"Et je, le pouvre escrivain,
Au cueur triste, faible et vain,
Voyant de chascun le deuil,
Soucy me tient en sa main;
Toujours les larmes à l'œil,
Rien fore mourir je ne vueil."[1]
All that we get to know of the moral state of the nobles points to a sentimental need of enrobing their souls with the garb of woe. There is hardly one who does not come forward to affirm that he has seen nothing but misery during his life and expects only worse things from the future. Georges Chastellain, the historiographer of the dukes of Burgundy and chief of the Burgundian rhetorical school, speaks thus of himself in the prologue to his chronicle: "I, man of sadness, born in an eclipse of darkness, and thick fogs of lamentation." His successor, Olivier de la Marche, chooses for his device the lament, "tant a souffert La Marche."[2] It would be interesting to study from the point of view of physiognomy the portraits of that time, which for the most part strike us by their sad expression.
It is curious to notice the variation of meaning which the word melancholy shows in the fourteenth century. The ideas of sadness, of reflection, and of fancy, are blended in the term. For example, in speaking of Philip of Artevelde, lost in thought, in consequence of a message he had just received, Froissart expresses himself thus: "Quant il eut merancoliet une espasse, il's'avisa que il rescriproit aus commissaires dou roi de France."[3] Deschamps says of something that is uglier than could be imagined: no artist is "merencolieux" enough to be able to paint it. The change of meaning evidently shows a tendency to identify all serious occupation of the mind with sadness.
The poetry of Eustache Deschamps is full of petty reviling of life and its inevitable troubles. Happy is he who has no children, for babies mean nothing but crying and stench;
- ↑ And I, poor writer, With the sad, feeble and vain heart, When I see every one mourning, Then Affliction holds me in her hand; I have always tears in my eye, I wish for nothing but to die.
- ↑ So much has La Marche suffered.
- ↑ When he had reflected for a space, he resolved to answer the emissaries of the king of France.
