The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

3. Prefacc to Lyrical Ballads (1800).

 .

1406 / MATTHEW ARNOLD

really possesses, because to us it is, or has been, of high importance. Here also we overrate the object of our interest, and apply to it a language of praise which is quite exaggerated. And thus we get the source of a second fallacy in our poetic judgments�the fallacy caused by an estimate which we may call personal.

� $ *

* * 4 The historic estimate is likely in especial to affect our judgment and our language when we are dealing with ancient poets; the personal estimate when we are dealing with poets our contemporaries, or at any rate modern. The exaggerations due to the historic estimate are not in themselves, perhaps, of very much gravity. Their report hardly enters the general ear; probably they do not always impose even on the literary men who adopt them. But they lead to a dangerous abuse of language. So we hear Caedmon,4 amongst our own poets, compared to Milton. I have already noticed the enthusiasm of one accomplished French critic for "historic origins."5 Another eminent French critic, M. Vitet, comments upon that famous document of the early poetry of his nation, the Chanson de Roland.'' It is indeed a most interesting document. The joculator or jongleur7 Taillefer, who was with William the Conqueror's army at Hastings,8 marched before the Norman troops, so said the tradition, singing "of Charlemagne and of Roland and of Oliver, and of the vassals who died at Roncevaux"; and it is suggested that in the Chanson de Roland by one Turoldus or Theroidde, a poem preserved in a manuscript of the twelfth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, we have certainly the matter, perhaps even some of the words, of the chant which Taillefer sang. The poem has vigor and freshness; it is not without pathos. But M. Vitet is not satisfied with seeing in it a document of some poetic value, and of very high historic and linguistic value; he sees in it a grand and beautiful work, a monument of epic genius. In its general design he finds the grandiose conception, in its details he finds the constant union of simplicity with greatness, which are the marks, he truly says, of the genuine epic, and distinguish it from the artificial epic of literary ages. One thinks of Homer; this is the sort of praise which is given to Homer, and justly given. Higher praise there cannot well be, and it is the praise due to epic poetry of the highest order only, and to no other. Let us try, then, the Chanson de Roland at its best. Roland, mortally wounded, lays himself down under a pine tree, with his face turned towards Spain and the enemy�

De plusurs choses a rememhrer li prist, De tantes teres cume li hers cunquist, De didce France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne sun seignor ki I'nurrit.9

That is primitive work, I repeat, with an undeniable poetic quality of its own. It deserves such praise, and such praise is sufficient for it. But now turn to Homer�

4. A 7th-century Old English poet. Vitet (1802-1873) wrote on it in his Essais Histo5. Charles d'Hericault (1823-1899), a French riques et Litteraires (1862). critic cited earlier in a passage omitted here. 7. Jester or minstrel (French). Arnold had mildly reprimanded him for his 8. The battle in 1066 in which Harold II was killed "historical" bias in praising a 1 Sth-century poet, and the English army defeated. Clement Marot, at the expense of classical 17th-9. "Then began he to call many things to rememcentury poets such as Racine. brance�all the lands which his valor conquered 6. An 1 Ith-century epic poem in Old French that and pleasant France, and the men of his lineage, tells of the 8th-century wars of Charlemagne and Charlemagne his liege lord who nourished against the Moors in Spain and of the bravery of him." Chanson de Roland 3.939- 42 [Arnold's the French leaders Roland and Oliver. Ludovic note[.

 .

THE STUDY OF POETRY / 1407

"QQ (puro rovg 6' rjdr/ KOLTEXEV (pvoiQoog aia ev AaKedaifiovL avOt, 'tfo(i kv narpidt yah].'

We are here in another world, another order of poetry altogether; here is rightly due such supreme praise as that which M. Vitet gives to the Chanson de Roland. If our words are to have any meaning, if our judgments are to have any solidity, we must not heap that supreme praise upon poetry of an order immeasurably inferior.