1:^90-91.] CELTIC, ROMAN AND GREEK TYPES. 191 



FREDERIC MISTRAL AND HIS MIREIO. 



I will confide to you that I knew very little more of Mistral than 

 Mistral did of me, but one glance at the man was enough to arrest 

 attention and challenge enquiry. Alphonse Daudet says of him some- 

 where that he unites the strong and supple figure of a Greek shepherd 

 with the natural grace of an Apollo. I applaud, and admit never to 

 have seen a handsomer man in strength, health, intelligence, dignity, 

 kindly good nature, happily blended, and shining from a nobler counten- 

 ance. The time of the troubadours, the best part of the middle ages, 

 has always had an interest for me — when Europe was being re-organised 

 after the great popular migrations. I have read the fierce war poems and 

 the tender complaints of Bertrand de Born, the Tensons of Gaucelm 

 Faidit, Geoffroi de Pons and others ; the sirventes, ballades, Rondes of 

 numerous singers whose names it would be useless to recall. These 

 troubadours led directly to Petrarch* and Dante in Italy, to Gower and 

 Chaucer in England. There is much in common between them and our 

 present Tennyson, in subject and in the swing of their rhythm. The old 

 Greek metres, wonderfully beautiful, do not live for us ; we admire in a 

 coldly intellectual manner their mathematical graces, as we scan, with 

 more or less of labor, their schemes of feet. I rather think that even the 

 exquisite Sapphic line, followed by an Adonic, would fail to arouse an 

 ecstasy of enthusiasm in this most cultured audience. The Latin 

 imitations of them by Horace and his followers fall as flat as the 

 originals ; the graces of diction and the tersely put together thoughts 

 alone impress us. When these poets of classical times " strike the lyre," 

 they strike it for us in dumb show only, as we have seen actors on the 

 stage pretend to sound the harp or violin while the true music came 

 from behind the scenes. But the troubadours sing in rhyme, which we 

 do still admire — and in rhythm, which, despite Walt Whitman's "barbaric 

 yaup," we yet delight in. It is literally true to say that not one of the 

 recent most graceful forms of English or French verse was not success- 

 fully attempted by the troubadours. " Sabia ben trobar e ben vuilar et 

 ben cantar" was said of one; it applies to very many. Still, we 

 had thought the race extinct ; that Cervantes and Rabelais had killed 

 the old-style minstrelsy when they gave the coiip de grace to chivalry, 

 with their finely tempered rapiers of keen sarcasm. 



But up comes Frederic Mistral, a Provencal farmer's son, whose fore- 

 fathers for generations back vv^ere farmers or peasants like himself ; 

 and in the same idiom, in the same spirit and the same form, sings like 



* Petrarch was a student of Montpellier ; so, later, was Rabelais. 

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