transfigures the whole narrative. The spirit of the Song of Roland is the spirit of the Crusades, the hero is the protagonist in a war against the enemies of God, and the true story of a skirmish with mountaineers at Roncevaux has become an epic and a glory of the world. Not once or twice had the story of Roland been told before it attained its final and magnificent form. In that form it captivated all Europe, inspired poets like Pulci and Ariosto, made the names of its characters household words in many languages, and remains the pride of France to the present day. It mirrors the noblest features of feudalism in the twelfth century as Beowulf the noblest features of the Viking Age. Roland, then, feudal and Christian though it be, is true epic poetry, with its roots in history. It is the culmination of a process not dissimilar to that which produced the Iliad. It is epic also in its preoccupation with the heroic subject, war— "Gente est nostre bataille !" cries Oliver, "a fine fight this of ours!"—and the sentence rings true to the type, whether we take Homer or Beowulf as representing it. But the Roland, though finely free and bold in its conduct of the narrative, is almost a sustained lyric in its fervour and emotional pitch. Lyrical and popular in origin-for the earliest Chansons were recited to music-it was composed in a metre suitable for song. The most lyrical of extant epics, it falls short of the highest reaches of heroic poetry in certain not negligible particulars. The form is comparatively weak and undistinguished, lacking in the last refinements of art. In the presentation of character and life generally-character and life in all their variety, breadth, and complexity—it is no match for Homer; as an historical document its value is slight, it gives no help, as does Beowulf, towards a reconstruction of the society it pictures. Yet neither the matter of Britain " nor that of Rome produced in the Middle Ages a poem at all comparable with Roland in epic quality, a poem for men, so tense with martial feeling, so noble in ideals, so full-blooded, simple, and impressive. Poetry and history, which in the earlier Chansons de Geste were, as in Homer and Beowulf, closely interwoven, part com pany before we reach the later cycles of romance. Already in Roland the connection is slight, in the Arthurian stories true history has sunk altogether below the horizon. In the fourteenth century the separation is complete, and for our history we go to Froissart rather than to the poets, though it is significant of the old alliance that the first book of his Chronicles, afterwards recast, was composed in verse. As authentic history becomes less and less in the romances the wonder element gains until it dominates the entire field. From the twelfth century onwards we are in the full flood of the romance of marvel, we associate with writers who no longer sing their compositions, but address themselves to readers, who have become conscious of the requirements of a new audience, and endeavour to gratify it with delightful novelties, with the strange and unexpected, with the subtleties of the new science of courtly love, with modern sentiment. The spirit of curiosity outgoes that of pleasure in the life of the actual world, credibility ceases to be of consequence, and astonishment is to be purchased at whatever price. With the Romans d'Aventure and the Arthurian stories—it is another significant change-women for the first time exert an influence in the world of literature. "A knight may never be of prowess but if he be a lover," said Sir Tristram. These were the tales which, in Chaucer's words, "women hold in full great reverence." That they formed a conspicuous and important, perhaps the most sympathetic, section of the audience to whom the poet addressed himself there is proof sufficient. "In chief these tales the ladies please They listen glad their hearts to ease." The fashionable and elegant society of feudal times, given to the pleasures of tourney, of hawking, and hunting-pleasures which, contrasted with the serious business of war, made the presence of ladies at the pursuits of men possible-demanded a literature which took account of women. And taking account of it not only did the interest of love overshadow that of battle, the ideals that were abroad in romance took higher flight. The courtesies, the tenderness and pathos, the symbolism and spirituality, the tone of thoughtfulness-all reflect, although all 1 are not directly due to, the influence of the feminine mind in this age. We have left behind the heroic and entered the chivalric world. Epic is masculine, romance feminine. A parallel may be drawn from ancient times. "Romance," writes Professor Hardie, "is naturally associated with women and their emotions-if it is concerned with the inner life of feeling it must inevitably deal with the sex which is less actively engaged in the work and business of the world. The Greek states differed very much in their treatment of women. Among the Ionians and Athenians women lived in seclusion, enjoyed little freedom, and had few opportunities of education. The Homeric poems are substantially the work of Ionians. Greek tragedy is Athenian. Neither in Homer nor the Drama is there a romantic tone. The state of things was different among the Dorians and Æolians. It is among them and not among Ionians that romance is to be looked for. Stesichorus was a Dorian poet." The older epic poetry then was driven from the field by the more popular "matter of Britain," its simpler beauty faded before the more brilliant splendours of Celtic imagining. The Arthurian romance, in some respects superior to the "matter of France," in others, and these important respects, was inferior to the "haughty matter" of epic. Unlike the Chansons de Geste, the Celtic stories did not spring from the soil of an actual life once lived, a veritable historical past. Arthur began in myth and never rose into a national hero. Efforts, but unavailing efforts, were made on his behalf. He failed to establish himself firmly and without rival in the national mind. It may have been, indeed, for this among other reasons, that the French epic lost ground before the chivalric legends, in that it was less symbolic, less universal in its appeal, a poem of limited patriotic and national feeling, incapable of that kind of indefinite expansion of meaning and various interpretation which assist the work of art to accommodate itself to the emotional and intellectual needs of progressive civilisation. Arthur-in the account of Nennius, leader in the battles against the Saxons waged by 1 Lectures on Classical Subjects. British kings-is, from the first mention of him, a figure in extremest shadow. This Arthur who, as the story went, came from the unknown, and after his last battle in Lyonesse returned to it, who kept his court in a vague wonderland through whose dark enchanted forests his knights wandered in search of adventure; this Arthur, only to be approached through myth and mystery, supplied by the Celtic imagination, was wholly superhuman, and conceptions of him to suit the needs of many times and minds were easily moulded. Fancy, untrammelled by any order of facts, was free to picture her hero as she would. Thus the absence of strongly defined features of character, though it militated against his acceptance as a national hero, was altogether in his favour as a world figure. The very lack of individuality makes for universality, and Arthur and his knights overthrew on the plains of romance Charlemagne and his peers. In an inquiry concerning the epic elements present in Arthurian literature the question of origins need not arise, and we may omit, therefore, all reference to the debate which has not yet determined for us the problem whether it sprang from Celtic or French or English-that is Anglo-Norman-sources. Nor need it here concern us how the various legends drifted together, until, with Arthur as centre, matter from far separated quarters was wrought into the wonderful embroidery. Taken as a whole, we have seen, the romances were never brought within the compass of a single poem. It is to the prose narrative of Malory, to his Morte d'Arthur, that we must go for the only attempt at unification of the legends in the English tongue, an attempt unrivalled in that it presented by far the most complete version of the romance, renewed at a later day its early popularity, and gave it currency throughout modern literature. Malory's is the only Arthuriad, and from Malory, therefore, whatever epic qualities belong to it will best appear. And it will be generally conceded that, despite the splendour of Malory's achievement, this final and most complete rendering of the Arthurian romance is lacking in one great essential of epic, a coherent plot. The stories have little or no connection with one another, and the absence of any important central action, with which they come. might have been associated as subsidiary episodes, places the Arthurian romance, as we possess it, almost at once beyond the pale of epic. This inherent defect has never been wholly overIt appears as conspicuously in Tennyson's Idylls as in the Morte d'Arthur itself. Nor is the atmosphere in any satisfying sense the atmosphere of true epic. The wars of heroic poetry have become adventures hardly serious beyond the seriousness of tourney, undertaken for the sake of glory, or for the favour of ladies "whose bright eyes Rain influence and judge the prize Love and adventure, knight-errantry, are the topics of this literature, and to these interests is added that of magic-love potions, charms, and spells, miraculous arms and armour, giants, dragons, enchanted castles, the whole sum of marvels gleaned from the folklore of West and East: "Where wonders wild of Arabesque combine Always pleasant is it, the wonderful," as Aristotle acknowledged, and these interests are indeed sublimated by the spiritual touch. For the child-like and almost vulgar materials are so interwoven with Christian ideals, so permeated with symbolic conceptions, so transfigured by high and mystical vision that civilisation is profoundly in their debt. Yet how far from Homer and Beowulf we are in this world of moving dreams, of phantom figures! From the epic standpoint "the matter of Britain" is defective also in its presentation of character. The vagueness of its history and geography is matched by the vagueness of its persons. The knights and ladies of Arthur's court have little to distinguish them from one another; all the men are bold-as in the ballads-and all the women fair. But of dramatic interplay of character there is almost none. And thus a certain incurable monotony-reflecting perhaps the monotony of life in the medieval castle 1-hardly assuaged by the introduction of 1 As the monotony of the Arabian Nights, veiled with wonderful skill, reflects the monotony of life in the harem. |