"Every modification of a society, at all lettered, works out for
itself a correspondent literature, bearing the stamp of its character
and exhibiting all its peculiarities."[1]
[Footnote 1: Sir J. Mackintosh's History of England, vol. I.]
It is thus that we see among the simple progenitors of a now polished
race, a simplicity of literature in extreme accordance with their rude
and unsophisticated manners. Yet when I speak of a rude literature, I
am not to be understood as implying want of merit. On the contrary,
the unpruned freedom of thought and unextinguished fire of feeling, so
essential to true poetry, are chiefly to be found among a people
martial and but little cultivated. Nor is this all; we often discover
a beautiful tenderness, breathing of the primeval simplicity in which
it has been nurtured. The dangers and hardships of severe employment,
were sometimes forgotten in intervals of rest, and at such times, love
ditties were made and sung. All natural beauties--the mountain--the
waters of the valley--the dingle--the mossy wood, peopled by its
vagabond essences and strange spirits--were inexhaustible food for
poetry. This love of gentleness was the stronger for its contrast with
the tone of feeling which preceded it. There are many instances of
"the soft" to be found amongst the mutilated scraps and scattered
records remaining to us from the numerous races usually called
Barbarians. Montaigne somewhere quotes an original Caribbean song,
which he pronounces worthy of Anacreon:
"Oh, snake stay; stay, O snake, that my sister may draw from the
pattern of thy painted skin, the fashion and work of a rich riband
which I mean to present to my mistress: so may thy beauty and thy
disposition be preferred to those of all other serpents. Oh, snake
stay!"
If this had been the song of a Peruvian or a Chilian, it would have
been less singular. As it is, it was probably sung by a savage Carib
in a moment of that rest, of which I have spoken as the season for
"love ditties."
The curious student who searches into the authorities of our
historians, will find that they are chiefly made up of legends
imbodied in the songs of coeval bards and minstrels. This was the
source of historical knowledge to the Danish writers, more than to
those of any other country; indeed the scald was as well a chronicler
as a singer. Nor is this historical foundation to be despised. Those
who sung were most frequently eye witnesses of the occurrences
celebrated in their songs. Men in those early ages had not so
thoroughly learned the art of misrepresentation. Manly openness was a
virtue: cunning was scarcely known in action or narration: or, if
known, despised. Consequently we find that in many or all cases where
other proofs are to be had, the legends of the bards are
substantiated.--The chief source of our information with regard to the
Saxon rule in the island of Great Britain, is the Saxon Chronicle--a
kind of journal or annual, kept by the monks of early ages. This
extends considerably beyond the era of the conquest, and is often spun
into verse. Indeed the first instance of the use of rhyme in the Saxon
tongue, is to be found in this chronicle--I will not however
anticipate my subject by quoting the lines in this place.
The materials with which English antiquaries build up their historical
creeds, are so slender, that the very existence of the minstrel, as
distinct from the poet, prior to William's coming, has been matter of
controversy.--After close examination, I am inclined to side with
those who maintain that minstrelsey--like the feudal system--was no
more than improved by the Normans; that it had accompanied the Saxons
from Germany.
We are told that, Colgrin, a Saxon prince, gained access to his
brother Baldulph, while the latter defended York against Arthur and
his Britons, by disguising himself as a harper.[2] Likewise that the
great Alfred stole forth in the same disguise from the Isle of
Athelney--whither Guthrun the Dane had driven him--and that in such
plight he entered the enemy's quarters unhindered. Another story of
the same nature is told us of Anlaff, a Danish chief, who explored the
camp of king Athelstane.[3] The learned bishop of Dromore, after
quoting these several stories at full length, remarks: "Now if the
Saxons had not been accustomed to have minstrels of their own,
Alfred's assuming so new and unusual a character would have excited
suspicions among the Danes. On the other hand, if it had not been
customary with the Saxons to shew favor and respect to the Danish
scalds, Anlaff would not have ventured himself among them, especially
on the eve of a battle. From the uniform procedure then of both these
kings, we may fairly conclude that the same mode of entertainment
prevailed among both people, and that the minstrel was a privileged
character with each."
[Footnote 2: Geoffrey of Monmouth.]
[Footnote 3: Vide Rapin.]
This proves, to me, that a plant from the same root whence sprung the
Danish scald, grew and flourished in England. This idea is farther
strengthened by the fact that Saxons and Danes were of one and the
same origin--both swarms from the same northern hive--and that the
scald retained by the Danes[4] was an important personage among the
Teutonic tribes; and nothing can be more natural than for men to recur
to the customs and usages of their parent-land.
[Footnote 4: Sir W. Temple.]
It seems therefore that minstrels constituted a privileged race among
the Saxons. Yet poetry was not meanwhile confined to their vocal
performances. Alfred himself was the author of several written pieces
of considerable merit. Among other ballads, one descriptive of the
battle of Brunnenburgh, is still extant. This battle--fought between
Athelstane and a confederacy of Danes and rebel Britons--was well
drawn in the original, and has been translated by a school boy at Eton
with unrivalled beauty and truth.[5]
[Footnote 5: Frere.]
Song was used likewise on the field of battle. Many instances of this
are on record, but I shall select no more than one for the sake of
proof.
When Harold the last Saxon king, drew up his army against the combined
forces of Tostigg--his rebel brother--and Harold Hardrada, the
Norwegian king, Tostigg rode out upon a hillock, and _after the
fashion of the day_, began a war-chaunt. While thus engaged, a herald
came from Harold, his brother, greeting him, and offering
reconciliation. "The dukedom of Northumberland shall be given thee,"
said the herald. "And what reward has he for my friend and ally?"
replied the haughty rebel. "Seven feet of English ground, or as men
call him a giant, perhaps eight." And the herald finding his attempt
at reconciliation futile, put spurs to his horse. Tostigg rode
backward and forward, tossing his bare sword into the air and catching
it as it fell. Meanwhile his brother's archers came within bow-shot,
and their arrows whistled from the string. Tostigg fought beside his
ally, in a blue tunic and shining helmet. He was yet chanting to his
army, when a shaft pierced his throat and ended song and life
together.
Thus do we see that poetry existed in three shapes; in the songs of a
privileged order, called by the various names of _joculator_,
_minstrel_, &c. &c.; in writing; and in the martial chaunts of heroes
"bowne for battelle."--And what were the subjects of these several
species of poetry? The last explains itself. The first two were
probably on martial topics; so we may infer at least from the
specimens which have reached us, and from the situation of England,
even for centuries after its union under Egbert. Swept by the repeated
inroads of the Danes--harassed and ground by the never-ending feuds of
the great nobles, "ye might (in the strong words of an old historian,)
as well plough the sea."--Thus with warlike customs--the last half of
Sir J. Mackintosh's remark, quoted in the beginning of this paper,
being at all times a consequent on the first--literature grew up in
more harsh strength than graceful beauty. Society was little better
than a confederacy for joint defence against watchful foes. The air
was redolent of strife and contention. The "clash of armor and the
rush of multitudes," mingling _minaci murmure cornuum_, were imitated
on the harp's string, and enthusiastic damsels sung the deeds of their
lovers, or so far forgot the more tender affection which would prefer
the life of its object, to that object's death and after-honor, as to
mingle the _io triumphe_ with the burial song; thus giving way to the
fierce joy, which weakness, when excited by thoughts of great deeds
denied itself, conjures up--the _gaudia certaminis_, ever strongest in
the weakest. I have already remarked, that "during intervals of rest,
love ditties were sung." We have remnants enough to know that the
Saxon poets were not forgetful of all gentler feeling, though these
too were most often mingled with alloy. There were not wanting those
willing and eager to embalm the names of the beautiful and great.
There were not wanting bards to sing of the _loves_ of these.
Elgiva, who drew her royal lover from the board where his nobles, and
the sage Dunstan, had met to do him honor. Editha, the lady of the
swan-neck, who recognised the body of Harold though mangled and
disfigured wofully "for that her eyes were strong with love." These
have had their good qualities and misfortunes immortalized by men,
who, in the pauses of the bitterest strife, turned to admire beauty
and unyielding affection, and to lament the evils brought upon
innocent heads.
They sung too of Elfrida, who stabbed young Alfred while feasting in
Corfe-castle--a deed "than which no worse had been committed among the
people of the Angles, since they first came to the land of Britain."
And in this we perceive the alloy, as in their praise of the masculine
Ethelflida, "the lady of Mercia," daughter of the great Alfred.
I have barely glanced over the Saxon literature from the middle of the
fifth century, to that of the eleventh, without entering into a
careful and accurate detail of the changes which must have occurred,
and which probably by a closer examination than I have thought
needful, might be spread open. One great change occurred about the end
of the eighth century. Egbert--Bretwalda, or king of Wessex, one of
the seven principalities forming the Heptarchy--long lived at the
court of Charlemagne, then the most polished court west of Italy. He
united the seven petty kingdoms into one, and as their single head,
had an opportunity of using effectually the information gathered
abroad.
Several additions were made to this, but the one most worthy notice,
was more than two centuries after. Edward the confessor, passed
twenty-seven years, from boyhood to middle age, at the court of Rouen;
indeed (according to Ingulphus,)
"Paene in Gallicam transierat."
He therefore added to the polish, introduced by his predecessor,
though at so late an hour that the change for the better was scarcely
perceptible, before it merged in the more important one, introduced by
the Norman invasion.
I now proceed to an examination of poetry through ages of comparative
light. Although from the gradual intercourse between the two nations
prior to their amalgamation, no alteration of feeling or manners had
taken place, extensive enough to mark the "conquest" as a grand and
important era in the history of national customs, still many and
subtle changes were produced, bearing in no small degree upon the
subject before us.
The poetry of the Saxons was without rhyme, and the author of "an
essay on Chaucer," says, "without metre." The learned antiquary must
have attached a meaning to the word _metre_, wholly at variance with
that now and usually received. Metre (from the Greek [Greek: metron]
and Latin _metrum_) has several meanings, but scarcely distinct ones:
all may be included in that of 'an harmonious disposition of words.'
It is not enough to say that it differed from prose in being the
language of passion. The general rules by which we judge poetry, are
immutable, and equally applicable to that of Greeks, Saxons, and
modern English. Dr. Blair and his authorities, define poetry to be
"the language of passion metrically arranged," (I quote from memory)
and supported so ably, I will not consent to a halving of the
definition. The before mentioned Essayist on Chaucer, adduces the
"vision of Pierce Ploughman" as a specimen of the Saxon style of
poetry. And herein it becomes evident that he mistakes the meaning of
the word _metre_. For those old lines, composed about the middle of
the fourteenth century, are, notwithstanding the ancient mode of
writing without breaks or division into lines, beyond doubt capable of
being arranged in separate and distinct verses. I am not without
support in the opinion here given; Dr. Hickes[6] maintains that the
Saxons observed syllabic quantities "though perhaps not so strictly as
the Greek and Latin heroic poets." It may be asked how this comes to
be at all a question, since monuments of Saxon poetry still remain by
which we can judge. But it is no such easy matter to judge correctly.
Syllables were accented much at the whim of the versifyer; so much so
that general rules for the disposition of accent are little less than
useless. Add to this the common custom, before mentioned, of writing
poetry and prose alike; and when we remember that the object in view
is to ascertain the number and accentuation of syllables, the wonder
will disappear.
[Footnote 6: Pref. Sax. Gram.]
One among the earliest specimens of the use of rhyme in the Island of
Great Britain, is to be found in the Saxon Chronicle. The author says
that he himself had seen the Conqueror, and we may thence infer that
the lines were written in the reign of William Rufus, or at farthest
in that of his brother and successor Henry. It may be as well before
quoting this literary curiosity, to notice a distich in itself
trifling, and only worth noticing as the very earliest specimen of
Saxon Rhyme, on record.
Aldred, Archbishop of York, threw out two rhyming verses against one
_Urse_, sheriff of Worcestershire, not long after the conquest:
"_Hatest thou Urse--Have thou God's curse._"
_Vocaris Ursus--Habeas dei maledictionem._
William of Malmsbury, who has preserved this precious morsel, says
that he inserts this English, "_quod Latina verba non sicut Anglica
concinnati respondent_." The _concinnity_ I presume consisted in the
rhyme, and would scarcely have been deemed worth repeating if rhyme in
English had not been a rare thing. It is quite apparent that rhyme and
an improved metre were introduced by the Normans, among whom
composition in their own dialect had been long before attempted in
imitation of the jingling Latin rhythm.
The lines in the Saxon Chronicle to which I have referred, are a
comment upon the changes effected by William. I will set them down in
legible characters.
Thet he nam he rihte
And mid mycelan un-rihte
He foette mycel deor-frith
And he loegde laga therwith--
He forbead the heortas
Swylce Eac tha baras;
Swa swithe he lufode the hea-deor
Swylce he waere heora faeder,
Eac he sætte be tham haran,
That hi mosten freo faran.--
This may be translated after somewhat the following fashion: "He took
money by right and unright--He made many deer parks and established
laws by which," whosoever slew a hart or a hind was deprived of his
eye-sight--"He forbade men to kill harts or boars, and he loved the
tall deer as if he were their father. He decreed that the brindled
hares should go free."
In addition to these, Matthew Paris mentions a canticle which 'the
blessed Virgin' was pleased to dictate to Godric, a hermit near
Durham.
From this time to the reign of Henry II, which began in 1154, we find
no records of rhyming poetry. In that reign, one Layamon, a priest of
Ernleye, near Severn, as he terms himself, translated from the French
of Wace, a fabulous history of the Britons, entitled, "Le Bruit;"
which, Wace himself, about the year 1150, had translated from the
Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth. This poem is for the most part after
the Old Saxon fashion, without rhyme, except so far as a jingle at
intervals may be so called. We next, if guided by the actual records
of written poetry, are forced to pass over an interval of 100
years--to the middle of Henry the third's reign. The reasons of this
gap are perhaps these--
The[7] scholars of the age affected to write in Latin--which they
called the universal language. The more skilful poets who lived, as is
usual with the race, upon the bounty of the great nobles, out of
compliment to these their Norman benefactors, framed their verse into
the Norman French; while the low and popular singers--then the only
true _English_ poets--left nothing worth preservation. I will pass on
hurriedly through this uninteresting portion of my slight history of
written poetry, to the nearest resting-place, and thence take a back
view of minstrelsy as nourished in the courts of the English Kings,
and principally in that of Richard Coeur de Lion.
[Footnote 7: The poems of this interval have been translated into the
English of Elizabeth's time, when the rage for gathering scraps of
ballad into "garlands" was at its full. It is, however, impossible to
distinguish them from the numerous pieces, really French--i.e. written
not only in the French language, but in France, bearing similar date,
and translated at the same time. It is impossible to draw hair lines
or any kind of lines between these; or if possible, needs a more
skilful antiquary, than the author of these cacoethes scribendi.]
In the reign of Henry III, we find that one Orm or Ormin, wrote a
paraphrase of the gospel histories, entitled, Ormulum. Hickes and
Wanley have both given large extracts from this, without discovering
that it was poetry. But a close examination will render evident to any
one, with any ear for metre, that the Ormulum is written very exactly,
in verses of fifteen syllables[8] without rhyme, in imitation of the
most common species of the Latin, tetrameter iambic. Another piece, a
moral poem on old age, bears date about the same reign; it is more
remarkable for a corrupt MS., from which the only print of the poem at
all common, seems to have been taken, than for any thing else.
[Footnote 8: This metre is the same metre with that of the Modern
Greeks, which Lord Byron tells us, shuffles on to the old tune: A
captain bold of Halifax, &c.]
The next interval from the end of Henry the third's reign, to the
middle of the fourteenth century, when Chaucer came upon the _dais_,
was filled up with a swarm of 'small poets.' These were principally
translators of popular poems from the Roman or French authors, and
their compositions were thence called _Romances_. They neither
improved on the material before gathered, nor added anything of value
to the store. And so we come to Geoffrey Chaucer--whence, let me recur
to another branch of the subject in hand.
I have said that minstrels were known among the Saxons before the
conquest, and that these were in high repute at the Saxon courts. That
Alfred himself was a poet, and on one occasion, a minstrel. The
Normans brought with them their harpers and troubadours[9] and the
profession received a great acquisition of strength and honor. Every
Baron had his own joculator, and we find amongst the records of the
Old English families, items of _largesse_ to wandering harpers. Such
were at all seasons welcomed by the feudal nobles--perhaps for the
same reason that our modern aristocrats of Virginia were
hospitable--from a love of news. Minstrels as news-gleaners--often
coming too from the royal court--were a source of entertainment to the
lords, who, immured in their solitary castles among swampy moors, or
perched on hill-tops almost inaccessible to man, seldom heard other
than an enemy at their gates.
[Footnote 9: Vid. the story of Taillefer--Du Cange.]
At the court of Henry I,--to whom Sir Walter Scott refers in those
lines of his rambling epistle to George Ellis--
"But who shall teach my harp to gain
A sound of the romantic strain,
Whose Anglo-Norman tones whilere
Could win the royal Henry's ear,--
Famed Beauclerc called, for that he loved,
The minstrel, and his lay approved?"
Minstrels and minstrelsy were especially favored.
Beauclerc--the most accomplished monarch of his day, so far as letters
were concerned, became by fellowship of feeling and taste, the patron
of all the caste. The court-fed minions, like the lizard whose color
depends on the species of grass or plant of which it eats, became of
course completely Norman in their feelings. Indeed the greater number
were Normans by birth and education, lured to the English court by the
ever ready bait of patronage; and those that were not, seeing that
these met with favor, imitated them in style and every thing else. The
'_Anglo_' might with propriety have been dropped in Sir Walter's verse
just quoted.[10]
[Footnote 10: It is a melancholy sight to see so exalted a class of
human beings, whether from necessity or not, forever debasing
themselves into servile dependency. Even Dante, whose lament that he
had to climb another's stair would seem the outbreak of an independent
spirit, could humble himself before a Guido.]
That the six kings following the conqueror were, with an exception,
completely Norman in their habits and predilections, we may easily
discover in the history of English law, traced back to its foundation
among the very roots of the feudal system. It was against Norman
innovation that the independent Barons of the thirteenth century
arose, and held John Lackland in duress until his name was affixed to
Magna Charta--a paper purporting to restore affairs to the state in
which Edward the Saxon left them. It was this same fondness for French
men and French rules that forced from Henry III a signature to the
same paper,--John having evaded his on plea of compulsion.
But, although extremely opposed to those principles of freedom which
Hengist and his followers had brought from the woods of Germany, and
which ages after marked England as a great and prosperous nation,
Norman ideas and sentiments were a southern sun to the growth of
poetry and other literature.
I have mentioned Henry Beauclerc's love for these. After him, in the
struggles of the heroic Maud or Matilda, and in the turbulent reign of
the ill-fated Stephen, neither party had leisure for literary
pursuits. But in the reign of Henry II, love and poetry both received
countenance from that gallant monarch. His amours with Rosamond
Clifford of Woodstock, have been the theme of many a popular ballad.
Richard Coeur de Lion, the knight errant king,[11] and king of knight
errants, invited the most famous of the Provencal bards to his court.
_Ubi mel ibi apes_, and London was soon a theatre crowded with
troubadours warm from the feet of the Pyrenees and banks of the Rhone.
The whispers of the sunny Provencal love-ditty were breathed upon the
rough ballad spirit of an earlier time,--mellowing that spirit, and
adding to its former dauntlessness the gloss of polish and
refinement.--Richard was himself a troubadour; and though at the
present day his deeds of verse would damn a schoolboy, they were then
thought worthy of being coupled with his deeds in arms.
[Footnote 11: Richard was truly a king _errant_,--for he spent
scarcely one out of the ten years of his reign, in England.]
Many romantic traditions have been handed down to us of that
adventurous monarch and Blondel de Nesle, his favorite minstrel. We
read in the records of our ancient chroniclers, a simple tale of the
latter's long pilgrimage in search of the captive king his master. How
Blondel came one evening as the sun went down among the hills of the
Rhine, to the solitary castle of Trifels, where the monarch lay in a
damp cold dungeon. How he seated himself at the dungeon grate, and
taking his harp from his shoulder, began a song which Richard and he
had made together in Palestine; and how the overjoyed king took up the
words as they reached his ear, and chanted to the top of his full
voice in answer. And farthermore, how Blondel returned to England, and
went 'shoonless and unhooded' through all parts of the land, until the
captive's loyal subjects were aroused; and until the great ransom was
gathered together by which those subjects bought his freedom. Many
such stories are told of the time of the chivalric Richard; and the
devoted fidelity of his dependents will ever be a bright spot on the
page of that history into which their names have stolen, and through
which they are now receiving--reward dearest to noble
spirits,--virtuous and stainless renown.
In the reign of John Lackland, the minstrels were the means of saving
the life and fortunes of an Earl of Chester, by stirring up the
rabble, who had gathered to a fair in the border of Wales, to go to
his rescue. This they did under one Dutton, at sight of whom and his
followers, the Welsh besiegers retired from before the Earl's castle.
In the time of Edward I, "a _multitude_ of minstrels attended at the
knighting of his son."
Under the reign of Edward II, such privileges were claimed by this
class, that it became necessary to restrain them by a particular
statute. Yet notwithstanding this, towards the latter part of this
reign, we find that the minstrels still retained the liberty of
entrance at will into the royal presence, and were still remarkable
for splendor of dress.
During the short rule of Richard II, John of Gaunt instituted a court
of minstrels at Tutbury in Staffordshire. They had a charter,
empowering them variously, and bestowing _inter alia_ the right of
appointing "a king of the minstrels with four subordinate officers."
Under the usurper Bolingbroke--Henry the Fourth--the profession
maintained its dignity and importance, and met with favor from king
and noble, notwithstanding the contempt of the stuttering Hotspur.
I had rather be a kitten and cry--mew,
Than one of these same metre ballad mongers;
I had rather hear a brazen canstick turned
Or a dry wheel grate on an axletree, Etc.
Alcibiades cried down lute playing--because, though he excelled his
comrades in beauty, eloquence, and gallantry, in this one little thing
his skill failed him. Percy "spoke thick" and so song did not suit
him. Even as late as Henry VIII, we find minstrels attached in
licensed capacities, to the households of the great nobles. But the
profession was fast sinking into disrepute; and in the great
entertainment at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, a caricature copy of the
old minstrel appeared among the sources of amusement prepared by the
gallant Leicester for his royal mistress.
Thus had the profession completed a circle, and, in name at least,
returned to its primitive state. Centuries before among the Saxons the
singer was called _mimus_, _joculator_, _histrio_, indiscriminately.
And though these words, like _parasite_, _demagogue_, _tyrant_,
_sophist_ and others, bore a respectable meaning at the period of
their first use, the minstrel in the course of time adapted himself to
the meaning which time and change had given them, and in the reign of
Elizabeth had become a mere '_jester_.' He turned the circle and went
back to the titles of his progenitors, adding to the ignominy of those
titles by wearing them. An act was at length passed, in the
thirty-ninth year of the queen just mentioned, classing "all wandering
minstrels, with rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars," and ordering
them to be punished as such. From this severe judgment, however,
those, attached by peculiar circumstances to the house of that Dutton
spoken of above as the preserver of Ranulph the last Earl of Chester,
were particularly excepted. This statute was the death blow to the few
remnants of the genuine old minstrelsy.
I can now proceed undividedly in tracing out my slight sketch of
English classic poets and written poetry.
Before I end this chapter, however, let me make a few remarks upon the
spirit prevalent among the English after the conquest.
In the scrap of Saxon poetry quoted above, the reader will perceive
that the chronicler mentions William's severe restrictions upon the
exercise of woodcraft in the wide waste lands of the escheated manors.
Following the same lines farther, we find in the old chronicle the
winding up words, which I will translate from the original. After
remarking that "he forbade men to kill harts or boars," the chronicler
adds, "Rich men bemoaned it and poor men shuddered at it. But he was
so stern and hot that he recked not the hatred of them all."
In consequence of these laws, Robinhoods and Littlejohns gathered in
the matted thickets, and among the oak glades on the banks of every
obscure lake and river, from the Thames to the Tweed. There was
something alluring in the romantic life of an outlawed forester, and
many a tall deer and bristling boar, died on the 'green shawe,'
against whom that law, intended as a shield, pointed the arrow.
Thus sprung up a race of men of whom the ballad makers delighted to
sing--coupling their names with 'Hereward the hardy outlaw' and the
patriot heroes of the ground and trampled Saxons.
That the introduction of Norman manners brought with it more
softness--a fact mentioned more than once--we may discover by
comparing the productions of those bards who in the same age, sung in
the rugged north country, and those who grew up in Kent and on the
Thames. These latter were for years before the Norman's coming,
receiving polish from their neighborhood, while those of
Northumberland retained much of their early rudeness ages after. The
bard who sings of the reyde on which
"The Perse out off Northumberland"
went to be killed among the Cheviot hills, has more roughness as well
as more strength than any of his compeers on the Thames. This old poem
is an important stone in the temple of English literature, and I will
treat of it in due season, as coming within the pale of English
classic poetry. This polish and increased softness introduced by the
Normans, opened the eyes and ears of all to "the soother and
honeyeder" style of poetry. And, indeed, unless Lord Bacon's
remark,--that verse is a better balm than any the Egyptians knew, "for
that it not only preserveth the stateliness of the form and the color
of the face--which the Egyptian preservative doth not--but giveth to
the one tenfold stateliness and borroweth from the rose for the
other,"--be true, their women were passing stately and very beautiful.
There were the three Mauds, all queens and all heroines. There was the
proud yet "fair Rosamond," who forgot her pride in the arms of a royal
lover; and many another fitting sharer in immortality with the Elgivas
and Ediths of an earlier time.
Superstition too gave a tinge to poetry.--The Druids had left their
foot marks upon the soil, and the ancient rites and feelings cherished
in Wales--the last place of refuge for the injured Britons--still held
an undefined influence over the hearts of their neighbors. This
feeling blazed out for awhile, when the partisans of Henry slew Thomas
a-Becket, the "child of love and wonder,"[12] before the altar of St.
Bennet. And the murdered Archbishop was doubly canonized, in the holy
ritual of Rome, and in the songs of those whom his death had made
worshippers.
[Footnote 12: Sir J. Mackintosh tells an odd romance of the mother of
the celebrated Archbishop, whom he calls the "child of love and
wonder."]
But the greatest characteristic of the ballad, as used among the
Norman successors to the Saxons in England, was a love for the
legendary. Britagne--that country lying between the Loire and the
Seine, had been peopled by a body of British emigrants about the time
of the Saxon invasion under Hengist, and these calling themselves
_Armoricans_, settled quietly down in a strange land. They retained
many of their old British feelings, and when in the course of time
they became nearly amalgamated with their Norman neighbors, and
followed them into England, the old love of country revived and they
sung of King[13] Arthur and his knights as champions of their
forefathers. The strange legends of the early contests between Angles
and Britons, were mere clews to the discovery of a thousand others,
wholly unfounded in truth, yet none the less palatable to the
ignorant. This love of the legendary remains to this day among the
descendants of these people, and will, perhaps, never be obliterated.
[Footnote 13: "The words _Konung_, _Kyning_, _King_, _Kong_, _Koenig_,
and others like them in the Teutonic languages, denoted every sort of
command from the highest to that of a very narrow extent. It would be
a gross fallacy to understand these words in their modern sense, when
we meet them in Anglo-Saxon history."]
For the Southern Literary Messenger.
MR. WHITE,--I offer a very threadbare excuse for the publication of
the following verses. They are published "at the request of a friend,"
for whom, indeed, they were written. You have accused me of obscurity,
and to prevent a repetition of your censure, I will here add a scrap
of explanation. "The Last Indian" is something of a Salathiel; he has
survived his whole race. Stanza VI, refers to the Aztecs and other
tribes long ago extinct, and supposed to have lived once upon a time,
among the higher valleys east and west of the Mississippi. A second
and more hardy people, referred to in stanza V, perhaps drove the
Aztecs, as the Huns drove the Goths, southward, upon the rich regions
of Mexico. These dead Mexican tribes are described on their
return--led by a kind of _amor patriæ_ instinct--to their early homes
in the north.
Before ending this scrawl, I would correct an error into which you
have fallen with regard to my signature. "Zarry Zyle" should be