I So CHAUCER. 



Roland can remember much more than a cloud of battle-dust, 

 through which the paladins loom dimly gigantic, and a strong 

 verse flashes here and there like an angry sword ? What are 

 the Roman davantures, the cycle of Arthur and his knights, but 

 a procession of armour and plumes mere spectacle, not vision 

 like their Grecian antitype, the Odyssey, whose pictures of life, 

 whether domestic or heroic, are among the abiding consolations 

 of the mind ? An element of disproportion, of grotesqueness,* 

 earmark of the barbarian, disturbs us, even when it does not 

 disgust, in them all. Except the Roland, they all want adequate 

 motive, and even in that we may well suspect a reminiscence of 

 the Iliad. They are not without a kind of dignity, for manliness 

 is always noble, and there are detached scenes that are striking, 

 perhaps all the more so from their rarity, like the combat of 

 Oliver and Fierabras, and the leave-taking of Parise la Duchesse. 

 But in point of art they are far below even Firdusi, whose great 

 poem is of precisely the same romantic type. The episode of 

 Sohrab and Rustem as much surpasses the former of the 

 passages just alluded to in largeness and energy of treatment, 

 in the true epical quality, as the lament of Tehmine over her 

 son does the latter of them in refined and natural pathos. In 

 our revolt against pseudo-classicism we must not let our admi 

 ration for the vigour and freshness which are the merit of this 

 old poetry tempt us to forget that our direct literary inheritance 

 comes to us from an ancestry who would never have got beyond 

 the Age of Iron but for the models of graceful form and delicate 

 workmanship which they found in the tombs of an earlier race. 



I recall but one passage (from Jourdain de Blaivies) which 

 in its simple movement of the heart can in any way be compared 

 with Chaucer. I translate it freely, merely changing the original 

 assonance into rhyme. Eremborc, to save the son of her liege- 

 lord, has passed off her own child for his, only stipulating that 

 he shall pass the night before his death with her in the prison 

 where she is confined by the usurper Fromond. The time is 

 just as the dreaded dawn begins to break. 



Gamier, fair son, the noble lady said, 

 To save thy fathei s life must thou be dead; 

 And mine, alas, must be with sorrow spent, 

 Since thou must die, albeit so innocent ! 

 Evening thou shall not see that see st the morn ! 

 Woe worth the hour that I beheld thee born, 

 Whom nine long months within my side I bore ! 

 Was never babe desired so much before. 

 . _ _, 



* Compare Floripar in Fierabras with Nausikaa, for example. 



