The further wanderings of the poet are of no consequence in relation to F. L.1

LATER POEMS-ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH

Thus far we have been examining works which were, either certainly or possibly, early enough to have influenced the author of our poem. It now seems desirable to add very brief mention of several later works that present similar features-that belong, in a sense, to the school of F. L.

2

Professor Skeat has made much of such resemblances as there are between F. L. and A. L.; but in reality they are not very numerous or striking, being mostly in the commonplaces of Chaucerian imitation. A. L. belongs much more definitely than F. L. to the Court of Love group. The time is September, not spring; but there is an "herber" of the usual sort, and a company of ladies. The action in no way resembles that of F. L.

3

Chaucer's Dream, or The Isle of Ladies, as Professor Skeat prefers to call it,' is also in part a Court of Love poem. A "world of ladies" appear with their knights before the Lord of Love, who is "all in floures." A good many details are reminiscent of F. L.

Various points of resemblance between F. L. and C. L. have been pointed out in chap. ii above. Still more might be added, if minute attention were paid to details in imitation of Chaucer; but there is no important similarity between the two poems in the matter of setting and machinery.

6

The Scottish Lancelot of the Laik is of some interest as showing how the conventional setting of love allegory was sometimes taken over into other kinds of poetry. The poet tells of coming, one spring day, to a garden, which was

1 The resemblances noted above, and in Mr. Henry Wood's article on "Chaucer's Influence on James I," Anglia, Vol. III, pp. 223 ff., seem to indicate that the author of The King's Quair knew F. L., and was directly alluding to it. If this is true, and James I was the author of the Scottish poem (an undecided question), F. L. must be dated earlier than Professor Skeat inclines to date it.

2 Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. 380-404 (text), lxix, lxx (Introduction), 535-38 (notes). 3 As stated by Neilson, Harvard Studies, Vol. VI, p. 150.

4 Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. xiv, xv. Text consulted, Chalmers' English Poets, Vol. I, pp. 378 ff.

5 Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. 409 ff.

6 Ed. Skeat, E. E. T. S. (1865).

al about enweronyt and Iclosit (53) One sich o wyss, that none within supposit Fore to be sen with ony vicht thare owt;'

So dide the levis clos it all about.

There he falls asleep, and has a dream that causes him to write the story of Lancelot. Other details besides those about the garden indicate that the author knew F. L.'

Several of Dunbar's poems present interesting features. The Goldyn Targe3 has the spring setting, with a vision of a hundred ladies in green kirtles, including Venus and Flora, followed by "ane othir court," headed by Cupid and also arrayed in green. In The Thistle and the Rose' the poet is awakened early by May, "in brycht atteir of flouris," and follows her to a garden where there is an assembly of beasts and birds and flowers." The Merle and the Nightingale is a debat somewhat resembling C. N., with a similar May setting. The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo' is also worth mention for its descriptions of spring.

Gavin Douglas, like the others of the Scottish school of Chaucer, seems to have known F. L. as well as the genuine works of his master.8 The Palice of Honour begins with the rising of the poet one day in May, and his entrance into a beautiful garden, where he sees a great company of ladies and gentlemen on their way to the palace of Honour. They are soon followed by the courts of Diana and Venus, the latter in a car drawn by horses in green trappings. She is accompanied by her son dressed in green."

10

Sir David Lyndesay, in his Testament and Complaynt of our Soverane Lordis Papyngo," tells of entering his "garth" to repose

1 Cf. F. L., 11. 66-70.

2 See especially 11. 335-42, 2088-93, 2471-87. There are also apparent allusions to L. G. W., as in 1. 57.

3 Poems of William Dunbar, ed. J. Small, S. T. S. (1893); Vol. II, pp. 1 ff.

4 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 183 ff.

5 Obviously in part an imitation of Chaucer's P. F.

6 Poems, Vol. II, pp. 174 ff.

7 Ibid., pp. 30 ff.

8 See P. Lange, "Chaucer's Einfluss auf Douglas," Anglia, Vol. VI, pp. 46 ff.

9 Poetical Works of Douglas, ed. J. Small (Edinburgh, 1874), Vol. I, pp. 1 ff.

10 This example of the use of green, together with that given above from Dunbar's Goldyn Targe, may be added to the list in chap. ii above, pp. 150, 151.

11 Poetical Works (E. E. T. S.), pp. 223 ff.

among the flowers. There is the usual astronomical reference and the usual description of a spring landscape, From under

ane hauthorne grene,

Quhare I mycht heir and se, and be unsene,

the poet hears the complaint which is the burden of his work. Ane Dialog betuix Experience and ane Courteour of the Miserabyll Estait of the World' has a Prologue telling how the sleepless poet fared forth into a park one May morning before sunrise, in the hope of banishing his melancholy by hearing the birds sing. He met an old man who made a long recital of history. The setting of The Dreme of Schir David Lyndesay' is also of some interest.3

SUMMARY

It should now be clear that most of the elements of the setting and most of the machinery of F. L. were decidedly conventional before the first half of the fifteenth century. The spring setting, with almost infinite repetition of details, is found in the earliest lyrics, in nearly all the poems of the Court of Love group, occasionally in other allegorical poems," in religious poems, in chansons de geste and metrical romances,' in political poems," and even in prose romances and treatises.' The description of springtime

2 Ibid., pp. 263 ff.

1 Poetical Works (E. E. T. S.), pp. 1 ff. 3" The Justes of the Month of May" (Hazlitt, Popular Poetry, Vol. II, pp. 209 ff.), of the latter part of the reign of Henry VII, contains several passages suggesting influence by F. L. 4 See Professor Neilson's dissertation, passim, Harvard Studies, Vol. VI.

5 As in Piers the Plowman, which begins on a May morning with a vision of a "faire felde ful of folke" (B, l. 17). See also Le chemin de vaillance, as analyzed in Romania, Vol. XXVII, pp. 584 ff.; de Guileville's Pélerinage de la vie humaine, as translated by Lydgate (ed. Furnivall, E. E. T. S., 1899-1904).

6 E. g., a macaronic French and Latin Hymn to the Virgin in Reliquiæ Antiquæ, ed. Wright and Halliwell, Vol. I, p. 200; Hoccleve's Minor Poems, ed. Furnivall (E. E. T. S., 1892), Vol. I, p. 67; Lydgate's Edmund, in Horstmann's Altenglische Legenden (Neue Folge, 1881), p. 443, 11. 233 ff.

7E. g., Aye d'Avignon, ed. Guessard and Meyer (Paris, 1861), 11. 2576-81; The Bruce, ed. Skeat (S. T. S., 1894), beginning of Book V; the Sowdone of Babylone, ed. Hausknecht (E. E. T. S., 1881), 11. 963 ff.; The Squyr of Low Degre, ed. Mead (Athenæum Press, 1904), 11. 27 ff., 43 ff., 57, etc.

8 See Political Songs of England, ed. Wright (Camden Society, 1839), pp. 3, 63. See, for example, a passage quoted from Guerin de Montglave in Dunlop's History of Prose Fiction, ed. Wilson (Bohn Library, 1888), Vol. I, p. 311; Le livre des faits de Boucicault (perhaps by Christine de Pisan), in Memoirs pour servir à l'historie de la France, Vol. II, p. 226; the Prologue to The Book of the Knight of la Tour-Landry, ed. T. Wright (E. E. T. S., 1868). Of course other examples could be found. I have made no exhaustive search in works of this kind.

phenomena in F. L. most closely resembles passages in Chaucer and Lydgate.' The sleepless poet is a familiar figure in medieval literature. Because of his pretended ignorance of the cause of his sleeplessness in both F. L. and B. D.,3 indebtedness of the former to Chaucer seems extremely probable. Rising before dawn, or about dawn, and going into a pleasant meadow or grove or garden was clearly a common pleasure of poets. The most notable passages in this connection are in Machaut, Froissart, Deschamps, Chaucer, and Lydgate. The regularity of the grove in F. L. appears to have been suggested by either Lydgate's R. S., or Chaucer's B. D., with a line of indebtedness probably running back to R. R. One of the main objects of the poet's early rising is usually to hear the birds sing, especially the nightingale. The most striking parallelism in this respect appears to be, as Professor Skeat points out, between F. L. and C. N. The "path of litel brede," overgrown with grass and weeds," was found by other poets on other morning walks. In Machaut and Chartier the poet took this path aimlessly; yet here, as in so many other places, the closest resemblance is to Chaucer (B. D.), in the observation that the path is "litel used." The "herber" to which the path leads is found almost everywhere. In French it is usually a "vergier;" in English the form is nearly always "herber." In Chaucer's L. G. W., Lydgate's C. B. and B. K., in F. L. and A. L. this arbor is said to be "benched;" in L. G. W., C. B., and F. L., "benched with turves"-a similarity in minute detail that indicates indebtedness of all the later poems to L. G. W. Usually the arbor or garden is inclosed by a hedge or a wall, and in a number of instances the poets represent themselves as in hiding. Attributing healing power to the odor of the eglantine of which the hedge is made is but one example of a very common device. The passage in F. L. on this subject seems most like passages in

1Owing to the number of specific comparisons already suggested between passages in F. L. and in works analyzed above, I shall not usually make direct reference to previous pages of this chapter.

2 See Neilson in Harvard Studies, Vol. VI, pp. 183, 185, 186, 190, 206, 216; Mott, The System of Courtly Love, p. 33; besides the instances given in this chapter.

3 Repeated also in The King's Quair.

4 Chaucerian and Other Pieces, note p. 530.

5 F. L., 11. 43-45.

Couvin's Fontaine d'Amours, Machaut's Dit du Vergier, and Chaucer's Franklin's Tale.

2

991

3

After the poet reached his "vergier" or "herber," it was his usual custom to sit down beneath a bush or a tree, and there either fall asleep and dream, or see visions without the aid of sleep. Of such visions a company like our poet's "world of ladies" and "rout of men at arms was a very common feature. Often such a company is connected with the Court of Love convention. Sometimes there may be reference to stories of the singing and dancing of companies of fairies. But probably in many cases the vision was suggested by the fact that on May Day and other popular holidays such companies actually did gather to sing and dance and engage in sports of various kinds. The vogue of R. R. seems to have been in part responsible for the commonness of such companies in later poetry; but on account of details as to the costumes, the author of F. L. appears most likely to owe direct debts in this matter to Froissart's Paradys d'Amours, Deschamp's Lay de Franchise, Christine de Pisan's Duc des Vrais Amans, Chaucer's L. G. W., Gower's C. A., and Lydgate's R. S.

On the whole, then, only one conclusion is possible: that whatever merits of combination and expression F. L. may possess, its setting and machinery are a tissue of conventionalities owing most to Chaucer and his earlier imitators (a group to which our author belonged), and much-no doubt partly through Chaucer and perhaps Lydgate—to R. R. and the French works influenced by that poem.

CHAPTER IV. GENERAL CONCLUSION AS TO SOURCES

Before endeavoring to decide, in the light of the foregoing evidence, what were the actual sources of F. L., it is desirable to examine briefly the suggestions previously made on this subject.

1 F. L., 11. 137, 196.

2 See Neilson's dissertation, Harvard Studies, Vol. VI, passim.

3 This theory as to the origin of the companies in F. L. was suggested to me by Professor Schofield, of Harvard. In view of the frequent occurrence of such companies, however, in poems containing no clear reference to fairy lore, and in view, further, of the common medieval pageantry in connection with all sorts of celebrations, it seems improper to assume any conscious use of fairy lore on the part of the author of F. L.

+ Discussed especially in chap. ii above.