Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/315

Rh the coming of the new spirit. For readers of that age lack of novelty in the matter was made up for by the æsthetic enjoyment of an ornate style. Everything seemed to them to be new when garbed in far-fetched and turgid phrases. It is an error to suppose that only literature cultivated this stylistic ornamentation, and that art was exempt from it. Art also displays the same pursuit of novelty and rich variety of expression. In the pictures of the brothers Van Eyck there are parts which might be called “rhetorician-like:” for example, the figure of Saint George presenting Canon van de Paele to the Virgin at Bruges. The magnificent helmet, the gilt armour, in which a naïve classicism is apparent, the dramatic gesture of the saint, all this is closely akin to Chastellain’s grandiloquence. The same tendency recurs in the figure of the archangel Michael in the small triptych of Dresden and in the group of angels singing and playing, on the altar-piece of the Lamb. It is also present in the work of the brothers of Limburg: for instance, in the bizarre magnificence of their “Adoration of the three Magi.”

Unless the ornate form be so charming and so novel as to suffice in itself for giving life to a piece of verse, the poetry of the fifteenth century is happiest when it is not aspiring to express an important thought, nor aiming at elegance of style. When it is content to call up a simple image or scene, or to express a simple sentiment, it is not without vigour. Hence it is more successful in short pieces than in long-winded compositions and grave subjects. In the roundel and the ballad, constructed on a single airy theme, all grace depends on tone, rhythm and vision; in fact, the more the artistic song of the time approaches the popular song, the greater is its charm.

The end of the fourteenth century is a turning-point in the relations between music and lyrical poetry. The song of the preceding period was intimately linked with musical recitation. The common type of the lyrical poet of the Middle Ages is always the poet–composer. Guillaume de Machaut used to compose the melodies of his poems. He also fixed the customary lyrical forms of his time: roundels, ballads, etc. He invented the “débat,” the contention of different parties on a moot point. His roundels and ballads are very airy, simple in form and thought; they have little colour; all these are