man's
life; it is not an accident, much less an incidental occurrence to be
lightly taken or possibly avoided: it is absolutely indispensable to
man's social training, to his moral and aesthetical self-improvement; it
is part and parcel of manhood and knighthood. Hence, where it does not
arise of itself (and where a man is full of the notion of such love, it
is rare that it does not come but too soon) it has to be sought for.
Ulrich von Liechtenstein, in his curious autobiography written late in
the twelfth century, relates how ever since his childhood he had been
aware of the necessity of the loyal love service of a lady for the
accomplishment of knightly duties; and how, as soon as he was old enough
to love, he looked around him for a lady whom he might serve; a
proceeding renewed in more prosaic days and with a curious pedantic
smack, by Lorenzo dei Medici; and then again, perhaps for the last time,
by the Knight of La Mancha, in that memorable discussion which ended in
the enthronement as his heart's queen of the unrivalled Dulcinea of
Toboso. _Frowendienst,_ "lady's service," is the name given by Ulrich
von Liechtenstein, a mediaeval Quixote, outshining by far the mad
Provencals Rudel and Vidal, to the memoirs very delightfully done into
modern German by Ludwig Tieck; and "lady's service" is the highest
occupation of knightly leisure, the subject of the immense bulk of
mediaeval poetry. "Lady's service" in deeds of arms and song, in constant
praise and defence of the beloved, in heroic enterprise and madcap
mummery, in submission and terror to the wondrous creature whom the
humble servant, the lover, never calls by her sacred name, speaking of
her in words unknown to Antiquity, _dompna, dame, frowe, madonna_--words
of which the original sense has almost been forgotten, although there
cleave to them even now ideas higher than those associated with the
_puella_ of the ancients, the _wib_ of the heroic days--lady,
mistress--the titles of the Mother of God, who is, after all, only the
mystical Soul's Paramour of the mediaeval world. "Lady's service"--the
almost technical word, expressing the position, half-serf-like,
half-religious, the bonds of complete humility and never-ending
faithfulness, the hopes of reward, the patience under displeasure, the
pride in the livery of servitude, the utter absorption of the life of
one individual in the life of another; which constitute in Provence, in
France, in Germany, in England