One sees then the origin of that furious gallantry which runs through the old romances. And so long as the refinement and fanaticism, which the writer speaks of, were kept in full vigour by the force of institution and the fashion of the times, the morals of these enamoured knights might, for any thing I know, be as pure as their apologist represents them. At the same time it must be confessed that this discipline was of a nature very likely to relax itself under another state of things, and certainly to be misconstrued by those who should come to look upon these pictures of a refined and spiritual passion, as incredible and fantastic. And hence, no doubt, we are to account for that censure which a famous writer, and one of the ornaments of Elizabeth’s own age, passeth on the old books of chivalry. His expression is downright, and somewhat coarse. “In our fathers time nothing was read but books of chivalry, wherein a man by reading should be led to none other end, but only to manslaughter and baudrye. If any man suppose they were good enough to pass the time withall, he is deceived. For surely vain words do work no small thing in vain, ignorant, and young minds, especially if they be given any thing thereunto of their own nature.” He adds, like a good Protestant, “These books, as I have heard say, were made the most part in abbayes and monasteries; a very likely and fit fruit of such an idle and blind kind of living.” Præf. to Ascham’s Toxophilus, 1571.
I thought it but just to set down this censure of Mr. Ascham over-against the candid representation of the French memorialist.—However, what is said of the influence, which this ancient institution had on the character of his countrymen, is not to be disputed. “Les preceptes d’amour repandoient dans le commerce des dames ces considerations et ces egards respectueux, qui, n’ayant jamais été effacés de l’esprit des François, ont toujours fait un des caractères distinctifs de nôtre nation.”
[75] Of Scriblerus. See the VIth chapter of that learned work, On the ancient Gymnastics.
[76] Masques, p. 181. Whaley’s edition.
[77] This romantic spirit of the Queen may be seen as well in her amours, as military achievements. “Ambiri, coli ob formam, et AMORIBUS, etiam inclinatâ jam ætate, videri voluit; de FABULOSIS INSULIS per illam relaxationem renovatâ quasi memoriâ in quibus EQUITES AC STRENUI HOMINES ERRABANT, et AMORES, fœditate omni prohibitâ, generosè per VIRTUTEM exercebant.”
Thuani Hist. tom. vi. p. 172.
The observation of the great historian is confirmed by Francis Osborne, Esq., who, speaking of a contrivance of the Cecilian party to ruin the earl of Essex, by giving him a rival in the good graces of the queen, observes—“But the whole result concluding in a duel, did rather inflame than abate the former account she made of him: the opinion of a CHAMPION being more splendid (in the weak and romantic sense of women, that admit of nothing fit to be made the object of a quarrel but themselves) and far above that of a captain or general. So as Sir Edmund Cary, brother to the Lord Hunsdon, then chamberlain and near kinsman to the Queen, told me, that though she chid them both, nothing pleased her better than a conceit she had, that her beauty was the subject of this quarrel, when, God knows, it grew from the stock of honour, of which then they were very tender.”—Mem. of Q. Elizabeth, p. 456.
But nothing shews the romantic disposition of the Queen, and indeed of her times, more evidently than the TRIUMPH, as it was called; devised and performed with great solemnity, in honour of the French commissioners in 1581. The contrivance was for four of her principal courtiers, under the quaint appellation of “four foster-children of DESIRE,” to besiege and carry, by dint of arms, “the fortress of Beauty;” intending, by this courtly ænigma, nothing less than the queen’s majesty’s own person.—The actors in this famous triumph were, the Earl of Arundel, the Lord Windsor, Master Philip Sidney, and Master Fulk Grevil. And the whole was conducted so entirely in the spirit and language of knight errantry, that nothing in the Arcadia itself is more romantic. See the account at large in Stow’s continuation of Holinshed’s Chronicles, p. 1316-1321.
To see the drift and propriety of this triumph, it is to be observed that the business which brought the French commissioners into England was, the great affair of the queen’s marriage with the duke of Alançon.
[78] Speeches at Prince Henry’s barriers.