The most striking circumstance in the oldest houses is not so much their precautions for defence in the outside staircase, and when that was disused, the better safeguard against robbery in the moat which frequently environed the walls, the strong gateway, the small window broken by mullions, which are no more than we should expect in the times, as the paucity of apartments, so that both sexes, and that even in high rank, must have occupied the same room. The progress of a regard to decency in domestic architecture has been gradual, and in some respects has been increasing up to our own age. But the mediæval period shows little of it; though in the advance of wealth, a greater division of apartments distinguishes the houses of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from those of an earlier period.
The French houses of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were probably much of the same arrangement as the English; the middle and lower classes had but one hall and one chamber; those superior to them had the solarium or upper floor, as with us. See Archæological Journal (vol. i. p. 212), where proofs are adduced from the fabliaux of Barbasan. [1848.]
The Abbé de Sade, in those copious memoirs of the life of Petrarch, which illustrate in an agreeable though rather prolix manner the civil and literary history of Provence and Italy in the fourteenth century, endeavoured to establish his own descent from Laura, as the wife of Hughes de Sade, and born in the family de Noves. This hypothesis has since been received with general acquiescence by literary men; and Tiraboschi in particular, whose talent lay in these petty biographical researches, and who had a prejudice against every thing that came from France, seems to consider it as decisively proved. But it has been called in question in a modern publication by the late Lord Woodhouselee. (Essay on the Life and Character of Petrarch, 1810.) I shall not offer any opinion as to the identity of Petrarch's mistress with Laura de Sade; but the main position of Lord W.'s essay, that Laura was an unmarried woman, and the object of an honourable attachment in her lover, seems irreconcileable with the evidence that his writings supply. 1. There is no passage in Petrarch, whether of poetry or prose, that alludes to the virgin character of Laura, or gives her the usual appellations of unmarried women, puella in Latin, or donzella in Italian; even in the Trionfo della Castità, where so obvious an opportunity occurred. Yet this was naturally to be expected from so ethereal an imagination as that of Petrarch, always inclined to invest her with the halo of celestial purity. We know how Milton took hold of the mystical notions of virginity; notions more congenial to the religion of Petrarch than his own:
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Quod tibi perpetuus pudor, et sine labe juventas Pura fuit, quod nulla tori libata voluptas, En etiam tibi virginei servantur honores. Epitaphium Damonis. |
2. The coldness of Laura towards so passionate and deserving a lover, if no insurmountable obstacle intervened during his twenty years of devotion, would be at least a mark that his attachment was misplaced, and show him in rather a ridiculous light. It is not surprising, that persons believing Laura to be unmarried, as seems to have been the case with the Italian commentators, should have thought his passion affected, and little more than poetical. But upon the contrary supposition, a thread runs through the whole of his poetry, and gives it consistency. A love on the one side, instantaneously conceived, and retained by the susceptibility of a tender heart and ardent fancy; nourished by slight encouragement, and seldom presuming to hope for more; a mixture of prudence and coquetry on the other, kept within bounds either by virtue or by the want of mutual attachment, yet not dissatisfied with fame more brilliant and flattery more refined than had ever before been the lot of woman—these are surely pretty natural circumstances, and such as do not render the story less intelligible. Unquestionably such a passion is not innocent. But Lord Woodhouselee, who is so much scandalized at it, knew little, one would think, of the fourteenth century. His standard is taken not from Avignon, but from Edinburgh, a much better place, no doubt, and where the moral barometer stands at a very different altitude. In one passage (p. 188) he carries his strictness to an excess of prudery. From all we know of the age of Petrarch, the only matter of astonishment is the persevering virtue of Laura. The troubadours boast of much better success with Provençal ladies. 3. But the following passage from Petrarch's dialogues with St. Augustin, the work, as is well known, where he most unbosoms himself, will leave no doubt, I think, that his passion could not have been gratified consistently with honour. At mulier ista celebris, quam tibi certissimam ducem fingis, ad superos cur non hæsitantem trepidumque direxerit, et quod cæcis fieri solet, manu apprehensum non tenuit, quò et gradiendum foret admonuit? Petr. Fecit hoc illa quantum potuit. Quid enim aliud egit, cum nullis mota precibus, nullis victa blanditiis, muliebrem tenuit decorem, et adversus suam semel et meam ætatem, adversus multa et varia quæ flectere adamantium spiritum debuissent, inexpugnabilis et firma permansit? Profectò animus iste fœmineus quid virum decuit admonebat, præstabatque ne in sectando pudicitiæ studio, ut verbis utar Senecæ, aut exemplum aut convitium deesset; postremò cum lorifragum ac præcipitem videret, deserere maluit potius quàm sequi. August. Turpe igitur aliquid interdum voluisti, quod supra negaveras. At iste vulgatus amantium, vel, ut dicam verius, amantium furor est, ut omnibus meritò dici possit: volo nolo, nolo volo. Vobis ipsis quid velitis, aut nolitis, ignotum est. Pet. Invitus in laqueum offendi. Si quid tamen olim aliter forte voluissem, amor ætasque coëgerunt; nunc quid velim et cupiam scio, firmavique jam tandem animum labentem; contra autem illa propositi tenax et semper una permansit, quare constantiam fœmineam quò magis intelligo, magis admiror: idque sibi consilium fuisse, si unquam debuit, gaudeo nunc et gratias ago. Aug. Semel fallenti, non facile rursus fides habenda est: tu prius mores atque habitum, vitamque mutavisti, quàm animum mutâsse persuadeas; mitigatur forte si tuus leniturque ignis, extinctus non est. Tu verò qui tantum dilectioni tribuis, non animadvertis, illam absolvendo, quantum te ipse condemnas; illam fateri libet fuisse sanctissimam dum te insanum scelestumque fateare.—De Contemptu Mundi, Dialog. 3, p. 367, edit. 1581.
The progress of our language in proceedings of the legislature is so well described in the preface to the authentic edition of Statutes of the Realm, published by the Record Commission, that I shall transcribe the passage, which I copy from Mr. Cooper's useful account of the Public Records (vol. i. p. 189):—
The earliest instance recorded of the use of the English language in any parliamentary proceeding is in 36 Edw. III. The style of the roll of that year is in French as usual, but it is expressly stated that the causes of summoning the parliament were declared en Englois; and the like circumstance is noted in 37 and 38 Edw. III.[d] In the 5th year of Richard II., the chancellor is stated to have made un bone collacion en Engleys (introductory, as was then sometimes the usage, to the commencement of business), though he made use of the common French form for opening the parliament. A petition from the 'Folk of the Mercerye of London,' in the 10th year of the same reign, is in English; and it appears also that in the 17th year the Earl of Arundel asked pardon of the Duke of Lancaster by the award of the King and Lords, in their presence in parliament, in a form of English words. The cession and renunciation of the crown by Richard II. is stated to have been read before the estates of the realm and the people in Westminster Hall, first in Latin and afterwards in English, but it is entered on the parliament roll only in Latin. And the challenge of the crown by Henry IV., with his thanks after the allowance of his title, in the same assembly, are recorded in English, which is termed his maternal tongue. So also is the speech of Lord William Thyrning, the Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, to the late King Richard, announcing to him the sentence of his deposition, and the yielding up, on the part of the people, of their fealty and allegiance. In the 6th year of the reign of Henry IV. an English answer is given to a petition of the Commons, touching a proposed resumption of certain grants of the crown to the intent the king might live of his own. The English language afterwards appears occasionally, through the reigns of Henry IV. and Henry V. In the first and second and subsequent years of Henry VI., the petitions or bills, and in many cases the answers also, on which the statutes were afterwards framed, are found frequently in English; but the statutes are entered on the roll in French or Latin. From the 23rd year of Henry VI. these petitions or bills are almost universally in English, as is also sometimes the form of the royal assent; but the statutes continued to be enrolled in French or Latin. Sometimes Latin and French are used in the same statute,[e] as in 8 Hen. VI., 27 Hen. VI., and 39 Hen. VI. The last statute wholly in Latin on record is 33 Hen. VI. c. 2. The statutes of Edward IV. are entirely in French. The statutes of Richard III. are in many manuscripts in French in a complete statute form; and they were so printed in his reign and that of his successor. In the earlier English editions a translation was inserted in the same form; but in several editions, since 1618, they have been printed in English, in a different form, agreeing, so far as relates to the acts printed, with the inrolment in Chancery at the Chapel of the Rolls. The petitions and bills in parliament, during these two reigns, are all in English. The statutes of Henry VII. have always, it is believed, been published in English; but there are manuscripts containing the statutes of the first two parliaments, in his first and third year, in French. From the fourth year to the end of his reign, and from thence to the present time, they are universally in English.
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