CHAPTER XI.
Vales of the Wye—Valley of Tintern—Tintern Abbey—History—Church—Character of the ruin—Site—Coxe’s description—Monuments—Insecurity of sepulchral fame—Churchyarde on tombs—Opinions on Tintern—Battle of Tintern.
The “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey, on revisiting the banks of the Wye during a tour,” are justly esteemed one of the masterpieces of modern poetry; but independently of this, they belong so peculiarly to the river we are attempting to illustrate, and are associated so intimately with the character of its scenery, and its reputation as a fountain of high thoughts and beautiful feelings, that our volume would have been incomplete without them. It is curious that this piece, which is dated in the concluding years of the last century, should be the only fruits as yet given to the world of the poetical inspiration of the Wye—for the effusions of Bloomfield are not to be named with those of Wordsworth.
We have seen that where the picturesque character of the Wye is chiefly formed by its banks, which is the case from Goodrich Castle downwards, these embrace the stream with more or less straitness, rising in naked crags from the water’s edge, or throwing their waving woods over the current. At intervals, however, they recede to some little distance from either side; picturesque hills forming the side-screens, and hills, rocks, and trees terminating the perspective in front, and enclosing the river like a lake. In such cases, the bottom is formed by a green pastoral meadow, through which the stream wanders leisurely, as if reposing after former struggles, and preparing for new ones. These lonely vales are not merely secluded from “the hum, the crowd, the shock of men,” but from all turbulent thoughts and unholy desires. The world lives in them only in the recollections of dead things, and feelings, and persons. They are spots, to use the fine but unappreciated image of Maturin,
“Where memory lingers o’er the grave of passion,
Watching its tranced sleep!”
The admirable taste so unequivocally displayed by the monks of old, in the selection of sites for their ascetic retreats, could not have overlooked this characteristic of the Wye; and accordingly we find, in the most beautiful of these delightful nooks, standing on a gently swelling meadow, by the banks of the lake-like river, the finest conventual ruins in England.
Tintern Abbey, though one of the oldest of the Cistercian communities in this country, was never famous either for its wealth, or the number of its brethren; and at the dissolution it contained only thirteen monks, supported by a rental of between two and three hundred pounds at the highest calculation. [158] It was founded in 1131 by Walter de Clare, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary; but the endowments were greatly increased by Gilbert de Strongbow, lord of Striguil and Chepstow, and afterwards earl of Pembroke. The religious colony consisted of Cistercians, otherwise called White Monks, introduced into England only three years before, where they formed an establishment at Waverley in Surrey. These brethren spread so luxuriantly, however, that in the reign of Henry VIII. there were thirty-six greater, and thirty-nine lesser monasteries, and twenty-six nunneries, of their rule.
The founder of the church was Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk; and it would appear that the choir was finished and consecrated before the rest of the building was complete, a circumstance not unusual at that time. The consecration took place in 1268; and in the body of the church the architecture is of a style long subsequent. The remains of the church are now the only interesting parts of the ruin, at least as a picture: and they are in fact what is called “Tintern Abbey;” although there are still fragments remaining here and there of the other parts of the pile. The church was built in the regular cathedral form; with a nave, north and south aisles, transept and choir, and a tower which stood in the centre.
Complete as the demolition is, there are at least vestiges, even in the most ruinous parts, which explain the original form, and even most of the details of the edifice. The very effects of time, as may be well supposed, are here among the principal advantages. The broken outlines, the isolated columns, the roofless walls, are all adjuncts of the picturesque; but added to these, there are the curtains, the canopies, the chaplets, coronals, festoons, of ivy, mosses and lichens, which give as much effect to a ruin, as rich draperies do to naked walls.