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MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO Bib. de l’Arsenal, Paris. POET DECLAIMING TO ACCOMPANIMENT OF VIOL. Frontispiece....
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The Author’s acknowledgments are due to the Editor of The Nineteenth Century and After for his kind permission to reprint such of the following studies as have already appeared in that Review, and also to “George Fleming” (Miss Constance Fletcher) for her rendering, on page 146, of four verses of Christine de Pisan’s poem on Joan of Arc....
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No one can study French mediæval lore, or Gothic cathedral, or Book of Hours, without realising how great a love of Nature prevailed in the late Middle Ages. The poems tell of spring, “the season of delight,” of gardens which suffice “for loss of Paradise,” and of birds “with soft melodious chant.” In the dim stillness of the cathedral, Nature is expressed in infinite variety. Foliage grows in the hollows of the mouldings, and sometimes, as at Chartres, even the shafts, as they tower into the gloom, end in half-opened leaves, suggestive of spring, of hope, and of aspiration. Many a sunny façade shows us scenes of rural life—sowing, reaping, vine-dressing, and so forth—fashioned as a calendar in stone, and many a peasant must have rejoiced as he saw himself and his occupation thus represented in effigy. Fortunately for the poor toiler, the Church not only taught that “to...