Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/226

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [10 S. I. MARCH 5, WO*.-

3. Ibid., xv. 4 : Quale i Fiamminghi tra Guizzante e Bruggia.

An unusually attractive discussion owes its l)irth to this line ; and, as with the Irish Round Towers, finality is not yet reached. Guizzante is still in search of its (Edipus, though MR. J. G. ALGER posed as such in these columns (8 lh S. ii. 101), somewhat over- con fid en tly, thus :

" Guzzante, says Mr. Gladstone [Nineteenth Cen- tury, June, 1892], according to the commentators,

is Wissant, near Calais Butis Guzzante Wissant?

An embankment from Bruges to Wissant would have been at least a hundred and twenty miles in length, a gigantic work, utterly inconceivable in the fourteenth century, and Dante would have been guilty of an anti-climax in adding as a second simile the embankment of the Brenta at Padua. No ; Guzzante is Cadzand, a port a little to the north-east of Bruges ; and we may fancy Dante there comparing the German Ocean with the tideless Mediterranean. The Italian form was Cazzante, and Guzzante is probably a copyist's error. The commentators who misled Mr. Glad- stone cannot have looked at the map." In the first place, so self-confident a critic should be sure of his ground. Mr. Gladstone does not write of Guzzante, but of Guizzante a distinction with no difference, perhaps, but one that makes for precision. In the second, is it quite certain that Guizzante is Cadzand ? Is it also equally certain that Cazzante is the Italian form for Cadzand ? MR. ALGER thinks so, and his sureness has received undue prominence (as I think) in a reference by Scartazzini in his ' Dantologia.' But the absence of proof for the statement is as significant as is the ignoring of it by later writers. Thus Mr. Tozer (1901) has in loco :

" Guizzante : Wissant, a town between Calais and Cape Gris Nez ; it was known in the Middle Ages as the starting-point for the crossing to Eng- land. This place and Bruges mark the western and eastern lirilits of the coast of Flanders, as known to Dante ; so the general meaning is ' on the Flemish coast.' Bruges is used roughly here for the coast in its neighbourhood, since it lies inland from Ostend."

This is clear and definite without dogma- tism, though possibly beneath MR. ALGER'S notice. Not so, however, a singularly clear and persuasive article by Mr. Paget Toynbee in the Academy of 10 December, 1892, wherein he marshals a goodly array of authorities in favour of the identification of Guizzante with Wissant. "Guizzante," he claims, as fearlessly as MR. ALGER contends for Cadzand, " is the undoubted Italian form of Wissant, proved by a reference to Villani, 'Poi ne venne [Edw. III.] a Guizzante'"; and, further, the identification of the Italian Guizzante with Wissant is confirmed by the Provengal form Guissan, by the OF. Guit- sand in the ' Chanson de Roland,' the striking

variants of several Anglo-Norman poems, such as Wittsant, Huitsand, Wizant, &c., and the testimony of many monastic chronicles, early and mediaeval. The article is as near an approach to finality as it is possible to achieve, and inferentially vindicates Mr. Gladstone from the charge of being " misled by the commentators."

But here MR. ALGER again steps into the arena with discomfiting result (Academy 14 January, 1893). There was a joint in his harness which Mr. Toynbee was not slow to perceive, the former being " misled "' by a misquotation from or a mistranslation of a passage in Benvenuto da Imola. One line from Mr. Toynbee's rejoinder (Academy, 21 January, 1893) will explain the nature of the misleading :

"Benvenuto says absolutely nothing about the length of the dyke by ' xy milliaria ' ; he simply says that the tide was receding 15 miles."

The defeat was signal, as it cut the heart out of MR. ALGER'S contention, and was gallantly acknowledged by him in the next issue of the journal.

Curiously enough, however, Mr. Toynbee s own armour was not flawless, for his assertion in his first article that " Cadzand never was. within the boundaries of Flanders called Gaggante in Italian," was rebutted by M. Paul Fredericq :

" This was an error in mediaeval geography. As a matter of fact Cadsand was situated in an island belonging to the county of Flanders in the mouth of the river Scheldt, at the very time Dante was- writing. This situation remained, the same till the beginning of the seventeenth century."

This may be, but it in no wise identifies Cadzand with Guizzante. Nor is it material whether Cadzand was of Flemish or any other nationality. Nor, again, whether the Italian for it be Cazzante or Gaggante, does it follow etymologically that Guizzante is signified. And, further, I see nothing either "absurd " or "inconceivable" in an embankment from? a coast point opposite Bruges to Wissant in the fourteenth century, even though the line was 120 miles in length. Dyke-building was no more difficult than church-building, and we tolerably well know what the latter was in the Middle Ages. Besides, if it was

Sossible to construct an embankment from- ruges (or " the coast in its neighbourhood ") to the Scheldt, it would be equally so to continue it thence to Wissant. As a matter of fact, as Dean Plumptre observes (note in loco),

" Wiasant, the harbour of which is now choked up and disused, was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the usual port of embarcatio_n for England,, [and] its neighbourhood abounds in remains or