The Harbours of England | Page 7

what the
word "chariot," in its noblest acceptation, means.
So, also, though much chivalry is yet left in us, and we English still
know several things about horses, I believe that if we had seen
Charlemagne and Roland ride out hunting from Aix, or Coeur de Lion
trot into camp on a sunny evening at Ascalon, or a Florentine lady
canter down the Val d'Arno in Dante's time, with her hawk on her wrist,
we should have had some other ideas even about horses than the best
we can have now. But most assuredly, nothing that ever swung at the
quay sides of Carthage, or glowed with crusaders' shields above the
bays of Syria, could give to any contemporary human creature such an
idea of the meaning of the word Boat, as may be now gained by any
mortal happy enough to behold as much as a Newcastle collier beating
against the wind. In the classical period, indeed, there was some
importance given to shipping as the means of locking a battle-field
together on the waves; but in the chivalric period, the whole mind of
man is withdrawn from the sea, regarding it merely as a treacherous
impediment, over which it was necessary sometimes to find
conveyance, but from which the thoughts were always turned
impatiently, fixing themselves in green fields, and pleasures that may
be enjoyed by land--the very supremacy of the horse necessitating the
scorn of the sea, which would not be trodden by hoofs.
It is very interesting to note how repugnant every oceanic idea appears
to be to the whole nature of our principal English mediæval poet,
Chaucer. Read first the Man of Lawe's Tale, in which the Lady
Constance is continually floated up and down the Mediterranean, and
the German Ocean, in a ship by herself; carried from Syria all the way
to Northumberland, and there wrecked upon the coast; thence yet again
driven up and down among the waves for five years, she and her child;

and yet, all this while, Chaucer does not let fall a single word
descriptive of the sea, or express any emotion whatever about it, or
about the ship. He simply tells us the lady sailed here and was wrecked
there; but neither he nor his audience appear to be capable of receiving
any sensation, but one of simple aversion, from waves, ships, or sands.
Compare with his absolutely apathetic recital, the description by a
modern poet of the sailing of a vessel, charged with the fate of another
Constance:
"It curled not Tweed alone, that breeze-- For far upon Northumbrian
seas It freshly blew, and strong; Where from high Whitby's cloistered
pile, Bound to St. Cuthbert's holy isle, It bore a bark along. Upon the
gale she stooped her side, And bounded o'er the swelling tide As she
were dancing home. The merry seamen laughed to see Their gallant
ship so lustily Furrow the green sea foam."
Now just as Scott enjoys this sea breeze, so does Chaucer the soft air of
the woods; the moment the older poet lands, he is himself again, his
poverty of language in speaking of the ship is not because he despises
description, but because he has nothing to describe. Hear him upon the
ground in Spring:
"These woodes else recoveren greene, That drie in winter ben to sene,
And the erth waxeth proud withall, For sweet dewes that on it fall, And
the poore estate forget, In which that winter had it set: And then
becomes the ground so proude, That it wol have a newe shroude, And
maketh so queint his robe and faire, That it had hewes an hundred paire,
Of grasse and floures, of Inde and Pers, And many hewes full divers:
That is the robe I mean ywis Through which the ground to praisen is."
In like manner, wherever throughout his poems we find Chaucer
enthusiastic, it is on a sunny day in the "good green-wood," but the
slightest approach to the sea-shore makes him shiver; and his antipathy
finds at last positive expression, and becomes the principal foundation
of the Frankeleine's Tale, in which a lady, waiting for her husband's
return in a castle by the sea, behaves and expresses herself as follows:--
"Another time wold she sit and thinke, And cast her eyen dounward fro

the brinke; But whan she saw the grisly rockes blake, For veray fere so
wold hire herte quake That on hire feet she might hire not sustene Than
wold she sit adoun upon the grene, And pitously into the see behold,
And say right thus, with careful sighes cold. 'Eterne God, that thurgh
thy purveance Ledest this world by certain governance, In idel, as men
sain, ye nothing make. But, lord, thise grisly fendly rockes blake, That
semen rather a foule confusion