The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wine, Women, and Song, by Various

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Title: Wine, Women, and Song
Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse

Author: Various

Translator: John Addington Symonds

Release Date: March 24, 2006 [EBook #18044]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WINE, WOMEN, AND SONG

"Wer liebt nicht Weib Wein and Gesang
Der bleibt ein Narr sein Lebenslang."

--_Martin Luther._

_MEDIAEVAL LATIN STUDENTS' SONGS_

Now First Translated into English Verse

WITH AN ESSAY

BY

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

London

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1884

TO

_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON._

_Dear Louis,_

_To you, in memory of past symposia, when wit (your wit) flowed freer
than our old Forzato, I dedicate this little book, my pastime through
three anxious months._

_Yours,_

_JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS_

_Villa Emily, San Remo,_

_May 1884._

Wine, Women, and Song.

I.

When we try to picture to ourselves the intellectual and moral state
of Europe in the Middle Ages, some fixed and almost stereotyped ideas
immediately suggest themselves. We think of the nations immersed in a
gross mental lethargy; passively witnessing the gradual extinction of
arts and sciences which Greece and Rome had splendidly inaugurated;
allowing libraries and monuments of antique civilisation to crumble
into dust; while they trembled under a dull and brooding terror of
coming judgment, shrank from natural enjoyment as from deadly sin, or
yielded themselves with brutal eagerness to the satisfaction of vulgar
appetites. Preoccupation with the other world in this long period
weakens ma