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Symbolism, Allegory, and Autobiography in The Pearl

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Henry Schofield
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Extract

In 1904 I ventured to write an article entitled “The Nature and Fabric of The Pearl,” in which I advanced opinions at variance with those previously held on the subject. Since then have appeared a new edition of the poem, five new English translations of all or a large part of it, and several articles on various aspects of the work. In no one of these documents has my point of view with regard to the symbolism, allegory, and autobiography in the poem been fully accepted. To be sure, the chief part of former, fanciful speculations regarding the author's life and incentive to composition have not been repeated; but all who have recently written about the poem have clung tenaciously to the pleasant belief that The Pearl is a personal lament of the poet for a daughter of his own, and therefore strictly elegiac and autobiographical. This belief would be fairly harmless if (because of the primary stress always laid upon it) it did not inevitably obscure the true significance of the poem; but on this account it should not be allowed to establish itself more firmly without frank protest.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , 1909 , pp. 585 - 675
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1909

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References

page 585 note 1 Pubs. Mod. Lang. Ass., xix, 154-215.

page 585 note 2 Ed. C. G. Osgood (Belles Lettres Series), Boston, 1906; trans. (in part) S. Weir Mitchell, N. Y., 1906—reprinted, with additions, in The Bibelot, Portland, Maine, 1908; trans. G. G. Coulton, London, 1906; trans. (in prose) C. G. Osgood, Princeton, N. J., 1907; trans. Marian Mead, Portland, Maine, 1908; trans. Sophie Jewett, N. Y., 1908. Professor Gollancz has announced a reprint of his edition and translation, to appear in The King's Classics.

See also C. S. Northup, Mod. Lang. Votes, xxii (1907), 21 ff.; G. G. Coulton, “In Defence of ‘Pearl,‘” Mod. Lang. Review, ii, (1907), 39 ff.; I. Gollancz, Cambridge History of English Literature, i, (1907), 320 ff.; J. J. Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, 2d Eng. ed., i, 351, n. A. Brandl, Anfänge der Autobiographie in England, in Sitzungsberichte der Kgl. Preuss. Akad. der Wissenschaften, xxxv (1908), 731-2; K. L. Bates, The Dial, Dec. 16, 1908, pp. 450 ff.

page 586 note 1 Save in the case of Professor Gollancz, who has revived his “hypothetical biography” of the poet in the Cambridge History, i, 330 ff.

page 587 note 1 There is no punctuation in the manuscript.

page 589 note 1 Early Eng. Allit. Poems, London, 1864, etc., EETS., i, p. ix.

page 589 note 2 Pearl, London, 1891, p. 3.

page 589 note 3 Edition, pp. 53, 170.

page 589 note 4 The translations of Mr. Coulton (“pleasant to princes' pay”) and of Miss Mead (“pleasing to prince's will”) do not reveal very clearly what the author's ideas on the point were. Miss Jewett's, on the contrary (“Pearl that the Prince full well might prize”), shows agreement with Dr. Osgood's rendering, with still further straining of the sense.

page 589 note 5 Be it said, however, to Professor Gollancz's credit, that, as he himself emphasizes (p. 107), he “carefully avoided” translating it so in the text, giving as his reason that “the allegory should reveal itself gradually.”

page 590 note 1 Cf. the description of Lady Meed in Piers Plowman (Text A, passus ii, ll. 11–12):

“Alle hir fyue fyngres . weore frettet with rynges, Of the preciousest perre (gems). that prince wered euere.”

Dr. Osgood himself cites (pp. 54, 53): “The gentileste jowelle ajuggede with lordes” (Morte Arthure, 862); “Coral ycud wiþ cayser and knyht” (Böddeker, Altengl. Dichtungen, 145. 7).

page 590 note 2 See below, pp. 612, 623 ff., 636.

page 590 note 3 “The author uses ”close“ (with silent ”e“) as an infinitive in the following line: ”þurз kynde of þe kyste þat hyt con close“ (271). There is extreme freedom in the scribe's use of final ”e“ in the text. The past participle of the verb is ”closed“ in Cleanness, l. 310 (”a cofer closed of tres, clanlych planed“); also ”clos“ in l. 12 (”if þay in clannes be clos þay cieche gret mede“). In the Destruction of Troy (ed. Panton and Donaldson, EETS., 1869) it is closet (closit), 268, 1509, 1634; in the Wars of Alexander (ed. Skeat, EETS., ES. 47, 1886) it is closid (closyd), 383, 1378, 2912.

page 591-592 note 1 In support of the “intended figurative meaning” discovered in this line, Dr. Osgood quotes as follows a passage from the Love-Rune of Thomas de Hales (Old Eng. Miscellany, ed. Morris, EETS., 1872, pp. 93 ff.):

“þe ymston [Mary] of þi bur,
He is betere an hundred folde
þan all þeos in heore culur.
He is idon in heouene golde,
And is ful of fyn amur.”

page 593 note 1 I have written “a possible mistake.” It may be I who am mistaken. The opinion I have reached, after long consideration of the passage and especially in the light of the lapidaries (on which see what follows), is that the author begins with statements concerning the gem pearl in general and then shifts in line nine (rather abruptly, to be sure) to statements concerning the particular pearl which he had in mind from the beginning to use as a symbol. On the contrary, it may well be held that he is speaking of this particular pearl throughout the stanza, and the “were” in line six and the definite “hyr” (it) in line nine would support this interpretation; yet I cannot make the opening lines fit such an explanation comfortably. There is evident difficulty whichever view one takes, and my argument does not depend on the correctness of either. The important fact I wish to establish here is that there is no mention of any maiden in any part of the stanza.

According to my view, “out of Orient” is equivalent to “when out of the Orient,” i. e., the author simply makes here the regular limitations of “Oriental pearl” in his superlative statements about the gem. This limitation is constant in mediæval literature. In The Pearl itself, the girl is said to wear a “crown of pearl Orient” (255), and we read of “precious pearls of Orient” (82). Cf. pp. 598, 602, 653 n. 1, 660 f. According to the alternative view, the translation of Dr. Osgood (as quoted) would convey the correct sense, except for the unjustifiable use of “her” in the line.

page 594 note 1 Pliny says in his Natural History (Bk. ix, ch. 57): “It is a well-ascertained fact that in Britannia pearls are found, though small, and of a bad colour” (trans., Bohn Library, ii; see note, p. 437). In Robert Greene's Orlando Furioso, 1594, p. 235, we read of “rich Orient pearl,” “more bright of hue than were the Margarets that Cæsar found in wealthy Albion.”

Messrs. Kunz and Stevenson write, in The Book of the Pearl (N. Y., 1908, p. 160): “In the twelfth century there was a market for Scotch pearls in Europe, but they were less valued than those from the Orient. (See Nicolai, Anglia Sacra, ii, 236; Alberti Magni Opera Omnia, ed. A. Borgnet, Paris, 1890, v, 41) An ordinance of John II, King of France, in August, 1355, which confirmed the old statutes and privileges of goldsmiths and jewellers, expressly forbade mounting Scotch pearls and Oriental pearls together in the same article, except in ecclesiastical jewelery. (”Orfèvre ne peut mettre en oeuvre d'or ne argent parles d'Ecosse avec parles d'Orient, si ce n'est en grand joyaulx d'église“)—See Histoire de l'Orfèvrerie-Joaillerie, Paris, 1850, p. 146; De la Borde, Emaux, Paris, 1852, ii, 437).”

page 595 note 1 If hyt is used in ll. 283-4 and 377 it is because the symbolism of the lost gem pearl is definitely in the poet's mind; cf. the use of ho, hyr, etc., in stanzas 14-19.

page 596 note 1 By a slight emendation of the text. Dante emphasizes the little spheres “che insieme Più s'abbelivan eoi mutui rai.” Cf. “full many a gem of purest ray serene”; “ryal ray” (l. 160).

page 597 note 1 Pp. xxxii, 54; cf. Pliny, Bk. ix, ch. 56, on the merit of pearls.

page 598 note 1 One is reminded of the charming ballade by Froissart, with the refrain: “Sur toutes fleurs j'aime la marguérite.” For example:

“Sur toutes fleurs tient on la rose belle
Et en après, je crois la violette,
La fleur de lis est belle et la perselle,
La fleur de glay (glaïeul) est plaisante et parfette
Et plusieurs sont qui aiment l'ancolie,
Le pyomer, le muquet, la soussie;
Chacune fleur a par soi son mérite;
Mais je vous dit, tant que pour ma partie,
Sur toutes fleurs j'aime la marguérite.“

Parodys d'Amours, ll. 1627 ff. (ed. Scheler, Oeuvres de Froissart, i, 49); modernized Faguet, Lit. Hist. of France, N. Y., 1907, p. 104.

page 598 note 2 Early Eng. Allit. Poems, ed. R. Morris, London, 1864, EETS., i, ll. 1117 ff.

page 599 note 1 Temple of Glas, ed. Schick, London, 1891, EETS. ES. lx, ll. 259 ff. Henry V wore in his helmet at the battle of Agincourt the famous ruby of the Black Prince, to whom it is said to have been given by Dom Pedro, King of Castille, after the battle of Nájera, near Vittoria, 1327 a. d.

page 599 note 2 L. Pannier, Les Lapidaires français, Paris, 1882, p. 295.

page 599 note 3 Pannier, pp. 246, 264.

page 599 note 4 See above, pp. 591-2.

page 600 note 1 The Latin poem De Gemmis by the Abbot Marbodus (Marbœuf), who was made Bishop of Rennes in 1081, and died c. 1124, was the basis of all the mediæval lapidaries. Edited Migne, Patr. lat., t. 171, col. 1725; Beckmann, Göttingen, 1799; (with translation) C. W. King, Antique Gems, 2nd ed., London, 1866, pp. 389 ff. Full information concerning the poem in Pannier; cf. p. 20: “Le lapidaire de l‘évêque Marbode n'eut pas seulement un immense succès dans sa rédaction originale latine, il ne resta pas seulement sous cette forme le grand poème pédagogique du moyen âge sur les pierres précieuses, et, jusqu’ à la fin du XVIe siècle, le manuel classique des écoles de pharmacie; on le traduisit très-anciennement dans presque toutes les langues de l'Europe occidentale.”

It may be noted that the author of The Pearl shows (in Cleanness, 1124 ff., Gollancz, p. xxviii) knowledge of the treatment of pearls as gems, giving a receipt for restoring their lustre when they grow dim (cf. Pliny, Bk. ix, ch. 56):

“It becometh never the worse for wear,
be it ne'er so old, if it remain but whole.
If by chance 'tis uncared for and becometh dim,
left neglected in some lady's bower,
wash it worthily in wine, as its nature requireth:
it becometh e'en clearer than ever before.“

He also refers (ll. 553–4) to another gem by way of comparison:

“As the bright burnished beryl ye must be clean that is wholly sound and hath no break.”

In the Lapidaire (Pannier, p. 123) we read:

“Bericle li Englois le claimment Qui mout le prisent et mout l'aimment.”

page 601 note 1 Pannier, pp. 39, 41, 45.

page 601 note 2 Pannier, p. 149.

page 602 note 1 Pannier, p. 65.

page 602 note 2 Pliny, Bk. ix, ch. 56.

page 603 note 1 Similar statements appear in the prose lapidary prepared for Philippe de Valois (Pannier, pp. 294, 297).

page 603 note 2 It will be remembered, from the passage above quoted (p. 591, note), that the allegorical gem “Maidenhood” in the Love-Rune was “set in the gold of heaven.”

page 604 note 1 Cf. “La bible et Sains Jehans nous dit” (708); “Sains Jehans en l'apocalypse Nous dit” (730); “Ce nous dist li verais legistres Sains Jehans (810); ”Sains Jehans dist tout a delivre En l'apocalypse son livre“ (837);—”Devise Sains Jehans,“ (1445); ”Li lapidaires nous devise“ (269); ”Ci com li livres nous devise“ (647); ”Que je vous devisai avant“ (844); ”Ce nous devise“ (1231); ”Trop i averoit long devis“ (1418); etc.

page 604 note 2 Pannier, pp. 258 ff.—“Surtout le but de ces oeuvres, c'est de faire passer, sous le couvert des idées reçues sur les pierres, des exemples de morale et d'édification et en même temps d'initier les âmes au mysticisme” (p. 209).

page 605 note 1 Pannier, pp. 265–6; ll. 889 ff.

page 605 note 2 Cf. Pearl, 445 ff.:

“The court of þe kyndom of God alyue
Hatz a property in hyt self beyng:
Alle þat may þerinne aryue
Of alle þe reme is quen oþer kyng, & neuer oþer зet schal depryue,
Bot vchon fayn of oþerez hafyng
& wolde her corounez wern worþ þo fyue
If possyble were her mendyng.“

page 607 note 1 Bouse of Fame, ll. 1350 ff.

page 607 note 2 G. F. Kunz and C. H. Stevenson, in their work of rare value and interest, The Booh of the Pearl, The History, Art, Science, and Industry of the Queen of Gems, New York, 1908.

page 607 note 3 The crown of Alfred the Great, that of Edward the Confessor (reproduced as the official crown of England), and the present crown of Scotland (used at the coronation of Robert Bruce's son, David II, 1324-76) were all largely decorated with pearls (l. c., pp. 418-19; cf. p. 15). Cf. Pliny, Bk. ix, ch. 58.

page 608 note 1 Ed. H. Yule, London, 1871; cf. also Bk. iii, ch. 2.

page 608 note 2 There was a popular French lapidary that went under the name of Sir John Mandevile, perhaps because it had so much to say of Oriental stones (ed. Is. del Sotto, Vienna, 1862; see Pannier, pp. 189 ff.).

page 609 note 1 Lity. Hist. of Eng. People, i, 264.

page 612 note 1 Lapidaire, ll. 49 ff. (Pannier, p. 239).

page 612 note 2 Camb. Hist., i, 331.

page 613 note 1 In the Introd. to his edition of the poem, p. xlvii.

page 613 note 2 Id., p. xlviii; Camb. Hist., i, 331.

page 614 note 1 Camb. Hist., i, 321.

page 615 note 1 Introd. to translation, p. ix.

page 616 note 1 I follow in the main Professor Gollancz's translation as being more literal; but Dr. Mitchell's rendering, so far as it goes, seems to me the most poetic of all that have appeared.

page 616 note 2 The season chosen for the vision to take place is plainly symbolical:

“In August in a high season, When corn is cut with sharp sickles” (39-40).

The “high season” is probably that of the Assumption of the Virgin, the fifteenth. No doubt, as I wrote in my previous article (p. 189), the choice of time and the wording was intended to suggest the harvest of the Great Reaper, as described in St. John's vision of one “like unto the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle,” who, at the bidding of an angel crying with a loud voice “the harvest of the earth is ripe,” “thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped.” We feel, as if our poet too, like the Apostle, may have heard a voice from heaven saying unto him: “Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth.”

page 617 note 1 Of this passage Dr. Osgood says (p. 67): “The whole passage shows an imperfect identification of the symbol with its subject” (259-61); and yet he thinks that “no symbolic meaning is discernible” in the frequency of the epithet jeweler, though reminiscent of the same epithet in the parable of the pearl of great price (734).—Compare the epithets of “rose” and “margaret” applied to the Virgin in such a passage as the following from the close of Gower's Mirour de l'Omme (ed. Macaulay, i, 334):

“O rose sanz espine dite
Odour de balsme, o mirre (myrrh) eslite, …
Sur tutes belles la plus belle
O gemme, o fine Margarite.“

See also below, p. 628.

page 617 note 2 In speaking to or of the girl personally the dreamer calls her: “that jewel” (253; cf. 277), “that gem” (289; cf. 266), “that precious piece” (192, 229). Even Christ is a “dear jewel” (795).

page 619 note 1 Professor A. S. Cook, in his article “Pearl, 212 ff.,” in Modern Philology, Oct., 1908, pp. 196-200, writes as follows in conclusion: “the flawless pearl—evidently symbolical in a peculiar degree—that constitutes the jewel at her breast.”

page 621 note 1 Cf. 869-70: “an hundred thousand and four and forty thousand more.”

page 623 note 1 Dr. Osgood notes in his glossary (p. 149) of the word juel: “used figuratively of the Pearl, 249, 253, 277; of her words, 278; of her companions, 929; of Christ, 795, 1124.”

page 624 note 1 In the familiar Biblical use of the word: “Create in me a clean heart,” etc. (Psalms, li).

page 624 note 2 Cf. Pearl, 725-6:

“Harmleз, trwe and vndefylde, Wythouten mote oþer mascle of sulpande synne.”

page 624 note 3 Cf. Pearl, 36: “þat spot þat I in speche expoun.”

page 625 note 1 Cf. Cleanness, ll. 12, 17 ff., 27 ff., 161 ff., 195 ff.

page 625 note 2 Further on this work, see p. 637, n.

page 626 note 1 Dr. Osgood (p. xxi; cf. 72 f.) lays too much weight on the similarity of this passage to Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, where Blanche is compared to “the soleyn fenix of Arabye, for ther liveth never but oon” (982-3). He appears to have overlooked my reference (article, p. 190, n. 3) to the remark of “Mandevile” (whose book our author certainly knew) “of the bird Fenix of Arabye”; “Et puet homme comparer cel oisel a Dieu, en ceo qe ni ad forsqe vn soul” (p. 25). There is no clear evidence that our author knew Chaucer, though the probability, of course, is that he did.

page 626 note 2 At this time there was a great dispute about the dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the “Virgin.

page 626 note 3 Ed. J. O. Halliwell, 1849, pp. 77 ff.; M. Cooke, Caxton Soc., 1852; Weymouth, Phil. Soc., 1864.

page 627 note 1 See my previous article, p. 166.

page 627 note 2 See Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, Leip., 1886 ff., passim; cf. Warton-Hazlitt, ii, 284.

page 627 note 3 See Eng. Nativity Plays, ed. S. B. Hemingway (Yale Studies in Eng., xxxviii), N. Y., 1909, p. 116.

page 628 note 1 Cf. H. N. MacCracken, Mod. Lang. Notes, xxiv (1909), pp. 110 ff.—Eng. version by Forrest. Cf. passage from Grower, cited p. 617, note, above.

page 628 note 2 Cf. Pearl, 436: “Blessed beginner of every grace.”

page 628 note 3 In Pearl (1037-8) it is stated that each gate of Paradise was “a perfect pearl that never fades.”

page 629 note 1 See Dreves, Analecta Hymnica, s. v. Margaretha, passim; Mone, Lateinische Hymnen, iii, 403-13, etc.

page 629 note 2 Ed. Graesse, 1846, cap. 93 (88), pp. 400 ff.; cf. Osgood, Pearl, p. xxxii: “Three of the eight English lives of St. Margaret paraphrase this prologue, namely, those by Lydgate, a pseudo-Barbour, and Bokenam.”

page 630 note 1 It is important to note the passage which I have italicized. As a matter of fact, through these “occasional epithets,” the symbolism of the pearl a girl never disappears from the poem; see above p. 617 ff.

page 631 note 1 Usually first introducing it with a “perhaps,” or “probably,” which is soon, however, lost sight of.

page 631 note 2 P. xxii; cf. xxxiii. On this point, see below, p. 652 f.

page 632 note 1 Gollancz reads “this”; see however, Osgood's edition.

page 633 note 1 Cf. also Pearl, 951-2 where “Jerusalem” is said to mean “nothing else but City of God, or Sight of Peace.”

page 633 note 2 My colleague, Professor Josiah Royce, has recently written (Philosophy of Loyalty, 1908, p. 157): “Let loyalty be your pearl of great price.” In the Assembly of Ladies, Loyalty was adorned “with grete perles ful fine and orient.” See below, p. 659 f.

page 634 note 1 Migne, cxii, p. 996: “Margarita est coeleste desiderium ut in Evangelio: ‘Inventa una pretiosa margarita,’ id est, concepto in mente desiderio coelesti. Per margaritas spiritualia sacramenta, ut in Evangelio: ‘ne mittatis margaritas vestras ante porcos,’ id est, interna mysteria non committatis immundis. Per margaritas homines justi, ut in Apocalypsi: ‘Duodecim margaritae, duodecim portae,’ quod homines sancti per fidem apostolorum aditum habent ad regnum coeleste. Per margaritas deliciae terrenae, ut in Apocalypsi: ‘Mulier erat ornata margaritis,’ quod fallacia hujus saeculi terrenis deliciis nitet.”

page 636 note 1 The thought of the author is like that of St. Bernard, who, for example, writes in a sermon just before one on the Assumption (De diversis sermo, xxxvii): “Quis enim coelibem vitam vitam coelestem et angelicam dicere vereatur? Aut quod in resurrectione futuri sunt omnes electi, quomodo non jam nunc estis sicut angeli dei in coelo a nuptiis penitus abstinentes? Amplectimini, fratres, pretiossimam margaritam, amplectimini sanctimonium vitae, qui vos efficit sanctorum similes et domesticos dei, dicente scriptura: Incorruptio facit proximum deo. Ita ergo non vespro quidem merito sed gratia dei estis, quod estis: quod ad castitatem et sanctimoniam spectat, angeli quidem terreni aut [potius] coeli cives sed interim in terra peregrini; quam diu enim sumus in [hoc] corpore, peregrinamur [a domino].” There is a literal translation in Old French, e. g.,: “Frere, teniz chiere ceste preciose mergerie, estranniz vos a sainte vie, car ille vos fait semblanz as sains et as amins de deu,” etc. (Alfred Schulze, Predigten des H. Bernhard in altfranz. Uebertragung, Tübingen, 1894, p. 333).

Compare, for example, the following passages in The Pearl:

  1. (a)

    (a) “For meek are all that dwell near Him” (404).

  2. (b)

    (b) “May he grant us to be His ‘homely hyne‘” (servants of His house, “domesticos Dei”) (1211-2).

  3. (c)

    (c) “I rede thee, forsake the mad world and purchase thy pearl immaculate” (743-4).

  4. “But knowest thou mortal anywhere,
    be he ever so holy in his prayers,
    that hath ne'er forfeited in somewise
    the meed of heaven so bright?
    And aye more often, the older they grow,
    have thy left the right and have wrought amiss;
    mercy and grace must pilot them;
    the grace of God is great enough“ (st. 52).

page 637 note 1 Our author was likewise familiar with secular allegories. In my previous article (pp. 182 ff.), I pointed out how much he was indebted to the Roman de la Rose, one of the very few works to which he refers directly in any of his poems. Professor Gollancz has since written (Camb. Hist., i, 321): “While the main part of the poem is a paraphrase of the closing chapters of the Apocalypse and the parable of the vineyard, the poet's debt to The Romaunt [of the Rose] is noteworthy, more particularly in the description of the wonderful land through which the dreamer wanders; and it can be traced here and there throughout the poem, in the personification of Pearl as Reason, in the form of the colloquy, in the details of dress and ornament, in many a characteristic word, phrase and reference; ‘the river from the throne,’ in the Apocalypse, here meets ‘the waters of the wells’ devised by Sir Mirth for the garden of the Rose. From these two sources. The Book 1 of Revelation, with its almost romantic. glamour, and The Romaunt 2 of the Rose, with its almost oriental allegory, are derived much of the wealth and brilliancy of the poem. The poet's fancy revels in the richness of the heavenly and the earthly paradise; but his fancy is subordinated to his earnestness and intensity.”

Even Dr. Osgood admits (p. xiv) that our author employed “the style and machinery” of the Roman and that he was familiar with and felt “a certain comradeship in his art” with “the many fourteenth century imitators of the Roman”—such as Baudouin de Condé and his son Jean, Watriquet de Couvin, Guillaume de Machault, Froissart, Deschamps, Langland, and Chaucer. He remarks, however (p. xvi): “Not one of the personifications of abstract qualities, whose speeches constitute by far the chief part of the Roman and its kind, is distinctly present in The Pearl.” Why, we may ask, should they be “distinctly present”? The poet did not plan for them to appear and speak. Yet note that the dreamer was pierced by Love-Danger (l. ll; cf. 250); Reason tried to make peace in his heart (52); Kind of Christ shewed him comfort (55; cf. Kind in Langland); and he reflects on Fortune (129; cf. Boethius, Bk. ii). Note also st. 63:

“Thy beauty ne'er from Nature came;
Pygmalion painted ne'er thy face;
Nor Aristotle, with all his lore,
Ne'er told of the properties of thy kind.“

page 640 note 1 EETS., i.

page 640 note 2 Cf. EETS., 46.

page 642 note 1 See E. Langlois, Origines et Sources du R. de la R., Paris, 1891.

page 643 note 1 Notes on Chaucer, in Mod. Lang. Review, iv (1908), p. 19.

page 644 note 1 Quotations from Kunz and Stevenson, Book of the Pearl, pp. 305, 47, 3.

page 645 note 1 See below, p. 663, n.

page 646 note 1 Introduction to translation, pp. xvi, xii.

page 646 note 2 See above, p. 638 f.

page 646 note 3 Miss Jewett speaks of the poem (p. x) as “the lament of a father for a little, long-lost daughter.”

page 646 note 4 Camb. Hist., i, 331.

page 646 note 5 The probability is exactly the opposite, if one may judge from progress in the poet's art; see my previous article, p. 165, and Osgood, edition, p. xlix. For further intimations to Professor Gollancz, see p. 672, n. 2.

page 647 note 1 To Miss Mead the poem is “simple indeed as a little child” (p. xviii).

page 648 note 1 In his own words (p. xiv f.): “The device of the sleep and the vision in field or wood was put to a great variety of uses in the fourteenth century. Besides the traditional use as the setting for a love-poem or for the praise of women, it was also employed in allegory of a moral or homiletic cast; in parables, dits and contes; in satire, both political and ecclesiastical; in eulogy; in poems treating a combination of these themes; and finally, as in The Pearl and Chaucer's Book of the Duchess, in elegy.”

page 648 note 2 See above, p. 616, n. 2.

page 648 note 3 Cf. Boccaccio's Eclogue (I. 38): “Quos insuper audio cantus,” etc. We wonder if the birds of the earthly paradise took a similar interest in him and dictated his poem.

“For, quen þose bryddeз her wyngeз bete,
þay songen wyth a swete asent;
So gracios gle couþe no mon gete
As here & se her adubbement“ (93 ff.).

Think of the rapture (“gracios gle”) of composition!

With The Pearl one might well compare the opening and ending of the Anglo-Saxon Be Domes Dœge, a translation of the De Die Judicii, ascribed to Bede (ed. Lumby, EETS., 65).

page 651 note 1 Miss Mead (p. xxi) calls this a “pregnant phrase.”

page 651 note 2 Of course, to use a convention is not necessarily to be “conventional”; cf. Osgood, edition, p. lv.

page 651 note 3 In Sir David Lyndesay's First Buke of the Monarchy, the poet begs the venerable man Experience, who appears to him in a dream, to give him, “a desolate man,” counsel. The old man does so, but first rebukes him for desiring the impossible.

“Thou art a great fool, Son, said he,
Things to desire which may not be“ (359).

page 653 note 1 Cf. Lydgate, Reason and Sensualty, ll. 665 ff.:

“Th' orient, which ys so bryght
And easteth forth so clere a lyght
Betokeneth in especiall
Things that be celestiali,
And things, as I kan diffyne
That be verrely dyvyne.“

There is much in the setting of this poem that reminds one of The Pearl. The author “expouns” the “heavenly empress” Nature, who appears to him in a vision.

page 653 note 2 Hilarii Versus et Ludi, 1838, p. 13, “Ad Roseam”: “Nomen tuum signat rosam,—et ecce virginitas.”

On the use of the name Rose in literature before the Roman de la Rose, see E. Langlois, Origines et Sources du R. de la R., Paris, 1891, pp. 40 ff.

page 654 note 1 Coulton, Mod. Lang. Review, ii, 43; cf. Gollanoz, Camb. Hist., i, 323.

page 654 note 2 See my article, p. 214.

page 654 note 3 See J. L. Lowes, Pubs. Mod. Lang. Ass., xix, 593 ff.; xx, 749 ff.

page 655 note 1 Mr. Coulton saya that “for the daisy [Chaucer] has a love so tender, so intimate, that it is difficult not to suspect under the flower some unknown Marguerite of flesh and blood” (Chaucer and his England, London, 1908, p. 112).

page 655 note 2 This remark of the maiden to the dreamer, Dr. Osgood thinks personal enough to argue from it that the poet was not an ecclesiastic. “She would,” he says, “hardly have given [this advice] if he had already forsaken it” [the world]! But, obviously, this is to introduce into a general phrase a particular meaning not intended. We read in Matthew xix, 29, in the very passage where Jesus relates the parable of the vineyard, which occupies so large a part of The Pearl: “And every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” “Forsaking the world” is not, of course, equivalent to “taking holy orders.” The following passage from the Pricke of Conscience (p. 163, l. 6034) shows the meaning clearly enough:

“First þas þat with Crist sal deme þat day
And noght be demed er namly þai
þat here forsuke þe werldes solace
and folowed rightly Cristes trace,
Als his apostels and other ma,
þat for his luf tholed angre and wa.“

Hugo of St. Victor (Állegoriae in Novum Testamentum, Bk. ii, ch. 25, Patr. Lat., 175, col. 794) quoting Matt. xiii, “Simile est,” etc., adds: “Bonae margaritae, lex et prophetae, una pretiosa, Salvatoris scientia: omnia vero vendit et istam emit, qui sicut Paulus, veteribus observationibus renuntiat, ut Christum lucrifaciat. Item omnia vendit et pretiosam margaritam emit, qui pro amore cœlestium terrena contemnit.”

page 656 note 1 Mod. Lang. Review, ii, 40.

page 658 note 1 Pointed out by Professor Cook, Mod. Phil., ii, 197 ff.

page 659 note 1 Chaucerian and Other Pieces. (Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Skeat, vii), Oxford, 1897, p. 397; cf. note p. 538.

page 660 note 1 In the Legend of Good Women, the God of Love had “gilte heer … corouned with a sonne” (B. 230). His queen, “Alceste the debonayre” was “clad in real (royal) habit grene” (214) and on her head she wore a “fret of gold” surmounted with a white crown made “of o (one) perle fyne, oriental” (221). She was:

“So womanly, so benigne, and so meke,
That in this world, thogh that men wolde seke,
Half hir beautee shulde men nat finde
In creature that formed is by kinde“ (243 ff.).

page 661 note 1 Chaucerian and Other Pieces, pp. 361 ff.; cf. pp. lxii ff. Prof. Skeat says (p. lxiv): “Surely these descriptions of seams, and collars, and sleeves, are due to a woman.” In that case, what shall we say of those in The Pearl?

page 662 note 1 With such phrases from The Pearl as: “þe myryeste margarys, at my deuyse, þat euer I seз зet with myn yзen” (199 f.), cf. “It was more pleasaunt than I coud devyse,” “That ever yet in al my lyf I sy” (F. and L., 199, 87); with “baysment gef myn hert a brunt,” “with yзen open & mouth ful clos, I stod as hende as hawk in halle. I hope þat gostly watз þat porpose” (Pearl, 174 ff.), cf. “as it were a sot, I stood astonied; so was I with the song Through ravished, that, [un]til late and long Ne wist I in what place I was, ne where,” “as me thought, I surely ravished was Into Paradyse” (F. L., 174 ff.); with Pearl, 223 ff., cf. “To tell right their greet beautè, it lyth not in my might, Ne their array” (F. L., 138 ff.); with Pearl, 213, “of self sute,” cf. “in a sute,” “in sute,” “al in a sute” (F. L., 227, 335, 340); with Pearl, 215, “wonted non,” cf. “nothing lakked” F. L., 426); with Pearl, 221, “her semblaunt sade,” cf. “with semblance ful demure” (F. L., 459); cf. “her countenaunce ful sad and ful demure” (A. of L., 82), with Pearl, 231, “heþen into Greece,” cf. “fro this countrey til Inde” (A. of L., 482).

page 662 note 2 The word in the text woþe is doubtful in meaning. Professor Gollancz derives it from A. S. wáþ; cf. Ger. weide; but Dr. Osgood derives it from O. N. vaþi, danger. Therefore I draw no inferences from the passage.

page 663 note 1 The passage reads “I am bot mol & marerez mysse.” Mr. Gollancz, emending marerez to marrez, renders the last clause, “grief woundeth me”; Dr. Mitchell: “my joy is gone”; Mr. Coulton: “heaviness.” Dr. Osgood in his translation renders it “undone with sin”; in his edition (p. 70) he writes: “marerez mysse. A botcher's blunder'? that is, I am worth no more than a botcher's blunder, good for nothing. But this is a bit forced. Holthausen and a reviewer in Ath., 1891. 184 suggests marierez mysse, i. e., ‘I lack manners,’ but N. E. D. shows that ‘manners’ was not employed in this sense till much later.”—Miss Jewett (following Dr. Osgood) translates the words: “my deeds amiss”; Miss Mead (following Professor Holthausen, Archiv, xc, 146): “lack manners.”

I would suggest that for marerez we read marierez or margerez, i. e., “margeries” (French margeries); cf. mariorys (206), margarys (199), margyrye (1037)—the meaning being: “I am but dust and lack margeries (pearls) [such as beautify you in heaven, ‘wyth precios perleз al vmbepyзte’ (204, etc.)].” The same sort of contrast is found in ll. 905 ff.: “I am but muck and mul (dust) the while, and thou so rich a radiant (”reken“) rose”;—and notably in the oft-quoted stanza (21) beginning: “‘O Perle,’ quod I, ‘in per leз pyзt,’” where the dreamer contrasts his loneliness on earth with her joy in paradise, concluding: “Since we were separated and torn asunder, I have been a joyless jeweller” (251-2).

page 663 note 2 “Meet,” to be sure, is in the present tense; but it suggests past meetings of the sort now missed. Would a father ever speak of meeting his own daughter “by stock or stone,” and nowhere else?

page 665 note 1 I recognize that the phrase “by stock or stone” is a common alliterative phrase and ought not to have its meaning forced. It is foolish to take passages out of their context or be too literal. Pearl in paradise is described as “stout and stiff” (779)! In Jerusalem they “stretch in the street” (971). Does the author's remark, “I wist never where my pearl was gone,” indicate that he was an agnostic?

page 666 note 1 See F. J. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Boston, 1886, ii, 234 ff.

page 667 note 1 Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist, London, 1887, p. 242.

page 667 note 2 See Life, above, p. 242.

page 668 note 1 It is only a conjecture that he actually did write the four, or more, poems that are attributed to him. I have myself no doubt about his authorship of Cleanness and Patience; but there is much to be said against the attribution to him of Gawain and the Green Knight.

page 669 note 1 Mr. Sidney Lee (Elizabethan Sonnets, i, p. lxxiv) quotes Minto's judgment concerning Lodge's sonnets: “There is a seeming artlessness in Lodge's sonnets, a winning directness, that constitutes a great part of their charm. They seem to be uttered through a clear and pure medium straight from the heart; their tender fragrance and music come from the heart itself”—whereupon Mr. Lee remarks: “Facts require the substitution in this passage for the word ‘heart’ of the words ‘French and Italian sonneteers.’”—Note further the way in which the author of Licia, writing to Lady Molineux “deprecates the notion that his book enshrines any episode in his own experience. He merely claims to follow the fashion, and to imitate the ‘men of learning and great parts’ of Italy, France, and England, who have already written ‘poems and sonnets of love.’ Most men, he explains, have some personal knowledge of the passion, but experience is not an essential preliminary to the penning of amorous verse. ‘A man may write of love and not be in love, as well as of husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches and be none, or of holiness and be flat profane’” (p. lxxxii).

page 670 note 1 I am indebted to Professor Kittredge for suggesting this parallel.

page 671 note 1 Compare also Lamb's “Child Angel: A Dream”:—“I chanced upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear of. I had been reading the ‘Loves of the Angels,‘ and went to bed with my head full of speculations suggested by that extraordinary legend. …

“I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could scarcely make out—but to some celestial region. It was not the real heaven neither—nor the downright Bible heaven—but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and air itself, I will hope, without presumption.

“Methought—what wild things dreams are!—I was present—at what would you imagine?—at an angel's gossiping.

“Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you nor I know—but there lay, sure enough, wrapped in its little cloudy swaddling-bands—a child angel. …

“And a name was given to the babe angel, and it was to be called Ge-Urania, because its production was of earth and heaven.”

“Oh, the inexplicable simpleness of dreams”!

page 671 note 2 See my article, pp. 157-8.

page 672 note 1 Notably Mr. Coulton (Mod. Lang. Review, ii, 39 ff.), who in a rather patronizing way explains that the “key” to my heterodoxy is due to “the demonstrably false conception of mediæval life” from which I started—a “central false idea.” Mr. Coulton, however, accepts Dr. Carleton Brown's contention that he was an ecclesiastic. He writes as follows: “The premiss (that he was an ecclesiastic) is indeed extremely probable; though even here it is necessary to face the fact that Dr. Brown's arguments would also prove—if we had not happened to know the contrary—that Sir Thomas More was an ecclesiastic. Still the ecclesiastic status of the author of Pearl is perhaps the point which stands out with the nearest approach to certainty among all our uncertainties about him; and Professor Schofield is therefore justified in building upon so likely a hypothesis.” Cf. Northup, M. L. Notes, xxii, 21: “Dr. Brown's argument is convincing.”

page 672 note 2 Moreover, Dr. Brown can do that better than I. Professor Gollancz writes (Camb). Hist., i, 330): “The intensely religious spirit of the poems, together with the knowledge they everywhere display of Holy Writ and Theology, lead one to infer that he was, at first, destined for the service of the church; probably, he became a ”clerk,“ studying sacred and profane literature at a monastic school, or at one of the universities; and he may have received the first tonsure only.” Note the passages I have underlined—more intimations!

page 673 note 1 On Mannyng, see my Eng. Lit. from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer, p. 361 and 412 ff., where the following passage is quoted.