HISTORYOF BOOK guage, with all its march of dignity, was found to be VI. so ductile to this popular beauty, that Bernard de LITERARY Cluny, in the twelfth century, composed a Latin ENGLAND. poem, in 3000 verses, riming in the middle and at the end; and the work of Friar Amand, intitled, Speculum humanæ Salvationis, consists of above 5000 Latin rimes.60 Nothing therefore seems to have been easier than to write in rime, especially when nothing else was aimed at. Its advantage to English poetry. The great benefit produced by the naturalization of rime in our national poetry, was the abolition of the affectations and distortions of the Anglo-Saxon style, and the introduction of the artless language of nature and perspicuity. The homely verses of our AngloNorman forefathers established a taste for simplicity and intelligibility, and framed a poetical diction, that permitted the heart to speak its feelings without restraint. No mental revolution could have been more beneficial. Without simplicity and perspicuity, no poetry is genuine, no genius impressive; with these essential requisites, every true grace and beauty, the most moving pathos, and the most elevating sublimity, may be happily combined. Hence, altho, by end in ie-followed by 18 in on-and 31 in er. Its metrical form may be Bene chancon plest vos que je vos die And see the Roman de Florimont, and indeed all the rimed romances- 59 De contemptu mundi, dedicated to Peter, abbot of Clugny, about 1125. Fauchet, p. 66 60 Harleian MS. N° 26. and Cotton MS. Vesp. E 1. The last gives the author's name. The Speculum Stultorum, MS. Titus, A 20. has nearly 4000 lines, riming in the middle; and all Walter Mapes' Latin poems are rimed apparently with great ease. VII. ANGLO NORMAN POETRY. having little else than rime, our vernacular poetry CHAP. was born in its humblest state, yet it thereby appeared the true child of nature. It has since grown to strength and beauty, as the national civilization VERNAhas advanced. Every generation has seen it disclose CULAR new charms, and acquire new excellencies, till it has attained to such majesty, such universality, such richness, such energy, and such polish, that the nation has yet to appear, to whose superiority the genius of English poetry must do homage.1 61 of the Troubadours, it may be mentioned, that only three of their romances in verse have survived. M. Raynouard states these to be1. Gerard de Rousillon; which may be placed in the beginning of the twelfth century, if not before. It is on his wars with Charles Martel, and contains above 8000 verses of ten syllables, in consecutive rimes.— 2. On Jaufre, son of Dovon, one of the knights of Arthur, describing his adventures in pursuing the ferocious Taulat de Rugimon, who had struck dead with a lance one of the knights of the round table. It comprises above 10,000 verses of eight syllables: it may be referred to the beginning of the thirteenth century. The 3d is Philomena; which contains the exploits of Charlemagne in the south of France against the Saracens, written apparently before 1200. Many other romances are mentioned in the works of the Troubadours, which have perished. Choix des Troub. v. 2. p. 284-298. They have a chronicle of 10,000 verses on the war against the Albigenses, by Guill. de Tudela, p. 283. VI. CHAP. VIII. On the Origin and Progress of Rime in the Middle Ages. BOOK AS rime has become the principal characteristic of all English poetry but the dramatic, in which it cannot be successfully naturalized, it deserves a more effects of enlarged consideration. Mental rime. Of all the forms of modern poesy, tho other metrical modes of verse have been tried, and with grand and pleasing effect, yet rime appears to have been the most universally liked, the most frequently praised, and the most abundantly practised. Rythm, cadence and metre may exist without it;. but with all these it associates; and adds to them its own peculiar pleasureableness; and therefore in its most perfect composition may be said to present the most perfect versification of English poetry. It is a sovereign which admits of viceroys, companions and allies, but which seems to claim to itself the superior throne, and to have the power of giving to poetry an elegance, a melody, a strength, an intonation, a sweetness, and yet also a pathos and a grandeur, which its absence lessens, and which no substitute can so completely supply. As its effects greatly impress, its principle, like that of all verbal cadence and rythm, must be deeply seated in the human mind. There is a charm in peculiar collocations and sequences, and in the consonancies of words, which the cultivated taste as sensibly feels, and with a gratification as agreeable as the duly organized and accustomed ear perceives and VIII. GRESS OF THE MID DLE AGES. relishes the harmonies of musical sound. This mys- CHAP. terious effect upon our minds has always formed one of the sweetest enchantments of poetry. What that ORIGIN music of the soul is, which, independently of audible AND PROsound, can be awakened and pleased by unknown RIME IN sympathies with the measured order of selected words and syllabic prosody, we have yet to discover; but that there are some fine chords of melodious sensibility within us, the universal gratification experienced from peculiar combinations of syllables, well-cadenced prose, and the metres and consonancies of poetry, impressively indicates. It does not depend upon the ear, because the mind perceives and enjoys the grateful beauty without the use of any organical vocality. The effect is, an intellectual sensation without the instrumentality of sense; and this implies, that there must be something responsive to it in the intellect, which occasions the feeling, and makes that feeling so generally delectable. But, however it originates, it comes in various shapes, and is producible by many verbal arrangements.' The ending cadence of the hexameter suited the language and delighted the nations of Greece and Rome. The pentameter, which is less rythmical to us, was yet pleasing to the latter. Their lyrical prosodies had also melodious agencies on their accordant sensibilities, which we cannot adequately enjoy. Instead of these, each of the vernacular tongues of Europe has found and formed from its separate capabilities, positions of words, time, measure, succession and combinations of syllables, modes of enunciation, pauses, flow and cadences of phrase, 'The treatise of Demetrius Phalereus de Elocutione; the orations of Isocrates; and the orations and speeches of Cicero, shew how much the graces and effect of verbal elocution were studied and valued by the ancients. VI. ENGLAND. BOOK and connected resemblances of terminal sounds, which constitute the various species of poetical versification, LITERARY that that every nation has appropriated to itself, and loves HISTORY OF and cherishes with intellectual delight. Among these, rime has been our property from the era of the Norman conquest; we have withdrawn it, almost without a dissentient voice, from the colloquial poetry of the stage; but we have attached it to every other department of the Muse, with a perseverance of approving taste, which no censuring denunciation of it, as the invention of barbarian times, has persuaded us to discontinue. Origin of rime. It is true that it is barbaric to us in its chronology; but it is not barbaric in its primeval ancestry or its mental operation. It certainly came into English composition amid the movements and from the nations of the grand Gothic stem, who broke up the Roman empire, and who introduced the feudal system; the duel, the ordeal, the common law, the jury and the parliament. So far, therefore, like these, it comes from a barbaric lineage; but there is no more reason to brand it as a rude barbarism, a pleasing contagion, or a degrading deterioration;2 unless all the intellectual improvements which have flowed upon us from the new fountains of mind and pursuits that were opened by our Gothic forefathers, are also to be considered as barbarian innovations. But rime cannot have had a barbarian origin, because rime is one of the chief poetical forms and graces of the most ancient, the first cultivated, and once most civilized nations and languages of the Algarotti tends to give it this character in his agreeable saggio' on rime, in the fourth volume of his Opere.' This saggio is an elegant specimen of the rythmical melody which Italian prose can receive from a refined taste. |