FOOTNOTES:
[1] Lit. Fam., iv., 1.
[2] Since this passage was written, I have met with the following extract from a letter of Tennyson's, dated in 1874, though with no direct reference to the experience being associated with nature: "All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself has seemed to dissolve and to fade away into boundless being; and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were), seeming no extinction, but the only true life."
[3] Any student of Dante, who recalls his lovely early sonnet, Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io, and compares it with Shelley's almost parallel conception of lovers sailing away in indivisible companionship, in the latter part of Epipsychidion, will obtain an excellent illustration of this same difference of feeling about the natural setting for a happy love. In Dante the sentiment is vague, and only what is peaceful, while Shelley's ideal haunt of lovers admits owls and bats with the ring-dove, an "old cavern hoar" left unadorned, mossy mountains, and quivering waves.
[4] We recall his great countryman's modern cry: "Wohin es geht, wer weiss es? Erinnert er sich doch kaum, woher er kam."
"A woman is never won by what is in one's thoughts:
. . . . . . . . . .
Of that she can know nothing."
[6] With this extravagant but probably veracious incident, one naturally compares the sacrifice of Guillem de Balaun's finger nail.
[7] These poet lovers seem to have been frequently laughed at. For instance, Pierre Vidal was promised in their amusement anything by the ladies whom he loved. Na Alazais was so indignant when he took encouragement to steal his one kiss, that he was compelled to flee, and go with Richard to the East.
[8] We must remember that the unwillingness of the upper grade of society to have peasants assume its styles of dress, went so far that ducal edicts were issued forbidding them to use coats of mail and helmets, or to carry any weapons. Bitter complaints were made of their wearing any stuffs so fine as silk, and clothes stylishly cut.
"La pluye nous a debuez et lavez,
Et le soleil dessechez et noirciz;
Pies, corbeaulx, nous ont les yeux cavez,
Et arrachez la barbe et les sourcilz."
[10] I will not quote Goethe's famous disparagement of the Divina Commedia, for the context indicates that it was uttered petulantly. Still, he certainly did not care for Dante, or appreciate him, though he recognized his eminence.
[11] It may be worth noting that Wolfram substitutes for the French original's usual conventionality of a pretty watered meadow, this harder and more appropriate setting.
[12] Tennyson might suitably enough have had the marriage of Parzival and Condiuiramur in mind when writing the Prince's aspiration. "Then reign the world's great bridals chaste and calm." Such passages in Wolfram's poem as Book iv. from line 666 and Book v. 676-682 may be commended to the critics who see nothing in mediæval love that is pure or faithful in the modern sense of marriage.
[13] Petri Abælardi Historia Calamitatum. Petri Abælardi et Heloissæ Epistolæ.
[14] Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit, iii., 14-34.