No More Learning

He might have lived longer and
done less; but at least he did not live long enough to fall below
his best.


## p. 217 (#243) ############################################

CHAPTER X
THE LITERARY INFLUENCE OF THE MIDDLE AGES
MACPHERSON'S OSSIAN. CHATTERTON.
PERCY AND THE WARTONS
It is scarcely a paradox to say that the Middle Ages have
influenced modern literature more strongly through their archi-
tecture than through their poems. Gothic churches and old
castles have exerted a medieval literary influence on many
authors who have had no close acquaintance with old French
and German poets, and not much curiosity about their ideals or
their style. Even in writers better qualified by study of medieval
literature, like Southey and Scott, it is generally the historical
substance of the Middle Ages rather than anything in the imagina-
tive form of old poetry or romance that attracts them. Even
William Morris, who is much more affected by the manner of old
poetry than Scott, is curiously unmedieval in much of his poetry;
there is nothing of the old fashion in the poem The Defence of
Guenevere, and the old English rhythm of the song in Sir Peter
Harpdon's End is in striking contrast, almost a discord, with the
dramatic blank verse of the piece. Medieval verse has seldom been
imitated or revived without the motive of parody, as, for instance,
in Swinburne's Masque of Queen Bersabe ; the great exception is
in the adoption of the old ballad measures, from which English
poetry was abundantly refreshed through Wordsworth, Scott and
Coleridge. And here, also, though the ballad measures live and
thrive all through the nineteenth century so naturally that few
people think of their debt to Percy's Reliques, yet, at the be-
ginning, there is parody in the greatest of all that race, The
Ancient Mariner-not quite so obvious in the established version
as in the first editions (in the Lyrical Ballads of 1798 and 1800),
but still clear enough.
The Middle Ages did much to help literary fancy long be-
fore the time of Scott; but the thrill of mystery and wonder came
-


## p. 218 (#244) ############################################

218 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
much more from Gothic buildings than from Morte d'Arthur, and
it is found in writers who had paid little or no attention to old
English romance, as well as in those who showed their interest in it.
The famous passage in Congreve's Mourning Bride is romantic in
spirit and intention, and its success is won from a Gothic cathedral,
with no intermediary literature. So, also, the romantic ruin in the
first version of Collins's Ode to Evening, 'whose walls more awful
nod,' is pictorial, not literary, except in the conventional ‘nod,'
which is literary, indeed, but not at all medieval. This ‘nod,' by
the way, has been carefully studied in Guesses at Truth? ; it is
a good criterion of the eighteenth century romantic style; Collins,
happily, got rid of it, and saved his poem unblemished.
Medieval literary studies undoubtedly encouraged the taste
for such romantic effects as are beheld when abbeys or ruined
castles are visited by twilight or moonlight; but the literary
Gothic terror or wonder could be exercised without any more
knowledge of the Middle Ages than Victor Hugo possessed, whose
Notre Dame de Paris owes hardly anything of its triumph to
medieval books. On the other hand, there was much literature of
the Middle Ages known and studied in the earlier part of the
eighteenth century without any great effect upon the aims or sensi-
bilities of practising men of letters. There seems to have been no
such prejudice against medieval literature, as there undoubtedly
was, for a long time, against Gothic architecture. “Black letter'
poetry and the books of chivalry were, naturally and rightly, be-
lieved to be old-fashioned, but they were not depreciated more
emphatically than were the Elizabethans; and, perhaps, the very
want of exact historical knowledge concerning the Middle Ages
allowed reading men to judge impartially when medieval things
came under their notice. Dryden’s praise of Chaucer is, altogether
and in every particular, far beyond the reach of his age in criticism;
but it is not at variance with the common literary judgment of
his time, or of Pope's. The principle is quite clear; in dealing
with Chaucer, one must allow for his ignorance of true English
verse and, of course, for his old English phrasing ; but, then, he is
to be taken on his merits, for his imagination and his narrative
skill, and, so taken, he comes out a better example of sound
poetical wit than Ovid himself, and more truly a follower of nature.
Pope sees clearly and is not put off by literary prejudices ; the
theme of Eloisa to Abelard is neither better nor worse for
dating back to the twelfth century, and he appropriates The
1 Pp. 44 ff. Eversley Series edn. 1897.
9


## p. 219 (#245) ############################################

Dryden, Addison and Pope 219
Temple of Fame from Chaucer because he finds that its substance
is good enough for him. Addison's estimate of Chevy Chace is
made in nearly the same spirit; only, here something controversial
comes in. He shows that the old English ballad has some of
the qualities of classical epic ; epic virtues are not exclusively
Greek and Roman. Yet, curiously, there is an additional moral;
the ballad is not used as an alternative to the modern taste for
correct writing, but, on the contrary, as a reproof to the meta-
physical school, an example of the essential and inherent perfection
of simplicity of thought. ' It is significant that the opposite
manner, which is not simple, but broken up into epigram and
points of wit, is called 'Gothick' by Addison ; the imitators of
Cowley are 'Gothick’; the medieval ballad, which many people
would have reckoned “Gothick,' is employed as an example of
classical simplicity to refute them. 'Gothick' was so very generally
used to denote what is now called 'medieval '—'the Gothick
romances,' 'the Gothick mythology of elves and fairies'—that
Addison's paradoxical application of the term in those two papers
can hardly have been unintentional; it shows, at any rate, that
the prejudice against Gothic art did not mislead him in his
judgment of old-fashioned poetry. In his more limited measure,
he agrees with Dryden and Pope. What is Gothic in date may be
classical in spirit.
Medievalism was one of the minor eccentric fashions of the
time, noted by Dryden in his reference to his old Saxon friends,
and by Pope with his ‘mister wight'; but those shadows of 'The
Upheaving of Ælfred' were not strong enough, for good or
ill, either to make a romantic revival or to provoke a modern
curse on paladins and troubadours. Rymer, indeed, who knew
more than anyone else about old French and Provençal poetry,
was the loudest champion of the unities and classical authority.
Medieval studies, including the history of poetry, could be carried
on without any particular bearing on modern productive art, with
no glimmering of a medievalist romantic school and no threatening
of insult or danger to the most precise and scrupulous modern
taste. It would seem that the long battle of the books, the
debate of ancients and moderns in France and England, had
greatly mitigated, if not altogether quenched, the old jealousy of
the Middle Ages which is exemplified in Ben Jonson's tirade :
6
No Knights o' the Sun, nor Amadis de Gauls,
Primaleons, Pantagruels, public nothings,
Abortives of the fabulous dark cloister.


## p. 220 (#246) ############################################

220 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
This is the old scholarly contempt for the Middle Ages ; it
is coming to be out of date in Jonson's time. The books of
chivalry recovered some of their favour, as they ceased to be
dangerous distractions; those who laughed at The Knight of the
Burning Pestle were not ashamed to read The Seven Champions
of Christendom. There is a pleasant apology for the old romances
by Chapelain in France, an author more determined than Ben
Jonson in his obedience to literary rules. And it may be supposed
that, later, when the extreme modern party had gone so far as to
abuse Homer for his irregularities and barbarous want of taste,
there would be less inclination among sensible men to find fault
with medieval roughness; cavilling at superfluities in romance
might be all very well, but it was too like the scandalous treatment
of Homer by Perrault and his party ; those, on the other hand,
who stood up for Homer might be the less ready to censure
Amadis of Gaul. There may be something of this motive in
Addison's praise of Chevy Chace ; at any rate, he has sense to find
the classical excellences where the pedantic moderns would not
look for anything of the sort.
Modern literature and the minds of modern readers are so
affected by different strains of medieval influence through various
' romantic' schools, through history, travel and the study of
languages, that it is difficult to understand the temper of the
students who broke into medieval antiquities in the seventeenth
century and discovered much poetry by the way, though their
chief business was with chronicles and state papers. It is safe to
believe that everything which appeals to any reader as peculiarly
medieval in the works of Tennyson or Rossetti was not apparent
to Hickes or Hearne or Rymer, any more than it was to Leibniz
(a great medieval antiquary), or, later, to Muratori, who makes
poetry one of his many interests in the course of work resembling
Rymer's, though marked by better taste and intelligence. The
Middle Ages were studied, sometimes, with a view to modern
applications ; but these were generally political or religious, not
literary. And, in literary studies, it is long before anything like
Ivanhoe or anything like The Defence of Guenevere is discernible.
Before the spell of the grail was heard again, and before the vision
of Dante was at all regarded, much had to be learned and many
experiments to be made. The first attraction from the Middle
Ages, coming as a discovery due to antiquarian research and not
by way of tradition, was that of old northern heroic poetry,
commonly called Icelandic— Islandic,' as Percy spells it. Gray,


## p. 221 (#247) ############################################

Temple, The Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok 22 I
when he composed The Descent of Odin and The Fatal Sisters,
drew from sources which had been made known in England in
the seventeenth century. These, in their effect on English readers,
formed the first example of the literary influence of the Middle
Ages, consciously recognised as such, and taken up with anti-
quarian literary interest.
Of course, the whole of modern literature is full of the Middle
Ages; the most disdainful modern classicist owes, in France, his
alexandrine verse to the twelfth century and, in England, his
heroic verse to a tradition older still. The poet who stands for
the perfection of the renascence in Italy, Ariosto, derives his
stanza from the lyric school of Provence, and is indebted for most
of his matter to old romances. Through Chaucer and Spenser,
through The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, through many
chapbooks and through the unprinted living folklore of England,
the Middle Ages formed the minds of Dryden and Pope and
their contemporaries. But, for a distinct and deliberate notice of
something medieval found by study and considered to be avail-
able in translation or adaptation, one must go to Sir William
Temple's remarks about The Death-Song of Ragnar Lodbrok; it is
hard to find anything of the same sort earlier. What marks it out
is not so much the literary curiosity which selects it, but the
literary estimate which judges this ancient northern piece to
have a present value. Thereby, Sir William Temple begins
the modern sort of literary study which looks for suggestion
in old remote and foreign regions, and he sets a precedent
for the explorations of various romantic schools, wandering
through all the world in search of plots, scenery and local
colour.
Here, it may be objected that this kind of exploration was
nothing new; that the Middle Ages themselves had collected
stories from all the ends of the earth; that Elizabethans range
as far as Southey or Victor Hugo ; that Racine, toc, calculates
the effect of what is distant and what is foreign, in his choice
of subjects for tragedy, Iphigénie or Bajazet. What, then, is
specially remarkable in the fact that Scandinavian legend was
noted as interesting, and that Sir William Temple gave an hour of
study to the death-song of Ragnar? The novelty is in the historical
motive. The Death-Song of Ragnar is intelligible without much
historical commentary; anyone can understand the emphatic
phrases: ‘we smote with swords' (pugnavimus ensibus); “laughing
I die' (ridens moriar)-not to speak of the mistranslated lines


## p. 222 (#248) ############################################

222 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
which represent the heroes in Valhalla drinking ale out of the
skulls of their enemies :
Bibemus cerevisiam
Ex concavis crateribus craniorum.
Those things caught men's fancy; and the honourable, courageous
viking was launched to try his fortune in modern romantic litera-
ture. But there was the historical interest, besides ; and Temple,
in his essay Of Heroic Virtue, notices the song of Ragnar because
it explains something in the past, and contributes something to
the experience of the human race. He takes up 'runic' literature
again in his essay Of Poetry; he is working on the same lines as
Sidney and attending the progress of poesy from its early life
among the barbarians. He vindicates, like Daniel, the right of the
Gothic nations to a share in the humanities. And he proves, by
particulars, what Sidney and Daniel had left vague; he exhibits
this specimen from a definite tract of country; and his quotation
has a double effect; it touches those readers who may be looking
for a new thrill and fresh sources of amazement; it touches those
also who, besides this craving, are curious about the past; who are
historically minded and who try to understand the various fashions
of thought in different ages. Thus, one significance of this quotation
from Ragnar's death-song is that it helps to alter the historical
view of the world. Historical studies had suffered from the old
prevalent opinion (still strong in the eighteenth century, if not
later) that all ages of the world are very much alike. The Death-
Song of Ragnar and other references to the heroic poetry of
Norway were like distance marks which brought out the perspec-
tive.
Scandinavian suggestions did not lead immediately to any
very large results in English poetry or fiction. Macpherson came
in later and took their ground; the profits all went to Ossian.
Students of northern antiquities were too conscientious and not
daring enough ; Percy's Five Pieces of Runic Poetry came out
humbly in the wake of Macpherson ; his book is like what the
Icelanders, in a favourite contemptuous figure, call the little
boat towed behind! But the history of Scandinavian studies is
worth some notice, though Odin and his friends achieved no such
sweeping victories as the heroes of Morven.
Temple's authorities are Scandinavian, not English, scholars;
he conversed at Nimeguen on these subjects with count
1 . It would be as vain to deny, as it is perhaps impolitic to mention, that this
attempt is owing to the success of the Erse fragments' (Five Pieces, 1763, Preface).


## p. 223 (#249) ############################################

Northern Studies : Hickes's Thesaurus
223
Oxenstierna, and he quotes from Olaus Wormius. But northern
studies were already flourishing in England by means of the Oxford
press, to which Junius had given founts of type from which were
printed his Gothic and Old English gospels, and where the founts
are still preserved and ready for use. Junius's type was used in
printing Hickes's Icelandic grammar, which was afterwards included
in the magnificent Thesaurus Linguarum Veterum Septentrion-
alium. It was used, also, for E. Go's (Edmund Gibson's) Oxford
edition of Polemo-Middinia and of Christis Kirk on the Grene
(1691), which was brought out as a philological joke, with no detri-
ment to philological science. Gothic, Icelandic, Old English and
the languages of Chaucer and Gawain Douglas are all employed in
illustration of these two excellent comic poems, for the benefit of
the 'joco-serious Commonwealth' to which the book is dedicated.
Hickes's Thesaurus is a great miscellaneous work on the
antiquities of all the Teutonic languages. One page in it has now
the authority of an original Old English document, for there he
printed the heroic lay of Finnsburh from a manuscript at Lambeth
which is not at present to be found. On the opposite page and
immediately following is an Icelandic poem : Hervor at her father
Angantyr's grave, calling upon him to give up the magic sword
which had been buried with him. This poem is translated into
English prose, and it had considerable effect on modern literature.
It was thought good enough, and not too learned or recondite, to
be reprinted in the new edition of Dryden's Miscellany, Part vi,
in 1716, Icelandic text and all. It seems to have been an after-
thought of the editor, or in compliance with a suggestion from
outside which the editor was too idle to refuse—for the piece is
printed with Hickes's heading, which refers to the preceding piece
(Finnsburh) in the Thesaurus and compares the Icelandic with
the Old English verse-quite unintelligible as it stands, abruptly,
in the Miscellany? But, however it came about, the selection
is a good one, and had as much success as is possible to those
shadowy ancient things. It is repeated, under the title The
Incantation of Hervor by Percy, as the first of his Five Runic
Pieces; and, after this, it became a favourite subject for para-
phrase; it did not escape ‘Monk’ Lewis; and it appears as L'Épée
d'Angantyr in the Poëmes barbares of Leconte de Lisle.
Percy's second piece is The Dying Ode of Ragnar Lodbrog.
This had not been left unnoticed after Temple's quotation from it.
Thomas Warton the elder translated the two stanzas which Temple
1 Part vi.


## p. 224 (#250) ############################################

224 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
took from his authority, the Literatura Runica of Olaus Wormius;
they appeared as 'a Runic Ode' in the posthumous volume of his
poems (1748). They counted for something in the education of
Thomas the younger and Joseph Warton, together with the
architecture of Winchester and Windsor, and the poetry of
Spenser and Milton.
It will be observed that Old English poetry had none of this
success--very slight success indeed, but still ascertainable—which
attended The Death-Song of Ragnar and The Incantation of
Hervor. Perhaps, if Hickes had translated The Fight at Finns-
burh—but he did not, and so the Icelandic page was taken and
the Old English left. Apart from that accident, there was good
reason for the greater success of the 'runic' or 'Islandic' poems.
They are much more compact and pointed than anything in Old
English. The poem of Hervor is an intensely passionate lyrical
drama ; the song of Ragnar is an emphatic rendering of the heroic
spirit of the north ; the poem is itself the product of an early
romantic movement which had learned the artistic use of heroic
phrases, and makes the most of them in a loud metallic way. The
literary artifice can be detected now; the difference from the
older heroic style is as great as that between Burns and Barbour
in their idea of the valiant king Robert and the eloquence of
Bannockburn. But this calculated and brassy emphasis all went
to establish The Death-Song as a remarkable proof of early poetical
genius in the north, and a type of northern heroic virtue.
The other three pieces in Percy's volume had less vogue than
Ragnar and the sword of Angantyr. One is The Ransome of Egill
the Scald, taken from Olaus Wormius. It had been appreciated
already by Temple, who calls the poet by the name of his father,
but means Egil when he says 'Scallogrim. The passage may be
quoted; it follows immediately on The Death-Song of Ragnar :
I am deceived, if in this sonnet, and a following ode of Scallogrim (which was
likewise made by him after he was condemned to die, and deserved his pardon
for a reward) there be not a vein truely poetical, and in its kind Pindaric,
taking it with the allowance of the different climates, fashions, opinions, and
languages of such distant countries.
Unfortunately, the prose history of Egil Skallagrimsson was
not printed as yet, and could not be used by Percy. There is a
curious neglect of history in Percy's notes on the two poems that
follow : The Funeral Song of Hacon and The Complaint of
Harold. The selection of the poems is a good one; but it is clear
that, with the editor, the mythological interest is stronger than the
a


## p. 225 (#251) ############################################

Translations from the Icelandic : Gray
Gray 225
historical. His principal guide is Introduction à l'histoire du Danne-
marc by Chevalier Mallet, as to which we read : 'A translation
of this work is in great forwardness, and will shortly be published. '
It is curious to see how the connection with the Oxford press and
the tradition of Junius and Hickes is still maintained ; Percy here
(as also in the preface to his Reliques) acknowledges the help of
Lye, whose edition of the Gothic Gospels was published at Oxford
in 1750. The Islandic Originals,' added by Percy after his trans-
lations, were plainly intended as a reminder to Macpherson that
the original Gaelic of Fingal was still unpublished. The Five
Pieces, it should be observed, were issued without Percy's name.
Gray's two translations from the Icelandic are far the finest
result of those antiquarian studies, and they help to explain how
comparatively small was the influence of the north upon English
poetry. How much Gray knew of the language is doubtful; but he
certainly knew something, and did not depend entirely on the Latin
translations which he found in Bartholinus or Torfaeus. He must
have caught something of the rhythm, in
Vindum, vindum
Vef darradar,
and have appreciated the sharpness and brilliance of certain
among the phrases. His Descent of Odin and his Fatal Sisters
are more than a mere exercise in a foreign language, or a record
of romantic things discovered in little-known mythologies. The
Icelandic poems were more to Gray than they were to any other
scholar, because they exactly correspond to his own ideals of poetic
style-concise, alert, unmuffled, never drawling or clumsy. Gray
must have felt this. It meant that there was nothing more to be
done with 'runic' poetry in English. It was all too finished, too
classical. No modern artist could hope to improve upon the style
of the northern poems; and the subjects of northern mythology,
good as they were in themselves, would be difficult and dangerous
if clothed in English narrative or dramatic forms. Gray uses what
he can, out of his Icelandic studies, by transferring some of the
motives and phrases to a British theme, in The Bard.
In Hickes's Thesaurus may be found many curious specimens
of what is now called Middle English: he quotes Poema Morale,
and he gives in full The Land of Cockayne. He discusses versi-
fication, and notes in Old English verse a greater regard for
quantity than in modern English (giving examples from Cowley
of short syllables lengthened and long shortened); while, in
1 Cf. ante, chap. vi, pp. 129 ff.
15
E. L. X.
CH. X.


## p. 226 (#252) ############################################

226 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
9
discussing alliteration, he quotes from modern poets, Donne, Waller,
Dryden. It might be said that the promise of the History of
English Poetry is there ; Hickes certainly does much in the
ground later occupied by Warton. Gibson's little book may be
mentioned again as part of the same work; and it had an effect
more immediate than Hickes’s ‘semi-Saxon’ quotations. There
was an audience ready for Christis Kirk on the Grene, and E. G.
ought to be honoured in Scotland as a founder of modern Scottish
poetry and one of the ancestors of Burns! Allan Ramsay took
up the poem, and, thus, E. G. 's new-year diversion (intended, as he
says, for the Saturnalia) is related to the whole movement of that
age in favour of ballads and popular songs, as well as specially to
the new Scottish poetry of Ramsay, Fergusson and Burns.
If Percy's Reliques be taken as the chief result of this move-
ment, then we may judge that there were in it two main interests
-one, antiquarian ; one, simply a liking for poetry, wherever
found, with an inclination to find it in the 'silly sooth' of popular
rimes. Thus, the search for ballads is only partially and acci-
dentally medieval. But it has a likeness to all “ romantic'schools,
in so far as it turns away from fashionable and conventional litera-
ture, and it was natural that lovers of ballads should also be fond of
old English poetry in general—a combination of tastes well ex-
hibited in the famous folio MS which was used by Percy and now
bears his name.
Addison's essays on Chevy Chace and The Children in the
Wood show how ballads were appreciated; and, in the last of these,
he notes particularly how the late Lord Dorset ‘had a numerous
collection of old English ballads and took a particular pleasure in
reading them. ' Addison proceeds: 'I can affirm the same of Mr
Dryden, and know several of the most refined writers of our present
age who are of the same humour. ' And then he speaks of Molière's
thoughts on the subject, as he has expressed them in Le Misan-
thrope. Ballads, it is plain, had an audience ready for them, and
they were provided in fair quantity long before Percy. The imi-
tation of them began very early ; Lady Wardlaw's Hardyknute
was published in 1719 as an ancient poem ; and again in Ramsay's
Evergreen (1724).
Between ballads and Scottish songs, which seem to have
been welcome everywhere, and ancient 'runic' pieces, which
were praised occasionally by amateurs, it would seem as if old
1 As to the publication of Christie Kirk in Watson's Choice Collection (1706-11) and
Alan Ramsay's addition to the poem, cf. ante, vol, ix, pp. 366 and 367.


## p. 227 (#253) ############################################

Ossian
227
English poems, earlier than Chaucer, were neglected. But we
know from Pope's scheme of a history of English poetry that they
were not forgotten, though it was left for Warton to study them
more minutely. Pope's liberality of judgment may be surprising
to those who take their opinions ready made. He was not
specially interested in the Middle Ages, but neither was he in-
tolerant, whatever he might say about monks and 'the long Gothic
night. ' He never repudiated his debt to Spenser; and, in his
praise of Shakespeare, he makes amends to the Middle Ages for
anything he had said against them : Shakespeare, he says, is an
ancient and majestick piece of Gothick architecture compared with
a neat modern building. ' But, before the medieval poetry of England
could be explored in accordance with the suggestions of Pope's
historical scheme, there came the triumph of Ossian, which utterly
overwhelmed the poor scrupulous experiments of 'runic' trans-
lators, and carried off the greatest men-Goethe, Bonaparte-in a
common enthusiasm.
Ossian, like Ragnar Lodbrok, belongs to a time earlier than
what is now generally reckoned the Middle Ages; it was not till
after Macpherson that the chivalrous Middle Ages—the world of
Ivanhoe or The Talisman, of Lohengrin or Tannhäuser--came to
their own again. There was something in the earlier times which
seems to have been more fascinating. But Ossian did not need to
concern himself much about his date and origin; there was no
serious rivalry to be feared either from The Descent of Odin or
The Castle of Otranto. Only a few vestiges of medieval literature
contributed to the great victory, which was won, not unfairly, by
rhythm, imagery and sentiment, historical and local associations
helping in various degrees. The author or translator of Ossian
won his great success fairly, by unfair means. To call him an
impostor is true, but insufficient. When Ossian dethroned Homer
in the soul of Werther, the historical and antiquarian fraud of
Macpherson had very little to do with it. Werther and Charlotte
mingle their tears over the 'Songs of Selma'; it would be an insult
to Goethe to suppose that he translated and printed these ‘Songs'
merely as interesting philological specimens of the ancient life of
Scotland, or that he was not really possessed and enchanted by
the melancholy winds and the voices of the days of old. Blair's
opinion about Ossian is stated in such terms as these :
The description of Fingal's airy hall, in the poem called Berrathon, and
of the ascent of Malvina into it deserves particular notice, as remarkably noble
and magnificent. But above all, the engagement of Fingal with the Spirit of
6
15-2


## p. 228 (#254) ############################################

228 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
Loda, in Carric-thura, cannot be mentioned withont admiration. I forbear
transcribing the passage, as it must have drawn the attention of every one
who has read the works of Ossian. The undaunted courage of Fingal,
opposed to all the terrors of the Scandinavian god; the appearance and the
speech of the awful spirit; the wound which he receives, and the shriek which
he sends forth, as rolled into himself, he rose upon the wind,' are full of the
most amazing and terrible majesty, that I know no passage more sublime in
the writings of any uninspired author.
Blair, as a doctor of divinity and professor of rhetoric and belles-
lettres, was bound to be careful in his language, and, if it here
seems extravagant, it is certainly not careless. His deliberate
judgment as to the sublimity of Ossian must be taken as abso-
lutely sincere, and it cannot be sincere if not founded on the text
as it stands, if bribed or biassed in any measurable degree by
antiquarian considerations. And the praise of Goethe and Blair
was honestly won by Macpherson ; his imagery, thoughts and
sentences are estimated by these critics for the effect upon their
minds. What they desire is beauty of imagination, thought and
language; these, they find in Ossian, the published Ossian, the
book in their hands; if Macpherson wrote it all, then their praise
belongs to him. Nothing can alter the fact that sentences were
written and published which were good enough to obtain this
praise ; all Macpherson's craft as a philological impostor would
have been nothing without his literary skill. He was original
enough, in a peculiar way, to touch and thrill the whole of
Europe.
The glamour of Ossian is only very partially to be reckoned
among the literary influences of the Middle Ages. It is romantic,
in every acceptation of that too significant word. But “romantic'
and 'medieval' are not the same thing. The Middle Ages help
the modern romantic authors in many ways, and some of these
may be found in Ossian ; the vague twilight of Ossian, and the
persistent tones of lamentation, are in accordance with many
passages of old Scandinavian poetry-of The Lays of Helgi
and The Lament of Gudrun, in the elder Edda-with many
old ballads, with much of the Arthurian legend. But those very
likenesses may prove a warning not to take medieval'as meaning
the exclusive possession of any of those qualities or modes. If
certain fashions of sentiment are found both in the elder Edda
and in Morte d'Arthur, it is probable that they will be found
also in ancient Babylon and in the South Sea islands. And, if the
scenery and sentiment of Ossian are not peculiarly medieval,
though they are undoubtedly romantic, the spell of Ossian, as we


## p. 229 (#255) ############################################

Ossian and Macpherson
229
may fitly call it—that is, the phrases and rhythmical cadences—are
obviously due to the inspired writings with which Blair, by a
simple and wellknown device of rhetoric, was willing to compare
them. The language of Ossian is copied from David and Isaiah.
It is enough to quote from the passage whose sublimity no unin-
spired author has outdone—the debate of Fingal and the spirit of
dismal Loda':
‘Dost thou force me from my place ? ' replied the hollow voice. The people
bend before me. I turn the battle in the field of the brave. I look on the
nations and they vanish; my nostrils pour the blast of death.
I come abroad
on the winds: the tempests are before my face. But my dwelling is calm,
above the clouds; the fields of my rest are pleasant. '
Another quotation may be taken from the other place selected
by Blair (which, by the way, is close to Werther's last momentous
quotation, following on 'Selma'):
Malvina! where art thou, with thy songs, with the soft sound of thy steps ?
Son of Alpin, art thou near? where is the daughter of Toscar? 'I passed, O
son of Fingal, by Tor-lutha's mossy walls. The smoke of the hall was ceased.
Silence was among the trees of the hill. The voice of the chase was over.
I saw the daughters of the bow. I asked about Malvina, but they answered
not. They turned their faces away: thin darkness covered their beauty.
They were like stars, on a rainy hill, by night, each looking faintly through
her mist. '
The last sentence is in a different measure from the rest of the
passage. Most of it, and almost the whole of Ossian, is in parallel
phrases, resembling Hebrew poetry. This was observed by Malcolm
Laing, and is practically acknowledged by Macpherson in the
parallel passages which he gives in his notes ; his admirers dwelt
upon the uninspired' eloquence which reminded them of the
Bible. It sometimes resembles the oriental manner satirised by
Goldsmith in The Citizen of the World': 'there is nothing like
sense in the true Eastern style, where nothing more is required
but sublimity. '.
But Macpherson did not invent the whole of Ossian out of his
own head : he knew a good deal of Gaelic poetry. If he had been
more of a Celtic scholar, he might have treated Gaelic songs as
Hickes did The Incantation of Hervor, printing the text with a
prose translation, and not asking for any favour from the reading
public. But he wished to be popular, and he took the right way
to that end-leaving Percy in the cold shade with his Five Pieces
of Runic Poetry and his philological compilations.
The life of Macpherson has the interest of an ironical fable.
6
1 Letter
XXXIII.


## p. 230 (#256) ############################################

230 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
Nemesis came upon him with a humorous cruelty; no detective
romance ever worked out a more coherent plot. The end of the
story is that Macpherson, long after his first successes, was com-
pelled by the enthusiasm of his supporters to provide them
with Gaelic originals. He laboured hard to compose the Gaelic
Ossian, when he was weary of the whole affair. He would gladly
have been allowed to pass with credit as the original composer of
the English Ossian, which was all that he really cared for. But
his ingenuity had brought him to this dilemma, that he could not
claim what really belonged to him in the invention of Ossian
without aflronting his generous friends, and so, twenty years after
his triumph, he had to sit down in cold blood and make his ancient
Gaelic poetry. He had begun with a piece of literary artifice, a
practical joke ; he ended with deliberate forgery, which, the more
it succeeded, would leave to him the less of what was really his
due for the merits of the English Ossian.
James Macpherson was born in 1736 near Kingussie, the son
of a small farmer. He did well at the university of Aberdeen
and then, for some time, was schoolmaster in his native parish,
Ruthven. His literary tastes and ambitions were keen, and, in
1758, he published a poem, The Highlander. About this date, he
was made tutor to the son of Graham of Balgowan, and, in 1759,
he went to Moffat with his pupil (Thomas Graham, the hero of
Barrosa); from which occasion the vogue of Ossian began. At
Moffat, Macpherson met John Home, the author of Douglas, who
was full of the romantic interest in the Highlands which he passed on
to Collins, and which was shared by Thomson. Macpherson really
knew something about Gaelic poetry, and particularly the poems
of Ossianic tradition which were generally popular in Badenoch.
But his own literary taste was too decided to let him be content
with what he knew; he honestly thought that the traditional Gaelic
poems were not very good; he saw the chance for original exercises
on Gaelic themes. His acquaintance Home, however, wanted to
get at the true Celtic spirit, which, at the same time, ought to
agree with what he expected of it. Macpherson supplied him with
The Death of Oscar, a thoroughly romantic story, resembling in
plot Chaucer's Knight's Tale, but more tragical—it ended in the
death of the two rivals and the lady also. This was followed by
others, which Home showed to Blair in Edinburgh. In the next
year, 1760, appeared Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in
the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or
Erse language.


## p. 231 (#257) ############################################

6
verse.
Gaelic Elements
231
Then, Macpherson went travelling in the Highlands and
Western isles, persuaded by several people of rank, as well as
taste. The result was the complete epic of Fingal : an ancient
epic poem in six books, which was published in 1762.
Several gentlemen in the Highlands and isles gave me all the assistance
in their power, and it was by their means I was enabled to compleat the epic
poem. How far it comes up to the rules of the epopoea, is the province of
criticism to examine. It is only my business to lay it before the reader, as
I have found it.
In the Fingal volume was also published among shorter pieces
Temora, an epic poem : 'little more than the opening' is Mac-
pherson’s note. But, in 1763, this poem, too, was completed, in
eight books.
The 'advertisement' to Fingal states that
there is a design on foot to print the Originals as soon as the translator shall
have time to transcribe them for the press; and if this publication shall not
take place, copies will then be deposited in one of the public libraries, to
prevent so ancient a monument of genius from being lost.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Macpherson, from the first, intended
to take no more than was convenient from what he knew of Gaelic
He did not wish to translate such poems as captain Hector
MacIntyre translated for Mr Jonathan Oldbuck. He did not ask
.
for help from Irish scholars. He spoke slightingly of the Irish
tales of Finn ; the traditional name of Finn MacCowl was not
good enough, and Macpherson invented the name Fingal; he ca
insisted that Fingal, Ossian, Oscar and all the poems were not
merely Scottish but ‘Caledonian’; in the glory of Ossian, the Irish
have only by courtesy a share. This glory, in Macpherson's mind,
was not romantic like the tales of chivalry, but heroic and political,
like the Iliad and the Aeneid. He might have been content, and
he might have been successful, with the purely romantic elements
as he found them in Gaelic poems, whether of Scotland or of
Ireland. But his fabrications (like those of Geoffrey of Monmouth)
are intended to glorify the history of his native country, and
Fingal and Oscar (like king Arthur in The Brut) are victorious
adversaries of Rome. “Both nations' (Caledonia and Ireland),
says Macpherson, 'were almost the same people in the days
of that hero’; but they are not equal; and Fingal the Cale-
donian hero comes to the relief of Ireland against the king of
Lochlin, when Cuchullin the Irish champion has been defeated.
Macpherson thus provoked Irish scholars and English sceptics
equally, and in such a way that Irish scholars were generally
cut off from a hearing in England. Johnson did not care


## p. 232 (#258) ############################################

232 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
for them ; what he asked for was the original Gaelic of the
'epopoea'; this the Irish Ossianic poems were not, and they were
rejected by Macpherson himself. They would have exploded his
history, and, with it, his epic scaffolding. Fingal, conqueror of the
Romans, and Ossian, rival of Homer, had become necessary to
Macpherson's scheme. And, as a literary man, Macpherson was
right-amazingly clever in his selections and rejections and in the
whole frame of his policy, so far as it was intended to catch the
greatest number of readers. Romance is to be found there in its
two chief modes superficial variety of scenes, and the opposite
mode of intense feeling. There is also enough to conciliate a
severer taste, in the motives of national heroism, and in the poet's
conformity with the standards of epic. Thus, all sorts of readers
were attracted—lovers of antiquity, lovers of romance, hearts of
sensibility and those respectable critics who were not ashamed to
follow Milton, Dryden and Pope in their devotion to the epic ideal.
Macpherson's literary talent was considerable, and is not
limited to his ancient epic poems. Reference will be made else-
wherel to his History of Great Britain, from the Restoration
in 1660 to the Accession of the House of Hannover (1775). In
1773, he had published a prose translation of the Niad, which
was not highly appreciated. But it is interesting as an experiment
in rhythm and as an attempt to free Homer from English literary
conventions. Macpherson died in 1796, in his native Badenoch, in
the house which he had built for himself and named 'Belleville';
he was buried in Westminster abbey, at his own request. A Gaelic
text, incomplete, was published from his papers in 1807. Klopstock,
Herder and Goethe took this publication seriously and tried to
discover in it the laws of Caledonian verse. In 1805, Malcolm
Laing brought out an edition of Ossian (and of Macpherson's own
poems), in which the debts of Macpherson were exposed, with
some exaggeration. Scott's article on Laing in The Edinburgh
Review (1805) reaches most of the conclusions that have been
proved by later critical research.
Percy's Reliques were much more closely related to the Middle
Ages than Ossian was; they revealed the proper medieval treasures
of romance and ballad poetry. They are much nearer than the
‘runic' poems to what is commonly reckoned medieval. Percy's
ballads are also connected with various other tastes-with the
liking for Scottish and Irish music which had led to the publication
1 Chap. XII, post.


## p. 233 (#259) ############################################

6
Percy's Reliques
233
of Scottish songs in D'Urfey's collection, in Old English Ballads
1723—1727, in Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius and Ramsay's Tea
Table Miscellany. But, though there was nothing peculiarly
medieval in Fy, let us all to the Bridal or in Cowden Knowes, the
taste for such country songs often went with the taste for ‘Gothic'
romances.
The famous folio MS which Percy secured from Humphrey
Pitt of Shifnal had been compiled with no exclusive regard for
any one kind. The book when Percy found it was being treated
as waste paper and used for fire-lighting. When it was saved from
total destruction, it was still treated with small respect; Percy,
instead of copying, tore out the ballad of King Estmere as copy
for the printers, without saving the original pages. But most of
the book is preserved; it has been fully edited by Furnivall and
Hales, with assistance from Child and Chappell ; what Percy took
or left is easily discerned. Ritson, the avenger, followed Percy
as he followed Warton, and, in the introduction to his Engleish
Romanceës, displayed some of Percy's methods, and proved how
far his versions were from the original. But Percy was avowedly
an improver and restorer. His processes are not those of scrupulous
philology, but neither are they such as Macpherson favoured. His
three volumes contain what they profess in the title-page :
Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets
(chiefly of the Lyric kind). Together with some few of later date.
And there is much greater variety than the title-page offers; to
take extreme cases, the Reliques include the song against Richard
of Almaigne and the song on the false traitor Thomas Cromwell,
the ballads of Edom o' Gordon and Sir Patrick Spens, 'Gentle
river' from the Spanish, Old Tom of Bedlam and Lilliburlero,
The Fairies Farewell by Corbet and Admiral Hosier's Ghost
by Glover. There are essays on ancient English minstrels, on the
metrical romances, on the origin of the English stage, and the
metre of Pierce Plowman's Vision, covering much of the ground
taken later by Warton, and certainly giving a strong impulse
to the study of old English poetry. Percy makes a strong and
.
not exaggerated claim for the art of the old poets and, by an
analysis of Libius Disconius, proves 'their skill in distributing
and conducting their fable. ' His opinion about early English
poetry is worth quoting :
It has happened unluckily, that the antiquaries who have revived the works
of our ancient writers have been for the most part men void of taste and genins,


## p. 234 (#260) ############################################

234 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
be
and therefore have always fastidiously rejected the old poetical Romances,
because founded on fictitious or popular subjects, while they have been
careful to grub up every petty fragment of the most dull and insipid rhymist,
whose merit it was to deform morality, or obscure true history. Should the
public encourage the revival of some of those ancient Epic Songs of Chivalry,
they would frequently see the rich ore of an Ariosto or a Tasso, tho’ buried it
may among the rubbish and dross of barbarous times.
The public did not discourage this revival, and what Percy wanted
was carried out by Ritson, Ellis, Scott and their successors. Perhaps
the best thing in Percy's criticism is his distinction between the
two classes of ballad; the one incorrect, with a romantic wildness,
is in contrast to the later, tamer southern class, which is thus
accurately described :
The other sort are written in exacter measure, have a low or subordinate
correctness, sometimes bordering on the insipid, yet often well adapted to the
pathetic.
As an example, Percy refers to Gernutus :
In Venice town not long agoe
A cruel Jew did dwell,
Which Jived all on usurie
As Italian writers tell.
The difference here noted by Percy is the principal thing in this
branch of learning, and it could hardly be explained in better
words.
It was through Percy's Reliques that the Middle Ages really
came to have an influence in modern poetry, and this was an effect
far greater than that of Ossian (which was not medieval) or that
of The Castle of Otranto (which was not poetical). The Reliques
did not spread one monotonous sentiment like Ossian, or publish
a receipt for romantic machinery. What they did may be found in
The Ancient Mariner, and is acknowledged by the authors of
Lyrical Ballads :
Contrast, in this respect, the effect of Macpherson's publication with the
Reliques of Percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions! I have
already stated how much Germany is indebted to this latter work; and for
our own country its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not
think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not
be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the Reliques; I know that it is so
with my friends; and for myself I am happy on this occasion to make a public
avowal of my own (Wordsworth, 1815).
It is strange that there should be so little of Reliques in
Chatterton. What one misses in the Rowley poems is the irregular
verse of the ballads; the freest measures in the Rowley poems are
borrowed from Shakespeare; the ballad called the Bristowe


## p. 235 (#261) ############################################

Chatterton's Debt to Spenser
235
Tragedie is in Percy's second class, written with 'a low or subor-
dinate correctness sometimes bordering on the insipid,' e. g.
I greeve to telle, before youre sonne
Does fromme the welkinn flye,
He hath upon his honour sworne,
That thou shalt surelie die.
The real master of Chatterton is Spenser. Chatterton had
a perfect command of the heroic line as it was then commonly
used in couplets ; he preferred the stanza, however, and almost
always a stanza with an alexandrine at the end. He had learned
much from The Castle of Indolence, but he does not remain content
with the eighteenth century Spenserians; he goes back to the
original. A technical variation of Chatterton's is proof of this :
whereas the eighteenth century imitators of The Faerie Queene
cut their alexandrines at the sixth syllable regularly, Chatterton
is not afraid to turn over :
Tell him I scorne to kenne hem from afar,
Botte leave the vyrgyn brydall bedde for bedde of warre.
(Alla, l. 347. )
And cries a guerre and slughornes shake the vaulted heaven.
(Hastings 2, 1. 190. )
And like to them æternal alwaie stryve to be. (Ibid. I. 380. )
In following Spenser, he sometimes agrees with Milton : thus,
Elinoure and Juga and the Excelente Balade of Charitie are in
Milton's seven line stanza (rime royal, with the seventh line an
alexandrine), thus :
Juga : Systers in sorrowe, on thys daise-ey'd banke,
Where melancholych broods, we wyll lamente;
Be wette wythe mornynge dewe and evene darke;
Lyche levynde okes in eche the odher bente,
Or lyche forlettenn halles of merriemente
Whose gastlie mitches holde the traine of fryghte
Where lethale ravens bark, and owlets wake the nyghte.
Elinoure : No moe the miskynette shall wake the morne
The minstrelle daunce, good cheere, and morryce plaie;
No moe the amblynge palfrie and the horne
Shall from the lessel rouze the foxe awaie;
I'll seke. the foreste alle the lyve-longe daie;
All nete amonge the gravde chyrche glebe wyll goe,
And to the passante Spryghtes lecture mie tale of woe.
In the Songe to Æla, again, there are measures from Milton's
Ode:
Orr whare thou kennst fromm farre
The dysmall crye of warre,
Orr seest some mountayne made of corse of sleyne.


## p. 236 (#262) ############################################

236 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
The poems attributed to Thomas Rowley are Elizabethan, where
they are not later, in style; the spelling is freely imitated from the
worst fifteenth century practice; the vocabulary is taken largely
from Speght's glossary to Chaucer, from Kersey's Dictionarium
Anglo-Britannicum (1708) and Bailey's Universal Etymological
Dictionary (1737). Chatterton does not seem to have cared much
for Chaucer except as an authority for old words ; he studied the
glossary, not the text, and does not imitate Chaucer's phrasing.
His poetry and his medieval tastes are distinct ; his poetry is not
medieval, and his medieval fictions (like those of Scott, to a great
extent) are derived from admiration of the life and manners, from
architecture and heraldry, from the church of St Mary Redcliffe,
from the black-letter Bible in which he learned to read, and from
the appearance of the old parchments which his father took from
Canynge's coffin in the neglected muniment room of the church.
His grandfather and great-grandfather had been sextons there,
and the church was the ancestral home of his imagination, the
pride of Brystowe and the Westerne lande. The child made an
imaginary Bristol of the fifteenth century, with personages who
were seen moving about in it and distinctly known to him ; the
childhood of Sordello in Browning's poem is the same sort of life
as Chatterton's. As he grew out of childhood and became a poet
with a mastery of verse, he still kept up his fictitious world ; his
phantom company was not dispersed by his new poetical knowledge
and skill, but was employed by him to utter his new poetry,
although this was almost wholly at variance with the assumed age
and habit of Thomas Rowley and his acquaintances. The Rowley
poems are not an imitation of fifteenth century English verse ;
they are new poetry of the eighteenth century, keeping wisely, but
not tamely, to the poetical conventions of the time, the tradition of
heroic verse—with excursions, like those of Blake, into the poetry
of Shakespeare's songs, and one remarkable experiment (noted by
Watts-Dunton) in the rhythm of Christabel, with likeness to Scott
and Byron :
Then each did don in seemlie gear,
What armour eche beseem'd to wear,
And on each sheelde devices shone
Of wounded hearts and battles won,
All curious and nice echon;
With many a tassild spear.
But this, The Unknown Knight (which is not in the early editions
of the Rowley poems), is an accident. Chatterton had here for


## p. 237 (#263) ############################################

Chatterton and his Impostures
237
a
a moment hit on one kind of verse which was destined to live in
the next generation ; but neither in the principal Rowley poems
nor in those avowedly his own does he show any sense of what he
had found or any wish to use again this new invention.
Thomas Chatterton was born in November 1752, and put to
school at Colston's hospital when he was nine ; in 1765, he was
apprenticed to a Bristol attorney. In April 1770, his master
.
released him, and he came to London to try his fortune as an
author and journalist. He had been a contributor to magazines for
some time before he left home, and possessed very great readiness
in different kinds of popular writing. He got five guineas for a short
a
comic opera, The Revenge (humours of Olympus), and seems to have
wanted nothing but time to establish a good practice as a literary
man. He does not seem to have made any mistake in judging his
own talents ; he could do efficiently the sort of work which he
professed. But he had come to a point of bad luck, and his pride
and ambition would not allow him to get over the difficulty by
begging or sponging ; so he killed himself (24 August 1770).
The nature of his impostures is now fairly well ascertained.
They began in his childhood as pure invention and imaginary life;
they turned to schoolboy practical joking (the solemn bookish
schoolboy who pretends to a knowledge of magic or Hebrew is
a wellknown character); then, later, came more elaborate jokes,
to impose upon editors—Saxon Atchievements is irresistible
and, then, the attempt to take in Horace Walpole with The Ryse
of Peyncteyning in Englande writen by T. Rowleie 1469 for
Mastre Canynge, a fraud very properly refused by Walpole.
The Rowley poems were written with all those motives mixed ;
but of fraud there was clearly less in them than in the document
for the history of painting, because the poems are good value,
whatever their history may be, whereas the document is only
meant to deceive and is otherwise not specially amusing.
Chatterton was slightly influenced by Macpherson, and seems
to have decided that the Caledonians were not to have all the
profits of heroic melancholy to themselves. He provided translations
of Saxon poems :
The loud winds whistled through the sacred grove of Thor; far over the
plains of Denania were the cries of the spirits heard. The howl of Hubba's
horrid voice swelled upon every blast, and the shrill shriek of the fair Locabara
shot through the midnight sky.
There is some likeness between Macpherson and Chatterton in
their acknowledged works: Macpherson, in his poems The Hunter


## p. 238 (#264) ############################################

238 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
a
and The Highlander, has great fluency with the heroic verse, and
in prose of different sorts he was a capable writer. The difference
is that Chatterton was a poet, with every variety of music,
seemingly, at his command, and with a mind that could project
itself in a hundred different ways—a true shaping mind. Nothing
in Chatterton's life is more wonderful than his impersonality ; he
does not make poetry out of his pains or sorrows, and, when he is
composing verse, he seems to have escaped from himself. His
dealing with common romantic scenery and sentiment is shown
in the quotation above from Elinoure and Juga ; he makes a
poetical use of melancholy motives, himself untouched, or, at any
rate, undeluded.
The Wartons were devoted to the Middle Ages through their
appreciation of Gothic architecture. It began with Thomas Warton
the elder, who let his sons Joseph and Thomas understand what
he himself admired in Windsor and Winchester. But, as with
Chatterton, and even with Scott, an admiration of the Middle
Ages need not lead to a study of medieval philology, though it did
so in the case of Thomas the younger. In literature, a taste for
the Middle Ages generally meant, first of all, a taste for Spenser,
for Elizabethans-old poetry, but not too old. Thomas Warton
the father was made professor of poetry at Oxford in 1718, and
deserved it for his praise of the neglected early poems of Milton.
It was indirectly from Warton that Pope got his knowledge of
Comus and Penseroso. Warton's own poems, published by
Il
his son Thomas in 1748, contain some rather amazing borrowings
from Milton's volume of 1645 ; his paraphrase of Temple's
quotation from Olaus Wormius has been already mentioned. The
younger Thomas had his father's tastes and proved this in his
work on Spenser, his edition of Milton's Poems upon several
occasions and his projected history of Gothic architecture, as well
as in his history of English poetry. His life, well written by
Richard Mant, is a perfect example of the easy-going university
man, such as is also well represented in the famous miscellany
which Warton himself edited, The Oxford Sausage. Warton was
a tutor of Trinity, distinguished even at that time for neglect of
his pupils and for a love of ale, tobacco, low company and of
going to see a man hanged. His works are numerous? ; his poems
in a collected edition were published in 1791, the year after his
death. He was professor of poetry 1757 to 1767, Camden professor
1 See bibliography,


## p. 239 (#265) ############################################

Thomas Warton the Younger
239
of history from 1785 and poet laureate in the same year. His
appointment was celebrated by the Probationary Odes attached
to The Rolliad.
The advertisement to Warton's Poems (1791) remarks that the
author was 'of the school of Spenser and Milton, rather than that
of Pope. ' The old English poetry which he studied and described
in his history had not much direct influence on his own compo-
sitions; the effect of his medieval researches was not to make him
an imitator of the Middle Ages, but to give him a wider range in
modern poetry. Study of the Middle Ages implied freedom from
many common literary prejudices, and, with Warton, as with Gray
and Chatterton and others, the freedom of poetry and of poetical
study was the chief thing; metrical romances, Chaucer and Gower,
Lydgate and Gawain Douglas, led, usually, not to a revival of
medieval forms, but to a quickening of interest in Spenser and
Milton. Nor was the school of Pope renounced or dishonoured in
consequence of Warton’s ‘Gothic' taste; he uses the regular
couplet to describe his medieval studies :
Long have I loved to catch the simple chime
Of minstrel-harps, and spell the fabling rime;
To view the festive rites, the knightly play,
That deck'd heroic Albion's elder day;
To mark the mouldering halls of barons bold,
And the rough castle, cast in giant mould;
With Gothic manners Gothic arts explore
And muse on the magnificence of yore'.
Thomas Warton's freedom of admiration does not make him dis-
respectful to the ordinary canons of literary taste; he does not go
so far as his brother Joseph. He is a believer in the dignity of
general terms, which was disparaged by his brother; this is a fair
of conservative literary opinion in the eighteenth century.
The History of English Poetry (in three volumes, 1774, 1778,
11781) was severely criticised ; not only, as by Ritson, for inaccu-
racy, but, even more severely, for incoherence. Scott is merciless
on this head :
As for the late laureate, it is well known that he never could follow a clue
of any kind. With a head abounding in multifarious lore, and a mind un-
questionably imbued with true tic fire, he wielded that most fatal of all
implements to its possessor, a pen so scaturient and unretentive, that we think
he must have been often astonished not only at the extent of his lucubrations,
but at their total and absolute want of connection with the subject he had
assigned to himself2.
1 Verses on Sir Joshua Reynolds's painted window at New College, Oxford : 1782.
? See Scott's art. on Todd's Spenser, in The Edinburgh Review, 1805.


## p. 240 (#266) ############################################

240 The Literary Influence of the Middle Ages
а
This does not make allowance enough, either for the difficulties
of Warton's explorations or for the various purposes of literary
history. Warton certainly had no gift for historical construction.
But the art of Gibbon is not required for every history, and the
history of literature can spare a coherent plan, so long as the
historian provides such plenty of samples as Warton always gives.
Obviously, in literature, the separate facts may be interesting and
intelligible, while the bare facts of political history can but rarely
be such. The relation of book to book is not like the relation of
one battle to another in the same war, or of one political act to the
other events of a king's reign. In literary history, desultory reading
and writing need not be senseless or useless; and Warton's work
has and retains an interest and value which will outlast many
ingenious writings of critics more thoroughly disciplined. Further,
his biographer Mant has ground for his opinion (contrary to Scott's)
that Warton
can trace the progress of the mind, not merely as exemplified in the confined
exertions of an individual, but in a succession of ages, and in the pursuits and
acquirements of a people.
There is more reasoning and more coherence in Warton's history
than Scott allows.
Joseph Warton did not care for the Middle Ages as bis brother
did, but he saw more clearly than Thomas how great a poet
Dante was; ‘perhaps the Inferno of Dante is the next composition
to the Iliad, in point of originality and sublimity? ' The footnote
here (“Milton was particularly fond of this writer' etc.