Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Disraeli Isaac
Издательство: Bookwire
Серия:
Жанр произведения: Документальная литература
Год издания: 0
isbn: 4064066119720
Скачать книгу
concealed the deer he chased, and often the bandit who chased the Lord—the terrible Lord of this realm of wood and water, where, whoever would fowl a bird or strike a buck, might have his eyes torn from their sockets, or on the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.3

      Too much leisure, too many loungers, and the tedium of prolonged banquets, a want of the pleasures of the luxurious sedentary would be as urgent as in ages more intellectual and refined; those pleasures in which we participate though we are passive, receiving the impressions without any exertion of our own—pleasures which make us delighted auditors or spectators. The theatre was not yet raised, but the listlessness of vacuity gave birth to all the variegated artists of revelry. If they had not comedy itself, they abounded with the comic, and without tragedy the tragic often moved their emotions. Nor were they even then without their scenical illusions, marvels which came and vanished, as the Tregetour clapped his hands—enchantments! which though Chaucer opined to be only “natural magic,” all the world tremblingly enjoyed as the work of devils; a sensation which we have totally lost in the necromancy of our pantomimes. And thus it was that in the illumed hall of the feudal Lord we discover a whole dramatic company; which, however dissimilar in their professional arts, were all enlisted under the indefinite class of Minstrels; for in the domestic state of society we are now recalling, the poetic minstrel must be separated from those other minstrels of very different acquirements, with whom, however, he was associated.

      There were minstrels who held honourable offices in the great households, sometimes chosen for their skill and elocution to perform the dignified service of heralds, and were in the secret confidence of their Lord; these were those favourites of the castle, whose guerdon was sometimes as romantic as any incident in their own romance.

——They tellen Tales Both of WEEPYING and of Game.

      Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited by his harp, a portrait evidently after the life.

Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness To make the English swete upon his tonge; And in his Harping when that he had songe, His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright, As don the Sterrés in a frosty night.

      The minstrel more particularly delighted “the Lewed,” or the people, when, sitting in their fellowship, the harper stilled their attention by some fragment of a chronicle of their fathers and their father-land. The family harper touched more personal sympathies; the ancestral honours of the baron made even the vassal proud—domestic traditions and local incidents deepened their emotions—the moralising ditty softened their mind with thought, and every county had its legend at which the heart of the native beat. Of this minstrelsy little was written down, but tradition lives through a hundred echoes, and the “reliques of ancient English poetry,” and the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and some other remains, for the greater part have been formed by so many metrical narratives and fugitive effusions.

Walken fer and wyde, Her, and ther, in every syde, In many a diverse londe.

      The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed both here and among our neighbours, corrupted their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reckless to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public assembly, and haunted the private abode. At different periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in England and in France; but their return was rarely delayed. The people could not be made to abandon these versatile dispensers of solace, amid their own monotonous cares.