37. In this French and Provençal poetry, if we come to the consideration of it historically, descending from an earlier period, we are at once struck by the vast preponderance of amorous ditties. The Greek and Roman muses, especially the latter, seem frigid as their own fountain in comparison. Satires on the great, and especially, on the clergy, exhortations to the crusade, and religious odes, are intermingled in the productions of the troubadours; but love is the prevailing theme. This tone they could hardly have borrowed from the rhythmical Latin verses, of which all that remain are without passion or energy. They could as little have been indebted to their predecessors for a peculiar gracefulness, an indescribable charm of gaiety and ease, which many of their lighter poems display. This can only be ascribed to the polish of chivalrous manners, and to the influence of feminine delicacy on public taste. The well-known dialogue, for example, of Horace and Lydia, is justly praised; nothing extant of this amœbean character, from Greece or Rome, is nearly so good. But such alternate stanzas, between speakers of different sexes, are very common in the early French poets; and it would be easy to find some quite equal to Horace in grace and spirit. They had even a generic name, tensons, contentions; that is, dialogues of lively repartee, such as we are surprised to find in the twelfth century, an age accounted by many almost barbarous. None of these are prettier than what are called pastourelles, in which the poet is feigned to meet a shepherdess, whose love he solicits, and by whom he is repelled, (not always finally,) in alternate stanzas.[68] Some of these may be read in Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie Française, dans le 12me et 13me siècles; others in Raynouard, Choix des Poésies des Troubadours; in Auguis, Recueil des Anciens Poètes Français; or in Galvani, Osservazioni sulla Poesia de’ Trovatori.
[68] These have, as Galvani has observed, an ancient prototype in the twenty-seventh pastoral of Theocritus, which Dryden has translated with no diminution of its freedom. Some of the Pastourelles are also rather licentious; but that is not the case with the greater part. M. Raynouard, in an article of the Journal des Savans for 1824, p. 613, remarks the superior decency of the southern poets, scarcely four or five transgressing in that respect; while many of the fabliaux in the collections of Barbazan and Méon are of the most coarse and stupid ribaldry; and such that even the object of exhibiting ancient manners and language scarcely warranted their publication in so large a number.
38. In all these light compositions which gallantry or gaiety inspired, we perceive the characteristic excellencies of French poetry, as distinctly as in the best vaudeville of the age of Louis XV. We can really sometimes find little difference, except an obsoleteness of language, which gives them a kind of poignancy. And this style, as I have observed, seems to have been quite original in France, though it was imitated by other nations.[69] The French poetry, on the other hand, was deficient in strength and ardour. It was also too much filled with monotonous commonplaces; among which the tedious descriptions of spring, and the everlasting nightingale, are eminently to be reckoned. These, perhaps, are less frequent in the early poems, most of which are short, than they became in the prolix expansion adopted by the allegorical school in the fourteenth century. They prevail, as is well known, in Chaucer, Dunbar, and several other of our own poets.
[69] Andrès, as usual, derives the Provençal style of poetry from the Arabians; and this has been countenanced, in some measure, by Ginguéné and Sismondi. Some of the peculiarities of the Trobadours, their tensons, or contentions, and the envoi, or termination of a poem, by an address to the poem itself or the reader, are said to be of Arabian origin. In assuming that rhyme was introduced by the same channel, these writers are probably mistaken. But I have seen too little of oriental, and, especially, of Hispano-Saracenic poetry, to form any opinion how far the more essential characteristics of Provençal verse may have been derived from it. One seems to find more of oriental hyperbole in the Castilian poetry.
Metrical romances. Havelok the Dane. 39. The metrical romances, far from common in Provençal,[70] but forming a large portion of what was written in the northern dialect, though occasionally picturesque, graceful, or animated, are seldom free from tedious or prosaic details. The earliest of these extant seems to be that of Havelok the Dane, of which an abridgment was made by Geoffrey Gaimar, before the middle of the twelfth century. The story is certainly a popular legend from the Danish part of England, which the French versifier has called, according to the fashion of romances, “a Breton lay.” If this word meant anything more than relating to Britain, it is a plain falsehood; and upon either hypothesis, it may lead us to doubt, as many other reasons may also, what has been so much asserted of late years, as to the Armorican origin of romantic fictions; since the word Breton, which some critics refer to Armorica, is here applied to a story of mere English birth.[71] It cannot, however, be doubted, from the absurd introduction of Arthur’s name in this romance of Havelok, that it was written after the publication of the splendid fables of Geoffrey.[72]
[70] It has been denied that there are any metrical romances in Provençal. But one called the Philomena, on the fabulous history of Charlemagne, is written after 1173, but not much later than 1200. Journal des Savans, 1824.
[71] The Recherches sur les Bardes d’Armorique, by that respectable veteran, M. de la Rue, are very unsatisfactory. It does not appear that the Bretons have so much as a national tradition of any romantic poetry; nor any writings in their language older than 1450. The authority of Warton, Leyden, Ellis, Turner, and Price have rendered this hypothesis of early Armorican romance popular; but I cannot believe that so baseless a fabric will endure much longer. Is it credible that tales of aristocratic splendour and courtesy sprung up in so poor and uncivilised a country as Bretagne? Traditional stories they might, no doubt, possess, and some of these may be found in the lais de Marie, and other early poems; but not romances of chivalry. I do not recollect, though speaking without confidence, that any proof has been given of Armorican traditions about Arthur, earlier than the history of Geoffrey: for it seems too much to interpret the word Britones of them rather than of the Welsh. Mr. Turner, I observe, without absolutely recanting, has much receded from his opinion of the Armorican prototype of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[72] The romance of Havelok was printed by Sir Frederick Madden in 1829; but not for sale. His Introduction is of considerable value. The story of Havelok is that of Curan and Argentile, in Warner’s Albion’s England, upon which Mason founded a drama. Sir F. Madden refers the English translation to some time between 1270 and 1290. The manuscript is in the Bodleian Library. The French original has since been reprinted in France, as I learn from Brunet’s Supplement au Manuel du Libraire. Both this and its abridgment, by Geoffrey Gaimar, are in the British Museum.
Diffusion of French language. 40. Two more celebrated poems are by Wace, a native of Jersey; one, a free version of the history lately published by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the other, a narrative of the Battle of Hastings and Conquest of England. Many other romances followed. Much has been disputed for some years concerning them, and the lays and fabliaux of the northern trouveurs; it is sufficient here to observe, that they afforded a copious source of amusement and interest to those who read or listened, as far as the French language was diffused; and this was far beyond the boundaries of France. Not only was it the common spoken tongue of what is called the court, or generally of the superior ranks, in England, but in Italy and in Germany, at least throughout the thirteenth century. Brunetto Latini wrote his philosophical compilation, called Le Tresor, in French, “because,” as he says, “the language was more agreeable and usual than any other.” Italian, in fact, was hardly employed in prose at that time. But for those whose education had not gone so far, the romances and tales of France began to be rendered into German, as early as the latter part of the twelfth century, as they were long afterwards into English, becoming the basis of those popular songs, which illustrate the period of the Swabian emperors, the great house of Hohenstauffen, Frederic Barbarossa, Henry VI., and Frederic II.
German poetry of Swabian period. 41. The poets of Germany, during this period of extraordinary fertility in versification, were not less numerous than those of France and Provence.[73] From Henry of Veldek to the last of the lyric poets, soon after the beginning of the fourteenth century, not less than two hundred are known by name. A collection made in that age by Rudiger von Manasse of Zurich contains the productions of one hundred and forty; and modern editors have much enlarged the list.[74] Henry of Veldek is placed by Eichhorn about 1170, and by Bouterwek twenty years later; so that at the utmost we cannot reckon the period of their duration more than a century and a half. But the great difference perceptible between the poetry of Henry and that of the old German songs proves him not to have been the earliest of the Swabian school: he is as polished in language and versification as any of his successors; and though a northern, he wrote in the dialect of the house of Hohenstauffen. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in the first years of the next century, is, perhaps, the most eminent name of the Minne-singers, as the lyric poets were denominated, and is also the translator of several romances. The golden age of German poetry was before the fall of the Swabian dynasty, at the death of Conrad IV., in 1254. Love, as the word denotes, was the peculiar theme of the Minne-singers; but it was chiefly from the northern or southern dialects of France, especially the latter, that they borrowed their amorous strains.[75] In the latter part of the thirteenth century, we find less of feeling and invention, but a more didactic and moral tone, sometimes veiled in Æsopic fables, sometimes openly satirical. Conrad of Wurtzburg is the chief of the latter school; but he had to lament the decline of taste and manners in his own age.