W A L T E R P A T E R . P o r t r a i t b y
Simeon Solomon, 1872.
W A L T E R P A T E R
The Renaissance
S T U D I E S IN A R T A N D
P O E T R Y
T H E 1893 T E X T
Edited, with Textual
and
by D O N A L D L. H I L L
Universi ty of
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D E D I C A T I O N
T O
Preface
M
A N Y A T T E M P T S
have been made
and
poetry to define beauty in the ab s t
rac t, to ex-
press it in the mo st general terms, to
find some universal
fo rmula for i t . The value of these at tempts has
most
often been in the suggest ive and
penetrating things said 5
by the way. Such discussions help us very l i t t
le to enjoy
w h a t has b een w ell
done in art o r poet ry , to
discriminate
between what is m o re and what
is less excellen t in them,
or to use
with a more precise meaning than they would
otherwise 10
have. Beauty, l ike all other qualit ies presented to human
experience, is relative; and the
definition of it becomes
unmeaning
and
useless
in
but in the
m o s t concrete terms possible, to find, not its
universal 15
formula , but the formula which expresses m o s
t ade-
quate ly this
of the t rue s tudent of æ sthetics .
"To see the
has
been
justly said to be the aim of all t rue cri t icism
whatever; 20
and in
aesthetic criticism
the first
own
impres-
sion
realise
it
dis-
t inct ly . T he objects with which æsthetic crit icism
deals
—music , poetry , ar t i s t ic and accomplished
forms of 25
hum an l i fe— are indeed receptacles of so many
powers
or forces: they possess, like the products
of n a t u r e , so
many v i r tues
or
in life or in a book,
to me? W h a t effect does it real ly
produc e on me? Does it
give
or
degree
of
plea-
sure? How is my nature modif ied by i t s
presence, and
5 under its influence? T he
answers to these questions are
the original facts with which the
æsthetic crit ic has to
do;
and, as in the s tudy of l
ight, of morals , of n u m b e r ,
one must real ise such primary data for one's self,
or not
at all.
1 0
of
them ,
the
abs t rac t
quest ion what beauty is in i tself , or what i ts exact
relation to t ru th or exper ience—metaphys
ica l ques-
t ions, as unpro f i t ab le as
metaphysical quest ions else-
1 5 where. He may pass them all by
as being, answerable or
not , of no interest to him.
T he æsthetic crit ic, then, regards all the
objects with
which
works
of
of na ture and hum an life, as powers or
forces
producing
of a more or
explain, b y
ty in
life
or in a book, L a Gioconda, the hills of
Carrara,
2 5
Pico of Mirandola , are
valuable for their virtues, as we
say, in speaking of a herb , a
wine, a gem; for the
proper ty each has of affecting one
with a special, a
unique, impression
complete in proport ion as our susceptibili
ty to these
3 0 im pressions increases in depth an
var ie ty . And the
funct ion of the æsthetic crit ic is to
dist inguish, to
funct ion of the æsthetic crit ic is to
dist inguish, to
analyse, and separate f rom i ts adjuncts , the
vi r tue by
xx
PREFACE
which a picture, a landscape, a
fair personality in life or
book,
is, and under what conditions it is experienced. His end
is reached when he has disengaged that
virtue, and 5
noted it, as a chemist notes some natural
element, for
himself and others; and the rule for those who would
reach this end is stated with great exactness in
the words
of a recent critique of Sainte-Beuve:—De s
e borner a con-
naitre de p r è s les belles choses
, et s’en nourrir en exquis
10
amateurs,
What is important, then, is not that the critic should
possess a correct abstract definition of
beauty for the
intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power
of being deeply moved by the presence
of
b e a u t i f u l
15
many forms.
of t as te ,
are in themselves equal. In all ages there
have been some
excellent workmen, and some excellent work done.
The
question he asks is always:—In
whom did the stir, the 20
genius,
the
sentiment
was the receptacle of its refinement, its elevation,
its
taste? "The ages are all equal," s a y s William
Blake, "but
genius is always above its age."
Often it will require great nicety to
disengage this 25
virtue from
and leaving
entering into
THE RENAISSANCE
a part, but only a part, of it;
and in that great mass of
verse there is much which might well be forgotten.
But
scattered up and down it, sometimes fus
ing and trans-
forming entire compositions, like the
S t a n z a s
on Resolu-
5 tion and Independence, or the Ode
on the Recollections o f
C h i l d h o o d , sometimes, as if at random,
depositing a fine
crystal
here
search through and transmute, we trace the action of his
unique, incommunicable f acu l t y , that
strange, mystical
1 0 sense of a life in natural
things, and of man's life as
a part
of nature, drawing strength and colour and character
from local in f luences , from the
hills and streams, and
from natural sights and sounds. Well that is
the virtue,
the active principle in Wordsworth's poetry; and then
1 5
the f u n c t i o n of the
critic of Wordsworth is to follow
up
that active principle, to disengage it, to mark the
degree
in which it penetrates his verse.
The subjects of the following studies are taken from
the history of the Renaissance, and touch
what I think the
2 0 chief points in that complex, many-sided
movement. I
have explained
the word, giving it a much wider scope than was
intended by those who originally used it to denote that
revival of classical antiquity in the
fifteenth century
2 5 which was only one of many
results of a general
excitement
and
enlightening
Christian art, is often
human
3 0 spirit may be traced far
into the middle age i tself ,
with
its motives already clearly pronounced, the
care for
physical beauty, the worship of the body, the breaking
xxii
down of those limits which the religious
system of the
middle age imposed on the heart and the imaginat ion. I
hav e taken as an example of this
m o v e m e n t ,
this earlier
Renaissance within the middle age itself, and as an
expression of its quali t ies , two l i t t
le composit ions in 5
early
French; not because they const i tu
te the best
possi-
b le expression of t hem , b ut b
ecause they help the uni ty
of my
series, inasmuch
as the
France , in French poetry, in a phase of which
the
wri t ings of Joachim du Bellay are
in m a n y w a y s the 10
m ost pe rfect i l lus t ra t io n. T he
Renaissance, in t ru th , put
forth in France an a f t e rma th , a
won der fu l l a te r g ro wth ,
the products of which have to the
full
ly decadence, as its earliest phases have
the freshness 15
which belongs to all periods of g r o w t
h in ar t , the charm
of a s c ê s i s , of the a u st er e and seriou s
girdin g of the loins
in
y o u t h .
But it is in I t a l y , in the
f if teenth century , tha t the
interest of the Renaissance mainly l ies ,—in that
solemn 20
fif teenth cen tury
which can hardly b e s
tudied too m u c h ,
not mere ly for its positive results in
the things of the
intellect
and the imaginat ion, i t s concrete works of ar t ,
its
special and prominent personali t ies , with
their pro-
found æsthe t ic charm, but for its general
spirit and 25
charac ter , for the ethical qual i t ies
of which it is a
consummate t ype .
T he var ious forms of in te l lectual ac t iv i
ty which to -
gether make up the cul ture of an age,
move for the m o st
par t from different starting-points, and
by unconnec ted 30
roads . As products of the same generat ion they par
take
roads . As products of the same generat ion they par
take
indeed of a common character , and unconsciously i l
lus-
xxiii
group is sol i tary, gaining what advantage
or disadvan-
tage there may be in intel lectual isolat ion. Art and
poetry, philosophy and the religious life, and that
other
5
life of refined pleasure and
action in the conspicuous
places of the world, are each o
f them confined to i ts ow n
circle of
of
them
are generally l i t t le curious of the t h o u g
h t s of others.
There
come, however , f rom t ime to t ime,
eras of more
1 0 favou rab le condit ions , in which
the thoughts of men
draw nearer together than is their wont, and
the m a n y
interests
somet imes
1 5 said of the age of Pericles is t
rue of tha t of Lorenzo :— i t
is an age
tralised, complete. Here, artists
world
has
elevated
and
made keen, do not l ive in isolat ion, but breathe a
2 0 common air , and catch light
and heat from each other 's
thoughts . There is a spirit of general elevation
and
enl ightenment in which a l l a l ike communicate . The
uni ty of this spir i t gives un ity to al l the
va riou s pro du cts
of the
R enaissance;
this intim ate alliance w ith
2 5 m ind, this part icip ation in the best
thoughts which that
age produced, that the art of I taly in
the fifteenth
century owes much of i ts grave dignity and influence.
I
3 0
enthusiasm
for
the things of the intel lect and the imagination for their
xxiv
P R E F A C E
ow n sake, by h is Hellenism, his l
ife-long struggle to
attain to the Greek spirit, he is in
sympathy with the
humanis t s of a prev ious cen tu ry . He is
the last fruit of
the Renaissance, and explains in a striking way its
motive and tendencies. 5
of the Renaissance ends in France ,
and carries us a wa y from I ta ly to
the b eaut ifu l cities
of the
count ry
of the
in
a very important sense, that the R
enaissance had b e g u n .
French wri te rs , who are fond of
connecting the ere- 5
ations of Italian gen ius with a F ren ch origin, who tell us
how
so
deeply penet ra ted his thoughts , f rom
a French source ,
how Boccacc io bor rowed the outl ines of
his stories 10
from the old French fab liaux, and how Dante
himself
expressly connects the origin of the art of miniature-
paint ing with
on
this
notion of a R ena issanc e in the end of the tw elfth and the
beginning of the th i r teenth century , a R
enaissance
with- 1
in the l imits of the middle age i
tself— a bri l l iant , but in
par t abor t ive effort to do for h u m a
n life and the h u m a n
mind what was afterwards done in the
f if teenth. The
w o r d
is now
generally used
to de-
note not mere ly the revival of
classical an tiquity which 20
took place in the fifteenth century , and to which
the
word was first applied, but a whole
complex move-
m e n t ,
w as
b ut one e lement or sy m ptom . For us the Renaissance is
the n a m e of a many-sided but ye t
un i t ed movement , in 25
which
the love of the things of the
intellect and the
imagina t ion
more
liberal and comely way of conceiving life, m a k
e
them-
i
search out first one and then another means of
intellec-
tual or imaginat ive enjoyment , and direct ing them
not
only to the discovery of old and forgot
ten sources of
5 th is en joy m ent ,
but to the
of fresh sources
thereof—new experiences, new subjects o
f poe t ry , new
forms of art . Of such feeling there was a great
outbreak
in the end of the twelf th and the
beginning of the fol-
lowing century . Here and there , under rare and happy
1 0 condit ions, in pointed archi tecture
, in the doctrines of
romant ic love,
of
Provence ,
the
rude
st rength of the middle age tu rns to
sweetness; and the
taste for sweetness generated there becomes
the seed of
the classical
in
which
so many sources of intel lectual and
imagina t ive en joy-
m e n t had actual ly disappeared, th is outbreak
is r ight ly
2 0 called a R enaissance , a revival
.
Theories which bring into connexion with each other
modes of t h o u g h t and feeling,
periods of tas te , form s of
art and poetry , which the narrowness of men 's minds
constantly t ends to oppose to each
other , have a grea t
2 5 s t imulus for the intellect, and
are a lmost a lways wor th
unders t and ing . It is so with this theory
of a R ena is sance
within the m iddle a ge , which seeks to estab l ish
a conti-
nui ty be tween the m ost character is t ic wo rk
of tha t pe-
riod, the scu lp ture of Char t r e s
, the windows of Le
3 0
M a n s , and the work of the la ter
Renaissance, the work
of Jean C ousin and G erm ain Pi lon, thus heal ing that
T H E R E N A I S S A N C E
of Jean C ousin and G erm ain Pi lon, thus heal ing that
rup tu re between the middle age and the Renaissance
which
2
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
much the ecclesiastical art of
the middle age, its sculp-
tu re and paint ing—work cer ta inly done
in a great mea-
sure for pleasure's sake, in which even a secular, a re-
bellious spirit often b e t rays i tse l f— b ut ra
ther its pro fane
poe t ry , the poet ry of Provence,
and the magnif icent 5
af ter-growth of that poetry in Italy
and France, which
those French wri ters have i view when they
speak of
this medieval Renaissance. In that poetry, earthly
pas-
sion, with its i n t i m a c y , its f r
eedom, its v a r i e t y — t h e
liberty of the heart—makes i tself felt;
and the n a m e of 10
Abe la rd , the great scholar and the great
lover, connects
the expression of this l iberty of
hear t with
the
free
play
of hu m an intel ligence aro un d al l sub jects presented to i t
,
with the l iber ty of the intellect,
as that age unders tood
i t . 1 5
E v e r y one knows the legend
of A b e l a r d , a legend
hardly less passionate, certainly n ot less
characteristic of
the middle age, than the legend of
Tannhauser ; how the
famous and comely c lerk , in
whom Wisdom herself,
self-possessed, pleasant, and discreet, seemed
to sit en- 20
throned, came to live in the house of
a canon of the
church of Notre-Dame, where dwelt a
girl, Heloïse, b e-
lieved to be the old priest 's orphan niece; how
the old
priest had testified his love for her
by giving her an
educat ion then unrival led, so that rumour asser
ted that , 25
t h r o u g h the knowledge of languages,
enabling her to
penetrate into the myster ies of the
older world, she had
become a sorceress, like the Celtic
druidesses; and how
as A b elard
and Heloïse sat together
at home there, to re-
fine a little fur ther on the na tu
re of ab strac t ideas, "Love 30
made himself of the par ty with
them."
Y ou conceive
the t empta t ions of the scholar, who,
in such dreamy
tranquil l i ty , amid the br ight and busy
spectacle of the
3
"Island," lived in a world of
something like shadows;
and that for one who knew so
well how to assign its
exact value to every abstract thought , those
restraints
which lie on the consciences of other
men had been re-
5
laxed. I t appears that he composed
many verses in the
vulgar tongue: already the y o u ng m en
sang them on the
quay below the house. Those
songs, says M. de Ré-
musa t , were probab ly in the taste of
the Trouvères, "of
whom he was one of the first in date,
or, so to speak ,
1 0 the predecessor." It is the same
spirit which has mould-
ed the f a mo us "letters," writ ten
in the quaint Latin of
the middle age.
At the foot of that early Gothic tower,
which the next
generation raised to grace the
precincts of Abelard ' s
1 5 schoo l, on the "Mountain of S aint G enev
iève," the his-
torian Michelet sees in thought "a terr
ible assembly; not
the hearers of Abelard alone, fifty
bishops, twenty car-
dinals, tw o popes, the whole
body of scholastic philos-
ophy; not only the learned Heloïse,
the teaching of lan-
2 0 guages , and the Renaissance; b
ut Arnold of Brescia—
that is to say , the revolution." And
so f rom the rooms
of this shadowy house by the Seine side we
see tha t spir-
it going ab road , with its qualities
already well defined,
its i n t im acy , its languid sweetness,
its rebellion, its sub-
2 5 tle skill in dividing the
elements of human pass ion, its
care for phys ica l b eau ty , its w
orship of the b o d y , which
penetrated the early l i terature of I t a ly
, and finds an echo
even in Dante .
That Abelard is not mentioned in the
Divine Comedy
3 0 m ay appear a singular omission
to the reader of Dante ,
w ho seems to have inwoven into
the texture of his work
w ho seems to have inwoven into
the texture of his work
whatever had impressed him as either
effective in colour
or spiritually significant among the recorded
incidents
4
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
of actual life. Nowhere in his
g reat poem
philosophy
of
which
Dante was an eager student, of whom in
the L atin Quar-
ter,
and f rom the lips of
scholar or teacher in the Uni-
5
versi ty of P aris, dur ing his so journ am ong them
, he can
hardly h a v e failed to
hear .
he
had indeed considered the s tory and
the m a n , and ab -
stained f rom pass ing judgment
as to his
In the
famous legend
of
Tannhäuser ,
the
erring
knight makes his wa y to R o m e , to seek ab
solution at the
centre of Christ ian rel igion. "S o
soon," though t and
said
the
Pope ,
hand should
bud and
blossom, so soon might the soul
of T a n n h ä u s e r be 15
saved, and no sooner;" an d
it came to pass not long
after
that
and flowers. So, in
the cloister of G o d s t o w ,
a petrified tree was shown of
which the nuns told that the fair R o
s a m o n d , who had 20
died a m o n g t h em , had declared tha t ,
the t ree being then
alive and green , it would b e
changed into stone at the
h o u r
salvat ion. When Abelard died, l ike Tann-
häuser , he was on h is way to Rome.
What might have
happened had he reached his j o u r n e y
's end is un cer ta in ; 25
and it is in this un certa in twilight
that his relation to the
general beliefs of his age has always remained.
In this,
as in other things, he prefigures
the character of the R e-
naissance, t h a t m o v e m e n t in
which, in var ious ways ,
the human mind wins for itself a new
kingdom of feel- 30
ing and sensation and thought, not opposed to but only
b ey on d and independe nt of the spiri tual sy stem then ac-
tually real ised.
is
5
thrown, which gives its colour to his
career, which
breaks his soul to pieces, is a no less subtle
opposition
than that between the merely professional, official,
hire-
ling ministers of that system, with their ignorant
wor-
5
ship of system for its own
sake, and the true child of
light,
the
humanist,
with
reason
and
heart
and
senses
He
reaches
out
towards,
he
germ, it may be, contained within it.
As always hap-
pens, the adherents of the poorer
and narrower culture
had no sympathy with, because no understanding of, a
culture richer
A f t e r the
discovery of wheat they would still live upon
acorns—
1 5 après I'invention
vivre
du
gland',
and would hear of no service to the
higher needs of
humanity with instruments not
of their forging.
But the human spirit, bold through those needs, was
too strong for them. Abelard and
Heloise write their
2 0 letters—letters with a wonderful
outpouring of soul—
in medieval Latin; and Abelard, though he composes
songs
low the abstractions of philosophy, as
one bent on try-
a s ing all things by their congruity with
human experience,
who had felt the hand of Heloise,
and looked
into her
eyes, and
great
and energetic nature. Yet it is only
a little later, early in
the thirteenth century, that French prose romance
be-
s o
pretty volumes
of it may be
In
6
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
Ami et
claims of which Abelard's story is an assertion, makes
itself felt in the incidents of a great
friendship, a friend-
ship pure and generous, pushed to a sort of passionate
exaltation,
everywhere, is still especially a
classical motive; Chau-
expressing
the
sentiment
in an an-
tique tale, that one knows
not whether the love of both
Palamon and Arcite for Emelya, or
of those two for 1 0
each other,
And therewithal he bleynte and
cried, ah
As that he s tongen were unto
the herte.
What reader does not
refer something of the bitterness 1
5
of that cry to the spoiling, already foreseen, of the
fair
friendship, which
offices?
The friendship of Amis and Amile is
deepened by the
romantic circumstance
of an
of the
Doppelganger, which begins among the s tars
with the
Dioscuri, being entwined in and out through all
the in- 25
cidents of the story, like an outward
token of the inward
similitude of
is
connected,
like
a second reflexion of that inward similitude, the
conceit of two marvellously b eau t ifu l cups, also
exactly
like each other—children's cups, of wood, but
adorned 30
with gold and precious stones. These two
cups, which
by their resemblance help to bring the
friends together
7
when
he
parents
had taken them for that purpose, in grat i tude for their
bir th. They cross
5 rative , serving the two heroes almost like
living things,
and with that well-known effect of a
beautiful object ,
kept constantly before the eye in a story
or p o e m , of
keeping sensation well awak e, and giving a certain air of
ref inement to all the scenes into which it
enters. That
1 0 sense of fate, which hangs
so m u c h of the shaping of hu-
m an life on trivial objects, l ike
Othello's s t r awber ry
handkerchief, is thereby heightened, while witness is
bo rne to the e n j o y m e n t of
beautiful handiwork b y a
primitive people, their simple wonder at it, so that
they
1 5 give it an oddly s ignif icant place
among the
factors
comes
to
at
a m o m e n t of great need Amis takes th
place of Amile
2 0 in a
tou rnam en t
it
happened
that a leprosy fell u pon A m is , so that h
is wife would not
approach him,
an d w r o u g h t
to strangle him.
H e depart-
2 5
what follows that the curious s trength of
the piece
shows
itself:—
to do as he
place where Amile was;
to
3 0 do. A nd when Amile heard the
noise he c o m m a n d e d one of
his servants to carry meat and bread to the s ick man, and
the
his servants to carry meat and bread to the s ick man, and
the
cup which w as given to him at R o m
e filled with
good
wine.
And when the servant had done as he was commanded, he
8
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H
S T O R I E S
returned and said, Sir, if I had not thy cup in my hand, I
should believe that the cup which the
sick m an has was thine,
for they are alike, the one to the
other , in height and fashion.
A nd Amile said, G o quickly and b
r ing him to me . And when
A m i s stood b efore his com rade A m ile dem anded of
him who 5
he was , and how he had gotten that cup. I
am of Briquain le
Chastel , answered Amis, and the cup was given to
me by the
Bishop of R o m e , w ho baptised me.
And when Amile heard
that , he
knew that
deliv-
ered him from death, and won for him the daughter of the 1
0
King of France to be his wife . A
nd s t ra igh tway he fell upon
him, an d began weeping great ly , and
kissed him. A nd when
his
wife heard that, she ran out with her hair in
disarray,
weeping
and
slain
A nd
thereupon they 1 5
placed him in a fair bed, and said to him, Abide with
us unti l
God's will be accomplished in thee, for all we have is at
thy
service. S o he and the two servants abode wi th
them.
And i t came to pass one night , when
Amis and A m i le lay in
one cham b er wi thou t o ther com panions , tha t God sent His
20
angel
Raphae l to A m i s , w ho
said to h i m , A m i s , art thou
asleep? And he,
supposing that Amile
angel
said to h i m , Thou hast answered well
, fo r thou art the com-
rade of the heavenly ci t izens .—I am
Raphae l , the angel of our 25
Lord, and am come to tell thee how
thou mayest b e healed;
for thy pray ers are heard . Thou shalt b id
A m ile , thy com rade,
tha t he
their blood, and
so thy body shal l b e made whole. A
nd Amis sa id to h i m , Let
not this thing b e, tha t m y comrade
should become a mu rderer 30
for m y sake. But the angel said, It
is convenient that he do
this. A n d thereupon the angel
departed.
A nd
Amile also,
sleep, heard those words ; and he
awoke an d said, Who is i t , my comrade,
that hath spoken
with thee? A nd
N ot so but
some one hath spoken with thee. Then
he arose and went to
the door of the c h a m b e r ; and f
inding it shut he said, Tell
m e,
THE RENAISSANCE
m y brother , who i t was said those words
to thee
to-night.
And Amis began to weep great ly , and
told him that i t was
Raphael ,
the angel of the Lord, who had
said to him, Amis ,
commands thee thou
5 children, and wash thee in their
blood, and so thou
shalt
b e
healed of thy leprosy. And Amile was great ly disturbed at
those words, and said, I would have
given to thee m y man-
servants
thou
feignest that an angel hath spoken to
thee that I should slay
1 0 m y two children. A nd im m ediately A m is began to
weep, and
said,
I
the
shelter of thy house. A nd Amile answered
that what he had
covenanted with him, that he would perform, unto
the hour
1 5 of his death: But I conjure thee,
said he, by the faith which
there is between me and thee, and by
our comradeship, and
by the baptism we received together
at Rome, that thou tell
m e whether i t was man or angel said that
to thee. A nd A m i s
answered again, So truly as an angel hath spoken to me this
2 0 night,
so may God deliver m e from m y
infirmity
Then Amile began to weep in
secret, and thought within
himself:
If
this
slay children? Shall keep faith
with him who was faithful to
me even unto death? And Amile
2 5 tarr ied
of his wife,
and bade her go hear the Sacred Office. And he took a
sword,
and went to the bed where the children we re
ly ing, and found
them asleep. And he lay down over
them and began to weep
bit ter ly and said, Hath any man yet heard of a father
who of
3 0 his own
longer your father, but your c rue l murderer .
And the children awoke at the tears of their
father , which
fell upon them; and they looked up into his face
and began to
laugh.
he
3 5 said, Y our laug hing •will b e turned
into tears , for y o u r inno-
cent blood must now be shed, and therewith he cut
their
heads. Then he laid them back in the bed, and put the
heads
upon
the
bodies,
and
T W O E A R L Y FRENCH S T O R I E S
with the blood which he had
taken he washed his comrade,
and said, Lord Jesus Christ who hast commanded
men to
keep faith
on earth, and didst heal the
leper by Thy word
cleanse n o w m y comrade, for whose
love I have shed the
blood of my children. 5
Then Amis was cleansed of
his leprosy. And
Amile clothed
in his
best robes;
and as
they went
to the
church to give thanks, the bells, by
the will of God, rang of
their own accord. And when
the people of the city heard that,
they ran together to see the marvel.
And the wife of Amile, 1 0
when she saw Amis and Amile coming, asked
which of the
twain was her husband, and said,
I know well the vesture of
them both, but I know not which
of them is Amile. A nd
Amile said to her, I am Amile, and
my companion is Amis,
who is healed of his sickness. A nd she
was full of wonder, and 1 5
desired to know in what manner he
was healed. Give thanks
to our Lord, answered
Amile, but trouble not thyself as to
the
manner of the healing.
where t e children were; but the
fa ther sighed heavily, b e- 20
cause they were dead, and the mother asked
fo r them, that
they might rejoice together; b u t Amile said,
Dame let the
children sleep. And i t was already
the hour o f Tierce. A nd
going in alone to the
children to weep over them, he found
them at play in the bed; only,
in place of the sword-cuts about 25
their throats was as i t were
a thread of crimson. And he took
them in his arms and carried them to
his wife and said,
Rejoice greatly, for thy children whom I
had slain b y t h e
commandment of the angel are alive,
and by their blood is
A m i s healed. 30
There, as I said, is the strength of
the old French
story.
which it
derives from
are great resources in
the true middle age. And as
I have illustrated the early 35
strength of the Renaissance by the
story of Amis and
ii
THE RENAISSANCE
Amile , a s tory w hich comes f ro m the N orth , in which
a
certain racy Teutonic flavour is percept ib le
, so I shall
i l lustrate that other element,
its
story
printed
5
of
the
istically,
the
lit-
Aubade,
of
Bernard
de
Ventadour
and Pierre Vidal, is poet ry for the f
ew, for the elect and
peculiar people o f the kingdom of sent
im ent . B ut below
this intenser poetry there w as probab ly a
wide range of
l i tera ture , less serious and elevated, reaching, by
light-
is ness of fo rm and co m para tive homeliness of interest ,
an
audience which the concentrated passion
of those higher
lyrics left un touche d. T his l i teratu re has long
since per-
ished, or l ives only in later French or I tal ian vers
ions .
O ne such version, the only representa t
ive of its species,
2 0 M . Faurie l thought he detected
in the story of Aucassin
and
of
the th i r teen th cen tury , and preserved
in a un ique m anu-
script , in the
there were
reasons which made him divine for it a stil l
m ore anc ient
2 5
in it of an
as in a
1
of its
the
English, with much grace fu l scholarship,
by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon. Still
30 more recently we
ingenious and versatile pen of Mr.
Andrew
also
th e Antique and Mediaeval in
the Renaissance, a work
abounding
in knowledge and insight on
the subjects of which it treats.
12
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
criticism which finds in it only a t
radi t ional subject ,
handed on by one people to another;
for after passing
thus from hand to hand, i ts outline is sti l l clear, i ts
sur-
face untarnished; and, l ike many other s tories ,
books,
li terary and artistic conceptions of the
middle age, it has 5
come to h a v e in this way a
sort of personal history, al-
most
as
full
of risk and adventure as
that of its own
heroes . T he writer himself calls the
piece a cantefable, a
tale told in prose, b ut with
its incidents and sen t iment
helped forward b y songs, inserted at i r
regular in terv als .
1 0
In the junc t ions of the story i tself
there are signs of
roughness and w a n t of skill , which
make one suspect
that the prose was only put
together to connect a series
of songs—a series of songs so
moving and at t ract ive
that people wished to heighten and dignify
their effect 1 5
b y a regula r f ram ew ork or set t ing.
Yet the songs them-
selves arc of the simplest kind, no t
rhymed even , b u t
only imperfect ly assonant , s tanzas of twenty
or thir ty
lines apiece , all end ing with a sim
ilar vowel sound. And
here , as elsewhere in that ear ly poetry ,
much of the in- 20
terest lies in the spectacle of the format
ion of a new ar-
tistic sense. A novel art is aris ing,
the music of r h y m e d
poe t ry , and in the songs of Aucass
in and Nicolet te ,
which seem always on the point of passing
into true
r h y m e ,
b ut
25
take f light , y ou see people ju
st growing aware of the ele-
ments of a new music in their
possession, and an ticipat-
ing how pleasant such music might become.
T he
of
of whom, at
for the lesser parts,
probably chi ldren. T he songs
are introduced by the rubr ic , Or
se cante (id on chante) and
each division of prose by the r u b r
i c , O r dient et co ntent et
13
the songs have been preserved; and some of
the details
are so descriptive that they suggested to M.
Fauriel the
notion that the words had been
accompanied
through-
composi-
tion of the thirteenth century,
is shown sometimes in
the turn given to some passing expression
or remark;
thus, "the Count de Garins was old and
frai l , his time
1 0
Beaucaire estoit vix et
frales;
s i avoit s o n tans trespasse.
A nd then all is so realised
One sees the ancient forest,
with its disused roads grown
deep
with
u aforkeut
1 5
rustic names, and putting forward, as their spokesman,
one among them who is more eloquent
and ready than
the rest—li un qui plus fu enparles
des autres', for the little
book
has its burlesque element
also, so that one hears the
0 fain t , far-off laughter still. Rough as it
is, the piece cer-
tainly
possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims
at a purely artistic effect. Its
subject is a great sorrow,
yet it claims to be a thing of joy and
refreshment, to be
entertained not for its matter only, but chiefly for
its
2 5 manner; it is cortois, it
tells us, et bien
assis .
For
the student of manners, and of the
old French lan-
guage and literature, it has much interest of a purely
antiquarian
compo-
antiquarian interest, often means
3 0 that it has no distinct
aesthetic interest for the reader of
to-day. Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effor t
, by
to-day. effor t ,
putting its object in
perspective, and setting the reader
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
sure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may
often
add great ly to the charm w e receive
from ancient litera-
ture. But the first condition of such aid must be a
real,
direct, aesthetic charm in the thing itself
. Unless it has
that charm, unless some purely ar t is t ic quali ty went to
5
i ts original making, no merely antiquarian effort
can
ever
give it an aesthetic value, or make i t a proper
sub-
ject of aesthetic cri t icism. This quali ty ,
wherever it
exists, it is always pleasant to
define, and discriminate
from the sort of borrowed interest
which an old p lay , or 1 0
an old story, may very l ikely acquire through a t rue
antiquarianism. T he story of A ucass
in a nd N icolette has
something of this quali ty . Aucassin, the
only son of
Count Garins of Beaucaire, is
passionately in love
with Nicolet te , a beaut i fu l girl
of unknown parentage,
1 5
bough t of the Saracens
, whom his father will no t
permit
him to
T he
adventures
of
these tw o lovers, until at the end of the
piece their
m u t u a l fidelity is rewarded. These
adventures are of the
simplest sort,
adventures which
seem to be chosen for 20
the happy occasion they afford
of keeping the eye of the
fancy, perhaps the outward eye ,
fixed on pleasant ob -
jects, a garden, a ruined tower,
the little hut of f lowers
which Nicolet te constructs in the forest
whither she es-
capes f rom her enemies, as a
token to Aucass in that she 25
has passed that way. All the charm of
the piece is in its
details,
in a turn of peculiar l ightness and grace given to
the situations and traits of
sentiment, especially in its
quaint
f r agment s of early French prose.
A ll through i t one feels the influence of
that faint air
30
of overwrought del icacy, a lmost of wantonness,
which
of overwrought del icacy, a lmost of wantonness,
which
was so s t rong a charac teristic of
the poetry of the Trou-
badours . T he Troubadours themselves were
often m en
15
THE RENAISSANCE
of great rank; they wro te for an exclusive a
udience, peo-
ple of much leisure and g reat ref inem ent
, and they came
to value a type of personal beauty which has in i t but
little of the influence of the open air
and sunshine. There
5 is a languid Eastern deliciousness in
the very scenery of
the s to ry , the full-blown roses,
the chamber painted in
some myster ious manner where Nicole t te is
impris-
oned, the cool b rown marb le , the almost
nameless
colours, the odour of
plucked grass and flowers. Nico-
1 0 lette herself well becomes this scenery, and
is the bes t
il lustration
of the
quali ty
I m e a n — th e b eaut i fu l ,
weird,
foreign
who
has the knowledge of simples,
the healing and beaut i fy -
ing qualit ies of leaves and flowers, whose
skilful
touch
1 5 heals A ucassin 's sprained shou lder, so t
ha t he suddenly
leaps f rom the ground; the mere s
ight of whose white
flesh, as she
lay, healed
a pil-
grim stricken with sore disease, so
that he rose up, and
returned to his own country. With this gir l
Aucassin is
2 0 so deeply in love that he
forge ts all knightly duties. A t
last Nicole t te is shut up to get her out
of his w a y , and
perhaps the prettiest passage in the
whole piece is the
f r agmen t of prose which describes her
escape:—
Aucass in was put in prison, as you have heard,
and Nico-
2 5 le t te rem ained shut up in her c h a m b e
r . I t was s u mm e r - t i m e ,
in the
clear, nights serene.
O ne night Nicolet te , lying on her bed ,
saw the moon shine
clear through the l i t t le window, and heard the
nightingale
3 0 sing in the garden , and then
came the m e m o r y of Aucass in ,
whom she so much loved. S he thought
of the Count Gar ins
of Beaucai re , w ho
morta l ly ha ted her, and, to be rid of
her,
m ight a t any m om ent cause her to be b urn ed or drown ed. S
he
perceived
tha t the old w o m a n w ho
kept her c o m p a n y w as
16
asleep; she
had;
the bedclothes and the towels, and knotted
them together like
a cord, as far as they would go.
Then she tied the end to a pil-
lar of the window, and let herself
slip down quite softly into
the garden, and passed straight across it,
to reach the town. 5
Her hair was yellow in small curls, her smiling eyes
blue-
green, her face clear and feat,
the little lips very red, the teeth
small and white; and
the daisies which she crushed in
passing,
holding
her
She came to the garden-gate and opened it, and walked
through the streets of Beaucaire, keeping on the dark side of
the way to be out of the light of
the moon, which shone quiet-
ly in the sky. She walked as fast as
she could, until she came to
the
here and there. She pressed herself against one of the
pillars, wrapped herself closely in her
mantle,
and putting her
face to a chink of the tower, which was old and ruined,
she
heard Aucassin crying bitterly within, and when she had
lis-
tened awhile she began to speak.— 20
B u t scat tered up and down
through this l ighter
and
of
s o m e intenser sentiment, coming it would seem
from 25
the profound and energetic spirit of
the
Provenca l
et ry itself, to which t e
inspiration of the
b o o k
referred. Let me gather up these
morsels of deeper col-
our, these expressions of the ideal intensity
of love , the
motive which really unites together
the
of the 30
the
perfect
ideal
love, has recorded how the t y r a n n
y of that "Lord of
terrible aspect" became actually physical , bl
inding
his
his
senses,
and
suspending
his
bodi ly
forces. In
this , Dante
is but the central expression and t y p
e of experiences 35
i?
known well enough to the init iated, in
that passionate
age.
A uc ass in represe nts this ideal inten si ty
of passion—
Ligentix, li
amorous; —
5 sl im , tal l , deb on air , dansellon, as
the singers call him,
with
his
w ho faints
wi th love, as Dante fainted, who r ides al l day thro
ug h
the
forest in search of Nicolet te , while the thorns tear
his
flesh, so t ha t one m ight have
traced him b y the b lood
1 0 upon the grass , and who
weeps at event ide because he
has no t
found he r ,
who has the
Once
he is induced to put
himself at the head of his people, that they, seeing him
before them, might have more hear t
to
defend
them-
in
It is
P r o v e n c a l
love-god, no longer a
to
him, riding on a white horse, fair as
the morning,
2 0 his ves tment embro idered wi th flowers.
He rode on
through the gates in to the open pla in beyond. But as he
of his
The br idle fell from his hands; and l ike one who
sleeps
walk ing , he was carried on into
the m i d s t of his ene-
2 5
most conveniently ki l l him.
One of the strongest characteris t ics of tha t ou
tb reak
of the reason and the imagina t ion ,
of that assertion of
the
of the
hear t ,
in the
and
religious ideas of the t ime. In their search after
the plea-
18
T W O E A R L Y F R E N C H S T O R I E S
sures of the senses and the imagina t ion
, in their care
for
b e a u t y , in their worship of
the body, people were
impelled
b e y o n d the bounds of the
Christian ideal;
and their love became sometimes
a
a
strange rival religion. It was the return
of that ancient 5
Venus , not dead, b ut only hidden for
a t im e in the caves
of the Venusberg, of those
old pagan gods still going to
and fro on the
A nd
this element in the middle age, for the
most part ignored
b y those writers who have t
reated it preem inent ly as the 1 0
"Age of Fa i th"—th i s rebell ious
and antinomian ele-
men t , the recogn ition of which
has m a d e the de lineat ion
of the middle age by the writers of
the Romant ic school
in
France ,
found al ike in the 1 5
history of A b e la rd and the legend
of
T a n n h a u s e r. More
and m o re ,
to mark changes and distinctions
of t emper in what is often in
one al l-embracing con-
fusion called the middle age, that rebellion, that
sinister
claim for l ibe rty of he ar t and tho ug ht, comes to the sur-
20
face. T he A lbigens ian m ovem ent , connected
so strange-
ly with
P rovenca l poe t ry , is deeply t
inged
with it. A touch of it makes
the Fran ciscan order , with
i ts poetry, its myst ic i sm, its "i l lum
ination," fro m the
point
of
view
of
re l ig ious au thor i ty , jus t ly suspect.
It in- 25
ers, like Joachim
world
of flowery rhetor ic of that third and
final dispensation of
a "spirit of f reedom," in
which law shall have passed
a w a y . O f this spirit Aucassin
and Nicolette contains per- 30
haps the most famous expression: i t is the
answer
haps the most famous expression: i t is the
answer
Aucassin gives when he is threatened with
the pains of
hell , if he makes Nicolette his mistress. A creature
19
senses,
he
sees
priests, "clinging
day and
whom he so m u c h
loves," he, for his par t , is ready
to s tar t on the way to
hell, along with "the good scholars," as
he says , and the
actors,
and the fine horsemen dead in ba t t
l e , and the
men of fashion
, and "the fair courteous ladies who
had
1 0 two or three chevaliers apiece beside their
own t rue
lords," all gay
beautiful furs—"the vair and the grey."
But in the H o u s e Beautiful the
saints too have thei r
place; and the
h s
this advan-
1 5 tage over the s tudent of the
emancipat ion of the h u m a n
mind in the
Reforma t ion ,
to
higher lev-
els, he is not b eset at eve ry tu rn b y the inflexib ili t ies
and
antagonisms
of
2 0 rigidly defined opposites, exh au sting
the
intelligence
T he
tha t more
sincere and generous play of the
forces of hum an mind
and character , which I have noted as the secret of
Abe-
2 5
lard 's s truggle, is indeed a lways powerfu l
. But the in-
compat ib i l i ty wi th one another of
souls really "fair" is
not
essential;
and
within
th
Renaissance, one needs not be for
ever on one's guard .
Here there
3 0
breathes of that uni ty of cul
ture in which "whatsoever
l
Parage,
peerage:—which came to signify all
tha t am bi t ious youth affect-
ed
most on the outside of life, in that old world
of the Troubadours, with
whom
2O
T W O E A R L Y
F R E N C H S T O R I E S
things are comely" are reconciled, for
the elevation and
adorning of our spirits. And just
in proportion as those
who took part in the Renaissance become centrally
rep-
resentative of it, just so much
the more is this condition
realised in them. The wicked popes, and
the loveless 5
tyrants, who from time to time became
its patrons, or
mere speculators in its fortunes, lend
themselves easily
to disputations, and, from this side or that, the spirit of
controversy lays just hold upon them. But
the painter of
the Last Supper, with his kindred,
lives in a land where 1 0
controversy has no breathing-place.
Nicolette,
lit-
erature which it represents,
the note of def iance , of the
opposition of one system to another,
is sometimes
harsh. Let me conclude then with a morsel
from Amis 1 5
and Amile,
is
stil l entire. For the story of the great traditional
friend-
ship, in which, as I said, the liberty of the heart makes
itself felt , seems,
saints martyrs
not till the end of the seventeenth century that
their
names were finally excluded from the martyrology;
and
their story ends with this monkish miracle of
earthly
comradeship, more than fa i th fu l unto
death.—
For ,
b y
side, with a host of other brave men, in battle
for King
Charles at Mortara, so called from that great slaughter. And
the bishops gave counsel to the king
and queen that they
should bury the dead, and build
a church in that place; and 30
their counsel pleased the king greatly. And there were built
two churches, the one by c o m m a n d m e n
t of the king in
h o n o u r of Saint Oseige, and the
other b y c o m m a n d m e n t o
the queen in honour of Saint
Peter.
21
THE RENAISSANCE
And the king caused the two chests of
stone to be b r o u g ht
in the
and Ami le lay; and A m i l e
was carried to the church of Saint
Peter , and A m i s to the
church of Saint Oseige; and the other
corpses were buried,
5 som e in one place and some in the other. B ut lo
next
morning, the body of Amile in his coffin was found ly
ing in
the
church
of
comrade. Behold then this wondrous amity, which b y
death
could not be dissevered
1 0 This miracle G od did, who g
a v e to His disciples power to
remove mounta ins . A n d b y reason of
this miracle the king
and queen remained in that place for
a space of th i r ty days ,
and performed the offices of the dead who were
slain, and
honoured the said churches with great
gifts. And the bishop
1 5 ordained m any clerks to se rve in
the church of Sain t Oseige,
and commanded them that they should guard duly , wi th
great devotion, the bodies of the two
companions , Amis and
Amile.
1872.
22
of the
complete
without some not ice of the a t tempt made b
y cer-
tain I tal ian scholars of the
fifteenth
concile forms of sentiment which at
first sight seem in- 5
compat ib le , to adjust the var ious
products of the h u m a n
mind to one another in one many-sided
type of intellec-
tual
cul ture , to g ive human i t y , fo
r hear t and imagina-
tion to feed upon, as much as i t could possibly
receive,
belonged to the generous inst incts of that
age. A n earlier 1 0
and
simpler generation had seen in
the gods of Greece so
many mal ignant spi r i t s , the defeated b
ut still living cen-
tres of the religion of darkness, s
truggling, not a lways
in vain , against the kingdom of
light. Little b y little, as
the natura l charm of pagan story reasserted
itself over 1 5
minds emerging out of b a r b a r is m ,
the religious signifi-
cance which had once belonged to it
was lost sight of,
and it
purely
artistic or poetical t reatment. But i t was inevitable
that
f rom t ime to t ime minds should arise, deeply
enough 20
impressed by i t s beau ty and
p o w e r
to ask themselves
whether the religion of Greece
was indeed a r ival of the
religion o
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