Note d — Chapter IX · [a] (continued 3)

The well-known Memoirs of St. Palaye are the best repository of interesting and illustrative facts respecting chivalry. Possibly he may have relied a little too much on romances, whose pictures will naturally be overcharged. Froissart himself has somewhat of this partial tendency, and the manners of chivalrous times do not make so fair an appearance in Monstrelet. In the Memoirs of la Tremouille (Collect. des Mém. t. xiv. p. 169), we have perhaps the earliest delineation from the life of those severe and stately virtues in high-born ladies, of which our own country furnished so many examples in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and which were derived from the influence of chivalrous principles. And those of Bayard in the same collection (t. xiv. and xv.) are a beautiful exhibition of the best effects of that discipline.

It appears to me that M. Guizot, to whose judgment I owe all deference, has dwelt rather too much on the feudal character of chivalry. Hist. de la Civilisation en France, Leçon 36. Hence he treats the institution as in its decline during the fourteenth century, when, if we can trust either Froissart or the romancers, it was at its height. Certainly, if mere knighthood was of right both in England and the north of France, a territorial dignity, which bore with it no actual presumption of merit, it was sometimes also conferred on a more honourable principle. It was not every knight who possessed a fief, nor in practice did every possessor of a fief receive knighthood.

Guizot justly remarks, as Sismondi has done, the disparity between the lives of most knights and the theory of chivalrous rectitude. But the same has been seen in religion, and can be no reproach to either principle. Partout la pensée morale des hommes s'élève et aspire fort au dessus de leur vie. Et gardez vous de croire que parce qu'elle ne gouvernait pas immédiatement les actions, parceque la pratique démontait sans cesse et étrangement la théorie, l'influence de la théorie fut nulle et sans valeur. C'est beaucoup que le jugement des hommes sur les actions humaines; tot ou tard il devient efficace.

It may be thought by many severe judges, that I have over-valued the efficacy of chivalrous sentiments in elevating the moral character of the middle ages. But I do not see ground for withdrawing or modifying any sentence. The comparison is never to be made with an ideal standard, or even with one which a purer religion and a more liberal organization of society may have rendered effectual, but with the condition of a country where neither the sentiments of honour nor those of right prevail. And it seems to me that I have not veiled the deficiencies and the vices of chivalry any more than its beneficial tendencies.

A very fascinating picture of chivalrous manners has been drawn by a writer of considerable reading, and still more considerable ability, Mr. Kenelm Digby, in his Broad Stone of Honour. The bravery, the courteousness, the munificence, above all, the deeply religious character of knighthood and its reverence for the church, naturally took hold of a heart so susceptible of these emotions, and a fancy so quick to embody them. St. Palaye himself is a less enthusiastic eulogist of chivalry, because he has seen it more on the side of mere romance, and been less penetrated with the conviction of its moral excellence. But the progress of still deeper impression seems to have moderated the ardour of Mr. Digby's admiration for the historical character of knighthood; he has discovered enough of human alloy to render unqualified praise hardly fitting, in his judgment, for a Christian writer; and in the Mores Catholici, the second work of this amiable and gifted man, the colours in which chivalry appears are by no means so brilliant [1848.]