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Rh which all freeholders were subject in Anglo-Saxon times. The obligations are usually mentioned in charters as the sole exceptions to grants of immunities; sometimes, however, a fourth obligation (singulare praetium contra alium) is reserved, as in the charter granted by Wiglaf of Mercia on the 28th of December 831 (Cod. dip. i. 294). Ceolwulf's charter of 822 to Archbishop Wilfred is remarkable, as the military service is there restricted to expeditiones contra paganos ostes (ibid. i. 272). The threefold obligation is first mentioned in a Latin charter (expeditione pontis arcisue construction) of doubtful authenticity, which professes to have been granted by Eadbald of Kent in A.D. 616 (Cod. dip. v. 2), but it is not until the 8th century that it appears in documents which are generally admitted to be genuine. Although there were corresponding obligations in the Frankish Empire which were called by Charles the Bald (antiquam et aliarum gentium consuetudinem), Stubbs held that the arguments which refer them to a Roman origin want both congruity and continuity.

The phrase “ trinoda necessitas " is not to be found in the Anglo-Saxon laws and charters; and Selden was probably the first historian of eminence who used it. “ These three exceptions," he says, “ are noted by the term of a three-knotted necessity in an old charter wherein King Cedwalla granted to Wilfrid, the first bishop of Shelsey in Sussex, the village of Paganham." This charter is an 11th-century copy of a lost original, but the words to which Selden referred are plainly written as trimoda necessitas not trinova necessitas. Du Cange gives two examples of the word trimoda in medieval Latin, in which language it meant “ triple "; but he cites no medieval example of trinoda; and in classical Latin the form is unknown, while trinodis (ter-nodus, “ triple-knotted ") occurs only rarely (Ovid. Her. iv. 115; Fast. i. 575).

See Du Cange, Glossarium; W. Stubbs, The Constitutional History of England, i. 86, 87; J. M. Kemble, Codex anglo-saxonicus, passim; Selden, English Janus (London, 1682), p. 43; Walter de Gray, Birch, Cartularium saxonicum, passim; Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in the British Museum, pt. iv. Cotton MS. Augustus, ii. 86.

TRINOVANTES (commonly Trinobantes), a powerful British tribe about 50 – 50 dwelling north and north-east of London, rivals and neighbours of the Catuvellauni. When Caesar invaded Britain they joined him against their domestic rivals and it is possible (though not certain) that half a century after Caesar’s departure they succumbed to them. Certainly they were conquered by Rome in 43 and joined in Boadicea’s revolt in 61. In the tribal division of Roman Britain given by Ptolemy their land included Camulodunum (Colchester), but nothing more is known of them. But their name plays a part in medieval legends and romances. There it was interpreted as Troy Novant, the “ new Troy,” and connected with the names of the Trojans Brutus and Corineus who were reputed to have given their names to Britain and Cornwell. (F. J. H.)

TRIOLET, one of the fixed forms of verse invented in medieval France, and preserved in the practice of many modern literatures. It consists of eight short lines on two rhymes, arranged a b a a a b a b, and in French usually begins on the masculine rhyme. The first line reappears as the fourth line, and the seventh and eighth lines repeat the opening couplet; the first line, therefore, is repeated three times, and hence the name. No more typical specimen of the triolet could be found than the following, by Jacques Ranchin (c. 1690):— “Le premier jour du mois de, mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie: Le beau dessein que je formais, Le premier jour du mois de mai ! le vous vis et je vous aimais. Si ce dessein vous plut, Sylvie, Le premier jour du mois de mai Fut le plus heureux de ma vie." This poem was styled by Ménage “ the king of triolets.” The great art of the triolet consists in using the refrain-line with such naturalness and ease that it should seem inevitable, and yet in each repetition slightly altering its meaning, or at least its relation to the rest of the poem. The triolet seems to have been invented in the 13th century. The earliest example known occurs in the Cléomadés of Adenéz-le-Roi (1258–1297). The medieval triolet was usually written in lines of ten syllables, and the lightness of touch in the modern specimens was unknown to these perfectly serious examples. One of the best-known is that of Froissart, “Mon cœur s'ebât en odorant la rose.” The rules are laid down in the Art et Science de Rhéthorique (1493) of Henry de Croi, who quotes a triolet written in words of one syllable. According to Sarrasin, who introduces the triolet as a mourner in his Pompe funèbre de Voiture, it was that writer who “ remis en vogue ” the ancient precise forms of verse, “ par ses balades, ses triolets et ses rondeaux, qui par sa mort (1648) retournaient dans leur ancien décri." Boileau threw scorn upon the delicate art of these pieces, and mocked the memory of Clément Marot because he “ tourna des triolets,” but Marmontel recognized the neatness and charm of the form. They continued to be written in France, but not by poets of much pretension, until the middle of the 19th century, when there was a great revival of their use.

The earliest triolets in English are those of a devotional nature composed in 1651 by Patrick Carey, a Benedictine monk at Douai, where he probably had become acquainted with what Voiture had made a fashionable French pastime. In modern times, the triolet was re-introduced into English by Robert Bridges, in 1873, with his— “When first we met, we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master; Of more than common friendliness When first we met we did not guess. Who could foretell the sore distress, This irretrievable disaster, When first we met?—we did not guess That Love would prove so hard a master." Since then the triolet has been cultivated very widely in English, most successfully by Austin Dobson, whose " Rose kissed me to-day,” “ I intended an Ode ” and " In the School of Coquettes ” are masterpieces of ingenuity and easy grace. In later French literature, triolets are innumerable; perhaps the most graceful cycle of them is “ Les Prunes," attached by Alphonse Daudet to his Les Armoureuses in 1858; and there are delightful examples by Théodore de Banville. In Germany the triolet has attracted much attention. Those which had been written before his day were collected by Friedrich Rassmann, in 1815 and 1817. But as early as 1795 an anthology of triolets had been published at Halberstadt, and another at Brunswick in 1796. Rassmann distinguished three species of triolet, the legitimate form (which has been described above), the loose triolet, which only approximately abides by the rules as to number of rhymes and lines, and single strophe poems which more or less accidentally approach the true triolet in character. The true triolet was employed by W. Schlegel, Hagedorn, Rückert, Platen and other romantic poets of the early 19th century. In many languages the triolet has come into very frequent use to give point and brightness to a brief stroke of satire; the French newspapers are full of examples of this. The triolet always, or at least since medieval times, has laboured under a suspicion of frivolity, and Rivarol, in 1788, found no more cutting thing to say of Conjon de Bayeux than that he was “ si recherche pour le triolet.” But in the hands of a genuine poetwho desires to record and to repeat a mood of graceful reverie or pathetic humour, the triolet possesses a very delicate charm.

See Friedrich Rassmann, Sammlung triolettischer Spiele (Leipzig, 1817).

TRIPHENYLMETHANE, (C6H5)3CH, a hydrocarbon, important as being the parent substance of several series of exceedingly valuable dyestuffs, e.g. rosanilines and malachite greens derived from aminotriphenylmethanes, and aurins and phthaleins derived from oxytriphenylmethanes. It is obtained by condensing benzal chloride with mercury diphenyl (Kekulé and Franchimont, Ber., 1872, 5, p. 907); from benzal chloride or benzotrichloride and zinc dust or aluminium chloride; from chloroform or carbon tetrachloride and benzene in the presence of aluminium chloride; and deamidating di- and tri-aminotriphenylmethane