[Sidenote: The part played by language, prosody, and manners.]
On this fact, be it repeated, if we observe the canons of sound criticism in the process, too much stress in general cannot be laid.
There must have been some more than ordinary _nisus_ towards story-telling in a people and a language which produced, and for three or four centuries cherished, something like a hundred legends, sometimes of great length, on the single general[14] subject of the exploits, sufferings, and what not of the great half-historical, half-legendary emperor _a la barbe florie_, of his son, and of the more legendary than historical peers, rebels, subjects, descendants, and "those about both"
generally. And though the a.s.sertion requires a little more justification and allowance, there must have been some extraordinary gifts for more or less fict.i.tious composition when such a vast body of spirited fict.i.tious, or even half-fict.i.tious, narrative is turned out.
But in this justification as to the last part of the contention a good deal of care has to be observed. It will not necessarily follow, because the metal is attractive, that its attractiveness is always of the kind purely belonging to fiction; and, as a matter of fact, a large part of it is not. Much is due to the singular sonority and splendour of the language, which is much more like Spanish than modern French, and which only a few poets of exceptional power have been able to reproduce in modern French itself. Much more is imparted by the equally peculiar character of the metre--the long _tirades_ or _laisses_, a.s.sonanced or mono-rhymed paragraphs in decasyllables or alexandrines, which, to those who have once caught their harmony, have an indescribable and unparalleled charm. Yet further, these attractions come from the strange unfamiliar world of life and character described and displayed; from the brilliant stock epithets and phrases that stud the style as if with a stiff but glittering embroidery; and from other sources too many to mention here.
[Sidenote: Some drawbacks.]
Yet one must draw attention to the fact that all the named sources of the attraction, and may perhaps ask the reader to take it on trust that most of the unnamed, are not essentially or exclusively attractions of fiction--that they are attractions of poetry. And, on the other hand, while the weaving of so vast a web of actual fiction remains "to credit," there are not a few things to be set on the other side of the account. The sameness of the _chanson_ story, the almost invariable recurrence of the stock motives and frameworks--of rebellion, treason, paynim invasion, petulance of a King"s son, somewhat too "coming"
affection of a King"s daughter, tyrannical and Lear-like _impotentia_ of the King himself, etc.--may be exaggerated, but cannot be denied. In the greatest of all by general acknowledgment, the far-famed _Roland_, the economy of pure story interest is pushed to a point which in a less unsophisticated age--say the twentieth instead of the twelfth or eleventh century--might be put down to deliberate theory or crotchet.
The very incidents, stirring as they are, are put as it were in skeleton argument or summary rather than amplified into full story-flesh and blood; we see such heroine as there is only to see her die; even the great moment of the horn is given as if it had been "censored" by somebody. People, I believe, have called this brevity Homeric; but that is not how I read Homer.
In fact, so jealous are some of those who well and wisely love the _chansons_, that I have known objections taken to ranking as pure examples, despite their undoubted age and merit, such pieces as _Amis et Amiles_ (for pa.s.sion and pathos and that just averted tragedy which is so difficult to manage, one of the finest of all) and the _Voyage a Constantin.o.ble_, the single early specimen of mainly or purely comic donnee.[15] This seems to me, I confess, mere prudery or else mistaken logic, starting from the quite unjustifiable proposition that nothing that is not found in the _Chanson de Roland_ ought to be found in any _chanson_. But we may admit that the "bones"--the simplest terms of the _chanson_-formula--hardly include varied interests, though they allow such interests to be clothed upon and added to them.
[Sidenote: But a fair balance of actual story merit.]
Despite this admission, however, and despite the further one that it is to the "romances" proper--Arthurian, cla.s.sical, and adventurous--rather than to the _chansons_ that one must look for the first satisfactory examples of such clothing and addition, it is not to be denied that the _chansons_ themselves provide a great deal of it--whether because of adulteration with strictly "romance" matter is a question for debate in another place and not here. But it would be a singularly ungrateful memory which should, in this place, leave the reader with the idea that the _Chanson de Geste_ as such is merely monotonous and dull. The intensity of the appeal of _Roland_ is no doubt helped by that approach to bareness--even by a certain tautology--which has been mentioned.
_Aliscans_, which few could reject as faithless to the type, contains, even without the family of dependent poems which cl.u.s.ter round it, a vivid picture of the valiant insubordinate warrior in William of Orange, with touches of comedy or at least horse-play.
[Sidenote: Some instances of this.]
The striking, and to all but unusually dull or hopelessly "modern"
imaginations as unusually beautiful, centre-point of _Amis et Amiles_,--where one of the heroes, who has sworn a "white" perjury to save his friend and is punished for it by the terror, "white" in the other sense, of leprosy, is abandoned by his wife, and only healed by the blood of the friend"s children, is the crowning instance of another set of appeals. The catholicity of a man"s literary taste, and his more special capacity of appreciating things mediaeval, may perhaps be better estimated by his opinion of _Amis et Amiles_ than by any other touchstone; for it has more appeals than this almost tragic one--a much greater development of the love-motive than either _Roland_ or _Aliscans_, and a more varied interest generally. Its continuation, _Jourdains de Blaivies_, takes the hero abroad, as do many other _chansons_, especially two of the most famous, _Huon de Bordeaux_ and _Ogier de Danemarche_. These two are also good--perhaps the best--examples of a process very much practised in the Middle Ages and leaving its mark on future fiction--that of expansion and continuation.
In the case of Ogier, indeed, this process was carried so far that enquiring students have been known to be sadly disappointed in the almost total disconnection between William Morris"s beautiful section of _The Earthly Paradise_ and the original French, as edited by Barrois in the first attempt to collect the _chansons_ seventy or eighty years ago.
The great "Orange" subcycle, of which _Aliscans_ is the most famous, extends in many directions, but is apt in all its branches to cling more to "war and politics." William of Orange is in this respect partly matched by Garin of Lorraine. No _chanson_ retained its popularity, in every sense of that word, better than the _Quatre Fils d"Aymon_--the history of Renaut de Montauban and his brothers and cousin, the famous enchanter-knight Maugis. As a "boy"s book" there is perhaps none better, and the present writer remembers an extensive and apparently modern English translation which was a favourite "sixty years since." _Berte aux grands Pies_, the earliest form of a well-known legend, has the extrinsic charm of being mentioned by Villon; while there is no more agreeable love-story, on a small scale and in a simple tone, than that of Doon and Nicolette[16] in _Doon de Mayence_. And not to make a mere catalogue which, if supported by full abstracts of all the pieces, would be inordinately bulky and would otherwise convey little idea to readers, it may be said that the general _chanson_ practice of grouping together or branching out the poems (whichever metaphor be preferred) after the fashion of a family-tree involves of itself no inconsiderable call on the tale-telling faculties. That the writers pay little or no attention to chronological and other possibilities is hardly much to say against them; if this be an unforgivable sin it is not clear how either d.i.c.kens or Thackeray is to escape d.a.m.nation, with Sir Walter to greet them in their uncomfortable sojourn.
But it is undoubtedly true that the almost exclusive concentration of the attention on war prevents the attainment of much detailed novel-interest. Love affairs--some glanced at above--do indeed make, in some of the _chansons_, a fuller appearance than the flashlight view of lost tragedy which we have in _Roland_. But until the reflex influence of the Arthurian romance begins to work, they are, though not always disagreeable or ungraceful, of a very simple and primitive kind, as indeed are the delineations of manners generally.
[Sidenote: The cla.s.sical borrowings--Troy and Alexander.]
The "matter of Rome the Great," as the original text has it (though, in fact, Rome proper has little to do with the most important examples of the cla.s.s), adds very importantly to the development of romance, and through that, of novel. Its bulk is considerable, and its examples have interest of various kinds. But for us this interest is concentrated upon, if not exclusively confined to, the two great groups (undertaken by, and ill.u.s.trated in, the three great literary languages of the earlier Middle Ages, and, as usual, most remarkably and originally in French) of the Siege of Troy and the life of Alexander. It should be almost enough to say of the former that it introduced,[17] with practically nothing but the faintest suggestion from really cla.s.sical sources, the great romance-novel of the loves of Troilus and Cressida to the world"s literature; and of the second, that it gives us the first instance of the infusion of Oriental mystery and marvel that we can discern in the literature of the West. For details about the books which contain these things, their authors and their probable sources and development, the reader must, as in other cases, look elsewhere.[18] It is only our business here to say something about the general nature of the things themselves and about the additions that they made to the capital, and in some cases almost to the "plant," of fiction.
[Sidenote: _Troilus._]
That the Troilus and Cressida romance, with its large provision and its more large suggestion of the accomplished love-story, evolved from older tale-tellers by Boccaccio and Chaucer and Henryson and Shakespeare, is not a pure creation of the earlier Middle Ages, few people who patiently attend to evidence can now believe. Even in the wretched summaries of the Tale of Troy by Dictys and Dares (which again no such person as the one just described can put very early), the real novel-interest--even the most slender romance-interest--is hardly present at all. Benoit de Sainte-More in the twelfth century may not have actually invented this; it is one of the principles of this book, as of all that its writer has written, that the quest of the inventor of a story is itself the vainest of inventions. But it is certain that n.o.body hitherto has been able to "get behind him," and it is still more certain that he has given enough base for the greater men who followed to build upon. If he cannot be credited with the position of the pseudo-Callisthenes (see below) in reference to the Alexander story, he may fairly share that of his contemporary Geoffrey of Monmouth, if not even of Nennius, as regards that of Arthur. The situation, or rather the group of situations, is of the most promising and suggestive kind, negatively and positively. In the first place the hero and heroine are persons about whom the great old poets of the subject have said little or nothing; and what an immense advantage this is all students of the historical novel of the last hundred years know. In the second, the way in which they are put in action (or ready for action) is equally satisfactory, or let us say stimulating. In a great war a prince loves a n.o.ble lady, who by birth and connections belongs to the enemy, and after vicissitudes, which can be elaborated according to the taste and powers of the romancer, gains her love. But the course of this love is interrupted by her surrender or exchange to the enemy themselves; her beauty attracts, nay has already attracted, the fancy of one of the enemy"s leaders, and being not merely a coquette but a light-o"-love[19] she admits his addresses. Her punishment follows or does not follow, is accomplished during the life of her true lover or not, according again to the taste and fancy of the person who handles the story. But the scheme, even at its simplest, is novel-soil: marked out, matured, manured, and ready for cultivation, and the crops which can be grown on it depend entirely upon the skill of the cultivator.
For all this some would, as has been said above, see sufficient suggestion in the Greek Romance. I have myself known the examples of that Romance for a very long time and have always had a high opinion of it; but except what has been already noticed--the prominence of the heroine--I can see little or nothing that the Mediaeval romance could possibly owe to it, and as a matter of fact hardly anything else in common between the two. In the last, and to some extent the most remarkable (though very far from the best if not nearly the worst), of the Greek Romances, the _Hysminias and Hysmine_ of Eustathius, we have indeed got to a point in advance, taking that word in a peculiar sense, even of Troilus at its most accomplished, that is to say, the Marinism or Marivaudage, if not even the Meredithese, of language and sentiment.
But _Hysminias and Hysmine_ is probably not older than Benoit de Sainte-More"s story, and as has just been said, Renaissance, nay post-Renaissance, not Mediaeval in character. We must, of course, abstain from "reading back" Chaucer or even Boccaccio into Benoit or into his probable plagiarist Guido de Columnis; but there is nothing uncritical or wrong in "reading forward" from these to the later writers. The hedge-rose is there, which will develop into, and serve as a support for, the hybrid perpetual--a term which could itself be developed in application, after the fashion of a mediaeval _moralitas_.
And when we have actually come to Pandaro and Deiphobus, to the "verse of society," as it may be called in a new sense, of the happier part of Chaucer and to the intense tragedy of the later part of Henryson, then we are in the workshop, if not in the actual show-room, of the completed novel. It would be easy, as it was not in the case of the _chansons_, to ill.u.s.trate directly by a translation, either here from Benoit or later from the shortened prose version of the fourteenth century, which we also possess; but it is not perhaps necessary, and would require much s.p.a.ce.
[Sidenote: _Alexander._]
The influence of the Alexander story, though scarcely less, is of a widely different kind. In _Troilus_, as has been said, the Middle Age is working on scarcely more than the barest hints of antiquity, which it amplifies and supplements out of its own head and its own heart--a head which can dream dream-webs of subtlest texture unknown to the ancients, and a heart which can throb and bleed in a fashion hardly shown by any ancient except Sappho. With the Alexander group we find it much more pa.s.sively recipient, though here also exercising its talent for varying and amplification. The controversies over the pseudo-Callisthenes, "Julius Valerius," the _Historia de Praeliis_, etc., are once more not for us; but results of them, which have almost or quite emerged from the state of controversy, are. It is certain that the appearance, in the cla.s.sical languages, of the wilder legends about Alexander was as early at least as the third century after Christ--that is to say, long before even "Dark" let alone "Middle" Ages were thought of--and perhaps earlier. There seems to be very little doubt that these legends were of Egyptian or Asiatic origin, and so what we vaguely call "Oriental." They long antic.i.p.ated the importing afresh of such influences by the Crusades, and they must, with all except Christians and Jews (that is to say, with the majority), have actually forestalled the Oriental influence of the Scriptures. Furthermore, when Mediaeval France began to create a new body of European literature, the Crusades had taken place; the appet.i.te for things Oriental and perhaps we should say the half-imaginative power of appreciating them, had become active; and a considerable amount of literature in the vernacular had already been composed. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the _trouveres_ should fly upon this spoil. By not the least notable of the curiosities of literature in its own cla.s.s, they picked out a historical but not very important episode--the siege of Gaza and Alexander"s disgraceful cruelty to its brave defender--and made of this a regular _Chanson de Geste_ (in all but "Family" connection), the _Fuerres de Gadres_, a poem of several thousand lines. But the most generally popular (though sometimes squabbled over) parts of the story, were the supposed perversion of Olympias, not by the G.o.d Ammon but by the magician-king Nectanabus personating the G.o.d and becoming thereby father of the Hero; the Indian and some other real campaigns (the actual conquest of Persia was very slightly treated), and, far above all, the pure Oriental wonder-tales of the descent into the sea, the march to the Fountain of Youth, and other myths of the kind.
Few things can be more different than the story-means used in these two legends; yet it must be personal taste rather than strict critical evaluation which p.r.o.nounces one more important to the development of the novel than the other. There is a little love interest in the Alexander poems--the heroine of this part being Queen Candace--but it is slight, episodic, and rudimentary beside the complex and all-absorbing pa.s.sions which, when genius took the matter in hand, were wrought out of the truth of Troilus and the faithlessness of Cressid. The joys of fighting or roaming, of adventure and quest, and above all those of marvel, are the attractions which the Alexander legend offers, and who shall say that they are insufficient? At any rate no one can deny that they have been made the seasoning, if not the stuff and substance, of an enormous slice of the romance interest, and of a very large part of that of the novel.
[Sidenote: The Arthurian Legend.]
It is scarcely necessary to speak of other cla.s.sical romances, and it is of course very desirable to keep in mind that the Alexander story, in no form in which we have it, attempts any _strictly_ novel interest; while though that interest is rife in some forms of "Troilus," those forms are not exactly of the period, and are in no case of the language, with which we are dealing. It was an Italian, an Englishman, and a Scot who each in his own speech--one in the admirable vulgar tongue, of which at that time and as a finished thing, Italian was alone in Europe as possessor; the others in the very best of Middle English, and, as some think, almost the best of Middle Scots verse--displayed the full possibilities of Benoit"s story. But the third "matter," the matter of Britain or (in words better understanded of most people) the Arthurian Legend, after starting in Latin, was, as far as language went, for some time almost wholly French, though it is exceedingly possible that at least one, if not more, of its main authors was no Frenchman. And in this "matter" the exhibition of the powers of fiction--prose as well as verse--was carried to a point almost out of sight of that reached by the _Chansons_, and very far ahead of any contemporary treatment even of the Troilus story.
[Sidenote: Chrestien de Troyes and the theories about him.]
Before, however, dealing with this great Arthurian story as a stage in the history of the Novel-Romance in and by itself, we must come to a figure which, though we have very little substantial knowledge of it, there is some reason for admitting as one of the first named and "coted"
figures in French literature, at least as regards fiction in verse. It is well known that the action of modern criticism is in some respects strikingly like that of the sea in one of the most famous and vivid pa.s.sages[20] of Spenser"s unequalled scene-painting in words with musical accompaniment of them. It delights in nothing so much as in stripping one part of the sh.o.r.e of its belongings, and hurrying them off to heap upon another part. Chrestien de Troyes is one of the lucky personages who have benefited, not least and most recently, by this fancy. It is true that the actual works attributed to him have remained the same--his part of the sh.o.r.e has not been actually extended like part of that of the Humber. But it has had new riches, honours, and decorations heaped upon it till it has become, in the actual Spenserian language of another but somewhat similar pa.s.sage (111. iv. 20), a "rich strond" indeed. Until a comparatively recent period, the opinion entertained of Chrestien, by most if not all competent students of him, was pretty uniform, and, though quite favourable, not extraordinarily high. He was recognised as a past-master of the verse _roman d"aventures_ in octosyllabic couplet, who probably took his heterogeneous materials wherever he found them; "did not invent much"
(as Thackeray says of Smollett), but treated whatever he did treat in a singularly light and pleasant manner, not indeed free from the somewhat undistinguished fluency to which this "light and lewed" couplet, as Chaucer calls it, is liable, and showing no strong grasp either of character or of plot, but on the whole a very agreeable writer, and a quite capital example of the better cla.s.s of _trouvere_, far above the _improvisatore_ on the one hand and the dull compiler on the other; but below, if not quite so far below, the definitely poetic poet.
To an opinion something like this the present writer, who formed it long ago, not at second hand but from independent study of originals, and who has kept up and extended his acquaintance with Chrestien, still adheres.
Of late, however, as above suggested, "Chrestiens" have gone up in the market to a surprising extent. Some twenty years ago the late M. Gaston Paris[21] announced and, with all his distinguished ability and his great knowledge elaborately supported, his conclusions, that the great French prose Arthurian romances (which had hitherto been considered by the best authorities, including his own no less admirable father, M.
Paulin Paris, slightly anterior to the poet of Troyes, and in all probability the source of part at least of his work) were posterior and probably derivative. Now this, of itself, would of course to some extent put up Chrestien"s value. But it, and the necessary corollaries from it, as originality and so forth, by no means exhaust the additional honours and achievements which have been heaped upon Chrestien by M.
Paris and by others who have followed, more or less accepted, and in some cases bettered his ascriptions. In the first and princ.i.p.al place, there has been a tendency, almost general, to dethrone Walter Map from his old position as the real begetter of the completed Arthurian romance, and to subst.i.tute the Troyan. Then, partly in support, but also to some extent, I think, independently of this immense enn.o.blement, discoveries have been made of gifts and graces in Chrestien himself, which had entirely escaped the eyes of so excellent a critic, so erudite a scholar, and so pa.s.sionate a lover of Old French literature as the elder M. Paris, and which continue to be invisible to the far inferior gifts and knowledge, but if I may dare to say so, the equal good will and the not inconsiderable critical experience, of the present historian.
Now with large parts of this matter we have, fortunately enough, nothing to do, and the actual authorship of the great Arthurian conception, namely, the interweaving of the Graal story on the one hand and the loves of Lancelot and Guinevere on the other, with the Geoffrey of Monmouth matter, concerns us hardly at all. But some have gone even further than has been yet hinted in the exaltation of Chrestien. They have discovered in him--"him-by-himself-him"--as the author of his actual extant works and not as putative author of the real Arthuriad, not merely a pattern example of the court _trouvere_--as much as this, or nearly as much, has been admitted here--but almost the inventor of romance and even of something very like novel, a kind of mediaeval Scott-Bulwer-Meredith, equally great at adventure, fashion, and character-a.n.a.lysis; subject only, and that not much, to the limitations of the time. In fact, if I do not do some of these panegyrists injustice, we ought to have a fancy bust of Chrestien, with the t.i.tles of his works gracefully inscribed on the pedestal, as a frontispiece to this book, if not even a full-length statue, robed like a small St.
Ursula, and like her in Memling"s presentation at Bruges, sheltering in its ample folds the child-like figures of future French novelists and romancers, from the author of _Auca.s.sin et Nicolette_ to M. Anatole France.
Again, some fifty years of more or less critical reading of novels of all ages and more than one or two languages, combined with nearly forty years reading of Chrestien himself and a pa.s.sion for Old French, leave the present writer quite unable to rise to this beatific vision. But let us, before saying any more what Chrestien could or could not do, see, in the usual cold-blooded way, what he _did_.
[Sidenote: His unquestioned work.]
The works attributed to this very differently, though never unfavourably, estimated tale-teller--at least those which concern us--are _Percevale le Gallois_, _Le Chevalier a[22] la Charette_, _Le Chevalier au Lyon_, _Erec et Enide_, _Cliges_, and a much shorter _Guillaume d"Angleterre_. This last has nothing to do with the Conqueror (though the t.i.tle has naturally deceived some), and is a semi-mystical romance of the group derived from the above-mentioned legend of St.
Eustace, and represented in English by the beautiful story of _Sir Isumbras_. It is very doubtfully Chrestien"s, and in any case very unlike his other work; but those who think him the Arthurian magician might make something of it, as being nearer the tone of the older Graal stories than the rest of his compositions, even _Percevale_ itself. Of these, all, except the _Charette_, deal with what may be called outliers of the Arthurian story. _Percevale_ is the longest, but its immense length required, by common confession, several continuators;[23] the others have a rather uniform allowance of some six or seven thousand lines. _Cliges_ is one of the most "outside" of all, for the hero, though knighted by Arthur, is the disinherited heir of Constantinople, and the story is that of the recovery of his kingdom. _Erec_, as the second part of the t.i.tle will truly suggest, though the first may disguise it, gives us the story of the first of Tennyson"s original _Idylls_. The _Chevalier au Lyon_ is a delightful romance of the Gawain group, better represented by its English adaptation, _Ywain_, than any other French example. _Percevale_ and the _Charette_ touch closest on the central Arthurian story, and the latter has been the chief battlefield as to Chrestien"s connection therewith, some even begging the question to the extent of adopting for it the t.i.tle _Lancelot_.
[Sidenote: Comparison of the _Chevalier a la Charette_ and the prose _Lancelot_.]
The subject is the episode, well known to English readers from Malory, of the abduction of Guinevere by Meleagraunce, the son of King Bagdemagus; of the inability of all knights but Lancelot (who has been absent from Court in one of the lovers" quarrels) to rescue her; and of his undertaking the task, though hampered in various ways, one of the earliest of which compelled him to ride in a cart--a thing regarded, by one of the odd[24] conventions of chivalry, as disgraceful to a knight.
Meleagraunce, though no coward, is treacherous and "felon," and all sorts of mishaps befall Lancelot before he is able for the second time to conquer his antagonist, and finally to take his over and over again forfeited life. But long before this he has arrived at the castle where Guinevere is imprisoned; and has been enabled to arrange a meeting with her at night, which is accomplished by wrenching out the bars of her window. The ill chances and _quiproquos_ which result from his having cut his hands in the proceeding (though the actual visit is not discovered), and the arts by which Meleagraunce ensnares the destined avenger for a time, lengthen out the story till, by the final contest, Meleagraunce goes to his own place and the Queen is restored to hers.
Unfortunately the blots of constant tautology and verbiage, with not infrequent flatness, are on all this gracious story as told by Chrestien.[25] Among the traps and temptations which are thrown in Lancelot"s way to the Queen is one of a highly "sensational" nature. In the night Lancelot hears a damsel, who is his hostess, though he has refused her most thorough hospitality, shrieking for a.s.sistance; and on coming to the spot finds her in a situation demanding instant help, which she begs, if the irreparable is not to happen. But the poet not only gives us a heavily figured description of the men-at-arms who bar the way to rescue, but puts into the mouth of the intending rescuer a speech (let us be exact) of twenty-eight lines and a quarter, during which the just mentioned irreparable, if it had been seriously meant, might have happened with plenty of time to spare. So, in the crowning scene (excellently told in Malory), where the lover forces his way through iron bars to his love, reckless of the tell-tale witness of his bleeding hands, the circ.u.mlocutions are _plusquam_ Richardsonian--and do not fall far short of a serious antic.i.p.ation of Shakespeare"s burlesque in _A Midsummer Night"s Dream_. The mainly gracious description is spoilt by terrible bathetics from time to time. Guinevere in her white nightdress and mantle of scarlet and _camus_[26] on one side of the bars, Lancelot outside, exchanging sweet salutes, "for much was he fain of her and she of him," are excellent. The next couplet, or quatrain, almost approaches the best poetry. "Of villainy or annoy make they no parley or complaint; but draw near each other so much at least that they hold each other hand by hand." But what follows? That they cannot come together vexes them so immeasurably that--what? They blame the iron work for it. This certainly shows an acute understanding[27] and a very creditable sense of the facts of the situation on the part of both lovers; but it might surely have been taken for granted. Also, it takes Lancelot forty lines to convince his lady that when bars are in your way there is nothing like pulling them out of it. So in the actual pulling-out there is the idlest exaggeration and surplusage; the first bar splits one of Lancelot"s fingers to the sinews and cuts off the top joint of the next. The actual embraces are prettily and gracefully told (though again with otiose observations about silence), and the whole, from the knight"s coming to the window to his leaving it, takes 150 lines. Now hear the prose of the so-called "Vulgate _Lancelot_."
"And he came to the window: and the Queen, who waited for him, slept not, but came thither. And the one threw to the other their arms, and they felt each other as much as they could reach. "Lady," said Lancelot, "if I could enter yonder, would it please you?" "Enter," said she, "fair sweet friend? How could this happen?" "Lady," said he, "if it please you, it could happen lightly." "Certainly," said she, "I should wish it willingly above everything." "Then, in G.o.d"s name," said he, "that shall well happen. For the iron will never hold." "Wait, then," said she, "till I have gone to bed." Then he drew the irons from their sockets so softly that no noise was made and no bar broke."
In this simple prose, sensuous and pa.s.sionate for all its simplicity, is told the rest of the story. There are eighteen lines of it altogether in Dr. Sommer"s reprint, but as these are long quarto lines, let us multiply them by some three to get the equivalent of the "skipping octosyllables." There will remain fifty to a hundred and fifty, with, in the prose, some extra matter not in the verse. But the acme of the contrast is reached in these words of the prose, which answer to some forty lines of the poet"s watering-out. "Great was the joy that they made each other that night, for long had each suffered for the other.
And when the day came, they parted." Beat that who can!
Many years ago, and not a few before M. Gaston Paris had published his views, I read these two forms of the story in the valuable joint edition, verse and prose, of M. Jonckbloet, which some ruffian (may Heaven _not_ a.s.soil him!) has since stolen or hidden from me. And I said then to myself, "There is no doubt which of these is the original."
Thirty years later, with an unbroken critical experience of imaginative work in prose and verse during the interval, I read them again in Dr.
Forster"s edition of the verse and Dr. Sommer"s of the prose, and said, "There is less doubt than ever." That the prose should have been prettified and plat.i.tudinised, decorated and diluted into the verse is a possibility which we know to be not only possible but likely, from a thousand more unfortunate examples. That the contrary process should have taken place is practically unexampled and, especially at that time, largely unthinkable. At any rate, whosoever did it had a much greater genius than Chrestien"s.
This is no place to argue out the whole question, but a single particular may be dealt with. The curiously silly pa.s.sage about the bars above given is a characteristic example of unlucky and superfluous amplification of the perfectly natural question and answer of the prose, "May I come to you?" "Yes, but how?" an example to be paralleled by thousands of others at the time and by many more later. Taken the other way it would be a miracle. Prose abridgers of poetry did not go to work like that in the twelfth-thirteenth century--nor, even in the case of Charles Lamb, have they often done so since.
It is, however, very disagreeable to have to speak disrespectfully of a writer so agreeable in himself and so really important in our story as Chrestien. His own gifts and performances are, as it seems to me, clear enough. He took from this or that source--his selection of the _Erec_ and _Percivale_ matters, if not also that of _Yvain_, suggests others besides the, by that time as I think, concentrated Arthurian story--and from the Arthuriad itself the substance of the _Chevalier a la Charette_. He varied and dressed them up with pleasant etceteras, and in especial, sometimes, though not always, embroidered the already introduced love-motive with courtly fantasies and with a great deal of detail. I should not be at all disposed to object if somebody says that he, before any one else, set the type of the regular verse _Roman d"aventures_. It seems likely, again, from the pieces referred to above, that he may have had originals more definitely connected with Celtic sources, if not actually Celtic themselves, than those which have given us the mighty architectonic of the "Vulgate" _Arthur_. In his own way and place he is a great and an attractive figure--not least in the history of the novel. But I can see nothing in him that makes me think him likely, and much that makes me think him utterly unlikely, to be the author of what I conceive to be the greatest, the most epoch-making, and almost the originating conception of the novel-romance itself. Who it was that did conceive this great thing I do not positively know. All external evidence points to Walter Map; no internal evidence, that I have seen, seems to me really to point away from him. But if any one likes let us leave him a mere Eidolon, an earlier "Great Unknown." Our business is, once more, with what he, whoever he was, did.
[Sidenote: The const.i.tution of the Arthuriad.]
The multiplicity of things done, whether by "him" or "them," is astonishing; and it is quite possible, indeed likely, that they were not all done by the same person. Mediaeval continuators (as has been seen in the case of Chrestien) worked after and into the work of each other in a rather uncanny fashion; and the present writer frankly confesses that he no more knows where G.o.dfrey de Lagny took up the _Charette_, or the various other sequelists the _Percevale_, from Chrestien than he would have known, without confession, the books of the _Odyssey_ done by Mr.
Broome and Mr. Fenton from those done by Mr. Pope. The _grand-oeuvre_ is the combination of Lancelot as (1) lover of the Queen; (2) descendant of the Graalwards; (3) author, in consequence of his sin, of the general failure of the Round Table Graal-Quest; (4) father of its one successful but half-unearthly Seeker; (5) bringer-about (in more ways than one[28]) of the intestine dissension which facilitates the invasion of Mordred and the foreigners and so the Pa.s.sing of Arthur, of his own rejection by the repentant Queen, and of his death. As regards minor details of plot and incident there have to be added the bringing in of the pre-Round Table part of the story by Lancelot"s descent from King Ban and his connections with King Bors, both Arthur"s old allies, and both, as we may call them, "Graal-heirs"; the further connection with the Merlin legend by Lancelot"s fostering under the Lady of the Lake;[29] the exaltation, inspiring, and, as it were, unification of the scattered knight-adventures through Lancelot"s constant presence as partaker, rescuer, and avenger;[30] the human interest given to the Graal-Quest (the earlier histories being strikingly lacking in this) by his failure, and a good many more. But above all there are the general characters of the knight and the Queen to make flesh and blood of the whole.