well as most rational, if we may use the phrase, of the oriental fictions. The Persian Romance of the Sha-Nameh is well known to Europeans by name, and by copious extracts; and the love-tale of Méjnoun and Leilah is also familiar to our ears, if not to our recollections. Many of the fictions in the extraordinary collection of the Arabian Tales, approach strictly to the character of Romances of Chivalry'; although in general they must be allowed to exceed the more tame northern fictions in dauntless vivacity of invention, and in their more strong tendency to the marvellous. Several specimens of the comic Romance are also to be found mingled with those which are serious; and we have the best and most positive authority that the recital of these seductive fictions is at this moment an amusement as fascinating and general among the people of the East, as the perusal of printed Romances and novels among the European public. But a minute investigation into this particular species of Romance would lead us from our present field, already sufficiently extensive for the limits to which our plan confines it. The European Romance, wherever it arises, and in whatsoever country it begins to be cultivated, had its origin in some part of the real or fabulous history of that country; and of this we will produce, in the sequel, abundant proofs. [But the simple tale of tradition had not passed through many mouths, ere some one, to indulge his own propensity for the wonderful, or to secure by novelty the attention of his audience, augments the meagre chronicle with his own apocryphal inventions. Skirmishes are magnified into great battles; the champion of a remote age is exaggerated into a sort of demi-god ; and the enemies whom he encountered and subdued are multiplied in number, and magnified in strength, in order to add dignity to his successes against them. Chanted to rhythmical numbers, the songs which celebrate the early valour of the fathers of the tribe become its war-cry in battle, and men march to conflict hymning the praises and the deeds of some real or supposed precursor who had marshalled their fathers in the path of victory. No reader can have forgotten that, when the decisive battle of Hastings commenced, a Norman minstrel, Taillefer, advanced on horseback before the invading host, and gave the signal for onset, by singing the Song of Roland, that renowned nephew of Charlemagne, of whom Romance speaks so much, and history so little; and whose fall, with the chivalry of Charles the Great in the pass of Roncesvalles, has given rise to such clouds of romantic fiction, that its very name has been for ever associated with it. The remarkable passage has been often quoted from the Brut of Wace, an Anglo-Norman metrical chronicle. "Taillefer, qui moult bien chantona Sur un cheval gi tost alont, Devant le Duc alont chantant De Karlemaigne et de Rollant, Which may be thus rendered: "Taillefer, who sung both well and loud, Who died at fatal Roncevaux." This champion possessed the sleight-of-hand of the juggler, as well as the art of the minstrel. He tossed up his sword in the air, and caught it again as he galloped to the charge, and showed other feats of dexterity. Taillefer slew two Saxon warriors of distinction, and was himself killed by a third. Ritson, with less than his usual severe accuracy, supposed that Taillefer sung some part of a long metrical Romance upon Roland and his history; but the words chanson, cantilena and song, by which the composition is usually described, seems rather to apply to a brief ballad or national song; which is also more consonant with our ideas of the time and place where it was chanted. But neither with these romantic and metrical chronicles did the mind long remain satisfied. More details were demanded, and were liberally added by the invention of those who undertook to cater for the public taste in such matters. The same names of kings and champions, which had first caught the national ear, were still retained, in order to secure attention; and the same assertions of authenticity, and affected references to real history, were stoutly made, both in the commencement and in the course of the narrative. Each nation, as will presently be seen, came to adopt to itself a cycle of heroes like those of the Iliad; a sort of common property to all minstrels who chose to make use of them, under the condition always that the general character ascribed to each individual hero was preserved with some degree of consistency. Thus, in the Romances of The Round Table, Gawain is usually represented as courteous; Kay as rude and boastful; Mordred as treacherous, and Sir Launcelot as a true, though a sinful lover, and in all other respects a model of chivalry. Amid the Paladins of Charlemagne, whose cycle may be considered as peculiarly the property of French in opposition to Norman-Anglo Romance, Gan, or Ganelon of Mayence, is as uniformly represented faithless, engaged in intrigues for the destruction of Christianity; Roland as brave, unsuspicious, devotedly loyal, and somewhat simple in his disposition; Renaud, or Rinaldo, is painted with all the properties of a borderer, valiant, alert, ingenious, rapacious, and unscrupulous. The same conventional distinctions may be traced in the history of the Nibelung, a composition of Scandinavian origin, which has supplied matter for so F ག many Teutonic adventurers. Meisteir Hildebrand, Etzel, Theodorick, and the champion Hogan, as well as Crimhelda and the females introduced, have the same individuality of character which is ascribed, in Homer's immortal writings, to the wise Ulysses, the brave but relentless Achilles, his more gentle friend Patroclus, Sarpedon the favourite of the Gods, and Hector the protector of mankind. It was not permitted to the invention of a Greek poet to make Ajax a dwarf, or Teucer a giant, Thersites a hero, or Diomedes a coward; and it seems to have been under similar restrictions respecting consistency, that the ancient romancers exercised their ingenuity upon the materials supplied them by their predecessors. But, in other respects, the whole store of romantic history and tradition was free to all as a joint stock in trade, on which each had a right to draw as suited his particular purposes. He was at liberty, not only to select a hero out of known and established names which had been the theme of others, but to imagine a new personage of his own pure fancy, and combine him with the heroes of Arthur's table or Charlemagne's Court, in the way which best suited his fancy. He was permitted to excite new wars against those bulwarks of Christendom, invade them with fresh and innumerable hosts of Saracens, reduce them to the last extremity, drive them from their thrones, and lead them into captivity, and again to relieve their persons, and restore their sovereignty, by events and agents totally unknown in their former story. In the characters thus assigned to the individual personages of romantic fiction, it is possible there might be some slight foundation in remote tradition, as there were also probably some real grounds for the existence of such persons, and perhaps for a very few of the leading circumstances attributed to them. But these realities only exist as the few grains of wheat in the bushel of chaff, incapable of being winnowed out, or cleared from the mass of fiction_with which each new romancer had in his turn overwhelmed them. So that Romance, though certainly deriving its first original from the pure font of History, is supplied, during the course of a very few generations, with so many tributes from the imagination, that at length the very name comes to be used to distinguish works of pure fiction. When so popular a department of poetry has attained this decided character, it becomes time to inquire who were the composers of these numerous, lengthened, and once admired narratives which are called Metrical Romances, and from whence they drew their authority. Both these subjects of discussion have been the source of great controversy among antiquaries; a class of men who, be it said with their forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which, therefore, we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence, and better temper, in proportion to their uncertainty. The late venerable Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, led the way unwarily to this dire controversy, by ascribing the composition of our ancient heroic songs and metrical legends, in rather too liberal language, to the minstrels, that class of men by whom they were generally recited. This excellent person, to whose memory the lovers of our ancient lyre must always remain so deeply indebted, did not, on publishing his work nearly fifty years ago, see the rigid necessity of observing the utmost and most accurate precision either in his transcripts or his definitions. The study which he wished to introduce was a new one—it was his object to place it before the public in an engaging and interesting form; and, in consideration of his having obtained this important point, we ought to make every allowance, not only for slight inaccuracies, but for some hasty conclusions, and even exaggerations, with which he was induced to garnish his labour of love. He defined the minstrels, to whose labours he chiefly ascribed the metrical compositions on which he desired to fix the attention of the public, as an order of men in the middle ages, who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sung to the harp verses composed by themselves or others."* In a very learned and elegant essay upon the text thus announced, the reverend Prelate in a great measure supported the definition which he had laid down; although it may be thought that, in the first editions at least, he has been anxious to view the profession of the minstrels on their fairest and most brilliant side; and to assign to them a higher station in society than a general review of all the passages connected with them will permit us to give to a class of persons, who either lived a vagrant life, dependent on the precarious taste of the public for a hard-earned maintenance, or, at best, were retained as a part of the menial retinue of some haughty baron, and in a great measure identified with his musical band. 66 The late acute, industrious, and ingenious Mr. Joseph Ritson, whose severe accuracy was connected with an unhappy eagerness and irritability of temper, took advantage of the exaggerations occasionally to be found in the Bishop's Account of Ancient Minstrelsy, and assailed him with terms which are anything but courteous. Without finding an excuse, either in the novelty of the studies in which Percy had led the way, or in the vivacity of imagination which he did not himself share, he proceeded to arraign each trivial inaccuracy as a gross fraud, and every deduction which he considered to be erroneous as a wilful untruth, fit to be stigmatised with the broadest appellation by which falsehood can be distinguished. Yet there is so little room for this extreme loss of temper, that upon a recent perusal of both these ingenious essays, we were surprised to find that the reverend editor of the Essay on Ancient Minstrels in England, prefixed to the first volume of Bishop Percy's Reliques. 7 Reliques, and the accurate antiquary, have differed so very little, as, in essential facts, they appear to have done. Quotations are, indeed, made by both with no sparing hand; and hot arguments, and, on one side at least, hard words, are unsparingly employed; while, as is said to happen in theological polemics, the contest grows warmer, in proportion as the ground concerning which it is carried on is narrower and more insignificant. In reality do not essentially differ. Ritson is chiefly offended at the sweeping conclusion, in which Percy states the minstrels as subsisting by the arts of poetry and music, and reciting to the harp verses composed by themselves and others. He shows very successfully that this definition is considerably too extensive, and that the term minstrel comprehended, of old, not merely those who recited to the harp or other instrument romances and ballads, but others who were distinguished by their skill in instrumental music only, and, moreover, that jugglers, sleight-of-hand performers, dancers, tumblers, and such like subordinate artists, who were introduced to help , away the tedious hours in an ancient feudal castle, were also comprehended under the general term of minstrel. But although he distinctly proves that Percy's definition applied only to one class of the persons termed minstrels, those namely who sung or recited verses, and in many cases of their own composition; the bishop's position remains unassailable, in so far as relates to one general class, and those the most distinguished during the middle ages. All minstrels did not use the harp, and recite or compose romantic poetry; but it cannot be denied that such was the occupation of the most eminent of the order. This Ritson has rather admitted than denied; and the number of quotations which his industry has brought together, rendered such an admission inevitable. Indeed, the slightest acquaintance with ancient romances of the metrical class, shows us that they were composed for the express purpose of being recited, or, more properly chanted, to some simple tune or cadence for the amusement of a large audience. Our ancestors, as they were circumscribed in knowledge, were also more limited in conversation than their enlightened descendants; and it seems probable, that, in their public festivals, there was great advantage found in the presence of a minstrel, who should recite some popular composition on their favourite subjects of love and war, to prevent those pauses of discourse which sometimes fall heavily on a company, even of the present accomplished age, and to supply an agreeable train of ideas to those guests who had none of their own. It is, therefore, almost constantly insinuated, that the Romance was to be chanted or recited to a large and festive society, and in some part or other of the piece, generally at the opening, there is a request of attention on the part of the performer; and hence, the perpetual "Lythe and listen, lordings free," which in those, or equivalent words, forms the introduction to so many Romances. |