patches is a mischievous picture of the Court ladies at their toilette: "Let me see that mirror; make my head-dress higher; let me show my mouth more; drop the pleat over the eyes;[74] alter my eyebrows," etc. etc. But beyond the washing of hands before the feast, this French book that Crapelet printed fourscore years ago goeth not. Perhaps it was a mere accident; perhaps the writer had a shrewd notion that whatever he wrote would seem but stale in its reminder of the night when Partenopeus lay awake, and seemingly alone, in the enchanted palace—now merely an ordinary place of splendour and festivity—and when something came to the bed, "step by step, little by little," and laid itself beside him.
Such are the contents and such some of the special traits and features of one of the most famous of those romances of chivalry, the reading of which with anything like the same interest as that taken in Homer, seemed to the Reverend Professor Hugh Blair to be the most suitable instance he could hit upon of a total lack of taste. This is a point, of course, on which each age, and each reader in each age, must judge for itself and himself. I think the author of the Odyssey (the Iliad comes rather in competition with the chansons than with these romances) was a better poet than the author of Partenopeus, and I also think that he was a better story-teller; but I do not think that the latter was a bad story-teller; and I can read him with plenty of interest. So I can most of his fellows, no one of whom, I think, ever quite approaches the insipidity of their worst English imitators. The knights do not weary me with their exploits, and I confess that I am hyperbolical enough to like reading and thinking as well as talking of the ladies very much. They are of various sorts; but they are generally lovable. There is no better for affection and faithfulness and pluck than the Josiane of Bevis, whose husband and her at one time faithful guardian, but at another would-be ravisher, Ascapart, guard a certain gate not more than a furlong or two from where I am writing. It is good to think of the (to some extent justified) indignation of l'Orgueilleuse d'Amours when Sir Blancandin rides up and audaciously kisses her in the midst of her train; and the companion picture of the tomb where Idoine apparently sleeps in death (while her true knight Amadas fights with a ghostly foe above) makes a fitting pendant. If her near namesake with an L prefixed, the Lidoine of Méraugis de Portlesguez, interests me less, it is because its author, Raoul de Houdenc, was one of the first to mix love and moral allegory—a "wanity" which is not my favourite "wanity." To the Alexandrine of Guillaume de Palerne reference has already been made. Blanchefleur—known all over Europe with her lover Floire (Floris, etc.)—the Saracen slave who charms a Christian prince, and is rescued by him from the Emir of Babylon, to whom she has been sold in hopes of weaning Floris from his attachment, more than deserved her vogue. But, as in the case of the chansons, mere cataloguing would be dull and unprofitable, and analysis on the scale accorded to Partenopeus impossible. One must only take up once more the note of this whole early part of our history, and impress again on the reader the evident desire for the accomplished novel which these numerous romances show; the inevitable practice, in tale-telling of a kind, which the production of them might have given; and, above all, the openings, germs, suggestions of new devices in fiction which are observable in them, and which remained for others to develop if the first finders left them unimproved.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] That is, of nothing like the length of the latest forms of the Chansons de Geste or the Arthurian Romances proper. Some of the late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Adventure stories, before they dropped into prose, are indeed long enough, and a great deal too long; but they show degeneracy.
[59] The h (Parth-) does occur in both forms, and there are other variation, as "Partonopeus," etc. But these are trifles.
[60] Taking honour to the mother as separate from that to the father.
[61] The Spanish-English form is perhaps the prettier. I am sorry to say that the poet, to get a rhyme, sometimes spells it "Urracle," which is not pretty. Southey's "Queen Orraca" seems to me to have changed her vowel to disadvantage.
[62] The original author of the Court of Love, whether Chaucer or another, pretty certainly knew it; and Spenser spiritualised the doctrine itself in the Four Hymns.
[63] I think the medical people (borrowing, as Science so often does, the language which she would fain banish from human knowledge) call this sort of thing a syndrome.
[64] See below on Urraca's plain speaking.
[65] Not too commentatorially identified with Constantinople.
[66] It may be worth noting that in this context appears the original form of an English word quite common recently, but almost unknown a very short time ago—"grouse" in the sense of "complain," "grumble": "Ce dist Corsols et nul n'en grouce."
[67] No one will be rude enough to disbelieve her, and, as will be seen, her supernatural powers had limits; but it was odd, though fortunate, that they should have broken down exactly at this important juncture. Who made those rebellious candles take him to that chamber and couch, unknown to her?
[68] For Melior, though of invisible beauty, is represented as delightful in every other way, as wise and witty and gracious in speech as becomes a white witch. And when her lover on one occasion thanks her for her sermon, there is no satire; he only means sermo.
[69] Like Guy of Warwick; still more like Mr. Jaggers's clerk, though the circumstances are reversed. He almost says in so many words, "Hullo! here's an engagement ring on my finger. We can't have a marriage."
[70] The author, more suo, intimates that the Court ladies by no means shared these hostile feelings, and would have willingly been in Melior's place.
[71] He induces him to turn Christian on the supposition of being his companion; and then gives him the slip. The neophyte's expressions on the occasion are not wholly edifying.
[72] The good palfrey is found and in a state to carry his master, who is quite unable to walk. One hopes they did not leave the beast to the lions, tigers, wyverns, etc., for he could hardly hope for such a literal "stroke of luck" again.
[73] The name will suggest, to those who have some wine-lore, no less a vintage than Château Yquem. Nothing could be better for a person in the Count's condition as a restorative.
[74] These two directions obviously refer to the common mediaeval "wimple" arrangement.
CHAPTER IV
THE
