Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature, by
Edward Tompkins McLaughlin
Title: Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature
Author: Edward Tompkins McLaughlin
Release Date: October 27, 2011 [EBook #37865] Language: English
*** STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LIFE AND ***
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STUDIES IN MEDIAEVAL LIFE AND LITERATURE BY
EDWARD TOMPKINS McLAUGHLIN
PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND BELLES-LETTRES IN YALE UNIVERSITY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK LONDON
27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND The Knickerbocker Press
1894
Copyright, 1894 by
SARAH B. McLAUGHLIN
Entered at Stationers' Hall, London
By G. P. Putnam's Sons
Electrotyped, Printed and Bound by The Knickerbocker Press, New York G. P. Putnam's Sons
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CONTENTS.
page
Introduction v
The Mediaeval Feeling for Nature 1
Ulrich von Liechtenstein: The Memoirs of an old German Gallant 34
Neidhart von Reuenthal and his Bavarian Peasants 71
Meier Helmbrecht: a German Farmer of the Thirteenth Century 100
Childhood in Mediaeval Literature 123
A Mediaeval Woman 152
Appendix 183 [v]
INTRODUCTION.
Edward Tompkins McLaughlin, the writer of the essays contained in this volume, was born at Sharon, Connecticut, on May 28,
1860. He was the son of the Reverend D. D. T. McLaughlin, a graduate of Yale College of the class of 1834. His mother's maiden name was Mary Whittlesey Brownell. She was the daughter of the Reverend Grove L. Brownell, who was settled for many years over the Congregational church of Cromwell, Connecticut. Thus it will be seen that the author of this work belonged on both sides to what Oliver Wendell Holmes has aptly called the Brahman caste of New England.
At the time of his birth his father was pastor of the Congregational church of Sharon, Connecticut, but in 1866 left that place for Morris in the same county. There he remained until 1872 when he gave up parish duties entirely, and retired to Litchfield, which he thenceforward made his permanent home.
With the exception of a short time spent in the Litchfield Academy, the son was fitted for college almost wholly by his father, who was himself a finished scholar in Latin and Greek. He entered Yale in the autumn of 1879, and received the degree of A.B. in[vi]
1883. From the very beginning of his university life he was distinguished for his interest in English literature, and during the entire course of it displayed remarkable proficiency in the pursuit of that study. To him, before his graduation, fell the highest honors which the college has to bestow in that department.
After receiving his bachelor's degree he remained another year in New Haven as a graduate student. During that time he devoted himself with increased ardor to the special branches of study in which from the outset he had been interested. In the following year he was made tutor in English. This position he held until 1890, when he was appointed assistant professor of the same subject. At the meeting of the Corporation of the University in May, 1893, he was elected by it to the chair of Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. Happily married to a wife of congenial tastes, who speedily learned to sympathize with him in the studies which he had made peculiarly his own, he had every reason to expect a long career of usefulness, which would be attended with distinction to himself and would confer distinction upon the institution with which he was connected. But his health had never been vigorous, and in the very sum-mer vacation following his appointment a fever, which came upon him almost without warning, and which seemed at first of slight importance, carried him off after an illness that lasted little more than a week. He died on the 25th of July, 1893, at the age of thirty-three. He lies buried at Litchfield.
Such is a brief sketch of the life of the author of this volume. He had at the time of his death many projects on hand, some partly carried out, some only in contemplation. In 1893 he had edited a volume of[vii] selections from English writers under the title of Literary Criticism for Students; and since his death a school-edition of Marlowe's Edward II., prepared by him, but left mainly in manuscript, has come from the press. But these were in a measure tasks imposed upon him by the needs of students, and not those undertaken in consequence of his own inclinations. During the last year of his life, however, he had been devoting himself to the preparation for publication of the following essays. He had long been a student of mediaeval literature, not merely of that found
in the English tongue, but of the much fuller and more varied work that had been produced at an early period on the continent. The writers of France, of Germany, and of Italy, belonging to that period, were in truth so familiar to him that he was sometimes disposed to assume that general acquaintance with them on the part of others which it is the fortune of but few to possess. Some results of this study he now set about putting into permanent form. The first rough draft of the essays here printed had been finished when the fatal illness fell upon him that carried him away.
There is no intention of apologizing either for the matter or the manner of the pieces contained in this volume. They are in no need
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of it, and in any event what is published must stand or fall upon its own merits. Yet it is the barest justice to the author of these es-says to state that not in a single instance do they represent the final form they would have assumed, had he lived to review and revise the first sketches he made. In the case of two of them, which were nearest to the condition in which they were ultimately to appear, evidences of their incompleteness in his own eyes are plainly seen in the manuscripts. Against particular[viii] passages and sometimes whole paragraphs there were marginal notes, indicating that the expression was to undergo alteration of various kinds. In several instances a place was marked for the insertion of a transition paragraph which had apparently never been written out, though its character was suggested. These, of course, had all to be disregarded. The condition of things, furthermore, was much worse with the four which had not been so fully completed as the two just mentioned. In the case of these the matter had to be collected and pieced together, at no slight expenditure of time and trouble, from scattered leaves of manuscript, in which it was not always easy to trace out the exact order.
Unfortunately, one essay, intended to be the longest and most important of all, could not be included in this volume. Profes-
sor McLaughlin had been for many years an ardent admirer of Dante. To a study of the early life of the great Italian poet he had devoted years of patient research. It was the one subject in which he had the deepest interest, and upon which he had expended the most labor, and he purposed to make the essay dealing with it the principal piece in the work he was preparing. But, as was not unnatural, it was the one essay which needed most the revising hand of its composer. The gaps in it were too numerous and important to justify its insertion in the unfinished condition in which it existed, and this particular piece, upon which the author himself set most store, has been reluctantly laid aside.
But while it is simple justice to state the facts just given, it must not be inferred that these essays, unfinished and even fragmentary as they might have seemed to the writer, will so appear to the reader. Few there[ix] will be who will detect that any part of them has failed to receive the full attention to which it is entitled. Nor is it likely, indeed, that the sentiments expressed in these essays would have undergone any material modification, whatever changes might have been made in the manner in which they were set forth. Doubtless some of the points now found in them would have been amplified, others would have been retrenched. Other views