necessary, as few of our readers who place any confidence in our judgement, will hesitate to put themselves in possession of Mr. Gurney's volume. On contrasting these Essays with the Treatise on Christian Doctrine that lately came under our review, one cannot fail to be struck with the immeasureable superiority of the present Writer in true wisdom to our English Sophocles. Those words of holy writ have forcibly occurred to us: "The meek will He guide in judgement, the meek will He teach his way." There is a spirit pervading Mr. Gurney's volume, which leaves no room for doubt as to the influence under which it has been composed. But the contrast between the two works is more especially interesting as they may both be considered as reflecting in some measure the character and spirit of the times That Quakerism has undergone some important modifications, on the one hand, since the time of Milton, Mr. Gurney will readily admit; and on the other hand, we feel persuaded that, had our great Poet lived at this era, he would never have put forth opinions so crude and erroneous. Nay, we cannot help imagining that an acquaintance with John Joseph Gurney, instead of the Quaker Ellwood, might not only have had a happy influence on Milton's religious tenets, but have led to the composition of a nobler poem than Paradise Regained. Art. II. 1. Lays of the Minnesingers or German Troubadours of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries illustrated by Specimens of the Contemporary Lyric Poetry of Provence and other Parts of Europe with historical and critical Notices and Engravings from the MS. of the Minnesingers in the King's Library at Paris, and from other Sources. Small 8vo. pp. 328. Price 14s. London, 1825. 2. The Songs of Greece, from the Roman Text edited by M. C. Fauriel, with Additions. Translated into English Verse, by Charles Brinsley Sheridan. Small 8vo. pp. lxxii. 314. Price 13s. London, 1825. To the specimens of Russian, Batavian, and Spanish popu lar poetry with which Mr. Bowring has gratified the public, these two volumes may be considered as adding a German and a Greek Anthology,-bearing respectively very different dates. yet, in point of fact, referrible to a similar era in the progress of civilization. In Greece, in Russia, and in Spain, it is as yet but the thirteenth century. Those countries have overslept themselves half a dozen centuries, and they are but now beginning to awake to the light which dawned in the twelfth century, burst forth with morning brilliancy in the sixteenth, and is now we trust, approaching nearer and nearer to a zenith from which it shall never decline. The Minnesingers, or Love-singers of Germany, were contemporary with the most celebrated of the Troubadours. The most splendid era of early German poetry opens with the Suabian dynasty in the twelfth century. In Frederic Barbarossa, the most extraordinary man of his age, the infant literature found a zealous patron. His niece had married Raymond Berenger III. Count of Provence, and to his acquaintance with. the Provençal poetry we must ascribe his literary taste. An epigram is extant, in the Provençal tongue, supposed to have been composed by this Imperial Mæcenas, which is curious as a commentary on the manners of the age. I like a cavalier Francés, And a donna Catalan; The Provence songs my ears to please, The graceful form of the Aragonese, The hands and face of the Anglése, And a page of Tuscany.' By some writers, this little piece has been ascribed to Frederic II., who was not less distinguished as the patron of literature. He was educated in Sicily, and was also a writer in the Provençal tongue. In Italy, where he almost constantly resided, he revived the academy of Salernum; he promoted the study of Grecian and Arabic learning, and his active exertions were directed towards imparting to his German subjects the benefit of the Southern schools. By the extinction of the Suabian dynasty towards the close of the thirteenth century, the school of the Minnesingers was deprived of that royal patronage to which it appears to have owed its existence and its celebrity; and the commencement of the fourteenth witnessed a total revolution in the literature of Germany. The church had regained its power over the public mind. The crusade against the Albigenses, by which Provence and Languedoc * We have ventured this as a conjectural emendation of the unintelligible line as given by the Editor, supposing La Perla Julliana to have been in the original, La Parla Siciliana. La Cour de Kas tellana is rendered by the Editor, Castilian dignity; we rather supit to mean courtesy or breeding, and that onrar is good faith. We have endeavoured, in our rude rhymes, to adhere more closely to the quaint form of the original. pose were laid waste, had put to flight the Muses of Provence; and by the wars and disorders produced or fanned by sacerdotal ambition or monkish intolerance, Germany was again thrown back into barbarism. ...... 'It was not at the Imperial court only, however, that the taste for poetry was, in its day of prosperity, cultivated. "Germany, about the time of Frederic II., began," as M. Schlegel observes," to abound more than ever in petty princes; in sovereigns whose dominions were too insignificant to occupy the whole of their attention, and who, therefore, were at full leisure to think of procuring for their courts the ornaments of music, poetry, and the arts. These were the real patrons of German literature. It was thus that vast assemblages of minstrels and poets were collected around the courts of the Landgrave of Thuringia, and still more of the Austrian Babenbergs." Suabia and German Switzerland seem to have been the principal sources whence the poetry of the Minnesingers flowed; but the same taste was more or less diffused all around, and there is every reason to believe that various other dialects were used by the Minnesingers, although nearly all that has come to us is Suabian.... Accidental circumstances alone probably have deprived us of a great variety of early poetry, of the same character, in all the various Teutonic dialects. Even the Dutch was, according to Kinderling, very early cultivated as a poetic language; much earlier, indeed, than Mr. Bowring seems to have been aware. The court of Herman Landgrave of Thuringia was a principal focus of attraction for the literature of his age; and it is therefore improbable that the Suabian dialect should have been exclusively adopted. Similar patronage was bestowed at the Austrian, Bohemian, and other courts; and the names of the Emperor Henry and some others of the Imperial Family, of Count Frederic of Leiningen, Count Otho of Bottenloube, Otho IV. Margrave of Brandenburg, Wenzel, King of Bohemia, Henry IV. Duke of Breslau, John, Duke of Brabant, &c. make the German catalogue of royal and noble poets, as distinguished as that of the Troubadours. The number of humbler minstrels is immense.' pp. 104 8. In like manner, the counts of Barcelona and monarchs of Aragon distinguished themselves as patrons of the Provençal bards; and modern times have afforded an illustrious instance of a similar spirit in the petty sovereign of Weimar. On comparing the lyric poetry of the Minnesingers with that of the Troubadours, the Editor thinks that the distinctive features of the Suabian minstrels appear in a more subdued and delicate tone of feeling: if less classical, they are more natural, less metaphysical, and more chaste, tender, and animated. Neither the canzos nor the sirventes of the Troubadours nor the fabliaux of the Trouvéres, M. Sismondi remarks, can be read without a blush. The poetry of Germany is much less exceptionable in this respect,-less Southern, or, may we say ? less Oriental in its character. This fact is remarkable, and favours the opinion which we threw out in a recent article as to the superiority of the German tales in point of morality over the novelists of Southern Europe. Whatever national characteristics may distinguish the different schools of minstrelsy, they must all, however, be considered as having had a common and nearly simultaneous origin, resulting from that general impulse which appears to have been given to the progress of civilization and the development of mind among the newly settled European states towards the middle of the eleventh century. The earliest lyric poet of this era, William IX. Count of Poictou, was born in 1070, and died in 1126. The polished style and metrical symmetry of his compositions prove that the Provençal dialect was no longer a new or unformed language. Indeed, it appears to have acquired a distinct character so early as the eighth century. But the first rude efforts of the Provençal bards cannot be assigned to an earlier period than the middle of the tenth. The precise date, it is scarcely possible to fix; and it is important only as affording some clew to the circumstances under which they had their birth. Neither the capture of Toledo by Alfonso VI., nor the accession of Raymond Berenger to the earldom of Provence, will in itself account for the origin of the Provençal poetry. The opinion espoused by both Sismondi and Ginguené deduces its pedigree from the Arabians of Spain. But these writers, in common with most of those who contend for the Eastern origin of the minstrelsy and romance of the times of chivalry, confound the genealogy of fiction with the history of literature. When we have traced up a tradition or legend to its Arabian, Greek, or Scandinavian source, what have we done towards illustrating the causes which govern the development of genius? Little or nothing,-any more than the appearance of Dante is accounted for by the monkish legends of which he availed himself in his great poem, or than Paradise Lost is to be resolved into the dramatic mysteries of a preceding age. The theory which deduces the Provençal poetry from the Moors, is combated with considerable ingenuity by the present Editor. Father Andrez, who, in his work" Dell' Origine e de Progressi d'ogni Letteratura," first started the hypothesis, ventures to fix the very era when the gallant knights of Southern France became acquainted with the songs of the Moors, at the taking of Toledo in 1085. Unfortunately,' it is remarked, M. Raynouard has published a Provençal poem anterior to 1000. Unfortunately, too, the Spaniards themselves, with whom these French knights fought, and whose lite rature, though at a much later period, has the most resemblance to that of the Moors, have nothing in the least approaching to the character of the Troubadour poetry till they imitated it in later ages; and moreover, the earliest school of Spanish poetry is that which bears least affinity to the Oriental. It is almost vain to ask, upon what grounds this supposed derivation of the Provençal love-songs from the Arabs could rest. One would naturally be at a loss to think it probable, that a poetry founded on a devoted idolatry of woman and her absolute supremacy in the social system, should have sprung from a people whose principles lead to conclusions totally the reverse; or that those of the Christians who fled to mountain fastnesses, and only met their Moslem foes for deadly combat, should make them their masters in the fine arts. When, indeed, the Christians afterwards gained the ascendancy, the population might be expected to have imbibed much of the manners and perhaps the literature of their late masters. So, in fact, it turned out; but the character of this early Castilian literature is altogether different from that of the Troubadours. Both Moors and Spaniards must have considerably assimilated during so long a period of intermixture. For instance, the Arabs learned to raise their women to a rank in society approaching that which they enjoyed among the Christians, though not to any great extent, for the allusions to the state of females in Conde's compilations from the Arabian documents are strictly Oriental; and, on the other hand, their schools of mathematics, physics, and philosophy, were resorted to by the studious of all religious denominations. But it is perfectly absurd to attribute to them such an influence as is asserted over the poetic genius and social relations of distant European countries, at a time when the same principles were at work every where in giving the spring to civilization and the culture of the mental faculties. M. Ginguené will not even allow the smiling descriptions of the beauties of nature, the joyous revellings in the genial influences of spring, the delights of fields, of flowers, of brooks and groves, to be natural ornaments of poetic imagination" tout cela est oriental." What is the internal evidence on which the supposed derivation of Troubadour poetry from the Arabs rests? Father Andrez admits it to be true, that, in the compositions of the Provençals, there is no discernible vestige of Arabian erudition, nor any sign of their having formed themselves on the poetry of the Arabs. But he adds: "Neither does it appear that they were better acquainted with the works of the Greeks and Latins, nor have they made any use of the Grecian fables and of the ancient mythology." His admission would probably be considered sufficient to destroy his theory; but, unluckily, this passage shews that Father Andrez, like many other writers on Provençal poetry, in reality knew very little of it, or he would be aware that it contains almost as many references to classical heroes and stories as to those of the romances of chivalry. References to the mythological tales of Ovid are frequent. On the other hand, there are scarcely any allusions to Arabian or Moorish language, customs, or feelings, throughout the whole body of pub. |