(1.) _Le Roman de la Rose._ Nouvelle Édition. Par Francisque Michel.
Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 1864.
The study of pre-Renaissance literature belongs especially to the
present century. A few ballads had been previously rescued from
oblivion; a few names unearthed from the rubbish of centuries; but the
great mass of writers who lived and flourished in what men used to
call the Dark Ages had been utterly forgotten, names as well as
writings, until the labours of Ampère, Fauriel, Raynouard, and others
in France, as well as those of our own antiquarian scholars in
England, brought them again to light within the last fifty years.
The literature thus revived has a value of its own quite independent
of any literary merit, though this is by no means contemptible. It
reveals to us not only the manners and customs of the time, the
mediæval daily life, but, which is more important, the mediæval
conditions and modes of thought, within such limits--too narrow,
alas!--as the conventional rules of poetry allowed. But artificial
grooves cannot wholly prevent a vigorous mind from running off the
beaten track, and in spite of conventionalism, the reader comes
sometimes, in the midst of sandy deserts of commonplace morality,
monotonous repetitions, and thirsty verbiage, upon oases of such
exceeding brightness and splendour, cooled with fountains so sparkling
and foliage so luxuriant, that he feels he is repaid for all his
trouble. And the country is by no means explored. As in the great
goldfields of Australia, the big nuggets have disappeared and been
gathered up long since; nevertheless there remain, for those who have
patience to dig, plenty of smaller pieces of virgin gold, which may
amply serve to reward their toil. But because all have not the time or
the opportunity for this work, and because, after all, it lies a good
deal out of the beaten track of scholars, it may not be uninteresting
to our readers to invite them to come with us and visit, sparing
themselves the trouble of looking for them, certain oases which lie
scattered about in a vast Sahara of verse called the 'Romance of the
Rose.' 'Rien n'est agréable et piquant,' says Sainte Beuve, 'comme un
guide familier dans les époques lointaines.'
Our sketch of the book will be necessarily incomplete; nor could any
ordinary limits of a paper suffice for its thorough examination. Its
importance is evidenced by the fact that for two hundred and fifty
years it was a sort of Bible to France; the source whence its readers
drew their maxims of morality, their philosophy, their science, their
history, and even their religion; and which, after having retained its
popularity for a length of time almost unparalleled in the history of
literature, was revived with success after the Renaissance, the _only_
mediæval book which enjoyed this distinction.
We shall endeavour to show some of the reasons of this long-continued
success, and to prove that the book, once the companion of knights and
dames, of _damoiseaux_ and _damoiselles_, has the strongest claims on
the student of the Middle Ages; that it is not a congeries of dry and
dead bones of antiquity, not a mass of mediæval fables, but a book
full of ideas, information, and suggestion--a book warm with life.
France, whence it came, is indeed the mother of modern literature.
Thence both Italy and England derived their inspiration. In the
countries of Provence and Languedoc lingered longest the remains of
the Latin civilization: there the lamp of learning, dwindled down at
last to a mere speck, had yet flame enough to light the new taper of
the troubadour; there was first heard the 'Nibelungen Lied;' there
originated the _tenson_, the _canso_, the _sirvente_, the _chanson
royale_, the _triolet_, and all the varied forms of mediæval poetry;
and there was the chosen home of such philosophy and science as
existed between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. English writers
before the Elizabethan age copied openly and avowedly from French
sources, taking plot, plan, and framework of their poems. Even Dante
deferred to Provence, and owned that the troubadour led the thought of
Western Europe. Other countries of Europe have little indeed in their
early literature to compare with the treasures of the Langue d'Oc and
the Langue d'Oil; and while, outside France, stand almost alone the
great figures of Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer, there is, within the
circle of the Langue d'Oil alone, a constellation in which are the
names of Marie de France, Rutebeuf, Jean de Meung, Charles of Orleans,
Christine de Pisan, Alain Chartier, Eustache Deschamps, and François
Villon, besides a host of minor poets whose works are little inferior,
and who may still be read, if not always with delight, certainly
always with profit. Scattered about in their writings is the whole of
the mediæval life; by their light we can penetrate through the clouds
of six hundred years, and bring those picturesque ages of colour and
splendour back to our minds as brightly and vividly as we realize any
battle-field in France by the pen of a special correspondent. And
besides the mediæval life, with its habits and its thought, the
student will trace in this poetry the gradual development of the true
French Muse--her mockery, her satirical spirit, her cynicism, her
incredulity, her curiosity, her want of reverence, with her inimitable
wit and fresh buoyancy of spirit--a muse _gaillarde et moqueuse_,
unlike any other that the world has seen, whom to know is to love,
though not always to respect. It is no fault of modern France if her
old literature is not known as it deserves to be. Editions have been
multiplied of the fabliaux, romances, poems, and chronicles which
began with Wace and ended with Clement Marot. But as yet no great
writer has taken up the subject as it deserves, and a consolidated
history of the literature and thought of the Middle Ages, from the
tenth century to the Renaissance, embracing as a whole, and not in
unconnected parts, the writings of Italy, France, and England, with
those of Spain and Germany, is a work which awaits the hand of some
man who will devote to it the greater part of a lifetime. Materials
for such a work amply exist; but he who undertakes it should bring to
his task a knowledge of languages and an amount of reading rare
indeed, and difficult to be found.
English readers principally know this 'Romance of the Rose' through
the translation which is attributed to Chaucer. Whether it be really
his or not is a matter which does not concern us here, and, to save
trouble of explanation, we will refer to it as Chaucer's translation.
It is unfortunate, in some respects, that it contains only a
portion--viz., the first 5,170 lines, and then, with an omission of
5,544 lines, about 1,300 more. It gives entire the portion contributed
by Guillaume de Lorris, and as much of the remainder as fell in most
readily with the humour of the translator, the attack on the hypocrisy
of monks and friars. But by omitting all the rest, amounting to about
two-thirds of the whole, he has failed altogether in giving the spirit
of the work; and those who read only Chaucer's version would certainly
be at a loss to explain the rapid, extraordinary, and lasting
popularity which the book achieved.
The reasons of this popularity have, indeed, been the subject of
considerable discussion among French critics. Pasquier speaks of its
'noble sentiments,' and considers that its object was moral--viz., to
show that love is but a dream. Roquefort can see in it only a long and
rather stupid allegory, enlivened by occasional gleams of poetry;
Villemain considers it a mere gloze on Ovid's 'Art of Love,' with a
_mélange_ of abstractions, allegories, and scholastic subtilties.
Nisard deduces from its popularity a proof of its entire conformity
with the spirit of the age--an almost obvious conclusion. Other
writers, Goujet among the number, try to account for its success by
the reputation which Jean de Meung enjoyed as an alchemist, and the
belief that the great secrets of the science were to be found in the
poem: a manifestly inadequate reason, because the proportion of
alchemists to the rest of his readers must have been small indeed.
Others, among whom were Molinet and Marot--of whom more
presently--thought its success was due to a double allegory which they
found in it; while Professor Morley and Mr. Thomas Wright, the latest
writers who have given any account of the book--both of them meagre,
dry, and uninteresting--do not attempt to explain its popularity at
all. There are sufficient reasons why the book sprang at once into
favour, which we hope presently to explain. The great success which it
attained is illustrated by the number and weight of its assailants.
Foremost among these was Gerson, the 'most Christian Doctor.' He
calls it a book written for the basest purposes; he says that if
there were only one copy of it in the world, and if he were offered
fifty pounds in gold for it, he would rather burn it: that those who
have it ought to give it up to their father confessors to be
destroyed: and that even if it were certain--which was unfortunately
far from being the case, the contrary being presumable--that Jean de
Meung had repented his sins in sackcloth and ashes, it would be no
more use praying for him than for Judas Iscariot himself. Cursing so
ecclesiastical, invective so angry, stimulated public curiosity more
and more, and instead of copies being given to confessors to be
burned, copies were given to scribes to be multiplied. Assailants came
every day unto the field. Christine de Pisan, later on, took up the
cause of her sex, and vindicated womankind from the sweeping charges
made against them by the poet; while Martin Franc, who styled himself
'Le Champion des Dames,' wrote an elaborate apology for his clients,
which has all the dreariness of the 'Romance of the Rose,' and none of
its brightness. The one is a desert indeed; the other, as we have
said, is a desert with oases.
The book is the work of two writers, Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de
Meung. The earlier of these seems to have died about the time that his
successor was born. Of his life we know absolutely nothing. He came
from the little town of Lorris, where, it is said, the house in which
he was born is still shown. Two or three lines in the poem are cited
to prove the date of his birth and death. These, however, are by no
means to be relied upon. Thus, he tells us in his opening lines--
'Au vingtiesme an de mon aage,
Si vi ung songe à mon dormant.'
whence most writers have assumed that he died at the age of twenty,
considering, we suppose, that it would not take a year to write the
4,670 lines which form his part. This would be, at least, quick
writing, while internal evidence seems to us to point most
unmistakeably to the bestowal of very careful thought, and therefore
much time, upon the work. And the lines which follow shortly after
have not received proper attention--indeed, hardly any modern writer
on the 'Romance of the Rose' appears to have read the book at all.
Here the poet says--
'Avis m'iere qu'il étoit mains;
Il a j'à bien cinc ans au mains.'
which would make him five and twenty at least, a much more likely age,
considering the work he had done, for his death.
At the close of his part of the book we get the following note by the
scholiast, if we may call him so:--
'Çi endroit, trespassa Guillaume
De Lorris et ne fist plus pseaume;
Mais après plus de quarante ans
Maistre Jehan de Meung li romans
Parfist, ainsi comme je treuve,
Et ici commence son oeuvre.'