that you will strike him through and through, though he knelt upon your mother's grave.' I held up my hand, and vowed the vow, even as he desired. My father half leaped to his feet, and said, 'There's the blood of the Kinnersleys in thee, my son; and God will give thee might to slay my destroyer-were a priest here, he would say, Die in peace,'-so in peace I die, and Ralph Lacey is forgiven; but damned be Simon de Kinnersley if he forgives him:' and he fell and died." "Thy father died an unholy death, young man," said the priest; "his notions of vengeance were unjust and dangerous. Had he made a suitable benefaction to the church, we would have soothed his spirit by cursing his enemy, and the food and the wine which he tasted. I have heard of this Sir Ralph Lacey, he is a stubborn heretic." "Yesterday he was," said the youth," and a brave and a noble man:-alas! I thought of his worth when it was too late. The slayer of my father fled to a far place,-I followed him there;-he returned to his native land, and to my native land I likewise came: I thought he shunned me for fear, for I had grown strong, and was skilful with the sword, and all the land spoke of our bitter feud. All this while I had never met him. His looks were engraven too deeply on my heart to be forgotten, and I sought him in public and private, resolved to strike him even in the sanctified place. "One day I entered a church, the people had assembled, and the preacher was admonishing men of their sins, and claiming vengeance for the Lord. When he mentioned vengeance, a tall form, with a mild and melancholy look, rose up among them, and looked on me,--it was Ralph Lacey. I waved him out of the church, but he moved not. I laid my hand on my sword hilt, and he heeded me not, and at last I exclaimed, Come out, if you are man; my father's blood cries from the ground, and this day shalt thou atone for it. He moved as if he would follow me, and the people fled; for my sword was bare, and my cloak was on the ground. The preacher leaped down from the pulpit, and held up his old and feeble hands be tween us before me, I should have said, for Ralph Lacey moved not, but looked on me with an eye of the deepest sorrow. The preacher looked me in the face, and spoke not:-I never before beheld such an aspect of awe; he shook his gray hairs. I put up my sword, he took me by the hand, and he preached of mercy and of meekness of spirit, and my resolution forsook me; I hid my face in my cloak and wept, and then I departed. "It was midnight, and I was seated where I now sit;-the moonlight found its way through that small wicket,-no other light was in the room. I tried to sleep, but sleep fled from me; I looked out upon the sea and sky for awhile, and then, stretching myself on this couch, I thought again upon the deep vow I had vowed, and the hot drops stood on my brow. As I lay I thought something came into the room, yet the door did not open. I saw no thing, though I felt conscious of another presence; and I gazed till I saw a dark and shadowy garment moving before me. It became more distinct; the outline was filled up with a human figure, and my fa ther's spirit, certainly my father's form,-stood before me. Yet I beheld not his face; where his face should have been there was utter darkness;-but the wave of the hand, and the moving of the head, was my father wholly; and my knees shook, and my tongue was struck with dumbness. I know not that it spoke, I spoke not myself, and as I looked, the form gradually melted away, and departed even as a shadow dies when the sunshine fades. I went to the window, and there I beheld, as plain as I see Ranulph now, my father's form, dilated beyond his living size, moving towards the sea shore:-it approached my mother's grave,---seemed to fill the space be tween the earth and heaven,---and then I beheld it no more. "Next morning I took my sword, and, seating myself on a stone by my mother's grave, I ruminated on what I had seen, and thought on the vow I had vowed, and how I had left it unfulfilled. The morning was balmy, and the air moist with dew, and the unrisen sun began to brighten the eastern waters. I arose and walked about for a little space, and, leaning over a small enclosure of turf, which hemmed in this melancholy spot, I looked again upon the grave. My hair nearly moved my hat on my brow, when, on the very stone where I had been seated, there sat a figure wrapt up in a dark mantle ;---its face and hands were hid,---but the form of my father was too noble not to be known to his son. I gazed upon it for a moment, and, making the blessed sign with my sword, I confronted and questioned it. I have vowed an unholy vow to my dying father,--does his spirit come to desire its fulfilment? I have prayed to God to direct me, yet I am undirected,---and the spirits from below assume the form of the spirits above, and haunt man for the destruction of his soul.' The spirit replied not, but stretched out a mantled hand towards the bay, and remained in that position for a little space:---I_looked upon the water, and there I saw a small boat coming swiftly towards the shore,--a man was in it;---he leaped upon the beach, and came towards my mother's grave:---it was Sir Ralph Lacey. I imagine he saw me not, for he walked with a slow step towards the grave,---he knelt beside it, and his forehead touched the grass that covered it. There needed no spirit now to pluck my sword from the sheath. I thought on the deathlooks of my father, and the deep vow I had vowed; and drawing my sword, I drew near and stood beside him. He looked up and saw me, yet he prayed out his prayer, and slowly arising, gazed mournfully in my face, and was going away. I stept in before him:---alas !---alas! a sorrowful spirit is soon chafed ;---yet he sought not to smite me:--- -when I slew him, and saw his blood streaming on my mother's grave, and saw his hands clasping the sod which covered her, and heard her name die on his lips, I sought to slay myself,---but, alas! my life goes slowly away. The evil spirit had done its work, and I saw it no more,---for there is a spirit of evil has haunted my name for seventeen generations, and is never visible save when blood is to be shed, and it deceived me in my noble father's shape." "Be comforted, my son," said the priest; but the young man heeded him not:---he passed his hands rapidly over his eyes,---gazed as if he beheld something fearful, and starting up exclaimed, "More blood?--have I vowed another vow? false spirit, are ye come to me again? --but I know your errand :---Go dig the grave, Ranulph, and go toll the bell; bid the torch-bearers be ready; and let those who chant over the dead come, for the last of the Kinnersleys is going to his father's, and their name to night will pass from the land." He fetched a deep sigh, and ceased to breathe.---Such is the story which the Land's End fishermen tell of Simon Kinnersley. NALLA. ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF ALAIN CHARTIER. EARLY FRENCH POETS. WHEN Margaret of Scotland, Dauphiness of France, was passing through an apartment in which Alain Chartier lay asleep, she went up to him and kissed him. The custom of claiming a new pair of gloves on such occasions was probably not then in use; for the ladies and gentlemen who at tended her expressed their wonder, that she should honour so ugly a fellow with that token of her affection; and Margaret replied, that she was tempted, not by the beauty of Alain's lips, but by the golden say ings that had proceeded from them. It is painful to think, that so free and gracious a lady should have died of grief occcasioned by calumnious imputations on her virtue. Male Bouche, as the fiend was then called, never did the world a worse turn. But the tears of her husband, who was afterwards King of France, with the title of Louis XI. sufficiently, as Henault observes, vindicated her memory. Alain Chartier, who was secretary to Charles VII. father of Louis, was and oppressed; the rule and government of ecclesiastical decorum is turned with the time into disorder and dissoluteness. The citizens are disfurnished of hope, and inobservant of scignory, through the darkness fusion, and law into unmeasured violence; of this thick cloud; order is changed to contheir place; obeisance is wearied out; pajust scignory and honor are fallen out of tience fails; every thing is going headlong into an abyss of ruin and desolation. He is ready to listen to the suggestions of Despair, when Nature, alarmed at the thoughts of dissolution, is so violently agitated that she sleeping by his side. Understanding rouses up Understanding, who was bolts of which had been held fast by opens the wicket of Memory, the three ladies and a very fair damsel the rust of Forgetfulness: by this a good poet for his day, or rather, he was an excellent rhymer; for he will often go on with such a string of like endings, that it would have pozed Touchstone, in spite of his brag that he could rhyme you so eight years together, dinner and supper and sleeping hours excepted, to keep pace with him. "Grand poete de son temps, et encor plus grand orateur," is the eulogium left him by Estienne Pasquier. His Curial and Quadrilogue, the works which, in Estienne's opinion, entitle him to the praise of being a great orator, would in these days have appeared in the shape of two dry political pamphlets; but in those they assumed the more inviting form of as many visions. In the first of them, the Curial, Alain, while he is musing on the decline and dis-immediately enter. The first of these, asters of France, is suddenly seized by Melancholy, a doleful and squalid female, who, without speaking a word, wraps him in her mantle and casts him into a bed, where three other females present themselves. These are, Indignation, Distrust, and Despair, whose persons are described. Indignation first endeavours to disgust him with the Court; next Distrust represents to him the forlorn condition of France; and, lastly, Despair tempts him to seek a refuge from his sufferings in death. Et toy (continues she) pourquoy veulx tu veiller en telle male meschance et vivre en souhaitant la mort tous les jours. La chevalerie de ton pays est perte et morte. Les estudes sont dissipees, le clergie est dispers et opprime, la rigle et moderation de honnestete ecclesiastique est tournee avecques le teps en desordonnance et dissolution. Les citoyens sont despourveus desperace, et descongnoissans de seigneurie par obscurte de ceste trouble nuee, lordre est tournee en confusion et loy en desmesuree violence, juste seigneurie et hōneur deschiet, obeyssace ennuyee, paciece fault tout tube et fond en labysme de ruine et de desolation. Fol. 12. Les oeuvres feu maistre Alain Chartier en son vivant secretaire du feu Roy Charles Septiesme du nom. vellement imprimees reveues et corrigices oultre les precedetes impressions. On les vend a Paris en la grant salle du palais au premier pillier en la boutique de Galliot du pre Libraire jure de Luniversite. 1529. Nou And thou, why art thou fain to keep watch in this evil mischance, and to live on, wishing for death all thy days? The chivalry of thy land is destroyed and gone; studies are routed; the clergy is dispersed who is Faith, addresses Understanding, and resolves many doubts which are proposed to her by that personage. Here he takes occasion to inveigh most bitterly against the abuses which had crept into the church. Dante, poet of Florence, thou, if thou wast still living, wouldst have cause to cry out against Constantine; seeing that in a time when religion was better observed thou wert yet bold to reprehend, and didst reproach him, for having infused into the church that venom and poison, wherewith she should be wasted and destroyed.-Fol. 36. Soon after he speaks with a mixture of pity and anger concerning the persecutions which the poor clergy in Bohemia had lately undergone; becomes eloquent in his indignation against those by whom the churches had been violated; and reproaches the French people with their degene racy since the days of Charles the Fifth. Deeper questions are afterwards discussed. Hope explains to Understanding in what manner human passions and perfections are attributed to the Deity, and endeavours to reconcile the free-will of man with the foreknowledge of God. She next declares in plain terms the enormity that had been occasioned by the celibacy of the clergy, and then imputable to the church. The the other crying sins which were other two ladies, whom he had before introduced, do not continue the conversation, as might have been expected; and the Curial ends abruptly, with a warning addressed to the author's brother, against the life of a courtier. In this book there are short poetical pieces interspersed, very inferior to the prose. He tells us, that the unhappiness of his country, and the desire of recalling his fellow-citizens to a sense of their duty, were the motives which induced him to write the Quadrilogue, so named from the four persons who are represented speaking in it. Dame France appears to him about the dawn of day-a noble lady, but full of sorrow, and dressed in "wondrous hieroglyphic robe." She addresses her three sons, under whom are figured the populace, the nobility, and the clergy, and descants on the miseries to which they, in conjunc tion with foreign enemies, had reduced her. They mutually crimi nate each other. France puts an end to their debates, by exhorting them to concord, and by desiring that their several pleas may be committed to writing, a task which she orders Alain to undertake. Puis que Dieu ne ta donne force de corps, ne usage d'armes, sers la chose publique de ce que tu peux. Car autant exaulca la gloire des rommains, et renforca leurs courages a vertu la plume et la lague de leurs orateurs, comme les glaives des com batans. Fol. 139. Since God hath not given thee force of body or skill in arms, serve thy country in that thou mayest; for the glory of the Romans was as much advanced, and their courage as much invigorated by the pen and tongue of their orators, as by the swords of their warriors. The Belle Dame sans Merci of this poet is known to us from a translation inserted by some mistake among the works of Chaucer, who died when the Frenchman was about fourteen years of age. Tyrwhitt says, that in the Harleian manuscripts, 373, the version is attributed to Sir Richard Ros. Whoever the author of it may be, it is very well done; and sometimes surpasses the original, as in the following stanza. De puis je ne sceuz quil devint Et depuis on me rapporta Quil avoit ses cheveulx descoux Et que tant en desconforta Fro thens he went, but whither wist I nought Nor to what part he drew in sothfastnesse, But he no more was in his ladies thought, For to the daunce anon she gan her dresse, And afterward, one told me thus expresse, He rent his heer, for anguish and for paine, And in himselfe toke so great heavinesse, That he was dedde within a day or twaine. Fol. 243, Speght's Edit. 1602. lator must have made use of a maHere it is evident that the transcorrect than the edition of 1529; nuscript of Chartier's works more for, instead of dames in the fourth line, he has translated as if it were danses, which was, no doubt, the right reading. In another place, this edition of Speght appears to be faulty. De ceste feste je lassay Car joye triste coeur travaille Se que nul pour cep et pour fucille And set me down alone behind a traile, Full of leaves to see a great mervaile, With greene wreaths ybounden wonderly, The leaves were so thick withouten faile, That throughout no man might me espie. Fol. 239. Instead of wreaths, the word was probably withs. The second line, which, in the original, conveys the natural sentiment that "joy is trouble to a heart in sorrow," was evidently misunderstood by the translator. The introduction to the Livre des Quatre Dames, written in 1433, is a lively picture of a spring morning, so much in Chaucer's way, that one might suppose it had been copied from that writer, if the images were not such as the poets of the time most delighted to assemble. The four ladies severally lay their griefs before Alain. The first had lost her lover, who was killed in the battle of Agincourt; the lover of the second had been made prisoner; that of the third was missing, and of the fourth had run away. The poem that approaches nearest to the sprightliness of old Geoffrey, Quil en estoit mort de courroux.-Fol. 199. is the Hospital damours, if that be indeed Chartier's, but it is a little. Assez pres au bout dung sentier Estoit tout l'art de retorique.-Fol. 278. Near, at the end of a path, lay the body of a very complete wise and loyal person, Alain Chartier, who did many a fine feat in love, and made known the misdeed of her by whom her lover was slain, and whom he called, when he had made that poem, La belle Dame sans Mercy. Round about his tomb in letters of gold was all the art of rhetorick engraven. The following verses, being one of his seven ballads on Fortune, may give a fair view of his character as a poet. Sur lac de dueil sur riviere ennuyeuse Dune part clere et dautre tenebreuse Et la endroit par sa dextre orgueilleuse Que voulez vous que je dye et responde Elle sera amere a la seconde En demonstrant quelle nest pas estable. (Fol. 335.) On lake of mourning by the stream of woe, "A mistake of the press for damertume. |