Читать книгу A Literary History of the English People, from the Origins to the Renaissance - J. J. Jusserand - Страница 12

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[130] The romantic events in the life of Harold Hardrada Sigurdson are the subject of an Icelandic saga in prose, by Snorre Sturlason (born at Hvam in Iceland, 1178): "The Heimskringla Saga, or the Sagas of the Norse kings, from the Icelandic of Snorre Sturlason," ed. Laing and R. B. Anderson, London, 1889, 4 vols. 8vo, vols. iii. and iv. A detailed account of the battle at "Stanforda-Bryggiur" (Stamford-bridge), will be found in chaps. 89 ff.; the battle of "Helsingja port" (Hastings), is told in chap. 100.

[131]

Taillefer ki mult bien chantout,

Sor un cheval ki tost alout

Devant le duc alout chantant

De Karlemaigne et de Rolant

E d'Oliver et des vassals

Qui morurent en Rencevals.

"Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou," ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo, p. 349, a statement reproduced or corroborated by several chroniclers: "Tunc cantilena Rollandi inochata. … " William of Malmesbury, "Gesta Regum Anglorum," ed. Hardy, London, 1840, English Historical Society, book iii., p. 415.

[132] William of Poictiers, a Norman by birth (he derived his name from having studied at Poictiers) and a chaplain of the Conqueror, says that his army consisted of "Mancels, French, Bretons, Aquitains, and Normans"; his statement is reproduced by Orderic Vital: "Insisterunt eis Cenomannici, Franci, Britanni, Aquitani et miserabiliter pereuntes cadebant Angli." "Historia Ecclesiastica," in Migne, vol. clxxxviii. col. 298. Vital was born nine years only after the Conquest, and he spent most of his life among Normans in the monastery of St. Evroult.

[133] Charter of William to the city of London: "Will'm kyng gret … ealle tha burhwaru binnan Londone, Frencisce and Englisce, freondlice" (greets all the burghers within London, French and English). At a later date, again, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, in a charter for Lincoln, sends his greetings to his subjects "tam Francis quam Anglis," a.d. 1194. Stubbs, "Select Charters," Oxford, 1876, pp. 82 and 266.

[134] "Gunnlangs Saga," in "Three northern Love Stories and other Tales," edited by Erikr Magnusson, and William Morris, London, 1875, 12mo.

[135] "The old play of the Wolsungs," in "Corpus Poeticum Boreale," i. p. 34.

[136] "Maistre Wace's Roman de Rou," ed. Andresen, line 7749. The same story is reproduced by William of Malmesbury (twelfth century). "Arma poposcit, moxque ministrorum tumultu loricam inversam indutus, casum risu correxit, vertetur, inquiens, fortitudo comitatus mei in regnum." "Gesta Regum Anglorum," 1840, English Historical Society, book iii. p. 415.

[137] William of Malmesbury, Ibid.

[138] "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (Rolls), year 1066, Worcester text (Tib. B. IV.). Same statement in William of Malmesbury, who says of his compatriots that "uno prælio et ipso perfacili se patriamque pessundederint." "Gesta Regum Anglorum," English Historical Society, p. 418.

[139] So says William of Poictiers, and Orderic Vital after him: " … Nudato insuper capite, detractaque galea exclamans: me inquit conspicite; vivo et vincam, opitulante Deo." "Orderici Vitalis Angligenæ … Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, Libri XIII.," in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. clxxxviii. col. 297.

[140] The inventory is carried down to details; answers are required to a number of questions: " … Deinde quomodo vocatur mansio, quis tenuit eam tempore Regis Eadwardi; quis modo tenet; quot hidæ; quot carrucæ in dominio; quot hominum; quot villani; quot cotarii; quot servi; quot liberi homines; quot sochemani; quantum silvæ; quantum prati; quot pascuorum; quot molendina; quot piscinæ," &c., &c. "Domesday for Ely"; Stubbs, "Select Charters," Oxford, 1876, p. 86. The Domesday has been published in facsimile by the Record Commission: "Domesday Book, or the great survey of England, of William the Conqueror, 1086," edited by Sir Henry James, London and Southampton, 1861–3, 2 vols. 4to.

[141] Peterborough text of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," year 1086.

[142] To the extent that England resembled then Jerusalem besieged by Titus: "Quid multa? In diebus eis multiplicata sunt mala in terra, ut si quis ea summatim recenseat, historiam Josephi possint excedere." John of Salisbury, "Policraticus," book vi chap. xviii.

[143] "Videas ubique in villis ecclesias, in vicis et urbibus monasteria, novo ædificandi genere consurgere." The buildings of the Anglo-Saxons, according to the testimony of the same, who may have seen many as his lived in the twelfth century, were very poor; they were pleased with "pravis et abjectis domibus." "Gesta Regum Anglorum," ed. Hardy, 1840, book iii. p. 418.

[144] William of Malmesbury, ut supra, p. 420.

[145] The Conqueror was buried at Caen; Henry II. and Richard Cœur-de-Lion at Fontevrault in Anjou. Henry III. was buried at Westminster, but his heart was sent to Fontevrault, and the chapter of Westminster still possesses the deed drawn at the moment when it was placed in the hands of the Angevin abbess, 20 Ed. I. (exhibited in the chapter house).

[146] "Henry II.," by Mrs. J. R. Green, 1888, p. 22 ("Twelve English Statesmen").

[147] Stubbs, "Seventeen Lectures," 1886, p. 131.

[148] After having congratulated the king upon his intention to teach manners and virtues to a wild race, "indoctis et rudibus populis," the Pope recalls the famous theory, according to which all islands belonged of right to the Holy See: "Sane Hiberniam et omnes insulas, quibus sol justitiæ Christus illuxit … ad jus B. Petri et sacrosanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ (quod tua et nobilitas recognoscit) non est dubium pertinere. … " The items of the bargain are then enumerated: "Significasti siquidem nobis, fili in Christo charissime, te Hiberniæ insulam, ad subdendum illum populum legibus, et vitiorum plantaria inde exstirpanda velle intrare, et de singulis domibus annuam unius denarii B. Petro velle solvere pensionem. … Nos itaque pium et laudabile desiderium tuum cum favore congruo prosequentes … gratum et acceptum habemus ut … illius terræ populus honorifice te recipiat et sicut Dominum veneretur." "Adriani papæ epistolæ et privilegia.—Ad Henricum II. Angliæ regem," in Migne's "Patrologia," vol. clxxxviii. col. 1441.

[149] As little French as could be, for he did not even know the language of the conquerors, and was on that account near being removed from his see: "quasi homo idiota, qui linguam gallicam non noverat nec regiis consiliis interesse poterat." Matthew Paris, "Chronica Majora," year 1095.

[150]

En mund ne est, (ben vus l'os dire)

Pais, reaume, ne empire

U tant unt esté bons rois

E seinz, cum en isle d'Englois,

Ki après règne terestre

Or règnent reis en célestre,

Seinz, martirs, e cunfessurs,

Ki pur Deu mururent plursurs;

Li autre, forz e hardiz mutz,

Cum fu Arthurs, Aedmunz e Knudz.

"Lives of Edward the Confessor," ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls), 1858; beginning of the "Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei."

[151] These three poets, all of them subjects of the English kings, lived in the twelfth century; the oldest of the three was Gaimar, who wrote, between 1147 and 1151 (P. Meyer, "Romania," vol. xviii. p. 314), his "Estorie des Engles" (ed. Hardy and Martin, Rolls, 1888, 2 vols., 8vo), and, about 1145, a translation in French verse of the "Historia Britonum" of Geoffrey of Monmouth (see below, p. 132).—Wace, born at Jersey (1100?-1175, G. Paris), translated also Geoffrey into French verse ("Roman de Brut," ed. Leroux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, 2 vols. 8vo), and wrote between 1160 and 1174 his "Geste des Normands" or "Roman de Rou" (ed. Andresen, Heilbronn, 1877, 2 vols. 8vo). He wrote also metrical lives of saints, &c.—Benoit de Sainte-More, besides his metrical romances (see below, p. 129), wrote, by command of Henry II., a great "Chronique des ducs de Normandie" (ed. Francisque Michel, "Documents inédits," Paris, 1836, 3 vols. 4to).

[152] Even under the Roman empire, nations had been known to attribute to themselves a Trojan origin. Lucanus states that the men of Auvergne were conceited enough to consider themselves allied to the Trojan race. Ammianus Marcellinus, fourth century, states that similar traditions were current in Gaul in his time: "Aiunt quidam paucos post excidium Trojæ fugientes Græcos ubique dispersos, loca hæc occupasse tunc vacua." "Rerum Gestarum," lib. xv. cap. ix. During the Middle Ages a Roman ancestry was attributed to the French, the Britons, the Lombards, the Normans. The history of Brutus, father of the Britons, is in Nennius, tenth century(?); he says he drew his information from "annalibus Romanorum" ("Historia Britonum," ed. Stevenson, Historical Society, London, 1838, p. 7). The English historians after him, up to modern times, accepted the same legend; it is reproduced by Matthew Paris in the thirteenth century, by Ralph Higden in the fourteenth, by Holinshed in Shakesperean times: "This Brutus … was the sonne of Silvius, the sonne of Ascanius, the sonne of Æneas the Troian, begotten of his wife Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied." Chronicles, 1807, 6 vols. fol. book ii. chap. 1. In France at the Renaissance, Ronsard chose for his hero Francus the Trojan, "because," as he says, "he had an extreme desire to honour the house of France."

CHAPTER II.

LITERATURE IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UNDER THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS.

I.

What previous invaders of the island had been unable to accomplish, the French of William of Normandy were finally to realise. By the rapidity and thoroughness of their conquest, by securing to themselves the assistance of those who knew how to use a pen, by their continental wars, they were to bring about the fusion of all the races in one, and teach them, whether they intended it or not, what a mother country was.

They taught them something else besides, and the results of the Conquest were not less remarkable from a literary than from a political point of view. A new language and new ideas were introduced by them into England, and a strange phenomenon occurred, one almost unique in history. For about two or three hundred years, the French language remained superimposed upon the English; the upper layer slowly infiltrated the lower, was absorbed, and disappeared in transforming it. But this was the work of centuries. "And then comes, lo!" writes an English chronicler more than two hundred years after Hastings, "England into Normandy's hand; and the Normans could speak no language but their own, and they spoke French here as they did at home, and taught it to their children: so that the high men of this land, who are come of their race, keep all to that speech which they have taken from them." People of a lower sort, "low men," stick to their English; all those who do not know French are men of no account. "I ween that in all the world there is no country that holds not to her own speech, save England alone."[153]

The diffusion of the French tongue was such that it seemed at one time as if a disappearance of English were possible. All over the great island people were found speaking French, and they were always the most powerful, the strongest, richest, or most knowing in the land, whose favour it was well to gain, and whose example it was well to imitate. Men who spoke only English remained all their lives, as Robert of Gloucester tells us, men of "little," of nothing. In order to become something the first condition was to learn French. This condition remained so long a necessary one, it was even impossible to foresee that it should ever cease to exist; and the wisest, during that period, were of opinion that only works written in French were assured of longevity. Gerald de Barry, who had written in Latin, regretted at the end of his life that he had not employed the French language, "gallicum," which would have secured to his works, he thought, a greater and more lasting fame.[154]

Besides the force lent to it by the Conquest, the diffusion of the French tongue was also facilitated by the marvellous renown it then enjoyed throughout Europe. Never had it a greater; men of various races wrote it, and the Italian Brunetto Latini, who used it, gave among other reasons for so doing, "that this speech is more delightful and more common to all people."[155] Such being the case, it spread quickly in England, where it was, for a long time, the language used in laws and deeds, in the courts of justice, in Parliamentary debates,[156] the language used by the most refined poets of the period.

And thus it happened that next to authors, French by race and language, subjects of the kings of England, were found others employing the same idiom, though of English blood. They strove, to the best of their possibility, to imitate the style in favour with the rulers of the land, they wrote chronicles in French, as did, in the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, Jordan Fantosme[157] and Peter de Langtoft; religious poems, as Robert of Greteham, Robert Grosseteste, William of Wadington did in the thirteenth; romances in verse, like those of Hue of Rotelande (twelfth century); moralised tales in prose, like those of Nicole Bozon; lyric poems,[158] or fabliaux,[159] like those composed by various anonymous writers; ballads such as those we owe, quite at the end of the period, in the second half of the fourteenth century, to Chaucer's friend, John Gower.

At this distance from the Conquest, French still played an important, though greatly diminished, part; it remained, as will be seen, the language of the Court; the accounts of the sittings of Parliament continued to be written in French; a London citizen registered in French on his note-book all that he knew concerning the history of his town.[160] As Robert of Gloucester had said, the case was an unparalleled one. This French literature, the work of Englishmen, consisted, of course, mainly in imitations of French models, and need not detain us long; still, its existence must be remembered, for no other fact shows so well how thorough and powerful the French invasion had been.

What, then, were the models copied by these imitators, and what the literature and ideas that, thanks to the Conquest, French-speaking poets acclimatised in lately-Germanic England? What sort of works pleased the rulers of the country; what writings were composed for them; what manuscripts did they order to be copied for their libraries? For it must not be forgotten, when studying the important problem of the diffusion of French ideas among men of English race, that it matters little whether the works most liked in England were composed by French subjects of the king of France, or by French subjects of the king of England; it matters little whether these ideas went across the Channel, carried over by poets, or by manuscripts. What is important is to see and ascertain that works of a new style, with new aims in them, and belonging to a new school of art, enjoyed in England a wide popularity after the Conquest, with the result that deep and lasting transformations affected the æsthetic ideal and even the way of thinking of the inhabitants. What, then, were these ideas, and what was this literature?

II.

This literature little resembled that liked by the late masters of the country. It was as varied, superabundant, and many-coloured as the other was grand, monotonous, and melancholy. The writings produced or simply admired by the conquerors were, like themselves, at once practical and romantic. They had, together with a multitude of useful works, a number of charming songs and tales, the authors of which had no aim but to please.

The useful works are those so-called scientific treatises in which everything is taught that can be learned, including virtue: "Image du Monde," "Petite Philosophie," "Lumière des laïques," "Secret des Secrets," &c.[161]; or those chronicles which so efficaciously served the political views of the rulers of the land; or else pious works that showed men the way to heaven.

The principal historical works are, as has been seen, those rhymed in the twelfth century by Gaimar, Wace, and Benoit de Sainte-More, lengthy stories, each being more flowery than its predecessor, and more thickly studded with digressions of all sorts, and descriptions in all colours, written in short and clear verse, with bell-like tinklings. The style is limpid, simple, transparent: it flows like those wide rivers without dykes, which cover immense spaces with still and shallow water.[162]

In the following century the most remarkable work is the biography in verse of William le Maréchal, earl of Pembroke, one of those knights of proud mien who still appear to breathe as they lie on their tombs in Temple Church. This Life is the best of its kind and period; the anonymous author who wrote it to order has the gift, unknown to his predecessors, of condensing his subject, of grouping his characters, of making them move and talk. As in the Temple Church, on the monument he erects to them, they seem to be living.[163]

Another century passes, the fashion of writing history in French verse still subsists, but will soon die out. Peter de Langtoft, a true Englishman as his language sufficiently proves, yet versifies in French, in the fourteenth century, a history of England from the creation of the world to the death of Edward I. But the times are changing, and Peter, last representative of an art that is over,[164] is a contemporary of that other Englishman, Robert of Gloucester, first representative of an art that begins, a distant ancestor of Gibbon and Macaulay. In sedate and manly, but somewhat monotonous strains, Robert tells in his turn the history of his country; differing in this respect from the others, he uses the English tongue; he is by no means cosmopolitan, but only and solely English. In the very first lines he makes this characteristic declaration: "England is a very good land; I ween the best of any. … The sea goes all about it; it stands as in an isle; it has the less to fear from foes. … Plenty of all goods may be found in England."[165]

The way to heaven is taught, after the Conquest, in innumerable French works, in verse and prose, paraphrases of the psalms and gospels, lives of the saints, manuals of penitence, miracles of Our Lady, moralised tales, bestiaries, and sermons.[166] The number of the French-speaking population had so increased in the kingdom that it was not absurd to preach in French, and some of the clergy inclined all the more willingly to so doing that many of the higher prelates in the land were Frenchmen. "To the simple folk," says, in French, an Anglo-Norman preacher, "have I simply made a simple sermon. I did not make it for the learned, as they have enough writings and discourses. For these young people who are not scholars I made it in the Romance tongue, for better will they understand the language they have been accustomed to since childhood."