IRE RISE OF ROMANCE AND ALLEGORY.*
Titis contribution to a general survey of European literature is the second in chronological order, but the first in point of publication, of a series of "Periods of European Literature," edited by Professor Saintsbury, and designed by him to sup- plement existing histories and to constitute a "new Hallam." It is the fashion nowadays to divide the sequence of events into "periods," and to entrust the chronicling of such arbitrary divisions of time to different writers, and the fashion has doubtless something in its favour. It is difficult, as Professor Saintsbury says, to find a man who combines the literary and critical faculty with a pack of learning • Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory. By George Saintsbury, Loudon; W. Blackwood and Sons.
sufficiently elastic to contain first-band knowledge of all European literatures in dead and living tongues. The breadth of the subject is perhaps appalling in face of the larger fields of information opened to modern scholars by the discovery and deciphering of early texts during the present century, but we own to a feeling in favour of continuity of authorship in such a study as the study of literature. The points of view, the mere question of matters of taste, vary in every scholar ; the style in which such points and questions are clothed varies equally. Nothing, for instance, could be more unlike the leisurely, gossipy style of Warton, with his excursions into byways of know- ledge, his voluminous notes, his dissertations and arguments, than Professor Saintsbury's own somewhat jaunty style. We are jolted and hurried along a stony path of knowledge, breathlessly surveying distant scenes, pelted with names of personages and classic works, familiar, no doubt, to all literary students, but stumbling-blocks to the ignorant. We are inclined to wonder whether "Periods of European Literature" are intended for the learned or unlearned, but the question is perhaps solved by a reference to Geoffrey of Monmouth in
chap. 3. We find him mentioned incidentally in connection with the beginnings of the Arthurian Legend, but in a dis-
jointed fashion, from which, we venture to think, the un- learned will derive little "nourishment." Professor Saints- bury dismisses Geoffrey and his Chronicle in this casual and contemptuous manner :—
"A few people, perhaps, who read this little book will need to be told that Geoffrey attributed the new and striking facts which he sprung upon his contemporaries to a British book which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, had brought out of Armorica ; and. that not the slightest trace of this most interesting and important work has ever been found. It is a thousand pities that it has not survived, inasmuch as it was not only a very ancient book in the British tongue,' but contained 'a continuous story in an elegant style.' However, the inquiry whether Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, did or did not belong to the ancient British family of Harris may be left to historians proper. To the specially literary historian the chief point of interest is first to notice how little, if Geoffrey really did take his book from 'British' sources, those sources apparently contained of the Arthurian Legend proper as we now know it."
It is evident from the passage just quoted that the book is. not so much intended for the "few people" who need to be
given information about the writers or works mentioned, as for the "historian proper" or the "specially literary his- torian," though how far those gifted beings will appreciate- the Professor's style of imparting "specially literary" know- ledge it is fortunately not our province to inquire. It merely seems to us that the seeker after truth will gather some rather disjointed knowledge, and will have to apply to other guides for information that will fill up the gaps.
Professor Saintsbury's "period," the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, embraces, of course, an account of the famous
chansons de geste, the "pride of French literature," as Southey calls them. The great mass of those old romance-poems are forgotten or only read by a few scholars. When the age of printing arrived there was no Malory to fuse a cycle into a great prose-epic. In our own time no Laureate has transformed them with life. It is only by means of the historic estimate, as Matthew Arnold said, though Professor Saintsbury accuses him of literary misjudgment in the matter of the chansons de geste, that we can form any idea of the importance of that mass of early French literature. Modern translations seem to us unsatisfactory. No one who reads his Roland,.
for instance, mainly by the aid of M. Leon Gautier's para- phrased prose, can appreciate the force and "awing" of de old" tirades," with their coherence of assonance. The brevity
of the style (though the matter was often prolix enough), the
trenchant force of the short Anglo-Norman sentences, cannot be translated into modern French ; the laisses need recita- tion in their original form. The spirit of the old chansons- will not bear transplanting to modern times—ages of progres- sion and civilisation have brought forth other phases of literature—but students, whether "specially literary" or not,
need to remember that those old poems are the fountain-head of all "romance," and that all succeeding generations owe- France a debt of gratitude on their account. Professor
Saintsbury devotes some space to a consideration of the growth of the Arthurian Legend. We gather that he disagrees with Mr. Nutt and Professor Rigs as to the theory of an entirely Celtic—i.e., Welsh or Armorican—origin, though he is "inclined to allow no small portion of Celtic ingredient to the spirit, the tendency, the essence of the Arthurian Legend." The question is one that will probably never be satisfactorily settled unless Geoffrey of Monmouth's " British books" are discovered. The ordinary reader will not enjoy his Malory or his Tennyson any the less for not knowing exactly whether he owes more to Chrestien die Troyes or to Walter Map. He will be content with the significant fact that the blend has become incorporated in English literature, and that it contained in itself the germs of greatness necessary to enable it so to live.
It is only fair to say that Professor Saintsbary is not always jaunty, and that particularly in the second part of his subject, "The Rise of Allegory," where he also discusses the appearance of lyric poetry, and the French fabliaux, he dis- plays some of that "high seriousness" which he regrets that Matthew Arnold did not find in his estimate of mediwval work generally. France again led the way, but England assimilated both lyrics and allegories ; the drama that was slowly being evolved from the old miracle-plays languished for a while in the meshes of allegory. A little later the canvases of Langland and Gower are crowded with personifica- tions of the cardinal virtues and deadly sins, until, as Macaulay said, we become aick of them, and long for the society of plain men and women. We question whether any allegory except the Pilgrim's Progress has really retained its hold on the reading world from the time of publication to the present day, and in that instance the evidence of" high serious- ness "is singularly apparent, by the introduction of the human element with its power of adaptability to all classes of readers. We are all acquainted with "sloughs of despond" and familiar with burdens. To quote Macaulay once more, "Bunyan is almost the only writer who ever gave to the abstract the interest of the concrete." But Bunyan, who naturally does not come within Professor Saintsbury's "period," is an inheritor and possessor of the old French and Early English allegories, only instead of the Lover and Bialacoil, and the fanciful quest of the Rose, we have the spirit of the early Puritans breathed into the familiar figures of Christian and Great. heart, the spirit that urged the Pilgrim Fathers to leave the City of Destruction and flee into a far country, that took its imagery direct from the Bible, and illustrated the old doctrine that not even the world itself can avail to a man if he lose hi a own soul. The two centuries of which Professor Saints. bury treats were enriched with performance and with promise. History, fables, lyrics, sagas, epics, allegories, dreams, all left their mark indelibly on European literature, Ind though England herself produced no great writer, it was England at least, as Professor Saintsbury says in his interesting conclusion of the whole matter, "that pro- vided the subject of the largest, and the most enduring, single division of mediaval work."
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