compensating
measure; the conduct of Iseult to the faithful Brengwain, if by no
means unfeminine, is exceedingly detestable; and if Tristram was
nearly as good a knight as Lancelot, he certainly was not nearly so
good a lover or nearly so thorough a gentleman. But the attractions of
the story were and are all the greater, we need not say to the vulgar,
but to the general; and Gottfried seems to have been quite admirably
and almost ideally qualified to treat them. His French original is not
known, for the earlier French versions of this story have perished or
only survive in fragments; and there is an almost inextricable coil
about the "Thomas" to whom Gottfried refers, and who used to be
(though this has now been given up) identified with no less a person
than Thomas the Rhymer, Thomas of Erceldoune himself. But we can see,
as clearly as if we had parallel texts, that Gottfried treated his
original as all real and sensible poets do treat their originals--that
is to say, that he took what he wanted, added what he chose, and
discarded what he pleased. In his handling of the French octosyllable
he at once displays that impatience of the rigidly syllabic system of
prosody which Teutonic poetry of the best kind always shows sooner or
later. At first the octosyllables are arranged in a curious and not
particularly charming scheme of quatrains, not only mono-rhymed, but
so arranged that the very same words occur in alternate places, or in
1, 4, and 2, 3--"Man," "kan," "man," "kan"; "list," "ist," "ist,"
"list,"--the latter order being in this interesting, that it suggests
the very first appearance of the _In Memoriam_ stanza. But Gottfried
was much too sensible a poet to think of writing a long poem--his,
which is not complete, and was continued by Ulrich von Turheim, by an
Anon, and by Heinrich von Freiberg, extends to some twenty thousand
lines--in such a measure as this. He soon takes up the simple
octosyllabic couplet, treated, however, with great freedom. The
rhymes are sometimes single, sometimes double, occasionally even
triple. The syllables constantly sink to seven, and sometimes even to
six, or extend themselves, by the admission of trisyllabic feet, to
ten, eleven, if not even twelve. Thus, once more, the famous
"Christabel" metre is here, not indeed in the extremely mobile
completeness which Coleridge gave it, nor even with quite such an
indulgence in anapaests as Spenser allows himself in "The Oak and the
Brere,"