Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 10.djvu/412

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [ s. x. -NOV. 22, 1902.

unique processes of romance adaptation so consistently exemplified in the whole range of his work. Upon it was engrafted, in the similitude of a dream, not only the applica- tion of the Nine Worthies (assuredly bor- rowed, along with the entire scheme of the vows and their treatment, from the ' Vceux du Paon '), but also the historical borrowing from the indictment of Roger Mortimer. For the dream itself let me point out that, just as in the ' Destruction of Troy ' (11. 2359-60) Paris was hunting alone when his dream came, and as in the ' Parlement of the Thre Ages' that motive was repeated (1 4), so here in 'Morte Arthure' the king tells that his vision found him in the wood alone : Me thoughte I was in a wode willed myn one.

'M. A., '3230.

In the dream woodland of the 'Parlement' the "wild swine" play a part (1 99), as they do in that of ' Morte Arthure ' (1. 3232). Sub- stantially the same woodland hunting dream motive appears in ' Wynnere and Wastoure,' accompanied there by gorgeously chivalric description and glorification of Edward III. For ' Morte Arthure ' he is an impossible critic who henceforth fails to recognize in its intrusions borrowed from Mordred(A.D. 1330} and Jeanne de Montfort (A.D. 1342) and Charles of Blois (1342-47), from the descrip- tions of Crecy (1346) and from the sea-fight of Winchelsea (1350) a series of allusions so distinct to the career of Edward III. as to make it certain that that monarch's Court, let us say in the spring of 1365, knew right well who was really meant when the philosopher prophesied

So many clerkis and kynges sail karpe of joure dedis And kepe joure conquestez in cronycle for ever.

'M. A.,' 3444-5.

By no gift of poetic prophecy could it have been seen, however, that of the chronicles of the Edwardian epoch none was so singularly to commemorate the conquests of its hero as this poem by its very indirectness does, weaving the victories of Edward III. into the fabric of literature with an art at once so courtly and so cryptic that the glory of the compliment to Edward is only revealed in the fulness of its lustre by intent scrutiny of the pattern of the romance.

If the poet adding to the banner of Arthur the " Gules charged with crowns or " of Ed- ward III. (11 3646-7, see August Antiquary), and giving to Lucius the sable eagle on a field of gold imperially borne by Charles IV. transposed and glorified in the entire corona- tion episode certain actual parts of the rather unheroic career of Charles IV. and assigned them to a victorious King Arthur, even this

intruded fancy has historical root. Above all, note how the sire of Milan (11. 3134-49) submits : he is the Viscount of Rome of the poem, and the Visconti jof history. The poet understood how to play at vice versd. Edward III., still in the splendour of Crecy, where he put Charles IV. to flight, had in 1348 been chosen emperor by the dis- satisfied body which had previously elected Charles IV.; and although Edward, "fear- ing perils, labours, and wars, refused* the empire," an imperial coronation was a splendia might-have-been not without its aptness to embellish in poetical romance an Arthur who already had in him so much of Edward III., while not only was his con- tinental enemy the emperor heraldically identified with Edward's enemy Charles IV., but the domestic traitor Mordred also, with the white lion passant, was heraldically identified (see August Antiquary) with the arch-traitor of Edward's reign, Roger Mor- timer. "The Emperourt of Almayne" of the years between 1346 and 1356 demands, im- perially, an audience in the hall of romance of the alliterative King Arthur. Nor may it be forgotten, as vital to the conception of the baulked coronation, that the mystic voice of seeming prophecy, quickened perhaps by the doings of the English companies in Italy, had said that Edward III. should be emperor.

GEO. NEILSON.

GEORGE I. : CORONATION CELEBRATION AT LEGHORN, 1714. The interesting articles ante, pp. 225, 313, as to the contradictory dates of


 * Mutii ' Germanorum Chronicon,' sub anno 1348.

t There is no Emperor of Germany in Geoffrey of Monmouth. Borrowings from history in 'Morte Arthure ' referable to Charles IV. include, besides the arms, the position Luxembourg ani Metz occupy in the poem, the Italian journey, the allusions to the Viscount of Rome and the lord of Milan, the sym- bols and ceremony of imperial coronation, and the design for that ceremony being performed at Rome. There are others, of which probably the most striking is the ambiguous allusion : Theemperour of Almayne and all theiseste marches We sail be overlynge of all that on the erthe lenges.

LI. 3210-11.

The context of this may denote (reading back) that "theemperour of Almayne" treated evidently as the first gentleman of Europe is a hostage of Rome in the hands of Arthur, and thus a type of the glory of Arthur's conquest, or (reading forward) more probably that, as emperor himself, Arthur is "over- lynge of all." Either reading completely counten- ances my suggestion of a vice verm motive in the Italian journey and the unaccomplished coronation. A heraldic point requires separate notice, for which meantime see the Athenceum of 15 November regard- ing the Viscount of Rome.