After reading more extracts from the poem, Mr. Lowell concluded his lecture in these words:
Truly it seems to me that I can feel a heart beat all through this old poem, a manly, trustful, and tender one. There are some men who have what may be called a vindictive love of Truth—whose love of it, indeed, seems to be only another form of hatred to their neighbor. They put crooked pins on the stool of repentance before they invite the erring to sit down on it. Our brother Langland is plainly not one of these.
What I especially find to our purpose in Piers Ploughman, as I said before, is that it defines with tolerable exactness those impulses which our poetry has received from the Anglo-Saxon as distinguished from the Anglo-Norman element of our race. It is a common Yankee proverb that there is a great deal of human nature in man. I think it especially true of the Anglo-Saxon man. We find in this poem common sense, tenderness, a love of spiritual goodness without much sensibility to the merely beautiful, a kind of domestic feeling of nature and a respect for what is established. But what is still more noticeable is that man is recognized as man, and that the conservatism of Langland is predicated upon the well-being of the people.
It is impossible to revive a dead poem, but it is pleasant, at least, to throw a memorial flower upon its grave.
LECTURE III
THE METRICAL ROMANCES
(Tuesday Evening, January 16, 1855)
III
Where is the Golden Age? It is fifty years ago to every man and woman of three-score and ten. I do not doubt that aged Adam babbled of the superiority of the good old times, and, forgetful in his enthusiasm of that fatal bite which set the teeth of all his descendants on edge, told, with a regretful sigh, how much larger and finer the apples of his youth were than that to which the great-grandson on his knee was giving a preliminary polish. Meanwhile the great-grandson sees the good times far in front, a galaxy of golden pippins whereof he shall pluck and eat as many as he likes without question. Thus it is that none of us knows when Time is with him, but the old man sees only his shoulders and that inexorable wallet in which youth and beauty and strength are borne away as alms for Oblivion; and the boy beholds but the glowing face and the hands stretched out full of gifts like those of a St. Nicholas. Thus there is never any present good; but the juggler, Life, smilingly baffles us all, making us believe that the vanished ring is under his left hand or his right, the past or the future, and shows us at last that it was in our own pocket all the while.
So we may always listen with composure when we hear of Golden Ages passed away. Burke pronounced the funeral oration of one—of the age of Chivalry—the period of Metrical Romances—of which I propose to speak to-night. Mr. Ruskin—himself as true a knight-errant as ever sat in a demipique saddle, ready to break a lance with all comers, and resolved that even the windmills and the drovers shall not go about their business till they have done homage to his Dulcinea—for the time being joins in the lament. Nay, what do we learn from the old romances themselves, but that all the heroes were already dead and buried? Their song also is a threnody, if we listen rightly. For when did Oliver and Roland live? When Arthur and Tristem and Lancelot and Caradoc Break-arm? In that Golden Age of Chivalry which is always past.