My fate will show," the dungeon and the grave Sad fate is mine; but worse their crime attends. No wonder though my heart with grief boil o'er, When both, in treaty, join'd our plighted hands? To those my friends, long lov'd, and ever dear, Go forth my song, and say, whate'er they hear, Know then the youths of Anjou and Touraine, The last stanza, in its present state, has so little meaning, that Mr. Ellis has not attempted to versify it. His conjectural emendation, however, is highly ingenious and estimable. Mr. Warton2 has recorded from Rymer 3, that Savarie de Mauleon, an English gentleman who lived in the service of St. Louis, king of France, and one of the Provençal poets, said of Richard, Coblas a teira faire adroitement Pou vos oillez enten dompna gentilz. "He could make stanzas on the eyes of gentle ladies." Proof of this seems to be afforded by the ancient fragment of a song, composed by himself and the minstrel Blondell de Nesle, which led to the discovery of the former, when held in secret custody by Leopold duke of Austria.4 Richard was killed by the French at Chaluz, from the shot of a cross-bow 5, a machine which he often worked skilfully with his own hands; and Guillaume le Breton, in his Latin poem called Phillippeis, introduces Atropos making a decree, that Richard should die by no other means than by a wound from this. destructive instrument; the use of which, after it had been interdicted by the pope in 1139, he revived, and is supposed to have shown the French in the crusades." 2 Hist. of Eng. Poetry, vol. i. p. 113. 3 Short View of Tragedy, p. 73. 6 + See Percy's Essay on the ancient Minstrels, p. xxxv., and note to Warton's poem of the Crusade. 5 It is highly honourable to the memory of this regal hero, that he had the generosity to pardon the archer who winged the mortal shaft, and ordered him to receive a hundred shillings, See Strutt's Reg. and Eccles. Antiq. p. 20. 6 Warton's Hist. ubi sup. p. 158. When pronounced past recovery of his wountl, he bequeathed to his rebellious brother John his kingdom of England, and all his other territories, and made those who were present take the oath of allegiance to him. He directed that his brains, his blood, and his entrails, should be buried at Chaluz, his heart at Rouen, and his body at Font Evrand, at the feet of his father." He died at Gizors, April 6, 1199, at the age of 42; and his body and his heart were buried as directed. See his monument in Sandford, and in Montfaucon, where also is the monument of his second wife Elizabeth, which has been copied in Ducarel's Anglo-Norman Antiquities, with the effigies of his wife Berengera, taken from her tomb in the abbey of l'Espan near Mans. 8 This gallant monarch, says Ritson, himself a celebrated poet, as well in Norman as in Provençal, was the subject of several romances. Leland found the "Historia de Ricardo Rege, Carmine scripta," in the library of Croyland abbey; and in that of the abbey of Glastonbury, were the "Gesta Ricardi" registered. Both these, no doubt, were a romance, or two different romances, in the French language. A copy of the same poem, or some other on the same subject, is in the library of Turin. In sir John Paston's inventory of his English books, temp. Edv. IV., " Kyng Ri. Cur de Lyon 2" is entered. This was printed by 7 Hoveden, Annal. p. 450. 8 Nichols's Collection of Royal and Noble Wills, p. 12. 9 Ritson's Dissertation, ubi sup. p.lxxxv. 2 Paston Letters, vol. ii. p. 300. Wynken de Worde, in 1528, and is largely extracted from by our poetical historian in the first volume of his valuable work. Richard, says Mr. Warton, is the last of our monarchs whose achievements were adorned with fiction and fable. Du Cange recites an old French manuscript prose romance, entitled "Histoire de la Mort de Richard Roy d'Angleterre." There was one, per t haps the same, among the manuscripts of the late Mr. T. Martin, of Palgrave, in Suffolk: and in the library of Caius college, Cambridge, is a manuscript romance in English rhyme, entitled "Richard Cuer da Lyon1," which accords with the copy printed by de Worde. Warton adds, that the victorious achievements of Richard I. were so famous in the reign of Henry III. as to be made the subject of a picture in the royal palace of Clarendon, near Salisbury; Duellum regis Ricardi. Richard performed great feats at the siege of Antioch, in the crusade; and lord Orford, in his Anecdotes of Painting, notices a certain great book, borrowed for queen Eleanor, written in French, containing "Gesta Antiochæ et Regum aliorum, &c.:" this, he concludes, comprised an account of the crusading exploits; the history of which was ordered by In the royal library at Paris, was "Histoire de Richard Roi d'Angleterre et de Maquemore d'Irlande, en rime." This Maquemore, according to Ritson, was Dermond Mac Morough, king of Leinster. 4 Hist. ubi sup. p.119. 5 Page 114. 6 Vol. i. p. 17. Henry III. to be painted in the Tower, and in a low chamber in the old palace of Westminster, which room was to be thenceforward called the Antioch chamber. Among the Cotton manuscripts' is preserved " Itinerarium, sive Gesta Ricardi I. Regis Angliæ in Judæa; per Ricardum Canonicum S. Trinitatis, London." To this Itinerary is prefixed, 66 EPITAPHIUM REGIS RICARDI: APUD FONTEM EVRALDI. "Scribitur hoc auro rex auree: laus tua tota: Laus tua prima fuit; Siculi Cypros altera dromo ; The capture of Jaffa, olim Joppa, was one of the feats achieved by this romantic monarch, whose exploits in Palestine are briefly enumerated by our historian of the Roman empire. Chatterton also made them the subject of Rowley's second eclogue, and depicted his hero Kynge Rycharde, lyche a lyoncel of warre, Inne sheenynge goulde, lyke feerie gronfers dyghte."] 7 Faustina, A. vii. 8 Vol.xi. p. 146. 9 Southey's edit. vol. ii. p. 13. |