'Combien je regrette
Mon bras si dodu,
Ma jambe bien faite,
Et le temps perdu.'
Jean de Meung's old woman is no more reformed than her successors. And
she tells Bel Accueil all that Ovid had to impart.
It is quite possible that in putting an imitation of the 'Art of Love'
into the old woman's mouth, Jean de Meung catered to the lowest tastes
of the age, and courted a popularity from this part of his work which
he might not have obtained from the rest. The same sort of defence--no
defence at all, but another and a worse charge--has been set up in the
cases of Rabelais and Swift. All such offenders we are told, deferred
to popular opinion, and wrote what they inwardly disapproved. This
surely is worse. To be yourself so far depraved as to take delight in
things impure is bad; to deliberately lay yourself out to please
others with things impure is surely infinitely more wicked. It is
_possible_ that Jean de Meung, Rabelais, and Swift, did this; but we
do not think it probable. In the case of the poet whom we are now
considering, there seems every reason to believe that he had formed
the lowest possible ideas of love and women; that from the depths of a
corrupted morality, which permitted him the same pleasure in impurity
which the common herd of the vulgar and illiterate shared, he had
eager yearnings for that purity of life which alone as he felt and
preached, could bring one to taste of the heavenly spring. That a man
could at the same time grovel so low and look so high, that his gaze
upwards was so clear and bright, while his eyes were so often turned
earthward, is a singular phenomenon; but it is not a solitary one.
Other great men have been as degraded as they were exalted. Perhaps
when Christiana and her children saw that vision of the man with the
muck-rake, while the angel, unregarded, held the crown of glory over
his head, had they looked much longer, they might have seen him drop
his rake and gaze upwards, with streaming eyes, upon the proffered
glory. Jean de Meung was the man with the muck-rake who sometimes
looked upwards.
The poet feels it necessary to apologize for his severity against the
sex. 'If,' he says, 'you see anything here against womankind, blame
not the poet.'
'All this was for instruction writ,
Here are no words of idle wit.
No jealousy inspired the song;
No hatred bears the lines along.
Bad are their hearts, if such there live,
Who villainie to women give.
Only, if aught your sense offend,
Think that to know yourself is good,
And that, with this intent, your friend,
I write what else might seem too rude.'
He thinks it right, too, to make a sort of apology for the severity of
his attack on monks.
'I strung my bow: I bent it well;
And though no saint, the truth to tell
I let my random arrows fly,
In lowly town and cloister high.
For what cared I where'er they lit?
The folk that Christ called hypocrite,
Who here and there are always found,
Who keep their Lent the whole year round,
* * * * *
But feed on live men's flesh the while
With teeth of envy and of guile,
These were my mark; no other aim
Was mine except to blot their fame.'
Let us pass to what is perhaps the most curious part of the book, and
the richest for the student of mediæval ideas, that in which he gives
us his views on the growth and principles of society. Here are
advanced theories of an audacity and apparent originality which make
one curious to know how far they penetrated into the lower strata of
France; whether they were the speculations of a dreamer, or the tenets
of a school; whether there was any connection--it is more than
possible--between this kind of teaching and the frantic revolt of the
peasantry; whether, in fact, Jean de Meung was a prophet with a
following, or a visionary without disciples. Read, for instance, his
account, somewhat abridged, of the Golden Age:--
'Once on a time, in those old years,
When lived our grandsires and forbears,
(Writers, by whom the tale we know,
And ancient legends, tell us so),
Love was loyal, and true, and good;
The folk was simple; the fare was rude;
They gathered the berries in forest and mead:
For all their meat and all their bread;
They wandered by valley and plain and mountain,
By river and forest and woodland fountain,
Plucking the chestnuts and sweet wild fruits,
Looking for acorns and rustic roots.
They rubbed together the ears of wheat;
They gathered the clustering grape to eat;
Rich fare they made when the forest bees
Filled with honey the hollow trees:
Water their drink; and the strong red wine
Was not yet pressed from the autumn vine.
* * * * *
'When sleep came with the shades of night,
They spread no beds of down so light,
But stretched in their cabins on piles of hay,
Fresh gathered grass and leaves they lay.
Or slept without--when the air was mild--
And summer winds were hushed and stilled;
When birds in the early morning grey
Awoke to welcome, each in his way,
The dawn that makes all hearts so gay.
In that glad time when the royal pair,
Flora--Queen of the flowers fair--
And Zephyr, her mate, give timely birth
To flowers of spring, through all the earth.
* * * * *
... 'such splendour give
That you might think the world would strive
With Heaven itself for glory--so bright,
So fair, so proud, with its flowers bedight.
Then in the woods they lay at ease,
Over their heads the branching trees--
Lovers kissed, who lovers were,
And kissed again, and had no fear--
Then they chaunted rounds and lays,
Joyously led their sports and plays:
A simple folk; they had no prayer--
No fond ambition--nor other care
Then just to live a life of joy--
And loyal love without annoy.
No king or prince was with them yet
To plunder and wrong, to ravish and fret;
There were no rich, there were no poor,
For no man yet kept his own store:
And well the saying old they knew--
(Wise it is, and is proven true)
_Love and Lordship are two--not one_:
_They cannot abide together, nor mate_:
_Who wishes to join them is undone_,
_And who would unite will separate_.'
Or, as Dryden, who certainly never read the 'Romance of the Rose,'
unless perhaps in Marot's edition, says:--
'Love either finds equality, or makes it.'
The end of the Golden Age--a thing not generally known--was
accelerated by Jason's voyage, the hero bringing home with him
treasures from _Outremer_: people begin to get ideas of property: they
amass wealth: they rob and fight for plunder: they go so far as _to
divide the land_. 'La propriété,' says Proudhon, 'c'est le vol.'
'Even the ground they parcelled out,
And placed the landmarks all about;
And over these, whene'er they met,
Fierce battle raged. What they could get,
They seized and snatched; and everywhere
The strongest got the biggest share.
* * * * *
So that at length, of plunder tired,
Needs must a guardian should be hired.
* * * * *
A sturdy peasant chose they then,
The mightiest of the sons of men;
Strongest in battle or in ring,
And him they chose to be their king.'
Voltaire has exactly the same idea:
'Le premier roi fut un soldat heureux.'
This is the origin of royalty. The growth of feudalism, of armies,
taxation, and division into classes is carefully traced from these
small beginnings.
But he deduces the great law of charity and love for our neighbours.
Having this, we have everything; and wanting this, we get wars,
tyranny, and all the miseries of the world.
What is the nature of true gentility? Lineage, he explains, has
nothing to do with it. None are gentle, but those whose virtues make
them so. Ancestors may leave their wealth behind them, but not the
qualities that made them great. Clerks have an advantage over
unlettered persons in knowing what is right. If they are coarse and
rude, they sin against greater light, and incur heavier punishment.
'Let him, who gentleman would be,
From sloth and idleness keep free;
In arms and study be employed,
And coarse rusticity avoid.
Let him, with humble, courteous grace,
Meet every class in every place;
Honour all women, wife or maid,
So that not too much trust be laid
In woman's faith. So may he steer,
Of this great danger wholly clear.
* * * * *
Know all that gentle blood may bring
No benefit, or anything,
Except what each man's worth may give.
Know, also, none of all that live
Can ask for honour, praise, or blame
By reason of another's name.'
The idea, of course, is not new. It is found frequently enough in the
Greek and Latin literature. It occurs, we believe, for the first time
in the fragments of Epicharmus,--
ἀγαθὸς δ' ἄνηρ κἂν Αἰθίοψ καὶ δοῦλος, εὐγενὴς ἔφυ.
and afterwards it is found in Euripides, Horace, Juvenal--'Stemmata
quid faciunt?'--and, lastly, in Seneca. Doubtless, Jean de Meung took
it from Seneca. Once started anew, the idea, of course, became
popular, and poet after poet repeated it, until it became a mere
commonplace. But so far as we have been able to discover, Jean de
Meung gave it new life.
A few words only, for our limits press, on the natural science taught
in the 'Romance of the Rose.' The poet, having got rid of this
indignation and wrath that lay at his soul anent the mendicant friars,
and the vices of women, wishes now, it seems, to sit down for a quiet
and comfortable disquisition on universal knowledge, including
alchemy, in which he is a firm believer; indeed, he wants to pass, in
a certain ballad of his, for an adept. This part takes the form of a
confession of Nature to her chaplain Genius (in which Power afterwards
copies him). The confession is long and wearisome, but it is curious
as being the earliest and fullest popular account of mediæval science.
He fancies Nature to be perpetually at work, fashioning creatures whom
Death continually tries to destroy.
'Nature, who fashions all that holds
The sky beneath its ample folds,
Within her forge meanwhile was found,
And at her work's eternal round,--
Struck out new forms of every race,
Lest life should fail, and types should cease;
She made so many, that Death, who toiled
With heavy mace to kill, was foiled.
* * * * *
They fly to save themselves, where'er
Their fate may lead, or feet may bear;
Some to the Church and convent rule,
Some to the dance, some to the school;
Some to their merchandize are turned,
Some to the arts which they have learned.
* * * * *
Another, sworn by Holy Writ,
Puts on the cloak of hypocrite;
And, flying, would his thoughts conceal,
Did not his life the truth reveal.
So, shunning Death, do all men shape
Their diverse ways, his blows to 'scape.'
The scientific discourse follows: observe the _good sense_ of many of
his remarks:--
'God, having made the world out of nothing, having put all
things into their proper places, measured spaces, and
allotted courses, handed all over to Nature as his
_chambrière_. Whatever man can do--and his power is very
great--he cannot equal Nature, the inexhaustible and
untiring. By alchemy he can interchange metals; can restore
its pristine purity to everything; can turn quicksilver
into gold by subtle medicines; but he cannot change or
create species. This Nature alone is able to effect,
changing the complexions of things, so that they assume new
forms and become new substances; as when in thunderstorms,
stones fall from the clouds, where no stones ever were.
'The heavens turn every day, bearing with them the stars.
They go round from east to west, rejoicing the world. A
complete revolution is made every 26,000 years.
'The moon is different from the planets in being obscure in
some places and clear in others. The reason of this is,
that the sun can penetrate through one part of it, as
through glass; the dark part, on which is figured a serpent
having a tree on his back, reflecting the rays.
'In the centre is the sun, like a king. He it is who makes
the stars so bright that they serve as lamps of the night;
were we nearer to the sun we should be scorched; were we
farther away we should be frozen.
'The comets are not attached to the heavens, but fly about
in the air. They do not last long, and it is a mistake to
suppose that they portend disaster. For there is no man of
worth or power sufficient for the heavens to take notice of
him.
Nor any prince of so great worth,
That signs from heaven should give to earth,
Notice of death for him alone:
Nor is his body--life once gone--
Worth one jot more than simple squire,
Or clerk, or one who works for hire.
'Foolish people imagine, too, that stars fall like flying
dragons from the skies; and that eclipses are to be taken
as portents. Now, no one would be astonished at these
things who understood the causes of things.
'Every student ought to acquire a knowledge of optics,
which can be learned by the aid of geometry, from the books
of Aristotle, Albacen, and Hucayen. Here can be learned the
properties of mirrors; how they produce things which appear
miracles; make small things seem great--a grain of sand
like a mountain; and great things small--a mountain like a
grain of sand; how glasses can be used to burn things; how
straight lines can be made to look crooked, round things
oblong, upright things reversed; the phantoms which do not
exist appear to be moving about.'
The book from beginning to end is as full of quotations as Burton. The
author quotes from Aristotle, Justinian, Horace, Seneca, St.
Augustine, Ovid, Cicero, Boethius, Lucan, Claudian, Suetonius, and he
has, probably through Cicero, some knowledge of Plato, but all this in
the wildest jumble, with no discrimination and no critical power
whatever. His range of reading was not by any means contemptible, and
though we know of no writer of his time who can compare with him in
this respect, it is evident that since one man had command of so many
books, other men must have enjoyed the same advantages. There is
reason to believe from Jean de Meung alone that acquaintance with
Latin literature was much more extended than is generally thought, and
that the scholarship of the time was by no means wholly confined to
scholastic disputation.
Such, roughly sketched, is the work of Jean de Meung, from which we
have plucked some of the fruits that come readiest to our hand. If not
altogether an original or a profound thinker, he has at least the
merit of fearlessness. He taught the folk, in the most popular way
possible, great and valuable lessons. He told them that religion is a
thing apart from, and independent of, religious profession; that "la
robe ne faict pas le moyne;" he says that most of the saints, men and
women, were decent married people, that marriage is a laudable and
holy custom, that the wealth of monks is a mockery of their profession
and a perjury of their vows, that learned persons ought to set an
example, and what is sheer ignorance and brutality in others is rank
sin with them; he attacks superstition, showing that all phenomena
have natural causes, and have nothing to do with earthly events and
the fortunes of men, because men are equal in the sight of God; and he
teaches in terms as clear as any used by Carlyle, that labor is noble,
and in accordance with the conditions of our being--that man's welfare
is the end and aim of all earthly provision.
All this is what used to be called the Dark Ages. After six hundred
years, the same questions exercise us which exercised Jean de Meung.
We are still disputing as to whether true nobility is inherited or
not; we have not all made up our minds about the holiness of marriage;
we still think the clergyman, because he wears a surplice, holier than
other men; work has been quite recently and with much solemnity
pronounced noble by a prophet who forgot, while he was about it, to
call it also respectable; men yet live who look upon scientific men
with horror, and quote with fine infelicity, a text of St. Paul's
about 'science falsely so called;' while the lesson of personal
holiness has to be preached again and again, and is generally
forgotten in the war over vestments and creeds.
Jean de Meung wished, as it seems to us, to write a book for the
people, to answer their questions, to warn them of dangers before
them, to instruct their ignorance. On the sapless trunk of a dying and
passionless allegory he grafts a living branch which shall bear fruit
in the years to come. His poem breathes indeed. Its pulses beat with a
warm human life. Its sympathies are with all mankind. The poet has a
tear for the poor naked beggars dying on dung-heaps and in the
Hôtel-Dieu, and a lash of scorpions for the Levite who goes by on the
other side; he teaches the loveliness of friendship; he catches the
wordless complaint of the poor, and gives it utterance: he speaks with
a scorn which Voltaire only has equalled, and a revolutionary
fearlessness surpassing that of D'Alembert or Diderot.
And much more than this. It seems to us that his book--absolutely the
only cheerful book of the time--afforded hope that things were not
permanent: evil times may change; times have not been always evil:
there was once a Golden Age: the troubles of the present are due, not
to the innate badness of Nature and the universal unfitness of things,
but to certain definite and ascertainable causes. Now to discover the
cause is to go some way towards curing the disease.
In that uneasy time, strange questions and doubts perplexed men's
minds--questions of religion and politics, affecting the very
foundations of society. They asked themselves _why_ things were so;
and looking about in the dim twilight of dawning knowledge they could
find as yet no answer. There was no rest in the Church or in the
State, and the mind of France--which was the mind of Europe--was
gravitating to a social and religious democracy. An hour before the
dawn, you may hear the birds of the forest twitter in their sleep:
they dream of the day. Europe at the close of the thirteenth century
was dreaming of the glorious Renaissance, the dawn of the second great
day of civilization. Jean de Meung answered the questions of the times
with a clearness and accuracy which satisfied if it did not entirely
explain. Five generations passed away before the full burst of light,
and he taught them all, with that geniality that is his greatest
charm. His book lasted because, confused and without art as it is, it
is full of life and cheerfulness and hope. Not one of the poets of his
own time had his lightness of heart: despondency and dejection weigh
down every one: they alternate between a monotonous song to a mistress
or a complaint for France; and to Jean de Meung they are as the
wood-pigeon to the nightingale. They all borrowed from him, or studied
him. Charles of Orleans, Villon, Clement Marot, Rabelais, La Fontaine,
Regnier, Molière, Béranger, all come down from him in direct line, his
literary children and grandchildren. And in Jean de Meung, to make an
end, is the first manifestation of the true spirit of French
literature--the _esprit Gaulois_--the legacy, they tell us, of the
ancient Gaul.