View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 42

[863] Mabillon speaks of this as the oldest French instrument he had seen. But the Benedictines quote some of the eleventh century. Hist.

Litt. t. vii. p. 59. This charter is supposed by the authors of Nouveau Traite de Diplomatique to be translated from the Latin, t. iv. p. 519.

French charters, they say, are not common before the age of Louis IX.; and this is confirmed by those published in Martenne's Thesaurus Anecdotorum, which are very commonly in French from his reign, but hardly ever before.

[864] Ravaliere, Revol. de la Langue Francoise, p. 116, doubts the age of this translation.

[865] Archaeologia, vols. xii. and xiii.

[866] Millot says that Richard's sirventes (satirical songs) have appeared in French as well as Provencal, but that the former is probably a translation. Hist. des Troubadours, vol. i. p. 54. Yet I have met with no writer who quotes them in the latter language, and M. Ginguene, as well as Le Grand d'Aussy, considers Richard as a trouveur.

[Raynouard has since published, in Provencal, the song of Richard on his captivity, which had several times appeared in French. It is not improbable that he wrote it in both dialects. Leroux de Lincy, Chants Historiques Francais, vol. i. p. 55. Richard also composed verses in the Poitevin dialect, spoken at that time in Maine and Anjou, which resembles the Langue d'Oc more than that of northern France, though, especially in the latter countries, it gave way not long afterwards. Id.

p. 77.]

[867] This derivation of the romantic stories of Arthur, which Le Grand d'Aussy ridiculously attributes to the jealousy entertained by the English of the renown of Charlemagne, is stated in a very perspicuous and satisfactory manner by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances.

[868] [Though the stories of Arthur were not invented by the English out of jealousy of Charlemagne, it has been ingeniously conjectured and rendered highly probable by Mr. Sharon Turner, that the history by Geoffrey of Monmouth was composed with a political view to display the independence and dignity of the British crown, and was intended, consequently, as a counterpoise to that of Turpin, which never became popular in England. It is doubtful, in my judgment, whether Geoffrey borrowed so much from Armorican traditions as he pretended.]

[869] Prose e Rime di Dante, Venez. 1758, t. iv. p. 261. Dante's words, biblia c.u.m Trojanorum Romanorumque gestibus compilata, seem to bear no other meaning than what I have given. But there may be a doubt whether _biblia_ is ever used except for the Scriptures; and the Italian translator renders it, cioe la bibbia, i fatti de i Trojani, e de i Romani. In this case something is wrong in the original Latin, and Dante will have alluded to the translations of parts of Scripture made into French, as mentioned in the text.

[870] The a.s.sises de Jerusalem have undergone two revisions; one, in 1250, by order of John d'Ibelin, count of Jaffa, and a second in 1369, by sixteen commissioners chosen by the states of the kingdom of Cyprus.

Their language seems to be such as might be expected from the time of the former revision.

[871] Several prose romances were written or translated from the Latin about 1170, and afterwards. Mr. Ellis seems inclined to dispute their antiquity. But, besides the authorities of La Ravaliere and Tressan, the latter of which is not worth much, a late very extensively informed writer seems to have put this matter out of doubt. Roquefort Flamericourt, Etat de la Poesie Francaise dans les 12me et 13me siecles, Paris, 1815 p. 147.

[872] Villaret, Hist. de France, t. xi. p. 121; De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. iii. p. 548. Charles V. had more learning than most princes of his time. Christine de Pisan, a lady who has written memoirs, or rather an eulogy of him, says that his father le fist introdire en lettres moult suffisamment, et tant que competemment entendoit son Latin, et souffisamment scavoit les regles de grammaire; la quelle chose pleust a dieu qu'ainsi fust accoutumee entre les princes. Collect. de Mem. t. v. p. 103, 190, &c.

[873] The earliest Spanish that I remember to have seen is an instrument in Martenne, Thesaurus Anecdotorum, t. i. p. 263; the date of which is 1095. Persons more conversant with the antiquities of that country may possibly go further back. Another of 1101 is published in Marina's Teoria de las Cortes, t. iii. p. 1. It is in a Vidimus by Peter the Cruel, and cannot, I presume, have been a translation from the Latin.

Yet the editors of Nouveau Tr. de Diplom. mention a charter of 1243, as the earliest they are acquainted with in the Spanish language. t. iv. p.

525.

Charters in the German language, according to the same work, first appear in the time of the emperor Rodolph, after 1272, and became usual in the next century. p. 523. But Struvius mentions an instrument of 1235, as the earliest in German. Corp. Hist. Germ. p. 457.

[874] An extract from this poem was published in 1808 by Mr. Southey, at the end of his "Chronicle of the Cid," the materials of which it partly supplied, accompanied by an excellent version by a gentleman, who is distinguished, among many other talents, for an unrivalled felicity in expressing the peculiar manner of authors whom he translates or imitates. M. Sismondi has given other pa.s.sages in the third volume of his History of Southern Literature. This popular and elegant work contains some interesting and not very common information as to the early Spanish poets in the Provencal dialect, as well as those who wrote in Castilian.

[875] Dissert. 32.

[876] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 340.

[877] Dante, in his treatise De vulgari Eloquentia, reckons fourteen or fifteen dialects, spoken in different parts of Italy, all of which were debased by impure modes of expression. But the "n.o.ble, princ.i.p.al, and courtly Italian idiom," was that which belonged to every city, and seemed to belong to none, and which, if Italy had a court, would be the language of that court. p. 274, 277.

Allowing for the metaphysical obscurity in which Dante chooses to envelop the subject, this might perhaps be said at present. The Florentine dialect has its peculiarities, which distinguish it from the general Italian language, though these are seldom discerned by foreigners, nor always by natives, with whom Tuscan is the proper denomination of their national tongue.

[878] Tiraboschi, t. iv. p. 309-377. Ginguene, vol. i. c. 6. The style of the Vita Nuova of Dante, written soon after the death of his Beatrice, which happened in 1290, is hardly distinguishable, by a foreigner, from that of Machiavel or Castiglione. Yet so recent was the adoption of this language, that the celebrated master of Dante, Brunetto Latini, had written his _Tesoro_ in French; and gives as a reason for it, that it was a more agreeable and useful language than his own. Et se aucuns demandoit pourquoi chis livre est ecris en Romans, selon la raison de France, pour chose que nous sommes Ytalien, je diroie que ch'est pour chose que nous sommes en France; l'autre pour chose _que la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens_. There is said to be a ma.n.u.script history of Venice down to 1275, in the Florentine library, written in French by Martin de Ca.n.a.le, who says that he has chosen that language, parceque la langue franceise cort parmi le monde, et est la plus delitable a lire et a oir que nulle autre.

Ginguene, vol. i. p. 384.

[879]

Tu proverai si (says Cacciaguida to him) come sa di sale Il pane altrui, e come e duro calle Il scendere e 'l salir per altrui scale.

Paradis. cant. 16.

[880] Paradiso, cant. 16.

[881] Velli, Vita di Dante. Tiraboschi.

[882] The source from which Dante derived the scheme and general idea of his poem has been a subject of inquiry in Italy. To his original mind one might have thought the sixth aeneid would have sufficed. But besides several legendary visions of the 12th and 13th centuries, it seems probable that he derived hints from the Tesoretto of his master in philosophical studies, Brunetto Latini. Ginguene, t. ii. p. 8.

[883] There is an unpleasing proof of this quality in a letter to Boccaccio on Dante, whose merit he rather disingenuously extenuates; and whose popularity evidently stung him to the quick. De Sade, t. iii. p.

512. Yet we judge so ill of ourselves, that Petrarch chose envy as the vice from which of all others he was most free. In his dialogue with St.

Augustin, he says: Quicquid libuerit, dicito; modo me non accuses invidiae. AUG. Utinam non tibi magis superbia quam invidia nocuisset: nam hoc crimine, me judice, liber es. De Contemptu Mundi, edit. 1581, p.

342.

I have read in some modern book, but know not where to seek the pa.s.sage, that Petrarch did not intend to allude to Dante in the letter to Boccaccio mentioned above, but rather to Zan.o.bi Strata, a contemporary Florentine poet, whom, however forgotten at present, the bad taste of a party in criticism preferred to himself.--Matteo Villani mentions them together as the two great ornaments of his age. This conjecture seems probable, for some expressions are not in the least applicable to Dante.

But whichever was intended, the letter equally shows the irritable humour of Petrarch.

[884] A goldsmith of Bergamo, by name Henry Capra, smitten with an enthusiastic love of letters, and of Petrarch, earnestly requested the honour of a visit from the poet. The house of this good tradesman was full of representations of his person, and of inscriptions with his name and arms. No expense had been spared in copying all his works as they appeared. He was received by Capra with a princely magnificence; lodged in a chamber hung with purple, and a splendid bed on which no one before or after him was permitted to sleep. Goldsmiths, as we may judge by this instance, were opulent persons; yet the friends of Petrarch dissuaded him from the visit, as derogatory to his own elevated station. De Sade, t. iii. p. 496.

[885] See the beautiful sonnet, Erano i capei d'oro all'aura sparsi. In a famous pa.s.sage of his Confessions, he says: Corpus illud egregium morbis et crebris partubus exhaustum, multum pristini vigoris amisit.

Those who maintain the virginity of Laura are forced to read _perturbationibus_, instead of _partubus_. Two ma.n.u.scripts in the royal library at Paris have the contraction _ptbus_, which leaves the matter open to controversy. De Sade contends that "crebris" is less applicable to "perturbationibus" than to "partubus." I do not know that there is much in this; but I am clear that corpus exhaustum partubus is much the more elegant Latin expression of the two.

[886] [Note III.]

[887] [I leave this as it stood. But my own taste has changed. I retract altogether the preference here given to the Triumphs above the Canzoni, and doubt whether the latter are superior to the Sonnets. This at least is not the opinion of Italian critics, who ought to be the most competent. 1848.]

[888] A sufficient extract from this work of Layamon has been published by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens of Early English Poetry, vol. i. p. 61.

This extract contains, he observes, no word which we are under the necessity of ascribing to a French origin.

[Layamon, as is now supposed, wrote in the reign of John. See Sir Frederick Madden's edition, and Mr. Wright's Biographia Literaria. The best reason seems to be that he speaks of Eleanor, queen of Henry, as then dead, which took place in 1204. But it requires a vast knowledge of the language to find a date by the use or disuse of particular forms; the idiom of one part of England not being similar to that of another in grammatical flexions. See Quarterly Review for April 1848.

The entire work of Layamon contains a small number of words taken from the French; about fifty in the original text, and about forty more in that of a ma.n.u.script, perhaps half a century later, and very considerably altered in consequence of the progress of our language.

Many of these words derived from the French express new ideas, as admiral, astronomy, baron, mantel, &c. "The language of Layamon," says Sir Frederick Madden, "belongs to that transition period in which the groundwork of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar still existed, although gradually yielding to the influence of the popular forms of speech. We find in it, as in the later portion of the Saxon Chronicle, marked indications of a tendency to adopt those terminations and sounds which characterize a language in a state of change, and which are apparent also in some other branches of the Teutonic tongue. The use of _a_ as an article--the change of the Anglo-Saxon terminations _a_ and _an_ into _e_ and _en_, as well as the disregard of inflections and genders--the masculine forms given to neuter nouns in the plural--the neglect of the feminine terminations of adjectives and p.r.o.nouns, and confusion between the definite and indefinite declensions--the introduction of the preposition _to_ before infinitives, and occasional use of weak preterites of verbs and participles instead of strong--the constant recurrence of _er_ for _or_ in the plurals of verbs--together with the uncertainty of the rule for the government of prepositions--all these variations, more or less visible in the two texts of Layamon, combined with the vowel-changes, which are numerous, though not altogether arbitrary, will show at once the progress made in two centuries, in departing from the ancient and purer grammatical forms, as found in Anglo-Saxon ma.n.u.scripts." Preface, p. xxviii.]

[889] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, Ellis's Specimens.

[890] This conjecture of Scott has not been favourably received by later critics.

[891] Warton printed copious extracts from some of these. Ritson gave several of them entire to the press. And Mr. Ellis has adopted the only plan which could render them palatable, by intermingling short pa.s.sages, where the original is rather above its usual mediocrity, with his own lively a.n.a.lysis.

[892] The evidences of this general employment and gradual disuse of French in conversation and writing are collected by Tyrwhitt, in a dissertation on the ancient English language, prefixed to the fourth volume of his edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; and by Ritson, in the preface to his Metrical Romances, vol. i. p. 70.

[893] Rymer, t. v. p. 490; t. vi. p. 642, et alibi.

[894] Ritson, p. 80. There is one in Rymer of the year 1385.

[895] [Note IV.]

[896] See Tyrwhitt's essay on the language and versification of Chaucer, in the fourth volume of his edition of the Canterbury Tales. The opinion of this eminent critic has lately been controverted by Dr. Nott, who maintains the versification of Chaucer to have been wholly founded on accentual and not syllabic regularity. I adhere, however, to Tyrwhitt's doctrine.

[897] Warton's Hist. of English Poetry, vol. i. Dissertation II.

Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie Francaise du douzieme Siecle p. 18. The following lines from the beginning of the eighth book of the Philippis seem a fair, or rather a favourable specimen of these epics. But I am very superficially acquainted with any of them.