Chapter I: Before Dante (2)

Having surveyed Mythology from the point of view of the most grovelling allegory, etymologically assisted by such fancies as that Teiresias (T_e_resias in his spelling) is derived [Sidenote: _The_ Super Thebaiden _and_ Expositio Virgiliana.] from _theros_ and _æon_, meaning “eternal summer,” and that Ulixes _Græce_ (it will go near to be thought shortly that Fulgentius knew less Greek than Shakespeare) is “quasi-_olon xenos_ id est omnium peregrinus,” Fulgentius seems to have turned to literature. If he also wrote the note on the _Thebaid_ attributed to the Sainted Bishop (and it is very much in the same style), he confined himself to a brief argument of the story, with a few etymologies, such as “_Creon quasi cremens omnia_,” and a short preface. In this he tells us that he “can never without grand ammiration[499] retract the ininvestigable prudence of the poets, and the immarcescible vein of their genius”: and having thus prepared rejoicing for the heart of the Limousin scholar nine hundred years ahead, he sets the fashion to Lyly by observing “Diligit puer nucem ad ludum integram: sapiens autem et adultus frangit ad gustum.” But this, though not insignificant, is a slight thing.

Footnote 499:

The forms _ammiratio_, _nimfa_, &c. are interesting as showing Latin
in its transformation to Romance.

The _Expositio Virgiliana_ or _Virgiliana Continentia_ (this word being late Latin for “contents”) is itself not long: it fills, with _apparatus criticus_, some five-and-twenty pages. If it were not written in a most detestable style, combining the presence of more than the affectation and barbarism of Martianus with a complete absence of his quaintness and full-blooded savour, it would be rather agreeable to read: even as it is, it is full of interest. We catch Virgil in mid-flight through the void, from that position of universal exponent of sober literary art which we have seen him occupy with Macrobius, to his rank as beneficent enchanter a few centuries later. The Bucolics and Georgics are full of such _Phisica secreta_, such _misticæ rationes_, that they are actually dangerous to touch. He has passed over the _interna viscera nullius pæne artis_ in these books. In the first Eclogue he has physically summed up the three lives (active, contemplative, and enjoying); in the fourth, he is a prophet; in the fifth, a priest; in the sixth, partly a musician, partly a physiologist; in the seventh, _botanicen dinamin tetigit_, he has touched the power of botany;[500] in the eighth he has pointed out magic and the apotelesmatic of the musician; combining this with _euphemesis_,[501] in the ninth.

Footnote 500:

It is very agreeable to see how the poor copyist of one MS., utterly
nonplussed by the learning of Fulgentius, has excogitated the blessed
words “totakicendi namin.”

Footnote 501:

This, disentangled from various _voces nihili_ in the MS., is probably
used in one of the senses which εὐφημία more properly bears in
classical Greek, “liturgical writing,” “prayer and praise.”

In the first Georgic he is throughout an astrologer and then a “eufemetic”; in the second, a physiologist and medical man; in the third, wholly an aruspex; and in the fourth, is to the fullest musical. But Fulgentius will not meddle further with the details of these books; and, after a breathless and intricate prologue, attacks the _Æneid_ in a manner easily to be conjectured from what has been said. Every word, every syllable almost, of the first line, is tortured to yield an allegory; the account being thrown into the form, first of a dialogue between poet and interpreter, and then of a long speech from the former. Achates is “Græce quasi _aconetos_ id est tristitiæ consuetudo.” Iopas is “quasi _siopas_ id est taciturnitas puerilis.” The progress of the story is the growth of human life. The wanderings of the first three books are the tales that amuse youth; the fourth shows how love distracts early manhood; the fifth displays it turning to generous exercises; the sixth is deep study of nature and things; the rest active life. And if anybody wishes to know why Turnus’ charioteer was called Metiscus, “Metiscos enim Græce est ebriosus.”

It cannot be necessary to say much of this, which speaks for itself; it is, as we said at first, the _intellectus_ (or rather the want of intellect) _sibi permissus_ and expatiating unchecked. _Qui l’aime le suive!_

Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus[502] (for a plethora of names was as characteristic of the Latin as of other decadences) is a much more interesting figure, and his [Sidenote: _Venantius Fortunatus._] critical importance, if less direct, is not really inferior. He goes in the general literary memory with Sidonius, as the twin-light of not yet wholly barbaric Gaul; and he had probably more original poetic gift than his predecessor. At least, I can find nowhere in Sidonius anything approaching the throb and thrill of his two great and universally known hymns, _Pange Lingua_ and _Vexilla Regis_—the earliest, perhaps, to attain that ineffable word-music of hymn-Latin, which is entirely independent of mere tune, mere setting, and which is not only equal to, but independent of, the choicest sound-music of either ancient or modern verse. He was also a livelier writer; and though he has made even further progress in the direction of affectation and bombast, these things rather add a piquancy, if not to his painful official praises of Queen Brunehault, at any rate to his expression of his half-pious, half-human affection for Radegund the Queen and Agnes the Abbess, his account of the sad results when the hospitable Mummolenus[503] would make him eat too many peaches, and his admirable description of his sail on the Moselle.

Footnote 502:

Ed. in two parts—the prose by F. Leo and the verse by B. Krusch—among
the _Monumenta Germaniæ Historica_ (Berlin, 1881-85).

Footnote 503:

Not the Bishop afterwards famous as first known to preach in French.

Moreover, he was certainly accomplished in all the learning of his time. He could even write very fair, if not delightful, sapphics. And he is not to be treated with the scornful contempt which some have heaped upon him, merely because he composed (with an amount of labour which makes one’s brain and eyes ache to think of) acrostics and cross-poems of various degrees of artificiality. He has one marvellous structure of the latter kind,[504] in which not only do the frame-letters of the scheme make sense, but correspondences, interwoven in the text trace out, also in sense, a sort of cross _patée_, as thus:—

Here the dots represent (though they are fewer) letters doing double duty, as part of sentences straight across, and in the lines of the figure itself. “The grace and liberty of the composition,” as some one says, may indeed be lost in such intricacies, yet are they not in themselves unliterary as a pastime.

Footnote 504:

Part i. p. 30. Another design of only minor intricacy, but not fully
filled in, appears a little later.

It must, however, be most frankly confessed that the literary expressions and references which we find in Fortunatus are (in the sense in which the word has so often to be used in this part of our work) “tell-tales.”

The Preface of his Poems,[505] addressed to Pope Gregory, opens with a somewhat emphatic and inflated laudation of the great men of letters of old, who were, we learn, "provident in invention, serious in partition, balanced in distribution, pleasant with the heel of epilogues, fluent with the fount of bile, beautiful with succise terseness, adorned from head to foot [literally "alike crowned and buskined"] with tropes, paradigms, periods, epicheiremes," which gives us a pretty clear idea of what seemed to Fortunatus to be literature. It contains also some touches of the “Italic”[506] writer’s contempt of those who “make no distinction between the shriek of the goose and the song of the swan,” who love “the harp buzzing barbarous _leods_.” But far fewer direct references to literature occur in these poems than in those of Sidonius. In II. ix.,[507] to the Parisian clergy who bade him resume his long-abandoned lyre, he takes it up purely as the hymn-writer, not the man of letters. There is more of the attitude of the latter in the prose epistle (III. iv.)[508] to Bishop Felix, but it does not come to very much. In the tenth of the same book,[509] the same bishop (who had, it seems, turned a river from its course) receives a complimentary reference to Homer, but none to Herodotus. Yet another bishop (of the undeniably Frankish name of Bertechramnus) is complimented, in the eighteenth, on his epigrams.[510] But Fortunatus, after much applause, does not fear (let us hope that the Frank was more placable than his brother prelate of Granada later) to add—

“Sed tamen in vestro quædam sermone notavi
Carmine de veteri furta novella loqui,
Ex quibus in paucis superedita syllaba fregit
Et pede læsa suo musica clauda gemit.”

Let us congratulate Venantius on not yielding to the heresy of the “extra-metrical syllable,” which has deceived some of the very elect in more illuminated days. Some slight glimmers are given by the flattery,[511] more elaborate than anything yet noticed, of still another bishop, Martin of Gallicia: and in V. iii.[512] we get a ticket-list of the same kind (though shorter and slighter) as those of which Sidonius is so prodigal. In this, after Athanasius has been designated _fortis_, Hilary _clarus_, Martin _dives_, and Ambrose _gravis_, he adds the distich—

“Gregorius _radiat_, sacer Augustinus _inundat_,
Basilius _rutilat_, Cæsariusque _micat_.”

Footnote 505:

Part i. p. 1.

Footnote 506:

Fortunatus seems to have been carefully styled Presbyter _Italicus_.
Cf. “Romanos” below. He was born at, or near, Treviso.

Footnote 507:

P. 37.

Footnote 508:

P. 52.

Footnote 509:

P. 62.

Footnote 510:

P. 72.

Footnote 511:

In the prose overture of Bk. V., p. 101 _sq._

Footnote 512:

Ll. 37-40 (p. 107).

The epistle to Syagrius of Autun (V. vi.)[513], which introduces another elaborate cross-poem, contains a vindication of it, by a twist of the Horatian tag to the effect that as painting and poetics are so like, why should you not combine them in such a fashion? After which the intricacies of the poem itself are carefully explained. The reference to “us Romans” in the poem to Sigebert (V. ii. 98)[514] (where he compliments the king on his skill, Sicambrian as he is, in the Latin tongue) suggests that the writer would have been scantly grateful for the inclusion of his work among “Monumenta _Germaniæ_.”

Footnote 513:

P. 112.

Footnote 514:

P. 133.

The genuine prose works of Fortunatus, consisting only of a few Saints’ Lives, do not promise much; but there is at least one remarkable passage in them. It is the opening of the Life of Saint Marcellus[515] in which his customary deprecation takes this form. “Illustrious orators of the most eloquent genius, whose speeches are distinguished by varied flowers, and shadowed by the vernal tendrils of eloquence, are wont deliberately to seek common causes and sterile matter, that they may show themselves as possessing an inexhaustible flow of speech on the smallest subjects, and as able to inundate the dryest themes with their internal founts of rhetoric. Men not so clever cannot even treat great subjects,” &c.

Footnote 515:

Part ii. p. 49.

And this, falling in with the other glimpses we have obtained, gives no misty view of the critical standpoint of this agreeable writer. The literary _nisus_, the literary tone, are fairly well maintained; there is no glaring lack of positive knowledge; and neither style nor sense shows anything like the degradation of Fulgentius. But Fortunatus, far more than Sidonius, is, in the good old phrase, “to seek” in the general field of matters literary, and especially in its critical quarters. Glitter and clatter, tinsel and crackers, are in prose, if not in verse (he is far more sober there), too much his ideals. The curse of the ancient formal Rhetoric has so far outlasted its blessings, that the expression of opinion last quoted would suit, and almost exaggerate, the position of the worst of the old declamation-makers. As to prosody, he has to some extent, if not wholly, “kept the bird in his bosom,” and his affection for subtleties in arrangement is, as has been said, not so wholly to his discredit as Mr Addison and Mr Pope thought. But it is rather a dangerous support; and he has very few others.

As Fulgentius and Venantius have stood for the sixth, so Isidore and Bede[516] may stand for the seventh century, while Bede’s flourishing time stretches into the eighth.

Footnote 516:

Aldhelm, between the two, wrote on metre, and is a considerable and
characteristic writer for his time, but needs no detailed treatment
here.

Isidore’s treatment of Grammar[517] is much fuller than his handling of her showier sister Rhetoric.[518] It fills the whole of [Sidenote: _Isidore of Seville again_.] the First Book of the curious Encyclopædia called the _Origines_, and is much more liberally arranged than the usual grammatical treatise, including a great deal of applied matter of various kinds, visibly filching Tropes and Figures from Rhetoric herself, and, besides dealing with Prosody, even devoting sections to the Fable and to History under more than one head. There is much interesting (if not for us strictly relevant) matter in the earlier chapters, where we read that _literæ_ are _quasi legiteræ_, and that Greek and Latin appear to have arisen out of Hebrew. The _vitia_, from barbarism and solœcism downwards, are pure Rhetoric, containing, as they do, things like _tapeinosis_ and amphibology, with which Grammar, as such, has certainly nothing to do; and they are near the rhetorical side of Criticism herself. The Metaplasms which follow, as purely verbal, may be claimed by the elder sister, but the _schemata_ and the _tropi_ are unquestioned usurpations. And thereafter, with Chapter Thirty-Seven _De Prosa_, we are almost on our own ground.

Footnote 517:

The _Origines_ or _Etymologiæ_, as a whole, form vol. iii. of
Lindemann’s _Corpus Grammaticorum_ (Leipsic, 1833), but this can
usually be obtained separate, and is worth having. It, of course,
repeats the _Rhetoric_, which is merely one section of it.

Footnote 518:

See above, p. 374 _sq._

Isidore, if not (save in his title) very original, is judicious in his selections from the public stock, and puts them together in a much more useful fashion than some authors of “composition-books” a good deal his juniors. Prose is “a straightforward form of speech freed from metre.” Metres (he has given “feet” a good deal earlier) are the fixed arrangements of feet which constitute verse. Their names are classified and accounted for, as are, subsequently, the chief forms of poetry in which they appear. The origination of these is claimed for various sacred persons—of the Hymn for David, “who was long before Ennius,” of the Epithalamium for Solomon. Not a few of the definitions, though desultory and oddly selected, are noteworthy, and the considerable space given to that of the Cento is characteristic of the age.

Fable, as has been said, has a section to itself, an honour which is prophetic of—and considering Isidore’s influence may, to some extent, have caused—the great attention paid in the Middle Ages to that kind. The History sections, though four in number, are much shorter—indeed, scarcely so long together as the single one allotted to Fable, which fact also is true, as the needle is, to the pole of the time. It is much better, Isidore thinks, that a man should only write of what he has actually seen. But History is not useless reading. Strictly, it is of our own time; “Annals” of the past; while Ephemeris is a diurnal and Kalendarium a monthly history. Finally the book ends with a contrast of _historia_, _argumentum_, and _fabula_. The first is of true things really done; the second of things which, though they have not been done, might be; the third of things which neither have been done nor can be, because they are contrary to nature. Here _argumentum_ clearly looks towards oratory: with regard to the difference between _historia_ and _fabula_, it must be admitted that the ages which followed very scrupulously forgot their teacher’s warning.

But even this does not exhaust our indebtedness to a very agreeable work, full of good sense and sound learning. The Sixth Book, which begins with an account of the Old and New Testament, diverges to the consideration of books generally. A note on famous libraries leads Isidore to record the chief authorities on Biblical Exegesis, from whom he passes to Latin libraries, to others (those of the Martyr Pamphilus and of Jerome), and thence to authors. Much writing attracts him first: and Varro, the Greek Chalcenterus, Origen, and St Augustine are picked out, the not entirely single-edged compliment being paid to the last, that not only could nobody write his books by working day and night, but nobody could read them completely by a similar expenditure of time and labour. An odd division of works follows, into _excerpta_ or _scholia_, “homilies,” and “tomes” or books,[519] or volumes: and this is followed by a string of remarks, as before rather desultory, on different kinds of books and writings, commentaries, prefaces, and what not. Then Isidore passes to the material side, and discusses waxen and wooden tablets, parchment, paper, with something about _format_. The staff and the plant of libraries follow; and then, returning from things profane to things divine, the book finishes with an account of the Calendar and the Offices of the Church.

Footnote 519:

Perhaps this is not so odd as it looks. _Excerpta_ or _scholia_ are,
_individually_, scraps; “homilies,” or essays, are only parts of a
book: _tomi_ are books substantive.

Those to whose taste and intellect this kind of thing appears despicable must, of course, be permitted to despise it. Others will prefer to recognise, with interest and sympathy, the combination of an extremely strong desire for knowledge, and the possession of no small quantity thereof, not merely with great disadvantages of resource and supply, but with a most curious and (if it were not so healthy and so promising) pathetic inability to distinguish, to know exactly where to plant the grip, what to discard, what simply to neglect. And they, once more, will see in this whole attitude, in this childhood crying for the light, something more encouraging than the complacent illumination of certain other ages, with which, perhaps, they may be more fully acquainted.

Bede,[520] a century later than Isidore, presents a changed but not a lesser interest. It is utterly improbable that the Bishop [Sidenote: _Bede again._] of Seville found himself in face of any vernacular writing that could be called in the least literary—if any vernacular except Latin and Old Basque can be supposed to have existed in Spain at all. Bede’s circumstances were quite different. The most famous passage in his writings—the story of Cædmon—is sufficient to tell us, even if we did not know it from other testimony, and from his extant death-bed verses, that he was well acquainted with vernacular poetry.

Footnote 520:

Bede’s treatises on Metric and Orthography, besides being accessible
in the various collected editions of his works, are to be found in
vol. vii. part ii. of Keil’s _Grammatici Latini_ (Leipsic, 1878).

But he seems to have thought it either unnecessary or undesirable to give any critical attention to it. His _Ars Metrica_[521], like his _Orthography_[522] and his _Rhetoric_,[523] concerns [Sidenote: _His_ Ars Metrica.] itself strictly with Latin. That this was on the whole better for the time, and so indirectly for us, who are the offspring of that time; that it was better for the vernaculars to be left to grow and seed themselves, and be transformed naturally without any attempt to train and so to cramp them; that it was, on the other hand, all important that the hand of discipline should be kept on the only “regular” writing, that of Latin—we may not only admit with frankness, but most eagerly and spontaneously advance and maintain. But the carnal man cannot help sighing for a tractate—a tractatule even of the tiniest—on English verse, from the Venerable One. There are, however, in the _Ars Metrica_ one large and several small crumbs of comfort. It is a pity that the learned and accurate Keil should have spoken so scornfully[524] of the undoubted truth that, while Bede supplements the precepts of the old grammarians in no whit, his whole usefulness lies in regard to the examination of more recent poets, and, as he calls them, “modern versifiers”; and should, a little further, have still more scornfully declined[525] to trouble himself with verifying unnamed references to such persons as Prudentius, Sedulius, Venantius Fortunatus, and others. To despise any age of literature is not literary: and to ignore it (as the motto which I have ventured to borrow from the excellent Leyser hath it in other words) is not safe. I think we may ask Herr Keil this question, “Is it not exactly of the _moderni versificatores_ that Bede can speak to us with advantage?” Do we, except by a supererogation of curiosity, want remarks from him on Virgil and Ovid?

Footnote 521:

Ed. cit. (with Introd.), pp. 219-260.

Footnote 522:

Ibid., pp. 261-294.

Footnote 523:

See p. 374.

Footnote 524:

Ed. cit., p. 221.

Footnote 525:

_Ut longum et molestum erat, ita in hoc genere scriptorum parum utile
esse videbatur._

Bede (who addresses the tract to the same Cuthbert whom we have to thank for the charming account of his death) begins with the letter, goes on to the syllable, and then has a chapter of peculiar interest on _common_ syllables—those stumbling-blocks to so many modern students of English prosody. The quantity of syllables in various positions is then dealt with successively, and next the metres, cæsura, elision, &c. One may note as specially interesting the section _Quæ sit optima Carminis forma_ (p. 243), both as showing long before, in reference to the hexameter, the same “striving after the best” which appears in Dante’s extrication of the _canzone_ and the hendecasyllable from meaner forms and lines, and as indicating something like a sense of that “verse-paragraph” which was to be the method of Shakespeare and of Milton. In dealing with these things he sometimes quotes, and still more frequently relies upon, Mallius Theodorus. But the passage which, if it existed alone, would make the book valuable (though in that case, as no doubt in many others, we should be prone to think that we had lost something more precious than it actually is), comes under the head _De Rhythmo_. After saying that the “Common books of a hundred metres”[526] will give many of these which he has omitted, he goes on thus: “But rhythm seems to be like metres, in that it is a modulated arrangement of words, governed not by metrical rule, but _by the number of syllables_, according to the judgment of the ear. And there can be rhythm without metre, though there can be no metre without rhythm: or, as it may be more clearly defined, metre is rhythm with modulation, rhythm modulation without proportion. But for the most part you will find, by a certain chance, proportion likewise in rhythm: not that any artificial discipline is used, but from the conduct of the sound and the modulation itself; and such as the poets of the people naturally produce in a rustic, learned poets in a learned manner.”[527] And then he quotes, as examples of iambic and trochaic rhythms respectively, the well-known hymns, _Rex æterne Domine_ and _Apparebit repentina_.

Footnote 526:

_Libris centimetrorum simplicibus examinata._ “Centimeter” is “the
poet who employs a hundred metres,” or the critic who discusses them.
Sidonius (Carm. ix. 264), in a passage referred to above (p. 389),
applies it to Terentianus Maurus, who certainly deserves it both in
theory and practice (_v._ his book, ed. Lachmann, Berlin, 1836).

Footnote 527:

_Vulgares poetæ._

Now this, which, though partly a result of, is quite different from, the classical opposition of rhythm and metre, is a thing of the first importance, and could not have been said by any one who had neglected the _moderni versificatores_: while it would perhaps not have been said so clearly and well by any one who had not known, and paid some attention to, the rising vernaculars. Even if, as Keil thinks, Bede followed such writers as Victorinus and Audax, he confirmed and strengthened this following by his study of recent verse.

I do not perceive any great crux in this passage: but Guest[528] was puzzled by the phrase _numero syllabarum_, which he seems to have taken as meaning that rhythm was more, not less, strict than metre in syllabic regularity. I am not sure that the words bear this interpretation: but, even if they did, we must remember that the rhythms _of which Bede was speaking_ are very strict syllabically, and admit little or no equivalence. The more prudish hymn-writers even dislike elision, and give every syllable its value.

Footnote 528:

_History of English Rhythms_, Bk. iii. chap. vi. (p. 472, ed. Skeat).
He also speaks of “discrepancies” in the different copies: but Keil’s
_apparatus_ gives no important variants in the MSS.

It is not from caprice or idleness that the somewhat minute examination thus given to the opening centuries of the Dark [Sidenote: _The Central Middle Ages to be more rapidly passed over._] or early Middle Ages will now be exchanged for a more rapid flight over the central portion of the same division of history. There are two very good reasons for this course. The first is, that there is a very great absence, probably of all material, certainly of material that is accessible. The second is, that even if such material existed and could be got at, it would probably be of little if of any service. When conditions of rhythmical composition in Latin were once settled, that composition was pursued with delightful results,[529] but with half traditional, half instinctive, absence of critical inquiry as to form. It was impossible that any such inquiry should take place, in the case of the vernaculars, until they had reached a state of actual creative development, which none of them enjoyed till the twelfth century, and hardly any of them till the thirteenth. As for appreciation, other than traditional, of authors classical, patristic, or contemporary, this was rendered a rare thing by that very mental constitution of the Middle Ages which has already been often referred to, and which will be more fully discussed in the Interchapter following this book. This constitution, rich in many priceless qualities, almost entirely lacked self-detachment on the one hand, and egotistic introspection on the other. It can very seldom have occurred to any Mediæval to isolate himself from the usual estimate of writers—to separate his opinion of their formal excellence from the interest, or the use, of their contents. And even if it had so occurred to any one, he would probably not have thought that opinion worth communicating. From which things, much more than from the assumed shallowness or puerility, a thousand years saw an almost astoundingly small change in regard to the matters with which we deal. Boethius and Martianus are text-books to the early sixteenth century as to the early sixth: the satirical lampoons of the religious wars in France burlesque the form, and use the language, of the hymns of Venantius Fortunatus:[530] Hawes and Douglas look at literature and science with the eyes of Isidore, if not even of Cassiodorus. Whether this conservatism did not invite, disastrously, the reaction of the Renaissance-criticism, we shall have to consider later; it is certain that it limits, very notably, the material of the present book, and especially of this portion of the present chapter. On two very remarkable books of the earliest thirteenth century, the _Labyrinthus_ attributed to Eberhard, and the _Nova Poetria_ of Geoffrey de Vinsauf, we may dwell with the utmost advantage. Otherwise a few notes, chiefly on the formal _Arts Poetic_ of the mid-Middle Age, are not only all that need, but almost all that can, be given before we turn to the great mediæval document of our subject, the _De Vulgari Eloquio_ of Dante.

Footnote 529:

For the understanding reader there is perhaps no subdivision of
literature more constantly delectable and refreshing than the Latin
hymns of the sixth-thirteenth centuries on the one hand, and on the
other the lighter work contained in such collections as the _Carmina
Burana_, Edélestand du Méril’s _three_ issues of _Poésies Populaires
Latines_, Wright’s _Poems of Walter Mapes_, _&c._

Footnote 530:

Cf. the ferocious, but vigorous, lampoon on Catherine of Montpensier
and Jacques Clément, entitled _Prosa Cleri Parisiensis ad ducem de
Mena_ (_Anciennes Poésies Françaises_, vol. ii. _Bibl. Elzévirienne_:
Paris, 1855).

In the vernacular languages it is hardly necessary to do more than refer to the instructions for accomplishing the intricacies [Sidenote: _Provençal and Latin treatises._] of Provençal verse found in that tongue;[531] the Latin rhythmics are rather more interesting. Until quite recently, access to them, save in the case of those students who unite palæographical accomplishment with leisure and means to travel all over Europe, was almost confined to two precious collections, the _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_ of Wright and Halliwell, and the plump and pleasing volume of Polycarp Leyser, which, among its varied treasures, gives the entire _Labyrinthus_ of Eberhard, the most important of them all. Now, however, the really admirable industry of Signor Giovanni Mari has collected, not merely the metrical part of the _Labyrinthus_, and the work (also rather famous) of John de Garlandia, but no less than six others, all of the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.[532] It is indeed not impossible that the first of these, the _De Rhythmico Dictamine_, may in its original have been as old as the twelfth, to which the _Labyrinthus_ itself used also to be assigned.

Footnote 531:

_V._ Bartsch, _Grundriss zur Gesch. der Prov. Lit._, p. 65 _sq._, on
Faidit’s _Donat_, Ramon Vidal’s _Rasos de Trobar_, &c.

Footnote 532:

_Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, by T. Wright & J. O. Halliwell, 2 vols., London,
1845.

P. Leyser, _Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii Ævi_, Halle, 1721.

G. Mari, _I Trattate Medievali di Ritmica Latina_, Milan, 1899.

The _Dictamen_,[533] the MSS. of which are found all over Europe, is very short. It lays down firmly the principle, which was [Sidenote: _The_ De Dictamine Rhythmico.] later to differentiate Romance from Teutonic, especially English, prosody, that _rhythmus est consonans paritas syllabarum sub certo numere comprehensarum_; it sets the limits of the line at a minimum of four syllables and a maximum of fourteen; it designs rhyme throughout as _consonance_; it gives examples from well-known hymns, from the poems attributed to Mapes and some not elsewhere known; and it supplies minute distinctions of kind as “transformed,” “equicomous,” “orbiculate,” “serpentine” rhythms. The tractatule is strictly limited to rhythm proper: classical metres do not appear in it. A rehandling by a certain “Master Sion” differs in its examples, and is rather more minute in its subdivisions: and there is yet a third version or pair of versions showing the authority and general influence of the treatise, while the _Regulæ de Rhythmis_ hardly differ essentially, and lead to the same conclusion.

Footnote 533:

First given in _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, i. 30-32. The others (except the
_Labyrinthus_) are in Mari only.

The _Ars Rhythmica_ of John de Garlandia is a much more elaborate composition, which originally followed upon similar [Sidenote: _John of Garlandia._] treatments of “prose” and “metre.” It is remarkable on the one hand for giving, not mere verses, but whole poems as examples, and on the other for varying the same theme in different rhythmical dispositions. The terms of ancient metric are also borrowed rather more freely than in the _Dictamen_; and great attention is paid to “rhetorical colours” of verse—homœoteleuton and the like. It is much longer than any form of the _Dictamen_, and has a supplement dealing with the strictly metrical forms usual in hymns. This does not exhibit the learned John Garland (he may have been an Englishman) as an expert in literary history, since he writes: “Saphicum, a Sapho _muliere quadam_ quæ fuit inventrix hujus metri: adonicum ab Adone inventore.” But in his liberal contribution of probably original examples he includes an _Oda de Archidiacono_, which might have been useful in a famous investigation. In fact, probably a major part of the treatise consists of not very excellent verse.

Signor Mari, conformably to his plan, has given of the _Labyrinthus_[534] only the short section dealing actually with [Sidenote: _The_ Labyrinthus.] rhythm: but the whole poem is of very great interest and importance for us—indeed of more than any work known to me between Isidore and Dante. The work, which is otherwise called _De Miseriis Rectorum Scholarum_, is an elaborate treatise on pædagogics. In the progress and details of this, the writer seems to forget the lugubrious estimate of his profession with which he starts, and which goes so far as to lay down that the future schoolmaster is cursed in his mother’s womb. Very sound rules are however given for guiding the moral nature and conduct of this unfortunate functionary; and then his various businesses are systematically attacked in elegiacs, not at all contemptible with due allowance. The second part deals with “themes,” grammar, and, to some extent, composition in general, though the examples, like the lecture, are in verse; the third with versification. And here we get a really precious estimate of various authors, ostensibly for their educational value, but, as in Quintilian’s case, going a good deal further. Indeed, hardly since Quintilian’s own time have we had such a critical summary. Cato, a special darling of the Middle Age, is “a path of virtue and a rule of Morals,” [Sidenote: _Critical review of poets contained in it._] “though the brevity of his metre forbids him to polish his words.” Theodolus,[535] a tenth-century writer of _Eclogæ_, who “champions” (is this the sense of _arcet_?) the cause of truth against falsehood, “and in whose verse theology plays,” comes next; and then the far better known Avianus, the instructive and moral virtue of whose fables is acknowledged, though he is debited _pauperiore stylo_. In one of the puns so dear to the sensible Middle Ages, _Æsopus metrum non sopit_—_i.e._, writes no dull or sleepy verse—and is otherwise highly praised. Maximianus[536] and Pamphilus (the original of the _Celestina_) follow, and “Geta,”[537] and a punning reference[538] to Claudian’s _Rape of Proserpine_. Statius, of course, is praised, indeed twice over. The “pleasing” work of Ovid, the “satire of the Venusian,” the “not juvenile but mature” ditto of Juvenal, which “lays bare and never cloaks vice”; Persius of the lofty soul, who spares no subtlety of mind though he is a lover of brevity, come next, while to these great satirists of old, the _Architrenius_[539] of John of Hauteville is yoked, with less injustice than may seem likely to devotees of classic and scorners of mediæval literature. The inevitable eccentricity (to _us_) of the mediæval estimate, and probably also the perseverance of the wooden censorship of Servius, is shown by the fact that only Virgil’s “themes,” not his treatment, are noticed, except obliquely. The second notice of Statius for the _Thebaid_, as the first had been for the _Achilleid_, is less reticent, praising him as _eloquii jucundus melle_; and Lucan is said to sing _metro lucidiore_, while an _Alexandreid_ (no doubt that of Gautier of Châtillon), though described as “shining by Lucan’s light,” is extolled as a historical poem. Claudian, again by allusion, receives praise for his praise of Stilicho, and Dares (as we expect with resignation) for his “veracity”; indeed the clerestories toward that south-north are quite as lustrous as ebony. Still Homer is placed beside him without depreciation, unless the mention of _Argolicum dolum_ is intended as a stigma. The couplet following—

“Sidonii regis qui pingit prælia morem
Egregium calamus Sidonianus habet”—

is annotated by Leyser “Apollonius,” but there seems some difficulty in this Apollonius. _Rhodius_ has nothing to do with Tyre or Sidon; and Apollonius _of Tyre_ has very little to do with _prælia_. The poet alluded to, whoever he is, possesses a pen with a noble manner. A Salimarius or Solinarius, who sang of the crusades, may be any versifier of William of Tyre: unless, indeed, the phrase _plenus amore crucis_ refers to one of the numerous poems on the Invention of the Cross. Macer’s matter is praised, but not his verse, _non sapit ille metro_—a true Quintilianian judgment. Petrus Riga (_petra cujus rigat Cristus_) escapes better. Sedulius is noted for “sedulity” of metre, and Arator “ploughs” the apostolic facts well, while Prudentius, of course, is prudent.

Footnote 534:

Or _Laborintus_. The adoption of an “Eberhard of Bethune” as the
author is not universally granted, nor the dating at 1212. But the
exact authorship is not of the slightest importance to us, and the
exact date not of much. The whole poem is printed by Leyser, p. 795
_sq._

Footnote 535:

Or Theodulus: _v._ Leyser, _op. cit._, p. 825 _sq._

Footnote 536:

This barbarous, and to Mrs Grundy shocking, but by no means
uninteresting versifier, was a great favourite with the Middle Ages.
He may be found conveniently in Baehrens, _Poetæ Latini Minores_, v.
313 _sq._

Footnote 537:

Leyser oddly annotated _Geta gemens_ “titulus tragediæ,” but the
words—

“Quia captus Mercuriali
Arte Jovem lectus Amphitrionis habet”—

can only refer to an _Amphitryon_.

Footnote 538:

“Thesiphones raptum qui comptus carmine claudit
Arte nec ingenio claudicat ille suo.”

To abduct Tisiphone would be a feather in the cap of any Don Juan, for
audacity if not for taste; but the text is corrupt enough to make it
(as it is elsewhere) an easy _f.l._ for Persephone. The puns in
_claudit_ and _claudicat_, moreover, are practically decisive.

Footnote 539:

This remarkable twelfth-century poem—_v. infra_, note, p. 414, an
allegorical world-pilgrimage with special reference to student sojourn
at Paris—was first abstracted by Wright in his _Biographia Britannica
Literaria_, vol. ii., London, 1846, and afterwards published in full
by him (_Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century_, London,
1872). John of Hauteville or Anville is also credited with a MS.
treatise, _De Epistolarum Compositione_. I wish I had seen it.

Alanus (de Insulis: “Alanus who was very sage,” as Pierre de la Sippade, the translator of _Paris and Vienne_ from Provençal into French says) is cited for his dealing with the Seven Arts in the _Anti-Claudianus_; and half-a-dozen lines of rather obscure allusiveness are devoted to Matthias Vindocinensis on Tobit, Geoffrey of Vinsauf (_v. infra_), and Alexander of Villedieu. Prosper _doctrinæ prosperitate sapit_; and the list is closed by fresh praises of the above Matthias or Matthew, of Martianus Capella and his “happy style,” of Boethius, Bernardus, the _Physiologus_, Paraclitus (?), and Sidonius Apollinaris.[540]

Footnote 540:

_Physiologus_ is of course the famous piece of Thetbaldus, the
original—mediate or immediate—of all the vernacular _Bestiaries_.
“Paraclitus” Leyser prints in capitals, like the other titles of books
or authors:—

“Hortatur propria per scripta PARACLITUS omnes
Peccantes. Veniam gratia donat iis.”

I should myself have taken this for a reference to the Holy Spirit as
speaking through the moralities of the _Physiologus_. The false
quantity is, of course, no objection to this: the 3rd syllable is
short at pleasure from Prudentius onwards. For poems of Matthias
Vindocinensis see _Reliquiæ Antiquæ_, ii. 257 _sq._ There is some
merit in them.

This catalogue, partly reasoned, is precious, as showing what the “Thirty best books” of the age of Dante’s birth were. It is succeeded by metrical and rhythmical directions, characterised by a good deal of punning as above, but also by acuteness and knowledge.

The extract from the _Labyrinthus_ given by Signor Mari is followed in his book by two other rhythmical tractates of [Sidenote: _Minor rhythmical tractates._] small importance, one very short, from a MS. in the Monaco library, and a longer one, but much later (it is probably as late as 1400), by a certain Nicolo Tibino. This last is chiefly noteworthy as giving fewer examples, but much exposition and discussion: it is indeed, after the custom of these ancestors, a kind of commentary on the _Labyrinthus_.

But, as it happens, the next piece to the _Labyrinthus_ in Leyser is a treatise of interest as great as its own, if not greater, the _Poetria Nova_ of Geoffrey de Vinsauf. Geoffrey, who, despite his French-sounding name, was certainly a [Sidenote: _Geoffrey de Vinsauf: his_ Nova Poetria.] countryman of ours, has been rather unkindly treated by us. Chaucer bestowed upon him one of his most ingeniously humorous gibes,[541] and Mr Wright (the most faithful and enthusiastic guardian and restorer of our Latin poets, and usually as tolerant as any, this side of mere critical omnivorousness) uses hard language of him in the _Biographia Britannica Literaria_.[542] But he is too valuable to us to be here abused: rather shall we be grateful to him exceedingly for revealing the literary tastes and ideals of the age as they lived. The _New Poetic_[543] begins by one of those mediæval gambades which, themselves sometimes partaking of the not unamiably nonsensical, seem at the present day to have a special gift of maddening those persons whose imbecility is of a different complexion from theirs. Geoffrey dedicates his poem to Pope Innocent III. (“stupor mundi”), and is at once in a difficulty. It would not do to call the Pope _Nocens_; _Innocens_ is simply impossible in a hexameter. So he plays about the subject for a score or so of lines, adding eulogistic jocular remarks on other Christian names, especially in relation to the Papacy. “Augustine may hold his tongue: Leo be quiet: John leave off: Gregory halt,”[544] while Innocent is comparable with Bartlemy in nobility, with Andrew in mildness, with St John himself in precious youth, in faith with Peter, in consummate scholarship with Paul. Then Rome is praised in comparison with England, and the poet-professor-of-poetry plunges into his subject.

Footnote 541:

_Nun’s Priest’s Tale_, 527 _sq._

Footnote 542:

_Anglo-Norman Period_, vol. ii. p. 398 _sq._

Footnote 543:

Leyser, _op. cit._, pp. 855-986.

Footnote 544:

“Augustine tace. Leo papa quiesce. Johannes
Desine. Gregori subsiste.”

His value, even if it were more flawed and alloyed than it is, will appear at once from the simple statement of the fact that, unlike the great majority of mediæval writers (such as they are) on literature, he does not confine himself to form on the one hand, and on the other does not adopt, in handling his subject, the extreme cut-and-dried rhetorical restrictions, though his own conception of the matter is more or less regulated by them. I do not remember that he ever quotes Horace; but it is pretty certain that he had the _Ars Poetica_ before him. He opens with the most solemn and elaborate commands to the poet not to rush upon his subject, to leave nothing to chance, but to form the conception of the work carefully and completely beforehand. “A little gall embitters a whole mass of honey, and one spot makes a whole face ugly.” In his second chapter he becomes more closely rhetorical. The poet must first choose and arrange his subject; then elaborate and amplify it; then clothe it in “civil, not rustic” words; and lastly, study its proper recitation or delivery. Under the first head the _mot d’ordre_ is order: the very word _ordo_ occurs over and over again in the first dozen or sixteen lines. The exordium must look straight to the end: and all the other parts must follow according to the regular drill of a “theme.” Special attention is given to the employment of Examples and Proverbs. Under the head of treatment, Brevity, Amplification, and all the scholastic tricks of style are inculcated again with plentiful examples, these including that unlucky passage against Friday which tempted the wicked wit of another Geoffrey. It is, however, fair to say that He of the Sound Wine does not himself seem to have been by any means destitute of a certain sense of humour, and demands ridicule of the ridiculous. If by his precept, and still more by his examples, Geoffrey seems too much to encourage word-play as a lighter, and bombast as a graver, ornament of composition, it is well to remember that the fashions of every time are not only liable to exaggeration, but nearly always exhibit it. Professional students of literature have no difficulty in putting a name to such exaggerations in the thirteenth, the sixteenth, or the eighteenth century; nor will such students in the future have any more in performing the same office for the literary fashions of the late nineteenth. Nor are some of the prescriptions for figure, and fanciful colour and conceit, by any means infelicitous—always supposing that such things can be made the subject of regular prescription at all. On the other hand, it must be admitted that Geoffrey is sometimes painfully rudimentary. The budding poet who requires to be told that

“Aptantur bene dentes nix; labra flammæ;
Gustus mel; vultus rosa; frons lac; crines et aurum;”

and who then obediently “goes and does it,” is a person with whose works reviewers (for their sins) are indeed still well acquainted, but to whom no philanthropist would willingly give encouragement.

This descent to even the lowest ranges of the particular is, however, one of the most interesting points of the book. There are some two thousand lines in all, and the whole, except the dedication and three not very long epilogue-addresses to Pope, Emperor, and a certain Archbishop William (who has not, I think, been identified), is strictly devoted to business.

This poem is, on fair authority, assigned to the year 1216, the _Labyrinthus_ being dated some four years earlier. And, without pinning our faith to these dates and so running the danger of its unsettlement should they be attacked, we may say quite boldly that the _Labyrinthus_ and the _Nova Poetria_[545] together give us a remarkable and nearly complete conspectus of what the late twelfth and early thirteenth century thought about literature, in what was still its almost all-embracing form—poetry, in both its rhythmical and metrical shapes—and in the only thoroughly acknowledged literary language of the time. For although the vernaculars were already knocking at the door, they were doing so as yet timidly and half consciously, while in so far as they were deliberately practised, the principles of composition and of taste which guided the practice cannot have been different. We find, if not always with exactly the same _nuance_, terms of Dante’s critical vocabulary (_e.g._, “pexa”) in the _Poetria Nova_. And though neither Eberhard nor Geoffrey would in all probability have had anything but scorn for the suggestion that “vulgar” could possibly equal “regular” composition; though they were at best men of respectable talent; their general critical estimate was probably not very different from that of their great successor on the bridge of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Of his eagle glance into the future of literature they were entirely destitute, but he shared at least some of their confused vision in reference to the past.[546]

Footnote 545:

Three other poems of the twelfth or early thirteenth century (referred
to above) are more original, two of them at least are more amusing,
and all have obtained more notice from general literary historians.
These are the _Speculum Stultorum_ or _Brunellus_ of Nigel Wireker,
the _Architrenius_ (see p. 410) of John of Hauteville, and the
_Anti-Claudianus_ of Alanus de Insulis. All three may be found most
conveniently in Wright’s above-cited work, _Anglo-Latin Satirical
Poets of the Twelfth Century_ (2 vols., Rolls Series, London, 1872).
They are by no means to be neglected by us, though their testimony is
mostly negative, and a slight reference to its nature will cover,
indirectly, the absence of reference in the text to such still more
generally famous authors as John of Salisbury and Walter Mapes
himself. It is probable that all five writers, as well as Godfrey of
Winchester (also in Wright, _op. cit._), who could write fair epigrams
in the more decent style of Martial, and others, were well acquainted
with no inconsiderable part of the classics. Upon satirists, moreover,
like Wireker and John of Hauteville, who were attacking the vanity of
monkish and clerical life, hopes, and ambitions, the labour-in-vain of
Universities, and the like, some such indirect but substantive
literary criticism as we find in their Roman originals would seem
almost imperative. But there is nothing of the kind, either in the
_Speculum_ or in the _Architrenius_. In the much duller
_Anti-Claudianus_, Rhetoric, like the other arts, appears, and she is
employed, consistently with her presentation in Martianus (though the
Rhetoric of Capella would perhaps have been too proud to do this
directly) to “paint and gild the pole” of the allegorical Chariot of
Prudence. But of criticism there is nothing, or so little as to be
nothing. Nor will much be found in the interesting notice of mediæval
notices of books and book collections which occurs in M. Cocheris’ ed.
of the _Philobiblon_ (_v. infra_, p. 455), pp. xxxiv-xlvii.

Footnote 546:

If to this peculiarity I seem to refer too often, let me close this
chapter with a sentence from one who loved the Middle Ages as well as
any man, and knew them far better than almost any. To them, says M.
Paulin Paris, “Les siècles passés ne semblaient former qu’une seule et
grande époque, où se réunissaient toutes les célébrités de
l’histoire.”—_Les Romans de la Table Ronde_, i. 169 (Paris: 1868-77).