[132] 6 vols. Paris, 1872-90.
[133] For these see the texts and editorial matter of Dolopathos, ed. Brunet and De Montaiglon (Bibliothèque Elzévirienne), Paris, 1856; and of Le Roman des Sept Sages, ed. G. Paris (Soc. des Anc. Textes), Paris, 1875. The English Seven Sages (in Weber, vol. iii.) has been thought to be of the thirteenth century. The Gesta Romanorum in any of its numerous forms is probably later.
[134] "Les Deux Bordeors [bourders, jesters] Ribaux."
[135] Early English Prose Romances (2d ed., London, 1858), i. 71. The text of this is only Deloney's and sixteenth century, but much of the matter must be far earlier.
[136] Weber, iii. 177.
[137] Works of Marie; ed. Roquefort, Paris, 1820; or ed. Warnke, Halle, 1885. The Lyoner Ysopet, with the Anonymus; ed. Förster, Heilbronn, 1882.
[138] Roman du (should be de) Renart: ed. Méon and Chabaille, 5 vols., Paris, 1826-35; ed. Martin, 3 vols. text and 1 critical observations, Strasburg, 1882-87. Reincke de Vos, ed. Prien, Halle, 1887, with a valuable bibliography. Reinaert, ed. Martin, Paderborn, 1874. Reinardus Vulpes, ed. Mone, Stuttgart, 1834. Reinhart Fuchs, ed. Grimm, Berlin, 1832. On the story there is perhaps nothing better than Carlyle, as quoted supra.
[139] This, which is not so much a branch as an independent fabliau, is attributed to Rutebœuf, v. infra.
[140] The Teutonic versions are consolidated into a more continuous story. But of the oldest High German version, that of the Glichezare, we have but part, and Reincke de Vos does not reach seven thousand verses. The French forms are therefore certainly to be preferred.
[141] Méon, iii. 82; Martin, ii. 43.
[142] Ed. Michel. Paris, 1864. One of the younger French scholars, who, under the teaching of M. Gaston Paris, have taken in hand various sections of mediæval literature, M. Langlois, has bestowed much attention on the Rose, and has produced a monograph on it, Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose. Paris, 1890.
[143] "Sloth" is a rather unhappy substitute for Accidia (ἀκήδεια), the gloomy and impious despair and indifference to good living and even life, of which sloth itself is but a partial result.
[144] "Seven" says the verse chapter-heading, which is a feature of the poem; but the actual text does not mention the number, and it will be seen that there were in fact ten. The author of the headings was no doubt thinking of the Seven Deadly Sins.
[145] Vilenie is never an easy word to translate: it means general misconduct and disagreeable behaviour.
[146] I am well aware of everything that has been said about and against the Chaucerian authorship of the English Rose. But until the learned philologists who deny that authorship in whole or in part agree a little better among themselves, they must allow literary critics at least to suspend their judgment.
Dante undoubtedly had this in his mind when he wrote the immortal Nessun maggior dolore. All this famous passage, l. 4557 sq., is admirable.
[148] The following of the Rose would take a volume, even treated as the poem itself is here. The English version has been referred to: Italian naturalised it early in a sonnet cycle, Il Fiore. Every country welcomed it, but the actual versions are as nothing to the imitations and the influence.
[150] Ed. Jubinal, 2d ed., Paris, 1874; or ed. Kressner, Wolfenbüttel, 1885.
[151] Ed. Monmerqué et Michel, Théâtre Français au Moyen Age. Paris, 1874. This also contains Théophile, Saint Nicolas, and the plays of Adam de la Halle.
[152] Ed. Luzarches, Tours, 1854; ed. Palustre, Paris, 1877.
[153] Several of these miracles of the Virgin will be found in the volume by Monmerqué and Michel referred to above: the whole collection has been printed by the Société des Anciens Textes. The MS. is of the fourteenth century, but some of its contents may date from the thirteenth.
[154] Besides the issue above noted these have been separately edited by A. Rambeau. Marburg, 1886.
[155] The often-quoted statement that in 659 Mummolinus or Momolenus was made Bishop of Noyon because of his double skill in "Teutonic" and "Roman" (not "Latin") speech.
[156] Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1872.
[157] Ed. Paulin Paris. Paris, 1879.
[158] Ed. Natalis de Wailly. Paris, 1874.
[159] Frequently edited: not least satisfactorily in the Nouvelles Françaises du XIIIme Siècle, referred to above. In 1887 two English translations, by Mr Lang and Mr Bourdillon, the latter with the text and much apparatus, appeared: and Mr Bourdillon has recently edited a facsimile of the unique MS. (Oxford, 1896).
[160] Iceland began to be Christian in 1000.
[161] It is almost superfluous to insert, but would be disagreeable to omit, a reference to the Sturlunga Saga (2 vols., Oxford, 1879) and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale (2 vols., Oxford, 1883) of the late Dr Vigfusson and Professor York Powell. The first contains an invaluable sketch, or rather history, of Icelandic literature: the second (though one may think its arrangement a little arbitrary) is a book of unique value and interest. Had these two been followed up according to Dr Vigfusson's plan, practically the whole of Icelandic literature that has real interest would have been accessible once for all. As it is, one is divided between satisfaction that England should have done such a service to one of the great mediæval literatures, and regret that she has not done as much for others.
[162] Dr Vigfusson is exceedingly severe on the Heimskringla, which he will have to be only a late, weak, and rationalised compilation from originals like the oddly termed "Great O.T. Saga." But it is hard for a man to think hardly of the book in which, though only a translation, he first read how Queen Sigrid the Haughty got rid of her troublesome lovers by the effectual process of burning them en masse in a barn, and how King Olaf died the greatest sea-death—greater even than Grenville's—of any defeated hero, in history or literature.
[163] The Story of Burnt Njal. Edinburgh, 1861.
[164] Included in the Bohn edition of Mallet's Northern Antiquities.
[165] Cornhill Magazine, July 1879.
[166] "The Lovers of Gudrun;" November, part iii. p. 337, original edition. London, 1870.
[167] London, 1869.
[168] Gunnlaug's Saga Ormstungu. Ed. Mogk. Halle, 1886.
[169] In Three Northern Love-Stories. London, 1875.
[170] London, 1866.
[171] Edinburgh, 1866.
[172] In one volume. London, 1891.
[173] Not translated, and said to require re-editing in the original, but very fully abstracted in Northern Antiquities, as above, pp. 321-339. The verse is in the Corpus Poeticum Boreale.
[174] It seems almost incredible that the resemblances between Beowulf and the Grettis Saga should never have struck any one till Dr Vigfusson noticed them less than twenty years ago. But the fact seems to be so; and nothing could better prove the rarity of that comparative study of literature to which this series aims at being a modest contribution and incentive.
[175] Compare, mutatis mutandis, Agam., 410 sq., and Kormak's "Stray verses," ll. 41-44, in the Corpus, ii. 65.
[176] Heimskringla does not say "edgeways," but this is the clear meaning. Kolbiorn held his shield flat and below him, so that it acted as a float, and he was taken. Olaf sank.
[177] Of course this is only in comparison. For instance, in Dr Suchier's Denkmäler (Halle, 1883), which contains nearly 500 large pages of Provençal anecdota, about four-fifths is devotional matter of various kinds and in various forms, prose and verse. But such matter, which is common to all mediæval languages, is hardly literature at all, being usually translated, with scarcely any expense of literary originality, from the Latin, or each other.
[178] Alberic's Alexander (v. chap. iv.) is of course Provençal in a way, and there was probably a Provençal intermediary between the Chanson d'Antioche and the Spanish Gran Conquesta de Ultramar. But we have only a few lines of the first and nothing of the second.
[179] The Grundriss zur Geschichte der Provenzalischen Literatur (Elberfeld, 1872) and the Chrestomathie Provençale (3d ed., Elberfeld, 1875) of this excellent scholar will not soon be obsolete, and may, in the peculiar conditions of the case, suffice all but special students in a degree hardly possible in any other literature. Mahn's Troubadours and the older works of Raynouard and Fauriel are the chief storehouses of wider information, and separate editions of the works of the chief poets are being accumulated by modern, chiefly German, scholars. An interesting and valuable addition to the English literature of the subject has been made, since the text was written, by Miss Ida Farnell's Lives of the Troubadours, a translation with added specimens of the poets and other editorial matter.
[180] Ed. Hercher, Erotici Scriptores Græci (2 vols., Leipzig, 1858), ii. 161-286.
[181] Ed. Reifferscheid. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1884.
[182] Following Eustathius in Hercher, op. cit.
[183] These political verses are fifteen-syllabled, with a cæsura at the eighth, and in a rhythm ostensibly accentual.
[184] Erotici Scriptores, ii. 555.
[185] Sometimes spelt Ismenias and Ismene. I believe it was first published in an Italian translation of the late Renaissance, and it has appeared in other languages since. But it is only worth reading in its own.
[186] Πόλις Εὐρύκωμις καὶ τἆλλα μὲν ἀγαθὴ, ὅτι καὶ θαλάττῃ στεφανοῦται καὶ ποίλμοῖς καταρρεῖται καὶ λειμῶσι κομᾷ καὶ τρυφαῖς εὐθηνεῖται παντοδαπαῖς, τὰ δ’ εἰς θεοῦς εὐσεβής, καὶ ὑπὲρ τὰς χρυσᾶς Ἀθήνας ὅλη βωμός, ὅλη θῦμα, θεοῖς ἀνάθημα.
Transliteration of above: Polis Eurykômis kai talla men agathê, hoti kai thalattê stephanoutai kai poilmois katarreitai kai leimôsi koma kai tryphais euthêneitai pantodapais, ta d' eis theous eusebês, kai hyper tas chrysas Athênas holê bômos, holê thyma, theois anathêma.
[187] I have not thought it proper, considering the system of excluding mere hypothesis which I have adopted, to give much place here to that interesting theory of modern "Romanists" which will have it that Latin classical literature was never much more than a literary artifice, and that the modern Romance tongues and literatures connect directly, through that famous lingua romana rustica and earlier forms of it, vigorous though inarticulate, in classical times themselves, with primitive poetry—"Saturnian," "Fescennine," and what not. All this is interesting, and it cannot be said, in the face of inscriptions, of the scraps of popular speech in the classics, &c., to be entirely guesswork. But a great deal of it is.
[188] See Studj sulla Letteratura Italiana dei Primi Secoli. 2d ed. Milan: Fratelli Treves, 1891. Pp. 241-458.
[189] Obtainable in many forms, separately and with Dante's works. The Latin is easy enough, but there is a good English translation by A.G. Ferrers Howell (London, 1890). Those who like facsimiles may find one of the Grenoble MS., with a learned introduction, edited by MM. Maignien and Prompt (Venice, 1892).
[190] Authorities differ oddly on Jacopone da Todi (v. p. 8) in his Italian work. Professor d'Andrea's book, cited above, opens with an excellent essay on him.
[191] The text with comment, stanza by stanza, is to be found in the book cited above.
[192] "Sacro erotismo," "baccanale cristiano," are phrases of Professor d'Andrea's.
[193] Spanish can scarcely be said to have shared, to an extent commensurate with its interest, in the benefit of recent study of the older forms of modern languages. There is, at any rate in English, and I think elsewhere, still nothing better than Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature (3 vols., London, 1849, and reprinted since), in the early part of which he had the invaluable assistance of the late Don Pascual de Gayangos. Some scattered papers may be found in Romania. Fortunately, almost all the known literary materials for our period are to be found in Sanchez' Poesias Castellanas Anteriores al Siglo XV., the Paris (1842) reprint of which by Ochoa, with a few valuable additions, I have used. The Poema del Cid is, except in this old edition, rather discreditably inaccessible—Vollmöller's German edition (Halle, 1879), the only modern or critical one, being, I understand, out of print. It would be a good deed if the Clarendon Press would furnish students with this, the only rival of Beowulf and the Chanson de Roland in the combination of antiquity and interest.
[194] Extracts of this appear in Ticknor, Appendix A., iii. 352, note.
[195] I have not seen Professor Cornu's paper itself, but only a notice of it by M. G. Paris in Romania, xxii. 153, and some additional annotations by the Professor himself at p. 531 of the same volume.
[196] It is perhaps fair to Professor Cornu to admit some weight in his argument that where proper names predominate—i.e., where the copyist was least likely to alter—his basis suggests itself most easily.
[197] Some writers very inconveniently, and by a false transference from "consonant," use "consonance" as if equivalent to "alliteration." It is much better kept for full rhyme, in which vowels and consonants both "sound with" each other.
[198] I have not thought it necessary to give an abstract of the contents of the poem, because Southey's Chronicle of the Cid is accessible to everybody, and because no wise man will ever attempt to do over again what Southey has once done.
[199] Sanchez-Ochoa, op. cit., pp. 525-561.
[200] Ibid., pp. 561-576.
[201] Sanchez-Ochoa, op. cit., pp. 577-579.