public opinion, which was the actual moral result, will convince any inquirer into the history of the age how important was the agency so put in operation. All the elements of society were thus, to a certain extent, drawn together by an uniting sympathy, and by a common zeal in the promotion of objects, which could not but tend in some degree to temper their asperities. The kings of nations, the aristocracy, and the people, were united in emulation in the field, and the inequalities of rank were still further mitigated by the value set upon poetic talent, by whomsoever displayed. The East opened its wonders, the world was enchanted, and history became a romance. was the spring time of the mind, "the season of unfolding intellect and mental blossoming;" "Love, now an universal birth, From heart to heart was stealing, From earth to man, from man to earth, It was the hour of feeling." It The heart of man was bolder, his arm firmer, than in the days of dull reality, and the spirit of adventurous knighthood was softened into heroic gentleness and gallant love. The beauty of woman became a boast and a treasure, and the "mortal mixture of earth's mould" was worshipped as a starry divinity. And then surely was the fit hour of blooming for "the crowning rose of all the wreath," that poetic spirit which tended so much to rub off the rust, and refine away the accumulated barbarism of ages, to stir up the spirit to emulation, and to prepare the way for better things, when better things should come. The fountains of pure and gentle feelings, which were destined to spread refinement and civilization over the world, were at any rate opened. The chivalry and the poetry of these ages are inseparably connected. They are the fruits of one great moral revolution; they sprung up together, and are mutually illustrative of each other; they have similar blemishes and similar redeeming qualities; and where so much has been said about the one, it cannot be uninteresting to exhibit a few specimens of the other. In this poetry we have the best illustration of the state of society to which it owed its birth; of that striking mixture of strong feelings, religious associations, and metaphysical gallantry, which clothed the object of the poet's adoration with the form of angels; made her eyes the stars in which man was to read his destinies; opened a heaven to the happy lover; and made the woods, the plains, the rivers and the flowers, the witnesses and partners of his joy. With what tender gaiety opens the song of the Troubadour Arnaud de Marveil; Oh! how sweet the breeze of April, Breathing soft as May draws near! Every bird his well-known language By his happy partner's side. When to life the young birds spring, What frolic jollity revels in the song of the old Minnesinger Earl Conrad of Kirchberg, when he calls the gay circles, on the return of May, to go forth and see All her stores of jollity! O'er the laughing hedgerow's side Where the nightingale hath made Ring with her sweet melody; Hill and dale are May's own treasures, Hail this merry, merry May! The coincidence in tone between the society and the poetry of the age, is also observable in the whimsical institutions to which the reigning passion for gallantry gave birth. "La société, jeune encore, (as the entertaining author of "De l'Amour," Paris 1822, observes,) se plaisait dans les formalités et les cérémonies qui alors montraient la civilization, et qui aujourd'hui feraient mourir d'ennui. Le même caractère se retrouve dans la langue des Provençaux, dans la difficulté et l'entrelacement de leurs rimes, dans leur mots masculins et féminins pour exprimer le même objet, enfin dans le nombre infini de leur poëtes. Tout ce qui est forme dans la société, et qui aujourd'hui est si insipide, avait alors toute la fraicheur et la saveur de la noveauté." In the same period is to be observed the groundwork of the striking distinctions which mark the school of modern poetry, as opposed to the ancient or classic. The latter had in every respect an essentially masculine character: even in its tenderest effusions woman was treated only as subservient to the caprices and pleasures of a nobler sex. Our poetry, on the contrary, owes much of its charms to the gentler character which the different position of woman in society has necessarily infused into it. In the early ages the new feeling was wildly and extravagantly pursued : but in modern times its spirit is subdued, and it has subsided into those quieter pictures of social affection, of which classic literature contained little or nothing. The poetry of the Troubadours has seldom been impartially dealt with, even by the very few who have sought it in the originals. The public will judge whether they ought to be dismissed with such sweeping indiscriminate obloquy as is often heaped upon them, by critics, who pretend at the same time to be in ecstasies with the rimes of Petrarch and his imitators. The German Minnesingers [love-singers], the cotem poraries of the Troubadours, are now for the first time introduced to the English reader, and must surely often succeed in winning their way to the hearts of those who are glad to recognise any where the poetry of nature and feeling. To one objection, indeed, the charge of uniformity and want of variety, they are from their very nature subject; but on that head their eloquent countryman F. Schlegel must be suffered to plead their excuse : "The reproach of uniformity seems to be a very singular one: it is as if we should condemn the spring or a garden for the multitude of its flowers. It is perhaps true enough that ornaments of many kinds are more delightful when they occur singly than when we see them gathered together in masses. Laura herself could scarcely have read her own praises without wearisomeness, had she been presented at any one time with all the verses which Petrarch composed upon her during the period of her life. The impression of uniformity arises from our seeing these poems bound together into large collections, a fate which was probably neither the design nor the hope of those who composed them. But in truth, not only love songs but all lyric poems, if they are really true to nature and aim at nothing more than the expression of individual feelings, must necessarily be confined within a very narrow range, both of thought and sentiment. Of this we find many examples in |
