Verbo rogantes
Removes ostio,
Munera dantes
Foves cubiculo,
Illos abire praecipis
A quibus nihil accipis,
Caecos claudosque recipis,
Viros illustres decipis
Cum melle venenosa. (1)
(1) GAUDEAMUS: CARMINA VAGORUM SELECTA. Leipsic. Trubner.
1879.
But our illustrious writer of ballades it was unnecessary to
deceive; it was the flight of beauty alone, not that of
honesty or honour, that he lamented in his song; and the
nameless mediaeval vagabond has the best of the comparison.
There is now a Villon Society in England; and Mr. John Payne
has translated him entirely into English, a task of unusual
difficulty. I regret to find that Mr. Payne and I are not
always at one as to the author's meaning; in such cases I am
bound to suppose that he is in the right, although the
weakness of the flesh withholds me from anything beyond a
formal submission. He is now upon a larger venture,
promising us at last that complete Arabian Nights to which we
have all so long looked forward.
CHARLES OF ORLEANS. - Perhaps I have done scanty justice to
the charm of the old Duke's verses, and certainly he is too
much treated as a fool. The period is not sufficiently
remembered. What that period was, to what a blank of
imbecility the human mind had fallen, can only be known to
those who have waded in the chronicles.
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