Page:The Song of Roland.djvu/16

 contemporary work, for love of its detail and one might almost say for love of its dulness. Even a random reader like myself, only dipping here and there into such things, so long as they are really things of the period, can often learn more from them than from the most careful constitutional digests or political summaries, by modern men more learned than himself. I admire the abnegation of the translator, who is himself a very brilliant and individual writer, in having really translated the Song of Roland. It would have been easy for a man of his poetic gift to make out of it a modern poem. It might easily have been a temptation to him to deal with Roland rather as Tennyson dealt with Arthur. But the value of his vivid and very laborious service to literature is precisely that a modern man, educated on the modern histories, may find here the things he does not expect. I have here only space for one example, out of many that I could give to show what I mean. Most of the stock histories tell the young student something of what Feudalism was in legal form and custom; that the subordinates were called vassals, that they did homage and so on. But they do it somehow in such a way as to suggest a savage and sullen obedience; as if a vassal were no more than a serf. What is left out is the fact that the homage really was homage; a thing worthy of a man. The first feudal feeling had something ideal and even impersonal like patriotism. The nations were not yet born; and these smaller groups had almost the souls of nations. Now in this translation, merely because it is an honest translation, the reader will find the word “vassalage” used again and again, on a note which is not only heroic but even haughty. The vassal is obviously as proud of being a vassal as anybody could be of being a lord. Indeed the feudal poet uses the word “vassalage” where a modern poet would use the word “chivalry.” The Paladins charging the Paynims