No More Learning

I have not seen him yet, though I left my name
for him. But I will tell you who is come too,-- Lady Mary
Wortley. I went last night to visit her; I give you my honor
(and you who know her would credit it me without it), the fol-
lowing is a faithful description. I found her in a little miserable
bedchamber of a ready-furnished house, with two tallow candles,
and a bureau covered with pots and pans. On her head, in full
of all accounts, she had an old black-laced hood, wrapped entirely
round, so as to conceal all hair or want of hair. No handker-
chief, but up to her chin a kind of horseman's riding-coat, call-
ing itself a pet-en-l'air, made of a dark green (green I think it
had been) brocade, with colored and silver flowers, and lined with
furs; boddice laced, a foul dimity petticoat sprig'd, velvet muffe-
teens on her arms, gray stockings and slippers. Her face less
changed in twenty years than I could have imagined: I told her
so, and she was not so tolerable twenty years ago that she needed
have taken it for flattery; but she did, and literally gave me a
box on the ear. She is very lively, all her senses perfect, her lan-
guages as imperfect as ever, her avarice greater. She entertained
me at the first with nothing but the dearness of provisions at
Helvoet. With nothing but an Italian, a French, and a Prussian,
all men-servants,- and something she calls an old secretary, but
whose age till he appears will be doubtful, - she receives all the
world, who go to homage her as Queen Mother, and crams them
into this kennel. The Duchess of Hamilton, who came in just
after me, was so astonished and diverted that she could not speak
to her for laughing: She says that she has left all her clothes
at Venice.


## p. 15569 (#523) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15569
A YEAR OF FASHION IN WALPOLE'S DAY
From Letter to the Earl of Hertford
YºY
a
are sensible, my dear lord, that any amusement from my
letters must depend upon times and seasons.
We are
very absurd nation (though the French are so good at pres-
ent as to think us a very wise one, only because they themselves
are now a very weak one); but then that absurdity depends upon
the almanac. Posterity, who will know nothing of our intervals,
will conclude that this age was a succession of events. I could
tell them that we know as well when an event, as when Easter,
will happen. Do but recollect these last ten years. The begin-
ning of October, one is certain that everybody will be at New-
market, and the Duke of Cumberland will lose, and Shafto win,
two or three thousand pounds. After that, while people are
preparing to come to town for the winter, the ministry is sud-
denly changed, and all the world comes to learn how it happened,
a fortnight sooner than they intended; and fully persuaded that
the new arrangement cannot last a month. The Parliament opens:
everybody is bribed; and the new establishment is perceived to
be composed of adamant. November passes with two or three
self-murders, and a new play. Christmas arrives: everybody goes
out of town; and a riot happens in one of the theatres. The
Parliament meets again, taxes are warmly opposed; and some
citizen makes his fortune by a subscription. The Opposition
languishes; balls and assemblies begin; some master and miss
begin to get together, are talked of, and give occasion to forty
more matches being invented; an unexpected debate starts up at
the end of the session, that makes more noise than anything that
was designed to make a noise, and subsides again in a new peer-
age or two.
Ranelagh opens, and Vauxhall: one produces scan-
dal, and t’other a drunken quarrel. People separate, some to
Tunbridge, and some to all the horse-races in England; and so
the year comes again to October.
XXVI–974


## p. 15570 (#524) ##########################################

15570
HORACE WALPOLE
FUNERAL OF GEORGE II.
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq. '
Dº
o you know, I had the curiosity to go to the burying tother
night, - I had never seen a royal funeral; nay, I walked as
a rag of quality, which I found would be, and so it is, the
easiest way of seeing it. It is absolutely a noble sight. The
Prince's chamber, hung with purple, and a quantity of silver
lamps, the coffin under a canopy of purple velvet, and six vast
chandeliers of silver on high stands, had a very good effect. The
Ambassador from Tripoli and his son were carried to see that
chamber. The procession through a line of foot-guards, every
seventh man bearing a torch, the horse-guards lining the outside,
their officers with drawn sabres and crape sashes on horseback,
the drums muffled, the fifes, bells tolling, and minute-guns, - all
this was very solemn. But the charm was the entrance of the
Abbey, where we were received by the dean and chapter in rich
robes, the choir and almsmen bearing torches; the whole abbey
so illuminated that one saw it to greater advantage than by day,
— the tombs, long aisles, and fretted roof all appearing distinctly
and with the happiest chiaroscuro. There wanted nothing but
incense, and little chapels here and there, with priests saying
mass for the repose of the defunct; yet one could not complain
of its not being Catholic enough. I had been in dread of being
coupled with some boy of ten years old; but the heralds were
not very accurate, and I walked with George Grenville, taller and
older, to keep me in countenance. When we came to the chapel
of Henry the Seventh, all solemnity and decorum ceased; no
order was observed, people sat or stood where they could or
would; the yeomen of the guard were crying for help, oppressed
by the great weight of the coffin; the bishop read sadly and
blundered in the prayers; the fine chapter “Man that is born of
a woman” was chanted, not read; and the anthem, besides being
immeasurably tedious, would have served as well for a nuptial.
The real serious part was the figure of the Duke of Cumberland,
heightened by a thousand melancholy circumstances, He had a
dark brown Adonis, and a cloak of black cloth, with a train of
five yards. Attending the funeral of a father could not be pleas-
ant; his leg extremely bad, yet forced to stand upon it nearly
two hours; his face bloated and distorted with his late paralytic
stroke, which has affected, too, one of his eyes; and placed over


## p. 15571 (#525) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15571
This grave
the mouth of the vault, into which, in all probability, he must
himself so soon descend: think how unpleasant a situation! He
bore it all with a firm and unaffected countenance.
scene was fully contrasted by the burlesque Duke of Newcastle.
He fell into a fit of crying the moment he came into the chapel,
and flung himself back in a stall, the archbishop hovering over
him with a smelling-bottle; but in two minutes his curiosity got
the better of his hypocrisy, and he ran about the chapel with
his glass to spy who was was not there, spying with one
hand and mopping his eyes with the other. Then returned the
fear of catching cold; and the Duke of Cumberland, who was
sinking with heat, felt himself weighed down, and turning round,
found it was the Duke of Newcastle standing upon his train to
avoid the chill of the marble. It was very theatric to look down
into the vault where the coffin lay, attended by mourners with
lights. Clavering, the groom of the bedchamber, refused to sit
up with the body, and was dismissed by the King's order.
or
GOSSIP ABOUT THE FRENCH AND FRENCH WOMEN
From Letter to Mr. Gray
B'
Y WHAT I said of their religious or rather irreligious opinions,
you must not conclude their people of quality atheists - at
least, not the men. Happily for them, poor souls! they are
not capable of going so far into thinking. They assent to a great
deal, because it is the fashion, and because they don't know how
to contradict. They are ashamed to defend the Roman Catholic
religion, because it is quite exploded; but I am convinced they
believe it in their hearts. They hate the Parliaments and the
philosophers, and are rejoiced that they may still idolize royalty.
At present, too, they are a little triumphant,- the court has
shown a little spirit, and the Parliaments much less; but as the
Duc de Choiseul, who is very fluttering, unsettled, and inclined to
the philosophers, has made a compromise with the Parliament of
Bretagne, the Parliaments might venture out again, if, as I fancy
will be the case, they are not glad to drop a cause, of which
they began to be a little weary of the inconveniences.
The generality of the men, and more than the generality, are
dull and empty. They have taken up gravity, thinking it was


## p. 15572 (#526) ##########################################

15572
HORACE WALPOLE
philosophy and English, and so have acquired nothing in the
room of their natural levity and cheerfulness. However, as their
high opinion of their own country remains, for which they can no
longer assign any reason, they are contemptuous and reserved,
instead of being ridiculously, consequently pardonably, imperti-
nent. I have wondered, knowing my own countrymen, that we
had attained such a superiority. I wonder no longer, and have
a little more respect for English heads than I had.
The women do not seem of the same country; if they are
less gay than they were, they are more informed, enough to
make them very conversable. I know six or seven with very
superior understandings; some of them with wit, or with soft-
ness, or very good sense.
Madame Geoffrin, of whom you have heard much, is an ex-
traordinary woman, with more common-sense than I almost ever
met with Great quickness in discovering characters, penetration
in going to the bottom of them, and a pencil that ifever fails in
a likeness, — seldom a favorable one. She exacts and preserves,
spite of her birth and their nonsensical prejudices about nobility,
great court and attention. This she acquires by a thousand little
arts and offices of friendship; and by a freedom and severity
which seem to be her sole end of drawing a concourse to her,
for she insists on scolding those she inveigles to her. She has
little taste and less knowledge; but protects artisans and authors,
and courts a few people to have the credit of serving her de-
pendents. She was bred under the famous Madame Tencin,
who advised her never to refuse any man; for, said her mistress,
though nine in ten should not care a farthing for you, the tenth
may live to be a useful friend. She did not adopt or reject the
whole plan, but fully retained the purport of the maxim.
In
short, she is an epitome of empire, subsisting by rewards and
punishments. Her great enemy, Madame du Deffand, was for a
short time mistress of the Regent; is now very old and stone-
blind, but retains all her vivacity, wit, memory, judgment, pas-
sions, and agreeableness. She goes to operas, plays, suppers,
and Versailles; gives suppers twice a week; has everything new
read to her; makes new songs and epigrams, ay, admirably, and
remembers every one that has been made these fourscore years.
She corresponds with Voltaire, dictates charming letters to him,
contradicts him, is no bigot to him or anybody, and laughs both
at the clergy and the philosophers. In a dispute, into which


## p. 15573 (#527) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15573
(
she easily falls, she is very warm, and yet scarce ever in the
wrong: her judgment on every subject is as just as possible; on
every point of conduct as wrong as possible; for she is all love
and hatred, passionate for her friends to enthusiasm, still anxious
to be loved, - I don't mean by lovers, - and a vehement enemy,
but openly. As she can have no amusement but conversation,
the least solitude and ennui are insupportable to her, and put her
into the power of several worthless people, who eat her suppers
when they can eat nobody's of higher rank; wink to one another
and laugh at her; hate her because she has forty times more
parts, — and venture to hate her because she is not rich. She
has an old friend whom I must mention: a Monsieur Pondeveyle,
author of the Fat puni, and the Complaisant,' and of those
pretty novels the Comte de Cominge,' the “Siege of Calais,' and
Les Malheurs de l'Amour. ' Would you not expect this old
man to be very agreeable? He can be so, but seldom is;- yet
he has another very different and very amusing talent, the art
of, parody, and is unique in his kind. He composes tales to the
tunes of long dances: for instance, he has adapted the Regent's
(Daphnis and Chloe' to one, and made it ten times more in-
decent; but he is so old, and sings it so well, that it is permitted
in all companies. He has succeeded still better in les caractères
de la danse, to which he has adapted words that express all the
characters of love. With all this he has not the least idea of
cheerfulness in conversation : seldom speaks but on grave sub-
jects, and not often on them; is a humorist, very supercilious,
and wrapt up in admiration of his own country as the only judge
of his merit. His air and look are cold and forbidding; but ask
him to sing, or praise his works, his eyes and smiles open and
brighten up. In short, I can show him to you: the self-applauding
poet in Hogarth's Rake's Progress, the second print, is so like
his very features and very wig, that you would know him by it,
if you came hither,- for he certainly will not go to you.
Madame de Mirepoix's understanding is excellent of the useful
kind, and can be so when she pleases of the agreeable kind. She
has read, but seldom shows it; and has perfect taste.
Her man-
ner is cold, but very civil; and she conceals even the blood of
Lorraine, without ever forgetting it. Nobody in France knows
the world better, and nobody is personally so well with the
King. She is false, artful, and insinuating beyond measure when
it is her interest; but indolent and a coward. She never had any


## p. 15574 (#528) ##########################################

15574
HORACE WALPOLE
passion but gaming, and always loses. For ever paying court, the
sole produce of a life of art is to get money from the King to
carry on a course of paying debts or contracting new ones, which
she discharges as fast as she is able. She advertised devotion to
get made dame du palais to the Queen; and the very next day
this Princess of Lorraine was seen riding backwards with Madame
Pompadour in the latter's coach. When the King was stabbed,
and heartily frightened, the mistress took a panic too, and con-
sulted D'Argenson whether she had not best make off in time.
He hated her, and said, By all means. Madame de Mirepoix
advised her to stay. The King recovered his spirits, D'Argenson
was banished, and La Maréchale inherited part of the mistress's
credit. -I must interrupt my history of illustrious women with
an anecdote of Monsieur de Maurepas, with whom I am much
acquainted, and who has one of the few heads which approach to
good ones; and who luckily for us was disgraced, and the marine
dropped, because it was his favorite object and province. He
employed Pondeveyle to make a song on the Pompadour; it was
clever and bitter, and did not spare even Majesty. This was
Maurepas absurd enough to sing at supper at Versailles. Banish-
ment ensued; and lest he should ever be restored, the mistress
persuaded the King that he had poisoned her predecessor, Ma-
dame de Chateauroux. Maurepas is very agrecable, and exceed-
ingly cheerful; yet I have seen a transient silent cloud when
politics are talked of.
Madame de Boufflers, who was in England, is a savante, mis-
tress of the Prince of Conti, and very desirous of being his wife.
She is two women, the upper and the lower. I need not tell you
that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper
is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just
and pleasing, – but all is spoiled by an unrelaxed attention to
applause. You would think she was always sitting for her pict-
ure to her biographer.
Madame de Rochfort is different from all the rest. Her un-
derstanding is just and delicate; with a finesse of wit that is
the result of reflection. Her manner is soft and feminine, and
though a savante, without any declared pretensions. She is the
decent friend of Monsieur de Nivernois; for you must not believe
a syllable of what you read in their novels. It requires the
greatest curiosity, or the greatest habitude, to discover the small-
est connexion between the sexes here. No familiarity, but under


## p. 15575 (#529) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15575
the veil of friendship, is permitted; and Love's dictionary is as
much prohibited, as at first sight one should think his ritual was.
All you hear, and that pronounced with nonchalance, is that Mon-
sieur un tel has had Madame une telle.
The Duchess of Choiseul, the only young one of these hero-
ines, is not very pretty, but has fine eyes; and is a little model
in waxwork, which not being allowed to speak for some time as
incapable, has a hesitation and modesty, the latter of which the
court has not cured, and the former of which is atoned for by
the most interesting sound of voice, and forgotten in the most
elegant turn and propriety of expression. Oh! it is the gen-
tlest, amiable, civil little creature that ever came out of a fairy
egg! so just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and good-
natured! Everybody loves it but its husband, who prefers his
own sister, the Duchesse de Grammont,-- an Amazonian, fierce,
haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is detested.
Madame de Choiseul, passionately fond of her husband, was the
martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good grace;
has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed to idolize
him.
But I doubt it: she takes too much pains to profess it.
I cannot finish my list without adding a much more com-
mon character, - but more complete in its kind than any of the
foregoing, - the Maréchale de Luxembourg. She has been very
handsome, very abandoned, and very mischievous. Her beauty
is gone, her lovers are gone, and she thinks the devil is coming.
This dejection has softened her into being rather agreeable, for
she has wit and good-breeding; but you would swear, by the rest-
lessness of her person and the horrors she cannot conceal, that
she had signed the compact, and expected to be called upon in a
week for the performance.
I could add many pictures, but none so remarkable. In those
I send you there is not a feature bestowed gratis or exaggerated.
For the beauties, of which there are a few considerable, -as
Mesdames de Brionne, de Monaco, et d'Egmont,- they have not
yet lost their characters, nor got any.
You must not attribute my intimacy with Paris to curiosity
alone. An accident unlocked the doors for me.
That passe-par-
tout called the fashion has made them fly open — and what do
you think was that fashion ? -I myself. Yes, like Queen Eleanor
in the ballad, I sunk at Charing Cross, and have risen in the
Fauxbourg St. Germain. A plaisanterie on Rousseau, whose
-


## p. 15576 (#530) ##########################################

15576
HORACE WALPOLE
arrival here in his way to you brought me acquainted with many
anecdotes conformable to the idea I had conceived of him,
got about, was liked much more than it deserved, spread like
wild-fire, and made me the subject of conversation. Rousseau's
devotees were offended. Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of
sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me
heartily, and then complained to myself with the utmost softness.
I acted contrition, but had liked to have spoiled all by growing
dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti,
who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history
wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand
half he said (nor he either), forgot the rest, said Yes when I
should have said No, yawned when I should have smiled, and
was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.
Madame de Boufflers was more distressed, for he owned twenty
times more than I had said: she frowned, and made him signs;
but she had wound up his clack, and there was no stopping it.
The moment she grew angry, the lord of the house grew
charmed, and it has been my fault if I am not at the head of a
numerous sect; but when I left a triumphant party in England,
I did not come here to be at the head of a fashion. However, I
have been sent for about like an African prince, or a learned
canary-bird; and was in particular carried by force to the Prin-
cess of Talmond, the Queen's cousin, who lives in a charitable
apartment in the Luxembourg, and was sitting on a small bed
hung with saints and Sobieskis, in a corner of one of those vast
chambers, by two blinking tapers. I stumbled over a cat and
a footstool in my journey to her presence. She could not find
a syllable to say to me, and the visit ended with her begging a
lap-dog. Thank the Lord! though this is the first month, it is
the last week, of my reign; and I shall resign my crown with a
great satisfaction to a bouillie of chestnuts, which is just invented,
and whose annals will be illustrated by so many indigestions
that Paris will not want anything else these three weeks. I
will inclose the fatal letter after I have finished this enormous
one; to which I will only add that nothing has interrupted my
Sévigné researches but the frost. The Abbé de Malesherbes has
given me full power to ransack Livry. I did not tell you that
by great accident, when I thought on nothing less, I stumbled on
an original picture of the Comte de Grammont. Adieu! You are
generally in London in March: I shall be there by the end of it.
>


## p. 15577 (#531) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15577
THE ENGLISH CLIMATE
From Letter to George Montagu, Esq.
Nº:
Z
STRAWBERRY Hill, June 15th, 1768.
I CANNOT be so false as to say I am glad you are pleased
with your situation. You are so apt to take root, that it
requires ten years to dig you out again when you once
begin to settle. As you go pitching your tent up and down, I
wish you were still more a Tartar, and shifted your quarters
perpetually. Yes, I will come and see you; but tell me first,
when do your Duke and Duchess (the Argylls) travel to the
North ? I know that he is a very amiable lad, and I do not
know that she is not as amiable a laddess, but I had rather see
their house comfortably when they are not there.
I perceive the deluge fell upon you before it reached us. It
began here but on Monday last, and then rained near eight-and-
forty hours without intermission. My poor hay has not a dry
thread to its back. I have had a fire these three days. In
short, every summer one lives in a state of mutiny and murmur,
and I have found the reason: it is because we will affect to
have a summer, and we have no title to any such thing. Our
poets learnt their trade of the Romans, and so adopted the terms
of their masters. They talk of shady groves, purling streams,
and cooling breezes, and we get sore throats and agues with
attempting to realize these visions. Master Damon writes a song,
and invites Miss Chloe to enjoy the cool of the evening, and
the deuce a bit have we of any such thing as a cool evening.
Zephyr is a northeast wind, that makes Damon button up to
the chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and
then they cry, This is a bad summer! as if we
ever had
any
other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I
am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin our-
selves with inviting over foreign trees, and making our houses
clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would
laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable unless
you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at
your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend
upon it, will go out of fashion again.
There is indeed a natural warmth in this country, which, as
you say, I am very glad not to enjoy any longer; I mean the


## p. 15578 (#532) ##########################################

15578
HORACE WALPOLE
hot-house in St. Stephen's chapel. My own sagacity makes me
very vain, though there is very little merit in it. I had seen
I
so much of all parties, that I had little esteem left for any; it
is most indifferent to me who is in or who is out, or which is
set in the pillory, Mr. Wilkes or my Lord Mansfield. I see the
country going to ruin, and no man with brains enough to save it.
That is mortifying; but what signifies who has the undoing it ?
I seldom suffer myself to think on this subject: my patriotism
could do no good, and my philosophy can make me be at peace.
I am sorry you are likely to lose your poor cousin Lady
Hinchinbrook; I heard a very bad account of her when I was
last in town. Your letter to Madame Roland shall be taken care
of; but as you are so scrupulous of making me pay postage, I
must remember not to overcharge you, as I can frank my idle
letters no longer; therefore, good night!
P. S. -I was in town last week and found Mr. Chute still
confined. He had a return in his shoulder, but I think it more
rheumatism than gout.
THE QUIPU SYSTEM; PROPHECIES OF NATIONAL RUIN
From Letter to the Countess of Ossory)
)
I
RETURN the Quipos, madam, because if I retained them till
I understand them, I fear you would never have them again.
I should as soon be able to hold a dialogue with a rainbow,
by the help of its grammar, a prism; for I have not yet discov-
ered which is the first or last verse of four lines that hang like
ropes of onions.
Yet it is not for want of study, or want of
respect for the Peruvian manner of writing. I perceive it is a
very soft language; and though at first I tangled the poem and
spoiled the rhymes, yet I can conceive that a harlequin's jacket,
artfully arranged by a princess of the blood of Mango Capac,
may contain a deep tragedy, and that a tawdry trimming may
be a version of Solomon's Song Nay, I can already say my
alphabet of six colors, and know that each stands indiscrimi-
nately but for four letters, — which gives the Peruvian a great
advantage over the Hebrew tongue, in which the total want of
vowels left every word, at the mercy of the reader; and though
our salvation depended upon it, we did not know precisely what
any word signified, till the invention of points, that were not


## p. 15579 (#533) ##########################################

HORACE WALPOLE
15579
used till the language had been obsolete for some thousands of
years. A little uncertainty, as where one has but one letter
instead of four, may give rise to many beauties. Puns must be
greatly assisted by that ambiguity, and the delicacies of the
language may depend on an almost imperceptible variation in
the shades.
I have heard of a French perfumer who
wrote an essay on the harmony of essences. Why should not
that idea be extended?
The Peruvian Quipos adapted a lan-
guage to the eyes, rather than to the ears. Why should not
there be one for the nose ? The more the senses can be used
indifferently for each other, the more our understandings would
be enlarged. A rose, a jessamine, a pink, a jonquil, and a honey-
suckle, might signify the vowels; the consonants to be repre-
sented by other flowers. The Cape jessamine, which has two
smells, was born a diphthong. How charming it would be to
smell an ode from a nosegay, and to scent one's handkerchief
with a favorite song. Indeed, many improvements might be
made on the Quipos themselves, especially as they might be
worn as well as perused. A trimming set on a new lute-string
would be equivalent to a second edition with corrections.
In good truth, I was glad of anything that would occupy me,
and turn my attention from all the horrors one hears or appre-
hends. I am sorry I have read the devastation of Barbadoes
and Jamaica, etc. , etc. : when one can do no good, can neither
prevent nor redress, nor has any personal share, by one's self or
one's friends, is it not excusable to steep one's attention in any-
thing? . . . The expedition sent against the Spanish settlements
is cut off by the climate, and not a single being is left alive.
The Duchess of Bedford told me last night that the poor soldiers
so averse, that they were driven to the march by the
point of the bayonet; and that, besides the men, twenty-five
officers have perished. Lord Cornwallis and his tiny army are
scarce in a more prosperous way. On this dismal canvas a fourth
war is embroidered; and what, I think, threatens still more, the
French administration is changed, and likely to be composed of
more active men, and much more hostile to England. Our ruin
seems to me inevitable. Nay, I know those who smile in the
drawing-room, that groan by their fireside: they own
we have
no more men to send to America, and think our credit almost as
nearly exhausted. Can you wonder, then, madam, if I am glad
to play with Quipos — Oh, no! nor can I be sorry to be on the
verge — does one wish to live to weep over the ruins of Carthage ?
were


## p. 15580 (#534) ##########################################

15580
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE AND HIS
TIMES
(Early THIRTEENTH CENTURY)
BY CHARLES HARVEY GENUNG
VON
M M
ALTHER DER VOGELWEIDE is the greatest lyric poet of
Germany before Goethe, and the first supremely great lyric
poet that the nations of modern Europe produced. There
is a musical cadence in the very name that is like a chord struck by
the minstrel on his lyre as the prelude to a lay of love. But Walther
was not a Minnesinger only: he could tune his instrument to sterner
themes, swaying the popular passions and
moving the hearts of princes; great political
movements were checked or speeded by his
powerful rhymes. He was thus not only the
chief literary figure of his time, but he became
also an important political force.
In him too,
as in his great contemporaries Wolfram von
Eschenbach and Hartmann von Aue, the deep
religious spirit of the age found expression.
Gottfried von Strassburg pictured the courtly
graces, the manly accomplishments, and the
extravagant ideals, of chivalry at its height.
These men, with the legion of lesser Minne-
WALTHER
singers, shed radiance upon the reign of the
greatest of medieval emperors, Frederick II. ;
than whom no more enlightened prince had sat upon a European
throne since the days of Alfred the Great and Charlemagne. Over
all that wonderful age lies the fairy charm of poetry and romance.
The court of Frederick recalls the fabled glories of the emperors of
Trebizond; it shines through the mists of nearly seven centuries like
an imperial city gleaming in a golden atmosphere. With the brave,
bold, broad-minded characteristics of the Hohenstaufen house, Fred-
erick united the rarest natural gifts, – learning, wisdom, foresight, and
a passionate love of art and science. According to the picture that
Raumer draws of him in the History of the Hohenstaufen,' he was
a warrior and statesman, a poet and a naturalist, and a protector
of learning and the fine arts. He mastered the languages of the six
dominions that were united under his imperial sway: Greek, Latin,



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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
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Italian, German, French, and Arabic. He promulgated the Sicilian
Constitutions,- a book of laws far in advance of his times. He col-
lected a vast library in many languages, and on the greatest variety
of subjects. He made Greek works more accessible by having them
translated into the vernacular. Copies were sent to the University
of Bologna, although that institution stood in political opposition to
him. In 1224 he founded the University of Naples, and many stu-
dents were assisted from his own private purse.
After his coronation in 1215 he attached to himself Nicolà da
Pisano, who was the first to shake off the conventionality of Byzan-
tine art. Through neglect or destruction the imperial art collections
have been lost; but the beautiful coins of Frederick's reign, and the
splendid remains of palaces and castles, testify to the inspiring inter-
est that the Emperor took in the arts. The bridge at Capua with its
tower he designed himself. Mural paintings adorned at least one of
his castles, — that of Foggia,- and the mosaics of Palermo we owe
in a sense to him. It was he that gave an impulse to the study of
natural history by founding a zoological garden, which, through his
relations with Oriental princes, he was able to stock with exotic ani-
mals; and he caused a translation to be made of Aristotle's work on
zoology. He himself wrote a book on falconry, which has intrinsic
value aside from the interest which attaches to its age and origin.
And since he was a poet and wrote love lyrics, singers and poets
were gathered at his romantic court. His sympathies were, it is true,
far more Italian than German: his efforts in behalf of the Italian
tongue were soon to be crowned by the immortal work of Dante; but
he was liberal-minded enough to treat the German language in the
same way. Germany, to be sure, already had a literature, but the
indifference of such a man as Frederick could have done much to
check its development. The first State document in German, how-
ever, was issued by him when the Peace of Mayence was proclaimed
in 1235. In this care for the popular languages of his dominions he
resembled his great predecessors, Charlemagne and Alfred. He made
himself the centre of intellectual activity throughout his broad realm.
It was this age also that saw the rise of the great Dominican and
Franciscan orders, and of the Order of Mendicant Friars; it witnessed
the career of St. Elizabeth of Hungary. At the north the court of
the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia became a rallying-point for min-
strelsy and song; the historic contest of the singers on the Wartburg
is a poetic memorial of those romantic days. Much that is best
in our traditional romance had its rise then. From the time of the
migrations down, rugged men of action had been making history
which the poetic mind of the people transmitted into legend, until in
this more cultivated age that vast fund of history and legend received
its artistic form from the shaping genius of the great poets.


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15582
WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
It was in the twelfth century that the Nibelungenlied was put
into the strophes in which we read it. The crusade of Frederick
Barbarossa in 1189 gave a powerful impulse to the intellectual activity
of Germany. Contact with the Orient had introduced greater luxury
and a higher refinement into the arts of living. The barbarian hordes
which had overthrown the Roman empire had now taken their place
among the leaders of European civilization. This was the long mis-
understood and misrepresented thirteenth century, whose glories were
soon transfigured in legend, obscured by the rise of democracy, and
at last forgotten utterly in the wars of the seventeenth century.
Honest ignorance, and the zeal of bigotry, finally succeeded in fasten-
ing upon it the name of the Dark Ages! The darkness lay elsewhere;
for although we look back upon those dazzling days through the
beautifying medium of many centuries, which shows them stripped of
their sordidness and sorrow, it is certain that the early thirteenth
century was the most brilliant period in German literary history
until Goethe took up the Minnesingers' lyre, and evoked new har-
monies at the old Thuringian court.
It was of an age such as this that Walther von der Vogelweide
was the chief literary figure and a great political force. The rapid
development of chivalry during the crusades had brought with it the
Minnedienst, — the service and homage paid to women. Love and war
were the essence of life, and both were the inspiration of song. The
conception of love was deepened, idealized, refined. Love became an
ennobling and purifying influence. It is the chivalrous homage of
a vassal for a queen to whom he devotes his service and his life, -
a conception unknown in the ruder days when Siegfried conquered
Brünnhilde, and men won women sword in hand. In the expression
homage there was often much euphuistic exaggeration, which
weakened the directness of its appeal; but in Walther von der Vogel-
weide the note is always genuine, true, convincing. One of the
earliest examples of supersensual love in European literature is in
Walther's lines:-
«Would you know what may be the eyne
Wherewith I can see her whate'er befalls ?
They are the thoughts of this heart of mine;
Therewith I can see her through castle walls. )
Walther's poems not only reveal the character of the man, but
they tell the story of his life. They do not, however, give us the date
or place of his birth. He was probably born in the Tyrol in 1170.
At Bozen, on the borderlands between the German and Italian do-
minions of the Hohenstaufen emperors, Walther's heroic statue stands.
His earliest song of which the date is known belongs to the year
1198, and already shows the mature artist. For forty years, he says,


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15583
>
he sang of love: it is no wonder, then, that in the end his love lyrics
lost some of the red blood of youth. The year 1198 marked an epoch
in his life. He had been attached to the Austrian court of the Baben-
bergers, and it was in Austria that he had learned “to sing and to
say. ” In 1197 the Emperor Henry VI. died, when his son, afterwards
Frederick II. , was but three years old. The political confusion
reached its highest point. Walther seems to have become for a time
a wandering minstrel, as did Wolfram also. The former sided with
Philip of Suabia, brother of Henry, and sang at his coronation; the
latter took the part of the rival King Otto. Philip triumphed; and at
the court of Hermann of Thuringia, who had submitted to Philip,
Walther was welcomed. It was there that he met Wolfram von
Eschenbach. That was a picturesque moment in the annals of Ger-
man literature, when the two greatest poets of the age came together
within the borders of that illustrious little principality, where nearly
seven hundred years later Goethe met his only rival and won his
friendship. From the inexhaustible youthfulness of Walther, Wolfram
derived his inspiration to finish the immortal Parzifal”; and to Wal-
ther, Wolfram seems to have imparted some of his ethical earnestness
and deep religious fervor. The contest on the Wartburg took place,
according to tradition, in 1207. Two years later there came a change
over the political face of Europe. Frederick II. , having attained his
fifteenth year, asserted his claim to his father's crown. He appeared
at Coire, and made a triumphant progress down the Rhine. Hermann
joined him, and Walther hailed him in a burst of lyric joy. And the
homeless singer had a personal end in view. This is his pathetic and
naïve petition : -
Fain, could it be, would I a home obtain,
And warm me by a hearth-side of my own.
Then, then, I'd sing about the sweet birds' strain,
And fields and flowers, as I have whilome done;
And paint in song the lily and the rose
That dwell upon her cheek who smiles on me.
But lone I stray — no home its comfort shows:
Ah, luckless man! still doomed a guest to be!
»
Frederick fulfilled his wish; and the poet broke out into the well-
known song of jubilation, I have my grant! I have my grant! ”
But he was never directly attached to the person of Frederick: he
returned to the liberal court of Leopold VII. , the Glorious, at Vienna,
and again sang a mendicant minstrel's song :-
<< To me is barred the door of joy and ease:
There stand I as an orphan, lone, forlorn,
And nothing boots me that I frequent knock.


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
Strange that on every hand the shower should fall,
And not one cheering drop should reach to me!
On all around the generous Austrian's gifts,
Gladdening the land, like genial rain descend.
A fair and gay adornéd mead is he,
Whereon are gathered oft the sweetest flowers:
Would that his rich and ever generous hand
Might stoop to pick one little leaf for me,
So might I fitly praise a scene so fair. »
And when the great poets begged in song, the princes granted.
Walther fared sumptuously at Vienna, honored among the noblest of
the land.
Walther von der Vogelweide was the first patriot poet of Ger-
man literature. The essential inner unity of the empire he perceived
more clearly than perhaps any other man of his time. It was the
consciousness of this national homogeneity that gave bitterness to his
attacks upon the papacy. He resented foreign interference. The
popes had always found it hard to hold this sturdy independent race
in check; and now, when the papal power was at its height, the lead-
ing spirits of Germany were in open revolt against the exactions
of Rome. All the great achievements of Frederick II. were accom-
plished in spite of the ban of excommunication. Walther, like Dante
a few years later, was a stanch upholder of the empire; and neither
Hutten, nor Sachs, nor Luther, was more vigorous in denunciations
of Roman abuses than Walther the Minnesinger. In Walther's time
it was emperor and people against the pope; in Luther's it was
the people against emperor and pope: which marks the democratic
change already begun in the thirteenth century. Walther inveighed
as vigorously against the sectional strife of the German princes, and
deplored the effect upon the fatherland in lines of thrilling patriotic
fervor.
The great world-events in Walther's later life were the struggle
between Frederick II. and the popes Innocent III. and Gregory IX. ,
and the crusade which culminated in the conquest of Jerusalem. The
Pope had excommunicated the Emperor for failing to keep his vow
to institute a crusade, and Walther was outspoken in his urgency
that this vow should be fulfilled. He was ever faithful to Frederick;
but these doughty German singers were frank and bold for the thing
that they thought right. There is a crusader's song of Walther's
which would, taken literally, indicate that he had himself gone to the
Holy Land. Probably however he did not. As the poet grew old
his interest in purely worldly things decreased. His religious nature
.
asserted itself, and some of his loftiest poems strike a profoundly
devotional note. In Uhland's fine figure: «The earthly vanishes, -as


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
15585
when the sun sinks the valleys are covered with shadows, and soon
only the highest peaks retain their radiance. ” Love became religion.
The worship of Mary was closely associated with the homage paid to
women, and all the Minnesingers have sung her praises. There was
no irreverence in these chivalrous songs to the Virgin. She was the
queen of the angels, to whom the knightly minstrels vowed allegiance.
When Walther bade farewell to Dame World, whom he had served
for forty years, he was preparing for his final resting-place:-
«Too well thy weakness have I proved;
Now would I leave thee,- it is time:
Good-night to thee, O World, good-night!
I haste me to my home. ”
The enduring charm of Walther's verse is due in large measure
to his genuineness and to the moral elevation of his character: he
was good as well as great. His roguish humor wins; his simplicity
moves; the greatness of his soul uplifts. The emotions which he
stirs are those of our common humanity in all ages. Several of his
best poems have been rendered accessible to the English reader by ·
the unsurpassed versions of Edgar Taylor, from whom some of the
above citations have been taken, and who rendered also the following
poem, written by Walther upon revisiting the scenes of his youth :-
Ah! WHERE are hours departed Aed ?
Is life a dream, or true indeed ?
Did all my heart hath fashionéd
From fancy's visitings proceed ?
Yes, I have slept; and now unknown
To me the things best known before,-
The land, the people, once mine own,
Where are they? they are here no more;
My boyhood's friends all aged, worn,
Despoiled the woods, the fields, of home,
Only the streams flow on forlorn:
Alas, that e'er such change should come!
And he who knew me once so well
Salutes me now as one estranged;
The very earth to me can tell
Of naught but things perverted, changed:
And when I muse on other days,
That passed me as the dashing oars
The surface of the ocean raise,
Ceaseless my heart its fate deplores.
Walther died about 1230 in Würzburg, and there in the minster he
lies buried. Longfellow has perpetuated the pretty legend concern-
ing his grave. It is said to have been provided in his will that
• XXVI–975


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
the birds from whom he learned his art should be fed daily at noon
upon the slab which covers his resting-place.
« Thus the bard of love departed;
And fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir. )
(
By the side of Walther von der Vogelweide and the Minnesingers
stood the epic poets Wolfram von Eschenbach, Hartmann von Aue,
and Gottfried von Strassburg. Wolfram, if we omit the qualifying
adjective lyric,” must be called the greatest poet of the Middle Ages.
Only seven of his lyrics have come down to us, but the tenderest
ideals of love are expressed in the two epic songs from the “Titurel
cycle. The full measure of his greatness is attained in the immortal
'Parzifal, the finest courtly epic of German literature. It is not only
a picture of the days of chivalry: it is the story of human life,-
its struggles, aspirations, conflicting temptations, defeats, and final
triumph. In a psychological sense it is the “Faust” of mediæval
Germany; and it reaches the same solution,-self-renunciation. The
whole poem, in its moral exaltation, is akin to Dante's. Parzifal' is
the expression of the highest ethical ideals of Germany in the Middle
Ages; and the author's profound insight into the human heart shows
him to have been the deepest thinker as he was the most powerful
poet of his time. With Wolfram must be grouped Hartmann von
Aue, because of the deep moral earnestness which both infused into
their poetry.
Wolfram planned his great work to fill the whole
circle of religion and ethics; Hartmann was content with a few of
its segments. The two epics “Erec) and Iwein' do not rise above
the commonplace level of the ordinary poetic tales of chivalry; but
in the two shorter epic tales (Gregorius) and Der Arme Heinrich'
(Poor Henry), problems of the tortured human soul are treated with
great simplicity and strength. For a sin unwittingly committed, Gre-
gorius spends his life in severest penance, and receives at last the
reward of his sincere atonement. Poor Henry' is the tale of a man
of wealth and high position, who is suddenly stricken with a loath-
some disease. Only the sacrifice of a young girl's life can
him; but from the devoted girl with whose parents he has taken
refuge he nobly conceals this secret. She learns it finally, however,
and this sacrifice appears to her in the light of a Divine mission:
but at the last moment Henry refuses to accept salvation at such a
price; his soul is cleansed of the last trace of selfishness, and at that
moment he is restored to bodily health as well. Longfellow preserves
this story for English readers in his poem “The Golden Legend,'
which forms the second part of Christus. '
save


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
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Of a very different order of mind from these two ethical poets
was Gottfried, the Master of Strassburg. His "Tristan und Isolde is
the perfection of art, without superior among the medieval courtly
epics of Germany; but it deals solely with the overmastering passion
of a guilty love, in which by reason of the magic potion the lovers
are victims rather than sinners. There is no psychological problem,
no ethical ideal, but there is a wealth of artistic culture and polished
poetry. In Tristan we have the richest picture of German chivalry
in its full flower that has been painted in literature. Gottfried was
the most cultivated poet of his time, but he lacked the moral eleva-
tion of his rivals.
Of the host of the Minnesingers it is impossible to speak in detail.
There is a mass of uncertain dates, picturesque 'names, legendary
anecdotes, and beautiful poems. The lyric poetry of that age of
song is wonderfully rich, but the name of Walther von der Vogel-
weide may stand as the symbol of the whole. Even in the testimony
of his contemporaries he occupies the highest place. Gottfried did
him homage; Wolfram praised him in Parzifal,' and in "Titurel
called him «the exalted master. ) Later poets looked up to him as
their incomparable model; for Walther was fertile in the invention of
elaborate and exquisitely musical measures. Some eighty new metres
were original with him, from the simplest folk-song to the most
majestic verse. A gradual process of petrifaction began when inspi-
ration failed, and the traditions descended to lesser men. Thus rules
came to be established, and the form was reverenced whence the
soul had fled. This is doubtless the historic connection between
the wooden age of the Mastersingers and Walther's age of gold.
The descent had begun even in the time of Walther, who deplored
the peasant realism of his contemporary Nithart, whose so-called Ni-
tharte represented the triumph of vulgarity over the courtly. But
the descent was not precipitate, for there are still exquisite speci-
mens of the minnesang in the early fourteenth century; as for
instance, the poem “I saw yon infant in her arms carest of the
Zürich poet Hadloub. But in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
the courtly vanished before the vulgar; and it required all the inde-
fatigable industry of the sound-hearted Hans Sachs to rescue German
literature from hopeless coarseness. Walther's name was still hon-
ored as a tradition, but it was only a name;- then darkness fell and
that too was forgotten. The story of his rehabilitation is the same
as that which relates the recovery of the Nibelungenlied. Bodmer
turned the attention of Germans to their ancient poets; slowly the
interest grew; at last the pioneers of German philology and the
Romantic poets, especially Tieck, -- who in 1803 published his edition
of the Minnelieder,— restored the bards of the thirteenth century to
their rightful place among the greatest singers of German song. And


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WALTHER VON DER VOGELWEIDE
to-day every lover of pure lyric verse will echo with equal sincerity
the sentiment of Walther's younger contemporary, Hugo von Trim-
berg, when he enthusiastically exclaims:-
«Her Walther von der Vogelweide, -
Swer des vergaez', der taet' mir leide.