Wine, Women, and Song | Page 5

forth the miseries of monastic life with realistic passion
bordering upon delirium, under titles like the following--_Dissuasio
Concubitûs in in Uno tantum Sexu_, or De Monachi Cruciata.[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Du Méril, _Poésies Populaires Latines Antérieures au
Deuxième: Siècle_, p. 240.]
[Footnote 2: Du Méril, op. cit., p. 239.]
[Footnote 3: Du Méril, _Poésies Populaires Latines du Moyen Age_, p.
196.]
[Footnote 4: Du Méril, _Poésies Pop. Lat. Ant._, pp. 278, 241, 275.]
[Footnote 5: These extraordinary compositions will be found on pp.
174-182 of a closely-printed book entitled _Carmina Med. Aev. Max.
Part. Inedita. Ed. H. Hagenus. Bernae. Ap. G. Frobenium_.
MDCCCLXXVII. The editor, so far as I can discover, gives but scant
indication of the poet who lurks, with so much style and so terrible
emotions, under the veil of Cod. Bern., 702 s. Any student who desires
to cut into the core of cloister life should read cvii. pp. 178-182, of this

little book.]
VI.
There is little need to dwell upon these crepuscular stirrings of popular
Latin poetry in the earlier Middle Ages. To indicate their existence was
necessary; for they serve to link by a dim and fragile thread of
evolution the decadent art of the base Empire with the renascence of
paganism attempted in the twelfth century, and thus to connect that
dawn of modern feeling with the orient splendours of the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries in Italy.
The first point to notice is the dominance of music in this verse, and the
subjugation of the classic metres to its influence. A deeply significant
transition has been effected from the versus to the modulus by the
substitution of accent for quantity, and by the value given to purely
melodic cadences. A long syllable and a short syllable have almost
equal weight in this prosody, for the musical tone can be prolonged or
shortened upon either. So now the
cantilena_, rather than the
_metron, rules the flow of verse; but, at the same time, antique forms
are still conventionally used, though violated in the using. In other
words, the modern metres of the modern European races--the Italian
Hendecasyllable, the French Alexandrine, the English Iambic and
Trochaic rhythms--have been indicated; and a moment has been
prepared when these measures shall tune themselves by means of
emphasis and accent to song, before they take their place as literary
schemes appealing to the ear in rhetoric. This phase, whereby the
metres of antiquity pass into the rhythms of the modern races, implies
the use of medieval Latin, still not unmindful of classic art, but
governed now by music often of Teutonic origin, and further modified
by affinities of prosody imported from Teutonic sources.
The next point to note is that, in this process of transition, popular
ecclesiastical poetry takes precedence of secular. The great rhyming
structures of the Middle Ages, which exercised so wide an influence
over early European literature, were invented for the service of the
Church--voluminous systems of recurrent double rhymes, intricate

rhythms moulded upon tunes for chanting, solid melodic fabrics, which,
having once been formed, were used for lighter efforts of the fancy, or
lent their ponderous effects to parody. Thus, in the first half of the
centuries which intervene between the extinction of the genuine Roman
Empire and the year 1300, ecclesiastical poetry took the lead in
creating and popularising new established types of verse, and in
rendering the spoken Latin pliable for various purposes of art.
A third point worthy of attention is, that a certain breath of paganism,
wafting perfumes from the old mythology, whispering of gods in exile,
encouraging men to accept their life on earth with genial enjoyment,
was never wholly absent during the darkest periods of the Middle Ages.
This inspiration uttered itself in Latin; for we have little reason to
believe that the modern languages had yet attained plasticity enough for
the expression of that specific note which belongs to the
Renaissance--the note of humanity conscious of its Græco-Roman
pagan past. This Latin, meanwhile, which it employed was fabricated
by the Church and used by men of learning.
VII.
The songs of the Wandering Students were in a strict sense moduli as
distinguished from versus; popular and not scholastic. They were,
however, composed by men of culture, imbued with classical learning
of some sort, and prepared by scholarship for the deftest and most
delicate manipulation of the Latin language.
Who were these Wandering Students, so often mentioned, and of whom
nothing has been as yet related? As their name implies, they were men,
and for the most part young men, travelling from university to
university in search of knowledge. Far from their homes, without
responsibilities, light of purse and light of heart, careless and
pleasure-seeking, they ran a free, disreputable course, frequenting
taverns at least as much as lecture-rooms, more capable