The pieces addressed to Saint Radegonde, or to the abbess Agnes, are incontestably those which best make known and characterise the turn of mind, and the kind of poetry, of Fortunatus. On these only I shall dwell.

One is naturally led to attach to the relations of such persons the most serious ideas, and it is, in fact, under a grave aspect that they have been described: It has been mistakenly; do not suppose that I have here to relate some strange anecdote, or that this history is subject to the embarrassment of some scandal. There is nothing scandalous, nothing equivocal, nothing which lends the slightest malignant conjecture, to be met with in the relations between the bishop and the nuns of Poictiers; but they are of a futility, of a puerility which it is impossible to overlook, for even the poems of Fortunatus are a monument of them.

These are the titles of sixteen of the twenty-seven pieces addressed to Saint Radegonde, or to Saint Agnes:

Book VIII., piece 8, to Saint Radegonde upon violets.
9, upon flowers put on the altar.
10, upon flowers which he sent her.

Book XI., piece 4, to Saint Radegonde for her to drink

Now see some samples of the pieces themselves; they prove that the titles do not deceive us..

"In the midst of my fasting," writes he to Saint Radegonde, "thou sendest me various meats, and at the sight of them thou painest my mind. My eyes contemplate what the doctor

forbids me to use, and his hand interdicts what my mouth desires. Still when thy goodness gratifies us with this milk, thy gifts surpass those of kings. Rejoice, therefore, I pray thee, like a good sister with our pious mother, for at this moment I have the sweet pleasure of being at table."

And elsewhere, after having a repast: "Surrounded by various delicacies, and all kinds of ragouts, sometimes I sleep, sometimes I eat; I open my mouth, then I close my eyes, and I again eat of everything; my mind was confused, believe it, most dear ones, and I could not easily either speak with liberty, or write verses. A drunken man has an uncertain hand; wine produced the same effect upon me as upon other drinkers; methinks I see the table swimming in pure wine. However, as well as I am able, I have traced in soft language this little song for my mother and my sister, and although sleep sharply presses me, the affection which I bear for them has inspired what the hand is scarcely in a state to write."

פיי

It is not by way of amusement that I insert these singular quotations, which it would be easy for me to multiply; I desire, on the one hand, to place before your eyes a view of the manners of this epoch, which are but little known; and on the other, to enable you to see, and, so to speak, to touch with your finger, the origin of a kind of poetry which has held rather an important place in our literature, of that light and mocking poetry which, beginning with our old fabliaux, down to Ver-vert, has been pitilessly exercised upon the weakness and ridiculous points of the interior of monasteries. Fortunatus, to be sure, did not mean to jest; actor and poet at the same time, he spoke and wrote very seriously to Saint Radegonde and the abbess Agnes; but the very manners which this kind of poetry took for a text, and which so long provoked French fancy, that puerility, that laziness, that gluttony, associated with the gravest relations,-you see them begin here with the sixth century, and under exactly the same traits with those which Marot or Gresset lent to them ten or twelve centuries later.

However, the poems of Fortunatus have not all of

1 Tertun Carm., 1. xi. No. 19; Bib. Pat., vol. v. p. 596.

Ibid. No. 24; ibid.

them this character. Independently of some beautiful sacred hymns, one of which, the Vexilla Regis, was officially adopted by the church, there is in many of these small lay and religious poems a good deal of imagination, of intellect, and animation. I shall only quote a passage from an elegiac poem of three hundred and seventy-one verses, about the departure of Galsuinthe, sister of Brunehault, from Spain, her arrival in France, her marriage with Chilperic, and her deplorable end; I select the lamentations of Galsuinthe, her mother, wife of Athanagilde; she sees her daughter about to quit her, embraces her, looks at her, embraces her again, and cries:

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Spain, so full of inhabitants, and too confined for a mother, land of the sun, become a prison to me, although thou extendest from the country of Zephyr to that of the burning Eous, from Tyrhenia to the ocean—although thou sufficest for numerous nations, since my daughter is not longer here, thou art too narrow for me. Without thee, my daughter, I shall be here as a foreigner and wanderer, and, in my native country, at once a citizen and an exile. I ask, what shall these eyes look at which everywhere seek my daughter?... Whatever infant plays with me will be a punishment; thou wilt weigh upon my heart in the embraces of another: let another run, step, seat herself, weep, enter, go out, thy dear image will always be before my eyes. When thou shalt have quitted me, I shall hasten to strange caresses, and, groaning, I shall press another face to my withered breast; I shall dry with my kisses the tears of another child; I shall drink of them; and may it please God that I may thus find some refreshment for my vouring thirst! Whatever I do, I shall be tormented, no remedy can console me; I perish, O Galsuinthe, by the wound which comes to me from thee! I ask what dear hand will dress, will ornament thy hair? Who, when I shall not b there, will cover thy soft cheeks with kisses? Who will warr thee in her bosom, who carry thee on her knees, surroun thee with her arms? Alas! when thou shalt be without me, thou wilt have no mother. For the rest, my sad heart charges thee at the time of thy departure: be happy, I implore thee; but leave me: go: farewell: send through the air some consolation to thy impatient mother; and, if the wind bears me any news, let it be favourable."l

1 Fortun. Carm., 1. vi. No. 7; Bib. Pat., vol. x. p. 502

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The subtlety and affectation of bad rhetoric are to be found in this passage; but its emotion is sincere, and the expression ingenious and vivid. Many pieces of Fortunatus have the same merits.

I shall prosecute this inquiry no further; I think I have fully justified what I said in commencing: sacred literature is not there; the habits, and even the metrical forms of the dying pagan literature, are clearly stamped upon them. Ausonius is more elegant, more correct, more licentious than Fortunatus; but, speaking literally, the bishop is a continuation of the consul; Latin tradition was not dead; it had passed into the Christian society; and here commences that imitation which, amid the universal overthrow, unites the modern to the ancient world, and, at a later period, will play so considerable a part in all literature.

We must pause: we have just studied the intellectual state of Frankish Gaul from the sixth to the eighth century. This study completes for us that of the development of our civilization during the same period, that is, under the empire of the Merovingian kings. Another epoch, stamped with the same character, began with the revolution which raised the family of the Pepins to the throne of the Franks. In our next lecture I shall attempt to describe the revolution itself; and we shall then enter into the new paths which it forced France to take.

NINETEENTH LECTURE.

The causes and the character of the revolution which substituted the Carlovingians for the Merovingians-Recapitulation of the history of civilization in France under the Merovingian kings-The Frankish state in its relations with the neighbouring nations-The Frankish state in its internal organization-The aristocratical element prevailed in it, but without entirety or regularity-The state of the Frankish churchEpiscopacy prevails in it, but is itself thrown into decay-Two new powers arise-1st. The Austrasian Franks-Mayors of the palace-The family of the Pepins-2. Papacy-Circumstances favourable to its progress-Causes which drew and united the Austrasian Franks to the popes-The conversion of the Germans beyond the Rhine-Relations of the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, on the one hand with the popes, on the other, with the mayors of the palace of Austrasia-Saint Boniface'The popes have need of the Austrasian Franks against the LombardsPepin-le-Bref has need of the pope to make himself king-Their alliance and the new direction which it impressed upon civilization - Conclusion of the first part of the course.

We have arrived at the eve of a great event, of the revolution which threw the last of the Merovingians into a cloister, and carried the Carlovingians to the throne of the Franks. It was consummated in the month of March 752, in the semi-lay and semi-ecclesiastical assembly held at Soissons, where Pepin was proclaimed king, and consecrated by Boniface, archbishop of Mayence. Never was a revolution brought about with less effort and noise; Pepin possessed the power: the fact was converted into right; no resistance was offered him; no protest of sufficient importance to leave a trace in history. Everything seemed to remain the same; a title, merely, was changed. Yet there can be no doubt but