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Love, who in the end advises a settlement and defers judgment. This is not the place to discuss the question of the real existence of Courts of Love; it is sufficient for the present purpose that the Provençal poets treated them as existent and as bound by principles to guide their judgment-as the reader of Chaucer will remember-and even by rules of procedure.* The latter, however, seem to exist only in prose, and so do not fall within the scope of the present article.

French.-Among numerous examples one of the best is a poem of Jean le Houx, or of Olivier Basselin, whichever was the real author of the Vaux de Vie, published in the 16th century. It is given here in the admirable translation of Mr. J. P. Muirhead, published in 1875.

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If thirst must indicted be,

Then I never wish to raise

A dilatory plea.

Ham is an accessory

Upon which I found my case.

When a drinking suit is mine

Then I always would dispense

With a contradicting line,

And all argument resign,

If they pay me my expense.

As my main substantial ground

Thirst and heat I mean to keep;

My case lies in goblet round;

In default I'm never found,

Though the cup be ne'er so deep.

Rubric, paragraph, the task

Might attempt, but all in vain,

Trying some authentic flask;

Practice there is all I ask,

When I would its contents drain.

* 66

They found that Love resembled a process at law, and more particularly the practice of the Cours d'Amour, as actually constituted," Courthope, Hist of Eng. Poetry, i., 354.

Then the poet says in effect in the remaining stanzas, “If I have to decide between law and drink, away with lawsuits, say I, and let us drink!"* Probably in his sober moments Jean reversed himself on appeal, for was he not an advocate of Caen ?

In the Bibliothèque Elzevirienne several examples occur; Le Procès des Femmes et des Pulces (written about 1520) is hardly quotable.t Of about the same period is Le Procès des Deux Amans plaidyant en la Court de Cupido la Grâce de leur Dame.‡ The preference expressed by Louis XII. for Parisiennes over Rouenniennes was the ground of a Débat des Dames de Paris et de Rouen, related by the supposed advocate of the Parisiennes and ending in their favour.§ A peculiarity of French literature is the occurrence of an allegorical prose tenso in Gerson's Traité contre le Roumant de la Rose (written in 1402). There the author feigns that he is in the Court Christian, presided over by Lady Canonical Justice and her assessors Mercy and Truth, who received the complaint of Chastity against the intolerable forfeitures which one named le Fol Amoureux had caused her.||

Italian. The sonnet of Cino da Pistoia, a translation of which appeared in the February number, is one of the most finished and artistic of the kind. There are tendencies towards the tenso in some of Dante's sonnets, T but the style was not fully worked out by him. A very interesting one is Petrarch's canzone Quell'antico mio dolce empio signore, in which the severe brevity of Cino's sonnet is expanded into a long poem by a master hand. Baldly analysed it runs thus. My old adversary (i.e., Love) was cited by me *S'il faut procéder pur le boire, p. 179.

Recueil de Poésies Françaises des xve. et xvie. Siècles, x., 61 (Paris, 1875). Id., 170. § Id., xi., I.

See Courthope, Hist. of Eng. Poetry, i., 185.

As in the sonnet

Due donne in cima della mente mia;

Canzionere, iv., sonnet 26, of Dr. Moore's edition.

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66

before the Queen, whose is the part divine of our nature, and who sits in the highest heaven. The plaintiff began, Madonna, in my youth I set foot in the defendant's realm and never had anything but anger and disdain, and suffered torments so many that my infinite patience was well-nigh exhausted and I hated life itself. Love took from me all my peace and gave me war instead. I served God too little and my lady too well. Love made me seek desert places, barren thickets, barbarous men and manners. Since I have been his I have lost my peace, sleep is banished from my nights and may not be recovered by simples or magic. Tears, martyrdom, and sighs wear me out." To whom Love, the defendant, with bitter reproof, Lady, hear the other side. The plaintiff in his youth was given to the art of selling words and lies. Raised by me to higher things he shames him not to complain of me-me who kept him free from the evil thoughts that wrought his harm. He knows the story of Atrides, and Alcides, and Hannibal; they loved basely; but as to him, I gave him the heart of the noblest lady that the world hath known since Lucretia, and so sweet a language and so lovely a song did I grant him that before it no base thought might stand. From good seed reap I an evil harvest. I gave him wings to soar to Heaven and he forgat me for the lady whom I gave him for pillar of his weak life." Then cried I, "Yea, he gave her, but soon he took her away." He answered, “Nay, not I, but He who took her to himself." In the end both turned to the seat of justice, the poet with trembling voice, Love with words high and harsh, and each says, "Noble lady, I await thy sentence." She smiled and spake, "It pleases me to have heard the question mooted, but time is wanted for so great a cause."*

* In Morte di M. Laura, Canz. vii. The decision is perhaps a reminiscence of Cino's and that again of Virgil's.

Spanish. In the various Cancioneros there are frequent instances of more or less merit. The peculiarity of one is that in a complaint of a lover against his lady in the Court of Love prose and verse are mixed; in the end Love gives no decision, but says that he is weary of the whole matter.* The long and notorious Pleyto del Manto is in full judicial style, with counsel's speeches, evidence of witnesses, judgment, and appeal, but the subject-matter is such as can hardly be printed here.t In more modern poetry a sonnet of Yriarte's is noticeable. The poet complains to Apollo, the justiciary,‡ that the God did not allow Yriarte's verse to be richer. Apollo answers the petition in the Court of Parnassus, and says that the reason is obvious, the petitioner had not sung the praises of Orminta.

Portuguese. One of the longest and most finished pieces of the kind is the tenso known as O Cuydar e Sospirar, Jorge de Silveira and Nuno Pereira contest for the love of Lyanor da Silva. Both present their petitions to the lady and each nominates two procurators (ajudadores). The procurators are heard and argue at great length the respective merits of loving and sighing. Various objections are taken at different points of the argument by the procurators. Finally the lady, after disposing of some minor points, reserves judgment, which is in the end given in favour of sighing on the authority of the text-books.

Que o tem favorecido
Estes livros que revolvo.

An appeal to the Court of Love is lodged.

The court

of appeal reverses the lady and advises her to be more discreet in her law (mays discreta em sua ley). The appeal

* Cancionero General of Hernando de Castillo (1511), Madrid (1882), No. 147.

† Cancionero de Obras de Burlas (1520). Appendix to above edition,

No. 257.

A ti me quexo, Apolo justiciero.

part seems to be by a later hand.

106

The whole process fills

pages of the Cancioneiro Geral, a compilation of Garcia de Resende in 1516.* Some of the louvores or encomia in the Cancioneiro are in the form of the judgment of a lady in favour of one of the cavaliers who sing her praises in strophes of fixed length.

Flemish. The great medieval epic of Reinaert de Vos (Reynard the Fox) was probably Flemish or Platt Deutsch in origin. Whether or not its earliest form was verse or prose does not much matter, as verse forms existed very early.t A free poetical version, as is well known, was published by Göthe as late as 1792. A short analysis of the satire from the legal point of view may be interesting as it is illustrative of the procedure of the period. Isegrim the wolf, with his kindred and friends, complain at the court of Nobel the lion, at Stade, of trespass and misdeeds by Reinaert.‡ The defendant should have taken his corporal oath on the Gospels that he was innocent, but he did not do so. Other charges followed, among them that he assaulted Cuwaert the hare, who was in the king's peace. In the end Bruun the bear and Tibeert the cat are sent as summoners to Reinaert, but on their failure Grimbeert the badger goes and brings him to the Court. Reinaert says (but apparently only in Caxton's translation) that he had been to school at Oxford and was licensed in both laws (civil and canon). He is

*Edition of Stuttgart, 1846, i., I.

†The earliest appears to be that printed at Lübeck in 1498. The best edition of the verse text appears to be that of Ernst Martin, Willems Gedicht van den Fos Reinaerde (Paderborn, 1874).

Compare with this the procedure of the secta in England, in which no doubt kinsmen would often be chosen as oath-helpers for convenience, though not required by law. In Leges Henrici Primi, lxiv., 4, there is a reference to purgation in a charge of homicide by the oath of kinsmen. The importance of the kindred (Mæg, Magburh) in pre-conquest law is obvious to any reader of the laws of the kings from Alfred downwards.

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