ON THE ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY.

PART I.

"I will tell you where my early feet wandered; I betook me among those lofty fables and romances which recount, in solemn cantos, the deeds of knighthood."-MILTON.

Ir is hardly possible to dwell on the remarkable characteristics of the Olden Time, without making some reference to those Romances which were the delight of our chivalric ancestors; the production of which occupied the pens of the most distinguished Clerks; the study of which, as a glass in which to dress themselves, was the peculiar care of the knights and nobles; and the perusal of which was the delightful occupation of the higher classes, in hall and bower, even long after the style of life which they exhibit had passed away. The majestic tome of the chivalric romance sunk beneath the far heavier weight of the elaborate volumes of Gomberville, Scuderi, &c.; these "stately impossibilities," as they have been happily termed, have fortunately become obsolete in their turn, and few will have the hardihood now-a-days to disturb the dust in which they repose.

Not so with the Romances of Chivalry. It is not likely, nor indeed desirable, that the perusal of the chivalric romances should be resumed; but they must always be regarded with curiosity and interest by those engaged in the study of English history: for the sway was unparalleled which they exercised over the minds of all elevated above mere serfism, at that important period, when learning and civilization were issuing from the monasteries, where alone, during many preceding ages, they were to be found. That those ages were not so "dark" as it has been the vulgar prejudice to call them, is now amply proved; but it was when, according to this popular creed, they were fast brightening, that the romances of chivalry began to illumine life and to guide manners. Divested, however, of all more important considerations, it cannot but be interesting to look at the romance of chivalry-a term, at least, with which we are tolerably familiar-as a book of mere amusement, in contrast with the nine hundred post octavo hot-pressed pages, with a rivulet of type elegantly meandering down a meadow of margin, which form the novel of "fashionable life" of to-day.

Though in succeeding ages the diffusion of geographical and various other knowledge may have enlarged the mass of material at the command of the novelist, the self same circumstance has detracted greatly from its value as a fitting staple of true romance. The moment a thing is clearly discerned and fully understood, the marvel of it must cease, the interest of it very often does. Perhaps, in no age were materials of so widely varied a nature at the command of the true romance-writer as in those in which the romances of chivalry were chiefly produced; the very confinement of the sphere of knowledge conduced to the success of the novelist, by investing with an alluring garb of wonder and mystery-those indispensable attributes of the sublime—innumerable circumstances, which, in a more cultivated age, could not excite even surprise, and which now are rendered clear to the capacity of children. We will shortly look at the various storehouses of marvel and mystery whence the materials of these tales were derived.

The Langue d'Oc, or Romance Provençal, was the first of the modern tongues, after the discontinuance of the classical languages, in which sufficient proficiency was attained to apply it to any literary purpose. Though short-lived, soon a comparatively

dead language, and leaving few remains of any intrinsic worth, it was the common boud of union between princes and nobles, who were spread over a considerable tract of country; and its epoch is one of great interest, as displaying the first germs of those compositions which, in northern France, branched out into the varied Fabliaux and the more elaborate chivalric romances as displaying the infant struggles of revivified and refining society-the first introduction of those customs of minstrelsy,' and harp, and song, which for ages after were so marked a characteristic of society, and the first faint gleamings of a general love of literature.

The songs of the Troubadours are the first specimens, after the re-organization of the European world, of popular fiction; we mean the first adapted to definite rules, and formed after (if we may so express ourselves) a general acknowledged code; for fiction, in the guise of vulgar legend and varied superstition, is inseparable from humanity.

Their Chanzos and Sirventes, the former chiefly sentimental sonnets, and the latter satirical and moral fables, are of simple construction and bald in incident: they have no foreign ornament, nor classical or historical allusion; their chief fascination consists in that harmony of versification which the metre in which they were usually composed displays, and which was easily attainable by persons quite uneducated, but who were endowed by nature with a correct and musical ear. Considered in this light, the extemporaneous effusions of knights and ladies in those romantic times, which at a first glance often seem to us to have been recorded with the pen more of imagination than of truth, lose much of the marvellous

indeed seem both possible and probable. There is, in fact, infinitely more improbability in the elaborate and grammatical sonnets of fourteen lines including the two Alexandrines, in which hapless heroines pour forth their sorrows to the melting moon, in the fashionable novels in the close of the last century. Truly, if these novels were pictures of life, our grandmothers must have been endowed with a wondrous talent for improvisation,-in comparison with which the long-descended fame of the troubadours must sink into nothingness. Miss Edgeworth was, perhaps, the very first who trusted to reason, common sense, and actual life, in the construction of a novel.

To return: The reign of the minstrel of Provence and Toulouse was as evanescent as it was brilliant; he swayed the hearts, alike of serf and noble,-gaining many a heartfelt welcome in the hut of the peasant, and many a golden guerdon at the footstool of the throne, as

"Courted and caress'd,

High placed in hall a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay
The unpremeditated lay."

But in the course of about three centuries from their first appearance, these troubadours of southern France had totally disappeared, and their productions had gra lually succumbed beneath the somewhat sterner literature of the north. For during this time civilization had been rapidly advancing on the north of the Loire. The Trouveurs, for some time the contemporaries of the troubadours, enriched, improved, and varied the materials which, in the first instance, they probably borrowed from their southern prototypes. Advancing knowledge illumined their productions; improving taste refined, and new

(1) Those customs of mere amusement and pleasure: the

ancient Scalds and Bards had a higher vocation.

incidents and ornaments enriched them. The trouveurs were the valued and favoured friends of all classes, and no mansion was complete without its full complement of them; nor was any circumstance of life considered as fully and properly achieved unless celebrated by them. At the close of the day, whether occupied in war or the chase, when the gates were closed and the sentinels placed, the more substantial parts of the banquet removed, and the wine-cup stirring, that wine-cup was hardly more indispensable to the pleasure of the evening than were the harp and lay of the minstrel, as he sang in a somewhat sterner strain than the voluptuous troubadour the lay of love or glory, the meed of valour, or recounted in "solemn canto the lofty deeds of knights and heroes. As Wordsworth thus describes him

"In days of yore how fortunately fared

The Minstrel! wandering from hall to hall,
Baronial court or royal; cheered with gifts
Munificent, and love, and ladies' praise:
Now meeting on his road an arméd knight,
Now resting with a pilgrim by the side
Of a clear brook; beneath an abbey's roof
One evening sumptuously lodged; the next
Humbly, in a religious hospital;

Or with some merry outlaws of the wood;
Or haply shrouded in a hermit's cell.
Him, sleeping or awake, the robber spared;
He walked, protected from the sword of war
By virtue of that sacred instrument

His Harp."

The Romance Wallon, the language of the trouveurs of northern France, acquired strength, and force, and extension, from the intermixture of numerous words and phrases engrafted on it, from their own language, by the conquering Normans; and as these chiefs devoted themselves to their new settlement, and wisely encouraged native intellect and talent, this language became, under William the Conqueror and his successors, the medium for recording those works of skill and imagination, those Romances to which our sketch has especial reference.

But though the romances of chivalry, clad in the garb of the time, invested with the peculiar attributes of chivalric manners, appeared suddenly and with unwonted brilliancy, it may readily be supposed that the varied materials which were collocated in the best of them, had been gradually and imperceptibly accumulated during the course of many ages; had long formed themes for all the varied grades of trouveurs, gestours, raconteurs, &c.; and were derived originally, probably from all those sources, classical, northern, and eastern, which have, each in its turn, found exclusive supporters in the historians of antiquarian lore. Suppose we endeavour to glance at the origin and progress of the various legends which constitute so much of the staple as well as ornament of chivalric

subdued at their command, terror rode on the black cloud, and the wind carried destruction in its blast. At their adjuration, hail poured down from heaven, lightning glanced along the sky, demons flitted before the startled traveller, or even the dead arose from the tomb, to freeze him with horror. Long, long did these fearful superstitions maintain their hold on the ignorance and credulity of the Scandinavians, and very terrible they were; the lingering traces of them, at a comparatively modern period, have been admirably displayed by the master magician and king of romancers, Sir Walter Scott, in his striking and finished portrait of Norna the Reimkennar, in the novel of "The Pirate."

Though it had a brighter aspect, and was not in all points divested of beneficent characteristics, still the religion of the Scandinavians was essentially one of fear, of awe, of dread. Their very festivals were accompanied by fearful ceremonies; and the Scalds, or historians, in singing the praises of their heroes, would seek to magnify them by assimilating their characters as nearly as possible to the revolting superstitions which characterized their theology. These Scalds (like the minstrels of a later date) were inseparable from their chiefs or heroes in every excursion, whether of war or pastime; and their traditions would thus naturally reach England, and the environs of France, during the various incursions of the Scandinavian warriors.

By degrees, but long before the time of the Crusades, these monstrous superstitions became less horrible; giants, dragons, and dwarfs, however frightful, were tangible monsters, and less fearful than the shadowy spectres which they displaced. These, too, gradually assumed a brighter aspect; and as the Eastern world opened its treasures, and intercourse became more free and unconstrained, the hideous fay was softened into the graceful and beneficent fairy, and brilliant and playful imaginings succeeded the dreary phantoms of the northern world; the solemn pine-wood became a flowery forest, and the foul den of the enchanter a fairy-like bower, glittering with gold and precious stones;

"The air a holier quiet filled,

The flowers a softer balm distilled,
The waves assumed a mellower hue,
And the calm heaven a paler blue."

for much of the beautiful and radiant paraphernalia of Doubtless it is to the Eastern world we are indebted fictional lore. It is indisputable that outward circumstances tend much to the formation of the mind, or at least give the imagination its peculiar colouring, and those external circumstances which excited the mind

of the uneducated Scandinavian to dreams of darkness

and deeds of blood, attuned the imagination of the voluptuous Asiatic to romantic fictions, which

"filled the solitudes of air With hues so bright, and forms so fair." We have tribute from all these nations. Even the grave Chinese, who boast historical annals from 2337 years B.c. are well furnished with tales of fancy; many of the traditionary romances of the Kalmuck Tartars have been translated: one of the earliest, and, in Europe, most widely extended tissues of tales, is supposed to have found its original in the works of an Indian Philosopher, who lived 100 years before Christ. The inhabitants of the Peninsula, east of the Ganges, had abundance of romances and legendary tales; and the Persians most especially, grave and courtly as

liar tales and legends of each district would naturally spread around, and become diffused among the neighbouring people: and in due time through various rills the Asiatic fables trickied into Europe.

The oral traditions of the Rabbins appear to have been a source from which many of the wilder fictions of later days were drawn. At the time of the captivity these traditions, even then obscured and profaned, became so deeply tinged with the spirit of the nation among whom the Jews were planted, that we are told it became necessary to have a copy of the law in the Chaldaic dialect, the idiom of the Jews being almost completely disused. Here, then, would be ingrafted probably much of the wild imagery and strong feeling of the Chaldæan, who gazed by night, we are told, from the grassy plain, or open tent where he reposed, on the stars as they performed their courses, until he aimed to comprehend the ordinances of heaven. Though he could not bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion, or guide Arcturus with his sons, he watched with deep and thrilling interest their mystic wanderings. Perhaps no imagination or superstition has taken so deep hold on the credulity of man, through various phases and disguises, almost even to this day, as that which originated with the Chaldæan shepherd, who fancied that in the wandering of the stars were mystically shadowed forth his own fate, and the destiny of those around him. On their return to Judea, the Rabbinical code, with its mass of corruptions and additions, was committed to writing, and thus became a fixed storehouse of legend and wonder, which spread around in various shapes. Mohamed adopted many of them, which, with various colourings, were diffused by his followers wherever they spread their victorious arms. In Spain this was especially the case, when the Arabs spurning the trammels of ignorance which their caliphs had imposed, laboured with more zeal for the revival of learning than they had erst while done for its extinction, and rendered that Peninsula the arena successively of all that was magnificent in arms, splendid in science, and useful in art.

The Jews also, those privileged wanderers, who, with a home nowhere, found a footing everywhere; and in despite of the war, the famine, or the pestilence, which forbade others to roam, still (the then only physicians of the world) contrived to make their way securely with drugs, spices, and other merchandise; these, as they passed along, would spread the traditions of their own belief, and those of the nations through which they travelled; and if they added the vocation of tale-teller to that of physician, would, almost in themselves, account for the fact of the Arabian tales being familiar in Europe, before the Arabians, as conquerors, could have spread them, and certainly before the tales themselves had been collected.

Long, too, before the first crusade,-indeed almost from the time of our Saviour, holy men, influenced by a feeling which it is much more easy to venerate than to ridicule, heedless of toil, regardless of pain, of risk, of suffering, of hunger or thirst, of want or weariness, performed a pilgrimage to Judea, and thought the toils, the dangers, the hardships of the way, amply recompensed by a view of the soil which had been hallowed by their Redeemer's footsteps. In the then ignorant state of the world, the real incidents of such a progress, as detailed by "some meek votarist, in palmer's weeds," would astonish the listeners, even without the embellishments which might naturally be expected, or the Eastern apologues which would doubtless be communicated.

Thus, by various means, were the Eastern traditions and fables introduced into Europe, where they have formed the basis of all the most celebrated series of tales, as the Gesta Romanorum, the French Fabliaux, the Italian Decameron, &c. They are found in abundance in the romances of chivalry, which however give them an air of originality by investing every incident with the peculiar costume of chivalric habits and manners.

The corner-stones on which the early chivalric romances are raised, are an ancient Armorican chronicle, or legendary history of the kings of Britain from time immemorial, translated in the twelfth century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welsh Benedictine monk, and another history, still more fabulous, ascribed to an Archbishop of Rheims, Turpin, contemporary with Charlemagne. The romances founded on these chronicles have all reference to Arthur and his knights, and to Charlemagne and his paladins, individually or collectively. The siege of Troy and Alexander the Great, also, furnished fruitful themes for the excursive pens of ancient genius. Homer, indeed, was unknown, or at least not understood; but the story of Troy was kept alive in two Latin works, which, in 1260, formed the basis of a grand prose romance by a Sicilian; and by this work, Achilles, Hercules, and other classical heroes, became familiar. In addition to this, though the classical nations were extinct, many of their superstitions were so indelibly impressed on the public mind as to leave vivid traces for centuries afterwards; and it is not at all improbable that some of the commoner classics-such as Ovid's Metamorphoses (an inexhaustible storehouse in itself for marvels), might be possessed by, and afford hints to, some of the cloistered fathers who assisted the early minstrels in the composition of their romances.

The renown of Alexander the Great had never died away in the East, which abounds with the most extravagant fables concerning him. A fabulous life of him was translated from the Persian into Greek in 1070, and into Latin in the next century. He cuts a considerable figure in the romance of Perceforest; but in another, appropriated more exclusively to his own exploits, he is a very wonderful personage indeed.

But we must hasten to the two magnificent luminaries of chivalric romance, Arthur and Charlemagne, each of whom is entitled to a little personal attention.

"On ne peut entendre le nom de Charlemagne sans concevoir aussitot quelque grande et merveilleuse idée;" but this idea will be better realized by considering the real actions of this beneficent and everhonoured prince, than by those romantic exaggerations which have disfigured the character they were intended to embellish.

It is the province of romance to adorn the passing scenes, events, and personages of every-day life, so as by a little superadded ornament—a leetle exaggeration, to render them more attractive, and therefore more likely to be imitated. But Charlemagne was a character so infinitely in advance of his age and generation, that in endeavouring to throw round him the barbaric pomp and splendour of romance, writers have subtracted from his real dignity. A great warrior he was-but not the mighty exterminator which the old romances make him, and in which it is probable that the name of Charlemagne was first introduced in mistake. On the contrary, he was mild, humane, and forgiving: in youth, in middle life, and

in old age, clemency was the prevailing quality of his mind. With an aim in view no less than the general civilization of Europe, in steadiness and unity of design, he proceeded from an early age to the close of a long and eventful life, in the promulgation and advancement of knowledge, of learning, but above all of religion. To the cause of religion, with its concomitants,-beneficence and charity,-he was an unwearying supporter and friend; having usefully occupied every moment of time, having beneficently promoted the welfare of all-not around him merely, but all in every region to which his power and his mercy could extend; being adorned with greater virtues and tainted with fewer faults than are usually the lot of humanity; with qualities of mind and of heart, which those around him, if they saw, could not estimate-yet with attractions of a more animal nature, which dazzled, captivated, and controlled the age in which he lived; full of years and honours, beloved and revered, he sank to the grave.1

Far different was the real character of Arthur, round whose name romance and tradition have woven such a halo of wild and interesting fiction. Born in South Wales, he commanded the British forces against the Saxons under Cerdic; and though generally a successful, was not the ever triumphant leader that, from traditional usage and early habit, we even now suppose him to have been. His private disposition was cruel and revengeful, and he fell in battle in an unnatural contest with his nephew.

The marvellous and surpassing glory with which a character by no means uncommon has been enveloped, is accounted for by some authors on the supposition that there was a mythological Arthur with whose attributes and perfections the mundane hero has

been invested.2

This, however, is a subject for critical research, and accords not with our lighter labours. The Arthur of romance is a bounteous and beneficent prince, the founder, the head, and the ornament of a Round Table, at which he assembles a circle of knights, individually the bravest and best that ever graced a kingdom, and yet shining but as lesser lights round him whose surpassing brightness attracted them

within his orbit.

The fictions concerning these knights are, however, according to some authors, invested, in addition to their first and literal sense, with a peculiar and interesting character. Under the form of Arthur and his knights, the fabling historians "shadow forth the idea of a spiritual knighthood, true, like that other chivalry, to the obligation of a solemn vow, proving itself, like it, by achievement and suffering and rising, like it, by slow and gradual advances to the summit of its perfection. Under the name of St. Graal there is brought together a whole train of allegorical deeds of chivalry; the knight is represented as labouring by excessive exertions to make himself worthy of gaining access to the holy places, and the deliverance of these is supposed to be the highest end of his calling."

"'3

To return to Arthur.
The darling, the cherished favourite of higher

(1) See Mezerai; and also "France in the Lives of her Great

Men," by G. P. R. James, Esq.

It seems a wondrous approximation of the old and modern

world to look at the Bible of Charlemagne at the British Museum, a Bible almost as fresh and spotless as if produced to-day; to read on the very page which he read, to turn the leaves which he turned, perchance even to touch them in the self-same spot which his finger, in life and health, a thousand years ago had touched. (2) Faber: Origin of Pagan Ideltary.

(3) Fred. Schlegel.

powers, though death sends out against him his irrevocable decree, Arthur is permitted to evade what he cannot oppose. A fairy bark guided by hands unseen wafts him

"To a green isle's enamelled steep,

Far in the navel of the deep."

This separation from his adoring subjects is but temporary: they anxiously and confidently look for his return: for

"There renewed the vital spring,
Again he reigns a mighty king;
And many a fair and fragrant clime,
Blooming in immortal prime,
By gales of Eden ever fanned,
Owns the Monarch's high command:
Thence he to Britain shall return
(If right prophetic rolls I learn,)
Borne on victory's spreading plume,
His ancient sceptre to resume,
Once more in old heroic pride
His barbéd courser to bestride,
His knightly table to restore,

And brave the Tournament of yore." The romances of chivalry were originally metions of the minstrel's tale, and were chiefly written trical, probably lengthened continuations and variaby natives of the north of France; not, however, universally so. A few of our earliest metrical romances were written in English, and translated, or imitated, by the French. But the intercourse between the English and Normans was at that time so close of each individual work. They were translated and and constant, that it is not easy to decide the origin retranslated, modified and remodelled on each side of the Channel, were equally dear to the inhabitants of each country, and equally cherished by both.

BEESTON CASTLE, CHESHIRE.1

insulated mass of rock, which forms so striking an THE ruins of Beeston Castle stand upon the bold, object in Cheshire and the adjacent counties. It is perfectly detached, and nearly pentagonal in form, sloping toward one extremity, and presenting at the other a front of precipitous and overhanging rocks, which are continued at the sides for a short space, and then gradually mix with the slope with which the rest of the hill declines towards the village.

prc

tower.

(1) Abridged from Ormerod's "History of Cheshire."