enca," is the substratum, nay, is the
very flesh and blood, of the spiritual passion to which, in later days,
we owe the book of Beatrice.

It is a harsh thing to say, but one which all sociology teaches us, that
as there exists no sensual relation which cannot produce for its
ennoblement a certain amount of passion, so also does there exist no
passion (and Phaedrus is there to prove it) so vile and loathsome as to
be unable to weave about itself a glamour of ideal sentiment. The poets
of the Middle Ages strove after the criminal possession of another man's
wife. This, however veiled with fine and delicate poetic expressions, is
the thing for which they wait and sigh and implore; this is the reward,
the supremely honouring and almost sanctifying reward which the lady
cannot refuse to the knight who has faithfully and humbly served her.
The whole bulk of the love lyrics of the early Middle Ages are there to
prove it; and if the allusions in them are not sufficiently clear, those
who would be enlightened may study the discussions of the allegorical
persons even in the English (and later) version of Guillaume de Lorris'
"Roman de la Rose;" and turn to what, were it in _langue d'oc_, we
should call a _tenso_ of Guillaume li Viniers among Maetzner's
"Altfranzoesische Lieder-dichter." The catastrophe of Ulrich von
Liechtenstein's "Frowendienst," where the lady, the "virtuous," the
"pure," as he is pleased to call her, after making him cut off his
finger, dress in leper's clothes, chop off part of his upper lip, and go
through the most marvellous Quixotic antics dressed in satin and pearls
and false hair as Queen Venus, and jousting in this costume with every
knight between Venice and Styria, all for her honour and glory; pulls
the gallant in a basket up to her window, and then lets him drop down
into the moat which is no better than a sewer; this grotesque and
tragically resented end of Ulrich's first _love service_ speaks volumes
on the point. The stones in Nostradamus' "Lives of the Troubadours," the
incidents in Gottfried's "Tristan und Isolde," nay, the adventures even
in our expunged English "Morte d'Arthur," relating to the birth of Sir
Galahad, are as explicit as anything in Brantome or the Queen of
Navarre; the most delicate love songs of Provence and Germany are
cobwebs spun round Decameronian situations. And all this is permitted,
admitted, sanctioned by feudal society even as the _cecisbeos_ of the
noble Italian la