Nemo dedit voci tuæ hæc dulcia carmina, Nisi solus Rex cœlestis qui gubernat omnia.* Surely with all its rudeness and deficiencies this poem has the true passion of nature, and contains in it the prophecy and pledge of much more than it actually accomplishes. In that Gloriosa valde facta veris præ lætitiâ, we have no weak prelude of that rapturous enthusiasm and inspiration, which at a later day have given us such immortal hymns as the Ode to the Skylark, by Shelley. Or consider these lines of Marbod, bishop of Rheims in the twelfth century; which, stiffly and awkwardly versified as they may be, have yet a deep interest, as touching on those healing influences of nature, the sense of which is almost, if not entirely, confined to modern, that is to Christian, art. They belong to a poem on the coming of the spring; and, as the reader will observe, are in leonine hexameters : Moribus esse feris prohibet me gratia veris, * D. Fulberti Opera Varia, Paris, 1608, p. 181. I believe we owe to Dr. Neale the following very graceful translation: "When the earth, with spring returning, vests herself in fresher sheen, And the glades and leafy thickets are arrayed in living green; When a sweeter fragrance breatheth flowery fields and vales along, Then, triumphant in her gladness, Philomel begins her song: And with thick delicious warble far and wide her notes she flings, Telling of the happy spring tide and the joys that summer brings. In the pauses of men's slumber deep and full she pours her voice, In the labour of his travel bids the wayfarer rejoice. Night and day, from bush and greenwood, sweeter than an earthly lyre, She, unwearied songstress, carols, distancing the feathered choir, Fills the hillside, fills the valley, bids the groves and thickets ring, Made indeed exceeding glorious through the joyousness of spring. None could teach such heavenly music, none implant such tuneful skill, Save the King of realms celestial, who doth all things as He will." Ipsi naturæ congratulor, ut puto, jure: Bruma rigens, æstas, auctumnus, veris honestas.* May we not say that the old monkish poet is anticipating here and however faintly, yet distinctly—such strains as the great poets of nature in our own day have made to be heard-the conversion of the witch Maimuna in Thalaba, Peter Bell, or those loveliest lines in Coleridge's Remorse? With other ministrations thou, O Nature, Healest thy wandering and distempered child; To be a jarring and a dissonant thing By the benignant touch of love and beauty. p. 1617. Few are so just to it as Bähr (Die Christl. Dichter Rom's, p. 10): Wenn wir daher auch nicht unbedingt die Ansicht derjenigen theilen können, welche die Einführung dieser Christlichen Dichter statt der heidnischen in Schulen zum Zwecke des Sprachunterrichts wie zur Bildung eines ächt christlichen Gemüths vorschlagen, aus Gründen, die zu offen da liegen, um weiterer Men come to it with a taste formed on quite other models, trying it by laws which were not its laws, by the approximation which it makes to a standard which is so far from being its standard, that the nearer it reaches that, the further removed from any true value it is. They come trying the Gothic cathedral by the laws of the Greek temple, and because they do not find in it that which, in its very faithfulness to its own idea, it cannot have, they treat it as worthy only of scorn and contempt. Nor less have they forgotten, in estimating the worth of this poetry, that much which appears trite and commonplace to us was yet very far from being so at its first utterance.* When the Gothic nations which divided the Roman empire began to crave intellectual and spiritual food, in the healthy hunger of their youth there lay the capacity of deriving truest nourishment from that which to us, partly from our far wider range Ausführung zu bedürfen, die auch nie, selbst in Mittelalter, verkannt worden sind, so glauben wir doch dass es zweckmässig und von wesentlichem Nutzen seyn dürfte den Erzeugnissen christlicher Poesie auch auf unseren höheren Bildungsanstalten eine grössere Aufmerksamheit zuzuwenden, als diess bisher der Fall war, die Jugend demnach in den obern Classen der Gymnasien und Lyceen mit den vorzüglicheren Erscheinungen dieser Poesie, die ihnen jetzt so ganz fremd ist und bleibt, bekannt zu machen, ja selbst einzelne Stücke solcher Dichtungen in die Chrestomathien Lateinischer Dichter, in denen sie wahrlich, auch von anderen Standpunkten aus betrachtet, eine Stelle neben manchen Productionen der heidnischen Zeit verdienen, aufzunehmen, um so zugleich den lebendigen Gegensatz der heidnischen und christlichen Welt und Poesie erkennen zu lassen, und jugendlichen Gemüthern frühe einzuprägen. * Ampère (vol. iii. p. 213) says with truth, and on this very matter: Ce qui est peu important pour l'histoire de l'art peut l'être beaucoup pour l'histoire de l'esprit humain. E of choice, and partly also from a satiated appetite, seems little calculated to yield it.* But considerations of this kind would lead me too far, and lie too wide of the immediate scope of this * Ferdinand Wolf, in his instructive work, Ueber die Lais, p. 281, and James Grimm, have both observed, that a history of this medieval Latin poetry is a book still waiting to be written, and which, when it is written will fill up a huge gap in the literary history of Europe. We have nothing in the kind but Leyser's compendium, Historia Poëtarum et Poëmatum Medii Evi, Halæ, 1721, which would have its use for the future labourer in this field, and which he would find especially serviceable in its copious literary notices; but for a book making, as by its title it does, some claim to completeness, absurdly fragmentary and imperfect and this, even when is added to it another essay, which Leyser published two years earlier, Diss. de fictâ Medii Evi Barbarie, imprimis circa Poësin Latinam, Helmstadt, 1719. Less complete than even in his own day he might have made it, it is far more deficient now, when so much bearing on the subject has been brought to light, which was then unknown. The volume, too, is as much at fault in what it has, as what it has not including as it does vast poems of very slightest merits; and from which an extract or two would have sufficed. Edélestand du Méril's two volumes, Poésies populaires Latines antérieures au douxième Siècle, Paris, 1843, and Poésies populaires Latines du Moyen Age, Paris, 1847, contain many valuable notices, and poems which had not previously, or had only partially or incorrectly, been printed. But, as the titles indicate, they have only to do with the popular Latin poetry of the middle ages. Whoever undertakes such a work, must be one who esteems as the glory of this poetry, and not the shame, that it seeks to emancipate itself, if not always from the forms, yet always from the spirit, of the classical poetry of the old world — desires to stand on its own ground, to grow out of its own root. Indeed no one else would have sufficient love to the subject to induce him to face the labours and wearinesses which it would involve. The later Latin poetry, that which has flourished since volume, to allow me to follow them further. Already what I thought to put into a few paragraphs has insensibly grown almost into an essay, having from its length some of the pretensions of an essay, with at the same time little that should justify those pretensions. I may not further encroach upon the room which I would reserve for other men's words, rather than pre the revival of learning, and which has drawn its inspiration not from the Church, but from ancient classical literature, has found a very careful and enthusiastic historian; but one who, according to my convictions, has begun his work just where all or nearly all of any true value has ended, leaving untouched the whole period which really offers much of any deep or abiding interest. I mean Budik, in his work, Leben und Wirken der vorzüglichsten Latein. Dichter des XV-XVIII. Jahrhunderts, Vienna, 1828. Such, however, was not his mind, who could express himself about the Christian middle ages with a fanaticism of contempt, possible some thirty years ago, but hardly so now, when we are in danger rather of exaggerations in the other extreme. He says: "Since the ages of Pericles and Augustus, the perfect creations of which enjoy an everlasting youth, until the middle of the fifteenth century, one sees nothing but a waste, whose dreary and barren uniformity is only broken by some scattered brushwood, and whose most vigorous productions awaken rather astonishment than admiration." For myself, I never so felt the inanity of modern Latin poetry as, when looking over the entire three volumes of Budik (and I have repeated the experiment with much larger collections), I could find no single poem or fragment of a poem which I cared to use, save, indeed, a few lines from Casimir, which I already possessed. It was from no affected preference of the old that my extracts from modern Latin poetry are so few; but three or four is all. If Vida, or Sannazar, or Buchanan, or any other of the moderns, would have offered anything of value, I would gladly have adopted it; but repeatedly seeking for something, I always sought in vain. |