A FRENCH HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.*

M. JUSSERAND is a French diplomatist who resided, we believe, for some time amongst us in that capacity, and has abandoned his profession in order to devote himself to the pursuit of letters. He has taken advantage of his double

calling to present us with the first part of what will, we suppose, develop into a book of ambitious proportions, upon a subject on which close and loving study eminently entitle him to speak at once with the authority of a student and the influence due to a foreign observer. For he loves his subject very dearly indeed; and it is a pleasure to welcome in him a man who can combine a keen appreciation of the work and characteristics of Englishmen with a thorough and unshaken spirit of French patriotism, which we could wish to see a little better emulated amongst ourselves. He is in full accord with the Frenchman's faith in his own literary and artistic pre-eminence among the favoured sons of earth, and in the superior grace and beauty and flexibility of his tongue. But he is a ripe and graceful English scholar, and we are inclined to think that after first writing his book in French, he became his own translator. At all events, it has not appeared in French, and no trans- lator's name is appended, and the result is a kind of quaint archaic flavour which in itself lends to the writing a good deal of charm. "From the Origins to the Renais- sance" is perhaps as neat a little Gallicism as the whole book contains, and lets us know at once from the title-page the worst that we have to expect in that way. There would be nothing in "Beginnings" to challenge comment, but the use of the more scholastic plural is characteristic. But "the origins" is a phrase in which M. Jusserand especially delights.

"More has been done," he says in his preface, " during the

last fifty years to shed light on the origins than in all the rest of modern times." And he is fanciful and poetical upon the charm of his subject, "so hard, so delightful too," as he describes it in another pretty little English equivalent for

" aussi."

"Deciphering, annotating, printing have gone on at an extra- ordinary pace and without interruption : the empire of letters has thus been enlarged, according to the chances of the explorers' discoveries, by gardens and deserts, cloudy immensities, and boundless forests ; its limits have receded into space—at least, so it seems to us. We laugh at the simplicity of honest Robertson,

• A Literar-y History of the English People : from ths Origins to tits Renaissance. By J. J. Jussersail, looladon: T. Fisher Unwin. 1885.

who in the last century wondered at the superabundance of historical documents accessible in his time ; the day is not far distant when we shall be laughed at in the same way for our own simplicity. The field of literary history widens in another manner yet, and one that affects us more nearly. The years glide on so rapidly that the traveller who started to explore the lands of former times, absorbed by his task, oblivious of days and months, is surprised on his return at beholding how the domain of the past has widened. To the past belongs Tennyson, the laureate; to the past belongs Browning, and that ruddy smiling face, manly and kind, which the traveller to realms beyond in- tended to describe from nature on his coming back among living men, has faded away, and the grey slab of Westminster covers it."

We are a little at a loss as to the meaning of the last pas- sage, but enough has been quoted to show M. Jusserand's attitude towards his subject. He is original in protesting-

against too much stress upon racial differences, preferring to dwell on the innate resemblances of man, rather than on their

variations. If the Saxons, poor men, are not to be acquitted. of "having a sad, solemn genius, and not numbering among their pre-eminent qualities the gift of repartee, it does not mean that for six centuries they all of them sat and wept without intermission, and that when asked a question they never knew what to answer." All men are men, and have human qualities more or less developed in their minds nothing more is implied in those passages but that one quality was more developed in one particular race of men

and that in another. It is, however, contradictory even of this limited form of condemnation, that all M. Jasserand's essays upon the English spirit, especially his discourse on Chaucer, seem to point to a very joyous and buoyant kind of humour, and of wholesome enjoyment of life, as its main and most characteristic development. If we were to plead guilty on the evidence to no great exuberance of "repartee," at the best rather a doubtful and superficial form of gift, we could certainly admit neither sadness nor solemnity.

The main text, which may be said to be interwoven with the

French author's purpose throughout, is the action and reaction of English and French literature upon each other. He detects this mutual influence in full play throughout; and

is therefore far apart from those who are for ever maintaining that English art and writing are essentially imitative, and founded upon the schools and traditions of other nations.

But he loves to penetrate into the " origins " of things, and no part of his book is more fascinating than his account of the genesis of the "tale" or story, recounted at nights over the fire. "It is the custom," says an English author of the thirteenth century, "in rich families to spend the winter evenings around the fire, telling tales of former times."

Boccaccio and Chaucer are, in M. Jusserand's view, the two great instances of the conteur, the grossness of the former tamed to the latter's hand. "The immense Gesta Bonzanorunt," he tells us, "so popular in the Middle Ages, were compiled in England about the end of the thirteenth century, an endless and varied repertory of fabliaux, graceful stories, and miracles of the Virgin." We recognise here a fable of Lafontaine, there an episode out of the "Roman de Renart," an anecdote from Roman history, or an adventure to be transformed into a Shakespearian play. Stories of French, Latin, English,

or Hindoo origin are grist for the romancer's mill. In the course of two pages he cites for us two. In one, a knight fell in love with the daughter of Celestinus, who reigned in the city of Rome, and found favour in the eyes of the maiden, but with her father none. To procure money for a secret interview, he journeyed afar in search of means, and found a merchant of singular humour, who made him sign a bond with his blood, for the flesh from his body to be removed with his knife. Our readers guess the rest ; how with all his wishes crowned the knight returned too late. "Offer him double, or treble the sum," said the maiden ; but the sentence was not in doubt, and she cut off her hair and donned a rich suit of clothes, mounted a palfrey, and set out for the palace where the trial was. The tale does not say that she disguised herself as a lawyer, but she saved her lover through the famous quibble about the blood, and riding hastily home received him in her woman's dress :—

"Alt miles, oh carissima domina, mihi pile omnibus praidileeta, hodie fere vitam amisi, sod cum ad mortem judicari debuissem intravit subito quidem miles formosus valde, hens militem tam formosum nuuquam autem vidi : et me per prudentiam suam non tantum a morte salvavit sed etiam me ab omni solutione pecunite liberavit Lit puella, 'Ergo ingratns fuisti quad militem ad prandium, quia vitam tuam tater ealvavit, non invitasti.' .Mt

miles, Subito intravit et subito exivit.' Alt puella, Si cum jam videres, haberes notitiam ejus P kit ills, Etiam optime.' "

So she put on her male attire, and came to him. And he immediately married the maiden, and they led saintly lives. How Shakespeare comes back to us at once with his incom- parable raiment of verse, out of this "at once charming, absurd, edifying, and touching original," even down to the "Sir, I entreat you home with me to dinner," which he

catches up at once from a detail of his tale. And here is a story of a different complexion :—

" The sacristan nun of a convent, beautiful as may be believed, falls in love with a clerk, and, unable to live without him, throws her keys on the altar, and roves with her friend for five years outside the monastery. Passing by the place at the end of that time, she is impelled by curiosity to go to the convent and inquire concerning herself, the sacristan nun of former years. To her great surprise, she hears that the sister continues there, and edifies the whole community by her piety. At night, while she sleeps, the Virgin appears to her in a vision, saying, Return, unfortunate one, to thy convent. It is I who, assuming thy shape, have fulfilled thy duties until now.' A conversion, of course, follows."

Within the last few years this little story has been twice made the subject of a poem,—first by Adelaide Proctor in her own especial way, and recently by Mr. Davidson after his different fashion. It is carious to find that latter-day Elizabethan seeking his inspirations where Shakespeare found his, and the same traditions of story-telling as much alive as ever.

M. Jusserand has plenty to tell us of the visions of William Langland, of the growth of peasant poetry with the songs in honour of Robin Hood, and of the "father of English prose," a title which, to the shame of many English readers be it said, it will be news to the great majority of them to learn, was borne "for a long time and up to oar day" by Sir John Mandeville, of St. Albans, though he has now vanished into the realms of the mythical, leaving alone behind him the

famous book of travels which bears his name. Brit his favourite hero in the present volume is Geoffrey Chaucer, to whose memory it becomes almost dedicate as "the Poet of the New Nation," the England of the second part as dis- tinguished from the Britannia of the first, produced by the "double fusion" of the fourteenth century, by which the French were "no longer superposed on the natives ; hence- forth there are only English in the English island." In

the fourteenth year of Edward IIL's reign, "whenever a murder was committed and the author of it remained un-

known, the victim was prima facie avowed to be Prancigena, and the whole county was fined. Bat the county was

allowed to prove, if it could, that the dead man was only an Englishman, and in that case there was nothing to pay." It is interesting to the New Democracy to know that it was on the lips of " lowe men" that the fusion began, and that the masses were the founders of modern English. That Chaucer was the first poet of the popular tongue, as Dante was the first popular Italian, is a fact of common knowledge, but he

has seldom been dealt with more completely and more attractively than in M. Jusserand's pages. That he knew Latin and French well, and lived in circles where these were mainly in favour, is all the more his plea for writing in English, even as Shakespeare makes his Queen Katharine plead for it at a later day. " Stiffyse to thee thise trewe conclusions in English "—the King's English— that of "the King that is lord of this langage." We believe that poets such as Chaucer, like the Spenser of a later day, are at the present day very little read, and it is both

stimulating and instructive to meet with a scholar of foreign extraction so deeply and sympathetically acquainted with him. We can do no more than indicate the more striking features of his survey, ending for the present as it does with a fine picture of the close of the Middle Ages, when "the Gods are to come down from Olympus and dwell here once more among men; Ma,homet IL, approaching Byzantium, never more Greek than on the eve of its destruction" :—

" The assault begins at two o'clock in the morning ; part of a wall, near the gate of St. Emmaus, falls in ; the ‘Cercoporta' gate is taken. The struggle goes on in the heart of the town ; the emperor is killed ; the basilica erected by St. Justinian to Divine Wisdom, St. Sophia, which was in the morning filled with a praying multitude, contains now only corpses. The smoke of an immense fire rises under the sky. All that could flee exiled themselves; the Greeks flocked to Italy. Out of the plundered libraries came a number of manuscripts, with which Rome and Venice were enriched. The result of the disaster was, tor intel-

lectual Europe, a new impulse given to classic studies. With the glare of the fire was mingled a light as of dawn ; its rays were to illuminate Italy and France, and, further towards the North, England also."

With this peroration of promise closes a book which its author begins with a characteristic touch of humour, thrown in by way of excuse for following in so old a path. Once, in London, he offered a cabman his fare, which looked but small in"his large, hollowed hand." Like Oliver Twist, he asked for more.—" Why " said the author, "it is the proper fare." Cabman mused for a second, and said, "I should like it so." That is M. Jusserand's plea for his work. He loved it so.