to put things straight, to\nsettle down, and is in its turn interrupted by the advent of some new\ncomer who begins the game afresh.\n\nAs it is with peoples, so also is it with ideas; scarcely has a scheme\nof life or of philosophy or of art taken shape and consistence before,\nfrom out of the inexhaustible chaos of mediaeval thought and feeling,\nthere issue new necessities, new aspirations, which put into confusion\nall previous ones. The Middle Ages were like some financial crisis: a\nlittle time, a little credit, money will fructify, wealth will reappear,\nthe difficult moment will be tided over; and so with civilization. But\nunfortunately the wealth of ideas began to accumulate in the storehouse\nonly just long enough to bring down a rout of creditors, people who\nrifled the bank, and went home to consume or invest their money in order\nto be succeeded by others. Hence, in the matter of civilization, the\nMiddle Ages ended in an extraordinary slow ruin, a bankruptcy like that\nwhich overtook France before '89, and from which, as France was restored\nby the bold seizure and breaking up of property of the revolution, the\nworld was restored by the bold breaking of feudal and spiritual\nmortmain, the restoring of wasted energies to utility, of that great\ndouble revolution, the Renaissance and the Reformation. Be this as it\nmay, mankind throughout the Middle Ages appears to have been in a\nchronic condition of packing up and unpacking, and packing up again; one\nafter another a nation, a race, a philosophy, a political system came to\nthe front and was pushed back again into limbo: Germans and Kelts and\nLatins, French civilization of the day of Abelard, Provencal\ncivilization of the days of the Raymonds, brilliant and evanescent\nHohenstauffen supremacy, papacy at Canossa and at Avignon, Templars\ntriumphant and Templars persecuted; scholasticism, mysticism, feudalism,\ndemocracy, communism: influences all these perpetually rising up and\nbeing trodden down, till they all rotted away in the great stagnation of\nthe fifteenth century; and only in one part of the world, where the\nconflict was more speedily ended, where one set of tendencies early\ntriumphed, where stability was temporarily obtained, in Italy alone did\ncivilization continue to be nurtured and developed for the benefit of\nall mankind. In such a state of affairs only such things could flourish\nand mature as were safe from what I have called, for want of a better\nexpression, the perpetual unpacking and repacking, the perpetual being\non the move, of the Middle Ages; and among such things foremost was art,\nthe essential art of the times, architecture, which, belonging to the\nsmall towns, to the infinite minority of the democracy, who worked and\nmade money and let the great changes pass over their heads, thrived\nalmost as something too insignificant for notice. But it was different\nwith literature. Cathedrals once built cannot so easily be changed; new\npeoples, new ideas, must accept them. But poetry--the thing which every\nnation insists upon having to suit its own taste, the thing which every\nnation and every generation carries about with it hither and thither,\nthe thing which can be altered to suit every passing whim--poetry was,\nof all the fluctuating things of the Middle Ages, perhaps the most\nfluctuating. And fluctuating also because, as none of these various\nnations, tendencies, aspirations, dominated sufficiently long to produce\nany highly organized art, there remained no standard works, nothing\nrecognizedly perfect, which would be kept for its perfection and gather\nround it imitations, so as to form the nucleus of any homogeneous\ntradition. The Middle Ages, so full of fashions in literary matters,\npossessed no classics; the minnesingers knew nothing of the stern old\nTeutonic war songs; the meistersaengers had forgotten the minnesingers;\nthe trouveres and troubadours knew nothing of \"The Chanson de Roland,\"\nand Villon knew nothing of them; only in Italy, where the Middle Ages\ncame to an end and the Renaissance began with the Lombard league, was\nthere established a tradition of excellence, with men like Dante,\nPetrarch, and Boccaccio, handed down from generation to generation; even\nas, while in the north there came about the strange modification which\nsubstituted the French of Rabelais for the French of Chrestien de\nTroyes, the German of Luther for the German of Wolfram von Eschenbach,\nthe Italian language, from Ciullo d'Alcamo almost to Boiardo and Lorenzo\ndei Medici, remained virtually identical. The result of this, which I\nmay call the heterogeneousness and instability of the Middle Ages was\nthat not merely literary forms were for ever arising and being\nsuperseded, but literary subject matter was continually undergoing a\nprocess of transformation. While in Antiquity the great epic and tragic\nstuffs remained well-nigh unaltered, and the stories of Valerius Flaccus\nand Apollonius Rhodius were merely the stories which had been current\nsince the days of Homer, during the course of the Middle Ages every epic\ncycle, and every tale belonging thereunto, was gradually adulterated,\nmingled with, swamped by, some other cycle or tale; nay, rather, every\nother, cycle and every other tale, the older ones trying to save their\npopularity by admixture with the more recent, till at last all mythical\nsignificance, all historical meaning, all national character, all\npsychological reality, were lost in the chaotic result. And meanwhile,\nin the absence of any stable language, of any durable literary fashion,\nthe Middle Ages were unable to give to these epic stuffs, at any one\nperiod of their life of metamorphose, a form sufficiently artistically\nvaluable to secure anything beyond momentary vogue, to secure for them\nthe immortality of the great Greek tales of adventure and warfare and\nlove. Thus it came about that the epic cycle of Charlemagne, after\nsupplanting in men's minds the grand sagas of the pagan North, was\nitself supplanted by the Arthurian cycle; that the Frankish stories\nabsorbed the wholly discrepant elements of their more fortunate Keltic\nrivals; that both cycles, having lost all character through fusion and\nthrough obliteration by time, became more meaningless generation by\ngeneration and year by year, until when the Middle Ages had come to an\nend, and the great poets of the Renaissance were ready to give this old\nmediaeval epic stuff a definitive and durable artistic shape, there came\nto the hands of Boiardo and Ariosto, of Tasso and Spenser, only a\nstrange, trumpery material, muddled by jongleurs and romance writers,\nand reduced to mere fairy stuff, taken seriously only by Don Quixote,\nand by the authors of the volumes of insane twaddle called after Amadis\nof Gaul and all his kinsmen.\n\nSuch a condition of perpetual change as explains, in my belief, why the\nmediaeval epic subjects were wanted, can be made clear only by examples.\nI shall therefore try to show the transformations which were undergone\nby one or two principal mediaeval epic subjects as a result of a mixture\nwith other epic cycles; of a gradual adaptation to a new state of\ncivilization; and finally of their gradual separation from all kind of\nreality and real interests.\n\nFirst of all, let us look at the epic cycle, which, although known to us\nonly in poems no older than those of the trouveres and minnesingers who\nsang of Charlemagne and Arthur, is in reality far more ancient, and on\naccount of its antiquity and its consequent disconnection with mediaeval\nreligious and political interests, was thrown aside even by the nations\nto which it belonged, by the Scandinavians who took to writing sagas\nabout the wars of Charlemagne against Saracens, and by the Germans who\npreferred to hear the adventures of Welsh and Briton, Launcelots and\nTristrams. I am alluding to the stories connected with the family and\nlife of the hero called Sigurd by the Scandinavians, and Siegfried by\nthe Germans. Of these we possess a Norse version called the Volsunga\nSaga, magnificently done into English by Mr. William Morris; which,\nalthough written down at the end of the twelfth century, in the very\ntime therefore of Chrestien de Troyes, Wolfram von Eschenbach, and\nGottfried von Strassburg, and subsequently to the presumed writing of\n\"The Chanson de Roland\" and the Nibelungenlied, shows us in reality the\nproduct of a people, the distant Scandinavians of Iceland, who were five\nor six hundred years behind the French, Germans, and English of the\ntwelfth century. In the Volsunga Saga, neither Christianity nor\nfeudalism is yet dreamed of; and it is for this reason that I wish to\ncompare it with the Nibelungenlied, in order to show how enormously the\nold epic stuff was altered by the new civilization. The whole social and\nmoral condition of the two versions is different. In the old\nScandinavian civilization, where the Viking is surrounded and served by\nclansmen, the feeling of blood relationship is the strongest in people's\nhearts; strangely and fearfully shown in the introductory tale of Signy,\nwho, in order to avenge her father Volsung, killed by her husband,\nmurders her children by the latter, and then, altered in face by magic\narts, goes forth to the woods to her brother Sigmund, that,\nun-wittingly, he may beget with her the only man fit to avenge the\nVolsungs. And then she sends the boy Sinfjotli to the man he has\nhitherto considered merely as his uncle, bidding the latter kill him if\nhe prove unworthy of his incestuous birth, or train him to vengeance.\nThe three together murder the husband and legitimate children of Signy,\nand set the palace on fire; which, being done, the queen, having\naccomplished her duty to her kin, accomplishes that towards her husband,\nand calmly returns to die in the burning hall. Here (and apparently\nagain in the case of the children of Sigurd and Brynhilt) incest becomes\na family virtue. This being the frightful preponderance of the feeling\nof blood relationship, it is quite natural that the Scandinavian\nChriemhilt (called in the Volsunga Saga, Gudrun) should not resent the\nmurder of her husband Siegfried or Sigurd by her brothers at the\ninstigation of the jealous Brynhilt (who has in a manner been Sigurd's\nwife before he made her over to Chriemhilt's eldest brother); and that,\nso far from seeking any revenge against them, she should, when her second\nhusband Atli sends for her brothers in order to rob and murder them,\nfirst vainly warn them of the plot, and then, when they have been\nmassacred, kill Atli and her children by him in order to avenge her\nbrothers. The slackening of the tribal feeling, the idea of fidelity in\nlove and sanctity of marriage belonging to Christianity and feudalism,\nrendered such a story unintelligible to the Germans of the Othos and\nHenrys. In the Nibelungenlied, the whole story of the massacre of the\nbrothers is changed. Chriemhilt never forgives the murder of Siegfried,\nand it is not Etzel--Atli for the sake of plunder, but she herself for\nthe sake of revenge, who decoys her brothers and murders them; it is she\nwho with her own hand cuts off the head of Gunther to expiate his murder\nof Siegfried. To our feelings, more akin to those of the feudal\nChristians of Franconia than to those of the tribal Scandinavians of the\nEdda, the second version is far more intelligible and interesting--the\nstory of this once gentle and loving Chriemhilt, turned by the murder of\nher beloved into a fury, and plotting to avenge his death by the death\nof all his kinsfolk, must be much grander and more pathetic than the\nstory of this strange Gudrun, who sits down patiently beneath the injury\ndone to her by her brothers, but savagely avenges them on her new\nhusband, and her own and his innocent children; to us this persistence\nof tribal feeling, destroying all indignation and love, is merely\nunnatural, confusing, and repulsive. But this alteration for the better\nin one of the incidents of the tale is a mere fluke; and the whole main\nplot of the originally central figures are completely obliterated by the\nnew state of civilization, and rendered merely trivial and grotesque. In\nthe Volsunga Saga Sigurd, overcome by enchantments, has forgotten his\nwife (or mistress, a vague mythical relationship); and, with all sense\nof the past obliterated, has made her over to the brother of his new\nwife Gudrun; and Brynhilt kills her faithless love to dissolve the\nsecond marriage and be reunited with him in death. In the Nibelungenlied\nSiegfried, although the flower of knighthood, conquers by foul play the\nAmazon Brunhilt to reward Gunther for the hand of his sister; nay, in a\ncomic and loathsome scene he forces her into the embraces of the craven\nGunther; and then he gets killed by Brunhilt's machinations; when, after\nmost unqueenly bickerings, the proud Amazon is brutally told by\nSiegfried's wife of the dirty trick which has given her to Gunther.\nAfter this, it is impossible to realize, when Siegfried is murdered and\nall our sympathies called on to his side, the utterly out-of-character,\nblackguardly behaviour which has brought the hero to his death.\nSimilarly the conception of the character and position of Brynhilt is\nentirely disfigured and rendered inane in the Nibelungenlied: of that\nsuperb demi-goddess of the Scandinavians, burnt on the pyre with her\nfalcons and dogs and horses and slaves, by the side of the demi-god\nSigurd, whom she has loved and killed, lest the door of Valhalla,\nswinging after him, should shut her out from his presence; of her there\nremains in the German mediaeval poem only a virago (more like the\ngiantesses of the Amadis romances) enraged at having been defeated and\ngrotesquely and grossly pummelled into wedlock by a man not her husband,\nand then slanged like a fishwife by her envious sister-in-law.\n\nThe old, consistent, grandly tragic tale of the mysterious incests and\nrevenges of a race of demi-gods has lost its sense, its point in the\nattempt to arrange it to suit Christian and feudal ideas. The really\nfine portions of the Nibelungenlied are exactly those which have no real\nconnection with the original story, gratuitous additions by mediaeval\npoets. The delicately indicated falling in love of Siegfried and\nChriemhilt, the struggles of Markgraf Ruedger between obedience to his\nfeudal superior and fidelity towards his friends and guests; and, above\nall, the canto of the death of Siegfried. This last is different,\nintensely different, from the rugged and dreary monotony of the rest;\nthis most poetical, almost Spenserian or Ariostesque realization of the\nscene; this beautiful picture (though worked with the needle of the\narras-worker rather than with pencil or brush) of the wood, the hunt,\nthe solitary fountain in the Odenwald, where, with his spear leaned\nagainst the lime-tree, Siegfried was struck down into the clover and\nflowers, and writhed with Hagen's steel through his back. This canto is\ncertainly interpolated by some first-rate poet, at least a Gottfried or\na Walther, to whom that passage of the savage old droning song of death\nhad suggested a piece of new art; it is like the fragments of\nexquisitely chiselled leafage and figures which you sometimes find\nencrusted--by whom? wherefore?--quite isolated in the midst of the rough\nand lichen-stained stones of some rude Lombard church. All the rest of\nthe Nibelungenlied gives an impression of effeteness; there is no\ndefiniteness of idea such as that of the Volsunga Saga; the battles are\nmere vague slaughter, no action, no realized movement, or (excepting\nRuedger) no realized motive of conduct. Shape and colour would seem to\nhave been obliterated by repetition and alteration. Yet even these\nalterations could not make the tale of Siegfried survive among the\nGermans of the Middle Ages; nay, the more the alterations the less the\ninterest; the want of consistency and colour due to rearrangement merely\naccelerated the throwing aside of a subject which, dating from pagan and\ntribal times, had become repugnant to the new generations. All the\nmutilations in the world could not make the old Scandinavian tales of\nbetrayed trust, of revenge and triumphant bloodshed, at all sympathetic\nto men whose religious and social ideals were those of forgiveness and\nfidelity; even stripped of its incestuous mysteries and of its fearful\ntribal love, the tale of Sigurd and Brynhilt, reduced to the tale of\nChriemhilt's revenge, was unpalatable: no more attempts were made at\nre-writing it, and the poems of Walther, of Gottfried, of Wolfram, of\nUlrich, and of Tannhaeuser, full as they are of references to stories of\nthe Carolingian and Arthurian cycles, nay, to Antique and Oriental\ntales, contain no allusion to the personages of the Nibelungenlied. The\nold epic of the Gothic races had been pushed aside by the triumphant\nepic of the obscure and conquered Kelts.\n\nThere are few phenomena in the history of ideas and forms more singular\nthan that of the sudden conquest of the poetry of dominant or distant\nnations by the poetic subjects of a comparatively small race, sheared of\nall political importance, restricted to a trifling territory, and\nwell-nigh deprived of their language; and of this there can be found no\nmore striking example than the sudden ousting of the Carolingian epic by\nthe cycle of Arthur.\n\nThe Kelts of Britain and Ireland possessed an epic cycle of their own,\nwhich came to notice only when they were dispossessed of their last\nstrongholds by Saxons and Normans, and which immediately spread with\nastounding rapidity all over Europe. The vanquished race became\nfashionable; themselves, their art and their poetry, began to be sought\nfor as a precious and war-enhanced loot. The heroic tales of the Kelts\nwere transcribed in Welsh, and translated into Latin, by order of the\nNorman and Angevine kings, glad, it would seem, to oppose the Old Briton\nto the Saxon element. The Keltic songs were carried all over France by\nBreton bards, to whose music and rhymes, with only a general idea of the\nsubjects, the neo-Latin-speaking Franks listened with the sort of stolid\nsatisfaction with which English or Germans of a hundred years ago\nlistened to Italians singing Metastasio's verses. But soon the songs and\ntales were translated; and French poets imitated in their language,\nnorthern and southern, the graceful metres of the Keltic lays, and\naltered and arranged their subjects. So that, in a very short time,\nFrance, and through it Germany, was inundated with Keltic stories. This\ntriumph of the vanquished race was not without reason. The Kelts, early\ncivilized by Rome and Christianity, had a set of stories and a set of\nheroes extremely in accordance with mediaeval ideas, and requiring but\nvery little alteration. The considerable age of their civilization had\nlong obliterated all traces of pagan and tribal feeling in their tales.\nTheir heroes, originally, like those of all other people, divinities\nintimately connected with natural phenomena, had long lost all cosmic\ncharacteristics, long ceased to be gods, and, manipulated by the fancy\nof a race whose greatness was quite a thing of the past, had become a\nsort of golden age ideals--the men of a distant period of glory, which\nwas adorned with every kind of perfection, till it became as unreal as\nfairyland. Fairyland, in good sooth, was this country of the Keltic\ntales; and there is a sort of symbolical significance in the fact of its\nlawgiver Merlin, and its emperor Arthur, being both of them not dead,\nlike Sigurd, like Dietrich, like Charlemagne and Roland, but lying in\nenchanted sleep. Long inaction and the day-dreaming of idleness had\nrefined and idealized the heroes of this Keltic race--a race of\nbrilliant fancy and almost southern mobility, and softened for a long\ntime by contact with Roman colonists and Christian priests. They were\nnot the brutal combatants of an active fighting age, like the heroes of\nthe Edda and of the Carolingian cycles; nor had they any particular\nmilitary work to do, belonging as they did to a people huddled away into\ninactivity. Their sole occupation was to extend abroad that ideal\nhappiness which reigned in the ideal court of Arthur; to go forth on the\nloose and see what ill-conditioned folk there might yet be who required\nbeing subdued or taught manners in the happy kingdom, which the poor\ninsignificant Kelts connected with some princelet of theirs who\ncenturies before may have momentarily repelled the pagan Saxons. Hence\nin the Keltic stories, such as they exist in the versions previous to\nthe conquest by the Norman kings, and previous also to any\ncommunications with other peoples, the distinct beginning of what was\nlater to be called knight-errantry; of heroes, creations of an inactive\nnation, having no special military duties, going forth to do what good\nthey may at random, unforced by any necessity, and following a mere\naesthetico-romantic plan of perfecting themselves by deeds of valour to\nbecome more worthy of their God, their King, and their Lady: religion,\nloyalty, and love, all three of them mere aesthetic abstractions,\nbecoming the goal of an essentially aesthetic, unpractical system of\nself-improvement, such as was utterly incompatible with any real and\nserious business in life. Idle poetic fancies of an inert people, the\nKnights of the Round Table have no mission save that of being\npoetically perfect. Such was the spirit of Keltic poetry; and, as it\nhappened, this spirit satisfied the imaginative wants of mediaeval\nsociety just at the moment when political events diffused in other\ncountries the knowledge of the Arthurian legends. The old Teutonic tales\nof Sigurd, Gudrun, and Dietrich, had long ceased to appeal, in their\nmutilated and obliterated condition, to a society to whom tribal feeling\nand pagan heroism were odious, and whose religion distinctly reproved\nrevenge. These semi-mythological tales had been replaced by another\ncycle: the purely realistic epic, which had arisen during the struggles\nbetween the Christian west against the pagan north-east and the\nMohammedan south, and which, originating in the short battle-songs\nnarrating the exploits of the predecessors and help-mates of\nCharlemagne, had constituted itself into large narratives of which the\n\"Song of Roland\" represents artistic culmination. These narratives of\nmere military exploits, of the battles of a strong feudal aristocracy\nanimated by feudal loyalty and half-religious, half-patriotic fury\nagainst invading heathenness, had perfectly satisfied the men of the\nearliest Middle Ages, of the times when feudalism was being established\nand the church being reformed; when the strong military princelets of\nthe North were embarking with their barons to conquer new kingdoms in\nEngland and in Italy and Greece; when the whole of feudal Europe hurled\nitself against Asia in the first Crusades. But the condition of things\nsoon altered: the feudal hierarchy was broken up into a number of\nsemi-independent little kingdoms or principalities, struggling, with the\nassistance of industrial and mercantile classes, to become absolute\nmonarchies; princes who had been mere generals became stay-at-home\ndiplomatists, studious of taxation and intrigue, surrounded no longer by\narmed vassals, but by an essentially urban court, in constant\ncommunication with the money-making burghers. Religion, also, instead of\nbeing a matter of fighting with infidel invaders, turned to fantastic\nsectarianism and emotional mysticism. With the sense of futility, of\ndisappointment, attendant on the later Crusades, came also a habit of\nroaming in strange countries, of isolated adventure in search of wealth\nor information, a love of the distant, the half-understood, the\nequivocal; perhaps even a hankering after a mysterious compromise\nbetween the religion of Europe and the religions of the East, such as\nappears to have existed among the Templars and other Franks settled in\nAsia.\n\nThere was, throughout feudal society, a sort of enervated languor, a\nmorbid longing for something new, now that the old had ceased to be\npossible or had proved futile; after the great excitement of the\nCrusades it was impossible to be either sedately idle or quietly active,\neven as it is with all of us during the days of weariness and\nrestlessness after some long journey. To such a society the strongly\nrealistic Carolingian epic had ceased to appeal: the tales of the Welsh\nand Breton bards, repeated by trouvere and jongleur, troubadour and\nminnesinger, came as a revelation. The fatigued, disappointed, morbid,\nimaginative society of the later Crusades recognized in this fairyland\nepic of a long refined, long idle, nay, effete race, the realization of\ntheir own ideal: of activity unhampered by aim or organization, of\nsentiment and emotion and action quite useless and unnecessary, purely\nsubservient to imaginative gratification. These Arthurs, Launcelots,\nTristrams, Kays, and Gawains, fantastic phantoms, were also far more\nartistically malleable than the iron Rolands, Olivers, and Renauds of\nearlier days; that unknown kingdom of Britain could much more easily be\nmade the impossible ideal, in longing for which squeamish and lazy minds\nmight refuse all coarser reality. Moreover, those who listened to the\ntales of chivalry were different from those who had listened to the\nCarolingian stories; and, therefore, required something different. They\nwere courtiers, and one half of them were women. Now the Carolingian\ntales, originally battle-songs, sung in camps and castles to mere\nsoldiers, had at first possessed no female characters at all; and when\ngradually they were introduced, it was in the coarsest barrack or\ntap-room style. The Keltic tales, on the contrary, whether from national\ntradition, or rather from longer familiarity with Christian culture and\ngreater idleness of life, naturally made women and women's love the\ngoal of a great many adventures which an effete nation could no longer\nascribe to patriotic movements. But this was not all. The religious\nfeeling of the day was extremely inclined to mysticism, in which\naesthetic, erotic, and all kinds of morbid and ill-defined tendencies\nwere united, which was more than anything else tinged with a\nsemi-Asiatic quietism, a longing for the passive ecstasy of Nirvana.\nThis religious side of mediaeval life was also gratified by the Arthurian\nromances. Oddly enough, there existed an old Welsh or Breton tale about\nthe boy Peredur, who from a complete simpleton became the prince of\nchivalry, and his many adventures connected with a certain mysterious\nblood-dripping lance, and a still more mysterious basin or _grail_ (an\nallusion to which is said by M. de la Villemarque to be contained in the\noriginally Keltic name of Percival), which possessed magic properties\nakin to those of the purse of Fortunatus, or the pipkin in the story of\n\"Little pot, boil!\" The story, whose original mythical meaning had been\nlost in the several centuries of Christianity, was very decayed and\nobscure; and the fact of the blood on the lance being that of a murdered\nkinsman of Peredur, and of the basin containing the head of the same\nperson cut off by Gloucester witches, was evidently insufficient to\naccount for all the mystery with which these objects were surrounded.\nThe French poets of the Middle Ages, strongly imbued with Oriental\nlegends brought back by the Crusaders, saw at a glance the meaning of\nthe whole story: the lance was the lance with which Longinus had pierced\nthe Saviour's side; the Grail was the cup which had received His blood,\nnay, it was the cup of the Last Supper. A tale about the preservation of\nthese precious relics by Joseph of Arimathaea, was immediately connected\ntherewith; a theory was set up (doubtless with the aid of quite\nunchristian, Oriental legends) of a kind of kingdom of the keepers of\nthe Grail, of a vague half-material, half-spiritual state of bliss\nconnected with the service of the Grail, which fed its knights (and here\nthe Templars and their semi-oriental mysteries, for which they were\nlater so frightfully misused, certainly come into play) with food which\nis at once of the body and of the soul. Thus the Keltic Peredur, bent\nupon massacring the Gloucester witches to avenge his uncle, was turned\ninto a saintly knight, seeking throughout a more and more perfect life\nfor the kingdom of the Grail: the Perceval of Chrestien de Troyes, the\nParzifal of Wolfram von Eschenbach, whom later romance writers (wishing\nto connect everything more closely with Arthur's court) replaced by the\nSir Galahad of the \"Morte d'Arthur,\" while the guest of the Grail became\na sort of general mission of several knights, a sort of spiritual\ncrusade to whose successful champions Percival, Bors, and Galahad, the\nMiddle Ages did not hesitate to add the arch-adulterer Launcelot.\n\nThus did the Arthurian tales answer the requirements of the languid,\ndreamy, courtly, lady-serving and religiously mystic sons and grandsons\nof those earlier Crusaders whose aspirations had been expressed by the\nrough and solemn heroes of Carolingian tales. The Carolingian tales were\nthrown aside, or were kept by the noble mediaeval poets only on condition\nof their original meaning being completely defaced by wholesale\nadmixture of the manners and adventures belonging to the Arthurian\ncycles. The paladins were forced to disport themselves in the same\nfairyland as the Knights of the Round Table; and many mediaeval poems the\nheroes of which, like Ogier of Denmark and Huon of Bordeaux, already\nexisted in the Carolingian tales, are in reality, with their romantic\nloves, their useless adventures, their Morgana's castles and Oberon's\nhorns, offshoots of the Keltic stories, which were as rich in every kind\nof supernatural (being, in fact, pagan myths turned into fairy tales) as\nthe genuine Carolingian subjects, whose origin was entirely historical,\nwere completely devoid of such things. Arthur and his ladies and\nknights: Guenevere, Elaine, Enid, Yseult, Launcelot, Geraint, Kay,\nGawain, Tristram, and Percival-Galahad, were the real heroes and\nheroines of the courtly nobles and the courtly poets of this second\nphase of mediaeval life. The Teuton Charlemagne, Roland and Oliver were\nas completely forgotten of the poets who met in that memorable combat of\nthe Wartburg, as were the Teuton Sigurd and Dietrich. And if the\nCarolingian cycle survived, however much altered, I think it must have\nbeen thanks to the burghers and artizans of the Netherlands and of\nProvence, to whom the bluff, matter-of-fact heroism, the simple, gross,\nbut not illegitimate amours of Carolingian heroes, were more\nsatisfactory than any mystic quest of the Grail, any refined adultery of\nGuenevere or Yseult.\n\nBut the inevitable fate of all mediaeval epics awaited this triumphant\nArthurian cycle: the fate of being obliterated by passing from one\nnation and civilization to another, long before the existence of any\npoetic art adequate to its treatment. Of this I will take as an example\none of the mediaeval poems which has the greatest reputation the\nmasterpiece (according to most critics, with whom I find it difficult,\nin the presence of a poet like Gottfried von Strassburg, to agree) of\nprobably the most really poetical and earnest school of poetry which the\npre-Dantesque Middle Ages possessed--the \"Parzifal\" of Wolfram von\nEschenbach.\n\nThe paramount impression (I cannot say the strongest, for strong\nimpressions are incompatible with such work as this) left by the\nmasterpiece of Wolfram von Eschenbach, is that of the most astonishing\nvagueness, fluidity, haziness, vaporousness. In reading it one looks\nback to that rudely hewn and extremely obliterated Nibelungenlied, as to\nsomething quite astonishingly clear, detailed and strongly marked as to\nsomething distinctly artistic. Indeed by the side of \"Parzifal\"\neverything seems artistic; Hartmann von Aue reads like Chaucer,\n\"Aucassin et Nicolette\" is as living as \"Cymbeline,\" \"Chevy Chase\" seems\nas good as the battles of Homer. It is not a narrative, but a vague\nmooning; a knight illiterate, not merely like his fellow minnesingers,\nin the way of reading and writing, but in the sense of complete absence\nof all habit of literary form; extremely noble and pure of mind, chaste,\ngentle, with a funny, puzzled sense of humour, reminding one distantly\nof Jean Paul in his drowsy moments; a hanger-on of courts, but perfectly\nsimple-hearted and childlike; very poor and easily pleased: such is, for\ngood and for bad, Herr Wolfram von Eschenbach, the only real personality\nin his poem. And he narrates, in a mooning, digressive, good-natured,\ndrowsy tone, with only a rare awaking of interest, a story which he has\nheard from some one else, and that some one else from a series of other\nsome one elses (Chrestien de Troyes, a legendary Provencal Chiot or\nGuyot, perhaps even the original Welsh bard); all muddled, monotonous,\nand droning; events and persons ill-defined, without any sense of the\nrelative importance of anything, without clear perception of what it is\nall about, or at least without the power of keeping the matter straight\nbefore the reader. A story, in point of fact, which is no story at all,\nbut a mere series of rambling adventures (adventures which are scarcely\nadventures, having no point or plot) of various people with not much\nconnection and no individuality--Gachmuret, Parzifal, Gawain,\nLoherangrein, Anfortas, Feirefis--pale ghosts of beings, moving in a\ncountry of Kennaqwhere, Aquitaine, Anjou, Brittany, Wales, Spain, and\nheaven knows what wondrous Oriental places; a misty country with woods\nand towns and castles which are infinitely far apart and yet quite near\neach other; which seem to sail about like cloud castles round the only\nsolid place in the book, Plimizoel, where Arthur's court, with round\ntable constantly spread, is for ever established. A no place, nowhere;\nyet full of details; minute inventories of the splendid furniture of\ncastles (castles where? how reached?); infinitely inferior in this\nmatter even to the Nibelungenlied, where you are made to feel so vividly\n(one of the few modern and therefore clear things therein) the long,\ndreary road from Worms to Bechlarn, and thence to Etzelburg, though of\nnone of them is there anything beyond a name. For the Nibelungen story\nhad been localized in what to narrator and audience was a reality, the\ncountry in which themselves lived, where themselves might seek out the\nabbey in which Siegfried was buried, the well in the Odenwald near which\nhe was stabbed; where they knew from merchant and pilgrim the road taken\nby the Nibelungs from Santen to Worms, by the Burgundians from Worms to\nHungary. But here in \"Parzifal\" we are in a mere vague world of\nanywhere, the world of Keltic and Oriental romance become mere cloudland\nto the Thuringian knight. And similarly have the heroes of other\nnations, the Arthurs, Gawains, Gachmurets, of Wales and Anjou, become\nmere vague names; they have become liquified, lost all shape and local\nhabitation. They are mere names, these ladies and knights of Herr\nWolfram, names with fair pink and white faces, names magnificently\ndraped in bejewelled Oriental stuffs and embossed armour; they have no\nhome, no work, nothing to do. This is the most remarkable characteristic\nof \"Parzifal,\" and what makes it so typical of the process of growing\ninane through overmuch alteration, which prevented the mediaeval epics\never turning into an Iliad or an Odyssey; this that it is essentially\nidle and all about nothing. The feudal relations strongly marked in the\nGerman Nibelungenlied have melted away like the distinctions of race:\nevery knight is independent, not a vassal nor a captain, a Volker or\nHagen, or Roland or Renaud followed by his men; but an isolated\nindividual, without even a squire, wandering about alone through this\nhazy land of nowhere. Knight-errantry, in the time of the great Guelph\nand Ghibelline struggles, every bit as ideal as that of Spenser or\nCervantes; and with the difference that Sir Calidore and Sir Artegal\nhave an appointed task, some Blatant Beast or other nuisance to\novercome; and that Don Quixote has the general rescuing of all the\noppressed Princesse Micomiconas, and the destruction of all windmills,\nand the capturing of all helmets of Mambrino, and the establishing all\nover the world of the worship of Dulcinea. But these knights of Wolfram\nvon Eschenbach have no more this mission than they have the\npolitico-military missions, missions of a Ruedger or a Roland. They are\nall riding about at random, without any particular pagans, necromancers,\nor dragons to pursue. The very service of the Holy Grail, which is the\nmain interest of the poem, consists in nothing apparently except living\nvirtuously at the Castle of Montselvaesche, and virtuously eating and\ndrinking the victuals provided miraculously. To be admitted to this\nservice, no initiation, no mission, nothing preliminary seems required.\nParzifal himself merely wanders about vaguely, without doing any\nspecified thing. The fact is that in this poem all has become purely\nideal; ideal to the point of utter vacuity: there is no connection with\nany human business. Of all the heroes and heroines we hear that they are\nperfectly chaste, truthful, upright; and they are never put into any\nsituation to test these qualities: they are never placed in the way of\ntemptation, never made to fight with evil, or to decide between it and\ngood. The very religion of the Holy Grail consists in doing nothing: not\na word about relieving the poor or oppressed, of tending the sick, of\ndelivering the Holy Sepulchre, of defending that great injured One,\nChrist. To be Grail Knight or even Grail King means to be exactly the\nsame as before. Where in this vague dreamland of passive purity and\nheroism, of untempted chastity and untried honour, where are the earthly\ntrials of Tristram, of Guenevere, of Ruedger, of Renaud? Where the moral\nstruggles of the Middle Ages? Where is Godfrey, or Francis, or Dominick?\nNowhere. All has disappeared, melted away; Christianity and Paganism\nthemselves have melted away or into each other, as in the easy meeting\nof the Pagan Feirefis and the Christian Parzifal, and in the double\nmarriage of Gachmuret with the Indian Belakane and the Welsh Herzeloid;\nthere remains only a kind of Buddhistic Nirvana of vague passive\nperfection, but without any renunciation; and in a world devoid of evil\nand full of excellent brocade and armour and eatables, and lovely\nmaidens who dress and undress you, and chastely kiss you on the mouth; a\nworld without desire, aspiration, or combat, vacantly happy and\nvirtuous. A world purely ideal, divorced from all reality, unsubstantial\nlike the kingdom of Gloriana, but, unlike Spenser's, quite unshadowed by\nany puritan sadness, by any sense of evil, untroubled by allegorical\nvices; cheerful, serene, filled with flowers and song of birds, but as\nunreal as the illuminated arabesques of a missal. In truth, perhaps more\nto be compared with an eighteenth century pastoral, an ideal created\nalmost in opposition to reality; a dream of passiveness and liberty (as\nof light leaves blown about) as the ideal of the fiercely troubled,\nstruggling, tightly fettered feudal world. The ideal, perhaps, of only\none moment, scarcely of a whole civilization; or rather (how express my\nfeeling?) an accidental combination of an instant, as of spectre vapour\narisen from the mixture of Kelt and Teuton, of Frank and Moslem. Is it\nChristian, Pagan, Mohammedan? None of all these. A simple-looking\nvaporous chaos of incongruous, but not conflicting, elements: a poem of\nvirtue without object, of knighthood without work, of religion without\nbelief; in this like its central interest, the Grail: a mystery, a cup,\na stone; a thing which heals, feeds, speaks; animate or inanimate? Stone\nof the Caaba or chalice of the Sacrament? Merely a mysterious holy of\nholies and good of goods, which does everything and nothings means\nnothing and requires nothing--is nothing.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\nThus was obliterated, in all its national and traditional meaning, the\nheroic cycle of Arthur; and by the same process of slow adaptation to\nnew intellectual requirements which had completely wiped out of men's\nmemory the heroic tales of Siegfried, which had entirely altered the\noriginally realistic character of the epic of Charlemagne. But unreal\nand ideal as had become the tales of the Round Table, and disconnected\nwith any national tradition, the time came when even these were not\nsufficiently independent of reality to satisfy the capricious\nimagination of the later Middle Ages. At the end of the fourteenth\ncentury was written, most probably in Portuguese by Vasco de Lobeira,\nthe tale of \"Amadis de Gaula,\" which was followed by some forty or fifty\nsimilar books telling the adventures of all the brothers, nephews,\nsons, grandsons sons, and great-grandsons, an infinite succession, of\nthe original Amadis; which, translated into all languages and presently\nmultiplied by the press, seem to have usurped the place of the Arthurian\nstories in feudal countries until well-nigh the middle of the sixteenth\ncentury; and which were succeeded by no more stories of heroes, but by\nthe realistic comic novels of the type of \"Lazarillo de Tormes,\" and the\nbuffoon philosophic extravaganzas of \"Gargantua.\" Further indeed it was\nimpossible to go than did mediaeval idealism in the Amadises. Compared\nwith them the most fairy-tale-like Arthurian stories are perfect\nhistorical documents. There remains no longer any connection whatsoever\nwith reality, historical or geographical: the whole world seems to have\nbeen expeditiously emptied of all its contents, to make room for\nkingdoms of Gaul, of Rome, of the Firm Island, of Sobradisa, etc., which\nare less like the Land West of the Moon and East of the Sun than they\nare like Sancho Panza's island. All real mankind, past, present, and\nfuture, has similarly been swept away and replaced by a miraculous race\nof Amadises, Lisvarts, Galaors, Gradasilias, Orianas, Pintiquinestras,\nFradalons, and so forth, who flit across our vision, in company with the\nindispensable necromancers, fairies, dwarfs, giants, and duennas, like\nsome huge ballet: things without character, passions, pathos; knights\nwho are never wounded or killed, princesses who always end with\nmarrying the right man, enchanters whose heads are always chopped off,\nfoundlings who are always reinstated in their kingdom, inane paper\npuppets bespangled with impossible sentiment, tinsel and rags which are\ndriven about like chaff by the wind-puffs of romance. The advent of the\nAmadises is the coming of the Kingdom of Nonsense, the sign that the\nlast days of chivalric romance have come; a little more, and the\nLicentiate Alonzo Perez will take his seat in Don Quixote's library, and\nNicholas the Barber light his faggots in the yard.\n\nBut, as if in compensation of the usurpation of which they had been the\nvictims, the Carolingian tales, pushed out of the way by the Arthurian\ncycle, were not destined to perish. Thrown aside with contempt by the\nupper classes, engrossed with the Round Table and the Holy Grail, the\ntales of Charlemagne and his paladins, largely adulterated with\nArthurian elements, were apparently cherished by a lower class of\nsociety: burgesses, artizans, and such-like, for whom that Arthurian\nworld was far too etherial and too delicately immoral; and to this\ncircumstance is due the fact that the humiliated Carolingian tales\neventually received an artistic embodiment which was not given to the\nArthurian stories. While troubadours and minnesingers were busy with the\ncourt of Arthur, and grave Latinists like Rusticiano of Pisa wrote of\nLauncelot and Guenevere; the Carolingian epics seem to have been mainly\nsung about by illiterate jongleurs, and to have busied the pens of\nprose hackwriters for the benefit of townsfolk. The free towns of the\nNetherlands and of Germany appear to have been full of this\nunfashionable literature: the Carolingian cycle had become democratic.\nAnd, inasmuch as it was literature no longer for knights and courtiers,\nbut for artizans and shopkeepers, it went, of course, to the\npre-eminently democratic country of the Middle Ages--Italy. This was at\na time when Italian was not yet a recognized language, and when the men\nand women who talked in Tuscan, Lombard, or Venetian dialects, wrote in\nLatin and in French; and while Francesca and Paolo read the story of\nLauncelot most probably in good mediaeval _langue d'oil_, as befitted\npeople of high birth; the jongleurs, who collected crowds so large as to\nbar the streets and require the interference of the Bolognese\nmagistrates, sang of Roland and Oliver in a sort of _lingua Franca_ of\nFrench Lombard. French jongleurs singing in impossible French-Italian;\nItalian jongleurs singing in impossible French; Paduan penny-a-liners\nwriting Carolingian cyclical novels in French, not of Paris, assuredly,\nbut of Padua--a comical and most hideous jabber of hybrid\nlanguages--this was how the Carolingian stories became popular in Italy.\nMeanwhile, the day came when the romantic Arthurian tales had to\ndislodge in Italy before the invasion of the classic epic. Troy, Rome,\nand Thebes had replaced Tintagil and Caerleon in the interest of the\ncultured classes long before the beginning of the fifteenth century;\nwhen Poggio, in the very midst of the classic revival, still told of the\ncomically engrossed audience which surrounded the vagabonds singing of\nOrlando and Rinaldo. The effete Arthurian cycle, superseded in Spain and\nFrance by the Amadis romances, was speedily forgotten in Italy; but the\nCarolingian stories remained; and when Italian poetry arose once more\nafter the long interregnum between Petrarch and Lorenzo dei Medici, and\nlooked about for subjects, it laid its hand upon them. But when, in the\nsecond half of the fifteenth century, those old tales of Charlemagne\nreceived, after so many centuries of alterations and ephemeral\nembodiments, that artistic form which the Middle Ages had been unable to\ngive them, the stories themselves, and the way in which they were\nregarded, were totally different from what they had been in the time of\nTheroulde, or of the anonymous author of \"The Quatre Fils Aymon;\" the\nRenaissance, with its keen artistic sense, made out of the Carolingian\ntales real works of art, but works of art which were playthings. To\nbegin with, the Carolingian stories had been saturated with Arthurian\ncolour: they had been furnished with all the knight-rrantry, all the\ngallantry, all the enchantments, the fairies, giants, and necromancers\nof the Keltic legends; and, moreover, they had lost, by infinite\nrepetition, all the political realism and meaning so striking in \"The\nChanson de Roland\" and \"The Quatre Fils Aymon;\" a confusion and\nunreality further increased by the fact that the Italians had no\noriginal connection with those tales, that to them real men and plans\nwere no better than imaginary ones, and that the minstrels who sang in\nthe market-place, and the laborious prose-writers who compiled such\ncollections as that called of the \"Reali di Francia,\" were equally free\nin their alterations and adaptations, creating unknown relationships,\ninventing new adventures, suppressing essential historical points, with\nno object save amusing their audience or readers with new stories about\nfamiliar heroes. Such was the condition of the stories themselves. The\nattitude of the public towards them was, by the middle of the fifteenth\ncentury, one of complete incredulity and frivolous amusement; the\npaladins were as unreal as the heroes of any granny's fairy tale. The\npeople wanted to hear of wonderful battles and adventures, of\nenchantments and love-makings; but they wanted also to laugh; and,\nsceptical, practical, democratic, the artizans and shopkeepers of\nFlorence--to whom, paying, as they did, expensive mercenaries who stole\npoultry and never got wounded on any account, all chivalry or real\nmilitary honour was the veriest nursery rubbish--such people as crowded\nround the _cantastoria_ of _mercato vecchio_, must indeed have found\nmuch to amuse them in these tales of so different an age.\n\nAnd into such crowds there penetrated to listen and watch (even as the\nMagnificent Lorenzo had elbowed among the carnival ragamuffins of\nFlorence, and had slid in among the holiday-making peasants of Poggio a\nCaiano) a learned man, a poet, an intimate of the Medicis, of Politian,\nFicino, and Pico della Mirandola, Messer Luigi Pulci, the same who had\nwritten the semi-allegorical, semi-realistic poem about Lorenzo dei\nMedici's gala tournament. There was a taste in the house of the Medici,\ntogether with those for platonic philosophy, classical erudition,\nreligious hymns, and Hebrew kabbala, for a certain kind of realism, for\nthe language and mode of thinking of the lower classes, as a reaction\nfrom Petrarchesque conventionality. As the Magnificent Lorenzo had had\nthe fancy to string together in more artistic shape the quaint and\ngraceful love poems, hyperbolical, realistic, tender, and abusive, of\nthe Tuscan peasantry; so also Messer Luigi Pulci appears to have been\nsmitten with the notion of trying his hand at a chivalric poem like\nthose to which he and his friends had listened among the butchers and\npork-shops, the fishmongers and frying booths of the market, and giving\nan impression, in its ideas and language, of the people to whom such\nstrains were sung. But Luigi Pulci was vastly less gifted as a poet than\nLorenzo dei Medici; Florentine prentices are less aesthetically pleasing\nthan Tuscan peasants, and the \"Morgante Maggiore\" is a piece of work of\na sort utterly inferior to the \"Nencia da Barberino.\" Still the\n\"Morgante Maggiore\" remains, and will remain, as a very remarkable\nproduction of grotesque art. Just as Lorenzo dei Medici was certainly\nnot without a deliberate purpose of selecting the quaintness and\ngracefulness of peasant life; even so, and perhaps more, Luigi Pulci\nmust have had a deliberate intention of producing a ludicrous effect; in\nboth cases the deliberate attempt is very little perceptible, in the\n\"Nencia da Barberino\" from the genius of Lorenzo, in the \"Morgante\nMaggiore\" from the stolidity of Pulci. The \"Morgante,\" of which parts\nwere probably written as a mere sample to amuse a supper party, became\ninteresting to Pulci, in the mere matter of inventing and stringing\ntogether new incidents; and despite its ludicrous passages, it must have\nbeen more seriously written by him, and more seriously listened to by\nhis friends, than would a similar production now-a-days. For the men of\nthe Renaissance, no matter how philosophized and cultured, retained the\npleasure in mere incident, which we moderns seem to have given over to\nchildren and savages; and Lorenzo, Ficino, and Politian probably\nlistened to the adventures of Luigi Pulci's paladins and giants with\nmuch the same interest, and only a little more conscious sense of\ngrotesqueness, with which the crowd in the market listened to Cristofano\ndell' Altissimo and similar story-tellers. The \"Morgante Maggiore,\"\ntherefore, is neither really comic nor really serious. It is not a piece\nof realistic grotesqueness like \"Gargantua\" or \"Pantagruel,\" any more\nthan it is a serious ideal work like \"Amadis de Gaula:\" the proportion\nof deliberately sought effects is small; the great bulk, serious or\ncomic, seems to have come quite at random. It is not a caricatured\nreproduction of the poems of chivalry sung in the market, for they were\nprobably serious, stately, and bald, with at most an occasional joke; it\nis the reproduction of the joint impression received from the absurd,\nharum-scarum, unpractical world of chivalry of the poet, and the real\nworld of prose, of good-humoured buffoonish coarseness with which the\nitinerant poet was surrounded. The paladins are no Don Quixotes, the\nprincesses no Dulcineas, the battles are real battles; but the language\nis that of Florentine wool-workers, housewives, cheese-sellers, and\nragamuffins, crammed with the slang of the market-place, its heavy jokes\nand perpetual sententious aphorism. Moreover the prominence given to\nfood and eating is unrivalled except by Rabelais: the poet must have\nlounged with delight through the narrow mediaeval lanes, crowded with\nbooths and barrows, sniffing with rapture the mingled scents of cheese,\npork, fish, spices, and a hundred strange concomitant market smells. And\nthe market, that classic _mercato vecchio_ (alas, finally condemned and\ndestroyed by modern sanitary prudishness, and which only those who have\nseen can conceive in its full barbarous, nay, barbaric Pantagruelian\nsplendour of food, blood, and stenches) of Florence, is what we think of\nthroughout the poem. And, when Messer Luigi comes to narrate, with real\ngravity and after the due invocation of the Virgin, the Trinity, and\nthe saints, the tremendous disaster of Roncevaux, he uses such words and\nsuch similes, that above the neighing of horses and the clash of\nhurtling armour and the yells of the combatants we suddenly hear the\nnasal sing-song of Florentine tripe-vendors and pumpkin-pod-sellers, the\nchaffer and oaths and laughter of the gluttonous crowd pouring through\nthe lanes of Calimala and Pellicceria; nay (horrible and grotesque\nmiracle), there seems to rise out of the confused darkness of the\nbattle-filled valley, there seems to disengage itself (as out of a mist)\nfrom the chaos of heaped bodies, and the flash of steel among the\nwhirlwinds of dust, a vision, more and more distinct and familiar, of\nthe crowded square with its black rough-hewn, smoke-stained houses,\nornamented with Robbia-ware angels and lilies or painted madonnas; of\nits black butchers dens, outside which hang the ghastly disembowelled\nsheep with blood-stained fleeces, the huge red-veined hearts and livers;\nof the piles of cabbage and cauli-flowers, the rows of tin ware and\ncopper saucepans, the heaps of maccaroni and pastes, of spices and\ndrugs; the garlands of onions and red peppers and piles of apples; the\nfetid sliminess of the fish tressels; the rough pavement oozy and black,\nslippery with cabbage-stalks, puddled with bullock's blood, strewn with\nplucked feathers--all under the bright blue sky, with Giotto's\ndove-coloured belfry soaring high above; a vision, finally, of one of\nthose deep dens, with walls, all covered with majolica plates and\ndishes and flashing brass-embossed trenchers, in the dark depths of\nwhich crackles perennially a ruddy fire, while a huge spit revolves,\noffering to the flames now one now the other side of scores of legs of\nmutton, rounds of beef, and larded chickens, trickling with the butter\nunceasingly ladled by the white-dressed cooks. Roncisvalle, Charlemagne,\nthe paladins, paganism, Christendom--what of them? \"I believe in capon,\nroast or boiled, and sometimes done in butter; in mead and in must; and\nI believe in the pasty and the pastykins, mother and children; but above\nall things I believe in good wine \"--as Margutte snuffles out in his\ncatechism; and as to Saracens and paladins, past, present, and future, a\nfig for them!\n\nBut meanwhile, for all that Florentine burgesses, artizans, and\nhumorists may think, there is in this Italy of the Renaissance something\nbesides Florence; there is a school of poetry, disconnected with the\nrealisms of Lorenzo and Pulci, with the Ovidian Petrarchisms of\nPolitian. There is Ferrara. Lying, as they do, between the Northern\nApennine slopes of Modena and the Euganean hills, the dominions of the\nHouse of Este appear at first sight merely as part and parcel of\nLombardy, and we should expect from them nothing very different from\nthat which we expect from Milan or Bologna or Padua. But the truth is\ndifferent; all round Ferrara, indeed, stretches the fertile flatness of\nLombard cornfields, and they produce, as infallibly as they produce\ntheir sacks of grain and tuns of wine and heaps of silk cocoon, the\nintellectual and social equivalents of such things in Renaissance Italy:\nindustry, wealth, comfort, scepticism, art. But on either side, into the\ndefiles of the Euganean hills to the north, into the widening torrent\nvalleys of the Modenese Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este\nstretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the imaginative kingdom\nof the Middle Ages. Mediaevalism, feudalism, chivalry, indeed, of a very\nmodified sort; and as different from that of France and Germany as\ndiffer from the poverty-stricken plains and forests and and moors of the\nnorth these Italian mountain slopes, along which the vines crawl in long\ntrellises, and the chestnuts rise in endlessly superposed tiers of\nterraces, cultivated by a peasant who is not the serf, but the equal\nsharer in profits with the master of the soil. And on one of those\nfertile hill-sides, looking down upon a narrow valley all a green-blue\nshimmer with corn and vine-bearing elms, was born, in the year 1434,\nMatteo Maria Boiardo, in the village which gave him the title, one of\nthe highest in the Estensian dominions, of Count of Scandiano. Here, in\nthe Apennines, Scandiano is a fortified village, also a castle,\ndoubtless half turned into a Renaissance villa, but mediaeval and feudal\nnevertheless; but the name of Scandiano belongs also, I know not for\nwhat reason, to a certain little red-brick palace on the outskirts of\nFerrara, beautifully painted with half-allegorical, half-realistic\npageant frescoes by Cosimo Tura, and enclosing a sweet tangled\norchard-garden; to all of which, being the place to which Duke Borso and\nDuke Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese have given\nthe further name of Schifanoia, which means, \"fly from cares.\" This\nlittle coincidence of Scandiano the feudal castle in the Apennines, and\nScandiano the little pleasure palace at Ferrara, seems to give, by\naccidental allegory, a fair idea of the double nature of Matteo Boiardo,\nof the Ferrarese court to which he belonged, and of the school of poetry\n(including the more notable but less original work of Ariosto) which the\ngenius of the man and the character of the court succeeded together in\nproducing.\n\nTo understand Boiardo we must compare him with Ariosto; and to\nunderstand Ariosto we must compare him with Boiardo; both belong to the\nsame school, and are men of very similar genius, and where the one\nleaves off the other begins. But first, in order to understand the\ncharacter of this poetry which, in the main, is identical in Boiardo and\nin his more successful but less fascinating pupil Ariosto, let us\nunderstand Ferrara. It was, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth\ncenturies, a chivalric town of Ariostesque chivalry: feudalism turned\ncourtly and elegant, and moreover, very liberal and comfortable by\npreponderance of democratic and industrial habits; a military court, of\nbrave mercenary captains full of dash and adventure, not mere brigands\nand marauders having studied strategy, like the little Umbrian\nchieftains; a court orderly, elegant, and brilliant: a prince not risen\nfrom behind a counter like Medicis and Petruccis, nor out of blood like\nBaglionis and Sforzas, but of a noble old house whose beginnings are\nlost in the mist of real chivalry and real paladinism; a duke with a\npretence of feudal honour and decorum, at whose court men were all brave\nand ladies all chaste--with the little licenses of baseness and\ngallantry admitted by Renaissance chivalry. A bright, brilliant court at\nthe close of the fifteenth century; and more stable than the only one\nwhich might have rivalled it, the Feltrian court of Urbino, too small\nand lost among the Umbrian bandits. A bright, brilliant town, also, this\nFerrara: not mercantile like Florence, not mere barracks like Perugia; a\ncapital, essentially, in its rich green plain by the widened Po, with\nits broad handsome streets (so different from the mediaeval exchanges of\nBologna, and the feudal alleys of Perugia), its well-built houses, so\nsafe and modern, needing neither _bravi_ nor iron window bars, protected\n(except against some stray murder by one of the Estensi themselves), by\nthe duke's well-organized police; houses with well-trimmed gardens, like\nso many Paris hotels; and with the grand russet brick castle, military\nwith its moat and towers, urban with its belvederes and balconies, in\nthe middle, well placed to sweep away with its guns (the wonderful guns\nof the duke's own making) any riot, tidily, cleanly, without a nasty\nheap of bodies and slop of blood as in the narrow streets of other\ntowns Imagine this bright capital, placed, moreover, in the richest\ncentre of Lombardy, with glitter of chivalry from the Euganean hills and\nApennines (castellated with Este, Monselice, Canossa, and Boiardo's own\nScandiano); with gorgeous rarities of commerce from Venice and Milan--a\ncentral, unique spot. It is the natural home of the chivalrous poets of\nthe Renaissance, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso; as Florence is of the\nPolitians and Pulcis (Hellenism and back-shopery); and Venice of the\nliterature of lust, jests, cynicism, and adventure, Aretine, Beolco,\nCalmo, and Poliphilo-Colonna. In that garden, where the white\nbutterflies crowd among the fruit trees bowed down to the tall grass of\nthe palace of Schifanoia--a garden neither grand nor classic, but\nelegiac and charming--we can imagine Boiardo or Ariosto reading their\npoems to just such a goodly company as Giraldi Cinthio (a Ferrarese, and\nfond of romance, too) describes in the prologue of his \"Ecatomiti:\"\ngentle and sprightful ladies, with the splendid brocaded robes, and the\ngold-filleted golden hair of Dosso Dossi's wonderful Alcina Circe;\ngraceful youths like the princely St. John of Benvenuto Garofalo;\njesters like Dosso's at Modena; brilliant captains like his St. George\nand St. Michael; and a little crowd of pages with doublets and sleeves\nlaced with gold tags, of sedate magistrates in fur robes and scarlet\ncaps, of white-dressed maids with instruments of music and embroidery\nframes and hand looms, like those which Cosimo Tura painted for Duke\nBorso on the walls of this same Schifanoia palace. Such is the audience;\nnow for the poems.\n\nThe stuff of Boiardo and Ariosto is the same: that old mediaeval stuff of\nthe Carolingian poems, coloured, scented with Arthurian chivalry and\nwonder. The knight-errantry of the Keltic tales is cleverly blended with\nthe pseudo-historical military organization of the Carolingian cycle.\nPaladins and Saracens are ingeniously manoeuvred about, now scattered in\nlittle groups of twos and threes, to encounter adventures in the style\nof Sir Launcelot or Amadis; now gathered into a compact army to crash\nupon each other as at Roncevaux; or else wildly flung up by the poet to\nalight in fairyland, to find themselves in the caverns of Jamschid, in\nthe isles where Oberon's mother kept Caesar, and Morgana kept Ogier, in\nthe boats, entering subterranean channels, of Sindbad and Huon of\nBordeaux; a constant alternation of individual adventure and wholesale\norganized campaigns, conceived and carried out with admirable ingenuity.\nSo much for the deeds of arms. The deeds of love are also compounded of\nCarolingian and Arthurian, but flavoured with special Renaissance\nfeeling. There is a great deal of rapid love-making between too gallant\nknights and too impressionable ladies; licentious amours which we\nmoderns lay at the door of Boiardo and Ariosto, not knowing that the\nlicentiousness of the Olivers and Ogiers and Guerins and Huons of\nmediaeval poetry, of the sentimental Amadises, Galaors, and Lisvarts of\nthe fourteenth century, whom the Renaissance has toned down in Rogers\nand Rinaldos and Ricciardettos, is by many degrees worse. A moral\nimprovement also (for all the immorality of the Renaissance) in the\neschewing of the never-failing adultery of the Arthurian romances, and\nthe appropriation to legitimately faithful love of the poetical devotion\nwhich Tristram and Launcelot bear to other men's wives. To this are\nadded, and more by Ariosto than by Boiardo, two essentially Italian\nelements: something of the nobility of passion of the Platonic\nsonneteers; and a good dose of the ironical, scurrilous, moralizing\nimmoral anecdote gossiping of Boccaccio and Sacchetti. Such is the\nstuff. The conception, though rarely comic, and sometimes _bond fide_\nserious, is never earnest. All this is a purely artistic world, a world\nof decorative arabesque incident, intended to please, scarcely ever to\nmove, or to move, at most, like some Decameronian tale of Isabella and\nthe Basil Plant, or Constance and Martuccio. On the other hand, there is\nnone of the grotesque irreverence of Pulci. Boiardo and Ariosto are not\nin earnest; they are well aware that their heroes and heroines are mere\nmodern men and women tricked out in pretty chivalric trappings, driven\nwildly about from Paris to Cathay, and from Spain to the Orkneys--on\nTony Lumpkin's principle of driving his mother round and round the\ngarden plot till she thought herself on a heath six miles off--without\never really changing place. But they do not, like Pulci, make fun of\ntheir characters. They write chivalry romances not for Florentine\npork-butchers and wool-carders, but for gallant ladies and gentlemen, to\nwhom, with duels, tournaments, serenades, and fine speeches, chivalry is\nan admired name, though no longer a respected reality.\n\nThe heroes of Boiardo and of Ariosto are always bold and gallant and\nglittering, the spirit of romance is in them; a giant Sancho Panza like\nMorgante, redolent of sausage and cheese, would never be admitted into\nthe society of a Ferrarese Orlando. The art of Boiardo and of Ariosto is\neminently pageant art, in which sentiment and heroism are but as one\nelement among many; there is no pretence at reality (although there is a\ngood deal of incidental realism), and no thought of the interest in\nsubject and persons which goes with reality. It is a masquerade, and one\nwhose men and women must, I think, be imagined in a kind of artistic\nfancy costume: a mixture of the Renaissance dress and of the antique, as\nwe see it in the prints of contemporary pageants, and in Venetian and\nFerrarese pictures; that Circe of Dosso's, in the Borghese gallery of\nRome, seated in her stately wine-lees and gold half-heraldically and\nhalf-cabalistically patterned brocade, before the rose-bushes of the\nlittle mysterious wood, is the very ideal of the Falerinas and Alcinas,\nof the enchantresses of Boiardo and Ariosto. Pageant people, these of\nthe Ferrarese poets; they only play at being in forests and deserts, as\nchildren play at being on volcanoes or in Green-land by the nursery\nfire. It is a kind of dressing up, a masquerading of the fancy; not\ndisguising in order to deceive, but rather laying hold of any pretty or\nbrilliant impressive garb that comes to hand, and putting that on in\nconjunction with many odds and ends, as an artist's guests might do with\nthe silks and velvets and Oriental properties of a studio. These knights\nand ladies, for ever tearing about from Scotland to India, never, in\npoint of fact, get any further than the Apennine slopes where Boiardo\nwas born, where Ariosto governed the Garfagnana. They ride for ever\n(while supposed to be in the Ardennes or in Egypt) across the velvet\nmoss turf, all patterned with minute starry clovers and the fallen white\nropy chestnut blossom, amidst the bracken beneath the slender chestnut\ntrees, the pale blue sky looking in between their spreading branches; at\nmost they lose their way in the intricacies of some seaside pineta,\nwhere the feet slip on the fallen needles, and the sun slants along the\nvistas of serried, red, scaly trunks, among the juniper and gorse and\ndry grass and flowers growing in the sea sand. Into the vast mediaeval\nforests of Germany and France, Boiardo and Ariosto's fancy never\npenetrated.\n\nSuch is the school: a school represented in its typical character only\nby Boiardo and Ariosto, but to which belong, nevertheless, with whatever\ndifferences, Tasso, Spenser, Camoens, all the poets of Renaissance\nromance. Now of the two leaders thereof. Here I feel that I can speak\nonly personally; tell only of my own personal impressions and\npreferences. Comparing together Boiardo and Ariosto, I am, of course,\naware of the infinite advantages of the latter. Ariosto is a man of far\nmore varied genius; he is an artist, while Boiardo is an amateur; he is\nlearned in arranging and ornamenting; he knows how to alternate various\nstyles, how to begin and how to end. Moreover, he is a scholarly person\nof a more scholarly time: he is familiar with the classics, and, what is\nmore important, he is familiar with the language in which he is writing.\nHe writes exquisitely harmonious, supple, and brilliant Tuscan verse,\nwith an infinite richness of diction; while poor Boiardo jogs along in a\nlanguage which is not the Lombard dialect in which he speaks, and which\nis very uncouth and awkward, as is every pure language for a provincial;\nindeed, so much so, that the pedantic Tuscans require Berni to make\nTuscan, elegant, to _ingentilire_, with infinite loss to quaintness and\ncharm, the \"Orlando Innamorato\" of poor Ferrarese Boiardo. Moreover,\nAriosto has many qualities unknown to Boiardo; wit, malice, stateliness,\ndecided eloquence and power of simile and apostrophe; he is a symphony\nfor full orchestra, and Boiardo a mere melody played on a single fiddle,\nwhich good authorities (and no one dare contest with Italians when they\ncondemn anything not Tuscan as jargon) pronounce to be no Cremona. All\nthese advantages Ariosto certainly has; and I do not quarrel with those\nwho prefer him for them. But many of them distinctly take away from my\npleasure. I confess that I am bored by the beautifully written moral and\nallegorical preludes of Ariosto's cantos; I would willingly give all his\naphorism and all his mythology to get quickly to the story. Also, I\nresent his admirable rhetorical flourishes about his patrons, his\nErcoles, Ippolitos, and Isabellas they ring false, dreadfully false and\nstudied; and Boiardo's quickly despatched friendly greeting of his\nfriends, his courteous knights and gentle ladies, pleases me much\nbetter. Moreover, the all-pervading consciousness of the existence of\nHomer, Virgil, nay, Statius and Lucan, every trumpery antique\nepic-monger, annoys me, giving an uncomfortable doubt as to whether\nAriosto did not try to make all this nonsense serious, and this romance\ninto an epic; all this occasional Virgilian stateliness, alternated with\na kind of polished Decameronian gossipy cynicism, diverts my attention,\nturns paladins and princesses too much into tutor-educated gentlemen,\ninto Bandello and Cinthio-reading ladies of the sixteenth century. The\npicture painted by Ariosto is finer, but you see too much of the\npainter; he and his patrons take up nearly the whole foreground, and\nthey have affected, idealized faces and would-be dignified and\nsenatorial poses. For these and many other reasons, I personally prefer\nBoiardo; and perhaps the best reason for my preference is the\nirrational one that he gives me more pleasure. My preferences, my\nimpressions, I have said, are in this matter, much less critical than\npersonal. Hence I can speak of Boiardo only as he affects me.\n\nWhen first I read Boiardo, I was conscious of a curious phenomenon in\nmyself. I must confess to reading books usually in a very ardent or\nrather weary manner, either way in a hurry to finish them. As it\nhappened, when I borrowed Boiardo, I had a great many other things on\nhand which required my time and attention; yet I could not make up my\nmind to return the book until I had finished it, though my intention had\nbeen merely to satisfy my curiosity by a dip into it. I went on, without\nthat eager desire to know what follows which one has in a novel;\ndrowsily with absolute reluctance to leave off, like the reluctance to\nrise from the grass beneath the trees with only butterflies and shadows\nto watch, or the reluctance to put aside some fairy book of Walter\nCrane's. It was like strolling in some quaint, ill-trimmed, old garden,\nfinding fresh flowers, fresh bits of lichened walls, fresh fragments of\nbroken earthenware ornaments; or, rather, more like a morning in the\nCathedral Library at Siena, the place where the gorgeous choir books are\nkept, itself illuminated like missal pages by Pinturicchio: amused,\ndelighted, not moved nor fascinated; finding every moment something new,\nsome charming piece of gilding, some sweet plumed head, some quaint\nlittle tree or town; making a journey of lazy discovery in a sort of\nworld of Prince Charmings, the real realm of the \"Faery Queen,\" quite\ndifferent in enchantment from the country of Spenser's Gloriana, with\nits pale allegoric ladies and knights, half-human, half-metaphysical,\nand its make-believe allegorical ogres and giants. This is the real\nFairyland, this of Boiardo: no mere outskirts of Ferrara, with real,\nplayfully cynical Ferrarese men and women tricked out as paladins and\nAmazons, and making fun of their disguise, as in Ariosto; no wonderland\nof Tasso, with enchanted gardens copied out of Bolognese pictures and\nmiraculous forests learned from theatre mechanicians, wonders imitated\nby a great poet from the cardboard and firework wonders of Bianca\nCappello's wedding feasts. This is the real fairyland, the wonderland of\nmediaeval romance and of Persian and Arabian tales, no longer solemn or\nawful, but brilliant, sunny, only half believed in; the fairyland of the\nRenaissance, superficially artistic, with its lightest, brightest\nfancies, and its charming realities; its cloistered and painted courts\nwith plashing fountains, its tapestried and inlaid rooms, its towered\nand belvedered villas, its quaint clipped gardens full of strange\nOriental plants and beasts; and all this transported into a country of\nwonders, where are the gardens of the Hesperides, the fountain of\nMerlin, the tomb of Narcissus, the castle of Morgan-le-Fay; every quaint\nand beautiful fancy, antique and mediaeval, mixed up together, as in some\nRenaissance picture of Botticelli or Rosselli or Filippino, where\nknights in armour descend from Pegasus before Roman temples, where\nswarthy white-turbaned Turks, with oddly bunched-up trousers and\njewelled caftans, and half-naked, oak-crowned youths, like genii\ndescended, pensive and wondering, from some antique sarcophagus, and\ndapper princelets and stalwart knights, and citizens and monks, all\ncrowd round the altar of some wonder-working Macone or Apolline or\nTrevigante; some comic, dreadful, apish figure, mummed up in\nhalf-antique, half-oriental garb. Or else we are led into some dainty,\npale-tinted panel of Botticelli, where the maidens dance in white\nclinging clothes, strewing flowers on to the flower-freaked turf; or\ninto some of Poliphilo's vignettes, where the gentle ladies, seated with\nlute and viol under vine-trellises, welcome the young gallant, or poet,\nor knight.\n\nSuch is the world of Boiardo. Spenser has once or twice peeped in,\npainted it, and given us exquisite little pictures, as that of\nMalecasta's castle, all hung with mythological tapestries, that of the\nenchanted chamber of Britomart, and those of Sir Calidore meeting the\nGraces and of Hellenore dancing with the Satyrs; but Spenser has done it\nrarely, trembling to return to his dreary allegories. Equal to these\nsingle pictures by Spenser, Boiardo has only one or two, but he keeps us\npermanently in the world where such pictures are painted. Boiardo is not\na great artist like Spenser: but he is a wizard, which is better. He\nleads us, unceasingly, through the little dreamy laurelwoods, where we\nmeet crisp-haired damsels tied to pine-trees, or terrible dragons, or\nenchanted wells, through whose translucent green waters we see brocaded\nrooms full of fair ladies; he ferries us ever and anon across shallow\nstreams, to the castles where _gentil donzelle_ wave their kerchiefs\nfrom the pillared belvedere; he slips us unseen into the camps and\ncouncil-rooms of the splendidly trapped Saracens, like so many figures\nout of Filippino's frescoes; he conducts us across the bridges where\ngiants stand warders, to the mysterious carved tombs whence issue green\nand crested snakes, who, kissed by a paladin, turn into lovely\nenchantresses; he takes us beneath the beds of rivers and through the\nbowels of the earth where kings and knights turned into statues of gold,\nsit round tables covered with jewels, illumined by carbuncles more\nwonderful than that of Jamschid; or through the mazes of fairy gardens,\nwhere every ear of corn, cut off, turns into a wild beast, and every\nfallen leaf into a bird, where hydras watch in the waters and lamias\nrear themselves in the grass, where Orlando must fill his helmet with\nroses lest he hear the voice of the sirens; where all the wonders of\nAntiquity--the snake-women, the Circes, the sirens, the hydras and fauns\nlive, strangely changed into something infinitely quaint and graceful,\nstill half-antique, yet already half-Arabian or Keltic, in the midst of\nthe fairyland of Merlin and of Oberon--live, move, transform themselves\nafresh; where the golden-haired damsels and the stripling knights,\ndelicate like Pinturicchio's Prince Charmings, gallop for ever on their\nenchanted coursers, within enchanted armour, invincible, invulnerable,\nunder a sky always blue, and through an unceasing spring, ever onwards\nto new adventures. Adventures which the noble, gentle Castellan of\nScandiano, poet and knight and humorist, philanthropical philosopher\nalmost from sheer goodness of heart, yet a little crazy, and capable of\nsetting all the church bells ringing in honour of the invention of the\nname of Rodomonte relates not to some dully ungrateful Alfonso or\nIppolito, but to his own guests, his own brilliant knights and ladies,\nwith ever and anon an effort to make them feel, through his verse, some\nof those joyous spring-tide feelings which bubble up in himself; as when\nhe remembers how, \"Once did I wander on a May morning in a fair\nflower-adorned field on a hillside overlooking the sea, which was all\ntremulous with light; and there, among the roses of a green thorn-brake,\na damsel was singing of love; singing so sweetly that the sweetness\nstill touches my heart; touches my heart, and makes me think of the\ngreat delight it was to listen;\" and how he would fain repeat that song,\nand indeed an echo of its sweetness runs through his verse. Meanwhile,\nstanza pours out after stanza, adventure grows out of adventure, each\nmore wonderful, more gorgeous than its predecessor. To which listen the\nladies, with their white, girdled dresses and crimped golden locks; the\nyouths, with their soft beardless faces framed in combed-out hair, with\ntheir daggers on their hips and their plumed hats between their fingers;\nand the serious bearded men, in silken robes; drawing nearer the poet,\nletting go lute or violin or music-book as they listen on the villa\nterrace or in some darkened room, where the sunset sky turns green-blue\nbehind the pillared window, and the roses hang over the trellise of the\ncloister. And as they did four hundred years ago, so do we now, rejoice.\nThe great stalwart naked forms of Greece no longer leap and wrestle or\ncarry their well-poised baskets of washed linen before us; the mailed\nand vizored knights of the Nibelungen no longer clash their armour to\nthe sound of Volker's red fiddle-bow; the glorified souls of Dante no\nlonger move in mystic mazes of light before the eyes of our fancy. All\nthat is gone. But here is the fairyland of the Renaissance. And thus\nMatteo Boiardo, Count of Scandiano, goes on, adding adventure to\nadventure, stanza to stanza, in his castle villa, or his palace at\nFerrara. But suddenly he stops and his bright fiddle and lute music jars\nand ends: \"While I am singing, O Redeeming God, I see all Italy set on\nfire by these Gauls, coming to ravage I know not what fresh place.\"\n\nAnd thus, with the earlier and more hopeful Renaissance of the fifteenth\ncentury, Matteo Boiardo broke off with his \"Orlando Innamorato.\" The\nperfect light-heartedness, the delight in play of a gentle, serious,\neminently kindly nature, which gives half the charm to Boiardo's work,\nseems to have become impossible after the ruin of Italian liberty and\nprosperity the frightful showing up of Italy's moral and social and\npolitical insignificance at the beginning of the sixteenth century.\nLombardy especially became a permanent battle-field, and its towns mere\ngarrison places of French, German, Spanish, and Swiss barbarians, whose\npresence meant slaughter and pillage and every foulest outrage; and\nthen, between the horrors of the unresisted invasions and the unresisted\nexactions, came plague and famine, and industry and commerce gradually\ndied out. A few princes, subsidised and guarded by French or\nImperialists, kept up an appearance of cheerfulness, but the courts even\ngrew more gloomy as the people grew more miserable. There is more\njoking, more resonant laughter in Ariosto than in Boiardo, but there is\nvery much less serenity and cheerfulness; ever and anon a sort of\nbitterness, a dreary moralizing tendency, a still more dreary fit of\nprophesying future good in which he has no belief, comes over Ariosto.\nBerni, who rewrote the \"Orlando Innamorato\" in choice Tuscan, and who\nunderlined every faintly marked jest of Boiardo's, with evident\npreoccupation of the ludicrous effects of the \"Morgante Maggiore\"--Berni\neven could not keep up his spirits; into the middle of Boiardo's serene\nfairyland adventures he inserted a description of the sack of Rome which\nis simply harrowing. All real cheerfulness departed from the people, to\nbe replaced only by pleasure in the debaucheries of the buffoonish\nobscenity of Aretino, Bandello, and so forth, to which the men of the\ndying Italy of the Renaissance listened as the roysterers of the plague\nof Florence, with the mortal sickness almost upon them, may have\nlistened to the filthy songs which they trolled out in their\ndrunkenness. Or at best, the poor starved, bruised, battered, humiliated\nnation may have tried to be cheerful on the principle of its harlequin\nplaywright Beolco, who, more honest than the Ariostos and Bibbienas, and\nAretines, came forward on his stage of planks at Padua, and after\ndescribing the ruin and wretchedness of the country, the sense of\ndreariness and desolation, which made young folk careless of marriage,\nand the very nightingales (he thought) careless of song, recommended his\naudience, since they could not even cry thoroughly and to feel any the\nbetter for it, to laugh, if they still were able. Boiardo was forgotten;\nhis spirit was unsuited to the depression, gloomy brutality, gloomy\nsentimentality, which grew every day as Italy settled down after its\nRenaissance-Shrovetide in the cinders and fasting of the long Lent of\nSpanish and Jesuit rule.\n\nStill the style of Boiardo was not yet exhausted; the peculiar kind of\nfairy epic, the peculiar combination of chivalric and classic elements\nof which the \"Orlando Innamorato\" and the \"Orlando Furioso,\" had been\nthe great examples, still fascinated poets and public. The Renaissance,\nor what remained of it, was now no longer confined to Italy; it had\nspread, paler, more diluted, shallower, over the rest of Europe. To\nfollow the filiation of schools, to understand the intellectual\nrelationships of individuals, of the latter half of the sixteenth\ncentury, it becomes necessary to move from one country to another. And\nthus the two brother poets of the family of Boiardo, its two last and\nmuch saddened representatives, came to write in very different languages\nand under very different circumstances. These two are Tasso and our own\nSpenser. They are both poets of the school of the \"Orlando Innamorato,\"\nboth poets of a reaction, of a kind of purified Renaissance: the one of\nthe late Italian Renaissance emasculated by the Council of Trent and by\nSpain; the other of the English Renaissance, in its youth truly, but, in\nthe individual case of Spenser, timidly drawn aside from the excesses of\nbuoyant life around. In the days of the semi-atheist dramatists, all\nflesh and blood and democracy, Spenser steeps himself in Christianity\nand chivalry, even as Tasso does, following on the fleshly levity and\nscepticism of Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto. There is in both poets a\npaleness, a certain diaphanous weakness, an absence of strong tint or\nfibre or perfume; in Tasso the pallor of autumn, in Spenser the paleness\nof spring: autumn left sad and leafless by the too voluptuous heat and\nfruitfulness of summer; spring still pale and pinched by winter, with\ntimid nipped grass and unripe stiff buds and catkins, which never\nsuggest the tangle of bush, grasses, and magnificent flowers and fruits,\nsweet, splendid, or poisonous, which the sun will make out of them. The\nRenaissance, in the past for Tasso, in the proximate and very visible\nfuture for Spenser, has frightened both; the cynicism and bestiality of\nmen like Machiavelli and Aretino; the godless, muscular lustiness of\nMarlowe, Greene, and Peele, seen in a glimpse by Tasso and Spenser, have\ngiven a shock to their sensitive nature, have made them turn away and\nhide themselves from a second sight of it. They both take refuge in a\nland of fiction, of romance, from the realities into which they dread to\nsplash; a world unsubstantial, diaphanous, faint-hued, almost\npassionless, which they make out of beauty and heroism and purity, which\nthey alembicize and refine, but into which there never enters any vital\nelement, anything to give it flesh and bone and pulsing life: it is a\nmere soap bubble. And beautiful as is this world of their own making, it\nis too negative even for them; they move in it only in imagination,\ncalm, serene, vacant, almost sad. There is in it, and in themselves, a\nsomething wanting; and the remembrance of that unholy-life of reality\nwhich jostled and splashed their delicate souls, comes back and haunts\nthem with its evil thought. There is no laugh--what is worse, no smile\n--in these men. Incipient puritanism, not yet the terrible brawny\nreality of Bunyan, but a vague, grey spectre, haunts Spenser; and the\npuritanism of Don Quixote, the vague, melancholy, fantastic reverting\nfrom the evil world of to-day to an impossible world of chivalry, is\ntroubling the sight of Tasso. He cannot go crazy like Don Quixote, and\ninstead he grows melancholy; he cannot believe in his own ideals; he\ncannot give them life, any more than can Spenser give life to his\nallegoric knights and ladies, because the life would have to be fetched\nby Tasso out of the flesh of Ariosto, and by Spenser out of the blood of\nMarlowe; and both Tasso and Spenser shrink at the thought of what might\nwith it be inoculated or transfused; and they rest satisfied with\nphantoms. The phantoms of Spenser are more shadowy much more utterly\ndevoid of human character; they are almost metaphysical abstractions,\nand they do not therefore sadden us: they are too unlike living things\nto seem very lifeless. But the phantoms of Tasso, he would fain make\nrealities; he works at every detail of character, history, or geography,\nwhich may make his people real; they are not, as with Spenser, elves and\nwizards flitting about in a nameless fairyland, characterless and\npassionless; they are historical creatures, captains and soldiers in a\ncountry mapped out by the geographer; but they are phantoms all the more\nmelancholy, these beautiful and heroic Clorindas and Erminias and\nTancreds and Godfreys--why? because the real world around Tasso is\npeopled with Brachianos and Corombonas, and Annabellas and Giovannis,\ncreatures for Webster and Ford; and because this world of chivalry is,\nin his Italy, as false as the world of Amadis and Esplandian in Toboso\nand Barcelona for poor Don Quixote. Melancholy therefore, and dreamy,\nboth Tasso and Spenser, with nothing they can fully love in reality,\nbecause they see it tainted with reality and evil; without the cheerful\nfalling back upon everyday life of Ariosto and Shakespeare, and with a\nstrange fancy for fairyland, for the distant, for the Happy Islands, the\nSt. Brandan's Isles, the country of the fountain of youth, the country\nof which vague reports have come back with the ships of Raleigh and\nPonce de Leon. Tasso and Spenser are happiest, in their calm, melancholy\nway, when they can let themselves go in day-dreams, and talk of things\nin which they do not believe, of diamond shields which stun monsters of\nointments which cure all ills of body and of soul of enchanted groves\nwhose trees sound with voices, and lutes, of boats in which, steered by\nfairies, we can glide across the scarcely rippled summer sea, and\nwatching the ruins of the past, time and reality left behind, set sail\nfor some strange land of bliss. And there is in the very sensuousness\nand love of beauty-of these men a vagueness and melancholy, a constant:\nsense of the fleeting and of the eternal, as in that passage, translated\nfrom the languidly sweet Italian perfection of Tasso into the timid,\nalmost scentless, English of Spenser--\"Cosi trapassa al trapassar d'un\ngiorno.\"\n\n\n     So passeth, in the passing of a day,\n\n     Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre\n\n     No more doth florish after first decay,\n     That earst was sought to deck both bed and bowre\n     Of many a lady, and many a Paramowre.\n     Gather therefore the Rose whilest yet is prime,\n     For soone comes age that will her pride deflowre;\n     Gather the Rose of love whitest yet is time,\n     Whitest loving thou mayest loved be withe equall crime.\n\n\nA sense of evanescence, of dreamlikeness, quite different from the\nthoughtless enjoyment of Boiardo, from the bold and manly facing of the\nfuture, the solemn, strong sense of life and death as of waking\nrealities, of the Elizabethan dramatists, even of weaklings like\nMassinger and Beaumont. In Tasso and in Spenser there is no such\njoyousness, no such solemnity; only a dreamy watching, a regret which is\nscarcely a regret, at the evanescence of pale beauty and pale life, of\njoys feebly felt and evils meekly borne.\n\nWith Tasso and Spenser comes to a close the school of Boiardo, the small\nnumber of real artists who finally gave an enduring and beautiful shape\nto that strangely mixed and altered material of romantic epic left\nbehind by the Middle Ages; comes to an end at least till our own day of\nappreciative and deliberate imitation and selection and rearrangement of\nthe artistic forms of the past. Until the revival (after much study and\ncriticism) by our own poets of Arthur and Gudrun and the Fortunate\nIsles, the world had had enough of mediaeval romance. Chivalry had\navowedly ended in chamberlainry; the devotion to women in the official\nroutine of the _cicisbeo_; the last romance to which the late\nRenaissance had clung, which made it sympathize with Huon, Ogier,\nOrlando, and Rinaldo, which had made it take delight still in the\nfairyland of Oberon, of Fallerina, of Alcina, of Armida, of Acrasia, the\nromance of the new world, had also turned into prose, prose of\nblood-stained filth. The humanistic and rationalistic men of the\nRenaissance had doubtless early begun to turn up their noses in dainty\ndilettantism or scientific contempt, at what were later to be called by\nMontaigne, \"Ces Lancelots du Lac, ces Amadis, ces Huons et tels fatras\ndi livres a quoy l'enfance s'amuse;\" and by Ben Jonson:\n\n\n                              Public nothings,\n     Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister,\n     Sent out to poison courts, and infect manners--\n\n\nthe public at large was more constant, and still retained a love for\nmediaeval romance. But more than humanities, more than scientific\nscepticism and religious puritanism, did the slow dispelling of the\nillusion of Eldorado and the Fortunate Isles. Mankind set sail for\nAmerica in brilliant and knightly gear, believing in fountains of youth\nand St. Brandan's Isles, with Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser still in its\npockets. It returns from America either as the tattered fever-stricken\nruffian, or as the vulgar, fat upstart of Spanish comedy, returns\nwithout honour or shame, holding money (and next to money, negroes) of\ngreater account than any insignia of paladinship or the Round Table; it\nis brutal, vulgar, cynical; at best very sad, and it gets written for\nits delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders,\nprostitutes, and card-sharpers, which from \"Lazarillo de Tormes\" to \"Gil\nBlas,\" and from \"Gil Blas\" to \"Tom Jones,\" finally replace the romances\nof the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.\n\n\n\nThus did the mediaeval romantic-epic stuffs suffer alteration,\nadulteration, and loss of character, throughout the long period of the\nMiddle Ages, without ever receiving an artistic shape, such as should\nmake all men preserve and cherish them for the only thing which makes\nmen preserve and cherish such things--that never to be wasted quality,\nbeauty. The Middle Ages were powerless to endow therewith their own\nsubjects; so the subjects had to wait, altering more and more with every\npassing day, till the coming of the Renaissance. And by that time these\nsubjects had ceased to have any serious meaning whatever; the Roland of\nthe song of Roncevaux had become the crazy Orlando of Ariosto; the\nRenaud of \"The Quatre Fils Aymon,\" had become the Rinaldo, thrashed with\nsheaves of lilies by Cupid, of Matteo Boiardo. The Renaissance took up\nthe old epic-romantic materials and made out of them works of art; but\nworks of art which, as I said before, were playthings gets written for\nits delectation the comic-tragic novels of rapscallions, panders,\nprostitutes, and card-sharpers, which, from \"Lazarillo de Tormes\" to\n\"Gil Bias,\" and from \"Gil Bias\" to \"Tom Jones,\" finally replace the\nromances of the Launcelots, Galahads, Rinaldos, and Orlandos.\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\nMEDIEVAL LOVE.\n\n\nOn laying down the \"Vita Nuova\" our soul is at first filled and\nresounding with the love of Beatrice. Whatever habits or capacities of\nnoble loving may lurk within ourselves, have been awakened by the solemn\nmusic of this book, and have sung in unison with Dante's love till we\nhave ceased to hear the voice of his passion and have heard only the\nvoice of our own. When the excitement has diminished, when we have grown\nable to separate from our own feelings the feelings of the man dead\nthese five centuries and a half, and to realize the strangeness, the\nobsoleteness of this love which for a moment had seemed our love; then a\nnew phase of impressions has set in, and the \"Vita Nuova\" inspires us\nwith mere passionate awe: awe before this passion which we feel to be no\nlonger our own, but far above and distant from us, as in some rarer\nstratum of atmosphere; awe before this woman who creates it, or rather\nwho is its creation. Even as Dante fancied that the people of Florence\ndid when the bodily presence of this lady came across their path, so do\nwe cast down our glance as the image of Beatrice passes across our mind.\nNay, the glory of her, felt so really while reading the few, meagre\nwords in the book, is stored away in our heart, and clothes with a faint\naureole the lady--if ever in our life we chance to meet her--in whom,\nthough Dante tells us nothing of stature, features, eyes or hair, we\nseem to recognize a likeness to her on whose passage \"ogni lingua divien\ntremando muta, e gli occhi non ardiscon di guardare.\" Passion like this,\nto paraphrase a line of Rossetti's, is genius; and it arouses in such as\nlook upon it the peculiar sense of wonder and love, of awe-stricken\nraising up of him who contemplates, which accompanies the contemplation\nof genius.\n\nBut it may be that one day we feel, instead of this, wonder indeed, but\nwonder mingled with doubt. This ideal love, which craves for no union\nwith its object; which seeks merely to see, nay, which is satisfied with\nmere thinking on the beloved one, will strike us with the cold and\nbarren glitter of the miraculous. This Beatrice, as we gaze on her, will\nprove to be no reality of flesh and blood like ourselves; she is a form\nmodelled in the semblance of that real, living woman who died six\ncenturies ago, but the substance of which is the white fire of Dante's\nlove. And the thought will arise that this purely intellectual love of a\nscarce-noticed youth for a scarce-known woman is a thing which does not\nbelong to life, neither sweetening nor ennobling any of its real\nrelations; that it is, in its dazzling purity and whiteness, in fact a\nmere strange and sterile death light, such as could not and should not,\nin this world of ours, exist twice over. And, lest we should ever be\ntempted to think of this ideal love for Beatrice as of a wonderful and\nbeautiful, but scarcely natural or useful phenomenon, I would wish to\nstudy the story of its origin and its influence. I would wish to show\nthat had it not burned thus strangely concentrated and pure, the poets\nof succeeding ages could not have taken from that white flame of love\nwhich Dante set alight upon the grave of Beatrice, the spark of ideal\npassion which has, in the noblest of our literature, made the desire of\nman for woman and of woman for man burn clear towards heaven, leaving\nbehind the noisome ashes and soul-enervating vapours of earthly lust.\n\n\nI.\n\nThe centuries have made us; forcing us into new practices, teaching us\nnew habits, creating for us new capacities and wants; adding, ever and\nanon, to the soul organism of mankind features which at first were but\naccidental peculiarities, which became little by little qualities\ndeliberately sought for and at lengths inborn and hereditary\ncharacteristics. And thus, in, what we call the Middle Ages, there was\ninvented by the stress of circumstances, elaborated by half-conscious\neffort and bequeathed as an unalienable habit, a new manner of loving.\n\nThe women of classical Antiquity appear to us in poetry and imaginative\nliterature as one of two things: the wife or the mistress. The wife,\nPenelope, Andromache, Alkestis, nay, even the charming young bride in\nXenophon's \"Oeconomics,\" is, while excluded from many concerns,\ndistinctly reverenced and loved in her own household capacity; but the\nreverence is of the sort which the man feels for his parents and his\nhousehold gods, and the affection is calm and gently rebuking like that\nfor his children. The mistress, on the other hand, is the object of\npassion which is often very vehement, but which is always either simply\nfleshly or merely fancifully aesthetic or both, and which entirely\nprecludes any save a degrading influence upon the sensual and suspicious\nlover. Even Tibullus, in love matters one of the most modern among the\nancients, and capable of painting many charming and delicate little\ndomestic idyls even in connection with a mere bought mistress, is\nperpetually accusing his Delia of selling herself to a higher bidder,\nand sighing at the high probability of her abandoning him for the\nIllyrian praetor or some other rich amateur of pretty women. The\nbarbarous North--whose songs have come down to us either, like the\nVolsunga Saga translated by Mr. Morris, in an original pagan version, or\nelse, as the Nibelungenlied, recast during the early Middle Ages--the\nNorth tells us nothing of the venal paramour, but knows nothing also\nbeyond the wedded wife; more independent and mighty perhaps than her\ncounterpart of classical Antiquity, but although often bought, like\nBrynhilt or Gudrun, at the expense of tremendous adventures, cherished\nscarcely more passionately than the wives of Odysseus and Hector. Thus,\nbefore the Middle Ages, there existed as a rule only a holy, but\nindifferent and utterly unlyrical, love for the women, the equals of\ntheir husbands, wooed usually of the family and solemnly given in\nmarriage without much consultation of their wishes; and a highly\npassionate and singing, but completely profligate and debasing, desire\nfor mercenary though cultivated creatures like the Delias and Cynthlas\nof Tibullus and Propertius, or highborn women, descended, like Catullus'\nLesbia, in brazen dishonour to their level, women towards whom there\ncould not possibly exist on the part of their lovers any sense of\nequality, much less of inferiority. To these two kinds of love, chaste\nbut cold, and passionate but unchaste, the Middle Ages added, or rather\nopposed, a new manner of loving, which, although a mere passing\nphenomenon, has left the clearest traces throughout our whole mode of\nfeeling and writing.\n\nTo describe mediaeval love is a difficult matter, and to describe it\nexcept in negations is next to impossibility. I conceive it to consist\nin a certain sentimental, romantic, idealistic attitude towards women,\nnot by any means incompatible however with the grossest animalism; an\nattitude presupposing a complete moral, aesthetical, and social\nsuperiority on the part of the whole sex, inspiring the very highest\nrespect and admiration independently of the individual's qualities; and\nreaching the point of actual worship, varying from the adoration of a\nqueen by a courtier to the adoration of a shrine by a pilgrim, in the\ncase of the one particular lady who happens to be the beloved; an\nattitude in the relations of the sexes which results in love becoming an\nindispensable part of a noble life, and the devoted attachment to one\nindividual woman, a necessary requisite of a gentlemanly training.\n\nMediaeval love is not merely a passion, a desire, an affection, a habit;\nit is a perfect occupation. It absorbs, or is supposed to absorb, the\nIndividual; it permeates his life like a religion. It is not one of the\ninterests of life, or, rather, one of life's phases; it is the whole of\nlife, all other interests and actions either sinking into an unsingable\nregion below it, or merely embroidering a variegated pattern upon its\ngolden background. Mediaeval love, therefore, never obtains its object,\nhowever much it may obtain the woman; for the object of mediaeval love,\nas of mediaeval religious mysticism, is not one particular act or series\nof acts, but is its own exercise, of which the various incidents of the\ndrama between man and woman are merely so many results. It has not its\ndefinite stages, like the love of the men of classical Antiquity or the\nheroic time of the North: its stages of seeking, obtaining, cherishing,\nguarding; it is always at the same point, always in the same condition\nof half-religious, half-courtier-like adoration, whether it be\ntriumphantly successful or sighingly despairing. The man and the\nwoman--or rather, I should say, the knight and the lady, for mediaeval\nlove is an aristocratic privilege, and the love of lower folk is not a\ntheme for song--the knight and the lady, therefore, seem always, however\nknit together by habit, nay, by inextricable meshes of guilt, somehow at\nthe same distance from one another. Once they have seen and loved each\nother, their passion burns on always evenly, burns on (at least\ntheoretically) to all eternity. It seems almost as if the woman were a\nmere shrine, a mysterious receptacle of the ineffable, a grail cup, a\nconsecrated wafer, but not the ineffable itself. For there is always in\nmediaeval love, however fleshly the incidents which it produces, a\ncertain Platonic element; that is to say, a craving for, a pursuit of,\nsomething which is an abstraction; an abstraction impossible to define\nin its constant shifting and shimmering, and which seems at one moment a\nsocial standard, a religious ideal, or both, and which merges for ever\nin the dazzling, vague sheen of the Eternal Feminine. Hence, one of the\nmost distinctive features of mediaeval love, an extraordinary sameness of\nintonation, making it difficult to distinguish between the _bona fide_\npassion for which a man risks life and honour, and the mere\nconventional gallantry of the knight who sticks a lady's glove on his\nhelmet as a compliment to her rank; nay, between the impure adoration of\nan adulterous lamia like Yseult, and the mystical adoration of a\nglorified Mother of God; for both are women, both are ladies, and\ntherefore the greatest poet of the early Middle Ages, Gottfried von\nStrassburg, sings them both with the same religious respect, and the\nsame hysterical rapture. This mediaeval love is furthermore a\ndeliberately expected, sought-for, and received necessity in a man's\nlife; it is not an accident, much less an incidental occurrence to be\nlightly taken or possibly avoided: it is absolutely indispensable to\nman's social training, to his moral and aesthetical self-improvement; it\nis part and parcel of manhood and knighthood. Hence, where it does not\narise of itself (and where a man is full of the notion of such love, it\nis rare that it does not come but too soon) it has to be sought for.\nUlrich von Liechtenstein, in his curious autobiography written late in\nthe twelfth century, relates how ever since his childhood he had been\naware of the necessity of the loyal love service of a lady for the\naccomplishment of knightly duties; and how, as soon as he was old enough\nto love, he looked around him for a lady whom he might serve; a\nproceeding renewed in more prosaic days and with a curious pedantic\nsmack, by Lorenzo dei Medici; and then again, perhaps for the last time,\nby the Knight of La Mancha, in that memorable discussion which ended in\nthe enthronement as his heart's queen of the unrivalled Dulcinea of\nToboso. _Frowendienst,_ \"lady's service,\" is the name given by Ulrich\nvon Liechtenstein, a mediaeval Quixote, outshining by far the mad\nProvencals Rudel and Vidal, to the memoirs very delightfully done into\nmodern German by Ludwig Tieck; and \"lady's service\" is the highest\noccupation of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense bulk of\nmediaeval poetry. \"Lady's service\" in deeds of arms and song, in constant\npraise and defence of the beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap\nmummery, in submission and terror to the wondrous creature whom the\nhumble servant, the lover, never calls by her sacred name, speaking of\nher in words unknown to Antiquity, _dompna, dame, frowe, madonna_--words\nof which the original sense has almost been forgotten, although there\ncleave to them even now ideas higher than those associated with the\n_puella_ of the ancients, the _wib_ of the heroic days--lady,\nmistress--the titles of the Mother of God, who is, after all, only the\nmystical Soul's Paramour of the mediaeval world. \"Lady's service\"--the\nalmost technical word, expressing the position, half-serf-like,\nhalf-religious, the bonds of complete humility and never-ending\nfaithfulness, the hopes of reward, the patience under displeasure, the\npride in the livery of servitude, the utter absorption of the life of\none individual in the life of another; which constitute in Provence, in\nFrance, in Germany, in England, in Italy, in the fabulous kingdoms of\nArthur and Charlemagne, the strange new thing which I have named\nMediaeval Love.\n\nHas such a thing really existed? Are not these mediaeval poets leagued\ntogether in a huge conspiracy to deceive us? Is it possible that strong\nmen have wept and fainted at a mere woman's name, like the Count of\nNevers in \"Flamenca,\" or that their mind has swooned away in months of\nreverie like that of Parzifal in Eschenbach's poem; that worldly wise\nand witty men have shipped off and died on sea for love of an unseen\nwoman like Jaufre Rudel; or dressed in wolf's hide and lurked and fled\nbefore the huntsmen-like Peire Vidal; or mangled their face and cut off\ntheir finger, and, clothing themselves in rags more frightful than\nNessus' robe, mixed in the untouchable band of lepers like Ulrich von\nLiechtenstein? Is it possible to believe that the insane enterprises of\nthe Amadises, Lisvarts and Felixmartes of late mediaeval romance, that\nthe behaviour of Don Quixote in the Sierra Morena, ever had any serious\nmodels in reality? Nay, more difficult still to believe--because the\nwhole madness of individuals is more credible than the half-madness of\nthe whole world--is it possible to believe that, as the poems of\ninnumerable trouveres and troubadours, minnesingers and Italian poets,\nas the legion of mediaeval romances of the cycles of Charlemagne, Arthur,\nand Amadis would have it, that during so long a period of time society\ncould have been enthralled by this hysterical, visionary, artificial,\nincredible religion of mediaeval love? It is at once too grotesque and\ntoo beautiful, too high and too low, to be credible; and our first\nimpulse, on closing the catechisms and breviaries, the legendaries and\nhymn-books of this strange new creed, is to protest that the love poems\nmust be allegories, the love romances solar myths, the Courts of Love\nhistorical bungles; that all this mediaeval world of love is a figment, a\nmisinterpretation, a falsehood.\n\nBut if we seek more than a mere casual impression; if, instead of\nfeeling sceptical over one or two fragments of evidence, we attempt to\ncollect the largest possible number of facts together; if we read not\none mediaeval love story, but twenty--not half a dozen mediaeval love\npoems, but several scores; if we really investigate into the origin of\nthe apparent myth, the case speedily alters. Little by little this which\nhad been inconceivable becomes not merely intelligible, but inevitable;\nthe myth becomes an historical phenomenon of the most obvious and\nnecessary sort. Mediaeval love, which had seemed to us a poetic fiction,\nis turned into a reality; and a reality, alas, which is prosaic. Let us\nlook at it.\n\nMediaeval love is first revealed in the sudden and almost simultaneous\nburst of song which, like the twitter and trill so dear to trouveres,\ntroubadours, and minnesingers, fills the woods that yesterday were\nsilent and dead, and greeted the earliest sunshine, the earliest faint\ngreen after the long winter numbness of the dark ages, after the\nboisterous gales of the earliest Crusade. The French and Provencals\nsang first, the Germans later, the Sicilians last; but although we may\nsay after deliberate analysis, such or such a form, or such or such a\nstory, was known in this country before it appeared in that one, such\nimitation or suggestion was so rapid that with regard to the French, the\nProvencals, and the Germans at least, the impression is simultaneous;\nonly the Sicilians beginning distinctly later, forerunners of the new\nlove lyric, wholly different from that of trouveres, troubadours, and\nminnesingers, of the Italians of the latter thirteenth century. And this\nsimultaneous revelation of mediaeval love takes place in the last quarter\nof the twelfth century, when Northern France had already consolidated\ninto a powerful monarchy, and Paris, after the teachings of Abelard, was\nrecognized as the intellectual metropolis of Europe; when south of the\nLoire the brilliant Angevine kings held the overlordship of the cultured\nRaymonds of Toulouse and of the reviving Latin municipalities of\nProvence \\ when Germany was welded as a compact feudal mass by the most\npowerful of the Stauffens; and the papacy had been built up by Gregory\nand Alexander into a political wall against which Frederick and Henry\nvainly battered; when the Italian commonwealths grew slowly but surely,\nas yet still far from guessing that the day would come when their\ndemocracy should produce a new civilization to supersede this triumphant\nmediaeval civilization of the early Capetiens, the Angevines, and the\nHohenstauffens. Europe was setting forth once more for the East; but no\nlonger as the ignorant and enthusiastic hordes of Peter the Hermit: Asia\nwas the great field for adventure, the great teacher of new luxuries, at\nonce the Eldorado and the grand tour of all the brilliant and\ninquisitive and unscrupulous chivalry of the day. And, while into the\nWest were insidiously entering habits and modes of thought of the East;\nthroughout Germany and Provence, and throughout the still obscure free\nburghs of Italy, was spreading the first indication of that emotional\nmysticism which, twenty or thirty years later, was to burst out in the\nfrenzy of spiritual love of St. Francis and his followers. The moment is\none of the most remarkable in all history: the premature promise in the\ntwelfth century of that intellectual revival which was delayed\nthroughout Northern Europe until the sixteenth. It is the moment when\nsociety settled down, after the anarchy of eight hundred years, on its\nfeudal basis; a basis fallaciously solid, and in whose presence no one\nmight guess that the true and definitive Renaissance would arise out of\nthe democratic civilization of Italy.\n\nSuch is the moment when we first hear the almost universal song of\nmediaeval love. This song comes from the triumphantly reorganized portion\nof society, not from the part which is slowly working its way to\nreorganization; not from the timidly encroaching burghers, but from the\nnobles. The reign of town poetry, of fabliaux and meistersang, comes\nlater; the poets of the early Middle Ages, trouveres, troubadours, and\nminnesingers are, with barely one or two exceptions, all knights. And\ntheir song comes from the castle. Now, in order to understand mediaeval\nlove, we must reflect for a moment upon this feudal castle, and upon the\nkind of life which the love poets of the late twelfth and early\nthirteenth century--whether lords like Bertram de Born, and Guillaume de\nPoitiers, among the troubadours; the Vidame de Chartres, Meurisses de\nCraon, and the Duke of Brabant among the trouveres of Northern France;\nlike Ulrich von Liechtenstein among the minnesingers; or retainers and\nhangers-on like Bernard de Ventadour and Armand de Mareulh, like\nChrestiens de Troyes, Gaisses Brulez, or Quienes de Bethune, like\nWalther, Wolfram, and Tannhaeuser--great or small, good or bad, saw\nbefore them and mixed with in that castle. The castle of a great\nfeudatory of the early Middle Ages, whether north or south of the Loire,\nin Austria or in Franconia, is like a miniature copy of some garrison\ntown in barbarous countries: there is an enormous numerical\npreponderance of men over women; for only the chiefs in command, the\noverlord, and perhaps one or two of his principal kinsmen or adjutants,\nare permitted the luxury of a wife; the rest of the gentlemen are\nsubalterns, younger sons without means, youths sent to learn their\nmilitary duty and the ways of the world: a whole pack of men without\nwives, without homes, and usually without fortune. High above all this\ndeferential male crowd, moves the lady of the castle: highborn, proud,\nhaving brought her husband a dower of fiefs often equal to his own, and\nof vassals devoted to her race. About her she has no equals; her\ndaughters, scarcely out of the nurse's hands, are given away in\nmarriage; and her companions, if companions they may be called, are the\nwaiting ladies, poor gentlewomen situated between the maid of honour and\nthe ladies' maid, like that Brangwaine whom Yseult sacrifices to her\nintrigue with Tristram, or those damsels whom Flamenca gives over to the\nsquires of her lover Guillems; at best, the wife of one of her husband's\nsubalterns, or some sister or aunt or widow kept by charity. Round this\nlady--the stately, proud lady perpetually described by mediaeval\npoets--flutters the swarm of young men, all day long, in her path:\nserving her at meals, guarding her apartments, nay, as pages, admitted\neven into her most secret chamber; meeting her for ever in the\nnarrowness of that castle life, where every unnecessary woman is a\nburden usurping the place of a soldier, and, if possible, replaced by a\nman. Servants, lacqueys, and enjoying the privileges of ubiquity of\nlacqueys, yet, at the same time, men of good birth and high breeding,\ngood at the sword and at the lute; bound to amuse this highborn woman,\nfading away in the monotony of feudal life, with few books to read or\nunable to read them, and far above all the household concerns which\ndevolve on the butler, the cellarer, the steward, the gentleman,\nhonourably employed as a servant. To them, to these young men, with few\nor no young women of their own age to associate, and absolutely no\nunmarried girls who could be a desirable match, the lady of the castle\nspeedily becomes a goddess, the impersonation at once of that feudal\nsuperiority before which they bow, of that social perfection which they\nare commanded to seek, and of that womankind of which the castle affords\nso few examples. To please her, this lazy, bored, highbred woman, with\nall the squeamishness and caprice of high birth and laziness about her,\nbecomes their ideal; to be favourably noticed, their highest glory; to\nbe loved, these wretched mortals, by this divinity--that thought must\noften pass through their brain and terrify them with its delicious\naudacity; oh no, such a thing is not possible. But it is. The lady at\nfirst, perhaps most often, singles out as a pastime some young knight,\nsome squire, some page; and, in a half-queenly, half-motherly way,\ncorrects, rebukes his deficiencies, undertakes to teach him his duty as\na servant. The romance of the \"Petit Jehan de Saintre,\" written in the\nfifteenth century, but telling, with a delicacy of cynicism worthy of\nBalzac, what must have been the old, old story of the whole feudal\nMiddle Ages, shows the manner in which, while feeling that he is being\ntrained to knightly courtesy and honour, the young man in the service of\na great feudal lady is gradually taught dissimulation, lying, intrigue;\nis initiated by the woman who looms above him like a saint into all the\nfoulness of adultery. Adultery; a very ugly word, which must strike\nalmost like a handful of mud in the face whosoever has approached this\nsubject of mediaeval love in admiration of its strange delicacy and\nenthusiasm. Yet it is a word which must be spoken, for in it is the\nexplanation of the whole origin and character of this passion which\nburst into song in the early Middle Ages. This almost religious love,\nthis love which conceives no higher honour than the service of the\nbeloved, no higher virtue than eternal fidelity--this love is the love\nfor another man's wife. Between unmarried young men and young women,\nkept carefully apart by the system which gives away a girl without her\nconsent and only to a rich suitor, there is no possibility of love in\nthese early feudal courts; the amours, however licentious, between\nkings' daughters and brave knights, of the Carolingian tales, belong to\na different rank of society, to the prose romances made up in the\nfourteenth century for the burgesses of cities; the intrigues, ending in\nmarriage, of the princes and princesses of the cycle of Amadis, belong\nto a different period, to the fifteenth century, and to courts where\nfeudal society scarcely exists; the squires, the young knights who hang\nabout a great baronial establishment of the twelfth and thirteenth\ncenturies, have still to make their fortune, and do not dream of\nmarriage. The husband, on the other hand, the great lord or successful\nknightly adventurer, married late in life, and married from the\nnecessity, for ever pressing upon the feudal proprietor, of adding on\nnew fiefs and new immunities, of increasing his importance and\nindependence in proportion to the hourly increasing strength and claims\nof the overlord, the king, who casts covetous eyes upon him--the husband\nhas not married for love; he has had his love affairs with the wives of\nother men in his day, or may still have them; this lady is a mere feudal\nnecessity, she is required to give him a dower and give him an heir,\nthat is all. If the husband does not love, how much less can the wife;\nmarried, as she is, scarce knowing what marriage is, to a man much older\nthan herself, whom most probably she has never seen, to whom she is a\nmere investment. Nay, there is not even the after-marriage love of the\nancients: this wife is not the housekeeper, the woman who works that the\nman's house may be rich and decorous; not even the nurse of his\nchildren, for the children are speedily given over to the squires and\nduennas; she is the woman of another family who has come into his, the\nstranger who must be respected (as that most typical mediaeval wife,\nEleanor of Guienne, was respected by her husbands) on account of her\nfiefs, her vassals, her kinsfolk; but who cannot be loved. Can there be\nlove between man and wife? There cannot be love between man and wife.\nThis is no answer of mine, fantastically deduced from mediaeval poetry.\nIt is the answer solemnly made to the solemnly asked question by the\nCourt of Love held by the Countess of Champagne in 1174, and registered\nby Master Andrew the King of France's chaplain: \"Dicimus enim et\nstabilito tenore firmamus amorem non posse inter duos jugales suas\nextendere vires.\" And the reason alleged for this judgment brings us\nback to the whole conception of mediaeval love as a respectful service\nhumbly waiting for a reward: \"For,\" pursues the decision published by\nAndre le Chapelain, \"whereas lovers grant to each other favours freely\nand from no legal necessity, married people have the duty of obeying\neach other's wishes and of refusing nothing to one another.\" \"No love is\npossible between man and wife,\" repeat the Courts of Love which,\nconsisting of all the highborn ladies of the province and presided by\nsome mighty queen or princess, represent the social opinions of the day.\n\"But this lady,\" says a knight (Miles) before the love tribunal of Queen\nEleanor, \"promised to me that if ever she should lose the love of her\nlover, she would take me in his place. She has wedded the man who was\nher lover, and I have come to claim fulfilment of her promise.\" The\ncourt discusses for awhile. \"We cannot,\" answers Queen Eleanor, \"go\nagainst the Countess of Champagne's decision that love cannot exist\nbetween man and wife. We therefore desire this lady to fulfil her\npromise and give you her love.\" Again, there come to the Court of Love\nof the Viscountess of Narbonne a knight and a lady, who desire to know\nwhether, having been once married, but since divorced, a love engagement\nbetween them would be honourable. The viscountess decides that \"Love\nbetween those who have been married together, but who have since been\ndivorced from one another, is not to be deemed reprehensible; nay, that\nit is to be considered as honourable.\" And these Courts of Love, be it\nremarked, were frequently held on occasion of the marriage of great\npersonages; as, for instance, of that between Louis VII. and Eleanor of\nPoitiers in 1137. The poetry of the early Middle Ages follows implicitly\nthe decisions of these tribunals, which reveal a state of society to\nwhich the nearest modern approach is that of Italy in the eighteenth\ncentury, when, as Goldoni and Parini show us, as Stendhal (whose \"De\nl'Amour\" may be taken as the modern \"Breviari d'Amor\") expounds, there\nwas no impropriety possible as long as a lady was beloved by any one\nexcept her own husband. No love, therefore, between unmarried people\n(the cyclical romances, as before stated, and the Amadises, belong to\nanother time of social condition, and the only real exception to my rule\nof which I can think is the lovely French tale of \"Aucassin et\nNicolette\"); and no love between man and wife. But love there must be;\nand love there consequently is; love for the married woman from the man\nwho is not her husband. The feudal lady, married without being consulted\nand without having had a chance of knowing what love is, yet lives to\nknow love; lives to be taught it by one of these many bachelors bound to\nflutter about her in military service or social duty; lives to teach it\nherself. And she is too powerful in her fiefs and kinsmen, too powerful\nin the public opinion which approves and supports her, to be hampered by\nher husband. The husband, indeed, has grown up in the same habits, has\nknown, before marrying, the customs sanctioned by the Courts of Love; he\nhas been the knight of some other man's wife in his day, what right has\nhe to object? As in the days of Italian _cecisbei_, the early mediaeval\nlover might say with Goldoni's Don Alfonso or Don Roberto, \"I _serve_\nyour wife--such or such another serves mine, what harm can there be in\nit?\" (\"Io servo vostra moglie, Don Eugenio favorisce la mia; che male c'\ne?\" I am quoting from memory.) And as a fact, we hear little of\njealousy; the amusement of En Barral when Peire Vidal came in and kissed\nhis sleeping wife; and the indignation of all Provence for the murder of\nGuillems de Cabestanh (buried in the same tomb with the lady who had\nbeen made to eat of his heart)--showing from opposite sides how the\nsociety accustomed to Courts of Love looked upon the duties of husbands.\n\nSuch was the social life in those feudal courts whence first arises the\nsong of mediaeval love, and that this is the case is proved by the whole\nhuge body of early mediaeval poetry. We must not judge, as I have said,\neither by poems of much earlier date, like the Nibelungen and the\nCarolingian _chansons de geste_, which merely received a new form in the\nearly Middle Ages; still less from the prose romances of Melusine,\nMilles et Amys, Palemon and Arcite, and a host of others which were\nelaborated only later and under the influence of the quite unfeudal\nhabits of the great cities; and least of all from that strange late\nsouthern cycle of the Amadises, from which, odd as it seems, many of our\nnotions of chivalric love have, through our ancestors, through the\nsatirists or burlesque poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,\nbeen inherited. We must look at the tales which, as we are constantly\nbeing told by trouveres, troubadours, and minnesingers, were the\nfashionable reading of the feudal classes of the twelfth and thirteenth\ncenturies: the tales best known to us in the colourless respectability\nof the collection made in the reign of Edward IV. by Sir Thomas Malory,\nand called by him the \"Morte d'Arthur\"--of the ladies and knights of\nArthur's court; of the quest of the Grail by spotless knights who were\nbastards and fathers of bastards; of the intrigues of Tristram of\nLyoness and Queen Yseult; of Launcelot and Guenevere; the tales which\nFrancesca and Paolo read together. We must look, above all, at the lyric\npoetry of France, Provence, Germany, and Sicily in the early Middle\nAges.\n\n\n     Vos qui tres bien ameis i petit mentendeis\n     Por l'amor de Ihesu les pucelles ameis.\n     Nos trouvons en escris de sainte auctoriteis\n     Ke pucelle est la fleur de loyaulment ameir.\n\n\nThis strange entreaty to love the maidens for the sake of Christ's love,\nthis protest of a nameless northern French poet (Wackernagel,\nAltfranzoesische Lieder and Leiche IX.) against the adulterous passion of\nhis contemporaries, comes to us, pathetically enough, solitary, faint,\nunnoticed in the vast chorus, boundless like the spring song of birds or\nthe sound of the waves, of poets singing the love of other men's wives.\nBut, it may be objected--how can we tell that these love songs, so\ncarefully avoiding all mention of names, are not addressed to the\ndesired bride, to the legitimate wife of the poet? For several reasons;\nand mainly, for the crushing evidence of an undefinable something which\ntells us that they are not. The other reasons are easily stated. We know\nthat feudal habits would never have allowed to unmarried women (and\nwomen were married when scarcely out of their childhood) the\nopportunities for the relations which obviously exist between the poet\nand his lady; and that, if by some accident a young knight might fall in\nlove with a girl, he would address not her but her parents, since the\nMiddle Ages, who were indifferent to adultery, were, like the southern\nnations among whom the married woman is not expected to be virtuous,\nextreme sticklers for the purity of their unmarried womankind. Further,\nwe have no instance of an unmarried woman being ever addressed during\nthe early Middle Ages, in those terms of social respect--_madame,\ndomna, frowe, madonna_--which essentially belong to the mistress of a\nhousehold; nor do these stately names fit in with any theory which would\nmake us believe that the lady addressed by the poet is the jealously\nguarded daughter of the house with whom he is plotting a secret\nmarriage, or an elopement to end off in marriage. This is not the way\nthat Romeo speaks to Juliet, nor even that the princesses in the\ncyclical romances and in the Amadises are wooed by their bridegrooms.\nThis is not the language of a lover who is broaching his love, and who\nhopes, however timidly, to consummate it before all the world by\nmarriage. It is obviously the language of a man either towards a woman\nwho is taking a pleasure in keeping him dangling without favours which\nshe has implicitly or explicitly promised; or towards a woman who is\nmomentarily withholding favours which her lover has habitually enjoyed.\nAnd in a large proportion of cases the poems of trouveres, troubadours,\nand minnesingers are the expression of fortunate love, the fond\nrecollection or eager expectation of meetings with the beloved. All this\ncan evidently not be connected with the wooing, however stealthy,\nhowever Romeo-and-Juliet-like of a bride; still less can it be explained\nin reference to love within wedlock. A man does not, however loving,\nworship his wife as his social superior; he does not address her in\ntitles of stiff respect; he does not sigh and weep and supplicate for\nlove which is his due, and remind his wife that she owes it him in\nreturn for loyal, humble, discreet service. Above all, a man (except in\nsome absurd comedy perhaps, where the husband, in an age of _cicisbeos_,\nis in love with his own wife and dares not admit it before the society\nwhich holds \"that there can be no love between married folk \")--a\nhusband, I repeat, does not beg for, arrange, look forward to, and\nrecall with triumph or sadness, secret meetings with his own wife. Now\nthe secret meeting is, in nearly every aristocratic poet of the early\npoetry, the inevitable result of the humble praises and humble requests\nfor kindness; it is, most obviously, _the_ reward for which the poet is\nalways importuning. Mediaeval love poetry, compared with the love poetry\nof Antiquity and the love poetry of the revival of letters, is, in its\nlyric form, decidedly chaste; but it is perfectly explicit; and, for all\nits metaphysical tendencies and its absence of clearly painted pictures,\nthe furthest possible removed from being Platonic. One of the most\nimportant, characteristic, and artistically charming categories of\nmediaeval love lyrics is that comprising the Provencal _serena_ and\n_alba,_ with their counterparts in the _langue d'oil_, and the so-called\n_Wachtlieder_ of the minnesingers; and this category of love poetry may\nbe defined as the drama, in four acts, of illicit love. The faithful\nlover has received from his lady an answer to his love, the place and\nhour are appointed; all the day of which the evening is to bring him\nthis honour, he goes heavy hearted and sighing: \"Day, much do you grow\nfor my grief, and the evening, the evening and the long hope kills me.\"\nThus far the _serena_, the evening song, of Guiraut Riquier. A lovely\nanonymous _alba,_ whose refrain, \"Oi deus, oi deus; de l' alba, tan tost\nve!\" is familiar to every smatterer of Provencal, shows us the lady and\nher knight in an orchard beneath the hawthorn, giving and taking the\nlast kisses while the birds sing and the sky whitens with dawn. \"The\nlady is gracious and pleasant, and many look upon her for her beauty,\nand her heart Is all in loving loyally; alas, alas, the dawn! how soon\nit: comes!--\" \"Oi deus, oi deus; de l'alba, tan tost ve!\" The real _alba_\nis the same as the German _Wachtlieder,_ the song of the squire or\nfriend posted at the garden gate or outside the castle wall, warning the\nlovers to separate. \"Fair comrade (Bel Companho), I call to you singing.\n'Sleep no more, for I hear the birds announcing the day in the trees,\nand I fear that the jealous one may find you;' and in a moment it will\nbe day, 'Bel Companho, come to the window and look at the signs in the\nsky! you will know me a faithful messenger; if you do it not, it will be\nto your harm\" and in a moment it will be dawn (et ades sera l' alba)...\nBel Companho, since I left you I have not slept nor raised myself from\nmy knees; for I have prayed to God the Son of Saint Mary, that he should\nsend me: back my faithful comrade, and in a moment it will be dawn In\nthis _alba_ of Guiraut de Borneulh, the lover comes at last to the\nwindow, and cries to his watching comrade that he is too happy to care\neither for the dawn or for the jealous one. The German _Wachtlieder_ are\neven more explicit. \"He must away at once and without delay,\" sings the\nwatchman in a poem of Wolfram, the austere singer of Parzifal and the\nGrail Quest; \"let him go, sweet lady; let him away from thy love so that\nhe keep his honour and life. He trusted himself to me that I should\nbring him safely hence; it is day ...\" \"Sing what thou wilt, watchman,\"\nanswers the lady, \"but leave him here.\" In a far superior, but also far\nless chaste poem of Heinrich von Morungen, the lady, alone and\nmelancholy, wakes up remembering the sad white light of morning, the sad\ncry of the watchman, which separated her from her knight. Still more\nfrankly, and in a poem which is one of the few real masterpieces of\nMinnesang, the lady in Walther von der Vogelweide's \"Under der linden an\nder Heide\" narrates a meeting in the wood. \"What passed between us shall\nnever be known by any! never by any, save him and me--yes, and by the\nlittle nightingale that sang _Tandaradei_! The little bird will surely\nbe discreet.\"\n\nThe songs of light love for another's wife of troubadour, trouvere, and\nminnesinger, seem to have been squeezed together, so that all their\nsweet and acrid perfume is, so to speak, sublimated, in the recently\ndiscovered early Provencal narrative poem called \"Flamenca.\" Like the\n\"Tristram\" of Gottfried von Strassburg, like all these light mediaeval\nlove _lyrics,_ of which I have been speaking, the rhymed story of\n\"Flamenca,\" a pale and simple, but perfect petalled daisy, has come up\nin a sort of moral and intellectual dell in the winter of the Middle\nAges--a dell such as you meet in hollows of even the most wind-swept\nsouthern hills, where, while all round the earth is frozen and the short\ngrass nibbled away by the frost, may be found even at Christmas a bright\nsheen of budding wheat beneath the olives on the slope, a yellow haze of\nsun upon the grass in which the little aromatic shoots of fennel and\nmint and marigold pattern with greenness the sere brown, the\nfrost-burnt; where the very leafless fruit trees have a spring-like rosy\ntinge against the blue sky, and the tufted little osiers flame a joyous\norange against the greenness of the hill.\n\nSuch spots there are--and many--in the winter of the Middle Ages; though\nit is not in them, but where the rain beats, and the snow and the wind\ntugs, that grow, struggling with bitterness, the great things of the\nday: the philosophy of Abelard, the love of man of St. Francis, the\npatriotism of the Lombard communes; nor that lie dormant, fertilized in\nthe cold earth, the great things of art and thought, the great things to\ncome. But in them arise the delicate winter flowers which we prize:\ntender, pale things, without much life, things either come too soon or\nstayed too late, among which is \"Flamenca;\" one of those roses, nipped\nand wrinkled, but stained a brighter red by the frost, which we pluck in\nDecember or in March; beautiful, bright, scentless roses, which, scarce\nin bud, already fall to pieces in our hand. \"Flamenca\" is simply the\nnarrative of the loves of the beautiful wife of the bearish and jealous\nCount Archambautz, and of Guillems de Nevers, a brilliant young knight\nwho hears of the lady's sore captivity, is enamoured before he sees her,\ndresses up as the priest's clerk, and speaks one word with her while\npresenting the mass book to be kissed, every holiday; and finally\ndeceives the vigilance of the husband by means of a subterranean\ncorridor, which he gets built between his inn and the bath-room of the\nlady at the famous waters of Bourbon-les-Bains. In this world of\n\"Flamenca,\" which is in truth the same world as that of the \"Romaunt of\nthe Rose,\" the \"Morte d'Arthur,\" and of the love poets of early France\nand Germany, conjugal morality and responsibility simply do not exist.\nIt seems an unreal pleasure-garden, with a shadowy guardian--impalpable\nto us gross moderns--called Honour, but where, as it seems, Love only\nreigns. Love, not the mystic and melancholy god of the \"Vita Nuova,\" but\na foppish young deity, sentimental at once and sensual, of fashionable\nfeudal life: the god of people with no apparent duties towards others,\nunconscious of any restraints save those of this vague thing called\nhonour; whose highest mission for the knight, as put in our English\n\"Romaunt of the Rose\" is to--\n\n         Set thy might and alle thy witte\n     Wymmen and ladies for to plese,\n     And to do thyng that may hem ese;\n\nwhile, for the lady, it is expressed with perfect simplicity of\nshamelessness by Flamenca herself to her damsels, teaching them that the\nwoman must yield to the pleasure of her lover. Now love, when young,\nwhen, so to speak, but just born and able to feed (as a newborn child on\nmilk, without hungering for more solid food) on looks and words and\nsighs; love thus young, is a fair-seeming godhead, and the devotion to\nhim a pretty and delicate piece of aestheticism. And such it is here in\n\"Flamenca,\" where there certainly exists neither God nor Christ, both\ncomplete absentees, whose priest becomes a courteous lover's valet,\nwhose church the place for amorous rendezvous, whose sacrifice of mass\nand prayer becomes a means of amorous correspondence: Cupid, in the\nshape of his slave Guillems de Nevers--become _patarin_(zealot) for\nlove--peeping with shaven golden head from behind the missal, touching\nthe lady's hand and whispering with the words of spiritual peace the\ndeclaration of love, the appointment for meeting. God and Christ, I\nrepeat, are absentees. Where they are I know not; perhaps over the Rhine\nwith the Lollards in their weavers' dens, or over the Alps in the cell\nof St. Francis; not here, certainly, or if here, themselves become the\nmere slaves of love. But this King Love, as long as a mere infant, is a\nsweet and gracious divinity, surrounded by somewhat of the freshness and\nhawthorn sweetness of spring which seem to accompany his favourite\nGuillems. Guillems de Nevers, \"who could still grow,\" this brilliant\nknight and troubadour, in his white silken and crimson and purple\ngarments and soundless shoes embroidered with flowers, this prince of\ntournaments and _tensos_, who hearing the sorrows of the beautiful\nFlamenca, loves her unseen, sits sighing in sight of her prison bower,\nand faints like a hero of the Arabian Nights at her name, and has\nvisions of her as St. Francis has of Christ; this younger and brighter\nSir Launcelot, is an ideal little figure, whom you might mistake for\nLove himself as described in the \"Romaunt of the Rose;\" Love's avatar or\nincarnation, on whose appearance the year blooms into spring, the fruit\ntrees blossom, the birds sing, the girls dance at eve round the\nmaypoles; behind whom, while reading this poem, we seem to see the corn\nshine green beneath the olives, the white-blossomed branches slant\nacross the blue sky. For is he not the very incarnation of chivalry, of\nbeauty, and of love? So much for this King Love while but quite young.\nUnfortunately he is speedily weaned of his baby food of mere blushing\nglances and sighed-out names; and then his aspect, his kingdom's aspect,\nthe aspect of his votaries, undergoes a change. The profane but charming\ngame of the loving clerk and the missal is exchanged for the more\ncoarse hide-and-seek of hidden causeways and tightened bolts, with\njealous husbands guarding the useless door; Guillems becomes but an\nordinary Don Juan or Lovelace, Flamenca but a sorry, sneaking\nadulteress, and the gracious damsels mere common sluts, curtseying at\nthe loan (during the interview of nobler folk) of the gallant's squires.\nFor the scent of May, of fresh leaves and fallen blossoms, we get the\nnauseous vapours of the bath-room; and, alas, King Love has lost his\naureole and his wings and turned keeper of the hot springs, sought out\nby the gouty and lepers, of Bourbon-les-Bains; and in closing this book,\nso delightfully begun, we sicken at the whiff of hot and fetid moral air\nas we should sicken in passing over the outlet of the polluted hot\nwater.\n\n\"But where is the use of telling us all this?\" the reader will ask;\n\"every one knows that illicit passion existed and exists, and has its\nchroniclers, its singers in prose and in verse. But what has all this\npoetry of common adultery to do with a book like the 'Vita Nuova,' with\nthat strange new thing, that lifelong worship of a woman, which you call\nmediaeval love?\" This much: that out of this illicit love, and out of it,\ngross as it looks, alone arises the possibility of the \"Vita Nuova;\"\narises the possibility of the romantic and semi-religious love of the\nMiddle Ages. Or, rather, let us say that this mere loose love of the\n_albas_ and _Wachtlieder_ and \"Flamenca,\" is the substratum, nay, is the\nvery flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion to which, in later days,\nwe owe the book of Beatrice.\n\nIt is a harsh thing to say, but one which all sociology teaches us, that\nas there exists no sensual relation which cannot produce for its\nennoblement a certain amount of passion, so also does there exist no\npassion (and Phaedrus is there to prove it) so vile and loathsome as to\nbe unable to weave about itself a glamour of ideal sentiment. The poets\nof the Middle Ages strove after the criminal possession of another man's\nwife. This, however veiled with fine and delicate poetic expressions, is\nthe thing for which they wait and sigh and implore; this is the reward,\nthe supremely honouring and almost sanctifying reward which the lady\ncannot refuse to the knight who has faithfully and humbly served her.\nThe whole bulk of the love lyrics of the early Middle Ages are there to\nprove it; and if the allusions in them are not sufficiently clear, those\nwho would be enlightened may study the discussions of the allegorical\npersons even in the English (and later) version of Guillaume de Lorris'\n\"Roman de la Rose;\" and turn to what, were it in _langue d'oc_, we\nshould call a _tenso_ of Guillaume li Viniers among Maetzner's\n\"Altfranzoesische Lieder-dichter.\" The catastrophe of Ulrich von\nLiechtenstein's \"Frowendienst,\" where the lady, the \"virtuous,\" the\n\"pure,\" as he is pleased to call her, after making him cut off his\nfinger, dress in leper's clothes, chop off part of his upper lip, and go\nthrough the most marvellous Quixotic antics dressed in satin and pearls\nand false hair as Queen Venus, and jousting in this costume with every\nknight between Venice and Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls\nthe gallant in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop down\ninto the moat which is no better than a sewer; this grotesque and\ntragically resented end of Ulrich's first _love service_ speaks volumes\non the point. The stones in Nostradamus' \"Lives of the Troubadours,\" the\nincidents in Gottfried's \"Tristan und Isolde,\" nay, the adventures even\nin our expunged English \"Morte d'Arthur,\" relating to the birth of Sir\nGalahad, are as explicit as anything in Brantome or the Queen of\nNavarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence and Germany are\ncobwebs spun round Decameronian situations. And all this is permitted,\nadmitted, sanctioned by feudal society even as the _cecisbeos_ of the\nnoble Italian ladies were sanctioned by the society of the seventeenth\nand eighteenth centuries. In the mediaeval castle, where, as we have\nseen, the lady, separated from her own sex, is surrounded by a swarm of\nyoung men without a chance of marriage, and bound to make themselves\nagreeable to the wife of a military superior; the woman soon ceases to\nbe the exclusive property of her husband, and the husband speedily\ndiscovers that the majority, hence public ridicule, are against any\nattempt at monopolizing her. Thus adultery becomes, as we have seen,\naccepted as an institution under the name of _service_; and, like all\nother social institutions, developes a morality of its own--a morality\nwithin immorality, of faithfulness within infidelity. The lady must be\ntrue to her knight, and the knight must be true to his lady: the Courts\nof Love solemnly banish from society any woman who is known to have more\nthan one lover. Faithfulness is the first and most essential virtue of\nmediaeval love; a virtue unknown to the erotic poets of Antiquity, and\nwhich modern times have inherited from the Middle Ages as a requisite,\neven (as the reproaches of poets of the Alfred de Musset school teach\nus) in the most completely illicit love. Tristram and Launcelot, the two\nparagons of knighthood, are inviolably constant to their mistress: the\nhusband may and must be deceived, but not the wife who helps to deceive\nhim. Yseult of Brittany and Elaine, the mother of Galahad, do not\nsucceed in breaking the vows made to Yseult the Fair and to Queen\nGuenevere. The beautiful lady in the hawthorn _alba_ \"a son cor en amar\nlejalmens.\" But this loyal loving is for the knight who is warned to\ndepart, certainly not for the husband, the _gilos_, in whose despite\n(\"Bels dous amios, baizem nos eu e vos--Aval els pratzon chantols\nauzellos--_Tot O fassam en despeit del gilos_\") they are meeting. The\nladies of the minnesingers are \"pure,\" \"good,\" \"faithful\" (and each and\nall are pure, good, and faithful, as long as they do not resist) from\nthe point of view of the lover, not of the husband, if indeed a husband\nbe permitted to have any point of view at all. And as fidelity is the\nessential virtue in these adulterous connections, so infidelity is the\ngreatest crime that a woman (and even a man) can commit, the greatest\nmisfortune which fate can send to an unhappy knight. That he leaves a\nfaithful mistress behind him is the one hope of the knight who, taking\nthe cross, departs to meet the scimitars of Saladin's followers, the\nfevers, the plagues, the many miserable deaths of the unknown East. \"If\nany lady be unfaithful,\" says Quienes de Bethune, \"she will have to be\nunfaithful with some base wretch.\"\n\n\n     Et les dames ki castement vivront\n     Se loiaute font a ceus qui iront;\n     Et seles font par mal conseil folaje,\n     A lasques gens et mauvais le feront,\n     Car tout li bon iront en cest voiage.\n\n\n\"I have taken the cross on account of my sins,\" sings Albrecht von\nJohansdorf, one of the most earnest of the minnesingers; \"now let God\nhelp, till my return, the woman who has great sorrow on my account, in\norder that I may find her possessed of her honour; let Him grant me this\nprayer. But if she change her life (_i.e_., take to bad courses), then\nmay God forbid my ever returning.\" The lady is bound (the Courts of Love\ndecide this point of honour) to reward her faithful lover. \"A knight,\"\nsays a lady, in an anonymous German song published by Bartsch, \"has\nserved me according to my will. Before too much time elapse, I must\nreward him; nay, if all the world were to object, he must have his way\nwith me\" (\"und waerez al der Werlte leit, so muoz sin wille an mir\nergaen\"). But, on the other hand, the favoured knight is bound to protect\nhis lady's good fame.\n\n\n     Se jai mamie en tel point mis,\n     Que tout motroit (m'octroit) sans esformer,\n     Tant doi je miex sonnor gaiter--\n\n\nthus one of the interlocutors in a French _jeu-parti_, published by\nMaetzner; a rule which, if we may judge from the behaviour of Tristram\nand Launcelot, and from the last remnants of mediaeval love lore in\nmodern French novels, means simply that the more completely a man has\ninduced a woman to deceive her husband, the more stoutly is he bound to\ndeny, with lies, rows, and blows, that she has ever done anything of the\nsort. Here, then, we find established, as a very fundamental necessity\nof this socially recognized adultery, a reciprocity of fidelity between\nlover and mistress which Antiquity never dreamed of even between husband\nand wife (Agamemnon has a perfect right to Briseis or Chryseis, but\nClytaemnestra has no right to Aegisthus); and which indeed could scarcely\narise as a moral obligation except where the woman was not bound to love\nthe man (which the wife is) and where her behaviour towards him depended\nwholly upon her pleasure, that is to say, upon her satisfaction with his\nbehaviour towards her. This, which seems to us so obvious, and of which\nevery day furnishes us an example in the relations of the modern suitor\nand his hoped-for wife, could not, at a time when women were married by\nfamily arrangement, arise except as a result of illegitimate love.\nHorrible as it seems, the more we examine into this subject of mediaeval\nlove, the more shall we see that our whole code of Grandisonian chivalry\nbetween lovers who intend marriage is derived from the practice of the\nLauncelots and Gueneveres, not from that of the married people (we may\nremember the manner in which Gunther woos his wife Brunhilt in the\nNibelungenlied) of former ages; nay, the more we shall have to recognize\nthat the very feeling which constitutes the virtuous love of modern\npoets is derived from the illegitimate loves of the Middle Ages.\n\nLet us examine what are the habits of feeling and thinking which grow\nout of this reciprocal fidelity due to the absence of all one-sided\nlegal pressure in this illegitimate, but socially legitimated, love of\nthe early Middle Ages; which are added on to it by the very necessities\nof illicit connection. The lover, having no right to the favours of his\nmistress, is obliged, in order to win and to keep them, to please her by\nhumility, fidelity, and such knightly qualities as are the ideal plumage\nof a man: he must bring home to her, by showing the world her colours\nvictorious in serious warfare, in the scarcely less dangerous play of\ntournaments, and by making her beauty and virtues more illustrious in\nhis song than are those of other women in the songs of their lovers--he\nmust bring home to her that she has a more worthy servant than her\nrivals; he must determine her to select him and to adhere to her\nselection. Now mediaeval husbands select their wives, instead of being\nselected; and once the woman and the dowry are in their hands, trouble\nthemselves but little whether they are approved of or not. On the other\nhand, the mistress appears to her lover invested with imaginative, ideal\nadvantages such as cannot surround her in the eyes of her husband: she\nis, in nearly every case, his superior in station and the desired of\nmany beholders; she is bound to him by no tie which may grow prosaic and\nwearisome; she appears to him in no domestic capacity, can never descend\nto be the female drudge; her possession is prevented from growing stale,\nher personality from becoming commonplace, by the difficulty, rareness,\nmystery, adventure, danger, which even in the days of Courts of Love\nattach to illicit amours; above all, being for this man neither the\nhousewife nor the mother, she remains essentially and continually the\nmistress, the beloved. Similarly the relations between the knight and\nthe lady, untroubled by domestic worries, pecuniary difficulties, and\nsquabbles about children, remain, exist merely as love relations,\nrelations of people whose highest and sole desire is to please one\nanother. Moreover, and this is an important consideration, the lady, who\nis a mere inexperienced, immature girl when she first meets her husband,\nis a mature woman, with character and passions developed by the\nindependence of conjugal and social life. When she meets her lover,\nwhatever power or dignity of character she may possess is ripe; whatever\nintensity of aspiration and passion may be latent is ready to come\nforth; for the first time there is equality in love. Equality? Ah, no.\nThis woman who is the wife of his feudal superior, this woman surrounded\nby all the state of feudal sovereignty, this woman who, however young,\nhas already known so much of life, this woman whose love is a free, gift\nof grace to the obscure, trembling vassal who has a right not even to be\nnoticed; this lady of mediaeval love must always remain immeasurably\nabove her lover. And, in the long day-dreams while watching her, as he\nthinks unseen, while singing of her, as he thinks unheard, there cluster\nround her figure, mistily seen in his fancy, those vague and-mystic\nsplendours which surround the new sovereign of the Middle Ages, the\nQueen of Heaven; there mingles in the half-terrified raptures of the\nfirst kind glance, the first encouraging word, the ineffable passion\nstored up in the Christian's heart for the immortal beings who, in the\ndays of Bernard and Francis, descend cloud-like on earth and fill the\ncells of the saints with unendurable glory.\n\nAnd thus, out of the baseness of habitual adultery, arises incense-like,\nin the early mediaeval poetry, a new kind of love--subtler, more\nimaginative, more passionate, a love of the fancy and the heart, a love\nstimulating to the perfection of the individual as is any religion;\nnay, a religion, and one appealing more completely to the complete man,\nflesh and soul, than even the mystical beliefs of the Middle Ages. And\nas, in the fantastic song of Ritter Tannhaeuser, whose liege lady, so\nlegend tells, was Dame Venus herself, the lady bids the knight go forth\nand fetch her green water which has washed the setting sun, salamanders\nsnatched from the flame, the stars out of heaven; so would it seem as if\nthis new power in the world, this poetically worshipped woman, had sent\nforth mankind to seek wonderful new virtues, never before seen on earth.\nNay, rather, as the snowflakes became green leaves, the frost blossoms\nred and blue flowers, the winter wind a spring-scented breeze, when\nBernard de Ventadorn was greeted by his mistress; so also does it seem\nas if, at the first greeting of the world by this new love, the mediaeval\nwinter had turned to summer, and there had budded forth and flowered a\nnew ideal of manly virtue, a new ideal of womanly grace.\n\nBut evil is evil, and evil is its fruit. Out of circumstances hitherto\nunknown, circumstances come about for the first time owing to the\nnecessities of illegitimate passion, have arisen certain new and nobler\ncharacters of sexual love, certain new and beautiful conceptions of\nmanly and womanly nature. The circumstances to which these are owed are\npure in themselves, they are circumstances which in more modern times\nhave characterized the perfectly legitimate passion of lovers held\nasunder by no social law, but by mere accidental barriers--from Romeo\nand Juliet to the Master of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton; and pure so far\nhave been the spiritual results. But these circumstances were due, in\nthe early Middle Ages, to the fact of adultery; and to the new ideal of\nlove has clung, even in its purity, in its superior nobility, an element\nof corruption as unknown to gross and corrupt Antiquity as was the\ndelicacy and nobility of mediaeval love. The most poetical and pathetic\nof all mediaeval love stories, the very incarnation of all that is most\nlyric at once and most tragic in the new kind of passion, is the story,\ntold and retold by a score of poets and prose writers, of the loves of\nYseult of Ireland and of Sir Tristram who, as the knight was bringing\nthe princess to his uncle and her affianced, King Mark of Cornwall drank\ntogether by a fatal mistake a philter which made all such as partook of\nit in common inseparable lovers even unto death. Every one knows the\nresult r: how Yseult came to her husband already the paramour of\nTristram; how Brangwaine, her damsel, feeling that this unhallowed\npassion was due to her having left-within reach the potion intended for\nthe King and Queen of Cornwall, devoted herself, at the price of her\nmaidenhood, to connive in the amours of the lovers whom she had made;\nhow King Mark was deceived, and doubted, and was deceived again; how\nTristram fled to Brittany, but how, despite his seeming marriage with\nanother and equally lovely Yseult, he remained faithful to the Queen of\nCornwall. One version tells that Mark slew his nephew while he sat\nharping to Queen Yseult; another that Tristram died of grief because his\nscorned though wedded wife told him that the white-sailed ship, bearing\nhis mistress to meet him, bore the black sail which meant that she was\nnot on board; but all versions, I think, agree in ending with the fact,\nthat the briar-rose growing on the tomb of the one, slowly trailed its\nflowers and thorns along till it had reached also the grave of the\nother, and knit together, as love had knit together with its sweet\nblossoms and sharp spines, the two fated lovers. The Middle Ages were\nenthralled by this tale; but they were also, occasionally, a little\nshocked by it. Poets and prose writers tampered every now and then with\nincidents and characters, seeking to make it appear that, owing to the\nsubstitution of the waiting-maid, and the neglect of the wedded princess\nof Brittany, Yseult had never belonged to any man save Tristram, nor\nTristram to any woman save Yseult; or that King Mark had sent his nephew\nto woo the Irish queen's daughter merely in hopes of his perishing in\nthe attempt, and that his whole subsequent conduct was due to a mere\nunnatural hatred of a better knight than himself; touching up here and\nthere with a view to justifying and excusing to some degree the long\nseries of deceits which constituted the whole story. Thus the more timid\nand less gifted. But when, in the very first years (1210) of the\nthirteenth century, the greatest mediaeval poet that preceded Dante, the\ngreatest German poet that preceded Goethe, Meister Gottfried von\nStrassburg, took in hand the old threadbare story of \"Tristan und\nIsolde,\" he despised all alterations of this sort, and accepted the\noriginal tale in its complete crudeness.\n\nFor, consciously or unconsciously, Gottfried had conceived this story as\na thing wholly unknown in his time, and no longer subject to any of\nthose necessities of constant rearrangement which tormented mediaeval\npoets: he had conceived it not as a tale, but as a novel. Gottfried\nhimself was probably but little aware of what he was doing; the poem\nthat he was writing probably fell for him into the very same category as\nthe poems of other men; but to us, with our experience of so many\ndifferent forms of narrative, it must be evident that \"Tristan und\nIsolde\" is a new departure, inasmuch as it is not the story of deeds and\nthe people who did them, like the true epic from Homer to the\nNibelungen; nor the story of people and the adventures which happened to\nthem, like all romance poetry from \"Palemon and Arcite,\" to the \"Orlando\nFurioso;\" but, on the contrary, the story of the psychological\nrelations, the gradual metamorphosis of soul by soul, between two\npersons. The long introductory story of Tristram's youth must not\nmislead us, nor all the minute narrations of the killing of dragons and\nthe drinking of love philters: Gottfried, we must remember, was\ncertainly no deliberate innovator, and these thing's are the mere\ninevitable externalities of mediaeval poetry, preserved with dull slavish\ncare by the re-writer of a well-known tale, but enclosing in reality\nsomething essentially and startlingly modern: the history of a passion\nand of the spiritual changes which it brings about in those who are its\nvictims.\n\nTo meet again this purely psychological interest we must skip the whole\nrest of the Middle Ages, nay, skip even the great period of dramatic\nliterature, not stopping till we come to the end of the seventeenth and\nbeginning of the eighteenth century, to the \"Princesse de Cleves,\" to\n\"Clarissa Harlowe,\" nay, really, to \"The Nouvelle Heloise.\" For even in\nShakespeare there is always interest and importance in the action and\nreaction of subsidiary characters, in the event, in the accidental;\nthere is intrigue, chance, misunderstanding, fate--active agencies of\nwhich Othello and Hamlet, King Lear and Romeo, are helpless victims;\nthere is, even in this psychological English drama of the Elizabethans,\nfate in the shape of Iago, in the shape of the Ghost, in the shape of\nthe brothers of Webster's duchess; fate in the shape of a ring, a\nletter, a drug, but fate always. And in this \"Tristan und Isolde\" of\nGottfried von Strassburg is there not fate also in the love potion\nintended for King Mark, and given by the mistake of Brangwaine to Mark's\nbride and his nephew? To this objection, which will naturally occur to\nany reader who is not acquainted with the poem of Gottfried, I simply\nanswer, there is not. The love potion there is, but it does not play the\nsame part as do, for instance, the drugs of Friar Laurence and his\nintercepted letter. Suppose the friar's narcotic to have been less\nenduring in its action, or his message to have reached in safety, why\nthen Juliet would have been awake instead of asleep, or Romeo would not\nhave supposed her to be dead, and instead of the suicide of the two\nlovers, we should have had the successful carying off of Juliet by\nRomeo. Not so with Gottfried. The philter is there, and a great deal is\ntalked about it; but it is merely one of the old, threadbare trappings\nof the original story, which he has been too lazy to suppress; it is\nmerely, for the reader, the allegorical signal for an outburst of\npassion which all our subsequent knowledge of Tristram and Yseult shows\nus to be absolutely inevitable. In Gottfried's poem, the drinking of the\npotion signifies merely that all the rambling, mediaeval prelude, not to\nbe distinguished from the stories of \"Morte d'Arthur,\" and of half the\nromances of the Middle Ages, has come to a close and may be forgotten;\nand that the real work of the great poet, the real, matchless tragedy of\nthe four actors--Tristram, Yseult, Mark, and Brangwaine--has begun.\n\nYet if we seek again to account to ourselves for this astonishing\nimpression of modernness which we receive from Gottfried's poem, we\nrecognize that it is due to something far more important than the mere\nprecocious psychological interest; nay, rather, that this psychological\ninterest is itself dependent upon the fact which makes \"Tristan und\nIsolde,\" so modern to our feelings. This fact is simply that the poem of\nGottfried is the earliest, and yet perhaps almost the completest,\nexample of a literary anomaly which Antiquity, for all its abominations,\ndid not know: the glorification of fidelity in adultery, the\nglorification of excellence within the compass of guilt. Older times\n--more distant from our own in spirit, though not necessarily in\nyears--have presented us with many themes of guilt: the guilt which\nexists according to our own moral standard, but not according to that of\nthe narrator, as the magnificently tragic Icelandic incest story of\nSigmund and Signy; the guilt which has come about no one well knows how,\nan unfortunate circumstance leaving the sinner virtually stainless, in\nhis or her own eyes and the eyes of others, like the Homeric Helen; the\nheroic guilt, where the very heroism seems due to the self-sacrifice of\nthe sinner's innocence, of Judith; the struggling, remorseful guilt,\nhopelessly overcome by fate and nature, of Phaedra; the dull and dogged\nguilt, making the sinner scarce more than a mere physical\nstumbling-block for others, of the murderer Hagen in the Nibelungenlied;\nand, finally, the perverse guilt, delighting in the consciousness of\nitself, of demons like Richard and Iago, of libidinous furies like the\nheroines of Tourneur and Marston. The guilt theme of \"Tristan und\nIsolde\" falls into none of these special categories. This theme,\nunguessed even by Shakespeare, is that of the virtuous behaviour towards\none another of two individuals united in sinning against every one else.\nGottfried von Strassburg narrates with the greatest detail how Tristram\nleads to the unsuspecting king the unblushing, unremorseful woman\npolluted by his own embraces; how Yseult substitutes on the wedding\nnight her spotless damsel Brangwaine for her own sullied self; then,\nterrified lest the poor victim of her dishonour should ever reveal it,\nattempts to have her barbarously murdered, and, finally, seeing that\nnothing can shake the heroic creature's faith, admits her once more to\nbe the remorseful go-between in her amours. He narrates how Tristram\ndresses as a pilgrim and carries the queen from a ship to the shore, in\norder that Yseult may call on Christ to bear witness by a miracle that\nshe is innocent of adultery, never having been touched save by that\npilgrim and her own husband; and how, when the followers of King Mark\nhave surrounded the grotto in the wood, Tristram places the drawn sword\nbetween himself and the sleeping queen, as a symbol of their chastity\nwhich the king is too honest to suspect. He draws, with a psychological\npower truly extraordinary in the beginning of the thirteenth century,\nthe two other figures in this love drama: King Mark, cheated,\ndishonoured, oscillating between horrible doubt, ignominious suspicion\nand more ignominious credulity, his love for his wife, his trust in his\nnephew, his incapacity for conceiving ill-faith and fraud, the very\ngentleness and generosity of his nature, made the pander of guilt in\nwhich he cannot believe; and, on the other side, Brangwaine, the\nmelancholy, mute victim of her fidelity to Yseult, the weak, heroic\nsoul, rewarded only with cruel ingratitude, and condemned to screen and\nhelp the sin which she loathes and for which she assumes the awful\nresponsibility. All this does Gottfried do, yet without ever seeming to\nperceive the baseness and wickedness of this tissue of lies,\nequivocations, and perjuries in which his lovers hide their passion;\nwithout ever seeming to guess at the pathos and nobility of the man and\nthe woman who are the mere trumpery obstacles or trumpery aids to their\namours. He heaps upon Tristram and Yseult the most extravagant praises:\nhe is the flower of all knighthood, and she, the kindest, gentlest,\npurest, and noblest of women; he insists upon the wickedness of the\nworld which is for ever waging war upon their passion, and holds up to\nexecration all those who seek to spy out their secret. Gottfried is most\ngenuinely overcome by the ideal beauty of this inextinguishable\ndevotion, by the sublimity of this love which holds the whole world as\ndross; the crimes of the lovers are for him the mere culminating point\nof their moral grandeur, which has ceased to know any guilt save\nabsence of love, any virtue save loving. And so serene is the old\nminnesinger's persuasion, that it obscures the judgment and troubles the\nheart even of his reader; and we are tempted to ask ourselves, on laying\ndown the book, whether indeed this could have been sinful, this love of\nTristram and Yseult which triumphed over everything in the world, and\ncould be quenched only by death. That circle of hell where all those who\nhad sinfully loved were whirled incessantly in the perse, dark, stormy\nair, appeared in the eyes even of Dante as a place less of punishment\nthan of glory; and, especially since the Middle Ages, all mankind looks\nupon that particular hell-pit with admiration rather than with loathing.\nAnd herein consists, more even than in any deceptions practised upon\nKing Mark or any ingratitude manifested towards Brangwaine, the\nsinfulness of Tristram and Yseult: sinfulness which is not finite like\nthe individual lives which it offends, but infinite and immortal as the\nheart and the judgment which it perverts. For such a tale, and so told,\nas the tale of Gottfried von Strassburg, makes us sympathize with this\nfidelity and devotion of a man and woman who care for nothing in the\nworld save for each other, who are dragged and glued together by the\ndesire and habit of mutual pleasure; it makes us admire their readiness\nto die rather than be parted, when their whole life is concentrated in\ntheir reciprocal sin, when their miserable natures enjoy, care for,\nknow, only this miserable love. It makes us wink with leniency at the\ndishonour, the baseness, the cruelty, to which all this easy virtue is\ndue. And such sympathy, such admiration, such leniency, for howsoever\nshort a time they may remain in our soul, leave it, if they ever leave\nit completely and utterly less strong, less clean than it was before. We\nhave all of us a lazy tendency to approve of the virtue which costs no\ntrouble; to contemplate in ourselves or others, with a spurious moral\nsatisfaction, the development of this or that virtuous quality in souls\nwhich are deteriorating in undoubted criminal self-indulgence. We have\nall of us, at the bottom of our hearts, a fellow feeling for all human\naffection; and the sinfulness of sinners like Tristram and Yseult lies\nlargely in the fact that they pervert this legitimate and holy sympathy\ninto a dangerous leniency for any strong and consistent love, into a\nmorbid admiration for any irresistible mutual passion, making us forget\nthat love has in itself no moral value, and that while self-indulgence\nmay often be innocent, only self-abnegation can ever be holy.\n\nThe great mediaeval German poem of Tristram and Yseult remained for\ncenturies a unique phenomenon; only John Ford perhaps, that grander and\ndarker twin spirit of Gottfried von Strassburg, reviving, even among the\nmorbidly psychological and crime-fascinated followers of Shakespeare,\nthat new theme of evil--the heroism of unlawful love. But Gottfried had\nmerely manipulated with precocious analytical power a mode of feeling\nand thinking which was universal in the feudal Middle Ages; the great\nepic of adultery was forgotten, but the sympathetic and admiring\ninterest in illegitimate passion remained; and was transmitted, wherever\nthe Renaissance or the Reformation did not break through such\ntransmission of mediaeval habits, as an almost inborn instinct from\nfather to son, from mother to daughter. And we may doubt whether the\nimportant class of men and women who write and read the novels of\nillicit love, could ever have existed, had not the psychological artists\nof modern times, from Rousseau to George Sand, and from Stendhal to\nOctave Feuillet, found ready prepared for them in the countries not\nre-tempered by Protestantism, an assoiation of romance, heroism, and\nideality with mere adulterous passion, which was unknown to the\ncorruption of Antiquity and to the lawlessness of the Dark Ages, and\nwhich remained as a fatal alloy to that legacy of mere spiritual love\nwhich was left to the world by the love poets of early feudalism.\n\n\nII.\n\nThe love of the troubadours and minnesingers, of the Arthurian tales,\nwhich show that love in narrative form, was, as we have seen, polluted\nby the selfishness, the deceitfulness, the many unclean necessities of\nadulterous passion. Elevated and exquisite though it was, it could not\nreally purify the relations of man and woman, since it was impure. Nay,\nwe see that through its influence the grave and simple married love of\nthe earlier tales of chivalry, the love of Siegfried for Chriemhilt, of\nRoland for his bride Belle Aude, of Renaud for his wife Clarisse, is\ngradually replaced in later fiction by the irregular love-makings of\nHuon of Bordeaux, Ogier the Dane, and Artus of Brittany; until we come\nat last to the extraordinary series of the Amadis romances, where every\nhero without exception is the bastard of virtuous parents, who\nsubsequently marry and discover their foundling: a state of things\nwhich, even in the corrupt Renaissance, Boiardo and Ariosto found it\nnecessary to reform in their romantic poems. With idealizing refinement,\nthe chivalric love of the French, Provencal, and German poets brings\nalso a kind of demoralization which, from one point of view, makes the\nspotless songs of Bernard de Ventadour and Armaud de Mareulh, of Ulrich\nvon Liechtenstein and Frauenlob, less pure than the licentious poems\naddressed by the Greeks and Romans to women who, at least, were not the\nwives of other men.\n\nShall all this idealizing refinement, this almost religious fervour,\nthis new poetic element of chivalric love remain useless; or serve only\nto subtly pollute while pretending to purify the great singing passion?\nNot so. But to prevent such waste of what in itself is pure and\nprecious, is the mission of another country, of another civilization; of\na wholly different cycle of poets who, receiving the new element of\nmediaeval love after it has passed through and been sifted by a number\nof hands, shall cleanse and recreate it in the fire of intellectual and\nalmost abstract passion, producing that wonderful essence of love which,\nas the juices squeezed by alchemists out of jewels purified the body\nfrom all its ills, shall purify away all the diseases of the human soul.\n\nWhile the troubadours and minnesingers had been singing at the courts of\nAngevine kings and Hohenstauffen emperors, of counts of Toulouse and\ndukes of Austria; a new civilization, a new political and social system,\nhad gradually been developing in the free burghs of Italy; a new life\nentirely the reverse of the life of feudal countries. The Italian cities\nwere communities of manufacturers and merchants, into which only\ngradually, and at the sacrifice of every aristocratic privilege and\nhabit, a certain number of originally foreign feudatories were gradually\nabsorbed. Each community consisted of a number of mercantile families,\nequal before the law, and illustrious or obscure according to their\ntalents or riches, whose members, instead of being scattered over a wide\narea like the members of the feudal nobility, were most often gathered\ntogether under one roof--sons, brothers, nephews, daughters, sisters and\ndaughters-in-law, forming a hierarchy attending to the business of\nfactory or counting-house under the orders of the father of the family,\nand to the economy of the house-under the superintendence of the mother;\na manner of living at once business-like and patriarchal, expounded\npounded by the interlocutors in Alberti's \"Governo della Famiglia,\" and\nwhich lasted until the dissolution of the commonwealths and almost to\nour own times. Such habits imply a social organization, an intercourse\nbetween men and women, and a code of domestic morality the exact\nopposite to those of feudal countries. Here, in the Italian cities,\nthere are no young men bound to loiter, far from their homes, round the\nwife of a military superior, to whom her rank and her isolation from all\nneighbours give idleness and solitude. The young men are all of them in\nbusiness, usually with their own kinsfolk; not in their employer's\nhouse, but in his office; they have no opportunity of seeing a woman\nfrom dawn till sunset. The women, on their side, are mainly employed at\nhome: the whole domestic arrangement depends upon them, and keeps their\nhands constantly full; working, and working in the company of their\nfemale relatives and friends. Men and women are free comparatively\nlittle, and then they are free all together in the same places; hence no\nopportunities for _tete-a-tete_. Early Italian poetry is fond of showing\nus the young poet reading his verses or explaining his passion to those\ngentle, compassionate women learned in love, of whom we meet a troop,\nbeautiful, vague, half-arch, half-melancholy faces, consoling Dante in\nthe \"Vita Nuova,\" and reminding Guido Cavalcanti of his lady far off at\nToulouse. But such women almost invariably form a group; they cannot be\napproached singly. Such a state of society inevitably produces a high\nand strict morality. In these early Italian cities a case of in'\nfidelity is punished ruthlessly; the lover banished or killed; the wife\nfor ever lost to the world, perhaps condemned to solitude and a\nlingering death in the fever tracts, like Pia dei Tolomei. A complacent\ndeceived husband is even more ridiculous (the deceived husband is\nnotoriously the chief laughing stock of all mediaeval free towns) than is\na jealous husband among the authorized and recognized _cicisbeos_ of a\nfeudal court. Indeed the respect for marriage vows inevitable in this\nbusy democratic mediaeval life is so strong, that long after the\ncommonwealths have turned into despotisms, and every social tie has been\ndissolved in the Renaissance, the wives and daughters of men stained\nwith every libidinous vice, nay, of the very despots themselves\n--Tiberiuses and Neros on a smaller scale--remain spotless in the midst\nof evil; and authorized adultery begins in Italy only under the Spanish\nrule in the late sixteenth century.\n\nSuch were the manners and morals of the Italian commonwealths when,\nabout the middle of the thirteenth century, the men of Tuscany, now free\nand prosperous, suddenly awoke to the consciousness that they had a soul\nwhich desired song, and a language which was spontaneously singing. It\nwas the moment when painting was beginning to claim for the figures of\nreal men and women the walls and vaulted spaces whence had hitherto\nglowered, with vacant faces and huge ghostlike eyes, mosaic figures,\nfrom their shimmering golden ground; the moment when the Pisan artists\nhad sculptured solemnly draped madonnas and kings not quite unworthy of\nthe carved sarcophagi which stood around them; the moment when, merging\ntogether old Byzantine traditions and Northern examples, the architects\nof Florence, Siena, and Orvieto conceived a style which made cathedrals\ninto marvellous and huge reliquaries of marble, jasper, alabaster, and\nmosaics. The mediaeval flowering time had come late, very late, in Italy;\nbut the atmosphere was only the warmer, the soil the richer, and Italy\nput forth a succession of exquisite and superb immortal flowers of art\nwhen the artistic sap of other countries had begun to be exhausted. But\nthe Italians, the Tuscans, audacious in the other arts, were diffident\nof themselves with regard to poetry. Architecture, painting, sculpture,\nhad been the undisputed field for plebeian craftsmen, belonging\nexclusively to the free burghs and disdained by the feudal castles; but\npoetry was essentially the aristocratic, the feudal art, cultivated by\nknights and cultivated for kings and barons. It was probably an unspoken\nsense of this fact which caused the early Tuscan poets to misgive their\nown powers and to turn wistfully and shyly towards the poets of Provence\nand of Sicily. There, beyond the seas, under the last lords of Toulouse\nand the brilliant mongrel Hohenstauffen princes, were courts, knights,\nand ladies; there was the tradition of this courtly art of poetry; and\nthere only could the sons of Florentine or Sienese merchants,\nclodhoppers in gallantry and song, hope to learn the correct style of\nthing. Hence the history of the Italian lyric before Dante is the\nhistory of a series of transformations which connect a style of poetry\nabsolutely feudal and feudally immoral, with the hitherto unheard-of\nplatonic love subtleties of the \"Vita Nuova.\" And it is curious, in\nlooking over the collections of early Italian lyrists, to note the\nalteration in tone as Sicily and the feudal courts are left further and\nfurther behind. Ciullo d' Alcamo, flourishing about 1190, is the only\nItalian-writing poet absolutely contemporaneous with the earlier and\nbetter trouveres, troubadours, and minnesingers; and he is also the only\none who resembles them very closely. His famous _tenso_, beginning \"Rosa\nfresca aulentissima\" (a tolerably faithful translation heads the\nbeautiful collection of the late Mr. D.G. Rossetti), is indeed more\nexplicitly gross and immoral than the majority of Provencal and German\nlove-songs: loose as are many of the _albas, serenas, wachtlieder_, and\neven many of the less special forms of German and Provencal poetry, I am\nacquainted with none of them which comes up to this singular dialogue,\nin which a man, refusing to marry a woman, little by little wins her\nover to his wishes and makes her brazenly invite him to her dishonour.\nBetween Ciullo d' Alcamo and his successors there is some gap of time,\nand a corresponding want of gradation. Yet the Sicilian poets of the\ncourts of Hohenstauffen and Anjou, recognizable by their name or the\nname of their town, Inghilfredi, Manfredi, Ranieri and Ruggierone da\nPalermo, Tommaso and Matteo da Messina, Guglielmotto d' Otranto, Rinaldo\nd'Aquino, Peir delle Vigne, either maintain altogether unchanged the\ntone of the troubadours, or only gradually, as in the remarkable case of\nthe Notary of Lentino, approximate to the platonic poets of Tuscany. The\nsongs of the archetype of Sicilian singers, the Emperor Frederick II.,\nare completely Provencal in feeling as in form, though infinitely\ninferior in execution. With him it is always the pleasure which he hopes\nfrom his lady, or the pleasure which he has had--\"Quando ambidue stavamo\nin allegranza alla dolce fera;\" \"Pregovi donna mia--Per vostra\ncortesia--E pregovi che sia--Quello che lo core disia.\" Again: \"Sospiro\ne sto in rancura--Ch' io son si disioso--E pauroso--Mi fate penare--Ma\ntanto m' assicura--Lo suo viso amoroso--E lo gioioso--Riso e lo\nsguardare--E lo parlare--Di questa criatura--Che per paura--Mi fate\npenare--E di morare--Tant' e fina e pura--Tanto e saggia e cortese--Non\ncredo che pensasse--Ne distornasse--Di cio he m' impromise.\" It is, this\nearliest Italian poetry, like the more refined poetry of troubadours and\nminnesingers, eminently an importuning of highborn but loosely living\nwomen. From Sicily and Apulia poetry goes first, as might be expected\n(and as probably sculpture went) to the seaport Pisa, thence to the\nneighbouring Lucca, considerably before reaching Florence. And as it\nbecomes more Italian and urban, it becomes also, under the strict\nvigilance of burgher husbands, considerably more platonic. In Bologna,\nthe city of jurists, it acquires (the remark is not mine merely, but\nbelongs also to Carducci) the very strong flavour of legal quibbling\nwhich distinguishes the otherwise charming Guido Guinicelli; and once in\nFlorence, among the most subtle of all subtle Tuscans, it becomes at\nonce what it remained even for Dante, saturated with metaphysics: the\nwoman is no longer paramount, she is subordinated to Love himself; to\nthat personified abstraction Amor, the serious and melancholy son of\npagan philosophy and Christian mysticism. The Tuscans had imported from\nProvence and Sicily the new element of mediaeval love, of life devotion,\nsoul absorption in loving; if they would sing, they must sing of this;\nany other kind of love, at a time when Italy still read and relished her\nwould-be Provencals, Lanfranc Cicala and Sordel of Mantua, would have\nbeen unfashionable and unendurable. But in these Italian commonwealths,\nas we have seen, poets are forced, nilly-willy, to be platonic; an\nimportuning poem found in her work-basket may send a Tuscan lady into a\nconvent, or, like Pia, into the Maremma; an _alba_ or a _serena_\ninterrupted by a wool-weaver of Calimara or a silk spinner of Lucca, may\nmean that the imprudent poet be found weltering in blood under some\narchway the next morning. The chivalric sentimentality of feudalism must\nbe restrained; and little by little, under the pressure of such very\ndifferent social habits, it grows into a veritable platonic passion.\nPoets must sing, and in order that they sing, they must adore; so men\nactually begin to seek out, and adore and make themselves happy and\nwretched about women from whom they can hope only social distinctions;\nand this purely aesthetic passion goes on by the side nay, rather on the\ntop, of their humdrum, conjugal life or loosest libertinage. Petrarch's\nbastards were born during the reign of Madonna Laura; and that they\nshould have been, was no more a slight or infidelity to her than to the\nother Madonna, the one in heaven. Laura had a right to only ideal\nsentiments ideal relations; the poet was at liberty to carry more\nmaterial preferences elsewhere.\n\nBut could such love as this exist, could it be genuine? To my mind,\nindubitably. For there is, in all our perceptions and desires of\nphysical and moral beauty, an element of passion which is akin to love;\nand there is, in all love that is not mere lust, a perception of, a\ncraving for, beauty, real or imaginary which is identical with our\nmerely aesthetic perceptions and cravings; hence the possibility, once\nthe wish for such a passion present, of a kind of love which is mainly\naesthetic, which views the beloved as gratifying merely to the wish for\nphysical or spiritual loveliness, and concentrates upon one exquisite\nreality all dreams of ideal perfection. Moreover there comes, to all\nnobler natures, a love dawning: a brightening and delicate flushing of\nthe soul before the actual appearance of the beloved one above the\nhorizon, which is as beautiful and fascinating in its very clearness,\npallor, and coldness, as the unearthly purity of the pale amber and\ngreen and ashy rose which streaks the heavens before sunrise. The love\nof the early Tuscan poets (for we must count Guinicelli, in virtue of\nhis language, as a Tuscan) had been restrained, by social necessities\nfirst, then by habit and deliberate aesthetic choice, within the limits\nof this dawning state; and in this state, it had fed itself off mere\nspiritual food, and acquired the strange intensity of mere intellectual\npassions. We give excessive weight, in our days, to spontaneity in all\nthings, apt to think that only the accidental, the unsought, can be\nvital; but it is true in many things, and truest in all matters of the\nimagination and the heart, that the desire to experience any sentiment\nwill powerfully conduce to its production, and even give it a strength\ndue to the long incubation of the wish. Thus the ideal love of the\nTuscan poets was probably none the weaker, but rather the stronger, for\nthe desire which they felt to sing such passion; nay, rather to hear it\nsinging in themselves. The love of man and wife, of bride and\nbridegroom, was still of the domain of prose; adulterous love forbidden;\nand the tradition of, the fervent wish for, the romantic passion of the\ntroubadours consumed them as a strong artistic craving. Platonic love\nwas possible, doubly possible in souls tense with poetic wants; it\nbecame a reality through the strength of the wish for it.\n\nNor was this all. In all imaginative passions, intellectual motives are\nso much fuel; and in this case the necessity of logically explaining the\nbodiless passion for a platonic lady, of understanding why they felt in\na manner so hitherto unknown to gross mankind, tended greatly to\nincrease the love of these Tuscans, and to bring it in its chastity to\nthe pitch of fervour of more fleshly passions, by mingling with the\naesthetic emotions already in their souls the mystical theorizings of\ntranscendental metaphysics, and the half-human, half-supernatural\necstasy of mediaeval religion. For we must remember that Italy was a\ncountry not merely of manufacturers and bankers, but of philosophers\nalso and of saints.\n\nAmong the Italians of the thirteenth century the revival of antique\nliterature was already in full swing; while in France, Germany, and\nProvence there had been, in lyric poetry at least, no trace of classic\nlore. Whereas the trouveres and troubadours had possessed but the light\nintellectual luggage of a military aristocracy; and the minnesingers\nhad, for the most part, been absolutely ignorant of reading and writing\n(Wolfram says so of himself, and Ulrich von Liechtenstein relates how he\ncarried about his lady's letter for days unread until the return of his\nsecretary); the poets of Italy, from Brunetto Latini to Petrarch, were\neminently scholars; men to whom, however much they might be politicians\nand ringleaders, like Cavalcanti, Donati, and Dante, whatever existed of\nantique learning was thoroughly well known. Such men were familiar with\nwhatever yet survived of the transcendental theories of Plato and\nPlotinus; and they seized at once upon the mythic metaphysics of an\nantenatal condition, of typical ideas, of the divine essence of beauty,\non all the mystic discussions on love and on the soul, as a\nphilosophical explanation of their seemingly inexplicable passion for an\nunapproachable woman. The lady upon whom the poetic fervour, the\nmediaeval love, inherited from Provence and France, was now expended, and\nwhom social reasons placed quite beyond the reach of anything save the\npoet's soul and words, was evidently beloved for the sake of that much\nof the divine essence contained in her nature; she was loved for purely\nspiritual reasons, loved as a visible and living embodiment of virtue\nand beauty, as a human piece of the godhead. So far, therefore, from\nsuch an attachment being absurd, as absurd it would have seemed to\ntroubadours and minnesingers, who never served a lady save for what they\ncalled a reward; it became, in the eyes of these platonizing Italians,\nthe triumph of the well-bred soul; and as such, soon after, a necessary\ncomplement to dignities, talents, and wealth, the very highest\noccupation of a liberal mind. Thus did their smattering of platonic and\nneo-platonic philosophy supply the Tuscan poets with a logical reality\nfor this otherwise unreal passion.\n\nBut there was something more. In this democratic and philosophizing\nItaly, there was not the gulf which separated the chivalric poets, men\nof the sword and not of books, from the great world of religious\nmysticism; for, though the minnesingers especially were extremely devout\nand sang many a strange love-song to the Virgin; they knew, they could\nknow, nothing of the contemplative religion of Eckhardt and his\ndisciples--humble and transcendental spirits, whose words were treasured\nby the sedentary, dreamy townsfolk of the Rhine, but would have conveyed\nno meaning even to the poet of the Grail epic, with its battles and\nfeasts, its booted and spurred slapdash morality, Wolfram von\nEschenbach. In the great manufacturing cities of Italy, such religious\nmysticism spread as it could never spread in feudal courts; it became\nfamiliar, both in the mere passionate sermons and songs of the wandering\nfriars, and in the subtle dialectics of the divines; above all, it\nbecame familiar to the poets. Now the essence of this contemplative\ntheology of the Middle Ages, which triumphantly held its own against the\ncut-and-dry argumentation of scholastic rationalism, was love. Love\nwhich assuredly meant different things to different minds; a passionate\nbenevolence towards man and beast to godlike simpletons like Francis of\nAssisi; a mere creative and impassive activity of the divinity to\ndeep-seeing (so deep as to see only their own strange passionate eyes\nand lips reflected in the dark well of knowledge) and almost pantheistic\nthinkers like Master Eckhardt; but love nevertheless, love. \"Amor,\namore, ardo d' amore,\" St. Francis had sung in a wild rhapsody, a sort\nof mystic dance, a kind of furious _malaguena_ of divine love; and that\nhe who would wish to know God, let him love--\"Qui vult habere notitiam\nDei, amet,\" had been written by Hugo of St. Victor, one of the subtlest\nof all the mystics. \"Amor oculus est,\" said Master Eckhardt; love,\nlove--was not love then the highest of all human faculties, and must not\nthe act of loving, of perceiving God's essence in some creature which\nhad virtue, the soul's beauty, and beauty, the body's virtue, be the\nnoblest business of a noble life? Thus argued the poets; and their\nargument, half-passionate, half-scholastic, mixing Phaedrus and\nBonaventura, the Schools of Alexandria and the Courts of Love of\nProvence, resulted in adding all the fervid reality of philosophical and\nreligious aspiration to their clear and cold phantom of disembodied love\nof woman.\n\nLittle by little therefore, together with the carnal desires of\nProvencals and Sicilians, the Tuscan poets put behind them those little\ncoquetries of style and manner, complications of metre and rhythm\nlearned and fantastic as a woman's plaited and braided hair; those\nmetaphors and similes, like bright flowers or shining golden ribbons\ndropped from the lady's bosom and head and eagerly snatched by the\nlover, which we still find, curiously transformed and scented with the\nrosemary and thyme of country lanes, in the peasant poetry of modern\nTuscany. Little by little does the love poetry of the Italians reject\nsuch ornaments; and cloth itself in that pale garment, pale and stately\nin heavy folds like a nun's or friar's weeds, but pure and radiant and\nsolemn as the garment of some painted angel, which we have all learned\nto know from the \"Vita Nuova.\"\n\nTo describe this poetry of the immediate precursors and contemporaries\nof Dante is to the last degree difficult: it can be described only by\nsymbols, and symbols can but mislead us. Dante Rossetti himself, after\ntranslating with exquisite beauty the finest poems of this school,\nshowed how he had read into them his own spirit, when he drew the\nbeautiful design for the frontispiece of his collection. These two\nlovers--the youth kneeling in his cloth of silver robe, lifting his long\nthrobbing neck towards the beloved; the lady stooping down towards him,\nraising him up and kissing him; the mingled cloud of waving hair, the\nfour tight-clasped hands, the four tightly glued lips, the profile\nhidden by the profile, the passion and the pathos, the eager, wistful\nfaces, nay, the very splendour of brocade robes and jewels, the very\nsweetness of blooming rose spaliers; all this is suitable to illustrate\nthis group of sonnets or that of the \"House of Life;\" but it is false,\nfalse in efflorescence and luxuriance of passion, splendour and colour\nof accessory, to the poetry of these early Tuscans. Imaginative their\npoetry certainly is, and passionate; indeed the very concentration of\nimaginative passion; but imagination and passion unlike those of all\nother poets; perhaps because more rigorously reduced to their elements:\nimagination purely of the heart, passion purely of the intellect,\nneither of the senses: love in its most essential condition, but, just\nbecause an essence, purged of earthly alloys, rarefied, sublimated into\na cultus or a philosophy.\n\nThese poems might nearly all have been written by one man, were it\npossible for one man to vary from absolute platitude to something like\ngenius, so homogeneous is their tone: everywhere do we meet the same\nsimplicity of diction struggling with the same complication and subtlety\nof thought, the same abstract speculation strangely mingled with most\nindividual and personal pathos. The mode of thinking and feeling, the\nconception of all the large characteristics of love, and of all its\nsmall incidents are, in this _cycle_ of poets, constantly the same; and\nthey are the same in the \"Vita Nuova;\" Dante having, it would seem,\ninvented and felt nothing unknown to his immediate predecessors and\ncontemporaries, but merely concentrated their thoughts and feelings by\nthe greater intenseness of his genius. This platonic love of Dante's\ndays is, as I have said, a passion sublimated into a philosophy and a\ncultus. The philosophy of love engages much of these poets' attention;\nall have treated of it, but Guido Cavalcanti, Dante's elder brother in\npoetry, is love's chief theologian. He explains, as Eckhardt or\nBonaventura might explain the mysteries of God's being and will, the\nnature and operation of love. \"Love, which enamours us of excellence,\narises out of pure virtue of the soul, and equals us to God,\" he tells\nus; and subtly developes his theme. This being the case, nothing can be\nmore mistaken than to suppose, as do those of little sense, that Love is\nblind, and goes blindly about (\"Da sentir poco, e da credenza vana--Si\nmove il dir di cotal grossa gente--Ch' amor fa cieco andar per lo suo\nregno\"). Love is omniscient, since love is born of the knowledge and\nrecognition of excellence. Such love as this is the only true source of\nhappiness, since it alone raises man to the level of the divinity.\nCavalcanti has in him not merely the subtlety but the scornfulness of a\ngreat divine. His wrath against all those who worship or defend a\ndifferent god of Love knows no bounds. \"I know not what to say of him\nwho adores the goddess born of Saturn and sea-foam. His love is fire: it\nseems sweet, but its result is bitter and evil. He may indeed call\nhimself happy; but in such delights he mingles himself with much\nbaseness.\" Such is this god of Love, who, when he descended into Dante's\nheart, caused the spirit of life to tremble terribly in his secret\nchamber, and trembling to cry, \"Lo, here is a god stronger than myself,\nwho coming will rule over me. Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens\ndominabitur mihi!\"\n\nThe god, this chaste and formidable archangel Amor, is the true subject\nof these poets' adoration; the woman into whom he descends by a mystic\nmiracle of beauty and of virtue becomes henceforward invested with\nsomewhat of his awful radiance. She is a gentle, gracious lady; a\nlovable and loving woman, in describing whose grey-green eyes and colour\nas of snow tinted with pomegranate, the older Tuscans would fain linger,\ncomparing her to the new-budded rose, to the morning star, to the golden\nsummer air, to the purity of snowflakes falling silently in a serene\nsky; but the sense of the divinity residing within her becomes too\nstrong. From her eyes dart spirits who strike awe into the heart; from\nher lips come words which make men sigh; on her passage the poet casts\ndown his eyes; notions, all these, with which we are familiar from the\n\"Vita Nuova;\" but which belong to Cavalcanti, Lapo Gianni, nay, even to\nGuinicelli, quite as much as to Dante. The poet bids his verse go forth\nto her, but softly; and stand before her with bended head, as before the\nMother of God. She is a miracle herself, a thing sent from heaven, a\nspirit, as Dante says in that most beautiful of all his sonnets, the\nsumming up of all that the poets of his circle had said of their\nlady--\"Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare.\"\n\n\"She passes along the street so beautiful and gracious,\" says\nGuinicelli, \"that she humbles pride in all whom she greets, and makes\nhim of our faith if he does not yet believe. And no base man can come\ninto her presence. And I will tell you another virtue of her: no man can\nthink ought of evil as long as he looks upon her.\" \"The noble mind which\nI feel, on account of this youthful lady who has appeared, makes me\ndespise baseness and vileness,\" says Lapo Gianni. The women who surround\nher are glorified in her glory, glorified in their womanhood and\ncompanionship with her. \"The ladies around you,\" says Cavalcanti, \"are\ndear to me for the sake of your love; and I pray them as they are\ncourteous, that they should do you all honour.\" She is, indeed, scarcely\na woman, and something more than a saint: an avatar, an incarnation of\nthat Amor who is born of virtue and beauty, and raises men's minds to\nheaven; and when Cavalcanti speaks of his lady's portrait behind the\nblazing tapers of Orsanmichele, it seems but natural that she should be\non an altar, in the Madonna's place. The idea of a mysterious\nincarnation of love in the lady, or of a mystic relationship between her\nand love, returns to these poets. Lapo Gianni tells us first that she is\nAmor's sister, then speaks of her as Amor's bride; nay, in this love\ntheology of the thirteenth century, arises the same kind of confusion as\nin the mystic disputes of the nature of the Godhead. A Sienese poet, Ugo\nda Massa, goes so far as to say, \"Amor and I are all one thing; and we\nhave one will and one heart; and if I were not, Amor were not; mind you,\ndo not think I am saying these things from subtlety ('e non pensate ch'\nio 'l dica per arte'); for certainly it is true that I am love, and he\nwho should slay me would slay love.\"\n\nTogether with the knowledge of public life and of scholastic theories,\ntogether with the love of occult and cabalistic science, and the craft\nof Provencal poetry, Dante received from his Florence of the thirteenth\ncentury the knowledge of this new, this exotic and esoteric intellectual\nlove. And, as it is the mission of genius to gather into an undying\nwhole, to model into a perfect form, the thoughts and feelings and\nperceptions of the less highly endowed men who surround it, so Dante\nmoulded out of the love passion and love philosophy of his day the \"Vita\nNuova.\" Whether the story narrated in this book is fact; whether a real\nwoman whom he called Beatrice ever existed; some of those praiseworthy\npersons, who prowl in the charnel-house of the past, and put its poor\nfleshless bones into the acids and sublimates of their laboratory, have\ngravely doubted. But such doubts cannot affect us. For if the story of\nthe \"Vita Nuova\" be a romance, and if Beatrice be a mere romance\nheroine, the real meaning and value of the book does not change in our\neyes; since, to concoct such a tale, Dante must have had a number of\nreal experiences which are fully the tale's equivalent; and to conceive\nand create such a figure as Beatrice, and such a passion as she inspires\nher poet, he must have felt as a poignant reality the desire for such a\nlady, the capacity for such a love. A tale merely of the soul, and of\nthe soul's movements and actions, this \"Vita Nuova;\" so why should it\nmatter if that which could never exist save in the spirit, should have\nbeen but the spirit's creation? It is, in its very intensity, a vision\nof love; what if it be a vision merely conceived and never realized?\nHence the futility of all those who wish to destroy our faith and\npleasure by saying \"all this never took place.\" Fools, can you tell what\ndid or did not take place in a poet's mind? Be this as it may, the \"Vita\nNuova,\" thank heaven, exists; and, thank heaven, exists as a reality to\nour feelings. The longed-for ideal, the perfection whose love, said\nCavalcanti, raises us up to God, has seemed to gather itself into a\nhuman shape; and a real being has been surrounded by the halo of\nperfection emanated from the poet's own soul. The vague visions of glory\nhave suddenly taken body in this woman, seen rarely, at a distance; the\nwoman whom, as a child, the poet, himself a child, had already looked at\nwith the strange, ideal fascination which we sometimes experience in our\nchildhood. People are apt to smile at this opening of the \"Vita Nuova;\"\nto put aside this narrative of childish love together with the pathetic\nlittle pedantries of learned poetry and Kabbala, of the long gloses to\neach poem, and the elaborate calculations of the recurrence and\ncombination of the number nine (and that curious little bit of\nencyclopaedic display about the Syrian month _Tismin_) as so much pretty\nlocal colouring or obsolete silliness. But there is nothing at which to\nlaugh in such childish fascinations; the wonderful, the perfect, is more\nopen to us as children than it is afterwards: a word, a picture, a\nsnatch of music will have for us an ineffable, mysterious meaning; and\nhow much more so some human being, often some other, more brilliant\nchild from whose immediate contact we are severed by some circumstance,\nperhaps by our own consciousness of inferiority, which makes that other\nappear strangely distant, above us, moving in a world of glory which we\nscarcely hope to approach; a child sometimes, or sometimes some grown\nperson, beautiful, brilliant, who sings or talks or looks at us, the\nchild, with ways which we do not understand, like some fairy or goddess.\nNo indeed, there is nothing to laugh at in this, in this first\nblossoming of that love for higher and more beautiful things, which in\nmost of us is trodden down, left to wither, by our maturer selves;\nnothing to make us laugh; nay, rather to make us sigh that later on we\nsee too well, see others too much on their real level, scrutinize too\nmuch; too much, alas, for what at best is but an imperfect creature. And\nin this state of fascination does the child Dante see the child\nBeatrice, as a strange, glorious little vision from a childish sphere\nquite above him; treasuring up that vision, till with his growth it\nexpands and grows more beautiful and noble, but none the less\nfascinating and full of awfulness. When, therefore, the grave young\npoet, full of the yearning for Paradise (but Paradise vaguer, sweeter,\nless metaphysic and theological than the Paradise of his manhood); as\nyet but a gracious, learned youth, his terrible moral muscle still\nundeveloped by struggle, the noble and delicate dreamer of Giotto's\nfresco, with the long, thin, almost womanish face, marked only by dreamy\neyes and lips, wandering through this young Florence of the Middle\nAges--when, I say, he meets after long years, the noble and gentle\nwoman, serious and cheerful and candid; and is told that she is that\nsame child who was the queen and goddess of his childish fancies; then\nthe vague glory with which his soul is filled expands and enwraps the\nbeloved figure, so familiar and yet so new. And the blood retreats from\nhis veins, and he trembles; and a vague god within him, half allegory,\nhalf reality, cries out to him that a new life for him has begun.\nBeatrice has become the ideal; Beatrice, the real woman, has ceased to\nexist; the Beatrice of his imagination only remains, a piece of his own\nsoul embodied in a gracious and beautiful reality, which he follows,\nseeks, but never tries to approach. Of the real woman he asks nothing;\nno word throughout the \"Vita Nuova\" of entreaty or complaint, no shadow\nof desire, not a syllable of those reproaches of cruelty which Petrarch\nis for ever showering upon Laura. He desires nothing of Beatrice, and\nBeatrice cannot act wrongly; she is perfection, and perfection makes him\nwho contemplates humble at once and proud, glorifying his spirit. Once,\nindeed, he would wish that she might listen to him; he has reason to\nthink that he has fallen in her esteem, has seemed base and uncourteous\nin her eyes, and he would explain. But he does not wish to address her;\nit never occurs to him that she can ever feel in any way towards him; it\nis enough that he feels towards her. Let her go by and smile and\ngraciously salute her friends: the sight of her grave and pure\nregalness, nay, rather divinity, of womanhood, suffices for his joy;\nnay, later the consciousness comes upon him that it is sufficient to\nknow of her existence and of his love even without seeing her. And, as\nmust be the case in such ideal passion, where the action is wholly in\nthe mind of the lover, he is at first ashamed, afraid; he feels a terror\nlest his love, if known to her, should excite her scorn; a horror lest\nit be misunderstood and befouled by the jests of those around him, even\nof those same gentle women to whom he afterwards addresses his praise of\nBeatrice. He is afraid of exposing to the air of reality this ideal\nflower of passion. But the moment comes when he can hide it no longer;\nand, behold, the passion flower of his soul opens out more gloriously in\nthe sunlight of the world. He is proud of his passion, of his worship;\nhe feels the dignity and glory of being the priest of such a love. The\nwomen all round, the beautiful, courteous women, of whom, only just\nnow, he was so dreadfully afraid, become his friends and confidants;\nthey are quite astonished (half in love, perhaps, with the young poet)\nat this strange way of loving; they sympathize, admire, are in love with\nhis love for Beatrice. And to them he speaks of her rather than to men,\nfor the womanhood which they share with his lady consecrates them in his\neyes; and they, without jealousy towards this ideal woman, though\nperhaps not without longing for this ideal love, listen as they might\nlisten to some new and unaccountably sweet music, touched and honoured,\nand feeling towards Dante as towards some beautiful, half-mad thing. He\ntalks of her, sings of her, and is happy; the strangest thing in this\nintensely real narrative of real love is this complete satisfaction of\nthe passion in its own existence, this complete absence of all desire or\nhope. But this happiness is interrupted by the sudden, terrible thought\nthat one day all this must cease; the horrible, logical necessity coming\nstraight home to him, that one day she must die--\"Di necessita conviene\nche la gentilissima Beatrice alcuna volta si muoia.\" There is nothing\ntruer, more intensely pathetic, in all literature, than this frightful\npang of evil, not real, but first imagined; this frightful nightmare\nvision of the end coming when reality is still happy. Have we not all of\nus at one time felt the horrible shudder of that sudden perception that\nhappiness must end; that the beloved, the living, must die; that this\nthing the present, which we clasp tight with our arms, which throbs\nagainst our breast, will in but few moments be gone, vanished, leaving\nus to grasp mere phantom recollections? Compared with this the blow of\nthe actual death of Beatrice is gentle. And then, the truthfulness of\nhis narration how, with yearning, empty heart, hungering after those\npoor lost realities of happiness, after that occasional glimpse of his\nlady, that rare catching of her voice, that blessed consciousness of her\nexistence, he little by little lets himself be consoled, cradled to\nsleep like a child which has sobbed itself out, in the sympathy, the\nvague love, of another--the Donna della Finestra--with whom he speaks of\nBeatrice; and the sudden, terrified, starting up and shaking off of any\nsuch base consolation, the wrath at any such mental infidelity to the\ndead one, the indignant impatience with his own weakness, with his\nbaseness in not understanding that it is enough that Beatrice has lived\nand that he has loved her, in not feeling that the glory and joy of the\nineffaceable past is sufficient for all present and future. A revolution\nin himself which gradually merges in that grave final resolve, that\nsudden seeing how Beatrice can be glorified by him, that solemn, quiet,\nbrief determination not to say any more of her as yet; not till he can\nshow her transfigured in Paradise. \"After this sonnet there appeared\nunto me a marvellous vision, in which I beheld things that made me\npropose unto myself to speak no more of this blessed one, until the\ntime when I might more worthily treat of her. And that this may come to\npass, I strive with all my endeavour, even as she truly knows it. Thus,\nif it should please Him, through whom all things do live, that my life\ncontinue for several more years, I hope to say of her such things as\nhave never been said of any lady. And then may it please Him, who is the\nlord of all courtesy, that my soul shall go forth to see the glory of\nits lady, that is to say, of that blessed Beatrice, who gloriously looks\nup into the face of Him, _qui est per omnia saecula benedictus_\"\n\nThus ends the \"Vita Nuova;\" a book, to find any equivalent for whose\nreality and completeness of passion, though it is passion for a woman\nwhom the poet scarcely knows and of whom he desires nothing, we must go\nback to the merest fleshly love of Antiquity, of Sappho or Catullus; for\nmodern times are too hesitating and weak. So at least it seems; but in\nfact, if we only think over the matter, we shall find that in no earthly\nlove can we find this reality and completeness: it is possible only in\nlove like Dante's. For there can be no unreality in it: it is a reality\nof the imagination, and leaves, with all its mysticism and idealism, no\nroom for falsehood. Any other kind of love may be set aside, silenced,\nby the activity of the mind; this love of Dante's constitutes that very\nactivity. And, after reading that last page which I have above\ntranscribed, as those closing Latin words echo through our mind like the\nbenediction from an altar, we feel as if we were rising from our knees\nin some secret chapel, bright with tapers and dim with incense; among a\ncrowd kneeling like ourselves; yet solitary, conscious of only the glory\nwe have seen and tasted, of that love _qui est per omnia scecula\nbenedictus._\n\n\nIII.\n\nBut is it right that we should feel thus? Is it right that love,\ncontaining within itself the potentialities of so many things so sadly\nneeded in this cold real world, as patience, tenderness, devotion, and\nloving-kindness--is it right that love should thus be carried away out\nof ordinary life and enclosed, a sacred thing for contemplation, in the\nshrine or chapel of an imaginary Beatrice? And, on the other hand, is it\nright that into the holy places of our soul, the places where we should\ncome face to face with the unattainable ideal of our own conduct that we\nmay strive after something nobler than mere present pleasure and\nprofit--is it right that into such holy places, destined but for an\nabstract perfection, there should be placed a mere half-unknown, vaguely\nseen woman? In short, is not this \"Vita Nuova\" a mere false ideal, one\nof those works of art which, because they are beautiful, get worshipped\nas holy?\n\nThis question is a grave one, and worthy to make us pause. The world is\nfull of instances of the fatal waste of feelings misapplied: of human\naffections, human sympathy and compassion, so terribly necessary to\nman, wasted in various religious systems, upon Christ and God: of\nreligious aspirations, contemplation, worship, and absorption, necessary\nto the improvement of the soul, wasted in various artistic or poetic\ncrazes upon mere pleasant works, or pleasant fancies, of man;\nwastefulness of emotions, wastefulness of time, which constitute\ntwo-thirds of mankind's history and explain the vast amount of evil in\npast and present. The present question therefore becomes, is not this\n\"Vita Nuova\" merely another instance of this lamentable carrying off of\nprecious feelings in channels where they result no longer in\nfertilization, but in corruption? The Middle Ages, especially, in its\nreligion, its philosophy, nay, in that very love of which I am writing,\nare one succession of such acts of wastefulness. This question has come\nto me many a time, and has left me in much doubt and trouble. But on\nreflection I am prepared to answer that such doubts as these may safely\nbe cast behind us, and that we may trust that instinct which, whenever\nwe lay down the \"Vita Nuova,\" tells us that to have felt and loved this\nbook is one of those spiritual gains in our life which, come what may,\ncan never be lost entirely.\n\nThe \"Vita Nuova\" represents the most exceptional of exceptional moral\nand intellectual conditions. Dante's love for Beatrice is, in great\nmeasure, to be regarded as an extraordinary and exquisite work of art,\nproduced not by the volition of man, but by the accidental combination\nof circumstances. It is no more suited to ordinary life than would a\ngolden and ivory goddess of Phidias be suited to be the wife of a mortal\nman. But it may not therefore be useless; nay, it may be of the highest\nutility. It may serve that high utilitarian mission of all art, to\ncorrect the real by the ideal, to mould the thing as it is in the\nsemblance of the thing as it should be. Herein, let it be remembered,\nconsists the value, the necessity of the abstract and the ideal. In the\nlong history of evolution we have now reached the stage where selection\nis no longer in the mere hands of unconscious nature, but of conscious\nor half-conscious man; who makes himself, or is made by mankind,\naccording to not merely physical necessities, but to the intellectual\nnecessity of realizing the ideal, of pursuing the object, of imitating\nthe model, before him. No man will ever find the living counterpart of\nthat chryselephantine goddess of the Greeks; ivory and gold, nay,\nmarble, fashioned by an artist, are one thing; flesh is another, and\nflesh fashioned by mere blind accident. But the man who should have\nbeheld that Phidian goddess, who should have felt her full perfection,\nwould not have been as easily satisfied as any other with a mere\ncommonplace living woman; he would have sought--and seeking, would have\nhad more likelihood of finding--the woman of flesh and blood who nearest\napproached to that ivory and gold perfection. The case is similar with\nthe \"Vita Nuova.\" No earthly affection, no natural love of man for\nwoman, of an entire human being, body and soul, for another entire human\nbeing, can ever be the counterpart of this passion for Beatrice, the\npassion of a mere mind for a mere mental ideal. But if the old\nlust-fattened evil of the world is to diminish rather than to increase,\nwhy then every love of man for woman and of woman for man should tend,\nto the utmost possibility, to resemble that love of the \"Vita Nuova.\"\nFor mankind has gradually separated from brute kind merely by the\ndevelopment of those possibilities of intellectual and moral passion\nwhich the animal has not got; an animal man will never cease to be, but\na man he can daily more and more become, until from the obscene\ngoat-legged and goat-faced creature which we commonly see, he has turned\ninto something like certain antique fauns: a beautiful creature, not\nnoticeably a beast, a beast in only the smallest portion of his nature.\nIn order that this may come to pass--and its coming to pass means, let\nus remember, the enormous increase of happiness and diminution of misery\nupon earth--it is necessary that day by day and year by year there\nshould enter into man's feelings, emotions, and habits, into his whole\nlife, a greater proportion of that which is his own, and is not shared\nby the animal; that his actions, preferences, the great bulk of his\nconscious existence, should be busied with things of the soul, truth,\ngood, and beauty, and not with things of the body. Hence the love of\nsuch a gradually improving and humanizing man for a gradually improving\nand humanizing woman, should become, as much as is possible, a\nconnection of the higher and more human, rather than of the lower and\nmore bestial, portions of their nature; it should tend, in its\nreciprocal stimulation, to make the man more a man, the woman more a\nwoman, to make both less of the mere male and female animals that they\nwere. In brief, love should increase, instead, like that which oftenest\nprofanes love's name, of diminishing, the power of aspiration, of\nself-direction, of self-restraint, which may exist within us. Now to\ntend to this is to tend towards the love of the \"Vita Nuova;\" to tend\ntowards the love of the \"Vita Nuova\" is to tend towards this. Say what\nyou will of the irresistible force of original constitution, it remains\ncertain, and all history is there as witness, that mankind--that is to\nsay, the only mankind in whom lies the initiative of good, mankind which\ncan judge and select--possesses the faculty of feeling and acting in\naccordance with its standard of feeling and action; the faculty in great\nmeasure of becoming that which it thinks desirable to become. Now to\nhave perceived the even imaginary existence of such a passion as that of\nDante for Beatrice, must be, for all who can perceive it, the first step\ntowards attempting to bring into reality a something of that passion:\nthe real passion conceived while the remembrance of that ideal passion\nbe still in the mind will bear to it a certain resemblance, even as,\naccording to the ancients, the children born of mothers whose rooms\ncontained some image of Apollo or Adonis would have in them a reflex,\nhowever faint, of that beauty in whose presence they came into\nexistence. In short, it seems to me, that as the \"Vita Nuova\" embodies\nthe utmost ideal of absolutely spiritual love, and as to spiritualize\nlove must long remain one of the chief moral necessities of the world,\nthere exists in this book a moral force, a moral value, a power in its\nunearthly passion and purity, which, as much as anything more\ndeliberately unselfish, more self-consciously ethical, we must\nacknowledge and honour as holy.\n\nAs the love of him who has read and felt the \"Vita Nuova\" cannot but\nstrive towards a purer nature, so also the love of which poets sang\nbecame also nobler as the influence of the strange Tuscan school of\nplatonic lyrists spread throughout literature, bringing to men the\nknowledge of a kind of love born of that idealizing and worshipping\npassion of the Middle Ages; but of mediaeval love chastened by the\nmanners of stern democracy and passed through the sieve of Christian\nmysticism and pagan philosophy. Of this influence of the \"Vita\nNuova\"--for the \"Vita Nuova\" had concentrated in itself all the\nintensest characteristics of Dante's immediate predecessors and\ncontemporaries, causing them to become useless and forgotten--of this\ninfluence of the \"Vita Nuova,\" there is perhaps no more striking example\nthan that of the poet who, constituted by nature to be the mere\ncontinuator of the romantically gallant tradition of the troubadours,\nbecame, and hence his importance and glory, the mediator between Dante\nand the centuries which followed him; the man who gave to mankind,\nincapable as yet of appreciating or enduring the spiritual essence of\nthe \"Vita Nuova,\" that self-same essence of intellectual love in an\nimmortal dilution. I speak, of course, of Petrarch. His passion is\nneither ideal nor strong. The man is in love, or has been in love,\nexisting on a borderland of loving and not loving, with the beautiful\nwoman. His elegant, refined, half-knightly, half-scholarly, and\naltogether courtly mind is delighted with her; with her curly yellow\nhair, her good red and white beauty (we are never even told that Dante's\nBeatrice is beautiful, yet how much lovelier is she not than this Laura,\ndescended from all the golden-haired bright-eyed ladies of the\ntroubadours!), with her manner, her amiability, her purity and dignity\nin this ecclesiastical Babylon called Avignon. He maintains a\nsemi-artificial love; frequenting her house, writing sonnet after\nsonnet, rhetorical exercises, studies from the antique and the\nProvencal, for the most part; he, who was born to be a mere troubadour\nlike Ventadour or Folquet, becomes, through the influence of Dante, the\ntype of the poet Abate, of the poetic _cavaliere servente_; a good, weak\nman with aspirations, who, failing to get the better of Laura's virtue,\ndoubtless consoles himself elsewhere, but returns to an habitual\ncontemplation of it. He is, being constitutionally a troubadour, an\nItalian priest turned partly Provencal, vexed at her not becoming his\nmistress; then (having made up his mind, which was but little set upon\nher), quite pleased at her refusal: it turns her into a kind of\nBeatrice, and him, poor man, heaven help him! into a kind of Dante--a\nDante for the use of the world at large. He goes on visiting Laura, and\nwriting to her a sonnet regularly so many times a week, and the best,\ncarefully selected, we feel distinctly persuaded, at regular intervals.\nIt is a determined cultus, a sort of half-real affectation, something\nequivalent to lighting a lamp before a very well-painted and very\nconspicuous shrine. All his humanities, all his Provencal lore go into\nthese poems--written for whom? For her? Decidedly; for she has no reason\nnot to read the effusions of this amiable, weak priestlet; she feels\nnothing for him. For her; but doubtless also to be handed round in\nsociety; a new sonnet or canzone by that charming and learned man, the\nAbate Petrarch. There is considerable emptiness in all this: he praises\nLaura's chastity, then grows impatient, then praises her again; adores\nher, calls her cruel, his goddess, his joy, his torment; he does not\nreally want her, but in the vacuity of his feeling, thinks he does;\ncalls her alternately the flat, abusive, and eulogistic names which mean\nnothing. He plays loud and soft with this absence of desire; he fiddle\nfaddles in descriptions of her, not passionate or burning, but\ndelicately undressed: he sees her (but with chaste eyes) in her bath;\nhe envies her veil, &c.; he neither violently intellectually embraces,\nnor humbly bows down in imagination before her; he trifles gracefully,\nmodestly, half-familiarly, with her finger tips, with the locks of her\nhair, and so forth. Fancy Dante abusing Beatrice; fancy Dante talking of\nBeatrice in her bath; the mere idea of his indignation and shame makes\none shameful and indignant at the thought. But this perfect Laura is no\nBeatrice, or only a half-and-half sham one. She is no ideal figure,\nmerely a figure idealized; this is no imaginative passion, merely an\nunreal one. Compare, for instance, the suggestion of Laura's possible\ndeath with the suggestion of the possible death of Beatrice. Petrarch\ndoes not love sufficiently to guess what such a loss would be. Then\nLaura does die. Here Petrarch rises. The severing of the dear old\nhabits, the absence of the sweet reality, the terrible sense that all is\nover, Death, the great poetizer and giver of love philters, all this\nmakes him love Laura as he never loved her before. The poor weak\ncreature, who cannot, like a troubadour, go seek a new mistress when the\nold one fails him, feels dreadfully alone, the world dreadfully dreary\naround him; he sits down and cries, and his crying is genuine, making\nthe tears come also into our eyes. And Laura, as she becomes a more\ndistant ideal, becomes nobler, though noble with only a faint earthly\ngraciousness not comparable to the glory of the living Beatrice. And,\nas he goes on, growing older and weaker and more desolate, the thought\nof a glorified Laura (as all are glorified, even in the eyes of the\nweakest, by death) begins to haunt him as Dante was haunted by the\nthought of Beatrice alive. Yet, even at this very time, come doubts of\nthe lawfulness of having thus adored (or thought he had adored) a mortal\nwoman; he does not know whether all this may not have been vanity and\nfolly; he tries to turn his thoughts away from Laura and up to God.\nPerhaps he may be called on to account for having given too much of his\nlife to a mere earthly love. Then, again, Laura reappears beautified in\nhis memory, and is again tremblingly half-conjured away. He is weak, and\nsad, and helpless, and alone; and his heart is empty; he knows not what\nto think nor how to feel; he sobs, and we cry with him. Nowhere could\nthere be found a stranger contrast than this nostalgic craving after the\ndead Laura, vacillating and troubled by fear of sin and doubt of\nunworthiness of object, with that solemn ending of the \"Vita Nuova,\"\nwhere the name of Beatrice is pronounced for the last time before it be\nglorified in Paradise, where Dante devotes his life to becoming worthy\nof saying \"such words as have never been said of any lady.\" The ideal\nwoman is one and unchangeable in glory, and unchangeable is the passion\nof her lover; but of this sweet dead Laura, whose purity and beauty and\ncruelty he had sung, without a tremor of self-unworthiness all her\nlife, of her the poor weak Petrarch begins to doubt, of her and her\nworthiness of all this love; and when? when she is dead and himself is\ndying.\n\nSuch a man is Petrarch; and yet, by the irresistible purifying and\nelevating power of the \"Vita Nuova,'\" this man came to write not other\n_albas_ and _serenas,_ not other love-songs to be added to the\nlove-songs of Provence, but those sonnets and canzoni which for four\ncenturies taught the world, too coarse as yet to receive Dante's passion\nat first hand, a nobler and more spiritual love. After Petrarch a\ngradual change takes place in the poetic conception of love: except in\nlearned revivalisms or in loose buffooneries, the mere fleshly love of\nAntiquity disappears out of literature; and equally so, though by a\nslower process of gradual transformation, vanishes also the adoring, but\nundisguisedly adulterous love of the troubadours and minnesingers. Into\nthe love Instincts of mankind have been mingled, however much diluted,\nsome drops of the more spiritual passion of Dante. The _puella_ of\nAntiquity, the noble dame of feudal days, is succeeded in Latin\ncountries, in Italy, and France, and Spain, and Portugal, by the\n_gloriosa donna_ imitated from. Petrarch, and imitated by Petrarch from\nDante; a long-line of shadowy figures, veiled in the veil of Madonna\nLaura, ladies beloved of Lorenzo and Michael Angelo, of Ariosto, and\nTasso, and Camoens, and Cervantes, passes through the world; nay, even\nthe sprightly-mistress of Ronsard, half-bred pagan and troubadour has\nairs of dignity and mystery which make us almost think that in this\ndainty coquettish French body, of Marie or Helene or Cassandrette, there\nreally may be an immortal soul. But with the Renaissance--that movement\nhalf of mediaeval democratic progress, and half of antique revivalism,\nand to which in reality belongs not merely Petrarch, but Dante, and\nevery one of the Tuscan poets, Guinicelli, Lapo Gianni, Cavalcanti, who\nbroke with the feudal poetry of Provence and Sicily--with the\nRenaissance, or rather with its long-drawn-out end, comes the close, for\nthe moment, of the really creative activity of the Latin peoples in the\ndomain of poetry. All the things for two centuries which Italy and\nFrance and Spain and Portugal (which we must remember for the sake of\nCamoens) continue to produce, are but developments of parts left\nuntouched; or refinements of extreme detail, as in the case,\nparticularly, of the French poets of the sixteenth century; but poetry\nreceives from these races nothing new or vital, no fresh ideal or\nfruitful marriage of ideals. And here begins, uniting in itself all the\nscattered and long-dormant powers of Northern poetry, the great and\nunexpected action of England. It had slept through the singing period of\nthe Middle Ages, and was awakened, not by Germany or Provence, but by\nItaly: Boccaccio and Petrarch spoke, and, as through dreams, England in\nChaucer's voice, made answer. Again, when the Renaissance had drawn to a\nclose, far on in the sixteenth century, English poetry was reawakened;\nand again by Italy. This time it was completely wakened, and arose and\nslept no more. And one of the great and fruitful things achieved by\nEnglish poetry in this its final awakening was to give to the world the\nnew, the modern, perhaps the definitive, the final ideal of love.\nEngland drank a deep draught--how deep we see from Sidney's and\nSpenser's sonnets--of Petrarch; and in this pleasant dilution, tasted\nand felt the burning essence of the \"Vita Nuova;\" for though Dante\nremained as the poet, the poet of heaven and hell, this happy\nhalf-and-half Petrarch had for full two centuries completely driven into\noblivion the young Dante who had loved Beatrice. For England, for this\nmagnificent and marvellous outburst of all the manifold poetic energy\nstored up and quintupled during that long period of inertness, there\ncould however be no foreign imported ideal of love; there was no\npossibility of a new series of spectral Lauras, shadows projected by a\nshadow. Already, long ago, at the first call of Petrarch, Chaucer, by\nthe side of the merely mediaeval love types--of brutish lust and doglike\ndevotion--of the Wife of Bath and of Griseldis, had rough-sketched a\nkind of modern love, the love which is to become that of Romeo and\nHamlet, in his story of Palemon and Arcite. Among the poetic material\nwhich existed in England at the close of the sixteenth century was the\nold, long-neglected, domestic love, quiet, undemonstrative, essentially\nunsinging, of the early Northern (as indeed also of the Greek and\nHindoo) epics; a domestic love which, in a social condition more closely\nresembling our own than any other, even than that of the Italian\ndemocracies, which had preceded it; among a people who permitted a woman\nto choose her own husband, and forbade a man wooing another man's wife,\nhad already, in ballads and folk poetry, begun a faint-twitter of song.\nTo this love of the man and the woman who hope to marry, strong and\ntender, but still (as Coleridge remarked of several of the lesser\nElizabethan playwrights) most outspokenly carnal, was united by the pure\nspirit of Spenser, by the unerring genius of Shakespeare, that vivifying\ndrop of burning, spiritual love taken from out of the \"Vita Nuova,\"\nwhich had floated, like some sovereign essential oil, on the top of\nPetrarch's rose-water. Henceforward the world possesses a new kind of\nlove: the love of Romeo, of Hamlet, of Bassanio, of Viola, and of\nJuliet; the love of the love poems of Shelley, of Tennyson, of Browning\nand Browning's wife. A love whose blindness, exaggeration of passion,\nall that might have made it foolish and impracticable, leads no longer\nto folly and sin, but to an intenser activity of mankind's imagination\nof the good and beautiful, to a momentary realization in our fancy of\nall our vague dreams of perfection; a love which, though it may cool\ndown imperceptibly and pale in its intenseness, like the sunrise fires\ninto a serene sky, has left some glory round the head of the wife, some\nglory in the heart of the husband, has been, however fleeting, a vision\nof beauty which has made beauty more real. And all this owing to the\ncreation, the storing up, the purification by the Platonic poets of\nTuscany, of that strange and seemingly so artificial and unreal thing,\nmediaeval love; the very forms and themes of whose poetry, the _serena_\nand the _alba_, which had been indignantly put aside by the early\nItalian lyrists, being unconsciously revived, and purified and\nconsecrated in the two loveliest love poems of Elizabethan poetry: the\n_serena_, the evening song of impatient expectation in Spenser's\nEpithalamium; the _alba_, the dawn song of hurried parting, in the\nbalcony scene of \"Romeo and Juliet.\"\n\nLet us recapitulate. The feudal Middle Ages gave to mankind a more\nrefined and spiritual love, a love all chivalry, fidelity, and\nadoration, but a love steeped in the poison of adultery; and to save the\npure and noble portions of this mediaeval love became the mission of the\nTuscan poets of that strange school of Platonic love which in its very\nloveliness may sometimes seem so unnatural and sterile. For, by reducing\nthis mediaeval love to a mere intellectual passion, seeking in woman\nmerely a self-made embodiment of cravings after perfection, they\ncleansed away that deep stain of adultery; they quadrupled the intensity\nof the ideal element; they distilled the very essential spirit of poetic\npassion, of which but a few drops, even as diluted by Petrarch,\nprecipitated, when mingled with the earthly passion of future poets, to\nthe bottom, no longer to be seen or tasted, all baser ingredients.\n\nAnd, while the poems of minnesingers and troubadours have ceased to\nappeal to us, and remain merely for their charm of verse and of graceful\nconceit; the poetry written by the Italians of the thirteenth century\nfor women, whose love was but an imaginative fervour, remains\nconcentrated in the \"Vita Nuova;\" and will remain for all time the\nsovereign purifier to which the world must have recourse whenever that\nprecipitate of baser instincts, which thickened like slime the love\npoetry of Antiquity, shall rise again and sully the purity of the love\npoetry of to-day.\n\n\n\n\n\nEPILOGUE.\n\nMore than a year has elapsed since the moment when, fancying that this\nseries of studies must be well-nigh complete, I attempted to explain in\nan introductory chapter what the nature of this book of mine is, or\nwould fain be. I had hoped that each of these studies would complete its\ncompanions; and that, without need for explicit explanation, my whole\nidea would have become more plain to others than it was at that time\neven to myself. But instead, it has become obvious that the more\ncarefully I had sought to reduce each question to unity, the more that\nquestion-subdivided and connected itself with other questions; and that,\nwith the solution of each separate problem, had arisen a new set of\nproblems which infinitely complicated the main lessons to be deduced\nfrom a study of that many-sided civilization to which, remembering the\nbrilliant and mysterious offspring of Faustus and Helena, I have given\nthe name of Euphorion. Hence, as it seems, the necessity for a few\nfurther words of explanation.\n\nIn those introductory pages written some fifteen months ago, I tried to\nbring home to the reader a sense which has haunted me throughout the\nwriting of this volume; namely, that instead of having deliberately made\nup my mind to study the Renaissance, as one makes up one's mind to visit\nGreece or Egypt or the Holy Land; I have, on the contrary, quite\naccidentally and unconsciously, found myself wandering about in spirit\namong the monuments of this particular historic region, even as I might\nwander about in the streets of Siena where I wrote last year, of\nFlorence whence I write at present; wandering about among these things,\nand little by little feeling a particular interest in one, then in\nanother, according as each happened to catch my fancy or to recall some\nalready known thing. Now these, which for want of a better word I have\njust called monuments, and just now, less clearly, but also less\nfoolishly, merely _things_--these things were in reality not merely\nindividual and really existing buildings, books, pictures, or statues,\nindividual and really registered men, women, and events; they were the\nmental conceptions which I had extracted out of these realities; the\nintellectual types made up (as the mediaeval symbols of justice are made\nup of the visible paraphernalia, robe, scales and sword, for judging and\nweighing and punishing) of the impressions left on the mind by all\nthose buildings, or books, or pictures, or statues, or men, women, and\nevents. They were not the iniquities of this particular despot nor the\nscandalous sayings of that particular humanist, but the general moral\nchaos of the Italian fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; not the poem of\nPulci, of Boiardo, of Ariosto in especial, but a vast imaginary poem\nmade up of them all; not the mediaeval saints of Angelico and the pagan\ndemi-gods of Michael Angelo, but the two tremendous abstractions: the\nspirit of Mediaevalism in art, and the spirit of Antiquity; the interest\nin the distressed soul, and the interest in the flourishing body. And,\nas my thoughts have gone back to Antiquity and onwards to our own times,\ntheir starting-point has nevertheless been the Tuscan art of the\nfifteenth century, their nucleus some notes on busts by Benedetto da\nMaiano and portraits by Raphael.\n\nMy _dramatis persona_ have been modes of feeling and forms of art. I\nhave tried to explain the life and character, not of any man or woman,\nbut of the moral scepticism of Italy, of the tragic spirit of our\nElizabethan dramatists; I have tried to write the biography of the\nromance poetry of the Middle Ages, of the realism of the great portrait\npainters and sculptors of the Renaissance. But these, my _dramatis\npersona,_ are, let me repeat it, abstractions: they exist only in my\nmind and in the minds of those who think like myself. Hence, like all\nabstractions, they represent the essence of a question, but not its\ncompleteness, its many-sidedness as we may see it in reality. Hence it\nis that I have frequently passed over exceptions to the rule which I was\nstating, because the explanation of these exceptions would have involved\nthe formulating of a number of apparently irrelevant propositions; so\nthat any one who please may accuse me of inexactness; and, to give an\ninstance, cover the margins of my essay on Mediaeval Love with a whole\nlist of virtuous love stories of the Middle Ages; or else ferret out of\nRaynouard and Von der Hagen a dozen pages of mediaeval poems in praise of\nrustic life. These objections will be perfectly correct, and (so far as\nmy knowledge permitted me) I might have puzzled the reader with them\nmyself; but it remains none the less certain that, in the main, mediaeval\nlove was not virtuous, and mediaeval peasantry not admired by poets; and\nnone the less certain, I think, also, that in describing the\ncharacteristics and origin of an abstract thing, such as mediaeval love,\nor mediaeval feeling towards the country and country folk, it was my\nbusiness to state the rule and let alone the exceptions.\n\nThere is another matter which gives me far greater concern. In creating\nand dealing with an abstraction, one is frequently forced, if I may use\nthe expression, to cut a subject in two, to bring one of its sides into\nfull light and leave the other in darkness; nay, to speak harshly of one\nside of an art or of a man without being able to speak admiringly of\nanother side.\n\nThis one-sidedness, this apparent injustice of judgment, has in some\ncases been remedied by the fact that I have treated in one study those\nthings which I was forced to omit in another study; as, in two separate\nessays, I have pointed out first the extreme inferiority of Renaissance\nsculpture to the sculpture of Antiquity with regard to absolute beauty\nof form; and then the immeasurable superiority of Renaissance over\nantique sculpture in the matter of that beauty and interest dependent\nupon mere arrangement and handling, wherein lies the beauty-creating\npower of realistic schools. But most often I have shown one side, not\nmerely of an artist or an art, but of my own feeling, without showing\nthe other; and in one case this inevitable one-sidedness has weighed\nupon me almost like personal guilt, and has almost made me postpone the\npublication of this book to the Greek Kalends, in hopes of being able to\nexplain and to atone. I am alluding to Fra Angelico. I spoke of him in a\nstudy of the progress of mere beautiful form, the naked human form\nmoreover, in the art of the Renaissance; I looked at his work with my\nmind full of the unapproachable superiority of antique form; I judged\nand condemned the artist with reference to that superb movement towards\nnature and form and bodily beauty which was the universal movement of\nthe fifteenth century; I lost patience with this saint because he would\nnot turn pagan; I pushed aside, because he did not seek for a classic\nOlympus, his exquisite dreams of a mediaeval Paradise. I had taken part,\nas its chronicler, with the art which seeks mere plastic perfection, the\nart to which Angelico said, \"Retro me Sathana.\" It was my intention to\nclose even this volume with a study of the poetical conception of early\nRenaissance painting, of that strange kind of painting in which a thing\nbut imperfect in itself, a mere symbol of lovely ideas, brings home to\nour mind, with a rush of associations, a sense of beauty and wonder\ngreater perhaps than any which we receive from the sober reality of\nperfect form. Again, there are the German masters--the great engravers,\nKranach, Altdorfer, Aldegrever, especially; of whom, for their absolute\npleasure in ugly women, for their filthy delight in horrors, I have said\nan immense amount of ill; and of whom, for their wonderful intuition of\ndramatic situation, their instinct of the poetry of common things, and\ntheir magnificently imaginative rendering of landscape, I hope some day\nto say an equal amount of good.\n\nI have spoken of the lesson which may be derived from studies even as\nhumble as these studies of mine; since, in my opinion, we cannot treat\nhistory as a mere art--though history alone can gives us now-a-days\ntragedy which has ceased to exist on our stage, and wonder which has\nceased to exist in our poetry--we cannot seek in it mere selfish\nenjoyment of imagination and emotion, without doing our soul the great\ninjury of cheating it of some of those great indignations, some of\nthose great lessons which make it stronger and more supple in the\npractical affairs of life. Each of these studies of mine brings its own\nlesson, artistic or ethical, important or unimportant; its lesson of\nseeking certainty in our moral opinions, beauty in all and whatever our\nforms of art, spirituality in our love. But besides these I seem to\nperceive another deduction, an historical fact with a practical\napplication; to see it as the result not merely perhaps of the studies\nof which this book is the fruit, but of those further studies, of the\nsubtler sides of Mediaeval and Renaissance life and art which at present\noccupy my mind and may some day add another series of essays to this: a\nlesson still vague to myself, but which, satisfactorily or\nunsatisfactorily, I shall nevertheless attempt to explain; if indeed it\nrequires to be brought home to the reader.\n\nOf the few forms of feeling and imagination which I have treated--things\nso different from one another as the feeling for nature and the\nchivalric poem, as modern art, with its idealism and realism, and modern\nlove--of these forms, emotional and artistic, which Antiquity did not\nknow, or knew but little, the reader may have observed that I have\nalmost invariably traced the origin deep into that fruitful cosmopolitan\nchaos, due to the mingling of all that was still unused of the remains\nof Antiquity with all that was untouched of the intellectual and moral\nriches of the barbarous nations, to which we give the name of Middle\nAges; and that I have, as invariably, followed the development of these\nprecious forms, and their definitive efflorescence and fruit-bearing,\ninto that particular country where certain mediaeval conditions had\nceased to exist, namely Italy. In other words, it has seemed to me that\nthe things which I have studied were originally produced during the\nMiddle Ages, and consequently in the mediaeval countries, France,\nGermany, Provence; but did not attain maturity except in that portion of\nthe Middle Ages which is mediaeval no longer, but already more than half\nmodern, the Renaissance, which began in Italy not with the establishment\nof despotisms and the coming of Greek humanists, but with the\nindependence of the free towns and with the revival of Roman tradition.\n\nWhy so? Because, it appears to me, after watching the lines of my\nthought converging to this point, because, with a few exceptions, the\nMiddle Ages were rich in great beginnings (indeed a good half of all\nthat makes up our present civilization seems to issue from them): but\nthey were poor in complete achievements; full of the seeds of modern\ninstitutions, arts, thoughts, and feelings, they yet show us but rarely\nthe complete growth of any one of them: a fruitful Nile flood, but which\nmust cease to drown and to wash away, which must subside before the\ngerms that it has brought can shoot forth and mature. The sense of this\ncomes home to me most powerfully whenever I think of mediaeval poetry and\nmediaeval painting.\n\nThe songs of the troubadours and minnesingers, what are they to our\nfeelings? They are pleasant, even occasionally beautiful, but they are\nempty, lamentably empty, charming arrangements of words; poetry which\nfills our mind or touches our heart comes only with the Tuscan lyrists\nof the thirteenth century. The same applies to mediaeval narrative-verse:\nit is, with one or two exceptions or half exceptions, such as \"The\nChanson de Roland\" and Gottfried's \"Tristan und Isolde,\" decidedly\nwearisome; a thing to study, but scarcely a thing to delight in. I do\nnot mean to say that the old legends of Wales and Scandinavia,\nsubsequently embodied by the French and German poets of the Middle Ages,\nare without imaginative or emotional interest; nothing can be further\nfrom my thoughts. The Nibelung story possesses, both in the Norse and in\nthe Middle High German version, a tragic fascination; and a quaint\nfairy-tale interest, every now and then rising to the charm of a\nDecameronian _novella_, is possessed by many of the Keltic tales,\nwhether briefly told in the Mabinogion or lengthily detailed by\nChrestien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. But all this is the\ninterest of the mere story, and you would enjoy it almost as much if\nthat story were related not by a poet but by a peasant; it is the\nfascination of the mere theme, with the added fascination of our own\nunconscious filling up and colouring of details. And the poem itself,\nwhence we extract this theme, remains, for the most part, uninteresting.\nThe figures are vague, almost shapeless and colourless; they have no\nwell-understood mental and moral anatomy, so that when they speak and\nact the writer seems to have no clear conception of the motives or\ntempers which make them do so; even as in a child's pictures, the horses\ngallop, the men run, the houses stand, but without any indication of the\nmuscles which move the horse, of the muscles which hold up the man, of\nthe solid ground upon which is built, nay rather, into which is planted,\nthe house. Hatred of Hagen, devotion of Ruedger, passionate piety of\nParzival--all these are things of which we do not particularly see the\nhow or why; we do not follow the reasons, in event or character, which\nmake these men sacrifice themselves or others, weep, storm, and so\nforth; nay, even when these reasons are clear from the circumstances, we\nare not shown the action of the mechanism, we do not see how Brunhilt is\nwroth, how Chriemhilt is revengeful, how Herzeloid is devoted to\nParzival. There is, in the vast majority of this mediaeval poetry, no\nclear conception of the construction and functions of people's\ncharacter, and hence no conception either of those actions and reactions\nof various moral organs which, after all, are at the bottom of the\nevents related. Herein lies the difference between the forms of the\nMiddle Ages and those of Antiquity; for how perfectly felt, understood,\nis not every feeling and every action of the Homeric heroes, how\nperfectly indicated! We can see the manner and reason of the conflict of\nAchilles and Agamemnon, of the behaviour of the returned Odysseus, as\nclearly as we see the manner and reason of the movements of the fighting\nCentaurs and Lapithae, or the Amazons; nay, even the minute mood of\ncomparatively unimportant figures, as Helen, Brisei's, and Nausicaa, is\nindicated in its moral anatomy and attitude as distinctly as is the\nmanner in which the maidens of the Parthenon frieze slowly restrain\ntheir steps, the boys curb their steeds, or the old men balance their\noil jars. Nothing of this in mediaeval literature, except perhaps in\n\"Flamenca\" and \"Tristan,\" where the motive of action, mere imaginative\ndesire, is all-permeating and explains everything. These people clearly\nhad no interest, no perception, connected with character: a valorous\nwoman, a chivalrous knight, an insolent steward, a jealous husband, a\nfaithful retainer; things recognized only in outline, made to speak and\nact only according to a fixed tradition, without knowledge of the\ninternal mechanism of motive; these sufficed. Hence it is that mediaeval\npoetry is always like mediaeval painting (for painting continued to be\nmediaeval with Giotto's pupils long after poetry had ceased to be\nmediaeval with Dante and his school), where the Virgin sits and holds the\nchild without body wherewith to sit or arms wherewith to hold; where\nangels flutter forward and kneel in conventional greeting, with\nobviously no bended knees beneath their robes, nay, with knees, waist,\narmpits, all anywhere; where men ride upon horses without flat to their\nback; where processions of the blessed come forth, guided by fiddling\nseraphs, vague, faint faces, sweet or grand, heads which might wave like\npieces of cut-out paper upon their necks, arms and legs here and there,\nnot clearly belonging to any one; creatures marching, soaring, flying,\nsinging, fiddling, without a bone or a muscle wherewith to do it all.\nAnd meanwhile, in this mediaeval poetry, as in this mediaeval painting,\nthere are yards and yards of elaborate preciousness: all the embossed\nvelvets, all the white-and-gold-shot brocades, all the silks and satins,\nand jewel-embroidered stuffs of the universe cast stiffly about these\nphantom men and women, these phantom horses and horsemen. It is not\nuntil we turn to Italy, and to the Northern man, Chaucer, entirely under\nItalian influence, that we obtain an approach to the antique clearness\nof perception and comprehension; that we obtain not only in Dante\nsomething akin to the muscularities of Signorelli and Michael Angelo;\nbut in Boccaccio and Chaucer, in Cavalca and Petrarch, the equivalent of\nthe well-understood movement, the well-indicated situation of the\nsimple, realistic or poetic, sketches of Filippino and Botticelli.\n\nThis, you will say, is a mere impression; it is no explanation, still\nless such an explanation as may afford a lesson. Not so. This strange\ninconclusiveness in all mediaeval things, till the moment comes when they\ncease to be mediaeval; this richness in germs and poverty in mature\nfruit, cannot be without its reason. And this reason, to my mind, lies\nin one word, the most terrible word of any, since it means suffering and\nhopelessness; a word which has haunted my mind ever since I have looked\ninto mediaeval things: the word Wastefulness. Wastefulness; the frightful\ncharacteristic of times at once so rich and so poor, the explanation of\nthe long starvation and sickness that mankind, that all mankind's\nconcerns--art, poetry, science, life--endured while the very things\nwhich would have fed and revived and nurtured, existed close at hand,\nand in profusion. Wastefulness, in this great period of confusion, of\nthe most precious things that we possess: time, thought, and feeling\nrefused to the realities of the world, and lavished on the figments of\nthe imagination. Why this vagueness, this imperfection in all mediaeval\nrepresentations of life? Because even as men's eyes were withdrawn, by\nthe temporal institutions of those days, from the sight of the fields\nand meadows which were left to the blind and dumb thing called serf; so\nalso the thoughts of mankind, its sympathy and intentions, were\nwithdrawn from the mere earthly souls, the mere earthly wrongs and woes\nof men by the great self-organized institution of mediaeval religion.\nPity of the body of Christ held in bondage by the Infidel; love of God;\nstudy of the unknowable things of Heaven: such are the noblest\nemployments of the mediaeval soul; how much of pity, of love, may remain\nfor man; how much of study for the knowable? To Wastefulness like\nthis--to misapplication of mind ending almost in palsy--must we ascribe,\nI think, the strange sterility of such mediaeval art as deals not merely\nwith pattern, but with the reality of man's body and soul. And we might\nbe thankful, if, during our wanderings among mediaeval things, we had\nseen the starving of only art and artistic instincts; but the soul of\nman has lain starving also; starving for the knowledge which was sought\nonly of Divine things, starving for the love which was given only to\nGod.\n\nThe explanation, therefore, and its lesson, may thus be summed up in the\none word Wastefulness. And the fruitfulness of the Renaissance, all that\nit has given to us of art, of thought, of feeling (for the \"Vita Nuova\"\nis its fruit), is due, as it seems to me, to the fact that the\nRenaissance is simply the condition of civilization when, thanks to the\ncivil liberty and the spiritual liberty inherited from Rome and\ninherited from Greece, man's energies of thought and feeling were\nwithdrawn from the unknowable to the knowable, from Heaven to Earth; and\nwere devoted to the developing of those marvellous new things which\nAntiquity had not known, and which had lain neglected and wasted during\nthe Middle Ages.\n\nFLORENCE, _January_,1884.\n\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX.\n\nI have seen the pictures and statues and towns which I have described,\nand I have read the books of which I attempt to give an impression; but\nhere my original research, if such it may be called, comes to an end. I\nhave trusted only to myself for my impressions; but I have taken from\nothers everything that may be called historical fact, as distinguished\nfrom the history of this or that form of thought or of art which I have\ntried to elaborate. My references are therefore only to standard\nhistorical works, and to such editions of poets and prose writers as\nhave come into my hands. How much I am endebted to the genius of\nMichelet; nay, rather, how much I am, however unimportant, the thing\nmade by him, every one will see and judge. With regard to positive\ninformation I must express my great obligations to the works of Jacob\nBurckhardt, of Prof. Villari, and of Mr. J.A. Symonds in everything that\nconcerns the political history and social condition of the Renaissance.\nMr. Symonds' name I have placed last, although this is by no means the\norder of importance in which the three writers appear in my mind,\nbecause vanity compels me to state that I have deprived myself of the\npleasure and profit of reading his volumes on Italian literature, from a\nfear that finding myself doubtless forestalled by him in various\nappreciations, I might deprive my essays of what I feel to be their\nprincipal merit, namely, the spontaneity and wholeness of personal\nimpression. With regard to philological lore, I may refer, among a\nnumber of other works, to M. Gaston Paris' work on the Cycle of\nCharlemagne, M. de la Villemarque's companion volume on Keltic romances,\nand Professor Rajna's \"Fonti dell' Ariosto.\" My knowledge of\ntroubadours, trouveres, and minnesingers is obtained mainly from the\ngreat collections of Raynouard, Wackernagel, Maetzner, Bartsch, and Von\nder Hagen, and from Bartsch's and Simrock's editions and versions of\nGottfried von Strassburg, Hartmann von Aue, and Wolfram von Eschenbach.\n\"Flamenca\" I have read in Professor Paul Meyer's beautiful edition, text\nand translation; \"Aucassin et Nicolette,\" in an edition published, if I\nremember rightly, by Janet; and also in a very happy translation\ncontained in Delvau's huge collection of \"Romans de Chevalerie,\" which\ncontains, unfortunately sometimes garbled, as many of the prose stories\nof the Carolingian and Amadis cycle as I, at all events, could endure to\nread. For the early Italian poets, excepting Carducci's \"Cino da\nPistoia,\" my references are the same as those in Rossetti's \"Dante and\nhis Cycle,\" especially the \"Rime Antiche\" and the \"Poeti del Primo\nSecolo.\" Professor d'Ancona's pleasant volume has greatly helped me in\nthe history of the transformation of the courtly poetry of the early\nMiddle Ages into the folk poetry of Tuscany. I owe a good deal also,\nwith regard to this same essay \"The Outdoor Poetry,\" to Roskoff's famous\n\"Geschichte des Teufels,\" and to Signor Novati's recently published\n\"Carmina Medii _AEvi_.\" The Italian _novellieri,_ Bandello, Cinthio, and\ntheir set, I have used in the Florentine editions of 1820 or 1825;\nMasuccio edited by De Sanctis. For the essay on the Italian Renaissance\non the Elizabethan Stage, I have had recourse, chiefly, to the fifteenth\ncentury chronicles in the \"Archivio Storico Italiano,\" and to Dyce's\nWebster, Hartley Coleridge's Massinger and Ford, Churton Collins' Cyril\nTourneur, and J.O. Halliwell's Marston.\n\nThe essays on art have naturally profited by the now inevitable Crowe\nand Cavalcaselle; but in this part of my work, while I have relied very\nlittle on books, I have received more than the equivalent of the\ninformation to be obtained from any writers in the suggestions and\nexplanations of my friend Mr. T. Nelson MacLean, who has made it\npossible for a mere creature of pens and ink to follow the differences\nof _technique_ of the sculptors and medallists of the fifteenth century;\na word of thanks also, for various such suggestions as can come only\nfrom a painter, to my old friend Mr. John S. Sargent, of Paris.\n\nI must conclude these acknowledgments by thanking the Editors of the\n_Contemporary, British Quarterly_, and _National Reviews_, and of the\n_Cornhill Magazine_, for permission to republish such of the essays or\nfragments of essays as have already appeared in those periodicals.\n\nTHE END.","title":"Euphorion - Vol. II: Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the Renaissance","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":56517}