od, bounded on one side by antiquity and on the other by the sixteenth century, the epoch of the revival of the arts and sciences. The author of the romance of Berte aus grans piés flourished about the close of the thirteenth. His name was Adans or Adenès, according to the general custom of designating an individual indifferently by his patronymic name or by its diminutive. The greater part of the manuscripts give him the surname of Roi, or King ; and M. Roquefort thinks that it was bestowed upon him because one of his poems bore off the palm at a puy d'amour;* whilst the learned authors of the Histoire Littéraire de la France suppose that Adenes was indebted for this title to the justice of his contemporaries and to the superiority of his poetic talent. I shall hazard an opinion of my own, which does not conform to either of these. We are acquainted with several trouvères, whose works obtained prizes in the Puys of Valenciennes or Cambray : — they all took the surname of couronné, and not that of roi. : But in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was a King of the Minstrels (Roi des Ménestrels.) This pacific sovereign had the direction of the jongleurs or troubadours of the court, and I am inclined to think, that his duties bore no inconsiderable resemblance to those of a modern leader of an orchestra. To him people addressed themselves, when they wanted a good singer, a good lute-player, or a good harper; and the King of the Minstrels, as the most skilful of all, directed and animated the concert by voice and gesture. Such were probably the prerogatives and functions of le Roi Adenès.t -- However this may be, and although no one can doubt, on running over the names of his numerous and illustrious protectors, that Adenès enjoyed a high reputation as Trouvère and minstrel, yet I do not find that any contemporary writer makes mention of him. It is true, that in one of the copies of the fables of Marie de France, this poetess designates le Roi Adam as the author of the first English translation of the fables of Esop; "Esop call we this book; King Adanès did highly rate it, And into English did translate it."‡ But this copy deceived the learned author of the catalogue of the La Vallière manuscripts. All other copies of Marie de France read [* The puys d'amour were assemblies in which questions of love and gallantry were discussed in poetry. The name of puy comes from the low latin podium, balcony or "stage," as the poets on those occasions recited their verses from an elevated place. For an account of these Puys or Cours d'Amour, see Roquefort, De la Poésie Françoise, p. 93. — Raynouard, Choix de Poésies des Troubadours, T. II. p. 79. et seq. TR.] [ By other writers he is spoken of as the Roi d'armes, the King-at-arms, of Henry, Duke of Brabant. TR.] li rois Henrys, instead of li rois Adans. At all events, as many of the manuscripts of Marie de France belong to the commencement of the thirteenth century, it is evident that they can make no mention of the works of Adenès, who did not flourish till near its close. It is, then, to the writings of Adenès and particularly to his romance of Cléomadès * that we must look for information respecting the time in which he flourished, and for some circumstances of his life. Adenès was born in the duchy of Brabant about 1240. He doubtless exhibited, at an early age, a remarkable talent for poetry ; for Henry III., then Duke of Brabant, the warm friend of poets and yet a poet himself, had him educated with care, and afterward chose him for his minstrel. It is very possible that the pretty songs of Henry III., which are still preserved in the Royal Library, were submitted to the correction of the young Adenès, before they were sung in public. Nearly all the princes of the thirteenth century give proofs of great talent, and sometimes of true poetic genius. But perhaps their highest, their most indisputable merit was mainly owing to the choice of their minstrels :— thus, Blondel was distinguished by the patronage of Richard Coeur-de-Lion, and Gaces Brulés by the king of Navarre; Charles d'Anjou, king of Naples, was accompanied by the Bossu d'Arras, and we have seen that Adenès had merited the good graces of the Duke of Brabant. "Minstrel was I to the good Duke Henry; He it was, that brought me up and nourished me, Henry died in 1260, regretted by his subjects, and above all by the poets, whose labors he liberally rewarded. Adenès, who, after the death of his benefactor, took every opportunity of praising his virtues, soon gained the affection of the Duke's children. Jean and Guyon preserved the poet from the ills of penury, and when Marie de Brabant became queen of France, she took him with her to Paris. There, in his double capacity of poet and courtier, he was honored with the most marked distinction. In those days, poets were permitted to eulogize the great, and to celebrate their numerous virtues. In doing this Adenès had no peer; but whilst he rendered due homage to those, whom fortune surrounded with all the splendor of power, he listened also to the natural promptings of his heart, and both respected and cherished all self-acquired renown. He somewhere says in Buevon de Comarchis; "If it please God and his saints, through all my earthly days, [* An analysis or paraphrase of this romance is given by the Counte de Tressan; Euvres Choisies. VT. II. p. 271. TR.] "Menestrés au bon duc Henri Fui, cil m'aleva et norri Et me fist mon mestier aprendre." What good I hear of them, I will record it in my lays, If aught I hear that 's ill, I will hold my peace always." The precise date of the death of Adenès is unknown. The last poem to which he has prefixed his name is Cléomadès, whose story transports us back to the reign of Diocletian. This is the longest of the author's poems, and contains no less than nineteen thousand octosyllabic lines. The principal narrative is often interrupted by agreeable episodes, such as the history of the miraculous deeds of the poet Virgil, the greatest enchanter of Rome. Among other marvels, which unfortunately time hath put into his wallet as "alms for oblivion," Adenès mentions the baths of Pozzuoli. On each of these Virgil had inscribed the name of that disease, which was instantly cured by the virtue of its waters. "But the Physicians every one, Who much ill and much good have done, For nothing could they gain thereby. They 'd like them little enough, I trow."† A great number of copies of Cléomadès are still extant, some of them under the title of Cheval de fust. This cheval de fust, or wooden horse, takes a very active part in the romance. He traversed the air, you know, with inconceivable rapidity, and was guided in his course by turning a peg, which is sufficient to prove, that this famous courser is the type of the horse on which Pierre de Provence carried away the fair Maguelonne, and which, at a later period, under the name of Clavileño, bore the divine Sancho so hign in air as to make him confound the earth with a grain of mustard-seed, and its inhabitants with filberts. mar Cléomadès was written at the joint request of Marie de Brabant and Blanche de France, who was married in 1269 to the Infante of Castille. The names of these two princesses determine very nearly the date of its composition. Marie de Brabant was ried in 1274 to Philippe-le-Hardi; and Blanche, on the death of her husband, returned to France in 1275. Cléomadès must, therefore, have been written between 1275 and 1283, the year in which Philippe-le-Hardi died. I have one word more to say of this romance. mences; * "Se Diex plaist et ses sains, tant com je viverai Se d'aus sais aucun bien je le recorderai ; Se de nului sai mal, trestout quoi m'en tairai." Qui ont fait maint mal et maint bien It thus com "He who did write Ogier the Dane, These three romances are still preserved in the Royal Library, all of them complete, except Bueron de Comarchis, of which the first part only remains. Bueron de Comarchis is a kind of appendage to the old romances which immortalize the family of Guillaume au cornés; in the same manner, that the Enfances Ogier are the sequel of the romances of Ogier. It has been often supposed, that Adenes was the author of all the poems of Guillaume au cornés, and also of Ogier le Danois; but this is an error; for the origin of the greater part of these romances can be traced back to the very cradle of French poetry, to a period far beyond the thirteenth century. Adenès, on the contrary, is one of the last poets, who sang, in monorhyme verse, the traditions of our fabulous and heroic ages. His versification is pure and correct; but it may be said, that the subject of his narratives is the less poetic in proportion as his style is the more so. But this letter is already a thousand times too long; and I therefore close these desultory remarks upon Adenès and his works, leaving it to the romance of Berte au grans pies to plead its own cause, and to justify the importance which I attach to its publi cation. Adieu, Sir, and believe me with much respect, etc. etc. PAULIN PARIS. I subjoin a brief notice of the method I have followed in examining and comparing these different manuscripts. In this, I have taken the illustrious M. Raynouard as my guide. His grammar is exceedingly simple. Its principal rules are these: 1. In the singular, an s at the end of a word denotes the subject or nominative: the absence of this letter denotes the regimen direct or indirect, or what the old grammarians call the genitive, dative, and accusative. 2. In the plural it is directly the reverse; the absence of the s denotes the nominative; its presence, the oblique cases. This rule is never violated in the old poems, except when the rhyme or measure requires it. Thus, too, in modern poetry we suppress at pleasure the final e in the words encore, zéphire, and some others. 3. In a great many substantives, and in the greater part of the pronouns, the termination of the oblique cases varies from that of the "Cil qui fit d'Ogier le Danois nominative. This is one of the beauties of the olden tongue, which in modern times has fallen into disuse. Thus, in old French we have In illustration take the following examples: “A l'issue d'avril uns temps dous et joli * Que li mes entendant en seront ebaubi Adonc tenoient Franc les ** Tyois por amis.— Lift rois Pepins a fait moult grant gent assembler. Que puis que Dier §§ laissa son cor crucifier." It is important, before beginning to read the romance of Berte, to have these rules well fixed in the mind. In the preparation of this work for the press I have constantly followed them; except in some rare cases, in which no one of the six copies preserved in the Royal Library authorized me so to do. In all such cases, I have preferred rather to leave an evident error uncorrected, than to add a single letter not found in any of the old copies. Before closing, I would inform my readers, as peradventure some of them may observe the great care that has been taken to render this publication worthy of their attention, that for this they are mainly indebted to M. Leroux de Lincy, one of the most promising pupils of the new school of Chartes, The work has been printed from a copy he was kind enough to make from MS. No. 7188 of the Royal Library; and every one knows how many difficulties must be surmounted, and how much learning employed, in producing a faithful copy of our old romance-writers. M. de Lincy must, then, be regarded as chief editor of the romance of Berte; and had he not declined the honor, his name would have shared with mine the poor advantage of figuring upon the title-page of this volume. In this, I must confess, he has given *Dous, nominative singular. Joli for jolis, on account of the rhyme. Erbelete, nominative plural. Dieu, accusative singular. Ystoires, accusative plural. Nominatives plural. Li, pronoun; nominative plural. ** Les, pronoun; accusative plural. tt Li, nominative singular. Le, accusative singular. § Diex, nominative singular. |