come prevalent, and when the 'song-schools' or 'guilds' became in Germany what the 'consistorios' and 'academies' were in other countries during the same decay of the art.

The results of such institutions in accelerating the progress of that decline which they pretend to obviate, but of which they are at once the symptom and disposing cause, may be traced historically in many other countries. Mr. Bowring in his 'Batavian Anthology' notices the same issue of the attempts made in Holland to force the growth of its native literature. "It is a singular fact," says he, "that the means which were employed in the 14th century for the advancement of the language and its literature became in the highest degree instrumental to its degradation. We allude to the foundation of the Chambers of Rhetoric, which took place towards the end of this æra. The degeneracy of the language may mainly be attributed to the wandering orators (sprekers), who, being called to the courts of princes, or admitted though uninvited, rehearsed, for money, the miserable doggrel produced by themselves or others. These people afterwards formed themselves, in Flanders and Brabant, into literary societies, which were known by the name of Chambers of Rhetoricians (Kamers der Rhetorijkers or Rederijkers), and which offered prizes to the most meritorious poets. The first Chambers appear to have been founded at Dixmuiden and Ant

werp: at the former place in 1394, and at the latter in 1400. These societies were formed in imitation of the French, who began to institute them about the middle of the 14th century, under the name of Collèges de Rhetorique. The example of Flanders was speedily followed by Zealand and Holland. In 1430 there was a Chamber at Middelburg; in 1433, at Vlaardingen; in 1434, at Nieuwkerk; and in 1437, at Gouda. Even insignificant Dutch villages had their Chambers. Among others, one was founded in the Lier in the year 1480. In the remaining provinces they met with less encouragement. They existed, however, at Utrecht, Amersfoort, Leeuwaarden, and Hasselt. The purity of the language was completely undermined by the riming self-called Rhetoricians, and their abandoned courses brought poetry itself into disrepute. All distinction of genders was nearly abandoned; the original abundance of words ran waste; and that which was left, became completely overwhelmed by a torrent of barbarous terms."

The change in the character of the German poets and in the quality of their verses, so far as we can judge from what has survived, was gradual. Among the latest, and not the meanest, ornaments of the proper Suabian school, we find many whose history and indeed whose very names mark the adoption of the art by men of a lower class of life. Instead of princes, nobles and knights, we have clerks, school

masters, and even mechanics*. The Chancellor (Der Chanzler), who has left some pieces of very considerable merit, has already been noticed as having in his origin been a fisherman of Steiermark, whose talents, perhaps, raised him to some office under Rodolph of Hapsburg. Regenbog, a name of much note, and one of "the twelve old-masters," was a smith at Mentz, as he himself declares, in stanzas which often lament his having left an honest mode of earning an independent livelihood for what the spirit of the age began to render an unprofitable calling. One of his songs, in the Colmar MS. and printed by Hagen and Docen in their Museum, II. 187, is not undeserving of note, from the similarity in its character to the modern tale of "The Three Warnings."-Death pays a premature and unwelcome visit to the poet in the days of his youth, and receives a remonstrance at the unreasonableness of the call. After a parley, his entreaties are heard: "Farewell! and live," says Death; "but be ready when I send my messengers to give thee thy warnings." The time comes-the

* Even the heraldry adapts itself to the change; and in the Manesse MS. we find Regenbog with hammer and tongs for the device on his shield; and, instead of the pomp of the tournament, the "schoolmaster," in the illumination which we have engraved, appears armed with the humbler honours of the rod.

messengers, in the form of the various bodily infirmities of old age, have arrived. "Who bids them speed, that they so fast arrive?" says the poet. Death answers the question by arriving in their train, and awakening his recollection to the import of the messages they convey. "Thus gently closed the strife," concludes the song, in an address of supplication to the Virgin, to receive the wearied and resigned traveller into his place of final repose.

At Mentz, which afterwards became the highplace of the 'song-schools,' Regenbog had an active rival in Henry of Meissen, a doctor of theology, and a canon of the cathedral there, more commonly known by the name of Frauenlob, or Praise-theladies; which he acquired, probably, from his zealous services in the support of the honour of the sex. "We know not," observes the Edinburgh Reviewer (vol. xxvi. p. 200), "what rewards their gratitude bestowed in his lifetime, but they gave an extraordinary demonstration of it at his funeral."

"On the eve of St. Andrew, in the year 1318," we read in the old chronicle of Albert of Strasburg, "Henry, surnamed Frauenlob, was buried at Mentz, in the parvis of the great church, near unto the stairs, with marvellous solemnity :-his corpse was carried by ladies from his dwelling-house unto the place of burial; and loudly did they mourn and bewail his death, on account of the infinite praises which he had

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bestowed on womankind in his poetry." The chronicle adds, that "so much good wine was poured into the grave, that it overflowed with the libations." Well might the good ladies of Mentz lament for the loss of the last of the minstrels who had so long toiled in their service! Almost prophetically did they crowd around the tomb where the spirit of German poetry was for centuries to make its bed of repose!

The Masters' were always anxious to clothe themselves with the ancient glory of the Minnesingers. They were fond of tracing up the origin of their school to a very remote antiquity; and the most celebrated names were placed, by all sorts of anachronisms, among the supposed united band of ancient founders. Nothing suited their purpose better than the poetic battle or tournament of Wartburg, which has been before alluded to as a supposed contest or 'tenson' at the court of the landgrave of Thuringia, though in reality it is very probably the composition, in that form, of one poet. To this event, real or imaginary, the Masters looked with great veneration, as a proof of the systematic cultivation of the art among the earliest worthies of the Suabian age; in short, as an undoubted type and precedent of a 'songschool.' They went even so far as to dress up this pseudo-historical tradition with supernatural details ; and these dreams are no small proofs of degeneracy in the taste and spirit of the age.