Burnellus, type of the ambitious monk, escapes from his stable, and wishes to rise in the world. He consults Galen, who laughs at him, and sends him to Salerno.[259] At Salerno he is again made a fool of, and provided with elixirs, warranted to make his tail grow to a beautiful length. But in passing through Lyons on his return, he quarrels with the dogs of a wicked monk called Fromond; while kicking right and left he kicks off his vials, which break, while Grimbald, the dog, cuts off half his tail. A sad occurrence! He revenges himself on Fromond, however, by drowning him in the Rhone, and, lifting up his voice, he makes then the valley ring with a "canticle" celebrating his triumph.[260]
What can he do next? It is useless for him to think of attaining perfection of form; he will shine by his science; he will go to the University of Paris, that centre of all light; he will become "Magister," and be appointed bishop. The people will bow down to him as he passes; it is a dream of bliss, La Fontaine's story of the "Pot au Lait."
He reaches Paris, and naturally matriculates among the English nation. He falls to studying; at the end of a year he has been taught many things, but is only able to say "ya" (semper ya repetit). He continues to work, scourges himself, follows the lectures for many years, but still knows nothing but "ya," and remains an ass.[261] What then? He will found an abbey, the rule of which shall combine the delights of all the others: it will be possible to gossip there as at Grandmont, to leave fasting alone as at Cluny, to dress warmly as among the Premonstrant, and to have a female friend like the secular canons; it will be a Thélème even before Rabelais.
But suddenly an unexpected personage appears on the scene, the donkey's master, Bernard the peasant, who had long been on the look-out for him, and by means of a stick the magister, bishop, mitred abbot, is led back to his stall.
Not satisfied with the writing of Latin poems, the subjects of the English kings would construct theories and establish the rules of the art. It was carrying boldness very far; they did not realise that theories can only be laid down with safety in periods of maturity, and that in formulating them too early there is risk of propagating nothing but the rules of bad taste. This was the case with Geoffrey de Vinesauf, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Geoffrey is sure of himself; he learnedly joins example to precept, he juggles with words; he soars on high, far above men of good sense. It was with great reason his work was called the New art of poetry, "Nova Poetria,"[262] for it has nothing in common with the old one, with Horace's. It is dedicated to the Pope, and begins by puns on the name of Innocent[263]; it closes with a comparison between the Pope and God: "Thou art neither God nor man, but an intermediary being whom God has taken into partnership.... Not wishing to keep all for himself, he has taken heaven and given thee earth; what could he do better?"[264]
Precepts and examples are in the same style. Geoffrey teaches how to praise, blame, and ridicule; he gives models of good prosopopœias; prosopopœias for times of happiness: an apostrophe to England governed by Richard Cœur-de-Lion (we know how well he governed); prosopopœia for times of sorrow: an apostrophe to England, whose sovereign (this same Richard) has been killed on a certain Friday:
"England, of his death thou thyself diest!... O lamentable day of Venus! O cruel planet! this day has been thy night, this Venus thy venom; by her wert thou vulnerable!... O woe and more than woe! O death! O truculent death! O death, I wish thou wert dead! It pleased thee to remove the sun and to obscure the soil with obscurity!"[265]
Then follow counsels as to the manner of treating ridiculous people[266]: they come in good time, and we breathe again, but we could have wished them even more stringent and sweeping. Such exaggerations make us understand the wisdom of the Oxford regulations prescribing simplicity and prohibiting emphasis; the more so if we consider that Geoffrey did not innovate, but merely turned into rules the tastes of many. Before him men of comparatively sound judgment, like Joseph of Exeter, forgot themselves so far as to apostrophise in these terms the night in which Troy was taken: "O night, cruel night! night truly noxious! troublous, sorrowful, traitorous, sanguinary night!"[267] &c.
IV.
The series of Latin prose authors of that epoch, grave or facetious, philosophers, moralists, satirists, historians, men of science, romance and tale writers, is still more remarkable in England than that of the poets. Had they only suspected the importance of the native language and left Latin, several of them would have held a very high rank in the national literature.