Our sketch of the book will be necessarily incomplete; nor could any ordinary limits of a paper suffice for its thorough examination. Its importance is evidenced by the fact that for two hundred and fifty years it was a sort of Bible to France; the source whence its readers drew their maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their history, and even their religion; and which, after having retained its popularity for a length of time almost unparalleled in the history of literature, was revived with success after the Renaissance, the only mediæval book which enjoyed this distinction.
We shall endeavour to show some of the reasons of this long-continued success, and to prove that the book, once the companion of knights and dames, of damoiseaux and damoiselles, has the strongest claims on the student of the Middle Ages; that it is not a congeries of dry and dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediæval fables, but a book full of ideas, information, and suggestion—a book warm with life.
France, whence it came, is indeed the mother of modern literature. Thence both Italy and England derived their inspiration. In the countries of Provence and Languedoc lingered longest the remains of the Latin civilization: there the lamp of learning, dwindled down at last to a mere speck, had yet flame enough to light the new taper of the troubadour; there was first heard the 'Nibelungen Lied;' there originated the tenson, the canso, the sirvente, the chanson royale, the triolet, and all the varied forms of mediæval poetry; and there was the chosen home of such philosophy and science as existed between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. English writers before the Elizabethan age copied openly and avowedly from French sources, taking plot, plan, and framework of their poems. Even Dante deferred to Provence, and owned that the troubadour led the thought of Western Europe. Other countries of Europe have little indeed in their early literature to compare with the treasures of the Langue d'Oc and the Langue d'Oil; and while, outside France, stand almost alone the great figures of Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, there is, within the circle of the Langue d'Oil alone, a constellation in which are the names of Marie de France, Rutebeuf, Jean de Meung, Charles of Orleans, Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Eustache Deschamps, and François Villon, besides a host of minor poets whose works are little inferior, and who may still be read, if not always with delight, certainly always with profit. Scattered about in their writings is the whole of the mediæval life; by their light we can penetrate through the clouds of six hundred years, and bring those picturesque ages of colour and splendour back to our minds as brightly and vividly as we realize any battle-field in France by the pen of a special correspondent. And besides the mediæval life, with its habits and its thought, the student will trace in this poetry the gradual development of the true French Muse—her mockery, her satirical spirit, her cynicism, her incredulity, her curiosity, her want of reverence, with her inimitable wit and fresh buoyancy of spirit—a muse gaillarde et moqueuse, unlike any other that the world has seen, whom to know is to love, though not always to respect. It is no fault of modern France if her old literature is not known as it deserves to be. Editions have been multiplied of the fabliaux, romances, poems, and chronicles which began with Wace and ended with Clement Marot. But as yet no great writer has taken up the subject as it deserves, and a consolidated history of the literature and thought of the Middle Ages, from the tenth century to the Renaissance, embracing as a whole, and not in unconnected parts, the writings of Italy, France, and England, with those of Spain and Germany, is a work which awaits the hand of some man who will devote to it the greater part of a lifetime. Materials for such a work amply exist; but he who undertakes it should bring to his task a knowledge of languages and an amount of reading rare indeed, and difficult to be found.
English readers principally know this 'Romance of the Rose' through the translation which is attributed to Chaucer. Whether it be really his or not is a matter which does not concern us here, and, to save trouble of explanation, we will refer to it as Chaucer's translation. It is unfortunate, in some respects, that it contains only a portion—viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission of 5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the portion contributed by Guillaume de Lorris, and as much of the remainder as fell in most readily with the humour of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy of monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amounting to about two-thirds of the whole, he has failed altogether in giving the spirit of the work; and those who read only Chaucer's version would certainly be at a loss to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting popularity which the book achieved.
The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the subject of considerable discussion among French critics. Pasquier speaks of its 'noble sentiments,' and considers that its object was moral—viz., to show that love is but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams of poetry; Villemain considers it a mere gloze on Ovid's 'Art of Love,' with a mélange of abstractions, allegories, and scholastic subtilties. Nisard deduces from its popularity a proof of its entire conformity with the spirit of the age—an almost obvious conclusion. Other writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for its success by the reputation which Jean de Meung enjoyed as an alchemist, and the belief that the great secrets of the science were to be found in the poem: a manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been small indeed. Others, among whom were Molinet and Marot—of whom more presently—thought its success was due to a double allegory which they found in it; while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest writers who have given any account of the book—both of them meagre, dry, and uninteresting—do not attempt to explain its popularity at all. There are sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into favour, which we hope presently to explain. The great success which it attained is illustrated by the number and weight of its assailants. Foremost among these was Gerson, the 'most Christian Doctor.' He calls it a book written for the basest purposes; he says that if there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he were offered fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather burn it: that those who have it ought to give it up to their father confessors to be destroyed: and that even if it were certain—which was unfortunately far from being the case, the contrary being presumable—that Jean de Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and ashes, it would be no more use praying for him than for Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so ecclesiastical, invective so angry, stimulated public curiosity more and more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to be burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied. Assailants came every day unto the field. Christine de Pisan, later on, took up the cause of her sex, and vindicated womankind from the sweeping charges made against them by the poet; while Martin Franc, who styled himself 'Le Champion des Dames,' wrote an elaborate apology for his clients, which has all the dreariness of the 'Romance of the Rose,' and none of its brightness. The one is a desert indeed; the other, as we have said, is a desert with oases.
The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung. The earlier of these seems to have died about the time that his successor was born. Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came from the little town of Lorris, where, it is said, the house in which he was born is still shown. Two or three lines in the poem are cited to prove the date of his birth and death. These, however, are by no means to be relied upon. Thus, he tells us in his opening lines—
'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,
Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'
whence most writers have assumed that he died at the age of twenty, considering, we suppose, that it would not take a year to write the 4,670 lines which form his part. This would be, at least, quick writing, while internal evidence seems to us to point most unmistakeably to the bestowal of very careful thought, and therefore much time, upon the work. And the lines which follow shortly after have not received proper attention—indeed, hardly any modern writer on the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to have read the book at all. Here the poet says—
'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;