antique prose. The vision of Antiquity was still very bizarre. At the funeral service of Charles the Bold at Nancy, his conqueror, the young duke of Lorraine, came to honour the corpse of his enemy, dressed "in antique style," that is to say, wearing a long golden beard which reached to his girdle. Thus got up to represent one of the Nine Worthies, he prayed for a quarter of an hour.
The word "antique" as conceived in France about 1400 belonged to the same group of ideas as "rhétorique, orateur, poésie." No one would have thought of applying the word "poésie" to a ballad or a song in the old French form. This classical word, which evoked the idea of the admired perfection of the Ancients, meant above all an artificial form. The poets of this time are perfectly capable of expressing heartfelt emotions in a simple form, but when they wish to attain superior beauty, they hunt up mythology, employ pedantic latinized terms and then consider themselves "rhetoricians." Christine de Pisan expressly singles out a mythologic piece, which she calls "balade pouétique," from her ordinary work. Eustache Deschamps, wishing to air his talent, in sending his works to Chaucer, his fellow-poet and admirer, adds the following lines:
"O Socrates plains de philosophie,
Seneque en meurs et Anglux en pratique,
Ovides grans en ta poeterie,
Bries en parler, saiges en rethorique
Aigles tres haulz, qui par ta théorique
Enlumines le regne d'Eneas,
L'Isle aux Geans, ceuls de Bruth, et qui as
Semé les fleurs et planté le rosier,
Aux ignorans de la langue pandras,
Grant translateur, noble Geoffroy Chaucier!
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A toy pour ce de la fontaine Helye
Requier avoir un buvraige autentique,
Dont la doys est du tout en ta baillie,
Pour rafrener d'elle ma soif ethique,
Qui en Gaul seray paralitique
Jusques a ce que tu m'abuveras."[1]
- ↑ O Socrates full of philosophy, Seneca in morals and Englishman in practice, Great Ovid in your poetry, Brief of speech, well-versed in rhetoric, Exalted eagle, who by your erudition Have illumined the reign of Eneas, The Island
