Part 4

The next interval from the end of Henry the third's reign, to the middle of the fourteenth century, when Chaucer came upon the _dais_, was filled up with a swarm of 'small poets.' These were principally translators of popular poems from the Roman or French authors, and their compositions were thence called _Romances_. They neither improved on the material before gathered, nor added anything of value to the store. And so we come to Geoffrey Chaucer--whence, let me recur to another branch of the subject in hand.

I have said that minstrels were known among the Saxons before the conquest, and that these were in high repute at the Saxon courts. That Alfred himself was a poet, and on one occasion, a minstrel. The Normans brought with them their harpers and troubadours[9] and the profession received a great acquisition of strength and honor. Every Baron had his own joculator, and we find amongst the records of the Old English families, items of _largesse_ to wandering harpers. Such were at all seasons welcomed by the feudal nobles--perhaps for the same reason that our modern aristocrats of Virginia were hospitable--from a love of news. Minstrels as news-gleaners--often coming too from the royal court--were a source of entertainment to the lords, who, immured in their solitary castles among swampy moors, or perched on hill-tops almost inaccessible to man, seldom heard other than an enemy at their gates.

[Footnote 9: Vid. the story of Taillefer--Du Cange.]

At the court of Henry I,--to whom Sir Walter Scott refers in those lines of his rambling epistle to George Ellis--

"But who shall teach my harp to gain A sound of the romantic strain, Whose Anglo-Norman tones whilere Could win the royal Henry's ear,-- Famed Beauclerc called, for that he loved, The minstrel, and his lay approved?"

Minstrels and minstrelsy were especially favored.

Beauclerc--the most accomplished monarch of his day, so far as letters were concerned, became by fellowship of feeling and taste, the patron of all the caste. The court-fed minions, like the lizard whose color depends on the species of grass or plant of which it eats, became of course completely Norman in their feelings. Indeed the greater number were Normans by birth and education, lured to the English court by the ever ready bait of patronage; and those that were not, seeing that these met with favor, imitated them in style and every thing else. The '_Anglo_' might with propriety have been dropped in Sir Walter's verse just quoted.[10]

[Footnote 10: It is a melancholy sight to see so exalted a class of human beings, whether from necessity or not, forever debasing themselves into servile dependency. Even Dante, whose lament that he had to climb another's stair would seem the outbreak of an independent spirit, could humble himself before a Guido.]

That the six kings following the conqueror were, with an exception, completely Norman in their habits and predilections, we may easily discover in the history of English law, traced back to its foundation among the very roots of the feudal system. It was against Norman innovation that the independent Barons of the thirteenth century arose, and held John Lackland in duress until his name was affixed to Magna Charta--a paper purporting to restore affairs to the state in which Edward the Saxon left them. It was this same fondness for French men and French rules that forced from Henry III a signature to the same paper,--John having evaded his on plea of compulsion.

But, although extremely opposed to those principles of freedom which Hengist and his followers had brought from the woods of Germany, and which ages after marked England as a great and prosperous nation, Norman ideas and sentiments were a southern sun to the growth of poetry and other literature.

I have mentioned Henry Beauclerc's love for these. After him, in the struggles of the heroic Maud or Matilda, and in the turbulent reign of the ill-fated Stephen, neither party had leisure for literary pursuits. But in the reign of Henry II, love and poetry both received countenance from that gallant monarch. His amours with Rosamond Clifford of Woodstock, have been the theme of many a popular ballad. Richard Coeur de Lion, the knight errant king,[11] and king of knight errants, invited the most famous of the Provencal bards to his court. _Ubi mel ibi apes_, and London was soon a theatre crowded with troubadours warm from the feet of the Pyrenees and banks of the Rhone. The whispers of the sunny Provencal love-ditty were breathed upon the rough ballad spirit of an earlier time,--mellowing that spirit, and adding to its former dauntlessness the gloss of polish and refinement.--Richard was himself a troubadour; and though at the present day his deeds of verse would damn a schoolboy, they were then thought worthy of being coupled with his deeds in arms.

[Footnote 11: Richard was truly a king _errant_,--for he spent scarcely one out of the ten years of his reign, in England.]

Many romantic traditions have been handed down to us of that adventurous monarch and Blondel de Nesle, his favorite minstrel. We read in the records of our ancient chroniclers, a simple tale of the latter's long pilgrimage in search of the captive king his master. How Blondel came one evening as the sun went down among the hills of the Rhine, to the solitary castle of Trifels, where the monarch lay in a damp cold dungeon. How he seated himself at the dungeon grate, and taking his harp from his shoulder, began a song which Richard and he had made together in Palestine; and how the overjoyed king took up the words as they reached his ear, and chanted to the top of his full voice in answer. And farthermore, how Blondel returned to England, and went 'shoonless and unhooded' through all parts of the land, until the captive's loyal subjects were aroused; and until the great ransom was gathered together by which those subjects bought his freedom. Many such stories are told of the time of the chivalric Richard; and the devoted fidelity of his dependents will ever be a bright spot on the page of that history into which their names have stolen, and through which they are now receiving--reward dearest to noble spirits,--virtuous and stainless renown.

In the reign of John Lackland, the minstrels were the means of saving the life and fortunes of an Earl of Chester, by stirring up the rabble, who had gathered to a fair in the border of Wales, to go to his rescue. This they did under one Dutton, at sight of whom and his followers, the Welsh besiegers retired from before the Earl's castle.

In the time of Edward I, "a _multitude_ of minstrels attended at the knighting of his son."

Under the reign of Edward II, such privileges were claimed by this class, that it became necessary to restrain them by a particular statute. Yet notwithstanding this, towards the latter part of this reign, we find that the minstrels still retained the liberty of entrance at will into the royal presence, and were still remarkable for splendor of dress.

During the short rule of Richard II, John of Gaunt instituted a court of minstrels at Tutbury in Staffordshire. They had a charter, empowering them variously, and bestowing _inter alia_ the right of appointing "a king of the minstrels with four subordinate officers."

Under the usurper Bolingbroke--Henry the Fourth--the profession maintained its dignity and importance, and met with favor from king and noble, notwithstanding the contempt of the stuttering Hotspur.

I had rather be a kitten and cry--mew, Than one of these same metre ballad mongers; I had rather hear a brazen canstick turned Or a dry wheel grate on an axletree, Etc.

Alcibiades cried down lute playing--because, though he excelled his comrades in beauty, eloquence, and gallantry, in this one little thing his skill failed him. Percy "spoke thick" and so song did not suit him. Even as late as Henry VIII, we find minstrels attached in licensed capacities, to the households of the great nobles. But the profession was fast sinking into disrepute; and in the great entertainment at Kenilworth Castle in 1575, a caricature copy of the old minstrel appeared among the sources of amusement prepared by the gallant Leicester for his royal mistress.

Thus had the profession completed a circle, and, in name at least, returned to its primitive state. Centuries before among the Saxons the singer was called _mimus_, _joculator_, _histrio_, indiscriminately. And though these words, like _parasite_, _demagogue_, _tyrant_, _sophist_ and others, bore a respectable meaning at the period of their first use, the minstrel in the course of time adapted himself to the meaning which time and change had given them, and in the reign of Elizabeth had become a mere '_jester_.' He turned the circle and went back to the titles of his progenitors, adding to the ignominy of those titles by wearing them. An act was at length passed, in the thirty-ninth year of the queen just mentioned, classing "all wandering minstrels, with rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars," and ordering them to be punished as such. From this severe judgment, however, those, attached by peculiar circumstances to the house of that Dutton spoken of above as the preserver of Ranulph the last Earl of Chester, were particularly excepted. This statute was the death blow to the few remnants of the genuine old minstrelsy.

I can now proceed undividedly in tracing out my slight sketch of English classic poets and written poetry.

Before I end this chapter, however, let me make a few remarks upon the spirit prevalent among the English after the conquest.

In the scrap of Saxon poetry quoted above, the reader will perceive that the chronicler mentions William's severe restrictions upon the exercise of woodcraft in the wide waste lands of the escheated manors. Following the same lines farther, we find in the old chronicle the winding up words, which I will translate from the original. After remarking that "he forbade men to kill harts or boars," the chronicler adds, "Rich men bemoaned it and poor men shuddered at it. But he was so stern and hot that he recked not the hatred of them all."

In consequence of these laws, Robinhoods and Littlejohns gathered in the matted thickets, and among the oak glades on the banks of every obscure lake and river, from the Thames to the Tweed. There was something alluring in the romantic life of an outlawed forester, and many a tall deer and bristling boar, died on the 'green shawe,' against whom that law, intended as a shield, pointed the arrow.

Thus sprung up a race of men of whom the ballad makers delighted to sing--coupling their names with 'Hereward the hardy outlaw' and the patriot heroes of the ground and trampled Saxons.

That the introduction of Norman manners brought with it more softness--a fact mentioned more than once--we may discover by comparing the productions of those bards who in the same age, sung in the rugged north country, and those who grew up in Kent and on the Thames. These latter were for years before the Norman's coming, receiving polish from their neighborhood, while those of Northumberland retained much of their early rudeness ages after. The bard who sings of the reyde on which

"The Perse out off Northumberland"

went to be killed among the Cheviot hills, has more roughness as well as more strength than any of his compeers on the Thames. This old poem is an important stone in the temple of English literature, and I will treat of it in due season, as coming within the pale of English classic poetry. This polish and increased softness introduced by the Normans, opened the eyes and ears of all to "the soother and honeyeder" style of poetry. And, indeed, unless Lord Bacon's remark,--that verse is a better balm than any the Egyptians knew, "for that it not only preserveth the stateliness of the form and the color of the face--which the Egyptian preservative doth not--but giveth to the one tenfold stateliness and borroweth from the rose for the other,"--be true, their women were passing stately and very beautiful. There were the three Mauds, all queens and all heroines. There was the proud yet "fair Rosamond," who forgot her pride in the arms of a royal lover; and many another fitting sharer in immortality with the Elgivas and Ediths of an earlier time.

Superstition too gave a tinge to poetry.--The Druids had left their foot marks upon the soil, and the ancient rites and feelings cherished in Wales--the last place of refuge for the injured Britons--still held an undefined influence over the hearts of their neighbors. This feeling blazed out for awhile, when the partisans of Henry slew Thomas a-Becket, the "child of love and wonder,"[12] before the altar of St. Bennet. And the murdered Archbishop was doubly canonized, in the holy ritual of Rome, and in the songs of those whom his death had made worshippers.

[Footnote 12: Sir J. Mackintosh tells an odd romance of the mother of the celebrated Archbishop, whom he calls the "child of love and wonder."]

But the greatest characteristic of the ballad, as used among the Norman successors to the Saxons in England, was a love for the legendary. Britagne--that country lying between the Loire and the Seine, had been peopled by a body of British emigrants about the time of the Saxon invasion under Hengist, and these calling themselves _Armoricans_, settled quietly down in a strange land. They retained many of their old British feelings, and when in the course of time they became nearly amalgamated with their Norman neighbors, and followed them into England, the old love of country revived and they sung of King[13] Arthur and his knights as champions of their forefathers. The strange legends of the early contests between Angles and Britons, were mere clews to the discovery of a thousand others, wholly unfounded in truth, yet none the less palatable to the ignorant. This love of the legendary remains to this day among the descendants of these people, and will, perhaps, never be obliterated.

[Footnote 13: "The words _Konung_, _Kyning_, _King_, _Kong_, _Koenig_, and others like them in the Teutonic languages, denoted every sort of command from the highest to that of a very narrow extent. It would be a gross fallacy to understand these words in their modern sense, when we meet them in Anglo-Saxon history."]

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

MR. WHITE,--I offer a very threadbare excuse for the publication of the following verses. They are published "at the request of a friend," for whom, indeed, they were written. You have accused me of obscurity, and to prevent a repetition of your censure, I will here add a scrap of explanation. "The Last Indian" is something of a Salathiel; he has survived his whole race. Stanza VI, refers to the Aztecs and other tribes long ago extinct, and supposed to have lived once upon a time, among the higher valleys east and west of the Mississippi. A second and more hardy people, referred to in stanza V, perhaps drove the Aztecs, as the Huns drove the Goths, southward, upon the rich regions of Mexico. These dead Mexican tribes are described on their return--led by a kind of _amor patriæ_ instinct--to their early homes in the north.

Before ending this scrawl, I would correct an error into which you have fallen with regard to my signature. "Zarry Zyle" should be

LARRY LYLE.

THE LAST INDIAN.

Once more, and yet once more, I give unto my harp a midnight-woven lay; --I heard the ebon waters roar, I heard the flood of ages pass away.--_Kirke White_.

I.

I slept beneath a tree one Summer eve, My couch a bed of blossom-beaded thyme, My roof the bough which spirit fingers weave, My slumber-song a brooklet's mellow chime: I dreamed--and far away thro' space and time, My liberated spirit joyfully Forth went--a pioneer well skilled to climb The cloudy crags and cliffs of mystery. I dreamed--I speak my dream; and canst thou read it me?

II.

On the jagg'd summit of a mountain range, More azure than the blue sky, sternly stood-- Like Sathanas of old--a wanderer strange, Drinking deep grief, as one who meets the flood Of bitterness in some parched solitude; Before him spread, in undulations vast, A Prairie sea, all isled with rock and wood; And young winds closed their wings above its breast, As faint bees close their wings when Summer days have passed.

III.

The Sun had come--a weary traveller-- Up o'er the hills of ether, for methought 'Twas many thousand years since Lucifer Fell from his glory, and, with trial fraught And leaden labor, Time had weakness brought To Sun and Moon. Men saw the Sun upcome, And marvelled at its lustre: Sages sought That lustre's source, and said "at point of doom Mysterious fires full oft the closing eye illume."

IV.

Methought a change came o'er the face of earth; Hill, plain, and hollow shook as with the throe Of mortal agony. The mountain girth Shrunk, heaved, then burst asunder. In mad flow The waters of great lakes foamed, battling through Far scattered crags; and mighty rocks, down hurled From mountain tops, laid bare the volcano-- The great volcano! and its flame unfurled, Streamed redly, wrathfully, above the reeling world.

V.

A voice went forth, far louder than the roar Of bounding rivers; and the summons broke The deep sleep of earth's dead. Each burial shore And tree-robed mound in groaning travail shook, And giant skeletons from death awoke. Barbarians seemed they, armed with spear and bow; And thro' their ribs as thro' the winter oak Winds whistled; while from bone lips evermo' Uptrembled hollowly, horn murmurs, faint and low.

VI.

And, from the charnel valleys of the South, A multitude, vast, vast beyond compare, Moved darkly onward. Song and shout uncouth, Betokened their wild joy; while on the air, Forgotten instruments breathed music rare-- Sweet unknown tunes, as soft as hymn of rills. The Mammoth and the Mastodon were there, All yoked;--and then I heard far-groaning wheels: The tomb had gaped--the dead tribes sought their early hills!

VII.

Amid the groan and rumbling heave of earth, And noise of waters, came each silver tone. But ere my wonder ceased, a storm had birth, And rattling thunder mingled with the moan And sob of nature. O'er car--skeleton-- A cloud-veil passed and hid them from my sight; While o'er that cloud, far on a mountain throne, A city rocked--illumined by the light Of its own burning towers--fit type of frail man's might!

VIII.

And then the Sun waxed dim. The red Moon rode Above the trembling nations, with an eye Of wrath and anguish, and a brow of blood-- While one by one, afar, in the dun sky The stars went out, as dew-drops, when winds sigh, From grass and flower and thin leaf disappear. Then no man saw the Sun! but still on high The great Moon rode; and, ever redly clear, Glared thro' thick fog and mist, till men grew dumb with fear.

IX.

The wanderer looked forth tremblingly, and lo! A wide winged Eagle on the darkness came. Her brood had died,--all died! and wild with wo And reckless wrath, that terror might not tame-- Chasing the swart cloud from her eye of flame-- She sought the summit of that lonely peak. She saw the Red Man, and with joyous scream, Claimed fellowship; but to her iron beak A single death-flash leapt, and wreathed her scornful neck.

X.

Innumerable mounds belched lurid streams, And poured, in hot black showers, the cinder-rain; I gazed and saw, as high the forked gleams Sprang piercingly thro' volumed smoke again, Earth's wan-faced myriads. From the Ocean-plain Her living tribes had flown, to seek the light And safety of that adamantine chain, In shivering crowds; and wildered with affright, They toiled in throngs to reach the mountain's farthest height.

XI.

And one, more daring, stood upon the brink Of a volcano,--and his scathed hand raised, Dripping with hissing lava. Some would shrink; And many called on God; while some, amazed, Stood statuelike: and some in madness seized With Vampyre tooth, and laid their full veins bare. And one--a blue-eyed maiden--upward gazed In speechless wo, while gleamed her long fair hair And ghastly cheek, beneath that flame's unearthly glare.

XII.

Methought, pale girl, that thou wert of the line Of her I loved; and tears flowed full and fast, To see a form so beautiful as thine In the Volcano's death-light. This soon passed! Again with strength I heard and saw. A blast From unseen horn, rang wildly o'er the herd Of dead and living men: The myriad vast Wailed moaningly when each the strange blast heard, And dead and living stood with stony brows upreared.

XIII.

Earth heaved anew, and toppling crags fell down In darkness. Rivers turned and fled the main-- And galloping--like startled steeds back thrown By some strong rampart--rushed in fear again To their far founts, o'erwhelming rock and plain. The fiend Tornado shrieked and wrung the wood, Old Earth's scorched locks--until her ory brain Lay shelterless and bare: while beryl-hued And bubbling streams, breast, cheek, and cloven brow imbrued.

XIV.

Mine eye waned slowly into wakefulness; The wild forms of my dream waxed faint and dim; But ere they fled, methought the pallid race Had crumbled into ashes; while o'er him, Last of the injured, twin in death with time-- A strong joy swept. Woe's furrow had been ploughed Deep in his heart; he was avenged! As swim O'er Autumn skies the fleets of shattered cloud, So swam those scenes and passed. I turned and sobbed aloud.

XV.

A purfled Oreole sate upon a bough Above me, and with gentle carollings Shook the still air; e'er raining on my brow The dewy globules, with her restless wings: I love the bird,--I love the song she sings! For that I heard it by a lonely stream In days, when love and hope were rainbow things: The sweet bird soothed me, but my brain will teem Full many a mirthless eve, with fragments of that dream!

_Winchester, Va._

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

WILLIAMSBURG BIRTH NIGHT BALL.

MR. WHITE,--From all I can learn, your "Messenger" seems to give general and increasing satisfaction in this quarter: to use a French phrase, _tout le monde en dit du bien_. Though it is not probable any thing so light and playful, (and particularly at this late period of the month,) should obtain admission into its columns, yet, as one or two stanzas of the annexed _metrical_, have some how or other found their way into the newspapers, I have at last succeeded in procuring a copy of _the whole_, that you may exercise your own discretion in respect to its insertion. It originated as follows: Some young ladies of your place, during a visit to Williamsburg to attend the _Birth-night Ball_, &c. received from an accomplished female friend at Richmond, a charming poetical letter, describing _a musical party_ at which she had assisted; and narrating in a familiar, agreeable manner, the principal incidents that had occurred in their absence. The following lines were composed, as a _response_ to this lively and entertaining communication:--

WINTER SCENES AT WILLIAMSBURG.

Your letter, dear Mary, tho' resting so long, Without a response, gave us infinite pleasure; For seldom indeed, in the language of song, And verse of so beautiful, smooth-flowing measure, Have we met with the news and events of the day, Reported and told, in so pleasing a way-- Is it _thus_, that the _Muses_ to each other write, And render e'en _absence_, a source of delight?