[315]. Not, of course, merely in this ballade. Among other examples of the quality, see stanzas 28, 29, 38 ff. of the Grand Testament. See other ballades; passages in the Petit Testament:—
“Au fort, je meurs amant martir,”
and of course the Regrets de la Belle Heaulmiere.
[316]. About 1300; modernized, of course. Compare the sweep and firm individual control of Wordsworth’s Loud is the Vale,—lines on the expected death of Fox.
[317]. M. Gaston Paris, Poésie du Moyen Age, II. 232, contrasts Villon with Charles of Orleans, the “dernier chanteur du moyen age,” while the other is “premier poète moderne,” and that “par le libre essor de l’individualisme.” See the rest of this admirable summary.
[318]. The Lorelei legend would once have been given for its own sake; now it is merely a reason, which the poet imparts to his reader, “dass ich so traurig bin.”
[319]. Lament for the Makaris (dead poets for dead ladies), quhen he wes Seik,—a significant situation, like Tom Nash—again with dead lords and ladies—and his “I am sick, I must die: Lord have mercy on us!” For the imitation of Villon by Dunbar, see the notes by Dr. Gregor in Small’s edition of Dunbar’s Works.
[320]. Mr. Sidney Lee has surely gone too far in divorcing sentiment from Elizabethan sonnets; as in the case of dance and ballad, literary bookkeeping can be overdone, and borrowing may too easily obscure production.
[321]. See Ribot, Psychol. Emot., p. 267, on arrested development of emotion. He allows, by the way, p. vi., not only a physiological basis of emotion, but, pp. 7, 12, gives autonomy to the emotional states, and allows them to exist independently of intellectual conditions.
[322]. The tyranny of terms mars some of the conclusions in Professor Francke’s valuable book on Social Forces in German Literature, and the “individualism” to which he often refers has divers meanings.