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A Seventeenth-Century French Source for Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Victor M. Hamm
Victor M. Hamm*
Affiliation:
College of Mount St. Joseph-on-the-Ohio
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Extract

Although Richard Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762) is a well-known document in the history of English criticism, there is, curiously enough, only one modern edition of this work, and there exists as yet no study of Hurd's total accomplishment as a critic. Miss Morley's Introduction to her edition of the Letters has been described as “valuable,” but she has done little more than summarize the contents of the book and reprint Hurd's own notes uncritically.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , September 1937 , pp. 820 - 828
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1937

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References

1 Hurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance with the Third Elizabethan Dialogue Edited with Introduction by Edith J. Morley (London, 1911).—Miss Morley reprints the text of the first edition, collating it with that of the edition of 1788, the last to appear during the author's lifetime. Variant readings are given in footnotes and appendices.

2 O. Elton, A Survey of Eng. Lit.: 1730–1780 (London, 1928), ii, 127n.

3 Op. cit., p. 12. Hurd contributes most of this note himself. Cf. pp. 56, 94 of the text in Miss Morley's edition.

4 This is the title of only the first seven volumes of the series. Beginning with the eighth, and onward to the fiftieth and last, the complete title reads: Mémoires de Litterature, Tiréz des Registres de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. In order to obviate confusion, I shall cite the whole as Histoire de l'Académie.

5 The 1759 publication (three volumes) is a mere reprint of the Mémoires as these had appeared in the twentieth volume of the Histoire, plus several additional pieces, nearly all of which latter had likewise already appeared in one or other of the volumes of the Histoire.

6 “You see, my purpose is to lead you from this forgotten chivalry to a more amusing subject, I mean the Poetry we still read, and which was founded upon it.” Letter on Chivalry, ed. Morley, p. 107.

7 Hurd was a good friend of Thomas Warton, and acted as intermediary in getting Gray's notes to Warton during the latter's preparation of the materials for his History of English Poetry. Cf. Correspondence of Hurd and Mason, ed. Leonard Whibley (Cambridge, 1932), p. 68. Warton's library contained several French treatises on the romances, which Hurd might have known. Cf. Clarissa Rinaker, Thomas Warton, Univ. of Ill. Studies (1916), pp. 177 ff.

8 Histoire de l'Académie, xvii (1743), 790.

9 Ibid., p. 796.

10 Ibid., p. 790.

11 Extract from the Preface to Vol. i: “Mon but principal est de receuillir des petites Pièces en tout genre de Littérature, tant de Vers que de Prose, composées par les Scavans du dernier siècle ou par ceux qui sont aujourd'hui l'ornement de la Republique des Lettres, soit qu'elles aient deja été imprimées, soit qu'elles soient demeurées manuscrites.”

12 History of Criticism, ii, 260.

13 Jean Chapelain (Paris, 1912), p. 185.

14 The text covers sixty pages: pp. 281–342 of Vol. vi of the Continuations.

15 Collas (op. cit., p. 185) establishes the date of the composition of the dialogue c. 1646–47, basing his inference on Chapelain's reference to the siege of Dunkirk, which took place in 1646.

16 Gilles Ménage (1613-92), érudit and bel-esprit; pensioned by cardinals de Retz and Mazarin; friend of Chapelain and Balzac; the Vadius of Molière's Femmes Savantes.

17 Jean François Sarazin (1603-54), poet, bohemian, later secretary to the Prince de Conti.

18 Chapelain's library contained many romances. Cf. the Catalogue de tous les livres de feu M. Chapelain (Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Français, Nouv. Acq., No. 318), edited by C. Searles (Stanford U. Press, 1912), pp. 70–71.—Item 2328 of this list is described as “Histoire de Lancelot, chevalier de la Table Ronde, en deux volumes l'un. Paris, 1520; l'autre. Lyon, 1591.”

19 Cf. Letters, ed. Morley, p. 56.

20 The numerals in parentheses at the end of the passages quoted refer, in the case of Hurd, to the pagination of Miss Morley's edition of the third dialogue in op. cit., and in the case of Chapelain to tome vi of the Continuations des Mémoires de Littérature et d'Histoire (Paris, 1728). I use Miss Morley's text advisedly, because of its ready accessibility. I have checked it with the text of the 1759 edition of the Dialogues and with the 1788 edition of Hurd's Works. Miss Morley's text is unimpeachable.

21 Complete title of the 1788 edition: Letters on Chivalry and Romance: Serving to illustrate some Passages in the Third Dialogue.

22 On May 3, 1761, Hurd wrote to Mason: “I have just finish'd a trifle in twelve short Letters, which you and one or two more will perhaps take the trouble of reading, and which nobody else will.” (The Correspondence of Richard Hurd and William Mason, ed. Leonard Whibley, Cambridge, 1932, p. 56.) On May 15, 1762, Warburton wrote to Hurd: “I have now seen the whole of the letters on Chivalry, and am wonderfully taken with them. They should be published forthwith, and the title-page be, as you say, Letters on Chivalry and Romance.” (Letters from a Late Eminent Prelate to One of His Friends, London, n.d., p. 248.)

23 The page-references in parentheses are again to Miss Morley's edition of the Letters, and to Vol. vi of the Continuations.

24 This passage does not occur in the earlier editions of the Letters. It was added in the edition of 1788.

25 Namely, La Pucelle.

26 Collas (op. cit., pp. 134, 185, 60 ff.) points out that Chapelain was not temperamentally a dogmatist. His private correspondence reveals him as a skeptic of the type of Montaigne. The censure of the Cid was forced on him by Richelieu.