Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/371

 much blood, bone, and muscle, whose duty it is to joust or war, if possible, in the romanceful twilight of love and chivalry, but in any case to war. The man of prayer, if his sense of personality be less material, clothes his spiritual self and his entire spirit-world in sensual shapes, and would treat as a heretic any who might hint an objection against such earthly dress. Warrior and saint alike touch but the surface of personality; if it be so objective for the former as to be identified with animal strength, it is for the latter the sensual prop on which his "Realism" is supported. How is the growth of the cities connected with these types of weak personality? If these show themselves in monkish chronicle or baronial "epic," do not the commune and the bourg reflect themselves in a literary form of their own?

It is no mere accident that brings together the rise of the modern European drama and that of towns; a brief contrast of feudal and town life will prove this. The lord in his fortified castle, surrounded by his family and armed retinue—such is the centre of each feudal molecule. Beyond the castle walls a group of serfs cultivates the lord's lands; and, though the village church may stand as a reminder that there-is an ideal of human unity before which even the gulf which separates serf and lord disappears, the castle chapel has its own caretaker of souls who is himself of knightly parentage, loftily patronises the village priest, and reminds the villagers that the Christian ideal of human equality is indeed only an ideal. Between this outer circle of the feudal group and the lord's family there is, in fact, no tie save that of force, no spiritual link save the ceremonial of Christian worship. This ceremonial is, indeed, a drama in miniature; but so long as there is only one gigantic personality of force (that of the lord), so long as bonds of social sympathy