Читать книгу: «The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2», страница 7

MEMORY'S PICTURES

By Charles Carleton Coffin, 1846

 
It is a pleasure to throw back the door,
And view the relics of departed hours;
To brush the cobwebs from the ancient lore,
And turn again the book of withered flowers.
Within the dusty chambers of the past,
Old pictures hang upon the crumbling walls;
Dim shadowy forms are in the twilight cast,
And many a dance is whirling through the halls.
There are bright fires blazing on the hearth,
The merry shout falls on the ear again;
And little footsteps patter down the path,
Just like the coming of the summer rain.
I hear the music of the rippling rill,
The dews of morn are sprinkled on my cheek;
While down the valley and upon the hill
The laughing echoes play their hide-and-seek.
I roam the meadow where the violets grow,
I watch the shadows o'er the mountain creep;
I bathe my feet where sparkling fountains flow,
Or bow my head on moss-grown rocks to sleep.
I hear the bell ring out the passing hour,
I hear its music o 'er the valleys flung;
O, what a preacher is that time-worn tower,
Reading great sermons with its iron tongue!
The old church clock, forever swinging slow,
With moving hands at morning and at even,
Points to the sleepers in the yard below,
Then lifts them upward to the distant heaven.
How will such memories o' er the spirit stray,
Of hopes and joys, of sorrows and of tears;
They are the tomb-stones time will ne'er decay,
Although the moss will gather with the years.
 

EARLY ENGLISH POETRY

By Professor Edwin H. Sanborn, LL.D

Our Saxon ancestors when they conquered England, were rude, barbarous, and cruel. The gods of their worship were bloodthirsty and revengeful. Odin, their chief divinity, in his celestial hall drank ale from the skulls of his enemies. In the year 596, the Monk Augustine, or Austin, was sent by Pope Gregory to attempt their conversion to Christianity. He and his associates were so successful that on one occasion ten thousand converts were baptized in one day. Of course their conversion was external and nominal. They still clung to their old superstitions and customs. But with the new religion came new ideas.

Manuscripts were circulated; monasteries and schools were founded, and learning was somewhat diffused. The Saxon language is marked by three several epochs:

1st. From the irruption of the Saxons into Britain, A.D. 449, to the invasion of the Danes, including a period of 330 years.

2d. The Danish-Saxon period, continuing to the Norman conquest, A.D. 1066.

3d. The Norman-Saxon era, running down to the close of Henry II's reign. Of the first period, but a single specimen remains, and that a quotation by King Alfred; of the 2d period, numerous specimens both in verse and prose are extant; with the last period, the annals of English poetry commence.

The three dialects of these three literary epochs illustrate fully the changes which the old Saxon tongue underwent during the five centuries of its growth into the modern English.

Learning was chiefly confined to the church, during the dark ages; of course, the great lights of Saxon England were prelates, except Alfred, and most of them wrote in Latin.

The venerable Bede (born 673, died 735), as he is styled, who wrote in the eighth century, was a profoundly learned man for those times. His writings embrace all topics then included in the knowledge of the schools or the Church. His works were published at Cologne, in 1612, in eight folio volumes. Another of the ornaments of this century was Alcuin, librarian and pupil of Egbert, Archbishop of York. He enjoyed a European reputation; was invited to France, by Charlemangne, to superintend his own studies; and was thought by some to have been the founder of the University of Paris. He was contemporary with Bede, was acquainted with the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, languages and composed treatises on music, logic, rhetoric, astronomy and grammar; besides lives of saints, commentaries on the Bible, homiles, epistles and verses.

From the age of these authors learning declined till Alfred appeared. "At my accession to the throne," he remarks, "all knowledge and learning were extinguished in the Englsh nation, insomuch, that there were very few to the south of the Humber who understood the common prayers of the Church, or were capable of translating a single sentence of Latin into English; but to the north of the Thames, I cannot recollect so much as one who could do this." King Alfred was an eminent lover and promotor of learning. His works in the Saxon tongue, both original and translated, were numerous and valuable. His glory as a scholar is not eclipsed by his fame as a legislator. In both respects he has no peer in England's line of Kings. He is reputed to have been the founder of the University of Oxford, as well as the originator of the "Trial by Jury." He died A.D. 900 or 901.

John Scot, or Johannes Scotus Engena, flourished during Alfred's reign, was a lecturer at Oxford, and the founder or chief prompter of scholastic divinity. The earliest specimen of the Anglo-Saxon language extant is the Lord's prayer, translated from the Greek by Ealdfride, Bishop of Sindisfarne, or Holy Island, about the year 700:

 
"Urin Fader thic arth in heofnas;
Our father which art in heaven;
 
 
sic gehalgud thin noma;
be hallowed thy name;
 
 
to cymeth thin ryc;
to come thy kingdom:
 
 
sic thin willa sue is in heofnas & in eorthe;
be thy will so is in heaven and in earth;
 
 
urin hlaf ofirwistlic sel us to daig;
our loaf super-excellent give us to day;
 
 
and forgefe us scylda urna;
and forgive us debts ours;
 
 
sue we forgefan scyldgum urum;
so we forgiven debts of ours;
 
 
and no inlead usig in custnung;
and not lead us into temptation;
 
 
ah gefrig usich from ifle.
but free us each from evil.
 

The new Danish irruptions again arrested the progress of learning, and ignorance and misery, as is usual, followed in the train of war. Alfred had restored learning and promoted the arts of peace. But his successors failed to sustain the institutions he planted. He is said to have shone with the lustre of the brightest day of summer amidst the gloom of a long, dark, and stormy, winter. Before the Norman conquest the Anglo-Saxon tongue fell into disrepute; and French teachers and French manners were affected by the high-born.

During the reign of Edward, the Confessor, it ceased to be cultivated; and after the Conqueror, it became more barbarous and vulgar, as it was then the sign of servility, and the badge of an enslaved race.

As early as the year 652, the Anglo-Saxons were accustomed to send their youth to French monasteries to be educated. In succeeding centuries the court and nobility were intimately allied to the magnates of France; and the adoption of French manners was deemed an accomplishment. The conquerors commanded the laws to be administered in French. Children at school were forbidden to read their native language, and the English name became a term of reproach. An old writer in the eleventh century says: "Children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations, beeth compelled for to leve hire own langage, and for to construe his lessons and thynges in Frenche, and so they haveth sethe Normans came first into England." The Saxon was spoken by the peasants, in the country, yet not without an intermixture of French; the courtly language was French with some vestiges of the vernacular Saxon.

The Conqueror's army was composed of the flower of the Norman nobility. They brought with them the taste, the arts, and the refinements, they had acquired in France. European schools and scholars had been greatly benefitted by studying Latin versions of Greek philosophers from the Arabic. Many learned men of the laity also became teachers, and the Church no longer enjoyed a monopoly of letters. They travelled into Spain to attend the Arabic schools.

It is a remarkable fact that Greek learning should have travelled through Bagdad to reach Europe.

The Arabs were as fond of letters as of war. In the eighth century, when they overran the Asiatic provinces, they found many Greek books which they read with eagerness. They translated such as best pleased them into Arabic. Greek poetry they rejected because it was polytheistic. Of Greek history they made no use, because it recorded events prior to the advent of their prophet. The politics of Greece and its eloquence were not congenial to their despotic notions, and so they passed them by. Grecian ethics were suspended by the Koran, hence Plato was overlooked. Mathematics, metaphysics, logic, and medicine, accorded with their tastes. Hence they translated and studied Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, and illustrated them with voluminous commentaries. These works stimulated native authors to write new treatises. The Arabs, therefore, became distinguished for their skill in logic, medicine, mathematics, and kindred studies. They founded universities during the eighth century in the cities of Spain and Africa. Charlemagne commanded their books to be translated into Latin; thus Aristotle entered Europe through Asia by the double door of the Arabic and Latin tongues, and, by long prescription, still holds his place in European schools.

Charlemagne founded the universities of Bononia, Pavia, Paris, and Osnaburg, in Hanover. These became centres for propagating the new sciences. The Normans, too, shared in the general progress of learning, and carried with them their attainments into England. The wild imagination of the Saracens kindled a love of romantic fiction, wherever their influence was felt. The crusades made the Europeans intimately acquainted with the literature of the Arabs. Says Marton, who maintains that romantic fiction originated in Arabia, in his "History of English Poetry," "Amid the gloom of superstition, in an age of the grossest ignorance and credulity, a taste for the wonders of oriental fiction was introduced by the Arabians into Europe, many countries of which were already seasoned to a reception of its extravagancies by means of the poetry of the Gothic scalds, who, perhaps, originally derived their ideas from the same fruitful region of invention.

"These fictions coinciding with the reigning manners, and perpetually kept up and improved in the tales of troubadours and minstrels, seem to have centred about the eleventh century in the ideal histories of Turpin and Geoffrey of Monmouth, which record the suppositious achievements of Charlemagne and King Arthur, where they formed the groundwork of that species of narrative called romance. And from these beginnings or causes, afterwards enlarged and enriched by kindred fancies fetched from the crusades, that singular and capricious mode of imagination arose, which at length composed the marvellous machineries of the more sublime Italian poets, and of their disciple Spenser." The theory which traces romantic fiction to the Arabs is but partially true. The entire literature of that age was monstrous, full of the most absurd and extravagant fancies. History was fabulous; poetry mendacious and philosophy erroneous. Theology abounded in pious frauds. Monks and minstrels vied with each other in the invention of lying legends to adorn the lives of heroes and saints. All classes of the community shared in the general delusion, and the supernatural seemed more credible than the natural. In tracing the progress of learning, in England, I propose, during the remainder of the present paper to discuss one inconsiderable yet important element of modern civilization, which is often entirely overlooked. I refer to "Lyric Poetry."

The lyre is one of the oldest of musical instruments. Its invention is ascribed to a god. Its Saxon name is harp. It was the favorite instrument of the ancient Hebrews, as well as of the Greeks. The Saxons, Britons and Danes regarded it with veneration, and protected by legal enactments those who played upon it. Their persons were esteemed inviolable and secured from injuries by heavy penalities. By the laws of Wales, slaves were forbidden to practice upon it; and no creditor could seize the harp of his debtor. That minstrels were a privileged class is manifested from king Alfred's penetrating the Danish camp (878) disguised as a harper. Sixty years after a Danish king visited King Athelstan's camp in the same disguise. It was also said of Aldhelm, one of the leading scholars of the eighth century: "He was an excellent harper, a most eloquent Saxon and Latin poet, a most expert chanter, or a singer, a doctor egregius, and admirably versed in scriptures and liberal sciences." The minstrel was a regular and stated officer of the Anglo-Saxon kings. Poetry is always the earliest form of literature; song the earliest form of poetry. The Muse adapts her lessons to the nation's infancy and adds the charm of melody to verse. No nation is destitute of lyric poetry. Even the North American Indians have their war songs, though their individual worship of their gods has prevented the creation of any national poetry for associated worship. The Scandinavians have but one term for the poet and the singer. The Northern scald invented and recited his own songs and epics. In other countries the poet and minstrel performed separate duties. "The Minstrels," says Bishop Percy, "were an order of men in the Middle Ages who subsisted by the arts of poetry and music, and sang to the harp verses composed by themselves and others. They appear to have accompanied their songs with mimicry and action. They are called in Latin of the day histriones, Mimi and Scurræ. Such arts rendered them exceedingly popular in this and in neighboring countries, where no high scene of festivity was esteemed complete that was not set off with the exercise of their talents; and where so long as the spirit of chivalry existed, they were protected and caressed, because their songs tended to do honor to the ruling passion of the times, and to encourage and foment a martial spirit."

They were the legitimate successors of the bards and scalds of early times whose art was considered divine and their songs worthy of regal patronage. They were the historians, genealogists, poets, and musicians, of the land. The word minstrel is derived from the Latin minister, a servant, because they were classed among the King's attendants. An earlier Saxon name for this class of performers was "Gleeman," in rude English, a Jogeler or Jocular; Latin, "Joculator." The word "glee" is from the Saxon "gligg," meaning music; and the meaning now attached to that word shows how intimately associated were pleasure and music in the national mind. The harp was the most ancient of Saxon musical instruments. It continued in use for a thousand years. It was well known in the time of Chaucer. His Frere could play upon it and sing to it; the merry "wife of Bath" had frequently danced to it in her youth. It was an ordinary accompaniment of revels and tavern festivals. It continued in use till the reign of Elizabeth. In Dr. Percy's "Reliques of ancient English poetry" he speaks of the minstrels as an order of men in the Middle Ages, highly honored, retained and pensioned by kings, lavishly rewarded by nobles, and kindly entertained by the common people.³ Ritson in his "Ancient Songs" admits that such an "order" of singers existed in France, but never in England; that individuals wandered up and down the country chanting romances and singing songs or ballads to the harp or fiddle; but that they never enjoyed the respect of the high born or received favors from them. The church evidently looked upon them with disfavor, as the enemies of sobriety and the promoters of revelry and mirth. In the sixteenth century they lost all credit and were classed, in penal enactments, with "rogues and vagabonds." One reason of the decline of minstrelsy was the introduction of printing and the advance of learning: that which might afford amusement and pleasure when sung to the harp, lost its point and spirit when read in retirement from the printed page. Their composition would not bear criticism. Besides, the market had become overstocked with these musical wares; as the religious houses had with homilies and saintly legends. The consideration bestowed on the early minstrels "enticed into their ranks idle vagabonds," according to the act of Edward I, who went about the country under color of minstrelsy; men who cared more about the supper than the song; who for base lucre divorced the arts of writing and reciting and stole other men's thunder. Their social degeneracy may be traced in the dictionary. The chanter of the "gests" of kings, gesta ducum regumque, dwindled into a gesticulator, a jester: the honored jogelar of Provence, into a mountebank; the jockie, a doggrel ballad-monger.

 
Beggars they are by one consent,
And rogues by act of Parliament.
 

What a fall was there from their former high estate and reverence. The earliest minstrels of the Norman courts, doubtless, came from France, where their rank was almost regal.

Froissart, describing a Christmas festival given by Comte de Foix in the fourteenth century, says:

"There were many Mynstrels as well of hys own as of strangers, and eache of them dyd their devoyres in their facalties. The same day the Earl of Foix gave to Hauralds and Minstrelles the sum of 500 franks, and gave to the Duke of Tonrayns Mynstreles gouns of cloth of gold furred with ermyne valued at 200 franks."

The courts of kings swarmed with these merry singers in the Dark Ages, and such sums were expended upon them, that they often drained the royal treasuries. In William's army there was a brave warrior named Taillefer, who was as renowned for minstrelsy as for arms. Like Tyrtæus and Alemon, in Sparta, he inspired his comrades with courage by his martial strains, and actually led the van in the fight against the English, chanting the praises of Charlemagne, and Roland. Richard Cœur de Lion was a distinguished patron of minstrels as well as "the mirror of chivalry." He was sought out in his prison in Austria by a faithful harper who made himself known by singing a French song under the window of the castle in which the king was confined. Blondel was the harper's name. The French song translated reads thus:

 
"Your beauty, lady fair,
None views without delight;
But still so cold an air
No passion can excite.
Yet still I patient see
While all are shun'd like me.
No nymph my heart can wound
If favor she divide,
And smiles on all around
Unwilling to decide;
I'd rather hatred bear,
Than love with others share."
 

Edward I had a harper in his train, in his crusade to the Holy Land, who stood by his side in battle.

That same king in his conquest of Wales is said to have murdered all the bards that fell into his hands lest they should rouse the nation again to arms. Gray's poem, "The Bard," was written upon that theme. I will quote a few lines:

 
"Dear lost companions of my tuneful art,
Dear as the light that visits these eyes,
Dear as the ruddy drops that warm my heart,
Ye died amidst your dying country's cries—
No more I weep. They do not sleep.
On yonder cliffs a griesly band,
I see them sit; they linger yet,
Avengers of their native land."
 

That the minstrel was a privileged character in England down to the reign of Elizabeth is proved by history, by frequent allusions to them in the current literature of the times, and by the large body of songs, ballads, and metrical romances, still extant which are ascribed to them. They were essential to the complete education of a knight as tutors: for no accomplishment was more valued in the days of chivalry than the playing of the harp and the composition of songs in honor of the fair. Before the origin of printing they acted as publishers of the works of more renowned poets by public recitations of their works. The period of their greatest celebrity was about the middle of the fifteenth century. The minstrel chose his own subject and so long as he discoursed to warriors of heroes and enchanters, and to gay knights of true love and fair ladies, he would not want patient and gratified listeners.

The great sources of Gothic romance are a British History of Arthur and his wizzard, Merlin, by Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, translated into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth; the history of Charlemagne and his twelve peers, forged by Turpin, a monk of the eighth century; the History of Troy, in two Latin works, which passed under the names of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis; and the History of Alexander the Great, originally written in Persic and translated into Greek by Simeon Seth, A.D. 1070, and again turned into Latin by Giraldus Cambrensis about the year 1200. These four works with variations, additions, and dilutions, formed the staple of romantic fiction in verse in the Dark Ages.

The minor songs and ballads which were called forth by passing events were usually amorous, sportive, gay, and often gross, yet suited to a rude age.

Ellis in his specimens of the early English poets has given us sketches of one hundred and sixty-one writers of songs from the year 1230 to 1650, after a careful search through this whole period for literary gems. The first edition of his work consisted almost entirely of love songs and sonnets; the revised edition has greater variety; but our circle of ideas is so enlarged, our habits are so different from those of by-gone centuries, that we look over this rare collection of old poems, rather to learn the manners of the people, than to enjoy the diction of their songs. We cannot doubt that this species of poetry excited an important influence when it was the staple of popular education and amusement.

A maxim is current among us which has been successively ascribed to many great thinkers, which shows the value usually set on compositions of this kind. It is this: "Let me make the songs of a people and I care not who makes their laws."

A ballad is a story in verse whose incidents awaken the sympathies and excite the passions of those who listen. The song is designed to express deep emotion, joy or sorrow, hope or fear and appeals directly to the feelings. Here, often, the singing is more than the sentiment; the tones of the chanter are often more touching than the thoughts of the Emperor. A national ode must have a national element in it; it must reflect the passions that burn in the people's breasts. Local topics, too, may call forth a general interest when they describe trials or triumphs which all may share. Says Carlyle: "In a peasant's death-bed there may be the fifth act of a tragedy. In the ballad which details the adventures and the fate of a partisan warrior or a love-lorn knight,—the foray of a border chieftain or the lawless bravery of a forrester; a Douglass, or a Robin Hood,—there may be the materials of a rich romance. Whatever be the subject of the song, high or low, sacred or secular, there is this peculiarity about it, it expresses essentially the popular spirit, the common sentiment, which the rudest breast may feel, yet which is not beneath the most cultivated. It is peculiarly the birth of the popular affections. It celebrates some event which the universal heart clings to, which, for joy or sorrow, awaken the memories of every mind." Hence we learn the history of a nation's heart from their songs as we learn their martial history from their armor.

The oldest song, set to music, which is now known is the following:

 
"Summer is y-comen in,
Loude sing cuckoo:
Groweth seed,
And bloweth mead,
And springeth the wood now;
Sing Cuckoo!
Ewe bleateth after lamb,
Lowth after calf cow;
Bullock starteth,
Buck resteth
Merry sing cuckoo!
Cuckoo, Cuckoo!
Well sings thou cuckoo!
Ne swick thou never now."
 

The old ballads seem to have no paternity. They spring up like flowers, spontaneously. Most of them are of unknown date and unknown authorship. The structure, language, and spelling of many have been so modified, by successive reciters, that their original form is now lost. We have a short summary of King Arthur's history, the great hero of romance, in a comparatively modern ballad. I will quote it:

 
Of Brutus' blood, in Brittane born,
King Arthur I am to name:
Through Christendome and Heathynesse
Well known is my worthy fame.
In Jesus Christ I doe beleeve;
I am a Christyan born:
The Father, Sone and Holy Gost
One God I doe adore.
In the four hundreed nintieth yeere
Over Brittaine I did rayne,
After my Savior Christ his byrth:
What time I did maintaine.
The fellowshippe of the table round
Soe famous in those days;
Whereatt a hundred noble Knights
And thirty sat alwayes;
Who for their deeds and martiall feates,
As bookes dou yet record,
Amongst all other nations
Wer feared through the world.
And in the castle of Tayntagill,
King Uther me begate
Of Agyana, a bewtyous ladye,
And come of hie estate.
And when I was fifteen yeer old,
Then was I crowned Kinge;
All Brittaine that was att an uprore
I did to quiett bring
And drove the Saxons from the realme,
Who had oppressed this land;
All Scotland then throughe manly feates
I conquered with my hand.
Ireland, Denmarke, Norway,
These countryes won I all
Iseland, Getheland and Swothland;
And mad their kings my thrall
I conquered all Galya,
That now is called France;
And slew the hardye Froll in Field
My honor to advance,
And the ugly gyant Dynabus
Soe terrible to vewe,
That in Saint Barnard's Mount did lye,
By force of armes, I slew;
And Lucyus, the emperor of Rome
I brought to deadly wracke;
And a thousand more of noble knightes
For feare did turn their backe;
Five kings of "Haynims" I did kill
Amidst that bloody strife;
Besides the Grecian emperor
Who also lost his liffe.
Whose carcasse I did send to Rome
Cladd pourlye on a beete;
And afterward I past Mount Joye
The next approaching yeer.
Then I came to Rome where I was mett
Right as a conquerer
And by all the cardinalls solempnelye
I was crowned an emperor.
One winter there I mad abode;
Then word to mee was brought
Howe Mordred had oppressed the crown;
What treason he had wrought.
Att home in Brittaine with my queene:
Therefore I came with speed
To Brittaine back with all my power
To quitt that traterous deede.
And soon at Sandwich I arrivde
Where Mordred me withstoode.
But yett at last I landed there
With effusion of much blood.
Thence chased I Mordred away
Who fledd to London right,
From London to Winchester, and
To Comeballe took his flight.
And stile I him pursued with speed
Tile at the last wee mett:
Uhevby an appointed day of fight
Was there agreed and sett
Where we did fight of mortal life
Eche other to deprive,
Tile of a hundred thousand men
Scarce one was left alive.
There all the noble chevalrye
Of Brittaine took their end
Oh see how fickle is their state
That doe on feates depend.
There all the traiterous men were slaine
Not one escapte away
And there dyed all my vallyant knights
Alas! that woful day!
Two and twenty yeere I ware the crown
In honor and grete fame;
And thus by deth⁴ suddenlye
Deprived of the same.
 

Some distinguished English critics, like Warton and Dr. Warburton, maintain that the materials as well as the taste for romantic fiction were derived almost exclusively from the Arabians. They assume therefore that the traditions, fables and mode of thought in Northern Asia from whence the Scandinavians and Germans are supposed to have originated, were identical with those which the secluded people of Arabia afterwards incorporated into their literature. It is more natural to assume that there is always a similarity in the mythologies, as in the manners, religion, and armor of rude ages and races. Respect for woman was a characteristic of the northern nations of Europe, and not of the Mohammedans. This is an all pervading element in romantic and chivalric fiction. The Northmen believed in giants and dwarfs; in wizzards and fairies; in necromancy and enchantments; as well as the Oriental natives. It is reasonable, therefore, to assume that the immense tide of song which inundated Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, under the form of metrical romances, ballads, and songs, was made up of confluent streams from classical, Oriental, and Gothic mythologies. The Troubadours of Province (from Provincia, by way of eminence), the legitimate successors of the Latin citharcedi, the British bards, the northern scalds, the Saxon gleemen, and English harpers, all contributed in turn to form English minstrelsy and French romance. The Latin tongue ceased to be spoken in France about the ninth century. The new language used in its stead was a mixture of bad Latin and the language of the Franks. As their speech was a medley, so was their poetry. As the songs of chivalry were the most popular compositions in the new or Romance language, they were called Romans, or Romants. They appeared about the eleventh century. The stories of Arthur and his round table are doubtless of British origin. It is evident that the Northmen had the elements of chivalry in them long before that institution became famous, as is shown by the story of Regner Lodbrog, the celebrated warrior and sea king, who landed in Denmark about the year 800. A Swedish Prince had intrusted his beautiful daughter to the care of one of his nobles who cruelly detained her in his castle under pretence of making her his wife. The King made proclamation that whoever would rescue her should have her in marriage. Regner alone achieved her rescue. The name of the traitorous man was Orme, which in the Islandic tongue means a serpent, hence the story that the maiden was guarded by a dragon, which her bold deliverer slew. The history of Richard I. is full of such romantic adventures. Shakespeare, in his play of King John, alludes to an exploit of Richard in slaying a lion, whence the epithet "Cœur de Lion," which is given in no history. He says:

 
"Needs must you lay your heart at his dispose
Against whose furie and unmatched force,
The aweless lion could not wage the fight
Nor keep his princely heart from Richard's hand:
He that perforce robs lions of their hearts
May easily winne a woman's."
 

This allusion is fully explained in the old romance of Richard Cœur de Lion. The King travelling as "a palmer in Almaye," from the Holy Land, was seized as a spy and imprisoned. Being challenged to a trial of pugilism by the King's son, he slew him. The King to avenge his son's death let in a hungry lion upon the royal prisoner. The King's daughter, who loved the captive, sent him forty ells of white silk "kerchers" to bind about him as a defence against the lion's teeth and claws. The romance thus proceeds: