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of fingularities, but proceeding from a particular vein of good-sense: and though fond of retirement, and careless of appear ances, fince he was croffed in love; it is faid that in his youth he had been a fine gentleman, who fupped with Lord Rochefter and Sir George Etheredge, had fought a duel, and kicked a bully in a coffee-house. It is certain that many of the fubfequent difplays of his character, in which he is reprefented as ignorant of the common forms of life, ruftic, uninformed, and credulous, very ill accord with this fuppofed town education. Steel himself has been guilty of some of these deviations from the original draught; but Addifon feems not at all to have regarded it, and to have painted after a conception of his own, to which he has faithfully adhered. His Sir Roger, though fomewhat of an humourist in his manner, is effentially a benevolent, chearful, hearty country gentleman, of very flender abilities and confined education, warmly attached to church and king, and imbued with all the political opinions of what was called the country party. Though he is made an object of affection from the goodness of his heart, and the hilarity of his temper, yet his weakneffes and prejudices fcarcely allow place for esteem; nor do we meet with any of that whimfical complication of fenfe and folly which Steel's papers exhibit, and which he accounts for on the fuppofition of a fort of mental infirmity, left by his amorous difappointment.

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I fhall point out fome of the particulars which feem defigned by Addison to lower him down to the standard of capacity which he chose to allot to the abstract character of the country gentleman. His behaviour at church may pass as the oddity of an humourift, though it alfo plainly denotes the ruftication of a fequeftered life; but his half belief of witchcraft in the cafe of Moll White, is undoubtedly a fatirical ftroke on country fuperftition. Sir Roger ferioufly advifes the old woman not to have communication with the devil, or hurt her neighbours' cattle; and it is obferved, "that he would frequently have bound her over to the county feffions, had not his chaplain, with much ado, perfuaded him to the contrary.” At the affizes he gets up and makes a speech; but, the Spectator fays, " it was fo little to the purpose, that he will not trouble his readers with an account of it." In the adventure with the gipfies, the knight suffers them to tell him his fortune, and appears more than half inclined to put faith in their predic gions. His notion that the Act for fecuring

the church of England had already begun to take effect, because a rigid diffenter, who had dined at his houfe on Christmasday, had been obferved to eat heartily of plum-porridge, is too palpable a stroke of raillery on the narrow conceptions of the high party to be mistaken. The whole defcription of Sir Roger's behaviour at the reprefentation of the Diftreffed Mother, is admirably humourous; but the figure the knight makes in it is not at all more refpectable in point of tafte or knowledge, than that of Partridge in Tom Jones on a fimilar occafion. But it is in the vifit to the tombs in Weftminster Abbey, that Addifon has moft unmercifully jested on the good man's fimplicity. Sir Roger, it feems, was prepared for this spectacle by a courfe of hiftorical reading in the fummer, which was to enable him to bring quota. tions from Baker's Chronicle in his political debates with Sir Andrew Freeport. He accordingly deals out his knowledge very liberally as he paffes through the heroes of this profound hiftorian, The fhew-man, however, informs him of many circumstances which he had not met with in Baker; and this profufion of anecdotes makes him appear fo extraordinary a perfon to Sir Roger, that he not only kindly fhakes him by the hand at parting, but invites him to his lodgings in Norfolk street, in order to talk over these matters with him more at leifure." The trait is pleafantly ludicrous, but fomewhat outréé, as applied to a perfon at all removed from the lowest vulgar.

If the picture of Sir Roger be compared with that of the country fquire in the Freeholder, it will be found that they differ chiefly in the milder temper and more benevolent difpofition of the knight, and fcarcely at all in point of information and understanding. Both have the fame national and party prejudices, and exhibit an equal inferiority to the more cultured inhabitant of the town. As the papers in which Sir Roger appears have ever been among the most popular in the Spectator, I cannot but think they have done much in fixing on the public mind the abstract idea of a country gentleman, and attaching to it that fort of contempt with which, whether juftly or otherwife, it has usually been treated; and I fhould no more hesitate to term Addifon a fatirift in this piece of pleafantry, than the author of the celebrated Lettres Provinciales," who has perhaps excelled every writer in the refined delicacy of his ridicule. Stoke Newington, Jan. 6, 1800,

A 2

J. AIKIN.

For

For the Monthly Magazine. THE ENQUIRER, No. XIX. WHERE IS THE PATRIA OF ROMANCE,

OF RIME, AND OF CHIVALRY?

An gwîranath ew an gwella En pob tra trea po pella. The truth is best in every thing, near or far. ARMORICAN PROVERBS.

HE neft of romantic fiction, the first

Tufe of rime, and the inftitution of

chivalry, are of uncertain locality; fo that the pedigree is till to feek of circumftances which have given to the manners of our heroic ages, and to the compofitions of our popular poets, their most peculiar tinge. Different theories have indeed been offered of their probable origin: two fyftems especially, which may be characterifed as the Arabic and the Gothic, have attracted the toils of microscopic erudition, and divide the votes of literary fpecu

lators.

That scheme of opinion which aims at deducing romance, rime, and knighthood, from the Arabs, originates probably with Velalquez, who, in a hiftory of the poetry of Spain, naturally afcribes to the Moorish conqueft many peculiarities of Spanish culture. Warburton (Final note to Love's Labour lot) and Warton (Firft Differtation prefixed to the Hiftory of English Poetry) favour more or lets this hypothefis, which makes Spain the birth-place of modern civilization, and fucceflively the fchool mistress of the Provenzal and Italian, of the Norman and English poets. According to thefe writers, the Douazdeh Rokh, or twelve champions of Kai Khofrou, would be the archetypes of the peers of Charlemayne; the morifcos, of our ballads; and the fieftas de las canas, of our tourna

ments.

Mallet, by his Introduction to the Hiftory of Denmark, fuggefted the trains of idea which led probably Pinkerton (Differtation on the Scythians or Goths, p. 135), and certainly Percy (on the ancient Metrical Romances), to afcribe a Scandinavian crigin to the talesanurites of chivalry. According to thefe writers, the model of romance must be fought in the Hiftory of Charles and Grymer, the firft lings of rime in Egil the Skald, and the rudiments of knighthood in the Edda.

Various confiderations, however, favour the fufpicion that neither Moorish Spain, nor Gothic Scandinavia, gave this very decifive impulse to the character of early modern civilization; but Armorica rather, and the connected provinces of Britain.

I. All the European nations take their romances of chivalry from the French.

The Italians have no vernacular poetry prior to the fourteenth century: the earliest of their writers in + verfe or profe,' abound with imitations from the Provenzal: Ariofto derives from Turpin, and Tafso from § Bechada, the subject of his poem. The Spaniards enumerate, among their earliest | poets, those invited out of the fouth of France to Barcelona by King

John the Firft of Arragon. According

to Cervantes, they have no older book of chivalry to exhibit than Amadis of Gaul, which is apparently a tranflation from the then manufcript French original: at any rate its circulation cannot be traced before the invention of printing, and it is confequently pofterior, by many centuries, to the rft French romances. The English poffefs few compofitions of this fort, which are not avowedly ¶ tranflated from Norman originals: and this is the cafe of the three** oldeft, the Gefte of King Horne, the Sangrale, and the Lives of the Saints. The German romancers again, as Adelung and ++ Eichhorn have proved, borrow from the French their firft effays: Ulrich of Zezam, who flourished in 1190,

* Petrarch, indeed, mentions in his Triumph of Love - i Siciliani Che fur' già primi

But these feem to be Provenzal poets migrated to Sicily.

† See especially La Crufca Provenzale of Ant. Baftero, Rome 1724.

Brunetto Latini, the mafter of Dante, il quale, ficcome teftimonia G. Villani, fu cominciatore, e maeftro in digroffare i Fiorentini, e farli fcorti in ben parlare ed in faper giudicare, piuttosto che adoperare il patrio fuo linguaggio nella grand' opera del Tesoro, volle zale, come quella che era in quel tempo teanzi fcriverla in lingua Romanza, o Provenana." Vicende della Letteratura, p. 75. nuta per più gentile, e più nobile del' Itali

"Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de Caftro de Turribus, profeffione miles, fubtiliflimi ingenii vir, aliquantulum imbutus literis, horum gefta præliorum (the taking of Jerufalem by Godfrey) materna, ut ita dixerim, linguâ rhythmo vulgari, ut populus pleniter intelligeret, ingens volumen decenter compofuit." Labbe Biblioth. nov. II. p. 296. This Bechada of Tours was affifted by Gaubert, Norman.'

I.

Dillon's Origin of Spanish Poetry, p. 54.
Percy's Reliques, III.
P. xxi.

** Warton's History of English Poetry, 13, 38, and 134; and Tyrwhitt's Effays on Chaucer, III. 68, and 164.

†† Gefchichte der Cuitur, p. 224.

tranf

tranflated Sir Lancelot of the Lake from the French of Arnaud Daniel: Albert of Halberitadt and Wolfram of Eschenbach tranflated from the French of Guyot the Romances Gamuret and Percival, about the year 1200 Rupert of Orbent, in 1226, tranflated Fleur Blanchefleur; and Godfrey of Strafburg, in 1250, Sir Tritram. The Icelanders, it fhould feem from •Peringskiold, have borrowed ufually from the Germans: as the Niflunga-faga, which is the most ancient of their ballads not my thological, appeals to Teutonic poems for rouchers.

II. The French romances originate in the north of France.

Among the provincial dialects of that country, the only † two which attained in the middle ages a degree of polish and fashion, were the Provenzal and the Norman, then called langue d'oc and langue desi. South of the Loire the cultivated claffes fpoke and wrote in Provenzal, north of the Loire in Norman French. In each of thefe dialects the kings of France were accustomed to pronounce the coronation cath; and in each, a variety of verfified compofitions were early drawn up. But among the Provenzal poets the Hiftory of the Troubadours enumerates only two makers of metrical romances, Arnaud de Carcaffes and Raimond Vidal. Nor is there more than a fingle romance of Provenzal origin (for Philomena is placed by Count Caylus under Saint Louis) which has probable claims to high antiquity and originality: that namely of William the Short-nofed, a companion of Charlemayne, who, for his fervices against the Spanish Moors receives the duchy of Aquitain, and at laft turns monk. Whereas in

the langue d'oui, or Norman French, above a hundred romance writers have been reckoned. The caufe of this disparity feems to be, that in the fouth of France poetry was cultivated as an accomplishment of the gentry, as a gay science, and dealt chiefly in galant fonnets, or fatirical fyrventes; while in the north of France it

See alfo Bragut III. p. 354.
Legrand's Preface to the Fabliaux.
Histoire des Troubadours. II. 390, and

III. 296.

Oeuvres badines.

See Corps d'extraits des Romans de Chevalerie, par le Comte de Treffan: Fauchet's Recueil de l'origine, &c. plus les noms et femmaire des oeuvres de CXXVII. poetes François vivans avant l'an MCCC: and the Appendix, No. 11, to Eichhorns Gefchichte der Cultur.

was the bufmefs of an order of reciters, who travelled from castle to caftle, amufing with their tales thofe vacant hours which the modern novellit occupies. Rimed ftories of marvellous import, merry fabliaux, miraculous legends, romances of chivalry, were beft adapted for the purpofes of fuch an employment.

III. The older romances of chivalry, have efpecially celebrated the heroes of greater or leffer Britany, and are therefore of Armorican origin.

Armorica was the north west corner of Gaul, included between the Loire, the Seine, and the Atlantic. In imitation of Britain, and in concert with it, this † province favoured, about the year 410, the revolt of Conftantine against the Roman emperor Honorius; but it did not refume on the death of the rebel its ancient allegiance. Under a conftitution in which the clergy, the nobility, and the city-corporations had all a formal influence, it continued in a state of independence until Charlemayne. The titular fovereignty of Clovis, who, by an opportune converfion to chriftianity, obtained the voluntary fubmiffion of the § Armoricans, encroached fo little on the real franchifes of the burghers, that neither he nor his royal fucceffors rivalled in power the metropolitan mayors, and were often removed by them. The conduct of the independent British was fimilar; firft they hired the protection of the Gothic ftragglers, next they conferred a limited and local fovereignty, and finally they fubmitted wholly to the fway of the barbarian intruders, a revolution which may be confidered as completed throughout this ifland, with the exception of a few Welsh mountains, in the time of Offa, the correfpondent of Charlemayne. Among the chieftains of continental Britany, Charles Martel acquired the strongest claims to public grati

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titude for maintaining and extending the independence of his country against the Saracens of the fouth, and the Germans of the east and among the pendragons of Britain, Arthur won the like celebrity against the Piks of the north, and the Saxons of the eaft. A furvey of romantic literature will evince that these two herces and their companions were principally extolled

The romances of chivalry may be arranged in four main claffes. 1. Thofe which relate to Amadis of Gaul and his fellows. These were all written originally in profe, are nearly cotemporary with the introduction of printing, and are therefore comparatively modern. 2. Those which relate to Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, or to Charlemayne and his peers. These were moftly published in profe during the first century of printing, but pre-exifted in metre, and were recited in that form by the minstrels of the middle ages. 3. Those which ascribe to religious worthies the manners of chivalry; as the Seven Champions of Chriftendom, the Lives of the Saints, and the Vifion of Pierce Plowman. Such romances moftly occur, both, in profe, in metre, and in Monkish Latin, from which language the various vernacular metrical verfions feem to have been made for the convenience of the pilgrim's memory. 4. Those which afcribe the manners of chivalry to the heroes of claffical antiquity; rehearsing the fiege of Troy, or the exploits of Thefeus and of Alexander, with the moral coftume of knighthood. Thefe moftly occur in vernacular metre, and in Monkish Latin verfe.

From the modern imitations of the proper romances of chivalry, no conclufion can be drawn relative to the patrial foil of the originals. From the fecond clafs, it

Treffan, indeed, fays, (Difcours préliminaire, p. 15.) "Tous les anciens Romans de la Table-ronde, tir és par les Bretens des anciennes & fabuleufes chroniques de Melchin et de Telezin, furent écrits en Latin par Rufticien de Puife." But the paffage implies that the Latin verfions were either from the Norman-French, or from the ftill prior romances of the Bretons. This Telezin is probably the fame with the Tyrfilio of the Welth. Chaucer says very truly. (v. 11021) Thife olde gentil Bretons in hir dayes Of diverfe aventures maden layes Rimeyed in hir firfte Breton tongue,

would naturally be inferred, that the counry of Arthur, and the country of Charlemayne, gave birth to these compofitions. But it may be doubted, whether the romances concerning Charlemayne do in fact relate to this Emperor. They afcribe to him a father named Pepin, who has four fons; exploits in the foreft of Ardenne; wars againft the Saxons; the repulfion of the Saracens, in confequence of a victory at Poitiers; the inftitution of an order of knighthood; the depofition of the Duke of Aquitain; an embaffy from the Pope; and the gift of the facred territory to the fee of Rome. All thefe circumftances are hiftorically true of Charles Martel. The names are the more likely to have been confounded through the medium of an Armorican dialect, as meur fignifies great, le mayne; and marra, a mattock, martel, in that language, fo that Charlemar would be the Britannian name of both. Paffing on to the third and fourth claffes; the Lives of the Saints, the Troybook, the Story of Alexander, and the Gefta Romanorum, are obviously modifications of the later remnants of Latin culture: they can, by no plan of inference, be referred to an Arabic or a Scandinavian origin. They muft. either be deduced from the Italian literature of the middle ages; or from the veftiges of ancient literature, which in Armorica and Britain furvived the feparation of thefe countries from the Roman Empire. But they do not derive from Italy, because that country has no native legends in which the manners of chivalry are afcribed to the champions of religion; and because William of Britany, Walter Chatillon, and others, preceded Guido Colonna and the Italian romancers in the chivalrization of ancient epopœas. It remains probable, therefore, that even thefe ftories received firft in Armorica their chevalerefque garb.

IV. Rime derives from Armorican language. The fpeech of Armorica and of Britain, during the fifth, fixth, seventh, and eighth centuries, which include the period of their connexion and independence, must have refembled clofely that of the older Welch bards. The patois of Britany, Cornwall, and Wales are kindred dialectst of the Cimbric tongue, differing radically from the Gaelic or Irifh, and from the Gothic or Saxon idioms of their western and eastern neighbours, but agree

Which layes with inftruments they fonge. ing minutely with the few remaining mo

and he no doubt transcribed this tradition from fame Norman-French poem which he was refashioning.

* Velly's Hiftoire de France, vol. I.

Lhuyd's Archæologia.

Ruments

can.

numents of the old Armorican and Britif; fo that from what is known of the Welsh, one may reason concerning the ArmoriNow rime is effential to Welsh poetry. Their oldeft verfifiers,† Talieffin, Aneurin, and Cian, employ this meafure. The heroic elegies of Llywarch are‡ compofed in rime. In each of the poems of Hywel the fon of Owain Gwynez the fame rime is repeated throughout the whole compofition. In all the Gothic dialects rime is a novation: but in Welsh it is coæval with recorded poetry. It is the more probable, that out of this language rime paffed into all the other European tongues, as the first Latin rimes en record are thofe of St. Auguftin relative to the Pelagian herefy, which originated with Morgan, a monk of Bangor, and was rife both in Britain and Armorica. The peculiarity of the form of attack is a legitimate ground for inferring, that rime had been recurred to for its diffufion, and was confequently in popular ale. St. Patrick, an Ármoriean, introduced** rime into Ireland.

V. Chivalry, though of obfcurer origin, is alfo probably Armorican. Its hiftory has been lefs evolved than its institutions by the labors of St. Palaye. It refembles, in the fpirit of its operation, a confederacy of country-gentlemen to ward off from each other the dangers and evils of anarchy. A defenfive, not an offenfive, fpirit characterizes the obligations of a knight. To protect the church against heathens, ladies against ravishers, orphans against en

"The first kind of ftanzas was the triplet; and the first kind of rime was identical rime." Inftitutes of the bards, as quoted in the Life of Llywarch, p. xix.

Evans de Bardis, p. 67. Pinkerton (Enquiry into the Hiftory of Scotland, II. 97) pleads rime as a proof that these poems are of the thirteenth century in the lives of Saint Columban and Saint Faron, that is in the fxth century, Latin rimes occur.

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1 Heroic Elegies of Llywarch, by W. Owen, 1792.

§ Monthly Magazine, III. 95, 186, 257,

335.419.

Quisquis novit evangelium, recognofcat

cum timore;

Videt reticulum ecclefiam, videt hoc fæculum mare,

Genus autem mixtum pifcis juftus eft cum peccatore ;

croaching guardians, and the conquered equal against infült, were the topics of his oath. An order-fpirit, an exclufive care for the interefts of gentlemen, diftinguishes the practice of the initiated. The perfonal rights of women of the lower claffes were invaded without fcruple; while those of ladies were refpected with fuperftitious politeness. Such features feem rather thereliques of a receding, than the tokens of a growing, civilization. The whole ritual of chivalry, the military exercises, the tournaments, the fortified palaces, its very religiofity, imply an advancement in fociety, to which the Scandinavians could not have attained. The facred reverence for ladies cannot have proceeded from the Mahometan Moors. Armorica alone was adapted by its political circumstances, its Chriftianity, and its long participation of Roman culture, to become the nurse of fuch peculiarities. Some ceremonies of knighthood bear a ftrong resemblance to thofe bardic inftitutions which were common precifely to the Belgic provinces of Gaul and Britain; and which retain until now among the Welsh a great influence. The Ovyds, like the knights, paffed through preliminary grades, were admitted by dubbing, were inftructed in the use of arms, affected a green livery, fwore obedience to the judge and prieft (to the Braintt and Druid), refpected the truce

* See the Differtation on Bardifm, prefixed to the Elegies of Llywarch, p. xxxvi. &c.

The Braints anfwer to the Chevaliers de loi, and the Ovyds to the Chevaliers d'epée, of the ancient French jurifprudence. Loifel, in his Dialogue des Avocats, remarks, p. 468: "Pendant long temps une bonne partie des gens lais du parlement étoient appellés cheva, liers," Boutillier, in his Sosime Rurale, fays, "Or fachez que le fait d'avocacerie font les anciens faifeurs de loix, fi eft tenu et compté pour chevalerie; & pour ce font ils appellez en droit efcrit Chevaliers de Loix et peuvent et doivent porter d'or comme font les chevaliers." chain, and breaking off one or more rings to We find the Welsh nobles wearing a gold reward their followers for prowess in battle, or their minstrels for excellence in fong: we alfo find the vaers, maers, or municipal magiftrates, with a gold chain: poffibly it was a badge common to both orders of chivalry, the makers and the executors of the law. It is highly defirable that thofe Welch antiquaries who are at prefent fo laudably employed in the tranflation and publication of their ma

Sæculi finis eft littus, tunc eft tempus fepa- nufcript monuments, would beftow a prefer

rare. &c.

•* Uffeṛii Antiq. Ecclef. c. 17, P. 452.

ence of care on fuch as tend moft to evolve the early form of an inftitution fo influen.

of

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