Then bloom on, gay tufts of scented roses;
O'er his grave your sweetest fragrance shed!
O'er his grave your sweetest fragrance shed!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v13 - Her to Hux
The hand, however, cannot possibly
be steady if the judgment is constantly whirling around like a
weathercock. Now the father sees in him "a lofty heart under
the jacket of a babe, with a strange but noble instinct of pride";
and only four days later he has changed into "a type of unutter-
ably deep baseness, of absolute platitude, and the quality of an
uncouth and dirty caterpillar which will not undergo a trans-
formation. " Then again: "An intelligence, a memory, a capacity,
which overpower, exciting astonishment, nay, fright. " And not
quite four weeks later: "A nothing, embellished with trivialities.
that will throw dust into the eyes of chatterboxes, but never be
anything but a quarter of a man, if peradventure he should ever
be anything at all. "
Unquestionably it was no easy task properly to educate this
boy, for there was a great deal of solid foundation for every one
of the father's contradictory judgments: the boy was like the
father, as "changeable as the sea. " Still, by conforming the
education, with untiring, loving patience, to the strongly pro-
nounced individuality of the child, a good pedagogue would have
been sure to achieve excellent results. The application of any
cut-and-dried system based upon preconceived notions was certain
## p. 7501 (#307) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7501
to work incalculable mischief. This the marquis failed to see,
and his system was in all its parts as adapted to the intellectual
and moral peculiarities of the boy as a blacksmith's hammer to
the repairing of a chronometer.
Many years later, the Baron von Gleichen wrote to the father:
"I told you often that you would make a great rascal of the
boy, while he was of a stuff to make a great man of him. He
has become both. " So it was; and that he became a rascal was
to a great extent due to the treatment he received at his father's
hands, while he became a great man in spite of it. Appeals
to reason, pride, honor, noble ambition, and above all affection,
always awakened a strong responsive echo in his bosom; the
father, however, whenever he was provoked,- and the high-
spirited unruly boy constantly provoked him,- had only stern-
ness, stinging sarcasm, sharp rebuke, and severe punishment for
him. Instead of educating him by methodically developing his
better qualities, he persists in trying to subdue him by fear,
although he cannot help confessing that the word fear is not to
be found in the boy's vocabulary. Contradicting himself, he
then again proudly asserts that while Honoré is afraid of no one
else, he fears him. That was a delusion. He knew that from
the father he had to expect nothing but punishment, and that
he tried to elude by hook and by crook; having, in spite of his
fearlessness, no more a liking for it than any other boy. The
father accused him, now and ever afterwards, of being by nature
a liar. It was he who had caused the germ of untruthfulness,
which is liable to be pretty strong with most very vivacious
children, to sprout so vigorously and to cast such deep roots, by
systematically watering it every day. From his early childhood
to the day of his death, Mirabeau was possessed of a secret
charm that in spite of everything, opened him the hearts of
almost all people with whom he came into close contact. Even
the father was by no means, as he pretended to be, wholly
proof against it. But as he was extraordinarily skillful in deceiv-
ing himself on this head, he also admirably succeeded in con-
cealing it from the son. The boy learned more and more to
look upon his father as his one natural enemy, whom it was a
matter of course to oppose by all available means, fair and foul.
He did his best to make himself a terror to his son, and he not
only deadened natural affection, but also undermined filial re-
spect. To reimpose the punishments remitted by the teacher, to
make everybody, from the father confessor down to the comrades,
## p. 7502 (#308) ###########################################
7502
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
a spy and informant, purposely and confessedly to exaggerate to
instructors and superiors his moral shortcomings,—that was a
policy to drive an angel to revolt. It would have been nothing
less than a miracle if it had not goaded into viciousness an un-
usually bright and hot-tempered boy, with a superabundance of
human nature in his every fibre. There is no surer way utterly
to ruin a full-blooded colt than madly to tear and jerk the bridle,
while brutally belaboring him with spur and whip.
Honoré was still a child, and the marquis already persuaded
himself that he was in the strict sense of the word a criminal.
He not only said so, but he also treated him as such, though he
admitted that in truth, thus far only boyish pranks could be laid
to his charge. As a last attempt to save him from perdition,
he was at the age of fifteen years intrusted to the Abbé Cho-
quard. The marquis himself applies to the institution the harsh
name "reformatory school. " It was not so bad as that. Among
Honoré's comrades were even some English boys "of family,"
who were not at all suspected of being candidates for the hang-
man's kind attentions. Not by putting him into this institution
did the marquis disgrace his son, but he did brand him by depriv
ing him of his name. As Pierre Buffière he was entered in the
lists. Loménie - facile princeps among Mirabeau's biographers
- makes light of this. He is even strongly inclined to suppose
that as Buffière was the name of a large estate forming part of
the prospective inheritance of his wife, the marquis was largely
induced by the desire to gratify his pride to impose this name
on the son. A strange way of distributing light and shadow in
painting this family tragedy! The marquis states in the plain-
est words that he intends to burn a mark upon the forehead of
the son.
Here again Mirabeau soon gained the vivid affection, not only
of his comrades, but also of his teachers. A touching demonstra-
tion of the former induced his father to refrain from carrying out
the intention of punishing him for the crime of accepting some
money presents from his mother, by taking him out of the school
and casting him adrift on the sea of life in a way which would
have burned an indelible mark on his, the father's, forehead.
In 1767 Pierre Buffière was put into the army. From this time
the feud between father and son rapidly sinks into darker and
darker depths. The son now comes in for a steadily and fast
increasing share of real guilt; but his guilt is always outrun by
his father's unreasonable, unjust, and despotic paternalism.
## p. 7503 (#309) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7503
Debts, contracted at the gambling-table and in all sorts of
other indulgences of a more or less reprehensible character, and
an indiscreet and impure love affair, caused his father to resume
the idea I just alluded to. He thought of sending the son to the
Dutch colonies, because their mephitic climate would render it
rather more than likely that he would never return from them.
Many a year later Mirabeau wrote from his terrible dungeon in
Vincennes to his father:-"You have confessed to me in one of
your letters, that from the time of my imprisonment on the Isle
of Rhé you have been on the point of sending me to the Dutch
colonies. The word has made a deep impression upon me, and
influenced in a high degree my after life.
What had I
done at the age of eighteen years, that you could conceive such
an idea, which makes me tremble even now, when I am buried
alive?
I had made love. " Why do Loménie and Stern
not quote this letter? It seems to me that it must be quoted, if
one is to judge fairly.
The project was abandoned in favor of a milder means, which
the ancien régime offered to persons of high standing and influ-
ence to rid themselves of people who were in their way, the
so-called lettres de cachet. The person whose name a complacent
minister entered upon the formulary was arrested in the name
of the king, and disappeared without trial or judgment in some
State prison, for as long a time as his persecutor chose to keep
him caged. By this handy means the marquis now began to
drag his son from prison to prison, in his "quality of natural
tribunal," as he said.
.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Loménie lays considerable stress upon the fact that once or
twice Mirabeau seems to have been rather satisfied with thus
being taken care of, because he was thereby protected from his
creditors. The marquis however gains but little by that. As to
his son, he appears in regard to this particular instance in a
better light than before this fact was unearthed, but from the
other side a new shadow falls upon him. Where did this fanatic
of duty find the moral justification to prevent the creditors from
getting their due, by thus putting their debtor "under the hand
of the king," as the phrase ran? It certainly could not be de-
rived from any paragraph in his catechism. It is a most genuine.
piece of the code of the ancien régime.
For a number of years Mirabeau's debts constituted his prin-
cipal wrong.
He was
one of those men who would somehow
## p. 7504 (#310) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7504
manage to get into debt even on a desert island, and with Robin-
son's lump of gold for a pillow. But he would have had no
opportunity to run up in the briefest time an account of over
200,000 francs, if he had not closely followed the father's bad
example in choosing a wife. Miss Marignane was also an heiress,
but-though bearing no resemblance to the née Miss Vassan —
in almost every other respect pretty much the reverse of what
a sensible man must wish his wife to be. Mirabeau would cer-
tainly never have thought of offering her his hand, if she had
not been an heiress. His main reasons for wooing her seem,
however, to have been the longing to become more independent
of his father, and a freak of petty vanity: he was tickled by the
sensation it would cause, that in spite of his ugliness the much-
coveted prize was carried off by him. He did not even scruple
to force the hand of the girl by gravely compromising her. But
when she was his wife, he was only too gallant a knight. She
was one of those women whose whole existence is comprised
in sipping the cup of pleasure. She is, so to speak, all outside
without any inside at all. If you want to get at her intellectual
life, you must listen to her merry laugh about nothing at the
picnic parties, and the animated recitation of her part on the
amateur stage, on which she is quite a star; and to find her
heart, you must go to the milliner's and jeweler's shop. To them
and to the caterers Mirabeau carried the bulk of the money
he borrowed from the usurers. She had eaten up with her fri-
volities most of the money, for the squandering of which he had
to pine his youth away in prison. And that was not all she had
to answer for. She too had enjoyed all the advantages of good
example, and she profited as much by it as Mirabeau. Her
grandmother and her mother were separated from their husbands,
and very soon she gave Mirabeau the right to bid her leave his
house forever. He forgave her the adultery, of which she stood
convicted by her own confession; and he never told any one of
her shame, until he thought that by revealing his magnanimity
he could induce the courts to compel her to rejoin him.
She
thanked him for his generosity by telling him that he was a fool,
when he implored and commanded her to join him in his place
of detention, in order to stand between him and the temptation.
which threatened to close the gulf over him by pushing him
from guilt into crime. Aye, Mirabeau sinned much, but he was
infinitely more sinned against.
## p. 7505 (#311) ###########################################
7505
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
(1748-1776)
B
ÖLTY, one of the best of the German lyric poets of the
eighteenth century, was born in Mariensee, near Hannover.
The son of a country minister, he was excellently grounded
by his father in the classics and modern languages. Though inces-
santly, even as a boy, poring over his studies, and thereby weaken-
ing his constitution, he yet escaped being a bookworm; for, growing
up in the country, he early developed that passion for nature and
for solitude which colored all his poetry. In 1769 he went to Göt-
tingen to study theology. Here, falling in
with Bürger, Voss, the Stolbergs, and other
poets of kindred tastes, he became one of
the founders of the Göttingen "Hainbund. "
This league of young enthusiasts was aflame
for Klopstock, then considered the greatest
German poet, for patriotism and for friend-
ship, detested Wieland's sensual poems and
his Frenchified manner, read the classics
together, and wrote poetry in friendly em-
ulation. Hölty's constitutional melancholy
deepened when the girl whom he had cele-
brated under the name of "Laura" married.
His health was further undermined by the
shock of the death of his father, to whom
he was fondly attached. The year after, on September 1st, 1776, he
died of consumption, not quite twenty-eight years of age.
Hölty is an engaging figure. His poems reveal a lovable person-
ality. The strain of sentimentality that runs through all his work
is not affectation, as it was with so many of the younger poets of
that age in which Rousseau had made sentimentality fashionable, but
was the true expression of Hölty's nature. He chose by preference
themes in which the thought of death was in some shape present, and
he was most effective where this thought served as the shadow in
the bright picture of fleeting joys. A presentiment of his own early
death hovered constantly about him; but it neither marred his enjoy-
ment of the present, nor did it diminish his delight in the beauties of
nature, or prevent his outbursts of youthful frolic. His range was
XIII-470
HÖLTY
## p. 7506 (#312) ###########################################
7506
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
small; but within its limits his work was perfect, and many of his
songs have become the common property of the people. His wide
knowledge of ancient and modern poetry made him familiar with
many verse forms; his own poems are marked by harmony of form
and matter, and by great technical skill in the handling of subjects
both gay and grave. They show on the one hand a deep feeling for
nature and solitude, and again an innocent gayety in treating of the
simple social relations. He combined in a curious degree a capacity
for enjoyment of the passing moment with a profound melancholy
and longing for death. The influence of the English poets with whom
Hölty was well acquainted is easily traceable, and in his verse one
hears the mournful echo of Young's 'Night Thoughts. '
COUNTRY LIFE
APPY the man who has the town escaped!
To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
The shining pebbles, preach
Virtue's and wisdom's lore.
H₁
The whispering grove a holy temple is
To him, where God draws nigher to his soul;
Each verdant sod a shrine,
Whereby he kneels to Heaven.
The nightingale on him sings slumber down;
The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,
When shines the lovely red
Of morning through the trees.
Then he admires thee in the plain, O God!
In the ascending pomp of dawning day,-
Thee in thy glorious sun,
The worm, the budding branch;
Where coolness gushes, in the waving grass
Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests:
Inhales the breath of prime,
The gentle airs of eve.
His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,
And play and hop, invites to sweeter rest
Than golden halls of state
Or beds of down afford.
## p. 7507 (#313) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
To him the plumy people sporting chirp,
Chatter, and whistle, on his basket perch,
And from his quiet hand
Pick crumbs, or peas, or grains.
Oft wanders he alone, and thinks on death;
And in the village church-yard by the graves
Sits, and beholds the cross,
Death's waving garland there,
The stone beneath the elders, where a text
Of Scripture teaches joyfully to die,
And with his scythe stands Death,
An angel too with palms.
Happy the man who thus hath 'scaped the town:
Him did an angel bless when he was born,
The cradle of the boy
With flowers celestial strewed.
SPRING SONG
HE snow melts fast,
May comes at last,
Now shoots each spray
THE
Forth blossoms gay,
The warbling bird
Around is heard.
From Fraser's Magazine.
Come, twine a wreath,
And on the heath
The dance prepare
Ye maidens fair!
Come, twine a wreath,
Dance on the heath!
Who can foretell
The tolling bell,
When we with May
No more shall play?
Canst thou foretell
The coming knell?
7507
## p. 7508 (#314) ###########################################
7508
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
Rejoice, rejoice!
To speak his voice
Who gave us birth
For joy on earth.
God gives us time,--
Enjoy its prime.
Translation of A. Baskerville.
HARVEST SONG
ICKLES Sound;
On the ground
Fast the ripe ears fall;
Every maiden's bonnet
Has blue blossoms on it:
Joy is over all.
ST
Sickles ring,
Maidens sing
To the sickle's sound;
Till the moon is beaming,
And the stubble gleaming,
Harvest songs go round.
All are springing,
All are singing,
Every lisping thing.
Man and master meet,
From one dish they eat;
Each is now a king.
Hans and Michael
Whet the sickle,
Piping merrily.
Now they mow; each maiden
Soon with sheaves is laden,
Busy as a bee.
Now the blisses,
And the kisses!
Now the wit doth flow
Till the beer is out;
Then, with song and shout,
Home they go, yo ho!
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7509 (#315) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
WINTER SONG
S⁹
UMMER joys are o’er;
Flowerets bloom no more;
Wintry winds are sweeping:
Through the snow-drifts peeping,
Cheerful evergreen
Rarely now is seen.
Now no plumèd throng
Charms the woods with song;
Ice-bound trees are glittering;
Merry snow-birds, twittering,
Fondly strive to cheer
Scenes so cold and drear.
Winter, still I see
Many charms in thee;
Love thy chilly greeting,
Snow-storms fiercely beating,
And the dear delights
Of the long, long nights.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
DEATH OF THE NIGHTINGALE
SHE
HE is no more, who bade the May month hail;
Alas! no more!
The songstress who enlivened all the vale,—
Her songs are o'er;
She whose sweet tones, in golden evening hours,
Rang through my breast,
When, by the brook that murmured 'mong the flowers,
I lay at rest.
How richly gurgled from her deep full throat
The silvery lay,
Till in her caves sweet Echo caught the note,
Far, far away!
7509
Then was the hour when village pipe and song
Sent up their sound,
And dancing maidens lightly tripped along
The moonlit ground.
## p. 7510 (#316) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7510
A youth lay listening on the green hillside,
Far down the grove,
While on his rapt face hung a youthful bride
In speechless love.
Their hands were locked oft as thy silvery strain
Rang through the vale;
They heeded not the merry dancing train,
Sweet nightingale!
They listened thee till village bells from far
Chimed on the ear,
And like a golden fleece, the evening star
Beamed bright and clear.
Then, in the cool and fanning breeze of May,
Homeward they stole,
Full of sweet thoughts, breathed by thy tender lay
Through the deep soul.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
THE OLD FARMER'S ADVICE TO HIS SON
Y SON, be honest truth thy guide,
And to thy dying day
Turn not a finger's breadth aside
From God's appointed way.
Then shall thy pilgrim pathway lie
Through meadows sunny-green;
Then shalt thou look on death with eye
Unshrinking and serene:
MY
Then shall the pathway to thy tomb
By frequent feet be trod,
And summer flowers of sweet perfume
Spring from the moistened sod;
For oft shall children's children, led
By fond affection's care,
At evening seek thy grave, and shed
The tear of sorrow there.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7511 (#317) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
Α
CALL TO JOY
WAY with pouting and with pining,
So long as youth and springtime bloom!
Why, when life's morning sun is shining,
Why should the brow be clothed in gloom?
On every road the Pleasures greet us,
As through life's pilgrimage we roam;
With wreaths of flowers they come to meet us.
And lead us onward to our home.
The rivulet purls and plays as lightly
As when it danced to Eden's breeze;
The lovely moon still beams as brightly
As when she shone through Adam's trees.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
THE DREAM-IMAGE
HERE art thou, image guarding me,
WHE There in the garden dreaming,
That bound my hair with rosemary,
Which round my couch was teeming?
Where art thou, image guarding me,
And in my spirit peering,
While my warm cheek all tenderly
Thou prest with touch endearing?
I seek for thee, with sorrow moved,
By linden-shaded river,
Or in the town, idea beloved,
And find thee nowhere, never.
I wander 'neath the sun's sharp heat,
If raining or if snowing,
And look into each face I meet
Along my pathway going.
7511
Thus am I doomed still to and fro
With sighs and tears to wander,
And Sundays at the church doors view
The maidens here and yonder.
Toward every window do I look,
Where but a veil doth hover,
I
I
1
## p. 7512 (#318) ###########################################
7512
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
And in no house or street or nook
Can I my love discover.
Come back, sweet image of the night,
With thy angelic bearing,
Clad in the shepherd garments light
Which marked thy first appearing;
And with thee bring the swan-white hand
Which stole my heart completely,
The purple-scarlet bosom-band,
The nosegay scented sweetly;
The pair of great and glad blue eyes,
From whence looked out an angel;
The forehead, in such kindly guise,
Amenity's evangel;
The mouth, love's paradise abode;
The dimples laughing clearest,
Where Heaven's bright portal open stood,-
Bring all with thee, my dearest!
HOMAGE
O
Pay I till my death,
YE beauties,
All my duties
Song-strains while upraising;
Ever till my death
All your virtues praising.
Ye, O good ones,
Joy-imbued ones,
Give life its sweet guise,
Man an angel making,
And a paradise
Of a world law-breaking.
Who the blisses
Of true kisses
Never tasted hath,
Wanders like one fleeing
O'er life's beaten path,-
Is an unborn being.
## p. 7513 (#319) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7513
Who the blisses
Of true kisses
Fully tasted hath,
Glows with Heaven's brightness,
And along his path
Rose-groves spring in lightness.
TO A VIOLET
AFTER ZAPPI
VIOLET, hide within thy calyx blue
O
The tears of anguish till my sweetheart true
This spring shall visit. If she thee shall take
From here, adornment for her breast to make,
Cling close then to her heart, and tell her true
That these pearl drops within thy calyx blue
From soul of truest youth on earth were brought,
Who wept his soul away, and then death sought.
ELEGY AT THE GRAVE OF MY FATHER
LEST are they who slumber in the Lord;
Β΄
Thou, too, O my father, thou art blest:
Angels came to crown thee; at their word,
Thou hast gone to share the heavenly rest.
Roaming through the boundless, starry sky,
What is now to thee this earthly clod?
At a glance ten thousand suns sweep by,
While thou gazest on the face of God.
In thy sight the eternal record lies;
Thou dost drink from life's immortal wells;
Midnight's mazy mist before thee flies,
And in heavenly day thy spirit dwells.
Yet beneath thy dazzling victor's crown,
Thou dost send a father's look to me;
At Jehovah's throne thou fallest down,
And Jehovah, hearing, answereth thee.
Father, oh when life's last drops are wasting,-
Those dear drops which God's own urn hath given,-
--
## p. 7514 (#320) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7514
When my soul the pangs of death is tasting,
To my dying bed come down from heaven!
Let thy cooling palm wave freshly o'er me,
Sinking to the dark and silent tomb;
Let the awful vales be bright before me,
Where the flowers of resurrection bloom.
Then with thine my soul shall soar through heaven,
With the same unfading glory blest;
For a home one star to us be given,-
In the Father's bosom we shall rest.
Then bloom on, gay tufts of scented roses;
O'er his grave your sweetest fragrance shed!
And while here his sacred dust reposes,
Silence reign around his lowly bed!
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7515 (#321) ###########################################
7515
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
BY GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER
HE modern poets, in their search for epic material, have laid
under tribute the history of the world and the mythologies
of all races. Yet the limited number of really epic subjects
thus discovered testifies either to the weakness of literary invention
or to the narrow bounds of heroic possibilities. A few old themes,
already used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have served
again for most of the ambitious narrative compositions of the nine-
teenth. Tennyson, Browning, William Morris, and Swinburne, in Eng-
lish, and Richard Wagner in German, have been the chief narrative
poets of our time, and their work has very largely been to infuse
modern poetical sentiment and modern philosophy into mediæval
stories. Except Browning, who is a son of the Renaissance, these
poets have all found a great part of their epic material in the early
traditions of the Celtic and Germanic races.
The most heroic of these traditions celebrate the gods and heroes
of the ancient Northern religion-Wodin, Thor, Freya, Balder, Loki,
Siegfried, Brunhild,- the terrible and beautiful figures which have
grown out of the Edda, through the Nibelungen-Lied, into Wagner's
stupendous tetralogy. The most romantic are the tales of Arthur
and the Round Table; British in origin, and appropriate in charac-
ter to the soft Celtic race and to the gentle modern poet who has
popularized them again in 'The Idylls of the King. ' The most spir-
itual are the stories of Perceval and the search for a sacred emblem,
which are known collectively as the Legend of the Holy Grail.
The best known of the many modern embodiments of this legend
are Tennyson's 'Holy Grail' and the text of Wagner's musical drama
'Parsifal. ' In the Middle Ages it found wider and more varied ex-
pression, being the substance of narratives in prose as well as verse,
and in no less than six languages,- French, Welsh, English, Ger-
man, Icelandic, and Flemish. During the latter half of the twelfth
century and the first quarter of the thirteenth, eight or ten different
authors wrote the romances which, for lack of the more ancient
works upon which they were based, we must call the original Grail
cycle. The popularity of the legend was wide-spread. Its influence
was profound, and showed itself especially in spiritualizing the Ar-
thurian narratives, which had previously been of a worldly and even
•
## p. 7516 (#322) ###########################################
7516
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
sensual character. Caxton no sooner set up his press in England
than he wrote: "Many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm
came and demanded many and often times wherefore I have not
made and emprynted the noble history of the San Graal;" and in
1485 he did "emprynt" Malory's 'Morte Darthur,' which is saturated
with the mysticism of the Grail idea.
In a mass of poetical work extending over many years, in vari-
ous lands, and produced by informing old borrowed stories with new
imaginative meaning, it is not easy to determine the distinguishing
features. There are, however, two principal lines of narration which
lie prominent to the view amid all the confusion of the Grail stories,
and to which the rest is subordinate. These are the tale of Perceval,
and the account of a miracle-working object connected with Christ's
passion. The former is in substance as follows:-
A banished queen, widow of a king slain in combat, lives in the
wild-wood with her little son. To guard him from the dangers of
court life, she brings him up in ignorance of his royal origin and of
all warlike arts. His childhood is spent in companionship with the
birds of the forest. He loves them, and understands their language.
One day he encounters several knights in a green glade, and is fas-
cinated by the splendor of their arms and what they tell of their
wandering life. Following their example, he sets forth to conquer
the world, to win the love of women and perform deeds of valor.
Ignorance, foolhardiness, and awkwardness are but the outward ap-
pearance of his true innocence, courage, simplicity, and chastity.
After many adventures he reaches an enchanted castle, upon which
some dreadful woe seems to have fallen. A wounded man, called
the "Fisher King," lies there speechless and supplicating relief; and
at regular intervals there are borne before this sufferer a bleeding
spear and a sacred vessel, at sight of which the King and his attend-
ant knights look expectantly at the simple Perceval. He has been
taught, however, never to ask questions, and so leaves the castle
without inquiring concerning its mysteries. Had he but asked, the
Fisher King would have been healed; for, as all the inmates of the
castle knew, this cannot be until a pure man makes question of the
holy relics. Perceval goes forth unto many more adventures, but is
ever haunted by pity for the King and regret of his own forbear-
ance. At length he learns from a hermit that the vessel was the
Grail, and devotes himself henceforth to searching for the castle, in
hopes of repairing his fault. After many years he finds it again, but
now the spell is not so easily unbound. He must first weld together
the parts of a broken sword. When this is done, the Fisher King
recovers, and hails Perceval as his deliverer and the chief defender of
the Grail. Upon the Fisher King's death, Perceval rules in his stead.
## p. 7517 (#323) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7517
The history of the Grail is given in most romances substantially
as follows: In a bowl which had served at the Last Supper, Joseph
of Arimathea caught some of the blood which flowed from Christ's
wounds as he hung upon the cross. Being miraculously conveyed to
England to escape persecution, he carried the precious vessel with
him. Throughout his life it furnished him with food and drink, and
with spiritual sustenance as well; and at his death he charged his
successor to guard it faithfully. It was handed down from generation
to generation, the Fisher King being a descendant of Joseph. This
vessel is the Grail. According to other versions, the Grail chooses
its own knights. It possesses miraculous properties, and at times is
instinct with divine life. To discover its abiding-place and become
one of its guardians is the ambition of good and valiant men, but
only the pure in heart may find it.
Any student of folk-lore will instantly perceive in the Perceval
narration an ancient heathen core, related to the tales of Siegfried in
early Germanic literature and more closely still to Celtic mythology.
Some investigators have tried to prove that the idea of a sacred
spear and vessel, endowed with wonder-working powers and guarded
by an order of knights, is also of Celtic and heathen origin. This
is a much-vexed question, and one of the most difficult in the whole
field of literary history. The advocates of this theory have at times
of late seemed tantalizingly near to untangling the mysterious knot,
and they may do it yet. But in the present state of knowledge it
still is safer to say that the account of a sacred spear and bowl,
as given in the Grail romances, appears to be mainly of Christian
legendary origin, and to be based upon the lives of saints and cer-
tain apocryphal books of the New Testament, principally the Gospel
of Nicodemus. It is probable that the Perceval story was familiar,
in one or more of its many different forms, to the people of western
Britain, before their conversion to Christianity. When the French
romancers of the twelfth century began to develop the Grail idea,-
the idea of a sacramental symbol, dwelling among men but discov-
erable only by the brave and pure,-they wove into their narrations
all the tales of chivalry, all the mysterious adventures, all the recon-
dite folk-lore, they remembered or could find in books. Points of
resemblance between Perceval's breaking the spell at the Fisher
King's castle and the religious legend of a quest for the Grail must
have caught the attention of these poets, half inventors, half com-
pilers, and been eagerly accepted. Chrestien de Troyes, who was
possibly the first writer from whom a Grail romance has come down
to us, was evidently intending to fuse these two elements in the
latter part of his poem, but evidently also hesitating over so bold
and difficult a task. He began his work about 1189, but died before
## p. 7518 (#324) ###########################################
7518
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
finishing it or even reaching the point where the blending was to
begin in earnest.
Mediæval poets felt no scruple about mingling Biblical stories and
the lives of saints with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, or of
Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain. They obeyed also a tendency
to materialize religion; a tendency almost universal, which has had
much to do with the attaching of undue importance to church rites
and sacraments. More controversy and bloodshed have been occas-
ioned by differences of opinion about baptism and the eucharist than
by divergence of conduct in following the moral law of Christianity.
This natural inclination to attribute deep spiritual significance to
physical objects and actions to symbolize, in a word was what
caused the Grail idea to develop so rapidly and gave it such a grasp
upon the imagination of men. And the Christian legendary element
in the Grail romances, while of later origin than the heathen ele-
ment, is the central and unifying principle, and has drawn to itself
and sublimated all those weird and strangely beautiful pagan stories
of which Perceval is the hero, and which awaken in our hearts a
faint reminiscence of the mysterious childhood of our race.
There have been many widely divergent opinions concerning the
meaning and origin of the word Grail,-or Graal, or Gréal, or Gral,
as it is variously spelt. An early and most natural conjecture was
that San Gréal was a mistaken way of writing sang réal, the royal
blood. But there is now scarcely any doubt that the early form
Graal was derived from the Low Latin gradale, and this in turn
from cratella, a bowl.
-
As to the order in which the members of the early cycle were
composed, there is much difference of opinion. Three, however, seem
older than the others, at least in the material they employ. They
are Chrestien's unfinished poem, the Conte du Graal,' in Old French;
the Welsh mabinogi, or prose romance, 'Peredur ab Evrawc,' prob-
ably written later than the former, though based not upon it but
upon very ancient matter, for it is simpler and shorter and makes
no mention of the Grail, being chiefly a life of Perceval (Peredur);
and the Early English metrical romance, Sir Perceval of Galles,' in
which no talismanic or miracle-working objects are mentioned at all.
These three compositions may have derived their Perceval elements
from a common source, opened to the medieval world during the
reign of Henry II. by some Norman-English compiler interested in
Welsh poetry.
Chrestien's poem was taken up by several other
French writers after his death. An introduction was fitted to it, in
which a violent attempt was made to reconcile the Christian and
heathen elements. Many thousands of lines were also added, by vari-
ous hands, in the early years of the thirteenth century. Meanwhile,
## p. 7519 (#325) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7519
probably before the end of the twelfth century, Robert de Borron
had written, in Old French verse,
verse, a trilogy, Joseph,' 'Merlin,'
'Perceval,' of which the 'Joseph' and part of the Merlin' have
been preserved. It was he especially who gave to all the material a
Christian character. There are also later prose adaptations of his
work. Great difficulty is occasioned by our ignorance of where to
place the French prose romance, the 'Queste del Saint Graal,' gener-
ally attributed to Walter Map, and another, the Grand Saint Graal,'
often accredited to Borron. In these the Christian symbolizing tend-
ency is strong, and the story of Perceval is buried under many
complicated tales of knight-errantry. They were, however, probably
written before 1204.
There are several other members of the early cycle of Grail
romances, but only one is of great importance, - the 'Parzival of
Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was a South-German poet, who lived
at least as early as 1170 and as late as 1220. The Parzival' is his
magnum opus. It is also the finest narrative poem of which the
authorship is known, between the era of classical antiquity and the
'Divine Comedy' of Dante. Furthermore, it is the most complete,
and virtually the final, mediæval handling of the two great themes
which are involved in the Legend of the Holy Grail, and which Wolf-
ram more thoroughly blends than any other poet. He accomplishes
this by reinstating and beautifying the Perceval element, and elim-
inating most of the confused monkish legendary matter concerning
the transference of the Grail from Palestine to Western Europe. He
professes to base his romance upon Chrestien's 'Conte du Graal' and
upon a work by "Kiot the Provençal," now lost without other trace
than this assertion. Material about Perceval was evidently more plen-
tiful and clearer than information as to the Grail, for Wolfram does
not know it as a bowl, but as a stone.
In this noble work there lives a spirit of reverence and moral
earnestness in marked contrast with the aimless and often frivolous
character of the other romances. The best qualities of the German.
mind-its hospitality to tender sentiment, its love of truth, its indi-
viduality in religion- are here abundantly present. The Grail is not
regarded merely as a talisman, but as a visible manifestation of the
ever-living Christ,
"a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove,"
a reminder of spiritual needs and privileges. But what will keep
the 'Parzival' ever fresh and attractive is the breath of morning
blowing through it, as from the greenwood where the world was
young, where man was innocent and held converse with the sweet
birds, where moral evil came not, and moral good was taught by a
## p. 7520 (#326) ###########################################
7520
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
mother's lips. The celebrated passage in which Wolfram relates the
boyhood of Perceval is by far the choicest portion of his long poem.
His selection and development of this theme have guaranteed to him,
more surely than to the other authors of early Grail romances, a sub-
stantial and enduring fame.
During the next two hundred and fifty years it was the mission
of the Legend of the Holy Grail to be the spiritualizing tributary of
a broader stream of literature, the bright full current of Arthurian
romance. To this brimming river it gave purity and light. It gave
direction as well; and for time at least, the generations who sailed
upon the bosom of these waters moved as honor and true religion
might approve. Then the Renaissance, which was springtime to
many fields of thought, fell like a polar night on these shining floods
of fair mediæval story. The Legend of the Holy Grail, which had
leaped down in tiny rivulets from the high antiquity of so many
races, and had cleansed and beautified the literatures of so many
tongues, and served so long as the highway of communication be-
tween widely separated nations,- this purifying and unifying stream
lay frozen throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen-
turies. Suddenly, in our own time, it has been irradiated and warmed
to life again and to the old genial motion. Modern English and Ger-
man poets in reviving the Legend of the Holy Grail have been
impelled by the same moral earnestness as Wolfram von Eschenbach,
and by the same desire to show the way to seekers after the spirit-
ual life.
GeoM Leon Harper
THE BOY PERCEVAL
From the Parzival' of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translation of George
McLean Harper
WHE
HEN doubt a human conscience gnaws,
Peace from that breast her light withdraws.
Beauty and ugliness we find
Even in the bravest heart combined,
If taint be in him, great or slight,
As in the magpie black and white.
Yet ofttimes may he savèd be,
For both share in his destiny —
## p. 7521 (#327) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7521
XIII-471
High heaven and the abyss of hell.
But when the man is infidel,
Of midnight blackness is his soul,
His course is towards yon pitchy hole;
While he of steady mind pursues
The shining road the righteous choose.
A knight-at-arms am I by birth;
In me sleep warlike strength and worth;
She who might love me for my song
Would show a judgment sadly wrong.
For if I seek a lady's grace,
And may not go before her face
With honors won by shield and sword,
I will not woo her, by my word!
No other game can have my praise
When Love's the stake and Knighthood plays.
I find the usage much to blame
Which makes no difference in the name
Of women false and women true.
Clear-voiced are all, but not a few
Quickly to evil courses run,
While others every folly shun.
So goes the world; but still 'tis shame
The bad ones share that honored name.
Loyal and fair is womanhood,
When once the name is understood.
Many there are who cannot see
Anything good in poverty.
But he who bears its trials well
May save his faithful soul from hell!
These trials once a woman bore
And gained thereby of grace a store.
Not many in their youth resign.
Riches in life for wealth divine.
I know not one in all the earth,
Whate'er the sex or age or birth;
For mortals all in this agree.
But Herzeloide the rich ladie
From her three lands afar did go-
She bore such heavy weight of woe.
In her was no unfaithfulness,
As every witness did confess.
All dark to her was now the sun;
The world's delights she fain would shun.
## p. 7522 (#328) ###########################################
7522
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Alike to her were night and day,
For sorrow followed her alway.
Now went the mourning lady good
Forth from her realm into a wood
In Soltanè the wilderness;
Not for flowers, as you might guess;
Her heart with sorrow was so full
She had no mind sweet flowers to pull,
Red though they were and bright, or pale.
She brought with her to that safe vale
Great Gahmuret's her lord's young child.
Her servants, with them there exiled,
Tilled the scant glebe with hoe and plow.
To run with them she'd oft allow
Her son. And e'er his mind awoke
She summoned all this vassal folk,
And on them singly, woman and man,
She laid this strange and solemn ban:
Never of knights to utter word,—
"For if of them my darling heard,
And knightly life and knightly fare,
"Twould be a grief to me, and care.
Now guard your speech and hark to me,
And tell him naught of chivalrie. "
With troubled mien they all withdrew;
And so concealed, the young boy grew
Soltanè's greenwood far within.
No royal sports he might begin
Save one,- to draw the bow
And bring the birds above him low
With arrows cut by his own hand,
All in that forest land.
But when one day a singing bird
He shot, and now no longer heard
Its thrilling note, he wept aloud,
This boy so innocent yet proud,
And beat his breast and tore his hair,
This boy so wild yet wondrous fair.
At the spring in the glade
He every day his toilet made.
Free had he been from sorrow
Till now, when he must borrow
Sweet pain from birds.
1
## p. 7523 (#329) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7523
Into his heart their music pressed
And swelled it with a strange unrest.
Straight to the queen he then did run;
She said, "Who hurt thee, pretty son? "
But naught could he in answer say—
'Tis so with children in our day.
Long mused the queen what this might be,
Till once beneath a greenwood tree
She saw him gazing and sighing still,
Then knew 'twas a bird's song did fill
Her darling's breast with yearning pain
And haunting mystery.
Queen Herzeloide's anger burned
Against the birds, she knew not why;
Her serving-folk she on them turned
And bade to quench their hated cry,
And chase and beat and kill
In every brake, on every hill.
Few were the birds that flew away
And saved their lives in that fierce fray;
Yet some escaped to live and sing
Joyous, and make the forest ring.
Unto the queen then spoke the boy,
"Why do you rob them of their joy? "
Such intercession then he made,
His mother kissed him while she said,
"Why should I break God's law, and rob
The birds of innocent delight? "
Then to his mother spoke the boy,
"O mother, what is God? »
"My son, in solemn truth I say
He is far brighter than the day,
Though once his countenance did change
Into the face of man.
O son of mine, give wisely heed,
And call on him in time of need,
Whose faithfulness has never failed
Since first the world began.
And one there is, the lord of hell,
Black and unfaithful, as I tell:
Bear thou towards him a courage stout,
And wander not in paths of doubt. "
His mother taught him to discern
Darkness and light; he quick did learn.
## p. 7524 (#330) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7524
The lesson done, away he'd spring
To practice with the dart and sling.
Full many an antlered stag he shot
And home to his lady mother brought;
Through snow or floods, it was the same,
Still harried he the game.
Now hear the tale of wonder:
When he had brought a great stag low,
Burden a mule might stagger under,
He'd shoulder it and homeward go!
Now it fell out upon a day
He wandered down a long wood-way,
And plucked a leaf and whistled shrill,
Near by a road that crossed a hill.
And thence he heard sharp hoof-strokes ring,
And quick his javelin did swing;
Then cried: "Now what is this I hear?
What if the Devil now appear,
With anger hot, and grim?
But certain I will not flee him!
Such fearful things my mother told —
I ween her heart is none too bold. "
All ready thus for strife he stood,
When lo! there galloped through the wood
Three riders, shining in the light,
From head to foot in armor dight.
The boy all innocently thought
Each one a god, as he was taught.
No longer upright then stood he,
But in the path he bent his knee.
Aloud he called, and clear and brave,
"Save, God, for thou alone canst save! "
The foremost rider spoke in wrath
Because the boy lay in the path:
"This clumsy Welsh boy
Hinders our rapid course. "
A name we Bavarians wear
Must the Welsh also bear:
They are clumsier even than we,
But good fighters too, you'll agree.
A graceful man within the round
Of these two lands is rarely found.
That moment came a knight
In battle-gear bedight.
## p. 7525 (#331) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Galloping hard and grim
Over the mountain's rim.
The rest had ridden on before,
Pursuing two false knights, who bore
A lady from his land.
That touched him near at hand;
The maid he pitied sore,
Who sadly rode before.
After his men he held his course,
Upon a fine Castilian horse.
His shield bore marks of many a lance;
His name - Karnacharnanz,
Le comte Ulterlec.
Quoth he, "Who dares to block our way? »
And forth he strode to see the youth,
Who thought him now a god in sooth,
For that he was a shining one:
His dewy armor caught the sun,
And with small golden bells were hung
The stirrup straps, that blithely swung
Before his greaved thighs
And from his feet likewise.
Bells on his right arm tinkled soft
Did he but raise his hand aloft.
Bright gleamed that arm from many a stroke,
Warded since first to fame he woke.
Thus rode the princely knight,
In wondrous armor dight.
That flower of manly grace and joy,
Karnacharnanz, now asked the boy:
"My lad, hast seen pass by this way
Two knights that grossly disobey
The rules of all knight-errantry?
For with a helpless maid they flee,
Whom all unwilling they have stolen,
To honor lost, with mischief swollen. »
The boy still thought, despite his speech,
That this was God; for so did teach
His mother Herzeloide, the queen-
To know him by his dazzling sheen.
He cried in all humility,
"Help, God, for all help comes from thee! "
And fell in louder suppliance yet
Le fils du roi Gahmuret.
7525
## p. 7526 (#332) ###########################################
7526
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
"I am not God," the prince replied,
"Though in his law I would abide.
Four knights we are, couldst thou but see
What things before thine eyen be. "
At this the boy his words did stay:
"Thou namest knights, but what are they?
And if thou hast not power divine,
Tell me, who gives, then, knighthood's sign? "
"King Arthur, lad, it is;
And goest thou to him, I wis
That if he gives thee knighthood's name
Thou'lt have in that no cause for shame.
Thou hast indeed a knightly mien. "
The chevalier had quickly seen
How God's good favor on him lay.
The legend telleth what I say,
And further doth confirm the boast
That he in beauty was the first
Of men since Adam's time: this praise
Was his from womankind always.
Then asked he in his innocence,
Whereon they laughed at his expense:
"Ay, good sir knight, what mayst thou be,
That hast these many rings I see
Upon thy body closely bound
And reaching downward to the ground? "
With that he touched the rings of steel
Which clothed the knight from head to heel,
And viewed his harness curiously.
be steady if the judgment is constantly whirling around like a
weathercock. Now the father sees in him "a lofty heart under
the jacket of a babe, with a strange but noble instinct of pride";
and only four days later he has changed into "a type of unutter-
ably deep baseness, of absolute platitude, and the quality of an
uncouth and dirty caterpillar which will not undergo a trans-
formation. " Then again: "An intelligence, a memory, a capacity,
which overpower, exciting astonishment, nay, fright. " And not
quite four weeks later: "A nothing, embellished with trivialities.
that will throw dust into the eyes of chatterboxes, but never be
anything but a quarter of a man, if peradventure he should ever
be anything at all. "
Unquestionably it was no easy task properly to educate this
boy, for there was a great deal of solid foundation for every one
of the father's contradictory judgments: the boy was like the
father, as "changeable as the sea. " Still, by conforming the
education, with untiring, loving patience, to the strongly pro-
nounced individuality of the child, a good pedagogue would have
been sure to achieve excellent results. The application of any
cut-and-dried system based upon preconceived notions was certain
## p. 7501 (#307) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7501
to work incalculable mischief. This the marquis failed to see,
and his system was in all its parts as adapted to the intellectual
and moral peculiarities of the boy as a blacksmith's hammer to
the repairing of a chronometer.
Many years later, the Baron von Gleichen wrote to the father:
"I told you often that you would make a great rascal of the
boy, while he was of a stuff to make a great man of him. He
has become both. " So it was; and that he became a rascal was
to a great extent due to the treatment he received at his father's
hands, while he became a great man in spite of it. Appeals
to reason, pride, honor, noble ambition, and above all affection,
always awakened a strong responsive echo in his bosom; the
father, however, whenever he was provoked,- and the high-
spirited unruly boy constantly provoked him,- had only stern-
ness, stinging sarcasm, sharp rebuke, and severe punishment for
him. Instead of educating him by methodically developing his
better qualities, he persists in trying to subdue him by fear,
although he cannot help confessing that the word fear is not to
be found in the boy's vocabulary. Contradicting himself, he
then again proudly asserts that while Honoré is afraid of no one
else, he fears him. That was a delusion. He knew that from
the father he had to expect nothing but punishment, and that
he tried to elude by hook and by crook; having, in spite of his
fearlessness, no more a liking for it than any other boy. The
father accused him, now and ever afterwards, of being by nature
a liar. It was he who had caused the germ of untruthfulness,
which is liable to be pretty strong with most very vivacious
children, to sprout so vigorously and to cast such deep roots, by
systematically watering it every day. From his early childhood
to the day of his death, Mirabeau was possessed of a secret
charm that in spite of everything, opened him the hearts of
almost all people with whom he came into close contact. Even
the father was by no means, as he pretended to be, wholly
proof against it. But as he was extraordinarily skillful in deceiv-
ing himself on this head, he also admirably succeeded in con-
cealing it from the son. The boy learned more and more to
look upon his father as his one natural enemy, whom it was a
matter of course to oppose by all available means, fair and foul.
He did his best to make himself a terror to his son, and he not
only deadened natural affection, but also undermined filial re-
spect. To reimpose the punishments remitted by the teacher, to
make everybody, from the father confessor down to the comrades,
## p. 7502 (#308) ###########################################
7502
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
a spy and informant, purposely and confessedly to exaggerate to
instructors and superiors his moral shortcomings,—that was a
policy to drive an angel to revolt. It would have been nothing
less than a miracle if it had not goaded into viciousness an un-
usually bright and hot-tempered boy, with a superabundance of
human nature in his every fibre. There is no surer way utterly
to ruin a full-blooded colt than madly to tear and jerk the bridle,
while brutally belaboring him with spur and whip.
Honoré was still a child, and the marquis already persuaded
himself that he was in the strict sense of the word a criminal.
He not only said so, but he also treated him as such, though he
admitted that in truth, thus far only boyish pranks could be laid
to his charge. As a last attempt to save him from perdition,
he was at the age of fifteen years intrusted to the Abbé Cho-
quard. The marquis himself applies to the institution the harsh
name "reformatory school. " It was not so bad as that. Among
Honoré's comrades were even some English boys "of family,"
who were not at all suspected of being candidates for the hang-
man's kind attentions. Not by putting him into this institution
did the marquis disgrace his son, but he did brand him by depriv
ing him of his name. As Pierre Buffière he was entered in the
lists. Loménie - facile princeps among Mirabeau's biographers
- makes light of this. He is even strongly inclined to suppose
that as Buffière was the name of a large estate forming part of
the prospective inheritance of his wife, the marquis was largely
induced by the desire to gratify his pride to impose this name
on the son. A strange way of distributing light and shadow in
painting this family tragedy! The marquis states in the plain-
est words that he intends to burn a mark upon the forehead of
the son.
Here again Mirabeau soon gained the vivid affection, not only
of his comrades, but also of his teachers. A touching demonstra-
tion of the former induced his father to refrain from carrying out
the intention of punishing him for the crime of accepting some
money presents from his mother, by taking him out of the school
and casting him adrift on the sea of life in a way which would
have burned an indelible mark on his, the father's, forehead.
In 1767 Pierre Buffière was put into the army. From this time
the feud between father and son rapidly sinks into darker and
darker depths. The son now comes in for a steadily and fast
increasing share of real guilt; but his guilt is always outrun by
his father's unreasonable, unjust, and despotic paternalism.
## p. 7503 (#309) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7503
Debts, contracted at the gambling-table and in all sorts of
other indulgences of a more or less reprehensible character, and
an indiscreet and impure love affair, caused his father to resume
the idea I just alluded to. He thought of sending the son to the
Dutch colonies, because their mephitic climate would render it
rather more than likely that he would never return from them.
Many a year later Mirabeau wrote from his terrible dungeon in
Vincennes to his father:-"You have confessed to me in one of
your letters, that from the time of my imprisonment on the Isle
of Rhé you have been on the point of sending me to the Dutch
colonies. The word has made a deep impression upon me, and
influenced in a high degree my after life.
What had I
done at the age of eighteen years, that you could conceive such
an idea, which makes me tremble even now, when I am buried
alive?
I had made love. " Why do Loménie and Stern
not quote this letter? It seems to me that it must be quoted, if
one is to judge fairly.
The project was abandoned in favor of a milder means, which
the ancien régime offered to persons of high standing and influ-
ence to rid themselves of people who were in their way, the
so-called lettres de cachet. The person whose name a complacent
minister entered upon the formulary was arrested in the name
of the king, and disappeared without trial or judgment in some
State prison, for as long a time as his persecutor chose to keep
him caged. By this handy means the marquis now began to
drag his son from prison to prison, in his "quality of natural
tribunal," as he said.
.
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Loménie lays considerable stress upon the fact that once or
twice Mirabeau seems to have been rather satisfied with thus
being taken care of, because he was thereby protected from his
creditors. The marquis however gains but little by that. As to
his son, he appears in regard to this particular instance in a
better light than before this fact was unearthed, but from the
other side a new shadow falls upon him. Where did this fanatic
of duty find the moral justification to prevent the creditors from
getting their due, by thus putting their debtor "under the hand
of the king," as the phrase ran? It certainly could not be de-
rived from any paragraph in his catechism. It is a most genuine.
piece of the code of the ancien régime.
For a number of years Mirabeau's debts constituted his prin-
cipal wrong.
He was
one of those men who would somehow
## p. 7504 (#310) ###########################################
HERMANN EDUARD VON HOLST
7504
manage to get into debt even on a desert island, and with Robin-
son's lump of gold for a pillow. But he would have had no
opportunity to run up in the briefest time an account of over
200,000 francs, if he had not closely followed the father's bad
example in choosing a wife. Miss Marignane was also an heiress,
but-though bearing no resemblance to the née Miss Vassan —
in almost every other respect pretty much the reverse of what
a sensible man must wish his wife to be. Mirabeau would cer-
tainly never have thought of offering her his hand, if she had
not been an heiress. His main reasons for wooing her seem,
however, to have been the longing to become more independent
of his father, and a freak of petty vanity: he was tickled by the
sensation it would cause, that in spite of his ugliness the much-
coveted prize was carried off by him. He did not even scruple
to force the hand of the girl by gravely compromising her. But
when she was his wife, he was only too gallant a knight. She
was one of those women whose whole existence is comprised
in sipping the cup of pleasure. She is, so to speak, all outside
without any inside at all. If you want to get at her intellectual
life, you must listen to her merry laugh about nothing at the
picnic parties, and the animated recitation of her part on the
amateur stage, on which she is quite a star; and to find her
heart, you must go to the milliner's and jeweler's shop. To them
and to the caterers Mirabeau carried the bulk of the money
he borrowed from the usurers. She had eaten up with her fri-
volities most of the money, for the squandering of which he had
to pine his youth away in prison. And that was not all she had
to answer for. She too had enjoyed all the advantages of good
example, and she profited as much by it as Mirabeau. Her
grandmother and her mother were separated from their husbands,
and very soon she gave Mirabeau the right to bid her leave his
house forever. He forgave her the adultery, of which she stood
convicted by her own confession; and he never told any one of
her shame, until he thought that by revealing his magnanimity
he could induce the courts to compel her to rejoin him.
She
thanked him for his generosity by telling him that he was a fool,
when he implored and commanded her to join him in his place
of detention, in order to stand between him and the temptation.
which threatened to close the gulf over him by pushing him
from guilt into crime. Aye, Mirabeau sinned much, but he was
infinitely more sinned against.
## p. 7505 (#311) ###########################################
7505
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
(1748-1776)
B
ÖLTY, one of the best of the German lyric poets of the
eighteenth century, was born in Mariensee, near Hannover.
The son of a country minister, he was excellently grounded
by his father in the classics and modern languages. Though inces-
santly, even as a boy, poring over his studies, and thereby weaken-
ing his constitution, he yet escaped being a bookworm; for, growing
up in the country, he early developed that passion for nature and
for solitude which colored all his poetry. In 1769 he went to Göt-
tingen to study theology. Here, falling in
with Bürger, Voss, the Stolbergs, and other
poets of kindred tastes, he became one of
the founders of the Göttingen "Hainbund. "
This league of young enthusiasts was aflame
for Klopstock, then considered the greatest
German poet, for patriotism and for friend-
ship, detested Wieland's sensual poems and
his Frenchified manner, read the classics
together, and wrote poetry in friendly em-
ulation. Hölty's constitutional melancholy
deepened when the girl whom he had cele-
brated under the name of "Laura" married.
His health was further undermined by the
shock of the death of his father, to whom
he was fondly attached. The year after, on September 1st, 1776, he
died of consumption, not quite twenty-eight years of age.
Hölty is an engaging figure. His poems reveal a lovable person-
ality. The strain of sentimentality that runs through all his work
is not affectation, as it was with so many of the younger poets of
that age in which Rousseau had made sentimentality fashionable, but
was the true expression of Hölty's nature. He chose by preference
themes in which the thought of death was in some shape present, and
he was most effective where this thought served as the shadow in
the bright picture of fleeting joys. A presentiment of his own early
death hovered constantly about him; but it neither marred his enjoy-
ment of the present, nor did it diminish his delight in the beauties of
nature, or prevent his outbursts of youthful frolic. His range was
XIII-470
HÖLTY
## p. 7506 (#312) ###########################################
7506
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
small; but within its limits his work was perfect, and many of his
songs have become the common property of the people. His wide
knowledge of ancient and modern poetry made him familiar with
many verse forms; his own poems are marked by harmony of form
and matter, and by great technical skill in the handling of subjects
both gay and grave. They show on the one hand a deep feeling for
nature and solitude, and again an innocent gayety in treating of the
simple social relations. He combined in a curious degree a capacity
for enjoyment of the passing moment with a profound melancholy
and longing for death. The influence of the English poets with whom
Hölty was well acquainted is easily traceable, and in his verse one
hears the mournful echo of Young's 'Night Thoughts. '
COUNTRY LIFE
APPY the man who has the town escaped!
To him the whistling trees, the murmuring brooks,
The shining pebbles, preach
Virtue's and wisdom's lore.
H₁
The whispering grove a holy temple is
To him, where God draws nigher to his soul;
Each verdant sod a shrine,
Whereby he kneels to Heaven.
The nightingale on him sings slumber down;
The nightingale rewakes him, fluting sweet,
When shines the lovely red
Of morning through the trees.
Then he admires thee in the plain, O God!
In the ascending pomp of dawning day,-
Thee in thy glorious sun,
The worm, the budding branch;
Where coolness gushes, in the waving grass
Or o'er the flowers streams the fountain, rests:
Inhales the breath of prime,
The gentle airs of eve.
His straw-decked thatch, where doves bask in the sun,
And play and hop, invites to sweeter rest
Than golden halls of state
Or beds of down afford.
## p. 7507 (#313) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
To him the plumy people sporting chirp,
Chatter, and whistle, on his basket perch,
And from his quiet hand
Pick crumbs, or peas, or grains.
Oft wanders he alone, and thinks on death;
And in the village church-yard by the graves
Sits, and beholds the cross,
Death's waving garland there,
The stone beneath the elders, where a text
Of Scripture teaches joyfully to die,
And with his scythe stands Death,
An angel too with palms.
Happy the man who thus hath 'scaped the town:
Him did an angel bless when he was born,
The cradle of the boy
With flowers celestial strewed.
SPRING SONG
HE snow melts fast,
May comes at last,
Now shoots each spray
THE
Forth blossoms gay,
The warbling bird
Around is heard.
From Fraser's Magazine.
Come, twine a wreath,
And on the heath
The dance prepare
Ye maidens fair!
Come, twine a wreath,
Dance on the heath!
Who can foretell
The tolling bell,
When we with May
No more shall play?
Canst thou foretell
The coming knell?
7507
## p. 7508 (#314) ###########################################
7508
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
Rejoice, rejoice!
To speak his voice
Who gave us birth
For joy on earth.
God gives us time,--
Enjoy its prime.
Translation of A. Baskerville.
HARVEST SONG
ICKLES Sound;
On the ground
Fast the ripe ears fall;
Every maiden's bonnet
Has blue blossoms on it:
Joy is over all.
ST
Sickles ring,
Maidens sing
To the sickle's sound;
Till the moon is beaming,
And the stubble gleaming,
Harvest songs go round.
All are springing,
All are singing,
Every lisping thing.
Man and master meet,
From one dish they eat;
Each is now a king.
Hans and Michael
Whet the sickle,
Piping merrily.
Now they mow; each maiden
Soon with sheaves is laden,
Busy as a bee.
Now the blisses,
And the kisses!
Now the wit doth flow
Till the beer is out;
Then, with song and shout,
Home they go, yo ho!
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7509 (#315) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
WINTER SONG
S⁹
UMMER joys are o’er;
Flowerets bloom no more;
Wintry winds are sweeping:
Through the snow-drifts peeping,
Cheerful evergreen
Rarely now is seen.
Now no plumèd throng
Charms the woods with song;
Ice-bound trees are glittering;
Merry snow-birds, twittering,
Fondly strive to cheer
Scenes so cold and drear.
Winter, still I see
Many charms in thee;
Love thy chilly greeting,
Snow-storms fiercely beating,
And the dear delights
Of the long, long nights.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
DEATH OF THE NIGHTINGALE
SHE
HE is no more, who bade the May month hail;
Alas! no more!
The songstress who enlivened all the vale,—
Her songs are o'er;
She whose sweet tones, in golden evening hours,
Rang through my breast,
When, by the brook that murmured 'mong the flowers,
I lay at rest.
How richly gurgled from her deep full throat
The silvery lay,
Till in her caves sweet Echo caught the note,
Far, far away!
7509
Then was the hour when village pipe and song
Sent up their sound,
And dancing maidens lightly tripped along
The moonlit ground.
## p. 7510 (#316) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7510
A youth lay listening on the green hillside,
Far down the grove,
While on his rapt face hung a youthful bride
In speechless love.
Their hands were locked oft as thy silvery strain
Rang through the vale;
They heeded not the merry dancing train,
Sweet nightingale!
They listened thee till village bells from far
Chimed on the ear,
And like a golden fleece, the evening star
Beamed bright and clear.
Then, in the cool and fanning breeze of May,
Homeward they stole,
Full of sweet thoughts, breathed by thy tender lay
Through the deep soul.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
THE OLD FARMER'S ADVICE TO HIS SON
Y SON, be honest truth thy guide,
And to thy dying day
Turn not a finger's breadth aside
From God's appointed way.
Then shall thy pilgrim pathway lie
Through meadows sunny-green;
Then shalt thou look on death with eye
Unshrinking and serene:
MY
Then shall the pathway to thy tomb
By frequent feet be trod,
And summer flowers of sweet perfume
Spring from the moistened sod;
For oft shall children's children, led
By fond affection's care,
At evening seek thy grave, and shed
The tear of sorrow there.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7511 (#317) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
Α
CALL TO JOY
WAY with pouting and with pining,
So long as youth and springtime bloom!
Why, when life's morning sun is shining,
Why should the brow be clothed in gloom?
On every road the Pleasures greet us,
As through life's pilgrimage we roam;
With wreaths of flowers they come to meet us.
And lead us onward to our home.
The rivulet purls and plays as lightly
As when it danced to Eden's breeze;
The lovely moon still beams as brightly
As when she shone through Adam's trees.
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
THE DREAM-IMAGE
HERE art thou, image guarding me,
WHE There in the garden dreaming,
That bound my hair with rosemary,
Which round my couch was teeming?
Where art thou, image guarding me,
And in my spirit peering,
While my warm cheek all tenderly
Thou prest with touch endearing?
I seek for thee, with sorrow moved,
By linden-shaded river,
Or in the town, idea beloved,
And find thee nowhere, never.
I wander 'neath the sun's sharp heat,
If raining or if snowing,
And look into each face I meet
Along my pathway going.
7511
Thus am I doomed still to and fro
With sighs and tears to wander,
And Sundays at the church doors view
The maidens here and yonder.
Toward every window do I look,
Where but a veil doth hover,
I
I
1
## p. 7512 (#318) ###########################################
7512
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
And in no house or street or nook
Can I my love discover.
Come back, sweet image of the night,
With thy angelic bearing,
Clad in the shepherd garments light
Which marked thy first appearing;
And with thee bring the swan-white hand
Which stole my heart completely,
The purple-scarlet bosom-band,
The nosegay scented sweetly;
The pair of great and glad blue eyes,
From whence looked out an angel;
The forehead, in such kindly guise,
Amenity's evangel;
The mouth, love's paradise abode;
The dimples laughing clearest,
Where Heaven's bright portal open stood,-
Bring all with thee, my dearest!
HOMAGE
O
Pay I till my death,
YE beauties,
All my duties
Song-strains while upraising;
Ever till my death
All your virtues praising.
Ye, O good ones,
Joy-imbued ones,
Give life its sweet guise,
Man an angel making,
And a paradise
Of a world law-breaking.
Who the blisses
Of true kisses
Never tasted hath,
Wanders like one fleeing
O'er life's beaten path,-
Is an unborn being.
## p. 7513 (#319) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7513
Who the blisses
Of true kisses
Fully tasted hath,
Glows with Heaven's brightness,
And along his path
Rose-groves spring in lightness.
TO A VIOLET
AFTER ZAPPI
VIOLET, hide within thy calyx blue
O
The tears of anguish till my sweetheart true
This spring shall visit. If she thee shall take
From here, adornment for her breast to make,
Cling close then to her heart, and tell her true
That these pearl drops within thy calyx blue
From soul of truest youth on earth were brought,
Who wept his soul away, and then death sought.
ELEGY AT THE GRAVE OF MY FATHER
LEST are they who slumber in the Lord;
Β΄
Thou, too, O my father, thou art blest:
Angels came to crown thee; at their word,
Thou hast gone to share the heavenly rest.
Roaming through the boundless, starry sky,
What is now to thee this earthly clod?
At a glance ten thousand suns sweep by,
While thou gazest on the face of God.
In thy sight the eternal record lies;
Thou dost drink from life's immortal wells;
Midnight's mazy mist before thee flies,
And in heavenly day thy spirit dwells.
Yet beneath thy dazzling victor's crown,
Thou dost send a father's look to me;
At Jehovah's throne thou fallest down,
And Jehovah, hearing, answereth thee.
Father, oh when life's last drops are wasting,-
Those dear drops which God's own urn hath given,-
--
## p. 7514 (#320) ###########################################
LUDWIG HEINRICH CHRISTOPH HÖLTY
7514
When my soul the pangs of death is tasting,
To my dying bed come down from heaven!
Let thy cooling palm wave freshly o'er me,
Sinking to the dark and silent tomb;
Let the awful vales be bright before me,
Where the flowers of resurrection bloom.
Then with thine my soul shall soar through heaven,
With the same unfading glory blest;
For a home one star to us be given,-
In the Father's bosom we shall rest.
Then bloom on, gay tufts of scented roses;
O'er his grave your sweetest fragrance shed!
And while here his sacred dust reposes,
Silence reign around his lowly bed!
Translation of C. T. Brooks.
## p. 7515 (#321) ###########################################
7515
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
BY GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER
HE modern poets, in their search for epic material, have laid
under tribute the history of the world and the mythologies
of all races. Yet the limited number of really epic subjects
thus discovered testifies either to the weakness of literary invention
or to the narrow bounds of heroic possibilities. A few old themes,
already used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have served
again for most of the ambitious narrative compositions of the nine-
teenth. Tennyson, Browning, William Morris, and Swinburne, in Eng-
lish, and Richard Wagner in German, have been the chief narrative
poets of our time, and their work has very largely been to infuse
modern poetical sentiment and modern philosophy into mediæval
stories. Except Browning, who is a son of the Renaissance, these
poets have all found a great part of their epic material in the early
traditions of the Celtic and Germanic races.
The most heroic of these traditions celebrate the gods and heroes
of the ancient Northern religion-Wodin, Thor, Freya, Balder, Loki,
Siegfried, Brunhild,- the terrible and beautiful figures which have
grown out of the Edda, through the Nibelungen-Lied, into Wagner's
stupendous tetralogy. The most romantic are the tales of Arthur
and the Round Table; British in origin, and appropriate in charac-
ter to the soft Celtic race and to the gentle modern poet who has
popularized them again in 'The Idylls of the King. ' The most spir-
itual are the stories of Perceval and the search for a sacred emblem,
which are known collectively as the Legend of the Holy Grail.
The best known of the many modern embodiments of this legend
are Tennyson's 'Holy Grail' and the text of Wagner's musical drama
'Parsifal. ' In the Middle Ages it found wider and more varied ex-
pression, being the substance of narratives in prose as well as verse,
and in no less than six languages,- French, Welsh, English, Ger-
man, Icelandic, and Flemish. During the latter half of the twelfth
century and the first quarter of the thirteenth, eight or ten different
authors wrote the romances which, for lack of the more ancient
works upon which they were based, we must call the original Grail
cycle. The popularity of the legend was wide-spread. Its influence
was profound, and showed itself especially in spiritualizing the Ar-
thurian narratives, which had previously been of a worldly and even
•
## p. 7516 (#322) ###########################################
7516
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
sensual character. Caxton no sooner set up his press in England
than he wrote: "Many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm
came and demanded many and often times wherefore I have not
made and emprynted the noble history of the San Graal;" and in
1485 he did "emprynt" Malory's 'Morte Darthur,' which is saturated
with the mysticism of the Grail idea.
In a mass of poetical work extending over many years, in vari-
ous lands, and produced by informing old borrowed stories with new
imaginative meaning, it is not easy to determine the distinguishing
features. There are, however, two principal lines of narration which
lie prominent to the view amid all the confusion of the Grail stories,
and to which the rest is subordinate. These are the tale of Perceval,
and the account of a miracle-working object connected with Christ's
passion. The former is in substance as follows:-
A banished queen, widow of a king slain in combat, lives in the
wild-wood with her little son. To guard him from the dangers of
court life, she brings him up in ignorance of his royal origin and of
all warlike arts. His childhood is spent in companionship with the
birds of the forest. He loves them, and understands their language.
One day he encounters several knights in a green glade, and is fas-
cinated by the splendor of their arms and what they tell of their
wandering life. Following their example, he sets forth to conquer
the world, to win the love of women and perform deeds of valor.
Ignorance, foolhardiness, and awkwardness are but the outward ap-
pearance of his true innocence, courage, simplicity, and chastity.
After many adventures he reaches an enchanted castle, upon which
some dreadful woe seems to have fallen. A wounded man, called
the "Fisher King," lies there speechless and supplicating relief; and
at regular intervals there are borne before this sufferer a bleeding
spear and a sacred vessel, at sight of which the King and his attend-
ant knights look expectantly at the simple Perceval. He has been
taught, however, never to ask questions, and so leaves the castle
without inquiring concerning its mysteries. Had he but asked, the
Fisher King would have been healed; for, as all the inmates of the
castle knew, this cannot be until a pure man makes question of the
holy relics. Perceval goes forth unto many more adventures, but is
ever haunted by pity for the King and regret of his own forbear-
ance. At length he learns from a hermit that the vessel was the
Grail, and devotes himself henceforth to searching for the castle, in
hopes of repairing his fault. After many years he finds it again, but
now the spell is not so easily unbound. He must first weld together
the parts of a broken sword. When this is done, the Fisher King
recovers, and hails Perceval as his deliverer and the chief defender of
the Grail. Upon the Fisher King's death, Perceval rules in his stead.
## p. 7517 (#323) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7517
The history of the Grail is given in most romances substantially
as follows: In a bowl which had served at the Last Supper, Joseph
of Arimathea caught some of the blood which flowed from Christ's
wounds as he hung upon the cross. Being miraculously conveyed to
England to escape persecution, he carried the precious vessel with
him. Throughout his life it furnished him with food and drink, and
with spiritual sustenance as well; and at his death he charged his
successor to guard it faithfully. It was handed down from generation
to generation, the Fisher King being a descendant of Joseph. This
vessel is the Grail. According to other versions, the Grail chooses
its own knights. It possesses miraculous properties, and at times is
instinct with divine life. To discover its abiding-place and become
one of its guardians is the ambition of good and valiant men, but
only the pure in heart may find it.
Any student of folk-lore will instantly perceive in the Perceval
narration an ancient heathen core, related to the tales of Siegfried in
early Germanic literature and more closely still to Celtic mythology.
Some investigators have tried to prove that the idea of a sacred
spear and vessel, endowed with wonder-working powers and guarded
by an order of knights, is also of Celtic and heathen origin. This
is a much-vexed question, and one of the most difficult in the whole
field of literary history. The advocates of this theory have at times
of late seemed tantalizingly near to untangling the mysterious knot,
and they may do it yet. But in the present state of knowledge it
still is safer to say that the account of a sacred spear and bowl,
as given in the Grail romances, appears to be mainly of Christian
legendary origin, and to be based upon the lives of saints and cer-
tain apocryphal books of the New Testament, principally the Gospel
of Nicodemus. It is probable that the Perceval story was familiar,
in one or more of its many different forms, to the people of western
Britain, before their conversion to Christianity. When the French
romancers of the twelfth century began to develop the Grail idea,-
the idea of a sacramental symbol, dwelling among men but discov-
erable only by the brave and pure,-they wove into their narrations
all the tales of chivalry, all the mysterious adventures, all the recon-
dite folk-lore, they remembered or could find in books. Points of
resemblance between Perceval's breaking the spell at the Fisher
King's castle and the religious legend of a quest for the Grail must
have caught the attention of these poets, half inventors, half com-
pilers, and been eagerly accepted. Chrestien de Troyes, who was
possibly the first writer from whom a Grail romance has come down
to us, was evidently intending to fuse these two elements in the
latter part of his poem, but evidently also hesitating over so bold
and difficult a task. He began his work about 1189, but died before
## p. 7518 (#324) ###########################################
7518
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
finishing it or even reaching the point where the blending was to
begin in earnest.
Mediæval poets felt no scruple about mingling Biblical stories and
the lives of saints with the mythologies of Greece and Rome, or of
Scandinavia, Germany, and Britain. They obeyed also a tendency
to materialize religion; a tendency almost universal, which has had
much to do with the attaching of undue importance to church rites
and sacraments. More controversy and bloodshed have been occas-
ioned by differences of opinion about baptism and the eucharist than
by divergence of conduct in following the moral law of Christianity.
This natural inclination to attribute deep spiritual significance to
physical objects and actions to symbolize, in a word was what
caused the Grail idea to develop so rapidly and gave it such a grasp
upon the imagination of men. And the Christian legendary element
in the Grail romances, while of later origin than the heathen ele-
ment, is the central and unifying principle, and has drawn to itself
and sublimated all those weird and strangely beautiful pagan stories
of which Perceval is the hero, and which awaken in our hearts a
faint reminiscence of the mysterious childhood of our race.
There have been many widely divergent opinions concerning the
meaning and origin of the word Grail,-or Graal, or Gréal, or Gral,
as it is variously spelt. An early and most natural conjecture was
that San Gréal was a mistaken way of writing sang réal, the royal
blood. But there is now scarcely any doubt that the early form
Graal was derived from the Low Latin gradale, and this in turn
from cratella, a bowl.
-
As to the order in which the members of the early cycle were
composed, there is much difference of opinion. Three, however, seem
older than the others, at least in the material they employ. They
are Chrestien's unfinished poem, the Conte du Graal,' in Old French;
the Welsh mabinogi, or prose romance, 'Peredur ab Evrawc,' prob-
ably written later than the former, though based not upon it but
upon very ancient matter, for it is simpler and shorter and makes
no mention of the Grail, being chiefly a life of Perceval (Peredur);
and the Early English metrical romance, Sir Perceval of Galles,' in
which no talismanic or miracle-working objects are mentioned at all.
These three compositions may have derived their Perceval elements
from a common source, opened to the medieval world during the
reign of Henry II. by some Norman-English compiler interested in
Welsh poetry.
Chrestien's poem was taken up by several other
French writers after his death. An introduction was fitted to it, in
which a violent attempt was made to reconcile the Christian and
heathen elements. Many thousands of lines were also added, by vari-
ous hands, in the early years of the thirteenth century. Meanwhile,
## p. 7519 (#325) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7519
probably before the end of the twelfth century, Robert de Borron
had written, in Old French verse,
verse, a trilogy, Joseph,' 'Merlin,'
'Perceval,' of which the 'Joseph' and part of the Merlin' have
been preserved. It was he especially who gave to all the material a
Christian character. There are also later prose adaptations of his
work. Great difficulty is occasioned by our ignorance of where to
place the French prose romance, the 'Queste del Saint Graal,' gener-
ally attributed to Walter Map, and another, the Grand Saint Graal,'
often accredited to Borron. In these the Christian symbolizing tend-
ency is strong, and the story of Perceval is buried under many
complicated tales of knight-errantry. They were, however, probably
written before 1204.
There are several other members of the early cycle of Grail
romances, but only one is of great importance, - the 'Parzival of
Wolfram von Eschenbach. He was a South-German poet, who lived
at least as early as 1170 and as late as 1220. The Parzival' is his
magnum opus. It is also the finest narrative poem of which the
authorship is known, between the era of classical antiquity and the
'Divine Comedy' of Dante. Furthermore, it is the most complete,
and virtually the final, mediæval handling of the two great themes
which are involved in the Legend of the Holy Grail, and which Wolf-
ram more thoroughly blends than any other poet. He accomplishes
this by reinstating and beautifying the Perceval element, and elim-
inating most of the confused monkish legendary matter concerning
the transference of the Grail from Palestine to Western Europe. He
professes to base his romance upon Chrestien's 'Conte du Graal' and
upon a work by "Kiot the Provençal," now lost without other trace
than this assertion. Material about Perceval was evidently more plen-
tiful and clearer than information as to the Grail, for Wolfram does
not know it as a bowl, but as a stone.
In this noble work there lives a spirit of reverence and moral
earnestness in marked contrast with the aimless and often frivolous
character of the other romances. The best qualities of the German.
mind-its hospitality to tender sentiment, its love of truth, its indi-
viduality in religion- are here abundantly present. The Grail is not
regarded merely as a talisman, but as a visible manifestation of the
ever-living Christ,
"a light to guide, a rod
To check the erring, and reprove,"
a reminder of spiritual needs and privileges. But what will keep
the 'Parzival' ever fresh and attractive is the breath of morning
blowing through it, as from the greenwood where the world was
young, where man was innocent and held converse with the sweet
birds, where moral evil came not, and moral good was taught by a
## p. 7520 (#326) ###########################################
7520
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
mother's lips. The celebrated passage in which Wolfram relates the
boyhood of Perceval is by far the choicest portion of his long poem.
His selection and development of this theme have guaranteed to him,
more surely than to the other authors of early Grail romances, a sub-
stantial and enduring fame.
During the next two hundred and fifty years it was the mission
of the Legend of the Holy Grail to be the spiritualizing tributary of
a broader stream of literature, the bright full current of Arthurian
romance. To this brimming river it gave purity and light. It gave
direction as well; and for time at least, the generations who sailed
upon the bosom of these waters moved as honor and true religion
might approve. Then the Renaissance, which was springtime to
many fields of thought, fell like a polar night on these shining floods
of fair mediæval story. The Legend of the Holy Grail, which had
leaped down in tiny rivulets from the high antiquity of so many
races, and had cleansed and beautified the literatures of so many
tongues, and served so long as the highway of communication be-
tween widely separated nations,- this purifying and unifying stream
lay frozen throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth cen-
turies. Suddenly, in our own time, it has been irradiated and warmed
to life again and to the old genial motion. Modern English and Ger-
man poets in reviving the Legend of the Holy Grail have been
impelled by the same moral earnestness as Wolfram von Eschenbach,
and by the same desire to show the way to seekers after the spirit-
ual life.
GeoM Leon Harper
THE BOY PERCEVAL
From the Parzival' of Wolfram von Eschenbach. Translation of George
McLean Harper
WHE
HEN doubt a human conscience gnaws,
Peace from that breast her light withdraws.
Beauty and ugliness we find
Even in the bravest heart combined,
If taint be in him, great or slight,
As in the magpie black and white.
Yet ofttimes may he savèd be,
For both share in his destiny —
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THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7521
XIII-471
High heaven and the abyss of hell.
But when the man is infidel,
Of midnight blackness is his soul,
His course is towards yon pitchy hole;
While he of steady mind pursues
The shining road the righteous choose.
A knight-at-arms am I by birth;
In me sleep warlike strength and worth;
She who might love me for my song
Would show a judgment sadly wrong.
For if I seek a lady's grace,
And may not go before her face
With honors won by shield and sword,
I will not woo her, by my word!
No other game can have my praise
When Love's the stake and Knighthood plays.
I find the usage much to blame
Which makes no difference in the name
Of women false and women true.
Clear-voiced are all, but not a few
Quickly to evil courses run,
While others every folly shun.
So goes the world; but still 'tis shame
The bad ones share that honored name.
Loyal and fair is womanhood,
When once the name is understood.
Many there are who cannot see
Anything good in poverty.
But he who bears its trials well
May save his faithful soul from hell!
These trials once a woman bore
And gained thereby of grace a store.
Not many in their youth resign.
Riches in life for wealth divine.
I know not one in all the earth,
Whate'er the sex or age or birth;
For mortals all in this agree.
But Herzeloide the rich ladie
From her three lands afar did go-
She bore such heavy weight of woe.
In her was no unfaithfulness,
As every witness did confess.
All dark to her was now the sun;
The world's delights she fain would shun.
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7522
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Alike to her were night and day,
For sorrow followed her alway.
Now went the mourning lady good
Forth from her realm into a wood
In Soltanè the wilderness;
Not for flowers, as you might guess;
Her heart with sorrow was so full
She had no mind sweet flowers to pull,
Red though they were and bright, or pale.
She brought with her to that safe vale
Great Gahmuret's her lord's young child.
Her servants, with them there exiled,
Tilled the scant glebe with hoe and plow.
To run with them she'd oft allow
Her son. And e'er his mind awoke
She summoned all this vassal folk,
And on them singly, woman and man,
She laid this strange and solemn ban:
Never of knights to utter word,—
"For if of them my darling heard,
And knightly life and knightly fare,
"Twould be a grief to me, and care.
Now guard your speech and hark to me,
And tell him naught of chivalrie. "
With troubled mien they all withdrew;
And so concealed, the young boy grew
Soltanè's greenwood far within.
No royal sports he might begin
Save one,- to draw the bow
And bring the birds above him low
With arrows cut by his own hand,
All in that forest land.
But when one day a singing bird
He shot, and now no longer heard
Its thrilling note, he wept aloud,
This boy so innocent yet proud,
And beat his breast and tore his hair,
This boy so wild yet wondrous fair.
At the spring in the glade
He every day his toilet made.
Free had he been from sorrow
Till now, when he must borrow
Sweet pain from birds.
1
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THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7523
Into his heart their music pressed
And swelled it with a strange unrest.
Straight to the queen he then did run;
She said, "Who hurt thee, pretty son? "
But naught could he in answer say—
'Tis so with children in our day.
Long mused the queen what this might be,
Till once beneath a greenwood tree
She saw him gazing and sighing still,
Then knew 'twas a bird's song did fill
Her darling's breast with yearning pain
And haunting mystery.
Queen Herzeloide's anger burned
Against the birds, she knew not why;
Her serving-folk she on them turned
And bade to quench their hated cry,
And chase and beat and kill
In every brake, on every hill.
Few were the birds that flew away
And saved their lives in that fierce fray;
Yet some escaped to live and sing
Joyous, and make the forest ring.
Unto the queen then spoke the boy,
"Why do you rob them of their joy? "
Such intercession then he made,
His mother kissed him while she said,
"Why should I break God's law, and rob
The birds of innocent delight? "
Then to his mother spoke the boy,
"O mother, what is God? »
"My son, in solemn truth I say
He is far brighter than the day,
Though once his countenance did change
Into the face of man.
O son of mine, give wisely heed,
And call on him in time of need,
Whose faithfulness has never failed
Since first the world began.
And one there is, the lord of hell,
Black and unfaithful, as I tell:
Bear thou towards him a courage stout,
And wander not in paths of doubt. "
His mother taught him to discern
Darkness and light; he quick did learn.
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THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
7524
The lesson done, away he'd spring
To practice with the dart and sling.
Full many an antlered stag he shot
And home to his lady mother brought;
Through snow or floods, it was the same,
Still harried he the game.
Now hear the tale of wonder:
When he had brought a great stag low,
Burden a mule might stagger under,
He'd shoulder it and homeward go!
Now it fell out upon a day
He wandered down a long wood-way,
And plucked a leaf and whistled shrill,
Near by a road that crossed a hill.
And thence he heard sharp hoof-strokes ring,
And quick his javelin did swing;
Then cried: "Now what is this I hear?
What if the Devil now appear,
With anger hot, and grim?
But certain I will not flee him!
Such fearful things my mother told —
I ween her heart is none too bold. "
All ready thus for strife he stood,
When lo! there galloped through the wood
Three riders, shining in the light,
From head to foot in armor dight.
The boy all innocently thought
Each one a god, as he was taught.
No longer upright then stood he,
But in the path he bent his knee.
Aloud he called, and clear and brave,
"Save, God, for thou alone canst save! "
The foremost rider spoke in wrath
Because the boy lay in the path:
"This clumsy Welsh boy
Hinders our rapid course. "
A name we Bavarians wear
Must the Welsh also bear:
They are clumsier even than we,
But good fighters too, you'll agree.
A graceful man within the round
Of these two lands is rarely found.
That moment came a knight
In battle-gear bedight.
## p. 7525 (#331) ###########################################
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
Galloping hard and grim
Over the mountain's rim.
The rest had ridden on before,
Pursuing two false knights, who bore
A lady from his land.
That touched him near at hand;
The maid he pitied sore,
Who sadly rode before.
After his men he held his course,
Upon a fine Castilian horse.
His shield bore marks of many a lance;
His name - Karnacharnanz,
Le comte Ulterlec.
Quoth he, "Who dares to block our way? »
And forth he strode to see the youth,
Who thought him now a god in sooth,
For that he was a shining one:
His dewy armor caught the sun,
And with small golden bells were hung
The stirrup straps, that blithely swung
Before his greaved thighs
And from his feet likewise.
Bells on his right arm tinkled soft
Did he but raise his hand aloft.
Bright gleamed that arm from many a stroke,
Warded since first to fame he woke.
Thus rode the princely knight,
In wondrous armor dight.
That flower of manly grace and joy,
Karnacharnanz, now asked the boy:
"My lad, hast seen pass by this way
Two knights that grossly disobey
The rules of all knight-errantry?
For with a helpless maid they flee,
Whom all unwilling they have stolen,
To honor lost, with mischief swollen. »
The boy still thought, despite his speech,
That this was God; for so did teach
His mother Herzeloide, the queen-
To know him by his dazzling sheen.
He cried in all humility,
"Help, God, for all help comes from thee! "
And fell in louder suppliance yet
Le fils du roi Gahmuret.
7525
## p. 7526 (#332) ###########################################
7526
THE LEGEND OF THE HOLY GRAIL
"I am not God," the prince replied,
"Though in his law I would abide.
Four knights we are, couldst thou but see
What things before thine eyen be. "
At this the boy his words did stay:
"Thou namest knights, but what are they?
And if thou hast not power divine,
Tell me, who gives, then, knighthood's sign? "
"King Arthur, lad, it is;
And goest thou to him, I wis
That if he gives thee knighthood's name
Thou'lt have in that no cause for shame.
Thou hast indeed a knightly mien. "
The chevalier had quickly seen
How God's good favor on him lay.
The legend telleth what I say,
And further doth confirm the boast
That he in beauty was the first
Of men since Adam's time: this praise
Was his from womankind always.
Then asked he in his innocence,
Whereon they laughed at his expense:
"Ay, good sir knight, what mayst thou be,
That hast these many rings I see
Upon thy body closely bound
And reaching downward to the ground? "
With that he touched the rings of steel
Which clothed the knight from head to heel,
And viewed his harness curiously.
