THE TIMES OF CHARLEMAGNE.
Sir Francis Palgrave's History of Normandy and of England, of which the first volume has just appeared in London, is unquestionably a very important work, illustrating a period of which comparatively little has been known, and of which a knowledge is eminently necessary to the student of British institutions and manners. The subject has been partially handled by French authors—by Thierry, Guizot, Michelet, and in a desultory manner by M. Barante—but not one of these has shown the very intimate relation that exists between the history of Normandy and of England. That intermixture of the histories of the countries may indeed be inferred from old English works, such as Camden, Fortescue, Hale, Britton, Bracton, Fleta, Spelman, Somner, Chief Baron Gilbert, Daines Barrington, and others, and from labors of Bede, William of Malmesbury, Geoffry of Monmouth, and all the older chroniclers. But not one of these writers, in all their varied labors, has undertaken to show how the histories of the two countries act and re-act on each other, or how, represented in the popular mind by the epithets Norman and Saxon, French and English, they have been for a thousand years or more running against each other a perpetual race of rivalry and emulation. A worthy Picard lawyer indeed, of the name of Gaillard, who abandoned the law for literature about a century ago, wrote a work called The Rivalry between France and England, in eleven volumes; but who, in 1851, unless specially dedicated to historical studies, would read a French history on the subject of the rivalry between the two nations, written between 1771 and 1777, especially when it extends to eleven volumes? Independently of this, any French history on such subject is sure to be tinged with prejudice, passion, and vanity. It is true that the judicious Sharon Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, Henry Wheaton, in his History of the Northmen, and M. Capefigue, give us more or less insight into Norman history; but none of these authors attempt to show the general relations of mediæval history, or that absolute need of uniting Norman to English history, which it is the chief aim of Sir Francis Palgrave to demonstrate. As deputy keeper of the public records of England, this learned historian has had the best possible opportunities of investigation, and he tells us in his preface that he has devoted to the work a full quarter of a century.
The style of Sir Francis Palgrave is generally heavy, and his work will therefore be more prized by students than by the mere lovers of literature. His manner and spirit and the character of his performance may be most satisfactorily exhibited in a few specimen paragraphs, however, and we proceed to quote, first, from an introductory dissertation, some remarks on the arts, architecture, and civilization of Rome. He says:
"Roman taste gave the fashion to the garment, Roman skill the models for the instruments of war. We have been told to seek in the forests of Germany the origin of the feudal system and the conception of the Gothic aisle. We shall discover neither there. Architecture is the costume of society, and throughout European Christendom that costume was patterned from Rome. Unapt and unskilful pupils, she taught the Ostrogothic workman to plan the palace of Theodoric; the Frank, to decorate the hall of Charlemagne; the Lombard, to vault the duomo; the Norman, to design the cathedral. Above all, Rome imparted to our European civilization her luxury, her grandeur, her richness, her splendor, her exaltation of human reason, her spirit of free inquiry, her ready mutability, her unwearied activity, her expansive and devouring energy, her hardness of heart, her intellectual pride, her fierceness, her insatiate cruelty, that unrelenting cruelty which expels all other races out of the very pale of humanity; whilst our direction of thought, our literature, our languages, concur in uniting the dominions, kingdoms, states, principalities, and powers, composing our civilized commonwealth in the Old Continent and the New, with the terrible people through whom that civilized commonwealth wields the thunderbolts of the dreadful monarchy, diverse from all others which preceded amongst mankind."
The following is our author's view of the real and the ideal Charlemagne:—
"It seems Charlemagne's fate that he should always be in danger of shading into a mythic monarch—not a man of flesh and blood, but a personified theory. Turpin's Carolus Magnus, the Charlemagne of Roncesvalles; Ariosto's Sacra Corona, surrounded by Palatines and Doze-Piers, are scarcely more unlike the real rough, tough, shaggy, old monarch, than the conventional portraitures by which his real features have been supplanted.
"It is an insuperable source of fallacy in human observation as well as in human judgment, that we never can sufficiently disjoin our own individuality from our estimates of moral nature. Admiring ourselves in others, we ascribe to those whom we love or admire the qualities we value in ourselves. We each see the landscape through our own stripe of the rainbow. A favorite hero by long-established prescription, few historical characters have been more disguised by fond adornment than Charlemagne. Each generation or school has endeavored to exhibit him as a normal model of excellence: Courtly Mezeray invests the son of Pepin with the taste of Louis Quatorze; the polished Abbé Velly bestows upon the Frankish emperor the abstract perfection of a dramatic hero; Boulainvilliers, the champion of the noblesse, worships the founder of hereditary feudality; Mably discovers in the capitulars the maxims of popular liberty; Montesquieu, the perfect philosophy of legislation. But, generally speaking, Charlemagne's historical aspect is derived from his patronage of literature. This notion of his literary character colors his political character, so that in the assumption of the imperial authority, we are fain to consider him as a true romanticist—such as in our own days we have seen upon the throne—seeking to appease hungry desires by playing with poetic fancies, to satisfy hard nature with pleasant words, to give substance and body to a dream.
"All these prestiges will vanish if we render to Charlemagne his well deserved encomium:—he was a great warrior, a great statesman, fitted for his own age. It is a very ambiguous praise to say that a man is in advance of his age; if so, he is out of his place; he lives in a foreign country. Equally so, if he lives in the past. No innovator so bold, so reckless, and so crude, as he who makes the attempt (which never succeeds) to effect a resurrection of antiquity."
The practical character of Charlemagne is thus sketched:—
"We may put by the book, and study Charlemagne's achievements on the borders of the Rhine; better than in the book may the traveller see Charlemagne's genuine character pictured upon the lovely unfolding landscape: the huge domminsters, the fortresses of religion; the yellow sunny rocks studded with the vine; the mulberry and the peach, ripening in the ruddy orchards; the succulent potherbs and worts which stock the Bauer's garden,—these are the monuments and memorials of Charlemagne's mind. The first health pledged when the flask is opened at Johannisberg should be the monarchs name who gave the song-inspiring vintage. Charlemagne's superiority and ability consisted chiefly in seeking and seizing the immediate advantages, whatever they might be which he could confer upon others or obtain for himself. He was a man of forethought, ready contrivance, and useful talent. He would employ every expedient, grasp every opportunity, and provide for each day as it was passing by.