PETER KLAUS. THE LEGEND OF THE GOATHERD.-RIP VAN WINKLE. THE following legend is offered to our readers, not only on the score of its intrinsic merit, but as being the undoubted source from which Geoffrey Crayon drew his Rip Van Winkle. This story of The Goatherd is to be found in Büsching's Popular Tales, page 327, where it is followed by a second legend on the same subject; both have reference to the celebrated Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who, in fact, is the subject of many a winter's tale amongst the Germans, but all springing from one and the same source. According to this primal story, the Emperor once took refuge, with a party of his followers, in the Kyffhäusen mountains, where he still lives, though under the influence of magic. Here he sits, with his friends, on a bench before a stone table, supporting his head on his hands, and in a state of apparent slumber. His red beard has grown through the table down to his feet, while his head nods and his eyes twinkle, as if he slept uneasily or were about to wake. At times this slumber is interrupted, but his naps are, for the most part, tolerably long, something about a hundred years' duration. In his waking moments, he is supposed to be fond of music, and amongst the numerous tales to which his magic state has given rise, there is one of a party of musicians, who thought proper to treat him with a regular concert in his subterranean abode. Each was rewarded with a green bough, a mode of payment so offensive to their expectations, that upon their return to earth, all flung away his gifts, save one, and he kept the bough only as a memorial of the adventure, without the least suspicion of its value; great, however, was his surprize, when, upon showing it to his wife, every leaf was changed into a golden dollar. But even the first tale of the Emperor's prolonged slumber can hardly be deemed original; and perhaps, to speak it fairly, is nothing more than a popular version of The Seven Sleepers, not a little disfigured by time and the peculiar superstitions of the country. It is, indeed, surprising how small a stock of original matter has sufficed for all the varieties of European legend; the sources are remarkably few to him who has sufficient knowledge of the subject to follow up the various streams to their fountain head; and it is a task which, if ably executed, might prove both curious and instructive. PETER KLAUS was a Goatherd of Sittendorf, and tended his flocks in the Kyffhäusen mountains; here he was accustomed to let them rest every evening in a mead surrounded by an old wall, while he made his muster of them; but for some days he had remarked that one of his finest goats always disappeared some time after coming to this spot, and did not join the flock till late: watching her more attentively, he observed that she slipped through an opening in the wall, upon which he crept after the animal, and found her in a sort of cave, busily employed in gleaning the oat-grains that dropped down singly from the roof. He looked up, shook his ears amidst the shower of corn that now fell down upon him, but with all his enquiry could discover nothing. At last he heard above the stamp and neighing of horses, from whose mangers it was probable the oats had fallen. Peter was yet standing in astonishment at the sound of horses in so unusual a place, when a boy appeared, who by signs, without speaking a word, desired him to follow. Accordingly he ascended a few steps and passed over a walled court into a hollow, closed in on all sides by lofty rocks, where a partial twilight shot through the over-spreading foliage of the shrubs. Here, upon a smooth, fresh lawn, he found twelve knights playing gravely at nine-pins, and not one spoke a syllable; with equal silence Peter was installed in the office of setting up the nine-pins. At first he performed this duty with knees that knocked against each other, as he now and then stole a partial look at the long beards and slashed doublets of the noble knights. By degrees, however, custom gave him courage; he gazed on every thing with firmer look, and at last even ventured to drink out of a bowl that stood near him, from which the wine exhaled a most delicious odour. The glowing juice made him feel as if re-animated, and whenever he found the least weariness, he again drew fresh vigour from the inexhaustible goblet. Sleep at last overcame him. Upon waking, Peter found himself in the very same enclosed mead where he was wont to tell his herds. He rubbed his eyes, but could see no sign either of dog or goats, and was, besides, not a little astonished at the high grass, and shrubs, and trees which he had never before observed there. Not well knowing what to think, he continued his way over all the places that he had been accustomed to frequent with his goats, but no where could he find any traces of them; below him he saw Sittendorf, and, at length, with hasty steps he descended. The people, whom he met before the village, were all strangers to him; they had not the dress of his acquaintance, nor yet did they exactly speak their language, and, when he asked after his goats, all stared and touched their chins. At last he did the same almost involuntarily, and found his beard lengthened by a foot at least, upon which he began to conclude that himself and those about him were equally under the influence of enchantment; still he recognised the mountain he had descended, for the Kyffhäusen; the houses too, with their yards and gardens, were all familiar to him, and to the passing questions of a traveller, several boys replied by the name of Sittendorf. With increasing doubt he now walked through the village to his house: It was much decayed, and before it lay a strange goatherd's boy in a ragged frock, by whose side was a dog worn lank by age, that growled and snarled when he spoke to him. He then entered the cottage through an opening which had once been closed by a door; here too he found all so void and waste that he tottered out again at the back door as if intoxicated, and called his wife and children by their names; but none heard, none answered. In a short time, women and children thronged around the stranger with the long hoary beard, and all, as if for a wager, joined in enquiring what he wanted. Before his own house to ask others after his wife, or children, or even of himself, seemed so strange, that, to get rid of these querists, he mentioned the first name that occurred to him; "Kurt Steffen?" The bye-standers looked at each other in silence, till at last an old woman said; "He has been in the churchyard these twelve years, and you'll not go there to-day. "Velten Meier?” “Heaven rest his soul!" replied an ancient dame, leaning upon her crutch; "Heaven rest his soul! He has lain these fifteen years in the house that he will never leave." The Goatherd shuddered, as in the last speaker he recognised his neighbour, who seemed to have suddenly grown old; but he had lost all desire for farther question. At this moment, a brisk young woman pressed through the anxious gapers, carrying an infant in her arms, and leading by the hand a girl of about fourteen years old, all three the very image of his wife. With increasing surprise he asked her name: "Maria!"" And your father's?"-" Peter Klaus! Heaven rest his soul! It is now twenty years since we sought him day and night on the Kyffhäusen mountains, when his flock returned without him; I was then but seven years old." The Goatherd could contain himself no longer; "I am Peter Klaus," he cried, "I am Peter Klaus, and none else," and he snatched the child from his daughter's arms. All for a moment stood as if petrified, till at length one voice, and another, and another, exclaimed, "Yes, this is Peter Klaus! Welcome, neighbour! Welcome after twenty years!" The Early French Poets. JOACHIM DU BELLAY. Bellay! first garland of free poesy That France brought forth, though fruitful of brave wits; That long hast travel'd by thy learned writs, And give a second life to dead decays; Needs must he all eternity survive, SUCH is the encomium which name, And fill the world with never-dying fame. Yet this honourable testimony from the author of the Faery Queene, who has still more distinguished the subject of it by translating several of his poems, secures for Joachim du Bellay undeniable claims to attention and deference from an English reader. When, indeed, we consider, that not only the boast of Eliza's days dipped his plumes in the Gallic Hippocrene, but that the Father of English poetry used to refresh himself largely at the same fountain, we cannot look upon it but as a source of hallowed waters. In the Defence and Illustration of the French language,* a judicious and well-written treatise, to which I have more than once had occasion to refer, Bellay betrays a want of reverence for his predecessors, which has been amply retaliated by posterity on his own age. Of all the ancient French poets, he observes, that Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun are almost the only authors worth reading; and that, not because there is much in them that deserves imitation, but for that first image, as it were, which they present of the French language, made venerable by its antiquity. He adds, that the more recent were those named by Clement Marot, in his Epigram to Hugues Salel; and that Jan le Maire de Belges seemed to him the first who had illustrated the French language; by which he explains himself to mean, that he imparted to it many poetical words and phrases, of which the most excellent writers of his own time had availed themselves.† Most of these, I doubt, have since been thrown away by the purists. He speaks of "vers libres," unfettered verse; such, he says, as had been used by Petrarch, and by Luigi Alamanni in his not less learned than pleasant poem on Agriculture. ‡ Alamanni indeed, who during his retreat from Florence had experienced the liberality and protection of Francis I. and who was probably known to Bellay at the court of that monarch, had written his Coltivazione in blank verse; and some, though without sufficient ground for the assertion, have pronounced him to be the first who employed it in a long poem. But that Petrarch ever wrote Italian poetry without rhyme or that he ever mingled versi sciolti, or blank verse, in his compositions, as Boccaccio is observed to have done, I am not aware that any other critic has asserted. Whilst I am on this subject, let me remark, that it is to the Italians we owe our blank verse; and that the two books of the Eneid, in the Oeuvres de Joachim du Bellay. Paris edition in 12mo. about 1568. translating of which it is believed to have been first introduced amongst us by Surrey, were about the same time translated into Italian blank verse; the second book by the Cardinal Ippolito de Medici, and the fourth by Lodovico Martelli. Bellay would not have the alternation of male and female rhymes too strictly adhered to. This was a meritorious though unsuccessful attempt to deliver the French verse from one of its most galling fetters.* Like Ronsard, he advises the frequenting persons of all different handicrafts, in order to collect terms, and to deduce comparisons and descriptions. + Amongst the French writers, are adduced by way of distinction, Guillaume Budé and Lazare de Baïf, the latter of whom had translated the Electra of Sophocles, almost line for line, "quasi vers par vers." + But to come to his Poems. His Olive is a collection of one hundred. and fifteen sonnets, nearly all of them, excepting a few of the last, on the subject of his love, which he shadows forth under the figure of that tree, as Petrarch had done his under that of a laurel. The word itself is an anagram of Viole, the real name of the lady whom he celebrates, and who was an inhabitant of Angers. In the twenty-eighth is found the sentiment in a common, but very pretty French song, which the unfortunate Major André was fond of applying to his Honora. I write it from memory, having never seen it in print : Ah! si vous pouviez comprendre Et peutêtre j'ai trop dit. Bellay has it : We have, I believe, an English song, in which the same natural feeling is expressed; but I am not able to recollect the words of it. The sixtieth sonnet is to Ronsard, whom he has addressed in several of his poems. When we come to that poet, we shall again have occasion to admire the nobleness of his mind, as displayed in his conduct towards Bellay. The ninety-first is on the same subject as an Italian one by Bernardino Tomitano, a physician and public professor of logic at Padua: he died a few years later than Bellay (in 1576). It is, therefore, not easy to say which of the two has the merit of being original; perhaps neither of them:-but the Frenchman's production has, I think, more the air of a copy. Here are the two. Rendez a l'or ceste couleur qui dore Ces blonds cheveux, rendez mille autres choses, A l'orient tant de perles encloses, Rendez aussi a l'Amour tous ces traits, Rendez encor' ce doux nom à son arbre, Rendez aux cieux leur celeste harmonie. Ou aux rochers rendez ce coeur de marbre, Et aux lyons cett' humble felonie. Sonetto di Bernardino Tomitano. L'alto chiaro immortal vivo splendore Ch'è ne' vostr' occhj e nel sereno viso, Donna, rendete al sole, e al paradiso I pensier casti e'l suo natio valore. Rendete a me la libertate e'l core Che da me avete si lontan diviso, amore. De le soavi angeliche parole La soave armonia rendete al cielo : Parnaso Italiano, Lirici misti del * Oeuvres de Joachim du Bellay. Paris edition in 12mo. about 1588; ch. 9. + Ibid. ch. 11. Ibid. ch. 12. For an English imitation, I must refer to the last volume of the LONDON MAGAZINE, p. 411. The ninety-sixth, which begins- Ny par les flots les grands vaisseaux is certainly borrowed from an old Italian sonnet by Guido Cavalcanti ; which is inserted, together with a version of it by a late translator of Dante, in his notes to the eleventh canto of the Purgatory. Sonnet ninety-seven, beginning Qui a peu voir la matinale rose, Τὸ γὰρ νεάζον ἐν τοιοῖσδε βόσκεται κλονεῖ, 'Αλλ' ἡδοναῖς ἄμοχθον ἐξαίρει βίον, and in Marino's Adoni, Quasi rosa fra fior ch'in fresca sponda are less obvious. All the sonnets in the Olive are, I believe, in the "vers commun," the ten syllable verse; which is more agreeable to an English ear than the Alexandrine. The pause, as usual, is on the fourth syllable; as is generally the case in our own Surrey. Of his other sonnets, there are some in each of these measures. Not one of the old French poets that I have yet seen appears so much at home amongst the Italians, for whom, in the fourth ode of his Recueil, he testifies his warm admiration. Quel siecle etiendra ta memoire O Boccace? et quels durs hyvers "What age shall extinguish the remembrance of thee, O Boccaccio? and what hard winters, O Petrarch! shall wither the glory of thy green laurels? Who, Dante and Bembo, of proud and lofty spirit, shall see your memory fade?" Yet he laments most bitterly the engagements which compelled him to reside in Italy, and to put on a false appearance which he abhorred; and he longs to be again his own master, and to return to his own land. In the Regrets, where these feelings are expressed, there is much ease and nature. Some of the poems under that title exhibit lively pictures of the corruptions then prevalent in the several Italian courts, and especially at Rome. His talent for satire here shows itself. What in this way can exceed the following sonnet on Venice? Il fait bon voir, Magny, ces coions magnifiques, Leurs changes, leurs profits, leur banque, et leurs trafiques, Il fait bon voir le bec de leurs chaprons antiques, Leurs robes a grand' manche, et leurs bonnets sans bord, Il fait bon voir de tout leur Senat balloter: Il fait bon voir par tout leurs gondolles flotter, C'est quand ces vieux cocus vont espouser la mer, It doth one good to see these Magnificoes, Sonnet 115, f. 414. Their roads o'erthrong'd with vessels; their Saint Mark; |