網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

OBSERVATIONS MADE BY WARTON.

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

NEARLY a century has elapsed since Dr. Warton, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, made the following remark in his valuable and interesting work, the 'History of Poetry:'-'In an age advanced to the highest degree of refinement, that species of curiosity commences which is busied in contemplating the progress of social life, in displaying the gradations of science, and in tracing the transitions of barbarism to civility.'

This observation was applied by Warton to the last century; that dreary season, when art and literature, as it now seems to us, were either frozen or under a cloud: it must therefore have been among the learned only, that such speculations were then becoming the prevalent taste, and furnishing the favourite topics of the day. One would imagine, in reading this sentence, that Warton was our contemporary; that he lived amongst us, when the light that was only then dawning, has shed its beams in full brilliance; when all that appertains to the past is almost sacred in the eyes of enthusiasts—(and who are now not enthusiasts?)—in history, or romance, or poetry, or the drama. Far from looking back, as Warton expresses it, to the condition of our ancestors with the triumph of superiority,' we reverence

6

[ocr errors]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

their very foibles; we have returned to their tastes and pleasures; we emulate their works of art; we dive with insatiable zeal into their domestic existence; our forefathers seem dearer to us than ourselves.

Admitting these conclusions, we must be greatly concerned in tracing the rise and progress of that which may be termed social literature; whether in the form of poetry, or in the more complicated construction of the drama, or in the careless, lively effusions of known wits, or in epistolary productions, composed with infinite care, and issuing from the Court or from the remote castle of the provinces at long intervals; or in the long forgotten satirical and political ballads, to which our ancestors were addicted when they dared to give vent to their prejudices or their passions.

6

Strictly speaking, we ought perhaps to date the permanent existence of the Literature of Society' after the Wars of the Roses were ended, and when this country settled down into a certain degree of repose. Then, as in France in the present day, wit, eloquence, fancy, sprang up like flowers after rain, and a sort of moral sunshine prevailed after the long eclipse of revolution. But even before that period, when a settled succession insured peace, one species of literature had delighted successive ages.

Romantic fiction, brought from Arabia, was the resource of society at a very early era. The gallant Crusaders, embued with that species of high romance which is an accompaniment to the devotional character, were prepared to accept as true, and to enjoy as exciting, the wildest productions of fancy. They carried, therefore, back to their homes that love for fiction which has never been extinguished in this country.

A colony of Saracens, settled on the north coast of Africa, had, meantime, infected the Spanish nation with a similar taste. Hence the Spaniards, carried away by the attractions

BRETAGNE COLONIZED BY WELSH.

5

of these extravagant inventions, neglected the study of Latin, and affected a pompous and turgid style of language. Italy and France soon caught up the prevailing passion for romance; and, in France, the ardour for fiction settled in that remote and still primitive province, La Basse Bretagne, which is one of the most curious, and the least visited, localities in France.

Bretagne, anciently colonized by the Welsh under Maximus, a Roman general, seems almost to claim kindredship with Wales. Its Welsh invaders introduced into that wild region their own dialect-the Armoric; and the patois still spoken among the poor, honest, neglected Bretons, can be understood by our mountaineers from Snowdon or Plinlimmon, and strange indeed was the sensation excited at the siege of Belleisle in the minds of our soldiers, when the Welsh could make themselves intelligible at once to the Bretons.

As their language was similar, so did their tastes become kindred. The original Welsh colonists carried back into their mountain fastnesses, or into their hill-side villages and lovely valleys, the fictions derived from the Moors. Wales became the stronghold of superstition and romance; and so closely were the two countries allied, that Milton enumerates the knights of Wales and of Armorica together, as being among the retainers of King Arthur, in these lines:

'What resounds

In fable or romance, of Uther's son

Begirt with British and Armoric knights.'

Llywarchen, a famous Welsh Bard, a hundred and fifty years afterwards, commemorated the exploits of his twentyfour sons,-who wore gold chains, and, thus marked out for slaughter, were, one is not surprised to find, all killed in

6

WALES AND CORNWALL THE SCENE OF CHIVALRY.

battle against the Saxons. By the testimony of Llywarchen the secession of the Welsh into Bretagne is mainly supported.

Nor was Wales the only part of Britain that formed and maintained a close connexion with Bretagne. Cornwall, which retained its Celtic dialect until the reign of Elizabeth, was an ally of Armorica even so early as the fourth or fifth century. To Bretagne were the children of the old Cornish Britons sent for education; and thither did their sons repair, not only to seek for polish, but for wives. Auxiliary troops to fight the Saxons were collected from Bretagne : connexions for purposes of commerce were kept up with that country also. Hence French romances were brought home by these traders, in order to divert not only the ladies of Cornwall, but those powerful chieftains who, under the title of Dukes of Cornwall, successively maintained their independence almost until the Norman Conquest. The shadow of this distinct principality is still exhibited in one of our regal titles, borne by our young Albert Edward, 'Prince of Wales, and Duke of Cornwall.'

Wales henceforth, and Cornwall, became the scenes of all ancient British chivalry; and were knitted together by several bonds-those of language, of kindred, and of customs. Divided from each other only by a narrow strait, Bretons and Cornishmen were often confounded with each other by old British writers; and Cornwall was frequently styled 'Welsh Wales.' 'May the prints of the hoofs of my Prince's steed be seen as far as Cornwall!' was the aspiration of the famous Llygnd Gwr, a Welsh Bard, in his ode to Llywellyn, the last Prince of Wales of the British line. King Arthur's exploits were as celebrated in Cornwall as in Wales; and many an old tradition is attached to some castle, or rock, or stream in Cornwall,—the gallant and royal Arthur its theme and hero.

GUALTIER, ARCHDEACON OF OXFORD.

7

It is curious to reflect that so much which has delighted us in our infancy, so much which now occupies the leisure of our middle age, so much that percolates into every provincial town of our empire, so much of fiction in its various phases,-comes from a land so little known to English travellers as the remote Bretagne; with its decaying towns, -poor, but stately; its starving peasantry,-destitute, yet honest; its wonderful Druidical remains, its perilous quicksands, its desolate castles, and still remembered and respected seignorial rights and customs. It is strange to reflect, that the contents of our unrivalled circulating libraries—in magnitude to which nothing in foreign capitals can be compared-derive their origin from the professional Bards of Armorica or Basse Bretagne, and that the natives of that most interesting country owed this mine of entertainment, through the Bretons, to the far-off Arabians or Saracens. It is true the materials which composed the ancient Armorican romance were compositions such as modern readers would repudiate with horror, as extravagant if not puerile. Charlemagne and Arthur, the first heroes of tradition, might be regarded with respect; but Gog and Magog, those giants, called by the Arabians and Persians Jagiouge and Magiouge, creatures from Tarturus, twelve cubits high, who could uproot an oak-tree as soon as others could tear up an hazel wand, are not, in our age of reason, calculated to rivet the fancy of readers. The return of the Crusaders, however, had made such fables in those days extensively popular; for the Knights whom we reverence, as their mute effigies rest cross-legged in monumental stone, were, at best, grown-up children, brave, loyal, but ignorant and superstitious to the last degree.

In 1100, Gualtier, an archdeacon of Oxford, made a journey into France, and brought back an Armorican chronicle containing a ' History of the Ten Kings of Britain.' This book

« 上一頁繼續 »