ABSTRACT
By Sir ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, LITT.D., F.B.A., Professor of English Language and Literature in the University of London.
I
OUR veracious historian, Professor Hearnshaw, acclaiming Clio as a Muse of Truth, has unsparingly probed beneath the gorgeous panoply of chivalry, and shown how under cover of high idealism men too often acted ignobly, and were false to their plighted vows. Evil was assuredly too often associated with an institution as exalted in its aims as in its origin, and the comment of the historian on the notorious instances of cruelty and want of honour which characterized the great religious military Orders is none too severe when this chivalry in action is tested by the standard of the ideal knight-
My theme is a brief survey of the ideals and portrayal of chivalry as found in medieval English poetry. The word itself, and much appertaining to the institution, belonged to Norman English. The old English "knight" eventually became identified with "chevalier" , and "knighthood" became the distinguishing mark of " chivalry". In the older Teutonic heroic life there was a high ideal of conduct, and possibly some form of institutional ritual, from which the Order of Chivalry was perhaps ultimately evolved. Into these questions of origin and history it is not my task to enter. The Anglo-Saxon poem of "The Battle of Maldon", at the end of the tenth century, breathes the spirit of exalted chivalrous idealism, with its picture of the great Chieftain accompanied by vassal Knights, unwilling to leave the field when their lord lay prostrate. The true Knight, as
opposed to the craven coward false to his troth, is placed before us in epic dignity of word and deed. This late AngloSaxon poem, mirroring knightly heroism on the battlefield, harks back in sentiment to the greatest of Old English heroic poems, Beowulf, with its vivid protraiture of old English courtly life, interpenetrated by refined ideals as virile as any in later chivalry. The young warrior makes good his knighthood by fighting with monsters of the prime; and when, an aged monarch, he again goes forth to fight with a devastating monster, there stands undaunted beside him a young warrior, who will, where others fail, be steadfast to his vows of fealty. "Death were better for any warrior than a disgraced life "-such is the burden of this ancient English epic.
