ART. IV.-1. Relics of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of old heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets, together with some few of a later date. By THOMAS PERCY, D. D. New Edition. Three Volumes, 12mo. London: 1839. 2. Versuch einer geschichtlichen Charakteristik der Volkslieder Germanischer Nationen. Von TALVI. Leipzig: 1840. F. A. Brockhaus. INDIVIDUALS at an early period of life, and nations in the first stages of their existence, discover a fondness for music, and the cadence of metrical composition. The earliest literary productions of the human mind, are therefore commonly of this description. The story of warlike deeds or heroic endurance, leads the imagination of the minstrel to conceive of, and the admiring listner to believe in, the interposition of the gods in the affairs of men. And the seemingly inspired individual, who is able to record the visible achievements performed on earth, becomes the authentic register of the acts, and the interpreter of the inscrutable purposes of heaven. No wonder, then, that under the names of poet, prophet, scald, bard, or minstrel, this class of persons, in ancient times, claimed the profoundest reverence of their contemporaries, and their writings the most sacred keeping and handing down of posterity. As But what was first preserved as a record of the gods, becomes available in our hands as the history of man. such we regard the Iliad, the true and unfading picture of the early Greeks, and effluence of their nascent vigor. The poems of the Niebelungenlied, which must have been composed some centuries before the age of Charlemagne, and the Icelandic Edda, the compilation of the Norwegian exiles upon that island, together with the superstitions of the Scandinavian tribes, have preserved to us the general impression of their national character. Nor do we, by any means, violate the sacredness of the writings of Moses and of Job, in seeking there for the graphic delineation of the patriarchal state, and the most satisfactory exposition of original man. Literature is the type and transcript of the national mind. Its progress, true as the shadow to its substance, denotes the advance of thought, and its shifting phases are those of a nation's improvement or decline. Thus, literature is the interpreter between distant ages and climes - the restoration of the past for our instruction, and the reproduction of things faded away. In this view, the succession of a nation's songs is more instructive than that of her battles, and the lives of poets more important than the chronicle of kings. In no way are we more interested in this idea, than as it is illustrated by the early literature of England, and in tracing the two schools of Saxon and romantic poetry to the people from which they are respectively derived. The occasion we shall have in so doing, to discuss the manners and genius of the Norman and Saxon races, will enable us, perhaps, to recognise our own lines and features, and the rudiments of our own social condition, but somewhat obscured in those of an almost uncivilized ancestry. The Norman kings of England were the most powerful in Europe. Sixty thousand knights, in capite, each with his retainers, more or less, stood ready for the defence of the throne or for foreign adventure. An income of four hundred thousand pounds of sterling silver, equal to six millions of dollars of our day, gave them command of whatever could worthily embellish so proud a court; trains of menials; troops of armed attendants; horses trained for battle or the chase; deep-voiced hounds and falcons; parks and forests as large as counties, for their pastime. Lords and ladies thronged their halls of ceremony, and drank wassail at their banquets. Persons cunning in shows and pageants were attracted from distant countries by the high request of their several crafts. They spoke the language of their native land. From that country came also, doctors learned in divinity and law, dividing with dialectic subtlety the doctrines of their schools, confounding the common sense of the people by the conceits of learning. Their refined arguments of casuistry perplexed the poor Saxon to the jeopardy of his faith, while a like logic, enforced by "the last argument of kings," effectually robbed him of his cattle and his land. Jousts and tournaments were their most labored pastime. But there were poets, or trouveres, as they were called, who aided to while their inactive hours, by reciting their tales of romantic adventure. These, too, were of continental origin: "Frankis speech is called romance, So saies clerks and men of France." Their subjects were the Trojan war, the conquests of Alexander, the achievements of Charlemagne and his paladins, and the fabulous traditions of Arthur and his dosapers, or twelve knights of his round table. The legends of the saints and martyrs of the Romish church, and even treatises of theology and science, were likewise favored themes of the Norman minstrel. The adventures of the heroes of romance were set forth, with interminable variations of the main incidents of their respective fables, with an extravagance of embellishment which has no example. They were made to conquer serpents larger than pines, and overthrow, in duel, giants as huge as the towers of the feudal castles. The heroes of early Greece were absurdly leagued in holy enterprise with the saints of the Romish calendar; and Aristotle wages a contest of divinity with St. George. Sir Guy of Warwick is nearly drowned in the blood of Colebrand, whom he has slain in miraculous combat. Richard the lion hearted feasts on the roasted head of a slaughtered Saracen. St. Brandon visits paradise in the body, crossing seas of amber, guiding his magic ship through floating palaces of crystal, and mooring it three weeks at a time upon the half submerged body of a sea monster, which he mistakes for an island. They sing, moreover, of mysterious gems, and talismans which could repel all harm, and girdles with power to test the heart's truth, and turn beauty into ugliness, and reverse the metamorphosis. Other themes were enchanted forests, where trees and plants informed with life, and birds and beasts which were such in form only, perplexed the hero with their secret influences and potent syllables. But not the gorgeous imagery alone of these poems, could satisfy, it is said, the astute perceptions and factitious tastes of the polite ranks of that period. Their subtle and refining intellect sought to express and imbibe a secondary, or esoteric meaning, beneath those showy types, and the incidents of the romance must cunningly shadow forth a doctrine. The knight who armed himself for adventure, put not on armor of brass or steel alone, but the panoply of God was signified by those emblems: "On his crest a dove, white, Signification of the holy spryte; Upon a cross the dove stood, God's high name thereon engrave." Translation, Romance of Richard Cœur de Lion. His adventure was the journey of life; the combat, the good fight of faith; the talisman, that holiness of heart which could baffle the machinations of the great dragon, the devil, and dispel the illusive mirages of temptation which the enchantress sin had raised up around his path. Such was early romantic fiction; like feudal hall, hung round with blazoned shields, where stripes of black, and white, and scarlet, eagles, lions, griffin's claws, glared in grotesque and gorgeous confusion upon the eye, but full of significance to those who could read their heraldry. The Romish church, with her emblematic cycle of holy seasons and gaudy and symbolic ritual; the cathedral, with its spires mounting to the heavens, its pictured windows, clustered columns, vaulted ceilings, and all its prodigality of antic shapes and colors, or, as Coleridge says, "the frozen music" of the Gothic church, were the offspring and images of the same genius. But romantic poesy, be it remembered, was not truly English. With the language of the conqueror, his feudal laws, the subtlety and pretension of his exotic learning, the august ceremonial and brilliant diversions of his court, it was merely superinduced upon the English soil, and the temper and genius of the Saxon strove against it. Though conquered, he was a Saxon still, and refused to be tutored in burdensome, outlandish, and fantastic observances. To him, the whole was but a gaudy and expensive pageant, as unsatisfying to his truth-seeking heart, as bubbles to the thirsty lips, and a mockery as cruel as the harmonious chimes of the church tower, which rung the oppressive curfew; and while it was passing before him like a festive procession, he was ripening in secret a strength which should some day spoil it. He was energizing himself towards that political freedom, whose first earnest was the restoration of the laws of the Confessor, by Henry I., and followed by the concession of the great charter of John, and which was de creed by such gradations to become, in distant time, the glory of the earth. And he was elaborating, meanwhile, the germs of a literature which should spread its fruitful branches when the almond forest, which then rocked over it, should have spent its fragrance and its shade, and the great flowers faded which had been nursed by its gloom. The Saxons sprang from the loins of as fierce and sombrous a race as ever peopled a wilderness. Their home was the Cimbric Chersonesus, and the neighboring regions of the north. For a god, they adored Thor, whose temple was the dark pine woods, where the northern ocean joined its restless moan with the songs of an unholy worship. Their priesthood promised them they should, with Odin, their first king, drink strong waters in heaven from the skulls of slaughtered foes. Their naked arms, their uncouth costume, cum reste stricta et singulos artus exprimente; and more especially the attire of the women, which did not veil, but studiously displayed the female form, shocked their invaders, accustomed to the graceful folds of their own flowing robes. They numbered their years by winters, and the revolutions of the earth upon its axis they called nights. They were respectful towards their women, and prodigal of their goods. They were bold in fight, and kept their engagements. But five centuries' possession of the English soil had wonderfully refined them. They had, in that time, become inured to habits of peace and industry-given birth to a system of jurisprudence out of which has grown our common law established the christian worship upon a worthy basis-and raised up a literature of some pretension. The Normans affected to despise their cowardice and stupidity. Undoubtedly they were more remarkable for obstinate adherence to their purposes, than for quick and ready action in achieving them. But the impetuous wit of the Norman was often found an unequal match for the cumbersome, but strong headwork, of the old prototype of John Bull. Hogs, sheep, and horned cattle, were the live products of their estates. Commerce had not stimulated their avarice, or disturbed their primitive manners, by disproportionate accumulations of wealth. In the language of the Bible, they were a people "holding the plough, glorying in the goad which driveth the oxen, diligent to give kine their fodder, and whose talk was of bullocks." Kings and nobles they had, but scarcely distinguished from the commonalty by gentility of manners or |