IV

MIDDLE ENGLISH

[By MARGARET L. LEE]

Two general observations may be made in regard to the year's work of this section; first, that in the majority of cases the purpose of the modern author or editor has been literary, social, or historical rather than linguistic; secondly, that an unusually large proportion of the books considered deal with matter belonging to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Mr. Sisam's volume of extracts from fourteenth-century writers 1 forbids any narrow definition of the nature of its appeal. In it we seem to possess what has so long been lacking to the student of late Middle English-an altogether excellent collection of representative pieces.

Anthologies culled from Old and Middle English literature have hitherto tended to emphasize the philological value of the passages chosen, at the expense of literary interest (Professor Cook's Literary Middle English Reader (1915) is a noteworthy exception, but has little in the way of textual annotation.) Mr. Sisam's collection, on the contrary, is so edited as to appeal both to linguistic and literary scholarship, and this in itself implies a high level of attainment. The Introduction, a delightful piece of critical prose, deals with the growth of romance and of new metrical forms during the thirteenth century, thus leading on to a detailed study of the fourteenth century, with its alliterative revival on the one hand, its fresh tide of foreign influence on the other, and its development of a new literary type, the Miracle Play. The discussion of the Middle English didactic or moral poem leads to an interesting digression, meant to prove that the large 1 Fourteenth-Century Verse and Prose, ed. by K. Sisam. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921. xxxiii+264+ App. 27 pp. 7s. 6d. net.

proportion of such poems among existing MSS. is inconclusive, since 'up to Chaucer's day, the greater the popularity of an English poem, the less important becomes the MS. as a means of early transmission. To determine the relative popularity of the longer tales in verse we need, not so much a catalogue of extant MSS. as a census, that cannot now be taken, of the repertoires of the entertainers.'

In a concluding section Mr. Sisam provides some hints on the study of early literature which should be of real benefit to students. The need for intensive plus discursive reading, and of a 'sensitive' attitude towards the writings dealt with, has seldom been so much as referred to in the ordinary text-book, which is apt to assume a finished scholarship on the part of the untrained student. Mr. Sisam writes as a teacher no less than a man of letters, and his point of view is broadly humanistic.

The scheme of the book excludes selections from Chaucer, 'who suffers when read in extracts . . . although without him fourteenthcentury literature is a body without a head'. The point is debateable; but if it be conceded, the choice of pieces leaves little room for criticism. Robert Mannyng, Richard Rolle, Langland, Mandeville, Barbour, Wiclif, Gower, Trevisa, and Minot are the chief individual authors represented, and there are plentiful extracts from the anonymous West Midland alliterative poems, the lyrics, and the York and Towneley plays. Each extract is introduced by a few clear paragraphs of general information, and elucidated by several pages of notes which fulfil the double function of exciting interest in subject-matter and in form. The volume includes an Appendix of nearly thirty pages on the English Language in the fourteenth century, so compact and suggestive as to constitute an altogether admirable introduction to the study of Middle English from the linguistic point of view; and (in the later edition) a Vocabulary, which is also issued separately for purchasers of the book in its earlier form. It is unfortunate that this separate issue is unpaged, and that it should be entitled a Vocabulary on the cover and a Glossary within. But these small points do not obscure the fact that Mr. Tolkien has worthily completed a piece of work which can hardly be praised too highly by teachers whom experience has 'A Middle English Vocabulary, by J. R. R. Tolkien. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922. (Not paged). 4s. 6d. net.

brought to realize the underlying unity of all literary and linguistic study worthy of the name.

Mr. Tolkien gives 'exceptionally full treatment to what may rightly be called the backbone of the language', e. g. he devotes much space and care to the various meanings of the preposition to, and the various forms of the pronoun he, or the verb habben, rather than to suggested etymologies of the rare and obscure words contained in his texts. The result is a Vocabulary with exhaustive textual references, having a value independent of the extracts to which it is appended-comparable indeed in fullness and interest with Heyne's Glossary to Beowulf and a few others like it. The treatment of convertible symbols such as 3 and g, and th, u and v, i and y, is particularly to be commended.

We hope that future editions of Fourteenth-Century Verse and Prose will be printed on more opaque paper, on which students could insert their own marginal annotations in ink.

It is doubtful whether a thoroughly good collection of pieces such as the one just considered, or a finely-edited example of the best that a Middle English writer could produce, forms the more desirable introduction to a study of the period. Of the latter class of work we have a specimen in Sir I. Gollancz's Pearl,3 a labour of love summarizing the fruit of many years' patient investigation. The editor regards 'this early In Memoriam' as based undoubtedly upon a personal experience, its scheme 'elaborated from the one thought of the transfiguration of the child'.

Uniting as it does the influences of Scripture and of Romance, of the courtly and the native poetic schools, its artistic value is unique, and so is its significance for the future development of English poetry. Many points of interest are touched upon in the Introduction to the text: the approximation of two sister arts, shown alike in the 'brilliancy of colour and richness of description' of the poem itself, and in the illustrations, here reproduced, which adorn the fourteenth-century MS.; the possible connexion with Boccaccio's Olympia, a similar lament for a young daughter; the

• Pearl, edited, with modern Rendering, Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, together with Boccaccio's Olympia, by Sir I. Gollancz, Litt.D., F.B.A. London, Chatto & Windus, 1921. xliv +285 pp. 7s. 6d. net.

vexed problem of authorship; and the relation of Pearl to the other three important poems of the West Midland group.

The notes supplied by Professor Gollancz are no less interesting to the general reader than helpful to the serious student. There is also an adequate glossary, greatly improving upon that of a previous edition; and the Appendix, introducing and translating Boccaccio's eclogue, gives the book a special value for those who find in parallel expressions of fundamental human feeling a convincing proof of the brotherhood of man.

4

A treatment of Sir Thomas Malory's great book is presented by Miss V. Scudder as the outcome of fifteen years' study with college classes. Admirable work has been done on the subject long since by Dr. Oskar Sommer, whose elaborate tables have been used by Miss Scudder as a basis for her own discussion. But Sommer's scholarship is of the strictly analytic and emendatory type which appeals only to the like-minded, whereas Miss Scudder has aimed at a popular presentation suited to the less erudite reader.

The arrangement of the book is business-like. Part I deals with Malory's predecessors-early Arthurian romance in Britain, French verse and prose romances, the development of the Merlin and Lancelot stories, and the romances of the Middle English period. In Part II we have, first, a study of Malory the man, and then a detailed analysis of his great work, the sources of which, together with certain aspects of Malory as philosopher and artist, are discussed in Part III.

The spirit in which Miss Scudder approaches her subject may be gathered from certain passages in the chapter entitled Preliminaries:

The most fascinating work is the investigation of sources. It leads back and back, till behind Geoffrey's Arthur fighting the giant of Mont S. Michel rise all mythic heroes who have slain monsters of darkness, and the traits of Morgan le Fay are explained by her kinship to the Valkyrie, or the Irish wargoddess, the Morrigu. It is in Keltic myth and legend that the

Le Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory, by Vida D. Scudder. London & Toronto: Dent & Sons, 1921. iv +407 pp., with Bibliography, 7 pp. 10s. 6d. net.

richest suggestions are found; yet the mind is impelled to peer toward yet farther horizons; Guenevere borne away by Meliagrance may be own cousin to Persephone in the courts of Hades; Gawain, waxing in strength as the sun mounts the sky, certainly suggests the large family of sun-heroes; and Perceval, dumb and puzzled as the Grail passes before the bier of a king dying yet never dead, may assist at the mystic burial rites of an Eastern god of vegetation.

Malory, as Miss Scudder points out in dealing with the Tristram story, is at times disappointing by reason of his prolixity, his omissions, his repetitions, and his general tendency to dilute and weaken the finest of the old legends. But taken as a whole 'the Morte d Arthur is unique, not so much in its type as in its genius'; and 'the final quality of Malory's art lies deeper than cadence or dramatic narrative; it is his power of suggestion'. Chapter V of Part III deals with this 'suggestion 'under the name of 'causality' (the determinism of the modern psychologist), and points to it as 'the hall-mark of romance at its conclusion rather than its inception'.

Finally, Miss Scudder assigns to Malory-excelled as he is at various points by Chaucer, Langland, and the unknown author of the West Midland alliterative poems-the credit of having written 'the most important single book produced in England during the Middle Ages'. 'No other book', she concludes, 'so carries the weight and force of a whole epoch, crystallized in the alembic of the imagination, and emerging in its immortal part alone.'

This contribution to Arthurian exegetic literature has value, but we could wish that it were less explanatory and more suggestive. Many of the descriptive, paraphrastic, and eulogistic passages might well be omitted without detriment to the main theme. Even a young reader prefers to draw his own conclusions in matters of aesthetics.

Study of the Arthurian story may well lead on by a natural transition to the subject of an article by Professor I. Gollancz on The Middle Ages in the Lineage of English Poetry. This article forms one chapter of a valuable work in which ten contributors

5

• Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilization, ed. by F. J. C. Hearnshaw, M.A., LL.D. London: Harrap, 1921. 262 pp. 10s. 6d.