WE do not know, and-as I do not believe in a science of history-I think we never shall know, the laws of Schwärmerei, or the enthusiasm of multitudes. The space from the eleventh to the fifteenth century was crowded with events more or less involved or coiled up in such enthusiasms; and, looking back from this distance of time, it is as if we could discern, through the mist of our wonder, The prophetic soul Of the great world, dreaming on things to come.' First, we are astonished at it; then we scrutinise it. And then again, dissatisfied with our unprofitable inspection, we find, as soon as ever we are a little familiar with the few hard facts we can see clearly, that the glamour of wonder returns. Once more, we see and feel, but do not understand. The mystery of human life is as great as ever, and the entangling of the threads of good and evil, of fatality and will, of conscious intent and (what I do not know how to call anything but) dreaming intent, as complicated and mysterious as ever. We cannot take up into our thoughts this Romantic movement: the burthen is too great for us. But if I had to name the conditions under which such a movement would be proved natural to human nature, I really think I should name those imposed upon society by the Medieval Church. It was totally impossible for the communities of the West to take shape without a large infusion of the strong heroic virtues; and, whatever the Church may have done towards mitigating pure secular ferocity, it never disowned the sword which helped or seemed to help it. It would never have done for a Church which ultimately rested on force to discredit the military virtues ; and we have seen that the consecration of a knight to VOL. I. his functions was almost a sacrament. Now, under any circumstances, the spirit of adventure, by which I mean the spirit that is apt to question the unknown or the future in any shape-the spirit of adventure, I say, which is another name for the love of mystery, is naturally akin to love and reverence for women. And if we give to the daring soldier-the huntsman of danger and wrong—a faith which apotheosizes a woman, and so tends to make the gentle virtues prominent in his thoughts, we inevitably go far to make a woman-worshipper. Such a man, with such a faith, was the medieval knight, and music-a festive and social accomplishment-was a natural part of the education of a gentleman; so that we frequently find the knight a singer and a harper as well as a swordsman and a good rider, But it is not to be supposed that he would be allowed to keep so easy a faculty as that of the singer or musician all to himself. Richard Cœur de Lion was a troubadour, and a thousand brave soldiers beside; but the soldier and the poet are types which are not commonly found united in one person; and, accordingly, knightly deeds and ladies' love were not left to be sung of by knights alone. The minstrel-romancist, or troubadour, appears upon the scene; a whole literature of loving and fighting springs up in Europe, the minstrelromancist doing impartial honour to knights and ladies; the Courts of Love are established; and, almost at a bound, we have before us erotic parodies of the faith of the Church, the subtleties of the Schoolmen, and the discipline of the Feud. The medieval Church, while it often acted so as to protect woman for the time-for example, in forbidding a wanton divorcedid, after all, very much degrade woman in other ways, proclaiming her inferiority and uncleanness, and so often identifying and connecting her with foul and abominable fancies. But it placed the Virgin on the steps of the divine throne and crowned her with stars. Then, after centuries of noise and turbidity, destroying much and threatening much, but leaving untouched the deeper idiosyncracies of races, it befell that,—-just at the moment when, quickened by the breath of an intellectual revival, the currents of Teutonic and Celtic sentiment met,-in a happy hour the image of the celestial maiden was reflected in the confluent waters, and the prepared vision saw, through the disturbing ripples, not the figure which the Church had painted, but another; and from that hour the knight and the poet thought no shame to praise.. God and his lady in the same hymn. Indeed, it is scarcely too much to say that, at this epoch, the knight and the poet have two gods and two heavens. Almost is the phraseology of psalm and prayer, chant and canticle, used indiscriminately. Half-sincere people, who prefer inventing opinions to knowing or thinking the truth, may profess to find allegorical meanings in all this, but it is superabundantly plain that it is fantasy that we have, not allegory. May is the month. dedicated to the Blessed Virgin by the Church, and May is accordingly the month of Love, in which the Courts of Love are held, under the lindens. The birds are the choristers of the heaven of the God of Love, and the councillors of His court. There is, indeed, something quite conventional in the use to which the birds, the trees, the flowers, and the leaves, are put by all the medieval poets and romancists. They drop into the verse or the story almost as mechanically as the Flora and Phoebus, and vernal meads, and feathered warblers of a later period. It would be too much to say that all this sentiment or teaching of the romance-literature is conventional in itself, though it may all have been the subject of convention. No degree of use and wont or artificiality of statement can remove the charm of sentiment such as this, which is put into the mouth of the lover in the Franklin's Tale, when he has come back to his mistress, Dorigen, wife of Arviragus, to tell her that he has been enabled to do her bidding, and that the rocks of the Breton coast are now removed: ' And whan he saugh his tyme, anoon right he |