ANTIQUITY IN ROMANCE.
ODDITY OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE. ITS IMPORTANCE. THE TROY
STORY. THE ALEXANDREID. CALLISTHENES. LATIN VERSIONS. THEIR
STORY. ITS DEVELOPMENTS. ALBERIC OF BESANÇON. THE
DECASYLLABIC POEM. THE GREAT "ROMAN D'ALIXANDRE." FORM, ETC.
CONTINUATIONS. "KING ALEXANDER." CHARACTERISTICS. THE TALE
OF TROY. DICTYS AND DARES. THE DARES STORY. ITS ABSURDITY.
ITS CAPABILITIES. TROILUS AND BRISEIDA. THE 'ROMAN DE
TROIE.' THE PHASES OF CRESSID. THE 'HISTORIA TROJANA.'
MEANING OF THE CLASSICAL ROMANCE.
[Sidenote: _Oddity of the Classical Romance._]
As the interest of Jean Bodel's first two divisions[68] differs
strikingly, and yet represents, in each case intimately and
indispensably, certain sides of the mediæval character, so also does
that of his third. This has perhaps more purely an interest of
curiosity than either of the others. It neither constitutes a capital
division of general literature like the Arthurian story, nor embodies
and preserves a single long-past phase in national spirit and
character, like the _chansons de geste_. From certain standpoints of
the drier and more rigid criticism it is exposed to the charge of
being trifling, almost puerile. We cannot understand--or, to speak
with extremer correctness, it would seem that some of us cannot
understand--the frame of mind which puts Dictys and Dares on the one
hand, Homer on the other, as authorities to be weighed on equal terms,
and gravely sets Homer aside as a very inferior and prejudiced person;
which, even after taking its Dictys and Dares, proceeds to supplement
them with entire inventions of its own; which, after in the same way
taking the Pseudo-Callisthenes as the authoritative biographer of
Alexander, elaborates the legend with a wild luxuriance that makes the
treatment of the Tale of Troy seem positively modest and sober; which
makes Thebes, Julius Cæsar, anything and anybody in fabulous and
historical antiquity alike, the centre, or at least the nucleus, of
successive accretions of romantic fiction.
[Footnote 68: See note 2, p. 26.]
[Sidenote: _Its importance--the Troy story._]
Nevertheless, the attractions, intrinsic and extrinsic, of the
division are neither few nor small. This very confusion, as it seems
nowadays, this extraordinary and almost monstrous blending of
uncritical history and unbridled romance, shows one of the most
characteristic sides of the whole matter, and exhibits, as do few
other things, that condition of mediæval thought in regard to all
critical questions which has so constantly to be insisted on. As in
the case of the Arthurian story, the matter thus presented caught hold
of the mediæval imagination with a remarkable grip, and some of the
most interesting literary successions of all history date from it.
Among them it is almost enough to mention the chain of names--Benoît
de Sainte-More, Guido Colonna, Boccaccio, Chaucer, Henryson--which
reaches Shakespeare, and does not cease with him, all successively
elaborating the history of Troilus and Cressida. The lively story,
first formed, like so many others, by the French genius, and well, if
rather impudently, copied by Colonna; Boccaccio's vivid Italian
Cressida; Chaucer's inimitable Pandarus, the first pleasing example of
the English talent for humorous portrayal in fiction; the wonderful
passage, culminating in a more wonderful single line,[69] of that
Dunfermline schoolmaster whom some inconceivable person has declared
to be only a poet to "Scotch patriotism"; the great gnomic verses of
Shakespeare's Ulysses, and the various, unequal, sometimes almost
repulsive, never otherwise than powerful, pageantry of that play,
which has been perhaps more misjudged than any other of
Shakespeare's,--all these spring from the Tale of Troy, not in the
least as handed down by the ancients, but tricked and frounced as the
Middle Age was wont. Nor is this half-borrowed interest by any means
the only one. The Cressid story, indeed, does not reach its full
attraction as a direct subject of literary treatment till the
fourteenth century. But the great Alexander cycle gives us work which
merely as poetry equals all but the very best mediæval work, and its
importance in connection with the famous metre named from it is of
itself capital.
[Footnote 69:
"Than upon him scho kest up baith her ene,
And with ane blunk it came in to his thocht,
That he sumtyme hir face before had sene.
* * * * *
Ane sparke of lufe than till his hart culd spring,
And kendlit all his bodie in ane fyre
With heit fevir, ane sweit and trimbilling
Him tuik quhile he was readie to expire;
To beir his scheild his breast began to tyre:
Within ane quhyle he changit mony hew,
_And nevertheles not ane ane uther knew_."
Laing's _Poems of Henryson_ (Edinburgh, 1865), p. 93. This volume is
unfortunately not too common; but 'The Testament and Complaint of
Cressid' may also be found under Chaucer in Chalmers's Poets (i. 298
for this passage).]
[Sidenote: _The Alexandreid._]
In interest, bulk, and importance these two stories--the Story of the
Destruction of Troy and the Alexandreid--far outstrip all the other
romances of antiquity; they are more accessible than the rest, and
have been the subject of far more careful investigation by modern
students. Little has been added, or is likely to be added, in regard
to the Troy-books generally, since M. Joly's introduction to Benoît's
_Roman de Troie_ six-and-twenty years ago,[70] and it is at least
improbable that much will be added to M. Paul Meyer's handling of the
old French treatments of the Alexandreid in his _Alexandre le Grand
dans la Littérature Française au Moyen Age_.[71] For it must once more
be said that the pre-eminence of French over other literatures in this
volume is not due to any crotchet of the writer, or to any desire to
speak of what he has known pretty thoroughly, long, and at first-hand,
in preference to that which he knows less thoroughly, less of old,
and in parts at second-hand. It is the simplest truth to say that in
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries France kept the literary school
of Europe, and that, with the single exception of Iceland, during a
part, and only a part, of the time, all the nations of Europe were
content to do, each in its own tongue, and sometimes even in hers, the
lessons which she taught, the exercises which she set them. That the
scholars sometimes far surpassed their masters is quite true, and is
nothing unusual; that they were scholars is simple fact.
[Footnote 70: _Le Roman de Troie._ Par Benoît de Sainte-More. Ed.
Joly. Paris, 1870.]
[Footnote 71: Paris, 1886. The number of monographs on this subject
is, however, very large, and I should like at least to add Mr Wallis
Budge's _Alexander the Great_ (the Syriac version of Callisthenes),
Cambridge, 1889, and his subsequent _Life and Exploits of Alexander_.]
[Sidenote: _Callisthenes._]
The Alexander story, which Mr Wallis Budge, our chief authority (and
perhaps _the_ chief authority) on the Oriental versions of it, speaks
of as "a book which has had more readers than any other, the Bible
alone excepted," is of an antiquity impossible to determine in any
manner at all certain. Nor is the exact place of its origin, or the
language in which it was originally written, to be pronounced upon
with anything like confidence. What does seem reasonably sure is that
what is called "the Pseudo-Callisthenes"--that is to say, the fabulous
biography of the great king, which is certainly the basis of all
Western, and perhaps that of most Eastern, versions of the legend--was
put into Greek at least as early as the third century after Christ,
and thence into Latin (by "Julius Valerius" or another) before the
middle of the fourth. And it appears probable that some of the Eastern
versions, if not themselves the original (and a strong fight has been
made for the Æthiopic or Old-Egyptian origin of nearly the whole),
represent Greek texts older than those we have, as well as in some
cases other Eastern texts which may be older still. Before any modern
Western vernacular handled the subject, there were Alexander legends,
not merely in Greek and Latin, not merely in Æthiopic or Coptic, but
in Armenian and Syriac, in Hebrew and Arabic, in Persian and perhaps
in Turkish: and it is possible that, either indirectly before the
Crusades, or directly through and after them, the legend as told in
the West received additions from the East.
As a whole, however, the Pseudo-Callisthenes, or rather his Latin
interpreter Julius Valerius,[72] was the main source of the mediæval
legend of Alexander. And it is not at all impossible (though the old
vague assertions that this or that mediæval characteristic or
development was derived from the East were rarely based on any solid
foundation so far as their authors knew) that this Alexander legend
did, at second-hand, and by suggesting imitation of its contents and
methods, give to some of the most noteworthy parts of mediæval
literature itself an Eastern colouring, perhaps to some extent even an
Eastern substance.
[Footnote 72: Most conveniently accessible in the Teubner collection,
ed. Kübler, Leipzig, 1888.]
[Sidenote: _Latin versions._]
Still the direct sources of knowledge in the West were undoubtedly
Latin versions of the Pseudo-Callisthenes, one of which, that ascribed
to Julius Valerius, appears, as has been said, to have existed before
the middle of the fourth century, while the other, sometimes called
the _Historia de Proeliis_, is later by a good deal. Later still,
and representing traditions necessarily different from and later than
those of the Callisthenes book, was the source of the most marvellous
elements in the Alexandreids of the twelfth and subsequent centuries,
the _Iter ad Paradisum_, in which the conquerer was represented as
having journeyed to the Earthly Paradise itself. After this, connected
as it was with dim Oriental fables as to his approach to the unknown
regions north-east of the Caucasus, and his making gates to shut out
Gog, there could be no further difficulty, and all accretions as to
his descent into the sea in a glass cage and so forth came easily.
[Sidenote: _Their story._]
Nor could they, indeed, be said to be so very different in nature from
at least the opening part of the Callisthenes version itself. This
starts with what seems to be the capital and oldest part of the whole
fabulous story, a very circumstantial account of the fictitious
circumstances of the birth of Alexander. According to this, which is
pretty constantly preserved in all the fabulous versions of the legend
(a proof of its age), Nectanabus, an Egyptian king and magician,
having ascertained by sortilege (a sort of _kriegs-spiel_ on a basin
of water with wax ships) that his throne is doomed, quits the country
and goes to Macedonia. There he falls in love with Olympias, and
during the absence of her husband succeeds by magic arts not only in
persuading her that the god Ammon is her lover, but to some extent in
persuading King Philip to believe this, and to accept the
consequences, the part of Ammon having been played of course by
Nectanabus himself. Bucephalus makes a considerable figure in the
story, and Nectanabus devotes much attention to Alexander's
education--care which the Prince repays (for no very discernible
reason) by pushing his father and tutor into a pit, where the sorcerer
dies after revealing the relationship. The rest of the story is mainly
occupied by the wars with Darius and Porus (the former a good deal
travestied), and two important parts, or rather appendices, of it are
epistolary communications between Aristotle and Alexander on the one
hand, Alexander and Dindymus (Dandamis, &c.), King of the Brahmins, on
the other. After his Indian adventures the king is poisoned by
Cassander or at his instigation.
[Sidenote: _Its developments._]
Into a framework of this kind fables of the sort above mentioned had,
it will be seen, not the remotest difficulty in fitting themselves;
and it was not even a very long step onward to make Alexander a
Christian, equip him with twelve peers, and the like. But it has been
well demonstrated by M. Paul Meyer that though the fictitious
narrative obtained wide acceptance, and even admission into their
historical compilations by Vincent of Beauvais, Ekkehard, and others,
a more sober tradition as to the hero obtained likewise. If we were
more certain than we are as to the exact age of Quintus Curtius, it
would be easier to be certain likewise how far he represents and how
far he is the source of this more sober tradition. It seems clear that
the Latin _Alexandreis_ of Walter of Châtillon is derived from him, or
from a common source, rather than from Valerius-Callisthenes: while M.
Meyer has dwelt upon a Latin compilation perhaps as old as the great
outburst of vernacular romance on Alexander, preserved only in English
MSS. at Oxford and Cambridge, and probably of English composition,
which is a perfectly common-sense account based upon historians, of
various dates and values, indeed, ranging from Trogus to Isidore of
Seville, but all historians and not romancers.
In this path, however, comparatively few cared to tread. The
attraction for the twelfth century lay elsewhere. Sometimes a little
of the more authentic matter was combined with the fabulous, and at
least one instance occurs where the author, probably in the thirteenth
century, simply combined, with a frank audacity which is altogether
charming, the popular epitome of Valerius and the sober compilation
just referred to. The better, more famous, and earlier romantic work
is taken straight from, though it by no means confines itself to,
Valerius, the _Historia de Proeliis_, and the _Iter ad Paradisum_.
The results of this handling are enormous in bulk, and in minor
varieties; but they are for general purposes sufficiently represented
by the great _Roman d'Alixandre_[73] in French, the long and
interesting English _King Alisaunder_,[74] and perhaps the German of
Lamprecht. The Icelandic Alexander-Saga, though of the thirteenth
century, is derived from Walter of Châtillon, and so reflects the
comparatively sober side of the story. Of all the others the _Roman
d'Alixandre_ is the most immediate parent.
[Footnote 73: Ed. Michelant, Stuttgart, 1846.]
[Footnote 74: Ed. Weber, _op. cit. sup._, i. 1-327.]
[Sidenote: _Alberic of Besançon._]
There was, indeed, an older French poem than this--perhaps two
such--and till the discovery of a fragment of it six years after the
publication in 1846 of the great _Roman d'Alixandre_ itself by
Michelant, it was supposed that this poem was the original of
Lamprecht's German (or of the German by whomsoever it be, for some
will have it that Lamprecht is simply Lambert li Tors, _v. infra_).
This, however, seems not to be the case. The Alberic fragment[75]
(respecting which the philologists, as usual, fight whether it was
written by a Besançon man or a Briançon one, or somebody else) is
extremely interesting in some ways. For, in the first place, it is
written in octosyllabic _tirades_ of single assonance or rhyme, a very
rare form; in the second, it is in a dialect of Provençal; and in the
third, the author not only does not follow, but distinctly and rather
indignantly rejects, the story of Nectanabus:--
"Dicunt alquant estrobatour
Quel reys fud filz d'encantatour:
Mentent fellon losengetour;
Mai en credreyz nec un de lour."[76]
[Footnote 75: Ed. Meyer, _op. cit._, i. 1-9.]
[Footnote 76: Ll. 27-30.]
But the fragment is unluckily so short (105 lines only) that it is
impossible to say much of its matter.
[Sidenote: _The decasyllabic poem._]
Between this and the Alexandrine poem there is another version,[77]
curiously intermediate in form, date, and substance. This is in the
ordinary form of the older, but not oldest, _chansons de geste_,
decasyllabic rhymed _tirades_. There are only about eight hundred
lines of it, which have been eked out, by about ten thousand
Alexandrines from the later and better known poem, in the MSS. which
remain. The decasyllabic part deals with the youth of Alexander, and
though the author does not seem, any more than Alberic, to have
admitted the scandal about Nectanabus, the death of that person is
introduced, and altogether we see a Callisthenic influence. The piece
has been very highly praised for literary merit; it seems to me
certainly not below, but not surprisingly above, the average of the
older _chansons_ in this respect. But in so much of the poem as
remains to us no very interesting part of the subject is attacked.
[Footnote 77: Meyer, i. 25-59.]
The great romance is in more fortunate conditions. We have it not
indeed complete (for it does not go to the death of the hero) but in
ample measure: and fortunately it has for full half a century been
accessible to the student. When M. Paul Meyer says that this edition
"ne saurait fournir une base suffisante à une étude critique sur le
roman d'Alixandre," he is of course using the word _critique_ with the
somewhat arbitrary limitations of the philological specialist. The
reader who cares for literature first of all--for the book as a book
to read--will find it now complete for his criticism in the Stuttgart
version of the _Alixandre_, though he cannot be too grateful to M.
Meyer for his second volume as a whole, and for the printing in the
first of Alberic, and the decasyllabic poem, and for the extracts from
that of Thomas of Kent, who, unlike the authors of the great Romance,
admitted the Nectanabus marvels and intrigues.
[Sidenote: _The great_ Roman d'Alixandre.]
The story is of such importance in mediæval literature that some
account of the chief English and French embodiments of it may be
desirable. The French version, attributed in shares, which have as
usual exercised the adventurous ingenuity of critics, to two authors,
Lambert li Tors, the Crooked (the older designation "Li Cors," the
Short, seems to be erroneous), and Alexander of Bernay or Paris,
occupies in the standard edition of Michelant 550 pages, holding, when
full and with no blanks or notes, 38 lines each. It must, therefore,
though the lines are not continuously numbered, extend to over 20,000.
It begins with Alexander's childhood, and though the paternity of
Nectanabus is rejected here as in the decasyllabic version, which was
evidently under the eyes of the authors, yet the enchanter is admitted
as having a great influence on the Prince's education. This portion,
filling about fifteen pages, is followed by another of double the
length, describing a war with Nicolas, King of Cesarea, an
unhistorical monarch, who in the Callisthenic fiction insults
Alexander. He is conquered and his kingdom given to Ptolemy. Next
Alexander threatens Athens, but is turned from his wrath by Aristotle;
and coming home, prevents his father's marriage with Cleopatra, who is
sent away in disgrace. And then, omitting the poisoning of Philip by
Olympias and her paramour, which generally figures, the Romance goes
straight to the war with Darius. This is introduced (in a manner which
made a great impression on the Middle Ages, as appears in a famous
passage of our wars with France[78]) by an insulting message and
present of childish gifts from the Persian king. Alexander marches to
battle, bathes in the Cydnus, crosses "Lube" and "Lutis," and passing
by a miraculous knoll which made cowards brave and brave men fearful,
arrives at Tarsus, which he takes. The siege of Tyre comes next, and
holds a large place; but a very much larger is occupied by the
_Fuerres de Gadres_ ("Foray of Gaza"), where the story of the
obstinate resistance of the Philistine city is expanded into a kind of
separate _chanson de geste_, occupying 120 pages and some five
thousand lines.
[Footnote 78: See _Henry V._ for the tennis-ball incident.]
In contradistinction to this prolixity, the visit to Jerusalem, and
the two battles of Arbela and Issus mixed into one, are very rapidly
passed over, though the murder of Darius and Alexander's vengeance for
it are duly mentioned. Something like a new beginning (thought by some
to coincide with a change of authors) then occurs, and the more
marvellous part of the narrative opens. After passing the desert and
(for no very clear object) visiting the bottom of the sea in a glass
case, Alexander begins his campaign with Porus, whom Darius had
summoned to his aid. The actual fighting does not take very long; but
there is an elaborate description of the strange tribes and other
wonders of India. Porus fights again in Bactria and is again beaten,
after which Alexander pursues his allies Gog and Magog and shuts them
off by his famous wall. An arrangement with Porus and a visit to the
Pillars of Hercules follow. The return is begun, and marvels come
thicker and thicker. Strange beasts and amphibious men attack the
Greeks. The "Valley from which None Return" presents itself, and
Alexander can only obtain passage for his army by devoting himself,
though he manages to escape by the aid of a grateful devil whom he
sets free from bondage. At the sea-shore sirens beset the host, and
numbers perish; after which hairy horned old men tell them of the
three magic fountains--the Fountain of Youth, the Fountain (visible
only once a-year) of Immortality, and the Fountain of Resurrection.
Many monstrous tribes of enemies supervene; also a Forest of Maidens,
kind but of hamadryad nature--"flower-women," as they have been
poetically called. It is only after this experience that they come to
the Fountain of Youth--the Fontaine de Jouvence--which has left such
an indelible impression on tradition. Treachery had deprived Alexander
of access to that of Immortality; and that of Resurrection has done
nothing but restore two cooked fish to life. But after suffering
intense cold, and passing through a rain of blood, the army arrives at
the Jouvence, bathes therein, and all become as men thirty years old.
The fountain is a branch of the Euphrates, the river of Paradise.
After this they come to the Trees of the Sun and Moon--speaking trees
which foretell Alexander's death. Porus hears of this, and when the
army returns to India he picks a quarrel, and the two kings fight.
Bucephalus is mortally wounded; but Porus is killed. The beginnings
of treason, plots against Alexander, and the episode of Queen Candace
(who has, however, been mentioned before) follow. The king marches on
Babylon and soars into the air in a car drawn by griffins. At Babylon
there is much fighting; indeed, except the Foray of Gaza, this is the
chief part of the book devoted to that subject, the Persian and Indian
wars having been, as we saw, but lightly treated. The Amazons are
brought in next; but fighting recommences with the siege of "Defur."
An enchanted river, which whosoever drinks he becomes guilty of
cowardice or treachery, follows; and then we return to Tarsus and
Candace, that courteous queen. Meanwhile the traitors Antipater and
"Divinuspater" continue plotting, and though Alexander is warned
against them by his mother Olympias, they succeed in poisoning him.
The death of the king and the regret of his Twelve Peers, to whom he
has distributed his dominions, finish the poem.
[Sidenote: _Form, &c._]
In form this poem resembles in all respects the _chansons de geste_.
It is written in mono-rhymed _laisses_ of the famous metre which owes
its name and perhaps its popularity to the use of it in this romance.
Part of it at least cannot be later than the twelfth century; and
though in so long a poem, certainly written by more than one, and in
all likelihood by more than two, there must be inequality, this
inequality is by no means very great. The best parts of the poem are
the marvels. The fighting is not quite so good as in the _chansons de
geste_ proper; but the marvels are excellent, the poet relating them
with an admirable mixture of gravity and complaisance, in spirited
style and language, and though with extremely little attention to
coherence and verisimilitude, yet with no small power of what may be
called fabulous attraction.
[Sidenote: _Continuations._]
It is also characteristic in having been freely continued. Two
authors, Guy of Cambray and Jean le Nevelois, composed a _Vengeance
Alexandre_. The _Voeux du Paon_, which develop some of the episodes
of the main poem, were almost as famous at the time as _Alixandre_
itself. Here appears the popular personage of Gadiffer, and hence was
in part derived the great prose romance of Perceforest. Less
interesting in itself, but curious as illustrating the tendency to
branch up and down to all parts of a hero's pedigree, is _Florimont_,
a very long octosyllabic poem, perhaps as old as the twelfth century,
dealing with Alexander's grandfather.[79]
[Footnote 79: In this paragraph I again speak at second-hand, for
neither the _Voeux_ nor _Florimont_ is to my knowledge yet in print.
The former seems to have supplied most of the material of the poem in
fifteenth-century Scots, printed by the Bannatyne Club in 1831, and to
be reprinted, in another version, by the Scottish Text Society.]
[Sidenote: King Alexander.]
The principal and earliest version of the English _Alexander_ is
accessible without much difficulty in Weber's _Metrical Romances of
the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries_. Its differences
from the French original are, however, very well worth noting. That it
only extends to about eight thousand octosyllabic lines instead of
some twenty thousand Alexandrines is enough to show that a good deal
is omitted; and an indication in some little detail of its contents
may therefore not be without interest. It should be observed that
besides this and the Scots _Alexander_ (see note above) an
alliterative _Romance of Alexander and Dindymus_[80] exists, and
perhaps others. But until some one supplements Mr Ward's admirable
_Catalogue of Romances in the British Museum_ with a similar catalogue
for the minor libraries of the United Kingdom, it will be very
difficult to give complete accounts of matters of this kind.
[Footnote 80: E.E.T.S., 1878, edited by Professor Skeat.]
Our present poem may be of the thirteenth century, and is pretty
certainly not long posterior to it. It begins, after the system of
English romances, with a kind of moral prologue on the various lives
and states of men of "Middelerd." Those who care for good literature
and good learning are invited to hear a noble _geste_ of Alisaundre,
Darye, and Pore, with wonders of worm and beast. After a geographical
prologue the story of Nectanabus, "Neptanabus," is opened, and his
determination to revenge himself on Philip of Macedon explained by the
fact of that king having headed the combination against Egypt. The
design on Olympias, and its success, are very fully expounded.
Nectanabus tells the queen, in his first interview with her, "a high
master in Egypt I was"; and about eight hundred lines carry us to the
death of Nectanabus and the breaking of "Bursifal" (Bucephalus) by the
Prince. The episodes of Nicolas (who is here King of Carthage) and of
Cleopatra follow; but when the expedition against Darius is reached,
the mention of "Lube" in the French text seems to have induced the
English poet to carry his man by Tripoli, instead of Cilicia, and
bring him to the oracle of Ammon--indeed in all the later versions of
the story the crossing of the purely fantastic Callisthenic romance
with more or less historical matter is noticeable. The "Bishop" of
Ammon, by the way, assures him that Philip is really his father. The
insulting presents follow the siege of Tyre; the fighting with Darius,
though of course much mediævalised, is brought somewhat more into
accordance with the historic account, though still the Granicus does
not appear; the return to Greece and the capture of Thebes have their
place; and the Athens-Aristotle business is also to some extent
critically treated. Then the last battle with Darius comes in: and his
death concludes the first part of the piece in about five thousand
lines. It is noticeable that the "Foray of Gaza" is entirely omitted;
and indeed, as above remarked, it bears every sign of being a separate
poem.
The second part deals with "Pore"--in other words, with the Indian
expedition and its wonders. These are copied from the French, but by
no means slavishly. The army is, on the whole, even worse treated by
savage beasts and men on its way to India than in the original; but
the handling, including the Candace episodes, follows the French more
closely than in the first part. The fighting at "Defur," however, like
that at Gaza, is omitted; and the wilder and more mystical and
luxuriant parts of the story--the three Fountains, the Sirens, the
flower-maidens, and the like--are either omitted likewise or handled
more prosaically.[81]
[Footnote 81: Dr Kölbing, who in combination of philological and
literary capacity is second among Continental students of romance only
to M. Gaston Paris, appears to have convinced himself of the existence
of a great unknown English poet who wrote not only _Alisaundre_, but
_Arthour and Merlin_, _Richard Coeur de Lion_, and other pieces. I
should much like to believe this.]
One of the most curious things about this poem is that every
division--divisions of which Weber made chapters--begins by a short
gnomic piece in the following style:--
"Day spryng is jolyf tide.
He that can his tyme abyde,
Oft he schal his wille bytyde.
Loth is grater man to chyde."
[Sidenote: _Characteristics._]
The treatment of the Alexander story thus well illustrates one way of
the mediæval mind with such things--the way of combining at will
incongruous stories, of accepting with no, or with little, criticism
any tale of wonder that it happened to find in books, of using its own
language, applying its own manners, supposing its own clothing,
weapons, and so forth to have prevailed at any period of history. And
further, it shows how the _geste_ theory--the theory of working out
family connections and stories of ancestors and successors--could not
fail to be applied to any subject that at all lent itself to such
treatment. But, on the other hand, this division of the romances of
antiquity does not exhibit the more fertile, the more inventive, the
more poetical, and generally the nobler traits of Middle-Age
literature. As will have been noted, there was little invention in the
later versions, the Callisthenic fictions and the _Iter ad Paradisum_
being, with a few Oriental accretions, almost slavishly relied upon
for furnishing out the main story, though the "Foray of Gaza," the
"Vows of the Peacock," and _Florimont_ exhibit greater independence.
Yet again no character, no taking and lively story, is elaborated.
Nectanabus has a certain personal interest: but he was given to, not
invented by, the Romance writers. Olympias has very little character
in more senses than one: Candace is not worked out: and Alexander
himself is entirely colourless. The fantastic story, and the wonders
with which it was bespread, seem to have absorbed the attention of
writers and hearers; and nobody seems to have thought of any more.
Perhaps this was merely due to the fact that none of the more original
genius of the time was directed on it: perhaps to the fact that the
historical element in the story, small as it was, cramped the
inventive powers, and prevented the romancers from doing their best.
[Sidenote: _The Tale of Troy._]
In this respect the Tale of Troy presents a remarkable contrast to its
great companion--a contrast pervading, and almost too remarkable to be
accidental. Inasmuch as this part of mediæval dealings with antiquity
connects itself with the literary history of two of the very greatest
writers of our own country, Chaucer and Shakespeare; with that of one
of the greatest writers of Italy, Boccaccio; and with some of the most
noteworthy work in Old French, it has been thoroughly and repeatedly
investigated.[82] But it is so important, and so characteristic of
the time with which we are dealing, that it cannot be passed over
here, though the later developments must only be referred to in so far
as they help us to understand the real originality, which was so long,
and still is sometimes, denied to mediæval writers. In this case, as
in the other, the first striking point is the fact that the Middle
Ages, having before them what may be called, _mutatis mutandis_,
canonical and apocryphal, authentic and unauthentic, ancient and not
ancient, accounts of a great literary matter, chose, by an instinct
which was not probably so wrong as it has sometimes seemed, the
apocryphal in preference to the canonical, the unauthentic in
preference to the authentic, the modern in preference to the ancient.
[Footnote 82: It would be unfair not to mention, as having preceded
that of M. Joly by some years, and having practically founded study on
the right lines, the handling of MM. Moland and d'Héricault,
_Nouvelles Françaises du Quatorzième Siècle_ (Bibliothèque
Elzévirienne. Paris, 1856).]
[Sidenote: _Dictys and Dares._]
As in the case of the Alexander-Saga, their origins were the
Pseudo-Callisthenes and the _Iter ad Paradisum_, so in the Tale of
Troy they were the works of two persons whose literary offspring has
obtained for them an amount of attention transcending to a quite
ludicrous extent their literary merit--Dictys Cretensis and Dares
Phrygius, to whom may perhaps be added the less shadowy personage of
the grammarian John Tzetzes. But, as in the other case also, they were
by no means confined to such authorities. If they did not know Homer
very well at first-hand, they did know him: they knew Ovid (who of
course represents Homer, though not Homer only) extremely well: and
they knew Virgil. But partly from the instinct above referred to, of
which more presently, partly from the craze for tracing Western Europe
back to the "thrice-beaten Trojans," it pleased them to regard Homer
as a late and unhistorical calumniator, whose Greek prejudices made
him bear false witness; and to accept the pretensions of Dictys and
Dares to be contemporaries and eyewitnesses of fact. Dictys, a
companion of Idomeneus, was supposed to represent the Greek side, but
more fairly than Homer; and Dares, priest of Hephæstus, the Trojan.
The works of these two worthies, which are both of small
compass,--Dictys occupies rather more than a hundred, Dares rather
more than fifty, pages of the ordinary Teubner classics,[83]--exist at
present only in Latin prose, though, as the Greeks were more expert
and inventive forgers than the Romans, it is possible, if not even
highly probable, that both were, and nearly certain that Dictys was,
originally Greek at least in language. Dictys, the older pretty
certainly, is introduced by a letter to a certain Quintus Aradius from
Lucius Septimius, who informs "his Rufinus" and the world, with a
great deal of authority and learning, that the book had been written
by Dictys in Punic letters, which Cadmus and Agenor had then made of
common use in Greece; that some shepherds found the manuscript written
on linden-bark paper in a tin case at his tomb at Gnossus; that their
landlord turning the Punic letters into Greek (which had always been
the language), gave it to Nero the Emperor, who rewarded him richly;
and that he, Septimius, having by chance got the book into his hands,
thought it worth while to translate it into Latin, both for the sake
of making the true history known and "ut otiosi animi desidiam
discuteremus." The Dares volume is more ambitious, and purports to be
introduced by no less a person than Cornelius Nepos to no less a
person than Sallustius Crispus, and to have been "faithfully
translated" by the former from MS. in the very hand of Dares, which he
found at Athens, in order to correct the late and fabulous authority
of Homer, who actually makes gods fight with men!
[Footnote 83: Ed. Meister. Leipzig, 1872-73.]
[Sidenote: _The Dares story._]
It will be, of course, obvious to the merest tyro in criticism that
these prefaces bear "forgery" on the very face of them. The first is
only one of those innumerable variants of the genesis of a fiction
which Sir Walter Scott has so pleasantly summarised in one of his
introductions; and the phrase quoted about _animi otiosi desidiam_ is
a commonplace of mediæval bookmaking. The second, more cleverly
arranged, exposes itself to the question how far, putting the
difficulty about writing aside, an ancient Greek MS. of the kind could
possibly have escaped the literary activity of many centuries of
Athenian wits and scholars, to fall into the hands of Cornelius Nepos.
The actual age and origin of the two have, of course, occupied many
modern scholars; and the favourite opinion seems to be that Dictys may
have been originally written by some Greek about the time of Nero (the
Latin translation cannot well be earlier than the fourth century and
may be much later), while Dares may possibly be as late as the
twelfth. Neither book is of the very slightest interest intrinsically.
Dictys (the full title of whose book is _Ephemeris Belli Trojani_) is
not only the longer but the better written of the two. It contains no
direct "set" at Homer; and may possibly preserve traits of some value
from the lost cyclic writers. But it was not anything like such a
favourite with the Middle Ages as Dares. Dictys had contented himself
with beginning at the abduction of Helen; Dares starts his _De Excidio
Trojæ_ with the Golden Fleece, and excuses the act of Paris as mere
reprisals for the carrying off of Hesione by Telamon. Antenor having
been sent to Greece to demand reparation and rudely treated, Paris
makes a regular raid in vengeance, and so the war begins with a sort
of balance of cause for it on the Trojan side. Before the actual
fighting, some personal descriptions of the chief heroes and heroines
are given, curiously feeble and strongly tinged with mediæval
peculiarities, but thought to be possibly derived from some similar
things attributed to the rhetorician Philostratus at the end of the
third century. And among these a great place is given to Troilus and
"Briseida."
Nearly half the book is filled with these preliminaries, with an
account of the fruitless embassy of Ulysses and Diomed to Troy, and
with enumerating the forces and allies of the two parties. But when
Dares gets to work he proceeds with a rapidity which may be partly
due to the desire to contradict Homer. The landing and death of
Protesilaus, avenged to some extent by Achilles, the battle in which
Hector slays Patroclus (to whom Dares adds Meriones), and that at the
ships, are all lumped together; and the funerals of Protesilaus and
Patroclus are simultaneously celebrated. Palamedes begins to plot
against Agamemnon. The fighting generally goes much against the
Greeks; and Agamemnon sues for a three years' truce, which is granted
despite Hector's very natural suspicion of such an uncommonly long
time. It is skipped in a line; and then, the fighting having gone
against the Trojans, they beg for a six months' truce in their turn.
This is followed by a twelve days' fight and a thirty days' truce
asked by the Greeks. Then comes Andromache's dream, the fruitless
attempt to prevent Hector fighting, and his death at the hands of
Achilles. After more truces, Palamedes supplants Agamemnon, and
conducts the war with pretty good success. Achilles sees Polyxena at
the tomb of Hector, falls in love with her, demands her hand, and is
promised it if he can bring about peace. In the next batch of
fighting, Palamedes kills Deiphobus and Sarpedon, but is killed by
Paris; and in consequence a fresh battle at the ships and the firing
of them takes place, Achilles abstaining, but Ajax keeping up the
battle till (natural) night. Troilus then becomes the hero of a seven
days' battle followed by the usual truce, during which Agamemnon tries
to coax Achilles out of the sulks, and on his refusal holds a great
council of war. When next _tempus pugnæ supervenit_ (a stock phrase
of the book) Troilus is again the hero, wounds everybody, including
Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Diomed, and very reasonably opposes a six
months' armistice which his father grants. At its end he again bears
all before him; but, killing too many Myrmidons, he at last excites
Achilles, who, though at first wounded, kills him at last by wounding
his horse, which throws him. Memnon recovers the body of Troilus, but
is himself killed. The death of Achilles in the temple of Apollo (by
ambush, but, of course, with no mention of the unenchanted heel), and
of Ajax and Paris in single fight, leads to the appearance of the
Amazons, who beat the Greeks, till Penthesilea is killed by
Neoptolemus. Antenor, Æneas, and others urge peace, and on failing to
prevail with Priam, begin to parley with the Greeks. There is no
Trojan horse, but the besiegers are treacherously introduced at a gate
_ubi extrinsecus portam equi sculptum caput erat_. Antenor and Æneas
receive their reward; but the latter is banished because he has
concealed Polyxena, who is massacred when discovered by Neoptolemus.
Helenus, Cassandra, and Andromache go free: and the book ends with the
beautifully precise statements that the war, truces and all, lasted
ten years, six months, and twelve days; that 886,000 men fell on the
Greek side, and 676,000 on the Trojan; that Æneas set out in
twenty-two ships ("the same with which Paris had gone to Greece," says
the careful Dares), and 3400 men, while 2500 followed Antenor, and
1200 Helenus and Andromache.
[Sidenote: _Its absurdity._]
This bald summary is scarcely balder than the book itself, which also,
as can be seen from the summary, and would be more fully seen from the
book, has no literary merit of any kind. It reads more like an
excessively uninspired _précis_ of a larger work than like anything
else--a _précis_ in which all the literary merit has, with unvarying
infelicity, been omitted. Nothing can be more childish than the
punctilious euhemerism by which all the miraculous elements of the
Homeric story are blinked or explained away, unless it be the
painstaking endeavour simply to say something different from Homer, or
the absurd alternation of fighting and truces, in which each party
invariably gives up its chance of finishing the war at the precise
time at which that chance is most flourishing, and which reads like a
humorous travesty of the warfare of some historic periods with all the
humour left out.
[Sidenote: _Its capabilities._]
Nevertheless it is not really disgraceful to the Romantic period that
it fastened so eagerly on this sorriest of illegitimate epitomes.[84]
Very few persons at that time were in case to compare the literary
merit of Homer--even that of Ovid and Virgil--with the literary merit
of these bald pieces of bad Latin prose. Moreover, the supernatural
elements in the Homeric story, though very congenial to the temper of
the Middle Age itself, were presented and ascribed in such a fashion
that it was almost impossible for that age to adopt them. Putting
aside a certain sentimental cult of "Venus la déesse d'amors," there
was nothing of which the mediæval mind was more tranquilly convinced
than that "Jubiter," "Appollin," and the rest were not mere fond
things vainly invented, but actual devils who had got themselves
worshipped in the pagan times. It was impossible for a devout
Christian man, whatever pranks he might play with his own religion, to
represent devils as playing the part of saints and of the Virgin,
helping the best heroes, and obtaining their triumph. Nor, audacious
as was the faculty of "transfer" possessed by the mediæval genius, was
it easy to Christianise the story in any other way. It is perhaps
almost surprising that, so far as I know or remember, no version
exists representing Cassandra as a holy and injured nun, making Our
Lady play the part of Venus to Æneas, and even punishing the
sacrilegious Diomed for wounding her. But I do not think I have heard
of such a version (though Sir Walter has gone near to representing
something parallel in _Ivanhoe_), and it would have been a somewhat
violent escapade for even a mediæval fancy.
[Footnote 84: The British Museum alone (see Mr Ward's _Catalogue of
Romances_, vol. i.) contains some seventeen separate MSS. of Dares.]
So, with that customary and restless ability to which we owe so much,
and which has been as a rule so much slighted, it seized on the
negative capacities of the story. Dares gives a wretched painting, but
a tolerable canvas and frame. Each section of his meagre narrative is
capable of being worked out by sufficiently busy and imaginative
operators into a complete _roman d'aventures_: his facts, if meagre
and jejune, are numerous. The raids and reprisals in the cases of
Hesione and Helen suited the demands of the time; and, as has been
hinted, the singular interlardings of truce and war, and the shutting
up of the latter into so many days' hand-to-hand fighting,--with no
strategy, no care for communications, no scientific nonsense of any
kind,--were exactly to mediæval taste.
[Sidenote: _Troilus and Briseida._]
Above all, the prominence of new heroes and heroines, about whom not
very much was said, and whose _gestes_ the mediæval writer could
accordingly fill up at his own will, with the presentation of others
in a light different from that of the classical accounts, was a
godsend. Achilles, as the principal author of the "Excidium Trojæ"
(the title of the Dares book, and after it of others), must be
blackened; and though Dares himself does not contain the worst
accusations of the mediæval writers against the unshorn son of the
sea-goddess, it clears the way for them by taking away the excuse of
the unjust deprivation of Briseis. From this to making him not merely
a factious partisan, but an unfair fighter, who mobs his enemies half
to death with Myrmidons before he engages them himself, is not far. On
the other hand, Troilus, a mere name in the older stories, offers
himself as a hero. And for a heroine, the casual mention of the charms
of Briseida in Dares started the required game. Helen was too
puzzling, as well as too Greek; Andromache only a faithful wife;
Cassandra a scolding sorceress; Polyxena a victim. Briseida had almost
a clear record, as after the confusion with Chryseis (to be altered in
name afterwards) there was very little personality left in her, and
she could for that very reason be dealt with as the romancers pleased.
In the subsequent and vernacular handling of the story the same
difference of alternation is at first perceived as that which appears
in the Alexander legend. The sobriety of Gautier of Châtillon's
_Alexandreis_ is matched and its Latinity surpassed by the _Bellum
Trojanum_ of our countryman Joseph of Exeter, who was long and justly
praised as about the best mediæval writer of classical Latin verse.
But this neighbourhood of the streams of history and fiction ceases
much earlier in the Trojan case, and for very obvious reasons. The
temperament of mediæval poets urged them to fill in and fill out: the
structure of the Daretic epitome invited them to do so: and they very
shortly did it.
[Sidenote: _The_ Roman de Troie.]
After some controversy, the credit of first "romancing" the Tale of
Troy has been, it would seem justly and finally, assigned to Benoît de
Sainte-More. Benoît, whose flourishing time was about 1160, who was a
contemporary and rival of Wace, and who wrote a chronicle of Normandy
even longer than his Troy-book, composed the latter in more than
thirty thousand octosyllabic lines, an expansion of the fifty pages of
Dares, which stands perhaps almost alone even among the numerous
similar feats of mediæval bards. He has helped himself freely with
matter from Dictys towards the end of his work; but, as we have seen,
even this reinforcement could not be great in bulk. Expansion,
however, so difficult to some writers, was never in the least a
stumbling-block to the _trouvère_. It was rather a bottomless pit into
which he fell, traversing in his fall lines and pages with endless
alacrity of sinning.
Not that Benoît is by any means a person to be contemptuously spoken
of. In the first place, as we shall see presently, he was for many
hundred years completely and rather impudently robbed of his fame; in
the second, he is the literary ancestor of far greater men than
himself; and in the third, his verse, though not free from the
besetting sin of its kind, and especially of the octosyllabic
variety--the sin of smooth but insignificant fluency--is always
pleasant, and sometimes picturesque. Still there is no doubt that at
present the second claim is the strongest with us; and that if Benoît
de Sainte-More had not, through his plagiarist Colonna, been the
original of Boccaccio and Chaucer and Shakespeare, he would require
little more than a bare mention here.
[Sidenote: _The phases of Cressid._]
Dares, as we have seen, mentions Briseida, and extols her beauty and
charm: she was, he says, "beautiful, not of lofty stature, fair, her
hair yellow and silky, her eyebrows joined, her eyes lively, her body
well proportioned, kind, affable, modest, of a simple mind, and
pious." He also mightily extols Troilus; but he does not intimate any
special connection between the two, or tell the story of "Cressid,"
which indeed his followers elaborated in terms not altogether
consistent with some of the above laudatory epithets. Tzetzes, who
with some others gives her the alternative name of Hippodamia, alters
her considerably, and assigns to her tall stature, a white complexion,
black hair, as well as specially comely breasts, cheeks, and nose,
skill in dress, a pleasant smile, but a distinct tendency to
"arrogance." Both these writers, however, with Joseph of Exeter and
others, seem to be thinking merely of the Briseis whom we know from
Homer as the mistress of Achilles, and do not connect her with
Calchas, much less with Troilus. What may be said with some confidence
is that the confusion of Briseida with the daughter of Calchas and the
assignment of her to Troilus as his love originated with Benoît de
Sainte-More. But we must perhaps hesitate a little before assigning to
him quite so much credit as has sometimes been allowed him. Long
before Shakespeare received the story in its full development (for
though he does not carry it to the bitter end in _Troilus and
Cressida_ itself, the allusion to the "lazar kite of Cressid's kind"
in _Henry V._ shows that he knew it) it had reached that completeness
through the hands of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Henryson, the least of
whom was capable of turning a comparatively barren _donnée_ into a
rich possession, and who as a matter of fact each added much. We do
not find in the Norman _trouvère_, and it would be rather wonderful if
we did find, the gay variety of the _Filostrato_ and its vivid picture
of Cressid as merely passionate, Chaucer's admirable Pandarus and his
skilfully blended heroine, or the infinite pathos of Henryson's final
interview. Still, all this great and moving romance would have been
impossible without the idea of Cressid's successive sojourn in Troy
and the Greek camp, and of her successive courtship by Troilus and by
Diomed. And this Benoît really seems to have thought of first. His
motives for devising it have been rather idly inquired into. For us it
shall be sufficient that he did devise it.
By an easy confusion with Chryses and Chryseis--half set right
afterwards in the change from Briseida to Griseida in Boccaccio and
Creseide in Chaucer--he made his heroine the daughter of Calchas. The
priest, a traitor to Troy but powerful with the Greeks, has left his
daughter in the city and demands her--a demand which, with the usual
complacency noticed above as characterising the Trojans in Dares
himself, is granted, though they are very angry with Calchas. But
Troilus is already the damsel's lover; and a bitter parting takes
place between them. She is sent, gorgeously equipped, to the Greeks;
and it happens to be Diomed who receives her. He at once makes the
fullest declarations--for in nothing did the Middle Age believe more
fervently than in the sentiment,
"Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?"
But Briseida, with a rather excessive politeness, and leaving him a
good deal of hope, informs him that she has already a fair friend
yonder. Whereat, as is reasonable, he is not too much discouraged. It
must be supposed that this is related to Troilus, for in the next
fight he, after Diomed has been wounded, reproaches Briseida pretty
openly. He is not wrong, for Briseida weeps at Diomed's wound, and (to
the regret and reproof of her historian, and indeed against her own
conscience) gives herself to the Greek, or determines to do so, on the
philosophical principle that Troilus is lost to her. Achilles then
kills Troilus himself, and we hear no more of the lady.
The volubility of Benoît assigns divers long speeches to Briseida, in
which favourable interpreters have seen the germ of the future
Cressid; and in which any fair critic may see the suggestion of her.
But it is little more than a suggestion. Of the full and masterly
conception of Cressid as a type of woman which was afterwards reached,
Troilus, and Diomed, and Pandarus, and the wrath of the gods were
essential features. Here Troilus is a shadow, Diomed not much more,
Pandarus non-existent, the vengeance of Love on a false lover
unthought of. Briseida, though she has changed her name, and
parentage, and status, is still, as even the patriotic enthusiasm of
MM. Moland and d'Héricault (the first who did Benoît justice)
perceives, the Briseis of Homer, a slave-girl who changes masters, and
for her own pleasure as well as her own safety is chiefly anxious to
please the master that is near. The vivifying touch was brought by
Boccaccio, and Boccaccio falls out of our story.
[Sidenote: _The_ Historia Trojana.]
But between Benoît and Boccaccio there is another personage who
concerns us very distinctly. Never was there such a case, even in the
Middle Ages, when the absence of printing, of public libraries, and of
general knowledge of literature made such things easy, of _sic vos non
vobis_ as the _Historia Trojana_ of Guido de Columnis, otherwise Guido
delle Colonne, or Guido Colonna, of Messina. This person appears to
have spent some time in England rather late in the thirteenth century;
and there, no doubt, he fell in with the _Roman de Troie_. He
wrote--in Latin, and thereby appealing to a larger audience than even
French could appeal to--a Troy-book which almost at once became widely
popular. The MSS. of it occur by scores in the principal libraries of
Europe; it was the direct source of Boccaccio, and with that writer's
_Filostrato_ of Chaucer, and it formed the foundation of almost all
the known Troy-books of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Benoît
being completely forgotten. Yet recent investigation has shown that
Guido not merely adapted Benoît in the usual mediæval fashion, but
followed him so closely that his work might rather be called
translation than adaptation. At any rate, beyond a few details he has
added nothing to the story of Troilus and Cressida as Benoît left it,
and as, in default of all evidence to the contrary, it is only fair to
conclude that he made it.
From the date, 1287, of Guido delle Colonne's version, it follows
necessarily that all the vernacular Troy-books--our own _Destruction
of Troy_,[85] the French prose romance of _Troilus_,[86] &c., not to
mention Lydgate and others--fall like Boccaccio and Chaucer out of the
limits of this volume. Nor can it be necessary to enter into detail as
to the other classical French romances, the _Roman de Thèbes_, the
_Roman d'Enéas_, the _Roman de Jules César_, _Athis and Profilias_,
and the rest;[87] while something will be said of the German Æneid of
H. von Veldeke in a future chapter. The capital examples of the
Alexandreid and the Iliad, as understood by the Middle Ages, not only
must but actually do suffice for our purpose.
[Footnote 85: Ed. Panton and Donaldson, E.E.T.S. London, 1869-74.]
[Footnote 86: Ed. Moland and d'Héricault, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 87: The section on "L'Epopée Antique" in M. Petit de
Julleville's book, more than once referred to, is by M. Léopold
Constans, editor of the _Roman de Thèbes_, and will be found useful.]
[Sidenote: _Meaning of the classical romance._]
And we see from them very well not merely in what light the Middle
Ages regarded the classical stories, but also to what extent the
classical stories affected the Middle Ages. This latter point is of
the more importance in that even yet the exact bearing and meaning of
the Renaissance in this respect is by no means universally
comprehended. It may be hoped, if not very certainly trusted, that
most educated persons have now got rid of the eighteenth-century
notion of mediæval times as being almost totally ignorant of the
classics themselves, a notion which careful reading of Chaucer alone
should be quite sufficient to dispel. The fact of course is, that all
through the Middle Ages the Latin classics were known, unequally but
very fairly in most cases, while the earlier Middle Ages at least were
by no means ignorant of Greek.
But although there was by no means total ignorance, there was what is
to us a scarcely comprehensible want of understanding. To the average
mediæval student, perhaps to any mediæval student, it seems seldom or
never to have occurred that the men of whom he was reading had lived
under a dispensation so different from his own in law and in
religion, in politics and in philosophy, in literature and in science,
that an elaborate process of readjustment was necessary in order to
get at anything like a real comprehension of them. Nor was he, as a
rule, able--men of transcendent genius being rather rare, amid a more
than respectable abundance of men of talent--to take them, as Chaucer
did to a great extent, Dante more intensely though less widely, and
Shakespeare (but Shakespeare had already felt the Renaissance spirit)
fully and perfectly, on the broad ground of humanity, so that
anachronisms, and faults of costume, matter not one jot to any one but
a pedant or a fool. When he came to something in the story--something
in sentiment, manners, religion, what not--which was out of the range
of his own experience, he changed it into something within the range
of his own experience. When the whole story did not lend itself to the
treatment which he wished to apply, he changed it, added to it, left
out from it, without the slightest scruple. He had no more difficulty
in transforming the disciplined tactic of the Macedonian phalanx into
a series of random _chevauchées_ than in adjusting the much more
congenial front-fighting of Greeks and Trojans to his own ideas; and
it cost him little more to engraft a whole brand-new romantic
love-story on the Tale of Troy than to change the historical siege of
Gaza into a _Fuerres de Gadres_, of which Aimeri of Narbonne or Raoul
de Cambrai would have been the appropriate hero. Sometimes, indeed, he
simply confounded Persians and Saracens, just as elsewhere he
confounded Saracens and Vikings; and he introduced high priests of
heathen divinities as bishops, with the same _sang froid_ with which
long afterwards the translators of the Bible founded an order of
"dukes" in Edom.
A study of antiquity conducted in such a fashion could hardly have
coloured mediæval thought with any real classicism, even if it had
been devoted to much more genuine specimens of antiquity than the
semi-Oriental medley of the Pseudo-Callisthenes and the bit of bald
euhemerism which had better have been devoted to Hephæstus than
ascribed to his priest. But, by another very curious fact, the two
great and commanding examples of the Romance of Antiquity were
executed each under the influence of the flourishing of one of the two
mightiest branches of mediæval poetry proper. When Alberic and the
decasyllabist (whoever he was) wrote, the _chanson de geste_ was in
the very prime of its most vigorous manhood, and the _Roman
d'Alixandre_ accordingly took not merely the outward form, but the
whole spirit of the _chanson de geste_ itself. And when Benoît de
Sainte-More gave the first shapings of the great story of Troilus and
Cressida out of the lifeless rubbish-heap of Dares, it was at the
precise minute when also, in hands known or unknown, the greater story
of Arthur and Gawain, of Lancelot and Guinevere, was shaping itself
from materials probably even scantier. Even Guido of the Columns, much
more Boccaccio, had this story fully before them; and Cressida, when
at last she becomes herself, has, if nothing of the majesty of
Guinevere, a good deal of Iseult--an Iseult more faithless to love,
but equally indifferent to anything except love. As Candace in
_Alexander_ has the crude though not unamiable naturalism of a
_chanson_ heroine, so Cressid--so even Briseida to some extent--has
the characteristic of the frail angels of Arthurian legend. The cup
would have spilled wofully in her husband's hand, the mantle would
scarcely have covered an inch of her; but though of coarser make, she
is of the same mould with the ladies of the Round Table,--she is of
the first creation of the order of romantic womanhood.