Lectures on English poets

by James Russell Lowell

Undoubtedly there was a great deal in the institution of Chivalry that was picturesque; but it is noticeable in countries where society is still picturesque that dirt and ignorance and tyranny have the chief hand in making them so. Mr. Fenimore Cooper thought the American savage picturesque, but if he had lived in a time when it was necessary that one should take out a policy of insurance on his scalp or wig before going to bed, he might have seen them in a different light. The tourist looks up with delight at the eagle sliding in smooth-winged circles on the icy mountain air, and sparkling back the low morning sun like a belated star. But what does the lamb think of him? Let us look at Chivalry a moment from the lamb’s point of view.

It is true that the investiture of the Knight was a religious ceremony, but this was due to the Church, which in an age of brute force always maintained the traditions at least of the intellect and conscience. The vows which the Knights took had as little force as those of god-parents, who fulfil their spiritual relation by sending a piece of plate to the god-child. They stood by each other when it was for their interest to do so, but the only virtue they had any respect for was an arm stronger than their own. It is hard to say which they preferred to break—a head, or one of the Ten Commandments. They looked upon the rich Jew with thirty-two sound teeth in his head as a providential contrivance, and practised upon him a comprehensive kind of dental surgery, at once for profit and amusement, and then put into some chapel a painted window with a Jewish prophet in it for piety—as if they were the Jewish profits they cared about. They outraged and robbed their vassals in every conceivable manner, and, if very religious, made restitution on their death-beds by giving a part of the plunder (when they could keep it no longer) to have masses sung for the health of their souls—thus contriving, as they thought, to be their own heirs in the other world. Individual examples of heroism are not wanting to show that man is always paramount to the institutions of his own contriving, so that any institution will yield itself to the compelling charms of a noble nature. But even were this not so, yet Sir Philip Sidney, the standard type of the chivalrous, grew up under other influences. So did Lord Herbert of Cherbury, so did the incomparable Bayard; and the single fact that is related as a wonderful thing of Bayard, that, after the storming of Brescia, he respected the honor of the daughter of a lady in whose house he was quartered, notwithstanding she was beautiful and in his power, is of more weight than all the romances in Don Quixote’s library.

But what form is that which rises before us, with features in which the gentle and forgiving reproach of the woman is lost in the aspiring power of the martyr?

We know her as she was,

The whitest lily in the shield of France,

With heart of virgin gold,

that bravest and most loyal heart over whose beatings knightly armor was ever buckled, that saintly shape in which even battle looks lovely, that life so pure, so inspired, so humble, which stands there forever to show us how near womanhood ever is to heroism, and that the human heart is true to an eternal instinct when it paints Faith and Hope and Charity and Religion with the countenances of women.

We are told that the sentiment of respect for woman, a sentiment always remarkable in the Teutonic race, is an inheritance from the Institution of Chivalry. But womanhood must be dressed in silk and miniver that chivalry may recognize it. That priceless pearl hidden in the coarse kirtle of the peasant-girl of Domremy it trampled under its knightly feet—shall I say?—or swinish hoofs. Poor Joan! The chivalry of France sold her; the chivalry of England subjected her to outrages whose burning shame cooled the martyr-fire, and the King whom she had saved, the very top of French Knighthood, was toying with Agnes Sorel while the fagots were crackling around the savior of himself and his kingdom in the square of Rouen! Thank God, that our unchivalric generation can hack the golden spurs from such recreant heels! A statue stands now where her ashes were gathered to be cast into the Seine, but her fittest monument is the little fountain beneath it, the emblem of her innocence, of her inspiration, drawn not from court, or castle, or cloister, but from the inscrutable depths of that old human nature and that heaven common to us all—an emblem, no less, that the memory of a devoted life is a spring where all coming times may drink the holy waters of gratitude and aspiration. I confess that I cannot see clearly that later scaffold in the Place de la Révolution, through the smoke of this martyr-fire at Rouen, but it seems to me that, compared with this woman, the Marie Antoinette, for whose sake Burke lamented the downfall of chivalry, is only the daughter of a king.

But those old days, whether good or bad, have left behind them a great body of literature, of which even yet a large part remains unprinted. To this literature belong the Metrical Romances. Astonished by the fancy and invention so abundantly displayed by the writers of these poems, those who have written upon the subject have set themselves gravely to work to find out what country they could have got them from. Mr. Warton, following Dr. Warburton, inclines to assign them to an Oriental origin. Dr. Percy, on the other hand, asserts a Scandinavian origin; while Ritson, who would have found it reason enough to think that the sun rose in the West if Warton or Percy had taken the other side, is positive that they were wholly French. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between the positions of Percy and Ritson. The Norman race, neither French nor Scandinavian, was a product of the mingled blood of both, and in its mental characteristics we find the gaiety and lively fancy of the one tempering what is wild in the energy and gloomy in the imagination of the other.

We know the exact date of the arrival of the first Metrical Romance in England. Taillefer, a Norman minstrel, brought it over in his head, and rode in the front at the battle of Hastings singing the song of Roland. Taillefer answers precisely the description of a Danish skald, but he sang in French, and the hero he celebrated was one of the peers of Charlemagne, who was himself a German.