the heroic (the Homeric age) was the most virtuous
age
of Greece. When Demosthenes is desirous of ex-
pressing any great and generous sentiment, he uses
the term νεανικὸν φρόνημα ; and it is the saying of
Plautus, when surprise is evinced at the benevolence
of an old man, "benignitas hujus ut adolescentuli
est." There is no difference, says the philosopher,
between youthful age and youthful character; and
what this is, cannot be better evinced than in the
very words of Aristotle: "The young are ardent in
desire, and what they do is from affection: they are
tractable and delicate; they earnestly desire, and
are quickly appeased; their wishes are intense,
without comprehending much, as the thirst and
hunger of the weary: they are passionate and hasty,
and liable to be surprised by anger; for being am-
bitious of honour, they cannot endure to be despised,
but are indignant when they suffer injustice: they
love honour, but still more victory; for youth
desires superiority, and victory is superiority, and
both of these they love more than riches; for as to
these, of all things, they care for them the least.
They are not of corrupt manners, but are innocent,
from not having beheld much wickedness; and they
are credulous, from having been seldom deceived;
and sanguine in hope, for, like persons who are
drunk with wine, they are inflamed by nature, and
from their having had but little experience of
fortune; and they live by hope, for hope is of the
future, but memory of the past, and to youth the
future is everything, the past but little they hope
all things, and remember nothing; and it is easy
to deceive them, for the reasons which have been
given, for they are willing to hope, and are full of
courage, being passionate and hasty, of which
tempers it is the nature of one not to fear, and of
the other to inspire confidence: and they are easily
put to shame, for they have no resources to set

aside the precepts which they have learned; and they have lofty souls, for they have never been disgraced or brought low, and they are unacquainted with necessity they prefer honour to advantage, virtue to expediency, for they live by affection rather than by reason; and reason is concerned with expediency, but affection with honour: and they are warm friends and hearty companions, more than other men, because they delight in fellowship, and judge of nothing by utility, and therefore not their friends; and they chiefly err in doing all things over-much, for they keep no medium; they love much, and they dislike much, and so in everything; and this arises from their idea that they know every. thing, and their faults consist more in insolence than in actual wrong: and they are full of mercy, because they regard all men as good, and more virtuous than they are, for they measure others by their own innocence; so that they suppose every man suffers wrongfully."

In this admirable picture of the youthful mind we behold the characteristic features, and as it were the ground-work, of natural chivalry. With some men, indeed, there may be a winter in the springtide to become afterwards a spring-tide in winter; youth may be perverted by the doctrine of sophists, and so bent from its natural direction as to become political and suspicious, and riper years, undeceived and renewed by religion, may enjoy the bright visions of imagination and innocence; but the natural order which prevails in the moral world is otherwise, and the time of issuing from youth is often distinguished by the decline and fall of a kingly and heroic state in the little world of man's soul. With the sentiment of chivalry happiness withdraws, attended by all the raptures which belonged to that lively, jocund, and, as I may say, dancing age; for what is termed entering the world, Godefridus.

I

assuming its principles and maxims, is nothing else but departing into those regions to which the souls of the Homeric heroes went sorrowing:

ὃν πότμον γοόωσα, λιποῦσ ̓ ἀνδροτῆτα καὶ ἥβην.

Generous souls are like those birds of paradise which are found on the banks of the Nile. When caught and confined, they never cease lamenting and struggling till they die, or are suffered again to fly away. To the spirit of chivalry there are, however, many other qualities belonging, the indications of which will always supply us with means of tracing its existence. Among them may be noticed, in the first place, an ardent admiration for excellence; which Crassus describes as "studium et ardorem quendam amoris, sine quo in vita nihil quidquam egregium nemo umquam assequetur." 1 A beautiful instance of this occurs in the romance of Perceforest. Lyonnel, discoursing with Perceforest, without knowing who the stranger was, had said of him, "Sachez qu'il nest riens au siecle chevalier de sa e que je desire tant que de devenir

main." Perceforest discovered himself to the youth, and then Lyonnel threw himself on the neck of the horse and kissed his thigh; and when the king saw the goodness of the squire, he alighted from his horse, undid his helmet, and then embraced and kissed the child. "Ha, sire," said Lyonnel, "vous faictes oultrage qui etes descendu pour ung garson que je suis." "Lyonnel," said the king, "je suis descendu encontre le bien que j'entens qui sera encores en vous.'

The same principle breaks out in the ardour with which men admire the excellence that is exhibited in books of philosophy, of history, or fiction, though youth, profound in its simplicity, will never believe excellence to be fiction. When Turenne was a lad,

1 Cicero, de Oratore, I, 30.

he used to delight in reading Quintus Curtius. An officer one day thought proper to tell him that it was but a romance. The young viscount was hurt to the last degree; and upon the officer continuing to rally him, he left the company, and sent him a challenge, which his mother, the Duchess of Bouillon, took care should end in a fête.1 Pompey, it appears, had, in like manner, absolutely resented the criticism of Dionysius Halicarnasseus, when he censured the writings of Plato. Chivalry induces men to conduct themselves in the same manner with respect to their favourite author as to their friend. When the queen, in the Morte d'Arthur, said that Sir Launcelot was "a fals traytour knyghte; 'Madame,' said Sir Bors, 'I pray you saye ye not so; for wete you wel, I maye not here such langage of hym.'" 3 The most surprising instance of this disposition is recorded by an ancient writer, who says that Cleombrotus, having read the Phædo of Plato, was seized with such a desire for the future life, that he threw himself into the sea. This disposition of mind is. described by Cicero to all his fellow-disciples in philosophy, when he says, "There is not one among us who, when he reads the books of Plato, so admirably written, in almost all of which Socrates is represented, does not suspect (although they are divinely written) that something still greater belongs to him upon whom they are written. To me, indeed," he says again, "those ancients seem to have embraced something more in their minds, and to have seen far more than can be perceived by any of our contemporaries."4 It may be permitted me to urge this confession upon those who would engage in a review of our heroic age, and entreat them, in regarding their ancestors," ut majus quiddam de illis

1 Histoire du Vicomte de Turenne par Ramsay, p. 5.
"Dion. Halicarnass. Epist. ad C. Pomp.

* II, 342.

De Oratore, lib. III, 4, 5.

quam quantum a nobis exprimitur suspicentur." Assuredly such a sentiment will not lead them from the truth. But this disposition of chivalry does not terminate with a mere belief in excellence, for it renders men anxious to promote it and to multiply the objects of its love and reverence. At the grand tournament described in the Morte d'Arthur, when Sir Gareth had overthrown a multitude of knights: "So God me help,' said king Arthur, that same knyght is a good knyght;' wherefore the kyng called unto hym Syr Launcelot, and praied hym to encounter with that knyght. Syr,' sayed Launcelot, 'I may wel fynde in my heart for to forbere hym as at this tyme, for he hath hadde travail ynough this day; and when a good knyght doth so wel upon some day, it is no good knyghtes parte to lette hym of his worship: peradventure,' said Launcelot, 'he is best byloved with this lady of all that ben here, for I seewell he payneth hym and enforceth hym to do great dedes; and therefore as for me, this day he shall have the honour; though it lay in my power to put hym fro it, I wold not.'" The same spirit breathes in that fine answer which is recorded of Charlemagne, when the traitor Ganelon, in an old romance, desired him to take the horse upon which young Galien was mounted, saying, that it was the finest in the world; to which the emperor replied, "Il convient mieux à Galien qu'à moi.'

From the love of excellence is inseparable a spirit. of uncompromising detestation for everything base and criminal. Thus Froissart describes Gaston de Foix, who "in every thyng was so parfite, that he cannot be praised too moche; he loved that ought to be beloved, and hated that ought to be hated"; adding a testimony to his practice, that "he never had myscreant with hym."

1 Vol. I, 233.