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be, because they are strong, and a strong man loves to prove his strength by knocking down his neighbors; but also from a desire of fame, and as a point of honor/ By this one word honor the whole spirit of warfare is changed. Saxon poets painted war as a murderous fury, as a blind madness which shook flesh and blood, and awakened the instincts of the beast of prey; Norman poets describe it as a tourney. The new passion which they introduce is that of vanity and gallantry Guy of Warwick dismounts all the knights in Europe, in order to deserve the hand of the prude and scornful Félice. The tourney itself is but a ceremony, somewhat brutal, I admit, since it turns upon the breaking of arms and limbs, but yet brilliant and French. To show skill and courage, display the magnificence of dress and armor, be applauded by and please the ladies,-such feelings indicate men of greater sociality, more under the influence of public opinion, less the slaves of their own passions, void both of lyric inspiration and savage enthusiasm, gifted by a different genius, because inclined to other pleasures.

Such were the men who at this moment were disembarking in England to introduce their new manners and a new spirit, French at bottom, in mind and speech, though with special and provincial features; of all the most matter-of-fact, with an eye to the main chance, calculating, having the nerve and the dash of our own soldiers, but with the tricks and precautions of lawyers; heroic undertakers of profitable enterprises; having gone to Sicily and Naples, and ready to travel

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Constantinople or Antioch, so it be to take a country or bring back money;

btle politicians, accustomed in Sicily to hire themselves to the highest bidder, and capable of doing a stroke of business in the heat of the Crusade, like Bohémond, who before Antioch, speculated on the dearth of his Christian allies, and would only open the town to them under condition of their keeping it for himself; methodical and persevering conquerors, expert in administration, and fond of scribbling on paper, like this very William, who was able to organize such ar expedi- !

tion, and such an army, and kept a written roll of the same, and who proceeded to register the whole of England in his Domesday Book. Sixteen days after the disembarkation, the contrast between the two nations was manifested at Hastings by its visible effects.

*

The Saxons "ate and drank the whole night. You might have seen them struggling much, and leaping and singing," with shouts of laughter and noisy joy. In the morning they packed behind their palisades the dense masses of their heavy infantry, and with battle-axe hung round their neck awaited the attack. The wary Normans weighed the chances of heaven and hell, and tried to enlist God upon their side. Robert Wace, their historian and compatriot, is no more troubled by poetical imagination than they were by warlike inspiration; and on the eve of the battle his mind is as prosaic and clear as theirs. The same spirit showed itself in the battle. They were for the most part bowmen and horsemen, well-skilled, nimble, and clever. Taillefer, the jongleur, who asked for the honor of striking the first blow, went singing, like a true French volunteer, performing tricks all the while. ‡ Having arrived before the * Robert Wace, Roman du Rou. ↑ Ibid.

Et li Normanz et li Franceiz
Tote nuit firent oreisons.
Et furent en afficions.
De lor péchiés confèz se firent
As proveires les regehirent,
Et qui n'en out proveires prèz.
4 son veizin se fist confèz,
Pour co ke samedi esteit
Ke la bataille estre debveit.
Unt Normanz a pramis e voé,
Si com li cler l'orent loé,
Ke à ce jor mez s'il veskeient,
Char ni saunc ne mangereient
Giffrei, éveske de Coustances,
A plusors joint lor pénitances.
Cli reçut li confessions
Et dona li béneiçons.
Robert Wace, Roman du Rou:
Taillefer ki moult bien cantout
Sur un roussin qui tot alout
Devant li dus alout cantant
De Kalermaine e de Roiant,
E d'Oliver et des vassals
Ki moururent à Roncevals.
Quant ils orent chevalchié tant
K'as Engleis vindrent aprismant
"Sires! dist Taillefer, merci
Je vos a la quement servi.

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English, he cast his ance aree times | in the air, then his sword, and caught them again by the handle; and Harold's clumsy foot-soldiers, who only knew how to cleave coats of mail by blows from their battle-axes, were astonished, saying to one another that it was magic." As for William, amongst a score of prudent and cunning actions, he performed two wellcalculated ones, which, in this sore embarrassment, brought him safe out of his difficulties. He ordered his archers to shoot into the air; the arrows wounded many of the Saxons in the face, and one of them pierced Harold in the eye. After this he simulated flight; the Saxons, intoxicated with joy and wrath, quitted their entrenchments, and exposed themselves to the lances of his horsemen. During the remainder of the contest they only make a stand by small companies, fight with fury, and end by being slaughtered. The strong, mettlesome, brutal race threw themselves on the enemy like a savage bull; the dexterous Norman hunters wounded them adroitly, knocked them down, and placed them under the yoke.

III.

What then is this French race, which by arms and letters make such a splendid entrance upon the world, and is so manifestly destined to rule, that in the East, for example, their name of Franks will be given to all the nations of the West? Wherein consists this new spirit, this precocious pioneer, this key of all middle-age civilization ? There is in every mind of the kind a fundamental activity which, when in

Tut mon servise me debvez,
Hui, si vos plaist, me le rendez
Por tout guerredun vos requier,
Et si vos voil forment preier,
Otreiez-mei, ke jo n'i faille,
Li primier colp de la bataille."
Et li dus répont: "Je l'otrei."
Et Taillefer point à desrei;
Devant toz li altres se mist,
Ja Englez féri, si l'ocist.
De sos le pis, parmie la pance,
Li fist passer ultre la lance,
A terre estendu l'abati.
Poiz trait l'espée altre féri.
Poiz a crié: "Venez, venez!
Ke fetes-vos? Férez, férez!"
Donc l'unt Englez avironé,
Al secund colp k' 1 ou doné.

cessantly repeated, moulds its plan and gives it its diretion; in town of country, cultivated or not, in its infancy and its age, it spends its existence and employs its energy in conceiving an event or an object. This is its origina and perpetual process; and whether it change its region, return, advance, prolong, or alter its course, its whole motion is but a series of consecutive steps; so that the least alteration in the size, quickness, or precision of its primitive stride transforms and regulates the whole course, as in a tree the structure of the first shoot determines the whole foliage, and governs the whole growth.*// When the Frenchman conceives an event or an object, he conceives quickly and distinctly; there is no internal disturbance, no previous fermentation of confused and violent ideas, which, becoming con centrated and elaborated, end in a noisy outbreak. The movement of his intelligence is nimble and prompt like that of his limbs; at once and without effort he seizes upon his idea. But he seizes that alone; he leaves on one side all the long entangling offshoots whereby it is entwined and twisted amongst its neighboring ideas; he does not embarrass himself with nor think of them; he detaches, plucks, touches but slightly, and that is all. He is deprived, or if you prefer it, he is exempt from those sudden half-visions which disturb a man, and open up to him instantaneously vast deeps and far perspectives. Images are excited by internal commotion; he, not being so moved, imagines not. He is only moved superficially; he is without large sympathy; he does not perceive an object as it is, complex and combined, but in parts, with a discursive and superficial knowledge. That is why no race in Europe is less poetical. Let us look at their epics; none are more prosaic. They are not wanting in number: The Song of Roland, Garin le Loherain, Ogier le Danois, Berthe aux grands Pieds. There is a library of them. Though their manners are heroic and their spirit fresh, though

The idea of types is app licable throughou all physical and moral nature.

+ Danois is a contraction of le d' Ardennois from the Ardennes.-TR.

1

they have originality, and deal with grand events, yet, spite of this, the narrative is as dull as that of the babbling Norman chroniclers. Doubtless when Homer relates he is as clear as they are, and he develops as they do: but his magnificent titles of rosy-fingered Morn, the wide-bosomed Air, the divine and nourishing Earth, the earthshaking Ocean, come in every instant and expand their purple bloom over the speeches and battles, and the grand abounding similes which interrupt the narrative tell of a people more inclined to enjoy beauty than to proceed straight to fact.//But here we have facts, always facts, nothing but facts; the Frenchman wants to know if the hero will kill the traitor, the lover wed the maiden; he must not be delayed by poetry or painting. He advances nimbly to the end of the story, not lingering for dreams of the heart or wealth of landscape. There is no splendor, no color, in his narrative; his style in quite bare, and without figures; you may read ten thousand verses in these old poems without meeting one/Sh Shall we open the most ancient, the most original, the most eloquent, at the most moving point, the Song of Roland, when Roland is dying? The narrator is moved, and yet his language remains the same, smooth, accentless, so penetrated by the prosaic spirit, and so void of the poetic! He gives an abstract of motives, a summary of events, a series of causes for grief, a series of causes for consolation.* Nothing more. These

Genin, Chanson de Roland:

Co sent Rollans que la mort le trespent,
Devers la teste sur le quer li descent;
Desuz un pin i est alet curant,

Sur l'herbe verte si est culchet adenz;
Desuz lui met l'espée et l'olifan;
Turnat sa teste vers la païene gent,
Pour ço l'at fait que il voelt veirement
Que Carles diet e trestute sa gent,

Li gentilz quens, qu'il fut mort cunquérant.
Cleimet sa culpe, e menut e suvent,
Pur ses peccrez en puroffrid lo guant.

ᏞᎥ quens Bollans se jut desuz un pin,
Envers Espagne en ad turnet sun vis,
De plusurs choses a remembrer le prist.
De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist,
De dulce France, des humes de sun lign,
De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit.
Ne poet muer n'en plurt et ne susprit.
Mais lui meisme ne volt mettre en ubli.
Cleimet sa culpe, si priet Dieu mercit:

"Veire paterne, ki unques ne mentis,

men regard the circumstance or the action by itself, and adhere to this view. Their idea remains exact, clear, and simple, and does not raise up a similar image to be confused with the first, to color or transform itself. I remains dry; they conceive the divis ions of the object one by one, withou ever collecting them, as the Saxons would, in an abrupt impassioned, glow ing semi-vision. Nothing is more on posed to their genius than the genuine songs and profound hymns, such as the English monks were singing be neath the low vaults of their churches They would be disconcerted by the un evenness and obscurity of such lan guage. They are not capable of such an access of enthusiasm and such excess of emotion. They never cry out, they speak, or rather they converse, and that at moments when the soul, overwhelmed by its trouble might be expected to cease thinking and feeling. Thus Amis, in a mystery-play, being leprous, calmly requires his friend Amille to slay his two sons, in order that their blood may heal him of his leprosy; and Amille replies still more calmly,* If ever they try to sing, even in heaven, "a roundelay high and clear," they will produce little rhymed arguments, as dull as the dullest talk

Seint Lazaron de mort resurrexis,
Et Daniel des lions guaresis,
Guaris de mei l'arome de tuz perilz,
Pur les pecchez que en ma vie fis."
Sun destre guant à Deu en puroffrit.
Seint Gabriel de sa main l'ad pris.
Desur sun bras teneit le chef enclin,
Juntes ses mains est alet à sa fin.
Deus i tramist sun angle cherubin,
Et seint Michel qu'on cleimet del péri
Ensemble ad els seint Gabriel i vint.
L'anme del cunte portent en pareis.
*Mon très-chier ami débonnaire,
Vous m'avez une chose ditte
Qui n'est pas à faire petite
Mais que l'on doit moult resonger
Et nonpourquant, sanz esiongnier
Puisque garison autrement
Ne povez avoir vraiement,
Pour vostre amour les occiray,
Et le sang vous apporteray.
Vraiz Diex, mout est excellente,
Et de grant charité plaine,
Vostre bonté souveraine.
Car vostre grâce présente,
A toute personne humaine,
Vraix Diex, moult est excellente,
Puisqu'elle a cuer et entente,

Et
que à ce desir l'amaine
Que de vous servir se paine.

are.

Pursue this literature to its conclu- | intelligence is a reasoning faculty, sion regard it, like that of the Skalds, which spreads, though unwittingly. at the time of its decadence, when its Nothing is more clear than the style of vices, being exaggerated, display, like the old French narratives and of the those of the Skalds, only still more earliest poems: we do not perceive strongly the kind of mind which pro- that we are following a narrator, so duced it. The Skalds fall off into non- easy is the gait, so even the road he sease; it loses itself into babble and opens to us, so smoothly and gradually platitude. The Saxon could not mas- every idea glides into the next; and ter his craving for exaltation; the this is why he narrates so well. The Frenchman could not restrain the volu- chroniclers Villehardouin, Joinville, bality of his tongue. He is too diffuse Froissart, the fathers of prose, have an and too clear; the Saxon is too obscure ease and clearness approached oy and brief. The one was excessively none, and beyond all, a charm, a grace, ag tatea and carried away; the other which they had not to go out of their explains and develops without meas- way to find. Grace is a national pos From the twelfth century the session in France, and springs from the Gestes spun out degenerate into rhap- native delicacy which has a horror of sodies and psalmodies of thirty or forty incongruities; the instinct of Frenchthousand verses. Theology enters into men avoids violent shocks in works of them; poetry becomes an intermin- taste as well as in works of argument; able, intolerable litany, where the they desire that their sentiments and ideas, expounded, developed, and re- ideas shall harmonize, and not clash. peated ad infinitum, without one out- Throughout they have this measured burst of emotion or one touch of origin- spirit, exquisitely refined.* They take ality, flow like a clear and insipid care, on a sad subject, not to push stream, and send off their reader, by emotion to its limits; they avoid big dint of their monotonous, rhymes, into words. Think how Joinville relates in a comfortable slumber. What a de- six lines the death of the poor sick plorable abundance of distinct and priest who wished to finish celebrating facile ideas! We meet with it again the mass, and "never more did sing, in the seventeenth century, in the liter- and died." Open a mystery-play, ary gossip which took place at the Théophilus, or that of the Queen of Hunfeet of men of distinction; it is the gary, for instance: when they are gofault and the talent of the race. With ing to burn her and her child, she says this involuntary art of perceiving, and two short lines about "this gentle dew isolating instantaneously and clearly which is so pure an innocent," nothing each part of every object, people can more. Take a fabliau, even a dramaspeak, even for speaking's sake, and tic one: when the penitent knight, forever. who has undertaken to fill a barrel with his tears, dies in the hermit's company, he asks from him only one last gift: "Do but embrace me, and then I'll die in the arms of my friend." Could a more touching sentiment be expressed in more sober language? We must say of their poetry what is said of certain pictures: This is made out of nothing. Is there in the world any thing more delicately graceful than the verses of Guillaume de Lorris ? Allegory clothes his ideas so as to dim their too great brightness; ideal fig ures, half transparent, float about the lover, luminous, yet in a cloud, and lead him amidst all the gentle and deli

Such is the primitive process; how will it be continued? Here appears a new trait in the French genius, the most valuable of all. It is necessary to comprehension that the second idea shall be contiguous to the first; other wise that genius is thrown out of its course and arrested; it cannot proceed by irregular bounds; it must walk step by step, on a straight road; order is innate in it; without study, and in the first place, it disjoints and decomposes the object or event, however complicated and entangled it may be, and sets the parts one by one in succession to each other, according to their natural connection. True, it is still in a state of barbarism; yet its

See H Taine, La Fontaine and his Fables

P. 15.

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whose the brightness of the morning; then, plain." | humming a burden of a song, he rethat in turns to his narrative. He seeks amusement, and herein lies his power.

cate-hued ideas to the rose, sweet odor embalms all the This refinement goes so far, Thibaut of Champagne and in Charles of Orléans it turns to affectation and In life, as in literature, it is pleasure insipidity. In them all impressions he aims at, not sensual pleasure or grow more slender; the perfume is so emotion. He is lively, not voluptu. weak, that one often fails to catch it; ous; dainty, not a glutton. He takes on their knees before their lady they love for a pastime, not for an intoxica whisper their waggeries and conceits; tion. It is a pretty fruit which he they love politely and wittily; they plucks, tastes, and leaves. And we arrange ingeniously in a bouquet their must remark yet further, that the best painted words," all the flowers of of the fruit in his eyes is the fact of its "fresh and beautiful language; " they beir g forbidden. He says to him self know how to mark fleeting ideas in that he is duping a husband, that “he their flight, soft melancholy, vague deceives a cruel woman, and think reverie; they are as elegant as talka- he ought to obtain a pope's indulgence tive, and as charming as the most for the deed."* He wishes to be amiable abbés of the eighteenth cen- merry-it is the state he prefers, the tury. This lightness of touch is prop-end and aim of his life; and especially er to the race, and appears as plainly to laugh at other people. The short under the armor and amid the massa- verse of his fabliaux gambols and leaps cres of the middle ages as amid the like a schoolboy released from school. courtesies and the musk-scented, wad-over all things respected or respectaded coats of the last court. You will ble: criticizing the church, women, the find it in their coloring as in their sen- great, the monks. Scoffers, banterers, timents They are not struck by the our fathers have abundance both of ex magnificence of nature, they see only pression and matter; and the matter her pretty side; they paint the beauty comes to them so naturally, that with of a woman by a single feature, which out culture, and surrounded by coarse is only polite, saying, "She is more ness, they are as delicate in their railgracious than the rose in May." They lery as the most refined. They touch do not experience the terrible emotion, upon ridicule lightly, they mock with ecstasy, sudden oppression of heart out emphasis, as it were innocently; which is displayed in the poetry of their style is so harmonious, that at neighboring nations they say discreet- first sight we make a mistake, and do ly," She began to smile, which vastly not see any harm in it. They seem artbecame her." They add, when they less; they look so very demure; only are in a descriptive humor, " that she a word shows the imperceptible smile: had a sweet and perfumed breath," is the ass, for example, which they and a body "white as new-fallen snow on a branch.” They do not aspire nigher; beauty pleases, but does not transport them. They enjoy agreeable motions, but are not fitted for deep sensations. The full rejuvenescence of being, the warm air of spring which renews and penetrates all existence, suggests but a pleasing couplet; they remark in passing, "Now is winter gone, the hawthorn blossoms, the rose expands" and so pass on about their business It is a light gladsomeness, soon ge, like that which an April landscape affords. For an instant the author glances at the mist of the streams rising about the willow trees, the pleasant vapor which imprisons

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call the high priest, by reason of his padded cassock and his serious air, and who gravely begins "to play the organ." At the close of the history the delicate sense of comicality has touched you, though you cannot say how. They do not call things by their names, especially in love matters; they let you guess it; they assume that you are as sharp and know ing as them selves.t A man might discriminate, embellish at times, per haps refine upon them, but their first traits are incomparable. When the

t

La Fontaine, Contes, Richard Minutols.
Parler lui veut d'une besogne
Où crois que peu conquerrerois
Si la besogne vous nommois.

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