Part 62 (1/2)

La meilleur partie esleut-elle Et la plus saine et la plus belle, Qui ja ne luy sera ostee Car par verite se fut celle Qui fut tousjours fresche et nouvelle, D'aymer Dieu et d'en estre aymee; Car jusqu'au cueur fut entamee, Et si ardamment enflammee.

Que tous-jours ardoit l'estincelle; Par quoi elle fut visitee Et de Dieu premier comfortee; Car charite est trop ysnelle.'

The only law of _metre_, observed in this song, is that each line shall be octosyllabic:

Qui fut

tousjours

fresche et

nouvelle, D'autre

ment vi

vret de

bien (ben) plaire, Et pen

soit den

tendret

de taire

But the reader must note that words which were two-syllabled in Latin mostly remain yet so in the French.

La _vi_

-_e_ de

Marthe

sa mie,

although _mie_, which is pet language, loving abbreviation of _amica_ through _amie_, remains monosyllabic. But _vie_ elides its _e_ before a vowel:

Car Mar-

the me

nait vie

active Et Ma-

ri-e

contemp

lative;

and custom endures many exceptions. Thus _Marie_ may be three-syllabled as above, or answer to _mie_ as a dissyllable; but _vierge_ is always, I think, dissyllabic, _vier-ge_, with even stronger accent on the -_ge_, for the Latin -_go_.

Then, secondly, of quant.i.ty, there is scarcely any fixed law. The metres may be timed as the minstrel chooses--fast or slow--and the iambic current checked in reverted eddy, as the words chance to come.

But, thirdly, there is to be rich ryming and chiming, no matter how simply got, so only that the words jingle and tingle together with due art of interlacing and answering in different parts of the stanza, correspondent to the involutions of tracery and illumination. The whole twelve-line stanza is thus constructed with two rymes only, six of each, thus arranged:

AAB

AAB

BBA

BBA

dividing the verse thus into four measures, reversed in ascent and descent, or _descant_ more properly; and doubtless with correspondent phases in the voice-given, and duly accompanying, or following, music; Thomas the Rymer's own precept, that 'tong is chefe in mynstrelsye,'

being always kept faithfully in mind.[176]

Here then you have a sufficient example of the pure chant of the Christian ages; which is always at heart joyful, and divides itself into the four great forms, Song of Praise, Song of Prayer, Song of Love, and Song of Battle; praise, however, being the keynote of pa.s.sion through all the four forms; according to the first law which I have already given in the laws of Fesole; 'all great Art is Praise,' of which the contrary is also true, all foul or miscreant Art is accusation, [Greek: diabole]: 'She gave me of the tree and I did eat' being an entirely museless expression on Adam's part, the briefly essential contrary of Love-song.

With these four perfect forms of Christian chant, of which we may take for pure examples the 'Te Deum,' the 'Te Lucis Ante,' the 'Amor che nella mente,'[177] and the 'Chant de Roland,' are mingled songs of mourning, of Pagan origin (whether Greek or Danish), holding grasp still of the races that have once learned them, in times of suffering and sorrow; and songs of Christian humiliation or grief, regarding chiefly the sufferings of Christ, or the conditions of our own sin: while through the entire system of these musical complaints are interwoven moralities, instructions, and related histories, in ill.u.s.tration of both, pa.s.sing into Epic and Romantic verse, which gradually, as the forms and learnings of society increase, becomes less joyful, and more didactic, or satiric, until the last echoes of Christian joy and melody vanish in the 'Vanity of human wishes.'

And here I must pause for a minute or two to separate the different branches of our inquiry clearly from one another. For one thing, the reader must please put for the present out of his head all thought of the progress of 'civilisation'--that is to say, broadly, of the subst.i.tution of wigs for hair, gas for candles, and steam for legs. This is an entirely distinct matter from the phases of policy and religion.