high-minded heroines and their lovers, was somewhat peculiar. Their delectations were in tales of warlike exploits, and in discourse of hunting and hawking. But when these topics were exhausted, they found in metaphysical discussions of nice questions concerning the passion of love, an endless source of interesting disquisition. The idea and definition of a true and pure passion, illustrated by an hundred imaginary cases devised on purpose, were managed in the same manner in which the schoolmen of the day agitated their points of metaphysical theology. The Scotists and the Thomists, whose useless and nonsensical debates cumbered the world with so many volumes of absurd disquisition upon the most extravagant points of polemical divinity, saw their theological labours rivalled in the courts of love, where the most abstracted reasoning was employed in discussing subtle questions upon the exaggerated hopes, fears, doubts, and suspicions of lovers, the circumstances of whose supposed cases were often ridiculous, sometimes criminal, sometimes licentious, and almost always puerile and extravagant. It is sufficient to state, that the discussions in the Courts of Love regarded such important and interesting questions, as, Whether his love be most meritorious who has formed his passion entirely on hearing, or his who has actually seen his mistress ? with others of a tendency equally edifying.

Extremes of every kind border on each other; and as the devotion of the knights of Chivalry degenerated into superstition, the Platonic refinements and subtleties of amorous passion which they ·

It

professed, were sometimes compatible with very coarse and gross debauchery. We have seen that they derived from the Gothic tribes that high and reverential devotion to the female sex, which forms the strongest tint in the manners of Chivalry. But with the simplicity of those ancient times they lost their innocence; and woman, though still worshipped with enthusiasm as in the German forests, did not continue to be (in all cases at least) the same pure object of regard. The marriage-tie ceased to be respected; and, as the youthful knights had seldom the means or inclination to encumber themselves with wives and families, their lady-love was often chosen among the married ladies of the court. is true, that such a connexion was supposed to be consistent with all respect and honour, and was regarded by the world, and sometimes by the husband, as a high strain of Platonic sentiment, through which the character of its object in no respect suffered. But nature vindicated herself for the violence offered to her; and while the metaphysical students and pleaders in the Courts of Love professed to aspire but to the lip or hand of their ladies, and to make a merit of renouncing all farther intrusion on their bounties, they privately indulged themselves in amours which had very little either of delicacy or sentiment. In the romance of the Petit Jehan de Saintré, that self-same Lady des Belles Cousines, who lectures so learnedly upon the seven mortal sins, not only confers on her deserving lover "le don d'amoureux merci," but enters into a very unworthy and disgraceful intrigue with a stout broad-shouldered abbot, into which no sentiment

whatever can be supposed to enter.

The romance

of Tirante the White,' praised by Cervantes as a faithful picture of the knights and ladies of his age, seems to have been written in an actual brothel, and contrasted with others, may lead us to suspect that their purity is that of romance, their profligacy that of reality. This license was greatly increased by the Crusades, from which the survivors of these wild expeditions brought back the corrupted morals of the East, to avenge the injuries they had inflicted on its inhabitants. Joinville has informed us of the complaints which Saint Louis made to him in confidence of the debaucheries practised in his own royal tent, by his attendants, in this holy expedition. And the ignominious punishment to which he subjected a knight, detected in such excesses, shows what severe remedies he judged necessary to stem the increase of libertinism.

Indeed, the gross license which was practised during the middle ages, may be well estimated by the vulgar and obscene language that was currently used in tales and fictions addressed to the young and noble of both sexes. In the romance of the Round Table, as Ascham sternly states, little was to be learned but examples of homicide and adultery, although he had himself seen it admitted to the antechamber of princes, when it was held a crime but to be possessed of the Word of God. In the romance of Amadis de Gaul, and many others, the heroines, without censure or imputation, confer

1[" Tirante was first published in the Catalonian dialect at Valencia in 1480. It was thence transformed into the Castilian language, and published at Valladolid in 1511.—DUNLOP."],

on their lovers the rights of a husband before the ceremony of the church gave them a title to the name. These are serious narrations, in which decorum, at least, is rarely violated. But the comic tales are of a far more indelicate cast.

The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer contain many narratives, of which, not only the diction, but the whole turn of the narrative, is extremely gross. Yet it does not seem to have occurred to the author, a man of rank and fashion, that they were improper to be recited, either in the presence of the Prioress and her votaries, or in that of the noble Knight who -" of his port was meek as is a maid, And never yet no villany he said."

And he makes but a little apology for including the disasters of the Millar of Trompington, or of Absalom the Gentle Clerk, in the same series of narrations with the Knight's Tale. Many of Bandello's most profligate novels are expressly dedicated to females of rank and consideration. And, to conclude, the Fabliaux, published by Barbazan and Le Grand, are frequently as revolting, from their naked grossness, as interesting from the lively pictures which they present of life and manners. Yet these were the chosen literary pastimes of the fair and the gay, during the times of Chivalry, and listened to, we cannot but suppose, with an interest considerably superior to that exhibited by the yawning audience who heard the theses of the Courts of Love attacked and supported in logical form, and with metaphysical subtlety.

Should the manners of the times appear inconsistent in these respects which we have noticed, we

must remember that we are ourselves variable and inconsistent animals, and that, perhaps, the surest mode of introducing and encouraging any particular vice, is to rank the corresponding virtue at a pitch unnatural in itself, and beyond the ordinary attainment of humanity. The vows of celibacy introduced profligacy among the Catholic clergy, as the high-flown and overstrained Platonism of the professors of Chivalry favoured the increase of license and debauchery.

After the love of God and of his lady, the preux chevalier was to be guided by that of glory and renown. He was bound by his vow to seek out adventures of risk and peril, and never to abstain from the quest which he might undertake, for any unexpected odds of opposition which he might encounter. It was not indeed the sober and regulated exercise of valour, but its fanaticism, which the genius of Chivalry demanded of its followers. Enterprises the most extravagant in conception, the most difficult in execution, the most useless when achieved, were those by which an adventurous knight chose to distinguish himself. There were solemn occasions also, on which these displays of chivalrous enthusiasm were specially expected and called for. It is only sufficient to name the tournaments, single combats, and solemn banquets, at which vows of chivalry were usually formed and proclaimed.

The tournaments were uniformly performed and frequented by the choicest and noblest youth in Europe, until the fatal accident of Henry II., after which they fell gradually into disuse. It was in